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Home › Activism › Painting Anna Julia Cooper by Angela Yarber
Painting Anna Julia Cooper by Angela Yarber
By Angela Yarber on February 8, 2014 • ( 9 )
As we celebrate Black History Month I’d like to honor a remarkable black woman who joins the Holy Woman Icons with a folk feminist twist that I feature each month. Anna Julia Cooper stands alongside Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, Jarena Lee, Isadora Duncan, Miriam, Lilith, Georgia O’Keeffe, Guanyin, Dorothy Day, Sappho, and Jephthah’s daughter.
Cooper was born a slave in Raleigh, NC in 1858. Her mother was a slave and her biological father was her mother’s white master. After living and working as a slave until the age of five, Cooper began her formal education at a school for slaves. She would grow up to become one of the most educated and intellectual black women of her century. In fact, she was the fourth African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in the United States, writing her dissertation on “Attitudes toward Slavery in Revolutionary France.”
Anna Julia Cooper also published a book entitled A Voice from the South in 1892. In her book, Cooper characterized God’s likeness as a “Singing Something,” a divine spark or “urge-cell” within each individual that, throughout history, has impelled humanity toward overcoming injustice into the full realization of freedom. She describes God as a liberating voice. This Singing Something within human beings is part of the “inborn human endowment” and “justifies the claim to equality by birthright” (Cooper, Equality of Races, 5). This Singing Something within human beings, then, is part of the very being of God.
Womanist theologian Karen Baker-Fletcher elaborates, saying, “In A Voice from the South…Cooper audaciously, shrewdly, and courageously questioned, challenged, and chastised the domination of the weak by the strong in Western culture. Originally, Cooper delivered most of the essays in this volume as lectures or speeches. She raised her voice to criticize the evils of racism, sexism, classism, and imperialism…” (Karen Baker-Fletcher, “Soprano Obligato,” 173).
Similarly, Mary Donovan Turner and Mary Lin Hudson laud Cooper as a preacher who held fast to her authentic voice, claiming that “through her love for music, Cooper came to use musical terminology to describe the importance of coming to speech. Blacks, she noted, were like a muffled chord. The black woman was a mute and voiceless note…Aware of the oppression that stifled their creativity and fullness, Cooper maintained that the black woman’s ‘little Voice’ must be added to the chorus…
For Cooper, then, being created in God’s likeness is not imagistic. It is musical and auditory. Cooper understood our god-likeness to be in sound, words, voice. Thus, she spoke of not being created in the image of God, but in the sound of God.” (Mary Donovan Turner and Mary Lin Hudson, Saved from Silence: Finding Women’s Voice in Preaching, 93). Cooper’s bold voice rose, like the voices of many other strong black women who sang the history of survival embedded in spirituals and gospel music. With voices raised in lament, solidarity, and protest, we remember these songs that arose out of the Singing Something that dwells within…
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus” speaks of the ways in which Jesus is the co-sufferer, the one who knows what it’s like to be exiled, enslaved, and oppressed.
“Sometimes I feel like motherless child a long way from home” speaks of the ways in which slaves were ripped out of the context of home and family, literally separated from mothers, with the compassion of God alone as their heavenly mother.
“Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus. Steal away, steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here” not only speaks to how suffering, slavery, and exile will be relieved by-and-by in heaven, but it was also code for when slaves could literally steal away at night to the underground railroad. And where would they steal away?
Wade in the water, wade in water children. Wade in water; God’s gonna trouble the water” speaks of not simply the waters of baptism and how God troubles those waters into places of equality, but the song also functions as a code that reminded slaves that when they steal away, they should steal away into the river where the master’s hounds cannot pick up their scent and they should wade in the water toward freedom.
And these songs not only functioned to identify with the compassionate and co-suffering God and as codes for escape, but they also served to subversively and secretly indict their captors. “Have ya got good religion? Certainly, Lord!” not only speaks to the need of having good faith in the compassionate and co-suffering God, but it also indicts those who don’t have good religion, who keep faith and freedom away from black Americans.
So, with musical notes swirling about her, Anna Julia Cooper stands strong, centered with her arms spread so wide that they reach off the canvas, embracing and emboldening us to find the Singing Something within, as her heart cries out to us:
Wisdom pulsed from her
Heart, as she raised her
Voice, preaching the melodious
Notes of her God:
The Singing Something
This month we remember, lament, and repent for the injustice and oppression white Americans have heaped upon black people throughout history. This month we also remember, celebrate, and honor the bold, courageous, and prophetic voices of many black Americans in the midst of such oppression—in history and today. Anna Julia Cooper was one of these voices. Her songs, her scholarship, her preaching, and her prophetic witness may have occurred in the late 1800s, when black women were ostensibly treated as the least among us. Yet her songs, her scholarship, her preaching, and her prophetic witness remain with us still, reminding us of that urge cell within, the Singing Something, whose song is a song of freedom, a song of justice, a song of equality.
Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber has a PhD in Art and Religion from the Graduate Theological Union at UC Berkeley and is author of Embodying the Feminine in the Dances of the World’s Religions, The Gendered Pulpit: Sex, Body, and Desire in Preaching and Worship and Dance in Scripture: How Biblical Dancers can Revolutionize Worship Today. She has been a clergywoman and professional dancer and artist since 1999. For more on her research, ministry, dance, or to purchase one of her icons, visit: www.angelayarber.com
‹ Lady Death by Jassy Watson
On the Path of Holiness by Ivy Helman ›
Categories: Activism, Art, Christianity, General, Slavery, Womanist Theology
Tags: A Voice From the South, Angela Yarber, Anna Julia Cooper, Holy Women Icons, Karen Baker-Fletcher, slavery
Thank you for this introduction to Anna Julia Cooper and her knowing of the divine as the Singing Something. Yes!
Excellent! Thank you so much for this and telling us about courageous Anna Julia Cooper!
I love the ‘meme’ of a “Singing Something”. It reminds me of a story about Moses where Moses wanted to see God. God said, “Let’s have the mountain look at me first and we’ll go from there.” When the mountain saw God’s glory, it fell down into pieces and Moses got really scared and begged God for forgiveness. God’s reply was to forgive Moses and remind him that “I raised you above all men by sending you My messages and speaking to you.” God is best presented to humans in a verbal format! Would that we would listen….
Katharine Bressler
Thank you for sharing this. I hadn’t known about Anna Julia Cooper, but I do resonate with music as the vibration that pulls us higher and into the interdependent web of all existence. That pulling and connection of music have always felt spiritual to me, so I understand.
Oh! I do love that name “Singing Something”! It sounds rich, melodious, powerful in an enabling way. Yes! and Thank you.
What an absolutely beautiful representation of God, or of Goddess — a song. A song that reverberates from deep within. Thank you so much for this post, one that truly resonates.
John Bartelloni
I echo Katharine Bressler in not knowing about this tremendous woman. Found the following link about Anna Julia Cooper very interesting: http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/acooper.htm
Thank you all for your kind words. Cooper’s witness–in preaching, academia, and the arts–has been an inspiration to me for a while and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to paint her and share her story with you!
Angela’s Upcoming Events and Recent Publications: | Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber
Painting and Ordaining the Holy Woman Icon by Angela Yarber «
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fems
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EMS Response Time
EMS response time performance measurements evaluate “response time” by FEMS emergency vehicles to EMS (G1) Class 2 (C2) and Class 3 (C3) incidents (please click here for an explanation of FEMS call types). “Higher Priority” EMS calls (C2) are considered “time sensitive” and “potentially life threatening,” meaning delayed response by FEMS emergency vehicles may impact patient outcome. “Highest Priority” EMS calls (C3) are considered “very time sensitive” and “immediately life threatening,” meaning delayed response by FEMS emergency vehicles will negatively impact patient outcome.
For each C2 and C3 EMS call, a FEMS “first responder” and “transport unit” respond to the call. One of these emergency vehicles is staffed by a Paramedic. A responding unit may be a fire truck, Ambulance or Medic Unit (both “transport units”). Fire trucks can be staffed with EMTs or Paramedics (at least 4 crew members). Ambulances are staffed by EMTs (2 crew members), Medic Units are staffed by a Paramedic and EMT (2 crew members). For C3 EMS calls, a FEMS “first responder,” “transport unit” and “EMS Supervisor” often respond to the call. “EMS Supervisors” (1 crew member) are senior Paramedic Captains, adding a second Paramedic to the responding units.
EMS First Response. C2 and C3 EMS calls require a first responder because the series of questions asked by the 9-1-1 call taker established that patient condition is “urgent” and either “potentially” or “immediately life threatening.” First responders (usually fire trucks staffed with EMTs or Paramedics) arrive more quickly to evaluate and treat life threatening patient conditions. NFPA Standard 1710 establishes a 60 second “turnout time” and 240 second “travel time” (together, 300 seconds or 5 minute first “response time”) benchmark time goal for not less than 90% of dispatched incidents (please click here and refer to Page 17 for a detailed description). The FEMS KPI measure for this benchmark time goal is the “percentage of high priority EMS calls when a first responding EMT arrived in 5 minutes or less.” The tables below show the percentage of C2 and C3 EMS incidents meeting the benchmark time goal during FY 2017, FY 2018 and FY2019 (beginning October 1, 2016) with the yearly total shown for each fiscal year.
EMS Incidents (G1): Percentage of high priority (C2 and C3) EMS calls when a first responding EMT arrived in 5 minutes or less.
EMS First Response and First Paramedic. C2 EMS calls require both a first responder and Paramedic because the series of questions asked by the 9-1-1 call taker established that patient condition is “urgent” and “potentially life threatening.” First responders (usually fire trucks staffed with EMTs or Paramedics) arrive more quickly to evaluate and treat life threatening patient conditions. NFPA Standard 1710 establishes a 300 second or 5 minute first “response time” goal for not less than 90% of these type incidents. Additionally, C2 EMS calls require an “advanced life support (ALS) unit” staffed by a Paramedic to provide definitive prehospital care for patients. Because FEMS deploys Paramedics individually on fire trucks and Medic Units (1 Paramedic crew member on both units), either emergency vehicle arriving at a C2 EMS call could provide ALS patient care and meet the requirement. NFPA Standard 1710 establishes a 60 second “turnout time” and 480 second “travel time” (together, 540 seconds or 9 minute “response time”) benchmark time goal for “the arrival of an advanced life support (ALS) unit at an emergency medical incident” at not less than 90% of dispatched incidents (please click here and refer to Page 23 for a detailed description). The FEMS KPI measure for these combined benchmark time goals is the “percentage of higher priority EMS calls when a first responding EMT arrived in 5 minutes or less and a Paramedic arrived in 9 minutes or less.” The tables below shows the percentage of C2 EMS incidents meeting the benchmark time goals during FY 2017, FY 2018 and FY2019 (beginning October 1, 2016) with the yearly total shown for each fiscal year.
EMS Incidents (G1): Percentage of higher priority (C2) EMS calls when a first responding EMT arrived in 5 minutes or less and a Paramedic arrived in 9 minutes or less.
EMS First Response and Two Paramedics. C3 EMS calls require both a first responder and two Paramedics because the series of questions asked by the 9-1-1 call taker established that patient condition is “urgent” and “immediately life threatening.” First responders (usually fire trucks staffed with EMTs or Paramedics) arrive more quickly to evaluate and treat life threatening patient conditions. NFPA Standard 1710 establishes a 300 second or 5 minute first “response time” goal for not less than 90% of these type incidents. Additionally, C3 EMS calls require an “advanced life support (ALS) unit” staffed by a Paramedic to provide definitive prehospital care for patients. However, NFPA Standard 1710 also describes that “a minimum of two members trained at the EMT-Paramedic level” shall arrive at the incident to meet this requirement. Because FEMS deploys Paramedics individually on fire trucks and Medic Units (1 Paramedic crew member on either unit), both emergency vehicles (or either emergency vehicle in combination with an EMS Supervisor) arriving at a C3 EMS call could provide ALS patient care and meet the requirement. NFPA Standard 1710 establishes a 60 second “turnout time” and 480 second “travel time” (together, 540 seconds or 9 minute “response time”) benchmark time goal for “the arrival of an advanced life support (ALS) unit at an emergency medical incident” with “a minimum of two members trained at the EMT-Paramedic level” at not less than 90% of dispatched incidents (please click here and refer to Page 23 for a detailed description). The FEMS KPI measure for these combined benchmark time goals is the “percentage of highest priority EMS calls when a first responding EMT arrived in 5 minutes or less and two Paramedics arrived in 9 minutes or less.” The tables below show the percentage of C3 EMS incidents meeting the benchmark time goals during FY 2017, FY 2018 and FY2019 (beginning October 1, 2016) with the yearly total shown for each fiscal year.
EMS Incidents (G1): Percentage of highest priority (C3) EMS calls when a first responding EMT arrived in 5 minutes or less and two Paramedics arrived in 9 minutes or less.
EMS First FEMS Transport Unit. C2 and C3 EMS calls require the response of an FEMS transport unit because the series of questions asked by the 9-1-1 call taker established that patient condition is “urgent” and either “potentially” or “immediately life threatening.” Transport units, including both Medic Units (staffed by a Paramedic and EMT) and Ambulances (staffed by EMTs) provide advanced life support (ALS) and basic life support (BLS) patient transport to regional hospitals. Although NFPA Standard 1710 has not established a benchmark time goal for this type emergency vehicle, FEMS has established a 60 second “turnout time” and 480 second “travel time” (together, 540 seconds or 9 minute “response time”) benchmark time goal “for the arrival of the first ALS or BLS transport unit at an emergency medical incident” for not less than 90% of dispatched incidents (please click here and refer to Page 26 for a detailed description). In the FEMS deployment model, transport units may be considered the first responding EMT or Paramedic emergency vehicle. The FEMS KPI measure for this benchmark time goal is the “percentage of high priority EMS calls when a FEMS transport unit arrived in 9 minutes or less.” The tables below show the percentage of C2 and C3 EMS incidents meeting the benchmark time goal during FY 2017, FY 2018 and FY2019 (beginning October 1, 2016) with the yearly total shown for each fiscal year.
EMS Incidents (G1): Percentage of high priority (C2 and C3) EMS calls when a FEMS transport unit arrived in 9 minutes or less.
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INTERVIEW: Sara Pascoe talks about her new show LadsLadsLads
Posted on July 30, 2018 by glasgowtheatreblog
Award-winning comedian Sara Pascoe talks to Glasgow Theatre Blog about her smash hit Edinburgh Fringe and sell-out West End show, LadsLadsLads.
• What is your show LadsLadsLads about? Why is it described as a ‘thinking person’s stag-do?
It’s sometimes hard to summarise what a show is about- but I wanted to give people the sense that it is fun and celebratory- but rather than about being about to get married- the exact opposite. Having fun, trying new things in a way of being braver and more self-reliant. Some of my shows in the past have had serious aspects, theories and research and this one is lighter. It’s like a party, except only I get to talk and you have to sit there watching me.
• Are you excited or daunted by going back on tour?
I love going on tour. I love our nation, I love rainy days up north and cold evenings by the seaside. It’s a luxury to get to travel for ones job and it’s still a novelty for me. Ask me again in twenty years!
• You’re touring from September to end of November. Do you see the show developing throughout the tour?
As my comedy is personal there are always updates, this show develops with recent escapades – my friends can persuade me to do anything by saying “you’ll get 5 minutes out of it”. That’s who I was recently tricked into watching a West Ham football match and seeing the film IT. They were both equally scary and I got exactly zero minutes out of them.
• Tell us about your new book Sex Power Money out next spring.
It’s about porn and sex work from a historical and evolutionary perspective. I am taking biology and the plasticity of human sexuality into account, and also laying out the whole spectrum of arguments in the debate about these aspects of our society. I’m also trying to explore power dynamics in sexual exchanges which are not as clearly defined as paying for sex- things like men paying for dinner, the abuse by powerful, rich men such as Weinstein and Trump. But with jokes as with my last book, Animal. Talking about serious, important stuff- but keeping it accessible and stimulating rather than hectoring.
• Did the experience of writing a book change the way you approach comedy?
Writing a book has changed my stand up, I think I’m funnier now because I can spend more time with ideas for the books, after a day’s writing doing a gig is a release. I only want to be silly, and it doesn’t feel as selfish if that makes sense? Comedy feels like a child’s job, you can’t believe you’re getting paid to do it. But there are huge things going on in the world and sometimes you feel a responsibility- because you’ve a mic in your hand. But now my responsible side who cares about the state of the world can go into book writing and stand up can be a distraction from that.
• Tell us about your recent Radio 4 series Modern Monkey where you explore our modern social world, did you enjoy the research involved?
Yes. I wish it had been more scientific and I could’ve done more research- but I kept being reminded it was supposed to be a comedy show and I had to write jokes about things. We recorded the show at several museums and I was so interested to visit and learn- especially the Foundling Museum- something I knew nothing about. Such a tragic thing- mothers giving away their children because they cannot afford to support them.
• Do you think the world of comedy has changed much since you started?
I think audiences are changing and that directly influences the acts. Comedy used to be a crueller place, and while there is still lots of that kind of stuff (and lots of people who love it) there is a lot more diversity now. And I hope that continues, live comedy is flourishing within an economic downturn and that is because the people making jokes are from a much wider spectrum. Their experiences are fresh and exciting and audiences want that. It’s not the individual cis, white, able bodied man’s fault that historically, comedy clubs were so reliant on stereotype and tropes, but only one type of person’s reality was being reflected and I’m glad that’s improving.
• Do you have a career highlight? Is there a moment you stopped and thought, wow, this is just incredible?
To write books is a massive privilege. Whenever I do a book signing, that for me is a “pinch myself” moment. Also selling out a West End run- those theatres are an absolute joy to play and it felt like a victory lap. I felt so much love for every person in the audience and wanted to kiss and hug everyone. I am a failed actor, didn’t get into drama school all of that malarkey. So getting to be in the West End was so special to me, a validation.
• What’s next for you following the tour?
I’d like to go do some stand up in America, and hopefully do some writing for TV. And another play. And I want to get a dog. And then more adventures so I can write another show
Sara Pascoe is touring LadsLadsLads Sunday 16th September – Wednesday 28th November 2018
http://www.sarapascoe.com
tagged with Interview, LadsLadsLads, Sara Pascoe
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Mysterious Runaway Star Stymies Experts
Mysterious Runaway Star Stymies Scientists
By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
type size: [A] [A] [A]
Nov. 14, 2005 ? Astronomers have stumbled onto a runaway star inbound to our galaxy that might have been kicked out of our nearest galactic neighbor by a supermassive black hole.
The star, HE 0437-5439, was found on a star survey and initially led its discoverers to suspect their instruments were out of whack.
"We first thought our wavelength calibration was off," said astronomer Ralf Napiwotzki of the University of Hertfordshire's Center for Astrophysics Research in the U.K.
The light from the star was both the wrong color (wavelength) for where the star is located and showed spectral signs that it is traveling inbound to the Milky Way at an unusually high speed ? about 1.6 million miles per hour (2.6 million kilometers per hour).
The light from HE 0437-5439 indicates that it's a rather healthy young star, like those found all over the Milky Way, explained Napiwotzki.
Yet this star is located out in the Milky Way's hinterlands, the geriatric ward of the galaxy.
Napiwotzki's first thought, after confirming the star's spectral information with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile, was that the star had been slingshot out of the core of the Milky Way after a close call with the giant black hole there.
That would account for the speed. But after calculating the star's velocity, location and age, it just didn't add up.
The bottom line: HE 0437-5439 is too far away from the center of the Milky Way to have made the trip and still be so young, said Napiwotzki, who, with several German colleagues, has authored a paper on the matter in a coming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"I agree that ejection from the Galactic center is not very plausible," said University of Texas astronomer John Kormendy, who was not involved the HE 0437-5439 discovery. "The star's lifetime is too short, given the necessary travel time."
It's more likely that the star is from the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) a irregular galaxy very near, but outside the Milky Way and visible in the night skies of Earth's Southern Hemisphere. But the LMC poses another problem, said Kormendy.
"Almost certainly the LMC does not have a supermassive black hole to do the same job," said Kormendy.
That means something even more unusual might have thrown the star towards the Milky Way, something like a sideways blast by a much bigger companion star that exploded as a supernova, he said.
Napiwotzki, for his part, is still holding out for a supermassive black hole at the center of the LMC.
To confirm this, however, will require a lot more information on the runaway star's trajectory, he said, and that could take many years of observing the star as it moves.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20051114/star_spa.html
Fuel Factor, the Gasoline Saver and engine Performance
Enhancer is now on our website! http://FitAndFabulous.com/2251
Dee and Roy
Posted by Dee Rohe at Tuesday, November 15, 2005
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Flatiron School's Student Outcomes
Since opening our doors in 2012, over 1,500 students have trusted Flatiron School to help them achieve better lives. Download our latest On-Campus and Online Outcomes Reports to learn more about all the details including:
Average starting salary
Time to get a job
Types of jobs students accept
Size of companies students joined
On-Campus Job Employment Rate
For job-seeking NYC Immersive students in the most recent On-Campus Outcomes Report including full-time salaried roles, paid apprenticeships, and part-time roles during reporting period (see outcomes report here)
Online Job Employment Rate
For job-seeking Online Web Developer Program (now called Online Software Engineering Immersive) students in Online Outcomes Report including full-time salaried roles, paid apprenticeships, and part-time roles during reporting period.
Flatiron School's Most Recent
Student Outcomes Data
2018 Online Outcomes Report:
Addressable Population
1. The addressable population of 229 students is the number of students who completed the program between November 15, 2015 and December 31, 2017.
Employment Outcomes
2. Of 229 total addressable students,
a. 184 students (80%) had completed a Job-Search Cycle1
b. 40 students (17%) were defined as not job-seeking
i. Of the students who have opted out of or were not job-seeking, 9 were not job-seeking for personal reasons such as illness, moving abroad, or other relocation, chose to pursue further higher education programs, such as Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees, 1 was unresponsive to outreach from our Career Services team, 3 chose to pursue non-engineering roles, 11 were not eligible for career services support under our terms of service, 2 returned to their previous employer, 4 became entrepreneurs, 3 opted out from receiving career services support, and 6 accepted non-coding or unpaid jobs before completing a Job-Search Cycle and chose to stop job-seeking.
Download Full Outcomes Reports and Data Visualization:
c. 5 students (2%) had not yet completed a Job-Search Cycle as of the compiling of this report
3. Of 184 students who completed a Job-Search Cycle, job placement data was available for 182 (99%).
Of the 182 students for whom job placement data was available, 94% (171) accepted a job offer4. 6% (11) had not accepted a job as of the compiling of this report.
4. Of 171 students who accepted offers, job structure was as follows:
a. 72% (123) accepted a full-time salaried role
b. 26% (45) accepted a full-time contract, internship, apprenticeship, or freelance role
c. 2% (3) accepted part-time work equating to more than 20 but less than 30 hours per week, and chose to stop job-seeking
5. Of 171 students who accepted offers, compensation data was available for 165 (96%) students. Compensation data was not available for 6 (4%) students. Of 165 students for whom compensation data was available, compensation was as follows:
a. Average starting salary for a full-time salaried role was $66,774
b. Average pay for a full-time contract, internship, apprenticeship, or freelance role, or part-time work, was $28 per hour
6. Of 171 students who accepted offers,
a. 85% (145) were in Software Engineering
b. 8% (13) were in Technical Teaching
c. 5% (8) were in Technical Product or Project Management
d. 3% (5) were in other technical disciplines, or employed in more than one technical discipline simultaneously
2018 NYC Immersive Outcomes Report:
1. The addressable population of 274 students is the number of students who were scheduled to complete an in-person Flatiron School immersive software engineering program between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017.
Of 274 addressable students included in this Report, 260 (95%) graduated from an in-person Flatiron School immersive software engineering program. Of the 260 students who graduated:
Of 274 addressable students included in this Report, 14 (5%) did not graduate from an in-person Flatiron School immersive software engineering program.
Of the students who did not graduate from an in-person Flatiron School immersive software engineering program, 9 transferred to the Online Software Engineering Bootcamp, 1 accepted a job before graduating the course and has not yet graduated as of the compiling of this Report, and 4 withdrew from Flatiron School.
1. Of 260 students who graduated from an in-person Flatiron School immersive software engineering program,
215 students (83%) had completed a Job-Search Cycle
b.45 students (17%) were defined as not job-seeking
i. Of the 45 students who were defined as not job-seeking, 2 were not job-seeking for personal reasons such as illness, moving abroad, or other relocation, 4 chose to pursue further higher education programs, such as Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees, 13 were unresponsive to outreach from our Career Services team, 6 chose to pursue non-engineering roles, 4 were not eligible for career services support under our terms of service, 5 returned to their previous employer or field, 3 became entrepreneurs, 5 opted out from receiving career services support, 1 had accepted a job offer before starting the program, and 2 paused the job search for more than 90 days following graduation.
2. Of 215 students who completed a Job-Search Cycle, employment data was available for 213 (99%). Of the 213 students for whom employment data was available, 97% (207) accepted a job offer. 3% (6) had not accepted a job as of the compiling of this Report.
3. Of 213 students for whom employment data was available, time to employment was as follows:
31% (66) had accepted a job within 30 days
55% (117) had accepted a job within 60 days
79% (169) had accepted a job within 120 days
74% (154) accepted a full-time salaried role
25% (51) accepted a full-time contract, internship, apprenticeship, or freelance role
1% (2) accepted part-time work equating to more than 20 but less than 30 hours per week, and chose to stop job-seeking
5. Of 207 students who accepted offers, compensation data was available for 202 (98%) students. Compensation data was not available for 5 (2%) students.
Of 202 students for whom compensation data was available, compensation was as follows:
Average starting salary for a full-time salaried role was $73,806
Average pay for a contract, internship, apprenticeship, part-time or freelance role was $30 per hour
6. Of 207 students who accepted offers:
83% (172) were in Software Engineering
7% (14) were in Technical Teaching
6% (13) were in Technical Product or Project Management
.3% (7) were in other technical disciplines, such as QA, Data Analytics, or Technical Sales
Data was not available for 1 (<1%).
© 2019 Flatiron School
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I Woke Up Early the Day I Died
A mental patient escapes from the looney bin in drag, robs a bank, and goes on the lam!
Genre : Comedy
Actors : Andrew McCarthy, Ann Magnuson, Billy Zane, Bud Cort, Christina Ricci, Marvin Lorence, Michael Greene, Robert Musselman, Roberta Hanley, Ron Perlman, Tippi Hedren
Director : Aris Iliopulos
Meet innocent Jim, terrified of girls, and on a reluctant quest to prove his manhood the night before he turns 30. He and his cocky friend Alex think they’ve hit the jackpot when they meet the beautiful siblings Kitty and Lulu, who seem up for anything on a wild party-fuelled night. But little do they know that the femmes fatales want to make Jim lose much more than just his virginity… Getting laid has never been so bloody difficult.
Enemies In-Law
Chul-Soo is the only son of a legendary thief family. He falls in love with Young-Hee who is a police officer. Her family is also a police family. To get her parents’ permission to marry, Chul-Soo undertakes an exam to become a police officer, but both families work to prevent their marriage.
Legendary secrets are revealed as Aladdin and his friends—Jasmine, Abu, Carpet and, of course, the always entertaining Genie—face all sorts of terrifying threats and make some exciting last-minute escapes pursuing the King Of Thieves and his villainous crew.
Genre: Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance
Ghost Team One
Two roommates deathly afraid of ghosts both fall in love with a girl who believes their home is haunted.
A young teenager named Mikey Walsh finds an old treasure map in his father’s attic. Hoping to save their homes from demolition, Mikey and his friends Data Wang, Chunk Cohen, and Mouth Devereaux run off on a big quest to find the secret stash of Pirate One-Eyed Willie.
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Family
Charlie gets released from an insane asylum and moves in with Miranda, the young daughter he left behind. Charlie believes that there is treasure hidden beneath the local Costco, so he puts together a plan to unearth the loot. By convincing Miranda to quit her job at McDonald’s and instead work at the wholesale store, he is able to obtain a key. Although Miranda is skeptical, she helps her father with his irrational quest.
Young industrialist Clemens Klina doesn’t have time for his children and accidentally hires a man who actually came to him, seeking revenge, as a nanny for them.
Austin High
What would happen if a group of high school slackers grew up and became the faculty at their own high school?
Night of the Demons
Angela (Shannon Elizabeth) is throwing a decadent Halloween party at New Orleans’ infamous Broussard Mansion. But after the police break up the festivities, Maddie (Monica Keena) and a few friends stay behind. Trapped inside the locked mansion gates, the remaining guests uncover a horrifying secret and soon fall victim to seven vicious, blood-thirsty demons.
Genre: Action, Comedy, Horror, Thriller
Barking Dogs Never Bite
An idle part-time college lecturer is annoyed by the yapping sound of a nearby dog. He decides to take drastic action.
Freaky Ali
A debt collector becomes a major sensation when he takes on the rich man’s sport of golfing.
Evil Dead II
Ash Williams and his girlfriend Linda find a log cabin in the woods with a voice recording from an archeologist who had recorded himself reciting ancient chants from “The Book of the Dead.” As they play the recording an evil power is unleashed taking over Linda’s body.
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These are green marketing books we have found useful and think you might like too.
Green Marketing – The context for change
The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools, and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding
By Jacquelyn A Ottman
Price: $21.96NZD
The New Rules of Green Marketing helps readers understand why value-based sustainability marketing has become a critical organizational capacity and how they themselves can adopt this approach. Drawing on the latest data from leadin researchers and reflecting on learnings from her corporate clients and other pioneers–including GE, Nike, Method, Starbucks, Timberland, HP, NatureWorks, Procter & Gamble, Stonyfield Farm, and Wal-Mart–Ottmanprovides practical strategies, tools, and inspiration for building every aspect of a credible value-based green marketing strategy.
Ethical Marketing And The New Consumer
By Chris Arnold
Ethical Marketing and The New Consumer explores and explains the various types of consumers and mindsets and presents techniques and channels to the ethical consumer market. The author identifies 50 ethical values that matter to consumers and uses case studies to show how great brands are winning over ethical consumers–or losing them.
Green Marketing’s Potential
Stitched Up: The Anti-capitalist Book of Fashion
By Tansy E. Hoskins
Stitched Up delves into the alluring world of fashion to reveal what is behind the clothes we wear. The book explores consumerism, class and advertising to reveal the interests which benefit from exploitation. Tansy E. Hoskins dissects fashion’s vampiric relationship with the planet and with our bodies to uncover what makes it so damaging.
The Song of the Shirt: The High Price of Cheap Garments, from Blackburn to Bangladesh
By Jeremy Seabrook
In elegiac prose, Jeremy Seabrook dwells upon the disproportionate sacrifices demanded by the manufacture of such throwaway items as baseball caps. He shows us how Bengal and Lancashire offer mirror images of impoverishment and affluence.
Publication date: 1 April 2015
Goodvertising: Creative Advertising That Cares
By Thomas Kolster
Goodvertising showcases outstanding creative work from over 120 campaigns from around the world that communicate that the client is being actively being and doing good. Each campaign is from a leading agency working in the full spectrum of media channels for an international array of clients including Unilever, Coca-Cola, Ben & Jerrys, Nike, Tropicana, Volkswagen, Fiat, Levis, Toyota, Honda, Sainsburys, Microsoft and IKEA, and charities including Greenpeace, Amnesty International, PETA and WWF. For any advertising or branding professional, this timely and much-needed book will provide inspiration and insights into how being good doesn’t lead to dull advertising.
Publication date: 1 October 2012
The Green Marketing Manifesto
By John Grant
The Green Marketing Manifesto provides a road map on how to organize green marketing effectively and sustainably. It offers a fresh start for green marketing, one that offers a practical and ingenious approach. The book offers many examples from companies and brands who are making headway in this difficult arena, such as Marks & Spencer, Sky, Virgin, Toyota, Tesco, O2 to give an indication of the potential of this route. John Grant creates a ‘Green Matrix’ as a tool for examining current practice and the practice that the future needs to embrace. This book is intended to assist marketers, by means of clear and practical guidance, through a complex transition towards meaningful green marketing.
Green Marketing Management
By Robert Dahlstorm
“Green Marketing Management” helps individuals make informed decisions about choices that impact the environment. This insightful new book provides a thorough introduction to the emerging field of green marketing management, including a useful exploration of the integral relationships among marketing strategy and action, macroeconomic sectors, and the environment. In addition to providing a detailed look at many green strategies, from environmentally friendly supply chains to the environmental implications of product creation, this book reviews the evolution of marketing and devotes considerable attention to the conditions for potential consumers to act in an ecologically responsible manner.
Making your brand an epicentre of change
Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s 50 Greatest Companies
By Jim Stengel
Based on almost ten years of empirical research involving 50,000 companies, Jim Stegnel, former director of marketing at Procter & Gamble, shows how the world’s 50 best businesses have a cause and effect relationship between financial performance and their ability to connect with fundamental human emotions, hopes, values and greater purposes. In this, the next big idea book, Stengel deftly blends timeless truths about human behaviour and values into an action’s framework, to show us how by embracing what he describes as ‘brand ideals’, the world’s best businesses can achieve incredible growth and drastically improve their performance.
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
By Daniel C. Esty and Andrew Winston
Following the evolution of business attitudes toward environmental concerns, Esty and Winston offer a series of fascinating plays by corporations such as Wal-Mart, GE and Chiquita (Banana), the bad guys who made good, and the good guys-watchdogs and industry associations, mostly-working behind the scenes.
Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose
By Jagdish N. Sheth, Rajendra S. Sisodia and David B. Wolfe
The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility has become embraced as a valid, important, and profitable business model. It is a trend that has transformed the workplace and corporate world.
Publication date: 9 February 2014
Marketing’s Responsibility – Greenwash
The Greenwash Effect: Corporate Decision, Celebrity Environmentalists, and What Big Business Isn’t Telling You about Their Green Products and Brands
By Guy Pearse
In “The Greenwash Effect”, Guy Pearse looks behind the corporate façade in the tradition of “Fast Food Nation” and “No Logo” –and what he finds will startle you. “The Greenwash Effect” is an entertaining and practical book that helps consumers to pick the truly green businesses from greenwashers and to demand a higher environmental standard from all.
Publication date: 5 August 2014
Green Marketing – Reinvention
Ecological Intelligence: The Coming Age of Radical Transparency
By Daniel Goleman
“Ecological Intelligence” shows you: Why a T-shirt that claims it is ‘100% organic cotton’ may be in fact no such thing; Why it’s good to buy tulips from Kenya and wine from France; and, That even the type of shampoo you use could affect the future of the planet. Knowledge is power. By discovering how to tune your eco intelligence, Daniel Goleman shows, you can make better decisions, and a better world.
Stuffocation
By James Wallman
Price: Unavailable
In this brilliant and original book, James Wallman explains and analyses why “Stuffocation” is the most messing problem of our time – and then goes in search of a solution. Through fascinating characters and brilliantly told stories, Wallman introduces the innovators whose lifestyles provide clues to how we will all be living tomorrow, and makes some of the world’s most counterintuitive, radical, and world-changing ideas feel inspiring – and possible for us all.
Publication date: 6 December 2013
Co-opportunity: Join Up for a Sustainable, Resilient, Prosperous World
In this book, green business guru John Grant shows how we, when we join forces through co-operative initiatives, can really make changes and work towards a better future. John uses cases and examples from around the world, from social networks to social ventures, Carrot Mobbing to the Carbon Disclosure Project, to show how a move to greater co-operation via what he calls Co-Operative Networks, can be a way forwards for all of us to increase the common well-being. Arguing that a climate for change can be created by engaging rather than alienating people, John also demonstrates ways of ‘relocating dreams’ to allow us to reassess our desires and priorities.
What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live
By Rachel Botsman and Roo Rodgers
This new and important book shows how technological advances are driving forms of ‘collaborative consumption’ which will change forever the ways in which interact both with businesses and each other.
Publication date: 2 March 2011
By Janine Benyus
This profound and accessible book details how science is studying nature’s best ideas to solve our toughest 21st century problems. Biomimicry is innovation inspired by nature – taking advantage of evolution’s 3.8 billion years of R&D since the first bacteria.
Positive Development: From Vicious Circles to Virtuous Cycles Through Built Environment Design
By Janis Birkeland
Janis Birkeland presents the innovative new paradigm of ‘Positive Development’ in which the built environment provides greater life quality, health, amenity and safety for all without sacrificing resources or money. With a different form of design, development itself can become a ‘sustainability solution’. A cornerstone of this new paradigm is the eco-retrofitting of the vast urban fabric we already inhabit. The author presents a revolutionary new tool called SmartMode to achieve this end. This book challenges everyone working in or studying the areas of sustainable development, planning, architecture or the built environment to rethink their current ideas and practices.
By Michael Braungart and William McDonough
‘Reduce, reuse and recycle’ urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this provocative, visionary book, this approach only perpetuates the one-way, ‘cradle to grave’ manufacturing model, dating to the Industrial Revolution, that creates such fantastic amounts of waste and pollution in the first place. McDonough and Braungart explain how products can be designed from the outset so that, after their useful lives, they will provide nourishment for something new – continually circulating as pure and viable materials within a ‘cradle to cradle’ model.
The World Guide to CSR: A Country-by-Country Analysis of Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility
By Wayne Visser and Nick Tolhurst
The World Guide to CSR is the first book to provide comparable national profiles that describe the evolution and practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for 58 countries and 5 global regions. Each regional and national profiles includes key information about the relevant CSR history, country-specific issues, trends, research and leading organisations. The purpose of the book is to give CSR professionals (including managers, consultants, academics, and NGOs focusing on the social, environmental and ethical responsibilities of business) a quick reference guide to CSR in different regional and national contexts.
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Let’s Interview: Glitch and Easter Egg YouTuber DPadGamer!
As you all know, video game glitch channels and series are a dime a dozen on YouTube. From
A+Start Show to Aurum, Mety333 to Stryder7X, it seems everyone and their dog has made videos about video game glitches at some point or another. They’re like challenge videos before coinless became a major thing, a major trend everyone seems to want to capitalise on, quality be damned.
And unfortunately, that’s led to many lazy, poorly done or otherwise unethical videos and creators becoming popular on the platform. Most notably, ones which don’t credit the original sources of the glitches they feature, and make mega bucks off of other people’s discoveries without giving them so much as a shout out in the video description. It’s an infuriating issue, and one that’s actually led to some speedrunning communities and dataminers outright hoarding information from the public in case those sneaky influencers and celebrities take the credit for it.
But while the bad actors often take the spotlight, there are exceptions out there. Such as today’s interviewee on Gaming Reinvented, DPadGamer.
And unlike many other video game glitch focused YouTubers, he does everything right on the ethics front. He works with communities to find out what’s going on, and makes sure to cover glitches that are taking off in the speedrunning scene. He gives full credit to people whose work is featured in his video, with named shoutouts right there next to their footage.
Hell, he even goes back to older games he’s already covered when new discoveries warrant it. Like with the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, where he went back and made a four part series about a two year old game simply because of how important (and interesting) all the glitches found in the meantime were.
So if you want to know how he makes his videos, how he choose what glitches to include there and how he became so successful on the platform, keep reading!
Let’s start out with a bit of personal background first. Who are you anyway?
My name is Sam, a twenty four year old dude. I’ve made videos of varying quality on YouTube since as far back as 2008, on a bunch of different channels until landing on my current channel; DPadGamer.
And where did your username come from? Why ‘DPadGamer’?
Unfortunately, its not a very interesting backstory. Back in 2011, I was offered to be partnered through a now defunct MCN (Multi Channel Network), but I had to make a new YouTube channel to do it. I brainstormed for a few days, making lists of every game, term, and what not that I could come up with. In the end I landed on “DPadGamer”, which admittedly is a bit uninspired but it fit the arbitrary criteria I came up with;
It should be simple, and straight forward.
It should be a name that I’m comfortable saying in public.
When heard aloud, it should be easy to spell.
And finally; I wanted it to be clearly related to gaming, without specifying a genre.
What about your interest in video games? How did that originally come about?
My interest in video games definitely came about because my brother, who is a good deal older than me, liked video games. As far back as I could remember, we’d have at least some kinda home console / handheld, which would trickle down to me after my brother had moved on.
Were you a fan of the Zelda series early on?
Definitely. Ocarina of Time came out when I was four, so my first experience with the series was with the 3D games. I thought they were awesome. Looking back, I played just about every installment, and I think I enjoyed them due to their combination of fun gameplay / puzzle elements.
Caption: Well DPadGamer actually started with the N64 version, but come on, that trailer was getting old by this point.
What other games did you enjoy anyway?
I’ve always loved Banjo-Kazooie, which is still my favorite game despite Banjo-Tooie being an objectively better game in comparison. Aside from those two stand-outs, I played and enjoyed a bunch of different games over the years. GameCube was definitely my most played console, as it was the first home console that I remember actually “owning”. It was a hand-me-down.
Caption: Given his affinity for Banjo-Kazooie, it’s no surprise DPadGamer made a challenge video about it recently.
Super Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Mega Man Battle Network (1-6), the Dark Souls series, Adventure Quest on PC, as well as eventually World of Warcraft were very memorable.
Which games are you playing at the moment?
I jump around a lot to be honest, but I occasionally play matched of League of Legends. After it came out I blasted through most of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice but i have yet to actually finish it. And theres a few games I often go back to that I have recently played like Terraria, Minecraft, and Stardew Valley.
Okay, enough of that, onto your content now. What made you decide to set up a YouTube channel anyway?
I’ve had at least seven different channels over the years. Back in 2008, my very first channel was actually made because I needed a channel to be able to comment on videos. I vaguely remember wanted to angrily defend the Nintendo Wii… And the only videos I uploaded to that channel were ‘anime music videos’…
And why did you decide to make it a gaming channel?
As for my current channel, the goal for a long time was to make Let’s Plays; episodic video game playthroughs where I talked over them. They were not very good, but that was my ideal form of content as it’s what I really enjoyed at the time.
Were there any other YouTubers that inspired you here?
I’m sure there were others, but when I first made ‘DPadGamer’ was definitely inspired by LPers like Chuggaaconnroy, Proton Jon, NintendoCaprisun, and StephenPlays.
Either way, it’s your glitch videos that many people subscribe for. Why did you decide to make videos about glitches anyway?
Its my glitch videos that definitely bring in a lot of subscribers, but my easter egg videos have arguably brought a comparable amount of people.
I initially started my current ‘era’ of content on DPadGamer with “Easter Eggs in Banjo-Kazooie”. It was my easter egg videos that let me prove to myself that I was capable of scripting / editing a decent video. Thats in comparison to over a thousand lazy let’s play episodes over the years.
As for my glitch videos, they came forth because put simply I really like glitches in video games. Its like bonus content, in a way. Another way to enjoy a game that I had already seen top to bottom.
Often, they’re like obscure windows into a game’s inner workings which is also really cool as I’ve always thought being a game developer and making my own game would be cool.
And how do you decide which games to make these videos about? Just general popularity online?
It’s changed, over time. Initially, I picked games that I enjoyed and knew there were glitches worth covering. After two years of making videos, I’ve already covered a lot of games so these day’s I’m often covering games I might not have played previously.
While I do consider a games popularity, at this point the most simple requirement is “Does this game have enough content to warrant a video.” After years of making garbage lets plays, I don’t want to make ‘lazy’ videos.
How about the choice of glitches to include? What makes you decide to cover a certain glitch in a certain video anyhow?
I don’t have a clear set of guidelines, just a vague sense over the years. Generally, I want to cover as much as possible without making it boring. So; if a game has a hundred different wall-clips, I’d only look at the few most interesting.
Like I said before, I think glitches are interesting. My videos are a way of sharing those interesting things with others; so if I find a glitch cool, you can expect it to be included.
One of the most famous sets of glitch videos on your channel concern the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, with three lengthy videos documenting almost every major bug in the title. What made you decide to create more glitch videos based on this game?
If we’re being very technical, my Breath of the Wild series is actually one my only series of videos looking at the same game, as until recently I only looked at one game per video.
After a year, I decided to revisit Breath of the Wild because another content creator I was talking with mentioned they enjoyed my first video and I decided to look and see if anything new had been found. Turns out, a LOT was found, so after researching the revisit I realised there was too much to cover in just one video.
One thing were found refreshing with said videos was how they were released a few years after the game came out, giving the community time to actually find interesting glitches. Are you going to be releasing similar videos for other games going forward?
Well, a LOT of my videos are for games that are years old. I don’t often cover that many new games. I do like making videos that feel “complete”, so allowing time for glitch to be discovered is definitely worthwhile.
If so, what games would you consider for a similar series? Maybe Super Mario
Odyssey?
It really comes down to whether or not a specific game has enough content to warrant a series. Also, it has to be a game I really enjoy because it can be extremely taxing to constantly play, record, script, and edit videos of the same game day after day for multiple weeks, which is what it took for Breath of the Wild.
Either way, it’s nice to see someone with a sizeable audience cover a game that’s actually got things to discuss rather than just whatever’s in the news at the moment. Do you wish more YouTubers acted like this?
Personally, my favourite YouTubers are the ones who cover games / topics which genuinely interests them. So as long as they’re doing that, I think any topic is fine.
Caption: Pannenkoek2012 being the ultimate example of this. He is practically obsessed with Super Mario 64, and his videos are really interesting because of that.
Still, it’s not just glitches you talk about. You also seem to make videos about challenges, secrets and mods too. Do you think diversifying your content is the way to go on YouTube nowadays?
I’ve seen so many channels come and go over the years. In my opinion, the ones that last are the ones who are open to trying new things. Sticking to just one kind of content and game is a great way to be successful in the short term, but it’ll lead to the eventual death of a channel, at least in my opinion.
What do you think about the boom in challenge videos in general? Seems like everyone and their dog is making videos about whether you can beat game X without doing Y…
Caption: As shown by previous interviewee Ceave Gaming, challenges are getting more varied than ever.
I think challenge videos are cool.
Why do you think they’ve become so popular anyway?
Seeing people beat games in odd ways has always been enjoyable, but the recent boom came forth because content creators found a way of conveying them (longer, scripted almost like documentaries) which appeals to a much wider audience.
And what do you think the next big thing might be anyway?
Honestly, no clue. Whatever it is, it’ll be something that doesn’t have much content now, or is a twist on a popular genre that makes it appealing to a wider audience.
Onto some future talk now though. First things first, have you got any interesting videos lined up?
Definitely interesting to me; within the next year I plan on covering Glitches in all of the Dark Souls games. Each game in the series is just bursting at the seams with really cool stuff, and I love the games, though I have no clue if they’ll be received well by my audience.
Also, within the next month or so I plan on making a “How Many Jumps Does It Take To Beat Banjo-Tooie” because I hate jumping, I guess.
What about ones based on topics you don’t usually cover? Any plans that don’t involve glitches, mods, challenges or easter eggs?
I’m always trying to think up new stuff to cover, but at this time I don’t have any specific plans.
How about collabs with other YouTubers? Got any of those planned for the future?
I don’t collaborate all that often, but I will be visiting E3 2019 alongside a bunch of my fellow members of “Minus World” a YouTuber group that consists of NathanielBandy, the HoboBros, Nintendrew, and a bunch of other cool bois, and we’ll definitely be recording some kind of videos together.
One thing we do find interesting is that you don’t have a Patreon for your channel, instead relying on merchandise sales. What made you decide to do that?
I did have a Patreon for a while, at least a year I think, but ultimately I chose to cancel it as I never felt I offered that value much to my patrons. Doesn’t feel like a good fit for my kind of content.
Also, I don’t actually rely on merchandise sales, its just the only other form of monetization that I have at the moment.
Have you considered any other ways of monetising your work?
Diversifying your sources of income is the way to go. Currently I just rely on ad revenue, the occasional sponsorship, and a small number of channel memberships (from really cool people).
How about alternatives to YouTube altogether? After all, the site isn’t exactly focused on helping its video creators all that much now, and it feels like one small mistake could spell the end of an entire channel…
Well, I don’t think YouTube has ever been that great about helping it’s video creators if I’m being honest. And the issue of “a single mistake” meaning the end of a channel isn’t just a YouTube only issue.
I’ve tried streaming regularly on Twitch, but streaming just isn’t really my thing. I am definitely open to alternatives to YouTube, but as it stands there’s not a lot out there.
Finally, what advice would you give someone wanting to start up a new gaming channel, and why?
I’ve made videos on various channels for over eight years until I saw any kind of success, which involved a lot of luck. It can be a valid job these days, but I’d never suggest anyone (gaming or otherwise) make a channel with the goal of being successful and making money.
Make videos that you enjoy, stay honest to who you are, and don’t do it for the money. Otherwise, you’re likely to get burnt out before too long.
Also; always try to improve and be open to change.
Wise words there DPadGamer. Especially the one about how you made videos for over eight years before you saw any kind of success.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what success looks like for most people and channels. It’s not a random lottery win type of success where suddenly their work blows up online and they’re a billionaire, it’s a hard earned slog that takes months or years of hard work to finally pay off.
But people don’t see that. They see the final product, the success story with thousands or millions of fans/users. They see the news stories about people like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. They see instant (or near instant) success and assume that’s the norm in society.
Caption: What people assume success looks like
It’s not. Just as in the startup world most successful entrepreneurs are 40 year olds running B2B businesses, most successful YouTubers are people who put years into their channels before seeing any real returns. They’re people like Boundary Break, Slopes Game Room, SNES Drunk, people who slogged through years of uploads before reaching fame and fortune.
And that’s true of almost anyone. Even your average celebrity, with Markiplier taking a good few years to become successful and PewDiePie taking 6 years to reach a million subscribers.
So don’t get disheartened if your new channel doesn’t immediately take off. Most don’t, and that’s perfectly normal. Instead, make the videos you enjoy making, get better at editing them and eventually, you too may be as successful as DPadGamer or Boundary Break.
Follow DPadGamer on Social Media
DPadGamer on YouTube
DPadGamer on Twitter
DPadGamer’s Instagram account
Buy DPadGamer Merchandise
Let’s Interview; Unused Content and Video Game Mystery YouTuber Oddheader!
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Nintendo Announces New Nintendo Direct for September 6th 2018!
Yes, it’s finally happened. After weeks of rumours and crazy predictions, Nintendo has announced a new Nintendo Direct. This Direct will be posted tomorrow at 3pm PT (11PM UK time), and will focus on new games for the 3DS and Nintendo Switch.
Here are the announcements about it on Twitter, courtesy of Nintendo of America:
Tune in 9/6 at 3pm PT for a new Nintendo Direct featuring around 35 minutes of information on upcoming Nintendo #3DS and #NintendoSwitch titles!https://t.co/vZbh2Ng6u1 pic.twitter.com/WVMdZYeGFv
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) 5 September 2018
As well as Nintendo UK:
At 23:00 (UK time) on 06/09, watch a new #NintendoDirect presentation, lasting approximately 35 minutes, for info about upcoming #NintendoSwitch and #3DS titles!https://t.co/batWvnJPX1 pic.twitter.com/9SVjZ5vsLo
— Nintendo UK (@NintendoUK) 5 September 2018
As you can tell, it’s a pretty big Nintendo Direct too, with 35 minutes of 3DS and Nintendo Switch announcements being included in the presentation.
But what exactly could they show there? What games will Nintendo announce at the event anyway?
Well, it’s obvious that Super Smash Bros Ultimate and the Pokemon Let’s Go games will be here. Every Direct has something Smash related in it now, and Nintendo’s been marketing the hell out of those Pokemon games recently. So that stuff seems a given.
Case in point…
Caption: Case in point…
And the likes of Luigi’s Mansion 3D may well make an appearance as well. After all, we haven’t heard much about that game recently, and we don’t have any idea what kind of new features it has either. Same with Mario & Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr’s Journey. We know the games exist, but we don’t know much about their features or what exists to incentivise fans of the original to shell out for the remakes.
Hence we’d bet at least one of those will appear in the Nintendo Direct too.
But it won’t just be about games we’ve seen footage of already, there’ll almost certainly be other Nintendo news and announcements as well. So what could those be?
Well in our (not too informed) opinion, we believe at least one or two of the following might be shown off in the Direct:
1. A new Wario Land game. Yeah it’s a bit of a cliche for us here at Gaming Reinvented now, and we do bring up the possibility for every new Nintendo event. But come on, the trademarks exist, the rumours have existed for years now… surely one of these has to come along sometime, right?
Hell, WarioWare Gold did, so Nintendo hasn’t completely forgotten about the franchise. So that’s one prediction we’ve got.
2. There’s also the possibility that we’ll see Metroid Prime 4 at one of these events too. This one was announced at E3 a while back, but we only ever really got a logo for it. That’s got to change soon, so it’s possible this Direct could be this game’s chance to shine.
3. Same goes for Pikmin 4. Like with Wario Land, it’s been in the ‘likely to exist’ category for a while now, and Miyamoto himself has even commented on the possibility a few times before. Hence that’s another possible reveal here, especially if Prime 4 is something Nintendo wants to save until E3 2019.
4. Super Mario Odyssey DLC could be a reveal too. Again, it’s been rumoured for a while now, but with the costumes found in the game’s datamine running dry, it seems all too possible the next update will be along some time soon.
5. Finally, there’s always that Yoshi game Nintendo revealed as well. You know, the mystery one they revealed in the early Switch days, the one that seemed vanished off the face of the Earth shortly afterwards. That’s got to appear again someday, and it’s quite possible that day’ll be tomorrow.
What happened to this thing?
Either way, those are our predictions for the event. They’re probably not all gonna be shown off tomorrow, but we believe one or two may very well be, along with a few smaller ‘surprise’ games that are a bit harder to predict.
Still, what do you think? Could Metroid Prime 4 or Pikmin 4 be in the Direct? What titles do you feel are likely to make an appearance in tomorrow’s event?
Tell us your thoughts on this (and more) over on the Gaming Latest forums today!
Is the Postponed Nintendo Direct Coming This Thursday?
Nintendo UK Accidentally Reveals Spyro Reignited Trilogy Could Be Heading to Nintendo Switch
Let’s Compare… Nintendo Switch Leaks and Predictions!
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South Africa’s manufacturing output jumps, boosting rand
REUTERS – 12 December 2018
South Africa’s manufacturing output rose more than expected in October to its highest level since June 2016, data showed on Tuesday, lifting the rand as the economy showed further signs of recovering from recession.
Africa’s most industrialised economy slipped into recession after contractions in the first two quarters of the year, but bounced back strongly in the third as the manufacturing, agriculture and retail sales sectors grew.
Manufacturing output rose by 3 percent year-on-year in October, driven by better vehicle and metals production, the statistics agency said.
The rand added to its earlier gains, advancing to 14.3450 per dollar from 14.40 just prior to the data’s release.
Motor vehicles, parts and accessories rose 14 percent, food and beverages was up 6 percent, while basic iron and steel product grew 3.2 percent.
Mining data earlier showed the output in the ailing industry had stabilised slightly, rising 0.5 percent year-on-year in the month.
Manufacturing accounts for 14 percent of gross domestic product and mining 8 percent. Both have been drivers of a primary sector slump blamed on low business and consumer confidence as well as political and policy uncertainty.
“It was a broad based recovery and not focused on one sector, and a first indication that things are beginning to turnaround for the better in the sector,” said Elize Kruger at NKC African Economics.
“However, there are still many headwinds like higher fuel prices, although they have come down now in December, which could contribute to a better environment,” Kruger said.
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How to Bring Humor to Meditation
A new book teaches mindfulness by emphasizing ease, joy, and jokes.
By Kira M. Newman | August 25, 2016
From the outside, meditation appears to be a thoroughly serious endeavor. You have to sit down, dutifully count your breaths and rein in your wandering mind, and practice this every day whether it’s fun or not.
But that isn’t Chade-Meng Tan’s approach to mindfulness. The founding chair of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which started as a mindfulness class at Google and now trains employees around the world, Tan lives by the motto that “life is too important to be taken seriously.” And he adopts the same attitude toward cultivating mindfulness—outlined in his new book, Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within.
While Tan acknowledges that there are other routes to mastering meditation (including sheer discipline and will), his focus is on joy. The book—peppered with cartoons in every chapter—teaches practices and principles for cultivating mindfulness that emphasize gentleness and ease, and lead to a life suffused with positive feeling.
“With practice, joy can become your personality and your whole life,” Tan writes. “What is neutral will become joyful, and what is joyful will become even more joyful.” He himself is living proof of this philosophy—his official title while at Google, printed on his business card, was “Jolly Good Fellow.”
© From Joy on Demand by Chade-Meng Tan, cartoons by Colin Goh; reprinted with permission from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Tan encourages lightness and playfulness in the way we think about mindfulness training in the first place. In a chapter called “Happiness Is Full of Crap,” he mentions teachings that compare the mind to “a piece of pure gold inside a big ball of cattle dung.” (“Great spiritual teachers tend to be funny people,” he observes.) In other words, we all have happiness within us; we just have to clear away the nasty habits of thinking that obscure it, which is part of the goal of mind training.
One of the practices he recommends is the ten-minute “Puppy Dog Meditation,” which has five steps that correspond to training a puppy:
Relax: “Relax and allow your puppy [mind] to wander, but if she gets too far away, gently and lovingly carry her back.”
Rejoice: “Now, the puppy is familiar with you and loves you, and she likes to sit next to you. When she does, you rejoice. If you catch her wandering, also rejoice at having such a lovely puppy before gently bringing her back.”
Resolve: “Now the puppy is a young dog and is ready for training. During training, you resolve to firmly enforce discipline [attention], in a gentle and loving way.”
Refine: “Now that your young dog is properly trained, it is time to refine her skills [attend to the subtle nature of the breath].”
Release: “Your dog is well trained and can be unleashed. . . . Let go of all effort and allow the mind to just be.”
In another, particularly delightful practice, Tan recommends that we take a moment every hour to wish for two people at our workplace to be happy, thinking, “I wish for this person to be happy, and I wish for that person to be happy.”
“If you like, you may pretend you are firing a ‘happiness ray gun’ at them and make ‘pew, pew’ sound effects in your head. Batteries not required,” Tan adds.
This is a micro version of loving-kindness meditation, where you generate feelings of goodwill and warmth toward others by wishing them well. Loving-kindness meditation has been shown to generate more positive attitudes toward the self and others and more positive emotions, which in turn can lead to a greater sense of connection to others, improved vagal tone (a measure of cardiac health), fewer symptoms of illness, higher life satisfaction, and less depression.
Lest we think all this humor is only for the innately cheerful, Tan assures us that he isn’t a naturally happy person; in fact, he was miserable for most of his childhood. Since then, he’s sometimes battled intense feelings of worthlessness and periods of overwhelming suffering in his life. But he now believes that humor is available to us even in moments of pain, at least some of the time.
Research backs him up: There’s some evidence that humor can help us cope with traumatic situations. Laughter releases dopamine, increases blood flow, and strengthens the heart. In one study, humor was even more effective than positivity at alleviating negative feelings. The benefits of laughter are no laughing matter.
HarperOne, 2016, 272 pages
And mindfulness isn’t just for happy times, either. Research suggests that mindfulness and mindfulness-based therapies can help students coping with failure and self-doubt, help veterans battling post-traumatic stress disorder, and help those suffering from depression and anxiety.
Amidst all the cartoons and jokes, it’s easy to forget that Tan himself is extraordinarily serious about mindfulness. He’s been practicing for 21 years, and he now meditates for three hours a day. Although anyone can get a hint of joy from a calming, mindful breath or a short loving-kindness meditation, it takes dedication to build a life where joy is the default state.
Tan’s advice for those who want to follow in his footsteps? “Don’t stop and don’t strain.” Practice, but not to the point of tension and rigidity. Be dedicated and persistent, but gentle and lighthearted at the same time. That is the path to joy.
Laughing Buddha photo by Petteri Sulonen / CC BY 2.0
Compassionate Leaders are Effective Leaders By Chade-Meng Tan
How Mindfulness Is Changing Law Enforcement By Jill Suttie
How to Focus a Wandering Mind By Wendy Hasenkamp
How to Be an Emotional Jedi By Marc Lesser
How Meditation Changes the Brain By Shauna Shapiro
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Research suggests that technology can be designed to make work more enjoyable (rather than frustrating).
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Lewd conduct accusations land ex-NFL player back in jail
Posted 9:36 PM, March 4, 2019, by Jaime Chambers and City News Service, Updated at 10:39PM, March 4, 2019
SAN DIEGO – Ex-NFL tight end Kellen Winslow II, who is awaiting trial on charges of raping two women in Encinitas and raping an unconscious teenage girl, is being held without bail on newly filed misdemeanor charges related to alleged lewd conduct with a 77-year-old woman at a Carlsbad gym.
Winslow, who had been out of custody on $2 million bail in connection with his felony case, is accused of touching himself and asking the woman if she liked it on Feb. 13, then groping her while she was in a hot tub at the same gym on Feb. 22, according to police and prosecutors.
The 35-year-old son of former San Diego Chargers legend Kellen Winslow, who's being held at the Vista Detention Facility, pleaded not guilty Monday to a pair of lewd conduct counts and one count each of elder abuse and battery of an elder.
He faces life in prison if convicted in the felony case, which involves allegations that he raped a 17-year-old girl in 2003 at a home in Scripps Ranch; lured a 54-year-old transient -- who was hitchhiking -- into his Hummer for a ride, then raped her on March 17, 2018; and that he raped a 59- year-old homeless woman on May 13, 2018, then threatened to kill her if she told anyone.
Ex-NFL star appears in court without wife or wedding ring
He appeared in a Vista courtroom Tuesday on a defense motion to dismiss the felony complaint, in which he's charged with kidnapping, forcible rape and rape of an unconscious person. A judge denied the request with the exception of one kidnapping count, finding insufficient evidence that the victim was transported under force or fear prior to the alleged rape.
Deputy District Attorney Dan Owens said that he will seek to have the misdemeanor counts consolidated into the main case during Winslow's next court hearing on March 29.
Winslow II grew up in San Diego and attended the University of Miami. He played for four NFL teams between 2004 and 2013.
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Baby Du
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À propos de Helena
Helena Noguerra speaks five languages, sings in three, is a popular TV presenter in France, has worked as a radio DJ, has published a novel, and does more than her fair share of modeling. Belgian born, Helena is part of the French retro pop movement called "minimalist variety" (similar to the American and English indie baroque pop scene), she was a member of a number of musical groups, including the moody downtempo act Ollano, whose self-titled album enjoyed a Stateside release. Then, Helena went solo with the sly Projet: Bikini before putting out Azul under her first name. Perhaps spurred on by the international success of such sonically similar artists as Italy's Carla Bruni and Brazil's Bebel Gilberto, Azul was released in the U.S. and received a warm critical response. A lovely combination of 1960s Parisian pop, bossa nova and modern electronica, Azul was produced by chill crowd favorite Bertrand Burgalat and features Noguerra's breathy vocals and witty faux naif lyrics in Portuguese, French and English. Her subsequent album, Nee Dans La Nature, downplays the electronics and has an even more pastoral feel than her previous work. Philippe Katerine, Noguerra's musical collaborator, has released a number of worthy albums under the band name Katerine. Nick Dedina
Ana Laan, Carla Bruni, Katerine, La Grande Sophie, Lio, Loane
Helena Noguerra speaks five languages, sings in three, is a popular TV presenter in France, has worked as a radio DJ, has published a novel, and does more than her fair share of modeling. Belgian born, Helena is part of the French retro pop movement called "minimalist variety" (similar to the American and English indie baroque pop scene), she was a member of a number of musical groups, including the moody downtempo act Ollano, whose self-titled album enjoyed a Stateside release. Then, Helena went solo with the sly Projet: Bikini before putting out Azul under her first name. Perhaps spurred on by the international success of such sonically similar artists as Italy's Carla Bruni and Brazil's Bebel Gilberto, Azul was released in the U.S. and received a warm critical response. A lovely combination of 1960s Parisian pop, bossa nova and modern electronica, Azul was produced by chill crowd favorite Bertrand Burgalat and features Noguerra's breathy vocals and witty faux naif lyrics in Portuguese, French and English. Her subsequent album, Nee Dans La Nature, downplays the electronics and has an even more pastoral feel than her previous work. Philippe Katerine, Noguerra's musical collaborator, has released a number of worthy albums under the band name Katerine.
Nick Dedina
Alt/Punk
I Surrender All
Ambient Define 2017
Quisiera para el tiempo (Incondicional trilogía...
Man of Few Words
Smooth Ambient 2017
Némesis
Omar Aldama
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← What a different Best Buy experience
Vendors are missing out on a malware fighting technique →
Anatomy of a Startup – PredictableIT Part III
Posted on August 31, 2012 by halberenson
With writer’s block out-of-the-way it’s time to finally finish this story. I apologize in advance for not polishing this more, but the stops and starts have caused problems. And I either push this out now or who knows when it will see the light of day.
Let’s start with our value proposition. When my partner first mentioned his consulting engagement he had a great story to tell. He’d interviewed the client’s CEO who said “I told them I wanted the systems backed up every day, but I have this feeling it isn’t happening”. When he asked the office people who were supposed to be running the (VAR-developed backup procedures) they said “The CEO thinks we are backing up the systems every day, but it isn’t happening”. This was also the height of fear and (justifiable) worry about security of desktop systems, and few customer PCs were being reliably patched, running and updating Anti-Virus/Spyware/Malware software, etc. And customers were paying VARs for Time and Materials to come in periodically and update software, remove malware, etc. This was an unpredictable and often large expense. So turning a very unpredictable IT expense, unconstrained security problem, and endless headaches into a predictable service seemed like a business opportunity . Give us $99 or $129 (or whatever, depending on package) per user per month and we take care of the rest. So we decided to go for it.
The customers we were targeting were small businesses, those who didn’t have IT staffs of their own. We initially targeted 5-25 users, though we took on some “Friends and Family” with fewer users (e.g., my wife’s Horse Boarding business) and were in discussions with potential customers in the 25-50 range. Small business is a notoriously hard nut to crack, which is why you don’t tend to see dominant players in the market. But that also makes it a place one can target without getting bulldozed by the Microsoft’s, SAP’s, Oracle’s, etc. of the world. Oh they target small businesses to various degrees, but their success rate is poor. For example Microsoft’s efforts in this 5-25 user category have pretty much all fallen flat. bCentral was abandoned. A few years later another attempt was made as “Office Live Small Business”. It too was discontinued. Two attempts at small business accounting software have come and gone. Now Microsoft is targeting this market with Office 365, and the jury is out on if they will finally succeed. However, niche offerings such as Quickbooks do well, and so we looked to incorporate those into our service.
We also discovered that small businesses could be quite complex. A principal often owned multiple businesses and didn’t want complete isolation (e.g., he might use a single email account with multiple addresses). While the general employee base had yet to discover smartphones (recall this was circa 2005) often the principal had (the Pam Treo line was particularly popular). Or try to imagine the shared calendaring problems of handling two fractional business aircraft where the owners, pilots, aircraft, etc. all had to be involved in scheduling. People think small business is much simpler than large enterprises, and they are, but often not by the magnitude most assume. A small medical clinic has to conform to HIPPA every bit as much as a huge hospital chain.
We did talk about an alternate service offering, remote management of desktops for example, but concluded that was something for the future. Or how another company might emerge to do this as a competitive approach to ours. We found some nascent attempts, but they didn’t really seem like threats. We also considered how Microsoft’s efforts to automate patching and address security and other cost of ownership issues might eventually eliminate much of the problem we were trying to address. Well, here we are eight years after our initial discussions and while Microsoft has addressed many of the problems (good automated patching, building anti-malware into the system, etc.) third-party software is still years behind. The situation, though significantly improved, hasn’t really changed. This is pretty much what we expected, and didn’t believe it harmed our overall value proposition though we clearly understood our message would have to mature just as the PC software ecosystem matured. In that regard we seem to have gotten it right as the Cloud, VDI, etc. finally seem to be living up to the promise that we’d anticipated.
As you read through the previous two blog postings you probably were thinking you saw things we could have avoided doing in the first release of the service offering, and as I’ve mentioned before on some level you are right. But now imagine an environment where, for example, we hadn’t implemented the virtual machine system (VDI) for running (semi-) arbitrary apps. No Quickbooks? There are one or two users per company (often including the principal) whose desktops can’t be locked down. No CRM solution? There goes all the sales people’s desktops. Etc. So how do we offer any value proposition around patching, backups, security, etc. when a significant portion of the desktops at the customer live outside our solution? We couldn’t. And so we solved for all the key general business software and even could have handled vertical industry software.
In fact we really only had one out-and-out failure scenario, the Graphic Designer at one of our customers. There was just no way to run Photoshop on a server and make it usable via Terminal Services. Recall that we are talking 2005 with Windows Server 2003 and technology for accelerating graphics (RemoteFX) wasn’t added to Terminal Services for another 7 years, with Windows 2008 R2 SP1 in 2011! That user was allowed to have a non-locked down PC, though they still did non-Photoshop work through Terminal Services.
So with that out-of-the-way it’s good to describe one of our big mistakes, how the initial system was developed. As I’ve mentioned previously we started with a plan that required just a website and ended up building a full automated ordering, billing, provisioning, etc. system. When we started we contracted out the web work to a developer who had experience in tech support and had done web development work. Unfortunately as our needs changed we stuck with the same developer. That was mistake 1(a). Then when we realized as we moved on to some more advanced work that it was stretching his abilities we considered replacing him, but instead helped him a bit and things seemed to improve considerably. Not replacing him when we realized he was struggling was mistake 1(b). Then when we realized he was struggling again we were going to replace him, but we were so close to the finish line and had no prospects to replace him that we decided to tough it out. We knew we were going to rewrite the stuff for Phase 2 anyway, so we just needed to get to launch of the service asap. That was mistake 1(c). Finally we concluded it just wasn’t ever going to be done, so we let the contractor go and I dropped all my other duties and became the full-time developer. It took me about a month to clean up and rewrite a lot of the modules so we could launch the service. And every time I looked at another module I asked myself how I could have let this happen. I should have just written the system myself. Of course then we would have had a similar problem on the operations side.
Our failure to fire the contract developer early and find an alternate way to build the system, either by doing it ourselves or finding a more appropriate contractor, is the thing that my partner and I beat ourselves up about the most. Would it have changed the outcome? Probably not. But we would have either failed faster (and thus spent less money to do so), or ended up with an asset we could have gotten a little of our investment back by selling, or changes path, or…. For example our automated provisioning was something a lot of people were looking for, but the code we had from the contractor was not something we could have gotten $0.02 for. I’m guessing (and I’m fairly confident) that if I’d written the code then we could have sold it for at least what we invested in the company.
Now to the two real business issues. Let’s start with the cost structure.
When you looked at our cost structure you could basically break it down into four major buckets:
Microsoft Licensing (particularly the Service Providers License Agreement or SPLA) model and costs
Data Center Cost of Operations
First we’ll dig into the Microsoft SPLA. I haven’t looked into how it works today, but it remains a real issue for people trying to create services. The SPLA is Microsoft’s model for how a service provider licenses its software for renting out as part of a service. It’s complex, but essentially you are paying a fee per month per (named) user for each piece of software (and sometimes functionality within software). The problem for us was really around what Microsoft made available under the SPLA, how they priced it, and the lack of any way to transfer existing licenses into the SPLA world.
Pricing first. Because this is a rental model it makes no sense to tie it to a specific software version. That is, you rent Microsoft Office not Microsoft Office 20xx. In Microsoft’s packaged product world this is done via something called Software Assurance (SA). With SA you pay a certain amount per year and get any new versions that come out during the terms of your contract. For this Microsoft charges a premium compared to just purchasing a specific version of the product. Well, SPLA pricing is based on SA pricing. There is only one problem with this, small businesses don’t (or at least didn’t at the time) buy Software Assurance. Not only that, but small businesses would typically not upgrade for much longer than Microsoft assumes in its pricing further raising the effective cost. That is, SPLA pricing was based on the life of a product being some number of months (say 30, though I don’t recall the actual number) but a typical small business might go twice that before buying a new version of Office. So a business comparing the cost of going into Staples and walking out with Microsoft Office Professional to the cost of renting it from us would discover that they paid tremendously more to rent it from us. And that was before adding in our cost of operations, support, G&A, etc.
But it gets worse. Microsoft doesn’t license everything under the SPLA. Using Office once again as our example, they only licensed Office Standard and Office Professional. One could not license individual Office applications like Word, nor could you offer Office Small Business under SPLA. So now our customers were comparing the much lower priced Office Small Business Edition price at Staples et al to being forced into Office Professional from us.
Third was that Microsoft offered no way to credit a user for already having a packaged product license. So let’s say a company had a bunch of PCs running Office 2003 and they were now investigating using our service. They were going to pay to re-license Office 2003 even though they already owned it. That they would automatically get Office 2007 when it came out for no additional cost was nice, but they just couldn’t get past the idea that they were paying twice for Office 2003.
So from the start Microsoft’s licensing policies handicapped us tremendously. While we knew pretty early on that the SPLA presented us with challenges we didn’t know how serious this would be until we started actively marketing our service. Early research indicated that we needed a $99 per user entry point, and we figured out we could offer this even with SPLA’s issues. Later we would discover how deeply some people would dig into our pricing, and discover how much they were effectively paying Microsoft. And as I looked into how we might build a second generation system I made an interesting discovery. I’d done a design for a much lower cost data center and was trying to see how it impacted our ability to offer a much lower price of entry. Plugging in various lower costs of operations into our business model produced far less improvement than I expected. Finally, out of frustration, I just zeroed out our operations costs and to my surprise we still weren’t profitable much below $99/user. Further analysis showed that because the SPLA model had no scalability built into it we eventually became nothing but a means of transferring money to Microsoft. There was no opportunity to charge for our added value!
From the start we’d considered moving away from a pure Microsoft software offering in order to lower our cost structure. For example, we could offer Open Office instead of Microsoft Office as part of an entry-level service offering. The problem was that customers weren’t aware of Open Office and we didn’t feel like our business model offered a way to sell them on the idea. This theme, that we were taking on a huge customer education problem in everything we did, is important. It would become key to our decision to shutter the business.
What fascinated us about SPLA pricing becoming such a dominant factor in our cost structure and deliberations is that we’d always expected the cost of operations to be our pain point. After all, we were creating a service. And indeed our initial design and use of a Managed Hosting company was a cost problem. And it was going to get worse. First of all our initial offering benefited from “Friends and Family” pricing, But future systems would not. We’d anticipated that, but hadn’t anticipated that they were changing their business model in a way that would impact our assumptions. In particular, they pretty much eliminated their hardware rental model in favor of a lease model (essentially transferring the financing of hardware from their balance sheet to their client’s balance sheets). Finally, they just weren’t geared towards being what we would today call a Cloud Data Center.
As I mentioned in one of the earlier posts we found that we were duplicating a lot of the services that in theory we were getting from the Managed Services Provider. Patch Management? I was doing it. Anti-Spyware? I was doing it. Anti-SPAM? My partner was doing it. etc. We realized that they were expensive and we weren’t getting much for our money. So we looked at moving to another hosting situation. We found much cheaper alternatives for raw hosting. I designed a storage and backup system that quite literally would cost us 1/10th what we were paying the managed hoster. We’d always had a problem with the managed hoster’s Internet connectivity (a historical artifact that I won’t go into), and the new hoster solved that by offering connectivity through multiple network providers. Basically, we were excited about the opportunities for creating our second generation hosting environment. Unlike the SPLA situation, this is something that was really within our control.
In our initial business modeling we were shocked to discover how dominant support costs would be. The problem was that given how new the environment was to the customer they would need lots of handholding. This would be particularly true in the first few months after a customer moved to our system. Then we expected that someone inside their organization would have enough expertise to help new users, and our support costs would drop. Still we modeled high costs because we couldn’t be certain of when (or even if) and by how much they would actually drop off. We invested in the trouble ticket system and wrote knowledge base articles early on so we could point users at those. We tried to refine the line between what constituted included support and what would be paid time and materials assistance. We looked at innovative ways to farm out support (e.g., people who would help do migrations). But through to the end support remained our big unknown. It was the one thing that the more we succeeded the closer we might be driven to failure, each new customer demanding attention from us that potentially we couldn’t deliver on. We could add machines to handle the load fairly quickly. We’d automated things tremendously. But we couldn’t add trained support people quickly or economically. Particularly if we succeeded wildly.
The rest of our costs were the usual and we kept them low. I mentioned at one point that our business model was to avoid taking on fixed costs, employees, etc. My partner’s brother was our accountant and his firm gave us friends and family rates. We shared an office. We answered our own phones (and hosted our own Asterisk-based PBX, which we also offered to customers as a service). We incorporated rational customer acquisition costs into our plan, including compensation for third parties such as VARs who brought us customers. There is nothing here that really stands out other than to say that we were very complete in modeling and understanding our overall cost structure yet quite frugal about spending that wouldn’t move the business along.
Even as we discovered potentially fatal roadblocks, like the SPLA situation, we pressed on. We knew we were pioneering Software-as-a-Service and that the world would change as we did so. I made the rounds at Microsoft, including with senior executives such as Bob Muglia, explaining what we were trying to do and where Microsoft was killing us. In some cases (basically technical issues) they offered assistance, but I didn’t walk away with anything on the business front. I didn’t expect to. What I expected was to get Microsoft thinking about these issues so that once we were successful I could come back and really press them to make changes. The Microsoft people were really interested, from the Terminal Services development team to the SPLA licensing guys to executives such as Bob. Now granted I had contacts, for example a long history with Bob, that made this easier. But the SPLA guys, for example, didn’t really know about that history. They were just interested in talking to one of their customers.
Sadly I had less luck with other software companies. Intuit, for example, was totally uninterested in discussing the licensing roadblocks they’d put in front of companies trying to host their products. At first I thought it was me, but then a competitor called to ask me if and how we were going to host multi-user Quickbooks. I discovered from her that no one had figured this out, and that Intuit hadn’t been interested in talking to anyone about it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Microsoft was way ahead of other software companies in trying to address the hosting market. But we knew others would eventually have to come around.
With our system ready to go and a path forward understood, or at least the roadblocks well understood, we launched our service. For the first few months we knew this would be largely experimental in nature because we didn’t know exactly what would work. And we’d previously shelved our attempts to hire a VP of Marketing and Sales, which I’ll get to shortly.
Initially I concentrated on search-engine optimization and search advertising while my partner concentrated on following up on inquiries, converting trials into paid customers, working with VARs or other potential partners, and a test direct mail campaign. We learned a lot, much of which I’ve already mentioned (e.g., potential customer’s really latching on to the fact they’d already paid for Microsoft Office and not wanting to pay a second time). We also learned that startups weren’t a good target for offering because they had a different focus on costs. The CEO of one startup told us quite simply that they were willing to take the risk of losing data or having machines infected with viruses rather than burn through their cash to protect against those possibilities.
And we learned that search advertising wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. At the time people talked in terms of “pennies per click”, but that was already no longer true. One issue we had was that keywords that might be uniquely associated with a business such as ours had absolutely no search traffic. Literally it was so bad that Google would shut down our campaign for lack of results. So we had to look at keywords that lots of others were competing for, like Anti-Virus or Backup. The only directly applicable keywords with reasonable activity were things like Hosted Exchange. These kinds of key words were going for several dollars, to even $15-20, per click! Ads that did a good job describing what we offered got light clicks while ads that offered a more general description of us solving a problem got heavy clicks. But those heavy clicks were at the expense of being poorly qualified. Paying $20 just to have the person hit “Back” in the browser when they read the first few lines of our website was quite discouraging. We got better at this as time went along, and also focused more on SEO instead of paid advertising, but it was also another lesson in the maturity of the market.
Customers weren’t looking for the solution we were offering. That was a lesson we got from studying which keywords were being searched on. It was also a lesson we learned from our direct mail campaign. Indeed the strongest interest we got was from IT professionals, such as VARs, who were looking for ways to offload the headaches their customers were causing. We’d always expected this community to become a channel for our product, so we started to focus more attention on it.
As we approached the need for another capital infusion we reflected on everything we’d learned. We came to one key conclusion, that given customers weren’t looking for a solution like ours we were going to have to educate them. And that was going to be a multi-million dollar effort, not something we could self-fund. As we thought about how much money we’d need to raise, and what it would mean for our ownership and control of the company, we realized it made continuing on unattractive. My partner was willing to put in one more chunk of money to see if we could reach a more attractive position before accepting outside investment. I was semi-willing, though I was being asked to return to Microsoft and was really tempted by the opportunity. We decided to pull the plug rather than throw good money after bad.
As I look back there is a lot we did right and a lot we should have done differently. Conceptually we got to a great place, even though the code was pretty much throw-away. Had we started with the volume market as our target initially we would have made a number of different decisions. We probably wouldn’t have taken on the consulting customers and their distraction. We wouldn’t have put development of a complex system into the hands of a web developer (and I would have really led the development effort). We would have accepted outside investment (which we were offered, but turned away), both to have a proper development and operations team and dedicated marketing/sales personnel with substantial funding for a marketing campaign.
Or we could have stuck to the original vision for a modest cash-generating business and probably done quite well.
The truth is we had one of the greatest experiences of our work lives. It was fun. We learned a huge amount. We tried some very unconventional things. We got in early (too early sadly) on what is now one of the hottest areas in computing.
I’d do it again. Hopefully with a better ending.
This entry was posted in Cloud, Computer and Internet and tagged PredictableIT. Bookmark the permalink.
4 Responses to Anatomy of a Startup – PredictableIT Part III
MarcelDevG says:
Been there, done that, and also got out. For a lot of the same reasons!
Chui Tey says:
Wow. Who would have thought licensing would be such a deal breaker. Thank you Hal, for writing this up. I learnt much.
halberenson says:
In answer to a question over on Twitter…
PredictableIT was targetted as an all-inclusive solution for Small Businesses where DaaS was just a piece of the offering. So we were DaaS, IaaS, and SaaS rolled up into one service offering. Current DaaS offerings also seem to primarily target larger companies than we’d targetted. But indeed we saw what is now called DaaS as a key technological differentiator.
Interestingly we didn’t really see DaaS as a standalone, enterprise size independent, offering as a potential market back then. It seemed to us that larger enterprises would offer such a service in-house. Again consider that we were operating in 2005-2006. Desktone, one of the current crop of DaaS vendors, wasn’t founded until 2007. And the explosion of VDI offerings really started in 2008, and is just now reaching a decent level of maturity. So it will be interesting to see if DaaS, or even VDI itself, ever amounts to more than a niche.
John Yii (@JohnYii) says:
Thanks for sharing again Hal.
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Tag: epic games
Shenmue 3 Developer Addresses Fans Concerns Over Epic Store Exclusivity
June 16, 2019 / Gigamaxgames / 0 Comments
The developer behind Shenmue 3, Ys Net, revealed last week during E3 that the crowdfunded sequel will appear on the PC as an Epic Store exclusive at launch.
Initial fan reaction was mixed, with many feeling agitated that Ys Net had moved back from their initial statement that said the game would be available on Steam. The developer still plans on launching the game on the platform, but not for 12 months after the initial release.
Ys Net has responded to the disparaging comments on their Kickstarter Page, saying that they are listening to fans. Important Representatives from the studio are currently on their way back from E3 2019, but the studio assured fans that they plan on sitting down and finding a way forward in returning fan confidence to the game when they get back home.
"We want to make sure that the Backers are aware that we are listening to their concerns," Ys Net says in the update. "We kindly ask all our fans to have some patience, we are currently at E3 demoing the game and need to get back to our respective offices to assess the situation and together find a way forward to justify the trust you placed in us." (https://bit.ly/2ZuKek0)
Back in 2015, development was funded on Kickstarter for Shenmue 3 by 69,000 backers contributing a total of $6.3 million. The publisher behind Saints Row, Deep Silver, later stepped forward to take on publishing rights for the game.
Shenmue 3 was just one of the titles the Epic Games Store said was coming to the platform as a timed exclusive. The studio clarified that this move was made because Epic offered them a unique sense of stability that they could not find anywhere else.
Epic Claims They Will Stop Pursuing Exclusives If Steam Gives Developers A Bigger Cut
April 25, 2019 / Gigamaxgames / 0 Comments
The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, has given Steam an ultimatum. If Valve offers the same compensation that Epic does for their titles, then they will stop signing exclusivity deals that keep games off of Steam.
If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 25, 2019
"If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam," Sweeney wrote. "Such a move would be a glorious moment in the history of PC gaming, and would have a sweeping impact on other platforms for generations to come."
Epic Store Pays Better
Recently, many developers have been leaving Steam and signing exclusivity deals with Epic Games. One of the first games to make this move was the hit indie game, Ashen, which was then followed by AAA titles Metro Exodus and Borderlands 3. Ubisoft has almost completely left Steam and entered into a partnership with the Epic Games Store, moving its major PC releases to the platform starting with The Division 2.
Chart and data source (Dec. 2018): https://bit.ly/2Gu2oKw
Fans have certainly shown their discontent for this practice, particularly when games are moved from one store to another during the pre-order phase. Many have taken to various social media platforms to show their discontent while others have taken to "review bombing" games that have previous titles in the series such as Metro: Last Light and Metro 2033.
Ironically, that this misuse is possible and that Steam has no interest in correcting this misuse makes me kind of happy about 2k’s decision and makes me want to reconsider Gearbox Publishing’s current posture on the platform.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) April 5, 2019
The brutal reactions from Steam users and Valve's slow response to the review bombings have led to criticism from the developers themselves. "Ironically, that this misuse is possible and that Steam has no interest in correcting this misuse makes me kind of happy about 2K's decision and makes me want to reconsider Gearbox Publishing's current posture on the platform," Gearbox studio head Randy Pitchford wrote.
Competition breeds innovation. Epic Games Store is offering creators better deals and Steam and its community is losing out on some key titles. Only time will tell if Steam decides to revisit their revenue sharing structure but until then, Epic Games will continue working on accumulating as many exclusives as they see fit. Be sure to stick and check back on GigamaxGames.com. for all the latest gaming news and video game industry updates!
Fortnite Season 7 Has Arrived With Plenty of Changes
December 6, 2018 / Gigamaxgames / 0 Comments
Epic Games officially kicked off Season 7 of their insanely popular shooter, Fortnite, with the launch of their 7.00 update. As with every other season before it, this is a substantial patch that signifies the start of major changes to the game in the form of an event. In this update, an iceberg has collided with the Fortnite island, which expanded the map, added an icy look over sections of the terrain, added a plane, new skins, and plenty more.
"Discover new areas such as Frosty Flights, Polar Peak, and more," Epic says in the patch notes. "Uncover what’s in the new Battle Pass, rule the skies with the new X-4 Stormwing plane, and change the style of some of your favorite weapons and items with Wraps in Battle Royale."
Take to the Skys
The plane is able to hold five players, the pilot and four other people who ride along on the wings. The flying vehicle features a mounted turret that makes it a devastating mobile weapon.
With the new season also comes a new battle pass that features over 100 new cosmetic items for players to unlock by completing challenges and playing the game. Along with the typical cosmetics, Epic created a new type called Wraps which "allow you to customize your weapons and vehicles with all new looks to match and complement your favorite outfits." (https://bit.ly/2RDLdeb)
Balloons have been adjusted so that players can still use their guns with the item. Epic also gave the boot to a bunch of items with the start of Fortnite Season 7 including Shadow Stones, Port-A-Fort, Chiller, Clinger, Double Barreled Shotgun, and Shockwave Grenade.
One of the biggest additions to Season 7 is Creative Mode, a sandbox based experience that encourages players to build unique Fortnite adventures either alone or with friends on their own private island. "It's a brand new way to experience the world of Fortnite," Epic said about the mode. "Design games, race around the island, battle your friends in new ways and build your dream Fortnite. It's all happening on your own private island where everything you make is saved."
Fortnite is currently a powerhouse in the multiplayer gaming space and it appears that Epic has no plans of slowing down on releasing updates for their popular shooter. If you'd like to see a full breakdown of all the changes, check out the full patch notes on Fortnite's website.
Fortnite: Battle Royale – What’s New With Season 5?
July 10, 2018 / Gigamaxgames / 0 Comments
What's New with Fortnite Season 5?
Confirmed, Discoveries, and Rumors
Epic Games announced that Season 5 of the massively popular Fortnite: Battle Royale will begin Thursday, July 12. Fortnite Season 5 will be available immediately after Season 4 ends and Epic finishes with their scheduled server maintenance. The latest patch will open up on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and iOS at 1 AM PT / 4 AM ET / 9 AM BST / 6 PM AET.
Gamers are lining up for their chance to purchase the Season 5 Battle Pass. Epic hasn’t confirmed exactly what skins or other items players can expect from the newest Battle Pass or how much it will cost. With no new skins shown off, there is an image of a new mask and a battleaxe in Epic Games teaser. It seems as though this is a partial look at some of the new Season 5 skins to come.
All previous Battle Passes cost 950 V-Bucks and it is assumed that Season 5 will be the same. Fortnite's in-game currency can either be bought with real money, earned when they reach certain reward tiers or in the paid “Save the World” mode. 1000 V-Bucks currently costs $9.99.
Epic Games Keeps Some Secrets
The developer hasn’t been releasing a pool of details about Fortnite Season 5 but recent in-game events has imaginations running wild. A mysterious rocket in the Evil Lair took off into the sky on June 30th which caused a giant rift to open in the sky. Cracks can be seen in the bubble-like storm above all the chaos happening on the island below. Since this time, more mysterious rifts began opening up all over the map. Lonely Lodge, Retail Row, Tomato Town and more all are now home to these interesting new additions.
Along with the in-game developments that are offering hints about the content coming to Fortnite Season 5, people are starting to come across hints in the real-world. A desert in California is now home to the Durr Burger. There were also warning signs that read “warning: you are too close to the anomaly” that appeared around the Durr Burger. Visitors also discovered a card with a phone number on it and when dialed, it played audio of an object disappearing through a rift according to PC Gamer and then was changed to coordinates, Forbes cited.
That’s not the only Fortnite imagery to appear IRL. People are stumbling across Fortnite’s loot llamas all around Europe. So far, there have been seven discovered in total. Paris, Cologne, Cennes, Warsaw, Barcelona and two in London are all home to this lovable llama. That’s a total of eight mysterious real-world Fortnite objects to appear outside of the game. What this all means is still unconfirmed. It could be nothing more than a clever (and successful) marketing stunt or a hint about what's to come in Season 5. Gamers will need to wait until July 12th to see for themselves.
Goodbye Playground Mode
As with the previous limited-time modes in Fortnite, this sandbox-style game option isn’t sticking around. Epic announced that Playground Mode is scheduled to be removed the same day Season 5 begins, July 12th. However, there is some good news for fans of this unique building mode. The developer confirmed that they listened to player feedback, took note of improvements that can be made, and plans on bringing it back to the game, eventually. There is no word yet on when gamers might be able to jump back in and build until their heart's content.
Fortnite Season 5 New Map Expected
One of the biggest questions surrounding Fortnite Season 5. There is no official statement or announcement from Epic Games but Express.co.uk is claiming dataminers uncovered the new map. The video below is from the YouTube Channel, DieBuddies Zocken, an Austrian gamer that seems as though he is playing on a dramatically different Fortnite map.
It’s no secret the Fortnite map has undergone some impressive changes since the game was released. Even with speculation mounting, the video above still remains unconfirmed.
Everyone at Gigamax Games hasn’t been able to pull themselves away from Fortnite, like most of the world. Be sure to stick around for the release of Fortnite Season 5 as the Gigamax crew will be releasing gameplay and exploring what Epic has planned for Fortnite fans with this latest update.
Epic Makes Big Announcement Concerning Competitive Fortnite
May 22, 2018 / Gigamaxgames / 0 Comments
Epic Games recently showed off their latest plans regarding competitive Fortnite. The developer officially revealed that they will provide $100 million in various prize pools for the 2018-2019 season. They clarified this in a small blog post where they shared their thoughts on making competitive Fortnite along with the overall experience of playing and watching the game more inclusive.
"We're getting behind competitive play in a big way, but our approach will be different," Epic Games explained. "We plan to be more inclusive, and focused on the joy of playing and watching the game." (https://bit.ly/2IwOWJM)
More details on how the tournaments will be structured and the platforms they have planned will be revealed in the weeks ahead. (We will be sure to offer an update whenever the company shares what its plans are.)
That's Big Money
According to the website E-Sports Earnings, the $100 million that Epic Games plans on dishing out more than doubles the $38 million in total prize money that Valve had given out for all of the Dota 2 tournaments that were held through 2017. Valve's biggest Dota 2 event, The International, paid out what was once the biggest prize pool in gaming history with an astounding $25 million for the one event. To compare another ultra-popular game, Blizzard's first Overwatch Tournament only has a prize pool of 3.5 million for its entire season.
Fortnite brings in almost $1 million a day from just the mobile version of the game and according to analysts, the PC and console version both make more money than that in a single day. The game may be free, but the industry is quickly embracing the trend of charging for cosmetics that have no impact on gameplay. Most developers see this as a fair revenue source that makes their game both competitive and profitable.
Epic Games currently has a competitive Fortnite competition planned for E3 2018, where celebrities and players will play Duos together.
In other news, Fortnite just received another big update that finally added the long-awaited jetpack into the game. This is shortly after the game's latest limited time mode, Solo Showdown, which was a competitive version of Fortnites' famous solo mode. For more information on competitive Fortnite, be sure to keep checking back with GigamaxGames.com!
Fortnite Players Get Freebies Following Server Outages
After Epic Games installed their latest 3.5 updates to Fortnite things quickly took a turn for the worse. Players soon found themselves unable log into the game. Unfortunately, the patch had rendered the game completely unplayable on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and mobile devices. Thankfully, the studio fixed a majority of the issues and is now apologizing to fans with a collection of giveaways. The Guided Missiles have also been temporarily removed since the bug was discovered as well.
"It's been no secret that over the past 24 hours we've been experiencing issues with our services that have prevented many of you from playing Battle Royale and Save the World. We're sorry," Epic Games says in a message on its website. "We know how frustrating this has been. We messed up here."
Epic Games Says Sorry
To make it up to players and thank them for their patience Epic Games is offering free items that can be claimed for a limited time. This weekend fans will be able to pick up a free Back Bling item, a new customization slot that was added to the locker in season 3. Also available this weekend, Save the World players can pick up a free Troll Stash Llama. Gamers can claim their items by heading to the respective in game stores.
Additionally, Battle Royale players will receive a pack of Battle Stars, which are used to rank up an individuals Seasonal Battle Tier. Save the World players will also get an unidentified amount of seasonal gold. Unlike the freebies given away on the store, these giveaways will take some time to distribute, given out during a planned update later next week (most likely Wednesday night into Thursday Morning).
Epic Games assured fans that they will release a detailed report next week that will go over the problem that occurred this week and their plan to improve services moving forward.
No word was given on when the Guided Missile will return to Fortnite but at least players are able to jump into the game again. As for the 3.5 update, Epic Games added a new Port-A-Fort item that allows players to deploy a fort on the spot. Week 8 challenges are also available to owners of the Battle Pass, unfortunately, the studio had to delay the limited time 50 Vs. 50 Mode until next week due to the server issues.
Catch Up on The Updates!
The Gigamax Games crew keeps up with the latest Fortnite updates and game modes. Stop by for some of the streams with the playlist above!
Fortnite’s Latest Update Expands Map
January 19, 2018 / Gigamaxgames / 0 Comments
Fortnite's Latest Update Expands Map
Epic Games finally dropped the latest 2.2.0 update for Fortnite on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. As the studio detailed previously on their blog, it deals mostly with their very popular Battle Royale mode, adding a newly updated version of the map, pre-game voice chat, and more.
The Largest Expansion Yet
The map updates are the biggest expansion to the free-to-play game. A few new areas have been added to the map, mostly to the west side of the island, which before the update had been somewhat lacking in terms of locations. These areas include a new city section and underground mines. Some existing areas have also received an update, with Epic creating more distinct differences between the various biomes. As lead systems designer Eric Williamson said recently, "The swamp feels swampier, the mountains feel more mountain-y. Really, the different areas of the map feel more unique." (http://bit.ly/2mE33z8)
Epic also added their new level-streaming system. Although it doesn't directly have an effect on gameplay, Epic says it "enables a richer map and improved performance." Console load times have been "greatly reduced" according to the studio and there should be less hitching issues in general. Visual improvements were also been made, with new water, grass, and foliage effects now in place.
Image Source: http://bit.ly/2DOJFrB
Even More New Stuff!
Some other new features include the ability to voice chat in the lobby before you start the game, a neat little update to the killfeed to show how far a sniper rifle kill was, and a reworked version of the Scoped rifle sight. Recently Epic Games took out friendly fire, although this may be a temporary measure as they evaluate what impact it has on the game.
This update is big news for fans of Fortnite. With all of these substantial additions and changes, it seems that Epic Games is focused on quality of life fixes for their Battle Royale experience. The full patch notes for version 2.2.0 are available on the studio's website and don't forget to check back with GigamaxGames.com for all the latest information on Fortnite!
Fortnite Battle Royale Dev Sues 14 Year Old in Anti-Cheating Battle
November 27, 2017 / Gigamaxgames / 0 Comments
In a brash display last month, Epic Games decided to make an example of two Fortnite Battle Royale cheaters. Instead of just banning the players they chose to take them to court. In a recent reveal, it has been detailed that one of the accused fans of the game is only 14 years old, and his mother has issued a response to the developer's lawsuit.
In an open letter to the court, she attacked Epic's handling of the case, which she provides plenty of context for.
Her first point is that Fortnite's terms require parental consent for minors, which she says was never given.
She also argues that Epic's case is based on loss of profits, but argues that the game is free-to-play, in order for the company to prove a loss they would need to release a statement that showed how the cheating directly caused a "mass profit loss".
Another valid argument is that by attacking the player rather than the websites that sell/provide the cheating software, Epic has ultimately made a scapegoat out of a 14 year old.
Epic also alleged that her son helped create the software used to cheat, which she claims is not the case, he simply downloaded the program as a user.
Her final point goes on to say that when Epic released her son's name publicly with the suit that the company violated Delaware laws that deal with revealing information on minors.
Gaming website, TorrentFreak, pointed out that you're not actually allowed to sue a minor directly, which could show that Epic did not know the full identity of the player before moving forward with the case. You can read her full letter below:
Fortnite Battle Royale Made Some Enemies
The various cases were issued last month when Epic began going after cheaters that had used the website Addicted Cheats to obtain "aimbots" that help give players a competitive advantage in the game. Although the cheats and other services from this site are not free, users pay a monthly subscription fee of around $5-$15 a month based on their membership level.
After reviewing their End User License Agreement and the Copyright act, Epic decided to take the users to court instead of just issuing a ban which is typically the case for similar situations. While cheaters can ruin a game experience for many people, this move seems a bit overdramatic for the game company. It is obvious they are trying to use scare tactics to prevent cheating but ultimately they are targeting the wrong group of people and may, in fact, make the problem worse. GigamaxGames.com will keep their eyes on the case so be sure to check back for updates as they become available.
Fortnite: New Twist or Blatant Ripoff?
October 3, 2017 / Gigamaxgames / 2 Comments
Video games are constantly evolving. A lot of the time, developers take successful ideas from other games and change it up a bit to make an entirely new title. However, sometimes, a game can be a little too similar to the original title which they took their ideas from. This has been the discussion surrounding Fortnite Battle Royale and PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds.
Let's take a look at the similarities between the two games and how they differ. It's an interesting list and one that might lead to more questions than answers.
Similarities:
1) 100 person deathmatch and the last one standing is the winner.
2) Squad mode, where players can team up to compete against other squads and the last group standing, wins.
3) Both of the games begin in 'lobby island' where all 100 players can run around, shoot guns, and scream loud into the mic.
4) Once the game officially starts, players are flown toward an island and can choose when to jump out of the aircraft.
5) After players jump out of the aircraft, they skydive down to their desired location and eventually float down and land gently.
6) Both only have one map as of now and bear striking similarities.
7) Players start unarmed and must scavenge around the map looking for weapons, ammo, and protective items.
8) The map begins to shrink because of an outside force which continues to close in on the players as the game goes on, forcing them into each other.
1) Cartoony graphics give Fortnite a different feel from the more gritty, realistic PUBG.
2) Fortnite has no prone, changing the stealth aspect when compared to PUBG.
3) Players jump out of a floating bus instead of a plane as in PUBG.
4) Gamers cannot find armor around the map in Fortnite, instead, they pick up ‘Shield Potions’.
5) Fortnite offers no attachments for the guns like in PUBG, what you see is what you get.
6) PUBG has first person servers and an option to aim down the iron sites. Fortnite is stuck in 3rd person.
7) The feature that separates Fortnite the most from PUBG is the building aspect. Players can collect materials from around the map and build forts and cover. This is the key feature that has the most dramatic effect when it comes to the differences of Fortnite from PUBG.
Final Thoughts and Your Input
Just from looking at the lists above, it’s clear that there are more similarities than differences. Most of the differences are even just splitting hairs, like not being able to go prone. However, these unique aspects from Fortnite do add some interesting dynamics which PUBG cannot provide. Still, PUBG seems as though it’s the superior shooter but this is not to say Fortnite doesn't deliver a quality gaming experience.
The question remains, is Fortnite walking a very fine line between blatant ripoff and unique interpretation? Or did the Fortnite developers, Epic Games, simply steal an innovative idea and implement their mechanics on top of PUBG?
With PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds developer, Bluehole, releasing a statement on September 22nd explaining that they felt Fortnite copied their game and might pursue legal action, the world may soon find out.
What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, we want to see how gamers feel about this complicated situation.
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Dr. Mario World | a Day Early and a Microtransaction Short July 10, 2019
Dr. Mario World, Nintendo’s latest venture into the mobile world of gaming released a day early on iOS and Android devices. Microtransactions leave a bitter taste. Expected to release on July 10, Nintendo surprised fans with Dr. Mario World’s early release. This has become a trend in the world of high-profile mobile games. It seems as […]
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Archive Seasons
Drivers Champions
Constructors Champions
Circuit type Race
Circuit Length 5.554kms
Circuit Turns 21
Circuit Direction anti-clockwise
Capacity 50,000
Designer Hermann Tilke
Circuit Info
Records and Statistics
First race Abu Dhabi Grand Prix November 1, 2009 Sebastian Vettel (GER) full results
Last race Abu Dhabi Grand Prix November 25, 2018 Lewis Hamilton (GBR) full results
Total races 10
Next race Abu Dhabi Grand Prix December 1, 2019
The circuit is one of very few on the F1 calendar to run in an anti-clockwise direction, and it is also unique as the only track with an underground pit lane. Leaving the track on the right, it crosses underneath and rejoins on the left. Concerns were raised that the tunnel was too narrow and dangerous, and any accidents would be difficult to clear quickly.
Granted the final go-ahead by the FIA in 2009, Bruno Senna was the first driver to complete a test lap during the GP2 testing. When the teams arrived in Abu Dhabi for the season finale in October 2009, not a single driver had driven the track.
Much more spectator-friendly than soulless near-neighbour Bahrain, some drivers have complained the circuit is too safe. "The car can go everywhere, cutting off corners, and you don't ever lose time," moaned Adrian Sutil after the 2009 grand prix. "That can make racing very boring. There's no real flow." Purists also lamented the need to build chicanes on a new track given their only purpose was to slow down cars on existing circuits.
Yas Marina made history when the 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix hosted F1's first day-night race, starting at twilight with the race finishing in the dark. Floodlights were used from the start of the event to illuminate the circuit and ensure a seamless transition from light to dark. Lewis Hamilton started the race on pole but was forced to retire with brake problems. Sebastian Vettel won the race, the fifth victory of his F1 career, beating team-mate Mark Webber and 2009 champion Jenson Button to seal second place in the championship.
Jo Carter November 2009
Make Huge Income from your Home
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Bakkah
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The Kaaba in Mecca.
Bakkah (Arabic: بكة [ˈbæk.kæ]), according to Muslim scholars, is an ancient name for Mecca, the most holy city of Islam.[1] Most people believe they are synonyms, but to Muslim scholars there is a distinction: Bakkah refers to the Kaaba and the sacred site immediately surrounding it, while Mecca is the name of the city in which they are both located.[2]
According to Lisan Al Arab of Ibn Manzor, the site of Kaaba and its surroundings was named Bakkah due to crowding and congestion of people in the area. The Arabic verb bakka (بكَّ), with double "k", means to crowd like in a bazaar. This is not to be confused with another unrelated Arabic verb baka (بَكَى)(single k) which is the past participle of yabki (يَبْكِي), to cry.
Bakkah is mentioned in sura 3 (Al-i-Imran), ayah 96 of the Qur'an,Translation: " Verily the first House set apart unto mankind was that at Bakka, blest, and a guidance unto the worlds.".[3]
1 Bakkah and Mecca
2 Valley of Baca
Bakkah and Mecca[edit]
Bakkah (also transliterated Baca, Baka, Bakke, Bakah, Bakka, Becca, Bekka, etc.) is the ancient name for the site of Mecca.[1][4][5][6] An Arabic language word, its etymology, like that of Mecca, is obscure.[7]
One meaning ascribed to it is "narrow", seen as descriptive of the area in which the valley of the holy places and the city of Mecca are located, pressed in upon as they are by mountains.[4] Widely believed to be a synonym for Mecca, it is said to be more specifically the early name for the valley located therein, while Muslim scholars generally use it to refer to the sacred area of the city that immediately surrounds and includes the Kaaba.[2][8][9]
The form Bakkah is used for the name Mecca in the Quran in 3:96, while the form Mecca is used in 48:24.[7][10] In South Arabic, the language in use in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad, the b and m were interchangeable.[10] The Quranic passage using the form Bakkah says: "The first sanctuary appointed for mankind was that at Bakkah, a blessed place, a guidance for the peoples."[4][11] Other references to Mecca in the Quran (6:92, 42:7) call it Umm al-Qura, meaning "mother of all settlements".[10]
In Islamic tradition, Bakkah is where Hagar and Ishmael (Ismā'īl) settled after being taken by Abraham (Ibrāhīm) to the wilderness, a story parallel to the Bible's Book of Genesis (21:14-21)(but see below for the biblical geography).[5][12] Genesis tells of how after Hagar and Ishmael ran out of water to drink.[5] In Arab tradition, Hagar runs back and forth between two elevated points seven times to search for help before sitting down in despair, at which point the angel speaks as recorded in Genesis 21:17-19:
God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, 'What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.' Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water and let the boy drink.[8]
Here, the tradition holds that a spring gushed forth from the spot where Hagar had laid Ishmael, and this spring came to be known as the Well of Zamzam.[5][8] When Muslims on hajj run between the hills of Safa and Marwah seven times, it is to commemorate Hagar's search for help and the resulting revelation of the well of Zamzam.[8]
In addition to the Islamic tradition that Hagar and Ishmael settled in Bakkah, the Quran relates that Abraham came to Mecca to help his son Ishmael build the Kaaba adjacent to the well of Zamzam.[5][8] However, in the Bible and ancient Jewish, Christian, and pre-Islamic tradition, Abraham is never mentioned as traveling far south into Arabia (Mekka is about 1400 kilometers south of Hebron, where Abraham is said to be buried). Ishmael is mentioned in Genesis at Abraham's funeral.[13]
Ibn Ishaq, the 8th-century Arab Muslim historian, relates that during the renovation of Kaaba undertaken by the Quraysh before Islam, found an inscription in one of the corners of the foundation of the building that mentions Bakkah. Composed in Syriac, it was incomprehensible to the Quraysh until a Jew translated it for them as follows: "I am Allah, the Lord of Bakka. I created it on the day I created heaven and earth and formed the sun and the moon, and I surrounded it with seven pious angels. It will stand while its two mountains stand, a blessing to its people with milk and water."[14]
The name Bakkah is woven into the kiswa, the cloth covering the Kaaba that is replaced each year before the Hajj.[15]
Valley of Baca[edit]
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Valley of Baca ("Valley of the Baka tree", see below) is mentioned in the Book of Psalms Chapter 84, in the following passage:
How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.
The original Hebrew-language phrase for the Valley of Baca is emeq ha-Baka עמק הבכא.[16][17][18] A literal translation of the Hebrew name is "valley of the Baka (tree)," (note the use of the word "the"), although the ancient Greek translation assumed a similar-sounding word בכה "crying" and translated ἐν τῇ κοιλάδι τοῦ κλαυθμῶνος "valley of mourning". The same Hebrew word בכא is associated with a famous battle in 2 Samuel 5:23-24 in the Valley of Rephaim,[19] about 4-7 kilometers southwest of the present day Old City of Jerusalem. David is advised to engage the Philistines in battle when he hears the sound of marching in the Baka trees (translated "mulberry trees" in the King James Version, although the specific tree to which בכא refers is not known--many modern translations suggest "balsam tree").
Baqaa
^ a b Barbara Ann Kipfer (2000). Encyclopedic dictionary of archaeology (Illustrated ed.). Springer. p. 342. ISBN 978-0-306-46158-3.
^ a b Oliver Leaman (2006). The Qur'an: an encyclopedia (Illustrated, annotated, reprint ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 337. ISBN 978-0-415-32639-1.
^ "Tanzil - Quran Navigator | القرآن الكريم". tanzil.net. Retrieved 2016-07-18.
^ a b c Cyril Glassé & Huston Smith (2003). The new encyclopedia of Islam (Revised, illustrated ed.). Rowman Altamira. p. 302. ISBN 978-0-7591-0190-6.
^ a b c d e William E. Phipps (1999). Muhammad and Jesus: a comparison of the prophets and their teachings (Illustrated ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-8264-1207-2.
^ Alice C. Hunsberger (2000). Nasir Khusraw, the ruby of Badakhshan: a portrait of the Persian poet, traveller and philosopher (Illustrated ed.). I.B.Tauris. p. 174. ISBN 978-1-85043-919-6.
^ a b Kees Versteegh (2008). C. H. M. Versteegh; Kees Versteegh (eds.). Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics, Volume 4 (Illustrated ed.). Brill. p. 513. ISBN 978-90-04-14476-7.
^ a b c d e Daniel C. Peterson (2007). Muhammad, prophet of God. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 22–25. ISBN 978-0-8028-0754-0.
^ Sher Ali Maulawi; Mirza Tahir; Ahmad Hadhrat (2004). The Holy Quran with English Translation. Islam International. p. 753. ISBN 978-1-85372-779-5.
^ a b c Philip Khûri Hitti (1973). Capital cities of Arab Islam (Illustrated ed.). University of Minnesota Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-8166-0663-4.
^ Quran 3:96–97:
The first House (of worship) appointed for men was that at Bakka: Full of blessing and of guidance for all kinds of beings:
In it are Signs Manifest; (for example), the Station of Abraham; whoever enters it attains security; Pilgrimage thereto is a duty men owe to Allah,- those who can afford the journey; but if any deny faith, Allah stands not in need of any of His creatures.
— Qur'an, sura 3 (Al-i-Imran), ayat 96-97
^ Genesis 21:14-21:21
^ Genesis 25:9 "And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in Hebron"
^ F. E. Peters (1995). The Hajj: the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and the holy places (Reprint, illustrated ed.). Princeton University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-691-02619-0.
^ James George Roche Forlong (1897). Short studies in the science of comparative religions: embracing all the religions of Asia (Reprint ed.). Kessinger Publishing. p. 536. ISBN 978-0-7661-0157-9.
^ Jan P. Fokkelman (2000). At the interface of prosody and structural analysis, Volume 2. Uitgeverij Van Gorcum. p. 235. ISBN 978-90-232-3381-7.
^ Heribert Busse (1998). Islam, Judaism, and Christianity: theological and historical affiliations (Illustrated ed.). Markus Wiener Publishers. p. 186. ISBN 978-1-55876-144-5.
^ Psalms 84:1-84:7 of the King James Version reads:
How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts!
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God.
Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah.
Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them.
Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.
They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.
^ See, for example, Amos Hakham, Book of Psalms [Heb], vol. 2: 73-150, Jerusalem: Mossad Rav Kook, 1990, p. 104: "There are commentators who explain that `emeq ha-baka בכא is a valley where certain trees grow that are called בכאים "baka-trees," this valley is emeq refaim עמק רפאים "Valley of Ghosts" 2 Sam 5:22-24, and it is where pilgrims would ascend on their way to the temple area in Jerusalem" [translated from Hebrew]."
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or plants
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'Ansāb
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Al-‘Uzzá
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Yamm (River or sea)
Sharāb (Drink)
Events, incidents,
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Times for Prayer
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Times for Duʿāʾ ('Invocation'), Ṣalāh and Dhikr ('Remembrance', including Taḥmīd ('Praising'), Takbīr and Tasbīḥ):
Al-‘Ashiyy (The Afternoon or the Night)
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Al-Bukrah ("The Morning")
Aṣ-Ṣabāḥ ("The Morning")
Al-Layl ("The Night")
Al-‘Ishā’ ("The Late-Night")
Aẓ-Ẓuhr ("The Noon")
Dulūk ash-Shams ("Decline of the Sun")
Al-Masā’ ("The Evening")
Qabl al-Ghurūb ("Before the Setting (of the Sun)")
Al-Aṣīl ("The Afternoon")
Al-Aṣr ("The Afternoon")
Qabl ṭulū‘ ash-Shams ("Before the rising of the Sun")
Al-Fajr ("The Dawn")
Event of Ghadir Khumm
Laylat al-Mabit
The first pilgrimage
Note: The names are sorted alphabetically. Standard form: Islamic name / Biblical name (title or relationship)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bakkah&oldid=897949803"
History of Mecca
Quranic places
Articles needing POV-check from October 2012
NPOV disputes from October 2012
All NPOV disputes
Articles with multiple maintenance issues
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Port of Taizhou
Taizhou, Zhejiang Province,
Type of harbor
Natural Estuary Seaport
Annual cargo tonnage
56，280，000 metric tons （2013）
Annual container volume
166，571 TEU （2013）
Port of Taizhou website
The Port of Taizhou is a natural seaport on the coast of the prefectural-level city of Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, People's Republic of China. The Port is centered at the mouth of the Jiaojiang River, with port areas opening to the Taizhou Bay, Yueqing Bay and Sanmen Bay of the East China Sea. It is considered as the southernmost of the ports of the Yangtze Delta economic area. In 2013 it reached a throughput of 56.28 million metric tons, an increase of 5.0% over 2012, and a container throughput of 166,571 TEUs, an increase of 10.4%.[1]
Layout[edit]
The Port of Taizhou is scattered all over the Taizhou Prefecture's 1,544 km of shoreline. It has six main port areas:[2]
Haimen Port Area (海门港区) is the central port area and its main administrative and communication center. Channel is 2 m deep, allowing for 5,000 DWT vessels and heavy barges at high tide. Haimen Port Area focuses on general cargo and passenger services.
Damaiyu Port Area (大麦屿港区) is located on the east coast of Yuhuan Peninsula, to the south of Taizhou city. The Lanmensha channel leading to it is 11 m deep, sufficient to handle 30,000 DWT vessels, up to 50,000 DWT vessels at high tide. The port basin is 13 m deep, low silt and the anchorage is well protected from wind, a useful feature in typhoon country. As of 2012, the port area had 14 berths, including one berth of 50,000 DWT, 2 berths of 30,000 DWT capacity, 1 Ro-ro berth 3,000 DWT, a passenger wharf of 3000 DWT and a 1000 DWT LNG transfer terminal.[3] The planned shoreline extends 29.85 km.[2]
The Jiantiao Port Area (健跳港区)is located to the north of the prefecture. It includes the Niushan and Yangshi deep-water harbors wharves, with water depths of 10 m. As of 2012, it had 10 wharves with 615 m of quayside, including one multipurpose wharf 5000 DWT, 2 wharves of 1000 DWT. It is also the site of an under-construction nuclear power station.
The Linhai(Toumen) Port Area (临海（头门）港区), currently under construction, is located outside the estuary of the Jiaojiang, on reclaimed land around Toumen Island, connected to the mainland by a 12 km long passageway. The south shore of the 4.3 km, water depth of 9 m will have multipurpose, petrochemical and coal berths. The port area will have 47 deep-water berths. The north shore will become and industrial port and tourism and leisure center.
The Wenling Port Area (温岭港区) as of 2012 had 38 berths, of which 3 1,000 DWT and 5 2,000 DWT oil berths. It also hosts the Longmen shipyard. The planned Wenling (Longmen) Port Area will cover 36.7 km of coastline. It is planned to be mostly a supply port for the industrial area, and a shipbuilding area.
The Huangyan Port Area (黄岩港区) is located on the south shore of the Jiaojiang River, 1.87 km of quayside. Channel depth is 3–8 m. As of 2012 it had 7 wharves of 500-1000 DWT, and 2 shipyards. Five bulk cargo berths of 1000-2000 DWT are planned, and one berth for dangerous chemicals.
^ a b "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-06-06. Retrieved 2014-01-16. CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
^ "LNG Transfers".
Coordinates: 28°41′08″N 121°27′01″E / 28.68556°N 121.45028°E / 28.68556; 121.45028
Ports and harbours of China
Bohai Sea
Jingtang
Yellow Sea
East China Sea
Ningbo-Zhoushan
Taiwan Strait
Pearl River Delta
Humen
New Seaport
Xiuying
Transport in China
Proposed public transport
Hong Kong*
Macau*
Expressways (NTHS)
China National Highways
Road numbering
Rules (Road safety law)
Licence plates
AH1
Gallery road
Zhongshan Road
Eastern-Qing
South Manchuria
Narrow-gauge
China Railway High-speed
Harbin-Beijing–Guangzhou–Hong Kong
Beijing–Kunming
Beijing–Shanghai
Lianyungang–Ürümqi
Shanghai–Chengdu
Shanghai–Kunming
Beijing–Harbin
Beijing–Kowloon
Beijing–Guangzhou
Lanzhou–Lianyungang
Lanzhou–Xinjiang
Lhasa–Xigazê
Qinghai–Tibet
Rapid transit systems
Maglev
Yangshan
Lingqu
Red Flag Canal
Zhengguo Canal
China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation
China State Shipbuilding Corporation
Ship lifts
Cathay Pacific* (Cathay Dragon*)
XiamenAir
By traffic
Major Airports: Beijing Capital
Chengdu Shuangliu
Guangzhou Baiyun
Shenzhen Bao'an
Shanghai Pudong
Shanghai Hongqiao
Aviation Industry Corporation of China
China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition
PLA Space Force [zh]
Transport by province or autonomous region / by city
Chinese New Year Transit
* in / related to the special administrative regions
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Port_of_Taizhou&oldid=832982318"
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Project Big Ben
"Big Ben" was the World War II code name for the British project to reconstruct and evaluate captured German missiles such as the V-2 rocket.[1] On 31 July 1944, after the UK agreed to exchange Supermarine Spitfires for the wreckage of a V-2 in Sweden during World War II, experts at Farnborough began an attempt to reconstruct the missile.[2]
In late July, 1944, Operation Most III the Polish resistance movement (Armia Krajowa) succeeded in capturing an intact V2 rocket near the Pustkow Testing Centre. It had been launched for a test flight, failed but did not explode and then retrieved still intact from the Bug River, and transferred secretly to London.[3]
V-1 and V-2 Intelligence
Home Army and V1 and V2 — Polish resistance efforts.
Operation Crossbow
Operation Hydra (1943)
^ McGovern, James (1964). Crossbow and Overcast. New York: W. Morrow. p. 74.
^ Collier, Basil (1976) [1964]. The Battle of the V-Weapons, 1944-1945. Yorkshire: The Emfield Press. ISBN 0-7057-0070-4.
^ Jewishgen.org: Pustkow Concentration Camp (Poland) . retrieve 5.15.2013
Aerial defence
Oslo Report
Strategic Bombing Survey
Lord Cherwell
Sir Arthur Harris
Dr R. V. Jones
Duncan Sandys
Babington-Smith
Bombing targets
"Heavy"
Brécourt
Mimoyecques
Siracourt
Söttevast
Watten (Blockhaus d'Éperlecques)
Wizernes (La Coupole)
NOBALL
V-1 (facilities)
Research etc
Blizna
Friedrichshafen (Bellicose)
Lehesten
Wiener Neustadt (Raxwerke)
B-17 "Flying Fortress"
B-24 "Liberator"
Barrage balloon
Azon
Luftwaffe (Defence of the Reich)
This United Kingdom military article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
This World War II article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Big_Ben&oldid=795298240"
V-weapons
Code names
United Kingdom intelligence operations
Battles and operations of World War II involving the United Kingdom
1944 in the United Kingdom
1944 in military history
United Kingdom military stubs
World War II stubs
This page was last edited on 13 August 2017, at 09:36 (UTC).
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Meet Natasha
Our Houseful
Houseful Of Cookies
#WeSowWeGrow
Thread Filled Thursdays
The Chicago Sky Home Opener: As Told by Mr. Houseful
My first time going to a Chicago Sky game was supposed be waaay back when they played at the UIC Pavilion. I had visions of checking the ladies out when we were trying to get our bearings from expansion to contender. I’m a fan that way. If given the chance, I want to start on the ground floor. I watched, and rooted and kept up with the stats, but I never saw them in person. I was really excited about our chances of doing something great in the WNBA when our best player was Candice Dupree. My excitement got kicked up a notch a couple years later when we drafted Sylvia Fowles. I thought for certain I would have gone and attended at least 1 game then. But procrastination and one thing or another always got in the way of my ability to go and watch. I was a fan that never supported. Don’t get me wrong, I bleed Orange and Blue (for both the BEARS and ILL INI), but I don’t go out buying their jerseys or going to games (well… maybe Illinois’ homecoming… I love my school). I figured, this would be an opportunity to actually get to see the women I followed since they were in college. I’m a huge women’s college basketball fan. The ticket prices are more than reasonable, and, especially when they were playing at the Pavilion, I live extremely close. Well, fast forward about 4 years, and throw in a few blog years for my wife, and I was presented an opportunity to see a game up close and personal. Below is my experience.
First, I want to say that if not for some inopportune injuries the past 2 seasons, we would have made the playoffs and been a tough match-up for anyone. The first year was Sylvia Fowles, and last year was Epiphany Prince. This year, I don’t think the league stands a chance. We have an X-factor that we haven’t had in forever: Delle Donne! Courtney Vandersloot running the point, Epiphany Prince playing the 2, Swin Cash at the 3, Elena Delle Donne at the 4, and Sylvia Fowles at the 5. We have a starting 5 that is fun to watch. Sylvia controls the paint, Courtney controls the pace, Elena opens the floor, and Epiphany keeps the defense guessing. It’s the best Sky lineup I’ve ever seen, and head coach Pokey Chatman deserves a ton of credit for the team she’s assembled. Young off the bench may be in 6th (wo)man of the year honors if she continues to contribute off the bench as she has. She’s always been athletic, but now, with her jumper falling, she’s dangerous. Swin is the quiet, veteran, savvy calm that knows when to do whatever needs to be done. She’s the pesky, gritty defender, the “find the open (wo)man” passer, and the “hit the shot when we need it” scorer. She’s been that way since college and, yes, I’ve been following her since then.
10 minute quarters in a WNBA game go a lot faster than you’d expect. I found it hard to keep track of the time while watching the game. I’d look up and there’d be 8 minutes left, I’d look up again and there were just 57 seconds remaining. It was a strange sensation. Good basketball, which is what this game was by both teams before the Sky started to pull away toward the end of the 3rd period, makes you lose track of time. Trust me, it’s a good sensation to have.
The women are waaay more physical than I expected. I’ve been watching women’s basketball for a long time, but i’ve never seen a game live. Thank you for this introduction. Watching online, or from the comfort of my couch didn’t do the hard fouls and strong drives to the basket justice. I loved every minute of it!
Epiphany Prince is as cool as the other side of the pillow. She has emerged as a legitimate scorer in this league, and I love watching her work. She doesn’t need to have the ball in her hand all the time. She picks her moments and never disappoints. Fun to watch!
Elena Delle Donne is awesome! She’s a match-up nightmare. She can shoot the 3, handle the ball well enough to create her own shot, athletic enough to put opposing defenders in the spin cycle, and, even if you were lucky enough to stick with her, tall enough to shoot over you. It’s a torture chamber. She’s learning how to inject herself into games. I’m going to enjoy watching her grow into a superstar.
Sylvia Fowles is a BEAST!!! She is a force and I loved ever minute of her imposing her will in the paint. She snatched rebounds with authority and scored with strong takes to the basket. I think they should feed the post and clear the floor for her a little more often, but, when you win by 20, it’s tough to argue the system.
All in all, this was a great experience. I enjoyed the game from start to finish. I am kind of kicking myself for never having attended a game in the past. But, my consolation is that I’ve been a fan since the beginning. I’ve been here when there wasn’t much to cheer about, and I’m definitely going to be here when we win our first playoff series this year (I dream BIG!!!). This was my first Sky game and this most certainly will not be my last. Who knows, I may even buy a jersey. Trust me, it takes a very secure husband to walk around with another woman’s name on his back. :0)
editors note: Not once do I see that he checked his wife out during the game. NOT ONCE. However, Mr. Houseful redeemed himself by writing you a WAY better summary than I ever could have. I loved the game, and I paid attention, but I still don’t have all of the bball vernacular up to order. I’ll do better. Hopefully you enjoyed this review, and if you are anywhere near my fine city, come and join us in the stadium for one game, will ya? We even just snagged two more sets of tickets for games this month. It’s serious in our Houseful, yo!
By Natasha Nicholes
Natasha Nicholes
I'm Mrs. Houseful. Or Natasha if you're not into nicknames! I'm a married mom of four. I love chatting it up with so many of you all. I love traveling, sewing, cooking, and trying new things. I also collect Box Tops For Education, and refer to myself as the crazy Box Tops Lady. Send me yours if you don't collect for your children! You need to contact me? Send me an email! natasha@housefulofnicholes.com
2017 Chicago Polar Plunge
Chicago Sights: Our House – Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
What I Wore Sunday
HFofNicholes
The Chicago Sky Home Opener: As Told by Mr. Houseful http://t.co/i9vTO4z4HZ #wnba #chicagosky #delledonne
glamazini
The Chicago Sky Home Opener: As Told by Mr. Houseful http://t.co/iP2H5oSrtB via @HFofNicholes
The Houseful Reloaded: The Chicago Sky Home Opener: As Told by Mr. Houseful http://t.co/UURQDbSQhM
Our Houseful LOVES comments! It warms our hearts to know that you're touched by something enough to say hello! We'll respond back to you! Promise! Cancel reply
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© 2019 - Houseful of Nicholes. All Rights Reserved.
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Smart View [EN]
Introduction and main features
Understand the different features and basic settings of the Smart View
Select Smart View from the side menu to be redirected to today's Smart View.
When hovering on Smart View you also open a sub-menu. From here you can access the Smart Views for the following 11 months, create a new Smart View or manage your existing ones.
What are the different features of the Smart View?
The Feeds
Selecting the View:
On top of the Smart View you have an option to choose between Show all feeds and Show only favorites. Select Show only favorites to see only your saved items; select the ✓ symbol to show all the current feeds.
Weather forecasts, Events, holidays and vacations, and saved Smart Views are displayed on top of the page; click here to find out how to make the most of these feeds.
The Smart View graph
One of the most loved features of HQ revenue, the Smart View graph displays yours and your competitors' rates in a clear and intuitive way. Follow this link to uncover all of the graph's mysteries. Follow this link to uncover all of the graph's mysteries.
Click on the funnel in the top right corner to start using the filter and tailor the graph to your needs by selecting only the information relevant to you. Find out here how to use it.
City Demand and occupancy rate
At the bottom of the Smart View you'll see a row of bar graphs; these display the city demand and the occupancy rate for your hotel. The data is synchronized with your PMS and allows you to make an accurate comparison between the two data sets. Discover how to use and navigate the City Demand and Occupancy graph.
The export button
You can export and save a Smart View as an Excel file by clicking on the arrow on top of the page > OK.
I’m not really a fan of graphs, can I see the data in another way?
If charts and graphs don't do it for you, worry not! You can decide to view your information in a table layout. To do so simply click on the icon on top of the page.
Overwhelmed by the result? Here we break down every aspect of the table view to make navigation easy-peasy.
Whenever you wish to go back to the graph view click on the graph symbol on top of the page.
Any Issues? Contact our support team!
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Watch Governor Mutua's wife dancing to 'Tetema'
Machakos First Lady Lilian Ng'ang'a. [Source/ Lilian Ng'ang'a/ Facebook]
2 months ago, by Asibabi Vincent
Machakos Governor Dr Alfred Mutua's wife, Lilian Ng'ang'a flaunted her dancing skills for all and sundry this week when she visited Kyethivo Girls Secondary School.
Rocking a cream half-sleeve coat and beautiful green dress with patches of blue and cream, Ng'ang'a is seen shaking her svelte body to 'Tetema', a smash song by Diamond Platinumz and Rayvanny.
This was not the first time that the Machakos First Lady has been captured dancing, she has been pictured before dancing with her husband, governor Mutua.
She encouraged the girls not to be serious at all times; to take some time off and dance.
"Some times we are caught up in school. We are doing all these things. We are doing Math which is good, we are doing Biology and then we forget to dance like these beautiful girls. Biology is good, Chemistry is good, if you are good at dancing, enhance that, " said the Machakos First Lady in a video shared by NTV on YouTube.
She bemoaned the difficulties that young school-going kids were experiencing in trying to access sanitary towels and called on county governments to work towards ensuring that girls' education is not impeded by lack of sanitary towels and asked for them to be made free.
"In 2017, the President passed a law that all school going girls should have free access to sanitary towels. To date, the same has not been implemented. What happened to the allocated budget? Our girls need free sanitary towels. It is a basic need that cannot be ignored, " said Ng'ang'a.
-Asibabi Vincent
Gathoni Wamuchomba decries drug addiction
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TI Sings That He’s A ‘Super Freak’ For His Love For Tiny At Her 44th Birthday Party
7 Times The KarJenners Showed Off Their Legs In Sexy Thigh-High Boots — See Pics
Dianna Agron Is A True BFF –- Will Watch ‘Glee’ Co-Star Jane Lynch Host ‘SNL’ No Matter What!
comment 7 Comments
August 16, 2010 8:39PM EDT
Angelina Jolie May Star As Notorious Man Eater Marilyn Monroe — Opposite Brad's BFF George Clooney!
SplashNews.com, Getty Images
Angie and George may be starring as Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra in an upcoming film — let’s hope no sparks fly between them onset!
In the latest bit of Angelina Jolie casting news comes talks that the actress is set to play Marilyn Monroe in a new biopic of the star — opposite partner Brad Pitt‘s best friend George Clooney! The Daily Mail reports, “The 35-year-old actress is set to play Monroe in an adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan‘s The Life And Opinions Of Maf The Dog, And Of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, the author revealed at the Edinburgh Book Festival yesterday.”
This is not the first time Angelina will be acting as the love interest to one of Brad’s buds, as she previously played the wife of Matt Damon in the 2006 pic The Good Shepherd.
The story is told through the eyes of Marilyn’s maltese terrier Maf, a gift from Frank whose full name was Mafia as a joking reference to Frank’s heritage. The dog famously accompanied Marilyn everywhere she went in the final two years of her short life.
Marilyn was as known for her acting as she was for her high profile relationships with men including Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, Marlon Brando, and a then married John F. Kennedy. Hmmm…
Angie and 49-year-old George would also likely be sharing some very steamy scenes — we wonder how met on set partner Brad will feel about that?!
This would now be the third Marilyn Monroe pic in the works, with Michelle Williams and Naomi Watts also both rumored to be working on pics.
Angelina Jolie Brad Pitt frank sinatra George Clooney John F. Kennedy Marilyn Monroe Matt Damon
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62nd most burdensome licensing requirements.
Landscape contractors contract with clients to landscape or maintain grounds of property using hand or power tools or equipment. Work may involve any of the following: sod laying, mowing, trimming, planting, watering, fertilizing, digging, raking, and installing sprinklers or mortarless segmental concrete masonry wall units.
Typically, only contractors require licenses, not the landscapers who work for them. In some states, licensing requirements differ based on the setting. Those with a residential license may work only on residential properties, while those with a commercial license may work on commercial properties. Other states require the same license regardless of the setting, and this report records that license in both settings. Many states have contract minimums before the contractor’s license applies. See Appendix B for details.
Forty-seven states license landscape contractors working on commercial properties. Eight states require between two and five years of experience working under a licensed contractor, while Alabama and Mississippi require completion of three contracted jobs. Mississippi also requires two years of college. Thirty-seven require no education or experience. On average, states require 228 days of education and experience, $235 in fees, and about one exam—the 62nd most burdensome of the 102 occupations studied.
1 Arkansas 47 $330 1825 5 years 1 0 0
2 Nevada 47 $1,253 1460 4 years 2 0 18
3 California 47 $579 1460 4 years 3 0 18
4 Hawaii 47 $615 1460 4 years 2 0 18
5 Arizona 47 $586 1460 4 years 2 0 18
6 Mississippi 47 $640 797 2 years 3 jobs, contractors 3 0 0
7 Virginia 47 $320 731 8 clock hours 2 years 1 0 18
8 Oregon 47 $730 730 2 years 1 0 0
9 Utah 47 $589 * 733 * 20 clock hours * 2 years * 0 0 0
10 Alabama 47 $721 67 3 jobs, contractors 3 0 0
11 Louisiana 47 $674 0 3 0 18
12 North Carolina 47 $75 0 1 0 18
13 North Dakota 47 $175 0 0 0 18
14 Tennessee 47 $505 0 1 0 0
16 D C 47 $655 0 0 0 0
17 West Virginia 47 $192 0 1 0 0
18 Alaska 47 $300 0 0 0 0
19 Washington 47 $176 0 0 0 0
20 Minnesota 47 $150 0 0 0 0
21 Idaho 47 $130 0 0 0 0
22 Ohio 47 $125 0 0 0 0
22 South Dakota 47 $125 0 0 0 0
24 Nebraska 47 $115 0 0 0 0
25 Maryland 47 $100 0 0 0 0
25 New York 47 $100 0 0 0 0
25 Oklahoma 47 $100 0 0 0 0
28 Colorado 47 $90 0 0 0 0
29 Kansas 47 $85 0 0 0 0
30 Iowa 47 $75 0 0 0 0
30 New Jersey 47 $75 0 0 0 0
30 New Mexico 47 $75 0 0 0 0
30 Texas 47 $75 0 0 0 0
34 Illinois 47 $50 0 0 0 0
34 Indiana 47 $50 0 0 0 0
34 Missouri 47 $50 0 0 0 0
37 Kentucky 47 $40 0 0 0 0
37 Pennsylvania 47 $40 0 0 0 0
39 Michigan 47 $35 0 0 0 0
40 Wisconsin 47 $30 0 0 0 0
41 Florida 47 $25 0 0 0 0
41 Maine 47 $25 0 0 0 0
41 Montana 47 $25 0 0 0 0
41 New Hampshire 47 $25 0 0 0 0
41 Wyoming 47 $25 0 0 0 0
46 Vermont 47 $20 0 0 0 0
47 Delaware 47 $0 0 0 0 0
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69th most burdensome licensing requirements.
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs drive automobiles, vans or limousines to transport passengers and may occasionally carry cargo.
Sixteen states require a special driver’s license for taxi drivers or chauffeurs.1 On average, these laws cost aspiring taxi drivers and chauffeurs $47 in fees and 148 days in education and experience—the 69th most burdensome requirements of the 102 occupations studied here. Also, because relatively few states license taxi drivers and chauffeurs, the occupation ranks as the 76th most widely and onerously licensed.
License requirements vary greatly across states. For example, Tennessee requires two years (730 days) of driving experience, but nine states require no education or experience. Similarly, seven states require an exam, while nine do not. And while 14 states have an age requirement (D.C. and Maryland do not), it varies from 17 to 21 years. Fees range from $3 in Delaware to $275 in D.C.2
1 Tennessee 16 $5 730 2 years 1 0 18
2 D C 16 $275 365 1 years 1 0 0
3 Indiana 16 $19 365 1 years 1 0 18
4 Rhode Island 16 $23 365 1 years 0 0 21
5 Delaware 16 $3 366 6 clock hours 1 years 0 0 18
6 Maryland 16 $53 182 6 months 0 0 0
7 Washington 16 $118 3 3 days 1 0 21
8 Utah 16 $25 0 1 0 21
9 Louisiana 16 $55 0 1 0 17
10 Michigan 16 $35 0 1 0 18
11 New Jersey 16 $51 0 0 0 21
12 Iowa 16 $40 0 0 0 18
13 Missouri 16 $18 0 0 0 18
15 Connecticut 16 $12 0 0 0 18
16 New York 16 $0 0 0 0 18
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Research Article|February 01 1998
Nutrient Exports from Two Agriculture-Dominated Watersheds in Southern Sweden
Barbro Ulén
Hydrology Research (1998) 29 (1): 41-56.
https://doi.org/10.2166/nh.1998.0003
Revision Received:
Barbro Ulén; Nutrient Exports from Two Agriculture-Dominated Watersheds in Southern Sweden. Hydrology Research 1 February 1998; 29 (1): 41–56. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/nh.1998.0003
Nutrient concentrations and exports were monitored for eight years in two agriculture-dominated watersheds in the central part of the Västgöta Plain in Sweden. The hydrology and the nutrient concentrations in the streams were very similar. Concentrations (monthly flow-weighted) of dissolved phosphate-phosphorus (PO4P) varied substantially during the year (from 0.03 to 0.27 mg 1−1) whereas concentrations of particulate phosphorus (PartP) varied less (from 0.03 to 0.16 mg −1). No trends in nutrient export during the eight years were found after flow-normalization of export data. Three wet periods dominated the long-term loads of the streams. Although a few events dominated annual yields of suspended solids (SS) from drainage pipes, standard deviation of annual mean SS concentration was reasonably constant between different years. However, when further developing phosphorus load models the variation in SS concentration should probably be considered. In-stream processes may contribute nearly as much to the phosphorus export as those occurring on and in arable soils in terms of their impact on the magnitude of phosphorus export. Total nitrogen (TotN) mean concentration was 5 mg 1−1 and was similar in drainage pipes and in the streams.
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Soldier of Controversy
To varying degrees, the films of Oliver Stone all express a distrust of power, a distate for war, and a gleeful disregard for the mainstream interpretation of history and current events. His fearlessness of thought and action is in the best American artistic tradition, despite what more straight-laced defenders of the status quo might want you to believe. Because unlike most politically-minded artists, Stone has every right to be distrustful of the powerful political and economic forces constantly keeping the country at war. As a young soldier in Vietnam, Stone learned of the horrors of war first hand. His early body of work includes a trilogy of Vietnam films that portray the brutality of military combat with visceral accuracy. His second slew of films is considered a trilogy of political dramas which portray the senselessness of war in a broader historical sense.
Stone has pointed his lens on War, Wall Street, 911, Watergate, and of course the Kennedy Assassination
The Vietnam Trilogy
In the decades immediately following the Second World War, scores of dramas and action films set during the war honored the heroism of American Warfare. Americans went to the movies to remind themselves of their own glory and sacrifice. In the decades after the Vietnam War, Oliver Stone used the same medium of cinema to portray American soldiering in the opposite light, filled with more atrocity than glory, and more senselessness than sacrifice. Stone’s Platoon shocked audiences in 1986 with its sheer brutality and realism. He defined how films would be made about Vietnam, and changed how films would be made about war in general. With 1989’s Born on the Fourth of July Stone showed audiences that perhaps the greatest wound of war is survival. The film portrays real-life figure Ron Kovic, who sustained crippling injuries as a Marine in Vietnam. Because of his wounds, Kovic never walked again and also never stayed silent about the futility of America’s involvement in Vietnam. Stone’s third film portraying the horrors of Vietnam shifted perspective from American soldiers to the Vietnamese people themselves. 1993’s Heaven and Earth told the story of another Vietnam War survivor, Le Ly Hayslip, a young girl who experienced brutality at the hands of both sides in the conflict but eventually escaped to freedom in the United States.
Stone gained critical and commercial success with his trilogy of films on Vietnam.
Chasing Controversy
During the 80s and 90s, Oliver Stone took on many other controversial subjects. 1987’s Wall Street indicted the greedy business culture of the 1980s, and the film’s antagonist Gordon Gecko became an icon of modern cinema. In 1994, Stone set his sights on the mainstream media’s love of violence and the prison industrial complex’s love of corruption with his ludicrously gory modern Bonnie and Clyde myth Natural Born Killers, penned by the legendary Gen X filmmaker Quentin Tarintino. The production of the Presidential films, Vietnam films, and films on other subjects overlapped throughout the years. Along the way he won and was nominated for many prestigious Oscars and other honors. Despite critical and commercial triumphs, Stone’s three Presidential films that have earned him his reputation as America’s most outspoken and brazen mainstream filmmakers.
With JFK, Nixon, and Dubya, director Oliver Stone has completed a presidential trilogy of sorts—three films which amount to a wicked, incendiary, and exciting mediation on the most powerful position in the world. All have provoked controversy: JFK for blurring the line between history and conjecture, Nixon for its daring dramatic licenses, and Dubya for taking a shot at a sitting President. What some forget is that Stone is not portraying history, he is dramatizing it by injecting historical stories into familiar storytelling genres.
Oliver Stone's Presidential Trilogy is an Important Legacy of Film History
Oliver Stone’s first Presidential film 1991’s JFK is a murder mystery, set against the background of political intrigue. In this film Stone is not illuminating corners of history as much as he is using them as a playground. Over the years, so many bizarre conspiracy theories and misleading red herrings have popped up concerning the Kennedy assassination. With JFK, Stone serves them all up in one meaty dish, garnished and seasoned with the kind of gusto and grace only Hollywood can provide. Stone himself keenly refers to the film as a “counter-myth” to the Lone Gunman story, and regards his own restaging of the assassination as “speculation.” Critics claim that Nixon‘s dramatics are akin to that of a Shakespearean tragedy, but in actuality Stone’s second presidential film is more similar to one of Shakespeare’s history plays. In these works real-life leaders such as Richard III and Henry V were either vilified or venerated for the sake of popular entertainment. Shakespeare, like Stone, took incredible dramatic license in his portrayal of historical figures. Indeed Stone uses many real-life Nixon speeches in his film, while Shakespeare’s “Now is the winter of our discontent,” and “Once more unto the breach dear friends,” were all fanciful concoctions of the writer’s imagination. The third and final film in the trilogy is Dubya, a black comedy with so little bite that it seems Stone is getting a bit more tame as the years bear on. Maybe he believes the failures of the Bush Administration speak for themselves. The film plays hardball with Cheney and the Cabinet, but is almost reverent to Dubya himself. Yet for some, merely making a major Hollywood film about a sitting President is slander enough. Still, Stone’s first Presidential film will always be his most controversial, and probably his best.
The Credit Sequence “Documentary”
JFK starts out as in the style of pure documentary. As the credits roll, historical footage is edited together to provide the audience with the cultural and political context of the film, as well as introduce us to the vitality and humanity that made John Fitzgerald Kennedy such a popular public figure. The sequence is ably narrated by legendary actor Martin Sheen, who himself received a Golden Globe a Golden Globe nod for his portrayal of JFK in the 1983 miniseries Kennedy. Sheen gives the sequence great majesty and gravitas.
Allied Commander Turned US President Dwight Eisenhower
The real President Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower is the first figure to appear on camera. Ike starts out the show with highlights from his farewell White House speech, an important oration where the World War II Allied Commander turned United States Presidential peacemaker informed everyday citizens about the “Military Industrial Complex” that was necessarily established during the Second World War but unnecessarily remained after our victory in that conflict. It is a startling moment for modern viewers to see a legendary Republican Warrior such as Eisenhower espouse a theory that has been so embraced by what is left of the American left. The rise and reign of this complex Eisenhower so eloquently admonished us to thwart is the fundamental subject of Oliver Stone’s Presidential trilogy. The screen goes black, and the story of a new era in American history is told.
Composer John Williams dreamily patriotic score crescendoes heroically as the camera reveals the striking figure of Jack Kennedy. We learn that Kennedy was narrowly elected over Vice President Nixon in the election of 1960. We learn of the political problems Kennedy inherited in the battle against communism in Southeast Asia and South America. Most importantly, we are informed that President Kennedy was dedicated to keeping combat troops out of Vietnam, a counter-narrative to mainstream history that becomes increasingly convincing as the years go on. “In the final analysis, it’s their war,” Kennedy tells newsman Walter Cronkite of the conflict in Vietnam.
The JFK credit sequence effectively blends black and white newsreel footage of President Kennedy with heartwarming color home movies of his home life. We see JFK laugh and joke with his wife and children, and in the process the audience falls in love with John Fitzgerald Kennedy the same way the world did during his short but historic life. And then we lose him all over again.
Sewings the Seams Between Film and Reality
Sheen’s narration fades and the footage starts to show JFK’s fatal motorcade through Dallas on November 22nd 1963. Almost imperceptibly, the documentary footage begins to be intercut with footage shot by Stone. Although much of the film’s narrative is shot in modern 35mm widescreen color film stock, Stone often recreates events in the same black and white film stocks commonly used by the news and home movie cameras of the time. The new footage is skillfully edited with the old to great dramatic effect. This technique had been used in historical films before and since, but rarely is it been performed by a filmmaker as skilled as Oliver Stone. Consequently, when the film was first released, ordinary audience members were often unable to sort out which shots was historical and which were conceived by Stone. From the first moment that the film cuts between a real shot of Kennedy feeding his horse to a staged shot of assassination prophet Rose Charamie being thrown out of a car, Stone has skillfully stitched the seams of reality to the world of his film. By the time Kennedy’s motorcade makes it to Dealey Plaza, Stone’s film seems as real as reality, only more so. Amazingly, he manages to maintain the effect for over three hours of screen time.
John William’s score descends into a low growl as shots ring out from somewhere in the Plaza. Birds flutter as a few flames of the Zapruder film flicker in the darkness of the movie theater. But Stone doesn’t show the fatal head shot. Unlike many other films on the subject, Stone saves that brutal centerpiece of the story—and Zapruder’s infamous film—for maximum emotional impact.
As the motorcade rattles onto the Stemmons freeway in haunting silence, the audience is yanked out of the world of documentary into a more traditional movie experience. We are introduced to Kevin Costner as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in beautiful 35mm. The scenic designer, costumer, and property master took great pains to recreate a stunningly accurate recreation of 1963. The first film to tackle the assassination, 1973’s Executive Desicion and the various television programs about the subject were noble efforts, but they reek of the periods they were in—the 70s and 80s. By contrast, Stone’s film is a veritable time machine to the 1960s, which has not dated itself in the past 20 years the way other the other films did over that same amount of time.
Television Through Big Jim’s Eyes
We will see the rest of the story through the eager and inquisitive eyes of “Big” Jim Garrison, a man whose dedication to unraveling the mystery of the Kennedy assassination would become as legendary as the mistakes and sabotages he experienced pursuing what he thought was the truth. We move from television to television with Garrison as the shocking events following Kennedy’s death unfold over four days in November. We are glued to the TV screen with Garrison, his friends, family and co-workers just as America was glued to the TV screen during that actual weekend. Over that long, torturous weekend America saw the man accused of murdering the President paraded to the press around the Dallas Police Department and then led to his own mysterious death. The footage of Lee Harvey Oswald talking to the press, and then being murdered by Jack Ruby in the station is faithfully recreated in black and white with the brilliant Gary Oldman taking on the role of the alleged assassin, and Bill Murray’s brother Bryan Doyle Murray taking on that of Ruby. Unless one is familiar with the actual footage of these events, it is almost impossible to see the seams in Stone’s masterful mixture of documentary and reenacted footage.
Stone captured the madness of Oswald's incarceration.
Stone even uses Oldman to recreate the photos of Oswald that were presented to the American people, including the infamous “Backyard Photos” of Oswald holding the alleged murder weapons. When presented those photos, Oswald himself said that someone matted his head onto someone else’s body. Stone gleefully does just that, matting Gary Oldman’s face over Lee Oswald’s. In doing so, Stone gives us the simple thrill of visual historical accuracy, while also demonstrating how one could modify the photos as Oswald accused somebody of doing.
We watch Walter Cronkite’s emotional proclamation of the President’s murder with Garrison at the local bar Napoleons. Reality blurs with the film as the man who inspired Kevin Bacon’s character in the film rises from the bar and applauds JFK’s death. Layers upon layers of fact and illusion begin piling up in the audience’s subconscious. The film has become a dream, a nightmare, a flashback, an inspired hallucination.
We are introduced to Oswald while watching television with Jim Garrison and his family. Oldman is yanked down the police hallway insisting he’s “just a patsy.” Garrison’s wife Liz calls Oswald a “creep” who gives her “the willies,” portraying how easily people bought into the idea that a disgusting little urchin could be capable of an assassination. Throughout the rest of the film, Liz’s character will come to represent the status quo of American thought.
We learn more about the case against Lee Oswald at Garrison’s office the next day, as Big Jim”and his staff watch the evidence pile up against the accused on TV. They learn about the rifle, ordered to Oswald’s alias and see the Backyard photos. When Jim learns that Oswald had been causing trouble in his town the summer before the assassination, he orders his staff to bring in the spooky suspect David Ferrie.
Stone hauntingly recreates Oswald's assassination
Before they can talk to Ferrie, Jim and the office staff watch as Oldman as Oswald is murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas jail on live TV. The emotional effect of the scene is staggering—the audience feels like they are watching that tragedy unfold once again—the first televised murder in American history. This sequence will doubtlessly be shown in film classes for generations to come alongside the masterworks of Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Coppolla, and Burton
Pesci as Ferrie
Big Jim decides to bring in Ferrie, even though Oswald died shortly after the Ruby shooting. No other character has captured the mystery and madness of the Kennedy assassination better than Pesci as Ferrie, as Hollywood legend Joe Pesci brings the quirky figure to life in all his glory in a way other historical films should be jealous of. The real Ferrie was a mildly perverted, admittedly brilliant, and severely tortured figure whose aspirations as a pilot, adventurer, and brother of the cloth were severely subverted by his sexual and intellectual idiosyncrasies. Ferrie was one of the many authority figures who floated in and out of the troubled life of Lee Harvey Oswald. He had been young Oswald’s commander in the Civil Air Patrol, Oswald’s first taste of service. Did Oswald spurn Ferrie’s authority as he’s been reported to have done with his superiors in the Marines, or did Lee remain loyal to the legendary Ferrie the rest of his short life? If so, what Ferrie tell him in New Orleans the summer before the assassination? And why was Dave so anxious about the trip to Texas he had taken the day of the assassination? Jim was determined to find out. His determination will become the narrative thrust of the film. Garrison arrests Ferrie for further questioning, but the FBI lets him loose and scolds Big Jim. Garrison shrugs his shoulders and decides to go on with his life. The narrative drowsily drifts three years down the road as the television tells the viewer and Jim Garrison one more report. “President Johnson has announced the creation of a blue ribbon commission to probe the events in Dallas.”
“That Dog Don’t Hunt!”
Stone brings in screen legend Walter Matthau to recreate an important part of assassination lore, the famed Long/Garrison conversation while cruising through the Washington skies. In this famed conversation, Senator Russell Long introduced District Attorney Jim Garrison to a theory fundamental to many conspiracy theories: Lee Oswald couldn’t have done the shooting The Warren Report said he did. This 1966 meeting apparently inspired Garrison to re-open his investigation, but some researchers know Garrison already had files open on the case, and postulate this story was a cover for an investigation he may have already started in private. Still, the conversation works as a perfect narrative device to move the story forward, and get our hero back into the case.
The Garrison Investigation
Jim Garrison dives head first into the Warren Commission’s 26 Volumes of Testimony and Exhibits related to the Kennedy assassination. In this sequence, Stone masterfully re-enacts the various witness testimony as Jim pours over the volumes of statements, documents and photographs. Finding enough inconsistencies in the report to warrant reasonable doubt, Garrison decides to use his staff of investigators, lawyers, and assistant D.A.s to figure out what happened that summer in New Orleans, and that Fall in Dallas.
The Garrison investigation is used as a clever device to introduce the audience to the various problems with the government’s official version of the story that various researchers have come up with over the years, and creating what he considered a a “Countermyth” to the myth of the Warren Commission. Prominent Warren Commission Critics like HSCA Photographic Expert Robert Groden, Dallas Reporter Jim Marrs, and even the ailing Big Jim himself were brought in for consultation or cameos.
The film points out how Garrison’s investigation was sabotaged by Washington insiders, the mainstream media, as well as the various law enforcement and intelligence agencies, but also brings light to some of the greater mistakes he has made. The most prominent blunders were his trusting of people who proved to be traitors to his cause, and his failure to protect the only man he might have been able to convict, Dave Ferrie. Instead of giving up, Big Jim decided to scapegoat a prominent businessman, playwright and philanthropist he believes cavorted with Ferrie under a homosexual alias. The re-enactments of Clay Shaw’s alleged conspiratorial actions in the film might convince viewers that the real Shaw was complicit in the assassination, but the film’s ambiguous ending might make more critical viewers question Stone’s portrayal of Shaw.
The Autopsy Recreation
Some of the most important information about the Kennedy assassination that came out of the Clay Shaw trials were the testimonies of the various doctors who attended and investigated President Kennedy’s wounds. For years the autopsy photographs were suppressed, and some say altered, before finally making their way to the public. Using an agonizingly realistic recreation of Kennedy’s corpse, Stone uses the photographs and testimony to meticulously recreate the President’s autopsy with almost nauseating accuracy. Stone briefly edits in the real autopsy photos with his footage. Only if you have already see the photos, or with repeat viewings of the film, can the typical audience member notice the brief substitution. Stone’s seam between reality and cinema is holding tight.
Oliver Stoned
Stocked, pilloried, and stoned, a brilliant filmmaker has become the “patsy” of the conspiracy theory community. Was his prowess behind the camera hindered by the follies of his reason, or did they fuel the passion that makes his works so compelling? Whatever your opinions of his personal beliefs, Stone is certainly an unsung hero in the enduring conspiracy debate. The momentum of his controversial counter-myth was the driving force behind the declassification of many important documents previously unavailable to the public by the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The study of these documents has moved the conspiracy debate into a new, broader, and more enlightened era, beyond the red herrings and hearsay and into a legitimate historical discussion.
Stone has therefore done what any great political artist should do: keep the dialogue open.
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John Judge says:
While Oliver Stone used some poetic license in the film JFK, it was not, as the press tried to assert and you repeat, a “mix of fact and fiction” or “blurring the lines of history and conjecture”. Stone accurately and meticulously portrayed New Orleans’ District Attorney Jim Garrisons 1968 case for conspiracy against Clay Shaw, who was acquitted but hardly innocent. Garrison was actively opposed and blocked by the CIA, the FBI and other elements of the government and media in making his case, denied access to records and to witnesses, and pilloried in the press for his courageous stand. Both Garrison and Stone have been borne out in their analysis by the release of over 6.5 million pages of classified records from the Warren Commission and House Select Committee on Assassinations investigations as well as other agencies here and abroad. That process continues to release records until 2017 when all postponements end. At least two books, Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio and Let Justice Fall by William Davey have gathered the new evidence on Shaw and other aspects of Garrison’s claims that prove him right. The release of State Department files on Southeast Asia in the 1990s confirmed the work of Peter Dale Scott and other critics regarding JFK’s clear intent to withdraw from Vietnam in 1964, another theme in Stone’s film. Garrison was assisted by many of the early critics and researchers in his case, including Mae Brussell, Maggie Fields, Lillian Castellano. A government orchestrated campaign against his character and case turned some critics against him at the time, sadly. His office was bugged and penetrated to compromise his prosecution and conclusions. Joan Mellon’s recent books on Garrison go deeper into the new files and what they tell us about his case. History has absolved Garrison, and by extension Oliver Stone. While Garrison never went to Washington to meet “Mr. X” (a character based on Fletcher Prouty), everything he is told was in correspondence to Garrison from Prouty at the time. This is dramatization but not distortion. I suggest you find a copy of JFK: The Book of the Film, which has the entire script along with exhaustive footnotes showing that almost every line was based on a documented statement by the people portrayed. When the media said Stone mixed “fact with fiction” my response was that unlike most Hollywood films which are propaganda fictions especially regarding key historical events, Stone had the audacity to make a film about the fact with very little fiction, portraying real historical events as they happened and their implications. All the best evidence points to a military coup d’etat by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on November 23 and the implementation of Operation Northwoods, a plan proposed by the Joint Chiefs that was rejected by Kennedy to create a traumatic incident that could plausibly be blamed on Fidel Castro to get public support for a military invasion of Cuba. Army troops were loaded onto transport planes on November 22, 1963 in anticipation of the invasion, and Navy Seals were sent offshore awaiting orders to assassinate Castro. Oswald had been “doubled” in Mexico City weeks before trying to get a pass into Cuba through the Soviet and Cuban embassies. It was only Oswald, who realized he was being set up as the patsy in a crime he tried to report on and prevent, and who then acted to prevent being killed during his arrest, who presented the problem of a talking head instead of a dead Red, who stopped the plan from being implemented. In his excellent analysis in History Will Not Absolve Us, Martin Schotz reprints Castro’s statement three days after the assassination of JFK making clear that he understood he was being set up to take the blame by US intelligence agencies. History will eventually absolve Garrison, the critics and Oliver Stone, who recently gave a copy of Jim Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable to Bill Maher on his show, recommending it, as do I for anyone seriously interested in ending their agnosticism or doubt about who killed JFK and why.
author337 says:
I do indeed have a well-worn copy of the JFK documented screenplay, which has a place of honor in my collection of assassination books and films—the “Presidential Library” as I like to call it. The structure and substance of that volume is a testament to to Oliver Stone’s daring as an artist, and integrity as a creative force. Did you get a chance to pick up the wonderful new DVD box set? My girlfriend was indulgent enough to buy it for me for my birthday, and I found all the additional literature and photographs to be quite compelling, though the “Emerald Kings” documentary seemed like a tacked-on afterthought. Eventually I plan on expanding this segment of the site from a discussion of Stone’s films to a broader discussion of all the films related to the assassination—from chilling prophecies of the assassination like The Manchurian Candidate, to hard hitting responses to it such as JFK and Executive Action.
I have great respect for Jim DiEugenio’s work, along with Bill Davey’s. They have done a great service in countering all the anti-Garrison slander which the mainstream media has been slinging for over forty years. I believe neither Oliver Stone nor Jim Garrison need the absolution you mention. Whatever flaws their myriad critics have identified in their work, the integrity of their mission can never be discredited. As DiEugenio points out, Garrison could have become Governor of Louisiana, or a powerful banker with the snap of a finger, but his dedication to finding the truth was paramount. The Helms admission that Clay Shaw did indeed have connections to the CIA demonstrates that there was more to Shaw than he was willing to let on. He may have even known Oswald, as we now know Dave Ferrie clearly did, but that does not necessarily put Kennedy’s blood on Shaw’s hands. The Russo testimony is intriguing, but I remain characteristically agnostic concerning its validity.
Mr. DiEugenio visited my page the other day, and like yourself, challenged my agnostic stance. I acknowledge that my position is unconventional, but because the essential truth of the assassination was either buried with Oswald or long ago covered up by whatever conspirators are complicit in the assassination, I believe an open-minded agnosticism is the only logical position I can maintain. I assure you my stance is borne neither from cynicism nor indifference, but from a willingness to hear the opinions of all reputable parties, yourself included. To close myself off from all possibilities would be disservice to my own inquisitiveness. I hope to one day be convinced of who is truly responsible for the death of President Kennedy, but until then I must maintain an open mind. I found the thesis and research of Jim Douglass to be rather intriguing, but I still maintain that the answer to the mystery of the JFK assassination is yet to be uncovered.
Thanks again for taking the time to visit my site and lending your expertise. Please encourage your friends and colleagues to do the same. All opinions are welcome here at Assassination Agnostic!
Lee Sanger Goldin
jim feemster says:
Lee,
” THEY ” killed JFK and ” THEY ” are still among us!
Jim Feemster
Christoph Messner says:
The problem is the people loves fiction more than the truth. We’d rather need documentaries than Hollywood movies about what really had happened and how conspirators really conspire. Nice tries of Oliver Stone, who at least does not fake like other Hollywood artists, but he is still Hollywood and Hollywood pastes the truth and keeps the people in a world of illusions. The same illusions Platon drew in his cave analogy.
i STRONGLY URGE YOU TO REVIEW THE VIDEOS ABOUT Roger Craigs story from the time the first shot was fired…with Deputy Crag running to where he encountered Lee Oswald exiting the rear of the Book depository Building..and getting inside the rambler station wagon with a driver later identified as very possibly one david morales a spook and hit man for the mob called CIA..He would later reappear in the Ambassador Hotel where Bobby Kennedy was awaiting his death sentence..the first rifle qwas identified by a group of dallas Detctives in whicjh Craig and all who found the Mauser..and signedoff on it ..only to later on ..have a change of mind and re do their i.d. of said weapon as the Italian piece of junk that no self respecting hitman would dare have as his main weapon..It was just a poor snipers weapon ..and in spite of Roger being hounded from his testimony until his “suicide’ in ’75..He was proven to be accurate and a good police officer that would not bend when told the other detectives had changed their mind about the Rifle ..and signed off on it n being a carcano..Why would he do himself s badly that the rest of his life was one incident after another of his being either shot at at tO running his car off the road..to a spook sounding bomb in his ride that detonated at the wrong time saving his short life ..was cRAIG AN HONEST COP WHO WOULD NOT BEND TO OBVIOUS LIES..OR WAS HE A STUPID MAN WJHO GAINED NOTHIONG FINANCIALLY…NOTJHING BUT TROUBLE AND LOSS WHEN HE WOULD NOT BACK OFF HIS ACCUSATIONS..OR ..WORSE?
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Sony Pictures Television unveils new iPhone games
Sony Pictures Television (SPT) on Monday announced plans for several games for the iPhone and iPod touch coming in 2009.
Ghostbusters is a new game planned on the hit comedy movie with Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd; it’s being developed to tie in to a new Ghostbusters game coming out in June. New York City is facing an invasion of ghosts once again, and you have to save the day by catching them. Continue reading →
Filed under: Entertainment, Game, Mobile phone | Tagged: Game, iPhone, iPhone game, Sony Pictures Television, SPT | 1 Comment »
Blizzard unveils new Battle.net
Activision Blizzard has today unveiled the latest, re-vamped version of its Battle.net multiplayer system and has confirmed reports that all future Blizzard games will require a Battle.net account.
The new version of Battle.net brings a whole host of minor changes to the long-running online gaming service, but the most important tweak is that players can now link all their Blizzard multiplayer profiles under a single Battle.net account, streamlining the whole process of logging in.
The system actually goes further than just linking gaming profiles together though – you can also connect your Blizzard forum accounts, store details and multiple World of Warcraft accounts to this single account. Merging your multiple accounts is totally optional right now, but will become obligatory in the future according to Blizzard:
“Currently, creating a Battle.net account and merging World of Warcraft accounts is entirely optional. However, as we continue to build additional functionality into the new Battle.net, we will eventually require all active World of Warcraft accounts to migrate over to Battle.net Accounts in order to continue playing.”
The announcement also confirmed that all future Blizzard titles, such as StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 will require an authentic Battle.net account.
Somewhat complicating the matter though is the fact that the existing version of Battle.net will continue to run for older games, such as Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2, under the title of Battle.net Classic – which will continue to use the old system and login details.
Are you as bewildered as us? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
by Joe Martin
Filed under: Game | Tagged: Battle.net, Blizzard | 2 Comments »
Zombieville USA Update and Lite Version
Touch………..if you dare
A very interesting iphone game
We last looked at Zombieville USA when it was first released in mid-February.
The survival shooter has since rocketed up the charts to the top 10 position in the App Store, and for very good reason. Despite its seemingly simple gameplay, Zombieville actually requires some strategy to progress and is a whole lot of fun.
Last week, Mika Mobile updated the app with a number of requested improvements including:
Two new zombie types that appear in high levels
3 different difficulty choices
Pause button
Improved firing controls
Weapon balance tweaks
A Lite version has also bee introduced [App Store] which gives you a single level to play to get a feel for the mechanics. If you haven’t tried this game yet, we give it a solid recommendation.
Filed under: Game | Tagged: Game, iPhone, touch | Leave a comment »
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KPLR11 TV Schedule Watch CW Shows Autos
More victims expected to come forward against accused Cub Scout den leader
Posted 4:42 pm, October 23, 2018, by Kevin S. Held, Updated at 11:49PM, October 23, 2018
ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. - St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Tim Lohmar anticipates more victims will come forward after a former Cub Scout den leader was charged with having sex with a juvenile.
At a news conference Tuesday, Lohmar said 48-year-old Matthew Baker is facing new charges of child abuse of a sexual nature.
According to the probable cause statement, an 8-year-old girl told her mother that in February 2018 that Baker had inappropriate contact with her while visiting his house in the 700 block of Little Oaks Drive to play with Baker's children. The girl said Baker took her to an upstairs bedroom, pulled her pants down, and touched her genitals.
At the time, the child declined to speak about the incident any further. The child's mother contacted police after seeing media reports about Baker. Police interviewed the child and she described what happened.
In that first case, the family of an 8-year-old boy contacted the O'Fallon Police Department on the evening of October 13 to report Baker had pulled the boy's pants down and performed oral sex on the child.
The victim told police the incident occurred earlier that day, between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., at Baker's home in O'Fallon. The victim said he was in the basement with Baker playing a board game.
After meeting with investigators to discuss that incident, prosecutors charged Baker with statutory sodomy or attempted statutory sodomy with a person under the age of 12. He was jailed and eventually released after posting a $50,000 cash-only bond.
Lohmar said Baker was familiar with both victims but did not elaborate further. He said the Boy Scouts organization had been cooperative with the investigation.
If any parents suspect their child may have had inappropriate contact with Baker, they're encouraged to contact the O'Fallon Police Department at 636-240-3200 or 636-379-5659.
Watch our free movie channel
KPLR’s digital channel 11.1 shows hit movies. Find out how you can watch.
DNA credited for breakthrough as man charged with Angie Housman’s murder
Hupp in jail – ‘She would try to turn the guards against one another’
St. Charles man will face death penalty in family murder trial
Accused Angie Housman killer facing new sodomy charges
Chief Hayden speaks out after recent shootings involving children
New York mother allegedly admitted to killing twins with her ‘bare hands’
Former Francis Howell North High School teacher charged with sexual contact with student
Mascoutah man gets 35 years for child porn, online extortion
Prosecutor: Silence on 911 call gave Pam Hupp away
Angie’s Angels ecstatic over DNA leading police to possible suspect
70-year-old Pennsylvania man accused of having inappropriate contact with 8-year-old girl
4 kids killed in 5 days in St. Louis; city leaders outraged
Bizarre twist: State trooper in child porn investigation charged after evidence uncovered in separate case
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FBI Statement on Suspicious Packages Sent to Obama, Clinton, Soros, Holder, and Brennan at CNN
Posted 1:47 PM, October 24, 2018, by KTLA 5, Updated at 01:48PM, October 24, 2018
The FBI released the following statement Oct. 24, 2018:
Statement on the FBI’s Investigation of Suspicious Packages
Between October 22 and 24, 2018, suspicious packages were received at multiple locations in the New York and Washington, D.C., areas and Florida. The packages are being sent for analysis at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
“This investigation is of the highest priority for the FBI. We have committed the full strength of the FBI’s resources and, together with our partners on our Joint Terrorism Task Forces, we will continue to work to identify and arrest whoever is responsible for sending these packages,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “We ask anyone who may have information to contact the FBI. Do not hesitate to call; no piece of information is too small to help us in this investigation.”
The packages are similar in appearance, as depicted in the below photograph, and contain potentially destructive devices.
The FBI released this image Oct. 24, 2018, with the caption: "Exterior of one of the suspicious packages. Addresses have been removed to protect privacy."
The packages were mailed in manila envelopes with bubble wrap interior. The packages were affixed with computer-printed address labels and six Forever stamps. All packages had a return address of “DEBBIE WASSERMAN SHULTZ” [sic] in Florida. Packages identified to date were addressed to:
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Former President Barack Obama
Former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN
Former Attorney General Eric Holder
The package addressed to former Attorney General Holder did not reach its intended destination, but was rerouted to the return address in Florida.
The FBI will continue to work with our federal law enforcement partners at the United States Secret Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as our state and local law enforcement partners, to identify and arrest the person or people responsible for sending these packages.
It is possible that additional packages were mailed to other locations. The FBI advises the public to remain vigilant and not touch, move or handle any suspicious or unknown packages.
If you have information about these packages, please contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov. If you observe any suspicious activity that requires an immediate response, please call 911 or contact your local law enforcement.
LAPD Monitoring String of Suspicious Packages Sent to New York, Washington
FBI Analyzing Pipe Bombs Packed With Glass Shards Sent to Obama, Clinton, Soros, Holder, Brennan and Rep. Waters
Packages Found Outside San Diego Building That Houses Kamala Harris Office, Union-Tribune Had Nothing Suspicious
Topics: Barack Obama, CNN, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, eric holder, FBI, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan
FBI: No Sarin Found in Package Sent to Facebook Headquarters
Barr Reviewing Origins of FBI’s Russia Investigation, Says He Thinks ‘Spying Did Occur’ on Trump Campaign
Ex-FBI Translator Charged With Lying About Contacts With Target of Terror Probe
CNN Sues FBI for Witness Memos in Mueller Investigation
Trump Now Says He Would Alert FBI or AG if He Got Foreign Dirt
Facebook Mail Facility in Menlo Park Evacuated After Possible Sarin Scare
Leader of Armed Civilian Border Group Said He Had Assassination Plans for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama: Court Documents
FBI Testing Minibar Samples at Dominican Republic Hotel After American Tourist Deaths
AG Barr Appoints Prosecutor to Examine Origins of Russia Probe, Determine If Intelligence Collection Was Lawful: Source
FBI, Bureau of Prisons Ordered to Probe LGBTQ Discrimination
Trump Says He Would Accept Dirt on Political Rivals From Foreign Governments
Donald Trump Jr., 2 Former FBI Leaders Testify on Capitol Hill
FBI Thwarted ‘Chilling’ Terror Plot in Long Beach; Army Vet Planned Attack in Revenge for Mosque Shootings: DOJ
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blog, go uste, k-smoove, karlc, mall of asia arena, nu bulldogs, uaap, uaap season 78, ust, ust growling tigers, victory
October 21, 2015 Karl Leave a comment
Last Saturday, on a rainy day across entire metropolis with Typhoon Lando bound to hit Luzon bringing heavy rains and gusty winds over the horizon. It was an opportunity for me to do something I haven’t done in the last three years. Watch my beloved UST Growling Tigers live in action.
The last time I watched the game, I witnessed my beloved Alma Mater lose in a two game sweep in their best of three finals series. As the victor celebrated a fifth straight championship. Since then, I was limited to watching the games on the television. Along that period, I’ve seen them come back for another crack on the title. But falling short in a epic three game series that featured a brother vs brother match-up. Then the following season, they fell down from heaven to a tough season which saw them miss the train to the Final Four.
Now, on that stormy Saturday afternoon in Pasay, I was back in the venue rooting for my Alma Mater. It was my first UST game since I became an alumnus of the university, and the first game I watched where their opponent is not named Ateneo nor La Salle.
The weather never bothered me to get to the game. The only thing I had to deal with along the way was my wet shoe as I went with me trip from home to the Mall of Asia Arena.
But before I get to see the Tigers play once again, there was the game between Ateneo and Adamson. The Soaring Falcons fought hard in that game, but the Blue Eagles found the breaks in the end game to seal the victory.
Then came the moment of truth, it’s game time for the Growling Tigers of España. They faced the National University Bulldogs. The lone team that they lost to in the first round of the tournament. Where they lost by a solitary point. It was their chance to get back from the defeat and pick up another victory.
Of course with every UST game, the men on the floor are fueled by a boisterous crowd clad in yellow. Supporting the squad with all their heart and soul. From the place going crazy every time they score a basket to the Go USTe! chant which never fails to fuel up the crowd. The crowd makes every single game special.
As the ball game played along, it was a defensive oriented game with both teams picking it up on the defensive end. The Tigers had full control for most of the first three quarters and were poised to get the victory heading into the fourth quarter. But the resilient Bulldogs had an answer and they managed to complete a comeback to take the lead. But the Tigers had the counter response late in the ball game. As they came up with a 65-57 victory, and became the only team so far this season to beat the other 7 teams that make up the league. UST’s balanced scoring made the difference in this game. The bench players came through all game long, while the leading men had the final blow to seal the victory.
Photo ©Karl Carandang
For me, it was a great feeling to see the Tigers win the game as I watched it live. To tag along with the Go USTe! chants. Singing the UST Hymn once again in victory. Getting to see some of my friends along the way. Some of which I haven’t seen for quite awhile now. It was also the second victory for UST whenever I get to watch the game live at the arena. Which brings my record when watching it live at 2-3 (all three losses came at the hands of Ateneo).
The Tigers have been impressive this season. They overachieved and went beyond expectations where pundits in the preseason saw them miss the Final Four train once again. Although as I am writing this, they lost to the Blue Eagles to bring their record to 8-2 on the season. They have still done a great job of getting to this point in the season. We have two legitimate candidates for MVP in Kevin Ferrer and Ed Daquioag. Karim Abdul, though not yet in peak condition is getting there. Then the bench has been coming along well with guys like Marvin Lee, Mario Bonleon, Louie Vigil, Jamil Sheriff, Kent Lao, among others. Of course, gotta give a ton of credit to head coach Bong Dela Cruz. Last season, he had the task of succeeding the fiery Pido Jarencio and fell short on the goal. Now, that he got his second take on calling the shots, he’s responded well. If this great season of UST basketball continues, this could be the year we could see the title return to España after a nine year wait.
Returning to see the Tigers roar in UAAP basketball will always be a special moment. And if it permits (especially resource-wise), this will not be the last time this season I will get to see the Tigers roar in action live at the arena.
#GoUSTe! Viva Santo Tomas!
bloggo ustek-smoovekarlcmall of asia arenanu bulldogsuaapuaap season 78ustust growling tigersvictory
Previous PostGot my life in check. A tearful adieu.
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Category Archives: free tibet
Leftist-Jihadis; where is my free speech?
March 5, 2016 – 12:06 pm
On the name of ‘Free Speech’-The sloganeering at the JNU in early Feb, in Support of the Terrorist Afzal Guru was meticulously planned by the Jihadists and supported by the leftists. This combination of leftist-jihadi in India is very peculiar and rather Unusual. The Islamist are the religious zealots, and they propagate Islam and its ideology. The communists on the other hand are known to be Atheist. So, how come they have become the Blood-Brothers!
The slogan, “Bharat tere tookde Hoonge, InshaAllah InshaAllah” is no way an expression of Free speech, Rather it shows, how much tolerant Hindu-India is. Had the slogan, “Pakistan/China tere tookde ho” been raised in Pakistan/China by any minority, He would have been hanged to Death by now.
I wonder, “What is a free speech”?
“Free-Speech”-reminds me instantly of the sloganeering that was witnessed by me in Kashmir, when every Mosque in my vicinity gag-ordered my community to either mingle with them( and become a Muslim) or else be ready to die. I was a victim. I was the oppressed. But, I didn’t had the freedom of ‘free speech’. There is no way, any minority group in a Muslim Majority area can have the privilege of a ‘Free Speech’.
For Leftists, all the problems existing in India is merely because of the Brahmins. Being a Kashmiri Hindu, that too a Brahmin, I am by-default deemed to be fit to be called a Fascist, communal and any attempt to raise my voice against the atrocities meted out to me in a Muslim Majority state will be turned down by the leftists and term it as a Threat to Indian Muslims and the secular fabric of India. The terminology of the “Victim” changes when it comes to the Kashmiri Hindus.
My lands have been encroached illegally by the Muslim Majority, My temples desecrated or burnt Down by the Jihadis, My Brethren murdered in the most inhuman way. But for the people of Leftist-Jihadi mindset, I remain as an oppressor.
The leftists claim to be the messiahs of the oppressed; and they often term their opponents as fascists. USA is a Fascist. Japan is a fascist, so are all the powerful nations where communism failed miserably. They often quote, “The violence of the oppressor is unjustified, but the violence of the oppressed is Justified.”
The oppressed is always who adheres to their ideology. Otherwise how can we justify the stoic silence of the leftists on some of the issues where the Oppressor was a Communist Country and the Oppressed was someone, who did not adhere to their ideology. They condone the atrocities by any communist Nation or Group.
It will be foolish of me to expect that the so-called-liberal-leftist can ever propagate and live in any Muslim Nation; That is why the ideology of communism could not make any inroads in these nations; except for Turkey, where it showed some strength, some resistance, before it got swallowed by the totalitarian-religious-ideology.
In fact both the ideologies are expansionist, totalitarian and there is no room for the dissent.
Tibetans are still languishing in India. They like the Kashmiri Pandits were forced into the Exile by their oppressors. But for the leftists, Tibetan Buddhists and their supreme leader, Nobel prize for peace winner-Dalai Lama is a Fascist.
Kashmiri Pandits, who were ousted by their leftist cohorts-the jihadis, are not allowed to return to their Homes. In fact there are no Homes left now as 50% of the properties were sold in Duress and the other 50% are illegally occupied by those people whom the leftists term as the “Oppressors”. The reason for being them as Oppressor is merely because of the Prefix ‘Pandits’ to Kashmiri Hindus.
The leftist and the Jihadis dream of balkanization of India. They do not recognize India as a Nation and are often heard opining that with so many linguistic differences between so many ethnic and regional groups, The Title or the Nation, ‘India’ is a misnomer; citing examples from the past when there were more than 600 small Princely states under the Britsh.
The Leftist-Jihadi combination are also supporters of all those groups who are advocating for separate Nations to be carved out from India. In short, they are the enemies of the Nation, who are merely propagating the Chinese and the Islamist Propaganda. And get paid for their Endeavour by their masters.
It is a war waged by the Islamists and the Chinese, through their surrogates, Otherwise, how can the incidents of Muslim-Suppression in China be explained. Islamist are under attack in the province of Xinjiang. Imams from its eastern Muslim majority Xinjiang region were forced to dance in the street and swear to an oath that they would not teach religion to children. The imams were also forced to tell children that prayer was harmful for the soul.The Muslim imams were further forced to brandish the slogan that “our income comes from the CKP [Chinese Communist Party] not from Allah”.
Similarly the Communists were slaughtered by the Islamist forces in Indonesia in 1965-66.It is estimated that in that slaughter nearly 1 million people were murdered. The majority of the people were those, who were active communists or their supporters.
The Jihadis ideology and the leftist ideology though totalitarian and Expansionist, are totally opposite to each other. The leftists who are showing their dissent against India are the puppets of China, and the Islamists represent an ideology, where the world population recognizes Islam as their religion. It is just because India happens to be their common enemy, they have embraced each other. This combination will remain till the Time India remains as a Nation. Otherwise there are ample examples, some of them cited above, that indicate that are these two ideologies can not stand each other.
And for the ‘Free Speech’-As long as it is termed as an expression against Hindus and against the Nation of India ; and as long as India remains a Hindus majority state, they will be tolerated.
Unfortunately…..
By-Manish Zijoo
By Sandeep | Also posted in brahmins, china, dalai lama, hindus, india, JAMMU & KASHMIR, kashmir, kashmiri pandits, politics, terrorism, tibet | Tagged afzal guru, ARTICLES ON Kashmir, china, hindus, indonesia, jihadis, jnu, KASHMIR BLOG, kashmiri pandits, leftist | Comments (0)
To safeguard Tibetan culture and Buddhist way of life, Tibetans have been forced by china to move to different parts of globe. Tibet is a high plateau with an average height of around 16000 feet. The genocide of Tibetans was clearly charted and well planned by the subsequent communist governments of china. Tibetan people have lived in the high plateau also known as “roof of world” since thousands of years back .Tibetans are god fearing and non-violent people. The local Tibetans who were a majority till Dalai Lama’s escape to India in 1959 have been reduced to a minority and people of Han Chinese origin have become a majority population with the help of PRC (People’s Republic of china)
Tibet, china, Mongolia and Indian sub-continent have shared a lot in terms of cultural exchange and religious ideologies. There have been times in history when Tibet had a greater control over china and vice-versa. The actual problem started when in 1911-1912 Tibet claimed full independence from china under Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The Chinese revolution of 1911 dethroned the last Manchurian emperor and subsequently religious bonding with Tibet was also snapped. And thereafter Tibet relied heavily on Dalai Lama for administrative and religious thoughts and philosophy and also British in India for support and protection. It continued to maintain neighborly goodwill and friendship with the people of China, but never acceded to the Chinese claim of suzerainty in 1914.British persuaded Tibet to sign treaty with china which was of nominal or non-interfering suzerainty (1914) and China was accorded the right to maintain a mission in Lhasa and at the same time it was forbidden to interfere in any of the internal affairs of Tibet.However that suzerainty was not enforced as Chinese did not sign the treaty. Tibet maintained its unique identity, independent and friendly relations with its neighboring countries including India.The real problem started when china became full fledged communist state and Tibetan Government broke off diplomatic relations with China and made a Chinese representative in Lhasa depart from Tibet in July, 1949 and Tibet cut off all relations with china and its communists. Since China was militarily more powerful than Tibet thus it agreed to negotiate on friendly terms with the Chinese Government. It sent a mission to negotiate with china but took longer time as it needed a British visa to transit through Hong Kong.
Indian govt.helped Tibetan mission to have negotiations with Chinese ambassador. Meanwhile Chinese troops without warning or provocation crossed Tibetan boundaries and quickly captured important places like Demar, Kamto, Tunga, Tshame, Rimochegotyu, Yakalo, and Markham.
The armed invasion of Tibet for the incorporation of Tibet in Communist China through sheer physical force is a clear case of aggression and violation of human rights. I personally have very deep feeling and support for people of Tibet and I support Tibetans for free Tibet. As all of us know China and Pakistan share a very close relation and Pakistan is heavily inclined towards china for military and strategic support .Pakistan did exactly what china did to Tibetans. Pakistan forced the Hindu population of Kashmir to migrate to different parts of globe by killing mercilessly. Kashmir has a total population of less than 10,000 Hindus which used to be 5lakh just 18 years back.
Coming back to Tibet, Tibetans have lost their motherland for the time being and I am somewhat puzzled by the Indian government’s reaction which is not as warm as it used to be. Is the coalition government of communists responsible for this? I have not yet heard any reactions from communists in India.
On my recent visit to majnu ka tila in Delhi which is at present home to many Tibetans, Things are somewhat different. One can clearly feel the tension and helplessness of Tibetans. With some difficulty I could get some words from a Tibetan women who sells T- shirts and jeans and she spoke in broken Hindi “China hamara dushman hai!” and again thought for some time may be 5-6 seconds and said “India hamara dost hai” her last question question was “Aap ko kya chahiyeh?”.After I left the place, I wondered how difficult it is for the Tibetans as tibetans are scattered are over world but somehow have managed their unique identity and culture.I also wondered the hardships faced by tibetans all over world as they have been uprooted from their motherland just as I was uprooted from Kashmir, at the same time I am quite impressed by tibetans for their beleif in self and their dream for beloved motherland—free Tibet.
By Sandeep | Also posted in china, dalai lama, genocide, india, kashmir, pakistan, politics, religion, tibet, Uncategorized | Comments (0)
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Being A Mom: By The Year (Stats)
SIphotography
Who doesn't love dear mom? Well Mother's Day is a good occasion to remember JUST how much moms are doing on the 364 days a year that don't explicitly celebrate them.
A new study from DigitalHub broke down a bunch of yearly stats on being a mom. And here are some of the highlights:
Moms spend three hours and 58 minutes a week watching kids' sports, which adds up to around eight full days per year.
They take three days off work per year to look after sick kids.
The spend four hours and 55 minutes at school plays and assemblies per year.
Hang five drawings on the fridge every year.
Buy 38 presents per kid per year between birthdays, Christmas, and other occasions.
Get woken up 16 times a year for bad dreams.
Hear the kids say 'I'm bored' 144 times a year, or 12 times a month.
And moms hear their kids say 'I love you' 676 times a year, or 13 times a week.
Filed Under: Mom, Mother's Day
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Haunting Temple Tunes at Si Satchanalai
February 6, 2014 by Khiri Travel | Filed Under: Sukhothai, Thailand
A few days ago Khiri Travel Thailand Director of Products inspected Si Satchanalai Historical Park. It is close to the better-known Sukhothai Historical Park in the lower north of Thailand.
Compared to Sukhothai Historical Park (which is very well maintained with a lot of restoration work neatly done beside well kept lawns), we immediately noticed the much more ‘authentic’ appearance of Si Satchanalai Historical Park. The ruins look more weather and time beaten and therefore quite different from ‘pretty’ Sukhothai Historical Park.
A number of the ruins at Si Satchanalai have more walls and even a roof has been preserved. It seems the Tourism Authority Thailand in the past had big plans for the park. But somewhere along the way gave up. We saw a lot of disused spotlights, burnt out guard cabins, ruined toilets for tourists and more. Perhaps sad, but it also contributed to the feeling that we were in a very special place not often visited by tourists.
Incidentally, the number of visitors on that day was considerably less compared to that of the previous day in Sukhothai. Bicycles for rent are available near the restaurants, similar to Sukhothai. Cycling is really the best way to go around the park.
Besides Wat Chang Lom, Wat Chedi Chet Thaew and Wat Nang Phaya we also had a look at Wat Phra Si Rattanamahatath Chaliang (on the other side of the park), which clearly showed some Khmer influences. Remarkable as well was the flute-playing musician at this temple ruin. After donating a few baht, his playing seemed remarkably appropriate for the surroundings.
All in all, Si Satchanalai is definitely a highly recommended place to visit for anyone interested in temples.
Si Satchanalai Historical Park is located on the bank of the Yom River only 55 km from Sukhothai town. The 91-hectare (288-acre) area within the old laterite ramparts and the city moat is the focus of sightseeing in the historical park. Among the remains of the 19 monuments inside the city wall, highlights are the first three monuments from the entrance: Wat Chang Lom, Wat Chedi Chet Thaew and Wat Nang Phaya.
Besides these monuments within the city wall, there are other Khmer style sites that are worth visiting. Si Satchanalai’s riverside site was crucial to the development of its famous ceramics industry. More than 1,000 kilns operated along the river, producing highly prized pots that carried a greenish-gray glaze known as celadon. These were eventually exported throughout Asia.
For more information, background details, travel options and bookings, please contact [email protected].
Crossing Borders in Style this Green Season
Travel in style from Thailand’s northern temples via Pak Beng to UNESCO-protected Luang Prabang in Laos. In the low season from 1 May until 30 June and 1-30 September, profit from major discounts on stylish hotel accommodation
Vietnam: Promised You a Miracle
As the annual Tet festival starts in Vietnam, Willem Niemeijer, CEO of Khiri Travel, analyses the country’s tourism prospects and challenges 25 years after ‘doi moi’.
New Signature Tour Takes You on Hue Discovery
In the last edition of Khiri Travel Insider, we highlighted our work on a new signature tour in Hue and featured an interview with Mr Anh, one of our top guides in this beautiful city, who talked about its identity, cultural importance and things
Season’s Best Wishes from Khiri Travel
Khiri Travel wishes all its clients and partners a very festive and merry Christmas followed by a rewarding, prosperous and happy 2011.
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Aperta Guides
PLOS Biology provides an Open Access platform to showcase your best research and commentary across all areas of biological science.
Neonatal Imitation in Rhesus Macaques
Pier F Ferrari ,
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ferrari@biol.unipr.it
Affiliations Dipartimento di Biologia Evolutiva e Funzionale, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy , Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy
Elisabetta Visalberghi,
Affiliation Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, National Research Council, Rome, Italy
Annika Paukner,
Affiliation Laboratory of Comparative Ethology, The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America
Leonardo Fogassi,
Affiliations Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy , Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy
Angela Ruggiero,
Stephen J Suomi
Pier F Ferrari,
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040302
Pier F Ferrari Elisabetta Visalberghi ... Stephen J Suomi
The emergence of social behaviors early in life is likely crucial for the development of mother–infant relationships. Some of these behaviors, such as the capacity of neonates to imitate adult facial movements, were previously thought to be limited to humans and perhaps the ape lineage. Here we report the behavioral responses of infant rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to the following human facial and hand gestures: lip smacking, tongue protrusion, mouth opening, hand opening, and opening and closing of eyes (control condition). In the third day of life, infant macaques imitate lip smacking and tongue protrusion. On the first day of life, the model's mouth openings elicited a similar matched behavior (lip smacking) in the infants. These imitative responses are present at an early stage of development, but they are apparently confined to a narrow temporal window. Because lip smacking is a core gesture in face-to-face interactions in macaques, neonatal imitation may serve to tune infants' affiliative responses to the social world. Our findings provide a quantitative description of neonatal imitation in a nonhuman primate species and suggest that these imitative capacities, contrary to what was previously thought, are not unique to the ape and human lineage. We suggest that their evolutionary origins may be traced to affiliative gestures with communicative functions.
Citation: Ferrari PF, Visalberghi E, Paukner A, Fogassi L, Ruggiero A, Suomi SJ (2006) Neonatal Imitation in Rhesus Macaques. PLoS Biol 4(9): e302. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040302
Academic Editor: Frans de Waal, Emory University, United States of America
Received: March 14, 2006; Accepted: July 12, 2006; Published: September 5, 2006
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain declaration which stipulates that, once placed in the public domain, this work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose.
Funding: This study was supported by the Division of Intramural Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, and by Cofin 2002 and Fondo per gli Investimenti della Ricerca di Base of the Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca grant RBNE01SZB4.
Abbreviations: EYE, eyes opening; HO, hand opening; LPS, lip smacking; MO, mouth opening; TP, tongue protrusion
Matching one's own behavior with that of others allows individuals to detect contingencies in the social world. This process could allow an individual to synchronize its activity with those of its group members, to copy the behavior of other individuals, and to learn the context in which an activity should be performed [1,2]. Tracking signs of this phenomenon early in life is important to understand its development and the biological features eliciting it.
To date, studies of early signs of this matching capacity have been largely limited to human infants. Almost 30 years ago, Meltzoff and Moore [3] reported that 2- to 3-wk-old infants responded with corresponding matching behaviors to specific human facial gestures, such as mouth opening (MO), tongue protrusion (TP), lip protrusion, and hand opening (HO). Other studies confirmed this early investigation, although there is still considerable debate about which gestures are actually imitated [4–9]. To avoid the possible interferences of early learning experiences with innate imitation processes, Meltzoff and Moore conducted further investigations immediately after birth and demonstrated that newborns also can imitate adult facial gestures [4,5]. They argued that the specificity of the imitative response indicates a capacity to accurately match the body parts involved. Because newborns cannot see their own face but can only perceive it through proprioception, the matching of their own acts to those observed should require a supramodal representation of the observed gesture, called active intermodal matching [3–5,10].
We know very little about the evolutionary origin of this capacity. Recently, Matsuzawa and colleagues studied neonatal imitation in two infant chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) that had been reared from birth by their biological mothers. The results were similar to those obtained with human infants [11]. Both infant chimpanzees imitated human facial gestures such as TP and MO within the first week of life, confirming previous observations carried out in a single subject by Myowa [12]. The chimpanzees' ability to imitate human facial gestures disappeared after 2 mo in both studies, similar to what has been reported for human infants [13,14]. Independently, another study with five neonate chimpanzees aged less than 3 d confirmed imitation of MO and TP [15].
Although neonatal imitation in chimpanzees, and especially in other ape species, requires further investigation, it seems that this phenomenon has features similar to human neonatal imitation, both in terms of timing and type of imitated gesture. This observation is congruent to the finding that humans and apes appear better endowed for imitation than are other primate species [15–18]. Studying neonatal imitation in a more evolutionary distant primate species in which the imitative processes are usually not present [19] might provide insights about how, when, and why this phenomenon evolved. This empirical strategy may have the dual advantage of marking possible cognitive boundaries between our species and other primates and, at the same time, delineating possible common elements shared by monkeys, humans, and chimpanzees.
To pursue this goal, we investigated the presence of neonatal imitation in rhesus macaques, an Old World monkey species that diverged from the human lineage about 25 million y ago [20]. This study represents the first detailed analysis, to our knowledge, of neonatal imitation conducted in a primate species outside the great ape clade. We provide evidence that infant macaques imitate mouth gestures (TP and LPS) performed by a human experimenter and that the temporal window in which this capacity is present is likely limited to the first days after birth. The results indicate that the capacity of neonates to imitate facial gestures may not be an evolutionary acquisition of apes and humans alone.
We tested 21 infant rhesus macaques at ages of 1, 3, 7, and 14 d. Infants were tested once a day in six different conditions (Figure 1). Each condition consisted of two time periods: baseline (40-s duration) and stimulus (20 s of stimulus presentation followed by 20 s of passive face). During baseline, the experimenter faced the infant with a passive/neutral facial expression. During stimulus presentation, one of the following gestures was performed by the experimenter: TP, MO, LPS, HO, or eyes opening (EYE, biological control condition). An additional control condition involved a nonbiological stimulus (DISK, a disk rotating clockwise and counterclockwise) to assess infants' attention toward biological versus nonbiological stimuli.
Figure 1. Experimental Conditions
Figures on the left represent stimuli during resting conditions and baseline. Figures on the right depict the stimuli when fully expressed. In the DISK condition, the disk was repeatedly rotated 90° clockwise and counterclockwise.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040302.g001
We videotaped the infants' behavior in each condition and analyzed whether their behavior matched the stimulus. We compared the frequency of matched behaviors in the baseline and stimulus periods and the frequency of the matched behaviors in each specific condition with the corresponding behavior in the biological control condition (EYE).
Infants' Attention (LOOK) to the Stimulus
During both baseline and stimulus periods, the amount of attention paid to the experimenter face/stimulus during the presentation of biological (mouth, tongue, eyes, and hand) and nonbiological stimuli (disk) did not differ among conditions. In general, the infants looked more at the stimuli during the stimulus period than at the baseline (Figure 2), although this effect was less robust on days 7 and 14. More specifically, this effect was statistically significant or close to significance on day 1 (mouth: z = 2.73, p < 0.01; hand: z = 2.33, p < 0.02; disk: z = 2.17, p < 0.05; eyes: not significant) and day 3 (mouth: z = 2.76, p < 0.01; hand: z = 1.82, p < 0.07; disk: z = 1.86, p < 0.07; eyes: z = 2.10, p < 0.05). On day 7, this effect was not present except in the hand condition (z = 2.17, p < 0.05). On day 14, the attention toward the stimulus was greater during the stimulus period than in the baseline in the DISK (z = 2.88, p < 0.005) and the EYE conditions (z = 2.55, p < 0.01).
Figure 2. Frequencies of Looks That the Infants Oriented at the Stimulus during the Baseline and the Stimulus Period
Asterisks (*) indicate a significant increase in number of looks (stimulus versus baseline) for a specific stimulus (at least p < 0.05). Pound symbols (#) indicate that this effect is close to statistical significance (p < 0.07). Because data concerning looks at models' LPS, MO, and TP were very similar, they were averaged and pooled. Frequencies are ± standard error of the mean.
Infants' Response to the Biological Stimuli
Figure 3 illustrates the infant macaques' responses to human facial and hand gestures at different ages. We report only results that obtained statistical significance.
Figure 3. Averaged Scores of the Imitated Behaviors and the Same Behaviors Scored in the Control Condition (EYE)
Averaged scores are calculated as the difference between the frequency of the imitated behavior in the stimulus period and the baseline. The scores the infants obtained are reported in relation to age and to the different experimental conditions (MO, LPS, TP, and HO). Scores are ± standard error of the mean.
On day 1, the frequency of MOs made by infant macaques was very low or absent (mean number of MOs during stimulus period in the different conditions were 0.33 in MO, 0.41 in TP, 0.47 in LPS, 0.13 in HO, and 0.07 in EYE). In contrast, high rhythmic mouth openings/closures (defined as LPS) were frequent. On day 1, in the MO condition, the frequency of MOs in the stimulus period was not different from baseline, although the frequency of LPS (in the MO condition) was significantly higher (z = 2.36, p < 0.02). More specifically, for eight out of 15 individuals, LPS increased in the stimulus period compared with baseline, whereas for one infant, it decreased and for six infants, no change occurred. The increase in LPS between baseline and stimulus periods tended to be greater in the MO condition than in the EYE condition (z = 1.77, p < 0.075), and it was significantly higher than in the TP (z = 2.35, p < 0.02) and HO (z = 2.20, p < 0.03) conditions. In the MO condition, the frequencies of HOs, MOs, and TPs did not increase in the stimulus period compared with the baseline. No significant changes were detected in any of the other conditions.
On day 3, the frequency of TPs in the TP condition and of LPS in the LPS condition were significantly higher during the stimulus period than during baseline (z = 2.19, p < 0.03 and z = 2.23, p < 0.03, respectively). The increases of LPS in the LPS condition and of TP in the TP condition were significantly higher than their respective increases in the EYE condition (z = 2.04, p < 0.05 and z = 2.26, p < 0.03, respectively). Figure 4 (and Videos S1 and S2) provides examples of two macaques responding to the experimenter's MO (left) and TP (right). In the LPS condition, ten out of 16 individuals increased the frequency of LPS in the stimulus period (in three individuals there was no change and in three, it decreased). In the TP condition, eight out of 16 individuals increased TPs in the stimulus period (in six infants there was no change and in two others, it decreased). Only five subjects increased both LPS in the LPS condition and TP in the TP condition.
Figure 4. Two Examples of a Monkey's Response to the Stimuli Mouth Opening and Tongue Protrusion
MO is shown on the left; TP on the right. Figures were taken from Videos S1 and S2. Frame A1 was taken 21.12 s after frame A, whereas frame B2 was taken 13.38 s after frame B.
Figure 5 illustrates the frequencies of LPS on day 1 and of LPS and TPs on day 3 in all experimental conditions. The frequencies of LPS in the LPS condition and of TP in the TP condition were higher than the frequencies of those same behaviors in all the other conditions (LPS frequency in LPS versus MO condition: z = 1.95, p < 0.05; versus TP condition: z = 2.19, p < 0.03; versus HO condition: z = 1.98, p < 0.05; versus EYE condition: z = 2.31, p < 0.02. TP frequency in TP versus MO condition: z = 2.36, p < 0.03; versus LPS condition: z = 2.54, p < 0.01; versus HO condition: z = 1.95, p < 0.05; versus EYE condition: z = 2.65, p < 0.01).
Figure 5. Averaged Scores of Lip Smacking on Days 1 and 3 and of Tongue Protrusion on Day 3 and of the Same Behaviors Scored in the Other Experimental Conditions
Averaged scores are calculated as the difference between the frequency of the imitated behavior in the stimulus period and the baseline. The asterisk (*) indicates a significant difference of LPS score in the MO compared with TP and HO conditions. Pound symbols (#) indicate a significant difference of the behavioral score recorded in that condition compared with all the other conditions. Scores are ± standard error of the mean.
In the LPS condition, the frequencies of HOs, MOs, and TPs did not increase in the stimulus period compared to the baseline. In the TP condition, the frequencies of HOs, MOs, and LPSs did not increase in the stimulus period compared to the baseline.
On day 7, there was a tendency to perform more LPS in the LPS condition than in the EYE condition (z = 1.77, p < 0.08). On day 14, no differences were detected between the two periods in any condition.
Our findings show that 3-d-old macaques imitate LPS and TP when seeing these gestures being performed by a human experimenter. On day 1, the MO stimulus elicited a significantly higher frequency of MOs in terms of lip smacks (repeated MO) but not in terms of the exactly matched behavior (a single MO). Thus, infants matched the type of behavior in the form but not in the pattern (repetition of mouth opening/closure). This finding could be attributed to several factors that are not mutually exclusive. First, the frequency of infants' spontaneous MOs was very low or virtually absent not only on day 1 but also on any other testing day. In contrast, as shown by our data, LPS is much more frequently displayed soon after birth than is MO, and it could be considered an easier behavior to match the MO of the model. Second, the visual system of the infant is not fully developed immediately after birth, and thus the model's MO might provide a much more visible and salient stimulus than LPS because, although both share some visible features, MO (contrary to LPS) involves a wide opening of the mouth. Thus, the infant could recognize the model's MO as a form of LPS behavior and, consequently, might respond to it.
Our findings cannot be interpreted in terms of a general, nonspecific arousal response of the infant to the observation of mouth or hand gestures for the following two reasons: (i) because the increase of a specific behavior was recorded only in the matching condition; i.e., TP increased only in the TP condition; and (ii) because we did not find increased frequencies of all the behaviors, regardless of whether they matched that performed by the model, as a generic arousal model will predict.
By day 7, neonatal imitation had largely disappeared, although some individuals (four out of 12) still matched the LPS. The infants were attentive to all the stimuli; nevertheless, only a few stimuli elicited neonatal imitation and only during the very first days of life. The other stimuli (i.e., hand, eyes, and disk) elicited the infants' interest but did not produce any specific change in the infants' responses. Thus, the mouth and the tongue appeared to be the only effective stimuli among those tested in producing an imitative response in these macaque infants. The lack of neonatal imitation of hand gestures reported here is in agreement with what has been found in chimpanzees [11] and also with some human studies that clearly replicated TP and MOs effects found by Meltzoff and Moore. However, we did not consistently find the same effect for the HOs [9].
Environmental rearing conditions and the unnatural source of stimuli might account for the limited number of gestures matched and the short time course in which neonatal imitation was observed. It is possible that infants that are separated from the mother at birth lack the rich social input required to adequately respond to gestures and to maintain such responses over time. Moreover, the biological stimuli provided by the experimenter were most likely less salient for monkeys than for those routinely provided by conspecifics (i.e., the mother or group members). These factors could have reduced the effectiveness of the stimulus and, consequently, the amplitude and time course of the imitative response. In addition, because the infant was not emotionally attached to the experimenter, the possible functional meaning of neonatal imitation might have been masked or could not emerge in its complexity.
Neonatal imitation in humans shows great interindividual variation [6,9]; indeed, it does not seem to appear in some infants. Furthermore, only TP and mouth gesture imitation, including emotional facial expressions, have been consistently reported across studies [6,7,21]. This imitative phenomenon, lasting 2–3 mo [6], occurs during a period in which infant humans develop new social abilities such as spontaneous vocalizing and smiling at others [22,23]. Similarly, infant chimpanzees imitate facial gestures at 1 wk of age and apparently cease to do so at 2 mo of age [11,12]. As in humans, the types of imitated gestures were MO and TP. Although Myowa-Yamakoshi et al. [11] used only two chimpanzees, it is remarkable how similar their results were to those obtained in human infants, both in terms of timing and type of matching. However, conclusions on possible homologies between nonhuman primates and human neonatal imitation, although very plausible, should be made with caution. Such similarities need to be further investigated in chimpanzees (and other ape species as well) and macaques, because the studies available are based on a limited number of subjects. Other phenomena related to neonatal imitation that have been demonstrated in humans, such as delay response and identity of the person effect, have not yet been studied in chimpanzees or other primates.
One of the main differences between the conclusions of our study and the other primate studies is the temporal window in which neonatal imitation was observed. In contrast to humans and chimpanzees, our infant macaques showed the phenomenon for only a few days after birth. As mentioned above, some individuals still displayed imitation of LPS at day 7, but not beyond that. How can such species differences be explained? Motor and cognitive development in macaques is much more rapid in macaques than in humans and chimpanzees [24–26]. Already at 1 wk, infant macaques may leave their mother for short periods of time. Infant exploration, involving mother–infant separation, increases over time. In our experiments, we noticed that holding a 2-wk-old or older infant and capturing its attention with the stimulus became more and more difficult with increasing age. In humans and chimpanzees, neonates stay in body contact with their mother for much longer, and the mother is the only one responsible for maintaining the infant. Thus, neonatal imitation in rhesus macaques occurs with a timing that, considering the species-specific patterns of development of motor and cognitive skills, is comparable with those reported for humans and chimpanzees.
Another important aspect that emerged from our study was the marked interindividual variability in neonatal imitative abilities. Attention paid to the stimulus was not predictive of matching the gesture. Some infants consistently imitated the model's gestures, whereas others did not imitate at all at any age. Interindividual variability cannot be attributed to environmental factors, because the housing and timing of testing were identical for all subjects. Rather, it might be related to differences in temperament that predisposes the sensorimotor system to be differently sensitive and reactive to external social events. However, we cannot draw any conclusion from our data on possible relations between predispositions of the sensorimotor system and stable individual traits. Longitudinal long-term studies may help in clarifying this possible relation. Finally, infants who imitated one specific gesture were not necessarily the same individuals who imitated the other gestures. Thus, the capacity to respond to the model may not reflect a general imitative skill but rather a sensorimotor sensitivity tuned to specific facial features.
A traditional notion in primate behavior is that apes imitate, and monkeys do not [19,27]. The capacity to learn new behaviors by imitation and the repetition of simple actions or movements already in the behavioral repertoire of the animal clearly represent two different phenomena [19,28–30]. On one hand, investigations focusing on the capacity to learn new behaviors by imitation in macaques and other monkeys have shown that the primates are not capable of imitating others in the sense that they do not learn a model's action that is novel to their own behavioral repertoire via imitation [19,31]. On the other hand, recent studies seem to suggest that macaques may be capable of displaying simple forms of imitation. Kumashiro et al. [32] trained Japanese macaques to perform joint attention and then to follow the experimenter's pointing gestures. By reinforcing spontaneous repetition of some gestures, the researchers taught the monkeys to match several of the experimenter's gestures (e.g., TP, clapping hands, hand clench, and touching one's own ear). Macaques and capuchin monkeys spontaneously perform actions related to food ingestion when they see conspecifics performing those same actions [33–35], and macaques recognize when they are being imitated by a human experimenter [36]. Therefore, it appears that adult macaques have a mechanism for matching another's behavior with their own. This matching mechanism would allow them to repeat an observed behavior that is already in their behavioral repertoire.
Several hypotheses have been put forward to identify which mechanisms might underlie neonatal imitation [37]. One of them, originally proposed for human neonatal imitation, claims that an active intermodal matching mechanism is responsible [3–5]. According to this model, the perception and production of acts in human neonates can be represented within a common supramodal framework, enabling neonates to process visual and motor information cross-modally and subsequently perform the matching motor response. An alternative hypothesis, based on neurophysiological findings, proposes that infant imitation results from a “resonance” mechanism [38,39] in which the motor system of the observer (or of the listener) is activated specifically by observing (or listening to) actions. This neural mechanism has been identified in a class of visuomotor neurons, termed mirror neurons, found in the macaque premotor and parietal cortex [40–42]. These mirror neurons become active both when the monkey makes a specific action with its hand (or mouth) and when the monkey observes similar hand (or mouth) actions performed by another individual. A class of mirror neurons was recently described that responds to facial communicative actions such as LPS and TP [41]. Taking into account these neurophysiological data, our findings are in agreement with the “mirror neurons hypothesis,” according to which the observation of mouth gestures directly activates similar motor programs in the monkey premotor areas, leading them to resonate and consequently to give rise to an overt replica of the observed gestures (LPS and TP). Similarly, neonatal imitation in humans can be interpreted within this hypothetical framework. In fact, several brain imaging studies support the existence of a mirror system in humans involving frontal and parietal areas that are homologous to those in which mirror neurons have been found in monkeys [2].
Meltzoff and Moore [43], on the basis of an experiment in which 6-wk-old infants remembered and imitated a gesture performed by an adult 1 d earlier, proposed that neonatal imitation can serve to identify individuals. According to other authors, neonatal imitation may attract caretaker attention, thereby increasing opportunities for social interactions [11]. Our data may help in clarifying the functional meaning of the phenomenon, because macaques also can match one gesture with an obvious meaning, such as LPS. LPS consists of rhythmic opening and closing of the mouth that may alternate with the protrusion of the tongue [44–46]. LPS in macaques is an important facial gesture communicating affiliation, usually used to reduce distance between two individuals, and it accompanies grooming sessions [44–46]. In this perspective, TP as part of the LPS gesture plays a role in dyadic communicative exchanges [46]. In fact, infant TPs accompanied by rhythmic opening and closing of the mouth are frequently displayed by infant macaques (Video S2).
Investigations of the ontogeny of communicative gestures in macaques showed that LPS begins to develop in the first few days of life [47]. In the first weeks of life, the infant's behavioral responses toward the social world are likely to be crucial for the infant to learn and respond appropriately to social gestures displayed by other individuals. We hypothesize that infant macaques imitate those affiliative facial gestures because they are the most appropriate responses for tuning their behaviors to individuals who show affiliative behaviors toward them. Clearly, the mother plays a crucial role in these dyadic exchanges. Some literature on human neonatal imitation emphasizes the communicative aspects of this phenomenon, especially in the face-to-face interactions [48,49]. We recently observed LPS exchanges between mother and infants in the first weeks of life in rhesus macaques living in a seminatural environment (Video S3). These observations suggest that these types of interactions, involving face-to-face communication, are common not only in chimpanzees and humans but also in macaques.
Subjects and housing.
Subjects were 21 infant rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), 14 males and seven females. To test these macaques, we took advantage of ongoing experiments requiring infants to be separated from their mother on day 1 post-partum. They were all reared in a nursery facility according to procedures described by Ruppenthal et al. [50]. Infants were housed individually in plastic cages (51 × 38 × 43 cm), which contained a 25-cm-high inanimate “surrogate mother,” composed of a 16.5-cm-circumference polypropylene cylinder attached by a flexible metal component to an 11.5-cm-wide circular metal base. The cylinder was wrapped in an electric heating pad that was covered with fleece fabric. Loose pieces of fleece fabric also covered the floor of the cage. The incubator was maintained at a temperature of ~27 °C and at 50%–55% humidity. Lights were on from 07:00 to 21:00. Infants could see and hear, but not physically contact, other infants.
All animals were provided with a 50:50 mixture of Similac (Ross Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio, United States) and Rimilac (Bio-Serv, Frenchtown, New Jersey, United States) formulas. They were hand-fed until they were old enough to feed independently, usually by day 4. Formula was administered ad libitum until 4 mo of age. Purina High Protein Monkey Chow (#5038) (Purina, St. Louis, Missouri, United States) and water were available ad libitum when nursery-reared animals reached 1 mo of age.
All testing was conducted in accordance with regulations governing the care and use of laboratory animals and had prior approval from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Subjects were tested at ages of 1, 3, 7, 14, and 30 d or, due to experimental constraints, within 1 d before or after these days. Early in the study, we found that by day 30, infants were highly mobile and difficult to hold for more than few seconds. For this reason, we abandoned the day 30 testing. Seven infants were tested at all four remaining ages, seven at only three different ages, one at two different ages (days 1 and 3), and five at one age (n = 3 monkeys at day 1; n = 1 at day 3; n = 1 at day 14). To summarize, we tested 15 infants at day 1, 16 at day 3, 12 at day 7, and 13 at day 14. If during testing, some animals were sleepy or too mobile, we waited for a few minutes until the infant was more awake or calm enough to be tested. However, no infants were eliminated from the analysis. Infants were tested ~30–90 min after feeding in an experimental room designed to minimize visual and auditory distractions. Once an infant was transferred to that room, a 10- to 20-min period of habituation followed to allow the infant to settle down. During testing, the experimenter was seated on a chair and held the infant while it was grasping the surrogate, or pieces of fleece fabric. This arrangement visibly calmed the infants and minimized their distress.
Three experimenters were involved in the data collection. One experimenter held the infant monkey in his/her hands, the second (the demonstrator) served as the source of stimuli, and the third videotaped the experiment and informed the demonstrator of the correct sequence of stimuli. Two video cameras (Panasonic VHS, Panasonic, Secausus, New Jersey, United States), and Sony digital, Sony, Tokyo, Japan; positioned 1.5 m lateral to the monkey) recorded the experiment. One video camera recorded both the experimenter and the infant in side view; the other recorded solely the subject's entire body from the other side (at about 120° angle from the other camera).
Each test session included six different conditions (Figure 1). Each condition consisted of two different time periods: baseline (40-s duration) and stimulus (20 s of stimulus presentation followed by 20 s of passive face). During baseline, the infant faced one of the following stimuli according to the experimental condition: (i) the demonstrator with a passive/neutral facial expression (in the conditions involving mouth gestures), (ii) the experimenter hand (in the condition involving the hand gesture), or (iii) a disk (in the DISK condition). During stimulus presentation, one of the following gestures was presented repeatedly: TP (protrusion with maximal extension and retraction of the tongue, ~seven openings/20 s), MO (opening and closing the mouth with a maximal aperture, ~seven openings/20 s), LPS (a high-frequency opening and closing of the mouth without sound production, ~100 openings/20 s), HO (opening and closing the hand, ~seven openings/20 s), EYE (opening and closing of the eyes including eyebrow lifts but without moving the lower face, ~seven openings/20 s), or DISK (a 15-cm-diameter plastic disk with a red and black cross painted on it, rotated 90° clockwise and counterclockwise). We introduced this last condition to compare the effect of a nonbiological stimulus and movement, similar in size to the human face and hand, on infant macaque behavior. On each testing day, each stimulus was presented only once. Stimuli were presented in a randomized sequence with two constraints: a mouth stimulus was never directly followed by a second mouth stimulus, and the same sequence of conditions was never repeated over two consecutive testing sessions.
Behavioral analysis.
Most of the tapes (80%) were digitally analyzed by two coders not blind to the experimental condition using all occurrence sampling for all behaviors listed below. Reliability between the two coders was very high (Cohen's kappa = 0.95). The analysis was not blind, to allow the coders to score the infants' behavior in relation to the beginning of each period, which was aligned to the time point in which the stimulus appeared on the screen, started to move (stimulus period), and ceased to move (post-stimulus period). However, to ensure the reliability of this procedure, 20% of sessions were coded with the human model covered on the screen so that the scorer was blind to the experimental condition. Reliability between the two coders was still high (Cohen's kappa = 0.86). The outcomes of these sessions were compared with the analysis of the same sessions in which the scorer was not blind to the experimental condition. Consistency between the blind and nonblind coding was very high (Pearson correlation: r = 0.879, p < 0.001).
The following behaviors were scored for analysis: (i) Attention to the model (LOOK). The monkey orients and looks at the stimulus (neutral face during baseline and post-stimulus, stimulus during stimulus presentation). Looking could vary from brief scans to extended visual contact for several seconds. Each look at the model was counted as one occurrence of LOOK. (ii) LPS. The mouth is opened and closed quickly. The mouth is not opened to its full extent (but generally to one-third). LPS may be combined with TP. Each opening of the mouth was counted as one occurrence of LPS. Occurrences of TP were scored separately. (iii) MO. The mouth is opened for at least half of its total opening span, and usually only once. MO is performed more slowly than LPS, and the mouth is maintained open for a slightly longer period. Each opening of the mouth was counted as one occurrence of MO. TPs could occur in combination with MO. Occurrences of TP were scored separately. (iv) TP. Forward movements of the tongue so that it crosses the inner edge of the lower lip. Each thrust was scored as one occurrence of TP. (v) HO. Opening and closing of a hand without arm movements. Generally, fingers are tightened around support (usually fleece fabric) with a whole hand grip. Each opening and closing of one hand was scored as one occurrence of HO. (vi) Move arm and grasp (MOVE-HO). Grip is released from support, arm moves toward another area on support, and the support is gripped again. Each of these sequences was counted as one occurrence of MOVE-HO.
Statistical analysis: Attention toward the biological and nonbiological objects.
Wilcoxon paired tests were used to compare the amount of attention (LOOK) that the infant paid to the biological (face or hand) or to the nonbiological stimulus (disk) during the baseline and the stimulus periods. For each animal, scores obtained in the three facial conditions (LPS, TP, and MO) were averaged.
Statistical analysis: Stimulus versus baseline period.
In each condition, we assessed whether the monkeys' behavior that matched the behavior provided by the experimenter (target behavior) was performed by the infant with higher frequency during stimulus periods than during baseline. For this purpose, we compared the frequency of each behavior displayed during the stimulus period with that displayed during baseline. The frequency of each behavior in the stimulus and baseline periods were compared with Wilcoxon paired tests.
Comparison of the monkeys' behavior during each experimental condition with the biological control (EYE) condition.
To compare the frequency of the matched behavior in a condition with that scored in the control, we calculated for each infant the difference in frequency between the matched behavior displayed during the stimulus period and the baseline period. A negative score indicated that a behavior was observed more frequently during baseline; a positive score indicated that a behavior was observed more frequently during the stimulus period. Wilcoxon tests were used to compare the score for each matched behavior displayed in a specific condition with the score of the same behavior displayed in the control condition (EYE condition). We ran the same comparison between each stimulus period and the same behavior displayed in the nonbiological control (DISK condition). To exclude that the frequency of the matched behavior could increase as a consequence of neonate general arousal for seeing a specific mouth or hand movement, we compared the score of each matched behavior displayed in a specific condition with that obtained in the other conditions (Wilcoxon paired tests).
Video S1. 3-d-Old Macaque Infant Imitating Mouth Opening
This video illustrates a 3-d-old infant male macaque responding to the experimenter mouth gesture.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040302.sv001
(3.3 MB AVI)
Video S2. 3-d-Old Macaque Infant Imitating Tongue Protrusion
This video illustrates a 3-d-old infant female macaque responding to the experimenter's TP.
Video S3. Lip Smacking Exchanges in a Naturalistic Setting between Mother and Infant Macaques
This video was taken at the field station in Poolesville, Maryland, United States (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development). It depicts a face-to-face mother–infant LPS exchange with the mother initiating the interaction. The infant is less than 10 d old.
We thank Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese, Arthur Glenberg, and Elsa Addessi for their valuable comments on an early draft of the manuscript.
PFF, EV, LF, and SJS conceived and designed the experiments. PFF, EV, and AR performed the experiments. PFF and AP analyzed the data. PFF, EV, and SJS wrote the paper.
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39. Rizzolatti G, Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Gallese V (2002) From mirror neurons to imitation: Facts and speculations. In: Meltzoff AN, Prinz W, editors. The imitative mind. Development, evolution, and brain bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 247–265. pp.
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Related PLOS Articles
Evolution of Neonatal Imitation
Is the Subject Area "Macaque" applicable to this article?
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Neonates
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What is the Jewish view of “work”?
What is the mainline Jewish view of "work"?
(1) Work is an just an option for those who have enough money to live on. The Torah may say "Six days shall you labor and do all your work", but none of the Sources or commentators interpret this as a commandment to work for six days. (It's just a preamble for the commandment of Shabbat.) Work is, however, encouraged. The Mishna says simply: "Love work -- Ehav et hamlakhah." [Pirkei Avot 1:10]
(2) Work is a religious obligation. The Rambam says [Mishneh Torah, Laws of Torah Study 3:10-11]:
Anyone... who makes up his mind to study Torah and not work, but live on charity, profanes the name of God, disgraces the Torah, obscures the light of religion, causes harm to himself, and deprives himself of life in the World to Come; for it is forbidden to derive temporal advantage from the words of the Torah [such as being supported by them] … The end of such a person will be that he will rob his fellow man.
[On the other hand,] anyone who supports himself by the work of his hands possesses a great virtue … He will attain all the glory and happiness of both this world and the World to Come, as [the psalmist] wrote: "When you eat the fruit of the labor of your hands, you shall be happy and it shall be well with you." [Psalms 128:2]
(3) Work is punishment for not being observant enough. The Mechilta [at Ki Tisa] says:
One verse says "In six days work shall be done" [passive voice] [Ex. 31:15, Ex. 35:2, Lev. 23:3] and another says, "Six days shall you work and do all your work" [active voice] [Ex. 20:9, Ex. 34:21, Deut. 5:13] . How can both be true?
It means that when [Israel] does not do the will of God, they will do their work themselves, and when Israel is doing the will of God, their work will be done by others, as it is written:
And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and tend your vineyards. But you shall be named the Priests of the Lord. Men shall call you the Ministers of our God; you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory. [Isaiah 61:5]
(4) Work is a necessary evil. Derived from combining (1) and (3).
Question: Is working for a living an option, an obligation, punishment, or an evil? (It can't be all of them.)
shabbat hashkafah-philosophy melacha-creative-work employment
edited Jun 14 at 0:10
Maurice Mizrahi
Maurice MizrahiMaurice Mizrahi
It could be all of them - it could be different things for different people. – DonielF Jun 13 at 17:36
@DonielF -- Not really. When "commandments" are involved, some "people" may be right and others wrong. – Maurice Mizrahi Jun 13 at 17:39
Rambam you quoted in (2) only considers it an obligation if the alternative is subsisting on charity, but not if one has enough to live on without working. So it doesn't contradict (1). – Jay Jun 13 at 17:46
Taking all your points and inferences at face value, why can't they all be valid opinions? Mishna says X, Rambam says Y, Mechilta says Z. Wouldn't be the first time we had multiple opinions for a single issue. – Salmononius2 Jun 13 at 17:54
Re: the Mishnah in Avot you quote: The full statement is "'Ehov et ha-Melakhah, u-Sna et ha-Rabanut, ve-al Titvada la-Reshut". In that context, it would seem that loving work is meant in contradistinction from seeking positions of ruling others, or getting [personally] close to the authorities, rather than a simple statement of preference of working. – Tamir Evan Jun 14 at 3:25
(5) R Sheishes (Sanhesrin 24b) says that a gambler cannot testify because eino oseiq beyishuvo shel olam -- he isn't busy with domesticating the universe. (Terrible translation, I know.) The Rambam rules accordingly in Eidus 10:4 and Gezeilah vaAveidah 6:11. In the latter, he ends, "שֶׁאֵין רָאוּי לְאָדָם שֶׁיַּעֲסֹק כָּל יָמָיו אֶלָּא בְּדִבְרֵי חָכְמָה וּבְיִשּׁוּבוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם: -- it is not worthy for a person to be busy all his days with anything but wisdom and domesticating the universe." See also the Tur (CM 34:25), the Beis Yoseif (YD 228:15) and elsewhere.
(6) Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi Yehudah haNasi would say (Avos 2:2) "יָפֶה תַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה עִם דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ, שֶׁיְּגִיעַת שְׁנֵיהֶם מְשַׁכַּחַת עָוֹן -- Torah study combined with a worldly occupation is beautiful, because toiling in both of them drives sin from one's mind."
(7) To buttress (3), note that Hashem was "Angry" (as it were) and punishing Adam when He said (Bereishis 3:19) "בְּזֵעַ֤ת אַפֶּ֙יךָ֙ תֹּ֣אכַל לֶ֔חֶם -- by the sweat of your brow you will be able to eat bread."
(7b) Although His initial "Intent" before the fruit was "וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ׃ -- and He placed him in the Garden of Eden
But I don't see you asking a question as much as stating the facts.
The Torah is telling us working for a living is a mixed bag, it has its pluses and its minuses. And whether it's a good thing or not depends on your abilities, your propensities, your desires, your middos and your situation.
Life is messy. Sometimes there is no tying conflicting threads into a neat bow.
Micha BergerMicha Berger
+1. Although a little disappointed that you’re not going to attempt a Soloveitchikian dialectic. – Joel K Jun 14 at 14:31
Why would I reduce the number of issues to two? Of the people you know who enjoy lomdus, I'm potentially the least Brisker! – Micha Berger Jun 14 at 15:22
@Micha there's no such thing as a three way Chakira. Just a two way Chakira with one side having a sub Chakira. – Double AA♦ Jun 14 at 15:39
Come over to R Shimon’s team. Here you learn there aren’t only chaqiros and chiluqim, but also hitztarfus. – Micha Berger Jun 14 at 16:07
You can have as many titles as you want but you can always subdivide a set of multiple distinct options into exactly two groups, and then recur. If you're stuck at a set of three options then by logical necessity you haven't finished the analysis – Double AA♦ Jun 14 at 17:51
What's a pillow? It might be good for many things and bad for others. It all depends on its uses because it's only a TOOL.
Work is not a goal to attain on its own, neither it is a punishment, it is a tool we use to do good or bad things. We can use it to support ourselves, our families, kids, to let us learn Torah is the peace of mind or to drown in it and forgot the Mitzvos in the constant pursuit of money and pleasures.
But wait, that's not all. Kaballicaly, the purpose of this world is (among the others) that G-d desired there to be a dwelling for him in the Earthy world. If you notice most of the Miztvos have physical implementations of actually doing something in this world, and some simple Mitzvos (like פרו ורבו) may imply years of hard parenting. Therefore, contrary to the common perception of the physical as something that "slows us down" or "make us fail", its goal is to let us elevate it to the level of spiritual, so to say. Like sex I mentioned.
That's why a Nazir is called a sinner, as he tries to distance himself from the physical world while G-d wants the opposite - dealing with the physical and sanctifying it. And that's why Chofetz Haim kept his shop. And that's what the Mishnah in Avos says "חכמתו מרובה ממעשיו".
Al BerkoAl Berko
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Are the AOC and JC really the same?
On July 29, the Judicial Council will vote to “retire” the name of the Administrative Office of the Court and henceforth refer to the AOC as “the Judicial Council staff.” The reasons for the change, and for the haste with which it’s being made, remain muddled. Our branch leaders claim that the change is necessary to eliminate “confusion”—although they never specify who is being confused, why the confusion couldn’t be cleared with a simple explanation rather than by suddenly changing the name of a 50-year-old institution, or why the confusion needs to be dispelled now, as opposed to sometime earlier in the budget process when it might have made a difference.
On one point, however, branch leaders have remained clear. They have all repeatedly claimed that the AOC has never existed as a separate entity.
In a letter to AOC staff dated June 27, the Chief Justice wrote: “Many now view the ‘AOC’ as a separate entity from the council, which it is not—it is, and always has been, the council’s staff arm, and as such implements council policy and provides professional services to the courts on the council’s behalf.” Justice Miller, chair of the powerful Executive & Planning Committee, declared at the last Judicial Council meeting, “We are not and we have not been separate and distinct entities.” A recent press release quotes AOC Administrative Director Jahr has having said, “There’s only one entity, and that’s the Judicial Council of California. Neither in the Constitution, in statute, in rules, or in other formal methods, was a separate entity ever created.” And in their report to the Judicial Council for consideration at this week’s Council meeting, the chairs of the five internal Judicial Council committees wrote: “It is a common misperception that the ‘AOC’ is an entity that is separate from, and in some way independent of, the council, with its own policymaking authority. In reality, the ‘AOC’ is not a separate entity.”
But this is not the position that the AOC and the Council have taken in court.
When AOC employee Paula Negley sued the AOC and the Judicial Council for gender discrimination and wrongful termination, attorneys for the Council argued back in 2010: “Plaintiff was employed by the AOC, not the Judicial Council. (Fuentes, Decl. p. 9.) As all of Plaintiff’s claims are predicated on the existence of an employee/employer relationship, the Judicial Council is entitled to summary judgment.” (Emphasis in original.) And Ernesto Fuentes, Director of the AOC’s Human Resources Division, stated in a declaration under penalty of perjury: “Plaintiff was employed by the AOC, not the Judicial Council. The Judicial Council does not have any employees.”
We link the relevant documents here and here. We obtained them through PACER, the federal judiciary’s functioning case search and e-filing system.
In announcing the proposed name change, Administrative Director Jahr said, “This retirement [of the name] at once changes everything, and changes nothing.” It certainly changes one thing: the position that the AOC and the Council have taken in documents that they filed under oath in litigation with their own employees.
Very Truly Yours,
Directors, Alliance of California Judges
From JCW:
Odd this: These are the representations that the AOC, the Judicial Council and their lawyers made to a federal court. In essence, the AOC, the Judicial Council, their lawyers and AOC employees all lied to a federal judge to win a summary judgement AGAINST their employee and favoring themselves. Subsequent litigation from other entities against the Judicial Council and the AOC would omit the name Judicial Council from the litigation because they clearly and unambiguously established to a federal court that they were in fact two separate entities.
We talked to Paula Negley about these matters yesterday. She pretty much confirmed that they all lied to win their case and to secure approximately $34,000.00 in fees and costs against Paula. If we are to believe what Queen Feckless and the inept leadership are telling us today, Paula Negley is writing a monthly check to an entity that does not, nor has ever existed.
We’re also confident that the sudden name change is being made for the sake of other litigation – to get the AOC off the hook from another legal matter by saying they did not exist and oh, by the way, the statute of limitations has run out so you can’t sue the judicial council.
It’s just another day down the rabbit hole.
Posted in: Administrative Office of the Courts, AOC, Branch Boondoggles, Judicial Council of California
← Does the rules committee follow the rules?
According to the Judicial Council perjury is OK when they’re conducting it →
112 Responses “Are the AOC and JC really the same?” →
sharonkramer
The continued greasy sleaziness never ceases to amaze me. As I understand it, another possibility for the sudden change in definition of the AOC is that the BSA only has leagl authority to audit state agencies — not the judicial branch “policy writing body” and its “staff”.
Is it perjury now that the JC has always been responsible for AOC actions; or was it perjury before, that they aren’t? They don’t get it both ways.
Not sure the statutes have run for Paula. I hope she goes back and nails them for what they did while trying to destroy her for telling the truth of their wicked ways and the harm from it.
The statutes certainly have not run out for those who came after Paula and relied upon the now JC self-admittede falicy in federal court that JC officers have never had liability for acts of AOC employees/JC staff.
Speaking of statutes of limitations . . .
The statute of limitations for making a false statement under oath (perjury) to a federal court or in a federal court proceeding is five years. So there’s still a good year and a half for members of the Judicial Council, the AOC, and Fuentes to be charged with perjury for lying to a federal court.
And under California law, there is no statute of limitations for the embezzlement of public funds.
Again, not that anyone is going to actually do anything about any of that.
Still serving themselves to the detriment of all Californians.
One could argue that Paula Negley just became aware that they knew they were committing perjury in a legal proceeding with their new admittance that they have always been responsible for acts of AOC — contrary to what they submitted earlier to skirt liability in federal lawsuit. Perjury is a funny thing. Its not the proof that you know they lied that counts. Its when one becomes aware of the proof that they know they did which matters.
Wonder what other lawsuits are out there in which the JC is now proven to know that they falsely claimed they had no liability for acts of the AOC? Sure sounds like a pattern to me — particularly against Whistleblowers!
R. Campomadera
The Judicial Council should be careful what it wishes for. Judges have full immunity for their judicial decisions only, not administrative decisions, for which they have only qualified immunity, just like any other bureaucrat.
Seems to me that the members of the Judicial Council had better line up their Errors and Omissions coverage. If the vote goes as expected (doesn’t it always?) they are going to be on the hook for the decisions of “their staff”. Given the staff’s track record (e.g. $500 million totally, absolutely wasted on CCMS, Long Beach, etc.), I sure wouldn’t want to be in that position.
I don’t think they’ve really thought this whole “it changes everything, it changes nothing” change through. There are going to be all kinds of unintended consequences, none of them inuring to the benefit of the members of the Judicial Council. They are being led down the primrose path by CJ Clueless, aka, CJ Feckless, aka “The Red Queen”.
That’s EXACTLY right!
Its pretty stupid to have a long history of BSA audits of the AOC doing acts which are nothing short of unconscienable — and then publicly state that JC officers have always been responsible for AOC acts, when you wrote in FEDERAL COURT under penalty of perjuiry, that they were not. Can you say “lying in federal legal proceedings, with no judicial immunity”?
MaxRebo5
That is a great shame JCW. I feel for Paula.
I noticed three things at the meeting this morning:
1. They almost laugh that there is no public comment. Could that lack of interest be a sign that this body is so removed that the public has no idea who they are or what public business they are conducting? If the public has no interest in the committee do you think they want that committee to have a staff of 800 employees?
2. For Judge Jahr’s retirement the presentation was by Noreen Evens and the chief didn’t say a word. Not a very heartfelt thanks for service to the man. No conference center in his honor? He did OK and didn’t waste $500 million on a failed computer system. Seems Jahr should be the new standard for excellence in judicial administration relative to the director he replaced.
3. For the retirement of the AOC name. No debate at all! Too funny. Jahr was telling the council how the signs, stationary, and cards will be replaced before the council even discussed the idea as a concept. The whole thing is a complete rubber stamp committee for the Chief. A two headed monster they said is the image they want to be free of by retiring the AOC name. Replaced now with a one headed snake. An almost a bibilical image of deception comes to mind.
So members of the Judicial Council and the AOC lied to a court. So Fuentes et al committed perjury. So they are all liars. So money is being paid every month to an entity that doesn’t legally exist. So there’s no public comment. So branch administration laughs at this. So 455 Golden Gate Avenue rubber stamps things assembly line style. So it’s all just an endless source of amusement for Queen Feckless and branch “leadership”. So what? Ho-hum. Yawn.
It’s not like anyone is going to do anything about any of it.
You just can’t make this stuff up really.
Concerted efforts to obstruct justice by (or at the direction/with the approval of) “top leadership” have gone on for years.
What the JUDICIAL COUNCIL did to Paula Negley is unforgivable. Feckless should propose to the JUDICIAL COUNCIL that the JUDICIAL COUNCIL give Paula Negley her money back, with interest. And the JUDICIAL COUNCIL should SWOV, but quick, to approve it.
I second that, Justice California. In addition to all other damages, those pompous asses shattered her faith in the Constitution and completely shook her confidence of being able to determine who are true friends. That is a terrible thing to steal from someone. It adversely impacts the rest of their lives — just because they did the right thing.
If they think some little name change erases the damage and absolves them for past wrongs, they need to think again.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-0729-tuesday-california-courts-funding-20140729-story.html
Terry Friedman should shut his piehole.
Friedman:
“California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye has issued her “Three-Year Blueprint for a Fully Functioning Judicial Branch.” Justice demands that we reinvest in our justice system by funding our courts, as the blueprint proposes.”
LOL, LOL.
Feckless has done nothing to improve the courts. She has to be overseen and forced to do the right thing (like dumping Vickrey and CCMS, and bouncing Halpin); she has created awards named after the worst of the worst (Vickrey) and handed them out to those she personally knows are the worst of the worst (Turner); she has alienated and belittled over 25% of the CA judiciary; she likes to be chauffeured around on the public dime; she expects that her wish is everyone else’s command and makes appointments accordingly; she is reliant on tired, compromised Team George members and policies to guide her and do her bidding; she is arrogant, self-absorbed, very ambitious, but honestly, just not too bright.
That is a very poor collection of qualities for the “leader” of the biggest judiciary in the free world to have. (Maybe somewhere else, but definitely not in a “free” world).
It CANNOT be said by those who pay attention that her priority is serving the public. The public HATES how it is being treated in the courts.
So Sakauye and Team George can whine about funding, but given Sakauye’s track record this past three years, how can this administration be trusted to do the right thing for the public with public funds? History has shown it cannot.
Yes, we are watching history in the making. The decline and fall of the biggest judiciary in the world, courtesy of Ron George and Tani Cantil Sakauye.
And all those who are sitting around getting paid by the public to protect the public– who have been told about corruption and crimes taking place at the highest levels, but have done nothing to stop it– will be a part of the story.
Note to Terry Friedman and Queen Feckless: “More money” is not going to fix what is really wrong in and with the California Judicial Branch. And everyone that matters knows this at this point.
You are so right, Wendy. This SWOV while claiming to be holier than thou needs to stop from top to bottom in the Cal courts. Politics under the color of law is the main problem in the branch. Giving them more money w/o ridding the compromised is like throwning gasoline on a raging toxic dump fire.
Just heard of another one where the Fourth District Division One Appellate Court is about to issue a fraudulent remittitur concealing that they failed to address a judgment known to be void on its face, in their opinion.
Yep, you guessed it. The victim is a whistleblower of cronyism in the courts, who they want destroyed and silenced.
Nice article by Courthouse News this morning:
Council Backs Off Deficit Budget, Name Change Brings Controversy
By MARIA DINZEO
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SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – Senator Noreen Evans on Tuesday urged the Judicial Council not to waste good will between the courts, the Legislature and the governor’s office by assuming legislators will make up for a projected shortfall of $22.7 million in court fee revenue. On a second matter, a motion to abandon the name of the judiciary’s administrative agency passed, but not without controversy.
“The Judicial Council cannot pick a fight with the Department of Finance. It is not winnable. They hold all the cards, obviously, and we need to work cooperatively with them,” Evans told the council.
Evans was referring to a recommendation from the council’s Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee that the council avoid addressing the shortfall now and instead send a request for the additional funds to the governor’s Department of Finance.
“The consensus of the committee was that by doing that we would solve a problem that’s not ours and should be solved by the DOF and they should not be let off the hook for that,” said Judge Laurie Earl of Sacramento, who chairs the budget committee.
The projected 2014-2015 revenue for court fees such as civil case filing fees and criminal fines was lowered by the judiciary staff and the governor’s financial staff by about $70 million earlier this year.
In April, the council asked the governor’s finance department to backfill that amount in the 2014-2015 budget for the courts. In his May revise, the governor gave $30.9 million.
The judicial council’s budget committee then said another $22.7 million was needed for the trial court trust fund which funds trial court operations in the 58 counties of California.
Earl told the council, “Over the past several years, the state significantly reduced support for trial court operations and relied in part on revenue from court user fees, and the risk is if that user fees decline, so do the revenue they generate.”
“This was the advisory committee’s opinion that the stability of state trial court funding should be protected despite changes in user fee revenues,” Earl added, “This shortfall, we believe, is rightfully a problem the state needs to take responsibility for. ”
Earl noted that the Department of Finance had said it would be willing to backfill fee revenue shortages. “It’s not clear why they couldn’t commit to back fill this year,” Earl said.
Evans, a Democrat from Santa Rosa and the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged caution in approaching the shortfall.
She warned that it was not fiscally prudent to operate at a deficit and that the goodwill the judiciary had built in Sacramento could be jeopardized by allocating funds that the courts are not assured of getting.
“Don’t upset the apple cart at this point. There has been a lot of goodwill built up at this point and we need to keep that moving forward,” said Evans. “I would suggest that conversations be held with legislative leaders.”
The judges around the council meeting table seemed to agree.
“The sentiments from the DOF is they want us to act prudently. Fiscally responsible. They consider deficit spending to be contrary to that,” Judge Brian McCabe from Merced said. “I’m slow but I’m not that slow. This is going to create political fallout and will undo what we’ve worked very hard to do over the last several years which is build a relationship with our sister branches.”
Justice Marvin Baxter said, “Sometimes a recommendation with the best of intentions can have unintended consequences. I suspect that in this case it would be true. We will be telegraphing to the trial courts that this money is available. Then what do we do? I do think that we proceed carefully. I don’t think we should provoke our sister branches of government.”
The council rejected the budget committee’s recommendation on a voice vote.
Judge Mary Ann O’Malley of Contra Costa County was the only judge who stood in opposition, voting against the majority.
“I feel for those presiding judges and court executive officers they’ve been cut, and cut and cut. I don’t think anybody wants to pick a fight with anybody I just think they don’t want to be hit again. And so it is just a matter of hoping that a wrong can be righted for the right reasons,” O’Malley said.
Also during its Tuesday meeting, the council approved an amendment to the California Rules of Court to retire the name “Administrative Office of the Courts,” and rename the agency “Judicial Council staff.”
A month earlier, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said she had decided to the change the agency’s name and directed the heads of the council’s five internal committees to draft the rule change.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the head of one of those committees made his pitch for the change, reflecting a line of argument adopted by the agency’s former director Steven Jahr who said, “It at once changes everything and changes nothing.”
“For years there has been widespread confusion among those who aren’t familiar with the judicial branch that the staff of the council was a separate entity from the council and in some way independent of the council,” said Justice Harry Hull, who chairs the internal committee on policy and legislation. “This confusion in my view at least was sometimes exploited by those who didn’t have the best interests of the judicial branch or the public in mind.”
That argument was contradicted a day earlier.
“This is not the position the AOC and the council have taken in court,” said a statement from the Alliance of California judges, a reform group that counts 500 California judges as members.
Referring to the AOC’s opposition to a sex discrimination suit by a former employee, the Alliance noted, “An attorney for the council argued back in 2010 that plaintiff was employed by the AOC and not the council.”
In that litigation, an affidavit filed by the AOC’s human resources director said, “Plaintiff was employed by the AOC, not the Judicial Council. The Judicial Council does not have any employees.”
Referring to the argument that the name change “changes nothing at all,” the Alliance statement said, “It certainly changes one thing, it changes the position that the AOC and the Council have taken in documents that they filed under oath.”
On Tuesday, the motion to adopt a court rule abandoning the name Administrative Office of the Courts passed on a unanimous vote.
I did want to comment on this article. The author says the name change was not without controversy. She is correct the ACJ’s raised great points in their letter but they do not have any respresentation to on the Judicial Council (as they should). The unanimous vote shows there was actually no controversy at all by the members of the Judicial Council. They rubber stamped this name change without any debate.
As for the shortfall of the fees, it is interesting the Judicial Council accepted the $30.9 million Governor Brown provided (not the 70 million they wanted). My view is this is tactical choice by the JC too. They will eat the $22,7 million and make the trial courts take that hit (more layoffs for the 58 trial courts).
I believe the Judicial Council is making this tactical choice to preserve their politcal capitol so they can push for the $400 million needed to fund the Sacramento Courthouse construction. They know this approach will mean layoffs for trial court staff around the state to afford a new courthouse in Sacramento. It is the exact same tactic Ron George/Vickrey took when Arnold was Governor. George/Vickrey pushed for and got 5 billion in bonds for CA Courthouses but there was no political capitol left to preserve/maintain funding for trial court staff. As a result, 2,500 trial court employees around the state, myself included, got laid off.
The same tactics are repeating again today because it is the same folks from Team George in charge with the current Chief Justice. If there is a shortfall in funding it should be the Judicial Council’s staff that is cut first to address the 22.7 million dollar shortfall in fines/fees and not trial court staff. I hope Governor Brown sees through this very wicked tactic by the Chief Justice’s Judicial Council where trial court employees are again being thrown under the bus by their so called “leaders”.
Published today, Wednesday, July 30, from the Metropolitan News Enterprise:
State Judicial Council Approves Retirement of AOC’s Name
From Staff and Wire Service Reports
As expected, the Judicial Council yesterday voted to retire the name of the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Under the rule change, approved at a meeting in San Francisco, the agency will henceforth be identified as the Judicial Council staff.
Third District Court of Appeal Justice Harry Hull, chair of the council’s Rules and Project’s Committee, called the change “[a] move that makes a great deal of sense,” in a statement released by the agency.
“For years, there has been confusion over the relationship between the administrative office and the council; that the staff of the council was a separate entity and in some way independent of the council. It’s time to end that confusion,” Hull said. Hull noted that the rule changes “merely retire the name without changing the functions, duties, responsibilities or obligations of the council or its staff.”
Earlier this week, the expected action was questioned in a statement issued by the directors of the Alliance of California Judges, a persistent critic of the AOC.
“The reasons for the change, and for the haste with which it’s being made, remain muddled,” the alliance directors said. “Our branch leaders claim that the change is necessary to eliminate ‘confusion’—although they never specify who is being confused, why the confusion couldn’t be cleared with a simple explanation rather than by suddenly changing the name of a 50-year-old institution, or why the confusion needs to be dispelled now, as opposed to sometime earlier in the budget process when it might have made a difference.”
The alliance also said the council and the AOC had claimed to be separate entities when they were sued by an AOC employee for gender discrimination and wrongful termination. It cited a 2010 declaration under penalty of perjury in which the director of the AOC’s Human Resources Division said the plaintiff was employed solely by the AOC and that “[t]he Judicial Council does not have any employees.”
In other action, the council voted to approve the allocation of $65 million appropriated for trial court facility modifications and planning.
The council also voted to seek $27 million for the design of a new criminal courthouse for the Sacramento Superior Court.
“I’m the eternal optimist. I believed it would ultimately get built,” Presiding Judge Robert Hight told Courthouse News Service Monday.
A statewide budget crisis in 2008 gutted the courthouse construction budget, with the Legislature taking funds set aside for construction projects and redirecting the money to keep standing courthouses open. Dozens of courthouse construction projects ended up on the indefinitely-delayed list.
“When the budget crisis hit, we were ready to proceed with design, construction plans. Then the council delayed this, because there wasn’t any money left in the account,” Hight said.
For the Sacramento courthouse, the process started with a recommendation by the Court Facilities Advisory Committee which then moved to the Policy Coordination and Liaison Committee. Based on a presentation from the chair of the facilities committee, the liaison committee voted unanimously last Thursday to recommend that the full council approve $27 million for blueprints at the next council meeting which is scheduled for Tuesday.
Based on past practice, the council is almost certain to approve what is recommended to it.
Within the council, the Court Facilities Advisory Committee determines the fate of every proposed courthouse project, deciding which one is shelved and which one goes forward.
“We were very sorry to have to put it on the back burner when we did,” said Justice Brad Hill who chairs the facilities committee. “This is certainly a critically needed project and we’re looking forward to getting it on track. Of those that were deferred, it was at the top of the list.”
The liaison committee to which he spoke was open to the press and public as a result of a new Judicial Council rule that opened almost all the council committees to the press and public.
One reason the Sacramento courthouse was first in line for funding was the need for improved security, said the court’s presiding judge.
“We only have one in-custody elevator and it only goes to the 4th floor,” said Hight. “If you have an in-custody matter on the 5th or 6th floor, you have to walk the defendant upstairs and across public halls and it’s just not good for security,” he said.
Judges also currently share an elevator with members of the public. “You’re in there with the defendant’s family and the victim’s family,” said Hight. “Though nothing has happened thus far, sometimes it’s tense.”
http://www.metnews.com/
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/30/6591468/steinberg-discusses-ambitions.html
It’s no secret Steinberg wants an appointment to the California bench He is also not a political idiot. The political reality is Steinberg will not get an appointment to the bench in advance of the November election. After the November election may be a different story. And if it’s not an appointment to the California Supreme Court, well, ok. Any other appointment to the California bench will do.
Absolutely amazing that Steinberg thinks it would be appropriate for Brown to appoint him to the Supreme Court. Steinberg is a politician. He will always be a politician, on or off the bench. How does being a politician qualify one to cut the line for an appointment to the Supreme Court? Geez.
Oh wait, right, now I understand. Feckless couldn’t get a job out of law school and was a gambler and cocktail waitress by trade and she is now chief justice, so why wouldn’t Steinberg think it is perfectly OK to be her termed-out politician buddy sitting on the Supreme Court with her? Brilliant.
Hey, maybe Steinberg was the one who insisted on the AOC name change? He wouldn’t take a job there unless it had more faked dignity? I still think Feckless has her buddy in the running to be . . . .what….Lord Steinberg, Judicial Council Chief of Staff? She needs him to protect her, he wants power, the pay and perks are nice, and he could have a damn fine gold embossed business card . . .
Steinberg is a successful, savvy politician, but that does not qualify him to be appointed to the bench, or hired as top administrator of the judicial branch.
“How does being a politician qualify one to cut the line for an appointment” to the California judicial bench?”
Here’s one possible answer: “The judge credited Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) for putting $40 million into the budget for courthouse construction. “Sen. Steinberg went to bat for us and made sure it happened. But for him, and then the governor authorizing the funds, we wouldn’t be here,” he said.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/07/28/69909.htm
LOL. So Steinberg has arranged to have the taxpayers of CA buy him a Supreme Court or Judicial Council position? Really?
Let’s just put Steinberg in some tight pants, and a red light and sign saying “Justice for Sale” outside 350 McCallister.
I’m pretty sure he is already there, Justice California.
Finding this post has anesrwed my prayers
http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/lr_gov_deukmejian_courthouse-SB-75.pdf
Why yes indeed Long Beach was a great “deal”.
Figures lie and liars figure. Just ignore the 100 million more pre-adjusted that long beach cost…….
courtflea
Pleeezzee another frickin tome designed to put even the most eager legislative staffer to sleep. Man, they sure can crank out the BS. 😛
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Santa-Clara-County-shutting-courthouses-5673071.php
Lando, Courtflea, Ant, Delilah, OBT . . . where are you?
wearyant
I’m here, totally gagged out by the latest events in As Injustice Turns and Churns, the continuous, long-running soap opera of the CA courts, Wendy D! For example, J Hull talking of “confusion” about the AOC and Judicial Council !! Excellent way to silence critics, by gagging them to death by spewing this crap or making them choke the life out of themselves with laughter by these ridiculous statements they continuously make from on high …
In the upside-down double-speak world of 455 Golden Gate Avenue, where everything is really the opposite of what is said, there was no “confusion.” In fact, it was precisely because so very, very, very many people were no longer “confused” about the incestuous link between the Judicial Council and the AOC, that the name was “changed”, which at the same time changed “everything” and simultaneously changed absolutely “nothing” at all. Well, except for that whole lying under oath and committing perjury thing. But nobody really cares about that, or will do anything about it. So it still changes absolutely nothing at all.
And yes, you just can’t make any of this stuff up. Really.
yo Wendy! I’m here. I have been trying to shut my mouth after reading all of this stuff with the agency that was formerly the AOC. I guess I am just dazzled by all of this B.S. No matter how jaded I am or how much JCW reports on it, it never ceases to amaze me….the antics (to put it nicely) of the JC and the AOC. If anything the JC is an arm/rubber stamp of the agency formerly known as the AOC. You know letting the judges feel important and in charge all the while they just approve whatever the the agency formerly known as the AOC feeds them just like it was their own ideas! The rational part of me wants to think that such learned individuals that comprise the JC must have some brilliant strategic grand design in making these decisions for the benefit of all Californians, but i must remind myself that rational thinking plays no part (unless you count a thirst for power)obviously in this farce that is the JC and the agency formerly known as the AOC. You can’t make this stuff up, really, you can’t make it up. Truth is stranger than fiction. And the kool aide drinking goose steppers march on in lock step, until the next JC meeting.
Good to hear from you, Flea!
Couldn’t have said it better, Flea! Funny how the jerks on the JC/AOC have shocked us both temporarily speechless with their antics. You just CANNOT make this stuff up. We should write books.
I am here too, Wendy Every day. At this point I have nothing new to contribute other than to echo everything you say, and now the comments of Ant and Flea. I had written an epic rant, but I am letting it sit in my outbox until morning so I can reflect on the wisdom of posting it.
Suffice it to say that the fact that the Judicial Council could declare by unanimous vote that the AOC never existed as a separate entity, and that only a couple of reporters from Courthouse News even raised an eyebrow about something so preposterous, says it all. That should have been laughed or shot down the minute it was proposed! Are you kidding me?
No, you can’t make it up. But that’s what our “reality” is anymore. Made-up shit. And, as George Carlin says: “And nobody seems to mind, nobody seems to care…”
It be funnier if it wasn’t state judges and state attorneys doing all of this. It be funnier if those state judges and state attorneys hadn’t taken an oath, which is apparently meaningless. It be funnier if it wasn’t state judges and state attorneys lying under oath and committing perjury.
But it is state judges and state attorneys doing all of this. And so much more.
Your quote from George Carlin really does succinctly sum it all up . . . Nobody seems to mind, nobody seems to care.
Still good to hear from you, Delilah. And many here would probably like to see your post.
The OBT
Thanks Wendy for asking for me. I was off in my secure and remote location for a bit and have come back to read about the latest antics at 455 Golden Gate. I really have a hard time understanding Justice Hull. Who is he fooling ? No one that works in our branch could be confused about the roles of the Judicial Council or the now former AOC. What went wrong in all this was Ronald George who essentially took power over everything . His quest for more and more power and control over the Judicial Council,the trial courts and the AOC blurred the roles of all of the above. CCMS and other major fiscal mismanagement like Long Beach an economic recession and the appointment of the blundering Queen HRH-2 all led to the collapse of George’s empire. Now to try and salvage something the insiders shoved J Jahr out and came up with this plan to rename the AOC. Nice try. No one is buying what the 455 Golden Gate insiders are selling because nothing is changing and nothing ever will until the Judicial Council is democratized and HRH-2 resigns or retires.
Wendy you are great friend to all of us and for our honorable and just cause to see our branch reformed. I will always remember Senator Steinberg for his lack of courage in blocking AB 1208 from ever getting a fair hearing in the State Senate. His actions proved to me that despite his high minded so called concerns for the courts, he put his own ambitions ahead of the public. He doesn’t deserve to be appointed a Small Claims Commissioner let alone a Supreme Court Justice. In this instance we are lucky to have term limits so the good Senator can be thanked and excused.
I’m reading comments like some think things will never change and that the compromised will continue to get away with the shenanigans forever because no one is paying attention. I don’t believe that it is true or that it takes massive amounts of people to cause change.
Each and every regular contributor to JCW have added valuable pieces to increase the understanding of the tangled web of deception. These pieces collectively make it easier to grasp how and why the big picture, perversion of justice on many levels, is occurring. Sooner or later the pieces will fall into place where criminal charges are going to have to filed somewhere — or those who fail to do so will be also proven criminal by their negligence.
I guess what I am trying to say is “never doubt the power of one”. Never doubt that what YOU are doing will, in the end, cause change for the better. I know that it will. That’s the way things work when even just a few won’t stay silent about corruption.
“Never doubt that what you are doing will, in the end, cause change for the better.”
Used to believe this. Don’t believe it anymore. Not likely to ever believe it ever again. I’ve joined the “believe it when you see it” crowd.
And what I expect to see is what I currently see. No one will ever be held accountable, in even the smallest way, for any of it, not the punishing people for telling the truth, not the abandonment of ethics, not the lying, not the perjury, not the embezzlements of public funds, not the waste of millions and millions of dollars, not the “a phone call from the Chief Justice can fix anything”, not any of it. The FBI isn’t looking into it. Neither is the Attorney General. Or the State Legislature. Or the U.S. Department of Justice. Or any enforcement or administrative agency either. Going to court is pointless. Everyone that could do something – anything – about any of this will continue to turn a blind eye or run away as fast as they can in the opposite direction.
What I also expect to see is the audit report will come out, and no matter what it says, it too will change nothing. Then the November election will happen, and Governor Brown will be re-elected. Then some time will pass, and Steinberg will likely get an appointment, somewhere, to the California bench.
And it will all just continue, ad nauseam.
Still serving themselves to the detriment of all Californians. Regardless of whatever name they’re doing it under. Or whatever black robe they’re hiding behind.
I’ve joined the “believe it when you see it” crowd.
But WD, the question is whether we’re better off with your voice than without it. I know the answer: we’re better off with it.
Our best weapon against the continuous stream of corruption and incompetence that we see coming from the “leadership” is our continued voice and persistence. If we give up, there truly is no hope. If that happens, they win. They must not be allowed to win.
With all respect R. Campomadera, as stated above, I have joined the “believe it when you see it” crowd. And what I see is they have won, they have been allowed to win, and they will continue to be allowed to win.
And as for “hope”, whatever tiny little smidgen or scintilla of hope I had, it died quite some time ago. There are very few things I am absolutely certain of in life, but one of them is that you can’t bring things back from the dead.
At this point, hope is for idiots.
R Campomadera
Oh dear. I still have hope.
Michael Paul
I’m a member of the believe it when I see it crowd but I still have hope.
Ho-hum. Yawn. Business as usual for Queen Feckless’ good friend Senator Steinberg. He’ll fit right in on the California bench when he gets there, having developed plenty of expertise while in the California Senate in covering up the truth, and fraud and corruption by those holding public office. Published today, Friday, August 1, from Courthouse News Service, by Maria Dinzeo:
Newspapers Sue California Senate for Records on Indicted Lawmakers
SACRAMENTO (CN) – Major California newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News and Oakland Tribune, claim the California Senate unconstitutionally withheld public records on when and where indicted and suspended state Senators Leland Yee and Ronald Calderon met with undercover FBI agents.
San Jose Mercury News managing editor Bert Robinson said in an interview Friday that for years, the Legislature has denied records requests regarding legislators’ calendars, citing the 1991 California Supreme Court case Times Mirror v. Superior Court.
“No one has challenged it,” Robinson said. Until now.
In the Times Mirror case, a Los Angeles Times reporter’s request for five years of Gov. George Deukmejian’s calendars and appointment schedules was blocked by the court, which ruled that those documents did not fall under the plain use of the term correspondence.
Robinson told Courthouse News on Friday: “We’ve been for some time looking for an opportunity to challenge their stance on that, because we have long believed that their interpretation of Times was way broader than was justified by the language of the Supreme Court decision. Three years ago we were close to suing and we were not sure we had quite the right case.”
Robinson said that the state Senate’s refusal conflicts with voter-passed Proposition 59, which amended the state constitution to allow public access to the writings of public officials for all three branches of state government.
“When public agencies are considering whether or not to release information, they should consider interest in disclosure in the broadest possible sense and the interest in secrecy in the narrowest sense,” Robinson said. “The bias is always in favor of making the information public. That is why we feel their stance is at odds with the California Constitution.”
The Mercury News, Bay Area News Group and Los Angeles News Group say in the lawsuit that they requested specific calendar entries and appointment schedules, reflecting when and where Yee and Calderon met with undercover agents. But “the SRC [Senate Rules Committee] chose to treat the calendars of its constituents as inviolate and above the public’s presumptive right to know of the conduct of the Legislature’s – and thus the public’s – business.”
Robinson said: “The public interest in understanding what was happing there is enormous. We knew when we submitted that they were going to say no, and the reason they were going to use was the public interest in keeping this information confidential outweighs the public interest in making it public.”
But that argument, he said, “is just ridiculous on its face.”
Calderon, a Democrat from Los Angeles, is charged in a 24-count indictment with public corruption, accepting bribes from an undercover FBI agent, wire fraud and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty.
Los Angeles News Group reporter Rebecca Kimitch sent an email to Deputy Secretary of the Senate Sheron Violini on June 19, requesting appointment books and calendar dates “reflecting with whom California State Senator Ronald Calderon met, or was scheduled to meet, or otherwise communicated with” on dates between February 2012 and March 2013.
The requests, made under the Legislative Open Records Act, were summarily rejected by the Senate Rules Committee, headed by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.
Through a response from Secretary of the Senate Gregory Schmidt, the committee said the requested records fell under provisions of the Legislative Open Records Act that exempt records where “on the facts of the particular case the public interest served by not making the record public clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record,” as well as correspondence between legislators and their staff, records exempted by legislative privilege and communications between legislators and private citizens.
Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, is charged with racketeering, wire fraud, public corruption and conspiracy to deal in firearms. He pleaded not guilty to all charges at a hearing this week.
A 137-page FBI affidavit claims Yee offered to help undercover FBI agents buy assault weapons from suspected terrorist group Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines, and to do political favors and vote on certain legislative bills in exchange for campaign donations.
Investigators said Yee told undercover agents that he needed to retire a $32,000 debt from his failed 2011 mayoral bid before he could announce his intent to run for Secretary of State. At a meeting with an undercover agent in February this year, Yee allegedly said of the gun deal: “People want to get whatever they want to get. Do I care? No, I don’t care. People need certain things.”
Yee also allegedly agreed to vote for several bills, including medical marijuana legislation, and allegedly helped a phony software company called Well Tech to obtain state government grants and contracts.
The solicitations for donations were allegedly made by his political consultant Keith Jackson, a former San Francisco school board president who also was indicted for narcotics conspiracy, wire fraud, murder for hire and conspiracy to import firearms.
Yee was arrested in March, and his offices in San Francisco and Sacramento were raided by the FBI.
In April, The Bay Area News Group asked for records for 26 dates between October 2011 and March 2014 where Yee was noted in the affidavit to have met with undercover agents, and for travel records and expense reports for Yee’s trips to the Philippines from January 2010 to April 2014.
Schmidt sent a response citing the same exemptions it used in rejecting the Calderon requests, and added that the Senate had no expense records related to travel to the Philippines.
Matthias Gafni, the San Jose Mercury News reporter who made requests, tried to narrow his request through an email on July 10, by asking for appointment books, schedules or calendars reflecting meetings on 29 specific dates that Yee was supposed to have had meetings related to the crimes mentioned in the indictment.
Schmidt again denied the request on behalf of the Senate Rules Committee, for the same reasons, adding, “These exemptions apply based on the substantive nature of the requested records, irrespective of how narrow in scope the request is crafted.”
Robinson didn’t buy the Senate’s argument.
“The guy has been suspended and he’s termed out. It’s not going to compromise his ability to be an effective legislator; no one is going to meet with this guy as a state senator again,” he said.
While both legislators are suspended, the complaint notes that they continue to draw taxpayer-funded salaries of more than $90,000 a year.
The news groups seek a writ of mandate ordering the Senate to disclose the records.
They are represented by Duffy Carolan with Jassy Vick Carolan in San Francisco.
I have more than hope that some leaders of the branch are going to get nailed for at least one of their criminal acts.
Here’s why I think that.
There are a lot of individuals currently knocking on doors to stop the criminal enterprise that the Cal judicial branch has become — while manifesting its criminality in various ways.
In sales, one can expect a 2% response rate when cold calling — meaning for every 100 doors knocked on, 2 will open. So, for every door that doesn’t open, statistical rules of thumb establish that a diligent knocker is one step closer to the door that will. That rule applies to everyone who is diligently knocking on doors to stop the fraudsters.
We don’t each need the doors we knock on to open. Collectively, we just need one person to get one open — which increases the odds for all of us, of someone getting nailed. To me, its just a numbers game and a matter of time before someone gets charged and prosecuted — as long as people keep knocking on those doors. Take out a couple of their key players for whatever reason, and their whole game collapses.
Wonder what kind of odds I could get in Vegas if I wanted to bet on it? lol
Love this song! The harder they come, the harder they fall. . . .
Saw the man sing it himself last night. Jimmy rocks! And at 66 years of age, he had everybody rocking with him. Wish I had taken a video on my phone, but I like this rendition:
I like Willie Nelson’s version too. . . .
It is nice to take a break and recharge. Feeling downright “irie” today. Back into the fray tomorrow or Monday. LOL.
The harder they come, the harder they fall, da da da. . . . .
What a devastating piece Courthouse News broke about the California State Senate and their leader D. Steinberg. Thanks Wendy for posting it. After reading that , I think Steinberg has no chance for any judicial office including Traffic Commissioner or the Mayor’s spot in Sacto. He would also appear to be too toxic even to the overlords at 455 Golden Gate. That leaves J Miller, Nash , or Roddy as the winner of the latest nationwide search lol , to replace all that have failed our Queen, Vickrey, Overholt Patel, and Jahr. My money is on Miller who loves all the power and perks the Crystal Palace brings and it sure beats hanging out in downtown Indio .
Miller and Nash probably are the two in the running but Roddy is out. His influence and knowledge passed a long time ago. No one listens to him and the cj doesn’t have time for his “good ole days” jive. Roddy’ career is done. He is just hanging on to his self aggrandizing legacy by kissing the judges a$$es in San Diego.
I’ll put my money on Steve Nash.
Doug Miller the new head of the AOC? You can’t make that up. He is a complete and total lackey to HRH-2 just as he was to HRH-1. He is exhibit 103 in why we need the Judicial Council and now the ” Judicial Council staff” to be democratized. My friend Lando is usually quite insightful but Indio isn’t bad. It might be the ultimate secure and remote location to get away from all this mess Ronald George created.
How about some of those justices from the 4th/1st? I happen to know they are proficient at ordering the falsification of court documents and pretending they’ve followed the law. Seems that talent would qualify several from Symphoney Towers to be the new chief of staff for the org that has changed, but hasn’t changed at all.
Hmm One of the possible secure and remote locations would be the City Center Motel in Indio. I wonder if they have a conference room named after Justice Douglas Miller lol.
Sigh..the memories of City Center Motel in Indio…that was once in a lifetime…
Called ahead from the road for an overnight stay on the way to Arizona…. Arrived at 9:45 pm, the proprietor was wearing athletic shorts and no shoes/socks (not very professional). Quickly checked in, went to the room. It was a smoking room, and stunk of cigarette smoke. Went back and asked for a non-smoking room, and we’re quickly accommodated.
City Center Motel. ” It’s Funky In A good Way”. Maybe when Queen Feckless and J Miller run our branch totally in the ground we can finally exit 455 Golden Gate and run the branch from here haha.
The City Center Motel home of J Miller. It is the perfect place to run all branch operations out of. ” Rooms to let for 50 cents. No phone , no pool . no pets” Sounds about right as this has what HRH-2 and her chief supporters like Harry Hull and Doug Miller have reduced us too.
Not to mention the hookers and drug dealers hanging around outside. Branch “leadership” could set up a table selling their specialty version of Kool-Aid.
In 2006 Steinberg advised the top assembled members of the branch to deal with court critics and challengers by “building as big a wall as possible and playing defense”. At that time Ron George was considered by many nationwide to be at the top of his game, and in the running for a US Supreme Court seat. Four short years later, after playing defense, and insulting at least 25% of the judiciary, George was forced to resign, and the branch was in shambles.
The branch is still in shambles.
George’s replacement, Feckless, and her Team George sidekicks, cannot, to use Rodney Dangerfield’s words, get no respect. For good reason. They are still in the ivory tower, playing defense. Playing hide the ball. Playing favorites. Fiddling while Rome burns. Rearranging deck chairs. Riding around in police limos on the public dime.
But I disagree that Steinberg does not have what Feckless wants, or that he is too compromised for Feckless (lol, lol, lol — can you tell me one person who is too compromised for her?). He cuts deals. He hides information. He does favors and keeps score and has a black book full of names. He has a big ego– so big he thinks he deserves a spot on the State Supreme Court.
Steinberg is a talented politician. But when it gets right down to it, he has a track record of giving TERRIBLE advice to the judicial branch. The interesting thing is he knows the branch is out of control and the public has suffered under George and Feckless, but notwithstanding his powerful position in the state senate has done nothing about it.
An oldie but a goodie. Whose yo daddy?
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-12-21/local/me-380_1_patrick-henry-high-school-students
Judges are people, people sometimes have children. Children, including the children of judges, sometimes do stupid things, including cheating at school. This 23-year old scandal really doesn’t say much about anything, does it? This really is starting to sound more like stalking of judges and their families than legitimate discussion of the problems with the California judicial branch.
Agreed, and we have asked Sharon not to come on here and assail judges and government employees. A vast majority are honest, hardworking public servants. JCW is NOT the place to post this kind of material Sharon.
Governor Brown has a bigger picture vision for the Supreme Court and my guess and hope is that doesn’t include political hacks like Mr Steinberg. I am hoping he appoints another outstanding and thoughtful woman to Justice Kennard’s seat to follow her legacy, like UCLA Dean Moran and Justice Humes to Justice Chin’s seat as Chin is rumored to be retiring soon. The Governor’s appointments to all levels of the judiciary have been outstanding and it gives me hope that some of these thoughtful and independent judicial officers will see the long term wisdom of bringing democracy back to our branch unlike Steinberg who has done everything to defeat and derail fairness , democracy and change, while he caters to the insiders at 455 Golden Gate.
I have to disagree about one of Brown’s appointments.
Governor Brown appointed Beverly Wood to the Marin bench, notwithstanding the fact that the JNE commission was told about her past– and at the JNE Commission’s suggestion, Governor Brown was also told about her past. Schwarzenegger was smart enough to pass on Wood (for Superior Court judge) and her buddy Marin Judge Lynn Duryee (for appellate justice). But Brown went for it.
Wood, Duryee, and their respective husbands are all involved in the very politically connected law firm Freitas McCarthy that gives a lot of money to a lot of people. Wood’s selection as a Commissioner in 2005 under her good friend Marin Presiding Judge Lynn Duryee from a field of 50 or 60 applicants served immediately to increase Wood’s net worth and her community property interest in the Freitas McCarthy firm, and set her up to be in line for appointment as a judge when Duryee retired.
In my opinion, Brown completely dropped the ball and sold out regarding Wood’s appointment. Now everyone is now forced to deal with the spectacular mess her appointment and foreseeable bad behavior on the bench have caused– just in her last one year as a judge.
I personally think that is BS. Brown was warned, appointed her anyway, and now others have to play clean up.
The fallout from Brown’s appointment of Wood is just getting started. She is a textbook exam test question regarding “how many laws and rules of court, and judicial canons did this judge violate”, and an Exhibit “A” example of a California judge gone wrong. The law means nothing to Wood– it is bothersome “procedural minutia”, to use her own words. Her legal misadventures continue, and continue to be documented– she just cannot seem to help herself.
Let’s see what the CJP does with this really problematic judge. It should be swift and it should be harsh. Given what Wood has done and continues to do to so many Marin litigants, Wood deserves nothing less.
Shame on Governor Brown for KNOWINGLY subjecting Marin County to this debacle.
In Feb 2014, Brown appointed the daughter of a convicted felon who was also a San Diego judge.
See http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-07/news/mn-26420_1_san-diego
and http://www.metnews.com/articles/mcco100401.htm
He recently appointed a young man who was involved in a highly publicized high school cheating scandal whose father was also a San Diego judge.
And let’s not forget Brown appointee Rosenstein who recently violated canons of judicial ethics and voters’ rights while back-door politicking for superior court judges appointments to be for life.
I was recently told that approximately 25% of the judges in San Diego county are either married to judges are were borne from judges.
So much for autonomy in the courts!
Are you saying that because Justice McConnell’s father had been convicted of a felony, she should not be eligible for appointment?
What canon do you believe Judge Rosenstein violated?
You were recently told of that 25% statistic by whom? Do you have any citation for that assertion? I’m often told that all judges are corrupt and all government employees are lazy and incompetent, but that does not make either statement true.
I enjoy reading judicialcouncilwatcher, even when I disagree with what is said, but this kind of a comment debases the discussion.
Dante,
I could see why you may think that based on what’s posted. The problem is, that’s not the whole story. Out of respect for JCW, I haven’t posted it — nor will I.
In further response to the questions you posed.
Your post:
1. Are you saying that because Justice McConnell’s father had been convicted of a felony, she should not be eligible for appointment?
I am not aware that Justice McConnell’s father was convicted of a felony. Was he? I am aware that McConnell reportedly worked closely with the father of February 2014 Brown appointed judge, Keri Katz. Its Katz’ father, San Diego Superior Court Presiding Judge Bruce Greer, who was convicted of the felony of bribery and racketeering. Two links I provided of news reports on the subject substantiate this.
A. http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-07/news/mn-26420_1_san-diego
B. http://www.metnews.com/articles/mcco100401.htm
As you can see from the second article, McConnell was accused of cronyism with the convicted judge while practicing politics from the bench under the color of law. Ron George and Richard Huffman came to her defense when she was being considered for appointment as an appellate justice. McConnell then went on to become the presiding justice of the 4th/1st and Chair of the “independent state agency”, the CJP.
To quote from the second article:
DiMare claimed McConnell has been investigated by the FBI and was a target of the investigation which resulted in Judges G. Dennis Adams and James Malkus being convicted of fraud and racketeering, and Judge Bruce Greer resigning and entering a guilty plea….The judges were found to have accepted improper gifts from Patrick Frega, a prominent trial lawyer who was convicted along with Adams and Malkus…. George accused DiMare of seeking to impose on McConnell a “guilt by association” standard. The chief justice noted that he was on the high court and voted to remove Adams from office, and said McConnell—who was assistant presiding judge under Greer—had never been implicated in the scandal….Support for McConnell also came from Div. One Justice Richard Huffman, who said he had followed McConnell’s career closely. He recalled her early days on the San Diego Municipal Court, when she “didn’t know a criminal case from a pickup truck” but went on to succeed through “enormous energy, talent, and keen intellect.”….Huffman called the corruption allegations “outrageous” and “scurrilous.”
2. Your post:
Its “canons”, plural. 2(b)2 and 5. There were many media reports on the subject during the recent elections. I filed a complaint with the current San Diego Presiding Judge (who is also the son of a judge). In violation of Rules of the Court, I never even received a written notification of receipt of the complaint. However, Brown appointed Rosenstein stopped (publicly) abusing her judicial position to intimidate potential endorsers of a challenger to an incumbent judge. In essence, she was advocating for herself and all other CA superior court judges that their appointments be for life by trying to make it more difficult for anyone to challenge them in an election. As I understand it, newly Brown appointed Katz was doing the same.
My March 14, 2014 complaint for canon violations with links to some of the media reports and evidence to substantiate the allegations: http://freepdfhosting.com/6eb90290dc.pdf
I was told by someone who has done research on the subject. If I knew it to be 100% certain fact, I would not have added the disclaimer “I was told”. It should be easy enough to corroborate or disprove that this is a correct percentage estimate by anyone who has been around the courts for years.
Here’s the list of San Diego judges. http://www.sdcourt.ca.gov/portal/page?_pageid=55,1057194&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
How many are married to judges or are children of judges?
The point is, we all know that there are severe ethics problems in the branch and that the CJP has been ineffectual, at best, at stopping them to the detriment of good, honest judges and to the public as a whole.
Justice California posted of a Brown appointee with ethics breaches under her belt. I’ve posted of the same occurring in San Diego.
Perhaps long-term nepotism is fueling the continuing problems from top to bottom. Those who are now at the top, once started at the bottom. Maybe its time to take a closer look at how one gets to the bottom to begin with. Do people become judges based on proven skill and willingness to uphold the law — or do they become judges based on the whims of political favor?
(am logged into WP as Katy. Don’t want to log out. Sharon Kramer)
I agree with Dante. It is really wrong to dredge up unfounded and ancient allegations about judges and their family members. There was some corruption in the San Diego Superior Court many years ago. It was limited to very few judges, was dealt with and is now over. It has no relevance to any issue today and it is totally unfair to even hint that any current sitting judge or Justice has anything to do with that in any way. Raising stuff like this undermines all of JCW’s great work to reform our branch and as Dante says debases the forum.
I am in total accord with JCW, Lando and Dante. If I see any more of these unwarranted attacks on San Diego judicial officers I am out of here. Sadly my secure and remote location far from California is looking better and better all the time as a full time venue to exit too.
OBT,
I would hate it if my concerns of continuing ethics problems in the courts themselves aided to drive you away from helping JCW to stop the corruption at the helm. I’m someone who needs to understand the roots of problems before I can grasp what may need to be done to solve them. I think one has to understand the history of HOW the JC grabbed control in order to wrestle it back and restore autonomy and justice to the courts today.
Lando,
I respect your opinion, but differ with you on this matter. The ethics problems in San Diego are provably not ancient history. SWOV continues to the detriment of the public — even if it means falsifying court docs while attempting to cover up SWOV becoming criminal.
I bring up the nepotism in the courts because I think it would make it harder to speak against one’s family or childhood friends. So maybe nepotism is part of the problem?
In recent history, I’m not the one who publicly called you all “clowns” for verbalizing your concerns of how good judges and the public are getting screwed by too much cronyism going on. To only want to address the cronyism when it occurs at the helm, is not going to save the branch.
I think the history of the players who are still active and appear to be teaching the game to new players, helps to illuminate how and why the problems continue at the helm of the courts
It seems to me that it is a comprehensive problem and it needs a comprehensive solution.
JCW, thank you for allowing me to voice my concerns, even when unpopular with the judges who also work to right the courts.
It won’t be sustained. We’ve discussed this many times Sharon. Please stop less you be aggressively moderated. Yes, there are issues in the courts but that is not the focus of the efforts here. Occasionally we permit those issues to surface when they are egregious but we don’t harp on them without end. That’s not the purpose or intent of this forum. The purpose of this forum is to deal with the head of the snake in the hope that everything else will self-correct when that effort is accomplished. And it will be accomplished even if it takes another ten years.
I agree with Katy that nepotism is a huge issue in CA Courts. I say this as a fromer pro cyclist would talk about the problem of drug abuse in the sport. You see, my father in law for 14 years was Bill Vickrey. He was a force in my carreer and education for 18 years. The jobs I had in CA Courts were due not to my masters degree in Judicial Administration but due almost entirely to my “family by marriage” connection wth CA’s State Court Administrator. For my last job as a “reengineering analyst” in Sacramento Superior Court I was hired by Jody Patel. I told no one of my family connection as I wanted it a secret for my own ego’s sake. I really just wanted people to like or dislike me for me as a person. To be my own success or failure in my own career. For me I thought being free meant keeping that fact a secret. In past jobs, like San Mateo Superior Court, I spoke of my family connection openly and that was really stupid and arrogant of me to do. In Utah it was known too as he was their former State Court Administrator and it was filled with friends of Bill. With Sacramento my naive intent was to be silent and succeed or fail on my own.
In reality, my coworkers all knew before I arrived! It was the gossip of the office on the very first day I started. I know I didn’t tell my coworkers so it had to be Jody Patel or Curt Soderlund who were the court executive and deputy court executive of Sacramento Superior Court at the time. The folks who hired me told my secret. It got out when I never wanted that known. I just wanted to get along based upon my own education and work experiences to that point which was an internship in grad school for Orange County Superior Court, a year and a half a jury clerk for San Mateo Superior Court, a year as a court clerk in Salt Lake City, and four years as an analyst and supervising analyst for Utah’s AOC. I thought my education and work experience was legitimate and was proud of myself. That’s not how it worked though.
I believe I was hired in Sacramento primarily as a favor by Jody for Bill. When I went out of Bill’s favor my job in Sacramento also ended. You see Bill’s daughter left me in the fall of 2010 because she was in love with my best friend who was married to my wife’s close friend of 20 years. Two marriages ended in divorce with 4 kids impacted. I honestly believe the budget was used as an excuse to get rid of me (now an ex husband) in 2012 who was no longer part of the family and from their point of view I detracted from their daughter’s quality of life with her kids.
Without my family by marriage connection the nine years 9 years of experience and service to Sacramento Superior Court was abrublty ended in 2012. Dennis Jones, who was on the AOC payroll as CEO of Sacramento Superior Court, so he could double dip pensions, made the cut to my job. Dennis said it was because of the budget, and there was clearly a budget problem, but I think that was used as cover to make more direct cuts they wanted for was fired for personal reasons. Sacramento was sitting on 17 million in reserves when they let me go.
I believe Bill Vickrey wanted me out of my ex wife’s life and she wanted 100% custody of our two kids. Bill was forced to retire by then over CCMS but Overholt was there at the AOC as acting director so Bill stll had influence in CA Courts. As my job at Sacramento was ending a reengineering job was created in Alameda Superior Court perfectly suited for my experience as a reengineering analyst. Does anyone besides me find it Interesting that Overholt was the former CEO of Alameda Courts where a job was offered to me?
The managers at Sacramento wispered to me that I should apply for the reengineering job in Oakland. I did apply, interviewed, and I got the job offer! I realized on the commute to Oakland that if I took it I would have have to move to the bay area which would mean giving up custody of my daughters. I had just lost them 50% of the time because we had joint custody so if I left for the job I would lose them almost 100% of the time. I had to decide, do I stay in my field and move away to make good money or do I stay in Sacramento and be present as a dad for my girls?
Keep in mind it was the depths of the recession, I really wanted to provide for my kids as a man, and I had no other job offers pending if I stayed. Nevertheless, I chose unemployment, left court administration, and stayed in Sacramento to raise my daughters. I found a job in a few months in another field for far less and now work in the Executive Branch where hiring is done much more fairly. It was the scariest time of my life and it didn’t have to be that way. I believe the layoffs of the analyst staff in Sacramento was done not based on senority or merit but on pure politics and Dennis promised the process would be fair. He had his assistants lay me off and didn’t even have the honor to do it in person. After all, it wasn’t personal right?
Yes there was a budget problem but who was selected to be cut was done not on merit but on politics. Even the other analysts let go I believe were cut to cover their methods. For example they fired another analyst with 20+ years experience I believe so they could say it was not just me who was a senior analyst that was let go. Dennis Jones soon retired and the HR Director for the court was soon fired. All loose ends for Team George tied up. Good luck with any wrongful termination suit as an unrepresented white male employee anyways.
Returning to San Diego (my hometown) where Kathy is concerned about nepotism. I interviewed for a job in San Diego Superior Court at one point right before I took the job with Sacramento Superior Court. David Yamakasaki was the hiriing manager under Mike Roddy at the time for San Diego who I interviewed with. Mike Roddy had been the Regional Director of the Northern Central AOC but Steve Love (who was a close friend of Bill Vickrey) was removed as the Court Executive of San Diego because of his alcohol problem. Mike Roddy got the job in San Diego and David was his right hand man.
Both Mike and David were USC Judicial Administration graduates so we all had the same degree and I thought that would be our common bond. That shared education background was minor to them. David knew Vickrey was my father in law and brought it up in the interview! He said, “I understand you have quite a family connection.” I admired David for being direct and not pretending he didn’t know (since he obviously did) but it also signaled it was not my education or experience he was most interested in and I was very sensative to that topic. David was on Team George, as we now can see so clearly, and that’s who the interview was with him even back then. The reality was if my father in law wanted me to live in San Diego it would of happened. If he wanted me (actually his daughter and grandkids) living closer to him in San Francisco then I would land a job closer and that’s how I believe my Sacramento came to be.
It was never an open market for me to work where I wanted to go. The entire market of CA Court Admin was corrupt like the sport of cycling when Lance Armstrong came of age. Lance chose to dope to get ahead and then became the ultimate professional cyclist. I wanted to stay clean and it pissed them off. Like cyclist Frankie Andreu who wanted to ride clean but Lance wasn’t going to change for him. Frankie was out of the family but his wife Besty Andreu who stood by her husband and loved him for being clean. In contrast my wife sided with her father and I believe was the one who pulled the trigger to end my carreer. She literally told me if there was one thing she could change about me it was my sense of justice. She wanted me to play the nepotism card outright, get ahead, make lots of money, and saw me as a fool for seeking to get promoted honestly when everyone was cheating to get ahead. She lost respect for me and there are three things a marriage needs love, trust, and respect. Sort of a three legged stool for any marriage to survive those things must be there.
It was actually Dennis Jones who was the court executive who laid me off from Sacramento Superior Court and he was the Deputy State Court Administrator for Bill for CA at one point. Dennis once offered me a job in Delaware where he was the State Court Administrator. I was working in Utah’s AOC as a supervising analyst. My wife was 8 months pregnant with our second daughter and I wanted a better paying job so my wife could afford to stay home. Dennis offered me the job but said I had to come immediately. That ended the job prospect for me. There was no way I was going to leave my wife when she was 8 months pregnant and move to the other side of the country. I declined the job and stayed in Utah for the birth of our daughter but then a job in Sacramento came open two months after our daughter was born. Funny how that job offer worked out don’t you think? That’s why the Alameda job offer felt so much like DEJA VU to me. I’d seen this game played several times. The jobs I was offered or not offered were controlled to get the pawn (me) to go where needed.
My opinion is Bill Vickrey didn’t want his son in law taking his daugher and grand kids to the other side of the USA back in 2002. Dennis Jones said to my mother in law at the time that I was the best analyst in the country and he really did want me to be there working in Delaware. Could of just been him BS’ing with her and saying something he didn’t mean but she repeated his words to me. It is ironic that Dennis then became Sacramento’s CEO when Jody Patel took Mike Roddy’s job at the AOC Northern Central Office. So Dennis Jones then had me as staff for like six years (on top of the three I put in for Jody). When layoffs came he selected me to be cut over newer analysts in the court with far less experience or education. My performance evaluations were excellent too. He had tried to promote me to management of civil operations without opening it to any other candiIdates and I wouldn’t do it that way. I rejected his offer of a back door appointment not an open recruitment where I won out. I wanted to get to the top but only if I didn’t have to cheat to do it. Interesting that the one analyst he wanted to promote was who he let go don’t you think?.
Clearly nepotism is a huge factor in CA Courts and it cuts both ways. Those in charge can have you hired and they can have you fired. Not based on your work but simply because your ex-wife wants the kids and you (despited all your education and experience) are now in the way.
Bill told me once, “The world is not black and white. It is grey.” He wainted me to be mentally tougher for the top jobs. I think that toughness (I’d call it corruptness now) is how Bill remains in silence and has never once called me to say sorry about you losing your job because of the CA budget. After all, if you believe their version it was just finances and nothing personal. Never once has he said sorry my daughter committed adultery and left you for your best friend. Sorry you lost your kids 50% of the time as I know you were a really involved father. So if the budget improves you’d think I’d be first in line to be rehired at Sacramento right? Right….I am blacklisted.
Vickrey loves the grey. He did not retire in CA to be close to his grandkids as he clained to the press (which is actually fine with me). That lie to the CA press was done to hide that he was leaving CA as he always planned to with a huge pension. He didn’t say the truth because he wanted to keep it all going with Overholt and Patel with Tani. He wasn’t going to give the ACJ more amunition to show he and George had built a political machine that was out of control in the wake of CCMS. Lies were as easy for him as they were for Lance Armstrong. Nobody was going to bring his image down. He was going out with awards just like Lance.
The Vickrey’s taught their kids they were special which is actually true. All kids are special. The perversion of this message is subtle and not really ever stated but his daughter learned incorrectly that her happiness was more important than that of others. She then went one shade of grey further to the idea that it was OK if she gained her happiness at the expense of another (her 20 year friend who she outright betrayed). That’s basically a narciscistic viewpoint when you go there.
Bill’s daughter literally betrayed her own bridesmaid in open contempt for her and her 12 year marriage and has been silent about it ever since. She now spends time with her former bridesmaid’s kids as if she didn’t betray their mom in any way. My former best friend pretends he didn’t betray me to my kids too. It’s a toxic childhood for them to grow up in such deception but that is their reality. It is really immoral to me (not illegal so CA Courts allow it) but that’s my world. This is how the arrogance of the Vickrey style works in families and it is sorta how it worked in CA Courts. They never admit to any mistakes (ani is this way too) which is very unhealthy for any organization.
My view is CA Court is recovering from having had a relationship with a narcissist as the State Court Administrator running the courts for the past 15 years. It is very similar to my own process in recovering from being in a 18 year relationship to Vickrey’s daughter. Look at all the rebound State Court Administrator relationships (3 of them) since Vickrey left. The Chief is unstable and appears now to be eliminating the AOC all together in name. It is a long term fight this rift between the ACJ and the Chief. A very different vision and irreconcilable differences exist between those visions. That is why she will never open up the Judicial Council to other voices
Which brings me back to this forum and my beef today with some who seek to silence a viewpoint. Vote a post up or down a post, critique a post, but don’t threaten to leave it because you disagree with an opinion. That’s cowardly.
That’s sorta how Ron George acted with the JC. He ended all counter opinions on the JC. This page is better than that and should tolerate offensive speech (or in my case very long winded posts). I think Kathy raised a good point in saying nepotism is a factor in CA Courts and it prompted me to speak out. Her voice deserves to be heard as do all voices.
I have met Tani twice. Both times were on interviews. She was on the Third District Court of Appeals at the time. One was for a low level supervisor job. I find it interesting that she was there on the panel for both jobs I ever applied to with the Court of Appeals don’t you? She owes her job to Bill Vickrey and was his loyal helper when he was in charge. That is why she gives out that award in his honor as much as anything. I see that award in his name as her way of saying thanks for advancing my carreer and she does truly believe in that vision. If they have done any wrongs it is best to not speak of it openly. Hide behind silence sort of like my ex does about really painful actions and maybe the critics will just give up in time.
My point of this long post is there is indeed nepotism or favorites on nearly every interview at all levels in CA Courts not just in San Diego Superior Court. The CA Legislature is the same way with their staff too. They don’t want to have civil service rules where they can’t hire friends, favorites, and family. They don’t want civil service like is expected in the Executive Branch. I say this as someone who has experienced nepotism both ways. Kathy has a valid point. Happy to give her a thumbs up. This is not just a page for judges but for all. Even the lowly voice of a former court employee like me. Thanks for the forum JCW!
Wow. Just wow…..
Dang, the image that comes to mind is the snake-filled Chamber of Secrets in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
MaxRebo5, wowsers! I fear for your safety … but thanks for posting ALL your posts so unselfishly. Will we hear from you again or will you take to a bunker near the general Nat?
Thank you for confirming that nepotism in the branch can indeed have an adverse impact on us all. I sincerely appreciate you explaining it from a case on point situation.
Sometimes when people are involved in trying to solve a problem, they don’t even reailize that what they are doing might be part of the problem. I think its good for them to hear differing views from others.
The main thing I would like to tell you, Max, is that in the big scheme of things I think your girls are very fortunate to have you for a daddy What you are teaching them in conjunction with what they are seeing first hand, will make them an ethical asset to society.
As you know, its always been the deal. If you and JCW think I need to be heavily censored toward what you perceive as the way of advancing the establishment of ethics in the branch, then go for it. Its your board. Not mine. I only contribute where I think I can help. If you think differently, then as I’ve told you many times, I respect your decision.
OBT and Lando,
Please don’t feel under attack. You are right, too.
Sharon, (still logged into WP as Katy)
MaxRebo5, thank you for sharing your story.
Not to add fuel to the fire or anything, but how about Santa Clara’s Judge Vanessa Zecher? Her mother was a judge, and both her husbands (Cain and Fox) were judges. Cain’s wife was director of court services. . . .
okay I’m done. I have other nepotism stories but they are nothing compared to MaxRebo5’s story. . .
I would like to point out that we all look at what is happening from different angles and from different experiences, we are all clearly opinionated (LOL), but we are all posting here with the hope that things will change for the better.
MaxRebo5 you have my sympathy for having been related to Bill Vickrey. But thanks for having the guts to share your story and expose your true identity. Like ant, I am concerned for you. I think the crooks like Bill V have a long reach and are still potentially dangerous to your career and family life.
What really pisses me off is that your identity was exposed and messed with your career aspirations. I know what it is like to want to be fair and square, be accepted for being yourself and your achievements, and not use your contacts to promote yourself. Those bastards.
All i can say is you rock dude for giving us the real story.
I must agree with Max Rebo 5.
Nepotism is a very real problem in the California Judicial Branch, especially at 455 Golden Gate Avenue and within the AOC. Among the many, many examples of the manipulation of the hiring process and the awarding of State jobs at the AOC, two in particular stand out. One was the hiring of the nephew of an AOC Assistant Director in a budget analyst position in the AOC’s Finance Department. The nephew had no finance experience or expertise; he was determined to be “qualified” for the position because he had been the treasurer of his college fraternity. After his initial hire, he was quickly promoted. He was also overheard talking on the phone, bragging that he did essentially no work, was often absent, picked up a paycheck every month for pretty much doing nothing, and was completely protected because of his relationship to an AOC Assistant Director. The AOC employee who reported this was disciplined for “gossiping.” The nephew was given a private office.
Not coincidently, the AOC Senior HR analyst who handled the hiring of the nephew was herself the girlfriend of the AOC’s Assistant HR Director. The girlfriend was hired into a position which required, as “minimum qualifications”, a college degree and a drivers license, neither of which the girlfriend had. Despite this, she was hired anyway, and then quickly promoted – twice. After she was hired, and promoted, the AOC’s HR Director allowed the girlfriend to go to school at San Francisco State University during state-paid work time to get her bachelor’s degree. The AOC HR Director also ordered various AOC line staff to drive the girlfriend around.
These are but two examples. There are many, many, many more. It goes on to this day. And god forbid anyone was to look too closely at some of the hires that have taken place in the AOC’s Office of General Counsel, or the “close personal relationships” of certain AOC attorneys with certain judges.
In the vernacular of the AOC line staff, it’s called “whoring your way up.”
But it’s not just nepotism in hiring and the awarding of State positions. I have witnessed discussions at 455 Golden Gate Avenue in which criminal activity was quietly “hushed up” depending on a person’s “close personal relationship” with Vickrey, Overholt, certain justices of the appellate courts, and others, including King George. From relatively lesser offenses, such as a DUI, or two, or more serious ones, such as possession of child pornography in such a quantity that it constituted multiple felonies and a mandatory prison sentence that would have been in the decades. All very nicely taken care of. “There isn’t anything a phone call from the Chief Justice can’t fix” isn’t just some catch phrase. It was, and remains, a well honed policy and practice at 455 Golden Gate Avenue.
I may not always agree with Sharon/Katy’s posts, but I will defend to the death her right to say them, especially here. One of the most powerful weapons judicial branch “leadership” previously had was the ability to silence and isolate those that would speak out. That was taken away from them, first with the AOC Watcher, and then with this forum, JCW. This is the only place on the entire planet that a person can come and speak honestly and openly about the very serious problems and issues in the California Judicial Branch and not be punished for telling the truth. If you come here, you take the bitter with the sweet, the good with the bad, that with which you agree along with that which you may not. If you don’t like a post, move on. It is the very essence of the First Amendment. To the extent that a post, or poster, needs to be modified, I leave that to the discretion of JCW, and JCW seems to be doing a really good job on that front so far.
And Max Rebo 5, I admire and respect your courage. I also wish to add my sympathies to you for in any way being related to Darth Vickrey. Working for Vickrey was a particular kind of hell. Being related to him, even by marriage, is a hell even I can’t begin to imagine.
Finally Max Rebo 5, pleased by assured it wasn’t all just some “magical coincidence”, all those things that happened. You have but to look at the Vickrey award for “excellence in judicial branch administration” to know the truth of this. Queen Feckless and branch leadership can change the name a thousand times over but it is, and will remain, the AOC: the Administrative Office of Corruption.
You just can’t make this stuff up. Really.
Thanks all. Mostly, sorry about all the typos for you as readers (sorry!). I was writing fast and emotionally not controlled and professional.
I am not worried about any fallout from my post though. What more can be done to me? My new job is in a union and I am past my probation period. I’m a research analyst II and will be eligible to be a research manager this fall. Besides, if I do get fired it just costs my ex more in child support so she has a financial incentive for me to be gainfully employed at the moment.
I am pleased with my choice as a dad. I think ethics is everything and am trying to be a moral example for them. They need it. They are teens so Darth Vickrey is mostly just Papa to them but I am teaching them to know right from wrong. It is all quite sad and not at all what I ever imagined for their childhoods or lives.
Thanks for this forum JCW! I’m very pleased it is going strong and voices outside of Team George are being heard. Looking forward to that audit report in two months and new appointments by Governor Brown to the CA Supreme Court (Not Steinberg). Governor Brown is my new boss and he seems wise to all of this crap. Gives me hope!
Wendy, thank you.
I know you are going to find this kind of odd, but I wholeheartedly support JCW and MP anytime and everytime they may want to censor my posts.
Although our goals are compatible, MP and I have a differing phylosophy of how to cut off the head of the snake.
I hate censorship of differing thoughts that may not be popular with the crowd. Yet, I understand that this important board is unique and sometimes unique methods are necessary. Much has been accomplished via this board for the good of us all.
If the owners/moderators feel there are times that my phylosophy needed to be moderated, they know that I wholeheartedly support their right to do so.
you know I am a big beliver in karma. It may not happen in our life time but these villians will pay one day. yes they will. there is a special place in hell for them. yes you can make that up and it will happen….one day. Rest easy Max, their time will come
ok I just have to bitchy Max…are the spawn of Bill V ugly or what? meow! 🙂
Pretty sad what is happening to this blog. To call my comments cowardly after all I have done in my career to reform this branch and after all the hits I and many others like me have taken, who have advocated reform in the trenches since the beginning of King George’s administration is very troubling. My point was a simple one. We need to maintain focus on bringing democracy back to our branch. We need to work in a positive way to end the waste of taxpayer dollars on a bloated and poorly run bureaucracy at 455 Golden Gate. And we need to restore the value of ethics to a system that should stand for that. I have no problem pointing out problems that judges or anyone else create in blocking the movement to achieve that democracy and essential reform. What i do object to is personal attacks on judicial officers that are unfounded or unrelated to the administration of justice and/or attacks on their family members.That shouldn’t be what we are all about. It is not a First Amendment issue it is an issue of just being fair to people even those who haven’t been particularly fair to me or many others. It has been great contributing here and my hope is that my modest insights helped make a difference. Good luck everyone. I exit on the positive and when I formally retire I do want to meet you Wendy to thank you specifically for your courage, your honesty, and your commitment to restoring an ethical branch of government. You are an inspiration that I will never forget.
I do not think of you in any way as a coward OBT. Far, far from it. Sometimes choices of words can harm where harm is not intended. I agree with what you say above, especially about remaining focused, and not straying into personal attacks. At the same time, I have always maintained that it is all of us together, or none of us at all. All should be able to post here, as long as they do so responsibly. When it is not done responsibly, I personally leave that to JCW’s discretion to address and resolve. There have been many posts that I have disliked, even found offensive. I choose to move past them, and focus instead on the greater, common objective. For we must reach for that together, or we will not reach it at all.
Your contributions here, and to that greater common objective, are beyond measure. I, for one, have always looked forward to your posts. It will be a great loss for us all to loose your voice and perspective here, OBT. I hope you reconsider. If not, I will miss your contributions and presence here very, very much. As for the rest, I am deeply touched and honored. JCW knows how to reach me, in an indirect way.
I did not mean to personally attack you OBT As Wendy said, sometimes choices of words can harm where there is no harm intended. I just disagree with this one line:
“If I see any more of these unwarranted attacks on San Diego judicial officers I am out of here.”
My point is to support an open forum for information and I was not agreeing with all of Katy’s points but defending her right to make them. Her voice deserves to be heard. Vote up a post, vote down a post, or reply with a comment. That’s the marketplace of ideas and it’s beauty/flaw is the freedom of the writers to express themselves openly. Threatening to leave is walking away from the arena which is not the same as standing up and debating things point by point. If my reply offended you it was not my intent.
The true critics of this page are not the posters debating issues on it. The scary critics to me are the Judicial Council insiders who see posters on this page as cowards hiding behind false names. Or those like King George who arrogantly said critics are ants on a rail who’s views are not worth notice at all. Justice having blindness through arrogance (not objectivity) bothers me very much. According to Wikipidea, “Justice is depicted with a blindfold because it represents objectivity, in that justice is or should be meted out objectively, without fear or favour, regardless of identity, money, power, or weakness.”
Justice must be blind for all voices to be heard (like on this forum where we don’t see each other). If the process for making policy was open and democratic on the Judicial Council itself there would be real debates on issues and less need for this web page.
Since two Chiefs now have set out to control the JC in order to have it “speak with one voice” the JC has moved from being arrogantly blind of “lesser” voices to a further shade of grey in actively crushing voices of dissent.
Today there is very little debate at all on the Judicial Council (for example the name change of the AOC). Instead critics within the courts have have no seat at the table and have to speak in the public comment section at meetings. Given the Chief Justice can dominate and control all policy making it takes great courage for judges, AOC employees, trial court employees, and the press to speak out and have their voices heard. I like your voice OBT, meant no offense, and hope you keep bravely sharing it here where it is heard and valued.
So many things have changed over the years. I miss those old Muni Court days when we ran our own operation, tried to achieve a sense of personal justice and we spent taxpayer dollars prudently. Since we were a small operation we could have a connection to the public and counsel that appeared before us that was lost when HRH-1 appeared on the scene to “fix” everything. Like the General and OBT and many many others I fought the good fight for many years. Just like everyone here. Thanks JCW whoever you are for providing this awesome forum. It has made a huge difference. Thanks to all the great contributors here too for all they exposed particularly to the Governor and legislature about the excesses of HRH-1 HRH-2 and their branch cronies at the Crystal Palace. Like the great Jerry Garcia said what a long sad trip this has been.
http://www.pacbiztimes.com/2014/08/08/courts-say-electronic-records-are-on-the-docket/
Good link, UMan! Hope you picked up the central coast paper featuring it in person as the weather out here is delish! 😀
LOL I get it online.
OBT, I don’t think of you as a coward either. It takes a lot of guts for a judge to post from the heart on this blog, even annonymously. We all know that you live in a culture of retaliation for speaking the truth. I don’t care if you always think like I do or not. I still respect your right to say what you think and this blog has provided a great forum for judges to bring serious branch problems to public/legislative light.
I think Lando just nailed the problem. We need to return to the days when judges could run their courts autonomously in the name of justice. George’s folly of trying to run it like a tax-payer funded, family owned and operated corporation, where the CJ controls everything via the BOD at the JC; and with judges and their staff being the little worker bees — has ruined the CA judicial branch.
It seems to me that at the end of the day, the solution always seems to be the same: Give back greater control to the trial judges over their funding and democratize the JC. Cut the AOC down to the bare bones of doing paperwork — not making executive decisions that impact justice all across the state.
There is currently too much control of money, power and policy is in the hands of too few perpetually conflicted souls.
And to the trial judges – not to diss but only to inform where you are aiding the problem you seek to stop: You need to stop dissing the helm for their SWOV while practicving it yourselves in your courtrooms — even when it is known to be unconstitutional, unlawful and sometimes criminal.
When you do that, all you are doing is discrediting your own words and the words of those who want you to have greater control of your courts. To me, this is where it seems that mass nepotism may be a root cause of some of the continued problems from top to bottom in the Cal judicial branch.. Break the George indoctrined SWOV from your mindset and we’ll all be alot better off in the end.
Katy/Sharon: with all respect, this sounds like you are scolding people, like they are children. Please stop.
Not meaning to sound that way. My apologies if it comes across like that.
Like you say, we all bring different perspectives to this board of what its going to take to really solve the branch’s ethics problem.
I’m not a court employee. I am in a unique position from others on this board of communicating with those harmed by SWOV in the courts themselves. Just like I think some had no idea of the problems nepotism may cause until Max articulated it so well: I don’t think some understand how erred SWOV has trickled down in the courts. Just trying to communicate to solve a problem — not scold anyone.
Thank you for letting me know that it appears to you that I am scolding. Will try to do a better job of phrasing my points so they don’t come across that way.
don’t go OBT, please don’t.
I know Flea, and I agree, one-thousand percent.
I would also second Flea’s request and ask The OBT to continue interacting with this forum. I missed any “cowardly” reference; nonetheless, The OBT is an priceless viewpoint here. Each commenter provides a different, interesting “take” on this sad, sometimes poignantly hilarious soap opera we are all a part of in *our* judicial branch. Here’s sincerely hoping all will continue to comment, and at the very, very least, check in and see how everyone is faring.
I sure hope Lando’s recent post was not a farewell! I too remember days of old in muni where the cases piled on, and all who worked together felt a kinship and had the feeling of being a part of the laboring “crew,” getting through huge calendars and experiencing the chaos and angst of the public appearing before us, serving the citizens, feeling like good was accomplished at the end of a long working day. Little did we know that this positive workforce effort would end at the hands of a weird, elite narcissist resulting in courtrooms being closed and droves of trial court workers, whose endeavors were extremely valued, would be laid off as fat elitist bureaucrats continued on in their luxurious lifestyle! This blog may be terribly diminished without all voices, but definitely would without The OBT and Lando’s posts.
Have a great weekend, all.
And long live the ACJ. Remember, what is known formerly as the AOC is still serving themselves at the detriment of all Californians.
Again, I agree with Ant, one thousand percent.
Stuart Michael
I’m a retired executive-level trial court employee who also worked with many AOC employees and others in the court system statewide for many years. I found that almost of them were quite competent in their fields, professionally and personally honest, and committed to providing valuable services to the courts and the public. Sadly this sometimes meant that their AOC or court careers were stunted or destroyed by incompetent or corrupt managers. Many just left, or were hounded till they quit.
My court career spanned the Justice Courts, the Municipal Courts, and eventually the unified Superior Courts. I had the opportunity to work on numerous state-wide programs, projects, and training programs and am proud that I was able to add some small contributions and make many friends through the years. I too remember how good the Muni Court days really were for the the courts and the public they served. Although there were many initial benefits to unification and some important functions provided by the AOC, they’ve been wiped out by the cancer destroying us all.
I was one of only two people who accompanied Paula Negley the day her case was heard by the 9th Circuit panel. Justice California was the other. We knew it was a lost cause. As a long-time friend of Paula’s – dating back to our previous careers before we met again years later in the court system, I know what she went through, personally and professionally. It’s a truly tragic story, made even worse because there were many others similarly treated, and the perps got away with it – and still do.
I’ve followed JCW almost from the beginning and have gained a lot of insight and confirmation about the goings-on at Star Palace 455, and courts throughout the state. JCW is a vital part of whatever hope there is to rescue the courts. The range of contributors and their experiences is awesome.
We need to remember that JCW’s full name is “Judicial Council Watcher”, and that there are many watchers and observers. When the focus is on individual personality traits, disparaging personal attacks, even when true ( which most probably are) and use derogatory names and slurs, we weaken the message. When some feel they have to bail out, we all lose even if we don’t agree with their points of view
Those who have dropped out should return. The stakes for all Californians are too high for anyone of us to walk away, even when you’re unfairly attacked.
Please reconsider. California needs all of you.
So what are the CJ and JC members intending to do now that it is established that they clearly understand their legal counsel and one of their employees lied in a federal court case?
They claim to have turned over a new leaf, right? If that’s true, surely this would cause them to undo and stop the continuing harm to Ms. Negley, caused by criminal acts of their employees; and to see those who committed criminal acts, punished. Right?
Or is it yet another lie that they have turned over a new leaf — in order to gain access and control of a greater amount of tax-dollars?
Is there a continuing pattern of lying to gain access and control of tax dollars that are allocated to the judicial branch?
“As all of Plaintiff’s claims are predicated on the existence of an employee/employer relationship, the Judicial Council is entitled to summary judgment.”
“Several courts have held that RICO claims are preempted by the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) where the “underlying conduct of the plaintiff’s RICO claim is wrongful only by virtue of the labor laws.”…The First Circuit similarly concluded that a RICO claim alleging that the defendants intimidated and coerced the plaintiff into quitting his job in retaliation for his union activities as a union steward was subject to the primary jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”), and thus preempted….On the other hand, the NLRA does not preempt RICO claims based on predicate acts that are illegal independent of the labor laws…
Courts have uniformly held that a cause of action that would be time-barred if it was brought independently may nevertheless serve as a predicate act for an otherwise timely RICO claim…
RICO plaintiffs should be careful to note that both equitable tolling and fraudulent concealment require the plaintiff to plead sufficient facts to establish that despite its due diligence, the plaintiff could not have discovered its RICO claim. The plaintiff must also plead fraudulent concealment with particularity as required by Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Also, a RICO plaintiff facing a statute of limitations problem should consider arguing that the limitations period should be equitably tolled until it could determine, exercising reasonable diligence, that its injury stems from conduct that was part of a pattern of racketeering. A plaintiff will not be able to avail itself of equitable tolling if it cannot demonstrate that it exercised reasonable diligence in its effort to investigate its injuries and its claim…”
http://jenner.com/system/assets/publications/12740/original/Civil_RICO_2014.pdf?1393971640
OBT, Lando, I hope no one goes.
Everyone brings a different and valuable perspective.
Lando, I hope that was not a farewell. I would really miss you.
Paula J. Negley
I would very much appreciate it if people would stop invoking my name because it has suddenly become politically convenient or politically useful for them to do so.
I apologize if my comments have aided to cause you more undue stress. I understand why you might feel a bit used.
http://www.vvdailypress.com/article/20140812/NEWS/140819937
Great link unionman575. I saw the press release on their new report and I actually think it is a great report (I don’t just complain). Here is a link to the report:
http://www.courts.ca.gov/26853.htm
What I don’t like is the spin on it from the Judicial Council insiders like Justice Miller. Filings are down 10% since last year alone and are down far more statewide when you see the multi-year trends on pages 39-44 of their own report. Yet the Chief still says the branch needs 2 billion more money just to tread water? Something doesn’t add up.
The fact is the branch is doing less work (has less weighted cases). This report proves it and is consistent with the decrease in fees and fines which the Legislature is having to backfill already for the branch. Meanwhile Tani keeps asking for additional money as if she has a growing workload need when she does not. The Chief’s message is way off from the reality presented by her own staff!
If the Judicial Council was an independent and credible policy making body they would tell her not to ask for more money from the other branches because it is inconsistent with the data gathered by the Judicial Council’s own analysts. The reality is Superior Court statewide filings are down significantly since 2009. Some areas like Fresno, Stockton, Riverside County, San Bernardino may be hurting as those communities are poorer and have had more crime since the recession. Other communities are seeing less cases so what has to happen under the workload model is resources (funding) should shift to where the need is greatest (where case filings are increasing the most).
That workload funding system was just imposed on the branch recently and will begin to happen now under the model being phased in over several years. This is the main work of the Judicial Council in terms of the budget. The council will begin to take from one court to help fund another court in greater need. Why should the state pay more overall to the branch when statewide case filings are down three years in a row? The Judicial Council is starting to do this tough work now (because they were forced too by the Legislature and Governor). Meanwhile Tani and Miller still call for more money and they are completely out of step with their own staff’s data. It is painful to take from one area and give to another but that is the job for this Chief and her appointed Judicial Council given the decline in filings.
To gain credibility as a policy making body, which follows the logic of basic math, the Judicial Council should stop asking the Legislature for more money when overall workload for the branch is clearly down. The collective wisdom of the bench on the council looking at the data should override the politcal posturing of the Chief in this case (but they don’t).
Lord knows the Judicial Council needs to repair their image after CCMS, the SEC Report, telecomuting staff from Switzerland, four directors of the AOC in the past few years, and now the rebranding of the AOC as the Judicial Council’s staff. This report was great but 800 staff for a policy making body? Is that really necessary? Looking forward to that audit in October to see the answer to this and other questions. Should be another great opportunity for the Judicial Council to make real reforms and stick to it’s important but very limited constitutional duties
“Lord knows the Judicial Council needs to repair their image after CCMS, the SEC Report, telecomuting staff from Switzerland, four directors of the AOC in the past few years” …
Hi Max! I thought the repairing of their image was the schlepping forward without a name in an obvious attempt to fade into obscurity. LOL! First real transparent move the evil empire has made, in my humble opinion. I too look forward to Elaine Howle and staff’s report. It should be very interesting to a lot of people. With the probable leaks from the ongoing investigation to those currently in power, these continual requests for more money from the queen and Miller are curious indeed.
To put it in the vernacular I have “wood” while waiting for Elaine Howle’s report.
Ah-hem, UMan! If that’s the vernacular, I cringe at what you term slang. 🙂
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LNG switch will fuel a cleaner future for all
Mike Utsler, Chief Operations Officer of Woodside Energy
Fremantle Ports made history last year by granting the first liquefied natural gas bunkering licence in Australia, allowing ships with gas-powered engines to load up on fuel.
The port authority should be applauded for taking this step, which is in sync with global developments and will deliver local benefits by supporting the uptake of a cleaner fuel that can lead to improved air quality.
A quiet revolution is occurring in international shipping in the lead-up to 2020, when all ships will need to comply with a 0.5 per cent limit on the sulphur content of fuel, down from the current 3.5 per cent.
As the leading Australian gas producer, Woodside is preparing for the switch to LNG as a shipping fuel while also working towards delivering LNG as a fuel for mine-haul trucks and locomotives in the Pilbara. WA is the ideal place to drive this transition, with world-class LNG supplies close to fuel-intensive export industries.
The global switch to cleaner marine fuels has been driven in part by concerns in Europe and Asia that sulphur dioxide emissions from shipping are contributing to increased incidence of heart and lung disease.
LNG is cleaner than diesel and much cleaner than the heavy fuel oil that has powered the commercial marine industry for decades. Since last October, when the International Maritime Organisation brought forward the start date for the new low-sulphur rules, the switch to LNG marine fuelling has gained momentum globally. As a shipping fuel, LNG easily meets the new sulphur caps and would also comply with any future tightening of the rules that could relate to emissions of nitrogen, particulates or carbon dioxide.
WA should be at the centre of this shipping revolution, as both a major LNG producer and a region that ships thousands of cargoes of commodities to the world each year.
Work is under way to make this happen and to build a local supply chain to support the switch to cleaner fuel. The major miners are collaborating with Woodside, as an LNG supplier, and with ship designers and owners to achieve LNG fuelling of iron ore carriers on the busy trade routes between WA and China. We want to turn these shipping routes into a “Green Corridor”.
So, it is pleasing Fremantle Ports and the Pilbara Ports Authority have recently allowed LNG bunkering. It’s a good first step, but more can be done if WA wants to make the most of its natural advantages and send a signal about its commitment to preserving coastal air quality. It’s time to consider introducing emissions controls in all major ports in WA — the technology and fuel is increasingly available to facilitate this and the shipping industry is preparing for it. Fremantle residents would surely welcome anything that cleans up the air they breathe.
In Sydney, a community campaign led the NSW Government to push for tighter controls on cruise ships berthing in the harbour.
The cruise ship industry has recognised change is necessary.
Indeed, the world’s biggest leisure travel company, Carnival Corporation, is building new “green cruising” ships, fuelled by LNG.
Even tougher restrictions on sulphur emissions from shipping than those adopted by the IMO now apply along most of the coast of the US, Canada, in key ports in Europe and China and will soon be enforced in Arctic waters.
Earlier this year, Woodside launched the Siem Thiima, the first LNG-fuelled marine support vessel in the southern hemisphere. Since then, staff on our offshore platforms have reported that when the Thiima pulls alongside, exhaust is much less noticeable than from diesel-fuelled vessels. The air seafarers breathe is free of particulates and they no longer get black soot on their hands and clothes.
In short, it’s a breath of fresh air.
We’ve recently called for emissions control areas to be established in all major Australian ports. WA is the perfect place to start.
Originally published in The West Australian, Thursday 6 July 2017
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Detecting deepfakes by looking closely reveals a way to protect against them
Published Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Are any of these faces real?
meyer_solutions/Shutterstock.com
Siwei Lyu, University at Albany, State University of New York
Deepfake videos are hard for untrained eyes to detect because they can be quite realistic. Whether used as personal weapons of revenge, to manipulate financial markets or to destabilize international relations, videos depicting people doing and saying things they never did or said are a fundamental threat to the longstanding idea that "seeing is believing." Not anymore.
Most deepfakes are made by showing a computer algorithm many images of a person, and then having it use what it saw to generate new face images. At the same time, their voice is synthesized, so it both looks and sounds like the person has said something new.
One of the most famous deepfakes sounds a warning.
Some of my research group's earlier work allowed us to detect deepfake videos that did not include a person's normal amount of eye blinking - but the latest generation of deepfakes has adapted, so our research has continued to advance.
Now, our research can identify the manipulation of a video by looking closely at the pixels of specific frames. Taking one step further, we also developed an active measure to protect individuals from becoming victims of deepfakes.
Finding flaws
In two recent research papers, we described ways to detect deepfakes with flaws that can't be fixed easily by the fakers.
When a deepfake video synthesis algorithm generates new facial expressions, the new images don't always match the exact positioning of the person's head, or the lighting conditions, or the distance to the camera. To make the fake faces blend into the surroundings, they have to be geometrically transformed - rotated, resized or otherwise distorted. This process leaves digital artifacts in the resulting image.
You may have noticed some artifacts from particularly severe transformations. These can make a photo look obviously doctored, like blurry borders and artificially smooth skin. More subtle transformations still leave evidence, and we have taught an algorithm to detect it, even when people can't see the differences.
A real video of Mark Zuckerberg.
An algorithm detects that this purported video of Mark Zuckerberg is a fake.
These artifacts can change if a deepfake video has a person who is not looking directly at the camera. Video that captures a real person shows their face moving in three dimensions, but deepfake algorithms are not yet able to fabricate faces in 3D. Instead, they generate a regular two-dimensional image of the face and then try to rotate, resize and distort that image to fit the direction the person is meant to be looking.
They don't yet do this very well, which provides an opportunity for detection. We designed an algorithm that calculates which way the person's nose is pointing in an image. It also measures which way the head is pointing, calculated using the contour of the face. In a real video of an actual person's head, those should all line up quite predictably. In deepfakes, though, they're often misaligned.
When a computer puts Nicolas Cage's face on Elon Musk's head, it may not line up the face and the head correctly.
Siwei Lyu, CC BY-ND
Defending against deepfakes
The science of detecting deepfakes is, effectively, an arms race - fakers will get better at making their fictions, and so our research always has to try to keep up, and even get a bit ahead.
If there were a way to influence the algorithms that create deepfakes to be worse at their task, it would make our method better at detecting the fakes. My group has recently found a way to do just that.
At left, a face is easily detected in an image before our processing. In the middle, we've added perturbations that cause an algorithm to detect other faces, but not the real one. At right are the changes we added to the image, enhanced 30 times to be visible.
Image libraries of faces are assembled by algorithms that process thousands of online photos and videos and use machine learning to detect and extract faces. A computer might look at a class photo and detect the faces of all the students and the teacher, and add just those faces to the library. When the resulting library has lots of high-quality face images, the resulting deepfake is more likely to succeed at deceiving its audience.
We have found a way to add specially designed noise to digital photographs or videos that are not visible to human eyes but can fool the face detection algorithms. It can conceal the pixel patterns that face detectors use to locate a face, and creates decoys that suggest there is a face where there is not one, like in a piece of the background or a square of a person's clothing.
Subtle alterations to images can throw face detection algorithms way off.
With fewer real faces and more nonfaces polluting the training data, a deepfake algorithm will be worse at generating a fake face. That not only slows down the process of making a deepfake, but also makes the resulting deepfake more flawed and easier to detect.
As we develop this algorithm, we hope to be able to apply it to any images that someone is uploading to social media or another online site. During the upload process, perhaps, they might be asked, "Do you want to protect the faces in this video or image against being used in deepfakes?" If the user chooses yes, then the algorithm could add the digital noise, letting people online see the faces but effectively hiding them from algorithms that might seek to impersonate them.
Siwei Lyu, Professor of Computer Science; Director, Computer Vision and Machine Learning Lab, University at Albany, State University of New York
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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School board member McClure blames the media for “hysteria” that followed a false threat at LCHS
Opinion October 10, 2018 , by Bill Johnson
DAHLONEGA, Ga. – Something good might yet come from the hysteria caused by Lumpkin County School System’s failure to keep the public informed about a potential threat at Lumpkin County High School last month.
At Monday’s Board of Education meeting — despite board member Jim McClure’s attempt to scapegoat the media — other board members began to question how information is disseminated to the public.
First, it’s important to note that the threat — which was reported in the morning — turned out to be no threat at all. However, the first information the administration passed on to the public was not posted until late that evening on Facebook.
By that time Facebook had blown up with rumors of what had taken place. Sheriff Stacey Jarrard’s phone had also blown up with parents wanting to know what was going on. It was a question he could not answer because the school administration did not inform him.
Second, when the school system did issue a press release on Facebook, this is how it read:
“Today a Lumpkin County High School student alleged that another LCHS student made a threat to harm the school. Law enforcement and school administrators took swift action to isolate the student in question and to conduct a thorough investigation. Conclusion: There is no evidence that a threat was ever made. Rumors perpetuated on social media have caused concern in our community, so we wanted to share the facts.”
Not only was that information posted many hours after the furor had erupted, it was factually incorrect. Sheriff Jarrard said he did not conduct an investigation until the next day.
As board member Craig Poore correctly stated during Monday’s meeting, “There are a lot of people who are not on Facebook who are being told hearsay and that is where we had our problem.” Therefore, Facebook is probably not the best choice for spreading the word.
School Superintendent Dr. Rob Brown estimates that it takes between two and two and a half hours for a robo call to go out to all recipients and the administration had not completed its “investigation.”
Board member Jim McClure said, “If you put something out and it’s late in the evening… I think it was the right call not to do an all-call because who wants their phone ringing at 11:30 saying there was a rumor of a threat to the school. I wouldn’t want to be woke up to that, especially with it being a rumor.”
Apparently a lot of folks do. Jarrard said concerned parents were calling him until about 2 a.m.
But the point is, a robo call should have been issued immediately.
The public could have been informed and Facebook would not have blown up with a lot of misinformation. That could have been avoided by a robo call that simply stated:
The Lumpkin County School System has just received a report that one Lumpkin County High School student overheard another student make a threat to harm the school. This has just now been brought to our attention so we cannot determine at this time if the report is credible. Because we take these reports seriously we are investigating and as soon as we have more information, we will keep everyone informed.
How hard is that?
Some board members were surprised to learn that the robo call system was being used to announce sports events, fundraisers and other special events.
“I didn’t realize we were using that system to announce basketball games and other things,” McClure said. “To me that would be a problem. I think it needs to be limited to official business. Maybe this is a learning experience for everybody and if we do have that situation again maybe we can make a decision earlier.”
Rather than learn from the experience, however, McClure chose to blame the media, specifically Fetch Your News.
“It also bothers me the media would assume the school board and school administration would do nothing,” he said. “That is ridiculous in itself. We need to have some common sense. If a little common sense was applied to the situation there would have been no hysteria at all.”
On that, we are in complete agreement. Hopefully, school officials will try that next time.
Fetch Your News is a hyper local news outlet that covers Dawson, Lumpkin, White, Fannin, Gilmer, Pickens, Union, Towns and Murray counties as well as Cherokee County in N.C. FYN attracts 300,000+ page views per month, 3.5 million impressions per month and approximately 15,000 viewers per week on FYNTV.com and up to 60,000 Facebook page reach. If you would like to follow up-to-date local events in any of those counties, please visit us at FetchYourNews.com
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Craig Poore Jim McClure Lumpkin County Board of Education White County High School
FYN didn’t even report on it till after the school system posted about the issue. They just don’t want to admit they where wrong. Blame someone else for their mistake. Its really dad. What’s next they are going to say FYN is “fake news” wow they are just proving that they are incompetent. A simple apology would have been nice but instead they try to blame social media and rumors and students I didn’t hear about the incident till the school posted something. They are the ones who cause mass hysteria.
Bill Johnson October 11, 2018 at 5:21 pm
Emily, thank you for reading FYN. Most disheartening is the fact that the first information posted by the school system appeared to be intentionally misleading. It indicated that an investigation had been concluded and that to no threat had been detected. However, Sheriff Jarrard said he did not conduct an investigation until the next day. Lumpkin County citizens deserve to be told the truth.
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Not the iPhone 5, but the 4S
The new phone, shown by Apple executives was greeted with tepid applause from a private audience expecting an iPhone 5 presentation.
(AP) The new phone, shown by Apple executives was greeted with tepid applause from a private audience expecting an iPhone 5 presentation.
The announcement seemed to underwhelm investors and online tech bloggers. Shares of Apple fell 4.6 per cent recently to $US357.53.
Apple's stock fell $US10.08, or 2.7 per cent, to $US364.52 in afternoon trading in the US on Tuesday.
Apple made the announcement at its first major product event in years without Steve Jobs presiding.
New CEO Tim Cook is leading the show after Jobs, who has been battling health problems, resigned from the post in August.
Cook, wearing a navy blue button-down shirt and jeans, opened by calling his nearly 14-year tenure at Apple "the privilege of a lifetime."
"This is my first product launch since being named CEO -- I'm sure you didn't know that." Cook said.
He said the company "has enormous momentum" and spoke about the success that the company has had with its retail stores and devices.
Those in the audience clapped as he entered, but the reaction seemed more muted than what Jobs had recently received.
The new iPhone 4S will feature Apple's A5 dual core chip, used in the iPad 2, and will be two times faster than for previous devices, Apple said.
The new camera has an eight megapixel sensor, meaning users can print out an 8 x 10 photo taken on their phone, said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior VP of worldwide product marketing. It will display HD video.
The new sensor is 33 per cent faster at taking photos, he said, addressing one common complaint about the iPhone camera.
Apple is including a "personal assistant" application called Siri in the iPhone 4S. It responds to spoken questions and commands such as "Do I need an umbrella today?'' It's a version of speech-recognition apps found on other phones.
The iPhone 4S also has a new antenna design, as Apple moves to address complaints about dropped calls. While the antenna still wraps around the edge of the phone, the new design can switch between two antennas to improve call quality and download data more quickly, Apple executives said.
But there was no mention of other touted features such as NFC or near field communication, which would allow the iPhone to be used for making credit card transactions.
Apple today also announced a cheaper, reconfigured iPhone 4 which will sell for $US99 on a contract in the US, but will be available widely. It has 8 Gigabytes of storage.
Apple said the iPhone 4S would come with new mobile software, iOS 5, that includes such features as the ability to sync content wirelessly, without having to plug the device to a Mac or Windows machine.
IOS 5 will also be available on October 12 for existing devices - the iPhone 4 and 3GS, both iPad models and later versions of the iPod Touch.
Apple said October 12 would also mark the launch of its new iCloud service, which will store content such as music, documents, apps and photos on Apple's servers and let people access them wirelessly on numerous devices.
Apple also touted the popularity of its products and unveiled a new line of iPods, including a Nano model with a multi-touch display that promises to be easier to navigate.
The event took place in Apple's Town Hall room, where the first iPod was launched a decade ago. Cook said Apple has sold more than 300 million iPods worldwide so far, including 45 million in the 12 months through June.
The iPhone came six years later and has gained millions of fans, thanks to its slick looks, high-resolution screen and intuitive software. There were 39 million iPhones sold in the first six months of this year.
Interview — 12.07.2019
Luxembourg AIIB meeting chance to prove naysayers wrong
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EU budget watchdog blasts EBA stress test
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Critics urge Europe to push China on transparency at bank meeting
Economy — 09.07.2019
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Since Kevin O’Sullivan took over as coach in 2008, UF has made the NCAA Tournament 12 consecutive times and has an overall record of 530-253.
Alligator Staff Photo
Florida clinches NCAA berth as third seed in Lubbock Regional
Evan Lepak, Sports Writer
Evan Lepak
The streak continues.
On Monday, the Florida baseball team learned its postseason fate during the NCAA Tournament Selection Show, sneaking into the tournament to extend its NCAAs appearance streak to 12.
The Gators will travel to Lubbock, Texas, to join Army, Dallas Baptist and host Texas Tech.
Third-seeded UF (33-24) will play second-seeded DBU (41-18) at 8 p.m. on Friday after No. 1 Texas Tech (39-17) and No. 4 Army (35-24) get the regional underway at 4 p.m.
It marks the first since 2013 that Florida won’t host an NCAA Regional.
After a quick departure from the SEC Tournament last week, UF was fearing the possibility of missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time under coach Kevin O’Sullivan, who took over in 2008.
D1baseball.com’s final projected NCAA field had the Gators as the final team in, placing them 64th out of 64 teams.
When the results were unveiled, however, UF wasn’t even in the last four in.
The team’s high RPI, brutal schedule and impressive array of RPI top-50 wins proved too much for the committee to truly consider leaving the team out.
The Gators were the 10th team from the SEC to make this year’s field, the most of any conference.
UF has been on the rise over the last few weeks, sweeping the Missouri Tigers during the final regular season series.
The team will need to use every bit of momentum it has earned recently as two top-25 teams await in Lubbock.
The Texas Tech Red Raiders earned the eighth-overall seed and a host regional site after finishing first in the Big 12 before losing to West Virginia in the Big 12 Tournament semifinals.
Texas Tech won 13 games against RPI top-50 teams, held an impressive 25-6 record at home and finished in the top 10 of D1baseball.com’s most recent top 25.
The batting lineup features some pop, highlighted by infielder Cameron Warren (14 home runs, 67 RBIs), Co-Big 12 Player of the Year infielder Josh Jung (11 home runs, 53 RBIs) and Second Team All-Big 12 infielder/outfielder Dylan Neuse (eight home runs, 48 RBIs).
On the mound, First Team All-Big 12 starter Caleb Killian (8-3, 3.89 ERA) and reliever Dane Haveman (2-1, 2.08 ERA in 28 appearances) could give the Gators issues if the two teams meet.
UF and Texas Tech last met in the 2018 College World Series, splitting two games in Omaha.
The Dallas Baptist Patriots, Florida’s first opponent, has the most wins out of any team in the Lubbock Regional at 41.
Ranked 24th in the most recent D1baseball.com top 25, DBU dropped a 16-3 decision to Indiana State in the Missouri Valley Conference Championship.
The Patriots won the regular season MVC title and defeated other Texas teams in major conferences including Texas A&M and TCU on their way to a 5-3 record against the RPI-top 25.
Making its sixth-straight NCAA Tournament appearance, DBU is led by infielder Bryce Ball (17 home runs and 52 RBIs) and starting pitcher MD Johnson (9-2, 2.46 ERA).
In order to extend their Super Regional appearance streak to five, the Gators will need to show consistency on the mound and in the batter’s box to defeat two of the best teams in the country.
Follow Evan Lepak on Twitter @evanmplepak and contact him [email protected].
Evan Lepak is a Sports Journalism student at the University of Florida, currently covering UF baseball. He's also covered both UF cross country and UF swimming and diving. He has been with the Alligator since Summer 2018.
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Tammy Rojas stands along College Avenue in Lancaster across from the former UPMC Pinnacle Lancaster hospital Thursday, May 9, 2019.
BLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer
In the spotlight: Tammy Rojas seeks systemic changes for the poor
TIM STUHLDREHER | Staff Writer
Tim Stuhldreher
It’s time for the poor and dispossessed to stand up for themselves, Tammy Rojas says.
Rojas, 41, is co-coordinator of the Lancaster Healthcare Rights Committee. She and her fellow members campaignedvigorously to stop UPMC Pinnacle’s closure of the former St. Joseph Hospital on Lancaster’s west side.
To their disappointment, the hospital closed as scheduled at the end of February. But Rojas is undeterred. The way City Hall handles the now-vacant site on College Avenue will show whether it stands with the poor, she says.
Public meeting planned to discuss closed UPMC Pinnacle Lancaster hospital
Lancaster Healthcare Rights Committee is part of the grassroots organization Put People First PA. It in turn is affiliated with the Poor People’s Campaign, the revival of a nationwide initiative originally launched by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. just a few months before his assassination.
Put People First “is about organizing the working class,” Rojas said. Its leaders, like her, are drawn from the population it’s fighting for.
Rojas began attending the group’s events in mid-2017. At the time, she was feeling depressed and “about to give up for good,” she said.
The campaign helped her understand the barriers she and other poor people face and “gave me the hope that I needed,” she said.
She took on her current position in January 2018. She’s working energetically to grow the group locally, raise awareness and push for “systemic, fundamental change.”
First job: Delivering newspapers.
Breaking News — Be the first to know breaking news, delivered only when a big story is developing.
Current job: SoWe Clean Crew member, providing litter and trash removal in the SoWe neighborhood service area.
Someone you admire: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
What motivates you: I love my community and I want to make change happen in Lancaster. This is the way I really feel we can do it.
Hobby: I love writing. I used to do creative writing; now I like to write things based on the work we’re doing.
Why activism matters: I think one of the most important things that we’re doing is changing the narrative of poverty. It’s deeper than how much you make a year. It goes way beyond that.
The Poor People’s Campaign talks about fighting “the four evils”: poverty, racism, ecological devastation and the war economy. These issues are all interconnected.
Complete coverage: UPMC Pinnacle Lancaster hospital closure
UPMC Pinnacle closed the former St. Joseph Hospital at the end of February 2019.
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After brush with homelessness, Lancaster man finds personal healing by helping homeless with basic needs
John Rinaldo didn’t understand how quickly someone could end up homeless until he was faced with the very prospect last week.
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The Diaper Debate
Neither disposable nor reusable diapers can claim an advantage in the great diaper debate: Which is most environmental friendly and best for our babies? Disposable Diapers or Re-usable Linen?
Factions in The Great Diaper Debate will argue their cases and causes fiercely but, when the dust settles and the wounds heal, neither will have gained the least advantage. Science leads you to an impasse. Your personal preference determines which diaper emerges as “the best.”
Here is our UK view on this question (“nappy” is British English for “diaper”):
“No green winner in nappy debate”(BBC News on Thursday, 19 May, 2005)
Some 675,000 children are born in the UK each year. Whether parents use disposable or cloth nappies makes little difference to the environment, a UK Environment Agency (SEPA) report has concluded.
The Environment Agency studied the impact of three types of nappy from their manufacture to their disposal. Disposable nappies, bought by 95% of parents, led to 400,000 tonnes of waste dumped mainly at landfill sites.
But re-usable nappies affected the environment in other ways, such as by the water and energy used for washing and drying them, it found.
The agency says it is the most independent and thorough study yet carried out in the UK.
It compared the environmental impact of disposable, home-laundered flat cloth nappies and commercially-laundered cloth nappies delivered to the home.
The study was supported by surveys of more than 2,000 parents who were questioned on factors such as the number of daily nappy changes and the size of washing machine loads.
Tricia Henton, director of Environmental Protection at the Environment Agency said:
“Although there is no substantial difference between the environmental impacts of the three systems studied, it does show where each system can be improved.”
She said that parents using reusable nappies can improve their impact on the environment by looking at how they wash them, such as using a bigger load at a lower temperature.
The study found most people washed nappies at 60C.
Ms Henton added that it was hoped manufacturers would use the study to improve the environmental performance of their products and the quantities going into landfill.
Our Conclusion
Disposable diapers have a slight advantage on the comfort index. Manufacturers process and reprocess those exceptionally absorbent paper linings to assure their softness and their wicking properties. Disposable diapers also feature elasticized legs and waistbands, so that each diaper custom fits your baby’s shapeliness even when she squirms, struggles, and tries to assert her right to natural nakedness. Disposable diapers also contribute to your “comfort” as measured by ease of use. They transport easily, effortlessly disappear after a change, go on in a flash and come off even quicker, and often come in handy for spilled drinks and jostled dinner plates when you and baby go out for dinner.
Both sides of the debate can make a case for economic advantage; experts say this, too, ends in an impasse, but your calculations may vary. Reusable diapers require an initial investment and then periodic updates. A bundle of cotton diapers costs little more than a single economy pack of disposables, which your baby will use-up faster than you can say Great Diaper Debate. The recurring cost of disposables, including the cost of your time and the gas in your car, ultimately balances against the cost of repeated laundry. Laundry arguably eats up more of your time and adds more to your energy costs than repeated trips to the diaper store, especially if you shop strategically and launder aggressively.
In the end, it probably comes down to style. What kind of fashion statement do you want your baby to make this season?
Now Read About Sustainable Diaper Disposable Services – the eco-friendly way to dispose of disposable diapers.
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September 2017 , Volume 60, Issue 9, pp 1601–1611 | Cite as
Metformin for diabetes prevention: insights gained from the Diabetes Prevention Program/Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study
Vanita R. Aroda
William C. Knowler
Jill P. Crandall
Leigh Perreault
Sharon L. Edelstein
Susan L. Jeffries
Mark E. Molitch
Xavier Pi-Sunyer
Christine Darwin
Brandy M. Heckman-Stoddard
Marinella Temprosa
Steven E. Kahn
David M. Nathan
for the Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group
First Online: 02 August 2017
11k Downloads
The largest and longest clinical trial of metformin for the prevention of diabetes is the Diabetes Prevention Program/Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPP/DPPOS). In this review, we summarise data from the DPP/DPPOS, focusing on metformin for diabetes prevention, as well as its long-term glycaemic and cardiometabolic effects and safety in people at high-risk of developing diabetes. The DPP (1996–2001) was a RCT of 3234 adults who, at baseline, were at high-risk of developing diabetes. Participants were assigned to masked placebo (n = 1082) or metformin (n = 1073) 850 mg twice daily, or intensive lifestyle intervention (n = 1079). The masked metformin/placebo intervention phase ended approximately 1 year ahead of schedule because of demonstrated efficacy. Primary outcome was reported at 2.8 years. At the end of the DPP, all participants were offered lifestyle education and 88% (n = 2776) of the surviving DPP cohort continued follow-up in the DPPOS. Participants originally assigned to metformin continued to receive metformin, unmasked. The DPP/DPPOS cohort has now been followed for over 15 years with prospective assessment of glycaemic, cardiometabolic, health economic and safety outcomes. After an average follow-up of 2.8 years, metformin reduced the incidence of diabetes by 31% compared with placebo, with a greater effect in those who were more obese, had a higher fasting glucose or a history of gestational diabetes. The DPPOS addressed the longer-term effects of metformin, showing a risk reduction of 18% over 10 and 15 years post-randomisation. Metformin treatment for diabetes prevention was estimated to be cost-saving. At 15 years, lack of progression to diabetes was associated with a 28% lower risk of microvascular complications across treatment arms, a reduction that was no different among treatment groups. Recent findings suggest metformin may reduce atherosclerosis development in men. Originally used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, metformin, now proven to prevent or delay diabetes, may serve as an important tool in battling the growing diabetes epidemic. Long-term follow-up, currently underway in the DPP/DPPOS, is now evaluating metformin’s potential role, when started early in the spectrum of dysglycaemia, on later-stage comorbidities, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00038727 and NCT00004992.
Diabetes prevention DPP DPPOS Impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) Metformin Prediabetes Review
Albumin:creatinine ratio
Coronary artery calcium
Diabetes Prevention Program
DPPOS
Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study
FPG
Fasting plasma glucose
GDM
2-hPG
2-h plasma glucose
Intensive lifestyle
The online version of this article (doi: 10.1007/s00125-017-4361-9) contains peer-reviewed but unedited supplementary material including a slideset of the figures for download, which is available to authorised users.
The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP; 1996–2001), an RCT to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes, was designed in the mid 1990s. Metformin was selected as one of the interventions, based on its mechanism of action and acceptable safety and tolerability profiles, with lifestyle intervention or placebo comprising the other treatment arms [1, 2]. The possibility of preventing or delaying diabetes in adults without diabetes but at high risk had been hypothesised for decades. Small randomised clinical trials using type 2 diabetes treatment drugs (phenformin or tolbutamide) for diabetes prevention were performed in the 1960s/70s, but were inconclusive [3, 4, 5]. They were followed by larger clinical trials testing lifestyle interventions that proved to be effective [6, 7]. The DPP was the first major diabetes prevention trial using metformin [2].
The DPP/Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS) represents the largest controlled clinical trial of metformin in a population at high-risk of developing diabetes, and also the longest trial of metformin for any indication. The effects of intensive lifestyle (ILS) intervention in the DPP and several other major trials, and the effects of other medications have been described elsewhere and are summarised in Table 1 [2, 8, 9, 10]. In this review, we focus on the effects of metformin on diabetes prevention, its long-term glycaemic and cardiometabolic effects, and its safety in the DPP/DPPOS.
Summary of select RCTs evaluating the prevention of progression to diabetes
Study title (country of conduct, year of publication, n)
Risk eligibility criteria
Duration of follow-up
Incidence/100 person-years (events) or cumulative incidence (%) at study end
Risk reduction in diabetes incidence compared with control/placebo
Da Qing Study [6] (China, 1997, n = 577)
IGT; age >25 years
Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study [7] (Finland, 2001, n = 522)
IGT; age 40–65 years; BMI >25 kg/m2
Diet and activity
DPP [2] (USA, 2002, n = 3234)
IGT; FPG 5.3–6.9 mmol/l (<6.9 mmol/l for Native American ancestry); age ≥25 years; BMI ≥24 kg/m2 (≥22 kg/m2 in Asians)
Metformin 850 mg BID
STOP-NIDDM [41] (multiple countries, 2002, n = 1429)
IGT; FPG 5.6–7.7 mmol/l; age 40–70 years; BMI 25–40 kg/m2
Acarbose 100 mg TID
XENDOS [42] (Sweden, 2004, n = 3305)
BMI ≥30 kg/m2; age 30–60 years
Orlistat 120 mg TID
Japanese IGT study [43] (Japan, 2005, n = 458)
Men with IGT
Indian Diabetes Prevention Programme [44] (India, 2006, n = 531)
IGT; age 35–55 years
Lifestyle modification + metformin 250 mg BID
DREAM (rosiglitazone) [45] (multiple countries, 2006, n = 5269)
IFG and/or IGT; age ≥30 years
Rosiglitazone 8 mg daily
DREAM (ramipril) [46] (multiple countries, 2006, n = 5269)
Ramipril, up to 15 mg per day
Nonea
Voglibose Ph-3 [47] (Japan, 2009, n = 1780)
IGT; age 30–70 years; with additional risk factor for T2D
48.1 weeks
Voglibose 0.2 mg TID
NAVIGATOR (valsartan) [48] (multiple countries, 2010, n = 9306)
IGT; FPG 5.3–<7.0 mmol/l; with CVD/CVD risk
Valsartan, up to 160 mg daily, and lifestyle modification instruction
NAVIGATOR (nateglinide) [49] (multiple countries, 2010, n = 9306)
Nateglinide, 60 mg before meals, TID
CANOE [50] (Canada, 2010, n = 207)
IGT; age 30–75 years (18–75 for Native Canadian ancestry); with at least one risk factor for T2D
Rosiglitazone + metformin (2 mg /500 mg, BID)
ACT NOW [51] (USA, 2011, n = 602)
IGT; FPG 5.3–6.9 mmol/l; age ≥18 years; BMI ≥25 kg/m2; at least one risk factor T2D
Pioglitazone 45 mg daily
SCALE Prediabetes [52] (multiple countries, 2017, n = 2254)
Prediabetesb; age ≥18 years; BMI ≥30 kg/m2 or ≥27 kg/m2 with comorbidities
Liraglutide 3.0 mg
Table includes RCTs studying progression to diabetes as a primary outcome with interventions that are currently available. Refer to original referenced studies for details on outcomes measured and reported
aComposite primary outcome of incident diabetes or death from any cause
bPrediabetes was defined as fulfilment of at least one of the three ADA 2010 criteria: 5.7–6.4% HbA1c; FPG between 5.6 and 6.9 mmol/l; or 2-h post-challenge plasma glucose concentration between 7.8 and 11.0 mmol/l
ACT NOW, Actos Now for the prevention of diabetes; BID, twice daily; CANOE, CAnadian Normoglycemia Outcomes Evaluation; DREAM, Diabetes REduction Assessment with ramipril and rosiglitazone Medication; IFG, impaired fasting glucose; IGT, impaired glucose tolerance; NAVIGATOR, Nateglinide and Valsartan in Impaired Glucose Tolerance Outcomes Research; SCALE, Satiety and Clinical Adiposity — Liraglutide Evidence in Nondiabetic and Diabetic Individuals; STOP-NIDDM, Study to Prevent Non-Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus; T2D, type 2 diabetes; TID, thrice daily; XENDOS, XENical in the prevention of Diabetes in Obese Subjects
Overview of the DPP/DPPOS
Design of the DPP/DPPOS
The DPP enrolled 3234 participants aged 25 years or older who were at high risk of developing diabetes, defined as impaired glucose tolerance, with elevated fasting plasma glucose (FPG) (5.3–6.9 mmol/l [≤6.9 mmol/l in Native Americans]) and a BMI of 24 kg/m2 or higher (≥22 kg/m2 in Asian-Americans). Participants were randomly assigned to placebo (n = 1082), metformin (n = 1073) titrated to 850 mg twice daily, or ILS intervention (n = 1079), which aimed for 7% weight loss through a low-energy, low-fat diet (based on recommendations for health) and ≥150 min/week of moderate-intensity physical activity [2]. Interventions were discontinued if there were safety concerns. Diagnosis of diabetes was based on annual OGTTs or semi-annual FPG tests, using the ADA diagnostic criteria, with the diagnosis requiring confirmation with repeat testing [11]. Diagnosis of diabetes and FPG ≥7.8 mmol/l resulted in discontinuation of study medication and referral to the participant’s own physician for further treatment [2].
The DPP was stopped in 2001, 1 year ahead of schedule, owing to demonstrated efficacy of both metformin and the lifestyle intervention [2]. Given the demonstrated effects of ILS, all participants were offered a group-administered version of the lifestyle curriculum at the end of the DPP. Eighty-eight per cent (n = 2776) of eligible DPP participants continued follow-up in the DPPOS, in which placebo was discontinued, those previously assigned to metformin received metformin 850 mg twice daily (now unmasked) and lifestyle messages were intermittently reinforced. The study-provided metformin was discontinued if diabetes was diagnosed and HbA1c was ≥7% (≥53 mmol/mol), hence requiring management by the participant’s physician [8]. Outcomes in the DPPOS from 2002 to 2013 centred on the long-term effects of the interventions on diabetes prevention, diabetes-associated microvascular complications [9] and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors.
Participant characteristics
By intention, the DPP enrolled a heterogeneous population, with 45% from racial or ethnic minorities, 20% aged 60 years or older and 68% women, including 350 women with a history of gestational diabetes (GDM). The mean age at randomisation was 51 years and mean BMI was 34 kg/m2. Mean FPG was 5.9 mmol/l and baseline HbA1c was 5.9% (41 mmol/mol). Sex, ethnic distribution and risk factors for diabetes were similar among the randomised treatment arms [2].
Exposure to metformin
Integral to understanding the effects of metformin over time is the separation of study and non-study exposure, keeping in mind that DPP/DPPOS participants who developed diabetes were subsequently managed by their own physicians, often with non-study metformin. By 15 years after randomisation, 37% of the original placebo participants had been treated with metformin by their healthcare providers, the vast majority associated with diabetes diagnosis (Fig. 1). The mean exposure, including study- and non-study metformin, from 1996 to 2013, remained widely separated, at 10.7 vs 2.3 metformin-years in metformin vs placebo groups [9].
Exposure to metformin throughout the DPP/DPPOS. AUCs represent total metformin-years of exposure, including study-provided metformin (blue), non-study-provided metformin for diabetes treatment (green), and non-study-provided metformin prescribed to individuals without diabetes (red)
Throughout the DPP and DPPOS, pill counts and structured interviews were used to promote adherence [12]. During the DPP, adherence to metformin, defined as taking at least 80% of assigned study pills, was 72% (Fig. 1) [2]. An additional 10–15% of participants took some metformin, albeit at less than 80% of pills assigned. Adherence to metformin (at the >80% threshold) fell to an average of 49% over the DPPOS (2002–2013) [9].
Effects of metformin on diabetes prevention
In 2002, the DPP published its primary findings from the masked-treatment phase, showing that the ILS and metformin groups had a respective 58% and 31% lower incidence of diabetes than the placebo group [2]. Subsequently, the DPPOS addressed the longer-term effects of metformin, showing a decline in risk reduction by 18% compared with placebo over 10 and 15 years post-randomisation (Fig. 2a) [8, 9]. Although the differences in incidence rates over the entire follow-up remained significant, the observed diabetes incidence rates during the DPPOS period (i.e. in the period after the DPP completed) were not significantly different between the original randomised groups. Diabetes incidence rates during the DPP were 7.8 cases per 100 person-years in the metformin group and 11.0 cases per 100 person-years in the placebo group [2], and these decreased in the DPPOS (2002–2008) to 4.9 cases per 100 person-years for metformin and 5.6 cases per 100 person-years for placebo [8], remaining stable thereafter. This reduced diabetes incidence approximates the five cases per 100 person-years rate observed in the lifestyle group during the DPP, which has remained nearly constant throughout the DPP/DPPOS [9]. The average genetic risk score, derived from 34 type 2 diabetes-associated genetic variants, declined over time among participants who remained without diabetes in the DPP/DPPOS, in both the metformin and placebo groups [13]. This suggests that the lower annual incidence rate of diabetes seen in the DPPOS was not entirely due to an effect of the lifestyle intervention offered during the transition to the DPPOS, but, in part, due to ‘exhaustion of susceptibles’, or that diabetes developed in the people who were most susceptible to diabetes during the DPP and that remaining participants in the DPPOS were less susceptible to diabetes [13].
(a) Cumulative incidence of diabetes and (b) weight change over 15 years in the DPP/DPPOS, in metformin (blue line) and placebo (red line) groups. (a) Adapted from The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology 3:866–875 [9]; Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group, Long-term effects of lifestyle intervention or metformin on diabetes development and microvascular complications over 15-year follow-up: the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study, Copyright (2015), with permission from Elsevier
Effects of metformin on diabetes prevention/delay in subgroups of interest
The DPP was not powered to assess the significance of effects within subgroups. Nonetheless, examination of treatment effects in cohort subgroups revealed significant heterogeneity. For example, obese participants with a BMI ≥35 kg/m2 were more responsive to metformin than to placebo, with a 53% risk reduction for diabetes but only a 3% reduction in those with BMI 22 to <30 kg/m2. In addition, those with a higher fasting glucose (6.1–6.9 mmol/l) had a greater risk reduction with metformin (48%) compared with those with a fasting glucose of 5.3–6.1 mmol/l (15% risk reduction). Although not significant for heterogeneity across strata, metformin appeared more effective in younger participants compared with placebo, reducing diabetes onset by 44% (95% CI 21%, 60%) in those 25–44 years old vs 11% (95% CI −33%, 41%) for those ≥60 years of age at study entry. Of note, no such differences were observed by sex, race/ethnicity, or tertiles of baseline 2-h plasma glucose (2-hPG) [2].
During the DPP, women with a history of GDM randomised to placebo had a 71% higher risk of diabetes than parous women without such a history, despite similar FPG and 2-hPG values at baseline [14]. Significant heterogeneity was observed in response to metformin with a 50% reduction in incidence of diabetes in women with a history of GDM compared with 14% in parous women with no such history. Ten-year follow-up in the DPPOS confirmed these effects, demonstrating a sustained and relatively greater risk for diabetes in women with a history of GDM, which was reduced by 40% with metformin [15].
Insights from the DPP/DPPOS on how metformin prevents or delays diabetes
Acute pharmacological effect or amelioration of pathophysiology?
During the DPP, evaluations were carried out without interruption of study medication (placebo or metformin), except for withholding study medicine the morning of glycaemic testing. Thus, some (or all) of metformin’s effect could have been a transient pharmacological treatment effect (‘masking of diabetes’), rather than a true delay in the onset of diabetes. The DPP addressed this issue by retesting participants who had not developed diabetes by study end, 1–2 weeks after stopping metformin. After this washout period, the incidence of diabetes was still reduced by 25%, compared with the 31% reduction seen in the primary analysis, suggesting a more durable effect of metformin treatment on glucose metabolism [16].
Explanation of metformin-induced effects
Some of metformin’s diabetes prevention effect is attributed to weight loss, which was durable over time in the DPP/DPPOS (Fig. 2b, Table 2) [2, 8, 9]. Weight loss with metformin explained 64% of the its beneficial effect on diabetes risk at the end of the DPP [17]. Favourable changes were also seen in other measures of adiposity (waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio), and in fasting insulin and proinsulin [17]. No differences were seen in self-reported physical activity or diet, or insulin secretion measured by the insulinogenic index between the metformin and placebo groups. While no single covariate completely explained the beneficial effect of metformin vs placebo, the combination of weight, fasting insulin and proinsulin levels, and other metabolic factors explained 81% of the beneficial outcomes with metformin [17]. Improvements in FPG and estimated insulin sensitivity with metformin may be owing to a combination of weight loss and other direct effects on the liver and, perhaps, other tissues.
Effect of metformin on diabetes risk and CVD risk factors at baseline and at the end of each phase of the DPP and DPPOS
Baseline (1996–1999)
DPP (1996–2001)
3.2 years mean follow-upa
DPPOS 1 (2002–2008)
10 years mean follow-up
n = 1082
Anthropometrics
92.0*
BMI (kg/m2)
Diabetes cases (n)
Mean diabetes duration (years among cases)
FPG (mmol/l)
HbA1c (%)
5.97*
HbA1c (mmol/mol)
CVD risk factors
Systolic BP (mmHg)
Diastolic BP (mmHg)
LDL-c (mmol/l)
HDL-c (mmol/l)
Triacylglycerol (mmol/l)
CRP (nmol/l)
tPA (ng/ml)
Fibrinogen (μmol/l)
Coronary calcification (%)b
Data shown as means, unless otherwise indicated
aDPP intervention phase was 3.2 years with primary diabetes incidence analysis completed at 2.8 years owing to demonstrated efficacy
bBased on scan measured at DPPOS year 10, with 14 years of average follow-up
* p < 0.05, metformin vs placebo
CRP, C-reactive protein; HDL-c, HDL-cholesterol; LDL-c, LDL-cholesterol; tPA, tissue plasminogen activator
Effects of metformin on blood glucose measures
The effects of the DPP interventions on FPG and HbA1c were examined in all participants, regardless of whether they had developed diabetes. During the DPP, metformin and ILS were similarly effective in restoring normal FPG values [2]. Despite metformin and ILS having similar effects on FPG, diabetes incidence was more significantly reduced by ILS than by metformin, reflecting the fact that most diabetes diagnoses in the DPP were triggered by the 2-hPG rather than FPG, and that ILS was more effective than metformin at restoring a normal 2-hPG. This latter observation was likely because, while both active interventions improved beta cell function, this effect was greater with ILS [18]. Consistent with metformin’s known ability to suppress hepatic glucose production during fasting [19, 20], its reduction of diabetes incidence compared with placebo was much greater in those entering the study with a FPG 6.1–6.9 mmol/l than in those with a FPG 5.3–6.1 mmol/l [2]. Metformin also lowered HbA1c relative to placebo, but to a lesser extent than did ILS [2].
After the DPP had been completed, an International Expert Committee and the ADA expanded the diagnostic criteria for diabetes to include HbA1c ≥6.5% (≥48 mmol/mol) [21, 22]. Although HbA1c was measured during the DPP/DPPOS, eligibility and diabetes diagnoses were based on fasting and/or 2-hPG. Thus, a secondary analysis using HbA1c ≥6.5% (≥48 mmol/mol) as an alternative definition of diabetes was performed, excluding the 13% of participants with HbA1c ≥6.5% (≥48 mmol/mol) at study entry. Although ILS was more effective than metformin in reducing the incidence of diabetes defined by the FPG and OGTT criteria, the effect of metformin was no longer significantly different from ILS when diabetes was diagnosed based on HbA1c (44% vs 49% reduction in the DPP, 38% vs 29% reduction throughout DPP/DPPOS; metformin vs ILS) [23]. In summary, metformin was as effective as ILS in preventing diabetes by some measures (i.e. HbA1c), but not by 2-hPG, in the DPP/DPPOS population.
Metformin’s interaction with genetic factors
The DPP investigated several genetic variants previously associated with risk of type 2 diabetes or metformin action. For example, homozygosity for the major diabetes risk variant rs7903146 in the TCF7L2 gene was associated with an 81% higher diabetes incidence in the placebo group that was reduced to a 62% increased risk in the metformin group [24]. In addition, a genetic risk score predicted diabetes incidence in the DPP, but with no significant interaction between the score and treatment group. That is, the interventions were equally effective, regardless of genetic susceptibility [25]. There was, however, a nominal interaction with metformin (p = 0.006) with the variant rs8065082 in the metformin transporter gene SLC47A1, with the minor allele being associated with lower incidence of diabetes in the metformin arm (HR 0.78 [95% CI 0.64, 0.96]; p = 0.02) [26].
Effects of metformin on microvascular complications
At the end of the DPP, the only microvascular outcome assessed was microalbuminuria. There was no effect of treatment intervention on the percentage of participants with elevated albumin:creatinine ratio (ACR) levels, although those who developed diabetes had a 59% increased risk of developing an elevated ACR (≥3.39 mg/mmol) [27]. One of the main goals in the longer-term follow-up of the DPPOS is to determine if treatments effective in preventing diabetes also affect the development of microvascular complications, specifically retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy. A composite of these microvascular outcomes at 15 years in the DPPOS was 28% less frequent in those who did not progress to diabetes, but there was no difference between the original treatment arms [9]. The very small difference in HbA1c levels among the treatment groups, limited power, and early referral to care providers for treatment of hypertension and dyslipidaemia have been considered reasons for the lack of an effect of the active treatments on microvascular outcomes thus far, despite the reduction in diabetes incidence [9]. It is still possible that treatment effects may emerge with longer follow-up and longer diabetes duration in the cohort.
Effects of metformin on cardiovascular disease risk factors
In the DPP, metformin had favourable effects on several cardiovascular risk factors, including lipoprotein subfractions [28], C-reactive protein and tissue plasminogen activator [29]. It also reduced the incidence of the metabolic syndrome by 17% compared with placebo [30]. No significant effects on lipid levels or blood pressure were seen [31] (Table 2). Over longer-term follow-up (10 years), no significant differences in traditional cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors have been noted between the metformin and placebo groups [32] (Table 2).
An average of 14 years after randomisation, subclinical atherosclerosis was assessed in 2029 participants using coronary artery calcium (CAC) measurements, according to the original randomisation group. There was a significant interaction between sex and the effects of metformin vs placebo on CAC presence (p = 0.01) and CAC severity (p = 0.08). Compared with placebo, metformin significantly lowered the presence and severity of CAC in men, with no effect in women. Of interest, no reduction in the prevalence of clinically significant plaque (Agatston score >100) was observed, suggesting the possibility that metformin affects smaller, more recently calcified plaques, rather than well-established plaques. There was no difference in CAC between ILS and placebo groups, suggesting a possible long-term differentiation between metformin and ILS [33]. Longer-term follow-up with ascertainment of CVD outcomes is underway.
Long-term safety and tolerability of metformin in the DPP/DPPOS
The long-term use of metformin within the context of a closely-monitored clinical trial has provided additional information on metformin safety and tolerability. Minor gastrointestinal symptoms were reported by 9.5% of those randomised to metformin, compared with 1.1% in the placebo group, but these were generally mild and tended to wane over time [34]. The risk of lactic acidosis with metformin use has recently been shown to be much lower than previously suspected [35] and there have been no reported cases of lactic acidosis in over 15,000 person-years of exposure to metformin in the DPP/DPPOS.
Metformin use has been associated with impaired intestinal absorption of vitamin B12 and increased risk of vitamin B12 deficiency. This risk was recognised in the design of the DPP and annual testing was performed to detect anaemia as a potential manifestation of low vitamin B12 levels. In addition, vitamin B12 levels were directly measured at two time points in the DPPOS. Biochemical vitamin B12 deficiency levels (<150 pmol/l) occurred more often in individuals in the metformin group than the placebo group at 5 years (4.3% vs 2.3%; p = 0.02); a similar pattern was observed but was not significant at 13 years (7.4% vs 5.4%; p = 0.12) [36]. Low or ‘borderline’ vitamin B12 (defined as levels <220 pmol/l) is accepted by some as evidence of inadequate vitamin B12 stores and was more common in those in the metformin group at 5 years vs placebo (19.1% vs 9.5%; p = 0.01) and 13 years (20.3% vs 15.6%; p = 0.02). In a multivariate model, years of metformin use, including metformin prescribed outside of the study, were associated with increased risk of vitamin B12 deficiency with the odds ratio for vitamin B12 <150 pmol/l per year of metformin use being 1.13 (95% CI 1.06, 1.20). Anaemia prevalence was higher in the metformin group but, importantly, did not differ by vitamin B12 level, suggesting that haematological monitoring may not be sufficient to detect metformin-associated vitamin B12 deficiency [36]. Given these findings in this large cohort, current guidelines now recommend consideration of periodic measurement of vitamin B12 levels and supplementation as needed in patients treated with metformin [37].
The impact of prediabetes and diabetes worldwide is enormous, with 415 million adults currently having diabetes and a projected increase to 642 million by 2040 [38]. Both lifestyle intervention and metformin are effective in the prevention or delay of diabetes. Originally used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, metformin, now proven to prevent or delay diabetes, may serve as an important additional tool in battling the growing diabetes epidemic. As detailed in this review, metformin had sustained benefit in preventing/delaying diabetes for at least 15 years. Further, while lifestyle intervention was uniformly effective across subgroups [2], the DPP identified significant benefit from metformin in those who were more obese, had a higher fasting glucose or a history of GDM, and a suggestion of greater effect than lifestyle intervention in those who were younger. Although not specific to treatment assignment, lack of progression to diabetes was associated with lower risk of microvascular complications [9] and, among men, metformin reduced atherosclerosis development [33]. Furthermore over 10 years, metformin treatment was estimated to be cost-saving, decreasing the cumulative costs of medical care received outside the DPP/DPPOS, compared with placebo [39]. Guidelines consistently recommend either lifestyle intervention or metformin therapy for the prevention of diabetes, with considerations for metformin in subgroups in which metformin had a relatively greater effect in the DPP [37, 40]. Given our current understanding of the beneficial effects of metformin to prevent or delay diabetes, a concerted global effort to translate this evidence may help redirect the continuing increase in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes.
The potential for additional benefits of metformin extends beyond diabetes prevention and represents the next phase of study for the DPPOS. As the largest and longest clinical trial of metformin treatment, uniquely in a population initially without diabetes, the DPP/DPPOS is now poised to evaluate whether starting metformin early in high-risk individuals impacts the development and risk for even later-stage comorbidities, notably CVD and cancer. Although decreasing the incidence of diabetes would be expected to decrease CVD risk, the effect of metformin and diabetes delay/prevention on CVD is unproven. In addition, based on experimental and epidemiological data, metformin has recently received attention as a potential anti-cancer agent. Prospective intervention studies with treatment of long duration and follow-up are needed to address these important questions. DPP/DPPOS, with over 15 years of randomised metformin experience, now aims to address this need.
In conclusion, the DPP/DPPOS clearly demonstrated a role for metformin in the prevention of diabetes. Looking to the future, understanding whether translation of these findings into routine clinical care improves current trends in the development of diabetes is of critical importance. The possibility that metformin can further impact additional complications of dysglycaemia that have not yet been investigated remains an exciting area of study.
The Research Group gratefully acknowledges the commitment and dedication of the participants of the DPP and DPPOS. A complete list of Centers, investigators, and staff can be found in the electronic supplementary material (ESM). All members of the Steering Committee had input into the report’s contents. All authors in the writing group had access to all data.
DPP and DPPOS data are available in the NIDDK repository (www.niddkrepository.org/home/) and can be requested by any researcher.
During the DPP and DPPOS, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health provided funding to the clinical centers and the Coordinating Center for the design and conduct of the study, and collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data (U01 DK048489). The Southwestern American Indian Centers were supported directly by the NIDDK, including its Intramural Research Program, and the Indian Health Service. The General Clinical Research Center Program, National Center for Research Resources, and the Department of Veterans Affairs supported data collection at many of the clinical centers. The sponsor of the DPP/DPPOS study was represented on the Steering Committee and played a part in study design, how the study was done, and publication. Funding was also provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging, the National Eye Institute, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the Office of Research on Women’s Health, the National Center for Minority Health and Human Disease, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Diabetes Association. Bristol-Myers Squibb and Parke-Davis provided additional funding and material support during the DPP, Lipha (Merck-Sante) provided medication and LifeScan Inc. donated materials during the DPP and DPPOS. The opinions expressed are those of the investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies. This material should not be interpreted as representing the viewpoint of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, or the National Cancer Institute.
Duality of interest
The authors declare that there is no duality of interest associated with this manuscript.
Contribution statement
All authors were responsible for drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content. All authors approved the version to be published.
125_2017_4361_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (119 kb)
ESM DPPOS Research Group Investigators (PDF 118 kb)
125_2017_4361_MOESM2_ESM.pptx (154 kb)
ESM Downloadable slideset (PPTX 154 kb)
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© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2017
1.MedStar Health Research InstituteHyattsvilleUSA
2.Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and MetabolismGeorgetown University School of MedicineWashingtonUSA
3.The Biostatistics CenterThe George Washington UniversityRockvilleUSA
4.Diabetes Epidemiology and Clinical Research Section, Phoenix Epidemiology and Clinical Research BranchNational Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney DiseasesPhoenixUSA
5.Department of Medicine, Division of EndocrinologyAlbert Einstein College of MedicineNew YorkUSA
6.Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes, School of MedicineUniversity of Colorado DenverDenverUSA
7.Department of Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public HealthUniversity of PittsburghPittsburghUSA
8.Feinberg School of MedicineNorthwestern UniversityChicagoUSA
9.Columbia University Medical CenterNew YorkUSA
10.University of California, Los Angeles Medical CenterLos AngelesUSA
11.Division on Cancer PreventionNational Cancer InstituteBethesdaUSA
12.VA Puget Sound Health Care SystemSeattleUSA
13.Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition, Department of MedicineUniversity of WashingtonSeattleUSA
14.Department of Medicine, Diabetes UnitMassachusetts General HospitalBostonUSA
15.Harvard Medical SchoolBostonUSA
Aroda, V.R., Knowler, W.C., Crandall, J.P. et al. Diabetologia (2017) 60: 1601. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-017-4361-9
Received 15 March 2017
Accepted 18 May 2017
First Online 02 August 2017
Publisher Name Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Print ISSN 0012-186X
European Association for the Study of Diabetes
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Tag: Politics
By Jasmeet Singh Bindra
BJP’s 2019 Campaign: A Perfect Management Primer
India has just concluded its marathon seven phase general assembly elections 2019 and BJP has won an astounding majority on its own. In the last three months, India has seen some highly politically motivated debates, discussions and mostly rhetoric. However, this article tries to offer a different and a completely apolitical perspective on these elections.
By Shalini Singh
Political Branding In India | How Narendra Modi & The BJP Won 2014 Elections
What Is A Brand A brand is a name or a symbol that helps a product/service or an organization to distinguish itself from others. Every brand has a story of its origins – a set of beliefs that it has, the attitude that it carries and the value that it carries. A brand offers a
By Abhinav Bansal
Happenings Around The World – November 22 – November 28
And the one exam which had kept hundreds of thousands of aspirants on their toes for the past one year or so came, shook the world for 3 hours and went away in a jiffy akin to a puff of smoke. Some of the test takers are experiencing a delirious euphoria post the exam with
What’s Happening Around The World – November 10, 2017 To November 16, 2017
“Television, radio, social media. The 24/7 news cycle plows forward mercilessly on our desks, in our cars and in our pockets. Thousands and thousands of messages and voices bombard us from the moment we wake, fighting for our attention. All we see and hear, all day long, is news. And most of it is bad.”,
By Heer Shingala
What You Can Learn About Feedback From RJ Malishka’s Controversy
Mumbai. Maya-nagri. Mumbai ki baarish. Bollywood has left no stone unturned to romanticise this city and especially the rains. (Shoutout to drenched Konkana Sen and Ranbir Kapoor at Marine Lines.) But once in a while, people get tired of convincing themselves that the spirit of Mumbai is a good thing and they should grumble about their problems
What’s Happening Around The World – September 24 – October 1
It is that time of the year by when either the summer placements have already commenced or are about to commence in almost every major b-school except IIMs ABC. Keeping that in mind, I’m back with a succinct summary of all the significant happenings of the last week of September. Hope it proves as a
One Stop GK Guide – Static GK – Politics
India is a federal parliamentary democratic republic. The President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of the central government. There have been 14 presidents of India since the introduction of the post in 1950. The current tenure is 5 years of an Indian President’s term. An acting president is a person
What’s Happening Around The World : August 24 – August 30
Quoting a rather farcical and an exaggerated expression of opinion by Will Rogers, “I read about eight newspapers in a day. When I’m in a town with only one newspaper, I read it eight times.”, the aim is to sensitize the readers with the importance that people have given in the past to the habit of making
By Sachin Mandot
Brand Management + Politics – Served With Sarcasm
I happen to be a big time political buff and been following politics of India for a long time. I’m a student of Marketing at IMT-Ghaziabad. So while studying ‘Brand Management and Marketing Strategy’ on a crazy night; after solving a number of case studies, reading, an idea hit me. What if our political parties
By Team InsideIIM
Consumer Market Research – Konversations Cafe With Utsav Mamoria and Ankit Doshi
In this episode, we meet Market Researcher and Konversations Course Creator Utsav Mamoria and jam with him about the interesting world of research. Ankit Doshi, the Creator of InsideIIM.com and Konversations.com discusses condoms, politics, FMCG in the context of Consumer Market Research. In the digital avatar of Konversations Cafe, we do a deep dive with
Take charge of your life!- Ameet Joshi, NMIMS Mumbai
Aditya Birla Group – Touching new horizons
It’s a perfect fit – The Brand that Believes in Inclusivity – Gagandeep Bhatia, NMIMS Mumbai
A walk down memory lane – Parul Rane, NMIMS Mumbai
Ambitions require a lot more than just hard work – Gagandeep Bhatia, NMIMS Mumbai
Big and Small Moments in Life – Deepankar Goyal, NMIMS Mumbai
My experiences with life and my thoughts about Aditya Birla Group – Animesh Sabharwal, NMIMS Mumbai
Why Aditya Birla Group is a big part of my life? and How I have overcome challenges to achieve my goals
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Egg Donor
UK – Why I already tell my one-year-old that she was so wanted that a donor helped to make her
May 31, 2018 Intended Parents
Source iNews
My one-year-old daughter Astrid has spent the past week practising the sound ‘mamama’. I’d love to say this is an acknowledgment of all the hard work I’ve put in during the year, but I know it’s no more aimed at me than when she says ‘dadada’, despite no dad figure in her world.
Many babies make the sound ‘dada’ first. I’m not sure whether in centuries gone by a father heard his baby’s first word and said ‘yes, that is me’, or whether a mother heard the noise and cannily offered encouragement, saying: ‘This is our child’s name for you. Now, please change this loincloth-nappy’.
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IVF Alternatives
What happens when IVF doesn’t work
Source Honey Nine
The success stories of IVF are marvellous and heart-warming, but spare a thought for the women who still can’t conceive through this method.
Like many young girls, Jenny Lloyd always dreamed of having a family – never thinking she was on a strict timeline.
“No one ever said to me – you’ll run out of eggs, which is basically what happened. No one tells you that,” she tells 9Honey.
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Mother in law as surrogate mother, UK
UK – My mother-in-law gave birth to my son as I had no womb or cervix after tumour hell
Patty and I had always got on well but when she offered to be our surrogate, I was overwhelmed.
By carrying our precious baby Kross, she’s made all my dreams come true.
My problems started when I was just 17 after I had problems with irregular and painful periods.
Doctors examined me and found a large benign tumour growing inside my womb.
Within just a few weeks, I had an operation to remove my womb and my cervix.
Tagged mother in law as surrogate, UKLeave a comment
Surrogacy Costs, Ukraine
Ukraine – Costs and Legal Aspects of Surrogacy in the Ukraine
May 25, 2018 May 25, 2018 Intended Parents
Source TGDaily
Searching for surrogacy within the US can be an exhaustive and expensive process. Many US couples have opted to look outside of our fine nations borders for better options concerning the surrogacy process. The Ukraine has recently become one of the choice places to look at for surrogate motherhood. Because of the explicit laws, excellent healthcare, ease of travel, and low associated expense, more and more couples that are having difficulty conceiving a family have been looking to and for surrogacy programs in the Ukraine.
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Egg Donation, Sperm Donation
Sperm, egg donation facing decreased anonymity due to DNA testing, social media
Source ABC 11
When the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) was founded in 2000, Wendy Kramer and her son Ryan were simply hoping to make Ryan available to connect with his biological dad who donated the sperm used to conceive him. Fast forward to 2018, Ryan did connect with his biological father as well as 10 biological siblings (and counting) and the DSR has done the same for 15,557 others.
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Canada, surrogacy compensation
Canada – Bill to decriminalize payments for surrogacy, egg and sperm donors to be tabled next week
May 25, 2018 July 18, 2018 Intended Parents
Details on how a Liberal MP wants the government to decriminalize payments for surrogacy and human reproductive material are set to be unveiled next week.
According to a listing posted on the House of Commons notice paper, Montreal MP Anthony Housefather will table An Act to amend the Assisted Human Reproduction Act on May 29 to try to decriminalize both the paying of surrogates in Canada as well as the ban on paying for sperm and egg donations.
Australia – Most women who freeze eggs for IVF leave them on ice
Source The Courier Mail
MOST women who have frozen their eggs leave them on ice, untouched.
IVF experts at Queensland Fertility Group have been snap freezing eggs for the purpose of deferring childbirth for 10 years and just over one third of women have thawed their eggs within that time and only six per cent have used them to try and conceive within four years.
“Egg freezing is family insurance and peace of mind but things change, that’s just life,” QFG’s Dr David Molloy told The Courier-Mail.
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Children from sperm donor
UK – ‘On Father’s Day it’s really hard’: Children of sperm donors talk about what it’s like to grow up without knowing their biological dad
Source Daily Mail
The children of sperm donors have spoken about what it’s like to grow up without knowing their biological father.
Caitlin, 10, was conceived with donor egg and sperm after her single mother Kathryn, at 45, was unable for have a child through IVF after six years of trying.
While the Australian girl was happy to live in a home free of squabbling parents, she admitted she struggled growing up without knowing her biological father.
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How does sperm donation in the UK work, do you get paid and how to find your nearest sperm bank?
Sperm donation is essential for fertility treatment such as intrauterine insemination or IVF.
It can help couples struggling to have kids of their own or single women who want to start a family.
If you donate your sperm through a fertility clinic or a sperm bank, you won’t have any responsibilities or rights towards a child conceived using your semen.
However, as of April 2005, children conceived through sperm donation do have the right to ask for certain information about their donor once they reach the age of 16.
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Here’s What It’s Really Like to Freeze Your Eggs
Source Pop Sugar
I’m 31 years old, recently married, and on the fence about ever having children. I’ve never been completely against it, but I’ve also never felt as though I’m “running out of time” or that my life is or would somehow be unfulfilled if I ended up never having kids. For some reason, a woman saying that out loud seems to offend more than when someone straight-up asks her, “When are you going to have kids already?” But I digress.
Ireland, Surrogacy Abroad
Ireland – Surrogacy: ‘Infertile couples will still have to go abroad to make their dream a reality’
Source The Ireland Journal
THE MINISTER FOR Health, Simon Harris, is forcefully encouraging the electorate to vote to repeal the 8th Amendment via his Twitter page. Consequently, the Minister is demonstrating that he empathises with women who need to be able to exercise the right to choose to terminate their pregnancy in Ireland.
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Altruistic, Surrogacy
Malta – Only Health Minister will be able to decide how altruistic surrogacy will be applied – David Agius
Source The Malta Independent
If the IVF bill is made law, the Health Minister will have exclusive rights to make the rules and regulations for altruistic surrogacy, says Nationalist Party Deputy Leader for Parliamentary Affairs David Agius in reference to Article 4 of the Embryo Protection Bill.
Agius quotes the Bill as saying: “The Minister shall by regulations prescribe the manner in which altruistic surrogacy shall be effected and for any matter incidental and ancillary thereto.”
This comes about in the light of Wednesday’s vote for approval of the second reading of the draft Bill. Agius comments that whereas before there was no right to surrogacy, now – if the law is passed – it will be introduced without knowing how it will be managed or the conditions that will apply.
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At 28, I Know I Never Want To Be A Mom, So I Donated My Eggs Instead
Source Essence
For years, Lyne Mugema knew that motherhood was not on the menu for her. Though, this didn’t mean she drew a line in the sand: Mugema still wanted to support other women who wanted to conceive.
So, in 2016 Mugema leaned into that aspiration and donated her eggs for the first time. The 28-year-old self-described free spirit did her due diligence–she researched everything she needed to know about becoming an egg donor and discussed the experience with a coworker who’d already gone through the process.
This journey helped her produce two pregnancies and enough wisdom about herself to last a lifetime.
CZECH COURT RECOGNISES GAY PARENTS FOR THE FIRST TIME
Source Radio Praha
The Czech supreme court has ruled for the first time that two gay partners should be legally recognised as the fathers of a surrogate child, the daily Mladá Fronta reported on Saturday.
The child was born a few months ago to a surrogate mother in California through artificial insemination. In its ruling, issued at the beginning of May, the Czech supreme court sustained a decision issued by a court in California, which recognised the two men as the baby girl’s parents.
Since 2006, gays and lesbians in the Czech Republic can live in an officially registered partnership. However, they are still prevented from adopting children as a couple, which means that the non-biological partner does not have the same legal rights to the child.
A Legislative Approach to the Concept of Parentage in the Age of Surrogacy and Artificial Reproduction
Source New York Law Journal
In March, this column addressed the “Continuing Legal Evolution of the Concepts of Parent and Child,” N.Y.L.J. (March 8, 2018) in a review of the Appellate Division, Third Department’s decision of Jan. 25, 2018 in Matter of Christopher YY v. Jessica ZZ, 2018 NY Slip Op 0049, where the sperm donor, biological father sought access to the child of a feminine same sex couple and the court employed both the presumption of legitimacy of a child born to married partners and the doctrine of equitable estoppel to enforce the donor’s promise to relinquish his rights to the child. The difficult questions resolved by that decision were soon followed by Matter of David S. v. Samantha G., N.Y.L.J. (May 3, 2018) where Family Court Judge Carol Goldstein was presented with a custody dispute surrounding a “tri-parent arrangement” involving a biological mother and the biological father joined by his husband.
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Surrogate Mother
Metro mom of four set to give birth to fifth baby — for another couple
Source Fox4kc
Meg Daughtery
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The joy of parenting is one many people want to experience.
For some moms and dads, once or twice is enough. Other families who struggle with infertility would give anything for the opportunity to bring their baby home.
And one local mom is choosing to give birth for the fifth time — but she and her husband aren’t the baby’s parents.
Every afternoon around 3 p.m., Meg Daughtery welcomes home her tribe. She and her husband Peter always knew they wanted four children. The faces of their four kids fill the walls of their home, and their laughter and personalities fill the space.
It’s a life Meg wouldn’t trade and an opportunity she wants everyone to have.
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Three Parent Embryo
FDA Tells Scientist to Stop Making Three-Parent Unborn Babies
Source LifeNews.com
A Manhattan fertility doctor has stopped creating three-parent embryos for now after receiving a warning letter from the federal government last year.
The Daily Mail reports Dr. John Zhang, who runs the New Hope Fertility Clinic and biotech company Darwin Life in New York City, gained international attention in 2009 when he created and implanted a human embryo with genetic material from three parents into a woman’s womb.
His manipulation of human genes has caused massive controversy. In August, the FDA sent Zhang and warning letter telling him to stop genetically altering human embryos, which is illegal, according to the report.
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Spain, Surrogate Mother
Spain – Single mom from B.C. gives the gift of family to man from Spain
Source Surrey Now-Leader
Kara Erickson gave the gift of family by being a surrogate mother for Josep Cañadas, who’s from Spain. (Submitted by New Bloom Photography)
On May 1, Kara Erickson gave birth to a healthy baby girl and then handed her over to Josep Antonio Castelló Cañadas, a man she’d met only once before in Las Vegas.
In the fall of 2016, while at an industry trade show, Erickson, who co-owns Chilliwack’s Yellow Bird Birth, had a chance encounter with Nathan Chan, the managing director of Proud Fertility in Calgary. The two—who connected over their shared stillbirth and loss doula training—began talking about egg donation and surrogacy, which Chan’s firm specializes in, and Erickson said she felt like she could be of help.
“I’d always wanted to be a surrogate,” said 28-year-old Erickson in April, while rubbing her very pregnant belly. “But I never pursued it—it was more like if somebody I knew needed somebody to carry for them I could do it.”
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surrogate mother exploitation
Surrogate mothers ask Supreme Court to stop ‘exploitation’ of women and babies
Source The Washington Post
Melissa Cook’s story became headline news in 2015 when she was carrying triplets as a surrogate. The intended dad asked her to abort at least one of them, she says, because he couldn’t afford to raise them all. She refused and has been fighting for custody of the children in court ever since.
Cook and two other surrogate mothers — Gail Robinson and Toni Bare — are in Washington this week to call on the Supreme Court to provide more clarity on the rights of women and children in the controversial industry. The women, who have separately filed lawsuits in different states, say surrogacy contracts are exploitative to the birth mothers, create a class of women as breeders and commodify children.
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Embryo adoption
Malta – Most couples won’t give up spare embryos for adoption
Source Times of Malta
80 per cent of couples refuse to give up spare embryos for adoption
More than 80 per cent of couples refuse to give up spare embryos for adoption after in vitro fertilisation, says an international study.
The studies were mentioned in a paper by the Malta College of Pathologists, which warned that the IVF Bill warranted further discussion by stakeholders.
The proposed law has raised eyebrows, as it would allow couples interested in IVF to give their consent to embryo adoption. Same-sex couples would rather opt for a genetically related embryo than accept adopting frozen embryos, the college said.
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Top StoriesOsteoporosisBone Health
Early Menopause Linked to Risk of Bone Fracture
Women who reach menopause early have a significantly higher risk for osteoporosis and bone fractures later in life.
Menopause marks the end of the reproductive phase in women. The term menopause refers to the stage in a woman’s life when she has her last menstrual cycle. A woman is considered to have completed menopause when she has experienced one year with no menstrual bleeding.
The average age at which a woman experiences her final menstrual period is 51; however, for some women menopause can occur much earlier or much later. Researchers in Sweden have found that women who experience menopause before age 47 are at an increased risk of osteoporosis.
The study involved 390 women who were recruited in 1977 (at age 48) and followed for 34 years in order to evaluate bone health. The women were classified into one of two groups: early menopause (before age 47) or late menopause (after age 47). Researchers measured bone mineral density in the women at age 48 and again at age 77. They recorded mortality rates and fracture incidence up to age 82.
The results indicated that women who experience early menopause have an 80 percent increased risk of osteoporosis, a 68 percent increased risk of bone fracture, and a 60 percent increased risk of death compared to women who undergo menopause at a later age. The reasons for this disparity are unclear, but they indicate the importance of measuring bone density in the decade following menopause.
The takeaway message—while you may not be able to control the age at which you experience menopause, you can control your lifestyle choices. In order to maintain optimal bone density, it’s important to eat a healthy bone-building diet and perform weight-bearing exercise. As with anything, prevention is the best course of action. Maintain open communication with your doctor as you navigate menopause.
[1] Svejme O, Ahlborg HG, Nilsson J-A, Karlsson MK. Early menopause and risk of osteoporosis, fracture and mortality: a 34-year prospective observational study in 390 women. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Published early online: April 25, 2012: DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-0528.2012.03324.x
Ask the Doctor: What Should Women Know about Osteoporosis?
Laura Ryan, MD, of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Discusses What Should Women Know about Osteoporosis
Understand The Signs Symptoms & Your Risk of Developing Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis affects 44 million Americans - Understand how and why it occurs and what you can do about it.
Understand What Assisted Devices Can Make Your Life Easier
Assisted devices can help make everyday life a little bit easier and help you to maintain your independence.
What Women with Inflammatory Arthritis Need to Understand About Osteoporosis
Eileen Lydon ANP, NYU Hospital For Joint Diseases Discusses Risk of Osteoporosis in RA and PsA
Diagnosing Osteoporosis
Learn how osteoporosis is diagnosed, how is bone mineral density measured and what is a T-score?
Understanding Hip Replacement - Is a new joint the answer to your pain?
Recent studies show that replaced hips typically last 25 years or longer
Are You Getting Enough Vitamin D?
Sunshine is the main source of vitamin D and you could be lacking as we begin summer.
Guidelines for Osteoporosis Management in Postmenopausal Women
Endocrine Society updates osteoporosis management guidelines for postmenopausal women
Understanding Joint replacement
Questions to ask your doctor about joint replacement. An interview with Dr. Michael Boothby, M.D. Fort Worth Orthopedics
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Illustration by Emily Tu
Professor Dan Silver comes up with a new way of looking at cities
June 14, 2011 | By Scott Anderson
Looking for a tattoo parlour in Toronto? Head to Queen West. A banking office? King and Bay. In many parts of the city, specific kinds of establishments define the character of a neighbourhood; together they create a “scene.” But what are the characteristics of these scenes? Using the Canadian Yellow Pages database, Daniel Silver, a sociology professor, has analyzed the amenities available in each postal code to create a cross-country “scenescape.”
Using a classification system he developed, Silver assigns each amenity a score out of five on 15 dimensions that measure different forms of “theatricality” (presentation), “authenticity” and “legitimacy” (or what ethical vision an establishment promotes). A gas station, for example, would score low on “glamorous theatricality” but high on “utilitarian legitimacy.” The reverse would be true of an independent high-fashion house. Compared to Montreal, says Silver, Toronto scores slightly higher on “self-expressive legitimacy” because of its many vintage-clothing shops, bookstores, and holistic-healing and meditation centres, but lower on “exhibitionistic theatricality” because it has fewer sex shops, leather shops and modelling agencies.
Silver is interested primarily in the sociological aspects of his research, but he says businesses might find it useful for determining where to locate a new store, individuals for choosing where to live, urban planners for city-building and politicians for predicting voting patterns.
Tags: Department of Sociology, Summer 2011
Editor, University of Toronto Magazine
After the Shooting, a Search for Salvation
I spent two years with people who had been shot, and recorded how their lives had changed. For many, the church offered a powerful source of hope
By Jooyoung Lee
What Does an Ethnographer Do?
The goal is to get “an intimate and authentic representation of the person’s life,” says U of T prof Jooyoung Lee
By Scott Anderson
When Getting a Job Is Mission Impossible
Laws to end workplace discrimination against people with disabilities have mostly failed to boost employment. Sociologist David Pettinicchio wants to know why
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The 90s Disease and The Global Star Wars on Terror
This is the first of two editorials tangential to political things including 9/11, the Global War on Terror, and how much of a cunt George Lucas is. I have written this particular piece while in a rather spirited mood. There is offensive content here and its payload has been calibrated to maximize its potential.
I was in a World History class, freshman year of High School when it happened.
This is one class I will not forget, though I don’t know it at the time. It will teach me far more than I expect. We are to be taking a short test on some material we recently covered. I wasn’t worried, my memory always did serve me well in areas like history. Twenty-five questions, and then a new lesson. Twenty-five questions on the origins of Islam. The strange mechanisms of the world already winking at my future self through a multiple-choice pop quiz.
When the television went on I saw the towers burning. They still stood over New York, then. At first the world thought “Tragic Accident”. Then the second plane hits. At first the news thought the towers couldn’t fall. Then they did. We all watched them fall. We all watched them die. Many of my classmates had family working in the Pentagon. DC is very much a company town. I’d never been to New York. I knew people there, the internet had permeated my life in a Very Big Way already, and through IRC I knew people who lived and worked there. My mind was too dumbstruck to register that they might be in danger.
The reactions of the students were telling. Mine was that of pain and rage. None of us had known the horrors of the Cold War, the grim sword of damocles that was Mutually Assured Destruction was foreign to us. War was something other people made. We were observers, all, and none of us knew that our world had just been swapped for some new monstrosity, a warped mirror that reflected all the wrong parts of ourselves. I knew there would be a war. I knew whoever had done this would feel the unchained rage of an empire. I knew we would feel the same rage. And I knew that rage would always be more dangerous to us than it ever would to our enemies.
There is no image I can think of that is so primal, so repulsive to the very core of one’s humanity, and so mortally terrifying than that of a mushroom cloud. Nuclear annihilation. As I said we were the first generation removed from the Cold War. We didn’t know the same fears. A mushroom cloud, the modern face of death itself, was now all that I could see. I saw the towers fall, I saw the fires and deaths, the jumpers, the secondary collapses. I saw them and I thought “Yes.” I saw mushroom clouds rising over some foreign land. I thought that death by nuclear fire would be too kind a fate for those responsible. For the first and only time in my life I was posessed of a terrible notion: We Must Kill Them All. No exceptions, no hesitation, no remorse. The world would never before or again see a more fearsome reprisal. This would never happen again. Not while We stood upon the bridge.
Some of the students, however, watched, riveted to their seats. I realized something awful. They were actually being entertained by this. Whether the sheer magnitude of this was too much for their feeble minds to grasp I do not know, I do know that there was more than one person that I previously thought was smart who actually commented on how “cool” this was. And everyone knew why this was getting people off. I’d seen such destruction before, we all had. We all paid for it at the movie theatres in the summers. We lined up to eat popcorn and watch aliens or asteroids or some Other destroy us, only to be vanquished by the might, ingenuity, and wisdom of Humanity. The 1990s was the Great American Victory Lap and it showed in all our media. We’re All So Fucking Great, because we survived the Cold War. If we could avoid annihilating ourselves, we could truly overcome any obstacle the universe would send our way. The 1990s are why George W. Bush would later challenge the terrorists to “Bring it on”. The threat to us in the 1990s seemed to never be human. We had conquered our demons, we were masters of our domain. Without nuclear war to worry about we could build fantastic new wonders like the Internet, cure diseases, bring the world together, throw down tyranny and lift humanity into a brighter future. We were building a space station, we were mapping the cosmos, the whole world seemed to peek its head out into the blinding light from a dark cave, just for a moment. We thought everything was going to be okay, soon. What could this new millenium bring other than the triumphant dawn of mankind? And, admittedly it was understandable, justified even.
Star Wars should have taught us differently. Episode One, specifically. At the ass end of the ’90s the most sacred of our pop culture icons was going to return with all the majesty of modern CGI and budgets greater than the GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa. A great big fucking fireworks show to cap our cultural bender. It didn’t even occur to us that it would be remotely possible for Star Wars to be Bad. Try and remember that time. The time when Star Wars was always going to be good. The time when its only blemishes were written off as a minor misstep by the visionary Lucas. Its important to remember the time when Star Wars couldn’t possibly be fucked up, even if spasticated rhesus monkeys suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome, smoking crystal meth wrote the screenplay in the AIDS-infested mongoloid spunk of the aborted baby Jesus. Star Wars was perfect. Then, Episode One came out. It was a fuckfest of legendary proportions, childhoods were retroactively ruined, and the insult would only seem to get worse with time.
Why was Star Wars bad? Why, when the first film was made at the end of the Vietnam War, and the series improved to its crescendo in the last great arms race under Reagan, why was this new Star Wars, forged over years in the victorious, pre-utopian 90s, so bad? Well, the problem was that Star Wars was perfect. Only someone who no one thinks can do wrong would or could fuck up Star Wars that badly. People around this man should have slapped the shit out of Lucas, the studios should have detonated his script. And it was the ultimate 90s script, no tremendous conflict, just a small backwater trade dispute, some political maneuvering, you know, easy shit. Shit that normal humans deal with all the time, nevermind Jedi. Shit that Yoda should have sorted out in five minutes. The whole of Industrial Light and Magic blackout drunk with money, and the entire production in a dissociative trance of denial, with no one challenging the fever-dream bullshit spewing from George Lucas.
A New Hope was made in the fucking desert with props that constantly broke, never-before-tried effects techniques, a veritable shoestring budget, and more problems than anyone knew could happen on a movie. Everyone thought the movie was going to be horrible! It was the exact opposite of The Phantom Menace in almost every way. The script was chopped, cut, tightened, until it was lean and unrelenting. Comedy and drama in balance, the Hero’s Journey updated for the modern era, and most importantly: Good Triumphs Over Evil. Not an ultimate triumph. Significant, but ultimately just another battle. It was exactly what it needed to be in that time, in that place in 1977. Star Wars made everyone remember “Hey, we’re the good guys. We can do this!” The Phantom Menace made us ask “Hey, you’re supposed to be the good guys, are you sure you can do this?”.
In its own way TPM is also exactly what it needed to be in its time, which is to say an overproduced monstrosity. A monument to excess. We let it happen. We were so busy telling George Lucas how great Star Wars was that he forgot the adversity that gave it a soul. In the 1990s, we were all in the business of buying our own bullshit and confirming ever so politely to each other that our shit did not in fact stink. The Millenial Generation had arrived and the Baby Boomers were going to kick back and get nice and fucked up with the hottest new drug for them: Unlimited Power. How could America possibly get punched in the dick by the Actual Sand People from Tatooine? Even if that happened, how could America so fuck up their response as to get bogged down in not one but fully two Vietnam-grade quagmires? We learned that lesson! We won, remember? We’re the good guys! We can do this! What are a bunch of irritable brown people going to do to us, nothing, because we’re America and we’re so fucking Perfect.
In the 1990s the US Economy boomed thanks to the Internet, we had the largest budget surplus in history, and our biggest problems according to the news were blowjobs and sharks. We gathered all that money, and all that confidence, and when we were attacked we hit back with our own great big Phantom Menace. An obnoxious, showy, over-budgeted, over-produced foreign-policy Hindenburg called the “Global War on Terror”. We named our enemy. The “Axis of Evil” ooh, scary, very Sith Lords, love it. For Iraq we even got our own Attack of the Clones complete with equally farcical justifications for a war!
The best thing about those movies, the prequel trilogy is that for all its flaws it does one thing incredibly right: From start to finish, episode one title crawl to episode three credits, the good guys manage to give the bad guys exactly what they want. The Jedi, through arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence fuck absolutely everything up. The bad guys play them like a fiddle and achieve almost every aim. The only thing that stops them from winning completely is that at the eleventh hour, a couple of people get their shit together just long enough to set the stage for the next generation to fix everything they broke, if they can, maybe.
And America did the same. We gave the bad guys exactly what they wanted, first we got good and scared. Then, we got good and angry. We started a war with too much confidence and rage and no decent plan. We alienated potential allies with our rhetoric. After 9/11 even Iran was chomping at the bit to help us. And why not? They’re fairly modern, certainly when compared to their neighbors. They’ve got just as much an interest in making sure the Taliban and Al Qaeda quiet down as we do. We were on the way towards real dialogue when President Lucas threw it all away by naming them to the axis of evil. And we got distracted, went off podracing in Iraq. We give radical groups decades worth of justification for their agenda in places where they were as welcome as syphillis. Now the western economy has tanked, and what did we get for all of this? We managed to get our shit together just long enough to shoot the guy responsible in the eye.
This is a tough one. And now, like it or not, its up to my generation to fix everything the grey-hairs broke.
If we can.
Categories: Editorial, Film, Writing, Etc., frothing rant, politics . Tags:9/11, 90s, afghanistan, al qaeda, america, attack of the clones, barack obama, bill clinton, Bullshit, cold war, film, george bush, gwot, high school, iraq, iraq war, jedi, new york, pentagon, podracing, politics, republicans, revenge of the sith, star wars, taliban, terror, terrorism, the hero's journey, the phantom menace . Author: Andrew Zimmer
My Night’s Sleep Fourteen years.
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Ancient and medieval architecture
Map of Estonia
Map of Poland
Map of Slovakia
Map of Wales
Patrons of medievalheritage.eu
Recommended pages
Chobienia – castle
castle plan according to J.Pilch, Leksykon zabytków architektury Dolnego Śląska
The first mention of the stronghold come from 1209 and 1238. It probably refer to the hillfort, which earth ramparts are still visible today. A brick, defensive structure in the late gothic style was erected around the middle of the 15th century, although the first brick buildings could have been built in the fourteenth century. The construction of the renaissance mansion began on the initiative of the then owner Georg von Kottwitz around 1530 and it lasted in stages up to 1630. The building was also rebuilt in the eighteenth century and in 1905. As a result of second world war, in 1945 the building was devastated and since then has remained in a state of progressing ruin.
Originally, it was probably a regular castle surrounded by a moat. It survived within the walls of the north-west wing of today’s building. In the 16th century, the castle was rebuilt into a four-wing, renaissance residence. It has defensive features thanks to three corner towers and a gatehouse in the west wing.
castle in Chobienia, photo: J.Strzelecki, Wikimedia Commons
show this monument on map
return to alphabetical index
Leksykon zamków w Polsce, L.Kajzer, S.Kołodziejski, J.Salm, Warszawa 2003.
Nowakowski D., Siedziby książęce i rycerskie księstwa głogowskiego w średniowieczu, Wrocław 2008.
Pilch J, Leksykon zabytków architektury Dolnego Śląska, Warszawa 2005.
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Home Technology Indians consuming maximum video content online: Report
Indians consuming maximum video content online: Report
Bengaluru– India consumes the most OTT (Over-the-top) videos, followed by Thailand and Philippines in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, content delivery network services provider Akamai Technologies said on Tuesday.
“In India, viewers watched 12.3 hours of online content in a week, while in Japan, viewers watched the least content online per week at 6.2 hours,” a study by Akamai Technologies, commissioned through research firm Kadence International, said.
Indian (44 per cent) and Thai (45 per cent) audiences showed similar behaviours of watching online content via smartphone, while 50 per cent of Japanese viewers preferred accessing OTT services via non-mobile devices.
The survey brought the importance of superior-quality video to the fore. Seventy per cent of Indian viewers said that the video and audio quality is of utmost importance to them, followed by fast start-up time (56 per cent).
“It is critical for the OTT service providers across the region to understand user preferences as viewers increasingly shift to a culture of consuming content on any device, any time, and anywhere,” Vincent Low, Chief Media Strategist and Head of Media Product Marketing APJ at Akamai Technologies, said in a statement.
“What now becomes the differentiator are those micro-moments when they access their preferred content that could either be instances of delight for the user from good overall quality of experience or frustration, which can potentially lead to churn,” Low added.
The study also found an increased demand for local OTT players across markets (Hotstar in India, Hooq in Indonesia and Niconico in Japan, among others). (IANS)
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Is Apple’s New iMac Pro In Trouble Already?
Tuesday, January 16, 2018 by Wil Gomez in Cheap Mac Apps
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines notwithstanding, there are times we can conclude a question with an answer other than no. What worries me about the state of Mac professional machines is that Apple may know the customer base better than professionals.
Remember Xserve G4? That’s was Apple’s first 21st century venture into the server market and it was mostly a failure which died about eight years ago. Steve Jobs killed it. Is iMac Pro about to face a similar trek into a similar niche in Apple history?
What Price Power?
I’m willing to ask the question because only Apple knows the number sold of each Mac. The MacBook Air remains because someone is buying it. Ditto for Mac mini. Even the Mac Pro, which languished for years as the most powerful Mac is still in the lineup. Meanwhile, about 80-percent of all Macs sold are Mac notebooks.
Why did Apple kill the Xserve? Steve Jobs:
Hardly anyone was buying them.
That was back in late 2010, about eight years after Apple launched the Xserve, which, as did all Macs early in the century, managed a smooth transition to Intel Inside.
What about the iMac Pro?
Never has there been a more powerful Mac, and even the scary $4,999 started price compares favorably with Window 10 PC iron when comparably equipped? Yet, here we are, barely two months after release, and already the iMac Pro is on sale.
The first discount occurred early in January. $250 off, but that was an open box sale price from Best Buy. That’s not much of a discount for a nearly $5,000 machine, but elsewhere Micro Center has iMac Pro for a $1,000 discount– $3,999 for the entry-level model.
Is the iMac Pro of 2018 the Xserve of 2010? Again, only Apple knows. Friends who work at a few of the Apple Stores where I work in Manhattan say the entry-level model does not sell as well as the BTO models– built to order. Why? It’s likely that professionals want configurations that go beyond the basics, especially with storage and memory.
For what it’s worth, those same Apple associates in the know also say the Mac Pro cylinder trash can model suffered a similar fate. The entry-level model was not the big seller because professionals needed as much storage and RAM as they could get. In this scenario, with heavy discounts on the entry-level iMac Pro, it’s likely that Apple stocked up on the iMac Pro for the launch in December, but now needs to move that inventory, hence the Micro Center discounts.
The base model iMac Pro at $4,999 on the Apple Store has immediate shipping options, while the $13,199 model with 18 core Intel Xeon Inside and maxed out RAM and SSD storage will ship in mid-February. In between, the 10-core model with more RAM and storage is available to be shipped or picked up in store near the end of January.
How many iMac Pro models are being shipped? Only Apple knows, but the entry-level model may not be the crowded pleaser that an aging MacBook Air is. The $1,000 discount on the entry-level $4,999 model should tell us that Apple’s margins are sufficient to keep the profits rolling in, even if iMac Pro doesn’t sell in great numbers. It’s just too early to tell if iMac Pro is the next Xserve.
About Wil Gomez
I live in Brooklyn, New York and work in Manhattan; a Mac owner for almost 25 years, and an IT specialist on mixed platforms-- Mac, Windows, and Linux. Read more of my articles here. My fiancée is semi-famous Kate MacKenzie. Follow her on PixoBebo.
Microsoft Has What I Want In A Notebook
How To Track Your Work On Your Mac
Constable Odo says
Tuesday, January 16, 2018 at 6:05 AM
$4000 for an iMac Pro. That’s a sweet deal. I hope I see more deals like that. I definitely want one of those iMac Pros this year and since I’m not a pro user I could happily settle for a discounted iMac Pro rather than getting a beefed-up standard iMac from Apple.
Apple seems pretty clueless about stuffing all that high-end hardware into such a slender case of an iMac. Even fairly decent aftermarket Windows PC cases can suffer from inadequate ventilation and thermal throttling despite stuffing plenty of large fans in them. I think Apple is just being stingy or Jony Ive must always prefer form over function. Oh, well. Apple is still doing pretty well financially, so who am I to questions their product decisions. I only know it doesn’t make any sense to me.
I just think that with all that money Apple has they could compete with the likes of AlienWare in building really attractive and functional desktop computers that might not be good for gaming in OSX but would be suitable for any pro users for video editing and general workstation use. Why Apple doesn’t build desktops with multiple PCIE slots is something I’ll never understand.
willis says
Wednesday, January 17, 2018 at 2:39 AM
That’s a healthy price drop. Apple does that to move inventory that is, well, not moving, and the entry level iMac Pro vs iMac with similar configuration isn’t as compelling. The iMac is just a few hundred dollars less than $3,999.
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Virginia General Assembly /
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Code of Virginia
Uncodified Acts
Table of Contents » Title 55. Property and Conveyances [Repealed Effective October 1, 2019] » Chapter 4. Form and Effect of Deeds and Covenants; Liens » Article 3. Effect of Certain Expressions in Deeds and Leases » § 55-70. (Repealed effective October 1, 2019) Words "with general warranty," "with special warranty" and "with English covenants of title" construed
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Title 55. Property and Conveyances [Repealed Effective October 1, 2019]
Chapter 4. Form and Effect of Deeds and Covenants; Liens
§ 55-70. (Repealed effective October 1, 2019) Words "with general warranty," "with special warranty" and "with English covenants of title" construed.
The words "with general warranty," in the granting part of any deed, shall be deemed to be a covenant by the grantor "that he will warrant generally the property hereby conveyed." The words "with special warranty," in the granting part of any deed, shall be deemed to be a covenant by the grantor "that he will warrant specially the property hereby conveyed."
The words "with English covenants of title" or words of similar import, in the granting part of any deed shall be deemed to be an expression by the grantor of those covenants set out in §§ 55-71 through 55-74, inclusive, and in addition thereto the covenant that he is seized in fee simple of the property conveyed.
Code 1919, § 5173; 1968, c. 257.
The chapters of the acts of assembly referenced in the historical citation at the end of this section may not constitute a comprehensive list of such chapters and may exclude chapters whose provisions have expired.
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Home Nevada Clark County Henderson Brian Vasek
Brian Vasek
Managing Member/Attorney at VASEK LAW
Prior to founding VASEK LAW, Brian Vasek was a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Michael P. Villani in the Eighth Judicial District Court of Nevada. Brian also handled hundreds of cases with the Clark County Public Defender and one of the largest criminal defense firms in the state. During that time, Brian personally resolved cases such as robbery, burglary, theft, child abuse, driving under the influence (DUI), battery domestic violence, solicitation, and possession of a controlled substance. Brian sought to provide each case the time, attention, and care it deserved to achieve the best result possible for each client. Brian founded VASEK LAW to provide this client-centered focus to a smaller group of persons facing the most serious of consequences personally and professionally.
Brian graduated from the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with Pro Bono Honors and the Dean’s Award for his participation in the Community Service Committee, Partners in Pro Bono Program, Kids’ Court School, the LACSN Educational Surrogate Parent Program, and as President of the Child Advocacy Law Association. Brian was also a Public Interest Fellow and member of the Nevada Law Journal. Brian received the Carl W. Tobias Excellence in Writing Award for his student note and publication. During law school, Brian served as a law clerk for the Clark County Public Defender, a Student-Attorney for the Juvenile Justice Clinic, and as a legislative extern in Carson City during the 78th Regular Session of the Nevada Legislature.
Prior to law school, Brian graduated from the Ohio State University with a degree in Psychology and Criminology. During his time at the Ohio State University, Brian also provided inpatient cognitive and behavioral therapy for children suffering from abuse and neglect.
Call 24/7 to Speak with Attorney Brian Vasek – 702-755-1441
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Home Arbitration & Mediation Illinois Silvis
Silvis, Illinois Arbitration & Mediation Lawyers
James Skinner
Galesburg, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 23 years experience
(309) 343-9964 20 W Main St
Galesburg, IL 61401
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Insurance Claims, Personal Injury and Workers' Comp
Stephany L. Impson
Neponset, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 45 years experience
(630) 606-8914 8067 200 East Street
Neponset, IL 61345
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Divorce, Family and Real Estate
Stephany L. Impson received her law degree from the University of Illinois. In addition, she has an MBA with emphases in Marketing and Finance from Northwestern University, is a certified Illinois Administrative Adjudicator, and has certification as a Family Law Mediator.
For over three decades, Stephany worked in the title insurance industry. For much of that time, she was a national underwriting counsel. In that capacity, she underwrote and closed transactions for commercial and industrial properties located in the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Canada. In the four years...
G. Edward Murphy
Peoria, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 31 years experience
(309) 674-5551 Murphy & Dunn, P.C.
121 NE Jefferson Street, Suite 200
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Appeals, Divorce and Family
G. Edward Murphy is the founder of the law firm, and has been one of Peoria, Bloomington, Pekin and Central Illinois' best divorce, custody and family law attorneys and lawyers for the past 28 years. He knows how to litigate your case when necessary, negotiate favorably for you if possible, and win your case for you and your children. He is a skilled trial attorney, but also a capable mediator and problem solver. He has been lead counsel running this firm since he was 26 years old and has been winning ever since for the past 27 years....
Thomas P Higgins
(309) 251-7803 Unit 3276
6310 N. University
Peoria, IL 61614-9800
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation and Municipal
The John Marshall Law School and Illinois Central College
A 1990 graduate of The John Marshall Law School, I practiced law privately before leaving to teach Criminal Justice and Paralegal courses at Illinois Central College in Peoria, Illinois. Since 1996 I have been retained primarily working for Municipalities as a Hearing Officer. I continue to fill this role in various communities, hearing cases related to building code ordinances, vehicle use and a wide range of municipal tickets written by the police department. In addition, I have many years experience consulting municipal government drafting, facilitating and implementing various ordinances. In addition to this work, I have been...
Keith Morse
Rockford, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney
(815) 967-5000 321 W. State Street, Suite 1204
Arbitration & Mediation, Criminal Defense, Divorce and Family
Susan E. Guthrie
Chicago, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 28 years experience
(203) 295-3388 1749 N. Winchester Avenue
Susan Guthrie, recently named again by Lawyers of Distinction as one of the Top Family Law and Mediation Attorneys in the country, has been helping individuals and families navigate separation and divorce for almost 30 years. Susan and fellow top attorney, Rebecca Zung, are the Co-Founders of Breaking Free Mediation, the first family law mediation centers in the country to offer a mindfulness track to help divorcing parties to negotiate their issues peacefully. Susan is an online mediation expert and Breaking Free Mediation offers online mediation services nationwide. As a Divorce Innovation Specialist, Susan has created...
Vincent L. DiTommaso
Oakbrook Terrace, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 37 years experience
(630) 333-0000 17W220 W 22nd St
Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Business, Consumer and Legal Malpractice
In 1987, Vincent DiTommaso founded his own law firm. Vincent forged his law firm into a firm specializing in business litigation, consumer fraud, and class actions. For over two and a half decades, Vincent has acted as lead or co-lead counsel in numerous consumer class actions that have had a national impact. The Illinois Attorney General appointed Vincent to act as a Special Assistant Attorney General to represent the Treasurer of the State of Illinois. The Chief Judge of DuPage County selected Vincent to be among the first group of Certified Court Appointed Mediators. He has given seminars to train...
Wheaton, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 39 years experience
(630) 690-0100 300 S. County Farm Road
Arbitration & Mediation, Appeals, Consumer and Municipal
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Practice concentrated in the defense of tort claims, the prosecution and defense of commercial disputes, the prosecution and defense of claims in the environmental field, the prosecution and defense of eminent domain actions, and in the preparation and presentation of materials and seminars providing legal education and training for business and claims professionals. Matters defended and prosecuted include asbestos, negligence, nuisance, trespass, warranty, contract, chancery (including claims seeking temporary, preliminary and/or permanent injunctive relief), breach of fiduciary duty, food poisoning and adulterated products, product liability, consumer fraud, premises liability, trucking, insurance coverage, corporate dissolution, condemnation, civil rights and employment...
Dr. Maudia Norman Washingon
Elgin, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney
(888) 586-4441 40 DuPage Court
Arbitration & Mediation, Business, Family and Foreclosure Defense
Michigan State University School of Law, East Lansing, Michigan
John Marshall School of Law, Chicago Illinois
LLM (Law of Masters Candidate) Real Estate Law
Argosy University, Chicago Illinois
Doctorate of Business Administration, International Business
Published Dissertation
Robert Morris University, Chicago, Illinois
Master in Business Administration, Concentration Management
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois
Bachelor of Arts, Administration of Justice, Minor: Sociology
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I am an attorney who is passionate about my profession and clients. I believe in providing top-notch, innovative, cutting-edge strategies and advice. My clients feel as if they are my only client. ...
Rodney W. Equi
Wheaton, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer
(630) 407-1200 400 S Knoll St
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Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Divorce, Domestic Violence and Family
The Honorable Rodney W. Equi (Ret.) was appointed as an Associate Judge for the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, DuPage County, Illinois in 1992 and elected as Circuit Judge in 1998.
Ms. Juli Ann Gumina
Naperville, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 24 years experience
(630) 665-7676 1250 East Diehl Road
Arbitration & Mediation, Divorce, Family and Juvenile
Admitted to practice law in 1995, Juli A. Gumina graduated with a J.D. from Illinois Institute of Technology-Kent College of Law, where she was on the Dean's List and a member of the Bar & Gavel Society. Juli received her B.A. from Loyola University in Chicago, where she graduate cum laude and was a member of Alpha Sigma Nu, the national Jesuit honor society. Juli honed her litigation skills for several years as a public defender in DuPage County, prior to joining the firm to focus on family law. Juli is a trained and experienced mediator, and is frequently appointed...
Cari B. Rincker
Champaign, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 11 years experience
(217) 531-2179 301 N. Neil Street, 4th Floor
Arbitration & Mediation, Agricultural, Business and Family
Cari is a licensed attorney in the States of New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut while being licensed in the District of Columbia. Cari is a general practitioner with concentrations in food/agriculture law, family/matrimonial law, civil litigation, estate planning and mediation. Rincker Law, PLLC has offices in New York City and Champaign, Illinois. Cari is a member of the Association for the Bar in the City of New York's Matrimonial Law Committee. Before starting Rincker Law, PLLC, Cari was an associate at Budd-Falen Law Offices, LLC in Cheyenne, Wyoming where her broad practice...
Maureen Sullivan Taylor
Naperville, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 37 years experience
(630) 665-7676 1250 East Diehl
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Divorce, Elder and Family
Admitted to practice law in 1982, Maureen Sullivan Taylor graduated with a J.D. from Northern Illinois University Law School. In addition to interning at the United States' Attorneys' Office, Maureen was awarded the American Jurisprudence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Matrimonial Law and also served on the Law Review. Founder of the firm, Maureen is a trained and experienced mediator, and is both a Fellow of the Collaborative Law Institute of Illinois and a member of the International Association of Collaborative Professionals. Maureen is admitted to the United States Supreme Court and the Northern District of Illinois Federal Court and...
Antonio DeBlasio
Oak Brook, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 24 years experience
(630) 560-1123 2001 Midwest Rd
Oak Brook, IL 60523
Arbitration & Mediation, Business, Personal Injury and Probate
Mr. DeBlasio is the founder and managing member of DeBlasio & Gower LLC. Tony has over 22 years of experience as a trial lawyer and advisor. He has counseled individuals, business executives, for profit and not-for-profit companies and government bodies in complex litigation matters, internal investigations and dispute resolution strategies. Tony has been selected as an Illinois Super Lawyer in Business Litigation on many occasions. Only 5% of attorneys receive this distinction. Tony has represented clients from a multitude of industry sectors, including, health care, technology, communications, financial, education, real estate, manufacturing, construction, management...
Chicago, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 8 years experience
(773) 405-2632 1829 N. Fairfield Ave. #1S
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Family, Landlord Tenant and Personal Injury
Bill is an Illinois and New York licensed attorney operating a general law practice in Chicago. He represent clients throughout the Chicagoland area on matters ranging from tenant evictions and judgment collections, to divorces and much more. Having grown up on the South Side of Chicago, Bill understands the value and importance of high quality service at a reasonable price. His main goal is to carry that mantra into his law practice and provide excellent and effective representation at an affordable price. By operating a virtual law office, he has been able to operate a more mobile...
Cynthia Pietrucha
Downers Grove, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer
(630) 344-6370 2001 Butterfield Road
Arbitration & Mediation, Business, Consumer and Employment
Northern Illinois University and University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
For all of your employment challenges, contact our firm at (630) 344-6370
My focus: Severance Agreements and Unemployment Benefits for Terminated Employees.
I have successfully collected settlements on behalf of employees who believe they have valid legal disputes. Whether you are in the midst of a dispute or you would like to prevent future litigation, lawyers at Pietrucha Law Firm, LLC, can act as your guide and representative to ensure the protection of your rights and your future.
Peter S. Lubin
Elmhurst, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 35 years experience
(833) 306-4933 360 W Butterfield Rd
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Business, Communications and Consumer
Peter S. Lubin Firm has been practicing law for over 35 years. Peter brings a rich range of courtroom experience to assist his commercial and class-action litigation clients. Peter has been lead defense counsel in a number of "bet the company" class actions that he has successfully defended. He has also been lead plaintiff's class counsel on numerous multi-million dollar class national and statewide class action. Peter has represented many corporations or businesses in a wide variety of complex business disputes including corporate freeze-outs, copyright infringement, trade secret theft, non-compete agreement and libel and defamation cases. Peter obtained an AB...
Vincent C Mancini
LaGrange, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 21 years experience
(708) 639-4320 1022 S. LaGrange Road
Arbitration & Mediation, Appeals, Business and Civil Rights
With over 20 years of legal experience, Vince provides his clients with a wide-ranging skill set for solving most legal problems. For many years Vince's practice focused on both trial work and appellate litigation handling a diverse array of cases, including criminal matters, personal injury and property damage claims, non-compete/non-solicitation disputes, business dissolution and accounting actions, probate and guardianship cases, discrimination and civil rights claims, construction defect, mechanic’s lien and breach of contract claims, UCC, banking and foreclosure matters, and municipal zoning hearings. Vince has conducted hundreds of trials, evidentiary hearings, and arbitrations/mediations, and prepared and argued dozens of appeals...
Celiza Braganca
Chicago, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 26 years experience
(847) 906-3460 230 South Clark Street, Suite 262
Lisa Bragança has decades of experience as a financial and securities litigator. Lisa served as a Branch Chief in the Division of Enforcement of the Chicago Office of the Securities & Exchange Commission, where she handled investigations of accounting fraud, Ponzi schemes, insider trading, churning, and unsuitability. While at the SEC, Lisa collaborated with the federal criminal prosecutors in securities fraud investigations at major corporations.
Lisa has recovered millions of dollars for clients including recoveries for investors and insurance policyholders. Lisa has successfully represented corporate officers and directors in SEC investigations and related litigation.
Lisa is a trial...
Kathleen L Hammock
Highland, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer
(618) 882-4525 In Highland...
102 Executive Dr.
Arbitration & Mediation, Business, Divorce and Family
Saint Louis University School of Law
Hammock Law LLC was formed in 2010. The firm focuses entirely on providing mediation services to businesses and individuals. Many referrals come directly from lawyers whose clients would like to bring an end to a lawsuit or other type of dispute. And many people come directly to mediation before a lawsuit is filed or even before lawyers are retained.
Julia A. Pucci
Geneva, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 13 years experience
(630) 945-8807 25 N River Ln
Julia A. Pucci, managing partner with Pucci Pirtle, focuses her practice in the areas of divorce and custody litigation. Ms. Pucci attended Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois where she received a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, in Sociology and Political Science. Ms. Pucci subsequently earned her Juris Doctor from St. Louis University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri. During her law school career, Julia taught legal research and writing as a teaching assistant and was also active in the mediation clinic where she obtained her mediation certification. As a certified mediator, she mediated court-ordered child custody matters and...
Gary Annes
(855) 529-2442 100 N LaSalle St
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Elder, Medical Malpractice and Personal Injury
Joe Wojciechowski Esq.
Barrington, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 10 years experience
(312) 332-4200 600 Hart Rd
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Consumer, Securities and Stockbroker Fraud
I have been a licensed attorney since November 2009 and been with Stoltmann Law Offices since March 2005. Prior to Stoltmann Law Offices, I had a short stint as a paralegal with a Chicago securities defense firm. I am currently managing partner at Stoltmann Law Offices and am responsible for the day to day operations of the firm, docket and case management. Personally, I handle all aspects of case management from potential client/case intake to trying the case. I have successfully briefed, argued, and defeated numerous motions to dismiss before dozens of FINRA arbitration panels and courts of law.
Eydie Rachel Glassman
(312) 523-5299 141 W. Jackson Blvd.
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Business, Civil Rights and Employment
Protecting your rights under the law is our commitment.
Eydie Vanderbosch (formerly Glassman) is the Head of Litigation Practice at Ziliak Law, LLC.
Eydie Vanderbosch is a driven lawyer and tenacious litigator who brings real world security, investigation and business experience to her practice at Ziliak Law, LLC.
Eydie’s career started in the United States Air Force where she served in the Office of Special Operations. As part of that service, Eydie conducted investigations involving criminal matters, fraud, counterintelligence, and internal security and targeted security concerns head-on.
Upon completion of her service with the United States Air Force, Eydie quickly rose to...
Charles G. Wentworth
Glen Ellyn, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 14 years experience
(630) 469-7100 536 Crescent Blvd. Suite 200
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Appeals, Business and Employment
The University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Charles is a shareholder at The Law Office of Lofgren & Wentworth, P.C. in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where he practices business, property, and appellate litigation. After graduating from the SJ Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, he clerked for Chief Justice John Broderick of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. He was then a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago before opening his own practice. He recently joined Richard Lofgren to form The Law Office of Lofgren & Wentworth, P.C., The Entrepreneur's Legal Resource. Charles' experience as an officer and director of multiple closely-held companies...
Lidia E Serrano
Geneva, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 18 years experience
(630) 844-8781 431 Williamsburg Avenue
Arbitration & Mediation, Divorce, Estate Planning and Family
I have been practicing law since 2001. I graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law in May of 2001 and from DePaul University in June of 1996. My main area of concentration is family law, i.e., divorce, paternity, child support, allocation of parental responsibilities (formerly known as custody) and adoption. As a family law attorney, I understand that my clients have to make difficult decisions while dealing with complex issues and emotions. As such, I believe that the key to successful representation depends not only in understanding the underlying issues, but, also in experience and expertise in the law...
James V. DiTommaso
Oakbrook Terrace, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 1 year experience
(630) 333-0000 17W220 22nd Street
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Business, Consumer and Family
James V. DiTommaso is an attorney at DiTommaso Law LLC where he has experience with consumer fraud, class-action, and complex business litigation in both federal and state courts including the trial court and appellate court. Also, his practice includes business transactional matters, family law, defamation, copyright, non-competition, and trade secret litigation. He received a JD, from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 2017 and a BFA, from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2011. While at Chicago-Kent, he was on the Dean’s List, he was a member of the Executive Board for the Chicago-Kent Justinian Society of Lawyers, and he received...
Alexander Loftus Esq.
Barrington, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 8 years experience
DePaul College of Law
Alexander Loftus specializes in litigating business, intellectual property, commercial, employment, and class action cases. \ Alexander graduated from DePaul University College of Law with honors. He is admitted to practice in Illinois State Courts, Illinois Federal Courts, Eastern District of Wisconsin, Federal Trial Bar, and The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He is currently admitted pro hac vice in Florida, Delaware, California, and Wisconsin. Alexander grew up in a small town in Southern Wisconsin and went to college in Saint Paul, Minnesota and Washington, D.C. In college he studied Political Science and was a member of...
Andrew Stoltmann Esq.
Andrew Stoltmann, attorney and investor advocate, exclusively concentrates his practice in representing investors who are the victims of investment fraud. He has represented over one thousand individuals in lawsuits and securities arbitration actions against brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Wachovia, Linsco, Prudential, Baird, Edward Jones, AG Edwards and Smith Barney and has tried approximately 80 cases. Previous to opening the Stoltmann Law Offices P.C. he was a partner in a law firm concentrating its practice in the representation of investors in lawsuits, arbitration claims and class actions against brokerage firms. Mr. Stoltmann is...
Michael P Tomlinson
(312) 715-8770 134 N. LaSalle Street
Arbitration & Mediation, Appeals, Business and Consumer
For nearly seven years, Michael P. Tomlinson practiced law at a large national law firm. During that time, Mr. Tomlinson represented clients in all types of complex commercial litigation, including the following types of cases: Restrictive covenants (non-competition and non-solicitation) Trade secret misappropriation Securities litigation Securities enforcement actions Labor and employment law Statutory fraud (e.g., the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act) Class action defense Uniform Commercial Code General contract and tort law Qui tam actions White collar crime Mr. Tomlinson also has experience in conducting internal investigations on behalf of both securities and health care clients. In addition to the litigation-related services listed above, Mr. Tomlinson provides advice to his...
Deanna Besbekos-LaPage Esq.
Barrington, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 6 years experience
For over a decade, Deanna has advocated for investors who have suffered at the hands of financial advisors, registered investment advisors, and insurance companies. Deanna successfully arbitrated cases through FINRA’s Dispute Resolution program, JAMS, and AAA. She has also litigated cases for investors in both state and federal court. She has helped hundreds of clients recover their hard-earned savings. As an active member of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, through which she has served on the SRO committee and as Chair of the Amicus Curiae committee, Deanna spearheaded several efforts to change legislation, regulations, and develop case law...
Susan Marie Pesch
(630) 462-9300 620 W Roosevelt Road
Suite A-1
Susan Marie Pesch has been an attorney licensed in Illinois since 1991. Ms. Pesch has concentrated her practice in all areas of family law since she began her own practice 16 years ago. Built largely on referrals, Pesch Law Office handles a variety of domestic relations matters, including divorce, paternity, child custody, child support, day care expenses, maintenance claims, and name change petitions. Also, Susan is experienced in post-decree issues such as seeking parent contribution to college expenses and enforcement/modification of child support. Ms. Pesch has represented clients in DuPage County and Kane County throughout her legal career....
Michael F Roe
St Charles, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 33 years experience
(630) 232-2400 100 Illinois St
Arbitration & Mediation, Divorce, Domestic Violence and Family
Trinity College, Dublin Ireland and University of San Diego School of Law
Peter Zneimer
(773) 516-4100 4141 N Western Ave
Arbitration & Mediation, Animal, Business and Nursing Home
Indiana University School of Law
Patrick D. Austermuehle
Patrick D. Austermuehle, a partner at Lubin Austermuehle, P.C., has experience in complex business and commercial litigation and consumer class actions. He has assisted in the successful representation of a number of state and federal matters, including cases at the appellate level.
Mr. Austermuehle received a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin and earned a J.D. with Honors from Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology where he was Notes and Comments Editor on the Law Review.
Prior to joining Lubin Austermuehle, P.C., Mr. Austermuehle served as a law clerk at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and as...
Aaron Rifkind
(312) 725-4229 20 W Hubbard St
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Business and Construction
Aaron Rifkind is an Illinois and Wisconsin licensed attorney, as well as admitted to the Trial Bar for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He focuses his practice to primarily breach of contract matters related to business, construction, and partnership disputes.
Kristen E. Prinz
(312) 212-4450 1 E Upper Wacker Dr
Free ConsultationArbitration & Mediation, Business and Employment
Chicago Attorney Kristen E. Prinz is the Founder and Managing Partner at The Prinz Law Firm, a premier firm representing clients in complex business and employment matters. Over the last decade, Ms. Prinz has litigated employment issues in both state and federal courts, and has handled cases at both the trial and appellate levels. Her successful experience with administrative agencies and arbitration panels allows her to handle these cases with confidence, and has litigated numerous cases which helped clarify and advance the law. To learn more about how Kristen Prinz can help you, call her firm today at (312) 212-4450.
Carol Coplan Babbitt
(312) 435-9775 35 E Wacker Dr
Arbitration & Mediation, Consumer and Employment
I am a Chicago based litigation attorney who has been practicing law since 1988. I opened my own law firm in 1997 and I have been a successful solo-practitioner ever since. I take a tenacious, results driven, approach to all matters in my practice which makes me a strong advocate and assists in my proven record of success. Because I am a solo-practitioner, I will be directly and personally involved in your legal matters from its inception through its conclusion and together, I believe we will achieve a positive resolve to your legal problems.
The focus of my practice is litigation...
Janella L. Barbrow
Wheaton, IL Arbitration & Mediation Attorney with 38 years experience
Arbitration & Mediation, Appeals, Estate Planning and Municipal
Practice concentrated in the defense of tort, civil rights, and commercial claims, and in the prosecution and handling of appellate matters. Matters handled include negligence, municipal liability, Structural Work Act, premises liability, Civil Rights Act, Human Rights Act, product liability, Dram Shop Act, aviation, breach of contract, employment matters, gas explosion, patent infringement, and warehouseman's liability actions. Participated in all aspects of pretrial work, discovery, and trial preparation. Handled cases in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and other federal courts throughout the country; in the Circuit Courts of Cook, DeKalb, DuPage,...
Marcia Gerber Cotler
Northbrook, IL Arbitration & Mediation Lawyer with 30 years experience
(847) 498-6040 5 Revere Dr
Arbitration & Mediation Attorneys in Nearby Cities
Arbitration & Mediation Attorneys in Nearby Counties
The Oyez Lawyer Directory contains lawyers who have claimed their profiles and are actively seeking clients. Find more Silvis, Illinois Arbitration & Mediation Lawyers in the Justia Legal Services and Lawyers Directory which includes profiles of more than one million lawyers licensed to practice in the United States, in addition to profiles of legal aid, pro bono and legal service organizations.
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Home Gov & Administrative Law California Mineral
Mineral, California Government & Administrative Lawyers
Michael Lee Carver
Chico, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 25 years experience
(530) 891-8503 1395 Ridgewood Drive, Suite 300
Administrative, Appeals, Business and Civil Rights
Redding, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney
1330 West Street, Suite B
Samuel E Spital
San Diego, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 48 years experience
(619) 583-0350 8880 Rio San Diego Dr., #800 San Diego 92108
Downtown Offices: 110 West C Street, Suite 1300 San Diego 92101
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Criminal Defense, DUI & DWI and Domestic Violence
Samuel Spital is the Managing Attorney at Spital and Associates. He is committed to personal service; his honesty, integrity and trustworthiness are only surpassed by his exceptionally high level of concern for his client. The law firm serves individuals and businesses in a wide array of administrative law, criminal defense and civil litigation. Sam Spital began his legal career as a Deputy Attorney General for the California Department of Justice (serving from 1970 - 1978, in both the Criminal and Civil Law Divisions). As a Deputy Attorney General, he handled over 50 appeals, in all State and Federal...
Miranda Dempsey McCroskey
Tustin, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 22 years experience
(949) 988-4444 140 Centennial Way
Miranda@UnlockLegal.com * Call me for a consultation: Call (833) UNLOCKED; (833) 865-6253
I am the KEY to unlocking a California professional license. With a degree from University California, Santa Barbara, and a law degree from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, I understand the nuances of California criminal courts and licensing boards.
As a criminal defense attorney, I spent 20 years defending my clients’ liberty --- only to find that they were facing additional jeopardy when their professional licenses -- and livelihood – were at stake. After handling thousands of cases I realized that defendants were not being made aware of...
Claimed Lawyer ProfileQ&AResponsive Law
Vernon Charles Tucker
Simi Valley, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 6 years experience
(818) 699-0333 2655 First Street, Suite 250
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Bankruptcy, Collections and Municipal
Southern California Institute of Law, Minot State University and Minot State University
Aggressive Representation. Don't settle for less!
Don't be a Sucker.................Call Vernon Tucker!!!
Joseph Wilson
Yorba Linda, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 17 years experience
(714) 463-4430 18032 Lemon Drive
Administrative, Criminal Defense, Tax and White Collar Crime
University of San Diego and James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona
Mr. Wilson is a former Federal Prosecutor, IRS Attorney and FTB Attorney. Mr. Wilson is the managing partner at the Wilson Tax Law Group, which is a law firm serving the Newport Beach and Yorba Linda areas that specializes in civil audits and criminal tax matters, involving federal and state tax authorities. The firm represents taxpayers during civil audits, administrative appeals, all phases of collection, judicial proceedings in all trial and appellate courts. The firm handles a wide variety of matters including international compliance and offshore banking matters. The firm is headed by Mr. Wilson, whose impressive background includes...
Nathan Mubasher
Corona, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney
(800) 691-2721 2621 Green River Rd
Ste 105 PMB 403
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Health Care, Medical Malpractice and Personal Injury
Attorney Mubasher has gained extensive knowledge about law, medicine and business. He is also very experienced in dealing with people in high-pressure situations. He can put this experience to work for you. In a free consultation, Mr. Mubasher can provide you all the details on the cost of representation, the likelihood of success, and what action to take depending on your appetite for risk. Most importantly, Mr. Mubasher provides genuine care and concern for you, and will stand by you throughout your matter. Mr. Mubasher earned...
Elena Fast
Los Angeles, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 6 years experience
(213) 336-3431 611 S. Catalina St.
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Criminal Defense, Health Care and White Collar Crime
Elena Fast is a Junior Managing Partner at the Blanch Law Firm, responsible for overseeing business and legal operations of the firm. Prior to joining Blanch Law, Elena worked as a Felony Assistant District Attorney at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, New York where she handled thousands of cases from arraignment to disposition.
During her six years at the District Attorney’s Office, Elena investigated and prosecuted a wide array of crimes. She has tried dozens of cases to verdict, ranging from misdemeanors to violent felonies. Elena has presented over 200 cases to the Grand Jury for murder, assault,...
Pasadena, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 20 years experience
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Education and Estate Planning
Narek Avetisyan
Fresno, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 1 year experience
(559) 550-2525 516 W Shaw Ave, Suite 200
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Business, Employment and Municipal
I'm a nerd when it comes to the law. I've handled a diverse caseload: business, contracts, employment, landlord-tenant, commercial, federal state and local regulations, injuries, corporate disputes, arbitration, mediation, and anything you can think of.
Michael Aaron Goldstein
Sherman Oaks, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 22 years experience
(818) 905-7272 15260 Ventura Blvd #1810
San Fernando Valley College of Law
Michael A. Goldstein was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1996 and is admitted to the Central and Southern Districts of the United States District Court. Michael represents clients charged in both State and Federal Courts and has represented the interests of clients in State or Federal cases pending in California, Hawaii, Nevada, Washington, Nebraska and other jurisdictions.
Michael served as the 2014 president of the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Bar Association and currently sits on the Board of Directors.
Michael has secured 4 consecutive not guilty verdicts. The last two juries found Michael’s client not guilty in 27 minutes...
Matthew Sean Harrison
Aliso Viejo, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 3 years experience
16A Journey
Administrative, Business and Municipal
University of Southern California Gould School of Law
Matt’s practice focuses on facilitating innovative change through legal action, and he works with private and public leaders in emerging issues and industries, ranging from internet to cannabis law. Most recently, Matt was one of the lead drafting attorneys on California’s Proposition 64, the successful ballot initiative to decriminalize and regulate cannabis for adult use. Working directly with California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and other state leaders to craft the policy structure, Matt directly authored key provisions in the legislation, integrating complex legislative, political and legal considerations into a balanced, comprehensive and historic reform. For over 10...
Bo Lee
Los Angeles, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 15 years experience
(213) 252-1661 3580 Wilshire Boulevard
Administrative, Business, Criminal Defense and DUI & DWI
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and William Howard Taft University
Top-Rated Award-Winning Business & Criminal Law Firm in business for 15 years. Representing Restaurant, Food and Beverage, Entertainment, and Fashion industry. Alcohol & Liquor Licensing, Land Use Permits, Police Permits, Entertainment Permits, Government and Administrative Expeditor, Commercial Leases and Criminal & DUI Defense. Attorney Bo Lee is also a certified mediator in the State of California.
James Lawrence Knox
San Bernardino, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 21 years experience
(909) 894-0812 255 North “D” Street
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Criminal Defense, Divorce and Family
James Lawrence Knox is a partner at Milligan, Beswick, Levine & Knox, LLP. For almost two decades, Mr. Knox has been providing aggressive legal representation to clients facing criminal charges, as well as individuals involved in family law issues or facing administrative law proceedings. Mr. Knox, along with the other members of our legal team, is firmly committed to putting the needs of clients first and has a long and distinguished track record to show that he is a skillful litigator and knowledgeable legal professional.
Whether you are getting divorced, have been charged with a crime, received a traffic citation, or...
Benjamin M. Reznik
(310) 201-3572 1900 Avenue of the Stars
Administrative, Business and Cannabis Law
University of Southern California Gould School of Law and UCLA School of Law
Thomas D. Mauriello
San Clemente, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 31 years experience
(949) 542-3555 1181 Puerta Del Sol
Administrative, Appeals, Consumer and Environmental
Michael L. Claessens
Pasadena, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 33 years experience
(888) 406-4020 225 S. Lake Ave.
Free ConsultationAdministrative
Univ of LaVerne
Star Q Lopez
Newport Beach, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 11 years experience
(949) 301-9443 260 Newport Center Drive
Administrative, Arbitration & Mediation, Business and Tax
New York University School of Law and University of California - Los Angeles
Star Q. Lopez focuses her practice in estate planning, business formations, and general tax law services. Having practiced law for over a decade, Star has extensive experience in a variety of matters from estate planning, tax law, international law, and business planning to federal labor law, government contracting, criminal law, and general counsel to federal entities. In addition to her transactional and business experience, Star is a former federal prosecutor. In her role as a Judge Advocate, Star handled several criminal trials, administrative board hearings, and Federal labor law cases on behalf of the United States Air Force....
David Emilio Mastagni
Sacramento, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 20 years experience
(877) 447-4614 1912 I St
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Appeals, Civil Rights and Employment
UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall
David E. Mastagni is a partner with the law firm of Mastagni Holstedt, APC, who specializes in labor and employment law representation of public safety employees, including trial and appellate litigation in California and federal courts. In particular, he handles complex civil, class action and collective action litigation, claims arising out of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the U.S. and California Constitutions, the California Public Records Act (CPRA), the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights (POBR), the California Labor Code, the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act, and other statutes protecting the rights of employees.
Among his other legal activities, David is an...
Kevin K. McDonnell
Los Angeles, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 20 years experience
Administrative and Business
Southwestern University School of Law
Kerry Shapiro
San Francisco, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 31 years experience
(415) 984-9612 2 Embarcadero Center
Tate R. Lounsbery
El Cajon, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 13 years experience
(619) 792-1451 270 E Douglas Ave
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Appeals, Criminal Defense and Juvenile
Tate represents clients in Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) grievance proceedings throughout California.
Ashod Mooradian
Montebello, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 21 years experience
(323) 477-1772 1304 W. Beverly Blvd.
LEGAL ETHICS & PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY
Ashod Mooradian is an expert in assisting attorneys successfully navigate the ethical issues and problems of Professional Responsibility that arise in the day-to-day practice of law. Before you take a case or make a move that you believe implicates an issue of legal ethics or professional responsibility call Ashod Mooradian to get the advice and practical instructions (including custom forms) that you absolutely need to consider.
Don't be penny-wise, nickel-foolish with your career! Make the call that will not only guide you in the right direction but give you peace of mind and confidence that you...
Matthew D. Hinks
Sheri L. Bonstelle
Sean T Prosser
(424) 259-4004 2029 Century Park East
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Securities, Stockbroker Fraud and White Collar Crime
Sean Prosser defends clients facing investigations and enforcement actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), including FBI and Grand Jury proceedings, and other government agencies. He also defends companies and their executives in shareholder litigation. With offices in San Diego and Los Angeles, Sean leads Mintz Levin’s California Securities Litigation practice. His clients include public and private companies, officers and directors, board committees, broker-dealers, banks, investment advisors, hedge funds, CPAs, individual stock traders and public officials. Sean regularly represents clients before the following agencies and regulators: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission...
Stacie Lynn Patterson
San Diego, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 27 years experience
(619) 269-8074 3200 4th Ave., Suite 101
Administrative, Business and Criminal Defense
Stacie Patterson—San Diego Criminal Defense Attorney & Professional License Defense Attorney. The Law Office of Stacie L. Patterson serves the greater San Diego, Riverside, and Orange County areas in professional license defense and criminal defense. Stacie Patterson has over 20 years of experience in California as a professional defense attorney and as a California and San Diego criminal defense attorney. Stacie graduated from Yale Law School in 1991. Since then, she has defended clients accused of felonies and misdemeanors in both federal and state courts. As a professional license defense attorney, she has defended clients from...
Miles Jarrod Dolinger
Capitola, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 25 years experience
(831) 477-9193 314 Capitola Avenue
Capitola, CA 95010
Administrative, Environmental, Municipal and Real Estate
I have over 21 years experience serving Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and Monterey Counties with superior and efficient land use, real estate, and business law services – all backed by professionalism and integrity. In my current practice in Capitola, I represent individual, business and public agency clients in a wide range of real estate, land use, and public law matters (transactional and litigation), with special emphasis on: Land use permits; Zoning compliance and red tag removal; CEQA and Coastal Act compliance and litigation; Writ of mandate litigation (against or on behalf of public agencies); Real estate transactions, disputes...
Devina G. Douglas
Santa Rosa, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 3 years experience
(707) 408-3529 703 Second Street, Suite 206
Administrative, Criminal Defense, DUI & DWI and Domestic Violence
Devina Douglas has worked hard to build a reputation within the northern Bay Area as an attorney who is as easy to work with as she is knowledgeable. She has experience in all facets of criminal practice from pre-filing investigations through jury trial, including investigation, arraignments, motions, discovery, pre-trial negotiations and plea bargaining, probation violations, and post-conviction remedies. She handles various felony and misdemeanor cases involving DUI, homicides, marijuana crimes, fish and game violations, drug offenses, sex crimes, and domestic violence.
Devina attended the California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly SLO), where she earned a...
Christian Andrew Montgomery
(916) 452-7033 3112 O Street, Suite 1
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Appeals, Business and Tax
At Montgomery & Wetenkamp, we understand the sleepless nights and stress that flows from dealing with tax and legal matters. While working directly with Montgomery & Wetenkamp, we will lead you on a course to a resolution of your tax and legal issues. We offer affordable legal representation with a focus on IRS tax relief nationwide. Pure tax attorney representation! No middlemen. Attorneys Montgomery & Wetenkamp will personally handle every aspect of your tax relief case. Speak with a tax relief attorney today by calling (800) 454-7043 for your free consultation.
Lucy Stearns McAllister
San Francisco, CA Gov & Administrative Law Lawyer with 31 years experience
(877) 280-9944 201 Spear Street, Suite 1100
The Law Offices of Lucy S. McAllister is a California-based administrative law, licensing law and criminal law practice providing legal services for clients in California. Attorney McAllister has successfully won over 250 Superior Court trials as a Defense Attorney.With 30+ years experience as a civil and criminal attorney.
She specializes in the following areas of law:
Licensing Law :
Pre-hearing resolution of licensing issues, Administrative Hearings, Administrative Appeals, License Applications, Legal Advice, Handling License Criminal Disclosures (Applications, Renewals, Reinstatements), criminal record expungement.
Criminal Law:
Restraining orders, DUI charges and convictions, Domestic Violence, Sex Charges, Strikes Charges, Assault and Battery, Theft and Fraud,...
Nicholas B. Grossman
Santa Ana, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 10 years experience
(714) 702-5222 2112 East 4th Street Suite 235D
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Employment, Personal Injury and Probate
Nicholas Grossman joined the State Bar of California in 2009 and has been selected by his peers as a “Rising Star” (top 2.5% of attorneys in Southern California under the age of 40) seven years in a row (2013- 2019). He has extensive experience in the areas of personal injury, employment law, probate, and civil litigation; and have tried multiple cases to verdict. Mr. Grossman has also served as an adjunct professor of law at AHU School of Law in Ontario, California, where he taught several classes including Legal Remedies and Wills & Trusts.
Prior to working at Shafer,...
David Cincotta
Lincoln University School of Law
Joseph Patrick Hougnon
(916) 730-5251 901 H St Ste 301
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Criminal Defense, DUI & DWI and Personal Injury
top of my law school class and opened my own office in downtown Sacramento in 1997. I've been running my own law office for almost 20 years now. I handle DUI Defense, Criminal Defense, and Personal Injury cases. I've won every case I’ve set for trial in the past 15 years. I offer a personal service and I have a passion for defending my clients - to protect them from the disruption and life changing aspects of criminal charges. I respect my clients and understand they are counting on me to do the best job possible, to...
Neill E. Brower
Los Angeles, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney
Administrative, Business and Environmental
George W. Wolff Esq.
(415) 788-1881 505 Sansome St
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Arbitration & Mediation, Business and Construction
University of California Hastings College of the Law and Northwestern University School of Law
J. Michael Ivancie
San Diego, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 9 years experience
(619) 929-0451 3200 4th Avenue
Free ConsultationAdministrative, Criminal Defense, Employment and Immigration
Seena Samimi
University of California - Berkeley and University of California - Los Angeles
Seena Max Samimi is an attorney in JMBM's Government, Land Use, Environmental and Energy practice, focusing on assisting clients in successfully navigating complex regulatory, zoning, and environmental issues. He is uniquely positioned to support clients with their development projects, and with litigation, due to his extensive experience throughout his career as 1) outside-firm counsel for public entities such as cities and counties, 2) in-house counsel for an international construction company, and 3) litigation and environmental counsel in the large firm setting, representing major private commercial enterprises.
Seena spent several years representing a wide range of public entities such as cities,...
Shaun Kendig Boss
(619) 293-7937 306 Upas Street
Administrative, Antitrust, Appeals and Municipal
Our operation is focused on providing cost effective solutions and expert customer service to all our clients. In addition to real estate, the firm represents clients in business litigation, construction defect problems, estate planning, arbitrations and mediations. We want our clients to fully understand the legal process and what will be involved in finding a constructive result to their legal issue. I am very active in the legal and real estate community. I continue to educate myself on the most up to date information within my field. I maintain active memberships with both local and national groups in the industry....
Joseph Bozant Katzakian
San Jose, CA Gov & Administrative Law Attorney with 13 years experience
(408) 816-8837 12 south first st
Free ConsultationAdministrative and Workers' Comp
Humphrey's Coll School of Law
Fluent Spanish speaker.
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Quiz: Can You Identify These Candies From a Portion of Their Wrapper?
Image: PCH
Does the sight of a certain shade of orange leave you salivating for a chocolate and peanut butter snack? Remember when candy bars were wrapped in foil and paper, or when a Take 5 bar was clad in red, rather than black? Can you tell the difference between the red color of a Kit-Kat wrapper and the slightly different shade used to conceal a Clark bar? If so, you might have what it takes to ace this quiz on all things candy!
Hershey set the stage for candy bar wrappers way back in 1900, with the release of the iconic Hershey bar. This milk chocolate concoction was wrapped in foil and white paper for a couple of years before the company switched to that classic maroon hue you're familiar with today.
Other bars followed suit over the years, packaging candy behind layers of shiny foil or brightly-printed paper. Colors and logos were carefully chosen to draw the eye and leave candy fans drooling as they waited to take that first bite. Today, these wrappers are so familiar that many sweet treat lovers can recognize a brand from only a piece of the wrapper. Think you're one of them? Take our quiz to find out!
Do you know the name of this sweet treat?
Milky Way Midnight
Gimme a break! What else could be concealed behind that bright red wrapper than the four chocolate-covered wafer fingers of a Kit Kat bar? Introduced in 1935, this sweet favorite was named for an old-school London establishment known as the Kit-Cat Club.
Which beloved treat does this wrapper contain?
Sir Sebastian
Charleston Chew
That dark brown packaging with the green flowing writing hides layers of chocolate, caramel and nougat. The Milky Way bar was introduced way back in 1923. Around the world it goes by other names and ingredients may vary.
Can you guess which candy bar uses this wrapper?
Left side or right side? It doesn't matter, as long as you are sinking your teeth into one of the two cookie and caramel segments that make up a Twix bar. Introduced in the 1960s, this caramel delight comes in a shiny gold wrapper with eye-catching red letters.
What candy bar is this?
MBisanz via Wiki Commons
Reese's Cups
There's only one brand of sweet treat that uses this bold shade of orange for its wrapping. It's the classic Reese's Cups, consisting of a thick layer of peanut butter surrounded by creamy milk chocolate. For sale since the 1920s, this brand has been owned by Hershey since the '60s, and consistently ranks among the best-selling candies in the U.S.
Which candy concoction is shown in this image?
Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger! This golden wrapper with blue writing conceals layers of crispy goodness enrobed in delicious chocolate. Introduced by the Curtiss Candy Company way back in 1923, the Butterfinger brand was bought by Nestle in 1990.
Which candy is shown here?
Believe it or not, this peanut-packed candy bar from Mars was named for a horse. Introduced in 1930, the Snickers bar comes in a brown wrapper with blue lettering and red and white accents. The peanut power is only heightened by sweet nougat, chocolate and caramel.
Remember what this candy is called?
Hershey Bar
The Great American Chocolate Bar has been around since 1900, and sporting that brown-maroon wrapper with the metallic lettering for more than a century. The nutty Hershey Almond bar came out in 1908, and both have been satisfying the sweet tooth ever since.
Do you know which candy is concealed within this wrapper?
david pacey via Wiki Commons
Nestle Crunch
The year 1938 was the year of chocolate bars packed with crispy rice. Hershey released the Krackel, and Nestle came out with its iconic Crunch bar, complete with this blue wrapper with its red and white accents.
Which delicious treat is shown in this image?
Candy Aisle
Stuck in the States but feeling the need for a tropical escape? The chocolate-coated coconut bars of an Almond Joy can take you away. Topped with a pair of almonds for a satisfying crunch, this candy sports a blue and white wrapper.
Choose the correct name of the candy shown here?
The Baby Ruth, with its silver and red wrapper, has been around since the 1920s. While this happened to be the same time period that Babe Ruth was gaining fame, the bar's maker claimed that the candy wasn't named for the baseball star. Instead, they insisted it was named for Grover Cleveland's daughter Ruth - who had died more than a decade earlier.
Can you ID this candy by its wrapper?
It melts in your mouth not in your hand, thanks to that colorful candy shell. Classic M&Ms candy comes in a trademark brown bag, while the peanut version of this treat sports a bright yellow package.
Can you name this beloved candy bar?
Andy Reviews Candy
Mounds pre-dates Almond Joy by around 25 years. It came out in 1919, and a century later this coconut candy sports a red and white wrapping.
Guess the name of this candy favorite?
Peppermint Pattie
Need a rush of sweet minty goodness? Look no further than the York Peppermint Pattie. Once wrapped in silver paper, it's now encased in a shiny silver film for added freshness and tamper-resistance.
Name this candy concoction.
PayDay was created by the Hollywood Candy Company in 1932 and purchased by Hershey in 1996. This peanut, caramel and nougat treat comes in a white package with orange and blue accents.
Can you name this candy classic?
Mr. Goodbar
Peanuts and chocolate together... what's not to love? Mr. Goodbar, with its yellow wrapper and red lettering, has been around since 1925.
Which candy bar is this?
Rolo's wrapper perfectly represents the yummy treat concealed inside. The brown wrapping over shiny gold foil brings to mind the chocolate coating over chewy caramel that makes up this candy.
Think you can identify this sweet treat?
Mr Bartush
When 3 Musketeers came out in 1932, it was made up of three pieces - one each in chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. After WWII, two of the flavors were dropped in favor of yummy chocolate-covered nougat. Today, the bar is covered by a silver wrapper with red, white and blue lettering and accents, as well as yellow text proclaiming the bar's lower fat status.
Named for the famous NYC shopping street, the 5th Avenue bar came out in 1936. The chocolate covered layers of crispy peanut butter are wrapped in brown film with bright yellow lettering.
Know which candy is behind this wrapper?
Evan-Amos via Wiki Commons
Krackel
Krackel came out in 1938, the same year as the Nestle Crunch. This Hershey creation features chocolate filled with crispy rice, and sports a red and white wrapper.
Mike Mozart via Wiki Commons
Named for the famous '20s dance craze, the Charleston Chew consists of chewy nougat coated in chocolate. The traditional version is wrapped in a bright yellow covering with blue and red lettering. This brand was created in 1925 by Fox-Cross Candy, but has been owned by Nabisco since 1980.
Can you choose the correct name of the candy shown here?
Snickers Almond
The wrapper on the Whatchamacallit sports as many colors as the bar contains ingredients. Shades of tan, peach, brown, orange, red and tan conceal a Hershey concoction made of wafers, peanut butter, caramel and chocolate.
Think you can ID this sweet treat?
Tami Dunn
David Clark introduced his famous peanut, taffy and chocolate creation way back in 1917. In 2018 the rights, recipes and equipment were bought by the Boyer Candy Company. The Clark Bar sports a red wrapper with bold blue letters.
Choose the correct name for this classic candy?
Jaymie and Josh
The Sky Bar is a classic candy that came out in 1938. Consisting of four squares filled with caramel, peanut, fudge or vanilla, this bar sports a yellow wrapper with red letters.
German Food Reviews
NutRageous
When you spot that shade of orange, you know it must be a Reese's. This treat is the Reese's Nutrageous, a peanut butter, peanut, caramel and chocolate candy that came out in 1994.
The Zero bar has been around since 1920. Coated in white chocolate and filled with caramel, peanuts and nougat, this candy bar is wrapped in silver with white letters.
Know the name of this sweet treat?
The chocolate-coated toffee of the Heath bar has been around for over a century. Purchased by Hershey in 1996, this bar now sports a brown, red and tan wrapper.
Choose the correct name for this classic candy.
Zagnut
The D.L. Clark Company introduced the Zagnut way back in 1930. This unusual combination of toasted coconut, peanut butter and brittle sports a red and yellow wrapper, and has been owned by Hershey since 1996.
earbuds ASMR
Goo Goo Cluster
When the Goo Goo Cluster came out in 1912, it was sold unwrapped to eager candy-loving customers. The company started wrapping this marshmallow and peanut treat in the 1920s, and today it sports a white wrapper with accents in red and blue.
Miss Pickle Potts
The Chunky bar came out in the '30s, and today is owned by Nestle. Consisting of chunks of peanut and raisin-filled chocolate, it's wrapped in a shiny silver film.
Dove started as a candy brand in the '30s, then branched into ice cream in the '50s. The creamy milk and dark chocolate was made into a candy bar by the 21st century, and is wrapped in blue and tan with a red or blue stripe.
Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme Bar
The Hershey bar came out in 1900, and 94 years later, the company brought out its Cookies 'n' Creme version. Made of blocks of white chocolate with cookie pieces mixed in, it's covered with a cream colored wrapper.
The Skor bar, which gets its name from the Swedish word for "Brickle," came out in the '80s to compete with the Heath bar. It sports a brown wrapper with orange-red lettering.
Food Review UK
Reese's Fast Break
The Fast Break sports the traditional Reese's orange, with yellow and brown accents to boot. This peanut butter bar is complemented by a layer of nougat and a sweet chocolate coating.
Hazel Nicholson via Wiki Commons
The Dairy Milk Caramello features runny caramel surrounded by thick, creamy chocolate. The American version is made by Hershey and comes in a maroon, orange and red wrapper. Throughout the rest of the world, this bar sports the traditional Cadbury purple and yellow color scheme.
Try to guess the name of this candy favorite?
Snickers Peanut Butter
Mars brought out the Snickers Peanut Butter bar in 2010. Consisting of two squares filled with peanut butter and nougat, this bar is wrapped in bright yellow with a red, white and blue logo.
Can you name this candy concoction?
Introduced by Nestle in 1966, the 100 Grand bar features a bar of chocolate-coated caramel and crispy rice segments. It sports a red wrapper with white and yellow lettering. It was originally spoken as the "hundred thousand dollar bar."
Supersaiyan79
Milky Way Simply Caramel
If you think the caramel is the best part of a Milky Way, Mars has you covered. The company released the Milky Way Simply Caramel in 2010. This all caramel bar is wrapped in a tan-gold film with traditional green Milk Way lettering.
Name this candy classic?
The Snickers Almond is similar to what the rest of the world knows as the Mars bar. A cream and brown wrapper encloses a chocolate, almond, nougat and caramel treat.
Are you able to name this beloved candy bar?
The Take 5 bar, with its pretzel, caramel, peanut butter and chocolate flavors, came out in 2004. Initially, it was enclosed in a red wrapper, but later the packaging was switched to black with green and white lettering.
CandyAisle
Once known as the Milky Way Dark, the Milky Way Midnight came out in 1989. This dark-chocolate bar has marshmallow nougat and caramel enclosed in a black wrapper with white and yellow accents.
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‘My Inner Eye Opened and I Learned to Look Within’: In Conversation With Renowned Artist Monica Talukdar
October 14, 2017 | By Lopa Banerjee
An in-depth interview with acclaimed painter and visionary artist hailing from Uttarakhand, Monica Talukdar, who has recently exhibited her stunning paintings in Hewitt Public Library, Waco and also Plano, Texas, USA.
Monica Talukdar
Monica Talukdar is an eminent artist who lives and paints in the picturesque Doon valley in India. She has been acclaimed as the doyenne among Uttarkhand artists. She has given a new dimension to landscape paintings and is credited with starting a ‘Doon’ school of thought.
She first copied a portrait of Radha and Krishna at age five and became known as the ‘little artist’. Thereafter, art became an inseparable part of her life as she forged her own path. Instead of being straitjacketed into an institution, Monica found teachers who set her on the journey to finding her unique voice. The first of these was Sukhvir Singhal, an artist from the Bengal School of Art who taught seven-year old Monica the now-almost lost art of wash painting. Later she trained in oil painting and sculpture at the studio of Dwijen Sen, a student of Nandalal Bose, a founding father of modern Indian Art.
In the 1970’s she worked and studied with the legendary blind artist Padma Vibushan Binode Behari Mukherji. These unorthodox experiences and training led her to experiment with combining wash painting techniques with the media of oils and acrylics. Her experience with sculpture found expression in lithographs and etchings, which she produced at the Garhi Art studios of the Lalit Kala Academy, Delhi. She has been the Head of the Art Department at Welham Boys School and taught painting at Doon School. However, her most exciting commission came when she was appointed an art consultant to the ONGC Subir Raha Museum.
Monica uses various media to depict natural beauty of the Himalayas and Indian culture in its entire splendor. Among her path breaking works is her rendition of Jai Shankar Prasad’s epic poem, ‘Kamayani’, through watercolors – a unique fusion of literature and painting, attempted for the very first time by any artist.
Kamayani (Water Colour)
Monica’s work has been exhibited all over India and the world. Her paintings have been displayed by national art institutes in India – the Lalit Kala Akademi (similar to the National Endowment for the Arts in the US), the Ministry of Commerce, Delhi, the Gubernatorial Mansion and ONGC Subir Raha Museum.
Monica has held solo exhibitions in venues like the Government Museum, Chandigarh, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, All-India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, and in museums in Washington DC, Chicago, and London.
Kumbh Mela (Oil)
Her paintings also adorn many private and public collections. In 2010, about 50 of her works of art done over a period of 60 years were on display at the exhibit called “Full Circle”, a journey into the world of art from 1950-2010.
Monica Talukdar with her painting Durga
She has been recognized by the University Women’s Association (1986) and the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (1999) for her lifetime contribution to the visual arts. Monica is also the founder-president of the Doon Art Society, which serves as a platform for nurturing young artists in the visual arts.
Living in Dehradun, and being married to a geologist, she has spent a large part of her life outdoors, near her beloved mountains. This connection to the earth and landscape has filtered into her vision, which explores the deep structures that connect humans to nature, a bond that is timeless yet fleeting. This connection with nature and with spirituality has taken Monica to her next major work – exploring the inward journey of the ‘Bindu’ (dot) as the source of light and sound.
Moonlight Sonata (Mixed Media)
Monica’s new works seek to inform, enlighten, inspire and explain the journey of this symbol of the cosmos from the manifest world to the point of ultimate bliss.
A cancer-survivor with incredible grit, this veteran Uttarakhand artist has been in Texas, USA for some months, a selection of her 25 paintings and prints, ranging from water colour wash on paper to acrylic and oil on canvas paintings have already been showcased at an art exhibition held at Hewitt Public library and Art Gallery at Waco, TX, from 15th July to September 2017.
Asatoma Satgamaya (collage)
On 1st October, amid a more homely, informal setting in Plano, TX, I got the opportunity to be up, close and personal with Mrs. Talukdar (as she is known as among the Indian circle in Texas) in a detailed interview, a part of which has been recorded as a video in YouTube, and the other part, via email correspondence. Both of us being Bengalis, I have addressed her as ‘Kakima’ in the video as she also happens to be the mother of my author friend Indrani Talukdar from Anand, India, and hence, a personal rapport has been established between us recently.
While talking to me, she has also emphasized on the fact that disease is in the mind, and that a positive attitude opens up new horizons and a renewed life for an individual, a life beyond life, a hope beyond hope. It is this inner strength that becomes boundless creative energy and love, manifested in her paintings, and in her personality.
Excerpts from an interview that reveals more about her paintings and her philosophy of life.
Lopa Banerjee: The world-renowned painter Pablo Picasso had famously said: “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily lives off our souls.” Being a veteran artist and painter, how do you perceive your art in terms of this quote? What is the objective of art to you personally and professionally?
Monica Talukdar: Art is meditation for me. I agree with Pablo Picasso, that Art washes the dust of daily lives off our souls. Our souls are pure, and we are closest to God or say, closest to ourselves, when we create. It is when we are ourselves, and not the imitation of others, when we create with all sincerity, do we realise our true soul, and we start respecting and loving ourselves, detachedly. Detachedly, means when we look at ourselves impartiality as pure souls and not just this material body, or the imitation of another person.
Rhythm (Oil)
Shiva Sankalp (Oil)
Lopa Banerjee: You have worked on various mediums including oil painting, acrylic and wash painting, among others, for many years? What would you say has been the most gratifying, the most appealing and constant among them all?
Monica Talukdar: Water colour wash painting has been most gratifying for me. It is a difficult medium, and requires a lot of practice and patience, but it trains you to handle any other medium easily. The art of wash painting is almost extinct now, as it is time consuming; but it trains you to understand colour and make friends with your brush.
Artists these days just roll colour on their canvases with their rollers or spatula, or even splash colour on their canvases, almost disrespecting the idea of form, balance or even beauty. It is the age of consumerism; therefore, art sometimes does not touch our hearts, and it is meaningless to the soul. The artist thinks in terms of marketing his paintings. Therefore, sometimes the artists name sells rather than his works.
The then President of India APJ. Abdul Kalam wrote for Mrs. Monica Talukdar saying “Beautiful minds create beautiful things ” when she received the prestigious award
Lopa Banerjee: Do let us know something about your formative years as an artist. When did you know that you would pursue the studies of art, and how has your early experiences as a student of art been like?
Monica Talukdar: In 1965 I joined Kala Kendra, Dehradun, of Dwijen Sen of Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. He trained me in all mediums of sculpture and painting. Here I switched over to oil painting, but the technique of wash painting persisted me. My oil painting of Mahishasurmardini which was done in wash technique, was sent on an All India touring exhibition by the Lalit Kala Akademy, Lucknow. Thereafter I won several laurels, and showcased my works all over the world. The journey was exciting!
Abode of Shiva (Oil on Canvas)
Lopa Banerjee: You have worked and studied with the legendary artist Padma Vibhushan Binode Behari Mukherji. What would you say about his legacy and how have you evolved as an artist under his tutelage?
Monica Talukdar: Artist, Padma Vibhushan Binode Behari Mukherji came to Dehradun in the 1970s from Santiniketan. Being blind, he asked me to help him write his book on the theory of Indian Art. In return he gave me all the knowledge he had on art. He introduced me to nature with a spiritual eye, and now landscape painting became my forte, being based in Uttarakhand or ‘Dev Bhumi’ the land of the gods. His inner eye gave new dimensions to form and perspective, to my paintings.
I started to understand that everything is right in life, provided you were sincere and truthful. This led me to do a collage ‘From fear set free’. He taught me all forms of mural paintings, and most importantly, what a good composition consists of. My inner eye was also opened, and I learnt to look within. Chinese, Japanese and South-eastern Art were grounded in me, and I was amazed at Binode da’s memory, the sight of his inner eye or intuition. His positive attitude gave me confidence as an artist.
Lopa Banerjee: You are one of the most acclaimed doyens among the local artists of the picturesque state of Uttarakhand, India. How has the Doon valley of Uttarakhand been as a muse to your art, and do you think the settings of the valley have had any influence in nurturing your art?
Monica Talukdar: The Doon valley of Uttarakhand is situated at the foothills of the Himalayas. In the 1960s when I came to Dehradun to settle down with my husband, its pristine beauty was still untouched. With a small population of intellectuals, Dehradun was called a town of green hedges and grey hair. Here I could absorb the beauty, the freshness of nature instinctively. The mountains, rivers- the Ganga, Jamuna, the tall Deodar trees, and the many streams, inspired me to paint. Here I came to know the beauty and importance of trees. I learnt how to hug a tree. To listen to their music, their rhythm of life. And my inner journey began through my paintings, which I called ‘lnscape’.
My series called the ‘Pilgrims ‘ Progress’ is the outcome of this.
Let me share another anecdote here, which will give you a glimpse of my tryst with nature. In 1990 when my husband and myself were driving upto Gangotri, up in the Himalayas, we stopped over at Harsil, situated on river Bhagirathi, which later becomes Ganga.
In the evening, with not a soul in sight, I sat on the banks of the river, feeling the cool breeze of the dark, dense forest standing majestically across the Bhagirathi.
The music of the river rushing down the mountains along with the notes of the winds, playing hide and seek in the forest, created a symphony, where time seemed eternal, and my senses created a canvas where sound, space, colour, form combined to give expression to my entire being. I absorbed nature in all its splendour. My soul was cleansed.
Dev Bhumi by which, Uttarakhand is known gave new dimensions to my personality, and I felt in harmony with nature, — in harmony with the universe.
Dev Bhumi (Oil)
Paintings by Monica Talukdar during her cancer treatment
Lopa Banerjee: Do let us know your experiences as a teacher of fine arts in some premiere schools of Uttarakhand and as the founder President of Doon Art Society. What would you say is the first and most important thing you have wanted to convey to the young learners of visual arts?
Monica Talukdar: It was wonderful teaching in Welham Boys’ School, and Doon School, Dehradun. With modern technology, –children and teachers often take short cuts by copying or tracing other works. Originality is missing. This only harms the student as well as the teacher. I started Doon Art Society, Dehradun, in 2008, and organised art exhibitions, workshops, art appreciation sessions, and camps, to give a platform to the younger artists, and to showcase their works and to interact with artists and the public regarding the visual art; to increase awareness in aesthetics, and our heritage.
Coming to USA has been a wonderful experience. Here the people are much more responsive to good art. They have an inquiring mind, and a lot of respect for the arts. The museums and art galleries are fabulous, which is really an excellent place for exposure, interaction, awareness and education. I wish my country had the same qualities. In India awareness is growing but there are no short-cuts to heaven.
Sisters (Oil)
Lopa Banerjee: You have had your art displayed in prestigious places including Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi and Lucknow, and have held solo exhibitions in venues like Government Museum Chandigarh; Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay; All India Fine Arts And Crafts Society Delhi ; Washington DC , Chicago and London. The repertoire is huge and very impressive. Have you seen any difference in the way the Indian audience and the western audience perceive the intuitive and evocative nature of art, keeping in mind how universal and also how subjective fine arts is?
Monica Talukdar: My exhibitions in USA has been a fantastic experience.
The people here are responsive, and have an inquiring mind. Here the museums and art galleries are overflowing with people, young and old. It is wonderful to see how they want to absorb the finer qualities of life. There is an excitement when they come to visit your exhibition; as though they were visiting a temple.
It is good to see that the younger generation in India are becoming much more aware.
Lopa Banerjee: Tell us something about your recent travel in the US and your recent art exhibition in Hewitt library, Waco, Texas. What were the paintings that you have showcased there and how has the reception been?
Monica Talukdar: I showcased about 25 of my paintings at the Hewitt Library and art gallery, Waco,Texas,from July to September 2017. I received wonderful response, and appreciation. Most of my paintings were acrylic on canvas. Two were wash paintings and some were prints of my original works. They were depicting mainly’ Dev Bhumi ‘ I have also showcased my works at Plano, Dallas, TX, on 1st October 2017. I loved the event as people here are very responsive and have a lot of regard for art. I have displayed 20 works, mainly landscapes.
Flight: oil painting
Lopa Banerjee: Finally, do you want to give some message for the readers of our e-zine ‘Learning & Creativity’?
Monica Talukdar: It is wonderful to have this magazine as it can interact with young and old alike. It brings about art awareness, and better appreciation of our surroundings. Most of all it is the doorway to our souls.
My best wishes to the Learning and Creativity Magazine. Thank you, and God bless!
Ganesha (Water Colour)
Do watch a brief video interview with the artist in our Youtube channel:
Featured Artist: Monica Talukdar
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Lopa Banerjee ( 49 Posts)
Lopamudra Banerjee is a writer, poet and translator, currently based in Dallas, USA. She is Deputy Editor of Learning & Creativity and the co-editor of 'Defiant Dreams: Tales of Everyday Divas', published by Readomania in collaboration with Incredible Women of India. She has been the Creative Editor of Incredible Women of India. 'Thwarted Escape: An Immigrant's Wayward Journey', her debut memoir/autobiographical novel, recently published by Authorspress, has been First Place Category Winner at the Journey Awards 2014 hosted by Chanticleer Reviews and Media LLC, USA. Her literary works have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, both in India and the US. She has been a regular contributor for Cafe Dissensus, Different Truths, Readomania.com and many other e-zines. Her fiction will also be featured in the upcoming Silhouette I & II anthology, to be published by Authorspress. She has received the Reuel International Award 2016 for her English translation of Rabindranath Tagore's novella Nastanirh (The Broken Home) instituted by The Significant League, a renowned literature group in Facebook, and the book is available in Amazon Kindle.
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Lee Moyer
Illustration & Design – Ridiculous to Sublime
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Tag Archives: Keith Baker
Doom Update
Posted on November 23, 2013 by leemoyer
I received a splendid update today from the fantastic Cryptozoic regarding The Doom That Came to Atlantic City. It even has pictures! If you would like to see the grotesque beauties in person, Cryptozoic will be demoing the game at Board Game Geek Con in Dallas, November 20-24.Please go visit (and play!) if you’re in town!
Shaping Your Doom
Dear Kickstarter Backer,
We’ve been making some great progress towards creating a beautiful game to send straight to your door. We wanted to keep you in the loop and show you some fun insider photos of what it takes to make a board game!
Miniatures from Another World
Check out these incredible resin models that the factory has created. These are based on the sculptures by Paul Komoda that we sent to them. The factory used these to create the actual molds for the plastic figures.
We have the proof copies of these figures in the office now and will be bringing them with us to Board Game Geek Con in Dallas Texas this week!
The detail on these guys is simply amazing. We wanted to retain as much of it as possible while keeping these figures tough to avoid damages in shipping. We also needed to keep the costs within the realm of sanity. After some discussion with the factory, we were able to narrow it down to the correct weight and blend that we feel will provide the durability and cost effective solution we required. We can’t wait to show you the final product!
It really helps to work with great factories that have a ton of experience so they can offer helpful advice. The factory we’re using for Doom has created several other great games with miniatures and was recommended to us by some industry friends. We know they’re going to make these figures as scary as possible!
We’re getting some more bits and pieces back from the factory soon and will be able to send lots of pictures with our next update. Once all the parts have been approved, we’ll also have a pretty good idea of when the release date will be for the game. We know you’re very excited to find out more so we’ll keep you up to date as much as possible.
Thanks again for funding this game and we look forward to offering you more updates in the near future!
-Adam Sblendorio
Board Game Brand Manager
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cryptozoic, Keith Baker, Paul Komoda, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City | Leave a reply
Really Big Doings
Posted on October 13, 2013 by leemoyer
Friends, Romans, Countrymen – Lend me your electrons!
Life is full of goodness and I have a lot of news to share:
• THE NEW WEB SITE!
It is remarkable how much work has snowballed during these last 35 years. Curating this curious compendium of work for a cohesive web site presented constant surprises and challenges, but was really great fun. I hope you’ll enjoy perusing them, and that you’ll let me know which pieces you like most, what is missing (and if you have pieces from the distant past that I lack a proper scan of):
www.leemoyer.com
For those who have kindly been following me on WordPress, please know I will gradually be switching my writings over to my new journal on the Zenfolio site: http://www.leemoyer.com/blog
I will keep cross-posting for a while longer and will let you know when I post my last entry here!
• 2014 LITERARY PIN-UP CALENDAR FOR CLARION WRITER’S WORKSHOP
2013’s calendar featured collaborations with modern masters Ray Bradbury, Charlaine Harris, George RR Martin, Jim Butcher, Peter Beagle, and Sir Terry Pratchett, and benefitted author Patrick Rothfuss’ charity Worldbuilders. This next year’s features the Calendar Project’s first authorial return engagement as Neil Gaiman once again graces its pages. Hooray!
I thrilled to be working with Clarion and the award-winning authors they invited to be in this coming year’s calendar.
Their IndieGoGo campaign should be lighting up the internets this very week. We’ll be sending the details to everyone on our mailing list of course, but more important than anything I can do is you spreading the good word.
• 120 SMALL GODS! SO FAR!
I have been drawing Small Gods for one third of a year so far. The story of the project’s origins is here:
https://leemoyer.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/1035/
It has been wonderful to have people approach me in person, on Facebook, or on Twitter with stories and ideas for Small Gods.
I look forward to the next hundred, and hope you’ll join me here:
www.leemoyer.com/smallgods
Also, people can now purchase prints of Small Gods directly from the website. Progress!
• STARSTRUCK
Earlier this year Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund Harry Palmer: Starstruck.
I am pleased to announce that in addition to the cover (below), I will again be painting the entirety of this astonishing work.
Even as I write, new pages are being created and Harry’s story promises to be even more beautiful than the previous.
• ARISIA 2015 HONORS
I was even more pleased to accept the Artist Guest of Honor invitation from Boston’s Arisia when I learned that the Author Guest of Honor is none other than the dynamic and delightful Nora Jemisin. It was an honor to draw a pin-up of one of her fascinating characters for my 2013 Literary Pin-up Calendar. I only hope the piece is as elegant and challenging as its source material.
• ICELAND & UK
In a weeks time I will be heading out for the UK via Iceland for the World Fantasy Convention. I am very much looking forward to the new friends and old I will see, including authors Kim Newman (whose Diogenes Club books I have been lucky enough to illustrate) and Andri Snær Magnason whose remarkable book LoveStar was runner-up for the Philip K. Dick Award last year. We are especially excited to meet up with The Indelicates, one of our favorite bands – as delightfully subversive and compelling as one could wish!
• 13th AGE
My game with Rob Heinsoo, Jonathan Tweet and Aaron McConnell 13th Age is out (to rave reviews) and available from Pelgrane Press.
I am working on the artwork for its follow-on book 13 True Ways (the wilier among you might notice a couple sneak previews of that art in the vasty Games section my new website):
www.leemoyer.com/13thAge
• DOOM in REVIEW
The rescue of my game ‘The Doom That Came to Atlantic City’ by Cryptozoic was a wonderful thing to be able to announce last month.
I just found this charming review of it from GenCon (where rules designer Keith Baker was present for play tests):
Edit: Upon posting this entry I was informed I have reached my 50th post on my journal! A milestone I didn’t even realize I was making.
Posted in Adventures, Art and Illustration, Small Gods, Starstruck | Tagged 13 True Ways, 13th Age, 2014 Literary Pin-up Calendar, Aaron McConell, Andri Snaer Magnason, Arisia 2015, Brighton, Clarion, Clarion Writer's Workshop, Cryptozoic, Elaine Lee, Harry Palmer, Jonathan Tweet, Keith Baker, Kim Newman, Lovestar, Michael Kaluta, Nora Jemisin, Pelgrane Press, Rob Heinsoo, Small Gods, Starstruck, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, The Indelicates, World Fantasy Convention 2013, Zenfolio | Leave a reply
Posted on July 31, 2013 by leemoyer
Good morning lovely people,
Today, after more than a year, Keith Baker and I have some good news for you.
• Please check this page out:
http://www.cryptozoic.com/games/doom-came-atlantic-city
• Please check this board out:
• Please check this press release out:
CRYPTOZOIC ENTERTAINMENT PARTNERS WITH CREATORS LEE MOYER
AND KEITH BAKER TO SAVE THE DOOM THAT CAME TO ATLANTIC CITY
Cryptozoic & Creators Pledge that Kickstarter Backers will not be Abandoned!
Irvine, CA (July 31, 2013)—Cryptozoic Entertainment™, a premier developer of original and licensed games, announced today that it will be publishing the board game The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, created by Lee Moyer and Keith Baker.This news comes just a week after the previous publisher announced that the Kickstarter project had been cancelled.
“For Lee and I, the worst part of this is that people who put their faith in our game have been hurt by it,” said Baker. “After the Kickstarter was cancelled, many people came forward with ideas to keep the game alive. But we didn’t want to pursue an option that would save Doom unless it would also get the game into the hands of the people who first supported it.”
Moyer and Baker have fought to bring this whimsical game of cosmic horror to life for over a decade. In 2010, sculptor Paul Komoda joined the team with his unique vision of the terrifying Old Ones. In 2013 it seemed that the stars were finally aligned… until the surprising announcement that the project was abandoned.
“We were really shocked to hear the news about this last week” said Scott Gaeta Cryptozoic’s chief operating officer. “The game looked fantastic and I thought that we might be able to help, so I contacted Keith right away. Keith and Lee told me that taking care of the Kickstarter backers was the most important thing to them and I couldn’t agree more. That’s why we are going to be fulfilling all of the Kickstarter game orders ourselves.”
“Our first priority is getting the game produced and in the hands of the Kickstarter backers,” said Gaeta. “We are already working with the factory and should have a date we can share in a few weeks. We are also going to be demoing the game at Gen Con and the upcoming Alliance Open House. This game is just too much fun not to make it available to gamers everywhere.”
Soon to be available in hobby stores world wide, The Doom that Came to Atlantic City board game invites players to assume the role of one of the Great Old Ones – beings of ancient eldritch power. Cosmic forces have held you at bay for untold eons, but at last the stars are right and your maniacal cult has called you forth. Once you regain your full powers, you will unleash your doom upon the world! There’s only one problem: you’re not alone. The other Great Old Ones are here as well, and your rivals are determined to steal your cultists and snatch victory from your flabby claws! It’s a race to the ultimate
finish as you crush houses, smash holes in reality, and fight to call down The Doom That Came To Atlantic City!
For more information about The Doom that Came to Atlantic City Board Game, please visit
http://www.cryptozoic.com, Keith Baker’s blog at http://www.keith-baker.com and Lee Moyer’s blog at
http://www.leemoyer.com/
Keep up to date with exclusive contests, promotions and game information on Cryptozoic
Entertainment’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
About Cryptozoic Entertainment
Founded in 2010, Cryptozoic Entertainment, Inc. is a premier developer and publisher of original and licensed board games, card games, comics and trading cards, including the World of Warcraft® Trading Card Game, The Hobbit board and deck building games, The Big Bang Theory: The Party Game and The Walking Dead™ Board Game. Following a philosophy and core principle of “Fans First,” the dedicated gamers and fans of the Cryptozoic Entertainment team are focused on producing fun and amazing products along with epic events that bring all gaming fans together as part of the Cryptozoic community. Visit http://www.cryptozoic.com for additional product and event information.
• Everyone who supported this Kickstarter deserves the game, my sincere thanks, and their money back from the Forking Path.
• Many thanks to those of you who have supported this project. My thanks to you for your patience and support – and to Keith, Paul Komoda and Cryptozoic for their brilliance! Thank you all!
Addendum. In regards to various notes I have received on the subject I would like to clarify one very important thing and I will use Keith Baker’s excellent words to do so:
“To be absolutely clear: This has nothing to do with The Forking Path or Kickstarter. The project was cancelled, and this is not a reward or refund from the Forking Path. Cryptozoic isn’t assuming responsibility for the Kickstarter project or the actions of The Forking Path: They are simply doing what they can to make things right for the gamers who have suffered because of it. As I said, they can’t cover all rewards The Forking Path promised, because they are doing this entirely at their own expense to lend a hand. But Cryptozoic will see to it that the backers get the game they thought they were backing, and that is a tremendous relief to me.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cryptozoic, Keith Baker, Kickstarter, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City | 8 Replies
Starstruck and Its Role in My Salvation
Posted on April 8, 2013 by leemoyer
I just finished reading Michael Kaluta’s wonderful introduction to The Lost Art of Heinrich Kley. It’s called “Heinrich Kley and His Role in My Salvation”.
This piece is, at the risk of plagiarism (please to call it “homage”) is: “Starstruck and Its Role in My Salvation“.
I was lucky to meet Michael Kaluta before I was introduced to Starstruck. Twice in fact.
The first time was at the apartment of artist David Mattingly in the long shadows of the World Trade Center. I had been working for a painter in New Jersey, and the occasion was one of the City’s monthly gatherings of those artists of the fantastic. I’d never been to the City before, much less to a party of real artists! I liked Michael and Charles Vess (his then-apartment-mate) on sight, but I would not get to know them for a couple years.
The second meeting was much more surprising as it was nowhere near New York – it was in a run-down building in a slightly seedy neighborhood north of the FBI building in downtown DC. Broadcast Arts was the name of the company, and it had been making quiet inroads into pop culture and media for some years (it would shortly thereafter move to New York later to become famous for its brilliant work on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse). It was close to my own modest digs in Arlington and, as I would shortly learn, a simple subway ride from Kaluta’s homestead in that same suburb. He had come to town to be the lead artist on DJ Webster’s video for the Alan Parsons Project’s million-selling smash hit “Don’t Answer Me“.
Here’s one of our first collaborations – Michael’s pencils and my inks for the heavy’s car in the video:
And here’s our hero and heroine – Nick and Sugar:
I was out of my depth, but that didn’t seem to bother Michael. He was filled with colorful tales, mad talent, and issues of The Shadow #1 he’d drawn (I have mine near to hand even now). Our small but daring cohort finished the video in a couple weeks, and I didn’t see Michael again until I next visited the City.
By that time I had seen Starstruck. Specifically, Marvel Graphic Novel #13. I mention this to suggest the naivete of numbering Graphic Novels, and because Starstruck has assumed more forms than most shapeshifters in comic history – from play, to flashback mini-comics, to radio play, to…. Well, it’s complicated. (For more details, I recommend this Chronology.)
Starstruck was like nothing I’d seen (and I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…).
Weirdly, it may still be ahead of its time.
A month later, the generous Jim Edwards-Hewitt, gifted me with the first issue of the Epic miniseries that followed the events of the Graphic Novel. Upon reading it, I sent Michael a note offering my assistance should it be desired. Happily for me, that note (and its poorly drawn portrait of Brucilla “the Muscle”) is lost to history. Sadly, Starstruck lasted a mere 6 issues at Epic, and by the time my note reached him, Michael and Elaine were bidding it a sad farewell. But not before they’d given Harry Palmer his own major storyline – with pieces that presaged some of the reality we now live in (Google goggles anyone?):
I met writer Elaine Lee about that time. She’d been a successful actress and off-Broadway playwright. Smart, pretty, and still possessed of a Southern accent that in no way diminished her obvious braininess.
She was also pregnant – VERY pregnant. She was a wee slip of a thing, and her unborn child? A behemoth waiting to be born. Suffice it to say, she made an impression. I, in my turn, also made an impression. Because even 4 years into my professional “career”, I looked all of 14 years old. No, really.
Here’s the tape case I made for the audio recording of her play The Contamination of the Kokomo Lounge:
And here’s the card I made for Elaine shortly thereafter. It’s as filled with joyous Starstruckery as I could manage:
Her son Brennan is now an adult with mad skills and a resume to match. Like his mother, he is an actor and a writer. His web comic is Strong Female Protagonist and he is a member of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade. And I, in the meantime, have managed to add the appearance (if not the maturity) of at least a couple decades.
It was my honor to work with Michael on assorted gigs through the 80s and 90s (The Abyss adaptation for Dark Horse, a couple SF covers for Byron Priess, et al.) even as I was visiting the City to engage in my long-running habit of dating NYU girls. (I sometimes suspect that Michael put up with my boisterous self because my coterie improved the scenery.) Happily, I got to spend time with Charlie, Elaine, Augusta and others during these pleasurable jaunts. Such a blessing for a young and untrained artist!
By the time Elaine and Michael were given a chance to revisit Starstruck in 1990, they had sufficient faith in my knowledge and passion for their project to entrust the “About Last Issue” blurbs to me. But rather than continuing the tale forward in time and space, they did something far more interesting: they expanded the story – literally adding frames, words and sometimes whole sequences, between the originals. This was reading between the lines in a very real sense! And I relished the opportunity to see the story unfold, to try and ferret out the details and relationships that each unreliable narrator were showing, telling, hiding or lying about. It was a joy! But short lived.
This time it was Michael’s workload that shut things down, not publisher Dark Horse. And so, many pages of Elaine’s expanded and continued story went unread. Oh sure, I had some of Michael’s xeroxed pencils from the unpublished Issue 5, but that was hardly sufficient….
Little did I suspect that Starstruck would be my entree to anything so strange as a career in games…. but by 1990 my interest in roleplaying games had come a long way. What had started with D&D and Boot Hill, had grown through Call of Cthulhu and culminated in a decade of running Lawyers, Guns and Money. And table-top divertissement (no matter how involving or therapeutic) didn’t tell the whole story – I had stumbled into the early live role-playing games that have come to be called LARPs.
I ran (and helped run) a few of these myself. One of these was notable because it involved Starstruck characters, and was staged down the block from Michael’s boyhood home. Elaine was invited to reprise her stage role of Galatia 9, but sadly money did not allow. The players were remarkable, and many things that could never occur in the real series happened with aplomb – The Bajar Shilling was revalued when Ronnie Lee Ellis married Dwannyun (or was it “Dumb-Onion”?) Grivaar, and the Girl Guides made out like… well, Girl Guides. Norris Rex created a new art form of “running real fast”, and Krystals were used to render the veil of the time/space continuum by none other than the displaced Hong Kong Cavaliers.
Here’s the cover I made for the game book – using what was (in 1986) the very latest in computer graphics: MacPaint. “If only computers would advance to a point where they were more useful than an Etch-a-Sketch! Oh, what I would do then!”
Here’s one of the labels I made for the hooch on the Vale of Tiers:
Then, early one morning, I got a call from Lawrence Schick (a dab hand in gaming and someone I knew from LARPs). It was 9 am and I had, as was my habit, hit the silk not 3 hours earlier. But he wasn’t calling to ask me about games, he was calling to ask if I was the same Lee Moyer who had been writing introductions to Starstruck. Even in my sleep deprived condition, that was a question I could answer.
I went to work on a project for Lawrence’s employers Magnet Interactive called Bluestar. And while that grotesquery was no Starstruck, I produced sufficient examples of Erotica Ann’s costume to put the kibosh on those outfits that Bluestar’s designers had in mind for the macho captain’s female underlings. Most every trace of this Gods-awful abomination has been eliminated from the internet, but for all that it was, in the words of our colleague Paul Murphy “The Worst thing EVER” it made a huge difference in my life – introducing me to people who are still friends, allowing me to work with my dear friends Keith Baker and Heather Lam.
Keith and I would work on all manner of game projects over the next decades, and I have hopes for the new year. But who can know?
When Lawrence went to AOL (It was a big deal then people. No, really), Keith, Heather and I were all involved in a Massively Multiplayer Starstruck pitch to AOL:
This proved a labor-intensive dead end, but it brought Elaine to my abode Arlington where I got to spend time with her and get to know her much better.
Many years passed and after I’d helped start a game company and been in-house as an Art Director for Electronic Arts, I found myself in Portland, Oregon.
During a particularly disagreeable freelance gig with one major corporation or another, it occurred to me that I’d really rather work with people of Integrity. So I asked Michael to send me out some of the black and white pages he’d created for the Dark Horse run and that had never been painted. His choices were… ambitious. This page’s Beastie WPA mural being only one example. Later, of course, we’d add a panel and dialog, but one piece at a time…:
The results were strong enough that Michael sent them out to his nearest and dearest. And that’s how I got the nod from Dave Stevens to paint his drawing of Spiderman (I had no idea that Dave was dying at the time, but it was an honor to work with him). One thing leads to another, but what that other will be is seldom obvious:
Several years on, I got THE CALL.
Starstruck was on – this time, from IDW. Michael would be making the pages 17% taller (sometimes by adding new panels, sometimes by adding extra height to existing panels) and I would be painting the lot.
Here is the cover for Issue 1 as it developed:
Having tried to buy Starstruck art from him for years, you could have knocked me over with a feather when Michael gave me the ink piece you see top center!
Here’s the cover to Issue 8. Michael’s grasp of war machinery, detail, and spacial relations is non-pariel (and somewhat tricky to paint!):
Here are a few panels from among the thousand or so Befores and Afters:
One of the unexpected aspects of this remastered expansion of the expanded tale was the need to relocate word balloons and caption boxes (like those in the Baron’s “throne” room above), as well as create new word balloons and sound effects. There was no budget for Todd Klein or John Workman to reprise their work, so it was my bailiwick (see: out of my depth, above). If there is any better lesson in type placement and flow, in TYPE generally, I’ve certainly never encountered it. In a few cases (like the one below) I had to turn to local expert (and legendary X-Men letterer) Tom Orzechowski for the most elegant and subtle solution:
But other times, the answers spoke for themselves (much like the garrulous Brucilla) and the resultant cascade of verbiage flowed between panels. Hey kids! See how many changes you can spot – even after Michael made the panel taller!
Sometimes I spent days working on important, if intentionally incomplete, UI. (See: Mary Medea and Ambrosia Vitrona Khrome, below):
And when that first HUGE 1/3 of the total Starstruck experience was collected by IDW, there were… gaps. {Gasp!}
Places where the story’s double-page art spreads needed to be properly set up and where the narrative (never seen in a single volume before) wanted reminders and costume changes.
In one case, it was all about conversing with Elaine and stealing from Michael (left), and in another, I had the honor of painting and lettering an all-new spread from Michael with all-new words from Elaine (right):
It took a very long day to paint this next page, and half that time was in making the background and the type work. By making the adjustments I did, it became possible to open up the Shakespeare quote (upper right), and more importantly, to include the object of greatest interest to the scheming parties involved: that anomaly of the Neutral Zone, the Mirror (in the lower right of the background panel). The change to Ronnie Lee’s monitor (upper left) is based on a set that Michael used later. Broadening her shoulder also seemed a good idea:
All of which brings me to Starstruck Today.
Because there is a Starstruck today!
Thanks to the miracle of Kickstarter, Starstruck is coming back.
And while I made the hard decision to leave the painting of my favorite story (to date) in the hands of some other lucky painter, I am lending my experience with Kickstarter and doing what any fan of the series will be doing: backing it. And in my case, backing it at a high level – there’s simply no way I’ll be missing the chance to get Michael to draw me a Starstruck scene he’s never (to my knowledge anyway) even attempted. Who knows what it will look like in the end? Is it wrong for me to hope for another WPA Mural? Turnabout is fair play after all. ;)
One of my prized possessions for the past 2 decades has been the poster for the original run of the play. It’s hung on the walls of many different homes, and now graces my den. But cooler still is the gun that Michael, Charlie, and company made for Kalif Bajar in the original stage play. It lives in my wunderkabinett – with the aluminum Cootie, Danger Mouse, Tsunami Bear, the Maltese Falcon, Felix the Cat and other dear friends.
How excited am I for this Kickstarter? Excited enough that I have donated Kalif’s pistol as a backer reward!:
It is more important to me to have Harry Palmer’s story, with all it’s grit, hilarity, and heartbreak finally told properly. I painted the cover of the book (below), some pieces for the Kickstarter, as well as some Kickstarter exclusives (go check them out here!).
Harry’s story is my favorite. And I hope it will be yours as well!
And it’s not just me that’s hoping for the best. Check out the words of Geof Darrow and Rick Berry in the Kickstarter film. Or check out the first big IDW compendium and read Mike Carey‘s thoughts therein.
Posted in Art and Illustration, Starstruck | Tagged Alan Parsons Project, Charles Vess, Dave Stevens, David Mattingly, Don't Answer Me, Elaine Lee, Geof Darrow, Heather Lam, Jim Edwards-Hewitt, John Workman, Keith Baker, Magnet Interactive, Michael Kaluta, Mike Carey, Paul Murphy, Rick Berry, Starstruck, The Shadow, Tom Klein, Tom Orzechowski | 5 Replies
Kickstarter – What does it all mean?
Posted on June 20, 2012 by leemoyer
Ever since the conclusion (actually long before the conclusion), of our recent Kickstarter campaign for The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, I’ve been receiving congratulations of one type and another. When I seemed momentarily startled by their kindness, people asked me why. And when I came out of my fugue state, I told them the simple truth: “Mistakes were made”.
With a little prompting, I went on to explain some of these mistakes. And I told all my friends to please let me know before they began their own Kickstarter campaigns, to help them better prevent the mistakes we made. But I soon realized that rather than repeat myself over and over, I should simply write a white paper on the subject, so that I could more easily disseminate the facts without forgetting crucial information with each repetition.
Before I get to practical matters however, there is no shortage of more diffuse and impractical thoughts to get out of the way from my month-long addiction to Kickstarter.
1. Kickstarter is the best thing ever.
2. It’s Kickstarter’s world. We just live in it.
Kickstarter is an amazing font of crowd-sourced capital, yes. But where does that crowd come from? Our first supporters had already supported between 2 and 178 other Kickstarter projects. In short, they were already “of the body”. They knew and loved Kickstarter for allowing them to help create products they wanted, for helping to change the playing field, for telling them about projects they would never otherwise have even heard of, and perhaps most important of all, for changing, deepening, and strengthening the relationship between Creator and consumer. They understood the paradigm and paid attention to the site’s many categories and recommendations.
As our month went on and we got stellar press, Kickstarter habitués gave way to people who’d never used, or in some cases even heard of, Kickstarter. I don’t know what the workers at Kickstarter Central call these wonderful people – Newcomers? Virgins? Noobs? Lambs to the slaughter? But this was the most surprising point to me. Not only were we using Kickstarter to fund this game project that no game publisher would touch, Kickstarter was using us to bring them more users. And the larger the user base grows, the better for everyone involved. Especially, Kickstarter shareholders.
Because Kickstarter makes its money on the success of projects, it is deeply incentivized to assist clever campaigns. As a result, we were featured on Kickstarter in a couple places: as Portland, Oregon’s top campaign for most of the month, and as a top pick in the Games category. In fact, during our tenure in Kickstarter’s Staff Picks, they restructured the “Games” category to include both “Board & Card Games” and “Video Games”, ensuring Doom’s status as a top pick for an even longer period of time.
I had initially guessed that our project was getting love from Kickstarter because it was graphic, we presented it well enough, and that the resumes of the 3 creators were pretty impressive. That may be true. But were we also a likelier candidate for success by virtue of the creators’ pre-existing social networks? Was our old-school board game meets HP Lovecraft vibe more likely to ensnare Kickstarter Virgins? I don’t know, but what I do know is by the end, few if any of our new backers had supported even 1 other Kickstarter project, and that may have been the really important part for Kickstarter.
3. Kickstarter is the best PR other people’s money can buy.
I had never heard of the Pebble watch until masses of our backers proved to be supporting their Kickstarter. The word of mouth and feeling of involvement a strong Kickstarter campaign can generate is phenomenal, and all without traditional Venture Capital or Angel Investors to pay off! It’s a funding platform that sells you rather than one that buys you. Sure, you’re giving them some of your supporters in perpetuity, but isn’t that transaction more agreeable than selling them a whopping percent of your company? And besides, each backer can use the wonders of the Internet to get you more backers! To get Kickstarter more! To get your next project more! To… well, looking forward, things get mighty interesting.
Does the current boom go bust as all the cool kids exceed their Kickstarter budgets and the whole thing shuts down? Or do projects get better and better the way evolution should work? This is an interesting point to me as I’ve watched actual capitalism wither and die in some parts of the economy. Yes, there’s been no shortage of shoddy product on Kickstarter – projects born of pity or in reaction to the dominant paradigms, et al. – but will such campaigns continue?
Will they be allowed to?
Will the marketplace of ideas become more discerning, and the bar for projects that Kickstarter will even approve be set much much higher?
Will Kickstarter self-censor strongly and effectively?
What will make them leverage their power more specifically, and control access more tightly?
Will some projects be so successful that Kickstarter finds itself paying for their virgins?
We can’t know at this juncture, but it’ll be fascinating to find out.
4. All the cool kids are doing it.
As 2012 dawned, I had never done a Kickstarter project. By the end of the year, I’ll have done half a dozen. A few with young, largely untested talent, but the vast majority with award-winning authors like M. K. Hobson, sculptors like Paul Komoda, and top-tier game designers like Keith Baker, Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet. And that’s just a hint of what I’m doing. Most of the Creators I know are currently working on some level of campaign (thus the white paper to follow)!
5. Creatives and Corporations – why can’t they all just get along?
I worried a little before Doom that ours would be the project with which Kickstarter would officially jump the shark. But that was apparently just nerves. It had, however, happened once before. The wonderful Z-Man Games (publishers of Pandemic, see above) purchased Doom, but then Z-Man was sold to a European game company right before our publication date, and the new owners didn’t want our game. And neither did anyone else. How is that working out for those publishers now I wonder?
When we took in 122k in a month, an old colleague suggested that, “The market was clearly ready for your game.” Maybe so, but the game companies were not. At all. The Creators’ willingness to market their game, the public’s desire to see Lovecraftian Gods trash Atlantic City, the pedigree of the creative team (games, novels, films, posters): none of that mattered one whit. They didn’t see a return that showed any kind of clear profit for them, and they passed.
In the decline of the working and creative class that we’ve all weathered these last 30 years, major monopolist corporations have intentionally made Creators the lowest people on their totem poles.
The odious work-for-hire contracts, the hierarchical apple-polishing, the constant cancellations of green-lit projects to protect their jobs at the expense of others and to “bolster” their bottom line: it’s all been designed to maximize their profits and strip Creators of their chance for licensure, and the passive streams of income Creators might otherwise have enjoyed. There are still plenty of artists who need corporate paychecks, but many artists are viewing this as a long-overdue sea change. In Portland, many people suggest that the only way to move up the ranks at Nike is to go to Adidas. And vice versa. In New York, people leave DC for Marvel. And vice versa. Does Kickstarter mean that Creatives will be getting more respect from the big players now that they can set their own terms elsewhere? Or will the big companies simply ignore them when they ask for more respect? As exciting as Kickstarter is now, what will it be in the future? Will it morph over time like the massive powerhouse whose informal corporate motto was “Don’t be evil”? We shall see.
6. Make no mistake. This is an addiction.
The shots of dopamine that accompany every new dollar the Refresh button reveals are the most obvious example. But the fact is, we Creators are on the line here. Every mistake or miscue is now on us. And that’s not the sort of responsibility that leads one to sleep like a baby. Kickstarter is not for the faint of heart. Can you imagine working a month or more (more really, even for a “30 day” campaign) only to have that campaign stall and fail? Many of the best and brightest Creators have already experienced that very thing. Sobering. Kickstarter will take every ounce of energy you can give it and want more. Believe it.
Every mistake we made weighs on me, and I suspect it’s the same for many others. So, with this prologue, I hope you’ll enjoy (and be informed by) the paper to come.
Part 1 of Kickstarter White Paper
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 13th Age, Jonathan Tweet, Keith Baker, Kickstarter, M. K. Hobson, Pandemic, Paul Komoda, Pebble watch, Rob Heinsoo, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, Z-Man Games | 8 Replies
I haven’t written a word here since the Kickstarter campaign for The Doom That Came to Atlantic City went live. There are plenty of reasons for that, and I strongly advise anyone I know who is planning a Kickstarter of their own to contact me before they set out on beautiful but mysterious the waters of crowdsourcing! It’s obviously an amazing venue that can yield spectacular results, but it might just eat your life in the process.
We were successful, and I want to thank everyone who helped spread the word! It was always a delight to see the names of my friends and colleagues join the list of backers. And watching that list grow was like watching the beans your Mom said were worthless (Don’t have a cow, Mom!) sprout and grow and reach their green tendrils up to the heavens.
The wonderful Nadya at Coilhouse led the way, and io9, Wired’s GeekDad, Quarter to Three, The Gaming Gang, Geek.com and Nerd Approved followed thereafter. BoardGameGeek.com was also helpful, even when their members couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that we’d come not to praise Monopoly, but to bury it.
With their help, we not only have the bare-bones game, we got to add several features we never thought we could afford (Tomes, Hotels, Gate markers, custom dice, et al.) that the wild success of the Kickstarter campaign made possible. There’s a lot more work for me to do, but it’s going to be amazing!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arkham Horror, Game, HP Lovecraft, Keith Baker, Paul Komoda, Success, Thank You, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City | Leave a reply
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Apple to Mountain Lion users: “Tell us who your friends are if you want to talk to us.”
30 Jul 2012 47 Apple, OS X, Privacy
Previous: Why you shouldn’t forward the “Invitation FACEBOOK – Olympic Torch” chain letter
Next: Where are the Safari security updates for Windows and Snow Leopard? Users left exposed
“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
You haven’t uploaded your contact list yet.”
An alert Naked Security reader and Mountain Lion early adopter has pointed us at a quirky new twist in the licensing conditions in Apple’s latest OS update.
Roger (not his real name) from South Australia (not his real location) grew up with IT at around the same time I did.
In those days, PCs were called microcomputers and Apples were still named after the company, not a raincoat. Computers you could talk to were just round the corner, along with your personal jetpack.
Fast forward 30 years, and Roger just dropped a biggish wedge of cash on a brand-new Macbook Pro, then maxed out the RAM and pimped up the storage with SSD.
With a computer of some vigour, Roger found himself drawn to the new dictation software in his Mountain Lion upgrade. Perhaps his new Mac would at last be powerful enough to make sense of his voice in real time, wither rout tamale king a complete docker’s diner offer hole fink?
Frayed knot:
When you use the keyboard dictation feature on your computer, the things you dictate will be recorded and sent to Apple to convert what you say into text.
Seems as though HAL 9000, the giant, sentient, centralised computer in the spaceship Discovery One in the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey (you can see where this is going, can’t you?), was actually a pretty good prediction of how computer speech recognition technology would pan out.
Your powerful, portable computer doesn’t do the work. That’s done in Apple’s giant server farms out in cloud-land.
Back to 2012, and what made Roger really sit up and take notice was the additional condition that:
Your computer will also send Apple other information, such as your first name and nickname; and the names, nicknames, and relationship with you (for example, 'my dad') of your address book contacts.
According to Apple, your contact data is “used to help the dictation feature understand you better and recognise what you say.”
You can see why this might be useful: names are notoriously difficult to recognise and spell correctly, since they frequently don’t come from the same linguistic and orthographic history as the language of which they’ve become part. The Australian mainland’s highest point, Mount Kosciuszko, is a lofty example.
But useful or not, it’s hard to see why letting dictation software at your contacts is necessary.
Apple has been in trouble already in 2012 for allowing into its App Store software that hoovered up your contact details.
This time, Apple is making sure that you opt in up front, which is a good thing.
Opt in or not, however, I can’t help being disappointed – just like Roger – that there doesn’t seem to be a way to use Apple’s voice-to-text software without handing over your dictation data to the cloud, and without telling Apple who your friends are. Even if you try out the dictation feature and then turn it off later:
Apple will delete your User Data, as well as your recent voice input data. Older voice input data that has been disassociated from you may be retained for a period of time to generally improve Dictation and other Apple products and services. This voice input data may include audio files and transcripts of what you said.
I’m not entirely comforted by that. How long is “a period of time”? And, more significantly, how is a transcript of your dictation – in which you might very well mention all sorts of personal stuff, such as your own name, your employer, your mortgage lender, and much more, “disassociated from you”?
Roger still hasn’t decided whether he’s willing to accept these terms and conditions. I bet you he’s started taking his helmet to the airlock while he thinks about it, though.
47 comments on “Apple to Mountain Lion users: “Tell us who your friends are if you want to talk to us.””
DragonDictation on my iPhone wanted my contacts to upload them to cloud land too. I chose no.
Reynard says:
Will not upgrade until this "feature" is fixed. Period. Total FAIL.
Bastion says:
Reynard,
As it clearly states in the article, it is an "opt-in" feature. Don't want to share the information, that is fine, but don't expect to dictate to your computer…
However, there is no reason to "opt out" of the whole Mt. Lion upgrade because of this.
Ummm. You can upgrade to OS X 10.8 without enabling the dictation feature. It is an annoyance that to use this you need to allow access to your contacts and as the previous reply mentions it is stated in the clearly marked "About Dictation and Privacy" button.
Not so much a FAIL, @Reynard, as a choice you can make.
Given the number of folks using iCloud to store everything in the cloud, and those who plop everything onto facebook I don't think this rates. It isn't a google level data slurp, but it is an indication of how companies view user data. Why not let us use the dictation without the contact info as an option?
And what happens if your "Contacts" is also connected to a corporate directory server? Does that information end up in Apple Land?
I am in love with the new dictation feature and seriously impressed with how well it works. Admittedly, I read the warning ‘briefly’, as you do. I noted it to say it would send my dictation to Apple, but did overlook the point about my contacts.
Hmm, on one hand correlating contextual data to be more effective seems cool, but, do I want Apple to have my contact book? What else are they doing with it? Even if the answer *were* nothing, how are they protecting it? Also, why not the option to use the feature without the added ‘correlation of contextual information’?
Caveat emptor not withstanding, I really like the feature and feel unfairly forced to disclose additional information that I’m not confident really makes it all that much more effective than it would be without.
4caster says:
So why are the asterisks in "Even if the answer were nothing, how are they protecting it?"? Does some computer program think "were" is bad English?
"Were" in this context is quite correct. It is present tense subjunctive mood, as in the song "If I were a carpenter and you were a lady". It is not past tense indicative mood, as in "The answer was nothing".
Using asterisks is a common way (when HTML markup is unavailable) of denoting text you would otherwise have set in italics, or which would have been said aloud with some sort of emphasis.
But I think you know that and are just being petulant 🙂
(If I were the original poster, I'd have been more careful with my moods and made the verbs in the two halves of the sentence match, writing "if it were…how would they", or "If it is…how are they.")
Andrew Ludgate says:
So having used the new dictation feature, you find you are able to manage with the "speak it all, send it, and wait for the response" approach? Have you tried a trial of Dragon Dictate, which does it all on the computer in real-time?
For me, the address-book-sharing made me wary of trying the feature out, and then I decided not to bother at all when I heard that it wasn't doing real-time transcription (allowing you to correct and tune as you go) but instead just using Siri. Server-based transcription makes sense for a phone, but I can't see writing anything big with it.
Just wait for Apple to offer voice recognition offline like Google does with Jellybean.
But with their system Apple supports English (in U.S., UK, and Australian variants), French, German, and Japanese with more on the way.
Jellybean offline dictation only supports English (and US only from what I saw).
JohnMWhite says:
I get that Apple wants to improve the accuracy of their voice recognition, but requiring that you agree to their access to everything you dictate in order to upgrade your OS seems, frankly, sinister.
Brian D. Watters says:
So…. if a person in your "shared" contacts list IS a person of interest on some other list, do you then become part of yet another list associated to that of persons of interest?
Not long ago, I purchased a new consumer digital camera, which once connected to my computer, installed a program (directly from the camera to the computer), with all kinds of nifty and yet FREE editing and image management features.
Seems the camera, and free software, is capable of recognizing and tagging the faces of people you photograph. It even wen so far as to offer to scan the images already stored on my computer and identify the faces of people in every photo it found.
I was amazed at how accurate the facial recognition and tagging software was, even on the lowest quality of images.
It was more than a bit unnerving that the software accurately picked out and identified my face in the background of photos that I didn't actually realize I was in until later viewing images categorized under "My" name.
Is Apple, Facebook, and my new cheap Camera storing information and images that to be compiled at a later date, or in another country, (where privacy laws may not consider it a crime to compile and profile such info), to be shared with or sold to, "Who knows", and for "what purpose", now or in the future?
We identify ourselves, our locations, and habitual actions every day at bank machines, grocery stores, public libraries, airports and multiple other places where we choose to visit or do business.
Sure, this IS the paranoid talk that is so often the meat of high tech espionage movies.
But how much of our personal information is gathered without our knowledge and or permission, to be shared with marketers and retailers, or other organizations willing to buy a list containing the demographics that best suit their needs?
Sounds like Apple is giving the option to opt in or out of information that they may otherwise be able to purchase elsewhere.
BTW, Naked Security gave me the option to log in using my Facebook Profile, another list?
Then at the bottom of THIS form has a box where I can enter my: "Email (optional)", before clicking the Submit Comment button. LOL.
Auto Roger says:
Upon further thought the dictation shall remain off. This isn't worth the limited convenience when I don't know what happens to my contact data.
Maybe I'll just buy Nuance's software directly from them.
I shall keep wearing the helmet even in the airlock though.
Allan Kaplan says:
This is a pretty common feature with dictation software that I've encountered before. While I don't care for it either, and am surprised one can't opt out, I don't think you're being completely fair targeting Apple as though they're alone in this practice.
I don't think I targeted Apple "as though they're alone in this practice".
Having said that, this is the first time I've heard of an OS upgrade with new T&Cs wanting to extract your contact data in return for activating the dictation software it included in the upgrade…and on that basis, it seemed worth writing about.
@bomyne says:
Don't know about the contacts thing, but the uploading what you say makes sense. Maybe the dictation database would bloat Lion's size. Maybe that's why it's sent to the cloud and the results are sent back, similar to what happens if I do a google search.
I don't know. I don't work for Apple but that part doesn't seem so farfetched to me. Not sure what they'd use the rest of it for though.
Jem says:
You think it’s ok for and unelected private company to have total access to your private information just to have a novelty toy activated on your computer? Why is electronic mail and information not treated the same as written mail whereby, in my country, they need a search warrant to open your mail (Barring Customs & Excise Duty). The police can not even have that amount of control & you think its ok for Apple to?
[Post edited for length.]
Ralph Carr says:
I’m always very cynical about being asked to trust big corporations with all of my personal data, and even more so when they demand it in what appears to be a threatening tone. Big thumbs down for Apple.
Delta2 says:
Another lame attempt at Apple. First you scaremonger all Apple users saying Apple gets over 9000 viruses so get your "free" product installed to protect yourself. I can see a subscription service coming along as soon as you have enough free users so they can be protected "Real time" or something 😉
And why your blog gives me an option to login using my "facebook" account ? So your app can access my facebook friends, profile info, make posts and target ads ? haha
Nice try though.
Our "free" product is, in fact, free.
And it already provides real-time protection, for free.
So neither the word "free" nor the word "real-time" needs air-quotes around it…
(And whilst I don't recall us ever saying there were 9000 Mac viruses, I'm not sure what difference the number makes – if you're at risk of infection, I'd have thought one would be enough.)
Graham Cluley says:
"And why your blog gives me an option to login using my "facebook" account ?"
That's to do with leaving comments. Some users like to leave a comment using their Twitter id or their Facebook account, rather than type in their name each time they want to respond to our posts.
It's optional – you don't have to leave a comment on our site via that mechanism if you would rather not. So, err.. no. We're not accessing your Facebook friends or targeting you with adverts.
You do however (again, it's optional) have the ability to repost any comment you make up on Naked Security to your Facebook page.
Hope that helps explain things for you.
Graham I have lot of respect for you but lately your team is taking pot-shots at apple and trying to scaremonger its users. I don't know what's your hidden agenda is but Apple obviously has its issues and fair share of viruses but keep in mind most of these caused by 3rd party applications (Java etc) and users giving permission to run the malware application. Unlike in windows Macs doesn't have 0 days or drive bys. You could get infected by going to a site without doing anything or get hit by a worm by simply being online. I still feel Apple does protects me fairly well without a use of Antivirus products compared to my Windows 7. Your articles about flame and stuxnet which pwned windows to its existence with 0days and even a MIM attack against windows updates aren't very exciting as posts about Apple's security problems. I just don't like the fact your company is trying to push Anti apple propaganda.
Thanks for your reply though.
Anti-Apple propaganda? Pwned? Come on, grow up. It's a security blog, not an adolescent flamewar.
How is this Pwned ?
My point was that using terms like ‘pwned’ and throwing out random accusations of ‘anti-Apple propaganda’ makes you look like somebody playing Call of Duty or screaming on the Youtube comments section. It’s not the sort of thing I’d expect grown ups to be talking about on a security blog. You’re parading yourself around like a stereotypical, reactionary fanboy and it’s just silly. Somebody can criticise or point out a potential privacy issue in Apple software without it being some partisan swipe from the boys in the other treehouse.
Tim Gowen says:
HAL 9000 wasn't sentient. It was a complex computer system and the problems were caused by a particular type of loop which the system found itself in. If you read 2010 or see the film it explains the whole thing.
From _An Interview with Stanley Kubrick (1969)_, by Joseph Gelmis:
Kubrick: "In the specific case of HAL, he had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility. The idea of neurotic computers is not uncommon – most advanced computer theorists believe that once you have a computer which is more intelligent than man and capable of learning by experience, it's inevitable that it will develop an equivalent range of emotional reactions — fear, love, hate, envy, etc. Such a machine could eventually become as incomprehensible as a human being, and could, of course, have a nervous breakdown – as HAL did in the film."
[Source: http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html]
Sure sounds sentient to me. Any later claim to the contrary can be written off as nothing more than revisionist claptrap 🙂
Graham Gooda says:
I cannot remember the source (an age thing!), but I did read somewhere on an Apple blog that Apple were saying that the information gathered was not stored on their "normal" servers and would never be used for any purpose other than improving their voice recognition services.
Regarding Allan Kaplan's comment about targeting Apple and the reply. I suspect that I am not alone in always detecting a certain amount of "delight" from Sophos in reporting any news which could be negative towards Apple. This has been the case for years.
The Sophos "hidden agenda" – in my opinion. is to push businesses towards their Apple "EndPoint" offering which has been available (and which my Company until recently has used) for years. And yes – in my opinion Mac anti-virus is essential!
As an aside – am I alone in feeling slightly embarrassed – whether alone or in company when talking to a computer? Plus, I still find, when writing either letters or "prose" that measured thought before input, tempered by the actual act of typing the copy, results in a more accurate – and in the long run quicker final result. As I said earlier – its probably "an age thing!"
If, as you say, we have a "hidden agenda", then there's no point in me denying it, is there? Since it's hidden, and all…
I write about Apple stuff because I happen to be interested in it, as a UNIX-head, as a keen Mac user, and as a self-styled security pundit.
I admit I've written about Apple-related security stuff four times in my past 20 or so articles, but I've also also about Facebook, Microsoft, Firefox, BlackHat, the National Health Service, Alan Turing, patching and hacktivism, plus three times about cybercrime busts and three times about USB keys and security.
Is my interest in Apple security really out-of-kilter? Is the apparently-corresponding interest of our readers out-of-kilter, too?
Apple is – after all – the biggest company in the world, at least in financial terms. If Wikipedia is to be believed, Apple is 40% bigger than Exxon, which is #2, and two-and-a-quarter times the size of Microsoft, currently at #3.
Graham Taylor says:
So what is the option if I don't like the idea of Apple processing my dictation 'in the cloud' and accessing my address book? May be I need to buy Dragon Dictate for Mac software? I assume Dragon Dictate doesn't access my address book or process my dictation 'in the cloud'.
I put Bin Laden in as a contact and friend.
Kenn says:
Cuttlefish or vanilla paste?
Anonymous Coward says:
Ummmm, this is exactly how Siri works on the iPhone. We've known about Siri uploading voice commands, contacts, music, etc to Apple for some time now.
So why is this really a surprise to anybody?
I find the tone of the article to be mildly alarmist with the references to HAL which is not necessary. Report the facts, remind us that Apple started doing this with the introduction of Siri, and let people decide if they want this feature or not once they have been armed with the facts (pro and con).
humor (Brit. humour) [noun]
* the quality of being amusing or comic, esp. as expressed in literature or speech
* the ability to perceive or appreciate a joke
(Humour aside, this article isn't about Siri on an iPhone. It's about OS-bundled dictation software on a modern, fast, poweful laptop. Call me old-fashioned, but in a world of quadcore laptops with blindingly fast processing speed, I naively expected that the big, centrally-located mainframe-type approach to processing would no longer be needed – especially for what is really just part of the user interface. I simply don't get the need to "call home" not only with what I say, but also with whom I know. If the reference to HAL offended you, sobeit. It's just the drollest example i could come up with of "a computer from pre-PC science fiction which people spoke to, which collected and assimilated everything it could, and where it all ended badly due to programming limitations which would best have been avoided".)
The problem with humour is that sometimes not everybody gets it (me as a case in point in this instance). In this case I failed to perceive. 🙂
I realize the article isn't about Siri or the iPhone, but my poorly made point is why would Apple drop that technology (which it paid a lot of money for) to build a stand-alone dictation application? So they probably re-packaged something like Siri to handle dictation. If we accept that premise for a minute then there are certain aspects to Siri that would be included in the "engine" like sending the data back to the Apple cloud for processing and looking at your contact list to extrapolate names, addresses, etc. From a convergence perspective, it makes more sense for Apple to leverage technologies across both the iOS and OSX platforms than to build separate (albeit similar) applications. Therefore why should we be so surprised to see them include a dictation program that behaves much like Siri?
Apple should create a blog for apple users with the ability to post comments, ideas, suggestions, etc, etc instead of demanding to collect information from you in order to improve hardware, software and services.
They can afford to employ people to read the blog.
Having used ViaVoice, MacSpeech, and now Dragon Dictate for Mac, I find Dictate fills my needs more than adequately. I get 99% accuracy, and I get to keep my privacy to boot. There's no way I'd use Apple's offering in its current state.
@BSPLtd says:
It's just the same situation on the new iPad when you use Dictation. There is a link to 'About Dictation and Privacy'
Elle Vee says:
I am really sick of these companies invading our privacy.
Verne Arase says:
So buy Dragon Dictate and keep the processing local.
You should know that Nuance wouldn't allow Apple to install their software on every Mac, not that Apple would want to steal that much Disk space from every Mac just for dictation.
You know, they can't steal your soul if you wear a tin-foil hat …
David Pittle says:
If you are not skeptical of Apple Corp. intentions you are both naive and uninformed. Many, if not most, Apple "innovations" have been ripped off of small companies. Apple has a habit of suing small innovation companies, then when the small company simply can't match the legal resources of Apple, they are forced to capitulate and sell out to Apple at bargain prices. Their other modus is to simple steal software, claim it and then when the small innovator tries to sue, they do the same "I've got more lawyers than you" approach.
A friend of mine in the 1980s developed a hard disk interface for the Apple II. They pulled this on him. They bought him out for a few thousand dollars, rebranded the product and made a bundle.
haha all the anti-apple comments. Apple invading user privacy ?
Lets talk about Google lol..
Note the wording….”such as”…you can bet it’s more then just name…bet you email is getting sent in as well.
ms k says:
This article is great and really clear particularly as these are exactly the issues that concern me. Many people around me expressed concern when we read what Apple wants to do and where Apple is going re privacy.
It is wrong to make comparisons with other companies. An Apple consumer buys Apple and makes a contract with Apple. Therefore, the question is more about what are Apple's values for you as a consumer and do they respect consumer choice particularly privacy in my case. More importantly what they will do for people who do not want to share their data with Apple. The other big question is how much other Apple software does this kind of thing and why?
Does it possible to restrict by sending to apple server, because i am using some private data for speech to text using SFSpeech recognizer- offline is quite enough. pls suggest
There’s an option, when you use Apple’s dictation feature, to enable “Enhanced Dictation”. You need to download one or more largish database files for your chosen languages/dialects, and then the voice recognition is done on your own computer.
Apple kills the POODLE – also fixes Shellshock in case you forgot
Apple introduces “cloudless dictation”, no longer demands your contact list to understand you
Apple Mountain Lion 10.8.2 – lots of bug fixes, no known vices
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Sayesha Saigal
Other names of Sayesha Saigal: Sayyeshaa Saigal
Home Movie-Actress Hindi Hindi Movie-Actress
Birthday: 12-08-1997
Star sign: Virgo
MOVIES - 1
Akhil
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Akhil Movie Review
Sayesha Saigal is a gorgeous and beautiful girl who is the grand niece of Bollywood sensation Saira Banu and living legend Dilip Kumar. She is the daughter of Shaheen Banu and Sumeet Saigal. She was born on 12th August 1997. She is pursuing her study in the second year from Junior College in Bombay. She is single.
Sayesha has made her debut with the Telugu movie Akhil: The Power of Jua, in which she shares screen space with Akkineni Akhil, the son of Akkineni Nagarjuna. The flick was released on November 11, 2015, and had got mixed reviews. The film is directed by W Vinayak and produced by Sudhakar Reddy and Nithin. It was Shivaay (details mentioned below) which seemed to be the debut flick of Sayesha but since the shooting got delayed this gorgeous actress debuted in Akhil. Akhil primarily focuses on the things done for the lead actress. Sayesha was very much at ease speaking in Telugu for Akhil.
If sources are to be believed, Vipin Parashar is going to direct a movie with Sayesha Saigal and the winner of Bigg Boss Season 8 Gautam Gulati, under the production of R-Vision India Pvt Ltd. Ashutosh Rana and Prem Chopra are also starring in this movie. The name of the movie is titled Udanchoo.
Ajay Devgan, who is actor turned producer-director, is going to make his second directorial project, and he has chosen Sayesha as the lead actress. The title of this flick is derived from the word ' Om Namah Shivay'. It is said that this movie will be a big-ticket action flip. However, the official and final announcement of the cast is not yet announced. It is said that the shooting of the movie will complete by the Diwali of 2016. The production of the flick is slated to commence very soon), and the major portions of it will be shot in the country Bulgaria. Ajay Devgan is also producing and acting in the film. He is donning the lead role in the flick. The flaws of Lord Shiva is told in this movie. It has a contemporary touch to it. Eros International is producing this flick.
Sayesha will go with her original name Sayesha and won't keep her last name. Recently, when Dilip Kumar launched his autobiography, Sayesha came into view. Her only aim is to groom herself for her debut film. According to the reports, Tiger Shroff and Sayesha are signed in superhero flick of Balaji production. Remo D'Souza will direct this movie, and he is going to include some visual feast. Sayesha is a good singer and well trained in Kathak and Latino, and she will surely win the audience's hearts.
On her personal front, Sayesha is living with her mother. Her father had parted ways with her mother. Sayesha always had the passion for being become an actress .
Sayali Bhagat is popular Indian actress who is born in Maharashtra on 1 January 1984. She is most beautiful Indian pageant who has won the Femina Miss India World title in 2004. She belonged to the famous city Nasik and born in simple customary Marathi family. Sayali completed her education from the Fravashi Academy in Nasik and completed her graduation in Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS) from Alkesh Dinesh Mody Institute of Academy located in Mumbai University campus in Kalina, Santacruz. She has started her career in modelling and won many of the beauty contests. She started her modelling career with Swarovski gems fashion show, Dentzz and SNDT College show. Her first Bollywood debut was “The Train: Some Lines Should Never Be Crossed” with the co-stars Emraan Hashmi and a Punjabi girl Geeta Basra, released in the theatre on 8 July 2007. She was also a part of the movie named “Paying Guests” and seen in some of the music videos. She loves to listen to the song “Aish Karo” which was a famous Punjabi song by A.S Kang. Sayali Bhagat was also a part of the TV show named as MTV Bakra where she acted as a journalist from Singapore and has taken interview of the famous Indian Cricketer Rahul Dravid. She got married on 10 December 2013 with a businessman Navneet Pratap Singh, who belongs to Delhi. Sayali is very fond of children. She has always helped the poor children and always ready to help children. She has joined many of the NGO’s for the welfare of children social services.
Seema Biswas
She is very much popular by the name “Phoolan Devi”. Seema Biswas was born on 14 January 1965. She is one of the most popular theatre artists who born in Nalbari, which is in Assam. Seema Biswas completed her studies from Nalbari College in the field of Political Science. After completing her graduation in 1984 Seema, she joined Repertory Company of NSD. Afterwards, she has joined the famous National School of Drama in New Delhi. Seema Biswas is still single, as she wants to enjoy her rest of the life without getting married. She is very much attached to her parents Meera and Jagdish Biswa. She acted in many of the theatres and played several supporting and strong roles. She had also received the National Film Award for the Best Actress for the movie Bandit Queen in which she was awarded for the best role of Phoolan Devi in 1994. She has rewarded with many more awards like Sangeet Natak Academic Award in 2000 and Best Actress Genie Award in 2006 for the character of Shakuntala, which she played in the movie water in 2005. Seema Biswas career is not ended here but still going further. She has done several numbers of movies in Malayalam, Tamil and Marathi. She has received many Film Fares, National and Star Screen Awards. In 2003, she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress in the movie Bhoot.
Sayesha Is Awestruck With Pathinettam Padi Team!
Bandobast Teaser Is Out!
Kaappaan First Single Detail Is Out! Suriya Follows Vijay Style?
Sayyesha Is The Talk Of The Twitter!
Arya And Sayesshaa To Release House Owner Trailer!
Arya In A Dual Role In Magamuni?
Arya’s Teddy Launched! Shooting Started!
Sayeshaa Promotes Magamuni!
Arya Is On A Signing Spree!
Actor Arya - Sayyeshaa Reception Photos
Actor Arya And Sayesha Saigal Marriage Stills
Watchman Movie Photos
Gajinikanth Movie Press Meet Photos
Kadaikutty Singam Movie Success Meet Pics
Chinababu Movie Team At Vijayawada Kanakadurga Temple Cute Images
China Babu Movie Success Meet Photos
Chinnababu Movie Stills
Chinababu Telugu Movie Stills
Recently Debuted Bollywood Star Kids
Top 10 Hottest Bollywood Debutantes 2016
Top 10 Bollywood Movies With High Box Office Collection In 2016
Top 10 Bollywood Debutants In 2016 Who Dazzled The Silver Screen
Top 10 Actresses In Bollywood Without Makeup 2016
Top 10 Fresh Faces Of Bollywood
A Look At The Indian Movies Releasing This Diwali
Top 10 Newcomers In Bollywood
Future Stars Of Bollywood:
OTHER MOVIE ACTRESSS
Richa Mukherjee
Mohini Ghosh
Akshita
Aafreen Sidhu
Shaurya Chauhan
Kanwal Toor
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What people have said about LCS ….
ELGAR’S DREAM OF GERONTIUS, GOLDSMITHS – MARCH 2018
The choirs acquitted themselves wonderfully well. Vigour, passion, contrasts; all were here. The solemnity of the litanies, the blazing C major paean of Praise to the Holiest and – hardest of all to bring off – The Demons chorus. In a word, it “worked”.
It was obvious that choir, soloists and orchestra, all under the most able baton of Dan Ludford-Thomas, love this great work and transmitted that affection to the audience.
Martin’s full review can be found here.
Martin Passande
Sounds Imperial with Haydn and Mozart, Goldsmiths – November 2017
The day after our wonderful Haydn and Mozart concert, Debbie and I were on a train to London when a lovely young woman sitting near us spoke up:
“You were in the choir last night at Goldsmiths weren’t you?”
“Yes! Were you there?”
“Yes, thank you so much. It was absolutely wonderful. I used to go to Goldsmiths and my parents were visiting so I treated them”
“What did they think?”
“They really enjoyed it and were hugely appreciative – it was really great, thank you so much.”
“What was your favourite piece?”
“Oh the Mozart! It was just great!”
If we keep this up fellow LCS singers won’t be able to go out without being mobbed by a grateful public!
Courtesy of Annie and Debbie, LCS sopranos
Bach B Minor Mass, Royal Festival Hall – March 2017
I’ve been to Lewisham Choral Society and Hackney Singers concerts before, including at the Royal Festival Hall two years ago. While that was good, this one was stunning. I am not a musician but I know this haunting and glorious Bach Mass is extremely demanding to learn and perform.
The combined choir sounded sublime, the soloists were perfect, and the orchestra surpassed all expectation. I loved how your conductor was intent throughout and then quietly triumphant at the end. He is nothing less than a genius. I am so glad the hall was packed – your latest concert was worthy of such a venue.
Thank you to every single one of you, it was an unforgettable evening.
Lisa Rodrigues
I’ve been to a few LCS performances now and have never been disappointed; the choice of works and the calibre of the singing, by choir and soloists alike, cannot be faulted. It is a particular pleasure for me to attend with my husband; he is not by nature a lover of classical music but he thoroughly enjoys the LCS events. The Bach was no exception; we both loved every minute. Well done, and really looking forward to the next one!
Sue Davnall
I very much enjoyed this concert and was impressed with all the performers. I also thought the programme was very informative and excellent value for £1!
Anne Treadaway
What a wonderful concert by Lewisham Choral Society and Hackney Singers – hundreds of singers raising the roof of the Royal Festival Hall in one of Bach’s greatest choral works. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Holly Skelton Ikon Arts
Great performance of Bach Mass by choirs, soloists and musicians You certainly did justice to the excellent venue. Hope all the participants enjoyed it as much as I did.
Jenny Heald
Schubert and Mozart, Goldsmiths – November 2016
I was stopped in the street today by a lovely woman, a complete stranger to me, who called me over to her car. She wanted to say what a lovely time she had at our concert the other Saturday. She thought it was wonderful and had really enjoyed it.
Normally I get stopped because people want to pet Lenny. Now I get stopped because I sing with LCS. How cool is that!
– Annie Rimmer, LCS Soprano
Concert goer
Entente Musicale, Holy Trinity, Sloane Square – July 2016
What an enterprising and different programme for this concert of French and English choral music. The quirky text of Britten’s brilliant Rejoice in the Lamb was matched by the exotic eccentricity of Boulanger’s Vieille prière bouddhique, but perhaps the best singing and playing of the evening came in Vierne’s surprisingly impressive Messe Solennelle where the glorious climaxes resounded around the walls of Holy Trinity Church. Full-throated singing from the well-trained choir backed up by dazzling accompaniment on two organs from Nico de Villiers and James Orford. Merveilleux!
Marc Wood
The Membranes, The Lexington – June 2016
The Membranes would like to thank the fantastic audience for last night’s sell out concert in London. And also [to LCS] for their fantastic voices. It was pretty cool to do a gig and be described as ‘sublime’!
The combination of punk music and melodic choir… proved to be almost a sensory overload. …The atmosphere was fantastic! To be there and feel the energy and be part of this unique show, which was nothing short of being a rock opera at its finest, was an absolute adrenaline rush.
Jim Templeton-Cross
Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Fairfield Halls – March 2016
Thank you for the invitation Peter, we both enjoyed this enormously. Such a huge choir makes a real impact and it was a very dramatic performance. I am full of admiration. It looks so much fun – makes me wish I could sing.
Peter Dawson's family
The choir sang as one which is something for such a large choir, and the words were clear. The soprano soloist, Elisabeth Meister, was outstanding. The performance was very good, orchestra included.
Mary and Beryl
Cherubini’s Requiem, Goldsmiths – November 2015
Hi all, thanks for the lovely evening. The performance was really terrific – all the tremendous effort that must have been involved in preparing paid off. Such a daunting and challenging piece but so wonderfully executed. For me it could have gone on for longer and I was roaring for an encore…………..!!!!! The programme notes were very good as well, and very helpful for me as I am ignorant in this area.
Orff’s Carmina Burana, Cadogan Hall – July 2015
Last night’s concert by Lewisham Choral Society was exhilarating! It was a brilliant evening – the choir, soloists and the ensemble were superb. It was a brilliant performance in absolute terms and LCS were at their very best.
Peter Stephens
Lewisham Choral Society, you were magnificent! What a storm of a performance of the Carmina Burana: it was thrilling in its intensity and passion and what a sound you made! Nerve tingling stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the words as clearly as this before. Fabulous percussion and piano and soloists too! A remarkably exciting concert and has to be one of the best yet! Truly professional performance.
Annie Rimmer
Carmina Burana was really brought alive by excellent singing, clarity of diction and soloists who acted their roles! Most enjoyable – as was the rest of a varied programme. LCS are really the biz! And their diction is so good – I could hear every word!
Wendy Saville, Hackney Singers
This was the first LCS concert I have been to, I thought the performance was really, really good. LCS were very professional and the sound they made in Cadogan Hall was brilliant. Well done LCS and the whole ensemble.
Jeanette Wilde
Let It Snow! Goldsmiths – December 2014
Really enjoyed Lewisham Choral Society’s lovely festive carols beneath the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square tonight.
Brilliant carols from Harmony Sinfonia with Lewisham Choral Society at Brockley Market.
Many thanks to Harmony Sinfonia and Lewisham Choral Society for providing fabulous carols earlier today at Brockley Market.
Fine Lewisham Choral Society carol concert: Darke’s Bleak Midwinter, Coventry Carol, Ben Parry’s Snow, and enthusiastic audience participation.
Impressive solos at carol concert by Lewisham Choral Society members Rebecca Vicary, Pierpaolo Finaldi and Lara Ruffle Coles, and by pianist Joshua Kelly.
A wonderful concert at Goldsmiths University with Lewisham Choral Society and Nico de Villiers – Thanks for the opportunity to perform.
Josh Kelly, piano soloist
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Journalism - J2100 News
Backgrounding with News Sources
Finding Information: Search Engines
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MU Licensed News Databases (current and archives)
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You've been given a topic on which to write a story. If it is a localized story, you should search the local news archives to see what was written about the same topic in the past. Not only will the results of the search provide more context, but it may also provide important facts and even valuable contacts useful in creating your own story.
If you want to localize a global, national or regional story, use the MU licensed databases to search for stories on the same subject. An example might be how drought affects the local economy. You might search for stories about drought and the global economy or its effect on a particular country.
Columbia Missourian (digital web version)
Choose the "Archive" link in the top navigation bar to search for digtal stories.
Columbia Missourian Digital Print Archive (collection of print newspapers only)
Columbia Missourian Archive (sometimes called MerlinOne) Search for articles beginning with 2007 (currently there is no access to the 1986-2006 archives). (login: merlin password: missourian#1)
Columbia Missourian (Missouri Digital Heritage Collection) Browse the historical collection (containing papers from 1929, 1969-1975).
Columbia Daily Tribune (digital web version - requires a subscription)
Columbia Daily Tribune Archive (requires a subscription after 10 searches/month)
Columbia Daily Tribune archive before Feb. 2, 2009
Columbia Daily Tribune archive after Feb. 2. 2009
Internet Archive's TV News Archive - is a free service provided as a way to enhance the capabilities of journalists, scholars, teachers, librarians, civic organizations and other engaged citizens. It repurposes closed captioning to enable users to search, quote and borrow from the Internet Archive’s collection of 500,000+ US TV news broadcasts aired since 2009.
Factiva provides access to more than 32,000 sources (such as newspapers, journals, magazines, television and radio transcripts, photos, etc.) from nearly every country worldwide in 28 languages, including more than 600 continuously updated newswires. It also contains business and financial data on companies from around the world. License terms restrict access to MU students, faculty, and staff only.
Date Coverage: Varies
Maximum Users: unlimited
Truncation:
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License Terms: http://mulibraries.missouri.edu/search/databases/proquestlicense.htm
Search Guide: http://askdj.dowjones.com/
US Newsstream
ProQuest Newsstand contains over 1169 newspapers, 134 trade journals, 62 general interest periodicals, 134 blogs, podcasts, and websites. With titles like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and major regionals like the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and the Boston Globe, users can also find access to international, national, and regional news.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Searchable full-image of The Washington Post (1877-2002), The Chicago Defender (1909-1975), the St. Louis Post Dispatch (1874-2003) and The Chicago Tribune (1849-1995).
Newspaper Source
Newspaper Source provides cover-to-cover full text for more than 40 national (U.S.) and international newspapers and contains full text for more than 300 regional (U.S.) newspapers. In addition, full-text television and radio news transcripts are provided from CBS News, CNN, CNN International, FOX News, NPR, etc. Access provide by MOREnet.
NewsBank
Newsbank includes Early American Newspapers, Series 1 (1690-1876); U. S. Congressional Serial Set and Serial Set Maps (1817-1980); Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, (1639-1800); Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, (1801-1819); American State Papers, (1789-1838); World Newspaper Archive, which includes America's Historical Newspapers and African Newspapers.
Date Coverage: 1989-date.
License Terms: http://www.more.net/online/contractinfo.html
Search Guide: http://infoweb.newsbank.com/gettingstarted/tut1.html
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MU Libraries, University of Missouri | Journalism Library
102 Reynolds Journalism Institute | Columbia, MO 65211 Ph: 573-882-7502
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Funding avenues
Back to portal home
International MS research funders
Not-for-profit and philanthropic funders
SUBMIT YOUR FEEDBACK OR SUGGESTIONS
Relevant Grants
Brain Foundation The Brain Foundation is dedicated to funding Australia-wide clinical research into neurological disorders, brain disease, and brain injuries. Research programs are open nationally and include general project support in the form of grants-in-aid, in fields of key research priority. The Foundation also offers people support for one Neurology trainee and one Neurosurgery trainee. Project or Infrastructure:
Project Grant-in-aid in priority areas, varies yearly
People Support:
Fellowship for Neurology trainee and Neurosurgery trainee
Annual funding round June
BUPA Health Foundation The BUPA Health Foundation is committed to improving the health of the Australian community and ensuring the sustainability of affordable healthcare. The Emerging Health Researcher Award recognises the valuable contribution of emerging health researchers to health outcomes for all Australians. The Foundation funds innovative replicable interventions and projects that empower people to prevent or better manage health conditions, and empower people to use health education and engagement to tackle health risk factors and promote healthy lifestyle habits. People Support:
Emerging Health Researcher Award
Project or Infrastructure
Foundation Grants Program
Annual funding round August/September
CASS Foundation The CASS Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation, established to support and promote the advancement of education, science and medicine, and research and practice in those fields. The CASS Foundation provides annual grants for research and development in science and medicine in Victoria. The travel awards program is open nationally and provides support for early career researchers to attend international conferences, with two application rounds each year. People Support:
Medicine/Science Grants
Annual round of Project grants, biannual travel awards
Equity Trustees Equity Trustees manage over 400 charitable trusts for scientific research, children’s charities, and many other causes. The Trustees administer a range of granting schemes including the William Buckland Foundation Grants (Victoria), the Hazel Peat Perpetual Trust, as well as Fellowship opportunities such as the Queensland Medical Research PhD Scholarship, the Sylvia and Charles Viertel Clinical Investigatorship, and the Sylvia and Charles Viertel Senior Research Fellowship (see more below). Project or Infrastructure:
William Buckland Foundation Grants (Victoria)
Harold and Cora Brennan Trust (Victoria)
Hazel Peat Perpetual Trust (Victoria)
Queensland Medical Research PhD Scholarship
Viertel Clinical investigatorship (see more below)
Viertel Senior Research Fellowship (see more below)
Annual funding round (varied)
Financial Markets for Children Foundation The Financial Markets Foundation for Children receives both corporate and individual donations to fund research programs and a wide range of other projects designed specifically to promote and improve the health, welfare and well-being of Australian children. The Foundation has allocated in excess of $17 million to over 220 projects. Grant applications are considered via an Expression of Interest process and are generally awarded for one or two years. The Foundation intends these grants to support pilot studies to encourage subsequent competitive grant applications. Project or Infrastructure
Project Grants
Annual funding round
Ian Potter Foundation The Ian Potter Foundation prioritises funding for innovative programs that enhance the lives of people with disability or chronic illness and promote the health of the community. Grants are awarded to promote research and development in public health and preventative medicine initiatives aimed at improving the health of the Australian community. Programs offered include Project Grants for Medical Research and Health & Disability, as well as Travel Awards for early career researchers. People Support:
Project or Infrastructure:
MS Research Australia MS Research Australia is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to funding and coordinating MS research. The organisation offers a wide range of grants, fellowships and scholarships to support research into finding better treatments, triggers, and a cure for MS. Funding includes both investigator-driven applications and collaborative platform funding. In addition to major project grants and salary support in form of scholarships and fellowships, MS Research Australia also funds one-year Incubator Grants that provide seed funds for new projects. See more on our How we Fund Research page. People Support:
Vacation Scholarship
TRIP Fellowship
Travel Award
Project Grant
Incubator Grant
Annual funding round - biannual incubator round April/May
Neurological Foundation of New Zealand The Neurological Foundation of New Zealand is a not-for-profit organisation aiming to progress research so that significant advances can be made in the prevention and cure of neurological disorders. The organisation offers a wide range of grants, fellowships, and scholarships to support research to alleviate suffering from diseases and disorders of the brain and nervous system. People Support:
Summer Studentship
Chapman (Clinical) Research Fellowship
Repatriation Fellowship
Senior Clinical Research Fellowship
Travel Grant (existing grantees only)
Small Project Grant
New Zealand Multiple Sclerosis Research Trust The New Zealand MS Research Trust has been established to stimulate, coordinate and support New Zealand-based research into the cause, prevention, treatment, alleviation and cure of MS, and to obtain and disseminate research findings. The Trust was newly established in 2015, and at the time of writing had not yet published a grants portfolio. Newly established trust – grants portfolio not yet available. Not yet available
Perpetual Trust Perpetual Trust distributed more than $83 million in the 2014 financial year on behalf of the charitable trusts and endowments that they manage. Non-profit organisations have the opportunity to apply for grants through their annual IMPACT Philanthropy Application Program. The grants generally range between $10,000 and $100,000 per year. National organisations can submit up to three applications in total. Project or Infrastructure:
Project Grant awarded to organisations
Ramaciotti Foundation The Ramaciotti Foundations are collectively one of the largest private contributors to biomedical research in Australia, and have granted almost $55 million to research projects since 1970. They contribute to individual investigators and organisations via three categories of grants in biomedical research, including the biennial Ramaciotti Biomedical Research Award, and the annual Ramaciotti Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research and Ramaciotti Health Investment Grants. People Support:
Biomedical Research Award
Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research
Health Investment Grant
Biennial funding round for Research Award Other awards annual
Rebecca L. Cooper Foundation The Rebecca L Cooper Foundation prioritises areas of medical research that are not widely funded by other funding bodies, and currently supports six areas of medical research including brain sciences (Psychiatry and Neurology) and vision sciences. The Foundation awards grants for purchasing of equipment and consumables, as well as the Al and Val Rosenstrauss Research Fellowship. One highly scoring grant applicant is awarded a PhD Scholarship to support a student under their supervision. People Support:
Annual funding round September
Sylvia and Charles Viertel Foundation Established to alleviate hardship for people suffering chronic illness, the Sylvia and Charles Viertel Foundation offers a Senior Medical Research Fellowship and a Clinical Investigatorship. The Fellowship is intended to provide both salary and project grant funding for mid-career researchers. The Clinical Investigatorship aims to assist the balance between the investigator’s research and clinical position.
Clinical investigatorship
Senior Research Fellowship
Annual funding round April
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Fed’s Barkin leaves door open to ‘insurance’ cut
FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Thomas Barkin poses during a break at a Dallas Fed conference on technology in Dallas, Texas, U.S., May 23, 2019. REUTERS/Ann Saphir
By Ann Saphir
VICTOR, Idaho (Reuters) – Soft U.S. inflation is not a reason for cutting interest rates at this point, but a drop in confidence or growth could be, Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin told Reuters on Thursday.
“To me there are two possible logics for a cut – one which is around growth and confidence, it’s described by some as insurance, and I think I can see the case for that – we’ll see if the data supports that,” Barkin said in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Interdependence Center’s annual economic summit.
“There’s a case, if growth starts to falter or if confidence starts to drop meaningfully in a way that looks likely to affect growth, in saying: let’s get in front of the curve with the tools that we have,” he said. “What I will be assessing is whether growth has faltered or confidence has faltered in the way that I’ve just described.”
But a second rationale for cutting rates, he said, would be “for reasons of recentering inflation – that’s the one I think I’m less supportive of,” Barkin said. “The inflation one to me — the case doesn’t yet feel strong enough. But, maybe the data will change that.”
Inflation has been running at slightly lower than the Fed’s 2% goal, worrying some Fed officials. Data released this morning, which Barkin said he had not yet looked carefully at, showed it may be firming.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell in two days of testimony on Capitol Hill bolstered expectations that worries over trade tensions and faltering global growth have convinced many policymakers to support an interest-rate cut later this month when Fed rate-setters meet in Washington for their fifth regular meeting of 2019.
Minutes of the Fed’s last policy-setting meeting, in June, showed policymakers discussed a range of possible reasons to cut rates, including as insurance against worse-than-expected growth and to boost inflation expectations.
Barkin said he would be watching economic data released over the next three weeks, including consumer confidence, GDP growth, inflation, and retail spending, and would wait until the meeting itself before forming his view on what action, if any, should be taken. Barkin does not vote on rates this year, but takes part in the debate and discussion at regular policy meetings.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; editing by Diane Craft)
Texas governor urges residents to prepare for storm off Gulf of Mexico
President Trump applauds Lockheed Martin
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Potters Mills Gap construction to detour drivers off Route 322 starting July 15
Drivers heading west on Route 322 will be detoured using routes 144 and 45 during the week of July 15
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) is issuing a mid-July update for its Route 322/Potters Mills Gap project in southeast Centre County. Up-to-date information can also be found on the PMG Project page at www.penndot.gov/pottersmillsgap.
Drivers can expect the following July 13 through July 19:
On Monday, July 15, the westbound detour using Route 144 north and Route 45 west will be in place from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Flaggers will be in the roadway to enhance traffic control. Flaggers will be located at the Route 322/Route 144 intersection and in Old Fort at the Route 144/Route 45 intersection. The detour is being used so that crews can pave on the western end of the project. Eastbound traffic will remain on Route 322.
Motorists are advised a new traffic pattern will be in effect once paving on the western end of the project is complete.
A mile east of Potters Mills, the crossover from Decker Valley Road to Sand Mountain Road remains in place, with one lane open in each direction. This crossover will continue through September.
Within the crossover, there is a 14-foot width restriction for westbound traffic and a 15-foot width restriction for eastbound traffic. These width restrictions will also be in place through September.
Work will also continue off the roadway and drivers should be alert for construction vehicles entering and exiting Route 322 through the Potters Mills area.
This is the third and final phase of a construction project dating back to 2015. Phase One of the project constructed the new bridge at Sand Mountain Road. Phase Two created the new local interchange on Route 322 at Sand Mountain Road. The goal of Phase Three is to reconstruct Route 322 from Sand Mountain Road to Potters Mills – including a new Route 322/Route 144 intersection. The completed project will alleviate congestion and allow traffic to move more safely and efficiently from the Centre/Mifflin County line to Potters Mills.
Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc. of State College is the contractor on this $82 million project.
Motorists are encouraged to “Know Before They Go” by checking conditions on more than 40,000 roadway miles by visiting www.511PA.com. 511PA, which is free and available 24 hours a day, provides traffic delay warnings, weather forecasts, traffic speed information and access to more than 950 traffic cameras.
511PA is also available through a smartphone application for iPhone and Android devices, by calling 5-1-1, or by following regional Twitter alerts accessible on the 511PA website.
Subscribe to PennDOT news in Cameron, Centre, Clearfield, Clinton, Elk, Juniata, McKean, Mifflin, and Potter counties at www.penndot.gov/District2.
For regional updates on Twitter, follow www.twitter.com\511PAStateCOLL
Atherton Street construction to turn off pedestrian signal at Park Avenue
Lengthy travel delays expected on U.S. Route 322 through Potters Mills
Reserved hours to change at select campus parking lots beginning July 1
Campus Life, Parking and Traffic
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From Campbell's To Kellogg's, Classic Brands Are Feeling The Crunch
By Alina Selyukh • Jan 1, 2019
The world of mainstream consumer brands is in a major slow-motion transformation.
sorbetto / Getty Images
Originally published on January 2, 2019 2:35 pm
Think about the last time you went to the supermarket. You probably spent no more than a few seconds choosing from all the different brands of toothpaste, frozen peas or oatmeal.
Those few seconds used to be the holy grail for brands, the moment you would get hooked forever on that Tide detergent or Heinz ketchup — an event referred to as "the first moment of truth." But lately, the moment of truth has moved to the Internet. What's more, ripples from the 2008 recession have changed us as shoppers.
More and more people have started saying: "I'm not a brand person."
Those five fateful words come from Juliet McFadden, 23, an office manager in Boston. For consumer brands used to owning American cupboards and closets, that sentiment spells trouble and signals a turning point: evolve or wither.
It has been a tumultuous period for giant consumer brand companies. Campbell Soup Co. is in the process of selling off parts of its business and welcoming a new chief executive. Procter & Gamble is restructuring. Unilever, which makes Dove soap and Hellmann's mayonnaise, has also hired a new CEO.
As far back as 2015, research firm Catalina reported that 90 of the top 100 brands in consumer packaged goods had lost market share.
To understand that trend, consider a shopper like McFadden. She is just starting to build her finances and lifelong shopping habits. This makes her a prime target for consumer-goods companies like Procter & Gamble, Kraft Heinz or General Mills. But she's not easy to win over.
For example, McFadden doesn't like cereal. "I just don't usually eat breakfast," she says. She doesn't drink soda and dislikes yogurts "with a ton of sugar with them." She doesn't buy paper towels and prefers reusable washable rags. "Paper towels are expensive," she says. "Stuff like that adds up."
The tastes of McFadden's generation often get treated with the tired trope about millennials killing breakfast cereal, napkins, bar soap, canned tuna. But really, most Americans could make a similar list. Maybe you choose the store brand of toilet paper; or you buy a fancier condiment instead of Hellmann's mayo; or you order eco-friendly diapers on the Internet.
"Rather than just relying on brand familiarity, consumers buy today what performs for them. They are much less brand-loyal," says David Luttenberger of market-research firm Mintel. "They are more driven by performance, by convenience, by price."
During the Great Recession, Americans warmed up to cheaper off-brand products, like generic or store brands. And then, they kept buying them even as the economy improved.
Like in the music industry, very few artists can continue being successful in the sophomore and junior album. ... It is a big challenge to reinvent yourself over and over again. - Americus Reed, marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School
Plus, the Internet — of course — has completely shaken up shopping.
Think about how people used to discover new brands. Only the biggest conglomerates could afford prime TV advertising and prominent placement in stores, right around eye level.
And so the baby boomer generation of shoppers grew up reaching for ubiquitous products like Campbell's soup, Heinz ketchup, Oscar Mayer hot dogs or P&G's Crest toothpaste.
Some of these names remain longtime favorites among loyal older shoppers. In a 2018 Morning Consult poll, Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark were the two top brands preferred by boomers, far more than U.S. adults overall.
Meanwhile, tech investors have been funding startups to bring Silicon Valley "disruption" to products such as toothbrushes, vitamins and tampons. Wall Street has become cautious about once-dominant consumer brands. Shares of companies like Kellogg, Kraft Heinz and General Mills recently hit their lowest levels in years.
"They're in a bit of a pickle," says Americus Reed, marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "Like in the music industry, very few artists can continue being successful in the sophomore and junior album, right? ... It is a big challenge to reinvent yourself over and over again."
But that's exactly what companies are trying to do with brands to survive. In 2017, Procter & Gamble cut the price of its razors and replacement blades to compete against online-subscription upstarts Dollar Shave Club and Harry's. Rival Unilever went all in and bought the Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion.
Kimberly-Clark — whose brands include Kleenex, Huggies and Kotex — was struggling so much that it announced plans to lay off 13 percent of its workers and shutter 10 plants. Among various brand revamps, the company has launched a new Scott toilet paper without the center tube to appeal to the environmentally conscious shopper.
General Mills renamed the classic Hamburger Helper as simply "Helper." In a quiet feat, Kraft Heinz managed to take out artificial preservatives and dyes from its classic macaroni and cheese without angering devotees.
The 149-year-old Campbell Soup Co. has been the poster child of the struggle to adjust to an age where people want convenient, fresher products with ingredients they can pronounce.
Canonized by Andy Warhol in the heat-and-serve postwar era, Campbell is acutely feeling Americans' waning appetite for canned and condensed soups. It's trying to hold on to its huge share of the market with cleaner labels showing fresh ingredients, containers meant for sipping and modern flavors like toasted barley.
Another staple feeling the pressure is breakfast cereal, with nostalgic brands like Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops; General Mills' Lucky Charms and Cheerios; PepsiCo's Life and Cap'n Crunch. Sales here have been declining for years. Mintel predicts an additional 5 percent decline through 2023, as people aren't swayed by reduced-sugar offerings and choose to skip breakfast or opt for more portable, warmer and more nutritious options.
"You've got a lot of CEOs that are at their wits' end trying to figure out growth," The Wall Street Journal cited "a now-retired big-food-company chief" as saying in May 2018. The article said at least 16 CEOs of major packaged-food and beverage companies had stepped down in the previous two years.
"The challenge for these legacy brands is that the people that were born into them are going to die," says Reed, the marketing professor, "and so you better have a plan to talk to these younger types of consumers."
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The world of mainstream consumer brands is in a slow-motion transformation. The companies that make products such as Campbell's Soup, Gillette razors, Crest toothpaste and Dove soap are going through major corporate changes, restructuring and hiring new CEOs. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports these mainstream brands are facing the challenge of adjusting to new shopping habits.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Think about the last time you went to the supermarket. You probably spent no more than a few seconds choosing from all the different brands of toothpaste or frozen peas or oatmeal. In retail, this is called, dramatically, the first moment of truth. For brands, these few seconds used to be their Holy grail, but in the past decade, shoppers started saying they'd go by other things.
JULIET MCFADDEN: Usually by what's cheapest. Like, I'm not a brand person.
SELYUKH: That's Juliet McFadden. She's an office manager in Boston, and she's 23. She's just starting to build her finances and lifelong shopping habits. This makes her a huge target for companies like Procter & Gamble, Kraft Heinz or General Mills, but she is not easy to win over.
MCFADDEN: I'm not a cereal person. I just usually don't eat breakfast. I don't really drink soda ever. I don't like the yogurts with a ton of sugar in them that are super sweet. Paper towels are expensive. Stuff like that adds up. We have reusable, like, rags that we use and then wash.
SELYUKH: McFadden's generation often gets the blame here, the tired trope about millennials killing breakfast cereals or napkins or canned tuna. But really, most Americans could make a similar list. Maybe you choose the store brand of toilet paper, buy a fancier condiment instead of Hellmann's mayo, order eco-friendly diapers on the Internet. Here's David Luttenberger of market research firm Mintel.
DAVID LUTTENBERGER: Rather than just relying on brand familiarity, consumers buy today what performs for them. They are much less brand loyal, and they are more driven by performance, by convenience, by price.
SELYUKH: At least two major things have changed us as shoppers. During the last recession, Americans warmed up to cheaper off-brand products like generic or store brands, and then they kept buying them even as the economy improved. And, of course, the Internet has completely shaken up our shopping. Think about how people used to learn about new brands.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Singing) Oh, I'd love to be an Oscar Meyer wiener.
SELYUKH: Only the biggest companies could afford catchy prime time TV ads.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Singing) 'Cause if I were an Oscar Meyer wiener, everyone would be in love with me.
SELYUKH: And so the boomer generation of shoppers grew up reaching for classic American brands. Now, Campbell's Soup, that symbol of the postwar era of processed foods, is restructuring as Americans are demanding fresher foods with pronounceable ingredients. Kraft Heinz got rid of artificial preservatives and dyes from its mac and cheese. Procter & Gamble lowered the price of Gillette razors for the first time in years to compete with the online startups like Dollar Shave Club. Unilever bought that startup, Dollar Shave Club. The mainstream brands are being squeezed by rivals that are both cheaper and more personalized.
AMERICUS REED: They're in a bit of a pickle.
SELYUKH: Americus Reed is a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He says legacy brands have to both stay true for the older, loyal customers but also attract new shoppers.
REED: It is a big challenge to reinvent yourself over and over again, right? You look at just, like, in the music industry, very few artists can continue being successful in the sophomore and junior album. You know, you have iconic artists like Madonna who can just reinvent herself every single time and speak to new audiences.
SELYUKH: But it is extremely hard to do when you're not Madonna, you're Campbell's Soup.
Alina Selyukh, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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3 feet of snow in upstate NY on Memorial weekend
Associated Press May 27, 2013
This photo provided courtesy of ORDA/Whiteface shows Whiteface Mountain Veterans' Memorial Highway after a heavy snowfall Sunday, May 26, 2013. The late-May storm has dropped three feet of snow on the New York ski mountain near the Vermont boarder. Whiteface Mountain spokesman Jon Lundin says 36 inches of white powder have fallen on the nearly 5,000-foot tall mountain in the Adirondacks, forcing the Olympic Regional Development Authority to close Whiteface Veteran’s Memorial Highway on the backside of the mountain. (AP Photo/courtesy of ORDA/Whiteface)
WILMINGTON, N.Y. (AP) — A Memorial Day weekend storm has dropped three feet of snow on a New York ski mountain near the Vermont boarder.
Whiteface Mountain spokesman Jon Lundin says 36 inches of white powder has blanketed the nearly 5,000-foot tall mountain in the Adirondacks. That has forced the Olympic Regional Development Authority to close Whiteface Veteran's Memorial Highway on the backside of the mountain.
Lundin says the snow began lightly falling Saturday and steadily dropped Sunday, finishing in the evening. He didn't know if the 3-foot snowfall was a record for Whiteface.
Burlington, Vt., National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Muccilli says the mountain experienced steady snow and gusty winds throughout the weekend.
He says Mount Mansfield, in Stowe, Vt., had 13.2 inches of snow Sunday, the latest in the season it's ever had a foot.
Boxing legend Pernell 'Sweet Pea' Whitaker dead at 55
Twitter lost the plot when it saw Roger Federer's wife's engagement ring
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You have capacity to rule Nigeria – Darius tells Turaki
September 20, 2018 Politics
Taraba State governor, Ishaku Darius has said that PDP presidential aspirant, Kabiru Tanimu Turaki has all what it takes to be Nigeria’s president in 2019.
The governor who was represented by the Deputy Governor, Engineer Haruna Manu made the remark on Wednesday when the presidential aspirant visited the Government House in Jalingo, in continuation of his nationwide consultations ahead of the party’s presidential primary next month.
“In terms of capability, capacity and knowledge of the situation of the country you have it all. The governor cherishes positive values and capacity and you indeed have it. We will pray for you. We will support you. We and our governor will take a united position,” he said.
He commended Turaki for his digital disposition to governance and his thorough grasp of the Nigerian situation. “We want to see you again in either November or December on campaign as our party’s presidential candidate,” he added.
He however counseled that the PDP can only dislodge the APC in the 2019 general elections if there was cohesion among members, especially the presidential aspirants.
He therefore enjoined the aspirants to abide by the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which they all signed to support whoever emerged as the party’s presidential candidate, noting that so many people are anxious to see how the PDP will conduct its primaries as a prelude to rescuing Nigerians from the hardships imposed on them by the APC.
The deputy Governor noted: “APC has failed Nigerians. In terms of economy we are worse off than we were in 2015. Unemployment condition has worsened. The HSBC Bank and the prestigious London Economist magazine have concluded that APC has failed Nigerians in all economic parameters.”
While at the state PDP secretariat, the party chairman, Hon. Victor Bala Kona who expressed the hope that Turaki will emerge as the party’s presidential standard bearer acknowledged the aspirant’s stewardship “in serving as a strong, loyal and stable party member.”
He commended Turaki for using his skill as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria in defending the party in election matters and other issues in the North East George’s-political zone.
The chairman noted that Turaki’s commitment to the PDP had not been for pecuniary gain, noting further that during he party’s crisis the aspirant remained firm, resolute and guided the party in retrieving its soul from destruction.
“There should be reward for loyalty,” the chairman said, otherwise, it will discourage justice and encourage injustice.”
He said further that Nigeria needed a person with capacity and talent to remove the country from its current bondage, adding that Nigeria needed a person like Turaki who, as part of his private sector experience was one of those who salvaged the then Bank of the North from collapse before a new board was appointed to succeed them.
The former Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs had stated earlier that he will give priority to the tackling of the country’s security challenges, rejuvenating the economy, fighting corruption through the strict adherence to the rule of law and will never lie to Nigerians.
He accused the APC government as being “disgustingly corrupt” beyond what the country had ever witnessed since independence in 1960, besides fueling divisiveness among the ethnic groups and also toying with the security of lives and property of the people.
Turaki
Learn From Recent Loss To PDP In Osun, MURIC Warns Lagos APC Leaders
July 19, 2017 News, Politics
The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has described the protest in Lagos Tuesday against Muiz Banire,SAN as a dangerous precedent. It said as victims of a 16-year pillaging of the common wealth of the Nigerian people […]
PDP NEC Approves Dec. 9 For National Convention
October 24, 2017 Featured, News, Politics
The People Democratic Party (PDP) National Executive Committee has approved Dec. 9 for the party’s national elective convention. The PDP National Caretaker Committee Publicity Secretary, Mr Dayo Adeyeye, disclosed this on Tuesday at the end […]
PDP yet to release presidential campaign timetable – Spokesman
November 27, 2018 News, Politics
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has says it is yet to issue timetable for its 2019 presidential campaigns. The party, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan on Tuesday in Abuja, said […]
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If 95%+ of comments have been rated as “fine”, does the site deserve its reputation of “unwelcoming”? Do we still need to focus on it?
There's been much ado over the last 5 years ago about the SE network being "unwelcoming".
From the summer of love to the code of conduct, from the welcome wagon to the instantaneous delisting of IPS from the HNQ because of a complaint on Twitter, there's been an enormous and ongoing effort from Stack Exchange to make the site more welcoming.
And there's been an equally enormous amount of drama on MSE (and other Metas) about these efforts.
Commentary on comments
Most recently, Stack Exchange has focused on comments as the principal source of the perceived unwelcoming atmosphere.
And they ran a well-constructed experiment to test this hypothesis. And now the results are in.
Net-net, more than 95% of all comments are considered totally fine. Less than 5% are considered "unwelcoming", and a negligible number are considered "abusive"¹. There is a high-level of inter-user agreement on these ratings. Agreement is unaffected, mostly, by reputation.
Welcome, one and all
Which makes me wonder: is there a problem to be solved here in the first place? Is Stack Exchange, despite all the drama, brouhaha, and blog posts, not actually unwelcoming after all?
Or maybe the recent focus on comments was the wrong target to aim for? If that's the case, we'd have to look somewhere else. Are we going to analyze, say, downvotes, closevotes², flags, next?
I have my own views on these matters, but I'd like to hear yours. I'd particularly like answers representing different classes of users, in particular from SE employees, from CMs, from non-CM mods, and from regular users (both high-rep and new).
¹ The linked blog presents these numbers with a lot more clarity, context, and detail. But for the sake of this MSE post, I needed to condense the results into a single number. I did that by taking the average rating weighted by the number of raters, to approximate the score the comments would get if you plucked a random guy off the street and didn't know if he were an SE employee, a moderator, a high-rep user, a new user, someone who had never heard of SE before, etc.
² Actually, SO did run an experiment aimed at analyzing closures, Project Reduplication of Deduplication. But while the meta community saw this as a refreshing breath of air on investing in AI-powered tools to help automate some of the grunt work of curation, it turned out that SE's interest in the project was to help identify false duplicates.
This suggests that SE thinks closures might be contributing to the perception of being unwelcoming, and are looking for ways to mitigate that.
discussion comments welcoming
Dan Bron
Dan BronDan Bron
If 99+% of posts on these sites aren't spam, should we stop worrying about spam? Everyone involved knew that the percentage of comments that people find abusive or unwelcoming in some way would be small, but insults can have a disproportionate impact. 99 people can compliment you, but it's the one who insults you that you dwell on. 5% of a very large number of comments is still a lot of comments that people have trouble with. – Brad Larson Dec 4 '18 at 20:50
In our "well-constructed experiment" we asked ourselves what we think of ourselves, but what percentage were those whom were actually the target. Including stats from 'approved rude flags' would include the person whom claimed to be affected. Over at other sites (YouTube) it's the wild west, yet there are few blogs about it being unwelcoming - they do have 'user blocking' (and flagging) while our blocking is either semi-automatic/automatic or Mod approved. Perhaps YouTube attracts thicker skinned people, they certainly can't say each video is a polished gem (neither by views nor votes). – Rob Dec 4 '18 at 20:52
@BradLarson That’s a flawed analogy, because yes, if 99%+ of posts are not spam, then we don’t have a spam problem. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest somewhat in tools to fight the remainder, but it does mean we wouldn’t need to write dozens of blog posts, scores of Meta questions, change the legal terms of a site, etc, to combat spam. And “a large number” is always relative. Here, the “larger number of bad comments” is large relative to the number of Ferraris I own, but small next to the astronomical number of non-bad comments. – Dan Bron Dec 4 '18 at 20:54
@DanBron - Even with a tiny fraction of posts being spam, a lot of effort is still being put into finding and destroying it. I'll put it another way: 1 out of 20 comments in the survey were rated as being unwelcoming. How many comments, on average, do typical questions receive on a Stack Exchange site? Let's say that's 5. That means that you have a roughly 1 in 4 chance of getting an objectionable comment on any given question you ask. How many posts until you're guaranteed to be insulted? – Brad Larson Dec 4 '18 at 21:27
@BradLarson I think we risk too much by trying to take a summary of a summary of data and use it to project. For example, in your math, you ignore distribution. I could equally well say that "only 1 in 20 users ever gets a negative comment". Neither of these analytics are true, and we shouldn't base any discussion on them. Re the spam analogy: I said we should invest in tools to combat the remainder, and you pointed out we are. We're aligned on that. But the investment has to be commensurate with the scale of the problem. – Dan Bron Dec 4 '18 at 21:31
@BradLarson And yet you can't really say, "SO is a site just full of spam". Yes, a lot of work is put into preventing and dealing with spam. New proposals to deal with it, that don't have significant negative side effects for the community, are more than welcome. Likewise, SO puts lots of effort into making users feel welcome, and new proposals to help even more people feel even more welcome are great, so long as they don't come with problematic side effects that cause more problems than they solve. – Servy Dec 4 '18 at 22:27
@BradLarson The problems arise when SO starts making changes that have major negative side effects to try to mitigate a problem that already has many effective solutions mitigating it's impact, and to which the further changes cause way more harm than their benefits. – Servy Dec 4 '18 at 22:29
95% of comments being fine means that 1 in 20 are not, and that's quite a large amount of comments. And when a single unwelcoming comment has the potential to turn away a potential long-term contributor, well, it should be reduced. – Sonic the Anonymous WizHog Dec 5 '18 at 1:28
Follow-up question: If 5% isn't good enough, how low does that percentage need to be? How far do we go to squash that number, and at what cost? – Houseman Dec 5 '18 at 2:19
"There is a high-level of inter-user agreement on these ratings." No, there really isn't. The blog itself says the "alpha" only goes as high as ~0.3 for employees, while social scientists look for at least 0.8 for significance. That's like saying p<0.1 is a "strongly" significant result. It's not even significant at all. – Nathan Tuggy Dec 5 '18 at 6:51
@BradLarson "A lot of effort" is perhaps a misnomer considering charcoal is comprised of a few dozen people at best vs hundreds of thousands of network users most of whom (even most moderators!) don't get exposed to spam nearly ever. – Magisch Dec 5 '18 at 10:48
What is even more interesting from those results is that the more involved in SE people are, the more negative they rate the friendliness of the comments. So you might be led to believe that the new users are the least bothered by unwelcoming comments while being the primary target of all the recent efforts. – Christian Rau Dec 5 '18 at 15:21
I certainly wouldn't call the comment experiment "well-constructed". It had several major and obvious flaws; it only sampled non-flagged, non-deleted comments, all without proper context. It also didn't give appropriate response options for those participating in the experiment... it's akin to asking a customer "do you love us or do you really love us?" – TylerH Dec 5 '18 at 15:23
As a followup - the survey could've been made much more effective by also prompting participants to describe each time they marked a comment as unwelcoming why they felt so. In other words, until we get a more holistic understanding of peoples' problems, we will just be shooting in the dark trying to fix the issue. – TylerH Dec 5 '18 at 15:31
Remember that 5% is unwelcoming, which doesn't necessarily mean rude or abusive, just not exactly ideal. We certainly don't have a problem when significantly under 1% of comments are actually abusive. – forest Dec 16 '18 at 2:47
I was once at a festival with some friends. Somebody camping across the road from us was being a disruptive jerk, and I commented negatively about it to a friend. The friend said to me: "there are 10,000 people here. If only 1% of the population is jerks, that's still 100 people."
We don't tend to notice the vast majority of innocuous, even friendly interactions. We notice right away when somebody is being a jerk. How often does that happen? Not very. Does it make more of an impact when it does? You bet!
If 5% of comments are problematic in some way, that's one in twenty. How many SE comments does somebody typically encounter in a day? There are currently 15 on this page alone. So maybe a casual visitor won't always see a problem comment, but if it happens every second or third visit, is that something to be concerned about? Because it doesn't take many bad comments to get there.
Now, I disagree with how SE has handled some of these problems (sometimes quite strongly), and I do think some people go looking for opportunities to be offended, but I also know, from direct experience, that some of our sites do have problems with comments. What we should (and shouldn't) do about that is far from clear, but to speak to the question you ask: yes, I think 5% bad is enough to pay attention to.
Monica Cellio♦Monica Cellio
"I also know, from direct experience, that some of our sites do have problems" Is this an unnecessary source of friction in this whole topic, I wonder? The blog and other company-authored posts seem to keep saying "Stack Overflow", but are they thinking about the whole network? For example, how does acrimony in comments on Politics compare to Stack Overflow? I'd be willing to bet (though prepared to lose) that it's higher, at least proportionally -- but maybe even absolutely. More specificity from SE might be useful. (Even the title of this question says "the site"...) – Josh Caswell Dec 4 '18 at 22:58
@JoshCaswell I can't speak for all sites, but I know that some of the sites I'm active on have this problem worse than others. How they compare to SO I can't really say, as I'm not active there. Moderators (justifiably) delete a lot of comments on Workplace, for example -- and I'm a mod there, not somebody picking on them from outside. – Monica Cellio♦ Dec 5 '18 at 3:40
Except being mildly "unwelcoming" (with shock, horror, snark) is not the same as being a jerk. – Raedwald Dec 5 '18 at 16:02
@JoshCaswell From experience, some other SE sites have far worse culture than SO. Easier for skewed sub-cultures to grow when there are fewer users and moderators. – Lundin Dec 6 '18 at 10:25
SE is much less hostile than most of the sites and forums I've seen. So I'd certainly argue that the reputation as being unwelcoming is undeserved in this regard*. But the problem is that "we're better than the average site on the internet" is still a very low bar to meet. And we certainly should aim higher than that.
5% is actually higher than I would have expected. Though I'd argue that is because I overestimated the amount of simple noise in comments compared to unwelcoming content. You don't need that much hostile content as a percentage of total comments to create a seriously hostile atmosphere. You usually remember the negative stuff, while the other neutral comments get lost in the noise. For a new user, it only takes a single bad comment to give a really negative first impression. And many users might not try again after that.
A single snarky or hostile comment is also likely to create a response, and the tone usually doesn't improve in those cases, it only gets worse. Stopping this kind of deteriorating conversations earlier is usually a good thing.
* there are other aspects of SE sites that are often perceived as hostile. Getting downvoted and getting your questions closed isn't the same thing, but it certainly is perceived as somewhat hostile by many new users.
Mad ScientistMad Scientist
Mind you, the 5% were rated as merely "unwelcoming" and the disagreement amongst raters was pretty high. We're talking about an alpha of at best 0.3 here, which is orders of magnitude below what a scientist would permit to draw any conclusions from. So the takeaway could simply be "everyone feels unwelcoming in a different way" – Magisch Dec 5 '18 at 10:45
Short answer: yes. We still need to think about and work on this.
Statistics are great, and I am a firm believer in data-driven behavior for most things, but numbers don't work so well when it comes to feelings.
If some new person comes to Stack Overflow and their own perception is that they haven't been welcomed, then the site is unwelcoming, regardless of how well or poorly the interactions they were involved in might be quantitatively scored.
As Abraham Lincoln would wouldn't* tell you here, there will always be some people who individually think the site/network is unwelcoming. It becomes a problem if the number of those people grows to a certain size, or those people start convincing others about how the site feels.
An alternative, slightly more concrete argument: it doesn't take a huge percentage of "bad" comments to make a site feel unwelcoming. If most of the content someone sees is unremarkable, but there's one comment that makes a new user feel uncomfortable, that's the one they'll focus on; it's human nature, not a flaw of the user.
It's just not memorable when things are boring or quietly work the way they're supposed to. It takes something unusual (either good or bad, but "bad" seems to take less work) to make a strong impression. This is why journalists talk about "dog bites man" not being particularly newsworthy, while "man bites dog" is.
Pithy wrap-up about negative perceptions: it's not always our fault, but it is always our problem.
*: Actually, it turns out the "you can please some/all of the people all/some of the time" attribution is disputed on Wikiquote.
SOLOSOLO
"a shapeless mass of negativity..." – Josh Caswell Dec 4 '18 at 20:02
That's a good quotation, too. – SOLO Dec 4 '18 at 20:04
Ok, I'll upvote just for the pithy-wrap up. That's a great line! – Dan Bron Dec 4 '18 at 20:39
"then the site is unwelcoming" to them*. The site itself is not unwelcoming as a whole because an individual feels unwelcome due to potentially as few as one user's comments. – TylerH Dec 5 '18 at 15:27
I don't know about that. If that doesn't mean the site is unwelcoming, then what does it mean for the site to be unwelcoming? – SOLO Dec 10 '18 at 14:21
It really doesn't take all that many users being mean to make a person not feel welcome. I don't have the StackExchange App on my phone anymore because the comments just two users kept leaving me. One or two users can be all it takes to make someone feel harassed.
At the same time, I have raised quite a few comment flags, and in my experience, most of the rude comments are made by a very small number of users who leave lots of rude comments. Focusing on those users and perhaps removing their ability to comment on other people's posts would greatly help the situation.
Here is the other thing, outright rudeness/bigotry/racism gets dealt with right away, constant sniping and putdowns can take months before anything other than comment deletion happens.
In summary, I think that 5% of comments being unwelcoming/rude/non-constructive is a problem, but I also object to any attempts to paint the community as a whole as unwelcoming.
Charlie BrumbaughCharlie Brumbaugh
I'm going to be hugely unpopular and say Yes, there is still a problem. And yes, Stack Exchange probably still deserves its reputation as being unfriendly.
The following comments have all been deleted because they were either flagged by me or by someone else.
The following comment on EL&U was addressed to me after I had defended an answer as being perfectly legitimate even if the author quoted some Google statistics.
This was addressed to a new contributor who had not capitalised the word "english" in their question. Note the diamond.
This was a comment left at an answer of mine on Meta, some of you might have seen this one.
This is a comment addressed to a new contributor, which I flagged earlier today
What kind of impression do these comments leave on visitors, users, and new contributors? Who is the real victim? The recipient or the site's reputation and good name? How many users just shrugged their shoulders, and brushed the comments to one side? And by the way these comments were posted months after the CoC.
N.B. A “GP” is British for general practitioner, in American it would be “family doctor”.
Is anyone going to say there isn't a problem?
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Journeyman Geek♦ Dec 7 '18 at 3:26
I see precisely two problematic comments there, one of which is actually abusive. – forest Dec 16 '18 at 2:50
You found some unwelcoming comments. Perfection is impossible; with enough comments, some unwelcoming comments are inevitable. "Being unwelcoming" is therfore a statistical property. Pointing at some unwelcoming comments does not indicate that SE "is unwelcoming". Only presenting some statistics showing the prevalence of bad posts can do that. – Raedwald Dec 17 '18 at 6:57
@Raedwald #1 No, perfection has never existed, but there's a reason why SE has implemented the new CoC, do you think they did it out of boredom? Generally speaking, SE has a negative reputation online, and everyone is also much more sensitive to criticism than we were in the past, especially the young, before the social media boom. – Mari-Lou A Dec 17 '18 at 10:32
#2 If your first question gets closed and downvoted, it's not a great experience. Can we agree on that? And EL&U has about a 54% "rejection" rate. Stack Overflow's rate hovers around 11%, surprisingly low but it also receives 3 million questions per year. The statistics of which you speak of were provided by SE, and I've shown the proof. This is but a small sample but the number of comments on EL&U I have flagged for being rude, unfriendly and or abusive is much higher than what you see here. – Mari-Lou A Dec 17 '18 at 10:32
@Mari-LouA do you have an idea why the rejection rate is so much higher on ELU? Is it because of the type of users it attracts (language learners vs programmers) or is it because of something on the site? – JJJ Mar 4 at 21:04
@JJJ how often have users and yourself voted to keep a question open on the close review? Very frequently, sometimes or hardly ever? The answer is there. Why does EL&U have so many questions voted to close? Maybe it has something to do with quality and standards. – Mari-Lou A Mar 5 at 10:24
@Mari-LouA obviously, but there's two sides to that coin. Is it just that ELU tends to attract more low-quality posts or is the ELU community harsher on low-quality stuff? In the first case, you'd have to ask the question if that is something the community or the site can actually solve. It may just be more demographically determined (way more people are taught English than some programming language and English language learning tends to start at a much younger age). – JJJ Mar 5 at 17:24
So all of the comments in the study are from Stack Overflow, but most of the unwelcoming comments I've come across are on other sites. I understand Stack Overflow is the behemoth in the room, but I wonder if the smaller less-technical sites have more impact on the network's reputation than might be expected by simply looking at traffic.
In my experience, developers talking to developers have a higher tolerance for directness that seems rude to people working in less technical fields. When you have developers talking to say, an expert woodworker, there might be more friction. There are also versions of Stack Overflow available in languages other than English, which could also be a factor in reducing comments perceived to be unwelcoming. I have often seen innocent remarks that are perfectly fine to me be very hurtful to someone else because of a language or culture difference.
In short, I'm questioning extrapolating the results to the entire network. I think that it is easier for cliques (which to me are the definition of unwelcoming) to form on smaller sites and there is more room for miscommunication when you're talking about topics where you can't just compile the answer and run it to see if it is correct. People solving a coding problem behave a bit differently than people answering a question like Is the conspiracy theory of “Cultural Marxism” inherently tied to antisemitism? (a question on the Politics site).
ColleenVColleenV
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
She was very good indeed,
My grandmother used to recite poems, that one was one of her favorites.
It comes to mind because I think that's what we often see on the network here. When we're good we're very good indeed, but when we're bad we're horrid. For the most part folks get along and behave themselves, but when things go off the rails... well... it's horrid.
Yes we're better than most places on the net when it comes to deleting the horrid, but "better" isn't always as good as it could be, and deletion usually occurs quietly after the damage is already done. It's easy to delete things and pretend the horrid didn't happen, but when it's directed at you, you usually see it before the rest of the community, you see it before the mods. Someone writes the horrid, you read the horrid, and then moderation wipes it away.
I've been around long enough to notice that this thing seems somewhat cyclical. We go on a campaign of nice, or welcome, or what have you, things improve enough so it's no longer a priority, and then we backslide till enough people complain, and it becomes a priority again.
If we want to break the cycle the cost is likely going to be sustained attention to these things. We don't get to say "well we're better than most" or "it's good enough for now" and take a break.
apaulapaul
Life, and more specifically, software development is absolutely filled with "good enough for now" though. I don't think anyone is in honesty against fewer snarky comments overall, they just disagree that is should be in any way a priority. – Magisch Dec 5 '18 at 10:39
I'd wager that whether 95% seems low or high (or just right) depends on your prior assumptions. Perhaps the most important sentence of the blog post reads:
[We] as employees learned that we don’t always perceive problems in the same way as other members of our community.
Employees as a group rated more comments as unwelcoming or abusive than users. Based on our priors, the user ratings seem somewhat more optimistic about the current state of comment friendliness. Perhaps the reason we rated comments as less welcoming than other groups is because we were primed to see negative comments because it's a common complaint about the site. It is one factor in why Stack Overflow's growth has leveled off and is a problem we've been eager to solve for years.
But what is an acceptable level of unwelcoming comments? Perhaps you don't see any particular problem with the tone of the network. In that case, the current level is fine. I guess. Conversely, if you are concerned that comments are too harsh, the current level is too high. My guess is that most people who spend time on the site would estimate that somewhere between 90-99% of comments are "fine". Generally we all agree Stack Exchange comments tend to be better than comments on other sites. So finding out that 95% of comments are fine won't change our prior understanding of the "welcomingness" of the site. Neither would 91.8%, for that matter.
So what's an objectively defined level of too many unwelcoming comments? I think the answer very much depends on whether you care about the network being a permanent resource or if you are willing for the network to shut down in a few decades. This might seem overly dramatic, but I encourage you to walk down this mental path with me. (And please excuse me for focusing on Stack Overflow in the beginning. I'll get to the rest of the network near the end.)
Usenet: a cautionary tale
I got interested in newsgroups when I started programming full time in 1999. I distinctly remember an article by Jon Udell that opened my eyes to the possibility of what we used to call groupware. It was already a well-matured system that let ordinary programmers help each other. It was also "overwhelmed with spam, smut and nonsense". Fortunately, some groups (notably the the Big 8) were relatively free of these distractions. While some groups relied on moderation, many thrived simply by using social pressure. Obnoxious users would be reprimanded by Usenet grognards. One strict rule was to ignore certain troublemakers (trolls). There were essentially no other controls to keep quality high and noise low.
Stack Overflow essentially made Usenet irrelevant for finding answers to programming questions. There are a number of reasons:
Q&A is a better format for knowledge propagation than branching discussions.
Stack Overflow content has always been favored by search engines.
The reputation system encouraged enlightened self-interest.
Features like voting and question closing surfaced useful content.
But also Stack Overflow had not yet developed a reputation for harshness. Since there weren't any rules in the beginning except those created by the system, it felt safer for my generation of programmers than Usenet with its killfiles and exhortations not to feed trolls. For people like me it was an enormous opportunity to forge new rules and a new way of interaction.
So Usenet lost out to a superior product and also to a fresh culture. After 10+ years, that culture is not so fresh anymore. It's no longer possible for a handful of users to shape the way people interact. While I think we've mostly ended up in a good place, our interactions with each other are far from perfect. For the moment, I don't see a viable alternative to Stack Overflow. However, when it does arrive, I'm certain the opportunity to start over will be attractive to many existing users.
Artificial societies
We might pick 0 unwelcoming comments as an objective goal. The trouble with this zero-tolerance approach is that it leads to shifting standards. This is how we end up with a student arrested for bringing a clock to school. It's also not entirely clear how much of the problem is related to public perception and how much is related to harsh comments that still exist on the site. It could be that we could eliminate unwelcome comments and still be seen as too harsh.
On the other hand, it's obvious that there is some level at which unwelcoming comments discourage users from using the site and actively drive them away. Everybody has their own level of tolerance for unwelcoming behavior, so we need to look at the effects on the society has a whole. It's not the sort of thing we can solve with a vote or using our gut.
To illustrate the current situation, I created an agent-based model of how users might respond to a potentially unwelcoming environment. I built the model based on Shamus Young's Philosophy of Moderation. He postulates that there are three types of users:
Unshakable kind people,
Unrepentantly harsh people and
Normal folks who adjust to the current tone they see around them.
I built a very simple model that you can try out. (Click the "Model Info" arrow for a detailed description and "NetLogo Code" for the source code.) It assumes that kind people will always raise the level of discourse, but will leave if there are too many unwelcoming comments. Harsh people influence the environment by increasing unwelcoming comments and normal users adapt to the average level of their neighborhood. The result is an very stable situation that seems entirely sustainable for a long period of time. But every now and then a user with low tolerance for unwelcome comments will leave the site and when enough have, it will start a cascading failure case:
This is probably a good time to say I started writing the model late last week and this is the first time I'm sharing it with anyone. This by no means motivated the Welcome Wagon project and is my own idiosyncratic way of looking at the world. But I think most of us in the company agree that our public sites, and Stack Overflow in particular, are at risk of cultural calcification. If we become too insular, the next generation of programmers could very well pass us by.
The critical number in the model is the level of unwelcoming comments that will cause people to start to leave. I estimated that people who have high standards for tone will leave if 20% or more of the comments they see are snarky. That can happen from time to time even if 90% or more of comments globally are just fine. So I'm not really any closer to knowing what the "right" level is, but we can't necessarily feel safe at the current level.
Chat: a cautionary tale
This pattern usually takes a long time to develop in the model. Without examples, it's difficult to validate the model. We've had a few sites fail dramatically in their first few weeks because of increasingly crase content. The cases I recall involved "Sexuality" sites that started off poorly and quickly descended from there. We finally got a site that works for this topic by expanding to Interpersonal Skills in general and having a team of hardworking users uphold certain standards. The model suggests that if these users left, it wouldn't take long for the site to fall into 4chan territory.
You might intuit that it's a natural consequence of the topic matter. But we've see the same pattern several chat rooms on the network, including several language-specific rooms on Stack Overflow. Everytime this comes up, we discover that users serious about civil discourse have given up on the room and the users who remain believe it's fine for a room to have a culture of coarse jokes and irreverent commentary. In other words, my simple model captures a common failure case in chat. Since chat is more fluid than onsite comments, it's not surprising we'd see these problems develop more quickly in that medium.
What about content?
As I thought about the model for unwelcoming comments, it occured to me that it would work just as well to model post quality. The dynamics seem similar in that some people have high standards, others have low or no standards, and the majority will tend to the current level of quality they see around them. What happens in the people with high standards start to leave? Well, I expect quality will fall off a cliff at some point.
So why shouldn't that be the priority? Well, the first reason is that it has been since the very first question was asked on the site. If you look at the tools we have for controlling content, they are quite varied: voting, closing, locking, protecting, editing, deleting, reviewing and quality filters. At least one of these tools ought to address quality problems when they crop up. Our tools for dealing with unwelcome comments (flags, deletion and suspension) are less flexible.
My second reason is more nuanced: quality is contextual. When I read complaints about quality on the site, it's not uncommon for people to focus not on obviously junk content, but on posts that have more subtle flaws. Maybe the code should be checking for system call errors or avoid a certain security flaw or stop using global variables for everything. It's not so much that answers are wrong as that they fail to exemplify excellence in the craft of programming. It might be acceptable to have such code in a throw-away script, but it shouldn't be used in a public answer where unsuspecting new programmers might learn bad habits.
One of the things we've learned through user research is that programmers read more than just the top answer to a question. This is good because it's not uncommon to see the top two answers of popular questions be 1) an ultra-pragmatic answer that gives a solution and 2) a detailed answer explaining the nuances readers might come across. (Randomly chosen example: How do I redirect to another webpage?) It might be that the best answer for a particular situation is the quick and dirty one. But there's also plenty of room to add another detailed answer that demonstrates the best we have to offer.
There's one more reason I think we should be working on more welcoming comments: we haven't given up on quality. Right now, we are testing custom question lists, which will help people find questions to answer. Also, we will be testing the next iteration of the ask a question wizard soon. And there are a few more projects in the early stages of discovery which ought to help users produce better content.
Everyone codes now
Our annual survey reported:
Each month, about 50 million people visit Stack Overflow to learn, share, and build their careers. We estimate that 21 million of these people are professional developers and university-level students.
So who are the ~29 million people who visit Stack Overflow and are not developers? Some of them are astronomers who use R, journalists who use Git and Community Managers who use NetLogo to get their jobs done. Every indication is that there will be more non-programmers in the future. I think there are two possible consequences:
Code that non-programmers use can be less concerned about best practices.
Non-programmers will need help from programmers to get applications that meet their needs.
When I worked at JPL, I was responsible for processing spectrometer data into useful atmospheric science products. The scientists wrote their algorithms in FORTRAN and provided executables that we ran on global observations. For a few months after launch, everything seemed to be going well. But we started noticing that the science algorithms were taking longer and longer to finish. After some investigation, we discovered the executables were pulling in all the rows in the database into memory and then filtering down to the relevant dataset. Not only was that a lot of unneeded I/O overhead, but the algorithm used to select the data was something like O(n2). So as we added more data, processing took exponentially longer.
Since it was too late to change the science software, we created a hack: every discrete dataset would go into its own schema and we'd pass the connection string for that subset schema to the science executables. Eventually, we built an entire system around that concept that created schemas from the complete dataset as needed. I would have prefered to fix the queries so they had a where clause. But my job was to make everything work, so that's what I did.
It's far too late to say that Stack Overflow is for programmers; we already have a majority of non-developers using the content on this site. So the question is how do we accommodate those who are new to the mysteries of code. Yes, we need to be strict about pure junk. (But please don't use comments.) However when confronted with code that, say, will never scale properly, we ought to kindly and helpfully point that out. This is, afterall, a teaching opportunity.
The diversity of Stack Exchange
Ok, let's get real. The immediate reason we started the Welcome Wagon is that our annual survey annually reveals we don't have a very diverse user base on Stack Overflow. There are good reasons to worry about that even if you don't care about bad PR. Like most companies, we do care about getting good press, so this is likely to be one of our priorities for as long as it is seen as a problem.
We have a lot more diversity sitting just outside programmer Jerusalem. The network is still male-dominated, of course. But the sites themselves host an incredible variety of topics beyond programming. It demonstrates that the Q&A format can be welcoming to a variety of people. I'm incredibly proud to be a part of these communities and we ought to do what we can to avoid the sort of catastrophic collapse that my model suggests is possible for any of our sites.
This is a great essay, Jon, thanks for sharing these thoughts. – Josh Caswell Dec 15 '18 at 19:18
I have a number of currently noisy and overlapping thoughts on this through and well-presented answer. I may come back with a more substantive comment later. For now, I stand behind a lot of what you say, but I think you give “question quality” short shrift, and/or underestimate the numbing proportion of new questions which are just hopeless. I feel that every action you applaud in the section on comment curation, you dismiss or diminish when it comes to question curation, and vice versa. But outside of that, I am extremely impressed with this answer. – Dan Bron Dec 16 '18 at 11:44
It's far too late to say that Stack Overflow is for programmers I just can't agree with this. We have to have a minimum level of skill required to properly ask questions on SO. Removing that barrier is just opening the floodgates, and is already destroying the quality standards. This is likely the dichotomy between SE and curators; we deal with enough junk in a day, and want that limited as much as possible, and see loosening the standards as the first step to ruin. Your analysis is missing another class of user: those that believe in the mission above all else. – fbueckert Feb 26 at 18:55
@fbueckert: If you re-read the section that you quoted from, you might see that I'm talking about readers, not posters necessarily. My analysis absolutely considers people who believe in the mission, but I suppose it wasn't as clear as it could be. It seems almost certain that if some system better than Stack Overflow gains traction, we'll quickly lose users such as yourself. I think the solution is to get more people onboard with the mission now while we have a chance. – Jon Ericson♦ Feb 26 at 19:43
Quantity has a quality all it's own. That's not usually used as a positive descriptor, though. Yes, if there was another system without this silly welcoming push, SE would lose a good chunk of it's userbase, and perhaps starting the spiral you're demonstrating. I think there can be a balance between being welcoming and maintaining quality, but it requires additional effort from new users. The current methods push far too much onto the established userbase, and indirectly faults us for the issues. – fbueckert Feb 26 at 20:17
@fbueckert: We're close to announcing the results of our Ask a Question Wizard. The results are not dissimilar from the results of the question template experiment. People who get the more structured guidance are less likely to ask. We strongly suspect that it's because they didn't know how much effort was required. It's a very encouraging result. – Jon Ericson♦ Feb 26 at 20:51
I'd agree with that being pretty encouraging. But there needs to be a comparison between question rates with, and without, the wizard, along with relative quality comparisons. That's where much of this falls down; we can slow down the flood, but when most of what we get is junk, we still really only see junk. I doubt I'm the only one completely exhausted at trying to gently guide users into something approaching our standards, only to have that blow up in my face more often than not. – fbueckert Feb 26 at 21:03
Great answer, and a powerful illustration of a point that can be very difficult to get across, both within SE and elsewhere. – duplode Jun 4 at 16:31
I hope this isn't considered thread necromancy, but I came across this discussion while considering this exact issue. I believe SE does have a bit of a problem with seeming to be unwelcoming. For me the key point was hit on in the original question here:
I'm coming from the perspective of someone relatively new to SE and focusing mostly on the English language & Usage and English Language Learners stacks. I really like the standard of rigor that users apply and the heart put into researching answers, and I've found most of the comments to be helpful and useful. That's why I joined the site and began participating, but I was quickly put off by behavior from more senior members.
What I have found unwelcoming has been the close voting of "imperfect questions" and downvoting of legitimate answers to questions deemed unfit for the community. I understand that many of those on the site are scholars and experts who expect a certain level of self-study, and there are questions from lazy students which deserve to be refused without some reseach, but my feeling is that it goes too far.
Closing questions because they are not rigourous enough, or don't have an accompanying essay explaining how their research left them unclear on some fine point seems harsh to me. Thus far I haven't asked a question which has been voted closed, so this isn't a personal reaction--at least not on that score. The downvoting of fair answers to imperfect questions is another matter.
My suggestions are these:
Users should reserve downvoting for answers that give incorrect answers.
If it's incomplete, make a comment on the answer or give a more complete answer. Don't upvote. Instead, upvote the better answers. The cream will rise to the top.
Users should reserve the option to close answers for duplicates, wrong category, incomprehensible, or [edit] clearly of no value to the community.
If truly a duplicate, put a link to to the older thread when closing. If it's in the wrong category, have the thread moved. If it's comprehensible but poorly worded, edit the question or ask for clarification. (edit: I understand much of this is already being done.)
If a question has the appearance of an academic inquiry that lacks effort, flag it as such and ask them for what research they've done (like what happens now), but if it's a simple question that can be easily answered either leave it for someone who is willing to handle such questions or just answer it. Trying to discuss why it is they don't understand something is usually less productive than giving a good explanation.
[edit] The standard by which questions are accepted can be broadened without compromising the quality of answers on the site.
And if there is a thread where someone asks a question that may not really merit an answer, but some kind soul does put in a decent effort, let the answer be unless it's actually unhelpful to the asker. If it's just a personal feeling the question isn't good enough, I think downvoting good questions is antithetical to the purpose of the site. At the very least it is unwelcoming.
But, I'm new. Maybe I don't get how closing questions that can actually be answered or downvoting fair answers to such questions helps things. I'm just saying that it does feel unwelcoming to me and I suspect it has the same effect on others.
answered Jun 3 at 8:28
MichaelMichael
Reserve the option to close answers for duplicates, wrong category, or incomprehensible. Off topic questions do need to be closed and deleted, and there are many off topic questions where changing tags or migration aren't an option, because they're off topic everywhere on stack exchange. To be closed as duplicate a link to the duplicate is already required and displayed prominently in a banner at the top of the question. – Magisch Jun 3 at 11:18
Reserve downvoting for answers to that give incorrect answers. That is a cultural change which might be positive but is unenforceable by the software unless you require reasons for downvote, which is a suggestion that has been discussed and declined a good two or three hundred times so far. – Magisch Jun 3 at 11:19
"I think downvoting good questions is antithetical to the purpose of the site" You're not going to get pretty much anyone to disagree with that here. The problem is you've defined "literally every question" as "a good question", rather than defining "questions that are actually useful to the community" as "good questions", the way the site itself has defined it. – Servy Jun 3 at 21:57
But regardless, thanks for confirming that SE is incorrect to focus on comments, in in your eyes as a new user, and that it's actually the very idea of having quality standards, and the closing and downvoting of bad content, that you as a new user find unwelcoming. – Servy Jun 3 at 21:59
@Servy I must thank you, as your comments on acceptable questions really illustrates exactly what I was talking about. You would prefer an exclusive, not-overly welcoming environment on SE, and I can see the benefit in that, but I believe an adjustment to the standard can be made and actually increase the usefulness of SE to all of its users. On the other hand, the polite snark with which you dismissed me ("but if that's what you're looking for...there are plenty of other places that offer it") cuts against my argument that comments aren't the main issue. :P – Michael Jun 4 at 0:28
@Michael This is the inherent clash here. You want to change what SE is and looks like, and a bunch of people see this as it becoming worse, while you see it as becoming better. You probably won't find much support for that here, as meta tends to be rather conservative as far as SE is concerned. – Magisch Jun 4 at 7:25
@Troyen Sure, some questions are contentious as to whether they're in scope or not in various communities. There's always a line somewhere. But this answer seems to think that lots of questions unambiguously and contentiously poor questions belong here. – Servy Jun 4 at 14:50
@Michael "There are questions there that have been closed that would, in my opinion, be useful to the community." And yet your answer makes a point of saying you don't think people should be allowed to downvote or close questions that aren't useful to the community. So that's clearly not what you've said thus far. If there's a particular category of questions that you feel is generally useful to the community, despite meeting a close criteria, then explain why you think those types of questions are useful and shouldn't be closed. – Servy Jun 4 at 14:54
@Michael The closure criteria are the result of lots of discussions over an extended period of time to determine what is and isn't useful. You should familiarize yourself with those discussions, see why the current closure criteria exist, and if you have compelling evidence for why different criteria would be better, provide it. But just saying, "people shouldn't be closing questions because someone might find it useful," isn't going to be compelling argument for many. – Servy Jun 4 at 14:55
@Michael Just dismissing anyone that disagrees with you as being snarky and insulting, purely because they don't agree with completely destroying all of the core values with the site, is not appropriate. It's not snark to tell you that there are lots of sites out there that work in exactly the way you want this site to work. It's not snark, or unwelcoming, to tell you that SE was founded on the premise of being different from those sites. You're more than welcome to participate in the site, but you're expected to meet the site's standards while doing so. – Servy Jun 4 at 14:58
Using question, "legitimacy" is a common defense against curation. To be blunt, how badly (or even if) you need to solve the problem isn't something we weigh when curating. It's an often heard refrain to guilt curators into bypassing their question. And it doesn't work. If you want help on SE, then meet the quality standards. If you can't, or won't, do that, well, then I'm sorry, but your question doesn't belong here. – fbueckert Jun 4 at 15:47
Additionally, one of the primary reasons to close questions to to allow the asker to edit it into shape. At which point, it can be reopened. Unless it's egregious spam or rude, it usually has until the roomba comes and grabs it before it gets deleted. – fbueckert Jun 4 at 15:51
Your standards are looser than ours. There's nothing wrong with that, but you're going to get a whole lot of pushback about trying to get curators to loosen up. If you've done any amount of curation for any length of time, you learn quick that people don't appreciate you for going easy on them. So most people now vote quick, vote often, and have no issue with new users needing to put more effort into their posts in order to allow them. – fbueckert Jun 4 at 16:18
Thank you for your answer. I appreciate the open-mindedness of it and the honest perspective from a new users. I very much appreciate your demonstration of understanding of the prevailing perspective. There's things to chew on here. I'll be interested if your perspective changes, over time and as you see more and more (very similar) questions to see if it stays the same, converges towards the existing consensus, or something else. And welcome to EL&U! That's my primary site. – Dan Bron Jun 4 at 16:39
@Servy, Michael, I've deleted some comments that were starting to get heated and were going in circles. I don't think either of you is going to convince the other, and both of you can make your cases in answers. – Monica Cellio♦ Jun 4 at 20:24
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Let's use the Snark Detector to actually find out if the Contributor Indicator is having any effect where we want it to
Stack Overflow has engaged in ideological censorship and unwelcoming behavior
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The Goal of Teams: Our Follow-Up to Your Questions [closed]
A few weeks ago, we came to meta with an idea called Teams.
For those who didn’t read the first post (we can’t blame you: it was a long read!), the idea behind Teams is to give users of Stack Overflow a way to showcase their team projects and achievements on a shared page and check out what other teams are building.
We also shared longer term ideas for Teams, including Q&A, job openings, and — yes — following (more on that below).
First, we’d like to thank everyone who took the time to add answers and comments, or sign up for the private beta. Your feedback is valuable and we appreciate it. There were a number of questions and concerns, and we’d like to address those here.
What problem(s) are we trying to solve?
Teams started from an observation that one of the most common use cases for the About Me section of the user profile on Stack Overflow is to showcase your projects and achievements, which breaks down when...
… A majority of your programming work is done as a Team. Individual user profiles have trouble reflecting this (after all, your profile is about you). With Teams, we’d like to make it easier for you to show your association with others on the projects you work on.
… Your programming work isn’t mono-dimensional. You probably have a day job, but you may also contribute to one or two open-source projects, or be a member of a handful of user groups or communities. With Teams, we’d like to give you an easier way to represent your role in all these different things in a more structured way (rather than flattening all this information in your individual profile).
In their initial iteration, a Team will simply be a page on Stack Overflow where a group of developers can tell the community about who they are and showcase their best work. Just like a user profile, but for multiple people (i.e. a free form about section, links to your website, GitHub, Twitter, and a team roster).
Teams are not a new site. They’re much more modest:
Who are Teams for?
We envision Teams to be used for professional teams, open-source projects, user groups, or even programming communities endemic to Stack Overflow working towards a common goal (e.g. organizing question lists, analyzing Stack Overflow data, writing bots, etc.).
So far, it’s encouraging to see that a wide range of teams that have signed up for the private beta. We’ve had companies (some large, some small), major open-source projects, single-person OSS projects (e.g. YouCast), user groups (e.g. Git, Docker), and even Stack Overflow communities (e.g. sopython).
Of course, you might be wondering, "but why would my Team ever want to showcase its work on Stack Overflow?" In the original meta post, we heard:
My team already has a company or project website.
I’m just not interested.
In any case, that’s fine: Teams are functionally and socially optional, and you won’t need to be a member of a Team to participate on Stack Overflow (you don’t have to check out anyone else’s Team, either).
What about authenticating teams?
Regarding authenticity, it’s already a hypothetical problem on Stack Overflow (e.g. you can easily pretend to be Guido Van Rossum if you want to), but it hasn’t been a practical problem.
We realize that just like user profiles, Teams as a feature must be resilient to misinformation and trolling. In the short term, we might surface user reputation on Team pages as a solution to communicate trustworthiness. In the longer term, we’d like to explore other ways to establish trustworthiness for Teams (maybe including "verified" Teams), but it’s too early to talk about those in detail.
What about teams disparaging other Teams / offensive content / spam?
The same argument applies here as well. Users can already disparage others and post offensive content on their user profile, but this hasn’t been a major problem on Stack Overflow so far.
For the most egregious cases (i.e. offensive content), Teams will have to support some form of flagging and moderation. We still have some work to do here (and we need to ensure we don’t create more work for our moderators), so we’re not quite ready to discuss the details.
As far as the private beta is concerned, we’ll take on moderation ourselves. Moderation tools will however be an integral part of our work as we move towards public beta.
What about conflicts within teams?
Dealing with conflict is inherently a personal thing, and it’s difficult to anticipate how we’ll deal with conflicts we haven’t seen yet (and maybe they won’t even be a problem — one can always hope!).
Either way, we understand that this is probably a problem we’ll have to deal with sooner or later. We think it’s reasonable to go into private beta without a more detailed strategy (as noted above, we’ll take on moderation ourselves for now), but we’ll make sure to return to meta and discuss this before we launch into public beta.
Can you be a member of multiple teams?
Is this for Stack Overflow only?
For the time being, yes. We’ll consider expanding Teams to other Stack Exchange communities based on how successful it is on Stack Overflow.
Is Stack Overflow becoming a social network?
No. One fear that was raised in the comments was that Teams introduces a way for users to form around non-programming interests on Stack Overflow. While these interests may apply to a wide range of developers (gaming, books, movies, etc.), that is not our intention with Teams.
Our intention is that Teams will form around programming-related groups (companies, open-source projects, or programming communities endemic to Stack Overflow). We don’t want to encourage groups which form around non-programming related topics (that’s what the broader Stack Exchange network is for!). If this becomes an issue, then we will address it.
Okay. Now as far as "following" goes, this is a mistake on our part; we jumped the gun here. Originally we thought of “following” as a feature we might introduce later on if we added Team job openings. That is, if you’re interested in a Team, then you could be notified when they post new jobs.
At some point we started thinking that "following" could be expanded to possibly other team content. To be honest, we didn’t really think it all the way through; thanks for bringing it up in the meta responses.
Following won’t exist until we have job openings on Team pages (more on that below). Once we do, following (which is probably not the best name for this feature) will only be used to be notified of new openings. We don’t have further plans around following at this time.
How is Team Q&A going to work?
Judging from the feedback we received on Team Q&A, we realize we have a lot more thinking to do (e.g. a better idea of what content is acceptable and why, a plan to ensure Teams aren’t used for spam, a strategy to address abandoned Teams).
Team Q&A wasn’t going to be a part of the beta (we hoped to ship it in Q1 next year), so we have time to revisit and perhaps rethink it (maybe with an emphasis around product and end-user support). In hindsight, we probably should have made that clearer in the initial announcement.
Team Q&A may be complex enough to deserve its own beta. We’ll return to meta when we have thought through some of the issues surrounding it. Once again, thank you for highlighting the issues we need to explore further.
Is this an attempt to integrate the Careers product with Stack Overflow?
It’s not our only goal (we think Teams can be useful for groups that aren’t going to use our Careers products, such as OSS projects), but it is indeed one of them. Here’s why:
If you’ve been around Stack Overflow for a while (even a short one), you probably noticed a few folks you admire. If they took the time to fill out their profile, you might also know what they work on, and you might even want to work with them if the opportunity arises.
On the flipside, they might be looking to hire someone like you (they might even be hiring on Stack Overflow’s Careers platform). But, you don’t know that, because developer hiring is broken, and relegates to an afterthought some of the things that matter the most in a development job: who you’ll work with, and on what projects.
Teams is thus our attempt to cut to the chase and let you start your job search with a team and its projects (which is a bit similar to how you might become interested in a job at a conference or meetup, after watching someone present their work).
In that regard, Teams are something we’re building upon the foundation of Stack Overflow Q&A. They don’t change Q&A. Teams are something new that you can decide to be a part of if you’d like, but we won’t expect you to be a member of a Team in order to participate fully in the Stack Overflow Q&A you love.
Nonetheless, we do realize that many of you are concerned that pain points in Q&A aren’t getting solved because our engineering resources are diverted towards projects like Teams. We agree, and it’s why we’re transitioning members from the Careers team to the Core team to help work on those new projects (Roberta was our first developer to transition, I did so too).
That’s all we have for now. I’m sure there will be more questions and comments. As we move into this private beta phase, we’ll learn more and have more answers for you. Once again, thank you to everyone who’s provided feedback so far. We appreciate the passion you have for Stack Overflow and its community.
You can still sign up for the private beta.
The private beta will start soon (end of October). If you would like to help us test this, please sign up at the form link below. We will need to know the following things about you:
Your Stack Overflow profile URL
Your team name
Your team size (team size especially helps us because we will want to see how teams of varying sizes will utilize the team page).
Sign up for the private beta
discussion teams
HynesHynes
closed as off-topic by Robert Columbia, Code Lღver, peterh, Arun Vinoth, EJoshuaS Aug 28 '18 at 21:19
"The problem described here can no longer be reproduced. Changes to the system or to the circumstances affecting the asker have rendered it obsolete. If you encounter a similar problem, please post a new question." – Robert Columbia, Code Lღver, peterh, Arun Vinoth, EJoshuaS
This makes the new feature seems better suited for the community now. Gotta love the built-in feedback engine that is meta. – ryanyuyu Oct 22 '15 at 16:16
-1 I still don't see any value added with this social feature. Aside from you guys putting a careers type feature into stackoverflow and burdening it. – JonH Oct 22 '15 at 16:42
This looks like it has some real potential, unfortunately I don't see myself using it at all. I'm just not getting how this helps me. I'd say this looks like a solution in search of a problem, but I'm guessing that it's just me (as usual) and that based on the feedback you received others find this something they'd use often. – j08691 Oct 22 '15 at 16:43
@j08691 - It's not just a problem for you, its for a LOT of folks on SO. Just look at the other post. I personally find this a feature that disrupts SO in general. – JonH Oct 22 '15 at 16:46
@JonH: Part of the goal of teams is that it not disrupt the workflow of people not interested in team pages. I think we will learn a lot in the private beta about how to achieve that goal. The biggest unknown that I see is that team pages might impact moderators (who are already overworked). We just won't know how that will play out until we get some actual teams using the feature. – Jon Ericson♦ Oct 22 '15 at 17:24
"We get some actual teams using the feature" but what is that "Actual Teams" I don't know about you but I highly doubt anyone is going to get all of their co-workers to join a team or branch into teams just because of their likes? I mean to me this is social networking - and for a site like this it's asinine. I mean you guys have posted twice about this and none of it is convincing. Is this like GitHub where developers become "Contributors". You guys keep saying the key word "think" this tells me and others that you guys don't even know what this is. – JonH Oct 22 '15 at 17:27
@j08691 We (I work on this with Hynes) understand that Teams aren't going to be immediately useful to everyone on SO (that's a tall order!). We hope to start building some structure around Team pages (which can be compelling as-is to some users, but not necessarily to a majority), and progressively add new features to make them compelling to more people (e.g. maybe by addressing the support use case Shog mentioned in his response on the last post with Q&A, etc.). Exactly what those should be is undetermined as of yet (that's what the beta's for, among other things). – Thomas Orozco Oct 22 '15 at 17:30
@ThomasOrozco - Why don't you guys spend the time fixing all the current issues with SE in general instead of making up some random features that your users are telling you you don't need. For instance, search is one prime example, why not build on that...search is pivotal in any application - especially one like this. The current search engine and search UI in general lacks. Stop building features and start improving the user experience and core important things related to questions such as search. If you can make search solid people won't even bother searching google. – JonH Oct 22 '15 at 17:42
So the main problem this feature solves is that it makes you able to showcase your team accomplishments. And then you tout that as not being socially motivated? I don't think showcasing personal achievements is a problem that Stack Overflow needs to solve, nor that developers in general have a problem with on a daily basis. – Travis J Oct 22 '15 at 17:45
@TravisJ - No one will use it...mark my words...the people that will use it will either be employees of the company or teams that no one will be interested and they'll fade away because programmers don't really care about this sort of stuff. Careers is the right place for this not stackoverflow. – JonH Oct 22 '15 at 17:46
You took the original response to heart and came up with a much more reasonable feature in both scope and presentation. I'm part of sopython, and while I'm still hesitant about this, I think at this point participating in the beta will be the most productive way to determine if it will be beneficial. – davidism Oct 22 '15 at 18:09
Folks, these things will exist, and they will be easy to discover, but nobody is going to be pushing "come join our team" down your throat, nor will we be pushing careers on anyone that has no interest there - beyond the job ads that you normally see, and have seen for quite a while. This stuff is there for you if you want or need it, it will not be getting in your way otherwise. I think we have a pretty good record that speaks for itself when it comes to not forcing anything on anyone that doesn't want it, starting in the very early days with reduced ads. Let's not imagine the worst? – Tim Post♦ Oct 22 '15 at 18:46
I was one of the (somewhat) vocal critics on the original post, and I would like to say, that while some of my concerns still stand, I'd really like to thank the team for not blindly ignoring the community on this. I was (and I'm sure many others) concerned that the company would ignore the (frankly, quite large) backlash against the original posting, and that it would spell the beginning of the end of the great record of dialogue between the company and the community. I don't that that's the case anymore, so hooray! – Linuxios Oct 22 '15 at 18:49
@JonH We just finished collecting responses from that after chasing down folks that didn't reply, and we had the annual product summit fall right in the middle of that (which I failed to account / plan for). The final list is going out to our warehouse tomorrow. Some stuff was shipped, the rest of it is going out Monday / Tuesday of next week. – Tim Post♦ Oct 22 '15 at 19:06
@ThomasOrozco: It just feels like were back to dialogue, rather than the other post, which felt like a battle. I'm still skeptical, and I do think that Travis got it right: "So the main problem this feature solves is that it makes you able to showcase your team accomplishments. And then you tout that as not being socially motivated?", however, I'm not really worried about SO as a whole anymore. – Linuxios Oct 22 '15 at 19:06
Call it Projects.
I read your post and got a much better idea what problem "Teams" should solve. However, all you are writing about is showcasing work and displaying (open source) projects. If this feature was named "Projects", some of the concerns raised in the comments would be better addressed.
Can you work on multiple projects? instead of Can you be a member of multiple teams? (the answer is obvious and the same)
Is Stack Overflow becoming a social network? No, we care about content more than people.
In case you want to show your affiliation with an organisation, you can still put that in your (careers) profile.
davidism
BergiBergi
But in some definitions project is something that needs to be done within limited scope for a set amount of time. Teams is not that, it is scoped but not within a set amount of time, right? – rene Oct 22 '15 at 21:12
@rene Hm, I didn't mean it in the management sense. I'd define a project primarily by its goal, not by a deadline. – Bergi Oct 22 '15 at 21:20
@TylerH: I don't see why every project would need to get "finished". – Bergi Oct 22 '15 at 21:42
Even if this isn't the perfect name, I think the possibility of rethinking the "branding" of the feature is worth considering - in the original post, a few unfortunate choices of words emphasised parts that are explicitly de-emphasised here. "Teams" do still sound very social to me, even now I know that's not what "Stack Overflow Teams" are intended to be. – IMSoP Oct 22 '15 at 21:51
@TylerH: Complete is hard to define. First major release? First point release? Something that doesn't have releases? Major open-source library that is still having major features built? – Linuxios Oct 22 '15 at 22:23
@TylerH: I've got many open-ended projects. Of course they have milestones that are completed and so, but the project doesn't really end until the product is no more used anywhere and the last bit of my code is rotten. – Bergi Oct 22 '15 at 22:24
A problem "teams" solves for Q&A is large companies finally getting it right by sending us a single contact to work with as they shift support over to SO properly. That's happening on a pretty big scale, I'm not sure if "projects" fits the use case as well. Not really saying it's a bad idea, just kinda thinking out loud. – Tim Post♦ Oct 22 '15 at 23:08
@TimPost if company support contacts is a main goal, add the word "Support" to Bergi's "Projects" – charlietfl Oct 23 '15 at 2:15
@TimPost huh? Now we are all about one feature that was not even clearly spelled out in the original post? Are the Tellericks and AWSs of the world really reaching out to the SO staff and saying: "We want you to take over our Q&A, please." Given how terrible IBM's help for MQ Broker, now IBM Service Bus, and Clear Case/Quest are I would love to see it, but then why not just a branded version of SO, no Team necessary. – Joshua Drake Oct 23 '15 at 3:16
@TimPost Wait, so you're saying Teams is an attempt at making an official interface for 3rd party libraries/APIs to do bug support here? – TylerH Oct 23 '15 at 5:17
I find it funny that the objecters don't object to e.g. GNU being a "project". Do you expect it to finish? Soon? What exactly are the success criteria? Etc. The word has a broader meaning than in the strict line management lingo. (I'm not sure Teams isn't actually good enough, or possibly better -- like many others here, I don't really see the need for this feature, and don't care strongly what you choose to call it.) – tripleee Oct 23 '15 at 7:12
The sopython team has at least five bigger projects. Do you want us to create five minimal project pages now that contain little content when we actually want to highlight the persons that are part of the team? – poke Oct 23 '15 at 10:28
Support of products is an incidental goal, but also a nice one, It's just one problem teams helps to solve, not the main goal, just a use case that eases a bit of pain. Please don't read more into it than that :) – Tim Post♦ Oct 23 '15 at 13:54
@TimPost funny, because it was the ONLY problem I saw that Teams might solve... – Joshua Drake Oct 23 '15 at 13:57
I have to agree with this. I think the fact that this is called Teams seem to carry an implicit secondary meaning that was fairly detrimental to this entire idea. – Zizouz212 Oct 25 '15 at 0:09
You still haven't answered what problem you are trying to solve, you've only addressed what Teams is meant to do. How will Teams benefit me?
Let's take this point by point:
...the user profile on Stack Overflow is to showcase your projects and achievements, which breaks down when...
How does showcasing projects and achievements break down?
What do you mean "break down"? Obviously the content is visible and rendered correctly. So what do you mean by "break down"? What goal is unachievable, considering there's enormous flexibility to include links, images and a large amount of text?
And how does your solution solve this "break down"? It seems the only usable addition you've provided is the ability to query these relationships, because the "About" page for projects doesn't look that different from the "About" page for profiles.
...programming work is done as a Team. Individual user profiles have trouble reflecting this...
What trouble, exactly, is encountered in reflecting that I work on a team?
It's not difficult, at all, to add "I work at XYZ" with a link to the company or project website. The proposed Teams feature does not have anywhere near the power or flexibility necessary to showcase the actual product (with about, demo and documentation pages) or to manage a team (with communication channels, backlogs, sprints or Gantt charts), so what exactly is the point of the Teams page other than to group some user profiles together? And what problem does that solve?
With Teams, we’d like to make it easier for you to show your association with others on the projects you work on.
What benefit is there to me to show my association with others? And this only works for other SO profiles, right?
Many of my co-workers don't have SO profiles. They aren't interested in SO profiles. So really I'll only be showcasing my association with other SO users. But why do I want to do that? What benefit is there for me? A company or project About page can easily list everyone involved on the project, with links to all of their social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc), so how would a separate, more limited and less representative "About" page on a different site help our team? It seems like any marginally successful project (in terms of usage) would quickly outgrow the very limited nature of Teams.
...we’d like to give you an easier way to represent your role in all these different things in a more structured way...
Why do I need a more structured representation of my various roles?
The use of "structured" points again to the seeming primary point of this project... to build a database. I don't see how such a database would provide any benefit to me.
At least on a service like Facebook there is some trade off, in that providing structured data about my social network gives me access to tools that I can use to enhance communication, etc, within that network.
Teams doesn't seem to provide any real benefit to its users while giving SE all the goodies... a big database of relationships between users. While I don't necessarily have a problem with that (I like and trust SE, so I'm willing to give you that information), you're going to have to give me more of reason to provide and update this data than just "so you can show off". And more importantly, you're going to have provide some serious incentive if you expect my co-workers who don't have SO accounts to create accounts and agree to keeping our project page updated. Because time we spend on this feature is time not spent on our product.
I guess I just don't see "Individual user profiles have trouble reflecting programming work done as a Team" as a problem in and of itself. Individual user profiles also have trouble facilitating conversations between users (though it could theoretically be done).
So the question I'd like answered is: What problem are we addressing by creating a structured way of grouping Teams, beyond the problem that it's currently not possible to create a structured way of grouping teams.
Otherwise you're just saying that we should do something because we can't currently do it, which could be said of a lot of things on SE. (Or, put another way... why?)
JDBJDB
Many of my co-workers don't have SO profiles. Perhaps the point is to convince them to make SO profiles through your "join my team---for completeness" nagging. – Michael Oct 26 '15 at 18:14
@Michael - Yes, that's the point... SO needs to provide a value prop for Teams beyond just "here's another thing you need to maintain." – JDB Oct 26 '15 at 18:34
Thanks for pitching in, JDB! We do realize Teams aren't going to be immediately useful to everyone on the site. The beta sign ups we have so far suggest they'll be useful to some people, though. Now, if that's any reassurance, in the long run, you can be confident that if Teams turn out not to be useful to anyone, they won't be useful to us, either (and they won't be worth dedicating a lot of effort to). – Thomas Orozco Oct 27 '15 at 14:58
@ThomasOrozco - I'd still like to know what the actual problem is. There will always be people who will sign up for betas, just because new === exciting. But it's going to have to solve an actual problem if it's going to be successful. – JDB Oct 27 '15 at 15:22
@JDB I think we disagree on what "problem" should mean. We explained in the original post what the problem we'd like to solve is, but you don't view it as one; that's entirely fine, and understandable (presumably, it's not a problem for you, or at least not one you feel is worth solving), but I'm afraid it means I can't really give you a better answer here. Please let me know if I'm misreading you. – Thomas Orozco Oct 27 '15 at 15:29
@ThomasOrozco - See my edit at the bottom of my post. – JDB Oct 27 '15 at 19:15
That was long, and it kinda had to be. If you've ever played with Lego Bricks, you probably understand the understated importance of things that look like this:
Of interest are the parts that form intersections. And that's what we've got here, along with a lot of talk about what's going to be built there, how it's going to be easy to get to, but not get in your way as you go about getting what you came here to do done. It's new, it's kinda big and we're at the point where we have to tell you that something is coming as we start building it in plain sight. You know everything about it that we do, and we'll make sure that stays true.
Maybe it's a new stadium, or a library, or something that town planners have decided is essential in order to bring more people into the town. Whatever it might be, there will always seem like there are more important things we could be doing other than building that thing. What about the potholes a block away? What about all that graffiti on that other side of town?
We're not putting any of that off. But we can't put this off any longer, either.
Sometimes there is just never a good time to do something and fully respect everyone's expectations at the same time. Core Q&A is never going to become a second class citizen when it comes to the amount of attention and resources we're committed to putting into it. But we really need the foundation for this laid so that a lot of other problems in and beyond Q&A can be solved, so that none of our products function like bolted-on afterthoughts.
But there are lots, and lots of things in the air, and not all of them are mutually exclusive. Deciding not to do this right now would not magically give us everything we need to solve other problems, like refining search, beefing up the spam protection layer, or the two dozen other things I really want to work on right now - and I see what I feel are quite a few assuming that we're diverting. That's not the case, we'd be obligated to announce this even if everything else was perfect, please don't read so much into the timing. Things block for many other reasons than hands needed to do them.
You can't appreciate what you don't see
What we positively must do a better job of, and it's been quite clear for some time (and broadly my fault that I've lagged the last two weeks) is being more responsive to the plethora of requests that we're currently serving in addition to what we're talking about here.
There are three of us 100% dedicated to making sure Stack Overflow as a Q&A product continues to thrive and grow. They are:
Shog9
Bluefeet
.. and more might be coming on this team. Our primary focus has been making sure long-standing and well-received community needs are met, and continue to be met timely. If you're not seeing that, it's my fault, and we'll do better.
We can't make super complicated problems magically simple enough to solve in a week, and before we fix problems, we need to figure out how. But (and this keeps repeating, which is something else I'm paying attention to) we can do a better job of letting you know what we know, even if we don't yet know very much. Some problems are just that hard at our scale.
Please don't read more into this than there is. It's new, it's big, and we wanted to tell you about it. We didn't wander off into the weeds chasing rainbow uni-squirrels, no matter how excited we seem. But we do have a lot going on, and while we promise to continue to be as transparent as we can possibly be, we humbly ask for your patience and support.
I'll be working on a series of posts here on MSO to shine some more light on what team SO has been up to lately, even if it's not as close to shipping as we'd like, because it's pretty clear to me that many would appreciate things like this more if they were more up to speed on the .. less glamorous endeavors that task us.
Tim Post♦Tim Post
You know everything about it that we do, and that is why I am concerned. – Joshua Drake Oct 22 '15 at 20:06
"There are three of us 100% dedicated to making sure Stack Overflow as a Q&A product continues to thrive and grow." - On the community team, this is great. I do however have to ask how many devs are involved with this push, as I imagine creating mockups for Teams, Documentation, and working on Careers also involves quite a few developers. – hichris123 Oct 22 '15 at 20:11
@hichris123 It varies. A significant effort is in all of those things, but we also have bandwidth to work on stuff that the community wants. Right now, we're working on making figuring out what happened to your flag much less confusing, overhauling the review history stuff so you can better see the longer-term effects you have on the site through review, overhauling the vote fraud scripts to be much smarter and a bunch of other stuff. As I indicated, I need to be more vocal about it. Constrained? Yeah. Starved? no. – Tim Post♦ Oct 22 '15 at 20:16
All we want is to know why you can't wait any longer for this. You say it as if the need for it is self-evident. Can you please elaborate? – Linuxios Oct 22 '15 at 20:26
@TimPost: It's just not very reassuring when the answer to every (and I mean every) concern voiced on the other post was "Well, we'll just find out, won't we!". – Linuxios Oct 22 '15 at 20:27
The short answer, @Linuxios, is "because we've been doing too much talking and not enough doing." We've been talking for a long time here at Stack Overflow about providing devs a way to show off what they do outside of Q&A and a small text area on the profile, and we've talked for a long time about bringing Careers and Stack Overflow a bit closer together. (We haven't talked too much publicly about this in years past because we had no good concrete ideas for how to do that.) Team pages move us closer to both of those goals, both of which we think are good for the developer community. cont'd... – Laura Oct 22 '15 at 22:13
...(cont'd) We want people to show off work they're proud of, be able to ask questions about other people's work, and to find jobs they love. We know from our annual user survey that many, many developers consider "what would I be working on" as one of the most important deciding factors when evaluating a new job. We also know that it's highly unlikely for recruiters to provide this information, and that devs like hearing from other devs. We've postponed actually building anything for a long time because we wanted to get it perfect. (cont'd..) – Laura Oct 22 '15 at 22:14
...But you know how we get to perfect? By building an MVP, getting feedback from you all, and iterating until it's better than we could have ever thought to make it on our own. – Laura Oct 22 '15 at 22:14
@Laura: OK. Two questions: 1) What make you think that team pages will be "safe" from HR/Marketing? It can end up being a public face for a company, and as discussed at length on the old post, that raises some problems. 2) Given that this seems so focused on jobs, why isn't it just part of Careers? – Linuxios Oct 22 '15 at 22:22
@Linuxios 1) I don't think Team pages necessarily have to remain "safe" from HR/Marketing. Sometimes our customers on Careers are technical people who have to hire their own team. Sometimes non-technical recruiters do understand devs. Sometimes...the two might even work together on things! 2) It's not part of Careers because jobs are just one piece of what we envision team pages to be, but for people on SO who are looking for jobs, it's a way better experience to see jobs in a context where they might actually be tempted to apply than it is to shuffle them off to another site to search. – Laura Oct 22 '15 at 22:29
@Laura If you've been doing "too much talking" then maybe you should reconsider. There has clearly been nothing to spur action. It appears that you all are simply bored. Some users are incredulous that you could be so given that issues they have raised persist on SO itself. – Joshua Drake Oct 23 '15 at 3:07
"There are three of us 100% dedicated to making sure Stack Overflow as a Q&A product continues to thrive and grow" -- you should make it clear that those are only the community managers. There are around 6 devs (me, m0sa, cky, Oded, Marc Gravell and one person on bug duty) whose primary job is improving Q&A and I don't see those numbers change anytime soon. – Sklivvz Oct 23 '15 at 9:38
@sth How is it distracting for people who just come for Q&A? If people aren't interested in Teams, they don't have to navigate to any team pages. It's not like we're going to be putting pop-ups in people's faces saying "hold on, before we let you see that answer, go check out this team!" – Laura Oct 23 '15 at 11:13
@sth Out of... seven billion humans? :-) – Sklivvz Oct 24 '15 at 16:38
@Laura "We want people to show off work they're proud of" but... do people really want a special place on Stack Overflow for that? AFAIK, most people are more than happy with that "textarea". It's simple, and lets me showcase whatever I want. In-fact the <!--summary thing for the hover card is excellent too. Stack Overflow profiles can already link to the corresponding careers.so profile, where showcasing projects is a special feature. Maybe try to get more people to join careers, not just those who are desperately looking for a job? – user3459110 Oct 25 '15 at 11:40
Let's see, a feature that will only be used for notification of new job openings...
Am I crazy, or is it really not worth spending time thinking about what to name this very basic feature? We already have notification preferences, just put it there (please excuse the hackish devtools mockup):
If it's really important that this be discoverable from within a Teams page and/or when signing up for Teams, just instruct users to follow a link to their preferences page to manage Teams notifications.
The only thing this doesn't do is let you get notifications from some Teams and not others. You could just as easily do that by adding another section at the same level as "Preferences" (what are these sub-tab things called? drawers, maybe?). throw it into "Applications", etc.
AirAir
Yep, this is indeed pretty much what "following" was meant to be (with a tweak that you'd want to know about jobs available in other teams)! – Thomas Orozco Oct 23 '15 at 17:08
Given that your wording in the proposed screenshot is "your Teams", one of us has entirely misunderstood the feature. – Ben Voigt Oct 23 '15 at 23:55
@Ben: Most concrete quote I can pull up from the Android app in an elevator is from the announcement: * Eventually we will also add a list of teams you’re a member of onto your profile, but it won’t be in the beta.* – Air Oct 24 '15 at 0:08
While reading through the previous post, I thought that this proposal could be of value to StackOverflow except for just one area where it lacks
You mentioned that
Here’s why we’re excited about teams:
Teams allow for a new kind of Q&A that wouldn’t be allowed right now
Teams let you show off more of what you do professionally
Teams help you hire developers or recruit for your open source project
Exploring all these one by one,
I think this is a good feature for those who use SO Careers to have. This would just serve the purpose of giving you the information about people currently involved in a company/project which may make you want to join that project, just like the current system where your profile may make a company want to hire you.
I don't think this proposal will cause problems for users who want to use just the Q&A feature any more than existence of SO Careers does.
I think this would be a perfectly legitimate extension to the current system where users' profiles show off their
an "about me"
all their questions and answers
and somewhat useful stats such as
member for [duration]
[number of] profile views
last seen [x minutes ago]
visited x days, y consecutive
Maybe a team page could show a meaningful aggregate of all this information, and a team "about me".
This just adds more information about the people that are involved in Q&A on StackOverflow and I don't think this generates any noise.
In fact, These might even work to motivate people to partake in Q&A like reputation and badges currently do.
But there is one area where this proposal lacks, which is the abuse of SO Q&A system.
It introduces a new kind of Q&A.
We’re looking to provide a place for questions such as:
"How does [Company X] run PostgreSQL at an enterprise scale?"
"What's a typical budget for [Company Y] when they upgrade their data centers?", or
"How does [Company Z] keep their distributed team working together even though they’re spread across multiple time zones?"
I think that the concept of asking a personal question to a person or a bunch of persons is foreign for StackOverflow where questions that are allowed are supposed to be answerable by anyone with knowledge in that domain.
For example, the current SO way is to ask that question like
How do I run PostgreSQL at an enterprise scale with my specific requirements that are included in the question?
And one of the answers from a representative of team that belongs to [Company X] could be
At [Company X], we doodled foobar so that baz does not overflow in PostgreSQL and thus achieved enterprise scale
along with other answers from other experts in that domain.
So perhaps one way that the teams feature could help SO Q&A is by contributing to the discoverablitiy problem* - a team may want to subscribe to a specific tag, or may be summoned by a @mention when a question regarding intricate implementation details about a project comes up.
One specific case that I do know that this feature may help is the openshift tag. openshift is a PaaS service which closed down their forums and recommended all their users to ask questions on SO instead, with the openshift tag.
Maybe cases like these may want to form support teams on SO and subscribe to all the questions tagged about their service and answer them quickly to show off the badges and stats earned by their support team's page as a proof of quality of the support that they offer to developers.
Other than this, like many have pointed out, if the teams are going to have their own "Team Timeline" where anyone can "post" questions to which they can "reply", then that is a bit social network-y,
Because unlike Q&A that SO is built on, this is more of a Ask Me Anything kind of thing, which I'm not saying is bad, but is just foreign to what SO currently is and is more fitting on social networks.
* See How do active answerers find questions to answer? and Help build a good "Find The Next Question To Answer" query
Peeyush KushwahaPeeyush Kushwaha
Keep an option for Pairs
That could be a very cool boost for the by mentorship and personal development as a software engineer, currently receiving too little attention in the SD world in general. If a nice tool was there and maybe support by others would somehow add to this it might be more likely that more people get incentivized to act as mentors. It would also be nice to see an option for people to move from Teams to Teams as Pairs.
Mik SeljamaaMik Seljamaa
I don't think this proposal excludes pairs, but I think we can do something better for a mentoring relationship. In particular, I'm working on a mentoring system that would allow mentors to monitor the progress of their mentees while also giving them a small bonus to get started. (My thinking on the details of mentoring has changed somewhat, but this is the basic outline.) – Jon Ericson♦ Oct 23 '15 at 15:54
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged discussion teams .
The Power of Teams: A Proposed Expansion of Stack Overflow
10 Million Questions - Let's Share Some Stories That the Number Doesn't Convey
How do active answerers find questions to answer?
A New Silver Badge That Robots Simply Can't Win
Help build a good “Find The Next Question To Answer” query
Explaining Stack Overflow: Experimenting with About Pages
Feature requests and bugs need more feedback from Stack Overflow developers
The Un-shipping of Teams
What do we want out of teams and how could we make it work?
Does Teams support Team Q&A, and if not, will it ever support it?
Joining the Teams private beta in “monitor” mode?
The Teams Private Beta is Starting
Introducing the Developer Story
What team member SO Activity should we gather and show on Teams?
Stack Overflow Jobs Update - April 2018
Why is Stack Overflow Team not free for open source projects?
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Spurs set to make Ghana star first signing of transfer window
metrowebukmetroTuesday 6 Jan 2009 8:11 am
Ghana midfielder Stephen Appiah is in the frame to become Harry Redknapp’s first signing of the transfer window, after training with Tottenham.
Appiah, who has been a free agent since the summer following a dispute with Turkish side Fenerbahce, looks set to be offered a deal until the end of the season.
Stephen Appiah has been training with Tottenham
The 28-year-old has suffered knee injuries in the past, but Redknapp is confident that will not be a problem and is hoping to arrange a deal.
‘I watched him an awful lot for Ghana – about six times – but I ended up taking Sulley Muntari because Juventus were asking £14million for Appiah,’ said Redknapp.
‘Appiah was the captain of Ghana. He played in midfield with (Michael) Essien and Muntari – that was their midfield.
‘He was a terrific player but had a bit of a problem with his knee – and he went to Turkey. But he is fine now; he’s fit and looks okay.
‘He is going to have a week’s training. We will have a chat with him; Daniel (Levy, Spurs chairman) will speak to his people and see what the deal is. He is a good player – if he is fit he’s a terrific player.’
Redknapp desperately wants to bolster his numbers for the second half of the season, with talks ongoing for Portsmouth’s Jermain Defoe.
Spurs have also put in a bid for Middlesbrough’s Stewart Downing, who like Defoe also wants to leave his club.
Redknapp refuted suggestions that he has unsettled players and went as far as stating that he would keep Defoe at Fratton Park if he was still Pompey boss.
‘(Peter) Crouch and Defoe are a terrific partnership, and that is why I bought them to play together when I was at Portsmouth,’ he said.
‘I’m not waiting for an answer about Defoe. If I could get someone in tomorrow then I would – someone who is available.
‘It has to be someone that I want. I have not got a long list.’
Redknapp signed Defoe for Pompey just under a year ago for around £9million, and admits that paying much more for the striker could pose a problem for Levy.
‘Probably, there would be a problem – and I can understand that,’ said the manager.
Redknapp was also interested in taking Sunderland’s Pascal Chimbonda on loan, but added: ‘Daniel spoke to Niall Quinn, and he’s not for loan. They bought him and don’t want to loan him – I can understand that.’
GhanaHarry RedknappStephen AppiahTottenham Hotspur FC
Porn site pitch invader interrupts Cricket World Cup final between England and New Zealand
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer struggling to convince United to improve Bruno Fernandes bid
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WWII sweethearts will meet again after 70 years apart
Jen MillsThursday 21 Jan 2016 4:58 pm
Norwood and Joyce Morris spoke to each other again via Skype (Picture: Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)
A veteran who fought in WWII will reunite with his wartime girlfriend, more than 70 years after they last saw each other.
Norwood Thomas, aged 93, lost touch with Joyce Morris, now 88, after the war ended and he went back to America while she moved to Australia.
Despite all the years in between, the two struck up a friendship again last year and have been talking on Skype, reminiscing about their courtship in England when he was 21 and she was just 17.
A few months after they met the two had to separate, when Norwood parachuted into Normandy.
Norwood asked her to come to the USA and marry him, but she said she was just beginning her nursing training, apparently not realising how serious the proposal was.
MORE: Places to go on first dates – ranked from worst to best
Norwood holds a photo of Joyce as a young woman (Picture: Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)
Both went on to marry other people, but say they never forget their first love.
Since the story of their reunion online went public in the Virginia Pilot, readers have been donating hundreds of pounds to fund a reunion for them.
More than 300 people gave some money to help the two reunite after so many years apart, bringing the total to more than $7,000.
‘I’m numb,’ Norwood said. ‘
I have no idea what my emotions are going to be once we meet face to face.’
The two plan to spend Valentine’s Day together.
MORE: Pub owner hits out at world’s worst wedding guests after one-star Tripadvisor review
Norwood will travel more than 10,000 miles (Picture: Google Maps)
Joyce now suffers from sight problems while Norwood is recovering from cancer, but when they meet next month they can reminisce about the moment they first saw each other on the banks of the Thames in London, when Norwood spotted Joyce and her friend, and invited them on a boat ride.
The Virginia Pilot was there the first time they spoke again on Skype, reporting that Norwood asked Joyce, ‘Tell me, do you see me now?’
She replied that sadly she can’t see properly anymore.
‘Well, I’ll tell ya,’ he said. ‘I’m smiling.’
Joyce replied: ‘I bet you are.’
Is it too much to ask for a dating app to put plus-sized women first?
When I tell you I have HIV, please don't unmatch me
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Pondering the recent emergence of Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH)
Posted in Uncategorized by Mike Byrd on March 9, 2015
Almost 20 years ago I wrote the history and social analysis (here’s a shorter version) of a community-based Alinsky-style group here called Tying Nashville Together after several years of involvement as a participant observer. TNT was an ethnically and economically diverse ecumenical coalition of congregations and neighborhood associations that provided unique insight into social movements and voluntarism in Nashville. I was even able to publish a chapter that was rejected from the book project itself. Given those interests, I have kept up with other grassroots efforts in Nashville since finishing that project.
Most recently a group called Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH) formed. NOAH started meeting with candidates for office in this election year. It self-describes as “a faith led coalition that is multi-racial and interdenominational comprised of congregations, community organizations, and labor unions that work to give voice to traditionally marginalized people.” Since there seemed to be parallels with TNT, I took interest in their cause.
One of the more conspicuous similarities of the two groups is that Mike Hodge, a lead organizer of NOAH, was a TNT lead organizer for a short time in the mid-1990s. Between NOAH and TNT, Mr. Hodge was most prominently the program manager at the Neighborhoods Resource Center, which brands itself as a non-profit partner with Metro government, providing training for neighborhood leaders and elected officials alike. Its board of directors has included officials with the Mayor’s Office and the Metro Council. In my opinion the NRC’s collaborative ties to Metro, under Mr. Hodge’s leadership, tended to dull any prophetic edge it might have as an advocate for marginalized communities. NRC’s role seems inconsistent with TNT’s more confrontational approach to organizing.
Alinsky himself argued that ridicule and pressure are two necessary tactics that empower the community. NRC never embodied those tactics. Will NOAH, with Mr. Hodge’s leadership, exhibit the cordial restraint of NRC or will it engage in what Alinsky called “the up-and-down and sideways swinging and cudgeling of a People’s Organization”?
One of the more conspicuous differences between NOAH and TNT has to do with a glaring omission in the former. Other observers besides myself have noted that broad support by the Catholic Church’s Campaign for Human Development extended to Tying Nashville Together in the 1990s. CCHD is the Catholic Church’s anti-poverty program. The appearance that NOAH has not brought them on board is puzzling to me. They can only benefit by enlisting CCHD support. [Scroll to end of post for a correction of my perception].
I’m also surprised at how few Catholic parishes are represented on the NOAH membership list. One Catholic congregation is listed among NOAH’s current members. While NOAH has only been operating for a few months, they hopefully have plans to reach out to Nashville’s Catholic community more broadly. They have a good number of mainline denominations represented by their membership. The relatively small number of Catholic members hurts their cause in my opinion.
Electoral politics and NOAH
The next mayor will not take office until September, and she or he may not meet with NOAH until October (60 days after the election). Seven months of governance by Karl Dean, the Metro Council, the Metro Planning Commission and any other municipal agency will be water under the bridge by then. Some Nashvillians cannot wait until September. They need to see small victories won for their communities today, not promises to meet with a few leaders at the end of the year. Their future is tomorrow or next week; their sense of uncertainty stems from the fierce urgency of now.
If NOAH organizers believe that the movers and the shakers will wait until October, they have another thing coming. Only foolhardiness assumes that real estate developers and professional lobbyists are going to sit out the next seven months, knowing what they know now about NOAH’s platform. When builders in Salemtown caught wind of CM Erica Gilmore’s proposal for a conservation overlay to protect the smaller scale of homes, they immediately tore down the houses they controlled in order to build tall duplexes exempt from the overlay. Gentrification hit the accelerator in Salemtown. There is a lesson in that for community organizers: those whose power you are trying to check are watching your plans for October, and they will move their chess pieces between now and then to block you.
Nonetheless, NOAH seems trained staunchly on the candidates for office (I’m sure the campaigns appreciate the extra publicity that NOAH is bringing them). I see no evidence that organizers are paying attention to what happens when those in power behind the thrones are challenged. I wonder whether NOAH can respond to neighbors whose problems set upon them now. How can NOAH support people before the wealthy and powerful in this city cut their knees out from under them when their focus is on the election cycle?
I would be more willing to believe that NOAH has a strategic plan larger than the election if they had rolled out their project before this election year started. The Mayor’s Office has bounced from one growth project to the next and the Mayor’s big plans provided numerous opportunities for engagement from the bottom. Nashville Next has shifted growth discussions away from community-based planning to region-wide formulas. For instance, last year’s contentious debate over the character of Whites Creek in North Nashville as an agricultural, suburban or emerging urban community provided an opportunity for community engagement and political action missed by NOAH.
Looking back on Tying Nashville Together, I would say that elections only played a minor role in organizing. Elections were just an excuse for the next action to prompt reactions from the array of local officials. That is consistent with Alinskyite strategies. Saul Alinsky himself sought to shift the emphasis away from electoral politics to the organized action in the community. He was a secular Jew who found his greatest affinity with Catholics committed to social justice and the idea of subsidiarity. Again, the seeming absence of Catholics in NOAH is worth noting, but the point to be underscored here is that the 2015 election cycle seems to be the lynchpin around which NOAH pivots.
However, electoral politics should not trump everyday politics where battles much be waged outside of ballots, meeting-by-meeting.
Part of the challenge for organizations of organizers like NOAH is to get out in front of the concerns that bubble up from the community. The biggest gentrification project in the history of Jefferson Street is going up right now in the form of First Tennessee Park and the mixed-use satellite developments that will follow the minor league (AAA) ballpark. I wish NOAH had shown up in 2013 to demand benchmarks of benefits to be achieved by the real estate developers of that project. But when some in the Metro Council made a move to put even the slightest obligation on ball club owner and real estate mogul Frank Ward–that could have clawed back any unplanned losses in public revenues–CM Jerry Maynard railed hyperbolically against such protections by calling them “poison pills.”
CM Megan Barry did not lift a finger to object and she voted with CM Maynard to kill any taxpayer protection. Now she is running for mayor. And at NOAH’s February mayoral forum she endorsed their plank for “community benefits agreements” for any future projects. I have watched her for a long time. I do not recall a single time that she introduced bills to demand CBAs on new projects, especially not the historically huge capital projects leveraged by Mayor Karl Dean. CM Barry’s trite logic has always been that building such expensive monstrosities, regardless of the shock and instability caused in local communities, is better than not building them.
How can we have faith in the sheer chance that an elected official with no track record of advancing and winning CBAs on development projects has suddenly had a come-to-Jesus moment at the end of her council service and will act differently as mayor? More to the point of this post: how can we trust that NOAH can hold sway given the influence of campaign finance and partisan power structures over candidates like Ms. Barry?
The simpler explanation for her endorsement is that Megan Barry is throwing NOAH a bone to get elected; she will govern in the fashion of the previous mayor (with whom she voted her entire council career). Is NOAH aware of that possibility? Do they have contingency plans?
Gentrification and affordable housing strategies
NOAH’s election year platform seems to have a peculiar inconsistency on the issue of gentrification. On the one hand, it claims that there nothing good about gentrification. On the other hand, I am aware of NOAH leaders who supported the construction of First Tennessee Park, which in itself is historic development on Jefferson Street with shock waves that fan out across North Nashville. After Metro Council approved the ballpark, North End real estate prices spiked, landlords raised rents or let renters know that they were redeveloping, and people were displaced. If gentrification is bad, then why were ballpark proponents not held to account for unleashing it on Jefferson Street?
I am not a true believer in CBAs. Those implemented around ballparks have a tendency to favor developers instead of the community. If they are the only tool we have, then so be it. But again, where was NOAH’s righteous indignation over gentrification when the Mayor and North Nashville council members were pounding the ballpark through to approval without vetting it to the community and at least attaching some requirements Sounds’ ownership to minimize the negative neighborhood impact and risk? I certainly do not recall Mr. Hodge or other organizers asking to slow the ballpark planning process down. Some of us directly affected by construction did ask for more deliberation and community consultation.
Those requests for sufficient community engagement in an open, inclusive planning process were ignored by our elected representatives and by community activists.
Another peculiarity of NOAH’s platform is that it advocates subsidized, but market-driven solutions to solve the affordable housing problem. In particular, NOAH insists that Metro “re-purpose” tax increment financing to support affordability. TIF is welcomed by lobbyists for the construction industry because it commits assumed revenue increases from the future from developed land to pay the costs of development in the present in spite of rising costs and frozen revenues streams before the hypothesized projections actually occur in the future. It essentially minimizes the risk that developers take by publicly subsidizing their building projects. The benefits go inordinately to developers who already game the system with large campaign donations, who bankroll tireless lobbyists through their professional associations. How is TIF more than a breadcrumb benefit for a few residents lucky enough to get affordable housing?
I am still searching for a case where TIF has realized the promised returns in revenues on the original “investment.” TIF proponents ignore the proposition that land owners already drive down values by encouraging blight, hence driving down the costs of developing the land even without TIF. In cases where TIF does spur development and increased property values the increased revenues have to be committed to public infrastructure (transit, pedestrian, utility, water & sewer, etc) that service the new developments rather than paying for inflationary expenses caused by frozen revenue streams. Hence, it leads to the gentrification, about which NOAH claims “nothing positive,” while the bills continue to come due for Metro government.
We should not pass over too quickly the point that in many “transitional” neighborhoods land owners promote blight by failing to obey codes on property upkeep issues like tall weeds, illegal dumping, deteriorating structures and the general quality of their properties. They are empowered by oblivious or foot-dragging codes officials in government. When we first moved to Salemtown 10 years ago illegal dumping and owner neglect of their properties–along with sluggish Metro government response–was rampant. I have no doubt that there was a subconscious, if not subtle logic in that to encourage the depression of real estate prices with an eye toward future housing bubbles.
Rather than training on TIF, community groups need to rally around the idea of leveraging stronger Metro response to blight through enforcement of codes equally across all neighborhoods. TNT did that in the 1990s by sending its members out to audit neighborhood conditions. From those audits came lists for Metro departments to address. Likewise, we should be fighting the blighted conditions that give TIF its rationale in the first place.
TIF is first and foremost “a profit margin for the developer.” If the idea is to boost the power of the people, then making developers more obscenely wealthy with subsidies they may not even need–thus stoking income inequality–seems counter-intuitive to progressive grassroots organizing. The state that invented TIF, California, has already stopped using it because it is an unsustainable model for development. Has NOAH looked into other policy options in places where TIF is not used? Working with a new mayor to extend TIF to expand affordable housing seems to put the cart (the developers) before the horse (housing).
While the platform calls for the continuing allocation and redistributing of shrinking Metro budget revenues to the Barnes Housing Trust Fund (which attempts to make rental and owned homes affordable), it curiously avoids calling for rent control regulations to tap the brakes on rental property owners. Would Megan Barry or any other mayoral candidate sign on to Metro regulation of rent prices? Is there a community advocate bold enough to ask that question? As with its stance on TIF so goes its silence on controlling rent: NOAH’s platform seems to be long on carrots and short on cudgels for real estate merchants.
Jury still out, yet still some perspective
Several people have asked me what I think about NOAH, given my experience of past neighborhood organizing and Metro politics. Because I have not been privy to their internal processes like I was with other organizing efforts, my response has been, “I’ll withhold judgment until more information comes out.” Now that they are publicizing their actions, strategies and priorities through the news media, I believe I have a toehold to prospect what I can see.
I see a group with promise as long as it stays more locally focused on everyday politics in the now. I see a group that runs the risk of being too beholden to market forces and to Nashville’s power pyramid to be bold. I see a group that stands to benefit from more ecumenical collaboration with like-minded anti-poverty groups. By no means have I reached final conclusions about the organization, but I do have a perspective as someone with experience in this area.
Now that I am aware of NOAH, I will continue to follow it with interest as I have various community-based groups that have appeared over the years. TNT had an impressive run, but it is no longer with us. Hopefully, NOAH will have greater staying power. Finally, I hope NOAH does not become an election campaign tool that gets put back on the shelf in 2016 after robocalls and yard signs disappear.
Nashvillians–especially those locked out of the process by the current mayor–deserve better than that.
Update and correction: according to a 2015 announcement on the Catholic Charities of Tennessee website, NOAH is a CCHD grant recipient, which alleviates my concern about whether they are connecting with Catholics.
Update: Tuesday night (March 10) NOAH met for its monthly meeting and my impression from their social media source is that they are focused on voter registration and GOTV for the August elections. That does not allay concerns I express above that the organization is primarily focused on future elections rather than on current actions to solve immediate community problems. I hope to see more than tailoring political action for marginalized communities to suit the election cycle.
Tagged with: Affordable Housing, Community Organizing, Elections, History, Nashville, Nashville Organized for Action and Hope, Neighborhoods, Saul Alinsky, Tax Increment Financing, Tying Nashville Together
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Archive for the tag “Political Strategy”
Uganda – President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni: Campaign of Fear for 2016 Presidential Election
When you have been in charge for a long time and no strategies to secure your position, it might be natural start campaigning as a politician with the results and the achievements that been made. A good politician would address the public with the progress and build on what has already been built. But this long term politician and president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni doesn’t do that in the run-up to the presidential election in 2016. Instead, He uses a whole other tool to bring the masses and secure his position in the country. His words are fearmongering and sectarianism, and that only he can keep order of the army. Which can’t be true and doesn’t look wise of a supposed statesman of his caliber, instead he speaks to his fellow countrymen like they need his guns and rigging to be sure of security. These quotes will show from July to August this year of how he speaks of his own regime and the necessary firepower for his reign.
President Museveni said in the 16th of May through the statehouse channel that “I have been involved in the politics of Uganda for 51 years and I have experienced the cost of the politics of lies. So please I advise you to avoid them and stop misleading the population. I have heard some people use bad words like National Resistance Movement is bad for West Nile. Such a statement is poisonous and dangerous for national unity and development” (…) “When we overthrew Idi Amin ourselves, the Uganda People’s Congress with the support from Tanzania, we pleaded with the UPC leaders not to punish the people of West Nile because of the mistakes of Amin as an individual. The UPC leaders did not listen to us and instead imported criminality in West Nile because it was Amin’s home area leading to many deaths and forcing almost all West Nile people into exile in Sudan and DRC” (…) “I drove to Kaya myself near Oraba in Sudan when we had come into leadership and met two families. I asked them if they were Ugandans and they said yes and I asked them what they were doing in Sudan and the message went on. The others followed and today West Nile which was abandoned is one of the most populated areas of Uganda. So politicians please stop meddling in lies, just like the Bible puts it; say the truth it will set you free” (Uganda Statehouse, 2015).
According to him on the 21th July 2015: “We have built a strong army but it’s not a dictatorship and needs a well founded and clear headed leadership to be sure that the country’s future is safe. Even if you have a strong army without clear political leadership you can’t guarantee national peace and transformation therefore value your vote because it counts” (…) “We took a leadership decision to strengthen the army against the wishes of many other players because we had realized that insecurity was bred out of the weaknesses in the army and by 2003 we had defeated Kony and you can see the development taking place in Northern Uganda. We have totally defeated Allied democratic forces and arrested their leader Jamil Mukulu who should tell us why they have been killing Ugandans and they can never attack Uganda because they will pay a heavy price” (Waswa, 2015).
On 24th of June he said: “There is peace in Uganda. No one has the capacity to destabilize Uganda” (Uganda Media Centre, 2015).
The President said on 31th July 2015: “We have built a strong army but it’s not a dictatorship and needs a well founded and clear headed leadership to be sure that the country’s future is safe. Even if you have a strong army without clear political leadership you can’t guarantee national peace and transformation therefore value your vote because it counts” (Lutaaya, 2015).
On the 5th of August he said: “he historical agreed that as a way forward, I come and pick these nomination forms and I offer myself for the position of party chairman and NRM presidential candidates for the period 2015-2021” (Omara, 2015).
The President even said on 6th August: “No one should poison your minds with wrong ideology based on tribe” (…) “If evidence is adduced, your victory will be annulled.” (…) “Leaders should be chosen based ability on to uplift the standard of living of the people not on ethnicity” (…) “We defeated ADF and ensured peace. Leadership premised on tribes will destabilize the area” (Ayiswa, 2015).
On his own web page, he quoted on 6th of August: “Let leaders tell you what they want to do for you and their usefulness and leave your tribes because all tribes and people were created by God and none of us created any person. Not even the children that I have and all of you. We are not our own creation. We are all gifts from God; so don’t divide God’s people” (…) “I am not campaigning but when time comes, I will come here and tell you that NRM defeated rebels and brought peace to this region and I will ask you to vote NRM on those grounds not on tribal or religious basis because sectarian politics is evil. Uganda is peaceful, united and developing and nobody should divide Ugandans and spoil all the gains the country has realized” (Museveni, 2015).
Other part of his campaign:
He even sent messages to the people; the President had to send his message to the people literally. Even sent SMS to all the people owning phones in the country, and it wasn’t just to NRM members, but all the telecoms users of their service like the once using Airtel (Kaaya, 2015).
(Kaaya, 2015).
Now, here is a gist!
How the Police keeps the posters of the President on the walls everywhere:
Fred Enaga said: “The president is the fountain of honour and he enjoys absolute immunity for whatever actions and enjoys structural advantages. You cannot just pull down his pictures under whatever circumstances” (…) “But even then, he has not come out to make such pronouncement (that he will run in the 2016 presidential elections),” (Tumwine, 2015).
How his army men fears him or misunderstood love:
Army Chief Brig Elly Kayanja says: “I am fully aware of the regulation that stops us (soldiers) from engaging in partisan politics but personally, I cannot hide my love and loyality to NRM and to President Museveni”. Vincent Bamulangaki Ssempijja says this: “We fear Museveni so much because he was our bush war leader, so we cannot just easily talk to him” (…) “When he (Museveni) comes to a cabinet meeting, we discuss issues of government and, after that, none of us get the chance to talk to him. Its very few amongst us who can call him, and likewise, he also calls a few of us” (TheInsider.ug, 2015).
All of this sectarianism treats isn’t strong enough to put a kettle on and see if the water is boiling. Because that`s what he is said that if you vote for something else then his, then your diffusing and voting actual ethnic reasons then NRM. Which we all know by now is a bit foolish, even though a party has their strongholds in the country. That is normal anywhere in the world. Certain parties have a stronger vibe in one area than the next because of the leadership of the party in that area and the public will recognize that they have. So that isn’t sectarianism, more given credit to the locals that are credit due.
The security issue that he continues to ponder on that, isn’t un-suspected. In other part of the country it’s all that he has to show for while being in power. So that he also uses the strong-man and big-man has to control the UPDF and the army to keep things secure isn’t something that should come as lightning on a clear sky, instead should be as visible as rainwater in the streets after a rain-shower. It is true that the current president is the reason why the UPDF and UPF are so strong and also as massive as it is. But he can’t believe his own words that he is the ONLY leader who got the power to command this brigades, right? If so, then he has lost his plot. That he is the sole reason for the peace in the Northern Uganda and also that the ADF has lost it strength over time, also their main leader which is now having court-time for his actions. I am sure that their more than one person who should get credit, also the support from SPLA and FARDC to push LRA into C.A.R. where the UPDF is still continuing the hunt. That the generals in the UPDF admire and fear their commander in chief isn’t unexpected though they are kind of over the line when even the president himself has said earlier that UPDF generals should not join into politics and they obviously do!
And that he drops gig songs isn’t new. I will not discuss the second song from the President (since I, myself is not a big fan). That is utter nonsense. But what is worthy of the campaign is the SMS sent to all the ones with SIM-cards for certain companies and not only for NRM members. That means that the President has bought the airtime and lists of numbers that the company has and maybe even violated its nation privacy laws. No matter what laws you have it’s a shady way of spreading your own vision to world. Isn’t it enough that they print your own views day in and day out in the New Vision?
A Timeline for how the Police and other institutions have gone after the opposition in the recent months before the 2016 elections:
The Amama Mbabazi planned to start his campaign and have demonstrations on the 15th of June as a “Presidential Aspiration” in the NRM party in Kampala. The day before the Press Secretary of Uganda Police Fred Enanga that if Amama Mbabazi did so it would be: “Therefore, whoever is involved in organizing the demonstrations, or intends to participate in them will be in violation of the law, and will face criminal sanctions in accordance with the law”. IGP Kale Kayihura sent a letter preceding that the Amama Mbabazi campaigning that he needed to be careful about holding public meetings as a presidential aspiration on the 23rd of June. On the 24th of June a letter from the Mbabazi lawyers addressing the IGP Kale Kayihura wasn’t correct according to the law. Because a person in the NRM party should be allowed to ‘run’ for the “Presidential Aspiration” and hold public meetings to gain more popularity for his elections.
Even on the 8th of July the Uganda Communication Commission and their Executive Director Godfrey Mutabazi who wrote to all Medias in Uganda that they have to be careful with the messages and what kind of voices they spread to the press either if it is radio, tv, newspapers and other formats. On the 9th of July Dr. Kizza Besigye was arrested by the UPF when going from Kasangati in Wakiso Disctrict when he was supposed to start his political campaign for his presidential front runner for the FDC. He was admitted on a “preventative arrest” from the Police. Even the Insepctor General of Police Mr. Okot-Ochola on 13th of July wrote a warning letter the FDC on their public meetings and explaining to them how the “Public Order Management Bill” works.
“Team Amama Mbabazi for President 2016-2021” had one NRM Youth Leader named Vincent Kaggwa that lost his ranks and was missing from 18th of July until 20th of June because he wore a T-Shirt with Amama Mbabazi.
After rallies in Jinja and Iganga on the 21st of July, Dr. Kizza Besigye was supposed to have an interview on Radio Baba/87.7 Basogo Baino FM. Only minutes into it the transmitter for the radio station was turned off by the government. On the 8th of August Dr. Kizza Besigye was not allowed to travel from his home and into a meeting at the American embassy in Kampala.
Even in Lira when FDC and Dr. Kizza Besigye had a rally in town. The police was all over town held the town under Siege the whole of 10th of August. In Padre the day after the FDC wasn’t able to hold a decent rally in the 11th of August the local police took the microphone from one of the FDC leaders holding it and Dr. Kizza Besigye wasn’t able to hold at the venue, instead the police went mad and trough tear-gas and beat the people attending. On the 14th of August the Lord Mayor of Kampala DP Erias Lukwago was blocked to attending as a speaker on a seminar on the Makerere University.
Afterthoughts:
I have no plan of going into too deep waters with this time line. Since this is a picturesque and historical how the progression of the police and other institutions are going after the opposition parties and those who are going against him as the flag-bearer and presidential candidate in the NRM party. It’s obvious that it’s nearly daily for months now that the regime has tracked and gone against those who isn’t following the president and NRM regime, even if the comply to the rules and laws of the Public Order Mangement Bill/Act, still they will be incriminated or threaten and violate common sense with sending troops with tear-gas and beating people up for showing up to FDC rallies. Then also to top it all off they have without being judged in court taken people to custody for wearing a Team Amama Mbabazi shirt in Kampala. This should be seen as something foolish and not as actions of rule of law. The fear the president is spreading with his words and actions is astonishing.
With being in this day and age we should expect of something else of our presidents and prime ministers. This is a leader he has been educated back in the day, though seem to forget the lessons he had learned there. In his thesis written about Frantz Fanon he wrote: “The process of creating the subjective conditions is as hard as the organising of revolution itself. However, it can be accelerated by various devices. The most important thing is to win confidence of the masses. It is necessary for all the local cadres or ‘terrainers’ as they sometimes called, indeed for all the activists that seek to enlist support of the masses, to lead a pure, exemplary and, most preferably, ascetic life. The person seduce peasents’ wives or daughters, will never win the confidence of the masses. Though personal example, political propaganda – in the simplest language about the simple and, to begin with, parochial problems – and through demonstrating the power of the people vis-à-vis the enemy, the cadres are able to create the subjective conditions, a fully and politically conscious people, that are indispensable for the revolution” (Museveni, 1971).
When he could write this and stand behind this words while being a student and seeing how he comes with force and fear now. His mind can’t be the same as it was. We should expect something else from somebody that makes the population either eat the fear or he actually never won “the confidence of the masses”. The president has surely forgotten these words while he stated in his speeches and outlets during start of his campaign for Uganda Presidential Election in 2016. That the Police Spokesman is saying that people don’t have the right to take down posters from the walls. He should already know that it’s not right how he speaks and acts. Generals are even afraid of him. Even quoted some members of the MPs who feels the same when he is around! So he is not the example he supposed to be anymore. So if the people are politically conscious they should by his own-old-selves be able to brush his fears off, right?
And also the speeches and daily acts against opposition should be addressed by bigger multilateral institutions and nations so that this “so called” and “multiparty democracy” isn’t really an actual state of affairs the country and republic of Uganda should be proud of. The way that the NRM regime is hurting its radios and newspapers, how it goes against the FDC leaders and certain DP leaders. Even though who’s has become independent and not dependent on the “Mzee” or the President of Museveni. It’s the same natural and calm level of fear that the president Museveni are both speaking in his speeches and acting out with the UPF and the UPDF. If this is his way to regain his popular stance somebody or even a presidential advisor! The Presidential Advisor should ask him behind closed doors “have you lost the plot?”
Ayiswa, Issa – ‘Museveni warns those pedaling sectarian talk risk losing seats (06.08.2015) link: http://www.ofuganda.co.ug/articles/20150806/museveni-warns-those-pedaling-sectarian-talk-risk-losing-seats#sthash.TgvP4A2E.dpuf
Kaaya, Sadab Kitatta – ‘Uproar over unsolicited Museveni campaign SMS’ (10.08.2015) link: http://www.observer.ug/news-headlines/39174-uproar-over-unsolicited-museveni-campaign-sms
Lutaaya, Henry – ‘Museveni exploits incumbency ahead of 2016’ (31.07.2015) link: http://www.sunrise.ug/news/201507/museveni-exploits-incumbency-ahead-of-2016.html
Museveni, Yoweri – ’Sectarian politicians to be arrested, prosecuted” – Museveni’ (06.08.2015) link: www.yowerikmuseveni.com/news/%E2%80%9Csectarian-politicians-be-arrested-prosecuted%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-museveni#sthash.aJNiX7oP.dpuf
Museveni, Yoweri – ‘FANON’S THEORY ON VIOLENCE: ITS VERIFICATION IN LIBERATED MOZAMBIQUE’: which was an essay/thesis in “Essays on the Liberation of Southern Africa”, Tanzania Publication House (Released in 1971).
TheInsider.ug – ‘Army Chief, minister confess love, fear for Museveni’ (05.08.2015) link:
http://www.theinsider.ug/army-chief-minister-confess-love-fear-for-museveni/
Tumwine, Albert – ‘We cannot pull down Museveni posters- Police’ (16.07.2015) link: http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/We-cannot-pull-down-Museveni-posters–Police/-/688334/2753854/-/lr6i1x/-/index.html
Omara, Chris – ‘The journey to 2016 and beyond under Gen Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (YKM)’ (05.08.2015) link: http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/671825-the-journey-to-2016-and-beyond-under-gen-yoweri-kaguta-museveni-ykm.html
Uganda Media Centre – ‘“No one has capacity to Destabilize Uganda” (24.07.2015) link: http://www.mediacentre.go.ug/news/%E2%80%9Cno-one-has-capacity-destabilize-uganda%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-president-museveni#sthash.9ovML4Po.dpuf
Uganda Statehouse – ‘President Museveni warns politicians on lies and sectarianism’ (15.06.2015) link: http://www.statehouse.go.ug/media/news/2015/05/15/president-museveni-warns-politicians-lies-and-sectarianism
Waswa, Sam – ‘Museveni: UPDF Needs Clear-headed Political Leadership’ (21.07.2015) link: http://chimpreports.com/museveni-updf-needs-clear-headed-political-leadership/
Posted in Africa, Agriculture, Aid, Army, Civil Service, Corruption, Crime, Daily Life, Development, Economic Measures, Economy, Election, Ethics, Governance, Government, Law, Politics and tagged 87.7 Basogo Baino FM, Achievements, ADF, Airtel, Airtime, Allied Democratic Force, Amin, Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Army, Army Chief Brig Elly Kayanja, Bible, Brig Elly Kayanja, C.A.R., Caliber, Central African Republic, Cheif, CP Fred Enanga, Dar Es Salaam University, Democracy, Democratic Party, Democratic Republic of Congo, Destabilize, Dictator, Dictatorship, DP, Dr. Kizza Besigye, Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, DRC, EAC, East Africa, East African Community, Election Campaign, Elly Kayanja, Entebbe Statehouse, Erias Lukwago, Etnicity, Fanon, FARDC, FDC, FDC Rallies, Forum for Democratic Change, Frantz Fanon, Fred Enanga, Godfrey Mutabazi, H. E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Idi Amin, Iganga, IGP Gen Kale Kayihura, Institution, J.M. Okoth-Ochola, Jamil Mukulu, Jinja, Joseph Kony, Kale Kayihura, Kampala, Kasangati, Kaya, Kenya, Kizza Besigye, Kony, Leadership, Lira, Long Serving Leadership, Long Term Politician, Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, LRA, M7, Makerere University, Mbabazi Shirt, MPS, MUK, Multi-Party Democracy, Multilateral Organization, Museveni Pakalast, Mzee, National Peace, National Resistance Movement, National Unity, New Vision, New Vision Newspapers, Newspaper, Norbert Mao, Northern Uganda, NRM, NRM M7 2016, NRM-Members, Okot-Ochola, Padre, PM Ruhakana Rugunda, Police Violence, Political Leadership, Political Strategy, Politics, POMA, POMB, President Museveni, Presidential Election 2016 Uganda, Presidential Flag Bearer, Preventative Arrests, Privacy Laws, Progress, Public Order Management Act, Public Order Management Bill, Radio, Radio Baba, Regime, Ruhakana Rugunda, Run-Up to Elections, Sectarian, Sectarianism, Security, SIM-Cards, SMS, SPLA, Strong Army, Sudan, Sudan People Liberation Army, Tanzania, Team Amama Mbabazi 2016-2021, Tear-Gas, Television, Transparency, Tribalism, Tribe, Tribes, Uganda, Uganda Communications Commission, Uganda Media Centre, Uganda People Defence Force, Uganda Peoples Congress, Uganda Police Force, Uganda Statehouse, Ugandans, UPC, UPDF, UPF, Vincent Bamulangaki Ssempijja, Vincent Kaggwa, Vote, Wakiso, Wakiso District, West Nile, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni
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‘Masters both of arts ...
‘Masters both of arts and lies’: Metadrama and the Informer in Poetaster and Sejanus
Bill Angus
in Metadrama and the Informer in Shakespeare and Jonson
Published by Edinburgh University Press
Published in print November 2016 | ISBN: 9781474415118
Published online May 2017 | e-ISBN: 9781474426886 | DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415118.003.0005
Metadrama and the Informer in Shakespeare and Jonson
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415118.001.0001
University Press Scholarship Online » abstract
This chapter explores Jonson’s metadramatic technique in Sejanus and Poetaster and its staging of the legitimacy of poetic and political authority. The informer lurks in the metadramatic shadows here, as a significant element within both Jonson’s critique of compromised authority in Sejanus, and the implications he makes in Poetaster, about his artistic enemies. In both cases their authority is tainted by the connection, going beyond simply blaming informers for the woes of his society, the most significant aspect of this is the way in which metadrama and the structures of informing fit so...
This chapter explores Jonson’s metadramatic technique in Sejanus and Poetaster and its staging of the legitimacy of poetic and political authority. The informer lurks in the metadramatic shadows here, as a significant element within both Jonson’s critique of compromised authority in Sejanus, and the implications he makes in Poetaster, about his artistic enemies. In both cases their authority is tainted by the connection, going beyond simply blaming informers for the woes of his society, the most significant aspect of this is the way in which metadrama and the structures of informing fit so integrally together. The chapter also asks what this means for the person of the author. If Poetaster addresses the relationship between poetic legitimacy and political authority within the world of the informer, Sejanus elevates this discourse to the realm of political revolution, in which, for the authorities of the time, Jonson’s desire to monopolise poetic legitimacy in the production of his own dramatic authority seems ambitiously excessive.
Keywords: metadramatic; technique; legitimacy; informer; authority; structures; author; political; revolution; poetic
Subjects: Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
Go to University Press Scholarship Online » abstract
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Oz Wiki
By L. Frank Baum (books #1-7)
The Marvelous Land of Oz
Ozma of Oz
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
The Road to Oz
The Emerald City of Oz
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
By L. Frank Baum (books #8-14)
Tik-Tok of Oz
The Scarecrow of Oz
Rinkitink in Oz
The Lost Princess of Oz
The Tin Woodman of Oz
The Magic of Oz
Glinda of Oz
By Ruth Plumly Thompson (books #15-24)
The Royal Book of Oz
Kabumpo in Oz
The Cowardly Lion of Oz
Grampa in Oz
The Lost King of Oz
The Hungry Tiger of Oz
The Gnome King of Oz
The Giant Horse of Oz
Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz
The Yellow Knight of Oz
Pirates in Oz
The Purple Prince of Oz
Ojo in Oz
Speedy in Oz
The Wishing Horse of Oz
Captain Salt in Oz
Handy Mandy in Oz
The Silver Princess in Oz
Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz
By John R. Neill (books #34-36)
The Wonder City of Oz
The Scalawagons of Oz
Lucky Bucky in Oz
By Jack Snow (books #37-38)
The Magical Mimics in Oz
The Shaggy Man of Oz
Others (books #39-43)
The Hidden Valley of Oz
Merry Go Round in Oz
The Emerald Wand of Oz
Trouble Under Oz
Sky Pyrates over Oz
Dorothy Gale
Tin Woodman
Glinda
Oz Movie Characters, Creatures
Horse of a Different Color
The Horse of a Different Color
The Horse of a Different Color was a horse who drew the carriage in the opening Emerald City scenes of the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz. The Cabbie (Frank Morgan) drove the carriage drawn by it. It would periodically change colors, hence its name.
Four separate horses were used to create the effect of an animal that changes color from moment to moment; the filmmakers found that multiple color changes on a single horse were too time-consuming. The ASPCA refused to allow the horses to be dyed; instead, technicians tinted them with lemon, cherry, and grape flavored powdered gelatin to create a spectrum of white, yellow, red, and purple. They had to be prevented from licking the colored powder off themselves between takes.
In Noel Langley's script for the film, the Horse of a Different Color had purple and green skin and red stripes. And it talked, too. Langley had it and the Wizard join the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion in their rescue of Dorothy from the Wicked Witch of the West and her Winged Monkeys — a plot element that did not survive into the final film.
The Carriage
The carriage drawn by the Horse of a Different Color in the 1939 film was originally made for President Abraham Lincoln and given to him as a gift during the Civil War. It possesses a handwritten note on its frame, "A. Lincoln, June 8, 1863." Before becoming a part of the collection at The Judy Garland Museum, it had been used in nearly 200 films.
Abraham Lincoln's Carriage
In Oz the Great and Powerful
Horses of a Different Color
Oscar Diggs and Finley pass a number of color-changing horses outside the Emerald City on their journey to find and kill the Wicked Witch. (Oz the Great and Powerful) While this movie is technically not a prequel to the 1939 one for copyright reasons, it contains many references to it, including the Horses of a Different Color.
In The Marvelous Map of Oz
Horses of a Different Color were kept at a Ranch of a Different Color, which was located close to the Yellow Brick Road in the Munchkin Country.
The Marvelous Map of Oz is a 2009 map poster produced by the company Culturenik. It appears to be a licensed work based on the 1939 film, and so the characters are drawn as they appear in it. However, the map also has some locations from Gregory Maguire's Wicked, as well as from Baum's books.
The Ranch of a Different Color's location on the map matches where the horses are seen in Oz the Great and Powerful, which is off the Yellow Brick Road in the Munchkin Country, near the Emerald City.
John Fricke, Jacy Scarfone, William Stillman. The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History. Warner Books, 1989.
Retrieved from "https://oz.fandom.com/wiki/Horse_of_a_Different_Color?oldid=66157"
Oz Movie Characters
More Oz Wiki
1 Wicked cast lists
2 Dorothy Gale
3 Wicked Witch of the West
Oz Wiki is a FANDOM Books Community.
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Home Life Style Health
Teens Are Smoking, Vaping and Eating Cannabis
By Lisa Rapaport
(Reuters Health)
Adolescents who try marijuana are not just smoking it. Many are also vaping or eating cannabis, a U.S. study suggests
Almost one in three teens have smoked cannabis at least once, the survey of 3,177 Los Angeles high school students found. More than one in five adolescents have consumed edible cannabis, and more than one in 10 have vaped it.
In the study of 10th-graders, two-thirds of teen cannabis users had tried at least two forms of the drug, and about 8 percent had tried all three methods of consuming cannabis.
“This raises the question whether teens who have traditionally been at lower risk for use of cannabis and other drugs in traditional smoked forms may be drawn into cannabis in alternative forms that may lack some of the deterrents . . . like the smell, taste, and harshness of inhaling cannabis smoke and difficulty concealing use of smoked cannabis to authority figures,” said senior study author Adam Leventhal, director of the University of Southern California’s Health, Emotion, and Addiction Laboratory in Los Angeles.
Cannabis use during adolescence has been linked to learning and memory deficits as well as impaired academic achievement in previous research. Vaping has also been tied to breathing problems as well as heart and blood vessel damage.
While edible forms of cannabis have been around for decades, these products have become more widely available and acceptable to many teens as a growing number of U.S. states have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use.
At the same time, increased availability of e-cigarettes that heat cannabis have also become more common, along with cannabinoid-infused e-cigarette liquids in youth-orientated flavors like bubble gum and marketing campaigns that might attract adolescents, researchers note in JAMA Network Open.
In the current study, researchers asked students at 10 Los Angeles high schools in 2015 about lifetime and prior-month cannabis use.
Over the previous month, about 13 percent of participants had smoked cannabis, 8 percent had eaten it and 5 percent had vaped it
When it came to ever-use of these three methods, students were about four times more likely to have smoked cannabis than to have eaten it, and nearly two and a half times more likely to have eaten it than vaped it, the analysis found.
Boys were more likely than girls to report vaping cannabis but there were no meaningful differences between the sexes for smoking or eating the drug.
Low-income students were more likely to smoke or eat cannabis than their more affluent classmates, but there wasn’t a meaningful income-based difference for vaping.
The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how any specific demographic factors might directly affect teens’ choice to use cannabis or what forms of the drug they tried.
The surveys were also conducted before the state of California’s legalization of recreational cannabis sales, the authors note.
Still, legalization of marijuana is likely sending the wrong message to parents and teens alike, said Dr. Ellen Rome, head of the Center for Adolescent Medicine at Cleveland Clinic Children’s in Ohio.
“Legalization normalizes use with an illusion of safety for both adults and kids,” Rome, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
“Legal for adults means ‘okay to use now’ to the average adolescent marijuana use.”
Parents should make sure teens understand the very real health risks associated with cannabis use during a period in life when their bodies and brains are still developing, Rome said. This is especially true when teens vape cannabis.
“Vaping was heralded as the way to deliver nicotine or other substances while decreasing the toxins associated with smoke inhalation,” Rome said.
“Unfortunately, the flavors used in vaping can cause irreversible small airway damage, a fact (not appreciated by) most adolescent users who do not yet have abstract thought, or the ability to foresee consequences,” Rome added. “That lack of abstract thought also leads teens to not concern themselves with risk of cancer when smoking cigarettes, marijuana, or any other potential toxin.”
SOURCE: JAMA Network Open, online September 28, 2018
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Streamline: Audi e-tron prototype with decisive aerodynamics
The better an electric car’s aerodynamics, the further it travels: With a drag coefficient of 0.28, the Audi e-tron prototype achieves a top result in the SUV segment. This figure is a decisive factor in the everyday range of more than 400 kilometers (248.5 mi) in the WLTP cycle. The virtual exterior mirrors constitute one highlight in the aerodynamics concept of the all-electric premium-class model.
The scenario: endurance tests in the wind tunnel.
In front of the low-noise rotor measuring around five meters (16.4 ft) in diameter, the Audi e-tron prototype stares into the eye of the hurricane. On the aeroacoustics test rig in the Wind Tunnel Center in Ingolstadt, the world’s quietest vehicle wind tunnel, the Audi engineers optimize drag and noise under extreme conditions. Both are crucial for a car’s efficiency and comfort. With an output of 2.6 megawatts, the fan produces speeds of up to 300 km/h (186.4 mph) . The Audi e-tron prototype was put through over 1,000 hours of testing here. The result: a drag coefficient of 0.28. Customers benefit directly from this low figure as drag contributes decisively to the high range of more than 400 kilometers (248.5 mi) in the WLTP cycle. A hundredth of the drag coefficient figure represents a range of around five kilometers (3.1 mi) driving under everyday conditions.
Drag: essential on long journeys
On long journeys where the Audi e-tron prototype is perfectly at home, the drag constitutes the key driving resistance – far more important than the rolling resistance and inertia. The energy is lost which the car needs to overcome this resistance. That is why good aerodynamics are so important. In urban traffic, however, other factors come into play. Here an electric car can recover a large part of the used energy when braking, thereby reducing the importance of its mass.
To achieve the drag coefficient of 0.28, the Audi engineers developed a wide range of aerodynamics measures in all body areas. Some of these technical solutions are evident at first glance, while others fulfill their purpose hidden away from sight. Thanks to these solutions, the drag coefficient for the Audi e-tron prototype is almost 0.07 less than for a comparable, conventionally powered vehicle. With a typical usage profile this set-up increases the range by around 35 kilometers (21.7 mi) per battery charge in the WLTP cycle.
Smart solutions: virtual exterior mirrors and dimples on the underbody.
The optional virtual exterior mirrors will be making their world premiere in the volumeproduction version of the Audi e-tron prototype. They are much narrower than the standard mirrors: They reduce the vehicle width by 15 centimeters (5.9 in) and, thanks to their new shape, not only reduce drag, but also noticeably cut the nonetheless low wind noise. Each of their flat supports integrates a small camera. The captured images appear on OLED displays in the transition between the instrument panel and door. The virtual exterior mirrors can be adapted for various driving situations, thus potentially improving safety. Three views are available in the MMI system – for highway driving, turning and parking.
Additional information about the Audi e-tron prototype is available at www.e-tron.audi.
100% Success for Modular RBCs
Northern Ireland Water has awarded a framework contract to wastewater treatment systems and solutions experts Jacopa for Rotating Biological Contactors...
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Impact of Protein Content, Total Solids, Protein Source, and Storage Time on the Functionality of Nonfat Stirred Yogurt
Kartik Shah
Nonfat yogurt is a popular fermented product available in various forms. In the US, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) requires >8.25% milk solids in the yogurt base. NDM is a common ingredient utilized to provide milk solids in yogurt produced in the US. However, in International markets, Skim Milk Powder (SMP), Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC), and De-Proteinized Whey (DPW) are also utilized in yogurt formulations. The protein content, Total Solids (TS), source of milk protein, and seasonal variation in yogurt formulations may have an impact on the functionality of yogurt. Additionally, physicochemical changes during storage of powders can result in variation of the functional properties of powders as well as of the product in which they are used. The first objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of Milk Solids Not Fat (MSNF) based fortification of yogurt formulations with various milk powders (SMP, NDM, MPC40, and MPC70) on the functionality of nonfat stirred yogurts. Required amounts of powder were added to produce yogurts containing 8.5% MSNF. The second objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of storage of various milk powders (SMP, NFDM, MPC40, and MPC70) on their functional properties and on the functionality of nonfat yogurts at three different protein and TS levels. Three different lots of SMP, NDM, MPC40 and MPC70 were collected from US manufacturers and each lot was divided into 3 portions. A portion was analyzed after 3, 9, and 15 months of storage at 25°C. At each storage time, yogurt formulations with %protein/%TS of 4/12.5, 4.5/13.5 and 505.5 were produced from each lot of SMP, NDM, MPC40, and MPC70. The third objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of seasonal variation of powder manufacture (SMP and NDM) on their functional properties and on the functionality of nonfat yogurt at three different %protein/% TS ratios ( 4/12.5, 4.5/13.5 and 5/15.5). Skim milk powder and NDM were collected from US manufacturers during summer (May'09 - August'09) and winter (Nov'09- Feb' 10) season for yogurt manufacture. A Rapid Visco Analyzer (RVA) method was utilized to produce yogurt for all objectives. At each storage time, yogurt formulations with three different · %protein/%TS (4/12.5, 4.5/13.5 and 5/15.5) were produced from each lot of SMP, NDM, MPC40, and MPC70. Varying amount of DPW was included to standardize the protein and TS content. Functional properties such as solubility, Emulsification Ability Index (EAI), foaming, and hydrophobicity of each powder lot was evaluated at 3, 9, and l 5months of storage. The data were analyzed by split plot design using PROC Mixed in SAS. Functional properties of yogurts (standardized at 8.5% MSNF) improved with an increase in the protein content in the formulation. Powders storage time did not have a significant effect (p>0.05) on the functional properties of yogurts fortified with NDM, MPC40, and MPC70 at all protein/TS ratio (protein:TS). Viscosity of both MPC40 and MPC70 yogurts was significantly (p<0.05) lower than SMP and NDM yogurts at each protein:TS. Syneresis of SMP yogurts was significantly higher (p<0.05) than NDM yogurts at each protein:TS of yogurt. Storage time had a significant effect (p<0.05) on solubility and foaming properties where solubility of MPC70 and foam overrun of SMP, MPC40, and MPC70 decreased significantly (p<0.05) with an increase in storage time of the powders. Emulsification properties of MPC70 were significantly higher (p<0.05) than SMP, NDM, and MPC40. Additionally, yogurts fortified with winter season powders showed improved functional properties as compared to yogurts fortified with summer season powders. Seasonal variation in powder manufacture did not have a significant (p>0.05) effect on their functional properties such as solubility, EAI and hydrophobicity. In conclusion, the storage of milk powders has an impact on their functional properties but has a minimal influence on the functional properties of nonfat yogurt, whereas the use of MPC had a substantial impact on the functionality of nonfat yogurt. Furthermore, the season of powder manufacture also has an impact on the functional properties of yogurts.
Proteins in human nutrition
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
Shah, Kartik, "Impact of Protein Content, Total Solids, Protein Source, and Storage Time on the Functionality of Nonfat Stirred Yogurt" (2014). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1618.
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The MOVE! Weight-Management Program Delivered by Videoconferencing Decreases Weight Up to One Year After Treatment
April Dawn Ahrendt, South Dakota State University
Health and Nutritional Sciences
Kendra Kattelmann
Objective The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the MOVE! Weight-Management Program delivered via videoconferencing to Veterans in rural areas compared to no treatment.
Design A retrospective cohort study was conducted by chart extraction of data, for the years 2008-201 O. The treatment included a 12-week MOVE! class series delivered using clinical video telehealth. Data was extracted from the time of baseline weight to one year after baseline weight for the MOVE! and control groups. Participants This study compared Veterans who participated in the MOVE! class series via remote location over the use of live videoconferencing (n=60) to a control group of Veterans who received no treatment (n=60).
Main Outcome Measures The main outcome measure for this study was the difference in body weight from baseline to one year after baseline weight between the MOVE! group and the control group after adjusting for baseline covariates.
Statistical analyses The baseline characteristics of the two study groups were described and compared using Fisher's exact tests to compare group proportions and means, standard deviations and two group t-tests for normally distributed continuous measures. Multivariable linear regression was used to test the changes in body weight with adjustment of baseline covariates. Change from baseline to one year after baseline in body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol, high density lipoprotein, low density lipoprotein, triglycerides, glucose and hemoglobin A1c were also compared via linear regression without adjustment for baseline covariates. Results The majority of subjects were Caucasian males. The mean age for the control group was 62 years old (±11.1) and the mean age for the MOVE! group was 57 years old (±10.1, P= . 0174). The mean baseline BMI (± SD) for the control and treatment group were 38.57 (±7.2), and 38.87 (±7.3) respectively. The mean (±SEM) difference in changes in weight between the groups after adjusting for differences in baseline characteristics was -5. 5 ± 2. 7 kg (95% Cl = - 8. 0 to -3. 0; P < 0.0001). Attrition rate was comparable to other weight management interventions at 23.3%. Conclusions: These results indicate that the use of clinical video telehealth is an effective form of weight management for Veterans in rural areas.
Veterans -- Health and hygiene -- South Dakota Veterans -- Health and hygiene -- Iowa Weight loss Medical telematics Rural health services
Ahrendt, April Dawn, "The MOVE! Weight-Management Program Delivered by Videoconferencing Decreases Weight Up to One Year After Treatment" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2185.
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Saw TLJ yesterday with my daughter (spoilers in the comments)
dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter
Definitely in the “it was good” camp, but not without its flaws.
Spoiler the first:
Ben Swolo. So the really funny part of this to me is that Kylo Ren reminds me of my brother, both in that my brother is kind of awkward and lanky and also that he is a sometimes whiny manchild.
So I found the shirtless scene kind of funny because of all the things that Kylo’s character is, serious is not something I have been able to attribute to him. He’s a super irresponsible child who doesn’t seem to have any kind of emotional grasp of the weight of his actions. And actually, he’s kind of what Anakin Skywalker from the prequels should have been.
Spoiler the second:
Fuck JJ Abrams. Ok, this one needs some explanation. JJ has this nasty fetish for putting little “question boxes” into his stuff that he has no intention of ever explaining because apparently when he was a kid he decided that not knowing was better than whatever the explanation you could come up with was. The problem is that when you’re making stuff that other people are going to have to explain, and you’re just making shit up, the resulting explanations to bail you out tend to suck. See: smoke monster. This, IMHO is why TLJ basically explains none of the lingering questions we had in TFA: JJ never got there because he doesn’t give a fuck, and so Rian had basically nothing to work with.
I’m in the camp that thinks Snoke’s backstory needs some elucidation in a way that the emperor and Vader never did. The Emperor had a clear backstory: he’s the Emperor. We don’t need to have any more than that because we don’t know any more about anyone else. But in the new movies, we know where basically everyone else is from, and Snoke basically has just appeared out of nowhere. Which makes very little sense in the context of the victory of the rebellion. Why wouldn’t he have taken over the Empire while it was getting its ass kicked? Also, the Empire was a “humans only” outfit, and the emperor fit into this narrative pretty easily. Snoke is not human, and thus his leadership of the “humans only” club would seem to demand an explanation.
Spoiler the third:
Luke wants to end the Jedi. This doesn’t get explained in a satisfactory way, as far as I can tell. Luke’s lost his pupils and is bitter and rationalizing ending the Jedi. But we don’t really get a decent explanation of this rationale: Rey, who knows nothing of the Jedi or the force, refutes his Jedi = failure bit without even the tiniest bit of thought. Surely there’s something more compelling than that?
All in all, it’s not terrible and if you pick over most of the movies with anything finer than a fro pick you’re going to find a lot of stuff you’d rather not think about.
Recent from dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter
Rewatching Fury Road, I realized that Furiosa's War Rig is a Tatra
Smoking my first successful attempt at a cigar... It's good.
Showerthought: Tatra should get back into building passenger vehicles as ultra-luxury armored cars.
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Linky Friday #193: Creatures in Crime
by Will Truman · November 18, 2016
Image by lsiegert
[E1] Maybe we ought to just encourage academics to blog.
[E2] This is the Democratic Party I’m going to miss. {More}
[E3] 74million takes a look at teacher attrition.
[E4] In case you missed it, Elizabeth Piccuito wrote a good piece about handling suspected plagiarism.
[E5] Will Trump have an adverse effect on international students coming here?
[E6] Last month he outlined an ambitious student debt plan. I don’t mind capping student loan repayment… if we start looking at colleges and majors where people are defaulting and adjust accordingly.
Wildlife:
[W1] Kansas City is being invaded.
[W2] In addition to the United States of America, the Animal Kingdom of Earth may end up a loser in the Trump era.
[W3] Well, this is a very Russia story.
[W4] Save the cows! Save the cows!
[W5] Awww, snail love.
[W6] Dead fish. Lots of them. Lots and lots of them.
[P1] Carl V Philips wrote a paper on the deleterious health effects of wind turbines, which wound around to lead him to a bit of Trump-voter Empathy.
[P2] China – which, by the way, did not invent global warming – may end up taking a lead on climate change. … We’ll see.
[P3] Britain may have to choose between a greener Europe or a blacker America.
[P4] Républicain Nicolas Sarkozy is threatening trade sanctions if Republican Donald Trump pulls out of the Paris Accord.
[P5] Ooooh, corporations sliding their money into activism. {dramatic music}
[P6] Good news: We may be able to inhabit Antarctica in a couple centuries.
Image by feverblue
[S1] Protons are really small. Like, really small.
[S2] Ooooh, some progress on fighting antibiotic resistance?
[S3] Roundest. Object. Ever.
[S4] Lee Jessim looks at the limitations of Stereotype Inaccuracy and the central problem: The lack of aggregate inaccuracy. {More}
[S5] On the other hand, what does it say about the validity of stereotypes that they can be so inconsistent?
[S6] A parasite that comes from cats alters your sex life.
[C1] A study on liberals, conservatives, and criminality.
[C2] Smooth, man.
[C3] Three cheers for Nebraska!
[C4] Never let daycare workers get bored. Bad things happen.
[C5] Maybe it was an owl that done it.
[C6] Dead dogs. Too many of them.
Tags: CrimeEducationenvironmentResourcesscienceWildlife
Will Truman
Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.
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LeeEsq says:
E1: Blogging would also be a much cheaper way to read what academics have to say about their research.
E3: I know that teachers are dedicated to their students but history teachers re-enacting the Battle of the Somme for their students is a bit much.
E5: If International students believe that they are going to be under constant surveillance even though they are here legally than yes, they are not going to want to come and study.
W2: Does this mean that King Leon the Lion will declare a war of self-defense and rally his predators against Americans? W1 suggests yes.
W3: The bride looks a little like a younger version of our new First Lady.
C3: The Cornhusker state has been doing some good work in criminal justice reform.Report
Gabriel Conroy says:
E6 [academics write too much crap]: I’m very sympathetic to Lattier’s argument, but one of the examples from a religious studies journal he cites,
“Death and Demonization of a Bodhisattva: Guanyin’s Reformulation within Chinese Religion”
strikes me as potentially very interesting. I’m certainly no expert on Buddhism or China’s adaptations thereof (and I haven’t read the article he refers to), but I understand that Guanyin is a major figure in–and the idea of a Bodhisattva is an important aspect of–that religious tradition. Simply identifying a weird-sounding title is not necessarily a clue that the piece in question is a bad one.
Now, maybe that article is still crap. As I said, there’s lots to decry in academic writing and the pressure to publish.Report
E4 [Elizabeth on “suspecting” plagiarism]: I wrote a pretty lengthy comment at her blog when the post came out. The gist is that college instructors’ and colleges’ means of identifying and dealing with plagiarism leave much to be desired.Report
fillyjonk in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:
We don’t have a subscription to Turnitin, but supposedly there is something called “SafeAssign” in BlackBoard for people who, unlike me, aren’t Luddites and want to do all their grading online.
I still demand printed copies of papers, that I can write on and file if necessary. I check plagiarism by doing a Google search on one or two random sentences in the paper (using quotation marks to see if I hit anything that’s an exact lifting). If I find something, I read the site, if it matches the paper, I print out the website, make a copy of it and the paper for my files (just in case) and staple the webpage to the student’s paper, and on the grade sheet have written “0. See me to discuss this.”
About 80% of the time when I catch a plagiarist, he or she responds with “oh, man, I didn’t think you’d check. I just ran out of time.” They accept the 0 and admit what they did, and I admit it bothers me that they’re simply chagrined they got caught…..and also that my reputation as someone who really truly does check hasn’t spread.
I once had someone protest what they did WASN’T plagiarism; I directed them to the defining statement of it in my syllabus and offered a meeting with the two of us and the department chair to iron things out, but then the student decided maybe they would just accept the 0.
A few people claim “But I didn’t know” but considering most every faculty member I know who requires written papers goes over just what is and is not plagiarism early in the semester, that one doesn’t wash either.
That said: I would NEVER confront someone in front of a class about it, and I would never base my claim on the usage of a single word. I think the professor in the instance described was in the wrong.Report
Gabriel Conroy in reply to fillyjonk says:
Part of my problem is that at least at the institutions I’ve taught/TA’d, it wasn’t up to the instructor to give a zero, but there were reporting requirements that if followed, could wreck havoc on a student’s academic career.
Part of my problem is that some instances of plagiarism don’t in my opinion merit a zero, especially when a zero means that the student will almost definitely get an F for the course. (Perhaps some of this is a difference in our disciplines? I know way too little about biology/botany, but in history, there is a lot of original argument required that demands both using other sources and coming up with one’s own thing. And the arguments themselves have a subjective component, too.)
I suppose my major beef is that instructors should have more latitude in how how they handle plagiarism and that with that latitude, they should see “busting” students on it as some sort of crusade.
(Disclosure: the last time I taught was spring 2009…..I’m getting so far away from that experience that maybe I shouldn’t rely on my anecdotes as much as I used to.)Report
We have leeway; my policy is to give a 0 for the first offense and any additional offenses after the person has been warned will go to Academic Dishonesty Council. I have never had to do that.
I give a very long time (more than a month for a 3-5 page review paper) for people to complete assignments, and I offer advice, and I even, in some cases, offer to look at drafts and comment on them.
Plagiarism is kind of a big deal if it happens “in the working world” in biology (though fabricating data is an even bigger bad deal) so I want to teach people how to do things the right way from the get-go.
The problem is, in high school, some students have been so miserably taught – either never had to write, or were told, “The only way you are not plagiarizing is to directly quote and then attribute” which, I’m sorry for the language, makes for piss-poor papers.
We’re SUPPOSED to report it to an online repository now but I don’t because that does feel needlessly harsh. A 0 on a paper in my class won’t net the student a failing grade but it will lower their final grade.Report
I realize my comment could be read as saying your discipline doesn’t put a high value on academic honesty. I apologize for that.
As for your broader points, I agree and find your example instructive. As much as I sometimes get on my high horse “academic people tend to grate on my nerves in their demand to retain their prerogatives,”* I think it would be wise to permit them greater latitude in addressing plagiarism and cheating, perhaps with some guidelines and due-process for the student accused of dishonesty. The fact that your institution is now requiring reporting on the online repository suggests to me that it is trying to erode that latitude.
*That’s not a jibe against you. It’s a jibe against some I have known personally and who tend to be like those described in this comment over at Elizabeth Picciuto’s thread, although perhaps not quite as bad as that commenter’s examples. (And at the end of the day, maybe that bad behavior ought to be irrelevant as an argument against academicians’ prerogatives.)Report
fillyjonk says:
E1: Don’t get me started on my tirade about the academic-publishing “game.” It’s rigged in a lot of ways, but it’s a game most profs are expected to play if they want to get or keep tenure. (And I definitely want the protection of tenure, based on what happened during the last bad budget cycle to a couple of our non-tenured people who were highly regarded as teachers – they were gone, somewhat suddenly, because there was No Money)Report
Oscar Gordon says:
S1: photons or protons?Report
Will Truman in reply to Oscar Gordon says:
FixedReport
Trump is considering Alabama Senator Jeff Seasions for Attorney General. This is a man who was rejected for federal judgeship because he referred to an African-American attorney as a “boy”.Report
Michael Cain in reply to LeeEsq says:
Yes, although that was something over 30 years ago. He’s on Trump’s short list today because of his current stance on illegal immigration. Given things he’s said in the last few years, it would be unsurprising if he also turned the DEA loose on recreational and medical marijuana shops/dispensaries. I don’t recall if it was Sessions or one of the other Republican Senators who was recently blaming the rapidly growing opioid problems across the South on Colorado’s legalization of marijuana.Report
Jaybird in reply to Michael Cain says:
Yeah, Sessions is going to be awful.
I suppose that the saving grace is that there are enough conservatives who actually believe in the 10th Amendment and enough liberals who will find temporary support for the 10th Amendment to be politically useful that it might become an interesting Constitutional argument.Report
Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:
Unless, of course, the conservatives *DON’T* actually believe in the 10th Amendment…Report
LeeEsq in reply to Jaybird says:
Scott Leimeux of LGMs argument is that most people do not care about federalism when it suits them.Report
Will Truman in reply to LeeEsq says:
I think that’s at least partially true. In my experiences, conservatives are prone to like federalism on an abstract level. But they’re (way too) willing to toss that aside for expedience. Likewise, liberals are prone to dislike federalism in the abstract, but are willing to implement it and argue for it when it helps them.
This is a distinction but with only a minor operational difference.Report
Kolohe in reply to Will Truman says:
Views on District of Columbia autonomy are the number one example.
If you think states shouldn’t be a big deal, or even a deal at all, you should love that the Federal government has absolute control over a piece of land.
And if you think the federal government overreaches too much, you should want the local community to have authority over its own affairs.
Yet, nobody sticks with convictions regarding the status of DC governance.Report
Morat20 in reply to LeeEsq says:
He’s right.
Texas is mulling over a state policy to override Houston’s policy on regulating Uber. (Houston just came to an agreement with Uber and Lyft, and it the issue was mostly about background checks and the required fingerprinting, and I think they pushed off the big ‘problem’ change until after the Superbowl anyways).
The spokesman from Houston pointed out that the State of Texas was thinking about doing to Houston what they always complain the Feds do to Texas — saying “We don’t like your law, and even though it has nothing to do with us, we’re gonna change it”.
I was really struck by how hard the States spokesman was finding it to justify, and even then he was stuck saying “We don’t like how Houston is regulating it’s taxi industry” — it wasn’t something he could hide.
But then, Houston’s used to that. We spent 20 years having Tom Delay micromanage our transit system. (He didn’t even represent Houston, for that matter, but Sugarland).Report
Will Truman in reply to Morat20 says:
The Uber thing doesn’t contradict federalism, though. That contradicts “local control” which is overlapping but different.
State transit being micromanaged by Washington does, though.Report
Morat20 in reply to Will Truman says:
I am aware it’s not federalism.
The same logic is used, and while Texas has no state version of the 10th Amendment, this is a pretty egregious violation of their own principles (which include local control, and it’s “local control” that leads them to praise the 10th Amendment so much, not the 10th Amendment that leads to them to embrace “local control”),
Tom Delay just hated the idea of Houston having mass transit. Hated it. He’d go so far as to shove in riders to explicitly block Houston from matching funds for transit stuff. Dallas could get it, Austin could get it, but Houston? Nope.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to Morat20 says:
This has been a long standing Republican tactic. They also try and do it when blue cities in red states pass progressive legislation like bans against LBGT discrimination.Report
LeeEsq in reply to Morat20 says:
I’m really not pissed when state governments override the decisions of local governments. Counties and cities are administrative creations of the state. It’s the role of the state legislature to structure their powers and responsibilities. I’m also a fan of a more uniform regulation than a patch work of regulation.Report
In this case, you have long-standing regulations that Uber wanted changed to benefit them. Houston said “No, you have to comply with the ones we make everyone driving people around adhere to” and then Uber threatened to pull out, and then Houston said “Look, we’re willing to compromise short-term a bit here so your drivers aren’t missing out on the Superbowl, but ultimately you’re going to have to adhere to the long-standing regs that have been in place decades”
And then Uber lobbied the state.
It has nothing to do with “uniform state regs” or even the Houston regulations, which the State cared nothing for prior.Report
Francis in reply to LeeEsq says:
Counties yes, but cities (at least here in California) can form independently from the state government. They’re called charter cities and they have home rule power over municipal affairs that cannot be superseded by the State Legislature.Report
LeeEsq in reply to Francis says:
Many states have home rule municipalities but only because the state constitution and law permits it.Report
Stillwater in reply to LeeEsq says:
Scott Leimeux of LGMs argument is that most people do not care about federalism when it suits them.
From a functional point of view, a political ideology that prioritizes state’s rights is actually – in my view, anyway – a very important difference between the two parties at the level of retail politics since conservatives can pick and choose which principles or rights ought to be enforced at the state level, and which ought to be enforced nationally. For example, without blatant incoherence, conservatives can claim that SSM ought to be a states rights issue (since marriage isn’t a foundational right granted by the constitution) and gun rights ought to be a national one (given the 2A). Dems have less flexibility politically in making those types of distinctions since the Party’s ideological presuppositions are increasingly based (almost exclusively, seems to me) on national-level policies. Personally, I think that difference – as it plays out in practice as well as ideologically (especially as the distinctions between the two parties are heightened and increasingly perceived as oppositional/incompatible) – is one of the main reasons the GOP has dominated at the local and state levels. And now, of course, at the national level too.
None of that, I wanna add, should be viewed as a judgment of the content of the specific proposals widely identified with each party. But I also fully expect the GOP to make some spectacularly horrible decisions over the next two years.Report
dragonfrog in reply to Stillwater says:
For example, without blatant incoherence, conservatives can claim that SSM ought to be a states rights issue (since marriage isn’t a foundational right granted by the constitution) and gun rights ought to be a national one (given the 2A).
If they’d started from that position, perhaps. But history rather makes states’ rights look more like the motte to which they retreat when the DOMA bailey falls.Report
NoPublic in reply to Stillwater says:
The Constitution does not grant any rights. All it does is note where the Federal Government cannot interfere with them.Report
Don Zeko in reply to NoPublic says:
You are aware that it has more than ten amendments, right?Report
Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:
The US is signatory to (and the Senate ratified) the UN drug treaty that requires marijuana to be a Schedule I drug. That alone would seem to take care of any Constitutional argument in court, putting laws and enforcement clearly in federal hands.Report
My immediate response is something to the effect of “Eff the UN and the horse it rode in on.”
Unfortunately when Scalia was given the choice between yelling “EFF WICKARD!” and punching a hippie, Scalia chose to punch the hippie.
I hope that there are more conservatives like Thomas than Scalia out there.
And, even if not, I hope that there are more conservatives that would prefer to punch the UN in the face than hippies.
But I see how the UN provides an out to the Democrats when it comes to the Feds kicking down the doors of Colorado dispensaries.Report
dragonfrog in reply to Michael Cain says:
I’m not sure that makes sense.
The fact that I have sold your house without actually having authority to do so doesn’t diminish your title to the house. It obligates me to go back to the buyer and say “Sorry guys, I messed up and sold you a thing that wasn’t mine, here’s your money back.”
If the federal government signs a treaty promising to do things it lacks authority to do, does that grant it the authority it lacked at the time of signing, or does that oblige it to withdraw from the treaty?Report
Jaybird in reply to dragonfrog says:
Serious question:
Is there anything that the federal government lacks the authority to do?
Okay, okay. Somewhat loaded question because the easy and obvious answer is “yes, of course, are you dumb?”
So ask a tougher one: “Does the Federal Government have the authority to do *THIS*?”
Only crazy people might argue that it doesn’t. Smart people, good people argue that it does but it should do the right thing. Only nutters think that the Feds doesn’t have the authority to do it in the first place.Report
dragonfrog in reply to Jaybird says:
I’m afraid I don’t understand your question.
If federalism and the 10th amendment mean anything, then the US federal government lacks authority to do some things.
I was taking issue with @michael-cain ‘s argument that the fact the fed signed a treaty requiring it to do something, is useful as an argument that it has the authority to do that thing.
At best, I think the signing of the treaty on its own is an argument that the fed has an obligation to determine whether it has the authority to enforce the treaty, and then either withdraw from the treaty immediately, or enforce it until such time as it does withdraw.
Which may not answer your question.Report
I’ll try to clarify:
“Does the Federal Government have the authority to do *THIS*?” then becomes “Does the Federal Government have the authority to Schedule marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug?”
So we ask: “Does the Federal Government have the authority to Schedule marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug?”
Is this question phrased more intelligibly?Report
And according to the SCOTUS, who gets to make the call, the answer is “Yes, the federal government has that authority.”Report
“Huh. Maybe we shouldn’t have done that.”Report
OK, I think I gave a somewhat better answer below then.
The thing that seems dubious to me is whether the fed can require states to enforce the fines and prison sentences for production / sales / possession of drugs on the various schedules, when those activities take place entirely within state lines. Which comes out pretty close to the same thing.Report
Michael Cain in reply to dragonfrog says:
Any shop, dispensary, or grow operation is going to be in possession of enough marijuana to get heavy sentences under federal law. The question is whether a Sessions-led DOJ will close such down, driving the marijuana business back underground. They don’t even have to prosecute, they just have to seize the product, which the DEA could manage with minimal effort and staff.Report
Dude, read Gonzales v. Raich again.
Here’s the argument again:
Angel Raich was the *PERFECT* person to bring this case. Young mother, who was afflicted with more crap than Job himself, was actively helped by marijuana.
Her friends grew marijuana for her, in California dirt, using California water, California sunshine, and hand carried weed to her and *GAVE* her the weed, not sold. Her argument was that “this is not ‘interstate commerce’, therefore the CSA does not apply to it.”
Anyway, I’m not doing the case justice.
It’s fun to go back and re-read arguments from the time of the case with 2016 eyes.Report
That’s what I mean – given that three supreme court justices not named Scalia agreed with her case, it’s not “crazy” to think the fed won, effectively, against the constitution.
I understand that it’s settled law now, but I suspect it’s one of those things where the supreme court chose to make the decision that would not upset things too much, not the decision that was more clearly supported by the constitution.
Also, read my comment about Gonzalez v. Raich again. You may be agreeing with me more than you think.Report
Two of those justices are gone.
The third is anathema.
The case is settled. We can hope that the Federal Government does the right thing… but the libertarian argument?
At this point, that position is crazy.
I mean, look at Kagan. Look at Alito. Look at Sotomayor.
Who among them would argue that the Federal Government does *NOT* have that power? Not that the federal government shouldn’t do something else with that power, mind.
Who would argue that, according to the Constitution, it doesn’t have it in the first place?Report
Road Scholar in reply to dragonfrog says:
The problem with the 10th amendment is that it doesn’t tell you anything beyond the abstract of “…the US federal government lacks authority to do some things.” Essentially, it’s a statement of subsidiarity, which is one of those fine principles that sounds profound and wise but actually tells you precisely nothing about any particular issue in question. And because it actually tells you nothing while seeming to be an important principle it’s the perfect cudgel to deploy in support of any argument from any direction.Report
Brandon Berg in reply to Road Scholar says:
It lacks the authority to do things not listed among its enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8.Report
Road Scholar in reply to Brandon Berg says:
Meh… old argument that’s above both our paygrades. But even if I grant your assertion then the 10th would seem to be redundant and pointless. But… apparently it wasn’t seen that way to the folks at the time.Report
Alternate answer maybe assuming I understand the question:
The Gonzalez v. Raich decision suggests the fed does at present possess such authority – on the other hand, the decision was not unanimous, but 6-3. I would hesitate to declare judges Rehnquist, O’Connor, and Thomas “crazy”.
And, to my initial point, Gonzalez v. Raich is a much better argument that the fed possesses authority to ban drugs than the signing of the SCoND. The SCoND dates to 1961, Gonzalez v. Raich to 2005.
That seems like an awful long time to delay figuring out whether the authority exists – particularly given that the SCoND was signed only 28 years after the 21st amendment, which should have given considerable reason to question whether other drug prohibitions would require constitutional amendments as well.Report
One of the declared purposes of the Controlled Substances Act was to bring US law into conformance with the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. In Gonzalez v. Raich, the SCOTUS held that the US federal government had the authority to prohibit all use of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. So if the new administration is determined to shut down recreational and medical marijuana, the argument is “The UN treaty requires that marijuana be a CSA Schedule I drug; the CSA puts it there; the SCOTUS says we can enforce that.”
Now, whether the DOJ and DEA can require states to prosecute under the CSA is another matter.Report
Makes sense I guess – the state can allocate a $0 budget for enforcement, prosecution, and imprisonment, and maybe even bill the fed for the time of any state employee subpoenaed in a cannabis prosecution.
At which point it comes down to a staring contest…Report
I don’t see how the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs requires cannabis to be a schedule I drug in the US Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It may require it to be on a schedule, but not specifically on one or another.
The SCoND contains in its schedule I:
Cannabis (CDSA schedule I)
Cocaine (CDSA schedule II)
Morphine (CDSA schedule II)
Oxycodone (CDSA schedule II)Report
dragonfrog in reply to dragonfrog says:
(Sorry, Controlled Substances Act – the CDSA is Canadian)Report
Hoosegow Flask in reply to Jaybird says:
People like Ted Cruz? Any respect I had gained for him for calling Trump out and refusing to endorse him was washed away by the pathetic image of him phone banking for Trump.
Even #NeverTrumps like Romney are lining up to kiss the ring. (And whatever happened to the principled Mormon holdout in Utah?)
I don’t expect much conservative opposition to the Trump administration unless public opinion turns hard. And even then, it’s questionable.Report
Jaybird in reply to Hoosegow Flask says:
I’m hoping to hear a lot from Rand Paul, myself.
I’m expecting Rand Paul to open his mouth to oppose Trump and hear people snicker about his father’s newsletters, though. HEY RAND! WOULD YOU HAVE PASSED THE CRA?!?Report
Kolohe in reply to Hoosegow Flask says:
Hoosegow Flask: Even #NeverTrumps like Romney are lining up to kiss the ring
I’m going to give Mitt some benefit of the doubt here. First, it’s not like Mitt needs a job.
Mitt could honestly think now that the deed is done, there’s no point in being in the bleachers complaining about the game, when he could be in the game, doing whatever good he can do.
Yeah, Mitt visited Trump tower, but at this point it’s a logistics thing, where else were they going to meet? It’s implausible for a President Elect to go around the country to get people skeptical of his leadership to serve in the goverment.
Mitt just saying ‘forget it, Trump doesn’t deserve people like me in his administration’ is more of a Burn The System To The Ground position than an anti-Trump positon at this stage in the process.Report
North in reply to Kolohe says:
I’m with Kolohe. Romney would be a better SoS than most of the possible Trump candidates unless he started inviting Democratic figures to apply.Report
Burt Likko in reply to LeeEsq says:
According to the WaPo, that wasn’t quite it — it was reference to all African-Americans by the capstone epithet, among many other questionable phrases and statements from early in his career. To be perfectly fair to Senator Sessions (and we critics of the Trump Administration can easily afford to be perfectly fair, as even when doing so there is ample material to criticize) it was thirty years ago.Report
Troublesome Frog in reply to Burt Likko says:
…we critics of the Trump Administration can easily afford to be perfectly fair, as even when doing so there is ample material to criticize.
This strikes me as very, very important. If his history is any guide, Trump is going to do a lot of terrible, terrible things. If we go into full freakout mode over things that can easily be dismissed (rightly or wrongly), we’re going to have trouble making a case when he inevitably does really indefensible things.
Then again, Hillary Clinton died the death of a million cuts over decades, so I suppose that full freakout mode and conspiracy theories work pretty well too, just on a longer timescale. I just think that the timescale for opposing Trump craziness is going to be 4 years. Trying to smear 84 year old future Trump with the general stink of corruption is probably pointless and redundant.Report
Mark Boggs in reply to Troublesome Frog says:
Yes, this.
The right spent the last 8 years creating outrage out of almost complete fabrications and imagined horrors. There were plenty of actual policy complaints they could have made in their post-Bush transition to small government and anti- interventionist ways but they couldn’t seem to help themselves from sharing photoshopped pictures of Obama kissing another guy to terrorist fist bumps, etc.
Trump’s opposition would do well to stick with policies rather than ginned up nitpicks. Let Trump do his own digging on the personal side.Report
Burt Likko in reply to Mark Boggs says:
Where on this policy-versus-personal scale do we put corruption?Report
I’m trying to convince myself that our budget and broader economy are large enough that Trump won’t do much noticeable damage as he spends the next 4 years looting the treasury for personal gain. I mean, it will be unseemly and gross, but it won’t really have much of a practical effect beyond eroding norms. I think it will only become a practical policy matter if he pushes bad policies for self enrichment such that $10M into his pocket is a $1B loss in bad governance. We’ll see how that goes.Report
Stillwater in reply to Troublesome Frog says:
From TPM:
The Cash-In Begins
Let’s review the stories of the last two days. Trump’s DC hotel is soliciting foreign diplomatic delegations to switch their business to the incoming President’s new hotel. On Tuesday Trump took a break from transition work to meet with his Indian business partners about expanding the Trump Organization’s business in India now that he’s president. Trump included his adult children in the meeting – the ones who will run his ‘blind trust’. The news didn’t reach the American press until it was reporting in an Indian paper. Now we learn that Trump’s Philippines business partner Jose E. B. Antonio has been named the Philippines new trade envoy to the United States.Report
Mark Boggs in reply to Burt Likko says:
Well, in my book, it’s way up there. And given the fact the democrats don’t hold either house of congress, they won’t have the ability to do perpetual investigations like the republicans did. Hopefully between Trump’s inability to shut his hole, his willingness to double down, and the presses ability to actually do reporting, Trump will undo himself there.
I’m just hoping that my fellow travelers don’t get all hung up on Melania’s citizenship, Trump’s kids, or other fringe items of nonsense. In most cases I think focusing on the small shit makes it easier for people to dismiss the big stuff. Ya know, sour grapes and all.Report
Will Truman in reply to Mark Boggs says:
I think this played a pretty significant role in both the primaries and the general.Report
Roland Dodds says:
E3: I do think too much is made of teacher’s leaving the field, especially when one compares the number that leaves compared to other professions (as the piece points out). I am speaking anecdotally, but here in the greater Bay Area and Northern California in general, it is very hard to fill many teaching jobs with qualified staff. It might not be people leaving the field that has caused this problem, and perhaps teachers leaving the area for locations with a more affordable standard of living.Report
Pinky says:
C6 – First of all, why the link to Russia Today? The article was a paraphrase of the Reason article. And yeah, I know Reason can be goofy, but they’re not propagandists for a thug like Putin.
Second, I’m a dog lover, but I have no problem with police using force against dogs if they perceive them as a threat. Of course any use of force should be investigated, but on a case-by-case basis.Report
Will Truman in reply to Pinky says:
It’s a (probably not good) habit I have that when I read a short encapsulation but not the longer thing it is drawn from, I link to the former rather than the latter.Report
Pinky in reply to Will Truman says:
Hey, I get it. We’re here to consume as many links as possible. Linky Friday isn’t a doctoral thesis.Report
Speaking of science/crime, have you seen this paper?
Here’s the paper’s title to help suck you in:
Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images
Phrenology is back, baby.Report
Troublesome Frog in reply to Jaybird says:
Give me enough parameters in my neural network and I shall draw a hyperplane through a horse. Or something like that.
Aside from the obvious “big data” types problems, the observation that criminals tend to have “weird” faces and non-criminals have “normal” ones is an interesting one. I can’t help but wonder if that says more about how we decide who is a criminal than it does about how lip shape and criminality are correlated.Report
Kim in reply to Troublesome Frog says:
tf,
XXY have weird faces? ;-P
More likely you’ve got both a chicken and an egg problem.
Also, lookit the pretty pictures. There’s not much difference.Report
Apparently, #TrumpCup is a thing.
Here’s the deal: Go into a Starbucks. Order your usual order. Ask them to put “Trump” on the side of the cup. Take video. If they refuse to or refuse to call the name, put the video on the youtubes!
It’s just that easy!Report
Ooooh, I misunderstood. You ask them to put “Trump and then the number 1” on there.
They’ll have to yell “TRUMP WON”.
Unless, of course, they refuse to.Report
fillyjonk in reply to Jaybird says:
My standard response to people getting upset over things like that, and things like the very cup DESIGN is:
If your life is that free of troubles and woes that you must go out looking for them, get down on your knees and thank whatever Deity you believe in (or the Universe, or whatever, if you don’t) for such a trouble-free life. Gah.Report
“Trumpi! Cafe au lait for Trumpi!”Report
Autolukos in reply to Jaybird says:
That’s a brilliant viral marketing scheme. Somebody deserves a raise.Report
C1 – I’d love to see that data controlled for religious involvement.Report
E1: Aren’t there plenty of blogging academics? I seem to see them frequently. A lot of these article felt like “Let’s punch the humanities academics” which is not surprising because it is FEE and economists with the FEE bent seem the most likely to punch humanities academics. I don’t see them suggesting that topics on theoreotical physics are too obtuse and deserved to be mocked.Report
C2 – Is using AXE body spray a primary offense, or is it something the police can check for once they pull you over? Either way, good for you, South Carolina.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to Pinky says:
I think you can smell AXE without pulling them over. Just take down their license plate and send them a ticket.Report
Pinky in reply to Saul Degraw says:
Ah. Protect the officer from more direct exposure. I see.Report
Fashion Designers have started announcing that they won’t make dresses for Melania Trump.
It’s like… sigh.
This is seriously, seriously, going to end with a pile of bodies.Report
Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:
First they came for the fashionistas…Report
Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:
We’re on “then” at this point in the iterated game. We’re not at “first”. We haven’t been at “first” for a long, long time.Report
You seem surprised by this.Report
Morat20 in reply to Jaybird says:
Now, now, Jaybird. They’re just exercising their religious freedoms not to support people whose lifestyles they don’t approve of I’m sure. 🙂
(Although come on. Someone will break because Trump or not, exclusive designer to the White House? Oh yeah).Report
Jaybird in reply to Morat20 says:
Still wondering why Trump won?Report
Still think you’re the only one whose met a blue collar worker or Trump voter?Report
There’s the guy who sells me my newspaper!
The guy who shines my shoes!
The janitor!Report
Though I admit there’s a certain schadenfreude in thinking of the First Lady having to wear a dress from JC Penney’s or something. (Wasn’t it Mrs. Ford who had the “good cloth coat”?)Report
Jaybird in reply to fillyjonk says:
I can easily see her deciding to do something like this.
I can easily see the so-called “coastal elites” snickering at her wearing a dress from JC Penney’s.
And then I see that the following states have senate elections in 2018:
If I were Team Trump, I’d have Mrs. Trump purchase such a coat at the Mall of America and give an interview in which she explains that the designers who made coats for Mrs. Obama refused to make her one.
On a Friday morning, perhaps.
Then, in the middle of Friday afternoon, I’d probably do a bad news dump.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to fillyjonk says:
@fillyjonk
Pat Nixon. That was the famous Checkers speech.Report
Jesus Christ. Pence got chewed out at Hamilton.
It’s like proggies would rather signal virtue than maintain norms.
You’re losing 2018 already, guys. Do you not see this?Report
Kolohe in reply to Jaybird says:
I think politicians should be booed often and loudly. Thank the FSM that the crime of lese majeste is dead again in this country.
I think both sides can declare “victory” after this “skirmish”.
I think Trump might come out ahead, because the Friday Night News Dump is dead – rather this event is highlighted and distracts from real stuff like the apointments, the settled lawsuit, the shady deals with foreign dips at the hotel.
Plus Trump’s tweet about it was a perfect troll, and he who trolls last, trolls best.Report
Kolohe in reply to Kolohe says:
It too bad Margery Mason passed away recently, she’d be the perfect inauguration ceremony guest.Report
Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:
I agree. Of course I agree.
But “hey, the Republicans are back in office, let’s dust off this unused norm we’ve been ignoring for the last decade and put this one we’ve been using away” is probably *NOT* what you ought to be doing if your plans include getting more congressmen, senators, and governors in the parts of the country where Chili’s is considered a nice restaurant.
Speaking of Chili’s, ‘member this?Report
Gabriel Conroy in reply to Jaybird says:
I remember that, and very recently was even thinking about that incident, before you brought it up here again.
But for some reason I remembered it as Applebee’s. Maybe because there was indeed discussion in that thread about Applebee’s.
To me, the distinction between the two is important, but I”m not positive how.Report
Jaybird in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:
Applebee’s is where you take a lady friend on a date.
Chili’s is where you take the wife on a date.Report
I wouldn’t take either to Applebee’s. (To be clear, my “lady friend” and “my wife” are the same person.)Report
You should take that fine woman to Chili’s.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:
Applebee’s is where Obama doesn’t go to the salad bar because he’s an elitist, according to man of the people David Brooks, who, if he’d ever been there would know it doesn’t have a salad bar.Report
I do remember that, but now I’m trying to remember “the worst thing he did on that trip” and I’m drawing a blank.
And I think that’s meaningful at this point.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:
@jaybird
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/1008/Why-Mike-Pence-won-t-grant-pardon-to-exonerated-Indiana-man
The prosecutor recommended a pardon. The parole board recommended a pardon. Mike Pence will not pardon and you are worried about him getting booed at Hamilton. What’s up with you?Report
Kolohe in reply to Saul Degraw says:
If I understand it, Jaybird’s worried about Pence continuing to be Vice President from 2021-2025, and possibly President thereafter.Report
At this rate, I’m worried about Pence being Vice-President from 2021-2034.Report
Guy who does shameful things gets shamed in the public square.Report
I am going to hope that Trump's opponents learn the difference between "cathartic" and "effective" quickly, for the sake of the country.— Dan Scotto (@dscotto10) November 19, 2016 Report
And publicly shaming people to veer outside societal norms is highly effective.Report
I suppose that this would be a better argument if it involved something measurable.
But my take from here is that Trump is winning this particular argument.Report
With who?
And why should we care?
This isn’t debate club, its society affirming its rules and boundaries of what is acceptable and what isn’t.Report
States like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
The Trump Coalition is still new and fragile.
Shit like this helps it harden.
That’s why you should care.Report
Retyping, from one of the commenters over at LGM, a tweet from Jeremy McKellen:
“One of the most common characteristics of abusers…is that the resistance to the abuser is justification for the abuse.
The broader message is ‘your resistance to my behavior is why I behave this way in the first place.’
“Remember this over the next four years when you hear the trope ‘See this is why Trump won.’
If you call his appointees racist, thats why Trump won.
If you boo Mike Pence, thats why Trump won.’
If you protest in the streets, thats why Trump won.
Its a rhetorical tool for neutering resistance. Always ask what function it serves.”Report
I’m not trying to neuter your resistance.
I’m pointing out that your resistance is already neutered.
I’m glad we’re hammering out that telling the truth is “abuse” now. Won’t it be awesome when that particular tool ends up in the hands of Trump.Report
I’m glad we’re hammering out that telling the truth is “abuse” now.
I have no idea what this means.Report
The cultural elite are at the beginning of a journey of discovery where they find that they actually have to talk to the people who disagree with them instead of just putting them in the “bad people” file.
Pre-emptively marking “people disagreeing with us” and “explaining what happened” as being “abuse” will not work.Report
Oh, you want to round me up and put me on a registry of suspected terrorists? To convert my gay son via electroshock therapy? To shred my Medicare?
Yes, please, lets have a calm civil discussion, and engage with each other.
Lets discuss your feelings, and your secret pain and anxiety.
I certainly wouldn’t want to utter a word which might cause you unpleasantness or distress.
Because that might cause you to do something worse, and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.Report
This is because the cultural elite are bad people, and need to be reminded of that at every opportunity.Report
greginak in reply to Mike Schilling says:
Well what to you except. The cultural elite have never ever been to Real America, none of them ever lived there, have family there or know anybody there. The CE live in bubbles while the rest of Americans don’t do that and mix with all sorts of people. And people who didn’t vote Trumpy are the Cultural Elite.Report
Chip Daniels in reply to Mike Schilling says:
Anyone who wears glasses should be rounded up and sent to the Real American countryside where they can learn proper attitudes from the proletarian workers in Carhartt jackets.Report
Which is why it needs to be broken, divided, and splintered apart.
We need to shame those who can be shamed, reason with those who can be reasoned with, co-opt those who can be co-opted, and then confront and overwhelm those who are left.
There are millions of Nice Polite Republicans who voted for Trump and now want to make him normal and safe and acceptable.
We need to block that, and call them out on the reality of what Trump stands for.
He isn’t normal, his appointees are not normal, and his actions are completely outside the societal norms.Report
Yeah, see if you can get Lena Dunham and the cast of The West Wing to help you.Report
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/11/19/mike_pence_was_booed_at_hamilton_on_broadway.html
Pence, in other words, insisted that no federal funds should go to AIDS organizations that accept homosexuality. Instead, he argued: “Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” Put simply, Pence wanted to redirect critical HIV funding from AIDS treatment programs to ex-gay conversion therapy—i.e., torture.
Obviously, Pence never achieved his goal of diverting federal AIDS funding to conversion therapy programs. But if he had, thousands of AIDS patients would have undoubtedly died for no good reason. Pence’s policy—which he has never repudiated, despite opportunities to do so—suggested that low-income people should only receive AIDS medication if they renounce their homosexuality and attempt “to change their sexual behavior.” Moreover, treatment centers and programs that fight AIDS should only get federal funds if they condemn homosexuality. These toxic ideas, if enacted, would have shuttered countless clinics and deprived innumerable patients of the drugs they needed to survive.
Kolohe in reply to Chip Daniels says:
I’ll just say at no point in the last 18 months, did Trump do anything ‘normal’ and he was never treated as ‘normal’
His escalator ride. Insulting Mexicans. Insulting POWs. Insulting a sitting federal judge. Insulting Muslims. Insulting African Americans. Insulting immigrants in general. Insulting women in general. Insulting a specific conservative woman. Abetting assault at another conservative woman. Including penis size as an issue in one debate. Skipping another debate entirely. Staging a bizarre, cult of personality convention. Insulting yet another woman, this time a gold star mother. Having three more debates where “San Dimas High School Football Rules!” would have been an improvement in his performance. Tweeting. Endless tweeting. Endless endless tweeting.
He’s never been normal, never been treated as normal, and yet, here we are.Report
greginak in reply to Kolohe says:
Yup, weird happens. And it has and lots are going to be screwed for it. The answer is not to assume everything Trumpy does is magic or strategic genius. He didn’t even win the pop vote remember.Report
Kolohe in reply to greginak says:
I totally agree that Trump Chris Columbus’ed it. A terrible plan with flawed execution that even his own people were ready to mutiny on, thinking they were sailing off the edge of the world.
Saved at the last minute by a previously unknown geographic feature on the map. One that he never understood what it actually was nor how it bailed him out.
The question is, how far does this analogy go? Is the feature like Altantis, ready to resubmerge beneath the waves? Or is like the actual New World? Cause the guys who came after Columbus knew what the New World really was, and had knowledge without peer on how to exploit it.Report
Also Comey. Comey had an effect. Heck plenty of people usually suspicious of the national security state were all in for Comey getting Clinton.
Good questions and none of us will know for a while. We’ll have some hints a few months into the Trumpy admin and some good data in two years. Long term question are the most irritating cause we all want to know now.
A couple months ago people would mention that the country is pretty evenly divided and had been for a while. Now…it’s Trump’s Country and we are either kings of world or defeated forever. Defeatism is the road to defeat.Report
They should have been chanting, “Lock him up,” instead if they wanted to be tactical about it.Report
Will Truman in reply to Chip Daniels says:
Only when it comes from people with leverage or influence over the shamed.Report
North in reply to Jaybird says:
To be honest I lean closer to Scotto and your opinion on the matter than not, but the idea of conservatives talking about any kind of respectful social norms towards the Presidency after their last eight year run is knee slapping funny.Report
Jaybird in reply to North says:
You’ll find the 2018 elections downright hilarious.Report
Well if past patterns are indicative playing to their lunatic base should reward dems with the House, Senate and Presidency no?Report
It is entirely possible that a huge majority of Americans will decide that rounding up Mexicans and Muslims into cattle cars for internment is a wonderful idea.
I don’t have the power to change that.
But I do have the power to refuse to accept it as within the range of normal political ideas.
I do have the power to call it out as an atrocity.
I do have the power to shame and ridicule and confront those who accept it and apologize for it and provide it with rhetorical cover.
Evil always relies on people wanting to be comfortable and safe, and turn their heads and wring their hands in helpless apathy. Or fool themselves with too-clever-by-half strategems of “lets make nice and maybe we can win without confrontation or unpleasantness.“Report
Chip Daniels: It is entirely possible that a huge majority of Americans will decide that rounding up Mexicans and Muslims into cattle cars for internment is a wonderful idea.
If it came to that, people taking to the streets and disrupting things overall would be highly useful.
But if people are already getting their dander up about ‘”Trump’s America” when Obama is still President and de Blasio is still Mayor of NYC, they may be exhausted by the time the real fight is necessary.Report
Looking back, “body positivity” may have been a mistake.Report
There is the possibility that this is the Doolittle Raid of the eventually victorious anti-Trump coalition, but it’s hard to see that yet.Report
Anti-Trump forces could take a page from Operation Rescue and make entry and egress of every Trump owned or operated property a hassle, but they pretty much did the complete opposite of that in this case.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to Kolohe says:
@kolohe @jaybird
We call it Trump’s America because Trump’s rhetoric through out the primaries and campaign gave license to the various hate crimes we have seen rise to post-election.
I don’t think people suddenly became anti-Mexican, or more sexist, more anti-Muslim, or more anti-Semitic but enough people feel like they can let their bigotry out more that it is noticeable. Most of this is probably not going to go beyond graffiti and sending hate e-mails and propaganda but they clearly received some signal from Trump that sending anti-Semitic propaganda is okay. I don’t think they would have sent it if HRC was the President-elect.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to North says:
At least we can all agree that the Theater must always be a safe and special place.Report
Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:
Hurray! Let’s get the left to mock the idea of “safe spaces” too!Report
PD Shaw in reply to Mike Schilling says:
Agreed.Report
PD Shaw in reply to PD Shaw says:
You do mean no shooting, right?Report
Mike Schilling in reply to PD Shaw says:
Interesting question, given which party loves the Confederacy.Report
The last several days I’ve not been so sure. We’ve got talk about secession. I just listened to James Carville on CSPAN calling for Democrats to pull out their bayonets in response to a question about preferential voting systems, and VOX ran an interview with a law professor who explained the purpose of the Electoral College as if he was Justice ‘fishin’ Taney.Report
Road Scholar in reply to Jaybird says:
SRSLY? Now we’re suddenly supposed to be concerned about norms? Like when a sitting congressman yells out, “You lie!” during a SoU address fer instance?
Dude, a hell of a lot of “norms” have taken a stroll the last eight or so years on both the public/political level as well as the personal. And I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but it wasn’t the “proggies” throwing them out the window.
Anyway, did you read what the actor actually said? It was a hell of a lot more respectful than a lot of sitting Congress critters have been toward Obama over the years.Report
Kolohe in reply to Road Scholar says:
“When they go low we go high” sure had a short shelf life, didn’t it?Report
Road Scholar in reply to Kolohe says:
Maybe, because as @north notes, it works so well.Report
North in reply to Road Scholar says:
FTR, I think it’s a bad idea- the actions of the cast are okay but the audience? Not cool. But I think the response from the right is just too funny.Report
Jaybird in reply to Road Scholar says:
I wasn’t talking about the actor.
I was talking about the boos.
Oh, and the culture war skirmish where “the left” and “the elite” just got their asses kicked.Report
Pence has also advocated for using electric-shock therapy to “cure” LBGT people and signed laws that mandated burials for miscarriages. Getting booed at is the least of his issues.
The statement done by the Hamilton cast was amazing and full of grace and dissent from what I’ve heard.
Do you care about dissent or only when red-leaning “real Americans” dissent? I would think as a non-libertarian libertarian who openly talks about wanting people not to vote for “lizard people”, you would not mind dissent and disrespect to politicians. Or are only liberals lizard people?Report
Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:
I care about dissent when it is more than virtue signaling, yes.
When it’s little more than “EFF YOU AND YOUR WAL-MART VALUES”, I see myself wondering whether you realize that you just lost an election to the people you’re booing at your $1,000/nosebleed seat play.
I’m sure that Trump and Pence both very much appreciate the impromptu fundraiser the audience at Hamilton threw them last night.
Look for more of this shit. If I’m Trump, I’m sending Pence to “The Book Of Mormon” next week.Report
And you are the lord master arbitrator and final judge of what counts as dissent and what counts as virtual signaling?Report
I’m pretty sure that the electoral college is.Report
If you want to persuade people, you talk to them. If you want to enrage people, you boo them. I’m not crazy about the term “virtue signalling”, but call it whatever you want. It was an act that could only make things more divided.
And sure, I understand that the left is only blowing off steam after a rough loss, but the truth is that this kind of escalation is what got us here, and got Trump the win.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Pinky says:
Trump won because the simple, non-threatening common sense of Fox, Bretibart, Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing noise machine overcame the hyper-partisan ranting of the MSM. Trump is a uniter, not a divider.Report
Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:
So in the link below, about these poor folks in Kentucky who are getting health care only due to Obamacare, and many of whom probably voted for the people who will strip it from them.
What do you think I should say to these people if I were to talk to them?
Aside from “What the f**k did you folks think was going to happen when you vote for a guy who openly promises to take away your health insurance?”
Is there some clever, witty, gentle and lovable way of telling them that they will probably die as a result of their own votes, and the votes of their neighbors?
What words would you use?Report
Luke 15:11-32Report
Kazzy in reply to Chip Daniels says:
“There is another election in two years. Here are some candidates that will fight to get your insurance back.”Report
Chip Daniels in reply to Kazzy says:
Those candidates want the government to create death panels that will kill your grandma, force your son to go to a gay re-education camp, and institute Sharia Law.
I saw this movie in its previous release, in 2009. I saw the original stage play in 1994.Report
Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:
Threaten them with the lost of the respect of the theatre community?Report
I know these people, or at least, people just like them.
One truck contractors, middle aged and middle class, just recently diagnosed with life threatening illness, completely reliant upon the grace of Obamacare and someday Medicare, if it exists when they reach 65.
And they voted Trump because he will make America great again and kids will pray and say the Pledge of Allegiance in school again (their exact words).
I don’t know what to say.
I am probably going to witness them being cut off from health insurance when Obamacare is repealed. And maybe the Paul Ryan Medicare voucher will cover their illness, but probably not, and they will slide into medical bankruptcy like millions before them. And then die.
I don’t know how to reach them, to persuade them to vote in their own interest.
What won’t I say?
The one thing I won’t say its my fault, that I somehow magically mesmerized them with my elitist metrosexual snobbery into voting so self destructively or that Hillary did this by using a private email server.Report
You’ll say anything except that it’s your fault for not reaching them, and Clinton was a terrible candidate with ethics problems. Great. The past week and a half haven’t been a learning experience for you, have they?
Ben Shapiro once said that most Democrats aren’t liberals; they just vote Democratic because they think that Republicans are a-holes. This year, people looked at Donald Trump and said that he’s less of an a-hole than Hillary Clinton. How does that happen? How do you convince anyone that any person who ever lived is a bigger a-hole than Donald Trump? Face it, that’s on your candidate. She lied all the time – badly. She ran on nothing. She avoided competitive states like the plague. She forgot to even try to unify her party, and never gave independents any reason to support her except that she’s female. I’d love it if some left-leaners would do some soul-searching about their policies, but if you won’t even admit that you had the worst candidate of all time heading your ticket, you’re never even going to start to understand this election.Report
Somehow my smug coastal elitism doesn’t seem to be a problem for Latino farmworkers who overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Or black working class voters.
Apparently the only working class voters whose feelings are so tender and sensitive are white folks.
But look, the battles are only just beginning.
When Paul Ryan introduces his bill to strip away Medicare from these working class white folks, I promise to be out in the streets with them to protest.Report
Michael Cain in reply to Chip Daniels says:
As far as I can tell, Ryan is going for the home run — if you don’t reach 65 in 2017, you don’t ever get traditional Medicare. I’m on retiree health coverage that, as the result of union settlement back in the early 1990s, assumes Medicare and Medi-gap insurance. Interesting times.Report
Maria in reply to Jaybird says:
Pence got booed, at least once that I am aware of, by his constituents in Indiana. Just because the audience was in NYC doesn’t mean they were signaling (I am growing to hate that word) disapproval of “Walmart values” or anything of the sort. A bit over one week after a very negative and personal election where the ticket who won was extremely unpopular in NYC, emotions are high. I think booing is pretty ineffective as a form of dissent (Don’t boo, vote!) and I am one who values respect for institutions regardless of who is currently in a given role, but honestly, in the grand scheme of things, Pence getting booed is not worth the breathless discussion it is garnering. I mean, a sitting President getting heckled during the State of the Union by an elected official is pretty damn disrespectful, but whatever. You roll with it. You keep your head up. That’s what a leader does.
The statement by the cast was a very succinct description of WHY so many people are concerned about the Trump/Pence administration. It was a moment for Pence to really hear the concerns of the people he will be governing. He could have truly listened rather than falling into the trope of liberal elites mocking my Midwest values. We need to listen to the concerns of the people who voted for Trump, and they need to listen to ours. There is common ground, and a leader who hopes to “bring us together” would take this opportunity to try to find that common ground. One who uses it as a chance to score points is sad.
I don’t think you are wrong that the Republicans have really mastered the art of the us vs them narrative, to great effect, and sometimes we liberals don’t help our situation, but their dismissiveness toward our concerns is no better or worse than some people’s dismissiveness toward the concerns of the average Trump/Republican voter. We are all humans, and humans are imperfect and are not always thinking about the optics of our behavior in moments of stress and emotion. Nor should we. That would be a sad and decidedly inauthentic way to live.
Tl;dr – Pence got booed. Liberal elite smugness doctrine reinforced. Not important enough for wall-to-wall news coverage. Missed opportunity for T/P to show leadership for all of America. Any sign of empathy from P or T would be extremely welcome by many of us “elites” who feel like our lives are just as precarious, in their own way, as those in Michigan.Report
Jaybird in reply to Maria says:
I am not opposed to the booing of politicians. I wish we had more of it.
*HOWEVER*, that booing ought to be when they are being politicians. If he went there as Mike Pence, the VP, sure, boo him. If he’s giving a speech, sure, boo him. If he’s going to the Waffle House to get some eggs, maybe some scattered and smothered potatoes, maybe some toast and some OJ, maybe that’s not the best circumstances in which to boo him.
Same for him going to a play.
He shows up at the Indy 500 to wave a flag? Boo the ever-living crap out of him.
I am not opposed to the booing of politicians.
While I appreciate your desire for common ground, I’m thinking that one of the pre-reqs is neutral ground.
If we are willing to argue that there shouldn’t be any neutral ground, we shouldn’t be surprised that we don’t have the common kind.
Edit: Also, good comment.Report
Fair enough on the neutral ground point.
I am willing to give this instance a pass as emotions and stress are running high, but I take your point as to time and place.
I don’t hold out hope that this incoming administration is looking to reach out to all Americans, but I am willing to be proved wrong.Report
Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:
“If he went there as Mike Pence, the VP, sure, boo him.”
Would he have gotten those tickets had he not been the VP? If not, then he was there as the VP… quite literally.
I otherwise agree pretty strongly with @maria . Pence hitched his wagon to the Trump Train which powered itself on ugliness, discord, and “calling it like it is”… or whatever. You don’t get to then turn around and say, “We just want a quiet night at the theater.” Sorry. No dice. What’s he want… a safe space? Some political correctness? Sorry, Mike. This is the new reality that you (not you alone or even just your side, of course) contributed to so no crying foul when it start reaches logical conclusions.
“The statement by the cast was a very succinct description of WHY so many people are concerned about the Trump/Pence administration. It was a moment for Pence to really hear the concerns of the people he will be governing. He could have truly listened rather than falling into the trope of liberal elites mocking my Midwest values. We need to listen to the concerns of the people who voted for Trump, and they need to listen to ours.”
This in particular stands out. The cast did not attack Pence. They said, “We are scared and worried. Please lead in a way that denies us reason to.” Liberals have been decried for ignoring the fears and worries of rural America or the WWC or whatever. And much of that criticism is deserved. But dialogue is a two way street. How many Black and Brown folks from the city does Pence know personally?
Trump and Pence won by sewing fear… by telling their supporters that they are right to be scared but they shouldn’t be any longer because Trump is scarier to the people they are afraid of. Well, included among those people are folks like the cast of Hamilton. Trump *wanted* them to be afraid. Telling Pence that, hey, it worked is about as fair as fair gets.Report
Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:
So, everywhere, for the rest of his life, he should expect to be booed if he wants to see a play in NYC? He ought to stick to the Chili’ses if he wants to have a pleasant evening out on the town?
This side is yours, that side is mine?Report
Hey, John Nance Garner warned him about the pitfalls of the job.Report
“Who are those seats for?”
“The Vice President-elect.”
Whenever that happens… yes.
Let me ask… do the people harmed by the policies that Trump and Pence enact get a break from that harm when he goes to a play?Report
I don’t think you’re going to like where this ends up.
You’re very much going to be wishing for a non-political public space at some point and agreeing that Pence doesn’t deserve one carries with it the implication that you don’t deserve one either.Report
I’m not the Vice President.
I didn’t just contribute to a campaign built on fear-mongering, hate, mockery, and general ugliness.
You don’t get to be the, “Let’s burn it to the ground” party and then complain about all the smoke, soot, and ash in the air.
ETA: Sounds quite a bit like you’re talking about carving out a safe space. How PC of you!Report
Damn, I am stealing, er, expropriating this in the name of the People.Report
Stillwater in reply to Chip Daniels says:
In this case, I think demanding an apology for the exercise of politically-oriented speech rights isn’t soot from another conflagration but its own separate fire.Report
Sounds quite a bit like you’re talking about carving out a safe space. How PC of you!
Not a safe space, but a neutral one.
But if we’re establishing that we would like to eliminate safe spaces, I think that we’re going to find a lot of people more than happy to root them out and shut them down.Report
Stillwater in reply to Kazzy says:
To Jaybird’s point here: given the above, do you think it’s appropriate to boo, harass, shake-down your Trump voting colleague or friend in a social setting or the workplace?
I mean, if Trump-Pence was a campaign built on hate, mockery, fear and ugliness, then surely the people who voted for that ticket are even more blameworthy than the messengers, yes?Report
Kazzy in reply to Stillwater says:
To your second question, I’d say that they are not which largely informs my response to your first question, which is no. In fact, over dinner and drinks last weekend, I had a long conversation with the one close friend I know voted for Trump that was entirely civil. Pointed, intense, but civil and enlightening.Report
To your second question, I’d say that they are not
Hmmm. I’m losing the thread here a bit. Why? Why would you view those two groups differently (the Trump-Pence political team and the citizens who voted for them)? Presumably, based on liberal CW at this point, Trump merely appealed to the basest instincts of racism and bigotry already held within the American conservative (and some quisling Dems too…) electorate. But here you’re saying that you had a civil dialogue with a Trump supporter.
Why didn’t you just punch him in the face? 🙂Report
I feel no need to adhere to liberal CW.Report
Are you willing to reject liberal identity politics?Report
I’m not sure I understand the question.Report
Liberal identity politics is an essential part of liberal CW.Report
I’ll confess to having never really known what the phrase “liberal identity politics” meant.Report
Of course you didn’t. As a cis-het white male, it probably never even occurred to you that you ought to have looked it up.Report
Stillwater seems confused by my position because it doesn’t adhere to liberal CW. When I said that I don’t adhere to liberal CW, I was asked about my feelings on a particular element of liberal CW that I don’t really understand.
Maybe I’m not the liberal Stillwater thinks I am?Report
Maybe I don’t. So, to phrase it differently, I’m just wondering what type of liberal rejects liberal CW when discussing politics with their Trump voting friend while (seemingly) adhering to liberal CW by advocating Pence being booed at every NYC theater he attends.Report
“…advocating Pence being booed at every NYC theater he attends.”
I did not advocate anything of the sort. In fact, I explicitly said I wished they hadn’t kneejerk booed him. What I have said is that I am wholly unsympathetic to complaints of “harassment” or that they shouldn’t have booed because Pence actively contributed to an environment where anything goes.Report
OK, you didn’t advocate. You apologized for.
Which, given your views of his politics and campaign messaging amounts to license to freely boo.
I mean, he opened that can of worms, right? (Isn’t that what you said above?)Report
Yes.Report
I think the idea here, kazzy, is that personal interactions with people are fundamentally different (as they should be!) than interactions based on people’s ideological commitments. It’s easy to reduce Pence to the embodiment of a set of perverse and (frankly) evil ideological commitments* merely because WE (or others) – as participants in the body electorate (Walt Wittman…) – have so reduced him. Same goes for other people who hold views we don’t agree with.
Unless those folks exhibit pathological deviant behavior, of course. Like identifying with a political party we’re not a member.
* “People like Mike Pence go to Hamilton to confirm their conviction that New Yorkers have always been filthy immigrants who proudly mock God and “history” while celebrating their perversities with every variety of that noisy jungle music.”Report
You know I neither wrote nor endorsed that paragraph in your footnote, yes?
As I said elsewhere, if you are the burn-it-all-down-party, it is disingenuous to complain about how smokey the air is.
I don’t like that the crowd booed. In fact, I wish they hadn’t.
I’m totally okay with the cast’s comments.
I think Trump calling their comments “harassment”, demanding an apology, and insisting the theater should be a “safe place” is complete and utter bullshit.Report
Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:
I would also say that I would not advocate people treating supporters of Trump/Pence the same way they treat Trump/Pence.Report
notme in reply to Kazzy says:
The cast’s comments are BS. They just wanted a public stage to lecture him. They could have had some class and invited him backstage and said the same thing. But they are full of It.Report
Kazzy in reply to notme says:
White folks: “We’re scared!”
Brown folks: “We’re scared!”
“No class.”
And that’s without the manner in which it was said… decidedly in favor of the Brown folks.Report
Try to give a coherent response.Report
Irony is dead.
You know what’s actually BS… you and your schtick. Goodbye.Report
Apparently good manner are dead as well.Report
By irony do you mean the Hamiton folks lecturing Pence but also calling only for non white actors to audition?
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/03/29/hamilton-casting-call-non-white/Report
It gets better. One of the Hamilton cast was on the CBS morning news for an interview about their lecture. The cast member told the interviewers that they told the audience to get their phones out to record the lecture. Clearly these folks are full of of BS.Report
In the conversation, I asked my friend why he voted for Trump. I asked if he supported Trump during the primary (he didn’t), why not, and how he made the transition to support him. I expressed the struggle I had teaching the values of kindness, decency, respect, honesty, and the like to my kids (biological and otherwise) and how this argument struck him as someone with deeply held values and children of his own. I asked what he made of Trump’s many troubling comments and actions, which he described as deplorable* but which he ultimately felt were less problematic to the future of our country than a Clinton presidency.
* I didn’t push on his use of this word and whether it was informed by Clinton’s comments or was an assessment of his own.Report
Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:
Brilliant. On so many levels.Report
Will Truman in reply to Stillwater says:
As a practical matter, 52% of Trump supporters believe that African-Americans are “less evolved” than whites… and so do 33% of Democrats. Over a third of Trump supporters (in some of these way more than a third) see them as lazy, rude, criminal, and violent… and so do over 1/5 of Democrats (in some cases substantially, though in one case maybe less).
Nobody wins without votes racists. The question is what they do or don’t do to court that vote. Virtuous candidates square this by reaching around the racism and grabbing on to other issues. Some on issues that involve race and don’t make direct racist appeals. Some make racist appeals of varying directness.
But talking about whether or not Dems can appeal to racist voters, the answer is that they already do. They just find other ways to do so. And Trump, on the other hand, speaks to the darkness of man. And the goal should be to bring them to the light. If not all on issues, then at least on who they vote for. (And, of course, find those that aren’t animated by race even if they are seemingly indifferent to the racism.)Report
trizzlor in reply to Will Truman says:
@will-truman this is a really great comment, and good way to think about the “it’s all race / no! it’s all economics” conversation that keeps coming up.Report
Chip Daniels in reply to Stillwater says:
The idea of civil discourse is predicated on there being a shared space within agreed upon boundaries and norms.
Trump and his followers have predicated their campaign on shattering those norms, on saying impolite and uncivil things.
When you step outside the norms you lose the protection of them.
This is why I am so emphatic on rejecting the normalization of it all.
Trump is not merely another politician, any more than Nazism merely another point of view or that pedophillia is merely another sexual orientation.
His raging hostility towards most of America does NOT deserve a polite hearing. He does NOT deserve to be treated with respect.
I won’t engage in a civil dialogue about rounding up Mexicans and registering Muslims and I refuse to respect anyone who does.Report
I don’t disagree. Especially at the level of politics. But I’d feel real bad if I didn’t say that conservatives feel the exact same way about liberals (even tho they don’t phrase it the same way). Conservatives FEEL like liberals have and continue to shatter norms as well.
Difference in kind? Maybe. Difference in degree? Well, we’re facing four years (inshallah) of a Trump preznitcy as a response to the shattering of norms.
Seems to me anyway. (I’m perhaps incorrectly excluding Hillary’s astoundingly high unfavorables from the analysis here…)Report
Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:
Yeah, this hits the nail on the head.
I mean, assuming that we can dismiss Hillary’s unfavorables.Report
Will Truman in reply to Jaybird says:
I’m going to pedant revolt this until December 19th, but Mike Pence is the governor of Indiana and not the Vice President Elect. (Yet. Sigh.)Report
Kazzy in reply to Will Truman says:
@will-truman
Did he get those seats because of his stewardship of the great state of Indiana? Or because of what happened last week?Report
Will Truman in reply to Kazzy says:
Oh, I think I agree with you*. I’m just saying WE SHOULD STOP CALLING HIM THAT BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE TO YET is all.
* – There was a thing where people were tut-tutting people who booed Trump as he was voting. Which sounds bad, but I decided to let it pass because he was able to skip in front of the line. Secret Service protocol, probably. But it meant that there was some degree of officiality in his presence. Others I pointed this out to agreed.Report
Jews (and non-Jews!) in Brooklyn woke recently to found a swastika spray painted on a children’s playground named for a Jewish local. Where is their break?Report
I agree that that looks horrible. Whoever defaced that playground is a terrible human being who is engaging in hate speech and deliberately trying to create fear in the people who live there.Report
Did Trump demand an apology from the folks who painted that? Would he consider that harassment? Does he think children’s playgrounds should be safe places?
(If you didn’t see Trump’s tweets, than please know much of my language here is directly or indirectly cribbed from them.)Report
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/11/19/trump-demands-apology-from-hamilton-after-casts-message-to-pence/Report
Oh! And I just want to say, I don’t think Maria’s position and your position are necessarily illogical here.
Hell, I don’t even necessarily think that you’re wrong.
I just think that your position will lead to war or divorce.Report
When one side declares war, sometimes your hand is forced.
ETA: And, yes, I’m sure that’s what Republicans are saying about Democrats this very moment.
ETAA: I’d rather the crowd didn’t reflexively boo Pence. I’m on board with the cast’s statement. I just am not going to criticize the former for their choice and I damn sure am not going to listen to calls for decency from Trumpers.Report
That’s what they said.Report
Heh… see my edits.
I’d rather Dems/liberals/anti-Trumpers take the high road. I’d rather them aim to make the necessary changes to win in 2018 and 2020 and 2022 and 2024. I’d rather they (we?) be smart and strategic and composed and intentional.
I’d rather we all pivot back towards decency and the country eventually unite around abhorrence to Trumpism.
But this week… Pence and his ilk get zero sympathy from me for stuff like that.Report
So, everywhere, for the rest of his life, he should expect to be booed if he wants to see a play in NYC?
Yes. Of course. He doesn’t enjoy himself, he only attends those plays to reconfirm his views that NYers are morally, intellectually and racially debased*.
*{{Oh, hell, I was gonna cite evidence for that last claim but can’t find the article right now…}}Report
El Muneco in reply to Jaybird says:
Forget the election.
Forget the Presidency, and the VPresidency.
Forget partisanship.
Mike Pence, former Governor of Indiana, should be booed by decent people every time he leaves his house.
For the actions he undertook while he was there.
For being the person he is.Report
Even Snopes had to admit that what you’re saying isn’t exactly true.
Stop reading fake news sites, Saul.Report
Burt Likko in reply to Jaybird says:
While the President-elect may have a thin skin about criticism like this, Pence himself seems to have an appropriate response: “That’s what freedom sounds like.”
I appreciate this response even though it appears to be recycled from his generalized political toolkit. Even if it’s it’s insincere, at least it calls people to a generalized norm of our society that I recognize.Report
Jaybird in reply to Burt Likko says:
Pence handled it well.
I could see him actually helping the ticket next time.Report
He arguably delivered the presidency this time.Report
Jaybird in reply to Will Truman says:
Living in Colorado, I’m not sure I had the perspective to see where he did a dang thing. (He was like Kaine!)
Was it the Indiana being the first cousin of those 3 states nobody expected to be battlegrounds?Report
He was Trump’s ambassador to the GOP. There were billboards in the midwest with Mike Pence on them saying Come Home. Pivotal states were in his back yard. Walker probably would have gotten the job done, too, but none of the actual finalists would have but Pence.
Usually VP picks only matter when they’re bad picks. This may be the first exception of our lifetimes.Report
Three tweets that make the point fairly well, I think:
What happened to @mike_pence at Hamilton last night has resonated already out here on Main Street. Regular Democrats I interviewed appalled— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) November 19, 2016
@SalenaZito @mike_pence Regular democrats? Is that some kind of code for straight folks?— Renée Jacobs (@ReneeJacobsLens) November 19, 2016
@ReneeJacobsLens @mike_pence pic.twitter.com/3qL36g9tNH— SalenaZito(@SalenaZito) November 19, 2016 Report
Among the lesser bad things about this election outcome, but still an agitating thing about said outcome, is that I can’t dismiss Zito as easily as I used to.Report
You might find this interesting:
Mike Pence, Public Scold of All Immorality, showed up at Hamilton for two reasons. First, getting good seats at the most popular show in one of the world’s top theater cities shows that he, VP-Elect Mike Pence, is now a Very Important Person. (If you were Mike Pence, you wouldn’t believe it without outside confirmation, either.) Second — most important, I’m guessing — {…} People like Mike Pence go to Hamilton to confirm their conviction that New Yorkers have always been filthy immigrants who proudly mock God and “history” while celebrating their perversities with every variety of that noisy jungle music.
I just don’t even know where to start with this, actually.Report
There’s a lot in there.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to Will Truman says:
Do you agree with the Balloon Juice story?Report
Will Truman in reply to Saul Degraw says:
Actually just wrote the following (which is pertinent):
I do not feel bad for Mike Pence.
The reasons I don’t feel bad for Pence is that he signed on with Trump and has some particularly bad views. I, like a lot of unclean folks, recognize that I have some “particularly bad views” as well and so there is a tendency to see ourselves in him even if we don’t like Trump. That being said, he signed on with Trump, so oh well.
Above comments refer to the booing. I think there’s a time/place argument where there’s a difference between booing at a show and booing at a rally, but it’s kind of murky. I thought the cast speech at the end was fine.
Notwithstanding the fineness of the cast speech, and my ambivalence on the booing, I believe that Donald Trump won the exchange for at least five reasons: (1) To the uncommitted, the hecklers do not come across as the good guys, (2) he wins any time the totalitarian card is pulled out on something people don’t care about, (3) Pence is not himself nationally unpopular, and (4) More important stories are being missed. Oh, and (5) increased tribal solidarity among Trump’s supporters and wobblers.
The only upshot I see is tribal solidarity among his opponents, which I don’t think was previously lacking. Maybe they helped get some of Pence’s past and/or present views on gay rights out there, though not in a way I think is especially helpful.
That being said, this is not a game-changer and is not huge. It’s indicative of potential problems, but right now it’s like a thirty yard kickoff return called back on a penalty. Not off to a good start, but life goes on.Report
Chip Daniels in reply to Will Truman says:
“Won the exchange”?
What did he win? A set of Trump brand steak knives?
Greater acceptance of forced gay conversion?
Is there someone somewhere saying, “Y’know, I used to be fine with gay people, but now that they booed Mike Pence, I think he’s right, we should curb stomp some homos”?
Are there people who are sitting atop some razor thin indifference, completely ambivalent between Trump and basic human decency, and can so easily be pushed to one side or the other by this simple act?
How come it never seems to work the other way?
I am opposed to ISIS, and Sharia Law and beheading infidels, but you know, Pam Geller is so shrill and uncivil.
I think I am going to vote ISIS in 2018.Report
Won the exchange in that insofar as it mattered, it mattered to his benefit and not to the benefit of those who booed and the cast members.Report
It does. Obama has won plenty of these types of exchanges over the years, no?
Or more subjectively: do you think Obama has effectively utilized Bonnetti’s defense given the rocky terrain?Report
Bingo.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Will Truman says:
Ir proves that the booers are out of touch and smug.
Had it been Hillary being booed, it would have proven that she was out of touch and smug.
Next time I’ll explain how it doesn’t matter that the coming tax cuts are going to explode the deficit, because everybody has a share.Report
Will Truman in reply to Mike Schilling says:
Good read, Mike.Report
Stillwater in reply to Will Truman says:
Maybe not a complete read of the situation, but not irrelevant either.
Foundational political-economic concepts like smugness (and privilege, and resentment…) have been elevated to the primacy they deserve this election.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Stillwater says:
Referring to a book that’s not a novelization of a superhero movie is smug.Report
Divorce or War.
Or both.Report
Oh my God, a Balloon Juice post is unhinged. We really need to reign in our crazies, because if 2016 proved anything, it’s that being cautious and responsible is the sure path to victory.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to Stillwater says:
@stillwater
LeeEsq would tell you that during the 1920s, a lot of Americans referred to NYC as “the foreign-occupied city of New York” because the city had a WASP minority (albeit a usually very wealthy one) and most New Yorkers were non-WASPs and if they were Christian they were probably Catholic.
You don’t even need to go very far out of NYC to see this attitude. When I was in grad school, several of my classmates lived in the New Jersey burbs with their families and came into the city every day for class. One woman had a party at her house and a lot of us trecked down to suburban NJ to hang out at her house with her family. She had some neighbors over as well. These neighbors all thought that NYC was something out of Escape from New York rather than a gentrified uber-wealthy place. I wonder what they thought of my classmate for getting on the train nearly everyday for class and rehearsal. Did they think she wore armor?
I find it rather amusing that all my urban friends complain about gentrification and rising rents and unaffordability and luxury condos and then to see people talk about SF, LA, or NYC like it is the bad old days of the 1970s with high crime, high graffiti, and no money in the budget. They both can’t be true.
In many ways, I see Trump’s election as a combination of 1920 and 1928. Harding’s “Return to Normalcy” was a conservative blowback to the Progressive Era and reforms that happened under Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson (like the direct election of Senators and giving women the right to vote and appointing the first Jew to the Supreme Court and anti-trust actions like breaking up Standard Oil, passing the FDA, housing regulations to get rid of slums, etc.) 1928 pitted an urban, Catholic, wet (the 1920s equivalent of marijuana legalization) against a small-town WASP. Al Smith’s New York accent was foreign to most America and they did not like it when they heard it on the radio. I guess it is progress that Sanders and Trump did not turn off voters with their NYC accents.
But it seems to me that there is an undercurrent of “Enough Hope & Change” in the 2016 election. But it is not a conservative tide like Nixon in 1968 or 1972 or Reagan in 1980 and 1984. HRC looks like she won the popular vote by over a million votes (though not with great geographic spread), The Democrats still picked up 2 Senate seats and 5 house seats. We have a chance to pick up one more in Louisiana in December but this is a long shot. We also picked up 5 seats in the House.
These are paltry numbers but it is not an epic defeat. Yet so many NeverTrumpers seem determined to treat the freak nature of Trump’s victory as the Mandate from Heaven. I can’t quite figure this out.Report
Gabriel Conroy in reply to Saul Degraw says:
Harding’s “Return to Normalcy” was a conservative blowback to the Progressive Era and reforms that happened under Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson (like the direct election of Senators and giving women the right to vote and appointing the first Jew to the Supreme Court and anti-trust actions like breaking up Standard Oil, passing the FDA, housing regulations to get rid of slums, etc.)
That “etc.” covers some unpalatable things, too. Wilson wasn’t really the best on race relations. You might mention some progressives’ endorsement of eugenics (Buck v. Bell came after Harding, but before Smith). Even things like the prosecution against Standard Oil enunciated a legal standard that made future prosecutions difficult. Remember also such “progressive” policies as the Palmer raids.
As for Harding being a blowback on progressive reforms, yes, I suppose it was. But “normalcy” rang true also because WWI and the postwar “reconstruction” (as it was then called) had created many problems that Harding’s supporters rightly and wrongly (but probably mostly wrongly) associated with the Dem’s of that era. Was that particularly fair to Wilson and the Dems? Maybe not, but it wasn’t only blowback against progressive “reform” and such reform wasn’t always good and beneficent.
I agree with your second point that 2016 does not so far seem to represent the type of rising tide that 1968 or 1980 did. Trump–whatever he represents–shot a hail Mary and won the touchdown. Whether or not it’s a rising tide of something won’t be clear for another ten years.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:
It’s a rising tide of something, all right. Try not to step in it.Report
Stillwater in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:
Whether or not it’s a rising tide of something won’t be clear for another ten years.
I think the analytical problem is two fold: one, how may planks on the old ship can you change before you have a new ship? (and related: does Trumpism constitute a deviation away from contemporary GOPism or is it merely the logical next phase of that GOPism); and two, a ten-year lead time on determining whether Trump(ism) constitutes a paradigm shift isn’t helpful in determining how to respond right now.Report
El Muneco in reply to Saul Degraw says:
I have lived since 1993 in a city of 150000 (then) to 200000 (now) that was paradigmatic for the worst excesses of the late 1900s, in particular pollution – and gang crime leading to the downtown being an urban hellhole after dark and sometimes before then. In 1996, a friend of a friend was beaten to death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong clothes despite being a noncomprehending (white) higher-SES dude.
None of that shit happens now. It hasn’t for a decade. You can walk from your condo with a view of the surprisingly non-gravy-colored bay to a Zagat-rated restaurant in the heart of downtown without particularly worrying about your safety – black, white, or indifferent.
Ice-T memorably sang (ok, rapped, but it was with his nu-metal band) about what was like growing up in South Central LA back when it really was a war zone. Now he can be seen at lemonade stands. Has he changed, or has urban America changed?Report
Saul Degraw in reply to El Muneco says:
@el-muneco
I think urban America changed. When I was in middle school, my favorite t-shirt said “Welcome to NY” and had a drawing of one of those police outlines of a dead body.* The reason that image sold is because NYC still had a reputation for being tough and gritty even though it was starting to change by then.
Yet the idea that cities are scary and evil places still persists.Report
Very much this. Urban America has changed. The perception of it filtered through action movies of the time wasn’t particularly realistic, but it had a grain of truth at the heart of it.
The problem is that the country is still looking at Urban America through the exact same filter – where Jeff Goldblum is designing drugs and Laurence Fishburne (inexpicably without temple-less sunglasses) has to reel him in, or Ice-T is a homeless man hunted by Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, and F. Murray Abraham.
Bad movies are what people remember. Reality isn’t important.Report
Those regular Democrats were at the salad bar at Applebee’s, no doubt.Report
Only if they were single.Report
Kolohe says:
H/t to the former Rose Woodhouse this is pretty interesting. Looks like everything’s coming up Milhouse for the erstwhile losers in the Obama era intelligence community civil wars.Report
Stillwater in reply to Kolohe says:
Subscription blocked. Never been subscription blocked til after the election. Thanks Trump.Report
Kolohe in reply to Stillwater says:
You just need to wait. After January 20th, we’ll all have the hugest incognito tabs and the classiest private browser modes.
(But basically, the guy that pretty much came out and said that Russians buttniskied into our election was on the ‘fire when Obama rents the UHaul’ list at least a month ago, but now has met with Trump to be the head jefe of intel in the government)
(The complication is that who should be the head jefe has been a point of contention going back to the Dubya post 9-11 re-org of intel)Report
Stillwater says:
Colorado looks good. Go Buffs!Report
Chip Daniels says:
, Elections have consequences part umpteen zillion.
The people profiled here in Kentucky will probably die an early and miserable death, due to proposed changes in Obamacare and Medicare/ Medicaid.
But to publicly boo the people responsible might force them to do even more drastic punishment to the ailing poor, and therefore we should stay silent.Report
Of course we have no idea how things move thru Warshington in Trump’s first few months, but I’d be very (VERY) surprised if GOPers unilaterally dismantled Medicaid (or Medicare, for that matter) and bear the brunt of that political disaster all on their own. They’ll want Dems on board to take cover for them.
So the real question, I guess, is how many Dems are gonna switch sides to vote for the war in Iraq veto the public option help dismantle these programs.Report
@jaybird @stillwater @kolohe
This is what makes me angry about the whole issue of being angry that Pence was spoken to and booed at Hamilton and it is only virtue signalling.
I know a lot of people in NYC and SF who fled from their small town hometowns. Many of these hometowns are in Trump country and Trump state. Most of these people are outsiders in one way or another. Sometimes multiple ways. At best, they just preferred reading and/or dungeons and dragons to sports. Many are LBGT and some are physically disabled. Most of them have stories of getting the tar beaten out them nearly daily. Many left when they turned 18 or 22 depending and did not turn back.
I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for these people. To them big cities and often the arts are where they could be who they are without judgment or fear.
How many people in that audience fled from their small towns to the safety of NYC where they could be themselves? How many of them know and love people who fled from their small towns because they were outsiders?
I’ve brought this up before and it always gets ignored. I’d like to see it addressed. Why shouldn’t small town America be confronted with stuff like “This is what you have done. What did Matt or Lisa do that they deserved to be beaten to a tar nearly every week? Why does it matter if they are gay or prefer writing poetry to football? Or if they are different? How does it hurt you?”Report
greginak in reply to Saul Degraw says:
What you say is completely true. Unfortunately their is simplistic narrative that has developed around liberals and the WWC. Liberals live in impermeable bubbles absolutely hating WWC and fly over country, people they have never ever met and places they have never seen. Fighting the narrative is always hard. To many people can correctly diagnose a faulty stereotype when its aimed at a group they sympathize with and be blind to other stereotypes. Gosh knows SJW’s have done this enough. I’ve also known some of those coastal people, some here is Ak, who will clearly say lots of small town rural places are filled with bigoted, judgmental people and they couldn’t’ run out of their fast enough.Report
Kazzy in reply to greginak says:
“…who will clearly say lots of small town rural places are filled with bigoted, judgmental people and they couldn’t’ run out of their fast enough.”
A slight difference is that those folks at least had their understanding of that slice of the world (partially) informed by time spent there.Report
greginak in reply to Kazzy says:
Oh yeah. Some people dislike things based on bitter experience, some on stereotypes. That goes for conservatives hating liberals and vice versa and every combo possible.Report
Agreed. But I think it is reasonable to respond differently to the person who fears hot pans because of burn marks on his finger tips and the person who fears hot pans because he thinks they are possessed by aliens.Report
Jesse Ewiak in reply to Kazzy says:
This maybe just the group of people I know, but the biggest group who say “we have to understand where they’re coming from” are usually folks who have never lived outside a major metro area while most of the area who say “screw ’em all” are usually from those small towns and rural areas.Report
El Muneco in reply to Jesse Ewiak says:
All of us could do better in the empathy department. That’s humanity for you.
The thing is – how many people in urban areas know at least one person who came from a hard-hit rural area, vs. how many people in those rural areas have ever met face-to-face a person who came from an urban area? I know which way I’d bet (higher than you’d expect on both sides but significantly leaning to “cities are a place you move to, not from”).
Pop culture is an argument, and a decent one. But that assumes that pop culture accurately reflects the high-SES urban experience… And I’m sorry, but any narrative where someone as unfunny as Kevin James continually is able to marry a woman significantly younger, more intelligent, and more attractive than himself is just a fantasy. Assuming that that gestalt actually represents how urban life goes is ridiculous.Report
Will Truman in reply to El Muneco says:
I would posit that the testimony of people who left an area do not reflect the totality of experience of those places. And while it’s true that a lot of people who live there have always lived there, almost all of them have family who live elsewhere. There’s more cross-pollination than one might think.
When I was doing my substitute teaching in Redstone, I remember seeing all of these bright kids and then looking at the adults and wondering “What happened?!” It took me a while to realize… the bright kids leave, sometime for cultural bliss but I suspect more often for opportunity (and because for most people it’s just depressing as hell). Like, almost all of them. Which is the story of Redstone: The smart, the ambitious, the capable left. And Redstone is now those who were left behind. An unfair characterization, but not too unfair.
Dukakis got 67% of the vote in Redstone. Obama also got 67% and then 64%. Hillary Clinton got 52% (the statewide Democrat got 70%).
So, I mean, I read Saul’s characterization with a degree of exasperation. I mean, if Democrats want to say “screw’em” I guess they’re welcome to do that. Whether that’s a good idea or not (for Redstone and other places like it) depends on the electoral calculus. But I don’t think I am ever going to respond favorably to the provided characterization juxtaposition (though I’m genuinely glad that bookish people were valued at his school), nor the resentment at the notion that there should be empathy involved.Report
If Redstone had changed such that fewer people left and, hell, maybe someone people angled themselves there… how would that have been received by the “locals”/lifers?Report
Not sure I understand the question.
Town was generally welcoming. I got a couple instances of rudeness, but that’s about it. But I lived elsewhere. Trying to attract people was a common topic of discussion in the paper.
A point of clarification, the population has been pretty stable in the last 25 years, having dipped a long time prior. I also can’t find confirmation of the 100k figure (which I got from a documentary) , with the census maxing out at 60k.Report
Why did the bright people leave? What were they looking for?
Imagine you identified what they were looking for and added all that to Redstone? Would the locals look around and think, “What has happened to our home?”Report
I think the most pertinent answer is jobs. Some leave for the bright lights and for cultural reasons, and there’s nothing Redstone can do about those. It’ll never again be that kind of place. I’m sure they would welcome a nice big movie theater, the regional live theater troupe to stop by more often, and of course Chili’s and Olive Garden. Little stuff like that can make a pretty big difference, but I don’t think it’s a deciding factor. (They do have a couple gay bars, for what it’s worth, though I’d imagine the dating pool is pretty limited just by sheer numbers.)
I didn’t get many assignments at the high school, but one two-day stint I did get was two days on the last week of school. They were talking a lot about where they were going and what they were doing. Some were going off to college and others were talking about the fields in North Dakota and the like. It seemed mostly about finding solid ground somewhere.
When I was in small city Deseret, I was always encouraging a lot of people to leave. Kind of presumptively and rudely, at first, in ways I regret. Some left and came back because the things city people take for granted (like traffic and cost) really grated on them, or because they wanted to live nearer to Mormons. But a lot never left because there was just enough to keep them there. But it had the economy where they could, without great sacrifice.
(Our county in Deseret went 45% Dukakis, 42% and 37% Obama, then 30% Clinton, though McMullin got a stout 10%)
In Redstone, my impression is that those aren’t there as much (certainly not the Mormon factor, obviously). Which makes it something of a cycle. The social networks aren’t there as much because nobody from the old days is still there. Nobody from the old days is still there because the network is gone. There aren’t jobs because there aren’t good people to fill the jobs, and there aren’t people there because there aren’t the jobs.
All of which leads to there not being simple answers. Some probably have visions that Trump is going to dump a lot of money into infrastructure (which I guess he might), but their reactions to this are all over the place. Trump is big there, Gary Johnson is big there, Ron Paul is big there, Occupy Wall Street was big there.
On a side note, I mentioned that the town is welcoming, but the more I think about it the more I think that’s directly related to the lack of migration into it. There is a lot of anti-migrant sentiment out there. Not a huge immigration freakout that I recall, but lots of stray comments about Californians coming in and being obnoxious and changing the character and so on.
But those were the laments of the more successful places and not Redstone. I don’t think Redstoners have thought that far ahead. If they ever do get what they want, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same sort of thing started to happen.Report
THAT last bit is what I was getting at… they want things to get better but not change.Report
I don’t think they’ve thought that far ahead. I think they’d welcome change now, then grumble about it later. Although the grumbling wouldn’t necessarily be universal. Go over to Summit and you have the change. Which has lead to some unwelcoming attitudes, but the permits keep getting issued. (Summit: 41% Dukakis, 50% and 46% Obama, 45.5% Clinton. Mitt won it in ’12, Clinton this year.)Report
Kolohe in reply to Kazzy says:
Kazzy:
THAT last bit is what I was getting at… they want things to get better but not change.
Which is pretty much universal. It’s what’s happening when people complain about gentrification.Report
Kazzy in reply to Kolohe says:
But Presidential elections aren’t being decided by people in gentrifying communities. No one is seeking top down solutions.
We’re told to listen. I’m listening. But I’m not hearing much.Report
That they did not was the main surprise to the Democrats (and Republicans for that matter). If 50 to 100k people north of the Ohio river would have voted the other way, the narrative would have been “How does the GOP break apart the ‘permanent Democratic majority?’, with one answer being ‘siphon off the upwardly mobile urban 20 and 30 somethings by exploiting the natural wedges between that group and legacy city machine politics’ – which is the split we seen for a decade in most intra party primary contests in the major cities of the US.Report
Which is pretty much universal. It’s what’s happening when people complain about gentrification.
Yeah, that’s a good point. According to stereotype, conservative ruralia wants the economic fundamentals of their town to change but not the culture, while liberal urbania wants the culture of their town to change but not the economic fundamentals.
Something like that anyway.Report
Former poster Zik was no one’s definition of a conservative. She also hated the brain drain that happened in rural Maine.
Her solution was that we should just start teaching kids via culture like TV that there is nothing wrong with being an assistant manager at Wal-Mart and we should stop having TV shows set among professionals in glamorous cities.
This struck me as a non-solution more than anything else.Report
I guess I agree with her. I mean, I do think society sends a message that assistant managers at Walmart are failures. TV portrayal is a part of that, and social norms geared by people who went to college (the better the college the better, etc) towards people who went to college.
And I don’t think that’s healthy.
But it’s not something there is a policy solution for.Report
Gabriel Conroy in reply to Will Truman says:
I agree, too, and with your caveat that it’s not really a “policy” solution.Report
@will-truman @gabriel-conroy
My issue with Zik’s view is that it makes everything an accident of your geographical birth which I find deeply wrong and illiberal. I was born in suburban New York which provided a lot more opportunities than Redstone in terms of intellectual/educational, cultural, and career advancement.
You two were also born in areas where the above was true even though our parents did very different things for their livelihoods.
I just find it deeply wrong that someone with our abilities and intellect should be forced to resignation and “being an assistant manager at Wal-Mart is okay” just because they were born in Redstone and not Denver or suburban New York.Report
That’s more-or-less the rationale behind the Kansas City Plan. To help people born in places where their talents are not needed, and put them in places where they are.
I favor the ability of those with grander ambitions to pursue those ambitions. Not everybody does, of course, and that’s good because everybody can’t be an archeologist. And being an assistant manager at Walmart shouldn’t (in itself) be seen as failure (for the individual or society).Report
Well, I have friends and family members who were born in or very near Denver and have jobs that while better than assistant manager at Walmart are much more modest than the types of jobs celebrated on TV and in the movies.
On the other hand, I do agree that being born where I was born gave me advantages that would not have been available to me if I hailed from Redstone, all other things being equal. I was also lucky in a lot of ways in addition to where I was born. It’s probably easier to be lucky in Denver than Redstone. (However, while in my lifetime and before, Denver was always a good place for opportunities, it wasn’t always–and won’t always be–what it supposedly is now.)
I suppose the proper response to my first paragraph is that if friends/family members had applied themselves more (or had better “intellect and abilities”), then they at least had a better starting point than if they had been born in Redstone. That seems to be what you’re going for, and I guess I agree.Report
Burt Likko in reply to Saul Degraw says:
Culturally, we have always celebrated wealth, youth, beauty, and good luck. Indeed, these attributes transcend through most cultures: the wealthy are celebrated more than the poor; the young and beautiful are celebrated more than the elderly and the ugly; good luck is always celebrated more than poor luck. The exact definitions of what constitutes these things varies sometimes, especially with beauty.
But we should hardly be surprised that cultural media depict aspirational figures in such a fashion. So we might have a show that depicts a Wal-mart manager in an aspirational way, but the manager is going to have some other aspirational quality becuase as a Wal-mart manager there just isn’t enough wealth to be of interest. So the manager might be really attractive (think, “Two Broke Girls” which ought to be titled “Two Attractive-But-Broke Girls”) or have origins in a wealthy family but be a fish-out-of-water (think, “Undercover Boss” meets “Roseanne”).Report
Will Truman in reply to Burt Likko says:
You don’t necessarily need admirability if you have relatability. Thinking of The Drew Carey Show, which I thought handled the work issue really well. And, of course, The Office revolved around the concept. Though TDCS flirted with Drew being a loser, we were nonetheless rooting for him and his goals are reasonable and everyday. We rooted for the folks at Dunder Mifflin, too. I think, as far as entertainment value goes, all of that is in a different cast than Friends where everybody either has an aspirational career or (in Chandler’s case) transitions to one.Report
Gabriel Conroy in reply to Burt Likko says:
I believe I’ve said this before, so please forgive and indulge.
This sub-thread of a sub-thread reminds me of an observation a friend of mine once made about how Good Will Hunting (unseen by me but I know the Cliff Notes version) and The Full Monty (seen by me several times) represents different (in his view American vs. British) attitudes toward class.
In his view, Good Will Hunting shows someone in a very modest career and he’s inspirational because he doesn’t really deserve to be there. He has the natural prodigious intelligence and he overcomes his bad mark in life by earning the respect of people who are both his social betters and his intellectual peers/inferiors.
The Full Monty shows people whom the newer economy has displaced. They’re able to work together for a common goal and gain a little bit of dignity and a little bit of money. And maybe from then on, they’ll be happier. But at the end of the day, they’ll still be poor and displaced.
With the caveat that I haven’t seen Good Will Hunting, I find the Full Monty people much more inspiring.
Now to our hypothetical Walmart assistant manager. I could imagine a sensitive show–following perhaps the example of whoever produced Friday Night Lights–that portrays in a sensitive light the challenges, setbacks, and victories that person encounters.
The show I’m imagining wouldn’t be some sort of a “TRIUMPH OF THE LITTLE GUY” sort of role modeling. In that way it might be limiting. But it would be a representation of someone doing the best he or she can in challenging circumstances.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to Gabriel Conroy says:
@gabriel-conroy
You see this a lot when British shows transition to being American ones. The British version of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares was very much “work with what you have.”
The American version (I only saw a few episodes) always came with a complete kitchen makeover.Report
I’ve seen only a few episodes of either version, but your observation rings true to me.Report
Kolohe in reply to Burt Likko says:
Superstore is a show about the people of walmart, in a funny and affectionate way.Report
Will Truman in reply to Kolohe says:
I’ve been meaning to watch that one. 10 Items or Less really had its moments though was a little gawky towards various lower-end demographics.Report
It borrows some of the same vibe as MASH – hate the game, but love the players. They even have many of the same archetypes – almost note for note recreations of Blake and Burns (although the Burns analogue actress has already done Winchester things). America Ferrera is a combo of Hawkeye and Radar.
If anything, I think they should lean into that even more – that is, the darkness of early run MASH. But, as far as I know, they’ve been on the bubble of being cancelled the entire show run, (they may be cancelled now for all I know), and likely can’t afford to take the risk. No one can in 22 minute comedies on network TV anymore.Report
Saul, you may misunderstand my position.
I am not angry that Pence got booed at Hamilton.
I understand why Pence got booed at Hamilton.
I am angry that the optics for this are so freaking awful and “the left” and “the elite” are more interested in escalating the culture war than in looking around and saying “huh… we just lost an election that was pretty much a must-win for us, given the current state of the House/Senate/Governorships…”
“The left” and “the elite” are in the part of the cycle where they’re losing the culture war and it seems like they would rather engage in cathartic primal scream therapy than figure out what went wrong.
I am not blaming them for indulging in catharsis. I am, however, looking at how this system seems to be evolving and I find it troubling because shit like Pence getting booed at Hamilton is representative of what I see as going wrong and I think that it’s most likely to end in either a war (yes, with people with guns shooting at and getting shot by other people with guns) or in some kind of secession movement where Jesusland and Utopia have a relationship with each other that is probably best analogized to the EU with stricter border controls.
So arguing against my position as if I don’t care about the chubby nerdy kids in school who play D&D is to misunderstand my position.Report
A couple responses…
Given that we are not yet two weeks from the election… an election with results that caught so many by surprise (whether or not it should have)… I would say that some cathartic yelling is still appropriate. If in two years all we are getting is boos and nothing more, we have a much bigger problem.
Expecting the “losers”/outsiders to start turning the cruise ship is a tall order.
More than anything, the left lacks leadership at this moment. Clinton is gone, I have no idea where Bernie is (or if he is even the right choice). We’re all going through the various stages of loss largely in isolation or small groups. We are rudderless. Expecting ANY sort of organized, intentional, rational movement is an even taller order.Report
And that’s fair enough.
But something the Dems want to avoid is inspiring “Ugh, I made the right decision” thoughts in the fragile Trump Coalition. You want “Ugh, I can’t believe I voted for this guy… that was a mistake.”
The Hamilton Food Fight is calcifying the “right decision” just a bit more and isn’t anywhere *NEAR* “mistake”.
But if the Democrats need a few weeks in the yurt, that’s what they need and there ain’t nothing wrong with needing what one needs.Report
Yeah, no, I’m not buying this.
These fragile flowers who run to Daddy Trump because those mean homos scolded Pence, are, I believe, entirely imaginary.Report
You’re going to want those fragile flowers to show up and vote for your guy/gal in 2 and then 4 years.Report
greginak in reply to Jaybird says:
“the left” and ” the elite” did not boo Pence. The crowd at the theater did. That is actually an important distinction.Report
Jaybird in reply to greginak says:
Greg, would you say that the crowd at the theater is representative of “the elite” at all?
I mean, enough for people who consider themselves on “the left” to be defending them in this situation?Report
They’re New Yorkers, man.
New Yorkers have always been filthy immigrants who proudly mock God and “history” while celebrating their perversities with every variety of that noisy jungle music.Report
Those New Yorkers would do well to visit Wisconsin once in a while. They might learn something.Report
greginak in reply to Chip Daniels says:
Would you consider a KKK rally to be representative of all white southerners? Cause there is apparently a KKK celebration rally scheduled for Dec 3 which i remembered because it’s my birthday.
If we want to move past shallow stereotypes we gotta stop judging large groups by small samples.Report
Mike Schilling in reply to greginak says:
You’re not going to beat the KKK talking about how evil it is when it’s discussing the concerns of white people and you’re not, especially when your group has such high negatives.Report
Saul Degraw in reply to greginak says:
@greginak
You forget that in conservative land, going to see a musical like Hamilton with its minority cast, hip-hop score, and Broadway location, makes you a member of the lefty elite.
In this case, there might be some truth in it because Hamilton tickets are expensive. I can’t afford to see it. I can’t afford the SF show because it also requires buying tickets to four other plays for the right to purchase Hamilton tickets.
On the other hand, people make unwise purchases they cant afford all the time.Report
@jaybird @chip-daniels and company.
Mike Pence seems okay with what happened::
https://twitter.com/foxnewssunday/status/800342125909069828Report
Is the takeaway “Mike Pence has class”?Report
Mike Pence isn’t totally daft on the meaning of ‘freedom’.Report
I guess I can see why so many would have voted for him, then.Report
I just personally avoid using the word “class” because I find it largely meaningless these days.Report
I feel the same way about “freedom”.Report
I would also say that I would not advocate people treating supporters of Trump/Pence the same way they treat Trump/Pence.
See, this is where I disagree.
I witnessed the change from the late 60’s to the 70’s, and saw how social norms evolve and change.
And while we dress up norms in all sorts of decorous language, about how society decides what its boundaries are and how they should be enforced, at the street level its often a brutal, cruel, and traumatically painful process.
Issues like integration, feminism, gay rights, the Vietnam war were all decided, not by calm reasoned intellectual debates, but by raw emotional arguments over dinner tables, bars, and workplace watercoolers all over America.
Both sides lobbed accusations of shame and ostracism at each other, and eventually one side won and the other side backed down.
It was ugly, and hurtful, and there were countless casualties of relationships severed, holiday gatherings ruined, and families torn apart.
But thats how society sets and enforces its boundaries.
Right now, the Trump forces have embraced transgression of social taboos.
The first step in changing a social norm is to make what was once taboo commonplace, open for debate and unsettled, what Moynihan called “defining deviancy down”.
I won’t yield that ground. If you want me to treat you with respect you have to stay within the boundaries of civility.
I’m not striving for persuasion here. As in any relationship, we have to stake out our boundaries, redlines beyond which we won’t yield or negotiate or debate.Report
@chip-daniels
Clarifying question… does voter = supporter?Report
Practically speaking, they are the same in a pretty fundamental way. But – and I can’t repeat this enough – we simply have to differentiate between the hardcore Trump voter, the median Trump voter, and the margin Trump voter. They’re all important, but in different ways that warrant different responses.Report
@kazzy Yes, what Will said.
And this is what I am striving for, to split out the persuadable Trump voter from the hard core.
The Neo-Nazis on Reddit who post Pepe memes aren’t who I want in 2018.
The middling Trump voter who wants to be respected and accepted into polite society, and who is horrified by the Steve Bannon types, are the target.
Which is why we liberals need to hit this key again and again, that Trump comes with a posse of Bannons and Neo-Nazis. There is no moderate Trump administration, the Neo-Nazis are not fringe actors but driving wheels.
You can either continue to support Trump, or enjoy the respect of the rest of society.Report
For what it’s worth, this was where I came down on the whole thing during the election. It was precisely the election that changed my perspective. And realizing, to an extent, that tactic (which again, was one I backed when it seemed feasible) was not a winning one.Report
I can’t control how people will react to the choice.
If I say, “Supporting Trump means supporting a bigoted policy towards Muslims” and someone responds “OK by me!”, well that’s their choice.
But at least we have clarified things.
Because right now there is a lot of “Well, he’s probably all bluster, and Hillary had something email argle bargle, so they are really both the same”Report
J_A in reply to Chip Daniels says:
I think this is extremely important and cannot be repeated too many times.
You can’t have your cake and eat it. You can’t say “I voted Trump because the Supreme Court….” or something, “…but I have nothing to do with creating registries for Muslims. I didn’t vote for that”.
YES-YOU-DID
You voted for the whole package. Muslims Registries was just the price tag attached to the Supreme Court deal YOU wanted. Is not something that happened while you were distracted. Is all part of the same package.
You had two bites of the apple to get the Supreme Court you wanted: the primaries, and the General.
This is You. You are the one that created the Muslm Registries.Report
Stillwater in reply to J_A says:
IF each of us only voted for politicians who advocate our own views about every policy issue out there, we’d all have had to run and been the only person to vote for ourownselves.Report
What it actually reminds me of us people who won’t vote (or voted for Johnson) despite firmly believing that Hillary Clinton was the lesser of evils.Report
J_A in reply to Stillwater says:
Or, if we all said to politicians that there are extremes we would not follow them to, perhaps they wouldn’t go there themselves.Report
Or, if we all said to politicians that there are extremes we would not follow them to
Like not following Hillary to her seat in the Oval Office?
I mean that seriously, by the way.Report
It’s possible that the dynamic is different when the Trump/Bannon continuum is in power than when it was not, and the techniques such as Chris Daniels describes may work – even if they didn’t from Jun 2015 to Nov 2016.Report
Sorry, Chip Daniels, not Chris Daniels.Report
Okay that’s on me then. I was using “supporter” to mean “voter” and was focused on the median and marginal folks.Report
Depending on how it turns out, I think there is cause to be harder on the medium and marginal Trump voter than the hardcore Trump voter. The hardcore Trump voter knows what he wants and what he voted for (presumably White Supremacy). The median and marginal Trump voters are the ones who say “Yeah Trump said all these horrible and disturbing things and I don’t trust him and his temperament sucks but e-mails and HRC is a woman so……”
If Trump is even half as bad as his dissenters say he will be, the marginal and medium Trump voters have no excuse. They know who he is, they admit their reservations and distrust and disgust in polls and surveys and still….they voted for him.Report
In some ways I find the true believers easier to deal with. I know where they’re coming from. They tend to be pretty straightforward about what they believe and why. It’s less likely to be about Team Red and Team Blue.
But there is no convincing them and no winning them over. They support Trump for pretty strong reasons, sincerely held. And a lot of them are really quite racist. Not all, but a lot of them. And not in a way that can be reached around.
For the median and the margin, it’s a question on whether “being hard on them” is effective, counterproductive, or neutral. My sense is that it’s more likely to be counterproductive just as the focus on his supporters turned out to be counterproductive in the elections.Report
Aaron David says:
Why I Had to Eat a Bug on CNN
Sam WangReport
Sunday Night Flashback.
Remember September?Report
From an article about the alt-right (and how to get rid of them quickly):
This may mean introducing some additional considerations into the way we presently discuss race relations. For example, the recent fad of professing to hate “white men”—however amusing and cathartic it might be—is clearly counterproductive, as it lets racist white men feel themselves justified in throwing around accusations of “reverse racism,” and encourages them to form a group identity based around the notion that they are despised and embattled. Ultimately, things like the #KillAllWhiteMen hashtag are not worth the amount of energy they take to explain, and make it harder to have good-faith discussions about other nuances of inter-race and cross-cultural communication. The left should stop this kind of talk.
OK, lets be reasonable and compromise.
We will stop talking about registering all Christians and they stop talking about registering all Muslims.
We will stop talking about how all white people are murderous rapists, and they will stop talking about how all Mexicans are murderous rapists.
Bipartisanship!
Tip and Ronnie having a drink!Report
Meh. I can’t speak on behalf of anybody but myself.
But I’m pretty sure that your moral claims require a certain amount of common ground in order to pull at the heartstrings of your opponents.
Without that common ground, I think that your moral claims only come across as so much noise.
You know, like if a Babtist was telling you that you had to get rid of your Twisted Sister cassettes.Report
Speaking of Creatures of Crime, how is this allowed?
Isn’t being part of the transition (before Dec 19) holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States?
Because Bondi’s still on the Florida Electors list provided to the Florida Secretary of State by the Republican Party.Report
how is this allowed?
He moved on her. He grabbed her. Yer allowed to do that when you’re a star. You can do anything.Report
Next story Joel Winston — How the Trump Campaign Built an Identity Database and Used Facebook Ads to Win the Election
Previous story Weekend!
North says:
I think he's saying that asserting that Trumps supporters all agree...
Perhaps relevant: President Trump: "If you're not happy...
[Tankie: A hard line Stalinist.]
North in reply to Sam Wilkinson on Bigot.I think he's saying that asserting that Trumps sup…
Jaybird in reply to Jaybird on Bigot.Perhaps relevant: President Trump: "If you…
JoeSal in reply to greginak on New Day for Evening News?[Tankie: A hard line Stalinist.]
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The Silly Gooses
by Dav Pilkey, Sue Denim, Kathleen Westray (Designed by)Dav Pilkey
Paperback(Illustrated)
$13.19 $13.95 Save 5% Current price is $13.19, Original price is $13.95. You Save 5%. View All Available Formats & Editions
8 New & Used from $1.99 in Marketplace
Mr. and Mrs. Goose are so silly that they make the serious geese fly south, even though it's June. Meet their two baby geese--Ketchup and Mustard--named after their favorite ice cream toppings!
Dav Pilkey has written and illustrated numerous popular, award-winning books for children, including the Captain Underpants, Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot, and Dumb Bunnies series; Dog Breath!: The Horrible Trouble With Hally Tosis, winner of the California Young Reader Medal; and The Paperboy, a Caldecott Honor Book. With other children’s book authors, he has contributed to anthologies such as Comics Squad: Recess! and Guys Read: Terrifying Tales. He lives with his wife in the Pacific Northwest.
"Pilkey creates an altogether festive mood, cheering those who waddle to a different drummer," said PWof this introduction to the Silly Goose family. Ages 4-8. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
PreS-Gr 3It's bad enough when one silly goose lives on the pond, but when another joins him and they start a silly family, all the other geese fly south in horrorin June. Pilkey's slapstick visual and concrete verbal humor combine with energetic, vivid full-color cartoons for a winning short chapter story. When a female goose arrives in a hot-air balloon to join silly Mr. Goose, she proclaims, "I will not fall out...Not unless I climb over the side and let golike this." And she does. The pair are wed by a church mouse; to celebrate they have a party and throw a cake. Their children are named Ketchup and Mustard after the condiments they prefer on their ice cream. With plenty of action and simple dialogue, the Gooses join the grand tradition of Harry Allard and Jim Marshall's "Stupids" (Houghton). With humor tailored expertly for primary-grade children, these silly gooses will be welcomed by listeners and newly independent readers alike.Carolyn Noah, Central Mass. Regional Library System, Worcester, MA
The Silly Gooses 4.5 out of 5 based on 0 ratings. 2 reviews.
I am in sixth grade, and I still love ths book. I saw it in my school library, and I remembered it from my childhood. I used to love this book, and it was great to read about cute little geese. I still love it.
My daughter just turned 6 and is in first grade. The book was a nice change of pace as we sat and read it together. We were able to laugh and talk about why things were silly. She also read it many times to her 4 year old brother. She checked the book out three times in a row and the librarian said 'no more'...so I guess I'll buy it from Barnes and Noble! If it makes the child read, it's a good book to me!
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A blog in the manner of many things
Polyamory, BDSM, magic, music, sexuality, gender, burlesque, life
The Dresden Dolls
Rock Star Lessons in the Forgotten Arts: Amanda Palmer tackles Vulnerability, Connection, & Asking For Help
(Book review #1 – original post @ Cannonball Read 8)
As a fan of The Dresden Dolls for over ten years and an avid reader, I was over the moon when I heard that Amanda Palmer was going to write a book. Even moreso when I heard that it was going to be along the same lines of work that the amazing Brené Brown (who actually wound up writing the Foreword to this book). It’s no secret that Amanda is super in touch with fans, known to put out calls via twitter for everything from advice to crashspace to announcing surprise ninja gigs and more. When The Dresden Dolls were still together, she and Brian Viglione would stay after shows, signing autographs, talking with fans, giving hugs, accepting gifts. I have a few select things signed by them, as I don’t usually go in for generic “sign your name on my book” type autographs. No, I want it to be special. So I have a stuffed panda that Amanda drew her signature eyebrow on over one and that Brian signed as the other eyebrow. Things like that. But I digress. I used to do street teaming for the Dolls, have performed with Brian Viglione, and just…adore them both. Amanda’s lyrics and music reached me in a way that most other music couldn’t at the time when I first heard “Half Jack”, a song off their eponymous first studio album. Her blogs about life, art, conflict, love, learning, connection, being human have helped me in ways too numerous for a book review. So, as I said, I was incredibly glad to hear she was writing a book. However, I wondered how much more she could put out there since, as I said above, she is known for being very accessible and present on the internet and in person.
Turns out, she had a lot more to put out there. The Art of Asking strikes me as one part history of the artist and one part love story for three different “people”: her husband, Neil Gaiman, her mentor, Anthony, and humanity in general. She talks about how she got into performing, starting with being a living statue in Boston and then moving on to forming The Dresden Dolls with Brian and the process of how that and she grew. Interspersed with the history are snippets of her courtship and life with Neil and am evolving explanation of Anthony and the myriad ways he was her rock, her mirror, her best friend, her mentor to life. I loved learning new things about her, recognizing certain periods and places she spoke of, and seeing all the ways she continues to foster connection, encourage trust in humanity, and completely admits to being shitty at certain parts of it all.
One of her biggest stumbling blocks is feeling unable to accept certain types of help. She, herself, boggles at this, especially since she opens the book with a story about asking loudly for a tampon in a restroom and reflects how she’s shameless and not afraid to ask for anything. However, this anecdote and assessment quickly turns to doubt in one sentence: “I think.”
Because she remembers there are things she’s ashamed or or embarassed or unable to ask or accept help with. Money from her well off, well known husband, for one. She actually admits in the beginning of the book that it used to be her deepest fear to be indebted to him. She offers her thoughts on why it’s hard to ask:
From what I’ve seen, it isn’t so much the asking that paralyzes us – it’s what lies beneath: the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of rejection, the fear of looking needy or weak. The fear of being seen as a burdensome member of the community instead of a productive one.
It points, fundamentally, to our separation from one another.
American culture in particular has instilled in us a bizarre notion that to ask for help amounts to admission of failure. But some of the most powerful, successful, admired people in the world seem, to me, to have something in common: they ask constantly, creatively, compassionately, and gracefully.
The book bouncing around a lot, but the connections are all there if you look for them. The ties she makes, the fans she creates, the trust she has in all of them. She speaks of a fairly universal feeling of the worrying about not being legit in what she was doing and coining the term The Fraud Police before she even knew what Imposter Syndrome was and that it was a Thing. Her descriptions of feeling like she and her art aren’t real, or valid, or “good enough” were immensely relieving, as I’ve been there, too, and know so many other people who have. And then to have Amanda F. Palmer get to the place where she can share what I’ve come to also believe is an hidden truth that’s hard to acknowledge:
There’s no “correct path” to becoming a real artist. You might think you’ll gain legitimacy by going to art school, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it’s all bullshit, and it’s all in your head. You’re an artist when you say you are. And you’re a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected.
In this book, Amanda continues to be what I consider a good artist and author, exploring the connection between vulnerability and asking for help and ultimately did get over her deep fear of being indebted to her husband…when it came to a life and death situation with her best friend, Anthony. I won’t go into it here, though, because I highly recommend reading this book yourself.
January 27, 2016 polyesque Amanda Palmer, open relationships, The Dresden Dolls, vulnerability Leave a comment
Not optional.
[New Year, New You] Week 17 – A Big Ritual
Dealing with Impossible Tasks
[New Year, New You] Week 16: Little Magics Everywhere
[New Year, New You] Week 15: Should to the Wheel, Champ!
Academy Awards Alcoholism Amanda Palmer Anxiety art Asexuality asmr BDSM Body Shaming Brené Brown burlesque challenges child psychology compersion cuckquean D/s dancing dating Demisexuality Depression drop out stigma family genderfluid genderqueer Gratitude High IQ internalized misogyny jealousy Kink lesbian polyamory let your freak flag fly love metamours motivation music new year new you open relationships oppression OscarsSoWhite plus-sized burlesque polyamory privilege PTSD queer reading relationship anarchy sales school school curriculum science self-esteem Self-Help sex sexuality singing submission Thanksgiving The Dresden Dolls The Gilmore Girls transgender vulnerability writing ze zir
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At least 20,000 flee deadly fighting in southern Philippines this week
February 29, 2016 By Timothy Walker Leave a Comment
At Least 20,000 Flee Deadly Fighting in Southern Philippines This Week – www.philippineslifestyle.com
At least six people have been killed and more than 20,000 displaced during a week of fighting between Islamic militants and security forces in the southern Philippine.
Three soldiers and three militants were confirmed killed in the clashes, which involved followers of a slain Indonesian leader of a Southeast Asian militant group, the military said.
“There was attack and counter-attack, sniping and counter-sniping, and artillery fire,” military spokesman Colonel Noel Detoyato told AFP, describing the fighting that began on Saturday with an attack on a military post.
The military said the group’s base, a concrete building on the outskirts of a remote town in a mountainous region of violence-racked Mindanao island, had been overrun on Thursday night following helicopter gunship attacks.
However a local reporter on the scene said clashes continued throughout Friday.
Up to 61 militants were believed to have been killed, although only three bodies had been recovered, according to the military chief with responsibility for the area, Colonel Roseller Murillo.
ALSO READ: Special forces find bomb-making manuals after killing three IS supporters
Col. Murillo and other military officials said they had no firm evidence to confirm the other 58 reported deaths, and would not say how they came up with the number other than that they relied on intelligence reports.
The fighting took place in and around Butig, a small Muslim-populated town surrounded by heavily forested mountains. One two-storey house was in ruins and many others were riddled with bullets, according to the local reporter.
More than 20,000 people had fled their homes, taking refuge in a mosque, government evacuation centres and with relatives, according to civil defence officials.
– Decades of violence –
A Muslim separatist insurgency has raged for more than four decades on Mindanao and other parts of the southern Philippines, leaving more than 120,000 people dead.
Efforts to secure a peace deal with the largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), recently collapsed after congress failed to pass a law that would have created an autonomous Muslim region in Mindanao.
ALSO READ: Fears grow that civilians being used as sex slaves by Marawi terrorists
The collapse of the previous peace process in 2008 led hardline MILF commanders to launch attacks on Christian villages in Mindanao, which killed more than 400 people and displaced 600,000.
This week’s fighting took place in a region bordering a stronghold of a powerful MILF commander.
But military officials said MILF did not take part in this week’s clashes.
They said the group involved in the clashes was led by followers of Indonesian Ustadz Sanusi, a member of the Jemaah Islamiyah who was killed in the southern Philippines in 2012.
Jemaah Islamiyah militants carried out the 2002 bombings on Indonesia’s holiday island of Bali, which killed 202 people. The group has long had a presence in the southern Philippines.
MILF leaders have warned in recent weeks that the collapse of the peace deal could embolden hardline militants who want to resume a violent separatist uprising.
Security analysts have also warned some Islamic militants in the Philippines may want to follow the more extreme violent tactics of the Islamic State group.
ALSO READ: Duterte claims Marawi crisis erupted after drug bust, not anti-terror raid
Timothy Walker
Latest posts by Timothy Walker (see all)
Fil-Am and American turn themselves in on drug run in US - November 7, 2017
Philippines suspends Uber, Grab vehicle registrations as backlog mounts - November 7, 2017
Mad, bad or misunderstood? What is Kim Jong Un really thinking? - August 28, 2017
Filed Under: News, Terrorism Tagged With: Islamic insurgency philippines, Islamic State philippines, rebel fighting mindanao, terrorism philippines
About Timothy Walker
Bacolod City identified as hotspot for online sex abuse of children
‘Candy Crush’ sold to ‘Call of Duty’ game maker for $5.9 billion
Canadian John Ridsdel beheaded by Abu Sayyaf terrorists
Guess which nationality lasts longest on world’s most popular porn site?
Filipina swindled money from Belgian man by pretending to be ill
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Bank’s survey says Philippines is 24th best place in the world for expats
July 8, 2019 By M G Martin Leave a Comment
A view of the Makati skyline via Wikimedia Commons.
The Philippines has bounced back to 24th place in a global bank’s survey of the best countries to live and work for expats.
This result in HSBC bank’s 2019 Expat Explorer is an improvement on last year, when the country had slipped to 28th place in the league.
At its current position, the Philippines is only one notch behind the United States, while being above countries including the UK, Italy, China, Indonesia and Japan.
Topping the table was Switzerland, followed by Singapore and then Canada.
The top-ten was completed by Spain, New Zealand, Australia, Turkey, Germany, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. The last of these countries had risen substantially from 19th place last year.
The 2019 Expat Explorer survey interviewed 18,059 expatriates from all over the world to formulate its conclusions. Respondents were asked 27 questions based on criteria such as living, career opportunities and family life.
Each country that was included in the league table needed to have a minimum sample of 100 expat respondents or at least 30 expat parents.
ALSO READ: Survey says Philippines is one of the most welcoming countries for expats
Describing the Philippines as a place to live and work, the survey said: “With its tropical climate and steadily growing economy, the Philippines is quickly becoming one of the most popular expat destinations in Southeast Asia.
“This extensive archipelago of more than 7,000 islands has long attracted immigrants from as far afield as Spain, America and Australia. Expats moving to the Philippines today can expect to find a multicultural country influenced as much by the West as it is by the East.”
The survey released today (Monday, July 8) also contained individual pieces of advice from respondents.
These included:
“Just be able to roll with the punches. Know that things will change constantly and be OK with that, or you will never make it here. Know there will be frustrations, but there will also be big rewards. It’s a beautiful country.”
“Bring lots of passport-sized photos. Be patient when dealing with bureaucracy.”
“Research long and hard before you head for the Philippines… The heat, humidity and lifestyle is not for everyone.”
“Just relax and enjoy the ride – Filipino people are simply beautiful! You don’t need to bring anything except your smile.”
“In the Philippines, people tend to shy away from giving bad news — it’s important to listen to what is not being said.”
Follow our Facebook page for daily news updates
ALSO READ: Over a third of all foreign retirees in the Philippines are Chinese expats
M G Martin
Editor in Chief at Philippines Lifestyle News
a UK journalist with 20 years experience in both print and broadcast.
Latest posts by M G Martin (see all)
British man who watched Filipino kids raped online gets 21 years - July 15, 2019
President Duterte signs law against ‘gender-based sexual harassment’ - July 15, 2019
National dengue alert declared as killer disease spikes across Philippines - July 15, 2019
Filed Under: News Tagged With: expat philippines, HSBC survey
About M G Martin
Drilon wants legal profession liberalised to allow foreign lawyers to practice
Teenager stabs Taiwanese pensioner to death during burglary
Enormous saltwater crocodile captured on Tawi-Tawi Island
No deaths after Baguio-bound bus plummeted down 37-ft ravine
El Niño drought hits farmers and brings water rationing to major cities
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Philippine Army to recruit over 13,000 troops for 2017
in Business and Money, Job Openings
The Philippine Army is recruiting new troops to join their ranks for 2017. The olders Armed Forces of the Philippines branch said it will add 13,910 total new recruits for this year to fill-up various Army units throughout the country.
The distribution of said recruitment is as follows:
– 349 officers (2nd Lieutenant);
– 8,892 soldiers for the special quota as approved by the President;
Philippine Army Recruitment 2017: Requirements, Qualifications, How to Apply and Benefits
– 1,069 soldiers for the newly organized 54th Engineer Brigade; and the
– 3,600 soldiers representing the annual quota replacement in the Army
Most number of new recruits will fill-up the Army infantry, cavalry and artillery units. There are also recruits who will fill-up the engineer, communication, logistics, and other administrative functions of the Army.
Out of the total number of recruits, ten (10) percent is allocated for female recruits while five (5) percent from the indigenous peoples.
Once recruited and becomes a trainee, the candidate soldier will receive a gross income of P16,852.00. If enlisted, the new Private will receive a starting gross income of P23,204.00 plus a number of allowances and benefits.
Read more about the Philippine Army Recruitment 2017: Requirements, Qualifications, How to Apply and Benefits.
Tags: AFP Recruitment 2017how to join the army?Hukbong Katihan ng PilipinasKailangan para maging sundaloPA Recruitment 2017Philippine Army Qualification for new recruitPhilippine Army Recruitment 2017Philipping Army Hiring 2017Requirements for Philippine Army
#WalangPasok: March 16 and 17, 2017 are declared non-working holidays in Davao City
Cholera outbreak is declared in parts of Bohol and Cebu
JBM has been blogging since 2005 and has maintained several blogs. She is a pediatrician by profession and is currently working at a government hospital in Mindanao.
Saudi Ministry of Health needs 1000 specialist nurses
BDO ATM, Online and Mobile Banking experience system downtime on October 6, 2018
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News tagged with game
Related topics: xbox 360 · wii · playstation 3 · facebook · social networking
Amazon forges fellowship for 'Lord of the Rings' online video game
Amazon has landed a prime franchise on which to build an online game: the Lord of the Rings.
Internet communities can teach amateurs to build personalized governments
The internet has its perils with privacy breaches and fake news, but on the plus side, a whole generation of youth have been teaching themselves skills in leadership and community-building, according to a new University of ...
AI program beats pros in six-player poker—a first
Artificial intelligence programs have bested humans in checkers, chess, Go and two-player poker, but multi-player poker was always believed to be a bigger ask. Mission: accomplished.
Online simulation game makes graphene research available to the public
The team of Toma Susi at the University of Vienna uses a state-of-the-art electron microscope, the UltraSTEM, to manipulate strongly bound materials with atomic precision. Since the instruments are fully computerized, it ...
EA's Origin had security flaws that could have put up to 300M at risk for identity theft
Video game publisher Electronic Arts has tightened some openings cybersleuths found in its Origin online network that could have exposed more than 300 million video game players to identity theft and account losses.
Game console makers oppose China tariffs
Game console makers Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have joined forces in opposing expanded tariffs on China, saying the plan would make their products unaffordable for the coming holiday season.
Play games with no latency
One of the most challenging issues for game players looks to be resolved soon with the introduction of a zero-latency gaming environment. A KAIST team developed a technology that helps game players maintain zero-latency performance. ...
Consumer & Gadgets
Voice-activiated Monopoly tells players: 'You're bankrupt!'
What fictional financial wisdom might the mustachioed, top-hat-wearing billionaire Mr Monopoly dole out to a regular board-game player?
Playing games? It's a serious way to win community backing for change
How would you and your neighbours triple the number of households in your street block in order to keep your cherished suburb thriving and do your bit to tackle urban sprawl? You have a number of choices to make. Where do ...
Elon Musk says Teslas to get games 'Beach Buggy Racing 2,' 'Fallout Shelter'
Coming soon to a Tesla screen near you: A racing game that uses the car's steering wheel.
A game is a structured activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more concerned with the expression of ideas. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports/games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mah-jongg solitaire).
Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational or psychological role. According to Chris Crawford, the requirement for player interaction puts activities such as jigsaw puzzles and solitaire "games" into the category of puzzles rather than games.
Attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures. The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, and Mancala are some of the oldest known games.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
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Disease Emergence from Global Climate and Land Use Change
Dis eas e Emergence from Global Climate a nd L a nd Us e Cha nge Jonathan A. Patz, MD, MPHa,b,*, Sarah H. Olson, BSa,b, Christopher K. Uejio, MSa, Holly K. Gibbs, PhDa KEYWORDS Climate change Global warming Emerging diseases Deforestation Malaria Urbanization
From the years 1906 to 2005, global average temperature has warmed by 0.74 C, and since 1961, sea level has risen on average by approximately 2 mm per year.1 Arctic sea ice extent has declined by 7.4% per decade and snow cover and glaciers have diminished in both hemispheres. The rate of change in climate is faster now than in any period in the last 1000 years. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 90 years, average global temperatures will increase between 1.8 C and 4.0 C and sea level will rise between 18 and 59 cm (Fig. 1). Extremes of the hydrologic cycle (eg, floods and droughts) are also expected to accompany global warming trends. The global rate of tropical deforestation continues at staggering levels, with nearly 2% to 3% of global forests lost each year. Land use change for agriculture represents the largest driver of land cover change across the earth. Together, croplands and pastures have become one of the largest terrestrial biomes on the planet, rivaling forest cover in extent, and occupying w40% of the land surface.2,3 Emergence or resurgence of numerous infectious diseases are strongly influenced by environmental factors such as climate or land use change. The most sensitive diseases are those that are indirectly transmitted, that is, those requiring either a vehicle for transfer from host to host (eg, water- and food-borne disease) or an intermediate host or vector as part of its life cycle. Most vector-borne diseases involve arthropod vectors, such as mosquitoes, flies, ticks, or fleas. Because insects are cold blooded, a marginal change in temperature can have a potentially large biologic effect on a
Global Environmental Health, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin (at Madison), 1710 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53726, USA b Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin (at Madison) 1710 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53726, USA * Corresponding author. Global Environmental Health, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin (at Madison), 1710 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53726. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.A. Patz). Med Clin N Am 92 (2008) 1473–1491 doi:10.1016/j.mcna.2008.07.007 medical.theclinics.com 0025-7125/08/$ – see front matter ª 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Patz et al
Fig.1. Observed trends in global temperature, sea level, and extent of Northern Hemisphere snow cover. (From IPCC. Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability: contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press; 2007; with permission.)
disease transmission. Therefore, climate change can alter the incidence, seasonal transmission, and geographic range of diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever (mosquitoes), leishmaniasis (sand flies), Lyme disease (ticks), and onchocerciasis or ‘‘river blindness’’ (black flies). Schistosomiasis (involving water snails as the intermediate hosts) is also influenced by water temperature.4 CLIMATE EFFECTS ON WATER- AND FOOD-BORNE DISEASES Waterborne Diseases
Heavy rainfall events can increase risk for waterborne disease outbreaks. Existing seasonal contamination of surface water in early spring in North America and Europe may explain some of the seasonality of many waterborne diseases. According to the North American chapter of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)1 report, heavy precipitation events are expected to increase under climate change scenarios. Preliminary analysis from the authors’ research shows that overall, climate models project that these extremely heavy precipitation events will become 10%
Disease Emergence from Global Climate and Land Use
to 40% stronger in southern Wisconsin, resulting in greater potential for the flooding and waterborne diseases that often accompany high discharge into Lake Michigan.5 Community water systems are already overwhelmed by extreme rainfall events. Runoff can exceed the capacity of the sewer system or treatment plants, and these systems are designed to discharge the excess wastewater directly into surface water bodies.6,7 Urban watersheds experience more than 60% of the annual loads of all contaminants during storm events.8 Turbidity also increases during storm events, and studies have linked turbidity and illness in many communities.9,10 Waterborne disease outbreaks from all causes in the United States are distinctly seasonal, clustered in key watersheds, and associated with heavy precipitation.11 In Walkerton, Ontario, in May 2000, heavy precipitation combined with failing infrastructure contaminated drinking water with Escherichia coli 0157:H7 and Campylobacter jejuni, resulting in an estimated 2300 illnesses and seven deaths.12 Intense rainfall can also contaminate recreational waters and increase the risk for human illness13 through higher bacterial counts. This association is strongest at the beaches closest to rivers.14 Involvement of the respiratory tract, ears, nose, and throat and gastrointestinal illnesses are commonly associated with recreational swimming in fresh and salt waters. High-risk groups for exposure to pathogens include frequent water users such as lifeguards or water sport enthusiasts, whereas young children, the elderly, pregnant women, and the immunocompromised have the greatest risk for suffering serious complications.15,16 Population trends in the United States toward an older and more immunocompromised population suggest that the United States’ vulnerability to waterborne pathogens will continue to increase. Pathogens tend to co-occur with indicator bacteria but indicators are prone to falsepositive readings. Indicator bacteria may survive in soil sediments or beach sand, resuspended during a precipitation event, and confound waterborne disease risk estimates.17–19 E coli indicator bacteria are influenced by precipitation events up to a week before sample collection, although recent precipitation (0–3 days) tends to exhibit the strongest relationships with their numbers.11 The spacing of rainfall events can also increase pollutant accumulation and subsequent loading into water bodies.20,21 Longer interval processes such as the El Nin˜o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) strongly influence interannual precipitation and therefore must be taken into account. During periods of heavy precipitation, Cryptosporidium parvum, a protozoan associated with domestic livestock, can readily contaminate drinking water. The 1993 cryptosporidiosis outbreak in Milwaukee killed more than 50 people and potentially exposed more than 400,000; this epidemic coincided with unusually heavy spring rains and runoff from melting snow.22 The authors’ review of all-cause waterborne disease outbreaks in the United States over a 50-year period demonstrated a distinct seasonality, a spatial clustering in key watersheds, and a strong association with heavy precipitation.11 Marine organisms
In warm marine waters, Vibrio species proliferate. Copepods (or zooplankton), which feed on algae, can serve as reservoirs for Vibrio cholerae and other enteric pathogens. In Bangladesh, for example, cholera follows seasonal warming of sea surface temperature that can enhance plankton blooms.23 After including intrinsic host immunity factors, interannual variability of cholera is strongly correlated to (1) sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal; (2) ENSO; (3) the extent of flooding in Bangladesh across short time periods (7 years).24 ENSO has had an increasing
role in explaining cholera outbreaks in recent years, perhaps because of concurrent climate change.25 Similarly, during the 1997 to 1998 El Nin˜o event, winter temperatures in Lima increased more than 5 C above normal, and the number of daily admissions for diarrhea increased by more than 200% compared with expected levels based on the prior 5 years.26 For every degree centigrade rise in air temperature above normal, an 8% increase in hospital admissions for childhood diarrhea was observed (Fig. 2). Food-Borne Diseases
Some food-borne diseases are impacted by fluctuations in temperature. An estimated 30% of reported cases of salmonellosis across much of continental Europe have been attributed to warm temperatures, especially when they exceed a threshold of 6 C above average.27 Monthly incidence of food poisoning in Britain is most strongly associated with temperatures of the previous 2 to 5 weeks.28 Other food-borne agents, such as campylobacter, are also seasonal but are not as strongly linked to temperature fluctuations. MALNUTRITION RISKS
Global climate change is expected to cause extremes of the hydrologic cycle (more floods and droughts). Droughts will exacerbate malnutrition, still one of the world’s largest health challenges, with 800 million undernourished.29 Climate extremes have direct impacts on food crops and can indirectly influence food supply by altering the ecology of plant pathogens, and higher soil temperatures can promote fungal growth that kills seedlings. According to the IPCC, reduced yields will occur throughout the tropics because of heat stress, and crops can be damaged from flooding, erosion, and wildfires.1 Malnutrition increases the risk for death from infectious diseases, especially diarrhea, and micronutrient deficiencies are related to drought.
Fig. 2. Daily hospitalizations for diarrhea, by daily temperature, Lima, Peru. Top graph shows hospital admission over time for childhood diarrhea in Lima, Peru. Bottom graph is ambient temperature for Lima. Note the marked seasonality of disease incidence, and that during the winter of 1997–98, a strong El Nin˜o (shaded region) made winter temperatures 5 C above normal, associated with a higher than expected incidence of diarrheal disease. For every 1 C rise in ambient temperature, admissions increased by 8%. (From Checkley W, Epstein LD, Gilman RH, et al. Effect of El Nino and ambient temperature on hospital admissions for diarrhoeal diseases in Peruvian children. Lancet 2000;355:442–50; with permission.)
Although malnutrition is complex in cause, one study has estimated that by the 2050s, climate change will increase the percentage at risk for hunger from a current 34% to a level of 64% to 72%, unadjusted for potential adaptive interventions.30 Droughts also can increase diarrhea and diseases such as scabies, conjunctivitis, and trachoma that are associated with poor hygiene and result from a breakdown in sanitation if water resources become depleted.31 Biofuels and Malnutrition?
The global biofuel industry is growing rapidly as rising oil prices and government mandates encourage increased production of these alternative fuels. Global biofuel production may quadruple within the next 15 to 20 years32–34 and it has already been implicated in changing world food supplies and price.35 Rising prices for food staples resulting from an unregulated biofuels boom could place undue burden on poor or malnourished populations in a potential scenario. According to one estimate, for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods, 16 million more people could become food insecure.36 Further, the amount of humanitarian food aid available for extremely impoverished countries will be affected in the short term because food aid shipments from the United States are inversely correlated to commodity prices.37 Demand for crop-derived ethanol or biodiesel also could have devastating effects on the fate of the world’s tropical forests. Expansion of the leading biofuel crops is already evident in South America and insular Southeast Asia as large-scale fields of soybean and oil palm, respectively, expand in these regions, leading to forest clearing, expulsion of subsistence farmers, and large emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.38–41 The authors’ center has found that most recently expanding oil palm fields have replaced forests in parts of Malaysia and Indonesia and that increases in soybean production in Brazil coincide with more forest conversion (Gibbs, unpublished data, 2008). CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND CHANGE EFFECTS ON VECTOR-BORNE DISEASES
The transmission dynamics and geographic distribution of most insect- or rodentborne (vector-borne) diseases are highly climate sensitive. Vector-borne pathogens spend part of their life cycle in cold-blooded arthropods that are subject to many environmental factors. Changes in weather and climate that can affect transmission of vector-borne diseases include temperature, rainfall, wind, extreme flooding or drought, and sea level rise. Rodent-borne pathogens can be affected indirectly by ecologic determinants of food sources affecting rodent population size, and floods can displace and lead them to seek food and refuge. See Box 1. The extrinsic incubation time of an infective agent within its vector organism is typically sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity.42 Some examples of temperature thresholds are included in Table 1. Malaria
Malaria kills between 700,000 and 2.7 million persons each year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa.43 Although malaria’s resurgence involves multiple factors, from climate and land use change to drug resistance, variable disease-control efforts, and other sociodemographic factors, malaria is an extremely climate-sensitive tropical disease, and one of the most important climate change/health questions to resolve.44
Box 1 Effects of weather and climate on vector- and rodent-borne diseasesa Examples of temperature effects on selected vectors and vector-borne pathogens Vector Survival can decrease or increase, depending on the species. Some vectors have higher survival at higher latitudes and altitudes with higher temperatures. Changes are possible in the susceptibility of vectors to some pathogens (eg, higher temperatures reduce the size of some vectors but reduce the activity of others). Changes occur in the rate of vector population growth. Changes occur in feeding rate and host contact (which may alter the survival rate). Changes occur in the seasonality of populations. Pathogen Extrinsic incubation period of pathogen is decreased in vector at higher temperatures, Changes occur in the transmission season. Changes occur in distribution. Viral replication is decreased. Examples of effects of changes in precipitation on selected vector-borne pathogens Vector Increased rain may increase larval habitat and vector population size by creating a new habitat. Excess rain or snow pack can eliminate habitat by flooding, thus decreasing the vector population size. Low rainfall can create habitat by causing rivers to dry into pools (dry season malaria). Decreased rain can increase container-breeding mosquitoes by forcing increased water storage. Epic rainfall events can synchronize vector host seeking and virus transmission. Increased humidity increases vector survival; decreased humidity decreases vector survival. Pathogen Few direct effects are evident but some data indicate humidity effects on malarial parasite development in the anopheline mosquito host. Vertebrate host Increased rain can increase vegetation, food availability, and population size. Increased rain can also cause flooding and decrease population size but increase contact with humans. Decreased rain can eliminate food and force rodents into housing areas, increasing human contact, but it can also decrease population size. Increased sea level Increased levels alter estuary flow and change existing salt marshes and associated mosquito species, decreasing or eliminating selected mosquito breeding sites (eg, reduced habitat for Culiseta melanura). a
The relationship between ambient weather conditions and vector ecology is complicated by the natural tendency for insect vectors to seek out the most suitable ‘‘microclimates’’ for their survival (eg, resting under vegetation or pit latrines during dry or hot conditions or in culverts during cold conditions). From Gubler DJ, Reiter P, Ebi KL, Yap W, Nasci R, Patz JA. Climate variability and change in the United States: potential impacts on vector- and rodent-borne diseases. Environ Health Perspect 2001;109:223–33; with permission.
Table 1 Temperature thresholds of pathogens and vectors Tmin for Vector
Pathogen
Plasmodium falciparum
Anopheles
8–10 biologic activity
Plasmodium vivax
Trypanosoma cruzi
Triatomine bugs
2–6 survival 20 biologic activity
Schistosomiasis Cercaria
Snails (Bulinus 5 biologic activity and others) 252 optimum range
Borrelia burgdorferi
Ixodes ticks
No yet determined
Tmin is the minimum temperature required for disease transmission. Tmax for the pathogen is the upper threshold beyond which temperatures are lethal. Tmax for vectors are not provided. Temperatures in C. Note: temperatures assume optimum humidity, vector survival decreases rapidly as dryness increases. Considerable variation exists in these thresholds within and among species. Sources: Purnell, 1966; Pfluger, 1980; Molineaux, 1988; Curto de Casas and Carcavallo, 1984; Rueda et al, 1990. Reprinted from IPCC. Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability: contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press; 2007; with permission.
Malaria incidence varies seasonally in highly endemic areas, and malaria transmission has been associated with temperature anomalies in some African highland areas.45 In the Punjab region of India, excessive monsoon rainfall and resultant high humidity have been recognized for years as major factors in the occurrence of malaria epidemics. Malaria epidemics have increased approximately fivefold during the year following an El Nin˜o event46 and recently, indices of El Nin˜o–related climate variability predicted malaria incidence in Botswana.47 Special case of malaria in the African highlands
For every 1000-meter gain in elevation, temperatures decrease by 6 C. Minimum temperature for parasite development of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax approximates 18 C and 15 C, respectively, limiting the spread of malaria at higher altitudes. Increasing altitude also results in decreasing mosquito abundance in African highlands.48 A warming trend from 1950 to 2002 was documented in the East African highlands, coinciding with increases in malaria incidence.49 Well-recognized nonlinear and threshold responses of malaria (a biologic system) are established for regional temperature fluctuations. As a biologic system, the response of mosquito populations to warming can be more than an order of magnitude larger than the measured change in temperature; just half a degree centigrade increase in temperature trend can translate into a 30% to 100% increase in mosquito abundance, demonstrating a ‘‘biologic amplification’’ of temperature effects. In the African highlands, where mosquito populations are small compared with lowland areas,50 such biologic responses may be especially significant in determining the risk for malaria.
Arboviruses Dengue fever
The peridomestic urban mosquito, Aedes aegypti, is also strongly influenced by climate, including variability in temperature, moisture, and solar radiation. Similar to the extrinsic incubation period of the malaria parasite, the rate of dengue virus replication in A aegypti mosquitoes increases directly with temperature in the laboratory. When linked to future climate change projections, biologic models of dengue transmission suggest that small increases in temperature, given viral introduction into a susceptible human population, could increase the potential for epidemics.51 For small countries with presumably some climate uniformity, a climate-based Aedes mosquito population model strongly correlates climate conditions with the variability in dengue cases reported at the national level.52 West Nile virus
Climate variability has an effect on West Nile virus (WNV), a disease that rapidly spread across the Western hemisphere. Reisen and colleagues53 found that the strain of WNV that entered New York (during the record hot July of 1999) differed from the South African strain in that it required warmer temperatures for efficient transmission. The investigators concluded that during the epidemic summers of 2002 and 2004 in the United States, epicenters of WNV were linked to above-average temperatures. Temperature influences other important components of the WNV transmission cycle, such as the development rate and fitness of immature mosquitoes and the biting rate and survival of adult female mosquitoes.54–58 Anomalously hot summer temperatures are also linked to international WNV outbreaks in South Africa and Russia.59–61 Variability of precipitation may affect WNV transmission by (1) inducing a large increase in disease-transmitting mosquito abundance or (2) killing mosquito predators and competitors (3) vector–avian host contact. Multiple North American WNV vector mosquito population sizes tend to mirror the total amount of summer season precipitation.62–65 Above-average summer precipitation likely activates new larval breeding habitats and temporarily increases the number of disease vectors, which may increase the level of WNV transmission. This mechanism appears to be behind the 1974 South African WNV epidemic, which infected more than 18,000 people.60 In the United States, below-average rainfall the previous year tended to increase WNV transmission the following year.66 Drought over multiple time periods has inconsistently been reported as a potential driver of multiple individual WNV outbreaks.61,67,68 Diseasetransmitting mosquito populations recover more rapidly than mosquito competitors and predators from a disturbance like drought, which may increase disease transmission.69 In humid Florida, spring drought increases vector and avian host contact and WNV transmission, and wet summer conditions foster mosquito dispersal and subsequent disease transmission.70 Similar to WNV, Saint Louis encephalitis virus (SLEV) is also associated with climatic factors. In Florida, SLEV appearance in sentinel chicken flocks is preceded by a wet period followed by drought. Chikungunya
During July 2004, amidst a severe drought in East Africa, an epidemic of chikungunya virus erupted in Lamu, Kenya, where an estimated 13,500 people (75% of the population) were infected.71 Climate analysis showed that unseasonably warm and dry conditions, especially over coastal Kenya, occurred during May 2004.72 Such conditions may have (1) led to unsafe domestic water storage practices and infrequent changing of water storage and (2) hastened viral development in the Aedes mosquito.
The virus spread to islands of the western Indian Ocean, then to India, and most recently to Italy during the summer of 2007. Although the role of climatic conditions in Italy is not clear, southern Europe was experiencing an unusually warm and dry summer.73 Rift valley fever
All known Rift Valley fever virus outbreaks in East Africa from 1950 to May 1998, and probably earlier, followed periods of abnormally high rainfall. Analysis of this record and Pacific and Indian Ocean sea surface temperature anomalies, coupled with satellite normalized difference vegetation index data, shows that prediction of Rift Valley fever outbreaks may be made up to 5 months in advance of outbreaks in East Africa. Concurrent near–real-time monitoring with satellite normalized difference vegetation data may identify actual affected areas.74 Dams and irrigation can increase breeding sites, exacerbating the effect of extreme rainfall. Extensive human disease outbreaks were not reported until 1951, when an estimated 20,000 persons were infected during an epidemic in cattle and sheep in South Africa. Outbreaks were reported exclusively from sub-Saharan Africa until 1977–78, when 18,000 persons were infected and 598 deaths were reported in Egypt.75
Lyme disease is a prevalent, tick-borne disease in North America that new evidence suggests has an association with temperature76 and precipitation.77 In the field, temperature and vapor pressure contribute to maintaining populations of the tick Ixodes scapularis which, in the United States, is the microorganism’s secondary host. A monthly average minimum temperature above 7 C is required for tick survival.78 The northern boundary of tick-borne Lyme disease is limited by cold temperature effects on the tick, I scapularis. The northern range limit for this tick could shift north by 200 km by the 2020s, and 1000 km by the 2080s (based on projections from the CGCM2 and HadCM3 atmosphere-ocean global circulation models under the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A2 emissions scenario).79
Rodent-Borne Diseases
For hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which newly emerged in the Southwest in 1993, weather conditions led to a growth in rodent populations and subsequent disease transmission, all following unusually heavy El Nin˜o–driven rainfall.80 Hantavirus infections are transmitted largely by exposure to infectious excreta, and may cause serious disease in humans and a high fatality rate. Extreme flooding or hurricanes can lead to outbreaks of leptospirosis. In Nicaragua, for example, an epidemic of leptospirosis followed heavy flooding in 1995. From a case-control study, a 15-fold risk for disease was associated with walking through flooded waters.81 Plague is another climate-sensitive disease that is carried by fleas, and it is associated with populations of rodents, the primary reservoir hosts of the Yersinia pestis bacterium. In the desert southwestern United States, plague bacterial levels in rodents have been found to increase in the wake of wet climate conditions following El Nin˜o and Pacific Decadal Oscillation–driven wet weather conditions.82 Historically, according to tree-ring proxy climate data, during the major plague epidemics of the Black Death period (1280–1350), climate conditions were becoming warmer and wetter.83
Other Vector-Borne Diseases and Climate Bluetongue
Bluetongue disease, a viral illness that is fatal to sheep and other ruminants, is spread by Culicoides spp (midges) and historically, only rarely reached north into Europe. But since 1998, several strains of bluetongue virus have advanced 800 km further into Europe than previously reported. Warming temperatures in the region have allowed enhanced survival of viruses through winter and a northern expansion of the insect vector of the disease.84 Warmer winter temperatures projected for the future may further the geographic range of this serious livestock disease; the warm temperatures of 2007 already have allowed establishment of bluetongue in Northern Europe (Fig. 3).85
LAND USE CHANGE AND DISEASE EMERGENCE
Disturbance of habitats due to land cover change is likely the largest environmental cause of altered risk for infectious diseases. Habitat change, in turn, may affect the breeding sites of disease vectors or the biodiversity of vectors or reservoir hosts. Major drivers of land use change include agricultural development or water projects, urbanization and sprawl, and deforestation. These changes, in turn, cause a cascade of factors that exacerbate infectious disease emergence, such as forest fragmentation, pathogen introduction, pollution, poverty, and human migration. These issues are important but complex and are only understood for a few diseases. For example, recent research has shown that forest fragmentation, urban sprawl, and loss of biodiversity are linked to increased Lyme disease risk in the northeastern United States.86
Fig. 3. Map of bluetongue virus (BTV) across the European Union. The molecular epidemiology of BTV since 1998: routes of introduction of different serotypes and individual virus strains. The presence of BTV-specific neutralizing antibodies in animals in Bulgaria is shown, but the presence of BTV serotype 8 cannot yet be confirmed. (From Saegerman C, Berkvens D, Mellor PS. Bluetongue epidemiology in the European Union. Emerg Infect Dis 2008;14:539–44; with permission.)
Land use change for agricultural expansion represents the largest driver of land cover change across the earth, and has continued to be the dominant cause of tropical deforestation well into this decade.87 Together, croplands and pastures have become one of the largest terrestrial biomes on the planet, rivaling forest cover in extent, and occupying w40% of the land surface.2,3 The area of cultivated land is expected to increase dramatically across the tropics because of unprecedented increases in global demand for food, feed, and fuel. Indeed, estimates suggest that agricultural land area in developing countries may increase considerably (25%) to meet this demand.88 Already, agriculture uses over two thirds of the world’s fresh water.89 Agricultural development in many parts of the world has resulted in an increased requirement for crop irrigation, which reduces water availability for other uses and increases breeding sites for disease vectors. An increase in soil moisture associated with irrigation development in the southern Nile Delta following the construction of the Aswan High Dam has caused a rapid rise in the mosquito, Culex pipiens, and a consequential increase in the arthropod-borne disease, Bancroftian filariasis.90,91 Onchocerciasis and trypanosomiasis are further examples of vector-borne parasitic diseases that may be triggered by changing land-use and water-management patterns. In addition, largescale use of pesticides has had deleterious effects on farm workers, including hormone disruption and immune suppression.92 Urbanization and Urban Sprawl
On a global basis, the proportion of people living in urban centers will increase to an unprecedented 65% by the year 2030.93 The 2000 census shows that 80% of the American population now lives in metropolitan areas, with 30% in cities of 5 million or more. The environmental issues posed by such large population centers have profound impacts on public health beyond the city limits.94 Alterations of ecosystems and natural resources contribute to the emergence and spread of infectious disease agents. Human encroachment of wildlife habitats has broadened the interface between wildlife and humans, resulting in increased opportunities for the emergence of novel infectious diseases in wildlife and their transmission to people. Rabies is an example of a zoonotic pathogen carried by animals that has become habituated to urban environments. Bats colonize buildings, skunks and raccoons scavenge human refuse, and in many countries, feral dogs in the streets are common and the major source of human infection.95 Periurban slums provide the ideal conditions for major epidemics, combining dense housing, poor sanitation and shelter, and open breeding sites for vectors that can transmit pathogens. Peridomestic dengue fever, infecting an estimated 50 million people each year, is one ramification of such poor urban conditions. Deforestation
Rates of deforestation have grown explosively since the beginning of the twentieth century. Driven by local to global demand for agricultural and forest products and expanding human population centers, large swaths of species-rich tropical and temperate forests, and prairies, grasslands, and wetlands, have been converted to species-poor agricultural and ranching areas. The global rate of tropical deforestation is continuing at staggering levels well into this decade, with more than 2.3% of humid tropical forests cleared between 2000 and 2005 alone.87 Parallel to this habitat destruction is an exponential growth in human–wildlife interaction and conflict, which has resulted in exposure to new pathogens for humans, livestock, and wildlife.96
Case study: malaria and deforestation
Land cover change can significantly affect local climate more acutely than long-term global warming. Surface change can influence microclimatic conditions including temperature, evapotranspiration, and runoff,97 all potentially important determinants of mosquito abundance and survivorship. In Kenya, open, treeless habitats average warmer midday temperatures than forested habitats, and also affect indoor hut temperatures.98 Subsequently, the gonadotropic cycle of female Anopheles gambiae was shortened by 2.6 days (52%) and 2.9 days (21%) during the dry and rainy seasons, respectively, compared with that of forested sites. In Uganda, similarly higher temperatures have been measured in communities bordering cultivated fields compared with those adjacent to natural wetlands, and the number of A gambiae s.l. per house increased along with minimum temperatures after adjustment for potential confounding variables.99 In aquatic breeding sites found in farmlands, higher maximum and mean temperatures also hasten larval development and pupation rates.100 In western Kenya, heavier canopy cover decreases the abundance of A gambiae complex and Anopheles funestus larvae in natural aquatic habitats.50 In artificial pools, survivorship of A gambiae larvae in sunlit open areas was 50 times the survivorship in forested areas and also related to assemblages of predatory species.101 In short, deforestation and cultivation of natural swamps in the African highlands create conditions favorable for the survival of A gambiae larvae, making analysis of land use change on local climate, habitat, and biodiversity key to malaria risk assessments. In the Amazon Basin, deforestation has also altered the risk for malaria. Vittor and colleagues102 have found a strong association between the biting rates of Anopheles darlingi and the extent of deforestation in the Amazon. Controlling for human population density, the biting rates of A darlingi were more than 200-fold higher in sites experiencing greater than 80% deforestation versus those with less than 30% deforested landscape (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4. Deforestation and A darlingi biting rates, Peruvian Amazon. Average human biting rates of the Anopheles darlingi mosquito according to the percentage of forest within a 1 1 km pixel. Biting rates rise dramatically with deforestation, even after controlling for human population density. Mean human-biting rate if determined per 6 hours per person; 15 or 16 collection nights per site during 1 year (total: 888 6-hour nights). (Data from Vittor AY, Gilman RH, Tielsch J, et al. The effect of deforestation on the human-biting rate of Anopheles Darlingi, the primary vector of falciparum malaria in the Peruvian Amazon. Am J Trop Med Hyg 2006;74:3–11.)
Host immunity against malaria can be affected indirectly by another form of land use change. Gold mining is an extractive industry that damages local and regional environments and has adverse human health effects because mercury is used to extract gold from riverbeds in the tropical forests. Not only does mercury accumulate in local fish populations, making them toxic to eat,103,104 but mercury also suppresses the human immune system. In gold-mining areas, more mosquito-breeding sites and increased malaria risk result from digging gem pits in the forest and the craters resulting from logging; broader disease spread occurs as populations disperse throughout the region.105 SUMMARY
Climate change and land use change can affect multiple infectious diseases of humans, acting either independently or synergistically. Although in isolated cases, disease resurgence has been attributed to recent warming trends, some of the long-term and complex problems posed by climate change may not be readily discernible from other causal factors. Expanded efforts, therefore, in empiric and future scenariobased risk assessment are required to anticipate these problems. Moreover, the many health impacts of climate and land use change must be examined in the context of the myriad other environmental and behavioral determinants of disease. Health risks are but one of many sectors expected to be affected by climate and ecologic change and represent the interconnected context in which decision makers must implement strategies. To optimize prevention capabilities, upstream environmental approaches must be part of any intervention, rather than assaults on single agents of disease. Clinicians must develop stronger ties, not only to public health officials and scientists, but also to earth and environmental scientists and policy makers. Without such efforts, we risk practicing medicine in an unsustainable manner and will inevitably benefit our current generation at the cost of generations to come. FURTHER READINGS
Aron JL, Patz JA, editors. Ecosystem change and public health: a global perspective. Johns Hopkins University Press; 2001. Foley JA, DeFries R, Asner GP, et al. Global consequences of land use. Science 2005; 309:570–4. Haines A, Patz JA. Health effects of climate change. JAMA 2004;291(1):99–103. Patz JA. Climate change. In: Frumkin H, editor. Environmental health: from global to local. San Francisco (CA): John Wiley & Sons Inc.; 2005. Patz JA, Daszak P, Tabor GM, et al. Unhealthy landscapes: policy recommendations on land use change and infectious disease emergence. Environ Health Perspect 2004;101:1092–8. REFERENCES
1. IPCC. Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability: contribution of working group II to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press; 2007. 2. Asner GP, Elmore AJ, Olander LP, et al. Grazing systems, ecosystem responses, and global change. Ann Rev Environ Resour 2004;29:261–99. 3. Ramankutty N, Foley JA. Estimating historical changes in global land cover: croplands from 1700 to 1992. Global Bioeochemical Cycles 1999;13: 997–1027.
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Dis eas e Emergence from Global Climate a nd L a nd Us e Cha nge Jonathan A. Patz, MD, MPHa,b,*, Sarah H. Olson, BSa,b, Christopher K. Uejio, MSa, Hol...
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10Sei0OttoTiziano and Paolo created the brand 10SEI0OTTO, both creative and with a passion for clothes and leather jackets. The mission of these guys is to satisfy the demand of the modern man focusing on quality and hand made pieces. They are not afraid to experiment new production process and the challenge is create a brand that stand out from a crowd. All products are produced exclusively in Italy in a traditional way.
AdiciannoveventitreSimone Cecchetto is the craftsman and designer of the brand Adiciannoveventitre (A1923). The brand was founded in 2006, Rome and it is specialised in the realisation of hand made shoes and clothes that reflect the Italian tradition. Adiciannoveventitre is the perfect balance to tradition and innovation with a particular attention to the high quality leathers and production techniques, making this brand exclusive and timeless.
Boris Bidjan SaberiBoris Bidjan Saberi, half-German and half-Iranian designer presented his first collection in 2007 and all his creations have been realised in his atelier in Barcelona. His main influences are street and skate culture that giving to his pieces functional dimensions and urban reference. All the garments are meticulous crafted and received different handmade process. Boris Bidjan Saberi’s work become a luxury menswear label that reflect his vision of the modern man.
Carol Christian PoellCarol Christian Poell was born in Linz, Austria in 1966, but he has set up base in Milan where he has founded C.C.P srl and also started his partnership with Sergio Simone. Poell attended the fashion design school in Graz, the Wien Michelbeurn fashion school and the Domus Academy in Milan. Poell’s approach to fashion is the mark of an industrial designer rather than that of a fashion creator; his attention is mainly devoted to fabrics, as they were the containers for forms and ideas, and the utterance of his inner self. He refuse any kind of fashion show, that he defines as “a self-celebration of the designer and what the have done in the latest six monts”. The unique way in which he shows his creations is also emblematic of his experimental and avant-garde approach. His first Men’s collection take place in 1995 and later went on to create a women’s collection three years after. His collections consist of extravagant and complex uses of different materials and technology, where aesthetics takes second place.
Damir DomaDamir Doma was born in Croatia and grown up in Germany, where he studied Fashion in Munich and in Berlin. He worked for Raf Simons and Dirk Schöenberger in Antwerp and in the 2007 he presented his first collection in Paris. In the last years his designs have encapsulated a measured study of proportion and a melange of textures. Since 2015, Damir Doma moved his runway shows to Milan, this decision helps to reinforce the relationship between his men and women collections, which share the same inspiration, innovative cuts and unique materials.
Daniele BastaDaniele Basta born in Empoli in 1979 from a artisans family who have worked in leather from generations. After his fashion studied at Polimoda he started travel in Europe looking for inspiration, in the 2010 realised that true fashion is art and each object created by hand is a kind of piece of art. Starting from this concept he runs his own label, all his pieces are hand-crafted by himself paying a lot of attention to details, leathers used and artisanal techniques.
Del CarloFounded in 1997, Del Carlo began as a small artisanal workshop in Tuscany. Traditional production processes and fine materials combined with modern design gave life to a women’s footwear collection. The upper, which completely covers the heel using a technique akin to tailoring, is the brand’s hallmark, which, combined with superior raw-cut hides in natural tones, conveys a strong, clear style message. Young designers from different backgrounds and countries joining the company’s own master craftsmen and technicians to creates continuity with the past, yet projects Del Carlo into the future. Real luxury and design blended into a modern, practical product. Made in Italy, because style is a gesture.
GotiRiccardo Goti started as a freelance designer in Tuscany where he went later to become a jewelry designer in 2002. He creates his pieces by incorporating leather, silver and brass which portray sexy, masculine pieces with a worn out look.
GuidiThe concept of the brand can be traced back to 1986 when Guido Guidi, Giovanni Rosellini and Gino Ulivo created the leather tannery called “Conceria Guidi e Rosellini” in Tuscany. Ruggero Guidi, who spends his time searching for the perfect balance between advanced technologies and the incorporation of his own heritage and traditions now runs the tannery. The brand is known all over the world and is used by the most prestigious designers. Guidi refuses the ways of mass production and ensures focus on unconventional design. These shoes are for those who are looking for something completely different but traditional. Something that only a craftsman could be able to make.
Homme Plissé By Issey MiyakeIssey Miyake first collection debuted in New York in 1971. The designer’s unique concept of clothing as “A Piece Of Cloth” was widely acclaimed throughout the world from the very beginning. He has continued to make clothes through research, experimentation and development while reimagining the relationship between the human body and clothing. Miyake has brought forth several epoch-making outcomes, including original pleated pieces from 1989, which would later develop into Pleats Please Issey Miyake, and the basic idea and process of A-Poc in 1997, which would soon evolve into a design solution called A-Poc Inside which was incorporated into the Issey Miyake collections as well as in all other brands owned by the Issey Miyake group. Placing a high value on fostering various human resources and innovative technologies in the industry since the foundation of the brand, Miyake’s spirit of making things has been passed on to a new generation of designers, past and present. They are taking on further challenges with fresh eyes and new ideas, while combining the traditional techniques of Japan with new technologies.
Isaac SellamIsaac Sellam created the Isaac Sellam Experience, during the first 15 years of his design carrier he studied leather’s manufacturing techniques and in 2002 started his own studio and label. In his studio he experiments new manufacturing processes and try to reinvent the old ones, thanks to his leather knowledge he is able to create unique and unusual design pieces.
Kloshar
Label Under ConstructionLabel Under Construction created by Luca Laurini, one of the former designer of the legendary Carpe Diem, is focused at realise new shapes and perceptions through the use of knitwear and traditional manufacturing. The main influence of his creations is the architecture, the symmetry and geometry in his knitwear are immovable points. Luca is able to experiment and create different kind of knitwear using the finest yarns and the latest knitting machines, the result is a conceptual collection that needs to be touch by hand to be deeply understood.
Layer-0Alessio Zero is the Italian designer who created the label Layer-0 in Perugia. The designer has been trained as a classically tailor and patternmaker, that helped his label to become one the most influent at the moment. He uses only the best quality leathers available and treated with wax and oil to give unique outcomes. Many of his clothes are realised with vintage or limited stock fabrics such as denim, canvas and linen, that makes his items very exclusive. All his footwear are fully handmade in Italy by him and skilful artisan, the result is unique timeless shoes.
Leon Emanuel Blanck
M_1978The brand Mannucci1978 (M_1978) was set up by the Artisan Master Mario. He passed on his passion and experience to his son Marco, who decided to continue the family tradition in Perugia, in the heart of Italy. After the specialisation as a Designer at IED, Marco continues to strengthen the creative aspect on his own personal experience, pursuing a project oriented towards experimentation that takes shape in jewellery and various accessories. The M_1978 philosophy is precisely to create collections based on ancient artisanal traditions, projecting them in a modern and topical context, with a particular attention to the use of oxidised metals, vegetable leather and old fabric. The combination of passion, creativity and experience, makes each piece unique and exclusive.
M.A+M.A+ was created from Maurizio Amadei, former designer of the legendary brand Carpe Diem, in 2006. The label offers bags, footwear, accessories and clothes for men and women. Maurizio Amadei born in Rome and helped Carpe Diem to become one of the most influent brand in the avant-garde world, thanks to his dexterity on working with the leather. Maurizio is obsessively focused on creating items starting from a single piece of fabric or leather, the outcome is getting innovative cuts and pieces with the minimal use of seams.
Maurizio Miri
MD 75
Meo FusciuniThe brand Meo Fusciuni born from the definition of artistic perfume as olfactory memory, it marks his first term in 2010 with the birth of the Trilogy of journey: nomadism, essence and memory. We blend every day in our space fragrances that recall moments of life lived through the smells. Our search begins in the travel, as nomadic in it tries of a earth, where to pause little moments, where to capture essences, where to create our fragrances, where to dream, where to return. Meo Fusciuni is a journey to the continuous search of themselves, the olfactory vision of a modern and nomad artist, is an exciting collection, the transfiguration of an olfactory path made in the name of obsessive search through places, poetry and feelings. Odours liquid, matter that contains and the optic language that tells about, all contained in a fragrance, this is the philosophy behind this project.
RBRSL RUBBER SOULIn 1991 born the brand O.X.S. from the influence of different cultures: workwear, punk and grunge. O.X.S. footwear are all different in terms of design and shape but always faithful to the main rules: made in Italy, craftsman care to detail, industrial know-how and cosmopolitan feel. Based in the Marche region, the Italian company creates timeless footwear without spatial borders that inhale a global reality based on a heritage.
RigardsRigards is an emerging eyewear brand that hand crafts its frames from natural horn. The brand is the realisation of a mission to rediscover the hidden appeal of horn frames, re-imagined through small, numbered editions. With an emphasis on handmade craftsmanship, all materials are honest and hard wearing.
Sagittaire AComing
ScunzaniThe label Scunzani Ivo born in 1971 from the founder Ivo and Mirca. During the ’80/’90, after worked for some of the most important Italian designers, such as Armani, they discovered and refined technical of workmanship of the animal skins. Marcello Scunzani joined the company and thanks to his support the levels of research and design reach a new level. Scunzani uses precious leathers only, such as crocodile, reptiles and rare fish leathers.
Tobias WistisenDanish born designer Tobias Wistisen decided to launch his own line of jewellery to allow his passion for exploring different textures and materials to take flight. What makes the collection so unique and interesting are the materials used, such as aged metal and textures left to develop over time. Thus, each delicate piece has an individuality and suits every taste.
Ugo CacciatoriUgo Cacciatori, the designer of the homonymous jewellery brand is very popular for his silver creations, skulls, chains, stones and shells. His collection is something more that an accessories line, but a series of objects that comes from a vision and made true from the master craftsman Ugo.
Uma WangUma Wang studied at China Textile University and Central Saint Martins, and launched her label in 2005 in London. She developed her signature knitting techniques and defined her own style and aesthetic. She has become a leader in the Chinese fashion industry by consistently producing high-quality products and collections that always balance fashion with functionality. Uma Wang is particularly skilled in mixing and matching different fabrics and textures to create simple but strong garments with subtle detailing, and it is these unique abilities that has positioned her to become the first internationally successful Chinese designer.
Werkstatt:MunchenKlaus Lohmeyer is the master craftsman behind the jewellery label Werkstatt:München. The old-school working methods and the attention to details are the roots to create something unique and that last for ever, all his creations have a soul. Werkstatt:München pieces are carefully hand-made paying attention to the perfect balance between beauty and function.
Ziggy ChenZiggy Chen seeks to articulate the encounter between tradition and contemporary times – expressed through the medium of clothing. The evolution of the project from its inception has manifested a strong focus on the research and detailing of simple volumes, as well as the exploration of different uses of materials. This revisits the rule of industrialisation without compromise, to redefine the landscape of what is commonly accepted as old or new. Seeking to advance the experimentation of unique materials, textiles are developed and sourced from selected mills around the world to Shanghai where the creation of its distinctive yet cohesive garments occurs. Fabrics such as wool, hemp, and linen are augmented with silk and fine cotton to craft organic pieces that are embedded with an intangible energy. Ziggy Chen develops a particular juxtaposition in its clothing via blending the aspects of rawness and durability with elements of softness and elegance. It is through this intention that the garments possess an immediate yet subtle intrinsic value to the wearer.
WomenNEW ARRIVALS
10Sei0OttoThis brand was created by Tiziano and Paul both creative people with a passion for clothing and particularly leather jackets. The intention of these designs was to satisfy the needs of modern and advanced trends focusing attention on the quality and craftsmanship of the piece. Their ideal customer is someone who is sophisticated and also not afraid to experiment. They are people who want to be individualists and stand out from a crowd. All products are visually appealing and have a great fit. There is also the use of combinations such as leather- metal- cotton and sheepskin with laser etched interior. All products are produced exclusively in Italy in a traditional way.
Alessandra MarchiThe Alessandra Marchi collection is defined by contemporary feminine style with an experimental edge. Her refined and innovative Italian style features architectural silhouettes and romantic draping, crafted from high quality fabrics, like natural leather. The use of contrasting textures, asymmetric cuts and glittering details leads to a modern feminine aesthetic.
AlmazAndra Olaru, is the co-owner and creative director of the Romanian brand Almaz. A sophisticated, edgy luxury brand. Its trademark is a balanced mix of contrasts, craftsmanship and versatility. The woman dressed in Almaz is both inviting and out of reach, boyish and fiercely feminine at the same time.
Amy Glenn
Ann DemeulemeesterAnn Demeulemeester is a fashion designer who established in 1985 her namesake brand in Antwerp. Acclaimed for the androgynous style, the collections evoke a romantic universe combined with a contemporary punk spirit. Each piece captures strength and sensitivity in equal parts. Signature silhouettes fuse languid tailoring in high quality fabrics with sensual asymmetries and the twist of sheer and opaque textiles. Her sensitive and receptive soul captures every aspect of reality from music to contemporary art.
Archivio J. M. Ribot
Arlo Haisek
AtelierseptemAtelierseptem is an italian one-woman-brand based in Florence, founded by the artist Kristina Nikolova. It offers unique stories for unique personalities who have a desire not only to touch high quality materials combined with tailor-made solutions, but to wear simple forms with a deep and strong conceptual meaning which comes from a singular vision to transform every piece in a very personal emotional and mental experience. Atelierseptem is a primitive avant-garde beyond the limits of time – wearable art born its creator’s heARTbeat.
Avant ToiAvant Toi has revolutionised the world of cashmere with an eclectic approach thanks to his creative director Mirko Ghinone. The label, founded in 1994 by Liapull production group, is characterized by the high quality and refined design typical of Made in Italy. Their research is strongly inspired by the world of art, using innovative techniques as hand-painted cashmere, they give life to clothes as pieces of modern art.
Bao Bao By Issey MiyakeBao Bao Issey Miyake is a line of bags and pouches with the theme of “shapes made by chance.” Their transformation after handling creates dramatic new lines thanks to their flexible functionality designed for everyday life. The pieces change flat surfaces into three-dimensional ones. Since its creation in 2000, it has established a unique array of products through its pursuit of intriguing shapes.
Barbara BolognaBarbara Bologna, graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Brera, created in 2000 her own clothing and accessory line. Her work is inspired mostly by music and art, she creates every collection to be strong and sweet, with thoughtful and unique research, which is always innovative and finished with high quality materials. All the manufacturing is done by several Italian artisans who are part of the brand. Barbara’s clothes are pieces that come from the soul and pass through the hands, hearts and knowledge of expert Italian workers.
Boris Bidjan SaberiThroughout the years, Boris Bidjan Saberi’s work has matured to an emblematical luxury menswear label reflecting Saberi’s unique take on contemporary handcrafted ready-to-wear. The half-German, half-Iranian designer launched his eponymous label in 2007 and developing his creations in his atelier in Barcelona. Quoting street and skate culture is one of his main influences, his label is distinctive for its meticulous sophistication and functional dimension, whilst still giving a nod to his urban references.
Carol Christian PoellCarol is an Austrian designer who currently lives in Milan where he spends his time designing his Avant-Garde and niche label. He is highly secretive with his designs and he doesn’t always show his pieces to the public. Carol Christian Poell had been trained as a man and woman tailor in Vienna, where he later went on to study fashion design at the Domus Academy in Milan. This is where he created his company C.C.P Srl and also started his partnership with Sergio Simone. He presented his first Men’s collection in 1995 and later went on to create a women’s collection three years after. His collections consist of extravagant and complex uses of different materials and technology.
CutuliCultCutuli is a well-established name in the fashion industry so much to be appreciated by the best Italian, European and Asian stores. Family members were dyers and weavers for at least five generations. After secondary school, Claudio immediately began working in the family business, which he has run for the past twenty-five years, transferring it to Umbria. Cutuli’s stoles, scarves and shawls are sold all over the world. Every piece is created in high quality natural fabrics such as hemp, linen and wool entirely worked by hand and dyed using selected premium raw materials of plant, animal and mineral origin.
Daniele BastaItalian designer born in Empoli in 1979, he has always believed that style is spirit, identity, something that is separate from life itself. He comes from a family of artisans who have worked in leather since before he was born. He decided that each piece should pass through his own hands to be refined and to fully complete the creative process, leather and silver bags, jewels, accessories and clothing, each creation requires this attention to become a truly unique and beautiful piece of jewelry.
Danielle GuizioDanielle Guizio founded her New York City based eponymous label in 2014. With a strong ‘It-Girl’ and cult following for her statement graphic tee’s, the collection has since evolved to signature sets, staple outwear and exclusive cut and sew pieces. Heavily influenced by the structural designs of 80s and 90s vintage sportswear, the brand reimagines womenswear classics while maintaining a distinct, modern aesthetic.
Forme 3’3204322896Forme 3’3204322896 also known as Forme D’Expression was launched in Italy in 2005 by Koeun Park. Park has had a full history as she has worked for designers like Giorgio Armani and Donna Karan. In her collections she offers very organic, raw and different takes on classical tailoring. She mostly focuses on texture and fabrication as they are the key elements to her designs. Park also pays special attention to the clever use of raw edges and exposed stitching, which gives the pieces a rough and artistic look.
Haider AckermannColombian native, but Paris based designer Haider Ackermann launched his namesake collection in 2002. Haider Ackermann’s signature are draped forms and intricate designs, created by his dynamic, layered tailoring. Influenced by cultural differences, Ackermann’s fashion contrasts and blends dress codes. The cuts of his creations are asymmetric and sewn of different materials, resolutely modern, dynamic and urban.
Ianua
Ilaria NistriEach piece of the collection was created from the combination of apparently distant elements like leather and silk, feminine and masculine, rough and impalpable. The strengths of the brand is the deep knowledge of fabrics and the ability to achieve, through overlays or inserts, combinations of contrasting materials in favor of a fluid silhouette, elongated and at the same time gritty. There are also strongly pictorial prints.
Isaac SellamIsaac Sellam, the creator of the Isaac Sellam Experience, spent the first 15 years of his career mastering his expertise in leather and in 2002 he created his own studio and brand. He eventually transformed his studio into a leather research laboratory where he aimed at experimenting with his creativity and innovations. Sellam works closely with the best tanners to develop new leather garments for his collections while in his designing he seeks out fluidity by diverting the stitching of materials. He creates unforeseen and unusual designs.
Issey MiyakeIssey Miyake first collection debuted in New York in 1971. The designer’s unique concept of clothing as “A Piece Of Cloth” was widely acclaimed throughout the world from the very beginning. He has continued to make clothes through research, experimentation and development while reimagining the relationship between the human body and clothing. Miyake has brought forth several epoch-making outcomes, including original pleated pieces from 1989, which would later develop into Pleats Please Issey Miyake, and the basic idea and process of A-Poc in 1997, which would soon evolve into a design solution called A-Poc Inside which was incorporated into the Issey Miyake collections as well as in all other brands owned by the Issey Miyake group. Placing a high value on fostering various human resources and innovative technologies in the industry since the foundation of the brand, Miyake’s spirit of making things has been passed on to a new generation of designers, past and present. They are taking on further challenges with fresh eyes and new ideas, while combining the traditional techniques of Japan with new technologies.
KD2024The sound of elements-KD- and numbers-2024- rumbles from the wild jungles to the techno cities in the world, through a chemical reaction that shoots straight forward the concept of research. Into this journey, from the barbaric form of metal idols rolling into the nomad’s theatre of life, nature takes over and underlines the whole inspiration of this accessories collection leaving his mark in every object. Everything is 100% handmade, supported by a “pure state of mind”.
Layer-0Layer-0 is the label created by Alessio Zero, an Italian designer from Perugia. Alessio has been classically trained as a patternmaker and tailor, which helped him to create beautiful handmade shoes and garments. The leather he uses is waxed, oiled or treated to give unique outcomes. While his use of materials such as denim and canvas are often vintage looking but still remaining modern.
Lonely Crowd
Ludovic De Saint Sernin
M.A+Created by Maurizio Amadei who is the former designer of the legendary brand Carpe Diem, M.A+ was created in 2006 beginning with bags and slowly introducing clothing, shoes and accessories for both men and women. Amadei’s interest in design started from a young age. Born in Rome Amadei moved to London and began designing his own pieces. After the closure of Carpe Diem label he began working on a project, which led to the creation of his own brand. Maurizio’s line is centered on structure and the utilisation of the minimal use of seams, while many pieces such as bags are constructed from a single piece of material resulting in innovative cuts.
Maria TurriMaria Turri, a young designer from Verona, has developed her love of sewing to create collections that mix deconstructed shapes with new volumes and technical patterns. Using geometric lines and a monochrome palette as a starting point, Maria Turri’s minimalist collections are versatile enough to be easily adapted and integrated into every wardrobe.
Mich Vasca
Mykita / Damir DomaAn in-depth study of form, colour and surface laid the foundation for the Mykita – Damir Doma collaboration. Inspired by the idea of translating the traditional circular frames of the intellectual avant-garde into a modern expression, the collaboration is distinguished by a minimal aesthetic, visible construction and a progressive use of materials. All frames in the collaboration are manufactured at the Mykita Haus in Berlin, where the traditional handcraft meets modern engineering.
Phaédo[sc name="Phaedo"]
Primordial Is PrimitivePrimordial Is Primitive was founded in 2014 with the idea and conviction to create a basic collection, but very sophisticated, a basic avant-garde. Primordial Is Primitive is completely made in Italy, carefully committed to the research of materials and fabrics, natural, primitive, primordial such as linen, cotton, silk, viscose, bamboo, wool, etc. It’s a collection easy to wear, but reserved for a competent customer, who chooses basic items, an extra pinch of emotion.
Pugnale & NyleveAll Pugnale productions are exclusively hand made in Italy through unique process techniques. Passion for design, fashion and luxury is the reason why Emanuele Pugnale founded in 2013 his own company with the aim to represent the excellences of Italian manufacturing tradition.
Quetsche
RBRSL RUBBER SOULA melting pot between different cultures, workwear, combat boots and a grunge soul, in 1991 the first shoe of what would have become a new brand was born: O.X.S. It was the boot named Frank with the inimitable chassis, that was to become a classic. Since then, many other names and many other shoes have become part of the O.X.S. “family”, all different and unique in their kind but, at the same time, always faithful to the same belief: made in Italy, industrial know-how together with manual skill, craftsman care to the detail and, most of all, a cosmopolitan feel. Present-day shoes that are timeless and without spatial borders that inhale a global reality based on a heritage belonging to a solid and authentic Italian company based in the Marche region.
Sagittaire A W
ScunzaniThe firm Scunzani Ivo, was born in 1971 from Scunzani Ivo and Salardi Mirca. Working for Armani, Pierre Cardin, Moschino and others, during the years ’80/’90, comes refined and discovered technical of workmanship of the animal skins, reaching excellent qualitative levels. Since eight years, it is added in the permanent staff, Marcello Scunzani, and this support made research in the materials both leathers and buckles, and also in the “wildest assemblage technique“. Using precious materials and metals, to introduce innovation and luxury into the more and more important accessories branch.
Tsolo MunkhTsolmandakh Munkhuu grew up in Mongolia. She moved to France in 2005 and studied at the Atelier Chardon Savard. In 2010, she won the Public Award of the Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival and launched her very own brand. Now based in Oulan Bator, Tsolo Munkh presents her collections during Paris fashion weeks. Her creative projects are still heavily influenced by the mongolian steppes, but even though some designs are inspired by Mongolian and Buddhist traditional elements, Tsolo doesn’t hesitate to take ideas from details of the worlds surrounding her. Her creations combine embroidery, paintings, creasings of recovered materials, and her use of ample volumes contrast with the cuts’ fluidity.
Ugo CacciatoriUgo Cacciatori is a brand of jewellery, accessories and small leather goods, launched by the homonymous designer. Popular for its silver creations representing skulls, chains, starfish, stones and shells. The result is a true success of the italian craftsmanship. It is not just an accessories collection, but the seed of a complete series of objects which emerge from a tale as they would from a dreamlike vision where the global perception of luxury finds its true home in fantasy.
UndercoverFounded in 1993 by Jun Takahashi, Undercover is a Japanese fashion imprint known for its punk-fused, American-influenced streetwear styles. Takahashi was heavily influenced by the British Punk Rock band ‘The Sex Pistols’, hence UNDERCOVER epitomises the essence of ‘Japanese cool’.
Vera WangVERA WANG Vera Wang is a chinese-american fashion designer who worked as an editor at Vogue immediately upon graduation for 17 years, making her the youngest editor at that magazine. In 1987 she joined Ralph Lauren, for whom she worked for 2 years. At 40 she resigned and became an independent bridal wear designer. In 1990, she opened her own design salon in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City that features her trademark bridal gowns. She was honored with the Council of Fashion Designers of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Over the years her business has continued to grow. It now includes ready to wear collection, lingerie, jewelry and products for the home.
Vic MatiéThe mission of Vic Matiè consists in creating products with a strongly-defined identity, authentically Italian in both spirit and savoir faire, yet international in their appeal, by mixing artisanal passion, attention to detail, industrial invention and disregard for conventions. The firm, based in the Marche region of Italy, conceives design as an expression of a contemporary attitude rooted in values such as culture, history and genius loci: tradition and innovation are seamlessly united, avoiding both complacency and nostalgia for the past.
Werkstatt:MunchenArtistically engaged in promoting a timeless and meaningful approach to jewelry making, Werkstatt:München pieces embed fragments. The aim of master craftsman Klaus Lohmeyer, creative mind behind the brand, is to combine old-school working methods with the most careful attention to details to achieve long-lasting jewels that aren’t just roughly beautiful but also have a soul. Constantly working on the perfect balance between beauty and function, Werkstatt:München pieces cherish the heritage of making things by hand in the best possible way. Becoming year after year braver and ner, Werkstatt:München keeps on pushing the boundaries of jewelry making by creating pieces in which meaning, function and beauty are entwined.
Yang LiYang Li was born in Beijing, after moving to Australia, he studied at Central Saint Martins in London and worked as a designer for Raf Simons in Antwerp. These global influences are behind his signature sharp silhouettes, blending high couture craftsmanship with absolute, precision-cut shapes that have a distinctly ’90s-minimalist feel. Yang Li is a fashion brand profoundly connected to and influenced by music. Championing the non-commercial and the underground is the brand’s nod to creative freedom and longevity.
Home / Men / ACCESSORIES / RINGS
M_1978 – Silver Ring With Cross And Black Spinel – SILVER
WERKSTATT MÜNCHEN – Would Ring Hammered – SILVER
WERKSTATT MÜNCHEN – Two Rings Hammered – SILVER
WERKSTATT MÜNCHEN – 4 Ring Combination Hammered – SILVER
TOBIAS WISTISEN – Rift Ring – SILVER
TOBIAS WISTISEN – Dark Hidden Skull Ring – SILVER
TOBIAS WISTISEN – Linked Rings – SILVER
GOTI – Silver Ring – SILVER
UGO CACCIATORI – Gem & Foliage Solitary – SILVER
WERKSTATT MÜNCHEN – Cross Ring Lyrics – SILVER
WERKSTATT MÜNCHEN – Ring Combination Crossover – SILVER
WERKSTATT:MÜNCHEN – 5 Ring Combination Tape – SILVER
UGO CACCIATORI – Torcetto Ring – SILVER
UGO CACCIATORI – Fine Chain & Camble Ring – SILVER
UGO CACCIATORI – Edge Band – GOLD
UGO CACCIATORI – Fine Chain Ring – GOLD
TOBIAS WISTISEN – Square Twisted Cable Ring – SILVER
GOTI – Ring 03 – SILVER
GOTI – Triple Merged Ring – SILVER
Adiciannoveventitre
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Homme Plissé By Issey Miyake
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Home/Immigration News/Accrual of Unlawful Presence for F, J, and M Students and Exchange Visitors
Accrual of Unlawful Presence for F, J, and M Students and Exchange Visitors
On August 9, 2018, USCIS implemented a revised policy memorandum entitled “Accrual of Unlawful Presence and F, J, and M Nonimmigrants.”
Under this memo, individuals in F, J, or M status begin to accrue unlawful presence at the earliest of the following dates:
The day after they no longer pursue the course of study or authorized activity
The day they engage in unauthorized activity
The day after completing the course of study or program, including practical training and any authorized grace period
The day after the period of authorized stay expires if admitted until a date certain (most students are admitted for D/S “duration of status” or for as long as they are in the program, rather than a date certain)
The day an immigration judge orders the F, J, or M nonimmigrant removed, whether or not the decision is appealed
Violations of student status include exceeding authorized days of unemployment during the period of OPT, working more than 20 hours per week at a qualifying on-campus job, or working without authorization, such as after OPT or cap gap work authorization has expired.
This change is significant as the penalties can be severe: a person who overstays by even one day must return to his/her own country to obtain a visa. A person who accrues more than 180 days of unlawful presence and who departs the United States is barred from re-entering the United States for three years. A person who accrues one year or more of unlawful presence is barred from reentering the United States for ten years. A person who attempts to enter the United States during the bar will be permanently barred from the United States.
An F-1 student whose OPT EAD expires between April 1 and October 1, and who is selected in the H-1B lottery may continue to work in the United States after the EAD expires until the start of the new visa year on October 1 pursuant to “cap gap” authorization. Cap gap extends OPT EAD authorization until September 30. If the student’s H-1B has not been approved by October 1, the student may not continue to work in the United States based on cap gap. Instead, he or she must stop work and must be removed from the payroll.
It is important that any student whose cap gap has expired and whose H-1B has not yet been adjudicated by USCIS stop work on October 1 as work would be a violation of status and he/she will begin to accrue unlawful presence under the new memorandum referenced above.
By Lisa Christoffersen| 2018-10-11T17:29:51+00:00 September 11th, 2018|Immigration News|Comments Off on Accrual of Unlawful Presence for F, J, and M Students and Exchange Visitors
About the Author: Lisa Christoffersen
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ePublishing Students win Pearson Education prizes
Pearson Education came to judge the work of the students taking the epublishing module, a part of the Publishing MA at Oxford Brookes University. Students taking the course worked on proposals for new online educational resources and developed websites based on Pearson's Secondary school range of books.
The course culminated in students presenting proposals for their new digital products while demonstrating their prototype websites. Marc Bloche, Head of Digital Publishing for the Secondary Division and Dr. Liz Marchant, Head of Publishing for Science choose first and second prize winners.
Both judges said they were very impressed with the standard of work the students had created and commented on their professional presentations.
The first prize of £350 went to Innocent Aguwuom, Michelle Ravey and Adam Wakeling for their Mira! website. This was based on the Mira! GCSE Spanish course book. The judges from Pearson commented that the students really understood their market, and had produced a beautifully designed, interactive site.
Second prize of £150 went to Renada Arens and Ilse Gey van Pittius for ChemistryQuest website to accompany a book aimed at teaching chemistry to 11-14 year olds. The judges loved the game-like interface, set in the labs of Antarctica, of this website. Users had a mission to save the world using their chemistry knowledge gained in this adventurous learning environment.
Cambridge Publishing Scholarship
Charlotte Armstrong was awarded the Cambridge Publishing Scholarship for the year 2009-10. She writes about her experience on the MA Publishing at Oxford Brookes. To find out how to enter for this year’s scholarship, and the other awards available, please visit here:
http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/publishing/postgraduate_scholarships/
During my undergraduate degree in English Lit, I became interested in getting into publishing. I had always loved books, and really enjoyed the publishing-related activities I had been involved in at uni, such as being involved in the student newspaper. However, I realised that I actually had little practical understanding of the publishing industry, or indeed any real business acumen, and decided to apply for the Brookes Publishing MA to address these shortcomings. I cannot emphasize enough how much the course has helped me develop my early enthusiasm and experiences into more practical, career-focused aims. ...
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11 Jun 2010 around 9am
Hachette UK Publishing Scholarship
Polly Silk was awarded the Hachette UK Publishing Scholarship for the year 2009-10. She writes about her experience on the MA Publishing at Oxford Brookes.
To read Polly Silk's interesting piece on her experiences on the course and how the scholarship helped visit the page in our student feedback section.
Bookseller Industry Awards 2010
The book industry now has a single set of awards, combining the trade Nibbies with the Bookseller’s Retail Awards. The winners were announced last week at the awards dinner at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Amongst the winners were Little Brown, Publisher of the Year, John Blake, Independent Publisher of the Year, and Quercus, Marketing Campaign of the Year. Virago and Lennie Goodings won the Imprint and Editor of the Year. Chain Bookseller of the Year was Foyles and the Independent Bookshop of the Year was won by One Tree Books in Petersfield in Hampshire.
The panel of judges for the publisher awards was chaired by Nigel Roby, Managing Director of The Bookseller. The judges included Eddie Bell, chair of the Bell Lomax Moreton Agency, Kate Wilson, MD of Nosy Crow, and Angus Phillips, Director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University.
For full details of the awards, please visit:
http://www.thebookseller.com/awards
Macmillan Publishing Scholarship
Renada Arens was awarded the Macmillan Publishing Scholarship for the year 2009-10. She writes about her experience on the Master’s in Publishing at Oxford Brookes. To find out how to enter for this year’s scholarship, and the other awards available, please visit the web page here.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 24 May 2010 around 10am
OICPS and the PA celebrate success of 2010 International Publisher Training Programme
The programme, which took place in Oxford over 5 days and included a number of industry visits and featured a variety of speakers, covered key issues such as trends in the UK market, digital developments, new product development and marketing strategy. Some of the highlights were a visit to Lightning Source, a networking dinner with a fascinating talk from Simon Littlewood, International Director at Random House, and a workshop on buying and selling rights presented by Lynette Owen, Copyright Director at Pearson.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 17 May 2010 around 12pm
Filed Under Publishing | Oxford Centre for Publishing Consultancy and Research
Delegates Relaxing after the presentation cermony
Set: International Publisher Training Programme 2010
Dareen Charafeddine with Angus Phillips and Ahmed Al Amri
Dareen Charafeddine, a delegate on the pre-LBF 2010 International Publisher Training Programme, receives their Certificate from Angus Phillips, Director OICPS, … Read More...
MA in Book History and Publishing Culture now enrolling
The Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies has launched a new MA in Book History and Publishing Culture for September 2010.
This course in now enrolling.
This is a taught master’s course that focuses on the theory and practice of authorship, textual production, dissemination and reception in the period 1870-present day. It considers transitions in the publishing industry and the material conditions under which literary text has been produced, in national and international contexts.
Further Information is available on the MA in Book History and Publishing Culture page.
OICPS at the 2010 London Book Fair
The Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies was widely represented at the 2010 London Book Fair. Our students assisted the LBF with organising seminars during the fair itself, and we also ran four extremely well-attended seminars on a wide variety of topics chaired by academics from the Centre, including one on the “Mid-list crisis” which featured in the Bookseller.com the following day. We also held a very lively and well-attended reception at our booth on the Tuesday evening. Despite the lower attendance figures, traffic to the OICPS booth was steady, and there was lots of interest in our MA in Publishing, our Certificate in Journals Publishing, and our bespoke training and consultancy work.
Celebrations at the OICPS stand
Set: London Book Fair 2010
Julia Golding and Sheila Lambie
MA Publishing scholarships available for 2010 entry
A range of scholarships are available for students starting one of the MAs in Publishing in the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies in September 2010.
The Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies is delighted to offer the following scholarships for students entering postgraduate courses in 2010-11:
Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies Scholarship (International)
John Henry Brookes Scholarships (Home/EU and International)
Cambridge Publishing Scholarship (Home/EU and International)
Hachette UK Publishing Scholarship (Home/EU)
Macmillan Publishing Scholarship (Home/EU and International)
Stationers' Foundation (UK resident)
These scholarships are available to applicants who have accepted the offer of a place on the MA programmes. Further details are available here.
Angels Are Tomorrow’s Vampires – Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2010
This March a group of 12 Oxford Brookes publishing students went to visit the 47th Children’s Book Fair in Bologna. A beautiful book fair, many interesting dialogues and a very pleasant visit to an Italian publishing house were awaiting the students, not to mention the charming city of Bologna, the Italian cuisine and warm temperatures.
Our Senior Lecturer, Beverley Tarquini, provided us with the perfect ‘survival package’, including maps and information about ‘the best pizza place in town’, where we all met on the Wednesday evening and got into the right mood for the book fair.
Networking with Bob Seath at Lion Hudson Publishers
Set: Bologna Book Fair 2010
At The Bookfair
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How Chris Robinson Patched Things Up After Aerosmith Controversy
Matt Wardlaw
Ilya S. Savenok / Larry Busacca, Getty Images
Chris Robinson didn't exactly endear himself to the guys in Aerosmith at first. Not after taking an opportunity in Rolling Stone magazine to accuse Steven Tyler of touring with backing tapes.
"If you're an entertainer and you take it seriously, you entertain with your natural abilities," Robinson said in early 1991, not long after the Black Crowes played a string of opening dates for Aerosmith on the Pump tour. "You go onstage and take a chance like everyone else. People say to us, 'Man, I heard some bad notes in your set tonight.' Well, fucking-A right you heard some bad notes. You saw a real band tonight, didn't you?"
Rich Robinson, Chris' younger brother and Black Crowes bandmate, came to his defense a few months later. "All Chris said is, he’s disappointed because great bands he’s loved all his life were made to resort to using tapes in concert," Rich told Rolling Stone, "and it bums him out because he feels they’re better than that. It didn't come off sounding that way, but it disappointed him and made him look at the world and think, 'Man, things are fucked up; the music industry is just for shit.'"
That appeared to be too little, too late. A not-unexpected rift with Aerosmith followed.
So, how did Robinson end up on stage jamming with Joe Perry at the Roxy in 2018? Or as a guest on "Fortunate One," a bonus track for the vinyl edition of the Aerosmith guitarist's most recent solo album, Sweetzerland Manifesto?
Answer: A shared love of music.
"I started out so cantankerous with Aerosmith," Robinson says in an exclusive new UCR interview. "We went on tour with them and I was still a kid, and I was shocked that they used tapes for [Steven Tyler's] vocals. Not the whole thing, but you know, that people back then were using [tapes]. Robert Plant was doing it. I brought it up in my first Rolling Stone interview and got nasty messages from everyone involved! [Laughs.] 'What are you doing, kid?' I was like, 'Oh, sorry!' I just was shocked that that's how this went down."
Watch Chris Robinson Join Joe Perry on Stage
Years later, however, a lingering mutual appreciation helped the Georgia native patch things up with Aerosmith.
"I remember running into Joe at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston in the elevator and he knew the title of the latest Black Crowes record – and I'm a massive Aerosmith fan," Robinson said. "I especially love Night In the Ruts and Draw the Line – all of the damaged, burned-out records – the most. [Laughs.] I think there's some really cool, unique rock music on those records."
The Black Crowes split in 2015, and their busy frontman returned to the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, a side project he formed four years earlier. They released their seventh album, Servants of the Sun, earlier this month. Robinson has also begun performing with As the Crow Flies, a Black Crowes offshoot group that also includes former bandmates Audley Freed and Adam MacDougall.
Still, he made time when Joe Perry – a player who Robinson readily praises for his intense playing style – asked him to take part in Sweetzerland Manifesto.
"I hadn't seen Joe in a while, but I got a call and he was doing these songs. He sent over this song and it only took me about 20 minutes to [complete it] – because it’s like, oh yeah, I know this! This is fun!" Robinson said. "It was fun to just rock out and do something a little more salty. He called me to do the gig and he's a super nice dude."
Turns out, the only stumbling block had nothing to do with his old comments about taped vocal performances. "I don’t understand a word [Perry]'s saying with that Boston accent," Robinson joked. "I’m just kidding. But yeah, he’s a real rock and roller and he’s a real icon. I texted him the next day, 'Thrill of a lifetime. Thanks, man. Super cool.'
See Black Crowes in the Top 25 Southern Rock Albums
See Aerosmith Among Rock's Most Criminally Underrated Albums
Next: Top 10 Black Crowe Songs
Source: How Chris Robinson Patched Things Up After Aerosmith Controversy
Filed Under: aerosmith, the black crowes
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Delivering real results and value for taxpayers
Now more than ever, governments at all levels are looking for ways to reduce spending and improve the services delivered to taxpayers. Reason Foundation’s annual Innovators in Action highlights good government efforts that are delivering real results and value for taxpayers.
Edited by Reason’s Leonard Gilroy, Innovators in Action 2009 profiles nine innovators who have demonstrated leadership through action on privatization, competition, government re-invention and other market-based reforms designed to reduce the costs of government and deliver more value to taxpayers:
Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue created the Commission on a New Georgia, an advisory group of corporate executives partnering with the state to re-engineer its bureaucratic machinery.
Former New South Wales, Australia Premier Bob Carr embraced privately financed toll roads as a means of delivering infrastructure better, faster and cheaper than traditional government approaches.
Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis is playing a central implementation role in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s wide-ranging efforts to streamline the state bureaucracy.
Under the leadership of State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek, Louisiana’s burgeoning school choice movement is using transparency, standards and accountability to improve student achievement and turn around low-performing schools.
Indianapolis Mayor Gregory Ballard has advanced an array of competition and government reform initiatives designed to control costs, improve government performance, and bring best business practices to government.
Former Florida Council on Efficient Government Executive Director Henry Garrigo helped to create a national model for a state center of excellence in privatization to ensure sound decisionmaking on outsourcing proposals.
Chicago’s Chief Financial Officer Gene Saffold oversaw the Windy City’s $1.15 billion lease of the city’s downtown parking meter system in 2009.
Former AT&T executive Oliver Porter led a citizen task force that created the template for the largely privatized government in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
Chief Information Officer Eric Gillespie and his colleagues at Onvia saw major gaps in the federal government’s commitment and ability to deliver on stimulus spending transparency— and they stepped in to fill it by creating Recovery.org at a fraction of the cost it took the feds to create their own Recovery.gov.
“Amidst today’s massive deficits and red ink, we need government leaders who are willing to ditch the failed status quo and seek out better ways of doing things,” said Gilroy, director of government reform at Reason Foundation. “We hope the examples and experiences offered by these innovators will inspire reform-minded officials at all levels of government to provide better, leaner and cheaper government to taxpayers.”
Full Report: Innovators in Action 2009
Leonard Gilroy is vice president of government reform at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets. He also serves as senior managing director of the Pension Integrity Project at Reason Foundation, which assists policymakers and other stakeholders in designing, analyzing and implementing public sector pension reforms.
More from Charter Schools, Economy and Economics, Federal Government, Highways, Toll Roads and Public-Private Partnerships, Innovators in Action, Local Government, School Choice, State Government, Tax and Budget Policy
Unschooling and School Choice: A Complicated Relationship
The evidence is largely on the side of freedom in education. And adding unschooling to the set of educational options available to families increases that freedom.
States Should Consider Converting Carpool Lanes Into Toll Lanes
Variable-priced tolling provides needed transportation revenue to build, maintain and operate the lanes.
By Baruch Feigenbaum and Peter Smet
Yet Another Study Shows School Choice Programs Reduce Crime
The evidence shows school choice does more to cut crime than residentially-assigned public schools.
More by Leonard Gilroy
Arizona Pension Bonuses Are Troubling. But Risky Investments Are The Real Crime
The bonuses raise important questions about what should really be ringing alarm bells.
Webinar: Leveraging Public Assets for Pension Solvency
State and local governments facing pension solvency challenges are exploring the transfer, lease or sale of public assets to shore up underfunded retiree benefit systems.
These findings suggest that the private benefits attained by students using voucher programs do not come with any social costs associated with diminished voting behavior.
Using Managed Lanes in Metro Areas to Fund the Reconstruction of Interstate Highways
Value-added tolling is the most realistic way to pay for the needed rebuilding of Interstate highways.
By Baruch Feigenbaum
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Posted on March 19, 2013 by wildbow
“Ballet, horseback riding, modeling classes or violin. Pick one, Emma. One.”
“Or, or, or, maybe I don’t pick any, and…”
“And?” she could hear a weariness in her father’s voice. He checked over his shoulder and then turned the car into a side street. A bag with assorted tubs of ice cream sat on the divider between the pair of them.
“Maybe you give a second thought to moving? There’s really nice places just a little way South, and I’d still be going to the same school, and-”
“Dad!”
“There’s three jobs I absolutely despise in this world. One is matching socks, the second is ironing, and the third is moving. I can foist the first two off on your mom, but the third is a lifestyle choice. My lifestyle, specifically, is owning the house I’m going to live in until I die.”
Emma frowned, turning to look out the window. She pouted a little, “This place sucks. Brockton Bay sucks.“
“What’s so bad about it?”
“Everything’s falling apart. It’s like… show me any house, and I can point out ten things that are wrong with it.”
“Every house has something wrong with it.”
“Not every house! Like, when I went to Chris’ birthday party? I-”
“Christine,” Emma injected a note of condescension into her voice, “Last weekend? Or did you forget already?”
“Why not call her Christine? Perfectly nice name.”
“Because androgyne is cool, dad. It’s the thing in modelling. Like, I could never have my hair short, but-” She stopped mid-sentence, answering her phone mid-ring. “Hello?”
“Emma!” The voice on the other end was breathy, excited. There was a babble of other voices in the background. She could imagine the other youths lined up to use the pay phones.
“Taylor,” Emma said, smiling.
“Ok I gotta talk fast because I only have two minutes and I need my other fifty cents to call my dad. We rowed across the lake this morning to this waterfall, only it wasn’t exactly a waterfall, more like a water stair, and we were all taking turns sliding and falling down this set of slick rocks, and Elsa, she’s this girl wearing a bikini, she’s been spending the last three days acting like she’s hot stuff, she slides down the wrong part, and it catches on the strap, right? It doesn’t tear it off, but it stretches, so it doesn’t even fit her anymore…”
Emma laughed, leaning back against her car seat.
It was something of a relief, to hear Taylor getting excited about something, to hear her getting excited over nothing. She’d lost her mother a year ago, and hadn’t bounced back, not entirely. Her smiles not quite as wide, she was a second later to laugh, as if she had to wait, to give herself permission to do it, had to hold back. Before, it had been almost no holds barred. Anything went, however they wanted to amuse themselves, whatever they wanted to talk about. Complete and total openness. Lately there had been too many movies, too many activities and topics of conversation, that Taylor preferred to avoid.
It hadn’t been easy, Emma mused, as Taylor yammered on. Sometimes she’d call, they’d do their customary hanging out, and she’d feel like the time was wasted, afternoons and weekends spent with her best friend that she didn’t enjoy.
Not that Taylor was a wet blanket, but, like, maybe she was a damp blanket?
This? This inane, aimless, stupid, one-sided conversation where she’d said one word? This was the good stuff. It gave her hope that things could get back to normal.
“…and I wish I’d listened to my dad, because he suggested at least ten times that I might want to take more books, and I only brought three, and I’ve read each of them twice already. My…”
Taylor’s voice continued over the phone, but Emma felt her dad’s hand on her wrist, lowered her phone to pay more attention to her surroundings.
The car had stopped in the middle of a narrow one-way street. A dumpster had been shifted to block the end of the alley.
She looked over her shoulder, down the other end of the alley. A white van had stopped there, the taillights glowing. There were a group of twenty-something Asian-Americans approaching, sliding over the hood of the van to get into the alley and approach. Members of the ABB.
This isn’t supposed to happen in broad daylight, Emma thought.
Taylor’s voice was faint, “…I could probably recite this one book word for word for you by the time I get back. Maybe if I asked one of the counselors, I could get more.”
Her heart pounding as hard as it ever had, Emma hung up. Some part of her rationalized it as needing to eliminate the distraction, to focus on the more immediate problem.
“Hold tight,” her father said.
She did, and he put his foot to the gas. The car started rolling toward the dumpster, and the gang members behind them began running after them.
Too slow, she thought.
The car barely tapped the dumpster. It was only after contact had already been made that her dad put his foot on the gas, pushing against the blockade instead of ramming or crashing into it.
The dumpster didn’t budge.
They blocked it. Or they took the wheels off. Or both.
There were too many people behind them for the car to reverse. Not unless her dad wanted to hurt or kill a bunch of people. Even if he did want to hurt them, he couldn’t be sure he’d hit them, and where could he go? There wasn’t any guarantee he’d be able to move the dumpster if he backed up and rammed into it.
“Call the police,” her father said.
She barely registered it.
“Emma! Call the police!”
She fumbled with the phone. Nine-nine…
Why won’t my hands work?
Nine-one-one.
The window to her right shattered. She screamed, then screamed again as hands clutched her hair, hauled her partially out of her seat, until the seatbelt strained against her shoulder and pelvis. He wasn’t strong enough to actually lift her, but it hurt. She wasn’t thinking, only wanted the pain to stop. Her mind was flooded with images of what might happen if the person outside tugged in a slightly different direction and dragged her face against the broken glass of the window. The phone clattered to the floor as she gripped her attacker’s wrists, tried to alleviate the pain of hair tearing free from her scalp.
She put her feet flat on the floor of the car, pushed herself up and away from her seat, almost helping her attacker.
Emma regretted it almost as she did it, but in the panic and pain, she undid the seatbelt.
She’d just wanted the pain to stop, and now there were two sets of hands gripping her, hauling her up and out through the car window. Glass broke away against the fabric of her denim jacket, and she fell hard enough against the pavement that grit was pushed into her skin.
I hope the jacket didn’t get torn. It was so expensive, she thought. It was inane, stupid, almost hilariously out of sync with reality. Delirious.
Her father’s screams of almost mindless panic sounded so far away, as he cried out her name, over and over again.
The gang members who stood above her each wore crimson and pale green. There were other colors, predominantly black, but the constrast of red and green stood out. Some had their faces exposed, others wore kerchiefs over the lower halves of their faces. One had a bandanna folded so it covered one eye. She couldn’t think straight enough to count them.
They had knives, she belatedly noted.
Her father screamed for her again.
Stop, dad. You’re embarassing me. She was more cognizant of how irrational the thought was, this time. Odd, how calm she felt. Except that wasn’t right. Her heart was pounding, she could barely breathe, her thoughts were jumbled and irrational, and yet she somehow felt more together than she might have guessed she would.
She wasn’t hysterical, at least. She was oddly pleased with that, even as she wondered if she might wet herself.
“Turn over, ginger bitch,” one of the girls standing above her said. The order was punctuated by a sharp kick to Emma’s ribs.
She flopped over, face pressing against the hot pavement. Hands took hold of her jacket and pulled it off. The sleeves turned inside out, the half-folded cuffs catching around her hands.
If she’d been taking it off herself, that would have been cause for some rearrangement, to get her hands free. Instead, they pulled. It hurt briefly, and then they had the jacket.
“Here, Yan,” one of the guys said, his accent almost musical. “You owe me.”
“Sweet!” The voice sounded young.
My jacket, Emma thought, plaintive.
“We could send this bitch out of town,” one of the guys said. “Stick her in one of the farms and hold her for a while. She’s got tits, could auction her off.
“Don’t be a moron. White girl goes missing, they look.”
Someone opened the car door and climbed in. There was the sound of the glove compartment opening, of items falling to the floor, where her cell phone was.
For the life of her, she couldn’t remember if she had hit ‘call’ on her cell phone before she’d dropped it. It would mean the difference between her phone sitting on the floor of the car, the numbers displayed on the screen, and authorities using the phone to find her location, sending help.
Someone grabbed her hair, again. This time, there was a tearing sensation, and the tugging abruptly stopped. Her face cracked against the pavement beneath, one cheekbone catching almost all of the impact.
They’d cut her hair, and she’d just bruised her face.
“Face,” she mumbled.
“What’s that, ginger?” the girl standing over her asked. Emma twisted her head around to see the girl holding a length of red hair in her hand.
“Not- not the face, please. I’ll do anything you want, just… not the face.”
It was the delirium that had taken hold of her the second her father had seized her arm. It wasn’t really her, was it? She couldn’t be this stupidly vain when it all came down to the wire. She didn’t want to be that kind of person.
“You’ll do anything?” One of the guys asked. The one with one eye. “Like what?”
She reached for an answer, but her thoughts were little more than white noise.
The answers that did come to mind weren’t possibilities. Not really.
“Then it’s the face after all. Hold her.”
Ten minutes ago, she’d never been afraid. Not really. Stage fright, sure. Fear of not getting the Christmas present she wanted? Sure. But she’d never been afraid.
And before the one-eyed thug spoke that last sentence, she’d never known terror. Had never known what it might be like to be a deer in the moment the wolves set tooth to flesh, the rabbit fleeing the bird of prey. It was like being possessed, and the white noise that had subsumed her her thoughts when she searched for an argument now consumed her brain in entirety. She felt a kind of surge of strength as her fight or flight instincts kicked into gear, and it wasn’t enough.
She was outnumbered, and many of them were stronger than her, even with the adrenaline feeding into her. Two held her arms out to either side, and someone knelt just behind her, knees pressing hard against the side of her head, keeping her from turning it. Looking up, she could see a girl, not much older than her, sporting a nose ring and a startling purple eye shadow. She was wearing Emma’s jacket.
Emma could hear her father screaming, still, and it sounded further away than ever.
One-eye straddled her, planting his left hand on top of her hair, helping to hold her head down to the ground.
He held a knife that was long and thin, the blade no wider across than a finger, tapering to a wicked point. What was it called? A stiletto? He rested the flat of the blade on the tip of her nose.
“Nose,” he murmured. The blade moved to her eye, and she couldn’t move away. She could only shut it, feel it twitching mercilessly as he laid the flat of the blade against her eyelid, “Eye…”
The blade touched her lips, a steel kiss.
He used the blade to brush the hair away from the side of her head, hooked an earring with the point of the blade.
“Well, you can hide the ears with the hair,” he said, his voice barely over a whisper. The knife point pulled at the earring until her face contorted in pain. “So maybe I’ll take both. Which will it be?”
She couldn’t process, couldn’t sort out the information in the mist of the terror that gripped her. “Unh?”
Again, the knife traveled over her face, almost gentle as it touched the areas in question. “One eye, the nose, the mouth, or both ears. Yan here thinks she has what it takes to be a member, instead of a common whore, so you choose one of the above, and she goes to town on the part in question, proves her worth.”
“Holy shit, Lao,” the girl with the eye shadow said. She sounded almost gleeful, “That’s fucked up.”
“Pick,” he said, again, as if he hadn’t heard.
Emma blinked tears out of her eyes, looked for an escape, an answer.
And she saw a figure crouched on top of her father’s car, dressed in black, with a hood and a cape that fluttered out of sync with the warm sea breeze that flowed from the general direction of the beach. She could see the whites of the girl’s eyes through the eyeholes of what looked like a metal hockey mask.
The dark figure didn’t move.
Lao, the one eyed man, reversed the knife in his hands and handed it to the girl with the eye shadow. The girl, for her part, dragged the knife’s point over Emma’s eyelid, a feather touch.
“Pick,” the girl said. “No, wait…”
She shoved the handful of hair she’d cut away into Emma’s mouth. “Eat it, then pick.”
Emma opened her mouth to plead for help, but she couldn’t find the breath. The hair wasn’t it, not really. Some of it was the weight of the young man sitting on her chest, crushing her under his weight. Mostly, it was the fear, like a physical thing.
She thought of Taylor, of all people. Taylor had, in her way, been put to the knife, had had an irreplaceable part of herself carved away. Not a nose or an eye, but a mother. And in the moment she’d found out, a light had gone out inside Emma’s best friend, a vibrancy had faded. She’d ceased to be the same person.
If she’d experienced her first real taste of fear when the gang members attacked the car, her first real taste of terror when Lao proclaimed he’d cut her face, then it was the thought of Taylor, of becoming Taylor, that gripped her with panic, a whole new level of fear.
I won’t become Taylor.
I’m not-
I’m not strong enough to come back from that.
The knife momentarily forgotten, she bucked, thrashed, fought. An inarticulate noise tore out of her throat, a scream, a grunt, and a wail of despair all together, an ugly sound she couldn’t ever have imagined she’d make. Lao was dislodged, one hand freed, and she brought it up, not in self defense, but to attack. Her nails found his one good eye, caught on flesh, dug into the softest tissues she could find and dragged through them, through eyelid and across eyeball, through cheekbone and the meat of his cheek.
He screamed, struck her with enough force that she wondered if he’d had knuckle dusters she hadn’t seen.
Knuckle dusters… a weapon. She belatedly remembered the knife, looked up at the girl with the eye shadow.
The figure in the black cloak had the knife-wielding girl, the knife hand twisted behind the girl’s back.
With a sharp, calculated motion, the arm was twisted a measure too far, the eye shadow girl jerked off balance so the weight of her body would only help twist it further. The girl screamed, dropping the knife, and she flopped to the ground, her arm gone limp, dangling from the shoulder at an angle that shouldn’t have been possible.
The figure in black turned on Lao. She swept her cape to one side, and momentarily became a living shadow, a transparent blur. When she returned to normal, her posture was different, and the knife had disappeared from the ground. It was in her hand.
Emma watched in numb horror and awe as the girl advanced on Lao, who crab-walked backward to get away. She closed the distance, stretched out one arm, and delivered a single scratch with the knife, cutting into Lao’s right eye.
Other thugs had already fallen. The one who’d held her arm before she pulled it free was slumping over, unconscious. The woman who must have been standing next to Emma’s father, was lying prone on the ground on the other side of the car, a pool of blood spreading beneath her.
That left only one, the thug who’d held Yan’s left arm. He was on his feet in a moment, running, Emma’s backpack in one hand, open, the contents from the glove compartment falling free. Useless, trivial items. A bag of candy, the driver’s handbook. Things he’d taken only because he could.
The girl in the cloak was small, Emma noted. Younger. Again, the cloaked vigilante became a virtual living shadow, flung herself down the length of the alleyway, faster than the man was running. She moved past him, ducking low as she materialized into a normal form. The knife raked across the side of his knee, and he fell. He twisted as he hit the ground, kicked out with one leg, and caught the girl in the side of one knee. She tumbled landing on top of him.
The ensuing struggle was brief and one sided. He tried to grab his attacker, found only immaterial shadow. He turned over, getting on hands and knees to push himself to a standing position, but she moved faster, going solid as she loomed over him, one hand on the wall for balance. She tipped, let herself fall, and drove his face into the pavement with all the weight she could bring down on him.
A second later, the cloaked girl was holding one of his hands against a door just to his right. She used the stiletto to impale his hand to the wood, bent the blade until the handle snapped away.
“Emma,” her father said. He was out of the car, embracing her. “Are you hurt? Emma?”
One hand absently tried to claw her own strands of hair from her mouth, failing to get all of them. She settled for leaving the hand mashed against her mouth, as incoherent a gesture as anything she might have said if she’d been able to speak.
Wordless, the girl in the black cloak limped a few steps away from the fallen boy before adopting her shadow form, floating away, untouchable.
“Emma?”
Emma stared at her bedroom ceiling. It was her sister’s voice.
“I went to that store, got that shampoo you liked.”
Emma turned over, pulling the covers tight, staring at the wall instead.
“I just thought a shower must sound pretty good right about now.”
There were still scraps of paper stuck to the wall with blue tack, the corners of the posters she’d torn down in a fit of emotion. All the words in the English language, and there wasn’t one for what she’d felt. Not anger, not fear, not resentment… some combination of those things that was duller, heavier, suffocating. The eyes of the boys from the posters had been too much.
“…Okay,” her sister said, from the other side of the bedroom door. “We love you, Emma. You know that, right?”
Her mother spoke through the door, “Emma? Taylor’s on the phone. She’s still at summer camp. Do you-“
Emma sat up in bed, swung her legs around until they hung off the end of the bed.
“No.” Her voice was a croak. How many days had it been since she spoke?
“If I explained, maybe she could-“
An image flashed across her mind’s eye. Taylor, on the other end of the phone, laughing, blabbering on, happy, just before the incident.
The tables had turned.
“If you tell her, I’m never coming out,” she croaked.
There wasn’t a reply. Emma stood from the bed and approached the door. She could hear her mother on the other side.
“-doesn’t want to talk to you right now. I’m sorry.”
“No. No, I don’t.”
Another pause, briefer.
“Bye, honey,” Emma’s mom said.
Floorboards creaked as her mother walked away.
“…a therapist. You could go alone, or we could go together.”
She grit her teeth.
“I… I left her number by the phone. We’re all going to be out. Your sister’s at a thing related to the college dorms, a pre-moving in orientation. Your mom and I have work. You know our phone numbers, but I was thinking, uh.”
“If you were thinking of doing something drastic, and you didn’t feel like you could talk to any of us, the therapist’s number’s there.”
Emma hugged her knees. Her back pressed hard against the door, the bones of her spine grinding against the door’s surface.
“I love you. We love you. The doors are all double locked, so you’re safe, and there’s food in the fridge. Your sister bought that stuff from the store you like. Soaps and shampoos.”
Emma clutched the fabric of her pyjamas.
“It’s been a week. You can’t- you can’t be happy like this. We won’t be here to bother you, so warm yourself up some food, treat yourself to a nice bath, maybe, watch some television? Get things a step back to normal?”
She stood, abrupt, paced halfway across her bedroom, then stopped. Nowhere to go, nothing to do.
She stood there, staring at the wall with the torn corners of poster still stuck to it, fists clenched.
“Bye, honey.”
She was rooted to the spot, staring at a blank surface, listening as her family went about their routines. There were murmurs of conversation as they got organized, orchestrated who was going in which car, what everyone was doing for lunch. Quieter fragments of conversation where they were discussing her.
The door slammed, and she heard the locks click, a sound so faint she might have imagined it.
It was only after everyone had left that she ventured out of her room.
Coffee. Cereal. She went through the motions, reheating a mug of the former and preparing the latter.
She hadn’t finished either when she stood and ventured into the bathroom. She didn’t touch the bag of expensive soaps and shampoos, instead using her father’s regular shampoo. She soaped up with the bar soap, rinsed off, then stepped out of the shower to dry herself.
Once she was dressed, her hair still damp, she approached the front door, hesitated.
She pushed through, left it unlocked behind her. She couldn’t shake the worry that if she stepped back inside to find keys, she might not be able to step through the threshold again.
Her teeth were chattering by the time she was at the end of the street, and it wasn’t cold out.
Her thoughts were a chaotic jumble as she walked. Her stomach felt like a blob of gelatin, quivering with every step she took.
The stares were worst of all. As much as she tried to tell herself that she wasn’t in the middle of a giant spotlight, that people didn’t care, she couldn’t shake the idea that they were watching her, analyzing her every move, noting her wet hair, noting the hunk of hair at the back that was shorter than the rest, crudely chopped off. Were they seeing her as a victim, someone so full of fear and anxiety that her every movement practically screamed ‘easy target’?
Perhaps the dumbest insecurity of all was the worry that somehow they could read her mind, that they knew she was doing the dumbest thing she’d ever done.
Every step she took, the white noise of her fear consumed a bit of her rational mind.
She found herself back at the mouth of the narrow one-way road. The dumpster had been moved, the van was nowhere in sight.
This was different from feeling like a victim, because here, she knew she really was begging to be attacked. To loiter around in known gang territory, unarmed? It was senseless. This time, they might really carry through with their threats. All it would take was the wrong person seeing her.
Emma couldn’t bring herself to care. She was scared, but she was scared every moment of every day, had been for the last seven days. Right now? She was more desperate than scared.
She’d hoped she would run into the girl in the black cloak. She wasn’t so lucky. Her stomach started protesting that the half-bowl of cereal hadn’t been enough, but she stayed where she was. She hadn’t brought a wallet, a phone or watch, so she had no way of getting food, nor any idea of how long she was really waiting.
When the sun was directly overhead, she turned to leave.
There was no place to go. Home? It would be too easy to shut herself in her room, to hide from the world. There was nothing she wanted to do, nobody she wanted to talk to.
The world was an ugly place, filled with ugly scenes, and unlike before, she couldn’t shut it out, couldn’t shake the idea that something horrible was happening around every corner. Thousands of people suffering every second, around the world.
What got her, the nebulous idea that haunted her, was the impact those scenes had. There were so many defining moments, so many crises, big and small, that shaped the people they touched. The biggest and most critical moments were the sorts that wiped the slate clean, that ignored or invalidated the person who had existed before, only to create another.
Emma had fought in a moment of desperation, as if fighting could make her stronger than Taylor, set herself apart. Except she’d failed. It was unbearable. She hated herself.
Her eyes watched the crowd, searching for the people who were eyeing her, judging her. She couldn’t find any obvious ones, but she couldn’t shake the belief that they were there.
“Takes guts.”
She could feel her heart leap into her throat, wheeling around, imagining the Asian girl with the eye shadow standing behind her.
It wasn’t. The girl was dark-skinned, slender, with long, straight hair. She had a hard stare, penetrating.
“Guts?” Emma couldn’t imagine any word less appropriate.
“Coming back. The only reason you’d do it is because you were looking for revenge, or you were looking for me. Or both, depending on how cracked you are.”
Emma opened her mouth, then closed it. The realization hit her. This was the girl with the black cloak, announcing herself.
She asked the question she’d gone to such risk to pose to the girl, “Why… why did you wait? You saw me in trouble, but you didn’t do a thing.”
“Because I wanted to see who you were.”
Before, Emma suspected she’d have been offended, aghast at the idea that this girl would leave her to suffer, leave her life at risk, just for an answer to a question. Now? Now she could almost understand it, oddly enough. “Who was I?”
“There’s two people in the world. Those who get stronger when they come through a crisis and those who get weaker. The ones who get stronger naturally come out on top. There’s ups and downs, but they’ll win out.”
“Who was I?” Emma asked, again.
“You’re here, aren’t you?” The girl smiled.
Emma didn’t have an answer to that. She shut her mouth, all too aware of the people walking past them, going about their everyday lives, overhearing snippets of their conversation and yet failing to pick up anything essential.
“I want to be one of the stronger ones.”
“I don’t do the partner thing, or the team thing.”
Emma nodded. She didn’t have an answer ready.
The other girl’s eyes studied her, and she seemed to come to a decision. “It’s a philosophy, a way of looking at it all. You can look at the world as a… what’s the word? One thing and another?”
“A binary?”
“A binary thing. But not black and white. It’s about the divide of winners and losers. Strong and weak, predators and prey. I kind of like that last one, but I’m a hunter.”
Emma thought back to how readily the girl had taken the thugs apart. “I can believe that.”
The girl smiled. “And what you have to keep in mind, is the biggest question of all is one you’re answering for yourself, right now. Survivor or victim?”
“On this violent, brutish little planet of ours, it’s the survivors who wind up the strongest ones of all.”
Emma stood from the kitchen table, aware that her entire family was watching her.
It’s all mental.
Three weeks ago, she might never have imagined that she’d be able to resume life as normal, to not be afraid.
Perhaps it was more correct to say that she was afraid, she just wasn’t acting it. Faking it until she could make it the truth.
“You’re going out?” her sister couldn’t quite keep the note of suprise out of her voice.
“Sophia’s dropping by,” Emma said.
Just want to forget it happened, put it behind me. Move forward.
“Taylor got back from camp this morning,” her mother said.
Emma paused. “Okay.”
“She might stop by.”
Emma couldn’t resist hurrying a little as she collected her dishes and rinsed them in the sink.
“If she comes by when you’re not here-”
“I’ll talk to her,” Emma said. “Don’t worry about it.”
She made her way to the front hall, stopped by the mirror to run a brush through her hair. It had all been cut to match the piece that had been cut shorter with the knife.
She couldn’t wait for it to grow in, as that alone would erase just one more memory that reminded her of her moment of weakness and humiliation, of how close she’d come to dying or being mutilated. Until it did grow in, it was yet another reminder of all the ugliness she wanted to be able to look past.
Sophia was waiting outside by the time she had her shoes on.
“Heya, vigilante,” Emma said, smiling.
“Heya, survivor.”
She could see Taylor approaching, tan, still wearing the shirt from camp in the bright primary blue, with the logo, shorts and sandals. It only made her look more kiddish. Broomstick arms and legs, gawky, with a wide, guileless smile, her eyes just a fraction larger behind the glasses she wore, a little too old fashioned. Her long dark curls were tied into a loose set of twin braids, one bearing a series of colorful ‘friendship braclet’ style ties at the end. Only her height gave her age away.
She looks like she did years ago. Way before her mom died. Like she’s nine, not thirteen.
“Who the fuck is that?” Sophia murmured.
Emma didn’t reply. She watched as Taylor approached the gate at the front of the house, walked up the path to the stairs where she and Sophia stood.
“Who the fuck are you?” Sophia asked.
Taylor’s smile faltered. A brief look of confusion flickered across her face. “We’re friends. Emma and I have been friends for a long time.”
Sophia smirked. “Really.”
Emma resisted the urge to cringe. Fake it until I make it.
“Really,” Taylor echoed Sophia. The smallest furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “What’s going on Emma? I haven’t heard from you in a good while. Your mom said you weren’t taking calls?”
Emma hesitated.
To just explain, to talk to Taylor…
Taylor would give her sympathy, would listen to everything she had to say, give an unbiased ear to every thought, every wondering and anxiety. Emma almost couldn’t bear the idea.
But there would be friendship too. Support. It would be so easy to reach out and take it.
“I love the haircut,” Taylor filled the silence, talking and smiling like she couldn’t contain herself. “You manage to make any style look great.”
Emma closed her eyes, taking a second to compose herself. Then she smiled back, though not so wide. She could feel Sophia’s eyes on her.
She stepped down one stair to get closer to Taylor, put a hand on her shoulder. Taylor raised one arm to wrap Emma in a hug, stopped short when Emma’s arm proved unyielding, stopping her from closing the distance.
“Go home, Taylor. I didn’t ask you to come over.”
She could see the smile fall from Taylor’s face. Only a trace of it lingered, a faltering half-smile. “It’s… it’s never been a problem before. I’m sorry. I was just excited to see you, it’s been weeks since we even talked.”
“There’s a reason for that. This was just an excuse to cut a cord I’ve been wanting to cut for a long time.”
There it went. The last half smile, wiped from Taylor’s expression. “I… what? Why?”
“Do you think it was fun? Spending time with you, this past year?” The words came too easily. Things she’d wanted to say, not the whole truth, but feelings she’d bottled up, held back. “I wanted to break off our friendship a long while back, even before your mom kicked the bucket, but I couldn’t find the chance. Then you got that call, and you were so down in the dumps that I thought you’d hurt yourself if I told you the truth, and I didn’t want to get saddled with that kind of guilt.”
It was surprising how easily the words came. Half truths.
“So you lied to me, strung me along.”
“You lied to yourself more than I lied to you.”
“Fuck you,” Taylor snapped back. She turned to leave, and Sophia stuck one foot out. Taylor didn’t fall, but she stumbled, had to catch the gate for balance.
Taylor turned around, eyes wide, as if she could barely comprehend that Sophia had done what she’d done, that Emma had stood by and watched it.
Then she was gone, running.
“Feel better?” Sophia asked.
Better? No. Emma couldn’t bring herself to feel guilty or ashamed, but… it didn’t feel good.
That knot of negative emotion was tempered by a sense of profound relief. One less reminder of the old, weak, pathetic vain Emma, one more step towards the new.
Emma’s cell phone vibrated. She rose from her bed, suppressing a sigh.
As quiet as she could, she collected the tackle box from beneath her bed, dressed and headed downstairs.
Her father was at the kitchen table. His eyes went wide, and he stood.
She pressed her finger to her lips, and he stopped, his mouth open.
She hesitated, then spoke in a whisper, “I need your help. Please. Can- can you not ask any questions just yet?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
She handed him the keys, and climbed into the passenger seat.
He started up the car, then drove in the directions she dictated, her eyes on the phone.
They found themselves downtown, in the midst of a collection of bodies.
And in the center, leaning against a wall, Shadow Stalker was hunched over, using her hands to staunch a leg wound.
Emma bent down, opened the tackle box, and began gathering the first aid supplies.
Wordless, her father joined her.
We owe her this, at least.
“Give it back,” Taylor’s voice was quiet, but level.
“Give what back?”
“You guys broke into my locker. You took my flute. It’s something my mom left me, something she used, that my dad gave to me so I could remember her. Just… if you’ve decided you hate me, if I said the wrong thing, or led you to believe something that wasn’t true, okay. But don’t do that to my mom. She was good to you. Don’t disrespect her memory.”
“If it was so valuable to you, then you shouldn’t have brought it.”
Taylor didn’t speak for long seconds. “Can you blame me? Since school started, you’ve been… after me. As if you’re trying to make a point or something. Except I don’t know what it is.”
“The point is that you’re a loser.”
Taylor wasn’t able to keep the emotion off her face. “…Even if it’s just a flute and a memory, maybe I wanted to feel like I had some backup here. I thought you were better than that, screwing with me on that level.”
“I guess you’re wrong,” Emma replied. She let the words sit for a few seconds, then added, “Doesn’t look like she’s offering you any backup at all.”
Emma had mused, back in the week she’d been reeling from her near-miss with death or disfigurement, that there were moments that changed destinies, that altered people’s trajectories in life. Some were small, the changes minor, others large to the point they were irreversible. It was so easy, just to utter the words, and the reaction was so profound. A mixture of emotions that briefly stripped Taylor bare, revealed everything in a series of changing facial expressions.
She didn’t enjoy it. Didn’t revel in it. But it was… reassuring? The world made sense. Predators and prey. Attackers and victims. It was like a drug, only she’d never experienced the high, the pure joy of it. There was only the withdrawal, the need for a hit just to get centered again.
Fight back, get angry, hit me.
Challenge me.
It took Taylor long seconds to get her mental footing. She met Emma’s eyes, and then stared down at the ground. She mumbled her response. “I think that says a lot more about you than it does about me.”
That wasn’t what I meant, Emma thought.
She felt irrationally angry, annoyed, and couldn’t put her finger on why.
It took her a minute to find Sophia, not helped by the fact that the two of them had classes on opposite sides of the building.
Sophia was putting coins into the vending machine. She looked up at Emma. “What?”
“Did you break into her locker?”
“Stole a flute?”
Emma paused for long seconds. To give the flute back, surreptitiously, it would go a ways towards breaking the rhythm, the cycle.
Taylor’s words nettled her. To back down now, it would be a step towards the old Emma, the victim.
“Fuck with it. Do something disgusting to it, and make sure to wreck it so she can’t use it ever again.”
Sophia smiled.
“Do you hereby attest that all statements disclosed in this document are the truth, to the best of your knowledge?”
“I do,” Emma’s father spoke.
Emma reached out and took his hand, squeezing it. He glanced at her, and she mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
There was a shuffling of papers at the other end of the long table. “We, the committee, have reviewed the documents, and agree that case one-six-three-one, Shadow Stalker, has met the necessary requirements. With stipulations to be named at a future date, specific to her powers and the charges previously laid against her, she is now a probationary member of the Wards, until such a time as she turns eighteen or violates the terms of this probationary status. Congratulations, Shadow Stalker.”
“Thank you,” Shadow Stalker’s tone was subdued, her eyes directing a glare at the center of the table rather than anyone present.
Emma watched as the capes and official bigwigs around her got out of their chairs, fell into groups.
Dauntless approached her dad. She only caught two murmured words of Dauntless’ question. “-divorce attorney?”
Shadow Stalker, for her part, stood and strode out of the room. Emma hurried to follow. By the time she reached the staircase, Shadow Stalker was halfway to the roof.
“You’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry. Stipulations, rules and regulations. I’ve had my powers for two and a half years and I’ve stopped more bad guys than half the capes in that room!”
Emma couldn’t stop the memory from hitting her.
The man struggled, and as much as Shadow Stalker was able to make herself immaterial, to loosen any grip or free herself from any bonds, she didn’t have the ability to tighten that same grip. He tipped backwards, off the edge of the roof, and a gesture meant to intimidate became manslaughter.
Shadow Stalker stared off the edge of the roof at the body, then turned to look at Emma.
“Is- is he?” Emma asked.
“Probably best if you don’t come on patrol with me again.”
“You have,” Emma replied, snapping back to reality. How many have you ‘stopped’?
“It’s like putting a wolf among sheep and expecting it to bleat!”
“It’s only three years. Better than prison.”
“Three years and four months.”
“Better than prison,” Emma repeated herself.
“It is prison, fuck it!”
“It’s like you said. Just… just fake it until you make it the truth, put away the lethal ammunition for a few years.”
Shadow Stalker wheeled on her, stabbed a finger in her direction, “Fuck that.”
Emma stared at her best friend, saw the look in Sophia’s eyes, the anger, the hardness.
For a moment, she regretted the choice she’d made.
Then she had her head in order again, the little things she was faking contorted with reality until she couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
People could convince themselves of anything, and there were worse things than convincing oneself that they were strong, capable, one of the ones on top, rather than one of the ones on the bottom.
The door of the bathroom stall swung open. Sophia had flung one arm around Emma’s shoulders, and Emma joined her in laughing. To their right, the third member of their trio was giggling so hard she had hiccups.
Taylor kneeled in the middle of a massive puddle of juices and sodas, some of it still fizzing around her. She was drenched, head to toe, trickles still running off of the lengths of her hair. Her style of dress had changed over the past little while, in ways Taylor probably wasn’t fully aware of. She wore darker clothes now, cloaked herself in sweatshirts and loose fitting jeans. Her long hair was a shield, a barrier around her face. All measures to hide, signals and gestures of defeat.
More than that, she’d changed in behavior, had stopped fighting back. She’d stopped reacting, for the most part. Her expression was impassive. It took some of the fun out of it. It was almost disappointing.
I’ll have to think of a better one than this. Crack that facade, Emma thought. She smirked as Madison led the way out of the bathroom, and they left Taylor behind.
Taylor had become the archetypical victim, Emma mused, in one sober moment, as she parted ways with the other two girls, and I’ve found myself becoming the type of person who could genuinely laugh at something like this.
She dismissed the thought, shifting mental gears, re-establishing the construction of self confidence she’d built. It was a little easier every time she did it.
The fan on the other side of the room had a piece loose. It squeaked on every third rotation.
She examined her nails, picked at a fleck of something white that had stick to the end of one nail, then checked her cuticles.
The fan squeaked, and she turned her head, as if she could spot the offending flaw and fix it.
“You come all this way, and you don’t have anything to say?” Sophia asked.
Emma shrugged. It was on our way.
“Say what’s on your mind.”
“It’s all backwards, isn’t it?”
“Backwards how?”
“Upside down, Turned around. Two wrongs make a right.”
“What wrongs?” Sophia’s voice was hard.
“Not you. Not your thing. That’s not what I’m talking about. We’re moving back to Brockton Bay. As in, it’s in progress. Half our stuff’s still back in Portland, half’s in the Bay. We finally moved.”
“Someplace nice?”
“Further north.”
Sophia smirked.
“But that’s why I’m saying it’s all backwards. Things got flipped around. The north end is nicer, now. They’re rebuilding, and it’s all coming together. Downtown is the place that got hit hard. You’ve got three big areas you can’t go, with the crater, the quarantine and the place I heard people calling the scar, where they did some bombing run with Bakuda’s stuff. Construction’s slower towards the south, because there’s so much traffic and not a lot of roads.”
“The bad guys are keeping the law, but things are better, and you talk to anyone, there’s hope. I don’t know how that happens, how you visit every tragedy imaginable on a place, drop a dozen different nightmare scenarios on it, and things get better. How does that work?”
“I don’t really care,” Shadow Stalker said.
“It’s your city.”
“The world ends in less than two years. I won’t be out of here before then. I… what’s the word? I reiterate, I don’t really care.”
“I’m trying to make conversation.”
“You’re doing a shitty job of it,” Sophia replied.
Emma shut her mouth, stared at her friend.
“World ends in two years,” Sophia added. “It’s a joke, pretending like things are getting better, like there’s hope. The world turns a few hundred more times and then it all ends.”
“It’s kind of neat in terms of the big picture,” Emma said, ignoring Sophia. “It’s like, the future hasn’t looked this bright in a while. There’s promise, if this rumor about an open interdimensional portal is for real. Multiple portals, if you believe the really out-there rumors. Escape routes, resources, work. And Brockton Bay is at the center of it all.”
Sophia snorted.
“And, more than that, it’s like, if we’re talking about hope, about the future, who’s more iconic for all that than kids? You know, that line about how kids are the future? Heroes too, they’re icons of hope too. And put those things together, you get Arcadia High. Winslow High’s gone, and there’s not quite enough students, so they’re herding us all together.”
“So, it’s like, all this hope, you’ve got Brockton Bay at the center of it all. And at the center of Brockton Bay’s hope, it’s Arcadia High. And at the center of that? You’ve got the heroes and the winners. I fully intend to be the latter. In a way, it’s like being queen of the world.”
“The popular kid in high school?”
“In the high school,” Emma said. She shrugged. “It’s one way of looking at it.”
Emma smirked. “Someone’s grumpy.”
“It’s sad because you’re making a fool of yourself, you’re missing a key detail.”
Sophia shrugged. “Better if you find out for yourself. I won’t spoon-feed you.”
Emma rolled her eyes. Sophia was just toying with her head. Easy enough to ignore.
“I’m going to go. I’d say it’s been a pleasure, but…”
Sophia caught the ‘but’. “Bitch.”
“Yeah. Def,” Emma replied, before hanging up the phone. She stood from the stool that was bolted to the floor, stretched, then offered a small wave.
Sophia raised both hands together to offer a miniscule wave with her right. They were cuffed together, LEDs standing out on the cuffs, marking the live current.
Emma couldn’t tell herself she’d be back. To stick around and be loyal now would betray every reason she’d given herself for dropping Taylor as a friend. Taylor had been a wet blanket, a loser. Sophia was no better, now.
It was ironic, but Sophia had proven herself to be more prey than predator, in the very philosophy she’d espoused.
“Hey dad?”
Her dad turned his head to acknowledge her, while keeping his eyes on the road. “What is it?”
“Mind making a detour? I wouldn’t mind seeing Taylor’s house.”
“I thought you weren’t friends anymore.”
Emma shook her head. “I’m… trying to put it all into perspective. It’s really changed, and it’s easiest to get my head around the changes if I can look at the familiar places, and her house is pretty familiar.”
“Sure. If nobody else minds?”
There were no objections from her mom or sister.
The city had always had its highs and lows, its peaks and valleys, but it seemed it was an even starker contrast now. She’d commented, once, that for any one house, she could find three things wrong with it. It had been flipped around, in its own way. For every ten houses, there was one ruin, a dilapidated structure or pile of wreckage. For every ten stretches of road that were intact, there was one that a car couldn’t pass over.
They turned off Lord Street, onto the street that Taylor’s house was on.
As they approached, Emma could see Taylor helping her dad unload a box from what looked to be a new or newly washed car. He said something and she laughed.
The casual display of emotion was startling. It was equally startling when, in the moment Emma’s dad slowed the car down, Taylor’s head turned, her eyes falling on them, her head and upper body turning to follow them as they passed.
She didn’t even resemble the person Emma had known way back then, not the girl who’d approached her house after coming back from camp, and not the girl who’d been drenched in juice. The lines of her cheekbones and chin were more defined, her skin baked to a light tan by the sun, her long black curls grown a touch wild by long exposure to wind. Light muscles stood out on her arms as she held a box, her dad standing back to direct.
Even her clothes. She wasn’t hiding under a hood and long sleeves. A trace of her stomach was exposed between the bottom of her yellow tank top and the top of her jeans. The frayed cuffs were rolled up at the bottom, around new running shoes, and neither Taylor nor her dad seemed to be paying any attention to the knife that was sheathed at her back.
It surprised Emma, all the little clues coming together to point to one fact; that Taylor had stayed. She’d stayed, and she’d come out of it okay. Judging by the new car, the shoes and her clothes, the Heberts were doing better for money than they had been the last time Emma had run into either of them. Were they early beneficiaries of Brockton Bay’s upswing in fortune?
It unsettled her, and she had a hard time putting her finger on why.
It didn’t hit her until they’d reached their new house, a recollection of something Sophia had said.
This entry was posted in 19.z (Interlude) and tagged Alan, Dauntless, Emma, Madison, Nosering, Shadow Stalker, Sophia, Taylor, Taylor's Dad by wildbow. Bookmark the permalink.
Trusting on March 19, 2013 at 00:03 said:
Got the slaughterhouse 9 chibis all drawn up and colored , thanks for a great series Wildbow , hope you like them .
http://scarfgirl.deviantart.com/art/Slaughterhouse9-360286629
TheAnt on March 19, 2013 at 00:11 said:
Thanks , I generally print these out and attach them to a thin magnet material and place them on my fridge , one day i’ll cover my fridge in worm magnets 🙂
Psycho Gecko on March 19, 2013 at 01:17 said:
“Honey?”
“Yeah babe?”
“I think the food’s gone bad.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There’s Worm all over it.”
soulpelt on March 19, 2013 at 08:07 said:
Ba dum tsh.
Shamooga on November 25, 2016 at 02:06 said:
You are a sincere delight
Nice capitalization on “Worm”
The meaning of stuff like “diet of worms” changes with capitalization.
Random Lurker on March 19, 2013 at 00:50 said:
I was never totally sure how to imagine the Nine. Now, I’m confused by the cuteness and disturbed by that thought at the same time.
Great art! Hope to see the other teams, especially the Travelers (although Echidna would be extremely difficult).
id be happy to do them as long as folks find and post descriptions of their costumes , don’t mind drawing but im horrid at searching out things .
MrVoid on March 19, 2013 at 01:13 said:
“I’ll be taking a chair, I think,” someone spoke from the door. Most heads turned to check out a male figure in a black costume with a red mask and tophat. It gave me sort of a Baron Samedi vibe. His teammates followed him into the room, all in matching costumes of red and black, differing only in design. A girl with a sun motif, a guy with bulky armor and a square mask, and a creature so large it had to crawl on its hands and knees to get through the door. It was hard to describe, approximating something like a four armed hairless gorilla, with a vest, mask and leggings in the red and black style its team was wearing, six-inch claws tipping each of its fingers and toes.”
This is from 5.1, though you may decide to give trickster a cigarette and use genesis’ real body which shouldn’t be too hard to find but I am tired.
Undead-Spaceman on March 19, 2013 at 11:03 said:
Genesis is easy, just draw a monster.
Unless you want to do her real body, in that case:
-Genesis slept on one of the bunks I’d set aside for my employees. Her face was contorted in an expression of concern. Average looks, if a little round-faced, she had long eyelashes, and her auburn hair was a mop.-
-Jess was the last to join them, navigating between the chairs, tables and other customers, making sharp turns as she wheeled herself to the table. Her hair was shaggy, she had three piercings in one ear and thick eyeliner around her eyes.-
Do note, the latter description is before she became a Traveller.
Clarvel on March 19, 2013 at 13:29 said:
For genesis I’d draw her in a wheelchair (if I’m remembering correctly), with the shadowy form of a monster behind her.
OHHH love the idea!!!
Gilgamesh on October 16, 2018 at 01:20 said:
If it helps, I visualize Jack as looking like a combination of Johnny Depp and the villain of Borderlands 2.
endgame on March 19, 2013 at 23:42 said:
Minor nitpick: why didn’t you add in the robo-spiders that Bonesaw makes? Other than that, good job.
theres more slaughterhouse 9 members then I actually drew too . like damsel , hookwolf and lest we forget old grungy human manton .
I pretty much only draw the ones people put up descriptions for when I ask for em 🙂 .
GreenGlass on March 20, 2013 at 02:04 said:
Great work! =D
You too, Wildblow. Seriously. It’s like heroin and you haven’t even polished your work yet. Lol
I always have a hard time getting used to second drafts because there’s something raw and satisfying about first drafts that just can’t be captured again once you experience a story for the first time. But if it’s good enough, I get used to it and embrace the new story. I want more people to enjoy your work as I did, so however that needs to happen, I’ll be happy if it does.
-With lots of worms, one grumpy, addicted Pest
Hi guys. Thanks for reading.
FYI, regular chapter (non-interlude on Thursday, just ’cause things got shuffled a bit for chronology’s sake this past week. Back to normal schedule on Saturday.
Also, a request – for those readers going back and commenting on early chapters, please don’t spoil things for those readers coming through for the first time. I’ve had to censor lines or delete comments where it was especially egregious. (ie. Taylor becomes a villain, stated in arc 1 – maybe predictable, but don’t give it all away).
I do appreciate the comments on early stuff, though.
Seras on March 19, 2013 at 02:30 said:
Thank you Wildbow. This is the one chapter that more than anything else I have wanted. It answers all of my questions on how this entire story REALLY started. All I can think is this answers so much, and fills in so many little details that have been nagging at me.
Xyric on March 26, 2016 at 17:44 said:
Agreed, I’ve been wondering the whole time exactly what happened between Emma and Taylor, it always seemed a bit odd and very abrupt. This was an awesome insight into Emma’s mind.
yakkt on March 19, 2013 at 05:36 said:
“I’ve had to censor lines”
That was one of my comments. Sorry. I’ll be more careful in the future.
Hate to call people out or limit people’s responses, but I do want the best possible reading experience overall.
alexanderthesoso on March 19, 2013 at 13:49 said:
I only commented as i was reading them in an archive binge, so anything that was spoilery was my own wmg.
Rob on December 3, 2015 at 05:56 said:
This is of course very insightful and makes me dislike Sophia even more, but it feels like you intended it to make us sympathise with Emma, and ugh, no. She’s still an asshole. A troubled asshole, sure. But I can’t like her.
Dr. Joe on December 20, 2015 at 22:15 said:
This is precisely how I reacted. In a way, I’m glad. At no point since I started reading Worm did I ever WANT to sympathize with Emma or Sophia. If this is the explanation for Emma’s behavior towards Taylor, I find myself cheerfully justified in absolutely hating her.
Honestly, I’d love to see her suffer something comparable to what happened to Sophia when she got the “Royal Treatment” from Regent. Guess my vindictive streak is showing =P
I still don’t *like* her, but it does make her behaviour more understandable.
Agreed. I think throughout all of Worm there were only two interludes that actually made me afterwards dislike characters even more instead of sympathize with them (and that includes the S9 sorta-interlude chapters). Coil and Emma are the only two to receive that mantle of honor(?) from me.
Regent took a dip for me after Sophia’s interlude. It’s cool that he stood up for Taylor but it really brought home that there was something not right in the head about that guy.
That was actually one of the first times I started to like Regent truthfully. Before that he was the creepy as hell token evil teammate who I was constantly worried about possibly going full on pyscho and killing everyone. Afterwards I finally understood a little more about how his mind works. I also realized just how much he does care about his friends even if he doesn’t acknowledge it himself or even seem to understand it.
It probably helps that I felt Sophia totally deserved that treatment and I cackled during some of her karmic retribution…
That’s probably why/where we differ. I don’t think anyone deserves that, ever. Having your body hijacked and used to destroy your life while you’re trapped helplessly inside has to be amongst the most dehumanising things possible.
Yup that is definitely where we differ. I completely agree with you that it is one of the worst punishments possible. My feelings that this is acceptable for Sophia and Emma come from being bullied as a kid. And even if I hadn’t been, the thing with the flute basically made me want all of the girls involved to be killed or at least mind raped. (Strangely I feel actual rape crosses a line in the sand that nearly nothing else approaches except child abuse…my morals are weird…)
If it had just been regular horrific bullying or physical abuse I’d probably be more conflicted about what Regent did. Defiling the last remaining memento of a dead parent in truly horrific fashion…yeah, it wasn’t enough of a punishment for me really.
Oh yes. After reading her interlude I can understand Emma, even sympathize with her, but I hate her even more than before.
chibipoe on March 19, 2013 at 00:16 said:
Am I reading too much there or was Sophia implying that she had figured out who Skitter was and thus, Emma’s making a fool of herself is because she hasn’t realised she’s nowhere near being top dog.
MrMoray on March 19, 2013 at 00:22 said:
You might be reading too much into it. Sophia may have just been alluding to the fact that members of the Wards attend Arcadia, so it’s unlikely Emma will be anything special there.
Or neither. I may have missed the mark on this front.
I don’t know that you did, Wildbow. Really, Sophia’s comment has a lot of possible meanings: she could be emphasizing that high school doesn’t really matter, especially when the world is ending in two years; OR grow up, you aren’t a real predator; or … Many possible interpretations, depending on how one looks at it.
endochrom on March 19, 2013 at 01:37 said:
I think it probably means; “Fuck off, you and your petty concerns. I’m in prison.”
xdrngy on March 20, 2015 at 14:18 said:
Or it could be foreshadowing to the revelation in the last line, that compared to the people who stayed, she’s weak. Some vain highschool girl
I thought it was already common knowledge that the Wards attended Arcadia.
And, given Regent’s last words to her, along with all the time to think about it, Sophia probably did figure it out.
It’s certainly possible, her words could be interpreted several ways. That was just the one that hit me first.
Notorious on March 19, 2013 at 15:35 said:
I feel that Sophia was referring to the messages that Regent sent on to the police and school system. It may not be much, but I don’t think she’s going to get away with nearly as much.
eh, looks like someone beat me to the punch a few hours ago, curse my Tuesday schedule.
I just see it as Emma coming back to the city after having fled during all the bad stuff that’s been happening, and she realizes that while Taylor stayed, survived and grew stronger, she herself took the easy way out according to her own philosophy.
Adam on March 19, 2013 at 00:17 said:
Damn good chapter.
Also, quick typo found: “In a way, it’s like being quene of the world.”
Fixed. Thank you.
Solaris Fox on March 19, 2013 at 11:51 said:
I found it funny because “quene” Is the Middle-English word for “queen”.
So…Emma is a time-traveler now?
No One in Particular on March 19, 2013 at 17:36 said:
Quick, wildbow! Not too late to make her French!
Packbat on June 7, 2013 at 12:10 said:
Belated typo: the line
should be in italics, as part of Emma’s flashback.
“She’d commented, once, that for any one house, she could find three things wrong with it.”
Wasn’t it 10?
Jack on March 19, 2013 at 00:19 said:
This chapter above all is the one that I enjoy the most, really really well done.
Someguy on March 19, 2013 at 00:19 said:
“queen of the world” not “quene of the world”
Damn, ninjaed
Muahaha.
Althalus on March 19, 2013 at 00:25 said:
Beneficiary’s rather than benefactors of Brockton Bay’s upswing in fortune. Though while Emma couldn’t know Taylor could in fact be considered both.
Good call. Fixed.
So the people what talked about everyone being routed to Arcadia were right. This should be interesting
On another note, it was nice to see the reasoning behind how Emma became this. It makes sense on a lot of levels; she needed reassurance she was strong, so she beat down what she thought was weak, and distanced herself from her past, weaker self in every way possible. I don’t know why you didn’t show the trigger event, but maybe the reasoning would be too complicated? Looking forward to Thursday, this should be good…
It seems pretty obvious why wildbow wouldn’t — in the immortal words of M. Bison, “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me… it was Tuesday.”
– http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButForMeItWasTuesday
Emma probably remembers the locker the same way I remember the time I won a race in Project Gotham against my brother by literally jumping over his car on a hill. It was awesome, but not *defining*.
Hobbes on March 19, 2013 at 01:51 said:
Taylor had to be committed to a psychiatric institution for around a week, as I recall, so Emma probably remembers it a little more vividly than the various other torments she visited upon her.
I guess what I’m saying is that that success was not really an essential part of Emma’s character arc. We don’t need to see it to understand where she came from or where she went.
See, she has to have some karmic justice. Join the revenge society Hobbes. Come to the dark side, we have cookies.
We have donuts. Some of them have sprinkles.
I dunno, I’m pretty sure that could’ve been one of the worst things they’ve ever done. Plus, they had to cart all the stuff to her lockers, which couldn’t have been fun for them.
Anzer'ke on March 19, 2013 at 09:44 said:
Not really, they just had to empty bins, the end part would suck but getting it there wouldn’t be all that bad really.
Kim on March 19, 2013 at 10:57 said:
it’s really more surprising that GREG doesn’t mention it. that’s the sort of thing that runs like WILDFIRE gossip through the halls.
Sure, tuesday you remember but not the superconductor electromagnetism…
So there is only one high school in the city. That means Taylor will be going with Clockie, Kid Win, and Char. If she decides to go for any significant length of time. I wonder if she told her dad anything. He didn’t comment on the knife, for instance. So we found out why Emma is the way she is, and I’m not impressed with her. Taylor said she never took revenge because of the slippery slope, I don’t think that is still true. There are so many ways she can hurt her. I wonder if Emma will continue the bullying. Also found out Shadowstalker is a multiple murder and a pretty screwed up individual.
The end of the chapter suggests that Emma recognizes Taylor’s personality changes, and won’t continue with the bullying. Also, I’d say we already knew all those things about Shadow Stalker from her interlude. Why take revenge on Emma, though? She’s already won.
She still hurt her more than anyone else ever has, and Taylor IS a villain now who had to respond to violence with violence. Plus Taylor is a person who didn’t want to let nazis get killed by bitch or seriously hurt ABB member who threatened to shoot a kid, yet she hit Emma in the face because she hated her so much. Granted Taylor is different than she used to. So I think Taylor is mature enough to ignore her unless she starts something. But Taylor will finish it now, one way or another.
See my longer post–she’s already finished it.
Don on March 19, 2013 at 00:54 said:
Nah. She punched Emma because her life was falling apart, every day was filled with new indignities and new tortures, and Emma was at the center of it all. It’s the sense of helplessness that caused her to lash out.
Emma is no longer at the center of it all. She’s not even a minor gravitational body. So, no need to punch her.
Now that I think about it, Emma will probably start picking on someone else, but Taylor, with her Chronic Hero Syndrome, will step in. The fact that a villain is the first to stop an injustice, not a hero like the Wards, will not be lost on those in the know.
I think it will lead to a friendship with the heroes in the school, the ones who also stand up for others. Taylor will probably figure out who they are, but I doubt most of them would connect the good Samaritan Taylor to the conquering supervillain Skitter.
They’ll all be going to the same school? Worm is about to change from apocalyptic super-drama into a high school comedy – with superpowers!
Individuo on March 19, 2013 at 10:19 said:
Clockbloker: High Five…..
aww shit, i need to see that happen in cannon!
Yog on March 19, 2013 at 02:33 said:
You know, I can see Wards both recognizing and being friendly, or at least respectful to Taylor in school (and considering it a “neutral ground”). She earned a lot of respect during Echidna situation (and, if Armsmaster’s treachery got disclosed, from that too).
Also, you know, if Emma brags about what she did to Taylor (or just mentions it) together with Sophia…
Some of the wards may be smart enough to recognize trigger event for what it is. I wonder, what would they do to someone who pushed a person into a trigger situation? This has to trigger (heh!) all sorts of berserk buttons.
But yes, Taylor being friends / respected acquaintances with the Wards would be hilarious.
Illise Montoya on March 19, 2013 at 10:58 said:
I couldn’t really see the Wards as being respectful of Skitter, even in a grudging way. Now maybe some of them can, after all that’s happened, but they’d still be a minority. Just because of what happened in the aftermath, all that was revealed I suppose it’s possible. They really clung to their notions of morality being hard edged and easily defined. If they confess anything else, after what they sacrificed, they’d lose something of themselves. Some of them have already.
throwaawy on March 19, 2013 at 11:06 said:
lets not forget the most important thing, however. Taylor wears glasses.
*walking down the hall when he sees skitter from the back*
Clockblocker: that girl… That height! That build!
Taylor: *turns towards her locker, bringing glasses into view*
Clock: oh… Never mind. What was I thinking?
ClarkKenting in full effect! Her disguise is PERFECT
colm on March 19, 2013 at 02:46 said:
given the state of the town Taylor having a knife isn’t really out of place
I think that detail was to give more details that point to the fact that skitter stayed in the city. It shows that she is now prepared to deal with threats, where she wasn’t before at all.
See, but how could Taylor go back to school? She’s 16 and has other options doesn’t she? Or if that’s still unavailable because the city is still recovering, why not just do her own thing? I bet they’ll be plenty of others still doing the same. She has her territory to run, and i doubt she’d be eager to go back. Is her identity really at risk if she doesn’t? Just because Greg GUESSED that she was Skitter?
Jguy on March 19, 2013 at 00:31 said:
Damn you Wildbow for taking someone I absolutely loathed and was glad was gone and making her sympathetic and fleshed out. I was happy in my hatred of her!
😦 So was I. We need at last one antagonist in this story who isn’t on the level of screwed-upness that they’ll cause the apocalypse JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS, but we can still solidly hate. I stand by my last review, though; this was interesting.
Don’t worry. We still have Cauldron, Contessa, and Doctor Mother for that level of antagonist. And Jack Slash and Bonesaw are still around, too! You’ll get your fill of black morality.
Gnarker on March 19, 2013 at 01:45 said:
We’ve got Shadow Stalker too.
riceraider on March 19, 2013 at 04:09 said:
I disagree with you on that. If you read into her story between the lines you can see just how messed up her family is. If I recall you only ever see her mother, and she and her entire family from the small bit you see them aren’t, ahh, well adjusted people.
I recall that it wasn’t her mother. It was her step mother who had somehow ended up taking care of her.
I missed that. I do that sometimes.
Maybe I wasn’t being specific enough. We need one who’s not a cape. Or an organization that involves capes. Or anything to do with capes. One movie I’ve seen has a mother as the major antagonist, and the daughter as Emma level. Okay, it’s realistic fiction, so not a perfect example, but you guys get the idea. Conflicts on every level are good, which is why I liked the whole bullying thing to begin with. It eased us into the story, gave us background and an origin story, and, in keeping with the typical Worm, didn’t given Taylor a break.
I’m still happy in my hatred of her, I feel no sympathy for her at all. At least now we see what she is in the dark – a loser.
True. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever looked forward to a next chapter this much. Though I have been waiting for updates for only a few months.
An emotional weakling who has to hurt someone to make her feel better about herself. Whats worse is that the only person she could really hurt was her best friend, because she knew just what to say and do. Predator/Prey my ass.
Honestly, if she hadn’t kept bring the mom into this, I could have let it go a little. But she knew the one thing that broke Taylor was her mom, ditched her for moping slightly after her mom died and as a pretty clear sign of trauma (which she refused to see a psychiatrist for), and then climbed up the social ladder on her best friend’s head. You know, I don’t really sympathize with her, but I do understand her, now.
Sarah on March 19, 2013 at 09:02 said:
Agreed! While its great to have a clear insight into the way Emma works I have absolutely no sympathy for her. I hope she’s hurtling towards some kind of karmic end or at the very least we get to see her reaction when she realises she inadvertently started her former best friend onto the road that leads to her becoming one of the most feared villains in town.
In my fantasies, Sarah, it starts with Emma telling the wards about pushing Taylor into the locker, has her point Taylor out in the crowd, and gets better from there.
Yes, by allowing us to understand and sympathize with Emma, Wildbow has
truly highlighted how pathetic and despicable she is. Well done.
Yeah. I really don’t have much sympathy for her either.
I agree. It is nice to see her backstory but what happened to her does not come close to excusing her behavior towards her friend. Worse is that she actually acknowledges that several times and consciously chooses to ignore that little sense of what is right and wrong. She is as much a monster to me as Bonesaw. At least Bonesaw seems to have the benefit of being genuinely batshit insane while Emma is just an evil person with a sad backstory. It’s like finding out the Joker was beaten by a clown as a kid. You feel bad for the child but you still can’t forgive, redeem or stop hating the adult pyscho.
Syphon on December 1, 2013 at 19:04 said:
She earned no sympathy from me. First time I was actually hoping a character would actually get raped.
Jim on December 13, 2013 at 14:02 said:
Umm, this was the event that turned her into a nasty person. Minority rrepoert much?
bundle on January 7, 2015 at 23:03 said:
dude, not cool. using sex as punishment, as a weapon, is fucked up. no one, not even rapists, deserves to get raped.
I agree with the others. I still hate her. Her backstory is sad but there was nothing there that made me feel more sympathetic to her. Teens experience traumas all the time and most don’t turn out psychopathic and evil because of it. Worse is that she acknowledges that she understands she’s crossed the line several times and actively turns away from it. I still think she deserves an awful fate on the level of what happened to Cherish.
This, ladies and gentlemen was Taylor winning. The story must continue, but when this is put into an e-book format, this should definitely be the end of one of the books. It is simply liquid success and I love it.
“There were other colors, predoninantly black”
It’s the end of book 19 lol.
Arc 19 not Book 19 Jack. I think that Wildbow has stated that he will be coalescing certain books together when Worm goes E-Book.
I just finished playing Tombraider, and the last line of the story matches the last line in the game. A survivor is born. Which fits Taylor very well. She is hard to kill.
Like a Goddamn cockroach.
Asmora on March 19, 2013 at 19:13 said:
Tombraider -> Tom braider -> one who braids toms -> angry, resentful cats with braided fur -> fanged death machines
Be careful with compounding, kids. It can create fanged death machines.
Always remember, a group of cats will TPK a first level party of adventurers nine times out of ten.
Pinkhair on March 19, 2013 at 00:39 said:
Poor Emma, Taylor can always use more minions. Though the disloyal ones tend to not last long.
“didn’t touch bag of expensive” Missing word.
“They werecuffed together,” missing space.
Oh yes, and forgot to mention how interesting that Emma was threatened by the girl who later became Taylor’s disloyal minion herself.
Don’t even joke about that. Wildbow might get ideas. How am I supposed to read an awesome horribly deserved fate worse than death for Emma when she is Taylor’s minion?
Honestly, that would be the perfect punishment if it wasn’t so out of character for Taylor. “Emma, my shoes need polishing. Emma, the spiders are feeling lonely: go pet them. Little kids, can you tell me what Emma is doing wrong with her chores?”
Hilarious.
mc2rpg on March 19, 2013 at 00:42 said:
I always like it when antagonistic characters are humanized. Interesting characters are never evil just to be evil, so finding out what happened with Emma was very nice.
I still really hope Greg and Emma don’t see Taylor at Arcadia though. Stay a warlord Taylor, school is for chumps!
Same. Some of the best fanfiction I’ve ever read we’re two “humanizations” , let’s call it, of two Harry Potter characters.
As a Harry Potter fanfic reader myself, I have a sneaking suspicion I might know at least one of those fanfictions you’re talking about. Which two are they?
Judas by Laora and Bright the Day by cupid-painted-blind. I like Judas more, though. I have great respect for the Harry Potter fandom, as it holds the best love story I’ve ever read, and I can count the number of love stories I’ve thought were good on one hand. Tom RiddleXHermionie, if you can believe it.
Huh. Didn’t expect that, though I have read Judas. I thought it would be “Cast a Long Shadow, We All Meet in the End” by Elizabeth Culmer. That one fits a little better with this chapter of Worm; it deals with Petunia Dursley, who matches up to Emma better than Peter Pettigrew, Bellatrix Lestrange, or Voldemort himself.
And to be honest, I’m frankly a bit disturbed by RiddleXHermione.
Just read the story you mentioned. Very good. I think you misunderstood me, though. I said they were “humanizations”, and therefore the same genre, not that they were especially relevant to Emma.
Another one I forgot to say was “Transfiguring Salt”, by random smilie.
And honestly, the author pulls it off. Big time. It’s “Tied for Last”, by Speechwriter, if you want to check it out.
If anyone on here wants to send me a PM if they have a fanfic account, I’m Little Dragon GIrl. Don’t ask why I have that name, I’ve been meaning to change it.
My, this has gotten seriously off topic.
Well, if Taylor, who at least THINKS that the wards know her unmasked face, avoids the school Greg might still try to tell Emma who Taylor is…
Why. Find a way to justify that against what we know of the two characters. He has no reason to tell someone that has been harassing Taylor that information, especially when you reread 2.3 and see how he was being treated like crap as well. He might let something slip, but I can’t come up with a reason to tell Emma specifically just because Taylor isn’t there.
No good reason, perhaps. Plenty of very bad ones.
Couldn’t help but think of this song. No prize to anyone who guesses it.
I would personally prefer this song, though it is not quite such fine art as yours. The message really resonates with me, and if I had remembered the song then it would have worked fantastic for dealing with Coil after Taylor escaped his ambush.
I get what you’re saying and I’m assuming that you like most of us are out of school.
But Taylor isn’t. She’s only been missing school for a couple months and all in all she’s still, a high-school student. As such it has an importance to her that most of us have left behind and forgotten about.
This is directed at The Ant in part, but it’s also a general comment. This interlude essentially completes the circle: Taylor and Lisa/Sarah are basically “good” versions of Emma and Sophia.
Lisa let one event, her brother’s suicide, define much of her life from that point on. She altered her status relative to the rest of the world (by becoming a villain), just as Emma did. But instead of lashing out at what she perceived to be her own failings, she tried to make up for them by being a better person–helping Taylor.
Taylor, like Sophia, gave Lisa direction an opportunity to “redeem herself.” But Sophia used that opportunity to manipulate Emma, to help Emma turn herself into a mean, vicious, vindictive person. When she’d finished, Sophia herself was cast aside, because the false redemption she offered was ultimately destructive, and something of a Pyrrhic victory.
Taylor, though? She did the most compassionate thing possible: she brought Lisa in. Instead of letting Lisa continue along her present course after Taylor had served her purpose, she approached her as one human being to another. And they’re both stronger for it.
This right here…*this* is Taylor winning. Quietly demonstrating that she is a better, more compassionate person. How does Emma see her? Out in the world, laughing, baring her midriff–physically and emotionally vulnerable. But who’s happy in that situation? Who’s secure?
Exactly. It’s a repudiation of the binary, authoritarian philosophy espoused by Sophia and Emma. This is the *same* binary philosophy (predators and prey, good and evil) that Taylor rejects as Skitter. And Emma also recognized that life was better in Brockton Bay with the villains running things. Taylor has “won” on every possible level.
Man, this is basically the happiest ending possible. Fantastic.
Taylor is even more financially secure. *And* she kicked the ass of the same person who brutalized Emma. Things pretty much can’t get better from a true revenge standpoint. Keep on living well, Taylor. You deserve it.
That is not really revenge though. I agree with pretty much everything you said in how much better Taylor is for making different choices. But I can’t help it, I want her to take her villainous REVENGE! (Insert Evil Laughter here!)
If she takes that kind of revenge how is she any better than the characters she despises? It would be a major step back for her as a character.
Oh I know that, I was merely remarking on common villain cliches. Hobbes is pretty much right in that she really is too good of a person to really do anything. She will defend herself now though. I just want her to embrace her dark side a little. She is the queen of the underworld now, and she has to project an image of smart, fair, and not to be fucked with. Just one evil laugh, maybe making an example of the people who are bothering Parian by scaring the piss out of them.
The Sandman on March 19, 2013 at 01:17 said:
The problem with Skitter actively embracing her dark side is that a big part of how scary she is comes from the fact that she has no idea how scary she is and she acts accordingly.
I wouldn’t say that. Sierra’s interlude shows she pretty much is scary due to her power, and actions. Acting like a normal, rational, person while covered in cockroaches and bees makes her creepy. Look at Flechette’s interview with Jessica shows that. It makes you wonder what the people working under her must think of her.
Psh, better and worse people? Almost sounds binary there. She could take revenge for a few reasons. 1. Emma deserves it, 2. Emma REALLY deserves it, 3. It might make her feel a lot better (if not, perhaps a reason not to do it), and 4. It would be just.
I’m serious about 4 too. Emma deserves at least part of the blame for what has happened within the scope of Taylor’s evil actions. I didn’t say all, mc2, I said part. Maybe someone else would have caused Taylor’s trigger event and then any villainous actions Taylor took due to having power would be partially their fault, but nope. Emma played a part in Taylor having such a horrible day the universe itself recognized it, the kind of trauma that leaves people screwed up for life.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it was supposedly named after Romulus.
Hydrargentium on March 19, 2013 at 14:30 said:
@PG: Everything’s binary if you draw a line down the middle of it.
Everything? Not only half of everything with the other half not being binary?
Mwahaha
Bobby on March 19, 2013 at 05:35 said:
[quote]*And* she kicked the ass of the same person who brutalized Emma. Things pretty much can’t get better from a true revenge standpoint.[/quote]
You can only get revenge for wrongdoings. There’s a fundamental division between the trauma Emma lived, where she was a victim, and the way she dealt with this trauma, where she actually was to blame. If Taylor had turned into a complete bitch, would Emma have been justified in bringing up her mother’s death? No, she wouldn’t.
Taylor beating up Emma’s aggressor is interesting to note, but seeing it as a victory of Taylor over Emma or as making one of them better than the other makes me deeply uncomfortable. Those were different situations.
Anyway, I realize that was probably just a throwaway comment, but I still felt this needed to be said. I pretty much agree with everything you said except for that one sentence.
Why do I feel that if Wildbow did an interlude from the POV of the ABB girl, we’d all end up feeling sorry for her, too…
When you put it like that, I feel like I should play it safe and let the story end here, not risk taking it to the end of the final book as I have it (loosely – never set in stone) envisioned.
Don’t be silly 😦
…you are a cruel, cruel man.
Is this only now becoming clear? I thought I would’ve established this around the time I did something horrible to a sympathetic character for the 100th time.
It is official. The Wormverse has a cruel, and evil god.
Yeah, it is called the Simurgh. Sorry Wildbow, you can’t be the god when the Simurgh already knows what you are typing in advance and runs off to ruin all the good things you have planned.
Reveen on March 19, 2013 at 01:17 said:
See what you almost did Hobbes? You are the worst.
I suppose the counterargument would be that ending it here is a cop-out, because this doesn’t fit with the win some lose some, bittersweet tone of the story. That said, I’d be okay with you ending it here.
Hm. The *other* counterargument would be that even if it’s perfect from a characterization perspective, the ending is too abrupt. Of course, the danger in resolving a lot of the *plot* loose ends is that you end up with ending fatigue, because this interlude is the climax of Taylor’s development (in a way) for all the reasons I mentioned.
If I were you, I might take time to resolve the rest of the plot first, delaying the start of school, and then have this at the end. Or, you could just end it here. It depends on where you want to go with it from a storytelling perspective.
WyldCard4 on March 19, 2013 at 02:19 said:
You know, I would be happy with this.
Then again, I would have been happy if the story ended with Taylor being eaten by Noelle, so listening to me is probably not the best course of action.
frozen chicken on March 19, 2013 at 06:39 said:
*Hits Wyldcard with a wet fish.*
That said, I can see the sense in calling this interlude a decent ending point. It comes full-circle, is up-beat without being so upbeat it goes against the tone of Worm (and isn’t that a terrible statement?), and solves the very FIRST plot thread. That said, it really is a fairly incomplete resolution. Not only in that there are more plot threads and more potential plot threads to explore, but just because this isn’t a true resolution. It’s resolved from the point of view of others, and Skitter is visibly in a good place right now, but that doesn’t mean that her story and issues are actually done. The battle isn’t over ’til the wounds are healed, if you follow.
No matter the reasoning, I’m pretty sure I would have my trigger event if you ended here.
…okay, really, really bad. But somewhat justified. Please, don’t scare me like this.
If I’d thought about it, and if I were more interested in writing -just- Wormverse fiction, I might have done this slightly differently.
In a way, I’m referring to the approach I took when I wrote the early Wormverse-drafts I titled TELUTTT. (I’ve brought this up before, in this comment thread).
I quote:
‘TELUTTT: Each draft featured rotating viewpoints attempting to incorporate everyone I’d added into the story by that point in one overarching story. First draft focused heavily on Faultline, introduced Scion, Legend, Narwhal, Hero, Alexandria and a major heroine named Mary Sue. Introduced Faultline’s crew, which was composed of Newter, Slug (Gregor), Spitfire and a scandanavian girl with Genesis’ power. Later drafts introduced Endbringers, Dauntless, and Cauldron.’
It was a basically a catch-all, but what I mean is that maybe, if I’d planned it out more and took a different tack, I might have led readers to expect more of a conclusion, stopped here. Picked up another story, weaving it in (or weaving it in from the first place; I called this site parahumans.wordpress.com because that was the goal in its early conception).
Then when all that’s said and done, all the individual story threads laid out, drawing to a point herabouts, moving on to the next set of story arcs.
That said, too major a reconstruction to even consider, and I’m eagerterrified to move on to the next work.
This can’t be the ending, really. It’s just the calm before the storm.
All y’all think that this could be the ending are missing all the signs. All this stuff up to now is still just the build up. Now, right now, coming up ABSOLUTELY NEXT… that’s a little thing I like to call “the massive third act”.
Really, you really really really ain’t seen nothin’ yet. (To paraphrase one of Wildbow’s and my fellow Canucks.)
Okay, Wildbow. Give’er.
It does make a tighter ending then the last ending for an individual book, but only if you opened the book with a scene from emma’s point of view, leaving town.
RazorSmile on March 19, 2013 at 14:48 said:
Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare.
Very good interpretation of events. Interpretation isn’t the word I’m looking for but I can’t think of the right one at the moment sadly. Anyway, I really like that concept.
“what’s the world? One thing and another?” – should be “what’s the word?”
We finally get to read something we’ve been asking for for a long, long time. Thank you so much, Wildbow!
As I expected, Emma’s situation is a lot more complicated than just making a cooler friend. It really shows the world of grays we’ve come to expect from Worm. We see her second guessing her decisions, but then making the wrong ones just to not feel like the weak person she thought she was. We readers get to see into her mind as she goes through a sort of Anakin Skywalker transformation, picking up a new philosophy on the world from a source they definitely should not have taken it from.
Thing is, neither Emma nor Sophia realized that by torturing Taylor so much, they made her the strongest survivor of their philosophy. Oh the irony.
With Sophia out of the picture, how will Emma’s school life go? She’s apparently still out to be the queen of the school, but is she really stupid enough to try to re-ingratiate herself with Taylor?
Another thought: the fact that the Mr. Barnes apparently supported Shadow Stalker in joining the Wards to avoid jail, would the family take a hit to their reputation considering she’s now in jail? And wouldn’t that closeness make Sophia’s identity rather easy for the public to spot?
I doubt that it would hurt their reputation much. Supporting someone who saved your daughter from grievous physical harm is understandable, and putting her on the Wards is not an obviously bad idea. Things could have turned out very differently from the PRT’s perspective. Emma may have known better, but people rarely blame teenagers for this kind of thing.
Mr. Walaa on March 19, 2013 at 00:48 said:
Ok I have always wondered how Emma’s story would be told. What was the catalyst behind the 180 from friend to enemy. i must say as usually Wild it is well written and insightful.
Now that being said I’m looking forward for Emma to get her comeuppance. I know there is gonna be some twist and turn but don’t spoil it for me 🙂 I’m a big fan of payback and karma.
You can look at the world as a… what’s the world? – I believe the second world is supposed to be ‘word’.
Honestly I still the chances of Taylor going to the school, for a few days at least, are still about 50/50. On the one hand, she has a lot of duties what with being a Warlord and all but on the other hand, there seems to have been a little timeskip so and things have stabilized so she might have extra time to give it a shot.
Have to agree. My guess is she goes for a little while and realizes she doesn’t belong there anymore. Then she gets her GED and takes an online course in business management. She has to learn how to properly manage a city afterall. Though she could have been practicing her multi-tasking. I could see a few bug clones managing territory while she reads in class.
Speaking of bugs, and multi-tasking, and reading, I wonder if Taylor will ever figure out how to read using her bugs. ‘Cause, really, if she did, she could, conceivably, read hundreds of books at the same time, and integrate all the data as is she was only reading a single one.
How cool would that be?
Maybe if she teaches herself Braille.
I can’t really see Taylor going back to school to play the Degrassi game again. But I can easily see her going in part time for classes she’s actually interested in or are actually useful and take exams or something for the rest of the credits, if for no other reason than to kick back and learn some stuff she can’t learn by beating the shit out of skinheads.
She ought to get some education or training in, or just start reading again. Atleast to work out her brain so she doesn’t become a thug consumed by the fight.
+1 for the Canuck TV reference!
Scrambles on March 19, 2013 at 00:50 said:
This is one of the chapters that people have been asking for for a while now, and Wildbow, you delivered 😀
For most of the chapter I had tangible feeling of disgust at Emma. For most of the story, I’ve been of the opinion that Emma deserves something bad to happen to her. But as of the end of this chapter, I’m of the opinion that she’s already gotten what she deserved.
Also, it is always gratifying to see someone who knew Taylor from the start notice how much she’s changed.
And bravo for getting some of us to feel pity for a character we’ve loathed for so long.
Next up, Psycho Gecko gives us his suggestions for better ways the ABB could have traumatized Emma.
Leave her alone.
Not in the nice way, just leave her somewhere alone, like an island no one ever goes to. See, a person who proclaims themselves stronger than other people often runs into one tiny problem. They need people more. I know people like that. You press them and they’ll tell you how you’re weaker than them, not as good at being a person. And then it turns out they define the end goal of life as how much money they make, how many people they’ve slept with, or the fact that they can talk to a stranger on a telephone without sounding like an idiot.
Except when you leave them alone, they are an empty vessel. Maybe the’ll watch TV or something else that shallowly entertains themselves, but in the end they’ll NEED a person. They desperately need someone else to talk to. I think they lack something, some inner imagination or way of thinking that helps people be an individual person.
If you pan out a little bit, look at where they excel again. Their work, where they supposedly do so much better than you? Yeah, they’d be nothing without someone under them. In fact, most of their work is done by someone else. Maybe some of them even realize this and get overly defensive, as if to justify the fact that they are worth less than their supposed underlings.
It all begins to fill in, doesn’t it? The people they’ve dated or had as friends didn’t mean anything. Interchangeable. Those people, if they have any kind of intelligence, will know it, so these supposed winners at life will be stuck with only those who need something from them. People much like them, actually.
And, of course, putting yourself above other people means you need those supposedly “lower” people, whether your claims are based on class, race, sexuality, gender, or high school social standing.
So no, I’d put her alone somewhere for a long time so she can get properly acquainted with herself. Every dirty flaw.
Heh..hehehehahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! *lightning strikes*
That felt good, now I need to go shove something up my ass for fun.
Don’t we all need people to some degree, though?
Yes. But if we’re mentally healthy, we don’t need constant validation from others once we reach adulthood.
People like Taylor can manage on a desert island. They won’t necessarily enjoy the loneliness, but they can still find things they value or enjoy doing without needing somebody else’s reactions to give them a sense of worth.
People like Emma or Sophia? They’ll snap. Probably quickly. Because they define themselves completely around the reactions they get from other people, and have nothing they do just for themselves beyond fulfilling unthinking biological needs. Without anybody else around, they lack the ability to feel anything, to want anything, to do anything, because for all intents and purposes they don’t exist as anything other than a meat puppet that echoes their surroundings.
Realizing that you’re an empty void where a person should be is not generally what one might call a fun experience.
Dude, lack of human interaction will drive anyone crazy. It’s why prolonged solitary is considered inhumane punishment.
Granted, a desert island wouldn’t be quite as stifling, but it’s still no good for the mental health. And I can’t see Taylor taming a leopard.
Indeed. How can you prove yourself the strongest if there’s nobody to be weaker than you?
Well put, Scrambles. You’ve just stumbles onto the foundation of a lot of societal problems. Why did this person support (insert discriminatory policy or law here)? Because it made them feel like they were a little better than another person, even if the distinction was trivial.
No desert island, put her in the bird cage. Let her live in a world where her philosophy is true. You can always put her in solitary, if they have it. The birdcage doesn’t seem that big if it is only holding 600 prisoners at most.
I like having people laugh at my jokes.
However, most of my comedy is written because I find it funny. Sometimes that means puns, sometimes bad jokes, sometimes intelligent parody, and sometimes it involves farts and dicks.
Not like I’m saying I’m the predator to y’all’s prey. I’m just the king of my world and sometimes I show that by doublecrossing the line.
King of the world? Umm, if you’re on a cruiseliner right now, you might want to think about your deboarding options…
Especially seeing as it’s YOU who’s on it.
King of my world. Big difference. Think Mythbusters or Kevin Norton.
And Wildbow’s all like.
“You guys want to see Taylor take revenge on Emma? Yeah, I’ll see about that.”
I really hope she doesn’t personally, it would blast Taylor’s personal development back into the stone age. That would seem like such a petty thing after all that’s happen and I think Taylor’s grown a lot in terms of maturity for that. Emma, by contrast seems like she’s taken Sophia’s philosophy and turn it into something (even more) childish. It would be like an adult taking revenge on a child at this point.
I don’t know if it’s intentional, but I really like Shadowstalker as a sort of mini-deconstruction of the grim and gritty, dark age of comics anti-hero. The sorts of philosophies and attitudes that go into that sort of character are pretty childish and stupid when put into a universe that’s genuinely realistic, and not GRIMDARK realistic.
I’m glad we got to see Taylor and Danny reconnected so we don’t go through the ultra-awkward initial meeting again. But it’s still gonna get awkward when he finds out about Brian. Who I’m assuming made it out okay considering Taylor’s here and not dealing with that.
He teased her about Brian when she first brought them up, so I don’t think he will care. Forget Emma, I want to know more about Sophia. What is going through her head after basically becoming the one thing she despised, a victim? If Wildbow can redeem Armsmaster in my eyes, he might just redeem her. Any chance she will become a better person?
He’ll care once he figures out why both Taylor and Brian looked embarrassed when they were playing Zork and the line “It is pitch-dark. You may be eaten by a grue” came up.
I see what you did there. It was still a bit unclear though whether or not Taylor is still a virgin after her night with Brian.
Alathon on March 19, 2013 at 01:37 said:
Taylor has personally developed into a first rate Supervillain. No vengeance, perhaps, but I suspect some stern justice is in the offing. Speaking openly and honestly about what Emma got up to at Winslow would be enough. I could also see Taylor allowing a cautionary ostracism of ‘that girl who messed with Skitter before she triggered’ to persist, when it would take only a few words from her to let others breathe freely around Emma.
Forgiveness may be divine, but Emma’s cowardice, her willingness to throw a friend to the wolves when the going got tough, cries out to be given answer.
Hear! Hear! or Here! Here! I’m not sure which is the right way to say it.
That assumes that Taylor’s going to actually commit to being a supervillain. Now that she’s out of the life or death pressure cooker it remains to be seen whether she’s going to continue operating the same way she been over the last few weeks.
It helps that the heroes will probably lay off somewhat, considering that the Undersiders have become a stable entity with interests in the wellbeing of the city.
I think when Taylor committed to joining the Undersiders during that chat with Tattletale by the endbringer memorial, it was about a lot more than just Dinah. Dinah was a focus and an obsession, but Taylor has an ideological point to prove as well. Not entirely sure what, maybe to prove to the world that it’s assumptions about ‘villains’ and ‘heroes’ are completely bogus, and to spite the system by succeeding where it failed and stealing its authority in the process. Or perhaps to accrue enough power to fix thingson an even larger scale, since it sure as hell looks like nobody else can be arsed to do it.
I do not think that the labels of hero and villain are /completely/ bogus. I think we can all agree that the Slaughterhouse 9 are villains, after all. However, the line between the Undersiders and the Wards especially does seem to be blurred sometimes.
anonymus on March 19, 2013 at 18:06 said:
Slaughterhouse 9 are not called villans they are reffered to as monsters (much much worse)
esran on March 19, 2013 at 01:07 said:
to me this doesnt even begin to excuse emmas actions, mainly because i expected something like this. it does make me hate shadow stalker slightly more. im still looking forward to someone kicking emmas ass, and have been since the comment about taylors mom.
First reaction: OOOHHHH YEAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
I guessed that it was Sophia who corrupted Emma. But this makes much more sense than anything I imagined.
The hint that Sophia knew that Skitter was Taylor was nice.
But how could she find out? Plus she is a vindictive, bitch. Why keep such a secret to yourself when it could greatly inconvenience her life? Revenge doesn’t really fit, because Regent made it very clear to her what would happen if she came back to town.
How she found out: Random Lurker pointed out that Regent’s last words to Sophia were a pretty big clue.
Why she wouldn’t tell: Three reasons. First, outing Skitter wouldn’t get her out of prison before the world is scheduled to end. Second, the way Emma was treating her, she probably would rather have the pleasure of knowing that Emma was cruising for a fall. Third, she had a kind of sneaky admiration for Skitter before she learned that Skitter was actually Taylor — and if *Sophia* triggered from being abused, turned that from weakness to strength, she would have every reason to empathize more with hella-strong uber-survivor Skitter than … well, *sorta*-survivor Emma.
Except Regent’s last words could easily apply to Grue and Skitter (as in, not Taylor). Shadow Stalker tried to murder both of them.
But the WAY Regent said it was almost a denial that he was talking about Grue. Not exactly definitive evidence, but enough for Sophia to start thinking. After all, Regent’s not the type to stand up for Grue’s sake, since Grue could do things himself. Kinda like helping would be killstealing. Sophia would realize that Regent would be doing this so secretively for other reasons, especially with Skitter’s reactions and considering all the things Regent did when controlling her, regarding Emma and Taylor.
Ah, Emma. There’s been a lot of large talk behind your back. I fear your triumphant return to Brockton Bay society may be marred by some measure of misfortune.
*There’s more than one way to skin a joke.*
It is pitch-dark. Emma may be eaten by a Grue.
Alex Emm on March 19, 2013 at 05:30 said:
That’s Abhorror-ible.
Why do I see that being said in one of those cold, cruel, snarky British accents?
Truth be told I imagined it in Ian McKellan’s voice, the one he used for Magneto. I suppose with the alliteration, V would work too.
Those two or the guy who played Snape. I could see Snape saying that.
hello, just caught up to the present, and what a place to catch up 🙂 I think it would almost be more of a revenge if Skitter ended up saving Emma’s life, in a slightly more dignified way than Shadow Stalker did. Also, I have no idea how her secret identity’s supposed to stay secret now, wasn’t her mask off for about half of the Echidna fight? I’d love to see the heroes and villains socializing at school, fully aware of the identities of the others, and also I want Clockblocker on Skitter’s side, personal request.
Glad you’re caught up, nice to meet you.
It’s always nice when a reader catches up at just the right moment, at one of the more awesome chapters/interludes or at a nice denouement point.
🙂 ikr? You do not make it easy to catch up btw, only made it this far with the aid of a little finals-week procrastination
Now you’re in trouble. You have to put up with the waiting and with us. Please stay in the comments section. We enjoy fresh blood and our special guests down here. Let’s get to know you better.
xdrngy, have you ever been in a cockpit before? Have you ever seen a grown man naked? Ever hung around a gymnasium? Do you like movies about gladiators? Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
PG, surely you’re joking.
I’m not joking, and don’t rate me PG.
So your name’s Shirley?
My name is surely something. Haven’t decided on an adjective yet.
yes, yes, yes, yes, no, though I would like to go to turkey. I’m glad for the waiting, I got practically no work done for the month and a half I was stuck reading this thing
Welcome to the party. I think Clockblocker pretty much is on Skitter’s side. He always had a rebel streak, admits in Jessica’s interlude that he feels bound by all of the rules, saw that she really isn’t an evil person, and she saved the wards twice. I honestly don’t think he would spill the beans if he found out.
I’m kinda hoping clockblocker joins the undersiders, seeing as the undersiders have lost shatterbird, and he and skitter already have powerful synergy. Not to mention clockie’s disregard of authority.
I do want some new blood. Maybe a ward, a case 53, or they go bust out a useful member from the asylum.
“Okay, Tattletale, we’ve got a new challenge for you. We would find it … pleasing if the following individual were to find herself becoming a valued member of society.”
*hands over Garotte’s file*
Ha, I wasnt the only one who immediately thought of garrote!
Garrote is extremely sad, but unless they can give her oliver’s power, I don’t think they can help her too much. Though Taylor probably would have broken in a month later if she had some kind of healing ability. I hate to say it, but I don’t think she would really be that useful. She is strong, and I’m assuming tough but they have plenty of Brutes with Bitch’s dogs. She also seems rather timid like Sundancer and Parian. What do the undersiders need? Something that has good synergy with at least some of their powers and fills a hole in their team. I’m thinking a Tinker, healer, or breaker.
My guess is we’ll see Chariot joining them, or at least being employed by them. They need a Tinker more than anything.
I agree, a tinker would be beneficial, however I dont see chariot joining them, as his focus was described as movement based creations, and the undersiders already have adequate transportation with atlas and bitch’s dogs. I nominate dragon joining the undersiders!
Yeah, a bunch of people saw her face during the last arch, or at least her clones’ faces, which very well might be enough. Also possibly when shatterbird hit.
Saintsant on March 19, 2013 at 01:26 said:
“and I’ve found herself becoming the type of person”
Should be “myself,” given that it’s an aside. All in all, this is… interesting. Not my favorite interlude ever, but it sets the tone for what seems like an arc more focused on Taylor as a person than Skitter. Also, it’s a bit of a “Take that!” to all the people who’ve been advocating revenge on Emma; nobody’s a villain in their own mind, everyone has justifications, and so on… More to the point, she doesn’t need to. The best revenge is living well, and this is an excellent demonstration of that.
Nobody is a villain in their own mind- but if you can only convince yourself you aren’t a villain by first convincing yourself that there’s no such thing as a villain… you ought to be able to recognize that that doesn’t say much to support your choices.
Charlie on March 19, 2013 at 01:28 said:
“and I’ve found herself becoming the type of person who could genuinely laugh at something like this.”
Should be ‘myself’
Hah! I ninja’d you by two minutes.
Damn! While I was reading the comments to make sure I hadn’t been ninja’d! IRONYYYYY
Also, great chapter. It’s interesting to see the process behind Emma abandoning Taylor. Although I have no sympathy for her (I think this is a character flaw, I very rarely feel any sympathy for villains who turn out to have trauma behind it all, it’s as if they’re too much in moral debt for it to count. Or something.)
As for Shadow Stalker, she reminds me of something said about the villain in a Christopher Stasheff book: “She’d always had a philosophy that the strongest rule. It had never occurred to her that she might not always be the strongest.”
Syroc on March 19, 2013 at 01:29 said:
This might be me having missed a detail or misremembering completely, but wasn’t Sophia in juvie before the S9 arc started? How would she know that the world ends in two years? Unless someone told her before she went. Or she wasn’t sent just yet.
Either way, I really don’t mind. I like the insight into Emma’s character given here: she’s a lot more understandable and relatable. Still a bitch, of course, but you can see the steps that took her there.
Or word got around to her after, via. one of the people she’s still in contact with.
Ah, figured it was something like that. It just seemed a bit weird to me.
Who would she still be in contact with, though? My impression was that no one on the Wards liked her all that much.
I could imagine Vista talking to her.
Really? I thought they were was a pretty mutual dislike between them after the wards arc. I’d have thought it would be Clockblocker, considering he kinda had a crush on her.
@Syroc: I didn’t say she’d be doing it for pleasure – I’m saying she’s the kind of person who might do it out of obligation.
Could be Clockblocker, I suppose, but I have a harder time seeing it. Pretty sure “she’s hot” has less effect on your actions when she’s not there.
Hmm, you got a point there. She was kind of trying to become the heart of the team last time we got some focus on her.
Actually, the prior update has a counter argument: when Vista lists people she lost, she lists Glory Girl but not Shadow Stalker.
I assumed she made new ‘friends’ in juvie who told her. I’m guessing the news has spread pretty far by now.
Indigo on March 19, 2013 at 01:34 said:
I understand Emma better now and if anything hate her even more for it.
Mazzon on March 19, 2013 at 07:50 said:
Seconded. The whole pattern of “I had a traumatic experience, so now I’m entitled to being a shitty person” feels like an insult to everyone who ever had bad stuff happen to them but still manage to be decent people.
thirded. She even recognized she was becoming a horrible person, and decided to take the easy path.
so… if the heberts have a new car… does that mean the economy got jumpstarted back up THAT fast?
…or has taylor confessed to her father about her new source of income?
btw i didn’t mention this in my last post but… (2nd) post here, just got pointed this way last week. and i had a sleepless weekend.
love the story. dont eat me please.
Sounds like there might have been a bit of a time-skip between now and the end of arc nineteen.
Well, Skitter is turning the Northside into the economic capital of the city, and her dad is in charge of the dockworkers. So maybe they have actual work now, so he can be paid. I could see her pretending to be the ceo of a company to push for the development of the ferry for him.
On Skitter turning Northside into the economic capital and her father being in charge of dockworkers. Skitter’s powers allow her to produce tons of goods and turn in a massive profit. Think about it. Spider silk clothes (they are bulletproof!). Honey production (lots and lots of it). Venom production (milk those spiders!). Cross-polynation and parasite control for farming.
Combine it with potential control over plankton (increased breeding for food production), oyster control (pearl production, food production) and, potentially, octopus control (possibly, unlikely), and Skitter could finance the city all on her own.
Her powers allow her to be an industrial power all on her own.
They are very much suited for peaceful applications.
we know it takes her a long time to make her silk outfits, it’s not exactly something she can mass-produce. what you described could happen in the long term possibly, but i don’t think that’s the case here.
my gut is telling me the timeskip (if any) is negligible—a week or so at most, which is why the car is a flag for me. i’m crossing my fingers hoping she finally revealed herself to him, although having it happen off-screen would be a bit of a downer too… so… maybe not =/
Almost three weeks – from June 20th (Echidna incident) to July 6/7th (last day before school).
And the time for production is the matter of scale. Taylor can now afford to have several warehouses to be filled with spiders, millions of spiders. She can organize them so they would not take much place. And with initial amount of spiders she could quickly ramp the production up (by forcing them to breed).
She could also play with controlled/directed evolution by carefully breeding insects to get better abilities. Like better hearing / more human sight, stronger ants, more poisonous insects, bees with enhanced honey production, spiders that produce tougher silk. After all, she gets all the info on them.
If she had several years, she could become very, VERY dangerous indeed, globally.
But even in the scope of a month she could already start turning in profit, I think.
Slightly over two weeks, IIRC.
The dates of the parahumans online chapter point to this.
See the dates mentioned in the first post and the most recent post (with Greg thinking school is the next day).
Ellert on March 19, 2013 at 13:21 said:
I get where you are comming from to hope she finally revealed herself but i think its unlikely.
To get a car you need money but where did it come from? Either Taylor or her Dad.
He got a job and the chapter indicates that its actually going well for brockton bay so presumably also its economy. Now i m pretty sure in a world in which endbringerattacks are common the crisis response at least when it comes to getting money and relief packages there is better than in ours if simply for the training this gets put through and the fact it sounds good on tv to say the people there are actually getting help.
Somehow i see politicians wanting to avoid protests as a strong motivation there.
Since he s got a job and the economy could be bouncing back i d also not put a loan out of the question since it says new or newly washed it could affordable . Or it could be a car from the dockworkers (a friend or an official one)
Taylor:
She should have the money if from Tattle or the jobs they pulled before taking over since i cant see them actually getting profit from the area they control yet. That takes time and i agree that this feels like a shorter timeskip which is also one of the reasons i think Yogs idea can t be the source of income yet.
Even with her control of the bugs what you are proposing takes trial and error to figure out how to get the stuff in a way that makes it tadeable (the silk spun up on a coil for transport the venom in flasks and sealed etc.); constant control and supervision by skitter at least thats the impression i got at the beginning of the story she had to be there to get the silk for her costume and couldn t simply tell the spiders to keep producing while she was away?
Also she d need to find contacts to sell it to. Here Tattle probably could help but that would still only mean skitter got the money. That all seems much for the short amount of time that probably passed.
Having a deja vu here i m pretty sure the possibilities for Taylor earning money with similar scemes were discussed before.
Now as Taylor i guess she wouldn t want that money to be traceable to her. Now after all this is over there probably is a semblance of normalcy returning and suddenly having a big amount of money and no real source where it came from could be pretty suspicious. Again if she really wanted to i m sure she could get Tattle to come up with a cover.
The big question is would she do this? I think that depends on the circumstances. Say her dad needed expensive surgery or was starving the answer would be yes of course but for a car? I don t see it.
Also her giving him the money would mean either coming clean about herself which is a big thing many here have waited and hoped for and therefor i think wildbow wouldn t do offscreen or lying about its source which is something i think Taylor would be against. Sure she would do it if necessary(again medcine or real need) but i find the car doesn t rate that.
Regarding her revealing herself. She didn t do it when there were real possibilities of her getting herself killed in the near future(Leviathan S9) so stress doesn t move her to that and i already stated that for many here that would be a big thing and wildbow knows that so i doubt it happened offscreen.
I ll admit now that some time has passed without something horrible triing to kill everyone she could have had time to think about it and decided to come clean of course should the next interlude be just that i d happily retract my previous statement and claim i meant the exact opposite^^
Uh, in regards to where the money come from I don’t think a car would be that big a red flag. Taylor could probably find on used on Kijiji or something for around a thousand bucks. If Danny asks she could just tell him she’s been working minimum wage for the last couple months.
I mean, I see a 2000 Dodge Caravan going for 650 right now in Montreal. Just pay for that thing and arrange transport for it under the table. It’s not like they need a new vehicle to get around a recovering disaster zone.
Oh, I expect to see a ferry come up some time soon.
Loki-L on March 19, 2013 at 06:18 said:
Federal reconstruction aid grants.
OM NOM NOM NOM…. what? no eating the newbies? Are you sure? darn.
Toast on March 19, 2013 at 14:25 said:
As one of the inedibly challenged, I must support this rule with all my delicious, delicious heart.
Messed up city with bad roads, rich people fled, huge swaths suffering glassplosions… most likely someone’s having one hell of a sale.
And welcome to the comments section. *Nibu nibu* You seem a bit stringy. Not a fiddle player, are you?
Too cool to be a picolo player. Those tend to be piping hot.
(Speaking of stealing jokes…try a little priest)
Now that I’m back on my computer, here’s what I was referencing:
Um the Muse on March 20, 2013 at 15:33 said:
Or the Heberts might not actually own the car. It could be a) a rental b) a car bought by the docker’s union c) borrowed from a friend d) the family had a visitor over. I suppose that there are less likely possibilities such as they’re fixing the car for someone else or scrapping abandoned cars for parts and this one just happens to look new.
OK, so Sophia knows about the end of the world coming down the pike, as do the people in charge of the protectorate. So my question is how long before the estimated end of the world do all of the imprisoned heroes, rogues, and tolerable (ie: not murdering rapist) villains get released? It doesn’t make sense to leave them in jail when they might end up being useful at a fixed point that you know is coming. I would be willing to bet that in a year or so a crossbow and some bolts end up sitting in a safe in the warden’s office ready to be handed over to Shadow Stalker when the shit hits the fan.
It makes sense leaving them in jail if you don’t know whether releasing them contributes to the end of the world.
They might end up being useful – or they might end up contributing to/taking advantage of the chaos and making everything worse. I know which I consider likelier…
Courtney on March 19, 2013 at 02:40 said:
I absolutely hate parents who are afraid of their kids. Emma’s parents are afraid of her. Skitter’s dad was/is afraid of her. What the hell? Why is that a thing in just about every story I read about white families? Discipline your kids. Call them out when they’re being assholes. Don’t let them just walk all over you, ugh
I know we wouldn’t have a story otherwise, but what kind of parent barely puts up a fight and allows their kid to just walk out during pretty much the apacolpyse? Is that real life? Seriously
I know I am looking at this wrong, but Danny could not actually stop Taylor from leaving as long as Lisa was there. Danny isn’t in good shape, and even without powers Taylor and Lisa are, and they are used to hurting people to varying degrees. If he had physically tried to stop them I expect they could have fucked him up.
my interpretation was less him expecting physical retaliation and more afraid of driving a permanent wedge between himself and taylor.
all the way up to that point he’d been afraid to press her about her problems in the fear that she wouldn’t see him as an ally anymore and cut the last ties (he assumes) she has. it was probably the only way he could think of to avoid completely alienating her
lose the fight to win the war and all that
Oh I agree completely, my point was more that even if Danny had tried to stop Taylor from leaving there was no actual chance of that happening. Even without powers if you toss two physically fit teenagers that have shown a willingness to hurt people against a middle aged guy that is out of shape and wouldn’t want to hurt them? I wouldn’t want to be Danny.
Did Danny have any reason to expect that either Lisa or Taylor would be willing to engage in physical violence? IIRC, he knew nothing about Lisa beyond “Taylor’s new friend”, and Taylor’s never been violent around him…
I doubt that that crossed Danny’s mind- He was probably more worried about hurting Taylor. He directly blames his temper for many of the bad things that have happened- his wife’s death, Taylor’s not being willing to finger the bullies.
And I see how well people ‘control’ their children in public every day… Mostly poorly.
Taylor didn’t finger the bullies because she was waiting for that one special lesbian love in her life…Lisa. Not Emma, Madison, or Sophia.
tieshaunn on March 19, 2013 at 07:24 said:
ugh. my head hurts.
Discipline tends to work better when it’s established early.
“You listen to mama” from age six to seventeen gets results.
If you’re used to the more … open and WASPy sort of style that white folks like,
well, trying to impose discipline can backfire. For one thing, you’re not acting like yourself — and it shows distrust.
He’s letting himself be a victim, sure… But, if he had tried to nail Taylor down, she would have left anyhow.
Enforcing discipline,even if it is from six to seventeen,tends to,depending on the nature of the person,destroy creativity or breed extreme rebellion
Ignoring your kid or being too authoritative are the easy way out,and certain to backfire,eventually…nurturing in the right balance is really hard,though,even if you indeed manage to do a decent job(like Taylor’s dad did),it is still prone to backfire…but at least,even if you do mistakes,you’ll still create a smart person who loves you and understand your ffacts.
Note that many of the parents who espouse “freedom”basically end up ignoring their kids or granting all its wishes,which is another form of freedom,as freedom has consequences,while they basically just do not want to deal with their kid.
I don’t think they are afraid of their kids at all. Yeah, Emma’s dad should definitely call her out on being an asshole, but it’s not fear of her that would prevent him from doing it. He probably doesn’t know what to do- he saw that she was getting “better” than she was after the attack, and wouldn’t want to set her back.
He also wouldn’t have been aware of the full extent of just how shitty his daughter was being.
Well, this certainly puts things into perspective. I don’t know if I feel sorry for Emma or not now, but her father at least gets his fair share of the blame for not acting like a responsible adult.
The thugs were a nice call back too.
On a related note my speculation about the schools being consolidated together seems to be coming true. It will certainly be interesting to see Taylor interacting with whats left of the wards. Clockblocker at least should recongize her and she will probably recognize him. My guess is that they will approach the whole thing like they did the Defiant thing. Pretending very hard not to notice because noticing would not do anyone any good to notice.
A funny result might be that Greg might try to out Taylor in frustration, but unfortunately he is surrounded by Wards, Undersiders and Skitters minions. He might go “Denis, Lisa, Charlotte, don’t you see Taylor is Skitter!” and everyone would be ignoring it. For added drama he might reveal that Sophia used to bully Taylor putting things into perspective for the heroes.
I might get lynched for saying this since, as the viewpoint character, Taylor always gets a lot of empathy and understanding. But at this point, Taylor being bullied isn’t any more an excuse for being a villain than Emma being assaulted is an excuse for being a total bitch. It explains the process (well, part of the process, a lot of stuff happened to Taylor to make her who she is) and gives insight into her motivations, but I’m not sure it would actually change all that much how the heroes treat her.
I mean, forget how much you love Skitter for a moment and think about it like a hero who learns about a villain’s past. That’s pretty common in fiction. And it’s like, yeah, you were bullied, sold into slavery, are the last survivor of a once proud race, your whole village (and your dog) were slaughtered, whatever. Doesn’t really change the whole part with robbery, aggravated assault, murder, etc.
If some heroes respect her or even befriend her, it’ll be because of Taylor’s actions, how she treats people well in her territory, how she fought against threats against the city like Echidna and the Nine, not because of what happened to her in the past.
Unless there really are heroes dumb enough to think people just spontaneously become villains for no particular reason. This despite the fact that pretty much every cape in existence has a traumatic event in their life (except the Cauldron-made). Those might get surprised upon learning about Taylor’s past.
The most likely thing for the remaining Wards to think if/when they find out about Taylor’s past is “Fuck you very much, Shadow Stalker. Was ‘Create a Supervillain’ on your bingo card for ‘Ways to make the rest of your team’s lives miserable’ or something?”
Plus, with all her powers and high and mighty notions of being a predator who hunts down criminals, what did Sophia do?
She picked on a nerdy teenage girl recovering from her mother’s death. Oh, ain’t you just something impressive.
At the very least she was one dumb hero.
I think Shadow Stalker’s involvement would have more of an effect on their perception than the bullying per se- especially if they think that Sophia was an ongoing deterrent to Skitter joining the heroes.
They would realize afterward that she probably would have joined the Wards if Sophia wasn’t there.
It would definitely effect how they handle probationary Wards members in the future, whether it was a jackboot Piggot or that self-centered dick Armsmaster someone completely dropped the ball by not watching Shadowstalker (who was under probation for fucking MANSLAUGHTER) like a shithawk.
But I think it’s passed the point where the Skitter-Shadowstalker connection would have effected change, before the S9 and Echidna it would have been a big deal, now it’s a drop in the pond.
Can we please use the term “Cauldron-born” instead of “Cauldron-made”?
(If you know why, then you know why, and if you don’t, well, you should read more than just manga sometime.)
I don’t want to step on toes though.
chrnno on March 20, 2013 at 11:30 said:
Cauldron-made fits better I would say, unless we start refering to trigger events as births or something like that.
I assume the Chronicle of Prydain are still under copyright. But I’d think we can use the term all we want in the comments. Hell, I’ve been using “Cauldron-born” ’cause it flows off the tongue better.
I like calling them Cauldron capes. Then you can take the pun from there and refer to them as nylon or polyester as a epitet, as oppsed to cotton capes (natural fiber)
Except that Taylor *didn’t* become a villain because she was bullied – she used her powers to become a hero instead and even went undercover in a dangerous gang of villains when the opportunity arose. Through a combination of growing attachment to that group and increasing disillusionment with the ‘heroes’ she became a villain (the final tipping point was finding out that the label ‘hero’ applied to someone like Sophia).
If you change “she became a villain because she was bullied” to “she became a villain because she was bullied BY A SUPERHERO” you’d be closer, but even then it still comes back to being disillusioned by how morally compromised the heroes were rather than any sort of cliched “the world has been cruel to me and now it must paaaaay!” motivation.
Freerider on March 19, 2013 at 03:53 said:
New poster here. Been reading for a bit now though catching up took forever. You are impressively prolific. Wildbow, first I need to say how wonderful Worm is. There’s a lot of online fiction around the web these days and Worm is the best thing online by a wide margin.
I also agree with many of the other posters. This was THE chapter that I feel the story has been basically demanding since the start. We all probably figured it was something along these lines, but it was nice to see it, to actually know what was really going inside Emma’s head.
And it was so nice to finally see Taylor triumph. Sure she trashes Lung, Bakuda, the Local Wards, and even Armsmaster. Fights the Endbringers. Thumps the S9 crew, and sends what’s left of them packing. Defeats Dragon by out-thinking her. Actually manages to escape Coil’s inevitable deathtrap and turns the tables on him. Kills him. Deserves a lion’s share of the credit for taking down Noelle. But in some ways this feels like her biggest victory because it’s the first time she has really triumphed over who she is and where she comes from (at the beginning of the story I mean).
Also to all those that are thinking why would Taylor go back to school since she’s an Evil Overlord:
1. As scary as any of the fights she’s been in as a cape clearly Taylor is far more afraid of high school. I mean after all why else would she keep running away from school to be a supervillian?
2. Taylor is an Evil Overlord now. Evil Overlords can not show fear. Thus, Taylor clearly must confront those fears and go back to school. After all what minion would respect a Supervillian boss that is too afraid to go to high school.
3. Wildbow clearly is one of those sadistic authors. Every victory results in an instant new even worse problem cliffhanger. What single other possible plot device would allow as much opportunity for sadistic dramatic tensions as putting Taylor, Emma, the Wards, various evil minions and who knows what all else all together under one roof?
4. Last of all, but most important, because Wildbow already set up the foreshadowing for it. (Then again this is WIldbow, I suppose it could all just be a sadistic taunt to make us all think that’s what’s gonna happen, only to find the proverbially rug pulled out from under us.) But still, foreshadowing.
Welcome to the comments section! Usually we’d smash a bottle of expensive champagne across the bow of such an excellent first post, but Psycho Gecko seems to have drank it all…
Fortunately, I think we may still have some of the cheap stuff in the back.
Is it just me, or is there a lot of people who have just caught up for this chapter?
Anyway, Freerider, welcome, and may god save your soul. You’re not getting out of this place alive.
Yeah, uh, Pinkhair? Psycho Gecko… uhhh, he didn’t exactly “drink” it… although the alcohol did end up in his bloodstream….
Skipped right over you apparently. Welcome, Freerider of the family Lazybums.
This is our lovely comments section. Now that you have filled your mind with Worm, we are here to protect the secrets of worm by making sure you lose your mind. Actually, it “fell off the back of a truck” for tax purposes.
I think Taylor as said evil overlord would be within her rights not to bother attending school, though I do know of at least one high school for evil people called Bad Guy High. There’s also Whateley, technically, but I’m not a fan of all the forcibe genderswapping of people who don’t feel like they were born in the wrong body. And when they’re done with that, they could stop by Overlord Academy. Those college kids are great customers for the Atomic Laundromat. If they do well enough, who knows, they might even get a job at Evil Inc. Just hope they don’t get all sexist when faced with a lot of Grrl Power.
I just realized Taylor could get a GED without too much trouble. She can hear with and talk through her bugs, so Tattletale just has to hang out nearby and feed her answers.
Talk, yes. Hear, not so much. I’m pretty sure it was established that she can hear bits and pieces, but only under extreme stress.
This is not optimal. Taylor *needs* the information that the last two and a half years of high school can grant her. Extra physics knowledge gets her more use out of her bugs. Economics and math let her run her territory better. History is full of warlords to learn from. If she picks up an instrument, the Undersiders can form a band. These are all important!
I’m not seeing it. I didn’t learn too much in my high school. She is very well read for a teenager and she is wealthy now. She can hire a tutor for things like that. She really should be studying how to run/manage a business for her warlord job. I think she could use more of a social life though, and high school could help with that. She has Brian, but he admitted that the rest of the Undersiders aren’t exactly big hitters in the emotional support area. Bitch probably doesn’t want her to go if she is still hanging out with her. Though Bitch could go out in public if they gave her plastic surgery to have a new face. They are rich now, and seems like something villains would do.
I’m kind of uncomfortable with the idea that she should pursue education just for the purposes of making her a better supervillain. I’d think that now that she’s not constantly under pressure or attack and not stuck in the despair quagmire she’d see some value in education for it’s own sake and would want to do some actual book learnin’ outside the bullshit core classes that high school makes people go through.
She’s kind of been heading a in a direction that would end up with supervillainy consuming her identity. Getting some education that isn’t necessarily “practical” might help slam the brakes on that.
Well she does still read alot for her mother’s memory and she probably could use a civilian identity. Since money isn’t an issue for her anymore, she can just study something she wants without worrying about employment.
Once i was finished i realized another of my posts turned into some huge mess of words and for that i apologize. Normally at that point i delete it but this time i somehow don t want to.
I m with the people that say she doesn t need to go back to high school anymore.
She is now overlord of a big part of the city and from what i ve seen from her she takes that as meaning a lot of responsibility not privileges.
That means once its rebuilt and the economy starts running again a big part of that being the wormhole the Undersiders are controlling at least at this point she will have all the money she needs. Until then however there is still so much to be done (cleaning the aftermath of Leviathan and S9, making sure of her peoples wellbeing and the rebuilding itself) that she has got more than enough to occupy her time. I also think from the way she thought about her area and the people there that she has a strong motivation to stay involved there personally as much as possible.
Another reason against going back could be that she believes the time until the end the world could be better spend be it training herself to be ready and have a better chance of saving as many people as possible or be it building up her organization for much the same motivation.
While i agree that she could use more of a social life this also brings about a number of problems. The people she would interact with would and frankly could only be allowed to know Taylor not Skitter. To go into that whole how hard it is to keep a secret identity thing can probably be skipped if you have read even one superhero comic for a time. Even if you haven t we already saw that it is possible for people who have known her just from seeing her at school to connect the two. I know i have no knowledge about psychology but how big an emotional improvement could she gain under the stress of keeping that big a part of her life secret? The socialising however seems to me a point that Taylor wouldn t even consider. Most people that everyone around them thinks should be among people more don t realize that and thus don t try to change it. And whatever else you can say about the Undersiders they stood with her through some of the very worst that the world could throw at them so maybe she thinks they are enough. Her spending time in her area and with her people or her organization could also provide social interaction.
The reason why i think she could only allow them to know Taylor is that Skitter is a supervillain. She has robbed a bank, attacked a social gettogether where heros were present, attacked the PRT headquarters in town , attacked and drove of dragon, disabled 2 directors of the PRT and taken over the town itself. I agree that her actions and decisions during the echidna fight will have gathered attention but i believe its mostly of a kind that only reinforces beliefs that are already in place. Miss Militia said everytime the Undersiders came to them it seemed like they were only given choices that had definite disadvantages for the heroes no matter what they did in the end. So i think she only reinforced her image as a capable and dangerous villain. Seeing as this is a world in which a girl can be send to the worst prison imaginable for not understanding the full extend of her power i am somewhat reluctant to believe the “heroes” or courts would feel inclined to do anything other than try and capture her to be send to the birdcage should they get to know her identity which gets more likely the more people know it.
I think however that Taylor herself has not yet reached a point where she thinks not going back is a good idea or even an option. If i remember right she was just expulsed from school when Leviathan attacked and regardless of how much action there was in the chapters not much time actually passed until now. And since it takes time to change ones mindset i think she still considers high school as one of the must does of her life.
So i think she will at least go back for a while and then maybe realize its not for her anymore.
Taylor is actually in a fairly unique situation, secret-identity-wise. She has her bug clones and multitasking ability, so ‘Skitter’ can be active across town while Taylor is sitting in math class studying. It’ll be interesting to see how she goes…
The heroes are not inclined to see her on better terms because she was badass on the Echidna fight,but because her arguments were validated in that fight due to Cauldron.
Fans on March 19, 2013 at 05:36 said:
This feels like an ending chapter. Not ‘the’ ending chapter of course, the world is due to end in two years after all, but it’s nice to show that Taylor doesn’t need to take revenge on Emma for what happened to her. They were kids and while it was horrible they’ve both grown up a little and are a little wiser for it. I doubt Taylor cares much anymore about it, it was nasty sure but it’s no Slaughterhouse 9 or Noelle.
It’s also nice to see Taylor laughing with her dad, no matter how horrible it gets she always bounces back.
Kytin on March 19, 2013 at 05:39 said:
Apparently there are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary, and those that don’t.
You forgot those who prefer ternary.
ther are 1-1 people in the world, poeple who know special trinary, and poeple who dont.
You forgot people who prefer explaining their number system before making jokes.
And the people who heard the jokes so many times that they recognize it instantly despite having no knowledge of whatever system it is using.
Also the people who are so into it that they can’t even conceive of making a joke like that since it wouldn’t even fit their worldview that someone doesn’t know the system.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who are hyperbolic and those who don’t know how to count.
Matthew K on March 19, 2013 at 05:50 said:
A very nice interlude. Poor poor Emma, having a crisis moment and turning to Shady Stroller and her garbled pseudo-Nietzschean-not-really-lol bullshit as an emotional anchor. Could happen to anyone, I guess. I can’t imagine Taylor putting up with any more shite from garden-variety school bullies any more, not when “Bitch, I stood this fucking close to an Endbringer and hit it with a magic antimatter techno-stick” must be going through her head 24/7.
It says a lot about Taylor that she never thinks that. She’s the girl who stabbed an Endbringer and still wonders why people find her scary at times.
I think she imagines there are three people:
1. Taylor, an ordinary skinny sixteen-year-old girl;
2. Skitter, a manager of municipal issues in one district of Brockton Bay; and
3. *Skitter*, a badass motherfucker with whom you do not mess if you value your skin.
…and she doesn’t understand emotionally that making person-3 terrifying (“bursts of sudden and extreme violence towards those she sees as her enemies”) is going to affect perceptions of persons 2 and 1.
Yep, that is who she is in the end.
I do like the dual meaning of the name “the irregulars”. I was wondering if they had any goals besides using freelance work to support themselves as a hero group. Perhaps trying to get in contact with fellow cauldron-made, help them out if necessary, recruit them if possible.
Fingers crossed that they start visiting sveta at the asylum at the least, maybe even work towards moving her out. I think sveta would develop a crush on weld merely because she could be in the same room with him without killing him.
It’s possible that Weld would get stuck to Sveta though and start absorbing her wires.
Start your slashfic engines.
Fluff on March 19, 2013 at 07:06 said:
Sounds likely – Sveta crushes on *everyone* 😉
sorry to bust your sick, sick fantasies (not that I don’t like them), but Sveta’s tendrils seem to be organic – they are described as more like a mix of hair and tentacles, but wire-thin
Curses!
Your Weld fantasy was foiled!
That does make Sveta/Weld more viable though. No absorbing anybody, just lots and lots of hugging.
true. alright, restart the slashfic engines!
This actually works pretty well. Neither can have babies so that isn’t a splitting problem. Both are looking for companionship…
And another fun pairing appears.
Re: Garrote/Weld
I think that’s one of the most inspiring ideas I’ve ever heard in this forum, Alex. 🙂
For Halloween, he can paint himself gold and go as Buddha. She can go as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I’m running out of words to comment on how great your work is wildbow.
while I finally understand emma now, it really just makes me despise her more – she is spectacularly vain and self-centered, even more than I expected.
Wageslave on March 19, 2013 at 08:21 said:
The worst thing that could happen to Emma at his point is her going up to Taylor, attempting to strike up some sort of conversation, and Taylor actually having to take a moment or two to remember *who* Emma is. Not laughing–that’d be an attack, a sign of weakness. Not cowering, or some loud declaration, but “Oh, right, you’re one of the girls that threw me into the locker.” And then shrugging and turning her back on Emma as if it didn’t mean anything and went about her business.
Though, I am reminded of something a friend of mine said. Sometimes your enemies attack you sideways…
Not seeing it, Emma was in her flashback within Noelle. Plainly she is still reeling from it.
So……Emma went all bitch because of Sophie and the fact she couldn’t be as strong as Taylor……now more than ever do I hope that Emma finds out Taylor is Skitter. That would fuckin BREAK her. Even more than the near-death experience, I think.
As always Wildbow your work is awesome. Can’t wait till Thursday. :3
Naw Soul, not break her, the problem with Emma is that she never really got unbroken in the first place. Everything since seems like it has been her way of hiding how messed up she is even from herself. It’s not knowing that Taylor IS Skitter that would mess Emma up, it’s knowing WHY Taylor is Skitter that would bring Emma’s whole little fantasy crashing down.
Though as fun as Emma finding out that Taylor is Skitter would be I think it would be more fun to have Emma watch Taylor take over Arcadia High as Taylor. After everything, especially Emma’s conversation with Sophia at the prison that would really be a major blow to Emma’s Shadow Stalker tainted perspective.
Very true. Taylor making friends with the Wards, the ‘popular’ kids of Arcadia and being an all around awesome person. I would normally feel sorry for Emma……but the way she just embraced Little Miss Psychopath’s thinking is making me wish Emma had suffered worse. Maybe having a trigger that turned her into a hideous monster with nearly useless powers! 😀
Still I wanna see what would happen if Emma found out who Taylor is…..the Villain ruling over where she lives, the undisputed ruler of Brockton Bay, the one who has an ENTIRE PLANET UNDER HER THUMB. Her already broken psyche would crumble. Then…..then I see Taylor help rebuild Emma up, as her old friend once more…..or ya know……watch her wallow in her own self-pity and denial.
….Damn I’m in such an evil mood. Must have been Coding and Modeling.
Pandemonious Ivy on March 20, 2013 at 21:18 said:
I was with you up until the “entire planet under her thumb” line. It kinda killed it for me. Better contenders for that title, in reverse order of importance (to date):
-Sleeper (S-Class, currently unknown)
-Nilbog (S-Class, way fucking scarier/more effective than Skitter)
-Jack Slash (S-Class, known far and wide, and basically is Skitter but depraved, what with the effective use of his teammates abilities, brilliant leadership skills, and ability to be similtaneously the “weakest” and strongest member of the S9)
-Behemoth (Hero-killer)
-Leviathan (Nation-killer)
-Simurgh ([Redacted via Creepy Fucking Psy-wiping])
-Scion/Zion (Most powerful parahuman on Earth Bet, probably autistic)
-Imp.
I think you’ll find soulpelt was referring to the entire planet that the Undersiders now own the portal to. As nominal leader of the Undersiders, Skitter certainly could be said to have that world under her thumb (though in practice I imagine she’ll largely defer to Lisa).
I started reading Worm on the tenth and have just caught up today. I have to say that from day 1 to today, nothing has at any point given me to have an ounce of sympathy for Sophia. Emma, I could see, had been manipulated, but Sophia was villainous through and through.
I also have to say that all this Lisa/Taylor shipping I see in the comments makes me really want to know what everybody’s favorite blabbermouth looks for in a romantical entanglement. Well. She’s not the romantical type. What she looks for in a fun Saturday evening, then.
Welcome to the Wormling fold, Toast. The hats are on the top shelf and the initiation ritual room is in the far left room.
Ah…..Lisa/Taylor….possible one of the few same-sex shipping that I support. I suspect PG will be here soon with some of his usual nonsensicalm if humorous, ramblings.
You’re late, very late. You’ve been holding up teatime. At least now you can be part of the conversation. Some of it is worth catching up on, but if you try it all you’ll likely go mad. But we’re all a little mad sometimes, so perhaps it us time to let the nice Gecko man lead you down the rabbit hole. You’re Toast either way.
I think Lisa would want somone at least a little capable of matching her intellectually and who she could count on to talk to her, since she’ll find out anyway. Skitter wasn’t hardly that Alice at the start, but now, perhaps.
@PG If you’re the Mad Hatter, then who’s the March Hare and the Dormouse? Who’d I be? Better yet, who’d Wildbow be?
Well, clearly, Wildbow is the Red Queen: “Off with their heads!”
And I nominate myself for Tweedle-dum.
Welcome, Toast. Good to hear from the ones who’ve finished their binges.
I prefer to think of my binge as merely slowing down a touch. I’ll finish when you do. Which from various hints you’ve been dropping isn’t long now?
Eh. 1-3 arcs before the conclusion gets underway and no idea how long the story’s ending will take.. I’m not in a rush, and I’ll let it happen as it happens.
That is best. I signed on for a five-book contract, and now I feel trapped. Advantages of the infinite canvas.
The flip side being that, going by the numbers, it’d cost a minimum of about $40,000 to get this thing proofread (a basic proofread), as is. 8x that for a copy-edit (15-40 cents a word).
I always told myself I’d invest in a serious edit, but I checked out the numbers and they’re mind boggling.
I had the Internet proofread my work. So have you, it seems, and I only spotted five or six things it missed in the entire work. This is a better track record than for-pay services.
Copy-edit is harder, it’s true, but if you’re going the vanity-press route, you do have the option of just chucking that step. Still, I was given to understand that it was possible to flat-rate editors rather than paying them by the word. Not that any such editor would be favorably disposed to you for dumping ten novels on her head . . .
Alternately, you can put out a call among select known-erudite members of your fanbase asking for editing services on individual chunks, so that you can get it done (slowly) for free. The only problem there is picking wormlings who you know can edit. Your fellow Web Fiction Guide lister Karen Wehrstein does this, and it works pretty well.
Good to know. Interesting info, and sorta relieving to know there’s options.
Thank you, Toast.
wildbow,
somehow, I doubt that is how much this would actually cost to get proofread.
I mean, that is some insane amount of cost. Hell, if you were willing to chop this up some… There’s magazines out there looking for serials. You familiar with where The Dragonriders of Pern got published?
They’ll pay you x a word (and it’s not much), but they wont’ charge you for the copyediting! And they’re good — Stan believes in making good writers out of promising folks.
I like Toast’s scattershot idea. Break it down into manageable chunks.
Maeri on March 19, 2013 at 17:43 said:
Maybe you could do a donation drive to help pay for it- not for an extra chapter, but maybe people who donate a certain amount or some such get something out of it? A lot of people would be willing to do so.
Or hey, try to set up a Kickstarter.
I’ve done some copy-editing for a literary magazine and newspaper. Nothing fancy, but if you don’t mind a long, protracted process I’d be willing edit at least an arc or a few chapters free of charge. I don’t usually look for typos–I assume that Worm will be heavily revised pre-publication, and it also feels too much like work. But I’m pretty anal about grammar and typos. So, if you ever want me to let the crazy out in service of your story…I’d be willing to at least chip in.
Thanks for the offer, Hobbes.
I wouldn’t stress about it just yet. I’ve gone over arcs 1-3 with my writer’s circle and just need to find the time to sit down and apply changes they’ve suggested. Minor stuff overall, though I’ve contemplated a greater change to scale up the pace of arcs 1-4 (starting the story in a slightly different place).
So give me a chance to apply all the fixes I’ve in mind before I take advantage of your generous offer.
I looked over some of the first chapter to see what I might be getting myself into. I noticed some things, but a lot of other *possible* errors would require a style manual to confirm. I love style manuals, because I’m a weirdo, but this task would consume me if I were to undertake it.
You would be better off paying for a professional, in the long run. Plus, the more I look over the story, the more intimidating it gets. It’s too much to do it all for free, and I’m not a skilled enough proofreader to get paid for it.
Furthermore, I lean toward a more formal style that might be out of place. When I’ve done copy-editing for publications, it’s often for pieces where I don’t really have to worry as much about crushing the author’s voice. With Worm, I think that would be a concern.
If you can’t hire a professional, then consider me one of multiple readers willing to proofread for you. Given the scope of the story, though, hiring someone at a flat rate would probably be worth it. I think you could get away with fewer bonus updates if people knew that donation money was going toward that end.
also remember, if you do go the traditional publishing route, they have their own editors, copy and otherwise. That’s part of the deal. If you DO go self pubbed, you can pay to edit one book, release it, and use the proceeds in part for the next edit. (if you wish to go that route) I’ve done story editing and copy editing for a few serials over the last decade, and your story is pretty tight, very few suggestions there, and yeah, the crowdsource copyedit is doing you good!
@Hobbes,
You seem to know a lot about hiring professionals.
Wasn’t it hinted at in Weld’s interlude that he also had a tendency for something along those lines, or was I reading that entirely wrong? In any case, it has yet to be brought back up in ten arcs so it must have so little impact on the story that it is retconned for the sake of making Weld awesome.
That’s right folks, Weld is so amazing that he was able to each into our world, slap wildbow around for giving him flaws and return as the quintessential representative for good everywhere.
Mr. Void…what are you talking about?
Regarding hiring a professional–consider it my attempt to duck out of the horrifyingly massive task of copy-editing a dozen novels.
Yeah, I can contribute some time to crowd-sourced copy-editing/proofreading. A couple chapters, an arc, something like that.
Thank you. Means a lot to me that I can count on my readers for help.
I’d be willing to proofread. Whether I’m a good choice is up to you. I may not be some big fancy writer like the rest of y’all, but I CAN spot a typo if I’m actively looking for them and I can try to see if a turn of phrase makes sense. I’m no stylistic great, though.
I won’t take offense if you’re like *puts a sock puppet with an afro on his hand and talks through it unenthusiastically* “Oh…Gecko…yes, that’s great, nice of you to offer. Why don’t you go make more comments with typos in them and we’ll handle this, eh.”
BWAHAHAAHH! Another basement dweller infected with the worm!
With lisa, I think someone that could appear to her the way that “The Woman” appears to Sherlock (in the new bbc series) would be a massive turn on. someone she couldnt read.
I’ve only seen the pilot of that series, but The Woman in Doyle’s Sherlock wasn’t somebody he couldn’t read. It was somebody who could read him *right back,* and come out ahead. But I really doubt Tattletale would go in for a fellow Thinker. Any such relationship would be forced into adversariality. Er. Adversarial-ness?
Don’t knock black-quadrant romances ’til you’ve tried them. They’re not the same as red-quadrant ones, but they’re every bit as great in their own way.
that too, but she was so good at reading other people that she knew how to prevent being read. So when he’d look at her, he’d see question marks, or blanks.
Finally! I caught up to you.
I figured Sophia had saved Emma at some point, and that her sudden change was dye in part to her following her new friend’s lead. Her emptiness however was mildly surprising. I half expected her to either be a sociopath like Sophia, a vapid idiot, or both. I despised Emma enough that I wanted to see her character die, but her absence from the story proved just as well. So when I saw the interlude was about her, I wasn’t thrilled. But this was a good update. Taylor doesn’t need “revenge” against Emma. She just needed to move on.
Looking forward to more!
Lots of people catching up. Where did you come from, if you don’t mind my asking?
Glad to have you with us, Illise Montoya.
Web Fiction Guide! I’ve been hearing about your story since it first started but never got around to reading it till now. I write web serials myself, so I thought it time to start reading some others again. Loving things so far. 🙂
This is wisdom. The best way to write is to read. It is written, “Good artists copy. Great artists *steal.*”
As the resident supervillain, I endorse this theft.
My own writings are now quite entangled with those of our dear Wildbow. Like Garrote playing Twister.
can’t say for the others, but I hopped on when I noticed some webfic other than my favorite was at the top of the charts – it’s how I found my other favorite webfic after all (which ended 😦 )
Wildbow, have you ever done a poll or something to figure out the demographics of your readers, like age, location, or other stuff?
If it could be done anonymously, a demographic poll would be very useful. I don’t know how to implement that in WordPress, though.
There’s free services online that let you embed the polls easily enough
For reference, the average reader of my work is a 33-year-old white woman who owns a cat and is slightly above average height. She has one point six children, which must be a pain to buy car seats for. I look forward to seeing Wildbow’s portmanteau portrait, should it ever arise; it would definitely be even more amusing.
i found out about worm in a happy accident.
i dont actually go around looking for original fics buti was fortunate to run into a community thread on ffnet on fanfic recs. i actually missed the rec itself but there was so much commentary that followed i just had to backtrack and look for the link
Don’t remind me of it, I did horrible in my test last tuesday because I couldn’t stop reading. Oh well at least I caught up already and won’t have it occupying the time reserved for my finals this week(no matter how deservedly and how much I still want worm to).
Glassware on March 19, 2013 at 16:13 said:
Do you have a link to this thread? I feel the compulsive need to track down everything that everybody on the internet has ever said about this work, mostly because it lets me not do all those other things that I’m supposed to be doing.
Well, not really sure if we should post links here but here it goes http://www.fanfiction.net/topic/88086/56046997/35/#82800961. If we are not supposed to do then just look for mechanics of in flight in ff.net, thread Recomended storys page 35.
And here’s where I realize chrnno is the one behind Soul Chess. Wow.
NVM. Read the fanfic profile page wrong.
That explains it, was thinking here how you arrived in that conclusion…
I was reading the “Heart Is An Awesome Power” on TvTropes, clicked the Worm link, said “This looks interesting”, and started reading. Unfortunately, I didn’t scroll the full length of the contents page, neglected to wait for a clear day in my schedule, and…well, you can probably guess about what happened.
And another one bites the dust. Don’t worry it was fated to be the moment you started reading.
Welcome, person named Illise Montoya. You can read no farther. Prepare to die of anticipation.
You really can find the punniest jokes to make, can you Gecko?
I have a ghost guide my sword against the keyboard. It leads to pointed discussion.
http://www.badum-tish.com/
Thank you for the warm welcome! Though I feel my life draining as we speak…
…need…more…Worm…
I have to agree with many other commenters, the time is due for a confrontation between taylor and emma. I do not support the idea of taylor taking ‘revenge’ – honestly, it’s stupid – but she needs closure; she needs to talk this out. And emma, too, has some issues that need to be sorted out, for good or bad.
this setup (everyone going to arcadia) is just perfect for that
I don’t know. They say the best revenge is to live well. Taylor doesn’t need to go out of her way to confront Emma. What Emma did to her is peanuts compared to what Taylor has fought and survived. I mean, you can argue that Skitter still isn’t necessarily happy, but her world is open to more possibilities than it had been before. She stands straighter
I agree with this. Revenge is a dish best served straight into the garbage bin. Taylor is better than *any* of her tormentors, girl-child or godling, and she’s starting to learn it.
Just to add to that, any retaliation towards Emma (short of defending herself) would undermine her accomplishments. Taylor’s gotta keep it classy. She’s a warlord now! 😉
well, I’m against revenge as well. but I believe that a confrontation – meaning, a talk – is necessary at some point, especially for someone like taylor
I just want to see Emma break. I want to see her will gone and her little philosophy shatter before her eyes. As for what Emma did to Taylor……she had no small part in making Taylor’s Trigger Event possible.
Hey Wildbow, I have a question. Was Sophie always that sociopathic before her trigger, did she become like that after the trigger, or did he powers mess with her morals in a way similiar to that of Bitch and Garrote or more like Burnscar and Labyrinth?
didnt she buy?
Truthseeker on March 19, 2013 at 16:54 said:
I think you’re thinking of Battery, there. Her interlude covered the usual Cauldron process. We don’t technically know for sure about Sophia, but she doesn’t come from a moneyed background and does seem properly screwed up, so I’m thinkin’ trigger.
Gets pretty icky too if you start thinking about what sort of events a teenage girl could go through that would trigger a ‘noone can touch me’ power like intangibility.
The best revenge involves getting your enemy sick with explosice diahrea, ducttaping your enemy to an angry gorilla, and dropping them in the middle of a lion enclosure with a slathering of bullet ants added to the mix. Then you take the whole thing, launch it into space, and blow it up. Set to the soundtrack of you seducing their mother.
For a nickle.
Good point, then you sell the sex tape of you and the person’s mother.
REVENGE! I know Taylor is a better person, but come one. The girl is bitch who put her in the hospital and filled her with despair. She deserves some karmic payback. Join the revenge society.
karmic payback? great
by taylor? not great
The best revenge is to live well. I think all it takes is for Taylor to blow Emma off as someone who simply doesn’t matter anymore to drive the point home.
If it doesn’t, a punch in the teeth might work. But like others have said, gotta keep it classy, so no putting the boot in while she’s down.
Okay just once. But that’s it, seriously.
As an exceptional teacher I knew used to tell her students:
“Success is the best revenge.”
I totally agree that Taylor should keep it classy – she’s a better person than that.
Might be fun if, say, Bitch, found out who Emma was and what she’d done to her friend, though. For some definitions of ‘fun’.
After all that has happened–the Endbringer, SH9, Coil, Noelle–it is really weird to remember that the Wards and Undersiders are actually teenagers and are expected to go to school when things go back to normal. When I was thinking about where the story could go next, before this interlude and the last one, I had thought the next arc would be about rebuilding the city and securing the Undersiders hold over it–the fact that the people who run the city now are high schoolers didn’t even enter my mind.
I wonder how seriously they’ll take it, now that they’ve been through so much else?
I never even thought of that, after all they’ve been through the idea that the Wards can get back to being kids is just messed up. Poor Vista has been having a hard time even before it really got bad, now it’d be hard to see any of them putting up with it for long.
They need a proper therapist. There are only three wards left for scion’s sake with Flechette going back to new york. But Vista might make some friends to help improve her support network. If Brian sends Aisha there she is the type to befriend a hero for the kicks, and Dinah could use a few allies herself. Kid Win said he just stopped giving a shit about everything, so I ironically he might be more adjusted because of that. Clockie is the one I am wondering about. He is a very friendly/social person and I wonder what is going through his head.
Be very funny if Vista, Aisha and Dinah were to end up as friends at school.
They might still need to secure their hold during this arc. The portal has the potential to make a ton of money, and there will be plenty of villains and criminals who would want to take it. Parian’s getting some people bothering her, and others are making a play in Imp’s territory. Just for fun I want the next villain to be a normal. You don’t have to be a parahuman to be a villain. We could have a mad bomber like the one from speed, a jigsaw trap maker, a dc sniper, or just a random ordinary serial killer who preys on the people of the city.
You have to be a parahuman to stand a chance vs Taylor.Hers is the most anti muggle power I know,at least with others you can hide and avoid,even ambush and kill if you do not have superdefense.But Taylor?she is always watching.
Thamuzz on March 19, 2013 at 11:31 said:
I’m pretty sure that Taylor won’t take revenge. Taylor’s reaction to finding out that Shadow Stalker is in jail was not one of vindictive triumph.
Aisha on the other hand… well, depending on how well Taylor is doing in helping Brian piece himself back together, she might have a thing or two to say and do to someone she perceives as a threat to Brian’s primary lifeline.
A few other thoughts:
Char will probably also be returning to school. Could produce an interesting perspective on events, particularly since she was aware of the old state of things.
What is going to happen to the kids Skitter who have been staying with Skitter? Will they stay in her care or will they move to the regular foster care system?
Doesn’t Skitter have influence in the North End? Isn’t Emma moving into the North End?
Yeah the forum post Interlude noted that Skitter controls the North End and the Boardwalk which is in walking distance from her house, part of the docks, and the Undersider’s old hideout. So Emma is essentially moving into Skitter’s officially known territory.
Muahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahaaahahhaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!…….
Reading this chapter again, I realized it’s missing something. There is a huge time jump between the bathroom stall incident (start of story) and talking to Sophia in jail (current events). We didn’t get to see any of Emma’s reactions in between. Specifically, how did Emma see the events of her and Sophia’s suspension; what was her reaction to moving out of Brockton Bay, considering her view of the city in the first sentences of the chapter; how did Shadowstalker’s “confession” and “attempted suicide” affect her views? That last one would seem especially important since it should affect that visit in jail, yet it was never touched upon.
after reading this interlude, once she got over the initial shock i can see this being where here opinion of sophia flipflopped.
she (sophia) is now the prey to regent’s predator. i assume she would have heard because it’s probably in the PRTs interest to blame him (a known villain) for her psychotic break rather than admit she was that unhinged
so two possibilities as i see it.
1. emma still follows sophia’s predator/prey worldview so regent–and the rest of the undersiders by extension are the new “predators”. she tries to get in good graces with them–ironically through skitter who is known to be the most benevolent
2. sophia’s break leads her to see the worldview as flawed and she tries to reconcile with taylor, she just had a bit of leftover bitchiness to inflict on sophia during her last visit.
I see it as more number 1, but I doubt she will try to get into their good graces. I don’t think her world view has changed, she simply sees the Undersiders as the new top predators. I imagine what really hurt her with Emma is the fact that she realized she doesn’t have a “pack” and how weak it made her. She is remarkably similar to bitch in how she rationalizes society as a fight for dominance between predator and prey. While Bitch was forced to be alone by circumstance, she has always been alone by choice. Bitch’s interlude showed that recognizes that humans are social creatures and that they are much more powerful/effective working together as opposed to trying to do everything herself. Maybe Sophia finally realized that the reason humanity became the dominant species was our ability to work together. If she somehow escapes, I doubt she will go near Brockton Bay. She has to believe that Regent will make good on his threat if she comes back to town. There is a possibility she tries to join a villain group for added security, but I doubt she will try to join the Undersiders.
For the above, I meant Sophia.
Yeah. I’m really curious how Emma and Sophia got past the fake love confession thing.
Hmm, an interesting move for Taylor would be to pretend to be her own (Skitter’s) minion. Not someone participating in illegal activities (or at least not someone who can be proven to be participating in illegal activities), but someone working under (and thus under the protection of) Skitter.
This both provides her security, allows her to explain a new big income source to her father, and lets her keep her bugs in school / near her and use her powers in public as self-defence. After all, heroes know that Skitter can see and hear what her bugs see and hear, but don’t know the range. Thus, Taylor won’t be thought to be Skitter, it would be thought that Skitter was within range and using her bugs to protect her minion.
An interesting move, but I think it would be seen through pretty quickly. If Worm teaches us anything, it is that secret identities are very fragile. Skitter’s trackers are *smart,* and many already know who she is. That layer of duplicity is guaranteed effort and vigilance that isn’t guaranteed to benefit her. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing she’d do.
If some of her minions also go to school, she could protect them too (it would be a natural instinct for her, really), thus diverting suspicion from herself.
Eduardo on March 19, 2013 at 13:33 said:
Little note here: Emma should know better than to embark in a predator-prey or strong-weak philosophy and she decided to become a “predator” capable of hurting her ex-best friend for fun.
It doesn`t matter why she decided this. Her actions were criminal, to say the least.
Now she must find the other side of their simplistic philosophy. There is always a predator worse than you somewhere or someone stronger than you, at least.
And I love the last thing that Sophia said to Emma. Among other things Emma forgot that Regent made Sophia confess all abuse that they did to Taylor.
Greg, on the other hand, the boy who kept trying to impress the “in crowd”, the boy that gave Taylor`s homework to Julia just to be pleasing, is really a bad person to realise that Taylor is Skitter.
Oh, and Emma`s dad, the one who should have forced his daughter into therapy or, at least, had a long talk to her about her actions against her former best friend, he is another one who may find life a bit difficult from now on.
Nope, Taylor will not get revenge, but everyone will know what happened and this will be more than enough.
Excellent chapter. I thank the author once again for the fun reading.
>And I love the last thing that Sophia said to Emma. Among other things Emma forgot that Regent made Sophia confess all abuse that they did to Taylor.
oh my. I completely forgot about that.
nvm taylor doesn’t need to do anything. emma’s kinda screwed
I cast Summon Bigger Fish!
…you’re not on the Darths and Droids forums, too, are you? I’m starting to fear you’re wherever I lurk.
Greedo really did shoot first. Now we engage in epic Jedi armwrestling!
But no, not on the forums.
During Taylor’s downtime, I hope she took the time to procure some exotic insects. I’m thinking Bullet Ants, Bombardier Beetles, Japanese Giant Hornets (even if Japan is mostly inaccessible, I’m sure there are still hornets around), and pretty much anything from Australia.
Bullet ants top the Schmidt Pain Index. Yak-killer hornets fucking *kill yaks.* (Yes, the yak-killer isn’t quite as nasty as its Japanese cousin, but it’s very closely related and, you know, not confined to a destroyed archipelago.) Introducing either or both of those would get that kill order expedited faster than you can say “Expedite this kill order, please.”
Thats the point though. She runs the city and the heroes did seem to give her a pass due to helping against Noelle, and Cauldron. She isn’t the type to use them against regular people. She can control them so they don’t get away from her and wreck environment. It merely gives her some added firepower against the inevitable new villain that wants to make a name for themselves by taking her down.
Bullet Ants would count as a nonlethal tactic, though. The pain is temporary and debilitating, but leaves no lasting injuries (unless of course they are stung with enough ants to kill). I don’t think they typically issue a kill order unless they think a villain is likely to kill a lot of people, or if they are are capable of producing a threat that can reproduce itself (and no, I don’t think breeding bullet ants counts for that :P).
Although I don’t know of Wildbow will let Taylor have Bullet Ants, since it would make a lot of fight scenes shorter. Instead of describing in detail how the insects are assaulting a person’s weak points, it would be more “I had some flying bugs bring a bullet ant to him, and made it sting his eye. It was hours before he stopped crying.”
Bombardier Beetles though wouldn’t necessarily end fights by themselves, but they would be useful as distractions or pain deterrence.
sarah penguin on March 19, 2013 at 14:29 said:
Another quality update 🙂
I’m a bit late to reading this, but this was pretty good. A lot better than I thought an Emma interlude would be. I think the last bit would also serve as a fitting ending for a book.
Seems I was right in my guess that Taylor would be hanging out with her father and that both high schools would get funneled together.
Regarding Emma getting her comeuppance- while I would very much love to see something terrible happen to her, I definitely don’t think Taylor should “take revenge” or anything. It would be a big step down for her, and I think she’s better than that. Still, I hope the Wards find out what terrible people Sophia and her friend Emma were and are.
Also, I’m definitely hoping for some interaction between the capes in civilian guise. I want Weld or Clockblocker to recognize Taylor- or maybe Dragon uses the school as a way to finally have her conversation with Taylor (didn’t think we’d forget about that, did you? That has been a long time coming).
>Or neither. I may have missed the mark on this front.
It’s hard to say if you missed the mark since we really don’t know what she meant. I guess, if we’re _supposed_ to know/figure it out, you might have.
Can’t give you any better feedback about until I know what you were trying to hint at.
Hells yes. Taylor has transcended Emma and her bullshit. Looking forward to seeing what’s up with Taylor and her dad. Has she come clean? How clean? Has he figured it out himself?
I think she’d leave out the “I shot a civil servant in the face” and “My boyfriend has PTSD from being disemboweled by a prepubescent psychopath” parts, if she does let the cat out of the bag.
She won’t want to mention she’s keeping a cat imprisoned in a bag either.
She could say she was just holding it for Schrödinger.
I really don’t think she’s come clean. That’s kind of a lot to admit to your parents. Though if he really is as afraid of losing her as he seemed to be, he might bury it just to keep her.
Donated!
I wonder if Sophia was alluding to the part where Regent sent the evidence of Emma being in on the bullying to the police.
Ah, that sounds likely to me. That’s what I’m betting on.
Karrin Blue on March 19, 2013 at 17:29 said:
Wow… This was pretty awesome. Also, hello! I just finished archive-binging this and it is really, really awesome. Though, I kinda doubt Taylor’s going to be going to school – didn’t the Wards see her with her mask off during the Noelle thing? At least one of them, I think. Plus she has to run her section of the city. I guess she doesn’t need to be there, but I’m not sure why she’d want to go back to school, other than maintaining cover.
Though it would be interesting if the school heard about her being blind and she had to fake it or something. Wonder if Emma would start thinking about that, or just assume Taylor heard the car.
Why would they hear about _Taylor_ being blind, and why would she have to fake it?
She was blind for like one day, and only the paramedics saw her in civilian guise as blind.
goodol'vorbis on March 19, 2013 at 19:10 said:
was it really only one day??
christ, that last arc (and a bit) WAS pretty much one day wasn’t it!
I figured that the school would somehow get medical records. Since she went to the hospital as Taylor after Coil’s attack? And I though I remembered that during the Noelle/Echidna fight she took off her mask because of an injury or something, and one of the Wards saw. But maybe I just imagined that. /shrug.
Though I guess since she’s healed it’s a moot point anyways.
She never went to the hospital. Some Wards from another city did find out she was blind, but only because Scapegoat healed her.
Right, taylor can likely bluff about it because as far as the heroes are concerned, skitter, not taylor was blind, and they don’t even know how long she had the condition. I can totally see them assuming she had been blind her whole costumed career.
Phlinn on November 19, 2013 at 12:33 said:
Yes, she did. Lisa came and picked her up from it.
Seriously, it’s an epidemic. A good one, but an epidemic nevertheless.
Don’t be blue, Karrin, there’ll be more Worm before you know it, and welcome to the Comments Section.
They may say we’re all a bit squirrely down here, but I think they’re nuts.
Knives are sheathed guns are holstered.
Alissa on March 19, 2013 at 19:07 said:
Finally caught up a couple weeks ago. Really enjoyed this chapter, specifically giving insight to what Emma did. I’ve always liked the way you’ve fleshed out every character and made them, well, characters, rather than names on a page, and I found it odd that emma’s apparent motivation until now was simply that she was a huge bitch. However finding out about her so late in the story definitely was the right decision, in my opinion.
Super excited to see them all back in a more mundane setting. Don’t get me wrong, I loved all the post-Endbringer stuff, especially the Slaughterhouse Nine, but it seemed like things kept escalating and getting worse and worse and worse without a reprieve. This is just a personal thing, but I like seeing characters deal with secret identities and the like and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how the dynamics of it all play out at Arcadia.
All in all, fantastic work! Thanks for writing such an engaging story.
Now you leave storyland and enter the tender embrace of the Comments section. Mwahaha, you’re in my world now, not your world, and I got friends on the other side (he’s got friends on the other side).
Don’t worry about that, just an echo, a little parlor trick we have around here.
Yes, I’d say Wildbow’s fleshing out of the various characters is one of the strongest selling points. It really is hard to hate some people from their perspective. Not Emma as far as I’m concerned. It’s why I rejected someone on TVtropes calling the characters one dimensional. It’s not the same multi-character storytelling as World War Z, but you still get a good sense that these are other people in the world whose eyes you get a glimpse through in one or two scenarios.
That said, avoiding the whole high school teenager with a secret identity thing has worked out pretty well for the series as whole.
Oh, and you’re not nearly the only one wanting Taylor to move away from constant high-danger situations. The darkness does wear on you a bit. Must be even worse for some of the bingers now that I think about it. The REALLY dark stuff didn’t hit until I had days in between updates to digest it all.
I have to say, the inclusion of tags on people like nosering is eternally useful
Quick question, for anyone who wants to answer: where in the city is Arcadia High? I was discussing the story with a friend of mine over lunch today, and we were trying to figure out if it was in Skitter’s territory, or at least close enough that she could keep an eye on things with bugs while at school.
dno about how canon it is, but in the gallery somebody ‘shopped up a satellite view of brockton bay. i would assume it’s somewhere near downtown (3) to speed up the Wards’ response times
Someone should shop up a new map, seeing as the undersiders’ territory has changed.
Wish I knew where the original image is from.
From me. I put it together.
Ok this might have been stupid of me but I now just realized how big that lake Leviathan created is. I was thinking of something like a few kilometers but looking at the map it would be 10-15…
…well i guess that answers the ‘canon’ question…
okay, well good to know.
Hey Wildbow, I don’t suppose you recall the coordinate where you got the basic landmass from?
Upper end of downtown. Not near her headquarters.
All right, thanks.
Updated images in gallery. Map now shows territories, included Scarfgirl’s S9 image.
Well, isn’t that convenient. Thanks!
so if i’m reading this right, skitter’s got quite a chunk of real estate… and cherish is sorta her responsibility?
…on the other hand *taylor* seems to be under grue’s
are we going to be seeing some “territory” labels? like parian (who has a much larger territory than i would have assumed considering she’s neutral… or has she officially thrown her lot in with the undersiders?) used to have Dolltown.
or are they keeping their original nicknames?
Just wanted to say that I’ve been skimming through past chapters on Emma and Sophia due to this Interlude. I’ve noticed that Sophia, especially in her own Interlude, has the tendency to search for a single word to sum up her thoughts, saying “what’s the word” or some variation of that.
Kudos to you, Wildbow. That’s a pretty unique and subtle character tic, much better than others I can name, dattebayo!
I noticed I was doing it unconsciously whenever I wrote her, made sure to keep it consistent.
Wow. They say that good characters write themselves, even when the author wishes they would do different things. The fact that such a little nuance sprung forth unconsciously at first yet so consistently just goes to show how much of an actual character you created, not just words on a screen.
Is that what they say? That’s actually a pretty interesting idea.
Can’t say I’ve ever noticed Sophia’s verbal tic before though. This story is going to be hell to reread.
Acreage isn’t the only consideration. The Trainyards have a low population density.
So many comments… I find it ludicrous that Taylor would even consider attending the new highschool. All the other teens belong there. But not Taylor. Or any Undersider, I forget how old they are.
Taylor has henchwomen to handle day-to-day affairs, and a sufficiently strong grip on her territory that threats aren’t likely to materialize out of the blue. What’s keeping her from going back to school and getting the education that her mother would expect of her?
Ally on March 20, 2013 at 11:45 said:
I’m really glad this isn’t the final chapter. Not only because then the story would be over, and I really enjoy it, but because then this would ultimately be a story about triumphing over high school bullies, and there’s really been too much destruction, death and chaos for that to be a satisfying prize.
Good to hear Emma’s story; her actions were pretty reprehensible and I’d wondered if she were a sociopath like Sophia. But nope, she’s an ordinary person reacting badly to trauma, nothing exceptional.
I wouldn’t call her ordinary. She’s clever, perceptive, charming, attractive … if it weren’t for her strengths, she would never have been so awful a bully.
She focused her build on all the dump stats.
What would that build be, I wonder? An elf bard? Maybe a level or two in cleric as well, since she patched Sophia up now and again?
I think supposing that she has even a single PC class level is questionable. I honestly would have her down as a level one Aristocrat.
agreyworld on March 20, 2013 at 19:12 said:
I really enjoyed the last two Intervals. Normally I can’t wait to get back to the story, even though I do like them. These two made me want more of them though!
I’m the same way. Some interludes, when I gathered what they were about, turned out to be some of my favorite updates. But I did a lot of my reading whilst at work (to my supervisor’s eternal grief–come on really, how many of you read Worm when you weren’t supposed to!? THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT) and so I had less time I was willing to devote to detours in story. With that in mind, I skipped some interludes to keep reading the primary plot. Taylor’s life is just too fascinating sometimes. I’m sort of glad I did things that way, now that I’ve caught up. I can read the interludes I skipped while I wait for new updates. Whee!
Actually, a lot of these interludes have proven very important to the plot, and IMO they should be included in Worm’s final drafts as a manuscript.
I also read at work!
But then I do most of my writing at work as well, and I’ve been too busy lately… The art of procrastination.
Ted on March 20, 2013 at 23:43 said:
Wow loving this story, found it like last week and it is awesome. really really really cool. I freaking love how powers have little quirks, like clock-blocker having to touch something to freeze it, and how minor powers can wreak havoc, like Tt tearing peoples psyche to shreds and figuring out the portal and that.
Found this story by searching for stories about bullying, it started out like that and then school disappeared but bullying was still kinda there, cause you know the power to control bugs versus end-bringers and serial killers and !SCIENCE! the whole story is great but it was how you portrayed bullying at the beginning and how the adults couldn’t act against it.
Was seething with rage at how taylor read off the list of things the bullies did to her, ON HER FIRST DAY BACK, and how emmas lawyer dad said prove it. and threatened to take them to court. Really showed how powerless taylor was? / felt then she grows and becomes confident happy and everything.
And now it might be going back to school, will make for a interesting contrast.
I’m waiting here at 03:44 in the uk for the next chapter cause it seems they appear at midnight in canada. shivering with excitement.
Thanks for the story so far wildbow.
and omg just now Arc 20: Chrysalis has appeared on the table of contents 🙂
Welcome, my friend.
Had to get that in before the more prominent Commenters did.
*does a little dance*
Bladesmith on March 21, 2013 at 08:22 said:
Hey, just a thought to troll the comment section with/ give Wildbow ideas. With all the anticipation of Taylor- Clockblocker interactions, has anyone considered the horrible concept of Clock going out with Emma? He’s already proven shallow enough or having enough of a save-the-mean-girl sort of attitude to be interested in Sophie(from the therapy interview). Emma will obviously be reaching out to the most popular and important boys in the school to raise her own status. Especially if she can guess at his identity(from things Sophie has told her?), that would make him all the more valuable as a boyfriend. Bonus mean points if she pursues him after he becomes Taylor’s friend.
Also, I think there’s an inconsistency towards the end of the story, where Emma remarks that she “could look at any house and find three things wrong with it”. Shouldn’t it be ten things?
anon on May 4, 2013 at 01:56 said:
On one hand, thank you for supplying some pretty good motivations for Emma’s history with Taylor. Most authors wouldn’t bother to supply a reason; they’d paint Emma as a shallow bitch. But it’s obviously more convoluted than that and you did an excellent job at paintaing a more complex antagonist (well, previous antagonist).
That said, I hate the style! A total personal thing here. I just /loathe/ flashbacks. If the story can’t “move forward” it feels like a waste of my time; like the story is stagnating. Maybe that’s /wrong/ and there are times when flashbacks can’t be helped at all, but I feel like, flashbacks can be handled better. Paint things in the “now” when you can. You’ve used dream sequences and other devices to do that, but there are other ways. And the ways you can dream up can add another perspective on things, that don’t paint too clear of a picture.
Because to me, this chapter cleared up one of the bigger mysteries about this story. I’ve always wondered what drove Emma and Sophia to do what they did. Now it’s all spelled out. And the worst part? Taylor has no idea about it. Will she ever understand it? Maybe. But if you ever decide to reveal it to her, you’ll need to devise some convoluted scene for it. It’s redundant, because you could accomplish both things in one scene set in the “now”.
Yan rings a bell. She and two other ex-ABB-thugs worked for Skitter before being chased away?
The two other ABB thugs aren’t tagged, but Yan was definitely one of the three briefly employed by Skitter — her tag is Nosering, the others were Accent and Shaggy.
GuesssWho on May 26, 2013 at 21:33 said:
She was a bitch from the beginning, then. Seriously, what kind of person is most afraid of being like their best friend, and is annoyed by sadness?
chrnno on May 26, 2013 at 23:49 said:
I am pretty sure most people over the course of their lives feel annoyed by sadness at some point and reasonably sure there is at least one thing you wouldn’t want to be like your best friend. From there to what she did is an immense jump…
I must say, I didn’t expect anything like this.
I dislike Emma less and Shadow Stalker more. I suspect I’m not alone.
I can’t help but draw parallels between what happened to Emma with the ABB and what happened to Taylor with the tampon locker. Both were helpless and having the worst experiences of their lives. Both took a while to re-enter their normal routines and weren’t the same afterwards. The big difference? Someone–Shadow Stalker–came to save Emma; no one saved Taylor. If no one saved Emma, she might have triggered, and this would be a much different story.
…I wonder if someone could write a fanfic with that premise.
Huh. Emma was right. She’s not as strong as Taylor.
Although Sophia pouring poison in her ear didn’t help.
And the moral of this story was that Sophia’s views of life was correct! Right? Since her main tenant of morality, survivors and victims, was proved right.
Don’t like it at all thematically, it’s a really common thing to turn it around and be like haha this thing you said was true but you weren’t part of it as if it makes it okay.
Be like Voldemort saying “Pure bloods are the best”, then he was revealed to be a half blood and defeated by a pure blood and then the end line being “After all pure bloods are the best”. It’s based in spite but doesn’t look beyond the fact that they were still right.
Dude, seriously. What are you doing?
Character’s opinion =/ Author’s actual opinions.
That isn’t the moral of the story.
It’s what the characters think, or believe. Don’t mistake what imperfect, flawed characters say to be gospel.
I didn’t say it was the author’s opinion, that’s why I said I don’t like it thematically as opposed to it being a realistic opinion. I just don’t like the whole Hitler being “Aryan’s are the best”, turning out not to be an Ayran and then people throwing that he’s not Ayran back in his face.
Also I meant this interlude, not the whole story. The long and short of it that was Sophia was right in her morality inside the story (obviously), when she said there are survivors and victims (something I think is a bad mindset and not true as well) you’re hoping the bad character doesn’t get proved right not that she does. I mean that’s why I was bringing up that people just see it as spite when they should be realising that you’re falling to their level.
It depends what level you read it at. On the face of it, sure, you could say Taylor’s success vindicates Sophia’s theory. But you have to remember that thought is from Emma’s perspective and she’s *looking* for evidence she can use to justify her mindset. And the more you think about it, the less it holds up.
Shadowstalker and Emma are both survivors by their own philosophy but that’s not working out so well for them. Sure, you could say that Taylor was just more survivory than they were, but that leaves you with a circular definition: only survivors succeed in this world. If you did all ‘survivor’y things but still fail? Sorry, I guess you weren’t a survivor after all. It becomes meaningless.
Ultimately Taylor is a ‘survivor’ in that she survived. But that’s a side-effect of her success, not the cause of it. She was successful because she (a) thinks well on her feet (b) thinks of other people (eg. taking the time to understand and befriend Bitch) and (c) refuses to give up on what matters to her.
Heck, Vista was a better survivor than Shadowstalker. And what’s the commonality? The ‘survivors’ are the ones who *didn’t* engage in anti-social “gotta be top dog” behaviour.
Anyone in a modern society who (a) believes you have to be a survivor to win and (b) fails to recognise the ability to get on with other people as a key survival trait is (c) an idiot.
“that had stick to the end of one nail”
stick –> stuck
“subsumed her her thoughts”
subtract a “her”
Omg this chapter was great, i even cried a little and by the end i was like “Take that Emma” and riding a literature high
Interesting. So, we get into Emma’s head a little, we can at least see the /explanation/ for all the crappy things she did, but at the same time it’s pretty clear that, while she had a very emotionally scarring experience, she made some very poor choices in how to deal with it. It may feel good to put others down to make yourself feel more powerful, especially when you’ve had a very disempowering experience, but it’s not what makes you a survivor.
Ugg, I wanted to unconditionally hate Emma forever, and now I almost feel sorry for her. Fantastic job humanizing her. She’s still an asshole, but now she’s a multi-dimensional character.
alextfish on January 7, 2014 at 17:28 said:
When this interlude started I said to myself, “Don’t you dare make Emma sympathetic!” 🙂 Fortunately you didn’t. Yes, she had a pretty awful experience, but she makes some pretty indefensible choices as a result of it too.
I agree Taylor won’t try to get revenge – she’s just moved on so much – but I’m amused by the idea that Taylor steps in to defend some other kid in trouble.
Emma gets flesh, the smallest violin in the world plays the saddest tune in the universe for her… I still hope she get kicked in the ass, she was a total bitch.
Jenny Creed on May 5, 2014 at 12:00 said:
I’m picturing the world’s smallest violin badly tuned and crammed up Emma’s nose. It takes a special kind of asshole to go through a traumatizing event, decide that surviving that sort of thing makes you the only worthwhile kind of person and then dedicate your life to shitting all over your best friend for being better at surviving trauma than you are, while telling yourself it’s because she reminds you of a time when you were a worse person for not having been traumatized yet.
She’s deluding herself on like five different levels, at least two of them wilfully. And it’s not so she can cope with her trauma, but because she doesn’t like knowing how weak she thinks she is and pretending she doesn’t know is easier than trying to better herself to live up to the unhealthy tenets of the lazy amateur-fascist philosophy she accepts without question.
Maybe if the next time she gets in trouble Scion comes along to save her so she can model her entirely impressionable personality on a more positive template. . .
Sooooo…she becomes totally expresionless and laconic?emanating a deep sense of sadness?
matron on June 30, 2014 at 12:20 said:
Should be “stuck”
Love the story, thanks for making it happen.
swiftmockingjay451 on July 3, 2014 at 09:26 said:
Sophia/Shadow Stalker’s theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OTTSxZqy5g
Especially the lines ‘I prey on your fear, it feeds my strength. You’re just another victim, awaiting death’.
Even the title is appropriate: Night Stalker
gwern on August 11, 2014 at 18:29 said:
Oh come on, does *every* major character who is nasty have some buried trauma which explains it? Maybe Emma was just a vicious person.
What I really like about wilbow is that she humanized her while still making her clearly villainous.A hard thing to do,Shadowstalker and Coil are arguably not humanized enough,while there are people who like Pigot and Armsmaster after their chapter,so that was a really hard balance to strike even for Wilbow
Not much for me to comment on in this chapter. I appreciate seeing the sympathetic backstory for Emma and that she didn’t just flip a switch overnight for no reason. That being said, I still hate her and find very little redeeming in her character. If anything this chapter made me hate her MORE. She still understands several times that she crossed the line and each time she clearly decides to fuck it and keep going. Plenty of people have traumas growing up and very few become evil psychopaths. Emma is still straight up evil in my book and I still have my fingers crossed for a cruel and painful death. Maybe not a fate worse than death but at least still a painful end. I almost hope that she will interact with Taylor in school just so that the bitch can get a small iota of deserved karma.
Any possible redemption for her character flew away like a bat out of hell with the flute incident. I commented on that another chapter but just to reiterate here…that one incident if nothing else, pushed her past my moral event horizon and into complete monster territory. Bonesaw has the small excuse of seeming to be batshit insane. Even Sophia seems to follow her own fucked up moral compass. Emma has no such justification. She is simply an evil person.
Also, minor repeated word typo: “It was like being possessed, and the white noise that had subsumed her her thoughts when she searched for an argument now consumed her brain in entirety.”
Extra “her” in the middle.
Another point when we disagree.While I do find older people,like Emma,responsible for their actions,so still on the “evil”territory,and on the “must be stopped”territory,”with death”,if murderous and no other way is possible,but I believe that,still,even the worst of people are redeemable,and the stopping must be quick and painless death,if possible.
I just find no practical reason for physical punishment.Is it acceptable sadism?that would make the punisher evil.Is it justice?justice is mercy.Is it the idea that evil will always get punished?yeah,that’s useful with the law,sometimes,but we all know evil does triumpth sometimes.Is it reformation?no,the exact opposite.
I am,however,all in for punishments that can be constructive to humanity,such as a criminal justice system,or destruction of a person’s worldview so he can change.Or death if dangerous and unstoppable,but not if imprisoned and on your mercy.
Ya see,I believe that humans often make a mistaken assumption.All humans are sympathetic,by dent of being humans.That doesn’t make people like Emma,Piggot,Armsmaster,Purity,Coil,the S9 etc. good,or even gray:they are firmly evil (yes,some readings can make Armsmaster,Piggot,Coil etc. gray,but not due to being sympathetic people,but due to subscribing to a moral system where their actions are halfway moral).Their inherent humanity,however,makes them sympathetic,no matter how monstrous,and thus redeemable.Even if they can never pay back what they’ve done,I’d much rather have another good person than a dead person.
slider214 on April 5, 2015 at 16:21 said:
In almost any other setting with almost any other event I could agree that Emma would be redeemable. My main problem with her is utterly and entirely personal. I had similar experiences with bullying though not to such a large extent. My only real comfort was my dog and a single friend. If that friend had turned around and been the leader of the bullies I would’ve pretty much lost all hope in everything. That’s why I consider her unredeemable in my own view. Wildbow is great and crafting sympathetic characters that somehow manage to flip sides with good feelings by all including the meta readers (Armsmaster is a good example and probably Assault as well). Emma to me was forever locked out of that possibility because she specifically chose her best friend to torment in an effort to save herself. The one person who trusted her more than anything when her world had collapsed Emma tore down in the worst possible ways. The flute was the final straw that broke my camel’s back. That girl deserves a cruel physical judgement end because I feel that she needs to experience some of the pain she forced onto her “friend”. This isn’t about justice, sadism, or reformation. This is about good old fashioned revenge. She deserves pain. She pushed her “friend” into being suicidal to help herself. That’s not worthy of a quick end because it hits too close to home.
You know I actually have no issues with Purity or Piggot. Both are dicks and full on racist but they have always both been sympathetic enough that I never had real issues with them. Even Lung I didn’t particularly hate until he started indiscriminately bombing the city and even then he was mostly forced into it by Baccuda. Armsmaster too I considered to be a dick but not necessarily a bad guy even before his change into Defiant. There are very few people I don’t find to be sympathetic or redeemable in this story. Jack, Emma and Bonesaw at this point are arguably it. I think there may have been one or two more but I’d have to reread from the beginning to remember who qualified. The only other one I remember for sure isn’t actually over the line yet so will remain nameless. (For the record, I never had issues with Amy either beyond her being a idiot and a bitch. I only bring that up because people always seem to lump her in with the monsters which I seriously do not understand.)
On the whole I do agree with you that another good person is better than another dead person.
In any other setting,characters would be fundamendally less redeemable,because they would be fundamentally less human.That ever goes for some villains I like.Not that they are flat,they just do not have the depth Wilbow gives her characters.
There is a reason revenge is rarely a heroic motive,and thats because,in some inherent level,its all about inflicting pain with no gain outside of some false sense of personal satisfaction that will pass away later.Sure,most of the time it coincides with the person being a monster,in which case it is anti-heroic,but that is in the tenets of doing something selfish and it coincidentaly helping the world.And no,deserves has nothing to do with this world,only because what somebody deserves is ambiguous.I am,fundamendally against the concept of punishment existing only as part of some astract Karma,rather seeking the best situation for all.
Unlike others,as I said,I can find someone both sympathetic and evil.But lets go purely by actions:Armsmaster betrayed allied supervillains and almost some superheroes,for glory.He also betrayed a person who trusted him very very much,Taylor.Twice.The second time,in a non excusable situation,on life on death situation,on an action with evil motivations,even if it would work for the greater good,on an avoidable death,even for his plan.
C’mon,why was this accidentally posted,I havent finished?
Anyway,Piggot used her authority to practically abuse the superheroes under her care,at least as much as she could get away with without getting shafted.This is bullying on the worst level.
Regent has done the worst torture done in this series by a not S level threat (perhaps what Panacea did also counts?whatever,she did not exactly do it willingly.I guess Heartbreaker would count too,but his is not exactly painful,though it might be worse),on innocents (according to your hate for Bonesaw,his younger self’s actions make him irredeemable)and,on one point after he joined the Undersiders,on a hero that was,as far as we know,not evil causing him to skip town (am I the only one to realise this is why Brownbeat left?)
And if we are comparing motivations,lets see if I can make her sympathetic to your eyes by changing only a few scenes and her thoughts.Lets say the lawyer on the talk with her teachers came without her will,and Shadowstalker did too at the mall.Lets say she wanted to make her friend lash out against her so she could join the survivors and be a winner like her,because that fitted her new morality.Would that make her good?excusable?
Wildbow does do a fantastically epic job of giving them depth but he isn’t the only writer out there to do so just one of the better ones.
I can agree that revenge tends to be less of a heroic motive. I still am perfectly okay and eager for people to take revenge on someone at times. When a man kills your family I feel the survivor is perfectly justified killing him in return. That’s just my view on things since I can’t guarantee that there is a suitable punishment waiting in the next life.
Armsmaster’s actions against Taylor were reprehensible but yes. I feel I am in the minority though when I question why there is such a huge outcry over his actions against Leviathan. His program worked best one on one, most of those people were dying anyway and he didn’t actually pull the trigger on any of them beyond the GPS for Taylor. He may have been a bit of gloryhound but he still did the most damage of anyone in the entire fight before Eidolon showed up. His actions weren’t great or honorable but I never saw it as the prime example of breaking the truce that the story treated it as.
Piggot is a bully yes but her comments and actions all had a point. She wasn’t politically correct but very few people even seemed all that bothered by her beyond finding her difficult to work with and frustratingly annoying.
I don’t find Regent’s prior actions as the worst torture behind the S level threats but again it probably boils down to most of them having been offscreen. He was a bad person yes and again my reasons for finding him better than Bonesaw are basically because he recognizes that about himself and dislikes it while she revels in it. (Plus I’m sorry, rape and drug addiction simply does not compare to copy and pasting two people together. Never mind the agnosia fog that would’ve killed the entire city had Amy not been strategically placed and dragged into helping.) I don’t think Browbeat was ever a victim of Regent…I thought he left because he didn’t want to stay after Leviathan / metawise Wildbow forgot about him…
Honestly, no those changes don’t do anything to help Emma for me. Truly I think the only way I’d change my opinion of her is by showing someone holding a gun to her head to do that stuff to Taylor. Even then, the flute thing still makes me go no way. Like I’ve said, I really can’t ever forgive someone who would willingly do that. Physical bullying is one thing. Emotional bullying is one thing. Mental bullying is one thing. Taking one of the only mementos of a dead parent and defiling it is…so far beyond wrong that…to me that action is worse than a serial killer. It’s very difficult to explain why but, I feel less hatred for someone like Jack the Ripper than I do for someone who does that.
On Brownbeat:reread the bank robbery…closely.It tends to slip people’s radars because they didn’t yet know he could do it,but in retrospect,something inexplicable that happened is really obvious now.
Bonesaw kinda is part of the aforementioned S level threats,ya know,so you haven’t really disproven me.
True,but Emma’s actions are like that precisely because she wants to hurt the other person as much as possible.Her actions are vile,yes,but not unpardonable and,frankly,the more you hate her for them,the more she suceeded.I,too,end to torture characters I hate very much in my mind,but,even if I was the author,spite fulled torture would never be my moral answer to them.
Truthseeker on January 6, 2015 at 19:03 said:
Oh, wowwwwwww.
A comment above mentioned that Yan sounded familiar, but I never caught it. Yan may be better remembered as, “Hand or knee?” –She took Lao’s “fucked up” notion from Emma’s assault here and made it her shtick.
Put another way, one of the people who so damaged Emma that she became the incredibly terrible person she is at the start of the story…. is someone Skitter dealt with, trivially, in between crises, and neither Taylor nor Emma will ever know because it’s just so coincidental.
slider214 on January 7, 2015 at 01:15 said:
Even more entertaining when you consider that Taylor basically neutered the root cause of her trigger event thrice over when she took out those three. Between the three mooks, Shadow Stalker and tangentially Lung, she took out the entire system that gave her her powers without a single damn clue besides SS.
Totally ironic and totally awesome.
one thing i noticed on the second read through is what Emma ruined in Taylor. that happy child that got buried when her mother died only snuffed out fully by Emma and i find that very sad.
“”could auction her off.”
Missing a quotation mark (“) on the end there.
I didn’t really note it very much the first time I read Worm because I was following along the serial update schedule, and the individual bits where a bit spaced out, but the last few arcs are absolutely heart-wrenching. I mean, in-between all the Excitin’ Fightin’ Scenes and the Conspiracies and the Plotting and the Romance and Psycho-Gecko’s puns and the talks about What Can Change the Nature of A (super)Man and so on there’s also a very, very sad dismantling of every heroic and “moral” principle Taylor-Skitter tried to uphold.
In Monarch16.13 Taylor kills Coil because it turns out that the 16 preceding arcs have slowly pushed her towards being able to kill someone and at the end of the day, it’s just the better option. If they let him go, well, he’d have contigency plans and he might finagle a fake trial, perhaps even escape and it’d be a mess and, honestly, he deserves it so it turns out some problems can be solved with by performing cranial surgery via bullet. It’s just easier. Neater. Tidier all around. Less trouble down the road. It’s probably the better option. Even Dinah says so – in the end, Coil’s murder didn’t stack up against being rescued. Guess you can’t cooperate or communicate with everybody.
In Queen18.1 and Queen18.2 Taylor(finally) rescues Dinah and its heartwarming and cute and she accomplishes the mission she set out to do so long ago, and 100 %, no lie, I’m fairly sure: “Rescuing kidnapped and abused children from the clutches of meglomaniacal masterminds” is concentrated and distilled Heroism… yet, the emotional pay-off is the realization, in Queen18.2, that this is a dumb decision that will make every following problem that much harder to solve. Sure, she waffles about it in 18.1, realizing that Dinah’s power is tempting her into turning into a Coil-lite, but only because Coil was right. Sometimes, perhaps imprisoning pre-teen precogs to plot your power plays is the smart, reasonable option. Doing the Right Thing might be dumb because it means tying your own hands behind your back seconds before a boxing match with the apocalypse. The suffering of one person versus the lives of everyone? Might not stack up.
In Scourge, somewhere between all the vomit, slime, quantum entanglement headaches, lies, deceit, violent thuggery and pernitent questions about interdimensional mining operations people end up talking about the mathemathics of human sacrifice. And Regent (fucking Regent) has to be all: “Wait, Taylor, isn’t this the part where you normally say something like: human sacrifice is wrong?” and she can’t do it.
Sure, she rationalizes in Scourge.19.6 that she actually meant herself! all along! and that Skitter’d be willing to perform the ultimate sacrifice! She couldn’t, she wouldn’t ask someone else to do that. Killing and kidnapping can perhaps be justified, might even be the smart choice, but throwing away the lives of others is going too far… What’s that? No, Sundancer, there are no more capes inside Echidna. All clear. Burn her. Couldn’t rescue the last 4 trapped people anyway. What? I didn’t ask them to, I just made the call. You others would have stopped me if you didn’t agree!
It’s the smart thing to do. It’s probably the better choice. Given the circumstances I’m fairly sure saving them is actually impossible, or if not that then at least so hard as to lead to greater danger for everyone else. (Taylor seems to think that) It just also turns out Coil, Cauldron and the PRT was right. You do need to lie, kill, conspire and sacrifice. Hell, after Cauldron’s grand edifice of lies, murder and human experimentation has been laid bare, Taylor ends up hoping that Cauldron has enough clout to actually silence everyone speaking out against it. Because kidnapping and imprisoning people in interdimensional purgatories, sacrificing lives to the meatgrinder of neccesity and killing those you disagree with might just be… better? Easier? Certainly smarter. Gotta make some sacrifices for the cause. The end of the world. Can’t tie your hands behind your back. What’s a few more corpses against the next Endbringer attack? It doesn’t stack up.
And she gets to see her dad! Because survivors prosper. Damn straight they do, everyone else is dead. Or a mind-wiped slave to an interdimensional conspiracy. Or ash. Or on the run from an unstoppable assassin out to silence them for having a dissenting opinion, which is bad for morale, so it’s just cleaner to cut it away.
It’s good writing and great story-telling, and it puts some interesting foundations for the next 11 Arcs (Spoiler: What follows is just as good if not better than the preceding bits), and it is also heart-wrenchingly sad. Guess becoming a Hero just isn’t what you need to become to save the world.
And this all started with grape-juice, bugs and dreams.
C.C x Lelouch on August 27, 2015 at 23:41 said:
Damn you made me hate Sophia and Emma even more……
slider214 on August 28, 2015 at 03:15 said:
You know this was actually I think the first chapter where I started to admit that maybe my hate for Sophia was a little over the top and while I still hoped she’d die I at least admitted that I would be okay with her survival as long as she never again went near our main group.
But yeah, this did totally and completely make me hate Emma even more than I already had which I honestly hadn’t realized was possible.
Huh. I feel like this chapter furthered my understanding of Sophia more than any of the chapters that followed Shadow Stalker to any measurable degree. (One of the comments helped too, apparently I’m really bad at reading between lines.)
I’m almost surprised we didn’t see the mall-punching incident. Hmm. Actually, not seeing the incident itself makes perfect sense, but part of me still almost wishes we saw something related to it, a setup smugness sort of thing or some aftermath or something.
I actually feel like the ultimate piece of revenge would be for Taylor to show kindness toward Emma. It would confirm how much more mature and stronger than Emma she is.
And it would hopefully help in shattering the worldview Sofia gave her: Taylor is clearly a survivor, a winner, but in no way is she being a preditor, just the opposite.
I have no hopes for them ever being friends again, Emma doesn’t deserve it, but perhaps she could find some new friends, real friends, in the future and grow up to become a decent person.
slider214 on March 12, 2016 at 20:57 said:
As a victim of bullying I have to disagree. While being kind to her would certainly give Taylor the moral high ground it barely ever phases the actual bully and it only rarely makes the victim feel better. It’s a nice sentiment and I really do wish it worked but in practice it just makes the bullies try even harder.
My point was doing it from a position of power, when Taylor was clearly at the top, and only to the extent that she accepts it. The moment Emma shows ungratefulness or attempts to abuse the kindness, Taylor should stop and instead ignore her.
Showing kindness when the bully is in a position to bully would just be seen as another sign of weakness (as you said), while showing kindness when you are very clearly on the top (especially to the extent where trying would count as Bullying a Dragon), would (or at least could) instead further the sense of superiority. “I’m so much better than you that I, even though I could easily destroy you, choose to show you kindness and forgiveness. After all you did to me, I will still give you a second chance.”
In that position, showing kindness is not as much a moral high ground as a show of strength. Especially if you make it clear that it is a second chance and nothing else.
On the other hand, when you are only in a slightly stronger position than your bully, which I admit is probably the case here, it would once again be seen as a sign of weakness and as a chance to reverse the power hierarchy.
Okay, I can mostly agree with that. In this instance though I would say that while Taylor is most definitely at the Bullying a Dragon level, Emma doesn’t know that. To her, Taylor isn’t Skitter refusing to sink to the poor insignificant worm’s (bad pun fully intended) level. She’s just little Taylor-who-might-have-grown-a-small-bit-of-backbone-during-the-chaos-but-still-doesn’t-truly-compare-to-me.
Robert Loughrey on January 18, 2017 at 21:34 said:
Great backstory here. I have to say though, Emma is still a bitch despite understanding a bit more of where she is coming from.
42 eyes on January 27, 2017 at 21:12 said:
Masterful writing as always, but, as someone who’s rereading this, I find that it’s far too easy to just skip the first half or so of this chapter. It’s nice backstory on Emma and all but it’s a bit of a painful slog if you know what’s happening. Not disagreeing with the fact that you put it there, just nitpicking.
IronGob on February 27, 2017 at 19:34 said:
Aaaaaaaaah! Emma is just the worst. I sure hope Taylor kills her later in the book. 😡
«The woman who must have been standing next to Emma’s father, was lying prone on the ground on the other side of the car, a pool of blood spreading beneath her.» the first comma is not correct
FvckSophia on June 21, 2017 at 16:29 said:
Fuck, Emma and specially fuck Sophia
Regent went soft on her
rhupsodyx on August 25, 2017 at 18:41 said:
I wonder story about 3rd girl — Madison. Almost nothing is known about her, she’s just a hollow character, she seemed to be introduced just so there were trio, not duo of most popular girls. No real personality, story, nothing. I am sad about this, wishing that Wildbow will once write interlude featuring her.
Tim McCormack on December 22, 2017 at 08:47 said:
This chapter felt cinematic to me, somehow. The fight scene in the alley felt very visual to me in a way Worm (and most books) usually don’t for me — I had strong mental visuals, whereas I usually have something more like a mental map of the scene. I wonder what was different?
Canon on April 13, 2018 at 12:31 said:
Living well really is the best revenge. Excellent chapter.
Fuck you Emma! Fuck you!
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Prisoners and case fifty-threes flooded into the narrow corridors, making their way into the special cells.
I gestured, urging others to move. They shifted until their backs were against the wall. Golem and Cuff even stepped onto the bed, to get out of the way.
I found myself by the door. Mantellum wasn’t close enough to blind my bugs, so I could track the people as they came around the corner, approaching the doorway. A gang of them.
I drew my second knife, then activated the knife Defiant had given me. Safety… and the trigger.
The guy at the head of the group made it into the doorway. He stopped as he saw Bastard. I pressed my old knife’s blade against his throat, saw him back away, only to bump into the people behind him.
three… fo-
The knife finished forming the gray blur around it. Roughly three point seven seconds. Good.
He didn’t look worried. So I reached out and dragged the blur against the wall, gouging out a groove a few inches deep. Smoke expanded.
He froze, his eyes flicking down, as if he could see past his cheekbones, face and chin to the knife I had against his throat.
I nodded slowly.
“Move it, asshole!” one of the captives said.
He didn’t move. I saw his eye shift, until it settled on me. My arm moved, not wholly steady when fully extended, a weight in hand, and I felt the blade rasp against the scruff on his neck.
Not a case fifty-three. Just an ordinary guy.
‘Ordinary’. He was here, he would have powers.
“Move!” the guy in the hallway ordered.
“Dim byd yma,” my hostage said, without breaking eye contact with me. Then he added, in a heavily accented voice, “Is nothing here.”
The cheering reached a climax outside. My bugs could sense the people in an adjacent cell. They had someone, and were dragging him out as a group.
“Something’s going on,” one of the guys in the corridor said.
“Don’t care. Move, motherfucker. I want to see if there’s any shit in there.”
“Is no shit,” my hostage said. “Empty.”
I nodded slowly. Oddly enough, he looked more concerned at that.
An issue in translation? A cultural problem?
The roaring reached a climax. They had a man with no arms or legs, not fat, but with a goiter-like mass around his neck… hairless. A case fifty-three.
“This one,” Imp said, repeating what the mob’s ringleader was saying. Shouting, judging by the way he was acting on camera. “This traitor, he is how they controlled us. How they planned to control you. He was going to brainwash these ones into a private army… he’s pointing at the weird looking ones they brought from downstairs. This traitor was going to send the rest of you out without any memories, without identities, as Cauldron’s trash.”
“We’re missing it,” the one further down the corridor said.
It’s only the three, now. The rest backed out to check out the scene.
“I think I know what we’re missing. It’s not worth seeing. But first dibs at whatever’s in this cell? If this fuckhole doesn’t move out of the doorway, I’m going to slide a foot up his rectum, and pry open a new doorway.”
I glanced around the room. I could see how tense the others were. Even Lung was rigid, bristling with scale-points. Primed for a fight.
Imp’s voice came over the earbuds. “Oh, hey, fun fact. You can apparently crucify someone without arms or legs, if you try hard enough, and have the right powers. He’s getting the crowd worked up, trying to start up a witch hunt. Um. He’s shouting, who wants to kill the real monster, the monster who did this to us?
The bloodthirsty cries of the crowd made it through even the soundproofing of the cell. I could sense the emotion, the anger.
“Look to your neighbors, the ones next to you. Are they shouting loud enough? Are they angry enough? Because we aren’t going to brook any traitors.”
My hostage looked like he was going to have a heart attack. Caught between two very dangerous people.
I relented, easing up on the knife, then I beckoned for him to enter the room.
Slowly, he obeyed.
The guy behind him spat. “Fucking liar. I knew you were lying. Trying to keep all this shit to your… self…”
He trailed off as he got far enough into the room to see me and the others.
I gave my hostage a push, with the idea that he’d get put off balance for the others to deal with. Except I failed, completely and utterly, to budge him. He started to turn, and I left him behind, hurrying forward to slide behind the second man and confront the third before he could catch on to what was happening and alert others.
The others folded in on the first two.
I could see the third man’s eyes go wide as I approached, my bugs swarming. I had a knife in each hand.
He had other powers.
Fighting capes I don’t know, unfamiliar powers.
A sphere of light surrounded my right hand and knife, more spheres lighting up to surround the largest clusters of my swarm, turning each of them into fireflies in the darkness.
Which put me in the awkward position of figuring out what his power did and counteracting it. The obvious solution, a solution to most powers, was to hit him before he could hit me with whatever it was he did.
I tried moving bugs outside of the sphere, and the sphere moved with them. I moved individual bugs in different directions, and I felt them distort, coming to pieces, as if they were blobs of ink and I was pushing them against a hard surface.
Bugs made it through his perimeter, biting and stinging, and he reacted with the appropriate pain. But the bugs surrounded by light didn’t manage to bite into flesh. They were soft, their mandibles bending like putty. Where he swatted his hand against them, both spheres and bugs were distorted and crushed by the movement.
I moved the bug-spheres out of the way, thrusting with the knife-hand he hadn’t yet affected, to cut off his retreat. I felt the effect surround it as I got closer. Another sphere.
I pulled back, instead. I moved my body to block his retreat, and then drove my knee into his stomach.
He staggered back, then cast out more lights, surrounding my elbows, knees…
My head, too. My vision went… not blurry, but the colors smudged, like bad watercoloring.
Breathing became more difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.
The bugs who’d bent their mandibles or distorted in the course of making their way outside of the spheres weren’t going back to normal. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hit this guy with any of my body parts, if they wouldn’t bounce back to their normal shape after the fact.
I wasn’t sure I wanted him to hit me, either. If my face proved that pliable and he punched it…
He charged me, and I was forced to move out of the way. He stumbled for the other end of the corridor and for the crowd, a hand pressed to his stomach. I unspooled lengths of silk cord from the dispensers at my belt and beneath my armor, dragonflies lancing past him to encircle his throat and feet.
I braced myself, ready to try and arrest his forward momentum, but one of the threads was shorter than the others, and he only tripped. He glanced over his shoulder, then cast out his spheres, so they covered my feet.
I threw myself forward, my flight pack kicking into action. I lost my orientation, fighting to activate the individual panels in such a way that my hands, feet or head wouldn’t slam into a wall.
Imp said something, reciting a comment, but my focus was elsewhere.
The flight pack cracked against a wall, and I came to a dead stop. For long seconds, the two of us were stuck. I was unable to walk, because my own body weight would crush my feet, with this softening effect. I couldn’t touch anything without turning my hand or whatever into mashed potatoes.
For his part, the guy was caught on the ground, his feet bound by cords too thick and strong to break with his own raw strength.
The lights flickered out. I could see him using his power. An orb of light, surrounding a length of the thread. He could counter that, while I wasn’t so lucky as to be able to counter him. He pulled his legs apart until the thread had stretched out to the point of snapping.
He started to climb to his feet, finding other threads and using his power to break them. He was screaming, but nobody seemed to hear him over the noise of the crowd, and all eyes were on whatever was going on in the Mantellum blind spot. He wasn’t getting any help, but I couldn’t stop him.
Not with the thread.
So I controlled the swarm, driving bugs into his nose and mouth.
You want to play hardball, Softball?
He collapsed, choking. Some would have capsaicin, but few of the laced insects would be alive, covered in hairspray and a toxic chemical, so long after I’d last refreshed them.
Slowly, in the order he’d created them, the spheres disappeared.
“Need help?” Cuff asked.
“No,” I said. Forty seconds ago, yes. Not now.
“Right,” she said. She looked at the choking man. Her voice was a little different as she said, “Okay.”
When the spheres around my feet and hands had faded, I let myself drift to the ground. I hit the safety and trigger to remove the blur, then sheathed my knives. Once my hands were free, I clenched and unclenched my hands to make sure everything was in working order, and then grabbed the threads that still remained. I pulled on the threads until he was in a position where Cuff and I could get our hands on him and drag him back towards the others.
There were cheers. I looked at my phone, and I could see the weirdly pretty man. Chains stretched out from the armless, legless figure’s stumps, extending to the high ceiling and the floor, suspending him fifteen or so feet in the air. Dead, or close enough it barely mattered.
I could also make out Mantellum, at the center of the crowd. He stood beneath the guy they’d strung up, blood running off of the shroud that seemed to flow from his back and the edges of his face. His expression was hard to read, but the fact that he seemed to be luxuriating in the blood rather than avoiding it… it didn’t put him in my good books.
“It looks like we’ve got a full-on riot here,” Imp commented. “Armless dude’s good as dead, they’re splitting up the crowd, so anyone that’s not inside the circle has a few guys who can deal with the ghost janitor.”
“The Custodian,” I said, as I rounded the corner. I shoved the still-choking prisoner to the ground. The one I’d held hostage was pinned to the wall, arms and legs held fast to the surface by Golem’s projected arms and legs. Lung stood with his face just a foot away from the man’s. Bastard stood with his paw on the chest of the remaining prisoner.
Three dealt with, no alert given.
The pretty man and the spiky, yellow guy were holding a prisoner’s hands up the air between them, like they were celebrating a prize fighter. I could hear the noise of the crowd, as if it were far more distant than it was. My bugs, outside of Mantellum’s effect, could hear it at full force.
“Her. Right,” Imp said. “He’s getting them hyped, saying they’re going after the Doctor, but they need to dig. Picking out the people who have the best powers for the job. They’re shouting out what they can do. I think they’re leaving soon.”
The small army we were faced with aside, I found myself smiling a little behind my mask. The situation evoked memories. Except this time, I had a cell phone. I had the pepper spray. I had a weapon.
I’d changed. I was more prepared to do what needed to be done.
“Less to fight,” Lung said. “If you are scared, children, you can stay here. In a moment, I will go.”
Taunting? Mocking? No. Not really his style. Confident in his superiority, now that he’d changed as much as he had. Not full changes, not even full coverage with his scales, but he seemed to think he could throw himself into the crowd just outside the corridor and survive.
“We should exfiltrate,” Golem said. “Lose the costumes, wear other ones, blend into the crowd.”
“Except you need your costume,” I said. “Cuff’s far stronger with hers. Imp, Rachel and I benefit pretty heavily from ours.”
“It’s just an idea,” Golem said.
“It’s an idea,” I said. “Very workable, but it doesn’t address our main issue. We need to stop them from going after the Doctor. If we only wanted to escape, then I’d agree with your plan, but for now-”
“Looks like they have groups formed,” Imp said.
It was true. I had to tilt my phone so others could see what I was seeing. Gaps had formed between the discrete groups, as everyone figured out who they were sticking with. The main group looked like it had eighty or ninety people.
“That’s a lot of people to stop,” Golem commented. He gave me a sidelong glance. “You’re wanting to do something here?”
I nodded. “Have to, don’t we?”
“Damn it,” he said, but he didn’t argue.
“Canary?” I asked.
Her eyes were on the two guys we had on the ground.
“Canary,” I said, a little louder.
One was still choking. I ordered the bugs to make their way out of his airway. They weren’t blocking it, but they were keeping him down. We had the situation here under control.
Canary didn’t seem to relax any as the bugs flowed out of his mouth and nose. A few crawled forth from beneath his eyelids. He coughed and gagged.
She got more tense as I let up on ‘softball’. Maybe I should have left him the way he was.
“Canary,” I repeated myself for the third time, injecting a little more force into my voice.
She looked at me, disoriented.
“Can you sing to them?”
“Just them?”
“If you don’t have control, then yeah. Just them.”
“I guess.”
“It makes them suggestible?” I asked.
“I don’t really know. I never really experimented with my power.”
“Not even in the Birdcage?”
“Not really, no.”
“They’ll listen to me. If I really get into it, they’ll do anything I say.”
“Are they suggestible to you alone, or everyone?”
Canary shook her head.
“You don’t know,” I said, in the same instant she said, “I don’t know.”
“Can you group them all together?” I asked.
Lung moved fast enough that it caught me off guard, bending down to grab ‘softball’ and the other guy by the throats. He slammed them against the wall, putting them beside the guy I’d taken hostage.
Golem bound them in place.
Lung grunted, and I couldn’t read any meaning in the noise. Irritation? Satisfaction?
He was restless. Ready for a fight. The sound might have been a ‘there, now we can stop talking and do something.’
“Lung,” I said.
“Go watch the corridor? Your hearing is good enough you can follow along. Plus you might not want to be too close to Canary, here.”
“Mm,” he said.
Less verbal, now, because of the transformation?
Canary crossed the room, and she began singing. Wordless at first, as if sounding out what she wanted to do, then with more character.
Even though she kept her voice low, it still reached me, and that made me more than a little paranoid.
I moved to the other end of the cell, leaning against the wall. When I could still hear the sounds, I put a curtain of bugs between myself and her, and made them buzz and drone, fluctuating the sound until I couldn’t make out what she was doing.
“What are you thinking?” Rachel asked me.
“Chaos,” I said. “Ideal world, it won’t be chaos with us at the center.”
Rachel nodded. “No dogs, then?”
That many parahumans, I suspected the dogs wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. “No. Let’s not put them in too much danger.”
“Lovely sentiment,” Shadow Stalker said, just a little sarcastically. “So how are you pulling off this chaos thing?”
“Whatever you’re going to do, do it soon,” Tattletale said.
I gathered my swarm into a cluster. Then I activated my knife.
Using thread, I bound the knife handle, then lifted the knife into the air.
“What are you doing?” Cuff asked. She sounded genuinely curious.
The bugs stopped working to carry the knife, and I very carefully grabbed it by the handle, before withdrawing my hand from the mass.
“Had a thought, but it doesn’t work. It’s too conspicuous, the swarm.”
“Floating death knife?” Shadow Stalker asked.
“That was the basic idea. But I’ll need to do something else,” I said. I turned off the effect around it, watched as it dissolved into smoke. “Custodian.”
I felt out with my bugs. She reached directly into the swarm, letting me feel the slow movement of her hand.
“Generally speaking, you think you could handle most of the ones out there?”
She slowly floated through my swarm. The movement of her head… was she shaking it?
I felt a familiar kind of disappointment. We had the tools. Canary’s song, Lung, the knife, the dogs, the Custodian, my swarm… but in execution, it didn’t fit together.
The crowd was stomping now, a rhythmic stomping, the crowd working in unison.
If anyone wasn’t game, if anyone wasn’t keen on the lynching of the armless man, they had to be powerless in the face of this much fury. How could they speak against it? Defend the man?
It was scary to think about.
“Riling them up to go trash the place,” Tattletale said.
There was a crash. I turned to my cell phone. A cloud of dust, the crowd was agitated. Someone had trashed a cell, or a group of cells.
“…If they keep doing that, they’re going to hit these cells awfully soon,” Tattletale added.
I shut my eyes.
“We’ll have to give it a shot,” I said. “Shadow Stalker? Leave.”
“Leave?” Shadow Stalker asked.
“Find a vantage point, away from the crowd. Be ready. Your targets are the special case fifty-threes. When I give you the signal, take out as many as you can. As many as you safely can.”
“Your concern for my well being is touching, Hebert,” she said.
“I’d be annoyed if you got killed,” I said. “I’d have that nagging doubt in the back of my mind, wondering if I sent you off into a suicidal situation because of our history. And because we can’t afford to lose anyone. Because you’re a human, and I don’t want people on our side to die needlessly.”
“So it’s about pride,” she said. “Petty, stupid pride, that you think the outcome of this shit is up to you. And maybe fear? That you’ll lose too many good soldiers?”
“Whatever,” I said. “However you want to interpret it.”
“I’m assuming you’ll insist on tranquilizer bolts,” she said. “Because you don’t want anyone dying needlessly?”
“No,” I said. I thought of Newter, of the unique physiology of the case fifty-threes. “Lethal shots.”
She made a funny little laugh as she looked down at her crossbow. She began loading it with expert, practiced movements. “Funny how it all turns out. This, for one thing. That I can’t anticipate you anymore. And… that it’s just you. There’s nobody to mourn me when I’m gone. Family doesn’t really care. No friends left. No teammates, even. I’m left to console myself with the idea that, if I die, I’ll at least annoy the depressing, creepy little geek from high school.”
“I’d say something reassuring,” I said. “I want to tell you that you matter more to me than that. Or that I’m sure you matter to someone out there… but I don’t think you’d buy it.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said. She wasn’t maintaining eye contact. “Whatever. I’m going as far up the stairs as I can, put myself half out the wall, snipe from there. I’ll be a minute.”
Then she was gone, stepping through the wall, heading towards the stairwell closest to us.
“You meant that shit, Skitter?” Imp asked. “Wanting to care? Wanting to reassure her?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “At this juncture, there’s no reason to lie.”
“You’re too forgiving,” she said.
The lights flickered as another impact shook the complex.
“They’re going.”
“So are we,” I said. “Just as soon as Canary’s ready.”
Imp spoke, “Always ticked Alec off, you know. That you weren’t any good at holding grudges. Too focused on the present, when it came to picking your enemies and your allies. I wound up defending you, even.”
I was barely listening, trying to focus on the swarm, picking out the places they could operate and the places they couldn’t, tracking the various prisoners as they started moving.
But that last sentence caught me off guard. “You defended me?”
“For him, it’s his raisin de enter.”
“Raison d’etre,” Tattletale clarified.
“Yeah. That. His daddy fucked him up, so it sort of gave him an inner fire where he didn’t have much more than coal inside, y’know what I mean? Forward momentum, itch to go out and get shit done? Become a villain with the idea that maybe someday he’d get to pull one over on the old man, become a warlord. So for him, it was the only reason he really got up in the morning, besides maybe the basic pleasures of life. My parents fucked me over too, but it was different. No grudge here, just a whole lot of sad.”
“Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to add to that.
“So it was a fight. Closest to a fight as I ever got with that asshole. Well, if Skitter’s being nice, so will I. Good deed of the day, since I’m dicking around now, nothing to report… You listening in, Shady?”
“Shady?”
Man, it was eerie to recognize Sophia’s voice over the earbud.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Regent told me about his stunt. Controlling you.”
Canary passed through my swarm. She was silent, and the glances to the side when Imp was speaking suggested she didn’t want to interrupt.
“He took you home. Gave you a hard time, messing with your mom. The whole thing with you nearly committing suicide afterwards.”
I was very still. The lights flickered, the ground rumbled, and I didn’t so much as flinch.
“Well, I’m not going to ‘prattle’, as Lung would put it. He was there, obviously. He told me about it, after the fact. Just, like, a heart to heart, between two of us who don’t have much heart to go around, you get me? Neither of us’s the type to get embarrassed, so nothing to hide. Can share all the stories. Share each other, just by talking?”
She made it sound like a question. Like she wasn’t even sure, and she wanted validation from someone.
I remembered how Regent had controlled her. Seized her with his power. Sharing each other indeed.
“Not a guy that’s in touch with his emotions. Way I always saw it, they’re there, he’s just oblivious to it all. Had to be. So it’s only after he’s through with you that he realizes maybe he was a little hard on you, maybe he twisted the knife harder than he usually would, because it bugged him. There you are with a family, and he can feel your emotions, and he totally knows you don’t even realize it in the slightest. He’s blind to his own emotions and you’re blind to the emotions of others.”
“Is this going somewhere?” Shadow Stalker’s voice. “You’re prattling.”
“Take it from me, as I tell you what the lazy jerk who body-controlled you told me. Your mommy loves you lots, Shady.”
There was a pause. “Okay.”
“That’s all you’re going to give me? I totally dish all this, and I get an ‘okay’?” Imp asked. She was oblivious to the pause before Shadow Stalker had spoken, to the fact that she’d affected Shadow Stalker on some level.
That, or Imp’s wording had taken a second to figure out.
“No arguments,” I said, cutting in before something could start between two of our more volatile members. “Canary?”
“They’re ready.”
“Good. Rachel, Golem, Cuff. If and when we move, I need you to run interference. When we move, I need you to distract, protect the core group, protect us as we run. Rachel, keep the dogs large enough they can maybe take a hit or two, but not so big they can’t make their way into the stairwell. Lung?”
There was no reply. I could sense him out in the corridor, just at the corner where it looked out into the main hallway with the prisoners and other cells. He turned in response. He might have been able to hear me through the comm system, but he could have heard me anyways.
“I don’t think he knows how to use the comm system,” Tattletale said. “Or he does, but he’s changed enough it’s hard to do.”
“Lung,” I said. “The other three are giving us cover. You have enough experience I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’ve been at this cape thing for a decade and a bit. So go all-in. Or do what the other three are doing. Your call.”
There was no reply. Maybe he didn’t understand the comm system.
“You’re so calm,” Canary said. “Most of you. Lung seemed nervous.”
Lung, out in the corridor, clenched his fist.
You annoyed him, saying that.
“I’m shaking,” Canary said, and her strange, melodic voice gave evidence to her fear. “You can’t tell with these gauntlets I’m wearing, but I’m shaking.”
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m-” she laughed a little, and the laugh hitched with emotion. “I’m- pretty worried.”
“We’ve been through worse. Everyone here has been through worse.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel like maybe I had the right idea, back in the beginning when I decided not to do this cape thing. I’m going to fuck up, and the stakes are so fucking high…”
“Relax,” I said. “Or… if that’s not possible, just, um. Tell yourself we’ve got your back. None of us are about to let the newbie die.”
“That’s not that reassuring,” she said.
“It’ll have to do,” I said. The ground was shaking, and someone was manually tearing apart a cell block just a distance away. I could feel Mantellum retreating, the blind spot shifting.
I was just a little impatient. We were running out of time, and I didn’t even have everything in place.
I parted my swarm, giving myself a view of the three captives.
“You three,” I said.
They raised their heads.
“Brutto tik,” the largest one growled.
“Be quiet,” I ordered, as authoritative as I could manage.
He clenched his teeth, lips pressed together.
Does he even realize he’s obeying?
“I’m not your enemy. Stop treating me like an enemy and listen,” I said.
I could see the tension slowly seep out of them.
“Nod your heads,” I said, experimentally.
They each nodded, out of sync.
“Golem? Release them,” I said.
Golem created more hands, manually tearing the old ones apart.
The three stood still, looking just a little unfocused.
I turned to the largest one. “What are your powers?”
He looked confused.
“Tell me your powers.”
“I’m dense,” he said.
I extended my disintegration knife in his direction, saw the delayed reaction, the genuine fear and concern.
I turned it around, offering him the handle.
He stared at it, still looking afraid.
“Calm down,” I said.
He relaxed, very slowly, very visibly.
It works on involuntary reactions?
He settled into a state that still looked ill-at-ease, but not nearly as afraid as before.
Or does it work on the voluntary, visible signs of the involuntary reactions?
“Take it,” I said.
He took the knife.
“Hide it.”
He hid it.
“Now don’t move. Don’t be afraid.”
He went stock still.
“Um,” Canary said. “A thing…”
“A thing?” I asked.
“He’s not as influenced as my ex-boyfriend was, but… they’re very literal, about what you say. Even like this.”
I looked at the dense man. “Okay. Then-”
“You’re allowed to move to breathe,” Canary cut me off.
The man exhaled audibly.
“Now don’t react,” I told him.
Then I sent my flying bugs to him, collecting them beneath the generic uniform he wore. They carried silk cord and wound it loosely around his legs and arms.
True to form, he didn’t react.
I thought about it a bit more, and then gave him an excess of silk. Hundreds of feet of it.
“This cell was empty, there’s nothing inside except people looking for some privacy. Make your way to an isolated spot where nobody can really see you, wait until the lights flicker out, and then use the safety on the knife.”
He looked at me as though he hadn’t taken in any of it.
“My ex was like that, before went and obeyed me, without my knowledge,” Canary said. “I think this guy will listen.”
“Then you’re free. Forget this.”
He left. I looked at the remaining two.
“You two, shirts off.”
“Yes. I like the way you think.”
“Be quiet, Imp,” I said. “We’re moving, be ready.”
“And moving starts with sexy times. Not complaining.“
For someone who hates being ignored, she seems to demand it from others, I thought. “Sit in the corridor, near where the spiky, scaled guy is now. Tell him to come here. If anyone comes, kiss. Convince them they’re interrupting something private, get angry.”
“I’m not comfortable with this bit,” Cuff said. “It’s creepy.”
“It’s better than Lung having to tear people to shreds or burn them if they happen this way,” I said. “I’ll take creepy.”
“Okay, if I have to be specific, then I’ll say it’s a bit, um, rapey.”
“Don’t actually kiss,” I told the men. “Fake it as much as you can.”
Cuff nodded.
The others were all moving, now.
As the two stopped near Lung, he turned to go.
Apparently he was going solo. He clawed at his already scale-torn shirt and cast it aside, then stalked into the crowd. He didn’t completely blend in, with his heavy jeans, but he could almost pass for a case fifty-three.
The dense man with the knife stopped. He’d found a place in a cell where nobody had a good view of him.
He held up the knife, then activated it. I drew the bugs from beneath his clothes and wrapped threads around the handle.
The lights went out.
I carried the knife up to the ceiling, then started carrying it down the length of the hallway. With my bugs, I could trace the hallways on either side, sense the general grid with cells in rows of five, I could see the people…
Up until I ran into Mantellum’s blind spot.
A chronic failing of human beings, that we so rarely looked up. The swarm moved along the ceiling. If any parahumans had the powers to notice it, they didn’t have a strong enough voice to alert any others.
And, in the interest of using the enemy’s tools against them, I was able to bring the swarm inside Mantellum’s area of effect. If there were clairvoyants or precogs capable of tracking my actions or what I was about to do, then this would presumably limit their sight just as well as it limited mine.
They’d lynched one of their own kind, were eager to lynch any others who didn’t show absolute loyalty. They were celebrating, in a way, and they were simultaneously building up the crowd, ensuring that their mob was loyal. All of them on the same page, for better or for worse. I couldn’t see, but I could guess that the reason for their slow progress was the press of the crowd between them and the door.
I was blind, here, but I didn’t have to strike aimlessly.
I extended silk thread above the blind spot. A good two hundred feet of the stuff, level with the ground. I only stopped when either end of the suspended silk cord I had bugs on either side of Mantellum’s blind spot.
Then I extended more, setting it cross-wise against the other thread.
Not perfect, but it gave me a starting point. Assuming the blind spot was a circle or a sphere, which it appeared to be, I could find the center point.
Mantellum, the source of the effect, dead center.
I waited until the lights flickered again. The moment my bugs couldn’t see the lights, the tight swarm of bugs with the threads and the dagger swept down.
“Shadow Stalker, Lung, this is my signal. Act. Imp? Get out of the way, head back to us.”
One pass. A lazy swoop with the swarm, the knife suspended by threads.
I couldn’t see, even with the camera, but I was aware of Mantellum stopping in his tracks. The boundaries of the circle stopped drifting in the general direction of the stairwell.
I waited, willed the lights to flicker. Time passed.
People were reacting, outside the circle. How much damage had I done?
Another pass.
Mantellum’s effect dissipated. The blind spot filled in, a crowd, capes, blood spraying. My bugs could sense them all.
The lights came back on. One cape saw the swarm, moving towards the ceiling.
A chunk of ice the size of a small car hit them. Ice fragments rained down on the crowd.
Many bugs had died in the collision.
The swarm couldn’t keep the knife aloft. I had to reinforce it, but I couldn’t get enough bugs there in time to do it before it hit the ground.
I let it fall. Let it pass through the ground like the ground wasn’t even there, disappearing into the floor beneath us.
“Custodian,” I said. “The effect that was blocking you is down.”
I could feel her move.
Lung was advancing, now. Fire rolled forth from his claws in plumes, surging into cells. The crowd moved out of his way.
I could hear them cheering. Oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t on their side, wasn’t just carrying out the raid.
Lung hurled a fireball that passed just inches above the crowd’s heads.
The fireball hit a cell block, scattering more of the crowd.
He was changing now, changing quickly.
“Lung,” I said. “Tone it down. If you grow too much, you won’t be able to come downstairs.”
More fire, more destruction. The flames were spreading, igniting beds. I could see on the camera, the meager flames that lingered on stone and concrete.
There was a method to his madness. Small as the flames were, capes were backing away a touch. They were cheering him on in his rampage, cheering the destruction of cells that had kept them captive, but they were still falling victim to the strategy beneath it all.
He was walling them off, sectioning off an area with fire and plumes of smoke. Making it so we only had to deal with a smaller number.
I became aware of Imp as she hopped over a smaller flame on her way to us. Lung, unaware due to her power or uncaring due to his personality, came dangerously close to frying her as he shored up the barrier, driving people back as the smoke continued to billow.
The cheers became screams of fear and panic as Shadow Stalker’s bolts started hitting the special capes. Sniping them.
Three shots, and then someone retaliated. A sonic attack, focused. The crossbow bolts stopped appearing.
She’s dead? Just like that?
No. More crossbow bolts, from a different vantage point. Fired from within walls, Shadow Stalker poking a barely visible head out into gloom to get a bead, then firing at her targets.
“Go,” I said. “Shadow Stalker, Lung, we’re moving. Cover our retreat, follow us if you can.”
No response from either. They were busy doing what they were doing.
I could feel the Custodians appearing.
A vast quantity. Filling empty spaces, overlapping.
A duplicator? I thought.
Like Velocity, the Brockton Bay Protectorate member who’d died against Leviathan. He’d been a fast cape, capable of outrunning vehicles, striking a hundred times in a minute. But that came at the expense of a limited ability to affect the world.
The Custodian was the same.
She was weak, standalone, barely a wisp of air. And she couldn’t turn it off. Couldn’t get back to a state where she was fully material, capable of affecting the world normally.
But she duplicated, combined her strength, made hundreds of herself, thousands…
She tore into the crowd like an elemental force. My bugs could feel the air ripple, felt prisoners get thrown into cells.
Felt the blood, the limbs being bent in ways that wasn’t possible, when they refused to be thrown.
Energy attacks cut through the open air, and she barely slowed down.
The remaining special case fifty-threes from the floor below started to attack, to use abilities I couldn’t quantify as sound or fire or lightning, and the Custodian let hundreds of duplicates disappear in her attempts to get out of the way.
We headed out of the corridor. “You two,” I ordered the shirtless duo. “Help defend us.”
Between the dogs, Golem and Cuff, we had the brawn to force ourselves through the crowd that was in the area Lung had walled off. Surprise, too, went a long way. I didn’t have a lot of bugs, but I had enough to blind a few people, to fill their noses and ears and distract.
When Lung turned his fire on the group that was standing their ground, readying to stop us, that was a breaking point. They scattered. Two remained, tough and stubborn enough to keep attacking, and Lung picked one of them up, swinging them like a flail to bludgeon the other aside.
Golem’s hands shoved more away. Cuff’s strikes, using her ability to manipulate metal and her metal gloves, were enough to break bone. She shattered legs and arms, struck ribs and threw people aside.
I wasn’t proud, but I knew that this cold, efficient ruthlessness was at least partially a result of the time we’d spent together.
Imp caught up with us. She had a sphere tucked under one arm, with the coiling mass of Weld’s partner within, still moving.
Panting, Imp said, “Couldn’t get him, but I figured she’s bound to be on our side, right?”
I only nodded. There were other things to focus on, like the ones that had been torturing her.
In the stairwell at the far end of the hallway, the one that mirrored our escape route, the main group, with the beautiful man, the spiky boy and a badly injured Gully were making their way down the stairs.
I was ready. I already had thread attached to a rivet in the ceiling, thread attached to the knife I’d dropped to the floor below. It swung into the stairwell, an easy, casual swing.
The disintegration effect carved into the people at the front of the group, into heads, shoulders, necks, and body parts unique to case fifty-threes.
I used the swarm to control the swing, to swing it into the crowd that was hurrying down the stairs.
More struck. Devastation, people falling over each other as they collapsed on the stairs.
Someone, no doubt someone with a sensory power, reached for the knife, tried to grab it.
I cut the thread with the mandibles of my bugs. It plunged down into the group, paused as the handle came to rest on writhing bodies.
Then slid off to one side as the blade continued to eat through everything near it.
Again, it ate through the stairs, falling to a floor below. I did what I could to catch it, using my bugs to grab after the threads that still trailed behind it.
We reached the stairwell, and faced the group within.
They’d barely dented the reinforced metal doors, with their myriad powers.
Cuff ignored them, charging forward, and hit the door with her fist.
The crash was loud enough to stun me, and I was at the thick of the group, furthest from the door.
She did more damage to the door than most of them had.
The Custodian was right. We wouldn’t have been able to break through here in normal circumstances. We’d have been cornered, more than we were in the cell.
The damage continued outside. The Custodian pursued the group in the stairwell, harassing, bludgeoning. She separated the crowd into groups and then bulled them back, driving them towards empty cells. I was drawing my bugs back to me in stages, concentrating them on a few people at a time, trying to track what she was doing.
Yet even with that, I couldn’t follow it all. Flayed skin, people holding their hands against one eye, joints bent the wrong way, bleeding wounds.
Nothing lethal. Only punishment.
Lung, Cuff, Golem and Rachel dealt with the five threats here in the stairwell. Shadow Stalker made her appearance, and dealt with the sixth, jamming a tranquilizer bolt into his neck.
Cuff hit the reinforced metal door again. It bulged as if she were ten times the size, hitting ten times as hard.
She hit it a third time, a fourth…
On the fifth impact, it gave way.
We made our way down.
“Further,” I said.
“FYI,” Tattletale’s voice sounded, “Losing you as you get further down.”
“We’ll be in touch,” I said.
“Attack in Gimel went. Not good, not bad, but it went. Didn’t want to dis…, but now it’s… …Just wanted to let you know. Bracing ours… …r nex… he didn’t show at next location… trying… where he is… Wish us-“
And then radio silence.
I tested the comm. No luck.
Two stairwells, mirroring, no doubt for the safety of having a backup. The other group had stalled where the knife had delayed them. We proceeded further.
Past the fourth floor.
We stopped, panting for breath.
Another reinforced door, open.
An expanse of flat, brushed steel behind it. A dead end.
And sitting in front of that expanse of steel were Satyrical, Blowout, Floret and Leonid. Revel and Exalt were nowhere to be seen.
“It seems we’re going to have ourselves a problem,” Satyrical said, looking down at his fingernails.
“No offense,” I said, “But I think we’re a little stronger, in terms of raw firepower.”
“So unless you’ve replaced half of my team with sleeper agents…”
He shook his head. “Only just became aware of you, honestly.”
“…I’m not particularly threatened.”
“No,” Satyr said, speaking slowly, as if he were picking his words. “It’s not us. It’s him.”
Him?
Oh. Him.
“And the one with the answers is buried under a half-mile of solid steel,” he said. He bit at the corner of one fingernail, then buffed it on the leg of his costume. “Like I said. A problem.”
This entry was posted in 29.05 and tagged Bastard, Bitch, Canary, Cuff, Custodian, Garotte, Imp, Lung, Shadow Stalker, Tattletale, Taylor, Theo, Weld by wildbow. Bookmark the permalink.
Hey everybody.
Tomorrow I’ll be going up to the cabin for what might be the last time this year. More of a wood fire in the chilly night thing than a sun and swim thing. Should be nice, in the company of some people I enjoy. Probable interlude Tuesday, if not a regular chapter. Still a few more chapters left in this arc. If I don’t return in time to deliver the promised chapter, it’s probably because one of the bridges washed out and I got stranded in the middle of the woods and didn’t make it home in time to transcribe handwritten notes to the computer.
Still a bit sick, rather distracted with guests over. Please forgive typos or a mild lack of coherency.
Please vote on topwebfiction, if you’re so inclined.
And lastly, most importantly, thank you for reading. Thank you for your support, for the mentions on reddit and the spreading the word or just the fact that you’re here, reading my comment. Thank you for being awesome, readers.
Patrick Reitz (@dreamfarer) on September 28, 2013 at 00:33 said:
Good luck with the trip, hope its restful and health-promoting!
And, as always, thanks for the awesome story!
Tom_D on September 28, 2013 at 00:51 said:
Always glad to read your tale.
Enjoy your weekend, and get well soon.
acediamonds on September 28, 2013 at 02:51 said:
Have a fun trip wildbow, hope you make it back in time but if you don’t we’ll still be here, no worries.
And thank you for the great story.
Thank you for being an awesome writer.
I have some difficulty picturing the whole layout of the cells and where the crowds are, but that may just be me. I have some difficulty with description from time to time.
I see you tried to go for the banter a little bet, at least as thinking. Playing hardball, softball. Good thing that guy wasn’t getting busy for real with anyone. They’d be putty in his hands. I expect he has a problem with keeping it hard, though.
The action was clear enough, as was the heart-to-heart stuff. I see you’re still keeping up the humor part. Seems like I noticed more of it in the story ever since people mentioned they’d have liked to see more, so good job working on it. You’ve done well.
I don’t say it that much but despite all I say about the tone of the story and my differing thoughts on how things should or could go as a matter of philosophy, it’s very good and it keeps my attention not just for trying to find out how Taylor’s going to think her way out of the situation, but also because you’ve done an awesome job of creating characters that resonate emotionally with us.
I think when all is said and done, you will have left a definite and unique mark on the genre of superhero fiction. The only reason I don’t count it as existing now is because you haven’t finished yet. Despite all the dread over no longer having Worm to read, we’re all looking forward to it.
Keep up the good work, Wildbow.
Well said, PG. I am also enjoying the final brush strokes as Wildbow finishes what I hope is only the first in a series of this masterpiece that is Worm.
yinyangorwuji on September 28, 2013 at 10:23 said:
I think that Wildbow’s influence is exponential, as writers read Worm, write their own stories influenced by it, which are read in turn…
AMR on September 28, 2013 at 10:26 said:
Indeed. As someone who is working on his own superhero story (still in planning phase) my greatest fear is that it will just turn out to be an inferior rip-off of Worm.
Hey, I’ve enjoyed your comments. Let me know when it goes up, I’ll read it, put a link or five up on my own story, threaten to kill people if they don’t read it…
-Zeta
Heh, thank you. It will be sometime before anything will go up (if it actually goes up). Characters and worldbuilding are pretty much done but plot is still somewhat lacking. Or better, I have so many ideas that I don’t know where to focus.
The supervillain gang-war in the city with the highest supers/normal ration in the world? The mysterious organization that is recruiting recently released small time superpowered crooks for some reason? The big superhero team that is battling the powerful brainwashing super villain? The somewhat ridiculed denomination that worships supers as angels on Earth?
And some times I think I should Ijust dump everything together, find some way to link it all and add some flashbacks to the Golden Age of Superheroes courtesy of the guy who ensures that the supervillains stay in prison thanks to his wide-range power nullifying ability 🙂 :
Huh. Funny. Personally, I’d say the religious group, but it depends on your protagonists. What I find funny is that in the world of There Are No Heroes, ADX Florence is equipped with a device that nullifies powers within a mile or two. With unpleasant side effects, like nausea, lethargy, dizziness, perpetual buzzing…
This is one of the stories that had to do with me writing my continuing adventures, so I understand some of that. You’d find things don’t really resemble Worm, though. Not that kind of influence, other dimensional and all. More about people here thinking I could and should. I feel like a bit more of a mooch around here because of it, especially whenever I mention it over here as if to say “Yes, this dealership is fine and all with its new cars, but come on down to Crazy Bob’s Car Lot!”
Still, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go along as long as it’s done well and isn’t too close for comfort. Just be aware of your limitations. For example, if I were to write a fictional story, I could never hit the negative emotions as well as Wildbow. However, I’m apparently not bad as a bit of a relief after a Worm update.
As for power nullification, they generally have a variety of methods they have over here to try and counter people personally, though a standard one involves cuffs capable of numbing a person. Problem is, physical aspects are difficult to nullify. Like if there was Three Arm Man who was arrested, no amount of power nullification is going to make his third arm wither and fall off.
Maybe do what Wildbow did and write a number of shorts to flesh out the world before doing a larger work?
And dude, don’t compare to Worm. That’s like taking up painting and comparing your work to that Michaelangelo guy. xD
agreyworld on September 28, 2013 at 19:39 said:
Indeed, worm was the final nail in the coffin that got me writing (or trying to) my own serial. Two books in now!
No One in Particular on September 28, 2013 at 14:01 said:
Amen, PG. I think I’ve learnt a lot about what makes a good story and what doesn’t just by reading this work. It’s really wonderful to know that there are people out there that are willing to do things like this. I go to bookstores, and see people, and I just want to introduce them to all the different kinds of amazing stories you can find on the internet. But overall, so happy I found this.
Have a fun time, wildbow. 🙂
Really, thank YOU for being such an awesome writer.
Charles Borner on September 28, 2013 at 00:03 said:
It’s Typo Thread Time!
Please use this thread to post any typographical errors or awkward grammatical usage.
Veloren on September 28, 2013 at 00:25 said:
If anyone wasn’t game, if anyone wasn’t keen on the lynching of the armless man, then
Landis963 on September 28, 2013 at 00:26 said:
“And sitting in front of that expanse of steel was Satyrical. Blowout, Floret and Leonid. ”
Should be comma between Satyrical and Blowout?
I’m not actually sure whether the cutoffs are deliberately lacking punctuation.
“his neck.1” 1.
“myself, ready to but one” Missing word.
“have capsaicin, but” Missing ellipsis.
“help?” Cuff asked” Missing period.
“hard to read, but the” Cuts off there.
“armless man, then” Cuts off.
““Lung,” I said. “The ” Extra spaces.
“safety on the knife” Missing period and quote.
Very much appreciated, Pink. Fixes made.
Two instances of “further” at the end of the chapter should technically be “farther,” if you want to be grammar-nitpicky.
bbrazil on November 3, 2013 at 17:04 said:
“just a distance away”
Short distance?
twofoe on November 22, 2013 at 21:47 said:
“I only stopped when either end of the suspended silk cord I had bugs on either side of Mantellum’s blind spot.”
cord I had –> cord had
“My ex was like that, before went and obeyed me, without my knowledge”
before went –> before he went
“The pretty man and the spiky, yellow guy were holding a prisoner’s hands up the air between them”
up the –> up in the
““My ex was like that, before went and obeyed me, without my knowledge,” Canary said.
“Two remained, tough and stubborn enough to keep attacking, and Lung picked one of them up, swinging them like a flail to bludgeon the other aside.”
Swinging him
Not actually a typo, but this phrase is kinda weird: “someone was manually tearing apart a cell block just a distance away.”.
“Just a distance away” doesnt tell us anything. It reads like maybe you intended to go back and fill it in later?
The last mention of Satyrical just calls him “Satyr”.
Missing a quotation mark at the end of “the monster who did this to us?”.
limbs being bent in ways that wasn’t possible –> weren’t possible
Tattletale’s next to last dialogue part suddenly stops being written in italics, in the middle.of.a word. Same with a sentence of Imp (the Shady part)
CoB on January 23, 2016 at 18:41 said:
–> Herbert
–>…silk cord had
(Whole sentence could be re-worked for clarity.)
“She separated the crowd into groups and then bulled them back”
Did you mean ‘bullied’? “Bulled” makes more sense –suggests a bull pushing against something– except I’m not sure it’s a word.
Waitaminnit, who’s “him”? Number Man? Unless this steel wall is another door of some kind (or a sliding panel or something that he activated as a security measure) he’s not the type to create that much metal. Weld? Didn’t know he could make that much metal, unless we’re referring to other problems besides the steel wall. Mantellum? That problem should be solved right quick once Taylor relays her recent exploits.
Pretty sure he means Scion. Who, according to Tt, didn’t hit where he was expected to.
Daaaaannnnggg. I keep try to make a cohesive response but my brain keeps coming back to that.
It was the obvious choice.
If they were in any position for an epic “I-Told-You-So”ing, this would be a good time to call them out again on not sending the portals on the oil platform.
Whew, yeah, good thing they didn’t. No telling if Scion would suddenly find their base because of the portals showing up.
Except he picked a moment to strike when Cauldron’s defenses were torn to shreds and the Case 53s were fighting each other as well, so it appears that Cauldron did, back then at least, have enough to make Scion not want to strike there.
They hesitated, though, helping to lead us here.
negadarkwing on September 28, 2013 at 08:23 said:
Of course now I’m wondering just where “he” is. I doubt he’s right behind them, or they are all dead.
To be fair, it was a reasonable call based on what they did (and didn’t) know at the time.
They’d launched an attack on Scion from a base in another dimension and he went straight to that dimension and confronted them there.
They had no way of knowing whether Scion had traced them back through the portals or not.
It was cold, but reasonable under the circumstances and not dissimilar to Taylor’s call to write off the civilians in the S9 zone rather than lead her troops into an ambush.
Given that Scion’s only just now gotten around to attacking Cauldron suggests that they might’ve made the right call. It suggests that he may well have found Cauldron while rampaging through the dimensions rather than knowing where to find them.
Not that a positive outcome automatically makes a call the right one, but there’s a good chance if they *had* opened the portal back then that there’d be no Cauldron left for Taylor to loot now.
Cauldron have done a *lot* of wrong things, but I’m finding it hard to fault them for this one.
I fault them for it, because I don’t actually believe the justification they gave. Yeah, Zion was able to track String Theory’s observation window back to the oil platform and shift there himself, but I don’t see how that implies that evacuation portals would make Cauldron or Doormaker vulnerable, unless the portals went straight back to Cauldron’s facility, which doesn’t seem desirable in any case. They could just door everyone to a different world, maybe even through a chain of them to try to break the trail for Zion before they consolidated forces elsewhere.
Unless seeing a door to anywhere can lead Zion back to Doormaker, in which case they were already screwed.
So, yeah, I think the story they gave is an excuse, not a reason. And not a valid one, either.
That was my first thought. If it *is* Scion though, Satyrical is being *very* calm about it…
alexanderthesoso on September 28, 2013 at 02:58 said:
theant87 on September 28, 2013 at 00:28 said:
Him? Who, Lung, Pretender, Numberman? Good chapter, and we see more of that ruthless efficiency Taylor forced herself to learn to save the world. If you had told me at the beginning that Lung, Shadow Stalker, and Taylor would have teamed up and actually done a decent job together I would have laughed. I actually did laugh at Lung being nervous. A guy who can fight off an Endbringer is nervous. Curious about shadowstalker’s feeling right now, and her own fucked up interpretation of Taylor. But I guess Regent and Imp were very close that she knew all of that about him.
See above where I ask that exact same question. And get an answer. o.o\/
farmerbob1 on September 29, 2013 at 03:11 said:
My guess is that Canary completely misread Lung. “Nervous” does NOT fit him. I’d say he was impatient, and irritated because things weren’t moving according to his own plans.
The fact that he’s listening to Taylor says a LOT. Lung does not respect many people from what I’ve seen.
Funny. I was looking for a place to put this thought.
I agree with you on Lung being impatient. That Canary interpreted that as nervousness, irritated him.
On to the thought.
When Lung first came out of the birdcage, he seemed to be thinking…”I haven’t forgotten about what you did to me and I’m going to kill you soon.” When Shadow Stalker tried to attack Taylor, Lung shut her down, possibly thinking… “Nope. You don’t get to kill her. I got first dibs.”
This chapter seems to have Lung, at least listening to Taylors instructions and cooperating with the plan as it evolves. I wouldn’t be surprised if he winds up joining the Undersiders at the end.
John Galt on September 30, 2013 at 11:03 said:
I’ll remind everyone of what Lung did to Bakuda (sp?) in the Birdcage. Lung may have a degree of respect for Taylor because she managed to defeat him but I’m willing to bet it’s dwarfed by his desire to squish her.
On the other hand, Lung doesn’t respect many people. If he find out that he can actually respect Taylor he might choose not to kill her. He might say he will some day, but just forever defer it. Saving face, while showing respect. Not too far fetched considering the culture he came from.
Also, Taylor beat him in two fights, but still respects him and as far as I’ve seen, she has not once reminded him of those defeats. The damage she did to him in those two fights was pretty brutal, but he regenerates so he’s not going to have any concern over physical damage done to him.
He’s 100% about respect. And despite beating him twice, and being in a position of leadership, Taylor gives him plenty of respect.
And, according to Canary, Lungs first action when he got to the birdcage, was to kill Bakuda. He may be reevaluating Taylor as a worthy opponent, instead of a lucky little punk.
Then again, he could be simply honoring the truce and staying close so that he CAN get his revenge as soon as the truce drops.
Thank you to Aaron, Hollis, Z, Sean, Blake and Kristian for their donations. Thank you in particular to Julia, for hers.
I appreciate it. I’ve updated the tracker and the donate page.
Continuity note: it’s not clear when Taylor retrieved the knife after it fell through the floor the first time.
I like Cuff having another opportunity to show off.
She never lost it- she was just unable to hold it up in the air for a while.
Hm. I’ll reread it.
Just imagine that when she got hold of it again, she said “Knife to see you again.”
My knife in shining armor has returned!
Always look on the bright side of knife! *whistles*
Passion and knife bow down the mind.
-Virgil from the Badass Universe
What a horrible knife to have a curse.
DasNiveau on September 30, 2013 at 05:46 said:
Nanananana
Nanananana (all together now)
knife (nanananana)
knife is knife (nanananana)
Labadab dab dab knife (nanananana)
kniiiiiiiiiife (nanananana)
“To knife, to knife, it’s only you to knife…”
“To knife is the knife, such a beautiful knife, and they call it bella coltello…”
Can you feel the love to knife?
“Knifed guys finish last.”
This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the knife the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
I’m going to stab you with this knife in my hand. … too literal?
Too Shakespearean. I wouldn’t put it in the director’s cut.
How has noone done “Jack the knife” yet!?
Mysterious commenter D on September 30, 2014 at 18:39 said:
To knife, to knife, l’chai-im,!
L’chai-im, l’chai-im, to knife!
Knife has a way of confusing us
Blessing and bruising us,
Drink l’chaim, to knife,
To knife, l’chaim!
L’chaim, l’chaim, to knife!
A gift we seldom are wise enough
Ever to prize enough,
Drink l’chaim, to knife!
God would like us to be joyful
Even though our hearts lie bleeding on the floor;
How much more can we be joyful,
When there’s really something
To be joyful for?
To knife, to knife, L’chai-im!
It gives you something to think about,
Something to drink about,
Drink l’chai-im, to knife!
Knife of you to chime in.
Good knife, sweet prince, and flights of insects swing it through thy breast.
Another continuity note: where did Lung get the shirt he ripped off? He was explicitly bare-chested back in the Dragonfly.
Something of a return to form here, and Taylor’s solution was excellent though I’m not entirely clear on why she needed it- was she just not sure that Shadow Stalker could make the killshot on Mantellum?
Imp/Sophia was great.
Scolopendra on September 28, 2013 at 01:22 said:
Case 53s are generally large and bulky, often with abnormal anatomy. It may have taken many shots from a crossbow to bring Mantellum down because Sophia may not have been able to figure out exactly what part critical organs are located in. Had she taken more than one shot, she would have alerted the whole mob. Taylor’s solution ensured the kill and caused maximum chaos.
‘Ensured the kill’ is off target, (she was firing blind, educated guess but still blind) but it was the safest measure, in terms of not providing any obvious or less-obvious targets for retaliation.
By “ensuring the kill”, I meant the damage a successful hit would cause, not the likelihood of hitting in the first place. It’s pretty hard to survive having a huge chunk of your upper body turned into red mist. A crossbow bolt would be something they could possibly just shrug off.
I was made rather uneasy by Taylor’s willingness to kill this time around. Not surprised, but it’s damn creepy to see her shift so deep into ruthless strategist mode. “Oh, asset Canary is showing signs that she might not perform reliably because of my treatment of target labelled Softball. I will cease said treatment. How odd that asset Canary is responding even more negatively to hundreds of bugs flowing out of target’s mouth, nose, and eyes.” And then not realizing she was quasi-raping her mind-controlled targets…
The thing that really made me squirm was when she was swinging the disintegration knife blindly into Mantellum’s bubble. She was killing people, lots of people, but she didn’t have to see the results. History and rather disturbing psychological experiments have shown that that’s a recipe for atrocity. The really disturbing part was when Mantellum’s effect went down; she didn’t even notice him or any of the others that she hit with the knife. We can infer that they were lying all over the place, bleeding and screaming, but all she registers is the knife slipping out of the grasp of her bugs.
Our little girl’s all grown up, and Dinah’s prediction that she’d be barely recognizable by this point wasn’t too far off.
Oh the irony, the girl you tormented ends up being the only person who cares if you die.
I love the reference to Taylor’s first night in costume too, really makes you realize how our little Taylor has grown into a gigantic badass. Also kind of funny how Taylor can get the Undersiders to act nicer but her old Ward teammates have the same kind of effect on her.
The Vegas Capes sure have style. Scion about to come murder you all and Satyr’s just checking out his nails.
She has definitely leveled up. When she first went out Lung nearly killed her, and they Undersiders were seriously worried about PRT agents with foam guns. By the time they took over the city, Bitch and Taylor alone took on the entire PRT office, the Undersiders were able to seriously threaten three villain groups who they later took down, and my personal favorite is when she threatens to remove Miss Militia and Flechette out of her territory. She is wearing a sundress, has a bag full of bugs, and no other weapons so I thought she was bluffing for appearances but then you realize she is completely confident she could take on and beat both of them. But what freaks out Canary is how freaking calm she is about everything.
Kessler on September 28, 2013 at 06:31 said:
To be fair for PRT agents with foam guns, one of them brought down Jack.
razorsmile on September 28, 2013 at 13:21 said:
To be fair to Jack, badass normals are his only weakness. And Endbringers.
Badass normals and Endbringers are his only two weaknesses. And tinker gear.
Badass normals, Endbringers and tinker gear are his only three weaknesses. And Grey Boy.
Wait, let me start over.
Here let me help you.
As long as Jack has the Siberian with him he has no weaknesses. Except Gray Boy.
As long as he has the Siberian with him his only weakness is Grey Boy. And Foil.
As long as he has the Siberian with him his only weakness is Grey Boy and Foil. And Clockblocker.
As long as he has the Siberian with him…you know what never mind.
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE NINE!
Hotaru on September 29, 2013 at 02:49 said:
Except Theo, but well…you know how that turned out.
I think we can all agree that Jack does not do well on the offensive. He does best when employing the principle that weaknesses are easier to exploit than they are to shore up.
Which is why he finally died when he did. He still had the initiative in all their fights, but he was reacting to what they did to try to stop his rampage rather than targeting their weaknesses. That’s what killed him.
Well. I suppose Jack’s not really dead. Ye gods and little fishes that’s a fate I would wish on absolutely no one.
Crap, I meant defensive.
Jack wasn’t human. Biologically, perhaps, but he just wasn’t human in how he reacted with the world. I agree that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. As long as he’s still alive he can still do harm. For all we know he’s in constant contact with Scion even now, teaching him how to be a “better” monster.
Normals are proving to be at least marginally useful even against Scion, provided that they are able to maintain/rebuild the suits and AI’s. The suits and predictive AI’s also actually protected them from Scion until he “cheated” with the AE glowing attack.
I’m amazed that they haven’t started training more capes in the use of these suits. Cuff and Foil for instance. Both highly effective fighters, but they probably can’t predict as well as the suit AI’s. Whether or not they could learn fast enough to actually be better in a fight is a different story.
What about Number Man in a predictive AI suit? Would it improve, or interfere with his power? He would certainly be able to adapt to use it almost instantly. It’s just more data.
Taylor comments at one point that for combat veterans, the predictive algorithm is more a distraction than anything useful. I don’t think it’d do anything for Number Man in particular that his power doesn’t already do better.
The only reason she could threaten Miss Militia and Flechette is because they weren’t willing to kill her. If lethal force was on the table she wouldn’t have stood a chance.
There’s also a bit of plot power reducing enemy competence and bending the laws of physics in Taylor’s favour at this point.
Actually I think that the earlier stages had way more plot power granted to to Taylor than the latest ones. In this chapter she had Lung (arguably in the top 10 of the most powerful parahumans ever) and the Custodian (who inside Cauldron’s base is just short of unbeatable) on her side.
Don’t forget that a lot of the earlier stages had Coil quietly editing away an unknown number of instances where Taylor and the other Undersiders did poorly.
I agree, she had much more plot armor at the beginning. Now she is just so experienced she doesn’t need plot armor.
Agreed. That part with MM and Flechette was a perfect example of just how much more versatile and powerful the entire group had become. Poor Canary spent two/three years in the Birdcage and didn’t have half as much experience as these people which is both entertaining and sad. She’ll get used to it if they survive. After all, it’s only a typical lunchtime for the Undersiders.
I thought there was no way I’d get to use this, but at last, Shadow Stalker has made it possible. Yes, yes!
I won’t bother sending it the way Wildbow has to approve, with Wildbow sleepy and going elsewhere, so here we go, a song about heroes and their one special enemy:
Deranged by Coheed and Cambria
youtube.com/watch?v=woPliVs5uqM
I almost wish I had an archnemesis to play that for. *sniff*
johnwedd on September 28, 2013 at 07:22 said:
you manage to stop killing them, you could find a cute hero go into a committed archnemisis relationship. maybe one with a brooding nature even. get together and settle down have lovely crossovers with.
I always felt that Shadow Stalker fit ‘Teenagers’ (MCR) worryingly well. She’s not quite cool enough to get ‘Welcome to the Jungle’.
Two stairs with a steel door at the end? Handsome man and his group butchered by the flying knife in one of the stairs while Taylor took the other flight of stairs? I couldn’t understand this well.
Taylor must have increased her kill count a lot with the crazy flying knife. And this reminds me of a certain d&d spell.
Before any Troll complains, I believe that the extreme violence used here was clearly justifiable.
Good work dear author.
And now we have Scion in the dungeon.
Damn, I guess it was a good thing Defiant never gave Taylor any of his knives before. Then again, she’d probably have taken out half the S9k by herself if he had.
Last time she got her hands on a nanothorn weapon, she ripped Leviathan a new asshole. Knifing a bunch of Case 53s is a step down, if anything.
Axel on September 28, 2013 at 01:04 said:
Hey this is actually just a quick question about a previous Chapter. When Taylor had to turn into that bug creature to survive, what exactly changed/grew? The stream of consciousness writing made it a little hard to figure out.
Well, look at the aftermath of what Scion hit her with in the first place. She was cut in half below the ribcage and her organs were falling out of the abdominal cavity. Pretty much everything below the ribs sprouted monstrous flesh to replace the severed half. She also had some strange things going on with her mouth that prevented normal speech, but it wasn’t clear what exactly was going on there.
Someone otta draw a picture of that XD. I’d totally pay money to see what they come up with.
At least one hand turned into a pincer with teeth in it, and she had between six and eight limbs.
I thought two of those limbs actually came from the flight pack?
Some might have, but I’m pretty sure she had more legs that usual. It’s all very vaugue.
The extra limbs were definitely the flight pack arms.
She had three bug-legs, an original-equipment arm and hand, an arm with a weird claw on it, and two bug-controlled mechanical arms on her flight pack, for a total of seven limbs.
Anyone but Krustacean……
(sorry about the spelling.)
This is what I was imagining. I don’t think she was as much modified as she was transformed almost entirely, only maintaining her brain and the biology required to keep her brain operating. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_crab
See… I hear all this and I actually keep coming back to David Chronenburg’s The Fly, only instead of gradual it happens all at once.
Surprised she wasn’t blasted on first sight.
Well the only thing they were intent on blasting at the time was Scion, who looks like a gold statue in a white robe. Pretty hard to mistake one for another. Also, she ran into Weld&Sveta first, who would be sympathetic to “monsters” by default.
Axel, can you please just stop posting here or stop pretending to read the story with any sort of comprehension? You just updated your review on TV Tropes accusing Taylor and crew of rape. You even went so far as to bold the word to make a point. Seriously, what the fuck is your problem? Nobody raped anybody. You made the update after this particular post, which leads me to believe that you somehow interpreted Taylor asking the Case 53s to make a distraction by kissing as actual rape and completely disregarded the part where Taylor made a point of scaling down the order when it was pointed out that it came across as a “bit rapey”. You are twisting things out of context just for attention and trolling. Please leave now and never come back.
Actually, that was about what she did to Triumph, which a lot of people here I’ve read tend to agree as well.
I have already said that I think that what she did to Triumph (and to the Mayor) was the worst thing Taylor has ever done. However it is NOT rape. It’s battery or maybe attempted murder, though to be fair she didn’t try to kill him on purpose. Pardon me for being crass, but filling someone’s anus with insects is not rape. TRIUMPH did not think about it as rape.
Oh and btw, did you perchance post as Pokun on the spacebattles forum, because he made a similar argument to this,along with other comments that reminded people of yours.
Damn, my question mark at the end of the last paragraph got eaten.
Where? I didn’t even know there was a forum for Worm.
Also, Forcible Penetration with a Foreign Object technically counts as Rape under the law in most states. Not to mention it’s been proven that men who have been raped almost next to never report it because of how degrading it is to them.
Axel, nobody believes you anymore. Yes, just about everyone thought that what Taylor did to Triumph was absolutely reprehensible, but not many people seriously saw it as rape. You do not speak for everyone (nor do I for that matter), so stop trying to get on some moral high horse to pretend you represent all the other commenters. From my point of view, you’ve become Persona non Grata.
Get out. Leave. Depart. Evacuate. Vacate. Abscond. Go away.
Under the law in many places, what she did is technically rape. If you refuse to address that, then you’re seriously defending her too much.
No, you respond to any statement that doesn’t agree with you with what amounts, in essence, to you saying “whatever, I’m right and you’re wrong”, and then you try to take the moral high ground. What does it say about you as a person that you are still here?
Vamoose. Skedaddle. Scram. Cut and run. Disappear.
Actually, I enjoy debate when there are actual legitimate points to be made. However, all you do is ignore when people point out the logical flaws in your arguments and repeat them ad nauseum. I can deal with logical fallacies though, but you’ve strayed into dangerous territory with outright lying.
Triumph was not raped. Nobody ever really called the vicious attack by police of Abner Louima rape, but it is essentially what happened to Triumph. I’m not going to get into an argument with you where you end up repeatedly splitting hairs and equivocating, ultimately lamenting “why isn’t this a Superman comic I’m reading?” Yeah, Taylor was utterly brutal and vicious there to a point that it was reprehensible, but she also apologized to Triumph later on, and he honestly did not seem too messed up about it. And it’s rather strange, seeing as that part of the story happened well over a year ago, and you are just now addressing it. And it’s also doubly strange that you edited your review to add a bolded RAPE into it immediately after this chapter was posted. I’m sure that timing has nothing to do with it and that you are truly not a duplicitous little troll. Whatever happened to “I stand by my review”. You don’t though, you keep editing it just to inflame more and more people for attention. You’re a complete hypocrite just from the fact that you advise everyone to avoid this site, yet you keep coming back, keep updating your review to refine how nasty it is. Do everyone a favor and take your own advice: please leave and do not come back.
I updated it with the truth. Like I said, Where? I didn’t even know there was a forum for Worm. Like I said, Forcible Penetration with a Foreign Object technically counts as Rape under the law in most states.
Sorry, I copy/pasted what I said before, copied too much
Since we’re stooping to using legalese to make a point (not to mentioning using such a delicate argument as rape to be sensationalistic), I could stress the “most states” part. I won’t.
I’ll just say that, yes, sticking an object there is considered a form of rape. There are usually sexual connotations to the act for it to be considered rape. I am not seeing them in the Triumph incident. It was battery, it was assault, torture attempted manslaughter if such a crime exists, blackmail, but rape? Sorry, not buying it.
As you see what Taylor did to Triumph is already horrible without you adding rape in an attempt to be a strawman or raise attention to yourself.
Its about what the law defines as Rape, Even under scrutiny, it would still fall under Sexual Assault.
No, you updated it to pursue whatever vendetta you have against this story and its author. You come here and try to speak technicalities on some moral crusade that relies on nothing but fallacy statements, broken logic, revisionist history, and complete garbage. Does its existence really vex you that much, and that so many people enjoy this story enough to donate for more of it? You’re like that little verminous troll that shows up on forums shouting at everyone “STOP LIKING WHAT I DON’T LIKE!” I’m going to quote another author I love, Mark Z. Danielewski, from the very opening of his magnum opus “House of Leaves”.
“This is not for you.”
Once more, if you’re going to just ignore what she did and not address the truth about what that scene ism, then it seriously needs to be readdressed because a review has to be truthful about what that person has read.
You claim I am A troll? I claim that you are being “butthurt” just because I am criticizing something that YOU like. And if you can’t handle a little criticism, then maybe it is you who are overreacting.
No, I was able to put up with your crap until you started straying into the territory of libel. Perhaps you dont’ realize that’s “technically illegal in most states” too. At no point have I not said that what Taylor did to Triumph was wrong. I fully say that it was horrific! Was it rape though? Absolutely not.
>Actually, that was about what she did to Triumph, which a lot of people here I’ve read tend to agree as well.<
Sigh, and here I was thinking you were okay. Allright, the general feeling was that what she did to Triumph was extreme. I do. Prior to you no one said it was rape. Because it wasn't.
Okay so technically most states could count it as rape. Well a lot of bullshit has gotten off on being a technicality. Japan keeps being able to commit whaling on the technicality that they are killing the whales for scientific reasearch. It's bullshit, but I guess it's technically accurate. I suppose that if I kicked someone in the ass and my foot went in the anus, that would be rape too. Do you think what Bill Clinton did with Monica Lewinzki was sex? Because in technical legal terms it wasn't.
But at this point I think your just looking for every little excuse you can to shriek about how Taylor is awful and something is wrong with us because we don't all expect her to be like Superman or Batman. Or I am giving you too much credit and you are just a troll. Because as others point you do seem to keep building your strawmen and other logical fallicies. If you don't like the story, and don't like the character, what reason do you have to keep reading, reviewing, and commenting on Worm?
chrnno on September 28, 2013 at 01:11 said:
Interesting, my first thought was Lung but didn’t make much sense quick re-read left me thinking Weld had hidden himself along with Doctor Mother like that and then after reading a few comments realized they were talking about that and Scion about to arrive.
Matt Nordhoff on September 28, 2013 at 02:25 said:
Weld is up with the crowd of Case 53s — they beat him up for being a “traitor”. Imp was able to grab Sveta but had to leave Weld behind.
It would be her one way ticket to midnight, hauling heavy metal. Deader than dead, slowin’ the fight, hauling Weld’s metal. Desperation on a red line, hauling heavy metal boys.
Robert on September 28, 2013 at 01:52 said:
Hope they don’t overreact to Sveta’s inability to control herself if they let her out.
Maybe they could have her hug Lung ? He is after allthemost durable 🙂
JN on September 28, 2013 at 02:43 said:
Don’t know how well she stands up to fire, though.
Well, she survived being baked just now- so probably more than average, though probably not up to Lung’s ultimate form.
Given her natural reaction to panic, still best to keep her curled up in a ball. Or at least, that’s my string theory.
Kazir on September 28, 2013 at 07:54 said:
I’m so glad she survived.
Well, we’ll see. I think she’s got organs hanging around some on those mess of tentacle thingies. Anyone order the fried liver?
Would be heartbreaking.
But she had guts.
Ristridin on September 28, 2013 at 06:05 said:
Canary might actually be of great help here, if her power indeed works on involuntary reactions.
Teruzi on September 29, 2013 at 08:35 said:
I was just thinking the same thing! Canary will sing to Garrote about controlling her strangle-everything reflexes. And then Garrote will become a hero. No wait, more like Garrote will become a hero with the most disturbing fanbase ever.
Scion is coming,huh?Okay, they are fucked. Especially if the fifth level does indeed hold the corpse of the second entity ( unless Doctor is busy reanimating it ). Though I wonder how Satyr knows that Scion is heading there in particular.
Anyway, best moment was the conversation between Imp and Sophia, complete with posthumous character development for Regent. I had forgotten that Taylor still didn’t know about what he did to Sophia.
Sveta is save! The Custodian kicks ass! The Irregulars turned the prisoners into a lynch mob! Wait the last one isn’t good. Hope Weld is going to turn out fine and I’m waiting for Gully to turn back to her senses.
And on a final note, am I the only one who snickered when tha guy said he’s dense? Really, the only one?
tieshaunn on September 28, 2013 at 04:54 said:
I died a little inside when that joke came. Seriously, that’s a lame pun at my flatmates’ level.
Maybe Scion is already there, behind the door?
Also, what did they do to Revel and Exalt?
Maybe it’s my fault for complaining there were far too few puns for a superhero story in the previous chapter?
Hey, a lot of people think superhero fights should start with a punchline.
Gecko, that was just lame. Not offensive, not painful, not revolting, not gecko, just plain old LAAAAAAAAME.
Shame on you!
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?
Yes, groan why don’t you. I shall get drunk on your whine.
Only if it’s home-groan whine…
BamBamBamBam Bam
BamBamBamBam
MrVoid on September 28, 2013 at 21:58 said:
Well I found, “you wanna play hardball, softball?” to be campy enough for one chapter
greatwyrmgold on September 28, 2013 at 12:14 said:
I was too busy trying to figure out if the pun was intended.
Nope. I was kinda surprised Imp or someone didn’t make the obligatory joke during the update.
ShawnMorgan on September 28, 2013 at 21:19 said:
Psychopomp gecko needs a fruity companion for his puns. Then they could pear up.
Btw. “it’s his reason de enter.” who else caught Imp was using the present tense about regent?
“It’s” can be a contraction for “it is” and “it was” both.
I’ve never seen “it’s” used as a contraction for “it was”
And I ain’t in a position to often to see “ain’t” used correctly, but it’s my understanding that “it’s” can mean “it was” as well.
After all my years I was still unaware of that application.
Usually only “It is” and “It has”, I’m pretty sure.
megasolipsist on May 14, 2017 at 05:45 said:
Reading that confused me, as Sophia didn’t try to commit suicide, Regent set her up as if she was and then left her alone. Surely he would have told Imp that?
Well, Cases-53. You call your competent knight-in-shining armor leader a traitor and turn into a mob with pitchforks. Don’t be surprised to get roasted by a Dragon.
In most cases I would be suspicious of anyone calling people traitors. Except if we’re talking about people who want the South to rise again. That would be treason.
Grant Moxham on September 28, 2013 at 11:10 said:
YEEEEEEEHAWWW!
uuuh! errrr! uuh! i .. i mean, yes! treason! yes! eh-eheheh..heh..heh…hehe……..heh….im about to be arrested, aint i?
From a certain point of view, Weld is a traitor. He was just a traitor to a group that changed significantly since his treason. Something like if the Catholic Church declared fish to count as meat and then excommunicated the Pope or something like that.
They pretty much lied to him about what sort of group he was leading, pretending that they wanted justice and to know the truth, instead of revenge.
I said “from a certain point of view”.
From a certain point of view, it’s Weld who deceived the rest. They thought they were going to get revenge, not answers.
dpara on September 28, 2013 at 06:39 said:
So can Canary cure Sveta?
Oh and can Golem just replaceWelds lost metal?
Well he can create spare metal and let Weld assimilate it but he couldn’t directly make it grow out of Weld due to Weld being particularly effective at resisting powers that follow the Manton limitation (essentially if the cape can only affect organic then Weld is immune because he’s made of metal, but if a cape can only affect inorganic then Weld is still immune because he’s a living person).
On the other hand, Golem could find chunks of metal and grow limbs out of them. Enough to work with, at least.
Yes, but not directly. Remember he could sense Hookwolf’s metal but not affect it. Pretty guaranteed to be the same with Weld.
Eh, just have Cuff rip off chunks of that door she destroyed and put Weld on it. He’ll be good in no time.
Better: Have Cuff make some chunks about as wide around as Weld’s arms and thick enough for Golem to use his power on. Arm-On: Apply directly to Weld’s shoulder!
Keep that up and we know where he’ll apply the palm.
hitherbydragons on September 28, 2013 at 08:42 said:
I’m very happy with Cuff taking a stand there. I don’t know to what degree it matters in-world but I like what it does to the reader-perspective reading of the scene. Plus, go Cuff! That was brave.
Reveen on September 28, 2013 at 12:14 said:
If you say so. I just see yet another superhero buzzkill.
Every party needs a pooper, that’s why they invited her. Party poo-per. Party poo-per.
sarah penguin on September 28, 2013 at 10:47 said:
Enjoy your trip. Thanks for the update 🙂
underwhelmingforce on September 28, 2013 at 11:01 said:
“”Wish us-”
Am I the only one whose foreshadowing sensors went wild at this part? Taylor thinking “No luck,” Immediately after tattletale asks Taylor to wish her luck seems like tempting fate.
Not the only one. Of course Taylor is the one with bad luck since Scion appears to be at Cauldron HQ.
Great chapter.
The reminder of Cuff’s metallokinesis made me wonder: Could she help Weld?
No. Weld is Manton-optimal, defensively speaking. Immune to flesh-only *and* metal-only effects.
Golem can sprout some metal from the walls for him though.
I’m referring to freeing some chunks of metal from the walls or shaping them to be more easily attached to Weld or something.
Weld can shape himself, anyways.
But having the limbs premade would speed up how fast he could get up and about.
I think. I’m not sure what you’re referring to. And I’m 80% sure I’m the first person to mention the possibility of Golem making Weld a premade arm.
I don’t think she could help Weld here for reasons others have stated.
I DO think she could help to get rid of the half a mile of steel that is currently in their way.
I might be alone in this, but I hope to see Taylor shove her boot right up the Vegas team’s asses. Satyr creeps me out and I just don’t trust these fuckers. Besides, they’re from the town that killed Tupac!
Good that they got away from the mob. But now that Mantellum’s gone they’re gonna have problems if they have to take on the Custodian. I simply don’t see Cauldron and Taylor coexisting any longer, if she doesn’t take control of the whole thing.
If Doormakers still alive maybe she can figure out how to give him orders, then just open a portal out into space and boom. No more air elemental prison guard.
Opening a door in space may not be enough. Custodian is more than an air elemental. She exist everywhere inside the base. The invisible air girl is just how she manifests her presence. And as this chapter showed she can manifest in more places at once.
I agree that this is just a short-lived truce between Taylor and Cauldron.
>I agree that this is just a short-lived truce between Taylor and Cauldron.<
Well if Scion really is there Cauldron and Taylor may be short lived.
That should probably be a thousand times the size and a thousand times as hard. A mere ten is substantially less than an elephant’s strength and we can keep those in cages.
Taylor’s an expert on big animals, not small ones.
Also, define “strength”. Humans have elephants beat in the “throwing stuff really far” category.
Isn’t it obvious that I meant strength as in the pressure that can be applied to the door?
What research has been done on the amount of pressure elephants can put on doors?
In my experience, some of the more docile creatures could get out if they really wanted to, like horses, cattle, and elephants.
About seven tons at about 15-20 miles an hour, I’d say. There really aren’t many definitive studies on elephant abilities though. There aren’t enough of them. They can run about as fast as humans though, and since they actually “run” by walking, their top end speed might actually be higher as they get heavier and bigger, because longer legs and more weight means you can walk faster without ever being completely off the ground (which is what elephants do – their fastest movement pace never allows them to be completely off the ground, at least one foot is always firmly planted, not like other quadrupeds that run.)
>>Taylor’s an expert on big animals, not small ones.<<
I think you meant the other way around 😉 .
Did, I yes.
Flipnash on September 28, 2013 at 13:52 said:
Humans can also throw things really really fast too. It’s kind of cool when you think about it. Some animals pounce, some bite or lash wiggle, rithe, some are fast. But us humans can throw deadly projectiles faster than the fastest animals. We also have intelligence but that’s not what im trying to say.
We are also good at walking long distances.
Well, were. Modern society took the wind out of that advantage.
On the plus side, we can always nuke nature if any baboons start giving us shit.
If I remember correctly we are up there with horses when it comes to efficiency.
In terms of ancient human survival versus animals, one of our biggest advantages is our ability to disperse heat. Most animals can outrun humans over short distances but not long distances. Without going into detail, the tactic was to chase the prey animal for miles until it falls over/ can’t run anymore from heat exhaustion.
A recent study actually showed we’re actually faster than horses over long distances. I didn’t actually read any of the details of said study, though, so I’m still a bit suspicious. I mean, did cowboys and Mongols just ride horses because they were lazy? I don’t really think so. Well, maybe cowboys.
Over the long haul, a human in good condition can sustain a pace that will kill any horse, but horses are a lot faster than humans over short-to-medium distances, which is often more useful. Also, their size and strength are handy in a lot of situations.
There’s an HTML error here. Since Extinction 27.5 every post has had the Last Chapter links have the title Interlude 26a.
I can’t imagine how on Earth that happened
I’m confused about some of the action, did she drop the knife on whatsisfacepowercancelingsphereguy’s head from above? That’s what I thought was happening but I have no idea if it actually happened.
Can’t wait to find out if ‘him’ is scion
Essentially, yeah. She can’t see people under Mantellum’s power through her bugs, but she knew that Mantellum would be the exact center of the AoE, so she swung the knife in that general direction. When Mantellum died, that’s the point when all hell started breaking loose. (I think she dropped it on another group later in the fight).
I just wonder how many limbs she cut with this little trick.
I just had a theory crystalyze about Imp’s behavior.
1. Imp is more erudite, suddenly enough for Tattletale to comment on it.
2. She has also been unusually annoying, even for her.
3. Taylor noted that it was almost like Imp was trying to be ignored.
What if Imp was actually a Satyrical clone? She’s not half the team and has been acting oddly,possibly from a combination of personal traits leaking through and overacting, possibly with a side of “trying to be ignored”.
can satyr copy powers?
I think so, but I don’t think it’s ever been directly covered.
Why bother to leave the true. Nix and the true Spur, if so? If he could have his copies use their abilities ( illusions to hide the portal and precognition to handle the talking, respectively ), he would have done so instead of needlessly endangering two teammates.
Interesting theory but I’m not sure it holds water. Apart from flipnash’s question above, Imp has been acting strange way before Satyr had any reason to infiltrate the Undersiders/Taylor’s team.
1. Imp was working with Tattletale.
2. Cauldron doesn’t like Tattletale.
3. Cauldron definitely oesn’t trust Tattletale.
4. Satyrical seems to be working for, or at least willing to work for, Cauldron.
It’s not impossible. And if Contessa happened to discover that this lead to a slightly higher chance of victory…definitely not impossible.
Okay, yeah, this theory doesn’t work well. In my defense, I was extremely tired when I cane up with it. (And extremely stubborn when I tried to defend it.)
I think this theory holds water really well actually. Think on it, have we actually seen Imp using her power recently? People have been ignoring her because they’re accustomed to doing so, but have they actually been in a conversation with her that made her uncomfortable and then suddenly wondered what they were doing?
I’m pretty sure they haven’t.
She was standing in the middle of the crowd of Case 53s, pointing a cameraphone at the leader and calmly giving a play-by-play, and the bloodthirsty mob didn’t tear her limb from limb. I’d say that yeah, her power was working quite well.
Also, the whole flashback bit about Regent just now would’ve been rather hard for someone else to pull off. It included a lot of details that not even Taylor knew.
She also startled Lung by suddenly appearing a chapter or two back.
Aisha’s never been dumb; just poorly-educated for various reasons (and getting a defaults-to-on superpower that practically guarantees she’ll slip through the cracks didn’t help). I think that two years of growing up as one of the ruling powers of a major city – especially after Grue kind of checked out, Skitter and Bitch left, and Regent died – has just convinced her that she needs to be more educated than she was.
I think some of the obtuse is just an act to troll people, too.
slider214 on July 9, 2015 at 02:45 said:
You left out one other major reason for Imp’s literate improvement: to troll Tattletale. This by itself seems like a huge reason for Aisha to study up whenever she got bored. She a dick like that 😉
Imp didn’t trigger until school was out anyways. And vocabulary is not related to intelligence, but education. And if it was a gradual thing, why would Tattletale comment on it? She’s been around Imp long enough to get used to it.
Rhodesian on September 28, 2013 at 22:20 said:
Hi Spartan 117
I’ve been trying to place my finger on what this chapter reminded me of. The Mob of case 53’s bieng riled up is just like what Skidmark would do. Though without the creative profanity. Course this time Taylor is more than able to tear the mob apart.
And lets face it, a mob is a ugly thing. Cactus and Pretty Boy made sure that no one would dare go against them. Too bad for there trying to use fear to keep everyone who might not be online with utter savagry in line, succesivly scarier things keep showing up. Also I don’t feel that bad about Mantellum likely getting his torso obliterated after he was showering in blood. The Slug may have wronged them, but that is just utter barberism.
So Gully’s badly wounded? Well if she was at the front of the stairs when Taylor swung the knife down, she’s about to be a lot worse. If she dies, maybe some of the good guys will be nice enough to lie about her involvement to her her old friends in the Wards.
Alathon on September 29, 2013 at 06:18 said:
The man-woman makes me wonder about Satyrical’s power.. if he can make clones with male and female human appearances, could he wedge them together to create something like that? Wouldn’t make much sense from context but we don’t really know what the fuck all is going on here anyway.
Enjoyed the dialogue, the thing between Imp, Shadow Stalker, and Taylor. I hope the faking doesn’t get those two guys killed by rioters with supersenses, but can’t deny that mind-controlling people to make out is creepy to say the least. Probably one of the very, very few excuses that could be accepted by rioters for not being in on the riot, but still. If that’s where Taylor’s mind is going, maybe she needs to haul Lung into one of the cells for a quickie? 😀 😀 😀
Well, as far as we know Taylor is two plus something years without a boyfriend.
Cuff is right, telling the guys to kiss was a bit too much. Although, no matter how you think on this, this was rape of some sort. Every use of Canary`s power is.
Canary’s power could have a lot ethical uses actually.
“Hi, I’m here for help quitting smoking.”
“I know I should diet and exercise but I find it really hard to stick to the plan. They said you could help me.”
“The football fans are rioting and going to trample each other, but none of them actually wants that to happen, if only there were someway we could get them to all leave in a slow and orderly fashion no one would have to die!”
“I have to give a presentation in five minutes, I know the material but I’m paralyzed with stage fright, help please!”
…and on and on.
Be pretty good as a motivational speaker/singer if she sang that song “You’re the Best” though don’t hit on her afterward or the encore might be “U + Ur Hand”
Extra ethical brainwashing is extra ethical.
Random question: does anyone remember where Wildbow described what Taylor’s blue Ward’s costume looked like? Was it blue bodysuit and gray/white armor or viceversa?
http://respicepostte.deviantart.com/art/Weaver-WIP-403974444
Is why I ask.
Shit, that’s really good. But I think it works better in black and white. Like if someone decided to do a Worm manga.
Though Taylor would kill to have hips like that.
Eh, I’ll leave it up, but I’ve got some coloring ideas I want to try.
(A Worm manga would be the coolest thing ever.)
(You’re so very right about the hips. They looked odd whenever I tried to make them smaller, though. Just gonna blame Glenn and move on)
I think Taylor does have hips like that, she’s been a committed runner for three years and has been doing strength training for two years. There should be some meat on her bones.. pretty sure it was even remarked on a time or two that she at least had some ‘back’.
Really? Where? Because if that did happen I think Psycho Gecko would have used it as a jumping off point to scar me for life, so I’d probably remember it.
Though on the other hand, Rachel got pretty ripped during the timeskip, so it’s pretty likely Taylor did too.
There’s some description at some point in her tenure in Chicago – her sparring with Golem? – that leads me to believe that she’s put on muscle, but doesn’t have a body type that bulks up much. She’s lanky, all wiry muscle, with basically no body fat to hide the muscle definition, and I think is probably stronger than she looks. Not that it matters much, because she never seems to get into contests of strength with anything that isn’t some kind of Brute monstrosity.
“Light gray fabric where I’d had black. Armor panels in the same dark gray as before, albeit with cleaner lines, less bulk, and less in the way of edges. I had no points at the tips of my gloves, and both the mantle around my shoulders and the cloth that hung around my belt were marked with an electric blue border, with my gang emblem in miniature at each corner, flipped upside down so they faced skyward, altered to match my new color scheme.”
From Cell 22.6. Very nice picture, by the way.
Nardia Kelly (@indigodecay) on September 30, 2013 at 10:29 said:
First time reader, just caught up after three weeks of desperate reading on buses and trains and the times when I was meant to be asleep, since I was silly enough to start reading during semester… woah. I haven’t felt this obsessed with a series since… I don’t know, Harry Potter. I’ve gotta get time aside to do fanart for this, it’s begging for it.
Probably you will get an welcome from Psycho Gecko, our welcome comitee in one supervillain.
GECKO GECKO
*Notices the Gecko signal from where he’s perched on a gargoyle with a portable grill and a plate of scrambled eggs. He dramatically begins his descent…by heading inside, waiting on the elevator, and humming along to the music as he heads down. By the time the door opens, he’s headbanging to his own version of The Stand(Man or Machine) by The Protomen with random Gregorian chants mixed in, wearing a giant pair of scissors on his head while a little old lady holds her Pekingese in her arms and cowers in a corner. Then he sets out…*
Aha! You thought you’d sneak up at me at the last minute before an update. The last minute of a few hours before an update, but a last minute nonetheless. Or more of a middle minute, 29.
Either way, your journey has not seen its end. Not without a mirror at least. Can’t get your neck around, you see. I wouldn’t say your trip through Worm is just beginning either, mainly because I welcome people when they’re caught up. But even though the end is nigh (and the reptilian aliens were behind the assassination of President Lincoln), there is still plenty left to enjoy (like the play Our American Cousin). You can stay and become one of us *holds up a flashlight under his face* One of us…one of us…
It’s not so much a community as an asylum, because we are committed to seeing this story through to the end and partying it up down here in the comments while we’re at it. May be a little dry this time around, but only because Wildbow’s not been around this update to provide us the Canadian booze. I hear that stuff is high quality. Grade “Eh” in fact.
You can have debates, you can have fun, you can have your cake. The research is still out on eating it too, but we’ve got high hopes for 3D printing. Yes, you too can share your thoughts on heroism and villainy, the ends and the means, the birds and the bees, the princess and the frog, the dog and its pennies, and the Leviathan and his use of Finding Nemo as porn. Dude’s got a problem. Seriously, I don’t think any of those fish were over 18.
Whether you want to see Leviathan get schooled or not, we look forward to having you stick around. Not sticking around in the sense of Leviathan after a Finding Nemo marathon, of course. You might want to wipe down your shoes on the way out, in fact.
Welcome, Nardia Kelly, to the comments section.
These welcomes of yours could make for an, interesting, tome of their own.
You’re all crazy. And I expected nothing less. ((Seriously? Finding Nemo porn? I was told I should re-read this story and all of the comments with it, this makes me feel that maybe I should.))
Since beginning, Worm has crept into my life in ways unexpected, and I look forwards to the continuation of this journey. I actually saw “Grue” scrawled as a graffiti tag in one suburb near where I live the other day and don’t yet know if it was a coincidence, bad eyesight, or I’m going mad. So yeah. I guess I am pleased to be amongst your number.
I really want to believe this is a coincidence…
Yeah, totally a coincidence and has nothing to do with the troll. Did you hear the news? He found a new hobby in sock-puppetry.
Notice how none of the rest of us have to make up people to act outraged over our view of things? Even if Axel had a point, suckpuppets make him look very much like someone who is intent on whining rather than providing any sort of constructive feedback.
What I tend to find is that reliance of fallacies and lies to support a position usually means the position is wrong.
We’ll see what Wildbow thinks of it when he gets back.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go with some time-traveling lawyer demons and see if we can get Vlad the Impaler’s crimes reduced from “Murder by Impaling” to “Rape”.
Wildbow is back, no worries. Working on tonight’s update.
Wibbity dibbity, piggity. As you can see, it’s been a light comments section this time around. Maybe they’re all too busy writing Yaoi fanfics because of the chapter.
Knife x Satyr fic, woo.
Glassware on September 30, 2013 at 21:55 said:
I have 1500 words of a Kid Win/Grue slashfic sitting on my harddrive right now, as a matter of fact.
Oh… oh good heavens.
whoops, sorry, that was a reply to Glassware.
*Yaaaaawnn* Uh-huh.
Half a mile of solid steel, eh? And someone knows how to boost at least some sorts of cape powers. Drag Weld down to that block of steel and put him in contact with it, then turn on the power amplification. There we go, a half mile tall weld. Might even give Scion a bit of a hard time for a while, or at least force him to expend a huge amount of power.
Who’s got the power amplification again? Mantellum had a power cloak and he’s dead.
That wasn’t made clear. They didn’t say how Mantellum was being amplified.
Scion fired a beam that ate through 30~40 feet of solid rock under a coastline to collapse it. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a power that can give him pause that doesn’t involve invincibility or nigh-instant regeneration.
He hasn’t been using that much power recently, basically just enough to win. Like tattletale said, he’s learning, experimenting. But he also seems to be conserving energy. He didn’t simply crush Lung, even when Lung was throwing him around and pounding on him. He didn’t tear Simurgh apart like he did Behemoth.
That, to me, seems to indicate that his path to eventual victory that he has mapped out requires him to be careful with energy expenditures.
Cauldron might have something down below their base which might cause Scion to forget his careful planning though.
We know that the actions of Scion’s mate are not visible to his predictions like the actions of humans are, or he would have known in advance that his mate was going to die. For that matter we don’t know that his mate is dead… The actions of the third entity were similarly unpredictable. So Scion’s prediction powers doesn’t work on other Worms, at least not normally. Maybe he can predict them, if he expends a huge amount of power, but has never felt the need to.
Perhaps the corpse of his mate might allow him to do a full rewind of all events from separation to present, leading him to knowledge of the third party Worm’s involvement, which in turn would make him start predictive analysis of the other Worm?
Lots of possibilities. But I see there’s another chapter, so time to catch up.
It was at least as justified as the time she had to rape a baby penguin with a spiked dildo. That was on fire. And we all know it was for a good cause, with the charity and all.
I have to say I can’t place the following:
“The situation evoked memories. Except this time, I had a cell phone. I had the pepper spray. I had a weapon.
I can think of several occasions this might refer to. In this case I’d appreciate a little clarification as to which memories exactly are evoked.
Maybe this wouldn’t be an issue if this were a completed book, but the serial format forces me in and out of the story and I’d sometimes appreciate little Memory-aids.
I hope I’m making myself clear. Just a tiny critique in the overall awesomeness that is Worm anyway :). Plus mostly reading the comments serves to clarify things.
I believe it’s a reference to the Merchants gathering, where Taylor was in the middle of a similarly murderous mob. If memory serves, that was in the time after Shatterbird’s attack, when there were no cell phones or other communication devices easily available. I can’t think of any other times she was similarly surrounded and wouldn’t have had a phone.
Haha oh god Shadow Stalker almost sounds sorry for herself. I don’t particularly think that her psychology allows for that sort of feeling but dear lord it is a perfect mix of hilarious and sad. Works well. I do agree with Imp though that Taylor is being far too forgiving for to the bitch. A few human moments at the end do not make up for a year of torture even if they do make her less of a monster.
Floating knife of death was a fantastic idea. That was so utterly funny, simple and amazingly satisfying. Wow. This dude beat Contessa and Taylor wiped him out with five minutes of prep and two passes with barely a thought. Not to mention utterly decimating a large group using the same trick again.
Wow I like Regent even more now and I feel so much worse for the guy than I had originally. Damn, Alec. And poor Imp. They really were truly good for one another.
“And moving starts with sexy times. Not complaining.” God I love that girl. How in the hell did we get from “annoying little sister” to “epic awesome comic relief scary motherfucker”?
Damn, and I had been thinking of Cuff as minor leagues using powers that sounded sweet but weren’t all that useful overall and now…damn. Girl took a few levels in badass during the time skip!
irrevenant on December 2, 2014 at 17:44 said:
To be fair, he (and his many, many friends) got the dr op on Contessa whereas Taylor got the drop on him. Still badass though.
Ryuuku Sakigake on December 2, 2014 at 17:01 said:
I don’t know if its been mentioned, but the whole “floating knife” thing reminds me of Bilbo’s iconic battle with the spiders in Mirkwood. Great work. 🙂
I came here expecting a majestic shitstorm about Taylor killing case 53s,some of which were no more guilty than Gully.I would sit here,eating pop corn,not taking sides,while everyone was arguing about it.But what do I find?some half baked comments talking about this subject,nothing more,,not even from Axel,telling us she jumped the slippery slope and/or raped them.Pah.Double pah.Perfectly good pop corn went to waste.
The chapter was not very well written.
There are some passages where it´s hard to understand what they are doing.
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Trump Accuses New York Times Of Treason Punishable By Death
June 16, 2019 PatriotsNews Mainstream Media, News 0
President Donald Trump is not a fan of The New York Times but he has now accused them of a crime that is punishable by the death penalty.
“Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia,” he said.
“This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country,” he said.
“Anything goes with our Corrupt News Media today,” he said. “They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia. This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country…..
…..ALSO, NOT TRUE! Anything goes with our Corrupt News Media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
Treason is defined in The Constitution as, among other infractions, giving aid and comfort to the enemy and one of the punishments is the death penalty.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
Is The Times guilty of treason?
No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.
“Accusing the press of treason is dangerous. We described the article to the government before publication.
“As our story notes, President Trump’s own national security officials said there were no concerns,” The New York Times said.
Accusing the press of treason is dangerous.
We described the article to the government before publication. As our story notes, President Trump’s own national security officials said there were no concerns. https://t.co/MU020hxwdc pic.twitter.com/4CIfcqKoEl
— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) June 16, 2019
The minute we heard it we knew it was fake news. @CNN was all over it – which says it all!!
— David Wohl (@DavidWohl) June 16, 2019
POTUS says the Times is committing treason (it’s not) by publishing a story about US cyber attacks against Russia’s power grid but then goes onto say the story isn’t accurate.
Read @SangerNYT @nicoleperlroth’s excellent investigation here: https://t.co/bj8MY781aY pic.twitter.com/j4cwgcRQfB
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) June 16, 2019
Trump accused a newspaper of treason today. He once again used a Stalinist term to incite violence against the press. It won’t be a big story for even a few hours. That’s creeping authoritarianism. The unthinkable has become routine. And as he gets away with it, he grows worse.
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) June 16, 2019
The Constitution says Treason is giving aide and comfort our enemies. Perhaps you’re worried your exKGB supervisor will be angry that the American military was defending the nation from both You & Him. https://t.co/ePhfbmlpCF
— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) June 16, 2019
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Trump Will Not Rule Out Death Penalty For Comey,…
Has Donald Trump Committed Treason?
NY Times CEO Calls Trump Press Attacks…
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