Carl von Clausewitz

01 June 1780 to 16 November 1831
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Carl von Clausewitz’s Moral Science of Warfare
Saturday 01 June 2024 is the 244th anniversary of the birth of Carl von Clausewitz (01 June 1780 to 16 November 1831), who was born on this date in Burg bei Magdeburg in 1780. (Wikipedia says that Clausewitz was born on the first of July, rather than June, but it’s possible to find pictures of Clausewitz’s grave marker, which gives his birth date as the first of June, so I will take this date as definitive.)
Clausewitz is remembered as the philosopher of war, and I have many times said that the philosophy of war and the philosophy of history are close cousins. If we hold that war is the motor that drives history forward, which many philosophers have argued, then was is the causal mechanism by which history is realized. Hegel and Marx in particular are associated with this view. We could even say that war is the reality of which history is the appearance.
And Clausewitz knew war. It was during the Napoleonic Wars that Clausewitz experienced his baptism by fire, so that his book On War is an account of war during the Napoleonic wars, and it is from On War that a mature conception of war has evolved and continues to evolve. By a “mature conception” I mean a theoretically mature conception of war. Since war inflames passions and feeds off irrationality, it can be difficult to engage with the topic of war with the requisite scientific disinterestedness. Clausewitz was the first to bring the attitude to the Enlightenment to war, and to seek to understand war as a rational process. One could argue that Hegel was doing something like this from a philosophical perspective at about the same time, but Clausewitz was a soldier with intellectual interests, while Hegel was a philosopher with an interest in history. The results were bound to be very different, and they were.
Also, Clausewitz’s understanding of Enlightenment rationalism took place when the romantic reaction against Enlightenment rationalism was already well underway, so, again Clausewitzs rationalism was bound to differ from the high Enlightenment representatives like Gibbon, Hume, and Condorcet. It might even be argued that the changes to Enlightenment rationalism that followed from the romantic reaction facilitated the very possibility of applying scientific reason to an object of knowledge as apparently irrational as war. There is an excellent book about post-Enlightenment science, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes, that tells the story of the development of science during the romantic era. Holmes doesn’t discuss Clausewitz, but it would have fit nicely into the narrative.
As the scientific revolution continued to unfold, new influences came to bear upon the development of science, and this in turn opened up scientific knowledge to further frontiers. Clausewitz reflects both Enlightenment and romantic epistemic imperatives. We can find in Clausewitz an intimation of the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic science:

“One may laugh at these reflections and consider them utopian dreams, but one would do so at the expense of philosophic truth. Philosophy teaches us to recognize the relations that essential elements bear to one another, and it would indeed be rash from this to deduce universal laws governing every single case, regardless of all haphazard influences. Those people, however, who ‘never rise above anecdote’ as a great writer said, and who would construct all history of individual cases-starting always with the most striking feature, the high point of the event, and digging only as deep as suits them, never get down to the general factors that govern the matter. Consequently their findings will never be valid for more than a single case; indeed they will consider a philosophy that encompasses the general run of cases as a mere dream.” (On War, Book Six, p. 374)

This is still true today for those who insist that history is exclusively idiographic. In another work, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia (1823 - 1825), Clausewitz gave an account of history that seems highly idiographic, but which does not necessarily exclude the possibility of assimilating events to a nomothetic explanation:

“Although we are not inclined to see the events of this world as resulting from individual causes but always take them as the complex product of many forces, so that the loss of a single component can never produce a complete reversal {but only a partial transformation relative to the significance of the component}, we must nevertheless recognize that great results have often arisen from seemingly small events, and that an isolated cause, strongly exposed to the workings of chance, often brings forth universal effects.” (Chapter V, From The Campaign of 1812 in Russia (1823 - 1825))

Clausewitz had enough of the Enlightenment in him that he looked for the relations that essential elements bear to one another in war, and he was enough of a romantic that he recognized that it would be rash to deduce universal laws governing every single case. So should the study of war be idiographic or nomothetic? As I read Clausewitz, it’s a little of both, and it needs to be a little of both. As our theoretical framework for understanding war increases in sophistication and detail, we might be able to assimilate more individual cases to universal laws, but we won’t exhaust individual cases any time soon.
In an introductory essay to the English translation of On War by Peter Paret we find this description of Clausewitz’s intellectual independence, which was probably a necessary condition for this project:

“…important for our purpose is the intellectual independence with which he approached the fundamental military issues of the age, as well as his sympathy with the aims of humanistic education, and his conviction that the study of history must be at the center of any advanced study of war.” (p. 8)

Clausewitz himself makes the importance of history explicit:

“While there may be no system, and no mechanical way of recognizing the truth, truth does exist. To recognize it one generally needs seasoned judgment and an instinct born of long experience. While history may yield no formula, it does provide an exercise for judgment here as everywhere else.”

Clausewitz is here making a logical point that would later, in the twentieth century, be recognized as the decision problem. A whole series of metalogical theorems on decidability have been proved for various calculi. The problem is to determine a yes or no answer to a question about a theorem, for example, whether or not a given proposition is a theorem of a given system. History is of course much too complex to be reduced to any calculus, so no currently conceivable decision procedure is out of reach for history.
Even if history provides us with no formulae, it still can be a source of insight and judgment. Clausewitz elsewhere in On War goes even further and seems to deny that systemic study could be effective:

“History provides the strongest proof of the importance of moral factors and their often incredible effect: this is the noblest and most solid nourishment that the mind of a general may draw from a study of the past. Parenthetically, it should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition.” (On War)

Given the state of our knowledge of history, Clausewitz is probably right about this, and we have to mostly depend on insight, impressions, and intuition. However, I would argue that Clausewitz leaves this problem open-ended, especially in light of the earlier quote in which he mentions rising above anecdotes, as insights, impressions, and intuitions without even the possibility of assimilating these to general laws would amount to little more than anecdote, which Clausewitz explicitly says we must rise above.
There is another sense in which we can say that history informs our theoretical conceptions. Raymond Aron wrote a study of Clausewitz, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, in which he makes an interesting observation:

“In his youth, he introduced moral forces into his theory; in his maturity, he introduced the conceptual distinction needed to reconcile the transhistoric theory with history, in other words the two extreme forms of war, each one conditioned or determined by circumstances or political intentions. In order to establish the equality of status in the two types of war, he had to recognize the unreality of absolute war which in many texts he represented as the only one consistent with the concept.”

Aron is suggesting that Clausewitz’s chief theoretical conception, absolute war, was unreal, but that it is conditioned and determined by historical circumstances. For Aron, history was the force that made theory responsive to practice. This is not all that different from the saying attributed to Thucydides, viz. that history is philosophy teaching by example. Thucydides also said that war is a stern master, and it brings men down to the level of their circumstances. Clausewitz knew this first hand, and when the lessons that philosophy teaches are the lessons of men being humbled despite the pretences to some higher position in the world, then we have been well and truly humbled.
We could call Thucydides’ observation about war being a stern master the Copernican principle of war, because it forces all participants into a recognition of their smallness within and peripherality to the bigger picture. Clausewitz himself had his share of Thucydides’ Copernican principle of war. He was in the thick of things during the Napoleonic wars, serving as aide-de-camp to Prince Augustus Ferdinand of Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt on 14 October 1806, where Hegel had glimpsed Napoleon and called him the world-spirit on horseback. Hegel fled Jena carrying the manuscript of his Phenomenology of Mind. Clausewitz was taken prisoner of war along with 25,000 others and spent two years as a prisoner of war in France after the catastrophic defeat of the Prussians at Jena. So Clausewitz experienced war as a stern master and he knew the bitterness of total defeat.
Fichte had also felt the weight of the German defeat by the French. In my episode on Fichte I talked about how he had given a series of public lectures subsequently published as Addresses to a German Nation. When Fichte was delivering this talk he is quoted as having said:

“I know very well what I risk; I know that a bullet may kill me, like Palm; but it is not this that I fear, and for my cause I would gladly die.”

War was also a stern master to Fichte; even those who were not soldiers like Clausewitz risked all. Like Fichte, Clausewitz believed that his people could rally, overcome defeat, and eventually regain their political autonomy. Machiavelli, too, had known defeat and had seen his people humiliated by an occupying force, which was also the French, but several hundred years earlier. Fichte wrote an essay about Machiavelli, which, after Clausewitz read it, he sent a letter to Fichte about his Machiavelli essay. In Clausewitz’s letter to Fichte he wrote this:

“This true spirit of war seems to me to consist in mobilizing the energies of every soldier to the greatest possible extent and in infusing him with warlike feelings, so that the fire of war spreads to every component of the army instead of leaving numerous dead coals in the mass. To the extent that this depends on the art of war, it is achieved by the manner in which the individual is treated, but even more by the manner in which he is employed. The modern art of war, far from using men like simple machines, should vitalize individual energies as far as the nature of its weapons permits—which, to be sure, establishes a limit, for an essential condition of large forces is to have the kind of organization that permits them to be led by a rational will without excessive friction.” (Letter to Fichte)

For Clausewitz, friction was a technical term. He wrote an entire chapter on friction in On War, saying, among much else:

“Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper. The military machine—the army and everything related to it—is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should bear in mind that none of its components is of one piece: each part is composed of individuals, every one of whom retains his potential of friction.” (On War)

Returning to the previous quote, Clausewitz names three conditions of modern war as: 1) mobilizing the energies of individual soldiers, 2) leading them with a rational will, and 3) doing so without excessive friction. We don’t have to strain too much to see these conditions of modern war as conditions of the possibility of mass warfare that was eventually realized as the First World War, which I also call the first planetary-scale industrial war.
Clausewitz, fighting in the Napoleonic wars, was positioned to see the prehistory of industrialized warfare. A hundred years later, the prehistory of industrialized warfare eventually morphed into the history of industrial warfare in the strict sense. In my episode on Ernst Jünger I described industrialized warfare as a boundary condition out of which novel forms of modernity emerge. In particular, mechanized warfare is a boundary condition for an emergent form of heroism distinctive to mechanized warfare. Something qualitatively new had appeared in history, and this novel emergent generated a cluster of other emergents for which mechanized warfare was the boundary condition.
The conditions that Clausewitz described were the boundary conditions for industrialized warfare. Ernst Jünger was positioned to see and describe the emergence of true industrialized warfare, as Clausewitz was positioned to see its prehistory. The two authors testify to distinct periods in the development of planetary-scale industrialized warfare. This is a development that continues today, and continues to generate philosophical commentary on the novel emergents that have appeared in history as a result of industrialized warfare.
Today is not only the birthday of Clausewitz, it is also the 117th anniversary of the birth of Jan Patočka (01 June 1907 – 13 March 1977), who was born in Turnov, Bohemia, on this date in 1907. Patočka wrote a book on philosophy of history, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, which was influenced by Husserl, Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt, among others. In the Fifth Essay: Is Technological Civilization Decadent, and Why? And especially in the Sixth Essay: Wars of the Twentieth Century and the Twentieth Century as War, Patočka discussed Ernst Jünger. I mentioned in my episode on Jünger that Jünger’s essay on total mobilization and his book The Worker was an influence on Heidegger, and Patočka too is interested in this work. Patočka’s description of the industrialization of Germany gives us the rational will and the organizational expertise to overcome the friction that Clausewitz saw as conditions of modern war:

“…Germany, for all its traditional structures, is the configuration that most closely approximated the reality of the new technoscientific age. Even its conservatism basically served a discipline that, contemptuous of equalization and democratization, vehemently and ruthlessly pursued the accumulation of building, organizing, transforming energy. Ernst Junger’s Der Arbeiter contains an implicit suspicion of the actual revolutionary nature of the old prewar Germany.! It is above all the ever deepening technoscientific aspect of its life. It is the organizing will of its economic leaders, its technocratic representatives forging plans leading inevitably to a conflict with the existing global order.”

Patočka also saw the orgiastic craziness of modern war that facilitated the mobilization of the energy of individual soldiers:

“War as a global ‘anything goes,’ a wild freedom, takes hold of states, becoming ‘total.’ The same hand stages orgies and organizes everydayness. The author of the five-year plans is at the same time the author of orchestrated show trials in a new witch hunt. War is simultaneously the greatest undertaking of industrial civilization, both product and instrument of total mobilization (as Ernst Jünger rightly saw), and a release of orgiastic potentials which could not afford such extreme of intoxication with destruction under any other circumstances. Already at the dawn of modernity, at the time of the wars of religion in the sixteenth. and seventeenth centuries, that kind of cruelty and orgiasm emerged. Already then it was the fruit of a disintegration of traditional discipline and demonization of the opponent though never before did the demonic reach its peak precisely in an age of greatest sobriety and rationality.”

It took the scientific and managerial resources of industrialized civilization—which Patočka and others call “technoscience”—to tame, and direct, and organize the orgiastic fury that was earlier released during the religious wars of the early modern period. I suspect that Junger would have largely agreed with this if he had read Patočka, and he could have read this since he lived longer than Patočka. It’s a bit more difficult to ascertain what Clausewitz would have thought of this.
To a certain extent it’s counter-intuitive to understand this orgiastic fury of warfare that Patočka described as a moral factor of war. We would perhaps like to think of the morality of war in terms of the various treaties like the Geneva Conventions that have attempted to moderate the brutality of armed conflict, or maybe the older framework of St. Augustines conception of a “just war.” There is, however, a wider sense of the use of the word “moral.” This wider sense of moral is less common that in the past. One could even say that this usage is becoming archaic. This is definitely is case with the idea of what were once called the moral sciences.The OED defines the moral sciences as:

(a) Those branches of knowledge which deal with the criteria of right and wrong;
(b) Cambridge University politics, philosophy, and economics, as a course of study.

This is now a defunct and archaic way to refer to the humanities and the social sciences. I suspect few if any university catalogs continue to use the moral sciences as a major division of the curriculum. But the idea of the moral sciences points to a wider sense of the term moral, and that is anything that engages specifically human responses to the world like politics, philosophy, and economics. In this context, moral doesn’t necessarily involve right and wrong, but it does involve what is human, all-too-human.
The Clausewitzean conception of war, which, as Raymond Aron said, was about introducing moral forces into our understanding of war, makes the study of war a moral science in this now archaic usage of “moral.” Clausewitz’s moral science of war is very close to what Ernst Jünger wrote about war being ultimately a spiritual endeavor. Patočka underlines this by recognizing the many social forces that came together to produce the wars of the twentieth century. Earlier I said that many philosophers have understood war as the engine that drives history forward. Patočka comes close to saying as much further along in his discussion of Jünger’s work:

“The first world war is the decisive event in the history of the twentieth century. It determined its entire character. It was this war that demonstrated that the transformation of the world into a laboratory for releasing reserves of energy accumulated over billions of years can be achieved only by means of wars. Thus it represented a definitive breakthrough of the conception of being that was born in the sixteenth century with the rise of mechanical natural science. Now it swept aside all the ‘conventions’ that inhibited this release of energy—a transvaluation of all values under the sign of power.” (Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, Sixth Essay, p. 124)

Clausewitz lived before this radical transvaluation of values, which is a phrase that Patočka has picked up from Nietzsche. Clausewitz belonged to the social order that was subsequently lost to the transvaluation of all values under the sign of power. He was there for the first stirrings of this transvaluation, but he did not see the completed arc of its development. Clausewitz’s traditionalism can be glimpsed in a document Clausewitz wrote in 1812—titled “Political Declaration” and published in Carl Von Clausewitz: Historical and Political Writings. Clausewitz wrote in the present tense, as a participant in historical events whose outcome was unknown as he wrote this account:

“The hatred that Napoleon bears toward the House of Hohenzollern is of course not obvious to everyone and not at all easy to explain. For some, however, it will be enough to know that at Tilsit a contemptuous coldness, indeed a suppressed hatred, could not be missed in the emperor’s personal conduct toward Frederick William III and his family, while the royal family's conduct toward Napoleon (thanks to a sense of dignity undiminished by politics!) had a more worthy and dignified bearing, which can of course enrage a vain and passionate man even more. There are also specific facts whose significance cannot be mistaken. The basis of Napoleon’s enmity probably lies above all in the liberality that characterizes the Prussian regime, which has attracted attention throughout Germany. Prussia, and particularly her ruling house, has public opinion on her side more than other states, and Napoleon is deeply hostile to this. The south German princes may be weary of French domination, but they have never been independent, they fear the vengeance of outsiders, and are without pride and self-esteem, half admirers and half flatterers of the French emperor. This is not the case with Frederick William III. This king, as everyone knows, is above all an upright man, incapable of hypocrisy: hatred of the French emperor is natural to him, and since he is sensitive and easily offended, his feelings are constantly inflamed by Napoleon’s abuses and can never grow numb. If he has refrained from expressing those feelings for political reasons (great self-possession being natural to him in any case), if he has admirably sacrificed his own dignity and that of his people in this regard, his reticence could never deceive the French emperor, and nothing is more natural than that Napoleon should have seen more deeply into the king’s heart than the king has into his.”

Here Napoleon is the upstart emperor who lacks the depth of dignity that the ancient family of the Hohenzollern possessed. Napoleon knew this, resented it, and the Napoleonic wars were one big cope-and-seethe because of it. The Hohenzollern represent the traditional aristocratic privilege that the French Revolution sought to overturn, and yet Napoleon and the Hohenzollerns found themselves forced into this diplomatic accommodation that both probably found distasteful. Napoleon was drawn into these ancient diplomatic traditions that the Revolution was in the process of sweeping away.
Not only was Napoleon draw into these ancient rituals of diplomacy, in having himself crowned emperor, he was effectively giving new life to these institutions, and the Hohenzollerns were drawn into paying their respects to a representative of the Revolution that would have done with them. For Clausewitz, the Hohenzollerns were an ancient aristocratic family reforming themselves and their kingdom along liberal lines, while Napoleon was the symbol of revolutionary change that threatened the established order of Europe. Patočka understood this, which why, in my earlier quote from him, he discussed the quasi-traditional, but, at the same time, the quasi-revolutionary nature of Imperial Germany, and Jünger’s response to this. This is not something I am prepared to exhaustively sort out, so I will leave it there for the moment.

Video Presentation

https://youtu.be/MAXr5Ze4bQg
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7s7dsjNGk5/
https://odysee.com/@Geopolicraticus:7/carl-von-clausewitz%E2%80%99s-moral-science-of:f

Podcast Edition

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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/carl-von-clausewitzs-moral-science-of-181857506/
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u/tv-belg, https://www.reddit.com/Ayahuasca/comments/1d5ru3comment/l6ohqcj/
 
Only thing you really need to worry about is avoiding high tyramine food (aged, cured fermented food etc) to avoid headache so. The rest is based on various different dogmas and will vary by person to person.
The old school curanderos doesn’t really care
 
Is there any evidence that tyramine causes a headache with harmalas? As u/MapachoCura said, the MAOI diet only applies to irreversible MAOIs.* See this post for relevant quotes from medical literature: https://www.reddit.com/DMT/s/sY9fyOpx9V
However, as you can see, the info suggests that if a sufficient amt. of tyramine is consumed when on ayahuasca, the ayahuasca will actually be kicked out of your body.
*MAOIs that permanently bond with the body's enzymes, but the effect is not truly permanent, as the body replaces its enzymes every two weeks or something. This is why some medications require a 2-week wait period before switching to a different medication.
 
Its for the same reason tyramine food should be avoided with pharmaceutical MAOI, which are full MAOIs. In which case it’s potentially dangerous. Ayahuasca is reversible MAOIs, so its not dangerous but can indeed cause headaches and discomfort. Plenty literature on this (google, pubmed etc)
It has nothing to with the effect of Ayahuasca, its to do with MAO not breaking down tyramine potentially causing too much much tyramine.
After 100s of ceremonies i definitely notice a difference if i slack on low tyramine. Which i still sometimes do. But definitely not really dangerous.
 

Plenty literature on this (google, pubmed etc)

This says that they're wrong:
Note that RIMA stands for reversible inhibitor of MAO-A.
“Patients treated with moclobemide are at lower risk for hypertensive responses to TYR; moclobemide is a RIMA which can be displaced from MAO by higher concentrations of TYR and of NE released by TYR. This displacement restores the activity of MAO and allows it to catabolize TYR and released NE. The labeling for moclobemide carries warnings about ingesting high-TYR foods that are similar to those for irreversible MAOIs despite clear evidence in the literature that, with moclobemide doses of up to 900 mg/day, a TYR-restricted diet is not necessary (5,30).”
Pharmacist Toolkit: Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors. Rex Lott, PharmD, BCPP. Lincoln, NE: American Association of Psychiatric Pharmacists, 2022 (Pharmacodynamic Interactions: Hypertensive Crisis. Interaction with Tyramine-Containing Food (“Cheese” Effect)) emphasis added
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It is, unfortunately, necessary to state clearly from the beginning that much of what is published by doctors in books and journals about MAOIs is either poorly informed, or just plain wrong. As an example, much of the information that comes with MAOIs (the PI, or product information sheet) contains inaccurate material concerning, among other things: serotonin toxicity, drug interactions generally, and dietary tyramine.
MAOIs (Parnate, Nardil): Misconceptions and Questions No. 1. Ken Gillman, MD. PsychoTropical Research. Nov. 14, 2012
 
You may want to go back and read the full text of these papers you are referring to. Nothing here contradicts what i said, just discusses the level of danger for different kind of foods and medication
 
I posted the information that contradicts what you said in bold text!
clear evidence in the literature that, with moclobemide doses of up to 900 mg/day, a TYR-restricted diet is not necessary
(a tyramine-restricted diet is not necessary)
 
That doesn’t contradict what i said…
 
You said “tyramine food should be avoided”. The quoted statement means “you do not need to avoid tyramine”. Clear contradiction. Maybe you don't understand it because English isn't your first language...
The closest alternative to the quote is “... a diet that contains minimal tyramine is not necessary.”
 
Thats not actually what I said, but even if I did, it still doesn’t contradict 😉 Nothing in your articles or quotes contradict the well known scientific fact that MAO enzymes are responsible for breaking down tyramine. And that high tyramine levels can cause high BP and discomfort. And in some cases be dangerous.
I even stated it isn’t dangerous with Ayahuasca, but that it can definitely cause discomfort in many. Including me.
So yes, I still do recommend to avoid high tyramine food 2-3 days before ayahuasca to avoid unnecessary headaches day after.
What I actually wrote was “Only thing you really need to worry about is avoiding high tyramine food (aged, cured fermented food etc) to avoid headache”
In your next reply to you I also stated “Not dangerous”, but can definitely cause discomfort. Which it can.
Anyway, you do you 😗 But again you might want to properly read the papers you are quoting to understand the context and medical science behind.
My English comprehension is perfectly fine thanks.
 

Thats not actually what I said,

“Its for the same reason tyramine food should be avoided with pharmaceutical MAOI,”

Nothing in your articles or quotes contradict the well known scientific fact that MAO enzymes are responsible for breaking down tyramine.

Now you're just making things up, because I never said that anything said that. The first quote states that if one ingests tyramine when on moclobemide, the moclobemide is kicked out of the body, thus even when one is on moclobemide, the enzymes are still available to do their job. After that it states that one does not need to avoid tyramine on moclobemide because, indeed, moclobemide will not stop MAO from doing its job. So, there's no reason to avoid high tyramine foods, and one especially does not need to avoid them for 2-3 days in any case, that's just you imagining stuff...
 
Are you feeling ok there? Making things up. Dude, why are you trying to argue things you don’t understand? You can have your opinions, but trying to argue biological facts based on misreading a couple of papers is just bizarre.
Anyway, I’m out. Not my job to educate you.
“MAOIs prevent the breakdown of tyramine found in the body and certain foods, drinks, and other medications. Patients that take MAOIs and consume tyramine-containing foods or drinks will exhibit high serum tyramine level.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539848/#:~:text=MAOIs%20prevent%20the%20breakdown%20of,exhibit%20high%20serum%20tyramine%20level.
 
That statement is an overgeneralizition. It only applies to irreversible MAOIs.
“moclobemide is a RIMA which can be displaced from MAO by higher concentrations of TYR and of NE released by TYR. This displacement restores the activity of MAO and allows it to catabolize TYR and released NE.”

Thereafter for four years more Beren wandered still upon Dorthonion, a solitary outlaw; but he became the friend of birds and beasts, and they aided him, and did not betray him, and from that time forth he ate no flesh nor slew any living thing that was not in the service of Morgoth.
Welcome one and all again to the 2024 Read-Along and Discussion of The Silmarillion here on tolkienfans. For Week 23 (Jun 2-Jun 8), we will be exploring The Quenta Silmarillion (The History of the Silmarils) chapter 19, "Of Beren and Lúthien."
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Following the Dagor Bragollach, Barahir and his companions continued to defend their land, Dorthonion. It was to Tarn Aeluin, a lake in the east of that country, that they made their abode. Morgoth could not discover it, and he ordered Sauron to eliminate them. Through Sauron's devices, a member of the group named Gorlim was deceived into revealing the retreat of Barahir, and the company was slain by Sauron's Orcs. All perished, except Beren, son of Barahir, who was away on a perilous errand at the time. Coming to Beren in a dream, a wraith of Gorlim told him all and urged him to return in haste. Alas, he came too late and found his kin slain. He buried his father, and slew the band of orcs responsible, reclaiming from them the Ring of Felagund.
Thus Beren roamed Dorthonion, slaughtering many servants of Morgoth, and so a bounty was set upon his head, and Sauron's armies hounded him to such an extent that he was forced to flee Dorthonion. Journeying through the horrors and terrors of Ered Gorgoroth and Nan Dungortheb he came at length, by paths untrodden, to Doriath, where no mortal had yet been before.
Staggering into the woods of Neldoreth, he chanced upon Lúthien, daughter of Thingol and Melian, dancing in a clearing beside Esgalduin. He became utterly enchanted by her, and his agony departed him, for Lúthien was the most beautiful of all of the Children of Ilúvatar. He called out to her, naming her Tinúviel and as she looked on him, doom fell upon her, and she loved him. For a brief time, long ago in the woods of Doriath, their joy was the greatest that has been, amongst any of the Children of Ilúvatar.
However, Daeron the minstrel loved Lúthien also, and betrayed them to Thingol, who was wrathful. For Lúthien he set above all things, while of mortal Men he took little heed. And so Thingol demanded to know Beren's business in Doriath. Finding resolve, Beren answered that his fate led him to what he sought not — Lúthien. At this, many thought Beren would be slain. Indeed desiring his death, Thingol set upon him the nigh hopeless task of bringing to him a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth. Only then would he allow Beren to receive Lúthien as his bride. Thus began in earnest, the Quest of the Silmaril.
Turning towards Nargothrond, Beren sought out the counsel of Finrod Felagund, who, recalling his vow to the kin of Barahir, gathered together a band of his most loyal chieftains. Departing from Angband, Felagund used his craft to disguise the group as a pack of orcs, and so they hoped to pass by Tol-in-Gaurhoth unnoticed. But Sauron was suspicious of them, and duelled long in song with Felagund. But alas the victory belonged to Sauron, and stripping them of their disguises, they were made to languish in a deep pit. One-by-one, Sauron sent werewolves to devour the companions in the hope of obtaining their purpose, but all were faithful to their lord. When the wolf came for Beren, Felagund slew it with his bare hands, but in doing so, was mortally wounded. Bidding Beren a final farewell, he died in the darkness of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, the tower he himself had built long ago. Thus ended the fairest and most beloved of the Noldor, Finrod Felagund.
In the hour of Beren's capture, a heaviness fell upon the heart of Lúthien and she left Doriath in pursuit of him. Encountering Celegorm and Curufin, and Huan, the Hound of the Valar, she was glad, but through treachery, the two brothers took her as prisoner to Nargothrond. But Huan had grown to love her and for the first time spoke, giving her counsel, and helped her to escape. With speed, the two came to Tol-in-Gaurhoth at the hour of Felagund's death, and Sauron smiled. For he knew a great reward would await him for the capture of Lúthien, daughter of the Maia Melian. So he sent wolves, including Draugluin, father of werewolves, to capture her, but Huan slew them all. Then Sauron came himself—taking the form of a mighty wolf—and fought with Huan, but not even he could defeat the Hound of the Valar. Thus he was forced to yield Tol-in-Gaurhoth to Lúthien, and he fled. Lúthien removed the ill shadow from that Isle, and came to Beren. Together, they buried the body of Felagund and left that place. And Huan returned to his master, Celegorm.
By chance, the two brothers Celegorm and Curufin came upon Beren and Lúthien near to the Forest of Brethil, and sought to take Lúthien by force and kill Beren. But in that hour, Huan forsook the service of Celegorm and came to the aid of Beren, who leapt onto the horse of Curufin, knocking him off. After taking horse and knife Angrist from Curufin, Beren bade him return, impoverished, to his kin. Being humiliated, Curufin took the bow of Celegorm and fired at Lúthien. Springing to protect her, Beren was hit. Huan pursued the brothers who fled, and upon returning, he brought a herb to Lúthien who, by her craft, healed Beren. Eventually, they returned to Doriath.
There, Beren left Lúthien in the care of Huan and departed for Angband. Arriving at the borders of Anfauglith, Beren lamented in the belief that this would be his final peril and sung the farewell Song Of Parting. But unsought for, Lúthien appeared upon Huan, and came to him once more. Huan spoke for the second time then, counselling Beren that he could no longer save Lúthien from her fate. And so, taking the guise of Draugluin, and the bat-like messenger-of-Sauron Thuringwethil, together Beren and Lúthien passed through perils untold until they arrived, weary and weather-worn, at the Gates of Angband.
To their dismay, guarding the entrance to Angband was a creature of whom no news had previously reached the ears of the Noldor: the great wolf Carcharoth. He was suspicious of them, for news of the demise of Draugluin had reached Angband, and approached them with menace. But by some power of Lúthien, she commanded the wolf to slumber, and into unconsciousness he fell. Then Beren and Lúthien crossed the threshold of Angband, descended down the subterranean chambers, and together wrought the greatest deed that has ever been dared, by Elves or by Men, in the history of Arda. For they arrived in the throne-room of Morgoth — a court filled with horrors untold, where Balrogs patrolled. Lúthien's disguise was robbed of her by the will of Morgoth, and, standing before his gaze, she began to sing for him a song of such outstanding power and beauty, that he was put into dreams of the Void, and he slammed into the ground, unconscious. All his court slumbered. Then removing his wolf-hame, Beren cut, with Angrist, a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth. It occurred to him then to bring out of Angband not one, but all three Silmarils. But such was not his fate, for Angrist snapped, and a fragment smote the cheek of Morgoth. He groaned. All the legions of Angband stirred in their sleep.
Then fear and terror unknown fell upon Beren and Lúthien, and realising their imminent peril, they fled. But alas, at the surface, they found Carcharoth conscious and wrathful. Beren held the Silmaril high; Carcharoth hesitated, and for a moment was afraid. But his spirit flew into a rage, and he bit off the right hand of Beren, consuming the Silmaril. It seared his innards, and he fled south, howling in a fit of madness.
The fangs of Carcharoth were laced with venom, and death approached Beren. So the Quest of the Silmaril would have ended in despair, but unlooked for, Thorondor came with his Eagles to the aid of Beren and Lúthien, even while droves issued forth from the Gates of Angband, and bore the two away from the reach of Morgoth. South they flew, passing above the hidden city of Gondolin, shining like a jewel in the sun. Yet Lúthien wept, for she feared the death of Beren. The Eagles left them at the borders of Doriath, in the same glade where Beren had left Lúthien and departed on the Quest. Huan came to Lúthien and again, and the two of them tended to him. There he lay, in dreams of anguish, until, as Lúthien's last hopes were fading, he awoke. And it was spring.
Thereafter, he was given the name Erchamion, "the One-handed". The two then tarried for a time in those woods, for it was pleasant to them, but Beren would not forget his Oath to Thingol. So after a time they returned to Doriath, which had fallen into grief at the loss of Lúthien. News of their coming had spread far, and they arrived in Menegroth with a large following.
Beren and Lúthien told the tale of their Quest, to the astonishment of all. It seemed to Thingol then that the Man before him was among the great in Arda, and Lúthien's love was a thing strange to him. It came to his mind then that no power of Elves or Men, or Maiar or Valar, or any other power in Arda, might interfere with their fate. And his mood towards Beren was softened. Thus, at last he relented, and Beren took the hand of Lúthien before the throne of her father.
For a time, there may have been some semblance of peace and joy in Doriath, but out of the north came the beast Carcharoth. A hunting party was assembled, consisting of Huan, the Hound of the Valar, Mablung of the Heavy Hand, Beleg Strongbow, Beren Erchamion, and Thingol, King of Doriath. As they rode forth for the Hunting of the Wolf, a shadow fell upon Lúthien, and to her it seemed as though the world had been drained of all colour, and beauty, and life. The party came upon Carcharoth near the northern waterfalls of Esgalduin. The wolf leapt for Thingol, but Beren came between them, suffering a deadly wound. Huan slew Carcharoth, but was himself fatally injured. Laying beside Beren, he spoke for the final time, bidding Beren farewell. So they parted. Mablung ripped open the wolf and placed the Silmaril in Beren's living hand, who asked Thingol to receive it. "Now the Quest is achieved, and my doom full wrought", he said. And he spoke no more. They bore Beren back to Menegroth, and Lúthien met them. She bade him await her beyond the Western Sea. Opening his eyes, he looked upon her one last time before he died. So ended the Quest of the Silmaril. But the tale of Beren and Lúthien did not end there.
For the spirit of Beren lingered in the Halls of Mandos, awaiting Lúthien upon the dim shores of the Outer Sea, where they could say their final farewell. For it is from there that the spirits of Men depart the world, never to return; such is the Gift of Ilúvatar. The spirit of Lúthien fled her body, and found its way to the Halls of Mandos. Kneeling before the Vala, she sang to him a song so beautifully sorrowful that Mandos was moved to pity. But it was not within his power to alter the fates of the Children of Ilúvatar, and so he called on Manwë, who sought guidance from Ilúvatar.
Two choices were put before Lúthien. On account of her extraordinary labours and grief in life, she was permitted to remain in Valinor, forgetting all pains she had known. But there Beren, being mortal, could not follow. The second choice was that she might return with Beren to dwell in Middle-earth, as a mortal, with no guarantee of joy in life. There, both would be subject to a second death. This second option she chose, forsaking the Undying Lands, for a mortal life with Beren. So it came to pass that long ago, Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren Erchamion at last left the confines of the world, together.[1]
Of Beren and Lúthien at The Lord of the Rings Wiki: This chapter tells The Lay of Leithian, i.e. Beren's quest for a Silmaril with Lúthien, and tells of the deaths of Finrod Felagund, Draugluin, Carcharoth, Huan (Beren's wolf-hound), and of Beren himself.
Chapter discussion at Entmoot TolkienTrail.
Chapter discussion at The Barrow-Downs.
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Questions for the week:

1. There seems almost no motivation for the love between Beren and Lúthien. They just look at each other and it happens. Why? Does Beren love Lúthien mainly because of her celestial beauty? Why does she love him?
2. Why didn't the Silmaril burn Beren's hand?
3. Why did Beren’s spirit go to the Halls of Mandos after he died? Do all men’s spirits go there, only to typically be sent off to who knows where, or was he an exception for some reason?
4. How did Lúthien end up in the Hall of Mandos?
5. How did Huan beat Sauron?

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For drafts and history of this chapter see The Lost Road and Other Writings, "The Later Annals of Beleriand", pp. 134-142 §262-306; "Quenta Silmarillion)", Chapter 12-15, "Of Beren and Tinúviel", pp. 292-306; The War of the Jewels, "The Grey Annals", p. 17 §44, pp. 58-99 §167-210; "The Later Quenta Silmarillion", The Last Chapters, pp. 243-247.
BONUS BACKGROUND 1: The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two (Ch. 1: The Tale of Tinúviel) , pp. 3-68.
BONUS BACKGROUND 2: The Lays of Beleriand (Ch. 3: The Lay of Leithian) , pp. 150-329.
BONUS BACKGROUND 3: The Lays of Beleriand (Ch. 4: The Lay of Leithian Recommenced), pp. 330-363.
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For further history and analysis of this chapter, see Arda Reconstructed (by Douglas Charles Kane), pp. 173-181.
Be sure to have your copy of The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad on hand as you go through this chapter.
Some Tolkien-related hangouts on YouTube (relevant to this week):

• Nerd of the Rings This episode: Maps of Middle-earth: The First Age The Silmarillion Explained
• Nerd of the Rings This episode: The Origins of Melkor Tolkien Explained
• Nerd of the Rings This episode: The History of Morgoth [COMPILATION] Tolkien Explained
• Nerd of the Rings This episode: The Complete Travels of Beren & Lúthien Tolkien Explained
• Tolkien Untangled This episode: Beren and Lúthien 101 - Why this story matters! (including Playlist: Of Beren and - Lúthien)
• Ælfwine's Road This episode: Silmarillion Summary: Ch. 19 - Of Beren and Lúthien [22/31]
• GirlNextGondor This episode: Tolkien's Greatest Love Story: Beren and Lúthien Tolkien Love Stories - Part 3
• The Tolkien Road Podcast This episode: Of Beren and Lúthien » Silmarillion 2022 Ch 19 » Tolkien Road Episode 298 » Sauron, Morgoth, Aragorn
• The Tolkien Road Podcast This episode: 0050 - The Silmarillion - Chapter 19 - Of Beren and Lúthien - Part 1 of 2
• The Tolkien Road Podcast This episode: 0051 - The Silmarillion - Chapter 19 - Of Beren and Lúthien - Part 2 of 2
• The One Ring This episode: Tolkien’s Greatest Joy – Of Beren and Luthien Intro – The Silmarillion – 23
• The One Ring This episode: Tolkien’s Real Alpha Male -Of Beren and Luthien Part 1 – The Silmarillion – 24
• The One Ring This episode: Middle-earth’s Real Power Couple – Of Beren and Luthien Part 2 – The Silmarillion – 25
• The One Ring This episode: Morgoth’s Kaiju-Wolf – Of Beren and Luthien Part 3 – The Silmarillion – 26

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The Silmarillion Reader's Guide at Tea With Tolkien.
The Silmarillion Reader's Guide by askmiddlearth on Tumblr.
Quettaparma Quenyallo (QQ) - The most extensive list of Quenya words available on the internet, by Helge Fauskanger, 1999-2013.
Tolkien Collector's Guide - Guide to Tolkien's Letters
A (Hopefully) Light Guide to the Silmarillion — Or What I Wish I’d Known Before Reading It by u/Ok_Bullfrog_8491/
The Definitive Family Tree of the Tolkien Legendarium by u/PotterGandalf117
Wikipedia - The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Announcement and Index: (Take 2) 2024 The Silmarillion and The Fall of Gondolin Read-Along

Hey! Ik a lot of the incoming first year engineering students have accepted their offers recently (congrats!) and I thought this may be of use for you guys and some of these can go for any first year student honestly. I learned so so much during my first year and would love to share if it even benefits one person!
- every percent helps! A lot of your mark will be based off the midterm and final, but most classes have room to gain marks in quizzes and homework. Although each one may be worth small (for ex. in pcs each hw is work 0.5%), don't get in the habit of slacking off and overlooking those. Those percents add up and can help you pass your course esp if you do poorly on major assessments. it can be very easy to skip or forget them in the midst of midterm season, but you future self will thank you when your calculating your grade at the end of the semester. Plus its a great way to stay sharp and caught up!
- join clubs. everyone says this but its for a reason!!!! It is an excellent way to meet upper years and learn from them, as well as gain skills and opportunities that set you apart from peers. You can also add it to your LinkedIn and climb up the exec ladder if you stick to the same clubs over the years. This is the best thing I could've done my first year. Although it can be challenging managing them along your classes, even joining one or two positions can help make yourself well rounded. Some examples are MUES positions, FYEO fyc, IEEE, WiE, BMES, MECU, ECEstorms, CECU and literally SM more.
- design teams. on the topic of clubs, design teams esp are something I wish I joined but hope to in my second year. Design teams are amazing because they allow you to contribute to physical projects and use the concepts you are taught in your classes! They're also great because you can add these projects to your resume and linkendin.
- find good friends/study group. It can be overwhelming and scary in the beginning to make friends, and it does take time to build those relationships. However I highly recommend you put yourself out there and out your comfort zone even if it is just talking to someone while waiting outside of a lecture. I cannot stress enough how beneficial a supportive friend/group can be for your entire degree! You guys can hang out between classes, lock in and study together, they can be there to help you/teach the things you don't understand, hold you accountable when you slack off, hype you up and push you to seek new oppurtunites, and make sm memories. don't be scared about meeting new people, it is a lot easier than you think esp bc everyone is on the same boat in first year and looking for friends! Joining clubs as I mentioned is a great way, as well as talking to the people in your tutorials/labs and inviting them to get a bite or drink with you!
- hold your self accountable. You know yourself best and you know when you are slacking off, when you are doing something you shouldn't be, when you can be doing better than you are, etc. University is not like hs where you have a teacher or figure to hold you accountable, you need to do that for yourself. Eng is not easy, you need to know when it's time to study or put in effort because spoiler alert, you need both to succeed. you cannot expect to pass or have good grades if you are only going to lectures and not reviewing, doing your hw, or studying. and holding yourself accountable throughout the sem can make studying for finals and midterms easier for you.
- be careful using chatgpt, bc you will become dependent on it. Ai is definitely a helpful tool than can be used to answer specific questions and spark new ideas, however use it cautiously. Pushing and using your brain is so good for you, however access to gpt and ai can make it seem like an easy fix. It is, but all I am saying is don't use it for everything, don't use it when you have the answers in your notes or textbook, don't use it if you have time to work it out/think on it. you do not want to become one of those brain rot individuals that cannot think and speak for themself thats all.
- save your money. I wish I'd hear this before but it is incredibly easy to blow off money in your first year esp at tmu. There are food and shopping places in every corner, so if you have the money/savings it's easy to get in the habit of buying food or a sweet treat every day. Many of us aren't working during school either. Just remember that each course you take cost money, if you need to take it again or online it cost money, your homework textbooks and lab equipment often costs money, and if you are on osap you will need money to pay it back! just be careful 🥲
- chang policy. I had to learn this one the hard way too. If you would like to take a course virtually through chang the refund policy is NOT the same as in person courses. If you change your mind about the course and want a full policy, you need to drop the course 5 BUSINESS DAYS before it begins if you want a full refund. I dropped a course 4 business days before and had to pay 50% for a course I did not take.
- time management because the workload is intense. engineering is not easy but time management can make your degree manageable and not feel impossible. it may be hard to find the routine and flow that works for you, but if I can give any advice while you do it is to make use of the time you have when you have it. Use resources like a planner, google cal, to-do lists, reminders etc to stay on top and make time for everything. being able to manage your time can save you a lot of panic and stress in midterm and final season. although the workload can get overwhelming, break your tasks down and take it day by day, but make sure you get done what you need too.
- start group projects early, especially CEN100. you will encounter many group projects during your first year, and most of the important ones happen near the end of the semester. I highly suggest you urge you and your group to get started or at least plan/break down tasks early, ideally from the get go when it is assigned. trying to coordinate with group members who are all busy with the end of the semester can be difficult and makes room for conflict to arise. not to mention starting early gives you time to seek help and critique from your TA. if you need to be that person, hold the group accountable and make sure you guys do not leave it for last min.
- don't compare yourself. everyone comes from different educational and social backgrounds. for some it may come as a shock to be surrounded by people who are as smart as you if not probably smarter. it is so easy to compare yourself and your success to others and it can easily become discouraging. just know that although you will meet people doing great while you may be near flunking, everyone is still struggling and finding it difficult. they may have different learning styles from you that makes it easier for them to learn new material, or they may have come from a school/background where they have already learned it. that doesn't mean you can't get to that level tho, for some it just takes some extra effort and that is okay.
- connect with your TA's and profs and build a relationship with them. You won't always come across a friendly or dedicated instructor, but if you feel you you have give them the chance to get to know and remember you, go to office hours and your tutorials even if they are optional. chances are they may be willing to give you advice or insight on what is on the midterm/final, or they could be the reason your mark has been boosted enough for you to pass. this is not always the case, but it often is.
- it will be a learning curve and takes time to adjust. as much as people can advise and warn you, you won't know what you are getting yourself into until you are actually in it. university for most people is a whole different ball park, let alone an engineering degree. you likely may not find your circle, your flow and your space right away and that is okay, it is part of the process that sets you up to be the best engineer you can be one day. some may be able to adjust quicker than others but just be patient with yourself, if you need to break up for your year into the spring/summer sem so be it. they say the first year of eng is the hardest bc it is such a large jump from high school, but remember it isn't impossible, so many people have done it and so can you. be kind with yourself, and use the many many resources that are available for your success.
- stay caught up in your classes to avoid burnout during midterm and exam season. one of my biggest regrets is missing so much class after midterms and having to cram for finals. Up until my midterms for both semesters I was caught up and following along in everything which made studying less time consuming bc I was already familiar with most the material, it was just filling in the gaps and practicing. Finals nearly took me out bc of the amount of cramming I had to do before I could even get to studying. not to mention seeing the material multiple times will make it stick better by logic. falling behind is common, but don't let it get too far because it truly is very hard to come back from. try to study as you go through the semester, and review/practice the lessons regularly. do not let the material leave your brain as soon as you learn it.
- it is okay to fail. many of us come from being high achievers in high school and getting above average grades. but you will come to learn that grades in the 45-60 range is normal. it is not the end of the world if you fail a course, especially in your first year. you are not dumb, you are not a failure, you are not letting anyone down. failing a course or two is normal and fairly common at least once during this degree. as a first year there is a lot of leeway and room for success, so you can just take it the next sem or the spring.
- make time for your family. this mostly goes for the commuters, but it can be difficult to make time for them especially when the semester ramps up. you may find yourself locked up in your room or coming home late from a library study sesh. but for many people they are your support system and even taking an hour away from your work to spend time with them and be a breath of fresh air and much needed to feel connected to them.
- go to student events! there are genuinely SO MANY that run throughout the year especially for us. I highly recommend to you to as many conferences as you can, GVIC, the WiE if you are female, the one from FYEO and more from MUES. these are great to make industry connections, learn things you don't learn in class, you can make friends, network, and grow yourself professionally. there are other more fun and chill student events that run too that can be great to destress during the sem and wind down with your friends.
- learn to make use of your time if your commute. Many of us who take the go have quite long commutes that can make it feel like a chunk of our day is gone. Something to help with that is just learning to manage the travel time and get something done. This can be being productive and study, taking a power nap, winding down/screen time before locking in at home, have lunch/dinner, making phone calls, etc. Plan your day out and what you are going to do during that commute time, it can truly help structure your day sm better.
- split your chegg. if you really need to buy it (its great for CHY homework and PCS) find some reliable and not snitchy friends and split it so its cheaper. although again, be careful using such tool incase you become dependent on it. it is a tool not solution, use it to learn how to do questions you don't have examples on, but still make sure you do most the hw for practice etc.
- don't get in the habit of skipping class. everyone says this yet we all do it. but I feel like I still need to include this since I have tasted my own medicine from skipping so much. its fine to skip here and there but don'ttttt make it a habit bc it is near impossible to break. its starts with one class, and then you skip the next one bc you didn't catch up and you're gonna be lost either way, and then it snowballs from there. its okay if you aren't caught up from previous missed lectures. just go, even if you just sit there and pay attention without taking notes. you will eventually catch up if you go, but letting it become a habit is just cutting yourself short and holding you back from sm academic success.
- don't overlook the easy classes. they WILL be your mark booster but you still need to put in the effort. for me they were CEN100, CHY102, my liberals, and CPS188. If you care about your gpa make sure you put effort into these classes bc they are very easy to do well in and will boost your gpa.
- its okay to feel imposter syndrome. I went through this a lot and felt like eng was not for me at many times because I would get in the habit of comparing myself. I don't think I felt like I belonged or felt like I was where I was supposed to be until the winter sem. as I mentioned it can take time to find your space but you will eventually. try to remember why you went into eng in the first place, and if it was just money joining clubs/going to eng events can help you find passion or belonging in it again. at the end of the day just trust your gut. if you truly truly feel like you can't see yourself working as an engineer maybe you could reconsider. but if you can but you are just struggling, I promise the imposter syndrome is normal but it will go away.
- NO all nighters. this is coming from someone who has pulled one too many this year and regrets it every single time. I feel like we all know this by now but just prioritize your sleep guys, this again comes down to time management but get enough sleep helps you SO MUCH to learn and digest all the material. you may be able to stay awake physically but you brain needs the rest. and ESPECIALLY DONT PULL ALL NIGHTERS BEFORE EXAMS. So many times this sem have I experience the worst brain fog of my life from doing this, you start to forget the most basic of things and concepts you may have perfected. it can be so easy to overlook our sleep but it truly is so important. don't sacrifice it, if you need to take the L bc you didn't study enough just take it, bc honestly studying more ahead would've saved you if you feel like you need to miss your sleep to cram.
- don't buy a single textbook. the only time you should is PCS and CHY bc it comes with the homework which you need to buy. other than that don't you can find it all online for free either on Anna's archive, the eng gcs or upper years.
- be prepared for midterms. tbh nothing could've prepared me, it is intense. esp if you are taking the full course load. the learning does not stop when midterms roll around, you will still have fast paced lectures, still have hw, still have regular quizzes and projects on top of studying for midterms. It can honestly feel suffocating in the midst of it and extremely overwhelming, but again this is where time management comes to play, use planning resources, and set yourself up for success from the very beginning of the sem. the biggest mistake people make is skipping lectures during midterms, because let me tell you, you will not make the time to catch up during midterm season, and even when it is over you are likely quite far behind or near finals. try your self to ensure you keep going to your classes during it. ALSO, make sure you study well for your midterms, for many people they do better on the midterm than the final so allocating those grades from the midterm is a great idea.
- check your emails! there are so many opportunities and resources that get sent to your inbox. this includes free tutoring, study halls, event details, on campus paid opportunities, club hirings etc.
- take care of yourself. like sm other things it can be so easy to overlook your basic needs and let yourself go. whether that be skipping meals or eating fast food alllllll the time, not sleeping, not showering and doing laundry, not giving yourself free time, etc, you need to look after yourself because no one else will. and the only way you can do well is ensuring you yourself are well. feed yourself healthy and balanced meals, get enough sleep, PLEASE SHOWER AND USE DEODORANT (the stereotype is in fact true), and take yourself outside on walks and with your loved ones. don't lose yourself along the way, it is all about balance.
- do not drop linear algebra in the fall. just listen to me on this one. even if you absolutely BOMB the midterm, don't get scared by it and decide to drop it. this happens essentially every year, and they usually, every year, make the final much easier and straight forward than the midterm is so it IS possible to pass. at the end of the day all you need is a 50 and it is very doable if you have the quiz/hw grades secured (free marks for most people) and study well for the final. try to get profs like majed and wang bc if you are near passing they may boost you enough too. and even if you did fail, so be it that is fine, you can take it in the winter but atleast you gave it youre all and said you tried but chances are you will pass. I say this bc the winter sections for linear algebra ive heard are much harder than the fall, although I think they curve at the end, it is a lottttt more theoretical and confusing so I recommend you push yourself for the fall and see where that takes you.
Anddddd I think that's all! I know that was a lot and maybe overwhelming but I hope it was insightful. if you have any questions or worries feel free to comment or pm.

CONCLUSION
And finally, here’s the final part! If you have any thoughts, or any disagreements, comment down below! I’d love to discuss the game’s lore with you all!
At its heart, Indigo Park is a tragedy, one that would make both Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks proud. It starts off with the creator wanting nothing but good, but slowly devolves into a horrifying, downward spiral. After all, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Isaac Indigo has a dream of bringing his imagination to life, for people everywhere. The beginning of the twentieth century began horrendously, World War 1 being the deadliest conflict at the time. Wanting to help everyone and bring at least a spark of joy into their lives, Isaac Indigo launches headfirst into the media of his choice: cartoons.
Indigo comes up with his first permanent Mascot, Lloydford L. Lion. A loud, booming, rambunctious character, Lloyd sought to be the spark of happiness that Indigo hoped he would be. Lloyd would the very best actor, showman, and orator. He’s arrogant, but not pompous. He’s loud, but not with ill will. He’s the beginning of the cast that Indigo envisions, a character whose sole purpose is to please the world. It’s not a surprise that Lloyd is an actor, after all. He seeks to distract the world from its woes, at least for a bit, and make everyone have a good time.
Indigo, emboldened by his sudden fame and success, proceeds to churn out four more individuals: Rambley the Raccoon, Mollie the Macaw, Salem the Skunk, and, eventually, Finley the Sea Serpent, though he comes in separate from the other three.
Rambley Raccoon, a quick thinking, sharp tongued, cheeky little gremlin, is an instant hit with the people, becoming the second most popular character out of the five. Mollie Macaw, a happy-go-lucky bird with a love for the open skies, acts as Rambley’s best friend, the two practically glued together. Together, alongside Lloyd, these three represent the ‘good guys’, a trio that want nothing but the best for the people.
However, every hero needs a villain, and thus, Salem the Skunk was born, a snappy, malevolent little critter that wished for the world to revolve around herself. She has a knack for potion making, a capable chemist who uses her concoctions to bend the wills of others to herself, only for herself.
Rambley and Salem end up becoming fated rivals, nemeses who dislike each other the most, out of every character that Indigo created. Using Salem, Indigo would spread the message of peace, of friendship and everlasting bonds that always triumph against evil, and Salem.
This continuity continues for a period of time, Indigo eventually adding one more character to his roster: the melancholy sea dragon, Finley. Finley’s main goal was to be the educator, to explain the natural world around people and share the fascinating and the beautiful, especially in regard to the ocean, a concept still so unexplored, while also trying to appeal to an older crowd alongside Lloyd.
However, poor Finley wouldn’t ever be that popular amongst his peers. Perhaps it was his gloomy, exhausted aura that pushed people away, or perhaps it was his towering, and frankly scary, size, or even maybe because he was deemed boring by the youngest, who were more keen on Rambley, the character that appealed to them the most. Even the other characters, whether Indigo intended for this or not, seemed a bit annoyed by Finley, and often left him to his devices.
And, for a while, Indigo’s plan succeeded. His popularity and notoriety only increased as time went on, gaining him influence, money, and prestige. His plans were working! He was making a difference, making smiles appear on the faces of people who would otherwise be swept away by the woes of the world!
Everything started to crumble, however, when yet another horrifying conflict arose: World War II. The Old World was thrown into chaos, Europe, Africa, and Asia becoming the bloodiest battleground in human history, surpassing even the Great War that came before it.
So, Indigo concocted a scheme, a way to raise the spirits of those he could currently help, his fellow Americans. Indigo Park was to be his magnus opus, his monument that would transcend his lifetime. Here, all of his creations would gather, all of them having their own attractions, bringing a level of access that had never yet been realized before. Costumed people would walk around during operational hours, bringing his characters into the real world to interact with those that needed refuge from the outside horrors.
However, while his park became a success, spearheaded by Lloyd the Lion, the very first, there was something that bothered Indigo. These costumed performers, while certainly a stroke of genius, underperformed. Besides that, they sometimes broke character, and destroyed the immersion of the guests, and were quite costly to keep around, alongside the engineers, the logistics division, and the Ranglers that helped run Indigo Park. Not to mention, the cost of custom costumes, of fabric and materials, rose higher and higher as quotas began to be placed and maintained in the USA, due to the resources it sent to its allies overseas, before eventually joining their allies in the fight against evil.
If he couldn’t simulate his characters, why not make them? Animals that would be living, breathing creatures that would merely need care, compassion, and basic necessities? Hiring a bunch of the best scientists, he gave them a special role: The Royal Ranglers, those that would be entrusted with this secret project.
Indigo, while a creative man, didn’t understand science as well as these individuals, and likely never would, but he would make them keep logs, records of their successes and failures, of their many experiments. And eventually, their labor paid off: One of each character, Mascots, came to life. They breathed air, had red blood flowing through their veins, were real, physical creatures, but also remained gentle with the guests. Once they were unveiled, there was no longer a need for costumed performers to roam around Indigo Park. They could also be trained to perform shows of their own, such as Finley and Lloyd, while the others could supervise their respective districts! It was a win win!
However, not everyone was so pleased with the results. The performers that once roamed the streets found themselves without jobs, only some kept around to care for the new Mascots, their betters, their replacements. And that made them furious. Why should these abominations, these stupid, ugly freaks replace them? Behind Indigo’s back, these disgruntled employees would begin their revenge slowly, minimally. Withholding a small amount of the supplies the Mascots needed, occasional cruel words. As time went on, this turned into a coping mechanism, the treatment of the Mascots progressing into physical violence, vile, cutting words on the regular basis.
Sometime before this Lloyd would end up giving up the title of main character to Rambley, who had gained immense popularity, even more than Lloyd himself. While it annoyed the proud Lloyd to be first mate, he would hand over the title graciously, partially because Rambley had always been jealous of Lloyd’s popularity and fame, and maybe, just maybe, this change would do them all good. Their abuse had been escalating, much worse than any thought possible. Salem was the only one to oppose this decision, thinking that it was all only to the benefit of Rambley. Mollie was the opposite, supportive of her best friend. And Finley … well, there was no way to consistently speak with the reptile. He was always kept in Oceanic Odyssey, far away from their cages underneath Jetsream Junction. And besides, none of the four particularly … liked Finley. Sure, Rambley had befriended the sea serpent, but that was done moreso to have some rapport and sway over the gentle giant, who was much too shy, like, ~obnoxiously~ ~shy.~ He was always so gloomy, so pessimistic, so willing to accept whatever came his way. No, Finley was definitely not an agent of change, but of pitiful complacence, locked away with his prized shell collection.
However, things did not improve at all. In fact, it only got worse. Tension between the Mascots was at an all time high, Rambley having become hurtful to even his best friend Mollie. He was still suspicious of Lloyd, convinced the lion would steal back his position as ringleader. Salem and Rambley, and thus with Mollie, also began to sour drastically. Salem was convinced that Rambley wasn’t doing anything to help the five. After all, he and Mollie practically abandoned Finley, someone who they claimed was a ‘friend’. Lloyd too became frustrated with the raccoon, Salem whispering in his ears, convincing him that Rambley had only pushed for Lloyd’s demotion to finally be the one above Lloyd, to have more power.
Mollie was soon caught in the crossfire of a particularly intense feud, Salem and Lloyd on one side, Rambley by himself on the other. Rambley, her best friend in the whole wide world. Rambley, that same friend who would sometimes be mean to Mollie for no apparent reason. However, no matter what Rambley had done to their relationship, it wasn’t Rambley’s fault. It was one time when Lloyd became particularly aggressive that Mollie had to finally end this.
The fault does not belong to Rambley! “Not Rambley! He hurts Lloyd! He hurts Lloyd!”
And suddenly, it clicked for the Mascots. No matter how much some of the Mascots didn’t like each other, there was one person they all could agree to hate: Isaac Indigo. Their creator who had left the newborn animals to the mercy of vengeful, spiteful, horrible people who did nothing but spit upon and abuse the Mascots. It was decided that they would fight back. They would show those humans that they were not muzzled dogs, but barely contained predators.
The next time the Mascots were in the presence of these Ranglers, Lloyd finally snapped. It was a particularly brutal day, and Lloyd would suffer no longer. With a crippling roar, Lloyd launched himself at the Ranglers, the other Mascots following suit.
Isaac Indigo had walked into work expecting the day to be like usual, but it was to his horror that he learned of the Mascots attack upon their Ranglers. Calling a hasty evacuation, guests were shoved outside of the park with no explanation, no answers. Even the authorities would not be able to provide answers. No, they couldn’t learn of such a thing; it would ruin Isaac Indigo and all that he had worked for.
Temporarily, the entire park fell under the control of the Mascots, who were a bit shocked with how easy it was to win their freedom. However, their victory would not last. They all would suffer the consequences.
Lloyd was deemed the biggest threat to Indigo’s plans, so he had to be the one dealt with first. But how? The scientists that Indigo had hired came up with a plan; repurpose the Critter Cuffs to make a high enough pitch to incapacitate the lion, before locking him up for good in his theater. Alongside this, in order to better guarantee the safety of their people, a resuscitation feature had been added to potentially save an employee's life, if it came down to it.
Luring the beast to his stage area, the humans spring their trap, their Critter Cuffs wailing, racking Lloyd with so much pain that he couldn’t do anything but curl up into a ball. With the help of some engineers, they lock Lloyd in his own theater, a special clearance required to even access the area. This is where they toss most of the assets Indigo Park does not wish anyone see. Research papers, binders, notebooks, it’s all scattered here. And while here, Indigo decides to deal with Mollie Macaw as well.
Mollie is dangerous in that she knows planes and how to use them. They’re massive weapons, so, the way to disarm the bomb that is Mollie is to lock Jetstream Junction behind the Critter Cuffs, as well as a massive lock and key. The key itself would be stored at the very back of Lloyd’s theater, a place where only they would know to look. And once they seal the doors one final time, Mollie, Rambley, and Salem would have no access to it.
Finley would be left to his own devices; he’s contained in his attraction and as long as they don’t approach, they’ll be fine. The remaining Mascots can’t hide there forever either, and the humans know that. Even if Finley is a deterrent, the humans would eventually invent a way to deal with the serpent, who would be unwilling to resist for too long.
And thus, two Mascots were dealt with, one Mascot crippled. Only Salem and Rambley remained threats with their rides and arsenals, though Mollie is still dangerous with her sharp beak and claws.
After some time, Mascot Rambley and Salem decide to retreat further into Indigo Park, further away from the entrance. Their movements were too easy to track with that blasted Artificial Intelligence system watching through the bountiful cameras. Mollie, however, can’t bear to leave her home, her hangar. She tries to reason with the two others, but ultimately, no agreement can be reached. Salem and Rambley would withdrawn, and Mollie would come, if she wanted to.
Eventually, the two sneakiest Mascots, once sworn enemies, were now the only one the other could rely on. Now brother and sister, they tried their best to weather the storm, but were ultimately dealt with. Mollie, grief-stricken with the loss of her home and being abandoned by the ones she called friend, had no will to fight anymore.
This entire process took almost ten years, finally ending in 2015, while the park had been closed in 2006. Outside, people slowly forgot about the enigmatic end to the once beloved park, distracted by the rapid expansion of other sources of fun and media. Indigo, saddened by the fate of what he once thought of as his greatest achievement, didn’t have the heart to tear the place down. It was too dangerous, so he merely bribed the local authorities to close it off from curious onlookers. He would command the AI Rambley to have most of his files wiped concerning the fate of the park, wiping all data concerning the back and forth between humans and their experiments brought to life. He’d be restricted to the Registration Center, cut off from the actual park, and only present in one computer until Indigo found a way to salvage the situation. And that’s where Isaac Indigo left Indigo Park.
Mascot Mollie is left alone to wander the park, all her friends gone, missing. She stumbles into Rambley Railroad, the only place that she can see all her friends, before she stops at Salem’s exhibit. Eyes narrowing in hate, Mollie remembers that it was Salem that pushed and manipulated them all to fight back. If Salem hadn’t been there, none of this would have happened. This leads Mascot Mollie on a destructive rampage, wrecking the whole area as much as she could. She eventually stumbles upon an animatronic version of herself, which shocks her when it repeats Mollie’s own words, almost like snidely trying to hurt Mollie with her own words. “Not Rambley! He hurts Lloyd! He hurts Lloyd!” Once again angered, Mascot Mollie pounds upon the robot until the lights fade from its painted eyes, slumped in a pile of metal rods and broken brick. From there, Mascot Mollie leaves, vowing to stay away from the place.
However, what Indigo did not account for was an urban explorer duo that made it their life mission to explore a wide variety of places. Laura and Ed made quite the dynamic duo, always exploring what they wanted, where they wanted, how they wanted. Though they trespassed and sometimes even burgled, they were never caught by the authorities, and their concealed presences on their channel was enough for the two to not be charged and arrested.
However, the two found themselves in a weird limbo. All of their newest explorations lacked a certain ‘oomph’, with even their viewers noticing the lack of excitement and passion of the two. So, Ed decides to set his sights on a big fish: Indigo Park.
Laura, his partner, is instantly worried by Ed’s choice. All the places they went to before were practically abandoned, the maximum they had to worry about were old motion detectors and an occasional camera or two. Indigo Park, however, would most likely be very secure, swarming with cops, even, so she tries to dissuade Ed, but Ed only becomes more pumped to break inside. Resigned, Laura promised assistance if Ed could find a way inside. Ed finally goes to this famed Indigo Park, home of so many of his treasured memories as a child, intent on having all of his personal questions answered.
It is to his surprise that the place is so easy to slip into. All he had to do was avoid the occasional patrol car, climb a fence, and viola, he was there. The entrance gates being locked up, however, was a bummer, but maybe the Registration Center would have some information. It would be even more of a shock to discover an AI Rambley, the same that Indigo had locked there.
AI Rambley would guide Ed, the first visitor in exactly eight years, inside, Ed collecting all sorts of goodies, such as plushies, ears, drinking containers, and even a vintage Rambley costume mask. However, Ed is disappointed by the way the AI practically ignores the state of disrepair Indigo Park has fallen into.
Lured by the sudden sound of Rambley speaking Mascot Mollie rushes over; Rambley came back for her! But it is to her horror that it’s merely a mockery of Mascot Rambley, that old AI speaking to a human! Mollie, wary and frightened of the implications of this, decides to merely follow cautiously.
Following the directions of the AI, Ed travels through Rambley Railroad, fixing the ride when in breaks in the wrecked zone of Salem the Skunk, her cutout and props left in broken pieces. It is during this ride that Ed senses he’s not alone, and notices Mollie Macaw stalking him. However, she’s not threatening in any way, so he leaves her be. Why antagonize this … Mascot? Person? Ed doesn’t know what to think of her, but maybe, if he’s careful, he won’t have to deal with her.
Ed is then directed to Jetsream Junction, but is disappointed to find it locked away, not only by Critter Cuff, but also by lock and key. The AI mentions a key in Lloyd’s theater, though, so he heads that way. What Ed does not expect to find is Mascot Lloyd himself, dozing on the stage. Quickly noticing Ed’s presence, however, Lloyd flees, remembering all too well of the danger that humans posed to him.
Unfortunately, Ed is left without AI Rambley’s presence, and Lloyd is slowly but surely pushed farther back into his domain. Lloyd at one point tries to attack, but the lion is clumsy. Though he can’t die of thirst or hunger, he still suffers from their effects, his body weak and dirty. Lloyd then leaves and lets this man do whatever he wants. Maybe if Lloyd hides in a corner, the scary human won’t come for him.
However, he is soon consumed by anger when he realizes that Ed takes the keys to Jetstream Junction. He can’t let this human escape, he might try to go and hurt Mollie! She’s probably locked in there like he’s locked in here!
Lloyd attacks, or tries to, at least. The accursed Critter Cuff wails, its high-pitched waves causing Lloyd to be paralyzed with pain. Once the sound stops, Lloyd runs away, his fears of torture reignited as he is subjected to pain he had not faced for almost twenty years.
Mascot Mollie, always lurking, heard the Critter Cuff go off, and she draws her conclusions well; Lloyd tried to fight the human, but was driven back, hurt and embarrassed in his own territory. From here, Mollie’s old, unresolved anger begins to build, following Ed as he opens up Jetstream Junction, much to her surprise. At first, she’s delighted. Finally, her old domain is open! She explores the place, running into Ed as they both take notice of one another. Perhaps she’ll let Ed go; he did do her a favor, after all.
But that notion is soon dissolved as she watched Ed run about the place like he owns it, Mollie’s anger mounting as he goes deeper into her home. Finally, she has enough. She attacks Ed, chasing him through the halls and tunnels Mollie so loves. Unfortunately, this final act turns out to be Mascot Mollie’s last. Just as she lunges for him, her head gets severed from her body by a metal door, her blood coating it and the surrounding environment bright red.
It is from here that AI Rambley is forced to acknowledge that this is not his familiar Indigo Park; it’s old and worn, the Mascots that once made people laugh now try to hunt them down. He forgets that they were abused because those files were wiped from him, and Mascot Mollie’s cries are very hard to discern as the echoes and Mascot Mollie’s own voice is ruined by age.
AI Rambley decides his best course of action is to enlist Ed’s help to repair the whole theme park. After all, he has all the information on how to go about it in his database, it just requires a physical body to do, something that the AI sorely lacks. And so, AI Rambley directs Ed toward the first place they need to kick back up: Oceanic Odyssey, home of the Mascot Finley. Perhaps this shy, reclusive sea snake won’t be trying to kill Ed.
On the way, though, Ed nearly stumbles upon the laboratories where the Mascots were made, so the AI makes sure to block that avenue. Ed was AI Rambley’s only hope of success, he wasn’t risking the man run away in terror from the sights and notes that likely were down there.
Ed finally reaches the Oceanic Odyssey attraction, pushing open the doors and following AI Rambley inside, catching a glimpse of a long, green, sea dragon in one of the aquariums …
END
Well, that’s about it! 12k words and 24 pages in, and I only covered the first chapter. Hoo boy …
I don’t think I need to reiterate that this is what I think happened, canonically. There will obviously be some wrong information due to the limited evidence I have to work with, and I intentionally remained vague during certain parts.
Despite that, I am very confident in a few ideas, such as the Mascot uprising, the weaponization of the Critter Cuff specifically against Lloyd the Lion, and the secret laboratories hidden behind that Royal Ranger Room area.
If you have any ideas of your own, let me know as well! I would love to theorize about some things that all of you think as well!
Also a huge shoutout and thank you to the creator of Indigo Park, Mason Myers, or UniqueGeese. The guy is insanely talented, considering this took him only one year to do. ONE! I can’t want to see the twists and turns he has to offer.
See you all later in Chapter 2! - Maddy

DAY: MAY 31 2024
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5-31-2024

DIGITAL CAMPAIGNING IS A HUGE PART OF ELECTIONS NOW—BUT GOING VIRAL ISN’T EVERYTHING

The election has commenced and the race is on—to amass as many likes, shares and comments as possible. Digital campaigning, particularly through social media, is now a key part of political candidates’ communication toolkit. In fact, every general election campaign since 1997 has at some point been lauded as the first to make effective use of digital campaigning. But it was in 2015 that David Cameron’s campaign first made strategic use of social media to drive an election victory. As political reporter Tim Ross outlines in his excellent book, Why
5-31-2024

WHY ARE ORGANIZATIONAL COVER-UPS SO COMMON?

The TV dramatization of the UK Horizon Post Office scandal evoked outrage and disbelief. However, as another example of dysfunctional organizational behavior, it was expected rather than exceptional. The Post Office saga joins a long list of cover-ups or scandals that includes Hillsborough, Enron, Grenfell, the infected blood scandal, the Tuam babies scandal in the Republic of Ireland, Boeing 737 Max and Nasa (Columbia space shuttle). They represent what happens when there is a move within organizations and institutions to cover up the causes of
5-31-2024

AMONG GEN Z AUSTRALIANS, 38% IDENTIFY AS SPIRITUAL AND HALF BELIEVE IN KARMA. WHY IS SPIRITUALITY SO POPULAR?

Spirituality is increasingly popular with young Australians: recent research shows 38% of Gen Z Australians identify as spiritual. It also reports 50% of them believe in karma, 29% in reincarnation and 20% in astrology. When it comes to activities equated with spirituality, 28% of Gen Z Australians practice meditation and 22% practice yoga. In Australia, spirituality is strongly, enduringly central to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and culturally and religiously diverse communities. Yet until recently, spirituality has received far less attention than religion. Spirituality may be
5-31-2024

COMPANIES CAN IMPROVE THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THEIR PRODUCTS IN THE EARLIEST PRODUCT-DESIGN STAGES

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Lithuanian and Italian universities propose a tool that allows companies to assess the circularity of their future products. The self-assessment tool emphasizes the co-creation of circular design in the early (creative) stages of product development, encouraging entrepreneurs and designers to think more systematically and collaborate better by integrating related stakeholders into the product development process. The study is published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology. “The majority of existing practical tools (systems of indicators) are aimed at measuring the environmental impact of products already
5-31-2024

RESEARCH EXAMINES HOW RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION AFFECTS A STATE’S COLLEGE ENROLLMENT

New research has revealed up to a 9% increase in college first-year enrollments in US states that have legalized recreational marijuana compared with states without such legalization. The study, which is published in Economic Inquiry, found that the increase was from out-of-state enrollments, with early adopter states and public non-research institutions experiencing the most pronounced increases. Recreational marijuana legalization did not negatively impact degree completion or graduation rate, and it did not affect college prices, quality, or in?state enrollment. The findings suggest that some students perceive recreational marijuana legalization as
5-31-2024

RESEARCH EXAMINES HOW RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION AFFECTS A STATE’S COLLEGE ENROLLMENT

New research has revealed up to a 9% increase in college first-year enrollments in US states that have legalized recreational marijuana compared with states without such legalization. The study, which is published in Economic Inquiry, found that the increase was from out-of-state enrollments, with early adopter states and public non-research institutions experiencing the most pronounced increases. Recreational marijuana legalization did not negatively impact degree completion or graduation rate, and it did not affect college prices, quality, or in?state enrollment. The findings suggest that some students perceive recreational marijuana legalization as
5-31-2024

HOW THE ‘MODEL MINORITY’ MYTH HARMS ASIAN AMERICANS

May is Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month, a time when Americans celebrate the profound contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders—a group that is commonly abbreviated as AAPI—to U.S. society. It’s also a time to acknowledge the complexity of AAPI experience. And as a professor who studies equity and inclusion in business, I think the focus on AAPI communities this month provides an excellent occasion to push back against a stereotype that has long misrepresented and marginalized a diverse range of people: the myth of the “model minority.” The
5-31-2024

WONDERING HOW TO TEACH YOUR KIDS ABOUT CONSENT? HERE’S AN AGE-BASED GUIDE TO GET YOU STARTED

The Australian government’s new campaign Consent Can’t Wait challenges us all to improve our understanding of consent. It asks a series of questions to illustrate this issue is more complex than simplistic “no means no” messaging. The campaign invites viewers to consider the nuances of consent, so we can raise these important issues with children and young people in our lives. But what is a good age to start talking about consent? How do parents tackle such conversations when this information probably wasn’t readily discussed in our own upbringing? How
5-31-2024

A PRODUCT OF NATURE OR NURTURE?

The concept of cultural entrepreneurship has many facets. It encompasses both the cultural and social impact of entrepreneurial training, and the environmental factors that influence its development. Some societies, such as the U.S., have a strong entrepreneurial culture. This means that certain characteristics are celebrated and encouraged, such as the ability of individuals to assume risks, patience when confronting challenges, and innovative problem solving, especially in uncertain situations. However, not all countries have such an entrepreneurial culture. Entrepreneurship struggles to take off in Europe In general, entrepreneurship can drive economic
5-31-2024

STUDY BRIDGES ANIMAL BEHAVIOR RESEARCH AND COMPUTER CODING TO ENGAGE CHILDREN IN STEM

A graphic depicting a student coding. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University Teachers today face a bit of a conundrum, according to a new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Rochester Institute of Technology. Their goal is to prepare young students to enter a rapidly changing world. Even basic jobs require technical proficiency, which requires computational and analytical skills. To address this need, many educators are pushing to fold these important STEM skills into elementary curriculum. Here’s the problem. Young students can lose interest and even develop an aversion
5-31-2024

STUDY SHOWS VR CAN HELP TEACHERS BETTER DISTRIBUTE THEIR GAZE

On the left, a bird’s-eye view of the virtual classroom; on the right, screenshots of each of the four gaze-visualization conditions. Teachers need to know their material, but they must also keep their students engaged and interested. Part of that involves making eye contact with their students—all of them. A multidisciplinary team of researchers tested several methods of data visualization in an immersive virtual reality (VR) classroom, to give teachers a way to gauge
5-31-2024

MARKETERS CAN MANAGE ‘FEATURE CREEP’ SO CONSUMERS FEEL LESS INTIMIDATED BY TOO MANY FEATURES IN A PRODUCT

Wifi-enabled washing machines. Voice-controlled microwaves. App-enabled TVs, vacuum cleaners, and even window blinds you can control from the comfort of your couch. Many of the technological features now included in everyday products are useful and accessible. But research has shown that having too many can overwhelm potential buyers, making them less likely to make a purchase. In recent research, Wayne Hoyer, marketing professor and James L. Bayless/William S. Farrish Fund Chair for Free Enterprise at Texas McCombs, digs into the phenomenon of “feature creep” and its impact on consumer sentiment.
5-31-2024

RESEARCHERS EXPLAIN SOCIAL MEDIA’S ROLE IN RAPIDLY SHIFTING SOCIAL NORMS ON GENDER AND SEXUALITY

A new paper summarizing decades of research demonstrates how social media has supported an explosion of diversity in gender and sexuality in America during the 21st century, and also how these technologies have equally enabled a cultural backlash. The paper’s authors, UC Santa Cruz Psychology Department faculty members Phil Hammack and Adriana Manago, identified five main narratives about gender and sexuality that they believe emerged through social media as people have strived to be “authentic” on these platforms. The findings, along with resulting recommendations for psychology researchers and practitioners, were
5-31-2024

KEY FACTORS IN TRAINING ASSESSORS FOR ENHANCED PERFORMANCE RATINGS

New research is examining how organizations can improve their training programs by customizing frame-of-reference training to emphasize identifying negative behaviors critical to their goals. While assessors naturally identify positive behaviors, C. Allen Gorman, Ph.D., associate professor in UAB’s Department of Management, Information Systems and Quantitative Methods, says targeted training helps them recognize harmful actions that can hinder organizational objectives. Involving assessors in defining important performance dimensions and examples of behaviors, both good and
5-31-2024

STUDIES CHALLENGE WIDELY HELD BELIEFS ON APPLICANT DIVERSITY AND WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

Justin Frake is interested in cause-and-effect relationships in real-world data and the hidden dynamics that shape workplace behavior and equality—or inequality, as the case might be. His curiosity has led to research that challenges some popular beliefs as well as published studies related to women in the workforce. One study shows that firms promoting flatter hierarchies inadvertently discourage female applicants and another study counters several recent studies that claim women CEOs negatively impact career outcomes of other women. Both are published in the Strategic Management Journal. The assistant professor of
5-31-2024

CHALLENGING LEWIN’S MOTIVATIONAL CONFLICTS THEORY

A recent series of experiments challenges the longstanding theory of motivational conflict resolution introduced by Kurt Lewin. According to Lewin, conflicts between two undesirable outcomes (avoidance–avoidance conflicts) are typically harder to resolve than those between two desirable ones (approach–approach conflicts). Lewin posited that avoidance–avoidance conflicts, where individuals must choose between two undesirable outcomes, are typically more challenging to resolve compared to approach–approach conflicts, which involve choosing between two desirable options.
5-31-2024

MEN WITH ‘TOXIC MASCULINITY’ ARE MORE LIKELY TO MAKE SEXUAL ADVANCES WITHOUT CONSENT, STUDY FINDS

No means no when it comes to sex. But what happens when a woman makes a more passive response to a sexual advance? According to new research from Binghamton University, men differ in how they interpret these types of responses, and men who display hostile masculinity, known commonly as “toxic masculinity,” tend to act on them regardless of whether or not they think it’s consensual. A team of researchers, including Binghamton psychology professor Richard Mattson and graduate student Michael Shaw asked men between the ages of 18–25 to respond to
5-31-2024

WHY WE DEHUMANIZE OUR POLITICAL OPPONENTS

Some of human history’s greatest atrocities—genocide, slavery, ethnic cleanings—are rooted in our ability to dehumanize people from other social, political, or cultural groups. Whereas prior research has traced dehumanization to the belief that others think or feel less than we do, new research co-authored by Haas professor Sameer Srivastava shows that our tendency to dehumanize can also be influenced by how we think others view important facets of the world. The greater the difference between our perceptions of an outgroup’s worldview
5-31-2024

STUDY SUGGESTS CHILDREN ARE OFTEN EXPOSED TO PROBLEMATIC CLICK BAIT DURING YOUTUBE SEARCHES

When a child peruses YouTube, the content recommended to them is not always age appropriate, a new study suggests. Researchers mimicked search behaviors of children using popular search terms, such as memes, Minecraft and Fortnite, and captured video thumbnails recommended at the end of each video. Among the 2,880 thumbnails analyzed, many contained problematic click bait, such as violence or frightening images, according to the Michigan Medicine led research in JAMA Network Open. “Children spend a significant amount of time on free video sharing platforms that include user-generated content,” said
5-31-2024

STUDY FINDS WOMEN ARE VULNERABLE IN POST-WAR PEACE PROCESSES

Post-war peace processes are a dangerous period for women. Many are forced to live close to men who committed serious abuse during the war or are expected to testify in various types of truth commissions, which can be both retraumatizing and stigmatizing. These are the findings of a new study by peace researchers at Uppsala University, published in the journal PLOS ONE. “In short, peace projects can force women to live side by side with ex-combatants who committed atrocities during the war. This puts them at risk of further threat
5-31-2024

HOW EMBRACING THE CRINGE CAN HELP YOUR DATING LIFE

We can all agree that dating is hard. Getting to know people can feel vulnerable, but at the same time, exciting. We can also agree that feeling rejected can be one of the worst feelings, especially after we put ourselves out there. Dating can also expose us to a lot of cringey things, maybe even something we didn’t know we’d consider cringey. Think of cringe like something that makes you uncomfortable, or something about someone else that you don’t find attractive. Before dating, most of us consider what we’re looking
5-31-2024

PERSONAL CONNECTIONS AT WORK POSITIVELY IMPACT RETENTION AND MENTAL HEALTH, SAYS REPORT

New survey results from Wiley suggest people still feel connected at work despite the prevalence of hybrid and remote work environments and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). According to the latest Wiley Workplace Intelligence report, “Human Connection: The Crucial Secret to Thriving in the Digital Age,” nearly 8 in 10 employees surveyed (78%) said they feel connected with their coworkers, and almost 7 in 10 (69%) said they also enjoy making connections with their colleagues. Around half even said they want to learn more about their coworkers by doing
5-31-2024

RESEARCHER DEVELOPS MODEL OF INFLUENCER IMPORTANCE WITHIN INSTAGRAM NETWORKS

A study has provided new insights into social media influencers, particularly focusing on those in the women’s fashion sector on the well-known image and video sharing platform Instagram. In a departure from the approach taken by earlier studies, Jens K. Perret of the International School of Management in Cologne, Germany, has used network statistics and centrality measures to establish a model of influencer importance within their network. Perret analyzed data from 255 influencers covering a four-year period. Influencers are loosely
5-31-2024

MOST PEOPLE TRUST ACCURATE SEARCH RESULTS WHEN THE STAKES ARE HIGH, STUDY FINDS

Rank (X-axis) does not affect the evaluation of trustworthiness (Y-axis, mean-centered) of accurate results. This lack of relationship is robust across experiments (columns) and for clicked results (top row, red) as well as non-clicked results (bottom row, blue). The trend lines represent the predicted change in trustworthiness ratings per unit decrease in rank fitted by the linear regression models. Credit: Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-61645-8 Using experiments with COVID-19 related queries, Cornell sociology and information science researchers found that in a public health emergency, most people pick out and click
5-31-2024

MISLEADING COVID-19 HEADLINES FROM MAINSTREAM SOURCES DID MORE HARM ON FACEBOOK THAN FAKE NEWS, STUDY FINDS

Despite the greater potency of “fake news” on Facebook to discourage Americans from taking the COVID-19 vaccine, users’ greater exposure to unflagged, vaccine-skeptical content meant the latter had a much greater negative effect on vaccine uptake. Credit: Jennifer Allen, Duncan Watts, David G. Rand Since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, fake news on social media has been widely blamed for low vaccine uptake in the United States—but research by MIT Sloan School of Management Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Allen and Professor David Rand finds that the blame lies
5-31-2024

CRITICAL DIALOGUE HELPS STRAIGHT MEN CONFRONT SEXIST, HOMOPHOBIC BELIEFS

Adult heterosexual men with sexist and homophobic views can potentially improve their attitudes toward gay men and women by engaging in critical dialogues that use illustrations as a springboard, according to a new University of Michigan study. The work is published in the journal Sexual and Gender Diversity in Social Services. The process by which people shift from a prejudicial stance to one of relative acceptance is a key innovation of the study. Guided by trained facilitators, critical dialogues reflect illustrations depicting different gender roles and sexual identities. The images
5-31-2024

RELIEVING A FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

If you dread public speaking you are not alone. It is a leading social phobia, one that can cause a state of anxiety that reduces otherwise articulate people to nervous incoherence. A strong fear of public speaking is known as glossophobia. Academic studies estimate it affects 20% of the population, but depending on the sample and methodology, the figure could be as high as 40%. As American writer and humourist Mark Twain said, “There are two types of speakers: Those who get nervous and those who are liars.” But help
5-31-2024

HOW SOME PRIVATE COMPANIES ARE MARKETING TECH AND AI SOLUTIONS

How do universities and colleges decide who to admit? Given the earnings advantage of a post-secondary degree both globally and in Canada, this is an important social mobility question. While the answer varies from one institution to the next, most focus on education criteria like exam scores and grades. However, Canada’s new intake cap on study permit applications puts increased pressure on Canadian institutions to also consider immigration criteria when admitting international undergraduate students. This is just the latest example of immigration’s growing influence on the societal roles of Canadian

Hi everyone,
On May 27th the union held an open house and invited all REM employees and many union members to join and discuss what happened, what's next and to answer questions first hand. These are some of the topics discussed.

The Decision and What to Do Next

(Click here to view the decision)
REM had enough signed cards to auto certify for unionization. The employees of REM were denied their right to representation because the LRB accepted REM's position that supervisors and car cab workers should be part of the collective agreement. The LRB denied that shop workers, office workers, drivers etc. should be part of the agreement.
This technicality voided the application. Unfortunately cards signed and votes taken could not be counted because of this, even if they pulled out supervisor and car cab votes and added them to mechanics and apprentices.
REM supervisors testified that they work in the field upwards of 4 days a week on the tools. We are all aware this is obviously untrue.
The union lawyer stated that he fully believes this decision to throw out the application would be overturned in court, however that would be a lengthy process (months to years). Local 82 and their legal representation believe that applying again with the new terms the LRB has set out for their application is the simplest and fastest way to proceed.
So the plan is simple. Local 82 will apply again with the terms the LRB has supplied. We know we had enough votes last time, and know we can do it again. We just need you to sign a card again and discuss with your co-workers what we can accomplish together.
If you believe that you have a right to better wages, benefits, pension, safety and more, the answer is simple. Stand together with your co-workers and work together to achieve something great.
United we bargain. Divided we beg.

Former Richmond Employees

Former Richmond/current union members spoke up, each and every one explaining how they cannot recommend joining the union enough.
Some of their statements were...
"I'm much happier"
"I wish I could have gone sooner."
"I went over as a first year apprentice 6 years ago and I have never made less than 150k a year here"
"The grass is definitely greener here."
"It was one of the best decisions I've ever made."
"The union feels more like a family than Richmond ever did."
These are people many of you have worked with before. They are respectable former REM employees.

Negotiations

The union presidents talked about giving REM 6 months to negotiate. During this period, all contracts must first be voted on BY US before being ratified and before paying dues. The decision whether to accept an offer from REM will solely rest on us.
If we do not come to an agreement and we do not believe REM is bargaining fairly, we will likely take a strike vote. During a strike, all members' jobs are protected by the Anti-Scab Legislation and REM can not fire us and replace us.
A union's real power resides in its ability to shut down the means of production. We are not contractually bound to the contracts; REM is.
Local 82 has shown great interest in striking with us if it came to that. Their members would still need to vote but everyone present at the meeting was in favor.
The question was raised if REM would fall under the same collective agreement that L82 has set out for other companies already.
The answer is that nobody can say anything for sure until bargaining begins, however union reps stated that their plan is to present their current agreement within 10 days of certification.
There is a large difference in the company composition of a large multinational company such as KONE compared to REM. It is quite possible that the first negotiation will be under a separate agreement with the aim for us to be bridged and caught up in time for the next negotiation (current contract expires Oct 2027).
However, the last time the IUEC certified a company as large as Richmond was Fujitec and they signed the current agreement at the time.
Union reps followed this with a statement explaining how their past bargaining is proof that they do right by their members. Each time they complete a bargaining agreement the increases they earn for their members are larger and larger, proof of this being in their last incredible agreement.

Supervisors in the Collective

Since supervisors have made the choice to testify that they are active mechanics working multiple days a week in the field, they will be part of the collective agreement. Should there be a strike, they must not cross the picket line. If they chose to do so would result in fines and possible expulsion from the collective. This would bar them from working for any IUEC union affiliated company in North America.

MIT's in Mechanic Positions

MIT's in service/maintenance or other departments that have their own routes and are not certified mechanics WILL be protected by the union in the current roles until they have achieved their ticket. You will NOT be removed from your position or have any other negative effects because you do not hold a ticket. You will not be replaced by a ticketed mechanic and your position is yours to keep, as it should be. You will be flagged in the union system until you complete your education and receive your TSBC accreditation.

Contact Info

If you have questions, concerns or anything that may have not been answered here in this subreddit, please reach out to Local 82 reps to ask your questions directly to them. Their phones are always on and their door is always open. They ask that you reach out to them through the phone, text, email or in person to discuss anything you like.
Blair Macmillan - 604-329-4832 - [bmacmillan@iuec.org](mailto:bmacmillan@iuec.org)
Tyler Dunlop - 604-968-3735 - [tdunlop@iueclocal82.com](mailto:tdunlop@iueclocal82.com)
Local 82 Union Hall - 2581 Shaughnessy St, Port Coquitlam, BC V3C 3C4 - 604-293-1281

Hello!
I've typed myself as an IEI for a while now, but I've been doing some soul searching and I'm not sure how well that fits me right now, and I'm curious whether it's to do with my understanding of socionics or just transient personal stuff.
I've seen some of the comments and answers on previous posts of this questionnaire, and they've been quite insightful and thorough, which I greatly appreciate, since it helps me learn better.
Any help that you could give would be greatly appreciated, and thank you!
*********************
-How do you work? Why do people go to work? Are there any parameters that determine whether you can do work or not? What are they?
My knee-jerk answer is to say “by starting, then finishing”. I do my best to be quick, efficient, to do it well, and to do extra sometimes. I get kind of competitive about it sometimes, where if I see someone else working hard it makes me want to do more. Granted they’re usually getting paid more to do more, but the urge is still there.
Depends on the person, but mostly to survive. You make money, you spend it on survival. Ideally, you’ll get to use it for more fulfilling things and to improve your life. For some people the reason could be to follow their passion, for socialization, for a cause, etc., but I do think that it’s mostly for survival.
I’m not sure I really understand this part of the question. Parameters like the working environment, the type of work, understanding/skill? I’m not sure how to answer this.

-How do you determine the quality of work? How do you determine the quality of a purchase? Do you pay any attention to it?
That’s kind of hard to quantify. I think boiled down: if it’s free of errors, if it’s organized, if it’s neat/done carefully, if it makes sense logically, and does the product/outcome show the skill that went into it.
For a purchase, I think basically are you getting a good quality for what you paid. Does it work the way it’s supposed to, and maybe even better? If it’s something for fun, does it bring joy, not just now, but for a while in the future? And in that vein, it should last for a long time and be able to be maintained.
I pay attention to both. Quality of work (from others as well, but from me especially) matters a LOT to me, and I do think that quality of purchases does hold at least some importance to me because my money used to purchase it came from my time, and I don’t want that to go to waste.

-There is a professional next to you. How do you know they are a professional? How do you evaluate their skill?
That’s actually a pretty interesting question. I would imagine the ease of which they are doing something, their ability to be creative in problem-solving/drawing conclusions, their confidence in what they are doing, and their ability and willingness to teach or at least share. I would evaluate their skill using the same criteria (but also, if I’m not a professional in that, my evaluation wouldn’t mean much).

-If you struggle to do something, how do you fix that? Do you know if your performance is better or worse than others?
Part of the time, I’ll power through the frustration until something finally clicks, or the outcome is at least “good enough” or done, even if the quality isn’t ideal. If I’m being honest, part of the time when I hit a wall in struggling with something, I will stop doing it. Sometimes because you need to figure out a different approach, sometimes it’s essentially “giving up”. I have a hard time asking for help, so it’s a last resort sort of thing.
I do keep a close eye on my performance, and compare it to others. I do wish I did it in a way where I’m using it as a kind of inspirational competitive things vs. just comparing myself to others (comparison is the thief of joy and all that). Sometimes I can, but most of the time it’s comparing and wanting to make sure I’m doing better.

-How do you measure the success of a job? What standard do you use? Do you pay attention to it? When should you deviate from this standard?
By if it worked, the result was good, and ideally also that getting to the result went smoothly. I feel like if the process to getting the result is chaotic, it usually means something needs to be done better and improve.
I use my own standards most of the time, being a perfectionist. I’ll have awareness of what the external standard is, like one set by a boss, but will have my own standards internally.
I do pay attention to both of these standards.
Sometimes you have to prioritize things, and honestly sometimes you have to “cut corners” and decide which things need to be done perfectly and which things can be done “enough” without effecting the result. Sometimes things just go sideways, and you have to say “good enough is good enough”. It depends on the situation, really. Try your best to meet the standards, but things are going to happen outside of your control sometimes and you have to adapt to the circumstances.
________________________________________
-What is a whole? Can you identify its parts? Are the parts equivalent to the whole?
Ngl, this is an annoying question. A whole is one unit, made up of smaller parts.
If there’s a whole, it would logically follow that it’s made up of parts, so I’d assume I’d be able to identify them?
I would say no, the parts aren’t equivalent to the whole. Take a car, for example: each parts together make up one car, but each parts are wholes in their own right and are their own working units.

-What does "logical" mean? What is your understanding? Do you think that it correlates with the common view? How do you know you are being logical?
Going from point A to point B in a way that can be replicated, I guess. This is another one I have a hard time actually getting into the details and defining. I don’t really think about this in great detail, I just do it?

-What is hierarchy? Give examples of hierarchies. Do you need to follow it? Why or why not? Explain how hierarchy is used in a system you are familiar with.
It’s an organization of people (at least in the context of this question) that operates with a person in charge, then a layer of people underneath them, and so on and so forth until you reach the lowest level (like a pyramid). Most of the ways humans are organized (government, military, schools, jobs, religions, the list goes on and on) are hierarchies, whether formally or not.
Whether or not you need to follow it is situational. To use the military example, if you’re given an order that violates laws, you don’t need to follow it (the consequences are a whole other topic). In general, I don’t mind hierarchies, so don’t mind following them, but there are limits. If someone is telling you to do something stupid or dangerous, it’s ridiculous to follow it just because you’re “following orders”. That’s how awful things happen, and you’re still a human being with a working brain and autonomy.
I feel like I’ve explained how the hierarchies work by explaining what they are, so I won’t go into it again.

-What is classification? How does classification work? Why is it needed and where is it applied? Give examples.
It’s essentially just a way of categorizing things, like phenomena, animals, plants, psychiatric disorders, etc. You’re grouping things with similarities together, whatever those similarities are. These furry things have four legs and give live birth? Mammals! These green things that get bigger in the sun? Plants!
It’s incredibly useful for understanding the world around us, and being able to connect concepts, ideas, and just tangible things together quickly. You don’t need to re-figure out what a strawberry plant is in relation to an apple tree every time, we can just say they’re fruit-bearing. It’s really just the natural way the human brain works: we scan around us, and oh! Something moved! It wouldn’t make sense for the survival of a species for us to have to figure out what a snake is and if it’s poisonous or not every time we see one, we just classify this scaly long boi as a “snake”, and put it into the “poisonous” sub-category if it’s also red.

• Are your ideas consistent? How do you know they are consistent? How do you spot inconsistency in others' ideas?

I would say they’re logically consistent (ideally lol, I try to be aware if they’re not really logically consistent to be honest about it, and to then not take those too seriously and be open to change if they’re not), but not consistent in the sense that I’ll have the same ideas about everything for eternity. I change my mind and ideas as needed, I’m not going to just stick my head in the sand and not change my mind if more information pops up.
If I’m actually paying attention to what the other person is saying, I can usually tell inconsistencies in their ideas, though I’m thinking of logical issues in their reasoning, and I’m not sure if this question means it in another way.

This section was the strangest to answer. It was like answering the question “why does 1+1=2?”. Because that’s how it works, move on to something more interesting!
________________________________________
-Can you press people? What methods do you use? How does it happen?
I don’t like pressing other people honestly, I’d prefer to collaborate with them, even if I’m the one “calling the shots”. I’m not a fan of pressing people, but can if I really have to. I don’t know that it’s a method, but just flat-out telling someone what you need them to do and not leave any room for discussion is how I’ve done it.

-How do you get what you want? What do you do if you have to work to get what you want?
Hm, I guess for the most part to do it myself, and if I need to, do it with other people? You kind of just have to pick a point where you want to go, and start going there. You might have to change your goals up (like if you realize your career goals hurt you instead of help you) along the way, but you just have to go for it and put in the work to get there.
You really always have to work to get what you want (well, I guess not everyone), so you just do it and keep going. I dunno, it’s not magic really, it’s mostly boring and hard until you get there, then you get new goals and do it all again!

-How do you deal with opposition? What methods do you use to defend your interests?
I think “screw them” lol Ideally I won’t have made it so that I’ll be opposed, I try to stay friendly with people so that won’t happen.
So, in a hypothetical situation, say I’m telling someone the best way to do something at work (let’s say organizing something). If I know that’s the best way and they disagree, I’ll hear them out as to why they think that, then go over it and say why that will/won’t work. If they’re still not going to agree, I’ll push more and have them try it and see. If they’re still resistant, then I’m going to tell them to go for it, watch them, then go over at the end why a stupid thing is happening because they did it their way. The problem is the last way is basically guaranteed to cause future issues with that person, which is why I’d prefer not to use it, because it has to be done really specifically so that they won’t just become defensive and double down.

-When do you think it's ok to occupy someone's space? Do you recognize it?
Like, if they don’t want me to? Or to go in for a hug or something? If you guys are on good terms and they’re fine with it, occupy away. If it’s someone you’re not close with, I wouldn’t unless they initiate it first. I’m not being on being physically close with people I’m not close to anyway, so it’s rare I’m going to do that. If I do though, it’s because I needed to get something done quickly and they were physically where I needed to be.
I recognize when people are in my space, and unless I like the person, I’m really not a fan. Personal bubble and all that.

-Do others think you are a strong-willed person? Do you think you have a strong will?
If I’m being honest, no, not particularly. I can be extremely stubborn about certain things, and give up very easily on others. Sometimes it’s to do with being fickle, but also willpower. It comes in bursts, it’s not consistent by any means.
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-How do you satisfy your physical senses? What examples can you give? What physical experiences are you drawn to?
If I’m thirsty or hungry, I drink and eat (or when I’m bored, sad, etc. etc.). If I’m tired, I’ll eventually sleep. I can’t say there’s a lot of physical experiences I’m drawn to, it’s more about interest and intrigue than physical sensations.

-How do you find harmony with your environment? How do you build a harmonious environment? What happens if this harmony is disturbed?
I’m not sure. If we’re talking like, having a nice bedroom, cut down on noises and lights and stuff for nighttime and have weather-appropriate sheets and a good pillow. Maybe some mood lighting and nice stuff to look at (I have a lot of my own art up in my room, which makes it feel more “mine” and I guess that means more harmonious?).
I can’t say I understand the feeling of being in harmony with my environment, so I also can’t say what I’d do if it’s disturbed. I’m more in tune with my internal environment and the harmony there than the external.

-What does comfort mean to you? How do you create it?
Means you’re not in pain, you feel nice. Get some good shoes and chairs and pillows and stuff.

-How do you express yourself in your hobbies? How do you engage yourself with those things?
My hobbies are a huge part of who I am, they’re what keep me sane and more fulfilled. I don’t know how people can feel like a full person without them, it’s got to be tough. I do a lot of art-based hobbies, especially crafts and tangible things, though also music and drawing. Usually it’s a one and done, then move on to another. I engage myself by just doing them?

-Tell us how you'd design any room, house or an office. Do you do it yourself, or trust someone else to do it? Why?
First thought was to just answer this question “No.” lol Design it so the furniture is laid out in a way that optimizes space and so you won’t slam into things, preferably keeping furniture on the outer edges of the room. Make it work so that you have things where they’re the most convenient, like an outlet by your bed for your phone, drawers next to your desk, etc.
I’d be fine at it, but not good. I’d trust someone else to do it for sure.
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-Is it acceptable to express emotions in public? Give examples of inappropriate expression of emotions.
Certain emotions, I guess. I don’t want to be sad or angry in public at all, and I get really nervous around people who do in public. Happy is fine, as long as it’s not over the top yelling and jumping up and down, just chill. I’m personally uncomfortable expressing more than surface level emotions in public, I’d rather show genuine emotions in private.
Inappropriate expressions would be getting upset over something and then taking it out on other people. It’s not their fault you’re upset, don’t transmit your issues onto others. It’s infectious, it sucks.

-How do you express your emotions? Can you tell how your expressions affect others in a positive or negative way?
This has always been kind of a struggle, I have a hard time getting that “sweet spot” of expressing my emotions in a way that isn’t too much or too little. I don’t want to have a tantrum, but I want to express that I’m angry. At this point I’ve started just saying how it is I feel verbally, trying not to act out the emotion with it. Not everyone is equipped to deal with that, but I don’t want to just bottle it up and not express it, so I figure it’s a happy medium where I’m saying what I need to say, and I’m letting someone else decide if they want to engage or not without just holding them hostage.
I try to be upbeat and cheery at work at least, but honestly I’m normally pretty sarcastic and prefer a style of communication that can come across as combative to people (like ribbing each other type of thing, like stronger teasing that sounds malicious with the understanding that it’s not), so I feel like I can come across as negative a lot, which I can tell affects people. So, I try to be more upbeat or at least neutral. This isn’t to say I’m always making people miserable, I do cheer people up sometimes and enough people seem to like being around me that whatever I’m doing seems to work enough, but it’s not entirely natural.

-Are you able to change your demeanor in order to interact with your environment in a more or less suitable way? How do you determine what is suitable?
I would say generally, yes. I’ve worked in customer service a long time, and that’s a skill you learn and get better at the more you use it. I’ll act differently around different people, like I won’t act the same way to new people I don’t know as I will to people I’ve known for half a decade.
I’d say I determine what’s suitable based on their reactions. If they’re looking shocked or uncomfortable or darting their eyes to look for an exit, you’ve screwed up and need to adjust. If the conversation keeps flowing, you’re probably good.

-In what situations do you feel others' feelings? Can you give examples of when you wanted to improve the mood of others?
This is something I’ve worked on over the years since it’s pretty hard for me to not get “infected” by someone else’s feelings. If I’m close to the person it’s a lot stronger and I can better “feel” their feelings than just understand what they’re going through intellectually.
If someone is getting antsy and pissy about something, I try to make light of something to cheer them up so they knock it off.

-How do others' emotions affect you? How does your internal emotional state correlate or contrast with what you express?
Honestly they make me nervous most of the time, which is something I’m not always conscious of. I’m prone to depression, and I learned how to hide it and put on a mask like everything is fine. A lot of the time what I’m feeling and expressing aren’t the same. Like, I get irritable and angry pretty easily, but I’m going to try to not express it because I don’t want to put that on another person.
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-How can you tell how much emotional space there is between yourself and others? How can you affect this space?
I feel like it’s usually quite a far space between me and the other person, unless they make it obvious we’re close (and I reciprocate) by like, spending time with me and talking to me and remembering things about me. I try to affect this space by doing things like spending more time, sharing more about myself, but I think if I’m being honest I usually leave it up to the other person to regulate.

-How do you determine how much you like or dislike someone else? How does this affect your relationships?
It can be super variable depending on if they’ve done something I feel “wronged” by or not, because then it flips like a switch (not something that I’m okay with, and something I’m consciously working on). I’m not sure how to quantify how much I like or dislike someone, it comes down to a physical feeling. Do I feel excited and warm fuzzies? Like! Revulsion if they’re within 20 feet? Dislike!
This essentially means that relationships are something I mostly leave up to the other person. I’ve been able to be the first to approach people before, and I can do it mostly okay, but I do prefer they come to me because I can’t tell if I’m annoying them or if they’re just being polite otherwise.

-How do you move from a distant relationship to a close one? What are the distinguishing characteristics of a close relationship?
It happens over time, as you get to know each other better. You just click with some people and you don’t with others, that’s just how it goes. Most people I don’t want to be that close to, but I put effort into people I do want to be close to. I make the effort to reach out to spend time with them, talk to them, and actually share things about myself to them instead of just being a listener.
I think the biggest characteristics of a close relationship is how little you have to explain yourself to the other person, they just get it and accept you, and you don’t have to waste time explaining why you do every single little thing, and get to talk about and focus on other things.

-How do you know that you are a moral person? Where do you draw your morality from? Do you believe others should share your beliefs on what's moral? Why?
I wouldn’t say I’m particularly moral. I’m not immoral, but I do think morals are subjective and situational, so I think by definition if I think morals are malleable, I’m not a “moral” person by popular definition.
I would say my morality comes internally, but obviously some of it is shaped by external things like culture. Like don’t steal, kill, etc.
My morals will be different from other people’s. I do think a lot of the morals I have are so general and common that it’d be messed up if people didn’t share them, but some of them are just based on me personally so I wouldn’t expect other people to uphold them, even though I want that.

-Someone you care about is acting distant to you. How do you know when this attitude is a reflection of your relationship?
I assume it is immediately, and that I did something to cause it to be distant.
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-How can you tell someone has the potential to be a successful person? What qualities make a successful person and why?
This one’s a little hard because it’s such an intuitive thing that takes so many factors into account and just turns it into a “feeling” (like gut feeling). I guess broken down it comes down to their characteristics like follow through, work ethic, how they work with other people, their self confidence, their intelligence, their problem solving, their general attitude, etc. If you have all that, you have a very good foundation to bob and weave with life when it throws its punches, and you can adapt and overcome.

-Where would you start when looking for a new hobby? How do you find new opportunities and how do you choose which would be best?
I constantly have new hobbies, and I can hardly remember where I looked to find them. The internet is a beautiful thing, it exposes you to so much without you even realizing it. If it doesn’t just come to you naturally, you can literally just go online and ask people what hobbies they have and to describe them, and you can choose from those and try them.
I’m not sure I go looking for new opportunities, but I guess keep an ear out for the possibilities when they come up. It’s also hard to say how I figure out which one is the best, I think it’s whichever one gets me the most bang for my buck, whether it’s in a job and that’s financial or if it’s in a hobby and that’s with fulfillment.

-How do you interpret the following statement: "Ideas don't need to be feasible in order to be worthwhile." Do you agree or disagree, and why?
Seems reasonable. Whatever idea someone has, even if it doesn’t work itself, can spark something else that WOULD be feasible. All ideas are worthwhile for their potential, even if all they do is help another idea along the path to feasibility.

-Describe your thought process when relating the following ideas: swimming, chicken, sciences. Do you think that others would draw the same or different connections?
I just think of a chicken swimming and a dude in a labcoat with a clipboard. I don’t think other people would draw the same connections, brains are weird and different.

-How would you summarize the qualities that are essential to who you are? What kind of potential in you has yet to be actualized and why?
I would say curiosity and willingness to learn are the most essential qualities of mine. On a real level, I feel a lot of the time like a lot of my potential has yet to be actualized for fun mental reasons. I think that’s true for a lot of human beings though, most people have a lot of potential, it’s just not tapped into or channeled properly.
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-How do people change? Can you describe how various events change people? Can others see those changes?
I think every little thing in life changes you as you live, like that butterfly flapping its wings causing a typhoon halfway across the world. You are in a constant state of flux, you’re always evolving. That being said, there are events that will change a person drastically and quickly. Going through something traumatic will make a dramatic, sudden change, like in evolution how there are random gene mutations instead of just slow and steady natural selection.
I guess it depends on how closely they’re paying attention, and if they’re the kind of people who believe people change. You can usually tell when a person has been through let’s say something traumatic, they just have an air about them. Now add in if you knew them before whatever happened, happened, then for sure you’d be able to see those changes.

-How do you feel and experience time? Can time be wasted? How?
Time is one constant stream that we are all always in and always riding. I feel it quite well, and I have a good sense of time. My belief is that your time is the only thing that’s truly yours, and to really value it as much as you can.
I do think you can waste time, yes. It doesn’t make it not worthwhile, but there are ways to use your time well and there are ways to run out the clock. You don’t have to fill every second of every day with something “productive” (dear please god don’t, that’s exhausting), but you do want to try and make it meaningful in some sort of way at least.

-Is there anything that cannot be described with words? What is it? If so, how can we understand what it is if language does not work?
Of course! That’s essentially intuition. It’s such a hard thing to grasp, but everyone experiences it. How do you just know and feel something is off about a situation? It’s probably about a million different things happening that your brain is taking in subconsciously and making decisions for in nanoseconds, and all you’re feeling from all that processing is “spidey senses tingling”.
Things like spirituality also can’t really be explained with words. I’ve tried to talk to people to understand their feelings behind it (I’m an atheist because I’ve never felt that or understood it, so it fascinates me and I like learning about it), but it’s such an amorphous and personal thing, it can’t really be reduced to words. It’s just a feeling, not like an emotion, but more like that gut feeling.
For those two concepts at least, they can be at least somewhat understood because it’s an almost universal experience. That being said, both are such subjective experiences that there are so many shades and nuances that can’t be explained, we can all just try our best to understand. There have been wars fought over these misunderstandings, though, so it’s not like it’s a perfect system.

-How do you anticipate events unfolding? How can you observe such unfoldments in your environment?
Hm, by understanding what’s happened in the past either with those same set of circumstances, or at least generally similar ones. Take into account the context, variables, people involved, what’s different, etc., and make your best educated guess. It’s something that occupies my mind, tying back into the question about how I feel time. I feel it all the time since I’m always in it, so I’m always trying to think about how one thing evolves into the next. Might as well think about it, since it’s going to happen anyway.
I observe them as they happen.

-In what situations is timing important? How do you know the time is right to act? How do you feel about waiting for the right moment?
Literally every single situation timing is important, I don’t know how else to say it. It’s kind of everything, honestly. It’s hard to explain how to know what the right time to act is, it ties back into the gut feeling and “spidey sense”. It just makes sense. I’d always rather wait for the right moment and have something go correctly than rush things and ruin them because I was too impatient.
This last one was the most interesting to answer, for sure!
****************************** Thank you for the read, and I'm looking forward to hearing feedback!

chapters 1&2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Link to AO3
For the first time in a long while Q’s bedroom didn’t feel empty. Next to him, lay the pinnacle of human beauty.
His little prince, exhausted after a single session of vigorous love-making, peacefully slept, curled in a cocoon of blankets and his newfound lover’s smell. Despite his promises to “ride Q all night long”, he went out like a light once he climaxed, quickly drifting off while still reveling in the afterglow.
But that wasn’t why Q was feeling worried. In fact, he was grateful for his student’s lack of endurance tonight because when their foreplay finally got to the serious stage, the older man came to an unpleasant realisation: he wasn’t going to get what he wanted out of this encounter. Yes, however tempting Iliya looked sprawled on the bedsheets, however shameless his moans and pleas were, however selflessly Q served him with his mouth, hands and hips, the only thing that got excited was his’s aesthetic taste.
Good thing Iliya didn’t notice his partner’s body lose interest before he fell asleep.
For the first time in a long while Q craved a stimulant. Caffeine, sugar, nicotine. Anything to dispel the dark cloud of the nasty disillusionment: the man he was in love with wasn’t going to keep him happy in the bedroom.
Could they work up to that? Perhaps. But despite Q’s best efforts to hint at wanting to be pushed around, submitted and taken over, Iliya only saw them as cute meaningless teasings, and insisted on being the one who was being serviced.
Could he deal with that? Wasn’t Iliya worth it?
Q sighed and climbed out of bed to look at the night city.
He should be grateful. It wasn’t a big deal, was it? As long as Iliya was happy, he could cope. He could always satisfy his own fantasies alone or with a simulation.
Which was the same thing really.
The ever-clear skies were getting greyish, which meant the night was coming to an end.
Ashtapadans lived almost throughout the whole day-night cycle, taking advantage of the safety of the night city and the mild climate that made being outside comfortable the whole year-round. The people below seemed impossibly small from the high floor but somehow as far away from Q as the perfect person in his bed just a couple steps away.
His bedroom wasn’t empty. But it felt dead.
Well, time for some work.
The only stimulant that was available.
Better do another round of checking the system status, or go through the surveillance cameras again. That would help him take his mind off of the swarm of the dark thoughts in his head.
The Turk was already sitting on the edge of the table, as if it had heard Q’s steps towards the room. Without any need to use the auglasses to see the little assistant, the man stretched his lips in a greeting, but the hologram’s facial recognition algorithms were too good.
“Not what you expected?” it asked, head tilted questioningly to the side.
“Please, T, I’m not in the mood,” Q said, plopping himself into the chair in defeat.
Had the Turk been listening? Hadn’t he closed the bedroom door?
“Alright, as you say. What can I help you with?” the simulation readily offered.
The man considered what could be the best course of action.
“Just run a check-up and notify me if anything is out of the ordinary,” he ordered. “Meanwhile, show me the main nodes and facilities’ cameras.”
“On it,” — the Turk froze for a moment, loading the 3D map on the desk that came to life, painting Q’s tired face with a blue hue, his sharp cheekbones and eyebags suddenly casting deep shadows.
Finally with something familiar to do, Q got to the methodical analysis of each of the critical points in the system, checking the logs and cameras in order. He knew that this process was supposed to be automatic as the AI ran diagnostics 24/7 without his help, but didn’t it mess up just yesterday? He could stumble upon another conspirators ring or a critical issue that the automatic process might have missed. A little double check never hurt.
After a while of watching its young master, the Turk spoke again, “There’s a couple of issues at the corn processing factory, and an incident with a cargo hound. The first problem is being dealt with and the hound is getting back to the main transport node and then to the repair facility to get fixed.”
So, nothing too serious, huh. Ashtapada ran like a clock. There had to be something he could be useful for though!
“What’s wrong with the hound?”
“It somehow got its front camera broken. Body sensors say there’s been an impact.”
“And the cargo?”
“Undamaged. The hound is going to be repaired and its logs loaded into the system for investigation and diagnostics. I’ll send you the report as soon as it gets generated.”
“Alright. What about the factory?”
“A couple of saccharification containers had a leak because of a pressure jump, the repair hounds already took care of that.”
Well, the system could at least to pretend to wait for Q’s order to send the hounds!
Realising where his thoughts were going, he immediately felt pathetic.
He wasn’t any kind of god, he didn’t even control the system in the slightest. The fact that he was allowed a glimpse into the inner workings of Ashtapada was a privilege, easily taken away if he wasn’t careful. But he needed to do something useful even if it was mere supervision.
“Turk,” he sighed. “Show me the saccharification containers.”
“Who are you talking to?” — came a sleepy voice from the door frame that Q couldn’t help but tune into immediately, like a mother hearing her baby’s crying.
Iliya was standing at the door, his ethereal silhouette pale against the dark rectangle. A loose sheet hugged his hips in a mock attempt at modesty that put a warm smile on Q’s lips.
“Just doing a bit of work, Cuddles, I’m talking to the system.”
“But where’re your glasses?” Iliya asked, coming closer, watching the desk curiously. For his bare eyes, it was lit up but didn’t display any sort of information, a normal person would need a pair of auglasses for that.
“I’m just using the voice recognition mode,” the man lied. “Bright light hurts my eyes.”
Iliya hummed in acknowledgment and came in, dragging the sheet behind like a very lewd wedding gown. Q’s unsatisfied hunger immediately stirred his insides, prompting him to tap his lap in invitation and get a couple of spare auglasses from the drawer at the same time.
“Come here, Cuddles, I’ll show you something amazing,” he lured, watching his lover gracefully approach.
He was so damn lucky to have this man in his life.
“More amazing that you’ve already shown me?” Iliya teased. He straddled Q’s lap, a warm back to a firm chest, and put the glasses on, instantly going “Whoahhh!” at what he saw.
“If the AI is the brain of Ashtapada,” Q murmured into his ear, hoping to sound seductive and not all lecture-y. “This is its heart.”
His arms instantly laced themselves around the narrow waist that clung to the warmth of Q’s body as Iliya’s buttocks teasingly shifted on his quickly heating seat.
“Amazing!” the boy breathed out, not failing to notice a warm palm snaking its way up his belly in a lazy motion. “Are those hounds? They look like ants from this angle.”
This awe-struck delight in the lecture hall and in the bedroom alike never failed to put a smile on Q’s face.
What they saw generated as a live 3D visualisation was indeed amazing. An enormous underground space, millions of tons of concrete shaped a little like a heart chamber with huge arteries of four main semi-circular tunnels coming out. The space was filled with hounds of various sizes hurrying to deliver the cargo, all sorts of pipes, wires and conveyor belts. The whole place seemed buzzing with activity even though the hologram didn’t generate any sound.
“Look,” Q pointed at one of the “arteries” with his free hand as the other caressed Iliya’s chest with the tips of the fingers. “This is the cargo sorting center. A hound that needs to transport something drops it off at this belt and it goes to the other part of the city to be picked up by another one.”
Iliya interlaced their fingers on his chest and showed his appreciation with a little wiggle of his hips in Q’s lap again.
God, he was temptation in the flesh.
“And this?” the boy asked innocently.
“Where the hounds go? This is the repair and modification facility. Here they automatically get diagnostics, maintenance and updates.”
“So cool!” — another brain-melting wiggle. — “And this?”
“This... ahh... This leads to the bio-ethanol factory,” — it was harder and harder to focus on the educational task and keep hands above the desk. — “See these pipes? They carry the fuel to the rest of the critical parts of the city.”
“And this last tunne... aahh! Q!”
“What? I’m just hoping for a little guided tour myself,” the man breathed into Iliya’s ear.
“Under my sheet?” he scolded coquettishly and last remnants of Q’s self-restraint ran dry in an instant.
“Let’s see if I can find my way without a map,” — he growled as his hands lost all shame and together with the mouth got to work on the treasure in his lap.
Hopefully, the Turk had enough decorum to disengage a while ago.
Like this, encompassed from all sides, the little prince was helpless to escape his teacher’s caresses. Encouraged by the writhing of the young body and the soft gasps, Q let his fingers tentatively slip under the bed sheet around the boy’s hips to find the hot hardness that already was leaking wet into the fabric. It was easy to lay back on the chair’s reclining support, making Iliya lose his balance and fall on the broad chest with a little endearing yelp. Like this, both of Q’s hands could explore what was to be had as he firmly grasped the already damp length as the other hand’s finger curled into the inviting heat of the place he had pleasured earlier that night.
“There, put your feet on my desk,” he whispered into Iliya’s neck between gentle bites, his own arousal catching up with his actions in a smothering wave that left him panting. “You’re so good and open for me like this, Cuddles.”
“Mmmhh…” the boy in his arms whined, doing as he was told, presenting a shameless picture of long graceful legs lecherously spread over the edge of the desk, with the other’s hands disappearing under the sheet around his hips. “What… ah… are you doing?”
Q let his finger slip into the tight heat just a little even though his lover was still wet from earlier, giving a couple of pumps with the other hand to admire the motions of his hands that looked deliciously lewd hidden like this under the fabric.
“It’s you who I must ask this question, my dear,” he went on, pushing the finger in and out slowly, circling the tip with his thumb to elicit another whine and a keen buckle of the other’s hips. “Do you know what you do to me, squirming like that in my lap? Do you know what your innocent sounds make me feel? Have you got the slightest idea how thoroughly your beauty ruined me?”
With those last words Iliya’s tortured motions halted. His mouth, too, stopped the soft panting and before Q knew it, the boy recovered his balance with the grace of a dancer he was, slipping away from his hands.
“What? Iliya? Did I hurt you?” he said hurriedly, his hands still itching to grab and squeeze and caress.
Iliya indeed looked hurt and indignant, and not in his usual flirty way. He stood a couple of steps away, and wrapped his bed sheet around his chest, as if protecting his assaulted innocence.
“Look, Q,” he said with a somber look in his eyes. He had never spoken like this before. — “I told you twice today to stop calling me beautiful. Why do you keep on doing it?”
“I… Did you? I... sorry, I thought you were just being coy,” Q scrambled for words, still sprawled on the chair, unsure what to do with his hands. “I’ll stop if you want.”
Oh, no. Had he ruined everything? So soon?
Iliya didn’t look impressed in the least.
“Listen, I told you I want you to stop but you ignored me,” he went on, clearly annoyed, pointing at the wall of the room where they started the evening. “I tried to be delicate, but looks like it takes me raising my voice for you to get it. It’s like you don’t see anything past my looks, just like everyone else!”
His student was indeed beautiful, even like this, looking daggers at him, but Q had the presence of mind to bite his tongue before letting it out. He just raised his palms in an attempt to reconcile.
“You’re right, Iliya,” — was it too much to call him Cuddles at a moment like this? — “I thought it was a simple compliment, but I should’ve listened to you the first time. I promise it won’t happen again. Come back to me?”
Iliya seemed hesitant for a moment looking at Q’s outstretched hands, the wetness of his body still lingering on his teacher’s fingers. The room wasn’t dark any more: the sun had spilled onto the walls and the furniture inside in an angry splatter of red.
“No. Sorry, but not now. You asked me not to call you Teach and I dropped it instantly. Because I respect your boundaries. Can’t you do the same for me?”
This was it. He did ruin everything.
Q’s shoulders drooped as he let his arms fall together with his gaze in defeat.
“You’re right, Iliya. It looks like I didn’t respect them. I apologise and hope you can forgive me.”
It was hard not looking at Iliya’s face, but it was terrifying to lift his eyes and meet something he wouldn’t be able to handle. What was in the other’s face? Hurt? Disgust? Resentment?
What was he supposed to say? To do? Was it over without even properly starting?
“It’s ok, Q,” Iliya’s voice came. It sounded a little choked, like the boy was forcing himself to calm down. “It’s new for both of us. I accept your apologies, but...”
But...?
But...?!
But what?
“...but I need some space right now. I‘ll go. I’ll see myself out,” he finished sternly, as if forcing himself into the firm tone.
“Of course,” Q said weakly, daring a glance at his Cuddles, wondering at the newfound depths of the other.
He’ll learn how to be the best partner for Iliya. He’ll have to.
“Thanks,” — the boy left the room to get his things and in a matter of minutes was already at the front door, hesitant. “Thanks again, I’ll see you... around, bye!”
Q covered his eyes with both hands and it wasn’t to block the bright sunlight that now filled the whole airy space with a blinding brilliance.
See him... around?

Hey everyone,
As many of us know, the North East has long struggled with underrepresentation and lack of real power. The North East Combined Authority (NECA) has been a step towards regional governance, but it's far from perfect. It's time to reform the NECA into a more democratic and effective body that truly serves our needs. Here's a roadmap to transform the NECA into the North East Executive.

Step 1: Building Awareness and Support

1. Public Engagement Campaign:
   • Launch a comprehensive public engagement campaign.
   • Use social media, local media, town hall meetings, and community events to spread the word.
   • Highlight the benefits of a democratic North East Executive.
2. Forming Alliances:
   • Build a coalition of support with local politicians, community leaders, businesses, advocacy groups, and citizens.
   • Engage key stakeholders who have influence and interest in regional devolution.

Step 2: Drafting the Reform Proposal

1. Research and Consultation:
   • Conduct research on successful regional governance models.
   • Consult with experts in public administration, law, and regional development.
   • Organize public consultations to gather input from North East residents.
2. Drafting the Proposal:
   • Develop a detailed proposal outlining the structure, powers, and responsibilities of the North East Executive.
   • Include direct elections using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) method.
   • Define legislative powers over key areas such as healthcare, education, housing, and environmental policy.
   • Outline fiscal autonomy mechanisms.

Step 3: Political Advocacy and Legislation

1. Petition and Lobbying:
   • Launch a petition to demonstrate public support for the reform.
   • Lobby MPs, local councilors, and other influential figures.
   • Present the petition and reform proposal to relevant government bodies and committees.
2. Drafting Legislation:
   • Work with sympathetic politicians to draft the necessary legislation.
   • Ensure the legislation includes provisions for direct elections, expanded powers, fiscal autonomy, and accountability measures.

Step 4: Implementation and Transition

1. Legislative Approval:
   • Push for the approval of the legislation in Parliament.
   • Engage in public and political debates.
2. Transition Planning:
   • Develop a transition plan to shift from the current NECA structure to the new North East Executive.
   • Establish timelines, resource allocation, and interim governance arrangements.
3. Elections and Establishment:
   • Conduct the first direct elections for the North East Executive using the STV method.
   • Implement the legislative and fiscal changes to ensure the Executive is fully operational.

Step 5: Monitoring and Adjustment

1. Ongoing Review:
   • Establish mechanisms for ongoing review and assessment of the Executive's performance.
   • Make adjustments based on feedback and evolving regional needs.
2. Public Engagement and Transparency:
   • Maintain high levels of public engagement and transparency.
   • Regularly publish reports on achievements, challenges, and future plans.

Including Tees Valley

To ensure comprehensive regional representation, we propose incorporating the Tees Valley into the North East Executive. This would unify the governance of the broader North East region and enhance our collective bargaining power and resource management.

Conclusion

By following this roadmap, we can transform the NECA into a more democratic, empowered, and effective governance structure. The North East Executive will ensure our region's unique needs and aspirations are met with tailored policies and accountable leadership.
Let’s work together to make this vision a reality!
Feel free to share your thoughts, suggestions, or support for this initiative. If you're passionate about seeing more devolution in the North East, join us in advocating for a better future!
Sign the petition here: https://chng.it/gcYzCrSHvw

Hey everyone,
As many of us know, the North East has long struggled with underrepresentation and lack of real power. The North East Combined Authority (NECA) has been a step towards regional governance, but it's far from perfect. It's time to reform the NECA into a more democratic and effective body that truly serves our needs. Here's a roadmap to transform the NECA into the North East Executive.

Step 1: Building Awareness and Support

1. Public Engagement Campaign:
   • Launch a comprehensive public engagement campaign.
   • Use social media, local media, town hall meetings, and community events to spread the word.
   • Highlight the benefits of a democratic North East Executive.
2. Forming Alliances:
   • Build a coalition of support with local politicians, community leaders, businesses, advocacy groups, and citizens.
   • Engage key stakeholders who have influence and interest in regional devolution.

Step 2: Drafting the Reform Proposal

1. Research and Consultation:
   • Conduct research on successful regional governance models.
   • Consult with experts in public administration, law, and regional development.
   • Organize public consultations to gather input from North East residents.
2. Drafting the Proposal:
   • Develop a detailed proposal outlining the structure, powers, and responsibilities of the North East Executive.
   • Include direct elections using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) method.
   • Define legislative powers over key areas such as healthcare, education, housing, and environmental policy.
   • Outline fiscal autonomy mechanisms.

Step 3: Political Advocacy and Legislation

1. Petition and Lobbying:
   • Launch a petition to demonstrate public support for the reform.
   • Lobby MPs, local councilors, and other influential figures.
   • Present the petition and reform proposal to relevant government bodies and committees.
2. Drafting Legislation:
   • Work with sympathetic politicians to draft the necessary legislation.
   • Ensure the legislation includes provisions for direct elections, expanded powers, fiscal autonomy, and accountability measures.

Step 4: Implementation and Transition

1. Legislative Approval:
   • Push for the approval of the legislation in Parliament.
   • Engage in public and political debates.
2. Transition Planning:
   • Develop a transition plan to shift from the current NECA structure to the new North East Executive.
   • Establish timelines, resource allocation, and interim governance arrangements.
3. Elections and Establishment:
   • Conduct the first direct elections for the North East Executive using the STV method.
   • Implement the legislative and fiscal changes to ensure the Executive is fully operational.

Step 5: Monitoring and Adjustment

1. Ongoing Review:
   • Establish mechanisms for ongoing review and assessment of the Executive's performance.
   • Make adjustments based on feedback and evolving regional needs.
2. Public Engagement and Transparency:
   • Maintain high levels of public engagement and transparency.
   • Regularly publish reports on achievements, challenges, and future plans.

Including Tees Valley

To ensure comprehensive regional representation, we propose incorporating the Tees Valley into the North East Executive. This would unify the governance of the broader North East region and enhance our collective bargaining power and resource management.

Conclusion

By following this roadmap, we can transform the NECA into a more democratic, empowered, and effective governance structure. The North East Executive will ensure our region's unique needs and aspirations are met with tailored policies and accountable leadership.
Let’s work together to make this vision a reality!
Feel free to share your thoughts, suggestions, or support for this initiative. If you're passionate about seeing more devolution in the North East, join us in advocating for a better future!
Sign the petition here: https://chng.it/gcYzCrSHvw

First
Previous
Sorry for the delay. Reddit was being Reddit, and the Old Reddit trick didn't fix it. I had to add everything in markdown mode and switch back to the rich editor before it would let me post. So there's that workaround now, I guess.
“So that's what happened,” Ryn'Ala said as her magical servants set out plates loaded with food. They had decided on a late dinner of dried meats and cheeses, once their host had seen her other guests off for the night.
“I remember my first ghoul encounter. It was a roamer, split off from a nest and wandering the countryside. We had been asleep after clearing out a pack of wolves that were terrorizing a farming village, and it managed to get the drop on us. I still think Randolph was asleep instead of keeping watch, but he always maintained his innocence. Anyway, Randolph shouted as he tried to hold the thing off with his axe, and the rest of us had to fight in our sleepwear. It's a good thing there was only the one.”
“Yeah,” Fulmara agreed, “I got bit even through my armor. I shudder to think what would have happened if it managed to grab a proper chunk of me.”
“It wouldn't have been pretty,” the elven woman said, shaking her head. “Spells and potions are all well and good for scrapes and bruises, but it takes something truly powerful to staunch a cut artery or regrow limbs.”
There was a moment of silence as they all contemplated the implications of their new lives. Finally, Jeron grabbed a roll from the basket and they all started eating.
“So,” Verrick began, breaking the silence, “good news first?”
“Right,” Ryn'Ala agreed, “I did promise you some news. Good news first then! The two gentlemen you met earlier are some of my colleagues, here to study the egg like I promised. They were able to determine that the material is indeed onyx, which hasn't been documented before, and that the engravings are related to the Celestial tongue, but are not a known dialect. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say they were possibly the written form of the Muses' own tongue. We're trying to find any commonalities we can to start deciphering it, but as none of us speak Celestial, it's a slow process. The other good news is for you, Verrick.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I managed to find some old books from when Jeron was young. They're aimed at teaching the children of nobles to read, and should help to get you to a basic level of competency. Once you get the basics down, the rest of it is just a matter of experience.”
Verrick blushed slightly. “You don't have anything suited to teaching adults to read, do you?”
She laughed. “Unfortunately, no. Though I suspect the subject matter would be much the same, but with less color in the pictures. I'll help you get started tomorrow, if you like.”
“I'll help get Fulmara up to speed while you're working with him,” Firun agreed. “Between the two of us, we'll have them reading like functional members of society in no time.”
“Hey!” the dwarf snapped. “I can read! Just not very well. The big words trip me sometimes.”
“The big words are some of the most important, dear,” Ryn'Ala countered. “How else would we know what alchemical reagents are in a flask, or what stuffy old monarch is buried in a newly discovered tomb?”
“I know that,” she replied, looking down at her food. “I just don't think it was very funny.”
“Also fair,” the elf agreed. “But he still makes a valid point. As you are now, you will struggle, especially if you're to continue your travels. Give us a little time to work on your reading comprehension, and you'll have a much easier time whenever you need to purchase supplies, or conduct research.”
“What's the bad news then?” Jeron asked, spearing a piece of fish.
“Our options are more limited than I originally thought. As... talented individuals, groups like yours naturally attract attention. It's something I went through in my younger days. Some attention is a good thing, of course. Having the right eyes on you can open doors in the most unexpected places, after all. The problem is that some of the attention you'll receive is significantly less beneficial. The Imperial Order of Inquisitors has taken an interest in you, as a new group with connections to the Imperial Court.”
“We know someone important?” Verrick wondered, confused.
Ryn'Ala finished her wine and held her glass out for a magical servant to refill. “As a classically trained performer of the Imperial College of Performances, and as a citizen gifted by the Song, I have some influence in the Elven Court. The Inquisitors don't particularly care how little the influence is, just that it exists. As long as they're watching us, I won't be able to leverage my connections as much as I would like.”
“So we're not really any worse off than before, right?” Jeron asked.
“Not entirely. The Egg research is still going to happen, but I can't exactly help you make new friends like I'd hoped. You'll have to do it the hard way.”
“So not really any different than before,” Firun confirmed. “We weren't exactly expecting elven royalty to help, although it would've been nice.”
“In any case, I have one more bit of news to share, and this one is a bit more concerning.”
She left the room for a moment, returning with a small stack of parchment in her hands. Jeron cleared a space on the table and she spread the stack for them to see.
“I took your descriptions of the warlock's benefactor and contacted a few of my colleagues in the royal archives. Don't worry,” she said, seeing the concerned look on Jeron's face, “I didn't give them any information about any of you. I just told them I had received information about interference from a powerful being. While we do not have an exact identity, our information does match descriptions of a being that has been encountered before.”
“What is it?” the dwarf asked. “What do we need to kill?”
“While I admire your enthusiasm,” Ryn'Ala began, “I must warn you that beings like this can't be killed. Not truly, in any case. But knowing what it is can help you to lessen its influence on the world.”
She pointed to the first sheet. “It is, as Jeron suggested, fond of presenting itself as a cloud of powdered bone. To the casual observer, it's not much different to a cloud of ash or dust, but it's a fitting appearance that drips with symbolism to those who know. The being is a powerful entity residing in the space beyond the Pale Reach, the realm of undeath.”
“The Pale Reach is a lifeless corruption of our realm,” Jeron explained, noticing the confusion on the faces of his companions. “Both it and the Deepwood were created by the Echoing, twisting the parts of the Song that created life in the world to create unlife and a bountiful overgrowth respectively.”
“Exactly,” his mentor continued, pride in his studies evident in her voice. “The Pale Reach, while not exactly the source of undead, still resonates with their energy. It's a place beyond life and light, where the sun is pale and weak. The air is as stale and unmoving as a tomb, and yet a howling gale tears at your very soul. It is a place no living being should tread, and in the darkness beyond even that, your adversary lurks.”
Fulmara shuddered, her face pale as she remembered the touch of the being's energies as it fed on her father and corrupted her mother. She felt Verrick's hand on her shoulder, and soon her friends were with her, driving back the memories with their presence.
“Exactly,” Ryn'Ala said, noticing her discomfort. “You have felt the touch of a being that was never meant to be. A thing that has no soul yet craves one above all else. It is an existence that should not be possible, even for the Echoing. That is what you have sworn to thwart. Knowing this, do you regret your Oath?”
Fulmara's answer was immediate. “No. I do not regret swearing vengeance on this vile thing, and if I cannot kill it, then I will kill its ambitions.”
“Well said. I believe you will make for a fine champion of Fulmos.”
The morning was frigid as Jeron entered the archives, nestled beneath the monolith of the Tradespire. His footsteps echoed on the marble floors, rebounding from the shadowy recesses of the vaulted ceiling above. Between the columns along the walls, statues of knights stood at attention, their stone swords as tall as Jeron himself. At the back of the room stood more, carved to resemble accountants. A dwarven woman sat at the wide desk ahead of him, watching his approach while she sorted paperwork. Finally, she called out to him.
“How can I help you this morning?” she asked, clearing a space in front of her. “If you have an appointment, I'm afraid there's been an emergency cancellation for anything before midday.”
“I'm here for research, actually,” Jeron clarified. “I'm looking into some events from a couple decades ago.”
She opened a drawer and began rummaging through more papers. “Alright, one moment then while I locate the form you'll need. If everything is valid, I'll also need your entry fee of fifteen silver, to help us maintain the files and our equipment.”
The receptionist brushed a lock of blond hair out of her face as she sat back up with a sheet of paper. “If you'll just fill this out, we'll get you started.”
The form was a simple one, with wide spacing for each category to allow for individuals with larger hands. Jeron scanned the page as he walked a short distance to the standing desks at the edge of the chamber, working over the wording he would use for each line.
Name, that's easy enough...
Benefactor, Ryn'Ala Leth
Group or Organization... I'll have to think about that.
Reason for request, Research on recent plagues and the means by which they were cured.
Additional Notes... Possible link to recent ghoul case in crossroads village of Caldren.
Jeron filled in the answers he could, but he was stumped by the request for a group name. He knew they'd need one eventually, and if they didn't start introducing themselves properly, then someone else would come up with a name for them. Those names were rarely ideal, if the Mud Biters were any example. Deciding to leave it blank for the time being, he returned to the receptionist and made a mental note to bring the topic up later.
“Alright, Mister Blackbough,” the dwarf muttered as she scanned the page, “let's see here.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Plague research? Not planning on spreading one, are you?”
“More looking into the cures,” he countered. “Never enough Clerics to cure a population once it gets out of control, so I'm looking into the alchemical cures that have been used recently. Easier to stockpile and transport ingredients than powerful people, after all.”
“Fair point, but what makes you think you'll find the answers you're looking for here?”
“If I don't, then I'll at least find something that will point me to the right answers. And besides, Do you honestly expect me to believe the formulae aren't kept here? Having them accessible may lose you a little money, but having them locked away where nobody can find them could completely kill a market.”
“Well done,” she said, filing the form in another drawer. “You pass, although we technically could keep the formulae in a separate section that the typical trader couldn't access.”
She clapped her hands, the sound echoing unnaturally throughout the chamber, and a statue peeled itself away from the wall behind her. The golem, Jeron realized, thudded forward and halted just behind her.
“Take our guest into the archives,” the woman said, turning to look up at the living stone. “Section four, subsection three. He has four hours to research before you bring him back.”
The golem grunted, a hollow groaning sound, and motioned for Jeron to follow.
“Stay with the guide,” the receptionist ordered. “Their default instructions include removing anyone who strays into areas they haven't been invited into, and they can be a lot faster than they look.”
“Got it,” Jeron said, turning to follow the lumbering accountant. “Lead the way.”
The golem led him deep into the building, through rooms filled with shelves and tables. More than once, he had to sidestep a gnome or a dwarf with stacks of scrolls so tall they couldn't see where they were walking, and he could swear he saw a wheeled golem zip across the hall at one point. Finally, they stopped in an unmarked room, which looked almost exactly like the ones they had already passed through. The golem gestured to a section of the wall, and the indicated shelves began to glow with a pulsating blue color.
“The focus of my research is a plague from about twenty years ago,” he said, turning to face the statue. “Any chance you can narrow that down a bit?”
The golem shrugged before gesturing to the wall again. The illuminated shelves did not change.
“Right, on my own then. Let's see how these are organized.”
His search took almost an hour to truly get started, but once he determined the pattern by which the information was stored, he was off. Books held verified accounts of events as recorded by city officials, merchants, and adventuring groups, which had all been corroborated by third parties. Scrolls with a blue end cap held accounts which matched the established timelines but could not be fully verified, such as the accounts of a group called The Dawn Star, which had claimed to have killed a necromancer responsible for an outbreak of Crushing Syndrome some sixty years ago. Accounts which were found to have possible merit but did not line up with the official account were written in scrolls with a red end cap.
Jeron sat down with a small stack of books, scanning each before setting it aside and taking the next. He jumped decades at a time, clearing the gaps between major disease outbreaks each time, until finally, he found it. Almost twenty years prior, the city of Varien about a month's travel bowlward, an outbreak of Leadbone. Admittedly, there wasn't much to go on. The disease was almost always fatal, and was magical in origin. Little was recorded about the cure, and nothing at all about the alchemist who discovered it. The scrolls, red and blue markings alike, shared in the dearth of information, and Jeron suspected the information had been deliberately withheld.
As he began returning the books to their shelves, the golem grunted, signaling the end of his time in the archives. Jeron gestured to the books, and the golem nodded, allowing him to finish returning them before it lead him back to the front desk. It returned to its place along the back wall as the receptionist sat back up from her search through yet another drawer.
“Find everything you needed?” she asked.
“Not quite, but I did get some clues. Quick question, if you have a minute,” he added, glancing at the sunlight streaming in through the bowlward window.
“Go on.”
“If I wanted to join a caravan headed toward Varien, who would I speak to?”
“Caravan offices are near the dawnward wall, about three streets from the gates. You'd have to ask about the schedules there.”
“Thank you very much,” Jeron said, bowing slightly. “You have been more helpful than you realize.”
“Tell that to my boss, maybe I'll get a raise.”
Jeron laughed, and was soon on his way home. His notes were folded and tucked into a bag at his waist, and he puzzled over the questions that had arisen in his research. Why was that plague so poorly documented? Was it even the right plague in the first place? The questions swirled in his mind, but above all of them, one rose to the top.
What do we call ourselves?
Next
Wiki
Seriously, do what the title says. Local libraries are the best source of information you have, because if you can't find something online, the librarian will often know where to direct your search. They're also a great place to play D&D if nobody can host. Just be sure to keep your celebrations to a low roar.

Today felt as if there was a collective inward breath as people tried to figure out what yesterday’s jury verdict means for the upcoming 2024 election. The jury decided that former president Trump created fraudulent business records in order to illegally influence the 2016 election. As of yesterday, the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States of America is a convicted felon.
Since the verdict, Trump and his supporters have worked very hard to spin the conviction as a good thing for his campaign, but those arguments sound like a desperate attempt to shape a narrative that is spinning out of their control. Newspapers all over the country bore the word “GUILTY” in their headlines today.
At stake for Trump is the Republican presidential nomination. Getting it would pave his way to the presidency, which offers him financial gain and the ability to short-circuit the federal prosecutions that observers say are even tighter cases than the state case in which a jury quickly and unanimously found him guilty yesterday. Not getting it leaves Trump and the MAGA supporters who helped him try to steal the 2020 presidential election at the mercy of the American justice system.
After last night’s verdict, Trump went to the cameras and tried to establish that the nomination remains his, asserting that voters would vindicate him on November 5. But this morning, as he followed up last night’s comments, he did himself no favors. He billed the event as a “press conference,” but delivered what Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times described as “a rambling and misleading speech,” so full of grievance and unhinged that the networks except the Fox News Channel cut away from it as he attacked trial witnesses, called Judge Merchan “the devil,” and falsely accused President Joe Biden of pushing his prosecution. He took no questions from the press.
Today the Trump campaign told reporters it raised $34.8 million from small-dollar donors in the hours after the guilty verdict, but observers pointed out there was no reason to believe those numbers based on statements from Trump’s campaign. Meanwhile, Trump advisor Stephen Miller shouted on the Fox News Channel that every Republican secretary of state, state attorney general, donor, member of Congress must use their power “RIGHT NOW” to “beat these Communists!”
The attempt of MAGA lawmakers to shape events in their favor seemed just as panicked. Representative Jim Banks (R-IN) posted on social media that “New York is a liberal sh*t hole,” and Jim Jordan (R-OH) today asked Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case against Trump, to testify before the House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government about “politically motivated prosecutions of…President Donald Trump.” Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY) noted that Trump is a private citizen and Congress has no jurisdiction over the case, but that Jordan is using his congressional authority illegally to defend Trump.
MAGA senators were even more strident. Republican senator Mike Lee of Utah melted down on X last night over the verdict, and today he led nine other Republican senators in a revolt against the federal government. Lee, J. D. Vance of Ohio, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Rick Scott of Florida, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin issued a public letter saying they would no longer pass legislation, fund the government, or vote to confirm the administration’s appointees because, they said, “[t]he White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways. As a Senate Republican conference,” they said, although there were only 10 of them, “we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart.”
It was an odd statement seemingly designed to use disinformation to convince voters to stick with them. Ten senators said they would not do the federal jobs they were elected to do because private citizen Trump was convicted in a state court by a jury of 12 people in New York, a jury that Trump’s lawyers had agreed to. The senators attacked the rule of law and the operation of the federal government in a demonstration of support for Trump. A number of the senators involved were key players in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Awkwardly, considering the day’s news, a video from 2016 circulated today in which Trump insisted that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who he falsely insisted had committed crimes even as he was the one actually committing them, “shouldn’t be allowed to run.” If she were to win, Trump then said, “it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and, ultimately, a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt.”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo put it correctly: this is not an “outpouring of rage and anger,” so much as “an overwhelming effort to match and muffle the earthquake of what happened yesterday afternoon with enough noise and choreography to keep everyone in Trump’s campaign and on the margins of it in line and on side.”
Still, there is more behind the MAGA support for Trump than fearful political messaging. Trump has been hailed as a savior by his supporters because he promises to smash through the laws and norms of American democracy to put them into power. There, they can assert their will over the rest of us, achieving the social and religious control they cannot achieve through democratic means because they cannot win the popular vote in a free and fair election. With Trump’s conviction within the legal system, his supporters are more determined than ever to destroy the rules that block them from imposing their will on the rest of us.
Today the Heritage Foundation,* which is now aligned with Victor Orbán’s Hungary, flew an upside-down U.S. flag as a signal of national distress. Their actions were in keeping with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s statement that Trump is being persecuted “for political reasons” and that the cases show “the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.”
Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News reported today on a spike in violent rhetoric on social media targeting New York judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw Trump’s Manhattan election interference trial, and District Attorney Bragg. Users of a fringe internet message board also shared what they claimed were the addresses of jurors. “Dox the Jurors. Dox them now,” one user wrote. Another wrote, “1,000,000 men (armed) need to go to [W]ashington and hang everyone. That’s the only solution.”
This attack on our democracy was the central message of a crucially important story from yesterday that got buried under the news of Trump’s conviction. In The New Republic, Ken Silverstein reported on a private WhatsApp group started last December by military contractor Erik Prince—founder of Blackwater and brother of Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos—and including about 650 wealthy and well-connected “right-wing government officials, intelligence operatives, arms traffickers, and journalists,” including Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT), who served as Trump’s secretary of the interior.
Called “Off Leash,” the group discussed, as Silverstein wrote, “the shortcomings of democracy that invariably resulted from extending the franchise to ordinary citizens, who are easily manipulated by Marxists and populists,” collapsing Gaza into a “fiery hell pit,” wiping out Iran, how Africa was a “sh*thole of a continent,” and ways to dominate the globe. Mostly, though, they discussed the danger of letting everyone vote. “There is only one path forward,” Zinke wrote. “Elect Trump.” Another member answered, “It’s Trump or Revolution” “You mean Trump AND Revolution,” wrote another.
And yet the frantic MAGA spin on the verdict reveals that there is another way to interpret it. Americans who had lost faith that the justice system could ever hold a powerful man accountable as Trump’s lawyers managed to put off his many indictments see the verdict as a welcome sign that the system still works.
“The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed,” Biden said today. “Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself. It was a state case, not a federal case. And it was heard by a jury of 12 citizens, 12 Americans, 12 people like you. Like millions of Americans who served on juries, this jury is chosen the same way every jury in America is chosen. It was a process that Donald Trump's attorney was part of. The jury heard five weeks of evidence…. After careful deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous verdict. They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts. Now he’ll be given the opportunity as he should to appeal that decision just like everyone else has that opportunity. That's how the American system of justice works. And it's reckless, it's dangerous, and it's irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don't like the verdict. Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years and it literally is the cornerstone of America…. The justice system should be respected, and we should never allow anyone to tear it down. It’s as simple as that. That's America. That's who we are. And that's who we will always be, God willing.”
Today the publisher of Dinesh D’Souza’s book and film 2000 Mules, which alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election, said it was pulling both the book and film from distribution and issued an apology to a Georgia man who sued for defamation after 2000 Mules accused him of voting illegally.
MAGA Republicans confidently predicted yesterday that the stock market would crash if the jury found Trump guilty. Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained almost 600 points.
—
EDIT: I originally misidentified the Federalist Society as flying the upside-down American flag, which also meant I associated the Federalist Society with the Danube Institute. This was very much an error: I meant the HERITAGE Foundation. I’ve corrected it. I’m sorry about that.
—
Notes:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-supporters-try-doxx-jurors-post-violent-threats-conviction-rcna154882
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/media/cnn-nbc-trump-speech.html
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/g-s1-2298/publisher-of-2000-mules-election-conspiracy-theory-film-issues-apology
https://www.politico.eu/article/charges-against-donald-trump-are-politically-motivated-vladimir-putin-says-russia-us/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/owhat-trump-requires/sharetoken/hnWkPTYknWwi
https://newrepublic.com/article/182008/erik-prince-secret-global-group-chat-off-leash
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-supporters-call-riots-violent-retribution-after-verdict-2024-05-31/
X:
TomDreisbach/status/1796634041749271001
clearing_fog/status/1796688610345079191
carlquintanilla/status/1796673529364074902
jkarsh/status/1796607730767262128
RepDanGoldman/status/1796645275739537822
AccountableGOP/status/1796553224293589011
RonFilipkowski/status/1796500340239695948
Jim_Banks/status/1796293183430705353
greggnunziata/status/1796668421725139139
bidenhq/status/1796598389213159514
SenMikeLee/status/1796600766691672394
SenMikeLee/status/1796650441545073147
RonFilipkowski/status/1796723924882919627
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-31-2024

~~~~~~~
Hello! This is my Ficnapping of Curing Malpractice by u/Cummy_wummys, which can be found Here!
Writing my own take on their novel about Novel was quite the novel experience. Hope you enjoy!
Also I'm going to collapse into bed the second I upload this, so apologies if I don't respond to any comments for several hours.
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Memory Transcription Subject: Novel, Eager Kolshian Scientist
Date {standardized human time}: October 20th, 2136

Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed up that late into my rest claw. Sometimes I just can’t help it, I get so absorbed in one little avenue of research that the claw begins to slip past. I check the time a while later and, what do you know, the heat death of the universe is drawing just that little bit closer. Was it a bad idea to waste so much time learning about the history of Human clothing? Probably. Was it ever so slightly traumatizing, especially the earlier history? You bet it was. Will I probably do something similar in the near future? Absolutely.
I won’t let my moderately sleep-deprived state stand in the way though, for I have been invited to partake in a Human tradition this paw. It is an honour, one that I must take seriously, and approach with reverence. It is a sign that the Humans have come to trust me, welcoming me into their herd. Of course, I already had my own herd with Ada, Sindre and Hailey, and I’d had pleasant interactions with others such as Bella and Max, but I mean the Humans as a whole! To be fair, it’s probably been apparent that the Humans have been warming up to me for some time… if their insistence of suffocating me with photos of their children was anything to go by.
I shiver at the thought. Never again.
I push that train of thought aside as I approach the security checkpoint to the refugee centre, finding Ledo in his usual place. The Jaur security guard is half slumped over in his chair, absentmindedly scrolling through something on his holopad. I give him a friendly sway of my tail as I approach the checkpoint, and he barely seems to muster up the energy to turn an ear my way.
“Good paw, Ledo. Are you alright?”
He places his holopad down and rubs one of his eyes with a paw.
“Just running on empty over here. My break paws can’t come fast enough.”
I sign my sympathy as I grab my visitor’s badge.
“You’re doing a great job, top notch security officer, really. You’ve earned your rest, and then some.”
He covers his mouth with a paw as he yawns.
“Thanks… enjoy the whole predator watching thing, or whatever it is you do in that place.”
“Thank you! Enjoy your shift… as much as you can.”
With a slightly awkward chuckle, I waste no time in heading into the refugee centre. Just to be safe though… I push open the doors and quickly dash to the side, expecting something to come flying at me like what usually happens. This time though, my precautions seem unnecessary. The lobby is empty, devoid of the children and adults that typically mingle around in it at this time. As I take a few tentative, confused steps inside as the doors close behind me, I realize the reason why. Ada said that the activity I’d been invited to partake in took place outside, in the small courtyard I’d heard mentioned here and there around the centre. Everyone must simply already be outside. Following that notion, I pick up my pace as I walk through the hallways, finding the back door that leads to the courtyard soon enough.
My presumption had been right, as when I go outside I’m greeted with the sound of Human laughter, specifically the moderately pitched squeals and giggles of Human children. The courtyard wasn’t all that large, but by no means cramped, with many children and adult Humans alike enjoying the fresh Venlilian air. Scanning the area, I quickly locate Ada, who is currently engaged in quite an odd-looking activity with Sindre. They are standing on opposite sides of what appears to be a bedsheet suspended between two poles, ties at its four corners so that it's stretched almost flat. They are both holding objects that seem vaguely familiar to me, and which I soon recognize as ‘rackets’, which I’d come across before when researching Human activities on the internet.
“Sindre! Ada!”
They turn to look at me as I rush over to them, faces soon breaking out into wide smiles. Sindre walks towards the bed sheet, bending over to pick up a small yellow ball laying in the grass, while Ada walks over to meet me.
“Heya Nov’, glad you decided to join us today.”
“Well, I couldn’t deny an invitation to be involved in a Human tradition!”
She smirks at my response.
“Tradition? Yeah sure, guess tennis counts as one.”
Information acquired: A name for this event.
“Tennis… It sounds fascinating!”
By now, Sindre has walked over to join us. He lightly taps the racket and yellow ball together, which upon closer inspection seems to be strangely fuzz, with a white line running around it in a wavy pattern.
“You made it just as we were about to start another rally. I’m not the best at tennis, so it’d probably be best for Ada to show you the ropes.”
As he says this, Sindre offers the racket out to me. My eyes go wide and my tail flicks with excitement at the gesture, and I securely wrap two of my tentacles around the handle, making sure that it won’t slip from my grip.
“Ooooo! What do I do with this?”
Ada steps away, back towards the suspended bed sheet.
“You go stand where Sindre just was, I’ll walk you through it. Oh, and don’t mind the bed sheet. We don’t exactly have a proper net.”
I rush over to stand in the spot assigned to me, while Ada mirrors my position on her side of the bed sheet. Sindre tosses the yellow ball her way, and to my surprise she easily catches it with one hand. Well, that was certainly a lucky catch, and an accurate throw from Sindre. Before I can dwell on it though, Ada calls out again.
“Lets just start with the basics. In tennis, you use the rackets to hit the ball when it comes to your side of the court, er- bed sheet. You want to hit it so that it flies over the net and lands on my side, where I’ll try and hit it back to you, repeating until one of us either misses the ball or hits it into the net. If that happens, your opponent gets a point.”
I try and emulate the Human ‘nodding’ expression while listening to Ada. That sounds like an interesting activity… there is just one problem.
“Um, alright. How exactly are we supposed to hit the ball?”
“Just make sure to angle the racket so that the ball shoots back to my side, alright? Since you’re new to this, I’ll go easy on you and just start simple.”
That… didn’t really answer my question. I’m unsure how I’m expected to reliably position my racket to make contact with the yellow ball. Even so, I won’t question the Human. I’ve been invited to partake in this ‘tennis’, so I will accept the opportunity with gusto. Ada shifts her stance slightly, before lightly tossing the ball into the air. As it comes back down, she lifts the racket to meet it, and the ball is sent up and forwards. Alright, here goes nothing.
I lift the racket up into the air and rush towards the bed sheet. As the ball sails over the makeshift barrier, it hits the plastic edge of my racket and falls back down onto Ada’s side. I hear a snicker coming from Sindre, and I lower the racket again as Ada retrieves the ball, my tail wagging.
“Did I do that right?”
Before Ada can respond, Sindre buts in.
“If it worked against Ada, it must be a viable strategy.”
The German briefly glared at him before clearing her throat.
“Well Nov’, running at the net with your racket above your head isn’t going to work in a proper game. You need to figure out where the ball is heading, move there, and then hit it with the racket with the right amount power at the right angle to send it back.”
Oh, sure, might I extinguish the sun while I’m at it? Cure every disease along the way? Of course, I don’t voice these thoughts out loud. Instead, I simply give Ada another nod. She repeats her previous ritual of tossing the ball up into the air before bringing the racket up to meet it. This time, the ball doesn’t come straight on, but veers off to the right. I take a couple hurried steps that way and hold out the racket in the hopes that I judged the ball’s movement correctly. To no one’s surprise, I did not, and the ball thuds into the grass.
“No worries Nov’, let’s try again.”
After I haphazardly throw the ball back to her (and she effortlessly catches it with one hand), Ada hits the ball my way again. This time, the ball veered slightly to the left. A mirror of what happened last time, the ball misses my racket by a considerable margin. In my periphery, I vaguely register Sindre wearing a face of mild concern, though my focus is too homed in on not letting my frustration show to dwell on it. I’m making a fool of myself in front of the Humans.
“Sorry, I’ll hit it next time.”
The next time comes, and I unfortunately can’t stay true to my word. A similar thing happens again and again. Sometimes I just try to shove the racket below where I think the ball will go, other times I try waving it around madly in the hopes that it’ll make contact. It never does.
“One more time! I swear I’ll get it!”
They invited me to take part in this. The least I can do is not be a complete failure. Ada stops tossing to me, concern etched into her features.
“Are you alright Nov’? We don’t have to do this if you can’t-”
“No no, I can. It’s just- I’m a novice. You can’t expect me to just know how to calculate projectile motion in my head… I just need practice.”
Ada’s face morphs into one of confusion.
“Projectile motion… Novel, it’s not that complicated.”
I gawk at the Human incredulously. Before I can formulate a response though, a sigh coming from my left draws my attention back to Sindre. He’s rubbing his forehead with his hand, and sighs in realization.
“Eye placement. Depth perception.”
Ada’s eyes go wide at that, and a hand comes up to cover her mouth.
“Oh crap… Sorry Nov’, I didn’t really uh- consider that…”
I look back over to her, my brain still trying to piece together what Sindre meant. I recall how easily the Humans tossed and caught the ball with stunning accuracy, and how Ada seemed to be able have complete control over the ball with her racket while I struggled to even make contact…
Depth perception…
That… makes sense.
I can’t help but gurgle a little in laughter. So predatory eyes were useful for things outside of hunting… like tennis! I need to jot that down, and make sure to investigate that a little more later on.
“Hey Novel, you ok there?”
I’m snapped out of my thoughts by Sindre’s voice. I give him a friendly tail wag and walk over to him.
“Of course, I’m fine. I’m sorry that I’m incapable of taking part in this.”
I offer the racket back to him, which he takes with a little hesitation when he sees the mucus covering the handle. Ada walks over to the two of us, rubbing the back of her neck in embarrassment.
“Sorry for all that Novel, we should’ve chosen something else to show you.”
I quickly turn to her and wave my tentacles in a placating manor.
“No, don’t be sorry! I’m honored that you wished to share the wonders of tennis with me. You two go ahead and enjoy it, I’ll just sit off to the side and make notes on the uses of binocular vision outside of hunting.”
I feel myself deflate slightly. I had been excited to play a part in a Human tradition, but it seems that I just… can’t. Not on my own volition, at least. Perhaps the Humans can sense my disappointment, because Sindre and Ada share a glance before the former speaks up.
“Nov’, you don’t have to-”
I interrupt him by wrapping a tenacle around both their backs and lightly nudging them towards their respective sides of the bed sheet.
“I insist! Don’t worry about me, I’m a graceful loser.”

Memory Transcription Subject: Novel, Sore Loser
Date {standardized human time}: October 21st, 2136

The Venlil I pass on the street are giving me odd looks, all the while I hold my head up high with pride as many of them turn around to do a second take of what I am wheeling behind me. It may be a teensy, tiny bit more complicated than some of the other things I’d previously brought with me to the shelter, but that was only because I had put my tentacles to good use. The splinters I had gotten in the process were testament to that. Should I have focused on getting a little more sleep during my rest claw? Maybe. Is this thing being held together by nothing but hope and super glue? Only the very best. Would the absolute joy that it’ll put on the Humans’ faces be worth it? You bet it will be!
As I wheel my creation past the security checkpoint, I find Ledo staring at his holopad with his head resting on his paws, eyelids drooping. When he spots me approaching, his ears perk up slightly, only for him to raise his head upon seeing my creation. He puts down his holopad and sits up in his chair, trying to get a better view of it.
“Hello Ledo! How are you? Have you gotten some rest?”
For a moment he doesn't respond, only for him to shake his head and rub his eyes.
“Novel, do I even want to know what that thing is?”
“It’s what will allow me to stand on par with the Humans and engage with them on an even playing field. I spent some of my last rest claw building it.”
Ledo looks back over to me.
“And uh, how much is ‘some’, exactly?”
I wave a tentacle dismissively.
“Irrelevant detail. Trust me, it’ll all be worth it. When I leave the shelter later this paw, I’ll tell you all about it.”
Ledo leans back in his chair with a sigh.
“Well, at least it’d be something other than binging movies. You’re a bit of a weirdo, have I told you that yet?”
“Why thank you! Have a nice shift.”
I bid farewell to the Jaur and my final approach to my destiny begins. Victory is so close I can almost taste it.
The lobby is empty again this paw, so I head right on through while towing my creation behind me. I pass a couple Humans along the way, who I give friendly greetings to as they marvel at my ingenious solution to the problem that had plagued me last paw. Since I’ve arrived a little later this paw (courtesy of a productive rest claw), I waste to time in heading directly to the back of the centre and out onto the grassy courtyard that had been the location of last paw’s utter failure. I will not allow that to happen again!
“Ah, welcome to the courtyard Nov-… Uh, what’s that you got behind you?”
Max’s friendly tone gives way to curiosity, and I feel the pride already beginning to swell just a little more. He was just in the middle of a round of the dreaded ‘tennis’ with Ada, who is on the opposite side of the makeshift net, which she leans over once she spots me.
“Novel… why do you have a catapult?”
It seems that my wonderful creation is also garnering interest from many of the children as well, who briefly stop their various running games to watch me. I finish wheeling the mini catapult into place and take out a tennis ball from my bag (turns out I had already purchased one, thanks past me!) while I finally answer Ada.
“So that I may properly partake in your Human traditions, of course! How can I study them if I can’t even participate? This little thing will allow me to successfully serve a ball to you in just a moment, no depth perception required! Watch and see.”
I place the tennis ball into the cup and begin cranking the lever to wind up the device. Max starts looking a little nervous as I do so.
“Um, Nov’? Are you sure that thing is going to work? Is it even safe?”
The homemade gears turn with a slight clacking sound, which tells me that it’s working just as expected… though Max does make me wonder briefly if I should’ve done a test run of this first… oh well, too late for that.
“Don’t worry, I know precisely what I’m do-”
I’m cut off by the rather disconcerting sound of splintering wood. I only have enough time to faintly register that the sound came from my creation, and that said realization is very bad. A resounding SNAP and the disappearance of the tennis ball at approximately Mach 5 tells me that I did not know the tensile strength of Venlilian wood as well as I thought. The rest of the world has gone silent, and I slowly turn my gaze in the direction the ball had preemptively flown, finding Max standing as still as a statue with the tennis ball resting on the ground in front of him. The silence is broken as the Human lets out a whining sound higher pitched than even the smallest of Dossur can produce, before falling to his knees and grasping his groin in obvious agony.
Some of the slightly older kids cringe in sympathy.
Ada tries not to laugh.
Max steadily raises his hand, pointing a shaky digit at me. His voice comes out squeaky, and pained.
“K-kids… avenge me…”
The children’s eyes lock onto me. I learn what true fear feels like.
All at once, the children let out their war cries, and began rushing over to me. I let out a shriek of my own as I turn back towards the refugee centre and start running like my life depends on it because it probably does! I don’t dare look back at the pack of predators pursuing me, I simply run through the back doors of the centre and sprint down the corridor as fast as I physically can. Even so, I know for a fact that it is not fast enough. I’ve studied Humans enough to know that they are built for chasing prey. Right now, that prey is me!
I try to lose the children by utilizing the building’s layout as best I can. I turn past several corners without slowing down, run up the stairs and even hide behind a pot plant at one point, startling an adult Human as I do so, who quickly rushes back inside their room. I make a mental note to apologize to them later, and file it right under ‘RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! GO GO GO!’
I hear it, the sound of light but determined footsteps plonking their way up the stairs. They’ve found me. This pot plant isn’t going to help me at all! I abandon my frankly pathetic hiding spot and dash further down the hallway, determining that my best shot at survival will be to get back to the main lobby and run out through the front do-
A dead end.
No…
Oh no…
The sound of footsteps grows closer. Just a single pair, but that is more than enough to seal my fate. I push myself against the wall, terror coursing through my mind. This was supposed to be a showcase of how much I respected Humans, I didn’t mean to injure one! Is this really it? Is this really how it all ends? Sought out and killed to avenge the fallen? I-I never got to publish my completed study on Human traditions… or binocular vision… or diets or facial express- a whole lot of things actually!
The footsteps pause, and the sound of giggling breaks me out of my mental spiral. There, standing before me, grinning ear to ear, is a familiar Human child.
“Found you!”
“D-David?”
Still grinning, the young boy reaches out a hand towards me. I push myself as far against the wall as I can go.
“W-wait, David! I-I-I thought we got along well! We watched that horrible movie together, remember? We can read that book about cattle again if you want! Or-or anything you want, really! P-please, don’t d-do this!”
I close my eyes tightly, and prepare myself for the end…
…
A hand lightly taps one of my tentacles, then retracts.
“Tag! You’re it.”
I crack open an eye.
“Wh-what?”
David is already running away from me, giggling again. As he reaches the stairs, he calls out as loud as he can, voice carrying further into the refugee centre.
“Guys! I got her! Novel’s it now!”
…
…
What?

The profusion of identical green tents at this spring’s anti-Israel protests struck many as odd. “Why is everybody’s tent the same?,” asked New York mayor Eric Adams. Like others, the mayor suspected “a well-concerted organizing effort” driving the protests. More recent reporting shows a concerted push behind the Gaza protest movement. But it is not as simple as a single organization secretly rallying protesters or buying tents. Instead, the movement’s most determined activists represent a network of loosely linked far-left groups. Some are openly affiliated with well-known progressive nonprofits; others work in the shadows.
The movement also draws on diverse but generous sources of financial backing. Those funding streams may soon be augmented by the federal government. As I chronicled last year in a Manhattan Institute report, “The Big Squeeze: How Biden’s Environmental Justice Agenda Hurts the Economy and the Environment,” the administration’s massive program of environmental justice grants seems designed to prioritize the funding of highly ideological local groups. The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, earmarks $3 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” intended for local nonprofits. Today, hundreds of far-left political groups include language about environmental issues and “climate justice” in their mission statements. If just a fraction of planned grants flows to such groups, the effect will be a gusher of new funding for radical causes.
As the Gaza protests spread across U.S. college campuses, many observers noted an eerie uniformity among them. From one campus to the next, protesters operated in disciplined cadres, keeping their faces covered and using identical rote phrases as they refused to talk with reporters. The Atlantic noted the strangeness of seeing elite college students “chanting like automatons.” Students held up keffiyeh scarves or umbrellas to block the view of prying cameras and linked arms to halt the movements of outsiders. At Columbia University and elsewhere, protesters formed “liberated zones,” from which “Zionists” were excluded. Around the edges of the encampments, the more militaristic activists donned helmets and goggles and carried crude weapons, apparently eager to mix it up with police or counter-protesters. We’ve seen these tactics before—notably during the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, when full-time agitators helped ignite riots, set up a police-free (and violence-plagued) zone in Seattle, and laid nightly siege to Portland, Oregon’s federal courthouse.
In a remarkable work of reporting, Park MacDougald recently traced the tangled roots of organizations backing pro-jihad protests, both on and off campuses. These include Antifa and other networks of anonymous anarchists, along with “various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition,” MacDougald writes. Higher up the food chain, we find groups openly supported by America’s growing class of super-rich tech execs or the anti-capitalist heirs of great fortunes. For example, retired tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, who is married to Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, funds The People’s Forum, a lavish Manhattan resource center for far-left groups. As the Columbia protests intensified, the center urged members to head uptown to “support our students.” Following the money trail of other protest groups, MacDougald finds connections to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and—surprising no one—the George Soros-backed Tides Foundation.
Of course, the current wave of anti-Israel protests also involves alliances with pro-Hamas organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Last November, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies testified to the House Ways and Means Committee that SJP and similar groups have deep ties to global terrorist organizations, including Hamas.
For many keffiyeh-wearing protestors, however, a recently professed concern for Palestinians is just the latest in a long list of causes they believe justify taking over streets and college quads. In Unherd, Mary Harrington dubs this medley of political beliefs the “omnicause,” writing that “all contemporary radical causes seem somehow to have been absorbed into one.” Today’s leftist activists share an interlocking worldview that sees racism, income inequality, trans intolerance, climate change, alleged police violence, and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts all as products of capitalism and “colonialism.” Therefore, the stated rationale for any individual protest is a stand-in for the real battle: attacking Western society and its institutions.
In the U.S., this type of general-purpose uprising goes back at least to the riots at the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. In those protests, mainstream liberal factions—including labor unions and environmentalists—were joined by “black bloc” anarchists and other radicals eager to engage in “direct action” against police. That pattern—relatively moderate demonstrators providing a friendly envelope for hard-core disruptors—formed the template for many later protests: the Occupy Wall Street encampments in 2011, demonstrations following the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, 2016’s Standing Rock anti-pipeline movement, and of course, the calamitous summer of 2020.
These uprisings were not entirely spontaneous. In some cases, activists spend months planning mass actions—for example, against economic summits or political conventions—and can recruit street fighters from across the country. In others, an event, such as George Floyd’s death, sparks popular protests involving neophyte demonstrators. Those attract far-left activists, who swoop in to organize and expand the struggle, often tilting it toward more radical action.
That has certainly been the case at the college Gaza-paloozas. At Columbia, the New York Times spotted a woman old enough to be a student’s grandmother in the thick of the action as protesters barricaded that school’s Hamilton Hall. The woman was 63-year-old Lisa Fithian, a lifetime activist, who Portland’s alternative weekly Street Roots approvingly calls “a trainer of mass rebellion.” A counter-protester trying to block the pro-Hamas demonstrators told NBC News, “She was right in the middle of it, instructing them how to better set up the barriers.” Fithian told the Times she’d been invited to train students in protest safety and “general logistics.” She claims to have taken part in almost every major U.S. protest movement going back to the 1999 “Battle in Seattle.”
America’s radical network has plenty of Lisa Fithians, with the time and resources to travel the country educating newcomers about the “logistics” of disruptive protests. And these activists appear to have played key roles in the college occupations. The New York City Police Department says nearly half the demonstrators arrested on the Columbia and City University of New York (CUNY) campuses on April 30 were not affiliated with the schools. One hooded Hamilton Hall occupier—photographed scuffling with a Columbia custodian before getting arrested—turned out to be 40-year-old James Carlson, heir to a large advertising fortune. According to the New York Post, Carlson lives in a $2.3 million Park Slope townhouse and has a long rap sheet. For example, in 2005, he was arrested in San Francisco during the violent “West Coast Anti-Capitalist Mobilization and March Against the G8.” (Those charges were dropped.)
For a quarter-century now, Antifa and other anarchist networks have worked to refine tactics and share lessons following each major action. At Columbia, UCLA, and other schools, authorities found printouts of a “Do-It Yourself Occupation Guide” and similar documents. The young campus radicals are eager to learn from their more experienced elders. And, like the high-achieving students they are, they follow directions carefully. MacDougald asked Kyle Shideler, the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, about the mystery of the identical tents. There was no need for a central group to distribute hundreds of tents, Shideler said. Instead, “the organizers told [students] to buy a tent, and sent around a Google Doc with a link to that specific tent on Amazon. So they all went out and bought the same tent.”
In other words, America’s radical class has gotten very skilled at recruiting and instructing new activists—even from among the ranks of elite college students with a good deal to lose. How much more could this movement accomplish with hundreds of millions in federal dollars flooding activist groups around the country?
From its first week in office, the Biden administration has trumpeted its goal to funnel more environmental spending toward “disadvantaged communities that have been historically marginalized,” partly by issuing grants to grassroots organizations. Previous environmental justice (EJ) grant programs were small in scope. But, with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022, a huge pool of grant money became available. EPA administrator Michael Regan told reporters, “We’re going from tens of thousands of dollars to developing and designing a program that will distribute billions.”
More than a year and a half later, it remains hard to nail down just where the Biden administration’s billions in EJ grants will wind up. Money is being distributed through a confusing variety of programs, and the process of identifying recipients is ongoing. To help outsource the job of sifting through proposals, the EPA last year designated 11 institutions as “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmakers.” These groups are empowered to make subgrants directly to community organizations, under streamlined EPA oversight. In all, the Biden administration has entrusted these outfits with distributing a staggering $600 million in funding. The money is expected to start flowing this summer.
The EPA’s grantmakers include a number of educational institutions and left-leaning nonprofits. For example, the EPA chose Fordham University as its lead grantmaker in the New York region. Fordham, in turn, lists as partners two nonprofits that oppose immigration enforcement. (One, the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, states on its website: “NJAIJ believes in the human right to migrate, regardless of citizenship or political status.”) Neither group claims expertise in environmental issues. Given that the IRA’s eligibility requirements for EJ grants are extremely vague, however, perhaps that’s not a problem. Almost any activity that could help “spur economic opportunity for disadvantaged communities” (in the words of Biden’s EJ executive order) might qualify.
Perhaps the most prominent—and problematic—EPA grantmaker is the Berkeley, California-based Climate Justice Alliance. The CJA is a consortium of mostly far-left activist groups. It describes its mission as working for “regenerative economic solutions and ecological justice—under a framework that challenges capitalism and both white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy.” The group is a vigorous proponent of the omnicause, embracing almost every left-wing concern as a manifestation of climate change. For example, the CJA website proclaims: “The path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.” MacDougald notes that the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, one of CJA’s affiliated groups, “organized an illegal anti-Israel protest in the Capitol Rotunda in December at which more than 50 activists were arrested.”
The CJA website also includes a section dedicated to the cause known as Stop Cop City. It refers to an effort to halt the construction of an 85-acre police and firefighter training center outside Atlanta. Rag-tag activists from around the country have gathered around the facility since 2021. They have repeatedly battled with police—sometimes with fireworks and Molotov cocktails—and used bolt cutters to enter the site and torch construction equipment. (CJA’s Stop Cop City page features a cartoon illustration of three childlike activists; one brandishes bolt cutters.) The group also backs a legal defense fund for activists arrested in attacks on the training center or in other protests. For those looking for more inspiration, CJA links to an interview with former Black Panther and self-described revolutionary Angela Davis.
The Alliance is not an ideological outlier in Biden’s EJ coalition. On the contrary, when the White House assembled its White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), a panel of outside experts meant to provide “horizon-expanding EJ advice and recommendations,” it chose CJA co-chair Elizabeth Yeampierre to help lead the committee. Like other members of the panel, she sees environmental issues through an ideological, not a scientific, lens. “Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery,” Yeampierre told Yale Environment 360. As a group, radical EJ activists tend not to focus on pragmatic ways to reduce pollution and carbon emissions; for them, the real goal is overturning what they see as an exploitative economic and political system. Since these are the voices the White House chose to help shape its EJ policies, we can assume this worldview will dominate grantmaking decisions.
In February 2023, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, along with fellow committee member Pat Fallon, wrote to EPA administrator Regan asking for more information on the EPA’s grant programs. They noted that the EPA’s own studies of EJ grants issued in previous years showed sloppy supervision. According to an EPA report, an earlier version of the program funded projects that did “not logically lead to the desired environmental and/or public health [result].” Without better oversight and more clearly defined goals, the congressmen wrote, the EPA’s EJ grant machine risks becoming simply a “slush fund for far-left organizations.”
Since then, the administration has done little to reassure skeptics. To the contrary, the EPA has put at least one far-left organization—CJA—in charge of distributing $50 million in grant money. No doubt, many of the EPA grants will go to worthwhile projects. But money is fungible. A group that gets a large grant to, say, clean up dirty parks or teach children about recycling will also be able to hire more staff and divert more resources to political action.
With graduation behind them, most of the anti-Israel college protesters have stowed away their keffiyehs and moved on to summer vacations or internships. But the peripatetic activists who helped guide and intensify those uprisings are doubtless already planning their next actions. After all, two political conventions are looming. This fall, the college protests will likely flare up again, though by then perhaps focused on a different facet of the omnicause. And, with hundreds of millions in fresh funding flowing through the activist ecosystem, the groups that quietly nurture extremists—like those who firebombed “Cop City,” or who chant “Intifada Revolution!,” or who block bridges in the name of “climate”—will be more emboldened than ever.
A Slush Fund for Radical Protesters? City Journal (city-journal.org)
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dude...i just got rejected...by this girl thats like...the girl of my dreams. For a recap, when i started 9th grade (school year 2022-2023), we were seatmates. We usually didint talk but one time, during a hard leason in maths which was like quadratic equations and stuff. I was struggling hard. I legit was just staring at the activity sheet. After a while she noticed and helped me which brought the start of our friendship. We always talked through chat, sometimes irl, but its mostly through chat. The first few weeks of talking, she usually sent me videos of herself doing math problems that i can watch if i need help. It continued untilthe math lessons didint get hard the following quarters. Summer vacation came, and i thought it would be great. Guess what...IT WASNT. I hate my family, my dad isn't with us, so it was only me(oldest), my mom, my lil brother, and my sister. Me and my siblings are all 3 years apart from age. I dont know why its always me getting scolded back then for the things my siblings do. It was so bad...i wanted to commit suicide. Like, my mental state was not OKAY. I didint know who to cry to, who to talk to. But then, thats when i thought, why not talk to her? So i ranted and ranted and ranted, i wanted to kill myself. I wanna rnd my life. Things were rough and on the outside, i might look tough or emotion less, but in reality. Im just a sensitive loser thats emotional, easily cries, and sucks at everything. I told her i wanted to kill myself. She kept stopping me. And take note, we rarely talk irl because...im too shy yo approach her. Then she said the most out of the blue thing "If you can't find a reason to live, why not make me your reason to live?" IT HIT HARD. I didint know what to say or reply. I just dropped my phone and continued crying in my room. A few days passed, i talked to her again, but i guess that was the wrong day because she was NOT in the mood. Her parents were about to go divorce because of a problem(i cant rlly say). She told me stuff like she already cried abt it and stuff. We were both there for each other. after that talk with her...summer vacation went, just a little smoother. We always get to play games on roblox, because we cant rlly meet up. We always chat from morning till night. It was perfect. Then, 10th grade came(school year 2023-2024). This time, we weren't seatmates. Since we both go to a special school which has a robotics class, and our T.L.E(Technology and Livelihood Education) was specialized on animation. Like, the whole thing was about 2D and 3D animation. Beinh the perfect most smartest person she is (atleast in my eyes) she was assigned the role of 3D animation for her group. After that...we never got to play most of the time...during our mid year break, she was still busy...a few months pass and on the 4th quarter(final quarter) of the school year. THEY ANNOUNCED THAT OUR BATCH WAS HAVING A PROM. So naturally, i was so excited. I immediately invited her and asked if she wanted to go with me. She said she's gonna think about it so I waited. I asked her about 3 weeks before prom. Then when our batch representative announced in the groupchat that since theres more girls that boys in our batch, they made a poll on who wants to volunteer to go individual to prom. SHE IMMEDIATELY WENT SOLO AND VOTED. It kinda hurt...she said she was gonna think about it and well...she went solo. I asked her why she did that and then she said "I wanna go with my other friends", which was okay with me since i have no rights to make her my partner because...well...we weren't a thing yet, and i still havent confessed. After that...a few more weeks pass, and take not of this specific detail: She asked me what my discord was because she said she forgot what my discord name was because she lost count and alot of her discord friends changed names. THEN I REMEMBERED, my discord bio was basically, me telling that i like her and hoping she doesnt find out and stuff. So i immediately change it then send her the screenshot of my discord.
After 1 week, prom night came. I went in a cool looking suit and stuff when it was time for the red carpet... she eas absolutely stunning. Her eyes sparkled, her pink dress was beautiful. In my eyes, shes the one that stood out the most. She went solo for the red carpet...and i did too..i told my self if i wasnt gonna get partnered with her, then im not gonna get partnered with anyone. Our tabled were far apart but i could still see her from the distance. When it was time for the slow dance part of prom. I went outside because well...i wasnt gonna dance with anyone. When i went outside i saw her with her friends. I just passed by and sat near the bench outside of the venue. I didint know what to do but just admire her beauty from afar. She was perfect. As time passed, only a few more minutes were left before prom night ended so i worked up my courage and went to her. I was about to confess but then when i looked at her, my mind went completely blank. Her eyes weren't the ocean, but i still drown...get lost in them. I was panicking on the inside but on the outside, I was just staring at her. Then the moment of silence was broken when she suddenly said "I already know you liked me"...i smiled...then she said "gotta go" as she want back into the venue because her friends were calling her she looked back for a second then shouted "I knew from your discord bio" AND I WAS SHOCKED. Because...after the discord incident...she never distanced herself from me. We kept talking, and one time, she even asked me "Be honest, Do i text badly? Do you feel ignored?" Which was like...dude...bro i love her. I just sat on the bench the whole night thinking about what i should do. After prom, when i got home i immediately texted her and said "sorry for earlier...my mind went black ahahahaha" she said "its okay" then i said "so...uhh...do you like me back...?" She said "sorry i dont feel the same..i wanna keep things platonic" SO THAT SHOOK MY TO MY CORE...it hurt alot. But still, we kept talking, she still didint distance her self.
This is my confession btw: If you ever get this message, it may be because when i confessed to you, I had a lot more to say(i didint confess😭). You made me feel the most special person in the world, for once i felt i wanted and i guess you're the reason for that. I know you might not like me back, and i know I'm probably not even close to your standards, but i just wanted to tell you how i feel about you. Do you know the saying: "you cant love others without loving yourself first." I never believed in that because I never loved myself, but you...I love YOU so much that i forgot what hating myself felt like. You're the reason i catch myself smiling out of nowhere in the middle of the day. You are the sunshine in my thoughts, and the unexpected joy that fills my heart. Every time I think of you, everything seems just a little brighter and a little lighter. You make waking up the best part of the day, seeing you at school always makes me the happiest person on earth...and i really just like you...i hope this won't ruin our friendship, and that things won't get awkward between us.
A few more weeks passed by and it was our moving up. I didint get to go because i was sick. Before that she was showing me a necklace that she found on Instagram then...well...i thought to myself why not buy it. Atleast i can give jer something for moving up. I bought it for her..then thats when fever struck me. I didint get to go to moving up so i just told her about the necklace. Then she said "Oh i wanted to give you something too, a Friendship bracelet." Since we both didint get to see each other for moving up, i just told her..."lets give our gifts for each other next school year" and she said "sureee". After that well..A FEW MORE WEEKS PASSED BY. And i was thinking to myself. I wanna pursue her. I loved her. And like...i dont know how to say it. So i made this whole ass paragraph again.
WHAT I SAID: I've been thinking abt this for a while now...and i really wanna try pursuing you. I know you're still prioritizing ur studies and time with ur fam but, i do wanna try pursuing you, i know that you never felt the same and stuff but like...yk..i guess that's the point? who knows you might fall or maybe feel the same too? I'M NOT FORCING U OR ANYTHING. Just... you're one of the people who made me feel this tingly feeling like, when someone mentions your name or your chat head pops up on my screen..i just get this feeling, it only has ever happened when its about you...i cant really express through words what or how i feel about you...but im POSITIVE..i can show them through my actions. i wanna give you the best hugs you deserve(im rlly into hugs). I wanna get to know you even more, i want to get to share unforgettable experiences with you. You're the first person that just I REALLY WANNA PURSUE AND BE WITH. You are the most perfect person in my eyes...i know perfect people don't exist but your imperfections, your flaws, everything about you...it just makes me go bananas. So...how about...we try it...? Like...trying to learn how to love me too...? ARGH I DONT KNOW MY HANDS R SHAKING AS IM TYPING THIS...i just wanna....be with you...i wanna stay with you and...i dont know what to say anymore...but maybe...just maybe even if its the slightest chance, maybe you'd fall for me too like how i fell for you? I know I'm putting our friendship at risk of awkwardness and stuff and maybe even the end of it...but I'm willing to take those risks for you. I know I'll just get hurt but...can you really experience love if you don't feel pain too?
IM NOT PRESSURING U OR ANYTHING DWWWWW!! dam I yap alot😭 just answer with a yes or no. And i know what to do next. Anyways, iloveuu🫶🏻(?)
I sent it to her after a few hours of procrastinating. She replied a few hours later and this is what she replied.
HER REPLY: Idk, like I said I don't really care, but I don't wanna, and u shouldn't get ur hopes up, liek I said last time, I really don't want to get into a relationship at all, I'm sorry if this hurts your feelings but you did say that you aren't forcing but I don't want to "try" or anything like that, I see you as a friend and only a friend. I appreciate that you think of me that way but I won't be returning those feelings back to you in any point of my life.
IT HURTS. It hit me hard. Its like getting shot straight to the heart. Her reply was the last time we talked to each other(3 days ago). We still havent talked after that. Im legit gonna cry...the first person i actually had feelings for...damn.

The global viscosupplementation market is anticipated to witness substantial growth, with a projected CAGR of 9% during the forecast period from 2024 to 2030. In 2020, the market was valued at USD 3.3 billion. Key factors driving this growth include the escalating demand for osteoarthritis treatment and the rising prevalence of lifestyle-related disorders. Additionally, the rapid expansion of the geriatric population and the increasing incidence of osteoarthritis are expected to further propel market expansion over the forecast period.
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Market Trends:
Increasing Prevalence of Osteoarthritis: Osteoarthritis is becoming increasingly prevalent globally, driven by factors such as aging populations, sedentary lifestyles, and rising obesity rates. As a result, there is a growing demand for viscosupplementation as a treatment option for managing osteoarthritis symptoms, particularly in weight-bearing joints such as the knees and hips.
Advancements in Viscosupplement Formulations: Manufacturers are continuously innovating and improving viscosupplement formulations to enhance efficacy, durability, and patient outcomes. This includes the development of next-generation hyaluronic acid (HA) products with improved rheological properties, longer-lasting effects, and better tissue integration.
Expansion of Indications and Treatment Sites: While viscosupplementation has traditionally been used for knee osteoarthritis, there is a growing trend towards expanding its indications to other joints such as the hip, shoulder, and ankle. Additionally, emerging evidence supports the use of viscosupplements for conditions like osteoarthritis of the hand and temporomandibular joint disorders.
Shift towards Combination Therapies: Clinicians are increasingly adopting combination therapies that integrate viscosupplementation with other treatment modalities such as physical therapy, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and regenerative medicine techniques like platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy. This multimodal approach aims to optimize pain relief and functional improvement in patients with osteoarthritis.
Patient-Centric Care and Personalized Medicine: There is a growing emphasis on patient-centric care and personalized medicine in the management of osteoarthritis. Healthcare providers are tailoring treatment plans to individual patient needs, preferences, and disease characteristics, leading to the adoption of personalized viscosupplementation regimens based on factors such as disease severity, joint anatomy, and patient lifestyle.
Market Opportunities:
The viscosupplementation market offers compelling opportunities driven by several factors. With the increasing prevalence of osteoarthritis globally, there is a growing demand for effective treatment options, including viscosupplements, particularly in aging populations. Manufacturers have the opportunity to innovate and develop advanced formulations that address the evolving needs of patients, such as longer-lasting effects and improved delivery systems. Additionally, expanding indications for viscosupplementation to include other joints and conditions present avenues for market expansion. Emerging markets, especially in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, offer significant growth potential due to rising healthcare expenditures and increasing awareness of osteoarthritis management. Moreover, the shift towards personalized medicine and combination therapies opens doors for collaboration and partnership opportunities between viscosupplement manufacturers and healthcare providers.
According to the recent report published by RC Market Analytics, the Global Viscosupplementation Market is expected to provide sustainable growth opportunities during the forecast period from 2024 to 2030. This latest industry research study analyzes the viscosupplementation market by various product segments, applications, regions and countries while assessing regional performances of numerous leading market participants. The report offers a holistic view of the viscosupplementation industry encompassing numerous stakeholders including raw material suppliers, providers, distributors, consumers and government agencies, among others. Furthermore, the report includes detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the global market considering market history, product development, regional dynamics, competitive landscape, and key success factors (KSFs) in the industry.
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Geographically, the viscosupplementation market report comprises dedicated sections centering on the regional market revenue and trends. The viscosupplementation market has been segmented on the basis of geographic regions into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Viscosupplementation market estimates have also been provided for the historical years 2020 to 2023 along with forecast for the period from 2024 - 2030.The report includes a deep-dive analysis of key countries including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, China, Japan, India, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, among others. Thereby, the report identifies unique growth opportunities across the world based on trends occurring in various developed and developing economies.
The Viscosupplementation Market Segmentation:
By Product:

• Single Injection
• Three Injection
• Five Injection

By Application:

• Knee Osteoarthritis
• Hip Osteoarthritis
• Hand Osteoarthritis

By End-Use:

• Hospitals
• Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASCs)
• Others

By Region:

• North America
• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East & Africa

Leading participants in the global viscosupplementation market include Sanofi, Anika Therapeutics, Inc., Seikagaku Corporation, Zimmer Holdings Inc., and Bioventus. These entities are actively pursuing growth through strategies such as market expansion, new investments, the introduction of innovative services, and collaborative ventures. They are strategically exploring new geographic regions through both expansion and acquisition, leveraging joint synergies to gain a competitive edge.
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Key Questions Answered by Viscosupplementation Market Report:

• Product popularity and adoption based on various country-level dynamics
• Regional presence and product development for leading market participants
• Market forecasts and trend analysis based on ongoing investments and economic growth in key countries
• Competitive landscape based on revenue, product offerings, years of presence, number of employees and market concentration, among others
• Various industry models such as SWOT analysis, Pestle Analysis, Porter’s Five Force model, Value Chain Analysis pertaining to Viscosupplementation market
• Analysis of the key factors driving and restraining the growth of the global, regional and country-level markets from 2020-2030

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