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shihalyfie · 3 years

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A guide to the 02 kids’ personalities and overall demeanors

I’ve already covered the deeper details of each 02 kid’s character arc and development throughout the series, but I figured I might dedicate a more specific post about the complexities of their outer personalities, and their behavior patterns on a day-to-day basis. 02 is the kind of series that doesn’t really spell out what the characters tend to do or don’t tend to do, or what boundaries they will and won’t cross, which means it can be a bit of a challenging task to track their behavior over fifty episodes and figure out the patterns. Fortunately, these characters are written remarkably consistently over said episodes, so we have a lot to work with!

Disclaimer before we continue: In general, all of my 02-based meta is specifically written for the Japanese version in mind, but this especially applies to this one, because the majority of the nuances of the demeanor and personality traits described below were not retained in the American English dub at all (please see this post for more detail). As a result, please understand that if you’re working from the perspective of having only seen that dub, and the contents of the below post sound completely different, that would be why.

Daisuke and V-mon

Believe it or not, I would say that Daisuke is actually the most difficult to nail the nuances of out of this entire cast. This is probably a really weird thing to hear when the usual fandom mantra is that he’s “flat” or “lacking in development”, but I think the deceptive part is that while he’s simple-minded and himself doesn’t think in complex terms, analyzing his behavior as a whole and how he approaches things actually involves a lot of very delicate balances, and getting that exactly right can be very easy to mess up. Daisuke’s not a rude jerk who looks down on anyone, not in the slightest -- but he’s also not a saint who can do no wrong, either!

I think the easiest analogy (which I’ve brought up several times on this blog already) is that Daisuke is like a puppy, but not just any puppy -- a tiny puppy that barks very loudly at anything it perceives as threatening (regardless of whether it’s actually threatening), makes its feelings very clear with obvious likes and dislikes, and can do some phenomenally stupid things in a bid to please others, but in the end means no malice and only wants you to be happy.

This is to the point where I’m just going to have to bullet-point this, because there’s so much going on at once:

Excessively emotional: One of Daisuke’s earliest profiles refers to him as having “an excessively large range of human emotions”, and really, a lot of the humor surrounding him has to do with the fact he has incredibly dramatic, overblown reactions to nearly everything around him. So if he gets a little annoyed or suspicious of people making fun of him, he tends to get really dramatic about being upset, and when he experiences only a minor setback, he acts like it’s the end of the world, and when he’s emotionally hurt, he sometimes even gets set on the verge of crying (you can especially hear this in Kiuchi Reiko’s delivery). Even Daisuke himself doesn’t tend to get caught up in it for too long and gets over things surprisingly quickly, so you can take it as him just constantly being too wrapped up in the mood -- but when it really is a serious situation, he gets truly emotionally invested in it, too.

Too easy to read: Because Daisuke wears his heart on his sleeve and is dramatic about everything, he’s awful at hiding anything. Any attempt at trickery or trying to disguise his intentions quickly blows up in his face because he’s too simple-minded and too transparent.

Not malicious: Daisuke only ever lashes out or gets angry at others when he thinks others are doing something he disapproves of, or when he thinks he’s being attacked; he’s very warm and kind to everyone otherwise (even in the earliest parts of the series, when he’s at his roughest, you might notice he’s very soft around Chibimon, as if understanding that his partner is now in a very small and delicate form and needs to be treated accordingly). In other words, Daisuke is very quick to get defensive, but he has no malice or reason to be condescending towards anyone otherwise, and he’s perfectly friendly with people even when they’d provoked him earlier (because he doesn’t really hold grudges). He doesn’t attack people without reason; even when he voices dissent against what someone is doing, he very rarely, if ever, insults a person or their character directly. Even when he’s trying to state his opinions (such as when he bids for the others to accept Ken), he never forces them down others’ throats and accepts that they disagree with him, even if he’s clearly not happy with their disagreement.

Easily critical and suspicious: Daisuke is a very bluntly straightforward and honest person, and he seems to get most set off by people who act suspicious; note how his early-series outbursts towards Takeru tend to be when Takeru’s acting evasive, and in Hurricane Touchdown, he catches onto Wallace’s shady behavior even before he starts flirting with Miyako (Daisuke’s own method of trying to seem attractive to others involves just “doing something cool and hoping it’ll impress others”, so he seems to dislike the concept of flirting as a whole). Because of that, he catches easily onto “things looking off”, so he tends to call it out (even if sometimes he’s overdoing it and there isn’t actually anything significant to be upset about).

Supportive and adoring of others: Other than the moments when he gets set off, fundamentally speaking, Daisuke likes other people, is perfectly willing to acknowledge them or heap praise on them when they do something awesome, and generally cares for their well-being. He’s easily defers to others when he understands they’re better than him at something, and he even has a decently realistic scope of his limits (see how he’s perfectly aware he’s likely to lose the soccer game in 02 episode 8, and figures he might as well enjoy the experience). This is even taken to its logical conclusion in the Kizuna drama CD when he “credits” his friends for giving him amazing and insightful advice when all of it was actually pretty ordinary stuff they’d done offhandedly. It also means that, given his penchant for getting emotionally invested in everything, he has a huge emotional stake in making sure his friends are doing okay, and supports them accordingly.

Deferential to seniors/elders: Tying into the above, you may notice that Daisuke takes a properly respectful and soft tone towards his elders and seniors in nearly all occasions, even to the point of occasionally using proper polite-form language around them. All things considered, Daisuke is a pretty well-behaved kid.

Constantly getting strung around: As much as Daisuke looks like he’s aggressive, in actuality, it’s very easy to get him to back down if you argue against him strongly enough, and since he has such a “the heck is that?!” attitude all of the time, you can see him constantly getting strung around and at the mercy of things happening around him. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have enough will to put his foot down when it becomes a really important subject (especially in the second half of the series), but it’s very often when he’ll be talked down by others around him and shrink with an “oh...okay...” In fact, this is why a lot of his actions aren’t nearly as reckless as they might be otherwise; as much as he’s a bit hot-headed and likes to lead the attack, he also has a sense of self-preservation and intimidation when things look a bit too dangerous, and will only push forward in such a case when there’s something he really believes in at the other side of it.

Lacking in self-awareness and insecure as a result: While Daisuke doesn’t have any signs of persistent self-hatred (on the contrary, there are times he arguably comes off as overconfident), it also seems that he has practically zero awareness of how he himself is doing -- which means that he ends up rolling over like an idiot trying to get others’ approval and trying to impress them, even when it’d be clear to anyone else that he already has that approval. This also likely ties into the fact that he’s perfectly capable of acknowledging others’ accomplishments and skills (see above), so you might even think that the problem isn’t so much that he thinks he’s bad as much as he keeps comparing himself to people he perceives as being that much more awesome. (Perhaps symbolic of this, he apparently has a complex over being shorter than Takeru and Ken, despite the fact that he seems to be of perfectly average height for a kid his age.) It seems that his only bar for how he’s doing is dependent on everyone’s reactions around him, hence why his ridiculous antics are significantly less pronounced when he has proper emotional support and friends to keep him in check. It’s also important to consider that this applies to his apparent crush on Hikari as well; his crush mainly manifests in wanting her approval very badly, and it’s mostly visible in terms of him losing a ton of brain cells in her presence and bending over backwards to please her or impress her. He never actually says in words that he’s interested in her, nor does he ever show signs of intending to seriously ask her out, so it’s something that’s only apparent because of this behavior, and it’s very likely he hasn’t even seriously thought through what would happen if she actually accepted him in return. You can basically see this as an extreme version of the way Daisuke tries to get approval from everyone else, and this trait of his noticeably dies down whenever there’s more important things at hand, or when he seems to be in the midst of getting proper validation from those around him.

Simple-minded and pragmatic: What’s usually referred to as Daisuke being an “idiot” comes from the fact he doesn’t play well with complex thinking, tends to settle for very simple explanations or answers, and more thoughtful types like Ken or Iori will often have to fill that part in for him. However, because Daisuke is so simple-minded, he’s sometimes the most pragmatic person in the group, because he doesn’t overthink things or get principles of theory caught up into everything. So if Ken is clearly not showing any indication of doing bad things anymore and is actively working to help, Daisuke believes he should be allowed to help regardless of what he’d done in the past, and if they’re dealing with the situation of potentially having to kill a living enemy, Daisuke points out that hesitation would have resulted in even more casualties. In essence, in a situation where everyone’s running mental loop-de-loops, Daisuke will usually be the first one to snap them all out of it and go “uh? Guys?” Moreover, this trait of his makes him very good at spotting glaring threads or asking questions about the elephant in the room, because since he works best with things that are right in front of him, he can’t not notice it.

Enjoys the little things: Because Daisuke is so simple-minded, it’s very easy to please him (this is why his chosen career path is something as simple as ramen making). Daisuke likes his friends, and appreciates even simple things around him, so he’s happy with even simple pieces of happiness -- hence, why he’s fine with potentially losing the soccer game in 02 episode 8, because he’s ready to simply just savor the experience of getting to play against a respectable and formidable opponent.

Note that the main reason Daisuke never seems to bring up any of these issues with himself within the series proper is simply that he doesn’t seem to be aware of them -- he’s too simple-minded to understand what’s going on with his own behavior in depth, and hence, this is how he can say he’s not worried about too much by the time of 02′s finale, especially since by that point he has a proper support group that’s already helping him deal with most of his issues anyway.

Daisuke also has the roughest speech pattern out of any of the 02 group (similar to Taichi and Yamato in Adventure); he has a tendency to shorten words a lot and use “rough” variants of words (for example “-nee” instead of “-nai”).

Mischievous, friendly, and playful, V-mon is pointed out even by official sources to be much like his partner (far more so than usual), and it’s likely a byproduct of the fact that Daisuke himself is very honest and straightforward about his emotions and thoughts, and so since he has nothing to hide, V-mon is pretty much exactly like him -- with the major difference being that he’s a little more outwardly friendly and less likely to lash out angrily. So he’s effectively Daisuke without that very thin abrasive exterior, and because both of them are so like-minded and friendly, they get along extremely well (albeit with quite a bit of comfortable bantering on the way there).

Ken and Wormmon

Ken is the more intellectual type that Daisuke isn’t, and even after his stint as the Kaiser, it’s clear that he’s still quite studious and naturally interested in studying things. Looking closely at his style of dress and way of carrying himself (note how he lays down his chopsticks in 02 episode 36) indicates he’s also a rather tidy person in general. Being someone who’s capable of thinking things thoroughly, this makes him able to have a lot of deep insight into both intellectual and emotional issues, but because he takes things too seriously sometimes, he can sometimes come off as a bit overly stickler or insistent (note Daisuke and Ken’s Shopping Carol, where he subjects Daisuke to a long-winded lecture about the history of Christmas, because, really, he’s a nerd), or lead himself down the wrong direction when he’s having a hard time being straightforward (such as when he comes up with some very flimsy theories about why Jogress might be dangerous in 02 episode 28).

In fact, Ken’s disposition could be considered to be the opposite of Daisuke’s in many ways; while Ken is much softer and more conciliatory on the surface, he’s actually much more assertive and strong-willed by default, and it’s made clear that, even after his reformation from the Kaiser persona, he could still be vicious if he wanted to, he just doesn’t enjoy it because he doesn’t like it and it goes against his belief system (note that he even offered to "dirty his own hands" in lieu of the other kids if push came to shove and Archnemon had to be killed in 02 episode 29, even though he clearly wasn't enthusiastic about the idea). In fact, he has a very strong sense of responsibility and believes heavily in making up for what he’s done -- recall that 02 episodes 26 and 49 involved snapping him out of it by reminding him that there were things that needed to be done, and that he himself still had many things he wanted to do that wouldn’t be addressed if he’d stayed fixated on his past. Thus, Ken doesn’t deny nor avoid anything he’d done, and he isn’t even all that prone to self-pity -- it’s just that his tendency to put too much responsibility on himself means that he also takes a while to accept everyone’s support, too, because he doesn’t like the idea of putting burdens on others.

Because Ken is actually one of the more straightforward people in this group and a fairly honest person (at least, as long as he’s not lying to himself), he might hold himself back a little bit in order to not be rude, but he doesn’t do it nearly to the same degree Takeru or Hikari would and is much more willing to speak his mind when he has an opinion he wants to voice or needs to sort out his thoughts on something. Conversely, he’s not nearly as cold as Iori can get when criticizing things (he’ll certainly be firm, but not as incisive). Most post-02 materials also indicate that he’s not above being a tease or even a little mischievous (see Armor Evolution to the Unknown, Diablomon Strikes Back, Daisuke and Ken’s Shopping Carol).

Ken uses a speech pattern that’s slightly more casual than Takeru’s, but not nearly as rough as Daisuke’s. While anime will often have speech patterns substantially change between different personas of a character, other than Park Romi’s delivery of a more condescending tone for the Kaiser and a significantly softer one for Ken, nothing about his speech pattern is substantially different between the two personas (not even the first-person pronoun), indicating that, in the end, they’re really the same person after all, just manifesting the same personality traits in different ways.

Wormmon is affectionate and clingy, unfailingly loyal to Ken, and his biggest advocate during a time when Ken is trying to relearn how to love and accept himself -- meaning that he ends up very important to providing Ken the initial support he needed before Ken allowed other friends into his life. Wormmon isn’t all nothing but clinginess, though -- he has some insight about the weight of his experiences when prompted (02 episode 46), and in fact is more than capable of calling out Ken’s behavior when he’s being unreasonable or throwing himself into denial (see 02 episodes 27, 30, and 49).

Miyako and Hawkmon

Miyako approaches everything she likes with an attitude that makes her come off as constantly having bubbles and hearts around her. When she likes something, she says so. When she doesn’t like something, she says so (and she will go off when she’s on a roll; see 02 episode 14). In fact, part of the reason she so infamously voices her opinion on people being cute is, quite simply, that it’s her honest opinion. (Note that she never actually tries to ask them out or anything -- she just wants to make it very clear that they’re attractive.)

For the most part, she adores the people around her, and, like the others in the 02 group, she’s perfectly respectful towards elders. She also loves poking her nose in others’ business and trying to be as helpful as possible, which is good in that she ends up being a huge help to others, but also not good in that sometimes she overdoes it a bit (when Hikari calls her out for being a “handful” in 02 episode 31, the word she uses is one that literally means "a little too overly involved in others' business").

Miyako is the one who gets everyone up in high spirits by being cheerful, and whose cheer rubs off on everyone else around her (see her cheerfully leading the charge into the Digital World with her “Digital Gate, open! Chosen Children, let’s roll!” catchphrase). This is something the rest of the group catches onto very quickly, asking her to supply the “usual cheer”, and the later episodes of the series especially drive home the fact that her presence and antics bring happiness to those around her.

Miyako has a similar “chaotic, sloppy, and straightforward” demeanor to Daisuke, but there are some key differences. Unlike Daisuke, who’s bluntly honest about his opinions mainly because he doesn’t really hide things in general, Miyako’s opinions will be out of her mouth before she can control it. In other words, she has a nasty case of foot-in-mouth syndrome. In addition, while Daisuke tends to have a very thin skin and lashes out defensively out of instinct, Miyako takes things much more at face value and doesn’t blow a fuse nearly as easily, but because she’s significantly more assertive and aggressive, she’s much more prone to doing what she wants on her own whims instead of backing down to anyone. In fact, Miyako is significantly more emotionally sensitive in the long run, so while Daisuke tends to blow a fuse more easily, he’s also able to shrug it off and move on more quickly, whereas Miyako has a thicker skin, but when she does take emotional pain, she takes it much more deeply and harshly. She also tends to get overwhelmed easily by stress and panic, which makes her one of the more prone to running around in circles and doing frantic things in the midst of it.

One thing you might notice about Miyako is that she’s actually more critical of herself than anyone else in the group is; most of the time they act with mild exasperation at her antics but don’t tend to criticize her directly, whereas Miyako is very aware of her own shortcomings and is constantly either criticizing herself or comparing herself negatively to others (see: 02 episodes 10, 14, 18, and 31 especially). If she slips up and does something that stepped on someone else’s toes, it doesn’t take her long to realize that she’s messed up and want to do better. So while she generally tends to act the most in-your-face and aggressive, she also doesn’t necessarily want to be this way, and suffers from self-confidence issues and a poor opinion of herself.

Miyako uses a feminine speech pattern that’s a bit more casual than Hikari’s (she noticeably is willing to use the word anta for “you”, which has a bit of a connotation of being abrupt and in-your-face, especially with Daisuke). She’s also the most likely to physically manhandle things, both in the affectionate (hugging people) and aggressive (grabbing things and jumping on them in order to attack) senses.

Hawkmon is repeatedly referred to as being like Miyako’s “knight”, since he has absolute loyalty to her (in spite of her ridiculous antics often meaning he gets strung around by her) and is effectively in charge of minding her so she doesn’t get too out of control. While his overly polite and gentlemanly demeanor initially seems like a sharp contrast to Miyako’s aggressive and messy personality, you might also notice that, at their cores, the two aren’t all that different -- both are unfailingly loyal to others, and both also have a penchant for dramatic theatrics and being a bit overly proud of themselves.

Iori and Armadimon

The key thing to know about Iori is that he’s not stoic because he’s not feeling fervent emotions, but rather because he’s constantly holding them back (this is especially apparent if you look carefully at his facial expressions and Urawa Megumi’s delivery, where you can tell his facade is often “slipping” even when his words would indicate otherwise). Since Iori is trying to live by the ideal of being a model citizen, especially under the very formal environment he was raised in, he comes off as mature for his age, but it’s very important to not forget that, underneath all that, he’s still an impressionable nine-year-old child with the wide range of emotions and immaturity of one, and when he does emotionally fall apart, everything tends to burst out (see 02 episodes 16, 44, 47, 50). In addition, Iori is never condescending about the fact he usually acts more mature than the others; the impression is that he’s much more strict with himself than he is with others, and in fact still does look up to his elders in the 02 group even when they’re obviously a lot messier than he is.

The “need to be a model citizen” is something looming over Iori’s head at almost every moment, and it’s the easiest way to understand the way he acts in a nutshell. Iori is focused on the idea of “becoming a proper adult”, which means that he’s adhering to all of these principles because he feels they’re necessary to live a proper and honest life as per the formal manners that his family background trained him into. But like a young child who insists “you have to do this because those are the rules!” all of the time, Iori is over-applying all of this, and even his own grandfather advises him that he really needs to chill (02 episodes 5, 24). In short, he struggles with thinking flexibly and understanding that life isn’t all that clear-cut, because he’s a young child. Since he also tends to bring out these things in relation to “what my father would do/say”, it’s implied that he’s basing all of this off of having only hearsay to work off of in regards to what his father was actually like, to the point of aspiring to an impossible, saintlike version of him he’d created in his head.

Note that Iori’s “rules” have less to do with institutional rules (that would be more of a Jou thing) and more to do with self-imposed personal rules; for instance, he doesn’t mind sneaking into school during a holiday when it’s obviously not hurting anyone (02 episode 6), but he struggles with things like wasting food (02 episode 3) or not formally introducing himself to an elder (02 episode 5). So in other words, his adherence to principles has heavily to do with “the right and proper way to live” more than anything, and what he believes is the right thing to do in a given situation.

Iori’s journey in 02 is largely fueled by the fact that, as an inheritor of sorts of the Crest of Knowledge, he has a sense of “I want to know and understand more” whenever he sees something that makes him curious, but unlike Koushirou’s desire to learn more about the world around him in terms of its technical workings, Iori mainly wants to know more about people. The reason he begins to let go of his inflexible mindset is that he has the humility to understand that he still has a lot more to learn and understand, and when he sees behavior from others that doesn’t make sense, he does his best to learn more about it -- hence how his aggressive probing into learning more about Takeru allows them to reach an understanding and eventual Jogress, and how he’s able to eventually reassess his own view of human morality and emotions.

Iori sticks out in that he almost always uses the formal variant of Japanese in most situations (nobody else in the 02 group does this). However, formal in this situation doesn’t necessarily mean polite; Iori doesn’t believe in flattery and will bluntly state his opinion in said formal tone, and will be very cold towards something he sufficiently disapproves of or doesn’t have any respect for, which can make him even come off as passive-aggressive at times. (Noticeably, while he still asserts his own opinion, he does refrain from criticizing the others in the 02 group too much, presumably because he respects and looks up to them a lot as his elders, regardless of how chaotic they can sometimes get.) In addition, because a lot of his demeanor comes from him restraining himself, when his emotions are sufficiently pushed over the edge, he loses grip on the polite form and starts “lapsing” back into the casual one.

Because Iori was so young during 02, and because the events of its story ended up really upending his view of the world, the huge eight-year gap between 02 and Kizuna makes it difficult to predict certain things about his demeanor at the time of Kizuna (especially since his own voice actor commented on the difficulty of conveying the nuances of Iori’s character, thanks to only being able to work with the limited time frame of a movie that doesn’t put him in the kinds of emotionally drastic situations that push him to his limit). That said, everything we’ve seen of him in the movie itself and the drama CD makes reasonable sense; now that he’s much older, he comes off as having much better restraint on his emotions and coming off as genuinely calm, but he’s still not one for flattery, and you can still see very minor slips in his facade every so often.

Armadimon also initially seems like a sharp contrast to Iori in terms of demeanor, in that he’s much more casual and laid-back, and he’s indeed a huge factor in reminding Iori to chill once in a while -- but, much like Iori, he prods and asks questions about anything he’s curious about. This initially seems to be out of simple-mindedness because, being a Digimon, he doesn’t understand human society that well, but his very basic questions often end up snapping Iori back to reality in realizing that he’s getting hung up on things that don’t actually make practical sense. Urawa also felt that Armadimon fills in some of the void that Iori’s late father left behind, in that he provides Iori with unconditional love and helps guide him.

Takeru and Patamon

Takeru is the kind of person who seems to dislike major disruptions to the status quo, so he doesn’t say anything inflammatory that’ll rock the boat. It’s very difficult to get him to talk about serious topics related to his deeper personal feelings (02 episode 17, 35, Spring 2003), and even when it’s clear he might have more misgivings on the situation, unless it’s an urgent situation where it needs to be brought up, he won’t voice his misgivings too clearly for the sake of not causing trouble (hence why Daisuke is so unsure what to make of him in the early episodes of the series, because Takeru constantly fails to clarify his own position in favor of a “good for you” or “sure, you keep believing that if you want” attitude). This also makes him the most likely to awkwardly change the subject or try to distract with small talk, and it means that, even when he’s saying cheerful, pleasant things, it’s very likely there’s pain or uncertainty under that initial facade. (Note that while his suspicions of Ken during 02 episodes 25 and 27 aren't nearly as vicious as Iori's turn out to be, we learn that he's still willing to quietly accuse Ken of working for his own self-satisfaction in the latter episode, but he never brings this up to anyone but himself.)

Because Takeru isn’t necessarily doing this to be consciously dishonest, it does mean that he also has positive applications of this tendency to take everything in stride and keep the peace, because he ends up keeping the more extreme personalities in the rest of the group in line and acts as an effective mediator. You could say that he has a pretty high amount of tolerance and a capacity for taking everyone’s points of view in mind. However, since it’s also very difficult to tell what he himself is thinking, his use of this as a poor coping mechanism for his personal trauma leads to a tendency for him to suddenly explode in a mess of emotions whenever something gets too personal, leading to sudden conflict, and with others at a loss in terms of how to deal with him (the most extreme example being 02 episode 19, but also present in 13, 11, and 34). This “two-sidedness” is why it ends up having to be the more consciously methodical Iori who steps up to try and understand him better as his Jogress partner.

Fortunately, Takeru shows signs of becoming more straightforward in the aftermath, although you can see that he still has a penchant for mild flattery and “trying to hold back for the sake of not being rude” all the way up to Kizuna (but, again, this can’t be said to necessarily be a bad thing when it means he has a valuable skill as a mediator).

Takeru has a fairly neutral speech pattern that comes off as casual but not too aggressive or assertive (not as absurdly polite as Iori’s, but slightly less assertive than Ken’s).

Patamon initially still seems to be “immature” in the same way he was in Adventure, which initially seems to widen the gap in personality between him and Takeru, but looking closer reveals that the differences aren’t as big as they seem; Patamon seems to have gained a capability for slyness and active trolling behind his playfulness (see 02 episode 7), not entirely like Takeru starting to use his evasiveness in a teasing-like manner. Moreover, Patamon does actually seem to have gained a bit of proper maturity in the meantime; see how he instructs the Baby Digimon on convenience store food in 02 episode 3, and in general seems much more willing to take independent action in ways he didn’t always in Adventure. Noticeably, Takeru’s difficulty with his own convoluted feelings means that he can’t even have a proper heart-to-heart with him about it on the situation (most glaring in 02 episode 34, where it’s implied that Takeru would rather leave Patamon to be happy right now instead of bothering him about it), especially because he’s clearly having difficulty even working it out with himself. However, despite their ostensible differences in mentality, Takeru and Patamon have no difficulty getting along at all in 02, and, other than Takeru pampering Patamon a bit, there isn’t all that strong of an impression of them being so mismatched -- perhaps because, in the end, they really aren’t all that different.

Hikari and Tailmon

Taichi stated in Adventure episode 48 that Hikari has a problem where she's so selfless and thinking of others that she'll never speak up about her own problems. Hikari states in 02 episode 31 that she compulsively cannot speak out about her own feelings even if she wanted to, to the point she’s jealous of Miyako for being able to be more open (even if it means being overkill at times). As a result: if Hikari’s talking about “the right thing to do”, or something for everyone’s sake, or something that’s relevant to other people and what’s best for them, she will be extremely vocal and quick to act, and she’s not above even chipping in with criticisms (see: 02 episodes 19, 32, 44). In fact, she’s fully capable of being playful or toying with others if she really wants to (see how she casually manipulates Daisuke into calling a lunch break for everyone in 02 episode 6).

The moment the issue at hand is about herself, though -- her own feelings or pain, or something that might hurt others’ feelings (hence the presumable reason she dodges Daisuke’s affections rather than proactively doing anything about it), or something that would put a burden on others for her own sake -- she completely clams up and refuses to do or say anything, and when bad things start happening to her, she resigns herself to her own fate and concludes she can’t do anything about it. Hence, why she takes such a defeatist attitude towards the Dark Ocean swallowing her up in 02 episodes 13 and 31, and why it’s such a big deal if she even so much as asks for help. 02 episode 31 indicates that Miyako reaching out to her is an important step in breaking her out of her shell, and the Kizuna drama CD -- which has Hikari assertively declare something she personally wants -- heavily implies further that Miyako was instrumental to this becoming possible.

Hikari is compassionate for others to the very end, expresses pity for BlackWarGreymon as early as 02 episode 31, and catches on quickly to Ken’s feelings on himself in 02 episode 37 (and even back when she’d been more skeptical about him in 02 episode 25, she never seemed to have real personal distaste against him as much as she still wanted to make sure he was trustworthy first). But although she’s one of the most compassionate in the group, she’s also one of the most assertive in the group. This leads to something that initially seems like a paradox: she’s actually more fervent about the need to fight than the more aggressive Miyako is. Miyako is, ultimately, emotionally caught up in everything and briefly falls apart at having killed LadyDevimon in 02 episode 44 (even despite knowing how horrible of a person she’d been), but Hikari is the one who points out that there would have been more victims if they hadn’t. 02 episodes 25 and 43 had made it abundantly clear that Hikari didn’t like it at all, but she states in 02 episode 37 repeatedly that they need to prevent there from being victims -- meaning that she values the importance of protecting all lives, including those who would be hurt in the process, and thus has some of the more resilient guts when it comes to the prospect of fighting to save others. Again, her hesitation only comes into play at its worst when it has to do with herself; working to save others is a no-brainer.

Hikari uses a casual feminine speech pattern that’s less in-your-face than Miyako’s, but she’s still a bit more casual than she was in Adventure, when she used the more polite watashi instead of atashi. Interestingly, Tailmon herself seems to have mirrored this as well, presumably because now that she’s had more time to recover from her miserable life under Vamdemon, she’s able to enjoy her life a bit more freely. This means that, while Tailmon is still the most mature and put-together of the Digimon partners in the 02 group, she sometimes acts a little more casual and playful in a similar way to Hikari, and while she has a certain degree of stuffy personal pride (see how she wasn’t very amused at how frivolously the other Digimon were playing around in 02 episode 3), she’s still open to enjoying herself a little more freely. Hikari, for her part, becomes surprisingly like-minded with her during those times -- see them in 02 episode 12 -- and, as stated earlier, it’s not like Hikari isn’t up for making tough decisions when they’re needed, either.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #shihameta

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tinyshe · 3 years

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Should Unvaccinated People Be Put on No-Fly List?

In June 2021, the U.S. National Security Council released a new “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” document.1 While it’s being largely framed as a tool to fight White supremacy and political extremism, the definition of what constitutes a “domestic terrorist” is incredibly vague and based on ideologies rather than specific behaviors.

It’s not difficult to imagine this policy being used to silence political opposition simply by labeling anyone who disagrees with the government as a domestic terrorist and charging them with a hate crime.

We’re already seeing signs suggesting that this is the path we’re on. July 28, 2021, Dr. Peter Hotez published a paper2 in PLOS Biology titled “Mounting Antiscience Aggression in the United States,” in which he suggests criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists ought to be labeled a “hate crime.” Commenting on the paper, Paul Joseph Watson at Summit News writes:3

“This is yet another transparent effort to dehumanize anti-lockdown protesters and demonize people who merely want to exercise bodily autonomy while elevating Fauci and his ilk to Pope-like status. Science isn’t supposed to be a religious dogma that is set in stone, it’s an ever-evolving knowledge base that changes and improves thanks to dissent and skepticism.”

Science Depends on Questioning and Challenging Assumptions

Attorney Jonathan Turley also responded to Hotez’s paper in an August 4, 2021, blog post, saying:4

“’Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.’ Feynman’s statement captures how science depends upon constant questioning and challenging of assumptions …

[T]here remain important debates over not just the underlying science relation to Covid-19 but the implications for such science for public policies. Criminalizing aspects of that debate would ratchet up the threats against those with dissenting views, including some scientists. That would harm not just free speech but science in the long run.”

Should We Have Protected Classes That Cannot Be Questioned?

Turley also points out how making scientists a protected class (and one would assume only those with specific political leanings) is a slippery slope that will likely have unwieldy ramifications:5

“The federal hate crime laws focus on basis of a person’s characteristics of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We have seen calls for adding professions like police officers, which I also opposed.

As with police officers, the inclusion of such professions would have a direct and inimical impact on free speech in our society. Indeed, it would create a slippery slope as other professions demand inclusion from reporters to ministers to physicians. Hate crimes would quickly apply to a wide array of people due to their occupations.”

Will America Accept No-Fly List for Unvaccinated?

Writing for The Atlantic,6 former assistant secretary for Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem posits that people who do not want to be part of the COVID injection experiment “need to bear the burden” when it comes to preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

“The number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available,” Kayyem writes.7 “Many public agencies are responding by reimposing masking rules on everyone.

But at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people.

The White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate … but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take.

It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel — and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.”

Travel Ban Identified as Effective Coercion Strategy

According to Kayyem, traveling in general and flying in particular is not a human right, and putting unvaccinated individuals on a no-fly list is a matter of national security, in the sense that the country needs to protect itself from people capable of spreading this dangerous virus.

She makes no mention of the scientifically confirmed fact that none of the COVID shots actually prevent you from getting infected, and that “vaccinated” individuals carry the same viral load as the unvaccinated,8,9 which means they’re just as infectious. The main difference is that vaccinated individuals might not realize that they’re carriers, as the primary effect when the injections do work is lessening symptoms of infection.

Kayyem also cites a New York Times and Kaiser Family Foundation poll in which 41% of unvaccinated respondents had said prohibition on airline travel would sway their decision, including 11% of those “adamantly opposed” to vaccination. In other words, where free doughnuts and million-dollar lotteries have failed to coerce people to get the shot, an airline travel ban might do the trick.

Despite her former position within government, she makes no mention of laws forbidding coercion of medical volunteers, such as the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46 (subpart A, the Belmont report),10 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty,11 the Declaration of Helsinki12 or the Nuremberg Code.13 Supreme court rulings have also clarified that Americans have the right to choose their own health care in general.14,15

Reframing to Confuse the Issue

Kayyem suggests circumventing such basic human rights by reframing the issue. She writes:16

“The public debate about making vaccination a precondition for travel, employment, and other activities has described this approach as vaccine mandates, a term that … suggests that unvaccinated people are being ordered around arbitrarily.

What is actually going on, mostly, is that institutions are shifting burdens to unvaccinated people ... rather than imposing greater burdens on everyone.

Americans still have a choice to go unvaccinated, but that means giving up on certain societal benefits. Nobody has a constitutional right to attend The Lion King on Broadway or work at Disney or Walmart … People who still want to wait and see about the vaccines can continue doing so. They just can’t keep pushing all the costs on everyone else.”

As pointed out by Swift Headline,17 the owner of Atlantic magazine, Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, owns two private jets herself, giving her the freedom to fly around the world at will, regardless what vaccine mandates might be in place. Many other ultra-rich individuals would also be able to ignore the rules due to wealth alone, essentially turning them into a protected class. Swift Headline points out this projection:18

“The Atlantic went on to say unvaccinated people who are exercising their individual rights as free Americans ‘do not deserve’ to be a ‘protected class’ …

Jobs’s wealth and class status is detailed in Breitbart News’ Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow’s book, ‘Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruptions,’ which ‘exposes the hidden connections between the establishment media and the activist left.’

As Marlow details, Jobs’s past is a privileged one ... Jobs ‘married well and inherited a lot of money, and her wealth is tied up in some of world’s biggest companies,’ Marlow continues. ‘She is the establishment.’”

The Price of Admission to Society

August 2, 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle also published an opinion piece19 by the Chronicle editorial board, in which they suggested we ought to “Make vaccination the price of admission to society.” One way to evaluate the reasonableness of such a proposition is to replace COVID “vaccination” with anything else. How about: “Make proof of contraception use the price of admission to bars and nightclubs.”

“Make clear skin the price of admission to gyms and public swimming pools.” “Make being taller than 5’ 9” the price of admission to theme parks.” “Make having a BMI below 25 the price of admission to airline flights.” “Make proof of not having an illness the price of admission to in-hospital care.”

According to the Chronicle editorial board, “the unvaccinated account for over 95% of hospitalizations and deaths.”20 The board does not cite where it got that data from, so let’s review the source of that data.

In an August 5, 2021, video statement, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky noted that this statistic was obtained by looking at hospitalization and mortality data from January through June 2021 — a timeframe during which the vast majority of the United States population were unvaccinated.

The narrative that we’re in a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ was created by using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated. When you look at more recent data, the trend is swinging in the opposite direction.

January 1, 2021, only 0.5% of the U.S. population had received a COVID shot. By mid-April, an estimated 31% had received one or more shots,21 and as of June 15, 48.7% were fully “vaccinated.”22

The CDC has also pointed out that you are not considered “fully vaccinated” until two weeks after your second dose (in the case of Pfizer or Moderna), which is given six weeks after your first shot.23 This means that if you receive your first dose on June 1, you won’t be “fully vaccinated” until eight weeks later, around August 1.

So, the narrative that we’re in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” was created by using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated. When you look at more recent data, the trend is swinging in the opposite direction.

Vaccinated Now Comprise the Bulk of Hospitalizations

For example, August 1, 2021, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, director of Israel’s Public Health Services, announced half of all COVID-19 infections were among the fully vaccinated.24

A few days later, August 5, Dr. Kobi Haviv, director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, appeared on Channel 13 News, reporting that 95% of severely ill COVID-19 patients are fully vaccinated, and that they make up 85% to 90% of COVID related hospitalizations overall.25

In Scotland, official data on hospitalizations and deaths show 87% of those who have died from COVID-19 in the third wave that began in early July were vaccinated,26 and in Gibraltar, which has a 99% COVID jab compliance rate, COVID cases have risen by 2,500% since June 1, 2021.27

A CDC investigation of an outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts between July 6 through July 25, 2021, found 74% of those who received a diagnosis of COVID19, and 80% of hospitalizations, were among the fully vaccinated.28,29 Most, but not all, had the Delta variant.

“What the breakthrough cases appear to show is that the delta variant of the coronavirus is more easily carried and transmitted by vaccinated people than its predecessors,” the Chronicle editorial board writes.30

“In any case, the greater apparent transmissibility of the variant makes it that much more important to protect as many people as possible from severe COVID by increasing inoculation rates.”

What the board appears to be saying is that unvaccinated people must be protected against severe infection, against their will, if need be, and the best way to do that is to discriminate against them and treat them like second-class citizens.

Again, a simple way to check the reasonableness of this argument is to swap out the COVID reference for something else. How about, “It’s important to protect as many people as possible from dying in car accidents by raising car prices so fewer people can get behind the wheel.”

Can ‘Big Brother’ Save You From a Virus?

As early as April 2020, The Times in the U.K. weighed in with similar suggestions, stating “We need Big Brother to beat this virus.”31 Clare Foges, the author of the piece in question, went on to say, “Don’t let the civil liberties lobby blind us to the fact that greater state surveillance, including ID cards, is required.”

The argument that Big Brother can protect us from infection is ludicrous on its face, because no amount of people surveillance can prevent microscopic viruses from circulating.

The No. 1 place of viral spread is in institutions, such as nursing homes and hospitals, yet the staff within them are among the most well-trained in pathogenic control. If trained hospital staff can’t prevent the spread of viruses, how can government officials do it?

Importantly, the argument that we need vaccine passports to prove we’re “clean” enough to participate in society immediately falls apart when you take into account the fact that the COVID shots do not provide immunity. You can still be infected, carry the virus and spread it to others.

We’ve already seen several examples of situations where 100% of people were fully “vaccinated” against COVID-19 yet an outbreak occurred. We’ve even seen over 100 fully COVID injected people die from COVID in one state alone, Massachusetts,32 so it is likely there are now many thousands of fully “vaccinated” who have died from COVID.

Even a 100% Vaccination Rate Cannot Eliminate COVID

Most recently, Carnival cruise lines experienced an outbreak despite every last person on that ship having proof of COVID “vaccination.”33 The cruise liner had even intentionally reduced capacity from 4,000 to 2,800 to provide ample social distancing capability. None of the measures worked. People got sick anyway, which makes perfect sense if you remember that the shot doesn’t provide immunity, only symptom reduction.

Cases such as these clearly reveal that even if everyone gets the shot, SARS-CoV-2 will mutate and continue to circulate, taking people out here and there. To think that giving up basic rights and freedoms is the answer simply isn’t logical. Taking responsibility for your own health is, and that includes deciding if and how you want to protect yourself from SARS-CoV-2.

Not everyone is deathly afraid of COVID-19. Many realize there are safe and effective treatments available, such as the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s I-MASS Prevention and At-Home Treatment protocol and I-MASK+ Early Outpatient Treatment protocol.

Nebulized hydrogen peroxide can also be used for prevention and treatment of COVID-19, as detailed in Dr. David Brownstein’s case paper34 and Dr. Thomas Levy’s free e-book, “Rapid Virus Recovery.” And if there’s effective treatment, there’s little need to risk permanent side effects from an experimental gene technology that can only provide a narrow range of protection in the first place.

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola August 17, 2021

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hollenius · 4 years

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Talking Heads: Are These Guys Trying To Give Rock A Bad Name?

Having fun trawling the internet for more old interviews and things with different bands & musicians. Here’s a Talking Heads one from 1977.

Talking Heads: Are These Guys Trying To Give Rock A Bad Name?

Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 25 June 1977

TALKING HEADS: it's a term they use up in the high-rise skyscrapers that house all the cogs in the corporate machinery cranking out network television for the American people.

The big-wigs in the boardroom – the William Holdens and Robert Duvalls of Network land – have a name for the lowest common-denominator programme non-personalities – the newscaster, weather-reporters, and other old warhorses who sit head and shoulders directly on camera mouthing out their obligatory tasks. These are the "talking heads" of American TV land; utterly boring, but necessary.

Talking heads with greying hair, dabs of make-up and dandruff removed from the shoulders of their suit-jackets, they sit austerely informing the public of the nation's daily occurences – the rapes and murders, the military campaigns abroad, the latest government manouevres. No opinions, no subjective slant to their reports – they simply precis it down, feed it out to those millions of tubes and when it's over they go away, back to the bar or to the suburban home, wife and kids.

David Byrne, guitarist and singer for the Talking Heads, an American rock group, has a song that he wrote and performs entitled 'Don't Worry About The Government'. It usually gets played early on in the set, with no prefacing explanation – just Byrne's reedy high-pitched voice almost stammering "This next song is called..."

And every time he introduced it to an audience in England, certain factions would snigger or boo or howl derisively because Talking Heads after all are a NEW WAVE group and if you are a New Wave group you must write direct anti-status quo, sloganeering songs of dissent. Just like The Clash or Chelsea or...

But Byrne's song isn't like that at all.

It's about an ordinary man who owns an apartment in some American suburb and who lives a quiet, fairly inconsequential existence, going to work in the morning and returning in the evening, who gains pleasure from life simply through drinking wine with friends or reading a book. There is no hint of moral castigation, no hint of cynicism, Byrne just places himself in his character's psyche and explains himself through his song.

It's a rare talent this, something much closer to the art of the very best short-story writers, a talent that only Ray Davies and Randy Newman before him, out of all the thousands of post-war song-writers, have bothered to identify with and explore perceptively.

"I just thought," said Byrne, "that lyrics could be used to strip down conversations, just normal day-to-day converstions and dialogues, and strip away all the phoney embellishments and posturing right down to essentials so that they would actually say something directly, without having to throw in all the 'Oh yeah, baby' or 'Hey, bitch I'm coming to get ya right now' or...

"Pa-a-arty," chips in Jerry Harrison, the Talking Heads' keyboard player.

Everybody laughs.

NOT AN easy band to write about, these Talking Heads. They mystify arid confuse simply because they so patently lack any dint of the arch brand of mystique that forms a patented cloak for the rock star enigma. Four intelligent, straightforward individuals, the very straightforward nature of their music and their image is somehow unique to the genre they have chosen to work within.

Not that the press haven't attempted time and time again to write about them, almost always in flattering terms.

They emerged as a live attraction in the hot summer of 1975 when Manhattan's CBGB's had suddenly been designated the centre-point of all new-wave rock activity, and were immediately slotted in with the likes of Television, Patti Smith, The Ramones, and Heartbreakers as the pace-setters right there at the vanguard of this brave new scene. Convenient tags like 'punk' and 'art-rock' found themselves strange bed-fellows in numerous articles consummated by the inevitable bandying of the term 'minimalism'.

New York rock critics, having witnessed the ugly death of the New York Dolls brand of gashed-up rock, latched on fast to this new austerely dressed-down form of the music, and the Talking Heads, suddenly caught in the swell, found themselves holding down the cover of the prestigious Village Voice with a photograph taken at only their third gig. Inside was a rave-review of said show with an extensive article.

Since then, coverage has been as extensive as it has been perplexingly unforthcoming in regard to mere bottom line info on what the band were actually all about.

What was disclosed was that the band was a trio then, led by the angular, neurotic-looking Byrne who carried all guitar, vocal and composing chores, while the bass-player was a slight blonde-haired girl called Tina Weymouth whose basic feminist features were undermined by a slightly asexual manner. Drummer Chris Frantz was baby-faced and pleasantly effeminate.

Their music, though, seemed incapable of being pigeon-holed and continually presented reviewers with a daunting problem.

Having witnessed the band on four separate occasions over this last highly successful European tour, it became at once apparent that the care of Talking Heads' repertoire – principally Byrne's songs – is not something that casual acquaintance can unveil. At first, they intrigue as much as they bemuse, but the deeper you dig the more you uncover. Like Television, Talking Heads must be divorced from pigeon-holed surroundings because there is nothing currently existing in the rock context that they can be favourably compared to.

Byrne's melodies are so insidious that they often totally by-pass the conventional quarters that rock music usually attempts to stimulate, instead going deeper, often lodging themselves in your subconscious. One song, after I'd witnessed the band only once at the Rock Garden, somehow kept manifesting itself in my dreams – this strange, utterly disarming descending chord motif would haunt me until I'd wake up desperately trying to recall it. It was only later that I even got to learn the song's title, 'The Book I Read'.

THIS IS how the band's music works – in a way that transcends conventional avenues of 'rock criticism' where parallels to established musical forms become redundant and trite. When one has finally achieved some intimacy and contact with the repertoire, the music alone is overwhelming at times. One song – Byrne's 'I'm Not In Love' – twists and turns, its twined guitar rhythms chattering and spitting like snap-dragons with sudden unsettling changes, its chorus brash and pointedly announced – before it charges off, climaxing in a devastating one chord richochet of sound. Each song takes on a personality of its own as one becomes more and more acquainted – the jagged paranoid thrashings of 'What Is It?' full of technical malevolence, the richly textured abrasive changes of 'No Compassion', that utterly disarming motif to 'The Book I Read'.

Similarly the lyrics make themselves apparent in this same insidious fashion, via sudden dazzling couplets or single lines that grab you as Byrne's introvert-gone-psychotic delivery tortuously builds up and up, eyes reeling like wild horses in a flood, his pitching often totally awry but his sheer intensity galvanising because this man is truly grabbing hold of his songs, each and every utterance, like a drowning man grabbing straws.

Byrne's performance is, in fact, full of the tortured passion and gut-commitment that many of us were hoping for and found so disappointingly lacking in Tom Verlaine's recent shows in Britain. Like Verlaine, Byrne is totally the master of his chosen medium, yet there is an edge to Byrne that is so much more human.

Where Verlaine is oh-so calculatingly distant, Byrne's thrashing desperate need to communicate his songs grants his music a whole other dimension of sheer humanity and warmth a million light years removed from the cold arch-romanticism of Television's guiding light.

OFF-STAGE, sitting with his cohorts in Talking Heads, Byrne exudes all the cooped-up mannerisms of a caged bird. He seems to be suffering from some arch nervous defect that would need a constant ingestion of valium to assuage. Twitching almost, he sits hunched up in a chair, ungainly like a parody of look-alike Tony Perkins. When he talks, his voice is weak and reedy and often his attempts to explain certain facets of his songs – particularly his lyrics – lead him into weird tangential awkward ramblings that cause other members of the band, Tina Weymouth in particular, to open displays of ridicule which make him even more edgy. He looks embarrassed and bows his head slightly.

Observing him, I can't help feeling concerned for his obvious discomfort, as if any form of socializing causes the man to undergo real psychic pain. He later admits to the gross discomfort of what is really just a fairly casual conversation, and claims that performing affords him infinite more relaxation.

"I can express parts of my personality on stage that I would never dare do in any other context."

Byrne's past remains obscured by the haziness of his own recollections. He talks about working in art galleries in the past, though he didn't in fact paint, while he claims his previous vocation while in college was to write up detailed questionnaires, until song-writing became an infinitely more agreeable pastime.

In contrast, the other three members of Talking Heads carry themselves in this social set-up with an ease and general open-ness.

Tina Weymouth appears fairly disinterested at first, more concerned with scanning the pages of the latest Oui, but is suddenly forthcoming when a question is either directed her way or else grabs her attention. Chris Frantz seems perfectly in sync with the whole interview routine, lavishing over most of his answers with great and entertainingly 'camp' detail.

And then there is Jerry Harrison, the newest member in the group, a veteran of only six months or less, but who has already obviously orientated himself into the consortium with great alacrity. Harrison is the most locquacious of the band and, with Frantz, the most forthcoming. His history as a musician is already full of worthy fodder for discourse, since he started his career as an integral founding force with Jonathon Richman in the Modern Lovers, about whom his reminiscences are nothing if not extremely witty.

"Well, you probably know that we started the Modern Lovers as a real cause – y'know, we were anti-drugs for a start, due to the fact that at that time in the States all the kids were just oohing themselves on quaaludes. So we'd go onstage and start our sets with this number called 'I'm Straight' which would immediately cause all the audience to start throwing things – oh, rotten fruit, bottles, cans, anything – at us."

The Lovers' history was short due firstly to their corporate snooty attitude to playing clubs of the ilk of Max's Kansas City – "We didn't want to be associated with the N.Y. Dolls or this or that...so we never played anywhere" – plus the traumas that followed the band being signed by John Cale to Warner Bros, who after financing an album (produced by Cale – it was finally released last year by Beserkley) decided to drop the band, leaving them penniless in Los Angeles.

Even when the album was being made, Harrison claims there were problems.

"Well this was around the time when Jonathan was starting to want to write and sing only happy songs (laughs). So there'd be continual arguments between Cale and him over how we should sing certain numbers. Cale would be saying 'Now, Jonathon, I want you to sing this in a mean way. And Jonathon would just look at him, y'know – 'Mean? I won't sing mean! I don't feel mean!"

"And he (Richman) kept going through changes of direction. Like one time he'd be totally into the Velvet Underground and early Stooges, and then he was suddenly enamoured with Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and he'd want to alter his whole style. Also he's a total astrology freak. You know that song, 'Astral Plane'? Well he was always having these visions – or so he said – and writing songs about them. Things like....oh God (he starts laughing again) 'I saw you by, the waterway, the waterway, the waterway' – just on and on. We'd have to tell him to forget it."

After the Modern Lovers broke up, Richman briefly went onstage backed only by a bunch of kids beating rolled-up newspapers in time to his songs, before disappearing altogether for a long spell to (according to John Cale) lock himself in his bedroom.

When Harrison is asked whether he feels more comfortable being in Talking Heads than Richman's motley crew he simply sighs, "Infinitely."

MUCH OF the conversation is taken up with the subject of the British New Wave and how the remarkably civilised T. Heads have found themselves having to cope with the more agressive elements at their concerts, particularly as they've been supporting the head-banger's friend, The Ramones.

Seems the atmosphere has never actually soured and that circumstances have been pretty agreeable all the way along.

From the other new wave bands of this country, T. Heads claim not to have incurred any particular animosity.

"Only Rat Scabies has caused a scene," claims Weymouth. "He appeared backstage at the Greyhound in Croydon and tried to get one of us to fight him. When we showed ourselves to be totally disinterested in that course of action, he contented himself with spitting on the floor and walking out. I felt rather sorry for him."

Meanwhile back in New York, the band have yet to break out of the New York club circuit set-up they've been working in for at least the last two years.

A record deal with Sire (whose head, Seymour Stein, is the only executive to have fully committed himself to the New Wave, having also inked The Ramones, Richard Hell, and now, apparently, The Dead Boys, – a Cleveland pastiche of England's punk excesses) has produced the single 'Love Goes To Building On Fire', an addictive though comparatively slight song from the band's repertoire.

A Talking Heads album however is scheduled for September release produced by Tony Bongiovi and with five backing tracks already in the can. Ten tracks are scheduled – all Byrne originals including 'Pyschokiller', 'The Book I Read', 'No Compassion', 'Happy Day', and 'I'm Not In Love', the only unfortunate matter being the probable exclusion of the band's brilliantly terse rendering of Al Green's 'Take Me To The River'.

The band are still a guaranteed sell-out at C.B.G.B.'s on any given night, a not inconsiderable feat as many other similarly prestigious local bands are unable apparently to do the same – and on their own minor league waterfront they've gauged a strong cult audience.

But then there is something extremely addictive about this band's music – potent enough to make Byrne an object of paranoid fear in the eyes of Tom Verlaine (who according to Weymouth is very nervous of Byrne's status on the New York scene – as perverted a compliment as anything that can be divined from Verlaine's psyche one supposes). Meanwhile Byrne is also considered the most singularly brilliant new songwriter currently in the States by John Cale, and even Lou Reed has lent a sizeable quota of suspiciously paternal advice.

Weymouth: "Yeah, I'd say he was actually genuinely trying to help us. I wouldn't say he was trying to rip us off, for example."

Byrne: "That's not true."

Weymouth: "How can you say that, David? I mean..."

Byrne: "Because he told me he ripped some of my ideas off. Not that I'm angry or anything."

How did the...uh gentleman go about this paternal business then?

"God...he'd invite us round to his apartment and insult us for a solid hour, particularly me. He'd always insult the clothes I was wearing, or my shoes. Then after that, he'd start to be more reasonable and actually have an agreeable conversation with us."

Byrne goes silent for a minute and then, for the first time, he seems calm and relaxed.

"Do you want to know...I'll tell you how much we've come on in the last two years, the real symbol of progress in Talking Heads, Now I can go round to Lou Reed's apartment and I can be rude to him!"

#talking heads #articles #david byrne #jerry harrison #tina weymouth #chris frantz #new musical express #nme #1970s

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spooky-chapscher · 4 years

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I want to talk about Steven’s comments in the latest HWYD. There are apparently quite a few posts cancelling him and I have seen many more fully supporting his comments. I don’t agree with either.

For context, here is the moment of discussion, which occurs at 53:22 in “Surviving a Boring Job” in response to a submitted question where the writer, Janette Shortlocker, wants to cut ties with a racist, homophobic friend but isn’t sure when or how to do so. Steven says the following:

“I have a lot of friends who are a little bit racist and a little bit homophobic and I’m still friends with them. And I’m not saying that I’m friends with them because of their values*, I just value them as people themselves and I try to keep them around and try to, you know, educate them with what I can, but it’s not something that… I don’t want to cut ties with everybody because of their belief system*, because, frankly, I have a different value system than Katie and Shane and Ryan.”

*In his apology (found on the podcast video’s comments section), Steven apologized for his word choice here. He writes, “Racism and homophobia are not values, belief systems, or ideals, they are simply hate and nothing more. Furthermore, there is no amount of intolerance that is okay when it comes to validating someone’s humanity and identity.”

I am not here to discuss the unfortunate word-choice, which I will generously frame as an unfortunate byproduct of this sort of off-the-cuff podcast format. Why he would associate the words “value” and “belief system” with bigotry I’ll get into in my main point.

I’ll come out and say that I do not agree with the message of what Steven was trying to convey on the podcast. I will say, as a queer Latino, that if you know someone who has embraced racism/homophobia/etc… that person isn’t your friend. This person either rejected you or will reject you eventually based on some other thing they can hate. You can know them, you can have a history with them, you can want to help them, you can try to help them… but you are not “friends.”

I say this as someone who has fully dropped people from my life because of shit like this. Friends, mentors, family members. It might sound cruel, but after knowing someone endorses shit like this it leaves a sour aftertaste to every otherwise fond memory I have of them. Like, “wow, I thought things were great but it turns out that they were hurting other people and I had no idea.” That sort of shit really bothers me.

Note that these people I cut out “embraced” bigotry. I do have friends who have occasionally said some kinda prejudiced shit and I have said “whoa, what?” Sometimes it led to earnest discussions of race or class or religion. Sometimes it prompts them saying “oh shit, you’re right. I didn’t think that through. I guess I don’t know that much about it.” But, you know what, the prejudice goes away after this talk and doesn’t rear its head again. Because the prejudiced shit was something that was offhandedly said and normalized by society, not something my friend genuinely believed. And when your friends do this, confront it in (initial) good faith that they didn’t mean what they said. I mean, you probably made mistakes like this too, I know I have, and every time I feel like my friends have made me a better person by calling out some ignorance that I wasn’t even aware of.

But when you try to address prejudice and a bigoted person stands their ground or, even worse, tries to counter with “well, agree to disagree;” then I think that’s the time to start distancing yourself from this person. The “friend” in Shortlocker’s letter is this type of person, and I hope that Shortlocker is able to cut them out of their life as quickly and cleanly as possible. But that’s just my opinion.

Cutting people out can be a very difficult decision, especially if you’re younger and the person in question is a family member. For people of any age, it’s a difficult call to make when the bigoted friend holds some kind of position of power over you – be they a boss, a landlord, a mentor, a spiritual leader, or just someone who can make you miserable or put you in danger if you get on their bad side. All I can say is that you do not need to announce to someone that you’re done with them. You can become “busy” with a project or another friend who “needs help” and then steadily grow apart from this hateful-ass friend until they’re only a hateful-ass acquaintance. Please stay safe.

Why I’m this way goes into where I think Steven’s coming from. Some people have commented that holding onto racist and homophobic friends is “unlike” Steven. I disagree. If anything, I think this is very on-brand for him, if only because I know quite a few religious Midwesterners and almost all of them are like this. I have seen my parents try to hold onto friends who once marched with them for civil rights but the friends ended up radicalized by racists after moving to small towns. I have seen friends try to maintain work friendships where my friends would have to remain closeted or risk losing their job. My parents and these friends? All quite religious. And none of the “friends” they tried to change ended up changing, which left the people I care about miserable and hurt.

There’s this sort of attempt to turn the other cheek, because that’s the righteous thing to do. It is what my parents and people like them genuinely believe. So no, they wouldn’t approach hatred with hostility or indignation, as I would, but instead approach it with the genuine belief that this “friend” is misguided and needs to be shown the light, an action which requires love and patience. Perhaps it’s because it’s how it was raised, but I think that’s a very noble approach, despite the obvious roots in evangelism. Part of me wants to believe that with enough time and love (and therapy) that someone can unlearn their own hatred. That’s a beautiful thing. There have been stories of a number of people who truly have turned their lives around after being helped by a friend… I just have yet to ever see this actually happen.

With this in mind, it makes sense to me why someone who believes this will find ways to rationalize keeping someone so hateful in their lives. On one hand, staying with this hateful person in order to help them is an act of charity, which is a good thing. On the other hand, staying with this hateful person might make them think that their behavior is appropriate, which is a bad thing. However, having healthy debates and discussions with someone with different beliefs than you and trying to find compromise and common ground is a good thing. It’s certainly easier on the conscience if, during these discussions, you think of your friend’s hatred as a “value” that you need to learn to see from their perspective in order to fully understand and confront properly. And when someone is so far into this line of thinking, it’s sometimes difficult for them to remember that there are people on the outside who are still being hurt by this person. It’s easy to forget, when trying to salvage a relationship, that ignoring the hurt of others is itself an act of cruelty.

The root of this discussion is “why do people hate” and, basically, I think it’s because they have found some kind of community in their bigotry. Their family is like that or their friends are like that or their neighborhood is like that or their online circles are like that or their entertainers are like that. There are so many people telling them “everyone in the circle is good and everyone outside the circle is evil and untrustworthy and will hurt you.” Some people, like my parents and other religious Midwesterners, will think that the way to confront this is by repeatedly demonstrating that “no, there is nothing inherently wrong with the people outside the circle,” in hopes that their dissenting voice will overwhelm all the other insider voices.

My approach is that if you make the circle as small as possible then eventually they’ll have nobody to talk to and start rethinking the whole “outsiders bad” thing. I’ve gone back and checked on a few people I cut out. Some of them are still in their hate circle. Some of them have left the circle and started a new life and I’m proud of them and if we ever meet again I’d give them another chance.

The heart of Steven’s sentiments come from a place of good intentions and reflect a philosophy that firmly believes that people want to better themselves morally. I do not share this philosophy and think that his approach minimizes and risks trivializing hateful actions. It puts far too much of an emphasis on making sure the bigoted person is comfortable and not enough emphasis on defending the targets of the bigot’s hatred.

Our aim should always be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

I disagree with Steven’s approach and hope that he will do better in the future when discussing things like this. Hopefully he’ll take the time to consider how his actions impact those he means to defend.

(If you’re curious, my philosophy is that we all want to make each other happy the best way we know how. Self-betterment has only a minor role to play in all this. For some people happiness means helping others and telling jokes and making art and cooking and all that good stuff. For some people this “happiness” comes from keeping those closest to them inside their walled-off circle, firmly believing that the outside world would hurt them. These people far too often go out of their way to harm outsiders, be it through verbal abuse, physical violence, or systematic violence - leading to larger societal issues such as legalized discrimination, redlining, and corrupt law enforcement).

(Oh, and regarding Shane and Katie’s lack of comment to this… at first I was let down and hoping that they just wanted to avoid a very long debate at the end of a podcast that was already approaching the hour mark. But, after giving it a little more thought, it would be kinda gross if Katie and Shane went out of their way to police how Steven handles his racist friends, what with them both being white. I understand their reluctance to speak up on this matter but still feel that there should have been a better way to deal with it… although I don’t know what that way is.)

#discourse

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wafkarachi · 5 years

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66 women’s rights, human rights, digital rights and feminists groups endorse statement on internet blackout in Kashmir

28 August 2019

We, a coalition of 66 women's rights, human rights, digital rights and feminists groups, condemn in the strongest possible terms the blatant violation of the right to freedom of expression, access to information, movement and peaceful assembly by the Indian government through a blanket network and internet shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir since the evening of August 4, 2019. We believe that access to communication networks, including the internet, is a fundamental human right and the current media blackout is tantamount to silencing the voices of millions of residents in Jammu and Kashmir.

We recognise that the current situation is not an aberration, it is rather part of a systematic effort by the BJP-led government to silence and exclude dissent from the region: the current internet and network shutdown is part of larger pattern of regular shutdowns in the disputed region; in 2019 alone 51 internet shutdowns have been imposed in Jammu and Kashmir. The right to access communication networks is an important prerequisite to the exercise to other democratic and fundamental rights, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have been systematically denied these rights.

It worries us that the latest shutdown has been expanded to block all communication, landline phones and cable TV in addition to the internet. Since August 4, 2019 there has been a complete media blackout on information inside and outside the conflict-ridden valley, in violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which has been ratified by India:

“Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”

The humanitarian impact of this blackout is palatable as family members have been unable to reach their loved ones inside Jammu and Kashmir. Freedom of movement has also severely restricted as curfew imposed under section 144 to stop movement during the day. These restrictions have thwarted the access basic services such as emergency medical care--the human cost of this blackout is immeasurable. Businesses in the region have suffered irreparable losses, devastating the local economy. 5,000 arrests have been made in a clampdown since the communications blackout started.

This communication blackout has been instrumentalized to remove a provision (Article 370) of the Indian Constitution that directly impacts the autonomy of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. We are extremely concerned that the pairing of the blackout with the passage of the constitutional amendment points towards a dangerous and draconian approach to democratic decision-making--the people of region cannot express their opinions regarding the decision and possibly have no way of knowing that the legal status of their home has drastically changed. We believe that communication networks during times of conflict and political turmoil are important to prevent further human rights violations and arbitrary measures. Given the excesses of the Indian army in the past, the lack of information and reporting from the region is extremely concerning.

We also condemn the uneven application of community guidelines and content regulation by social media companies such as Twitter to silence users critiquing the official narrative of the Modi-led Indian government and amplifying the voices of Kashmiris on the ground. According to estimates, more than 200 Twitter accounts have been suspended for posting about Kashmir. Furthermore notices have been sent to Twitter users for allegedly “violating the laws of India”. At a time when voices of people from the region are being systematically excluded, these suspensions and notices amount to gross negligence on the part of social media companies.

The United Nations has termed this communications blackout as “unprecedented”, “disproportionate” and constituting “collective punishment”. David Kaye, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression, stated: “I can’t recall a situation where there has been a total blackout of not only the two-way, multi-point communication systems that we are familiar with now – anything on the internet, WhatsApp etc – but also the one-direction communications like TV”.

We urge that urgent and strict action be taken by the international community to address the international law violations. We demand that the blanket ban on communication network be lifted with immediate effect. We stand in solidarity with the people of Jammu and Kashmir in their legitimate struggle for the right to determination.

Signatories:

Asma Jahangir Legal Aid Cell (AGHS) ASR Resource Centre Association for Behavior and Knowledge Transformation (ABKT) Aurat Foundation Aurat Haq Aurat March Karachi Aurat March Lahore AwazFoundationPakistan: Centre for Development Services Baidarie Balochistan Media Association Beaconhouse National University Feminist Community Bolo Bhi, Pakistan Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) Center for Artificial Intelligence Center for Cyber Security Pakistan Center for Cyber Security Pakistan Centre for Social Justice Channan Christian Muslim Peace Combine FiOS Courting the Law, Pakistan Damen Support Programme DCHD Digital Rights Foundation (DRF), Pakistan Farmers Development Organization FDO Pakistan Freedom Network Girls at Dhabas Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Human Rights Defenders United for Digital Rights Institute for Peace and Secular Studies Institute of Research, Advocacy and development (IRADA), Pakistan Internet Policy Observatory Pakistan Internet Policy Observatory Pakistan Joint Action Committee Khwendo kor Media Matters for Democracy Minorities Rights Watch Network of Women Journalists for Digital Rights Omar Asghar Khan Foundation Pakistan Press Foundation Participatory Welfare Services - PWS Participatory Welfare Services, Layyah Peasants women society Pakistan Quetta City Live Shirkat Gah - Women’s Resource Centre Social Action Transformation of Humanity (SATH Pakistan) South Asia Partnership - Pakistan SPACE (Sufism for Peace & Co-existence) Sungi Takhleeq Foundation

Tehrik-e-Niswan The Cecil & Iris Chaudhry Foundation (CICF) The SAWERA Foundation

War Against Rape (WAR), Lahore WISE Women Action Forum Hyderabad Women Action Forum Islamabad Women Action Forum Karachi Women Action Forum Lahore Women Democratic Front Women’s Regional Network Youth Observatory Pakistan

International Organisations

Afro Leadership Cameroon Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE) Freedom Forum Nepal Internet Sans Frontières NetBlocks

#Statement #Kashmir #internet blackout

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popatochisssp · 5 years

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Fur a Good Time, Call... 1/15

Series: Undertale, Horrortale Relationship(s): HT!Sans/Reader Chapter Warnings: animal cruelty, entirely off-screen and non-graphic

You work at an animal shelter. You love all your fuzzy buddies and can't imagine a better job for yourself than looking after cats and dogs all day, even when the work is hard and often gross. What can you say? You've got a lot of love to give!

You're just not quite sure yet how you feel about the new monster who's been helping out these days, and this riddle wrapped up in an enigma is something you just can't resist investigating...

AO3 Link

Prologue - Curiosity

You weren’t quite sure what to make of the new guy.

When your boss had bullied you into using some of your vacation days, you hadn’t been thrilled. You’d protested, actually—you didn’t have anywhere you wanted to go and no social life to speak of, and the animals needed you!

There was always so much to be done at the shelter and you prided yourself as one of their most dedicated full-timers. If there was a dog needing a walk or a cat screaming for some dinner, you were right there with a smile (and some silly baby-talk), ready to take care of it.

Pets were your passion and nothing made you happier than to help out the ones that hadn’t found their forever-homes just yet.

But…maybe you were working a bit too hard. As the shelter manager was quick to point out, you were going on three years without a full day off and no matter how much you loved the work, burnout was a thing that happened to people and not something she wanted to happen to her best worker.

Flattery: your Achilles’ heel.

She insisted on a break, no less than a week, and since you were so worried about the animals, she’d even try to get a couple extra volunteers to keep things covered while you were out.

You caved in and had a frustratingly great week at home doing absolutely nothing and then went back to work where the same amount of nothing had caught fire in your absence.

Everything was totally fine, great even, thanks to the irreproachable work of the newest volunteer your manager had dug up.

“hey. where’d you want these again?”

You turned, jumping just a little when you came face to sternum with the man himself. He was staring down at you from his considerable height, his single brick-red eye large and glowing as he waited for your answer… probably about the three pallets of kibble he had slung over his shoulder.

“Oh! You can just put those over by the dog room, I’ll take it from there.” You smiled at him, hoping you looked friendly. “Thanks for getting them, I can never reach without the step-ladder!”

He just shrugged. “s’cool. i got it.”

And then he was off, moving far quieter than you thought a skeleton of his massive size should be able to.

Then again, it’s not like you knew many skeletons: it was just Sans.

Monsters had come up to the surface only a year ago: creatures of magic emerging from the depths of the earth like out of a fantasy novel, but all too real. Humanity was collectively horrified and demanded an immediate response to their arrival, governments from all over the world snapping into action faster than any bureaucracy had moved in centuries.

And you were so proud of your dumb species for the first time in a long time.

The appalling conditions of the Underground and the hunched and broken bodies of the monsters who emerged from it had triggered a visceral, emotional response in nearly everyone who saw them. In an outpouring of pity and compassion, monsters were quickly granted legal rights, facilitated access to very necessary health care both physical and psychological, and even regular stipends from relief fund donations to help them establish stable lives.

It was true humanitarianism at its finest, people banding together to right a terrible wrong and it warmed your heart to see it happen. There were dissenters, of course, bigots here and there who thought monsters were evil and should’ve died Underground, especially after…what was done to the humans who had fallen down there….

But Queen Undyne, the monster monarch had taken full responsibility for all of those deaths already. Even now, she was serving out her prison sentence for it so it wasn’t as if justice wasn’t being done just because her people weren’t locked up with her.

You may not have known all the details but you didn’t think you needed to and your opinion was one shared by the majority: humans put them down there and humans should make it better. Monsters were owed at least that much.

Even in spite of the government money they were receiving, the grateful monsters who were physically able seemed quite happy to return the kindness given to them, entering the human workforce wherever they could and giving back as productive members of their new society.

That was the category that seemed to best fit Sans.

When you’d first come back to work, he’d been… a little bit of a shock, to say the least. Going to say hi to all the cats you hadn’t seen in days and finding a towering and frankly terrifying death-omen standing silently amongst them had actually really rattled you.

You had frozen, just a little, transfixed by his blazing eye-light and the jagged, gaping hole in his skull that looked positively grisly.

It wasn’t until your manager came in behind you, introducing him to you as the new volunteer that you noticed that the ‘death-omen’ was wearing a fuzzy hoodie and a frankly adorable pair of novelty skull slippers and you realized how rude you’d been.

Things had gotten busy, as they always did—litter boxes to scrub, animals to socialize, families to interview—and you kind of lost track of him, but you did ask around.

“Sans? Nice guy, a little bit of a scatterbrain maybe, but I’ve seen worse,” was the endorsement from a long-time coworker of yours. “I’ve never had to show him something more than twice, so y’know, he’s already better than Michael, god, remember Michael?”

“He kinda creeps me out,” another volunteer told you, “but the animals love him. One time, I saw him carrying around that big Rottweiler in one arm like it was a baby or something and she was totally cool with it.”

“He’s been great so far,” your manager had promised. “I think you two will work really well together.”

Oh, yeah, sure. If he didn’t think you were a total monsterphobic jerk by now.

You’d spent basically every day since you’d been back, in between actual work, trying to talk to Sans. Not to apologize for freezing like a scared deer, the window for that was probably way past, but… you could be better going forward, right? If you were actually nice and showed some manners better than a wild boar’s, you could be friends…right?

Wrong. So wrong.

You discovered quickly that Sans was as much of an enigma as he was deceptively scary. He rarely spoke and when he did, it was quiet and to the point; never anything about himself.

It actually hurt your feelings a little bit at first until you learned that it didn’t seem to be personal. Nobody at the shelter seemed to know anything about Sans: even the big boss maxed out at knowing he just showed up one day asking to be put to work.

If anything, though, learning that just made you all the more determined to befriend him.

Sans was a mystery and the less you realized you knew about him, the more driven you felt to figure him out. Who is this skeleton in comfy clothes who comes in most days and works hard for no money and barely says a word to anyone? You wanted to find out, even as it was proving just as hard as herding cats.

Harder, probably. The cats usually pay pretty good attention if you’re holding something jingly.

But you were getting way too in your own head and there was work to be done, lest you’d made Sans lug all that kibble from the stock room for nothing.

A deafening barrage of barks and whines greeted you from the second you opened the door to the dog room and it brought a smile to your face.

“Oh my god, I know,” you laughed, “I know, I’ve been gone for like an hour, I could’ve been dead!”

Princess, a pit bull mutt and the biggest, whiniest baby you’ve ever seen in your life, certainly seemed to think so. She was the closest to the door and whimpering at you with her paws up against the chain-link of her enclosure, wiggling so hard it rattled.

“Alright, jeez, I’m here now, aren’t I?” She looked right at you and let out a long, low whine that sounded so pathetic you had to laugh again. “You want lunch first? Will that take the sting out of my betrayal?”

A loud bark was your answer from Princess, and from every other dog in the room. They didn’t know a whole lot of human words but anything food-related got picked up real damn quick.

“Okay, shush, then, I’m on it, you all know the drill.”

You headed over to the big bags of kibble propped up against the door jamb, right where Sans had left them, and got to work.

It used to be that you felt a little silly talking to the animals as if they could understand you, even when you and them were the only ones in the room, but those days were long behind you. They understood your tone of voice at least, so you were happy to chat with (or at) your furry wards about whatever popped into your head while you doled out their food.

It was a step up from talking to yourself… which you’d definitely also done. You hadn’t been exaggerating that ‘no social life’ thing, but it’s not like you’d ever felt lonely.

“Well, maybe not never,” you muttered, nudging an eager little bulldog back with your foot to edge into his room and set down one of the bowls you were holding. “But not like…seriously. I see everybody here all the time, plus adopters, and the cats, and you guys. That’s plenty, right?”

You looked down to realize you were being pointedly ignored, a little doggy face planted firmly in his food. “Yeah, you’re plenty. Good talk, Smoochie.”

If you weren’t already pretty sure you were going to end up as a crazy animal person, this might’ve been the moment it hit you.

You didn’t really have time to dwell on that, though, not with the downright chilling screams that suddenly erupted from outside.

Automatically, you found yourself headed for the noise, goosebumps prickling up on your skin from the awful quality of the sound. You just barely remembered to fasten the latch of the cage one-handedly behind you before walking, jogging, running towards the lobby where it seemed to be coming from and what were you going into that it could be heard from so far away in the building?!

There was a loud clatter and even more screaming and when you finally made it through the door, you skidded to a halt.

And your heart broke.

The horrible, discordant screaming sound was coming from a dog. The poor thing was skinny, shaking, fur so matted and dingy that it couldn’t even see through it, every worst nightmare you’d ever had from those Sarah McLachlan commercials come to life. It looked like it had knocked over some chairs trying to scrunch itself into a corner and was cowering in a puddle of its own pee. And screeching every time it heard a noise.

You didn’t often see ones this bad, but it didn’t hurt any less when you did.

“Oh, baby, no,” you whispered. “What happened?”

You hadn’t been talking to anyone in particular so it startled you when you got an answer.

“H-he slipped his lead,” you heard and turned to see one of the new volunteers standing beside you, wide-eyed and holding a useless green rope in her hands. “I don’t know… I was just… What do we do?”

Glancing around, you suddenly realized that you were the most senior person in the room. Even with the trickle of onlookers drawn by the noise everybody else was just hesitating at the edges of the lobby, nervous and unsure while the poor animal wailed and shook in front of them.

Right, then. Up to you.

“Go get the vet,” you told the volunteer and took a step forward, reaching out to take the lead from her fingers…

…only to watch a much bigger, paler hand close over the rope instead of your own.

Sans took it, silently ghosting his broad body between you and the girl and heading straight for the dog.

Your jaw nearly dropped. A million thoughts raced through your head at once—where did he come from? What is he doing? Shouldn’t you stop him? He barely has any experience, he’s not even staff!— but when you tried to say something, your throat was too tight and all that came out was…

“Be careful…!”

Sans didn’t even turn. “it’s fine,” he said, just as soft-spoken as he ever was. “s’just a little spooked, that’s all.”

You watched with bated breath as he knelt down, right in front of the scruffy animal. It prompted a fresh bout of screaming that made you flinch, but Sans acted like he didn’t even hear it.

“heya, bud. there’s no need for all’a that, is there?” The dog’s mismatched ears flicked once, but immediately flattened back against his head. Sans kept talking. “it’s good here. we’ll take care of ya. it won’t be like wherever ya came from. nobody here’s gonna hurt’cha.”

It was the most you’d ever heard him say at once and the deep, sonorous quality of his voice was a surprise to you. His tone was slow and even, almost lulling; it was putting you at ease, so to see the poor dog responding the same way, his hackles lowering ever so slightly and his shriek dying into a pitiful little cry shouldn’t have been so shocking.

You were amazed, anyway.

“that’s it, bud. there ya go.” Sans raised the rope, moving it carefully to the dog’s head.

Once he was leashed, it should be a little easier to coax him to the vet’s exam room. He’d get checked out, bathed, shaved, fed, and settled into his own little kennel.

Thank god you were under capacity right now, you’d really lose sleep if you had to turn this one away. As long as he was here, you could help him.

But there you went, getting ahead of yourself again.

The dog panicked at the very last second. He lunged forward, snapping his jaws shut on the closest target—Sans.

Your gasp was loud in the tension-quieted room, chorused by others and even a muffled yelp from the receptionist, everyone alarmed by the sight of Sans’ blue hoodie caught in a semi-feral dog’s muzzle.

You had already taken several steps forward—to do what, you had no idea—when Sans just cinched the rope into a proper lead around the dog’s neck with a triumphant, “gotcha,” as if he hadn’t just had a sharp set of teeth successfully come at him.

You were speechless for several long seconds. Had he…not noticed? Did the dog just graze him? Was he even bleeding? If he was, you’d want to drive him to the hospital just in case, you never knew what a strange dog could be carrying and even if it was shallow, the stomach seemed like a terrible place to get bitten…

And then, the obvious hit you.

The dog had lunged at Sans’ abdomen. The abdomen he didn’t have. Because he was a skeleton.

Oh, god, duh.

Of course Sans was fine, that bite had never come anywhere near him. You wanted to physically facepalm, just a little bit, at your own apparent stupidity but that would hardly be helpful right now.

You managed to take some slight pleasure in knowing you weren’t the only dumb human in the room that’d had the same thought and then tried to forget it. “You okay, Sans?”

“yeah, we’re fine,” he answered easily. The dog may have disagreed, having unlatched himself from Sans’ hoodie and, when that last defensive bid had so totally failed, resigned himself to making heart-wrenching crying noises and continuing to cower. “he’s not happy, but i got ‘im.”

There were sighs of relief all around. You scanned the room, seeing the tension fade and normal activity start to hesitantly resume—and the volunteer girl still standing by the door.

“What are you still…? I said to go get the vet!” you reminded her, maybe a little more sharply than you intended because she squeaked and scurried off.

You immediately felt a little bad about it. Seeing an animal in such bad shape for the first time wasn’t easy and not all newbies had the kind of brass ones Sans did.

Sans, who suddenly turned to look right at you and said your name.

“I…. Me?” You wanted to kick yourself for saying that. There was only one you at the whole damn shelter, but Sans didn’t seem to care.

“yeah, c’mere. he’ll probably chill out a little if he’s got some food, right?”

You were already moving forward again before you fully realized what he meant—the shiny metal bowl of kibble in your hand that you’d apparently run all the way here holding, stars, what had that looked like? But if you were accidentally prepared, you probably shouldn’t criticize yourself too hard.

You knelt down next to Sans, moving carefully but the skittish animal still yelped and scrabbled when he heard you coming. There was a blur of blue and suddenly Sans’ arm was between you and the dog.

“it’s okay, pal,” he soothed. “you’re fine, stay cool, just friends here. you want some food, don’tcha?”

That was your cue. You placed the bowl on the floor and gently slid it over to the dog before pulling your hand back.

The dog whined again, upset and unsure. You couldn’t quite see with Sans’ arm in the way and straightened up to look over it, bracing just one hand against his humerus. The dog was blinded by his own matted fur but he could clearly smell the kibble and his nose found its way to the bowl, sniffing cautiously with his tail tucked between his legs.

You slumped in relief when he took the first hesitant bite, and the ravenous second, third, fourth.

Thank god.

Sans seemed just as pleased, lowering his protective arm and looping the lead around his other hand, shortened for better control. He said your name again and you turned; even kneeling, you still had to look up.

“you should pet him,” he said. “i don’t think he’ll bite again.”

Glancing at the dog, you agreed, but also… “Why me?”

His one red eye met yours, gleaming with earnest sincerity. “you’re good at dogs,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Grass is green. Water makes stuff wet. You’re good at dogs.

Feeling unaccountably flattered, you reached out and carefully stroked your fingers along the dog’s back. He flinched at the touch but didn’t stop eating or try to bite again, so you had high hopes for his adoption chances later on.

You kept petting him, crouched on the floor of the shelter lobby next to a gentle giant of a skeleton and watched the dog finish the whole bowl.

“That’s a good boy,” you cooed. “You’re gonna do just fine.”

It felt like you were there for a long time, but eventually you heard footsteps and finally, the vet arrived. He was flanked by a couple of other staff members, bigger guys who you knew had experience with nervous and aggressive dogs.

Sans stood, and you with him, and you watched as he gingerly handed over the leash to one of them and let them coax the dog forward. The vet was already looking him over even as they got the little guy moving and you were relieved not to hear him point out anything that sounded too serious.

Soon they had all filed out to take care of business and it was just you and Sans left there in the lobby. Even the receptionist had fled for a coffee/need-a-breather-right-now break and you didn’t blame her.

“So that was…intense.”

“yeah.”

You turned more fully towards Sans and tried to catch his gaze. “You’re okay, right?” you asked. “Like…really okay?”

He looked at you like you’d said something bizarre. “said i was, didn’t i?”

“Well, people say a lot of things, and that was…a lot, even for somebody who actually gets paid for it. You’re good?”

Sans didn’t look any less bemused. “…yeah.”

He didn’t say anything else for several long moments. His single glowing pupil was cast down away from your face and when you followed it, you saw…

Oh jeez, your hand on his arm, still.

You pulled back immediately, feeling yourself go red and hoping he didn’t notice. “Sorry!” you definitely didn’t squeak. “Sorry, that was…. Oh, no, your hoodie…”

Sans looked down and quickly spotted what you just had— three sizeable holes torn into the bottom of his sweatshirt, right at the hem of the pocket. He picked at it, poking two thick, bony fingers straight through. “huh.”

“He got you pretty good.” You winced a little at the damp tear in the fabric: it was a jagged rip and pretty frayed. “I’m not sure that’s gonna be salvageable. Sorry.”

By the expressions Sans kept fixing on you, you’d have guessed you were the most confusing human on the planet. “what for?”

“The holes? That’s your favorite jacket, isn’t it?” You hesitated, realizing you didn’t actually know that. “Or at least, you wear it all the time. I kinda guessed you just loved that thing.”

“i do. but it’s just a thing. shit happens, y’know.” He shrugged. “’sides, not like anybody got hurt, right?”

“…Right.” Of course. That really was the most important thing.

That, and cleaning up the mess your new little friend had made of the lobby.

You sighed just looking at it but it wasn’t about to fix itself so you dove right in, picking up chairs and moving them to the side while you skirted around the puddle on the floor as best as you could.

“……can i help?”

The gentle inquiry from Sans made you pause. The man got literally snapped at not fifteen minutes ago, at a place where they worked him like a…well, like a dog without even having him on the payroll, and he still wanted to help?

Sans really was something else.

“You could get the mop and bucket for me from the supply closet,” you said lightly, pointedly not making it an order. “And maybe finish feeding the dogs for me? I hadn’t even gotten halfway through when all of this mess happened, I’m sure they’re not too happy about that.”

“yeah, sure.” But Sans seemed just a little nervous all of a sudden, his permanent grin looking more like a grimace while his eye-light darted quickly to one side. “uhhh…which dogs did you already…?”

You smiled. “It was Tina’s turn, but I didn’t pick anything back up. Any cage that doesn’t have a food bowl in it needs one.”

The skeleton’s shoulders slumped in relief. “okay, cool.” That was an easy way to remember what needed doing. He probably wouldn’t have to come back and ask you again like he did some other times. “i’m on it.”

You opened your mouth to thank him, but between one blink and the next he was gone.

Literally. Not even a motion-blur, just gone. You turned to the reception desk to see if anybody else had just seen that, but of course it was still just you there—you and the mop and bucket that had just appeared where Sans had been standing when you’d looked away for no more than two seconds.

“Well,” you announced to no one. “That’s new.”

No one was very appreciative of your dry and pithy wit, you were quite sure.

You grabbed the mop and got to work on the glamorous task of wiping up urine, just one of the many hidden perks of your job—that you really did love, warts and all.

You really weren’t sure what to make of the new guy, but after today you were damn well going to figure it out.

Next Chapter

#fur a good time call #myfic #undertale #horrortale #sans #sans/reader #ht!sans #fanfiction

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askavenezuelan · 5 years

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Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet

To anyone who might have missed it, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, finally made a statement regarding the human rights situation in Venezuela.

To get the backstory on this:

Venezuelans made a strong social media campaign, asking Bachelet to visit the country and see the situation for herself.

There wasn’t much hope that she ever would since she had made vague statements before, and she was also famous for having a love-hate relationship with Chavez, even mourning his death and admiring his work.

Simultaneously, she was openly invited by Chancellor Jorge Arreaza, an active member of the Maduro regime, to visit the country. So the outlook seemed to point at a report that would favor the regime’s propaganda, instead of giving a real account of what was happening in Venezuela.

She finally agreed to send a committee of the OHCHR, which visited the country on the days after the massive blackout. And although the regime hurried off to take control of the situation by limiting the places they were visiting and the people they would speak with, they gave a less-than-favorable briefing of what’s happening in Venezuela.

If you want to read the full report, you’ll find it under the “Keep reading” break.

If you want a quick summary of this initial report (and yes, this is just a preliminary report), this is what they have seen so far:

Children, pregnant women, elderly and indigenous peoples are the groups that have been the most affected by the crisis.

Infrastructure challenges (which they also relate to the massive blackout).

Water shortages.

Scarcity of natural gas.

Collapse of public transport.

Increase in maternal and infant mortality.

Spread of infectious diseases, previously under control.

A collapse in the education system, with more than 1 million children no longer attending school due to failed food programmes, lack of affordable public transportation, and the absence of teachers.

Numerous human rights violations and abuses by pro-government armed groups; including killings, arbitrary detentions, torture, etc.

Also under investigation: extrajudicial executions. Only in 2018, 205 cases were denounced.

Increasing restrictions on freedom of expression.

Persecution of journalists, opposition leaders and those who dissent.

Massive migration, with more than 3 million Venezuelans already having left the country.

Interestingly, the report also recognizes that the economic and social crisis did begin before the economic sanctions imposed in 2017. This is crucial since it challenges the regime’s widespread narrative, which claims that the crisis began due to the sanctions.

Bachelet does express concern about recent sanctions aggravating the crisis, but thus accepts that the origin of the Venezuelan situation can be found elsewhere.

Finally, they call for authorities to work for the improvement of the human rights situation in the country, and work towards ending the division that is making the situation worse.

However, due to the response of the regime -which immediately after the report was released, arrested Juan Guaidó’s chief of staff, and condemned the report for being under the influence of a “fake international media campaign”- little change can be expected from Maduro’s side.

Full report:

“ Resolution 39/1 requested an oral update regarding the situation in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. I am deeply concerned by the magnitude and gravity of the human rights impact of the current crisis, which is also a worrying destabilizing factor in the region.

A technical team from my Office is currently in the country. I view this as a positive first step, which I trust will lead to continued access for the Office in the future. It is important that the team have completely unhindered access, with no reprisals against any person who has met, or sought to meet, with them.

The enjoyment of economic and social rights has continued to deteriorate dramatically since June 2018, when we last published a report on Venezuela. Vulnerable populations, such as children, pregnant women, the elderly and indigenous peoples have been particularly affected. For instance, dire living conditions forced a significant number of Warao Indigenous Peoples to cross the border into Brazil in search for food, health care and other basic services. The extent and severity of the crises in food, health care and basic services, have not been fully acknowledged by the authorities, thus the measures they have adopted have been insufficient.

The recent nation-wide electricity blackout has exacerbated this situation, further reducing people’s access to food, water and medication, and severely affecting hospitals. The full extent of the damage, and the number of direct casualties, is not yet known, but the unusually long blackout embodies the infrastructure challenges that Venezuela faces. Water shortages, scarcity of natural gas and the collapse of public transport also continue to affect many people, and together with hyperinflation, they generate dire economic conditions, which have triggered thousands of social protests.

The health system continues to deteriorate, with very significant impact on maternal mortality and morbidity and infant mortality. The spread of infectious diseases, which were previously under control, is the focus of the recent vaccination campaign by the government with the help of the Pan-American Health Organisation.

More than 1 million children no longer attend school, according to a recent survey, mostly due to the fact that parents cannot feed breakfast to their children, the failure of schools’ food programmes, and lack of affordable public transportation, as well as the absence of teachers and related professionals, many of whom have left the country.

Although this pervasive and devastating economic and social crisis began before the imposition of the first economic sanctions in 2017, I am concerned that the recent sanctions on financial transfers related to the sale of Venezuelan oil within the United States may contribute to aggravating the economic crisis, with possible repercussions on people's basic rights and wellbeing.

I am also deeply concerned about the shrinking of the democratic space, especially the continued criminalization of peaceful protest and dissent. In the context of the latest surge of nationwide anti-government protests in the first two months of this year, my Office documented numerous human rights violations and abuses by security forces and pro-government armed groups (colectivos armados), including excessive use of force, killings, arbitrary detentions, torture and ill-treatment in detention, and threats and intimidation. Many of these concerns have been highlighted in our press statements, and our report to the June session of the Council will include extensive detail.

The Office has continued to investigate reports of possible extrajudicial executions by security forces. In 2018, the FAES were reported to have killed at least 205 persons. A further 37 were reportedly killed in the course of January 2019 in Caracas. It appears that some of these killings have followed a similar pattern. They take place during illegal house raids carried out by the FAES, which subsequently reports the death as resulting from an armed confrontation – although witnesses report the victims were unarmed. In some cases, relatives of the victims have alleged that the Attorney General's Office explicitly refused to initiate investigations against members of the FAES. Most of the victims lived in poor neighborhoods and participated in anti-government protests, and I am particularly concerned about reports that indicate that this type of operation is used as a form of reprisal and intimidation.

I am also concerned about increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and of the press in Venezuela, and the allegations that the authorities have arbitrarily used the law against hatred, adopted in November 2017, to prosecute journalists, opposition leaders and anyone expressing dissenting opinions, leading to self-censorship. This context has significant impact on people’s right to information.

As a direct result of this far-reaching human rights crisis, more than 3 million people have fled Venezuela, in search of food, health care, work and protection. Many leave in precarious health and with few or no financial resources; their difficulties are compounded by long-standing practises of extortion and appropriation by some border guards. Venezuelans also face enormous obstacles to obtain documentation that would facilitate regular migration, and access to education or work in other countries.

Countries in the region have been confronted with the massive arrival of people who often have urgent humanitarian and human rights protection needs. They require very significant, and jointly coordinated, efforts of regularization and family reunification, as well as access to healthcare, food, shelter, education or work. I applaud the efforts undertaken by receiving countries of the region to address the needs of Venezuelan refugees and migrants and encourage them to continue to combat xenophobia and discrimination, and to maintain access to their territory.

Excellencies,

Divisions are exacerbating an already critical situation. There is a need for common agreement on a political solution by all stakeholders, with actions to improve a wide range of urgent human rights issues. I call on the authorities to take steps to demonstrate their real commitment to addressing the many challenging issues reported across the country. And I want to emphasize the continuing commitment of the Office to work with all relevant stakeholders in their efforts to improve the human rights situation in Venezuela.“

Source

#venezuela #venezuelan crisis #crisis en venezuela #ddhh #hhrr #human rights #humanitarian crisis #politics #nicolas maduro #juan guaido #freedom #free venezuela #OHCHR #ask a venezuelan

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airoasis · 5 years

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Why I Choose Bitcoin Cash

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/why-i-choose-bitcoin-cash/

Why I Choose Bitcoin Cash

I prefer a Peer to see digital money over the whole lot. Correct now the first-class form of this comes in the form of Bitcoin cash, which holds the ticker BCH on virtually all exchanges. My title is Collin Enstad, i’ve lived in the USA my entire lifestyles. I am a freelance director / cinematographer / steadicam operator. I first heard about Bitcoin in 2013 in the course of its bubble, the place it peaked at $1200. I consider my first purchase was once around $one hundred fifty however I only bought a bit bit, as much as I might find the money for being a broke school pupil. I made some cash and purchased matters with it, like this bizarre digicam rig. Of course part of the adoption of bitcoin is brought about via men and women speculating trying to generate income off of it. But i noticed I had actual utility, I could use it as money. An investment that’s liquid as hell. Excellent. I requested an harmless query in late 2015 on the uncensored bitcoin subreddit, /r/btc: ELI5: Why achieve this many individuals insist on a small block size?. I got first-rate answers, similar to Blockstreams function in taking up the progress, how Peter Todd remains to be seeking to these days to kill 0-affirmation transactions, and how the Core devs have been proscribing the bottom layer to push a 2nd one that they claimed would be even higher than the actual blockchain.All of these aspects nonetheless maintain proper to nowadays. I even respect a number of the names within the thread from again then with persons I still speak to in these days. I even had some put up calling out theymos, the king of censorship, round this time. How things have no longer transformed. The extra I dig up the more obvious the manipulation of public opinion. Once more, this was once in 2015 this was all being called out, 4 years ago. Thats close to 1/2 of bitcoins lifetime. Crypto is really just politics, but on a time scale which appears hundreds and hundreds of times faster.I was once continuously a huge blocker. 1MB is tiny. Its less knowledge than a 2d of this video. It gave the impression a majority of the community back in 2015 was once for bigger blocks too. How a small crew of Core developers took over and sabotaged the bitcoin experiment with never-ending small blocks will be rather the exciting case be taught in historical past class. Im nonetheless seeking to utterly wrap my head around how Gavin, the character Satoshi entrusted with the keys to the bitcoin code, used to be pushed out and ostracized for looking the logical answer, higher blocks.Its a narrative that takes a long time to tell, and entails a false Satoshi. Im currently engaged on a feature size documentary about the shitshow that’s bitcoins history. The real down and dirty bitcoin politics, no longer some loud mouth troll showing up on tv spouting nonsense. So the fork happened in August 2017 and the large block version, Bitcoin cash, didn’t win over the hearts and minds of traders. Instantaneous ridicule from the Core persons ensued, as used to be par for the path. Bcash is trash was once their mantra, in an try to rip the word bitcoin out of its name. Now take into account, theymos fairly ramped up his censorship on /r/bitcoin in 2015. Reddit used to be THE spot to talk bitcoin, and theymos actions make him, individually, the only greatest affect on this whole Scaling warfare. Go to any publish from again then about theymos increasing moderation and appear at how many individuals vehemently adverse it.One of bitcoins most important residences is censorship-resistance, however apparently whenever you go away the protocol layer you additionally abandon all of its ethos. When your methods hotel to silencing the opposition you understand your arguments aren’t on stable floor. If they were, they might let all of the dissent come their approach and evaporate before them in the face of truth. However no. The block and ban buttons are used as a type of religious piety. This itself was once a tremendous red flag that some thing used to be wrong with Bitcoin. As a latest concrete instance of manipulation, My ultra-modern video criticizing the lightning community was once the top put up on /r/btc, except every week historic news story broke in regards to the Twitter CEO, Jack, purchasing a hardware pockets all of a sudden unseated it. This Jack story was once in a antagonistic sub and it won the highest spot in an hour. Mods deleted the submit shortly after. The account had a history of vote botting. Proof Of Social Media. Par for the course for those against peer to peer money. And this this is the place I just get angry.BTC does no longer work as a trustworthy form of money, but its still pushed on unsuspecting noobs, many who now go to the bcash sunday service. These social media influencers have 10s of hundreds of thousands of followers that they preach the nice word to absolutely this many folks wouldnt listen to any person who was just basically unsuitable! This market is immature and albeit, just dumb. I really awoke to all of this when instantly I was paying $1 for a transaction rate in early 2017. This isn’t what I signed up for. My money will have to not disappear every time I need to move it. When Bitcoin cash forked, I was all in, actually with my nonetheless tiny stash and figuratively from an ideological standpoint. Does this provide me investment bias? Almost always, however again, Im now not talking tremendous cash right here.Irregardless, I do my research and its the one coin i can confidently put my cash in. I do know what it is trying to do is the reason bitcoin was created in the first place, which is what once more? Oh yeah, to offer each person in the world an possibility to be their own bank. To give humans the potential to transact with anyone in the world with out the necessity of a 3rd celebration, even if they make not up to $2 a day. That is bitcoin. I kept diving deeper into the rabbit hole. Undoubtedly each person couldnt be this deluded however they were. Advocating for the shrewd factor of raising the blocksize and how BCH is a reliable variation of Bitcoin on social media has been tiring. I dont know the way a few of these trolls are so lively and simply hostile.I grew up with the web, part of the primary iteration that had social media for his or her whole middle and excessive institution experience. However these bitcoin guys man, the most poisonous i have ever seen. You have to have thick epidermis when you even believe about having impartial idea in crypto. Its sad. I haven’t any doubt there are individuals whose full-time job it is to sow up disagreement and strife within people who want to see Bitcoin be the arena money. Theres even proof of In November of 2017 I made a industrial for BCH with the support of the Bitcoin money association. It used to be a excessive high-quality industrial in a barber store which showed bitcoin getting used as cash. Response from the group was once nice, and i located myself in Tokyo a pair months later shooting the Satoshis vision convention, where a few of the Bitcoin cash group attended.I interviewed lots of the prime leaders in BCH for the period of that point interval for my documentary together with Craig Wright. This man appeared to come out of nowhere and was once a large suggest of Bitcoin cash. He had charisma, unquestionably, even when his Satoshi claims have been iffy. I consider the BCH neighborhood sided with him on account that he was once so anti-core. An enemy of an enemy is your buddy. And on the grounds that this buddy was very aggressive and outspoken in the direction of the purpose, many were inclined to let his shadiness slide.However very quickly after this convention actual bitcoin devs, who in reality work on and comprehend the bitcoin protocol, began calling him out on his lies. It was once rough to confess youd been duped, but right here we all are. Then, of direction he forked off into his possess coin months later, and his fraud lives on. Then comes the altcoin arguments. For those who dont like BTC so much simply use nano? Dash is the real peer to see cash! Lol noob do you even cardano? Well, considering BCH has the identical transaction historical past relationship again to the genesis block in 2009, one could argue the distribution of the coin is more decentralized than any of the altcoins, due to the fact that it has been around the longest.Im a strong believer in Proof of work as well. Even though BCH has a lot less hashpower than BTC, it has been shown how a gigantic portion of hash would transfer to BCH in safeguard of a malicious actor, like we noticed within the hashwar. The miners like Bitcoin money, however they generally follow gains, and this means mining BTC and BCH on the same price as the fee ratio between them. Now that BCH is free from its former crippled blocksize, most things the altcoins can do, BCH would enforce itself. Even things just like the lightning community would work muchhhh higher on Bitcoin cash as a result of the small charges to open and shut channels. Bitcoin was once intended to be the one crypto that ruled all of them, absorbing the quality altcoin facets. Vitalik Buterin found out this was no longer the case to any extent further, and he ran off to make Ethereum in 2015 after a lot combating with the Core devs. So right here I to find myself, in March 2019, nonetheless a supporter of Bitcoin cash. That you may believe the creative and grassroots power of individuals who just wish to construct. I hear the Bitcoin OGs say its the same spirit that bitcoin had it in its early days.Persons that CARE about making bitcoin exceptional again. And of path, the small blocks made building apps problematic for devs, because the excessive charges and sluggish confirmations might disable some functions who relied on inexpensive and speedy transactions. Full blocks rationale unreliability. And if youre a dev and need to construct an app, why within the hell would you use a base protocol that can instantly price $50 for a single use. If BCH stops being the excellent type of P2P money, make no mistake, i’d drop aid. Im no longer a blind follower and am at all times watching to mission my beliefs. Tokens, Decentralized handles, Badger wallet, suggestions.Cash, CashShuffle, Satoshidice the record goes on. So many of those projects are simply now hitting the Bitcoin cash market, and wallets are looking to catch up and implement these elements as speedy as they may be able to.Its nonetheless early in Bitcoin Cashs development existence, and the power within the community is the equal one I felt once I first received into it, vibrant, filled with hope for a greater future, and now with an added tenacity to make certain that no dangerous actors can once once more spoil the imaginative and prescient of Peer to look cash for the complete world. .

#bitcoin #bitcoin cash #bitcoincash #crypto #cryptocurrency

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batterymonster2021 · 5 years

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Why I Choose Bitcoin Cash

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/why-i-choose-bitcoin-cash/

Why I Choose Bitcoin Cash

#bitcoin #bitcoin cash #bitcoincash #crypto #cryptocurrency

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freedom-of-fanfic · 6 years

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regarding cults and cultlike communities (and how easy it is to get sucked in)

(My authority: born & raised in a very cultlike church of only 20-ish attendees, a lot of research attending the departure from that church)

a person i follow reblogged a post today to respond to the OP’s open question: were they vulnerable to being sucked into a cult? and I wrote up this longass response to send to OP but then felt it was .. well. long. so I’m making it into a separate post instead of flooding a stranger with words they didn’t ask for.

tl;dr: Q: are you vulnerable to being sucked into a cult or cultlike community? A: IMO: almost definitely yes. (we all are.)

cults and cultlike communities suck in vulnerable people looking for safety, camaraderie/a social circle, a meaning for their life, an explanation for their trauma, etc etc by promising to provide the thing they’re looking for.

the insidious thing is that cults actually do provide the intangible desired thing, usually. Friends? a cult is a ready-made social circle. a meaning to life? cults certainly will give you a purpose for living. A reason for your trauma? A cult will tell you who to blame for everything wrong with your life. Safety? well - they’ll convince you that everyone outside the cult is your enemy/untrustworthy down the line, but the good news is you’ll feel safe in your cult space.

Once a cult inducts somebody by filling their emotional or social need, what entangles members isn’t usually an instant, deep loyalty to The Cause or The Leader or whatever. It’s community and the sense of belonging it engenders.

With increasing quickness, the cult community creates the sense of being a member of the ‘in’ group. you and your cult friends are In the Know. people outside your group are ignorant of the truth. And because of this, it doesn’t take long for a new person to feel that they can’t have true friendship with people outside of the cult. they can never be fully honest with them (unless they’re interested in joining).

outside friendships fall away. now you have no meaningful social circle outside the cult, putting you into a social echo chamber of people who all believe the exact same things and raising the stakes of leaving the cult. where would you go? you have no other real friends.

At this point a person is pretty well ‘in’. if it’s a true cult, this is where your investment level means you’re ready to have your loyalty tested: are you willing to take the (economic/social/physical/faith) leap the cult is asking you to take, or will you turn back, be abandoned by everyone you care about*, and left alone and friendless?

(*because as you already know, people In the Know can’t really be friends with people who choose to not be In the Know. they’ll be forced to abandon you.)

basically: the choice about your willingness to bend to authority isn’t asked until the deck is heavily stacked against you. all your chips are on the table. you’ve invested almost everything. will you invest the last bit you’ve got? and if you decide ‘yes’ - which many people do, because where else can they go? - escape becomes nigh impossible.

the only sure(-ish) defense against getting sucked into a cult is satisfaction with your life: having self-assurance about your purpose, your choices, and your social circle, plus a sense of good health and economic security. hardly anyone has all these things at once.

because of this, it’s my opinion that literally everyone on Earth is susceptible to getting sucked into a cult. almost everyone has some emotional weakness, something that makes them feel inadequate or afraid: if a cult happens to hit on that Achilles heel, you’re vulnerable to them. and frankly: if you get sucked into a cult, it’s not your fault. cults are designed to recruit.

regarding cultlike communities specifically:

there are ‘cults’ that aren’t actually cults, just similar to them. true cults glorify and enrich a person, the leader; cultlike groups usually glorify an ideology.

the major commonality between cults and cultlike groups is that both demand/strongly encourage your loyalty above anything else: above your happiness, above existing friendships/social ties, and above human respect or decency towards others, particularly outsiders.

cultlike groups are more common than cults. they’re easier to escape in a strict sense b/c usually there’s no leader controlling the strings, sucking every dollar and moment of your life out of you, but the social investment can get very high and create high stakes to leaving the community anyway:

having been so utterly radicalized by the echo chamber of the cultlike group, their understanding of the world is alien to non-members; it takes a while to deprogram.

people who leave these groups can be sure of being vilified by their old friends & probably harassed, and

they frequently have few friends outside the group to support their departure.

big, well-known examples of cultlike-but-not-strictly-a-cult groups include Radfems/TERFs/SWERFs, Christian Dominionism, & each individual alt-right white supremacist organization.

(the fandom cultlike baby of radfems and dominionism is anti-shipping/kink/’fujoshi’/nsfw, combining purity culture & swerf politics. the aphobic cultlike baby of radfem ideology is REG.)

you can watch your friends groups for warning signs of becoming cultlike* by asking yourself a few questions occasionally:

has my friendsgroup ostracized and turned on a friend when they said they didn’t agree with an opinion the rest of us held? was it a rapid/sudden turn without allowing any discussion or debate? was it so vicious it made me afraid to express a dissenting opinion?

do I feel pushed/goaded to dissociate from friends who don’t hold the same opinions as my main friendsgroup, even if it’s against my wishes? does my friendsgroup talk disdainfully of all people who aren’t in our group or engage in ‘us vs the world’ language frequently?

Realistically, is there anything I wouldn’t do in the name of protecting/advancing the beliefs of my friends? If I think there are limits on what’s okay to do on behalf of our beliefs, would my friends agree? Am I afraid to tell them I think there are limits?

If someone in my friendsgroup hurts me, would I be afraid to confront them? would I feel like I’m betraying my whole friend circle by saying somebody did something harmful? Would I be afraid of severe consequences, like having my friends turn on me, even if I was believed?

If the answer to these questions suggest that loyalty may be more important than being kind or respectful to one another in your friendsgroup, that’s a warning sign of toxicity and potentially cultish dynamics. D:

(*use your discretion, dangit. obviously this isn’t a 1:1 for-sure correlation to your friendsgroup becoming shitty.)

and here’s some good reading on the subject of cults/cultlike groups:

How Good People & Well-Intentioned Groups Can Go Bad - i have some quibbles with language (it shows its age) but there’s a lot of good stuff in this article and these two articles about the cultish thinking that radicalized groups develop.

Dominionism Rising - focus piece on the cultlike ‘Dominionist’ movement that is (quietly) pushing an anti-Christian agenda in US Christian circles. shows how cultlike thinking can deeply influence less cultish circles.

We Need to Talk About the Radicalization of Young White Men and The Alt-Right is Recruiting Depressed People and The radicalization of white Americans on how cultlike alt-right ideologies recruit people into their ranks

Who’s Behind Newsweek? - A focus piece on The Community, a true cult glorifying David Jang as the second coming of Jesus Christ.

#cults #radicalization #how radicalization works #cultlike groups #radfems again #alt-right #christian dominionism #cults are about community #that's why they're successful #unasked for advice

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thejokertalks · 5 years

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WHY DO YOU MAKE INAPPROPRIATE JOKES, ASSHOLE?

You know I have reached a stage where sometimes I joke about things so that people roll their eyes, get a little shocked, taken aback and then after a few more thumps get used to the fact that it's ok to joke about everything and bring those conversations, no wait.. bring conversations to people’s living rooms.

We have been brought up in manner where we have been taught that there are things you can say, things that are acceptable and you must only say those and stick to those and if you have inappropriate thoughts / jokes you should keep them to yourselves. There is an old saying "If you don't have anything good to say don't say it". This is the first step to censorship and an individualistic avtar of what has resulted in a culmination of 3 billion people choosing right winged governments who are methodically and stepwise deconstructing and demolishing the sheer institutions of democracy and making a mockery of free speech which we as people are watching without realizing.

The need to be liked, the need to be accepted though evolutionary has brought us to a stage where we have accepted that it's ok to not speak our minds and we are infact scared of speaking our minds. What if we are made fun of? What if someone bullies us into submission? being disliked. We are concerned about these at a micro level. At a macro level, we are busy thinking "aah but he's from my caste. Oh but I am not gay why does it matter to me? So what if he beat his wife? I don't beat my wife that's my contribution. That's enough. That’s my contribution" No it's not enough. It's never enough. From Nirbhaya's rape to the blatantly visible glass ceiling which we choose to ignore, from mental health to impotency, from standing up to your parents and answering back when you believe you are right without the fear of being disrespectful and / or getting slapped to law and order situations. The problem in my opinion is not actually the wrongdoing but the inability to hold a conversation, the inability to speak, the inability to listen, the inability to debate and the inability accept and adapt.

2019 elections are here. Everyone is talking about things which they believe are the most important plots in the elections-Political advertisements spend, Mamata Bannerjee jokes, Raga being what he is, modi being what he is, bhakts, aaptards, EVM tampering, air pollution, caste based politics, special status to Andhra/Telangana, reservation, rafale deal etc. These are all important, no doubt but they are all sub plots. The real problem is the autocracy of one man, the systematic disintegration of constitutional powers, the judiciary and most importantly the 4th estate-the media. Not that the Congress was much better when it setup NAC as an advisory council which was basically a shadow parliament with a questionable prime minister. But right now that's not the problem. Unfortunately, no one is talking about or worrying about the right to dissent, the right to speak because it doesn't affect us at a level where we can see a visible difference, unless ofcourse we are going to jail for sharing cartoons or memes.

Yes, we are evolving as humans at a rapid pace but as a society, as a culture though evolving we are doing it at a much slower pace, if at all. We had reformers and scientists centuries ago who we read about even today but are unable to follow them and their teachings. Moreover, right now our times, even with much easier modes of communication are unable to provide reformers and work that can be put at the same level as the greats of yesteryears. Why is that I wonder? Surely we are smarter than people back in the day. Could it be that we are too busy creating clones who need to think and think again before talking? It is a possibility. Anyhow I digress, in a line, if I have to summarise the scenario it would be “We can reach Mars but we can't talk about their being 0 women and 20 male dignitaries on stage at a lit fest.”

By the way this in no way means that people can say anything and that the right to free speech is absolute. No. The basic rights, innocent unless proven guilty and not otherwise, social media trials, vigilante justice etc is all wrong. However, my point is that people should be allowed to say anything they want and then face the consequences of the same. You make a defamatory statement you get sued, you cheat someone you get sent to jail. Even in case of defamation no one sends 10 goons to hit you they take you to court or in case of a different point of view they argue it out passionately. In case of children you help them understand the necessity of reading and then taking a decision and urge them to argue and talk. Yes there may be certain amount of censorship to take care of kids but that is possibly the only time when censorship should be allowed. Adults should not and must not be censored. Give them time to learn and censor themselves when required. DO NOT CENSOR ADULTS. DO NOT STOP DISSENT. DO NOT STOP CONVERSATION. TALK.

Personally, I myself am guilty of putting people down and shutting them up maybe even bullying them just like I have been guilty of not speaking my mind and of body shaming, fat shaming people, blatantly sexist remarks and many other social evils but I am now more aware and though I cannot change all of it and will make major mistakes in the future as well because of how I have been brought up and what I have seen but atleast i can try to normalise these stigmatic conversations wherever possible. People won't listen to sermons and I am not going to make them because well.. I don’t have the brains for that and nor do I have the qualities to make people listen to me, what I believe I am good at is that I can make jokes just like I can take jokes and if thanks to me 5 people can make and take jokes of all kinds then that's going to be my contribution. If thanks to me today people get uncomfortable listening to me making glass ceiling jokes and then questioning the matter in their office or make jokes on CASHD which makes people think about it and realise what might be wrong and question it and talk about it, the victims who would have faced certain problems not having that mental stigma of not being able to talk being able to talk even slightly more openly and normalising, humanising and talking about everything under the sun I believe I would evolve from being just a meme vigilante to a happy man, a JOKER.

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tinyshe · 4 years

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Systems Biologist Speaks Out About COVID-19 Response

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

[this is a long read but well worth the time, food for thought]

Download Interview Transcript Download my FREE Podcast

Story at-a-glance

According to systems biologist Shiva Ayyadurai, Ph.D., the COVID-19 pandemic is being used to shift global wealth

Systems biology deciphers the synergies within living systems to understand how to diagnose, assess and identify the underlying problem, and how to administer the most appropriate remedy

The economic collapse is a result of precisely engineered governmental policies, even though those policies, superficially, appear to be in the public’s best interest

Systems biology informs us one size does not fit all. Yet this knowledge is being ignored in this pandemic. Instead, everyone is told they must take the same precautions as those who are at high risk

Fearmongering is being used to suppress antigovernment dissent, to crash the economy and issue medical mandates that could generate trillions of dollars in ongoing revenue in years to come

Today, we continue to provide you information about the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this recording, April 6, 2020, there are more than 1.4 million cases worldwide and 370,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., with New York City being one of the hotspots.1,2 Here, I interview Shiva Ayyadurai, who has a Ph.D. in systems biology from MIT.

What Is Systems Biology?

His academic background gives Ayyadurai a slightly different perspective on this outbreak, as it focuses on the foundational causes of disease rather than the conventional medical paradigm that tends to focus on pharmaceutical remedies. Ayyadurai explains:

“The MIT department of biological engineering was created in 2003. The notion was … that you needed an engineering approach to biology as new advances or new discoveries were coming out in biology. That created the department of biological engineering …

One of the big things that took place in 2003 that led to the formation of that department was, in an ironic way, what occurred with the human genome project starting in 1993. We went into the genome project with a reductionist view of biology.

Biologists essentially thought that the number of parts meant complexity. We knew in 1993, a worm had around 20,000 genes. So, we said, OK, we're going to start mapping out the human genome. We were at least 25 times more complex. The notion was we had about a half a million genes.

By 2003, they only found 20,000 protein coding genes. That flipped biology on its head because it said, wait a minute, we have the same number of parts, and they thought genes were a reflection of complexity. That led to systems biology starting around 2003, which said, look, genes create proteins and these proteins interact. So, it's about all these interactions …

Today, that has led to this field called epigenetics, in which we know that the external environment, what we interact with, can turn on and turn off genes. I came back to MIT in 2003. I did four degrees at MIT in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering. My Master's was in design, but I always was fascinated with medicine.”

The Cytosol Platform

The project Ayyadurai took on for his Ph.D. thesis was to mathematically model the whole human cell. His work led to the creation of a platform called CytoSolve “cyto” standing for “cell.” This approach is different from biology, computer science and chemistry.

“Biologists are essentially distributed knowledge engineers,” he says, “and the thing they're trying to understand is this thing called the body. No different than aeronautical engineers trying to build the airplane. The difference is when we build an airplane, we actually know what we want to build. And we know the parts in biology, we're finding the parts, that's what they're doing.

Some biologists can win a Nobel prize just for looking at how two proteins interact. So, they're very focused on understanding these parts. So, imagine if we could create a technology where we could take those parts, integrate them, and then essentially let them be sort of focused in their silos.

But there wouldn't be this framework that you could integrate, where you could integrate these molecular pathways. And that really created cytosol. To me, it was a big circling back because I grew up in India where my grandmother practiced traditional systems of medicine.

In that system of medicine, they had diagnosis methods, they looked at you, they figured out your body type and they would figure out the right types of foods and medicines, herbs or even body work to get you back into balance. That was always seen as a ‘black art’ from a Western medicine [perspective].

[CytoSolve] lets us decipher what they were doing and actually understand these synergies. So that's what systems biology is about. It's taking an engineering systems approach to the body … It's literally understanding how to diagnose and assess and identify what the problem is, and then how to administer a prescription within a few minutes. It’s essentially an ‘AI’-type model.”

COVID-19 — Health and Economic Perspectives

As noted by Ayyadurai, the COVID-19 pandemic is not only highlighting our immune health but also our economic health. We're seeing the integration of medical policy and economic policy.

“I had a very interesting discussion with a leading economist,” Ayyadurai says, “and he had a serious concern about the fact that economists are being forced to backfill in a misguided health policy, which is occurring. What he meant by that is, [they’re being told to] just use quantitative easing, which is basically printing money, and that will solve the problem.

Now that entire process does two things. First of all, we have I think 10 million unemployment claims in March alone. In addition to that, you have the fact that we're going to print money, which … if you look, since 2008 and 2009, when quantitative easing started … that has essentially been the biggest transfer of wealth — to the 0.01%, again.

It is essentially a weakened earning power and the [weakened value] of the dollar. So that's what's occurred. Now we have this COVID-19, and we have this economic overreaction, in my opinion, from the fear-mongering. In many ways, it reflects the immune system.

The immune system fundamentally wants to operate well for you and maintain homeostasis, and it's the overreaction of a weakened and dysfunctional immune system that causes harm. Similarly, when you look at it from the economic standpoint, we have this unbridled overreaction, in my view. [We’re] not looking at what modern medicine is saying — that we should take a personalized medicine approach, right?

One size doesn't fit all. This is basically flatten the curve: Kick the can down the street. We're just going to wait until, when? Until the vaccine is produced or until a drug comes out. The assumption is that the immune system of all of us is equally weak. That's what this is based on. The assumption is that all of us are going to get it and all of us will suffer from it.

It's a very interesting model. Look at the person leading this health policy, Dr. Fauci. His background is from the pharmaceutical world … [and] when you look at the NIH and the CDC, these organizations are heavily, heavily influenced by pharmaceutical companies.

In that environment, the model has always been never to discuss immune health, what we can do to support the immune system. It's always under the assumption that there's this big boogeyman, that the virus harms your body. Most medical doctors, again, they're victims of this education.

Many of them are taught the virus literally comes and attacks your body, and that a vaccine or a pharmaceutical intervention blocks it. It's not taught broadly that [the problem is that] the dysfunctional, weakened immune system is not running on all cylinders.

One part of it can overreact, and that overreaction is what goes in and attacks your own tissues. So, the issue is, we're not having a discussion at all in the media about ‘How do you modulate that overreaction and support people's immune health?’”

Similarly, Ayyadurai notes, the economic collapse is “a result of precisely engineered governmental policies,” even though those policies, superficially, appear to be in the public’s best interest.

Is COVID-19 a Real Pandemic?

COVID-19 meets the technical definition of a pandemic, and the World Health Organization did declare it a pandemic. However, the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government.

The Spanish flu in 1918 infected 500 million people worldwide, killing between 20 million and 50 million. The bubonic plague also killed 50 million people, wiping out a shocking 60% of the European population. This is typically what people think of when they hear the word “pandemic.”

COVID-19 presently affects a tiny fraction of the global population — about 1.4 million cases out of a global population of 7.78 billion3 — and even with a death toll of 81,000 worldwide,4 COVID-19 has had a miniscule impact, having killed a mere 0.00001% of the population.

Don’t get me wrong. Any death is tragic. But any given individual’s risk of dying from the epidemics of diabetes, heart disease or cancer, for example, is greater than their risk of dying from COVID-19. Why is death from lifestyle-induced disease and environmental toxicity more preferable and acceptable than death from an infectious disease?

Dying from a preventable medical mistake is also a greater risk, as that kills up to 440,000 Americans every year. Where’s the panic about that? Isn’t the idea that conventional medicine kills 440,000 people a year terrifying?! 1 in 5 elderly patients are also injured by medical care. Where are the calls to protect our aging loved ones from this threat?

Were health policies more aligned with truth, we wouldn’t have these chronic disease epidemics and far fewer people would die from preventable medical mistakes. More people would lead healthy lives were they properly informed about what’s harmful and what’s healthy.

Similarly, when it comes to COVID-19, there are simple strategies with which we can address this infection that does not require collapsing the global economy, creating unheard of unemployment and isolating everyone from human contact for weeks on end. You can find many articles detailing such strategies on my Coronavirus Resource Page.

As noted by Ayyadurai, systems biology tells us that one size does not fit all. “We need to move to the right medicine for the right person at the right time,” he says. But this knowledge has not been applied in this pandemic. Instead, everyone is being treated as though they’re high risk for severe infection and death and therefore need to take identical precautions. So, what’s really going on here?

“We have not said, ‘Hey, let's shut down the economy to address the fact that we have skyrocketing obesity taking place, skyrocketing diabetes,” Ayyadurai says. “So, the level of contradiction, the level of hypocrisy should wake up everyone to understand that there is another agenda.

There is another agenda afoot. I repeat what my mentor said: ‘When things don't add up, take a step back and ask, what is the other agenda?’ And the only thing in a common-sense way that reveals itself to me is power, profit and control. Power, profit and control.”

The Power, Profit and Control Agenda

Like Ayyadurai, I believe the fearmongering is being used to suppress dissent, to crash the economy and to issue medical mandates. “If you look broadly, there were massive uprisings, antiestablishment uprisings [in different countries]. Well, they're all gone now. We don't even hear anything about them,” Ayyadurai says.

He also believes this fearmongering and social isolation mandates will be used as a way to acclimatize people to accept state wants or what a few people deem is good for everyone. “That, I think, is the milieu being set up,” he says. “That's being teed up.” Indeed, it simply doesn’t add up when you look at mortality rates.

“There's another agenda,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what I see, because it doesn't make any rational sense [to crash the economy over COVID-19]. I think that's why a number of the videos, the tweets I've done have gone viral, because to everyday working people, it doesn't make sense either. They're trying to sort this out.”

Interestingly, this epidemic is taking place just a few months after Google began censoring holistic health news. So, people searching for sound nutritional strategies can no longer find them. Instead, they’re directed to Big Pharma-backed sites promoting conventional medicine.

The censorship isn’t even about squashing nonscientific views anymore. Educated health professionals are being banned left and right simply for posting peer-reviewed studies showing nutraceuticals work, or that drugs or vaccines don’t work — including Ayyadurai himself, who got kicked off Twitter the day this interview was recorded over a vitamin D post.

“It has essentially moved to a model of a finite set of people serving the interests of another finite set of people,” Ayyadurai says. “That's what's fundamentally going on. When we really look back at the history of ‘infectious diseases,’ what actually caused the real decline in infectious disease? …

That came from sanitation, vitamin A, nutrition, elimination of child labor, refrigeration [and] infrastructure at the political level … Well, how did we get that? This is one layer people need to understand from a human standpoint. It came about because in the late 1800s, there was a massive force of the American working class who were militant, and they fought for those rights.

People lived in squalor. No one cared for them. It was the uprising of those people and very, very powerful independently self-organizing systems, all over this country, that forced the elites to give them these basic infrastructures …

So, what I see is the ability for people to organize and demand their rights and get them. That is what occurred in the late 1900s, and we got massive gains. Now look at infrastructure today. Dirty water, dirty air, dirty food … and we look at them in synergy, how they affect our body. None of that's discussed, none of that.

I think the United States has a D+ in infrastructure. The roads, the bridges and the water systems [are all crumbling]. And when you don't fix these things in time, they affect all types of environmental things. The elite in this country do not want to address that. They want to always create a fake problem and a fake solution to consolidate power.

And that's why when you look at this [COVID-19] phenomenon that's taking place, it's a penultimate of it … You create massive amounts of fear so people will be willing — because they're under economic stress, under what they think is a health [threat] — to give up their rights.

And that's where I see this headed. So, this is an interesting convergence of … economic attack, attack on people's health, [and attack on] people's autonomy and freedom. Truth, freedom and health are all under attack …

They do not want any discussion about indigenous people's medicines that have worked for centuries. They don't want to talk about simple solutions … so, they suppress discourse, suppress debate, suppress freedom, and move everything away from the scientific method — which is a process where you actually have to prove stuff, which is what they claim they want to do to scientific consensus.

Freedom gets suppressed and now you can move truth to scientific consensus. So, you go from suppression of freedom to fake science or outdated science at best. And then that is used to create a fake problem and a fake solution.

And then, if you go to the health part, what that means is you diminish people's health, you control people's health, and now you have a populace which is so controlled, they don't have the strength to fight for their freedom. So, you have the attack on freedom, the attack on truth, and the attack on health.

All of those are interconnected. They too are a system from a systems perspective. Without freedom, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can’t have health. And without health we don't have the strength to fight for our freedom. And the way that truth actually is discovered should be through the scientific method. That's what's really been compromised, starting, I would say, in the late ‘50s.”

Postal Service Could Be Used to Protect Free Communications

To summarize, the three-pronged agenda is: Power, profit and control. To counteract that three-pronged threat, we need academic freedom and the freedom to discourse and debate.

From that freedom, we get truth, and from truth, we’re able to understand health, not only physical health but also in the broadest sense the health of our systems, our infrastructure and environment. With health, we gain the strength to fight for even more freedoms.

“For each one of those, there's a solution. For example, when you go to freedom, if you look at communication, right now we are heavily relying on Google, Facebook and three major telecom companies. So, basically, five CEOs control our communication. One phone call to them, and you can essentially shut down communication ...

What is the solution? Well, it's going to sound weird, but … the founding fathers of this country created an institution called the United States Postal Service. Why did they create that? Because the crown was not allowing each individual to communicate. So, the notion of ‘the press’ was all of us. There was no New York Times. Each one of us were supposed to be the press ...

If anyone interfered with your communications, [they got a] 20-year prison sentence. It was criminal. So, the entire postal service system was a decentralized environment enabling every American to communicate for pennies …

In 1997 is when email volume overtook postal mail volume. I met with the executives of the postal service. I said, look, you guys should be living up to what you were chartered to do, which is to protect free communications. Why don't you offer a public email service and public social media services … that would be protected by the laws of the Constitution? No one, including the government, could interfere.

They thought it was a ridiculous idea … In 2011, the postal services were going out of business. Why? Because all the best parts of the postal service were privatized into DHL and FedEx. So, I again hit them really hard. The inspector general, Dave Williams, called me up.

He goes, ‘Shiva, why are you attacking us?’ I said, ‘Look, you guys are not doing your job. You're not in the postal mail business. You were supposed to be in the communications business. You are set up as a quasi-organization to protect our rights. So anyway, I did two chartered reports for them.

My point is we need a digital rights act, and there is an institution [that can supply us with that]. It is the postal service, in my view. All these postal service locations could be converted to a mesh network. So, there is an opportunity to have a network by the people for the people. Now if someone wants to go use Google and Facebook and you can, but there needs to be a public common.

Those few elite would object to this and have the power and control to prevent that from being implemented. Definitely. That's why I believe we need to have a mass movement. Nothing has ever been given to us. People think slavery ends one day and we have freedom the next. Every point in human history has always been people chipping away at slavery to get freedom from the elite."

Decentralization Is the Name of the Game

Ayyadurai discusses many additional issues and goes far deeper than I can summarize here, so please, listen to the interview in its entirety. He has many fascinating insights, ideas and solutions. For example, about 50 minutes in, he discusses how federally funded research systems can be improved to ensure scientific integrity and prevent scientific fraud.

“We need to take power away from the academics,” he says, “and one way to do that is to force decentralization. That's a common theme here.” He also analyzes the health care model, and discusses how health care, as a system, can be improved while simultaneously being made far less expensive.

“Broadly, we need to decentralize health care. The concept of centralized health care — which is what the purpose of this [COVID-19 pandemic is] — is that next year everyone's going to be mandated vaccines,” he says.

“For them to crash the economy, to drive it into a depression, for them it's a relatively great return on investment. You make the fed print $6 trillion, but you're going to make $7 trillion to $8 trillion recurring revenue [by way of mandated, annual vaccinations] … So, we have to do whatever it takes to decentralize health care …

When you look at these things I've said, it comes down to one word: Decentralization … I think the opportunity here is to start educating people. It is supposed to be We the People, and this does not mean it's going to happen without struggle.

We may have to rise up and fight in ways that we haven't done before, just like those people did in the late 1800s, and the idea is to compel the thing. We need to build a broad-based movement bottom-up … And I think it begins with taking care of your health.”

#covid-19 #pandemic

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sanjuno · 6 years

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from the tone of ur mcu/got fic it seemed like u really hate or at least disiked steve, how come?

Woo boy, okay. So first things first. Let’s clarify the statement. Steve Rogers, aka Captain America is a character that has been re-imaged several times dependant on the universe he’s in. Classic and Silver Age Steve is okay. I’m kind ‘meh’ about Steve in 616 and Ultimates.

MCU Steve is everything wrong about American superheroes distilled into one storyline. And it’s not just one thing, it’s many things that build up until I want to set him on fire for the good of the world and all the poor, impressionable fanboys in it.

My issues with Steve in the First Avenger are:

MCU Steve refuses to accept any dissenting opinions and his first resort is always violence instead of debate. He’s manipulative in that he verbally antagonizes people so that they “throw the first punch” so he can feel justified in “standing up to bullies”.

MCU Steve glorifies active military service to the point of outright refusing to support the army in a way he’s actually capable of succeeding at and instead commits treason (lying on the enlistment forms) rather that applying for a support role. To say nothing of the danger Steve’s fellow servicemen would be in covering his ass if he did actually manage to lie his way to the warfront. Plus he completely ignores the fact that Bucky was drafted, which means that Bucky did not willingly enlist.

MCU Steve took steroids that had the proven, recorded side effects of increased aggression, sociopathy, and psychosis in every known survival case.

MCU Steve never finished basic training, and thus never even made it to the rank of Private. He’s never been employed by the US Army. “Captain America” is a stage name, not a real rank. If anything, Steve was a consultant employed by the SSR to deal with Hydra and only Hydra.

My issues with Steve in The Avengers are:

MCU Steve is isolating himself and refuses to take care of his own mental health and stability. He expresses obsessive behaviours and rigid thought processes that make it easy for the Hydra agents embedded in SHIELD to gaslight him about people and the operation of modern society. In short, Steve is ignorant and uneducated in a way that he could easily change but refuses to despite have unrestricted access to the resources he needs, and so any failures or bad judgement calls on his part as a result of his ignorance are on his head. Self-education is the responsibility of every thinking person who wants to interact with the wider world.

MCU Steve doesn’t know how to accept specialist opinions, as proven by his distain for Tony and Bruce’s work in the lab so they can track down the cube. Again, distain for cerebral pursuits such as engineering or computer sciences because there’s no visible effort to show for it aside from the results that are produced once the actually work is over.

More attempts to provoke people into violence when MCU Steve is losing an argument because he doesn’t have the facts to back up his statement.

Takes off on a road trip, but when the hell did MCU Steve have the time to get a motorcycle certification or driver’s license? Does he even have a source of income? Second instance of lawbreaking confirmed.

My issues with Steve in The Winter Soldier are:

MCU Steve has no proof that Sam isn’t a Hydra plant when he goes for help, just a gut feeling. Sorry, but background checks are a thing you need to do before sharing classified information for a reason. Operational security is nothing but a dream at this point.

Doesn’t call Tony to get the Helicarriers shut down. Why? Tony has made multiple public statements that Stark tech in the hands of terrorists goes boom!

Yes, there were Hydra agents in SHIELD but dumping the database just meant that all the good, actually SHIELD agents are the ones who got burned. How many active or retired agents and their families got killed because of that info leak? That’s like burning down your house because you saw a spider.

MCU Steve fucks off and doesn’t go to the hearing, and he never actually gets debriefed about what went down. Once again Steve disrespects governing authority and the due process of laws put in place to protect the public. (Because Bucky, and I’m so sick of that mentality.)

My issues with Steve in Age of Ultron are:

MCU Steve hasn’t told Tony that his parents death was a murder but accuses Tony of lying to them. Tony never lies, he doesn’t have enough of a self preservation instinct to bother lying. But Steve is covering up a murder and still somehow thinks he’s a moral authority.

Blames Tony for Ultron when it’s obvious that (a) Bruce was helping and (b) alien magi-tech bullshit was at fault. Plus JARVIS is dead and Steve doesn’t care despite the fact that it’s obvious Tony is grieving.

Identifies with Wanda, known Hydra volunteer who only switched sides because she was going to get killed by Ultron otherwise. Trusts Wanda’s word over Tony’s, when Wanda’s goal has always been to messily murder Tony and she set an enraged Hulk on a city full of civilians with the intent to kill everyone there.

Throws the shield when he gets to Tony’s lab while Vision is being born, so yet again violence is the chosen option instead of debate.

My issues with Steve in Civil War are:

MCU Steve is still so ignorant of modern politics that he thinks the UN is a government. Also refuses to respect the right of sovereign nations to say “no” to having the Avengers cross their borders. If Steve wants to operate against human organizations instead of just the random alien invasion then he needs to have oversight and a proper command structure. Otherwise he’s just another extremist pushing his personal agenda on the populace. And that’s the definition of terrorism.

MCU Steve fucks up Bucky Barnes’ chances of being acquitted of Hydra’s crimes when they escape custody by blowing through the anti-terrorist task force and collapse a transit tunnel on civilians during the midday commute. Until that point everything Bucky did was could be filed under Bucky being non copus menti as a result of the Winter Soldier programming and the deliberately, maliciously cultivated PTSD triggers implanted by Hydra. But that chance is gone now because Bucky Barnes was the one “in control” when they fucked up the airport and beat up Tony.

MCU Steve lies to Clint and Scott about the reason they’re fighting. Steve says they needs to stop the other Winter Soldiers from being set loose and that the Accords will stop them from acting, but in reality it all boils down to saving Bucky. Meanwhile everyone on Team Cap gets labelled an international criminal in the end and chances are they aren’t going to be able to go home for years even if they’re very, very lucky.

Bad laws are argued in court and amendments get made if a law infringes on the civil rights of the people it impacts. But MCU Steve doesn’t obey the laws, he has never obeyed the laws, and so he has no fucking goddamned clue about how to work inside the system to get what he wants peacefully. Cue more punching his problems.

LYING OR WITHHOLDING INFORMATION ABOUT A MURDER CASE IS OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE AND IT’S A CRIME, STEVE.

Breaking people out of prison when they have, in point of fact, broken the law, IS A CRIME, STEVE.

So in summary, MCU Steve is a violent, delusional bully who likes to be the centre of attention and has never believed that the laws apply to him. It’s especially grating because the script writers keep trying to make him a sympathetic character but all I can see is some jacked up white boy on steroids whining because it’s not fair that he needs to be a decent, law-abiding human being. Due Process, Workplace Health and Safety Regulations, Harassment Policies, things like that. Also, Steve and Wanda are actually close to the same age in life experience according to the MCU storylines but he marginalizes her and denies her agency by saying she’ “just a kid”, which is the most bullshit patronizing expression of a superiority complex I’ve even seen in media. And that’s why I don’t like MCU’s version of Steve Rogers.

#Sanjuno Answers #MCU meta #MCU Steve Rogers #Character Analysis #Let me tell you my issues with bad character reimaging with bullet points

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thinkveganworld · 6 years

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This is long, but I thought I’d post just on the outside chance anybody might find it worth reading. It’s part three of a series of articles I wrote years ago, and it includes information on modern day politicians’ use of political propaganda. I might post the other parts later.

Goebbels and mass mind control: Part Three

How PR opinion-shapers undermine the people's political power

In parts one and two, we compared the methods of Hitler's propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, with the PR techniques of today's corporate spin doctors. We also looked at the ways in which corporate PR spin works against the public interest regarding health care and the environment. Now we'll explore the ways that corporate propaganda undermines the political power of ordinary citizens.

Journalist Frank Rich wrote in a recent New York Times opinion piece that he felt he was living through a Twilight Zone episode when he read the Palm Beach Post's scoop saying that Palm Beach's butterfly ballot cost Al Gore "about 6,600 votes, more than 10 times what he needed to overcome George W. Bush's slim lead in Florida." Rich said the reason it felt as if he had entered the Twilight Zone, was because, beyond Palm Beach, he could find no sign such a thing had happened.

"I turned on my TV," writes Rich, "and had to search to find a mention of the Post's story. It might as well have been a hallucination."

In an article entitled "The Invisible People," (The Progressive, March 2001) June Jordan writes about Election 2000's disenfranchised African-American voters and the corporate-owned news media's neglect of the story. Jordan, a noted author and professor of African-American Studies at the University of California-Berkeley, says, "We have moved from The Invisible Man to The Invisible People. It's a raging and a sorrow at the terrible meaning of that discount - for us, and for democracy itself."

The corporate-owned news media "invents reality," as author and educator Michael Parenti has said, by instructing the American people on which news stories are real, and which facts to ignore. Parenti has also written (Land of Idols, St. Martin's Press, 1994) that our political system can be seen in one of three ways:

1. "A conservative celebration of the wonders of our free-market society, coupled with an insistence that capitalism would be still more wonderful were it not for meddlesome government regulations and the demands of undeserving, low-income people who feed out of the public trough."

2. A liberal complaint about "aberrant problems that remain in an otherwise basically good System."

3. A radical analysis "that sees ecological crisis, military interventions, the national security State, homelessness, poverty, an inequitable tax system, and undemocratic social institutions, such as the corporate-owned media, not as irrational outcomes of a basically rational system, but as rational results of a system whose central goal is the accumulation of wealth and power for the few."

Parenti adds that if you take the radical analysis perspective, you "cross an invisible line and will be labeled in mainstream circles a 'conspiracy theorist.'" He notes that Abraham Lincoln might today be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, because Lincoln once observed in a speech, "These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people."

However, Parenti adds that the corporation/ruling class's mode of operation is systemic and institutional rather than conspiratorial. The fact that corporate domination is built into our existing political system, and into many of our institutions, makes it a more daunting problem than a grand and aberrant conspiracy might be.

In a brilliant article for Online Journal (4/24/01), Scott Morschhauser took up the same issue, pointing out that the label "conspiracy theory' is used by those defending corporate interests the same way they use the label 'communist.' If you are successful at pinning a person or idea with a negative label, then the public will ignore the message. It doesn't matter whether or not the label fits. The facts don't matter. All that you have to do is accuse."

When corporate PR teams are able to confuse the public by spinning citizen dissenters as "conspiracy theorists" or as "wacko, tree-hugging environmentalists" or as "extremist fringe," they are able to marginalize activists and dilute their political effectiveness. Journalist Norman Solomon once suggested that rather than succumbing to media manipulation, we can "tune up our personal and collective 'radar screens' to track unidentified flying propaganda."

In False Hope, (Common Courage Press, 1994) Solomon also discusses the subject of public confusion. He writes about the various ways in which corporate PR spin and media "illusion-making" confuse the public. Solomon quotes Anne Wilson Schaef on the results of this kind of confusion:

"First, it keeps us powerless and controllable. No one is more controllable than a confused person; no society is more controllable than a confused society. Politicians know this better than anyone, and that is why they use innuendo, veiled references, and out-and-out lies instead of speaking clearly and truthfully.

"Second, it keeps us ignorant. Professionals give their clients confusing information cloaked in intimidating language that lay-people cannot understand. They preserve their one-up status while preventing us from learning about our own bodies, our legal rights, and our psychology.

"Third, it keeps us from taking responsibility for our own lives. No one expects confused people to own up to the things they think, say, or do . . Fourth, it keeps us busy. When we must spend all our time and energy trying to figure out what is going on, we have none left over for reflecting on the system, challenging it, or exploring alternatives to it."

A confused person will stay stuck within the corporate-dominated system, because creating new options requires mental clarity. Confusion also causes numbness and political passivity.

Frank Rich's "Twilight Zone" experience of the media's ignoring the butterfly ballot story, and June Jordan's sense that African-Americans have become invisible, are normal, healthy responses to the corporate media's lying about reality. When the people see one reality with their own eyes, and simultaneously the corporate media denies that reality, the effect is gas-lighting.

People need truthfulness about politics in order to operate powerfully in the world. Truth is one of psychologist Abraham Maslow's "meta-needs." It has always been a high priority for the world's spiritual and philosophical thinkers. Factual information is a necessary foundation in order for ordinary Americans to set priorities for political action and organize accordingly.

A high priority concern might be weighing corporate interests against the public interest. Another priority might be clearly deciding what our values are. Corporate spokespeople sometimes try to blur the distinction between, for example, good-versus-harmful effects on the environment, or good-versus-harmful health care proposals.

Some corporate spokespeople claim terms such as "good" or "truth" or "justice" can only be vague, misleading "weasel words," despite the fact that philosophers from Aristotle, to the various Enlightenment-era philosophers, to today's best political thinkers have used such terms freely, and have helped clarify their meaning.

For example, the dialogues of Plato explore the meaning of the word "justice." Harvard Professor John Rawls has said, "A just basic structure will be one which produces a proper distribution of prospects of obtaining primary goods, such as income and health care."

How do we define "good" or "harmful" for purposes of the subject at hand? Let's just play with possible working definitions, for the sake of argument. Those options which are "good" could be defined as options that promote health, safety and well-being for the largest number of people, in a kind, egalitarian manner, without discrimination against race, sexual orientation, religion or lack of religion.

Those options which are "harmful" might be defined as ones that destroy health, safety and well-being for large numbers of people in order that corporations can increase their profits, without regard for kindness, egalitarianism, and with (at times) discrimination based on race (as during the Florida election debacle, racial profiling, etc.), sexual orientation, religion or lack of religion.

Are there gray areas within those definitions? Yes. Are there complexities, and is there room for debate? Of course. However, the lines between good and harmful; right and wrong; public health and public detriment are not as blurry as many corporate spokespeople would have us think . . . or, more precisely, would "confuse" us to think.

Thomas Jefferson said repeatedly that democracy could work only if the electorate were "fully informed." He said, "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome direction, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion."

Thomas Paine, in "The Rights of Man," urged "education for one million and thirty thousand children," saying that "the poor laws, those instruments of civil torture will be superceded" by an informed public given a modicum of "comfortable provision" by government.

Paine also wrote that as a result of a better informed and educated public, and of government's providing some assistance for the poor, "The hearts of the humane will not be shocked by ragged and hungry children, and persons of seventy and eighty years of age begging for bread. The dying poor will not be dragged from place to place to breathe their last . . . The poor as well as the rich, will then be interested in the support of government, and the cause and apprehension of riots and tumults will cease."

Some media propagandists such as Rush Limbaugh and his many clones often say, in their usual Orwellian style, that government assistance for the poor actually hurts the poor. Never mind that the Limbaugh types also generally claim to be of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's interesting to contrast their "screw-the-poor" comments with those attributed to Christ, such as, "What you do for the least of these, you do for me," or with a typical Hebrew proverb, such as, "When a needy man stands at your door, God stands at his side." And, of course, to corporate mouthpieces such as Limbaugh, agnostic or "pagan" humanists (such as Thomas Paine) who might suggest assisting the poor don't count at all.

Former radio talk show host, Neal Boortz, has said, "That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf, is there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life." ("The Terrible Truth About Liberals," Longstreet Press, 1998.) Boortz implies people are never poor due to being laid off from a job by a corporation that moved offshore in order to pay slave wages; or due to sudden overwhelming medical bills; or, least of all, due to flaws within the corporate-dominated system itself.

Boortz also says this country is a republic rather than a democracy. He claims that the view that this country is meant to be a democracy is an "insidious idea planted by the Left, by liberals anxious to expand the role of government and their own power." Limbaugh often says the same about democracy, and such antidemocratic views have been popular among many right-wing groups in recent years, just they were in Nazi Germany.

The fact is, America is not merely a republic, but a democratic republic. This country has a strong democratic lineage. The above comments by Jefferson and Paine have to do with enhancing American democracy. Activists who worked toward civil rights, women's rights, labor rights and many other social causes, have helped strengthen democracy within the nation.

In parts one and two, we showed that Hitler and his propagandist, Goebbels, worked to dismantle democracy. They accomplished their goal in part by using PR spin, in order to confuse the people and convince them that democracy wasn't good for them. Through propaganda, Goebbels created a national "Twilight Zone," making the Jewish people invisible, marginalizing dissenters and rendering potential activists powerless.

Somehow, it has turned out that corporate America's PR spin has also taken aim against democracy, confused the people, created a national "Twilight Zone," made ordinary Americans (especially Jewish and African-Americans) invisible, marginalized dissenters and rendered potential activists powerless.

Ordinary Americans have been rendered at least so powerless that we have not yet found a way to persuade our elected representatives to enforce laws that would curb corporate excesses when it comes to polluting the environment; to create legislation that would give this country affordable pharmaceutical drugs or a good health care system; or to bring back the Fairness Doctrine or create similar new legislation, so that our nation's news media is not entirely corporate-controlled.

In a Showtime movie aired this week, Varian's War, the lead character (played by William Hurt) helped bring around 2,000 artists and intellectuals to America, to escape the Nazi Holocaust. A character played by the actor Alan Arkin described the Nazis as "destroying everything they do not understand, which is everything that makes life beautiful and sweet and pure."

Corporate polluters, health care opponents, and illusion-makers, probably don't understand that they are contributing to the destruction of (almost) everything that makes life beautiful, sweet and pure. However, it is up to ordinary Americans with clear vision to toss a little light on the subject. In our proposed working definition of "good," working to preserve the beautiful, sweet and pure things in life has to figure in somewhere. It is a better way to spend a life than screwing the poor, plundering the earth and grubbing for corporate profit.

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