text:
COMMENTARY AND INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM ON CANADIAN AND ONTARIO POLITICS
Raving Canuck
About Raving Canuck
The Contenders: Sizing Up The Field For The Next PCPO Leader
February 2, 2018 by Graeme C. Gordon, posted in Ontario Politics
By Josh Lieblein
DOUG FORD: Populist Prime
Pros: Well, even mentioning that Doug has pros would be too much for some people, so I'll say this: While the rest of the party is obsessively chasing after the middle, Doug's "base" consists of people who are completely outside the voting spectrum. If anyone can reach these outsiders — the so-called "Ford Nation" — it's Doug. Beyond that: This ain't no Mini-Trump Leitch campaign, Folks — even if it does have some of the same staff. This is the real deal. Things that would destroy any of the other campaigns won't touch Doug.
Cons: Looking past the obvious issues, Dougie has a serious numbers issue. To win he has to absolutely crush on the first ballot. You'll be hearing nasty off-the-record mutterings about how he's "nobody's second choice" in the coming weeks.
CAROLINE MULRONEY: Apparent Heir
Pros: The freshest face in the bunch. Poised to lock down the youth vote, and if you took those "He's Just Not Ready" Justin Trudeau Job Interview ads literally (and a lot of conservatives did) then look no further. Most of Brown's old staff (the ones who didn't leave under a cloud) have settled on this campaign, which is great if you thought Brown was doing fine before he personally blew up. And hey- people are actually saying- out loud- that she's "#MeToo proof!"
Cons: For Doug Ford, being associated with a controversial name and being part of a dynasty isn't a negative. It is for Caroline. Then there's the other controversial name associated with her — Hamish Marshall, who will be running her campaign.
CHRISTINE ELLIOTT: The Peaceful, Consensus, PC Candidate
Pros: Honestly, if you think the path to victory is putting forth a candidate who is simply beyond reproach, Christine is your number one choice. She's run before, has nothing to prove, and polls have her as a heavy favourite amongst PC faithful. She'll also put a dent in Ford's support because of the Ford family's loyalty to the Elliot-Flaherty family.
Cons: She's going with the same team she went with last time, headed up by the ever-present, ever-loyal John Capobianco. Unfortunately, this time around she won't have as much access to caucus endorsements because of Phillips (see below), as much access to the women's vote because of Mulroney, and while butter may melt in her mouth, Christine is not known for being especially warm.
ROD PHILLIPS: He's Rod Phillips
PROS: He's the caucus favourite, because when Vic Fedeli lost his bid to be permanent leader, the powers that be behind that attempt swung their support over to Rod. If you think this leadership race is a bad idea, or if you are tired of outsiders stomping into the party and taking it over, In Rod You Trust. He may be able to swing Paul Godfrey's endorsement, which put Patrick Brown over the top last time.
CONS: Has he actually declared yet?
Tagged Caroline Mulroney, Christine Elliott, Doug Ford, Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, Rod Phillips
Previous postHijab Hoax: Some Answers from Toronto Police and Lingering Questions for Toronto District School Board, Media, Politicians, and Girl's Family
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Toronto Politics


AULD REEKIE was built in 1943 as VIC 27 for the Admiralty. Her builders were Isaac Pimblott & Sons Limited of Northwich and she was powered by a steam compound engine built by Crabtree (1931) Limited. She is of iron/steel riveted construction.
Sold out of service by the Admiralty to Sir James Miller in 1968 and registered as AULD REEKIE in 1969, her use then was for the Land Sea and Air Youth Club Limited. In 1979 she was sold to Bathgate Brothers and used in the TV series Para Handy. Subsequently, she passed through two owners and is presently under restoration at Crinan Boatyard.


Having been played around Addict-o-matic for few days, to be straightforward, I was attracted by its interface first time I opened it, even my daughter loves that cute robot. It's really a great experience searching with Addict-o-matic, the page loads fast, the Ajax script didn't slow down my browser, and the AIO result is quite easy to preview with the cute tooltips.
But, multi-byte characters? NO WAY, just another chicken rib to Asian language users. Anyway, I still love it, thanks to those shiny APIs to make this possible and so easy, it's very convenient to track down Microsoft and Yahoo! event in the past few days, and, of course, adults.
PS: Here's my own result.


text:
/*jshint esversion: 6 */

/**
 * @module PM
 * @author Manh Phuoc Nguyen
 */
sap.ui.define(
  [
    "mpn/PM/controller/BaseController",
    "sap/ui/core/mvc/Controller",
    "sap/m/MessageToast",
    "sap/ui/model/json/JSONModel",
    "mpn/PM/model/Purchase",
    "mpn/PM/model/Shop",
    "mpn/PM/model/Payer"
  ],
  function(
    BaseController,
    Controller,
    MessageToast,
    JSONModel,
    Purchase,
    Shop,
    Payer
  ) {
    "use strict";
    return BaseController.extend("mpn.PM.controller.purchase", {
      /**
		 * setup models and setup shop entity
		 */
      onInit: function() {
        var oThat = this;

        // on before show
        this.getView().addDelegate({
          onBeforeShow: function(oEvent) {
            //set geschaefte
            oThat.getGeschaeftEntitySet();
          }
        });

        //setup models
        this.setupModels();
      },

      /**
		 * on after rendering handler: set current date to form
		 */
      onAfterRendering: function() {
        this.setCurrentDateToForm();
      },

      /**
		 * on navigate back to top master
		 */
      onNavBack: function() {
        this.getRouter().navTo("myGroup", {
          groupId: this.getSelectedGroupId()
        });
      },

      /**
		 * get geschaefte entity setModel
		 */
      getGeschaeftEntitySet: function(callback) {
        this.getView().setBusy(true);
        var oThat = this;
        var shop;

        this.getFireBaseIdToken()
          .then(function(token) {
            return token;
          })
          .then(function(token) {
            shop = new Shop({fbIdToken: token});
            return shop.getShops({sGroupId: oThat.getSelectedGroupId()});
          })
          .then(function(oData) {
            oThat.getView().setModel(new JSONModel(oData), "Geschaefte");
            oThat.getView().setBusy(false);
          })
          .catch(function(oError) {
            //error handling
            MessageToast.show("Die Geschäfte konnten nicht geladen werden.");
            oThat.getView().setBusy(false);
          });
      },

      /**
		 * get zahler entity model and set to view
		 */
      setPayerToView: function() {
        this.getView().setBusy(true);
        var oThat = this;
        var payer;

        //get payers
        this.getFireBaseIdToken()
          .then(function(token) {
            return token;
          })
          .then(function(token) {
            //TODO: refactor contructor as object
            payer = new Payer({ fbIdToken: token });
            return payer.getPayers({sGroupId: oThat.getSelectedGroupId()});
          })
          .then(function(oData) {
            oThat.getView().setModel(new JSONModel(oData), "Zahler");
            oThat.getView().setBusy(false);
          })
          .catch(function(oError) {
            MessageToast.show("Die Zahler konnten nicht geladen werden.");
            oDefZahler.reject();
            oThat.getView().setBusy(false);
          });
      },

      /**
		 * add purchase
		 */
      onAddPurchase: function() {
        //check valid form values
        if (
          this.getView().byId("purchaseDate").mProperties.dateValue === null ||
          this.getView().byId("geschaefteCb").getSelectedKey() === "" ||
          this.getView().byId("zahlerCb").getSelectedKey() === "" ||
          this.getView().byId("purchaseValInput").getValue() === ""
        ) {
          MessageToast.show("Bitte alle Felder ausfüllen!");
        } else {
          // transform , to .
          let svalInput = this.getView().byId("purchaseValInput").getValue();
          if (svalInput.includes(",")) {
            this.getView()
              .byId("purchaseValInput")
              .setValue(svalInput.replace(",", "."));
          }

          this.getView().setBusy(true);
          var oThat = this;
          var purchase;

          //create new purchase
          this.getFireBaseIdToken()
            .then((token)=> {
              return token;
            })
            .then((token)=> {
              //TODO: refactor contructor as object
              purchase = new Purchase(oThat.createNewPurchaseObject(token));
              return purchase.createPurchase({sGroupId: this.getSelectedGroupId()});
            })
            .then((oData) =>{
              oThat.getView().getModel("PurchaseTemp").newEink_id =
                oData.insertedId.eink_id;
              oThat.getView().byId("successMs").setVisible(true);
              //reset geschaefte count
              oThat.getGeschaeftEntitySet();
              oThat.getView().setBusy(false);
            })
            .catch((oError) =>{
              //error handling
              MessageToast.show("Fehler. Probiere es später aus.");
              oThat.getView().setBusy(false);
            });
        }
      },

      /**
		 * on delete new purchase
		 */
      onDeleteNewPurchase: function() {
        this.getView().setBusy(true);
        var oThat = this;
        var purchase;

        //get purchases
        this.getFireBaseIdToken()
          .then(function(token) {
            return token;
          })
          .then(function(token) {
            //TODO: refactor contructor as object
            purchase = new Purchase({ fbIdToken: token });
            return purchase.deletePurchase(
              oThat.getView().getModel("PurchaseTemp").newEink_id,
              {sGroupId: this.getSelectedGroupId()}
            );
          })
          .then(function(oData) {
            oThat.getView().byId("successMs").setVisible(false);
            oThat.getView().setBusy(false);
            MessageToast.show("Der Einkauf wurde wieder gelöscht.");
          })
          .catch(function(oError) {
            //error handling
            oThat.getView().byId("successMs").setVisible(false);
            MessageToast.show("Fehler. Probiere es später aus.");
            oThat.getView().setBusy(false);
          });
      },

      /**
		 * set device model to view
		 */
      setDeviceModel: function() {
        this.getView().setModel(new JSONModel(sap.ui.Device), "device");
      },

      /**
		 * setup models and set to view
		 */
      setupModels: function() {
        this.setDeviceModel();
        this.setPayerToView();
        this.getView().setModel({ newEink_id: 0 }, "PurchaseTemp"); //temp added purchase obj
      },

      /**
       * set current date to form
       */
      setCurrentDateToForm: function() {
        this.byId("purchaseDate").setDateValue(new Date());
      },

      /**
       * create new purchase object
       */
      createNewPurchaseObject: function(sFbToken) {
        return {
          purchaseId: 0,
          purchaseDate: new Date(
            this
              .getView()
              .byId("purchaseDate")
              .mProperties.dateValue.setDate(
                this
                  .getView()
                  .byId("purchaseDate")
                  .mProperties.dateValue.getDate() + 1
              )
          ).toISOString(),
          purchaseValue: parseFloat(
            this.getView().byId("purchaseValInput").getValue()
          ),
          shopId: parseInt(
            this.getView().byId("geschaefteCb").getSelectedKey()
          ),
          payerId: parseInt(this.getView().byId("zahlerCb").getSelectedKey()),
          fbIdToken: sFbToken,
          grId: this.getSelectedGroupId()
        };
      }
    });
  }
);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
1.3.0
----
- Configuration options: `raw`, `json`. Replaces raw option, becomes config:

  ```javascript
  $.cookie.raw = true; // bypass encoding/decoding the cookie value
  $.cookie.json = true; // automatically JSON stringify/parse value
  ```

  Thus the default options now cleanly contain cookie attributes only.

- Removing licensing under GPL Version 2, the plugin is now released under MIT License only
(keeping it simple and following the jQuery library itself here).

- Bugfix: Properly handle RFC 2068 quoted cookie values.

- Added component.json for bower.

- Added jQuery plugin package manifest.

- `$.cookie()` returns all available cookies.

1.2.0
-----
- Adding `$.removeCookie('foo')` for deleting a cookie, using `$.cookie('foo', null)` is now deprecated.

1.1
---
- Adding default options.


Gecis' staff show a strong and self-willed ability to fit to specific needs : after precise assessment of customer's requirements, they will offer the most appropriate technical solution.
With a 30-year background in medicals and pharmaceuticals, Gecis settled its activities of development, technical production, trade and servicing, in the beautiful county of Sologne.
In 2009, brand new offices, labs and warehouses were built, in accordance with up-to-date standards, in Neung sur Beuvron, a small town located at a 2-hour drive south of Paris (with the A10 or A71 motorways).
From 2010 on, Gecis markets an innovative technology to count hard gelatin of soft capsules, and tablets, under the brand name EASYCOUNT.


Management, like everything else, has its fair share of unspoken dictats and advisories and there was a phase (which still lingers) when there were so many open doors leading into the CEO's / MD's office that there was a very healthy cross-ventilation!
A good leader is that most elusive of creatures - very difficult to pin down and fit within a paradigm or set parameters. The definition changes with social contexts, times and the demands of the economy. However, there are some things, which like diamonds, are forever.
Change is the only constant, as we are told often enough, but intelligent change is difficult to achieve. Given that like the Red Queen in Caroll's Alice in Wonderland, all of us have to run to stay in the same place today, effecting change requires more than just energy.


Today is Wednesday October 14th and ALB Tech will be open at BOTH locations from from 11am to 7pm. That's right, eight hours of computer and iPhone fixing action in both Richmond and Mechanicsville. We're always having fun here at ALB tech and we want you to do the same. That's why today we are offering an awesome 19% discount off your repair service total if you participate. You MUST, participate, however, to save. Participation today is doing the Carlton Dance. What is the Carlton Dance? Basically it's a funky arm swing/leg shimmy dance pioneered by Alfonso Ribeiro during his role as Carlton Banks on the popular early 1990s television show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. If you watched the show, you know what dance we are referring to. It was hilarious and he was great at it. It was henceforth known as the Carlton Dance. It rules. Do it today and you can too! If you are still oblivious as to what the Carlton Dance is, check out the video at the bottom of the post. Watch the video, come into either ALB Tech location TODAY, do the Carlton Dance, get fixed, and save money. Thanks for taking the time to read this post – we look forward to fixing your PCs, Macs, iPhones, and more. More importantly, we look forward to seeing your Carlton Dance! See you soon Richmond and Mechanicsville!
Today is Wednesday October 14th and ALB Tech will be open at BOTH locations from from 11am to 7pm. Yes – 7pm, it's a Wednesday!


Energy efficiency has been designated a national infrastructure priority by the Scottish Government and through the new Energy Efficient Scotland Programme there will be a concerted effort to encourage people to improve the efficiency of their properties.
Ian Cuthbert, Sustainable Energy Supply Chain Programme Manager from the Energy Saving Trust said that it was estimated that up to £12 billion could be invested over the programme's lifetime which is likely to result in an increase in demand and opportunities for contractors in Scotland providing energy efficiency and renewable products and services.
What is Energy Efficient Scotland?
growing the Scottish economy in an inclusive way.
The Scottish Government's vision is for all our homes and buildings to be warmer, greener and more efficient by 2040. They published a Routemap outlining how this will be achieved in May 2018. The Routemap includes the setting of minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings based on Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). Whilst these standards for social housing have been in place for some time (EPC band D and in some circumstances band C), new standards will be phased in from 2020 covering all buildings; starting with the privately rented sector.
This is an exciting time for energy efficiency and the Energy Saving Trust's Sustainable Energy Supply Chain team will be working closely with the Scottish Government to get contractors' views on the Energy Efficient Scotland programme. To assist with this, we're organising free consultation workshops in Inverness and Stirling on the following dates.
To book a place just click on the link for each.


text:
Rediff.com » News » PHOTOS: Restoration of Jesus' tomb costs $3.3 million
PHOTOS: Restoration of Jesus' tomb costs $3.3 million
March 22, 2017 13:01 IST
The restoration work, held up for more than 200 years, took nine months to be completed.
IMAGE: Visitors stand near the newly restored Edicule, the ancient structure housing the tomb, which according to Christian belief is where Jesus' body was anointed and buried, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City. All Photographs: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
After nine months of hard work, a team of scientists and restorers has completed the restoration of the tomb where Jesus is believed to have been buried.
The shrine in Jerusalem's Old City was re-opened to the public on Wednesday.
The group has worked for the past nine months at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and focused on the small structure above the burial place, known as the Edicule.
Many Christians believe Jesus' body was buried at what became the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
"The structure needed reinforcement and conservation, including work on drainage network for rainwater and sewage," Antonia Moropoulou, a professor at the National Technical University of Athens who directed the work at the site, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
IMAGE: During the renovation, researchers came across the actual limestone shelf where, according to doctrine, Christ's body was brought after his crucifixion.
The Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Roman Catholic denominations share custody of the church, where tensions often run high over control of its various sectors.
During the renovation, researchers came across the actual limestone shelf where, according to doctrine, Christ's body was brought after his crucifixion, Architectural Digest reported.
Christian tradition indicates that followers visited the site three days later only to find the tomb empty, confirming Jesus' resurrection.
IMAGE: Christian tradition indicates that followers visited the site three days later after crucifixion and found the tomb empty, confirming Jesus' resurrection.
Disputes between the denominations have held up restoration work for more than 200 years.
Unlike other parts of the church, which were renovated between the 1960s and 1990s, the Edicule had been neglected, reported The Guardian.
The work began last year after the church was deemed unsafe by Israeli authorities.
Media reports said each denomination had contributed toward the project and Jordan's King Abdullah also made a personal donation, with the work costing around $3.3 million (Rs 21 crore).
The reopening ceremony was led by religious leaders and donors.
IMAGE: The cave thought to be the tomb of Jesus was opened for the first time in centuries.
The Guardian quoted Moropoulou as saying that in October last year, the cave thought to be the tomb of Jesus was opened for the first time in centuries.
When marble slabs were removed to allow for the chamber's reinforcement, a top slab dating from the era of the Crusades was found, indicating that the tomb had not been opened for 700 years, Moropoulou said.
Underneath they found another from the era of Constantine the Great, the emperor who began the Roman Empire's transition to Christianity.
Related News: Jesus, IMAGE, Antonia Moropoulou, National Technical University of Athens, Christ
10 photos that capture Karnataka's beauty
196 countries in 567 days with $198,000. Beat that!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


On grit, the art of storytelling, and bridging the gap between good taste and great work.
This American Life host and producer Ira Glass is among our era's most beloved storytellers. In this wonderful short motion graphics piece, filmmaker David Shiyang Liu has captured Glass's now-legendary interview on the art of storytelling in beautifully minimalist and elegant kinetic typography. The gist of Glass's message for beginners — that grit is what separates mere good taste from great work, and that the only way to bridge the gap between ability and ambition is to actually do the work — is one that rings true for just about every creative discipline, and something I can certainly speak to in my own experience.
Look for more of Glass's singular lens on storytelling in The New Kings of Nonfiction, his fantastically curated anthology of essays by some of today's finest nonfiction storytellers, the introduction to which alone is an absolute literary masterpiece.


text:
package app.kanela;

import lombok.val;

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

public class MetricsReporter {

    private static List<String> units = Arrays.asList("ns.", "μs.", "ms.", "sec.");

    static void report(final String taskName, final List<Double> samples) {
        val average = average(samples);
        val per95 = percentile(samples, 95);
        val per90 = percentile(samples, 90);
        val per80 = percentile(samples, 80);
        System.out.println(String.format("Method %s. # Samples: %d. Avg: %s P95: %s P90: %s P80: %s",
                taskName, samples.size(), readableTiming(average), readableTiming(per95), readableTiming(per90), readableTiming(per80)));
    }

    private static String readableTiming(double nanoseconds) {
        double timing = nanoseconds;
        int i = 1;
        while (timing > 1000 && i < units.size()) {
            timing = timing / 1000;
            i++;
        }
        return String.format("%10.2f %s", timing, units.get(i - 1));
    }

    private static double average(final List<Double> values) {
        double sum = values.stream().mapToDouble(Double::doubleValue).sum();
        return sum / values.size();
    }

    /**
     * pick from 'http://alvinalexander.com/java/jwarehouse/commons-math/src/main/java/org/apache/commons/math/stat/descriptive/rank/Percentile.java.shtml'
     * @param values: samples
     * @param p: quantile
     * @return: percentile value
     */
    private static double percentile(final List<Double> values, final double p) {
        final int length = values.size();
        final int begin = 0;
        if ((p > 100) || (p <= 0)) {
            throw new RuntimeException("out of bounds quantile value: " + p + ", must be in (0, 100]");
        }
        if (length == 0) {
            return Double.NaN;
        }
        if (length == 1) {
            return values.get(begin); // always return single value for n = 1
        }
        double pos = p * (length + 1) / 100;
        double fpos = Math.floor(pos);
        int intPos = (int) fpos;
        double dif = pos - fpos;
        double[] sorted = values.stream().sorted().mapToDouble(Double::doubleValue).toArray();
        if (pos < 1) {
            return sorted[0];
        }
        if (pos >= length) {
            return sorted[length - 1];
        }
        double lower = sorted[intPos - 1];
        double upper = sorted[intPos];
        return lower + dif * (upper - lower);
    }
}


text:
Serle Court is a leading set offering significant art and cultural property expertise. At both silk and junior level, Serle Court has recognised leaders in this niche area of practice. This enables chambers to offer specialist legal expertise in matters relating to the ownership, sale, attribution, valuation, movement and restitution of art in England and internationally. Whether the issue relates to high net worth clients and trusts or wills and charities or bailments and negligence or intellectual property and copyright, Serle Court has the breadth of experience to assist.
Members of Serle Court are recommended in Chambers' High Net Worth and Chambers' London Bar in the field of 'Art and Cultural Property' having been involved in cases such as Thwaytes v. Sotheby's, the leading recent authority on auctioneers' negligence which concerned a painting of 'The Cardsharps' attributed to Caravaggio and Creative Foundation v. Dreamland, which concerned the removal of a Banksy work. Members have also dealt with litigation involving works by artists as diverse as Titian, Modigliani, Warhol, Henry Moore, Winston Churchill and Rolf Harris and been involved in claims about wine collections, original music manuscripts and graffiti art.
Chambers UK 2019
Andrew Bruce: "Very well regarded, incredibly thorough and someone whose written work is excellent. He is very analytical and clever, and takes a direct approach to advocacy."
Dickson v Christie's:
The facts of the case are widely reported - e.g. Mail Online and BBC.
The Claimants settled a professional negligence claim immediately before trial in which they alleged that an international auction house had failed to undertake appropriate research and/or advise them to have their painting of 'Salome' cleaned and restored, when such research and/or cleaning would have revealed that the painting had been in the collection of King Charles II and and was likely to have been by the hand of Titian. The painting was subsequently sold by the auction house for £8,000. When the painting re-appeared on the market, having been restored, it was valued at US$ 4-6 million. A case of significant interest that would, had it not settled, have provided guidance as to the duty of care of international auction houses when they agree to "Research & Advise" on art-works.
Temple Island Collections Ltd v New English Teas Ltd:
A copyright infringement case regarding pictures of a Routemaster bus in front of the Houses of Parliament that raised questions about the scope of copyright protection of a digitally manipulated photograph.
Thwaytes v Sotheby's:
Represented Mr Thwaytes in his claim for damages again Sotheby's. The claim arose out or research undetaken and advice given by Sotheby's in respect of a painting of "The Cardsharpes" owned by Mr Thwaytes. The painting was subsequently sold through Sotheby's for £42,000 and the following year the purchaser, Sir Denis Mahon, announced that the painting was by Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio (Caravaggio) and worth millions of pounds. The painting was then exhibited in Trapani and Forli, Italy and is now on display at the Museum of the Order of St John in Clerkenwell.
Andrew Bruce
Stephanie Wickenden
International Trusts and Commercial Litigation Conference 2018
"…thank you Serle Court for another interesting conference - informative and enjoyable - a great combination!" On... Read More
New Tenant: Stephanie Wickenden
Serle Court is delighted to announce a new tentant Stephanie Wickenden. For more information please contact Senior Clerk... Read More


Just 15 days until CashBack to the Future kicks off! We're putting the spotlight on another of our creative team who will be delivering these workshops to young people aged 12-19 for four weeks this summer.
Rachel Rostock is an actor, musician, performer with significant experience of acting, directing and scriptwork, and a number of stage and screen roles under her belt. A member of our artist team in Ayrshire last year, we're delighted to have Rachel back delivering performance workshops once again. We spoke tot Rachel about what young people can expect from the free performance workshops she'll be running.
We still have spaces for young people to sign up to CashBack. The workshops are free and will be taking place in Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Renfrewshire this summer. Find out more and sign up/refer online here.
How was your experience working on CashBack to the Future in Ayrshire last year?
Great! We had a lot of fun exploring different genres of performance, including outdoor theatre and acting for screen. It was great having the chance to take workshops outside, spending our day on the beach, while discussing ideas for a musical and filming a music video.
What will be your role this year?
I'll be Performance tutor once again. Young people will have the opportunity to sample different genres of performance - such as theatre acting, comedy, creative movement and acting for film. They will be encouraged to make suggestions, and if there is anything in particular they want to try out then we will make it happen!
The young people from last year became a close group, and stayed in touch outwith the project. So it's an opportunity to learn new skills and have fun - but also to meet new friends.
Ayrshire's CashBack workshops will run in Irvine and Kilmarnock from July 3rd until July 27th 2018. Be part of it.


text:
Brooklyn Life, Sports
Born Into This: A Son's Legacy in Boxing
January 8, 2014October 16, 2019By Sean Ryon
Sherif Younan Sr. is worried. In less than two hours, he'll witness his son Junior "Sugar Boy" Younan knock a man unconscious, but he doesn't yet know that. For now, he stands with his arms pretzeled across his chest, hovering over Junior as he casually flexes in front of a camera while waiting for his urine test to begin. It's the night of Junior's second professional boxing match, and his father shoulders all of their anxiety.
"It's a very dangerous sport," he says. "Sometimes you feel helpless."
It's strange Sherif Sr. should be so tense this evening: he is, after all, the man who molded his son into a prize fighter. For 12 years, he has taught his son how to conquer other men, at no cost himself. The son has more than fulfilled his father's aspirations. Junior is 18 years old, well over six feet tall, and lean. His arms are tattooed and his short mohawk is dyed red. He punches very fast and very hard.
He fought 95 times as an amateur, winning 90. When he announced in October that he was turning professional, it was met with the sort of fanfare accorded to only those young men who are deemed commodities in the fight game. He had a promoter – Lou DiBella – and two managers – Josh Dubin, his lawyer, and James Prince, founder of the iconic Houston record label Rap-A-Lot Records. And, as always, as his trainer, his father.
Sherif Sr. is 46 and he too had been a boxer, though of modest achievement. He grew up in Cairo where he worked as a flight attendant for Egypt Air and trained as a body builder. He did not start boxing until he arrived in New York when he was 28 – ancient for a beginning boxer. He fought as an amateur but stopped when his son was born in 1995. What remains of his brief career collects dust on old VHS tapes.
He never stopped training, and would take his infant son to Gleason's Gym. When Junior was 14 months old, his father says, he climbed out of his stroller, clambered into the ring and pulled on headgear and tried to pull a boxing glove onto his hand.
"It was fun then and games, because he was little and it was cute," the father says. "But we knew he was hooked."
Junior won his first amateur fight at the age of six. Two years later, he had racked up his first Junior Olympics victory. Everything he knew came from his father. In 2006, the boxing world was beginning to take notice of the fighter Sherif Sr. was creating. The New York Times hailed him as "a boxing prodigy."
"I'm like Roy Jones Jr. and Floyd Mayweather Jr. combined," Junior boasted.
But there was something else that struck the writer, Geoffrey Gray: the way the father was treating his son. Sherif Sr. showed an aggressiveness with his son that, Gray wrote, worried his fellow trainers, as well as the gym's owner.
"They always end up the same way: the father screaming for the son to exercise harder and the son crying," Gray wrote. In the ring he hit his son, hard. He yelled and cursed, forever ordering him to run another mile. "I'm a drill sergeant," he told Gray. "Sometimes I go off, you know. But these rigorous methods are why we are at where we are right now."
The son did not protest.
"I always knew how it felt," Junior now says. "I don't remember the first time clearly, but I know it was normal."
Sherif Sr. and Junior weren't alone in this dynamic. There's a long history of father and son tandems in professional boxing. Guty Espadas, Jr. trained under his father Guty, Sr.; Leon Spinks taught all three of his sons to fight. But boxing's patrilineal streak is mired in cautionary tales of fractured families. It's ironic Junior counts Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Roy Jones Jr. among his heroes; their relationships with their fathers have become the benchmark of boxing's father-son struggles. Mayweather fired Floyd, Sr. as his trainer and hired his uncle Roger in 1999. Jones endured years of physical and emotional abuse under his father's regiment. He, too, fired his father as his trainer: the first time was in 1992, the second in 2005.
Years later Sherif Sr. seems pained when asked about his depiction in the Times. His voice becomes soft. The tough approach, he says, was necessary to protect his son. He knew what could happen if Junior wasn't properly prepared to step into the brutality of the ring. He wonders whether he trained his son too hard, too early.
"Sometimes I was hard on him when he was younger, " he says. "Sometimes I pushed him a little too much."
But he also believes he has done work well. Junior has grown into a fearsome boxer, and a cocky one, too. His debut fight came in November against Kenneth Schmitz, a fighter with two wins and 11 loses – an ideal first opponent for a young fighter with investors on his side. Within 35 seconds of the first round bell, Schmitz was on the canvas. A minute later he was out for the count.
Junior saved a picture of the vanquished Schmitz on his cell phone. He laughs.
"I have pictures of his face," he says. "I have pictures of his face on my iPhone. Man…"
It is two hours before his second fight, this one at the BB King Blues Club and Grill in Times Square. Junior excuses himself for his urine test. His father has been watching him shadowbox, just as he watches everything he does. The father and son do lots of other things together; they fish and play PlayStation. But there is always the gym, and now, another fight to prepare for.
"We're a boxing family," the father says. His eyes follow his son out of the dressed room. He asks his son if he needs help.
"You gonna hold it for me?" Junior jokes back. "The doctor said you shouldn't lift anything heavy."
Sherif Sr.'s stern countenance momentarily breaks into a smile.
"Kid's a pain in my ass," he mutters.
It's 8 PM, and time for Junior to fight. He swaggers to the ring as Maybach Music Group's "Ain't Bout That Life" blares over the speakers. His sequined shorts glare in the bright lights; his shoelace tassels bounce as he bobs and weaves. He gazes into a void, oblivious to the cheers building from the sold-out crowd around him. The only thing that pulls him back into the moment is his father grabbing him by the neck and kissing him on the cheek.
His eyes are menacingly vacant. His father, too, has a distant look. Gone is the visible look of worry that crossed his face earlier. His eyes are drawn close in a dark, cutting glare. It's as much his fight as it is his son's.
Junior's opponent Travis "Barracuda" McClaren stands in the opposite corner. He's shorter, but his hulking frame is intimidating.
The bell sounds. Junior races across the ring. His hands cut at McClaren's face, a blur of red leather. McClaren dodges a few punches, takes a few to the chin, and then counters with a few his own.
A left jab grazes Junior's face, but it barely registers. Junior presses in on McClaren, his punches almost impossible to follow. McClaren last jab leaves him unprotected. Junior sees his opening. A left hook crashes into the side of McClaren's head.
Twenty two seconds have passed. McClaren tumbles back and falls drunkenly to the canvas. Junior vaunts around the ring, arms outstretched and mouth triumphantly agape. "Who wants next?" his face seems to scream. He runs over to his father and hugs him. Sherif Sr.'s face is spread open with a smile.
Sherif Sr. sits back, beaming. The victory, he says, is especially satisfying: McClaren had dared to trash-talk his son before the fight, letting him know he was going to learn how a man punched.
The father laughs. It's the same laugh I heard earlier that night when I asked who would win in a fight, him or his son.
"Oh yeah, he'll kick my ass – don't tell him that," he said. "No, I think the student will be the teacher."
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Love this story! And great picture.
January 11, 2014	Indrani


On Friday, a court in Shanghai seized the container feeder Van Manila on suspicion of involvement in a disastrous hit-and-run collision.
Chinese maritime authorities believe that the 1,700 TEU Van Manila collided with the cargo vessel Xiang Zhou near the mouth of the Yellow River on April 5. The Xiang Zhou quickly sank, and responders – including ten commercial vessels and five patrol boats – were only able to rescue two crewmembers out of a complement of 14. The investigators assert that the Manila did not stay for the search effort: after the collision, her bridge team allegedly turned off their AIS transponder and fled the scene. Shanghai Daily reports that the Manila's master and crew have agreed to cooperate with the investigation.
Surviving crewmembers of the Zhou confirmed that the Van Manila was the second vessel involved in the collision. The families of the missing petitioned the court to detain the Manila to preserve its value for any potential damage claims, and the court seized the boxship when she arrived at Wudong Port in Shanghai.
The Van Manila was the Hanjin Manila until 2015, when her operations were taken over by a firm based in Hong Kong. Her port state control record shows no significant inspection deficiencies. As of Friday, her AIS signal showed her anchored in the Yangtze River just north of Shanghai.


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text:
embrodski
Musings On Present Day No Responses »
Spoilers for The Village.
The Village is a Shyamalan movie about a group of people that leave modern society to raise their children in an American Colonial time-period replica, so that their children will never be exposed to violence and alienation of modern life.
In a recent Discord conversation, it was speculated that maybe the only way to really get rid of racism would be if everyone agreed to suppress all their racial emotions, act as if they don't exist, and raise the next generation in a world that pretends there is no racism. The children won't internalize racist impulses, and hopefully won't even realize that racism was ever a thing until they're old enough to find out about it in history books and be shocked that people used to be so shallow.
Someone pointed out that this was basically what was being done in the 90s, and it fell apart.
It then occurred to me that this was also done for gender in the 90s, and with far more success. It legit worked on some people. Notably: myself.
In the 90s, basically every piece of children's media had at least one girl in it, and the girl was always as capable as the boy(s). Gadget in Rescue Rangers was the nerdy engineer and got the crew out of tons of jams. The Pink and Yellow Power Rangers kicked an equal amount of ass as Blue, Black, and Red.
This "sex doesn't matter" permeated everything. Lara Croft was disproportionate to entice male players, sure. But she was still a better athlete and killer than every man in her video games. Every female character in fighting games had just as much ability to win as the male characters. RPGs that let you choose what sex your character was gave the same starting stats regardless.
When I was a teenage, my heroes were Xena and Sarah Connor. I loved Buffy too. I admired Chyna, though I didn't watch wrestling.
The un-dimorphism of the era extended to male action stars. Some of the most popular of the decade were fairly lithe. Neo certainly isn't one of the muscle-bound lunks we got in the 80s. (Have you seen what happened to Hugh Jackman between the first X-Men movie and the latest Wolverine? yikes)
Yeah, we had the lunks too, if less frequently. But they were more like jokes. Schwarzenegger wasn't a real person, he was a cartoon in human flesh.
And honestly, I'm not sure why I'm harping on action movies. Action movies were but one symptom, and they don't even matter that much because most people have zero action sequences in their lifetimes. This "there's no difference between men and women" extended into all domains. People were primarily presented as unique individuals that may have incidental differences in personality, but whose gender only mattered for mating/matching purposes. It didn't define anything else about the characters.
Ally McBeal was so egalitarian that they didn't even have sex-segregated bathrooms. Daria, the most Gen-X teen show ever created, only ever used gender-types as the butts of jokes to show how stupid they are. The main characters we identified with were basically androgynous. As it should be!
Of course the true encapsulation of 90s media, the one thing that sums up the decade and its ideals, is Friends. America has always used sitcoms as the mirror it sees itself in. And what did we see in Friends? A group of attractive young people that hooked up with each other a lot, but treated each other as equals, with basically no differences in temperament or treatment due to sex. They even all have roughly the same morphology, having similar heights and builds. Joey and Pheobe don't quite fit, but they are caricatures —the throwbacks from the 80s that we laugh at in recognition of our own past follies.
Being raised in a striving middle-class suburb, I didn't just get this message from media alone. I got this message from everyone around me. My parents, my teachers, everyone. There's basically no difference between boys and girls, we're all people.
The thing is, it worked. I didn't care what sex/gender people were. It struck me as an insanely weird thing to care about, and I chalked it up to the same lunacy that made people hate other religions or skin colors. Our ancestors be fucking nuts, yo.
One of my favorite essays was P.Z. Myer's post about how any differences between the sexes must be contained entirely on the Y chromosome (since only that one is different), and how ridiculous it is to think that things like "preference in colors" or "favorite genres of fiction" would be encoded within it. There's seriously almost nothing different between us, and any difference that there is has to have put selective pressure on the Y-chromosome. C'mon guys, are we really this dumb? Selective pressure being put JUST on the Y chromosome?? Stop being a dogmatic, sexist fool.
It worked so well that I was legitimately shocked when I discovered the large differences in physical strength between the sexes, even among people of similar sizes, in my late 20s. (Yes, it took that long). It was a vast chasm in my model of reality that I plunged into, smashing into every protruding jagged edge and rock outcropping along the way.
So sure, maybe this view isn't as accurate as it should be. But I still believe deeply that that was a better world for everyone. We managed, for the space of a few years between the mid 90s and early 00s, to create a world without gender. We still had sex – everyone could see sex, and it determined who you were sexually attracted to. But gender didn't matter. There weren't (much) gender roles or expectations or stereotypes. Everyone was an individual. And since gender didn't exist, your pronouns didn't matter. People defaulted to what it looked like your sex was.
Then 4th wave feminism happened. I could go on at length as to why 3rd wave feminism is the one true way and 4th wave feminism is vile trash that has destroyed incalculable amounts of value. But I won't. I will, instead, bemoan the fact that it brought back gender, and made it THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. We had fixed the world in one small way. At least in some corners of it. Until, like someone finding a hidden store of small pox, 4th wave feminism couldn't wait but re-infect the world with glee. We were almost there guys. And now? Now your gender defines you. It defines how you act, how you are treated by both strangers and friends, and the broader social system, and it decides what side of the culture wars you are on.
We were almost there.
No wonder the newest generation wants to opt out entirely, and go un-gendered. I would too, if I hadn't lived through proof that the same results can be achieved in a better way. In the 90s, you could just be who you are and it was fine. Now you are either a strongly-identified gender, or you have to contort your appearance and lifestyle into aggressively signaling "I am no gender!" While also imposing costs on anyone around you. That's fucked up man.
I guess that's part of why I resented Them, and why I felt They were on the side of the 4th wave feminists shoring up the vital importance of gender. Opting out of gender isn't something you bother to do if gender doesn't matter. It's only if one has bought into the "Gender totally matters for everything!!" hype that one would be so concerned they're not seen as either one.
I get now that it wasn't that they were intentionally reinforcing the narrative. They just didn't have other options, given how badly gender equality has been mangled over the past decade.
I'm hopeful that 4th wave will eat itself sometime in the 20s. wokeness already appears to be imploding. Hopefully the next generation will get to grow up in a less polluted social atmosphere, once we get back to pre-2010 levels of dignity and human respect. The dream of the 90s is still alive, and not just in Portland.
Book Club Review No Responses »
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O, by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
Synopsis: A poorly-run government agency with a time machine attempts to alter history, and hijinks ensue.
Book Review: This will be a short review, because there isn't terribly much to say. This is a well written, fun romp through time. It's almost like a very intellectual Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. We have a team of scrappy underdogs that are very easy to relate to and to fall in love with. I absolutely ADORE the "witch" from 19th century Prussia, every single scene with her is the best thing ever. <3 The government is both powerful and incompetent in the ways you come to expect as you get older. The villains are so deliciously easy to hate. The scenes set in the past feel incredibly realistic (which one would expect with both Stephenson and Galland at the helm). There is an extended scene with a raiding party of naked Vikings pillaging a Wal-Mart which is hilarious and makes perfect internal sense.
The book is also written with the fun gimmick of being a collection of archival evidence that is being presented to the reader, so every single bit of it is either an excerpt from a journal, or a letter that was intercepted, or an email that was leaked, or a PowerPoint presentation, or something. It's a cool constraint, and it's fun to see how the authors pull off telling a great story in an entirely epistolary format.
That being said, there isn't much of substance here. It's a fun trip, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, but it doesn't really have much to say about humanity or the world or whatever. I like my fiction (even the comedic romps) to have a deeper motive as well. So not something to rush out for, but good if you're in the mood for something well written and fun. Mildly Recommended.
Book Club Review: Overall people enjoyed the book, although nearly everyone else thought that it really dragged in the middle. I don't see it, but if everyone else thought so, it's something to consider. We had a fun time talking about the characters we loved and the scenes we enjoyed. But there wasn't any deeper discussion either. Fun for a get-together, but again, not quite what I look for in a book club meeting. Also, it's a typical Stephenson-length novel, so about twice the length of most novels, which is a lot to ask for a book club, and can bring down attendance. Mildly Not Recommended.
Uncategorized No Responses »
I saw the first episode of The Witcher on Festivus, and boy did that unintentionally fit the holiday theme. tldr is that the writers are just phoning this in, and hoping the strength of the fight choreography will keep people watching.
Full Spoilers below.
The problems start right out the gate, where we see a stranger fighting a monster. Why do I care about this monster, and whether it wins or not? Or is it the stranger I'm supposed to care about, because he's human? There are no stakes in this fight, I don't care about either participant, so I'm already bored. Also, since I know that's Geralt, I also know I'm *supposed* to care if he wins (lazy writing!), and that he will win because they aren't killing off the lead in the first 4 minutes of a series.
Geralt struggles to reach his sword when it's been knocked from his grasp, but fails to do so, and must go back to grappling. I guess this is suspense? He then reaches for it, and fails to get it, AGAIN. Oh my god. I was on pins and needles, seeing a close up of a hand failing to close around a sword for several grasps. How many times will this incredibly suspenseful gambit be reused? *At least once more*, because we have run time to pad!
Most of the rest of this episode is mumbled exposition in boring locations while two characters look at each other. This also fails to draw me in. I don't know what kingdom you rule, or why I am in support of it. I don't know who the Nilfgardians are, why they are coming, or what bad things will happen if they are not thrown back. Sure, the nobility will likely have some bad times, maybe execution, but they're nobility–they probably deserve it. Sic Semper Tyrannis! Like, I really just can't feel any anticipation at the revelation that the enemy army is already within your borders if I don't give a damn about you or your borders yet.
Same for your weird dissection of people born during an eclipse. That could've been spiced up with ominous music and flashbacks, or something. Just having two dudes mumbling at each other stoically about mutations had me actually zoning out.
Lets talk about the big skirmish between the two… armies? First of all, I don't know where the hell it happens. Is this nearby? Just outside the city? Several days' march away? Does this field even exist in the world? Because I swear before all the gods that if felt like a Green Screen Room that everyone was teleported to, and then later teleported back from. It's implied the battle goes on for at least a couple days, but I have no sense of time passing as well as no sense of location. And the CGI is the worst I have seen this decade. When we got distance shots of cavalry moving, or infantry rushing each other, it almost looked like I was playing Myth again. Well, ok, maybe not that extreme, but it was really bad. The CGI in the Witcher 3 video game was strikingly better, which is just not something I expect from a Netflix show.
There were two really good things about this show, however. The first was Renfri, the maybe-demon lady. She has an actual personality, with motivation and everything! Her dialog is fun, she gets our sympathy very quickly, and she's a freakin' bad-ass. The actress portraying her does a fantastic job. I was willing to keep watching this series on the strength of what would be done with this character and her arc alone — and then they killed her at the end of the episode. Y'all removed the only good thing about your show in the pilot, dammit. Screw this whole thing.
The other really good part was the two fight scenes we get at the end. They were beautiful. A high-budget call back to the ridiculously over-the-top Xena-style fighting from my childhood. It was pure bombast and awesome eye candy. I had so much fun watching them.
(I did hear a friend say that someone told him this was "very realistic fighting," which made me choke on my Comed-Tea. This is the opposite of realistic fighting. I don't care, because it was wonderful and super fun. But the only universe were someone could think this was realistic is if their only exposure to fight scenes is Marvel movies.)
Unfortunately, this is 2-3 minutes of screen time at the end of a 56 minute slog. It is not worth the loss of 1/16th of my waking hours for the day. I will be watching the fight scenes on YouTube, and that's it. I'm disappointed that a series with such potential was tanked by people who don't care to do any writing work.
Posted by embrodski at 11:57 am
Book Club Review 1 Response »
Aftershocks, by Marko Kloos
Synopsis: Years after an interplanetary war has ended, insurgents from the losing side are starting to show up.
Book Review: I've written before about my dislike of the Series Trend. ie: everything is a series now, rather than a single book, because that's the only way most writers can make a living. But Aftershocks is really taking this problem to a new level.
Aftershocks is a prologue to the real story. That's it. It is the equivalent of taking the opening crawl from Star Wars and inflating it to a novel rather than a few paragraphs that set up the movie. You can see the beginnings of a story coming, and it looks like it'll be a good one. The world building is good, the writing is intelligent, the characters are interesting. But the main action of the story literally doesn't even start, it's all just set-up.
One might say that this is fine, because Marko Kloos is a proven author with a solid track record. His prior series is well received, and even people who don't like Military SF say that his series is a stand-out exception. I can believe it, because like I said, the writing really is good. One could very well just trust the author and settle in for a ride. Isn't this what I do anyway when I read web serials?
The prose is particularly good at quickly and efficiently building visuals. Where other authors take pages describing something, and you still aren't quite sure what's happening, Kloos manages to play a fully realized scene in your mind on every page. Everyone is accounted for and the environment feels rich, and he does this all with just a few lines. It's an extraordinary power!
The characters, likewise, are relatable, and each one feels like a different person with a unique personality. I, personally, also really appreciated the recognition of human sexuality. Much like real-life people, these characters have libidos. They recognize when someone is attractive, and the effect it has on themselves. I've been seeing this less and less in SF/F, as novels either become directly about sex/sexual relationships, or completely ignore it. It was neat to actually see a character feel sexual attraction to a stranger, but just not act on it, like almost everyone IRL does almost every day.
Still, I can't get past the fact that nothing happens. When I reached the halfway point of the book and realized that I hadn't even get to the part where the author makes a promise to the reader, and probably wouldn't until the last chapter because Everything Is A Series, I felt disappointment lapping at my knees. Not Recommended.
Book Club Review: It really is good prose. It reads fast, and the novel is short, which helps with turnout. There's even a few things of interest to talk about, regarding the (rather intentional) parallels between Aftershocks's world and post-WWI Germany. If anyone in your book club has experience with military bureaucracy and/or military culture, they'll bring a fair bit to the discussion. So you can get talking for a while. But the most common refrain was "It felt sorta… empty." I guess I'd wait until at least three books are out and then read them all in one go, so there's something to sink one's teeth into, story-wise. Until then, Not Recommended.
Also… I had a ridiculously hard time getting hold of an ebook version of this. I wasn't allowed to simply give Amazon (or any other online retailer) my money in exchange for the book! I had to put in a lot of work to get it, and if I wasn't reading it for my book club I would have given up early in the struggle. WTF, Capitalism? What is going on here?
Personal 2 Responses »
I had a saddening encounter this weekend. On a panel about civil verbal disagreement, an audience member asked what to do when people use terms that are viewed by one side in a debate as slurs (such as "climate-denier") and was told that in such a case, rather than getting upset one should stay quiet and introspect on their situation and see if they can understand why the other party would say such things. So I turned to my fellow panelist and told her that sounded very self-serving. Yes, we all dislike climate-deniers and don't find anything wrong will calling someone literally what they are. But by way of comparison, if someone called me a "fag," should I also introspect on my situation and see if I can understand why someone would say such a thing, rather than getting upset? She said of course not, and there was some concession that maybe this wasn't the most fair-handed advice, but the topic was quickly moved past because panels are fast-paced and many people had questions/comments to get to.
(I know that "climate denier" is obviously drastically different. No one's ever been kicked out of their house or beaten to death for being a climate denier. But after a failed attempt using a more analogous example, I found this was the only one that could get my co-panelist to consider how someone from the outside would view her call to ponder "why am I so bad?" rather than anything remotely realistic.)
Importantly, afterwards the panelist told me privately that she didn't mean to be unfair or anything. It's just that the person who asked the question was a White Man, he obviously needed to reflect on himself. And implicit both in her words and the "you know…" look she was giving me was that white men can have no legitimate complaints about how they are treated, and that was the basis of her answer. They are a class that can only ever do violence, and no verbal abuse can be visited upon them that is not morally justified. The only thing she knew about the question-asker was that he was white and male and somewhere north of his 40s, and that was enough.
SF/F Review – The Freeze-Frame Revolution
Book Club Review 2 Responses »
The Freeze-Frame Revolution, by Peter Watts
Synopsis: A group of engineers living in a total-surveillance spaceship decide they must overthrow its near-omniscient sovereign AI, and have to figure out how to do so while also only being awake a few days every several thousand years.
Book Review: I continue to love everything Peter Watts writes. He is a super-stimulus to my taste in fiction.
The premise of the book is already interesting. A covert revolution with ridiculous constraints on action, against a tyrant that can decide to never wake you up every time you go to sleep if he finds out what you're planning. Watts then rockets us directly into Kafka territory, as the crew almost immediately loses all contact with the rest of humanity due to sleeping away eons between their shifts to create wormhole gates. Why do they continue to make gates for a humanity that may not exist anymore? Why are eldritch monstrosities erupting from these gates and trying to destroy their ship? Why does anything matter? It doesn't, just keep making gates, that's your sole purpose, so latch onto it.
After reading a number of works by an author, you come to see common themes between them. Watts's books are always incredibly lonely. The characters within them are singular and alone. The rest of humanity either doesn't exist, or may as well not exist anymore. Their peers are all distant, strange creatures, whom one can't form bonds with. Everything is cold, and quiet, and isolation is all-pervasive. (yes, I love this)
Also, Watts loves non-sapient intelligences. Things that behave as if conscious, but which are not. They are generally incredibly creepy. One of the major themes in Freeze-Frame is the protagonist slowly coming to accept that the AI she speaks with isn't a person. It's a series of flow-charts and equations meant to mimic human interaction. And this hurts, because due to the previously-discussed isolation, the AI was the only friend she had. Not only is she losing her friend, she's realizing she never had one to begin with.
The mark of a good book is, of course, the drawing together of mood and theme into a compelling plot that moves the reader through the story, and Freeze-Frame has that too. The changes that occur over deep time, and the insane level of engineering that was bent to the task of making a thing that would remain stable over so long (and the interesting ways it fails) tie into the covert revolution plot as well. There's just so much to love here for fans of dark SF.
The two main complaints I have is that the protagonist is the only developed character, everyone else is a bit one-dimensional. I'm not sure that's a valid complaint though, because the fact that no one else feels fully real is to be expected when you are so isolated and have no connections to anyone. The other complaint is that this is too short. Not just in a "Hey, I want more!" way (although there's that too!), but in a "This is basically a novella being sold as a novel," way. It only barely squeaks into the lower bound of a novel in length. However this does force Watts to keep his prose tight, there aren't nearly as many ponderous descriptions of objects and actions, and much more getting-to-the-point, which I appreciated. And to be honest, if it was a novella it wouldn't have been read by our book club, since we only do novels.
Regardless, definitely Recommended!
Book Club Review: A good book for book clubs as well. The fact that it is so short meant no one had trouble finishing it, and we had very high attendance. Not everyone is the Watts fanboy that I am, but most everyone found it interesting. There were quite a few things to talk about, and a bit of speculation about the nature of the reveal near the novel's end. For that matter, there was speculation about what happened to humanity, and how realistic certain aspects of the story were/weren't. This is a dense book, and like all of Watts's books, it expects a lot from the reader. There'll be just as much discussion about this as there are in most books triple its length. Recommended.
Link & Meme Archive 6/1/19 – 10/8/19
Uncategorized 1 Response »
After sharing this link, I was informed that Stallman has had a history of maybe defending sexual relationships with minors. I didn't know about this. That is bad. I am less certain now that he shouldn't have lost all his positions. On the other hand, as the link points out, the worst allegations against Stallman involve him being a socially clueless aspie. That makes me worried.
In Defense of Richard Stallman
"Stallman made some technically-correct-but-utterly-tactless comments on a private mailing list, mostly in defense of his late friend and colleague Marvin Minsky. Someone leaked those comments to the public. He was then forced to resign from pretty much every position he held….He is now likely homeless and his friends (such as Eric Raymond) have had trouble contacting him."
Libertarian leaders debate the direction of the Libertarian political party. This was one of the more interesting and passionate debates I've heard in a long time. And I'm still very torn. Passionate idealism, vs pragmatic realism? I don't know dammit!
The economic case for fighting pollution to boost productivity
"pseudoaddiction is the most obviously true medical concept this side of Hippocrates. The denial of its existence is a failure of national epistemics that deserves more scrutiny than it's getting."
AKA: My friend almost died because a doctor refused to feed his addiction to insulin.
Natalie Wynn is amazing, I love her videos in general. But this one is the most overwhelmingly "This is everything I ever wanted in a video, I can't even begin about how great it is." It summarizes everything I'd like to say but can't. It doesn't have any solutions, but at least it identifies the problem. <3
(for the uninitiated, Wynn is a social commentator, and this video is about the state of Men in modern society. Also, it takes a while to get started.)
"Here's yet another reminder that our memories are reconstructed fabrications our brains use to reinforce existing narratives. A new study of 3,140 participants finds that exposing people to fake news created false memories of the depicted events in about half of subjects."
Humans are fascinating. Real-life Persephone :)
E-cigarettes are so dangerous they give people heart attacks — even before they start using them.
Planned Parenthood to stop taking Title X funds rather than comply with abortion 'gag rule'. Y'all remember to up your donations a few bucks the coming years. :)
"The best thing about HPMOR is it's a perfect example of how an intelligent, outside the box thinker can direct millions of dollars toward their goals in ways you'd never expect."
We regret to inform you that all the Fast & Furious stars might be candy asses. "each of the leads has negotiated with the studio to ensure they never look less badass than any of their costars for even a single round of ass-whooping"
I keep forgetting that in Rowling's Potter, Harry gets married to freakin' Ginnie Weasley. But then, I also keep for getting that in Rowling's version he's a jock. ><
"Harry Potter had a crush on Cho specifically because she was good at Quidditch, and could go toe to toe with him as a seeker. Harry Potter started developing feelings for Ginny after she joined the Quidditch Team, and their first kiss happen as a celebration of winning a important match for the house cup, and she will later become a freaking professional quidditch player.
Harry Potter is into jocks. Harry Potter is into jocks that, specifically, could kick his ass at his favorite sport.
I feel like this is an important thing to know about the guy."
"most of the people interviewed had a similar path to getting so deep into flat eartherism
1) They sorta believed that the earth was flat.
2) They told their friends, who either blew them off or mocked them or both.
3) They found a group of flat-earthers online, who were very welcoming and happy to find a fellow flat-earther.
4) Slowly, these people abandoned their old friends and converted to the new folks, who'd never tell them they were wrong about the flat-earth. Which had the side effect of making their flat-earth beliefs the most prominent part of their personality.
5) Eventually, the rejection becomes the proof that they're on the road to truth, and no amount of evidence will convince them because this is no longer about logic – it's about using their own logic to build a shield to protect them from rejection.
[…] the most telling part was at the end, when they interviewed one of the most devoted flat-earthers and asked him (I'm paraphrasing):
"What if you got irrefutable proof that the Earth was round? You'd lose all your friends. Could you walk away from this culture you helped create?"
And to his credit, he answered honestly:
"No. No, I don't think I could." […]
… the internet has made wrong people folks to be courted. In fact, the more wrong people you can get on your side, the less you'll be lonely. And the only cost to be a part of these groups is that you can never question the beliefs at the core of it, because that wrongness is what binds you, and any evidence that contradicts that wrongness must be either discarded, attacked, or humiliated."
The ridiculous beliefs of religions are a feature, not a bug. You can't have a religion without at least one obviously ludicrous thing. I used to think this was an argument against religions. Now I'm starting to think it's an argument in favor of one Big False Belief.
"Did anyone notice how quickly the internet turned into a Lovecraftian horror scenario?
Like we've got this dimension right next to ours, that extends across the entire planet, and it is just brimming with nightmares. We have spambots, viruses, ransomware, this endless legion of malevolent entities that are blindly probing us for weaknesses, seeking only to corrupt, to thieve, to destroy.
Add onto that the corrupted ones themselves, humans who've abandoned morality and given up faces to hunt other people, jeering them, lashing out, seeing how easy it is to kill something you can't touch or see or smell.
…Some of our best and brightest are going to create an army of four winged bats hovering throughout every city and we are going to connect them directly to the dimension where the nightmares live.
I'm not saying it's all bad, but I am saying Cthulhu lies deathless dreaming in this web we built him and he is waking up."
TIL that the most important things to recycle are metals. So rinse your aluminum and tin cans and put them in the bin.
Paper is iffy, and anything that's touched food or has glue/sticky on it will contaminate other recycling or damage the machinery, so throw that in the trash.
And plastic should not be recycled at all, always put those in the trash.
The Website Obesity Crisis
"[author tweeted] "text-based websites should not exceed in size the major works of Russian literature."
If you open that tweet in a browser, you'll see the page is 900 KB big. That's almost 100 KB more than the full text of The Master and Margarita.
In May 2015, Facebook introduced 'Instant Articles', a special format for news stories designed to appear within the Facebook site, and to load nearly instantly.
Facebook made the announcement on a 6.8 megabyte webpage dominated by a giant headshot of some dude. He doesn't even work for Facebook, he's just the National Geographic photo editor.
Further down the page, you'll find a 41 megabyte video, the only way to find out more about the project."
I kinda suspect that at least part of it is class-signalling. One demonstrates that one is rich enough to live in a high-bandwidth area and therefore higher class than those rural and third-world people by insisting on pages that are visibly obese.
Yes, it's probably not a conscious thought, but it's there nonetheless. Why does poor fashion instinctively hurt the sensibilities of the rich, even if "they aren't classist?" Because everyone has completely absorbed the subtleties of status markers to the point that they are mostly subconscious aesthetic taste.
Sometimes I get pleasure out of the stupidest things. Like, this is the first Pitch Meeting I ever saw. I've now watched over 100 of them. They are all basically identical, with a few details swapped out as appropriate. And yet, I love them. Every single one just brings me joy. I am ashamed, I feel like the 5-year old that keeps saying "Again!" and watching the same episode of his favorite show over and over and over and over. And yet…. <3
""Civil religion" is a surprising place for social justice to end up. Gay pride started at Stonewall as a giant fuck-you to civil society. Homeless people, addicts, and sex workers told the police where they could shove their respectable values.
But there was another major world religion that started with beggars, lepers, and prostitutes, wasn't there? One that told the Pharisees where to shove their respectable values. One whose founder got in trouble with the cops of his time.
In a hundred years, will social justice look exactly like Christianity does now? No. The world's changed too much. Even if every religion converges on the same set of socially useful values, the socially useful values change. We don't need to push chastity if we have good STD treatment and contraception; we don't need to push martial valor if all our wars are fought by drones. The old religions are failing partly because they can't adapt quickly enough; social justice won't need to imitate their failures. … But I expect it to recapitulate the history of other civil religions in fast-forward. Did you know "pagan" is just Latin for "rural"?"
Don't Hire Assholes. "removing an asshole (or converting them to a non-asshole) enhances productivity more than replacing an average worker with a superstar"
Sometimes the world is good. :) Jurors refuse to convict activist facing 20 years for helping migrants
Obituaries For The Recently Cancelled. "Matthew Edwards, 41, was canceled early Friday evening after he was seen in his car singing along to "Remix to Ignition." Mr. Edwards has not watched the R. Kelly documentary, but colleagues say he was aware of its existence and general content. He leaves behind his intersectional feminist wife Julia and two woke children."
Netflix's re-translation of Neon Genesis Evangelion is drawing backlash for queer erasure. Fuck Netflix. This was the most formative work of art of my young adult life, and I hope they burn in the same hell as the guy who was hired to draw pants/cloths over the genitals of all the famous renaissance works.
I am forced to re-link The Remarkable Queerness of Shinji Ikari
Casually Explained: Life as a Video Game
Planet of Cops. "The single greatest accomplishment of 21st Century leftism is distributing the culture of surveillance and snitching. Intersectionality gave nearly everybody a weak spot to be exploited by the right self-appointed enforcer and a lens to turn any innocuous opinion into kompromat. It couldn't have worked better if designed from the ground up to work like this."
Watch out! I'm on a Kontext Machine Kick!
Today I learned that pre-Reagan Republicans used to be Batman? O_O
"Hell, for a while, the Republicans were even the more abortion-friendly party. The Democrats were the Catholic party after all. The Republicans were the Protestant-as-humanistic-heritage-charity ones, the ones who eugenically spaced their three children two years apart unlike those grubby Papists, the ones with mistresses, the ones with bourgeois life courses to even be diverted from. Not to mention the doctors who cleaned up after amateur abortions or offered black-market ones themselves."
"the framework that I've found productive for understanding The Big Lebowski is that it's a Raymond Chandler tribute.
…That's why the cowboy's there as chorus/narrator, because the brilliant thing about The Big Lebowski is that it isn't a stoner comedy, it's a stoner tragedy."
"the internet in general was pretty wealth-marked in 1998 (far more than we realized, with our American mythology of universal white suburban middle-classness and "global village" Internet mythology) … And if the Anglophone internet is ::gestures:: like this now maybe it's cause it's less of a professional-class preserve? The dividing line maybe being smartphones where "people on the internet" went from "people who specifically spend $X/mo on it as luxury" to "people with telephone service"? That's a real possibility, that for all the "Global Village" stuff the wondrous effect of the '90s internet was to create a cultural space that was MORE gatekept by wealth and education.
That's… kind of depressing, though. "Haha you thought the world was getting better because you were eliminating elitist barriers but actually it's cause you were making them higher, which is good because the poor and non-elite are disproportionately idiots with worthless ideas and to the extent they're on top of things the thing they're on top of is undermining the basis of a good society, and anyway those times were a phenomenon of a narrow early adopter base and you'll never ever get them back unless you make the non-elite economically and politically irrelevant."
Depressing but very well precedented, that's exactly the arc newsprint, radio, and TV followed before."
"Proposed: the 1980s farm crisis (which was where family farming finally died in America) at some level fed into the development of anti-abortion activity and identity in the same period, by way of agrarian-magical fertility rites.
It's a recurring notion among human agricultural societies that the health of the land, and of the crop, rely, through sympathetic magic, on the enactment of human fertility, in ritual or actual childbearing
These fertility cults constitute a folk religion symbiotic with any variety of nominal official religions, if not actively parasitic and tending to supplant
At some fundamental level the failure of the agrarian economy is understood or at least felt as a result of the failure of women to bear children, and for them to return to fertility will renew the golden age
To perform abortions is, essentially, to perform black witchcraft, cursing the crop and ruining the harvest; if a witch has cursed your crop the solution is to kill the witch.
This would explain the origin of Operation Rescue in the mid-1980s, and why it would choose Wichita of all places for its Summer of Mercy, this would explain the geographic distribution of the most intense anti-abortion sentiment and violence, this would explain why if you drive too far into farm country the cultural footprint consists of decaying human settlements and roadside signs condemning abortion or beseeching women to give birth"
Guest Post by Wil McCarthy
A number of years ago I was in a friend's living room. We were setting up to play boardgames. I was up and looking at his bookshelf when I saw the book "Bloom." It wasn't by one of the super-famous authors you see everywhere and I had just read it a while ago myself, so I said "Oh hey, you have Bloom! That was a good book, I liked it." Behind me a voice said "Yeah, I wrote that."
I turned around and there sat a man I'd been introduced to just that day for boardgaming, looking at me in dead seriousness. I had this intense feeling of vertigo, because somehow a published author had just randomly snuck into my life and was hanging around in a mutual friend's living room like this was a perfectly normal thing that just happens. I was initially at a loss for words.
That was Wil McCarthy, and since then we've gotten to know each other quite a bit more. He took about a decade off from writing to do the tech-entrepreneur thing, but now he's back into the word-slinging game. His latest novel drops today, and I'm hosting a guest post from him in support, because he greatly overestimates the reach of my blog. :) I mentioned that hearing about tech entrepreneurship would be something my readers are interested in, so he wrote to that. Without further delay:
Hi, my name is Wil McCarthy, and I'm a writer. Eneasz was kind enough to lend my this platform for a day, because I've got a hardcover science fiction novel out from Baen this week. This is actually the twelfth book in my publishing career, and yet still a really significant milestone for me, because the last time I released a book was in 2005, and if you'd told me then that there'd be a gap of fourteen years before my next book, well, I wouldn't have believed it. Seriously, I used to work a full-time job whilst writing a book a year, and I still had enough leftover time and energy to attend to my family and maintain an active social life. Then I gave up the full-time job to concentrate exclusively on my writing, and that went well. For years. So what happened?
In a way, the writing was a victim of its own success; in my 1999 novella "Once Upon a Matter Crushed" and subsequent novel THE COLLAPSIUM, I posited a type of programmable matter called "wellstone", whose optical and electrical and even mechanical properties could be adjusted in real time through the application of minute electrical signals. This was based on real science, and I said so in the book's appendix, but even so I got a flood of annoyed fan mail saying the idea was nonsense and had no place in a hard science fiction book. I responded with a series of increasingly detailed, increasingly specific nonfiction articles on the subject, culminating in a long WIRED magazine feature that spelled out, in engineering terms, how such a thing could actually work.
That turned out to be a patentable invention, which I patented and made the subject of a nonfiction book, HACKING MATTER, that was basically a much longer, more detailed, more self-indulgent version of the article I'd written for WIRED. This resulted, in early 2004, in one of the co-inventors of the Blackberry smartphone (remember the Blackberry?) calling me up out of the blue and saying he wanted to give me (or rather, the company I had founded when I filed the patent) a million dollars, just to see what happened.
Saying yes to that resulted in my being the president and chief technology officer of a tech startup, which attracted still more investment from other high-net-worth individuals. Which was fine and fun; what better way to succeed as a science fiction writer than for people to pay you to make your crazy ideas real? One caution I received at the time was that the thing we actually discovered would be different than the thing we set out to invent, and this turned out to be sage advice indeed; after multiple pivots triggered by unexpected results in both the lab and the marketplace, I ended up co-inventing a type of smart window that tinted when it got hot.
Sounds useful, right? Want some for your own house? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, while we almost succeeded in selling the technology to 3M, and then really almost succeeded in selling it to Dow Chemical, the 2008 meltdown in the economy kiboshed all that, and we eventually concluded we would need to build our own factory and develop and sell the product ourselves. This involved raising many more millions of dollars, which sounds great but was actually the downfall of basically the entire life I'd so carefully built for myself.
One caution I didn't receive, but quickly figured out for myself, was that venture capitalists don't want you fucking around writing science fiction novels on the side. They expect (and arguably deserve) your undivided attention. Up until this point, I'd still been dabbling in the world of science fiction, writing novellas for Analog and Asimov's, and I was also the toastmaster at the World Science Fiction Convention one year, and guest of Honor for Apollocon during the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. Oh, and I was still writing for WIRED, and had a monthly column over at the SciFi channel (later SyFy). But yeah, between 2008 and 2013 all that went away. I didn't consciously kill any of it, but it certainly died through inattention and starvation. After that, I was no longer a writer — just another tech company entrepreneur.
Another caution I didn't receive was that tech company founders are basically cannon fodder for the venture capital industry. Once they've got 51% control of your company and its IP, you basically become the most expensive and most expendable employee on the roster, and if they can scheme a way to get rid of you and still keep the enterprise afloat, they will frequently do so. I'm not going to say that's exactly what happened to me. There were negotiations, and a settlement of sorts, and a mutual non-disparagement agreement. What I will say is that in 2014 I found myself out of a job, and with a much-diluted ownership stake in the company I had founded in my own basement. Much diluted. That's not a disparagement, just a numerical fact. I won't name the company, but I will say it still exists, and has lost a lot of money over the years. Whether it would have succeeded with me at the helm is hard to say, but it certainly has not so far succeeded without me, in five and a half years of trying.
Over the next year I would suffer both a nasty divorce and a nasty car accident, both of whose aftereffects continue to reverberate in my life. All of this set me back, and made it hard to get back on my feet as my actual self, Wil McCarthy the science fiction writer. However, in 2016 I dusted off a book proposal I'd written all the way back in 2004, right before all the craziness began, and called up Baen's Toni Weisskopf to ask if she'd like a peek at it. She had, years earlier, given me a standing invitation to write for Baen, so this wasn't a huge stretch, but still I was grateful when she liked the proposal enough to offer me a two-book contract. I was a writer again! Now all I had to do was actually, you know, write a book. For the first time in more than 10 years. Piece of cake, right? Well, it took a year, even though I was doing it full nearly full time, with just some part-time consulting on the side. And then there were the revisions, and the copyedits, and the page proofs, and the marketing copy, all of which stretched out over another agonizing year.
Okay, but now it's late 2019, and I'm actually a professional novelist again, in the most fundamental sense of having written and published a novel. Whew. Now, as I obsessively scan the web for reviews and scrape my Amazon page for real-time sales rankings, I feel whole again, in a way that I haven't for a long time.
How do I feel about my ten years in startup land? That's a hard question to answer. As badly as it all turned out, the experience still furnished some of the most memorable times of my life. I traveled the world in Business Class, and solved hard problems side-by-side with people who loved what they were doing as much as I did. And honestly, I do not see how I could have forgiven myself for refusing that first million dollars, and all that came after. Just because the tiger eats you doesn't mean it isn't worth riding. I have a lot of regrets, but "doing it at all" isn't one of them. Still, would I do it again if I had the chance? Again, it's hard to say. The easy answer is no, of course not, but I also know that if the right idea and the right situation came along, I'd still be sorely tempted to see where it might lead. Which may simply mean that I've learned nothing from the experience, except that being a writer isn't something I'm eager to give up again, anytime soon.
Do I have any advice for people thinking about following in my footsteps? Yeah, kind of. Be careful with your founding documents; make sure they don't lock you into a situation you can't escape from, and make sure they do protect you as much as possible from involuntary ejection. Build that golden parachute right into the foundations of your company. Also, don't trust anyone. That may sound harsh, but with enough money in play to make a company appear, nobody is your friend, and literally anyone (no matter your history) could be tempted at times to stab you in the back and run away with the treasure. You can work with people you don't trust (in fact, you'll need to), but don't hand them the knife to stab you with, and don't turn your back. Most importantly, don't give up your other dreams, because at the end of the day, they may be all you have to fall back on.
Wil McCarthy's latest novel is Antediluvian, get it here.
Posted by embrodski at 9:16 am
SF/F Review – Equal Rites
Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett
Synopsis: When a young witch is given wizard powers, she and her grandmother must find a way to get the all-male wizard university to acknowledge and accept her.
Book Review: This is one of Pratchett's early works, and it's interesting watching someone you know will become a grandmaster slowly coming into his powers.
The story is entertaining, but it was thematically confusing for me. The girl-witch doesn't really do a whole lot, and her grandmother, while being absolutely awesome and someone I'd love to know, its rather inconsistent. I wasn't sure how I felt about this book until I went to the bookclub and someone dropped a revelation on me – the protagonist of this book isn't really the girl, she's just the inciting incident. The protagonist is the grandmother!
After that it all made sense. The grandmother starts out very cynical and jaded. She practices "headology," which is mostly psychology and the use of ritual and expectation to help guide people's lives and actions. She is obviously very aware of how powerful ritual and expectations are, but she's also extremely cynical about it, mostly viewing other people as befuddled fools who need to be lead through life because they're too dumb for their own good.
She grows, though. The grandmother's character arc is of someone who comes to see that ritual can be overemphasized and sometimes needs to be jettisoned when human interests are at stake… and that some humans are actually kinda alright.
Now, I say Pratchett hasn't quite come into his own yet in this book, because that's not the clear focus of the story, and it's a bit inconsistent. Also, he doesn't engage my emotions at the anger level when showing the witches' fight for equal rights. The wizards seem more befuddled and incompetent than actually unlikable. There was only one moment when I felt any animus towards them, and it passed quickly. It made the whole "sexism" thing seem like not a big deal, just a misunderstanding, and kinda gave a lie to the title. It's certainly nothing like the rousing political statements and declarations of his later works, which have you on your feet cheering for human rights and swearing to strike down any tyranny and corruption you see.
Likewise, neither his humor nor his socio-political statements really flowed with the story. It seemed like story, humor, and political stuff always had to stop for each other and interject, rather weaving seamlessly into a majestic single melody like his later books.
But still, his prose is eminently readable! When you read Pratchett it always feels like he's a mischievous uncle sitting in the room and telling you this story himself, weaving this epic yarn with a twinkle in his eye. He's snappy and funny and doesn't belabor anything.
And honestly, it feels a bit churlish to say this work doesn't measure up to his later works, after he's had thousands of hours more experience. Is it really fair to compare someone to their refined, future self?
So, all in all, a fun read. Pratchett in general is a Strong Recommended. I would recommend his later works first. But if you've already gone through those, this one is pretty good too.
Book Club Review: You can't go wrong with Pratchett for a book club, y'all already know this. Plenty to talk about, even moreso if people are well-read in his universe. Obviously recommended, with the same caveat of "later works first" as above.
Binary addendum
Musings On Present Day, Personal 1 Response »
I've spoken at length with a few people about the non-binary gender stuff over the last few weeks, and I've made a few updates.
First, and most significantly, is I find I resent non-binary people far less now that I'm honest about disliking (and not holding myself to) using neutral pronouns. Neat.
Second, I withdraw most of what I said in "Reducing the Spectrum to a Binary." The people who most have their spectrum options reduced have them reduced by rightist bigots, not nb folks. And giving people more options doesn't take away their previous options. I was mainly feeling like my allies in "taking back masculinity to mean many, many things besides Macho He-men" were being stripped away as they got removed from the category of "male", but they really weren't, and my feelings of dwindling support were misplaced.
Third, I have firmed up a position I didn't quite have the words to express before. I don't like being press-ganged into a war I don't support. To explain: Declaring oneself to be of a non-sex is the equivalent of declaring oneself non-racial. (ie: I don't identify as any race, and therefore I am non-racial.) Fine, you do you — but then asking that others use non-conforming pronouns for you to publicly identify you as non-racial (or non-sex) serves the sole purpose of drawing everyone around you into an culture war that they don't necessarily want to be in. Either they use your pronouns and show that they have joined your side in the culture war (with all that entails), or they don't, and they have joined the Other Side in the culture war (and all that THAT entails). Which, quite frankly, is bullshit.
This is hopefully my last post on the issue for a long time. :)


text:
Genre(s)Drama, FFC 2016
French Title: Fatima
Director: Philippe Faucon
Cast: Soria Zeroual, Zita Hanrot, Chawki Amari
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Country: France, Canada
Release: CT Premiere
Select Awards: 3 César 2016 Awards for Best Film, Most promising Actress and Best Adaptation (+ 1 Nomination) | 1 Lumière 2016 Award for Best Screenplay
April 2 – 9:30pm
TICKETS | SCHEDULE (pdf)
Fatima lives on her own with two daughters to support: 15-year old Souad, a teenager in revolt, and 18-year old Nesrine, who is starting medical school. Fatima speaks French poorly and is constantly frustrated by her daily interactions with her daughters. Her pride and joy, they are also a source of worry. To ensure the best possible future for them, she works odd hours as a cleaning woman. One day, she takes a fall down the stairs. On leave, Fatima begins to write to her daughters in Arabic that which she has never been able to express in French.
FOCUS ON the Inception of an Idea
"My grandparents didn't speak French, and neither did my mother when she was a child. They were "the invisible ones" in the society they lived in. Some of Fatima's manners remind me of them. She is like those women, only partly schooled, who had to emigrate out of vital necessity, to come and live in a country whose language and codes were completely unknown to them. In France, they gave birth to children and raised them, even though sometimes they were kept apart by the language or by different customs and points of reference. For all these reasons, regardless of the things they didn't know or master, these women have developed major resources, drawn from fierce courage and obstinacy." -Philippe Faucon
Press Kit: French & English
(4/2/16 THEATRE 2)
< PREVIOUS MOVIE: 3:45 PM – VANITY / La Vanité
> FOLLOWING MOVIE: none (End of Day)
< PREVIOUS MOVIE: 5:30 – MARSEILLE
FFC 2016
FFC2015
FFC_Romantic_Movies
(FFC2015) US Premiere – Romain is 23 years old sharing a small apartment in his native Paris. He aspires to be a writer but is currently working as …