#chips (contextually bag of chips)

[sixth-light]

Contextually it’s about to get a bit harder for kiwis, because chips will refer to hot chips, crisps, and the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Firstly, I hope we are not so boring as to select Chippie*, may he find other ways to spread his legs**, and secondly, Chippie /=/ chips (or chippies, even - which are both bags of potato chips and carpenters)

*Minister of many things Chris Hipkins, oft-known as "Chippie"

**a legendary malapropism

#politics #new zealand #new zealand english

[context-is--irrelevant]

You know what, Martin? You can STAY on the fruit farm.

Hanna

#hanna what the heck #martin's fruit farm #fruit #fruit farm #apple chips #sassing a chip bag #stay on the fruit farm #goodbye martin #martin #context #contextual #context is everything #context free #out of context #out of context quotes #context is irrelevant

[onthevirgeofdestruction]

Dreaming While I Wake

Sanders Sides Foster Care AU - Roman-centric Angst & Hurt/Comfort & Abuse Recovery

Roman tries to be upbeat and hopeful despite all the shit that’s happened to him. And a lot of shit has. Luckily, his new foster home is with two literal rays of sunshine (and a sarcastic asshole).

Words: 3,445 Warnings: Anger issues, Talk of JDC, Over-Apologizing, Food, Talk of Cryptids, Death Mention, Blood Mention Characters: Roman, Patton, Virgil, Thomas Universe: Dreaming While I Wake Genre: Family Fluff, actually

Chapter 22

chapter 1 for new readers - ffn mirror

   Roman mostly fumed for the drive home, and Patton let him do so without a fuss. He also let him take a nap. Roman was certain he ended up falling asleep at some point. He was awake when they got home, but the music changed to classical and he didn’t remember that happening. It also happened much faster than it should have in theory, not that Roman had any understanding of time. He was thankful for the space to process. He was mad about having to leave Remus again, but the ride home helped him get through that so he wasn’t as bitter anymore. Stupid anger issues. Stupid being resentful about being angry. Emotions were dumb.

   He accepted Patton's assistance to the couch, and with as much as his feet hurt, he didn’t bother complaining. Patton looked a little shell-shocked himself as he sat down near the corner of the couch, honestly. Roman wasn’t entirely sure what about, but the whole experience was both shitty and amazing, so he couldn’t blame him. Roman was somewhere between happy, sad, angry, and just straight vibing.

   Patton examined Roman for a moment as he settled down on the couch. “So, kiddo… I can’t say I followed all of that. Because somehow you two broke some kind of weird time barrier along with using fake words, jumping subjects like hopscotch and cursing as if you were sailors. But I think there are lots to unpack there,” Patton intoned, being careful with his enunciation.

   “Let’s throw out the whole garbage bag,” Roman shrugged, kicking out of his shoes to put his aching feet up on the couch. He didn’t feel like discussing it. He only just calmed down and wasn’t sure he could work down from being pissed off again.

   “I’d ground you for that language, but you are sort of already stuck at home and that feels uncharitable to take away video games or something,” Patton said off-handedly, looking a bit defeated as he leaned forward on his thighs.

   “See, too nice for your own good,” Roman chuckled, motioning with his arms towards Patton. Patton just blinked at him for an awkward moment.

   “I have literally never seen you so alive and animated. Ever. Even when you were sprinting with Lita,” Patton said, looking somewhat baffled. He scrunched up his lip to the side and kept staring unnervingly at Roman. “Also, I had no idea anybody could talk that fast,” Patton added, sounding a little impressed.

   “Remus and were always ‘if you stop moving you die’-type individuals,” Roman replied, fiddling with his jacket sleeves. He didn’t understand why he was being watched so closely. Did he do something? Was he supposed to do something? Roman chewed on the inside of his lip apprehensively.

   “I’ve just never seen you be that… high-energy. I mean, I knew you were energetic, but that was a whole other level. It was kind of overwhelming,” Patton stated, leaning back into the couch with a sigh.

   “Sorry,” Roman muttered, looking down at his lap.

   “No, no! I think I get why you were having so much trouble with following your homework yesterday if it’s always like that in your head. And why you act restless so often,” Patton held up his hands and shook his head. “You don’t have to say sorry,” He added gently.

   “I don’t follow what you’re saying, either,” Roman looked at Patton in confusion. “Am I in trouble for cussing?” He asked, furrowing his eyebrows in concern and still chewing his inner lip nervously.

   “Yes, but I don’t think it’d be right to punish you over it. Just try not to do it next time,” Patton said considerately with a small shrug.

   “I was 100% not thinking before speaking at JDC. I barely have that capacity in the first place,” Roman rolled his eyes and leaned back against the couch arm. He didn’t want to make promises he couldn’t keep.

   “Well, that explains how you can talk so fast,” Patton chuckled and shook his head. “Seriously, you boys cussed more this afternoon then I’ve heard all year,” Patton said weakly, sounding kind of disappointed in Roman. The tone almost hurt, and Roman winced a little and played with his jacket zipper.

   “Sorry, I don’t have much of a filter,” Roman apologized dourly, tugging his zipper up and down.

   “It’s something we can work on, I guess. That kind of language doesn’t fly in the real world,” Patton said firmly, holding up his finger.

   “We were at Juvie. If there’s anywhere to cuss like prison inmates, it’s with the prison inmates,” Roman said and signed ‘inside prison,’ while he rolled his eyes.

   “That doesn’t mean you should do it,” Patton frowned at Roman. “Oh, hi Virgil,” Patton smiled towards the staircase. Roman signed hello as well.

   ‘Chips,’ Virgil signed, passing by. Roman blinked twice at Virgil actually explaining what he was up to, which didn’t happen that much. It was strange to see Virgil do non-cryptid of insults-like things. Unless maybe he was just powered by salt. What does a sodium-powered insult cryptid look like? Probably some kind of gangly demon. Virgil needs red eyes or something. He has bright hazel, but he deserves to be more of a cryptid in real life.

   “That whole event has me very confused. But first thing’s first, why didn’t you mention you had an identical twin?” Patton asked and shook Roman from imagining the various ways Virgil could look if he was skulking through the woods as a supernatural entity. Roman blinked and sat up straighter, his eyes shooting to Patton.

   “I didn’t realize the state hadn’t told you! You said you knew I had a brother. I didn’t realize you didn’t know we were born 17 minutes apart,” Roman threw up his arms. “I figured you’d find out soon and really wanted to see the face you made,” Roman explained sheepishly. Patton sounded upset at him about it, and it put Roman on edge a bit.

   “That’s kind of dishonest, Roman,” Patton chided, frowning at Roman. Roman scratched at his finger for a moment, feeling bad.

   “Letting the situation speak for itself isn’t dishonest. It’s shady at worst,” Roman shrugged slightly, trying to excuse himself. He didn’t understand why it would be a big deal. Virgil walked back into the living room munching on a bag of chips, looking interested. He placed the bag on the top of the couch.

   ‘Damn. Photo?’ Virgil signed while he stood behind the couch.

   ‘No phones allowed,’ Roman signed back the reason he couldn’t get one. He wanted a photo, too.

   ‘Shit,’ Virgil signed and snapped, looking disappointed. He came around to sit on the opposite couch arm while eating salt and vinegar chips by the handful.

   “There’re lots of things that I think I heard that just make me more thankful you’re already going to be talking to someone. I have to admit I feel awful that Remus has no support system in there knowing what I do now,” Patton said a little shakily. Roman stared at him incredulously for a moment. He was not entirely sure what Patton was going on about still until his brain caught up.

   “Oh! Well, he’s probably got friends if he’s teaching them our made-up twin language,” Roman replied with a slight shrug. “I don’t think anybody who doesn’t like him would put up with it. It’s a hard one,” Roman signed ‘impossible’. It was nearly a bitch to learn because of all the contextual words, so anyone putting up with that probably liked him. Patton hummed, not sounding that satisfied.

   “Do you know why he wants boxers?” Patton asked carefully after another pause of Roman fiddling with his zipper and the crunch of chips from Virgil.

   “Yeah, I heard about that,” Roman drawled in distaste. “They have communal underwear. The state doesn’t buy them any separate clothes,” Roman explained. Patton shivered in disgust. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but he had a visceral reaction to the idea no matter how he looked at it. He has known some revolting dudes in his life and would rather go commando than share cleaned underwear with them.

   ‘Fucking gross,’ Virgil signed and shook his head. Virgil must have agreed with the sentiment because he also stuck out his tongue and grimaced.

   “And, um,” Patton shot a glance to Virgil. “I think he said you were bi?” Patton asked quietly.

   “I mean, we can’t all get assigned gay by J. K. Rowling. Some of us have to settle on our twins maybe being the less repressed ones. I said I’d consider it, don’t go throwing me a pride parade,” Roman said dismissively. He didn’t wish to speculate about it, he didn’t want to deal with it, he wouldn’t prefer to hear a single slur from his dad’s mouth in his head again, so he’d just rather… not. Maybe later. Maybe. Is hermit a choice? Hermit sounds nice.

   ‘I got assigned gay by Nintendo , loser,’ Virgil fingerspelled with a teasing expression.

   ‘Lucky,’ Roman signed back, shooting Virgil a sarcastic grin after he scrunched up his lips. Well, there’s his confirmation. Virgil just ate his chips smugly.

   “I’m still very confused,” Patton creased his eyebrows and looked at Roman.

   “I’m saying I don’t know,” Roman motioned widely with his open palms as if motioning to all the shit he didn’t comprehend.

   “Okay, that I understand. I support you no matter what,” Patton said with a small reassuring smile. He appreciated the acceptance and all but considering Patton married a man, it was kind of a given.

   ‘Barf,’ Virgil signed with a grimace and his tongue out again. Roman couldn’t help but chortle at Virgil’s ridiculousness.

   “What if I come out as an asshole? Would you support me then?” Roman asked an absurd hypothetical just to make Virgil laugh.

   “What? No!” Patton objected and put his face in his hands, shaking his head slowly. Roman chuckled at Patton’s over-the-top reaction.

   ‘Owned,’ Virgil signed and snickered silently before shoving another handful of chips in his mouth.

   “I think I need to go process this with Thomas. Would you mind slipping your gloves back on?” Patton asked, sounding weary. Roman sighed dramatically and pulled them out of his pocket, making a big show about putting them on. “Thanks, kiddo,” Patton got up from the couch and went to Thomas’s office and closed the door.

   ‘How was the slammer?’ Virgil signed curiously.

   ‘Bullshit. There go our diabolical plans,’ Roman fingerspelled with a small eye roll.

   ‘Curses. Plan B, then. Attract vampires. Gay ones,’ Virgil signed back with a smirk and bounced his eyebrow once.

   ‘Perfect. Plan C is metal limbs. Now is Minecraft time,’ Roman signed, getting up to grab the laptop.

   ‘I’ll join you. BRB,’ Virgil signed and got up from the couch and headed upstairs. Roman sat back down and laid across the couch with the family laptop, elevating one foot against the arm of the couch. Virgil came back down with his laptop and sat on the top of the couch with his laptop in his lap. Like, join him in the living room or playing Minecraft? Did Virgil play Minecraft? Did he want to spend time with Roman of his own free will?

   ‘Make a world to join,’ Virgil signed. Roman shrugged and created a new world with a random seed and opened it to LAN. So Virgil played Minecraft. He didn’t strike Virgil as the sandbox type. And he wanted to play with Roman. That was unexpected. It wasn’t like he hadn’t played with foster siblings before, but he just hadn’t expected Virgil to want to do anything with him that didn’t involve watching TV and insults.

   Virgil’s demon avatar popped up a few moments later and immediately started punching trees. Roman joined him in the massacre of the local flora right away. He had set up a small house for them to wait out the night by the time the sun finished setting. However, Virgil was perhaps too feral and ran into the night with a wooden sword. Roman built the house close to the spawn point, so there wasn’t much harm in crafting up some wooden swords and joining him. Virgil played much differently from Roman. He just ran off and murdered until he ran out of supplies and then came back to the base Roman was building up with materials. He messaged for help sometimes, but just seemed content running headway into hoards of spiders in caves. He was clearly terrified of creepers, but who wasn’t? Everything else he wanted to murder without exception. Keeping up with Virgil’s need for torches was an event in itself.

   It was nice playing with someone that wasn’t a little kid, though. Roman got to focus more on the building when he preferred to and had someone to back him up in the caves when he would rather explore. They also insulted each other incessantly. Roman had been called a ‘ball-brained hamster’, a ‘sock full of hot go-gurt ’, and ‘hysterical trilling inanity’ in the last few minutes alone. He called Virgil a dark void where dreams go to die when Roman suggested a new addition to the base Virgil didn’t like. Virgil created a sign for the chest Roman kept filling with mining and murdering materials with that very name he liked it so much.

   “Boys, it’s past noon. I made lunch for everyone since you were playing games together. Get to a stopping point and come eat,” Patton called from the kitchen while Roman was harvesting a vein of gold. His inventory was nearly full, so he may as well turn around and head back to base. Roman retraced the trail of torches back, where he joined Virgil in setting stuff to smelt while they were eating. Virgil got up and Roman followed him into the kitchen.

   “The food smells good, Patton. Thanks for cooking for us when you didn’t have to,” Roman said, sitting down at the table and joyfully serving himself some broccoli-chicken mac-and-cheese at the plates already set. It smelled marvelous, and Patton hadn’t seasoned it oddly like that food last night.

   “I didn’t want to bother you. Plus, it’s an excuse for a bonus eat-together time!” Patton smiled, though he still looked exhausted. Virgil grabbed the salt and vinegar chips he was eating earlier and crumpled them up on the top of his serving of mac-and-cheese. He held the bag over for Roman and raised an eyebrow. Roman shrugged and took a small handful of chips to do the same. The crunch and bite were pretty good on the creamy mac-and-cheese when he tentatively tried it.

   “Oh, that’s awesome,” Roman nodded and Virgil smirked, putting the bag down on the dinner table between the two of them. It wasn’t like Virgil to share his salty potato products, so the gesture weirdly flattered Roman. His standards for flattery had gotten low, it seemed. Thomas came into the kitchen and smiled at Roman.

   “Comfort food, Pat?” Thomas asked, arching an eyebrow at the food on the table.

   “ Roman is fine, but I’m not,” Patton said somberly as he served himself some mac-and-cheese.

   “Hm?” Roman looked up with his mouth full of mac-and-cheese when he heard his name and swallowed. “I’m sorry?” Roman apologized, but he did not understand what was happening.

   “No, Roman, you didn’t do anything wrong. You don’t have to apologize,” Patton held up his hands and shook his head.

   “I heard my name and the fact that you’re not okay, so I think I kinda do ?” Roman said carefully, furrowing his brow nervously.

   “Do you remember what you talked to Remus about?” Thomas asked mildly, sitting down at the table in the remaining spot.

   “Uh-” Roman thought for a moment, trying to remember. “Um. Frozen, gayness, juvie, killing each other through a mirror universe… my family, I think,” Roman listed off. “Probably some other stuff, we were there for an hour,” Roman shrugged and took another bite of mac-and-cheese. It was a weird question to ask, but it’s not like he and Remus were talking about bad things, so he had no reason to hide it.

   ‘Can twins kill each other through a mirror universe? Metal,’ Virgil signed, looking darkly excited at the concept.

   ‘Only if they’re perfectly identical,’ Roman put down his fork and signed back while he chewed.

   “Agreed, he’s probably fine. Comfort food is excellent, though. Thanks for cooking, love,” Thomas rubbed Patton’s shoulder appreciatively.

   “It helps me process things, but there’s never a bad time for mac-and-cheese,” Patton said sagely, nodding and rubbing his chin wisdom.

   “Maybe not so much if you’re lactose intolerant. Unless it was your last meal, then it’s the perfect time for mac-and-cheese,” Roman provided with a small shrug. Virgil looked considerate and also nodded after a moment, chewing his food.

   ‘Poisoned mac-and-cheese would be a good method to die,’ Virgil signed. Roman raised his eyebrows and considered it, then tilted his head and nodded enthusiastically.

   ‘Only with bacon and serranos,’ Roman added. Virgil nodded in agreement, looking satisfied.

   “I really hope that’s table appropriate talk,” Patton narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

   “We’re just talking about variants of mac-and-cheese,” Roman provided dismissively. It wasn’t wrong, but he assumed Patton didn’t want to know that one of those variants was poison.

   “Pre-digested, right?” Patton asked carefully, pointing with his fork.

   “Gross!” Roman shot and Virgil stuck his tongue out. They both grimaced at Patton. “We’re not animals, geez,” Roman muttered bitterly and shook his head.

   “We discussed lactose intolerance. I had to be sure,” Patton said seriously as he looked between the two of them.

   “Well, you brought that part of the issues up, not us,” Roman rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair dramatically.

   “Are your feet okay after having to be on them today?” Thomas asked, clearly in an attempt to change the subject. Roman could respect that since he’d rather be able to eat his food without feeling disgusted.

   “They’re not bleeding, I don’t think? They just hurt,” Roman replied, sounding just as unsure as he felt. He didn’t exactly check them when he got back. Bending down to do that hurt like a bitch and they didn’t feel weirdly hot or anything like that.

   “I’m not sure about you walking to school still on Monday,” Thomas deliberated, sounding concerned again. Thomas and safety, geez.

   “A proposed compromise: I call you if they start bleeding again,” Roman offered. Thomas seemed to like compromises, and it was reasonable in Roman’s opinion.

   “How about we check if your feet are okay in the morning and then make that the agreement if they’re healed enough?” Thomas suggested back an alteration to the compromise, and Roman narrowed his eyes and chewed his cheek for a moment.

   “You know I’ll be too out of it to argue with you in the morning,” Roman objected, stabbing at his mac-and-cheese.

   “I’m counting on it,” Thomas smiled knowingly and Virgil silently snickered at Roman.

   “ Hey ,” Roman glowered mildly at Thomas, pulling his lip to the side.

   “If they keep opening up and bleeding, it’ll just take longer to get back to your regular life, Roman. They need to heal fully,” Thomas reminded him, tapping the table with his finger to punctuate his point.

   “It’s just that one on my right foot that doesn’t like staying closed. What if I hop there?” Roman asked facetiously, rolling his eyes dramatically.

   “I’d love to see you try while not hurting your broken rib,” Thomas said glibly.

   “Okay, you know what?” Roman replied faux-angrily. “That’s fair,” Roman finished blithely and snickered. He reached in the chip bag and crumpled up one more chip on the remaining mac-and-cheese.

   “You had me going there, kiddo, not gonna lie,” Patton chuckled nervously after a second.

   “Sorry,” Roman apologized. “I was just having some fun,” Roman said sheepishly, curling in his shoulders.

   “I thought it was funny,” Thomas laughed lightly. Roman relaxed a little and continued eating, glad he wasn’t upset. Patton settled down too, though he was still eating much slower than his usual vacuum pace.

   ‘Want to continue playing after food?’ Roman put down his fork and signed at Virgil. Virgil scooped some more mac-and-cheese out before signing.

   ‘Father, I crave violence,’ Virgil signed back with an evil smile, and Roman laughed, not anticipating that response in any sense, and got a smaller portion of seconds for himself.

Personal Taglist: @bunny222 @elizabutgayer​ @prinxietyforever @kanene-yaaay-o-retorno @the-sympathetic-villain @croftersjam15 @ollyollyoxinfree @xytiiko

the taglist repository:

High school:  @dragonwithproblems @starlight-era @averykedavra  @potatsanderssides

Roman Angst:  @k1ngtok1

Hurt/Comfort:  @callboxkat @nonasficcollection @supernovainthenightsky @evoodo123

Roman-Centric:  @smileyzs  @robinwritesshitposts @thatgaydemigodnerd

Fostering AU:  @i-am-not-a-dinner-roll

literally everything sanders sides:  @katelynn-a-fan @dwbh888 @grouptalekindnesssoul @the-hoely-bleach @anvil527up @fanficloverinthesun  @brain-deadx0 @the-grounded-raven  @ananonsplace

#tsss #sanders sides #tsss fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #tsss fanfic #ayri writes #chapter fic #dreaming while i wake #teen!roman #teen!virgil #dad!patton #dad!thomas #ts roman #ts roman angst #ts virgil #ts patton #ts thomas #gay #jdc mention #blood mention #food mention #death mention #fanfiction #fanfic

[elven-cook-apprentice]

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Vernon’s Rations

Uncle Vernon's rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.

----------------

I mean, it’s not bad... Always hard to tell with translations which times they mean what but I’m pretty sure contextually this is right.

--------------

Donate to https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/ to support trans youth in the UK!    

#hplit #harry potter #Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone #rations #literary food #uncle vernon #banana #chips

[fightmeyeats]

Let’s Make it That Deep: Thinking about the Surveillance State, Racial Politics, and Humanity in Terminator: Dark Fate

This week I watched Terminator: Dark Fate, which carries forward from the second Terminator film, Terminator: Judgement Day (1991), wisely ignoring everything that happened in movies 3-5. Dark Fate is set in the year 2020 and follows Dani Ramos, humanity’s new hope to survive the future robot apocalypse, as she, Grace (an augmented human from the future), Sarah Connor, and Carl (a T-800 model terminator) fight against a Rev-9 sent back in time to kill Dani. Overall, to quote my sibling, the movie “isn’t a literary masterpiece,” but it is fairly enjoyable--especially if you’re thirsting over the main leads. However, because I have a feral academic-garbage brain I also wanted to spend some time unpacking what I saw as the film’s three major discourses: surveillance/technological inevitability, race politics, and human exceptionalism. These are fraught discourses, often represented in contradictory and confusing ways over the course of the film, but I think it is generative to sit with them and to try to work out what messages are intentionally and/or unintentionally being conveyed through the movie, as well as what the potentials and limitations of these messages might be. 

Spoilers ahead.

i. Surveillance & Technological Inevitability

Before getting into the content of the film, one thing which may be useful to consider is how the movie previews shown in the theater before the start of the movie contextualize reception and engagement with the actual story Terminator: Dark Fate tells. There were quite a few trailers before the movie--enough so that one patron a few seats down in my row loudly commented “is the movie going to start now or what??” as yet another trailer started playing, the majority of which were either for war or horror movies. The two in particular I am interested in discussing are The King’s Man (2020) and Midway (2019), and the way that they both glorify and justify the imperialist/security state. The King’s Man trailer, for example, positions the titular agency as being an “independent intelligence agency” which essentially is able to actively “protect” people while governments fall short. In between clips from the film, title cards read "witness the rise...of the civilized," a shockingly open and yet seemingly unconscious connection between the King’s Man narrative and British colonialism/imperialism. Immediately following this trailer is one for Midway, a WWII moving centering on the aircraft carrier USS Midway immediately after the events of Pearl Harbor, which a character in the trailer calls “the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the US”. The reason why these trailers are important to keep in mind is because they implicitly respond to some of the anxieties articulated in Terminator; if Terminator films speak to fears of technology and surveillance, these trailers argue that really technology, surveillance, and military power are all important aspects of “civilized” nations, necessary for security and safety. 

This actually ties in immediately to the opening of Terminator: Dark Fate, and the death of John Connor which can be interpreted, in one sense, as a failure of surveillance. This actually specifically made me think of Inderpal Grewal’s article “Security Moms,” and the rise of the neoliberal female citizen subject as an agent of security through motherhood in the post 9/11 U.S. The “security mom, essentially, is a “conceptualization of women as mothers seeking to protect their innocent children - a figure that is not so new in the history of modern nationalisms, or even American nationalisms and racism” (Grewal 27). Much like the King’s Man trailer suggestion that private intelligence is better suited to save lives than governmentalized intelligence, “neoliberalism suggests that the state is unable to provide security and thus it disavows its ability to protect all citizens”--only in here, it is the figure of the mother rather than a private agency which becomes the new and better fitted agent of surveillance, always watching for enemies in order to protect their children (Grewal 28). In a voice over, Sarah Connor tells us that she “saved three billion people but [she] couldn’t save [her] son”; a T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) model Terminator which had been sent back before Skynet was destroyed and continued carrying out orders “from a future that never happened” walks right past Sarah and shoots John. While Sarah leaps in to action after she recognizes the threat, she is unable to stop the T-800 from killing her son in seconds. This might actually be a key difference between Sarah Connor and Grewal’s “security mom”: while security moms are a largely a post-9/11 construction of neoliberal/nationalist motherhood, Sarah Connor was a successful security mom in 1991, constantly vigilant and constantly surveilling her surroundings for concealed enemies who could kill her son. In the post-9/11 era, Sarah Connor’s belief that the apocalypse has been averted causes her to believe that she and her son are safe, resulting in inadequate surveillance/vigilance and her son’s death. Much like the framing of Pearl Harbor in the Midway trailer and 9/11 in real life, disasters happen because of failures to appropriately surveil. 

Technological state surveillance itself is reflected in strange ways in the film, which seems to be at once critiquing and accepting constant surveillance. Sarah Connor keeps her cell phone in a chip bag to avoid being tracked and tells Grace and Dani that they will not last without her help because they are not aware of the constant surveillance occurring at every traffic light, every store, every gas station, etc--information the Rev-9 terminator chasing Dani will certainly have access to. Terminator: Dark Fate expresses fears of technological abuse/control and surveillance, but constantly frames these fears as the failure of the government to control these technologies--the threat isn’t what the government will do or is doing with these technologies, but rather that these technologies are uncontrollable or might be used by enemy agents. While one could argue that the fear being expressed here is actually a critique of the existence of surveillance technologies--that technologies exist for a reason and will do what they are programmed to do--this framing overwhelmingly still imagines a kind of governmental neutrality, where the threat is the located exclusively in the technology itself, not in those creating and using it. Here I also want to emphasize that while in Judgement Day there’s a deeper critique of the military industrial complex and the role of private corporations, in Dark Fate it appears to be the government alone engaged in constant surveillance and the technologies which result in the robot apocalypse, with the role of capitalism largely obscured from the connection between the new evil AI, Legion. In this same vein, while it seems that Legion is built as a weapon by the government, but we do not even explicitly know which government--again, the threat isn’t government construction of Legion (although Sarah does comment “they never learn”) but rather the technology itself. 

In the original movies, Skynet was a defensive surveillance software--but this is no longer science fiction; as Edward Snowden revealed/confirmed in 2013, constant mass surveillance is a real thing, and there are real ways people can avoid it (using VPNs, encryption, covering webcams, anti-facial recognition makeup (called CV dazzle), wearing disguises, etc). Despite this, and despite Sarah Connor’s awareness of constant surveillance, the characters don’t do much to avoid surveillance and just as Sarah originally predicted, the Rev-9 easily tracks them through governmental surveillance apparatuses. In the same way, surveillance and the technological abuse/carelessness which bring about the robot apocalypse are largely imagined inevitable. While there is a constant argument for agency and the idea that people can and must make choices in the present moment that determine the future, nothing is done to disrupt surveillance in the present moment, and the future seems to be unstoppable. While we can certainly think about the switch from Skynet to Legion, and the way this articulates a different set of social concerns and anxieties in 2019 than in the late 80s/early 90s, stopping Skynet delays but does not prevent what seems to be, from a material standpoint, the same future. In this same vein, when Grace dies so that Dani can use her power source to destroy the Rev-9, Grace tells Dani “we both knew I wasn’t coming back”; this frames her death as predetermined and fixed. Similarly, at the end of the film Sarah tells Dani she will help her to “prepare”, implicitly suggesting that the future cannot be prevented--further legitimizing the reading of the Skynet to Legion switch as an inability to meaningfully change the future. This brings us to the line used both in Judgement Day and Dark Fate: “there is no fate but what we make for ourselves”. While this line seems to suggest that we have agency and can make choices that change the future, the inability to actually enact change might instead lead to a counter reading of the line: is it that we make fate, or that the fate we get is the one we “deserve”? 

ii. Race (& Gender) Politics

There’s actually quite a bit to think about in terms of the racial politics of Terminator: Dark Fate. One the one hand, we can certainly think about the underlying savior discourse and the transition of this role from a white man to a Mexican woman. There is some fairly heavy handed Christian symbolism involved in John Connor as the white male hero—John’s initials parallel him to Jesus Christ, and Sarah comments “let her play Mother Mary for a while” when she thinks Dani has become the new target because a son Dani will someday give birth to will be the new savior of humanity. Sarah also comments that Dani isn’t the threat, it’s her womb. I want to go two directions on this comment: first, while it of course turns out that Dani is the hero herself, the idea of Latinx wombs as a threat is intricately tied to U.S. immigration policies and histories of eugenics, with the imagined threat being to the preservation of the (white) nation, so to here articulate the idea of Latinx reproduction as a kind of weapon to protect humanity is to offer something very different from a discourse of salvation through white reproduction/motherhood. Second, this line offers a kind of meta commentary on the way the previous movies claimed John as the savior (despite Sarah’s own heroism) to convince viewers that Dark Fate is more politically aware than previous Terminator movies, since Dani is the one destined to save the world (which  of course ties back into my previous discussion of the unresolved tension between fate and agency), not her son and not a white man.

Moving beyond the switch in hero, one of the main things I want us to consider in thinking about the racial politics of Dark Fate is the question of collateral damage: while it’s nothing unusual to see large amounts of collateral damage in the background of an action movie, here this damage seems to be located exclusively in the Global South (specifically Mexico). Most (but not all) of the destruction is disassociated from individual people--for example, in one scene the Rev-9 drives a bulldozer down the wrong side of a freeway, crushing or crashing into numerous cars which obviously have people inside, even though we do not see most of them. Scenes of damage or interactions between populations and the Rev-9 in the U.S. do not result in death the same way that they do in Mexico/along the border. When the Rev-9 is knocked off of a plane after take off and crashes into a backyard in Texas, for example, he picks himself up and apologizes to the white people barbecuing in the yard for destroying their shed before continuing on his way. Similarly, when he flies over a military base which is actively attacking him, he ignores them and continues his pursuit of Dani without fighting back. While in both of these cases, one might argue that this is connected to the Rev-9’s obsession with fulfilling his mission without needing to kill anyone who is not actually preventing him from reaching Dani, a) this is a work of fiction so someone decided that the Rev-9 could fulfill his mission with minimal collateral damage in some spaces but not others, and b) in the final fight at the dam, the workers simply disappear when the fighting begins, removing them from any risk of becoming collateral damage. 

Although there are action scenes throughout the movie, the last scene to involve mass violence against background characters is in the detention center. Before I get into the discussion of collateral damage/background character death at the detention center, I want to start by discussing border crossing and the representation of the detention center more broadly. There are some ways in which Dark Fate does attempt to address the violence involved in detention centers and U.S. immigration policy, but overwhelmingly it falls short. One of the ways we see this is in the actual crossing of the border and the way that it’s not particularly difficult or dangerous for Dani, Grace, and Sarah to cross. Certain popularized images of border crossing are deployed in ways which might suggest this is an authentic look at what it means to cross borders without documents (Dani, Grace, and Sarah ride on the top of a train with other migrants, which I suspect draws from the documentary Which Way Home, and Dani’s uncle, a Coyote, helps them cross the desert and enter the U.S. through a tunnel under the border wall), however the way these images are used as a shorthand undermines the danger undertaken/violence experienced by real undocumented migrants as the result of U.S. border policy. Riding the freight trains, called El tren de la muerte or La Bestia (the Death Train or The Beast) in real life, is highly dangerous and many people are killed or suffer serious and long term injuries as a result, and although we are told that Dani’s uncle is a good Coyote who gets people across safely (and he is of course helping his own niece), crossing the desert is extremely dangerous and many people die. Representing this crossing in maybe 10 minutes of screen time makes it seem easy and safe, obscuring the very real dangers faced by migrants in real life. Similarly, in the detention center border patrol agents are represented as apathetic but not particularly violent/dangerous, and the depictions of the cages migrants are kept in do not come close to reflecting the overcrowding experienced by the people who are being imprisoned in detention centers in real life. Furthermore, the imprisoned migrants do not have speaking roles and become non-agentive; the real suffering of undocumented migrants becomes nothing more than a setting, offering no significant or useful critique of U.S. border policies/politics. This brings us back to that question of collateral damage in the detention center. After Grace breaks out of the medical room she was being held in, she unlocks all of the cages and detained migrants begin to flee; although I have seen this described in some places online as her “freeing” them, escaping migrants become a distraction which aids in Dani, Sarah, and Grace’s actual escape from the detention center and the Rev-9 which has caught up with them. While most of the violence is enacted on border patrol agents rather than migrants (which is good), the Rev-9 does kill/harm some of the migrants who block his path as they attempt to escape, and the only border patrol agent we can identify as a speaking character to be killed is the Black woman who was pointedly apathetic to Dani’s pleas for help during the intake process. Most, if not all, of the other border patrol agents with speaking lines at the detention center are white, and seem to be framed as almost more sympathetic; the medical personnel fixing Grace’s wounds, for example, notices the metal interlaid in her body and are horrified by “what’s been done to her,” viewing her as a victim to be sympathized with. While one of the guards insists “we call them detainees” when Grace escapes from her handcuffs and demands to know where the prisoners are being kept, which offers an attempted commentary on the linguistic obscuration of violence and white apathy, we again must come back to the fact that the white medical guard is left unharmed while the Black guard is very pointedly killed. 

We might push back on this overall interpretation by thinking about the ways that in real life people of color can become complicit in systems of white supremacy which will ultimately harm them while continuing to overwhelmingly protect white citizens, as well as the way that the Global South so frequently is a site of collateral damage, and experiences the displaced violence of the Global North. However, what I want us to think about is that this kind of intervention is useless when it is left latent, and overall only feeds into the constant racialized violence which plays out in movies and television programming. Furthermore, I want us to think about James Cameron’s comment about Judgement Day when he said that the T-1000 looked like an LAPD officer because “the Terminator films are...about us losing touch with our own humanity and becoming machines, which allows us to kill and brutalize each other. Cops think of all non-cops as less than they are”. While some have argued that Dark Fate picks up this legacy by making border patrol the villains, and the Rev-9 does clearly represent a military/border patrol kind of threat, the Rev-9 is also always a person of color. The base appearance, played by Gabriel Luna, is a man of color, and every single person it transforms itself to look like (which we are told kills the person being copied) is also a person of color. Because of this, there is a way in which the critique of border patrol is divorced from white supremacy and people of color become part of what is imagined as the threat. 

iii. Thinking About Humanity 

Finally, this ties into the discussion of humanity and the idea of human exceptionalism and purity articulated throughout Dark Fate. As with much of what I have previously talked about, this is a frequently contradictory kind of discourse which simultaneously broadens and constrains the idea of what “humanity” is/means. One example of this is the way in which augments and terminators that grow a conscious queer the boundary between “human” and “machine.” When Sarah demands they shoot Carl in the face to see what he “really is,” Dani insists “I don’t really care what he is”; through this there seems to be, on some level, an articulation that there’s more to being “human” than literally being a human being. Furthermore, these characters are queer in multiple dimensions--Grace is a very butch, very queer feeling character, and while I don’t want to say that the reformed murderous robot said Ace Rights, Carl’s character does push back against the heteronormative coital imperative by through his relationship to Elisa and his adopted son Mateo, which offers a model of meaningful romantic partnership and family commitment which does not involve biological reproduction or sexual intimacy. However, despite these queer potentials, we are constantly pushed back towards a privileging of “human” through frequent assertions that Grace is human (not a machine, just augmented), that augmentation is unstable (Grace’s frequent metabolic crashes and dependence on a cocktail of medication to keep herself going), and Carl only has the approximation of a conscious and cannot love the way humans do. Furthermore, Carl and Grace both die, suggesting that this queering of the human/machine boundary is untenable. 

So what does “humanity” mean in Dark Fate? Ultimately, it seems to mean protecting the vulnerable and being willing to sacrifice yourself to do it. During the final confrontation between Dani, Sarah, Grace, and Carl, the Rev-9 says “I know she’s a stranger, why not let me have her”; Sarah responds: “Because we’re not machines you metal motherfucker”. While I obviously think the film offers a confused message on agency and that we need to be critical of the racial politics of the film, this ties into what I think (or what I would like to think) the movie hoped to say about border patrol and detention centers: we need to do better by refugees and undocumented migrants. It doesn’t matter whether we know someone, whether we imagine they are deserving or undeserving, what it might or might not cost us to do the right thing; we can choose, in this moment, whether or not we step up and fight against the detention of undocumented migrants, whether we resist ICE, whether we advocate for refugees. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. 

#terminator dark fate #terminator #dark fate #critical race theory #neoliberalism #essay #review #spoilers #i am white #as always i wrote this in one mad go & will fix any errors as i find them #also as always pls feel free to respond & engage

[bitemygigabits]

Another deck review from friendly neighborhood kickstarter deck collector! This one is the Gothic Moon Tarot by Gothic Art Studio.

The first picture is everything I got with my kickstarter as well as another one of @stonesandsigils bags which will of course be it’s new home for the most part.

This deck had a tough time after it was kickstarted and I’m actually missing one of my rewards but considering that I was supposed to receive it in November last year and over half that time was mostly in the dark about what was going on except “well they should be coming soon!” I’m just glad I got the deck at all.

This is a limited edition print with silver gilding on the edges and it looks very pretty and honestly helps hold the deck together since the deck itself contains a lot of silver flash wherever it could think to have it including on the numerals.

When it comes to this deck I have to say the art itself was a bit hit and miss. In the fourth picture I have my three favorite cards on the top row to show what I really felt were the artists strengths. Big expanses with lots of atmosphere and contextual shots with drama behind them really make a striking impression on this deck and show it’s spirit.

But on the bottom row I have some cards that I personally feel take away. Most of these ones seem unfinished with rough or smeared edges, undefined facial expressions or gestures, and clashing colors that confuse the eye and make the card unpleasant to look at. This holds true with many of the closer up shots, the protagonist who wanders through the whole deck often looks fine in wider shot cards but when you get closer suddenly he becomes wall eyed or has a lot of things going on around him making the card too busy for such a close scene.

One other detractor for this deck for me is the court cards. The rest of the suits in this deck are not pip cards and don’t repeat thematically too closely but the court cards are all very near to identical which is a jarring transition in such a diversely set deck. In the fifth picture I have all the suit cards for the swords.

On two of four queen cards the off white eggshell of the envelope obscures the card title. I can still make out that it says “Queen Swords” if I look closely but it’s tough. There are a couple other cards where this happens too but it’s the worst on these envelope cards.

The knight cards are all supposed to have different things happening around the knight chess pieces, but the boldness of the big black and white chess board with the small size of everything else makes it hard to distinguish the cards from each other. Again, it’s just not easy to read these cards sometimes without staring at them for awhile which isn’t always optimal. Also all the other knights have the queen postcard on the board but not the knight of swords. I’m not sure why.

The page cards, named messengers here and being actual pages from a book suffer from the same issue as the knights. There’s thematic things going on but the bright book pages themselves draw so much attention that it’s hard to see between them at a first glance.

The king cards are perhaps what I am most bitter about. They are essentially basic playing deck cards dressed up which isn’t in itself a bad thing, obviously when I backed this deck they talked about the themes they had for the courts although they made them seem more diverse. What I am frustrated about is that while all the other cards are easily reversible the king cards are not. They deliberately changed the titles so that they are in the top left and bottom right corner and made the upright and reverse kings essentially identical aside from the “paint chip” effect that has been randomly generated across the card and doesn’t really work to identify them. There is only one tiny difference in each king card that is really small and has to be searched for. I don’t even know if you can see it in the picture but on the king of swords it is the tattoo on his shoulder.

All in all this deck is about a 6/10 from me. It’s still got a lot of decent art, and the quality is industry standard but nothing to write home about. The deck itself is not very communicative and is taking a lot of coaxing to get readings from. It’s hard to get the meaning behind some of the messier busy cards, and honestly while I was very patient with the creators it was a bit of a substandard experience and I don’t really want to deal with them or their fan base again.

#deck review #tarot deck #gothic moon tarot #tarot #witchy

[philosworkbench]

Meetings, Agendas, and why the best conversation spot at the party is always the kitchen

Re: my last long post about authenticity vs. polish. It’s hard enough to figure out how to have an authentic “monologue.” Building effective dialogue? That is a high-wire act.

When Bad Meetings Go Terrible...

I have been in my share of poorly run meetings and I’ve run them. Here are some of my favorite things to hate about meetings. You’ll see I left out saying “the facilitator is unprepared,” because a lack of preparedness and forethought underscores all of these.

The point of the meeting is unclear. No one really knows why they’re there. What do we expect to achieve?

Similarly, the expectations are unclear. Who is talking when? Are only the meeting’s organizers really talking? What are the unwritten rules?

Psychological safety is low. The attendees are there to cover their ass. They aren’t excited about what might be accomplished by their presence. They’re there because of what may be risked by their absence.

The facilitators have chips on their shoulders. They ask for feedback and then get angry when they hear it. They answer questions curtly; they make obvious signals to say “that’s not the conversation we came for.”

The facilitators are on the defensive. Maybe they called the meeting months ago and are now forgetting why they called it. Maybe they were supposed to meet with each other before the big meeting and never did. Regardless of why, they take every question like it’s a criticism. They speak in rapid circles. They act like they have to answer everything when they’re the only people who are expecting them to have an answer.

The facilitators are doing all the talking. (This is my personal weakness.) The facilitator asks a question and almost immediately starts giving their own answer “as an example.” This can be fear, which makes 5 seconds feel like 50. Or, it can be manipulation. “We as a group need to decide...” becomes code for “I need you idiots to agree to something I already know I want. So, lets ‘discuss’ it calmly.”

The participants are thrown in the deep end. The facilitator says, “we’re here to talk about x, so let’s get started...” What follows has no structure. It’s just unrefereed free-for-all for the full length of the meeting. No “let’s start with a breakout and then report back as a group.” No “here’s a brief presentation to remind everyone of where we’re at so far.” No “we’re covering these 5 questions today. We’re going in this order so these reasons.” Just the morass of “I was told to have a meeting about X, so I scheduled time, we’re here. Let’s talk about it.”

Good facilitation is no party. It’s work. But the best analogy I have for what you want to create as a facilitator is a party. Specifically, the kitchen of a party.

Why I Would Have Been Bad at Hosting and Facilitation in College

Full disclosure: I was pretty awful at parties in college. Not like a “I don’t party because I study so much and have carved out such a bright future” nerd. No, perish the thought. I was always the, “I hate my body, have undiagnosed anxiety, and don’t know I’m bisexual yet so I spend parties making Doctor Who references and speaking in a British accent. No thank you, I’ll keep my freakishly long overcoat on. Yes I will wear it the entire time. No, I am not comfortable. Are there snacks?”

As a college student, I was the epitome of a bad facilitator:

I hadn’t handled my own shit enough to help others set aside theirs

I was so focused on how I was coming off that I couldn’t see anyone else for who they were

I did things to make myself comfortable that specifically made others uncomfortable

I entered a shared space with no appreciation for how it operated and what the pre-existing cultural mores were

I came, expecting snacks, and never brought any

When I came to Chicago in my twenties to do improv comedy, I’d like to think I got better at parties. There were always improv parties at somebody’s apartment. Different rooms in the apartment would take on different personas:

The living room was the bit-fest where everyone kept trying to get funnier (and therefore louder) than everyone else, and of course, the music, which was also loud. (Yes, I thought loud music was unnecessary, even in my twenties. I have never, ever, been cool.)

The back porch was for smokers and those who hadn’t quite come into the party yet, or who hadn’t quite left. There was smoke and everyone was just about to go somewhere else. It was party purgatory. Partytory.

Bedrooms were for coats, hooking up, and the occasional board or card game. 

Then there was always that weirdly shaped, new construction vs. old, hallway that was darker than it had to be. This was often where the “always on” improvisers would be doing something improv-y. A warm-up game. A free-style hip hop cypher. Or a hushed “deep” conversation about “the art.” 

Then there was the kitchen.

But the Kitchen at an Improv Party Tho...

The kitchen at an improv party was absolutely my favorite spot. As I look back on it, it absolutely showed me how to facilitate a good meeting.

It’s the chill eye of the party hurricane. The problem with many work meetings is they carry the defeatist assumption that they should be as awful as the rest of work often is. Work can often feel too loud, fast, and chaotic. You’re dealing with everyone’s drama. Your inbox is a company’s worth of polite shouting. But then there’s your meeting. Each meeting can be a permission you give yourself (and your participants) to stop. You have something to discuss. There’s a dialogue. Take a breath and get everyone to do the same. Create shared understanding. Make a group decision. Turn that decision into armor and step back into the hurricane. (Is it good to wear armor in a hurricane? I have no idea.)

You can tell how much the host cares about their guests. A neat kitchen with plenty of bags of chips, etc.? Stacked bowls. Extra 2 liters of soda/mixers? ICE? (A host with enough ice for a big party is hero. QUILT THEM A CAPE.) Is the kitchen well-lit? Cozy? Are trash and recyclables being managed? None of that happens by accident. The facilitator who plans a thoughtful agenda that gives participants clear jumping off points for discussion and brings them back in for a safe, meaningful, and productive landing? They remembered the ice.

The only people there are adding to the experience. The unwritten rule of Chicago improv parties was that assholes always held court in the living room. They could be loud. They could vie for attention. They could make it all about them. But that didn’t fly in the kitchen. The kitchen was for dialogues, not diatribes. It was an authentic space where people could actually listen to each other. And people who were only there to be seen would quickly become uncomfortable in the kitchen, realize the rest of us weren’t having their one-person show, get their ice cubes or paper towels or whatever and GTFO. So be it. “We would have all such offenders so caught off.”

Not everyone is invited to a good meeting. Sorry ‘bout it. If everyone’s invited, it’s not meeting, it’s a panel discussion. They’re not participants, they’re audience members who sometimes speak up. You have to be clear about this. People like knowing what’s expected of them in a meeting. If you have 40 people in a room and say, “who has a comment?” make sure you’ve earned that with clarity. Everyone in that room needs to know what the program is about and what the real (usually unspoken) expectations are. I’ve made the mistake of planning a living room and telling myself it would be a kitchen. It sucks and people will only come to your next “party” if they have to.

The conversation follows its own logic, but it’s clear when it should change, and everyone lets it. The facilitator of the kitchen is a great listener, but also a great watcher. They’re looking for body language that says, “I guess, but I’ve used up my caring about this topic.” Time to pivot. Did you get what you needed? No? Too bad. Give people a new ally to go down and come back. No all elephants should be eaten at once.

The environment doesn’t scream, “stay here forever and don’t do anything.” No one is in the kitchen because it’s the most comfortable room in the house. The conversation is making them engage despite the room. This is why agile teams do their meetings standing. I’m not saying to go out of your way to make people uncomfortable, but try to get people closer together. Discourage multi-tasking. Do an icebreaker that actually builds emotional connections. Do things that pull people toward each other. Everyone sitting around the world’s largest table and leaning back in the world’s softest chairs are not in the kitchen.

You’re not quite sure whose apartment it is. Last thing. In the kitchen, the facilitator doesn’t make sure everyone knows they’re wearing a different hat than everybody else. The facilitator leads by popping a volleyball into the air just the right way. People smack it around. The volley lasts a while. When the ball finally hits the ground, it’s because that’s when it was time to happen. Everyone feels it. The facilitator was there to correct the ball’s path when it almost went out of bounds. But the players were always more focused on the ball than the facilitator. (Side note: the facilitator is also probably not always standing around saying, “How about that ball I threw in there? Did you see how I did that? Pretty snazzy! You’re welcome!”)

Okay, I’ve so far mixed every metaphor. Parties. Rooms of a house. Hurricanes. Volleyball. I had a really cool one about how best to hold a fencing foil, but that will have to wait.

Fine, Here’s your TL;DR: 

The adept facilitator creates a space (literally, culturally, and contextually) for participants to be their full selves -- where they can really talk and really listen about what matters. The adept facilitator can only do this by getting out of their own way. If the facilitator hasn’t appropriately dealt with their own fears and needs, they will start co-opting the participants’ work from having the meeting they need to have, to making the facilitator feel better about the meeting that person wants them to have. Do the work, both on yourself and on your plan for a kickass meeting.

#facilitation #facilitator #improv #better meeting

[mrmrsvegan]

Why is it so hard to stay accountable to oneself? I've been eating badly for a while now and I'm finding it so hard to kickstart again!

The food industry figured out how to keep us addicted and never satiated & eating ourselves ill. "A mere half-cup of Prego Traditional, for instance, has the equivalent of more than two teaspoons of sugar, as much as two-plus Oreo cookies. It also delivers one-third of the sodium recommended for a majority of American adults for an entire day."https://nyti.ms/11TOoSR"he had no qualms about his own pioneering work on discovering what industry insiders now regularly refer to as “the bliss point” or any of the other systems that helped food companies create the greatest amount of crave. “There’s no moral issue for me,” he said. “I did the best science I could. I was struggling to survive and didn’t have the luxury of being a moral creature. As a researcher, I was ahead of my time.”they just used us like lab rats to find the most addictive ingredients...when you are fighting the toxic food environment, remember that..."white bread would never get them too excited, but they could eat lots and lots of it without feeling they’d had enough.”This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.”& a heafty dose of fuck your kid's health, I am making $$$ = Lunchables..."Eventually, a line of the trays, appropriately called Maxed Out, was released that had as many as nine grams of saturated fat, or nearly an entire day’s recommended maximum for kids, with up to two-thirds of the max for sodium and 13 teaspoons of sugar.When I asked Geoffrey Bible, former C.E.O. of Philip Morris, about this shift toward more salt, sugar and fat in meals for kids, he smiled and noted that even in its earliest incarnation, Lunchables was held up for criticism. “One article said something like, ‘If you take Lunchables apart, the most healthy item in it is the napkin.’ ”We can kill toddlers, too!" In 2007, Kraft even tried a Lunchables Jr. for 3- to 5-year-olds."not mad enough, yet?"Our limbic brains love sugar, fat, salt. . . . So formulate products to deliver these. Perhaps add low-cost ingredients to boost profit margins. Then ���supersize’ to sell more. . . . And advertise/promote to lock in ‘heavy users.’ Plenty of guilt to go around here!""people could beat their salt habits simply by refraining from salty foods long enough for their taste buds to return to a normal level of sensitivity. He had also done work on the bliss point, showing how a product’s allure is contextual, shaped partly by the other foods a person is eating"so there is a way out... but"Baby boomers, especially, seemed to have greatly cut down on regular meals. They were skipping breakfast when they had early-morning meetings. They skipped lunch when they then needed to catch up on work because of those meetings. They skipped dinner when their kids stayed out late or grew up and moved out of the house. And when they skipped these meals, they replaced them with snacks. “We looked at this behavior, and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, people were skipping meals right and left,’ ” Riskey told me. “It was amazing.” This led to the next realization, that baby boomers did not represent “a category that is mature, with no growth. This is a category that has huge growth potential.”"our shitty lifestyles stopped eating real food & we are snackatarians..."Frito-Lay had a formidable research complex near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research that cost up to $30 million a year, and the science corps focused intense amounts of resources on questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch"vs you... how do you win?"Unconsciously, people expect to be punished for ‘letting themselves go’ and enjoying them.” Dichter listed seven “fears and resistances” to the chips: “You can’t stop eating them; they’re fattening; they’re not good for you; they’re greasy and messy to eat; they’re too expensive; it’s hard to store the leftovers; and they’re bad for children.” He spent the rest of his memo laying out his prescriptions, which in time would become widely used not just by Frito-Lay but also by the entire industry. Dichter suggested that Frito-Lay avoid using the word “fried” in referring to its chips and adopt instead the more healthful-sounding term “toasted.” To counteract the “fear of letting oneself go,” he suggested repacking the chips into smaller bags. “The more-anxious consumers, the ones who have the deepest fears about their capacity to control their appetite, will tend to sense the function of the new pack and select it,” he said."They got you now!So to simply answer your question, get out of this health raping society and find a corner of the world w/o potato chips, soda & processed foods, where people sit down & eat three home made meals a day. Otherwise surround yourself with people who care & can see how really and truly horrible this has all become. You need community support to put as many days between you & the last food drug you succumbed to... myself included

[luvs-like-a-hurricane]

Most people hate Mondays because they mark the beginning of a work week. But this year, Mondays quickly became one of the highlights of my week. Monday evenings brought friends crowding into my living room, on the couches and on the floor, and even some standing by the door at first, so as to have an escape route if needed. Each week we gathered, a core group consistently and a rotation of guests intrigued and drawn to our funny mismatched group of Christians and non-believers. There would be chatter and shuffling and throwing off of coats as people got settled into their spots. Often someone would bring a treat: cookies, scones, chips. Mondays meant using every mug in my house for tea, an open invitation to bring along friends and quickly whispered prayers as I printed manuscripts 5 minutes before my pals arrived, prayers that the Holy Spirit would make up for my gaps in knowledge and, sometimes, for my woeful lack of preparation. And then, when most people had arrived and everyone had a pen ready, we would start. 

Together we would dive into the Bible, into the book of John. As we worked our way through the book, John became our trusted narrator and eyewitness to the miracles of Jesus; we knew he was on a mission to prove his thesis that Jesus is the Son of God. We contextualized ourselves as best as we could, trying to figure out what ancient Israel was like in John and Jesus’ time, what these events and words would have meant to people then and there. And then we jumped back to Ottawa, 2020, and we asked honest questions: some nit picky, irrelevant questions, some easily answered questions, some big picture philosophy questions, and some real life “more vulnerable than we maybe would have liked” questions about who Jesus is and what he was trying to teach each of us. All of us asked questions: those of us raised in the church, who felt like we should already have every answer, and those of us who had never read the Bible before, and all of us in between. We noticed themes, of light and darkness, of living bread and water, of Jesus knowing people intimately, of people asking and seeing and believing. We shared what we had seen that made us believe in Jesus, or what we would need to see, or what we were desperately hoping to see and had yet to. We sat in tension. We came together to study and we took it seriously but, we also laughed a lot. I think we became friends. 

And as we became friends, we chose more vulnerability and we learned more and more each week from the Word and from each other. A deep fondness for and trust in our group grew in my heart as we wandered through each passage. We became a team and as one of the leaders I learned to adapt to the strengths of my people. They didn’t need me to have prepared application questions or to drag observations out of people; they just needed me to show up. I trusted our team to navigate well together, to ask the hard questions and be engaged in trying to find answers. I trusted us to be ok with not always finding those answers, to be ok not wrapping everything up with a bow for the sake of simplicity. Unspoken, we decided to leave space to walk away still chewing a challenging question. As a leader, I trusted my team but even more so I trusted the Holy Spirit to keep teaching us throughout the week. That trust meant that I got to walk with people rather than ahead of them, to be vulnerable, to ask my own questions, and to be deeply blessed by conversations we had. 

This year, on Mondays, I fell back in love with the Bible and with my community. A mixed bag of experiences with manuscript studies before, I should have had low expectations. But in September, at the start of the year, God gave me vision for this Bible study. He told me He was doing something new, whispered that I would get to watch the Holy Spirit change hearts right in my living room. He gave me specific names of people who would be there (despite some of their own proclamations), reminders of how He desires to speak to His Children, promises of investment and consistency and engagement. And He has been faithful to those promises. 

God doesn’t have to let me play a role in His ever evolving story of redeeming humanity. But, thankfully, He is in the habit of letting His kids step into what He is doing, letting them see and participate in and be changed by His work, despite their (read, my) many flaws. This year, on Mondays in a small way, I think I got to watch and participate in and be changed by what He was doing through the Word in my living room. And dang, I am grateful. 

Walk boldly friends, into the places and with the people the Lord has given you vision for. It’s a gift and a joy to see the ways He is making all things new. Speaking of, the song “New Wine” by Hillsong has been a beautiful ongoing conversation this year between me and God. You should give it a listen.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” – John 1:1-5

Bible Study Most people hate Mondays because they mark the beginning of a work week. But this year, Mondays quickly became one of the highlights of my week.

#bible study #christianity #faith #leadership #learning

[wooden--spoon]

Fish and chips from the past

**This article was written before the full extent of COVID-19 restrictions were in place**

The cheese and spinach roll I had for breakfast sat comfortably in my belly as we rolled through the choppy waves towards Macleay Island. Ever since I started working with my dad again my pastry consumption had sky-rocketed. He gets a pie and a coke, I get a cheese and spinach roll, then we’re off to work. he the carpenter; I his helper.  

During the week we work all over Brisbane, bouncing from site to site. On Saturdays, we go to the island. My parents bought a block of land there last year and now we spend our weekends building the house.  

The island is a forty-five-minute car ferry from Redland Bay through tidal waters that range from Caribbean blue to mangrove mud brown. Macleay isn’t exactly what you picture when someone says they bought land on an island off the coast of South-east Queensland, but it has its own charm. It got a reputation for skulduggery and crime over the years, doll bludgers, drug dealers and the like were its renowned occupants. Up until recently you could drive an unregistered car out there. Even now you can tick off your own road worthy.  In reality I haven’t seen those aspects of the island too much. All I’ve seen is an elderly population who enjoy fishing and a touch of sailing, perhaps having lunch and a beer at the pub. When the ferry glides onto the concrete ramp at the southern end of the island, if the prawns are running, the shallow waters are full of families in tinnies casting nets.  

The island is narrow, a main road stretches down its spine from end to end and streets reach out for the coasts. Our plot is about halfway up, not far from the only petrol station on the island, which charges prices like it knows it owns the market.

Vegetation wise, again it isn’t exactly an array of palm trees and sand dunes. Paper barks, grow almost everywhere. Out back of our lot young pines shoot for the sky next to an old mango tree. The grass grows quickly, vines come from everywhere and climb anything, bugs of all shapes and colours buzz at knee height and ants colonise under every pile of timber. Green tree frogs leap from the wet timber when you get too close.  

There is a lot of building sites, my parents aren’t the only people catching onto what looks like the only affordable housing market in the greater Brisbane vicinity. There are three real estate agents.  Every weekend we see more young families in amongst the white haired crowd. This place is about to blow, despite the lack of road access.  

That day was humid as all get out.  My dad and I lifted sheets of tin high above our heads to the roofer — Bob, a surfy dude with a six-pack a day body and a few questionable views — who slid them into place, slowly covering the open space. Watching a roof go up is like watching a thought come into reality.  In my dad’s case, a lifelong dream.  

At around one o’clock, I was sent to get some lunch from the fish and chip shop before it shut for its customary two-hour break from two ‘til four. At the pub near the ferry port I picked up a case of XXXX Bitter and was charged island prices. Sixty-seven dollars later I was on my way.  

Peter’s Place is the last shop on the right in a dilapidated strip mall. An old tinny flipped on its stern, stands upright. Inside in thick black lettering is a list of fish on offer: HOKI. COD. FLATHEAD. BARRA. CALAMARI. WHITING. FLAKE. SNAPPER.  SALMON. Because of the sign, the shop feels distanced from the other places nearby, all of which were shut for the day. Outside the screen sliding doors a lone old codger seated at a fake marble table, his bucket hat pulled low over his eyes.  

Inside was familiar. Greasy off-white cinderblock walls. The hum of freezers mixing with the whir of a fan directed at the kitchen. Packets of noodles stacked on a shelf near the door were out of place but made sense here. A sign on the counter read ‘Must Try Asian Soup’, written in red texter.  

Instead of the soup, I settled for the classics: beer-battered snapper, calamari, chips and three tubs of tartare sauce. There is never enough tartare, plus I didn’t know Bob’s sauce to fish ratio, and I wasn’t going to come up short on mine out of politeness.

I waited outside at a square timber table that had lost all its finish from the sun and was strewn with grease stains. Around the table was a wall of sturdy palm trees. I flicked through a few dated fishing magazines someone had left on table from the stack by the door but quickly lost interest in the whopper Damo had reeled in late 2017 sat listening to the rustling of the palms the sounds of the kitchen inside.

When the food came out, neatly stacked in two fold-up boxes and covered in a thin sheet of paper, I knew why Peter and his workers could shut down for two hours in the middle of the afternoon. Similar to the petrol station, they owned this market. Just smelling the fish, I could tell it was supremely fresh. I jumped in the van, carefully balanced the food on top of the beers and sped off back to the site, grabbed three beers from the box and threw a few in the esky. I squeezed some lime on the chips and calamari while Bob and my dad were coming down the ladder grabbed a couple chippies. Chewy and browned with just a hint of crunch, the chips had a nostalgic feel about them. They reminded me of getting a big bag of hot chips for six bucks from the corner store in my youth, before it became a gourmet burger joint. They reminded me of a time when fish and chip shops were just that, nothing fancy. The calamari —the crumbing falling off where the lime juice had soaked in, revealing pure white strips of flesh — had a similar appeal. Not fantastic, just what the menu said, plus a few extra rings thrown in for good measure.  

By now the other two had joined me.  ‘Did you get enough tartare?’ my dad joked while cracking a tinny and ripping a piece of snapper in half. Bob leaned back, shirt off, snapper in one hand, beer in the other, knackered.  

Where the chips and calamari had been run of the mill, the fish brought the gusto. Light and crispy batter, that is usually only gloated on the menu but never appears, coated big juicy flakes of meat.  The tartare, melting on the hot flesh after being spread on with a chip was smooth and lacked the chunks of gherkin I love, sufficed none-the-less. In a highly contextual pairing, the Bitter when down superbly.  

Soon after the food was gone, another island tradie transplant came along, a plastic bag of Gold’s in his hand. One beer turned to three as the stories flowed under the silverly underside of insulation. Saturday work calls for long lunches. With a few beers in us the work seemed more bearable, the sun had dipped behind the clouds for a quick siesta and we were done before you knew it.  

Macleay Island is likely in for a big change over the next couple of years as younger people start to move out there, bringing with them all the things younger people like. Craft beer, poke bowls and matcha lattes seem just over the horizon.  I hope that Peter’s Place never has to change. I hope they keep having their long lunches. Above everything else, I hope they never considers adding curly fries and brioche-bun-burgers to the menu.  

Julius Dennis

[infotainmentplus-blog]

Navigation Wars: Google Maps vs Waze vs Apple Maps The dawn of the smartphone age had us cheering for GPS chips and easy, on-the-go navigation. No longer were we beholden to sites like MapQuest (which still exists as a mobile app, by the way) and printing out directions. Instead, we could open up our maps app, input a destination, and receive live, turn-by-turn directions. It was like having a pocket-sized Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, or Ferdinand Magellan as your permanent wingman. It was surely also a death blow to paper maps — but it didn’t stop there. Once we could navigate with our smartphones, the question became: “which software does it better?” Obviously, Google Maps is the best-known map app — it’s basically synonymous with mobile navigation. In fact, Google Maps was originally the iPhone’s default, preinstalled navigation software, until Apple launched its own Apple Maps. An app called Waze emerged as a third-party alternative, developing quite a following before Google bought it. We at Android Authority decided it was time to settle this once and for all. We’ve analyzed of all three apps, identifying their weaknesses and breaking down their unique strengths. Welcome to the Navigation Wars: Waze vs Google Maps vs Apple Maps. Who will reign supreme? Waze vs Google Maps vs Apple Maps — Google Maps One might expect Google Maps to take the gold. It’s Google, after all. The company has put incomprehensible amounts of money and resources into mapping the world. Beyond simply mapping the streets, the search giant sent out a fleet of Street View cars — which, according to a report from a few years ago, have collectively driven an estimated seven million miles — to take 360-degree photos along 99 percent of all public roads in the U.S. Users get to actually preview their route from a first-person perspective. Google is continuously repeating and perfecting this process in countries all over the world. Google Maps can give you directions on your next Florida vacation, but also when you finally take that trip to Greece. More recently, Google started providing detailed 3D imaging in lots of highly-populated and tourist-heavy areas. So in addition to getting a first-person street view of your route, you can zoom out to see a computer-rendered model of the surrounding area for contextual information such as the shapes and sizes of buildings. Algorithms built into Google Maps can even account for things like traffic jams. Basically, the software monitors user location and movement to see how they move through certain areas and compares that to historical data, so Google Maps can put out a traffic alert when drivers start to slow down. It may sound simple, but making it all work requires some finesse. Google has invested into complex software that provides detailed 3D imaging in lots of highly-populated and tourist-heavy areas. When you open Google Apps, you get a very clean interface. At the top, you’re invited to either search for your destination — obviously employing Google’s popular search engine — or input an address. Whether you’ve selected a destination, the map shows you the destination on the map, as well as reviews (if it’s a business), the amount of time it would take you to travel there, an option to learn more about the destination, and a big blue button that says “DIRECTIONS,” which will begin plotting your route. It will typically give you the choice of a few routes, depending on how many different ways there are to get to your destination. Arguably the biggest selling feature of those standalone GPS units we used to buy for our vehicles was spoken turn-by-turn directions. Google Maps rolled out turn-by-turn directions a couple years back and currently offers three options: spoken directions for each step of your route, no spoken directions, or an alert mode, which means Google Apps will only speak to you about things like travel alerts and missed turns. Google Maps allows you to program multiple stops into a trip or conduct a search for an additional stop while still en route. In operation, Google Maps maintains its clean UI. Your location is denoted by an arrow points in the direction you’re facing. From what I can tell, the app uses the direction in which you were last moving to determine the direction to point the arrow since the arrow will change direction if you begin to reverse. On occasion, though, the app seems to get confused about which direction you’re facing. This tends to happen when you’re sitting still for a few minutes (like at a stoplight), or if you initiate a trip while you’re sitting still, at which time the app may think you’re diverting from the route and begin needlessly amending it. If I start a trip while sitting at a stoplight, for instance, the app can’t seem to remember the direction in which I had just been traveling and may tell me I need to turn around when I’m actually facing the right way. These hiccups are easy to deal with and won’t cause any catastrophes, but it’s worth making note of them. Some Google Maps features are particularly useful. You can program multiple stops into a trip or search for an additional stop while still en route. The options menu offers toggles for different map views, including satellite (replaces the standard map appearance with satellite images), terrain (overlays a topographical map over the existing roadmap), and traffic (adds color-coded traffic details to all roads instead of just the ones you’re traveling). Even something as simple as being able to choose different modes of travel — car, bus or public transit, walking, and biking — is a thoughtful addition that really expands your options with Google Maps. On top of directions, Google Maps contains tons of useful information about nearby businesses, restaurants, and points of interest, with plenty of filters to find what you're looking for. Due to the bevy of information Google Maps contains, it has a few added functions. One of my favorites is using it to find restaurants. When you open Google Maps, open the menu bar on the lefthand side and select “Explore.” This will open a directory of restaurants and other venues nearby. Along the top, you have a toggle with which you can filter the results by meal (options are Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner), find a place where you can get your next caffeine fix (Coffee), or plan for your evening social hour (Drinks). Naturally, Google is always rolling out new features and improvements. It’s gained some pretty robust offline functionality, asking you for your permission to download a chunk of the map (your general vicinity) or to save trips to local storage so you can pull them up without a data connection. Essentially, it makes Google Maps useful even when you don’t have an internet connection. If you are using Google Maps with Android 8.0 Oreo or higher, you can use the picture-in-picture mode. You can see a small window that shows Google Maps working on the main app page. You can see the map, a turn indicator, which road you are currently traveling on, and an ETA for your destination. Google Maps recently added a way to search for reviews of stores, restaurants, hotels and other places from within the app. There’s also a new tab labeled “For You” which offers recommendations of places and businesses in your immediate area, especially brand new or “trending” ones, based on Google’s data. A number of voice commands also work with Google Maps to do things like mute or unmute the voice guidance, inquire about your next turn, avoid highways or tolls, and find a gas station. It may sound like Google already has it in the bag, but keep reading to find out if that’s really the case. (Insert devilish grin here.) Waze vs Google Maps vs Apple Maps — Waze As someone who appreciates and uses both Android and iOS devices, I’m pretty familiar with both Apple and Google’s navigation apps. Aside from a handful of times over the past few years, though, I’d never really used Waze much. Before I started writing this article, I took a good 10 days or so to familiarize myself with Waze. Did you know that Google has owned Waze since 2013? If we’re splitting hairs, Waze is technically owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. It allegedly operates mostly independently from Google, but there has definitely been some crossing of the streams. The acquisition of Waze brought traffic alerts to Google Maps later that year. Waze has incorporated some of Google’s data too, including Street View. You wouldn’t know Waze was owned by Google by looking at it — it has a completely different aesthetic. Personally, Waze’s cartoonish appearance reminds me of emojis. Everything looks very bubbly, but Waze manages to maintain minimalist elements, which keeps it from being too much. But the differences between Google Maps and Waze are more than skin deep. When you open the app, you’re prompted to login or create an account, both of which are done by either connecting your Facebook account or using your mobile phone number. Once you make it to the main screen, the map includes a notification to let you know how many “Wazers” are in your proximity. Right off the bat, there’s an inherently social element to Waze throughout much of the user experience. Unlike other navigation apps, Waze suggests logging in to make the most of its social features. While Google Maps is sparse and almost utilitarian, Waze feels a little more dressed-up, with more bells and whistles. You can connect Waze to your Spotify accoun to manage your music directly from the Waze app by adding a bar along the top of the screen to select from your playlists and preferred stations. You can report traffic, car accidents, speed traps, road closures, and other such things to your fellow Wazers. This function plays a significant role in Waze’s ability to keep users abreast of their local traffic conditions. Waze almost goes overboard on extra features, ranging from Spotify integration, to petrol station prices, and a huge range of novelty turn-by-turn navigation voices. You can do things like manage your account details (set a profile picture, view your friends list, read your messages), as well as manage your favorite places and check your planned drives in the main menu. The planned drive feature is really interesting. In essence, you set a destination for a future date, so when the time comes you can start navigating there with just one or two clicks. It’s really easy, too; when you search for a destination, you can either click “Go” or “Later” to choose the date and time for your trip. Alternately, it can glean information from your Facebook calendar, scheduling trips to specific destinations based on the events you’re attending. If that’s not impressive enough, Waze adjusts how long the trip will take based on traffic at different times of day, so a 15 minute trip in the morning may take 30 minutes during rush hour. Waze is even courteous enough to remind you when it’s time to leave so that you’ll arrive on time. In addition to being able to either schedule or initiate a trip to that destination, Waze can guide you to the closest parking lot to your destination. I your destination happens to be a mall or retail outlet, it’ll give you the option to set your destination as the closest parking lot or allow you to choose from other parking options nearby. I didn’t really get to take advantage of this feature, but I can see it really being a godsend in an unfamiliar place. If you like customization options, Waze offers a bunch of different voices for turn-by-turn instructions. Many of the most populated countries get at least two options, but English-speakers have a plethora of options. Each voice is given its own name, like Jane, Nathan, or Boy Band for Americans, and Kate, Thomas, or Simon for those in the U.K. In the past, Waze even offered celebrity voices, including Morgan Freeman and more recently Liam Neeson. Waze relies on data collected and posted by its real-time users and has a much more inherently social feel than your standard map app. As you get deeper and deeper into Waze, you find all these nifty little surprises. In the settings menu, you can go into “Gas stations & prices” to choose your preferred gas station chain (if you happen to have one). You can also set the speedometer to only show up if you happen to go over the speed limit. With a toggle, you can control whether or not you see nearby Wazers on your friends list. There’s a whole host of map display options you can toggle, including speed cameras, other Wazers, road hazards, and more. A few months ago, Waze got a big update adding hands-free navigation, using just your voice. The feature, called simply Talk to Waze, can be turned on by heading into Settings > Sound & voice > Talk to Waze > Toggle Listen for “OK Waze.” Then just say “Ok Waze” to initiate a drive, get a preview of the route ahead, send reports, or add a pit stop without touching your phone. Other recently added features include adding routes optimized for motorcycles. There’s also a new HOV lane feature for carpooling drivers, or those with a special pass or in an electric, hybrid, or clean-fuel car. If you are driving such a car, and there are HOV lanes available on your route, Waze will show you additional navigation options and arrival times. Another recent update improved the ETA feature, allowing users to get an estimated traffic forecast for your route. Waze may sound bloated with needless features, but most of them are tucked out of the way and accessible only from the menus. None of Waze’s additional features feel imposing or like they’re coming between you and the purpose of the app, which is to get directions from one place to another. There are tons of bells and whistles available if you want to use them. As mentioned previously, there’s something inherently social about using Waze, an interesting but not totally surprising concept in 2018. Overall, my experience using Waze was extremely pleasant. Despite having so much going on, the app is very snappy and responsive, although I may not have used it long enough to encounter the hiccups that surely come up from time to time. Waze vs Google Maps vs Apple Maps — Apple Maps Prior to iOS 6, Apple smartphones had Google Maps preinstalled as the default navigation app. In hindsight, Apple creating its own alternative to Google’s popular trip-mapping app was inevitable, if for no other reason than to boot the competition’s software off the iPhone. As usually happens with newborn software, Apple Maps was plagued with bugs and map inaccuracies for the first couple years. It’s gotten a lot better since then. I’m a lover of both Apple and Android, so I’m nearly as familiar with Apple Maps as Google Maps (although having access to the latter with any desktop browser basically ensures some disparity between the two). In certain ways, I may even like Apple Maps best of all. Compared to both Google Maps and Waze, Apple Maps has arguably the most pleasing look and has exemplary integrations with other iOS apps. After that rough first year, Apple invested lots of time and energy (and money) into improving Maps, and it shows. Compared to both Google Maps and Waze, Apple Maps has arguably the most pleasing look. Of course, appearance is subjective, but there’s something very polished and contemporary about Apple Maps, particularly since its slight redesign earlier this year. It manages to achieve a modern feel without looking sparse like Google Maps or borderline-cartoonish like Waze. It’s elegant, and very Apple. Perhaps taking a cue from Google Maps, Apple Maps has much better integrations with other iOS apps. Sprinkled throughout Apple Maps, you’ll find suggestions for scheduling and upcoming events for which you may need to travel. It’s reminiscent of how clicking addresses will take you into Google Maps from Gmail or Inbox or Google’s numerous other services. However, Apple Maps integrations extend even outside the Apple apps family, including things like OpenTable for making restaurant reservations, ride-sharing apps, and, of course, Apple Pay to pay for it all. Similar to Google’s app, Apple Maps has a very clean and straightforward interface. Opening Apple Maps brings up the map with an overlap toward the bottom, giving you a place to input an address or search for a destination. It also offers suggestions and the ability to click a single button to begin navigating home. If you were already home, it may offer you navigation to your workplace or a destination pertaining to an upcoming event in your calendar. It sounds like a lot, and while everything is big and readable, it’s also not totally in the way. One of the updates to Apple Maps brought something called “Flyover Mode,” a Google Earth-esque feature into the mix. In essence, it creates a 3D render of the map, allowing you to essentially fly over it like you’re in a helicopter. The feature itself isn’t especially groundbreaking, but it’s fun and certainly a welcome feature. Anything not already visible in the app is usually accessible with an upward or downward swipe, appearing neatly and organized on overlaying cards. You can swipe upward on an upcoming trip to view alternate route options. It’s a nice feature to have if, for instance, you happen to see that there’s traffic on your would-be route. And yes, the app can give you that traffic information, too. Apple has tried to make Maps as informative as possible and, in doing so, includes some really thoughtful details. If you click on a landmark, it usually brings up a card showing a picture, offering you directions, reviews (via Yelp, of course), and a link to Wikipedia to learn more about it. As well, if you zoom into a part of the map sufficiently far away from your actual location, it’ll show you that location’s local weather in the bottom-righthand corner. Apple Maps is focused on providing navigation. By comparison, Google is much more focused on places, which means that it’s able to provide both navigation as well as allowing you to simply use Google Maps like tourists would use paper maps as they explored their surroundings. When it comes to the actual map, though, there’s both good and bad news. The bad news is that Apple Maps just isn’t as robust as Google Maps (or Waze, for that matter, since it incorporates Google data). If you zoom into the same section of a large city on both Google and Apple Maps, Google’s map contains more accurate data, particularly when it comes to the names and locations of businesses. In fact, someone decided to track changes to both maps over a year and found that for any given section of the map, Apple Maps averaged fewer businesses than Google. However, as long as you search for and bring up the address of the business, Apple Maps can get you there — even if the business isn’t on the map. That brings us to another key difference between Google and Apple Maps. Clearly, Apple Maps is focused on providing navigation, and that’s a good thing since navigation is the point of these apps. By comparison, Google is much more focused on places — it’s able to provide navigation while allowing you to simply use Google Maps like a tourist would a paper map as they explore their surroundings. Again, Google simply has more data with which to build a map containing. It’s almost an unfair comparison, but it’s a difference that’s worth mentioning. It seems that Apple Maps is mostly reliant on map information licensed from TomTom and from acquiring a handful of smaller companies over the years. Some of those companies are WifiSlam for interior maps, HopStop and Embark for public transportation, Locationary for improving mapping abilities, and BroadMap for managing and analyzing map data. TechCrunch This is all expected to change soon. Apple’s SVP Eddy Cue recently told TechCrunch the company is working a major revamp of the Maps app and service, and will use first-party data collected from iPhone owners. It will start slowly with the upcoming iOS 12, beginning with Apple’s Northern California area this fall. The plan is to phase out the use of third parties for map data entirely, but its not clear exactly how long that transition will take. TechCrunch also reports that, like Google Maps, Apple has been collecting street level map images and date via its own fleet of Apple Maps vans. Among other things, there is hardware and software inside the vans that allows them to map the world around that vehicle in full 3D. That date, combined with high-resolution images taken via orbiting satellites, should give future Apple Maps users full 3D navigation of streets, complete with high-res textures. Apple Maps has come a really long way since the early days, when Tim Cook actually apologized for how “difficult” the Google Maps replacement was. In fact, it’s become quite serviceable in its own right. Some of its biggest strengths include its very attractive design language, and very intuitive UI. But is that enough? Waze vs Google Maps vs Apple Maps — And the winner is… So who wins in the Waze vs Google Maps vs Apple Maps war? That honor goes to Google Maps. Now let me explain why. Obviously, I don’t speak for everyone. A lot of people will be on Team Waze or Apple Maps. I chose Google Maps as the winner of the navigation wars because I feel like Google Maps is the navigation app that can meet the most users’ needs. Google’s put a lot of work into improving and fine-tuning Google Maps. I think we can safely say that no other navigation app has more than 20 petabytes of map data, obtained by having a fleet of cars physically drive more than 99 percent of all public American roads. Plus, Google Maps has the power of the Google search engine behind it. As I said before, that’s hard for anyone to compete with. No other navigation app has more than 20 petabytes of map data that was obtained by having a fleet of cars physically drive more than 99 percent of all public American roads. Google Maps is a great example of how the evolution and growth of technology can change our lives — it’s for far more than just navigation. In large part, Google Maps is a place-oriented navigation map, and it’s become a catalyst for exploration of new places. Rather than solely giving us driving directions, we can use Google Maps for learning and discovery, and that’s pretty damn cool. Waze and Apple Maps are not bad navigation apps. Waze definitely has more features to offer, some of which could actually be quite useful, though I doubt many would find them necessary or vital to their use of Waze. Just because an app has the most bells and whistles doesn’t mean it’s right for most people. If I were giving a “Most Improved” award, or perhaps a “Best Dressed” award, it would probably go to Apple Maps. Due to the improvements it’s made, many iOS users don’t feel the need to immediately download Google Maps or Waze from the App Store, and that certainly says something. At the same time, even considering how you can access Apple Maps via the desktop app for MacOS, it’s difficult to recommend it over Google Maps (or even Waze) for all but a very limited number of uses. However, as we stated earlier, Apple is working on even more improvements that should allow it to compete better with Google Maps and Waze. All but Apple Maps are available for both Android and iOS devices. At least for the time being, Apple Maps is only available for Apple devices. Now I’d like to hear from you. Which map app do you use? Why do you use it? Sound off in the comments below! , via Android Authority http://bit.ly/2L4aGhE

[barbosaasouza]

Statistics vs. Stories

In this article, game designer Sande Chen looks at why social impact games should consider emotion-based appeals rather than statistics-filled logic. You've likely seen the appeals before.  They usually come at the end of year.  Help us cure cancer, give to your alumni fund, donate to needy students, etc.  What motivates us to care, and care enough to do something?

As Chip Heath & Dan Heath state in their book, Made to Stick, charities have long grasped that the emotional appeal of a story does a better job of opening checkbooks than the logical stance of statistics.  That's why you "adopt" a wild horse or help a young girl in Africa named Rukia. The charity allows you to imagine how the money from giving up your morning Starbucks for 2 months would drastically change Rukia's life.  Her family would have access to running water!  Perhaps you'll even receive progress reports on Rukia telling you how much your contribution has meant to her life.  So why do some social impact games still rely on cold and impersonal statistical pop-ups scattered about in the game? In fact, the Heaths relate a research study in which researchers had one group calculate a math problem and another group think about babies before being asked to donate to a cause.  Even without telling the story about Rukia, the "babies" group was primed to give more money. So why is this so? If I were to tell you, "In February 2018, there were 63,343 homeless people in New York City," you may or may not believe me.  Statistics can be fudged.  But also, 63,343 is a rather large amount.  Would my $3.50 a day really help?  How could it help? In addition, people often have a hard time contextualizing numbers.  If I am told that one small bag of movie popcorn has 60 grams of saturated fat, what does that mean to me?  Is that good or bad?  Is movie popcorn alright?  If I'm shown all the artery-clogging foods I can think of and told that one small bag of movie popcorn is equivalent to 2 days of eating artery cloggers, then, yeah, I might think again. As I've written before, in "Great Narrative Stories Are the Answer,"  the way to changing attitudes and actions may lie in emotion and the great narrative stories that support that emotion.  Let's find a way to tap into that emotion. Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG. Statistics vs. Stories published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/