#Stitcher has rules when it comes to killing

[stitchedragdoll]

Did you ever go after a version of one of your siblings?

"My siblings... I lost them the day I lost my world... I've met plenty of versions of them since then. I don't really like having to kill some during missions, so Crou is generally the one to do it, while I take care of the ones he doesn't want to kill. We're a great team !"

"So, no, I don't 'go after" any of my siblings. But I have some of them in my collection... Versions that are my new family. I won't lose them again"

Tw: Puppet Gore

#welcome home au #welcome home multiverse #stitcher julie #wh au #wh multiverse #welcome home #wttmv #julie joyful #chit chats #Stitcher has rules when it comes to killing #there are characters she won't touch #or character she will try to befriend first #she also has rules when it comes to her collection #she never killed the puppet in her collection herself #so those siblings variants weren't killed by Stitcher #but what happened then ? #story for an other time

[brazenautomaton]

oh, don’t you worry though

the writing in Shadowlands is bad

I am through Bastion and Maldraxxus, 2 of the 4 leveling zones, and I don’t know if I would say “God-Awful” because our point of comparison is Heart of the Swarm, and indeed some of the concepts there are really cool, and there’s great opportunities to meet old characters in new contexts (not only is Thrall’s mom an assassin built like a brick shithouse, she and Lady Vashj are best buds because they got sorted into the same Afterlife Hogwarts House and bonded over their mutual love of garroting motherfuckers)

but it’s got the problem of “the special rules of this fantasy setting are very important to how things proceed and our ability to understand what is happening, are explained nowhere at all, and different parts by different writers clearly assume the rules to be different.” Where do the souls of regular-ass people go, who aren’t super notable enough to be sent to one of these five realms, the kind of people the Kyrian are shepherding? Who does Maldraxxus stand guard against, how often do they get attacked? Do they spend the rest of their time fighting and killing each other? What does it mean for a being to die in the Shadowlands?

and every cool bit constantly undermined by every cool concept being underexplored or straight up sandbagged, so the story can instead focus its time on doing nothing.

you spend almost all of your time in Bastion attended by two Kyrian characters, and you learn about this weird system where they all have to go through ascetic purification to cleanse all memory of their past lives, and that’s fucked up! and there’s a rebellion against this system, secretly backed by the Jailer, Lord Of Double Hell, but led by fucking Uther the Lightbringer, that’s so fucking baller! And then instead of engaging with that in any way or having a chance to say “dude this is fucked up right here” you walk from generic objective to generic objective with these two characters who are fucking aggressively generic and uninteresting.

Maldraxxus is cooler, it has character, it’s weird and not always fitting that the afterlife of eternal battle has a Scourge undead aesthetic -- where does the plague stuff fit in to that? abominations? why do people’s souls, the manifestation of their essence beyond the mere accidents of their flesh, look like fucking skeletons? Sure would be cool if you told us that! But there’s one thing that instantly establishes their Construct House as being different from your Scourge abomination stitchers by having their stitched-up patchwork flesh beasts be not only intelligent, but very very concerned that people will remember them. That’s cool. And Drakha and Vashj are cool, they aren’t “deep”, but they are cool and they are not insanely generic and when you are around them you do cool things together instead of just watching them bitch and moan. But you don’t spend nearlty, nearly enough time with them. There’s less of a “choosing to do nothing instead of doing something” problem because at least the stuff you do in Maldraxxus is cool, but it’s not focused, doesn’t spend enough time on its strong points, and is greatly injured by the “how the fuck does any of this work” problem.

after you finish Maldraxxus and before you go on to Nightweald por whatever it is, you jaunt back to the Maw, which is Double Hell that only you can escape from, abnd to its credit has a wonderful atmosphere (all of the environments in this xpac are incredible) and a wonderfully atmospheric mechanic wherein the more of the Maw’s creatures and minions you kill, the more attention the Jailer is paying to you, and that’s a really bad thing because everything just gets progressively more dangerous to you. But we have a vision through Bolvar, the old new Lich King, where we hear Jaina and Thrall being tortured (remember them? yeah) and then see Sylvanas cackling evilly with the Jailer about how their plans are unfolding as planned.

After the intro sequence where you escape the Maw for the first time, the one you do before Bastion, Sylvanas -- the Big Bad of the expansion -- has had fuck-all to do with the plot. Everything going on in these two zones so far is a perfectly cromulent ideological conflict on its own, and aside from a couple of people saying “oh this thing we’re going to do anyway is gonna be super good because the Jailer’s gonna give us cool shit for Reasons” it has no impact on anything. We haven’t learned more because there’s nothing to learn and no hints to uncover. At this point in the WOTLK levelling story, Arthas Menethil had shown up to menace you personally a few times and possiblty drag his ballsack over your face, constantly reminding you of who you were fighting and how he was entwined in everything! This isn’t how you write a cool story! If you want the bad guys to be mysterious, we need to care about solving their mystery! To care about solving their mystery, there needs to be SOMETHING there instead of NOTHING!

Why do they always choose to do nothing instead of choosing to do something?

I hear that “oh, the storylines don’t really pick up until you hit level 60 and complete the main quest and pick a Covenant,” and that’s even WORSE, because this whole thing that was supposed to get me invested has been a waste of my time! I don’t know about the other Covenants, but when it comes time for me to pick I’m not going to be saying “Oh, I need to find out what is happening in Maldraxxus!” or “Ooh, I want to spend more time with the Kyrians!”

#world of warcraft #shadowlands #fixing stories

[faireekira]

Highlights from Song of The Dark Crystal (Book #2)

Rian has a little sister named Mythra, who is amazed by Naia

Forgot to say this in the previous post: it’s assumed that Stonewood will believe and protect Rian since he is a member of their clan

Rian is described as tall for a gelfling, with olive skin and a single blue streak above his right eye

Kylan is very good at figuring out other gelfling’s emotions

Drinking essence immediately causes the Skeksis to look younger

Rian also has a brother named Timtri

when Rian talks about his plans for resistance, he says that he does it for his siblings and mother, but doesn’t mention his father.  it’s been established at this point that he has a father who’s a castle guard

Like in the series, Rian’s father was sent by the Skeksis to go find him

Rian is very insistent at first that he doesn’t need anyone’s help

Mythra and Rian have a very normal sibling relationship (they get annoyed at each other easily)

Kylan isn’t able to remember the images other Gelfling give him through dreamfast, but Naia is

this is called “dreamfasted memory” and apparently it’s a gift

i guess it’s like having a photographic memory?

it’s still establised that gelfling cannot dreamfast a dreamfast (give gelfling’s memories to a different gelfling)

Kylan believes that he has failed to be a good Spriton, and the only thing he has that’s valuable is his dream-etching abilities

it was also established in the previous book that Kylan is half Spriton and half Stonewood and lived somewhere in the middle of both areas, but he went to live with the Spriton after his parents died

He wanted to live in Stonewood for awhile thinking that it would solve his problem, but later decides against it

there’s different bags normally used for men and women, with men’s bags covering their whole backs and women’s bags accommodating for their wings

there’s a story within the world about six sisters that started six of the clans, but there are seven clans total

the Sifa may be the ones who are left out of this

Rian’s mom Shoni is said to have long dark hair

her wings are red and brown with two black eyespots with flecks of gold, tan, and orange

Mythra seems to be a tween, but Timtri is a baby

Rian is super bitter and angry because of everything that’s happened to him

Shoni has never left the woodland area where she lives

Shoni’s trying really hard to keep the family together despite everything that’s happening

riding Landstriders for fun is a common Spriton thing

the Drenchen are into pole-vaulting

there’s a slingshot-like weapon called a bola, and the way they’re crafted varies by region

Maudra Fara has burgundy and gold wings, and her outfit is indigo and green with beads in her hair

(all of the gelfling women in this series have such cool and distinct wings)

Maudra Mera goes by “Dream Stitcher Mera” when talking to the other maudras

all of the maudras refer to each other as sisters

Maudra Fara really isn’t loyal to the Skeksis, she’s more concerned about protecting her clan

Fara is seen as cold and unemotional

Aughra is still a mythical figure, and she doesn’t live far from Stone-in-the-Wood

Aughra is also called “the mother of three” (referring to the suns i think) and “Maudra Thra” (so literally mother earth)

the Skeksis do a census for every clan except the Drenchen (and maybe the Grottans?) twice a trine, and it’s suspected that they do this to keep track of how many gelfling they’re draining

There are carnivorous plants that will eat both animals and gelfling; some entice their prey by bearing very sweet and ripe-smelling fruits

Gelfling clasp wrists instead of shaking hands

Tavra survives an attempted draining

Naia, Gurjin, and Kylan are still meant to spread the word to all gelfling while Rian does his thing

Drenchen are specifically known for their healing powers, but they can only heal surface wounds

the All-Maudra’s children literally get whatever they want, at least in Ha’rar

Tavra has lavender eyes, and she’s described as looking “ethereal and ghostly”

Stonewoods are good with giving directions

spiders are just spiders, they’re not called the arathim or spitters or anything like that

they can come in a variety of shapes and colors, and their bodies look like jewels

Before Aughra’s home was destroyed by the garthim, she lived on the absolute highest hill in all of Thra

Aughra is not asleep in this novel

her third eye also isn’t open

she says that gelfling only call her Mother Aughra when they need help lol

Aughra calls Kylan a grassling, but it’s not capitalized in the way that Silverling is, idk what to make of that actually

she’s also the only one to call a Spriton a grassling

It’s implied that it’s not time for the crystal to be healed yet

the Urskeks are the ones who taught Aughra how to read

the gelfling have no idea when the next great conjunction will happen (which is the one that heals the crystal), so no time frame is given between the events of the novel and the original film

Aughra doesn’t know if or how the skeksis drainings can be stopped, but she does theorize that the next great conjunction will be the one to end their rule (which is exactly what happens)

she doesn’t say whether or not she knows about the drainings, but she does seem to know that the skeksis are destroying Thra

Aughra has forgotten her son Raunip’s name before

Grottans have a special connection to gelfling songs and other lore, as well as artifacts

they still live secluded in the Caves of Grot

gelfling are able to dreamfast just by touching, it doesn’t have to be through hand holding

Drenchen skin turns into a more saturated color as they make contact with water

the Grottan sigil is the hollerbat

Grottans are called “Shadowlings”

they’re also very distrustful of Vaprans

Maudra Argot is called “The Shadow Bender”

her wings are described as being almost completely transparent

she also has a deep voice, and she’s blind

Argot is still very friendly and calls Naia her daughter after only knowing her for a short time

all Grottans can read, which is very strange for a clan

there’s literally 37 of them, that exact number is said

Kylan is claustrophobic

the Grottans and Vapra are actually of the same clan that was split up ages ago

Amri (new Grottan character) admits that living in the caves kinda sucks but it’s still home to them

urLii, who appears in the Age of Resistance comics, hangs out in the Grottan Tombs

he also wears glasses

urLii taught all of the Grottans how to read

this book in particular is also more about Kylan than Naia

on top of dream-etching, Kylan also knows how to fix shoes

shoe making is a Spriton thing

spiders can hear gelfling dreamfasts

Tavra is still infected by a spider, but the situation around it is somewhat different

The Satirist, a new skeksis, has great jewelry

giant mushrooms exist

The Heretic is mentioned, though they call him Skekgra the Conqueror

the skeksis want to drain both Naia and Gurjin cuz they’re twins and they think that twin essences have like special powers

one of the skeksis gets bit and he’s described as tasting gross

the first fircas were likely made out of the bones of a large bird

the bird went extinct after the first great conjunction

Kylan has 1 braided ponytail in the illustrations

the mystics have somewhat of an upper hand over their skeksis counterparts

pretty much all of the mystics have the attitude of “yeah he’s me but i’ll kill the bastard if i have to”

The Archer wants to meet up with the other mystics, implying that they don’t all live in the valley yet

the archer is really nice

the message calling for resistance is spread in a really beautiful way

it’s implied that the garthim are currently being made

#im back back back back again #the books #song of the dark crystal #aor #age of resistance

[hypexion]

A Pile of Fanwalkers (Part 3)

Part three of all these fanwalkers. Now it’s time for all the ones who are mean, and should not be trusted. Sometimes because they’ll stab you, and sometimes because they’re just... kind of massively evil.

The basic format for each planeswalker will be a Name/Colour Identity/Pre-Ignition Typeline/Homeplane blob of information, a quickish description of them and some “fun“ facts, and then some hits and misses for extra flavour. Also, I’m going to split this into three posts - “Heroic“, “Okay“ and “Villians“, for I believe I have the moral authority to judge my creations.

Also some of these are going to be from fanplanes, which will go undescribed beyond whatever tidbits come out the character flavour. Others will just have a ?, representing a lack of knowledge and/or sufficent worldbuilding. With that out of the way, let’s go!

Villians

Evil is not a state of being. It is a form of intent, and a form of action. Some of these Planeswalkers can be trusted. Some of them may even appear to be nice. But make no mistake. They have caused suffering. They have altered lives for the worse. Either by design or consequence, their effect upon the multiverse marks them as villians.

Aster - B, Human Warlock, Zodyas - Aster was born under the influence of a bad star, which granted him the ability to draw power from negative emotions. But don’t think that makes him a bad person. Aster’s powers do not compel him to perform evil deeds. They simply enable him. Motivated by nothing greater than his own self-interest, Aster is the truest example of a disaster with a point of view. He was, while it lasted, a member of the Infinite Consortium. After Tezzeret forget how to run it, Aster managed to… convince a number of cells to accept his leadership. While lacking a grand plan for his splinter group, he’s interested in expansion, if only for the sake of increasing his own personal power. Aster may possess a certain kind of charm, and some level of restraint when compared to other ‘walkers, but do not be decieved. The moment harming you becomes worth the effort, Aster will be ready to do so.

Aster is often described as being pale of skin and dark of hair. There’s some weird magic causing that, since different cultures usually focus on different things when describing others. Aster prefers to dress in the fashions of power, whether that happens to be expensive robes, hand-tailored suits, togas or other such clothing. He preferes to wear darker colours, but if opulence is the style of a plane’s elite, then opulent he shall be. While he does carry a mean looking dagger, his primary form of defense are his so-called attendants - humanoid shades he commands via magic. These can perform many tasks, such as “fetch me more wine“, “open that door“ and “kill them“. When Aster planeswalks, he dissipates into a fine black mist. Interestingly, if he’s thinking about planeswalking, his magic generates a similar mist, that trails from him as he moves.

Hits: Power, influcence, tormenting his enemies, using people’s guilt to literally physically crush them. Misses: The undead, constructs, Loxy, Constellation Cults trying to recruit him, being around Ashiok for too long.

Galina - WB, Human Advisor, Ithmorne - In her early life, Galina leaned much more towards the White aspects of her personality. Even as a member of the Zoriac Imperium, she valued their goal of peace greatly, and was one of those that saw certain practices as a detriment to that goal. However, this did not last. When the outpost she was in was raided, everything changed. The ignition of her spark saved her life, but not her right eye. Fortunately for her, Galina arrived on Ravnica within dragging distance of a Simic emergency care clinic, where it was assumed she was an Azorius member who had suffered a run in with the Gruul. This was a role she was happy to take up for real, once the chance provided itself, seeing the Senate as an obvious parallel for the Imperium of her homeplane. In fact, Ravnica seemed to have many similarities with Ithmorne. This could only be due to the work of Azor, the great Sphinx who had brought peace to her warring plane so long ago, and whose Compact still enforced it now. Galina soon realised that her ability to traverse the multiverse would allow her to find more worlds ‘saved’ by Azor, and in turn learn more from them. Ultimately, she decided, those factions on Ithmorne too small to be affected be the Compact would be forced into co-operating. And if not? Then they would perish. Such would be the price of peace. The process had already begun, Galina believed, and if accelerating the pace was necessary, it would be done.

Galina has white skin and long brown hair. Additionally, the events that led to her ignition left her with a noticeable scar, running from her temple, across her right eye, to halfway down her right cheek. Many wonder how her right eye survived such a wound, and the truth is that it didn’t. Instead, she had it replaced by the Simic while on Ravnica. Galina generally wears the standard uniform for those in her position in the Zoriac Imperium - navy blue military robes, kept in the best condition possible. Rather than carry a weapon, Galina relies on her mastery of law magic, using it bind and impede her enemies. She is also capable of many of the standard black mana abilities, especially those which weaken her foes. When combined, these make her a formidable, and potentially deadly opponent. Galina’s planeswalking effect is a jagged and chaotic burst of darkness, which can cause minor damage to living things that nearby.

Hits: Peace through power, Azor, law and order, her own take on the concept of justice, Simic biomagic. Misses: “Barbarians“, insubordination, traumatic memories.

Malius - UBR, Human Wizard, Innistrad - In every profession, there are those that push boundaries. They look at the rules, and wonder which are truly needed. These are the kind of people the majority of Innistrad distrusts. And in the case of the stitcher pariah Malius, they are completely right to do so. While his fellow skaberen found his “wolf with werewolf arms“ experiment a daring new idea, even they had limits. Rumors began that he had started to use demons as a source of parts, and that he consorted with diabolists for unknown purposes. These rumors contained some truth - Malius was interested in demons and had, for a time, used them to “improve” his creations. But over time, he had become interested in the nature of demonic pacts, and how one might acquire the benefits without having to pay the price. Somehow, he was able to construct a device that extracted the source of a demon’s power, and began using it to infuse himself with dark power. For a time, not demon, nor mob, nor torch-wielding monstrosity could stop him. The destruction of the Helvault was an opportunity to Malius, bring him yet more specimins. Everything was going well, until an angel arrived. She cut through his creations, and had both the strength and motivation to kill Malius. In an act of desparation, he activated the extractor, aiming it at the angel. She exploded (don’t worry - she got better (sort of)). This would have been incredibly fatal to Malius had his Spark not ignited, sending him across the Blind Eternities to Zendikar. And so, he soon discovered all sorts of new things to stitch. Including Eldrazi. In fact, Malius was straight-up ecstatic during the events of Eldritch Moon.

Malius’ various experiments have left him with sickly, pallid skin, and pale white hair. His eyes no longer appear human, and those who spend time around him soon feel uneasy. Malius wears the standard dress of the stitcher, a white labcoat, brimming with tools and notebooks. Malius often manipulates his tools via telekinesis, either to work upon a new creation, or as a method of attack. In dire situations, he calls upon the demonic powers he has infused himself with, physically taking on the form of a demon. This grants him signifigance strength, speed and endurance while it lasts, but prevents him from planeswalking, making it as risky as it is useful. When Malius planeswalkers, he disappears in cloud of dark and burning ash, crackling with lightning. This occurs even when he cannot actually planeswalk due to being a demon.

Hits: Extracting demonic power, demonic infusions, terrifying creations. Misses: Angels, torch-weilding mobs, basic medical ethics.

Skath - WBG, Naga Assassin, Orpheri - At first glance, Skath is like any other planeswalker assassin you might meet. She kills people for money, and she does it well. However, she is still a member of the organisation that trained her, a religious order of assassins on Orpheri. So Skath will not kill those standing on sacred grond, those not old enough to be an adult of their kind, and she requires more than just a payment before targetting a diplomat or member of a religious order. Beyond the rules of her faith, however, Skath kills without hesitation, selling death for gold and jewels. When not killing, she is surprisingly thoughtful, a writer of poetry and cultivator of interesting plants. And while unrepentant, she not always unrelenting. Put up enought of a fight, or simple hide in a shrine for a few days, and Skath will move onto easier targets.

Skath has copper-brown scales, and no hair, because Naga don’t have hair on Orpheri. She wears light armor on her torso, which is engraved with protective magic. Her favoured weapons are two scimitars, enchanted to deliver venomous strikes. She also carries a dagger, and a number of poisons, so that she might have the perfect tool for any assassination. In a pinch, she can bite someone, however the Naga Assassins of Orpheri consider this an act of last resort. Mainly because once you identify the cause of death as Naga venom, finding the killer is fairly simple. Skath planeswalks with a flash of pale orange light, leaving behind traces of sand. Interestingly, she is capable of being incredibly precise with her appearance on a plane, and has sometimes managed to planeswalk into a room based on it’s relative position to a know location.

Hits: Getting paid, botany, the statisfaction of a job well done. Misses: Cold places, oath-breakers, Locke, people attacking her from sacred ground (this is actually a bad idea - her religion sees this as an act of desecration, meaning you ultimately forfeit the protection provided).

Look at all these not nice people. It’s probably best to keep a distance between you and them. Of course, their motivations differ greatly, so if you were to find yourself in close proximity to them, you might be able to avoid getting stabbed. Or worse.

#fanwalker #magic the gathering #fan character february

[rpgsandbox]

Since the dawn of time, humankind has struggled to survive the ravages of nature, the frailty of the body, and the cruel whims of fate. This is known by all. But what only the initiated know is that nature and its attendant miseries are the least of our concerns. There exist powers, realms, beyond the comprehension of a sane mind, and the dark corners of the earth are home to the twisted offspring of these powers, and to exiles from these realms.

How has humanity survived in the face of threats whose very names can sear our souls? Some say by the grace of God, some say by mere luck or by the strength of the human spirit. All these speakers are wrong. We survive because we have captured some few of these supernatural threats and put them to use. Humanity has stolen a dark fire from gods it cannot comprehend, and wields it desperately against the coming night.

ORPHEUS, a secretive paramilitary organization tracing its roots to ancient history, strives to maintain a monopoly on deployable paranormal power, operating in strike teams and secret cells around the globe. Their methods are ruthless, their resources bottomless, and their directive simple: Assess, Contain, Employ. The ORPHEUS Protocol is a tabletop role playing game in which players explore a world of eldritch horror, occult espionage, and shadowy paramilitary engagement. To this end, players take on the role of a supernaturally augmented or impeccably skilled operative with a role in ORPHEUS's eternal mission to protect the world and consolidate its supernatural power in the process. These operatives investigate strange occurrences, navigate dangerous social situations with cunning and finesse, and do battle with forces inconceivable to the unbroken human psyche.

Players familiar with The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Hellboy, Cosmic Horror Fiction, or even the Jason Bourne films should have a good idea of the game's intended feel. ORPHEUS Operatives must attempt to make sense of the impossible and insulate the “normal” world from factors it is woefully unequipped to handle. Players will infiltrate cults, prevent terror attacks, catalogue mind-shattering metaphysical phenomena, and kill and be killed by creatures that should not be, all the while engaging with a tense and delicately balanced system of resource management that mechanically models the operative’s dwindling internal reserves, the mounting dread of the supernatural, and their luck just plain running out.

The ORPHEUS Protocol is tabletop roleplaying game that has been in development for nearly 5 years. Rob Stith, the designer, was struck by the tension that the mechanics of games like Dread, Call of Cthulhu, and Don’t Walk in Winter Wood could bring to a standard RPG experience, and wished to combine that feeling with the tactical decision making found in many Euro-style board games, and set to work on creating a horror-thriller role playing game whose foundation lay on resource management mechanics. Rather than go through closed beta testing, The ORPHEUS Protocol’s main beta test has been recorded, edited, and produced as an Actual Play podcast covering a continuous, sprawling narrative of global occult conspiracy, and has been airing weekly since 2016, with well over 100 episodes and counting.

The unique thrill of The ORPHEUS Protocol rests on the use of multiple, interlocking systems of resource management that play out over different time frames. The different scopes of these different systems allows The ORPHEUS Protocol to be played in a longform campaign style, as well as more focused, episodic adventures or one-shots that place more emphasis on the more short-term, immediate systems. Multiverse-spanning epics as well as contained slasher film-style stories can, and have, been played to the horrified delight of players and GMs alike using The ORPHEUS Protocol.

The book itself will be run 300-400 pages (depending on stretch goals), and will be full-size, full-color, and professionally illustrated. The book will cover the game’s rules, character creation, setting information, and advice for GM’s to get the most out of the game’s systems as well as how to adapt the setting and system to make something all their own. Some of our stretch goals will allow us to invite writers from some of your favorite role playing products and Actual Play podcasts to contribute adventure seeds, dark mysteries, horrific creatures, and other terrifying delights.

In addition to the hardcover book, the game will also be offered as a traditional PDF, and on the Roll20 marketplace. The Roll20 format is discussed in more detail below.

The ORPHEUS Protocol runs on an original system designed by Rob Stith specifically to model the mounting dread and desperation experienced by people in over their heads in the kind of horrific and tense situations one would expect from the cosmic horror-paramilitary espionage setting. To achieve this effect, as many aspects of the game as possible are put directly into the players’ hands as resources they must make tense, important decisions with. On a moment-to-moment basis in combat, the players must decide how to spend their Initiative to best approach the current crisis. Within a Scene, players must decide the most opportune time to make use of the special mechanical advantages granted to them by their skills. Players also have pools of Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Strain, which represent their inner reserves, toughness, and luck in these different areas, and they must decide how and when to spend these resources; they confer great advantages, but can be spent much faster than they are regained if one isn’t careful. To make matters more tense, Strain not only increases a player’s effectiveness, but can also be used to buy down incoming damage, leaving the player to make hard choices about whether to go all-in on offense, or save Strain to weather the storm. On an even longer time scale, players must decide how much to make use of their supernatural abilities, if they have them; for tapping into unnatural powers grants a powerful edge, but slowly drains the player character’s humanity, making them more and more an inhuman manifestation of the strange forces that strengthen them.

Adventures and campaigns in The ORPHEUS Protocol focus on three distinct, but interwoven avenues of challenge: Investigation, Combat, and Social Influence. Each aspect is equally important, and often equally deadly.

Investigation

ORPHEUS operatives are more than soldiers. They must investigate bizarre happenings around the globe, and attempt to understand the eldritch and the unexplainable. The work of an ORPHEUS operative combines some of the most challenging aspects of a private detection, crime scene investigation, scientific research, antiquarian study, and other disciplines, all the while carrying the risk of the operative learning too much of the truth and losing their mind.

Combat

ORPHEUS operatives are often called upon to solve problems very directly, as well. Shootouts with vicious drug gangs, deadly engagements with private corporate strike teams, and direct, violent confrontation with creatures whose very existence blasphemes against the concept of nature are all an expected part of the job.

Social Influence

Just as deadly and tense as any occult mystery or desperate spate of violence, however, are the delicate social situations ORPHEUS operatives can find themselves in. Cult infiltration, corporate espionage, clandestine meetings with informants, and other such tasks can pit the operative’s life and safety against one small slip of the tongue or one failed bluff.

If you are interested in seeing more of what The ORPHEUS Protocol can do, feel free to check out our playtest document.  It includes the basic rules, 5 sample characters, advice for GMs; everything needed to get a taste of the game.

DriveThruRPG - ORPHEOUS Protocol Playtest

The beta testing process for The ORPHEUS Protocol has taken a rather unusual shape. I've been running a campaign for the last 3 years, and producing our sessions into an Actual Play podcast. In this way, an ongoing series of windows into the game's development are available for free to the public. The campaign is an intricate and epic story of eldritch monstrosities, corporate skulduggery, and heroes facing desperate odds.

The show can be found HERE, and can also be found on iTunes (Apple Podcasts), Stitcher, or your podcast app of choice.

The ORPHEUS Protocol will be released in the traditional formats of PDF and hardcover, however we are also working in conjunction with Roll20 on this project. Roll20 is the world’s largest Virtual Tabletop, with over 3 million users. Virtual tabletops are an ever increasing part of the RPG community, with millions of people that have their game experience solely on these platforms.

The ORPHEUS Protocol will be built for complete incorporation into the Roll20 platform. This includes Roll20 specific character sheets, an in-platform rules compendium, and more. The Roll20 version will be a seamless digital product that will provide the best possible online play experience for The ORPHEUS Protocol.

Kickstarter campaign ends: Fri, June 7 2019 3:00 AM BST

Website: [The Orpheus Protocol] [twitter]

#RPG #kickstarter #The Orpheus Protocol

[art-of-manliness]

Podcast #574: The Power of Bad — Overcoming the Negativity Effect

Have you ever been heaped with praise, only to ignore it in favor of focusing on the lone piece of criticism you received? That’s the power that bad things wield, and it’s a power that humans need to learn how to both harness and mitigate.  My guest today lays out both sides of that coin in a book he co-authored with psychologist Roy Baumeister. His name is John Tierney and the book is The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It. We begin our conversation discussing how much stronger bad is than good, and how many good things it takes to offset a single bad one. We then dig into the implications of the fact that bad things have a much stronger impact than good ones, including how you really only need to be a good enough parent to your kids, the best way to deliver criticism to others, and why religions that emphasize Hell have historically won more adherents than those that focus on Heaven. We also talk about how negativity is contagious and why it’s true that one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. We end our conversation with a look at whether or not social media is a negative force in our lives, and John’s advice on how to not let those he calls “the merchants of bad” in the media make us think that things in the world are worse than they really are.  Lots of insights in this show on how both to use the power of bad to your advantage, and overcome its negative effects. Show Highlights * Why do negative experiences carry more weight than positive in our lives? * Why do humans even have a negativity bias?  * What is the positivity ratio? * The merchants of bad  * How to go on a “low bad” diet  * Why it’s okay to have unrealistic views of the people you care about  * How negativity hurts parents  * Being able to take criticism without letting it kill you (and how to best deliver it, too)  * When it comes to motivation, are sticks or carrots more powerful? * How religions throughout history have used sticks effectively  * How social media and online negativity fuels our unhappiness * Why the most unhappy and pessimistic people are in the wealthiest countries  Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast * My interview with Roy Baumeister about men and masculinity * Why Your First Impression Matters * How to Strengthen Your Marriage Against Divorce * Treating Your Marriage Like a Bank Account * Is There Any Reason to Keep Up With the News? * Why Negativity Is a Social Killer * Mastering Mindset to Improve Happiness, Health, and Longevity * How to Take Criticism * How to Give Criticism * How to Hardwire Your Happiness * How to Get a Handle on Your Anger * Fighting FOMO Connect With John John’s website John on Twitter Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!) Listen to the episode on a separate page. Download this episode. Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice. Listen ad-free on Stitcher Premium; get a free month when you use code “manliness” at checkout. Podcast Sponsors Zicam. Other cold medicines only mask cold symptoms, but Zicam is homeopathic and clinically proven to shorten colds when taken at the first sign. Visit Zicam.com/manliness to receive a $2 coupon on your next purchase. ZipRecruiter. Find the best job candidates by posting your job on over 100+ of the top job recruitment sites with just a click at ZipRecruiter. Visit ZipRecruiter.com/manliness to learn more. Policygenius. Compare life insurance quotes in minutes, and let us handle the red tape. If insurance has frustrated you in the past, visit policygenius.com. Click here to see a full list of our podcast sponsors. Read the Transcript Coming soon! The post Podcast #574: The Power of Bad — Overcoming the Negativity Effect appeared first on The Art of Manliness. http://dlvr.it/RMpHvW

[trolloled]

Big List of Fantroll Facts from Hiveswap

This is all pulled straight from the game with 0 (or attempted 0) bias from me or @peckonthecheek​

We have both played the game so I can verify several things on the list. Most of the information comes from @peckonthecheek​ who exhaustively did everything in the game and recorded useful information.

If you want to add to this post, feel free to screenshot what you want to add and send it to me!

Land - Alternia consists of 4 - 5 continents and is mostly covered by said land.

Language - Alternian is distinct from English, trolls at least write in Alternian. It is read from LEFT to RIGHT and every symbol in its alphabet can be directly translated back to an English letter.

Drones - Weak point is in its torso. Drones can burn down hives and just take away random trolls for whatever reason.

- They can also fly and fire missiles.

Lususes (Yes that’s correct) - One species of lusus is the Cuspidated Grimalkin, (A deercat) which prefers to bond with brownbloods with leadership aptitudes. If a Grimalkin loses its charge (Fairly common) it will try to find a new troll to adopt. This is highly illegal.

- Another species of lusus is the Supplikatydid, which resembles praying mantises

- There exist several books on the various species of lususes.

- Lususes have blood colors and tend to bond with trolls of certain bloods

- Sloth lususes (GLACIAL TREETRUDGER) are pretty uncommon

- Lusus can be referred to as a pet/dad

- Multiple of the same types of lususes exist

Powers - Redbloods share telekinesis and speak-with-dead powers as a caste, brownbloods share animal communion powers

- Telekinesis - no matter how weak - can erase data off of discs easily

- Overexerting powers can cause exhaustion, nosebleeds, headaches

Stickball - This is gonna be huge so just. Bear with it.

- There are several leagues depending on area - There’s some sort of piece known as a CLOVER - Positions include PUSHER, BRAWLER, PROWLER, ZAPPER - Played on Velvet - Two pieces called a DOZER (Ball) and a SNOWGLOBE (Ball) - Burgundies often play PUSHER due to their telekinesis and ability to talk to the dead players - PUSHER is the most dangerous position - No one cares if a rustblood dies due to the danger of the position - Some HAZARDS - MATCHTIP - burns you - ZAPPER - blasts you - LUSUS - controlled by opposing (brownblood) Wranglers - Only unbonded lususes are allowed (Can be friendly, neutral, or opposing) - Each ball (DOZER, STITCHER, TRACER, FINISHER, SNOWGLOBE) has its own effect (There are 15 total) - Cuebats (the tool that the PUSHERS use) are made to be hard to bend with their telekinesis - It's okay to use someones torn off leg or other weapons found on the playing field as improvised weapons - but illegal to bring in your own!  - DOZER puts you to sleep if you touch it with your bare hands - STITCHER is a ball of yarn that has to be rolled up before it can be used to score - TRACER will try to follow the path it was taken the match before - FINISHER will only move in a predetermined path to the goal. - If your tryout is bad enough, you CAN get culled  - Rustbloods caught cheating in Arena Stickball will "get culled before they can blink"  - SNOWGLOBE - 8-BALL, rigged with a nuclear bomb that explodes after a set amount of time. - Controllers are often bluebloods (Cerulean?)  - Lususes are used in this sport - they can be friendly, neutral, or opposing - Aren't allowed to be fed, though - Sloths are not commonly used in AS due to their slowness - PUSHERs are the only players allowed to score (And are thus prime targets) - PUSHER helmets are designed to leave the forehead exposed for their    Psychic Powers, however this is a weak point and why they die a lot. - There is a team called the SNOWGLOBES - Xultan Matzos was a PUSHER - very famous - If the heiress attends a match, you are “encouraged” to kneel the entire time - Not following the rules proper will get you culled - Couches are MADE of FABRIC  - PUSHERS are advised to rely heavily on telekinesis - THE MAN ON THE MOON (White, non-scoring ball) cannot be interacted with by PUSHERS. It radiates a feeling of pernicious intent (to Xefros, at least)

Lowblood life:

- Having leadership aspirations is illegal and grounds for execution.

- Suburbs (Subgrubs) are segregated by caste.

- It is mandatory to buy what the heiress is selling.

- The bus system is infrequent and unreliable ("engineered to prevent caste mobility")

- Sometimes (Most times for lowbloods?) jobs are involuntary and assigned

- There is a LOT of class struggle and oppression

- There is, quote “Forced participation in keeping that oppression running smoothly.”

- Have to practice your profession before the TRIALS or you'll get culled

- Demanding a refund as a lowblood can get you culled

- Even uttering rebellious sentiment and promoting it could lead to your execution

- It's Imperial mandate that rustbloods are kept poor - they're not allowed to have more than the bare minimum to scrape by

- "Almost all" rustbloods end up as butlers 

- If a lowblood (read: redblood) makes a name for themselves and succeeds too well, they are liable to be humiliated and culled.

- Heiress will and can make a spectacle of your death in public

- Dreaming of destroying things associated with the heiress can get you killed

- Circular discs are a luxury, if you can't afford them, you get hexagonal ones

- There are sections of magazines that are illegal for lowbloods to read (???)

- Good pizza toppings are reserved for highbloods

- Lowbloods either get instaculled in raids or snatched up for later

- Mostly to be killed as a highblood spectacle

- Lowbloods can get culled for anything and everything or no reason at all - Anyone who disobeys the heiress gets rounded up and enslaved or slaughtered - Slavery is a thing (especially for rustbloods)

- The heiress hates aliens and lowbloods

- Your money is monitored by the government to keep you poor. (Probably).

- Scythian (Troll version of Amazon) always takes forever to deliver to lowbloods

Highblood Life:

- SLAM OR GET CULLED prevents voting from lususes, unless you're a highblood, and then you can have your lusus go on stage and eat everyone, if you want

- Highbloods generally can get away with a lot.

- Indigos (Blue?) care where the silverware goes (tend to "crush anything they pick up anyways")

- High society dinners often involve bluebloods (Pranking during this time often gets you culled)

- Chucklevoodoos are a subjug thing - not a purpleblood/Gamzee thing (Typically these involve dreams and the subconscious) - Heiress has a lot of servants, literally eats off of gold plates

- Violetbloods are considered royals: They can get published anywhere and tend to write lots of reviews about everything (Their hatred for lowbloods, what they just ate), most reviews are by them and they are especially disgusted by rustbloods.

- Heiress has a court of highbloods and a drone army

FLARP:

- They have FLARP editions based on spies, espionage, and rebellion - FLARP editions have fatigue rules in them involving SOPOR SLIME - There is a FLARP class called ESPIACROONER - It is permitted to use your telekinesis and other psychic powers in FLARP  - Need a game grub in order to play FLARP! 

Miscellaneous (Everything else):

- There is a city named THRASHTHRUST which contains the subgrub called OUTGLUT

- Swinging a weapon at an image of the heiress will bring a drone down upon you near instantly.

- Trolls sleep in recuperacoons due to the "violent and troubling impusles" they have - Sopor is very physically and mentally draining - Can injure trolls further if they sleep in the sopor while injured. - Gotta shake off some of the slime to completely wake up (?) - There are chairs with sopor slime in them, made to relax in (See below) - Sopor slime in close proximity to a troll helps them to relax - Eating sopor slime makes you dumb though 

- Sopor Slime keeps powers in check while they are asleep.

- SLAM OR GET CULLED can end in “relatively certain death” for the losers

- There is an interplanetary warsong titled  "If You Aliens Were Not Meant To Die At Our Hands, Why Are You All So Pitifully Incapable Of Defending Yourselves?!"

- There are Illegal parts of History! Censorship is REAL!

- Protest art exists (Videogames are considered art?)

- Video game controllers dies from starvation. Once they die, the mother console lays a new one.

- Crack open a controller for game grub - pus gets everywhere

- There have been multiple heiresses, but only one is alive at a time

- Interfaces can be designed with psionics/telekinesis in mind

- Jostling sopor is good housekeeping (?)

- Magazine titles: Arena Stickball Illustrated, Grubs Diurnally, Talentless Nobodies

- RITES OF MATURATION: Occur around 7 sweeps, involve Trials, decides your future. Nothing is known about them beyond this, not even whether it means you instantly leave the planet. Trolls are expected to TRAIN FOR THESE.

- Putting inorganic material in a grubslurry activator is begging for death

- Eating raw eggs is bad for trolls and gives them parasites - Trolls have benevolent and benign parasites

- Troll pupils are kind of reflective like a dog - they reflect white, though!

- They create their hives when they are freshly pupated, CARPENTER DRONES ENFORCE THIS.

- Typing Quirks are very personal for trolls! - Close friends and quadrants can imitate them sometimes - Only two fuschiabloods - Heiress and the Queen. Both are seadwellers - Queen is far away  leading conquests in other galaxies, she is known to be incredibly powerful

- THERE ARE NO (0) (ZERO) ADULTS ALLOWED ON ALTERNIA. NO EXCEPTIONS EVER.

- Adults are sent off-planet for their ORDEALS when they come of age

- Quadrants are Fated? (???)

- All text communications and conversations are subject to monitoring by the government.

- Trolls do not meet aliens until they’re off-planet, where they conquer them.

- The caste system is highly important.

- Trolls clean their floors with mucus (?)

- Calendars exist with celebrities on them!

- There is a month named CULLUBRE

TROLLIAN TERMS HIVE - House POWER HEXAGRID - Power grid? LUSUS - Caretaker beast SUBGRUB - suburb STEMCLUSTER - City OMNISCUTTLECOACH - Bus SCYTHIAN - Amazon but not FLARP - LARP but deadly RESPITEBLOCK - bedroom GANDER PRECIPICE - balcony ARENA STICKBALL - a sport! WAREGRID STUDYSCROLL - Looks like a placemat that you study for tablesetting MEGAFORK , MICROFORK , KNIFE FORK, "FOOLS FORK" - Several types of forks SMASHSUIT - stunt gear "SLAM OR GET CULLED" - American Idol but deadly RECUPERACOON - bed SOPOR SLIME - sedative slime that trolls sleep in RAKE PRONG, BILESCOOPER - Utensils 12TH PERIGREES EVE - assumedly christmas SCOURDRAY - Maid. Cleany. Thingy. RESIFLUID - Floor Cleaner SMEARSPINNER - Floor waxer CUEBAT - PUSHERS tool in ARENA STICKBALL FLAVOR DISC - pizza WET CHITIN SACK - ??? XULTAN MATZOS - Famous STICKBALL player BOBBLENUG FIGURINE - Bobblehead RECESSED TABLETOP ARENA STICKBALL - foozeball but not THRASHTHRUST SNOWGLOBES - ARENA STICKBALL League team SPORT OF LORDS  - ??? SPLAYSAC - beanbag filled with SOPOR SLIME CHAIRBAG - beanbag GAME GRUB - videogame CASTE SYSTEM - a system of oppression by blood - rust is lowest, fuschia is highest. ROYGBIV NUGBONES - Skull GRUBFLECKS - a type of cereal SCOURBRISTLE / SCOURBRISTLING - Mop/Mopping? Alternatively Broom/Sweeping CHITIN-RIDGER - goes to the right of the cuebat STICK-JAMMER - thumbtack DROMED BAKTAR - famous stickball player LOUNGEPLANKS - sofa CRISPRANGE - stovetop GRUBSLURRY AGITATOR - used to aggrivate some grubslurry GRUBSLURRY - made to be aggrivated HUSKLOAF - meatloaf BILESLAW - probably coleslaw : / GRUB-SAUCE - its a sauce UNRANGED CLUCKBEAST OVA - uncooked eggs? ACID TUBES - probably intestines given the context GRUB JUICE HYDRATION CYLINDERS - cans of grub juice GRUB JUICE - drink to restore psychic powers WRIGGLING DAY - birthday WIPES - a measurement of time. RITES OF MATURATION - a series of TRIALS and potentially ORDEALS that happen around 7 sweeps SMEARGUNK - cleans floors - is used with smearspinner GLACIAL TREETRUDGER - Xefros' Sloth lusus! ZIGZAG INCLINE - stairs GASTRIC EVACUATION GLAND - The uvula TUBEFLORA SHAVINGS - Banana Slices (Maybe, unconfirmed) LAWNRING - Yard SUPPLIKATYDIDS - Praying Mantis Lususes ORDEALS - gone through by adults. May be a part of the RITES OF MATURATION? CRUEL-AID - Kool-aid CUSPIDATED GRIMALKIN - deercat lusus of Dammeks GUTTERBLOOD - a term for lowbloods THROTTLEMOTH - Just a moth BELLOWSACS - Lungs SCENTBULB - Nose

#hiveswap #fantroll #fantrolls #hiveswap spoilers #homestuck #text post terror #peckonthecheek

[llarruda]

Aliud

"So, Mr Flynn, tell me more about what happened yesterday."

She looks into his eyes, staring them, trying to decipher every gesture.

"As I said before, I don't even know WHY I'm here."

"Okay Mr Flynn, but if you help me with more information, I can help you. Have you ever heard that popular saying? 'One hand washes another one'? So, help me to help you.

He was tired to talk, to run and to fight.

Nobody knows exactly what happened, only hi version of this world.

"As I was saying, Lola..."

"Please, call me Chief Lola."

"So, you are in charge here?"

"Mr Flynn, you aren't entitled to ask questions. I present the questions and you answer, understood?"

"Yes, Chief Lola." Flynn looks to her and snorted.

"I know that you are tired, that you want to go to your home and just rest. But I need to understand why your version from another dimension is here on our planet. You do know that the authority has strict rules about this. If another version of us wants to travel to our planet, then a visa is required. And as I was looking in my files, your version doesn't have a visa."

Lola crosses her arms and looks at him seriously.

"I need to know why he doesn't have it, Mr Flynn."

"I don't know. That's the first time I've met him. I swear!"

"But why do you have a visa to go to planet Aliud? I saw here that you went there three times just this month."

"I'm a businessman."

Lola stands up and walks to the coffee machine. Grabs a cup, put it in the machine and brews an expresso.

"Do you prefer coffee or tea, Mr Flynn?"

"Tea, please. It would be good to have something to calm me down."

Lola takes her coffee off the machine and sits with it in her chair.

"You are going to have your tea if you answer my questions."

"What? But that's not right."

"You are a businessman, correct? And I'm the law, I make the rules here, Mr Flynn." She punches the table annoyed.

Flynn swallowed his saliva.

"So, it was ten a.m. I was making my simple breakfast as any mornings, with two slices of bread, some beans, bacon and my hot tea. You know, I'm an Irish guy."

"I do know." She looked irritated. "The faster you tell your story, the faster I dismiss you, or not. Depends on yourself." She sips her coffee.

"Why not? I didn't do anything wrong. He did it, the other version of myself."

"But I need to know why the fuck he's dead."

She starts to raise her voice.

"I didn't kill him. He killed himself."

"I know that you're hiding something. And WE are not going to rest until you revel it."

"Okay. So, I was doing my breakfast, and then I heard something coming through my portal."

"You mean your mirror, right?"

"Yes! I went to my bedroom to see what was happening, but when I noticed, he was already standing in front of my bed. I said 'hello', and he said 'hello' back to me...

 SEVEN HOURS BEFORE

 "Hello another me. My name is Flynn, and yours?"

"Hello, Flynn. My name is Flynn Twenty-two."

"I never saw some other version of myself using my portal before. That's unusual. Can I see your visa?''

''Of course, Flynn.'' Flynn Twenty-two put his hand behind his back and pushed a gun from his pants.

"WHAT THE FUCK DUDE?'' Flynn takes a few steps back.

"SHUT UP!" Still pointing the gun to Flynn's head. "Now, hear me out clear and nice. You'll go to sit in the finest chair that you have, but before this, I need duck tape, for your own safety, you know." Flynn Twenty-two blinks to Flynn.

Flynn took his duck tape from a drawer nearby and threw to him.

"Good boy. Now, sit in your most comfortable chair."

Flynn sat down while watching Flynn Twenty-two taping him in his most refined pink chair.

"Carefully please, this chair is a relic from my grandmother."

"I know, I had one exactly like that from my grandmother Twenty-two." He laughs at Flynn while finishes taping him.

"And why is that?"

"What?"

"Why you don't have the chair any more?" Flynn asked.

"It's just a long story. I can only tell you if you trade something with me." Flynn Twenty-two looked to him with a naughty eye.

"What do you want?" He asked stammering.

Flynn Twenty-two bent down and leaned in Flynn's knee.

"You're the best Flynn that I know. The best from the best." He touched Flynn's face gently. "You have a nice apartment, a good job and a large salary too (I can expect). You're such a nice boy. You're a gentleman." He then kissed Flynn's cheeks.

"What do you need? Just say it and stop kissing me." Flynn started to cry.

"Sorry kiddo, I didn't mean to make you cry, but you know, I'm not the same man as you. Even your hair is better than mine."

"You just need a better conditioner. And I can help you to be a good man, and find a nice job. I can teach you." Flynn said and stopped crying. "You can even live here with me."

"That's very kind of you."

"And I really mean all the things I said to you."

"The thing is, Flynn, I need a new life. My life in Aliud is getting hard to live. Some people are hunting me. And when I mean hunting, I really mean that they want my HEAD!"

Flynn started sweating and asked.

"Why they're hunting you?"

"Because I'm a bad man. I NEED A NEW LIFE FLYNN, AND JUST YOU CAN HELP ME." He started to scream at Flynn's face.

Flynn was crying again.

"You know why I don't have a visa? Because I'm a fugitive, even from my own planet. I made bad choices. I choose to be friends with bad people. I killed some of them, and I almost died in the process." He grabbed Flynn's arm and said.

"I need this." Then tightened his grip.

"You need my identification chip?"

"YES!"

"No, you can't have it. FUCK OFF!" Flynn shouted.

"Okay! Let's stick some duck tape on this little and annoying mouth."

He stuck the duck tape and got a knife in the kitchen.

"Much better now. It's like the others Flynn’s said, that you're such a moron." He laughed slapping Flynn's face.

He grabbed Flynn's arm again and cut his skin open, taking off his identification chip.

Flynn screamed in pain, but no sound came out from his mouth.

"That's a good identification Flynn. I can see here that you have many visas to go to other dimensions. That's perfect. Thank you!" He kissed Flynn's cheek. "Now I'll put my identification chip in your arm and mend with a laser stitcher." While mending the arm, Flynn Twenty-two started singing: "Out of body and out of mind, kiss the demons out of my dreams, I get a funny feeling, that's alright." He finished mending Flynn's arm.

"See? Easy peasy lemon squeezy! Now it's my turn."

Flynn Twenty-two cut his own arm and put Flynn's identification chip then started mending with the laser stitcher.

"It's a little difficult doing by myself. But, it'll look fine. Don't you think?" He showed the result while mending.

"Now, before I finish, I need to do one tinier little thing more. Do you know what it is?"

Flynn shakes his head while crying.

"Make sure you NEVER talk about our little chat to anyone! And you'll help me." He took his gun and pointed at Flynn's head. "Just SMILE!" Flynn Twenty-two pushed the trigger.

He cleaned the gun and put it on Flynn's lap. He took out all the tape stuck on Flynn. Grabbed his tiny robot from his jean's pocket and said:

"I need you to clean all the mess in two minutes."

While his tiny robot was doing his job, Flynn Twenty-two fixed his hair and took a new shirt from Flynn's wardrobe. Then took out Flynn phone and called the police.

SEVEN HOURS LATER AT THE POLICE STATION.

 "And that's it?" Lola asks.

"Yes. He killed himself in front of me. We were just talking, he was a sad man, saying that he had a terrible life in Aliud. I tried to save him but when I went to the kitchen again, he took his gun and shot at his head in my pink chair. Such a shame. My chair got all dirty and it was from my grandmother."

"Okay Mr Flynn, I think I heard enough. Many things are getting fucking crazy about other versions from another planets, and what you just said to me, unfortunately, it's getting pretty normal nowadays. Sad, but normal." Lola gets up and Flynn follows her.

"What's going to happen with Flynn Twenty-two body?" He stops to walk.

"About the dead body, don't worry, it'll be sent back to Aliud. I just need you to fill some paperwork and then you're free to go. The police office in Aliud will be responsible for a thorough investigation on Flynn Twenty-two, so If we have more questions to you, we'll get in touch, okay?"

"No problem Chief Lola. I'm glad to help."

"Sorry about your chair, I saw it was a nice chair. I hope you can clean it."

"It was. Thank you, anyway!"

Flynn Twenty-two leaves the police station after dealing with bureaucracy and says to himself.

"New life, new me." While walking to his new home.

 *Song: Green Day - Novacaine

[tmiquotepage]

11 Questions

Rules: always post the rules, answer the questions given to you, write 11 questions of your own, tag 11 people.

Thank you, @randomfinny​ for tagging me!

1. If you could have the life of a fictional character for a year, whose life would you choose?

FUCK I HATE THESE KINDS OF QUESTIONS. So.... I’m gonna be a nerd and say one of my own characters because I know what their lives are like for the next year or so. Intimately. But even then, I’m stuck between choosing Melinda Dormer (Time Catchers) and Willow Danson (The Dynagyn Chronicles). I think I”m going to go with Will because Lindy’s life is pretty much downhill for the foreseeable future. Will’s is terrible and has issues, but she’s got magic powers and a level head, so I think she’ll be able to handle it more. I will. Am I my own mind in these characters’ lives, or am I just an observer as they make decisions and live? (God I’m maing this so complicated. Lol)

2. If you had to listen to one song on a loop for three hours right now, what song would you choose?

I Will Never Die  by Delta Rae!

3. Favourite ice-cream flavour?

I generally dislike ice cream, but I do love birthday cake flavor. Sometimes. In small amounts.

4. Do you prefer watching movies/tv shows/cartoons/animes/etc. in silence or do you like commenting on them?

TV! Like, I’m a tv writer by profession, so I get TV writing more. On that note, whenever I’m watching TV, I always do live CinemaSins-style comments and miss important things and have to go back and watch them again... So yeah, watching any kind of TV or film with me is insuffereable because I”m the film stdent, the filmmaker watching and picking things apart.

5. Weirdest dream you’ve ever had?

This is so hard to qualify. As a writer, most of my stories have come from dreams, so that’s hard to say. I write some weird shit. But the weirdest dream ever... Um... Maybe the time that I dreamed Ian Somerhalder was my brother (because I was abandoned as a child and then adopted by my family) and I went to visit him on set at Vampire Diaries and he got so mad because my real family hadn’t abandoned me, I’d been kidnapped, and so he decided to take me back and adopt me and become my best friend and then there were spies involved and I ended up killing somone. It was like brother-sister spy stuff with James Bond-level gadgets and action. It was weird. But to this day, I still call Ian Somerhalder my brother as an inside joke with my family and closest friends.

6. If you had to spend an afternoon with the main character of the last book you’ve read, how would you spend it?

Okay, so I’ve been rereading Throne of Glass, but I don’t know if rereads count. If they do, technically the main haracer or the book I was reading was Celaena Sardothien, so I’d spend my day with her fighting and training probably. Talking about reading while trying to stab each other with knives.

If we’re not including rereads, the main character of the last book I read was Laia from A Torch Against the Night, in which case, I’m not sure how I’d spend the day. Probably telling her not to bother falling in love with anybody that surrounds her because I don’t like any of the characters in this series for her. None are worthy. But also, I’d probably slap her and tell her she doesn’t have to do everything herself. IDK. Maybe I’d just wrap her in a blanket and take her away from this world that doesn’t deserve her.

7. If you could write an episode for any tv show (running or already cancelled), which tv show would you write for?

Eyyyyyy my kind of question! Okay, so I have written episodes for TV before (spec episodes, never produced), so I’m a little biased. I’ve written one for Pretty Little Liars. I have an episode of Shadowhunters that I worte (I’d love to be in that writer’s room, but I also heard that the showrunners don’t respect the women in the room nearly enough and pretty much dictate the way they write their episodes, so idk about that). I love the show Stitchers, so that’s be a cool assignment. Of course, none of my shows have been picked up yet, so I can’t say any of those. I’m also writing my own version of the Thone of Glass tv show pilot, but that’s fan fiction. It’s different. I think, if I had to choose, I’d say Once Upon a Time (but in a world where I could keep the old characters and plot, not this new reboot BS) OR an episode of Castle. That was my all-time favorite.

8. If you could have the home of any fictional character, whose home would you want to have?

Another fucking impossible question. Um... I’m going to avoid saying any of my characters (even though I loooooove Lindy’s loft in Time Catchers and J.D.’s house in the woods in Deep Six) and say probably Feyre’s in A Court of Mist and Fury/A Court of  Wings and Ruin. All of her houses. The House of Wind, the townhouse in Velaris. Anywhere where Rhysand is in my bed when I come home....

9. Last tv show, movie or book that you’ve discovered through tumblr?

Through tumblr? Maybe Jessica Jones. I don’t normally find TV shows through tumblr anymore. 

10. Sightseeing or hiking?

I have been fat all my life, so I am going to be lazy and say sightseeing. 

11. If I gave you a little chicken (I don’t know why I would, but let’s just go with it), how would you name it?

I would name him Heihei. I’m a sucker for Moana and that name was the first to come to mind. I had a friend who named her chicken “Duck.” He was adorable, and I might consider doing that, but I think I would ultimately end up with Heihei. 

Tagging just a few friends because this was FUN! @gryffindor819 @vampirchen96 @myfandomtopia @canwriteitbetterthanueverfeltit @thenearsightedfeminist @amoraeternusforyou @red-queen-em-for-a-dream @clumsybutawesomefangirl

For you, my loves, the questions are: 

1. What was your first fandom, how old were you when you joined, and what drew you in to it? (Yes that’s all one question!)

2. What is one line/section of a novel or other literary work that you can remember changing you in some significant way?

3. What TV show have you heard is the absolute best, but either haven’t gotten around to watching it, or you have and were throughly unimpressed?

4. Biggest book series/tv series finale dissappointment?

5. What’s your favorite trope in fiction?

6. Do you read with absolute silence around you, or with a lot of noise?

7. What is your dream career?

8. Favorite female filmmaker!

9. What’s a movie you absolutely love that everyone else hates/is indifferent to?

10. What book series/tv series do you wish more people watched/knew about?

11. Top 5 most underrated young adult actors you can think of!

#tag games #i never do these #but i'm currently avoiding work #my life

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Scott Johnson

When the body of Scott Johnson was found at the bottom of a cliff in North Head, Sydney, with his clothes folded neatly at the top of the cliff with a pen resting on top, the police easily ruled it a suicide. That was the direction in which the evidence was pointing, and there was no need to investigate any further.

Scott’s brother, Steve, could never accept that Scott would kill himself. Scott was almost finished his PhD. He had moved to Australia from America only two years prior to live with his partner. But he was also an out gay man in the 1980s, a time when homophobic violence was rampant, particularly in Sydney. Steve was determined to investigate his brother’s death, properly and thoroughly, and with the help of a dedicated journalist, the eventual backing of the NSW police, a couple of million dollars, two coronial inquests, and almost 32 years of waiting, a man named Scott Phillip White was finally arrested for the murder of Scott Johnson, on May 12, 2020.

EPISODE NOTES:

Scott Johnson was sadly one of the many gay men who were overlooked or discounted by the NSW Police in the late 1980s. It was well known that gangs of young men would rove around “gay beats” – areas where gay men would frequent for hook ups – in search of victims to bash. Many men were beaten, many were killed, but homophobia and the AIDS panic were at fever pitch. Many of gay men just felt like the police weren’t interested in protecting them.

Over the years, many inquests, investigations, and reviews have been held into the murders of gay men in Sydney. In 2005, it was found that two other young men who had died after ‘falling’ of a cliff top were victims of a gay hate crime. Scott Johnson’s former partner forwarded the story to Steve Johnson, questioning whether or not that could have been what happened to Scott, too. Neither man ever really believe Scott had killed himself. Steve pushed for a new investigation, put literally millions of dollars and years of his own life into finding out the truth about what happened to his brother. Finally, in 2020, there has been an arrest – an arrest which has prompted investigations in to four other potential gay hate crimes from around the same era. Justice has come late for Scott Johnson, and for his family and friends. But hopefully, finally, there will be some closure in this case, and the right thing will finally be done by all the victims of hate crimes who have gone without a voice for so long.

You can watch the episode of Australian Story about Scott and Steve Johnson here https://www.abc.net.au/austory/on-the-precipice/9170140?fbclid=IwAR2VBUsu7dznI--ylDQ1-i8uC-TvJN02hm0aAzxFiTwcJvaQYQY3Txn2ur0 (if you’re in Australia).

A longform article about the case can be found here https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-moment-that-inspired-steve-johnson-to-find-his-brother-s-killer-20200512-p54sbr.html?fbclid=IwAR1VKHJdQbIbeE38WnwmHqY5ZS5uYR6wy7ogrhW0gVn_o2b0Bjfh56wteHA

A timeline of Scott’s life can be found here https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-16/scott-johnson-saga-from-the-80s-to-now/8120902?nw=0&fbclid=IwAR1CVhzFlQW2Z-L6gKhkB9kkZaeMDKcBUoI2HtgokQGMMQ-WLgmjk0UAMWs

Information about the arrest can be found here https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/11/metro/cambridge-mans-search-justice-brother-slain-australia-results-arrest/?fbclid=IwAR2VBUsu7dznI--ylDQ1-i8uC-TvJN02hm0aAzxFiTwcJvaQYQY3Txn2ur0

If you like what we do please consider supporting us on PATREON

Subscribe to the podcast on ITUNES, STITCHER, SPOTIFY or your podcatcher of choice.

Find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM or EMAIL us on [email protected]

www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com

#true crime #crime #investigation #police #australia #justice #podcast #brisbane #forensic #evidence #murder #criminal #tasmania #victoria #new south wales

[sweetangelnakshtra]

WWE Elimination Chamber 2020 Results: Reviewing Top Highlights and Low Points - News Buddi The card for WWE Elimination Chamber 2020 was severely lacking considering its position as the last pay-per-view before WrestleMania 36. Most fights were rematches that had been done before too often, while others were foregone conclusions that didn't need to happen. Many big names weren't scheduled to appear Sunday night, and the whole thing felt like WWE had split the difference between this and Super ShowDown on February 27. But every WWE show has the potential to surprise, even if it looks like a waste of time. Is that what happened with this show? What were the biggest positives and negatives that stood out from the program? Presented in order of appearance, here are the highlights and low points from Sunday's Elimination Chamber. Full Match Results WWE Elimination Chamber 2020 results The Viking Raiders defeated Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder by pinfall. Daniel Bryan defeated Drew Gulak by submission. Andrade defeated Humberto Carrillo by pinfall to retain the United States Championship. John Morrison and The Miz won the SmackDown Tag Team Championship Elimination Chamber match. No Disqualification Match: Aleister Black defeated AJ Styles by pinfall. The Street Profits defeated Seth Rollins and Murphy by pinfall to retain the Raw Tag Team Championship. Sami Zayn, Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Braun Strowman by pinfall to win the Intercontinental Championship. Zayn scored the pin and is the new champion. Shayna Baszler won the Women's Elimination Chamber match. Low Point: Kickoff 2 OF 9 Credit: WWE.com Sometimes, it's as if WWE purposely tries to tell fans not to bother watching something. With so many Superstars not on the Elimination Chamber card, was WWE's go-to option for a bonus match on the Kickoff show really The Viking Raiders vs. Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder? Elias vs. King Corbin, Sheamus vs. Apollo Crews and Shorty G or something with the SmackDown women's division would have been better and carried over stories from the blue brand at least. Meanwhile, the two teams who did feature Sunday night have had little momentum. The rest of the Kickoff was a waste of time. All it did was kill time that could have been better used for plenty of other stories. Highlight: Daniel Bryan vs. Drew Gulak 3 OF 9 Credit: WWE.com This was a nail-biter of an opening match. The story was predominantly Drew Gulak capitalizing on Daniel Bryan's neck injuries, which was both logical and nerve-racking. Each time Bryan was dropped on his head made sense, as Gulak has talked previously about knowing his opponent's weaknesses. But it was also scary, as any of those moments could have ended The Yes Man's career. As long as they were safe, this was a great taste of what these talented Superstars could do in a future rematch. However, it can't be said enough that no matter how much this toyed with our emotions, safety should always be the priority. Middle of the Road: Andrade vs. Humberto Carrillo 4 OF 9 Credit: WWE.com Andrade and Humberto Carrillo have fought seven times since Halloween on television and pay-per-view. They reached a point where they were repeating themselves long ago, so there was nothing new here. Granted, a moment like Carrillo's hurricanrana off the top rope was fun and elicited a "this is awesome" chant from the crowd. In a bubble, this was a decent enough match. The problem was that this story lost its steam over a month ago. Hopefully, this was an OK culmination of this feud and not something that will happen again for some time. However, Andrade winning by holding the tights implies this still may not be over, which is frustrating. Highlight: SmackDown Tag Team Championship Elimination Chamber Match 5 OF 9 Credit: WWE.com The Elimination Chamber match for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship was an absolute thrill, with some of the best spots we'll probably see all year in WWE. Gran Metalik's hurricanrana onto John Morrison, Lince Dorado's flip from the top of the cage and Tucker's somersault off the top of a pod were among the "wow" moments, but the real showstopper was Otis barreling through a pod and spilling outside the cage. However, stories were also told in this match. The feud between Otis and Dolph Ziggler was highlighted. The crowd was fired up to see Tucker fight Robert Roode and The Showoff in his buddy's stead, then disappointed for Heavy Machinery to be eliminated. When Roode and Ziggler were taken out, it brought a "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" song from the crowd. The Usos and The New Day have shown plenty respect for each other in the past and worked well together at times Sunday night, while The Miz and John Morrison bent the rules to hold on to their titles. This was fantastic and well worth watching again. Highlight: Aleister Black vs. AJ Styles 6 OF 9 Credit: WWE.com There were four things WWE needed to accomplish in this segment: Further establish The O.C. as a unit that fights together and will cheat if need be. Add more fuel to the fire in the AJ Styles vs. Undertaker feud. Give Aleister Black his win back over Styles. Have a good match through that process. Thankfully, all parties were able to check everything off that list. Black and Styles have also proved they have chemistry in the ring, so whenever WWE wishes to revisit this feud in a more in-depth way, this match will give fans something to look forward to. Middle of the Road: The Street Profits vs. Seth Rollins and Murphy 7 OF 9 Credit: WWE.com The Raw Tag Team Championship match was a good contest, but it didn't stand out as a highlight on a card with better segments. In the grand scheme of things, this boiled down to Kevin Owens and The Viking Raiders interfering to offset AOP and screw Seth Rollins and Murphy so The Street Profits could win. That's no different from what happened when Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins claimed the titles. All WWE did Sunday was repeat it for people who didn't watch Raw, which isn't the same as adding another wrinkle in the story. Also, since the rematch clause was supposed to be expunged over one year ago, Rollins and Murphy didn't need a chance to win their belts back in the first place. At least the action was good enough to enjoy, though. Highlight: Intercontinental Championship 3-on-1 Handicap Match 8 OF 9 Credit: WWE.com As disappointing as it was to see Braun Strowman drop a title within a few weeks—which seems a clear sign WWE doesn't think he should have a championship reign—at least it was done this way. Losing a 3-on-1 Handicap match against Shinsuke Nakamura, Cesaro and Sami Zayn does help to protect The Monster Among Men from looking too bad. On the bright side, the belt is now in Zayn's possession instead of reverting back to Nakamura, who WWE forgets to use whenever he has a midcard title. It's something different and could be a lot of fun. Here's hoping this was more about going in that direction and freeing Strowman up for something else or setting up a chance for him to get his revenge. Low Point: Raw Women's Championship No. 1 Contender Elimination Chamber Match 9 OF 9 Credit: WWE.com If anyone thought Roman Reigns winning a men's Elimination Chamber would have been too much of a foregone conclusion, why didn't they see the same thing with Shayna Baszler? There was little doubt The Queen of Spades was going to prevail Sunday night and forge a challenge to Becky Lynch at WrestleMania 36. Sometimes, it's great to book someone as strong as Baszler was featured here. After all, the more intimidating she is, the more threatening she seems for the Raw women's champion. However, the way this was laid out was disjointed and unpalatable. Why didn't the match start with The Riott Squad as the first three in the ring to at least give them a moment to shine until Baszler took them all out? It did Liv Morgan no favors to come in after her two former best friends were eliminated and tap out within a minute or so. Natalya took more punishment from Ruby Riott and Sarah Logan, rather than Baszler. Intervals of just waiting for a pod to open were far from exhilarating, too, especially for a main event. That meant the crowd peaked earlier in the show and left on a flat note. The main event makes more of a lasting impression than anything, and if anyone felt underwhelmed or dissatisfied with the PPV, it's likely down to how dull the finale was.           Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.

http://newsbuddi.blogspot.com/2020/03/wwe-elimination-chamber-2020-results.html

#News

[firstdraftpod]

Sexy First Responders with Sara Farizan, Katie Cotugno, and Sarah Enni

First Draft Episode #207: Sara Farizan, Katie Cotugno, and Sarah Enni at Trident Booksellers and Cafe in Boston

I was thrilled to do an event with Sara Farizan--author of Here to Stay, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, and If You Could Be Mine--and Katie Cotugno--New York Times bestselling author of How to Love, 99 Days, Top Ten, and Fireworks. We met at Trident Booksellers and Cafe, Sara and Katie’s local bookstore in Boston, to discuss sexy first responders for all your needs, writing humor in contemporary stories, and letting characters make mistakes.

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

Link to Sara Farizan’s First Draft episode and Katie Cotungo’s First Draft episode

In Here to Stay, Reggie Miller (former NBA player and commentator) and Kevin Harlan (NBA commentator) are Bijan’s (protagonist) favorite NBA commentators and when he needs a minute he has them narrate in his head.

Sarah had the opportunity to go to Scholastic and read a chapter from Tell Me Everything!

Sara Farizan recently watched Killing Eve (TV show), and thinks that because people haven't really seen female serial killers that the characters Villanelle is loved despite being an “unlikable female lead”.

“You’re Not Allowed in the Anne Hathaway Club if You Hated Her in the 2000s” article on VICE

In Fireworks, Katie wanted to reflect an accurate experience of being a teen especially when writing a historical and not including social media and technology in the way we use it today

Sarah made a Trent Reznor (founder, lead vocalist, and principal songwriter of the band of Nine Inch Nails) zine in high school that only five people ever saw.

Sarah also played The Sims (PC game) to reflect all the things she was interested in.

PostSecret was the origin of the app Veil from Tell Me Everything.

At the Boston Teen Author Festival, Mark Oshiro, author of Anger is a Gift; joked that if he could hang out with any villain he would hang out racism.

Rules for Being a Girl by Katie Cotungo and Candace Bushnell is coming out in Spring 2020!

Uprooted by Noami Novik

Sheets by Brenna Thummler

Dating Tips for the Unemployed by Iris Smyles

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

Christine by Stephen King

Tell Me Everything has a similar feel to the film Amelie

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call [phone]. You can also email the podcast at [email protected]. 

Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni

Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It’s free!

Rate, Review, and Recommend

How do you like the show?

Please take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!

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Listen now!

#Join host Sarah Enni every Tuesday for a quality hang with your favorite authors.

[zipgrowth]

Why Students Can’t Write — And Why Tech is Part of the Problem

Writing is more important than ever, but many of today’s students are lousy at it. John Warner has some ideas about why that is, and how to fix it.

Warner has been teaching writing at colleges for more than 20 years. And he’s written two books on the topic, including his most recent, called “Why They Can’t Write.”

Part of the problem, he says, is technology. In some cases the very technologies that were intended to improve writing, like automatic-essay grading software, have backfired by encouraging a kind of paint-by-numbers approach to writing.

But Warner is not anti-tech. In fact, for years he edited one of the most popular humor magazines on the Internet, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency — a more literary version of the The Onion. And he thinks that the writing students do for their Instagram accounts and social media is actually great.

Watch a live taping of the podcast on April 8 and 9 at the ASU GSV Summit (or online). Check out details and RSVP here.

The problem, he says, is what kids are asked to write in schools, like those five-paragraph essays, which emphasize following arbitrary rules instead of finding the most effective ways to communicate their ideas. And he has some ideas about how to make things better.

EdSurge talked with Warner recently about his sometimes surprising ideas about the crisis in writing instruction, including why he thinks FitBits are part of the problem.

Listen to the discussion on this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast. You can follow the podcast on the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music or wherever you listen. Or read a portion of the interview below, lightly edited for clarity.

EdSurge: I’ve certainly heard professors grumble that their students are bad at writing. But in your latest book, “Why Can't They Write,” you say that students are surprisingly confident about their writing abilities, even though you see them as poor. How do you explain this disconnect?

Warner: Students may have gotten good grades on the kinds of writing they've been asked to do, either in school or on a standardized assessment. They know they've performed well on what I call “in the book writing related simulations,” which is mostly what I think they're asked to do in school. The purpose is to sort of prove that they can demonstrate a limited set of moves that make it look like you know how to write.

You’re saying they’ve been trained to essentially act like a writer, and behave how they think a writer would?

That's exactly it. In the book I say the equivalent would be if in an acting class we taught exclusively through asking students to do specific imitations of actors in specific roles. We’d have like De Niro 101 or Streep 413. And they wouldn't even be acting like them, they would just be imitating a particular performance.

So to get a good grade, they’d have to nail a De Niro impression?

Yeah. It comes from this sort of highly prescriptive practice that's privileged because they're going to be assessed on a very narrow range of abilities. That’s why the subtitle of my book is “killing the five-paragraph essay and other necessities.” A lot of my students arrive having written exclusively five-paragraph essays. And they've been told things like never use I, never write with contractions, every sentence must be between five and seven sentences. And then another student will argue and say, “No, no, no. It's seven to nine sentences, that's what I was told.”

But then they get to college, in a first-year writing class like I've spent many years teaching, and I pull the rug out from under them and say, “Every piece of writing is a custom job. There are no rules. We have to think through these problems.” And they feel bummed or betrayed or frustrated that I've changed the game on them. They understood the game and were doing well at the game, and now the game’s different. What I'm saying is, it's not a game, it's actually something substantive and real that we want to ask them to do.

What would you have students and teachers do before they get to you, instead of a paint-by-numbers approach that you say the five-paragraph represents?

A lot of that is wrapped up in my other book, “The Writers Practice.” I think they should be building their practice. And I define that as the skills, attitudes, knowledge and habits-of-mind of writers. We develop those things primarily by writing—writing to audiences, writing with purpose, writing from things we are passionate about, writing about things we are interested but don't know a lot about, which requires research and all of the sorts of things we want students doing. A lot of it is based on my reflection of my experience learning to write as a young person sort of before the era of standardized assessments and accountability.

But unlike when we went to school, don't kids today today actually write a lot? Even if it's just a caption on their Instagram photo, aren't they constantly writing for an audience?

They are. They're not practicing in school but they're writing in the world all the time. And they're doing the kinds of things that we ask of the writers practice all the time, they're thinking about audience. An example I use in first year writing, I'll say, “You guys will text your parents that you're going out. You guys will text your friends that you're going out. What is the difference between the message you text to your parents and the message you text to your friends?” And they understand instantly that they're tailoring a message to audience for radically different purposes.

"Instant feedback can be horrible for a piece of writing. It can be much much better to let the writer sit with having written for a period of time to let that filter through."

—John Warner

And it's a relatively small matter to get them to start translating that in academic or scholarly contexts. Once you give them an audience, often they've not been writing for an audience. They've been writing for a teacher in the generic sense, or an assessment which really is entirely disembodied, where they're following the moves because those are the moves that they know the invisible assessor is going to like. So as soon as I give them audience and purpose they're often off and running. And it's not a difficult or painful switch at that point.

In your book you criticize many technology innovations around the teaching of writing. Could you talk about that?

There’s Edison's quote about how the moving picture is going to replace the classroom, or the hype around MOOCs when we still thought those were going to be innovative… I think that is incorrect and it's particularly incorrect for writing. Because there's no information I can give students about writing that will help them write better. I am of the belief that writing can't be taught, but it can be a learned school of thought. I can create the conditions and experiences under which writing can be engaged with, and challenges that are interesting and get students to want to do it more. But ultimately that's going to happen within the student.

I'm thinking about your piece on being John McPhee's student. And it's a great example of that process. The teacher brings you into his world, and says this is how writers act, how they behave, how they think, what they do. And it's great to be exposed to that, but ultimately you have to go put that into your practice. So I spent a lot of time just setting the terms of the action: Here's what we're going to try to do, here are the parameters under which I want us to do it, and I then provide a soundboard and feedback.

It's easy to describe what a good piece of writing looks like, but the process to produce that writing is incredibly complicated and hugely variable depending on who's doing it, and why they're doing it and what they're doing. Which I love. That's the fascinating part of the job for me. That's why I love teaching writing. But it does not lend itself to prescription, and it particularly is not something where the kinds of technologies that are injecting themselves into the space are helpful.

People argue essay grading software can make things more efficient, and help bring down the high cost of education. So what's not to like about this idea of automated grading?

The big problem is that efficiency is not a value when it comes to learning to write. Learning to write is a process that requires failure, that requires trying things over again. That requires taking a big swing and missing. And a lot of that has to happen internally to the writer themselves. So when these algorithms intervene, they can really only score an essay. To give it, say, a four out of five. That feedback by itself is not helpful.

[People tout that software gives instant feedback.] Instant feedback can be horrible for a piece of writing. It can be much much better to let the writer sit with having written for a period of time to let that filter through. I'm sure any writer has experienced this, where you wrote a draft of something, you let it sit there, you went and did something else, maybe you went to sleep or you walked the dog or you took a shower, or you did your yoga or whatever your thing is. And you came back to it, and you look at it again, and something that was stuck in your craw, all the sudden you have a solution for it.

In the book you also mention that even other technologies outside of the classroom are hurting student writing. Even Fitbits?

Fitbit's as a kind of experience of quantification and surveillance. [It sets the expectation that we'll be monitored.] Surveillance ruins the atmosphere for writing, and learning in general, I think. I talk about an app called Class Dojo that I think is potentially doing great harm to students because it's making them hyper aware of being watched in school. And the class portals where they're getting notifications of their grades in real time. A huge part of learning to write is failing, is trying to do something and not succeeding at it.

How would you boil that down to a TED talk?

Well, my Ted Talk would be very short. And it would be “fund public higher education.” [So that colleges can pay professors to grade student writing instead of using software.]

Why Students Can’t Write — And Why Tech is Part of the Problem published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[jeroldlockettus]

Extra: Mark Teixeira Full Interview

Mark Teixeira, the retired Yankee first baseman, hit 409 career home runs — No. 54 on the all-time list. The hardest thing to do in sports, he says: hitting a baseball. (Photo: Elsa/Getty)

A conversation with former Major League Baseball player and current ESPN analyst Mark Teixeira, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

This is a Freakonomics Radio extra: our full interview with Mark Teixeira, the former baseball All-Star who’s been appearing in our “The Hidden Side of Sports” series. Teixeira retired after the 2016 season, having played 14 years in the big leagues. He hit 409 home runs, won lots of offensive and defensive awards, and helped lead the New York Yankees to a World Series title in 2009.

Stephen DUBNER: Mark, if you would just start by literally saying your name and what you do?

Mark TEIXEIRA: Mark Teixeira, currently ESPN analyst and real estate developer in Atlanta, Georgia.

DUBNER: Very good. How old are you now?

TEIXEIRA: I am 38.

DUBNER: You played for 14 seasons?

TEIXEIRA: 14 years. 15 professionally, 14 in the bigs.

DUBNER: Yeah, all right. Let’s go back. So for people who know baseball, Mark Teixeira is a big big big big name. For people who don’t know baseball — and there are people out there — we’ll expose them to you. Let’s start with you as a kid. Talk about growing up, Baltimore, I believe. Talk about growing up as a kid, your family, your dad was a Naval Academy graduate. Just describe you, your family, and especially sports.

TEIXEIRA: Yes, so I had one of those really cool childhoods where both my parents were around. I had an older sister, my dad being a Navy guy — graduated from the academy — was tough on me, but fair. He really gave me a blueprint of how to act and treating people with respect and keeping my hair short and making sure I said ‘yes sir’ and ‘yes ma’am’ and those type of things — things that he learned at the Naval Academy. I was really lucky to have a family around me that gave me every opportunity to succeed. I played every sport as a kid. We didn’t have the cell phones and all the cool technology back in the day when I grew up in Severna Park, Maryland. So, I went outside and played.

DUBNER: Was baseball your best sport from the outset?

TEIXEIRA: It always was. And I actually enjoyed playing basketball more. I played backyard football. I played soccer, tennis, but I was always good at baseball. So I knew baseball was going to be a sport for my future.

DUBNER: Can you pinpoint the moment, or day, month, year, when you said to yourself, “Oh, I’m way better than everybody else.”

TEIXEIRA: Yes. And most kids grow up being — if you’re an elite athlete you’re going to be the best kid on your team. But you never really think you’re going to make it until you get that first call or letter from a pro scout. And I was a sophomore in high school and pro scouts started showing up to my games. And that’s when I was talking to my coaches and talking to my dad and talking to some of the scouts, saying, “Wow, I could actually play professional baseball. How cool is that?”

DUBNER: Your role model as I understand, it was Don Mattingly. Yes? Was he the one?

TEIXEIRA: My favorite player. My role model was my dad. My favorite player growing up was Don Mattingly. He was a guy — I loved the way he played the game. I loved his sweet swing, so smooth at first base. And growing up in Baltimore — I loved Cal Ripken, loved Eddie Murray, but Mattingly — there was something about Donnie Baseball that just really grabbed me as a young kid.

DUBNER: He was a longtime and beloved and very, very good first baseman for the Yankees, also very good defensive first baseman. You became exactly that many years later. I’m just curious, more of a character issue: you said your dad was your role model and one can see how that worked for you. Mattingly was your favorite player. It strikes me that his character was not that different from your dad’s — keep your head down, right? I’m just curious, what if your favorite player had been Reggie Jackson? Would you have become a different kind of player and person?

TEIXEIRA: That’s a great question. I think I chose somebody like Don Mattingly because of his character. While some of these players today have lots of flash and flair — I like the grinders. I wasn’t blessed with amazing speed and just athletic ability that oozed out of my pores, but I felt like I had a gift to hit a baseball, and I grinded with everything else. Everything else in my career I had to work for.

DUBNER: When you say a gift, there’s this huge debate in everything in life. Anything that involves what we call “talent.” So it could be sports, but it could be medicine, you name it, about the difference between (a) nurture and nature and (b) talent versus work and what’s called deliberate practice, the 10,000 hour rule. Tell me where you come down on that. Obviously, you have yourself as an example, and we know that you were physically talented from an early age. But talk about what it was that got you to be a professional at the highest level.

TEIXEIRA: I think the gift is No. 1. Because without the gift, you can’t take a kid that has zero athletic ability and just happens to be a hard worker and he goes to the big leagues. At any given time there’s a thousand big leaguers out there. But there’s probably 10,000 players, whether in college or amateur baseball or low professional ranks, that are good enough to someday make it.

DUBNER: Talent wise you’re saying.

TEIXEIRA: Yes, there’s 10,000 talented players with a gift. Of those 10,000 players, which are the ones that work hard enough? Which are the ones that figure it out? Which are the ones that get it? That make the right decisions and train the right way, and eat the right way and do preparation for games. Those are the ones that make it. So the gift is first. But then you have to put the time in.

DUBNER: Can you think of a particular player or a group of players who, when you were either in high school or college, obviously we know you were very good but maybe you saw some guys who looked to be on the surface more talented than you and didn’t make it.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah. The most talented player that I ever saw as an amateur was Corey Patterson. And guys that know baseball — he was the fourth or fifth overall pick from the Chicago Cubs. My draft year. And he had a decent big league career. But talent-wise, I would kill for his talent. And he had some injuries and just couldn’t quite make it over the top, but talent-wise there were a ton of guys that I thought had more talent than me, but I thought I figured it out, at a young age.

DUBNER: What do you mean by that?

TEIXEIRA: Figured it out means — in high school, by the time I was a sophomore, and I knew I had a chance, I started preparing. So I started working out, and I actually called the Florida State baseball coach because they were the No. 1 team in the country that time, and said, “Can you please just send me your workout regimen?” I started doing the Florida State baseball workout regimen. I didn’t go to my high school homecoming for three straight years because I was playing fall baseball. I didn’t do a lot of stuff in the summertime. I played 70 games every summer. My friends are going to concerts, my friends are having a good time at the beach and all these things. And I just figured out young how to make it. And that helped me as I went along in the big leagues because you don’t have your ‘A’ stuff every day, or every year even, you gotta figure it out as you go.

DUBNER: So you were a phenomenally talented and bettable, let’s say, high school prospect. I’d love you to tell a story about when you’re graduating high school. I don’t know if you know what you were ranked in the in the country at the time, I’d love to know. And then also this scenario where the Boston Red Sox wanted you but they behaved in a way that was pretty bizarre. So tell us that episode.

TEIXEIRA: Yes. This was the moment that I realized that baseball is a business. And I was the 12th rated prospect in the draft that year, my senior year. For all intents and purposes, I should have been a top 15 pick. Top 15 pick in the first round of the draft. The Red Sox that year had the ninth pick. They called me up before the draft and said, “Hey, we want you to take this signing bonus, it was $1.5 million, we’ll take you this signing bonus, agree to this pre-draft deal, we’ll draft you and you’ll get started.” Well first of all, that’s illegal. You’re not allowed to, at least in those days, you weren’t allowed to pre-negotiate a deal when you’re an amateur. So I said, “That’s not really what I’m going to do right now, so we’ll negotiate later after you draft me.”

DUBNER: Because you were an amateur, or because it was unfair to other teams, that you can’t jump the draft like that and get your guy?

TEIXEIRA: Both. Yes so my agent said, “It’s unethical, it happens, but don’t do this and you’ll get more money later if you don’t sign.” I said, “Okay, you know what? I’ll roll the dice. If the Red Sox don’t draft me, some other team will draft me and I’ll be fine.” Well draft day comes. It was going to be the coolest day of my life — the most exciting day of my life. Not only was I not the ninth pick, but I dropped to the ninth round.

DUBNER: Wow. So that’s around 270 spots or something? 30 teams?

TEIXEIRA: And who drafts me?

DUBNER: Boston Red Sox? Oh boy.

TEIXEIRA: The Boston Red Sox. They called every single team in baseball and said, “Teixeira is not signing and he’s going to Georgia Tech. Don’t draft him.” And you know what? It was a great life lesson for me, because I became a businessman that day. And it actually helped me out for the rest of my career when I was dealing with contracts.

DUBNER: That scenario is what led you to go ahead and go to college, to Georgia Tech. How many years did you stay there?

TEIXEIRA: Three years at Georgia Tech. Best three years of my life.

DUBNER: Met your wife there I understand?

TEIXEIRA: Met my wife there, had a blast. Became a better baseball player. Yeah, one of those moments in life that ‘things happened for a reason?’ Absolutely. This was all meant to be.

DUBNER: You were prepared though, if you’d been drafted let’s say first round — let’s say it was by the Red Sox, and let’s say you had signed for even the deal that they had offered before the draft — would you have taken that and gone pro? Gone straight to the minors?

TEIXEIRA: I would have. Yeah I would have. I grew up with a certain sense of expectations and ethics. And when my agent, my advisor tells me, “This is unethical. This isn’t really the right way to do things. Don’t do this.” I took his advice. I took his counsel. And when a team shows you the business side of baseball, you gotta get smart, and I did.

DUBNER: Your agent at the time was I believe Scott Boras, correct?

TEIXEIRA: Yes.

DUBNER: Who at that time was already a big deal. Would go on to become easily the most dominant agent in baseball. How did you get connected with him?

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, I became a really top prospect before my senior year. So, in my junior summer, before my senior year, I went to a wood bat tournament, which all the top prospects in high school baseball went to this tournament. And I was the only guy to hit a home run. So all the scouts, “Oh my goodness, look at this kid from Maryland, we’ve heard about him but he hit a home run in this tournament. And now he jumps to the top of the list of high school players.” And Scott Boras’ office called me that summer and said, “We’d love to talk to you.” Met with Scott and his group, and they were far and above anybody else in the business.

DUBNER: In terms of professionalism?

TEIXEIRA: Professionalism, their preparation, their knowledge of the market, their knowledge of amateur baseball. They gave you a really good sense of, “Okay, this is the landscape of baseball. This is what your career is going to look like. And this is how you should make decisions based on that.”

DUBNER: So you signed with Boras — we’ll jump ahead now, we’ll come back — you signed with Boras and he was your agent for many years. And he helped you sign, or helped you get, or you got with him, your ultimate deal which was in 2009 coming to the New York Yankees, correct?

TEIXEIRA: Yep.

DUBNER: Eight year, $180 million deal, correct?

TEIXEIRA: Yep.

DUBNER: All guaranteed?

TEIXEIRA: All guaranteed in baseball.

DUBNER: Now interestingly however, you split with Boras a few years into that, and I guess, on the one hand I understand why do you need an agent anymore once you’re signing what’s going to be the last deal in your career? But why did you split? And talk to me about the relationship of an athlete like you and an agent like him.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, when I split with Boras it was more practical reasons than anything else. It wasn’t — we didn’t have a falling out. There was none of that. But I was in New York and he’s in L.A. And when you play for the New York Yankees and you’re the starting first baseman and there’s all these things that are put on your plate, you need your agent closer. No pun intended, I hired Casey Close who happens to be a New York guy. He’d worked with Derek Jeter and the Yankees for years and years, and so really understood the landscape of the Yankees, and New York, and charity, and marketing, and all these things that happened. It just made me a little bit more comfortable being with an agent — again, I didn’t really need an agent, but just someone that could help me in New York and be closer.

DUBNER: So I guess that gets to the question of what does an agent actually do for an athlete like you at that level? And also maybe help people understand the difference between — in some industries — in entertainment, a lot of entertainers have an agent and a manager and they may have 18 other advisors. When we think of an agent, we usually only hear of an agent with an athlete when they’re negotiating or signing the deal or when something goes wrong. But you’re talking about all the different elements that come with being a major league athlete. So (a) what does an agent do, or should they do? And then (b) what did you get Casey Close involved in?

TEIXEIRA: What an agent does is, he really helps support you from the time you sign your first contract, even before your first contract, and navigate you through the business waters, the professional waters, and all of the things that can happen to you until you’re a free agent. In baseball, you don’t make your living, your career, until you’re a free agent. What Scott Boras did for me — at 18 years old we started our relationship and he taught me so much about the game. Him and some of his associates — Bob Brower was my right-hand man, Mike Fiore — he has a great group of guys around him that said, “Okay, Tex you’re 18 right now. When you’re 26 or 28, you’re going to be a free agent. And these are the things that you have to accomplish in your life and your baseball career to get you to free agency.” That’s where agents in baseball provide the most value.

Once you sign your eight-year deal, you don’t really need them that much. But what Casey did for me when I hired him in 2011, I believe, was, the Yankees — there’s a lot of charity stuff that you are involved in. There’s a lot of off-the-field distractions. I started getting hurt a little bit. And you deal with second opinions, and you deal with general managers questioning, “Hey what’s going on with Tex? And does he need surgery?” That’s where an agent later in your career can really help — is helping you take some of that pressure off your shoulders when problems happen.

DUBNER: And what about business opportunities. Is that their job to help bring some to you or maybe filter out the bad from the good?

TEIXEIRA: Yeah. Marketing opportunities, yes. But, honestly, baseball players don’t have a lot of marketing opportunities, unless you’re Derek Jeter or Mike Trout. I did a handful of deals a year. So I knew I was going to do my Nike deal. I knew I was going to do my deal with Steiner Sports for my autographs. And then a handful of other print or local media type stuff, local appearances. So it wasn’t overwhelming.

DUBNER: What about non-sports related investment though? Where did those — so I know you’re involved in a number of things, some of them predate your retirement a couple years ago — Where do those typically come from? Are are they a la carte, ad hoc, or do you have a way for soliciting and sorting?

TEIXEIRA: Most agents don’t do that for you. What they will do is they will hire somebody or point you in the right direction for financial literacy and for financial help and estate planning. I’m with a group called Winpoint. Joe Geier and his group out of Baltimore — Joe went to my high school at Mount St. Joe, years before me, but had a really great relationship with a lot of ex-Orioles, and current players, and Major League Baseball, and so he’s my business manager. He’s the one that handles all of my estate planning and all of my investments. And I like keeping them separate. If you have all of your eggs in one basket as an athlete, sometimes you’ll make wrong decisions, or sometimes your decision making will get clouded. So I like having that separation of power when it comes to business deals or investment opportunities.

DUBNER: Now Scott Boras encourages people to put a lot of eggs in one basket, yes? In terms of investment and mental guidance?

TEIXEIRA: Yeah. Scott has so many things that you can take advantage of under his umbrella. And investment advice is one of them. But the mental conditioning that he has — Harvey Dorfman was his right-hand man for mental conditioning, literally wrote the book The ABC’s of Pitching, The Mental Game of Baseball. Harvey Dorfman was one of those guys that when I was young, when I was learning how to become a great major leaguer, I leaned on him immensely. And one of the great relationships of my young career was Harvey Dorfman.

DUBNER: Okay, well one more thing about agents before we move on to your playing career. There are those who argue that an inevitable conflict is — especially a very successful agent, Boras maybe being the most, you end up having a roster of a lot of players in your stable. And then you’re dealing with a market where you’re only dealing with a limited number of buyers. There are only 30 teams and for any given player there might be a very limited pool of let’s say two, three, four teams that have the money and the need and so on. So there are those who argue that if you’re with an agent — there may be an inherent conflict of interest in that they may gain leverage by dealing you low, by making a suboptimal deal.

TEIXEIRA: You’re exactly right, and this is where every player needs to take control of his career. If I’m a first baseman and I want to go to a team that is also looking at another player that my agent has in his roster, there might be some horse trading there. “Okay well — take him, but then I gotta find a place for Tex,” and there’s back and forth. Ultimately the player has to take control. And I tell every young player, “Hire a great agent, but also know what he’s doing.”

DUBNER: Right.

TEIXEIRA: And the best agents are good at that horse trading. They’re good at getting their clients the best deal no matter what. But you have to pay attention.

DUBNER: So walk me through the deal that you signed with the Yankees, again, and that was your final deal. That was a massive free agent deal that set you and your family up for life, for generations. So that’s amazing, and congratulations because it’s a great accomplishment. Going into that, you were coming most directly from the Braves?

TEIXEIRA: Braves and Angels.

DUBNER: Braves and Angels. Right. Walk me through that deal. What were the possibilities? I believe the Red Sox were one of those, and I’m curious to know if you would even entertain that after all those years. And then talk about the negotiation of that deal and how you made the decision to come the Yankees.

TEIXEIRA: Well, first of all, free agency is not a fun process. As a major leaguer, I’m glad I only did it once. You feel completely helpless, on one hand, because there’s 30 teams out there. But really there’s probably only five or six that are really interested and really want you. And I had a family. I had two young kids and a wife that I wanted to make sure they were happy as well. So the process for me was not a lot of fun. Ultimately, it came down to the Yankees, Red Sox, Nationals, Angels and Orioles. Those were the five teams that I had face-to-face meetings with. The Red Sox actually came back for a second meeting, and it was a whole new regime. So the general manager, even the owner was new, back from ’98. So I let them know right from the beginning, “Guys I hold no hard feelings towards the Red Sox organization.”

But ultimately it came down to — I wanted to go to a place that had a chance to win every single year. And one of the things that Scott Boras always told me is, “Don’t look at the Yankees current roster, don’t look at their minor league system. This team does what it takes every year to be competitive.” And, playing in New York, putting those pinstripes on, just had too much allure, and it helped that they matched the offer of some of the other teams.

DUBNER: You come to New York. New York loves you even though you’re not a typical — New York has gotten behind a lot of guys who are a lot more aggressive than you, a lot cockier than you, and you were the nice, good, hard-working guy who also happened to be a phenomenal baseball player. Very good hitter and a great defensive first baseman. And then you get here and first season out you go and win the World Series. Talk about setting expectations. Talk about the high and then the inability to win another one after that. What that was like?

TEIXEIRA: My first year in New York in 2009 was a complete whirlwind. I’m getting lost on the way to the ballpark because the new Yankee Stadium was literally, brand new. They opened the doors three days before the season started. So, all the navigation systems — back in 2009, Waze and Google Maps weren’t around, or weren’t as good at least. So I’m getting lost getting into the ballpark in the Bronx. And then you have to worry about hitting 98 mph fastballs at night. So it was a complete whirlwind.

We win the World Series. And before I knew it spring training was around the corner. And when you get to the top of the mountain you want to stay there, the pressure’s always there. But the rosters just weren’t as good. I mean we can look at ourselves and say 2010 was the best chance we had to win again. Thought we had a pretty good team in 2010. By 2011, 2012 we just ran out of gas at the end of the season. We didn’t have the team that could make it that far.

DUBNER: How much of that is age?

TEIXEIRA: A lot of it’s age. We had a team that in 2009 were called old. At 28 years old I was one of the kids on the team. You get here and you win, but then you look at the best players, you look around that that locker room and go, “Man, we have a short window here,” and that window closed in four years. But listen, in those four years we made three A.L.C.S.’s, we won a whole lot of games, and yeah, we didn’t win another one, but not a lot of regrets there.

DUBNER: Your ultimate I guess decline as a player, it’s what happens. Players get older, they don’t keep getting better, except in rare cases like Barry Bonds. And those are usually a little bit chemically aided as it turns out. I’m curious about one thing. So you were a relatively rare power hitting switch hitter. There aren’t a whole lot of them. During your career, more and more teams started using more and more analytics. Some managers used to put a defensive shift on some players who pulled the ball a lot, but it became a lot more common. Now defenses were putting a shift on you from the left side and the right side. And your numbers were going down. Now you were also getting older and declining as a player, no offense, that’s what happens. I’m curious, in retrospect, the degree to which you think that rise in analytics and the use of the shift, and so on, was a contributing factor to your decline and how much of it was just the natural cycle of an aging baseball player.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah it’s probably 70/30, just the natural age. Without analytics I still would be retired. Analytics doesn’t make your wrist blow out. Analytics doesn’t make you tear up your knee. The things that I had to deal with. But I would say that analytics took numbers that should have been better and decreased them. I mean studies show that left handed hitters hit 20 points lower just across the board because of analytics and because of the shift.

But for me, I was lucky enough to have a really great career for the first 10 years. I had a really great 10-year run. I blew out my wrist in year 11, and it just became very tough. I felt like I was playing catch up. I had one more All-Star season that I felt really good about. But for me, it was much more the physical decline, and the analytic side of it — listen if you’re walking, if you’re hitting doubles and home runs, the shift doesn’t matter. And the one year that I did make it back to the All-Star Game, it’s because I was really locked in, physically I felt good and I was hitting doubles and a home runs again.

DUBNER: What are some ways that you benefited from analytics? Did you — I don’t know if you were a tape rat. If you watched a lot of tape. And I’m curious whether you studied pitchers and so on for their tendencies?

TEIXEIRA: I didn’t benefit at all. I was not a tape rat. I was one of those guys — because I was a switch hitter, I had too many things to think about anyway. I had two full swings. One swing is hard to keep up in Major League Baseball. I had two of them. So early on in my career I basically told myself, “I’m not adding more junk to my head and complicating things. I’m going to see the ball, and hit the ball.”

Now, did I watch tape? Absolutely. Did I have positive reinforcement? It’s called our hit tape. So you look back at when you’re good. What are the pitches you’re swinging at, where are you hitting them, where are your hands, and your feet, and your legs, and what do you look like when you’re hitting those balls? So, I used positive reinforcement. But I wasn’t the guy that went up there and said, “Okay it’s two to one. This guy has a 73 percent chance to throw a backdoor slider here, I’m going to look—” No, I never did that. And there’s a whole bunch of players that still don’t look at tape.

DUBNER: Talk about that for a minute. You don’t do that in part, I guess, because you don’t think it’s going to be productive. But I’m curious when you talk about sports where there’s live action, as the batter, you’re reacting to someone else throwing. As a pitcher, it’s a little bit different. You’re generating the action. As a golfer it’s different, you’re generating the action from the ball at stop. And in those cases, we know that the mind can really get in the way, right? When you’re reacting, theoretically to some benefit, because you don’t have the time to quote ‘think.’ But on the other hand, when you’re in the batter’s box and you’re dug in, and waiting for the pitcher — talk for a moment about that thought process and maybe when your mind does get in the way.

TEIXEIRA: I had two different swing thoughts that, depending on the pitcher, was my plan. Everyone says, when you go up to the plate you need to have a plan. And a guy that threw hard, say 95 and above, my plan was get the head of the bat on the ball. Put the barrel of the bat, square the ball up, wherever it goes is a positive. If a guy threw soft, a Greg Maddux-type guy, I looked for a location. I said, “Okay I’m going to look for the ball away here. I’m going to stay on it. I’m going to stay square. I’m going to hit the ball the other way.” Or, say a guy threw a lot of curveballs. Okay, I’m going to wait for a curveball. I’m just going to sit, sit, sit. So that was my plan on fast guys or guys that threw softer.

Where you get into problems was when your first swing against that guy who is fast and it was a bad swing, you go, “Oh wait a second, I’m going to change my plan here. And I think he’s going to throw me a curveball, and I’m going to sit on a curveball,” and he throws another fastball and you break your bat, because you’re late. That’s where your mind gets in the way. When you should be keeping it very simple and reacting, you complicate things and then are slow to react or late to react and then you’re done in baseball.

DUBNER: Did you see great hitters, however, who did think a lot at the plate in a way that you’re describing was not productive for you?

TEIXEIRA: Yes some guys joked, “He’s so dumb, he’s a great hitter.” See it, hit it, react. And there are a lot of great hitters that did that. Then there’s Chipper Jones, just went into the Hall of Fame yesterday. Chipper Jones knew exactly what he was going to do on every single pitch. He looked at the tape — and he was a switch hitter too, so don’t tell me how that worked — but he really looked at pitchers. He set pitchers up. He sat on pitches and it helps that he was so talented. Eye-hand contact. His coordination was just amazing. But he was one of those guys that thought through every at-bat.

*      *      *

DUBNER: I’ve heard you talk in the past about spring training. So, I’d love you to describe this for people, again, who don’t know baseball but even who do: you’ve talked about every year you’d show up, and it’s relearning — both from a confidence and a physical level — relearning to swing. I find it hard to believe that, but I’d love to hear you talk about it.

TEIXEIRA: When I say that it’s true. Every year I showed up to spring training, I had to learn how to hit major-league pitching again. Because timing is so important, right? If I got into a cage today, I’d still probably look like a big leaguer. Put me on a tee or throw 60 mph softballs to me, I could probably still hit some balls and look like a big leaguer. If you put me in a 95 mph fastball situation with a guy that’s got a slider and a changeup, I would look like I never played the game, because I have no reference point. I haven’t had one in a year and a half — since I retired, almost two years now. I have no reference point to the timing of when I need to start my swing and where that ball’s going to be at the plate. That’s what I mean when I say you have to figure out, you have to re-learn how to hit major league hitting. It’s all about that timing. It’s not like riding a bike. Some guys it is, but for me it wasn’t. Every year my timing — from both sides of the plate — had to get right. And that’s one of the reasons most of the time I had a slow April.

DUBNER: And then for both sides of the plate — you’ve also referred to how your right-hand swing and your left-hand swings were really different. So I’d like you to talk about that. Also, again, for people who don’t know baseball, it’d be a little bit like watching a great basketball player with a jump shot, start to shoot left handed sometimes, when the situation called for it. It doesn’t happen in other sports.

TEIXEIRA: Nope.

DUBNER: In baseball it does, for a variety of reasons, and it’s an advantage obviously, but can you talk about — I would imagine that one swing is a mirror image of the other. I gather however that is not, correct?

TEIXEIRA: It’s not, because of right hand domination. So I throw right-handed. I write right-handed. I do everything right-handed. So as a right-handed hitter my top hand, my right hand, is the steering mechanism for the bat. And because of that, I was a better contact hitter right-handed, because that dominant hand, your top hand steering it, I could steer the bat where I wanted. Left-handed, that right hand, dominant hand, is the bottom hand. And that is my pull, trigger — the bat gets through the zone quick. I hit longer home runs left handed, I hit more home runs left handed. I was a much more power hitter, much more pull hitter left handed.

DUBNER: More strikeouts lefty?

TEIXEIRA: Probably, I’m sure. I’m sure I had more strikeouts lefty. I also hit the inside pitch way better left-handed. Right-handed, you could bust me in all the time. I was not a good inside hitter right-handed because I just didn’t have the bat speed right-handed. That’s why I had two different swings. It’s not by design, I picked up a bat left-handed and I just had a different swing.

DUBNER: What about dominant eye though? I always wondered about this. When I played baseball growing up I was a right-handed batter. But then when I played Wiffle ball I could hit great lefty. And I thought, why was this? Obviously it’s a different ball, everything’s different, and I was an okay switch hitter as a kid but not good enough to actually do it in games. And then I started to wonder, maybe I’m just seeing it better. Or it’s different. I’m curious about that.

TEIXEIRA: You were. You were seeing it better. I am right eye dominant.

DUBNER: How can you tell? I see you holding up your hands here.

TEIXEIRA: So you put your hands in front of you in a triangle, keep both eyes open and point to a spot, get it the microphone or something here. And then close one eye and close the other one whatever you see it with that’s your dominant eye.

DUBNER: Oh yeah.

TEIXEIRA: So I’m right-eye dominant. That being said, I could stay closed left-handed. Right-handed I had to open up my stance and actually point my face towards the pitcher more, so my right eye could see the ball better. But I’m naturally right handed I was able to always have better plate discipline, right-handed. But because I’m right-eye dominant, I was able to become a switch hitter. I’d like to see a statistic on switch hitters that are naturally right-handed that are right-eye dominant. I would probably guess most of them are right-eye dominant.

DUBNER: Now, considering that you figured that out, did you think about training your left eye?

TEIXEIRA: I tried. It’s one of those — when you work out and you feel sore the next day, you know that it worked. What I did in the gym, worked. I don’t know if it works, but I did eye exercises for two months, messing around with it, and I don’t know if it worked. I just I ended up letting it go. Again, I try to keep things simple. Baseball, when you break it down, is a very simple game. They throw a ball at you and you gotta hit it. And I didn’t want to complicate things. I’m not a quarterback in the N.F.L. with 15 different plays or 50 different options of that play. I’m see the ball, hit the ball.

DUBNER: Describe briefly your game day routine. Let’s say it was a home game playing for the New York Yankees. You’ve got your family living in Connecticut. Describe from morning to night what the day was like.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, so I slept in, because your games are over at 10:30/11:00. You’re not getting home until 12:30 or 1:00. So I slept in until probably 10 or 11, every day. Just hung out at the house. Did nothing usually. Try to spend some time with my kids. When I was on the road, I’d sit in the hotel room or maybe take a little stroll and have breakfast or lunch, but I really tried to conserve as much energy as possible before the games. Leave for the ballpark around 2.

DUBNER: No golf on game days.

TEIXEIRA: No never. I would probably golf once or twice during the entire season. And I love golf, but I just didn’t have the energy to swing a golf club or be outside for four hours and then go play a game. Some guys do it. I could never do that. So, leave for about — leave at about 2. Get to the ballpark no later than 3, and then start the process. Start the process, which is you maybe grab a quick bite to eat because you have a long day ahead of you.

DUBNER: Is this the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or is that right before the game?

TEIXEIRA: So, yeah, before I became gluten free it was always peanut butter and jelly sandwich before the game.

DUBNER: Okay.

TEIXEIRA: But usually at 3 it was a grilled chicken sandwich or something semi-healthy. But it gets you to that pregame meal. And so, I would do my stretching and get ready for my batting practice session. Take batting practice in the cage. Get loosened up in the cage, which is tee a drill. Do that tee drill for 15 or 20 minutes. Go back. Do all my interviews. Get that out of the way before batting practice. You go out to the batting practice and stretch run, throw, take your ground balls, take your round of BP.

And then it’s an hour of chill time before the game. That’s when you let everything sink in. If you do need to get treatment, on injuries whatever, you do that. If you need to get extra stretching, if you need to watch video, whatever it might be. You do that in between batting practice and the game. Then at about 6 or 6:15, I grab that peanut butter and jelly sandwich — again, before I became gluten free — and then a cup of coffee because it’s a long day and you need a little jolt before the game. And I was on the field by 6:40.

DUBNER: Did you — was there any mental concentration, meditation, prayer or anything like that?

TEIXEIRA: The routine got me locked in. I knew while I was doing my routine, the closer I got to game time — I looked at the clock. And you always knew, there was clocks all over big league clubhouses, right? No one wants to be late for for a stretch, or a meeting, or a game. So there’s clocks everywhere. And as the clock got closer to 7:05, I just slowly got locked in. I didn’t talk to a lot of people before the game. I wasn’t very chatty. I was focused, and I knew every single night that the fans of New York expected me to go out there and make my plays at first, and hopefully get a hit or drive in a run. So, I took that very seriously.

DUBNER: Were you an anthem singer or an anthem hummer?

TEIXEIRA: I prayed during the anthem. That was my time, my Christian faith is very important to me. And if not for the God-given ability that I have, I wouldn’t be playing Major League Baseball. So, always gave thanks to God during the national anthem and said some prayers for my family and friends or people that were struggling or whatever was happening. And that also helped too, because that was a minute or two where I could lock in and get burdens maybe that are on my heart or on my mind get them off my chest and then go out and play the game.

DUBNER: The anthem protests that have become a big deal in football have not hit baseball. And there might be a million different reasons why. I’m just curious your thoughts on that. You’re not only a longtime athlete, now retired athlete, sports commentator, but a bright guy who’s involved in the real world. I’m curious what you make of those protests and especially how it’s affecting professional sports and the perspective that the public has on professional athletes.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, first of all, I definitely think that players, in leagues all over the world, should speak out, either for or against things that they feel strongly about. The problem is, the Yankees pay me to play first base. They pay me to get hits. They don’t pay me while I am on the field to be a distraction. And whether you agree or you disagree with whatever I’m standing up for, during the game, during the national anthem especially, when we’re honoring the country and we’re honoring those who have fought for our freedom, I just don’t think that’s the right platform. Now after the game, in the offseason, when you’re home or you’re in your own community, in which there’s issues going on, absolutely speak up, because athletes and celebrities have a very strong platform. But whether it’s the Dallas Cowboys or New York Yankees or Golden State Warriors, we are paid to play a sport, and we’re paid to, while we’re on the field, while we’re in the uniform, to respect the rules of that league or that team. And I just don’t think that the national anthem is a time to make that stand.

DUBNER: So I hear that argument. Here’s a counter: some people would say that a pro athlete — it’s a little bit like Cinderella. When you’re in the zone, when you’re wearing the dress, before midnight, you’re a different person. Everyone’s paying attention. When you’re in uniform during a game, that’s when you have the most leverage. And then, no matter how prominent an athlete you may be if you’re doing an interview, even immediately after the game, or during the off-season with your local media or whatnot, and you say, “Hey listen, this is a big problem that I see.” It might be domestic violence, income inequality, police brutality. We know those stories get coverage. But compared to the leverage that you have during the game, it’s one one-thousandth, one ten-thous— taking the devil’s advocate position, I could see why, man, if I’m an athlete I know that the only way I have a chance to really raise hell is to do it right now. And you’re saying that’s inappropriate because you’re essentially there to do one job and—

TEIXEIRA: Well you’re also an employee. I have a really cool job at ESPN. If I took Baseball Tonight tomorrow during the trade deadline show and said, “Hey guys, just stop for five minutes, because I have something I want to talk about.” I’d probably be fired. Because I’m an employee and I have to do what I’m told when it comes to certain rules and regulations — now if the league league says, “Hey, you guys do whatever you want,” then hey, that’s great. Do whatever you want. But the N.F.L. has seen the the protests be a double-edged sword. While they’re proud of their players standing up for certain things or whatever it might be, they also have to understand that there’s a whole lot of people that don’t appreciate it and it’s probably not the best time to be taking a stand right before a game, when they know it’s going to be a distraction.

DUBNER: There’s also obviously a lot of class and ethnic, racial considerations here, and I want to ask you about that on a baseball team. There are scholars who argue that sports teams are among the best institutions — along with the military, by the way — at building what they call social trust. Meaning, you feel someone’s got your back, even if you don’t know them. And they say that sports teams in particular, and again, the military, where people from very different backgrounds come together — you emerge from that as if you’re you’ve got a lot in common. And I’d love you to talk about that for a moment, (a) if you experienced it, and (b) if you think there’s any way to port that over into the real world without making everyone join the Yankees.

TEIXEIRA: I agree completely. During my career I played with black, white, Asian, people from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, wherever it might be. And we all got along. I mean 99.9 percent of athlete teammates get along. Now they don’t have to be best friends, but get along on the field, why? Because there’s a common goal. In the military, why do people in the military get along? Because there’s a common goal.

And where we can use that in society is: let’s not always harp on our differences. Me and you could spend an hour talking about what we disagree on. That would not be a productive hour, time together. We would rather talk about interesting things in economics, and sports, and life, and things that we we enjoy about life. Happy things in life. Things that are positive. If we continue to harp on negative things in society or the mainstream media, you’re going to have these issues.

But sports and the military, as you said, were always focused on how do we win this game? How do we become a closer team, to win this game for our fans, and for our front office, and our ownership, or whatever it might be? Because let’s not talk about — I’m sure we have differences. I’m sure we don’t agree on every single thing. That’s human nature. But what we can agree on is working hard together and showing up on time and being accountable to each other and working towards that common goal.

DUBNER: Let me ask you this about something you just mentioned about how we focus on the negative. It does seem to be a human trait. It does, however, also seem to be magnified by the current — meaning contemporary landscape — meaning communication media and so on. There are people who will do a comparison. If you look at a European King, in the 17th century, versus the middle billion of the world right now — the life of the middle billion today is better than the king on every ground, except housing, because palaces and castles are hard to beat. But in terms of just about everything else, life has gotten so much better. And yet we don’t talk about that too much and acknowledge it. We do tend to focus on these differences often. And I’m curious: look, you’re you’re an athlete, you’re not a philosopher, a psychologist or whatever. But I’m curious to know if you have a perspective on that.

TEIXEIRA: Yes. It’s a great perspective. One of the things I do when I pray is I thank God for being born the United States. I won the lottery just by being born in the United States. The freedoms that we have, the opportunities that we have. There’s no guarantee. Obviously there’s a lot of pain, and suffering, and poverty, that we’re all trying to to help and fix. But you have the opportunity because of the freedoms that we have in our country. We can sit here and focus on all the negative things in our country, and there’s plenty of them. We could fill a hundred of these podcasts with all the negative things that are happening in our country.

DUBNER: Well we do that most weeks. Just so you know.

TEIXEIRA: But let’s wake up a little bit and be thankful for what we have. Because there’s a lot of places in this world that, if I was born into, I would not be even close to the person I am today or even have close to the opportunity, because you start life with two strikes against you in third-world countries or countries where you have no freedom. I’m lucky to be born here and to live here.

DUBNER: Scholars say another way in which athletes and sports teams produce a social cohesion is that conflict resolution is handled really differently on sports teams. They say that outside of sports and the military, there’s a lot of passive-aggressive. So in an office world, you might send someone an e-mail with some snarky wording as opposed to going up and saying, “Hey listen, you did this, I did that, blah blah blah.” Tell me about a case, or maybe a general scenario, maybe it’s a teammate, maybe it was something — Jeter was famous for being a good captain on a number of dimensions. Talk about a way that you saw a problem get resolved on a team that you think is very different from the real world.

TEIXEIRA: That’s a great point, because I love it when guys bark at each other, real loud for 20 seconds, and it’s over. Because that is way more effective at conflict resolution than a guy for three weeks, or the whole season, being passive-aggressive and then creating this really weird situation around both these players. And then it permeates to the rest of the team. Then you start having cliques. I would much rather — and I’ve done it, with coaches, with players — where we’ve had it out, almost fist fight, and then 20 minutes later you’re fine.

DUBNER: Give me a for instance. What’s the scenario, what do you say?

TEIXEIRA: In 2015, my third base coach Joe Espada, who I love, told me to hold up at third base because I was going to score easily. I ended up getting thrown out. And he just missed — just totally, just botched the situation. And he knew he botched it. And I almost got hurt. I had to half slide, and it looked terrible, and we needed the run and all these things. I went into the dugout and I just started throwing stuff. I just went nuts. I had this rage.

DUBNER: That doesn’t sound very Tex to me.

TEIXEIRA: No, I had this rage inside of me, because I was so mad at the situation. The situation lasted 15 minutes. I told Joe after the game, “We’re all good. Hey, I know you’re trying your best.” And it was done. It was over with. And those type of situations — Tom Brady, one of the best of all time, barking at his coaches, barking at his offensive lineman, barking at his receivers. But guess what, people take less, to go play for the Patriots. Coaches take demotions to stay with the Patriots because they want to be a part of the Bill Belichick, Tom Brady atmosphere that they create there.

DUBNER: My Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt did some research, and he found that pitchers essentially throw too many fastballs. Okay? So part of this is may be mistaken belief, and part of it is that many people are not good at randomizing, which is a useful trick when you’re trying to in any game theory thing. So let me just read you a tiny bit of this. I’m really curious to know what you have to say. When there are two strikes is when the scenario really happens. When there are two strikes, fastballs generate an OPS, that’s on-base plus slugging percentage, that is more than 100 points higher than non fastballs. The authors calculate that if a team’s pitchers reduce their share of fastballs by 10 percentage points, they would allow roughly 15 fewer runs in a season. About 2 percent of their total runs. Make sense?

TEIXEIRA: Yep. And I agree 100 percent. The issue is you have to take the pitcher’s skill and ability to perform that skill with two strikes. So, the pitchers that can throw curveballs, and change ups, and sliders with two strikes, do it. The guys that maybe bounce that pitch or hang that pitch, are going to throw fastballs. They’re going to get hit. So, the best pitchers in baseball, they throw more sliders and curveballs and change ups with two strikes because they can control it better. 

And the last thing you want to do is get a guy down 0-2, throw three straight sliders in the dirt because you can’t control that pitch, and then have to come back with a 3-2 fastball, because the hitter knows that you can’t throw a slider for a strike. You don’t have any confidence. Your catcher doesn’t have any confidence, in you throwing an off speed pitch for a strike. And the hitter’s geared up for a fastball and that’s why those numbers get up there.

DUBNER: So what we need to ask Levitt — and I’m sure this is in the paper, and I don’t have it off the top my head — is whether they controlled for the efficacy of the pitcher.

TEIXEIRA: Yes.

DUBNER: Because you’re saying the good pitchers won’t do it.

TEIXEIRA: I agree. That’s the issue. The best pitchers can execute those pitches. I feasted — my entire career was based on a guy. Not getting me to chase the curveballs and the sliders in the dirt, and having to come with a fastball over the middle of the plate. That was the style of hitter that I was.

DUBNER: So, did you in your mind know, whoever’s on the mound, that they’re the kind a pitcher who doesn’t have the ability to throw the cutting? The off—

TEIXEIRA: Yes. So that was the preparation that I had.

DUBNER: Right.

TEIXEIRA: So I would ask the pitching coach, if I didn’t know this guy. Now, once I was in the big leagues for four or five years, I started knowing the players, and then I would only ask the hitting coach, “Hey this guy’s a rookie, what’s his percentage of off-speed strikes?”

DUBNER: Right.

TEIXEIRA: And if his percentage of off-speed strikes was really low, I’m just sitting dead red fastball. Why would I take into account a slider or a change up or split finger fastball that he doesn’t throw for strikes? I’m going to bet that the numbers hold up. He’s not going to throw a strike with that off-speed pitch, and he’s going to have to throw me a fastball that I can then hammer.

DUBNER: Who were the pitchers that just plagued you during your career?

TEIXEIRA: The guy that I had the worst time against was James Shields. Did not hit him well. Did not hit Justin Verlander well.

DUBNER: Well, join the crowd.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, and then and then you have weird guys like Aaron Sele, who didn’t throw more — by the time I faced him, didn’t throw more than 86 mph. I just could not hit him. Some really good pitchers had my number. But there are also some guys that weren’t All-Stars every season that had my number as well.

DUBNER: And does it become self-enforcing after a while? A pitcher like Sele, you think, “Man I can’t hit the guy.” And then—

TEIXEIRA: Sometimes it does. Yeah, confidence is huge in baseball. That’s why baseball teams and baseball players are so streaky. You have these guys that hit seven homers in a month and then don’t hit one for six weeks. Or a pitcher that wins 14 straight games and then the last month of the season can’t get out of the third inning, because the confidence to to swing at good pitches, to to get good results, it builds on itself. And you’ve heard, hitting is contagious. Well it’s not physically contagious. But mentally, when I see the three guys in front of me, just got hits, I go up there going, “Hey, this guy can be hit today. He might be an All-Star but this guy is going to get hit because those three guys in front of me just got just got base hits and now I’m next.”

DUBNER: Were you ever totally lost at the plate?

TEIXEIRA: Absolutely. I had stretches, whether it was a week or even a month, where I said, “This might be my last week in baseball. I am so bad right now. There is no way I’m getting another hit in Major League Baseball. I look awful. I feel awful. I can’t get a hit.” But then something just snaps.

And it’s just like in golf when you can’t make a short putt. You go an entire round or maybe an entire week, or you play three rounds, and you don’t make anything within four feet. You just can’t make that putt. Or your driver, you’re snap-hooking everything. And no matter what you do, no matter what you try, you just can’t hit that driver straight.

Happens in baseball all the time because it’s a very hard skill. Hitting a baseball is still the hardest thing to do in sports. And you have guys on the mound that are trying to get you out, and if you’re off a little bit mechanically, mentally, confidence-wise, and he’s on, you can have some bad nights.

DUBNER: So, how do you get back to success? Because I’m sure you’re trying to adjust — you are trying to adjust mechanically, psychically, and so on. What actually works?

TEIXEIRA: Shock the system. So, we talked about tricking the system, shocking the system. So, it’s either taking more batting practice or taking no batting practice. It’s changing your bat. It’s changing the way you stand just a little bit. Altering your stance just a little bit. Maybe just get a hard workout in. Maybe I’m a little too jumpy. I got a little bit too much energy — let me get a hard workout in before the game. I’m going to be a little slower, a little bit tired during this game. Or the opposite. I’m exhausted so I’m going to sleep all day. I’m not going to take batting practice. I’m going to get a massage. And really try to be fresh. It’s just completely changing up your system.

DUBNER: Would you ever change the P.B.J.?

TEIXEIRA: Yeah. I would go honey sometimes. Peanut butter and honey that was m —

DUBNER: Is that your slump food or—

TEIXEIRA: That was the slump breaker.

DUBNER: Yeah, that’s radical.

TEIXEIRA: I’m crazy.

DUBNER: Yeah, you are. For people again who don’t play baseball or know baseball, I’d like you to just describe a scenario — so, you’re a very, very, very good defensive first baseman, which is valuable but not necessarily so appreciated by the casual fan. There’s one aspect to playing in the field that people would love to hear about, which is, what you’re doing in your mind before every pitch.

So I’d love you to describe — pick a scenario. If it’s a real one, all the better. And maybe it’s a tight game. And maybe there’s a runner on first and maybe second. And maybe you’re holding the runner, depending. And then you’re thinking, “Here’s my pitcher. There is the batter. What pitch is going to be thrown. And what do I do if it’s hit to third, to short, to second, to me, on the ground, in the air, and so on.” Just talk about that moment.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah so, when I was at first base, I would actually play the entire scenario in my head. So I would say 2-and-1, one out. Ball hit to me, to my left I’m going to second. Ball hit in front of me, I’m just getting the out — whatever it might be. So I would play the entire scenario ahead of time, and I would actually position myself and then look to my right and left and maybe sometimes even behind me and say, “Okay, well if the ball’s hit this way I’m going to do that, if the ball’s hit like this I’m going to do that.” So I got bored during games, and so I started doing this probably five or six years into my career, where I would actually play the game in my head in between pitches. And it kept me from getting bored, but it also had a really nice result that I actually was prepared for when those different balls were hit to me and it actually worked out.

DUBNER: Now, doesn’t everybody do that? I mean I remember learning that in Little League. I mean that’s—

TEIXEIRA: Well everyone’s supposed to do that but a lot of guys don’t.

DUBNER: Really?

TEIXEIRA: A lot of guys completely space out. I mean, listen, when no one’s on it’s pretty easy. But when there’s guys on base, it kills me to see fielders going to the wrong base, not being prepared for different situations, outfielders not hitting the cutoff man. These are little things in baseball that I learned when I was young that I don’t think get taught anymore. You have a lot more players that are worried about analytics and don’t spend the time on the nuances of baseball, and the skills, and the subtleties that make you a great player.

DUBNER: We recently interviewed Lance Armstrong on the show and he argued that he and his team started taking E.P.O. because everybody else was doing it. And that if they didn’t they were, they were goners. That there was just no way to compete. You played in an era that was the end of the big steroid era, in which some of the best home run hitters in history were turned out to have all — many of them, doping. Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds. And then a few of your very prominent teammates, great baseball players, Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera also were found to be doping. I’d love to talk — I’d love to hear about — first of all let’s start with this. Did you ever use performance enhancing drugs?

TEIXEIRA: No. Never. And I told myself — I got offered my rookie year. And I told my—

DUBNER: What did you get offered?

TEIXEIRA: I don’t even know what it was — I mean I don’t know what the name — some pill. I don’t know. I’m not sure what it was. And—

DUBNER: Who offered?

TEIXEIRA: A teammate — I’m not going to say who offered—

DUBNER: But I mean was a teammate?

TEIXEIRA: A teammate. Yeah. And he said, he said, “Tex you can’t play this game on milk and cookies.” And I just told him, flippant self at 22 years old. I said, “Well I am going to try.” And I told myself right then and there, if I have to take drugs, illegal steroids, to play this game I’ll retire. It’s — it’s not something—

DUBNER: Why?

TEIXEIRA: That’s the way I was I was brought up. It’s wrong. I can’t stand people that make excuses for breaking the rules. Our union has made rules and agreed to rules because it’s for the betterment of our entire union and for the betterment of the game of baseball. We agree to these rules. If you knowingly break those rules you should be punished to the utmost degree. And I don’t think our punishments are hard enough. We should have much stricter enforcement of the rules and much stricter punishments.

One of the the highlights of my career is I can look at kids — I speak to kids all the time. I speak to kids in Harlem and the Bronx and at home in Baltimore or wherever it might be. And one of the things I’m proudest to say to them is, “Yeah, I had a nice career, but I didn’t have to take steroids to make it. And you don’t have to cut corners.”

Because what kind of message am I telling kids or telling my own children. I have a 12-, 10- and 7-year-old. What kind of message am I telling them, “Hey kids it’s okay to break the rules. It’s okay to cheat. It’s okay to lie. It’s okay to steal.” These are just terrible things that we’re teaching our children. That you can go do these things in professional sports and get away with it. And really just get a slap on the wrist.

DUBNER: As I said, you had a very, very good career. Way better than solid. Some people say about different players, career was solid — it was a long and very good career. There was a World Series, there were a lot of individual honors, you hit very, very well. You fielded great. The Hall of Fame — it’s a funny thing — election these days is contentious in part because the baseball writers, who elect the Hall of Fame candidates, they’ve decided they don’t want steroid players in the Hall. Which is controversial. So there are a lot of guys who are not going in. I’m curious to know your feelings about it. Obviously you want to get in. I’m curious to know whether you feel you deserve it. I know you’re a humble guy and you’re probably not going to say yes, but I’d love to know what that thought process is like as you’re in this period right now between the end of your career and when you’re eligible.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, I think about it. Definitely. But I don’t think I’ll get in. I think that I had a great career under different metrics. I do believe that some of the steroid guys are already in, and there are some guys that have taken P.E.D.’s that are in the Hall of Fame. Everyone knows that. But you’re going to start seeing some of those players get in. And I just think that under those metrics—

DUBNER: And that’ll keep you out, you’re saying.

TEIXEIRA: I’m not a Hall of Famer, yeah. 400 home runs, when guys were hitting 50 a year, my 30 a year didn’t look so good.

DUBNER: Don’t you think they might redo the metrics and a little bit and give extra points for playing clean?

TEIXEIRA: I hope so. If that’s the case I have a much better chance. But it’s not something I think about more than a few times a year, when we have these type of conversation. But it’s not something that I think about all the time.

DUBNER: Did you lead the league in P.B.J.’s or were a lot of guys doing that?

TEIXEIRA: I’m sure I did. And I also — one of the cool stats that I do own is most hit-by-pitch, in my career, by a switch hitter.

DUBNER: Oh nice, yeah.

TEIXEIRA: So I got that. I got that hanging, and one of the things I’m most proud of is hitting 30 homers and driving in a hundred runs for eight straight years. Because the first time I did it, I had to pinch myself. I was a second year player, playing for the Rangers, and I said, “Oh my goodness, I just hit 30 homers and drove in a hundred R.B.I.’s,” and being able to do that eight straight years is the thing I’m most proud of.

DUBNER: Yeah. It was a great career. As a New Yorker, I enjoyed watching you with the Yankees and I especially enjoyed getting to talk to you today. So thank you so much.

TEIXEIRA: Thank you.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. Our “Hidden Side of Sports” series was produced by Anders Kelto and Derek John, with help from Alvin Melathe, Matt Stroup, and Harry Huggins. Our staff includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, and Zack Lapinski. The music you hear throughout our episodes was composed by Luis Guerra. Our show can also be heard on NPR stations across the country — check your local station for the schedule — as well as on SiriusXM, Spotify, and even your better airlines! Thanks for listening.

The post Extra: Mark Teixeira Full Interview appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mark-teixeira/

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Three Ways to Honor Your Body’s Fullness (Intuitive Eating Principle 6)

Continuing on with our Intuitive Eating Principles Series, today I am supplying you with tips on how to start tuning into your body’s sense of fullness. Intuitive Eating is all about self-knowledge, self-care, and self-compassion, and when you can listen to your body’s signals, you can better understand when you are full and what foods are satisfying you.

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Finding Support Through Intuitive Eating

Intuitive Eating is not a solo experience. It takes a good support group and framework in order to accomplish your goals and break up with diet culture. Through Intuitive Eating Principle 6, you can begin to listen to the messages your body is sending you, and get back to treating your body right.

How to Acknowledge Your Bodies Unique Fullness Signals

When was the last time you took a moment to check in with yourself during mealtime? Oftentimes we can rush through or distract ourselves when eating, which leads to stuffing ourselves past the point of satisfaction. Instead of eating past the point of comfortable fullness, Intuitive Eating can help you stop when you are satisfied.

Three Tips to Start Listening To Your Body

Diet culture has robbed many of us the trust we need in our bodies to be able to eat without a set of restrictions. By checking in with yourself throughout your meal, avoiding the ‘air foods’ that many diets try to push as ‘healthy’, and by listening to the innate cues your body is giving you, you too can feel your fullness and honor your body’s needs.

Do you struggle with your ability to sense your fullness, stop clearing the plate, and finish eating when you feel truly satisfied? Share how you differentiate between fullness and satisfaction with me in the comments below.

In This Episode

The importance of a support system when diving into Intuitive Eating and going against the grain of diet culture (3:20)

Three points to help you start tuning into your hunger and feeling your fullness (6:30)

Why you should stop filling up on ‘air foods’ that diet culture tells you are the ‘right’ choice (14:06)

The difference between satisfying your hunger and actually fueling your body with real foods (17:00)

How to become okay with not always finishing your plate and avoid binge eating (18:08)

Key Takeaways

In Order To Start Feeling Your Fullness You Must:

Get real about what dieting has taken from you and start to pay attention to the innate signals coming from within your body

Avoid filling up on ‘air foods’ and create moments to pause and check-in during mealtimes

Honor the signals that you feel of hunger or fullness and build trust in yourself that you can eat again

Resources Mentioned In This Show

Join the Listen To Your Body Insiders Newsletter

National Eating Disorder Association Free Assessment

LTYB 288: How To Ditch Dieting (Intuitive Eating Principle 1)

LTYB 289: Honoring Your Hunger (Intuitive Eating Principle 2)

LTYB 292: Make Peace With Food (Intuitive Eating Principle 3)

LTYB 293: Challenging The Food Police (Intuitive Eating Principle 4)

LTYB 296: 3 Ways to Make Eating More Satisfying (Intuitive Eating Principle 5)

Quotes

“Please do not attempt this Intuitive Eating journey completely by yourself, and think that you have to be the hero and do everything and it’s an individual pursuit. Because really, that’s what diet culture loves.” (3:48)

“Intuitive Eating isn’t one of those things that you read or you hear a podcast about and you think ‘Great, now I’m an intuitive eater!’. No! It’s something that you practice and something you have to embody.” (5:12)

“If you consistently rush through meals or you are consistently distracted and you haven’t practiced feeling and sensing your fullness, this is a huge area for growth opportunity for you to be able to start doing that.” (13:12)

“If my tactic, every time I start to feel hungry or every time I try to fill myself up, is to go back to relying on these ‘air foods’, it’s not saying they don’t provide any kind of benefit, but are they really satisfying our hunger? And the answer in a lot of those cases is ‘no’.” (17:04)

“It’s not an arbitrary portion control based on external rules. This is about tuning in, noticing… building that trust again that what your body is telling you is something you can begin to listen too.” (21:53)

Three Ways to Honor Your Body’s Fullness (Intuitive Eating Principle 6) FULL TRANSCRIPT

This is Episode 297 of the Listen To Your Body podcast and on today’s show a continuation of our intuitive eating series. This one is all about tips for you to start tuning in to your sense of fullness. The next evolution of Harder To Kill Radio is here, welcome to the Listen To Your Body podcast. On this show, we’ll explore the intersection of body, mind, and soul health and help you reclaim your abilities to eat and move more intuitively, hear your body’s signals, and trust yourself more deeply. I’m Steph Gaudreau, a certified intuitive eating counselor, nutritional therapy practitioner, and strength coach. On this podcast, you can expect to hear expert guest interviews and solo chats that will help you deepen your trust with food movement and your body. Remember to hit the subscribe button and share this podcast with your friends and loved ones. Now, on to the show.

Hello, hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Oh my goodness, I’m so glad that you’re here today. Thank you so much for hanging out with me on the show and listening to the continuation of our series, all about the principles of intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is a part of the framework that I teach and it is really such a powerful way to start tuning in, to start paying attention to your body to your body’s signals and using that information to help you break up with dieting. So on today’s podcast, I’m going to be diving into principle six of intuitive eating which is all about feeling your fullness.

Now I have to give kind of a content warning today I am going to be mentioned a couple of things about eating disorders and disordered eating. So if you feel like that is not something that you want to listen to, then I would recommend skipping over this particular show. Or you can go check out the show notes and see exactly what section of the show we talked about that and then be able to hop off before that comes up. Remember a couple of things before we jump in first, push that subscribe button on your podcast app, that’s going to make sure the show gets into your device, and is ready and queued up for you to listen every time a new episode comes out. Secondly, if you love this episode, it resonated with you in some way then please share it on social media and tag me I would love to see it and I would of course love to amplify what you learn and what hit home for you in this particular show. The last thing to do is join my newsletter called the Listen To Your Body newsletter and you can do that at StephGaudreau.com/LTYB. There you’re going to find more about these topics, intuitive eating, body neutrality tuning in, and so much more in detail and then every time I have something new for you and offering a way that you can work with me, you’re going to get an announcement about that and a chance to learn more and join in because doing this with support of some description is so very important. Whether that means working with me, it means joining a community, getting help and support in your life from the people that you know and love and trust. Please do not attempt this intuitive eating journey completely by yourself and think that you have to be the hero and do everything and it’s an individual pursuit because really, that’s what diet culture loves.

Diet culture, loves to isolate, separate, and move people into silos where they are feeling like if they fuck it up, it’s all their fault and that is not true. So please make sure that if you are learning about this, even if you’re just learning about it that you get support because here’s the thing you’re going to hear, you’re going to see constant reinforcement from the diet culture that we live in. Whether it’s celebrity trainers, all the way to your grandma, who I’m sure your grandma means really well. But we get these messages from everywhere television films, you name it, diet, culture is everywhere. And if you are doing this alone, it’s gonna feel like it’s you against the world and like you’re a complete freak for wanting to do it, and it’s going to be too hard. So please get some support along the way. It is not something to do by herself. All right, I hope also, you’ve gone back and listened to principles one through five, if you haven’t already, there’s lots of great information and so what I’m really presenting in this series are some key points about the principles. Again, intuitive eating isn’t one of those things that you read, or you hear a podcast about and you think great, now I’m an intuitive eater. No, it’s something that you practice., it’s something you have to embody, it’s something that you reconnect to little by little in most cases and it takes doing work and practicing in these three areas, self-knowledge, self-care and self-compassion or self-kindness. Very, very important.

Okay, so today’s principle is called feel your fullness. That’s kind of the official name. I like to say tune into your fullness because the idea of feeling full to a lot of people is one of, it ranges, it depends. For some folks, it is a scary thought, because diet culture tells us that if we feel full, we’ve we have eaten too much. Right! Calorie restriction, calorie plans that are what a toddler should eat. There’s just such a preponderance of you know, eating like a bird, and that this is the socially acceptable thing that women do and you should never eat more than your dinner partner. And I mean, you’ve named it, it is something that people are afraid of is feeling any fullness and yet on the other side of that, fullness can feel like a comfort. And so this is a really complex principle, and there’s a lot that goes into it. So I’m going to break it down into three points to think about, these are not the only three points that have to do with tuning into your fulness or feeling your fullness, but they may give you a starting point, okay?

So know that your unique situation may cause these particular teaching points to vary, and that’s just the way it is. So the first one is when we’re working on feeling fullness, fullness is a signal from your body and it is one of those interoceptive awareness signals. Now fullness can mean different things to different people it can be that your belly is distended and looks like it’s full, it could be a sensation, a sensation of bloating, a sensation of your body, your actual stomach area has expanded. It could be a sensation of satiety and pleasure. Fullness in the sense of I am satisfied after this meal, it could feel like your clothing has gotten tighter, that so there are many different ways that fullness can present. Not all of those are interesting have signals, but it is a signal that your body sends you. And quite often one of the things that I hear from my community is, I feel hungry, what’s wrong with me? I just ate! Why don’t I feel as full and there are so many reasons why that could be possible. So let’s start with the base.

The first one here, and I think that this is when I say basic, I don’t necessarily mean easy. I just mean that it is a simple thing, but it is something you’re going to have to practice and at the beginning, especially when you are newer to these signals, it is something you’re going to put a lot of conscious thought and effort into, which is one of the reasons why intuitive eating feels a lot harder in the beginning, especially than a diet allows your brain to go on autopilot. And for some people, that’s why it’s appealing. I don’t have to think. But you have to get real with yourself and you can go back to the episode, the episode that I did on principle one, about getting real about what dieting has taken from you, or what are the negative repercussions and outcomes that dieting has introduced into your life because so often, it is so alluring and tempting because we think, oh, we just think about all the great things, I don’t have to think anymore. Someone just tells me what to do and that’s not to say that you might not introduce some structure once you really heal your relationship with food. But it is to say that if you’re constantly outsourcing your hunger and fullness to things like an app or a nutritionist or whoever it is, even if they’re extremely well-meaning you’re making your body wrong for sending the signals that it does, and you’re making it less likely that you’re actually going to honor those signals. by either stopping eating when you’re feeling truly full or deciding you’re going to eat when you’re feeling hungry, and then no one is seeing the gradient that comes up.

So let me read it back in point number one, create moments to pause, and check-in with your fullness during mealtime and or before and after a meal. Now typically, you’re not going to notice your fullness before a meal, we would be noticing your hunger, but you might notice after a meal, how long do I feel satiated? How long do I feel satisfied and noticing that satisfaction may feel different from my stomach literally feeling fuller, that those are kind of two different things right, your distension the expansion of your stomach and the kind of biochemical and neurological signals the hormonal signals that go into fuel? Like you’re satiated are two different things even though they are related. So are you creating moments to pause and check-in during mealtime with yourself and how full you actually feel because a lot of folks are used to only feeling overly full and so they’re not quite used to pausing or slowing down and just saying, how am I feeling right now regarding fullness? If I could give it a scale of one to five, or one to 10 where am I in 10 or five if you like five better because it’s just fewer options. If you’re at the top end of that scale, maybe that’s like, it feels like your gut is gonna bust and we all know that sensation of Thanksgiving dinner. And we just feel like all the pants need to be unbuttoned or we just need to Donald Duck it which is not wearing any pants or we need to put on stretchy pants. Or on the other side, we’re not feeling full at all. We’re feeling like, actually quite hungry. So we want to get more aware of the subtler signs and signals. But you have to be able to pause to notice that, especially at the beginning, so if you are rushing through your meals, this is one of my things that I’m constantly asking folks, hey, how long does it actually take you to eat your meal? And a lot, a lot, a lot of my clients, a lot of my members in my Tune-In membership, notice that they speed through mealtime. So they’re missing some of those subtler signals. Those less strong signals of Hey, you know what, actually, I’m getting comfortably full right now I feel pleasantly satisfied. I don’t feel hungry and I also don’t feel overstuffed. I think right now I might put my fork down. And so if you consistently rush through meals or you’re consistently distracted, and you haven’t practiced feeling and sensing your fullness.

This is a huge area for growth, a growth opportunity for you to be able to start doing that. Now does it mean you need to do it during every meal? No, start easy because I know some of y’all out there are going to be listening and thinking, Well, I’m going to do this for a whole month for every single meal I eat. Good luck. It’s not going to happen. Especially if you’re not doing it at all right? So can you just say, hey, today during lunch, I have a little bit of extra time in space. I’m just going to notice what is my hunger or fullness like before, during, and after? How long do I stay full for afterward and just tune into that.

Alright, point number two. This is one people like to fight me on. Avoid filling up on “air foods”. Okay, this is where I’m going to start talking about dieting kinds of behaviors. So this if this is triggering to you for any reason, this might be a good time to stop listening. Air foods are those foods that typical diets tell you that it’s okay to fill up on because they’re going to prevent you from eating anything that has high energy or calorie content. This is such a classic tactic. And I have learned dozens of these over the years with doing different diets. And I’ll give you an example. I used to do Weight Watchers, I didn’t go to the meetings but my ex-in-laws, were doing Weight Watchers, I had my own slider, I had a points range that I was using and I would consistently look for ways to fill my belly up with foods that were as low points as possible. Now the part that people fight me on is saying, Well, you know, a lot of these foods are things like vegetables, or they are green vegetables. Are you saying we shouldn’t eat green vegetables? Of course not. Let’s not be pedantic. But what we’re saying is the purpose of things like air foods like celery, like clear liquid foods that have no energy content at all, like air-popped foods. You name it right popcorn with no butter or oil.

These foods exist primarily to trick your stomach into feeling full, which is a different sensation than true, satiety, or satisfaction. And if you don’t trust me on this, you can test this out for yourself. You can go drink, you know a big, big glass of water and notice how full your stomach might feel afterward. You might have to drink two. But notice how awful your stomach feels and see does that actually impact your, does it take away any hunger that you have? And typically the answer is no. So the classic one here also is, you know, if you feel hungry, just go drink something because you’re probably dehydrated. Now that could be true and we want to stay well hydrated, okay, my friends, but it doesn’t mean that we need to keep tricking our body if we are truly feeling hungry, that biological hunger, we haven’t eaten in a while. We’re getting more in tune with our hunger signals and you can go back to that particular episode and listen to that. It doesn’t mean that we’re not also drinking water, okay? But it just means if my tactic every time I start to feel hungry, or every time I want to try to fill myself up is to go back to relying on these air foods. It’s not saying they don’t provide any kind of benefit but are they really satisfying our hunger? And the answer in a lot of those cases as No, so maybe you’re not going to completely take yourself off of these kinds of air foods but start noticing what is my tendency when I feel like I’m just trying to fill myself up but I don’t want to eat a particular food or I feel like I’d haven’t earned a meal because it hasn’t been long enough, or I just ate or whatever it is. Notice what you tend to gravitate toward. Are you gravitating toward things that are low cals, zero cals, you know, air foods that have no fat, right, fat-free, like they’re, they’re very, very fibrous, like whatever it is that you’re looking to, to try to fill that fullness. And then actually notice, does it satisfy and you can go back to listen to principle five, all about satisfaction. Does it satisfy your hunger or does it just leave your belly feeling really full, does that satisfaction or fullness last. So that’s another important point.

And the last thing, and this is probably the toughest one, which is why I left it till last is to honor the signals that you do feel of hunger or fullness and build trust that you can eat again. Another one that goes along with this is challenging this notion that you have to always clean your plate. And the reason I left this to last is because this topic can be kind of sensitive for people for very good reason, especially if you have a history of food insecurity, which means food was not reliable. Food was not always available. And so there was or is a sensation that I have to eat all of this right now because I don’t know when the next meal is coming. So I want to be really sensitive to food insecurity in this discussion, but also say that if you’ve been used to that pattern and its food is no longer scary. Or there’s no food insecurity for you currently, slowly working on the concept of if I’m feeling pleasantly full, and I put the rest of this meal aside. Can I do that? Can I come back to it later if, in fact, I do start to help feel hungry later because I’m still learning my own feelings of fullness? Now, it’s really interesting. And again, if you feel like this, this content could be a little bit triggering for you, I’m going to talk about binge eating here for a moment. So there’s really interesting research coming out and there was a 2018 study that came out that linked food insecurity to an increased likelihood of binge eating disorder. What does this say? It’s a survival mechanism. And in folks who are food insecure, that mechanism of cleaning the plate right, eating as much as you can at any one time because you don’t know when the next food is coming is a potential driver of shooting past your fullness signals.

So I just wanted to mention that if you suspect that what you’re dealing with is binge eating disorder, or you want to just take an assessment, you can go to the National Eating Disorder Association website and we will link that in the show notes, take their assessment, and they also have resources to find a practitioner to find a therapist or a counselor who specializes in those things so that you can get the help that you need. If what you’re dealing with is not quite that but you were told as a kid like you couldn’t leave the table until you cleaned your plate or you’re in the habit of eating everything and not checking in. See if you can create moments and opportunities to go back to what I talked about in the first part, right, creating those moments to pause and check-in with yourself but interrupting that habit of just wanting to eat everything on the plate. I’m not saying you need to throw that food away, especially if that is just the notion that you cannot abide for different reasons. Maybe you pack it up for later you put it in the fridge, whatever it is you take it to go. Notice what I’m talking about is not portion control because of some external factor like my meal plans that I could only eat this, or this app said I could only eat this much. It’s not an arbitrary portion control based on external rules. This is about tuning in, noticing again, it’s not going to be perfect, especially at the beginning, but building that trust again that what your body is telling you is something that you can begin to listen to, noticing the signal that’s coming through, and knowing that if you decide to put your fork down and you decide you’re actually feeling pleasantly full. There’s a good chance that then, later on, you can come back to eating and it creates a dynamic for some folks where they feel sad that they’re going to stop eating now and that’s its own challenge to work through, but it’s not insurmountable.

So, those are my three kinds of big tips to tune into on feeling your fullness, right, one create moments to pause and check-in, especially during mealtime with your own sense of fullness, to start to question or avoid filling up on air foods and really eat foods that are satisfying to you, and three, begin to honor the signals of your own hunger and fullness so that you can begin to build trust that yes, you will be able to eat again and that eating past the point of comfortable fullness no longer serves you for the variety of reasons that we talked about today. That does it for our episode today. A couple of things, first of all, make sure you go check the show notes on StephGaudreau.com there, you’ll find links to everything I talked about in the episode, push that subscribe button so that you’re following along with this podcast and you get new updates and then, of course, share it with me on social media, tag me, I would love to see what you took away from this episode and how you feel like it benefited you going forward. All right, I will be back next week with an episode about principle seven of intuitive eating ao please join me at that time. I hope you’re enjoying this series and I’ll talk to you very soon. Until then, be well!

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  Three Ways to Honor Your Body’s Fullness (Intuitive Eating Principle 6) | Steph Gaudreau.

Original source: https://www.stephgaudreau.com/honor-bodys-fullness-intuitive-eating-principle-6/

Healthy Meal Plans For The Week

#Healthy Meal Plans For The Week

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Last week in tech: Movies in the theater, TV on our phones

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/last-week-in-tech-movies-in-the-theater-tv-on-our-phones/

Last week in tech: Movies in the theater, TV on our phones

It’s time to take a break from reading recaps of last night’s Westworld season two finale and get all caught up on a week full of tech news so profound it will make you question the nature of your own existence. Are you a robot? Are we robots? Read on, either way.

Download the latest version of the Last Week in Tech podcast! This week’s episode digs into our codependent relationships with our gadgets, our trust issues with big technology companies that promise us the world, and some cinematic history in light of Instagram’s new TV service. You can listen in the player above, subscribe on iTunes, add us on Stitcher, or follow along on SoundCloud.

Here are some of the other stories you may have missed.

The movie theater subscription space got a lot more interesting

This week, upstart subscription service MoviePass announced that it will start implementing “surge pricing” similar to ride-sharing services like Uber, which charge more during peak times. MoviePass subscribers will have to cough up an extra $2 to see a movie during the most crowded hours. Also this week, theater chain AMC announced its own subscription service, which costs $20 per month and allows for three movies per week, but includes bonuses like access to premium and IMAX theaters, as well as discounts on concessions.

Instagram TV is aiming at YouTube’s long-form video audience

In addition to the regular stream and stories, Instagram now also offers videos up to an hour long (that’s for high-follower accounts; typical accounts are limited to 10 minutes) as part of what it called IGTV. Instagram, which now has over a billion active users, tapped some “influencers” to make its initial batch of IGTV content, which includes things like cooking shows and general lifestyle blogging. Interestingly, the platform is designed to show video that vertically fills your phone’s screen. Will it kill widescreen? Probably not, but here’s a nerdy deep dive into the history of video aspect ratios just in case.

Nvidia is trying to improve slow-motion video with AI

Slow-motion video is tricky to shoot. You need a ton of light and timing your shots can be extremely difficult. Nvidia, however, is trying to make super-slow video out of typical 30 fps shots. It uses AI to generate frames in between the captured images. The results are impressive and could make for some truly hypnotic—if not entirely authentic—footage.

You can now get in line for a Venmo debit card

Venmo has so far been a peer-to-peer payment system that lives in your phone, but now the company is introducing a physical debit card to live in your real-life wallet. You can use it to withdraw cash from your Venmo account using an ATM if you don’t mind a $2.50 fee.

Leica makes watches now

German purveyor of pricey cameras, Leica, has now stepped into the luxury timepiece arena. The Leica L1 will be a limited edition of 400 pieces and will cost less than 10,000 Euro later the year.

Get ready to pay sales tax on internet purchases if you aren’t already

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that local governments can charge sales tax on purchases made from businesses without a physical location in the state. The decision revokes a rule we can trace all the way back to mail order catalogs in 1992 that allowed online retailers to sell tax-free as long as there was no brick-and-mortar presence in the state of the buyer.

Learning Garage Band is easier now

If you’re looking for a summer project, Apple is hoping you’ll consider “become a music producer” as a worthwhile activity. GarageBand 10.3 adds tons of new loops, sounds, drum patterns, and effects to use when creating your sonic masterpiece. The Artist Lessons, which used to cost $4.99 each, are also now free, so you have a fighting chance of figuring out just how to use those sounds in your creations.

You can now measure things with Google Earth

Screwing around on Google Earth is one of the best time-sucks on the internet, and it just got a software feature for finding the distance between two points on the globe. It’s live already for Chrome and Android, but the iOS app is coming soon.

Written By Stan Horaczek

#Technology