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Sep. 1st, 2019
Leverage: Supers
Sep. 1st, 2019 01:19 pmvia https://ift.tt/2MOiTa0
thelogicalghost:
They don’t have superpowers. They don’t. Or at least, they don’t have super powers.
Sure, Nate jokes that he’s psychic. It’s a con he’s played on more than one mark, not counting the times Sophie (or, memorably, Tara) picked up the role. The rumors of precognition floated around him as an investigator no matter how much he insisted otherwise. As his reputation as a thief grew, so did the rumors. Being assumed as a seer of some kind has been a help as much as a hindrance, really, but it deters more trouble than it attracts, so Nate’s let the rumor lie.
But there are times, once in a while, when Nate pauses. His voice will get raspy. Usually it’s just a word: duck, stop, run, wait. The team has learned that you don’t argue when he uses that voice, because he’s always right, and it’s saved their lives more than once. Nate calls it a feeling, or an instinct, and then changes the subject. One time, when he was drunk and pressed, he slurred, “It didn’t save my son.” After that, they stopped asking.
Sophie isn’t actually a shapeshifter, not like in that 1970’s footage of the person changing, one face after another sliding across their body like a slideshow. They know Sophie can’t do that, because she’s a good liar but they know she cares, and if she could do that, she would have, when they were in a few tight spots where a change of face would have stopped the violence.
But there’s something just slightly too good about her performances, sometimes. Even though it’s her skills that sell it, her features never betray her. Her skin is always just enough of the right shade. Her eyes are always just close enough to the right shape. It could be written off as the mind playing tricks, except that Hardison keep having to update his facial analysis algorithms, because they keep getting Sophie wrong. People who have met her before swear they haven’t, and vice versa.
Eliot is easy to pin down, if harder to prove. It’s just not natural for anyone to take that much damage and never need a hospital. He always waves it off, insists it’s not as bad as it looks, but that doesn’t explain why he has smooth skin in places where he absolutely should have scars, given the injuries he’s acquired during their work.
One day Hardison cracks the right server and finds a photo he recognizes on a list in a military database. After that, he notices the way Eliot reacts to mentions of super soldiers and government experiments. It’s subtle. It could be mistaken for the general dislike many army grunts have of superheroes, if he didn’t know better.
Parker also has instinctive reactions, though she denies them even while tensing, just enough for her teammates to notice, around large men in lab coats when they tower over her, around needles and syringes. She doesn’t know why because she was far too young to remember anything before the endless foster homes.
When she trusts them, eventually, they get glimpses of Parker dislocating joints that shouldn’t be able to dislocate and popping them back into place without blinking or bruising. It’s a bit too much for even the most limber double-jointed acrobats. Hardison thinks of cats, who can fold their collarbones to fit through tight spaces, and deliberately does not go looking for Parker’s past.
And Hardison? Hardison doesn’t think he has anything at all above baseline. Sure, he’s always talked to his tech. He names his computers, the vans, the robots. He whispers soothing encouragements or desperate pleas off-mic. Like any good programmer, he’s irrationally superstitious, but he doesn’t really, logically, objectively think much of it, until the day when Parker thrusts her phone in his face, cracked and probably irreparably dead, and tells him to ask it to turn on for just a bit longer so they can call for help.
He does. It does. Parker seems completely unsurprised. Haridison starts being more aware of how he talks to things, starts leaning how to feel the connections that he’s been tapping into unconsciously his whole life.
They don’t have superpowers. But then again, none of them ever claimed to be normal.
thelogicalghost:
They don’t have superpowers. They don’t. Or at least, they don’t have super powers.
Sure, Nate jokes that he’s psychic. It’s a con he’s played on more than one mark, not counting the times Sophie (or, memorably, Tara) picked up the role. The rumors of precognition floated around him as an investigator no matter how much he insisted otherwise. As his reputation as a thief grew, so did the rumors. Being assumed as a seer of some kind has been a help as much as a hindrance, really, but it deters more trouble than it attracts, so Nate’s let the rumor lie.
But there are times, once in a while, when Nate pauses. His voice will get raspy. Usually it’s just a word: duck, stop, run, wait. The team has learned that you don’t argue when he uses that voice, because he’s always right, and it’s saved their lives more than once. Nate calls it a feeling, or an instinct, and then changes the subject. One time, when he was drunk and pressed, he slurred, “It didn’t save my son.” After that, they stopped asking.
Sophie isn’t actually a shapeshifter, not like in that 1970’s footage of the person changing, one face after another sliding across their body like a slideshow. They know Sophie can’t do that, because she’s a good liar but they know she cares, and if she could do that, she would have, when they were in a few tight spots where a change of face would have stopped the violence.
But there’s something just slightly too good about her performances, sometimes. Even though it’s her skills that sell it, her features never betray her. Her skin is always just enough of the right shade. Her eyes are always just close enough to the right shape. It could be written off as the mind playing tricks, except that Hardison keep having to update his facial analysis algorithms, because they keep getting Sophie wrong. People who have met her before swear they haven’t, and vice versa.
Eliot is easy to pin down, if harder to prove. It’s just not natural for anyone to take that much damage and never need a hospital. He always waves it off, insists it’s not as bad as it looks, but that doesn’t explain why he has smooth skin in places where he absolutely should have scars, given the injuries he’s acquired during their work.
One day Hardison cracks the right server and finds a photo he recognizes on a list in a military database. After that, he notices the way Eliot reacts to mentions of super soldiers and government experiments. It’s subtle. It could be mistaken for the general dislike many army grunts have of superheroes, if he didn’t know better.
Parker also has instinctive reactions, though she denies them even while tensing, just enough for her teammates to notice, around large men in lab coats when they tower over her, around needles and syringes. She doesn’t know why because she was far too young to remember anything before the endless foster homes.
When she trusts them, eventually, they get glimpses of Parker dislocating joints that shouldn’t be able to dislocate and popping them back into place without blinking or bruising. It’s a bit too much for even the most limber double-jointed acrobats. Hardison thinks of cats, who can fold their collarbones to fit through tight spaces, and deliberately does not go looking for Parker’s past.
And Hardison? Hardison doesn’t think he has anything at all above baseline. Sure, he’s always talked to his tech. He names his computers, the vans, the robots. He whispers soothing encouragements or desperate pleas off-mic. Like any good programmer, he’s irrationally superstitious, but he doesn’t really, logically, objectively think much of it, until the day when Parker thrusts her phone in his face, cracked and probably irreparably dead, and tells him to ask it to turn on for just a bit longer so they can call for help.
He does. It does. Parker seems completely unsurprised. Haridison starts being more aware of how he talks to things, starts leaning how to feel the connections that he’s been tapping into unconsciously his whole life.
They don’t have superpowers. But then again, none of them ever claimed to be normal.
via https://ift.tt/2NGuJTj
phantoms-lair:
It the same with the companies saying video games need microtransactions to stay profitable. Because I remember they being plenty profitable for a couple of decades before microtransactions were a thing.
burnitalldownism:
People who are old enough to remember ad free YouTube, FB, Twitter and Instagram believing that capitalism drives innovation are fucking hilarious.
Like, all of those platforms were still profitable…massively profitable before they had targeted ads on your feed and unskippable ads before videos. They didn’t need to bring them in. They weren’t going to go under, their CEOs weren’t living in the backseats of their cars, they were living in mansions already. They just wanted more money.
Greed was the only reason. Capitalism is the reason they made their platforms and the user experience worse. That’s it.
phantoms-lair:
It the same with the companies saying video games need microtransactions to stay profitable. Because I remember they being plenty profitable for a couple of decades before microtransactions were a thing.
burnitalldownism:
People who are old enough to remember ad free YouTube, FB, Twitter and Instagram believing that capitalism drives innovation are fucking hilarious.
Like, all of those platforms were still profitable…massively profitable before they had targeted ads on your feed and unskippable ads before videos. They didn’t need to bring them in. They weren’t going to go under, their CEOs weren’t living in the backseats of their cars, they were living in mansions already. They just wanted more money.
Greed was the only reason. Capitalism is the reason they made their platforms and the user experience worse. That’s it.
via https://ift.tt/2MOiXGM
sans–seraph:
systlin:
kingscrown666:
wodneswynn:
Me: “So I’m really into history.”
Bro: “Oh me too! I can’t believe a girl is into history like I am. Who’s your favorite Roman emperor?”
Me, automatically, transforming into an NPC with idle dialogue: “The Funnelbeaker Culture grew wheat, millet, and barley using ard ploughs to dig shallow scratches into the topsoil, and ard ploughs and other simple scratch ploughs or spike ploughs would remain standard in northern Europe until the invention of the mouldboard in the early Middle Ages; most of the stones used in the construction of Scandinavian megaliths, including the stone ship cemeteries from the Viking Age, bear ard scratches, indicating that they were picked out of field middens. And that’s all very interesting, but the domestication of bees dates all the way back to the Neolithic, and–”
Bro dude: No, no. I mean real history. Y'know, they important stuff
Me, with a Very Intense look in my eyes; “Oh, important stuff! Well, the oldest spun fibers ever found are in Georgia in the Causcaus region. This means that humans knew how to process flax into fiber as early at 28,000 BCE, and while we have not found woven textiles dating back that far we have evidence of woven cloth being pressed against clay to make textured pottery dating back to 25,000 bce, and that means that woven linen significantly pre-dates settled populations. Now, humans didn’t domesticate sheep until around 11,000 years ago, but I suspect that they gathered shed wool to spin and weave textiles from before that, and that the warmth of woolen garments was a significant factor in humans eventually domesticating sheep, in order to obtain a reliable supply of both fiber and meat, and….”
Reblog to piss off war fanboys
sans–seraph:
systlin:
kingscrown666:
wodneswynn:
Me: “So I’m really into history.”
Bro: “Oh me too! I can’t believe a girl is into history like I am. Who’s your favorite Roman emperor?”
Me, automatically, transforming into an NPC with idle dialogue: “The Funnelbeaker Culture grew wheat, millet, and barley using ard ploughs to dig shallow scratches into the topsoil, and ard ploughs and other simple scratch ploughs or spike ploughs would remain standard in northern Europe until the invention of the mouldboard in the early Middle Ages; most of the stones used in the construction of Scandinavian megaliths, including the stone ship cemeteries from the Viking Age, bear ard scratches, indicating that they were picked out of field middens. And that’s all very interesting, but the domestication of bees dates all the way back to the Neolithic, and–”
Bro dude: No, no. I mean real history. Y'know, they important stuff
Me, with a Very Intense look in my eyes; “Oh, important stuff! Well, the oldest spun fibers ever found are in Georgia in the Causcaus region. This means that humans knew how to process flax into fiber as early at 28,000 BCE, and while we have not found woven textiles dating back that far we have evidence of woven cloth being pressed against clay to make textured pottery dating back to 25,000 bce, and that means that woven linen significantly pre-dates settled populations. Now, humans didn’t domesticate sheep until around 11,000 years ago, but I suspect that they gathered shed wool to spin and weave textiles from before that, and that the warmth of woolen garments was a significant factor in humans eventually domesticating sheep, in order to obtain a reliable supply of both fiber and meat, and….”
Reblog to piss off war fanboys
via https://ift.tt/2NL47ke
dsudis:
tsumeghost:
phoenixwaller:
elliottholt:
Большой секрет — знает весь свет. Big secret—the whole world knows.
Борода не делает философом. A beard doesn’t make a philosopher.
В темноте все кошки серы. All cats are gray in the dark.
В Ту́лу со свои́м самова́ром не е́здят. No one brings a samovar to Tula. (Tula is famous as the city where samovars were manufactured. This is the equivalent of “Don’t bring coal to Newcastle.”)
Волко́в боя́ться — в лес не ходи́ть. If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go to the woods.
Говорить правду — потерять дружбу. Tell the truth—lose friends.
Доверя́й, но проверя́й. Trust, but verify.
Долг платежо́м кра́сен. Debt is beautiful once it’s repaid.
Доно́счику — пе́рвый кнут. The informer is whipped first.
Друг познаётся в беде́. You get to know your friend in trouble. (A friend in need is a friend indeed.)
Дру́жба дру́жбой, а де́нежкам счёт. Friendship is friendship, but count money.
Знать всё — значит не знать ничего. To know everything is to know nothing.
И у стен бывают уши. And even walls have ears.
Когда́ де́ньги говоря́т, тогда́ пра́вда молчи́т. When money talks, truth shuts up.
На чужо́м го́ре сча́стья не постро́ишь. One can’t build happiness upon another’s grief.
Назва́лся гру́здем — полеза́й в ку́зов. If you called yourself a mushroom—get in the basket. (Sort of like, “don’t just talk the talk—walk the walk.”)
Не ошиба́ется тот, кто ничего́ не де́лает. He that does nothing makes no mistakes.
NB: any translation mistakes are mine
USEFUL!!!
Very Important Addition, my favorite
Любовь не картошка, не выбросишь в окошко. LOVE IS NOT A POTATO YOU CANNOT THROW IT OUT A WINDOW (that is, love is not a small thing that is easy to get rid of)
!!!!!!!!!!!
For about TWENTY YEARS I have been wondering why, in the English-translated Chekhov play I read because it was on the summer reading list for my AP English class, someone says with no particularly enlightening context, “Death is not a potato.”
BUT THAT’S WHY, ISN’T IT. HE’S REFERENCING THAT PROVERB. LOVE IS NOT A POTATO; DEATH IS NOT A POTATO.
dsudis:
tsumeghost:
phoenixwaller:
elliottholt:
Большой секрет — знает весь свет. Big secret—the whole world knows.
Борода не делает философом. A beard doesn’t make a philosopher.
В темноте все кошки серы. All cats are gray in the dark.
В Ту́лу со свои́м самова́ром не е́здят. No one brings a samovar to Tula. (Tula is famous as the city where samovars were manufactured. This is the equivalent of “Don’t bring coal to Newcastle.”)
Волко́в боя́ться — в лес не ходи́ть. If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go to the woods.
Говорить правду — потерять дружбу. Tell the truth—lose friends.
Доверя́й, но проверя́й. Trust, but verify.
Долг платежо́м кра́сен. Debt is beautiful once it’s repaid.
Доно́счику — пе́рвый кнут. The informer is whipped first.
Друг познаётся в беде́. You get to know your friend in trouble. (A friend in need is a friend indeed.)
Дру́жба дру́жбой, а де́нежкам счёт. Friendship is friendship, but count money.
Знать всё — значит не знать ничего. To know everything is to know nothing.
И у стен бывают уши. And even walls have ears.
Когда́ де́ньги говоря́т, тогда́ пра́вда молчи́т. When money talks, truth shuts up.
На чужо́м го́ре сча́стья не постро́ишь. One can’t build happiness upon another’s grief.
Назва́лся гру́здем — полеза́й в ку́зов. If you called yourself a mushroom—get in the basket. (Sort of like, “don’t just talk the talk—walk the walk.”)
Не ошиба́ется тот, кто ничего́ не де́лает. He that does nothing makes no mistakes.
NB: any translation mistakes are mine
USEFUL!!!
Very Important Addition, my favorite
Любовь не картошка, не выбросишь в окошко. LOVE IS NOT A POTATO YOU CANNOT THROW IT OUT A WINDOW (that is, love is not a small thing that is easy to get rid of)
!!!!!!!!!!!
For about TWENTY YEARS I have been wondering why, in the English-translated Chekhov play I read because it was on the summer reading list for my AP English class, someone says with no particularly enlightening context, “Death is not a potato.”
BUT THAT’S WHY, ISN’T IT. HE’S REFERENCING THAT PROVERB. LOVE IS NOT A POTATO; DEATH IS NOT A POTATO.
via https://ift.tt/2NGv9Jn
zachsanomaiy:
Sinosauropteryx is one of the only dinosaurs where we know exactly what they looked like and exactly what color it was
And it was gosh darn cute
zachsanomaiy:
Sinosauropteryx is one of the only dinosaurs where we know exactly what they looked like and exactly what color it was
And it was gosh darn cute
via https://ift.tt/2NL4j2W
intersex-ionality:
alarajrogers:
findingfeather:
I’m putting this over here rather than on the thread: https://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/187301803839/just-a-zuki-star-anise-donna-dot-paella
I’m on mobile and it’s really being a PITA about hyperlinking, so forgive me on this one. But I’m putting this over here in part because that thread is already getting long, but also because the point here has wider application.
Because even when you look at what’s discussed, and you recognize that the majority of the people in the pyramid scheme are fucked over and supposedly only a small percent are getting rewards …
… but then you look at how that small percent experience the universe …
… you realize that for the most part the super-rich and powerful are also actually miserable, most of the time. It’s one of the hideous fucking ironies of the whole thing: the top of the wealth class actually have similar rates of pathology, addiction, suicide, mental illness, abuse, neglect, failed relationships and general just Fucked Upness, as those facing the most challenges in the world.
This is not to say you should pity the poor fuckers: that’s not what I’m talking about. My point is more that the actual meaning of “money can’t buy happiness” is on this end, not on the “you should be able to be happy when you can’t get the necessities of life”: that’s obviously bullshit.
But what isn’t is that extreme wealth and privilege are, ironically, not correlated with happiness. Or even basic mental health.
Ditto every other kind of privilege. And this seems absolute madness, until one realizes one very central, very important thing about human society and human existence:
Systems do not actually have to benefit anyone to survive. They just have to self-perpetuate.
A system can literally harm all its members but as long as it manages to perpetuate itself, it will survive. And in fact some of the most resilient systems of thought and belief are actually inherently guaranteed to make their holders miserable and unhealthy and that very fact means that they will get passed on.
Like, well. Toxic masculinity.
It’s one of the biggest emotional challenges, I find, of figuring out how to fix any of these things. Surely, you think, as you’re looking at (for example) the ways in which ablism fucks you over (fucks me over) those goddamn people who fit in the “acceptable” box, the “able” box, the “mentally well” box, surely - given how attached to it they are, given how much time they spend attacking me and mine for its sake - surely it must be rewarding them! Somehow! Materially! Continually!
It isn’t. At most there is a very small, very short-term brain-chemical reward from being an enforcer of social norms. Now, that’s very powerful - of such things are life-destroying gambling addictions made - but it’s not actually, materially, very….well, useful.
And that’s because the only requirement of a system of belief, of understanding, of approaching the world, the only thing it needs to actually keep existing? Is the ability to get people to sign on, and pass it on.
It doesn’t need to actually benefit anyone. Systems just need to self-replicate and self-perpetuate, they don’t need to do anything else.
Some of the most ardent supporters of all kinds of shit - of homophobia, of toxic masculinity, of white supremacy, of classist bullshit, pick your poison - who are supposedly among the people it purports to uplift, are actually among those most damaged by it, because it doesn’t need to actually help them at all: it just needs their buy-in.
And there doesn’t need to be a mastermind. There doesn’t need to be someone who’s secretly driving it all with a master-plan to do … something. In the same way that we don’t end up with physiological traits - body-traits, things about our physical being - because of some guiding hand, but because for some reason on a species-wide scale they self-perpetuate? Same thing with our behavioural systems.
Nobody has to win; the system just has to self-perpetuate. And an aspect that many systems use to self-perpetuate is in fact making absolutely damn sure that nobody, nobody caught in the system is ever actually satisfied. Actually content.
Because then they’ll get out there and push the system more.
Now, I don’t think that’s “destiny”. I don’t think that’s an irreparable aspect that we’re just trapped dealing with forever: after all, that’s also more or less how viruses and other infectious diseases reproduce, and we’re learning how to stall, slow, and in some cases even eradicate those. We are learning how to make that kind of behaviour (making people metaphorically suffer until they metaphorically spew the contagion out where someone else catches it) unrewarding as a survival strategy.
But I think realizing this aspect is actually hella useful to getting there. I think it’s useful to let it inform strategies and temper how we work so that it’s potentially more effective in getting these toxic, poison systems of belief and behaviour out of us.
[nb: now, in any human interaction, there are in fact system within systems: obviously people on a small scale use the systems I mention above for smaller-scale goals all the time. And yeah, I’m including things like “getting to be president of the USA” in “smaller scale goals” here because compared even with the history of humankind this is a tiny, temporary sliver of time. But if you look at even the Cheeto’s life, and that of his family, it takes barely a scratch at the surface to see this deep, ugly misery, insecurity, gnawing terror of impermanence, and bitter/resentful anger all the time - and yet they “should” be blissfully happy, being at the top of the heap. The system doesn’t actually reward them, insomuch as “reward” means “end up not suffering”. It just plays on their fear and their greed and their envy and their resentment to drive them to amass useless piles of money and power they’re unsuited for, to the MASSIVE MASSIVE detriment of EVERYONE ELSE - and they AREN’T EVEN HAPPY.
That’s the point here. That’s what I mean by “systems don’t actually have to fully benefit anyone.”
I am reminded of a story about George W. Bush, how when he was 7, his beloved little sister, who was 3, died of an illness. From his perspective she disappeared and never came back. His parents went golfing.
I don’t feel sorry for W – he participated in the destruction of my country as much as Reagan and his dad did, and there are enormous quantities of blood on his hands – but I feel sorry for the little boy he once was, whose parents were so disconnected from emotion, they didn’t acknowledge that their son needed to grieve for his dead sister, regardless of whether they were cold enough to shove their feelings about her in a box and bury them.
Some of the super-rich may be happy. The ones who got there through doing something they truly love, maybe. Bezos and Musk reportedly have terrible marriages and/or divorces, but Bill Gates as far as I know is genuinely devoted to his wife and is enjoying his life of philanthropy after building one of the most powerful and influential software companies on the planet. But I strongly suspect that most of them, especially the ones who got there because it was handed to them on a platter, are absolutely miserable.
Personally, I’d like to be as wealthy as, say, the Obamas. Two professional highly paid incomes and money from writing books? Financial security and the freedom to travel at will? Sign me up for that! But more wealth than that, I don’t see how you live with yourself, with what you need to do to yourself and to other people to achieve it.
You live with it by repressing anything negative you feel, until you end up repressing everything you feel.
It’s wildly unhealthy. I’ve a friend who worked as a therapist for the ultra-rich in the 90s. Most of them have so fundamentally lost touch with their own emotions–let alone the emotions of anyone else–that they live in a state of permanent dissociation.
If they weren’t the most powerful people in society, we would call that complex PTSD as a result of severe and sustained childhood trauma.
But they are the most powerful in society, so we all just kind of call it normal. Or, at best, we call it monstrous and inhuman, without recognizing the fundamental humanity that caused them to move down this path of exploitation, violence, and repression.
Systems just need to self-replicate and self-perpetuate, they don’t need to do anything else.
intersex-ionality:
alarajrogers:
findingfeather:
I’m putting this over here rather than on the thread: https://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/187301803839/just-a-zuki-star-anise-donna-dot-paella
I’m on mobile and it’s really being a PITA about hyperlinking, so forgive me on this one. But I’m putting this over here in part because that thread is already getting long, but also because the point here has wider application.
Because even when you look at what’s discussed, and you recognize that the majority of the people in the pyramid scheme are fucked over and supposedly only a small percent are getting rewards …
… but then you look at how that small percent experience the universe …
… you realize that for the most part the super-rich and powerful are also actually miserable, most of the time. It’s one of the hideous fucking ironies of the whole thing: the top of the wealth class actually have similar rates of pathology, addiction, suicide, mental illness, abuse, neglect, failed relationships and general just Fucked Upness, as those facing the most challenges in the world.
This is not to say you should pity the poor fuckers: that’s not what I’m talking about. My point is more that the actual meaning of “money can’t buy happiness” is on this end, not on the “you should be able to be happy when you can’t get the necessities of life”: that’s obviously bullshit.
But what isn’t is that extreme wealth and privilege are, ironically, not correlated with happiness. Or even basic mental health.
Ditto every other kind of privilege. And this seems absolute madness, until one realizes one very central, very important thing about human society and human existence:
Systems do not actually have to benefit anyone to survive. They just have to self-perpetuate.
A system can literally harm all its members but as long as it manages to perpetuate itself, it will survive. And in fact some of the most resilient systems of thought and belief are actually inherently guaranteed to make their holders miserable and unhealthy and that very fact means that they will get passed on.
Like, well. Toxic masculinity.
It’s one of the biggest emotional challenges, I find, of figuring out how to fix any of these things. Surely, you think, as you’re looking at (for example) the ways in which ablism fucks you over (fucks me over) those goddamn people who fit in the “acceptable” box, the “able” box, the “mentally well” box, surely - given how attached to it they are, given how much time they spend attacking me and mine for its sake - surely it must be rewarding them! Somehow! Materially! Continually!
It isn’t. At most there is a very small, very short-term brain-chemical reward from being an enforcer of social norms. Now, that’s very powerful - of such things are life-destroying gambling addictions made - but it’s not actually, materially, very….well, useful.
And that’s because the only requirement of a system of belief, of understanding, of approaching the world, the only thing it needs to actually keep existing? Is the ability to get people to sign on, and pass it on.
It doesn’t need to actually benefit anyone. Systems just need to self-replicate and self-perpetuate, they don’t need to do anything else.
Some of the most ardent supporters of all kinds of shit - of homophobia, of toxic masculinity, of white supremacy, of classist bullshit, pick your poison - who are supposedly among the people it purports to uplift, are actually among those most damaged by it, because it doesn’t need to actually help them at all: it just needs their buy-in.
And there doesn’t need to be a mastermind. There doesn’t need to be someone who’s secretly driving it all with a master-plan to do … something. In the same way that we don’t end up with physiological traits - body-traits, things about our physical being - because of some guiding hand, but because for some reason on a species-wide scale they self-perpetuate? Same thing with our behavioural systems.
Nobody has to win; the system just has to self-perpetuate. And an aspect that many systems use to self-perpetuate is in fact making absolutely damn sure that nobody, nobody caught in the system is ever actually satisfied. Actually content.
Because then they’ll get out there and push the system more.
Now, I don’t think that’s “destiny”. I don’t think that’s an irreparable aspect that we’re just trapped dealing with forever: after all, that’s also more or less how viruses and other infectious diseases reproduce, and we’re learning how to stall, slow, and in some cases even eradicate those. We are learning how to make that kind of behaviour (making people metaphorically suffer until they metaphorically spew the contagion out where someone else catches it) unrewarding as a survival strategy.
But I think realizing this aspect is actually hella useful to getting there. I think it’s useful to let it inform strategies and temper how we work so that it’s potentially more effective in getting these toxic, poison systems of belief and behaviour out of us.
[nb: now, in any human interaction, there are in fact system within systems: obviously people on a small scale use the systems I mention above for smaller-scale goals all the time. And yeah, I’m including things like “getting to be president of the USA” in “smaller scale goals” here because compared even with the history of humankind this is a tiny, temporary sliver of time. But if you look at even the Cheeto’s life, and that of his family, it takes barely a scratch at the surface to see this deep, ugly misery, insecurity, gnawing terror of impermanence, and bitter/resentful anger all the time - and yet they “should” be blissfully happy, being at the top of the heap. The system doesn’t actually reward them, insomuch as “reward” means “end up not suffering”. It just plays on their fear and their greed and their envy and their resentment to drive them to amass useless piles of money and power they’re unsuited for, to the MASSIVE MASSIVE detriment of EVERYONE ELSE - and they AREN’T EVEN HAPPY.
That’s the point here. That’s what I mean by “systems don’t actually have to fully benefit anyone.”
I am reminded of a story about George W. Bush, how when he was 7, his beloved little sister, who was 3, died of an illness. From his perspective she disappeared and never came back. His parents went golfing.
I don’t feel sorry for W – he participated in the destruction of my country as much as Reagan and his dad did, and there are enormous quantities of blood on his hands – but I feel sorry for the little boy he once was, whose parents were so disconnected from emotion, they didn’t acknowledge that their son needed to grieve for his dead sister, regardless of whether they were cold enough to shove their feelings about her in a box and bury them.
Some of the super-rich may be happy. The ones who got there through doing something they truly love, maybe. Bezos and Musk reportedly have terrible marriages and/or divorces, but Bill Gates as far as I know is genuinely devoted to his wife and is enjoying his life of philanthropy after building one of the most powerful and influential software companies on the planet. But I strongly suspect that most of them, especially the ones who got there because it was handed to them on a platter, are absolutely miserable.
Personally, I’d like to be as wealthy as, say, the Obamas. Two professional highly paid incomes and money from writing books? Financial security and the freedom to travel at will? Sign me up for that! But more wealth than that, I don’t see how you live with yourself, with what you need to do to yourself and to other people to achieve it.
You live with it by repressing anything negative you feel, until you end up repressing everything you feel.
It’s wildly unhealthy. I’ve a friend who worked as a therapist for the ultra-rich in the 90s. Most of them have so fundamentally lost touch with their own emotions–let alone the emotions of anyone else–that they live in a state of permanent dissociation.
If they weren’t the most powerful people in society, we would call that complex PTSD as a result of severe and sustained childhood trauma.
But they are the most powerful in society, so we all just kind of call it normal. Or, at best, we call it monstrous and inhuman, without recognizing the fundamental humanity that caused them to move down this path of exploitation, violence, and repression.
Systems just need to self-replicate and self-perpetuate, they don’t need to do anything else.
via https://ift.tt/2MOjiJy
star-anise:
just-a-zuki:
star-anise:
donna-dot-paella:
rabbitindisguise:
star-anise:
star-anise:
So “queer” isn’t just an identity that’s broadly inclusive because, I don’t know, we like big parties. There’s actually an underlying ethic, a queer theory, that has political implications.
Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.
That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.
It’s recognizing that something that harms or oppresses one of us is pretty likely to harm all of us, so we all benefit from taking it down together.
For everyone who’s like “Whoa, I was with you until you threw straight men in there”:
Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”
It’s the same way that men aren’t the primary intended beneficiaries of feminism, but part of the work of feminism is addressing and changing toxic masculinity. If you’re effective enough at changing the system, you change it for everyone.
Also getting really tired of that criticism of any activism that dares talk about how it might benefit Straight™ men
Maybe straight men not being as miserable … shouldn’t be an automatic negative, especially not if the whole idea before that addition was to benefit marginalized groups?
Also it’s not just homophobia, it’s toxic masculinity which is the manifestation of hating women so much it impacts their own gender, and also transphobia and transmisogyny, where any deviation from the gender assigned at birth is heavily policed with violence
I really disagree here, and not because I don’t think straight men should have more occasions to be vulnerable and emotional, but because they as a group benefit from the oppression of everyone else
I get it, of course they would in some ways know some positive changes in a less patriarchal/heteronormative society - but maybe let’s not forget who patriarchal/heteronormative society benefits to? Because like. A straight man who is vulnerable and softspoken won’t be as oppressed as a gay man, no matter said gay man’s personality!
I don’t think anybody thinks it’s a good thing straight men are miserable but like are they really? are they miserable? Compared to everyone else?
They’re the norm the queer movement deviates from!
Do they? Broadly, as a class? Is every single straight cis man benefiting from privilege more than every single gay cis man?
I think that men are promised the rewards of privilege. They are told that being homophobic and straight will make them fundamentally better than gay men. They are told that being male and masculine will make them fundamentally better than women. And yes, the people reaping the rewards are generally straight cis men.
But it’s like a pyramid scheme: Every member, when they join, is promised the INCREDIBLE REWARDS they could receive, if they only get a few people to join at a lower level than them! And some members ARE making absolute bank. But when you look at the balance sheet, you see that 90% of active members are earning absolutely no money, and meanwhile the top 1% are fucking millionaires.
I think that, yes, if you look into the lived experiences of men in our culture, masculinity is making them actively miserable. There’s a reason men are, on average, more depressed, more isolated, more violent, and more likely to die by suicide. “Toxic masculinity” wasn’t a term coined to talk about women’s experiences.
The straight-cis-men-always-win argument especially falls to pieces once you look outside the realm of sex and gender–there’s no arguing that things like class, money, race, immigration status, incarceration, disability, and mental health don’t also have huge impacts on peoples’ quality of life. There are a lot of ways queer people can have, comparatively, a lot of privilege compared to straight cis men.
So really, does it benefit us, as a group, to outcast and demonize groups of people who are fighting the same forces as us? Do we want to pit large swathes of the population against each other and stage the Oppression Olympics endlessly? Or do we want to recognize that it’s probably 99% of the population getting fucked over by the massively powerful people at the top and doing something about that?
I want to recruit straight cis men to be my allies, not typecast them as my enemies because I think that homophobia is the only kind of evil in the world.
When I said, “cops are oppressed under capitalism,” this is the kind of shit I mean. Oppressor/victim isn’t binary. I particularly like this ‘pyramid scheme’ conception of privilege.
Particularly because pyramid schemes rely on an endless chain of recruitment. The way to move slightly up the ladder is to have people under you. Just slide into a higher role…
Be a shift manager. Get promoted to Corporal. Move from floor staff to the sales desk. Make it onto the police force. Put all your effort into being the best little cog in the whole machine. Someday it will pay off. Someday you’ll move up high enough in the ranks. Oh, you’re still poor? Work harder. Get a better job.
Be a man. Catcall women. Get dates. Have a girlfriend. Have children. Produce an entire family of people who have to respect you as its patriarch! Oh, that’s not happening? You must not be manly enough.
It’s similar to the way colonialism works, where the children of one conquered country are used to fill the ranks of the army that invades the next one, because when colonialism has destroyed your country, being your oppressor’s footsoldier is one of the last viable careers left.
The biggest lie the system sells is that if you cooperate well enough, you’ll get to run the show someday. We have to have the wit and awareness to understand that the entire system is rigged, and we need to take apart the systems that dominate and control people, instead of just replacing the people on top.
Which is part of why I get very nervous about straight-white-cis-abled-man bashing. A lot of people don’t sound like they want people to not be treated badly based on demographic characteristics they have no control over; they just want to be the people wielding the whips.
star-anise:
just-a-zuki:
star-anise:
donna-dot-paella:
rabbitindisguise:
star-anise:
star-anise:
So “queer” isn’t just an identity that’s broadly inclusive because, I don’t know, we like big parties. There’s actually an underlying ethic, a queer theory, that has political implications.
Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.
That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.
It’s recognizing that something that harms or oppresses one of us is pretty likely to harm all of us, so we all benefit from taking it down together.
For everyone who’s like “Whoa, I was with you until you threw straight men in there”:
Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”
It’s the same way that men aren’t the primary intended beneficiaries of feminism, but part of the work of feminism is addressing and changing toxic masculinity. If you’re effective enough at changing the system, you change it for everyone.
Also getting really tired of that criticism of any activism that dares talk about how it might benefit Straight™ men
Maybe straight men not being as miserable … shouldn’t be an automatic negative, especially not if the whole idea before that addition was to benefit marginalized groups?
Also it’s not just homophobia, it’s toxic masculinity which is the manifestation of hating women so much it impacts their own gender, and also transphobia and transmisogyny, where any deviation from the gender assigned at birth is heavily policed with violence
I really disagree here, and not because I don’t think straight men should have more occasions to be vulnerable and emotional, but because they as a group benefit from the oppression of everyone else
I get it, of course they would in some ways know some positive changes in a less patriarchal/heteronormative society - but maybe let’s not forget who patriarchal/heteronormative society benefits to? Because like. A straight man who is vulnerable and softspoken won’t be as oppressed as a gay man, no matter said gay man’s personality!
I don’t think anybody thinks it’s a good thing straight men are miserable but like are they really? are they miserable? Compared to everyone else?
They’re the norm the queer movement deviates from!
Do they? Broadly, as a class? Is every single straight cis man benefiting from privilege more than every single gay cis man?
I think that men are promised the rewards of privilege. They are told that being homophobic and straight will make them fundamentally better than gay men. They are told that being male and masculine will make them fundamentally better than women. And yes, the people reaping the rewards are generally straight cis men.
But it’s like a pyramid scheme: Every member, when they join, is promised the INCREDIBLE REWARDS they could receive, if they only get a few people to join at a lower level than them! And some members ARE making absolute bank. But when you look at the balance sheet, you see that 90% of active members are earning absolutely no money, and meanwhile the top 1% are fucking millionaires.
I think that, yes, if you look into the lived experiences of men in our culture, masculinity is making them actively miserable. There’s a reason men are, on average, more depressed, more isolated, more violent, and more likely to die by suicide. “Toxic masculinity” wasn’t a term coined to talk about women’s experiences.
The straight-cis-men-always-win argument especially falls to pieces once you look outside the realm of sex and gender–there’s no arguing that things like class, money, race, immigration status, incarceration, disability, and mental health don’t also have huge impacts on peoples’ quality of life. There are a lot of ways queer people can have, comparatively, a lot of privilege compared to straight cis men.
So really, does it benefit us, as a group, to outcast and demonize groups of people who are fighting the same forces as us? Do we want to pit large swathes of the population against each other and stage the Oppression Olympics endlessly? Or do we want to recognize that it’s probably 99% of the population getting fucked over by the massively powerful people at the top and doing something about that?
I want to recruit straight cis men to be my allies, not typecast them as my enemies because I think that homophobia is the only kind of evil in the world.
When I said, “cops are oppressed under capitalism,” this is the kind of shit I mean. Oppressor/victim isn’t binary. I particularly like this ‘pyramid scheme’ conception of privilege.
Particularly because pyramid schemes rely on an endless chain of recruitment. The way to move slightly up the ladder is to have people under you. Just slide into a higher role…
Be a shift manager. Get promoted to Corporal. Move from floor staff to the sales desk. Make it onto the police force. Put all your effort into being the best little cog in the whole machine. Someday it will pay off. Someday you’ll move up high enough in the ranks. Oh, you’re still poor? Work harder. Get a better job.
Be a man. Catcall women. Get dates. Have a girlfriend. Have children. Produce an entire family of people who have to respect you as its patriarch! Oh, that’s not happening? You must not be manly enough.
It’s similar to the way colonialism works, where the children of one conquered country are used to fill the ranks of the army that invades the next one, because when colonialism has destroyed your country, being your oppressor’s footsoldier is one of the last viable careers left.
The biggest lie the system sells is that if you cooperate well enough, you’ll get to run the show someday. We have to have the wit and awareness to understand that the entire system is rigged, and we need to take apart the systems that dominate and control people, instead of just replacing the people on top.
Which is part of why I get very nervous about straight-white-cis-abled-man bashing. A lot of people don’t sound like they want people to not be treated badly based on demographic characteristics they have no control over; they just want to be the people wielding the whips.
via https://ift.tt/2MOjmcg
fromchaostocosmos:
intersex-ionality:
alarajrogers:
iamthedukeofurl:
Any analysis of Superman and Captain America should involve two main points.
1) They are every bit the caricature of honest goodness that they are said to be.
And
2) BEING a a caricature of honest goodness means not just fighting obvious villainy, but raging against institutional injustice, even when it comes from “Legitimate” sources.
There is a difference, however.
The Kent’s raised Clark with a strong moral compass, but also good sense. He’s very aware that, as Superman, anything he does comes with a tinge of Threat. He’s keenly aware that with the power he wields, the only way he can continue to operate is by appearing completely nonthreatening to the status quo. Unless he is preventing immediate, obvious harm, he has to be very careful with his intervention. He’ll see a city councilman skimming funds from schools, a factory illegally disposing of waste, or Cops inflating their quotas with bogus charges, and he’ll be outraged. But, Superman can’t do anything about those things. If he intervenes, people won’t see Superman protecting civilians from police abuse, they’ll see Superman Threatening A Cop. If Superman expresses any opinions besides the most milquetoast “Be Kind To One Another” stuff, it gets spun into “Scary Indestructible Alien Man Wants To Take Over The World”.
So, Superman takes all that rage, every injustice and abuse he sees, and those that he cannot solve as Superman, he gives to Clark Kent.
And behind the “Aw Shucks’ Kansas Farmboy affect, Clark Kent is RUTHLESS. He will pick apart your life and nail you sins the sky for all to see.
Like, everybody knows about Lois Lane, and she’s objectively the better journalist, but people always underestimate Clark. Those that remember anything about him usually think of him as harmless, the guy who comes to collect the statements your media people prepared, so you’re caught off-guard when the fangs come out. A Clark Kent interview goes like this:
First Question: Hello Police Chief Smith. So, how did you get involved in law enforcement?
Second Question: What are the key values that drive your police department?
Third Question: On September 14th, you called your officers together and told them to, and I quote “ Pull over every [racial slur] you can find out there. If they let you search, say you smell weed and bring them in. If they don’t, bring ‘em in for refusing to cooperate. Just get those [expletive deleted] in cuffs and paying fines, or else start looking for a new job”. Would you say this policy of deliberately targeting racial minorities is in line with the values you described earlier?”
And Clark Kent doesn’t stop after he gets his headline. It might end up on Page 3, but he’ll keep the story going until your career is torn to shreds and staked outside as a warning to others.
And then it’s back to human-interest stories and the feel-good beat until he selects his next target.
Superman is forced to overlook things, but he IS looking, and he won’t forget, and just because he’s not throwing you into the sun, doesn’t mean he intends to spare you.
Steve Rogers on the other hand will interrupt an interview to kick the shit out of a crooked real estate developer for driving people out of their homes. When arrested he’ll say “I’m sorry, how about we just chalk up the next time I save the world as community service”.
There’s a short story by Cory Doctorow called “Model Minority” (that doesn’t quite know whether it wants to be a fanfic or an expy; it renamed Superman to “American Eagle” but then continues to refer to Lois and Bruce) that goes into this. Superman saves a black man from police brutality and things spiral out of control to the point where Lois has to cut ties with him for her own safety and he has to go into hiding.
I think the strategy outlined by the OP would work a lot better for Superman and is also rather more in character in general, but I wonder, if he saw an act of police brutality right in front of him, would he be able to stop himself from intervening?
I think, and of course this is all in ideal circumstances, but it’s fiction so whatever. I think Superman would be able to intervene directly in acts of open police brutality simply by “helping” the police to make the arrest.
“Oh yes, officer, I saw you struggling to apprehend this man, and felt it was my civic duty to assist you. What did you say he is charged with, again?”
And should the officer not have a sufficiently meaningful excuse for the arrest, then Superman can either make a mental note of it, and offer the officer “company” back to the precinct, or possibly subtly remind the victim of their rights: you can’t be held without a charge, you can call a lawyer (and as a journalist AND superhero, he knows plenty to recommend and maybe has a business card on hand), you have to say, “I am invoking my fifth amendment right to remain silent. Please provide me with an attorney, as required by law” before you sit perfectly silent and still, you don’t have to sign anything, etc.
Delivered with his classic Boy Scout Charm, after he just helped the police apprehend a violent criminal and saved those Blue Lives that Matter so much, it would be possible to spin it.
Superman is meant to be the living embodiment of the obligation the Jewish people have to fix the world, he is Tikkun Olam in living flesh.
Captain America is the living embodiment of the Jewish willingness to fight and struggle. It is our “I will fight in synagogue parking lot” brought to life.
They were both written around the same time, but Superman was written by two Jewish teens and so I think with Superman because they were teens there is more optimism to him. A more sense youthfulness almost and fragility because there is also a more one to one of the Diasporic Jewish story going on with him.
Where as Captain America was being written by Jewish adults so there more of sense of him having seen the horrors of humanity, a sense of trauma, and Captain America was meant to a Golem who protects the Jewish people in a life threatening time. So he has to be ready to fight even if the fight is a verbal smack-down.
So I find with them two different, but very distinctive Jewish personalities essentially or methods of expressing Jewish philosophy, Jewish problem solving, and Jewish characteristics.
fromchaostocosmos:
intersex-ionality:
alarajrogers:
iamthedukeofurl:
Any analysis of Superman and Captain America should involve two main points.
1) They are every bit the caricature of honest goodness that they are said to be.
And
2) BEING a a caricature of honest goodness means not just fighting obvious villainy, but raging against institutional injustice, even when it comes from “Legitimate” sources.
There is a difference, however.
The Kent’s raised Clark with a strong moral compass, but also good sense. He’s very aware that, as Superman, anything he does comes with a tinge of Threat. He’s keenly aware that with the power he wields, the only way he can continue to operate is by appearing completely nonthreatening to the status quo. Unless he is preventing immediate, obvious harm, he has to be very careful with his intervention. He’ll see a city councilman skimming funds from schools, a factory illegally disposing of waste, or Cops inflating their quotas with bogus charges, and he’ll be outraged. But, Superman can’t do anything about those things. If he intervenes, people won’t see Superman protecting civilians from police abuse, they’ll see Superman Threatening A Cop. If Superman expresses any opinions besides the most milquetoast “Be Kind To One Another” stuff, it gets spun into “Scary Indestructible Alien Man Wants To Take Over The World”.
So, Superman takes all that rage, every injustice and abuse he sees, and those that he cannot solve as Superman, he gives to Clark Kent.
And behind the “Aw Shucks’ Kansas Farmboy affect, Clark Kent is RUTHLESS. He will pick apart your life and nail you sins the sky for all to see.
Like, everybody knows about Lois Lane, and she’s objectively the better journalist, but people always underestimate Clark. Those that remember anything about him usually think of him as harmless, the guy who comes to collect the statements your media people prepared, so you’re caught off-guard when the fangs come out. A Clark Kent interview goes like this:
First Question: Hello Police Chief Smith. So, how did you get involved in law enforcement?
Second Question: What are the key values that drive your police department?
Third Question: On September 14th, you called your officers together and told them to, and I quote “ Pull over every [racial slur] you can find out there. If they let you search, say you smell weed and bring them in. If they don’t, bring ‘em in for refusing to cooperate. Just get those [expletive deleted] in cuffs and paying fines, or else start looking for a new job”. Would you say this policy of deliberately targeting racial minorities is in line with the values you described earlier?”
And Clark Kent doesn’t stop after he gets his headline. It might end up on Page 3, but he’ll keep the story going until your career is torn to shreds and staked outside as a warning to others.
And then it’s back to human-interest stories and the feel-good beat until he selects his next target.
Superman is forced to overlook things, but he IS looking, and he won’t forget, and just because he’s not throwing you into the sun, doesn’t mean he intends to spare you.
Steve Rogers on the other hand will interrupt an interview to kick the shit out of a crooked real estate developer for driving people out of their homes. When arrested he’ll say “I’m sorry, how about we just chalk up the next time I save the world as community service”.
There’s a short story by Cory Doctorow called “Model Minority” (that doesn’t quite know whether it wants to be a fanfic or an expy; it renamed Superman to “American Eagle” but then continues to refer to Lois and Bruce) that goes into this. Superman saves a black man from police brutality and things spiral out of control to the point where Lois has to cut ties with him for her own safety and he has to go into hiding.
I think the strategy outlined by the OP would work a lot better for Superman and is also rather more in character in general, but I wonder, if he saw an act of police brutality right in front of him, would he be able to stop himself from intervening?
I think, and of course this is all in ideal circumstances, but it’s fiction so whatever. I think Superman would be able to intervene directly in acts of open police brutality simply by “helping” the police to make the arrest.
“Oh yes, officer, I saw you struggling to apprehend this man, and felt it was my civic duty to assist you. What did you say he is charged with, again?”
And should the officer not have a sufficiently meaningful excuse for the arrest, then Superman can either make a mental note of it, and offer the officer “company” back to the precinct, or possibly subtly remind the victim of their rights: you can’t be held without a charge, you can call a lawyer (and as a journalist AND superhero, he knows plenty to recommend and maybe has a business card on hand), you have to say, “I am invoking my fifth amendment right to remain silent. Please provide me with an attorney, as required by law” before you sit perfectly silent and still, you don’t have to sign anything, etc.
Delivered with his classic Boy Scout Charm, after he just helped the police apprehend a violent criminal and saved those Blue Lives that Matter so much, it would be possible to spin it.
Superman is meant to be the living embodiment of the obligation the Jewish people have to fix the world, he is Tikkun Olam in living flesh.
Captain America is the living embodiment of the Jewish willingness to fight and struggle. It is our “I will fight in synagogue parking lot” brought to life.
They were both written around the same time, but Superman was written by two Jewish teens and so I think with Superman because they were teens there is more optimism to him. A more sense youthfulness almost and fragility because there is also a more one to one of the Diasporic Jewish story going on with him.
Where as Captain America was being written by Jewish adults so there more of sense of him having seen the horrors of humanity, a sense of trauma, and Captain America was meant to a Golem who protects the Jewish people in a life threatening time. So he has to be ready to fight even if the fight is a verbal smack-down.
So I find with them two different, but very distinctive Jewish personalities essentially or methods of expressing Jewish philosophy, Jewish problem solving, and Jewish characteristics.
via https://ift.tt/2NK4ifC
girl-torture:
russianconcussion:
I really like what this physicist, Lamar Glover, has to say in Behind the Curve.
+ this part from Spiros Michalakis:
Incredibly good take which is really rare for these topics
girl-torture:
russianconcussion:
I really like what this physicist, Lamar Glover, has to say in Behind the Curve.
+ this part from Spiros Michalakis:
Incredibly good take which is really rare for these topics
via https://ift.tt/2NLoeys
mudmossmolly:
A northern dusky salamander (Desmognathus fuscus) posing for us during a salamander survey in a West Virginia stream. We took these photos on the last day of my internship in the genomics lab, where I was studying eDNA, or environmental DNA, a new science that has only just begun to truly take hold in conservation in the last decade!
eDNA can be extracted from many sources, including soil, water (even snow!), and even scat (poop!).
Why do we use eDNA? In this case, some species of aquatic (water-dwelling) animals are extremely cryptic, or hard to find.
By taking a sample of water, soil, etc. and matching eDNA within it to a known species, we can detect and confirm presence of that species without ever seeing the animal.
Imagine a river we think would make a good habitat for a species of concern, but murky conditions, pollution, traffic, protections, etc. make it too dangerous or inaccessible to do a full survey. We might use eDNA to confirm the presence of that species with water alone! It’s a very cool science.
We can also use eDNA from scat to determine the diet of an animal.
eDNA is also a noninvasive (meaning we don’t directly handle or disturb the animal) way of surveying.
In my lab, we were doing experiments that were actually focused on determining how accurate eDNA identification is for specific species of salamanders, in order to hopefully defend using it for future population studies.
I’m super grateful I got to learn so much about eDNA and genomics in general this summer!
Here is a bit more reading on it if you’re interested!
And here is another project, including a guide on how to collect it, that seems to be using volunteer efforts to compile local eDNA data—very cool!
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mudmossmolly:
A northern dusky salamander (Desmognathus fuscus) posing for us during a salamander survey in a West Virginia stream. We took these photos on the last day of my internship in the genomics lab, where I was studying eDNA, or environmental DNA, a new science that has only just begun to truly take hold in conservation in the last decade!
eDNA can be extracted from many sources, including soil, water (even snow!), and even scat (poop!).
Why do we use eDNA? In this case, some species of aquatic (water-dwelling) animals are extremely cryptic, or hard to find.
By taking a sample of water, soil, etc. and matching eDNA within it to a known species, we can detect and confirm presence of that species without ever seeing the animal.
Imagine a river we think would make a good habitat for a species of concern, but murky conditions, pollution, traffic, protections, etc. make it too dangerous or inaccessible to do a full survey. We might use eDNA to confirm the presence of that species with water alone! It’s a very cool science.
We can also use eDNA from scat to determine the diet of an animal.
eDNA is also a noninvasive (meaning we don’t directly handle or disturb the animal) way of surveying.
In my lab, we were doing experiments that were actually focused on determining how accurate eDNA identification is for specific species of salamanders, in order to hopefully defend using it for future population studies.
I’m super grateful I got to learn so much about eDNA and genomics in general this summer!
Here is a bit more reading on it if you’re interested!
And here is another project, including a guide on how to collect it, that seems to be using volunteer efforts to compile local eDNA data—very cool!
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