Renaissance Guy (Mobile)

Life Changing?

What does it take to change a life? To have such an impact on another person that it changes their default behaviors and life trajectory, even if subtly? Certainly it can be argued that it takes very little, since our behaviors are always being influenced by our surroundings. But what about a long-term difference? What does it take to really change someone?

The year 2007 was perhaps the most important and most impactful of my life. I say that 2007 was the year that my childhood ended. This may be a slight over exaggeration, but not by much. It was a year of drama and trauma, of new highs and extreme lows. In my personal history, the year 2007 stands out like 1914 in European history. It is a date I measure things from, even more so than my birthday.

That year contained both the best and worst days of my life to date. The worst day, July 20th, 2007, and the bad days that followed it, I have already written about. But what about the best day? What happened on that day?

January 5th, 2007 had all the hallmarks of a good day. I was on school holiday- summer holiday, in fact, since the Australian school calendar follows Australian seasons so that our main break comes around Christmas -and I was traveling. Being ever-curious and ever-precocious, I loved traveling, especially by plane.

All the mechanisms of air travel fascinated me: the terminals, with their lights and signs and displays, acting as literal gateways to every far flung exotic locale on the planet. Customs and security, with its fancy DHS eagles, and its sense of officiality, and finality, advertising that it once you cross this line, you have crossed some important threshold from which you could not simply return, as if somewhere, someone reading your story would be holding their breath while turning the page. And of course, the planes themselves, which not only seemed to defy physics in their flight, not only liked the world together, but did so in such comfort and luxury.

That day, we started early from the family farm in Indiana to the Indianapolis Airport, via a road that had enough dips and bumps that we called it affectionately “the rollercoaster road”. We arrived at Indianapolis Airport for our short flight to transfer at my all time favorite airport, Chicago O’hare, which I adore for its dinosaur skeleton, its Vienna beef hot dogs, and its inter-concourse tunnel, where I would stare up in wonder from the moving walkway at the ceiling light display. I was told that the abstract neon colors were meant to represent the aurora, but for my part, having seen both, I have always thought the lights at O’hare to be more impressive than the aurora.

We arrived in Orlando at about 8:00pm, which, to my then childish mind, was a kind of magical hour. Things only happened after 8:00 on special occasions- watching New Year’s fireworks or space shuttle launches on television, calls from relatives in different time zones. After 8:00pm was the time of big and exceptional things, and the fact that we were only now boarding the bus from the airport to Disney World only seemed to vindicate the feeling I had woken up with that morning that it was going to be a great day.

Much of the resort was already closed by the time we arrived. But even then, there was much excitement to be had. We found our rooms, and as we wound our way around the Port Orleans Resort, I remember drinking in every detail of the scenery and design, and thinking to myself about how much attention and intent must have gone onto adding all the little details and embellishments. At this time I used to enjoy drawing, but whenever I did, I would become obsessed with details and embellishments. I would draw an airplane, and become fixated on the precise curvature of the engines, the alignment of the ailerons, the number of windows depending on whether it was a Boeing 747 like the one we took to San Francisco or an Embraer like the one we took…

You get the idea. Details were important to me. For me to see that someone had paid enough attention to the details to add all these little decorative Easter eggs, like hidden Mickeys, or a plastic frog on a Lilly pad in a small pond beside the concrete path. To see these little acknowledgments of my attentiveness told me that other people had been paying at least as much attention as I had, which put me at ease, and made me feel welcome and safe, at a time when I had spent most of my life as a foreigner, and a great deal of my time at school being bullied.

Thus assured that I was in a place that was safe and well designed by people who thought like I did, I let loose, skipping happily along as I never did in school for fear of being mocked, and sang songs I had memorized from the inflight children’s “radio station” (which was actually just a recording loop) about fishing worms, the state of Michigan, and carps in tubs.

The next day, I was reunited with my Best Friend in the Whole Entire World, whom I knew from Australia, but who had recently moved to Denver. It was the first time we had seen each other since he had moved away. I had missed his going away party because, in what now seems like a foreshadowing of what was to come, I had been in the hospital with Acute Pan Sinusitis, and after having my immune system wiped out by the drugs, was stuck in protective quarantine.

Together, we tore up the parks, going on rides and eating Mickey out of house and home. This last point proved to be dire foreshadowing, as looking back I can say it was the first time that the earliest symptoms of the medical calamity that would consume my life just six months later were indisputably noticeable. In fact, the symptoms of hunger and thirst were so bad that they caused problems trying to eat off the Disney meal plan. It was the only bittersweet thing about the trip- that it was the last great experience of my life unmarried by the specter of disability and looming death. But that’s a story for another time.

So, back to the question at hand: what does it take to change a life? Was my trip life-changing? Did it change who I am as a person, or alter my future behavior or trajectory in a meaningful way? Hard to say. Despite picking a solidly philosophical topic I’m not willing to sit down for the requisite hours of navel gazing to try and formulate the probable alternate histories if that trip hadn’t gone just so.

It’s tempting, then, to brush it off and say that even though I definitely see that event as one of the high points of my existence, that it never changed who I am at my core. It certainly didn’t change the course of events that were about to happen, which were in retrospect so obviously already in motion. It would be easy to extrapolate that the whole event had no effect on me, but for the fact that I know of a counterexample.

The day itself, more than a decade in the past, has gotten old enough in my mind that parts of it have started to fade around the edges. I don’t, for example, remember which side of the two connecting rooms my brother and I slept in, and which side my parents slept in. The parts I do remember are as much vaguely connected vignettes as they are a consistent narrative, and correlate more to the things that struck me as important at the time than what might be important to the story now. Hence why I can’t tell you what rides we went on, but I can describe the exact configuration of the twisty straw that I had with my milkshake.

One of the things that I remember clearest about that day, one of the things that to this day will occasionally interrupt my stream of consciousness, was the in flight radio. In particular, I recall there being several songs about environmental themes. And I recall sitting there, consciously rethinking my point of view. My train of thought went something like this: The reason I’m hearing this song, which, though decent, isn’t artistically great, is because it’s about a cause, which is clearly important to whomever is picking songs to play.

The kind of causes that get songs written about them, and, despite artistic shortcomings, played constantly at children, are ones that are important to society at large: learning one’s ABCs, being prepared for emergencies, and national crises like a world war (Over There) or pandemic (there was a song about washing one’s hands that was circulated during the Mad Cow scare). That I am hearing this song indicates that it is viewed not just as something of idle interest, but as a crisis of immediate concern.

It was at that moment that I remember mentally upgrading the issue of environmentalism from something that I was merely passively sympathetic towards, to something which I actively supported where possible. Hearing that song on that trip changed my life. Or if it is melodramatic to say that hearing a song single handed lyrics changed my life trajectory, then at least it is accurate to say that hearing those songs at that time provoked me into a change in attitude and behavior.

Would I still have had such a moment of revelation on a different day? Probably, but I doubt I would have remembered it. But as to the question of what it takes to change a life, we are forced to consider how much effort it took for me to hear those songs. There is no good answer here. On the one hand, it took a massive amount of societal machinery to record, license, and select the song, and then see that it was played on the flight that I happened to be on. To do this purposely would require a massive conspiracy.

On the other hand, it requires no small number of miracles from a huge number of contributors to get me the iPad I’m writing on, and the web server I’m posting to, and massive amounts of effort to maintain the global system of communications that allow you to view my words, and yet I’d hardly argue that my writing here is the pinnacle of all of society thus far. Perhaps so, in a strictly epistemological, navel-gazing sense that is largely meaningless for the purpose of guiding future individual actions. But realistically, my authorial exercise here is only slightly more effort than recording my unpolished stream of consciousness.

The truth is, even when I can identify what it has taken in the past to change my own life, I can’t extrapolate that knowledge into a meaningful rule. It’s clearly not that hard, given that it’s happened so many times before, and on such flimsy pretenses. But it also clearly can’t be that easy, or else everyone would already be their best self.

People have in the past attempted to compliment me by insinuating that my writing, or my speeches at events, or my support, have changed their lives. Despite their intentions at flattery, I have generally been disinclined to believe them, on the grounds that, though I may take pride that my writing is decent, it is certainly not of a caliber great enough to be called life-changing. But upon reflection, perhaps it doesn’t need to be. Perhaps the bar isn’t nearly that high. Perhaps, I venture to hope, one does not need to be perfect to change another’s life for the better.

Personal Surveillance – Part 2

This is the second installment in a continued multi-part series entitled Personal Surveillance. To read the other parts once they become available, click here.

Our modern surveillance system is not the totalitarian paradigm foreseen by Orwell, but a decentralized, and in the strictest sense, voluntary, though practically compulsory network. The goal and means are different, but the ends, a society with total insight into the very thoughts of its inhabitants, are the same.

Which brings me to last week. Last week, I was approached by a parent concerned about the conduct of her daughter. Specifically, her daughter has one of the same diagnoses I do, and had been struggling awfully to keep to her regimen, and suffering as a result. When I was contacted the daughter had just been admitted to the hospital to treat the acute symptoms and bring her back from the brink. This state of affairs is naturally unsustainable, in both medical and epistemological terms. I was asked if there was any advice I could provide, from my experience of dealing with my own medical situation as a teenager, and in working closely with other teenagers and young adults.

Of course, the proper response depends inextricably upon the root cause of the problem. After all, treating what may be a form of self harm, whether intentional or not, which has been noted to be endemic to adolescents who have to execute their own medical regimen, or some other mental illness, with the kind of disciplinary tactics that might be suited to the more ordinary teenage rebellion and antipathy, would be not only ineffective and counterproductive, but dangerous. There are a myriad of different potential causes, many of which are mutually exclusive, all of which require different tactics, and none of which can be ruled out without more information.

I gave several recommendations, including the one I have been turning over in my head since. I recommended that this mother look into her daughter’s digital activities; into her social media, her messages, and her browser history. I gave the mother a list of things to look out for: evidence of bullying online or at school, signs that the daughter had been browsing sites linked to mental illness, in particular eating disorders and depression, messages to her friends complaining about her illness or medical regimen, or even a confession that she was willfully going against it. The idea was to try and get more information to contextualize her actions, and that this would help her parents help her.

After reflecting for some time, I don’t feel bad about telling the mother to look through private messages. The parents are presumably paying for the phone, and it’s generally accepted that parents have some leeway to meddle in children’s private lives, especially when it involves medical issues. What bothers me isn’t any one line being crossed. What bothers me is this notion of looking into someone’s entire life like this.

That is, after all, the point here. The mother is trying to pry into her daughter’s whole life at once, into her mind, to figure out what makes her tick, why she does what she does, and what she is likely to do in the future. Based on the information I was provided, it seemed justified; even generous. As described, the daughter’s behavior towards her health is at best negligent, and at worst suggests she is unstable and a danger to herself. The tactics described, sinister though they are, are still preferable to bringing down the boot-heel of discipline or committing her to psychiatric care if neither may be warranted.

This admittedly presupposes that intervention is necessary in any case, in effect presuming guilt. In this instance, it was necessary, because the alternative of allowing the daughter to continue her conduct, which was, intentional or not, causing medical harm and caused her to be hospitalized, was untenable. At least, based on the information I had. But even such information was certainly enough to be gravely concerned, if not enough to make a decision on a course of action.

The goal, in this case, was as benevolent as possible: to help the daughter overcome whatever it was that landed her in this crisis in the first place. Sometimes such matters truly are a matter of doing something “for their own good”. But such matters have to be executed with the utmost kindness and open-mindedness. Violating someone’s privacy may or may not be acceptable under certain circumstances, but certainly never for petty vendettas.

It would not, for example, be acceptable for the mother to punish the daughter for a unkind comment made to a friend regarding the mother. Even though this might suggest that some discipline is in order to solve the original problem, as, without other evidence to the contrary, it suggests a pattern of rebellion that could reasonably be extrapolated to include willful disobedience of one’s medical regimen, such discipline needs to be meted out for the original violation, not for one that was only discovered because of this surveillance.

Mind you, I’m not just talking out of my hat here. This is not just a philosophical notion, but a legal one as well. The fifth amendment, and more broadly the protections against self-incrimination, are centered around protecting the core personhood- a person’s thoughts and soul -from what is known as inquisitorial prosecution. Better scholars than I have explained why this cornerstone is essential to our understanding of justice and morality, but, to quickly summarize: coercing a person by using their private thoughts against them deprives them of the ability to make their own moral choices, and destroys the entire notion of rights, responsibilities, and justice.

Lawyers will be quick to point out that the fifth amendment as written doesn’t apply here per se (and as a matter of law, they’d be right). But we know that our own intentions are to look into the daughter’s life as a whole, her thoughts and intentions, which is a certain kind of self incrimination, even if you would be hard pressed to write a law around it. We are doing this not to find evidence of new wrongs to right, but to gain context which is necessary for the effective remedy of problems that are already apparent, that were already proven. By metaphor: we are not looking to prosecute the drug user for additional crimes, but to complete rehabilitation treatment following a previous conviction.

In government, the state can circumvent the problems posed to fact-finding by the fifth amendment by granting immunity to the testifying witness so that anything they say can not be used against them, as though they had never said it, neutralizing self-incrimination. In our circumstances, it is imperative that the information gathered only be used as context for the behaviors we already know about. I tried to convey this point in my recommendations to the mother in a way that also avoided implying that I expected she would launch an inquisition at the first opportunity.

Of course, this line of thinking is extremely idealistic. Can a person really just ignore a social taboo, or minor breach, and carry on unbiased and impartial in digging through someone’s entire digital life? Can that person who has been exposed to everything the subject has ever done, but not lived any of it, even make an objective judgment? The law sweeps this question under the rug, because it makes law even more of an epistemological nightmare than it already is, and in practical terms probably doesn’t matter unless we are prepared to overhaul our entire constitutional system. But it is a pertinent question for understanding these tactics.

The question of whether such all-inclusive surveillance of our digital lives can be thought to constitute self-incrimination cannot be answered in a blog post, and is unlikely to be settled in the foreseeable future. The generation which is now growing up, which will eventually have grown up with nothing else but the internet, will, I am sure, be an interesting test case. It is certainly not difficult to imagine that with all the focus on privacy and manipulation of online data that we will see a shift in opinions, so that parts of one’s online presence will be thought to be included as part of one’s mind. Or perhaps, once law enforcement catches up to the 21st century, we will see a subtle uptick in the efficacy of catching minor crimes and breaches of taboo, possibly before they even happen.

Personal Surveillance – Part 1

This is the first installment in a multi-part series entitled Personal Surveillance. To read the other parts once they become available, click here.

George Orwell predicted, among many other things, a massive state surveillance apparatus. He wasn’t wrong; we certainly have that. But I’d submit that it’s also not the average person’s greatest threat to privacy. There’s the old saying that the only thing protecting citizens from government overreach is government inefficiency, and in this case there’s something to that. Surveillance programs are terrifyingly massive in their reach, but simply aren’t staffed well enough to parse everything. This may change as algorithms become more advanced in sifting through data, but at the moment, we aren’t efficient enough to have a thought police.

The real danger to privacy isn’t what a bureaucrat is able to pry from an unwilling suspect, but what an onlooker is able to discern from an average person without any special investigative tools or legal duress. The average person is generally more at risk from stalkers than surveillance. Social media is especially dangerous in this regard, and the latest scandals surrounding Cambridge Analytica, et. al. are a good example of how social media can be used for nefarious purposes.

Yet despite lofty and varied criticism, I am willing to bet the overall conclusion of this latest furor: the eventual consensus will be that, while social media may be at fault, its developers are not guilty of intentional malice, but rather of pursuing misaligned incentives, combined with an inability to keep up, whether through laziness or not grasping the complete picture soon enough, with the accelerating pace with which our lives have become digitized.

Because that is the root problem. Facebook and its ilk started as essentially decentralized contact lists and curated galleries, and twitter and its facsimiles started as essentially open-ended messaging services, but they have evolved into so much more. Life happens on the Internet nowadays.

In harkening back to the halcyon days before the scandal du jour, older people have called attention to the brief period between the widespread adoption of television and the diversification; the days when there were maybe a baker’s dozen channels. In such times, we are told, people were held together by what was on TV. The political issues of the day were chosen by journalists, and public discourse shaped almost solely by the way they were presented on those few channels. Popular culture, we are told, was shaped in much the same way, so that there was always a baseline of commonality.

Whether or not this happened in practice, I cannot say. But I think the claim about those being the halcyon days before all this divide and subdivide are backwards. On the contrary, I would submit that those halcyon days were the beginning of the current pattern, as people began to adapt to the notion that life is a collective enterprise understood through an expansive network. Perhaps that time was still a honeymoon phase of sorts. Or perhaps the nature of this emerging pattern of interconnectedness is one of constant acceleration, like a planet falling into a black hole, slowly, imperceptibly at first, but always getting faster.

But getting back to the original point, in addition to accelerating fragmentation, we are also seeing accelerated sharing of information, which is always, constantly being integrated, woven into a more complete mosaic narrative. Given this, it would be foolish to think that we could be a part of it without our own information being woven into the whole. Indeed, it would be foolish to think that we could live in a world so defined by interconnectedness and not be ourselves part of the collective.

Life, whether we like it or not, is now digital. Social media, in the broadest sense, is the lenses through which current events are now projected onto the world, regardless of whether or not social media was built for or to withstand this purpose. Participation is compulsory (that is, under compulsion, if not strictly mandatory) to be a part of modern public life. And to this point, jealous scrutiny of one’s internet presence is far more powerful than merely collecting biographical or contact information, such as looking one up in an old fashioned directory.

Yet society has not adapted to this power. We have not adapted to treat social media interactions with the same dignity with which we respect, for example, conversations between friends in public. We recognize that a person following us and listening in while we were in public would be a gross violation of our privacy, even if it might skirt by the letter of the law*. But trawling back through potentially decades of interactions online, is, well… we haven’t really formulated a moral benchmark.

This process is complicated by the legitimate uses of social media as a sort of collective memory. As more and more mental labor is unloaded onto the Internet, the importance of being able to call up some detail from several years ago becomes increasingly important. Take birthdays, for example. Hardly anyone nowadays bothers to commit birthdays to memory, and of the people I know, increasingly few keep private records, opting instead to rely on Facebook notifications to send greetings. And what about remembering other events, like who was at that great party last year, or the exact itinerary of last summer’s road trip?

Human memory fades, even more quickly now that we have machines to consult, and no longer have to exercise our own powers of recognizance. Trawling through a close friend’s feed in order to find the picture of the both of you from Turks and Caicos, so that you can get it framed as a present, is a perfectly legitimate, even beneficial, use of their otherwise private, even intimate, data, which would hardly be possible if that data were not available and accessible. The modern social system- our friendships, our jobs, our leisure -rely on this accelerating flow of information. To invoke one’s privacy even on a personal level seems now to border on the antisocial.

Entitlements

I am decidedly upset because of what happened a few weeks ago as I was hassled in public at my local theater because of my disability. At a bag check, immediately after several people, including my able-bodied family were passed over with no more than a cursory inspection, I was stopped and briefly detained. I was told that I would not be allowed in with the contents of my bag. I explained that the items which she had indicated were medically necessary. The woman persisted, insisting that it was house policy, to which I replied that denying me access over a matter of medical necessity where it pertained to a legally recognized physical disability would be a blatant case of discrimination and a clear violation of the law. Or I tried to; I was flustered by her unusually pugnacious attitude, and the crowd that was gathering behind me.

After a few more moments of back and forth she switched to saying that while I might be allowed to bring in my backpack, I would certainly have to dump out the contents of my water bottle, which I also need for medical purposes. I was initially prepared to accept this on the assumption that it was a matter of security (this is, after all, what I do at TSA; I empty my water bottle before screening and refill it after at a public fountain) until she added the suggestion that I could purchase water at the concession stand; that this was a matter of commercial policy. That’s a horse of a different color. After all, I need my water. If I’m not able to refill it for free, then I’m being forced to pay because of my medical condition. And of course, when one is compelled to pay extra because one is disabled, that’s discrimination.

I tried explaining this. The lady seemed to relent on the water, but then demanded that I prove that I’m disabled and need these things. This is a trap, for two reasons. First, it’s essentially impossible for a person to positively prove that they need something to survive and be healthy to someone who is determined to be skeptical. To use an intentionally ludicrous example: Sure, you say you need oxygen, but have you tried going without it? Maybe you should try not breathing for a while and then get back to me. So asking someone to prove they’re disabled isn’t so much an honest question as a remarkably effective logical fallacy used to browbeat people.

The other reason this is a trap relates to HIPPA. Legally*, medical information is confidential and privileged, unless and until the patient reveals it voluntarily. Once the information is disclosed, however, it’s fair game. Kinda, sorta. It gets complicated real fast, and comes down to the comparatively squishy world of case law, reasonableness and intent. But it does mean that they can try and argue, based on whatever bits of medical trivia they happen to know, that they know your disease better than you, and they can (try to) say you don’t need whatever specific thing you’re asking for.

Usually, this is a moot point, because HIPPA is very clear that a person can’t be coerced to reveal their confidential medical information. The interpretation of coercion is broad enough that it could reasonably include requiring disclosure of medical issues to receive disability accommodations. The logic here is that if you are, in fact, disabled, that either option results in your rights being violated; either your right to equal opportunity or your right to privacy.

As a result, most institutions have a policy of not asking at all and only acting on what you give them. So, at most places, if you tell them you need a water bottle, and you haven’t given them any reason to disbelieve you (i.e. you haven’t mentioned a specific diagnosis that they think they’re familiar with), they won’t bother you. But apparently this lady didn’t get the memo.

I showed her the Medic Alert bracelet that I wear just to get her to let me go. Of course, I didn’t tell her that the bracelet, which is a third party nonprofit, wasn’t particularly more legitimate as proof than my backpack, which is a design given by another nonprofit to families with children diagnosed with one of my issues. The truth is that there is no universal, or even officially sanctioned, form of proof, since that too would either violate privacy by being tailored to specific diagnoses, or would have to be so broad as to give every person carrying an EpiPen personal aides, full access to handicap parking, free motorized wheelchairs, and every other accommodation in history.

I did politely tell her, because at this point I was growing rapidly annoyed with her attitude, that asking me to reveal my diagnosis and to try and prove it was a violation of my HIPPA rights. And since I’m the only person being required to disclose, is still discrimination. She shook her head indignantly, and tried to justify to me, claiming that she had encountered many other people who had claimed to need various things for medical reasons, but didn’t really need them.

I kept my mouth more or less shut, because I couldn’t at the time think of a polite way to respond; to suggest that it was quite possible that some of those people, though perhaps not all, did in fact need as they said, and that rather than catch the guilty, she had merely browbeaten the innocent into bending their medical protocol and risking their health in the process, as has happened to many I have met. I did not retort that her finding a way to reconcile her employer’s policy and federal law is distinctly not my problem, nor is it my problem to speak on behalf of everyone who might need disability accommodations to bring her up to speed.

If ever I seem to act entitled, it is because, as a matter of fact, the world does owe me. The world owes me not because I have suffered pain in the past, or because I have been discriminated against in a society that is supposed to avoid such things, and punish violators. Although it might be nice to receive some recognition for the struggles I have gone through, I am not so naive and petty as to think that the world is fair, and that I am entitled to compensation, even if I might deserve it. I am, however, entitled to my rights, and to my dignity. I believe that I am entitled to going out in public without being accosted and interrogated. I do not think this is too much to ask.

*Obligatory reminder: I am not a lawyer. And while I do my best to always be right, if you’re having actual legal issues, you should consult an actual lawyer. Which I am not.

Project Candlabra

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 182) hdxm
 183) dpfj
 184) caau
 185) hjis
 186) hkmr
 187) ydhf
 188) dpoj
 189) hdrp
 190) wcwv
 191) zttz
 192) gacv
 193) ubie
 194) skhx
 195) njjp
 196) ukmh
 197) casx
 198) nshy
 199) mjou
 200) nign
 201) lnaq
 202) usnb
 203) poqp
 204) vgag
 205) hvuh
 206) loll
 207) kguy
 208) kbop
 209) sqow
 210) kyse
 211) tmvn
 212) znmx
 213) twlk
 214) wmlb
 215) dgtn
 216) nfkb
 217) lppb
 218) dcds
 219) byfo
 220) vrwe
 221) hqjz
 222) djac
 223) xksv
 224) mahe
 225) ahoa
 226) zitu
 227) dflz
 228) wujl
 229) uoor
 230) fmqn
 231) sufy
 232) wvxl
 233) sksv
 234) cqbl
 235) bonn
 236) ljbo
 237) qqlr
 238) sssg
 239) yinp
 240) qmqo
 241) hxhf
 242) erix
 243) bodk
 244) yuvf
 245) cpla
 246) klcp
 247) ogdi
 248) puzl
 249) mopl
 250) xjth
 251) bgls
 252) lhbe
 253) jdua
 254) mude
 255) pqxn
 256) eeju
 257) qiri
 258) oomj
 259) xgar
 260) daxc
 261) sevu
 262) ybqa
 263) azes
 264) kwng
 265) nkrz
 266) pnfd
 267) cyqe
 268) fhqf
 269) xrzp
 270) wkrd
 271) ntws
 272) jcdu
 273) iyya
 274) gzmu
 275) brgb
 276) osis
 277) gbsj
 278) fbqm
 279) hoaj
 280) wxkk
 281) uhxm
 282) lhpd
 283) kykw
 284) tuwz
 285) dpgm
 286) xpmt
 287) hstw
 288) mbns
 289) zqmr
 290) tdji
 291) gsqk
 292) vdbi
 293) hyya
 294) abhz
 295) tqbc
 296) nxin
 297) aucs
 298) yxev
 299) uqvc
 300) erva
 301) zsph
 302) pgmz
 303) kzpn
 304) bfri
 305) abxq
 306) xsms
 307) hnjt
 308) jljq
 309) avdt
 310) bgqr
 311) pncz
 312) wvxx
 313) mxna
 314) jtce
 315) mayp
 316) coys
 317) gxuj
 318) tgrm
 319) mwoz
 320) loou
 321) ygrv
 322) ucbf
 323) ajyb
 324) xkwt
 325) jmrr
 326) ydym
 327) ngei
 328) cnqi
 329) enuq
 330) mshm
 331) cvpd
 332) ppiw
 333) ybpf
 334) glnk
 335) ryxk
 336) ntzy
 337) wlam
 338) bjmh
 339) obqc
 340) ueva
 341) rcvy
 342) aawk
 343) vsjx
 344) cbwf
 345) ljqw
 346) zses
 347) halw
 348) pmyp
 349) ogad
 350) qxvu
 351) ayll
 352) qirq
 353) racy
 354) nvvk
 355) tkdd
 356) fkua
 357) ylqg
 358) wbtq
 359) knir
 360) ixmb
 361) rkch
 362) vwyp
 363) ooxr
 364) ecif
 365) jnnz
 366) arqz
 367) rjft
 368) iwrn
 369) ceyu
 370) lzmc
 371) knaa
 372) ksnx
 373) cpsq
 374) wgva
 375) urpz
 376) hsdb
 377) rnnd
 378) lcno
 379) wvci
 380) cdnh
 381) jyoe
 382) dwqt
 383) jckz
 384) xbkm
 385) abjr
 386) fjgs
 387) srhc
 388) ugxg
 389) cwuf
 390) puva
 391) evhv
 392) ebvs
 393) suan
 394) jgwk
 395) wqhe
 396) tkmg
 397) iyap
 398) ywws
 399) godb
 400) upzn
 401) zvsx
 402) pbzp
 403) wmka
 404) ebyk
 405) fnnh
 406) otys
 407) kkzm
 408) afgf
 409) nnnq
 410) ddqr
 411) rxcn
 412) lgvn
 413) ztec
 414) htim
 415) iweq
 416) vkcv
 417) qcvn
 418) pguz
 419) wgdj
 420) xwjy
 421) rnyb
 422) pwzi
 423) xllt
 424) gzzx
 425) hxks
 426) iuai
 427) dpfi
 428) aadw
 429) djps
 430) pdpt
 431) ejbz
 432) rrtz
 433) jwxg
 434) incw
 435) mmuk
 436) thkv
 437) zlrc
 438) viiu
 439) ozkg
 440) jcap
 441) vykf
 442) biau
 443) aaal
 444) tqxx
 445) saql
 446) kdjr
 447) irhc
 448) eghn
 449) cjvu
 450) jsam
 451) cojz
 452) ogah
 453) fnfu
 454) xylu
 455) hcur
 456) ixpz
 457) gtql
 458) wseq
 459) evke
 460) lzsv
 461) dfnk
 462) zzzr
 463) vrez
 464) yfiq
 465) fpaa
 466) xvux
 467) hvgn
 468) hdpi
 469) dpia
 470) rvim
 471) ldwf
 472) vzyp
 473) kfgs
 474) xbjc
 475) rfpz
 476) rgpm
 477) iewu
 478) irxb
 479) wukd
 480) amqs
 481) ppcq
 482) vihv
 483) qnbe
 484) tncb
 485) xdzm
 486) trbl
 487) hwlt
 488) gkaf
 489) lffl
 490) iann
 491) dwxh
 492) lqvt
 493) ozpw
 494) tltm
 495) ujvj
 496) cgom
 497) vzng
 498) pemg
 499) cpiq
 500) hkut
 501) mlaj
 502) nqvk
 503) wsgd
 504) dnyh
 505) cbrm
 506) hkrk
 507) rcnj
 508) mnmd
 509) leyj
 510) qjwb
 511) nvjp
 512) epre
 513) dhvb
 514) lvhi
 515) mjtw
 516) rmbf
 517) myen
 518) uwvj
 519) vctf
 520) gepo
 521) myyk
 522) eduo
 523) scji
 524) rvhn
 525) efid
 526) tnev
 527) xpyr
 528) zuuu
 529) duud
 530) tavc
 531) mhor
 532) kewb
 533) auby
 534) tvli
 535) mboc
 536) vptv
 537) ztmg
 538) qfev
 539) ieac
 540) qtdx
 541) lwea
 542) djzc
 543) ngti
 544) dewm
 545) ntya
 546) hait
 547) kzzc
 548) mcqc
 549) ocbp
 550) velg
 551) lhrg
 552) xkbh
 553) bctw
 554) wwsx
 555) gbwg
 556) whgr
 557) vvng
 558) eybg
 559) uiuc
 560) cddt
 561) agja
 562) wpfc
 563) rwjy
 564) iils
 565) rdhx
 566) pqyx
 567) ppbx
 568) loza
 569) okui
 570) hipy
 571) cofm
 572) kdrm
 573) gahs
 574) aesb
 575) lwwh
 576) msbu
 577) yfbh
 578) yfny
 579) jfpp
 580) tmvo
 581) gibf
 582) bmko
 583) jlmh
 584) udrp
 585) xrmg
 586) aotu
 587) hlsg
 588) laox
 589) orjn
 590) tank
 591) zulz
 592) rmdf
 593) achr
 594) pyda
 595) slsf
 596) oyeo
 597) wywu
 598) zsge
 599) hvzc
 600) ncpm
 601) wsou
 602) baes
 603) zbaj
 604) dyqt
 605) zygb
 606) wlch
 607) fpts
 608) lrbe
 609) ayql
 610) pnsx
 611) hnko
 612) nbxr
 613) quax
 614) sora
 615) dbbv
 616) ylqe
 617) xmku
 618) txcf
 619) ybzp
 620) ygrq
 621) mhgs
 622) zqum
 623) egsk
 624) zqpz
 625) pxht
 626) smsk
 627) yfzt
 628) degb
 629) qfcg
 630) eskz
 631) acab
 632) kfxg
 633) kllf
 634) rsra
 635) ncja
 636) quna
 637) juxv
 638) yqsq
 639) dwpk
 640) emcy
 641) qpwq
 642) rlkh
 643) abjg
 644) djui
 645) advp
 646) ohsu
 647) tqka
 648) sqbl
 649) wpgd
 650) zfun
 651) ocie
 652) vcgg
 653) ohim
 654) ppbf
 655) qneq
 656) gthh
 657) bvhg
 658) smvf
 659) dvpn
 660) ihjr
 661) dxlc
 662) qtgv
 663) xaec
 664) ayue
 665) ypug
 666) meww
 667) rujv
 668) jqve
 669) vgcm
 670) lmiy
 671) ulju
 672) gpjc
 673) zuom
 674) yukn
 675) jzdl
 676) iwwu
 677) phgj
 678) dxpi
 679) ldjc
 680) umwl
 681) vxdh
 682) bejr
 683) bkxs
 684) oywr
 685) ckyo
 686) uckq
 687) tnvc
 688) zzmh
 689) asvi
 690) hhey
 691) xzon
 692) uirz
 693) kwun
 694) joed
 695) ggvk
 696) ykkf
 697) vzqm
 698) yxtt
 699) ubjz
 700) rpkr
 701) gkex
 702) juuh
 703) dxzi
 704) pcrq
 705) bszw
 706) otcu
 707) ncad
 708) jqyo
 709) cscg
 710) lwvw
 711) udsa
 712) hllm
 713) zwzw
 714) zmhj
 715) yfno
 716) hkjj
 717) yujz
 718) tgab
 719) xjxl
 720) fqsc
 721) qvma
 722) uklh
 723) irre
 724) pbnl
 725) pkvy
 726) tsic
 727) mxyu
 728) guat
 729) ikhx
 730) fvoy
 731) aedy
 732) byug
 733) espr
 734) ynnb
 735) ibyy
 736) fgjo
 737) zsct
 738) xnrh
 739) rbmc
 740) epqr
 741) nbjq
 742) gesk
 743) kzrf
 744) epqb
 745) pexx
 746) lizq
 747) ukqt
 748) imtb
 749) tbqy
 750) nwsj
 751) cyjr
 752) prmf
 753) wgmm
 754) hlrt
 755) ivsr
 756) ohqy
 757) hagj
 758) mnvc
 759) cqdd
 760) wber
 761) fhri
 762) jmem
 763) spwe
 764) gdni
 765) xtnl
 766) uxvp
 767) kbiv
 768) yktm
 769) nwkw
 770) xbfa
 771) csfy
 772) crdb
 773) hhmc
 774) kfwz
 775) lyps
 776) swge
 777) bjmc
 778) fvkf
 779) ejnq
 780) fpar
 781) mtlz
 782) moke
 783) ovyo
 784) yuad
 785) vbdn
 786) igmo
 787) pbkq
 788) laej
 789) taeo
 790) zivs
 791) qfqc
 792) yfdd
 793) ygkr
 794) dhlm
 795) ciwj
 796) unbl
 797) nhtd
 798) zoht
 799) mgop
 800) sbsn
 801) zaxu
 802) onbk
 803) wfll
 804) zqjs
 805) becq
 806) tkcy
 807) mnan
 808) xijy
 809) lhdn
 810) nhon
 811) ovkz
 812) xqhy
 813) nrjq
 814) vhgi
 815) vboh
 816) dfys
 817) mdrh
 818) tgro
 819) bvgp
 820) nsol
 821) qnmu
 822) vgjs
 823) sgyu
 824) xtcb
 825) htei
 826) kkyo
 827) liel
 828) clol
 829) tyol
 830) ctxg
 831) rxua
 832) isbc
 833) omhz
 834) ailg
 835) viwc
 836) kzjw
 837) jttw
 838) tvod
 839) fcqd
 840) uxel
 841) lrwl
 842) ylgr
 843) nmcn
 844) edgv
 845) qsav
 846) lhpq
 847) fyya
 848) hhrk
 849) cyuj
 850) yrsg
 851) ewwn
 852) rivy
 853) wcsc
 854) jewe
 855) dzsi
 856) hxmd
 857) jvlo
 858) qstw
 859) gusw
 860) hsks
 861) kpxu
 862) rinm
 863) khvm
 864) oith
 865) kkrb
 866) fvbf
 867) myoe
 868) ervd
 869) pbbd
 870) nebj
 871) devi
 872) oqtu
 873) ejjw
 874) ofsp
 875) wqff
 876) beqz
 877) fbab
 878) smdt
 879) lvkf
 880) iqgm
 881) fozd
 882) xahi
 883) fuzh
 884) annb
 885) zfkf
 886) jbwe
 887) savo
 888) cyjv
 889) lrta
 890) jajp
 891) ezwd
 892) hhpt
 893) yzhz
 894) afbc
 895) gnln
 896) tvbk
 897) rors
 898) fags
 899) ugyz
 900) usmj
 901) stel
 902) qipq
 903) ckis
 904) spxn
 905) rqcv
 906) nnhq
 907) qdll
 908) wqbf
 909) uion
 910) ondx
 911) cuaq
 912) kemg
 913) snbr
 914) dsry
 915) kxye
 916) ajew
 917) vtpf
 918) trqi
 919) iqqw
 920) bjsk
 921) ewhb
 922) tims
 923) hblo
 924) ongy
 925) lhwx
 926) lqyp
 927) ifwk
 928) oknl
 929) qcob
 930) gfmb
 931) qnbd
 932) vuzc
 933) ebqy
 934) qmal
 935) smsm
 936) zkax
 937) ivfa
 938) jlkq
 939) oikm
 940) qoef
 941) lrwz
 942) dpfw
 943) zkzs
 944) kuuc
 945) dfko
 946) eipj
 947) fbcs
 948) wrlz
 949) ctey
 950) covl
 951) atzd
 952) scme
 953) ktoc
 954) akfy
 955) tbfd
 956) skgj
 957) dgpz
 958) eqgz
 959) aboz
 960) vhgr
 961) nxdn
 962) hjtq
 963) ivyn
 964) dxgc
 965) vafm
 966) dode
 967) twpp
 968) gtfn
 969) ojsl
 970) jpea
 971) uohe
 972) nqdv
 973) hydf
 974) qagw
 975) zfit
 976) avhi
 977) bfwe
 978) zron
 979) toeo
 980) pkmf
 981) nuur
 982) kwae
 983) ufre
 984) wcmw
 985) miow
 986) krws
 987) acer
 988) axuo
 989) wtyq
 990) prht
 991) fvkc
 992) fpvl
 993) slbz
 994) jorl
 995) iyog
 996) zawt
 997) caqw
 998) wlms
 999) plwk

MESSAGE ENDS

My Experiences With Guns

Note: This post talks about guns, and some of my experiences with them and opinions about them, some of which are, let’s say, charged. This post may not be appropriate for everyone. Reader discretion is advised.

I have a few different stories about guns. The first come from Australia. Most Americans are vaguely aware that Australia has adopted fairly tight regulations around guns as a consequence of a mass shooting several years ago. It does indeed have tight restrictions, but it is indeed still quite possible to own guns in Australia. I know this because my mother shot competitively while we lived there. She applied and was granted a license to own and shoot pistols for sport. She was actually quite good at it.

The process involved plenty of paperwork and questions. It also involved having a new safe installed in our house under close supervision to make sure it was properly bolted to the wall, and couldn’t be accessed improperly. But even as a foreign immigrant and a mere amateur, her permit was granted. Of course, after she got her license, she had to use it often enough to prove that she was in fact shooting for sport. As a child I spent time at pistol clubs and shooting arenas watching my mother compete.

Occasionally we would be subject to police inspections to see that my mother’s pistols were being stored according to regulation. The officers were perfectly courteous about the whole affair, and often gave me and my brother tokens, like coloring pages and trading cards featuring glossy color photographs of police helicopters, and the off-road vehicles they used in the outback.

Not everyone was satisfied with the way things worked. Many of the people we met a the various pistol clubs grumbled about the restrictions, and more broadly, the vilification of their hobby. Several others, mostly schoolmates and friends of schoolmates, thought that the restrictions weren’t enough; that there was no reason for anyone outside of the military to have a gun (our local police, when they carried weapons, mostly used tasers when on ordinary patrol, and even this was widely seen as too intimidating for police), and certainly no reason to keep one at home.

The balance struck by the law was a compromise. Very few were completely happy, but almost everyone agreed that it was preferable to one extreme or the other. Those who would shoot for sport could still do so, albeit with some safety precautions, and checks to prevent the notion of sport from becoming a loophole. Those who lived in the outback, and were in danger from wildlife, or too far away from settlements to rely on police, were still permitted arms to defend themselves. However, one could not simply decide to purchase a gun on a mere whim.

My second story, which is quite a bit longer, was several years later, on an unassuming Friday in December, almost four years after moving back to the United States. Like most days, I was sick, more reeling than recovering from a recurrent sinus infection that had knocked me off my feet for most of the first semester. I had slept through most of the morning, but after a hearty brunch felt well enough to try my hand going into school for the afternoon. My first sign that something might be amiss was a news alert; a national headline flagged for my attention because it was local. Police were responding to an incident at an elementary school in neighboring Newtown. There were no details to be had at that exact moment, so I shuffled out the door towards school.

My second sign that something was wrong were the police cars parked around the school building. I was stopped getting out of the car, by the police officer I knew from middle school DARE sessions. He shouted from where he stood behind the squad car, which was positioned between the curb and the school doors, as if to barricade the entrance, and told me that the school was on lockdown.

I hesitated, car door still open, and asked if it was about whatever was going on in Newtown. His face stiffened, and he asked what I knew. I explained the vague news alert. After a moment’s hesitation, he said that there had been an attack, and it was possible that there was a second gunman. Hence the lockdown. So far there had been no reports from our town, but we were close enough that even if the suspect had fled on foot, as was suspected, we were still potentially a target. Classes were still going on inside, but the school buildings were all sealed, and police had been dispatched to secure key sites around town.

I looked back to the car, then at my schoolbag, then at the school. I asked if I should go home, if he school was on lockdown. The officer hesitated for a long moment, looking me over, and then looking at the building. In a low, almost conspiratorial voice, he told me to go ahead in. He knew me, after all. He cracked a halfhearted joke, saying that I wasn’t the suspect they were looking for, and that I should move along. I chuckled politely.

Class was never so quiet and so disorderly at the same time. Any pretense of productive work had disappeared. Despite classes still nominally occurring, the bell schedule had been suspended; either because they wanted to minimize the number of students in the halls in the event that a full lockdown had to be initiated, or because students were already so distracted and distraught that it didn’t particularly matter if they wasted time in their classrooms for period six or period seven.

My teacher kept a slide up on the smart board with all of the key points from the lesson we had been supposed to cover, just in case anyone wanted to distract themselves with schoolwork. In the back of the room, students paced anxiously, awaiting phone calls or messages from friends and loved ones with news. In the corner, a girl I was tangentially friends with wept, trying every few moments to regain her composure, only to lose it anew in a fresh wave of sobbing. Someone she knew had lost a sibling. A few other girls, who were better friends with her than I, sat with her.

In the center of the room, a handful of students had pulled chairs together in a loose circle, and were trying to scrape together all the information they could between themselves, exchanging screenshots and headlines on cell phones and laptops. The idea, I think, was that if we knew what was going on, that it would make the news easier to take. That, and the idea that doing something, applying this familiar method or coordination and research, gave us back some small modicum of power over this thing being wrought upon us.

The teacher sent us home without any homework, and waived the assignments that would have been due soon. In a moment that reflected why he was one of my favorite teachers, he took a moment to urge all of us to look after ourselves first, to take time off or see the guidance office if we felt we needed to. The next day back, the guidance office brought in extra counselors and therapy dogs. Several dark jokes circulated that this level of tragedy was the only thing that could cause the teachers of AP classes to let up on homework.

The mood in the hallways over the next several days was so heavy it was palpable. It seemed that students moved slowly, as though physically wading through grief, staring either at the floor, or at some invisible point a thousand yards off. You would see students at lunch tables weeping silently alone or in groups. I remember in one instance, a girl who was walking down the hallway suddenly halted, and broke down right there. Her books fell out of her hands and her head and shoulders slumped forward as she started crying. One of the extra counselors wove his way through the stopped crowd and silently put a protective arm around her, and walked her to the counseling office.

Several days later, the unthinkable happened as, without any kind of instruction or official sanction, our school dressed up in the colors of our rival, Newtown High School. Even the cheerleaders and football players, those dual bastions of school tribalism, donned the uniforms of their enemies, not as a prank, but in solidarity. It was a bold statement covered in all the papers, and captured on local TV news.

Despite having memories of the period, it’s a bit of a stretch to say that I actually remember the attacks of September 11th. Certainly I took note of the marines stationed at the consulate, and the way they regarded even my infant brother with the kind of paranoid suspicion that is learned from loss. I recall how in the days after, people would recognize our American accents on the street, and stop us to offer condolences, solidarity, and hugs. But I don’t have enough memories from before that to form a meaningful context, at least not from my own experiences. Some bad people had done a bad thing, and people were sad and angry and scared, but I didn’t know enough to feel those things myself except as a reflection of the adults around me.

I imagine that people felt on September 11th the way we felt on the day of Sandy Hook. For that matter, I imagine that is roughly how those who lived through it felt after Pearl Harbor. We had been attacked. Our community had been attacked, savagely and deliberately, without warning, and without any apparent reason other than the unknowable agenda of a probable lunatic. A bad person did a bad thing, and now children and teachers were dead, and our whole community was grieving and looking for answers.

There was a caveat to our shared grief. Not a silver lining; it was an unadulterated tragedy, without qualification. But a footnote. We saw the media attention that this local tragedy was getting. We saw the world grieving with us. For my part, I had old friends half a world away, who didn’t didn’t know anything about US geography, but who knew I lived in the same general area as the places suddenly mentioned on the news calling me. We saw the massive reverberations, and we were comforted in the fact that we were not alone.

There was no silver lining. But the caveat was that the same tragedy that had touched us personally had set things in motion on a larger scale. Our world had been shaken up, but things were righting themselves, and in doing so it seemed like there would have to be consequences. The adults seemed to agree that this was a tragedy, and that it could not be allowed to happen again. The outcry seemed to demand change, which we took to mean that those who had lost would not have lost in vain, and that there would be new laws so that we could put this incident behind us, and feel safe again.

We waited for the change that seemed so inevitable that most hardly even bothered advocating for it. It seemed so blatantly obvious that we needed to update our laws to keep guns out of the hands of madmen. Perhaps because we were children, we took it as given that all those adults who had sent their hopes and prayers would realize what was painfully, tearfully obvious to us: that the current balance on gun control had failed miserably, and needed to be renegotiated. As the police and then the media dug in to the details of which loopholes and lapses had been exploited to create this tragedy, we assumed, perhaps naively, that our leaders would take note, and close them.

We waited in vain. The promised reforms never came. As the immediate sting faded for those who hadn’t been close enough to see any kind of firsthand, or even, as in my case, secondhand, consequences, people stopped asking questions. And those who did, instead of focusing on questions like why a madman could access unsecured weapons of war, or why such weapons exist in abundance among civilians in the first places, focused on other questions, like why a school isn’t build to withstand a literal siege, and whether the people who are stricken by grief because of this are even real people at all.

Instead of a safer society with fewer possibilities for mass murder, our government helped to fortify our school, replacing the windows and glass doors we passed through each day on the way to our classrooms with bulletproof glass and reinforced steel, under supervision of increased police and armed security. More dark jokes circulated through the student body, comparing our building to a prison, or a Maginot fortress. A handful of brave students and other adults did speak out, gathering signatures and organizing demonstrations, but they faced fierce backlash, and in some instances, came under attack from conspiracy theorists who accused them of orchestrating the whole tragedy.

For many people I knew, who were motivated by grief and a need for closure, this broke them. To have the worst day of their life scrutinized, torn apart, twisted, perverted, and then thrown back in their face with hostility and accusation was simply too much. The toxicity of conspiracy theorists and professional pundits, coupled with the deafening silence of our leaders, broke their resolve. And so the tragedy at Newtown became just another event in a long list of tragedies mentioned occasionally in passing on anniversaries or during political debates. The camera crews left, and life went on, indifferent to those of us still grieving or looking for answers.

Many of the people I knew who were most passionate about seeing change in the immediate aftermath eventually let up, not because their opinions changed, but because they lost hope. New mass shootings, even school shootings, happened, pushing our local tragedy further and further into distant memory. Nothing happened, or at least, nothing large enough on a large enough scale to shift the balance from the current decidedly pro-gun stance, happened. Those of us who waited after Newtown, or whatever other tragedy touched them personally, as there have been so many, still wait, while those of us who have seen other systems work, possibly even work better, silently lament.

It is perhaps worth reiterating explicitly what has been mentioned previously: any conclusion on gun regulation will be a compromise. This is not merely a realistic view of politics, but a matter of reality. No country, even those cited as having overly draconian laws, has completely outlawed firearms, for essentially the same reasons that no country has completely outlawed painkillers. Every country wants to ensure that sportsmen (and women) can hone their craft, that serious hunters can enjoy their hobby, and citizens can defend themselves, even if they disagree to what extent these activities themselves ought be regulated.

Every solution is a compromise; a tradeoff. And naturally, the balance which is best suited to one country may not be as effective in another. I do not suppose that the Australian system, which despite its ample criticisms, did mostly work for Australia, could be copied wholesale for the United States, at least not without serious teething issues. Yet I also think it is obvious to all that the current balance is untenable. With so many unsecured weapons in so many untrained hands, there are simply too many points of failure.

Perhaps the solution is to focus not on restricting firearms purchases, but on training and storage. Maybe this is an issue of better an more consistent enforcement of existing laws. There is also certainly a pressing need for improvements in mental health, though the kind of comprehensive system that might conceivably be able to counterbalance the inordinate ease of access to weapons; the kind of system that can identify, intervene, and treat a sick person, possibly before they have any symptoms, probably against their will, would require not only enormous year to year funding, but the kind of governmental machinery that is fundamentally inimical to the American zeitgeist (see: American attitudes towards socialized medicine).

Every solution is a tradeoff. Some are better than others, but none are perfect. But one thing is clear: the current solution is unacceptable. Scores of children murdered is not an acceptable tradeoff for being legally permitted to buy firearms at Walmart. If ensuring that students of the future do not have to cower in ad-hoc shelters means eliminating some weapons from a hobbyist’s arsenal, then so be it. If preventing the next soft target terrorist attack requires us to foot the bill for extra police to get out into the communities and enforce the laws before the next crisis, then so be it. And if preventing these tragedies which are unique to our country requires the erection of a unique and unprecedented mental health machinery, which will cost an inordinate amount as it tries to address a gun problem without touching guns, then so be it. But a new solution is needed, and urgently.

Soda Cans

One of the first life changes I made after I began to spend a great deal of time in hospitals was giving myself permission to care about the small things. As a person who tends to get inside my own head, sometimes to a fault, the notion of, for example, finding joy in a beautiful sunset, has often seemed trite and beneath me, as though the only thoughts worthy of my contemplation are deep musings and speculations on the hows and whys of life, the universe, and everything.

This line of thinking is, of course hogwash. After all, even if one aims to ask the big questions, doing so is not in any way mutually exclusive with finding meaning in the little things. Indeed, on the contrary, it is often by exploration of such matters more easily grasped that we are able to make headway towards a more complete picture. And besides that, getting to enjoy the little things is quite nice.

With this background in mind, I have been thinking lately about the can design for the new round of Diet Coke flavors. So far I have only tried the twisted mango flavor. On the whole, I like it. I do not think it will supplant Coke Zero Vanilla as my default beverage option (the reasoning behind this being the default is far too elaborate to go into here). The twisted mango flavor is more novel, and hence is more appropriate on occasion than as a default option. I can imagine myself sipping it on vacation, or even at a party, but not on a random occasion when I happen to need a caffeinated beverage to dull a mild headache.

I do not, however, like the can that it comes in.

For some reason, the Coca-Cola company thought it necessary to mess with success, and change the shape of the can the new line of flavors come in. The volume is the same, but the shape is taller, with a shorter circumference, similar to the cans used by some beer and energy drink brands. I can only assume that this is the aesthetic that Coca-Cola was aiming for; that their intention is to obfuscate and confuse, by creating a can better able to camouflage among more hardcore party drinks.

If this is the reason for the redesign, I can understand, but cannot approve. Part of the reason that I have such strong feelings about various Coke products (or indeed, have feelings at all) is precisely because I cannot drink. Legally, I am not old enough in the United States (not that this has ever stopped my friends, or would stop me while traveling abroad), and moreover even if I was old enough, my medical condition and medications make alcohol extremely ill-advised.

Coke is a stand-in, in this regard. I can be fussy about my Coke products in the way that others fuss over beers. And because I have a drink over which I am seen to be fussing, it becomes common knowledge that I enjoy this very particular product. As a result, when it comes to that kind of person that is only satisfied when there is a (hard) drink in every hand, they can rest easy seeing that I have my preferred beverage, even if mine happens to be non-alcoholic. It is a subtle maneuver that satisfies everyone without anyone having to lose face or endure a complex explanation of my medical history. Coke undercuts this maneuver by making their product look more like beer. It sends the subtle subconscious message that the two are interchangeable, which in my case is untrue.

But this is hardly my primary complaint. After all, if my main problem was social camouflage, I could always, as my medical team have suggested, use camouflage, and simply during my beverage of choice out of some other container. It worked well enough for Zhukov, who naturally couldn’t be seen publicly drinking decadent western capitalism distilled in his capacity as leader of the Red Army, and so took to drinking a custom-ordered clear formulation of Coke in a bottle design to mimic those of the Soviet state vodka monopoly. It shouldn’t be my problem in the first place, but I could deal with mere cosmetic complaints.

No, what frustrates me about the can is its functionality. Or rather, its lack thereof. I’ve turned the problem over in my head, and from an engineering standpoint, I can’t fathom how the new design is anything but a step backwards. I assume that a megacorporation like Coca-Cola went through a design process at least as rigorous the one we employed in our Introduction to Engineering Design class. I would hope that they have spent at least as much time thinking about the flaws of the new design. In case they haven’t, here are my notes:

1) The can is too long for straws.
Some people prefer to drink out of a glass. For me, having to drink cold fluid in this way hurts my teeth. And if there is ice in the glass, I have to worry about accidentally swallowing the ice cubes, turning the whole experience into a struggle. Plus, then I have to deal with washing the empty glass afterwards. Drinking straight out of the can is better, but tipping a can back to take a sip makes one look like an uncivilized glutton who hasn’t been introduced to the technological marvel of the bendy straw. And conveniently, the opener on most cans can also be adjusted to secure a straw from bobbing up and down. Alas, the new can design is too long to comfortably accommodate a standard bendy straw.

2) The can doesn’t stand up as well
The fact that the can is taller, with a smaller base means that does not fit comfortably in most cup holders. Moreover, the smaller base area means that it is less stable standing upright. It does take up less space on the table, but that doesn’t matter when it falls over because I sneezed.

3) The shape makes for poor insulation
Alright, this part involves some math and physics, so bear with me. The speed at which a chilled cylindrical object, such as a soda can, will warm to room temperature is governed by the amount of surface area, because, the greater the surface area, the more direct contact with the surroundings, and the more conduction of heat. The can is taller, but the volume is the same, so the surface area must be greater to compensate. The conclusion is intuitively obvious if one remembers that a circle is the most efficient way to contain area on a 2D plane (and by extension, a sphere is most efficient for 3D, but we use cylinders and boxes for the sake of manufacturing and storage).

Consequently, the greater surface area of the can means that it comes in contact with more of the surrounding air. This increased contact results in increased conduction of heat from the air into the can, and proportionally faster warming. So my nice, refreshing, cold soda becomes room temperature and flat in a hurry. Sure, this means it also gets colder faster, and so perhaps it is a feature for that peculiar brand of soul that doesn’t keep soda refrigerated beforehand, but insists on waiting to chill it immediately before drinking out of the can, but I have no concern for such eccentrics.

I could go on, but I’m belaboring the point even now. The new can design is a step backwards. I just can’t help but feel like Coca-Cola tried to reinvent the wheel here, and decided to use Reulaux rotors instead of circles. Now, onto the important question: does it matter? Well, it clearly matters to Coca-Cola, seeing as they say fit to make the change. And, despite being objectively petty, it does matter to me, because it impacts my life, albeit in a relatively small way. Denying that I have strong feelings about this matter in favor of appearing to focus only on high minded ideals helps no one. And, as I learned in my time in the hospital, when the big picture looks bleak and can’t be changed, the small things start to matter a lot more.

A Song of Flame and Snow

Where I lived growing up in Australia, there was no snow. There was barely rain, and if it ever gold cold enough for water to freeze, the entire city lost its mind. The closest experience we ever had to snow was a massive hailstorm. Shops closed, preachers proclaimed the end times were upon us, there was mass panic, and people used surfboards (remember, this is Australia) to try and recreate sledding as seen on TV, with the layer of ice on the streets instead of snow.

It wasn’t that we lacked our own weird weather. It’s just that we didn’t get a whole lot of storms. We did get droughts. It got hot and dry enough that if one wasn’t careful, a backyard pool that existed at the beginning of the beginning of the week could easily be a dry hole in the ground by week’s end. Water rationing made this harder.

The storms we did have were more often firestorms. With the land as dry as it was, the threat of fire loomed over everyone. A single match, or cigarette dropped accidentally or negligently, could kindle a fire that would consume the country. A single bolt of lightning striking the wrong tree could ignite a blaze that would render the most flammable parts, which were mostly the areas surrounding population centers, uninhabitable.

Through the summer months, public information adverts warned citizens of hazards that could create the spark that would burn down our civilization. School projects demonstrated how a glass bottle discarded in the open could, if left at the wrong angle, magnify the sun’s raise and start a fire. Poster campaigns reminiscent of WWII and Cold War civil defence campaigns lined walls at public places, warning of the danger. Overhead, helicopters scouted and patrolled daily, checking for any signs of smoke, and marking off which pools, ponds, and lakes still had water that could be used if needed. Meanwhile, ground vehicles checked water meters and sprinkler setups, and issued stiff fines to those who used more than their fair share.

At school, we conducted fire drills, not only for evacuation, but for prevention, and active firefighting. We were quizzed on which tools and tactics worked best against which type of fire. We drilled on how to aim and hold a hose while battling flames, how to clear a fire break, how to fortify a residential structure against an oncoming firestorm, how to improvise masks to prevent smoke inhalation, and other first aid. We were told that if the fire reached our homes, the professionals would likely already be overwhelmed, and it might well be up to us to do what we could, either to shelter in place, or to eliminate any fuel from our homes before retreating.

When the fires did come, as they did almost every summer, we followed the progress along, marking down on maps the deployments of the fire brigades, the areas that were being cleared to create a break, the areas that were marked for evacuation, and so on. We noted the location of our local teams, and the presence of airborne units that we saw on television and publicity material. The campaigns often lasted for weeks, and could span the length of the continent as new theaters flared up and were pacified.

While there are some similarities, a blizzard is something quite different. Whereas the Australian bushfires are perhaps best understood as a kind of siege, blizzards of the sort that exist in the American northeast are closer to a single pitched battle. Blizzards are mostly contained within the space of a day or two, while bushfires can rage for an entire season.

A blizzard is almost quaint in this way. It forces people to break routines, and limits their actions in a way that creates the kind of contrived circumstances that make interesting stories. Yet the inconvenience is always temporary. Snow melts, or is removed, power lines get repaired, and schools go back into session.

Bushfires are only quaint if one is sufficiently far away from them, and only then in the way that people call the Blitz, with its Anderson Shelters, blackouts, evacuations, and “we’ll all go together when we go” spirit, quaint, in retrospect. A blizzard may impact a larger swath of land in a shorter period, dumping snow to knock out electricity to large numbers of people, and closing roads. But bushfires will scour towns off the map, suffocating or burning those who stand in their way. And while snowstorms are mostly bound by the laws of meteorology, a sufficiently large bushfire will spawn its own weather system.

It is an interesting contrast to consider while my house and the landscape around it is buried in snow.

Not Dead Again

So last night, as of writing, I very nearly died. This comes off somewhat melodramatic, I know, but I regard it as a simple fact. Last night, the part of me that makes me a cyborg and prevents me from being dead suffered a catastrophic failure. Possibly multiple catastrophic failures depending on how you count, and how much blame you give the hardware for trusting it.

That last sentence doesn’t make a whole lot of sense out of context, so here’s an illustrative example: take your average AI-goes-rogue-and-starts-hurting-humans plot. In fact, it doesn’t even to be that extreme: take the plot of WarGames. Obviously, McKitrick didn’t intend intend to start an accidental nuclear war, and even tried to prevent it. But he did advocate for trusting a machine to oversee the process, and the rest of the film makes it pretty clear that, even if he’s not a villain, he’s at least partly at fault. The machine, inasmuch as a (at least probably) non-sentient machine can take blame, was responsible for the film’s main crisis, but it was literally just following its instructions.

Last night wasn’t quite as bad as that example. My life support didn’t go rogue, so much as the alarm that’s supposed to go off and warn me and others that my blood sugar is dropping critically low didn’t go off, at least not at first. The secondary alarm that is hardcoded and can’t be silenced (normally a fact I loathe) did go off, but only on my receiver, and not on my mother’s.

By the time I was woken up, only half-conscious at this point, I was so far gone that I couldn’t move my legs. I’m not sure if the problem was that my legs wouldn’t respond, or that my brain was so scrambled that it couldn’t issue commands to them. I picked up my phone and immediately texted my mother for help. In retrospect, I could and probably should have called her, either on the phone, or by screaming bloody murder until everyone in the house was awake. The fact that nether of these things occurred to me speaks to my mental state.

I felt like I was drowning. It didn’t help that my body was dumping all of its heat into my surrounding linens, creating a personal oven, and sweating up a small lake, and shivering all at the same time. I don’t know why my autonomous nervous system decided this was a good idea; I suspect it was simply that the part of my brain that controls temperature was just out of commission, and so was doing everything it knew how to simultaneously and at maximum capacity.

I was drowning in my mind as much as on land. I struggled to pull together coherent thoughts, or even incoherent ones. I fought against the current of panic. I couldn’t find the emergency sugar stash that I normally kept on my nightstand, and I couldn’t move to reach the one in the hall. I looked around in the darkness of my home at night, trying to find something that might save me.

And that was when I felt it. The pull of darkness. It was much the same tug as being sleepy, but stronger, and darker in a way that I can’t quite put words to. It called to me to simply lay down and stop moving. I had woken up because of the alarm, and because I had felt like I was baking in my own juices, but these things wouldn’t keep me awake if I let go of them. My vision darkened and lost its color, inviting me to close my eyes. Except I knew that if I fell asleep, there was a very good chance I wouldn’t wake up again. This was, after all, how people died from hypoglycemia. In their sleep. “Peacefully”.

I didn’t make a choice so much as I ignored the only choice given. In desperation, I began tearing open the drawers on my nightstand that I could reach. I rifled through the treasured mementos and documents like a stranger would; a looter in my own home. At last I found a couple of spearmints, which I presumably acquired long ago at a restaurant and left in my drawer when emptying my pockets. I frantically discarded the wrappers and shoved them into my mouth, crunching them between my teeth. I could feel the desperately needed sugar leech into my mouth. It wasn’t enough, but it was a step in the right direction. I found some throat lozenges, and similarly swallowed them.

I kept pillaging my nightstand with shaking hands, until I hit upon what I needed. A rice krispy treat. I spent several seconds searching for an expiration date, though I’m not sure why. Even if it were expired, it wouldn’t have changed my options. So long as fending off death was the goal, it was better to be hospitalized for food poisoning than dead from low blood sugar. I fumbled around the wrapping, mangling the food inside, until I managed to get it open. I gnashed my teeth into the ancient snack, swallowing before I had even finished chewing. I continue to rifle through the drawers while I waited for the Glucose to absorb into my bloodstream.

I texted my mother again, hoping she might wake up and come to my aid. At the same time, I listened to music. The goal of this was twofold. First, it helped keep the panic at bay and focus my thoughts. Second, and more importantly, it helped anchor me; to keep me awake, and away from the darkness.

Whether it was the music, or the sugar, or both, the dark, sleepy sensation that pulled towards eternity, started to ebb. More of the color came back to my vision. The trend indicator on my sensor, though it was still already dangerously low and dropping, was slowing in its descent.

It was now or never. I yanked my uncooperative legs over the side of the bed, testing their compliance and trying to will them to work with me. With trepidation, but without the luxury of hesitation, I forced myself to stand up, wobbling violently and very narrowly avoiding a face-first collision as the floor leapt up to meet me. Without time to steady myself, I shifted the momentum of falling into forward motion, knocking over my rubbish bin and a few various articles and pieces of bric-a-brac that lay on my winding path from bed to doorway. Serendipitously, I avoided destroying anything, as my lamp was knocked over, hit the wall, and harmlessly bounced off it back into standing position.

I staggered towards the IKEA bookshelf where we kept my emergency sugar stash. I braced myself against the walls and sides of the bookshelf as I took fistfuls of this and that item and stuffed it into my pajama pockets, knocking over containers and wrecking the organizational system. So be it. This was a live-to-clean-up-another-day situation. With the same graceless form of loosely-controlled falling over my own feet, I tripped, stumbled, and staggered back to my bed to digest my loot. I downed juice boxes scarfed peppermint puffs stockpiled from post-holiday sales.

By this point, the hunger had kicked in. My brain had started to function well enough to realize that it had been starving. The way the human brain responds to this is to induce a ravenous hunger that is more compulsion than sensation. And so I devoured with an unnatural zeal. About this time, my mother did show up, woken by some combination of my text messages, the noise I had stirred up, or the continued bleating of my life support sensors. She asked me what I needed, and I told her I needed more food, which was true both in the sense that my blood sugar was still low, and in the sense that a compulsive hunger was quickly overrunning my brain and needed to be appeased.

My blood sugar came up quickly after that, and it took another fifteen minutes or so before the hunger faded. By that time, the darkness had receded. I was still sleepy, but I felt confident that this was a function of having been rudely awoken at an ungodly hour rather than the call of the reaper. I felt confident that I would wake up again if I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel safe; I hardly ever feel safe these days, especially after so harrowing an incident; but I no longer felt in imminent danger.

I woke up this morning slightly worse for wear. Yet I am alive, and that is never nothing. It had been a while since I last had a similar experience of nearly-dying. Of course, I evade death in a fashion every day. That’s what living with a chronic disease is. But it had been a while since I had last faced death as such, where I had felt I was acutely dying; where I had been dying, and had to take steps to avert that course. After so many similar incidents over so many years, naturally, they all start to blur together and bleed over in memory, but I reckon it has been a few months since the last incident.

I am slightly at a loss as to what cadence I ought take here. Obviously, nearly dying is awful and terrifying, and would be even more so if this wasn’t a semi-regular occurrence. Or perhaps the regularity makes it worse, because of the knowledge that there will be a next time. On the other hand, I am glad to not have died, and if there is going to be a next time, I may as well not waste what time I do have moping about it. As the old song goes: What’s the use of worrying? It never was worth-while. Oh, pack all your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile!

It is difficult to find a balance between celebrating small victories like not dying when I very well might have, and letting myself become complacent. Between acknowledging my handicaps and circumstances in a way that is sound, and letting them override my ambitions and sabotage myself. Of course, I am neither the first, nor the only person to face these questions. But as the answers necessarily very from person to person, I cannot draw upon the knowledge of others in the same way that I would for a more academic matter. I wish that I could put this debate to bed, nearly as much as I wish that it wasn’t so relevant.

Hearts of Iron Review

Since finally caving in and buying Hearts of Iron 4, I have been quite enthralled with it. That is, until our house’s main computer decided to stop responding to inputs from the keyboards or mice. Near as anyone can tell, the computer is fine, but without it can’t do anything. Left without my game, I have felt compelled to contemplate on what I like and don’t about it. Hence, this review.

For all of the complaints that Hearts of Iron 4 has a steep learning curve, I managed to get a (very basic) handle on the mechanics after only a few hours. Admittedly some of this might be because I have experience in other games, like Age of Empires, or because I’ve seen videos from YouTubers who play the game competently. Also I am what most people would call a history buff, meaning I can tell you not only what the Manhattan Project was, but what the Office of Strategic Services did, what Liberty Ships were, and why the United States was almost unbeatable by 1942, especially combined with other allies; but by the same coin, had to put in extra effort to put their finger on the scales in Europe and Asia.

Needless to say, I played my first game of the United States. Or rather, I started as the United States, but quickly got bored of simply waiting for things to happen while the American people couldn’t be bothered for anything because of the ongoing Great Depression. Democracies, in this game, have all sorts of limitations that limit their early game potential and make them merely reactive. So instead of just sitting and waiting for stuff to happen, in my timeline, by early 1939, revolution was sweeping through the United States. The newly-instated Communist States of America rapidly began rearming the country, preparing to spread the revolution across the continent. Despite lofty promises, the military campaign to liberate the Mexican proletariat proved decidedly more difficult in practice, and the planned encirclement of the Mexican Army failed spectacularly. American forces, who in many places were still equipped with outdated WWI equipment, were forced back into Texas.

The Communist States eventually won the war through sheer numbers, securing Mexican industry and manpower for the Comintern. The CSA continued pushing through Guatemala and Honduras, only stopping at the Panama Canal. Plans to invade Canada in a similar fashion were drawn up, but quickly shelved as Nazi Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Nazi advance was quickly blunted by American air power, and American lend-lease weapons. Nevertheless the eastern front quickly devolved into a stalemate of back and forth while Soviet troops stalled for time as their American comrades worked their way from their ports in Siberia.

The war quickly became one of attrition, and in this, it was colossally one-sided. Whatever the Nazis threw at the meat grinder, the Comintern would match them for. An abortive attempt was made to open up a second front just northwest of the Dutch border, but though the landing went well, and early progress was made, in the excitement and confusion, the landings were never reinforced, and were quickly driven back. The divisions that died in the landing did not die in vain, however. For the distraction in the west gave the Comintern the opening they had needed to begin the march to Berlin.

For some inexplicable reason, Spain under Franco, and Japan, took this moment to throw their lot in with the beleaguered Axis. Perhaps they feared a Europe dominated by the Comintern, and knew that their chances of victory would only grow more slim with each passing day. Perhaps the AI in Hearts of Iron doesn’t understand self-preservation. This needn’t have mattered, except that it was at this point that I learnt a very important lesson about checking whether countries had joined a faction between the time I started preparing an invasion and when I declared war. Apparently Iceland, which I had been planning to use as a new naval base, was now part of the Allies, and in declaring admittedly frivolous war on them, I brought the Allies into the war against the Comintern.

Of course, Comrade Bowder had never really trusted the British anyways. In fact, about half the army was stationed on the Canadian border. In stark contrast to Mexico, the Canadian campaign was a cakewalk. American motorized forces raced around the northern tundra, encircling the confused home guard divisions, who were expecting a mock German invasion as part of Canada’s “If Day” campaign, not a real American one. These triumphs in the north were tempered by news from Western Europe, where advancing American forces, hot on the heels of the remnants of the Reich, suddenly found themselves cut off by the very countries they had been liberating. The European Front became a massacre.

By late 1943, the war had settled in to something of a stalemate, with the Comintern controlling Europe north of the alps and east of the Rhine. In Asia, Mongolia and Manchuria changed hands almost monthly. The Americans kept up a mixed success rate in attempting to seize nearby British possessions by amphibious landings. American ports churned out endless fleets of screen vessels with the occasional capital ship, attempting to keep the routes to its trade partners open. In an attempt to break the stalemate, many of the Canadian provinces were put to work on producing nuclear materials. The first Atomic Bomb was dropped in early 1944 on a small town in the Netherlands where the fighting had devolved into a bitter stalemate. Comintern forces did achieve their breakthrough, but the destruction of major infrastructure prevented the breakthrough from being exploited. Over the coming weeks, dozens more bombs would be used by the Communist States of America across various fronts.

The main bottleneck to my winning was, at this point, production. I had more than six million men ready to be drafted, but nothing to arm them with. I could barely supply the troops I had (insert communism joke here). The bottleneck to production was resources. I lacked access to adequate Tungsten, Chromium, and above all, Rubber. Declaring war on the allies, while it had given me access to Canada’s factories, had cut off my main sources of all three. This problem only got worse when my main trading partner, the Soviet Union, closed their economy to outside trade to fuel their own war machine.

And then I read online that, actually, I could just make more rubber. I could synthesize it, if I built synthetic refineries. Which I hadn’t, because I had gotten it in my head (somewhere) that refineries were for oil, so I hadn’t even researched the technology. I also didn’t have building slots to spare at this point.

I wanted to argue a bit against the notion popular in reviews that Hearts of Iron has a steep learning curve, because that’s not quite accurate. I actually found most of the controls themselves intuitive enough. The game even does a decent enough job of notifying you when things are going wrong, at least as far as proximal causes go. Where the game has trouble is in tracing these proximal causes back to bottlenecks that can be fixed. For example:

Your invasion… err, liberation… of the United Kingdom has stalled. You know this because your troops are still in marshaling areas at Norfolk instead of London. Okay. You go to find the commander of that task force to give a talking to, and he says he called it off. Why? Because he’s concerned the mid-Atlantic isn’t fully under our control. Why isn’t the Atlantic an American Lake? Because the fleet you assigned there decided to head back to port. Because its ships got dented by those pesky British subs. It’ll be done repairing… soon…ish. So you look to deploy more ships, only to find your shipyards have also been taking a break. Because you lack Chromium. And good luck finding more. Because the only country that has Chromium that’s not at war is Sweden. And Sweden hasn’t delivered. Why? Because there’s an ocean in the way. An ocean filled with British subs. The ones that you need your navy to beat. Your navy that needs Chromium.

Even though the story here is relatively straightforward, every sentence here is buried on a different tab. Once you’ve figured out that it’s a shipping problem in Sweden, and everything trickles down from there, it’s relatively straightforward to come up with a solution (most of them involve invading Norway). But figuring out the issues is, sometimes literally, half the battle.

This problem is somewhat exacerbated by the pace of the game. Hearts of Iron measures in-game time in hours. This is fair enough when tearing through undefended countryside in a motorized division, but gets a little slow during the moments in between, or even along a static front. Of course, part of this may be due to my computer, which, while it meets the minimum specifications (or used to when it still worked), isn’t new by any stretch. The time on my computer doesn’t seem to pass as quickly as it does on videos of other people playing.

Computer issues aside, the game still involves a lot of waiting. You have to wait for factories to be built, for materiel to be produced, for troops to be trained and marshaled, for fleets to be assembled, etcetera. Even on a fast computer, this takes hours, if not days (real time). Hearts of Iron alternates between short, staccato bursts of activity, in which you scramble to give orders to all of your divisions at once, and long periods of buildup and regrouping. You can speed up and slow down time, but in my experience this still isn’t fast enough to power through the slow bits. Indeed, I have played almost the whole game at maximum speed, and in many places it still felt too slow.

In 1944, the Comintern navies finally got the upper hand in the battle for the Atlantic, paving the way for the American invasion of the United Kingdom. Supported by liberal use of nuclear weapons across the European continent, American forces moved from Plymouth towards London. As American motorized forces raced north to secure Scotland and jump into Northern Ireland, the remaining British forces desperately shifted their forces across the Channel, abandoning continental Europe to defend the holdouts in Dover. British forces held firm, but were overrun, as were the remaining western enclaves in France and the Low Countries. By 1946, the Americans had used their nuclear arsenal to force an encirclement, trapping most of the Spanish frontline and what remained of Vichy France, and causing the last major power in Europe to capitulate. The bitter mountain campaign continued, but this was a mere distraction for the Comintern.

The remaining exiled British forces fought on in India, but as American forces arrived in greater number, the front slowly inched closer to the last major allied capital. In the Far East, Atomic bombs rained down on Japan, shattering any pretense of industry. Still, having yet to lose ground in battle, the sole Axis power would not surrender. At this point, a victory on either front would mean an effective end to the war, particularly as killing either the allies or the Axis would allow the Comintern to consolidate their resources. The rubber shortage had by 1946 been mostly alleviated by synthesis, but Chromium remained in short supply.

In 1947, India surrendered, triggering a conference of the major warring powers to divide up the world. For some reason, the Soviet Union decided to take Canada, which I had worked quite hard to build up after liberating it. Despite this, they didn’t seem too concerned about how Europe looked. So I took most of Great Britain, except for London, where the USSR installed a puppet government that controlled the city as well as… Italy, apparently. I took most of costal France, and a few bits and pieces in the balkans, India, and Africa that would give me the Chromium I needed to continue prosecuting the war against Japan.

The Home islands were taken that same year in an amphibious invasion that took the Japanese completely by surprise. That should have been the end of it, but the game decided that the real powerhouse behind the Axis was Reorganized Nationalist China, that is, the puppet government installed by the Japanese. And this is where things bogged down again, because while WWII-era China may not have much in the way of infrastructure, or technology, or planes, or a navy, or logistics, they do have a seemingly endless reserve of men to absorb all the munitions the Comintern can produce, be they conventional or atomic.

Worth noting- the way the game handles atomic bombs is interesting. Rather than act as world-ending weapons, they inflict a decent, if somewhat disappointing amount of damage, and, rather than bring your opponent closer to surrendering, instead they lower the threshold, which is calculated by what percentage of major cities a nation holds. This means that A-bombs are helpful to give your opponent a nudge, but you can’t win a war just by throwing nukes at the enemy while you sit back in your bunker. From a game mechanics standpoint, this is a solid approach. Unfortunately, it means that you can fling scores of bombs at an enemy until you run out of targets, and your enemy is no closer to surrender than when you started. It also means that using nuclear weapons to support a ground advance is only effective in marginal cases.

At the beginning of the game, there were seven countries the game recognized as great powers. By 1949 there were two remaining that weren’t puppet states. Who would’ve won in a showdown is an open question. The USSR had far more troops in the field (in all of the fields, because apparently Zhukov didn’t feel like moving his divisions to the front), but my Communist States of America had more factories, and had lost far fewer men in the fighting so far. I had also already been preparing for a 1984-style betrayal, building fortifications, stationing troops to man them, and keeping enough planes and rockets on standby to begin bombing Moscow if need be. On the other hand, nearly every country was already in the Comintern, and so chances were good that it would be pretty much the whole world versus me. And while I could out-produce the Soviets, I wasn’t sure I could take on the rest of the world combined. I could try and make a bunch of them switch, but that would take time, and the game clock was running out. Also, my computer was already sputtering with the number of divisions it had to render, and I didn’t think it would be terribly happy with opening up even more fronts.

I made a lot of stupid mistakes during my first game. The whole rubber debacle comes to mind, as does accidentally declaring war on the allies before I was ready. I also managed to have multiple amphibious invasions fail spectacularly because I forgot to order them to take a port from which they could be supplied, and as a result by the time I went back to check on them, they were starving to death and couldn’t be bothered to move. My troops had a knack for advancing into places where they could be supplied, and subsequently developed a knack for losing whatever equipment they were issued. Perhaps there’s a way to fix this, so that the largest economy on the planet isn’t struggling to supply its soldiers.

The game does take some patience and willingness to learn, but it is eminently learnable. Much of the minutiae which makes the difference between a smashing victory and a pyrrhic one aren’t fully detailed in the tutorial, and so have to be looked up online or intuited, but despite criticism, the game is intuitive coming from the proper stratego-historical (according to the original Greek declensions, this is the correct way to say that) headspace. This game is not easy, and it is certainly not simple, but it is great fun for the right person. I enjoy it, and as soon as our computer can be brought back into line, or I decide to finally set up my laptop, I shall continue to enjoy playing it.