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hjorthoover2 · 2 months

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hoppupindia · 1 year

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Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence, or AI as it is more frequently known, has quickly assimilated into contemporary technology. This area of computer science, which is currently in rapid development, is concerned with the development of intelligent machines that can carry out tasks without direct guidance. By simulating human thought processes, AI enables machines to grow and develop on their own.

Although the idea of artificial intelligence has been around for centuries, it has only recently begun to take off significantly. More advanced AI algorithms have been created as a result of improvements in computing capacity and data accessibility. Self-driving cars, medical diagnosis, and even financial forecasting are just a few of the current day's many applications for artificial intelligence.

The ability of AI to automate time-consuming and repetitive chores is one of its key advantages. This makes it possible for companies to function more cost-effectively. For instance, customer support departments can use chatbots to respond to straightforward questions, freeing up staff to handle more complicated problems. Furthermore, AI can rapidly process enormous amounts of data, allowing businesses to make better decisions based on current information.

Healthcare is another industry where AI has had a big impact. Diagnostic tools driven by AI are highly accurate at analysing medical images and identifying abnormalities. This can aid medical professionals in making more accurate diagnoses and offering superior patient care. AI is also being used to create novel medications and treatments, advancing medical research.

AI is a field that is continuously developing, with new developments occurring frequently. Deep learning, which uses neural networks to mimic the human brain, is one of the newest developments in AI. In fields like image recognition, natural language processing, and autonomous vehicles, this strategy has shown a lot of potentials.

Despite its many advantages, AI has some drawbacks as well. The possible effects on employment are among the main worries. Machines that are more intelligent than humans can perform many tasks in their place, which will cause job losses in some sectors. However, experts think that AI will also lead to the creation of new employment, particularly in the programming and data analysis industries.

Considering AI's social ramifications is another difficulty. There is a chance that machines will make bad choices as they become more autonomous. For instance, an autonomous car might put the safety of its occupants before the safety of pedestrians, which could result in accidents. Researchers are working on AI ethical frameworks and investigating methods to make sure that machines operate responsibly and safely to allay these worries.

In conclusion, artificial intelligence is a rapidly evolving field that has the potential to significantly alter many facets of our existence. AI has already significantly impacted a variety of industries, from healthcare to company efficiency. Even though there are some difficulties, the advantages of AI are too great to be overlooked. AI is positioned to play a bigger and bigger part in determining our future as technology develops.

#wireless bluetooth headphones #tws earbuds #bluetooth headset #wireless earphones #bluetooth headphone

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letsoulswander · 3 years

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16, 24, 25, 65, 66, 84, 92 ? for the 4.02 am asks

16. Do theoretical ethical debates have any value? Is it important people discuss ethical dilemmas, e.g. the trolley problem?

I think they’re valuable insofar as they can* teach people how to think critically about a problem. Sometimes they have no “right” answer, and being confronted with that and the question of whether to minimize suffering can show a philosophy student some of the tools/angles necessary to consider and make decisions about real ethical issues in a meaningful way.

*that being said, if the student isn’t paying attention or they have a poor teacher, they might not understand that to be the question at hand, and instead might decide there’s a “right” answer to the debate if only they consider it hard enough.

24. Do you think you really understand your gender and sexuality?

I think I understand it enough to take care of it. My gender is always going to have corners I can’t keep clean, because the world is going to continue to make demands of me and my presentation that I’m not prepared for or that I’m unwilling to meet.

my sexuality is kind of a null question, I’m ace and it really only comes up in the context of someone wanting to interact with me sexually. the rest of the time I just enjoy being single.

25. How fluid is your concept of gender and sexuality?

Very. don’t assume you know who I am or what I like based on one facet of me, because even I can’t assume I know without experiencing it. some things are great! some things suck. It’s case-by-case and it changes with the tides.

65. What age should people be allowed to vote? Should children and teenagers be allowed to vote?

I’m fine with 18 y/o being the voting age. There’s a possible argument to be made for 16 y/os to vote, but I could see that becoming an excuse to regard 16 y/os as legal adults and I’m not sure what kind of ramifications that would result in.

66. How do you feel about the idea ‘an eye for an eye’?

don’t like it. I understand the impulse to get retribution, but I don’t think it’s productive. I am growing, and I plan to grow into a person that the people who hurt me will never know. If I decided to devote myself to getting back at people, I’d never have time for anyone or anything else, and I’d make an ass of myself in the process. I’d rather keep moving forward.

84. Are you who people think you are?

no. I don’t think anyone is. I think we’re all more than the sum of the perceptions held about us.

92. Do you speak multiple languages? Which do you dream in? What language would you want to learn?

yo hablo un poco español, pero nunca practico normalmente. quiero hablar mejor, pero, y tengo programas y podcasts en español a ver/oir mas. yo sueno en inglés cuando yo sueno, pero no sueno mucho en nada idioma. quiero apprender aleman y hebreo, pero despues de aprendo mas español jajaja

(I speak a little spanish, but I normally never practice. I want to speak better, though(?), and I have tv shows and podcasts in spanish to watch/listen to more. I dream in english when I dream, but I don’t dream much in any language. I want to learn german and hebrew, but after I learn more spanish hahaha)

#thanks for the ask! these are good questions #aghostintheforest #asks #improving

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script-a-world · 4 years

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Do you have any existing examples of world building a future that's actually accurate and predictive of the future? Say, ones that have depicted the last 5 years with some accuracy but created over 15 years ago. Or perhaps some future ones that aren't extreme sci fi writing genetically modified humans with superpowers or time travel in the next 50 years.

Tex: The Simpsons sure did give things a go (Metro, Business Insider).

That said, I could throw out some arguments in the line of “100% predictions are plausibly from time-travellers and would skew the time-line, likely creating catastrophic effects on spacetime as we know it” or something, but that would very quickly derail your question.

More realistically, Star Trek did a damn good job on the technological front (The Portalist, Quartz), and their cultural impact has been so significant that there’s a wiki on it. In this instance, I would argue rather more that the genre of sci-fi in particular has inspired our current technological advances - when we have an idea posited to us, it no longer becomes “impossible”, merely “improbable”.

Humans have historically liked a good challenge (or on the flip-side, really dislike being told no), so I would say that eventually most sci-fi things are created by sheer stubbornness. A warp drive, for example, has been talked about since at least the 1960s, but we’re slowly getting there in terms of real-world development (ScienceAlert, Universe Today).

We might not have the superpowers thing down yet (though that might take some paradigm changes, re: quantum entanglement in the brain and related topics - let’s scale our expectations of a “superpower” gradually), but we do already have genetically modified humans. Germ-line therapies (also known as somatic gene therapy, ScienceDirect) have existed for a while, and have many ethical issues arising from it (SingularityHub, National Academy of Sciences).

I do my best to keep up with as many STEM fields as I can, but in the past decade we’ve had a boom in development - I think if you asked someone in 2000 what sort of scientific and technological developments would exist by 2020, a good half of them might be wrong due to the simple fact that many fields just didn’t exist.

Given how long it took us to posit the theory of cellphones (in 1917 by Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt), to how long the first commercially available mobile phone was sold (by Motorola in 1973) - never mind flip phones (first posited in 1964 by Star Trek: The Original Series, first seen in real life via the Motorola StarTAC in 1996) - I would challenge anyone to bring a concept from drawing board to production line within ten years and have it be a commercial success!

There’s approximately 46 listed fields of engineering in this wiki, the Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that seven out of ten of the largest STEM fields were computer related in 2017 - the first concept of the modern computer was by Alan Turing in 1937 (Wikipedia), the first realization of this concept was with the Ferranti Mark 1 in 1951 (Wikipedia), and the first mobile computer was the IBM 5100 in 1975 (Wikipedia) - between Alan Turing in 1937 and the job statistics of 2017, a full 80 years had passed. I won’t delve more into the details of things like the history of social media, the Dot-com bubble, or literally anything about the 2000s, but suffice to say:

Description: Exponential Growth in STEM? Articles Published Worldwide, 1900?2011. Source: SPHERE project database of SCIE publications (Thomson Reuters' Web of Science).

STEM is likely increasing at an exponential pace (ResearchGate). I don’t know whether this means we’ll see things like the Enterprise, a TARDIS, or even Spiderman within our lifetime, but I distinctly would not preclude their possibilities just because our literature and scientific experiments didn’t have a palatable success rate. We got cell phones and 3D printing! I’m sure humans might be able to see things like superpowered humans or time-travel eventually, if not in our lifetime.

Delta: I’d also recommend The Martian by Andy Weir if you haven’t read it. It’s not super advanced sci-fi, so I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s an extremely realistic look at near-future space travel and Mars missions (realistic in every way, that is, except for the privatization of the American space industry; Weir wrote publicly funded space travel, which is looking less and less likely to be the case).

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, is less sci-fi and more apocalypse/dystopia fiction, but takes a realistic, hard look at how humanity would actually react to an apocalypse, and is disturbingly familiar in 2020 (the main plot is a pandemic, so read with caution). Similarly, Octavia Butler wrote a great deal of similar future dystopia fiction; I’m particularly thinking of Parable of the Sower (warnings for rape, violence, riots, looting, etc.).

Mary Doria Russel’s The Sparrow is another good one. The timeline is a bit outdated, things didn’t happen as quickly as she thought, but her ideas about everything from space travel in asteroids to continuing violence in the middle east are more or less shaping up the way she predicted. She also takes a realistic look at what “first contact” would actually be like, as well as the actual ramifications of relative time caused by space travel. (While Russel is herself Jewish, Roman Catholic Christianity plays a very important role both thematically and in the plot, so this won’t be everyone’s cup of proverbial tea).

(On a related note, the movie Arrival by director Dennis Villeneuve is another sci-fi story that’s a very realistic (if somewhat trippy) look at “first contact,” but is set in the present day, rather than the future, so it’s not necessarily what you’re looking for, but I think very highly of it because of its realism and creative restraint, so it felt worth a mention.)

#pylons #future #predictions #Anonymous

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docholligay · 4 years

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St. Raphael 3: With All Your Strength

THE CATHOLIC BOARDING SCHOOL AU. This is actually up to part 8 on the Patreon, part 9 hopefully coming tomorrow, but I wanted to give y’all a couple that were only ever on the Patreon, so there’ll be a couple parts released today! All posted parts listed here

Physical pain, Haruka liked. Well, perhaps liked was the wrong word, but it was easy to understand, familiar, and it felt like something she deserved. Mortification of the flesh, that old prayer when words of forgiveness were not enough.The aching with every breath gave voice to her bruised heart, and she languished in it, even refusing the medication. It wasn’t bad, it didn’t really hurt, she said, lying, which was another sin to add to the tally, but then the punishment could do double the work. They took it as a positive sign that the injury had been frightening but not altogether dangerous, and she was released to her room, though given a few days’ freedom from school.

But it was an avoidant pain, and soon the Lord took that from her as well, and the much deeper and more bloody emotional pain of a hope began to fill the space. Michiru sat in front of her still, and Haruka could not have even told you what country they were studying, her mind only studying each time and date that Michiru spoke to her, only concerned about the social ramifications of each word from her lips. There were so few now. A polite notation that she was pleased Haruka was well. Condolences for her fall.

Not only did Michiru not love her--it had been vain and stupid to consider she might--but, it seemed, did not even like her.

The ache behind her breastbone could no longer be mistaken for a corporeal injury, and it festered and stewed deep within her.

And so, it was only seven days from that dance at Saint Sebastian's that Haruka hit a wall Mina might have seen coming on her calendar, if she had cared to look.

“I’m not going.” Haruka sat on her bed, cross legged and cross armed as if it prove just how cross she was, and frowned deeply.

Mako’s face was hard as the stone on the building, and just as unimpressed. “I’ve spent weeks making this dress. You’re going.”

“I’m gonna look stupid!” Haruka protested.

“You’re going.” It seemed like once again the very things that had exploded between them years ago--namely Haruka’s dramatics and Mako’s immovability--were about to explode once more, over a carefully sewn pink dress. She stepped toward Haruka, clutching a spare piece of fabric, briefly considering exactly how many Hail Marys murder got you.

And she HAD labored. Not just on Haruka’s, but all the dresses. She had been designing since the summer, collecting oversized dresses at thrift stores, seeing how she could make the gaudy rhinestones into a delicate accent, how she could use an outdated sateen to offset the cream fabric taken from an old wedding dress. She had scoured sales and remnants. She had sat up late, sketching and re sketching, looking at pictures of her friends, and now, two days before the dance, Haruka was throwing one of her fits.

She was going, if Mako had to put her in that dress herself.

Mina, for a very rare moment in her life the voice of reason, stepped in, touching Mako’s arm and drawing her back. “Hey, hey, hey. Mako, just...she’s going.”

“NO I’M NOT!” Haruka turned over on her side, flopping dramatically.

Mina nodded at Mako. “Just let me.”

Mako took a deep breath and huffed it out, her fists balled, but gave a sharp nod in return and headed back over to her side of the room.

Mina sat on the edge of Haruka’s bed, considering for a moment what she might say. She was clever and silver-tongued--enough people had said so, and it hadn’t always been a compliment--but sometimes, with Haruka, there seemed nothing to say. Haruka more complex than people gave her credit for, and it wasn’t that she didn’t have all the fine onionskin layers of her own bible, it was simply that so many of the pages had been colored by her own struggle with herself, and sometimes they simply stuck together in a single oppressive ball.

“Ruka, what’s the deal?” She leaned over her. “I know you don’t like dresses that much, but c’mon, you wear a skirt every damn day. Mako put a nice collar and stuff on this one, it’s not the girliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Not that.” She mumbled angrily into her pillow. “Just don’t want to go.”

“You just don’t want to go, in the most dramatic way possible, a week before the dance?” Mina rolled her eyes. “Give me some credit.”

Haruka turned over, her eyes mournful, half whispering. “I don’t want to look stupid in front of her.”

“Sister Mary Clare?” Her eyebrows twisted in confusion. “Pretty sure she’s used to seeing you look awkward in a dress, Ruka, she’s known us since we were eight.”

Haruka gave a brief glare. “Michiru.”

Mina sighed. In some ways, it was hard to understand where this had come from--Haruka had had a crush on Michiru since she was 13, and all of a sudden it was becoming a source of great and terrible pain. Was it the chocolate and comics? It had to be. Often, Mina reflected, hope only deepened the pain of failure, cutting open the dull ache with fresh vigor.

She touched Haruka’s shoulder. “Buddy, she’s seen you in a dress before. Nothing’s changed” Even saying it, she knew it was a lie, at least for Haruka.

Haruka closed her eyes and fell back on the pillow.

The human capacity to act an utter fool is capacious as the sea, and so, Michiru and Haruka passed by each other, gliding like ships, silently and darkly past each other, never imagining what might lie in the heart of the other. No flag were flown in signal, no smoke came over the bow, there was only a quiet bobbing in the water, and an inability to articulate that feeling which God had given them but man had put asunder.

Unfortunately, the only people they had managed to buffalo entirely was themselves, and the school began to notice that the girl who had always been a princess in tower now drifted into the clouds themselves, and the girl whose temper soothed a tender hurt became more apt to break and boil, and though no one could have guessed at the reason, the world saw the tense brokenness in them both, a window cracked with the glass holding in only by its own support.

But someone is always watching, even, and knowing, even in our darkest hours, and it is in these moments that a Saint may find occasion to step in.

Michiru had been quieter than usual, a turn of events Rei was not certain could have been possible, if you had asked her earlier in the year. She had always been a taciturn person, but lately her quietness had not seemed as some guardian angel, content to watch and to know, but it had taken on a pale grey flavor, that took Rei time to identify, until, turning over in bed one night, it came to her.

As unbelievable as it was, Michiru was sad.

This mystic knowledge whispered into her ear by God himself (Herself, Rei would correct), Rei set out to discover the cause of her sadness. Michiru had few family visits, but that was not terribly uncommon here, and it occurred to Rei that Michiru seemed unhappier when she was returning home anyhow. She didn’t seem ill. She was doing well in school. She was, as ever, remarkable at her violin, and her paintings were praised.

It was mystery she could not fathom, no matter how many charts she drew, bent over her desk late at night. And then, considering Michiru, sitting quietly at the lunch table that day, she doodled on her paper, hoping that in the tangles & knots of her pen, and picture would begin to reveal itself. And then she remembered. Just the smallest twitch of Michiru’s eye, and it was looking at--

She ran out the door of her room, and down the hallway, to the room at the end of the hall where Michiru slept. SHe banged on the door as if it were a foot thick, her knuckles aching with the pleasure of having solved the puzzle of Michiru Kaioh.

The door swung open, and Michiru stood, her silk robe wrapped around her, looking at Rei in disbelief.

Rei leaned inside the door, hand on the doorframe. “You like Haruka.”

Michiru’s lip curled slightly, but she shook it off. “Come inside.” She shut the door behind Rei and turned on her officially banned but unofficially well-known hot water kettle, and began to spoon tea into a tea ball. “Yes, she’s a very sweet girl, I think most people do.” But her cheeks pinked, just slightly, just enough that someone who had known her most of her life could notice.

“No,” Rei’s relentlessness stirred, her desire to know, her desire to be right, “you,” she could not quite form the words, as Mary stared down at them, “you...you know,” Michiru’s face puzzled, and Rei could not tell if it was because she was unaccustomed to Rei being at a loss for words, or Michiru herself being caught out, “you like her, in that way.” Rei was not sure how Michiru would take the accusation (for it was difficult to imagine anything coming from Rei as anything else,) and, if she balked, if it would be for ethical reasons or the very idea that should feel romantically at all. Michiru always was terribly practical.

But, to Rei’s great surprise, there was no denial at all.

Michiru looked down to the floor. “What we feel is endlessly less relevant than what we do.”

Rei’s eyes widened in the splendor of her correctness. “No! Really?!”She caught herself--to look like she was unfamiliar with the concept would look unworldly, and out of all the things she hoped not to be, a peasant in Michiru’s eyes was one of them. “I mean, I obviously this is completely fine, I just, you don’t look like...seem like.”

Michiru gave her a stern look, and Rei realized had failed in her attempt to look cosmopolitan.

She cleared her throat. “Haruka must like you. I’m sure of it.”

“Oh?” Michiru poured tea for the both of them. “And why are you so very certain?”

Because you’re both lesbians and I just assumed you’d get together, she immediately realized was wrong. “Ah, I mean, you’re basically the princess of this school.” Good recovery, Rei.

Michiru gave a huffing chuckle and handed Rei her tea. “It has been my experience that to be so far above others is to miss out on their company entirely.”

It sounded sad, and vulnerable, in a way that Rei had never heard Michiru sound, and looked over at her as she settled into her velvet chair, looking terribly soft in the moonlight. People, often even Rei, seemed not to think of Michiru as a person, but a figurehead, an aspirational painting of a human being, an idea. Seeing her, heartbroken over a girl, somehow made Rei love her all the more.

And with Rei, love meant help, whether requested or not.

Rei, as always, had a plan. People needed a leader, sometimes, and sometimes it was Rei’s job to be so. It was more comfortable for people to sit, unmoving, in the world the way they always had, but Rei had a certain pride in her ability to move people. And Michiru’s silent pining over haruka, however much she denied, could not sit any longer-- a ship in harbor may well be safe, but the bottom will also get rusted out and it’ll get moldy from lack of use. Michiru was her friend, and it was Rei’s job as Michiru’s friend to set this in motion.

It was a bit selfish, too, Rei would admit only to herself. The matter involved intrigue and secret knowledge and forbidden love, and it was all very exciting to a girl who had spent most of her life contained within the same grey walls of the school.

She slipped a note into a locker, covering her face casually with her cardigan as she did it, and lay in wait, for a response.

It was only half an hour later, in the domestic arts section, as requested, that she got her opportunity.

Rei spoke through the the bookshelves, a hissing whisper that caught Mina in its grasp. “I have information you may find interesting.”

“Rei?” She moved a book and peeked through the shelves. “What the hell are you doing?” She looked down at the piece of paper, pressed on the edges with a stamp. “I should have known this was you. Can you lesbians not do anything in the most dramatic way possible at least once?”

“I’m NOT a lesbian, Mina.” Mina could see her ever-expressive eyebrows through the tomes on ribbon embroidery.

“Well, this incredibly ridiculous gesture seems to suggest otherwise. Trust me, I would know all about it.”

There was a pause. “Then you are--”

“No, I freelance, but, anyway what the fuck, are we here to swap coming out stories?” She pulled out a needlework book and put her eye up to the gap.

Rei pulled back, her shoulder blade just touching a book on breadmaking. “I told you, I’m not--”

Mina hissed her words through the books. “God, don’t act so scandalized, it’s an all girl’s Catholic school, what else are we supposed to do?”

Rei pinked, though she could not explain why, and shook her head. “It seems that I have to be the one to pass on the forbidden knowledge here.” Rei smiled smugly.

“Hino, everyone knows you wear lace panties, what do you got for me?”

Rei’s pink turned a brilliant red. “Will you stop and just listen to me for even one minute, you are INFURIATING, and--”

“Anyway, this super secret intel.” Mina stared at Rei. “Well?”

Rei held her chin up proudly, recovering. She looked down again, eyeing Mina for any sign that might give her away. “Michiru has taken an interest in Haruka.” She leaned in and her whisper became low and harsh. “Romantically.”

“Gasp.” Mina’s affect was flat. “So why are you telling me?”

Rei put her hands on her hips. “So you can tell Haruka.”

“Why doesn’t Michiru tell Haruka?”

“Michiru is not going to tell Haruka, Mina.” There was an edge of obvious irritation at Mina’s insistence that such a thing was even possible.

“Of course not, because we’re dealing with fucking lesbi--HI THERE SISTER.” Mina sprung back from the books in jump, bringing a book on Amish quilting with her. “Hello!” She brandished the book at the sister. “Let me tell you what, I am just...fascinated by these...star...quilt..things. I’ve been meaning to take up more domestic arts, I mean--”

“Move it along, Mina.” The sister shooed her out of the dark corner of the library, quilting book still in her hand, as Rei looked very interested in Julia Child’s Art of French Cooking, as if she’d ever even correctly salted a piece of meat.

Mina walked out of the library, staring at the star on the book’s cover, and noticing how all the small pieces of fabric became one solid picture.

“She was sick, or at least that’s what Rei tells me.”

Haruka shook her head. “Are you sure?”

“Hino’s a lot of things,” She passed Haruka another cigarette as they sat out on their rooftop perch, “but I don’t think she’s a liar. What would her motivation be?”

Haruka thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I think Rei thinks I’m stupid.”

“You think,” she took a puff, “literally everyone thinks you’re stupid. The only person who thinks you’re stupid is you. Why do you think Father Joe has you sign up for shop every year, because you just look,” her voice became high and she batted her eyelashes, “soooo dreamy in that plaid skirt and sweater vest?” she passed over the cookies. “No, it’s because you’re really good at that. Build Michiru a bookshelf or some shit, I don’t know how lesbians court.”

Haruka smiled as she considered such a wild and fanciful idea. What if she made it with some inlay? White birch against dark rosewood, it would be beautiful and elegant and how Michiru would smile every time she looked at it with the knowledge of how Haruka had labored and cut over every detail, how much talent it had taken to make such a thing, how she would delicately put her finger to her lips and say that Haruka had made it when her friends asked.

It was a silly dream, but it was hers.

She looked over at Mina. “So she’s definitely going?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Why not?” Haruka scowled, taking a cookie from the tin.

“Because I’m not your fucking carrier pigeon, Ruka, Jesus Christ.” She blew the smoke into high curls on the air. “You ask her.” She grinned. “No reason to be nervous, now that we know she likes you.”

Haruka bit her lip happily as she grinned up at the sky. “It doesn’t feel real. I mean...I know it’s hard but, we only have like two years of school left, less than two really, and then she can go to college and we’ll get a little apartment together. I’ve always wanted a cat. I think I’m gonna try and go to technical school, I like carpentry and mechanical stuff. You can do pretty good with that, and I know her family’s rich and all, but I could get a nice ring, I think, and I’ll work--”

“Buddy,” Mina clasped her hand tightly. “You’re gonna have to ask her out before you marry her.”

Asking out, was, of course, an impossibility. Where would they go? The chapel? And, even with the knowledge given her by Mina, through Rei, it all seemed too terribly frightening, out alone on a cold plain, praying for salvation.

Her St. Joan medal hit against her chest as she tapped Michiru’s shoulder in history class. Michiru turned to her, and she was nearly overwhelmed by the scent of Jasmine wafting from her hair.

Focus.

“So the dance is this weekend.” She fiddled with her pen.

Michiru had not yet recovered from the feel of Haruka's fingertips on her shoulder. “Ah yes, that bi-annual organization of awkwardness. I never really much enjoy the Saint Sebastian’s dances. It’s terribly awkward to be asked to dance by a boy you scarcely have heard of, palms sweating, cologned heavily, tripping over my toes, much less to have it happen over and over again in a gymnasium that smells of teenage boys’ socks.”

“But you’re going to go?” Michiru looked up at her, and saw what she thought might be hope in Haruka’s eyes, and though she immediately cursed herself for it, her heart fluttered in her chest, a hummingbird above Haruka’s tempting flower.

“I suppose. My parents purchased me a dress, and it would seem odd if I didn’t.” The words did not seem to come from herself, but from something deep within, as if the Holy Spirit spoke through her, simply a vessel.

“I...I’m glad.” Haruka scratched the back of her neck awkwardly as the Sister announced the end of class, and books began to shuffle and move.

Michiru stood up, and daringly stepped onto the precipice between her heart and Haruka’s. “Yes well, I hope I find someone handsome to dance with.”

The words flowed out of Haruka’s mouth before she could stop them. “Oh, I hope you do too, I’m sure you will, you’re beautiful--or,” she blushed heavily, catching yourself, “I mean that’s what the Saint Stephen’s guys say.”

Michiru smiled with more true delight than she had felt since she was a girl. “Well, I thank you for you confidence.” She walked to the door of the classroom, practically gliding across the tile.

“Michiru!” Haruka called after her.

Michiru turned expectantly. “Yes?”

“I hope I see you there.” Her heart swelled. “Maybe we could…” Haruka’s mind reeled, looking for something possible. “Talk. I don’t dance much.”

“I would like that very much.”

The threads of the tapestry gathered and knotted, another detail set into place as Michiru’s shoes tapped along the floor, Matching every beat of Haruka’s heart.

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ifridiot · 4 years

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Let Them Eat Flesh

GOD okay this is unfair because Let Them Eat Flesh is a series but GUH that series is still such a fave.

SeriesLink

So this series, like Quid Pro Quo, was another big project that I decided to play with the fun concepts up front and not explore fully because i genuinely didn’t think there’d be any interest in it. If i wanted to write something solely for myself that no one else would read save for after me begging for attention, I’d work on my original fiction lmao.

But the two key scenes i had in my head were David giving Frank the blood transfusion scene from the show, with the additional angst of David being Infected, and then the scene where Frank is fighting Billy and David shoots him. I’ll go more into detail under the cut.

I loved the first scene because i love the like... drama and dubious ethics of saving Frank’s life while potentially infecting him with in illness that will like... physically alter him when he can’t consent to that treatment. I didn’t really get the world building opportunity to like... go into the entire Idea i have behind my Zombie AU, but there’s a lot of stuff going on with Infected people socially and politically and economically.

The infection also causes a painful physical transition, and certain baseline ‘normals’ for a healthy human are altered. Infected are slower but stronger, and have better endurance than uninfected people. They see better in the dark but are sensitive to bright light. They’re obligate carnivores -- obligate cannibals, only fully healthy when eating regular meals of human flesh. Those who refuse to accept that new requirement to their diet lose cognitive function in an accelerated type of dementia that leaves them weak but prone to violence, and eventually they succumb to malnutrition and starve to death.

With the infection being a new ‘illness’, it’s still considered a deeply taboo and awful thing to survive that way. Infected people have a harder time getting and keeping jobs, many turning to illegal options that utilize their new strengths while putting them at risk. There are organizations both lobbying for greater government action in isolating and segregating infected people and illegally hunting and murdering them.

so one of the earliest scenes that occurred to me was:

Later, there will be plenty of time for David to fret and self-loathe and question the morality. In the moment, the choice is clearer than any crystal, and Hamid’s dithering over medical ethics fills David with a passionate, frustrated sort of rage.

“If he doesn’t get a transfusion now , then he dies !” David says, fighting to keep from raising his voice. All that time in the basement trading verbal barbs with Frank, as passionate as they could get, he’s still not good at this part. Playing at the calm, level-headed end of the argument, presenting himself as both passionate and yet not irrational in his investment. “You don’t get to decide him maybe catching what I’ve got is worse than him dying !”

“No! And we do not get to decide that it is better, either!” Hamid speaks just as passionately, obstinate for all that he was willing to accept a patient in his home, to triage a dying, condemned man -- willing to do everything to save his life but this. “This is meant to be his decision, and we cannot ask him. Even if he were to wake now, he is no position to make such a choice.”

It’s Dinah who speaks on David’s behalf, quiet and direct with her father. For all that Farah and Hamid have spoken together in soft, lyrical Farsi, Dinah sticks to English. David thinks it’s for his benefit, but it’s hard to tell with a woman like Madani. David also thinks her siding with him has less to do with saving Frank than it does with the fact that her murdered partner had also been infected, and that she is more sympathetic to the idea that the mutation wasn’t some kind of life ender.

David’s blood looks like anyone else’s, dark, rich red flowing through the IV line, from David’s arm and into Frank’s. Life, he insists to himself; just like Frank had given of himself to keep David alive, now David gives of himself. He’s keeping Frank alive, whatever else may come of this -- surely living, even in this condition, was better than dying.

from Wretched and Joyful

the second scene that came to me when i decided to just Go For It revolved around my deeply held desires for 1. Billy Russo to be fucking dead, and 2. David to get to be the one to do it lmao.

I loved this idea of like. Given all the socioeconomic and political ramifications of Frank surviving the events of the first season exactly as seen in the show, except being Infected with my super special pseudo-zombie illness, Frank ending up living with the Liebermans. We see in the show how deeply and immediately Frank bonds to that family and how they very clearly become a second chance for him to keep his family safe, and i was super into the idea of zombie!Frank living with them and having this like, confused ‘i can’t ruin the good thing Lieberman’s got except also i love him and want him’ bullshit self-denial thing with Frank.

That all came to a head in All We Do and Flesh and Bone, and then in part nine, I wanted to have something almost like a thriller as the apex of rising action, with Frank fighting Billy. In turn, that provided me with an excellent narrative opportunity to show how David also is deeply protective of Frank and get my personal reward of writing David shooting Billy Russo in the fucking head lmao.

This is what came of that:

[Frank] has to win, because if he doesn’t, it’s his family in danger and he can’t, he cannot let any of them be hurt, not again, not again.

“I made you a promise,” Billy says, triumphant, face bloody, hands bloodier, grinning as he sits back, reaching for the gun holstered under his arm. “In that basement, with Rawlins? I promised it would be me and I’m guh --”

Heat splatters over Frank’s face, hot, wet, stinging. His mouth is open and he tastes blood, thinks it must be his own until he registers the great gorey hole where Bill’s left eye had been, the echoing bang of a gunshot, the way Bill’s gone stiff, his grin more rictus now that revel. Bill topples onto Frank, dead weight, and it feels like slow motion but it’s not, it’s still so much so fast.

“Frank, are you -- shit, Frank,” and Frank’s heart is starting slow, starting to even out because whether he wants to puke or not -- his mouth is full of Bill’s blood and whatever all else had flown in when the gun went off -- that’s David’s voice, that’s David standing there, gun still held in front, two handed to deal with the kick put out by that stupid, ‘just for show’ P250 Frank had last seen in the basement he’d nearly died in.

#meme me baby #scene to fic meme #saulsgoodman

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robert-c · 4 years

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What Should Be Illegal?

For most of human history there have been two sources for what was defined as illegal or prohibited behavior – religion and political power; and often the combination of the two. Whoever is in control obviously wants to stay in control so anything that threatens their power is going to be illegal. Religions can come up with a wide array of things to prohibit; some just to be different and distinctive, some to prove their power (there’s little proof of power in telling people not to do something no one wants to do in the first place), and even some because it makes sense. But this last is never the reason given – because it must be about “because I say so” (where “I” is the priest or other spokesperson for “God”, “Creator”, or whatever).

With this sort of history it is easy to see how we can get misled into believing that there needs to be an “official” (or even “unofficial”) religion of a country. At the risk of offending, let’s just say that believing “God” (by whatever name) is the source of all moral conduct codes is a cop out, an excuse for not thinking these things out on our own. That’s not to say there is no such thing as a divine being, just that ascribing the source of moral conduct for a whole society to a being one must accept on faith is really just accepting the dictates of someone who has successfully convinced you that they are the spokesperson for this ethereal being. Tying right in with the desire for simple certainty, it is easy to buy into this idea. But it doesn’t do much to develop a society that preserves the right of each person to believe as their own conscience dictates.

It’s true that most previous societies have been organized around a common religious or cultural set of beliefs, and it is also true that model has produced most of the oppression and warfare in human history. Surely there is a better way for us to live together.

A society that seeks to make possible the widest range of personal freedom of belief must limit prohibited behavior to the minimum necessary for a society to function. While the concept seems simple, the application can get complicated as the personal beliefs of some inevitably cannot imagine a world in which “x” is not prohibited. Nevertheless, a decent foundation was laid with the ideas that depriving someone of life, liberty or property without the due process of law was wrong and should be illegal. The Founding Fathers of the United States may not have fully understood the ramifications of what they were setting up by forbidding the establishment of a ‘state religion’; but most great ideas end up being grander than their creators ever imagined.

This whole idea that if we believe something we must impose it on others, has a very long history, probably as long as humans even imagined that there was anything “divine” at all. Without getting too far into a history lesson, it wasn’t until Judaism (and later Christianity) came into contact with a wider world that it really became an issue. Most of the so-called pagan religions offered myths about the creation and nature of the world, and little in the way of commandments on moral behavior. The biggest requirement of most of these other religions was providing sacrifices and donations to the priests of the various deities. So when one people with different gods took over another people they insisted that their gods get the sacrifices and the offerings. Many might regard this as a simple racket to get a free ride in society, not perhaps dissimilar to various current day charlatans charging people for cliché advice under the guise of self-help or self-development. I would agree with that comparison. The Romans had the inkling of a very brilliant idea in creating their empire. Rather than replace the conquered population’s gods with their own, they just allowed them to continue with the idea that they were just other names for the same ones the Romans knew. Their “king of the gods” was Jupiter, but if you were Greek that was the same as Zeus and if Egyptian that was Ra, and so on.

Judaism and Christianity were different in that they had a moral code of conduct. So more than just the name of the god that you provided sacrifices to was at stake. Judaism’s prohibition of images of God ends up being an intolerance for images of the other gods. It breaks with the tradition of allowing others to have their own view of who or what “god” (or “God”) is. This is precisely the attitude that we must resist if we wish to live in a free society. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter, “…in every age the priest has been the enemy of liberty.” I believe this is precisely the point he was trying to make – that enforcement of a single religious world view inevitably must lead to a sort of tyranny over the very minds of people.

Despite these ideals and the mechanism to protect them through the separation of powers in the Constitution, things have never been quite that straight forward. If a majority of the voters imagine something should be illegal (even if just because of their religious beliefs) then it likely will become law. The only hope of striking it down was supposed to be an independent judiciary, but the undue influence of extreme partisan positions has undermined that.

Which leaves only an appeal to those voters who will still use their own minds, instead of the fear and hatred some leaders continually stir up. Imagining a world in which everyone is pretty much like us is not only easy, it’s comforting on many levels. We may never be challenged to question why we think or do things in a certain way. We can feel comfortable in the world, because it is all familiar and understood. But what if we weren’t the only kind of people, what if we weren’t the majority? Now there is a choice to make – some people will see that strict devotion to the principle of many different cultures and beliefs as the only way to safely ensure that we all remain free to believe and act as we wish, no matter which way the popularity of one belief or another goes.

Sadly, there are many others who take that scenario as the reason they should “call to arms” and suppress the other ideas. This is the key point, the desire to suppress the expression of any other view point or lifestyle. I often feel that these efforts stem from a realization that public exposure to these other people and ideas will reveal the unreasonableness of their prejudices. That is what happened for most people with the mixing of the races. And it is what should happen with other groups as well.

All too often the proponents of free speech and diversity give too much respect to these folks for “merely defending their ideals”. While free speech does mean they get to express their opinions, we should call them out for what they are – people less defending their own ideals than trying to end liberty for any who disagree with them. They aren’t patriots or defenders of “traditional American values” – they are petty little wannabe tyrants who will wave the flag at the same time they trample every principle it ever stood for. It ultimately ends up where every dictatorship does, where dissent or disagreement is called treason.

It does seem that our civics classes (and our progressives) ought to spend more time promoting the idea that our “right to swing our fists ends at the other person’s nose” as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said (btw he was a Republican!). For that matter, I am continually amazed that no one calls out the hypocrisy of those who call for smaller, limited government while at the same time thinking it should regulate private, personal behavior on the basis of their own personal view of morality.

The Founders of our republic were rightly suspicious of the sort of direct democracy where a majority vote of the people decided everything. It was more than just the impracticality of conducting timely polls in the 18th and early 19th century; they knew that demagogues would play to the fears of the mob and that could easily subvert the rights of the minority. Unfortunately technology and the mechanism of elections have essentially eliminated the safeguards they thought they built in by having our republic be a representative democracy – one where the majority elect representatives to handle the passing (and rejecting) of laws.

I think the only potential answer is a campaign to educate the voting public about the true nature of liberty, and the dangers (and hypocrisy) of attempting to regulate and protect a particular “culture” or set of religious beliefs. I think we need to stress the idea that even though I wouldn’t personally want to participate in or view some behaviors, the only reason to outlaw them is if it would limit my legitimate rights (as opposed to my imagined “right not to be offended”).

We have done too little to express this ideal and far too little to call out the cries for censorship and suppression of beliefs that contradict the so called “traditional” values of some of the most extreme elements of our society. In every age there are those who are more comfortable with the way things are, even if they have reservations about the rightness of them. I believe failure to call them out for this behavior is what Edmund Burke meant when he said “for evil to triumph all that is required is for good men to do nothing.”

There is another test for what should be illegal, and I think it is a relatively simple test, though not necessarily easy in practice because of people’s denial and devotion to their ideas. If the primary reason for making something illegal is a moral or ethical claim, then it should be suspect. In other words, don’t tell me that it is wrong because of your ethics or morals, tell me how it deprives someone else of their right to life, property, liberty or their own pursuit of happiness. And I don’t mean some “domino theory” of how it will undermine society. It may not be without its own gray areas, but if we exposed the religious underpinnings of the belief behind the moral code it might become more obvious that the proposed law has more to do with legislating someone’s religious beliefs than it does with protecting the liberty of others.

There is an illustrative historical example in the “blue laws” that used to exist in Texas and other southern states. Basically these laws sought to prohibit certain items from being sold on Sundays. It began as prohibiting the sale of “non-essential” items, but quickly became the farce it was always meant to be. Baby food could be sold, but not diapers. Hammers but not nails (or vice versa, I can’t remember). It was clear to all that the point of the law was to make everyone respect the idea that Sunday was “God’s day” and not just another shopping day. In order to mask the nature of what they were up to, the supporters of the blue laws said that they couldn’t sell the prohibited items on consecutive Saturday and Sundays, or Sundays and Mondays. This was supposed to make it seem less like a religious law. As people from the north moved to Texas a growing movement to repeal these laws started. The supporters tried to couch the law as protection for time off for workers, despite the fact that Federal laws already regulated pay and hours, and that the blue laws did nothing to protect workers from abusive hours in the rest of the week. In the last referendum before their abolishment, support of the blue laws was equated to support for local, family owned businesses, against national chain stores, as if the sales on one day of the week could bankrupt small locally owned businesses. But the most telling news came when the referendum abolishing the blue laws was passed. One of its most outspoken supporters got emotional and lost his phony mask of rationality. He said that they weren’t done yet, and that while they might not be able to force people to go to church, they would continue their efforts to make sure that there was little else they could do on Sunday. And so, what most of us already knew all along, was finally admitted. We don’t often get to see it so clearly, but look closely at the folks who “coincidentally” want to regulate something that just happens to mirror their religious beliefs.

I am also persuaded to be suspicious when there is gross inconsistency. On the one hand someone wants to object to regulations of businesses and their dealings with the consumer public, arguing for more limited government, but at the same time thinks the government ought to be regulating private choices because of some larger moral or alleged societal impact.

If we think about it in these terms a lot of the objections to laws and regulations are ridiculous and the regulations are necessary to protect us from the greed and short-sightedness of some people: e.g. regulations about product and workplace safety, regulations to preserve the opportunity for competition to exist in industries dominated by a few companies, and of course laws prohibiting using age, race, gender, religion, etc. as reasons to disqualify someone from employment instead of their actual capabilities. And other regulations are simply enforcing a personal belief; regulating personal medical choices (whether it’s to carry a fetus to term, or to die with dignity), who you can marry, and even personal appearance.

We simply MUST stop imagining that this country is, was or ought to be a single religious or cultural place if we are to continue to enjoy its true uniqueness in the world, as a place where people are free to believe as they will.

#freedom #rights #what is illegal

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dxmedstudent · 7 years

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Why is it that there is a high probability that medics will experience mental health issues? Is it related to long working hours, emotional labour, the pressure to succeed etc? Are there similar patterns within dental students/dentist community?

It’s a complex issue, and I’m not sure it’s been researched properly. We certainly don’t have a monopoly on mental health problems, but when current figures suggest that 8 in 10 of us will have mental problems, you know it’s really serious. Interestingly, 60 per cent of UK doctors in general have experienced mental illness, but the figure rises to 82 per cent in England. That’s a really, really high proportion. I’m pretty sure it also affects dentists, too.

Speaking personally, I can say that of the people in medicine that I know well, only a few people haven’t experienced mental health problems. We may differ in the degree to which we are affected, and the type of influence it has on our lives, and the exact illness, but mental illness is something that unites us. And yet it remains stigmatised, and the ways in which our health problems are assessed can make it difficult for people to feel comfortable seeking help when they are struggling. The short answer is that I think it’s all of what you said. And more. I don’t think it’s any one thing, and to be honest, I think different aspects affect us all differently. So the bits that I struggle with might not be the same bits that affect my friends the most. But overall, these things affect us all.To answer your question, we must start back in secondary school. What kind of person chooses to become a doctor? Someone who is typically a very high achiever, who works hard, wants to do their very best, and is a bit of a perfectionist. Someone who applies very high standards to themselves. If you think about it, applying to med school is a grand undertaking. You aren’t just saying that you want to study something, you are declaring your intent to be a hero. You want to save people, to make a difference in the world. It’s a massive act of optimism and bravery.That’s your first risk factor. The pressure to do well in your GCSEs and A levels can be immense. Being a perfectionist is risky, because in real life it is very hard to achieve perfection. And the kinds of people who go into medicne are the kinds of people who expect a huge deal of themselves. We all have to learn not to break down when we can’t reach a particular standard. For some people, mental problems start in school.And some people don’t have great childhoods, and carry a lot of trauma behind their perfection. People imagine docs or nurses as happy, smiling people with perfect lives, from well-off backgrounds, but nobody has any idea what many people faced in the past. Some of us are just dealing with a lot more problems to begin with, and then you add med school or doctorhood on top of that. I have serious respect for how well many such people cope with the pressures of medicine, given everything else thay are facing.When you go to med school, there’s a lot of pressure. So much to learn, so little time. The pressure med schools can put on you with endless exams can really add up. Everyone seems to know more than you do. You look at doctors and think that they seem so far removed from where you are now; how will you ever get there? You try to imagine yourself delivering a baby, or leading a cardiac arrest, or diagnosing a difficult case. And whilst it might make a great fantasy, in reality you know just how far you have to go. And the gap between pefection and where you are seems pretty wide. Sometimes placements make you feel worse about yourself, sometimes exams are the biggest stress factor. For many people it starts in med school.Then you start working as a doctor. However ready you felt, the minute you start, you realise med school did not prepare you for the system. But you fumble your way along as best as you can. Hoping not to kill anyone in the process. That’s another risk factor. The sheer pressure of being responsible for other people’s lives. The pressure of what might happen if you make a mistake. The pressure of what might happen if you get complaints, or whistleblow. The thought of legal ramifications, as well as ethical ones. It’s a heavy burden to carry, and it’s a side people don’t really talk about very much. Sometimes I think, even within medicine, that we need to do more to talk about and deal with this side, rather than suffer alone.You get swamped with work, more often than not. You rarely leave on time. You get stuck in situations you feel completely unprepared for. Sometimes your seniors help, sometimes they don’t. You discover the complexity of human life, and human suffering, and encounter heartbreaking scenarios on a daily basis. The world is a weird, wonderful place, and you have a front row seat into the deepest, darkest secrets of humanity. Sometimes people are nice, sometimes they are not. There’s something very dispiriting about being shouted at by people you are trying to make better. Sometimes you can put it down to people just needing a good rant, and you can let it go. But sometimes it really gets to you. Overall, medicine can be highly emotionally charged because being sick is a very emotional time for patients and their families, and some of that can rub off on us. There’s also the sad reality that we can’t save everyone, and that we sometimes reach the limit of what we can do. Or we make mistakes. Or we discover that others have made mistakes. We go into medicine wanting to help people, but sometimes bieng a doctor is just realising how powerless you really are to actually change some things. And feeling the full force of having to explain to patients and their families that “this is all we can do”. I think you’re right that there’s a heavy emotional toll that comes with the job. We truly care about what we do, and we want to do our best, so it always hurts when our best isn’t good enough. We cry because we can’t change a person’s diagnosis, or their response to treatment. We cry because we can’t fix everything. We cry because we hate knowing that it isn’t good enough. We cry because we hate the limitations of the system we are working in. We want a better world for our patients, our families and ourselves. Your timetable is not just lots of hours, it’s also irregular. There’s also just the effect it has on your body. shift work is really bad for you. It messes up your natural rhythms, mucks up your metabolism, increasing your risk of metabolic diseases and other health problems. It makes you feel absolutely exhausted. You struggle to eat a balanced diet, or get enough exercise. Sometimes, when you are particularly snowed under, you struggle to have any kind of meaningful life outside of work at all. It’s not hard to see how this kind of isolation can lead to burnout or mental illness.Your social life becomes sporadic; even when you have time, you are too exhausted to go out. Some friends understand, some don’t. You can never understand how amazing it is to work 9-5 until you don’t.The sheer effect that shiftwork has on your social life is huge; you sleep or work when others are out socialising. Then your breaks are when everyone else is busy; this can be isolating. Your hobbies are something you have to cling onto as if you are drowning; it’s so easy to lose these parts of you, because medicine can become all-consuming. You always have paperwork. There is always more hoop-jumping to progress to the next stage of your training. More exams, that you prepare for by yourself. Audits, projects, all the other things you have to do, on your own time, to progress your career. To be honest, I find the ‘techicalities you have to tick off to pass the year’ one of the more stressful parts of medicine, personally. I really hate the constant low-key pressure to get things signed off by a particular deadline, and the struggle towards the end of the year is always unpleasant. It personally stresses me out more than being shouted at by relatives. Not only that, but it’s built into our jobs that we have to progress. You can’t just ‘stay where you are’. In lots of jobs, once you get used to your team and figure out how to to your job, you’re all set. You can feel comfortable. Medicine is not like that at all. Because each year you progress brings with it new expectations and roles and responsibilities that you are expected to take on. We’re forced to push ourselves to become better, every year, and it’s expected of us to try our best to master new challenges and become more confident. I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing, because it gives us direction and it pushes us to new heights. It prevents us from getting complacent, and makes us lifelong learners. It means that we push ourselves to new heights, all the time. But that’s also a huge pressure, sometimes. It’s not easy to go beyond your comfort zone, and sometimes it’s scary and uncomfrotable, and feels like you’re being dragged kicking and screaming into the next stage of your life. But really, the last bit is simply that life is stressful in general. We all have normal people problems. We’re not just doctors, we’re boyfriends who got dumped. Wives whose husbands have cancer. Children whose parents have disabilities and need care. Parents whose kids get sick. Grandkids of grandparents who pass away. We can pick up addictions. We can have personal problems with friends and family. Life can be horrid for everyone, I don’t think we are unique in that. I think medicine just piles more crap onto our plates on top of the usual life drama that anyone can fall victim to. And perhaps with all that going on, and then the stress that medicine piles on top? Perhaps that gets to be a little too much for most of us in medicine.

#ask dx #askdx #mental health and medicine

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gettingagriponthings · 4 years

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The A.I. Panopticon: The Power of Mind Over Mind

In 1787 a British thinker by the name of Jeremy Bentham published a series of 21 letters in response to an advertisement he’d seen in the paper. The ad was regarding a House of Correction. Parliament was preparing to deport thousands of prisoners to Australia (they had been sending convicts to the colonies across the Atlantic, but that system ended with the American revolution) and was looking for some new prison designs. Bentham went to great length detailing a structure he thought might fit the bill and allow a large number of subjects to be overseen by a minimum number of monitors. He called this design the panopticon or Inspection House. PAN-OPTI-CON, From the Greek: pan (all) opti (seeing). Bentham described it as such:

The building is circular.

The apartments of the prisoners occupy the circumference. You may call them, if you please, the cells.

These cells are divided from one another, and the prisoners by that means secluded from all communication with each other, by partitions in the form of radii issuing from the circumference towards the centre, and extending as many feet as shall be thought necessary to form the largest dimension of the cell.

The apartment of the inspector occupies the centre; you may call it if you please the inspector's lodge.

It will be convenient in most, if not in all cases, to have a vacant space or area all round, between such centre and such circumference. You may call it if you please the intermediate or annular area.

Bentham’s design called for a round building with a single tower in the middle. The tower was surrounded by some large number of cells arranged in a circle, all exposed to the central tower. Subjects would be kept in separate cells, and monitored by a solitary guard in the middle. I used the term “subjects” because Bentham emphasized in his letters how versatile the panopticon could be:

No matter how different, or even opposite the purpose: whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing the willing in any branch of industry, or training the rising race in the path of education: in a word, whether it be applied to the purposes of perpetual prisons in the room of death, or prisons for confinement before trial, or penitentiary-houses, or houses of correction, or work-houses, or manufactories, or mad-houses, or hospitals, or schools.

Bentham’s panopticon was designed for the masses, especially for the subjugation of the vulnerable and already oppressed.

With only “a simple idea in Architecture!” Bentham effectively designed a way for the powerful to reform the morals, preserve health, and invigorate industry, among the powerless. And only one monitor would be needed for “obtaining power of mind over mind.”

Morals reformed - health preserved - industry invigorated instruction diffused - public burthens lightened - Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied - all by a simple idea in Architecture!

[...]

A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example

The panopticon is a diabolically genius idea. Though its simplicity and bluntness hit you over the head like a brick and leave you with a bad hangover. One person can effectively control hundreds, not by monitoring all subjects at every moment, but by convincing them that they could be monitored at any given moment. You never know when the monitor is watching so you behave as though he is always watching.

Visible and Unverifiable

Nearly two centuries later, in his 1975 book Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, French philosopher Michel Foucault revisited Bentham’s panopticon.

Foucault teased out some of the finer points and clarified the ramifications of the architectural structure that could go beyond the physical manifestation of a prison.

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. [...]

To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.

A Clearer View of Everything

2020 has brought about a new age of the panopticon. This one is without walls and is even more “all-seeing” than Bentham’s version.

The New York Times recently released a piece entitled The Secret Company That Might End Privacy As We Know It, detailing a new artificial intelligence company called Clearview AI that’s developed a powerful facial recognition product. Clearview’s facial recognition application is unparalleled in its reach and capacity to recognize the faces of countless people on the street that might be unfortunate enough to cross the path of a device employing it. But Clearview isn’t a best-in-class product because of what the founder Hoan Ton-That says is a “state-of-the-art neural net,” or because of more sophisticated thermal imaging, or because of the implementation of any other particular technological innovation. In fact, Albert Wenger of the venture capital firm a16z wrote on his blog:

“First, it should be clear by now that it has become almost trivial to build a system like this. A lot of open source frameworks and neural networks have been made available that can be trained for face recognition. Clearview AI did not have to come up with some technological breakthrough, they just had to point existing technology at image sources[...].”

Clearview AI is in a class all its own because of their massive database of images to pull from when evaluating a person spotted in the real world. They tout a database of over 3 billion images, each scraped from sites on the open web like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Venmo, and YouTube.

Automated web scraping technology has existed nearly as long as the internet itself. The first internet crawling bot, the World Wide Web Crawler, debuted in the summer of 1993, with the first crawler powered search engine coming that winter.

The usage of web scraping technology is not difficult (Try it for yourself here, here, or here), but the usage of it for the collection of massive amounts of personal information for surveillance is ethically ambiguous at best, and is in direct contradiction to the terms and policies of many popular websites. Twitter’s Developer Agreement and Policy document for example says:

User Protection. Twitter Content, and information derived from Twitter Content, may not be used by, or knowingly displayed, distributed, or otherwise made available to:

1. any public sector entity (or any entities providing services to such entities) for surveillance purposes, including but not limited to:

investigating or tracking Twitter's users or their Twitter Content; and,

tracking, alerting, or other monitoring of sensitive events (including but not limited to protests, rallies, or community organizing meetings);

2. any public sector entity (or any entities providing services to such entities) whose primary function or mission includes conducting surveillance or gathering intelligence;

Twitter has already sent a cease and desist letter to the company regarding its violation of its terms. I hope other platforms aren’t too far behind.

More important than Clearview’s violation of the wishes of giant tech platforms is their violation of the trust and privacy of millions of Americans. In over three billion instances Clearview has surreptitiously taken the images of unwitting social media and content site users (if you’re reading this, they almost certainly have photos of you) and given them to others to surveil them.

There are now over 600 different law enforcement entities in the United States that have licensed Clearview’s facial recognition product. Everyone from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to hundreds of state and local agencies is using Clearview’s tech. It’s had such rapid adoption because it’s simply more powerful than everything else they have. A more common facial recognition tool used by law enforcement might have similar identification technology but certainly has a dramatically smaller database to match from. It might have a database of a few million images: a combination of police collected images from criminal investigations, mugshots, and maybe a state DMV database. It would be limited in size (still massive but not 3 billion images massive) and limited in identification range and flexibility. These government collected photos are often taken straight-on from the front, or directly from the side, and usually feature an individual with a relatively blank expression. Clearview’s ripped photos show people from every imaginable angle and would feature a wide range of expressions; from happy to sad, and everything in between.

Invisible and Verifiable

Clearview’s facial recognition weapon is the panopticon made real and inverted.

Foucault described Bentham’s panopticon as laying down the idea that power, like the monitor within the central tower, should be ‘visible but unverifiable.’

In conjunction with the unregulated ability of companies and governments to track our movements, purchases, thoughts, and desires, Clearview’s product (and the ubiquity of facial recognition policing) represents a new paradigm.

Power will be increasingly invisible but verifiable.

There is no central tower to see and to fear. It’s been digitized, decentralized, and democratized.

And there isn’t a question of whether or not the inspector is paying attention. You are being watched. You are being monitored. You are not anonymous.

Only understanding the issue and having the courage to stand up and speak, even while under the gaze of the panopticon’s eye, will hold power accountable.

*(h/t to @benedictevans whose subheading “Building the panopticon” in last week’s newsletter lead to my research into the ideas of Bentham/Foucault. Read his essays HERE and subscribe to his awesome newsletter)

#AI #Artificial Intelligence #Facial Recognition #Technology #Panopticon #Clearview #Law Enforcement

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mst3kproject · 7 years

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Terror Beneath the Sea

Fresh from the studio that brought us Invasion of the Neptune Men, and starring Space Chief himself, Sonny Chiba, it's Terror Beneath the Sea! It's in widescreen.

Reporter Ken Abe and photographer Jenny Gleason are guests at the test of a new type of guided missile when they glimpse a mysterious swimming creature with a human silhouette. Upon investigating, they find a cave inhabited by guys in stupid silver fish-man suits! From here they're brought to the underwater base of the evil Professor Moore, who created the fish-men so that he can... honestly, I have no fucking idea what he's trying to do. He starts the process to change Ken and Jenny into fish-people, too, but then the base is hit by a missile and he loses control of his creatures. Can our heroes fight their way through the hordes of angry fish-men and escape before their transformation is complete?

One of the first things I notice about Terror Beneath the Sea is that I'm ninety-five percent sure that Ken and Jenny are supposed to be a couple, but the movie never depicts any physical affection between them that couldn't also happen between platonic friends. Probably this is partially because in Japan PDA's are considered inappropriate, even moreso than in Western countries, but I get the feeling there was also a desire to avoid being explicit about an interracial relationship. I can imagine producers getting together and agreeing that white women dating Asian men does happen in real life, and movie heroes are supposed have love interests, but they need plausible deniability so they don't lose the all-important 'bigoted asshole' demographic. Not that they have anything against the idea personally, you understand, but public opinion is public opinion. They completely support interracial relationships, but how would they explain something like that to their children?

Another thing I notice is how much Terror Beneath the Sea reminds me of The Time Travelers or The Green Slime, though it is less colourful than either. It has that kind of comic-book-y 60's sci-fi aesthetic, where they don't necessarily seem to care if what they're showing you looks real as long as it gets the idea across. In fact, many of the sequences of shots, with odd angles or a focus on only eyes or a smile, look very much like panels from a manga comic. The comics industry was flourishing in Japan in the mid-to-late 60's, and it's quite possible that the film-makers mimicked this style on purpose.

Terror Beneath the Sea also, as I noted in the opening paragraph, has a great deal in common with Invasion of the Neptune Men, including the same production company, same star, and a similar level of effects work featuring guys in costumes and toy-like miniatures. For all that, though, Terror Beneath the Sea is better at its worst than Invasion of the Neptune Men was at its best. Both films are confusing, but Terror Beneath the Sea is funny-confusing, whereas Invasion of the Neptune Men was just frustrating-confusing. Why the difference?

I don't think the colour film has anything much to do with it – Invasion of the Neptune Men would still have been an ordeal in colour. I think it has a lot to do with the characters. Terror Beneath the Sea actually has some.

The main characters of Invasion of the Neptune Men, such as they were, were five nameless children and Space Chief. We never really got to know them – indeed, the kids' names were not presented in a way that made them remotely memorable. All I know is that one of them was Kenny. In Terror Beneath the Sea, we have only two main characters who are easy to differentiate visually, audially, and by their actions. Their personalities are sketched out, just barely, well enough to give us an idea what each of them would have done alone in this situation: Ken would have done pretty much what he did anyway, and Jenny would have stood around and screamed a lot. They're not particularly complex or interesting characters, but they are characters.

Likewise the villains. The Neptune Men just kind of blundered around trying all kinds of random things and not really achieving much. The underwater Illuminati, or whoever they are, of Terror Beneath the Sea seem to have a plan, even if we're not entirely sure what that plan is (it seems to involve ruling the world – they always do). Progress has been made in the building of the underwater base and the creation of the mindlessly obedient fish-people. We are shown in great detail the process of transforming a normal man into one of these creatures, and there's some moments in this that are quite effectively gross, if not exactly convincing.

But a lot of what makes the movie engaging comes from how hysterically, over-the-top bad it is. Almost everything in it is taken just a little bit too far. Invasion of the Neptune Men seems rather restrained in comparison and maybe that's another thing that hurt it.

Take, for example, the fish-men (according to their creator, they are technically water cyborgs). They obey commands given to them by a computer, which the humans control using a dial on the wall that has points labeled with things like 'work' and 'fight'. Their full-body costumes are quite elaborate but often don't fit very well, sagging at the buttocks and wrinkling at the joints. When the dial is turned to 'fight', a pair of them get into a ridiculous slap-fight that shows off exactly how badly the suits fit, accompanied by dubbed-in fin-flapping noises! Nothing in Invasion of the Neptune Men even approached that level of gratuitous silliness.

Then there's the acting. All the dialogue has that same quality as The Green Slime, in that it sounds like its translated from Japanese even when it's coming from white actors whose mouths show that they're speaking English, but it's the dubbing that really raises it to comic heights. The people actually on the screen are pretty hammy themselves – there's one who guy actually manages to over-act raising an eyebrow – and the dub actors providing the English dialogue are terrifically melodramatic in slightly different ways. The dissonance of this is as funny as anything else. Somehow, even the guys in the full-body fish-men suits manage to overact.

A lot of the scenes, especially the fights, do go on a little too long. This is especially true of the fish-man creation sequence – it lasts forever. Fortunately, the general ridiculousness of the proceedings, with punches that obviously miss by a couple of feet and the exaggerated and mismatched reaction shots, can usually keep you giggling long enough to get through them. This is pretty obviously done to pad out the running time to eighty minutes, which the movie only just barely achieves. At least ten minutes could be cut from Terror Beneath the Sea without damaging the very minimal storyline, probably more. MST3K would have had no trouble making it fit.

There isn't anything much to think about in this movie, but I did manage to tease one actual idea out of the mess. While Terror Beneath the Sea gives very little time to Professor Moore's evil plan, he does describe his goal as a totalitarian society in which the citizens, like the water cyborgs we see, will be drones adapted to specific tasks. One of his partners in the scheme refers to this as “a world that makes sense”. Like a number of thinkers in science fiction movies through the decades, the undersea Illuminati seem to believe that true peace and cooperation are only possible when human beings lose our individuality. As if to emphasize this, one of the scientists points out that the water cyborgs show no sexual dimorphism: males and females are externally identical.

It's actually kind of hard to argue with the basic idea here: utopia is probably impossible as long as people remain recognizably human, because frankly, humans suck. Ninety-nine percent of people just want to do their thing and get along, but there's always that hundredth one who decides to be an asshole and ruin things for everybody else. Fiction likes to play with this idea, but in Terror Beneath the Sea it is merely a trope. Ken and Jenny are horrified by the idea that the water cyborgs were made out of human beings, but there is no actual discussion of the ethical or philosophical ramifications of the idea. When the fish-men turn on their masters, it is not because their humanity has reasserted itself, but merely because the computer is stuck on 'fight' setting.

Terror Beneath the Sea is basically b-movie cotton candy. It's fun for as long as it lasts, but when you're done with it you realize it was mostly empty space and not particularly satisfying. This is perhaps the point in which it most resembles Invasion of the Neptune Men: you're not really sure what you just watched or why you watched it. Of course, with Terror Beneath the Sea you can answer both questions with 'Sonny Chiba fighting ridiculous fish-men'. Invasion of the Neptune Men didn't even have that.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #terror beneath the sea #it's beginning to look a lot like fishmen #60s

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afishtrap · 7 years

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(another repost, saving for posterity)

I think it's not just that fanfiction rests (in part) upon a ground of potential plausibility; I think it also works within a framework that's similar enough to original fiction that this gives the impression that one should be able to make the leap quite easily: genre assumptions. That is, fanfiction has canon assumptions which are closely analogous to genre assumptions, so you'd just be trading one for the other. When the author is familiar with the concept of shortcuts, after that it's simply a matter of learning what they are for any given genre.

And since I wouldn't mention it unless I find that a problem, it's that both are cop-outs. They're a way to treat the underpinnings of fiction as superfluous and extract them one by one, until the work feels almost hollow. (Not unlike the non-load-bearing wall in my dining room with studs at 36" on center. It's not to code, though it won't make the house fall down, but it sure makes putting up shelves damn difficult.)

In a story example, this isn't unlike the complaint I had about a historical fiction work wherein there wasn't a single mention of fashion, politics, or technology to give me even a generalized idea of when the story took place. It consisted almost entirely of an emotional conflict resting on a pile of short-cuts. It's even worse than 36" on center studs; it's a house where the walls are made of paper hung from wires stretched between poles: it may be pretty, but there's nothing there, really, to ground it to this place and this time. A decent breeze -- or a decent plothole -- and it'll all come crashing down.

Slight tangent: the notion of structural underpinnings got me thinking, in turn, about instances where I've been able to compare an author's work when the author writes in several genres. (For the most part, the author's approach, technique, sensibilities, stay generally even, which makes deconstructive analysis much easier than comparing cross-author in the same genre.) In a not-this-world fantasy story, there's a lot of world-building required if the not-this-world isn't a direct or semi-direct analogue to our own (similar tech, land masses, cultures, fashion, etc). This world-building acts as one of the integral structural components of the fiction, and the more deft an engineer be the writer, the more heft the story seems to have. (And thus we realize that 'doorstop tome' is a label both physical and metaphorical.)

The result, then, is that the story's close leaves me with the impression -- as one of those readers who can't freaking turn off my brain -- that the story somehow has more to it. It's akin to standing in the great hall of a castle and asking yourself: how did they build that ceiling? Really, how did they do that? If what structure the reader can see is impressive, double that when it implies there's even more under the surface: that's the implications of fiction's underpinnings... even if I am a wierdo for thinking of it in engineering terms.

To take an architectural tangent, because I don't want anyone getting the wrong impression in the comparison, the reason we may see century-old cathedrals as phenomenal works of engineering is because (a) they're unfamiliar to us as an everyday event, (b) we've probably never been around one as it was constructed to see its inner prior to being wrapped in an outer, and underneath it all, (c) those cathedrals, castles, and the like were built without advanced mathematics. I mean, honestly, calculus and the all-powerful derivative aren't even a century older than my own freaking country! (Yes, William & Mary College in Virginia was founded only four years after Isaac Newton published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Imagine that.)

But if you've ever seen a Mies Van der Rohe skyscraper, you'd realize that our modern architecture -- analogue to this-world genres of cyberpunk, urban fantasy, steampunk -- is pretty damn impressive in its own right. The engineering and mathematics that go into creating a steel and concrete structure that rises thirty stories into the sky and yet is wrapped in little more than a bit of steel and football-fields of glass... well, that's nothing to sniff at. Hell, just the usual suburban home has some pretty amazing engineering within its walls, but we dismiss it because we see it everyday and have grown used to the idea that platform-framing is pretty ordinary -- to the point that now, to build a post-and-beam house, is considered radical, and something to remark on.

Essentially, you could say that in trad-fantasy the author-engineer is building without calculus, doing the math long-hand to make sure the structure doesn't fall down: creating culture, language, laws, ethics, technology, even genders and species. In this-world genres, the author-engineer is using already-available structural supports. It's not a matter of coming up with a new steel or a new type of glass, so much as using the familiar in an unusual or daring way.

And to drive this analogy completely into the ground, authors may alternate between them, building something long-hand that's ready-made, like artisans building post-and-beam houses instead of using studs and drywall. It doesn't always work, though, and it's the why that I think some authors don't address, too busy thinking it's radical somehow to mix the old with the new (or in trad-fantasy, the new with the old). Structural elements include the story's concept of, say, colonialism. Where once it was accepted that colonialism had a positive benefit (of civilizing the natives) that outweighed its exploitative aspects, now you're more likely to find stories that posit colonialist bad, noble savage good.

The review that started me reading the ferretbrain critiqued that story as flipping good-bad structure on its head and ending up with "colonial good, native ignorant and in need of civilizing colonial influence". Not really an improvement, and more to my analogy's point: somewhat like thinking you'll build this part of your house long-hand as a way to make it unique -- but not realizing that there's a really good reason we stopped using horsehair and plaster to insulate our houses. Sure, this bit of structure may be different from the suburban homes flooding the market, but different does not automatically mean better.

But wait! I just realized I can drive (deconstruct?) this analogy even farther into its foundations. As a friend commented about historical romance, "God help me if you try to convince me a "saucy" woman would ever be conceived of as attractive to a Lord of the Manor" -- except that I know for certain that my great-grandmother was described as saucy, and she was married three times. (Widowed all three times, too.) It's just that what we modern-minds think of as "saucy" or "sassy" isn't quite the same thing -- or more like, it's exactly the same but only on the surface.

Think again to the horsehair-and-plaster versus drywall. Both, done by an expert, can end up beautifully and perfectly smooth and white, and both can then be painted with lime-wash, or oil-based paint, or even latex (though latex, not so good for the plaster, if you're wondering, but that's neither here nor there). On the surface, you have a smooth interior wall, just as on the surface you have a head-strong woman who speaks her mind. It's what's underneath, what makes her possible -- the source of her behavior/character -- that is almost totally opposite between historical and modern.

That, I think, is where a lazy historical writer undermines their story: if you don't realize the fundamental underlying differences even when the external appearance is identical, then you're going to miss all the tiny tells that let a savvy person know that all you've really done is take a modern structure and slap some gingerbread on it and call it Victorian, or slap some mud on it and call it adobe, or slap a corset and a fichu on it and call it Regency. You're not fooling anyone, y'know.

Anyway.

Setting aside the issue of then-structures with now-structures, if the genre rests in our own world -- like urban fantasy, or super-spy-thrillers, or mysteries, or contemporary romances -- the author doesn't even necessarily need genre-shortcuts, given then real-world shortcuts already at his/her disposal. There's no need to tell me what a car is, or why someone might freak out at a call from the IRS. One might say these underpinnings already exist, a kind of socio-cultural framework the author can preempt to use in his/her own work, but it's not like these are considered integral to the story-structure.

To me, these underpinnings are best considered external to the story. They're holding the story up from the outside, rather than from within. It's like looking at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, where nearly the entire engineering structure of the building exists outside the building. It's not hidden within the walls; there's no mystery about it. Okay, if we're talking modern architecture, that statement is debatable, but if we're saying this on the grounds that "when you can see how things are put together, it's not mysterious," then no, there's no mystery to a structure where the architectural and engineering underpinnings are actually designed as overpinnings.

Or more precisely, it's not that the structure is like the Pompidou, so much as the story hangs from the existing elements rather than is built on an interior framework of elements. That's a somewhat post-modernist view, as well, but I'm having trouble finding any better way to put why I frequently find a lot of urban fantasy to be hollow, in a kind of no-real-substance sense. The things that make the story hold together are things I already know, so the ramifications of a story's outcome don't really require this specific story to highlight them; any story, really, could hang from that combination and thus outline the space between.

But not always, and if the trad-fantasy where the author must build all the engineering from the ground up is a story that seems to have massive heft and substance, the value of a modern-based story (or an extrapolated futuristic story) is to do precisely the opposite: to create a story within the existing limitations of our world (including culture, race, gender, and so on) and to reveal the gaps between these structural elements. It's a kind of parallax, really: what from outside the Pompidou Centre looks kinda awkward and near-brutal is pretty freaking amazing from the inside.

(Hell, I was there because my hosts wanted to see an exhibit, but I spent the entire time at the Pompidou staring at the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and then ended up at the windows, looking out to see everything that should've been within -- in some ways, moving everything to the visible outside doesn't make the interior more dramatic by opening up the space, but makes the overall design even more obtrusive for the lack of expected internal solidity -- sort of like me reading that historical fiction and so busy actively looking for any historical place-in-time references that I stopped really paying attention to the story itself.)

When we talk about issues of racism or sexism or classism, there's often a parallel discussion about intersectionality -- like where one's ethnicity may allow privilege but one's disabilities or gender in turn reduces privilege. That concept of intersectionality is what can make this-world stories, of a variety of genres, so incredibly powerful, when they place us within this previous empty or unidentified space (the intersection between certain aspects of our reality) and show us a view we'd previously overlooked.

That's one reason I retain a fondness for the original Star Trek despite its shortcomings and/or dated-ness, such as the way Star Trek used the "alien culture" formula to reflect back upon political and social questions of the day. ST:TNG toyed with this formula at times (not enough for my tastes, though), like in its two-parter that tackled whether Data was a machine and thus a possession, or whether he had sentience, and if so, what is sentience and what does it mean to be human? These are questions hard to ask in the everyday world, where we have no near-sentient machine. That's where SFF can do some amazing mind-expanding stuff.

But this also applies on a much smaller scale. Ironically (or not), it's another ferretbrain review that got me on this one, this time Dan Hemmon's comparison of BtVS and Harry Potter, in When Harry Met Buffy:

Buffy takes issues that its audience will be highly familiar with (academic pressure, romantic disaster, teenage insecurity) and uses the language of the supernatural to explore them in an emotionally believable way. Harry Potter, on the other hand uses real-world issues (racism, slavery, death) as a cheap way to add colour to an otherwise unconvincing fantasy world.

#analysis is my chocolate cake #half-asleep at the fandom wheel

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the-faculty · 7 years

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I've never been in a d/s dynamic/relationship but I'm desperate to try and explore this world. My partner isn't interested in it and it's something that I've been craving more and more. I'm been encouraging him to try new things but he just isn't willing. Now the idea of an online dom has popped into my head (and from seeing it on here) I was just wondering if there was anywhere I can read more about it? Sorry if this has been asked before and I missed it. Thankyou for your answer 🖤.

Online bdsm can be a great outlet for people in circumstances where a real life D/s relationship isn’t available, but I do caveat this with a huge warning.

Over the years I have seen many marriages dissolve because one partner has gone down this pathway without the support of their spouse. However, if you have an open relationship where your spouse is consenting, then this can work very well. When I was looking for a submissive I had it in my checklist that if a potential submissive had a partner, then I would need to directly talk to them to get their consent. Why? Because it’s their relationship too. You’re talking about involving a Dominant who gives you orders which if you don’t carefully negotiate your boundaries of control, can/will effect your marriage. Alternatively if you do this without your spouse knowing, then you run the very real risk of damaging your marriage when he does find out (yeah… seriously keeping this a secret is like a ticking time bomb). So my advice is to talk with your partner and see if he is willing to support you in being a submissive to another.

There are responsibilities in becoming a submissive to another, this includes having the time dedicated to be with them. Work out what you would be able to ‘give’ to an online relationship;- Your time. This is for communication, tasks, learning, self development - Finances. This could be certain toys/equipment/clothes etc - Emotions. D/s relationships are very intense, you need to be prepared for a roller coaster of possibilities - both highs and lows. Write down exactly what you expect from an online dynamic.

Additionally you need to think about how to exclude things from any D/s relationship;- Family/friends, do you want your Dominant to have any say over who/when you see your family and friends? If not, that needs to be clearly negotiated- Spouse. Ethically - here I say there’s no way a Dominant should have influence over your marriage (including sex with your partner), but I have known plenty of subs put in bad positions because of following orders- Finances. You should seriously exclude any control over your finances, possibly have a small budget set aside for things, but no, don’t hand over your credit card details or spend $$ on expensive things to the detriment of your family/mortgage repayments- Job. Hmm… unless your boss is your Dominant, exclude anything that could put your job in jeopardy. - Illegal activity. Yes… this happens too.

While what I’ve just mentioned seems logical, the online world is full of people with a great story to hook you in, and then emotional manipulation to get you to do things that weren’t a part of your expectations/assumptions.

For anyone entering this domain, negotiation and a written agreement is fundamental. If you don’t know what you’re agreeing to - and conversely what they are agreeing to do, then you’re essentially setting it up to fail at the first hurdle. This is where you get the 'you’re not a real sub’ type statements when you say no to something that wasn’t a part of your assumptions. Worse still, you do it because you think you have to and pay the price with real life ramifications while the online Dom 'ghosts’ on you.

Now, online bdsm communities. There are dozens around. Each with their idiosyncrasies, rules, favourite sayings, cliques and trolls. Explore a few, initially don’t say you’re 'looking for a Dom’ as that’s sure to get every troll/wannabe and predators ears pricked up and your pm full of 'kneel before me you’re now mine bitch’ type dribble. Seriously spend time just getting to meet people, talk bdsm beliefs and philosophies and find people that have a style of bdsm that you’re comfortable with. Friends in a community are more likely to inform you of who to avoid, but also remember to talk directly to their previous partners. Red flag anyone who claims a lot of experience, but doesn’t want you talking to any of their ex’s. some other online communities can be found on whiplr, kik, line, palringo, fetlife and sooo many more apps.

You will find online relationships need to rely on strong text, plus Skype/FaceTime type communications. Remember you don’t have the physical presence of another, nor body language. Both sides need to be creative (one word responses don’t go far) and this does engage more the psychological side of a relationship rather than the physical side. Where possible, I recommend doing the activity not just typing 'doing it’. Of course you can’t experience an impact session as you can only do a certain amount to yourself, but there are activities you can do, however, what you miss out is the anticipation of not knowing when/where the next drop of wax may fall etc.

So I hope this hasn’t made you run for the hills, but hopefully avoid many of the initial traps when it comes to starting down this path. If you find the right Dom (and no it probably won’t be the first dozen you speak to), you can have a wonderful experience. Good luck.

Heels 👠👠

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simplemlmsponsoring · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/internet-marketing/how-to-build-a-content-calendar-plus-a-free-template/

How to Build a Content Calendar (Plus a Free Template)

Creating a content calendar from scratch is one of those tasks that seems so much more complicated than it actually is. Even just opening a blank Excel spreadsheet can feel overwhelming. Thankfully, sometimes all that’s needed to get on the right track is a quick how-to and a great starter template, which is exactly what we have for you here.

In this post, we provide a guide to building a content calendar, plus a free template for the year.

The Definition of a Content Calendar

Before we jump into calendaring our content, let’s talk about what a content calendar actually is, plus a few baseline requirements for success.

We define a content calendar as a shareable resource that teams can use to plan all content activity. This allows you to visualize how your content is distributed throughout the year. We prefer a calendar-based format, as opposed to just creating a long list of content to be published, because it comes with several benefits:

Gain inter-and cross-department alignment: Inform everyone about what is being published, when and where, so there’s no surprises or duplication of efforts. Get a 50,000-foot view of content: Create a clear visual of how your content is distributed throughout the year. Identify content milestones: Plan content around key events or important dates. Spot content gaps: Gain a sense of what content still needs to be planned, with plenty of lead time to line up more content. Inform the content creation workflow: Make sure you have your content ready in time to actually publish when needed.

Consistency is insanely critical to content success. Yes, amazing new ideas and brilliant sparks of creativity help, but we can’t rely on them alone. They’re too inconsistent and unreliable. Instead, everyone needs to be on the same page with what content is being created, plus where and when it’s being published, and it has to be done on a regular, ongoing basis. And that is precisely where content calendars come into play.

The further ahead you plan, the better positioned you are to produce a consistent flow of content.

The 4 Keys to Content Calendar Success

Whether you plan content on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, depending on how quickly your industry or organization moves, there are several universal keys to content calendar success:

Open your calendars to everyone: While not everyone should have the ability to edit a master content calendar, everyone should at least know where the content calendar is located and have viewing access. Iterate constantly: A content calendar is a living, breathing document, and it should change and grow as your content needs do, too. There’s no one right way to calendar your content: There are a million different methods, templates and approaches to take. We’re providing you with a baseline template and a proven process that we use for ourselves and Convince & Convert clients, but you should also play around with the approach and modify elements, as needed. We tinker with it all the time, too. Create a content repository: Don’t get stuck on ideas that you can’t implement immediately, or don’t get hung up on the “we’ll never be able to do that” ideas. Instead, create a repository of content ideas that you can tap into whenever needed.

Fantastic! Now that we have all of that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff: calendaring all of our amazing content.

How to Build Your Content Calendar in 3 Easy Steps

Step 1: Start with Existing Content Assets

There’s a lot of focus on creating new content when we should really be focusing on creating more with less. It’s also usually not necessary to produce all your content from scratch since we often leave heaps of valuable content just lying around.

Instead, start by taking note of all of your existing content or resources to see what can be repurposed and remixed. For example:

Slide decks: Repurpose these as videos, blog posts, or key takeaway slide decks. First-hand data or research: As long as you use that data safely and in ethical ways, leverage your own data or research to create infographics or news stories. Colleagues and coworkers: The expertise of your colleagues can be tapped for video, audio, or transcribed interviews. Whitepapers or reports: Break big content pieces into a series of blog posts or social takeaways. We call this content atomization, which we’ll dive into in just a bit. Old blog posts: Make minor adjustments and updated with fresh information. Or if they’re all on the same topic, combine them into an uber-post or whitepaper, which is a process we call reverse atomization.

Repurposing content assets takes away some of the strain of having to come up with a million new content ideas. It also helps you efficiently fill gaps in your content schedule. A single content asset can also often give rise to several pieces of content, which we refer to as content atomization. It’s the process of taking one big piece of content and spinning it out into eight smaller pieces of content. For example, an infographic can support a blog post that analyzes the integrity of the data it was based on. You could also include a video which explains the wider ramifications of its findings. So on and so forth.

Content atomization will become your best friend when it comes to content calendaring, so get to know a bit more about it, plus get amazing examples and inspiration here: 49 Tactics to Atomize Your Content Marketing.

Step 2: Identify and Create Your Content Shows

If you’re not familiar with Jay Baer’s concept of creating content shows, you can read his in-depth post about content shows. If you’re already familiar or just want the highlights, content marketers need to start to think like television networks and create content shows. In short, these content shows become predictable, steady, initiatives that our audiences can rely on and recognize. In fact, these shows are something that they actually look forward to.

Content marketers need to start to think like television networks and create content shows. Click To Tweet

There are 3 types of shows you need to identify within your content:

Binge-worthy shows: These shows are big, steady, ongoing content initiatives that have the same theme and format. They should target at least two audiences, otherwise. they’re not worth the time or effort to produce. These are often podcasts, video series, webinar series, white papers, reports, etc. You should be able to execute this show at least twice per month. These also get plugged into your calendar first.

Binge-worthy show example: I’m a massive fan of Retro Replay, a relatively new weekly YouTube show that pits two of today’s most well-known video game voice actors against some of the most difficult and/or nostalgic video games of the past. It premiers live every Thursday at 4:00 pm PT, and includes a live chat with the hosts. Aside from being super fun to watch, this show is also a fantastic case study for what a true binge-worthy show looks like, plus how to build and engage with an audience. Seriously, check it out.

One-time shows: These shows are special quarterly or yearly shows that attack a major customer pain point or topic. Although they’re less frequent in cadence than binge-worthy shows, they’re still fairly large content pieces. Think white papers, research papers, contests, user-generated content campaigns, etc. These don’t have to have the same level of consistency, but they should still be in line with your branding and voice and tone.

One-time show example: Who doesn’t love CMI’s annual Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report?! This yearly report is chock-full of goodness. Even though the report varies slightly in design and layout each year, it’s consistent enough that audiences know exactly what to expect.

Regularly scheduled programming: These shows are ongoing content initiatives that round out your calendar, and they don’t have to necessarily connect completely or be 100 percent consistent in theme. Like in the case of blog posts, they may have a different author, topic or format, depending on the content, but they always connect back to the content strategy and have at least one clear audience in mind. Think of them as what a local nightly news show is to any major television network.

Regularly scheduled program example: Convince & Convert’s own blog is our version of regularly scheduled programming. We have our weekly ON newsletter (binge-worthy show) and our big masterclass courses (one-time shows), and then we have our blog to help round out the calendar and provide ongoing information (regularly scheduled programming).

It’s important to note that you most likely already have content shows in your existing content assets, so check your inventory first. It may just be a matter of spinning assets a bit differently, giving them an official show title, or connecting them in more consistent ways.

If you don’t have any shows in your existing content assets, or you need more shows to round out your calendar, then you’ll want to focus on creating new content shows.

Step 3: Plan, Schedule, Publish, Promote, Track and Tweak Your Content

Regular editorial planning meetings between all those involved in content creation should be scheduled well before the next publishing period—be it monthly or quarterly. This meeting can be used to schedule the publishing content from your repository with realistic time frames and to support social media activity, email newsletter inclusions, etc.

Your planning meetings can also be used to review the visit, engagement, and revenue (if available) stats from previous periods to assess which types of content are most successful (and perhaps need to be replicated) and which are less successful (and perhaps need to be rethought).

Analytics (both web and social) and revenue data can also be used to make tweaks to already published content e.g. titles, introductions, outbound links etc to optimize visits and engagement.

Your Free Content Calendar Template (Excel File)

We’ve provided a basic content calendar for you to use. While there are a ton of amazing, wonderful content calendaring platforms and tools, we’ve opted for an Excel spreadsheet. That’s because it’s a great starting place, easy to edit and modify, and almost everyone has the ability to open the file.

Download your free content calendar Excel template now >>

Right click and save as

To add your content to the calendar and get the most out of your content:

Start with binge-worthy shows: Add these into your calendar first, and make sure to pay attention to any key dates or big events. Add your one-time specials: Pay attention to how they overlap or complement your binge-worthy shows. Round it out with regularly scheduled programming: Last, but definitely not least, add in your regularly scheduled programming. These should help fill any gaps in your cadence and keep content consistent. Add content to the content repository: Don’t have a place right now in the calendar for some great ideas? Add it to the repository. Let this be your storage solution for great ideas, and check back on it often.

That’s it! Now you can edit and update it, as needed. The actual calendaring part is pretty quick, once you get your shows established. Now, bring this to your editorial meetings, and make sure to keep tabs on how content is performing, so you can adjust your publishing flow and content ideation, as necessary. Happy calendaring!

This post was originally written by Jamie Griffiths in 2014, and extensively updated by Anna Hrach, Digital Strategist here at Convince & Convert, in 2019.

The post How to Build a Content Calendar (Plus a Free Template) appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.