#(this is true in terms of there IS a wheelchair. its just there for emergency purposes tho. )

[alexandrekocian]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI is not intelligence, but rather marketing to exploit human labor, says Nicolelis

Neuroscientist claims that human intelligence results from millions of years of evolution: 'I want to see ChatGPT survive a Palmeiras game'

Pedro S. Teixeira

SÃO PAULO - ChatGPT functions as a marketing tool by generating inequalities in the relationship between employers and the workforce, says neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis. According to him, intelligence is the result of millions of years of evolution, which cannot be computed in binary code. Nicolelis has been working with neural networks, the mechanism behind current machine learning algorithms, for 30 years.

As a reference in brain-machine interfaces, he has been involved in the development of neuroprosthetics capable of restoring body movements. During the opening ceremony of the 2014 World Cup in São Paulo, a wheelchair user kicked the ball into the goal with the help of a device developed by him.

Nicolelis states to Folha that it is absurd to claim that language models like ChatGPT are ten times more intelligent than a human being

just because they write quickly or communicate in multiple languages, as Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist who invented neural networks and was a partner and advisor at Google for over a decade, claimed. "The turtle is extremely intelligent; it's just slow."

You criticized the writer Yuval Harari. Why?

He mixes things from other areas without having in-depth knowledge. In Sapiens, he combines references and interprets our results in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with what we have done. It is work that I have spent 30 years of my life on. When he talks about the future where we will have this thing called brain-to-brain interface, which was an experimental thing I did with rats, monkeys, and humans for rehabilitation purposes. But it's not about exchanging feelings with other people. It's about exchanging motor commands, things suitable for reducing digital logic. He interpreted it as if I were reading someone's mind, which will never happen. He says things like "we will live up to 200 years," "we will end aging." It's all fantasy.

What about Harari's views on artificial intelligence?

He thrives on sensationalism. He wrote that artificial intelligence has hijacked the system; it has hijacked

nothing. The human species is hijacking its own evolution. Behind artificial intelligence, there are armies of people annotating data.

And there are armies of evangelists. I never liked that word because it denotes that the vast majority of human movements have turned into religions. Everything seems like a religion. From a scientific point of view, I've been saying this for years, and now Noam Chomsky uses the same phrase: artificial intelligence is neither intelligent nor artificial. It is not artificial because it is created by us; it is natural. And it is not intelligent because intelligence is an emergent property of organisms interacting with the environment and other organisms. It is a product of the Darwinian process of natural selection. The algorithm can walk and do things, but they are not intelligent by definition. If he were alive, Charles Darwin would have a heart attack over this.

Is it better to call it machine learning?

Machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence are big terms that we have colloquially become accustomed to using, relating them to the human brain or any animal brain, to define things that we do with binary logic. Human intelligence is not binary. That's why it's an inappropriate name.

The creator of neural networks, Geoffrey Hinton, says he tries to simulate the structure of neurons to think about these algorithms.

He also makes a bunch of absurd comments.

He claimed that artificial intelligence is already ten times superior to human intelligence, which is absurd. We have these marketers in the technology field who claim things that seem true, but they don't have the evidence. He works with results. He talks about the speed at which he delivers answers, multiple languages.

The turtle is extremely intelligent. It's slow. But what we are trying to do is use market language to define what life does. The market wants things fast, efficient, with infinite profit and zero cost. Intelligence doesn't have that commitment. The intelligence of an organism is committed to making it survive as long as possible in a continuously changing environment. Just because a computer plays chess faster and beats a world champion doesn't mean it is intelligent. It is simply more efficient because chess is a game with predetermined rules. That computer cannot survive in Palmeiras Stadium during a game, it doesn't understand the reasons behind a fight because it doesn't have the capacity to generalize its intelligence.

The researcher from the Open Philanthropy Institute, Ajeya Cotra, estimated that in the current societal model, the human mind runs the risk of becoming obsolete by 2037 in terms of production for the labor market. Does that make sense?

It depends on what you define as production and obsolescence. There is a limit to digital logic. I just read a book by one of the top intellectuals in the field of AI, Michael Wildridge from the University of Oxford. It was published in 2021. In the book, he says: we know that there is a limit determined by non-computable phenomena, where there is no algorithm, no solvable mathematical formula with a program. However, he briefly mentions the most important thing in the book and comments that researchers don't pay much attention to it because they have too much to do.

But the human mind is filled with non-computable phenomena: intelligence, intuition, creativity, aesthetic sense, definitions of beauty, creativity – all of these are non-computable. What is the formula for beauty?

A young person posted on Twitter that her uncle was accused of plagiarism because a professor took a section of his work and asked if it had been done by ChatGPT for

ChatGPT. The platform is not designed to recognize if a text was created by artificial intelligence and always claims to be the author of any text.

In a way, ChatGPT is a big plagiarizer because it takes material created by many people, mixes it, and generates something it calls a new product, but in reality, it is largely influenced by the intellectual output of thousands and thousands of human beings. In the current modern capitalist system, artificial intelligence is a major marketing tool because it generates a complete inequality in the relationship with the workforce.

An employer can say, "I have an artificial intelligence application. If the worker doesn't accept the salary I am willing to pay, which is 10% of what they earn today, I will dismiss them and use the application." There is a whole ideology of replacing human labor, which cannot be done 100%, it's not possible.

Can we say that a more utilitarian thought is gaining ground in society?

That's the problem; it has nothing to do with the machine. What is happening is forcing human biology to follow market rules. Market rules are not divine; they are abstractions created by the human mind. What have they produced in the history of humanity? A tremendous income

distribution inequality. We have people spending money to dive and see the Titanic exploding in the middle of the ocean. If someone walks from Avenida Paulista to here, like I did, they will see tens of thousands of people dying of hunger on the streets. All of this is being ignored because these systems are convenient. They increase our productivity and our reach as human beings.

Are you more aligned with the view that these language models are more like statistical parrots? Absolutely. Deep learning is nothing more than neural networks with multiple layers, more layers, more neurons, and more connections between those layers. The brain does that too. However, it is impossible to simulate the biological mechanisms the brain uses to make decisions.

The brain consumes much less energy than AI supercomputers to deliver the same processing power. It is a process of optimization over millions of years. It's no coincidence that we descended from trees; it took 4 million years for us to start walking. It's a much more elaborate thing: 20% of the energy your body produces goes here [points to the head]. The energy of the brain can light up a lamp, more or less. It's an extremely optimized thing that has undergone drastic changes since life appeared on Earth. And it is not

computable. Alan Turing himself knew this, after proposing his thesis, he said: there are certain problems that my theoretical machine, which has now become the Turing machine and generated computers, will not be able to solve. And when I face this impasse, there is only one solution. I have to consult an oracle to make a decision. The oracle is a human being.

But within this competition between machines and humans, do you agree with the risks to the species mentioned by researchers and people in the technology industry? The risks are tremendous. These tools must be used under human supervision.

In the programming of an AI system, a person may request something without considering that the means to achieve the goal are undesirable. And what happens with the technology industry?

The risks are tremendous. These tools must be used under human supervision.

In programming an AI system, a person may request something without considering that the means to achieve the goal are undesirable. This is what happened with the computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Its mission was to reach a destination with the crew. They just forgot to mention that HAL couldn't kill the

crew. They overlooked the scenarios where the mission would be accomplished, but there would be no one left to witness it. When someone delegates a mission to something on their behalf, it won't be possible to offer that thing all the immediate restrictions due to evolution.

Can these mechanisms be useful in terms of research, like your studies in neuroscience?

I use neural networks to interpret patterns of real neural activity since the 1990s. Not the same networks as today, but simpler ones. It's a statistical method of pattern recognition.

These tools must be used under human supervision.

In the programming of an AI system, a person may request something without considering that the means to achieve the goal are undesirable. And what happens with the technology industry?

The risks are tremendous. These tools must be used under human supervision.

In the programming of an AI system, a person may request something without considering that the means to achieve the goal are undesirable. This is what happened with HAL, the computer in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Its mission was to reach a destination with the crew. They just forgot to

mention that HAL couldn't kill the crew. They overlooked the scenarios where the mission would be complete, but there would be no one left to witness it. When someone delegates a mission to something on their behalf, it won't be possible to offer all the immediate restrictions that we have due to evolution to that thing.

Can these mechanisms be useful in terms of research, like your studies in neuroscience?

I use neural networks to interpret patterns of real neural activity since the 1990s. Not the same networks as today, but simpler ones. It's a statistical method of pattern recognition.

When someone delegates a mission to something on their behalf, it won't be possible to offer all the immediate restrictions that we have due to evolution to that thing.

Can these mechanisms be useful in terms of research, like your studies in neuroscience?

I use neural networks to interpret patterns of real neural activity since the 1990s. Not the same networks as today, but simpler ones. It's a statistical method of pattern recognition.

I don't agree with turning a statistical tool into a new God and building an entire religion around it, as is happening. I call it the church of technology.

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/amp/tec/2023/07/ia-nao-e-inteligencia-e-sim-marketing-para-explorar-trabalho-humano-diz-nicolelis.shtml

[wheezingghoulbois]

I feel like ryan’s dream bfu location is the haunted mansion at disneyland.

#ryan would be geeking out the whole time probably aghsbdjdjdd #he'd be like SHANE LOOK we're in the ballroom look!! look how they do the ghost effect its this thing called pepper's ghost and basically- #*goes on long HM tangent* #there ARE like reports of some actual ghosties tho lmao #and ppl are fucking weird and throw their famd ashes on the ride sometimes so if ghosties are real #theyre probably partying at that place and like god i wish that were me #my rambles #i want to be the 1000th spirits pls im BEGGING #they always say theres room for one more and ask for volunteers #like THIS IS ME #VOLUNTEERING #anyway #and he'd be like shane theres this rumor about a wheelchair on behind the ride vehicles int he ballroom and no one knows y its there #(this is true in terms of there IS a wheelchair. its just there for emergency purposes tho. ) #it was funny tho a CM told me and my friend and made it sound so spoopy lmao

[butterflyinthewell]

Some stuff about wheelchair!Vegeta with headcanons everywhere:

Vegeta was chronically ill before his injury due to medical abuse by Freeza. He was meant to be stronger than Goku, but will always be a half-step behind because of this, but even he doesn’t know that.

The illness stunted his growth and damaged all his organs. He recovered with lasting damage to his heart and kidneys. Saiyajin bodies compensate for damaged organs until they no longer function, so his liver and spleens(yes two) do some of the work his kidneys used to.

He gets drunk on less alcohol than other Saiyajins because of this.

In human terms he’s in chronic heart and kidney failure. He has to be very careful taking any meds that are toxic to the heart, liver and kidneys.

A human in his condition would be dead in a week. He’s been this way for decades.

His medical rap sheet is many pages long, and he paid huge amounts of money to have his medical records sealed so Freeza wouldn’t use them against him in the future. Medicines dangerous to him due to his organ damage were listed as allergies.

The Androids caused his spinal cord injury and the violent beating left him with PTSD. He already had sub-clinical PTSD symptoms before and this incident is what made it manifest fully.

He lost his ‘little’ spleen because of them. (Which is fine, it’s like a human appendix. He needs the big one, though.)

The damage to his body made his kidneys fail temporarily, so he was put on dialysis until they spontaneously started working again.

For a short time he was a quadriplegic on a ventilator because the surgery to repair his shattered 10th thoracic vertebra caused massive swelling in his spinal cord and brain. Nobody knew if he would survive the night after surgery, and the true extent of how the spinal cord injury affected him couldn’t be assessed until the swelling went down.

Saiyajin central nervous systems swell up when their brain or spinal cord gets punctured or exposed. It’s a vestigial trait from billions of years ago when their evolutionary ancestors’ bodies became toxic to any predator trying to eat them. This “immune edema” normally isn’t survivable, so Vegeta is the first and only Saiyajin to experience it and live.

He was in a coma from May until August. Nobody knew what condition he would be in if he woke up at all. But he did, and spent a long time in a minimally conscious state before becoming alert enough to communicate.

For awhile, he couldn’t use his vocal cords even if he had a Passy-Muir valve attached, so he communicated via AAC through a tablet and a mouth switch.

The brain edema caused neurons to sheer apart. While Saiyajin brains are capable of more neuroplasticity than human brains are, he still sustained a traumatic brain injury. He was diagnosed with epilepsy (he has tonic clonic seizures) caused by scar tissue all over his brain, and it’s inoperable because of the immune edema response. He takes meds to control his seizures and only has breakthroughs when something drastically lowers his seizure threshold.

Vegeta understands epilepsy because Raditz was born with it. Raditz’s was a lot worse and no medication controlled it. (Raditz had focal aware, atonic and tonic clonic seizures. His could be triggered by strobes, but Vegeta’s aren’t.)

Raditz was shameless about his seizures. They were just a thing that happened. Vegeta, in contrast, finds it humiliating if anyone other than Bulma or Trunks sees him have one, doubly so if he wets or soils himself during it.

Raditz tended to get confused, hyperactive and giddy the day after a seizure. Vegeta is bone-tired, struggles with brain fog and has trouble with his short term memory the day after a seizure. It takes him two days to fully recover.

Once all the brain issues settled down, it became clear that Vegeta is a t10 paraplegic, but he still gets autonomic dysreflexia because Saiyajins are more easily prone to it than humans. His experience of it is also worse than humans because he goes right to high blood pressure and a pounding headache. This drops his seizure threshold and it’s a mess. The only thing to control it is stopping the pain signal that’s happening below his lesion and keeping his head above his heart until his BP goes down.

Saiyajins have redundant nerves throughout their spine, so Vegeta can feel his toes, the soles of his feet, his tail scar and some spots on his butt. He can flex his butt muscles, but can’t wiggle his toes. He has no sensation from his belly button to the tops of his feet.

He can hobble along wearing knee-ankle-foot orthotics and using forearm crutches (four point gait) because those muscles in his butt give just enough movement to initiate a leg swing while gravity does the rest. He walks therapeutically to keep his legs from completely atrophying, but prefers his chair to get around.

He’s more prone to G-LOC in the gravity room due to orthostatic hypotension. Bulma programmed the computer to check his blood pressure periodically and tell him to power up if it drops too low since powering up raises blood pressure.

He tends to have seizures if he passes out from G-LOC. His brain is very sensitive to lack of oxygen since his injury.

He can exercise and train in up to 700Gs, but can’t fight in anything above 95 because his blood pressure and unhealthy heart can’t cope. He can die of anoxia if he’s turned upside down, abruptly flipped right side up again and held there while all the blood goes to his legs.

Vegeta doesn’t measure his disability by human standards. He measures it by Saiyajin standards. To able-bodied humans he doesn’t seem all that affected by what happened, but from his perspective he’s extremely affected.

The PTSD can make him violent and quick to anger. He has flashbacks and nightmares. If he gets triggered hard enough, he dissociates to the point of memory blackout. Sometimes he has bouts of depression.

Manual wheelchairs made for humans can’t survive him. He goes to push the wheels and they fly off, or it flies apart if he powers up, or it collapses in the gravity room, so Bulma made him some Saiyajin-proof chairs.

His current wheelchair LOOKS like an ultralight rigid open frame manual wheelchair, but it actually weighs about fifty pounds and is made of similar material to his old armor and attack ball. Unlike us in the real world, he’s got a button to push that’ll poof his chair into a capsule if he’s getting in a car or something. Btw, his chair has a white frame (hanger at 90 degrees and tapered to fit his legs), a hard backing, dark blue upholstery, a silver open tube footrest, black wheels, black push rims, white spoke covers, gold casters and gold bolts.

A regular human probably wouldn’t be able to use the wheelchair at all due to its weight.

His chair can survive up to 700 Gs in the gravity room, can survive him powering up and can take direct ki blasts without falling apart. This is because the frame is solid, not hollow tubes, and the wheels are also solid so they can’t pop or go flat.

His wheels have micro-treads, but he’s got “off road” wheels with huge treads he can switch to if he’s going somewhere outdoors or muddy.

He’s gentle about moving his chair around inside the Capsule Corporation compound, but give him a straightaway with no obstacles and he can shoot himself forward at 50mph on one full-strength push.

One of his fighting moves is to knock someone down, pop a wheelie and slam his casters down on them. Sometimes he keeps going by running them completely over. This could kill an ordinary human.

He can cheat stairs by flying, but finds that annoying and will use a ramp if it’s available.

He can still fight how he used to, just no kicks or leg movement.

All the pills he has to take (extended release Tegretol for his epilepsy, Valium for when a panic attack won’t stop) require a special coating so he metabolizes it with the full benefit instead of getting all the medication in his system at once for an hour. Injected meds work on him the same as a human, though.

Morphine is the go-to pain med when he’s having AD because he metabolizes it the fastest (he sprays it on his gums) but it zonks him out so it’s literally ever only used in dire emergencies where the cause of pain can’t be found or fixed by external means. Using morphine requires he gets blood work after to check on his liver.

Trunks is the only one in the story who grew up with Vegeta in the wheelchair and seeing him being tended to by Bulma whenever his health issues came up, so all his dad’s medical stuff is normal to him. He’s a sweet helper of a kid too and will sometimes ask if he can push Vegeta somewhere.

Actually, Vegeta kinda hates being fussed over, but he feels loved when family does the fussing. If it’s anybody else, though? He gets irritable and embarrassed.

He HATES it if people touch, lean on or move his chair without permission. Gohan makes the mistake of moving the chair exactly one time and learns a really hard lesson to never do it again.

Bulma can sit in the wheelchair without asking when Vegeta isn’t in it, and sometimes she does if she’s sitting at his bedside after he had a medical issue or seizure.

VEGETA’S DISABILITY WILL NOT BE CURED, EVER, NOT EVEN WITH THE DRAGON BALLS.

Vegeta sees his wheelchair as a reminder that he survived something that killed all the other Z-fighters. It’s a source of pride, not shame!

Sometimes he refers to his wheelchair as his throne.

Wheelchair!Vegeta is sexy af.

#Vegeta #DBZ #Cyndi is writing #wheelchair!Vegeta #Mirai timeline AU #fanfic in progress #yes the gif is supposed to be still

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #337

“if i showed you my soul, would you cover your eyes?”

What's your favorite brand of chips? I like Lays best. Are you a good painter? My Painting teacher when I was in college last said I did wonderfully, but I definitely beg to differ. Before buying a car, do you usually test drive it? N/A Have you ever written a poem and then read it aloud? No, but a teacher has. It was so fucking awkward; it was very pacifist, the topic being about war, and it had some depressing tones of death; there was just silence at the end of it, and I still don't know if it was shock or "what the fuck, she's messed up." There was this one guy that went, "Nobody is going to clap at that?", though, which I thought was pretty nice and reassuring. Do you like pineapple? Yeah, I do. Have you ever met your favorite author? I don't have a favorite author. Have you and your best friend ever liked the same person? No. Do you have any freckles? Not on my face (though oddly enough, I did as a kid?), but on random parts of my body. How many different languages can you say goodbye in? English, German, and then Spanish. Do you like or hate the smell of fish? I hate it. Have you ever been to Sea World? As a child, yes. I'd never go as an adult. Do you know someone who suffers from short-term memory loss? I don't know how this is actually diagnosed, but my memory is absolutely fucking nightmarish, almost exclusively in short-term situations. I can remember the most obscure events from my childhood, but not what I said to you five seconds prior. I'm rather sure my medications have made it worse over time. Have you ever read any of John Green's books? I got like, one chapter or less into The Fault in Our Stars before the book got replaced with the Wings of Fire series, so I never finished it. Are you a protective person? I'm an immensely protective person over those that matter to me. Have you ever experienced an earthquake? No, thankfully. I'm terrified of earthquakes. What's one thing that makes everything in life worthwhile? The fact that to our proven knowledge, this is the only one we'll ever experience. What type of waffles do you like? (Plain, blueberry etc..) I prefer plain, but I can eat chocolate chip ones as well as blueberry and strawberry. Have you ever seen the show Wife Swap? Yeah, I actually quite like it. Do you like chicken or beef better? Or do you not eat meat? Chicken, I think. I eat meat, but wish I didn't. What brand of dish soap do you use? Dawn, usually. Do any of your neighbors have dogs? Yes, and they never shut up. Do you believe in fortune tellers? They're money-driver bullshitters. Have you ever been to one? No, and judging by the fervor in the above question, I hope you can tell I never would do so and thus monetarily support them. Do you like regular or chocolate milk better? Chocolate, of course. But I love normal milk, too. Once again, wish I didn't, though. Forcing a cow to constantly reproduce to lactate is pretty fucking cruel. Growing up, did you listen to country music? I actually did. Do you normally wash your hands in warm or cold water? If it's just a quick wash, it's usually cold because our water takes quite a few moments to warm up. However, if I'm looking to thoroughly wash my hands, it's gotta be relatively hot. Do you believe in mediums? I see them in a worse light than I do fortune tellers, so... Like sure, manipulate grieving people for profit, sounds great. Have you ever been to one? Obviously not. Have you ever dated someone on the football team? No. Do you have a gazebo at your house? No. Do you like tomatoes? Solely when straight from a garden and on a bacon and mayonnaise sandwich. Otherwise I am noooot a fan. Are you a competitive person? Not very, but there's a tiny spark in me, really when it just comes to photography. I hate it. Google or Bing? Does literally anyone use Bing? What's your favorite brand of bottled water? Essentia. Do you have any ceramic animals in your house or outside? Ummm I don't think so. Have you ever given someone flowers? Yes. What is something you might eat with a hamburger? Fries or mac and cheese. What is a sport that you’ve always wanted to play, but never got a chance to. None. What is a fruit that you might eat in the morning? A banana. Who might you send a selfie to? I don't send selfies to anyone. About how many pages is the longest book you’ve ever read? I THINK it surpassed 1,000? At least in the high hundreds. Who would you call first after getting engaged to tell them the news? Probably Mom. Around what time do you start feeling tired enough to go to sleep? Truth be told, it's usually arouund 7-8. I rarely make it to 9:00 nowadays. What trends do you refuse to give in to? I don't even know what's trendy right now. What subjects in history interest you most? As dark as it is, I find the Holocaust interesting to learn about. Are you superstitious in any way? No. How do you get rid of anxiety? What a relevant question, being in a partial hospitalization program right now. Coping skills that help me are doing deep breathing, mindfulness exercises, and a little jerk back to reality is splashing freezing cold water on my face. It also helps to talk it out with somebody, just get my feelings into words. Then if it's a true anxiety or panic attack, I have my "emergency" anxiety prescription. Are there any items of jewelry you never/rarely take off? My lip and tragus piercings never do, and I always wear two rings. Do you find yourself correcting people’s grammar often? Not really, no. It just seems rude and snobby to me, honestly, if it's not in an educational setting, like helping someone with an essay. Correcting someone in your average conversation is just... unnecessary, imo. Now if you're talking like in surveys and stuff, I definitely do in questions and such, but I don't point it out. Gummi worms: Yay or nay? Yay, love 'em. What do you do when you have ‘me time’? I only ever have "me" time, so what I always do... Do you lack common sense sometimes? I have a horrible lack of common sense, shit's embarrassing. Have you ever poured glue on your hand just to peel it off for fun? No. How do babies make you feel? "Nervous. They’re so damn breakable." <<<< Mood. Would you/Have you milked a cow? No, and I'm not interested. What really gives you the creeps? #!: seeing a baby move inside its mother's stomach. It will actually make me scream and/or cry because it just grosses me the fuck out. Whale sharks' mouths also creep me out big time. Do you ever eat leftover pizza cold? Yeah, I love cold pizza. When you're wanting a midnight snack, what do you normally get? We normally have cashew bars that I like if I'm really hungry. Which cartoon character would you want to keep as a pet? Obviously Pikachu. My niece loves Pikachu anyway, so she'd be ecstatic to see a real one. Or well, maybe I'd go for an Eevee. Not as dangerous with electricity and all but just as cute and small. Do you like marshmallows? Yeah. If you had the opportunity to live forever, would you take it? No. It would ruin so many factors of the temporary nature of life. Things would lose meaning, get old and boring, it'd be much easier to take advantage of things... There are many reasons why I have no desire to live forever. Hell, I even wonder if I want an afterlife for those same reasons. Did you ever really believe in Santa Claus? As a little kid, yeah. Do you like quesadillas? I like cheese, chicken, and shrimp ones. What's the greatest/most influential song you've ever heard? Ozzy's "Life Won't Wait." Do you prefer to pull off band-aids slowly or quickly? I tend to do it slowly. What was the last thing someone told you that had you at a loss for words? Uhhh I feel like Sara said something, but I don't remember what. What was the last health scare you had? Ugh... I'm kind of living in one now. As my legs have been worsening, I'm becoming increasingly concerned I'm eventually going to need a wheelchair for "walking" longer distances. And mind you, "long" for me is probably short for the average person. My knees do nothing but crack incessantly and burn when I use them, and they frequently feel like they're going to give way, and in a few rare instances, have. It's my own fucking fault for not sucking it up and exercising with my mom in the room, so I'd like to move on. What is your favorite filling for a piece of chocolate? Caramel. Do you enjoy the sound of birds chirping? I do. If applicable, what’s your favorite drug, and why? I don't do drugs, so. What was the last TV show you binge-watched? Avatar: The Last Airbender with Sara. Would you rather eat burgers or tacos? Definitely burgers. I don't like tacos. Did your mother change her maiden name when/if she got marred? Yes. What was the last job you applied for? Did you get the job? Deli worker, and yes. Do you use TikTok? No. What decorations do you have in your bathroom? None. Our bathroom is pretty small. Well, the one we use, anyway. The one attached to the master's bedroom isn't cleaned up yet, but we'll use it in case of emergency. What year was your favourite band formed? (Before people think I'm smart, no, I looked the dates up, haha.) Well Ozzy was Black Sabbath's vocalist, and the band formed in 1968, but Ozzy became a solo artist in 1979. What's your favourite fruit? Strawberries. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? No. Do you prefer gory horror films or the psychological ones? I prefer psychological. Are you easily paranoid? Yeah. Do you have a favorite obsession? Meerkats and Mark are kinda tied, haha. Are you a workaholic? No. Have you ever given a tattoo before and would you like to? No and no; that would be an awful idea, given I have bad tremors in my hands. Have you ever seen the movie Labyrinth? I actually have not. Would you rather be called pretty or hot? Pretty. Have you ever gotten a serious injury at school? What happened? No. Have you ever performed in front of my large group of people? Yes; I was a dancer for many years. Have you ever fundraised? If so, what for? You know how Facebook recommends making fundraisers for a charity of your choice for your birthday? I've done that for the Trevor Project and two charities for ovarian and pancreatic cancers. Are you wearing earrings right now? Ugh, no, even though I want to be. The first holes in my ears are just too stretched for normal earrings because I wore heavy ones too often, and I just don't have nice earrings. I still want to get very small gauges to put in the stretched holes. Name a singer whose voice makes you swoon? Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump can do that, holy shit. "America's Suitehearts" does it for me, man. Y'know, when his voice goes all deep. Do your pets follow you when you walk around the house? My cat Roman is quite literally my shadow. Where I go, he goes. What do you do online? I seem to only exist online, really, so I've got a lot on my plate to choose from, yet I'm still bored half the time, haha. I'm essentially always watching or listening to YouTube, I play World of Warcraft for varying amounts of time depending on the day, I scroll through deviantART, check KM periodically, do surveys obviously, "work" at the wikis I contribute to, wander around on Facebook... idk, that's all I really do at least semi-regularly online. Haha oh, wait, I also check Craigslist like... every day for tarantula and hognoses even though I can't currently get either. Let me dream. Do you have any scars on your face? I have a couple on my chin from when I fainted and busted it open. What countries were your grandparents born in? In the US. What was the most damaging relationship (romantic or not) that you’ve ever been a part of? Ultimately, with Jason, because of how it ended. The relationship itself wasn't at all damaging to me, but the breakup shook my entire fucking world. When in your life was your self-esteem at its lowest point? Self-esteem? Now. I'm very unhappy with my weight going back up, my body is just in poor health in general, I'm not employed, not in school... I just feel like a lowlife. Who was the last person you cut out of your life? Do you regret it? I want to say my sister's mother-in-law. Sure don't, considering she revealed her disgusting support for conversion therapy. I'm civil around her in person, but I kicked that woman off my Facebook so fucking quick when I saw that shit. Who is the most attractive person you know personally? That I know personally... I would say Alon, but I haven't seen even a picture of her in forever. Summer, though, shares selfies frequently, and by god is she gorgeous. I know a lot a lot of beautiful women, asldkjf;awe. It's funny that I'm blanking on men, at least involving people I still "know"/are somehow present in my life. Would you rather look older or younger than you are? I'm fine looking my age. Have you ever dated someone who was very vastly different from your “type”? No. What is the biggest project you’re currently working on? I suppose you can count an RP plot as a "project." I'm procrastinating so bad on it because it is going to be A LOT of writing. Is there a person from your past that you wonder about frequently? Who? Take a shot in the dark for me. Who knows you best, excluding romantic partners? My mother. What are your thoughts on human creation? I believe we evolved. How many people have you had sex with? One. Have you ever had a yard sale? Yeah. Have you ever been surfing? No.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''voices'' by motionless in white

[saintsforsakencity]

Professor Fahey

Dudes, I was scrolling through my drafts and I found the best post I’ve ever written. It’s really long and all over the place in terms of tone and topic (I think I was planning to break it up into smaller posts, but who has time for that). Here it is:

I’ve seen a couple people floating a headcanon that Jesper becomes a professor at the Ketterdam University. The idea startled me at first—didn’t he hate school?—but the more I’ve thought about it, I realized that Jesper would be the best professor the University has ever seen. Think about it:

He gets bored easily. His lectures will be full of group problem sets, games, simulations, discussions, fantasy!Kahoot.

There’s a professor at my college (who probably has ADHD) who builds stretch breaks into the middle of his lectures. Everyone loves him. Jesper would totally do that.

Not to mention, he’s a good speaker!

And he tried to sell himself as “the funny friend” as an unhealthy coping mechanism, sure, and in this future time he’s over that, but he still knows how to drop in a well-placed joke to wake up the class.

His homework assignments will be project-based, along the lines of “visit the Exchange and take notes on how people behave,” and “build a model out of bread cubes and toothpicks.”

I’m imagining him as primarily an Economics and Politics professor, because I think that’s where his experiences would lead him, but he’s all about alternative models and interpretations and once called neoliberalism “a load of naive horse dung” in front of a lecture hall of 300 freshmen.

His published research, articles letters-to-the-editor has made him enemies in academia, government, the international community, and the press—not to mention a few more Barrel enemies. He thrives on it.

He’ll also just teach seminars on whatever interests him because if you think he’s going to teach the same topics year after year, you are dead wrong.

Most importantly, he’d also be the professor ready to throw down for his students. He likes risk. He cares about people. He will fight the administration on anything that’s unfair to his kids.

He almost singlehandedly invents the concept of a disability accommodations policy and is responsible for its enforcement.

He built the wheelchair ramp into his building himself—without telling the administration beforehand.

The University tried to fire him once and the entire student body lobbied to get him rehired.

He’s the faculty advisor for international students and helps them navigate Ketterdam culture, find resources, and practice Kerch.

He cooks for them sometimes. They start having monthly potluck dinners and he learns dishes from everywhere from Southern Shu Han to the Fjerdan branch of the Suli. Eventually, when a new student joins, no matter where they’re from, he or another student can cook them something from somewhere close to home.

In middle school, I had a teacher who we all believed was in the Illuminati because he would casually drop into his lectures references to jobs he’d held and places he’d visited. There were many of them and they all seemed very improbable. He was weirdly willing to spend large amounts of money taking his classes out for lunch as a reward for perfect attendance, implying that he was rich beyond what you would expect from a middle school teacher. That’s Jesper.

“Thanks for the holiday cookies! They remind me of some I tried years ago, when I was in Fjerda” “what were you doing in Fjerda?”(expecting to learn a bit about his research projects) “Trying to prevent a war. It was a bit of a disaster but it worked out in the end and I got paid.”

“Hey I got the class tickets to the opening night of *fancy opera* let’s go analyze some themes!”

“So a friend of mine, she—you all know about the Crow Club? It’s run by a gang, of course—she’s the assistant manager and she has this great analogy...” (that’s Anika, btw)

If you catch him after class, he might tell you some juicy stories that the statute of limitations has run out on.

Wylan tries to hide it, but he gets a bit angsty thinking about the University because of his bad experiences with education, and doesn’t visit Jesper at work much.

So Jesper puts together a class on the emerging technologies of photography, projection, and film. Grading is on sketches, darkroom labs, film screenings, class discussions, and oral presentations. No reading required.

He wheedles Wylan into enrolling. He doesn’t tell anyone he and Wylan are married and gets a TA to grade all Wylan’s assignments so no one can’t say his good grades are out of pity.

Wylan, obviously, does fantastically (it’s art plus technology, are you kidding?!), and he delivers his final presentation so confidently that Jesper teases him about how cocky he looked for hours afterwards to keep from crying. Wylan can tell.

Next year, Jesper pulls some strings to get Wylan hired part-time so he can take over the class. (He doesn’t have to pull a lot of strings; Wylan is a rich merchant and the administration is happy for the chance to suck up to him).

Jesper does not stop carrying guns. The administration would not like this if they found out but who’s going to tell them?

There is a rumor among the students about a parallel, faculty-only party circuit. This is true and Jesper started it.

I love professor!Jesper so much; there’s so much potential here.

I want to be in his class.

Please nitpick the quality of these headcanons and add your own!

#arin chat #six of crows #grishaverse #crooked kingdom #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #wesper

[matildainmotion]

Equality and Diversity: Mothering Difference, Making Art

I have been slow to talk or write about race and diversity because of feeling vastly ill-qualified to do so. I’ve felt I should shut up, listen and let people who do not identify as white, straight and able-bodied do the talking and the writing. But recently I have come to realise that branding myself as ill-qualified feeds into the idea that ‘white’ is all-pervasive, as if white is so much the norm that it isn’t even a race, so what would I know about it? As if I am not part of the problem. I have done enough listening now to understand that structural racism is, in large part, for white people to undo. Just as patriarchy is not only for women to solve, and if you are a wheelchair user then the issue is not your lack of able-bodied legs but the lack of lifts inside the building. As the co-leader, with Lizzy Humber, of a movement called Mothers Who Make, which claims to be for ‘every kind of mother and every kind of maker,’ I think it is probably time I asked whether this is true – are we doing it for everyone, or only a privileged few?

Immediately, it’s complicated. For a start motherhood is a colossal category, so catering for ‘every kind of mother’ is a fantastic and preposterously ambitious claim. We like to try and list them: biological, adoptive, surrogate, foster, expectant, grand, great grand, single, bereaved…..is just the start of the list. Part of the reason for the movement existing at all is that motherhood itself has an ambivalent status in relationship to privilege. ‘Pregnancy and Maternity’ are ‘protected characteristics’ according to the Equality and Human Rights commission but this only covers a mother until 26 weeks after the birth. The remaining 26 plus years of raising the child do not count. I remember at one of the first Arts Council meetings I had with regards to Mothers Who Make, the ACE officer with whom I met said to me, only half-jokingly, “So are you to blame for all the funding applications I am now receiving that include childcare costs?” Whilst being a primary carer is slowly becoming recognised as an access issue, motherhood, the ACE officer explained to me kindly, is not a disability. Becoming a mother is a chosen privilege, not an inherited challenge. You were not born with it, instead, you were the one that did the birthing. This is true, and also not the whole truth. For me, it is true that being able to care for and raise two human beings feels like a huge honour. It is also true that my experiencing and naming my mothering as such is probably a result of my own white, middle class upbringing. It is a result of my having my children in my late 30s and early 40s. But even whilst owning my middle-class-ness, I object to motherhood being framed as a kind of lifestyle choice, as if children were a nice accessory, to be obtained if you wish. Motherhood is not always chosen. In teenagers and young women motherhood is often associated, not with privilege, but with deprivation. And then there is the fact that if motherhood were a lifestyle choice it would be a fairlly terrible one – hours and hours of unpaid, undervalued labour that does nothing for your cultural capital. Meanwhile, for some, missing out on motherhood can be a source of lifelong grief. Like I said, it’s complicated. And that’s just the mothering. Then there’s the making….

When I started Mothers Who Make I decided on the word ‘make’ not just because of the alliteration with the word ‘mother.’ I decided on it because I hoped it would be more welcoming to more mothers to use an everyday verb like ‘make’, rather than a fancy noun like ‘artist.’ You can make a bed as well as a book. You can make it through the day. Make a mess. Make mistakes. Make a difference. Even so mothers are still all too ready to exclude themselves: “Oh, I don’t feel I can come at the moment, I’m not really making anything,” is something I have heard time and again from potential participants and I have to work hard at convincing them that having made some soup is as valid and valued in a MWM meeting as having put a painting on the wall of Tate Modern. The verb ‘to make’ comes close on the heels of the verb ‘to be’ in defining who we are: we are human makings – creatures that create. I have always said that if you understand the need for a group called Mothers Who Make to exist then you can come – i.e if you want to be there, you are welcome. But is that enough? Is it enough to say that anyone can join in if they like? Based on our limited statistics to date, the answer is definitely no- it’s not enough. At present we are predominantly white (96%), straight (85%) and non-disabled (85%) (Stats from 124 equality and diversity monitoring forms, not from on our online community of nearer 3000). To be in a position to have heard of the group at all, to identify with it, to want to participate, to feel able to go through the door of an arts venue (in a pre-pandemic era), I fear already necessitates a certain level of privilege. So, what to do? There is an overwhelming amount to do, but as a start Lizzy and I have put out a call for feedback and am holding two meetings to focus specifically on how to begin to extend and diversify MWM’s reach (for more details see under this blog), and already I have received some incredibly useful responses. Right now, I want to draw on and explore three strands of feedback.

The first (thanks to Lucy Bell) was that MWM’s vibe – in terms of the images we put out, verbal and visual, and the culture of the group – leans towards what is often referred to as ‘attachment parenting.’ Our intention is to hold spaces that are non-judgemental and that do not condone or condemn any particular style of mothering. There is no right answer as to how to mother, how to make or how to manage the extraordinary challenge of doing both. Everyone has to do what is right for their particular circumstances, and their child/ren, and we recognise that ‘right’ even for an individual is an always changing work-in-progress. Part of the point of the network is to share and make visible to one another the enormous range of the answers that people explore and live out. However, in large part because my own solutions to the conundrums of mothering have been attachment parenting ones, I believe this has impacted the vibe of MWM and agree that, if this is not your style of parenting, it might make you steer clear. 

The second piece of feedback (thanks to Zoe Gardner), was that MWM’s spaces, in person or online, often invite ambiguity, asking people to wear double identities, and therefore to blend or blur them. It implies in its name a relationship between mothering and making, a mucky mixture of selves and practices. I think this links back to the attachment parenting point – again I recognise it in myself. It’s what I do – I breastfeed my children, whilst typing my blogs sitting on their bedroom floor. I co-sleep with them and with my notebooks. I have carried the children in slings into rehearsal rooms and meetings. Both my mothering and making styles have been thoroughly messy, emergent and have involved much merging of spaces, tasks, beds, books and more. I strongly suspect that this tendency in me, which has in turn, to date, influenced the messaging of MWM, is connected to my relative privilege: if the gates are open to you, then you can afford to experiment with taking the walls down, rearranging the boundary lines; if the gates are closed to you, then messing with the walls isn’t necessarily an option, and might well be off-putting.

There is a further twist in this however- whilst many of these practices now seem white and middle class, their recent origins are most definitely non-western. A key text, written in 1975, which fuelled the whole attachment parenting movement, was The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. Liedloff was inspired by her time spent living with the indigenous Yequana people in Venezuela. The Yequana carried their babies in slings, co-slept with them, breastfed on demand. MWM’s principle of holding spaces that are ‘adult-centred but child-friendly’ is directly linked to one of Liedloff’s key observations of how the Yequana raised their children in the midst of adult activity, as opposed to segregating them off into child-centred environments. I was born when the Continuum Concept first came out, when carrying your baby on your back would have been identified, by most in the UK, as something a woman from Africa might do, not a practice done by a white woman in Oxfordshire (my mother). Jump on forty years and, if you google images of ‘baby on back,’ the first one that comes up is of a white man with an Ergo-baby sling, a white baby inside it, standing smiling in his garden. This feels like dangerous and difficult territory. This shift could be framed as western culture growing more diverse, or as an act of appropriation, or both. Whichever it is, it adds to the complexity of the picture, which brings me to the third piece of feedback.

           It came as a question on Facebook (thanks to Wendy Thomson) “Are we in white knight/ saviour behaviour mode?”- are non-white mothers, for example, doing just fine, thank you very much, with their own groups and support networks? And then there was also a response (thanks to Kit Whitfield Thomas) “I don’t think it is white knight mode, just manners. What is the alternative? – not trying to include us and assuming we should just sort it all out ourselves?” And along with this Kit made a request not to assume anything, a request, as a mother of a SEN child, for an acknowledgement that “no experience of motherhood is universal”. I think these are all vital questions and requests. We must keep inviting but be alert to our manners – the manner and the mode of the invitation, to keep making and holding space for, not the universe, but the countless, complex, diverse versions of experiences within it.

           These three pieces of feedback have helped me to begin to think more deeply about diversity and equality, inclusion and exclusion in relation to MWM and beyond. Mothers Who Make already excludes – it is explicitly not for everyone – the clue is in the name. I have been challenged on this point repeatedly, most often with the question: “What about fathers?”. My response stems from a belief in specificity and difference. Equal does not mean ‘the same as.’ It may mean having the same pay, the same rights, the same access to opportunities, but it does not mean having the same experiences or identity. For now there needs to be a movement called ‘Black Lives Matter’ not ‘All Lives Matter,’ which doesn’t mean white lives don’t matter; and there needs to be a group called ‘Mothers Who Make’ not ‘Parents who Make,’ even though there are many creative fathers who also need support. Some lives that have not been deemed to matter, need to be visibly valued right now. Some experiences that have been marginalised need a special, protected space. Even in a utopian future, I am not sure the aim should be a world where we no longer need these groups and movements that hold space for specific differences, such as the black, the trans, the queer, the disabled, the maternal– and of course within each of these categories are a thousand further differences. My utopian vision would not be of a colour-blind world, in which no one notices race anymore, but rather one involving ever sharper vision. One in which people would see everything, every colour, pattern, nuance, every difference in ever greater detail.

           For the second time this year I find myself reaching for my copy of the parenting classic, ‘Siblings without Rivalry’ by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. One of its chapters is headed “Equal is less:”

“To be loved equally….is somehow to be loved less. To be loved uniquely—for one’s own special self—is to be loved as much as we need to be loved.”

Back in February I quoted this same line within a blog about rivalry. I wrote,

“Yes, this makes sense. Equal is still in the paradigm of quantity. Equal implies that you could have more than me, even if we have the same. It explains my children bickering over identical chocolate bars – they both have exactly the same, and that, in the end, is not enough, not what they want. They want their differences, not their same-ness…as long as we remain in the world of quantities, of equal signs, then there is always an implied risk that one of them could lose - minus, subtraction, less, loss.”

Often ‘equal’ connotes a measure-able amount which results, I believe, in this fear of scarcity. The phrase ‘equal access,’ seems more useful. It is not the gold, but the access to the gold, that needs to be shared. This may seem like a crazy distinction, but I think it is important – it makes equality a dynamic process not an amount, the swaying of the scales, not the stuff weighed out in them. My children are not equal, they are not static, not quantifiable. As a mother, my job is not to treat them the same, but rather to recognise and celebrate their evolving, see-sawing differences. In a way their differences are the gold, and it is plentiful. Diversity involves a generous kind of maths – multiplication – always more. Equality and Diversity monitoring forms, however, involve more difficult calculations- our differences are boxed,tracked and stacked into statistics in pursuit of everyone having equal access. It is hard to keep the sense of equality as a dynamic process when faced with those forms. So, whilst they are a critical tool on a vital quest, I think we also need to keep doing the other sum- the one so long that it never reaches the equals sign but we know the answer to it is infinity – a glorious inventory of our never-ending differences.

As is recognised in the work of Abraham Maslow, in Marshal Rosenburg’s Non-Violent Communication, and in many spiritual traditions, if you go far enough with detailing the differences, patterns begin to emerge – we start to connect up, to equal one another at the deepest level of our needs. “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a green field,” writes Rumi, the 12th C Sufi poet, and once we meet there, there is another inventory to be found, a list of the fundamentals to which we all require and deserve access: food, shelter, rest, warmth, autonomy, play, love……the complete sum of our same-ness.

           For the last month my daughter has wanted the same bedtime book. Unprompted she has had her four-year-old finger on the pulse of the world’s process, for she has asked me again and again for ‘Mix,’ by Arree Chung. It is a beautiful, witty picture book, that I would recommend to anyone wanting to talk about difference and race with their children. It opens:

“In the beginning there were three colours: Reds, Yellows and Blues. Reds were the loudest, Yellows were the brightest and Blues were the coolest. Everyone lived in colour harmony, until one day when a red said, ‘Reds are the best!’….”

The colours decide to divide – to live in separate parts of the city. But then a Blue and a Yellow fall in love, and, contentiously, the first interracial marriage takes place. A mixed-race child is born - they call her Green. Slowly the other colours are inspired- more and more mixing follows, until at last they give up on segregation. The final line is my favourite one in the book: “The new city was full of colour. It wasn’t perfect, but it was home.” I love that the happy ending is imperfect – it makes equality dynamic again, not a final prize possession but an unfolding multi-coloured process.

Meanwhile, Mothers who Make will continue to hand out equality and diversity monitoring forms. But alongside these, we will also start to interrogate and diversify the kinds of images and words we use, the places we advertise ourselves, the venues with which we work, the range of events we hold, in an effort to make ourselves more genuinely accessible to mothers and makers of every kind. Right now, I have, not so much a question of the month, as a request to put to you: I want to know about how you are different. I want to know about what you need. I want to know how to access you and how you might best access me, us, MWM. This is a fourfold invitation: you can write to me with your feedback via email - [email protected] . You can come to one of the diversity meetings happening this month (details below). And you can fill in our equality and diversity form so we can gain a more accurate picture of our network: https://forms.gle/wgDm335c1zQbaKer7  

Lastly, you can do this: go beyond the boxes- go as deep as you can into your difference. Whether it is your ethnic identity, your neurodiversity, your sexuality, your gender, your disability, your child’s disability, your mental health challenges. Articulate it however you wish. Maybe it will be a list, an inventory. Maybe a letter. A photo. A drawing. A song. Be as specific as you can. Name all your identities, all your differences. This is a creative injunction - I believe it may in fact be where making begins - tracking your difference, your way of accessing the world, as the origin of art.  

Our diversity-focussed meetings, via Zoom, open to all, are on: Thursday 9th July 1-2.30pm BST and Tuesday 28th July 10-11.30am BST. Children are welcome too. Email [email protected] if you wish to attend.

[pfenniged]

What books are you currently reading? :)

Some of these I’m currently reading are books I’ve already read/ started reading, but had to put aside or haven’t reread in a long time. Others are books I’ve read for the first time, but I’m trying to catch up on as well. Lastly, I’ve got some books coming in the mail. I’ll note all categories below.

(Note: Books I’ve already read and rereading have an asterisk next to them, so you know they’re really good. xD)

Books I’m Currently Rereading:

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque*: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.’

Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller* (TW: As a novel and as someone who experienced underage sexual abuse, I acknowledge this could be very triggering and there are sections I have to skip by. However, the film starring Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett is so fantastic, and the material provided here so dark and so twisted, it’s a fantastic example of a double-twist and a fucked-up unreliable narrator): Notes on a Scandal is a 2003 novel by Zoë Heller. It is about a female teacher at a London comprehensive school who begins an affair with an underage pupil. 

Jane Austen’s Persuasion* (Note: This is my favourite Jane Austen novel): ‘Of all Jane Austen’s great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving. It is the story of a second chance. Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen she fell in love with—and was engaged to—a naval officer, the fearless and headstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, and Anne allowed herself to be persuaded to give him up. Now, eight years later, Wentworth has returned to the neighborhood, a rich man and still unwed. Anne’s never-diminished love is muffled by her pride, and he seems cold and unforgiving. What happens as the two are thrown together in the social world of Bath—and as an eager new suitor appears for Anne—is touchingly and wittily told in a masterpiece that is also one of the most entrancing novels in the English language.’

Books I’ve Started Reading, But Had to Put Aside at One Point:

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy: ‘Dopesick is an unflinching look at the opioid crisis in the US, which is predicted to kill more Americans in a decade than HIV has since it emerged in the 1980s.'

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern by Richard Munson: ‘Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. In Tesla, Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind.’

Me by Elton John: ‘In his first and only official autobiography, music icon Elton John reveals the truth about his extraordinary life, which is also the subject of the smash-hit film Rocketman.’

Circe by Madeline Miller: ‘In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power--the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.’

Intellectual Property by Siva Vaidhyanathan: ‘We all create intellectual property. We all use intellectual property. Intellectual property is the most pervasive yet least understood way we regulate expression. Despite its importance to so many aspects of the global economy and daily life, intellectual property policy remains a confusing and arcane subject. This engaging book clarifies both the basic terms and the major conflicts surrounding these fascinating areas of law, offering a layman's introduction to copyright, patents, trademarks, and other forms of knowledge falling under the purview of intellectual property rights. Using vivid examples, noted media expert Siva Vaidhyanathan illustrates the powers and limits of intellectual property, distilling with grace and wit the complex tangle of laws, policies, and values governing the dissemination of ideas, expressions, inventions, creativity, and data collection in the modern world.’

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky: ‘The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th-century Russia, that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual, theological drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, judgment, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia, with a plot which revolves around the subject of patricide.’

The Balkans by Mark Mazower: ‘Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zone of endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashing between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. In this highly acclaimed short history, Mark Mazower sheds light on what has been called the tinderbox of Europe, whose troubles have ignited wider wars for hundreds of years. Focusing on events from the emergence of the nation-state onward, The Balkans reveals with piercing clarity the historical roots of current conflicts and gives a landmark reassessment of the region’s history, from the world wars and the Cold War to the collapse of communism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the continuing search for stability in southeastern Europe.’

Books I’m Reading for the First Time:

Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel (This is a guilty pleasure basically because I’m a True Crime nerd: It’s basically that Blanchard case in a novel form): ‘For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair, and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score. Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home.’

The Plague by Albert Camus: ‘A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.’

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: ‘A Moveable Feast is a memoir by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling young expat journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. The book, first published in 1964, describes the author's apprenticeship as a young writer while he was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson.’

Books Coming in the Mail:

The Outsider by Albert Camus: ‘L'Étranger is a 1942 novel by French author Albert Camus. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of Camus's philosophy, absurdism coupled with that of existentialism, though Camus personally rejected the latter label.’

Becoming by Michelle Obama: ‘Becoming is the memoir of former United States first lady Michelle Obama published in 2018. Described by the author as a deeply personal experience, the book talks about her roots and how she found her voice, as well as her time in the White House, her public health campaign, and her role as a mother.’

Things Fall Apart: A Novel by Chinua Achebe*: ‘Things Fall Apart is the debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. Its story chronicles pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century.’

E.M. Forster’s Maurice* (I accidentally ordered a copy when I already own one I couldn’t find and thought I had to donate moving home from uni. Whoops xD (But seriously you can never have too many copies of this book): ‘Maurice is a novel by E. M. Forster. A tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays through university and beyond. It was written in 1913–1914, and revised in 1932 and 1959–1960.’

Howard’s End by E.M. Forster: ‘Howard’s End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. Howards End is considered by many to be Forster's masterpiece. ‘

War and Peace by Tolstoy: ‘War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.’

I’m also hoping to order The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole and How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram Kendi next time I get some cash in my pocket; the fact that the library still isn’t open locally and shows no sign of opening soon is wrecking havoc with any budgeting I might usually do. xD But hopefully this gives you some ideas for books to search out! <3

#literature #personal #reading recommendations #anonymous

[whilereadingandwalking]

I had very mixed feelings about Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. It tells the story of a modern-day family who have done everything right yet now live on the poverty line in a crumbling house in Vineland, New Jersey. It also dives into historical fiction with the story of Thatcher Greenwood, a 1800s-teacher who befriends scientist Mary Treat while making enemies as he insists on his right to teach Darwinism and other true science.

The highlight of this novel was learning about the life and discoveries of Mary Treat, a scientist I knew nothing about who corresponded with famous scientists such as Charles Darwin and lived off of her contributions to scientific journals of her day. The modern-day (2016ish) storyline focused sometimes too closely on the revelations and debates of the family, making it come off as a highlight reel of sorts. The many political conversations the family has weren’t unrealistic as some reviewers claim, but the pacing of the novel makes it seem as though the big questions are all they discuss, while skipping over most actual events. The most effective moments are the ones she allows to be more personal, real, quiet: a conversation where Tig opens up to Willa about her time in Cuba, for example.

There are other problems with the text. Kingsolver captures the many complexities of all the characters to try and make them realistic as modern-day white liberals. She does succeed in some ways—the microaggressions that lead to arguments within the family are very realistic and successful—but Willa’s internal lapses into ableism, fatphobia, and her casual racism are jarring because they go unexamined. The ableism in this text is particularly insidious: the old racist grandfather and Trump supporter is dying and his dependence on a wheelchair and oxygen is meant to be a source for sympathy even as he spews racism, which is fine as that’s just a portrayal of a stubborn older racist, but the villain in Thatcher’s story, the creationist principal is also disabled—he has a wooden hand that’s evoked when he’s being his most stubborn. This links backwardness with being disabled, with physical weakness or difference. I also felt the excellent character of resourceful, anti-capitalist millennial Tig was held back by the risks of her becoming a caricature through her insistence that her dreads aren’t a problem because her whiteness is a construct and her romanticization of Cuba that’s never nuanced.

Kingsolver was too ambitious with this novel, or perhaps just didn’t finish what she started. Whenever a work of fiction is written, eventually as it’s edited, its construction blends into the background. Here, it’s clearly constructed, which is why so many reviewers find it preachy. In terms of craft, for example, each chapter title is the final words of the chapter before it, a very forced way of connecting Kingsolver’s two storylines. Kingsolver’s novel feels consistently created. It’s impossible to truly lose yourself in the characters’ narratives—while so much of what Kingsolver writes is interesting, it’s impossible to shake off the sense that this was written to you in the modern day. Ultimately, the weakness of the novel emerges in the unshakeable presence of the author, who won’t allow the text to speak for itself.

#barbara kingsolver #unsheltered #book review #mary treat #historical fiction #all mine #my book reviews

[nataliesnews]

All politics 27.8.2021

If  any of you are donating to the Jewish Agency I think you should see how political they have become.  Look at the PDF above. I no longer donate to the JNF either as all these organizations are completely on the right

 I loathe the summer more and more each year. It is a dry period in every way with courses ending and with the heat impossible to really do anything outside after 9am. Winter I can get up when I want and walk at any hour of the day. Now I always get up at 6am and then do my walking or after six at night and even then I come back drenched in sweat. Of course it makes it easier then for the rest of you as I have nothing but politics to write about!!  Here we call it the cucumber season and I went to google to find out why and found this

Why is it called the silly season?

Silly season was coined in the 19th century to describe the time when journalists face a bit of a conundrum: Washington is on summer break and the United Kingdom and in some other places, the silly season is the period lasting for a few summer months typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media. It is known in many languages as the cucumber time. The term is first attested in 1861,[1] was listed in the second (1894) edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and remains in use at the start of the 21st century. The 15th edition of Brewer's expands on the second, defining the silly season as "the part of the year when Parliament and the Law Courts are not sitting (about August and September)".

In North America the period is often referred to prosaically as the slow news season, or less commonly with the phrase dog days of summer. In Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the silly season has come to refer to the Christmas/New Year festive period (which occurs during the summer season in the Southern Hemisphere) on account of the higher than usual number of social engagements where the consumption of alcohol is typical.[citation needed]

The term is also used in sports, to describe periods outside traditional competitive sporting seasons.”

 Written by a friend of mine about the Kalandia checkpoint where I went to many year. People on the Palestinian side have told me that many of the elderly no longer try to get into Jerusalem as it is too difficult for them to get to the checking posts and I found it so too and you can see at the end of this report I wrote years ago.

 We arrived at the pedestrian checkpoint at 6:00, left at 7:00, and in between everything proceeded smoothly without incident. Two men approached us during the shift. One asked, "Where is Sylvia?" because he wanted to thank her, personally, for the help that her team extended to his wife, a year ago, by having her removed from the blacklist of people prevented from receiving a permit to enter Israel. We told him we would convey his thanks. The second man had a painful complaint about the pedestrian bridge built at Qalandia and the means of accessing it. The bridge—which is the only way to reach and leave the pedestrian checkpoint is truly a Via Dolorosa for older people. He said that he has been phoning and sending letters to anyone capable of hearing or reading to explain the difficulties it creates, to no avail. So he asked us to describe the problem through our channel, in the hope of reaching those responsible for the checkpoint and the world at large.

First the description: the bridge extends over the area of the vehicle checkpoint where cars and trucks are checked. Its purpose is apparently to keep pedestrians from crossing the road there on their way to the building containing the pedestrian checkpoint. It also keeps pedestrians far from the soldiers who are carrying out the vehicle checks, as in the past unfortunate, including lethal, incidents occurred stemming from the possibility of approaching the soldiers. A pedestrian approaching the checkpoint from the south (East Jerusalem via Beit Hanina), has no way of entering it except to cross the bridge. The same is true for pedestrians coming from the north (the direction of Kafr Aqeb and Ramallah), who have been checked inside the pedestrian checkpoint before continuing on to East Jerusalem. Upon exiting this building, they have no choice but to cross the bridge to reach the area of the buses and taxis on the opposite side of the road. Also at that exit point is a locked gate. We have never seen it open and do not know what use it serves, though were it open it could serve as an alternate route for workers who are being picked up by their employers on the road south into East Jerusalem.

So what's the problem? Essentially: older people, like the man who addressed us. The bridge is about two stories high. And the climb up is not easy, particularly because the steps are rather narrow for people moving in both directions, the younger and faster ones also attempting to pass the older and slower ones. There is also a ramp up to the bridge, wider than the steps, but you truly wouldn't want to be the one accompanying an elderly man or woman up this ramp or, heaven forbid, pushing a wheelchair.

What's more, anyone approaching the bridge on foot from the south, in order to reach the steps and the ramp, must negotiate a dirt field peppered with small stones that poke up through the ground and virtually invite being tripped on. Recently, this journey through the field has even been extended by blocking off a more convenient entrance to it. In short, whoever designed the bridge was apparently thinking less about serving people, especially older people, than about serving the occupation. One wonders whether anyone will address these difficulties

 And this is what I wrote:

ME:

Years ago I wrote about  how impossible I had found that bridge to cross and how I am convinced it was engineered by someone who hates the Palestinian population. I only have walked it once and thank heavens every day that I do not have to do it on a daily or even a weekly basic.    Natanya

  o a very vague hope for a different Israel though there is alittle hope for the Palestinians

I hope never to see Netanyahu return though there is talk that Gantz is willing to crawl back to him. Evidently that man has no pride. But this article which a friend sent to me put me in a different state of mind. My main reason for doubting this new government is that nothing has changed in the  occupied territories and has got even worse. There is no holding back the settlers and the soldiers side with them and guard them and even allow them to use their weapons. The two parties which are more too my liking are too silent. But here there is some light. A dim candle but better than nothing.

https://plus61j.net.au/featured/israels-change-government-is-creaking-open-the-gates-of-exclusion/

There is a big furor here about Bennett and his mistaking the name of the soldier who was shot. And of course  Netanyahu at his millionaire holiday resort took full advantage of the situation. I can just imagine the consultations there so as to enable him to make his weeping call to the father.  But better a prime minister who made a mistake and did  not lie about it than a prime minister who phoned a soldier who shot a Palestinian to death when he was lying bound on the ground as Netanyahu did with Azaria or whatever his name was

Bennett apologizes for mixing up name of critically wounded soldier

Barel Hadaria Shmueli, a Border Police officer who was shot near the Gaza border on Saturday, remains hospitalized in serious condition

https://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-apologizes-for-mixing-up-name-of-critically-wounded-soldier/

So until something happens worth reporting I am signing off

natanya

If  any of you are donating to the Jewish Agency I think you should see how political they have become.  Look at the PDF above. I no longer donate to the JNF either as all these organizations are completely on the right

#All politics 27.8.2021

[illusionlock]

Belief and Persuasion- Chapter 8 (Finale)

hey folks! i’ve been working on a little batim prequel fanfic for a while n its finally done! its a little long, so im dividing it in 8 chapters total!

if you want to read more, i’ll be tagging this under ‘bap fic’ on my blog!

summary:

Joey Drew gives an interview about how he managed to build his empire, and focuses on the two things needed most: belief and persuasion, the latter of which is trickier. As he talks about his philosophy, we can see examples of his influence at work.

This chapter: Joey finishes giving his interview, only to be confronted by Bendy.

(note: when Bendy “speaks” in this fanfiction, it’s not that he is actually speaking, but rather whistling, and everyone can just understand him, hence the parenthesis. It’s an old silly little trope, but I like it.)

"So, I think that will be all, don't you agree? You've learned quite a lot!" Joey seemed to be joking around, but the interviewer now seemed confused, as if the roles had been flipped.

He looked at his notebook to find scribbles and notes of some strange philosophy bordering in manipulation, things that he hadn't realized he was so absent mindedly writing, so compliant. Joey drew had really taken him for a spin. It really was true what they said about that man, he could have anyone wrapped up in his world in no time. But still, he had to leave.

"Thank you for having me, Mr. Drew." He stammered, getting up, almost not quite sure how to answer. "I will surely remember this, uh. I'll be making my leave now."

"Sure, sure, see you then!" Joey laughed gently as he watched the man make his way out.

After he had turned the corner, Joey moved into his wheelchair and rolled out, only to be confronted by Bendy, who seemed to have been snooping around, hidden from sight. He did not look happy, with his arms crossed and frowning.

"Why, what's this, Bendy? You look as sour as a lemon!" Joey joked, but Bendy had none of it.

"(I know what you did now. Alice and Susie are like this because you did it, didn't you? All of this, everything you do, it's just a game to you! You don't really care about making us stars, you only really care about what you want for the company. Well newsflash! I'm done bowing to you like a loyal little puppy dog, and Boris shouldn't either, no matter how much food you give him!)" Bendy whistled, pointing at him accusingly.

Joey seemed quiet for a minute, seeming genuinely caught in his deceitful manipulative behavior. Then, he nodded solemnly, and spoke again: "Bendy, you don't understand the true predicament I'm in. If I am rushing things, if I am using deceit and persuasion and every resource I can, it's because I'm truly desperate. I'm dying Bendy. The polio is eating me away." He then grabbed his toon's gloved hands, almost as if pleading.

"(What?)" Bendy took a step back. "(What- I'm sorry, that's really awful, but I still think what you did wasn't right.)"

"Yes, but there is a way to help me, to help this, I can be better, we can be better, together!" Joey grabbed Bendy's hands again, this time holding him firmly, as if not letting him get away.

"(... You... Are you honestly still...)" Bendy looked at him in dismay, trying to wriggle free of his grasp.

"Yes, Bendy, let's become one and the same, then I won't have to ever worry about death again! Won't you save me? Save your dear old creator? And let this studio prosper again? Really, killing two birds with one stone!" Joey kept holding him firmly, trapping him almost.

"(I can't believe it! You're doing it again, even when you're sick like this you're still thinking of what you can do to expand your greed! What about what I want? I'm not ready to have what happened to Alice happen to me!)" Bendy stared at him, visibly upset, his whistles growing louder and more aggressive.

"What you want? How can you possibly be so selfish when the one that has brought you to life is dying? You look positively despicable with that frown you know that! Now you better be smiling up and proud again because you are going to help me or you know what's going to happen? Without me, this whole studio's gonna come crumbling to the ground!" Joey snarled, now actually getting angry seeing as his initial persuasion didn't work.

But Bendy kept shaking his head in disbelief: "(No, no, I refuse to get the blame of YOU wanting to have a perfect little cartoon to dance for you. Maybe you should have never made me, if you weren't ready for me to disagree with you.)" Finally, he managed to tear himself free and ran off down the hall.

Joey huffed in anger and went after him; he had a feeling he knew where the little devil was going to.

Sure enough, Joey found him clawing and pounding at the ink machine, but so obviously unsure of how to attack it (if you could even call it an attack, so meek it was) that it made him laugh.

"Bendy." Joey laughed gently, but obviously mocking him. "What do you think you're doing?"

"(I'm going to destroy this wretched machine. Once it's gone, you won't be able to do any of your weird ideas anymore!)" Bendy growled between whistles, taking out random nuts and bolts and whatever he could out of it. Finally, he managed to reach one of the bigger gears, and started to pull it off, it was almost coming completely loose when...

"Bendy, no!" Joey screamed.

Bendy stopped, startled enough by how loud Joey had yelled.

"If you pull that, the pressure will de-stabilize and the whole studio's going to flood! Don't. Do that. Just gently ease it back into place and-" Joey couldn't finish.

Bendy, even if really had not moved the piece fully away from the machine, had already pulled on it so much it just came loose, and the machine immediately did its job, pipes bursting and flooding the room immediately, large amounts of ink washing over them in waves, pulling both Joey and Henry from where they were in swirls of black liquid. It quickly spread over to the other rooms, the work desks and chairs being knocked over, the items on the pedestals being washed out and spread around, the projectors violently swaying in the ink...

Alice Angel, or rather, Alice and Susie, now made into one being, heard it, from the level she stood, where she was still trying to accommodate her home, to come to terms with who she was now. Even with her having failed miserably at becoming perfect, she had still convinced the others to let her stay. But now, she thought it might not have been such a good idea. The employees that were also in that level immediately looked up, hearing it too, feeling the ceiling rumble. Then came the ink, first dripping down in small droplets, then coming down the elevator shaft, the pipes bursting. Something big and terrible was happening.

"Oh no... Oh my god..." Alice said to herself. Then she looked around, to her ex-colleagues, grabbed a microphone from a nearby booth and connected it to the speakers of the studio, shouting: "Get a move people go, go, go! This place is going to flood! Those who can, get into the elevator shaft, those who can't-"

She stopped herself, thinking about whether there was any other solution. She didn't want any of these people to die, but... No. She couldn't think of anything else. "Listen up people, try your best to keep swimming around the ink if you can, and stay atop big structures if possible! After a while, toons are going to start to form, and... and if you can't hold on until this all passes, and if you fear it's your last moment, coat yourselves in ink and become one with them. I'm serious, it's the only way, I'm immune to the ink, you will be too, but for now, try to stay alive!"

Back upstairs, Joey, who was at least trying to make an effort to hold onto the doorframe, felt himself slipping as the levels of ink rose higher and higher. Bendy on the other side of the room, had managed to hold on still to the top of the ink machine.

"Bendy..." Joey pleaded. "I don't think I'll hold on much longer..."

Bendy kept quiet, almost as if he was trying to ignore him.

"Bendy, look at me! You're the one that's doomed us all and you still refuse to help me?!" He tried an angrier approach, but that only earned him another silent distrustful and angry look from the demon.

Joey gulped, seeing as his last two fingers slipped off. "Bendy!" He yelled, as his hands finally gave out and he got washed away, engulfed by the ink. He tried one more time, using his last energy to yell: "Bendy please! You know I can't swim like this!"

Finally, guilt got the best of the little cartoon demon as he let go of the machine and swam with ease, diving towards Joey, who was now nearly drowning in the ink. Bendy was a toon, so he could keep his eyes open under the ink, and looking at Joey now, nearly unconscious, he did feel in the end, a pang of pity... His creator had been awful to him, his friends and the employees, but surely, Bendy went too far...

Suddenly, Joey's eyes shot up, blood red as they immediately reacted by being in contact with the ink, the human man grabbing the little toon and forcefully pulling him next to him. Bendy whistled and squealed in despair, his sounds muffled out by the layers and layers of ink, as he was pulled in closer and closer to the dark inky figure that had become of Joey...

Finally, the ink machine had given it all it could. The pressure had become extremely low, its fuel, whatever it was, had stopped functioning, it had for all purposes exhausted itself. At the surface of the black sea of ink, all was still for a moment, nearly peaceful.

Then a figure rose from the ink, tall, imposing, almost like a shark emerging from the sea waters, screeching and howling like and unnatural beast being born. But the most peculiar thing about this new monster was its happy grin that went from cheek to cheek.

#don't be scared. i am here with you. #bap fic #bendy and the ink machine #batim #joey drew #bendy the demon #alice angel

[beyoutifulwanders]

Dapitan.

Just as soon as the term ends, my squad and I, (L-R Arianne, Kyla, Me, Marsella) went to the busy streets of Dapitan! With lots of food stalls nearby, we can’t help but to gazed through everything! But, our Dapitan trip became more exciting when we got to go to visit its own Barangay Hall. But, how come?

This is the main Barangay Hall of Brgy. 489, Zone 48, District 4, Sampaloc, Manila, Philippines. It is located on one of the narrow streets of Dapitan. It may just be a small facade, but we were warmly welcomed!

This is Kagawad Ariel Rañola, who is already on his 2nd term. He agreed to be interviewed for my Disaster Risk Reduction Assessment.

Kagawad Rañola showed this Executive Order No. 10, Series of 2018, which shows the creation of Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Committee. This states how the barangay put its utmost effort to provide the necessary precautions in preventing hazards and disasters within their reach.

I believe that this is a good initiation from the government - to provide every Barangay a committee who will be in charge of the safety of its own citizens.

When asked of the people who are vulnerable of Disaster, Kagawad Rañola said that disasters can be experienced by everyone. However, students who are usually living inside their dormitories can sometimes be the ones who are vulnerable since some of them are still minors who are lacking of experience.

This is a First-Aid Kit available inside the Barangay Hall.

These are two-way radios to help the responders and volunteers to communicate with each other.

There are also CCTV cameras installed around the different corners and streets to monitor accidents and disasters, if there’s any. CCTV cameras also come with a speaker who may be utilized for announcements and public addresses.

These are the equipments used for Public Address System to call the attention of the people.

These are some of the examples of safety gears which are very important during times of disaster.

I asked Kagawad of the struggles and issues that the Barangay faces during times of disaster, and he answered me with, “chismis.” At first I thought that he was joking around. But surprisingly, he is serious with what he said. I asked him why is that a problem during times of disaster.

According to him, “chismis” or hearsays can be compared to fake news. These hearsays mislead people to wrong judgment. One should be prepared prior to disaster, and should not listen to mere rumors on whether to take action or not.

I believe that as a responsible citizen, we should be vigilant of what we do, especially, if lives were involved.

As based on my observation, I also do notice how they are lacking facilities and rooms for their equipment. This was proven true by Kagawad as well. He said that they are in need of spacious areas to make a room for their large equipment. He also said that their small barangay still doesn’t have a definite evacuation area. They even asked UST if they would allow their open field to be such, however, Dominican friars won’t allow.

These are some of the Activities that the Barangay conducts such as a Clean-up Drive which also helps to regulate the cleanliness of the Barangay.

Examples of gears such as splint board, wheelchair, and safety jacket are also available.

I asked Kagawad on the Barangay’s effort to conduct drills and practices among its citizens which will help them to be prepared, and he showed me this portfolio of the activities they did.

I believe that it is a good initiation from the local Barangays to conduct Earthquake Drills that will educate the people on the proper way of survival during times of emergencies.

This is also true to the disaster preparedness of the whole country - they have put efforts to eradicate accidents. Although, the government still have lapses to improve to lessen accidents, especially those people belonging to rural places.

Accidents are inevitable. But one thing is for sure, every small steps matter. As a responsible citizen, I learned how important it is to educate people. Educating your neighbor of disaster-prevention means showing genuine care for them as well. 

And it starts with you.

#dapitan disaster prevention risk reduction

[jenroses]

Sometimes it’s really hard to write about other people’s happy times when it reminds me of when I was strong and thought I could do almost anything. 

Sometimes it’s an escape, but sometimes it’s just a really rough reminder of how hard I’m struggling right now. 

The true answer to “How are you” behind the cut. It ain’t pretty.

The nausea is bad right now. Every week it’s a little worse, Saturdays. The dosage hasn’t changed, once a week I sit on the toilet lid while my husband is in the bathtub, and I swab alcohol between the stretch marks on my belly while he reads some old book or another (literally old, he’s on this kick and I think he’s up to the late 18th century? Maybe 19th? Idk.) 

I swab the top of the tiny vial of vile chartreuse poison. It’s thick:  in the little glass container it rolls thinner than honey, but thicker than oil. 

I pull out a syringe and draw .8 ml of air into it to push into the vial, in order to not create too much suction inside when I’m trying to pull the thick liquid into the needle.

The flashback comes when I get ready to inject, every time. When I was pregnant, I pushed a much larger amount of fire into my belly twice a day, every day, for most of ten months. It hurt, it bruised, and it kept me from clotting, and it meant that I survived a pregnancy without clots, long enough to give birth to a bundle of ornery sunshine. 

Methotrexate does not keep me from clotting. This is poison, and it’s only once a week, and the needle doesn’t even hurt going in. It doesn’t hurt pushing the medication in. But I know what’s coming. 

I do this before I head to bed. It’s almost always six or seven in the morning, because I dread it, and I want to milk the last of the “feeling okay” I’ve finally managed to achieve by the time I’m six days out from the shot. So I stay up too late, and then collapse into bed and cease to function for the rest of the weekend.

I sometimes think that I’m making too much of it. It’s only a little bit of chemo. For cancer, it would be 10-25 ml, not .8. It could be worse. I could be taking it orally and killing off my gastrointestinal tract. With the blood thinner I’m on, that seemed like a bad idea, so shots it is. 

When I let myself think that way, I do ill-advised things like decide I can fix shit and push through, like I did today when there was a crisis in the house over the fact that a DVD had come from the library as a blu-ray, for which we have no player. So I went to a store that had no electric cart to buy things that are literally way more expensive than a season of Game of Thrones could ever be, and came home to discover that there was literally no way to install anything on the computer that was supposed to get it. I sat there for an hour trying, on the wrong chair, which I should not have done, and then spent another hour trying to figure it out on a different computer. I emerged victorious, with a migraine and a blossoming fibro flare. 

I take... take feels like the wrong word. I subject myself to methotrexate in order to keep my immune system under control, to prevent my body from waging war on my gut, my liver, my salivary glands, my lacrimal glands and the membranes around my knuckles. It doesn’t work nearly as well as steroids at making me feel good, but might have fewer side effects long term? It’s hard to say. Something is going to kill me, and whether it’s the rheumatoid arthritis or the medications to fight the rheumatoid arthritis, or the blood clotting disorder, or the meds I take to prevent clots from forming (when the real problem is that once clots form, they just don’t STOP)... I don’t know. My grandmother lived to be 101 and right now that feels like too damn long. 

I have children. I have a husband. They need me, god knows why, and so I stay. I spent most of my time with my son today yelling at him. He’s five and it’s absolutely not his fault that my skin is so sensitive that touch is painful to me. I’m sure there’s probably a more graceful way to tell him that I just spent every last bit of energy I had making a couple of eggs that may or may not stay down and no, I don’t have the energy to deal with him wanting a new packet of salami and cheese when he hasn’t finished the cheese from the last one. He spent most of the day hanging out with his dad and his oldest sibling. My daughter is fortunately well cared for. We are protected from each other, but I wonder often what she thinks of our new reality, where she always has someone, but it’s almost never her mother because I can’t risk her feet or her teeth, because I can’t risk my temper or my lack of coping. Because I can no longer lift her, this child that I carried on my back for three straight years because she hadn’t learned to walk yet. I only stopped because I ended up with a clot and couldn’t lift anything. 

Writing has been hard this week, because when I write I draw on my experience, and right now it hurts to remember that once, I was a dancer, once I was a competitive swimmer, once I stood in front of people trying to ignore a bigot and roused them to speak out against him.

When I write I remember the things I could do and the places I went. I did so much. And it feels like that is over. The last convention I went to hurt. I had a scooter, and pillows, and a hotel room to retreat to, and it hurt so, so bad that I now associate conventions, which were fun, once, with blinding pain. 

The last one I went to was just before I was diagnosed. My joints were on fire. I thought I would need a wheelchair forever afterwards. 

I’m afraid to go back to the doctor and tell them how much the methotrexate is hurting me because the alternatives are thousands of dollars per month.

We can afford it, I just hate being that much more of a burden. That money was supposed to let us enjoy my husband’s retirement. But the idea of going on a cruise? I don’t see it happening and I don’t know how to break it to my husband that it might not be possible. 

I keep feeling like there are things I should be doing, like I should be trying, TRYING to exercise, like I should be trying to do something about my weight even though I know that trying to do something about my weight is not actually going to result in making healthier choices. There are barely any foods I can eat. No foods that are unambiguously healthy for me. The last thing I need to do right now is tell myself I can’t eat the few foods that don’t actively make me sick.

But today I tried to push through and I feel like I’m going to lose the entire week to it. 

I have no extra resources for social niceties. I’m completely social-scripting my responses to comments on my fic (please keep making comments, it matter so much, just understand if my responses are short.) I’m making huge social errors because I’m misreading things because the only way I social is by applying cognitive effort and I just don’t have it right now. 

I hear about people living and doing relatively normal things with RA. But my RA was not correctly diagnosed in a timely fashion. In retrospect, I think it started in 2014, but they didn’t have the right test in common usage so they shrugged and attributed my symptoms to “I don’t know some sort of inflammatory process probably related to EDS” and so by the time I was diagnosed, 29 joints were on fire and the antibody levels were so high they could not be accurately measured.

A lot of people with RA just have RA. 

I have RA, EDS, Hashimotos, Sjogren’s, fibro, sleep apnea, allergies, IBS, and Factor V Leiden. I’m probably autistic, definitely neuroatypical, with massive sensory issues and a brain that does amazing things in a lot of areas and is utterly inept at the things people expect to be easy. If I write people well it’s because I’ve been studying human beings like an anthropologist since I was three years old. (I gave my mother a sheet of paper on which I’d drawn a wide variety of facial expressions because I was trying to understand facial expressions.)

Someone asked me once, “Have you considered that your problems might be psychological?” I laughed in his face. The idea that I could, via mental illness, magically clot the blood in my veins or sabotage my own thyroid? I mean, I absolutely have anxiety and intermittent depression issues, but ffs, those things don’t make my salivary glands swell to the size of golf balls. I get tired because my body is attacking myself, and exercise makes that process worse because it fucks with my immune system which is pretty good at fucking its own self up.

Someone asked me once why I pursued so many diagnoses. The answer was, “Maybe if they figure out the right one, they can fix something.” It’s not because I *like* collecting diagnoses. I miss being able to eat normally. I miss being strong and physically fit. I used to swim 10 hours per week. I used to ride horses. I used to go camping and loved it. I used to be able to build things with my hands. 

I have to remind myself not to do those things.

I have to, because pretending I’m not sick makes me sicker.

Every shot I take seems to push me into a flare. Not a huge flare, just a few joints reminding me that this isn’t over. That this will never be over.

I got through the twice-a-day-Lovenox routine because I knew it was finite and i knew there would be a baby I wanted very much at the end of it.

I will be on methotrexate or something like it for the rest of my life. 

It feels like poison. The sneaky poison that you think isn’t poison until your lips go numb even though you didn’t drink it. And then I sleep and think, “Well, at least I can sleep.”

And then I wake up and my whole body hurts, and the exhaustion pulls at me so hard, and I’m supposed to eat something so that I can take the small dose of steroids I’m still on, and I don’t want to eat because my stomach is on a boat. 

Saturdays might as well not exist. Sundays aren’t much better. By Monday I can drag myself to physical therapy. By Tuesday I can drag myself to the grocery store. By Thursday I start to think, “I really should exercise” and on Friday I fight dread about the coming shot. 

This morning my husband said, “I blame Trump.”

And I said, “You might as well. Stress increases inflammation, and most of my stress in the last six months has started with That Man.”

It is no mystery to me that so many people died last year.

The mystery is how we keep going when it’s hard.

“How are you doing?” asks a cashier. They all ask this. Everyone, locally. It’s a reflex thing.

And my brain won’t let me give the flip lie of an answer. I can’t say I’m fine. I’m not fine.

“I’m doing,” I echo. (Right now this feels like a lie, too.)

Sometimes they say, “How are you today?”

And I just say, “I’m here.”

Sometimes what doesn’t kill us just doesn’t kill us (yet). 

I’m not stronger, I’m just not dead.

#Mine #rage against the chemo #I'm not fine #medical reality #rheumatoid arthritis #writing (or not) #needles #I cried at the best buy counter today

[vasitumthings]

Why Should Companies Hire People With Disabilities?

Just like others, the majority of persons with disabilities want a dignified and productive life. Employment not only provides them with a source of income but also opportunities for social participation. This is especially important for persons with disabilities. Spending on systems and facilities for persons with disabilities is not for the privilege of a small minority, but an investment for everyone. 

 But why should companies hire disabled persons?

Diverse work groups develop to come up with better solutions to business challenges. Many companies have found that by employing people with disabilities they have been better able to understand and serve their customers with disabilities. Adapting services to meet the diverse needs of people with disabilities allows the business to develop greater flexibility, build a reputation and reach out to a sizable market.

What’s more?

You get to promote diversity in its true sense.

You can build a positive brand image of your business.

You put in efforts to create an inclusive environment for your employees.

People with disability are more reliable and have better retention rate.

Because they are as capable as any other employee in your organization.

Persons with disabilities are frequently not considered potential members of the workforce. Perception, fear, myth and prejudice continue to limit understanding and acceptance of disability in workplaces everywhere. Myths abound, persons with disabilities are unable to work and that accommodating a person with a disability in the workplace is expensive. Contrary to these notions, many companies have found these people are more than capable.

As per a report by the U.S. Council of Commerce, "Leading Practices on Disability Inclusion", hiring individuals with disabilities is useful for the core functionality. The report has analysis from organizations such as 3M, PepsiCo, Merck and AT&T. The organizations revealed that proving accommodations brought about such benefits as retaining valuable employees, improving productivity and morale, reducing workers’ compensation and training expenses and improving organizational diversity.

What does the constitution say?

The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities Act, 2016 states under Article 35 Section 1 “The appropriate Government shall formulate schemes and programmes including provision of loans at concessional rates to facilitate and support the employment of persons with disabilities especially for their vocational training and self-employment.”

Right To Employment of Disables in India - Disability law

With advancements in medical sciences, breakthroughs in technology, greater understanding of the causes of disability and improved methods of coping with it, increasing consciousness of civil rights and the emergence of people with disabilities displaying skills and knowledge to improve their own lives, are some of the factors which have contributed to the new thinking that the disabled deserve a dignified status in society on the same terms as the non-disabled.

Right to work

“Only 1% of disabled people are able to find jobs.” This is despite the government has set up 28 employment exchanges to source employment opportunities for the differently-abled. Also, the 3% reservation of government employment opportunities is only for Class III and IV jobs. There are many factors related to disability which need to be investigated. For instance, the Government of Maharashtra appointed its full-time disability commissioner in 2016 even though the Law of Disability was passed in 1995.

The Disability Act, that promises equal opportunities to the disabled, provides for three per cent job reservation for disabled people. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 is the disability law passed by the Indian Parliament to fulfill its obligation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which India approved in 2007.

The current quota requirements for disabled workers must be met by employers and those successfully implementing these are to be provided with subsidies by the government and those neglecting it must be charged with the fair penalties. 

What’s happening in the rest of the world?

“In developing countries, 80% to 90% of persons with disabilities of working age are unemployed, whereas in industrialized countries the figure is between 50% and 70%. In most developed countries the official unemployment rate for persons with disabilities of working age is at least twice that for those who have no disability.”

-‘Disabled still face hurdles in the job market’, The Washington Times, 5 December 2005

 74% of persons with physical disabilities and 94% of persons with mental retardation are unemployed.

-‘International Disability Rights Monitor’, Regional Report of Asia, 2005

 The hiring trends for the differently-abled has seen a positive turn towards helping the community and give them fair treatment when considering them for jobs. US states have made it a crime to discriminate any candidates on the basis of disabilities. The following economic conditions were favourable to provide senior positions to the differently-abled.

 India

According to the 2001 census, 21.9 million people or 2.13% of the country’s population are persons with disabilities.

-‘The disabled trip up on Job Street’, The Economic Times, 19 August 2005

Information technology-enabled services find persons with disabilities loyal and hard-working and have no problem hiring them as long as their disability does not affect work.

-‘Calls for special skills’, Business Line: The Hindu, 4 February 2005

 Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop 

 Ms Pooja Aggarwal is a trilateral amputee after a near-death train accident cost her an upper limb and both lower limbs. However, wasn’t defeated by the disability. She is a champion of wheelchair shooting and secured the Silver medal in the World Shooting Para Sport World Cup 2017, 10m Air Pistol.

Besides being a pro-Para Shooter, Pooja also works full time at Allahabad Bank and was also conferred upon by the Government and earned a National Award for Best Employee of the year 2018 under the category of ‘Loco-motor Disabilities’.

[businesslenders1]

The 3 Really Obvious Ways To Help With Paying Apartment Rent For Free Better That You Ever Did

According to federal housing standards, any family members that puts more than 30% of their revenue towards rent are "price burdened." This means they might have difficulty paying for other requirements.

" That's difficult in a lot of rental markets for people," states Laura Scherler, senior director of financial wheelchair and business solutions at United Way. She added that there are people who spend upwards of 40 or 50% of their income on lease. "It leaves them at risk if their car breaks down, or their children get ill. Anything unforeseen will throw them off. It does not provide any shake area to handle those dilemmas."

That held true for Mandy. She as well as her partner had actually currently exhausted their cost savings for their action when they needed to obtain her automobile repaired. Mandy approximates that they were paying close to 50% of their common income toward rent.

" We didn't have any kind of cost savings to draw on," Mandy says, adding that saving even $20 per paycheck (as Scherler suggests) was extremely difficult for the pair at the time.

Financial difficulties prevail Only 39% of Americans can pay for a $1,000 economic emergency situation out of their savings, according to a current study from Bankrate.

The exact same Bankrate survey located that of those who can not pay for a $1,000 economic emergency out of savings, their remedy is to:

Money with a charge card (19%). Minimize their spending on other things (13%). Obtain loan from friend or family (12%). Secure an individual finance (5%). There are lots of reasons that a person might be in need of temporary help and would want to know exactly how to obtain help with rental fee. Volunteers of America (VOA) is a national not-for-profit organization that assists individuals locate affordable housing, especially experts, senior citizens, family members and also individuals with disabilities. VOA has actually identified these reasons for the increase in requirement:.

Salaries are not raising at a proportional rate to the regularly enhancing residential or commercial property worths and reduced job prices. Building values as well as rent continue to raise at a price that lessees can't stay on par with, causing battle with paying rental fee. Progressively long waiting checklists for subsidized housing. Waitlists of 2-3 years for low-income family members and also songs make paying rent in higher rentals more difficult. While the issue might be on the rise, there are methods to elevate cash for rental fee.

Exactly how to obtain assist with lease. 1. Review your lease. Discover your legal rights as a tenant. Look to see what happens if your repayment is late or if you miss a month, and also when eviction process would certainly start.

Usually, it takes 90 days prior to eviction process start, Scherler claims, so there is a long time to collaborate with.

" If you miss one rental fee payment, yet make your following month's settlement, you might not be forced out," Scherler claims.

2. Speak to your proprietor. They may be willing to function with you if you are a great occupant and have an excellent partnership with your property manager. Ask if they will accept a late repayment or if you can pay your rental fee in installations.

3. Connect to nonprofits. Nonprofit companies can load the requirement for aid when the government can not. Both Catholic Charities as well as The Redemption Army may be able to supply emergency situation funds to pay your lease and energy bills.

An additional choice is calling 2-1-1, a 24-hour helpline provided by United Manner in which attaches individuals seeking support to resources in their areas.

Of the 15 million e-mails and also telephone calls asking 2-1-1 for help in 2017, 4.4 million were for real estate and utility help. That call volume was the greatest percent of any type of classification, Scherler says.

" I believe, however, housing is a challenging one," Scherler says. "That is a large challenge in a lot of neighborhoods.".

One more nationwide nonprofit company that provides support is Modest Requirements, which provides grants for an one-time emergency expense.

Individuals have to apply for a grant with Modest Needs. A lot of requests get met within two weeks, Taylor claims, and numerous of the grant applications have to do with covering living costs that candidates can't afford due to a temporary financial emergency situation.

4. Check into various other sources of income. Ask your friends and family participants for a funding or see if you can obtain a payroll development from your employer. Some firms may additionally have a hardship fund for employees.

5. Take into consideration crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a terrific remedy. An excellent way to alert friends and family to your scenario is by starting a fundraising event on GoFundMe. They supply complimentary fundraising so you get to maintain even more of the funds you increase.

6. Rental aid for professionals. If you're a professional, the UNITED STATE Division of Veterans Matters offers aid for homeless veterans. Nonprofit organizations like Veterans Inc. might also have the ability to help those that need assist with rent with its housing program. The federal government has a program to give financing to establish and subsidize low income rental housing for grownups with specials needs if you're disabled.

7. Federal government help. Regrettably, the federal government provides just limited aid to pay emergency rent costs. The government department of Housing as well as Urban Development provides aid through its housing selection coupons program, but there are commonly lengthy waitlists, Scherler states.

The federal government does supply some emergency situation funding. It's normally administered through the state firms, but unless you're encountering expulsion, the assistance is hard to obtain.

" You virtually need to specify of crisis before you have the ability to get support," Scherler claims.

A lease dilemma can signal a much deeper need. By taking a look at the large photo when faced with a single, emergency expense, people can stay clear of years of monetary battle.

For Mandy, her rent struggle was an indication that she as well as her companion needed even more help to get by than they wished to admit. They had actually been considering requesting Supplemental Nourishment Aid Program (generally referred to as SNAP), yet their financial dilemma triggered them to look for aid immediately.

" We felt horrible," Mandy claims. "We wanted so badly to be self-sufficient, yet we just could not make it function.".

There are a number of totally free sources readily available if you remain in a circumstance like Mandy's, and also many continue to offer help after the dilemma has actually passed.

Volunteers of America has the complying with recommendations if you need help paying your rent:.

Take an active role in developing an activity strategy to end your crisis situation with lasting and temporary solutions. Stay clear of neglecting the problem up until the eleventh hour. Do not make or stress rash decisions, as there are area sources and also sustains in position to get you with this situation. Take into consideration taking free budgeting courses to identify just how to pay your lease, or if you need to discover a cheaper place to live. " If you have this creeping suspicion that next month you might not make the lease, you require to start looking right now," Taylor states. "It is necessary to be aggressive and truly venture out there.".

There's no pity in asking for aid. Regardless if you're requesting help with a not-for-profit organization, close friends or family, or crowdfunding, don't really feel embarrassed.

" Every person drops on tough times," Mandy states. "It takes place to even more of us than individuals understand.".

So if you're battling as well as require to raise money for rental fee, take a deep breath. Get in touch with your property owner, a not-for-profit company, your loved ones, or start a crowdfunding charity event. Most notably, bear in mind that you are not the only one. Sometimes all of us require a little help.

There are several factors that somebody might be in need of short-term aid and also would desire to recognize how to get aid with rental fee. Volunteers of America (VOA) is a nationwide not-for-profit organization that helps people find budget-friendly real estate, particularly experts, senior residents, family members and people with impairments. Nonprofit organizations can fill the demand for aid when the federal government can not. Nonprofit organizations like Veterans Inc. might additionally be able to aid those that need help with lease with its housing program. In some cases we all need a little help.

[swedna]

Former President George Bush’s legacy was on display just hours before his death. President Trump signed a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that was the next generation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Bush first negotiated nearly three decades ago.

As Mr. Trump scrawled his name on the document on Friday, however, he chose not to frame the accord as building on Mr. Bush’s accomplishment, but as tearing it down. Rather than the natural update of Nafta, he characterized it as the replacement for a disastrous agreement. “The terrible NAFTA will soon be gone,” he declared on Twitter.

If ever there was a moment when it was clear that Mr. Bush’s America has given way to Mr. Trump’s America, this is it. Mr. Bush’s death at age 94 is the end of an era, the passing of the last of the World War II and Cold War generation to serve as president and the fading of an approach to public life overtaken by the politics of anger, grievance and polarization.

Yet however much he wants to dismantle it, Mr. Trump is still operating within the framework that Mr. Bush helped establish. While he disparaged Nafta, Mr. Trump ultimately accepted Mr. Bush’s fundamental concept of knitting together the three great nations of North America in a single, integrated trade bloc. The alliances that Mr. Bush built and bolstered remain in place, however frayed. And a host of civil rights, environmental and other Bush-era laws still govern America.

“He was a very fine man. I met him on a number of occasions,” Mr. Trump, who was in Buenos Aires meeting with world leaders, told reporters shortly after calling former President George W. Bush and former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida to offer condolences. “He was a terrific guy, and he’ll be missed. He lived a full life and an exemplary life.”

His words of admiration belied a history of animosity with the Bush family. Mr. Trump eviscerated Jeb Bush during the 2016 Republican primaries and regularly disparaged George W. Bush. The elder Mr. Bush refused to support Mr. Trump in the fall election, voting instead for Hillary Clinton. The younger George Bush has said he voted for none of the above.

George Herbert Walker Bush led the country and the world through a hinge point in history as decades of superpower rivalry came to a close in a remarkably peaceful way and the United States emerged as the dominant force on the planet. With the reunification of Germany, he helped redraw the map of Europe, and he set in motion a drastic reduction in the world’s largest nuclear arsenals.

His foray into the Middle East successfully ousted Iraq from Kuwait but entangled the United States in the region in a way that would later prove disastrous when George W. Bush sent troops to Baghdad. And his broken “read my lips” promise not to raise taxes and his inability to hold off a recession spelled his political doom as voters rejected him for a second term in 1992.

Arguably, that moment proved a precursor to this one as conservatives angry at his apostasy, led by a onetime backbench congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich, rose to power within the Republican Party and toppled the old establishment. The harder-edged Gingrich revolution in some ways foreshadowed Mr. Trump’s extraordinary takeover of the party.

“Bush was truly the last of a kind of president,” said Jon Meacham, who spent much time with the former president while writing “Destiny and Power,” his definitive biography of the 41st president. “He had more in common culturally with F.D.R. and Eisenhower than he did with Clinton and Obama.”

Mr. Meacham said the current world of cable talk and relentless partisanship took shape during Mr. Bush’s era. “He saw it all coming, and he didn’t like it,” he said.

Mark K. Updegrove, the author of “The Last Republicans,” about the two Bush presidencies, said, “In so many ways, Bush was the antithesis of the Republican leadership we see today.” He embodied, Mr. Updegrove added, “the humility, civility and self-sacrifice of the best of the World War II generation. He played tough but fair, making friends on both sides of the aisle and rejecting the notion of politics as a zero-sum game.”

For all of the condolences and tributes pouring in to the Bush home in Houston from every corner of the world on Saturday, Mr. Trump’s very presidency stands as a rebuke to Mr. Bush. Never a proponent of “kinder and gentler” politics, Mr. Trump prefers a brawl, even with his own party. The “new world order” of free-trade, alliance-building internationalism that Mr. Bush championed has been replaced by Mr. Trump’s “America First” defiance of globalism.

In effect, Mr. Trump has demonstrated that he sees the go-along-to-get-along style that defined Mr. Bush’s presidency as inadequate to advance the nation in a hostile world. Gentility and dignity, hallmarks of Mr. Bush, are signs of weakness to Mr. Trump. In his view, Mr. Bush’s version of leadership left the United States exploited by allies and adversaries, whether on economics or security.

Mr. Trump reflected on none of that out loud in the early hours after Mr. Bush’s death, authorizing the release of gracious written statements and canceling a news conference to end his trip to Buenos Aires as a gesture of respect.

“President George H.W. Bush led a long, successful and beautiful life,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning. “Whenever I was with him I saw his absolute joy for life and true pride in his family. His accomplishments were great from beginning to end. He was a truly wonderful man and will be missed by all!”

While many wondered whether he would attend the funeral, given his history of animosity with the Bush family, the White House confirmed that he will. Mr. Trump designated Wednesday as a national day of mourning and planned to participate in services at the Washington National Cathedral.

Senator John McCain, another stalwart of a past Republican generation, made a point of excluding Mr. Trump from his funeral in September, but the elder Mr. Bush was known for New England propriety and evidently did not want to break with tradition.

Indeed, Mr. Bush was, in effect, president of the presidents’ club, the father of one other commander in chief and the father figure to another, Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter always appreciated that Mr. Bush’s administration treated him better than Ronald Reagan’s or Mr. Clinton’s, while Barack Obama expressed admiration for the elder Mr. Bush when he ran for the White House.

In fact, when Mr. Obama visited Houston in 2014 as president, he got off Air Force One to find Mr. Bush waiting for him on the tarmac in a wheelchair. “When the president comes to your hometown,” Mr. Bush explained, “you show up and welcome him.”

As it happened, Mr. Obama was among the last people to see Mr. Bush alive. During a visit to Houston on Tuesday for an appearance at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Mr. Obama made a point of stopping by to visit “my buddy 41.” At the institute dinner that night, Mr. Obama said that Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker, his secretary of state, “deserve enormous credit for managing the end of the Cold War.”

Mr. Trump was never as harsh publicly about the patriarch of the Bush family as he was about its other members, but more than once in recent months, he mocked a famous phrase from the former president’s 1989 inaugural address, “a thousand points of light,” which Mr. Bush used to describe Americans coming together as volunteers to improve their communities and their country.

“What the hell was that, by the way, thousand points of light?” Mr. Trump asked scornfully at a campaign rally in Great Falls, Mont., in July. “What did that mean? Does anyone know? I know one thing: Make America great again, we understand. Putting America first, we understand. Thousand points of light, I never quite got that one.”

Two months later, he returned to that theme. “It’s so easy to be presidential,” Mr. Trump said at a campaign rally in Wheeling, W.Va. “But instead of having 10,000 people outside trying to get into this packed arena, we’d have about 200 people standing right there. O.K.? It’s so easy to be presidential. All I have to do is ‘Thank you very much for being here, ladies and gentlemen. It’s great to see you off — you’re great Americans. Thousand points of light.’ Which nobody has really figured out.”

“And in the meantime,” he added, “everything’s going to be dying, and your coal and everything else. No, no. We got to keep it going the way it’s going. Do we agree? Do we agree?”

For his part, Mr. Bush was never impressed by Mr. Trump. The two had only passing encounters over the years. In 1988, when Mr. Bush was seeking the presidency, Mr. Trump offered himself as a running mate. Mr. Bush never took the idea seriously, deeming it “strange and unbelievable,” according to “Destiny and Power,” Mr. Meacham’s biography.

“I don’t like him,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Updegrove in May 2016. “I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s a blowhard. And I’m not too excited about him being a leader.” Rather than being motivated by public service, Mr. Bush said, Mr. Trump seemed to be driven by “a certain ego.”

But the younger Mr. Bush recognized that Mr. Trump was at the forefront of change. “I’m worried that I will be the last Republican president,” he told Mr. Updegrove.

The current president sought to put that history aside on Saturday, even citing Mr. Bush’s “thousand points of light” in the written statement that he authorized aides to release in the immediate hours after the former president’s death.

“President Bush inspired generations of his fellow Americans to public service — to be, in his words, ‘a thousand points of light’ illuminating the greatness, hope, and opportunity of America to the world,” the statement said.

#George Bush

[endenogatai]

The Zennström manifesto

At almost 86 degrees Fahrenheit, London is enduring a mini heat wave by traditional British summer standards. News reports at the weekend had relayed findings from the Met Office’s latest “State of the U.K. Climate report” confirming that the country is officially warming. Perhaps the first two industrial revolutions have finally taken their toll on the planet, just as the World Economic Forum argues that we are ushering in a fourth industrial revolution based on emerging technology such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, biotechnology and quantum computing.

Knowing full well that the office building housing European venture capital firm Atomico happily pumps out air conditioning on a day like today, I’ve arrived 30 minutes early for an interview scheduled with founding partner Niklas Zennström. Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, Zennström co-founded Skype, the internet telephony company, which he famously managed to sell twice — first to eBay in 2005 for $2.6 billion, then to Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion. A known environmentalist, with his wife Catherine, he is also the founder of Zennström Philanthropies, a nonprofit that supports organisations combatting climate change and promoting human rights and social entrepreneurship.

Located in Mayfair, one of London’s most expensive districts, Atomico sits within walking distance of the London offices of Accel Partners and Index Ventures. If Balderton Capital, the other of the “big four” early-stage VCs in the U.K., hadn’t moved to the trendier Kings Cross area in North London, Mayfair would be the closest thing the country has to Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road, renowned for its high concentration of venture capital.

I’m greeted by Atomico’s hard-working and always jovial head of communications, who seems slightly on edge, which I take as a compliment and has the converse effect of helping me relax. After taking the lift to the third floor, we find sanctuary in an empty and cool meeting room, and I remark that it feels like I’ve been reporting on Atomico for nearly as long as I’ve been a journalist. A quick count that morning revealed that I’ve covered just less than half of the companies in the current portfolio, as well as interviewed numerous members of the now 30-plus investment team. Yet I’d never met or spoken to Zennström.

The Atomico founder doesn’t give as many interviews as he used to, preferring to share media duties with the wider team, even though there remains a feeling within the organisation that the VC firm is sometimes misunderstood. Despite being in its 12th year and on fund four, Atomico is still considered to be the upstart compared to Accel, Index and Balderton, and amongst entrepreneurs and the press there are often a number of other misconceptions:

Atomico is a late-stage investor. Wrong. The majority of investments from fund four are at Series A, although the firm does invest at Series B, too, and typically follows on.

Atomico is mostly Zennström’s own money. Wrong. LPs in the fund do include Atomico partners, but mostly span the usual gamut of family offices and institutional investors such as pension funds, funds of funds and the EU taxpayer backed European Investment Fund.

Atomico only invests in consumer technology. Wrong. The firm is largely sector agnostic and places bets across B2C, B2B, software, hardware, deep tech and more.

What is perhaps better — and accurately — understood is that Atomico is one of the few European VCs to have developed a penchant for making “moonshot” investments: putting money into a number of genuinely groundbreaking companies and exploratory technology that isn’t expected to generate revenue for many years to come and will either change the world or fail spectacularly.

The best-known is probably Lilium, the Munich-based startup developing an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet. It plans to use the aircraft to power a “flying taxi” service that wouldn’t be out-of-place in a Sci-Fi movie. Another is Memphis Meats, the San Francisco-based company growing meat in a lab by harvesting it from cells instead of animals. Then there is Graphcore, the Bristol, U.K.-based startup that is designing chips specifically for artificial intelligence, and which has its sights set on Nvidia. Lilium and Graphcore have raised more than $100 million each, while all three are yet to launch a product.

A few weeks prior to the interview I called various mutual contacts Zennström and I have to get a sense of what he is like as a person. Ambitious was a word that came back repeatedly. One entrepreneur who has taken investment from Zennström tried to convince me that there is no venture capitalist equal to him in Europe based on sheer ambition levels, which they said he always tries to instill in the startups he backs. I was also told that he is renowned for being an extremely tough negotiator (A partner at Atomico is rumoured to have asked one of the firm’s portfolio companies to have a pair of brass balls made as a present for Zennström in homage to a deal he recently got over the line.) Paradoxically, others said he can sometimes come across as shy or a little awkward, especially when talking publicly.

Atomico’s Niklas Zennström at TechCrunch Disrupt London 2016

I’m told Zennström isn’t short of entertaining stories, both from his time building Skype and before that through his association with the peer-to-peer file sharing application Kazaa, whose technology was licensed by Joltid, another company he co-founded. The success of Skype, which for millions of people made international calling effectively free, saw him become a major adversary to the incumbent telecommunications industry. In the early 2000s, following in the footsteps of Napster’s Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, Zennström might well have been considered the entertainment industry’s enemy No. 1 due to the way Kazaa was used for music and film piracy, which led to multiple lawsuits.

As fun as I’m sure those anecdotes are, tales from a bygone era would have to wait for another day. With the interview restricted to just an hour and no red lines agreed upon, I had other things on my mind. Tech, it seems to anyone who tracks the industry for a vocation, is having a “moment,” and not always for the right reasons.

From the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal and social media’s reluctance to stem the flow of hate speech and misinformation, to bad behaviour, including sexual harassment and assault, bullying and racism, if ever the tech industry was in need of finding its moral compass, not only to remedy the problems of the past, but more so as we head into the future, it is now.

With $1.5 billion of capital under management, and its fourth fund totaling $765 million, perhaps more than most European VC firms, Atomico is well-positioned to help shape what that future looks like and play a significant role in determining how the technology industry evolves over the next 10 years and beyond.

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ennström enters the room in an upbeat and relaxed mood, and we exchange a few pleasantries — no social awkwardness detected. He thanks me for making the effort to visit Atomico (I have a reputation for conducting the majority of interviews remotely, partially because of the extra time and energy traveling consumes as a wheelchair user). Not wanting to waste any time, I switch on my iPhone’s recording app and fire my opening shot: “Why did Atomico need to exist when you first founded this VC firm, and probably more to the point, why does it still need to exist today?”

People told me there is no ambition level in Europe. Niklas Zennström

Zennström laughs, having seen the second half of the question coming a mile off, and then launches into a precursor to the Atomico pitch. He says that when he was building Skype (and before that Kazaa and Joltid), he always had people tell him that you can’t build tech companies in Europe, and that if you want to build a tech company, you need to be in Silicon Valley.

“People told me there is no ambition level in Europe, there’s no development, no talent, nothing,” says Zennström. “Certainly what was true, what I learned firsthand, [was that out of] the VC firms back then in Europe, most of them were very risk-averse. They’d rather bet on a copy of something they’d seen in the U.S., deployed in a small market. And there was also much more of a mentality back then about making a quick buck and exiting early instead of building companies for the long-term.”

He says that when he pitched Skype to European VCs many said they didn’t dare invest as they hadn’t seen anything like it before and they didn’t understand why he and co-founder Janus Friis would want to take on the whole telecoms industry. Instead they asked if he could create telecoms enterprise software, which, the VCs argued, would feel a lot safer. In contrast, many VCs in Silicon Valley thought Skype was amazing and liked the sheer level of ambition, leading them to ask when the London, U.K. and Tallinn, Estonia-based company was planning to relocate. Zennström’s reply: “Well, actually, we’re not moving here.”

“The Skype exit, I think, was a big milestone for Europe. We showed and proved you could build a [European] company that had a big value,” he says. “The thesis that we developed was that if we could do it then a lot of others can do it because we’re not that special; there’s a lot of people who are a lot smarter than we are. So we had the thesis that Europe will produce a lot of great companies in the future and that the existing VCs were risk averse.

“As an entrepreneur — and of course being rejected so many times — it was clear to me [that] my next industry to disrupt needs to be European venture capital.”

This led to the realisation that the reason why many European VCs were so risk-averse and “asked weird questions” was because they had never run companies.

“You need to build a VC firm with people who have also built businesses, because you can build a better rapport with founders if you have done it yourself,” says Zennström. “And of course if you’ve been a successful founder, you probably have a competitive advantage to get access to founders because they’d rather take money and advice from someone who has done it themselves.”

Even at larger venture capital funds, he says that founders tended to only deal with one partner and perhaps one associate, who may or may not be that great. To mitigate this risk, he decided he needed to build a team at Atomico that could help with core aspects of scaling, such as entering new markets, recruitment, marketing and strategy, long before it was fashionable to do so in Europe. The result is Atomico’s “Growth Acceleration Team,” staffed by former operators at major tech companies, from Skype and Google to Uber, Spotify and Facebook.

Adds Zennström: “The mission was to prove and to help to build the tech ecosystem in Europe. And that was important because, at the end of the day, this is innovation, and if you don’t have innovation in the future technologies, you’re gonna be a stagnant region. As a European citizen and someone who wants to live in Europe, I thought it was important.”

The Atomico team

To part two of my question — why Atomico needs to exist today — Zennström says that although we are seeing an inflection point of accelerated growth in Europe, as evidenced by Spotify and Adyen going public, we are still behind the U.S., and it isn’t mission accomplished just yet. More profoundly, he says there is now a second aspect to Atomico’s mission: backing founders who are building technology “that can actually have a positive impact on society.”

“What we’ve seen over the last few years is more and more founders who are building companies to address world problems, whether that is sustainability problems, trying to fix education, trying to fix healthcare, using AI to massively improve the detection of diseases, or treating mental illness, fixing transportation, fixing the food chain that is broken. If we can support those entrepreneurs who are going after these big opportunities, bigger problems, and if some of those companies can be successful, that can be a positive impact on some pretty urgent challenges we have in this world.”

We might be destroying our planet because of tech. Niklas Zennström

Zennström says that some of those urgent problems have their genesis in our parents’ generation, who didn’t understand that certain things would become a problem because it was assumed that the world had infinite resources. “But we know very well now that was not the case,” he says.

It’s a theme that the Atomico founder returns to throughout the interview: the idea that the non-digital technology of the last century has had a lot of positive benefits, such as cars, airplanes and combustion engines, which have been instrumental in driving economic growth and productivity, “but has had a tremendous impact on our society in terms of the environment.”

“We might be destroying our planet because of tech,” he says, before reiterating his belief that digital technology and innovation can fix some of these problems. The examples he cites are electric transportation and technology that can help us become less reliant on animal farming — an indirect reference to two of the VC firm’s moonshots.

“If we are leaders and we are people with the ability to have an impact, then it’s not only an obligation, it’s obviously the right thing to do… But we also think that those companies are also the ones that can become some of the biggest companies in the next 10, 15, 20 years, because these problems are really, really big.”

At this point I’m reminded of something Zennström said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt London in 2016: that politicians are no longer the changemakers. But what exactly did he mean?

“Well..,” he says, breaking out in laughter and rowing back temporarily in reference to Brexit. “Some politicians made change in this country, unfortunately, although it was a referendum and ultimately it was the people who voted, but I think some politicians mainly messed up.

“But what I’m saying with this is, as we’re living in a world which is very dynamic, and whether we have a better world or a worse world than before can be debated, there’s a big paradigm shift that is happening in many ways…

“Not all of them but most politicians are tactical and they seem to be more focused on optimising for the sake of winning the election rather than doing the right long-term thing for the constituency, that’s why they’re not really leaders. A real leader is also someone who goes out and says, ‘these are things we need to do, because we need to pave the way to a better future.’

“In that way, they’re not as great leaders as some of the politicians we had from time to time in history.”

Zennström believes that this is where entrepreneurs can and are taking up some of the slack through tech’s ability to drive change, coupled with a millennial mindset that is seeing consumers “actually thinking about purpose and mission and trying to do the right things.”

I push back a little and suggest there is also a climate where too many startups overstate their missions when at the end of the day they’re building for-profit businesses that will eventually come under pressure to prioritise returning value to shareholders. Recent history is full of examples of tech companies that have seemingly lost their way in pursuit of growth and I wonder if this is something the Atomico founder spends much time thinking about.

“Yeah, big time… We think about this a lot,” he says, and then goes on to offer what can only be interpreted as a diagnosis of Facebook’s recent woes, even though neither of us has mentioned the social network by name.

Compared to when Zennström was building Skype — a time when there weren’t as many feedback loops available — online companies are now incredibly data-driven, he says. And although this “has been amazing,” there are also downsides.

“If you’re a company based on advertisements, all your engineers, your rank engineers who are working on the ranking and how content should be displayed, they are trying to optimise for engagement, right? It’s like, what is our North Star, we try to get people to engage, to click more and come back more. Then they have basically black box algorithms, lots of data points, and out of that comes the content and advertising that is displayed so that people come back. And that becomes the model.

“And then it’s like, ‘well, we are just trying to optimise our business, we’re not doing anything wrong.’ That’s kind of how most engineers in some of these bigger companies are thinking. They may not necessarily think at all that they’re losing their way: ‘We’re doing really well because our algorithms are awesome.’ But then when they take a step back and look at the consequences, it’s like, ‘wow, that didn’t go so well, did it?’ ”

As companies become big, they also become “big machines,” especially if they’ve gone public and where the expectation from the stock market is to continually drive growth. “If you don’t drive growth, guess what, your share price is plummeting and people lose money relative to what they had the day before. So they all want to fuel that growth, without having really thought about some of these consequences.”

Zennström on stage with former U.S president Barack Obama at Nordic Business Forum

This is where Zennström, aged 52, sees a role for industry veterans like himself, and Atomico more broadly. He says the VC firm encourages young founders to grapple with these kinds of issues early, as well as helping them build in company mechanisms “to make sure we have the right backbone so we don’t lose our way.”

“Those are conversations we are having with founders,” he says. “What is the culture you are building, how do you think about the ethics of your business, so that when you become successful, you’re gonna be a company you can be proud of.”

When entrepreneurs and VCs in Silicon Valley talk about “changing the world” through technology, there is always implicit assumption that it is for the better. Does the Atomico founder view tech as agnostic or is tech inherently good?

“I think most people who are in tech believe that ultimately tech is positive,” replies Zennström, although he says that it is not a new debate.

“Let’s take tech from the beginning, the industrial revolution and the first pieces of technology. It’s a philosophical question: before we had the plough, the hammer, were we happier? If you read Socrates, maybe we were happier when we were hunter-gatherers, I dunno,” he says, laughing. “Now we live in a society because of technology.”

Zennström recalls how users of Kazaa sometimes shared “really bad content,” which he says was horrible to see but that tech and the internet is simply a reflection of humanity and turbocharges connections.

“Of course it’s a positive thing that people can connect with each other. Connectivity is better than isolation, I think, as a starting point. But when people connect, it can also be misused.

“We cannot just say, ‘it’s not our responsibility’ and everyone else who is involved in tech. We need to have conversations about this and say, ‘what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.’ And those conversations did not happen…”

But are they happening enough now?

“Not enough, but they’re happening… We certainly have a lot of those discussions, both internally but also with other people we know in the tech industry. I’m sure also within the big tech companies they’re happening but it’s harder for them to move because they’re so big. But I think they’re not happening enough, we need to have more of those conversations.”

A diverse decision group makes better decisions. Niklas Zennström

Zennström says that the challenge for anyone running a large tech company is that lawyers will often dictate what can and cannot be said, which stifles debate and prevents an open discussion. CEOs are advised to toe the party line “and then that party line becomes truth.”

“It’s easier if you’re not running a big tech company to have discussions about what is right or wrong,” he says.

If big tech is prone to adopting a PR “line” as internal truth, I wonder what role Zennström sees the tech press having in reinstating much-needed checks and balances, and if he were to score the press, how good or bad are we doing?

Careful not to take the bait, he says the press has a “very important” role to play in highlighting issues facing the technology industry and tech’s broader impact on society, even if he believes the discourse could benefit from going deeper.

At the same time, we both agree that in some sections of the press, the discussion has gone from an overly simple narrative of “technology is amazing” to “technology is awful,” and Zennström says in some ways we are already in the midst of a public “techlash” that is only going to get more intense.

“I think there is risk for that to become much bigger, because of the strong impact and growth of tech and the development of algorithms and AI and [the] adaptation of that,” he says.

“In many cases when you’re applying AI and machine learning to something, you have biases and then you get a biased outcome. And of course it’s a very interesting thing for the press to write about… so I’m sure you’ll have more and more of these stories. Then you add the risk of more people losing jobs because of tech. Of course there will be a bigger backlash. That’s why it’s so important to have even more discussions.”

Asked what stage AI is in its overall development — since a lot of the technology is overhyped and under-delivers — Zennström says we are still at the beginning, but that AI/machine learning is being used every day to influence what news and what content we are exposed to. “It’s deployed at a massive scale already. And it has impact. It’s not in the future, it’s here,” he says.

“The amount of engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians spending time on machine learning and AI today is just massive compared to about five years ago. There’s so much focus on innovation in AI… it’s probably going faster than many people expected.”

As a journalist who has steadfastly stuck to covering European tech (even when it was detrimental to my career), when I look at AI companies in the U.K. and the number that have already exited, I can’t help feel like they are selling out incredibly early. Zennström doesn’t entirely disagree.

“I think that maybe some have,” he says, although there are several other AI companies in the U.K. and Europe that are looking promising and that have certainly not sold out. “Just like when people told me [that] maybe we sold Skype too early… you also have to think a little bit in the context of the times. If you are early in the cycle and you don’t really see a future in how you can get funding, then maybe it is okay to sell.”

At the same time, he thinks that with more and more funding coming into AI companies, investors in the U.K. are realising that the country is building “really good AI companies” and are encouraging startups to stay independent for longer.

With our allotted time together coming to an end, I hastily turn the topic to diversity, one of tech’s liveliest and at times divisive topics. I wanted to know what diversity actually means to Zennström, and — playing a little devil’s advocate — if it is something early-stage startups should even care about.

He says the way Atomico thinks about diversity — and something that is actually stated in the VC firm’s internal principles of how the organisation should operate — is that “a diverse decision group makes better decisions,” which he says is also borne out by the available research.

“If there’s a bunch of people who are coming from an exactly identical background then each person is not going to add as much,” he says. “For us, because that’s the core thing we do, we make investment decisions, we think it’s important for us as investors. So diversity in that broader sense is people with different backgrounds.

“And of course everyone talks about gender diversity, that’s one dimension. There’s so many other diversities, there’s faith, there’s cultures, there’s age, there’s disabilities, there’s sexual orientation, there’s if you’re introvert, extrovert, if you’re a business person, if you’re an engineer, if you’re someone coming from an unprivileged geography. It’s like, there’s so many different dimensions on this.

“So we think it’s important… we think that we as an investment firm need to be much better, to be diverse, but we need to think about it in the broadest context and we’re striving to do that.”

Atomico almost certainly does better than most VC firms in Europe or elsewhere in terms of gender diversity: Counting the entire 51-person team, 53 percent are male and 47 percent are female — although it is less clear how well it does by other measures.

For startups, especially consumer companies, Zennström argues that they also should have a diverse team because that will likely better reflect their consumer base. “That’s just being a better business,” he says.

“When we are investing in a company, we are talking to them about this. These are conversations we are having, it’s like, ‘how do you think about diversity?’ If they say ‘I couldn’t care less, I just want to build a good business,’ we say ‘if you want to build a great business, you probably want to think about diversity and be active about it.’”

I think that when you have an issue, you first need insight that you have a problem. Niklas Zennström

It is noticeable that the case Zennström makes for a more diverse workforce, either in venture capital or at technology companies in general, is largely a business one, which prompts me to air a view I’ve held for a while as I’ve watched diversity move further up the tech industry agenda: In Europe we have blindly imported Silicon Valley’s version of diversity and as a result there doesn’t seems to be nearly enough emphasis on how diversity relates to European and British progressive notions of social mobility and building a more equal society.

“I feel like if tech treats diversity as the way you described it, it misses a trick,” I tell Zennström. Tech is a great enabler and therefore should also be a vehicle for social mobility. If we are creating this brave new world, with lots of money being generated or value being captured based on new technologies, and not employing a workforce of all the talents, by which I really mean class as much as gender or ethnicity, then something is going badly wrong.

Zennström says that of course tech has a role to play in promoting social mobility, although at first I’m not sure he entirely gets it, even if he undoubtedly thinks about these kinds of issues more than most VCs.

He says there are already initiatives trying to tackle this problem, such as Zinc.vc, the London-based company builder that wants to solve “huge societal issues,” and which counts Atomico as a backer. Zinc’s latest cohort is being asked to focus on people living in places that have been hit hardest by automation and globalisation over the last 20 or 30 years as traditional industries have declined.

“What’s interesting about these things is that what drives an entrepreneur is some kind of hunger: if you’re very privileged you might not be that hungry,” says Zennström. “But if you’re underprivileged you’re probably going to be hungrier to create change. So I think there’s also an opportunity to find entrepreneurs among groups of people who might be less privileged in society.”

“And in a word, so far,” I ask, “the U.K., Europe, Silicon Valley, are terrible at doing that, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I think that when you have an issue, you first need insight that you have a problem… It’s very early but I think what is good is that there’s an awareness and there’s a lot of initiatives and discussions about these things, which did not happen 18 months ago.”

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