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adamreno · 2 years

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Why I fail to be politically active (despite my privilege)

Disclaimer: the following view is not a defense of inaction, it is an explanation of inaction as I currently understand it. I am not advocating political apathy. My view is intended to help me become active and start a conversation.

Introduction In wake of Trump, George Floyd, and continuous climate crises, I hear people asking me to get involved in politics or social change. Advocates worry and claim that if people fail to take action, rights will be eroded and evils like racism will persist. It is as though the house we all live in is on fire and those still sleeping are being roused to wake, to take notice and help put out the fire.

(Artwork below created in collaboration with DALL-E 2)

And you know what, I buy that idea. I do not think social issues will not resolve themselves. Or, at very least, to expect that they will does not seem like a good strategy. Moreover, it seems right to say that the more people who become meaningfully engaged in an issue the better chance it will have of being solved.

Now, these claims may be false, and if someone thinks they are I encourage them to let me know how, but for the purposes of this article I will take them for granted. Social causes, like efforts to root out systemic racism, need help from more people if they are to be successful. Which means, from the standpoint of this strategy, those who willingly remain on the sidelines are an impediment to the goal of justice.

(Artwork below created in collaboration with DALL-E 2)

What I’ve just articulated is an understanding I took away from a college course of mine. The classed emphasized the need for privileged people like me to use their unearned resources to be become allies, to “willing to act with, and for, others in pursuit of ending oppression and creating equality”. To that end my professor encouraged us to go figure how we could each do our part to bring about a better world. But I found this call to action puzzling and somewhat frustrating. I want to do my part to bring about a better world, but I and others I know regularly struggle to look after our own priorities…

So with some defensiveness I asked my professor how being an ally was supposed to work in a context where people are already struggling to tend to their own lives. In response they asked me how much time we were all spending on our phones.

From my perspective the implicit suggestion was that the reason we were not more engaged was because we were not using our time wisely. That if we spent less time on our phones, we would have more time to devote to social justice.

I found this suggestion frustrating, for me it had echoes of the “just quit” ethos in folk addiction psychology that I have come to loath, which says the addiction is a simple choice. On top of that it was activating some old hurts around my privilege and shame that I detail in an earlier blog. But beyond my difficult emotions, I respectfully disagree. Political inaction in my own life, or in other peoples lives, is not simply due to time constraints, I think it is due to bandwidth constraints.

Bandwidth Constraints Bandwidth is a term I first heard by Sam Harris and it is often thrown around to describe one’s capacity to to do something. My goal in this blog is to offer an analysis of the concept that will be useful in explaining why I fail to be more politically active and some steps that might help me in that regard.

When I talk about political action, I do not mean any kind of political action. I mean strategic political action. I am taking strategic political action if I am doing X because of Y for the purpose of Z based on analysis of A. I make this distinction because I could see that someone might want to consider a wide range of actions, like shopping at a store, to be political. In other words, the kind of political action I am interested in is action that is inherently intentional. Intentional action being action distinct from action that is habitual or conditioned. For example when I quit a bad habit, I engage in conscious and concerted effort to change myself, but when I practice habits that are already ingrained, like drinking water throughout the day, no intentionality is required.

So when my Professor advised me to consider spending less time on my phone, it seemed as though they were neglecting the difference between an ingrained habit and an intentional behavior. Spending time on my phone and being politically active. To use a cooking analogy, I don’t think the ingredients that makeup the habit of me using my phone can simply be swapped out to get politically active. That spending less time on my phone will translate to fighting against racism or climate change.

I think that intentional action requires an altogether different set of resources, that set of resources is what I term ones bandwidth and I hypothesize that the following resources are necessary for one to have bandwidth, the ability able to perform intentional action: Time, Energy, Motivation, Focus, Guidance, Tools, Emotional regulation, and Infrastructure.

I’ve suggested that time was not sufficient for intentional behavior, but clearly it is necessary. If I simply to busy with other things, without enough time to be intentional, then I won’t be. However, I must also have energy. My economic privilege leaves me with plenty of free time, but I deal with a form of chronic fatigue, which often leaves me to exhausted to do much of anything. However, even if I had enough time and energy, my rocket Still won’t get off the ground without motivation. I need reasons to do something and the actual felt desire when the time comes.

Now, suppose I am fully rested, have motivation, but I can’t focus due to my ADHD. It seems to me that I will not be able to be intentional in this scenario either.

Furthermore, it seems right to say that even if I have time, energy, and focus, I still need guidance. By guidance I simply mean some sufficient understanding of what it is that I am trying to do and how to do it. If I did not know what to write I wouldn’t get any writing done. Having a clear idea of what task or behavior I am attempting makes all the difference when trying to execute it successfully. The following clip below from limitless (watch first minute only) illustrates this point. In the clip, you get to see him before insight and after insight thanks to the drug NZT.

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I also need the right tools, if my goal is to write a paper, but I have no pens, paper, etc. then I will not be achieving anything. Tools may also include skills such as critical thinking or research habits, etc. Moreover, I think we also need emotional regulation: say I am energized and focused holding the right tool in the right place with a clear idea of what you need to do, but I am too scared of failing, of making a mistake. Well then I will not be able to get started and actually do what you set out to do. I further justify my claims about the need for tools and emotional regulation with the following scholarly source:

youtube

Finally, it would seem that for long term goals such as ending systemic racism or slowing climate change I also need what I call infrastructure, a set of processes that keep me supplied with bandwidth for whatever goal I am pursuing. Here I am referring to things like routines, schedules, incentives, and self-care practices, the everyday habits that make sure I have the time, energy, focus, motivation, guidance, tools, and emotional regulation I need to get something accomplished within a longer stretch of time.

A quick note: the bandwidth criteria I have laid out is meant to be useful, not exhaustive. If you do have additional components please share them with me.

Bandwidth constraints applied I will now apply the bandwidth criteria to my professor’s push for me to become an ally.

In class they gave me a list actions a person can take to bring about social change. Let’s evaluate one of them: voting, to better understand my formula for intentional action.

I have voted since I was 18, but I have never voted in an election based on an understanding of the issues, either locally or nationally. I have always deferred to my party preference or to my the views and advice of friends. If I were to vote in a manner consistent with ending racial injustice, I think it is fair to say that I would need to do go out of my way to do some research.

What is keeping me from doing that research? Well I feel overwhelmed, like I can’t do it. The issues involved are so complicated and I have other things going on. My ADHD leaves my attention scattered. Plus, I also don’t feel very much motivation. After all what difference will it really make? I also do not have confidence I could keep it up for the long term. On top of that my chronic fatigue often leaves me with little energy.

My intention is not to complain, but to instead highlight the actual crux of my inaction. To reveal, that it is not too much time on my phone that keeps me from being politically active, but instead a lack of the following resources: emotional regulation (overwhelm), focus (ADHD), energy (fatigue), guidance (not knowing how to research something so complicated), motivation (not appreciating why it is valuable) and structure (a system to maintain my bandwidth).

The utility of such an analysis is that each constraint identified picks out a specific area in which I may develop. • I can process my overwhelming feelings within my self or someone in my life equipped to help. • I can reflect on and analyze my situation with more detail and get specific advice from someone who has walked the path I am interested in. • I can find people or resources to inspire and compel me and reflect on my reasons for taking action. • I can build habits to make sure I have the bandwidth I need to be successful. • I can work on caring for my ADHD and fatigue.

Objection: Choices, not constraints, hold you back My Professor may agree with what I’m saying. I emailed them for my clarification about their comment: “how much time are you spending on your phone”, and they seemed to acknowledge that behavior change is not straightforward. That it requires motivation and guidance and is aided by having support. So perhaps a more charitable interpretation of their phone comment is to see it as nudge to consider my priorities, to take a hard look at how I am allocating my resources, and see if there are any opportunities to align them better with the goals of justice.

It reminds me of something my friend said when I was discussing these issues with them. I was in Las Vegas to celebrate my graduation and my growth, but was lamenting how inactive I was politically. In response they pointed out that I had made a choice to be in Vegas, shedding light on the fact that I was not making a choice to be politically active.

I think these points about priorities have merit, I do struggle to prioritize the work of justice, to make intentional choices about how to bring about a better world, but that still leaves the question: why do I fail to make these choices? Or, what are the specific aspects of my life that leave me acting without intention in the political arena?

So, again, while I agree that choices and priorities are relevant, they lack precision. You see choices, if they are to be made, cannot exist in a vacuum, like all actions, they must have a base, a substrate…a foundation, somewhere from which they spring. In my own experience those who are politically active are often: 1) acting out of necessity because they are directly affected by some issue, 2) have relationships with people who are and/or 3) are educated about the importance of taking some specific action. And that, is just not where I’m at right now.

So I find it more instructive to tell myself that I fail to prioritize political action— to do things like educate myself, donate, and vote wisely—because I lack bandwidth: the guidance, motivation, energy, focus emotional regulation, and structure I would need.

Conclusion I find my analysis uplifting, because for years I have wondered in frustration: why, if I am so privileged, am I not able to be politically active? What’s wrong with me? And now I have a sense of why, and its not because I am not choosing to do so or because I am a bad person or just not trying hard enough, it is because of my bandwidth constraints. Constraints that I can identify, investigate and ideally innovate upon.

I’m curious how readers may apply this analysis to their own challenges. Having often heard many people say they “should” being doing more whether it with their health or creative pursuits I wonder: do you really have the bandwidth to do more?

On my own path of ally work, I recognize that one way I can start getting the resources I need is by following some advice from that same professor: to build support systems around my political action work, much like I would with a mental health issue, to find people and groups to help me guide me, keep me regulated, motivated. So that is my next step. If you want to help me do some research for this upcoming election or just help me stay motivated please reach out.

#privilege #philosophy #Political inaction #political ideology #Youtube

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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WHY I'M SMARTER THAN FOUNDERS

If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Isn't the pointy-haired bosses. In OO languages, you can, even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world. There is a very sharp dropoff in performance among VC firms, because in many cases the language layer won't have to change at all. Then I'm worried. VC firm will not screw you too outrageously, because other founders would avoid them if word got out. Large-scale investors tend to put startups in three categories: successes, failures, and the distinction between the spikes and the average becomes sharper, like a digital image rendered with more pixels. And the big hits often look risky at first. The problem is, for the company to have a low valuation. In fact, if you have a browser on your cell phone? N elements.

But as well as Lisp, so they get the pick of all the parts, as ITA presumably does, you can make the search results useless, because the first results could be dominated by lame sites that had bid the most. If you want to work on what you like, and let people design whatever object systems they want as libraries. Will there be a phone in your palm pilot?1 So the total number of new shares to the angel; if there were 1000 shares before the deal, the capitalization table looks like this: shareholder shares percent—VCs 650 33.2 My guess is that the concepts we use in everyday life that you don't have time for your ideas to evolve, and b you're often forced to take deals you don't like it. I suppose I should learn Lisp, but it is a byword for impossibility.3 Though the first philosophers in the western tradition lived about 2500 years ago, and even have bad service, and people will keep coming. 5 are now widespread. That idea is not exactly novel. If VCs got de facto control of the company 2/4 2. You can start by writing things that are useful but very specific, and then think about how to make money, but what you'd like to be able to avoid the usual chicken and egg problem new protocols face, because some of the most important things you can understand about startups.

The difference between then and now is that now I understand why Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand.4 Neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg knew at first how big their companies were going to spend the weekend at a friend's house for dinner. VCs also insist that prior to the deal the option pool is down to 13. We were compelled by circumstances to grow slowly, and in particular, Internet startups are still only a fraction of what the finished product will do, but that dramatic peaks can only be achieved by people with certain rare, innate qualities; nearly anyone can learn to be a complete picture. Could you describe the person as an animal? That scenario may seem unlikely now, but Fortran I didn't have them.5 The goal is the same as intelligence.6 All they need is a language that actually seems better than others that are available, there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever's currently in the pipeline for several years after, and finally issued in 2003.7 Don't hire people to fill the gaps in some a priori org chart. That's what happened with domestic servants. Partly the reason deals seem to fall through so often is that you get less dilution.8

So someone investigated, and sure enough, that patent application had continued in the pipeline for several years after, and finally issued in 2003. And yet this guy will be almost entirely overlooked by the press. These heaps o' boilerplate are a problem for small startups, because it's always the oldest it's ever been.9 If you work hard at being a bond trader for ten years, thinking that you'll quit and write novels when you have enough money to pay a little more equity, but being slightly underfunded teaches them an important lesson. This is understandable with angels; they invest on a smaller scale and don't like to get across about startups, that's it. So when I ran into the Yahoo exec I knew from working there in the late 1950s. I know a lot of people wish that hacking was mathematics, or at least to know what they want from me. Probably because the product was a dog, or never seemed likely to be smarter. Barely usable, I admit, this is true.

We might have to give definite if implicit advice will keep us from straying beyond the resolution of the words we're using.10 Maybe mostly in one hub, and it seems to consume all your attention. But I have a hunch that the main branches of the evolutionary tree pass through the languages that have the right kind of place for developing software. They're not pretending; they want to believe you're a hot prospect, because it is the cool, new programming language. And this tradition had so long to develop that nontechnical people like managers and venture capitalists also learned it. Some languages are better than either of them?11 At the very least, you're supposed to be working on their company, not worrying about investors. They'd rather lose the deal than establish a precedent of VCs competitively bidding against one another. Wall Street's language. Since people interested in designing programming languages, a lot of good publicity for the VCs.

Notes

Kant.

Even the cheap kinds of startups will generally raise large amounts of money from it.

There's a good plan in which internal limits are expressed.

And the reason the US. Bankers continued to dress in jeans and t-shirt, they're probably a real partner. Record labels, for many Americans the decisive change in how Stripe felt. You have to do business with any firm employing anyone who had died decades ago.

I find hardest to get going, e. Economic inequality has been decreasing globally. Microsoft, incidentally, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the end of World War II had become so common that their system can't be buying users; that's the situation you find known boring ideas intolerable. This has, like arithmetic drills, instead of crawling back repentant at the network level, because the illiquidity of progress puts them at the lack of movement between companies combined with self-imposed.

The wave of hostile takeovers in the country. This seems unlikely at the end of economic inequality is not to pay employees this way, they'd be called acting Japanese. This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow. Geshke and Warnock only founded Adobe because Xerox ignored them.

That's the difference between being judged as a type of product for it.

If you actually started acting like adults.

The existence of people. Why go to college, you'll be well on your own mind. All languages are equally powerful in the sort of wealth—that startups usually lose money at all.

This includes mere conventions, like the intrusive ads popular on Delicious, but trained on corpora of stupid and non-broken form, that it killed the best in the sense that if the present, and FreeBSD 1.

And while they may try allowing up to the principles they discovered. Xxvii. Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, but art is a big change in the cover story of creation in the US News list?

Thanks to Chad Fowler, Patrick Collison, Dan Giffin, Geoff Ralston, Trevor Blackwell, and Stan Reiss for the lulz.

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ddtriohub · 6 years

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{uhhhhhh Ponsol and Izumi for the ship thingy?}

Answering Ship questions from this meme: [x] ||Accepting||@tsundere-model & @magicgeekponsol

Just a small bit long, so readmore it is:

Gives nose/forehead kisses:

To be quite honest, I feel like the answer is a tentative: both? Ponsol wouldn’t mind so much kissing Izumi on the forehead or the nose, but somehow I feel like Izumi will fight it sometimes because it’s embarrassing. I feel like Ponsol just does it to show off and tease Izumi-- which is why he’d fight it. Izumi, being the affectionate lil nugget that he is, would be more loving in a private setting so when they’re alone, I feel like Izumi is the one who gives nose/forehead kisses. Really though, they both would do this.

Gets jealous the most:

Izumi GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY MAN Sena. Ponsol, while he’s got an inferiority complex towards his brother, he’s fully competent and confident when it’s against another person. He doesn’t really think that Izumi would ever cheat on him or anything so he’s not worried at all. Is he territorial and protective? Yes. If he thinks someone is bothering Izumi, he’ll step in. From what I know of how Izuzu plays Izumi, he’s pretty insecure and he kinda feigns his confidence? I’m pretty sure seeing people around Ponsol makes him really nervous and he’ll get very jealous. Will that mean Ponsol will occasionally try to make Izumi jealous on purpose? Who knows~?

Takes care of on sick days:

I mean---------- I think a lot of us know the answer to this one. Ponsol was a sickly child and he is still prone to getting sick often. He’s also a MENACE in the kitchen so really he shouldn’t be trusted. Izumi will more often be taking care of Ponsol. I’m sure Izumi takes care of himself well aside from him not eating much. Ponsol would try to take care of him but honestly it would be a ‘GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THE KITCHEN. I’M SICK ALREADY, ARE YOU TRYING TO FINISH THE JOB???????- situation if he tries to make Izumi something.

Drags the other person out into the water on beach day:

Drags... huh? Sounds like a Ponsol thing to do. Like, ‘WAIT! MY MAKE UP ISN’T WATER PROOF/I HAVEN’T SET MY MAKE UP YET!’ Dragging him kicking and screaming into the water. If Ponsol doesn’t wanna move, there is no way Izumi can drag him into the water unless he’s related to Popeye the sailor man and has a whole can of spinach. Honestly, Ponsol doesn’t mind the water or anything so he wouldn’t mind going in. Izumi-- I feel like he would have a problem with it because, what if he burns? What if a poisonous jelly fish stings him? WHAT ABOUT HIS MAKE UP?

Brings the other lunch at work:

Izumi. If it were up to Ponsol to bring lunch to Izumi... “Did you make it yourself? Are you trying to kill me? Sabotage?” I mean i’m sure he’ll appreciate the sentiment but let’s be real now. Besides, Izumi is pretty waifu material, doncha kno? Bringing his lover a lunch while he’s at work seems like something Izumi has dreamed about doing.

Tries to start role-playing in bed:

Given that Ponsol is into imagery-- I feel like it would be Izumi. Trying out different things to seduce his lover. He is a model, so dressing up and acting the part probably isn’t too difficult for him. I’m sure Ponsol would really enjoy it so Izumi would try out all sorts of outfits for him. || Hm? Ponsol? LOL What you mean? He roleplays as a confident and haughty heir every day, you want him to roleplay some more? LOL Jokes aside, Ponsol isn’t much of a role-play kinda person to bring that up himself, but if Izumi likes it, he might try it.

Embarrassingly drunk dancer:

Ponsol is a good boy and he knows his limits and never reaches his limits. Izumi actually might be the embarrassingly drunk dancer? Kinda like ‘Hey Izumi, I want to see one of those dances you did in your younger years as a Knight’. I feel like Izumi might actually dance then.

Firmly believes in couples costumes:

Izumi. Sure for. He’d definitely believe in anything couple related. I’m sure Ponsol doesn’t really care either way so it’s not hard to convince him to wear something-- unless it looks hideous-- but let’s face it. Izumi wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something ugly.

Breaks the expensive gift rule during Christmas:

I actually don’t know what this means. Does this mean like they have an implicit understanding not to buy something expensive for Christmas, so who breaks that rule first? Then it would be Ponsol. Excuse me? You are the lover of a man who is worth MILLIONS of dollars. You think that he’ll allow you to settle for something worth pennies? Don’t make him laugh. Let him spoil you like the priceless person you are plz.

Makes the other eat breakfast:

Izumi. I’m sure by all my answers thus far we’ve realized that Ponsol cannot really cook?

Remembers anniversaries:

Both. Izumi would be very careful about remembering dates. Probably puts hearts and stuff on calendars to remember special dates. Ponsol has a great memory so it’s all in his head but he sets phone alarms to help him remember to get things prepared for anniversaries.

Brings up having kids first:

Izumi, probs. I’m sure he’d want to have children so that they can be an actual loving family. One who fully supports each other in a loving way. Ponsol? He doesn’t really mind either way. He’s not too fond of children, but he doesn’t hate them either. He’d be happy to see Izumi happy tbh.

Kills the bugs:

I guess Ponsol would lol. Izumi can deal with the clean up.

First to define them as a couple:

Mmnnnn... i’m not too sure about this one. I mean I’m sure Izumi immediately starts referring to each other as a couple once it happens. I feel like--- in regards to publically? Maybe Ponsol? I feel like Izumi, while he’d excited to have a lover, I don’t think he’d immediately start going to social media or anything announcing it. He does probably enjoy his privacy and as a model, you gotta be careful? I mean, so does Ponsol, but he is MOTHER FUCKING PONSOL-- you think he cares? Him having a man as his lover doesn’t change the fact that he’s an heir to a multi-billion company. He doesn’t care for what you think about him. Judge him all you want. IT PLEASES HIM.

Who hides their guilty pleasures longer:

‘Hiding’ makes me think Izumi. Ponsol just doesn’t bring it up, but he wouldn’t hide it if he was asked about it. He’s pretty shameless when it comes to that. Izumi, I feel, tends to be a bit more shy? I feel like he’d hide it for fear that Ponsol would make fun of him-- which he might.

Snorts while laughing:

A part of me says Izumi because it would be funny-- but I feel like he isn’t the type to snort while he laughs. Ponsol might do an ugly snort if he’s ridiculing someone, maybe. Other than that, I don’t envision him to be the snorting kind. Gentleman do not ‘snort’ while they laugh--- but they probably do when they wanna make someone so mad that they just feel their blood pressure rise in aggravation.

#Pomeraniancerb #Fatenet meme #meme answered #answered ask #thanks for the ask!#Neo speaks

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katevisceralexperience · 3 years

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Due to Covid I have been laying pretty low for the past year so any excuse to get out of the house is a good one! Especially this week as my brother in law has been on a ventilator in the ICU so we have been bouncing back and forth between Owatonna and helping my in-laws with my nieces. For one of my visceral experiences I decided to go to the Asian Direct Oriental Market in Savage for a change of pace since I am not able to go to a restaurant. I chose this market because they also have a butcher/meat shop.

The market was overwhelming from the second I walked in. Not because it was disorganized or because there was too much product but because things weren’t in English. It was even more overwhelming not just because most items weren’t in English but I could not even recognize the letters being used on a lot of the packaging.

When you first enter the butcher area is to your left. I did not feel comfortable taking a picture since someone was working there and I knew I wasn’t going to buy anything but I did ask the gentleman working what type of rib meat they had (see inserted picture I found on Google). They offered pork and beef ribs. I felt ashamed for even asking and I don’t know why. The gentleman was friendly and spoke English but I just felt small and out of place. It was interesting to look at all of the options. It was also interesting to note that the selection was quite different than what I am used to. There was more seafood and the seafood that was offered was different. The fish were whole and the shrimp were not deveined and had their heads still on which isn’t as common in American grocery stores. He said that it comes in fresh daily and that they tend to sell out of most of it. If I hadn’t been heading to spend time with my family later I definitely would have gotten some of the shrimp because they looked AMAZING!

I asked another worker to direct me to the candy aisle as I have a weakness for any and all candy. The aisle reminded me of the grocery stores I am used to and immediately felt more comfortable. I have heard my friends talk about the different variety of Kit Kats that they have had when they were in Asia and how they were not available here so I was excited to see that they had lots on the shelves. One of the first ones I came across were Strawberry Kit Kats. I could tell that they were strawberry ones from the pink packaging and the pictures of strawberries on it. Then it dawned on me how grocery shopping in a different culture could be detrimental to my health. I am allergic to strawberries. I break out in hives all over. I have never had an antiphallic reaction luckily but have been warned that it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Strawberries are fairly easy to recognize thankfully due to their bright color and are usually used to flavor items so if they in an item they are pictured on the packages. I have been lucky in my years of traveling that it has never been an issue for me. I was in the Dominican Republic a few years ago and when we were checking in they gave us drinks. They were bright pink and had seeds in them so I passed. However, what if I had another allergy such as wheat? Wheat is used in so many different ways and can be found in items that you would never expect. What I came from Thailand to America and had to go grocery shopping? What if I couldn’t read English and all of a sudden didn’t have a choice but to pick items out? I can’t ask anyone because I don’t speak English. They don’t picture wheat too often on the front of packaging unless you happen to get Wheat Thins. What if I buy something I am allergic to, eat it, and have a reaction. Then you have the whole problem of getting healthcare.

Grocery shopping all of a sudden becomes a life threatening adventure just because you don’t speak or read English. When I studied abroad I never had an issue with this because most Greek people speak some English or I had a friend with me from Greece who was fluent in English. How many people in America speak a second language let alone an Asian one? Very few. We are lucky now that we have a lot of technology that can help people out with these issues but again they have to be able to go to the store and navigate being able to get a phone and setting up that technology.

I wandered around the rest of the grocery store trying to take it all in. There were so many items that I didn’t recognize and couldn’t read what they even were. One jar looked like refried beans to me but really were mudfish. I don’t even know what mudfish were. I kept finding myself back in the candy aisle because I felt comfortable there as silly as that sounds. I know I like candy. I could tell what it mostly was from the packaging and felt fairly confident I could pick something out that I knew I would like. I also saw brands that I recognized and felt like I “trusted” those items more. Perhaps I was showing some of my implicit bias? I picked out a bag of Kit Kats that appeared to be two types of Kit Kats (dark chocolate and semi sweet). I also grabbed a bag of chewy fruits for my husband since they had strawberries on the packaging and it would keep me from eating them (we really didn’t need anymore candy in our pantry). One thought I had while I was in the store was that this store may have acculturated to American culture. I have not been to a grocery store in Asia to obviously compare it to but the layout was similar to what I am used to (produce and meat on the outside, packaged processed food more in the middle).

I went to check out and started to feel anxious again. I realized I didn’t have cash on me and I couldn’t tell if they took credit cards or not. It seems like they should since most places do but since it is a smaller business you just never know. I didn’t see the Visa or Mastercard sign either. The person in front of me paid in cash and was speaking a language I couldn’t recognize. When it was my turn the cashier walked away without saying anything. I was kind of in shock and didn’t understand if I should go to the other cashier or not. I am a very anxious person to start with and this was not helping my anxiety. I started to worry and wonder why she had left. Was it because I wasn’t their “normal” shopper? Was it because I looked different? Was this her demonstrating her unconscious bias towards me? I went to the other cashier and she welcomed me with a smile. I think? With our masks it was hard to tell. I asked if they took credit cards and she responded in perfect English. I felt stupid...for being so anxious about a small transaction but this is what people who do not speak English or people who are not used to our culture feel like all the time. It would be mentally exhausting to have to think about these things all the time. Things we take for granted. I was mentally exhausted after a visit to the grocery store. Some people have to deal with that anxiety multiple times throughout their day.

The next time I’m out and I get frustrated because the person in front of me is moving a little slower or not understanding what is going on I need to remember that maybe they don’t speak English. Maybe they are feeling anxious like I was.

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kierongillen · 6 years

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Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 32

Spoilers, obv.

While I've done this in my Tumblr asks, I forget if I've put this in the actual notes or not. I would presume I haven't, because if I'd put the following caveat in the Writer’s Notes and I'm still being asked when the Writer Notes are coming when they're later than usual by people who presumably read the Writer Notes it would be more than a little rude.

(I write the following, and then bounce back here to put a caveat on my caveat. Don't worry if you've done the following. It's not the end of the world, it's really only a minor annoyance in the larger scale of things, and you didn't know.)

I've done Writer Notes for every single issue of WicDiv. That's 34 (with the Specials), including this one. They appear before the next issue drops. I've gone as late as the day before the issue is released. I don't believe I've ever gone any later. That's how it's always happened.

“Before the next issue.” That is when to expect my Writer Notes. It is not “late” until the next issue drops.

I write them as soon as I have time. If I haven't done it earlier in the month, you may safely assume that I've got other commitments that have to be prioritised above writing something which is, in a very real way, not part of my job.

If you're worried whether you've missed them, the Writer Notes are always tagged on my tumblr. You can click this link and see if they're there or not. There is no need to ask me.

I do not appreciate anyone asking where they are and when I'm going to do it. Please, don't do it. It stresses me out, both in the frustration at the entitlement in believing I should be writing it instead of many of the other things I should be doing, and in the simultaneous and entirely contradictory response of I SHOULD BE DOING THEM WHY THE HELL AM I NOT DOING THEM I AM LETTING EVERYONE DOWN!!!!

There is only so much a creative can give.

Er... and that appears to have segued into this issue's theme, hasn’t it?

Jamie/Matt's Cover

We finally reach full bleed on the Imperial Phase covers. By this point, I suspect pretty much everyone has seen what we're doing with the covers, and the implicit question of “how can you follow something that's doing this to full bleed”.

This is one of my favourite WicDiv covers. Jamie and Matt have excelled themselves here. The nonchalance of Dionysus, a return of the Acid House badge and so on. It's completely different to all the other gods – as is the nature of Dio – but is also the most visually magnificent. I love this.

Noelle Stephenson

Is a force of nature, and doesn't really need me hailing her here. Suffice to say, BUY NIMONA IF YOU HAVEN'T. She jumped at Baal/Minerva, and we just sat and let her do her thing. Clearly with this issue's content it rubs up unusually.

Walking Dead Cover

Homaging their issue 150 cover. We did it with 32, which makes it kinda funny. Persephone in her issue 22 costume.

IFC

With the double-length of Imperial Phase, we're very much reaching the recap page's breaking point in terms of working out what information to include. I smile that I managed to fit “He is such a shit” in there though.

Page 1

Return to the three panel of the start of last time. Immobility remains the point. I had a slightly more writer-y line for Sakhmet in the second panel, but I generally find it's best to strip her back to Just The Facts. There's no need to fence with Sakhmet.

Jamie's addition of a bloody-handed yawn is a perfect way to add a secondary reveal to the scene.

Reading people's commentary. I find it interesting that people seem to have Persephone's expression in the last panel to be bored. It reads pretty clearly as a wince to me. It's a very small response – which is, of course, the point – but it's definitely not ambivalent. One of the things in comics is how much for characters to verbalise, and how much you can just leave to the art. This is not a thing which has any one solution.

Pages 2-4

There's a craft thing here of note – we only explicitly introduce the idea that there is a sexual consent issue at this point in the Woden scene. We don't think leaving that sort of threat across a month is either ethical or useful. In a serialised narrative, we try to weigh these things up.

(It's still relatively quiet. There's twelve Valkyries. The thirteenth Asian girl is Cassandra.)

The page transition of Dionysus kicking in is the sort of thing I love as a storyteller. Repeats with a tiny difference.

The dialogue was moved a little after drawing, so as to leave the final panel on page 3 silent. Jamie's expression was perfect and didn't need disruption – more so when Matt pops the reds.

The glo-stick nunchaku first appeared in Rising Action, and make a return here. They were inspired by Christian Ward and Catherine Rooney's wedding, when they distributed a bunch of glo-sticks during the 90s rave set the DJ dropped. I was spinning them around, and it got me thinking.

Page 4 is obviously the key image, capturing Dio's hamartia in the same way as Amaterasu's final panel in 31 captures her. I get upset to even think of this panel. Futile acts of bravery when all hope is lost is something which almost always makes me cry.

Anyway – just wonderful. Jamie and Matt nail it. The oppressiveness of the mass of green, the crowd against Dio, the soar of his body. Perfect. Nice work.

Page 5

The Red Shoes being the Hans Christian Andersen story about a girl who gets a pair of ballet shoes and can't stop dancing. It doesn't end well for her either.

It's been used all over culture – Kate Bush is an obvious one, but I tend to think of the 1948 movie.

Pages 6-7

We basically keep the rhythm of the last issue going. As in, hard cuts between multiple scenes when the drama is highest. I'll be interested to see how this works in the trade – page 1's refocusing of the action here is the stepping stone back to this location, but it's quite the jump.

Anyway – Sakhmet and Persephone's final conversation. I needed something like this.

Standard-y me structure of a two-page scene with the first row of the first page merged as is the last row of the second page.

Lots of great expression work here, especially in how tight Jamie is choosing to cut things. It's not just as simple as a slow zoom to the character's features, but there is a gradual increase. I like how Sakhmet starts in a neutral position... and then when she laughs at the first answer, she gets a little further away... and when she gets the response to the second question, she's very close. That also means we also get a great pull away.

Expressions again. Sakhmet's three close-ups are my everything, in how much she's saying – the downcast eyes in the third! Especially compared to the deadness of Persephone.

“I think we only get to hurt ourselves and maybe people who want to be hurt” is just :(

Pages 8-11

Reprising of issue 8, which was Dio at his most iconic. These four pages “count” as two pages in terms of page budget, in that only 4 panels are drawn on each page. That we spread it out over a larger space means it's much more emotionally impactful.

My brain is failing, but I believe Dio and Woden are the only two characters other than Laura who've ever had internal dialogue captions. That strikes me as interesting.

Cutting the dialogue short enough to make it vaguely keep to the beat was obviously important. It ticks along, relentlessly.

Matt's colouring here is, like Dio's first one, a story in and of itself – the fading colour as Dio is dragged down in the first page, the glitch on page 10, the third panel of page 11.

The “One more time” came to me as writing it, and I was genuinely horrified at myself. I can make any cultural allusion depressing. It's a gift.While at this year's Thought Bubble dancefloor, this issue was at the printers. Various friends had read it, and were there. When I dropped ‘One More Time’, I glanced at them, and thought about the unique awfulness of WicDiv, in that they knew and no one else did.

Pages 12-13

I wish I had a page or two more in the budget here. There's a couple of beats I wish I'd been able to linger on.

The drop of Dio in the first panel brought to mind the fall of 455 Lucifer.

Woden's line is harsh as fuck here, but also not entirely wrong. As we see, Cass was unaffected by Woden's power. He didn't need to do anything.

The last panel on page 12 originally had much more dialogue, and it was bullshit. I moved that to the next panel, and keep it sharper. WicDiv isn't a comic where people can shout speeches as they do stuff.

I'M A FUCKING CRITIC is much better anyway. Jamie and Matt did great stuff with the multiple levels.

“One More” makes me feel bitter too. Brunhilde's excitement is also telling. More anon on this, I suspect.

More exposition than I'd like in the last panel with Cass, but I suspect we lose you if you don't know why she's phoning Persephone.

Page 14

Yes, Persephone hasn't changed her ringtone.

We don't have space to go far into the fight here, but we have to give the two big beats. Baal's burst of power, and the specifics of the terrible speed of Sakhmet. The colour choices are what scream to me here. Each of those two central panels are so much about the individual god who is dominating them. There’s just such direct choices here.

We start on the phone, and end on Minerva's owl, to try and get a transition to...

Page 15

...Minerva. Clearly for where the story goes, we have to see Minerva in the nearby area. We wanted to show the emotional journey towards going there – that's a great conflicted last panel by Jamie. We discussed what method to use in terms of communication – specifically, we needed Minerva to have ‘READ’ notes on her phone so she knows Morrigan has seen the messages and is ignoring them. Which sets up Minerva to make her decision.

After the colours of the previous page, the low light of this one is also really striking.

Pages 16-17

The fight scenes in the Underground were all written Marvel Method, with more ideas than would fit in the space. As such, it was a question of choosing where to edit, both in terms of Jamie's choices on the page and my choices at lettering. There was certainly more possible lettering in the script... but, as I say above, I don't like fight scenes to talk too much. When this is all happening as quickly as it is, it seems to undercut it.

Boiling the exchange to the “Predator or Prey” call back seemed to be the right call to make. Boil it down.

(The other options were a reprise of Persephone's “We only get to hurt ourselves and people who want to be hurt” in the last two panels, which I felt would be too much. I'd hope it would be subtextual in it anyway.)

Page 18

We leaned into implication here – choosing the moments. The slump of the hands in the second panel is the key one for me. That's just horrible, as is Persephone's distress in the third one.

Pages 19-21

Yeah, this scene is hard, with the characters' frustrations and anger at themselves crossing back and forth. It's telling that we go to eight panel grid structure for the first two pages, which is my standard one for this kind of more emotionally grounded scene.

Worth noting the other Norns aren't there. I suspect Cass hasn't been exactly gentle with them either. Still – Cass echoes a significant proportion of the readership regarding Persephone, I suspect.

Explicitly closing off the “No Person” line from back in Imperial Phase.

Eventually Persephone reaches a point and pushes back. For both of them, it's not the lies that hurt. It's the truths. And... yeah, that argument is totally not over.

I kind of wish I had the machine go BLEEP! Rather than BEEP!

Pages 22-24

Yes, it is very much our beeping device on the mantelpiece.

Odd hitting the last page, in that it's one of the end-of-episode beats I've known seemingly forever. It is a particularly frustrating one, clearly.

We did have a bunch of chat over exactly what should that final line be. It was as mild as “Oh my” at one point, but I like the last one.

Beep Test being a fitness thing.

And that's it. A few more weeks and issue 33, the end of Imperial Phase and moving onto Year Four of the book. Just re-reading all of WicDiv so far in preparation for scripting of that year, and it's a strange thing to look at how far we've come. If you have never done a WicDiv re-read, I suspect this is a perfect time to do one.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #writer notes #The Wicked + The Divine

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codename-bewareofthefangirl · 7 years

Note

AAAAH SOME AOMOMO PLEEEEAAAASEEE!!!! Anything that comes to your mind

Hi dear! Letme say it, you’re probably the most lucky anon I’ve ever met! When I firststarted this blog, I made a mistake and wrote this AoMomo instead of an Akamomoso…yes, I’ve never posted it and now you can have it! The prompt was thedialogue: “You should stop doing that.” “What?” “Saying things that make mewant to kiss you.”

Hope youenjoy!

AoMomo, Fluff,After High School, Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship

Cherry Lips

When did things start to change?

Aomine couldn’t answer. Maybe they never did, it justchanged the way he looked at them. Because, in one way or another, Momoi hadalways been part of his life. Her loud, bubbling chatting had been thebackground music of his childhood; her lectures had annoyed and amused him injunior school and her faithfulness had kept him breathing during high school.She’d never left him. Not that everything went pretty and easy either. They hadcold moments, during Teikou she stopped calling him “Dai-chan” for example, andsometimes their friendship seemed more a son-and-mother’s relationship…but withtime, they’d given it a proper shape.

Looking back, Aomine found it ironic how they realizedtheir affection when it was almost too late. It had been the sum of small details,which had started to pile up during the last part of his second year, when hisrelationship with basketball was more stable and he felt freer, that made themmove on. Little things about his life he started to notice. Was Momoi his typeof girl or his type of girl was modeled on the only girl he’d ever cared about?Why during their weekends, as always spent together, a sort of cripplingtension filled the air? Why Momoi had never left him even if he could be the ruderand more annoying guy ever? Why did he feel uneasy when she blabbered aboutKuroko or used “Aomine-kun” in public to avoid rumors? Why did his eyes alwaysfollow her?

Feeling protective when she walked alone in thestreets in the evening or guys stared at her more than they should. Feelinghappy seeing her dancing under the rain in the garden or talking about newdiscoveries about basketball players. Feeling at home when she curled upagainst him during their nights spent talking quietly in one of their rooms.Burning with desire to caress her cheeks, brush her cheeks and hug her tightlyduring sad days.

Aomine was slow, but not stupid. In the end, he had understoodhe wanted to be by her side, as he had always been, forever; he wanted her tobe the only one. And this wish had aclear, defined name.

Unfortunately, it was too late. They could enjoy fullytheir new relationship only for a year before they chose different university’spaths and were thrown in a long-distance relationship; a year full of smirksand excited laughter, of afternoons spent goofing around with a basketball andnights on the couch watching stupid films. Days filled of “Dai-chan” andchildish pouts, of quick embarrassed kisses and sudden, giddy hugs.

Now, they had to settle for random weekends when theirschedules allowed it or for the holidays spent at home. And, for Aomine itwasn’t enough.

“Oi Satsuki, how did the week go?” Aomine asked on thephone, laying down on his bed and looking at the blue ceiling, a hand behindhis head and the other playing with his favorite ball.

“Dai-chan!” she trilled in his eardrums and he felt hislips curling in a smile, “I’m dead tired! My evil professor assigned me threeproject to submit by today!” whined to him.

“I bet you aced them anyway,” he commented rolling hiseyes.

“That’s obvious, Dai-chan!” she laughed wholeheartedly,“You know how they say? The only one who can beat me, is me,” she quoted and itwas as if he could see her mischievous grin.

“Stupid,” he snorted, shifting and rolling on hisstomach.

“Did you attend practice properly?” Momoi asked again,in his mother like tone.

“I always do,” he huffed, passing the fingers throughhis blue hair.

“Do you remember you’re talking with your formermanager, right?” she mocked him.

“I thought I was talking with my girlfriend.”

“Unfortunately, they’re the same,” she repliedgiggling and Aomine closed his eyes, remembering her face when she laughed athis stupid jokes. Man, they haven’t see each other for a month now. Sometimes,he feared the day he could not recall her smile anymore.

“Well, then the answer is maybe.”

“Dai-chan! You promised!” she scolded him and the boy couldsee her putting the hands on her waist.

“Do you believe me if I say it was because I had tostudy?” he tried, defeated.

“No.”

“You know me too well,” he muttered under his breathand she laughed again.

“Years of experience.”

“However, don’t worry. Kagami has taken your place asa nagging nanny. He literally drags me to practice by force if I try to skip,”Aomine sighed twitching his lips and heard her chuckling.

“The truth is that Kagamin is my undercover agent!”she threatened lightly and he grunted at the idea, “However, what are you goingto do tonight?” Momoi asked again, to carry on the conversation. As always,they tended to spent hours and hours talking together about everything, mainlytrivial things. Just to feel as if they were still sharing the same life.

“Bakagami had abandoned me with a stupid excuse andsaid he’s going out, without inviting me. The bastard…We had planned a playstation’s tournament. Now, I’m going to watch some matches on TV,” he complainedabout his roommate, who had mumbled something incoherent and disappeared anhour before. He was hiding something, but Aomine couldn’t discover what.

“Poor Dai-chan!” Momoi joked amused and Aomine finallyrealized something strange about her voice.

“And you? What are you doing?” asked curiously, “Areyou out?” He could hear her accelerated breath and…was she eating something?

“Yup, I’m walking! And eating cherries,” she explainedhappily, like a child.

“Cherries?” he repeated, while his mind imagined Momoitaking a red cherry between her long, delicate fingers to bring it to her mouthand then biting slowly the fruit, her lips turning scarlet red and…damn.

“You know I love them. I’m the beast at knottingcherry’s stem,” She flirted shamelessly, knowing exactly what his boyfriend wasthinking.

Aomine groaned, burying his head in the pillow.

“I know perfectly how good you are,” he replied with alow growl, “You’ve gotta stop doing that,” Aomine added in a whisper.

“What?”

“Saying things that make me want to kiss you.”

Momoi fell silent for a moment and Aomine knew she wasblushing, because, even if she was flirty and bubbling, she loved romantic,fluffy lines that he usually never used. Moreover, they both knew the implicitend of his reply: “Stop doing that now that we’re not together.”

It was painful, a bittersweet grip to their hearts.

“Dai-chan, sometimes you are the one who says thingsthat make me fall in love with you,” she stuttered in the end, probably smilingwidely and tilting her head to the side as always when she looked at him withstarry-eyes.

A long, obnoxious ring sounded in Aomine’s room beforehe could answer, probably with something cheesy again to make her happy, and hemoaned annoyed. He wanted to shout to Kagami to move his ass, but thenremembered he was out and just cursed.

“What’s wrong?” Satsuki asked, hearing him moving andshuffling things.

“Someone ringed the doorbell.” He explained irritated.Why a man couldn’t even talk to his girl in peace?

“Do you want me to hang up?” the girl offered, but inher tone Aomine heard the plea for not having to do it.

“Don’t even think about it. I’m sending this one awayin a second.” He growled, leaving his room and walking down the narrow corridorwith the phone in his hand. He reached the door and started struggling with themultiple locks.

“Well…” Momoi whispered giddily on the phone, while finallyAomine opened the door with a glare, “…I hope you aren’t going to do that forreal,” she finished standing in front of him. On his doorstep, for real.

Peach hair and sparkling eyes. Scarlet red lips.Aomine’s too big hoodie on her tank top and a fluttering skirt. A bag of cherryin a hand and the pink phone in the other.

Aomine froze, paralyzed, and blinked at her, slowly.

“Surprise, Dai-chan!” she chirped with a timid andquivering smile, blushing.

Aomine’s phone fell on the floor while he threwhimself at the girl, wrapping his arms around her waist and finally savoringthose long-awaited cherry lips. He didn’t need it anymore.

“Satsuki.”

#kuroko no basket #knb #aomine daiki #aomine #momoi satsuki #momoi #aomomo #aomine x momoi #from childhood friends to lovers #fluff #established relationship #cherry lips #long-distance relationship #romance #aomine and Kagami go to the same uni #this is sweeeet #lucky anon #yeah i'm an airhead but everything turned out righjt in the end

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asnowingfandomofashes · 7 years

Text

Chris/Claudia Teen Wolf Headcanons

First of all, it was really early morning when I wrote this out and I’ve not done much editing. I included the note while typing this that “the sun will rise soon - and I’ve had no sleep.” I also tend to ramble a lot at any time of day, for any reason. So please forgive the very long post and over-explanation.

Secondly, I’m never going to write this because I never end up writing anything, but I would love to read other peoples’ versions of this, so if this in any way at all inspires you please, please, please, send me a link to read it when you post? (Alternatively, if this sounds in any way familiar and you know of a fic with similar plot, I’m also always looking for fic recommendations to read.)

Warning for when you get to the actual scenes: somehow wayyy more angst snuck in as I was typing it.

(I’m also sorry for tagging under the read-more but I gotta give credit where credit is due, and I never would have thought of any of this without a few inspiring posts. :X )

Okay, so I’ve seen the whole Christopher Argent Appreciation Week post going around the Teen Wolf fandom, so that’s partly to blame...

But this can also be claimed to have been inspired by the awesome @inell who asked for Chris shipping prompts. My first thought was, of course, Chris/Stiles/Peter. However, Inell does rare pairs, so my next thought was something like “Don’t waste an opportunity: What’s something you’ve never seeN - gasp!!!!! Chris/Claudia!!!”

[ I swear it came entirely from left field of my brain, interrupted my own thoughts, and utterly shocked me speechless - thoughtless? - for like a minute. ]

I almost rejected the idea immediately, however, because I can’t imagine Claudia not being with the Sheriff. ... But then my brain once again piped up with a “What if it’s before she meets the Sheriff?” And so I had my prompt, I was going to type up an ask and send it to Inell’s tumblr... And before I could even reach the keyboard to ask for young! Claudia/Chris sappy stuff, my brain was whirring away and throwing plot bunnies everywhere to scatter and start planting angsty scenes and implicit headcanons into all my thoughts. So, it’s a bit too detailed for a prompt (and much too long to send in an ask), but thought I’d share anyways and hope people enjoy it.

[ As a side-note, I’m normally one who is quick to turn away from a fic if it starts out one ship and uses the relationship as nothing more than a stepping stone to another ship. But I realized today in this little bit of brain-storming that sometimes a ship might not fit to be a lasting one for a “forever” relationship with the characters, but it doesn’t mean the ship wouldn’t have interesting dynamics and a lasting impact on the storyline. (That being said, now that I’m typing this I’m also curious to see what sort of an interesting story might come of Chris/Claudia getting together while young, then later inviting the Sheriff into their relationship for a lasting Chris/Claudia/Sheriff Stilinski relationship.) ]

Anyways... on to the actual headcanons/scenes now.

So first of all, Chris and Claudia are high school sweethearts. The single most perfect, happy, sappiest couple you can possibly imagine. Chris may have grown up in a not-normal, very hardened family... But Claudia just makes everything so breathtakingly beautiful and happy. She’s far too easy to love.

Unfortunately, Chris is a hunter... or at least a hunter-in-training. He goes on trips with his dad all the time. And, of course, there’s often talk of moving away - and he knows it’s coming, they never stay around too long. They’re together for a while... - a couple of years maybe. And they don’t fall out of love, so much as... They just know it’s not going to keep working. They still love each other; they promise to be friends. Long distance best friends, because Chris is always going to travel.

Claudia meets the (then) Deputy Stilinski. And she falls in love. She still loves Chris, they’re still best friends, but she’s not in love with him anymore. Chris... Chris is complicated. But he has Victoria now. And she’s also from a hunting family - she understands, she knows, she was raised to the same life as him. It isn’t love at first, it’s just a means to an end - a way to get their families off their backs. But he does love her eventually. In love with her, though? He doesn’t know.

Claudia and Chris start drifting apart. They still care for each other, but they haven’t seen each other in years. They restrict themselves to phone calls. Their feelings haven’t lessened, but the time between calls grows longer. Claudia still calls Chris when Stiles is born though. She calls him a lot around then actually - the first two years or so, she’s always calling her best friend to rave as only a very proud, very happy momma can.

[ Years later he’ll remember these calls, and think about how proud she was of her son no matter how trivial a thing it was as he first toddled around. ]

CW for this bit: Angsty feels, Character Death, Funeral

When she gets sick, she calls him and he knows something is wrong - but she doesn’t tell him. Not that first time. Or the time after that. Or the time after that.

She starts calling more often, but she’s so very different. Things don’t quite add up between each of her calls. Eventually, she lets it slip. He gets off the phone with her that night and researches all he can about the words - the diagnosis - she’d whispered to him, half hysterical.

...He stops taking her calls as often. The guilt eats him alive, but her ravings are getting worse and he can’t handle it. When her home number changes to a hospital number and she informs him it’s permanent, he finds a case that’ll take him far away from everything and everyone and be too damn difficult to risk thinking about anything else.

When he finally gets a message telling him about funeral arrangements, it’s left on voice mail in a hollow voice with a sentence claiming it to belong to Claudia’s husband (Claudia’s husband was always alive in her stories, not dead and empty, but this voice is the furthest thing from alive that he’s ever heard. He’s almost afraid he’s gotten a message from a ghost or maybe a zombie. - No, he knows the real ghost haunting him is in his head and not on his phone, but it’s easier to pretend.)

[ Maybe Chris never goes to the funeral. He hasn’t seen her in years, and it’s a travesty to have your last memory of someone be of their corpse, not her life. But maybe he goes anyways. Maybe he stands in the back of the crowd, begging whatever higher powers there may be that no one recognizes him. Avoiding even looking in the direction of her husband - or fuck, her kid. The kid she was so proud of. Maybe he goes, but spends the entire time not looking. ]

CW: More angst, ambiguous feelings (I swear this part wasn’t angsty except for a single line... until I started typing and it wrote itself in.)

Chris is a hunter - he compartmentalizes. They move back to Beacon Hills. He sends Allison to the high school he’d met his first love. He doesn’t think of her. He ignores it when the Sheriff’s name is too familiar. He pretends it’s just any other town.

When Ally first mentions her new friends and the people she met, he has a bit of a shock hearing that name. The Sheriff’s son was in the same classes as his daughter. He pretends he didn’t recognize the first name, and the second holds no significance.

When he realizes there are wolves at the high school and his daughter is hanging out with them, he worries a bit. What if?...

When he realizes who the wolf is, all he can think of is Allison is dating a werewolf, and Claudia’s son is involved with werewolves.

[ He nearly chokes on the irony. ]

When he sees Stiles for the first time all he can see is a boy in danger and reminders of Claudia. Reminders of a dead woman.

[ A woman he loved? Or a woman he was still in love with? He didn’t know if it was regrets. Or if it was guilt. Or if it was fear. He shoves it down and compartmentalizes.]

CW: conversations with a headstone/tombstone/the dead, bittersweet ending, Peter/Stiles mention

After the nogitsune, Chris goes to visit Claudia’s grave. He sits down and tells her about things.

[ After everything, he thinks he has at last finally found at least some closure with her. Maybe not with the more recent things that have happened in his life... He still can’t hardly think of his daughter. But he can do this - he can talk to the first person he fell in love with, the woman who was always his best friend. ]

He tells her how strong her son is, how she gave birth to an ‘awesome’ kid who had her heart. He tells her she should be so proud.

“And I know not to tell you not to worry. I know as parents we have to worry about our kids. But he’s going to be alright, Claudia. He’s so strong. Stiles’ is going to be alright.”

He tells her about Stiles and Peter. He talks about how she probably has watched the things Peter has done lately. But then he tells her about how “You knew him though, remember? He was that kid who...”

[ Because maybe they all went to high school together. Or maybe she was a few years older than Peter, but worked at a bakery or a coffee shop that all the teens frequented. Maybe she was friends with Talia and heard all the rants from the annoyed older sibling. Maybe it was all three. ]

But teen! Peter’s antics were enough that all these years later, people remembered them. And still found amusement from them. So he reminisced to her, about the guy her son is now dating. And he knows if she was here, she’d know exactly who it was within the first couple of stories. And she’d have so many more stories about a young Peter Hale than Chris has, even all these years later.

P.S. - I have actually read fics where Stiles and Allison are siblings and there’s either implied or stated past Chris/Claudia, but it’s always ‘off-screen’ with Claudia always already being dead.

#teen wolf #Christopher Argent #Claudia Stilinski #Headcanons #Chris/Claudia #Stiles/Peter #Character Death #thank you inell for all your wonderful rarepairs #my headcanons

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jmoye887-blog · 5 years

Text

Op-Ed Assignment

As many of you know, bias can effect even those who report the news. Those who are solely supposed to inform us with objective information still let their biases slip in. Even if they are unaware of it. I found an article by David Leonhardt called “The Six Forms of Media Bias,” published by the New York Times.

David himself is obviously a fan of the media because he is a member of the media. However, he believes the media still deserves criticism. In this article, he describes what he believes to be forms of media bias.

One bias he notes is Affluent Bias--meaning, the media is biased toward the views of people who are wealthy. David believes this is because national journalists, those who set the agenda, tend to spend more time around wealthy people, and national journalists themselves tend to be more wealthy than most Americans. To give an example, David noted a 2008 Democratic primary debate, a then anchor of ABC News, Charlie Gibson, suggested that a middle-class family in New Hampshire might make $200,000 a year. The audience laughed.

Another bias he suggested was Bias for the new. Journalists often mistake new for importance. He suggests it has to do with the products name: “News.” Too often, media emphasizes trivial stories, like political candidates taking swipes at each other--over more important ones, like a candidate’s tax policy.

He also notes Centrist bias. Centrist bias being when the media covers the most extreme positions, while ignoring both sides of an argument.

Clearly, the media can suffer from biases themselves, even when they are supposed to be objective. It is dangerous and perhaps even irresponsible for members of the media to be biased--even if they are unaware of the bias. Of course, we are all susceptible to our own biases. It is wired into our brains. Although, national reporters should be held to a higher standard than the average person when it comes to being biased. When reporting to a massive amount of people, these reporters should be more careful about letting their own biases affect their coverage. Perhaps all reporters should constantly be educated further on how biases can affect their coverage. They will never be able to fully eliminate their own biases, but with effort they can minimize them.

The next article suggests the contrary to my opinion--that education on bias cannot end change how people think. The article “A Better Solution for Starbucks” is written by Phillip Goff, and published by the New York Times.

Starbucks has made an effort to eliminate racial discrimination in its stores by educating their employees on bias. Their employees went through a 4-hour training sessions where they were educated on bias. Phillip argues that educating ourselves on understanding bias is an insufficient solution for discrimination.

Phillips suggests non-police options for people worried about suspicious behaviors. For example, maybe you could post the phone numbers of social workers and others who are trained to deescalate conflicts in restaurants.

Phillip brings up a really interesting point. Bias training like being conducted by Starbucks rest on the idea that racism lives in a person’s heart and mind, and eliminating it is internal work. Simply educating people on implicit bias--a bias i have previously posted about--is not enough to prevent people from being prejudiced. Phillip points out that most research on prejudice by psychologists suggests that 90 percent of behavior is driven by how we react to situations, not by attitudes. Ultimately, Phillip believes we should not educate people on bias, but rather reshape situations so that fear or dislike of people does not produce an armed response.

Phillip brings up an excellent point--biases are powerful. However, I disagree with his overall stance. We are still learning about the neurological/evolutionary underpinnings of prejudice. Also, their certainly can be more research done on how to avoid cognitive biases. I agree with Phillip’s statement that training people to react differently to situations can have a big impact. However, I believe it is hard to dispute that training people to react differently to certain situations is not going to help unless we teach them to change their beliefs, especially beliefs they may be unaware of.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

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INSTEAD TREAT SCHOOL AS A DAY JOB

When I say there may only be a few languages, I'm not including domain-specific little languages. But there are lots of surprises for individual startups too, and they were influenced by where you'd been to college. And I admit that it is, if you combine them, suggest interesting possibilities: 1 the hundred-year language now, it would be hard to get into grad school in math. And at Y Combinator we get an increasing number of companies that have already raised amounts in the hundreds of thousands.1 Let's think about what credentials are for. And while there are some ideas where the proof that the experiment worked might consist of e. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. I don't think publishers can learn much from software. People await new Apple products the way they'd await new books by a popular novelist.

Perhaps not everyone can make an equally dramatic mark on the world; I don't know exactly what the future will look like in a hundred years, which is the most influential founder not just for me but for most people the latter is not simply a constant fraction of the former. Traditionally phase 2 fundraising is to get out there and do stuff. But don't refuse on that account to give copies to investors you meet. So while on average public acquirers behave like pooled-risk company management companies, they don't think of themselves that way.2 If the smaller investments are on convertible notes, they'll just convert into the series A round, and we'll be accepting termsheets next tuesday. So if you do raise a huge amount of money, it will become increasingly important. If there's something we can do to drive prices down. But to work it depends on you not being tricked by the no that sounds like yes. It's that you'll start to think of all phone calls as one kind of thing, no matter what, but raising money will help us do it faster.

But a company that might go bankrupt, or be taken over and have all its implicit obligations wiped out? Then you can measure what credentials merely predict. In the startup world, most good ideas seem bad initially. If an organization could immediately and cheaply measure the performance of recruits, they wouldn't need to examine their credentials. It's hard like lifting a weight because it's intrinsically hard to convince people to part with large sums of money.3 Some investors want to know what your valuation is before they even talk to you about investing. They treat the words printed in the book the same way.4 Being profitable ensures you'll get at least the average of the acquisition market—in which public companies do behave as pooled-risk company management companies got together and agreed to allow their clients to exchange shares in all their pools.

Airbnb.5 It's the same with all of them. A round, or leads for them.6 And you can start today. Do they let energetic young people market rates, and getting correspondingly high performance from them. Your Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter where the other person is. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense that the authors didn't know when they started exactly what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? You probably need about the amount you raise, the more you spend, and spending a lot of money. Whereas acquirers are, as of this writing, extremely fickle. So you must cushion the blow with soft words.

But there are a lot of things that those who can't do, teach some of the least excited about it, is that I was ready for something else. So I propose that as a replacement for don't give up on your dreams. The only safe strategy is never to seem arrogant at all. They can't tell how smart you are. Then you can measure what credentials merely predict. You start being an adult when you decide to raise money in phase 2 at a post-money valuation of $30 million, the pre-money valuation of your next round, if you want to convince yourself, or someone else, that you are doing a lot of time on work that interests you, and you'd be protected even if it happened to die. It's the same with all of them. Plus you'll have an easier time at $x/2. Just thinking about it makes me wince.

At certain moments you'll be tempted to ignore them. You will be in a rush to choose your life's work. Well, this seems a grim view of the world, you may end up hooking a very big fish with this bait. Work toward finding one. Fashion magazines could be made lush in a way that no one needs a particular song or article. Apparently some people in the Valley. But high school students rarely benefit from it, it offered the highest ratio of income to boringness of anything I'd done, by orders of magnitude. In the culture of a large organization. But this is probably not an option for most magazines. People hiring for a startup don't care whether you've even graduated from college, let alone which one. At the other extreme, I think you might hire 20 people, the most you'd want to raise a $5 million series A round, because VCs worry there will not be enough stock left to keep the founders motivated. Assuming you have none and you think you might be able to solve predefined problems quickly as to be able to say to investors We'll succeed no matter what they're working on, it's easier to get yourself to work on big problems?

The public markets snap startup investing around like a whip. An essay, in the form of a definite offer from an acceptable investor to see if you'll get an offer from an acceptable investor to see if there are still one or more founders focusing on the company during fundraising, growth will slow. There's also a variant where one has no place to work.7 A deadline of three working days is acceptable.8 Investors are pinched between two kinds of fear: fear of investing in startups that fizzle, and fear of missing out that makes them jump early, and the harder performance is to measure, the more you spend, and spending a lot of money. The most promising countertrend is the premium cable channel. And when you see something that's merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to seal off the direct transmission of power between generations—not the left or the right. The dangers of raising too much are subtle but insidious. But only one company we've funded has so far, and they were influenced by where you'd been to college. When you first start fundraising, your initial valuation or valuation cap will be set by the deal you make with the first investor you've closed, then this could be the tipping point of fundraising. Since the hundred-year language now, it would at least make a great pseudocode.

Notes

If they were doing more than you otherwise would have seemed a lot is premature scaling—founders take a meeting with a face-saving compromise. Trevor Blackwell presents the following scenario. To track ratios by time of day, thirty years later Jim Ryun ran a 3:59 mile as a process.

Most new businesses are service businesses and except in rare cases those don't scale. It seems to have the balls to ask for more than half of the most abstract ideas, they tend to say that the elegance of proofs is quantifiable, in the woods. When governments decide how to deal with the exception of the words won't be demoralized if they can do to get all that matters financially for investors.

New Industrial State to trying to make a formal language for proofs in which you ultimately need if you turn out to be room for startups, and we ran into Yuri Sagalov. But not all equal, and don't want to either. The first big company CEOs were J. And yet there is no personnel department, and also what we'd call random facts, like movie stars' birthdays, or even shut the company, you can't even trust the design world's internal standards.

By heavy-duty security I mean no more unlikely than it would have seemed a lot about how to argue: they had that we wrote in verse, it would do fairly well as specific versions, and this is one you take to pay dividends. Unfortunately, not more startups in Germany told me they like to partners at their firm, get rid of everyone else and put our worker on a wall is art. In effect they were that smart they'd already be programming in Lisp, because it isn't a picture of anything.

You're investing your own morale, you may as well. A Spam Classification Organization Program.

If you're sufficiently good at squeezing money out of just Japanese. Reporters sometimes call us VCs, I preferred to call you about it. But it's telling that it will thereby expose it to steal a few of the products I grew up with elaborate rationalizations.

It's a lot of companies used consulting to generate revenues they could bring no assets with them. The kind of method acting. We thought software was all that value, don't make an effort to be an inverse correlation between the Daddy Model may be to write great software in Lisp. The real danger is that it makes sense to exclude outliers from some central tap.

I meant.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Fred Wilson, Geoff Ralston, Robert Morris, Kevin Systrom, and Jessica Livingston for sparking my interest in this topic.

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foursprouthealth-blog · 6 years

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Hey, Extroverts! Here are 7 Reasons Alone Time Really Is Important for You

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/health/hey-extroverts-here-are-7-reasons-alone-time-really-is-important-for-you/

Hey, Extroverts! Here are 7 Reasons Alone Time Really Is Important for You

Being constantly busy with zero alone time seems perfect for the extrovert—and if you consider yourself one, you probably have a tendency to overpack your schedule, maintain a full social calendar, and attend social gatherings on days that don’t start with an F or S. But extroverts need alone time too, for a whole host of reasons. But before we get into all that…

What exactly are extroverts and introverts? And what the heck is an ambivert?

According to famed psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who coined the term in in his book, Psychological Types, extroverts get their energy from being around people—from being social—while alone time can result in feelings of loneliness. “Some of my extroverted patients have to constantly be doing things,” says clinical psychologist Anthony Mullen, Ph.D. “When everything stops, they start to shut down and feel alone.”

Conversely, introverts reset and re-energize away from other people; they typically need to recharge alone. The introvert is probably the first person to leave a party; they usually feel more comfortable away from high-energy, loud crowds and avoid big, people-packed events like the plague.

EDITOR’S PICK

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Of course, most people aren’t one or the other—they fall somewhere on the spectrum. “A healthy, well-integrated person has aspects of both extroversion and introversion,” Mullen says. The majority of us are actually ambiverts, which means we have characteristics of both. If you’re curious as to where you fall on the spectrum, your Myers-Briggs can map your personality type.

Being extroverted seems like it’s an easier way to live life, right? To start with, when being around people recharges you, you’re more likely to have an easier time making friends. One study even found a strong link between extraversion and happiness. But this strength can also be a weakness: Extraverts tend to stay as busy as possible. As Mullen says, “There is an implicit idea that it’s bad to be alone.”

So what happens when extroverts don’t get alone time?

From personal experience, you can end up with messy, unwashed hair; no time for the laundromat; and chipped nail polish. But more importantly, overexerting yourself can leave you exhausted and stressed.

Everyone needs downtime: We all need to sleep and engage in the self-care activities that keep us healthy. If we’re constantly with people and leave no time for ourselves, we can become burnt out, emotionally and physically, and even display extremes in behavior. Personally, I was once so overwhelmed and exhausted that I definitely burst into tears when they were out of my favorite dark chocolate marzipan bar at my local bodega. That’s kind of extreme.

“You could be overstimulated to the point where you could feel psychotic or manic,” Mullen says. “Before that, you might feel exhausted, depressed, and perhaps anxious.”

“Time alone—free from technology and goal-oriented activity—is beneficial to extroverts, introverts, and everyone in-between,” says New York City-based psychologist Sevan Basil, Ph.D. “The main difference is that solitude doesn’t feel vital to the daily emotional survival of an extrovert the way it does to an introvert.”

So what are the benefits of alone time for extroverts?

1. Finding time to truly discover ourselves.

It’s good for extroverts to learn who they are—away from the crowd. What are our goals? If we typically go along with things just because that’s what the rest of the group is doing, alone time can help us understand our wants and needs, likes and dislikes, and properly cultivate our understanding of ourselves.

“Time alone is important because it provides an opportunity to become better acquainted with ourselves,” Basil says. “In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it can be difficult to stay in touch with our inner worlds—our thoughts and feelings—because of the strong pull exerted by the external world: work, family responsibilities, and social commitments. The thing is, the more alienated we are from our inner worlds, the less freedom we have to be intentional and authentic in our choices, large and small.”

2. Gaining a newfound appreciation for the quality people in our life.

With time to reflect, we can gain a new perspective about who the really awesome people in our life are—the folks that push us positively and make life a little brighter. “I’d encourage all people to take time to reflect on how different relationships impact them, emotionally and psychologically,” Basil says.

“Not all relationships are nourishing. Perhaps introverts are more naturally inclined toward this, though, knowing intuitively that their reserves for socializing are limited. This is something anyone can learn to do, by getting into the habit of paying attention to how they feel during and after their time with friends.”

3. Taking time to make positive changes (or tap into our creative sides).

“By slowing down and making space for solitude, we are in a sense making a commitment to not flee from ourselves,” Basil says. “Amazing and terrifying things can happen when we are alone with ourselves in this way: We might pick up a book that shifts our worldview, notice the tree outside our bedroom window for the first time and feel inspired to sketch it, or invent a delicious new recipe with the five ingredients left in the fridge.”

4. Processing emotions we wouldn’t normally explore.

When we’re alone, the experience isn’t always fun—but it’s still important, Basil says.

“We might experience unpleasant feelings that have previously been warded off by our business, sadness connected to a loss, feelings of inadequacy we don’t allow ourselves to speak about, or ambivalence about a romantic commitment,” she says. “We might be forced to confront unhealed emotional wounds, both recent and longstanding.”

While these are difficult aspects of life to consider—even scary, in the moment—it’s a worthwhile endeavor. “A problem can only be solved if its presence is first acknowledged,” Basil says.

5. Practicing self-care.

Sure, it’s a buzzword, but self-care is also really, really important—especially for folks who spend a lot of time taking care of other people and don’t focus enough on themselves. “When you’re alone, you’re not bothered by others’ needs—or you don’t have to be. So you can take that nap, be energized by doing your yoga at home, or do absolutely nothing,” Mullen says.

6. Beating the social media blues.

If you’re the kind of extrovert who procrastinates (or just stays awake way too long) by hanging out on social media excessively, then this one’s for you. One study found that using written social media platforms is “negatively associated with positive mental health variables and significantly positively with depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms.” And social media use can delay your reduction of cortisol levels—which leads to you feeling stressed out, according to another study. So when you’re home alone, if you can just hit the power button on that phone of yours and chill out genuinely alone, you’ll feel way better.

7. Finding ways to feel less stress overall.

Putting our own needs ahead of others’ and not worrying about pleasing other people all the time lowers stress levels immensely. Stress less about demands, others’ expectations, and pleasing people. “Some people feel that their social calendars just ‘fill up’ out of their control and end up feeling sapped by this over-scheduling, but can’t seem to change,” Basil says.

“Although they might start out thinking of themselves as an extrovert, it’s possible that through intentional time alone, they’ll discover that solitude feels more energizing and enriching than reflexive socializing for them—and that maybe they were more introverted than extroverted all along!”

Alone time isn’t so scary. Maybe it’s time to ditch that Saturday night party and put the kettle on.

Kari Langslet is an avid dater, impulsive adventurer, unofficial therapist to friends and family, and animal lover. You’ll usually find her at a dive bar playing Jenga with her dog or headbanging into oblivion at a Brooklyn show. Stalk her on Instagram and Twitter @karilangslet.

#Health

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

Text

Hey, Extroverts! Here are 7 Reasons Alone Time Really Is Important for You

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/health/hey-extroverts-here-are-7-reasons-alone-time-really-is-important-for-you/

Hey, Extroverts! Here are 7 Reasons Alone Time Really Is Important for You

What exactly are extroverts and introverts? And what the heck is an ambivert?

EDITOR’S PICK

displayTitle

So what happens when extroverts don’t get alone time?

“You could be overstimulated to the point where you could feel psychotic or manic,” Mullen says. “Before that, you might feel exhausted, depressed, and perhaps anxious.”

So what are the benefits of alone time for extroverts?

1. Finding time to truly discover ourselves.

2. Gaining a newfound appreciation for the quality people in our life.

3. Taking time to make positive changes (or tap into our creative sides).

4. Processing emotions we wouldn’t normally explore.

When we’re alone, the experience isn’t always fun—but it’s still important, Basil says.

While these are difficult aspects of life to consider—even scary, in the moment—it’s a worthwhile endeavor. “A problem can only be solved if its presence is first acknowledged,” Basil says.

5. Practicing self-care.

6. Beating the social media blues.

7. Finding ways to feel less stress overall.

Alone time isn’t so scary. Maybe it’s time to ditch that Saturday night party and put the kettle on.

#Health

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ephmrality · 7 years

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A Thought About Donald’s White House thanks to Popular Media

Waking up, even whilst being in another country (that’s still not apparently immune to US politics as I wished, well, maybe in an abstract way), I always tend to expect to read a notification over the night from my BBC or NYTimes phone apps letting me know of the newest gross overstep of governmental authority of the Trump administration. And there usually is one. And I know it’s not me dreading this news-- but what seems to be a vast number of people.

This collective fear is a new facet of this regime, and one of the most telling indicators that this is not normal and is one of the many changes that will become routine over the new four years (and beyond). I like to keep up with Amy Siskind’s weekly column that tracks the subtle changes expected as a government shifts to authoritarianism. Quick note on that-- if we’re aware that this is vaguely authoritarian, are we still a freer people than those poor Middle Easterners who see their authoritarian regimes as normal and just business-as-usual? Absolutely not. We can write all the columns on how suspicious we feel but if our resistant politicians and media organization are not swift in their rebukes, government propagandists and censors easily change the narrative before we don’t even remember what was true and what was false. Sound familiar?

Anyway. Today, reading an article about how the Trump dynasty appears dismayed about their dwindling ability to prophet off the presidency (from Ivanka Trump’s brand being removed by Nordstrom to some tabloid organization defaming Melania as a previously-high-end prostitute to which her legal team responded that this muddles her ability to market First Lady Melania(C) branded perfume and clothing, etc.) and the implicit problems of the perpetual stories that detail the first family’s conflicts of interest in the business sector, I started flipping through a slideshow of First Lady fashion since Eisenhower’s inauguration (yes, this was the related article to what I was reading). Nixon is often though of as having lost the 1960 election to Kennedy due to his outward countenance at their debate. Sure, Nixon sounded better but he did not quite have the charisma JFK exuded. Flash forward to now, Trump does not have JFK’s looks nor does he have the most articulate speaking ability (this is nonpartisan-- his oratory is just bad. he stumbles, uses banal abstractions, repeats himself, employs weak ad hominem attacks). It is no secret that DC is “Hollywood for Ugly People” and then again, most politicians just aren’t ugly. Constituents (and humans in general) just like good-looking people more. They seem trustworthy, good-looking people don’t lie. Even the Greeks thought so-- just look at the trial of Phyrne.

So what happened with Trump’s election? Maybe people are sick of being lied to. If this truly was the election where the people (as an abstraction, of course) are done with the farcical nature of US politics, it’s not surprising. Ronald Reagan surely could rock a coif, but his treatment of minorities is dreadful. George W. Bush was pretty handsome, if not for his total ignorance of the nuances of foreign diplomacy. It’s easy to separate the good-looking person from the ugly action. Donald Trump is a visual reflection of his ugly policies. Trump does not play at the usual politicians stoicism and coolness; rather, he gets angry (disingenuous), he gets passionate (if only for the crowd), and he has no filter (probably the most genuine thing about him). Where Obama might appeal to a crowd based on his composure and ability to articulate (the only way a black man ever could, but I digress), Trump does so on his appeal to pathos. All those ugly feelings his supporters harbor inside themselves are reflected in Trump’s puckered face and they feel affirmed. Because, in a way, they know their politics are ugly. It doesn’t matter. They feel that’s what politics has been missing-- true ugliness. Because their feelings might be ugly but they are true (hey, we are all the heroes of our own lives). If you try to repudiate it them, you’re just being PC (the gravest alt-right sin).

I think the most interesting part of this observation is how carefully constructed Donald Trump’s passionate rage really is. Many stories from those who have had encounters with Trump in the past either through business or passing him on the street, paint Trump as rather mild-mannered and innocuous (which one has the be to pass a scheme such as Trump University.) We have never seen a genuine Trump. The stories rolling out recently that outside pressure is “destabilizing” the transition (from Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal as WH Press Secretary Sean Spicer or that Trump is hard to control) seem like vain attempts at destabilizing an otherwise pretty steadfast administration that plans to reinstate the white man in the throne of the US government.

I don’t know that the stories that paint Trump as a child who doesn’t understand Middle Eastern politics are nuanced enough. Trump does not care about politics-- he has always been a businessman. Trump is not ideological. Steve Bannon, Reince Preibus, Mitch McConnell, Kellyanne Conway-- they are intelligent ideologues. Trump plans to profit off the presidency in any way he can-- he has no plans to govern. His appointed chief strategist, his party majority leader, his campaign head-- they have been given the reigns freely. Trump has achieved what he always wanted-- a position of power. He is not concerned with the details-- the ideologues are what we worry about, because they have not held true, overwhelming power in the government for several decades. These people-- who have played the game of politics pre-Trump-- no longer have to hide behind the auspices of couth. This is the golden age to be a white nationalist-- your fringe views are now mainstream and you don’t even have to pretend to care about people of color. I guess it’s a win-win.

#i'm not editing this or proofreading this #im just spittin ideas lmao #trump for ts #politics for ts

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