#i started to google how poisoning works but i ultimately gave up on that
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Satisfied, Part 51
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She rested her head back against the wall -- a mistake, there was now water streaming down her face, but one she had accepted. “Hey, Riddler, what happened to your whole ‘we’re not killing kids’ thing?”
“Sorry, kids, but you’re both 18! Fair game!”
She rolled her eyes. “You just called us kids.”
There was a short silence, then Riddler mumbled something that sounded like it might have been ‘shut up.’
Damian worked at attempting to break his bindings with his rock. It was apparently much harder than you’d see in movies, because he was making seemingly no progress.
“Y’know this is a really boring puzzle!” She yelled.
She felt a hand smack her leg and cursed, drawing her knees to her chest and glaring at Damian.
“Can you not taunt the guy who’s trying to kill us?”
“What’s he gonna do? Try and kill us harder?”
“Yes! We at least have a chance of escaping right now!”
She rolled her eyes.
For a while, all that they could hear was the steady stream of water, the clanking of their manacles, and the sharp sound of rock striking metal.
And then Damian managed to pull himself free. He stared at his broken chains for a second, apparently just as shocked as Marinette was that he’d managed to get that to work, and then went to breaking Marinette’s bindings.
This would have been all well and good if the water wasn’t already creeping up her neck.
She sat up as straight as she could, but it wouldn’t be good for long. Even if it would be, she didn’t know how long she could hold the position. The cold water made her muscles ache from the strain of even keeping her neck up.
She bit the inside of her cheek…
She interlocked her fingers in front of her and held them out to him.
He raised his eyebrows slightly.
“I’ll help you vault up. Get out and beat him up for me, will you?”
He gave a quiet sigh of annoyance and continued to try his hardest to break at least one chain on her wrist. “Shut up. I’m not leaving you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Dami…”
“Nope! Shut up!”
She didn’t know what to do. She had no clue and she hated it. There definitely wasn’t a way for both of them to get out, there was no way Damian could break her chains in time. She could tell he knew that, could see it in the frantic way he struck the metal, but then why wouldn’t he stop? The water wouldn’t reach the top, and the walls were too slick to climb. He needed to vault up soon, while she still had enough energy to give him a boost.
He needed to get out while he still could.
She caught his hand on his next strike and held him there. “Dami… please, you have to get out, okay?” She whispered.
He sighed and looked at the rock in his hands, then his eyes widened slightly. He dropped the rock.
“The hell? That worked --?” She began, but then he shoved his hand in her face. She raised her eyebrows. “Nice?”
“Look closer.”
She snickered and glanced it over, then her eyes snapped back to his fingers.
To the industrial steel ring.
She cursed.
He leaned over her and pressed a hand to her chains. “Cataclysm.”
The illusion crumbled to dust around them.
The warm air brought her to her senses in a flash of pain as her body attempted to adapt. She curled inward on herself instinctively, screwing her eyes shut. She reached out and tapped the nearest surface twice. She could hear movement beside her but it took a moment for her to get over the feeling of her skin cracking from the sudden change.
She pried her eyes open and cringed at the Wayne Manor guest room they were in. She was laying on a bed, it seemed. Damian was next to her, though he was quickly getting up. In the corner was a very concerned and confused Riddler.
Marinette managed to pull herself together. Her hands went to her utility belt and she cursed. Empty.
Great, so Riddler had the horse and fox miraculous.
She doubted he would have found much use for the horse miraculous, though him having it was problematic for some of her future plans.
But the fox miraculous…
Well, he’d already shown what he’d wanted to do. The idea of him being able to make insane death traps (because, ultimately, any damage someone took in an illusion transferred over) without any need to ground it in reality? To make them without a paper trail for them all to follow? To be able to hide his victims in plain sight? It was terrifying, and she wasn’t about to just let him have it.
She held her hands up placatingly as Riddler’s hands went to his flute.
“I don’t want to fight!” The two men looked at her and she gave a somewhat sheepish smile. “Seriously, I don’t. I want to make a deal.”
Ultimately, it was far safer that way. The fox miraculous was a tricky one to deal with, she didn’t want to have to directly engage with it if she could get around it.
She and Damian exchanged looks. He sent her a wary look and she rolled her eyes. After they glared at each other for a bit he finally stepped out of the room, shutting it behind him. She relaxed slightly and slowly scooted her way to the end of the bed.
“Cards?” She asked, giving a bright smile.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he nodded. He took a seat a safe distance away, setting his flute down in his lap in case. She pulled out her yoyo and summoned a deck. She let him shuffle and deal.
“How’d you know? Was the ring the wrong color or something?” Asked Riddler as he handed over half of the deck.
She gave a smile and they started playing war. “Give us the miraculi and I’ll tell you.”
“No.”
Marinette shrugged. Fair enough. She would have been stunned if that actually worked. She bit the inside of her cheek.
“Right, what do you want?”
She nodded slightly. “I want the miraculi back and to have your word that you won’t tell the Rogues my identity.”
“And I get…?”
“I’ll help you get an insanity plea.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m not insane.”
“Sure, you aren’t,” she said in a gentle tone. “But I’m sure you could find some use for it.”
She let his mind wander to what it would mean. Even if she had no intention of getting him or any of the other Rogues into Arkham (they seemed utterly incompetent and there had to be other asylums around), she let him think that she would. She wasn’t directly lying, really. Just giving minimal information and allowing them to draw incorrect conclusions.
He sighed. “I. De. Clare. War.”
“I. De. Clare. War.” She collected her winnings and looked up at him. “So, what do you think?”
“Why would you help me out like that?”
“A lot of reasons, really, but mostly because I care about you and the other Rogues.”
His hands paused and, after a moment’s thought, he nodded. “Fine. But if you don’t do the insanity plea…”
“You have the right to tell the entire world my identity, I’ll get you a press conference myself.”
He stared her down for a few moments, probably trying to gauge her truthfulness, and then he nodded and slowly handed over the miraculi.
She breathed a sigh of relief and put them away. She tossed her Lucky Charm up and watched it disintegrate. “Right, I’m going to have to make it look like I beat you.”
“Of course.”
“Sorry,” she mumbled, wrapping him in her yoyo and pulling him out the door.
Damian raised his eyebrows. “It worked?”
She grinned. “Obviously. I’m a genius. Also, geniuses don’t have to carry Rogues, so… good luck!”
She handed off the yoyo to Damian before he could react and jumped out the nearest window.
She brushed some stray leaves out of her hair (she’d fallen straight into a hedge, ow) and made her way into the courtyard.
She felt herself relax a little when she saw that everything seemed to be alright. There wasn’t any blood, so no one had died in her absence, and she could see all the Rogues tied up by a fountain. Great.
The bats were circling the Rogues carefully, making sure no one escaped. As she looked closer, though, she could see their stress in the tenseness of their shoulders.
The first person to spot them was Dick, who ran forward and wrapped her in a tight hug.
“Euh…?” She murmured, giving him a short pat on the back. “What’s with all the hugging?”
“You were gone for three hours! What the hell?! We thought you died!”
She felt the blood leave her face. She didn’t even know that was a real thing, she thought that was just something you read about in books, but she’d managed it. The world around her felt cold.
3 hours…?
She forced an awkward laugh and pulled away. “Yeah, we were just dealing with one of Riddler’s traps. He’s annoying. Damian’s bringing him down the regular way.”
Dick nodded slightly, then a frown came over his face. “Wait, Riddler?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Yeah…? That’s… what I said?” She said slowly.
“Not Joker?”
“No, obviously not… why?”
He sighed and pointed at the Rogue pile. Marinette raised her eyebrows slightly, glancing over the faces.
Harley Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Penguin… And Riddler on the way…
But no Joker.
~~~
*frantically googling how to write a climax* *it doesn’t help at all* *struggling author sounds*
~
I don’t get why writers these days are so obsessed with subverting expectations. People guessing what’s happening feels great. Like, yesssss all that work foreshadowing wasn’t for nothing
~
Taglist
@comet-kun @thatonecroc @trippingovermyfeet @swiftie-miraculer13 @nickristus-dreamer @moongoddesskiana @i-am-ironic @indecisive-mess-named-me @thebooki3h @insane-fangirl-of-everything @deepestobservationwombat @theymakeupfairies @fatimaabbasrizvi @clumsy-owl-4178 @fanofalittletoomuch @iamablinkmarvelarmy @nathleigh @lilkymilky @silvergold-swirl @dino-lovingreen-angel @thestressmademedoit @kissa-chan @ladybug-182 @alysrose-starchild @t1dwarrior-of-earth @spyofthenightcourt @rowanrouge @nik-nak-3 @momothefemur @aestheticnpoetic @labschaos @our-preciousss @mochinek0 @eliza-bich @mythogaychic @severelyenchantedwonderland @sashakoi @smolplantmum @bluesimani @tropestropestropes @kitsunebell @keepingupwiththemalfoys @sassakitty @2confused-2doanything @too0bsessedformyowngood @all-mights-asscheeks @demonicbusiness @meg-an-ace @fantasiame @qualitypeacepainter @multplelifes @kokotaru @spicybelladonna @ultimatetornshipper
<3
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Change
[Change (A Connor x Reader story based on Detroit: Become Human)]
MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR
Hey, it's Kei! I'm so excited to start and write this story since I had the idea!
First off, shout out to my good sis @findart.me (https://www.instagram.com/findart.me/?hl=en) for going through this adventure with me and for making these covers!! Omg it was so hard to choose but I chose the one I liked the most HAHAHA.
I'm in love with Detroit: Become Human and so I became DBH trash lol. I had been looking for fanfics about DBH, specifically Connor since I'm in love with the smol bean.
There are a lot of stories about Connor and I love each and every one of them and I've seen the trope of being Hank's daughter and the more I read I wanted something more that I don't think I've seen yet. I mean I have seen something similar but not completely the plot that I was looking for so I decided to write my own.
Keep in mind, I have no idea about some of the details in the story like how police work actually work so I just trusted google with the research lol so please don't pay attention to the wrong things since it is just a fanfiction and I'm not the best at writing.
I'll be pushing to write all of this in the same canon of the game but with the inclusion of reader since there are more paths and whatnot and just- basically I'm adding canon and non canon stuff together so-
SPOILER ALERT!!!
I want to make it as real game as possible so that we can have that feeling that it's not too far from the game and it could actually exist, I don't know if you guys get me but I want this to be as close to game reality as possible so that we could really feel close to Connor and the other characters.
Now keep in mind that I just went through the game like only a few times (I have yet to complete it a hundred percent because God knows that take HOURS like omg one chapter is like 4-7 hours of replay) so as detailed of this as I want I may get some things wrong.
Anyway that's enough about me, feel free to comment as much as you like if there are mistakes and hope you guys enjoy the Detroit: Change experience!
Note:
*The reader will be female
*Mostly on 2nd person, rotating between Connor and reader
*I copied some of the texts from the original game's script to make it more immersive, please don't clock me on that lol
*I already finished the story but I'll be posting them daily for pacing and checking purposes.
*Major credits to the original creators, I can only take credit for the plot and story itself but as for the characters that will be use on this story they solely belong to their owners.
Prologue
xX0Xx
Y/n Anderson is her name.
She grew up in a loving environment and she loved her family more than anything. She grew up with a lot of love from her parents but she was particularly a daddy's girl, holding him high up on a pedestal and hoping to one day achieve as many great things as him.
She looked up to her father who was top of his class and was also a valedictorian, he was a very intelligent and talented man and so she wanted to follow in his footsteps. That, and he constantly spoiled her and showered her with love and gifts that sometimes her mother says it's too much.
Because of her desire to make her father proud she studied and worked hard to pass every exam she could and when the time came for her to take the exam for Criminology she passed with flying colors, both parents couldn't be prouder.
It was one of the happiest moments in Y/n's 18 years of life and she had another reason to celebrate because her parents had just announced that her mother was yet again pregnant and that she was going to finally have a little sibling.
She believed she had it all and couldn't have been more content with her life. Her years had been filled with love and laughter and when her younger brother came into their world their family became even better. Their family even got bigger when they got Sumo, the fluffy giant Saint Bernard, for one of her brother's birthdays.
Y/n's life was good, she was a great student and also graduated a valedictorian like her father and when she started working with him at the same precinct in the Detroit Police Department, she felt pride in herself and of course, her father was proud of her as well.
He made it known to just about everyone there what his daughter achieved and although it was embarrassing she was still happy. She loved her job of fighting crime, helping people, and saving lives.
But all that happiness ended when a series of unfortunate events took her brother's life, the one life that mattered to her the most, the one life she couldn't save.
An accident cost the life of her brother, this changed her life and perfect family into a living disaster.
Her father, whom she looked up to, decided to turn to alcohol to remedy the pain. Her mother had had enough of her father's drinking problem and his sometimes downright horrible attitude on top of the tragedy and it ultimately broke them apart.
When the divorce happened it left her in the middle, broken and lost.
Years passed by and her relationship with her parents deteriorated, still, she continued working at the same precinct as her father and stayed with him in fear that if he was truly left alone something bad would happen.
Early on, her father showed signs of depression and her mother couldn't seem to handle it so she took it upon herself as the eldest daughter to look after him. She went with him when her parents decided to sell their house after the divorce and although the house he got wasn't the best she stayed with him.
When he would drink himself to the brink of alcohol poisoning she was there in the hospital waiting for him to get better, she had been nothing but patient when he would lash out at her and yell out hurtful words and she would be the one to apologize to whoever it was that his father pissed off.
What really drove her to yell at him was when she found out one night that he had been playing Russian roulette.
She screamed and cried and he screamed in turn, not caring that his only daughter was crying over his actions. This went on to the early morning until Y/n finally had enough. She locked herself in her room silently crying while her father slammed the front door shut to get drunk somewhere other than home.
This was when their relationship finally broke.
Y/n still stayed at their home but would go out early and return when she knew her father wouldn't be home, she avoided him at all cost but would also watch over him when he was passed out drunk or just too tired to even get to bed.
Even at the precinct, she would make sure to avoid him by taking more assignments and never being in the same area for more than a few minutes at a time.
Her father didn't seem to mind, in fact, he didn't even show a smidge of regret or sadness and that hurt her even more. She had hoped that after a few days of it being like that he would come up to her and apologize but days turned into weeks and then into months.
It had been three years since her brother passed, three years since her parents seemed to have lost care for her, three long years of her father forgetting that he had another child that had done nothing but love and care for him.
Y/n's life changed and even though she was trying to pull her life together nothing seemed to be changing for the better.
-------
AUG 15TH, 2038
PM 08:45:29
"Ma'am it's okay, I've just heard that the situation is under control." The soothing voice of a woman spoke as the sounds of sirens, helicopters, and yelling echoed around the area.
Lights of red and blue shone as the woman with a soothing voice slowly pats the back of another woman who looked ragged and is having a panic attack.
The woman had h/l h/c hair and was wearing a black bomber jacket, tight dark blue pants, and combat boots. Her badge was attached to her hip and it signified her position as a police detective.
"It's not okay! They sent an android to save my daughter!"
"Detective Anderson, we've got a new report." an officer spoke up and Y/n sighed.
"Lay it on me."
"The negotiator was successful, the girl's safe."
Y/n smiled and looked at the woman who was now looking at them and crying in relief.
"I'll go check on your daughter, please stay here and I'll make sure to bring her to you."
"Please... Please make sure my baby is safe." she sobbed and Y/n gave her another pat.
Detective Y/n Anderson, age 27, was one of the people who responded to the hostage situation since she was around the area patrolling with officers Deckart and Wilson, they were just having a chat when it happened. At that time, the three of them rushed into the scene after Y/n called for backup and there they met the android who shot
its owner and was taking a little girl hostage.
They had a standoff and Deckart was shot dead in the living room. She tried to negotiate with it with Wilson but the mother of the girl was screaming which had added stress to the situation. When it went to the outside, Wilson followed while Y/n tried to stop the mother from going further.
She continued to stop the mother from moving and potentially endangering herself, she heard another gunshot from outside along with a yell of pain and when she looked, the android was now on the edge while Wilson's body laid on the ground.
When the SWAT team finally arrived, Y/n had briefed the captain, Allen, about the situation and she was given the task to help secure the area downstairs.
After hearing that the situation had finally been defused, Y/n made her way up but not before noticing a taxi leaving the area. She looked at it in confusion for a bit since taxis shouldn't have been allowed in the area but disregarded it.
When she was upstairs, the SWAT team was clearing up and she went straight to the crying girl being treated by one of the medics. Y/n kneeled down in front of the girl and gave her a reassuring smile.
"Hey, there little one, my name's Detective Y/n Anderson and your mom sent me. You're going to be okay now, I'll take you down when you're done getting patched up, okay?" she smiled softly at the girl who sniffled and nodded.
"How's downstairs, Anderson?"
She turned to look at Captain Allen who looked less tense than when she first saw him tonight, she gave him a soft smile and a salute.
"Captain, all's well and handled downstairs. Great work up here."
"Yeah well, that piece of plastic gave us more trouble than its worth." Allen frowned and glanced at the little girl.
"You managed to convince it though, that's less innocent lives tonight."
"Yeah, well... We didn't do the convincing. Cyberlife sent this detective android in."
"A detective android?" Y/n raised an eyebrow and slightly tilted her head, she's never heard of a detective android before.
"Yeah, the thing managed to do the job but if they make more of that thing it'll be trouble for us."
"Well, let's hope it's a one-time thing then. Cyberlife probably just wanted to remedy their own problem."
"Yeah, well here's to hoping I don't see it again."
"She's done." the medic spoke up which got both of their attentions.
"You taking her?" Allen asked and Y/n nodded.
"Yep, told her mother I'd make sure she was safe."
"I'll leave her to you before we process things then."
"You got it."
Y/n gave a small salute to Allen who just gave a tiny chuckle and patted her shoulder in return. It wasn't a secret that Y/n was a talented detective, she was talented in many areas and, in turn. she's made friends and connections within the force. Most people liked her and those who really knew about her situation pitted her and hopes that she had a better life than she did now.
"Come on, sweetheart. Let's get you to momma."
Y/n extended her hand towards the girl and she took her hand, the little girl was still shaking but she seemed to have relaxed a little after Y/n squeezed her hand.
"What's your name?"
"Emma." the little girl answered quietly and she could understand why.
"Well, Emma, I'm going to make sure you and you're mom are taken care of."
-------
After the exhausting day she had, Y/n finally got home. She was dead tired and she could feel her eyes closing as she entered the house. A loud bark was heard as she entered and she couldn't help but giggle and pet the big fluffy dog that walked towards her.
"Hey there, Sumo. Sorry but Y/n's a little tired right now." she spoke softly as she patted the dog's head.
Sumo walked over to the couch and when she followed her eyes landed on her father who was passed out on the couch, again.
Y/n sighed before removing her jacket and putting it on the table where she saw the picture frame of her brother facing down, she frowned and shook her head and went to pick her father up. As she moved, she accidentally kicked a bottle on the floor and she looked at it in disgust.
"Be quiet while I move him okay, bud?"
Sumo whimpered softly before going to his own little doggie space and laying down. Y/n, who was already used to this, grabbed her father and slung his arm around her shoulder.
"Move." she groaned.
It felt like it took forever to move her father but when she finally placed him on the bed she took off his shoes and socks and covered him with a blanket. She looked at him one last time before leaving for her own bed.
When she finally laid down she felt almost everything shut down, she didn't even care if she hasn't changed, all she wanted now was to sleep.
As Y/n's eyes fluttered close to accept the sweet release of slumber, a loud alarm sounded and she jumped off of the bed. She looked around with adrenaline coursing through her and when she looked at her alarm clock it was already time for work again.
"Agh!" she let out a scream of frustration before throwing herself to the bed again.
Y/n laid down on her bed before ultimately decided to get up again for a shower and fresh change of clothes, begrudgingly getting ready for another workday ahead.
xX0Xx
Chapter One
#detroit become human#detroit become human x reader#detroit become human connor x reader#connor#rk800#x reader#reader insert#connor x reader#dbh connor#reader is an anderson#hank anderson#rk800 connor
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The book of Romeo and Juliet
The book might have been your last communication with me, one I had not the right to answer to. It was notable for one key issue: my total absence from it. Yet the photo on its hardcover was reminiscent of our time together, those three small months. The woman in the picture, although one could not see her face, was me. I was not featured in the book: I WAS I the book. The very texture of it, the life and themes, it was me. Yet you never mentioned me, or our love and that innocence we both possessed. It is true in a sense that we hide what really matters, and I wonder if your wife, who by the way looks exactly like me, even knew of us.
I came to know of your death in a very simple way: you told me. It was evening and I was lying diagonally on my bed; my bedroom cannot be described as pretty, nor does my life. I felt your presence in the room, I suddenly thought of you and it was as if you were there. Did you pay me a visit, that night? I googled your name, something I hadn’t done in a long, long time, and there you were, your death announced as a terrible free diving accident. I thought, you died doing something you loved- and it struck me as peculiar that only a year prior you had published The Book.
It was a collection of stories, imaginary or real, you were teasing your reader into guessing if you were describing something that happened to you or not. But I knew better. You were a surgeon, a successful doctor who treated something called “allux valgus,” bunions in layman terms. Day in day out. You travelled all around Europe and more to bring your science, yet you were an artist at heart: there was a song in you that waited to be written. Your stories kept me glued to the pages. You wrote them in airport stops, long travel and waiting times: those hours where the silence of idleness stopped the masquerade of your life. You, my dear, judged me and cruelly so. You never fully understood my suffering, yet I always understood and justified yours. In death, I know that you forgave me. Did you think of me, when your last breath left you, there in the deep of the sea? Did you see my face? Do you understand, now?
The stories, according to you, were born out of boredom: this is not strictly true. The true reason is revenge. I feared when I knew you had published, because I knew you would find a way to be cruel.
We were a dark version or Romeo and Juliet, where the lovers poison each other with words. In the last conversation we ever had you said I was “acid" because for the first time I stood up to you. You fed on my life and stole my innocence: or, was I doomed anyway? There are so many ways to tell a story.
The first story in your book was about your great passion, freediving, which is where you ultimately found your peace. You had everything in life yet there is a sense of something missing, something you cannot even quite describe. In this story reality blends with fiction. Freediving into the beautiful sea of southern Italy is a metaphor for diving into your subconscious, reaching the dangerous boundary of madness: the diver runs out of oxygen and something happens down there, you speak to Azzurra whoever she is. I think this is somewhat ironic. I wonder what happened down there, when you really run out of breath - when I read the news I even thought you may have done it on purpose. Perhaps your unhappiness was more well hidden than we all thought.
Another story was about you on the operating table, your job, "a job like any other, " you write " with the potential to become routine and boring." You hated routine, that’s why you needed all your little adventures: freediving, free climbing, running - but you were trapped in a golden cage of bunions to repair. And that’s what you did, day in day out. The story describes how during one of your surgeries you start hallucinating, of all things smelling boar sausages and beans because you are hungry. I tend to believe that this has actually happened. The fact that you have lost all passion for your work is transparent to me, and I feel that you are really not appreciating what life handed to you on a plate. Your father gave you his successful practice and you, admittedly, turned it into something bigger. But you write: "A job like any other, at the end of the day." A cash cow.
The other story was cruel. You describe one if your past loves ( thankfully not me), a biology student turned fat and miserable by the wrong marriage and by impending single-parenthood. "You have eaten a lot, these past years," these are your inner thoughts as you visit her in the old house where you consummated your love and lust. "Sadness and an air of stale bread was in the atmosphere: so long gone was our love, in contrast with your today," you write. Not only there is no compassion for the woman who cheated on you and discarded you for a better fit ( so she thought), you are using these pages to show how far you have come, and how deep she has fallen. You revel in your victory over your past. But my question is, if you are that happy why do you need to do this?
I am really wondering about you and if you were different things to different people. Who were you to your wife? In another story you describe how you fell in love with her land, in southern Italy and how she was everything: not once though you say you love her or you describe what you actually love about her. You see, I notice the small things. You, you married a system, a place, an opportunity. It could have been me: for many reasons, it wasn’t.
I was 15 when we met. To be honest, I had been stalking you for a while, even engeneering a meeting with you through one of your "friends". I don't think though that you had real friends, you were to them, an outsider. You were 23, the dashing young senior in the local scout section. I was so shy about liking you, but I had a massive crash on you. From where I am standing now, I would see this relationship as inappropriate. 7 years difference at that age: you were crazy to even think of me as someone you could date. You could have ended in prison, perhaps you should have: you were my world for 3 months. And then it ended, I think I did, because my mother advised I should. The scouts also felt they could no longer keep you as an example to the younger ones: they simply threw you out of the organisation. At that time, I could not totally appreciate why.
I felt free in the beginning but then I felt empty. And then as the years passed I tried to look for you in many ways. But this is not the point: I never stopped to look at how you saw this whole thing. You thought I was to blame, or really I was the easiest thing to blame. Truth said, I was a child who had no one, not even you.
I wanted to become a doctor before I met you, after what happened I purposely avoided that, because of you. It’s a shame, I would have had the passion to do that, it would never be routine to me to change a person’s life. Honestly: I think we were poison for each other, like two dystopic Romeo and Juliet.
I don’t fully understand what I feel if anything at all for you. You are long gone and perhaps I too have seemed to find you again and again in any partner I had. Why does your wife look like me? There is perhaps a need to give closure to our story. I feel we began to write it but it was never fully finished and polished. The fact is, I was scared of you in the end. I talked to you a few times over the years, and it was like the curtains had come down on you. It was you, but the person who has those big dreams was there no longer. You had become hard and cynical: I think you stopped believing in love.
And now that It’s all so final, in your premature death, I actually think you died at the right moment, before you could become someone who has lost any trace of humanity. How many women have there been within the sanctity of your marriage? I can see it on your face. I am sure things are different when you see them from spirit, quite sure if that.
The day you died you called your wife, to let her know you would be in for dinner, so said the newspaper. I wonder if it was your way of say I g goodbye. Your friend, who didn't see you come back and called for help, was beyond himself. I would be too. I you were, surprisingly so a very private person. And I know that there are things you never told me too.
#lost love#keeper of the lost cities#lost light#lost#excerpt from a book i'll never write#writer#writing#writeblr#wrinkles#poetry#stories#death note#death mention#goodbye
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What Happened When the PetNet Smart Pet Feeder Went Out of Business
New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/business/what-happened-when-the-petnet-smart-pet-feeder-went-out-of-business/
What Happened When the PetNet Smart Pet Feeder Went Out of Business
The Amazon and PetCo-backed startup PetNet sold a WiFi-connected pet feeder controlled using an app.
When a failed acquisition forced the company out of business in 2020, customers were left with useless hardware.
An analysis by Insider founder that of 33 wearable or connected home startups leading the industry in 2015, only 12 sold products that are actively supported today.
See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Allen Sampsell knew something was up when his cats started to act out. Freya, a “chonker” born without a tail, and May, a younger tortoiseshell with all of her appendages, were hungry. Sampsell had no idea how many days or hours the duo had gone without eating.
“My cats very obviously kept acting like they weren’t getting fed,” said Sampsell, who works on an Air Force base near Omaha and travels frequently for his job.
Normally, such daily business as feeding the cats went off without a hitch. For the last few years, Sampsell had used the PetNet SmartFeeder, an $150 Internet of Things device which dropped a set amount of kibble into a feeding bowl based on a schedule set using a smartphone app.
But in spring 2020, the feeder started to go offline. Then PetNet asked for more money. In a letter to customers last May, the company said that anyone who didn’t pay a $30 annual subscription fee would no longer have a working cat feeder.
“I am not even sure if people actually fell for that,” said Sampsell, who opted against the subscription. “And then they folded up shop completely.”
From doorbell cameras and smart locks to fitness trackers and smart glasses, Americans are increasingly dependent on internet-connected devices that rely on software and servers to perform basic functions. But as early venture capital funding runs out, and business plans fall through, many of these startups are forced to sell their assets or shut down entirely, leaving consumers with closets and junk drawers filled with beautifully designed but useless hardware. Worse, because many of these connected devices are designed to handle essential aspects of household life, their sudden demise can create all sorts of problems and headaches.
Even the most well funded of IoT startups have failed, including the $3 billion fitness tracker company Jawbone, which shut down in 2017 after struggling to pay its vendors. Others shut down after getting acquired, like the startup North, which stopped supporting Focals, its $600 augmented reality glasses, when Google bought the company in June 2020. Of 33 wearable or connected home startups leading the industry in 2015, just 12 sold products that are actively supported today, an Insider analysis found.
In some cases, unsupported IoT devices, including the PetNet feeder, Jawbone fitness bands and the smart food scale Orange Chef, are still being sold through online retailers like Amazon and Walmart, which give no indication that the hardware won’t be able to connect to the app required to use the product. Amazon and Walmart did not respond to requests for comment about why they are continue to sell internet connected devices that will no longer work as they’re supposed to.
Though PetNet was just one small company among many, I had personal reasons for uncovering why it failed. Like Sampsell, my PetNet cat feeder had stopped working. My cat Dewey was waking me up at the crack of dawn for a meal that she would normally get automatically. She was hungry. I was tired. That’s when I called PetNet CEO Carlos Herrera.
“The hardware was the Trojan horse”
By the time PetNet sent the email asking for subscription revenue, the company was already in a tailspin.
The startup released the second generation of its cat feeder in January 2018 but the feeder had trouble connecting to the internet. The issue, Herrera said, was with one of its vendors which stopped supporting a key piece of software right when the pet feeder shipped out to customers.
Reports about PetNet’s connectivity issues circulated, which hurt its sales. On top of it all, PetNet had taken on substantial debt from that same vendor to cover its supply chain costs.
“One hand is washing the other with poisoned water,” Herrera told me over the phone one day this June, a year after the company ceased operations.
Herrera had dealt with hardware problems before, but hardware was never supposed to be the heart of PetNet’s business model.
He started the company in Los Angeles in 2012 with two friends, one who he met while playing soccer as a kid growing up in Columbia, and the second who he knew from their job building sensors in the defense sector post 9/11.
Their idea was to sell pet food to cat and dog owners using information entered into the PetNet app. The automatic pet feeder was a way to get people to share that data.
“The hardware was the Trojan horse to get the online food business going,” said Bob Kron, a sales and marketing consultant for startups, who ran sales for PetNet in its early days.
PetNet raised a couple million dollars in seed funding through an accelerator and early investors like Grishin Robotics, but Herrera struggled to get the support of large venture capital funds.
He had better luck with strategic investors and in 2015, PetNet raised $4 million, including money from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, followed by a $16 million Series A in 2016 led by PetCo.
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The strategic investments brought creditiblity to PetNet but the deals had strings attached. Most of the money from Amazon went toward integrating the device with Amazon Alexa, Herrera said, which meant hiring someone to do that work. (A spokesperson for Amazon said that integration with Alexa is not a requirement for Alexa Fund investments.)
The investment from PetCo came with a partnership deal that required PetNet to use PetCo to deliver the food that it sold through its app.
By 2015, PetNet had grown to around 50 employees with big plans to expand the application, but hardware problems derailed those plans.
Despite its sleek exterior, the first version of the feeder had major design flaws. Customers used a wide array of kibbles, and some brands of food contained oils that eroded the rubber router that moves food through the machine. Sometimes the kibble pieces were so big that they got stuck altogether.
The money Herrera had earmarked for new projects was reallocated toward remanufacturing the hardware. PetNet addressed the kibble problem by offering its customers a free ramp, which went under the feeder and tilted it at an angle so the food would fall out more easily.
While a software company can fix a bug and redeploy its product overnight, even small issues with hardware products can take half a year to fix, Herrera said. “It means you have to repay for everything.”
For every unit sold, PetNet lost around $10, Herrera said. For every ramp it gave away, it lost another $15. Herrera said he only took a salary one of eight years the company was in business.
“The problem with early stage startups is that you’re always going to be tight with cash,” Herrera said.
By 2018, PetNet was ready to raise more money, and Herrera had his hopes set on a $100 million Series B. But his investors were wary and wanted PetNet to find an acquirer instead.
The startup got close to sellings its business in August 2019 after 18 months of negotiations, but the deal fell through, Herrera said. Soon after, the startup ran out of cash.
“Ultimately, the product/market fit was not there,” PetNet investor Alexey Alexanov, a partner at Cabra VC, said in an email. “Not enough pet owners purchased the SmartFeeder for the company to gain from the potential economies of scale in the supply chain.”
The PetNet feeder is still for sale on Amazon, even though the company is winding down and the product doesn’t work.
Becky Peterson/Amazon
Most consumer IoT companies disappear
Julie Ask is a vice president and principal analyst for Forrester where she researches mobile technologies. But it’s her husband who bought the wifi connected teapot and door handles, and notably, a wifi-connected air filter.
“These are expensive one-off products that entertain my husband,” Ask said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do if it goes out of business. I don’t know where we’re going to get the filters.”
Ask said she’s seen a shift in business models over the last decade as hardware companies adapt to the realities of the market. Like PetNet, most device startups offer their services for free in an attempt to win over customers, with plans to charge for premium services once the customer is hooked, and then eventually to monetize data garnered from the device.
A Ring doorbell in 2019.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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Internet of Things.
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Two models of Google smart speakers, including the smaller Nest, on display.
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“Few companies go into this thinking they’re going to make money on hardware,” Ask said. “All of this data is generated to develop some kind of context that feeds insights that lets these companies know more about their ultimate customer or, in this case, a pet.”
Venture funding into connected devices has increased over the last few years, though there are fewer companies in the space raising money.
In 2017, IoT companies, which include consumer goods as well as products in healthcare, infrastructure and connected cars, raised $6 billion in equity funding across 788 deals, according to CB Insights. In 2020, IoT companies raised $10.2 billion across just 465 deals.
“Devices are a really, really hard business. And so a lot of them go under, even if the product is amazing,” Ask said.
PetNet’s product and brand went to creditors
Sampsell has become somewhat of a celebrity among PetNet customers thanks to his YouTube channel AllensCloud, where he posts instructional videos with simple tech projects, including two videos on “hacking” the PetNet feeders.
In the videos, Sampsell gives instructions on replacing the PetNet electronics with a wifi connected board that lets people control the feeder directly with another app. Collectively, the videos have 5,400 views.
The jury-rigged feeder works well, and it still sits in Sampsell’s kitchen in Nebraska. “I’ve been using it ever since I first put it in there,” he said. “I have no plans of buying a different one.”
Winding down the company has been rough for Herrera. He knows customers are angry, and many have told him as much directly. PetNet can’t file for bankruptcy because that would cost money, and there is none, but he plans to personally pay back each person who paid for a $30 subscription once he has the means, he said.
Dewey reposes in the time between her nap and her meal.
Crystal Cox/Insider
The defunct PetNet feeder is still for sale on Amazon and Walmart.com, though Herrera said he gave up control over the product and brand to creditors. The app is down and the PetNet website now redirects to a pet blog called Pet Keen, which posts tips for pet owners. It’s not clear who runs it.
For Herrera, there’s no question that consumer hardware startups are a dead end. He doesn’t think venture capitalists want to invest in the space and he no longer thinks they should.
But the experience hasn’t turned him off to startups. He’s working on some new projects, none of which involve manufacturing.
“Most startups fail, so that’s just the world we choose to be in,” Herrera said.
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Who Started the Reichstag Fire?
Marinus van der Lubbe, an unemployed Dutch bricklayer linked to the Communist party, was tried and executed for the crime the following year, but even then TIME questioned whether the Nazis who held him responsible were also the ones who had paid him to set the fire, "promising to save his neck by a Presidential reprieve and to reward him handsomely for hiding their identity and taking the whole blame in court."
Whoever set the spark, the aftermath had already been determined by Nazi powers, in their own favor.
“Before German Democracy could thus be downed this week, the Hitler Cabinet had to launch last week a juggernaut of super-suppressive measures & decrees for which they needed an excuse. What excuse could be better than the colossal act of arson which had just sent a $1,500,000 fire roaring through the Reichstag Building.”
The "juggernaut" of new decrees included increasing the weaponry provided to Nazi troops (despite violation of the Treaty of Versailles) and the transfer of the majority of state powers from President Paul von Hindenburg to Hitler and his cabinet. Rights ensured by the German constitution were suspended, and a gag rule was placed on foreign journalists within the country, with severe punishments for violation. The German government was moved from Berlin to Potsdam. Within the month, TIME reported that nearly all of the country's leading Communists and Socialists were in jail. By April, Nazis were using the threat of another fire to ensure the passage of the Enabling Act, which solidified Hitler's place as dictatorial leader for years to come.
Whether Nazi involvement in the Reichstag fire was direct or indirect or, improbably, nonexistent, the result was the same.
Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary: "Eight days before the election the clumsy business of the Reichstag fire - cannot imagine that anyone really believes in Communist perpetrators instead of paid Nazi work. Then the wild prohibitions and acts of violence. And on top of that the never-ending propaganda in the street, on the radio etc."
At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial attempts were made to discover who started the Reichstag Fire. General Franz Halder argued that at a luncheon on the birthday of Adolf Hitler in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. "I heard with my own ears when Hermann Göring interrupted the conversation and shouted: The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!"
In 1933, Hitler demanded that Germany's president, Hindenburg, sign what became known as the Reichstag fire decree (Reichstagsbrandverordnung).
It nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens, and it was used as the legal basis to imprison anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis.
It was also aimed at suppressing publications that were considered unfriendly to the Nazi cause.
According to Ferdinand Schlingensiepen's biography of one of Hitler's leading critics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer*, the decree meant that "the right to privacy of communication by mail or telephone no longer existed."
The decree consisted of six articles. Article 1 indefinitely suspended most of the civil liberties set forth in the Weimar Constitution, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone, not to mention the protection of property and the home. Articles 2 and 3 allowed the Reich government to assume powers normally reserved for the federal states. Articles 4 and 5 established draconian penalties for certain offenses, including the death penalty for arson to public buildings. Article 6 simply stated that the decree took effect on the day of its proclamation.
Citizens could be imprisoned if considered to be opponents of the Nazis and publications such as the newspaper, The Other Germany, were banned if not considered pro-Nazi. The Decree is thought to be a key step toward establishment of the one party Nazi state.
Just over three weeks after the passage of the Reichstag Fire Decree, Hitler’s National Socialists further tightened their grasp on Germany by the passage of the Enabling Act. This act gave Hitler’s cabinet the legal power to decree laws without being passed by the Reichstag — effectively making Hitler a dictator.
How To Deal with Reichstag Fire Fears in the Age of Trump
A record number of even-keeled folks are googling “Reichstag fire” and worrying out loud that the President of the United States is actively planning to exploit a future domestic terrorist attack to institute otherwise inconceivably bigoted, oppressive, and generally anti-democratic policies.
Will the Trump administration respond appropriately to a small- or large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil?
Can we do anything to mitigate the problem of Trump’s likely exploitation of a future attack?
Trump told military personnel in a speech at MacDill Air Force Base that the media are covering up terrorist attacks.
Trump’s presidency, like his campaign, is built on a set of powerful negative emotions: fear, hate, disgust, contempt, resentment. When Americans think of the world outside our borders, he wants us to think of two things: foreigners that are ripping us off, and foreigners that are trying to kill us.
“I have to admit: When I heard that a group of anarchists called the Black Bloc had sent “150 masked agitators” to an otherwise peaceful protest in order to disrupt a planned speech at UC-Berkeley by alt-right shithead Milo Yiannopoulos, and that they’d succeeded in scaring the hell out of everyone and shutting the whole event down, I felt a visceral satisfaction.”
“And what I also understand, after the thrill wears off, is that my feeling is poisonous. Just as the violence is poisonous. And it will consume us.”
“It’s possible that Bannon and Trump could encourage the formation of citizen patrols to oppose leftist protesters, and that this organization could slowly integrate with law enforcement until America had its own version of the brownshirts. But it’s far more likely that retribution and domination would come from our militarized police force, who have already shown what they’re capable of when given free reign.”
“The violence the Black Bloc can muster will pale to the crackback that comes from the state.”
“Each time a group like the Black Bloc undermines a peaceful protest with violence, the large portion of our country that would be totally fine with cops beating the shit out of the demonstrators—even killing them—grows larger. Fox News will amplify the story, moderates will be disgusted, and little by little, the threshold of acceptable retaliation from the state will grow. And once that counter-violence becomes normalized, the act of protesting will be too dangerous to undertake unless we accept the ultimate consequence. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be able to protest at the airport, or have my wife march on Washington, without being shot.”
“The Black Bloc may believe that they are perpetrating necessary violence, but—assuming they themselves aren’t a false flag—all they’re really doing is giving Bannon the first excuse he needs to tighten the noose of totalitarianism around the necks of the American public.”
“Consider the warning: You are playing into Bannon’s hands. Nonviolent action is what moves people, and exposes the hatred and brutality of those we’re opposing. Our strength will come from passionate, outspoken, peaceful opposition. Our destruction will come from failing to maintain those qualities that distinguish us from our enemy.”
http://time.com/3717003/reichstag-fire-1933/
http://spartacus-educational.com/GERreichstagF.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/dec/04/surveillance-adolf-hitler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree#Text_of_the_decree
http://worldwar2headquarters.com/HTML/posters/german/nazi-newspaper-ban.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-deal-reichstag-fire-fears-age-trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/02/07/donald-trump-wants-you-to-be-afraid/?utm_term=.5c5604066128
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/02/the-violence-in-berkeley-is-a-very-very-bad-idea-f.html
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Game 355: The Devil’s Dungeon (1978)
Since there’s no in-game title, here’s the title from the printed instructions.
The Devil’s Dungeon
United States
Written and published as code by C. William Engel
Versions released for BASIC computers (1978), Atari 800 (1979), Commodore VIC-20 (1983), Apple II (1984), TI-99 (1984), and Commodore 64 (1984)
Date Started: 4 February 2020
Date Ended: 4 February 2020
Total Hours: 1
Difficulty: Very Easy (1/5) in the sense that you can escape and “win” from the opening screen; Hard (4/5) in the sense that it’s hard to stay alive if you choose to keep exploring
Final Rating: (To come later)
Ranking at Time of Posting: (To come later)
This is one of a couple of very brief “clean up” entries that you’re going to see this week, spaced not so far apart as my usual longer entries. The purpose here is to sweep up some 1970s titles that linger on my master list even though I should have gotten to them sooner.
The Devil’s Dungeon has dogged me for a few years, and I occasionally get e-mails about it. I understand why. If it was a 1977 game, as many web sites (including MobyGames) allege, and if it was an RPG and if it was actually sold as a game, it would be perhaps the first commercial RPG. Indeed, my colleague and occasional commenter Keith Smith wrote an article in 2015 questioning whether it was, in fact, the first commercial CRPG. When Smith wrote to me about the question, I dismissed it as such, but after reading his coverage, I realized I was a bit hasty. For various reasons, I am reluctant to call it the first commercial CRPG, but for various reasons it isn’t exactly not, either.
The cover for the Atari 800 version of the program.
The game was a creation (perhaps–see below) of C. William Engel, professor of Mathematics Education at the University of South Florida in Tampa. In 1977, Engel self-published Stimulating Simulations: Ten Unique Programs in BASIC for the Computer Hobbyist. The 64-page book consists of 8 BASIC programs that the reader could type into a TRS-80 or whatever other computer he had that used conventional BASIC. The programs included Art Auction, Gone Fishing, Space Flight, and Business Management. The goal was to teach the reader to program, with a particular focus on statistical simulation and probability.
The Devil’s Dungeon is not one of the original 10 programs, but Engel soon found a commercial publisher for Stimulating Simulations in Hayden Books of New Jersey, and gussied-up versions followed for the Atari 800 in 1979, the Commodore VIC-20 in 1983, and the Apple II, TI-99, and Commodore 64 in 1984. The Devil’s Dungeon appears in all of these editions. Whether the game counts as the earliest RPGs thus depends first on whether we count type-it-yourself code as actual software.
Gameplay consists of moving from room to room.
Then we have the date. Evidence from ads shows that Engel was selling The Devil’s Dungeon as a 15-page standalone publication as early as February 1978. I have yet to find a copy of this book, but enough web sites, including Google Books, give the specific date of 10 January 1978 that I suspect that’s what appeared on the original publication itself. The 1977 date given by many web sites is a confusion based on the copyright date in several editions of Stimulating Simulations, which list both the original copyright (1977, with no Devil’s Dungeon) and the publication dates of those specific editions (1979-1984). So while the game was not published in 1977–which would have put it in stores a full year before any other candidate–it was published so early in 1978 that it’s hard to imagine any of the other candidates beats it.
A February 1978 ad for the pre-Hayden Books version of Stimulating Simulations. Note that The Devil’s Dungeon is “also available” at the bottom.
Third, there’s the question of whether the game is even an RPG. If you wonder whether something printed on a few pages for a reader to type could possibly be much of a game, your skepticism is well-founded. The game reminds me in a weird way of Andrew Greenberg’s Star Saga (1988), where most of the “game” was in the printed book and the computer was simply used for the probabilities and calculations. Here, you need the book for the backstory and instructions. The computer program just keeps track of your strength, speed, experience, and gold. So it does have attributes. And those attributes do increase with experience and they are used to determine success in combat. And you do have a single piece of “equipment” that you can you use when you want. It’s like someone looked at my requirements and made a game that technically meets them . . . but come on.
“Character development” consists of buying speed and strength with experience.
The backstory is simply that there’s a lot of gold hidden in a “maze of caves” in an active volcano. Monsters and demons also roam the halls. When you start the game, you have 100 speed, 100 strength, and no gold. The game creates randomized dungeon levels of 16 rooms each, and you spend the game navigating from room to room by pressing the number of the room you want to go to. A room may have a random amount of gold, a monster (unnamed) with a random amount of speed and strength. It may also have demons or poison gas, neither of which can be conquered and instead must be quickly fled. Tremors occasionally re-arrange the dungeon levels while you’re in mid-exploration.
The only “equipment” is a “magic wand” that the player carries and can activate by hitting 99 in any room. The wand destroys monsters and creates a dropoff to lower levels 60% of the time; it backfires and halves your strength and speed 40% of the time.
Room #1 on each level is a “special room,” where you can trade your accumulated experience for an equivalent boost to your speed or strength. You can also leave the dungeon from the room, at which point the game gives you your gold total and dumps you out of the program.
“Winning” The Devil’s Dungeon.
Commands are simply 0 to fight (if the room has a monster), 1-9 to move between rooms, negative numbers to go down an equivalent number of levels (if the room has a dropoff), 88 to see what rooms you’ve already visited, and 99 to activate the wand or leave the dungeon, depending on what room you’re in. This is one of those few cases where a couple of screenshots tells you all you need to know about the game.
Engel wasn’t trying to entertain with this game; he was trying to teach. His books weren’t just a bunch of code: they contained tables of variables, flow charts, diagrams, and other tools meant to explain how the program works. At the end of each program, he also listed some ideas for both minor and major modifications and upgrades to the base program–challenges for the more advanced coder. For The Devil’s Dungeon, he suggested that a more complicated game would include the purchase of weapons and equipment before starting, named monsters, a variable number of rooms per level, light and dark rooms, and pit traps that dump the player to lower levels.
These suggestions are not coincidentally among the many featured in Caverns of Mordia, a 1980 Australian game for the Apple II that is a “grown up” version of The Devil’s Dungeon. I covered it about a year ago. That Mordia uses Dungeon as a base is 100% clear from the nature of exploration: infinite dungeon levels of up to 16 rooms, Room #1 is a “special room,” you have two attributes (strength and agility in Mordia) and can trade experience for them, there are gas and demons, the wand works the same way, and so forth. But Mordia adds about 200% to the content of the game, including some crude graphics (animated in a couple scenes!), equipment, named monsters, more special encounters, and a main quest.
Caverns of Mordia started with a Devil’s Dungeon base but offered a more complete RPG experience.
Mordia is so clearly an expanded version of The Devil’s Dungeon that I find it hard to give credence to author Hans Coster’s insistence (in an e-mail to me) that he wrote it from scratch. He says he gave early version of the game away for free before ultimately selling Mordia, but it’s hard to imagine one of those disks making it from Australia to Florida two years ahead of Mordia‘s release, and Dr. Engel then not only plagiarizing the code but dumbing it down at the same time. (Dr. Engel died in 2011, so we can’t ask him.) Mordia makes so much more sense as an additive experience to Dungeon than Dungeon does as a reductive experience of Mordia. It’s easier to believe that Dr. Coster simply doesn’t remember, 40 years later, that he started with The Devil’s Dungeon as a nucleus, particularly when he would have had to add so much to the code. It is a full game where Dungeon isn’t, and if it had been published in 1978, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it the first commercial RPG.
If I had to GIMLET The Devil’s Dungeon, it would earn a 6, tied for the lowest score ever, probably the lowest score possible. I can’t bring myself to give it any points for the game world, encounters, or equipment; even though it technically has them, they’re not fleshed out enough to even make it to “1.” I did give a 1 for character creation and development, combat, economy, quest, graphics and sound, and gameplay.
In the end, while I’m reluctantly forced to admit that it was “sold” before any other RPG we can identify and it does meet my three RPG criteria, it’s still tough to give it the award of “first commercial CRPG,” particularly when this is one of the few cases where even I would have had the skill to create a BASIC game this primitive. While I try to think of a good way out of it, check out my colleague Nathan’s take on the game at “CRPG Adventures,” where he found an amusing way to cheat. Maybe ignore his last sentence before the rating.
source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-355-the-devils-dungeon-1978/
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The Zen of Death Cleaning | Part 1
By Elizabeth Harper
Though storytelling is a popular live lit activity in Chicago, I haven’t dabbled in it. I’m put off by the requirement that the story must be true. How to tell a story that is true? Which details to include or exclude? I make stuff up. Indeed I think we’re all always making stuff up, and how could we possibly know if we’re telling the truth about our own lives? Our lives intersect with the lives of others, others whose full stories and motivations are unknown to us. The reasons we tell ourselves might not be the real reasons, the actual causes, for how we act in any situation. The reasons of others are something we speculate upon, but are ultimately mysterious.
We are meaning-making machines, looking for signs and patterns where there are none. There is tedium in daily life: going to the bathroom; clipping toenails; packing strategically to get through TSA at the airport, doing the laundry, eating dinner. None of these details are particularly interesting to anyone else or even to ourselves, unless we ascribe meaning to them, perhaps by understanding them in some bigger social context or as historical trends, or by attributing emotional significance. We look for a moral to the story, even if there is no moral to be found, or only the one we invent.
I have been inordinately preoccupied with myself lately, and more specifically, my family history. I find myself falling down the family history rabbit hole on the internet, and more fruitfully, although much more unpredictably and slowly, through the process of looking through the detritus of death: old papers, correspondence, newspaper clippings, marginalia, etc.
Due to a recent death in the family and through a very specific set of circumstances, a peculiar history if you will, several generations of things including furniture, dishes and glassware, books, family photographs, art created and collected by family members, plus handwritten notes, cards, diaries, etc. have accumulated in one house, which I find myself compelled to look through. And I am not complaining about this at all, and I am not seeking sympathy or advice. Looking through these things is something I’m choosing to do. I could turn my back on it and choose not to look at it, leave it for someone else to deal with. But a stranger wouldn’t know that the paintings on the wall are of me and my sister when we were very young, or that the antique, ornately hand carved violin was made by my great grandfather on my mother’s side, a Welsh immigrant named Tom Jones, father of ten children, three of whom died as children. The youngest child was my grandmother Bessie Smith. Tom Jones died in his workshop, left his children his tools. They used them to start their business, Jones Machine Tool Works. Supposedly the brothers were the eccentric dreamer inventors and the older sisters were the financially savvy number-crunchers who knew how to keep the business going. During World War II, the women sewed baby clothes to wrap the machine parts they sent to England, or so the story goes as told by my mother, the only child of the youngest child Bessie. Bessie went to art school and designed hats and had lots of boyfriends before she married my grandfather Charlie Smith, or so the story goes. And there are so many stories, and then there are the ones I don’t even know. And then there’s connecting the family stories to actual historical facts and trends. My mind flits from different stories and time periods and memories. How should I shape this so that it’s something interesting for others to read? I’m fascinated, mesmerized, by the old family photos from the 1800s, but it’s because they are my family that I never knew. I look through letters, cards, receipts, and a story emerges. These are the things the family kept, thought were important.
A man I lived with in college described the way I do things as “Zen.” Eastern religions do not appeal to me. The very idea of a meditation practice revolts me. The word “mindfulness” makes me want to vomit. I don’t presume to know anything more about Zen than what could be found in a Google search. What could he possibly mean? Could it be that meditation, in the sense of sitting in one position, doesn’t appeal to me because I’m always in a meditative state, always aware of my thoughts, always in my own mind? I do things In a slow, unhurried, unstructured way, in my own time, in my own way.
I sit with a box, a melange of newspaper clippings, old letters, saved church programs, death certificates, receipts, recipes, etc. I carefully examine each item, one at a time. Some things are clearly garbage. I do not need to keep old Ann Landers columns. And then I come across, in what must be Great Grandmother Jones’ handwriting, a list of her then-living children with their birthdays and ages, written in 1937 when my mother was just a year old. I had just been asking my sister if she remembered all of their names. Most of them died before I was born. But I remember (Grand) Uncle Mark, who lived in a little cramped and cluttered room in Grandmother’s farmhouse. He was always tinkering with things, always had dirty fingernails, would walk on the farm with me when I was very little, showing me the pretty but poisonous berries. He was patient and gentle. I still have the doll he gave me as a baby. He was petite, thin, and wiry. And then I think how he was similar in some ways to a boyfriend I had not too long ago and my ex-husband. Why are we attracted to certain people? Could it be, unconsciously, they reminded me of Uncle Mark? He died when I was still young, maybe four or five.
And so it goes… the memories, the stories, the reflections… to be continued through time. No doubt many things get lost, discarded, forgotten. Inevitably there are missing pieces to the puzzle, details lost forever, allowing for myth-making of uncertain accuracy, uncertain ancestry. And maybe what matters is not so much truth but function, how we use the stories we piece together to understand ourselves and our own lives.
I found a letter to my father from my Grandfather Harper’s best friend, someone I never knew, that included what he said at my grandfather’s funeral. He died just about a year before I was born, in March of 1967. He was Choctaw, born in the 1880s in Indian Territory, which became Oklahoma, where he lived his whole life. I had never seen It before. Here’s an excerpt:
“E.B. was a quiet man. There was no bombast — no aggressive self-assertion. There was about him a native shyness that added to the attractiveness of his personality. He was always ready to render service to others and did so in many ways. He was ever humble in spirit. He was a true and trusted friend, and today I am conscious of a deep sense of personal loss.
E.B. knew life in all its forms — joy and sorrow — success and failure — pleasure and pain — gain and loss. Through it all his Christian faith remained unshaken. It was a simple faith — but deep and strong.
This is the successful life — to face life without bitterness, without resentment, and to accept the fortunes of life in the humble faith that beyond the mystery of life there is meaning and purpose, and that some day we shall know and understand. This was the faith of our friend.”
I’m glad I saw this.
To be continued...
#family history#genealogy#death cleaning#detritus#marginalia#pictures of people in old-fashioned clothes#Zen#life goes on but the past doesn't go away#hoarders and collectors#inventions#art#immigration#World War II#Indian Territory#Choctaw#Presbyterian missionaries#machines#tools#paintings#dolls
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What is creativity? The ultimate guide to understanding today’s most important ability.
Creativity is one of those traits that people seem to have an intrinsic understanding of, but if you actually ask them to define it, they get tripped up. It’s easy to come up with a list of creative people (Frieda Khalo, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Einstein), and the outcomes of creativity (a novel, an invention, a new way of looking at the world), but it’s difficult to wrap your head around the actual concept of creativity. The more I researched this article, the more I realized creativity is an incredibly nuanced phenomenon.
by rvasilovski
But you have to start somewhere, so let’s begin with a definition:
Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ways of thinking or acting, and to develop new and original ideas, methods or objects.
Let’s break that down:
It’s an ability
It’s also an ability to run a mile, or to do calculus or recite a Shakespearean sonnet (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?). So creativity is a skill that is specific to an individual. For some people, it might seem to come naturally, but it is something that anyone can improve at if they give it the time and effort.
It transcends traditional ways of thinking or acting
Transcending means you’re going above and beyond. It’s recognizing the limitations of what already exists, and trying to improve upon it.
It develops new and original things
I think the key word here is develops. Creativity goes beyond imagining: it’s about developing. If it’s an idea, you go out and do the research to prove it. If it’s a new process you try and test it to see if it works. If it’s an object, you build it.
Great! And now that I’ve provided you with that enlightening definition, let’s wade a bit deeper and try to really understand what creativity is (and why you should or shouldn’t care).
Creativity is a relatively new phenomenon
—
Creativity has only been a thing for the past 60-80 years or so.
“But wait,” you say, “what about all those amazing artists and inventors of yesteryear. Are you telling me you don’t think Mark Twain and Sir Isaac Newton weren’t creative? Preposterous!”
I am certainly not one to dis the fathers of Tom Sawyer and gravity. What I’m saying is that the concept of creativity as we understand it—even though it seems so ubiquitous—wasn’t really part of the popular lexicon until midway through the last century:
From Google’s Ngram viewer
In many ancient cultures, ideas or advancements that we would attribute to an individual’s creativity were deemed “discoveries.” Even artwork was seen as an imitation of nature rather than a form of creation.
In the medieval Christian world, creative ideas were positioned as divine inspiration. Did you do something awesome? You owe god a high five for sending that fantastic idea your way, my friend.
With the dawning of the enlightenment, we started to see a gradual shift towards individual responsibility, but even then the focus was on imagination and intelligence—both of which are definitely part of the modern definition of creativity, but not quite the same thing.
by E·the·re·al”
Where we really begin to see the emergence in the idea of modern creativity is in the 1920s. With the birth of psychology1 at the end of the 19th century, paradigms in the western world shifted to focus more intently on the individual, and our unique capabilities and personalities. (Another one of those things that we think as innate—personality wasn’t really a thing until Freud.) Creativity as an ability, or a personality trait, first gained popularity after Graham Wallas’ book Art of Thought. In this work, Wallas presents a model for how humans approach problems and think creatively.
And thus, the modern idea of creativity was born. Since then, psychologists and researchers in other disciplines have only continued to develop the idea into what we understand today.
So does that mean that no one was creative until the 1930s? No, clearly humans have had the ability to think outside the box and develop new ideas for a long time. What the current focus on creativity does show is that it’s a valued quality in our culture right now. The focus on it as a coveted trait can probably be linked to the rapid development of new ideas and technology in the past century.
Creativity is a pattern of thinking
—
So we know that creativity is an ability that allows people to develop new ideas, but that still feels a bit vague and intangible (kind of like saying swimming is the ability to not drown in water—technically true, but not particularly useful if you’re going for a deeper understanding, or ya know, wanting to not drown). Put on your floaties and let’s dive into the deep end.
All skills originate in our brains: whether it’s physical (learning to do the breaststroke) or mental (learning to solve an algebraic equation), it’s all about neurons in the right part of your brain firing over and over again until what you’re doing becomes ingrained.2
Creativity is the skill to transcend traditional ways of thinking and come up with new ideas. But where do these new ideas come from?
Forget left vs. right brained, it’s all about the networks.
Like the persistent “we only use 10% of our brains” myth, the concept of left-brained = creative vs. right-brained = analytical is total pseudoscience.
by LittleFox
Yes, there are parts of our brain that have specific functions, but it’s the connections between these areas, and the subsequent networks they create which creates cognition. For example, if you’re trying to climb over a log that’s fallen on a path, you’re likely engaging the network which links the parts of your brain that process visual images and govern motor coordination. If you’re explaining to a friend how to climb over said log, add in the parts of your brain which control language.
When it comes to creativity, neuroscientists have identified three large-scale (and aptly named) networks of the brain that are important:
The executive attention network helps you pay attention and focus
The imagination network allows you to daydream or imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes
The salience network let’s you identify when things you have buried deep in your brain are salient to the world around you (e.g. you’re going for a hike and taking in the scenery, and you notice this plant… realize it looks familiar… and that it’s poison ivy! And you just saved yourself from a terrible itchy rash.)
The more active these networks are in your brain, and the more they work together, the more creative you are.3
So going back to our original question: what is creativity? Creativity is a skill that allows you to draw understanding of the world around you, connect those observations to your existing knowledge reservoirs, and imagine new applications of your knowledge on the world.
Is there a connection between creativity and intelligence?
—
This study purports to find a positive correlation between creativity and intelligence, but our in-house statistician was dubious of the results.
So if it’s all about what’s going on in certain brain networks, does that mean that creative people are smarter? I wish I had an easy yes or no answer for you, but the study of creativity is still a pretty new thing, and the research isn’t entirely settled on this matter yet.
In 1999, researchers Sternberg and O’Hara provided a framework of five possible relationships between creativity and intelligence:
Creativity is a type of intelligence
Intelligence is a type of creativity
Creativity and intelligence are overlapping constructs (they have some traits in common)
Creativity and intelligence are part of the same construct (they’re basically the same thing)
Creativity and intelligence are distinct constructs (there is no relationship between them)
There are studies that provide evidence in favor of each of these perspectives, but thus far none has been overwhelming in its conclusions. So essentially there’s nothing that shows if you’re smarter you’re more creative. But there’s nothing showing that there’s not a correlation either.
Are children more creative than adults?
—
If you do a Google search on creativity, you’ll pretty quickly run into an article that mentions a study run by Professor George Land that seems to show that children become less creative over time.
youtube
The gist: Land worked with NASA to develop a creativity test that would help them select innovative engineers and scientists for the space program. In 1968, he and colleague Beth Jarmen gave the same test to 1,600 children and found that—shock—98% of five-year-olds were apparently creative geniuses. And we all just got less and less creative as we aged, until only a measly 2% of us adults qualify as creative geniuses.
by fritzR
Now, maybe I’m just bitter because I’m jealous of all those child prodigies and their ideas that would allow them to be astronauts, but I’m a bit skeptical of these results. Sure, they make for great clickbait and feel-goodry (just embrace your inner child, ignore the pressures of society and you might be able to qualify to go the moon!) but have you spent any time with a five year old recently?
My colleague has a son about this age: this past weekend he linked together a Barrel of Monkeys to create a ladder for his green army men to climb.
Not only is this adorable, but it’s an amazing example of out-of-the-box creative thinking. But real world application? Maybe not so much. (Though I’m having a fantastic time imagining this scenario!)
Fewer synapses = fewer monkeys?
Young children have amazing brains: they develop literally trillions of neural synapses in the first few years of life. Then, through a process called synaptic pruning, those connections decrease over time, as some of these synapses are used and others aren’t.
In other words, kids connect all sorts of weird things together in their minds because they haven’t learned that these things don’t necessarily go together yet. This ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated things—also called divergent thinking—is an important tennant in creative thinking. But it’s just one part of it. And probably why I’m not quite ready to trust the Space Program to child geniuses just yet.
But this highlights an important question:
How do we test for creativity?
—
Some of our designers excel at divergent thinking. Flying turtle by Fafahrd Deustua.
The original creativity tests developed in the 1960s are tests of divergent thinking. A couple examples of these include alternative uses (how many different ways can you think of to use a paperclip; the number and originality of your ideas impact your score) and incomplete figure tests where you’re given a line on a paper and asked to finish the drawing (uncommon subject matter, implied stories, humor and originality earn high marks).4
Other researchers have tried to measure creativity through self-reported creativity questionnaires and social-personality approaches (where they look at a mix of other personality traits and try to find a “formula” for a creative person). Both of these methods have some inherent biases.
So while divergent thinking tests have been criticized, they are currently the most accepted measure of creativity. (Though I’m very curious to see where the neuroscience takes us.)
Why should you care about creativity?
—
I hope I’m not being to presumptuous when I say everyone wants to develop new skills or grow their abilities. (Who wouldn’t want to be a faster runner or a better poker player?) But we all have limited hours in the day, so you can’t practice to get better at everything. Why is creativity one of those skills you should spend time developing?
by InQueen
Well, if you care about your career, it’s probably worth the investment. Both individuals and businesses value hold those with creative qualities in high regard. According to a survey by Adobe, people that identify as creative earn 17% more money than those who don’t. Similarly, in a survey of 1,500 CEOs, IBM found that creativity is the number one trait needed for business success.
And yes, the data from these surveys is based on opinion or self-reported creativity levels, but even if the scientists might squawk, it’s probably worth paying attention to. Basically, your boss and your boss’ boss both think creativity is important. And that makes sense as the definition of a creative person is literally someone who comes up with good ideas and can bring them to fruition. In today’s world, that is exactly the fuel that drives business success. So if you want to get ahead, start churning out those ideas like a barrel of monkeys. (Am I doing it right?)
Can you become more creative?
—
Absolutely! Creativity isn’t a magical gift bestowed to just a few lucky individuals, it’s a skill that you can hone and develop. The trick is figuring out how to flex your creativity muscles.
1. A number of things happened at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries that shifted our world view, from the discover of relativity to the invention of mass, fast transportation, new ways of communicating across long distances, and of capturing reality (i.e. photography and filmmaking).
2. This TED Talk on how to practice effectively is great. It offers a great explanation of the impact of practice on our brains.
3.All that being said, there are some compelling evidence that our current education system is not setup to nurture the type of creative thinking that we value in today’s society. Which makes sense if you consider that the basic structure and curriculum of schools (at least here in the United States) comes from the 19th century.
4. Interested in more? 99U has a great article with 5 classic creativity tests you can try.
The post What is creativity? The ultimate guide to understanding today’s most important ability. appeared first on 99designs.
via https://99designs.co.uk/blog/
What is creativity? The ultimate guide to understanding today’s most important ability. syndicated from https://www.lilpackaging.com/
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Text
What is creativity? The ultimate guide to understanding today’s most important ability.
Creativity is one of those traits that people seem to have an intrinsic understanding of, but if you actually ask them to define it, they get tripped up. It’s easy to come up with a list of creative people (Frieda Khalo, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Einstein), and the outcomes of creativity (a novel, an invention, a new way of looking at the world), but it’s difficult to wrap your head around the actual concept of creativity. The more I researched this article, the more I realized creativity is an incredibly nuanced phenomenon.
by rvasilovski
But you have to start somewhere, so let’s begin with a definition:
Creativity is the ability to transcend traditional ways of thinking or acting, and to develop new and original ideas, methods or objects.
Let’s break that down:
It’s an ability
It’s also an ability to run a mile, or to do calculus or recite a Shakespearean sonnet (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?). So creativity is a skill that is specific to an individual. For some people, it might seem to come naturally, but it is something that anyone can improve at if they give it the time and effort.
It transcends traditional ways of thinking or acting
Transcending means you’re going above and beyond. It’s recognizing the limitations of what already exists, and trying to improve upon it.
It develops new and original things
I think the key word here is develops. Creativity goes beyond imagining: it’s about developing. If it’s an idea, you go out and do the research to prove it. If it’s a new process you try and test it to see if it works. If it’s an object, you build it.
Great! And now that I’ve provided you with that enlightening definition, let’s wade a bit deeper and try to really understand what creativity is (and why you should or shouldn’t care).
Creativity is a relatively new phenomenon
—
Creativity has only been a thing for the past 60-80 years or so.
“But wait,” you say, “what about all those amazing artists and inventors of yesteryear. Are you telling me you don’t think Mark Twain and Sir Isaac Newton weren’t creative? Preposterous!”
I am certainly not one to dis the fathers of Tom Sawyer and gravity. What I’m saying is that the concept of creativity as we understand it—even though it seems so ubiquitous—wasn’t really part of the popular lexicon until midway through the last century:
From Google’s Ngram viewer
In many ancient cultures, ideas or advancements that we would attribute to an individual’s creativity were deemed “discoveries.” Even artwork was seen as an imitation of nature rather than a form of creation.
In the medieval Christian world, creative ideas were positioned as divine inspiration. Did you do something awesome? You owe god a high five for sending that fantastic idea your way, my friend.
With the dawning of the enlightenment, we started to see a gradual shift towards individual responsibility, but even then the focus was on imagination and intelligence—both of which are definitely part of the modern definition of creativity, but not quite the same thing.
by E·the·re·al”
Where we really begin to see the emergence in the idea of modern creativity is in the 1920s. With the birth of psychology1 at the end of the 19th century, paradigms in the western world shifted to focus more intently on the individual, and our unique capabilities and personalities. (Another one of those things that we think as innate—personality wasn’t really a thing until Freud.) Creativity as an ability, or a personality trait, first gained popularity after Graham Wallas’ book Art of Thought. In this work, Wallas presents a model for how humans approach problems and think creatively.
And thus, the modern idea of creativity was born. Since then, psychologists and researchers in other disciplines have only continued to develop the idea into what we understand today.
So does that mean that no one was creative until the 1930s? No, clearly humans have had the ability to think outside the box and develop new ideas for a long time. What the current focus on creativity does show is that it’s a valued quality in our culture right now. The focus on it as a coveted trait can probably be linked to the rapid development of new ideas and technology in the past century.
Creativity is a pattern of thinking
—
So we know that creativity is an ability that allows people to develop new ideas, but that still feels a bit vague and intangible (kind of like saying swimming is the ability to not drown in water—technically true, but not particularly useful if you’re going for a deeper understanding, or ya know, wanting to not drown). Put on your floaties and let’s dive into the deep end.
All skills originate in our brains: whether it’s physical (learning to do the breaststroke) or mental (learning to solve an algebraic equation), it’s all about neurons in the right part of your brain firing over and over again until what you’re doing becomes ingrained.2
Creativity is the skill to transcend traditional ways of thinking and come up with new ideas. But where do these new ideas come from?
Forget left vs. right brained, it’s all about the networks.
Like the persistent “we only use 10% of our brains” myth, the concept of left-brained = creative vs. right-brained = analytical is total pseudoscience.
by LittleFox
Yes, there are parts of our brain that have specific functions, but it’s the connections between these areas, and the subsequent networks they create which creates cognition. For example, if you’re trying to climb over a log that’s fallen on a path, you’re likely engaging the network which links the parts of your brain that process visual images and govern motor coordination. If you’re explaining to a friend how to climb over said log, add in the parts of your brain which control language.
When it comes to creativity, neuroscientists have identified three large-scale (and aptly named) networks of the brain that are important:
The executive attention network helps you pay attention and focus
The imagination network allows you to daydream or imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes
The salience network let’s you identify when things you have buried deep in your brain are salient to the world around you (e.g. you’re going for a hike and taking in the scenery, and you notice this plant… realize it looks familiar… and that it’s poison ivy! And you just saved yourself from a terrible itchy rash.)
The more active these networks are in your brain, and the more they work together, the more creative you are.3
So going back to our original question: what is creativity? Creativity is a skill that allows you to draw understanding of the world around you, connect those observations to your existing knowledge reservoirs, and imagine new applications of your knowledge on the world.
Is there a connection between creativity and intelligence?
—
This study purports to find a positive correlation between creativity and intelligence, but our in-house statistician was dubious of the results.
So if it’s all about what’s going on in certain brain networks, does that mean that creative people are smarter? I wish I had an easy yes or no answer for you, but the study of creativity is still a pretty new thing, and the research isn’t entirely settled on this matter yet.
In 1999, researchers Sternberg and O’Hara provided a framework of five possible relationships between creativity and intelligence:
Creativity is a type of intelligence
Intelligence is a type of creativity
Creativity and intelligence are overlapping constructs (they have some traits in common)
Creativity and intelligence are part of the same construct (they’re basically the same thing)
Creativity and intelligence are distinct constructs (there is no relationship between them)
There are studies that provide evidence in favor of each of these perspectives, but thus far none has been overwhelming in its conclusions. So essentially there’s nothing that shows if you’re smarter you’re more creative. But there’s nothing showing that there’s not a correlation either.
Are children more creative than adults?
—
If you do a Google search on creativity, you’ll pretty quickly run into an article that mentions a study run by Professor George Land that seems to show that children become less creative over time.
youtube
The gist: Land worked with NASA to develop a creativity test that would help them select innovative engineers and scientists for the space program. In 1968, he and colleague Beth Jarmen gave the same test to 1,600 children and found that—shock—98% of five-year-olds were apparently creative geniuses. And we all just got less and less creative as we aged, until only a measly 2% of us adults qualify as creative geniuses.
by fritzR
Now, maybe I’m just bitter because I’m jealous of all those child prodigies and their ideas that would allow them to be astronauts, but I’m a bit skeptical of these results. Sure, they make for great clickbait and feel-goodry (just embrace your inner child, ignore the pressures of society and you might be able to qualify to go the moon!) but have you spent any time with a five year old recently?
My colleague has a son about this age: this past weekend he linked together a Barrel of Monkeys to create a ladder for his green army men to climb.
Not only is this adorable, but it’s an amazing example of out-of-the-box creative thinking. But real world application? Maybe not so much. (Though I’m having a fantastic time imagining this scenario!)
Fewer synapses = fewer monkeys?
Young children have amazing brains: they develop literally trillions of neural synapses in the first few years of life. Then, through a process called synaptic pruning, those connections decrease over time, as some of these synapses are used and others aren’t.
In other words, kids connect all sorts of weird things together in their minds because they haven’t learned that these things don’t necessarily go together yet. This ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated things—also called divergent thinking—is an important tennant in creative thinking. But it’s just one part of it. And probably why I’m not quite ready to trust the Space Program to child geniuses just yet.
But this highlights an important question:
How do we test for creativity?
—
Some of our designers excel at divergent thinking. Flying turtle by Fafahrd Deustua.
The original creativity tests developed in the 1960s are tests of divergent thinking. A couple examples of these include alternative uses (how many different ways can you think of to use a paperclip; the number and originality of your ideas impact your score) and incomplete figure tests where you’re given a line on a paper and asked to finish the drawing (uncommon subject matter, implied stories, humor and originality earn high marks).4
Other researchers have tried to measure creativity through self-reported creativity questionnaires and social-personality approaches (where they look at a mix of other personality traits and try to find a “formula” for a creative person). Both of these methods have some inherent biases.
So while divergent thinking tests have been criticized, they are currently the most accepted measure of creativity. (Though I’m very curious to see where the neuroscience takes us.)
Why should you care about creativity?
—
I hope I’m not being to presumptuous when I say everyone wants to develop new skills or grow their abilities. (Who wouldn’t want to be a faster runner or a better poker player?) But we all have limited hours in the day, so you can’t practice to get better at everything. Why is creativity one of those skills you should spend time developing?
by InQueen
Well, if you care about your career, it’s probably worth the investment. Both individuals and businesses value hold those with creative qualities in high regard. According to a survey by Adobe, people that identify as creative earn 17% more money than those who don’t. Similarly, in a survey of 1,500 CEOs, IBM found that creativity is the number one trait needed for business success.
And yes, the data from these surveys is based on opinion or self-reported creativity levels, but even if the scientists might squawk, it’s probably worth paying attention to. Basically, your boss and your boss’ boss both think creativity is important. And that makes sense as the definition of a creative person is literally someone who comes up with good ideas and can bring them to fruition. In today’s world, that is exactly the fuel that drives business success. So if you want to get ahead, start churning out those ideas like a barrel of monkeys. (Am I doing it right?)
Can you become more creative?
—
Absolutely! Creativity isn’t a magical gift bestowed to just a few lucky individuals, it’s a skill that you can hone and develop. The trick is figuring out how to flex your creativity muscles.
1. A number of things happened at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries that shifted our world view, from the discover of relativity to the invention of mass, fast transportation, new ways of communicating across long distances, and of capturing reality (i.e. photography and filmmaking).
2. This TED Talk on how to practice effectively is great. It offers a great explanation of the impact of practice on our brains.
3.All that being said, there are some compelling evidence that our current education system is not setup to nurture the type of creative thinking that we value in today’s society. Which makes sense if you consider that the basic structure and curriculum of schools (at least here in the United States) comes from the 19th century.
4. Interested in more? 99U has a great article with 5 classic creativity tests you can try.
The post What is creativity? The ultimate guide to understanding today’s most important ability. appeared first on 99designs.
via https://99designs.co.uk/blog/
0 notes
Text
Sandcastle, 23 June, and Colossal Cafe, 24 June 2018
The problem with being the sandwich bully - Is that what I am? I just thought it was the title I gave to this fuckjob blog but OK, whatever. The problem with being the sandwich bully is what happens when you have to deliver the negative review to the local business that absolutely nobody else has a problem with. I can slag off Subways and Chipotles all day every day eight ways from Sunday and nobody cares: Those are multi-billion dollar businesses that will not hurt from one bad review, especially not some dick-off number like Sandwich Bully.
However, I stand to do greater damage to a local independent joint - or I would if this were a popular blog, I have no delusions regarding the small fry nature of this thing. And in that, you think my near anonymity would permit me license to say "Fuck this joint!" but it doesn't: Local business owners are concerned with how they're doing, what their public perception is; they Google their businesses not for the ego boost of the five star Yelp but to know what caused the two star complaint.
At some point, they'll see me like I'm Tom Joad and they're my ma.
And I'm also quite aware that one bad review is not going to shut a motherfucker down, is not going to lay off staff, is not going to result in a garden hose taken out to the garage in the middle of the night. I, as you may all understand by now, am a total jackoff. Nobody cares what I have to say.
Well, until those two little words pop up:
FOOD POISONING
Yeah, that makes the meerkats pop their heads up out of their dens.
"Food poisoning" in a local restaurant review may as well be "shots fired" on a police scanner, so I am super hesitant to use it but, in the case of last night's dining experience, food poisoning wasn't the only thing that me and GF were ultimately unhappy with. And as much as I don't want to write a shitty (pardon the pun) review about a lakeside snack stand, I'm also inclined to tell the truth. You don't come here for me to not tell the truth. Sometimes you come here for stories like the time I climbed a tree to get away from Magic Walter's drunk horny aunt who just got out of prison. Sometimes you come here for stories like the time Tim Evans got a DUI for passing out drunk in the Taco Bell drive thru. Sometimes you come here for stories like the time I had to drive my first ex's dad to the airport to pick up his mail order bride in a car without a working speedometer. Sometimes you come here for stories like the time I fucked a spy. But I assume you don't come here for lies. You come here for the truth. So here it goes.
Also, this is the first hotdog post on a blog that claims that hotdogs are sandwiches.
Last night, GF wants to go get a paddle boat and says there's this place next to the paddle boat joint that we can get a quick dinner at and I say that, yeah, I've seen that place. Been meaning to check it out. I Google it and the little thing that tells you how busy it gets says about a half hour wait. How the - What are they - Is it like a Michelin star bistro or - Let me look at the menu.
GF says, "They just do burgers and hotdogs."
I says, "I can look at the menu, though, right?"
GF tolerates this because - Actually, I don't know why she tolerates this. Maybe she just lost the receipt.
So, red flag: Their menu link wasn't working last night but that wasn't a big deal. It's burgers and franks. How hard can my decision be once we get there? But in my effort to jab my phone with my thumb at least ten times trying to open the fucking menu, I forgot completely why I had tried to look at the menu in the first place: The half hour wait.
We get there and GF wants to check on the paddle boats because the place closes at nine and then she sees the large stock of paddle boats and says she's not worried so we walk over to Sandcastle. Line's about five deep. I eye the menu and see the Nokomis Dog, a slawdog with hot peppers. We're on Lake Nokomis, why would I get anything else? And I like slawdogs. GF wants a BLT and to split an order of fries. We each get a beer.
We're handed a little buzzy light up thing that'll tell us when our order is ready. We get a spot on the grass and then eventually some proper seating over looking the lake. And then?
We wait.
I'm not going to drag it out for dramatic effect: That half hour ETA Google gave me wasn't a joke. It seemed to take forever for our food to be ready. Actually, it kind of did. It took long enough that, though we arrived at about sevenish, we totally missed the deadline for the last paddle boat rental at eight while we were just finishing up our meal.
Bear in mind the number of factors: We get there about sevenish, ish, we get in a five deep line with a bunch of Eden Prairie fuckos (likely in for a big night in the city) who don't know what they want while they are at the register - one guy changed his order at least four times and I wanted to kick him in the fucking nuts, then there was the part where Google warned us about the very real half hour wait but still, GF said it: "It's a hotdog and a BLT," which earns her the gold star: A hotdog and a BLT shouldn't take a half hour to make. So, all told, we're looking at roughly about forty minutes from arrival to getting our order. And that is ridiculous: I don't care how popular you are, I don't care what night of the week it is, I don't care about your prime lakeside real estate, I don't care about your first / summer jobs for underskilled teenagers, it shouldn't take forty minutes from the time you get in line to the time you get a hotdog and a BLT.
When that happened to us at Broder's? I kind of got that. Upscale, out of the way, Italian eatery, safe money is on making a reservation. This is a fuckin' hotdog stand. Even if it does serve shrimp tacos, it's a hotdog stand.
Now let's get to the hotdog.
GF asked me how it was.
I told her there was a lot of bun.
The frank was skinnier than what I'd get from a pack of Babars, the bun was big and fluffy and overwhelming, the slaw was just cabbage and (I'm guessing) Hellman's, and whatever those pepperettes were, they weren't hot, they were slightly sour and not really interesting. Think I paid five bucks for it. There are still worse things I've paid five dollars for. [cough Arby's gyro cough]
Asked GF about her BLT. She said, "It's kind of hard to mess up a BLT. I just don't get why it took a half hour."
True, boo. True.
Anyway, GF is a little bummed that we can't get a paddle boat but we go for a little walk around the lake instead. On the way back to the car, I tell her we're going to need to go right back to her place. She asks why and I tell her I refuse to use a park bathroom. And then a little knock at my backdoor and I tell her, "NOPE! Not going to make it!" and I hand her my bag and pinch-butt run to the men's room.
One toilet. Flip-flop-shod foot with a toe ring visible under the stall wall. And I wait. And I try to look nonchalant like I'm not about to shit in the sink if Toe Ring can't move things along a little faster.
Toilet flushes. A woman comes out of the stall. "I'm sorry -"
I move by her.
"- there was no toilet paper in the women's room -"
"I'm really not bothered by this," as I enter the stall.
"- so I had to come in here and squat -"
"OK!"
"- it's kind of gross in there."
I've seen worse but we're totally laying down the toilet paper triangle.
I hear a dad come in and ask his kid about the urinal. "Is that too high or do you need the toilet?"
Before the kid can answer, I very audibly defecate and the dad realizes what's going on and asks the kid, "How about I just hold you up so you can go?”
Oh, I'm sorry. You're squigged out by this story of acute onset diarrhea in a public place? Yeah, you just have to read about it. I had to live through it.
Long story short, I get in the car, GF asks me if I'm OK enough for her to detour to Cold Stone Creamery, I tell her, "Uh..." and she says that's OK and we go back to her place where she gives me permission to Hiroshima her bathroom so long as I light the scented candle in there. It was bad. I then settle my stomach with a carton of Goldfish, salt content be damned.
If I give the place any positive points, those points go to their friendly staff. But the food itself, discounting the ensuing carnage but still taking the obscene wait into consideration, was a let down. The frank was meh, the slaw was tangy but not really all that crisp (and also the most likely suspect concerning the gastrointestinal Nagasaki), the peppers were, uh, there, I don't know what they were doing but they were there, and there was a whole lot of fluffy white bun. It was the majority of it. It wasn't worth the money or the wait and I'm pretty sure I'd say the same thing if the My Lai Massacre hadn't occurred inside my guts.
By the way, you like how all those references were awful things the American military did to Asian people? Kind of like how we put them in internment camps? Like we're doing now to Latinx folks?
Yeah, I'm using this space to say ABOLISH ICE.
Even a dumbass sandwich blog in some backwater like Minneapolis has stronger political convictions than Taylor Swift.
That was an unnecessary dig at T-Swift. I'm sure she'll shake it off.
NEXT!
This morning, still with warbly guts, I show GF that latest Bon Appetit video of Carla Lalli Music doing a back-to-back chef with Miz Cracker. That makes GF hungry.
We go to brunch at Colossal Cafe and I'm fully prepared to do biscuits and gravy, having looked at the menu before heading over there. (Sandwich Bully: Showing Up Prepared For Shit Like A Fucking Man Since - OK, So Really Only Like In The Last Year And A Half Did I Start Looking At The Menu Before Going Someplace But, Believe Me, It Saves Oodles Of Time Once You Get There.)
The place is packed, it takes at least five minutes before the maitre d - who totally gave me Miss Tanner vibes (tell me you get that reference) - gets to us, I ask for a table for two outside, we're seated outside, we are assigned a harried but polite server - the kind that probably hates the shift but loves the tips - and we are right away brought GF's Coke and my English Breakfast Tea - described on the menu as "tippy", whatever the fuck that means. By the time our server makes a second visit, GF knows what she wants, which is what I had wanted: Biscuits and gravy.
But, you see, they made the mistake of handing me my menu lunch side up and there it was, staring at me, singing in a Nina Hagen voice with a cacophonous orchestra behind her, "I fucking dare you to ignore me, motherfucker."
Reuben, you cruel bitch-temptress, we meet again.
OK. OK. You want to do this? You want to play? We can play. We can play all day. Reuben, Rachael, one time I saw you listed on the menu as a Rebecca, I don't give a fuck what your fucking name is or how you self-identify, you son of a bitch! You're going in my fucking belly! Kiss my ass!
I got that with a Caesar salad on the side because the other two options were chips or "cafe salad" and I'm not trying to find out about "cafe salad".
We got our orders in less than ten minutes considering there was an admittedly smaller but still full house - inside was elbow to elbow and the patio was brought to occupancy about five minutes after we were seated - and an advertised as Made From Scratch menu of entrées more advanced than hotdogs and shrimp tacos. Slightly, just slightly inconvenient wait to be seated, totally prompt reception of our orders.
And how were our dishes?'
GF didn't really describe the biscuits and gravy beyond "hitting the spot" and that she "needed that". She told me my sandwich looked pretty and asked what went on one, anyway.
Colossal doesn't fuck around and try to make it "signature" with some weirdo variation. Instead, they corn their own beef (shredded on this sandwich, something I can't recall seeing before), probably ferment their own kraut, I'd be surprised if they made their own Swiss, they straight up tell you on the menu they make the thousand island in-house, and they bake their own black rye bread.
I told her, "Corned beef, Swiss, sauerkraut, thousand island."
I asked if she wanted me to cut her off a bite and then I was like, "Wait. We fucking kiss each other all the time. I am thirty seven years old. 'Cut her off a bite’? Grow the fuck up."
I hand her the sandwich and she took a bite and she said, "Tangy."
You know what? Pretty apt descriptor: Tangy. The thousand island and the kraut are a competent and balanced tag team, neither overshadowing the other, even though this is a Reuben so they would normally pretty much overshadow everything else. The corned beef is savory and paired well with the creaminess of the that's-not-Sysco Swiss and this is where I realize Swiss' place on the Reuben: When somebody uses a high quality Swiss. The creaminess of the cheese is meant to pair with the umami of the meat while the high-pitched lactic tang of Swiss is meant to bridge the flavor profile over to the sweet & sour kraut/dressing combo. I just never knew it, just always figured that it was meant for bullshit "stretchiness" factor or some other shit honky chicks Swifties dig. But that was because this whole time, people were handing me Sysco Swiss. Somebody took the time to use a premium Swiss and it's like, shit, now I get it. Like when I went to Broder's and had quality provolone. My entire life, just had Sysco provolone. Never knew. And here, a revelation: Swiss, good, quality Swiss, will prove to you that there is a true function for its presence on the Reuben.
This, and I'm going on record here, Kafe Nasty, take a memo, upsets the Reuben ranking in Minneapolis. Tiny Diner has been the favorite for about a year now because of how smoky and complex their corned beef is. When you can make a meat that steals the show from the kraut/dressing combo, you lead the pack. But their cheese didn't bring much to the table except that stretch game.
Colossal Cafe's Reuben changes things because their sandwich isn't meat versus condiments, the Swiss there is noticeable and in its presence creates a harmonious Reuben, the Reuben you didn't know about until now or, you know, did know if you've been there before me.
It's a tough call because all Tiny Diner would have to do to have a perfect Reuben, one without competing flavors - this isn't some kind of metaphor, goddamn, this is real - is step up their Swiss game.
Meanwhile, Colossal's corned beef is good, better than great, but lacks that smoky depth that Tiny imbues their brisket with. The call gets tougher when you consider that the elements play nicely together as they are. If you altered the meat's recipe would it still get bridged to the condiments via the Swiss?
And that begs the question of whether better Swiss really would work at Tiny.
Paradox!
It's a tough call and that they make their ingredients from scratch puts - hold on to your butts - Cecil's on notice. I'm fucking saying it. Cecil's is on notice. (They admittedly have their meats shipped in.) Until I get this shit figured out in my head, every Reuben making motherfucker I know is unsafe. Reubens, Rachaels, you weird motherfuckers with Rebeccas, whatever those are, Rhondas, Randies, Robbies, RuPauls, I don't give a fuck. Everybody (who gives a shit about a next-to-non-existent lunch blog) is on notice. Colossal changed the game, OK? I'm sorry but y'all been fuckin' up on your Sysco crutch.
My Caesar salad? Fresh greens, plenty of cheese, creamy dressing, crutons that were firm but not Cap'n' Crunching your mouth. Probably the best Caesar salad I've ever had. I'll say that. Not as big a deal as this Reuben, though.
Then I got the itis and then I got the squitters because I wasn't done being sick from last night, so I laid down and watched a movie with GF that my first ex told me to watch but I was like "Nah." So I finally saw that.
Go to Colossal, tell me I'm wrong.
Also abolish ICE.
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