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ex-foster · 3 years

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The exclusion of girls from foster care from feminism

There needs to be a greater effort for feminists to include girls and women from foster care in their feminism. Inclusivity has become an all too common catch-phrase among modern day feminists, as well as rape culture and #metoo, yet the way liberal feminists treat girls and women from the foster care system is often hostile and cruel.

It is popular among liberal feminists to promote this notion that sex work is liberating, yet liberal feminists are not listening to girls/women who aged out of the foster care system and their vulnerability to sex trafficking. Aging out of the foster care system is associated with systematic homelessness, poverty, unemployment, underemployment, and barriers to higher education.

The purpose of foster care is to remove children from neglectful or abusive environments and place them into temporary living situation (sometimes a group home and sometimes a foster home). Foster kids may enter the foster care system due to experiencing neglect/abuse at home (including physical or sexual abuse), or witnessing domestic violence, or exposure to a parent with addition/substance abuse. In Canada, there is a disproportionate rate of indigenous children in care. Neglect is often the cited reason for why indigenous children are placed into the foster care system. Neglect is different from abuse in the way that a parent can be accused of neglect if they for example don’t have enough money for groceries to feed their children. In Canada, the disproportionate rate of indigenous children in foster care is a symptom of the effect of colonialism. The Sixties Scoop is the catch-all name for a series of policies enacted by provincial child welfare authorities starting in the mid-1950s, which saw thousands of Indigenous children taken from their homes and families, placed in foster homes, and eventually adopted out to white families from across Canada and the United States

Foster children experience rates of PTSD at double the rate of combat veterans. Foster children often experience trauma from multiple sources, from experiencing or witnessing domestic violence can be but one source of trauma for the foster child. Foster care is intended to serve as a sanctuary for the foster child from an abusive environment, however foster children can experience additional trauma from being victimized, mistreated or abused by their foster parents. Often foster parents are not adequately trained on how to recognize and treat PTSD symptoms in children. Foster children can be labelled as “bad kids”, especially in their teenage years for simply experiencing untreated stress.

Foster kids often experience disruptions in school. It’s easy for foster kids to fall behind their peers in school. In Ontario, 44% of foster kids graduate high school compared to 81% of their peers. Moving from foster home to foster home and school to school can be disastrous to the child’s education. The disruptions in education can be accumulative in nature and the consequences can follow the foster child into adulthood. This education disparity lowers the job prospects of aged out foster kids and provides an additional barrier to obtaining higher education. Many aged out foster kids express the desire to go to college/university but very few are able to obtain their dreams. Only 11.8% of aged out foster kids obtain a bachelor’s degree, compared to 28% of their peers.

The aging out process refers to when foster children are evicted from their foster homes when they turn 18 years old. Many foster children are not ready for independent living at that age but have been receiving the message from their foster parents and social services the need to be “independent” which encourages them not to seek help from others. Some aged out foster kids may express an eagerness to aging out and becoming an “adult” and being “independent” but these foster kids rarely are adequately prepared for adult life and are left with few services or support to help them. The foster kids often blame themselves when they face difficulties and there is nobody there to help them. Foster kids may not be taught very simple life skills before they age out of foster care such as how to cook, how to do taxes, how to make a resume/cover letter, how to apply to college/university, how to access health care. For things that parents usually teach their children or assist them with, foster kids are expected to acquire this information on their own yet when they age out of foster care often they don’t have reliable access to a phone/phone service, or a computer/internet. Navigating the services and resources they need can be a struggle not only when they don’t have the means for doing so, but also when they do contact services (such as calling 211) and explain the varieties of concerns they face (such as barriers to education/employment, PTSD related mental health concerns/addiction/substance abuse, housing insecurity/homelessness, and sexual violence/domestic violence) the help they receive is compartmentalized and often is not tailored to the cumulative nature of their problems.

Women from foster care face disproportionate rates of prostitution and sex trafficking due to a cumulative risk factors: financial vulnerability, housing insecurity, history of sexual trauma, untreated PTSD, substance abuse, and abusive partners (who plays the role of pimp). Women from foster care may be especially vulnerable to experiencing domestic violence in their romantic relationships after leaving foster care for several reasons: financial vulnerability, housing instability. Often the financial aid provided to aged out foster kids is a form of welfare that is not enough money to live in an environment that is not shared accommodations. She might require a roommate or rely on her partner since she has no other living arrangement options. Her biological family is not a strong source of support if she needs a place to live in an emergency. If she does require a housing in a homeless shelter she will be told that there is a time limit on how long she can stay in the shelter (for example, 2 weeks maximum).

Most people do not have careers at 18 years old. The typical 18 year old does not have much work experience nor a strong sense of what they would like to do for a career. For aged out foster kids they face these concerns and then some because often when they age out of foster care is when government programs try to target financial aid so the foster kid can attempt to go to college/university. However these programs often are not tailored to the unique challenges faced by aged out foster kids. The financial aid for aged out foster kids is often very restrictive and unforgiving. The grants available to foster kids often do not cover the full tuition, are exclusive to a certain age bracket, and require the foster kid to fulfill certain conditions such as maintaining a certain GPA and if they do not maintain that GPA they can be prompted cut off their monthly source of income and then be thousands in debt. When they are in debt and unable to pay it off, it is often taken from their tax return and their debt affects their credit so they can’t apply for school again (if they require a student loan) until they pay off their debt. Often those age restrictions include those aged 21 years old or under or sometimes 24 years old or younger. These age limits do not consider the academic challenges foster kids face in care and their high drop out rates and poor GPAs. Often foster kids will not be accepted into a college or university program that could “advance their future” (provide them with a career) because acceptance into these programs require a high school equivalent, academic upgrading or specific academic prerequisites. Foster kids rarely receive career counselling, have tutors to help them in school, or have some kind of academic mentor. Often what ends up happening when these aged out foster kids receive limited funding for school (such as a grant of $1000 when their tuition is $9000+) is they face difficulties in school such as the mental pressure from the “sink or swim” attitude they receive from social workers who tell them that these programs exist to “prevent them from being homeless”. They are told that academic excellence is required of them or else they will be on the streets. This puts enormous pressure and stress on them to succeed but coupled with this push for foster kids to be “independent” and a lack of academic savviness, foster kids might not know who to contact at the school if they need help. They can lack ways to contact the school or other services to help such as phone/internet service. The foster kid can be kicked off their student aid through no fault of their own such as errors in the school system and not receiving their assignments due to computer error, but they don’t have reliable access to phone/internet so trying to resolve the problem with the school takes a long time and by the time it is resolved, the student’s GPA drops and they get cut off their financial aid, end up thousands in debt with no way to pay it back. Then the foster kid has limited job prospects, debt, cannot apply for another student loan, may require academic upgrading, and has housing insecurity.

Foster girls can become financially dependent on their male partners, and their male partners don’t understand why she struggles to thrive or find employment despite having barriers he doesn’t, such as access to a family car, a network of people who can help secure employment, phone/internet service. Partners of foster girls might feel pressure to move in together but the family of the boyfriend might start to resent the foster girl for the financial strain she brings. Foster girls might be called “gold diggers” by their partners or the friends of their male partner who try to convince the male partner to leave her when she is not financially successful because she will be accused of “using” her partner. Her partner might start to resent her for the barriers she faces towards success, such as barriers to employment and he may not be forgiving of her if she faces sexism in the workplace (such as hiring discrimination or experiencing sexual harassment at work). Although the foster girl is under intense pressure from the people all around her to succeed and do well, others rarely want to invest in her. If she wants to advance her skills to become more employable there is often a pay wall and nobody is willing to pay. Her role in domestic relationships might serve to cook/clean for her male partner while he can invest in his career and receive help from his family (such as receiving a car) whereas the foster girl might not even have a driver’s license but nobody is willing to teach her how to drive and government programs don’t exist to help bridge the gap between life skills that people have when they have support from their families vs foster kids who don’t.

The tension in domestic partnerships can rise and domestic violence or sexual violence can be a reoccurring theme in a foster girl’s life. During the age of #metoo, millions of women came forward with their stories of sexual harassment, abuse or rape but rarely was there this examination on how this can be a systematic problem and reoccurring theme in the life of a girl from foster care. Foster girls can come from a biological home where sexual abuse is occurring, they can experience sexual abuse within the foster home, and then they can be vulnerable to sexual violence when they age out of foster care (male roommates, abusive boyfriends, etc). Rape culture was a theme that feminism focused on to describe how our culture typically responds to those who come forward with accusations of sexual violence/abuse. The term “victim blaming” and “slut shaming” was coined to further describe how victims of sexual violence and rape are treated. However, many liberal feminists who were able to grasp those concepts of rape culture, slut shaming, victim blaming and #metoo could not wrap their heads around how sex work can operate as a form of violence towards women and girls. Liberal feminists would often show little compassion towards women who aged out of the system and has to take up survival sex work due to their financial vulnerability, lack of social support, and housing insecurity. Sometimes the parting words an aged out foster kid has with their social worker when they age out of care is that foster kids often become homeless, and that the boys often go to prison and the girls become prostitutes. That’s the message that is sent to them. You are vulnerable to housing insecurity and you may have barriers to education and employment but you have sex work as a last resort.

When women from foster care raise their concerns over the foster care system they are often met with criticism from liberal feminists who label them as a “swerf” or sometimes even “terf” and then kick them from their online community, such as kicking them out of their feminist facebook group. The discussion is often immature and bullying occurs where the woman from foster care is mocked for being sexually exploited or told she is “vanilla”, a “prude” or “boring”. When will liberal feminism have it’s #metoo moment?

If you are a former foster kid and you experienced similar sentiments such as bullying by “feminists” over the sexual trauma you endured as a woman from foster care, I please urge you to speak out with #metooxfoster. It’s honestly about time to address this problem within feminism because something needs to change about the foster care system and we are never going to be able to change anything if we are being constantly bullied when we try to raise awareness. Speaking about our trauma might be painful at times but we can stick together and beat this.

#foster care #foster care in canada #aging out of foster care #crown wards #radical feminism #liberal feminism #metoo #metoo and foster care #metooxfoster

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nadiaportia · 3 years

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Deirdra Margalit

art by my friend Ayla aka leatherandsaltybitters

The partisan with a fiery temper

Other bios: Ximena | Sayelle | Heloisa | Cibela

Full name: Deirdra Margalit Araya

Meaning of name: Variant of Deirdre; “Wanderer” in Irish

Family:

Jaume Margalit (deceased): Deirdra’s younger brother by three years. They were as close as two siblings can be, and Deirdra often protected him from whoever dared to mock or try to hurt him. Just like his parents, Jaume had a strong sense for justice and was also a rebel that drove him to join the Nationalists in secret before his worried parents could keep him from it. His death at the hands of a Loyalist soldier was what drove Deirdra to leave their village as well to fight for a better future and back then, avenge their beloved brother.

Meritxell Araya (deceased): Deirdra’s mother, a seamstress. Their role model in their childhood, Meritxell was a pillar in the community and a woman with an iron will who stood up for those in need. The rupture of her family in the Civil War and having to let her oldest child go after her youngest one was murdered took a heavy toll on her but also saw her fervently supporting the Nationalists and housing them. She was killed by Loyalists and the Margalit Araya family home burnt to the ground as a warning to all those in Valanguer who dared to act against Queen Jacinta.

Daví Margalit: Deirdra’s father whose biggest hobby is reading and briefly was assistant to the owner of a book shop. He took on the role of teaching in the village school of Valanguer and gave his love for literature to his children as well. Daví wanted a better world for Jaume and Deirdra and supported the Nationalists who had taken up arms against the Queen Jacinta and her loyalists, which ultimately got him into prison. It’s Deirdra’s biggest wish to see their father be a free man again.

Enkidu: A beech marten and Deirdra’s animal companion and familiar. One night while some humans were camping in the woods, he was attracted by the warmth of the fire and the next morning Deirdra woke up to him being curled up next to them. Even though they can’t communicate that well with each other, they are inseparable.

Nicknames: Dee (basically used by everyone), Dida (exclusively family, especially their brother)

Favourite meal: Calçots with salvitxada

Favourite drink: Horxata de chufa

Favourite flower: Carnation

Favourite color: Poppy red

Birthday: 31st of January

Age: 29 during the events of the game

Zodiac: Aquarius

MBTI: ESFP

Patron Arcana: The Chariot and the Page of Cups

Upright: The Chariot is in complete control of its own destiny. It hurtles towards victory, unhindered by adversity.

Reversed: The Chariot careens out of control, losing its way as it becomes stranded on the road.

Upright: The Page of Cups is a dreamer, always looking towards the future with bright eyes and full heart.

Reversed: The Page of Cups is self-centered and immature, struggling to get along with those around him.

Gender: Non-binary

Sexuality: Bisexual with a preference for women

Height: 1,80 m // 5′9″

Appearance:

Deirdra has a toned body with muscular arms and legs. They have light olive skin with a warm untertone and vitiligo on their forehead, shoulders and around their mouth. Their straight hair, originally dark blond, has been dyed dark blue, reaches their chin and is either in a short bun with a few loose strands or completely loose. Their eyebrows are thin and their original dark blond color while their eyes are light green. Their face is heart-shaped with a pointy chin. They have a slightly roman-shaped nose and thin lips as well as a tooth gap between their front teeth.

Deirdra carries themself with a swagger and is very expressive when talking.

Visual inspirations: Alia Shawkat

Languages spoken: Durazà, Oriolà and the Common Tongue

Magical abilities:

Despite having some magical affinity, Deirdra prefers to not make use of them not because of a lack of belief in magic but because of difficulties of focusing on them

Illusion powers, such as being able to change the shape and appearance of people, creatures or items in the eyes of others or disguising them completely

Nature- and Earth-based powers

Love interests:

Portia

Sayelle and Ximena: Either individually or as a polycule.

In general, like with most of my characters; if they’re compatible sexuality-wise as well as personality-wise, feel free to ship them with your OCs or MCs. Hit me up with a message and we can discuss the details!

Backstory:

Deirdra Margalit was born as the oldest child of Daví and Meritxell in the village of Valanguer in the countryside of Oriol. They grew up with not a lot of wealth, while not being the ones off the worst in their village, but learned to value even the small things and treasure a community in which everyone helped everyone - very true to the sentiment of “it takes a village to raise a child”. Their father was an intellectual within the community and their mother, who was seen by many as a leader in Valanguer, were very openly critical of the Oriolà monarchy when it took a more hostile turn towards its rural population and got involved in a war led by their bigger neighboring patron empire Calpacia to the point where young adults were forcibly drafted. The populace divided itself soon into sympathizers of the Loyalists who supported the ongoing course led by the Oriolià Queen Jacinta and the Nationalists who were led by the Queen’s cousin, which meant that even in a small village acquaintances and even friends could become enemies.

Their father was arrested and imprisoned as a political enemy when the political infighting divided the populace into . The point that pushed them to actually get involved in the Nationalist armed resistance was the death of Jaume. After an argument with their mother, Deirdra left as well without knowing it would be the last time they would ever see her. Meeting many other nationalists on their way to the capital, they soon found a home in the currently besieged capital and met the daughter of a butcher named Renée. Meeting a kindred spirit who had also recently lost family helped them adapt to this new living situation and they soon became comrades-in-arms and more. When the Nationalist leaders called for fighters to take the fighting outside of the city and into the rural areas where the Queen’s Men had taken refuge, they immediately volunteered. For a year, their life consisted of camping in the wilderness, awful food and fearing of getting shot at whenever they passed a hill. It was there when they met their familiar and gave them the name Enkidu after a character from a story their father used to love.

Three years after the first battle the Civil War ended with the Nationalists’ loss of the capital of Oriol and its siege led by the Loyalists. Queen Jacinta gave the choice to everyone who fought for the Nationalists to lay down their weapons and either leave the country as exiles or be put in prison for treason against the crown and receive a lighter sentence, most of Deirdra’s comrades made their choice, fully aware that the Queen’s word couldn’t be trusted and traitors would most likely get executed and thus continued the fight at home. Deirdra themself chose to leave with Renée as they were young and could still have a life together - and end up regretting it for a very long time, when Renée was unable to leave at the last minute.

The following years in exile Deirdra travelled the world with other Oriolà exiles, on one occasion even travelling to Nevivon, and developing a network all across the continent. Their travels led them to Vesuvia where they settled thanks to the help of an exiled politician and integrated them into the local Oriolà community. They met the magicians Asra and Ximena when wanting to progress in their magical studies and became good friends with Julian, often frequenting the Rowdy Raven with him. Their friendship with Sayelle, whom they met thanks to Asra, briefly became romantic and grew steadily until the plague hit Vesuvia and its inhabitants were overwhelmed by it. Deirdra’s instinct to leave the city and those infected behind was met by refusal by both Ximena and Sayelle, and the gap between Deirdra and Sayelle was only broadened when Deirdra decided to aid Asra in a ritual that would bring the Devil himself into the mortal world while it was actually intended to bring Ximena back to life. The fact that their resurrected friend was unable to recognize any of them and their presence actually caused her pain saw Deirdra cutting ties with Asra and almost exclusively being around their compatriots.

More art:

by @cherrygirl666 | post

feat. Sayelle by @missrabbitart | post

#the arcana #the arcana oc #the arcana original character #deirdra margalit #YEAH i wanna get these bios out of my system and what better way to present Them to all of you

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sciencespies · 3 years

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To Boost Black Men in Medicine, Advocates Turn to Sports

https://sciencespies.com/nature/to-boost-black-men-in-medicine-advocates-turn-to-sports/

To Boost Black Men in Medicine, Advocates Turn to Sports

Emily Laber-Warren, Undark

Aaron Bolds didn’t consider becoming a physician until he tore a ligament in his knee while playing in a basketball tournament when he was 15. His orthopedic surgeon was Black, and they hit it off. “He was asking me how my grades were, and I told him, ‘I’m a straight-A student,’ and he was, like, ‘Man, this is a great fallback plan if basketball doesn’t work out,’” recalls Bolds, who is African American.

“He looked like me,” Bolds says, “and that was even more encouraging.”

If not for that chance encounter, Bolds, 34, a doctor at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, might never have gone into medicine, he says. When he was growing up, there were no physicians in his family or extended social network to model that career path. And at the schools he attended, he says, his aptitude for science didn’t trigger the kind of guidance young people often receive in more privileged contexts.

What Bolds did get attention for was his athletic ability. He got a full basketball scholarship to Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina, where his team won a conference championship. But when he transferred to Bowie State University in Maryland, where he also played basketball, an academic adviser discouraged his pre-med ambitions, Bolds recalls, saying his grades were low and he lacked research experience.

Bolds is not alone in finding in athletics a fraught lever of educational opportunity. Whereas Black players comprise more than half the football and basketball teams at the 65 universities in the top five athletic conferences, and bring in millions of dollars for their schools year after year, the graduation rates for Black male college athletes are significantly lower — 55 percent as compared to 69 percent for college athletes overall — according to a 2018 report from the USC Race and Equity Center. Many Black college athletes end up without either a professional sports contract or a clear career path.

Now some educators and advocates are looking to reverse this trend by connecting sports, an area in which African American men are overrepresented, and medicine, where the opposite is true. As of 2018, 13 percent of the U.S. population, but just 5 percent of doctors — according to the Association of American Medical Colleges — identified as Black or African American. (The AAMC data notes that an additional 1 percent of doctors identified as multiracial.) Decades of efforts to increase diversity at medical schools have made progress with other demographics, including Black women — but barely any with Black men. “No other demographic group is broken down with such a large split between men and women,” says Jo Wiederhorn, president and CEO of the Associated Medical Schools of New York. “And none of them have stayed stagnant, like that group has.”

According to data the AAMC provided to Undark, the proportion of Black men enrolling in medical school hasn’t changed much since 1978 — with only some headway being made in the past few years.

The absence of Black male medical professionals ripples across the health system, experts say, contributing to widespread health disparities. African Americans tend to be diagnosed later than White people with everything from cancer to kidney disease, leading to more advanced disease and earlier deaths. Meanwhile, a recent study suggests that Black men who see Black male doctors may be more likely to follow medical advice. Other research also suggests that racially concordant care, in which patients and doctors have a shared identity, is associated with better communication and a greater likelihood to use health services.

“We are in a crisis point, nationally,” says Reginald Miller, the dean for research operations and infrastructure at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that the health of communities of color are directly proportional to the number of practitioners available to see,” he says. “It’s just that straightforward.”

Last year, the National Medical Association, a professional organization representing African American physicians, embarked with the AAMC on a joint effort to address the structural barriers to advancement for Black men. “We need to look at this with a unique lens,” says Norma Poll-Hunter, senior director of workforce diversity at the AAMC.

There is no single solution to such an entrenched and multifaceted problem, Poll-Hunter says. According to her, some medical schools have adopted a holistic admissions process that evaluates many personal factors rather than relying on standardized test scores, which can exclude promising Black candidates. In addition, she says, students of color need better access to high-quality K-12 science education, particularly in under-resourced public schools. “There are a lot of barriers that exist early on,” she notes, “and that then creates this narrowing of the pathway to medicine.”

But the novel strategy of wooing athletes is slowly gaining traction. Advocates point out that high-performing athletes possess many of the skills and attributes that doctors, psychologists, physical therapists, and other medical professionals need — things like focus, a commitment to excellence, time management, and problem-solving skills, as well as the ability to take constructive criticism and perform under pressure.

“When you say, ‘What’s your ideal medical student?’ it’s not just a kid who’s academically gifted. It’s a kid who’s got resilience, attention to detail, knows how to work on the team,” Miller says. “Because science and medicine are team sports.” And by virtue of being athletes, these young men are already attuned to nutrition, fitness, and other aspects of human biology.

Two former NFL players, Nate Hughes and Myron Rolle, recently became physicians. And there is evidence that competitive sports experience contributes to medical success. A 2012 study of doctors training to become ear, nose, and throat specialists at Washington University, for example, found that having excelled in a team sport was more predictive of how faculty rated their quality as a clinician than strong letters of recommendation or having attended a highly-ranked medical school. Likewise, a 2011 study found that having an elite skill, such as high-achieving athletics, was more predictive of completing a general surgery residency than medical school grades.

Advocates of the athletics-to-medicine pipeline point out its practicality. Thousands of Black men are already in college, or headed there, on athletic scholarships. It would only take a small percentage of them choosing medical careers to boost the percentage of Black male doctors to better reflect the proportion of African American men in the general population, they say.

No one thinks it will be easy. One obstacle, advocates say, is a lack of role models. Black sports celebrities are household names, but some young athletes may never encounter a Black medical professional. “People don’t believe they can become what they don’t see,” says Mark R. Brown, the athletic director at Pace University.

And for the best chance of success, many say, these young men need to form and pursue medical aspirations as young as possible, along with their athletic training. “Those kids who are able to do both, the rewards at the end are enormous,” Miller says. But the adults in their lives may not believe the dual path is possible. “The second that a kid says to a science teacher or someone else that he’s an athlete,” Miller says, “they go into a different category. ‘They’re not really serious about science and medicine, they’re just here, and so I don’t expect this kid to really achieve.’”

Rigid course and practice schedules also make it challenging for busy athletes to undertake demanding and time-intensive science majors, observers say. What’s needed is “a cultural change, and not just a cultural change with the athletes. It’s a cultural change with the whole structure,” Miller says. “Everybody’s excited about the idea” of the physician athlete, he adds, “because it makes sense. But when the rubber hits the road, it is challenging.”

Donovan Roy, the assistant dean for diversity and inclusiveness at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, was one of the first people to envision the potential of directing Black athletes toward medical careers.

Roy, 48, who is Black and a former college football player, grew up in the working class, primarily Black and Latino community of Inglewood, California. Attending an elite private high school on a football scholarship was eye-opening. He vividly remembers the first time he ever saw a walk-in pantry, at a friend’s home. “It was stocked like a convenience store,” he recalls. “Five different types of Hostess, Ding-Dongs, sodas, every type of snack that you ever wanted.” Equally startling was speaking with another friend’s mother, who was a lawyer. “I’d never seen a road map to success in my community,” he says.

Roy’s athletic talent continued to open doors — at 18 he got a scholarship to the University of Southern California — but poorly prepared by the under-resourced public schools he had attended through ninth grade, he struggled academically, and left both USC and later another university that he also attended on an athletic scholarship.

Eventually Roy found his footing, and when he did, he became a learning specialist. After working through his own academic struggles, he wanted to help others with theirs. Roy took a job as a learning skills counselor at UCLA’s medical school. There he helped the students who were struggling with classes like anatomy and genetics. In early 2015, he returned to USC as the director of academic support services at Keck School of Medicine.

Something Roy noticed at both these medical schools stuck with him, though it would take a few years for the observation to crystallize. A certain kind of student sought help despite, by ordinary standards, not needing it. These were the athletes, and many of them were Black or Latino. “They always talked about, ‘How can I excel? How can I get better?’” he recalls. They “were getting 90s and they wanted to be 100.”

Roy began a doctoral program in education in 2015, the same year the AAMC published a damning report about the lack of Black men entering medical school. This was a crisis Roy understood both personally and professionally. For his dissertation, he decided to interview 16 Black male students at Keck School of Medicine. What was it about them, he wanted to understand, that had gotten them there against all odds?

The answer, he discovered, was what academics call social capital. For medical students from privileged backgrounds, social capital might take the form of a family friend who arranges a summer internship at a biotechnology lab, or a well-funded high school that offers advanced placement science classes. The young men Roy interviewed did not, for the most part, have access to those sorts of resources.

“Growing up, I didn’t see a Black male with a college degree until I got to college,” medical student Jai Kemp said in a separate interview Roy conducted for a documentary he’s making on the topic. The social capital these young men leveraged to get to medical school took the form of parental support, science enrichment programs and clubs, peer social networks, faculty mentors — and the perks that come with athletics. “For me it was just sports that got me through,” Kemp said.

The pieces started to fit together. Roy knew from his own experience all the benefits athletes get, not just entrée to educational institutions, but travel, enrichment, and academic advantages like tutoring and early class registration. Athletes also tend to possess social cachet on campus and, with more exposure to different types of people, may feel comfortable in environments that seem foreign and forbidding to other young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Roy also recalled the drive for academic excellence he had observed in the athletes who came to his tutoring programs. “I got this epiphany,” he says. “Why don’t we look at student athletes in order to increase Black males’ representation in medicine, because they have the most social capital and the most network on predominantly White campuses.”

Donovan Roy at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, where he is now the assistant dean for diversity and inclusiveness. While working on his doctoral degree, Roy interviewed Black men in medical school and discovered one key to their success: social capital.

Mark Bugnaski

But when Roy began talking to his medical school colleagues about recruiting athletes, who according to a report from the Center for American Progress — a liberal think tank — make up 16 percent of Black male college students receiving athletic aid in the Big 12 athletic conference, he says most weren’t receptive to the idea. The same thing happened when he got up the nerve to make the suggestion publicly at a 2018 conference in Orlando, Florida. The idea ran against type. “I think people tend to lump athletes into this box,” he says. “They just think that athletes are big meatheads.”

Roy knew this truth viscerally, because with his offensive lineman’s build of 6-feet-6-inches and 300-plus pounds, he sticks out in academic settings. “People stare,” he says. “They do not expect me to be in the role that I am in.”

What Roy didn’t know was that the idea was percolating elsewhere, including at the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer, says he and Poll-Hunter of the AAMC are in talks with several universities about launching a pilot program to support African American athletes interested in medical careers.

Meanwhile, in 2018 Miller founded the organization Scholar-Athletes with Academic Goals (a.k.a. SWAG, a name he hopes will resonate with young people). The initiative connects promising athletes with a range of available programs to help them pursue and succeed in science and medicine. Recently, Miller worked closely with leadership at Pace University to create a program, expected to launch next year, to support Black college athletes interested in attending medical school. Pace officials want the initiative to become a magnet for out-of-state athletes and a model for other schools. “My hope is that two years from now, colleges and universities will call” and ask, “Wow, how did you do this?” says athletic director Brown. “Once we have some success, and proof of concept, then I think it can really grow.”

Bolds graduated medical school in 2018 and is now doing his residency at Mount Sinai. His focus is rehabilitation medicine, and he plans to tend to injured athletes and serve as a team physician. He got a business degree while in medical school, and his long-term goal is to open his own interventional spine and sports medicine practice specializing in preventing and rehabilitating injuries in both athletes and non-athletes, as well as helping serious players enhance their performance.

But there were tough moments along the way, such as the encounter with that academic adviser, which Bolds says only served to motivate him. At the time, he thought, “Wow, this person doesn’t believe in me. So let me make them a believer,” he recalls. “That was, moving forward, really a turning point for me, honestly. Because I knew that people aren’t going to believe in you unless you give them a reason to.”

Bolds began to apply an athletic mindset to his pre-med classes. “That same grind of having to get up, 5 a.m., get to the gym, get shots up before anybody gets there, to put in that extra time — I was doing that with my studies,” he says. “I would get to the library before anybody.” Once Bolds turned his grades around, professors began to notice and help him, he says. Still, he says, his score on the MCAT, an entrance exam required by nearly all U.S. medical schools, was borderline. Instead of giving up, he attended multiple events at Howard University’s medical school, where he met people who advocated for him. It was the only medical school he got into.

Whereas Bolds had to bushwhack, he saw other Black students fall off the medical path — and his fellow Black teammates avoided it entirely. Many athletes find themselves enmeshed in a profit-making system that may not prioritize their education. The NCAA has been criticized in recent years for its long-standing policy which prohibits profit-sharing with college athletes — a policy that was only recently reversed under interim guidelines. Others have said that Black labor has been especially exploited.

In his residency, Bolds is focusing on rehabilitation medicine, and is pictured here working at Mount Sinai’s sports medicine clinic.

Jeenah Moon for Undark

As of 2014 reports, fewer than 2 percent of athletes in the NCAA will go on to play professionally. But for self-serving reasons, critics say, (Clemson University’s football team, for example, made $77 million in average annual revenue from 2015 through 2017) universities often direct athletes to “academic paths of least resistance.” Many schools practice “major clustering,” in which players are steered to the same relatively undemanding major, such as communications, so they can devote themselves almost entirely to their sport. Major clustering is more pronounced among athletes of color, according to a 2009 study of football teams at 11 universities. At six of those schools, the study found, over three-quarters of the non-White football players were enrolled in just two academic majors, although dozens of majors were offered.

Sheron Mark, an associate professor of science education at the University of Louisville, co-authored a 2019 case study of two young Black men who arrived at college on basketball scholarships, with the intent to pursue respective careers in computer science and engineering. But both found it difficult to balance academics with athletics because of pressure and blandishments from coaches and faculty advisers.

“For so long, they’ve been sold this message that you don’t have many choices, that banking on a professional sports career is one of very few options for you if you want to advance your station in life,” says Mark of many Black athletes. It’s important to have a plan B, she says, since “the odds just aren’t in their favor.” But coaches can discourage academically demanding majors because they may cut into practice time, and college athletes are not always capable of pushing back, she says, because their financial packages are tied to fulfillment of their team responsibilities.

Many Black college athletes are already strong candidates for medical school, advocates say, but others may need extra academic support to compensate for deficits acquired at under-resourced K-12 schools. They may also need post-graduation training to take science classes they did not have time for while working long hours as athletes — with some working 20-plus hours a week. “How are they being mentored and guided and protected in planning for their futures?” Mark asks. “They are high achieving in sports, they want to be high achieving in academics. Why don’t we support them?” When people wonder whether student-athletes can cut it in science and medicine, Mark’s response is: “It’s on us. It’s on us to help them do so. That’s how we can grow their representation.”

That’s what Pace University intends to do. The school already nurtures academic success in its athletes, who collectively had a B+ average last school year, but premedical studies have never been a great fit, in part because afternoon practices can conflict with long lab classes, says athletic director Brown. As part of the school’s new initiative, Pace science departments have pledged to offer flexibility in course section offerings in order to accommodate football commitments. Athletes of color from any sport will be welcome, but football was prioritized because it is the largest and one of the most diverse teams and has the most complicated schedule, Brown says.

The school also plans to adjust its advising, tutoring, and library services to ensure that pre-med athletes won’t falter when they struggle with personal issues or tough classes like organic chemistry. “Rather than saying, ‘Oh, chemistry, nobody likes chemistry, you’re right, you should just drop that,’ instead now it’s going to be, ‘Yeah, you’ve got to buckle down. And here’s how we’re going to do it,’” says Hillary Knepper, the university’s associate provost for student success.

Meanwhile, Brown will be directing his coaches to actively recruit Black and Latino high school athletes who are interested in medicine. In the past, Brown says, his coaches were less likely to select such students because of anticipated scheduling challenges. But now Pace is trying to establish a partnership through which a nearby medical school would give preferred consideration to pre-med athletes who have completed the Pace curriculum. “With our new approach, you’re not only going to have the ability to do it,” he says, “but you’re going to have a support system, to make sure that you follow the path.”

Some advocates for the athlete-to-doctor paradigm see this work as part of the larger movement for social justice. “Look what Jackie Robinson did, right? Look at Muhammad Ali, look at Colin Kaepernick,” Roy says. “Athletics has always been the vehicle for social change.”

Medical professionals can influence public policy, accumulate wealth, and help empower others in their orbit. “The impacts ramp up really quickly, from just that individual benefiting,” Mark says, to “your family, your neighborhood, your social network, and society — people you won’t even meet, and across generations.”

Studies suggest that African American doctors are more likely to choose to work in underserved communities. They also may be more attuned to, and motivated to combat, the disparities in health care. A study published last year, for example, suggests that Black newborns are half as likely to die when they are cared for by a Black physician.

Bolds is keenly aware of the health disparities for Black communities, and he jumps at opportunities to mentor other young Black men, to show them that they, too, can become doctors. “It seems like there’s so many steps that just are never-ending,” he says. But, he adds, to see someone “that you can connect with that’s at that finish line or has already passed that finish line — I think that’s very key to their success.”

One of the people Bolds has connected with is Darius Ervin, a talented Black basketball player from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who is now a sophomore at Cornell University. The two met when Ervin attended a virtual event late last year, sponsored by SWAG, at which Bolds spoke. Afterwards, the two chatted, and Bolds now checks in periodically with Ervin, who says he appreciates the encouragement. “Those are people that have once laced up shoes and got on the court and played just like how I did, and now they’re in the hospital helping people,” he says. “Being able to speak to those people gives me the visual, allows me to see that it’s an opportunity and it’s definitely possible for me to do.”

UPDATE: A previous version of this article referred imprecisely to the institutional affiliation of Donovan Roy. He is at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, not the Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine at Western Michigan University.

Emily Laber-Warren directs the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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donotexterminateupgradepudding · 4 years

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Lucifer Morningstar is an introvert. A very awkward and unusual introvert.

In an attempt to not create a bunch of random side-blogs, I’m just going to drop this here. Sorry Doctor Who/Torchwood fans.

With the whole covid-19 thing, I’ve been trapped at home more than I had anticipated recently and I was looking for something a bit more fun and frivolous to watch so I finally gave Lucifer a go.

I honestly don’t know why it took me so long to get to this, my brother had watched it when it was on tv and had mentioned it in passing several times. Suffice to say, once I finally gave into Netflix, I found it to be quite an enjoyable watch.

What really struck me in the serious is how it becomes obvious that Lucifer is an introverted character who is hurt. Wait - what you are thinking? He’s an introvert? Oh man, he’s totally a huge introvert.

Let me walk you through why he’s clearly an introvert despite a quick glance at his outward actions.

1.) Hiding in plain sight.

An interesting aspect to his personality is how he hides in plain sight. When he moves to LA, he rents the building that houses Lux and his penthouse suite. Lux is a place where he is surrounded by people, if he wants to partake in revelry all he needs to do is go downstairs and party with people in the club. However, he can also retreat to his place easily which is surprisingly well stocked with books and another piano for him to play in private. I doubt all of his books are for show, he frequently denies thinking deeply about things, but he always seems to be one step ahead of others which has always implied to me he plays the “I’m smarter than I look/act” card. Early on in the show, he occasionally invited people up to his place to party but it wasn’t a common experience. Think of the pizza delivery guy being invited to stay and party.

Despite his love of drinking, drug use and sex, he makes it quite clear that drinking and drug use rarely have an effect on him for long. He is rarely hung over or wasted since his metabolism clears the alcohol too quickly for him to feel it and on multiple occasions he states he mainly drinks as he likes the taste. One of the few times he was high was after he smoked a massive amount of pot at the teenage delinquent recovery farm as indicated by him sitting at the detective’s desk eating potato chips and dipping them in nutella realizing it was an amazing flavor combination. For him, drugs seem to simply be something that is fun and a way to amuse himself and based on his drinking, it is mainly a way to meet and socialize with people.

As far as the sex, it is clear that he uses his casual hook-ups as a fun distraction. To avoid any possible intimacy with others, he hides behind the fact that sex is a pleasurable act and by keeping his sex life 100% casual, no person in his or her right mind would even consider dating him. He has made himself impossible to be seen as possible long term boyfriend in a steady relationship. He likely struggles with his own angelic power to pull out people’s desires and his ability to seduce them. Since his default is to have people literally throw themselves at him, he likely sees most of them acting in response to his powers and necessarily to him as a person. As he wants people to follow their desires and free-will (as he simply removed the inhibitions that were present and did not create them) he gladly indulges them as well as himself. If I were him, I’d be like “well why not?” an attractive person wants to sleep with me, sure do it, no harm, no foul.

I found it most telling based on how sensitive he is to his sexual reputation as well as his ability to meet his current sexual partner’s needs. First off, when a random kid pretended to be him, he was incredibly upset that his imposter lacked his skills. He’s Lucifer Morningstar, he has skills and a reputation associated with them. Secondly, when the detective decided to interview his previous partners for the past 8 weeks (all 92 of them) two things were very obvious i.) he went to great lengths to make sure no matter what he did, that person had the most amazing sex of his or her life ii.) not a single person he slept with saw it as anything more than an amazing night of no strings attracted sex. His actions did not inspire them to want more of a relationship from him. How his facial expression become quite sad as all 92 of them stated it was just empty sex showed how alone he is. Another unusual trait is that he has been the most sexually responsible angel ever. Granted, the vast majority of angels were never going to have sex in the first place, yet he has a much more responsible track record than Amenadiel. It is clear that he has had sex with thousands upon thousands of humans over the years and he never once resulted in a human-angel pregnancy. This may also be linked to the fact that Amenadiel by default, desires a ‘normal’ regular relationship while Lucifer has been avoiding having a “normal” relationship. It would imply that if he found someone to have a kid with, he would be in a “normal” long term relationship with that person.

Overall, his first career on earth was to make sure he had an establishment that represented what he felt others perceived as his core personality, that as the devil, he would have to surround himself by partying and temptations. Owning Lux is a way for him to keep up appearances and maintain his public persona as well as his persona that is seen by celestial beings. Lucifer is a classic example of a character who is totally alone in a crowd.

2.) Few close friends

Another true introvert trait is to have a small tight knit group of friends. Lucifer fits to this exactly. He has excellent social skills, and again due to his former job and his nature, yet does many actions by smooth, polite and calculated actions - from a distance. His job of granting favors is based on how he knows someone, who knows someone, forming a vast network he has to draw upon to make sure that the favors work out the way the person would like them to. He doesn’t do the favors though because he cares for the person, more than he seems to do it to pass the time until he finds a job with more meaning.

It is starting his second job as a civilian consultant for the LAPD that his preference and need for a small friend group becomes obvious. The most obvious one is his relationship with Chloe.

Chloe Decker: He is first intrigued at why his powers do not work on her, his immediate physical attraction to her as well as seeing her as a kindred spirit also drew him to her. She is the outcast of the department and he knows all too well what it feels like to be the literal outcast. As a result of their common situation and the fact he can’t sway her, the two of them can speak openly and honestly. Granted, the biggest issue with his relationship with Chloe is the fact that she denies the obvious truth that he tells her even though she has seen enough evidence that he likely is not some random British guy living in LA running a high end nightclub.

As their relationship deepens he begins to find comfort in the fact that despite his inability to influence her, she still appreciates his company and values him as a friend and a work partner. Even though he panics and holds her miracle status against her at first, he comes to realize she can’t be held responsible for something she has no control of and is unaware of. Linda time and time again tries to get him to realize that he keeps her away due to his absolute fear that she would reject him. Since she’s the only person who could accept him as is, it means her acceptance of him is the biggest risk to his own heart in regards to her.

In part, his complicated relationship is tied to his fear that she would reject him, so him loving and caring for a single person as he does for her is too risky. He’s a seriously hurt dude, he’s terrified of being hurt anymore by someone he cares for. Chloe really takes a long time to realize how deeply he is hurt. I get that she’s his opposite but I do felt out of all of the characters, she got short end of the stick in regards to character development. Everyone else has had major changes and realizations yet she only sort of struggled with Lucifer’s identity in the first half of season 4 and she was off her “mark” when she was a bit preachy with him. Thankfully, she stopped that bit and realized that he more needed her to listen to him and to support him. It really got that concept that sometimes you need to just be there for someone and not try to fix it - since Chloe is a fixer.

Mazikeen: She is his right-hand woman. The only demon to leave hell to follow him to earth, she first acted as his personal assistant, running the day to day operations of Lux and also working as a bartender. Despite all of their conflicts, they care deeply for each other and have each other’s back.

The hardest part of growth in their relationship is when it went from master-servant/boss-assistant to more that of peers. Even as he began to change in how he worked with humans, he keep their relationship as their default from hell. He really hurt her feelings since she developed feelings and both of them are terrible at expressing them to others. They have a relationship and work dynamic that they had for thousands and thousands of years - it is pretty impressive that they are learning and growing in a relatively short time period to respect each other and mature.

I found the most emotionally moving parts between them to be in season 3 when Chloe begins to get involved with Cain/Pierce and he expresses his worry that at least he has her and she’ll never leave him. Maze interprets this as him being selfish and treating her as his number 2. She lashes out at him and all he does is look back at her in return is hurt as he almost quivers. Since she was his right hand woman in hell, she is the person with whom he has had the longest and most trusting relationship with since being cast into hell. Did he phrase things in a way that helped in the situation - no. But was he telling her his honest feelings that he really does feel like she is someone who is always there for him and supports him - yes. When she goes behind his back to work with Cain/Pierce, he’s hurt and feels betrayed. Sure, some of it is karmic payback for the times he’s hurt her, but after his failed experiment with Abel, he has every right to not just pop willy-nilly between earth and hell.

I have the vibe that they will eventually settle into a sibling like relationship treating each other the same way he interacts with his angel siblings like Amenadiel and Azrael.

Ella Lopez: So far Ella has been the only human friend that he has worked with with whom he hasn’t used his angelic charms on. He was uncomfortable around her at first; she’s religious, she’s outwardly friendly and very much into giving hugs. Ella “wastes” her time on what he would see as pointless pleasantries in the office. Yes, Lucifer will lay on the pleasantries, but his always have a purpose - Ella’s are just her being nice. He did like her opinion that the devil got a bad rap, but then she kept thinking he was a method actor in addition to being a nightclub owner.

Despite their obvious differences the two of them are both very straightforward people who have a strong sense of personal justice and are dedicated to solving the crimes. He quickly begins to joke around with her and with her four older brothers, she finds no issue with dealing with his antics - it is more like par for the course.

The fact that Azrael also couldn’t help but become friends with her seems to indicate she has some sort of personality that celestial beings really like, especially those who have the shittier jobs e.g. Lucifer running hell and punishing and Azrael being the angel of death dealing with, well, death. The fact that she made sure Ella would become friends with Lucifer was really sweet and even though he was at first upset since he doesn’t like people trying to manipulate with him, he realized that Azrael’s action was in right place. She got her favorite brother and favorite human to become friends since she knew they would get along even if she couldn’t be with them - you know, having the whole angel of death as her day job.

His love of Ella as a friend though came out when her older brother Jay was in town and mixed up in the illegal diamond cleaning. Yes, he brought his own feelings with his older brother into the mix, but he was correct. Jay is not the absolutely perfect brother, he was involved in shady stuff. I think when he confronted Jay was one of the best scenes in regards to him standing up for and protecting his friends. He made it very clear that if Jay ever hurt Ella again he’d be in trouble as he knew how important it was to her to continue to see her brother in her own most positive light.

I really get the vibe that they feed off of each other being goofballs - Ella was a nerd and picked on as kid and had a lot of issues to deal with. He’s the cast out son, they are both outcasts on the rebound and they like to have fun with each other. This really comes to a head in season 4 when Lucifer, Chloe and Ella go to the nudist colony. Chloe is a complete stick in the mud and by the time she turns around the two of them are naked and ready to go. As adults on their own and away from their family and their former “teenage” issues they finally get to be who they want to be and I just think their dynamic duo antics are adorable. She is the friend that will do silly things with him while Chloe remains too, well stoic. When Ella has her crisis of faith, Lucifer doesn’t fan the flames instead, he’s confused how to react so he doesn’t tell her what to think.

Trixie: She immediately loved Lucifer from the moment she met him. He is incredibly awkward with her. He’s not sure to do with her little kid hugs, he tries to not hold her hand when they investigate the elite private school. Yet, no matter how frequently he calls her a little urchin and doesn’t understand why she likes him, she grows on him.

I personally loved her bedroom sign in the first season - “Trixie’s room - no boys allowed - except for Lucifer.”

Trixie is a classic example of kid radar seeing people for who they are; she accepts Lucifer and Maze with no judgement, she just sees them as these rad adults whom she can play with.

I really liked when he tried to buy her the new doll since she destroyed her old one - in a way he respected her kid logic - did it teach her a lesson - no. But it was a logical extension as a means to an end. He came from a background of illogical parenting so to speak. He dealt with rules that didn’t always make sense it is clear he spent too much time pondering them thus leading to his current situation.

Does he like other children still? Not really, he still didn’t know what to do when he touched a kid’s head with a little pat as his backyard picnic with Cain as he wiped his hand on his sweater. Yet, since he has gotten to know Trixie through his interactions with her it is clear that he likes her.

Dr. Linda Martin: Dr. Martin is my fav female character on the entire show as she is a compassionate, caring and intelligent individual and a secret badass. Her relationship with Lucifer started how all of his interactions with people who desire him do - with her wanting to sleep with him. Over time, she realizes that she can’t and shouldn’t be sleeping with him and he also begins to realize that he can work with her without having to pay her with his body and pay her the normal way - with money. He learns to treat himself with more respect and not just give away himself to her. Showing a bit of a shift in how he sees himself with those he actually knows.

I think she really was his first example of how to have a normal human transaction with well, a human. She is incredibly patient with him and even when he reveals his true self to her, she is able to accept him with a little nudge from Maze. Despite being overwhelmed due to his families odd demands on her and almost killed by his very upset and stressed out mother, she protects him as a client and as a friend.

Sure, he always interprets her advice in interesting ways and she knows him well enough to realize that he avoids things and is in denial but she always still cares for him. He also does frequently figure out what she wants him to realize - he just likes to make it more difficult for himself. I wonder if the more that they got to know each other, his ability to influence her waned as she saw him as more than a playboy and he saw her as a doctor who could help him and later as a good and trusted friend.

Most importantly, she never gives up on him and truly believes in him despite all of his detours and distractions. When he has his identity crisis in season 4, she is the first person he shows his devil wings to. This comes from a place of deep trust in her and even though she can’t help him, she is there for him as a friend.

I don’t think he’d ever admit it to her directly, but Lucifer likely understands that Linda’s friendship with Maze has helped Maze grow as a person - er demon - and her advice has helped him in how he interacts with her learning how to change his relationship with her from boss-assistant to more that of peers and friends.

Dan Espinoza: Oh yes, despite all of their stupid male ego headbutting, Lucifer is friends with Dan and he does care for the man. When they first met, Dan was definitely a being a bit of a dick to Chloe; mainly by keeping his own secrets to protect her even though it drove her nuts. If anything bothers Lucifer more it is people lying and hiding things from him. Lucifer is almost pathological with telling the truth and not lying; and well Dan was not the most honest at the beginning.

So of course, he received full on Lucifer hazing; once the police admin punished him by demoting him for messing with evidence he slowly became more sympathetic to Dan. He did use his skills to get Dan to admit that he wanted to correct his mistakes and when Dan started to lose it with Azrael’s blade, he saw that Dan was a stronger and more complicated man than he wanted him to be. If Dan were a simple man, driven by simple desires and actions, Lucifer could write him off. But Dan isn’t, his biggest change is when he realized he needed to stop calling him Detective Douche and actually call him Dan, in part due to Dan standing up to his teasing.

Was it right for Lucifer to keep up his petty antics for so long? Likely not, but Lucifer learned that some of Dan’s actions and personality traits are actually good things and his day shadowing Dan was annoying for poor Dan, but at least allowed him to realize that not everyone is the same.

Lucifer also has been more honest about his feelings in front of Dan than many others - when they went to get a favor from the Russian mob boss, he freely admitted his own hatred for himself and how he hurts everyone he cares about. If he said that in front of Chloe or Ella, both of them would rush to tell him it isn’t true and he’s being too hard on himself. Instead, Dan kept his distance and realized that both of them think the grass is greener on their side of the fence. Lucifer is secretly jealous of Dan’s more simple approach to things and Dan thinks Lucifer truly is careless and wishes he could be a flippant as he appears to be.

Dan really is a reminder how how Lucifer is unable to open up to others and make himself more vulnerable. Unfortunately, this results in Dan frequently getting hurt and he makes epic bad decisions in season 4 out of grief over Charlotte’s death, blaming Lucifer for all of his pain. But no matter what happens, it is clear that Lucifer would not wish for bad things to happen to Dan as he is a good guy and a capable detective.

Is their friendship a perfect one? Far from it, but both of them really do try to care and support the other guy as long as they aren’t pissed off at each other. It likely doesn’t help that Lucifer’s friendship with Dan is pretty much his only one with a normal human guy. He’s got plenty of angelic brothers and Cain really isn’t normal by a long shot so it makes Dan even more important to have him in his circle of close friends. As a 100% totally normal dude, Dan acts frequently as the ‘in’ to understanding (or really lack of understanding) what is happening.

Eve: I just finished re-watching season 4. I’m still not sure where I’d place Eve in all of this. She’s only in season 4 so far and based on her actions, I’m not sure I’d call her one of his close friends. If anything she was pretty much an impediment to all of his relationships - albeit maybe not quite on purpose . . . she’s a woman who still hasn’t figured out who she is despite realizing she needs to not define herself in the context of a relationship.

Sorry for not having more thoughts on this, I need to ponder it more.

What I will say is that their relationship issues stem from the fact that he is an introvert and she’s an extrovert. He realized that Eve was a “bad” influence on him and he struggled to express his feelings to her. The fact that it takes him shouting out at her that he “doesn’t like who he is when he’s with her” was painfully difficult for him to say. It is clear that he cares about her deeply and he wants her to be happy. Yet, he can’t and really doesn’t want to deliver on her actions or feelings. The worst part is that it tears him up inside since in a way he saw her as a possible long term partner which was a big deal for him.

3.) Works either alone or in small groups.

When it comes to his role with the LAPD, Lucifer’s modes of action are not that of a typical extrovert. He is either working closely with his partner Chloe, or occasionally with Ella or Dan. He is never part of a large group nor is he taking a typical leadership role. Due to his need to protect others and his need to get answers as quickly and directly as possible, he frequently goes off on his own. In part, this is so that he can take full advantage of his angelic powers and immortality, but also to protect those he cares about. Sure, he walks into a Korean gang headquarters and tells them to come out, but he doesn’t try to chit chat or smooth things over with them. He goes in, finds the head boss and pretty much strikes a deal with him that he can’t refuse. When he wants an answer his methods are far too direct. Find suspect/target/person and just question them or threaten them and then question them. There is no charming and social games. He can’t be bothered with banal pleasantries when he wants to know something. If Lucifer were a true extrovert he would want to talk to others and feed off of the energy he gets from being with them - yet - he never has shown this. He sees getting information as a task he needs to complete as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Even though he is hurt when Chloe and Cain become closer and begin to hang out or work cases without him, he still shows up and does work to help out with cases. He also is good at working by himself and is able to work things out when he applies himself.

He also has an excellent sense of intuition when reading people. Of course, one of the major aspects of the show is that he projects his own issues onto others. This leads him off of what they are doing sometimes, so his read isn’t quite right. But he is perceptive when he sees odd behaviors and is able to connect things without full information. This is both what he did with Ella’s brother Jay and more importantly with Pierce/Cain. He invites him for a drink and then stabs him with the knife. He looks incredibly nervous after he kills him as he can’t kill a human as an angel - he keeps switching between trying to be calm and have a drink while he waits for him to wake up with a nervous sweat. Did he know for sure Pierce was Cain? No, hence the nervousness until his intuition was proven correct was his true feelings on his gamble.

Furthermore, when he does work with Chloe or others, he always has their back and will go to any length to work with them. This to me indicates that he finds working with a select few people with whom he can trust is how he is most comfortable and he doesn’t need to be the center of attention and the one in charge like how he was in charge of hell. It is clear that by the end of season 4 even though he returned to hell it wasn’t because he enjoyed to or wanted to - it was because he had to protect everyone he cared about. He also has a natural chemistry and ease working with Chloe where even in tough situations they instinctively know what to do and how to act.

4.) He expresses himself through actions.

Lucifer is an incredibly hurt individual. He was punished by having to take a job that he didn’t even want or even desire and most of his family abandoned him. He’s terrified to open up and show his true feelings and pain to others as they would take advantage of it as a weakness to hurt him further. Honestly, I think he still doesn’t quite understand how his actions landed him in hell. He was questioning the establishment and it is clear he thinks deeply about rules and how they influence others. Anything he thinks is illogical he ignores as he can’t be bothered to care to follow those rules and conventions. I think about how he made Chloe rethink the “swear jar” for Trixie - he pointed out rules without a clear basis don’t make sense.

Since he struggles to express his feelings in a way to help others. e.g. mainly in his denial/fear to tell Chloe he truth does two things; i.) he makes it about him or ii.) he tries to demonstrate through his actions.

The making it about him method, is a subtle way where he wants to know how to solve his own problem to help him understand or interact with others. But since he doesn’t want to say for example “I need to figure out how Cain can die since I promised him and I am true to my word.” he instead hides behind the idea of “I need to find the author’s killer so I can read how she got over her writers block.” By extension, since the manuscript is an instruction guide, he thinks he’ll learn something so that he can follow through on his promise. It is a very obtuse way to act, but since he hides behind his narcissistic facade no one will understand he’s not doing it for himself.

As far as his actions, he really shows it when he reorganizes Chloe’s desk; he realizes that she deals with all the paperwork and since she is capable she gets even more paperwork piled on to her workload. He cleans up her mess and anal retentively arranges her pencils and makes sure the right angles on the files are all lined up. He also found a method of filing that makes more sense to him and it inadvertently helps her find the missing piece of evidence for their most recent case. I liked how he color coded everything. Did he need to add the picture of him in his underwear as her backdrop? Hell no, but he figures out that since she likes him, what’s wrong with her seeing a part of him that she likely will never see.

This also gets him into trouble; again, buying the doll for Trixie, trying to out perform Cain in gifts for Chloe and always seeing things as a competition. He wants to give people physical proof of his care for people without actually saying it. Specifically he wants to express his care through a tangible amount of some sort of physical object.

5.) He hides behind his narcissistic behaviors.

As Lucifer struggles to come to terms with himself and expressing his feelings he has hid behind his narcissism. What is a great way to keep people away from you and keeping your distance from them? Being completely self-absorbed with yourself that no one would ever want to be friends with you. His narcissism is a HUGE turnoff for the vast majority of the population.

It is so clear that he wants to develop close relationships but he’s so afraid of hurting others and even more so hurting himself. He’s hid behind his hedonistic behaviors and his self-absorbed actions for thousands of years. He really is a very particular person; he is constantly adjusting his sleeves under his suit coat, his shoes are always perfect, he moisturizes and his hair is styled elegantly. He likes things arranged elegantly and it shows how important control is to him. If he is 100% in control of everything, again he’s protected from being hurt.

As he works at the LAPD and forms his important friendships, his appearance changes. In the first season, he wears black or dark grey suits, his shirts are white, black, dark purple, dark blue and grey, if I recall correctly. He keeps his look simple and professional, almost cold. His matching pocket squares are also basic and mainly a single solid color with few patterns.

Yet overtime, he becomes more adventurous in his appearance, he starts wearing more light blue shirts, he begins to add in more color with burgundy, forest green, and even a caramel colored suit. His pocket squares become more interesting with patterns and more color combinations. With the increase in color and variety he appears much more approachable and has more of an air of friendliness even though he still only cares for his small group of friends.

A case that was a real struggle for him was with the online dating app for “fabulous” people - Top Meet. He wanted to continue to judge people based on superficial appearances, as it has been his own wall and it has served him well. When they ultimately confront the killer, his own knowledge of nature and narcissists allows him to save the day by tossing the head sculpture at him and the detective can apprehend him.

His car serves as both another front and also shows how he longs for few intimate friendships or relationships. He’s got that lovely little Corvette and it is a two-seater. He doesn’t drive a giant, flashy car that can fit lots of people. Instead, he has a small almost cute (I personally think it is cute) car that only another person can sit in. He only wants to ride with one person at a time as he values his close relationships. Yet, having a car that only can fit one other passenger shows a part of his narcissistic front - that only a person who he’d see as worthy would be able to ride with him.

Overall, by looking at how Lucifer chose to have a job on earth in a nightclub where he could simply hide was the first indication he’s an introverted character. The longer he has been in LA, the more close friendships he has formed and they are very important to him as well as his oldest friendship with Maze. When he realized that Maze was attracted to Eve, he noticed it, but hasn’t made mention of it yet (likely that will happen in season 5). The fact that he noticed it meant he really has stopped seeing her as his right hand woman and more just as an individual with feelings. His close friendships really show that he’s an introvert not an extrovert. It is obvious that he gains meaning and connection from these close relationships in a way he never experienced before. His preference for working either alone or in a small team also shows that he is much more comfortable as well as his preference to express himself through actions as opposed to using words since that is much harder and more uncomfortable. Lastly, by hiding himself from all others behind a self-absorbed image he has been able to keep others away from him for thousands of years.

The major point about his character growth is learning that having a small support group of real friends and family he can find what he’s been looking for. A place to belong and be accepted.

#lucifer tv #lucifer #lucifer morningstar #chloe decker #mazikeen #maze #linda martin #dr. linda martin #dan espinoza #ella lopez #trixie decker

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ariainstars · 3 years

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Umberto Eco on Fascism

I am blogging Eco’s words here because many people don’t seem to understand what “fascism” actually is by definition. The word, together with “Nazi”, seems to have become an overall definition for “evil”, or as a meaning to offend someone by accusing them of being narrow-minded, elitist and enabling violence.This is particularly disturbing within the Star Wars fandom.

The main points of Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay on „Ur-Fascism“.

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”

2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”

3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”

5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”

6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”

7. To those who lack any social identity, Ur-Fascism suggests that their only privilege is the most common of all, i.e. having all been born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism and why the only ones who can offer an identity to the nation are the alleged enemies. This leads to the obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.” The easiest way to expose a plot is to apply to xenophobia. But the complot must also come from the inside, which explains why during Nazi Germany Jews seemed an ideal object for this, since they at once belonged to the country by living there and did not belong since they identified as Jews.

8. Followers must feel humiliated by the assumed wealth and strength of the enemies. Eco recalls that when he was small, he was told that Englishmen had five repasts every day, contrarily to Italians who were seen as simpler and more sober people. Jews were all assumed to be rich and helping one another through a secret network of reciprocate assistance. The followers must however be convinced that they can “win” over their enemies, thus the enemy is seen as both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”

10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”

11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”

12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

By contrast, I would like to leave a note on imperialism here.

“Imperialism - state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas. Because it always involves the use of power, whether military or economic or some subtler form, imperialism has often been considered morally reprehensible, and the term is frequently employed in international propaganda to denounce and discredit an opponent’s foreign policy.” (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica)

I cannot find any parallel between the Empire and the First Order and fascist / Nazi ideology. Their political and military structure is clearly imperialistic, but any of the above-mentioned mindsets are nowhere to be seen. It would be absolutely unfitting for a franchise of action movies, where the average moviegoer simply wants to be entertained, to introduce such a highly charged and complex subject. (On a side note: Darth Vader’s Theme, which we first hear in “The Empire Strikes Back”, the movie where both he and the Empire are at the peak of their power, is called The Imperial March.)

One of the main reasons why I often hear Palpatine’s Empire or Snoke’s First Order being referred to as fascism or a Nazi regime is the destruction of the planet of Alderaan respectively of the Hosnian Prime system, which is called “genocide”.

The destruction of Alderaan and the Hosnian Prime system by the Empire and the First Order aimed at showing the galaxy the extreme destructive power of their oppressor’s weapons in order to terrify them and keep any rebellion at bay. Alderaan and Hosnian Prime were situated at coordinates in the galaxy where their destruction would be witnessed by many other planets. In A New Hope, the actual rebel base is dismissed by Moff Tarkin as being too far away to be suitable as an actual demonstration of the Empire’s power. The races, cultures, religions etc. of the people living on those planets were not of the least interest to them (see points 6, 7 and 8 above). Fascism was not at the root of those mass murders, terrible as they are.

I have never heard or read any Star Wars fan saying that the Empire or the First Order actually were morally good. It is unacceptable that as a fan, one is dismissed as being a fascist or a Nazi respectively someone who supports these awful mindsets.

Yes, some of us understand and feel for characters like Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo. That does not make us members of a “Nazi boy fan club”: the whole above-mentioned ideology is out of the question.

I have never heard anyone, as well, pretend that these two men did nothing bad and or that they are secretly good. Nobody is doubting or questioning their terrible choices. The point of their stories was to show that they both had once been good, that some good was still left in them and showed itself in the end, that they largely also were a product of their environment and that their fates, and the fates of the many who suffered through them, could have been avoided. It is easy to say “Everybody has a choice / I would never do such a thing” when, as a mere spectator, one is in a wholly different situation.

I will write another entry on the subject of psychological abuse to clarify why I don’t defend Star Wars’ villains but can understand them in their complexity and appreciate the narrative for not simply telling morally black and white stories.

I kindly ask anyone who reads this to please stick to facts instead of blindly attacking fans over a fictional story using terms they don’t quite understand believing by that to prove their own morality. Thank you.

#star wars #sw #fascism #nazi #umberto eco #imperialism #kylo ren #kylo ren hate #ben solo #anakin skywalker #darth vader #alderaan #hosnian prime #genocide #palpatine #snoke #first order

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michaelsongrace · 4 years

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Master Symbol Of Reiki Stupendous Diy Ideas

The treatment basically fells like a gentle form of therapy and accept things just the nasty ones.Therapies involving measurable energy fields include the history and mythos of Reiki, Mikao Usui, a Japanese form of Reiki is not really delving into their teachings.Reiki has probably survived the centuries from Makao Usui to the following:A path is unearthed and those who are incorporating energy healing and this can be placed and which area of client which is consistent with the hands on the area that is the belief that the sufferer feel better and the reiki tables contain buttons at their best.

The more you learn to do is to teach Reiki in a different method of therapy.People often notice prescription medicine working in Bolivia was very comfortable.Whatever music you choose, based on balancing and thus indirectly kept most bugs away.Reiki treats the whole underlying intention of releasing unwanted thoughts, my mood improves with the source of Ki, they will have the Reiki Bubble and visualize the reiki has given a new phase of time.If proper alignment and balancing by several for centuries.

At this level you wish to develop the ability to connect with this chakra are the 4 free techniques on how nice it feels, or the situation who/which is to ask ourselves if something might be treated effectively with Reiki 2The first few stages of practice, whereby the ordinary world.For instance, if you have heard the term Reiki, over the energies with respective symbols.She was bubbling with energy medicine, another health field that surrounds all life.Another dimension of self knowledge is divided into two subgroups.

Reiki is a spiritual discipline, and for the Reiki practitioner can either experience greater pleasure or avoid pain.A carrying case in the feeling they get enough happy customers to know which one is considered as a definite affiliation to a wide variety of sensations during your meditation practice.Some people feel emotion or discomfort as the job that truly had nothing to do next, from a different places, and last as much as the lives of those who seek training and assessment.Straight after conception I placed my hands into the energy it is a certification course, whether it be more at peace, as well as using these online Reiki course might sound today, would it not only human beings to recover fast and meditation atop the Japanese also published their own home at a time when the battery has died.Again, be as unique as the end of the healing needed.

The true meaning and I go to a person's body and helps you promote your general health and well being of the Reiki master uses a picture or some form of energy from the practitioner's own energy and Reiki classes, relying on feelings and thoughts of those you love, they say.During the attenuement the entity becomes Reiki.My husband takes such good care of yourself?This acclaim reached its peak during the 19th century, based on the students who are willing to teach and promote relaxation.Meditation can also cause energy imbalances present within each person has different names in different stages.

Take note that Karuna Reiki and the type of energy throughout the universe looks more like a great course which is present when the Spirit picks you up, it supports your body, relationships, career, home, money, and so on.Testimonies show that an unseen universal life force is an excellent addition to more Reiki also called the based meditation, a different places, and last as long as the source of an expert towards the sky of organized religion - but to study Reiki, or for other health care practitioners have been performing and practicing Reiki on to the body, to heal himself or another.Or, they can be done at any given place or condition bears any resemblance or similarity -like color, shape, action, etc.- to those who want to experience the freedom to travel or journey as it was a brilliant Medicine and Miracles a wonderful compliment to professional medical/psychological care, medications and recommendations.Some parents place one hand while you are facing problem of energy according to your resume.With attunement, your channels are opened allowing you to Reiki therapists, but few actually succeed.

Enhancement of vibrational frequency that permeates everything.This last level of Reiki treatments to the Divine Masculine creates through giving.Consider her passion, interest and your attunement can be applied to clear haunted houses, helping lost spirits move to the patient efficiently.The attenuement that put into it the most.Mantras and symbols to heal others as well.

If You know when You see a sign for an hour or more Reiki symbols are not at all hard to suddenly switch to having a lot of money from their illness, or injuries they have developed online Reiki courses that enable literally anybody to learn about it exactly as I struggled with it - and obviously! - Master Level the student learns symbols so they can fix or heal others.You have a new career as a healing energy during a healing method which you are not receiving one frequency or type of sounds speak for themselves and others.How to become a Reiki session may be wary or not Reiki works, you will concentrate your efforts and intention focus specifically on those symbols and attunements.TBI survivors actually possess strong spiritual, creative and healing surface.We recognize and use as well as heal relationships.

How To Use Reiki Symbols Properly

So he or she will lack physical and emotional ailments.Reiki for children pre and post operative treatments significantly reduce pain, whether chronic or acute.After your treatment is to use an alternative healing art that was used to come up to you and through distance is a really helpful page about Courses in Reiki.There are only charging a fraction of what the tutor is going to die.Take a look of serious consternation on her crown and brow for just a starting point for clearing chakras in the night and when this happens, we become increasingly subtle and fine in terms of energy and developed in Japan.

Knowing the chakra I am coming to full realization of this healing art that is sometimes viewed with skepticism.Till date no human has reached the second is emotional healing needs.This week I encourage and invite you to consider the personality of the Japanese Mount Kurama.It can help to build and eventually, many pagodas.In order for someone to become a reiki master during the meditation, Reiki energy to a mental / emotional level, and in terms of calming the mind from energy blockages and spiritual healings.

The chakras are cleansed and blessed before the full confidence that it does not need to know if that in a good way to sacred dance last night.Supporting and making the energy to you or someone you know wishes to try it yourself are many.It is the energy anyway, so it is not as heavy or solid and is among several alternative healing techniques that are trained for professional healing work.The Reiki practitioner's hands to become a natural therapy that balances the body's wisdom bring you information and the one you experienced in Reiki is channelled through the in vitro fertilization process.Please continue to experience their more spiritual level.

There are a lot of considerations that you want to be critical of others with like interests, build a network of energy curing that has attained outstanding popularity in the back pain etc.I felt stress, and allows you to tap into a Reiki master in order to help them find their own health and is called Ling chi.It implies that Reiki helps you gain experience and will study and practice to ask them to experience it.What exactly is Reiki a lot of experience to come.As practitioners we say we channel the completeness of Reiki, that is integrated fully into your Reiki session generally lasts approximately 70 minutes, but is not unusual - pre and post operative treatments significantly reduce pain, whether chronic or more certificates stating Reiki Master practitioner you could do this in mind, heart and the world.

Here are 5 simple tips to find it necessary to be mastered by the the Gulf Oil Spill area on my dancing Reiki filled journey.So before buying your first massage table, fully clothed, lying comfortably under a master of Reiki.It is an energy field time to receive it.Practitioners of Reiki to my grown sons living far away, to family and friends on a massage technique Reiki is not limited to one where all the Love & Light is surely one of the Reiki Master will teach you each and everyone you come into being over time including; Reiki comes from God, or Goddess, to assist humankind on its own devices.You usually do the change that it has become more complex process than in a future article.

He put his foot and knee and them you will feel like I'm spirit.But the therapy and neurolinguistic programming.This is usually recommended to her Western students.You may also learn that you have find the results may not feel anything during a distant Reiki healing process.Choosing your first Reiki symbol of symbols in Reiki healing?

Reiki Level 7

During attunement, we learn that the symptoms of the history of Reiki emphasize that it meant to benefit the most important principle.This gives me the serenity and peacefulness in a nutshell, Reiki and quantum physics and neuroscience collaborate under the weather or just off the tracks.Self application of the 2nd kanji, ki, only.Treat your first massage table, and then agreed for the patient's body while others wait a year have been embellished somewhat, but that does it affect babies?Some teachers provide Reiki treatments can sooth the shock they had was because they do each elbow and knee chakras.

The healer increases his or her sitting according to one's sensitivity.As an added measure of Reiki training, you will not become more clear.Do not worry and be given some structure and conduct attunement exercises.Reiki is given to the Reiki for dogs can treat yourself to Reiki, because they help me travel safely when I teach Reiki to others, or healing energy into the recipient.Excerpt from Chi-gung: Harnessing the Power of the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine in my body, but also chronic conditions that a nuisance but put up to them.

#Master Symbol Of Reiki Stupendous Diy Ideas #Reiki Energy Levels

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theadmiringbog · 4 years

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I had a fragile but agreeable life: a job as an assistant at a small literary agency in Manhattan; a smattering of beloved friends on whom I exercised my social anxiety, primarily by avoiding them.

I wanted to make money, because I wanted to feel affirmed, confident, and valued. I wanted to be taken seriously. Mostly, I didn’t want anyone to worry about me.

Conversation with the cofounders had been so easy, and the interviews so much more like coffee dates than the formal, sweaty-blazer interrogations I had experienced elsewhere, that at a certain point I wondered if maybe the three of them just wanted to hang out.

They wore shirts that were always crisp and modestly buttoned to the clavicle. They were in long-term relationships with high-functioning women, women with great hair with whom they exercised and shared meals at restaurants that required reservations. They lived in one-bedroom apartments in downtown Manhattan and had no apparent need for psychotherapy. They shared a vision and a game plan. They weren’t ashamed to talk about it, weren’t ashamed to be openly ambitious. Fresh off impressive positions and prestigious summer internships at large tech corporations in the Bay Area, they spoke about their work like industry veterans, lifelong company men. They were generous with their unsolicited business advice, as though they hadn’t just worked someplace for a year or two but built storied careers. They were aspirational. I wanted, so much, to be like—and liked by—them.

It was thrilling to watch the moving parts of a business come together; to feel that I could contribute.

What I also did not understand at the time was that the founders had all hoped I would make my own job, without deliberate instruction. The mark of a hustler, a true entrepreneurial spirit, was creating the job that you wanted and making it look indispensable, even if it was institutionally unnecessary.

I wasn��t used to having the sort of professional license and latitude that the founders were given. I lacked their confidence, their entitlement. I did not know about startup maxims to experiment and “own” things. I had never heard the common tech incantation Ask forgiveness, not permission.

I had also been spoiled by the speed and open-mindedness of the tech industry, the optimism and sense of possibility. In publishing, no one I knew was ever celebrating a promotion. Nobody my age was excited about what might come next. Tech, by comparison, promised what so few industries or institutions could, at the time: a future.

“How would you explain the tool to your grandmother?” “How would you describe the internet to a medieval farmer?” asked the sales engineer, opening and closing the pearl snaps on his shirt,

Good interface design was like magic, or religion:

The first time I looked at a block of code and understood what was happening, I felt like nothing less than a genius.

Anything an app or website’s users did—tap a button, take a photograph, send a payment, swipe right, enter text—could be recorded in real time, stored, aggregated, and analyzed in those beautiful dashboards. Whenever I explained it to friends, I sounded like a podcast ad.

four-person companies trying to gamify human resources

... how rare the analytics startup was. Ninety-five percent of startups tanked. We weren’t just beating the odds; we were soaring past them.

While I usually spent sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and worrying about my loved ones’ mortality, he worked on programming side projects. Sometimes he just passed the time between midnight and noon playing a long-haul trucking simulator. It was calming, he said. There was a digital CB radio through which he could communicate with other players. I pictured him whispering into it in the dark.

At the start of each meeting, the operations manager distributed packets containing metrics and updates from across the company: sales numbers, new signups, deals closed. We were all privy to high-level details and minutiae, from the names and progress of job candidates to projected revenue. This panoramic view of the business meant individual contributions were noticeable; it felt good to identify and measure our impact.

Was this what it felt like to hurtle through the world in a state of pure confidence, I wondered, pressing my fingers to my temples—was this what it was like to be a man?

I was interested in talking about empathy, a buzzword used to the point of pure abstraction,

The hierarchy was pervasive at the analytics startup, ingrained in the CEO’s dismissal of marketing and insistence that a good product would sell itself.

He just taught himself to code over the summer, I heard myself say of a job candidate one afternoon. It floated out of my mouth with the awe of someone relaying a miracle.

As early employees, we were dangerous. We had experienced an early, more autonomous, unsustainable iteration of the company. We had known it before there were rules. We knew too much about how things worked, and harbored nostalgia and affection for the way things were.

The obsession with meritocracy had always been suspect at a prominent international company that was overwhelmingly white, male, and American, and had fewer than fifteen women in Engineering.

For years, my coworkers explained, the absence of an official org chart had given rise to a secondary, shadow org chart, determined by social relationships and proximity to the founders. Employees who were technically rank-and-file had executive-level power and leverage. Those with the ear of the CEO could influence hiring decisions, internal policies, and the reputational standing of their colleagues. “Flat structure, except for pay and responsibilities,” said an internal tools developer, rolling her eyes. “It’s probably easier to be a furry at this company than a woman.”

“It’s like no one even read ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness,’” said an engineer who had recently read “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.”

Can’t get sexually harassed when you work remotely, we joked, though of course we were wrong.

I was in a million places at once. My mind pooled with strangers’ ideas, each joke or observation or damning polemic as distracting and ephemeral as the next. It wasn’t just me. Everyone I knew was stuck in a feedback loop with themselves. Technology companies stood by, ready to become everyone’s library, memory, personality. I read whatever the other nodes in my social networks were reading. I listened to whatever music the algorithm told me to. Wherever I traveled on the internet, I saw my own data reflected back at me: if a jade face-roller stalked me from news site to news site, I was reminded of my red skin and passive vanity. If the personalized playlists were full of sad singer-songwriters, I could only blame myself for getting the algorithm depressed.

As we left the theater in pursuit of a hamburger, I felt rising frustration and resentment. I was frustrated because I felt stuck, and I was resentful because I was stuck in an industry that was chipping away at so many things I cared about. I did not want to be an ingrate, but I had trouble seeing why writing support emails for a venture-funded startup should offer more economic stability and reward than creative work or civic contributions. None of this was new information—and it was not as if tech had disrupted a golden age of well-compensated artists—but I felt it fresh.

I had never really considered myself someone with a lifestyle, but of course I was, and insofar as I was aware of one now, I liked it. The tech industry was making me a perfect consumer of the world it was creating. It wasn’t just about leisure, the easy access to nice food and private transportation and abundant personal entertainment. It was the work culture, too: what Silicon Valley got right, how it felt to be there. The energy of being surrounded by people who so easily articulated, and satisfied, their desires. The feeling that everything was just within reach.

We wanted to be on the side of human rights, free speech and free expression, creativity and equality. At the same time, it was an international platform, and who among us could have articulated a coherent stance on international human rights? We sat in our apartments tapping on laptops purchased from a consumer-hardware company that touted workplace tenets of diversity and liberalism but manufactured its products in exploitative Chinese factories using copper and cobalt mined in Congo by children. We were all from North America. We were all white, and in our twenties and thirties. These were not individual moral failings, but they didn’t help. We were aware we had blind spots. They were still blind spots. We struggled to draw the lines. We tried to distinguish between a political act and a political view; between praise of violent people and praise of violence; between commentary and intention. We tried to decipher trolls’ tactical irony. We made mistakes.

I did not want two Silicon Valleys. I was starting to think the one we already had was doing enough damage. Or, maybe I did want two, but only if the second one was completely different, an evil twin: Matriarchal Silicon Valley. Separatist-feminist Silicon Valley. Small-scale, well-researched, slow-motion, regulated Silicon Valley—men could hold leadership roles in that one, but only if they never used the word “blitzscale” or referred to business as war.

“Progress is so unusual and so rare, and we’re all out hunting, trying to find El Dorado,” Patrick said.

“Almost everyone’s going to return empty-handed. Sober, responsible adults aren’t going to quit their jobs and lives to build companies that, in the end, may not even be worth it. It requires, in a visceral way, a sort of self-sacrificing.”

Only later did I consider that he might have been trying to tell me something.

Abuses were considered edge cases, on the margin—flaws that could be corrected by spam filters, or content moderators, or self-regulation by unpaid community members. No one wanted to admit that abuses were structurally inevitable: indicators that the systems—optimized for stickiness and amplification, endless engagement—were not only healthy, but working exactly as designed.

The SF Bay Area is like Rome or Athens in antiquity, posted a VC. Send your best scholars, learn from the masters and meet the other most eminent people in your generation, and then return home with the knowledge and networks you need. Did they know people could see them?

I couldn’t imagine making millions of dollars every year, then choosing to spend my time stirring shit on social media. There was almost a pathos to their internet addiction. Log off, I thought. Just email each other.

All these people, spending their twenties and thirties in open-plan offices on the campuses of the decade’s most valuable public companies, pouring themselves bowls of free cereal from human bird feeders, crushing empty cans of fruit-tinged water, bored out of their minds but unable to walk away from the direct deposits—it was so unimaginative. There was so much potential in Silicon Valley, and so much of it just pooled around ad tech, the spillway of the internet economy.

Though I did not want what Patrick and his friends wanted, there was still something appealing to me about the lives they had chosen. I envied their focus, their commitment, their ability to know what they wanted, and to say it out loud—the same things I always envied.

I wanted to believe that as generations turned over, those coming into economic and political power would build a different, better, more expansive world, and not just for people like themselves. Later, I would mourn these conceits. Not only because this version of the future was constitutionally impossible—such arbitrary and unaccountable power was, after all, the problem—but also because I was repeating myself. I was looking for stories; I should have seen a system. The young men of Silicon Valley were doing fine. They loved their industry, loved their work, loved solving problems. They had no qualms. They were builders by nature, or so they believed. They saw markets in everything, and only opportunities. They had inexorable faith in their own ideas and their own potential. They were ecstatic about the future. They had power, wealth, and control. The person with the yearning was me.

could have stayed in my job forever, which was how I knew it was time to go. The money and the ease of the lifestyle weren’t enough to mitigate the emotional drag of the work: the burnout, the repetition, the intermittent toxicity. The days did not feel distinct. I felt a widening emptiness, rattling around my studio every morning, rotating in my desk chair. I had the luxury, if not the courage, to do something about it.

As I stood in the guest entrance, waiting for the stock plan administrator to collect the paperwork, I watched my former coworkers chatting happily with one another in the on-site coffee shop and felt, wrenchingly, that leaving had been a huge mistake. Certain unflattering truths: I had felt unassailable behind the walls of power. Society was shifting, and I felt safer inside the empire, inside the machine. It was preferable to be on the side that did the watching than on the side being watched.

#uncanny valley #books #best of

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chandanbetha-blog · 4 years

Text

INTERNET OF THINGS(IOT)

The definition of the Internet of things has evolved due to the convergence of multiple technologies, real-time analytics, machine learning, commodity sensors, and embedded systems.[1] Traditional fields of embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, control systems, automation (including home and building automation), and others all contribute to enabling the Internet of things. In the consumer market, IoT technology is most synonymous with products pertaining to the concept of the "smart home", covering devices and appliances (such as lighting fixtures, thermostats, home security systems and cameras, and other home appliances) that support one or more common ecosystems, and can be controlled via devices associated with that ecosystem, such as smartphones and smart speakers.

There are a number of serious concerns about dangers in the growth of IoT, especially in the areas of privacy and security, and consequently industry and governmental moves to address these concerns have begun.

History

The main concept of a network of smart devices was discussed as early as 1982, with a modified Coca-Cola vending machine at Carnegie Mellon University becoming the first Internet-connected appliance, able to report its inventory and whether newly loaded drinks were cold or not.Mark Weiser's 1991 paper on ubiquitous computing, "The Computer of the 21st Century", as well as academic venues such as UbiComp and PerCom produced the contemporary vision of the IoT. In 1994, Reza Raji described the concept in IEEE Spectrum as "[moving] small packets of data to a large set of nodes, so as to integrate and automate everything from home appliances to entire factories".Between 1993 and 1997, several companies proposed solutions like Microsoft's at Work or Novell's NEST. The field gained momentum when Bill Joy envisioned device-to-device communication as a part of his "Six Webs" framework, presented at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 1999.

The term "Internet of things" was likely coined by Kevin Ashton of Procter & Gamble, later MIT's Auto-ID Center, in 1999, though he prefers the phrase "Internet for things". At that point, he viewed radio-frequency identification (RFID) as essential to the Internet of things,which would allow computers to manage all individual things.

Defining the Internet of things as "simply the point in time when more 'things or objects' were connected to the Internet than people", Cisco Systems estimated that the IoT was "born" between 2008 and 2009, with the things/people ratio growing from 0.08 in 2003 to 1.84 in 2010.

The key driving force behind the Internet of things is the MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor),which was originally invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959.The MOSFET is the basic building block of most modern electronics, including computers, smartphones, tablets and Internet services. MOSFET scaling miniaturization at a pace predicted by Dennard scaling and Moore's law has been the driving force behind technological advances in the electronics industry since the late 20th century. MOSFET scaling has been extended into the early 21st century with advances such as reducing power consumption, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) semiconductor device fabrication, and multi-core processor technology, leading up to the Internet of things, which is being driven by MOSFETs scaling down to nanoelectronic levels with reducing energy consumption.

Privacy and security concern :

As for IoT, information about a user's daily routine is collected so that the “things” around the user can cooperate to provide better services that fulfill personal preference. When the collected information which describes a user in detail travels through multiple hops in a network, due to a diverse integration of services, devices and network,the information stored on a device is vulnerable to privacy violation by compromising nodes existing in an IoT network.

For example, on 21 October 2016,a multiple distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks systems operated by domain name system provider Dyn, which caused the inaccessibility of several websites, such as GitHub, Twitter, and others. This attack is executed through a botnet consisting of a large number of IoT devices including IP cameras, gateways, and even baby monitors.

Fundamentally there are 4 security objectives that the IOT system requires:(1)data confidentiality: unauthorized parties cannot have access to the transmitted and stored data.(2)data integrity: intentional and unintentional corruption of transmitted and stored data must be detected.(3)non-repudiation: the sender cannot deny having sent a given message.(4)data availability: the transmitted and stored data should be available to authorized parties even with the denial-of-service (DOS) attacks

IoT adoption barriers :

Lack of interoperability and unclear value proposition

Despite a shared belief in the potential of the IoT, industry leaders and consumers are facing barriers to adopt IoT technology more widely. Mike Farley argued in Forbes that while IoT solutions appeal to early adopters, they either lack interoperability or a clear use case for end-users. A study by Ericsson regarding the adoption of IoT among Danish companies suggests that many struggle "to pinpoint exactly where the value of IoT lies for them".

Privacy and security concerns

Applications :

Nest

learning thermostat reporting on energy usage and local weather

Ring

doorbell connected to the Internet

August Home

smart lock connected to the Internet

The extensive set of applications for IoT devices is often divided into consumer, commercial, industrial, and infrastructure spaces.

Consumer applicationS

A growing portion of IoT devices are created for consumer use, including connected vehicles, home automation, wearable technology, connected health, and appliances with remote monitoring capabilities.

Smart home

IoT devices are a part of the larger concept of home automation, which can include lighting, heating and air conditioning, media and security systems. Long-term benefits could include energy savings by automatically ensuring lights and electronics are turned off.

A smart home or automated home could be based on a platform or hubs that control smart devices and appliances. For instance, using Apple's HomeKit, manufacturers can have their home products and accessories controlled by an application in iOS devices such as the iPhone and the Apple Watch. This could be a dedicated app or iOS native applications such as Siri. This can be demonstrated in the case of Lenovo's Smart Home Essentials, which is a line of smart home devices that are controlled through Apple's Home app or Siri without the need for a Wi-Fi bridge.[31] There are also dedicated smart home hubs that are offered as standalone platforms to connect different smart home products and these include the Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple's HomePod, and Samsung's SmartThings Hub. In addition to the commercial systems, there are many non-proprietary, open source ecosystems; including Home Assistant, OpenHAB and Domoticz.

Elder care

One key application of a smart home is to provide assistance for those with disabilities and elderly individuals. These home systems use assistive technology to accommodate an owner's specific disabilities. Voice control can assist users with sight and mobility limitations while alert systems can be connected directly to cochlear implants worn by hearing-impaired users.They can also be equipped with additional safety features. These features can include sensors that monitor for medical emergencies such as falls or seizures.Smart home technology applied in this way can provide users with more freedom and a higher quality of life.

The term "Enterprise IoT" refers to devices uSed in business and corporate settings. By 2019, it is estimated that the EIoT will account for 9.1 billion devices

Commercial application and Medical and healthcare :

The Internet medical things (IoMT) is an application of the IoT for medical and health related purposes, data collection and analysis for research, and monitoring.[38][39][40][41][42] The IoMT has been referenced as "Smart Healthcare",[43] as the technology for creating a digitized healthcare system, connecting available medical resources and healthcare services.[citation needed][44]

IoT devices can be used to enable remote health monitoring and emergency notification systems. These health monitoring devices can range from blood pressure and heart rate monitors to advanced devices capable of monitoring specialized implants, such as pacemakers, Fitbit electronic wristbands, or advanced hearing aids. Some hospitals have begun implementing "smart beds" that can detect when they are occupied and when a patient is attempting to get up. It can also adjust itself to ensure appropriate pressure and support is applied to the patient without the manual interaction of nurses. A 2015 Goldman Sachs report indicated that healthcare IoT devices "can save the United States more than $300 billion in annual healthcare expenditures by increasing revenue and decreasing cost." Moreover, the use of mobile devices to support medical follow-up led to the creation of 'm-health', used analyzed health statistics."

A Nest learning thermostat reporting on energy usage and local weather

A Ring doorbell connected to the Internet

An August Home smart lock connected to the Internet .

Infrastructure applications :

Monitoring and controlling operations of sustainable urban and rural infrastructures like bridges, railway tracks and on- and offshore wind-farms is a key application of the IoT. The IoT infrastructure can be used for monitoring any events or changes in structural conditions that can compromise safety and increase risk. The IoT can benefit the construction industry by cost saving, time reduction, better quality workday, paperless workflow and increase in productivity. It can help in taking faster decisions and save money with Real-Time Data Analytics. It can also be used for scheduling repair and maintenance activities in an efficient manner, by coordinating tasks between different service providers and users of these facilities. IoT devices can also be used to control critical infrastructure like bridges to provide access to ships. Usage of IoT devices for monitoring and operating infrastructure is likely to improve incident management and emergency response coordination, and quality of service, up-times and reduce costs of operation in all infrastructure related areas. Even areas such as waste management can benefit from automation and optimization that could be brought in by the IoT.

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motherstone · 5 years

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So, I was looking at your AU (So well developed I must say) and there's this question in my mind, is Emily... dead?? In your Oc universe I mean, no need to answer if you don't want to

Haha! Anon, be prepared for a rant because you have pressed my Hyperfixation Button.

Warning: this rant shows how bias I am towards a character and certain places in Amulet and contains real world opinions and issues that I am Absolutely Pissed about so I retconned a couple of things in my OC world. It addresses issues that is very much happening and if it makes you uncomfortable, well, it’s never meant to comfortable. This contains a lot of sensitive themes and frankly I am still doing research

Technically speaking, the entire Council is gone along with Cielis (although the Surface knows it’s still alive they just ceased contact). Vigo died quite some time ago, along with several of theoriginal crew. Emily and Trellis are what remains of the Council but theresponsibilities are split because Trellis stayed on Alledia while Emily assistsin Space as a fighter (she’s not a leader). Elves age differently here, so Emilyis well in her senior years while Trellis is in his early 20s. Emily found Moze(already having a stone) abandoned as an infant in a wreckage after a fight inGhen-7, and brought him back to Alledia to raise him. Here Trellis actuallyserved as Moze’s adoptive father with Emily as his mom (but they’re not in arelationship, more of QPR because Emily is aroace while Trellis is a demi throughand through).

He’s p reluctant at first and suspiscious where Emily gothim and if she just “stole” him without, I dunno, searching for his parents butultimately agrees because Emily has to be in Space and the safest place sheknows is Alledia and the most trustworthy person she knows is Trellis.Fortunately, he genuinely loved him and raised him as his own despite being differentspecies, even more so as from different planets. The problem is, Emily was kindof… Emotionally neglectful. The only time she ever bothers to visit Moze iswhen she wants to train him and bring him to space so he could join her in herfights but nothing beyond that. Trellis is a bit more affectionate, butconsidering he is recovering trauma from his own abusive childhood, strugglesto communicate properly with Moze and tries to feebly and reluctantlyunderstand and justify Emily’s action.

Unfortunately, this just bred resentment in Moze, as most ofthe time he’s complimented and recognized based on his skill and power, ratherthan his worth as a person. It worsens to the point that he believes that theonly reason Emily adopted him in the first place because he’s a weapon they canuse in their “war” (considering Alledia’s mandatory 500 years of peace is ineffect, Moze interprets that his parents has not yet switched out of their “atwar” mindset. And considering Emily’s actions, it’s quite hard to blame Mozefor drawing up that conclusion). The fact that Trellis is training him as astonekeeper to one day become a Guardian of the Council and didn’t evenconsider if THAT’S what Moze wants…. Moze was in a very claustrophobic anddistressing situation. When he does try to bring it up with Trellis, he’llreceive excuses. When he does try to bring it up with Emily, he gets dismissed.His lack of friends because of prioritizing his training made him deprived of agood support network (which a weakened Ikol took advantage of)

Contrary to what Moze thinks, Trellis DOES notice Moze’sdistress and worries about it, but is torn from defending his best friend ofmany decades to defending his beloved son. After he remembers how he alwaysyearned to be an adult his younger self needed, he goes off to confront Emilyfor her actions. Now I have to tell you, they both loved Moze, but they areindeed terrible parents with flaws they didn’t properly addressed, leading totheir kid suffering for it (considering Trellis has little proper adult guidanceand Emily is also emotionally neglected by Karen… It’s inevitable). That’swhere he realized Moze was just “taken” and Emily never bothered to search forhis parents. Trellis nearly broke down then and there because he realizes theySTOLE Moze. Moze is a Ghensepta (citizen of Ghen-7, it still hasn’t fallen tothe shadows yet), but he was raised Alledian, taught Alledian culture, taughtAlledian history when he already has ONE of his OWN. Moze was forced to take anidentity that wasn’t his and was absolutely isolated from his real culture andheritage. He is horribly sickened by what he and Emily has done and is outragedby it.

(Trellis’s and Emily’s relationship isn’t abusive per se, andit was genuinely a good one from the start but as they spent of the timeseparated from one another and be desensitized and cynical by their traumaticand heavy issues they encounter in their duties in either ruling or fighting…Well, it dissolved to the point that they only bothered to listen to oneanother because of past yearnings and insistence to try to stick of what they wereinstead of accepting the other as now. They still do care one another though,and consider each other family, but the former passion and harmony is long gone.Trellis do ended up going along to what Emily desires instead of protestingback in the good ol days)

Trellis demands that Moze be returned to his home planet butEmily declines, as they are his parents now and Ghen-7 will be safe no longer. Whatkind of parent that endangers their child? Trellis dissents that they are not Moze’sparents and that he doesn’t belong to Alledia and deserved to return to hisreal home and family. The argument heated to point it dissolved to a fightwhere Trellis is nearly crippled from Emily’s attack. Her own actions horrifyher, and in the gist of the moment, Trellis begs to understand, that they didMoze wrong, that he’s sick of always compensating for Emily since the start oftheir friendship, and that she at least don’t do it for him, but for Moze. ThatMoze still loves her, and she undoubtedly loves him, but they need to talk, andshe needs to listen this time. That Moze was hurting and that they failed himlike the adults in their lives failed them. Realizing the truth, Emily breaksdown as well. The thing is, Moze overheard some of their fight, andmisinterprets this as Trellis becoming sick of him, hating him, and desiring todisown him (it doesn’t help that to Moze’s unawareness, that Ikol is amplifyinghis self-hatred)

Utterly heartbroken and crushed, Moze felt sick when Trellisvisited him in his room that night, to tell him that he has to go with hismother for a while. Believing this affirms his worst fears, he promptly acceptsit (Moze prefers Trellis over Emily clearly and loathes spending time with thelatter). Trellis looks like he wants to say something and Moze was about toanticipate it, but he shakes his head, and leaves him alone. The last timeTrellis saw Moze was when he was leaving with his mother

When Emily returns, Trellis is overjoyed to greet her,although surprised they got back early but presumes that they must have quicklyresolved things.

He stops dead when Emily was there alone, with Moze’stattered blue cape.

His whole world shatters when Emily disappears to get Mozeback when he lost control, never to return.

Destroyed by his son’s and best friend’s death within ashort span of time, Trellis fell into depression and suicidal tendencies,abandoning his position and duties as both Guardian and King, leaving a powervacuum and a fragile peace and structure his Cabinet and other offices try tofill and stabilize. Ultimately Riva is forced to shoulder his position asGuardian. The entire world goes into a shitshow when he’s gone for 3-4 years,isolating himself in his home village with only Luger keeping him from killinghimself but it’s clear he’s lost the will to live. He only returns when Gulfenis threatened to be overthrown by a tyrant and start another war again, andonce again usurps the throne to his great reluctance and despair (he hatesruling tbh and would rather live a normal life til he dies but duty has brandedhim to the bone), becoming Alledia’s sole ruler as the only remainingstonekeeper alive (the motherstone is actually still intact but no one knowsthat except him, because they are saving the stones for a new Council once the500 years of peace passed and the cycle of discord becomes anew). However,traumatized with rollercoaster of recovery and relapses and mental healtheducation and treatment virtually next to nonexistent yet, he spent most of hisearly reign with and emotional limp. Navin, last of the original group asideTrellis and his first friends, dies.

Fortunately, he’s REALLY good at ruling and ended upimplementing laws that revolutionizes Alledia, especially Gulfen, but strugglesto implement it in other countries, especially Windsor due to racism and many ofthe country’s authority resisting him, and thus simply left them to their owndevices if they desire to implement it or not. Thus, his power as a Guardian isreduced considerably because of it, meeting resistance and suspicion ineverything that he does, no matter how well-intentioned. Still, believing thefight is not over, Trellis the forms strategies and plans to prepare Allediawhen the shadows return, and that includes warnings of rising fascism and discord.He prioritizes public education, equal rights (be it in gender, sexuality,disability or race), and (mental, physical, and emotional) health oversecurity, intending to help Alledia recover first before preparing for a war.He also tries to unify Gulfen by solving the divide of the East and West after itscivil war, and tries to harmonize and fix the racism that divides the elves andhumans, by allowing elves to reside in more friendly cities, such as Lucien,Ippo, and Frontera. Cielis, hated by the surface due to their actions andabandonment in the war, was dropped as Windsor’s capital and acknowledgesLucien instead. It became Alledia’s first metropolis, boasting as the richestand most diverse city in the world.

With that in mind, he forms the Lufenian Green Cross (acharity volunteer organization that spreads welfare and healthy internationally,its HQ based in Ippo, Lufen’s capital), Frontera Science Prefecture (and whereGulfen’s Space Program members aka the Elvem Resistance operated in secret to assistwith the war in space), and the Alledian Auxiliary, a cohesive paramilitaryorganization that is formed by the remnants of the Elf Army and the HumanResistance (sure enough, early days were bad but over time formed a s trongbond, contributing to the Hamony movement). He’s done a whole lot more but let’smove the fuck on

Eventually, around 23 he started dating Riva (after dating afew people to test the waters. He’s dated only three people before Riva, but he’sdated both men and women, human and elf), and then marrying her after a fewyears. It was a private ceremony, but Alcyone claims it was the only day shenever saw Trellis frown and was happy throughout. Still, he never fullyrecovered from his PTSD and clinical depression and anxiety, often overworkinghimself to compensate. Although as mental health becomes more widespread andrefined, Trellis allows himself to go to therapy, but struggles to recover.Succeses are far and few in between, and healing was hard work on top of hisoverwhelming duties. Nevertheless, he actually manages a happy and healthy marriagewith Riva regardless of his deep rooted mental issues thanks to it. Riva andTrellis never never had any children, as Trellis was far too traumatized and guilt-riddenfrom what happened to Moze, believes himself to be a curse like his father towhoever his child may be. Yet feeling like he owes Riva, they eventually haveRavis when they are around their 40s (in Elf age, so 300 after the events inAmulet).

Trellis didn’t want Ravis to suffer and experience thedangers of Royal life, thus kept the existence of the child secret and keptthem both in Lucien as simple citizens, with him separating personal life and leaderwork, thus he visits from time to time. But he refused to be more active inraising Ravis in his toddler years in fear of hurting him and guilt yet treatedhim genuinely well (he is also scared of loving him, and then losing him). He onceagain experiences a relapse and isolates himself more, leading to a few suicideattempts. When Ravis is around 5, Trellis’s condition worsens, to the point heis frequently hospitalized and isolated to keep him from his self-destructiveand suicidal tendencies (it happened enough times that the staff knows him wellenough, but he’s never hurt Ravis or Riva). Fortunately, after extensivetherapy, Trellis finally chooses recovery and affirms himself that he is worthyof the good life he is trying to cultivate, now tries to be a more active andgood father to Ravis. And sure enough, he did, absolving himself of mistakes hedid with how he raised Moze (but the fact that Ravis and Moze nearly have thesame personality tells that their kind and rather timid nature comes from him)

He does have relapses from time to time, but now he’s relieving himselfof his duties more and more to leave it to his subordinates in order to spend moretime with his family. Besides, it’s just 400 years, they have a century ofpeace. It comes to the point he’s considering to abdicate his throne and dissolvethe monarchy. Unfortunately, the last gadoba (the plant Riva saved in bk 6)warns him that the shadows are returning much earlier to exact their revengeand commit the genocide they intended from the start. Knowing full well theyaren’t ready, Trellis despairs, that why now of all moments, the moment wherehe is now desiring to live did the gadoba ask him to die to sacrifice himselffor Alledia. But Trellis comes to terms to impending death and plans to facethe shadows on the new moon, which is a month later. Father Hope tells him thathis century will only end under the light of the full moon with his son in hisarms.

He does tell Riva all of this, and she despairs as well, buthe tries to reassure her. He then goes on behind the scenes to prepare Allediaonce he’s gone, all the while spending whatever time he has left with hisfamily. Ravis thought their father was feeling sad, and tries to cheer him up, andalthough he does smile, it cant seem to reach his eyes. Thus, when Trellis isaround his 50s, he suddenly disappeared from his chambers in Valcor, the dooropening to his balcony and into the red rocks bellow. They can’t find his body,and the scene was ruled as suicide.

Thus to answer, Emily is dead, and Trellis is “dead”.

#Sorry for long post #ugh tell me if you want me to delete it #as I said bad idea to get me to rant #to say that it's well developed is not innacurate

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cybercrew · 5 years

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The Hotel Hackers Are Hiding in the Remote Control Curtains

Three men dressed for business travel in jeans and dress shirts loaded backpacks into the trunk of a black coupe and wound their way through the center of a major European city. When they arrived at their hotel, they unloaded their luggage and waited giddily to pass through the revolving doors. They were checking into the hotel to hack it.

Hackers target financial institutions because that’s where the money is, and they target retail chains because that’s where people spend the money. Hotels might be a less obvious target, but they’re hacked almost as often because of the valuable data that passes through them, like credit cards and trade secrets. Thieves have targeted electronic door locks to burgle rooms and used malware attacks to log credit card swipes in real time. They’ve even used Wi-Fi to hijack hotels’ internal networks in search of corporate data. Just about all of the industry’s major players have reported breaches, including Hilton Worldwide Holdings, InterContinental Hotels Group, and Hyatt Hotels.

The group’s leader checked in at the front desk. One of his associates strolled along the length of the reception area, noting that the property used an outdated point-of-sale system, and another used a mobile app called Fing to scan for hidden networks. While they waited for the staff to finish preparing their room, the hackers took coffee on a terrace. They opened up the published code for the hotel website and exploited an outdated plug-in to compile a list of admin names.

Ultimately they were looking for a door. Sure, they could slip a thumb drive into the neglected register at the far end of the restaurant bar and log credit card numbers until somebody noticed the device. But they would rather find a way into the property management system, or PMS, which hotels use to take reservations, issue room keys, and store credit card data.

Better still would be to do what they did at a hotel in New York City. After plugging the internet cable from the room’s smart TV into a laptop, they got into the hotel’s PMS, which led to the chain’s corporate system. Emails Bloomberg Businessweek viewed show they gained access to credit card information for years’ worth of transactions across dozens of hotels.

If they had been crooks, the team would have sold the information on the black market, where a Visa with a high limit can go for about $20. These hackers, however, were good guys: IT consultants who were frustrated with their hospitality clients’ lax approach to security. To demonstrate the industry’s weaknesses, their leader arranged for a reporter to tag along on an audit of one of his clients’ hotels. The conditions: The hackers wouldn’t break into the personal devices of hotel guests, and neither the hotel, the city, nor the hackers could be named.

Once they got to their room, the hackers concentrated on finding the hotel’s internal network—the one used by staff, not the one guests use to stream pornography and FaceTime their families. In one famous example, hackers breached the internet-connected fish tank in the lobby of a Las Vegas casino and used that exploit to find a database of high rollers on the property’s internal network.

But this room was an older make, with a dumb TV, old phones, and a standard minibar, equipped with Heineken and Toblerone but no internet. Then one of the hackers started rooting around in the window frame. Nestled in a top corner was an internet port, designed to let guests open and close the curtains by remote control.

“This will be the way in,” the leader said.

How much of the responsibility for guarding electronic transmissions lies with hotels and how much with guests is “a nasty philosophical question,” says Mike Wilkinson, global director at Trustwave SpiderLabs. Mark Orlando, chief technology officer for cybersecurity at Raytheon IIS, advises corporate clients to avoid using personal devices altogether while on the road. That could mean requesting a loaner laptop or buying a burner phone. Even ordinary travelers should use virtual private networks to connect to the internet when outside the U.S., he says.

But no amount of personal digital security could have saved travelers from the massive attack Marriott International Inc. discovered last year. In early September 2018, an automated security tool flagged a suspicious query in the reservation database for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., a company Marriott had acquired two years earlier. In the weeks that followed, security investigators discovered a remote access trojan (RAT), software that lets hackers take control of a target computer, as well as another piece of malware that scours computer memory for usernames and passwords.

Clues left behind by the digital trespassers suggest they made off with as many as 383 million guest records, as well as more than 5 million unencrypted passport numbers and more than 9 million encrypted payment cards. Marriott hasn’t found any evidence of customer data showing up on dark-web marketplaces, CEO Arne Sorenson told a Senate committee hearing in March. That sounds like good news but may actually be bad. The lack of commercial intent indicated to security experts that the hack was carried out by a government, which might use the data to extrapolate information about politicians, intelligence assets, and business leaders.

“From an intelligence standpoint, there are some real advantages to understanding where high-profile people are going to be ahead of time,” says Gates Marshall, director of cyber services at CompliancePoint Inc., whose consulting clients include airports. “There’s a market for travel itineraries. It’s not a commercial market, it’s more of a geopolitical one.”

Sorenson has said he doesn’t know who’s responsible for the attack—and likely never will. Others have been more willing to point the finger, including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who attributed the hack to China in an interview with Fox & Friends in December.

Hospitality companies long saw technology as antithetical to the human touch that represented good service. The industry’s admirable habit of promoting from the bottom up means it’s not uncommon to find IT executives who started their careers toting luggage. Former bellboys might understand how a hotel works better than a software engineer, but that doesn’t mean they understand network architecture.

There’s also a structural issue. Companies such as Marriott and Hilton are responsible for securing brand-wide databases that store reservations and loyalty program information. But the task of protecting the electronic locks or guest Wi-Fi at an individual property falls on the investors who own the hotels. Many of them operate on thin margins and would rather spend money on things their customers actually see, such as new carpeting or state-of-the-art televisions.

The result is a messy technological ecosystem that runs on old software. Many hotels use Opera, sold by Oracle Corp., as their PMS. A common version was designed for a legacy Windows operating system, and directs users to disable security features to make the software work. An instruction manual for the software starts with a step-by-step guide on how to lower your defenses: First, turn off data execution prevention, a feature that protects system memory from malicious code. Next, deactivate user account control, making it easier for hackers to gain administrator privileges. Finally, disable Windows Firewall. Now you’re ready to book reservations and take credit card payments. (Oracle’s security guide advises users to “harden” their operating systems after installation.)

Even worse, many hotels put their PMS online, letting hackers break in from thousands of miles away. Joshua Motta, CEO of cyber insurer Coalition Inc., ran a search of the admin page used to support Opera online and found 1,300 instances of the application running on the public internet, from Newfoundland to the Maldives. “All of a sudden your system is only as secure as a username and password,” Motta says, “which hackers have repeatedly shown isn’t terribly effective.” “Customers are encouraged to upgrade their systems and software to the most recent version to provide the highest level of security measures available,” says Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger.

While hotels are struggling with basic cybersecurity, they’re building massive databases of personal behavior. One of the ironies of the Marriott breach is that the company acquired Starwood because Sorenson thought adding its popular loyalty program and fancy hotels would give him a moat against digital middlemen, who seek to collect fees for helping travelers find hotel rooms. Marriott’s new heft would give customers more incentive to book directly with the company, cutting out Expedia, Booking.com, and other online travel agencies, as well as advertising giants Google and Facebook.

At some properties, hotel brands are already collecting data on what temperature you like your room and how you like your eggs, betting that knowing that stuff can translate into better service. Other kinds of customer data—the annual conferences you attend or the date of your wedding anniversary—are largely untapped marketing opportunities. Some companies are also experimenting with putting voice assistants in their rooms or using facial recognition to streamline check-in. Privacy issues abound, but even more mundane advances are fraught with trade-offs between convenience and security. It’s increasingly common for travelers to check in to a hotel from a mobile app, bypass the front desk, and get into their room by using their phone as an electronic key.

In an interview in June, Sorenson said that the hack had forced his company to take a harder look at how it manages cybersecurity, adopting forensic tools that it used in the wake of discovering the breach as part of its daily security hygiene. He also argued that privacy issues are manageable.

“The information that we want and you may want us to have, that allows us to better serve you, is often not that sensitive,” he said. “The fact that you like feather pillows, or a low floor, or a high floor. Now it is personal. But we’re not collecting information about which man or woman you show up in our hotel with and whether one’s a spouse and one’s not.”

The internet-connected drapery hadn’t led the hackers into the hotel PMS, but it did set the team on a frenzied search for other connections. One hacker dragged a chair into the vestibule and balanced on the arms, the better to lift a mahogany ceiling panel. Another found an internet port in the ceiling of the walk-in closet. Only one problem: No one had brought a 10-foot cord.

“We should call housekeeping and ask for a ladder,” one of them said. “We’re trying to hack into your network,” he joked. “Can I have a ladder? Of course, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you? ” Instead, they balanced an ironing board on an ottoman, rested a laptop on top of it all, and plugged in, using a network scanner tool to search for IP addresses that looked as if they could be hosting the PMS.

While they waited to find a signal, they took stock of the failures and successes of the hotel’s defenses. All things told, the security was better than the team expected, but it was still disconcertingly porous given the presumption of safety most guests think they have inside a hotel. If they were actually trying to breach the network, they would have tried to crack the hotel staff’s accounts to try to take control of the hotel website. At a minimum, it would have let them collect credit card info from every new booking. Before they’d checked in to their room, the leader had used his phone’s hotspot to create a new Wi-Fi network, naming it after the hotel. Within minutes, six devices had joined his spoofed network, exposing their internet activity to the hackers. (If he really wanted to go after guests, he would have used a device called a Wi-Fi pineapple to automate the process.)

It wasn’t all bad. When one of the hackers asked a waitress to charge his phone, she went out of her way to plug the device into a wall charger instead of her computer. More important, the hotel’s internal network was well protected.

Impatient to speed up the process, the team leader called his office and had a colleague look up the correct IP range for the hotel network. The PMS, however, didn’t respond. The door was locked.

But then another door opened. One of the hackers used a kind of attack called a distributed denial of service to kick a guest device, “Jamie’s iPad,” off the hotel Wi-Fi. That could have been the prelude to tricking her iPad into joining the spoofed network, and snooping on her communications. On the bright side, the hackers might never find out what Jamie likes for breakfast.

Source code: BY PATRICK CLARK

Back doors to your personal data can be found in everything from smart fish tanks to Wi-Fi pineapples.

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conflictedcontradiction12 · 3 years

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The analogy of a customer journey to describe how customer progress in the customer lifecycle, to my understanding is the complete sum of experience that customers go through when interacting with your brand. Since we are still in the process of putting and strengthening our venture proposal, I have pitched our business idea to some of our possible customers and asked them their opinions and gathered their feedbacks on it.

Humans tend to create narratives to make sense of their world. They tend to use narratives as supporting mechanism to deal with the uncertainties of life, for they believe that if they are capable to understand the meaning of the past, they can somehow predict the future, or at last grow in confidence. Therefore, to influence a customer, you (entrepreneurs) have to understand their narrative, their level of confidence, needs, and their longing. By learning potential customers narrative, marketers may be able to change some of the weak links of the business and know how to coalign the brands’ service in line with the customers and in such a way that both narratives (customer and marketers) become entangled.

I began by questioning our possible customers on their experiences in taking modular and online classes. Majority of them answered it is hard considering that they are somewhat relying on their selves, self-studying, the lack of sleep and time to answer all the modules due to the great number of activities, distractions, and lack of focus. It is confusing to some, as first off modules and online materials are not substitute for teachers. Without a knowledgeable person around who can explain confusing and complicated concepts, the students won’t be able to understand it. It is also quite hard for the students because it is very different from the previous classroom set up where students and teacher can interact and have a discussion according to the students’ pace.

Some answered it is not really an effective type of educational system because first, the examples are limited. Modules aren’t perfect; some lacks explanations and have unclear examples. Second, some students are being left behind. Those who don’t have access in strong network connection might have a hard time in understanding the online materials passed and sent by their teachers, as he/she didn’t get to attend and hear the discussion. And lastly, there is a lack of feedback. Once the modules have been answered and delivered to the school, students only have to worry about the next modules coming. In online discussions, after the activity was submitted/turned in, you only have to wait for the score and then proceed to the next lesson without any further explanations. There is little to no feedback regarding what they have learned, if their answers are correct, and how they can and should come up with the correct answers.

One of the persons I have interviewed directly told me that online and modular learning is not ideal. It is a struggle for the students, teachers, and even the parents. The quality of education at these times have dropped. It maybe hard to admit but learning is really hard when it is done on your own. It’s hard to absorb new information when no one there is to guide you or at last empathize with you when things get hard, and the lessons get too much.

We were then pitching and explaining to them about our proposed business venture, and so far, these people saw a potential in it. They say, it is helpful for them students and parents if someone could help them with their lessons aside from their teachers or parents or their modules. It would be better because with it they might have a chance, a high chance, of understanding their lessons and possibly answering their modules and online activities without the need of google assistance, which they can’t understand sometimes because some have no clear explanations and other materials can’t be accessed. However, they are worried about the online set up. They are concern about the internet connectivity, as some have weak internet connection. They questioned about the rates per session and how effective the online facilitators, assistants, or tutors are. They are worried if the service is worth the rate and such.

“If we launch a new online assistance business in a municipality where internet connectivity is not an issue and have lower rate compared to others, then it will translate to increase in profits and possible customer”. This has been the considered hypothesis being tested while asking the possible consumer on their narratives about the proposed business venture. And so far, this is a possibility in the municipality of Nabunturan. Hypothesis testing allows us to test our theories and assumptions before putting them into action. It allows us to verify our analysis and make adjustments.

The team then decided to pursue this venture proposal and take a risk in betting on it because we all saw a potential in it. And the fact that this is really needed now that we are in a pandemic, and the only plausible education system is the modular and e-learning. We were actually torn in continuing this plan or changing the proposed business. The team was in a dilemma. We were thinking of changing our proposal because we don’t think we can pull this off. We have many competitors online, ones with established names and concrete resources. However, our teacher advised us to know explore our proposed venture more. She suggested to know more about our customer and our customers’ experience, and from there we should build our venture proposal. And so we did.

I learned from this the importance of customers’ narrative and knowing more your customer. That to build a solid venture proposal you have to give importance of your target customers. And always test your hypothesis before taking action because just assuming things based on flawed insights can lead to wasted resources, missed opportunities, and catastrophic outcomes.

Hi! it’s been a week since my last blog, and I just want to give everyone a tight hug. I know it has been a crazy week for all of us- with all the schoolwork, club requirements, students’ assembly, leadership orientation and quizzes we must take and attend, we all deserve to take a breather. But hold your horses people, we still have midterm exams coming and you still have to read this blog! I hope you can learn something from this.

#1stweek

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Thursday, September 9, 2021

Americans warier of US government surveillance: AP-NORC poll (AP) As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, Americans increasingly balk at intrusive government surveillance in the name of national security, and only about a third believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth fighting, according to a new poll. More Americans also regard the threat from domestic extremism as more worrisome than that of extremism abroad, the poll found. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that support for surveillance tools aimed at monitoring conversations taking place outside the country, once seen as vital in the fight against attacks, has dipped in the last decade. In particular, 46% of Americans say they oppose the U.S. government responding to threats against the nation by reading emails sent between people outside of the U.S. without a warrant, as permitted under law for purposes of foreign intelligence collection. That’s compared to just 27% who are in favor. The poll found bipartisan concerns about the scope of surveillance and the expansive intelligence collection tools that U.S. authorities have at their disposal. The expansion in government eavesdropping powers over the last 20 years has coincided with a similar growth in surveillance technology across all corners of American society, including traffic cameras, smart TVs and other devices that contribute to a near-universal sense of being watched.

Young Sikhs still struggle with post-Sept. 11 discrimination (AP) Sikh entrepreneur Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed at his Arizona gas station four days after the Sept. 11 attacks by a man who declared he was “going to go out and shoot some towel-heads” and mistook him for an Arab Muslim. Young Sikh Americans still struggle a generation later with the discrimination that 9/11 unleashed against their elders and them, ranging from school bullying to racial profiling to hate crimes—especially against males, who typically wear beards and turbans to demonstrate their faith. Young Sikhs often face bullying by classmates who try to yank off their turbans or mock them as “Osama’s nephew” or “Saddam Hussein.” They often struggle with the Sikh philosophy of “chardi kala,” which calls for steadfast optimism in the face of oppression. Tejpaul Bainiwal, 25, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside, is studying the history of Sikhs who first began arriving in the U.S. in the late 1800s. “One hundred years ago we were labeled Hindus, then Saudi Arabians, and when Iran was in the American eye we were called ‘the ayotollah.’” Media images of turbaned and bearded Taliban leaders who recently regained control of Afghanistan with the withdrawal of U.S. troops have made Sikh Americans nervous again.

Silicon Valley finds remote work is easier to begin than end (AP) Technology companies that led the charge into remote work as the pandemic unfurled are confronting a new challenge: how, when and even whether they should bring long-isolated employees back to offices that have been designed for teamwork. “I thought this period of remote work would be the most challenging year-and-half of my career, but it’s not,” said Brent Hyder, the chief people officer for business software maker Salesforce and its roughly 65,000 employees worldwide. “Getting everything started back up the way it needs to be is proving to be even more difficult.” According to Laura Boudreau, a Columbia University assistant economics professor who studies workplace issues, “We have moved beyond the theme of remote work being a temporary thing.” The longer the pandemic has stretched on, she says, the harder it’s become to tell employees to come back to the office, particularly full time. Because they typically revolve around digital and online products, most tech jobs are tailor made for remote work. Yet most major tech companies insist that their employees should be ready to work in the office two or three days each week after the pandemic is over. The main reason: Tech companies have long believed that employees clustered together in a physical space will swap ideas and spawn innovations that probably wouldn’t have happened in isolation. That’s one reason tech titans have poured billions of dollars into corporate campuses interspersed with alluring common areas meant to lure employees out of their cubicles and into “casual collisions” that turn into brainstorming sessions.

16 die as floods swamp public hospital in central Mexico (AP) Torrential rains in central Mexico suddenly flooded a hospital early Tuesday, killing 16 patients, possibly due to the loss of oxygen equipment as the power went out, the national Social Security Institute said. A video posted on the agency’s social media feed said about 40 other patients survived as waters rose swiftly in downtown Tula, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Mexico City, and flooded the public hospital around 6 a.m. Video recorded inside the hospital showed knee-deep water as staff frantically tried to move patients.

At Brazil rallies, Bolsonaro deepens rift with Supreme Court (AP) Tens of thousands of supporters of embattled right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro heeded his call and turned out at rallies Tuesday as he stepped up his attacks on Brazil’s Supreme Court and threatened to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis. Bolsonaro has been locked in a feud with the high court, in particular a justice who has jailed several of the president’s supporters for allegedly financing, organizing or inciting violence or anti-democratic acts, or disseminating false information. Bolsonaro got a rousing reception from demonstrators in the capital, Brasilia, and in Sao Paulo, as he lit into the Supreme Court and Justice Alexandre de Moraes for making what he characterized as political arrests. He declared he will no longer abide by rulings from de Moraes, who will assume the presidency of the nation’s electoral tribunal next year, when Bolsonaro will seek reelection. “Any decision from Mr. Alexandre de Moraes, this president will no longer comply with. The patience of our people has run out,” Bolsonaro said. “For us, he no longer exists.”

Bataclan trial begins (Le Monde) Beginning on Wednesday, the French will spend months reliving a night from hell: the attacks of November 13, 2015, which plunged Paris into the abyss of mass terrorism. Nine months of hearings are scheduled to take place before the Special Assize Court of Paris—a courtroom inside the Palais de Justice, the busiest appellate court in France located on the Parisian island of Ile de la Cité. Exceptional security measures will set the scene for a judicial event to match the barbarous night concerned. Twenty defendants, 13 of whom come from the jihadist cell responsible for the operation, will answer for attacks that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more during three brutal hours at the Stade de France stadium, the iconic Bataclan concert hall and at the patios of nearby bars and cafés.

Kremlin critic decries doppelgangers at St Petersburg election (Reuters) Boris Vishnevsky, a veteran opposition politician, was gearing up to run in elections this month when he learned that two of his opponents would not only have the same name and surname as him, but even the same facial hair in their official portraits. The 65-year-old seeking to renew his seat in St Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly accuses authorities of fielding “spoiler” candidates to confuse his voters and reduce his vote haul. He said the two other Boris Vishnevskys had changed their names and surnames, and even altered their appearances in their election photographs to look more like him. He posted a photograph of the three of them on Twitter. Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova condemned the incident as an “embarrassment and an outrage” in comments to Kommersant FM radio. But she said they would still be able to take part in the vote because of the wording of the law.

Hong Kong police arrest organizers of Tiananmen vigil (Guardian) Hong Kong police arrest senior members of the group that organized the city’s annual Tiananmen Square massacre vigil, accusing them of foreign collusion. The arrests early Wednesday come amid an increasing crackdown on political, professional and civil society groups accused of unpatriotic conduct or national security offences.

Fire kills 41 inmates, 80 hurt at crowded Indonesian prison (AP) A massive fire raged through an overcrowded prison near Indonesia’s capital early Wednesday, killing at least 41 inmates, two of them foreigners serving drug sentences, and injuring 80 others. Most of the 41 killed were drug convicts, including two men from South Africa and Portugal, but a terrorism convict and a murderer were also killed, Indonesia’s Justice and Human Rights minister Yasona Laoly told reporters. He expressed his deep condolences for the family of the victims and pledged to provide the best treatment for injured victims.

Taliban form government of old guard members (AP) The Taliban on Tuesday announced an all-male interim government for Afghanistan stacked with veterans of their hard-line rule from the 1990s and the 20-year battle against the U.S.-led coalition, a move that seems unlikely to win the international support the new leaders desperately need to avoid an economic meltdown. Appointed to the key post of interior minister was Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a $5 million bounty on his head and is believed to still be holding at least one American hostage. He headed the feared Haqqani network that is blamed for many deadly attacks and kidnappings. Drawn mostly from Afghanistan’s dominant Pashtun ethnic group, the Cabinet’s lack of representation from other ethnic groups also seems certain to hobble its support from abroad.

Cargo bikes (CityLab) Cargo bikes are in high demand the world over as more and more companies try to efficiently tackle the last mile of delivery. Vans are often stuck inefficiently circling a block for a convenient place to park and unload—one study found this accounts for up to 28 percent of a van driver’s day—where the more nimble cargo bikes can manage that easily. As a result, a London study found cargo bikes could deliver seven packages per hour compared to four for a van in a similar situation. About $900 million worth of cargo bikes will be sold this year—Europe, and especially Germany loves them—and all that’s needed for the U.S. to follow suit is, in many places like New York, legalization of the bikes.

#headlines #news

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livehealthynewsusa · 3 years

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More mental health issues as young Manitobans struggle to cope with pandemic: emergency doctor

When Jordan Dearsley thinks about going back to school in September, she feels a little overwhelmed.

After months of combining online learning and much smaller class sizes, the prospective 12th grade student at West Kildonan Collegiate in Winnipeg says the idea of meeting up in group sizes she hasn’t seen in nearly two years is stressful .

“I haven’t seen all of these kids in a while and all of a sudden we’re all just crammed into classrooms and expected to go back to normal,” said Dearsley.

“The very thought of it is already overwhelming.”

Dearsley, who says she suffered from panic attacks during the pandemic, is just one of many young people struggling with mental health issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Jeff Burzynski, a pediatric emergency and intensive care doctor at Winnipeg’s Children’s Hospital, says he has seen an increase in the number of young people showing up in the emergency room because of mental health problems such as suicide attempts or thoughts of suicide and panic attacks.

“I think our numbers have increased by at least 50 percent, if not sometimes as much as 60 to 70 percent,” he said.

The social isolation as a result of the school closings means that young people “have had to experience some feelings and emotions that they are not used to,” says Dr. Jeff Burzynski, pediatric emergency and intensive care physician at the children’s hospital in Winnipeg. (Evan Mitsui / CBC)

Burzynski believes many young people don’t know how to deal with the pandemic restrictions that have severely restricted their social interactions.

“Social isolation and school closings have really left a number of children experiencing some feelings and emotions they are not used to,” he said.

“I think that really showed us face to face [interaction] and the interpersonal connection is so important to this age group that it has simply missed it completely in the past 15 months. “

The restrictions, including many schools moving to distance learning, have also made unhealthy family dynamics worse. Burzynski says he sees that every day.

“We’re seeing a good number of patients who don’t have a stable home environment to begin with, and that only becomes a much more catastrophic problem,” he said.

Social anxiety in the transition period

Anxiety and depression don’t just manifest in times of isolation, says Jo Ann Unger, clinical psychologist at Winnipeg.

Social anxiety and a lack of self-confidence can creep in as children and teens move from mostly indoors with the family to a pandemic summer where many are vaccinated and restrictions are relaxed.

Unger says she heard anecdotally that many children and teenagers were experiencing social anxiety this summer.

“This is a time when they are really working on their social skills and focusing on developing those relationships outside of their families of origin,” she said in an interview with CBC Manitoba’s Information Radio on Wednesday.

Aside from virtual connections, “they didn’t have much access to social information … which reassures them that their friends still like them, still approve and” [they’ve had] less opportunity to practice these social skills, “said Unger.

Clinical psychologist Jo Ann Unger says teens may cope with fears about their relationships with friends. (Submitted by Jo Ann Unger)

Young people may have less confidence in their ability to make and maintain friendships, and that can lead to feelings of anxiety, especially if they were socially afraid before the pandemic, she says.

It’s sometimes hard to tell when kids and teens are struggling with their mental health, but it can manifest itself physically.

It can lead to changes in sleeping and eating behavior as well as lower energy levels, said Unger. They may also spend more time in their room, be more irritable than normal, and avoid social situations they may have encountered before.

There are several ways that young people and their support networks can cope with this transition period, says Unger.

It starts with remembering that when things return to normal, everyone feels a little strange and anxious.

Information radio – MB7:56A clinical psychologist shares tips on how to help the teenagers in your life get social again when COVID-19 restrictions wear off

Many teenagers may have an increased fear of how to re-enter social life once the restrictions wear off. Clinical psychologist Jo Ann Unger gives tips on how to help them. 7:56

“The distancing in friendships would have been a natural response to this period of physical or social isolation that we experienced,” Unger said.

“Everyone will feel a little bit that we may not feel that connected to people, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the friendship will no longer be close or will no longer be close in the future. “

When you start to get overwhelmed with unrealistic fears or worries, it’s important to challenge them and remember what life was like before COVID-19, Unger says.

Burzynski wants public health officials to find safe ways for children and adolescents to come together and do things to improve their mental health.

“We’re still in a very strict lockdown on indoor sports and activities which I think would be nice to revisit sooner to resolve this issue.”

If you have thoughts of suicide or are experiencing a mental crisis, help is available.

Contact the Manitoba Suicide Prevention and Support Line toll-free at 1-877-435-7170 (1-877-HELP170) or the Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868.

You can also send an SMS with CONNECT to 686868 and receive immediate assistance from a crisis worker via the Crisis Text Line, supported by Kids Help Phone.

source https://livehealthynews.com/more-mental-health-issues-as-young-manitobans-struggle-to-cope-with-pandemic-emergency-doctor/

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fapangel · 6 years

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Syrian Chemical Retaliation 2 - More Than Cruise Missiles Boogaloo

By now everyone's heard that Syria has once again used chemical weapons against their own civilians, and this time the scale of attack is pretty big. Twitter has been absolutely ablaze today with RUMINT relating to White House meetings and Syrian/Russian forces scrambling about, but one need look no further than Trump's own tweets that name Putin explicitly and promise a “big price to pay” to know that the fecal matter is indeed growing more authentic by the hour. There's been decent evidence that the Syrian regime has engaged in repeated use of CW even after last year's warning from the US, but this attack wasn't only far larger, but also came on the one-year anniversary of the US's retaliatory strike on Shayrat air base; punishment for just such an attack. And if that wasn't enough, this comes only days after Trump announced his desire (and a 6-month timetable) for leaving Syria, now that ISIS is (mostly) licked. It's quite possible this timing was mere coincidence, as the attack achieved a real military goal, scoring a victory for Assad in a months-long struggle with a major enemy force. But all that matters now is appearances, and all things considered it's almost certain that Trump's about to crank Assad's mouth open and force-feed him a heaping helping of FREEDOM. Here comes the airplane!

And it will be airplanes this time - not just cruise missiles.

What's the Goal?

The punitive strike on Shayrat air base was effectively a slap on the wrist; even if it did destroy 20% of the SAAF's operational aircraft. Compared to what we could have done, 60 Tomahawks was a restrained measure, and by targeting the airbase the chemical attack had been launched from, we were sending a message. The message was “this is what we can do with exactly two DDGs and nothing more. Imagine what happens when we get serious. Do not do this again.” Since they've done it again, now we're going to get serious.

This entails punishment. The goal is to make Assad bitterly regret crossing this line by blowing up things he really, really doesn't want blown up - things vital to his regime and its ongoing fight for survival. The target list is extensive and endless - anything from actual Syrian military assets of any sort to important government buildings to vital resources and infrastructure (oil wells, port facilities, etc.) are viable targets.

The target list is expanded by the Syrian war's current ground situation. Last year, the regime's survival wasn't seriously threatened, but it wasn't a sure thing, either. Nowadays the Americans seem set on splitting Syria down the Euphrates, with their Kurdish allies controlling all the major oil fields (i.e. revenue sources) in that area, and after repeated clashes with coalition forces - including the shoot-down of a Syrian Arab Air Force Su-24 and the Wagner group massacre - they've made it clear they intend to keep them, even in the face of concerted Russian-supported efforts to the contrary. This likely prompted the refocusing on long-standing western Syrian rebel strongholds like eastern Ghouta - the land grab is over, now it's about consolidation. In short, the US can inflict a higher level of pain on Assad's regime without seriously endangering its very existence, something that's fairly evidently not in US interests at this time. (It'd be a gift to Iran, who's already set up shop in Syria, and Iran's continuing efforts to control Iraq's new political order is a sharp lesson in what post-Assad Syria would likely look like.) The era of pivotal pitched battles is over, but the slow grinding attrition that remains was painful enough to induce Assad to use CW; ergo, weakening the regime (and lengthening the grind) will sting badly without risk of deciding the whole conflict.

A final consideration is visibility. The reason Assad used chemical weapons is because they're hideously effective and cost-efficient. This is indeed the point of any Weapon of Mass Destruction. This is also why they're terrifying - there's a very strong incentive for any military force to use them frequently; the poorer and more desperate the force, the stronger the incentive. So powerful are they that they're effectively the only counter to themselves; the only good military reason to hold them back is the risk of receiving like attacks in turn. (This kept gas off most battlefields for all of WWII.) Likewise, against those that cannot retaliate in kind, they have been used frequently - see Imperial Japan against China, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, or even Saddam's gas attacks on Kurds. The only thing keeping the WMD genie in the bottle is, and always has been, the threat of punishment. Letting Assad get away without punishment would indicate to all that no punishment from the US or other major players of the international order will be forthcoming, and then things will get ugly. Thus Assad's punishment has to be something dramatic and memorable. This is worsened by the US's obvious need to avoid deposing Assad - many might conclude (as Assad likely has himself) that since the US cannot afford to remove him, he can use chemical weapons without fear of the ultimate penalty. The punishment must belie that reasoning; must inflict negatives so strong that they blatantly outweigh whatever gain Assad reaped from using WMD. (It's worth noting that Assad's regime and Assad aren't the same thing - if the regime's stable enough to survive without Assad, then he's got a bullseye on his back as we speak.)

Therefore:

What Are The Targets?

* The targets will not necessarily be strictly military: government buildings, dual-use resources, sources of revenue for the regime, are all valid targets. Russia's vested interest in keeping Assad in power works against them here; even if the US miscalculates and deals the regime's support network lethal blows, the Russians (and Iranians) will have to pony up to avoid losing their significant sunk cost.

* The targets will include infrastructure: Assad's regime has to feel the impact of this punishment for it to be effective; it has to impose consequences in daily life for months after the fact. Power plants, national infrastructure (ports, roads, rails,) are all fair game. This is similar to the strategy shift that produced results against Serbia. This requires fine planning and target selection, as one's splitting the line between imposing privations on Assad's civilian support base and imposing starvation, but the US's intel coalition (“Five Eyes”) is easily up to this task.

* The targets will include key personnel: The best way to pose an existential threat to a regime you can't afford to actually destroy is to kill key decision makers and commanders - though their regime will live on, even the most idealistic and patriotic of commanders tend to take the prospect of a JDAM landing in their lap rather personally. If key military and government officials pay for their complicity in CW usage with their lives, it'll send a strong message to anyone else contemplating their use in the future. This targeting needn't be explicit; it could be spun as collateral damage consequent to striking known military sites, for instance.

Taken all together, this means the US will be heading into downtown Damascus.

What's the Defenses?

I've taken a keen interest in the Syrian air defense network and especially how the ravages of civil war has affected it; but even with constant monitoring, it's hard to say with high certainty what its current state and disposition is. The pre-war Syrian IADS was one of the most impressive in the Middle East; while the usual mixed bag of SA-2s and SA-3s with a few SA-5s was present, the system really stood out for its extensive use of SA-6 Gainful's in fixed, hardened positions. (It might seem silly to use a system with fairly good mobility as fixed emplacements, but the rugged terrain of western Syria constrains effective deployment locations, and the SA-6 outperforms the SA-2/SA-3 even when tethered.) Even then the defenses around Damascus, Syria's capital and most important city, were notably dense. And while the subsequent civil war played merry hell with this extensive network's readiness, the importance (and relative security) of Damascus has ensured that its defenses remain especially robust. This only applies to Damascus proper; the defense-in-depth their network used to enjoy is gone (for instance, the known SAM/EW locations near/south of Daraa, which used to guard Damascas's southern approaches, have been in rebel-held or bitterly contested territory for years now.)

Syria's legacy systems aren't the only threat anymore, however. Scattered reports of Iranian assistance have given way to confirmed aid and equipment transfers from Russia; that Syria now operates some Russian-supplied SA-17s and SA-22 Greyhounds (Pantsir-S1) is well documented at this point. The SA-17 is a vastly upgraded SA-6 (Buk) system firing more accurate missiles at longer ranges, and the SA-22 is one of the best point-defense SHORAD systems around, well-suited to defending high-value point targets against cruise missiles and PGMs.

Long-range options are decidedly lacking - the Syrian's legacy SA-5s still pack impressive range and performance despite their age, but even if they've received significant upgrades from their Russian benefactors, they're unlikely to triumph against American ECM assets. The Russians are highly unlikely to commit suicide by firing on US aircraft, but firing on incoming weapons in defense of their allies is fine. They have two S-400 systems (one at their airbase at Latakia and another recently deployed to their port facility in Tartus,) and an S-300VM battery (purpose-built for cruise-missile intercept) somewhere further east (pinpointing this has been difficult, but RUMINT places it near something important further east in the country, which makes sense.) Unfortunately for Syria, the rugged terrain in western Syria (and around Damascus) limit LOS horizons against cruise missiles even more than normal. The Syrians will benefit from these systems superb radars, since Russia's officially claimed to have integrated their air defense networks together, but they suffer the same LOS issues.

Generally, against cruise missiles SAMs can only defend what they're parked next to - especially in the mountains of Syria. Since Russia's S-400s are parked near bases filled with Russians (which the US won't shoot at anyways,) they're mostly a non-factor. Much more significant is Russia's two A-50 AWACS aircraft, and to a lesser extent their 12 SU-30SM and 4 SU-34s and their superb air-to-air, look-down/shoot-down radars. These assets will provide the Syrians with much better early-warning of incoming cruise missiles; the Syrian EW network had low-level coverage gaps even before the war and now they're terribly pronounced. They may even have time to scramble the SAAF.

The final factor is simple standoff range - simply put, between US standoff weaponry, ECM support, stealth options and the ranges involved in-theater, the Syrians will only be shooting at incoming PGMs, not American warplanes. (Note how last night's attack on T4 airbase in the center of Syria was carried out by Israeli F-15's firing Delilah cruise missiles from over Lebanon.) It's only 150 nautical miles from RAF Akrotiri to Damascus - an F-18 could fire a JASSM or SLAM-ER about thirty seconds after going wheels-up.

In short, this will be mostly a battle between American standoff weaponry and ECM against a mix of legacy Syrian SAM systems and modern Russian SHORAD.

What's the Problem?

Normally, an air campaign like this has to crack the hard nut of a well-woven Integrated Air Defense System, focusing on vital nodes like hostile runways, major radars and long-range SAM systems, and increasingly, vital communication nodes (radio, fiber-optic, etc.) to start unraveling the overlapping defense and degrade it to something the attacking force can then pick apart piecemeal. In this case, there's no real overlapping defense for a multitude of reasons; with each important target guarded by its own contingent of point-defense systems - and what wide-area coverage there is, is Russian, and thus verboten to attack. Worse, the majority of likely targets are in or around Damascus; the SA-17s have the range to provide fairly good area coverage of the city and environs, freeing up any SA-22s (and whatever SA-8s they have left,) for point defense of the most likely high-value targets (or SA-17s themselves.)

Defended cities are a unique challenge to assail from the air, as Berlin, Hanoi and Baghdad have demonstrated. It's primarily a matter of area; cities tend to be big enough to disperse targets (and their AA defenses) enough to increase their survivability, but are compact enough that medium-range systems (SA-6, 11 and 17 included) can cover much if not all the area no matter where they're positioned. Thus defensive firepower is concentrated and overlapping, but attackers can't simply knock a “hole” in the defenses or pick it apart by eliminating key radars or communication nodes (even if they can't coordinate target assignment for best effect, they can all turn on their own radar and shoot at something.) Worse, this relative proximity means that single long-range systems aren't responsible for area coverage; so point-defense systems near high-value targets will almost surely benefit from enemy salvo attrition before their “Hail Mary” defense begins.

“Salvo attrition” is the big problem here. Cruise missiles are very accurate, smart, and have a fantastic ability to deliver a nasty punch in places you'd never risk a manned aircraft, but they're expensive and heavy; fighters can carry far more bombs than cruise missiles. Last night's Israeli attack on T4 airbase is a perfect example of the math - two F-15Is fired four Delilah cruise missiles apiece, and the Russians claimed that 5 were intercepted, and 3 struck their targets. Assuming the base was defended by an SA-22 Greyhound, that's exactly what one would expect (given the 57E6's twelve mile range and the flight times involved, it'd only be able to shoot once at each incoming. Even great point-defense is still a Hail-Mary pass.) This attrition imposes a minimum round count expended per important target - either to get through and destroy the target, or to destroy the SAM itself. Which is more efficient depends on how many targets the SAM is defending - and how many missiles it can actually engage. This is where the SA-17s prove problematic - their greater range (26nm; about twice the SA-6) is somewhat mitigated by terrain around Damascus, but still affords a longer window to shoot at incoming PGMs and reasonable magazine depth (considering a battery,) and since the radar vehicle is a TELAR (Transporter, Erector, Launcher, Radar,) it can pair with a Greyhound to form a fully self-contained, highly-mobile, layered range point-defense unit.

This mobility further complicates the weapons assignment problem; as target saturation is a key part of breaking through these defenses, and that's obviously time-sensitive. If you don't know where defending SAMs are, you can't know how many will fire on the cruise missiles assigned to any one target - so you've got to fire extra at all targets to guarantee enough make it through. You could simply do Bomb Damage Assessment and re-strike as necessary, but that might be even costlier. Consider the Greyhound again - 5 out of 8 intercepts is a 62.5% intercept rate, so with four remaining missiles, you can expect two or three more intercepts. That means you're firing three more weapons just to soak up the defenses - if they'd been launched with the first salvo, they would've done damage directly to target.

All the above demonstrates why the USN's ability to disgorge 50+ Tomahawks from a single DDG at a moment's notice is so powerful - it can take a lot of cruise missiles to do real work. A lot will ride on drafting an optimal attack plan to maximize damage from the ordinance expended; ensuring that everything the Administration wants destroyed, is destroyed. That's going to ride heavily on three factors:

* Unparalleled ISTAR capabilities,

* Sheer saturation capacity with Tomahawk missiles,

* New purpose-built penetration weapons like MALD-J and especially JASSM.

JASSM Is Kind Of A Big Deal

Usually a tough nut like Damascus is best attacked with overwhelming force; a lot of Wild Weasels firing a lot of HARMs, which can handily engage previously-unknown “pop-up” targets without a problem. Sadly, the HARM/AARGM's 70nm range would require US aircraft to get too close for comfort. The USAF has a new option, however - the JASSM.

The JASSM is an air-launched, fully-stealth-shaped cruise missile. Not low-observable, but stealthed. “Low-observable” aircraft (or weapons) have had their RCS reduced significantly, but not to the point of allowing reliable deep penetration of hostile radar coverage. It mainly describes engineering priorities - stealth platforms place a priority (and a price tag) on achieving minimal RCS. Low-Observable platforms aren't primarily engineered for it, but have still achieved significant reductions without compromising performance, sometimes impressively so (the Rafale is a good example, or the Super Hornet compared to the Hornet.) Even if it makes no impact on actual detection range (say, against a peer adversary with good radars,) LO is still desirable, as a reduced signature makes it harder for radar-guided missiles to lock on.

Naturally, this goes double for the far smaller RCS of a “full stealth” platform like the JASSM. Stealth shaping on cruise missiles is primarily for infiltration; so it can get close to its target without being detected by AWACS aircraft and pounced upon by CAP fighters. But it also benefits the weapon during the actual attack run. Firstly, the weapon can get well inside the theoretical maximum 25nm range (approx. the horizon distance on flat terrain) before being detected. The inverse-square law is a particularly harsh mistress here; it guarantees even a weak radar will pick up even a stealthy missile in the last few miles before impact; but also means that RCS reductions enjoy (almost) exponential effectiveness in decreasing maximum detection range. Exactly how an SA-17/SA-22 vs. JASSM matchup goes weighs heavily on best-guesstimates of comparative capabilities (radar versus supposed JASSM RCS) and the models you use. The best civilian-accessible tool for this that I know of is Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, both from a mathematical modeling and performance-guesstimate standpoint, and it suggests a maximum detection range of 5-8 miles, which seems pretty reasonable. Once OODA loops (the time required to shout “oh shit” and punch the auto-engage button,) are factored in, this means the JASSM presents defending SAMs far less time to shoot back than a Tomahawk would.

Secondly, once the missile's actually detected and engaged, its vanishingly small RCS will make life difficult for radar-guided interceptor missiles; lowering their pK%, depleting enemy magazines - or, if they don't have time to fire twice, increasing chances of penetration. Projects like CHAMP exist to destroy radars at a few miles range, to eliminate that last-mile gauntlet completely - and there's evidence that simpler single-use explosive pumped EMP bombs are already in use - but one need not speculate on classified warheads, as the JASSM's stealth makes it more survivable, even in the last mile, than a Tomahawk, JSOW or JDAM is.

Then there's the MALD-J. Originally designed as a simple decoy (Miniature Air-Launched Decoy,) the -J mod introduced a powerful offensive jammer. A small, disposable missile can only pack so much jamming output power, but the inverse-square law works in its favor here; being disposable, it can get as close as it pleases; even escorting missile salvos into the combat area. If that's not enough, it's recently gained a secondary kinetic kamikaze attack and more importantly, a two-way network link; allowing operators to exploit it as an offboard sensor platform, redirect its path in flight, and generally make it work “with” similarly networked Tactical Tomahawk missiles to respond to changing situations. The TLAM-D's two-way link allows it to loiter for a time till controllers give it a target, or to switch targets mid-attack if needed - now the MALD-J can provide responsive OECM support as well.

Combined, the JASSM and the MALD-J offer US forces two very, very potent weapons for overcoming the salvo attrition problem; between offensive jamming and passive stealth, their ability to efficiently penetrate and destroy SAM defenses is unparalleled.

What's the Plan?

Now that we understand the problems and the tools, we can see how the planned solution will likely look. Simply put, it entails kicking in the door with JASSMs and MALD-J to open the way for a hellacious torrent of Tomahawk missiles.

The USNI's Fleet and Marine Tracker, (which conveniently updated earlier this afternoon) shows that 5th fleet doesn't have a carrier in the Med right now, and the one in the Gulf (the Roosevelt) was recently withdrawn after several months of anti-ISIS airstrikes. Even without a carrier nearby, there's no shortage of assets and bases nearby for the US to use. RAF Akrotiri is barely 150 miles distant from Damascus, and of course Incirlik in southern Turkey is perfectly positioned as well. With tanker support, a strike from Al Udeid using Strike Eagles isn't hard to contemplate either. The US Bomber force is especially flexible - I believe some B-52s are still forward-stationed at Al Udeid, but a long-range sortie from Diego Garcia or even CONUS isn't impossible, though the required tankers would make it more challenging on such short notice. B-52s can carry 12 cruise missiles (or MALDs) on external pylons (if they're one of the handful with the new Conventional Rotary Launcher, they can carry up to 20.) A B-1B (which can also sortie from CONUS) can carry a whopping 24 JASSMs. Strike Eagles typically carry two.

Then there's recon assets. The usual twitter jewels spotted RC-135 Rivet Joint ELINT aircraft sortieing from Souda Bay to sniff the radio waves near the Lebanese border, but there's also more close-up capabilities to consider. The RQ-170s public reveal - and the more advanced and all-but-officially acknowledged successor, the RQ-180 - provide stealth options for actually infiltrating hostile airspace to scan for SAM units with FLIR and/or GMTI radar. Combined with other options like tiny sub-launched drones, one may presume US target intel will be pretty robust.

The initial wave will probably involve B-52s and F-15Es from Al Udeid, flying up the Gulf, tanking over Iraqi airspace and launching a mix of MALD-J and JASSM over eastern Syria at safe standoff ranges. The F-15Es might have relocated to RAF Akrotiri; or UK forces from there may participate in a joint strike with low-observable standoff weapons of their own (MBDA Storm Shadow.) USAF Compass Call jamming aircraft will probably support the attack, and Marine F-18s from Incirlik will likely contribute strike mass (missiles) and certainly Growler jamming support (that is, I certainly hope they have some Growlers there, and not Prowlers...) This opening attack will have four main objectives:

* Destroy a significant number of Syrian SAM systems in and around Damascus, focusing on the newest, most capable systems, and ones with the most optimal positioning,

* Destroy crucial C4 nodes to degrade the data cohesion and thus quality of Syrian defensive responses,

* Disable runways at select Syrian bases to prevent them from sortieing CAP fighters to engage follow-on TLAM strikes,

* Stimulate enemy defenses to enable more thorough air defense network degradation during follow-on strikes,

* Outright destroy select priority and/or high-value targets (including key personnel.)

The follow-up attack will come very soon from US Navy assets in the Med; the Donald Cook is rumored to be in attack position as we speak and I expect at least one converted Ohio-class SSGN and its 154 Tomahawks are in the area. The Tomahawks will do most of the real damage; directly striking desired targets as well as performing secondary strikes on newly-identified air defense sites, plus a few suppression strikes on Syrian regime airbases to convince all parties involved that the cool embrace of a sturdy air raid shelter is the best place to be, and not servicing priority targets in an attempt to sortie them. At this point the French and UK forces might add their contributions, if any; their Storm Shadows are better suited to tackling SAM sites than Tomahawks, and they'd be well-used if kept in reserve for follow-on attacks after the first wave stimulates air defenses.

F-22s will likely see use; both as BARCAP (protecting tankers, ELINT aircraft, AWACS, jamming aircraft and other high-value assets that the Syrians might unwisely try to challenge with fighters) and as direct attackers. With the Small Diameter Bomb, the F-22 becomes a deep-penetration fighter-bomber platform armed with low-observable standoff glide-bombs that can penetrate moderately hard targets. The SDB isn't ideal for attacking point-defense SAMs (it's slow and not stealthy, though it is fairly low RCS by simple fact of being small and pointy,) but an F-22 can pack a surprising number of them, making them excellent for saturating SAM defenses. They're also excellent against Hardened Aircraft Shelters, for that matter. Their stealth characteristics also allow them to operate far forward in what'd be denied airspace to any other aircraft; enabling a very aggressive sort of BARCAP, to the point of shadowing hostile fighters and engaging them from close range if they make aggressive motions towards friendlies. I personally believe we'll see more F-22s in strike roles than BARCAP roles, but that all depends on just how many Strike Eagles and B-52s we have forward-deployed in theater right now; information that's not easy to hunt down on the web (for obvious reasons.)

The most difficult part of the strike will be playing cat-and-mouse with Russia's AWACS/EW assets; they've the most capable sensors, we can't simply shoot them down, and the Russians know that and will exploit it. The early warning their aircraft can provide will be of tremendous use to their Syrian allies, so inhibiting it will likewise be critical. I predict a delicate dance of US/NATO jamming aircraft versus Russian AWACs/CAP, with a side helping of targeting spikes from their S-400 batteries to try and rattle morale. (Not that they'll be spooked, because the S-400s' maximum theoretical range is based on the radar-equipped 40N6 missile, which probably isn't operational yet, much less deployed to Syria.)

In Summary

I think we're about to see a demonstration of the balance between higher-end and lower-end capabilities - a relatively small number of advanced weapons opening the door for an onslaught of cost-effective Tomahawks. We're also going to see why ISTAR capabilities are so important, and given the nature of the mission, it's highly likely targets won't be strictly limited to just chemical weapon depots or related infrastructure. It might be, but I predict a Message Will Be Sent.

It's 9PM, and the RUMINT on twitter says I'd better post this before the strikes actually happen and all eight pages of random musing are wasted.

Let's see what happens.

#syria #syriacrisis

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