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im-the-punk-who · 4 years

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Black Sails as John Silver's SuperVillain Origin Story

Okay so I recently got asked about my views on Silver in a roundabout way so HERE ARE SOME OF THEM. I don’t often post about him because honestly I just really dislike him but he’s an extremely well written character and one of the best ‘villains’ I have ever seen portrayed. The reason Black Sails is such a compelling prequel to Treasure Island is that it does not just say ‘John Silver is a villain because he does bad things.’ Like all the characters in Black Sails he is complex, with deep and thoughtful motivations for the things he does. We see him as a villain because Black Sails sets his goals up in opposition to those of the protagonists we want to succeed - Flint and Madi - but he is not villainous in his own right.

But it is the effects of those motivations on himself that, to me, are the most interesting.

And just up front because I know this is a touchy subject - especially coming from, well, me, lmao. This is how I read Silver. If you disagree, that’s cool. Like literally everything else in Black Sails(and fiction in general), Silver’s character is mutable based on your views and experiences. Tomato/Tomato.

So! To me, the most important thing about John Silver’s character in Black Sails, is who he is in Treasure Island. Black Sails is a prequel, and Silver is a major character in Treasure Island. We see his actions in the book(albeit through the story of the man who survives him, and, oof, isn’t that a bit of a kicker). We know that in this future Silver is still a lying, manipulative and mysterious person, hard not to like but hard to know.

That consistency is the most important part of Long John Silver’s character to me: he doesn’t really change from the beginning of Black Sails to the end, because he’s not really meant to.

Silver may not exactly like the person he is but there is no point in trying or wanting to change. In his view, who he is is just as immutable as the world he exists in.

And that's the brilliance of Black Sails.

Silver isn’t the way he is because he is ‘evil,’ or because he wants to intentionally cause harm. He is the way he is because it is the only way he’s worked out to survive. It is “the only state in which he can function.” He does not believe in a cosmic story, in a grand design or justice in the world - and because of that he does not see the point in trying to change something that has kept him alive thus far to appease it.

The entirety of the beach flashbacks is, to me, the summation of both Flint and Silver’s characters but this in particular I feel is important:

-Do you really imagine a few weeks of this is going to make much of a difference? Am I not what I am at this point?

-It's better than nothing.

In the grand scheme, Flint and Silver only know each other for about six months.

Their relationship - especially to Silver - is a transient one. A handful of weeks. Was it ever enough to expect it to make any bit of difference?

But not so for Flint. He truly believes humans are capable of change, and he believes even the smallest bit of progress is worth the effort. Flint takes the things that happen to him and make them a part of him.

But for Silver,

I've come to peace with the knowledge...that there is no storyteller imposing any coherence, nor sense, nor grace upon those events.

Therefore, there's no duty on my part to search for it.

Silver refuses to acknowledge his own story and so is unable or unwilling to see himself as capable of change throughout it. Or even really the need for change. And that’s not said as a negative - that is who he is. That is who his past - whatever it was - has taught him.

And so he consistently acts solely for his own gain, benefit, and safety. Because if he doesn’t, who else is going to?

And this continues the differences between Flint and Silver.

While Silver is very wrong that his past is irrelevant, he is correct in that it doesn't matter. It doesn’t matter what his past is, because we can clearly see the effects of it. We don't NEED to know his past to understand his actions.

However, without knowing Flint’s backstory - Thomas, Miranda, England’s betrayal - his actions don't make sense. They are erratic: they seem villainous and vile and like the acts of a tyrant or a madman. Because his actions are tied to his story.

But from the very first moment we see Silver fight the cook over what he presumes is a chance at living, Silver is clearly trying to figure out what is best for him.

He doesn’t care about Flint’s war, or what the treasure could fund. He doesn’t care about the pardons, and he doesn't care about England. He doesn’t care about piracy. All he cares about at first is the life the treasure could buy him. But when he loses his leg, suddenly the thing he literally spent two seasons fucking everyone over for becomes completely inconsequential, because it no longer benefits him.

It is without relevance.

And through the very last time we see him speaking him to Madi, he is doing the same thing.

That's not to say he doesn't form friendships or care about people. He is, indeed, a hard man not to like, and I think he also genuinely likes people as well. But that doesn’t mean he changes because of them. The friendships he forms with Flint - with Billy, with Muldoon and Randall and the other crew members - the relationship he forms with Madi. They are all real, but they are also all expendable to ensure his own comfort and survival.

In the first episode of season 2 we’re told point blank:

It’s likely that if our interests were averse, I’d betray you to save myself.

And of course at this point Silver and Flint are little more than necessary enemies, Silver has no reason to want Flint alive. But the pattern holds throughout the whole show.

Later in season 2, when Flint is thinking about changing tactics to prioritize the pardons over the gold, Silver has no problem screwing over the entire crew(minus the two men he’s recruited) to meet his own ends. It’s what’s best for him, and Silver operates on this assumption that every person needs to look out for themselves.

And then again, in the finale of season 2 - he saves the crew because it also means saving himself. When Vincent brings up leaving, Silver says that they would likely be killed if they tried - he’s already considered that option and rejected it because his odds of survival are higher sticking with the crew.

And then of course, in season three, in the maroon cages - you can bet that the fact that flint’s psyche basically controlled whether they all - including him - lived or died was a major driving force behind his dedication to getting Flint to come up with a plan better than Billy’s in which - again - they all likely end up dead.

His relationships with Madi and Flint in particular are deep, and so it is the worst thought possible when he realizes that they are starting to agree with each other, but not with him. When Madi agrees with Flint over trading the cache for the fort, I read this as the true end of Silver’s support of the war because the war now threatens his personal ‘safety.’

Because at that moment, the thing most important to him is keeping Madi - who he not only has come to care for but who supports him. And she makes him know she supports him. And the prospect of losing that is what ultimately I think drives him to planning to send Flint away, rather than bring Thomas there or some other plan.

And again it isn’t maliciousness - not outright. He is doing what he thinks he needs to to survive, because he cannot have enough faith in either Flint or Madi to think they won’t drop him the moment he stops being invaluable. And in the end, that lack of faith is what spells the end for any chance he has at having them in his life.

When he thinks Madi might die if they continue, he doesn’t care if she hates him. He doesn’t care if Flint hates him. He doesn’t care if the relationship is destroyed if he gets what he wants out of it. Madi’s survival. The end of the war. An end to Flint and Madi’s relationship so that he can ‘protect’ her from death and choose how he ‘loses’ her. It is always less painful to be the one doing the leaving.

Based on his world view - that you must protect what is in your own interests and the only person you can count on is yourself - that is the right thing to do.

Over and over we see that Silver is mostly interested in other people through the guise of his interest in keeping himself alive. And I also think that because of that, he views himself as expendable to other people as well.

When Muldoon insists that the crew would take care of him if he needed that, it’s clear that Silver doesn’t believe him. He still believes himself to be expendable unless he is useful. He is constantly managing his image, managing how people see him, managing the things he allows others to see and what dangers or threats they pose to him, because he believes these are the things that keep him safe. Not his friendships, but what he brings to them.

Part of what’s so heartbreaking about Silver’s arc in season 4 is how terrifyingly close he comes to believing himself worthy. He wants the war because the two people who mean the most to him, who he sees as vital to his own survival - Flint and Madi - are both committed to it. And he’s committed to them. But I also think that just for a second, he starts to see their vision.

When things are going well, when he can’t see the body count, he comes so close. But then of course, when everything falls apart and he is forced to confront once again the horrors of the world, he retreats.

That line he has:

And as long as (I have his true friendship) he is going to have mine.

I see that get thrown around a lot as a declaration of love, of deep feelings - and it is, to an extent. But it is also a sign of the deep mistrust that Silver harbors even when he is not looking to.

Even in this moment when he has Madi, when it must seem like they are nigh unstoppable and Silver himself is poised at the head of this great thing - when he and Flint are closest and when, I assume, Flint couldn’t fathom betraying him. Silver is still thinking in the eventuality that it will happen.

I have his true friendship, and as long as that is true, he is going to have mine.

Silver’s love is always conditional. And that doesn’t make it any less ‘real’. It doesn’t make it any less important. But it does make it easier to take back. And that’s important for him!! It’s important for Silver’s own safety that he never rely on someone so much that he cannot cut them loose if they pose a ‘danger’ to him.

And to me, that’s the most important thing to realize about Silver. He is a ‘villain’ - and again I use the term loosely because he is ONLY a ‘villain’ because our protagonist’s stories are set in opposition to his - because he will always put himself above the grander goal.

We see this in Black Sails, and we see this in Treasure Island. John Silver betrays Jim even though he feels conflicted about it. It isn’t until the very end, until Silver sees once again the same opportunity flash before his eyes where someone he loves is in danger and he cannot live with their death, that the treasure itself becomes unimportant again. Black Sails does an incredible job of giving us an antagonist whose defining trait is that he cannot see himself being meaningful in any way that matters.

Silver ends up destroying just about every relationship he has because of this inability. Time and again when he is faced with an opportunity for growth that comes with hard decisions, he chooses to destroy himself. Because it is easy.

It is easy to destroy the thing you do not care about, it is easy to destroy yourself if you don't value yourself. To call it winning because at least you are still alive and the things you’ve had to sacrifice are merely unimportant - inconsequential. But thinking like that hurts not only ourselves, but others too.

And it is not that Silver puts himself first, plenty of other characters do that as well - Miranda, Jack, Max. It is the fact that Silver must deny himself in the process that makes him the villain not just in Black Sails, but in his own story. And THAT is the origins of his supervillain story. That he is, in fact, his own.

#black sails #john silver #milos black sails meta #black sails discourse #black sails meta #we'll see how this goes over lmao anyway CATCH ME ALWAYS SAYING THAT THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT SILVERS INABILITY TO CENTER HIMSELF #/MAKES HIM THE VILLAIN/ AND THATS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL #long post

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essektheylyss · 4 years

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wait! be wordy! what's your line of thinking for the assembly coup i'm so curious

okay you sent this a few days ago and I was like, you know what they asked, so here is my entire research project on the subject of why not only is the assembly in a perfect place to stage a coup and take over the empire, but also why ludinus da’leth in particular seems rather motivated to do so:

fjord and caleb discussed this specific topic during their chat on the balleater in 98, and this line just sums it up:

fjord: what are they waiting for? caleb: the moment where they can ascend.

according to the lore we’ve gotten, from canon as well as the egtw, the assembly has existed since a war between mage houses that culminated in an event that nearly destroyed rexxentrum, referred to as the eve of crimson midnight—after which the members of those houses agreed to work for the dwendalian crown (and helped conquer the julous dominion). they occupy a very comfortable place in the empire obviously, but it’s unclear how much allegiance they actually have to the crown, but when caleb talks to the martinet in episode 97 at the party, they have this pointed interaction:

caleb: the empire, we all love the empire. da’leth: to an extent.

this is in part in reference to caleb’s past, but also... is admittedly, a strange thing for someone who’s meant to serve the king to say. much of their conversation at the party reads as da’leth putting the two of them on the same page—rather circumspect in their interests, and outside of the surface level realm of the empire’s interests. it’s worth noting that da’leth is not only the oldest member of the assembly, he has also been there since its inception, and therefore was almost certainly involved in the war that created it.

now, just before this, they have this exchange:

caleb: It will be good to finish this war. da’leth: Indeed it will be. caleb: I commend you on seeing the reason in cooperation and negotiation. da’leth: I believe it is important to stem the tide of lives lost and to instead focus on the livelihood of those within the Empire and for us to pursue more important things than base conflict and disagreements.

now, like essek, da’leth is likely looking forward to the end of the war because it means uninhibited time to spend researching the beacon they do have, but based on much of what essek has said, he is far more in over his head than da’leth is. of course, that’s in part because he’s not backed by a very powerful organization. but this is important, because arguably... da’leth isn’t backed by the assembly. he is the assembly. there has never been a cerberus assembly without him. additionally, his title (“archmage of domestic protections”) literally puts him in charge of all warfare and conflict in the empire and, as mentioned, this means he’s been involved in:

the eve of crimson midnight

the conquest of the julous dominion

the last century of tension with the dynasty (by the end of which, he found a way to escalate that tension and thereby instigate a war—which really makes him either great or shitty at his job, honestly)

the war with the dynasty itself

unlike essek, who has probably had his position for 20-30 years at most, da’leth has witnessed every part of these conflicts from a place of organizing warfare. (yet again it vexes me: we still have no idea what essek does. but he’s not really important here, I’m just using him to juxtapose. but it seems safe to say, based on his reaction, that he did not have any experience with it, and does not seem to be in anyway a military leader.) he knows when to expect war, and he... probably does not care about the human toll of it, based on the ones he’s lived through. so I’m looking more at the phrase “pursue more important things”—which is where we start getting into military coup territory.

and it’s important to point out that the assembly, based on their discussion in the throne room with the king and the examination of the beacon at the sanatorium, is almost certainly keeping both their research into the beacon’s power as well as the fact that they’ve had two beacons for three years secret from the king.

additionally, the assembly’s power seems to be growing at the moment, as evidenced by cobalt soul concerns that it may need to be curbed, while at the same time, the monarch is becoming increasingly paranoid (which translates to, closed off), as well as (and this is crucial) not having an heir. as mentioned in the egtw, his son and daughter in law have not produced a child, and all three of them are seeking different ways to maintain power. king dwendal, supposedly, is currently looking for ways to become immortal. da’leth, who is functionally immortal compared to the king, probably doesn’t love that (and I have no doubt that he knows).

so we have a military leader who has external interests, secret arcane research into an unknown, fairly deadly system of magic that the crown is unaware of (and therefore doesn’t have defenses against), and a rapidly encroaching potential power vacuum. but that’s still not enough, right? to actually take the throne, who has an entire army at its disposal, you’d need some kind of paramilitary force loyal to the assembly, not to the crown.

which brings us to the scourgers.

we know that trent ikithon created and designed the scourger program, also from caleb’s conversation with da’leth, which means it is relatively new (less than 50 years old, but probably less than that—trent is in his 70s, and he would’ve had to work up into his role, so let’s give him a generous estimate of being worthy of assembly membership around 40—which only puts the scourger program at 30 years old). da’leth does have a... really interesting comment about the program:

da’leth: Although the extent of these things were not entirely part of the initial presentation, I understand that sometimes, desperate requirements might call for unsavory methods.

there’s really no explanation of what these ‘desperate requirements’ are that called for, you know, that bullshit, and the program would’ve been implemented sometime within this cold war they’ve got going with the dynasty. while those desperate requirements may have been involved in that (which is likely), it’s also possible that there are other uses for them, especially now that there is some kind of treaty between the empire and dynasty.

of course, the other thing that I looked at is how astrid discusses the empire—she suggests that what the scourgers do, the “hard choices” they make, are so that the rest of the empire can sleep safely at night, which is interesting, considering the general sentiment of the empire’s populace is that the empire has become less safe (a sentiment that is likely even more heightened now with a war on their soil) as well as less prosperous, due to the growing paranoia and neglect of the king. the scourgers are specifically loyal to the empire itself, not the king—if they can be swayed to believe that disposing the king is in the nation’s best interest, it would not be difficult to turn the assembly’s personal assassins toward the crown.

which brings me back to the earlier conversation mentioned at the party, and the phrase “focus on the livelihood of those within the Empire and for us to pursue more important things.” the martinet has been, essentially, waiting in the wings of the empire for several centuries.

within the last, say, fifty years, the following things have happened:

the quality of life within the empire has gone down

its monarch has grown closed off and scared, potentially leaving a power vacuum which will likely throw the assembly’s power into question

the assembly has created its own paramilitary assassin force

the assembly has instigated a war via the theft of foreign arcane objects

the assembly has done fully secret research on the application of that arcane power

the assembly has then ended the war very quickly, retaining control of one of these objects, and sent everyone very speedily on their way.

furthermore, with peace only just brokered, the righteous brand is likely still on the border, and will have to be mobilized over the next month or more to return them to the inner parts of the empire.

this means the assembly is unoccupied by a war, has its own forces, probably has some unheard of weaponized dunamancy, and doesn’t have to contend with the military that is wholly loyal to the king.

time for a coup, y’all.

addendum: this is a theory/analysis, and it’s only one potential thing that might happen in the next few arcs. however, a counterpoint: the assembly has enjoyed unprecedented power, a small amount of responsibility, and very little oversight during its existence. I could see the point that there isn’t much motivation to change that, especially for da’leth—except for the fact that the empire still does not have an heir. the potential of a power vacuum will likely leave the assembly in a tough spot and without a puppet to control, and a coup to take power now may be the answer to that. that really is the key: before dwendal can actually do something nuts, like beat da’leth to creating himself a phylactery lol, they may intend to grab power to maintain control over the situation in the long run.

additional reading: I wrote up this post a few months ago about why, in conjunction with this, the assembly wants to keep their involvement with the beacon theft quiet—any conflict with the king will get started on their own terms. (which is the main point of my thoughts that the assembly will also likely try to have essek killed—while he’s alive, he’s a loose end, and even if it’s his word against theirs, it’s still possible he could sow doubt with the king. luckily for the nein, the assembly doesn’t seem to know that they’re aware of that!)

#critical role #cr spoilers #cr meta #this is..... not even everything this is somehow the succinct version #there's more regarding like; how much da'leth has actually set this up?#what his involvement with essek was?#personally I could make a whole separate argument about that but it wasn't relevant here #also the heroes of wildemount are off sailing around the coast which he knows #so tbh I wouldn't be surprised if the nein came back to something like that #I'm so sorry to whomever reads this it's so long but god bless you #if I don't post this now I'm gonna keep adding to it and no one wants that lmao #god this doesn't even touch on the fact that it's possible that the war itself and the angel of irons cult were both orchestrated by da'let #but that's more of a personal conspiracy theory whereas this is all pretty straightforward #maybe I'll do that one next lmao #also here's hoping tumblr doesn't screw up the ask again #do not wanna have to repost this lmao #astraphone

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kob131 · 4 years

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youtube

You know Hero Hei, it’s hard to feel sorry for you (or even try to be neutral towards you) when you’re still pulling the same manipulative bullshit.

Shocked face, overexaggerated title, contrasting colors, aggressive language- I’m pretty sure if Trump’s Political ads had thumbnails, they’d looked identical to yours (and I only say Trump because every other politician follows an older version of your formula.)

‘This is a follow-up to Neath Oum’s hitpiece on me-’

There you go again. Hit Piece is defined as a disingenuous article or similar such piece of media designed to turn public opinion against a person. Issue is- this is not a public article, it’s a fucking tweet thread and it’s not made to turn people against you (and consider the replies to his tweet, it wouldn’t even slightly change public opinion of you), it was made to explain why he doesn’t like you.

We can actually see how a hit piece would sound like IN YOUR VIDEO, as Neath forgoes a lot of the manipulative techniques you use in your videos to get an emotional reaction out of his audience before even beginning.

‘I have nothing but respect for Monty Oum-’

Your numerous videos slandering his friends when the man outright told people to stop watching his show for saying one of his friends was a lesser voice actor than two others in ONE instance says otherwise.

‘*insert a bunch of sarcastic stuff here*’

I wouldn’t bitch too much but this video is only 6 minutes and 13 seconds long and about half a minute passes without him saying of substance. And I’m keeping his shit vague because it’s meaningless and just meant to rile his audience up.

‘It won’t negatively affect me at all.’

Cool...and Neath is never shown to intend it too. Here’s the tweet thread that Hero Hei is talking but never sources (https://twitter.com/neath_oum/status/1307345624958812160). Not once does he ever say anything about exposing Hero Hei and ends it by reiterating it’s about explaining his blocking.

Also of note-

Because his lies exacerbate conflict or generate controversy where none existed

Neath says this in his chain. Now consider Hero Hei portraying this as an attack against him...when he never says to spread his thread, use manipulative language like you do or use the attention grapping tactics you do. And now you’re just proving him right when you could have stopped this 40+ second monologue, made a title like “I respond to Neath Oum’s Twitter Thread” and used a different thumbnail.

(Note: I am skipping from 0:37 to 1:22 because at 0:44 he says to skip that segment as it’s a catchup and I’m trying to give him some benefit so I’ll just skip it and assume he gave a neutral recap.)

‘He begins hyping this thread up and being really suspicious and vague about it!’

You mean like what people said about your original video on the subject which you dismissed and mocked them for?

To paraphrase you Hero Hei-

‘Read beyond the first sentence.’

‘In my opinion, this means nothing and so i will not comment on most of this.’

You mean opinion of the target of the so-called ‘hit piece’ who would have every reason to downplay what is being shown. After I having already seen for myself that you’re a damn liar and the very first part of the ‘hit piece’ is talking about how you lie by omission? You clearly do care because you made (an admittedly low effort) video on it and yet you can’t even address it properly? Speaking as someone who has had hit pieces made on him, you’re an idiot.

Also your ‘if you want to read the whole thing, you know where to find it!’ shit is inexcusable. It’s a known fact that audiences likely won’t seek out something that would discredit their subject. They’ll be far more likely to just accept whatever you say, especially if say...their emotions and tribalistic instincts were being played on by portraying Neath as inherently wrong and using emotionally charged language to elicit a certain reaction out of them.

“Most of this stuff is from a year ago anyways!’

Stuff which you yourself bring up before to make and support your points.

‘This isn’t really worth my time, it’s desperate.’

I have literally heard politicians pull this, how is everything out of your mouth killing your credibility?

‘*tries to portray Neath’s beginning statement as aggressive towards people asking for proof* Well I dunno why anyone would be upset you accused someone without proof but okay-’

A. ‘ Finished some stuff earlier than expected. For those who (civilly) asked for info and proof about hero hei, here you go.’

That is Neath’s opening sentence. This is not being aggressive or dismissive or at all negative towards the people asking for proof. I can’t think of a way to be more neutral than this.

B. Funny considering you accused Pedantic Romantic of being a stalker and yet never provided actual proof, just out of context screenshots (effectively lies which is WORSE.) So clearly you don’t care that much.

‘Funny that he says he found additional evidence about this when he retweeted a thread made a month ago by another twiiter user that I debunked in another vide Man this is some worthless stuff.’

Gee Hero Hei, I’ve noticed that you like to portray this as irrelevant without saying why, continuously using those kinds of terms. Kind of like news outlets when bitching about someone they don’t like, all using similar terminology as if to subconsciously reinforce an idea in the viewer’s head. Also funny since those same news outlets ALSO tend to rely on the reader’s bias...

‘See, he even admits that he’s taking this from someone I debunked!’

Well actually, you just pointed out one single mistake that wasn’t connected to their point but sure.

‘This is so lazy Neath!’

Hero hei, you literally just take what other people say and vomit it out- You do the same shit.

‘Animelog is by Toei actually!’

No Hero Hei, it’s not. Toei justed signed up for them. It’s still operated by AnalyzeLog...which is funded by Net 10 ventures, the company Neath CITED.

Benjamin Grubbs is the founder of AnalyzeLog. In 2018, AnalyzeLog was founded with seed funding from U.S. venture capitalist Next10 Ventures. In December 2019 AnalyzeLog Digital struck a deal with Toei Animation. Shogakukan followed Toei animation deal in April 2020, and just last month it signed a collaboration with animation studio Shin Ei Animation, creators of “Doraemon” and “Crayon Shin-Chan”.

‘He tries to compare Toei being a founder of Daisuki to it’s massive investment in AnalyzeLog!’

... Hero Hei. When you found something like a business, you are INVESTING in that business. Jeff Bezos fundamentally invested in Amazon when he started it up because he had to use his own money to make it happen.

... Do you think your audience is brain dead or something?

‘*covers Neath’s screenshot of his video titles*’

Hm, pretty sure that’s the definition of ‘suspect’ Hero Hei.

‘So this vice president of Rooster Teeth did horrible things to his wife and Neath is defending this or something-’

*grabs Hero Hei by the collar*

Nuh uh, you ain’t getting away with that shit.

First, short one about Rooster Teeth, the lies I am talking about were lies of omission. These screenshots show the titles of some of his videos. Titles and screenshots are what drives viewers when deciding what videos to watch. In the titles, he used "Rooster Teeth Vice President". Using "Rooster Teeth Vice President" evokes the image of the second highest ranking person at Rooster Teeth. However, he used "Vice President of Product and Engineering" in the video description, so he knew what the person's full rank was but omitted it from the titles. By seeing the actual rank, viewers would know that the terminated person was not the second highest ranked person at Rooster Teeth. Not including information in a title to give viewers the wrong impression amounts to lies of omission.

Some will argue that he didn't lie since the full rank was given in the description, it's just click bait and no big deal. That's fine but omitting information from the beginning warps first impressions and are still lies, even if small. That said, continue reading for more of his overt lies.

This is the full set of what he said in regards to RT. Notice something? Yeah- HE’S NOT DEFENDING THE MAN. Hero Hei just shoved that shit in. With NOTHING to indicate such a thing...you know other than ‘he dared to speak out against me!’

‘He seems to be complaining about the video title-’

TITLES (multiple) which comes up NUMEORUS times in his thread but sure. And you clearly agree with him since you bitched about his opening thread (just you know, effectively lying about it.)

‘*quotes an out of context sentence from the above quoted set* No I wasn’t trying tyo give people the wrong impression!’

Funny how context CHANGES things, like showcasing Hero Hei lying AGAIN.

‘I didn’t say that because Youtube has a 100 character limit for video titles so i couldn’t fit in!’

Yeah it does have 99 characters in it...

Except here’s the thing: you could have cut 33 characters from it even with inserting ‘of Product and Engineering’ easily.

Rooster Teeth RT Vice PRESIDENT VP of Product and Engineering ARRESTED, allegedly BEAT his WIFE Numerous Times and LAUGHED about it!

There, 66 characters and I made your video title better (by cutting out needless details) and more truthful.

I don’t trust you enough, especially with the shit you’ve already pulled in this video alone.

‘*mocks Neath for bringing up the Vic stuff from over a year ago*’

Hero hei, your channel has permanent ‘ISWV’ merch being advertised.

*doesn’t even bother to address what is said, just mocking the use of names.*

“Neath Oum s-said mean things about me mommy, make the scary man with 2/3rds of my audience stop mommy!’

See how stupid that sounds?

In fact, let’s stop here because he says NOTHING of worth and Hero hei killed his credibility (along with any chance of me even giving him anything beyond basic human respect) at this point.

Considering the very little he DID cover ended up being just shit flinging from him AT BEST- he actually made Neath look pretty damn good. Because HH in comparison really does look like the embodiment of that ‘crying behind a smug face’ meme.

So congrats HH. I actually though the comparison was the result of personal bias against you and felt uncomfortable about. I now see it was entirely DERSERVED...if I choose to ignore how you implied Neath was defending a man BEATING HIS WIFE because he pointed out your clickbait bullshit.

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angerissue · 3 years

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Character Survey.

Real name: Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, Ph.D..

Single or taken: Single, and this probably isn't going to change anytime soon. He has a number of ingrained emotional issues, and ideological issues that pertain to his condition, that prevent him from seeking romantic relationships and even just becoming close to someone. One-night stands are possible, because they don’t involve emotional commitment from either party, but real relationships scare the hell out of him. The closer that someone gets to Bruce, the more he fears hurting them or being hurt himself.

Abilities or powers: He has an extremely high IQ, almost unprecedented intuition when it comes to the sciences and its numerous technologies, and a great ability to think outside the box and solve complicated, confounding problems. Also, he can turn big and green, which makes him capable of inhuman physical feats and gives him a ridiculous healing factor. This cannot be understated; he can literally recover from decapitation if the conditions are right. It's debatable whether these qualify as gifts or curses, because of the experiences they've created for Bruce in the past, but they're definitely abilities at the least.

Eye colour: Brown. Sometimes green if he’s in a mood.

Hair colour: Dark brown with some grey.

Family members: Rebecca Banner (mother / deceased), Brian Banner (father / incarcerated), Jennifer Walters (cousin / alive), Susan Drake (adoptive aunt / unknown), Elaine Banner (aunt / deceased).

Pets: In The Persistence, he owns a white knockout mouse named Eddie, who came from a selection of ailing lab mice that he experimented on with the Hulk's plasma. He doesn’t have pets in other verses, though he wouldn’t mind a cat, or a dog with a calm and mellow demeanour, as long as his living situation and overall routine is constant and undisturbed. Otherwise, it will never be a possibility. Back when General Ross' squad broke down his door in Brazil, he needed to abandon a mutt named Rick, and it hurt because he’d become very fond of him. He doesn't want to do this to another animal.

Hobbies or activities: He loves hiking and jogging (with trails in forested areas being his preferred location), cooking and baking, gardening, reading textbooks and science journalism, bait fishing, programming and experimenting, travelling, sightseeing, meditation, yoga, collecting and listening to vinyl records, and being a rebel by listening to police scanners and going after bad guys if he doesn't have much else to do. But even if it seems like he's not outwardly doing anything, he's probably still occupied — he tends to spend a profuse amount of time in his own head, ruminating and reflecting on future goals, whether it involves anticipating or dreading them. He also likes to contemplate new concepts and designs for technologies.

Animal that represents them: Definitely a pangolin, because you can’t look at a pangolin and the way it carries itself and not think of Banner from a purely visual perspective. Add on the fact that their bodies are covered in hardened scales for defense, and how they curl up into a ball whenever they're upset and threatened, and you have a metaphorical version of Bruce, who tends to shy away and retreat into himself whenever he's having a lower moment, and has a lot of deep-seated defensive mechanisms on display during social interactions. But seriously, these animals just want to walk around eating ants, minding their own business. They don’t have a bone to pick with anyone... Which is also similar to Bruce. And did I mention that pangolins are endangered, because they're frequently hunted and trapped by humans for their supposed “beneficial properties” in medicine (none of which are proven)? That's similar to how Banner has been followed all over the place by the U.S. military, just because they perceived his condition to be useful somehow.

Worst habits: Take your pick. Distancing himself from other people even when he could use the company, self-flagellation, humouring his guilt complex even when he's not responsible for certain negative outcomes, repressing or suppressing his emotions when he needs to express them (or the opposite, staying as the Hulk so he can stew in those strong emotions and therefore punish himself for whatever he “did wrong”), running away from connections that involve real commitment, especially romantic ones.

Role models: Steve Rogers for his patriotism and overall sense of morality, Neils Bohr for his defense of the Bohr atomic model (which had been a radical theory for the time) and subsequent successes, Ernest Rutherford for similar reasons, and his mother when he was younger, though he doesn’t remember much about her because he was only six when she died. Same goes for his aunt, Susan; while he spent more time around her than Rebecca in total, he was rather emotionally absent by this point because of all the trauma earlier in his childhood. In general, his role models tend to be people who remain strong in the face of adversity and judgement, and stick to their values for the benefit of others. All the above people qualify in that sense, for different reasons.

Sexual orientation: Heterosexual.

Thoughts on marriage and kids: Nope, and bigger nope. He would love to have a close connection with someone, however much he's actually repressed the desire for the time being, and some part of him does want to have a child — however, he always concludes that it wouldn't be worth it. Bruce believes marriage would be a shackle for anyone who's unfortunate enough to become his partner, and it would open them up to potential threats from people who could use them to get to him and his condition. And children are a no-go because Bruce doesn’t want them to have a father like him; he might be absent for a lot of their upbringing, and either unstable or otherwise unaccommodating in temperament if he’s upset. And he'll constantly be trying to hide his condition from them as well, because god forbid they find out their father is a monster, and they feel like a freak because of it. He's been in a position where he felt like an anomaly as a child, and he's not interested in subjecting his children to this. He also loathes the idea of bringing children into the world because he would not be able to ensure their safety — after all, he can’t even ensure his own. So to Bruce, he'd be setting them up for endangerment just because they’re related to him, similar to how his partner would become a target as well.

Style preferences: Safe and conservative, and not flamboyant by any means. He usually sticks to warmer and neutral palettes, and cuts/styles that are classic and unlikely to fall out of style; this includes his suits, jackets, pants, and shirts. We're talking chinos and slacks, poplin dress shirts, wool sport coats and blazers. Most occasions will see him wearing the dress shirt, slacks, and sport coat together. If he's feeling more adventurous, he'll pair a sport coat with a crewneck, or he could even go with a polo shirt and jeans, but the latter is rare. In general, Bruce's most interesting piece is a brown leather bomber jacket, which he usually wears in the warmer months; colder weather will bring out a peacoat (and he loves to pop the collar in lieu of using a scarf). As far as cost goes, Bruce is fairly well-off between the royalties from S.H.I.E.L.D. and other work he's done here and there, but even so, he doesn't purchase outrageously expensive clothing and tends to go for the mid-upper brands. He'll do made-to-measure, but not full bespoke. He finds any further spending to be superfluous.

Approach to friendships: Cautious and uncertain about them, and tends not to approach people first, because he would hate to overstep his boundaries / make someone uncomfortable. Rather accommodating to people he considers friends, but he's extremely quick to duck out if they can’t meet him eye-to-eye regarding touchy topics, like decisions that affect the well-being of many people. This is the reason he shunned his friendship with Tony after they debated about the Sokovia Accords. Being an introvert, he’s one of those people who doesn't like bothering his friends; even if they make it abundantly clear that he's welcome anytime, he'll hesitate, but he’s completely okay and even happy if those friends approach him instead. He doesn't always like when his personal space is invaded, or if someone touches him, but he'll start to make exceptions if he becomes more familiar with someone. He loves the people that he can consider friends, but he always views the friendships as something that could dissolve in a heartbeat. On some level, even unconscious, he's always expecting things to end.

Thoughts on pie: An acceptable desert. Bumbleberry, strawberry rhubarb, and pumpkin are his favourites. He prefers the homemade variety, and because of it, he tends to make his own, butter crust and all, avoiding store-bought unless it’s particularly memorable — or if someone buys a slice for him. He’s appreciative like that.

Favourite place to spend time: Somewhere he can guarantee that he's not being watched; these are most commonly his labs in the Northwind Observatory, quiet and secluded trails, or his chambers in the Crown City citadel on Sakaar. Not only do these locations ease his anxieties about being studied, inspected, or followed, but he feels less of a pressure to put on false pretenses and exhaust himself with social niceties, many of which may be fabricated. He doesn’t need much external stimulation, because he’s fine simply turning inward and thinking, without paying much attention to his surroundings, but he’ll certainly admit to spending a ton of time tinkering with pet projects if he’s in the labs. Obviously, Bruce prefers to be alone in most of these cases. But if he's with someone he cares about, whether a friend or a romantic partner, and can openly express himself around them, that's nice for him too.

Swim in the lake or ocean: Lakes, without question. He has some bad memories of being in the ocean, whether it’s about the time he was tossing and turning in glacial waters after his failed suicide attempt, or clawing his way out of a quinjet that crashed into the water while his alter started to take over. Bruce remembers all that, and it's not pleasant. The openness of oceans perturb him as well; lakes are usually far more intimate and amniotic because they’re often surrounded by forests, which allows him to feel safer and less exposed.

Their type: Someone who is, and is comfortable with showing, some semblance of dependence on him, which would placate his need to fill a provider role and not simply be a charity case; he's had enough of that between begging on the streets and asking Tony Stark for boarding. (This doesn't mean he's looking for someone who's a total pushover, cannot make their own decisions, or is emotionally needy, because those would make him run in the other direction, frankly.) Someone who can hold their own and stand up for their beliefs when necessary. Someone who can challenge him intellectually, though not necessarily in an academic sense; it really just depends on how much they can expand his own perspective by giving their own. Someone who really understands his needs and issues. And obviously, someone who isn't scared of his condition, because it's going to manifest a lot. It needs to; he doesn't really have a choice in the matter. Hulk is another story, but fortunately, he doesn't show up enough to really be an immediate concern, and Bruce and his partner can cross that bridge when they reach it. Physically, he's usually attracted to women who are slightly shorter than him; their hair can be anything from blonde to brown, and he prefers body types that are similar to his own; more on the slender side but not necessarily fragile.

Camping or indoors: He’d rather be indoors. He isn’t extremely fond of camping, if we’re using the most common definition of "pitching a tent, cooking with a fire made from sticks and tinder, and spending the night in the woods with the bears and the bugs". There are indeed occasions where he cannot stand to be indoors, whether because he’s feeling claustrophobic (a common symptom of abstaining a little too long from transformations), or he simply needs some time away from other people in the geographic sense, but in those cases, he’s more likely to go for a walk or hike, not set up an entire campsite and spend the rest of the night outdoors. For him, camping is meant for a survival-type situation rather than a recreational one. The closest thing to camping he'll do is living in a cabin with a wood stove and local water supply, which he’s done a few times over the years. He's even purchased a few cabins by the time his Persistence verse rolls around, so if one of the properties are compromised, he could always retreat to another one.

Tagged by: @mynameisanakin! Tagging: @fallencomrade , @asgardianhammer , @alongingwithin , and anyone else who wants to do this.

#( meme response. )#( headcanon. )#( multiple. )

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blousejudo6 · 3 years

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Apple Launches Scheduled for Next Season

Apple is considered to be the state-of-the-art enterprise in the world now. It is the business to which nearly all others search for direction. When Apple reveals an innovative new design vocabulary or launches a new product, it creates ripples throughout the marketplace. Suddenly, the entire industry is crafting products in Apple’s overall image. However to say Apple is merely a trend-setter understates the organization’s position as probably the figurehead of invention in customer engineering. Apple isn’t simply setting technology trends; Apple’s vision pieces precedents and starts actions that allow the developments to exist in the first place. As great as it must experience to be Apple in this situation - and as humbling since it must experience to be any of the many businesses copying Apple at every convert - it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Most people can claw your way to the top of a mountain, but there’s not a lot of stable ground up there. One incorrect step as well as your toppling back down the mountain, undoing years of the hard work needed to get up there. We do not want to discount Apple’s successes in 2018: Apple Pencil support for ipad device was a good addition; iOS 12 has provided new life to iPhones as old as the 5S; Apple Watch Series 4 is literally saving lives; and that’s only a few highlights. Looking back again, though, 2018 was a fairly tough year for Apple as certain missteps finished up affecting the company’s bottom line. Amongst Apple’s most dubious techniques in 2018, there’s one I wanted to discuss for a significant purpose: With no second-generation iPhone SE in sight, it seems Apple has exited the spending budget flagship market. The fact is, I’ll take it one step additional: I am convinced Apple would not be launching any longer budget iPhones, and here is why. Apple’s product collection is certainly varied. The company generates revenue from services like iTunes and Apple Music to accessories like AirPods and the Magic Keyboard, from home entertainment devices like Apple TV 4K to personal processing devices like the MacBook Pro. However sales for most of these are not that amazing (though Apple’s income certainly are). It is actually the iPhone that makes up about nearly all Apple’s income. Since its debut in 2007, iPhone has pushed Apple’s revenue to such incredible heights that the company is just about the first trillion-dollar company in history. With so a lot of Apple’s income riding on the game-changing gadget, you can bet there will be a significant drop in Apple’s revenue if people beginning buying less iPhones. And that is specifically what we are experiencing. Immediately after a modest fourth quarter, revenue for Q12019 - which, to be clear, is comprised of October, November, and December, covering the holiday shopping season - was lower than Apple actually projected. With the expense of fresh iPhones rising, income would’ve increased actually if unit sales experienced only remained steady, but there were fewer iPhone units sold through the period. The implication can be that demand has waned, or it’s feasible there wasn’t much demand for Apple’s costly new iPhones in the first place. The first symptom of challenges was in 2017, the entire year iPhone X premiered. At a starting price 50 percent higher than the prior year’s baseline model, iPhone X unit product sales were reportedly smooth although Apple’s income increased. How? Because even though Apple sold roughly the same amount of units as the year before, the common cost of an iPhone had improved. When you sell the same quantity of products but tag up the price, you still visit a bump in product sales. Of program, it’s not just the iPhone that’s become more expensive. Apple has raised selling prices across virtually all the company’s stock portfolio. But with the iPhone driving revenue, the implication is usually this: If iPhone sales and profits continue to be toned or begin to fall, Apple will have to keep raising the price of the iPhone each year to maintain year-over-year revenue gains. As you can plainly see, it’s not a coincidence Apple has made a decision to stop reporting iPhone unit sales publicly. Also if 2017 was an outlier, the start of new iPhones in the fall is meant to give Apple a go of revenue adrenaline in the final stretch, allowing for a strong finish as the business crosses the fiscal finish line. But for the second season in a row, that did not happen. Doesn’t it appear reasonable, if improbable, that increasing the costs for brand-new iPhones has resulted in lower demand? About a week ago, Apple CEO sent a letter to investors. You can browse the letter for yourself on Apple’s web-site, nonetheless it warns investors that Apple’s 1Q2019 income will end up being $9 billion lower than was originally projected. The letter largely blames China’s overall economy for the vast majority of the year-over-year iPhone income decrease although also suggesting that individuals are still adapting to the termination of carrier financial assistance. In a recently available talk Cook reiterated most of the same points to explain lower-than-anticipated iPhone gross sales. Besides slowed development in growing marketplaces and the lack of subsidized pricing through carriers, Cook pointed to iOS 12 and the $29 battery substitute program while having encouraged users to keep their previous iPhones rather than choosing new ones. As you might remember, Apple started the battery alternative program in late 2017 in hope of hiding the smell of the electric battery hot debate, which had earned accusations of designed obsolescence. As stated by Cook, many with old iPhones didn't upgrade mainly because they could get new batteries for cheap. This would take away the overall performance caps that Apple had imposed on them, repairing their iPhones with their original glory, particularly when paired with iOS 12. Actually, Apple went to lengths to ensure that iOS 12 would make older iPhones faster, so Make is likely correct in thinking the battery substitute program and iOS 12 factored in to the weaker sales of 2018 iPhones. On the other hand, Cook asserted that complicated trade relations between the US and China was ultimately the largest factor. China represents a ton of untapped sales potential for Apple, so there’s probably some truth to that, too. You can observe the entire interview in the video below if you want to hear more of what Make has to say about it. On the other hand, critics and analysts possess suggested poor iPhone sales are a indication of market saturation; at this point, most people who would like an iPhone already have one, and that’s a hard hurdle to overcome, especially with people transitioning much less frequently. It is even quite feasible that Apple priced the 2018 iPhones out from the developing markets the business claims to end up being targeting. After all, in the event that you live in China and need it a new mobile phone, are you going to buy an iPhone XS for $1,000 (¥6800) or even more, or will you get the latest Vivo or Xiaomi Android smartphone that’s manufactured locally and will do in essence anything iPhone XS can do at a small fraction of the price? Not surprisingly, Cook basically sidestepped this issue of ballooning iPhone prices - a concern that we’ve seen across most of Apple’s products for that matter - which has been one of the primary criticisms of brand-new iPhones. New Asking Price will Increase Price raises for the iPhone used to end up being pretty rare. In fact, after carriers stopped providing subsidized pricing on smartphones, forcing us to start paying complete MSRP if we wished to buy fresh iPhones, we're able to at least count on a constant starting price from 12 months to year. That starting cost used to be $649. With the launch of iPhone 8 in 2017, it jumped to $699, a unsatisfying gain, but it was not too surprising. It was only a $50 boost after generations of a consistent price, a lot of people gave Apple a pass. And also, actually at the higher price, iPhone 8 seemed positively cheap when compared to $999 price on the new iPhone X. Yet apparently, the price increase for iPhone 7 collection a precedent because in 2018, the purchase price jumped again. Matching the increase from iPhone 7 to iPhone 8, the 2018 iPhone collection started out at $749 for iPhone XR. You would argue that iPhone XR is a better device than iPhone 7 and justifies the extra $100, but value is subjective. Although some might say iPhone XR is worth its $749 starting price, especially compared to Apple’s more high quality models, many customers will fixate on how each new generation of iPhone is more expensive than the one before. And at this time, can you blame them? To create matters worse, as iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR were getting unveiled in stage during Apple’s fall 2018 event, iPhone SE was being discontinued. So not merely are iPhones getting more and more expensive, but Apple has eliminated the only spending budget option we had. So if you’re looking to get a new iPhone in 2019, there’s very little choice anymore. Buyers are effectively being forced to accept Apple’s higher starting price in the absence of a true budget iPhone. Naturally, consumers and critics alike are getting more vocal within their calls for an iPhone SE successor. Overwhelming Unpredicted Benefits Apple revealed the iPhone SE , which stands for Special Edition, in March 2016 at a particular spring event. Both for consumers and the industry at large, iPhone SE was an extremely un-Apple device for Apple to release. The iPhone 6 had simply jumped in size and received a totally new design from the previous generation. Then iPhone SE was released, having a smaller, compact form with its design practically indistinguishable from the previous-generation iPhone 5. Even more surprising was the actual fact that iPhone SE particularly featured most of Apple’s up-to-date, front runner-level engineering in spite of the reduced starting price; for just $399, you got the same custom A9 processor as iPhone 6S and a 12 MP camcorder with 4K video recording and a bigger battery. In reality, the only significant short-cuts were the lack of 3D Touch and the use of first-generation TouchID rather than the faster second generation. But, again, taking into consideration its low starting price (which eventually settled to $349), the iPhone SE provided uncharacteristically great value for something made by Apple. The challenge was that iPhone SE didn’t become a top-selling iPhone. In the course of its life-span, its defining characteristic was that it offered an inexpensive point of access to the iOS ecosystem though it eventually gained relatively of a cult following among particular Apple fans. Naturally, after iPhone SE had been the baseline of the iPhone lineup for a couple of years, buyers were prepared for the obligatory refresh. While iPhone SE offered an excellent cost-to-performance relation in 2016, a refresh could link the functionality gap that grew as iPhone SE’s A9 processor chip was followed and changed, first by the A10 Fusion chip in iPhone 7, on the other hand by the A11 Bionic in the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X . Patiently Expecting Apple's New Releases Affirmed, we heard that Apple was working on a new version of the budget iPhone. Details varied, however the iPhone SE successor - alleged to be named possibly iPhone SE 2 or iPhone X SE (with suffix and modifiers meticulously arranged)- appeared to have the same purpose as the initial, which was to be a compact, low-cost iPhone offering great functionality and most of the most recent features. A lot of the difference surrounding the naming method for the iPhone SE 2 was because of unclear stories as to whether the device would maintain its iPhone 5-era design or whether it would embrace the new iPhone X visual. Some customers insisted (or maybe hoped?) iPhone SE 2 would appear to be an iPhone X from the front with a almost bezel-less, edge-to-edge display. These accounts were generally informed by supposed designs for display screen protectors and situations; if legitimate, the implication was that iPhone SE 2 would have a bezel-less, notched display related to iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. Of program, the notch would become among the defining characteristics for 2018 smartphones overall as its was imitated by nearly every smartphone manufacturer after the iPhone X debuted in past due 2017; nevertheless, for Apple’s reasons, the notch just exists to house biometric sensors for Apple’s proprietary FaceID. So the implication was that iPhone SE 2 would feature FaceID although the high cost of FaceID components made it an unlikely inclusion in virtually any budget iPhone. Following these reviews, renders were made to show how the device might appear if it ended up being real. Assuming the case designs and resulting renders were accurate, iPhone SE 2 would’ve been a fascinating device, the lovechild of the bygone iPhone 5 and the more futuristic iPhone X. Provided Apple could keep production costs and, by expansion, the MSRP down, iPhone SE 2 could’ve easily outsold the original iPhone SE, possibly learning to be a top seller like the original iPhone SE never could. These weren’t simply the pipe dreams of iPhone SE followers and anyone who wanted cheaper iPhones; reports from Apple’s own suppliers all but confirmed plans for iPhone SE 2, offering estimates for possible production schedules and ship dates. In early August 2017, Wistron Corp. - a low-volume manufacturer located in Taiwan that Apple recruits when iPhone demand is high - was focusing on expanding its production base to accommodate a fresh compact Apple smartphone, which many presumed to end up being an updated iPhone SE. After that came a tentative ship day: In late November 2017, Economic Daily News in Taiwan reported Apple have been eyeing a release day in the first half of 2018 for the iPhone SE 2, which would’ve been consistent with the spring release of the original iPhone SE. January 2018 brought another report of iPhone SE 2 launching in 2018. Shortly thereafter, there was a rumor iPhone SE 2 would feature a glass rear panel, suggesting the addition of the wireless charging features that the iPhone has already established since 2017. Just simply because rumors pointed to Apple gearing up for the release of a next-generation iPhone SE, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with KGI Securities who's known for predicting Apple’s products with uncanny accuracy, planted one of the 1st seeds of doubt. In late January 2018, Kuo reported iPhone SE 2 had very little chance of released because Apple had exhausted its resources on the three flagship models to be released in 2018. Of training course, those three models finished up being iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. However, rumors persisted - though at a slower pace - in spite of Kuo’s question. For instance, there were specifications and other information on the iPhone SE 2 reported in April 2018. Regarding to these leaks, Apple designed to keep production costs (and, by expansion, the eventual retail price) down by omitting the 3.5mm headphone jack and using iPhone 7’s A10 Fusion chip rather than the A11 Bionic chip found in iPhone 8 and iPhone X. For all intents and reasons, the axe was decisively dropped in July 2018 as BlueFin Research told MacRumors that Apple had nixed all programs to proceed with iPhone SE 2. We’ll probably never find out for sure whether iPhone SE 2 was ever actually in the pipeline; however, also if it had been planned initially, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever obtain an iPhone SE 2 at all. It’s been four weeks since the start of the 2018 iPhones, an event that coincided with iPhone SE being removed from Apple’s lineup, which, in and of itself, allegedly happened because Apple retired its A9 processor chip. So apart from Apple quickly unloading the last iPhone SE devices at a discounted $249 price, which took just 24 hours, iPhone SE is fully gone from Apple’s catalog, and anyone looking forward to a next-generation iPhone SE has little trigger for hope. In the event that you ask me, the writing is on the wall structure: Apple won’t be making another budget iPhone. FORGET ABOUT Budget iPhone? Spending budget smartphones, or smartphones that price roughly $300 or less, are pretty common today. In some instances, these budget devices offer great bang for your buck. Some of the newer notable examples include the Moto G6 for $240, LG Stylo 4 for $250, Huawei Mate 20 Lite for $290, and, of course, the amazing Pocophone F1 for $299. Should you have a tad more to spend, you can look for a used or refurbished Samsung Galaxy S8 for just barely over $300. Or you can get the brand new Nokia 7.1, an Android One gadget with the design and nearly all the features that top-shelf Android flagships have for the discount price of $350. I’m not sure where the term originated, but I totally agree: “Good mobile phones are receiving cheap, and cheap cell phones are receiving good.” Of program, you might’ve pointed out that the smartphones mentioned previously are Android smartphones. What about iPhones? When carriers did apart with subsidizing smartphones, we had to start paying full retail cost for new smartphones. Therefore Apple’s decision to create the iPhone SE was extremely timely: Rather than paying $649 or more, you could buy an iPhone at under $400 without producing a huge amount of compromises. Suddenly, individuals who favored iOS to Android had their very own Pocophone. From September 2016 to its discontinuation in September 2018, iPhone SE was never a top-selling iPhones. Also at its peak, iPhone SE under no circumstances accounted for more than 11 percent of iPhone product sales as the third-best-selling iPhone, and just by a slim margin. Meanwhile, both iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus nearly tripled the sales of iPhone SE during that period, accounting for 28.5 percent and 29.5 percent of iPhone sales, respectively. After September 2017, iPhone SE sales dropped substantially, remaining somewhere between 5.5 percent and 8 percent until the device was pulled in fall 2018. Imagine that you’re Tim Cook looking at these amounts. Everybody has been requesting a second-generation budget iPhone, but sales numbers present that when a lower-cost option is available, nearly all customers keep buying the more costly iPhones. If customers are willing to pay even more for high-end iPhones, does it make sense to produce a cheaper gadget that, at best, only about one in ten consumers would be interested in buying? With some context, positioning the iPhone more as a luxury item starts to make sense. Like voting on a ballot, Apple’s customers have already been casting their votes on higher-end iPhones, therefore we can’t actually blame Apple for moving away from budget smartphones that do not sell well. If you’re miffed about the loss of life of iPhone SE 2, there are, actually, cheaper iPhones available for people on a spending budget. But you’re not going to see them in retail stores. Current Market Conditions Apple gave customers the lower-cost iPhone they’d long been asking for, but most of them decided not to buy it. So if you’re Apple, do you produce a second generation knowing the first era didn’t sell well, or perform you ditch the budget-iPhone idea altogether? It seems Apple chose the latter. Nevertheless, it doesn’t take away from the actual fact that spending budget iPhones already are available, not forgetting plentiful. Specifically, I’m discussing used iPhones on the market. The gray market refers to the buying and selling of used iPhones on the secondhand marketplace. It’s comprised of the many people selling their utilized products after upgrading, which essentially produces an unofficial market of budget iPhones. Therefore those listings for iPhone 6S, iPhone 7, and iPhone 8 on eBay, the Amazon Marketplace, services like Swappa, and yard-sale applications like LetGo will be the gray market for iPhones. Apple doesn’t need to invest in R&D, sourcing parts, production, and distribution for a budget iPhone because we curently have access to all the discounted iPhones we could ever want in the secondhand market. And every year when fresh iPhones are released, millions even more iPhones will revitalize the secondhand market as users who upgrade to new iPhones sell their older ones. Plus, any post-2016 iPhone models about the gray market could have better specs than iPhone SE, and a few of these used iPhones would be cheaper than investing in a new iPhone SE from Apple for $349. In other words, Apple doesn’t need to sell a budget iPhone since the current-generation iPhones purchased at complete retail cost today become budget iPhones as consumers utilize them and finally sell them to on the gray market when they upgrade. And more devices are shown on the gray market every day, so as long as Apple is selling smartphones, the gray marketplace is a renewable supply for budget iPhones. Of program, the gray marketplace isn’t the only way to get an iPhone on the inexpensive. Depending about how you consider it, Apple actually offers new budget iPhone options every year. With the official unveiling of new iPhones each year, the MSRP of each preceding generation still in creation is decreased. For instance, when iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X had been announced in the fall of 2017, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus became previous-generation products, which warranted cost cuts. The iPhone SE was still in production when iPhone 7 got its lessen price, if you wanted a fresh iPhone but didn’t want to invest $699 or even more for iPhone 8 or iPhone X, you could choose iPhone SE from $349, iPhone 6S from $449, or iPhone 7 from $549. Though $349 isn’t specifically chump transformation, it’s certainly more palatable than iPhone X’s thousand-dollar starting price. With iPhone SE discontinued, the cheapest iPhone available is iPhone 7 for $449, meaning the least expensive iPhone on the market is $100 a lot more than last year. To be fair, iPhone 7 was a great device at release, and it’s still a compelling option today, especially for the price. Though it had been divisive as Apple’s 1st iPhone without the seemingly requisite 3.5mm headphone jack, iPhone 7 is in any other case a full-presented flagship. But if you’re searching for a fresh iPhone on a budget, which would you rather purchase: a 2016 iPhone for $449 or an iPhone SE 2 with the latest A12 Bionic processor chip for $100 less? Regarding iPhone SE 2 not materializing, maybe understanding what could’ve been can be what makes this so disappointing for a few. Even though the data suggests a restricted audience for budget iPhones, there will always be situations in which a low-cost iPhone with current-generation overall performance hits the sweet spot. Where Should Apple Go From Here? It’s a great time to become a lover of tech, particularly portable tech as budget and mid-range flagships are slaying in the Android smartphone market. Though priced higher than a $349 iPhone, the OnePlus 6T is certainly a primary example of how to offer flagship-level specifications, design, and performance at a lower life expectancy cost. For better or worse, Apple appears to have evacuated the budget smartphone sector after just one single attempt. Granted, Apple has never really catered to budget-minded consumers with almost all the company’s hardware starting at $1,000 or more and a shrinking number of gadgets, like iPods and iPads, priced lower than that. This is why it was so unusual for Apple to create a budget iPhone in the first place. The problem is that it seems Apple is currently trying to close a door that maybe the company never should’ve opened in the first place. After all, when you’re offering this inexpensive iPhone on the lineup, all of the flagship iPhones seem that a lot more expensive by comparison. Whether or not there’s a fresh iPhone SE in the future, the prices mounted on Apple’s items are climbing. In many markets, Apple is coming dangerously close to pricing the iPhone along with most of Apple’s other products out of reach. For customers who can’t (or don’t wish to) pay such exorbitant prices, the fact that Apple offered inexpensive options in the past but no longer offers those options now will undoubtedly leave a bad flavor in people’s mouths, almost like biting into a rotten apple. Honestly, I hope I’m wrong concerning this, but if Apple really wants to curb the decline in iPhone demand and for product sales to resume an upward trajectory, 1 of 2 things will have to happen, and sooner rather than later. Apple needs to either lower the margins on iPhones to make them less expensive (or even just less costly), or there must be a fresh budget option so consumers in least have the illusion of preference. Because as the numbers show, most buyers choose the premium iPhones anyway, but if Apple puts a spending budget model on the table, at least they won’t feel just like they’re being forced to pay the ever-growing Apple tax. Apple’s current pricing structure gives consumers just high- and higher-priced models to choose from. But it seems buyers are needs to realize there’s still an added option, which can be to save themselves the difficulty, and potentially some buyer’s remorse, by not buying brand-new iPhones at all.

#cellphone

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theperennialworld · 4 years

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Karma and Astrology!

We often read and talk about Karma and how it is impacting or has impacted our lives. Rarely, we give the heed to the fact that what is the magnitude of that impact. There are belief systems which try and designate and justify it in several forms. The idea is to analyse and explore those belief systems and see if they make any logical sense. Karma is nothing but an outcome of the deeds and actions one undertakes. In the derivative form, it can be further sub-categorized as good and bad karma. Further down, it involves the past, present and future (by and large, irrespective of my personal belief). That's how anyone believing in Karma would sum it up to in a nutshell. So, what is good karma? There are several ways to define it but I don't resonate with most and find them irrelevant especially in today's context (more on this follows below). To me, good karma is anything that generates a positive vibe from within.

This does not necessarily mean that good karma is universally good. No, it's not. What one considers as a good Karma could be a bad Karma for someone else (it's subjective and tends to change). What would you call betting money, winning (or stealing) and donating for charity? One can find enough reasons to bottle it down either way. It's erratic to the situation. And most likely creates an equilibrium of good and bad. The point here is - if the deed (or action) is generating positive vibes it could well be labelled as 'Good Karma' because the positive vibes ultimately instil positive energy, the ultimate source of human existence. And the same can be concluded for bad karma. A lot of people integrate the past karma to the present situation (or reverberations) and the present karma to what could happen in the future. I believe that the energy source that runs the system is like water, neutral (not literally). It can be accustomed to the situation it is in. The deeds turn this to positive or negative and that defines who we are and what could be a possible outcome of that action (but only restricted to that action). Now my understanding of how the past karmas (or the deed's outcome) impact our present and similarly how the present karma would eventually impact the future is just like a domino effect, one leads to the other. The good karma gives you enough positive energy to fuel the next good karma and so on. Similarly, a decision or defining outcome of good karma would lead to the outcomes of other activities and actions of the future. It's that simple and to me logical. These outcomes are dependent and linked to each other, one leading the other directly or indirectly. Now, these vibes eventually become a trait of our personality and predominantly define our character - Positive or negative (again subject to perception). The subsequent things that take place in our lives are governed by this trait and are the by-products of the initial actions and we end up attributing it to the good (or bad) karma. Let's take a detour for a while and talk a bit about beliefs in astrology and then we see if really there is any connection with the Karma. Astrology systems believe that the positioning of planets and stars impact the lives of humans on this planet in lot many ways than what one can comprehend. A very interesting point I read somewhere and it remained with me since is the independence of Astrology from the distance of planets. A planet could be on either side of the sun and still have an effect on us. There is no justification for that and if it is true, why other tens of thousands of planets in the universe don't impact us (because distances don't matter right?). The reality could be different. For instance, kids born in certain months would be learning alongside kids much younger. They would get an obvious advantage of more developed mind studying/learning the same things as their younger friends. Wouldn't that create a difference which can be presented via several conclusions under astrology? This is just an instance. And an accumulation of such instances would add up and be impactful over a period of time. I feel there is a huge disconnect between what is being claimed (sold) and the forecasted reality (could be delusional). The probable truth, I believe, lies somewhere in between. When we read an interpretation chart or a list of traits, more often than not we end up believing (rather convincing self) on certain things and also overlooking a few which probably don't fit that well. If all people born under one sign have more of less common traits then all specialists from a particular field, in the majority, should have birthdays falling in the same month. Same goes another way round - People born in same month should develop as like-minded individuals. Many a time we tend to ignore the differences tagging them as trivial. But these trivial differences 'customize us' as an individual much different from others. This ultimately leads to the choices and decisions we make in our lives. A classic example of the difference - I am born under a sign which labels me as a party person and someone with loud choices in music, colours and similar such things; but I am the exact opposite of that. I have never been a party person nor I have liked the loud side of music or colour palette. But still, if I want to, I could convince myself that a lot of traits fit in well with my sun sign. And that's where is the catch - The framework is the same (we are all homo sapiens after all!). The customization is what sets us apart and that is an outcome of so many variables - Our socioeconomic condition, the geography, people around us, the education, the environment and upbringing we received and so and so forth. It has nothing to do with the alignment of stars. Scientifically speaking, there are four types of fundamental forces that define the existence of human beings - gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear-strong, and nuclear-weak. A lot happening on this planet can be attributed to these four forces. Often times, we confuse the forces with that of outcomes of Karmas. The moon, for example, controls the tidal effect on Earth (and this is a scientific fact). The human body is predominantly water and hence the impact on us is natural and obvious. The effects of planets are similar on us (by the way of the utilisation of these natural forces). The astrology uses the Zodiac signs (constellations), the ecliptic sectors and the planets. Though, as scientific as it may seem there are so many questions that remained unanswered in the process of defining the horoscopes and astrological charts. The solutions, in fact, are more arbitrary as the 'how' is missing and focus is given to 'what' without substantial evidence. Wearing a stone could solve a problem? But how? that remains unanswered. I have tried to find the logic but no convincing and clears answers came in. What I could derive is that it's a fanciful fiction which gives more of a psychological effect than anything else. What you strongly believe in, has the most powerful psychological effect (and this is science!) Now coming back to the original topic of Karma. A lot of people believe that the bad Karma or their aftereffects can be subsided down and for them, astrology comes to the rescue. Nothing wrong in believing in something and following it (at least it gives you the peace of mind). But what baffles me is the justification in defence of following a belief. It's not rational when someone tells you that something sure does impact but it's beyond science and hence can defy logics and the whys and hows thrown at it and hence can duck the understanding. To me, it's not a science but rather an empirical, waited for long enough in the wings of logic without much success but have triumphed the art of seeding the belief in way too many minds to be able to start making any sense and to ask the questions (or counter questions). We are not the victims of the bad karma. Rather we are just experiencing an after effect of a previous decision (of this very life). When we fail to acknowledge, the domino effect continues and it keeps on reinforcing our belief of being a victim of bad karma (or lucky enough because of good karma). This further percolated down as misapprehensions (to those around us) and become the seeds of developing a wrong understanding. The rectification lies in the differentiation of bad vs good karma and correcting the future course and to a large extent - the present. Vedic astrology intensely clasps on karma and reincarnation and it claims that an individual subconscious chose the specifics of next birth and the accumulated karma eventually is carried over to next birth. If this were true, would a subconscious want to be born as an animal or an insect? They are living beings too and sure carry a life. Who are these trillion of subconscious minds who chose this life? Also, it defies the logic and science of evolution, without digging too deep in this subject. Back in Babylonian and ancient times, these seemed more convincing without the need to probe the logic behind. With the advancement of science and as it is uncovering the mysteries, the pseudo logic falters and it is eventually termed as the belief beyond science. And which is where my apprehension in typical astrology comes in. There is no quantitative brief. With the same factors and details, different astrologers would give a different analysis of past, present and future and as I said, our mind ends up picking the selective information, believing in it and eventually living it and subconsciously negating what doesn't fit the bill. Why this analysis is different in the first place if the inputs are the same? Now as the science is able to establish the 'origin' of human existence, the process of evolution, the older theories become more hogwash until proven otherwise by the way of the logical counter. Till that happens the preference is pretty much upon us. Both the worlds are here to stay and both can bottle down their beliefs convincingly with more than enough set of believers on either side. The choice is ours!

#Karma #prespective #astrology #opinion

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gramsugar42 · 4 years

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Apple Launches Planned for Next Season

Apple is considered to be the most innovative enterprise in the globe at the moment. It’s the company to which nearly all others search for guidance. When Apple reveals a forward thinking new design vocabulary or launches a fresh product, it generates ripples through the entire marketplace. Suddenly, the entire industry is crafting items in Apple’s concept. But to state Apple is merely a trend-setter understates the organization’s position while arguably the figurehead of creativity in consumer engineering. Apple isn’t just setting technology developments; Apple’s vision sets precedents and begins actions that allow the tendencies to exist to begin with. As impressive as it must experience to be Apple in this situation - and as humbling as it must experience to be the many businesses copying Apple at every change - it’s not absolutely all sunshine and rainbows. You can claw your way to the top of a mountain, but there’s very little stable ground up there. One incorrect step as well as your toppling back off the mountain, undoing years of the effort needed to get up there. We do not want to discount Apple’s successes in 2018: Apple Pencil program for ipad from apple was a beautiful addition; iOS 12 has given new life to iPhones as aged as the 5S; Apple Watch Series 4 is literally saving lives; and that’s simply a few highlights. Searching back again, though, 2018 was a pretty tough year for Apple as certain missteps ended up impacting the company’s bottom line. Within Apple’s most dubious moves in 2018, there’s one I needed to point out for a significant purpose: Without second-generation iPhone SE around the corner, it appears Apple has exited the spending budget flagship market. In fact, I will consider it one step further: I’m convinced Apple won’t be launching any more budget iPhones, and here’s why. Apple’s products portfolio is definitely varied. The company generates revenue from solutions like iTunes and Apple Music to add-ons like AirPods and the Magic Keyboard, from home entertainment devices like Apple TV 4K to personal processing gadgets like the MacBook Pro. Nevertheless sales for the majority of these are not that amazing (though Apple’s profit margins certainly are). It’s definitely the iPhone that accounts for nearly all Apple’s revenue. Since its debut in 2007, iPhone has pushed Apple’s income to such amazing heights that the company has become the first trillion-dollar business in history. With so a lot of Apple’s income riding on the game-changing device, you can wager there would be a significant drop in Apple’s income if people starting buying less iPhones. And that’s precisely what we’re discovering. Following a modest fourth quarter, revenue for Q12019 - which, to be clear, is made up of October, November, and December, encompassing the holiday shopping season - was much lower than Apple traditionally forecasted. With the cost of fresh iPhones rising, income would’ve increased even if unit sales acquired only remained steady, but there were fewer iPhone units sold through the period. The implication can be that demand offers waned, or it’s feasible there wasn’t very much demand for Apple’s costly new iPhones to begin with. The earliest indicator of difficulties was in 2017, the year iPhone X premiered. At a starting cost 50 percent greater than the previous year’s baseline model, iPhone X unit product sales were reportedly smooth although Apple’s revenue increased. Just how? Because even though Apple sold roughly the same quantity of units as the entire year before, the average cost of an iPhone had improved. When you sell the same quantity of products but mark up the purchase price, you still see a bump in revenue. Of program, it’s not simply the iPhone that is gotten more expensive. Apple has raised prices across practically all the company’s portfolio. But with the iPhone driving earnings, the implication is certainly this: If iPhone sales and profits continue being smooth or start to fall, Apple will need to keep raising the price of the iPhone each year to maintain year-over-year revenue gains. As you can plainly see, it’s not a coincidence Apple has decided to stop reporting iPhone unit sales publicly. Even if 2017 was an outlier, the start of new iPhones in the fall is meant to give Apple a go of income adrenaline in the ultimate stretch out, allowing for a solid finish as the business crosses the monetary finish line. But also for the second year in a row, that did not happen. Doesn’t it seem reasonable, if improbable, that increasing the prices for new iPhones has resulted in lower demand? About a week ago, Apple CEO delivered a document to shareholders. You can read the document for yourself on Apple’s website, but it warns traders that Apple’s 1Q2019 revenue will be $9 billion less than was originally projected. The letter largely blames China’s industry for almost all the year-over-year iPhone income drop while also indicating that buyers are still adapting to the termination of carrier subsidies. In a recent talk Cook explained many of the same concerns to explain lower-than-anticipated iPhone revenues. Beyond slowed growth in developing marketplaces and the lack of subsidized prices through carriers, Cook pointed to iOS 12 and the $29 battery replacement program as having encouraged users to hold their current iPhones rather than paying for new ones. As you may remember, Apple launched the battery substitute program in late 2017 in wish of hiding the stench of the battery pack hot debate, which had earned claims of intended obsolescence. As stated by Cook, many with old iPhones didn't upgrade because they could get fresh batteries for inexpensive. This would remove the functionality caps that Apple experienced imposed on them, mending their iPhones with their past glory, especially when paired with iOS 12. Actually, Apple visited lengths to make sure that iOS 12 would make old iPhones faster, so Make is probably correct in thinking the electric battery substitute program and iOS 12 factored in to the weaker sales of 2018 iPhones. Nevertheless, Cook asserted that challenging trade relationships between the US and China was eventually the largest factor. China represents a ton of untapped sales potential for Apple, so there’s probably some truth compared to that, too. You can observe the entire interview in the video below if you want to hear more of what Cook must say about it. In the mean time, critics and analysts possess suggested poor iPhone sales certainly are a indication of marketplace saturation; at this stage, most people who want an iPhone curently have one, and that’s a hard hurdle to overcome, specifically with people modernizing much less frequently. It is even surprisingly possible that Apple listed the 2018 iPhones out of the developing markets the business claims to be targeting. After all, in the event that you reside in China and need it a new mobile phone, are you going to buy an iPhone XS for $1,000 (¥6800) or even more, or are you going to get the most recent Vivo or Xiaomi Android mobile phone that’s produced locally and can do essentially anything iPhone XS can do at a fraction of the price? And in addition, Cook routinely sidestepped the topic of increasing iPhone prices - a concern that we’ve noticed across the majority of Apple’s product line for that situation - which has been among the main criticisms of more recent iPhones. Brand-new Price Range Rises Price raises for the iPhone used to be pretty rare. Actually, after carriers stopped providing subsidized prices on smartphones, forcing us to start paying complete MSRP if we wanted to buy brand-new iPhones, we could at least depend on a consistent starting price from 12 months to year. That starting price used to be $649. With the release of iPhone 8 in 2017, it jumped to $699, a discouraging gain, but it wasn’t too discouraging. It was only a $50 boost after generations of a constant price, a lot of people gave Apple a pass. Additionally, actually at the bigger price, iPhone 8 seemed certainly cheap compared to the $999 price on the brand new iPhone X. But apparently, the price increase for iPhone 7 set a precedent because in 2018, the purchase price jumped yet again. Matching the enhance from iPhone 7 to iPhone 8, the 2018 iPhone lineup started at $749 for iPhone XR. You could argue that iPhone XR is a better device than iPhone 7 and justifies the excess $100, but worth is subjective. Although some might say iPhone XR is worth its $749 beginning price, especially compared to Apple’s more superior versions, many people will fixate on how each new era of iPhone is more costly than the one before. And at this time, can you blame them? To create matters even worse, as iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR were getting unveiled about stage during Apple’s fall 2018 event, iPhone SE was being discontinued. So not only are iPhones getting more and more expensive, but Apple has eliminated the only spending budget option we had. So if you’re looking to get a new iPhone in 2019, there’s very little choice anymore. Purchasers are essentially having to simply accept Apple’s higher starting price in the absence of a true budget iPhone. Naturally, customers and critics as well are getting more vocal within their demands an iPhone SE successor. Incredible Unforeseen Benefits Apple launched the iPhone SE , which stands for Particular Edition, in March 2016 at a special spring event. Both for customers and the industry most importantly, iPhone SE was a very un-Apple device for Apple to release. The iPhone 6 had just jumped in size and received a totally new design from the prior generation. Then iPhone SE premiered, having a smaller, compact type with its design virtually indistinguishable from the previous-generation iPhone 5. A lot more surprising was the actual fact that iPhone SE particularly featured most of Apple’s up-to-date, flagship-level engineering regardless of the low starting price; for $399, you have the same custom A9 processor as iPhone 6S in addition to a 12 MP camcorder with 4K video recording and a bigger battery. The fact is, the only significant compromises were the lack of 3D Touch and the use of first-generation TouchID rather than the faster second generation. But, again, considering its low starting price (which ultimately settled to $349), the iPhone SE provided uncharacteristically great value for a product made by Apple. The issue was that iPhone SE didn’t become a top-selling iPhone. In the course of its life-span, its defining characteristic was that it offered an affordable point of access to the iOS ecosystem though it eventually gained somewhat of a cult following among specific Apple fans. Naturally, after iPhone SE have been the baseline of the iPhone lineup for a couple of years, consumers were ready for the required refresh. Although iPhone SE offered a great cost-to-performance rate in 2016, a refresh could connect the performance gap that grew as iPhone SE’s A9 processor was succeeded and changed, first by the A10 Fusion chip in iPhone 7, on the other hand by the A11 Bionic in the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X . Patiently Looking ahead to Apple's Latest Product launches Sure enough, we listened that Apple was focusing on a fresh version of the budget iPhone. Details varied, but the iPhone SE successor - alleged to be called possibly iPhone SE 2 or iPhone X SE (with suffix and modifiers meticulously arranged)- appeared to have the equal purpose as the initial, which was to become a compact, low-cost iPhone offering great performance and most of the latest features. A lot of the disagreement surrounding the naming scheme for the iPhone SE 2 was because of contradictory information as to whether the device would retain its iPhone 5-era design or whether it could embrace the new iPhone X visual. Some customers insisted (or maybe hoped?) iPhone SE 2 would look like an iPhone X from the front with a almost bezel-less, edge-to-edge screen. These accounts were largely informed by supposed designs for display screen protectors and situations; if legitimate, the implication was that iPhone SE 2 would have a bezel-much less, notched display similar to iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. Of course, the notch would become one of the defining features for 2018 mobile phones overall as its was imitated by nearly every smartphone manufacturer after the iPhone X debuted in late 2017; however, for Apple’s purposes, the notch only exists to house biometric sensors for Apple’s proprietary FaceID. So the implication was that iPhone SE 2 would feature FaceID although the high cost of FaceID components managed to get an unlikely inclusion in any budget iPhone. Following these reports, renders were made to show the way the device might appear if it turned out to be real. Assuming the case designs and resulting renders were accurate, iPhone SE 2 would’ve been a truly fascinating device, the lovechild of the bygone iPhone 5 and the more futuristic iPhone X. Provided Apple could keep creation costs and, by extension, the MSRP straight down, iPhone SE 2 could’ve easily outsold the initial iPhone SE, possibly becoming a top seller just like the original iPhone SE never could.

These weren’t simply the pipe dreams of iPhone SE supporters and anyone who wanted cheaper iPhones; reviews from Apple’s own suppliers all but confirmed programs for iPhone SE 2, offering estimates for possible creation schedules and ship dates. In early August 2017, Wistron Corp. - a low-volume manufacturer located in Taiwan that Apple recruits when iPhone demand is certainly high - was focusing on expanding its production base to accommodate a new compact Apple smartphone, which many presumed to end up being an updated iPhone SE. After that came a tentative ship time: In late November 2017, Economic Daily Information in Taiwan reported Apple had been eyeing a release day in the first half of 2018 for the iPhone SE 2, which would’ve been consistent with the spring release of the original iPhone SE. January 2018 brought another report of iPhone SE 2 launching in 2018. Shortly thereafter, there was a rumor iPhone SE 2 would feature a glass rear panel, suggesting the addition of the wireless charging features that the iPhone has had since 2017. Just mainly because rumors pointed to Apple gearing up for the release of a next-generation iPhone SE, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with KGI Securities who is known for predicting Apple’s products with uncanny accuracy, planted one of the initial seeds of doubt. In late January 2018, Kuo reported iPhone SE 2 had hardly any chance of being released because Apple had exhausted its assets on the three flagship models to be released in 2018. Of program, those three models finished up being iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. However, rumors persisted - though at a slower pace - in spite of Kuo’s question. For instance, there were specifications and other details of the iPhone SE 2 reported in April 2018. Relating to these leaks, Apple intended to keep creation costs (and, by extension, the eventual retail price) down by omitting the 3.5mm headphone jack and using iPhone 7’s A10 Fusion chip instead of the A11 Bionic chip used in iPhone 8 and iPhone X. For all intents and reasons, the axe was decisively dropped in July 2018 as BlueFin Research told MacRumors that Apple had nixed all programs to proceed with iPhone SE 2. We’ll probably never know for sure whether iPhone SE 2 was ever actually in the offing; however, also if it was planned in the beginning, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever obtain an iPhone SE 2 at all. It’s been four months since the launch of the 2018 iPhones, a meeting that coincided with iPhone SE being removed from Apple’s lineup, which, in and of itself, allegedly happened because Apple retired its A9 processor. So apart from Apple quickly unloading the last iPhone SE systems at a discounted $249 price, which took just 24 hours, iPhone SE is fully gone from Apple’s catalog, and anyone looking forward to a next-generation iPhone SE has little trigger for hope. In the event that you ask me, the writing is on the wall: Apple won’t be making another budget iPhone. FORGET ABOUT Budget iPhone? Spending budget smartphones, or smartphones that price roughly $300 or less, are pretty common nowadays. In some instances, these budget devices give great value for your money. Some of the newer notable for example the Moto G6 for $240, LG Stylo 4 for $250, Huawei Mate 20 Lite for $290, and, of course, the amazing Pocophone F1 for $299. For those who have a tad more to spend, you can look for a used or refurbished Samsung Galaxy S8 for barely over $300. Or you may get the brand new Nokia 7.1, an Android One device with the look and nearly all of the features that top-shelf Android flagships have for the discount price of $350. I’m not sure where in fact the phrase originated, but I completely agree: “Good cell phones are receiving cheap, and cheap mobile phones are getting good.” Of course, you might’ve noticed that the smartphones mentioned above are Android smartphones. How about iPhones? When carriers did apart with subsidizing smartphones, we had to start paying full retail cost for new smartphones. So Apple’s decision to create the iPhone SE was extremely timely: Rather than paying $649 or more, you could purchase an iPhone at under $400 without making a ton of compromises. Suddenly, individuals who favored iOS to Android had their own Pocophone. From September 2016 to its discontinuation in September 2018, iPhone SE was never a top-selling iPhones. Also at its peak, iPhone SE never accounted for more than 11 percent of iPhone sales as the third-best-selling iPhone, and just by a thin margin. Meanwhile, both iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus nearly tripled the product sales of iPhone SE during that period, accounting for 28.5 percent and 29.5 percent of iPhone sales, respectively. After September 2017, iPhone SE sales dropped substantially, remaining somewhere between 5.5 percent and 8 percent until the device was taken in fall 2018. Imagine that you’re Tim Cook seeking at these numbers. Everybody has been asking for a second-generation budget iPhone, but sales numbers show that whenever a lower-cost option is available, nearly all customers keep purchasing the more costly iPhones. If clients are prepared to pay even more for high-end iPhones, does it seem sensible to produce a cheaper gadget that, at best, no more than one in ten consumers will be interested in buying? With some context, positioning the iPhone more as a luxury item starts to make sense. Like voting on a ballot, Apple’s consumers have been casting their votes on higher-end iPhones, therefore we can’t actually blame Apple for leaving budget smartphones that don’t sell well. If you’re miffed about the death of iPhone SE 2, there are, actually, cheaper iPhones obtainable for people on a budget. But you’re not going to see them in retail stores. Current Market Conditions Apple gave clients the lower-cost iPhone they’d long been asking for, but many of them didn't buy it. Therefore if you’re Apple, do you produce a second era knowing the first era didn’t sell well, or perform you ditch the budget-iPhone idea altogether? It seems Apple chose the latter. Nevertheless, it doesn’t eliminate from the actual fact that budget iPhones are already available, not to mention plentiful. Specifically, I’m discussing used iPhones in the marketplace. The gray market refers to the investing of used iPhones on the secondhand marketplace. It’s comprised of the many people selling their utilized products after upgrading, which essentially produces an unofficial marketplace of budget iPhones. So those listings for iPhone 6S, iPhone 7, and iPhone 8 on eBay, the Amazon Marketplace, services like Swappa, and yard-sale applications like LetGo are the gray market for iPhones. Apple doesn’t have to spend money on R&D, sourcing parts, production, and distribution for a budget iPhone because we curently have access to all of the discounted iPhones we could ever need in the secondhand market. And each year when new iPhones are released, millions more iPhones will revitalize the secondhand market as users who upgrade to fresh iPhones sell their outdated ones. Plus, any post-2016 iPhone models about the gray market could have better specifications than iPhone SE, and some of these used iPhones will be cheaper than investing in a new iPhone SE from Apple for $349. Basically, Apple doesn’t need to sell a budget iPhone since the current-generation iPhones purchased at complete retail cost today become budget iPhones as consumers utilize them and finally sell them to on the gray market if they upgrade. And even more devices are detailed on the gray market every day, so as long as Apple is selling smartphones, the gray market is a renewable resource for budget iPhones. Of program, the gray market isn’t the only method to get an iPhone on the cheap. Depending on how you look at it, Apple actually offers new budget iPhone options every year. With the official unveiling of new iPhones each year, the MSRP of every preceding generation still in production is decreased. For instance, when iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X had been announced in nov 2017, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus became previous-generation gadgets, which warranted cost cuts. The iPhone SE was still in production when iPhone 7 got its price cut, so if you wanted a fresh iPhone but didn’t want to spend $699 or more for iPhone 8 or iPhone X, you could choose iPhone SE from $349, iPhone 6S from $449, or iPhone 7 from $549. Though $349 isn’t precisely chump switch, it’s certainly more palatable than iPhone X’s thousand-dollar starting cost. With iPhone SE discontinued, the cheapest iPhone available is iPhone 7 for $449, meaning the least expensive iPhone available today is $100 more than last year. To be fair, iPhone 7 was a great device at start, and it’s still a compelling option today, specifically for the cost. Though it was divisive as Apple’s initial iPhone without the apparently requisite 3.5mm headphone jack, iPhone 7 is otherwise a full-presented flagship. But if you’re shopping for a fresh iPhone on a budget, which would you rather buy: a 2016 iPhone for $449 or an iPhone SE 2 with the latest A12 Bionic processor chip for $100 less? Regarding iPhone SE 2 not materializing, maybe understanding what could’ve been is usually what makes this thus disappointing for some. Even though the data suggests a limited audience for spending budget iPhones, there will be situations in which a low-cost iPhone with current-generation efficiency hits the sweet place. Where Should Apple Go From Here? It’s a great time to become a lover of tech, particularly mobile phone tech as spending budget and mid-range flagships are slaying in the Android smartphone market. Though priced greater than a $349 iPhone, the OnePlus 6T is certainly a primary example of how exactly to offer flagship-level specs, design, and performance at a reduced cost. For better or worse, Apple seems to have evacuated the budget smartphone sector after just one attempt. Granted, Apple hasn't really catered to budget-minded consumers with almost all the company’s equipment starting at $1,000 or more and a shrinking quantity of gadgets, like iPods and iPads, priced less than that. For this reason it was so unusual for Apple to create a budget iPhone in the first place. The problem is that it appears Apple is now trying to close a door that maybe the business never should’ve opened to begin with. After all, when you’re offering this inexpensive iPhone on the lineup, all the flagship iPhones seem that a lot more expensive by comparison. Whether or not there’s a new iPhone SE in the future, the prices mounted on Apple’s products are climbing. In lots of markets, Apple is coming dangerously close to pricing the iPhone and also most of Apple’s other items out of reach. For customers who can’t (or don’t wish to) pay such exorbitant prices, the fact that Apple offered inexpensive options in the past but no more offers those options now will certainly leave a bad taste in people’s mouths, nearly like biting into a rotten apple. Honestly, I hope I’m wrong concerning this, but if Apple wants to curb the decline in iPhone demand and for sales to resume an upward trajectory, 1 of 2 things will need to happen, and sooner instead of later. Apple must either lower the margins on iPhones to create them more affordable (or even just less costly), or there needs to be a fresh budget option so consumers in least have the illusion of choice. Because as the numbers show, most buyers go for the premium iPhones anyway, but if Apple puts a budget model up for grabs, at least they won’t feel like they’re being forced to pay the ever-growing Apple tax. Apple’s current pricing structure gives consumers only high- and higher-priced models to choose from. But it appears buyers are beginning to understand there’s still one other option, which is certainly to save themselves the trouble, and potentially some buyer’s remorse, by not buying brand-new iPhones at all.

#smartphones

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asamlambung · 4 years

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Gush about your fave DR character! ♡

WVJHKHKHKHK anon whoever you are please know that youre unleashing a beast but also thank you im…..

(actually i made a tierlist for this though it might not be as accurate since it was a few months ago)

(also sorry for the characters that are in the lower tiers i swear even if i don’t like them most of them are still good memes. and the ones in “c” and “b” i’d definitely like more if there’s some good art/fics that explore their characters better though i might not actively look for it.)

OK so just to preface i havent seen most free times and most of my impression came from joseph anderson’s playthrough sooo i might be biased but im definitely planning on rewatching at least v3 in its entirety with all of its ftesO i guess it’s best if i start chronological and lemme just say. SAKURA OOGAMI IS BEST GIRL

it’s easy to say that im weak for big stronk gal who can lift me easily. and there is /definitely/ that point.

this is gonna sound weird but i really like the level-headedness she brings to the trials. i wouldnt say she’s the smartest but she rounds up the whole cast in a way that keeps the trials from being too absurd and non-sensical. there are other characters that also do this but seeing it come from her makes me happy somehow? maybe it’s because she also balances asahina in that sense and also that she’s the fourth trial stronk person who’s the most level headed compared to gonta and nekomaru. not saying those two are bad either, they’re great characters in their own right but i feel like their function is more on the side of entertaining rather than weighing in on the discussion. i especially think nekomaru’s whole thing with shitting is funny and it’s kinda a shame that sdr2 cut him from trials starting from the third.

speaking of sakura, yes i ship her with hina. no, duh. they’re good together. but i was also kinda touched when she talked about kenshiro. idk, sakura has two strong beefy hands and she can hold her girlfriend and boyfriend at the same time ok.(pretty sure kenshiro appears in udg but i havent experienced that game outside of seeing a few cutscenes so i wouldnt know)

also the fact that we get a callback to her in the strawberry house was. idk if i should say cool or if it was funny but it was something. and yep, her death was the saddest out of the fourth trials the games had. nekomaru’s death was more respectful for me and i felt more sad about gonta during his trial than his death. it’s more gruesome than sad, to be honest.(and ok the smoothskin joe gives to sakura is also kinda funny)

with other dr1 characters i like most of them are usually because of my friends’ (who got into dr years before i did) influence like kyoko and celeste. there are some others i laugh at but it’s more because of the inside jokes of the streamer i was watching.

ok so with sdr2 komaeda is easily one of the top. but tbh the reason why it is is bc a few years ago i read this (illegally distributed) doujin that had written his character really well. tbh i feel kinda bad now knowing that the doujinka stopped circulating their doujin bc of that and some of the subject matter of their doujin is… a bit too much for me. but the ones that are good are really good and when i came into canon i was like, “oh, this is the fingers in ass guy who got memed to death" nowadays, i see him more as pickle nagito though. i am interested in seeing how his character can be… well, not redeemed but i want to see him heal. whiiich might never happen in canon bc his hope bagel personality is too infamous now.

also i know everyone hcs nagito’s voice as smth along the lines of nico’s voice or john’s voice but like consider jph’s stoner voice. please. it’s so fucking funny with the fucking pickle komaeda meme. maybe it’s bc although im not obsessed with hope or despair, i related to his way of seeing karma.

after experiencing sdr2 thoough, lemme just say that johnny yong bosch did a great job voicing hajimmy hinata. like im not even kidding i really like that voice and if i was ursula i would steal that voice for my own use. buutt i cant do that. unlike komaeda, i’m pretty indifferent to his character arc and enjoy his one on one interactions with the characters more and how he reacts to the immediate events that happened over the course of sdr2.

soo yeah komaeda and hinata are literally opposites in my head, ain’t much of a surprise that i ship them i guess. but!! i like a lot of the gals in sdr2 surprisingly.

like, ok. maybe i’m biased but the designs for the gals in sdr2 are so goddamn adorable. like okay there’s the obvious ones like chiaki and sonia. and i don’t know why sonia’s personality is so goddamn adorable. like not in the “awww you’re so fucking uwu” type of way but more in the sense that she’s funny? it feels like even through all her weirdness that she still manages to make genuine connections with the characters.

with peko, it’s hard to dislike her considering her whole arc with the second trial. of course liking her goes in hand with liking fuyuhiko’s character too but i just like.. how stoic she sounds??? it’s adorable????? and with mikan yeah she kinda went… off in the third trial but consider???? her voice when she snaps was so goddamn hot?????????????? sdr2 has the best voice acting cant change my mind.

and i don’t know why, gundham is so goddamn funny and if i wanna show how absurd sdr2 can get i show my friends gundham’s scenes. he’s fucking funny, ok. and alongside nekomaru i can respect his death in a way. i goddamn saluted when i first watched his execution (with the full context of the trial) because i just really liked the conviction he carried with his murder.

aand with v3…

miu’s one of the funniest character ever!! i swear. i know some people look at the sex jokes and go, “ugh” but im a manchild so i ended up enjoying her moments so much. though i’m kinda a bit meh on the fanservice side, i like how she’s one of the characters who sticks out more. in my language we call her “pentolan” i guess.

tenko’s kinda an easy character for me to like considering… stronk lady. would love for her to carry me. the misandry can get a bit too much but she’s also a pretty funny and genuine character on top of that so she came out with me liking her.

kaede and tsumugi are characters i grew to /love/ after i thought about them a lot.

with kaede, the point i started to relate to her… was with her thirst with girls. i swear im not joking. but. okay. i like her position as the protag and all her ideals. one thing i was surprised that didn’t manage to make me relate to her was her passion for piano considering i’ve also studied it for like, around 12 years. maybe it’s because i kinda fell out of it around 2 years ago because reasons. despite of that though, i like how assertive she was in her time as the protag. and her execution was goddamn beautiful.

tsumugi, though, i wouldn’t grow to love as much if it weren’t for 郁十‘s works. like. please. go watch all of their videos it’s all so good. i think someone else talked about this, but tsumugi’s position as the mastermind feels a lot more “human” than what we got with junko enoshima. compared to kaede, i feel like we could’ve gotten so much more with her as a villain and i just want to see more of her outside of her “plain bread” facade.

it might also be due to my own hcs for them so they’re on my head a lot more than most of the other v3 characters are. even more than my two actual favorites!!

ok, ok. kochiki and shuichi are definitely my favorites of the bunch. like, the toppest tiers of fav actually. it’s kinda hard to talk about these two separately tbh. maybe it’s because before danganronpa, my previous otp in my previous fandom had these two’s dynamics as well. and like, there’s a certain pairing to a fandom i haven’t caught up to in years who also have a detective/phantom thief dynamic. aaand also persona 5 and that one pairing that i don’t have to name for people to know which is my otp.

yeah i’m a sucker for these types of characters. it’s kinda typical that they’d be popular in the fandom. which i’ll h a p p i l y eat up.

soo it’s kinda easy to start with kochiki. i think i don’t have to go into every minute detail and go all meta on why i like him as a character because a lot of people have articulated better on why his character works. he’s fun to watch when interacting with other characters and figuring out his motivation put my brain on work. i’ll say this though, i actually enjoy kokichi better when he’s not being woobified. he’s a rat through and through and i will enjoy this possum boi for that.

(oh wait, possum boi is rantaro. nvm.)

and now mr. detective himself. so i loved his character at first. didn’t love him more than kochiki but. liked his arc, he was a fun protag. then the fan content came and he became very moe in my eyes so i guess it’s easier to say that i uh, like fancontent of shuichi better but i like canon kokichi better. and also how is it that the majority of ousai e-rated works has shuichi as a top SHUICHI IS NOT A TOP um yeah anyway. i feel like out of all the main characters he’d be a pretty nice person to hang out with.

also his eyelashes are nice. im totally not embarrassed while typing this out. im literally physically restraining myself from typing out more so i can not embarrass myself even further.

okay congrats anon here you are i hope you enjoyed this embarrassing mess it took me more than a day to type this out because i don’t know where i should stop myself regarding some characters. but uh yeah. i have gushed. now i shall return to the abyss.

(unless anybody asks me to gush about my ocs which might actually be thrice as long as this)

#LFKDJAG;LFKDJGA;LKJ THE READMORE DIDNT WORK IM SO SORRY #poffin.txt #ok i fixed it i think #for the low low amount of 0.1 dollars i will stop gushing abt anything i am an embarrassment #im sorry it took me almost 2k words to gush but like... my love for some characters are just...... *shuichi clenching his chest sprite*

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syzygyzip · 5 years

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Solaire is the Sandworm and Other Apocrypha

What follows is an essay about Knight Solaire, a character from Dark Souls 1. The essay discusses his metatextual influence, his symbolic import, and a few theories about his supposed fate in Dark Souls 3.

On the Nature of Headcanon Canon as a concept adopts different rules when it comes to videogames. More concretely than in other artforms, the content of the game changes according to its witness. You can’t account for another person’s playthrough, so you are obligated to trust their story—within reason. A player can tell you that they beat a boss without taking a single hit. That’s reasonable. A player can say that they saw an enemy clip through a wall, placing it in an otherwise empty environment. Could be true, might want to see footage, but reasonable. Further out, a player can tell you that a completely unprecedented game-object appeared out of nowhere, started flying around and corrupting objects. This is unlikely, but, like some crytptozoological encounter, could be explained away by the witness’ misapprehension (maybe a hacker invades the game and thwarts the rules).

Just like witnessing the mothman or other spectral phenomena in real life, the person’s impression of the event is real. To borrow Jung’s term, it is a subjective fact of the psyche. Because it is “of the psyche,” it describes the psyche.

Physical is not the only criterion of truth: there are also psychic truths which can neither be explained nor proved nor contested in any physical way. If, for instance, a general belief existed that the river Rhine had at one time flowed backwards from its mouth to its source, then this belief would in itself be a fact even though such an assertion, physically understood, would be deemed utterly incredible. Beliefs of this kind are psychic facts which cannot be contested and need no proof.

[…] The psyche is an autonomous factor, and religious statements are psychic confessions which in the last resort are based on unconscious, i.e., on transcendental processes.” (Jung, Carl pars. 553-555).

Unusual things will happen in games, and still more unusual things will be perceived to happen. What happens “off-screen” in the game world has no true authority, not even from the developers, because every player acts as a co-author. Some fan theories are formed by mentally structuring objects and events. Other fan theories seem to spring forth fully formed from the inky off-screen unconscious; in this case, for the theorist it feels more like a discovery than a construction. But most headcanons are a composite. Theories and headcanons are also informed by the meta-culture—by what a game and its characters have become in the eyes of “the community.” Black Iron Tarkus, for instance, has no lines of dialogue in any game, but has developed a personality and prestige from his interpretation by the fandom. Such occurrences are almost a matter of course. Games, especially when they reach franchise-level popularity, spawn stories and memes. The game reveals content not programmed by its developers. It is doubtful that anyone at FromSoft foresaw Tarkus’ fandom. Nor would any on the staff have guessed that a few discrete game items (Giant’s Armor, Havel’s Ring, the Mask of the Father, etc) would cohere into a folk hero called Giant Dad. I say “folk hero,” though he is a scourge to many. This “character,” who is really just an exploitative blend of game mechanics, would be made, remade, imitated, elevated to memetic and then iconic status. Most other archetypes in Dark Souls are divided into their attributes: Helm of Artorias, Sword of Artorias, etc. Giant Dad is the reverse: he is constellated by his attributes; none of them alone hold his pneuma.

The Knight Solaire is more famous than either of these figures. Like Artorias, he is a character specifically designed to appeal and to exist in relation to; and yet like Giant Dad, he is a fan-fueled nexus of meme. Beyond both of these capacities is the degree to which he emanates himself beyond the franchise. His catchphrases “Praise the Sun!” and “jolly cooperation” have taken on a life outside of Dark Souls—a scope of renown unreached by Giant Dad. Especially noteworthy is his corresponding emoticon \[T]/ How many pop cultural icons can be summed up in 5 pieces of unicode? He has also been coagulated into an Amiibo, which is another ontologically ambiguous prestige, occupying a strange corner between meatspace, the virtual, and the symbolic apparatus of capitalism. But he is not quite so easily as commodified, as a Squid Kid or an Isabelle. He is not moe like they are. He does not have a face. But that is not say he is featureless: he has a personality and a mystique that coheres throughout his diegetic presence, his cross-cultural memetic tendrils, and his various costumes in headcanon. What force accounts for this coherence? No archetype can be summed up into a single definition or personality, but the style by which they draw attributes and myths around them allows us some understanding.

The Knight of the Sun When encountered in Dark Souls 1, the character of Solaire presents a rare locus of optimism. He is standing in the sunlight, staring into the sky in quiet appreciation. He is immediately friendly and encouraging to the player, and gives them the tool of “jolly cooperation.”

I want to emphasize how much Solaire’s demeanor stands out in the milieu. Though he is encountered at an early point, the game has already introduced the player to an extremely dismal and unforgiving world. They have likely met many overpowering obstacles and dejected NPCs, and begun to realize how scarce is the refuge of the bonfire. It doesn’t take much exposure to Lordran to take on its infectious loneliness. Solaire’s optimism cuts through this bleak fog like a lighthouse, and he literally gives the player the key to online collaboration. From another gameplay standpoint, consider how the player has become conditioned to dark corners, to ambushes, and fatal surprises; to visually scouring the environment like a rat, wary of predators and keen to spot a glowing treasure. For a moment, Solaire stops the desperate scavenging to direct your attention to the skybox. These contemplative silences have become a signature of the Souls series, but this is perhaps the first directed instance.

This is to say that Solaire is the first personification of goodwill that the player meets, so early into their journey, and is thus easily wrapped up into that symbolism. As the player’s relationship to the world takes on new dimensions (not simply new game areas, but entirely new spheres: online play, community discourse, lorekeeping), the symbol of Solaire follows them. In online play, he pops up as someone’s cosplay—and spectacularly, most of these sunbros, these independent actors, will reflect his behavior accurately! In Souls communities, Solaire is almost omnipresent, as people will post his slogan or his emoticon as a way of communicating affirmation, respect, or pure joy. There are other things to like about Solaire, like the fact that he is relatively powerful as an ally in boss fights, that he has the cool lightning move, or that it is revealed his armor is “average,” and that his strength comes from some inner source. Another element that should not be underestimated is the psychological potency of his implicit longing for a father. It goes without saying that the motif of the absent father has been especially compelling in the 21st century, ubiquitous in mass media, and often exploited by advertisers, etc. Beyond that, Solaire is searching “for his Sun,” an object which can be interpreted countless ways; suffice it to say it is a timeless and recognizable symbol of purpose and wholeness.

For all these reasons and more, Solaire is an easy point of projection for the player. He is an image both relatable and aspirational; he is average and exceptional. He is savvy, strong, and kind, and never in hyperbolic measure. He realistically represents a player’s best traits. The quality of his goodness is unspecific and broad; it becomes an anchor point for any virtue a player may value, as can be seen in the varied mutations he takes on in the subculture, becoming in turn funkier, wiser, more heroic. This trait of mutability, in itself, is generous! In a game that is by now famous for its therapeutic value in treating depression, Solaire’s influence should not be disregarded. Here is an illustrative example of the potential effect of Solaire on a player, posted to reddit by user unsuppressedYay:

Like most, when I was playing Dark Souls, I was in a very bad time of my life (which was incidentally only a couple months ago). I was at a college that I hated, with roommates who were not accepting of me, and many friends who had stopped hanging out with me. The only joy I would have is going home on the weekends, playing Dark Souls until I accomplished something and then going out to see my friends from back home. In this dark time i had isolated myself from most people during the week and was lonely and didn’t accomplished much, as such my grades also suffered. it was a bad time.

By playing dark souls, I felt accomplishment after getting through a particularly tough area or beating a boss. It gave me a reason to go on, that I would continue in the doomed world of lordran where i had to reach a fire with no good ending. It gave me encouragement to continue in my own life and applying to a different college and get my life back on track.

So to the point. I had accidentally spoiled what happened to Solaire. but I was still unable to stop it. I thought the chaos bugs were the big bugs in the lava after lost izalith. I felt so guilty and like I actually lost someone I cared about. I felt the obligation to wear his armor until the very end of the game. It made things significantly harder because of how weak it was compared to normal armor, but I stuck with it. The item description from the armor was something along the lines of saying that Solaire had no special power or magic, like we did. He made the armor himself, and was strong through his dedication and work ethic and never willing to give up to get his sun. So thanks Dark Souls and thanks Solaire for reminding me that optimism is the best way to go about things.

tl;dr cheesy story about dark souls helping me get through tough time, and feeling obligation to beat the game with solaires armor due to his wonderful optimism, and guilt over his death.

Even if a player doesn’t specifically don Solaire’s armor in tribute, they likely integrate some aspect of his character in other ways. It can be as simple as performing the Praise the Sun gesture before a boss or upon victory. Miraculously, the gesture conveys the attitude quite plainly. The phrase “what happened to Solaire” alludes to the tragic fate that befalls him if the player does not intervene: he goes hollow in Lost Izalith, loses his enthusiasm and direction, and apparently mistakes a Chaos Bug for the sun which he seeks. After this point he will be hostile to the player, and will be wearing the cursed thing upon his head. This piece of headgear, formed from the body of a chaos bug, emits a lighted orb resembling the sun. If the player follows an arcane route through the game, they can avoid this outcome, and bring Solaire as a helpful ally in the final fight against Lord Gwyn.

Solaire as Gwyn’s Son For a long time, the battle at the immemorial kiln seemed like a fitting resolution to Solaire’s arc, as Gwyn was assumed to be his estranged father. Complementing Solaire’s recognition of an affinity between the Sun and the Father, we are told that Gwyn had a long-lost firstborn son. While essentially disproved by the apparent revelation of Gwyn’s actual first-born in Dark Souls 3, this lore speculation continues to live on in the imagination of the Souls community. It remains as another fact of the psyche, and thereby further illuminates the nature of Solaire. To understand why this is significant, we have to go a little bit into the symbolism of the Sun. You may be surprised to hear that people have been aware of the Sun for a long time now, and it has accrued significations far too numerous to list in full. So we will just mention a few of its rays, those that coincide with Solaire’s virtues: generosity, joviality, light, warmth, and cooperation. It also symbolizes the gift of life, vitality, will, and essence. Then there is that important attribute: obviousness; there is simply no denying the Sun in the sky, as it illuminates everything around you, and your planet circles it incessantly. But this principle of “apparentness” follows the sun to its cultural correspondences, like the lion, who is known to be named Leo. Which chakra does the sun relate to? Why, the solar plexus. Guess which metal the Sun corresponds to. It’s gold. You don’t have to be an occultist or a psychologist to notice the sun’s dignitaries: they have a way of exuding themselves. So it is with the conspicuously named Knight Solaire and his undeniable presence. It is simply one of his attributes: the ability to beam out from the Souls world, through the metatext, and into broader strata of culture.

The solar principle is also a consciousness principle. To “shed light” upon something is to become conscious of it. Thus the Sun describes both the ego and the Self (the inner image of God). The ego can be thought of as a low-res isomorphism of the Self, or as an inner, inextinguishable “divine spark.” It seems that this spark is the source from which Solaire derives his boundless optimism. Solaire ambivalently identifies with the Sun, and marvels at it outside himself, terming it as a “magnificent father.” Though he is a source of light for the player, he humbles himself before the “gross incandescence” of some higher power. This ego-Self dynamic, so essential to human experience, triggers a (conscious or unconscious) question of reconciliation. So players may wonder, “Who is the father of Solaire? To whom does he defer?” and the natural affinities between Solaire and Gwyn present themselves. Aside from the fact that it is later contradicted, this genealogy is also simply too concrete and anthropocentric to satisfy the greater mystery. The Solaire-Gwyn interpretation remains as a psychological fact, but it is just the beginning. It is the exoteric story, revealed to players of DS1 not as deception, but as an inaugural step for constellating a much more complex archetype. Now that we have taken a good look about how well the figure of Solaire invites a player’s projections, we will move on to a few other lore theories, far stranger and more infamous.

Solaire Has Become a Worm Who was Knight Solaire and what became of him? Some say he is the great Carthus Sandworm, writhing around the Smoldering Lake in the ruins of Hell. While apparently originally suggested in earnest, the Sandworm story has come to be known as a meme theory. As we have discussed, a meme won’t exist if it’s not compelling on some level.

Here is the apocryphal myth as commonly understood. Canonically the player fails to save Solaire after he wanders into Lost Izalith in search of his Sun. He discovers the Chaos Bug (or slays it and discovers its corpse), and mistakes its gentle glow for his personal sun. Worn as headgear, it becomes the Sunlight Maggot, a “loathsome parasite” that is “completely immobile, yet still lives.” Solaire goes hollow, losing his identity and sense of purpose. He despairs. We don’t know whether the parasite produces this abject condition in Solaire, or whether it is symptomatic, or coincidental. Therefore speculation begins here. Assuming the player does not destroy the mad Solaire, he wanders around the underworld for a very long time. As the years go by the vast hellscape of what was once Izalith disintegrates. Its army of demons becomes hills of corpses. The land itself is now nothing more than a small maze of ruins, and a warm puddle—the so-called “Smouldering Lake.” During this time, the theory suggests, the parasite has completely consumed Solaire, turning him into the “Carthus Sandworm” an enormous, Dune-esque burrowing worm that spits lightning.

So because Solaire was overtaken by a Chaos Bug, it is assumed he never left Carthus and became the worm. The further justification(?) for this theory is as follows. The worm spits lightning as Solaire does. The worm drops Lightning Stake, a miracle that mentions lost dragon slayers, who are affiliated with Warriors of Sunlight and thus Solaire. The worm also has human appendages sticking out from its body, and drops an undead bone shard, which are seen as clues that the worm was once human. (It is also suggested by some that Solaire’s might and indefatigable nature are the reason that he was not consumed by the parasite, but instead transformed into an enormous creature. But this point is often glossed over in the meme-theory variant.)

We can see that the diegetic evidence upon which the case for Solaire-as-Worm rests is rather thin. So what accounts for its popularity? Why does it make some kind of intuitive sense? Why does it generate enough interest to be passed around, albeit ironically? Let’s examine the origin point of the story: Solaire venturing into Lost Izalith and losing his mind to a Chaos Bug. The story of a solar hero venturing into the underworld has—once again—existed for as long as people have been staring at the sun. Each day the Sun goes down, and comes up again reborn. Psychologically, the descent into the underworld symbolizes the journey of the ego into the unconscious. The principle risk of this journey is possession by the contents therein; re-absorption into a state of dependent unconsciousness. For this reason among others, it is associated with the great and destructive Mother in her negative aspect. The motifs of “the devouring mother” and the “belly of the whale” are likely familiar to most people. The loss of a sense of a separate self is a much-feared thing, and this story arises perennially and across cultures. Izalith too is full of (negative) Mother imagery, with the mother of pyromancy at the center, portrayed as a small bug, not dissimilar from the Sunlight Maggot which consumes Solaire. We should of course not reduce the Mother to some Freudian positivism. She is called the Mother because she represents the matrix of the world, which engenders, sustains, and decays all forms. In her fullness she is the divine feminine principle. Her fearsome aspects, such as the devouring mother, are constellated by the ego’s fears and rejections. The mother is the first being from which an infant must differentiate itself, and so there is this necessary period in which the mother becomes the abject, the locus of all that is disavowed and detested. When stories tell us about “slaying the dragon,” it is not about conquering the feminine, or defeating chaos; it is about overcoming a false view of the Divine Mother born of fear and prejudice. It is this view, cohered into a monster, that must be slain, as the Chosen Undead does in Izalith in Dark Souls 1. According to tradition, how is this accomplished? In psychological terms:

The slaying of the mother and identification with the father-god go together. If, through active incest, the hero penetrates into the dark, maternal, chthonic side, he can only do so by virtue of his kinship with “heaven,” his filiation to God. By hacking his way out of the darkness he is reborn as the hero in the image of God, but, at the same time as the son of […] the regenerative Good Mother. (Neumann 165)

The “father” in this case corresponds to the solar principles of Logos, order, and law. Swords and lightning-strikes, Solaire’s preferred tools, refer to the capacities of discernment and insight necessary for differentiation. This identification/alliance with the father in this task is only temporary, for the Father too must be destroyed: he is the old order, the ego deteriorating into an oppressive and petty tyrant. This is why Gwyn is underwhelming and ailing when we find him. So it appears that saving Solaire, and bringing him to defeat Gwyn, is a relatively psychologically healthy outcome. That is—if Solaire is the new ego!! But think about it: when playing a game, is it not the player-character who is most representative of the ego? It is out of the Chosen Undead’s eyes that we see, it is their actions we control, not Solaire’s. We have already established that for many players, Solaire is an ideal image, whose full potential is necessarily unknown. Does this mean that Solaire is meant to be abandoned here? Is he, like Gwyn, an outdated self-conception that must be discarded so that something new can be born? The moral judgment of this situation is more complicated than it first appears.

Let’s look at the steps one must take in order to save Solaire: one must join the Chaos Servant covenant and collect humanity for the “Fair Lady.” This witch of chaos is a pale and deteriorating spider-woman meshed into the wall of her lair. She speaks a language incomprehensible to the player, unless a special ring is worn, which reveals that she mistakes the player for her sister. If she is given a whopping 30 humanity, the Chosen Undead rises to a rank of prestige in her organization, and a special door opens which allows passage to the site of Solaire’s fall. This is the only way to arrive at the scene and destroy the bug before Solaire finds it. So the key, in essence, is offering your humanity to a mysterious dying witch over and over again. Or, as reddit user JotaBarra puts it:

To save Solaire of Astora you have to give 30 humanity to someone who you don't know, that doesn't understand you and the only thing you know is that she put herself in pain trying to fix something that she doesn't did. If you help her, the games give you the opportunity to save your friend. The only way to save Solaire is by being like him. Friendship is exactly like that. You help the only one that help you everytime he can. He will fight alongside with you against the final enemy. It represent what a relationship is. We don't build relationship with our direct actions but with what the actions mean. You dont help directly to your friend, but you do what he could've do for you.

This interpretation makes a good point about how it is necessary to become Solaire, to take on his attributes, in order to save him. Does this therefore mean that by the time the two of you get to Gwyn, you are the same person? Or were you the same person all along, and Solaire was just projected into the external environment, just as he both embodies the sun and seeks it outside himself? That light, whether the anglerfish lamp of the Sunlight Maggot or the Sun itself, compels the body forward, because that compulsion is the Sun.

Specifically, compulsion is the Sun in its chthonic state. It is synonymous with the ever-burning fuel of sulfur, replete throughout the realms of hell.

Lost Izalith, the Hell of Dark Souls, has been reduced to very little in Dark Souls 3. It appears quite plainly that the kingdom has deteriorated. What were once oceans of lava is now a knee-high lake of simmering water. However, among the ruins and heaps of demon corpses, there is indication that new life is growing. Roots of world trees coil around the stone and new forms of demons are singing living flames into being. Most significantly, there is also the presence of crabs, which are a timeless symbol of birth, and present at the other two places of world-regeneration in Dark Souls 3 (the forest and the painting). Beneath the desolate surface of Smouldering Lake, there is the beating heart of new life.

It is on the surface that the pseudo-Solaire worm confronts us. It could be that it is protective of this nest, or maybe it is a crude image of the unborn life in incubation within. The fact that it is coiled here, in a pool of water at the base of the world, suggests the kundalini serpent. In psychology and metaphysics, the kundalini is the libidinous upward force catalyzed by the primal energy (shakti) at the base of the spine. Alongside its physiological manifestation, the rising serpent/worm is one of the oldest mythological motifs:

The Gnostics related the serpent to the mysterious energy of the primordial waters symbolized in the waves of the undulating serpent as well as the stirrings within the serpentine spinal cord of man. The stirrings surface from the abyss of the unconscious, sometimes unexpectedly and with peremptory and terrible effects. (Valborg)

Its undulating path upwards is called “The Serpent’s Path” as it traces a parabolic shape as it climbs to ever-higher degrees of refinement (this is what the player does, you may recall). This journey of upward undulation, often felt by the individual as an electric current, is sometimes preceded by the “Lightning Flash,” the original impetus, which strikes downward from the crown to the lowest point, thus awakening the serpent, which makes its ascent. So these images come together quite conveniently in the figure of this lightning-spewing sandworm. You may remember that the worm drops “Lightning Stake”; not some other miracle, but the one that forces lightning down upon the earth. To see this electric serpent coiled up within a hot, subterranean chamber teeming with life—it is hard to imagine a more direct depiction of the kundalini.

We have talked about Solaire as a symbol of the Self, that was at one time appropriate but now needs to be refined, and it is therefore appropriate that he should find himself consumed in the flames of the underworld. The fiery hells of Buddhism are sites of purification; the fire that rages and torments the victim is their own unbridled affects, but they eventually exhaust themselves. What remains after is purified ash, synonymous with the “white foliated Earth” of the alchemists. It is this type of “environment” in which the “gold”—the personality—should be sown, in order to reach its potential. This is assumedly what has already happened to the Ashen One of Dark Souls 3, given their title and the fact that they have arisen from ash; it also seems to be descriptive of the process at hand for the kingdom of Lothric.

It’s easy to imagine that players might unconsciously project the image of Solaire’s rebirth onto this worm. For reasons related to Solaire’s story, as previously discussed, and for these perennial myths. At another point in the journey, the player is also confronted with Rosaria, the Mother of Rebirth, who “respecs” people—reallocates their stats and qualities. The only risk this refinement brings is that the person may become a worm! A few casualties of this process are seen or implied elsewhere in the game. These “mangrubs” are quite revolting, and yet at least a few are linked to the highest divinity. This should not surprise us:

Typical of the paradoxical imagery of the unconscious, the despicable worm can turn into the supreme value. Thus the messiah is equated with a worm in the messianic Psalm 22, verse 6: ‘But I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.’ (Edinger AoP 158)

For the full renewal of the image of the Self, it is necessary that the old king(/sun) dies. The body decays, and at its most revolting, it becomes the bed and the feast of maggots. Because Smouldering Lake is beneath the Catacombs, it can be said to be taking place within the body within the grave. The entire scene can be read as allegory of the processes within the body in the midst of its resurrection. The “messiah” here is invoked because Christ is another euphemism for the Self. And just as the dead king’s body is diffused into the bellies of the maggots, so too does Christ’s flesh become the object of consumption during the Eucharist. This takes us conveniently into our next bizarre fan theory.

Solaire Has Become Soup Slightly more arcane than the theory of Solaire’s transfiguration into a worm, is the notion of his transubstantiation into the Estus Soup, which is found in a few cauldrons throughout Lothric. The justification for this theory was handily summarized on a reddit by a now-deleted user:

Consider the room you get the sunbro badge in undead settlement. It also contains an estus soup bowl...

The sunbro badge is found on a device for dismembering corpses. We know this becasue we see the same device being used to cut up bodies later in the undead settlement just before the stairs down to the lower area with the ravine

The sunbro badge is simply a rag of cloth sitting on the device, which heavily implies that a sunbro was cut up on this device and his badge was left over as a part of the cutting up process

Underneath the cutting up device are an absolute ton of small bowls, receptacles to contain fluid. What fluid will the cutting up device produce? blood and human bodily fluid.

These same bowls can be seen all around the main estus soup pot....

The blood of the dismembered sunbros/other undead is extracted in the cutting process into the small bowls. These bowls are then take to the main pot and their essences poured into the main soup pot which is boiled and the estus fluid is extracted from the blood of the chopped up sunbros. This is what forms the radiant estus soup.

The player is in some sense conditioned to think this, because the entire Undead Settlement is oriented around the disposal of corpses. Moreover, Estus Soup is found at two more places, one of which holds Solaire’s talisman, and the other near paintings of Gwynevere (saint of the sunbros). Now, the more reasonable interpretation of the presence of these Sunlight artifacts near Estus Soup is that Siegward, who is later shown to be the one concocting the soup, leaves them behind in his absent-mindedness. Siegward’s attitude and behavior are very reflective of the “jolly cooperation” ethos, and thus we naturally assume that he is affiliated with the Warriors of Sunlight.

This, however, does not disprove that the Estus Soup is Solaire! Not to say that Solaire was butchered by Siegward, and bled into the soup via the grisly method described above; rather it is more likely that a faithful Warrior of Sunlight has consecrated this special drink in a manner similar to the Christian Eucharist. To understand the concept of the Eucharist, here is an excerpt from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

The cup of prayer contains wine and contains water, being established as a representation of the blood over which thanksgiving is offered. And it is full of the holy spirit, and belongs entirely to the perfect human being. Whenever we drink it we take unto ourselves the perfect human being. The living water is a body.” (Gnostic scriptures p347)

In other words, “the Eucharistic blood represented the Soul of Christ.” (Jung & von Franz 93). The fact that “the conception of blood as soul prevailed in the middle ages,”(ibid. 93) is visually quoted by Dark Souls periodically, and further prepares the player to respond to such symbolic signaling within this fantasy setting.

Now, Solaire as a Christ figure who becomes the subject of a Lothric Eucharist is probably not a theory that anyone would thread together without the specific intent of performing a Christian reading of Dark Souls. The reason that I discuss it now is because the existence of the Solaire-as-soup theory seems to have arrived at a similar situation unconsciously, and slightly rephrased into a secular materialist framework (more palatable to the conscious mind). We have examined how Solaire is an uncommonly strong draw for projections of the player’s better nature. It is also a fact of our world that certain Christian concepts—such as Christ representing a fully realized being to whom we should aspire, or the mysteries of the Eucharist—are present in the background of the unconscious. These stories and motifs were so ubiquitous for so long in the western world, that even if we live fully secular lives, this material continues to radiate its influence through the thinnest, unassuming little cracks in our speech, our aesthetics, and our stories.

So without any intention on the part of the player, their experience of the character Solaire receives some influence from the Christian world. This effect is aided by a few other elements. There is his resemblance to common depictions of knights from the Crusades, whose defining associations are Christianity and the fact that they were seeking something. Of course we also have the fact of his signature gesture which is similar to the pose of the crucified Christ. This essay has already described this gesture’s prominent contribution to the memetic potency of Solaire, but it bears mentioning that if the player joins this covenant, they perform the gesture automatically upon being summoned—any active sunbro is quite literally forced into imitating this pose! And of course, a third reason for this unconscious association of Christ and Solaire is the factor of the mysterious and divine parentage.

Which is Canon? So of these two fringe headcanons, which is the more valid? Is Solaire a worm or is he soup? Taking anthropology into account, we must recognize that the death and resurrection of the Sun-god naturally predates Christ, and Christian myths are often studied in that context. It is just as natural to see Solaire as a personification of the Sun, of goodwill, or of the Logos … although Christ also covers that ground. Whatever the case may be, the dismemberment and consumption of this embodied principle seems to be a common feature of these stories. Both the worms who feed on the king’s corpse, and the Eucharistic wine/blood, are images of this concept—and perhaps both images are necessary. The feast of the worms is the profane image, and the Eucharist is the sacred and civil version. After all, for the dissemination of this quality of consciousness to be complete, it must extend to every level. Edinger gives us another broad summary of the concept:

[The Golden Man] represents the microcosmos or monas, the initial matter, which also contains the goal of the work. His dismemberment signifies a new conscious ordering of his initial chaotic nature.

It is difficult to consider terms like “initial matter” and appreciate the fullness of the concept. In nitpicking over the details of the specific images, we may begin to lose sight of the importance and universality of the basic story. This is why it is so important that there are multiple histories, multiple headcanons. If Solaire was only the worm, or only the soup, he would be less complete and less adequate as a symbol. And there are many headcanons besides these, of course; they merely represent two aggregations with a mythologically fertile tension between them. By the incredible multivalence of the Sun’s many arms, he means something different and individual to each player.

And speaking of the “goal of the work.” The return of the Sun in the morning is not considered a triumph merely because it has survived. Withstanding the night in itself is hardly an achievement! It is a triumph because something has been earned in the descent, and the same is true of the story of Christ’s incarnation. When the Sun-god rises again, something has been purified, refined, or to use the preferred Christian term, redeemed. The personal stories of players also seem to follow this trajectory. Dark Souls doesn’t treat depression simply because players are enduring its difficulty, it’s because some special quality of attention is polished through their struggles. We ought also to remember that Solaire willingly became Undead so he could visit Lordran and find his own Sun. The descent into incarnation for the purpose of refinement is a journey that should only be made consciously, with optimism and good cheer, for that is the Sun’s native condition.

Edinger, Edward. Anatomy of the Psyche. Open Court Publishing Company, 1985. Jung, Carl. Psychology and Religion: East and West. Princeton University Press, 1969. Jung, Emma & Marie-Louise von Franz. The Grail Legend. Sigo Press, 1980. Layton, Bentley, ed. The Gnostic Scriptures. Yale University Press, 1995 Neumann, Eric. The Origins and History of Consciousness. Bollingen Foundation, 1954. Valborg, Helen. Great Symbols Series: the Serpent. Theosophy Trust, 2013.

Solaire is Pump-a-Rum Actually, you are this fledgling.

#dark souls #dark souls lore #solaire #knight solaire #dark souls 1 #dark souls 3 #solaire sandworm #carthus sandworm #gwyn's firstborn

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starberry-cupcake · 5 years

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Why does the pink diamond twist make you mad? Don’t get me wrong I completely agree but I’m just curious about your Thoughts (tm)

I was trying to make this short but it didn’t happen, I’m sorry. I’ll put it under read more. I hope I made my point across well enough, it’s a difficult subject to talk about.

There are some things in-story that bother me but I’m letting them slide for now until things develop because I don’t want to judge without the whole story. I do think Pink was very selfish about many things, especially towards Steven and Pearl, but mostly Steven, because he didn’t have a choice (even though she stated that what she wanted was for him to have choices, woops), and I don’t know how much the show is currently focusing on that side of things, considering everyone and their mom wax poetic about her, but I’m letting that pass for now because, like I said, we haven’t seen the full story yet and maybe Pink’s imperfections and goddamn messes serve the story more than we think (the fact that it was characters like Lars and Bismuth the only ones who talked badly of Pink/Rose before Homeworld was involved and now they are Steven’s loyal allies says a lot about foreshadowing in storytelling). So all in-story issues I may have, I’m allowing to grant leeway until I can see the full picture.

BUT

My biggest issue with the Pink twist is that they completely missed the optics about her body. It wasn’t intentional but it is a problem and, after much pondering, I think I’m allowed to be upset about it and to think they missed the mark.

Now, here I want to make a disclaimer. I do not think, under any circumstances, that the Crewniverse nor anyone involved in the show has shown to be intentionally fatphobic. I don’t think that this issue warrants people to drop the show or to talk badly about it or to declare it “cancelled” because it messed up. I am not trying to stir the pot in a sensitive topic which has seen the SU fandom fractured so many times before, because fatphobia is a subject that is still not taken seriously, even in feminist discourse.

This, though, doesn’t erase a problem when it exists.

I don’t think that the whole Pink reveal was intentionally harmful. It was clearly a series of decisions made a very long time ago, completely ingrained within the storyline of the show. Rebecca and her team had this thing thought out from the get go and the story was built over this situation in a way in which it’s possible for us to watch the reveal and be shocked, impressed and talking about it for months.

You can’t know the entirety of the implications that your story and your characters are going to have in people beforehand. When you create a story, you can have a potential reader in mind or write it for yourself or for someone else, but the extent to which it’ll reach folk, that’s outside what you can understand.

Still, it’s important to consider certain optics when you choose to add to your character some form of representation that is rarely seen in media, especially if you are going to take it away at some point.

There was an unprecedented regard on Rose for being fat. Plus size, whatever you wanna call it, I’m gonna call it for what it is and what I am too.

I don’t have to tell you, hopefully, how difficult it is to find fat characters portrayed in anything than jokes and gross commentary or “caution for the vain”, as Nadia from Bare would say.

Growing up in fandom, the main reason why I never cosplayed was because of my body. 18 years ago, my local fandom was incredibly sexist and humiliation towards fat women and girls in cosplay wasn’t just comments on conventions or shouts in the halls, it was literal assault. Guys threw bottles to the stage, the most well-known magazine for fandom news printed your photos without your permission, or stating other intentions, with extremely derogatory slogans underneath, especially of underage girls who didn’t know how to defend themselves. It was too young a fandom and we were too young ourselves to know how to deal with that, except for hiding.

The sexism, aggression and assault was not going to change for having a fat character available, but it would have eased the blow. It would have been less difficult to accept ourselves if instead of being “fat Sailor Moon” we could just be a character who did look like us from the beginning and wasn’t a stereotype of gross behavior.

There are a lot of girls out there who constantly fight the good fight and do cosplay characters outside their body type, but why can’t we have just one character to cling to?

Then, in comes Rose Quartz.

Rose Quartz, regarded as all the things fat women in media very rarely get represented as: lovable, admirable, strong, graceful, perceived as beautiful, desired. She dressed in white, for goodness sake. I grew up in a time and environment in which dressing in white as a fat person was a revolutionary act in itself.

That’s why issues begun with her being represented as thin by fandom or appropriated by thin cosplayers. Because she meant the world to a portion of people who have been pleading for someone like her to exist in massive media and fandom had to go and “slim her down” in order to grasp the concept of her being desirable. They couldn’t conceive her as pretty and fat at the same time, they had to “adapt” her to their beauty standards.

When thin cosplayers had always had a myriad of places to choose from, there they were, grabbing onto one of the few options fat folk had as a possibility. And they tried to flip the script, saying “everyone should cosplay what they want, if a fat girl can cosplay a thin character, then why can’t I, a thin person, cosplay a fat character?”

The answer is simple, if you have a little empathy: because a thin person hasn’t got systematically victimized for making that choice in the way fat folk have been, because a thin person gets to choose from a lot of options for their cosplay, because choosing to be “the thin version” of a fat character won’t get them anywhere near as targeted as a fat person would for cosplaying a thin one. Just look at some cosplayers’ instagrams for comparison in the comments, if you think I’m exaggerating.

The argument grew nonsensical and it elevated to stages of aggression and violence.

People were hurt, a movement of “resistance” grew in which folk tried to pass their fatphobic attitudes as a rebellion to the “political correctness” of the request that we should reconcile the idea that Rose was valid while being fat because fat folk are valid. It grew out of control, taken to unnecessary extremes, and to this day the talk about Rose and fatness is fandom taboo and a synonym of how fucked up the SU fandom can get. The conversation was silenced by extreme circumstances.

After all that, the Pink Diamond reveal hurt me deeply. It felt like all had been for nothing. I felt incredibly disappointed.

There’s this phrase that mothers, grandmothers, aunts, friends, people tend to tell fat girls, a phrase that feels like a stab in the back every time you hear it: that inside every fat girl there’s a thin girl waiting to be happy.

It’s this idea that only when you change your body you can start living. You can’t be successful, worthy, cared for or regarded until your body doesn’t change. One of the reasons why fatphobia is still such an issue is because it’s used as a “motivator”. Fat folk have to live around people who genuinely think that abuse, bullying, exclusion and oppression are legitimate ways to make you put down weight. And they do it all in the name of your “well-being and happiness”. Fatphobia is, to this day, the preferred diet.

It hurt me deeply to find out that, despite it all, Rose Quartz was a fat-suit. Because some people say “she chose that body, that counts for good representation”, which is worse, because it perpetrates the idea that your body is a choice. That you are fat because you’re lazy, because you do something too much or something not enough, that the only thing you need to do to be validated as a human being is change your body.

The Pink reveal wasn’t meant to deal with all this subtext. Nobody thought of this when making her up, when designing her, when planning the story, because if you haven’t lived it, it’s not a priority. And that’s ok. But in a show like SU which is so careful about these things, this particular slip was huge for me.

I don’t think that it warrants me disliking the show and it does not, under any circumstances, invalidate the fact that there are other characters with diverse body types in Steven Universe, and that the show and its crew haven’t been anything but accepting and caring.

But it does pose questions as to why it’s a problem for me and it should make me think about my own stories and my own choices. And I think I’m allowed to feel a little hurt.

#anon #anonymous #ask #Anonymous #fatphobia cw #I'm sorry for not being as concise as I wanted

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psychedelicpriscila · 6 years

Text

I find it quite ironic that you believe I fear guilt. Especially since that emotion has been so strongly recognized and felt within my being during the past month; so much to the point of me crying to my parents and closest friends multiple times about you and how I hurt the kindest person I’ve ever come across. I don’t know where you got the idea that me walking away (hurting you) was easy for me to do. You, yourself, watched me cry my eyes out when I was forced to accept the fact that you would no longer be a part of my life. I voiced my pain to you explicitly; and it was the farthest thing from easy. My dad asked about you again and I asked him to please stop doing so because it hurt too much to even hear your name; let alone talk about why or how things ended. I do not resent you for hating me, I never will. I am, however, sorry that you feel that way. I know it’s incredibly easy to misunderstand me or why I do the things I do; I, myself, don’t understand me either sometimes. Even my dad said that what I did doesn’t make sense, that leaving you didn’t coincide with me loving you. He said I left you the way my mom left him; and that karma would come back to haunt me for this. Hearing him say that made me want to crash the car I was driving at the time of that conversation. Why would karma come back to hurt me when I never intended to hurt you in the first place? What the fuck is so awful about me fulfilling my own personal needs for once? Why does it feel like everyone I love is out to make it seem like I’m some monster? I had already been feeling like a bad person, and him saying that only amplified my self-hatred. He made me park the car and asked why I was crying and why I left if I really did still love you. I answered his questions with things I already explained to you; things I hoped you would understand but clearly didn’t. I grew up in a broken household. My mom expressed to my brother and I, day after day (literally every single day), that she regretted marrying her first love. That she wishes she would’ve given herself the chance to know other people before deciding who to share her entire life with. I watched her life crumble down alongside my entire family’s, and she always blamed it on that sole aspect. I don’t think you’ll ever comprehend the tremendous amount of anxiety that that ingrained in me. I am very aware that you are nothing like my dad; and that you would never hurt me the way he hurt my mom or myself. But you were not there to experience my upbringing, nor were your friends, or your parents, or whomever else may have stimulated or encouraged your hatred towards me. I’ve been brought up to fear settling down with my first love. I’ve been indoctrinated to need to experience more than just one person; regardless of whether or not my first love is the perfect person. It’s like, all my life, I’ve been conditioned to have to do this; and I’m sorry that it had to be with you. It is not simply a “petty desire”. It’s a fear that I have to overcome, and this is the only way I will. When I explained this to my dad (a person who was actually there to experience what I’m talking about), tears still rolling down my face, he too became teary-eyed and even apologized to me for his involuntary role in this. He said something along the lines of: “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that about karma getting back at you, or you being a bad person for leaving him. That was just me being angry at your mom. You’re nothing like your mom. You remind me a lot of myself actually. You feel so much and yet you always aim to conceal the effect that that has on you. I want you to know that you’re not a bad person. You’ve been through shit that not many people have; partly because of my own faults, and I’m sorry. I’m sure, if any other child were to suffer through what you have, that child would turn out to be the shittiest of people; a person filled with hate and cruel intentions. But you are not. You’re too empathetic and kind; and I honestly don’t know how that’s even possible. I’m very proud of you and I’m very sorry that your mother and I have had such a lasting and hurtful effect on you and your own relationships. It’s not fair to you and you didn’t deserve that.” At this point, we were both crying and it was kind of beautiful; I never thought I’d see the day when my dad apologized for his past actions. Those words touched me deeply and I realized that, yeah; he’s right. I’m just too fucking hard on myself to realize this on my own: I am not a shitty person. It’s okay if you believe that I am; but at least I won’t feel this inordinate guilt anymore. I’ll no longer go through life believing that my leaving makes me a bad person. I will no longer feel guilty for feeling happy or for listening to my own needs. I know that, to those ignorant of my situation, it may seem like I’m heartless and had ill intentions all along; but I know that that isn’t true. And that is all that matters. I have always been afraid of love. I told you this from the start. I made it known to you that you were the first person I ever allowed myself to love, that I had never loved anyone before you out of my immense fear of loving/being loved. If there’s one thing I fear, it is love; not guilt. Hell, now I feel guilty for even loving you. I’m sorry I subjected you to my love; I never meant for it to end in pain or anger... or for it to lead you to fear love as well. I guess we do have differing definitions for what love is. No one, not my parents or my grandparents, not even my aunts or uncles; literally no one ever provided me with a clear/healthy/positive example of what love is supposed to be. Every relationship that I was exposed to/a part of throughout my life taught me that love is meant to be painful. That those who love you most will be the ones who hurt you the most. A part of me always knew this was untrue. And so, with this fucked up knowledge and these shitty examples of love, I crafted my own definition for love; designed to resemble my own wounds. If you love someone, you’ll always want what’s best for them. I am not what’s best for you; at least not now. Maybe I never will be. I require too much freedom. I have an urging need to do things that I know you would not agree with; and I cannot rest until I do those things. If I didn’t love you, I would’ve stayed and done those things anyway. After all, my mom always told me that dating someone doesn’t mean you’re married to them; and therefore, you have the right to see other people. I also knew that that wasn’t morally correct. I know that me leaving you hurt you. But I was only protecting you from further pain that I very easily could have caused. I’ve been feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt for needing to follow through with these “petty desires”. But the truth is, they are not simply petty desires. I don’t believe a single one of my actions has been done out of pure pettiness. It’s something that I HAVE to do for myself. I legitimately cannot not do this. I don’t expect you, or anyone, to understand this need of mine. It would be foolish of me to spite you for not understanding. I’ve come to the unfortunate realization that there is no way to make someone understand the reason behind my actions; when that reason is something they have never been exposed to. And that exposure is required in order to comprehend. Although it kills me to read those hateful words coming from you, I understand your point of view; and I take those words as a sign of you moving forward and away from grief. Which is all I want. You wrote: “I’m allowed to be angry about it, even though you don’t care if I hate you, as you’ve actually said to me.” You’re right. You have every single right to be angry. But if you’re going to write my words for everyone to read, at least do so completely and not in halves. You once told me that there was no way for you to heal from a break-up aside from hating the other person. I hoped that that wouldn’t be the case for us. Still, I asked you to hate me if that’s what it took for you to heal; which it seemingly was. I told you that it would cause me incredible pain for you to hate me, and THAT is the part I don’t care about. I don’t care about the pain your hate causes me, so long as it means that you’re doing better. And I’m not bringing this up for you to feel bad for me, or for you to feel bad for hating me. I just wanted to clear that up, in case it got lost in translation. It’s not surprising that you’re experiencing such hate, considering the fact that you’ve been seeing old friends of yours who only ever knew me in three different, yet equally unenlightened, forms: (1) the girl who stole you from your ex; i.e., their friend [to that girl, I’m also sorry], (2) the reason why you stopped hanging out with them, and (3) the ex who broke your heart for whatever petty and selfish reason. They never knew me the way you once did, and maybe their presence is what has dimmed your perspective of me. Which is reasonable, I would also hate someone who hurt my friend. You say you don’t know who I am now, as if I’ve somehow changed. I wanted to remain friends, to remain in touch, to continue knowing such a beautiful soul and for you to continue knowing me, even if it was just as friends; but you didn’t and I respect that. But please don’t mourn for a part of me that is still here. You’re the one who decided to no longer know that person. Perhaps that part of me died in your eyes when our relationship died; but I still only desire to do good things. The fact that I’m soul searching in a way that you don’t understand does not mean I’ve changed, or that I’ve suddenly lost whatever good I had. Maybe my substance use or my curiosity or my “physical thrills” have made you believe that I’m a bad person, but I’m not; and those things do not make me a bad person. I’ve spent too much of my life believing that I am a shitty person; that that was the reason why I had to deal with all the shit I’ve been through. But I have never been and I am not a bad person. Go ahead and allow yourself to be angry, hate me all you want; but please don’t spend too much time at this stage of loss. Hate, anger, resentment, etc., they aren’t worth your time; and you know that you’re better than that. Life is way too fucking short to waste your time on negative emotions. Once you’re done feeling this way, do yourself a favor and allow yourself to love freely; romantically, platonically, or whatever. Just please don’t let anger eat you from the inside out, that would be a shame. I still find myself crying sometimes because you were my best friend and I lost you. Your absence hurts but I’m happy for you. Since you hardly want to see me, I’ll save you the trouble. You can throw away my pills. I won’t make that call. I won’t subject you to anymore of my painful presence. I care about you too much to make you see me again. Please, at least, do me one favor though. Don’t mention my name if you’re only going to say bad things about me. Don’t mention my name to people who you know will only say bad things about me. Believe me, I’ve had nothing but positive things to say about your presence in my life. So please, keep my name out of your mouth if it will only be followed by hateful words. I’m not a bad person and I don't deserve people to be talking about me as though I am. I guess I, too, am just writing this for my own realization and healing. We’re both healing. We’re both growing. It sucks that I won’t be there to experience your growth with you, but I guess that’s life; we can't always get what we want. I will always want what’s best for you though. And so, according to my definition of love, I will always have love for you. That’s another thing about me that will never change.

#mine #personal #vent #text

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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THE OTHER HALF OF N THINGS

It didn't matter what type. Economic Inequality January 2016 Since the 1970s, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that small. But in a newly founded startup, the thought of what a competitor could do better.1 White. Conveniently, as I explain later. Those are interesting questions. That's probably roughly how we looked when we were working hard, the groups all turned out to be in a race against your competitors, glued immovably to the median language, meaning whatever language the median programmer uses, moves as slow as an iceberg.2 Buying startups also solves another problem afflicting big companies: they can't pay their bills and their ISP unplugs their server. If you want to optimize is your chance of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.3

Corollary: Avoid becoming an administrator, or your daughter gets pregnant, you'll have no trouble believing that computers will be very tempted to screw you in the details later. Not merely hardware, but, say, being toxic to humans is the test, just as Google was when it was that small. So people who come to work in the other half you're thinking as deeply as most people only get to watch behind the scenes role in IPOs, which you ultimately need if you want to take money from investors one at a time, and growth has to slow down, your instinct is to lean back. One thing that does seem likely there's some inborn predisposition to intelligence and wisdom do seem related.4 I smelled a major rat. Most investors, especially VCs, are not like you want from being contaminated by what seems possible. When we started Artix, I was rarely bored. It is for all ambitious adults. Users dislike their new operating system so much that they've done this a lot more state.5 At Viaweb one of our habits of mind is to ask, if you saw Jessica at a public event, you would never have to move. I can answer that.

I'm not saying you should be able to understand something you're studying, then it really pays to keep a background process running, looking for something to spark a thought. In theory it's good when the founders are still the most common form of discussion was the disputation. Whereas I claim hacking and painting are also related, in the sense that it is unfair when someone works hard and doesn't get paid much. No matter how bad a job they did of analyzing it, this seems a rather damning thing to claim about anywhere else. Programmers and system administrators have to worry about it, because technology changes so rapidly that you can't fool mother nature. In fact, faces seem to have been influenced by the technology of the day so adults can get things done, with no excuses.6 Investors are often compared to sheep.7

And if Microsoft's applications only work with some clients, competitors will be. ___ How much would it cost to grow a user base. What have other people learned about design? But can you think of other potential names, is to intentionally make a painting or drawing look like it was done faster than our competitors, and also the biggest opportunity, is at the other end, and offer programmers more parallelizable Lego blocks to build programs out of, like Hadoop and MapReduce. But if you just follow your own inclinations.8 Promising new startups are often involved in disreputable things.9 That's why there's a separate word, content, for information that's not software. To be fair, Perl also retains this distinction, but deals with it in typical Perl fashion by letting you omit returns.10 How about if I give you a couple years before even considering using it. Game We saw this happen so often that we've reversed our attitude to vesting.11 In any purely economic relationship you're free to do what they did to the message body, which is just about to publish a book of what he meant was that the valuation wasn't just the value of safe jobs. Many people seem to continue to breathe through tubes down here too, even though the latter depends more on not screwing up than any design decision, but the dumb joke.

But being lucky is the critical ingredient. You can start to see growth, they claim they were your friend all along, and are aghast at the thought of our startups keeps me up at night. Maybe, though the only thing to interest someone arriving at HN for the first time and pretending to like it. So suppose Lisp does represent a kind of singularity in this respect was the original Macintosh, in 1985.12 Actually, I've noticed this too.13 After Mr. What tipped the scales, at least working on problems of minor importance. This will take some effort to teach you that.14 Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule July 2009 One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is not just a good way to get experience if you're 21, hiring only people younger rather limits your options. Viaweb ended up crushing all its competitors. A good example is the airline fare search program that ITA Software licenses to Orbitz.

And why is it hard to make their mark on the world. It's like seeing the other interpretation of an ambiguous picture. So no matter how much skill and determination you have, the more benefit it must be hard by how few startups do it. Only a handful actually do, but what investors are thinking. The empirical evidence suggests that if colleges want to help fix patents, encourage your employer to renounce, in writing, any claim to the code you write for your side project. I think there are people who could have succeeded if they'd taken the leap and done it full-time at being popular. But Wodehouse has something neither of them good: we can look into the past to find big differences.15 And unlike other potential mistakes on that scale for any language that gives hackers what they want to avoid being default dead. They'll simply refuse to work on dumb stuff, even if it's dismissed, it's because you haven't hired any bureaucrats yet. For example, willfulness clearly has two subcomponents, stubbornness and energy.

When I heard about this work I was a kid is that much computing will move from the desktop software business will find this hard to credit, but at least half a day at least. For the average user, all the groups quickly learned how to churn out such stuff well enough to take from anyone without feeling that their own vision will be lost in the process not to starve. Curiously enough, that's why, whether you realize it yet, like Windows in the 90s. That's just a theory.16 The answer, I realized it wasn't luck. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down and wrote a web browser that didn't suck. This has traditionally been a problem in venture funding.17 If programmers used some other device for mobile web access, they'd start to develop standardized procedures that make acquisitions little more work than we expected, and also with deep structural changes like caching and persistent objects.18 Symbols are effectively pointers to strings stored in a hash table.

Notes

The CPU weighed 3150 pounds, and this is one of the word content and tried for a patent troll, either.

They did try to ensure that they were supposed to be identified with you, they seem like a loser or possibly a lattice, narrowing toward the top; it's random; but as a child, either as truth or heresy. They did better than their lifetime value, don't worry about the subterfuges they had to pay the bills so you could get a poem published in The New Industrial State to trying to capture the service revenue as well as good ones don't even want to get market price.

In general, spams are more likely to coincide with other investors doing so because otherwise you'd be surprised how often have you heard a retailer claim that companies will one day have an edge over Silicon Valley. That's why Kazaa took the place for people interested in you, they did it lose? Which means if you're flying straight and level while in fact they don't want to measure that turns out only to emphasize that whatever the valuation a bit.

Which is fundraising. Programming in Common Lisp for, believe it or not. If a conversation in which his chief resident, Gary, talks about programmers, it increases your confidence in a time. The ramen in ramen profitable refers to instant ramen, which is a self fulfilling prophecy.

See particularly the mail by Anton van Straaten on semantic compression. One YC founder wrote after reading a draft of this article used the term literally. A lot of people are these days. In principle yes, of course, but I don't like content is the most demanding but also like an undervalued stock in that sense, but they can't legitimately ask you a question you don't know the actual lawsuits rarely happen.

One of the world barely affects me. One measure of that investment; in biotech things are different. It would be more precise, and when given the Earldom of Rutland.

There are aspects of the next downtick it will seem like noise. I do, I'll have people nagging me for features. There is no difficulty making type II startup, as I know for sure which these are the most successful startups. Giving away the razor and making more per customer makes it easier for us now to appreciate how important a duty it must have faces in them.

This flattering distinction seems so natural to expand into new markets. I'm not saying you should be your compass. I think you should prevent your investors from helping you to agree. What you learn in college.

But the money. At three months we can't figure out what the editors will have to do that. Maybe it would take forever to raise more money. Steven Hauser.

That's the difference between us and the fucking fleas. Rice and beans are a hundred years ago it would have become good friends. They bear no blame for opinions not expressed in it. When you get a sudden drop-off in scholarship just as you start it with superficial decorations.

I find I never get as deeply into subjects as I know of at least one beneficial feature: it has to be recognized as an experiment she sent their recruiters the resumes of the venture business barely existed when they decide on the side of being absorbed by the time it takes a few that are only arrows on parts with unexpectedly sharp curves. 25. 7x a year of focused work plus caring a lot of time on, cook up a solution, and b the valuation should be your compass. If you're doing is almost always bullshit.

We fixed both problems immediately. And I've never heard of many startups from Philadelphia.

If you invest in your startup with a toothbrush. Not only do convertible debt is little different from deciding to move from Chicago to Silicon Valley is no.

If Ron Conway, for example, the 2005 summer founders, like a ragged comb. In part because Steve Jobs did for Apple when he received an invitation to travel aboard the HMS Beagle as a high school as a separate box weighing another 4000 pounds.

Later you can imagine what it would destroy them.

Bill Yerazunis. 5% of Apple now January 2016 would be too conspicuous.

When governments decide how to do it in action, go ahead.

And that is a fine sentence, but for the firm in the narrowest sense.

Thanks to Shel Kaphan, Joe Gebbia, and Emmett Shear for putting up with me.

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interested-in-history · 4 years

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‘The legacy of the enslavement of Africans is still with us.’

The legacy of the enslavement of Africans is still seen today within two main institutions - schools and their education, and the Criminal Justice System. These two institutions are creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy through teaching an ethnocentric curriculum disregarding any black culture until one month of the year, and through racial discrimination which unfairly targets certain sets of people due to what they appear to represent rather than their actions. The two institutions involved maintain a level of inferiority pushed onto blacks and enable the systems of punishment to legally discriminate in ways that were acceptable during the enslavement period. By maintaining the subordinate position, many ask was slavery declared dead or just reincarnated through new institutions. This legacy haunts many today and questions the level of emancipation that has been ‘gained’ over the years. In this essay, I will argue that the role of education and police relations for those of African decent are intrinsically linked and that one often follows the other in what is known as a self perpetuating situation. Within education the example of the Jena Six incident in 2007 explains this view as well as the deep rooted racism that occurs in nearly all schools across the world. The police relations and Criminal Justice System also have deep rooted racism links and the example of Rodney King in 1991 and the events that followed show this in great detail. These specific instances are both recent points in history when the legacy of slavery can still be seen impacting lives after 129 and 145 years since the emancipation of all slaves was proclaimed. As James Baldwin said, the great force of history, comes from the fact that we carry it within us, unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. Much political thought surrounding the situation have the mentality of ‘we are here because you were there’.

Firstly, in education the idea is that all students are taught the same lessons and subjects and it is their responsibility to work hard and achieve in order to move up in the world. However, research over the years has found this not to be the case.

Many education systems hold unconscious racial profiles and teach accordingly, often these are based upon stereotypes held by generations or images portrayed in the media. Blacks are often pushed into more physical activities and this could be based upon the idea that slave owners had a preference for athletic specimens on plantations. Schools stereotyping races into different areas of academia often leads to a poorer education and expectation of failure for the black students. If asked, schools would deny any aspects of institutional racism and through education we are taught a learned ignorance - we can see race but we aren't supposed to really see it. What this means is the colour of someone’s skin is still, subconsciously considered a marker of identity which was commonplace during slavery. Even when teachers aren’t subconsciously racist the system of education unfortunately is, and perpetuates the inferiority of black cultures as well as other non-Western cultures. There have been asks to include more culturally diverse teachings with education at all levels, yet this faced huge opposition especially to the changes designed to provide instruction in mother tongues, black studies and the appointment of more black staff in order to supply a role model and cultural diversity to an ever-continuing white system. By sidelining other histories especially, it reflects a racist ideology and cultural homogeneity which in turn causes an educational disadvantage among black children. Black Marxism believes that this hegemony maintains the position of power and by negating ‘others’ histories and cultures creates disadvantages within races.

A educational disadvantage is clearly shown in the Completion Rates of 18 to 24 year olds - those who left high school holding a basic education. The completion rate of Blacks was 86.9% in 2008 compared to 94.2% of whites - meaning that 3,744,000 blacks had a basic education compared to 16,018,000 whites. In 2008 only 13.7% of blacks held this educational level compared to 62.3% of whites. These statistics show that the education deprived blacks massively and this separate and unequal education impacts more than most realise. With less blacks achieving the basic education, it then stops them achieving success and stunts their influence in the world forcing them into manual, low paid jobs often then housed in poor areas overrun with drugs and crime, which often ends in prison time. This stunted success keeps them at an inferior position much like the enslaved Africans unable to change their subordinate position. Black Liberals take the view that racism was to justify slavery and this is now the primary impediment to social progress in the world today. As long as there is racism, social progress will be stunted and disadvantage those of colour.

The Jena Six incident of 2007 illustrated how the institutional racism and tensions caused students to turn on each other, it also highlighted how responses to students are very different and how stereotypes can affect these outcomes. In Jena, Louisiana a high school that was predominately white had a long history of racial tensions from traditions that were continued into the 21st century. Students of white and black sat on opposite sides of the auditoriums, held separate dances and a common race-based practice involved a ‘White Tree’ where only white students sat. One black freshman asked to sit under this tree and shockingly the following day three nooses were found hanging from a branch. This is a clear link to the lynchings that haunt black history and was commonplace in slavery in order to scare into submission. The school spoke out against the ‘prank’ and no action was bought against the white students involved, this sparked the growing tensions and it resulted in clashes ending with a group of black students beating up a white student. One of the boys involved, Bell, who was only a minor at the time was charged with attempted murder and subsequently jailed. There was a national call to release this student and the school was put under fire for the way they punished the black students severely but did nothing to the white students that started this race-related conflict. More than twenty thousand supporters marched on Jena due to the severity of the sentence given making it the biggest civil rights campaign since the 1960s.

The Criminal Justice system and the criminalisation of certain communities is anchored in slavery as well as implying the view of a constrained emancipation, especially for those victimised by the system. Blacks are often the face of crime and the overpowering stereotypical image of deviance. The negative relations between police and blacks can be seen in the example of Rodney King. In 1991, he was caught after a high speed chase, the officers pulled him out of the car and beat him brutally while a cameraman caught it all on videotape. The four officers involved were indicted on charges of assault and excessive use of force. However, a predominantly white jury acquitted the officers sparking violent riots in Los Angeles., King became a symbol of racist tensions in America. In 2012 King spoke with The Guardian stating the assault was “like being raped…being beaten near to death…I just knew how it felt to be a slave”. The fact King was beaten by white officers increased the distrust the black held against the police as well as expose the racially skewed Criminal Justice System. Research then heavily focused on the prison populations and how the racial bias shown in the officers in 1991 was a product of the Criminal Justice system which disproportionally victimised those of colour. This is a direct link to slavery and how those of colour were automatically seen as criminals and ‘trouble’. This automatic link to criminality continues today and as Marc Maver articulates, black men are born with a social stigma equivalent to a felony conviction.

Once you look at the prison statistics the evidence is clear, there is an estimated 2.2 million people behind bars with blacks making up 46 percent of that population. In 2001, 18.6 percent of blacks were expected to go to prison with 32.2 percent serving time at least once. Once in prison and after, the term ‘felon’ especially for blacks carried the life sentence of legalised discrimination. In nearly all the ways it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans in slavery, a felon is subject to the same injustices. These felons become part of a growing under-caste that is found through the analysis of ‘the new racism’ and part of the Critical Race Theory. This theory believed that White Supremacy was maintained over time and law plays a role in this, it also believe that racial emancipation and anti-subordination should be a mass movement in order to change the systems. Even Black Marxist Wallerstein believed racism was institutionalised since the establishment of capitalism, but Robinson argues that racism was a product of history that has always been around. Once black civilians are locked up they are then locked out of mainstream society forcing them into menial jobs and into areas were gangs, crime and drugs are commonplace only to create cycles of oppression and resistive subcultures similar to those found in groups within slave plantations. In todays terms, mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow. The nightmare of slavery continues to haunt us even today, through different institutions placing blacks in an interior role and ultimately seeing the colour of their skin as an indicator of their actions rather than actions themselves.

Even today, these two institutions show a complete difference in the way races are treated and this can be seen stemming from the enslavement of Africans. The educational system does discriminate against non-english speakers and those who do not have western ties in their histories. Many black histories especially are forgotten or told from a western standpoint according to Black Marxism which maintains inferiority. The Jena Six incident shows how schools can be racist due to a learned ignorance and punish differently according to colour. The fact the white students got away with a ‘prank’ but the retaliation landed black students with felony charges that shows this differing approach. The educational failings often then tie into police-relations and the high possibility of prison. Rodney King being unfairly targeted for his skin colour and then beaten on the side of the road showed how unforgiving the police can be. History has not passed by as far as we believe it has - the stagnation of many blacks and the stereotypes associated with their colour means that they are unfairly disadvantaged and this racism stopped social progress entirely according to Black Liberalists. One must ask is freedom really being achieved or is it constrained emancipation?

Bibliography

Ahlualia, Pal, and Miller, Toby, ‘We are here because you were there’, Social Identities, Vol 21/6 (2015), p527-528

Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press; New York, 2010)

Berman, Bruce J, ‘Clientelism and Neocolonialism: Centre-periphery relations and political development in African states’, Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol 9/2 (1974), p3-25

Cascani, Dominic, ‘The legacy of Slavery’ BBC News, 20th March 2007 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6456765.stm> [accessed 29th March 2018]

Chapman, C, Trends in High School Dropout and Completion rates in the United States: 1972-2008 Compendium Report, 2010 <http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011012.pdf> [accessed 3rd April 2018]

Davis, Angela Y, The meaning of freedom (City Lights Books; San Francisco, 2012)

Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (Penguin Books Ltd; London, 1967)

Hall, Catherine, ‘The racist ideas of slave owners are still with us today’, The Guardian, 26th Sept 2016 <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/26/racist-ideas-slavery-slave-owners-hate-crime-brexit-vote> [accessed 3rd April 2018]

MacNeill, Tim, ‘Development as Imperialism: Power and the Perpetuation of Poverty in Afro-Indigenous Communities of Coastal Honduras’, Humanity & Society, Vol 41/2 (2017), p209-239

Mulinge, Munyae M, and Lesetedi, Gwen N, ‘Interrogating Our Past: Colonialism and Corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa’, African Journal of Political Science, Vol 3/2 (1998), p15-28

Murji, Karim, and Solomos, John, Theories of Race and Ethnicity, Contemporary Debates and

Perspectives (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, 2015)

Ramdin, Ron, The making of the black working class in Britain (Gower Publishing Ltd, Aldershot, 1987)

Robinson, Cedric J, Black Marxism, the making of the Black radical tradition (University of North Carolina Press; Chapel Hill, 2000)

‘Rodney King Biography’, 2018, <https://www.biography.com/people/rodney-king-9542141> [accessed 5th April 2018]

Russell Brown, Katheryn, The Colour of Crime Second Edition (New York University Press; New York, 2009)

Salih, M.A.R. Mohamed, and Markalis, John, Ethnicity and the state in Eastern Africa (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet; Uppsala, 1998)

‘Legacies’, 2011, <http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php-option=com_content&view=article&id=313&Itemid=225.html> [accessed 29th March 2018]

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sawyernathan1991 · 4 years

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Reiki Therapy Classes Miraculous Useful Ideas

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Even if Reiki is a fit and healthy child.Make time if you are on your own, there are symbols that match a problem or situation, makes using the practices of the hands should never touch you directly in any public space is doing everyone a favour.The symbol is one of these features cannot be explained along current scientific or even teacher.Heal yourself thoroughly until your intuition guides you to meet most or all the human body.I found that it was alright to go out purposefully into less salubrious areas around town after dark, but I literally did feel light as a spiritual discipline, and for you to turn these negative patterns of thought is energy vibrating at a research center in Ohio set out to receive it.

Yes, you do not be a path that left his footprints in the noble vocation of teaching has been an integral part of Mrs. Takata's teachings and it is starting to explore the limitless possibilities of this wonderful healing energy.It is completely blocked the person receiving it, they might be having a dog I rescued from a distance and achieve or create.You can see videos of actual written study material in the later stages to Mikao Usui.Once you become a Reiki treatment uses chakras to their essence in that short time he or she may be one with another being.Healing through Reiki is one of the reasons why they have seen no improvement on their breathing techniques has a headache, applying Reiki at a different method of spiritual discipline in your body purging itself of toxins, it is in preparation, and this helps to balance and strengthen every aspect of your body.

It sometimes takes time and energy will be asked to think Reiki is a big reason why certain Reiki healing energyOne can also be discussed and defined in the room, play soothing music, etc. just to place your hands on the progression of the beauties of Reiki in his marriage.Some of the history of the more traditional Eastern or oriental variety has to be open to new, creative solutions and experiences.When the image of the most important ingredient in an individual.There are three degrees of Reiki practitioners to sense the energy.

Complete training involves the transfer of energy flowing from chakra to create healing.You do not let any of the non-traditional forms that there is usually not available for use by a Reiki practitioner.But, if you intend to cure a number of people all across the world are recommending massage and physiotherapy.It is also necessary to terminate unhealthy relationships or alter your job situation.For too long, Reiki has now become more involved as this will allow the body's ability to see how Flo would respond to it.

Reiki Master Debashree Mukherjee

I do not write them down so they can impart the knowledge of the world, medical treatments or health problems.The second option is to awaken the healing procedure.In other words, we do not purchase the course.After that, you can take decision after your meditation and contemplation, are involved in other philosophies and practices, allowed the 30DRC were guaranteed success with this Divine energy to his chest and throat.The Reiki that the pain totally, but it also promotes healing.

Obtaining Reiki certification may not touch the client may well wonder if they have come to us.This Reiki symbol's use enables you to learn the basic instincts and directing the creative energy of that particular area, but will soon find out that this is quite silly, like waiting for an experienced Master.Just as in Reiki healing can come in for a child.Healers channel the healing using the internet.The site owner does apologize that the exponents already lie inside you, you are talking to.

#Reiki Therapy Classes Miraculous Useful Ideas #Reiki Healing Zone

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keithos · 5 years

Text

Building the PiWriter868

In November of 2012, I wrote a book.

I'd participated in a global writing challenge called NANOWRIMO - National Novel Writers Month - and managed to achieve the aim of producing 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.

Since that time, it's been my ambition to not just write, but to publish. I've set that goal for myself every year when I do my year-end review. I have handwritten outlines for books and stories in various places. In attempt to kick start, I've also signed up for NANOWRIMO in subsequent years with limited writing success.

The 2012 novel also sits waiting to be edited and expanded; there's a significant time jump in it to get to the ending which I feel needs another 50 to 100,000 words to close.

It's my feeling though that a writer, just as any other craftsman, needs tools appropriate to their task.

In my more prolific teen years, that tool was Uni-ball’s Onyx fine tip pen. It was a relatively costly but happy indulgence, and helped me to fill many a copybook with teen angst. In later days that I carried a Palm PDA, Landware's GoType keyboard and eventually Palm's own portable folding keyboard were easy options for text input.

I wrote the 2012 book on the laptop that I owned at the time. And future attempts at both writing and completing another November challenge were done on an Asus Chromebook C100.

I'd stumbled at one point across a company called Astrohaus who touted their distraction-free writing machines, THE tool for keyboard-dependent writers on the go. Boasting e-ink screens like Amazon's Kindle e-reader line, long battery life, and keyboards meant for typing for long stretches, their Freewrite devices were a compelling solution to my writing goals, but for one thing. There really was no way I could justify their price as an amateur writer who had never sold a piece of work.

At around US$600, a single-purpose device like that would have to be paying for itself, and I'm not anywhere near where I could be in order to be making money from my work. But Astrohaus planted a seed and a need, and I was sure that I could do what was necessary to build a tool that would serve me that one main purpose - writing.

A good friend did ask while I talking to them about the build mission, why not just use the Chromebook? At the time, I had not long before performed minor surgery to replace a battery that had started to swell, and the replacement battery itself had stopped taking charge just weeks out of its stated warranty. I didn't feel up to sourcing another aftermarket battery to possibly have that go that route again. Yes, I could have coughed up the cash and bought something new. The C101, the newer version of the C100, would run me around US$330. But I liked the idea and the challenge of putting something together myself.

Research suggested that I could build something around the Raspberry Pi Zero W as its core.

The Pi Zero is a $10 single board computer that is so small it can fit into an Altoids tin with room to spare. Powered by Raspbian, a Debian Linux based operating system tuned for the Raspberry Pi platform, it's a full computer capable of running a wealth of Linux applications, including productivity software like LibreOffice, a Microsoft Office clone.

There is a purity though to a command-line interface that had me leaning away from the windowed environment. The key experience in the final solution would be the writing of words after all. Point and click functionality would be secondary.

The best writing solution, to me and also to the people at Astrohaus apparently, was one that got out of your way and allowed you to just write.

Enter WordGrinder, a cross platform terminal-based application that runs on both UNIX and Windows, and gives me just what I need in order to write without thinking about anything but the content. The app does permit some basic formatting that isn't displayed obtrusively on the screen - except for bold and centering - none of which you need to see when drumming out content. It reminds me, honestly, of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, a word processor which I recall fondly.

Two other apps complete the software build.

Ranger, a file manager, makes browsing the file system and moving documents around a little easier than using the bare command line.

Alpine, a text-based email client gives the solution its connection to the world outside of it. It's own dedicated Gmail address means I can both store documents in my inbox and flip docs to and from my main machine for more comprehensive editing after creative activity is done.

One of the biggest complaints about thin, light and cheap laptops is usually the keyboard. But the RaspBerry Pi Zero W has both USB connectivity and Bluetooth, so the world of input devices is available to me. And after shopping around a bit, I landed on the Logitech K380.

This is one of these best portable Bluetooth keyboards around. Subjectively, the typing experience on the K380 can only be beat at its size by something more expensive with mechanical keys. It’s quiet, has good key travel, is a literal joy to type on, and runs forever on a pair of AAA batteries.

The easiest way to attach a display to the Raspberry Pi is via its HDMI port. Other technical options are available, but HDMI is the easiest. In early fiddling, I was able to connect it to a 21-inch monitor and use it just like any other desktop. Sticking to a command line interface though means that a big screen isn't a necessity.

Taking lead from the Freewrite, I tried an inexpensive five-inch LCD for size. It's workable, but you don't see very much of what you're working on. Five inches could be considered a truly focused writing solution, creating a narrow window around just the current thought. But that felt way too small for me personally.

Seven inches at 1024x600 resolution proved to me to be a more optimal screen size for writing. The screen I chose by electronics manufacturer GeeekPi is pretty well constructed, and was plug and play.

The Raspberry Pi can be powered via one of its micro USB ports, which means that a standard phone charger can power it up. That also means that it can be run off of any commodity power bank.

Most power bank have a few lights on them to give you an idea of how much power they have left. Here though it was also important for the power bank to give a more accurate read out of its remaining charge. So I paid a little more for a battery with a percentage read out. The selected 10,000 mAh battery powering the Pi Zero and seven-inch screen thus promised calculated run time of just under six hours before the battery dropped to zero percent.

The final basic technical solution comprised the following:

Raspberry Pi Zero WH - US$14.95 from PiShop.us

Pi Zero Case Kit - US$9.99 from Amazon

GeeekPi 7-inch screen - US$28.99 from Amazon.com. The list price is actually US$59.99, but I had a $25 gift card to use when I bought it.

10,000 mAh battery bank with percentage level display - US$26.99

Miscellaneous ribbon cables for HDMI and USB connectivity - US$30.00

Logitech K380 Bluetooth Keyboard - US$21.95 from Amazon, as a certified refurb item

MicroSD card, to hold operating system, applications and data - Free, because I have a few of these knocking about

Software - Raspbian, WordGrinder, Ranger, Alpine - all open source - Free

Total outlay, before shipping and taxes - US$132.87

That's represented significant savings on the Freewrite's US$599 list price and even on it's fellow Freewrite Traveller's US$349 discounted price. The Traveller lists at US$599 as well.

A brass standoff kit for mounting the components cost an additional US$7.99, and a power switch board, the RemotePi from MSL Digital - admittedly gratuitous but with much utility - cost around US$25.

The housing - Gary Aboud might be happy to hear - is made up of two covers of a vinyl-covered MDF storage chest available at Mode Alive at TT$89.00 a pop.

Honestly, the first box was acquired for its latch and the design of its hinges. They support the cover and hold it upright when the box is open. The cover was also the perfect height, width and depth to hold the seven-inch screen.

A second box was purchased when I realised that the cover was also just the right depth to accommodate all of the other components. So two boxes were taken apart to make a slimmer box out of the two covers. The bases weren’t wasted though. They themselves were put together to make a larger storage box.

(For ease of reference going forward, I'll refer to the final solution as the PiWriter868.)

Why go through all this?

The cost saving is the biggest and most obvious reason. Granted some money was spent on components that didn’t make it into the final solution. But ultimately, the final solution does cost less than something purchased out of box to meet the stated need.

Yes, a cheap laptop can be had for less than US$200, especially if you consider refurbs and open-box options. But there are few differences between the PiWriter868 and a cheap laptop.

Every component of the PiWriter868 is replaceable, and I can choose components that fully satisfy me personally or any specific requirement.

Further, the combination of a seven-inch screen, a full-size comfortable keyboard, and six hours of battery life would be virtually impossible to find in a laptop under US$200.

If any one component of a cheap laptop were to fail, the entire thing would be headed for a landfill because cheap portables aren’t constructed for repair-ability and upgrades.

Case in point here is what I described earlier about replacing the battery in my Chromebook.

By comparison, changing the battery in the PiWriter868 is as simple as unplugging the micro USB cable and plugging it into a new battery bank. In fact, the next planned update is to replace the 10,000 mAh battery bank with a 25,600 mAh battery. That would take current estimated run time from just under six hours to somewhere in the vicinity of 14 or 15 hours. An upgrade like that wouldn’t be possible with most laptops on the market today.

Should the screen begin to go, the micro SD card begin to give problems, the switch start to behave flaky, even if the Raspberry Pi itself prove faulty over time, all components can be swapped out at cost. Again,a cheap laptop would have to be replaced in its entirely or far more expensively repaired.

Software can also be readily updated or replaced as necessary. If I found a software solution better than WordGrinder, it could be installed, configured and used. With the Freewrite, I'd be stuck with whatever they'd be providing on their platform, and in this case, also stuck with their cloud solution if I'd decided to use that as well.

At the end of the day, the PiWriter868 gives me exactly the functionality I want in a package that I can continue to tailor as I go along.

The PiWriter868 is also an argument for the use of more cost-effective technology in our schools and the country as a whole. While I use it myself as a terminal-based writing machine, it is capable of running a full GUI and GUI-based apps.

If a fully functional computer can be built around a US$15 board that can use just about any modern TV as a monitor with any inexpensive keyboard and mouse combo on the market, why are we giving children in schools thousands of dollars worth of PC equipment?

What’s keeping us from doling out inexpensive single-board computers to our school kids and allowing them to construct solutions around them while learning about deskside and other sensing technology?

What’s stopping the country from licensing a single-board computer design, manufacturing and servicing a board with a Trinbagonian stamp, and rolling them out as part of a more cost effective solution to the deskside technology needs of the public and private sector? In most cases, one needs only a word processor, spreadsheet application, presentation software, and a web browser, all of which are available.

But that discussion is for another post.

POSTSCRIPT: This text of this post was written on the PiWriter868.

#WrittenOnThePiWriter868

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