Amezaiku, the art of making realistic animal lollipops, has been a Japanese tradition since the 8th century, but 26 year-old Shinri Tezuka is the young master making it famous again. There is no cheap or convenient way to mass produce the candy, and the artists have to endure painful heat when working the hot candy by hand.
Shinri is one of the few Amezaiku artists keeping the tradition alive. He opened his shop ‘Ameshin’ in 2013, sells his animal confectionery for 1000-2000 yen (8-17 USD), and also offers courses for those interested in learning. The candy is made from sugary syrup and starch along with organic coloring.
Goniurellia tridens is the fly with ant-mimic wings. Those “ants” in its wings aren’t real ants, but markings. When threatened, the fly flashes its wings to give the appearance of ants walking back and forth. The predator gets confused and the fly zips off. (Source)
A water main break in West Hollywood early Sunday morning unleashed 10,000 gallons of water, creating a sinkhole and flooding nearby homes and garages. [ more › ]
maybe everyone here is tired of all the sailor jerry shit
Earlier this year, tattoo artist Daniel Meyer relocated to Los Angeles from Germany with no local history and no local clients, planning to open his own studio without ties to an established shop. He set up an invitation-only space in Pasadena where antlers, taxidermy, and his monochromatic artwork create a...
What a pleasure to receive a late-night private tour of Oracle in Kansas City. This store/gallery was a marvel. I cannot wait to have the owner’s out to LA for some taxidermy-making-fun. (at Oracle - Fine Curiosities)
Song of Horror is an upcoming third-person survival horror game that has 16 playable characters. Each of them are described as being ordinary people that find themselves in a bad place.
The main character is Daniel Noyer. But you’ll rarely play as him. The game is divided into chapters that each take place in a different location that gets you closer to the source of the mystery. All the other characters are people who are either connected to Daniel or find themselves in this terrible place for another reason (each chapter has a different set of characters).
At the start of each chapter you get to choose from the range of characters. As permadeath is in place, should any of the characters die they are lost forever, and any strand of the story tied to them will similarly be gone – you cannot bring them back unless everyone dies, at which point you restart the chapter. Adding to the tension is the game’s complete lack of save points. Your progress is only saved upon beating a chapter. However, you can choose to “Save & Quit” to come back to an exact point later on.
While details on the game’s mystery are appropriately under wraps, the new video that you can watch above introduces the game’s threat – the presence. This is something that you cannot combat, only run from, and it’s described as an eldritch and primeval horror. It’s possible to run and hide from it but that doesn’t mean you’re safe. Nor will the presence always be hunting for you, instead, it may decide to lay in wait for you to arrive, and spring upon you suddenly. This is to encourage slow and steady advancement.
Not much else is known about Song of Horror at the moment so make sure to check out its website for future updates.
Every week, Todd VanDerWerff will be joined by two of Vox's other writers to discuss the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Check out the recap for this episode here, and follow the whole discussion here. This week, Todd is joined by foreign policy writer Zack Beauchamp and politics writer Andrew Prokop. Come back throughout the week for entries.
Whether or not you're right about Daenerys, the fact that the theory is plausible points to something deeper about Game of Thrones — and suggests that we might all be watching it a bit wrong.
It's easy to forget, as we root for super-likable badasses like Arya and Tyrion, that George R. R. Martin's books were designed as takedowns of the kind of stylized violence you see in the dominant, Lord of the Rings–inspired type of fantasy novel. Martin, a conscientious objector of the Vietnam War, despises war and violence — and wanted his work to reflect that.
"The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that," he told Rolling Stone. "World War I is much more typical of the wars of history than World War II — the kind of war you look back afterward and say, 'What the hell were we fighting for?'"
But as viewers, we love Game of Thrones as a violent spectacle. We cheer the huge battles at Blackwater and Castle Black, and marvel at the show's beautifully staged duels. We get grumpy when episodes are slow and talky. We cheer when Daenerys torches the slavers and when, for a few fleeting moments, it looks like Oberyn is going to dismember the Mountain. This is all key to Game of Thrones' appeal.
And that's fine. It's not a problem like the "bad fans" who kept rooting for Breaking Bad's Walter White even as he became a monster. But I wonder if when we cheer for our favorite Game of Thrones characters to win battles and wars, we're being subtly blinded to show's underlying message: war is terrible, and all of this is pointless.
Think about it: do we have any reason to believe any of these people would be good leaders? The only two characters who actually seem suited to running countries, Varys and Tyrion, are by their own admission consigned to the shadows. We care who wins, because we want our favorite characters to come out on top. But from the point of view of your average Westerosi peasant, I doubt it really matters.
And that shouldn't really be surprising. Monarchy is a really terrible form of government, after all; even if one king or queen turns out well, incompetents (Robert) and sociopaths (Joffrey) almost inevitably end up in charge at one point. There aren't any democrats in the world of Game of Thrones, so it seems like an awful lot of people are dying in a struggle over which rich and powerful family gets to be in charge of sticking it to the poors.
The show can't foreground this point, because the already dark series would end up unbearably bleak. Emphasizing the total hopelessness of the situation is part of what made the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, such a disaster.
Game of Thrones was wise to lighten things up a little. But it's hard to understand what's really going on screen, I think, without remembering that the series is adapted from a story about the horror and pointlessness of war. No matter what happens with the main characters, Game of Thrones is a tragedy.
Read the recap. Come back tomorrow for thoughts on episode five, "Kill the Boy."
i'm still crushed about barrister and holy shit Myranda's hipbones rival valerian steel. *rimshot*
ollie-ollie-oxen-free-folk-must-die is totally gonna lead the stabfest.
i swear though if next week is the wedding and bedding of sansa (which seemed implied from the preview) i'm going to flip tables because she's been though enough.
Spoilers for the newest episode of Game of Thrones are below.
This week's episode of Game of Thrones, "Kill the Boy," brings us to the halfway point of season five. By now, the strategy showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are taking for adapting George R. R. Martin's most recent books has become clear.
For nearly every plotline, Benioff and Weiss are taking that ideas that exist in some kernel in A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. But they're reshaping these ideas, sometimes with only minor alterations, but sometimes nearly beyond recognition.
Whether it involves the simplification of convoluted twists, the condensation of characters, or the addition of more drama and action, Game of Thrones is now more likely than ever to start with something from the books — and then take it in a completely different direction. Here's how the show did so this week.
1) Jorah doesn't get greyscale in the books — somebody else does
(HBO)
The core of this week's action sequence involving Tyrion and Jorah is drawn from A Dance with Dragons. In it, Tyrion gets attacked by the "stone men" while on a riverboat journey through ancient ruins — but on the page, Jorah isn't there.
Book Tyrion takes this treacherous voyage before his kidnapping by Jorah. Instead, at this point he's still traveling with the characters Griff and Young Griff, who seem to have been cut from the show. It is Griff who saves Tyrion from the water, and is later revealed to have contracted greyscale in doing so. Though Jorah doesn't have an easy time of it in book five, he appears to be disease-free at the very least.
The setting is also different — in the books, the stone men don't live in the ruins of Old Valyria. Indeed, it’s said no one has ever visited that mysterious locale and returned. Instead, the stone men inhabit the ruined city of Chroyane in a part of the Rhoyne River known as The Sorrows.
Finally, book Tyrion doesn’t see Drogon flying overhead — not clearly, at least. In the fog, he briefly spots "a half-seen shape" above him with "pale leathery wings," but it disappears before he can get a better look.
2) In the books it's Mance Rayder, not Brienne, who tries to rescue Ramsay's bride
(HBO)
This week, Brienne tries to get a message to Sansa Stark, as part of an effort to save her from the clutches of the Boltons. But while there's an attempt to save Ramsay Bolton's bride in A Dance with Dragons, neither Sansa nor Brienne is involved in any way.
First of all, book Sansa doesn’t marry Ramsay at all. Instead, the unfortunate bride is a friend of Sansa’s from the first novel, Jeyne Poole, who’s abducted and forced to pose as "Arya Stark" to solidify the Boltons’ claim on the North. The action at Winterfell is told entirely through Theon Greyjoy’s eyes.
An attempt to rescue this faux "Arya" is launched, but it doesn’t involve Brienne, who’s been tipped off by Jaime Lannister that Ramsay’s bride isn’t really a Stark. Rather, Jon Snow gets word of the planned marriage at the Wall and believes it involves his actual sister.
When Jon tells himself he can’t interfere, Melisandre offers him a way that, according to her, he can stay true to his vows of neutrality and still save "Arya." She unveils that king-beyond-the-Wall Mance Rayder, who had seemingly burned to death, had actually survived through a magical illusion. And Jon agrees to send Mance south to save his sister… but the problem, of course, is that she isn't even there. So the show's rescue mission is different in almost every capacity.
3) The characters who are, and aren't, at the Wall have been jumbled up
(HBO)
This week's Wall plotline, featuring Jon turning to Aemon for advice and resolving to try and make peace with Tormund and the wildlings, is broadly similar to the books. It differs, though, in many details: events have been condensed, and some characters are in different places.
Near the beginning of A Dance with Dragons, Maester Aemon gives Jon the important advice to "kill the boy." But Jon doesn't seek him out because of his plans to make peace with the wildlings. That hasn’t come up yet, and by the time it does, Aemon is long gone — and so are Sam and Gilly. Jon sends them on a sea voyage to the city of Oldtown, so Sam can train as a maester at the Citadel. (This may still happen, considering the number of references to Oldtown we heard this week.)
Also, at this point in the books, wildling leader Tormund Giantsbane isn’t at the Wall. After the battle at the end of A Storm of Swords, he was never taken prisoner and escaped with thousands of other wildlings. He’s missing for most of book five, but after Jon sends a different wildling ally to go find him and make a peace overture, Tormund finally shows up again near the end — with his army. The skepticism and anger from many men of the Night's Watch about the proposed peace with Tormund is from the books, but the character of Olly — Jon's steward, whose parents were murdered by wildlings in season four — is invented for the show.
There are more changes and omissions in Stannis and Melisandre’s departure this week. In the books, Stannis is set to ride into a Bolton trap — but Jon, despite his instinct that he shouldn’t get involved in the wars of the realm, counsels Stannis that he should attack the remaining Greyjoy forces instead to win support among the Northmen. Yet we hear nothing about the Greyjoys in this week's episode, and Jon doesn't revise Stannis's war plans. Book Melisandre, Selyse, and Shireen, meanwhile, decide to stay at the Wall rather than go south with Stannis.
4) Dany's decision to marry a Meereenese noble occurs in a very different context
(HBO)
This week, Dany grapples with how to respond to the murder of her adviser Barristan Selmy by the Sons of the Harpy insurgents. Her ruthless lover, Daario, advises her to execute all of the former slave masters in Meereen. "Clean this city out," he says, "until the rats have nowhere left to hide."
At first, Dany seems to agree, having the heads of the noble families brought to her, and torching one of them with her chained dragons. But then, she changes course — deciding instead to marry Hizdahr zo Loraq, a noble from the old families, to unify the city's warring factions. She'll also reopen the fighting pits, as the nobles desire — but for freed men only.
In the books, this betrothal happens for different reasons. Barristan doesn't die in the books, but beyond that, it's the nobles who suggest the idea of a marriage alliance. Dany is eventually forced to agree, in large part because she faces an external threat from various foreign powers.
At this point in the books, Dany’s Meereen is being blockaded by the city of Qarth, dealing with an influx of refugees from the collapsed city of Astapor, and, most importantly, preparing for an attack by an army raised by the city of Yunkai. So Dany resolves that she has to unify her city against external foes — and that she can only do that by making peace with the nobles, even if it means allying with former slavers.
5) Book Ramsay doesn't have a girlfriend
(HBO)
We spend lots of time with the awful Boltons this week, as they prepare for Ramsay's wedding and the impending attack from Stannis Baratheon. A dinner scene that keeps topping itself in horrendous awkwardness is a particular standout, as Ramsay forces Theon to apologize to Sansa for killing her brothers (which he didn't actually do), just before deciding that Theon will give her away at the wedding.
The biggest difference here is, of course, the presence of Sansa, who goes nowhere near Theon or the Boltons in the books. But this episode also spotlights Ramsay's lover Myranda, an invented character for the show who's been hanging around since season three, acting as Ramsay's evil partner in crime. In the books, Ramsay has no paramour and certainly no woman who's an equal partner to him. Instead, he has a crew of thugs called the "Bastard's Boys," who aid him in his diabolical pursuits.
When Falah Liang was five, she began to sense the presence of a man named Lark in her mind. She could almost see him. His frame was birdlike, he had gray hair, and his company soothed her.
As Falah entered her teens, Lark's presence grew and solidified. He took on a name. He took on a voice. "I was well aware that it was unusual for those my age to continue having 'imaginary friends,'" she says, "so I kept him a secret, even as the two of us held thought-conversations throughout the day and explored elaborate mental worlds together. I knew he wasn't just an imaginary friend at that point, but I didn't know what exactly he was. Some words we tried and discarded:
guardianangel, daemon, alter ego. Muse was the only one that felt right, and we still use it today. Only last year did we finally find the words for our experiences."
What she found were words like
system and multiple and fronting—the vocabulary of the multiplicity community, a group that formed during the mailing lists of the 1980s. These multiples, as they call themselves, see themselves as healthy and empowered rather than disordered and "inherently pathological," as Falah says. And they desperately want the rest of the world to see them that way, too.
Their vocabulary is extensive, but the most basic concepts are these: A "multiplicity system" refers to the group within the body itself (i.e., "I'm part of a multiplicity system"). The system might consist of two people, or it might consist of 200. The "outer world" is this physical plane that we're all stumbling around in, while "inner worlds" are the subjective realms where their system members spend time when they're not "fronting," or running the body in the outer world. When I speak to Falah, she is fronting, not Lark.
The multiplicity community insists on being seen as healthy—even normal.
This is our reality, they argue. Why are you imposing your reality onto us?Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)—and its controversial precursor, Multiple Personality Disorder—are terms roundly rejected by the community, and most of them don't feel that they belong in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) at all. It's not that they don't believe people can suffer from DID (or, more broadly, Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified [DDNOS]). They just don't accept that they suffer from it. To them, all those with DID/DDNOS are multiple, but not all multiples are DID/DDNOS. Contrary to what a DID/DDNOS diagnosis implies, multiples want everyone in their system to be seen as people. Not fragments, alters, or personalities, but distinct individuals who happen to be inhabiting the same physical body.
About a year ago, Falah and Lark were joined by Steven and Rain; a few months later, Marcus, Santria, and Alyenor came along. "We are not openly multiple," she says. "All of us disguise our behavior under one mask, one public persona, in essence appearing non-multiple to the outside eye and to most people we interact with. We're able to share memories and communicate among ourselves internally, so it's easy for us. We wear the mask well and look like your standard non-multiple STEM student, but it can be tiring to wear the mask."
The multiplicity community disagrees with the way the community is portrayed in the media, as in the TV show United States of Tara
Multiples who wear the mask, so to speak, may still notice others looking at them strangely, aware of shifts in speech patterns and personality traits but unable to put their finger on what's happening. Miakoda Combies, a computer technician and member of a nine-person multiplicity system called the JC Klatch, noticed that clients grew nervous when they didn't understand that she was a multiple. "They would sense a change in personality, but they didn't have an explanation [for it]," she says. "I guess they figured that if we didn't know what was going on, they should worry."
But certain clients knew that Miakoda was part of a multiplicity system, and remained unfazed. "We actually had customers that would prefer one of us over another," she says. "There were a few who could tell us apart the moment we walked through the door." Being multiple also provided subtle comic relief from an insufferable boss. "During meetings, as he repeated the same stuff for the umpteenth time, we'd poke fun inside where he couldn't hear us," she says. But when a disorder of the inner ear forced Miakoda and her system to leave that job, her employer denied them unemployment benefits. "After working there for five years, he insisted that a multiple couldn't possibly hold a job," she says.
Being denied benefits is just one example of the negative consequences of open multiplicity. Julie, another member of the JC Klatch multiplicity system, writes on her website that the Klatch's childhood signs of multiplicity were mistaken for ADHD, and that they were put on a cocktail of medication— Ritalin, Dexadrine, Welibutrin, Zoloft, and more—that led to extreme health problems and affects their body negatively to this day. "Social services might take your kids away," says Jazz Abbottlane, another multiple. "And you might know the laws to get your kids back, but the damage is done. Your kids are like,
Oh my God, they can do that to us?"
Jazz fought for disability rights (unrelated to multiplicity) for years, so she's well aware of the law and has "taken a lot of precautions" to insure that her rights won't be encroached on. She's a member of Oure Gaiya, a system so big that she "hasn't a clue of the total." Both her mother and her grandmother were multiple, though she says they didn't pass down their wisdom to Jazz. "We had very messed-up childhood," she says, and declined to elaborate. Today, Jazz runs a group she founded called Plural Activism, which provides support for multiples and pushes for non-biased representation in the media. They're currently trying to soften the negative impact that Leonardo DiCaprio's latest movie,
The Crowded Room, will have on the multiple community, as it portrays the violent side of Billy Milligan, famously diagnosed with multiple personality disorder.
For a long time, Jazz wasn't openly multiple, because the person fronting her system was a woman named Debbie. "Debbie was scared of the idea of multiplicity," says Jazz. "She didn't want to have anything to do with it. All she knew was what this society had been cramming down her throat for her entire life: That multiplicity is sick, horrible; that you can't be that way. And she just wasn't around long enough to learn differently." Eventually, Debbie died—one person inside a still-living body.
"There should not be one model of reality imposed upon everyone." –Anthony Temple
A multiplicity system named Astraea runs one of the oldest and most definitive guides to multiplicity on the internet: Astraea's Web, which started in 1995. As a group, Astraea is vocally political, and not just about multiplicity; they'll take up the flag for everything from free speech to LGBT rights to animal abuse. Despite being a figurehead of the movement, the system keeps their multiplicity a secret offline. "Only a handful of people know our actual identity and accept that we are a 'we,'" three of the members tell me.
"Any time that a multiple group lives in fear of the consequences of coming out of the closet, they are being denied their social rights," says Anthony Temple, a member of Astraea. "There should not be one model of reality imposed upon everyone. Society can and should change to accept those who are different, rather than enforcing a single standard of normality and punishing those who don't fit."
The idea of different modes of reality is fascinating, troubling, and incredibly slippery. It's not exactly a banner that the psych community at large is particularly interested in carrying. I asked a psychologist who specializes in dissociative identity disorder if she thought we should be accepting of different realities, and she immediately answered, "Of course there aren't multiple people in one body."
Still, she admitted that multiplicity "is how it's experienced and that is the reality of how it feels," which begs the question: Where is the line between experience and reality? If you experience life as part of a multiplicity system, that is, at the very least, your reality, whether or not anyone else agrees with you. So it's not about whether multiplicity is real, because that's not necessarily the point here. Instead, we should be asking ourselves whether or not we should try to change someone if we disagree with their mode of reality. Is it our duty to make all realities conform to our own?
"The multiplicity community's history with the MPD/DID/DDNOS labels is complicated, and full of contention," says Falah Liang. "There's a lot of resentment towards psychiatry for pathologizing what is seen as simply a neurological difference like being left-handed, for painting multiplicity as freaks and invalids, and for pushing integration as a necessary 'cure' that all multiplicity must undergo." On the flip side, the anonymous psychologist I spoke to expressed mild resentment at the idea of healthy/empowered multiplicity distracting from people who actually need a DID diagnosis. "People with DID need to be recognized, as it's a genuine disorder," she said.
To be diagnosed with DID, you must fit several criteria under the DSM-5. Here's one: "The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning." This is the criterion that really annoys multiples. They'll readily admit that they have problems, whether they're anxious or depressed or just bad at responding to text messages, but they don't chalk those problems up to multiplicity. They chalk them up to being human.
They also dislike the diagnostic language of "identity" and "personality," which implies that their system members—who they consider full-fledged people—are just fragments of some truer, more real Self that will one day, ideally, be unified again. This is the thinking behind integration, a controversial and somewhat dated process wherein all the people in a multiple system fuse into one. Most multiples are understandably skeptical, especially since famous integrations, like the ones undergone by Billy Milligan, Chris Costner Sizemore (who was written about in
The Three Faces of Eve), and Shirley Ardell Mason (whose experiences were documented in the bookSybil), were never actually permanent. In these integrations, the many fused into one, but eventually, the one splintered back into many.
Dr. Max Krucoff, a neurological surgeon at Duke University Medical Center, would be the first to acknowledge the potential slipperiness of DSM diagnoses. "Most medical diagnoses are defined by a pathophysiology—something identifiable, anatomic," he says. "Psychiatric diagnoses have no known underlying cause. I can't take a biopsy of somebody's brain and look at it under a microscope and say, 'You have Multiple Personality Disorder.'"
Still, the controversial term "disorder," he says, is a means to an end: effective treatment for those who want and/or need it. "If people aren't hurting anybody or dangerous to anybody or asking for help, there's no reason to go looking for them and treating them," he says. "Everybody's on a spectrum, and what's considered a psychiatric illness is often evolving. If you feel like you're sick, if you feel like you need help, then doctors may be able to label you with a disorder only so they can figure out a good way to treat and help you."
Other cultures, religions, and historical periods have been open to the idea of—well, maybe not multiplicity exactly, but similar phenomena, like muses, phantoms, and fluid "selves." In ancient Greece, Socrates had his daimon, a mysterious sort of influencer whose presence he chalked up to the gods' generosity. We see the idea of autonomous-but-bodiless consciousness in Tibetan Buddhists, who allegedly invented
tulpamancy, where one meditates and conjures up imaginary beings that eventually become sentient. Spirit possession is ritualized in religions from Pentecostal Christianity to Haitian Vodou. Even Descartes's famous dictum, "I think, therefore I am" can be read in a multiplicity-hued light—if multiple beings inside one body are all thinking, don't they all "exist"?
Point is, multiplicity wasn't born on 1990s internet forums, or dreamed up by lonely gamers longing for imaginary friends. Aspects of it, at least, have been around for centuries.
"We're not made-up, we're not characters, we're not role-playing, we're not identity disordered. We're people." – Samari of the Monokrom System
This is all to say that though the shift in behavior that happens when multiples "switch," or change who's up front, may seem implausible or even fake to a layperson, the multiples aren't acting.
I watched
a video made by six members of a system known as the Monokrom System, each answering questions like "What is your hair color?" and "What is your favorite quote?" If you had showed me the video without context, I would have assumed it was an acting reel, or maybe just the result of a bored day at home, because the female body onscreen never changed. She dressed differently, she spoke differently, she wore her hair up or down or braided, but she was always the same brown-haired girl with bangs. One body. And, by extension, I would have assumed, one mind.
The Monokrom System is so large that they think of themselves as a city, with both locals and visitors—tourists of the mind, you might say. I Skyped with Samari, one member of the system, whose voice and personality were consistent throughout our interview and consistent with what I'd seen of her in the previous video. I asked her about the hardest part of being multiple. "Making people understand that we're people, we're not made up, we're not characters, we're not role-playing, we're not identity disordered," she says.
In the video, Samari says that her hair is "strawberry pink," though she speaks from a brown-haired girl's body. That's because while multiples exist within a body, but they don't always identify closely with it. A person within a multiplicity system might be a different age than the body's age. They might be a different gender. They could be covered in tattoos but living in a body untouched by needles.
"Like any nine people forced to live together, we have spats," says Miakoda from the JC Klatch system. These spats often center around the body, whether physically or spatially. "One of us wants a tattoo, the others disagree. Two want to dye the hair, but they disagree on color, and the rest disagree on dying it at all." At one point, she laughingly refers to the body as the "meat car." The nine members of her system simply take turns driving it around.
If you take this sense of disconnect too far, the ethics get a little murky. You run into cases like Billy Milligan's: He raped three women but used a successful insanity defense, saying that others in his system had committed the crimes without Billy being aware of them. In other words, the body committed the crimes, but Billy's detachment from the body made him innocent.
Interestingly enough, many multiples disagree with Milligan's insanity defense. They take full responsibility for the body, no matter how disconnected to it they otherwise feel. According to Astraea's Web, "The multiple personality defense should be abolished; if one person in a system commits a crime... the body goes to jail. Period."
"I see that people are abused by the medical and psychiatric profession simply because they are not like me." –Jim Bunkelman
A person with one mind inside one body is a "singlet," according to multiple's terminology, and Jim Bunkelman is what they call a "singlet ally." His story is typical, at first: Jim met Rhonda at a production company, where she was the office manager and he was a freelancer. Then one day, when the two of them were hanging out with Rhonda's sister, the sister alluded to Rhonda's multiplicity.
"Rhonda didn't seem nervous about it, but she was," says Jim. "She didn't know if it would scare me off or not." It didn't faze him at all, a fact he chalks up to a curious personality, an open-minded upbringing, and a degree in physics, which taught him that you can never be sure you're totally right. "I've always felt that the universe and the human mind are amazing and the possibilities within each are endless," he says. Plus, Rhonda was a total catch. "She was such a lovable and good being that everyone loved her and accepted her and her system," he says. "If you knew Rhonda and spent time with her and the people in her system, you could not be skeptical."
Jim and Rhonda married, and eventually, Jim met 70 other members of Rhonda's system. He even fell in love with another one of them, Gloria, and the two of them had a wedding in his and Rhonda's backyard. "The others were my friends, my companions, and my kids," he says. "I had an entire family of Rhonda. It was the most wonderful experience of my life."
After 15 happy years of marriage, Rhonda Bunkelman passed away. A grieving Jim went online, searching for some way to perpetuate her memory. He stumbled across Plural Activism, the group run by Jazz Abbottlane, and has been an active member ever since. "I have no investment in this group other than the fact that I have lived with a multiple and I see that people are abused by the medical and psychiatric profession simply because they are not like me," he says.
"There's this whole evolving understanding of how the actual physical brain interfaces with the mind, and how we identify the self and consciousness—when you say 'I am this,' what that actually means as far as the physical substrate of the brain," says Dr. Krucoff. "It's hard for anybody to say what's really a disorder versus a variant of normal."
Jim created a memorial for Rhonda in Los Angeles with three columns that listed the names of everyone in her system. He says over 5,000 people attended the event. "There are so many things we do not know," he says. "To declare them not possible solely because we have not experienced them is incredibly foolish to me."
"Where does consciousness reside? Where does the brain end and the mind begin?" –Dr. Max Krucoff
I sat outside at a coffee shop the other day and tried to retreat within my own mind. I identify with my physical self so closely:
my eyes, my fingers, my annoying hair. I wanted to see if I could imagine others milling around inside my body, but instead, I was overwhelmed by a sense of single occupancy. It felt like my mind, my selfhood, was occupying every square inch of my frame, pressing against the inside of my skull and furling out to the tips of my fingers. I waited for a voice to step out from the shadows and say hello, but there was no room for anyone else.
The self is an infinitely complicated topic. Personal reality? So subjective. The brain? A mysterious organ, its surface barely scratched by neuroscience. Consciousness? A living phantom, still impossible to pin down. "When you start digging deep into neuroscience," says Dr. Krucoff, "you start digging into the question: Where does consciousness reside? Where does the brain end and the mind begin? What's the chicken and what's the egg? When you have a spontaneous thought, is it because neurons fired and you had the thought or because you had the thought and neurons fired?" And later: "We're not even close [to understanding the brain] in some regard."
It can be beautiful to dwell a little in mystery, to inhabit our own unknowing. Maybe admitting that we don't understand everything is a vital stance for all of us: for those asking to help and medicate and "fix," for those who say they don't need help or medication or fixing, and for those of us on the sidelines, unsure of our role in the complicated realm of the mind.
GentlemanMetalhead used the tiny pair of katana from his own 1980s Leonardo action figure to set up this photo. And don’t worry if Leo isn’t your favorite member of the TMNT. GentlemanMetalhead has plans to photograph the other three chelonian warrior brothers. So stay tuned.
Cupcakes are awesome, even when they’re made of paper, which means we can’t actually eat them. These exquisite paper treats are the work of Vancouver, BC-based paper artist Justina Yang of Fiber Lab.
All Things Paper recently asked Yang what led her to explore making mini cakes out of paper:
“Well, as you may already know, I’ve been obsessed with making paper food for a while now - maybe it has something to do with this “logic”: paper -> books -> stories -> imagination -> magical otherworld where things aren’t exactly what they seem. The whole cupcake series was also prompted by a study on curved folding, which I had neglected to explore before, due to the fact that it’s not as collapsible as straight edges. But to me, there is just something beautiful and whimsical about smooth lines. So I cooked up a way to present different curved folding techniques as cupcake frostings, each named after a paper product.”
this is seriously one of the most heartbreaking things i've ever read
A British Columbia man has apparently admitted in a Facebook post to killing his family, CBC News reports. The post on Randy Janzen’s Facebook page states that he killed his wife, his daughter, and his sister.
On Tuesday night, an unarmed homeless black man named Brandon Glenn was shot and killed by an LAPD officer outside of a bar in the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles. The incident marks yet another tragic episode in a
seemingly endless string of controversies over the use of force by police, especially against men of color.
The
incident was filmed, but so far, the city hasn't released that footage to the public.
The unusual twist in this particular incident is that LAPD Chief Charlie Beck is being criticized by the local police union for being too hard on his cops. Protesters
called for Beck's resignation when another unarmed black homeless man was shot in March, and he defended the LAPD. This time, after viewing the footage of the shooting, Chief Beck told the press that, so far, he hadn't seen the "extraordinary circumstances" that might justify a killing. Craig Lally of the union representing LAPD officers called the comments "completely irresponsible" at this stage of the investigation.
Beck was noticeably absent from Thursday night's town hall meeting about the killing, as was Mayor Eric Garcetti. Instead, the city dispatched Francisco Ortega, a "community engagement specialist," to emcee the event at Venice's Westminster Avenue Elementary School. Ortega introduced a panel of officials that included Beatrice Girmala, LAPD deputy chief for the city's West Side, President of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners Steve Soboroff, and the area's City Councilman Mike Bonin.
The evening got off to a rocky start, with Ortega's opening remarks—"We know these aren't the best of circumstances"—almost immediately being interrupted by an attendee shouting, "You haven't said anything about murder!" Through the two opening invocations from neighborhood ministers, and a few remarks by Girmala, the atmosphere got even more raucous. When Bonin spoke, he was booed almost completely off from the podium.
The event soon became an outpouring of rage and grief from the crowd that lasted almost three hours. The panel shied away from straightforwardly defending the cops, but also seemed determined to avoid falling into the trap Beck did. Their solution was to mostly remain silent.
The evening took a surprising turn when one man (above), who claimed to be an eyewitness to the shooting, gave his account of Glenn's state of mind minutes before he got in a fight with a bouncer, which led to his fatal encounter with the police. He and his friends were outside the bar playing music, the man said. "Brandon came up to our spot. He was clearly in an altered state." But the self-identified witness wasn't threatened, he said.
"He just wanted to look me in the eye and tell me about his life. He wanted to hug me too, and I wasn't interested in being hugged by a drunk stranger. He was a muscular guy. I can see why someone could be intimidated. I just looked him in the eye, listened to his story, and it wasn't that difficult. That's when the bouncer threw down." He became emotional as he explained that he had tried to defuse the situation "with my tongue, with my hands, and with my eyes."
Many attendees had a long history of interacting with members of the panel, and seemed discouraged. Tibby Rothman, a retired journalist, told the panel that "the problem is disproportional use of violence against the poor," before recounting several examples she had witnessed. "I don't think you're going to change it," she said, adding, "Fucking prove me wrong."
Andrew Keegan, a Hollywood actor best known for his role in
10 Things I Hate About You, was the last person to speak. He spoke of a need for harmony and mindfulness, before complaining about the police poking around his new age temple in Venice called "Full Circle."
The trio of officials simply absorbed the crowd's expressions of pain and outrage. They gave few substantive answers—mostly about distinguishing the investigative procedures of the LAPD from those of the district attorney's office—and it's safe to say that few people left satisfied.
Scroll down for more photos of an emotional evening.
My Plush-Crested Jay that won a First Place in the Professional Division at the World Taxidermy Championships. #wtc2015 #WorldChampionships #taxidermy #taxidermist
Sand Francisco-based landscape artist Andres Amador uses beaches as his canvas and a simple rake to create enormous, beautifully-detailed sand paintings, some of which measure up to 500 ft x 300ft. He prefers to work during a full or new moon, when the tide is at its lowest, thus creating the largest possible canvas. Working either alone or with a few helpers, Amador carves giant geometric and organic patterns made of the contrasting shades of raked and un-raked sand, sometimes using a rope as a compass to help keep the design steady. Most of his pieces are completed in about 2 hours.
“I tend to frequent the beaches near where I live in the San Francisco Bay area. A design starts with an inspiration of some sort - an off-hand doodle or perhaps something I came across that day of which I took a picture. About 95 per cent of the work is done beforehand on my computer, creating as many versions as I can of a design and choosing the one that speaks to me. Then I reverse-engineer the step-by-step process I would need to replicate the design on the beach. Next I choose an appropriate day for a design, which is contingent on the tides and available daylight. The final step is to trust the guide I made and start raking. The window of opportunity is very narrow.”
Each sand painting is a short-lived creation. Not long after a piece is completed, the ocean begins to wash it away. They tend to last long enough for a few photos to be taken, which will end up being the only proof that the pieces ever existed. That impermanence is a vital part of Amador’s artwork:
“My ultimate goal is to promote the cause of self-awareness. The art I create is intended as a reflection and a reminder of the grandeur that exists within every viewer and the beauty that abounds in our world everywhere we look. At the beach itself the person lucky enough to see one happening generally stays to watch the process, cheering when I complete the design. Once I have finished a piece and can get up on the overlook to see my work and take photos, I completely let go of it.”
Head over to Andres Amador’s website to check out more of his awesome ephemeral sand paintings and videos his creation process.
To say Game of Thrones fans are obsessed is an understatement, and when it comes to food, the obsession goes beyond all 7 kingdoms. While there’s a website and a cookbook dedicated to GoT recipes, one chef has created a 15-course tasting menu based on George R.R. Martin’s grand opus.
At Elizabeth restaurant in Chicago, chef Iliana Regan is known for her foraging skills and creating seasonal menus. Just take a look at the photos on the restaurant’s website; all the food is gorgeous and worthy of any banquet table where you might slaughter your family members. I mean, the food is beautiful and inspired…
Chef Regan is a geek chef after my own heart. While reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series, she made note of all the pages that mentioned food and went back to reference and create her menu. Eater.com has a video showcasing the meal preparation and the food is so bright and beautiful, it practically jumps off the plate through the gorgeous presentation. Here’s a look at the full tasting menu:
Bok choy and amaranth Strawberries Bitter salad Crisp bread and pickles Peas and asparagus Snails with green garlic Scallop and fermented rhubarb Pickled sardines and salted beef Mussels, clams, spring onions, and watercress Beet root and fermented milk Pigeon pie Yogurt and poppyseed Lemon curd and graham cracker Buckwheat and raw cow’s milk
Elizabeth restaurant’s Instagram photos show that diners have come to dine dressed in full Game of Thrones regalia, easily combining elegant cosplay with fine dining. If the idea of a Westeros-themed dinner piques your fancy, tickets are still available and the special menu is being offered until May 16, 2015.
A photo posted by Iliana Regan (@elizabethrestaurant) on
What do you make for your Game of Thrones viewing parties? Let us know on Twitter and Instagram, and don’t miss our Westerosi-themed recipes for your next royal feast.
Since the trading card game debuted in 1993, Magic: The Gathering has gone from being a niche hobby to an international phenomenon. Today some of its 10 million–plus disciples are so besotted with MTG that they've nicknamed it "cardboard crack."
In this episode of
American Obsessions, we follow a professional Magic player who dropped out of college to join the pro circuit, and we talk to two brothers as they wax nostalgic about the spells, creatures, and mana of old.
The EMP Museum in Seattle, WA never ceases to impress with its dedication to the popular arts. A few months ago, it was the first place to host Star Wars and the Power of Costume, an exhibit sponsored by the Smithsonian. Now it delves into the world of Fantasy with its latest attraction: Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic.
Showing off everything from movies, books, and games, Worlds of Myth and Magic transports us into the realms we grew up loving. Taken from movies, the exhibit displays a vast array of fictional weapons, like Conan’s sword from Conan the Barbarian. When Dorothy killed the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, her hat was the only thing that remained: this is on display. For those of you that enjoy a little more whimsy, the costumes of Indigo Montoya, Princess Buttercup, and the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride are in full view, as well.
Not only are there costumes of these fantastic characters, but also glimpses into their creation. A collection of original notebooks and manuscripts from Jim Henson, George R.R. Martin and Tolkien are available for perusal. If you are in the Seattle area, I highly recommend checking it out. If you are NOT, then you can check out the gallery below and live vicariously through the internet!
Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic is included with a General Admission ticket to the EMP, and is free for EMP members. You can find ticket and museum info here.
But what say you? Is there anything here that brings back memories? Or is there something new you’d like to discover? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.
May 4th is a very, very special holiday on the internet, and don’t worry, Chris Hardwick, Paul F. Tompkins, Grace Helbig and John Hodgman had lots of fun with Star Wars references. The How Old site continues to offend us all, and some very smart people decided to #DumbDownABook for the hashtag wars. TV commercials continue to be really weird, and it’s seriously a challenge to figure out what’s real and what’s not. Oh, and apparently there was a fight this weekend that everyone was talking about? Also, can someone tell me how PFT does those things with his eyebrows because #amazing.
Tuesday brought together Jon Gabrus, Eugene Cordero and Matt Besser to tackle such hot topics as the Met Gala. Fashion is weird. Chris gave us some insight into the celebrity lifestyle of selfies with fans. The internet tries to teach us power tools and common household things to make our lives…better. I’m worried about the guy who gave himself a pedicure with a sander. And kids are really mean to their Uber drivers, though it sounds like some of them deserve it. The Simpsons is back for a few more seasons, and man it’s hard to think of storylines that haven’t already been done.
Wednesday night brought Heather Anne Campbell, Dan Harmon and Jeff B. Davis together, and Chris swore about how great they were. Seriously, I think they might be his favorite. And then they freaked me out with dolls. Who does that? #VideoGameSitcoms really had me thinking about the television I watched as a child, but I’m not sure I’d really want to watch anything that these three came up with. And Orson Welles remains a big deal.
The week wrapped up with Jen Kirkman, Blaine Capatch and Colton Dunn. The new Hamburglar was discussed. I was so distracted by his DadBod that I didn’t catch the jokes. The trio stocked their very own manly crying rooms to compliment Japan’s newest fun thing to do on your time off. In honor of Mother’s Day (It’s Sunday — DO NOT FORGET), the hashtag was #AddMomRuinAMovie. They were great and so is your mom. And then they decided the future of children based on the onsies they found on the internet. It was great.
One of the only downsides of cast iron pans is that they can be a nightmare to clean, but this chainmail scrubber claims to scrape away caked-on food without hurting your seasoning, and its 4.8 star review average seems to back that up. It’s also the #1 selling item in “Kitchen Cleaners” on Amazon, and marked down to an all-time low price. [Hudson Cast Iron Cleaner XL 7x7 Premium Stainless Steel Chainmail Scrubber, $12 with code SXWF62R4]
A water main break in West Hollywood early Sunday morning unleashed 10,000 gallons of water, creating a sinkhole and flooding nearby homes and garages. [ more › ]
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