Hate laws

There are a lot of things that I see in the United States as good things, but there are quite a lot of things that I see as not quite good things.  Like the right to free speech.  In America this is taken as the right to say what ever you like unless it is defamatory and untrue and thus damaging.  In Canada there is a very similar law but it has a difference.  The difference is that you can't say anything hateful.  

Why I am talking about this is because I just heard on the news that there was a  demonstration in California on the weekend by the KKK, the Ku Klux Klan.  I realize that someone out there might not know who the KKK are.  And that would be great if that were true.  They are White Supremacists; people who believe that white people are superior to all other races.  They were a bigger organization in the American South in the years after the American Civil War and the 1950s.  They focused their hate on African Americans.  Among the activities that they are most known for include, burning crosses on people's lawns as intimidation and hanging Black people from trees.  They are also known for the white cloaks they wore with white hoods over their heads so that no one could tell who they were.  

I am surprised that the KKK is even allowed to exist at all, but they are protected by the American Constitution, the right to free speech.  They can say horrible things if they want to, as long as they are not defaming a specific individual or organization.  Whereas if they did that in Canada, they could be charged under the Hate Crimes laws.  It is a law that protects people from words of hate spoken or written to incite hate of any group of people.  Like in the states where people can not defame an individual or organization with untrue statements, this law protects ethnicities and groups of people.  It has been used in the past to stop people from spreading hateful speech, most notable Ernst Zundel who was a holocaust denier.  

There are four specific offences that one can be charged in Canada under the Hate Laws.  Advocating Genocide, public incitement of hatred, willful promotion of hate, and mischief motivated by hate in relation to religious property.  If the Americans had a similar law, the KKK might be persecuted on three of those offences, unless they could demonstrate that it is no longer an organization of hatred of African Americans.  Except it can't.

I truly wish that Canada did not need to have this law on the books, except that it is a valuable law for helping to maintain the security and well being of Canadians of all creeds and religions in these times of increased diversity.  It places crimes of hate in the proper context in society and let's people know that defacing a Jewish headstone with a swastika is more than just mischief, that throwing a Molotov Cocktail at a mosque is more than Arson, that telling people it is okay to beat up Sikh people because they are heathens is not okay and is wrong, and telling people that it is okay to kill someone because of the colour of their skin is actually worse than just murder.

Hate laws are also not about being politically correct, but about allowing people to feel safe.  They are not about removing people's right to free speech, but about removing the use of fear as a weapon.   I think that The States should amend their Right to Free Speech to remove the right to spread hate.  Of course if they did that, at least one presidential candidate might be charged by that law.

Holly is a white Wood

When I think about superheroes I realize that they are all Caucasian.  Okay, not all of them, but all the first stringers.  Superman, Batman, Ironman, the Hulk, Spiderman, the Green Lantern.  Most of the second stringers are Caucasian too.  It is only when you get to the third stringers that you see more diversity of roles and the bad guys.  In some cases the superhero must be Caucasian, because it is the storyline, like Wonder Woman, a Greek Amazon and Thor the Norse God of Thunder—those two have to be Caucasian, but all the others could be any race, but they are never portrayed that way.  Superman is an alien, so he could be of any appearance.  Batman, Spiderman, Ironman, the Hulk do not have it anywhere in their origin story that they are Caucasian, they are just traditionally Caucasian.   

Hell half the time when historically it makes sense to cast an ethnic group other than Caucasian, they don't and just pick some White person for the role.  This is the problem of Hollywood, it is the reason why this years Oscars are all white.  The good parts of all the movie roles are cast as white people and e bit parts by anyone.  The problem with the Oscars this year is not that there are no minorities, but that Hollywood does not cast major roles with non Caucasian people if it does not have to.  There are a lot of great Caucasian actors out there, but there are great nonCaucasian actors too.  

The biggest surprise of last year in the movies, was that the biggest box office hit, the lead actor was a woman and the best supporting actor was not Caucasian.  I am talking Star Wars here, both actors were unknowns too.  The big draws for that movie were Caucasians though, so . . ..  

Later this year there will be a movie out called Suicide Squad.  One of the characters is called DeadShot, traditionally a Caucasian, but this time an African American, except he is a bad guy and is a second stringer bad guy too.    Also this year there is a movie called The Gods of Egypt and all the main roles are played by Caucasian, even though historically, Egyptians and their Gods were black skinned.  

Maybe it is because Hollywood thinks that America is still racist and people of African heritage don't sell movie tickets.  Maybe they think that Black people only make good athletes and musicians.  What do you think?

And then I saw this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fJy_OU1DPcg

Dating yuch

The not dating scene is getting me down.  It is like I am getting negative experiences for about a week and I have not even been trying.  Which is tough because I am already in a place that is telling me to give up and stop trying.

I sent off a short message to someone who I thought was interesting and the response was a total shut down, then I replied thanking them for turning me down in person and to explain the problems that she saw.  And I get a nasty response that my condescension was dripping from my letter.

People *know* what they know and think that is the extent of what is.  Hi I am Queer, so I am up on everything odd sexually, but they are not.  Throw them a curve ball like demisexual and watch them tell you they *know* what it is but not understand that it actually exists.  Do I have to lie and hide myself to date?  I was wondering back at MagicEyes, when she wanted to go further on the first date than talk but resisted because I wanted to go slow and it all went nowhere.  Do I have to cough and fake being normal, do I have to sleep with women I might become attracted to keep them there in my life until I am ready to be with them?

I was thinking about revamping my profiles anyways.  I was told that I should not tell people things about myself and let them discover the magic that is me, but these experiences scream at me that I need to advertise my differences in neon lights, I need to let people know what demisexual means, that I am a literal person that I do not dissemble or use sarcasm in writing to people.

I will probably ignore my friends, I would rather not be with people who cannot see past the way my brain works to see what is in it.

Tax Me Please

City sales tax

http://taxfoundation.org/article/sales-tax-rates-major-us-cities

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/1-sales-tax-could-net-1-3b-for-transit-says-city-1.1192528

Apparently BigSmoke just passed its budget for the year, 10.1 billion dollars.  Lots of money, but then it is as big as a small country with over two million people and a surrounding region of city that contains over five million people.  Ten billion does not seem that big.  

The difference is that a small country decides everything and a big city does not have that choice.  BigSmoke is a third tier government, meaning there are two levels of government above it.  Two levels of government mean two levels of taxation and two sources of drain to the people who live there above the city itself.  Theoretically the national government deals with the National and International concerns.  Trade, Defense, and stuff like that.  The provincial government deals with things that were not as important back when the country was built, like education and healthcare.  The city level of government deals with the basic necessities, like waste removal, water, road maintenance and stuff like that.  It is pretty funny that interest is inversely proportional to the value that the governments provide.  

The government that provides the most services to us is the local government, but it has the lowest yielding taxes.  The Federal government provides almost nothing of our day to day interactions, but gets the most from taxation.  The middle level government is part way in between, both with taxes and personal importance to the people.

The biggest problem with the model of government is that only the higher government levels can pass laws that affect the lower levels but not the opposite.  The upper level governments chose, in times of financial pressure to move its responsibilities to lower level governments, but not increase their revenue gathering capabilities.  Both levels of government have done this over the past couple of decades.  BigSmoke has another problem because it is a very big city, it attracts mo specialized government services, because of the large population.  Many of these services are now their responsibility.  Additionally big cities have other services that they need to take care of that smaller cities and towns do not have, Public Transportation.  When the public transportation networks were first set up, it was as a partnership between all governments, but now the BigSmoke transit system is almost exclusively their responsibility.  

Larger Governments are willing to spend money locally if the city can take over the maintenance of the projects, but if they did that they would go deeper in debt.  Debt at the local government is not something that can be passed to anyone else.  New projects are increasingly required as the infrastructure ages and needs replacing, but also as the city grows and technology changes.  That is the problem.  Local governments need a better way to get money.

The Americans use a similar method of taxation.  Both federal governments collect income tax and trade tariffs, the State and Provincial raise money through sales taxes, so does our federal government.  The local level raises money through property taxes, and in the States with sales tax.  The Canadian Sales tax used to be at seven percent, but was later dropped to five.    If the cities were allowed to levy a sales tax of up to two percent, this would alleviate a lot of financial pressure on local governments.  If BigSmoke got this they could increase revenues by about $2.5 Billion a year.  That could be used to repair a lot of bridges, increase subway lines and make everything more efficient.

Part of me thinks that this income has to be kept focused, or it will begin to be thought of as expected income and used to get more paid people doing services.  I think it should be used to increase and repair the infrastructure or else it goes away.  The tax needs to be earmarked for specific projects.  1/2% allocated to public housing repairs for a projected eighteen months, then it ends, 1.25% allocated for a dedicated express subway line East to West, North to South, three years, .25% for overpass repairs for six months.

Something for the cities is needed.  Something for the big and the small alike.

Occam's Razor and me

The problem that I have with ME is the number of thingings that I am defining myself with.  I am Demisexual, Demiromantic, Autistic and a bunch of other things.  All these things feel right for me, but when someone tells me that they are several different things it makes me quake; there is something wrong there.  Occam's Razor would suggest that many different major things is wrong, when there are so many other people that are not defined as such.  one thing is more believable than more than one.  As such, I am Autistic and the Demisexual, Demiromantic are not separate, but aspects of Autism.

I feel that I am justified in believing that I am Demi, in that thinking that I am has left me more comfortable with myself than I have ever been before, but as an aspect of Autism it works too.  Here I sit next to my ex girlfriend, MPTR as she sets up a booty call with her new boyfriend, who is not me.  I am not jealous at all.  Her longterm boyfriend would be, but he is not here.  I am not interested in her anymore, I have no romantic feelings either.

Will I feel romantic feelings again . . . I hope so.  There is no greater feeling.

A Penny for your Droughts?

There was a news story today that said that Canadian farmers were going to be planting more lentils and peas this year because the price of these crops has doubled in the past year.  It has doubled because they are staples in India and India has had two years of drought.  There have been a lot of serious droughts in the past few years.  Serious droughts and aquifers being depleted of water.  Our agricultural regions of are being damaged.  We need to produce more on less land, which means we need to irrigate and that means in turn that we need to take the water from the aquifers.  One might say that if there were less people we would not have this problem.  

There are too many people.  But I am not advocating forced sterilization, nor am I saying that what we need to do to limit the population of the planet.  There should not be an IQ test to determine who lives, because there is already an IQ test that will do that; we will figure out what to do or we will die.  What I will do is draw you a picture of what is is happening and why and what we could do to stop it from getting worse.

Droughts are normal.  They have existed for all of history and they are natural.  Most droughts are caused by the variable weather patterns.  The weather has always been this way so the question is it worse now or not.  The answer is that whether the droughts are worse now or then is not the real issue, but rather that the food supply is so tight that any disruption causes world wide effects and in the future it will only get worse.

One of the reasons for drought is deforestation.  It has been estimated that half of all the rain to fall in a tropical rainforest came from the moisture that the forest respired.  This means for every parcel of rainforest we remove, less rain will fall in those areas.  The Amazon, India, Indonesia, Africa and South Asia are all the major rainforests in the world.  Most of the people living in these places are subsistence farmers.  For them cutting down the forests creates more land to farm, but doing so decreases the amounts of crops the land produces, because less water falls as rain.  Deforestation also decreases aquifer recharge too.  The roots of trees provide bigger holes far water the pass from the surface and the roots bore deeper into the ground than grasses do, so when the water does enter the ground it will go deeper down under a forest as it will under a grass land.  Pavement is even worse.  There are other reasons why forests are better than no forests other than drought protection like biodiversity, but droughts are the topic of today.

Climate change is another cause of droughts.  Big surprise right, that I would not bring this into the discussion.  Climate change is bringing about a world of more or less of what it is today.  That is, more water here, less water over there, hotter here, cooler over there.  It is not as simple as just a global temperature rise, would that it were so easy.  Yes there is a temperature increase, but the effects of the temperature increase are complex.  Warmer air can hold more water than drier air, which means areas that are already dry now will get drier.  Wetter air means that places where it rains more now will get more rain later and everywhere where is rains will get even more rain.  Meaning that there will be heavier rainfalls over less rain days as climate change progresses.  Droughts will be longer and when the drought breaks, there will be more rain than the land can hold and there will be flooding and erosion.  We see this happening in the world today.  Several years of drought in Australia broken with record breaking floods, California suffering from wildfires brought on by years of drought then inundated by mudslides when the rains returned.

The effects of the droughts are pretty obvious.  I grew up with stories of the great Dust Bowls of the nineteen-thirties, when the droughts dried out the top layer of the soil, the best part of the soil, and blew it away and off the land, creating a choking hazard and reducing the productivity of the farmland for decades to come.  That is one dramatic effect of drought, but there are others and they are more dramatic and traumatic too.

Climate change as I stated previously is a boon for some and a bust for others.  For Canada it is a boon.  Warmer temperatures increase the growing season and rather than less rain, we are forecasted to get more rain on average.  As a result over the past few years Canadian farmers have been getting bumper crops of much of what they grow and they have been able to sell the gross excess for a lot more than usual, because the prices have been high.  High prices means one thing only, because food is a commodity and in a free market this means that there are greater supply problems in the world than there is too much production.  Back to that news report, drought in India doubles the price of peas and lentils, making them more profitable to grow for Canadian farmers.  I fully support high food prices and farmers making money, but in this case it means that there is a shortage of food world wide.  The shortage is caused by drought and aquifer depletion.  

Aquifers are that store of freshwater that exists in the ground.  It is like a giant bank that we can tap and use when there is no other water.  It is hard to get to so we only use it when we have no other option.  Ideally we should use it slower than the speed that it refills, that way it will always be there.  Alternatively, we could use it a lot in times of drought and then let it recharge in times of plenty.  But we have not been doing that, we have been using it in times of plenty to make more plenty and in some cases we have been using it through long droughts and not letting them recharge; we have been depleting them.  What happens when the are gone, for some of them, they are gone.  For others they will take centuries to recharge.  

Higher prices for food means shortages of food in some areas and this means starvation.  Starving people means that people will move.  We have seen this before.  In the nineteen-eighties there was a large famine in Africa, specifically Ethiopia.  The Famine was caused by drought.  People did not stay where they were, they fled and they migrated.  They first moved from the drought affected area to the unaffected areas.  Then they moved to different countries.  Currently there is a refugee crisis in the world focused primarily on the Syrians, but including many other countries from Africa.  The primary mover in the counties where these refugees are from is drought.  Indeed, it has been mentioned that the primary cause of the unrest in Syria before the Civil War started was hunger caused by years of drought.  

Which leads to the ultimate affect of drought, war.  The Syrian Civil War, the Ethiopian Civil War.  The unrest and conflict in Yemen.  These are all minor conflict in the world caused by drought.  There are entire regions that are drought vulnerable that only require a spark when there is no water to drown the flames for more war to break out.  Sub Saharan Africa, already strongholds of Boka Horum and other radical extremist groups with drought they would receive thousands of new recruits and more war and more migration.  More migration would cause people to stop people at boarders and this will raise tensions as people feel that they are being kept out.  People will risk everything to get in, thousands will die—just like they are already crossing between Turkey and Greece, Libya and Sicily.  That is just the low hanging fruit.  What about India, home to a billion people, more farmers than any other country in the world. Most of them subsistence farmers.  When the current drought stretches from two years to five.  Think of the war that would be fought then.  Right now there is a war in Syria after five million people were displaced.  How big will the war be when it is half a billion displaced people and the countries they is fighting in are nuclear powers.  It is not a huge stretch.  Pakistan and India have been at war several times in the last fifty years, they are both nuclear powers and they have both had years of drought. 

Prevention is the best strategy, it is the most inexpensive too.  Don't cut the forests down, use perennial crops that do not disturb the soil and increase soil water retention, but is it too late?  Most of the areas with forest still intact are areas that rely on wood for cooking and heating.  The crops that are grown most places have higher yields and require fertilizers and are annual crops.  The perennial crops of the past are treated as inferior.  Lastly, stop climate change while seeming to be on the foremost of everyone's thoughts, still seems to be on the bottom of everyone's actions.  We need to reverse this, put climate change to the back of our thoughts by putting action on climate change to the front of our actions.  Because it is cheaper. It is cheaper in human life and dollars and cents.

Here is an expensive alternative to prevention:  Desalination of ocean water and pumping the water into irrigation.  Right now we irrigate with surface water and ground water, but increasingly both sources are disappearing.  The aquifers are going dry and the rivers are not making it to the oceans anymore. Where there is still excess water it is thousands of kilometers from the regions that need to the water.  If we do not prevent the droughts we will have to build massive power plants just to clean water to pour on the ground to grow crops. We will have to do this or face massive wars.  Correction, we will have to do this and face massive wars to avoid extinction.  Can you imagine the Gulf Coast of the United States, the oil rigs and refineries replaced with solar and wind power plants to run desalination plants to pump water water north to irrigate crops in the Midwest and Texas, Arizona and California.  Equally large or larger plants doing the same all over the mid latitudes, India, Australia, Amazonia, Africa and Europe.  Pipelines stretching from the Black Sea to the east pumping cleaned ocean water to fields in Russia.  

The cure is more expensive than prevention, but we are not doing a good job at seeing what is staring us in the face. 

Space for Power

Hey I have talked about this before but I thought I would say it again, you know get more hits on the Internet on this subject and maybe someone will wise up.  People are so singleminded.  They think because an area is being used for one purpose it can't be used for another and this is stupid.  People no think it is smart to put solar panels on roofs, that is more because they always put them there.  I am talking about other things.  They put oil wells in farmers fields, why not wind turbines?  Think about it, a big cleared open space with no one near, perfect place to put a wind turbine.  Highways, perfect place as well.  Big clear places with easy access and lots of noise because of the cars.  The split median highways are also great places to put solar panels too.  What about the cleared sides?  They want to keep the vegetation down there and treeless.  They are typically 10m wide and there are thousands of kilometers of such roadways, and there are two sides and some have a clearance in the center.  think about it a square km has a million square meters, that means fifty thousand km of road is a huge solar farm a thousand km of roads could hold two to three hectares of solar panels, the power lines are usually right there too.  On hectare can produce about a Gw/h electricity.  How many gigawatts of power do we need?  The Hoover Dam generates 2Gw an hour.  The Trans-Canada highway outfit this way, about 5000 km would 10 to 15 Hoover Dams every hour.  That is just one highway, granted a long one.  

Consider power lines from power plants.  They keep them clear, people can farm under them, but they can't build under them.  You can put open parks under them, but no trees.  They are about 200m wide.  They stretch from each hydro power plant to the big cities, and much of that land is not suitable for farming.  People have to sweep it regularly to clear trees from the land.  Solar panels would block the sun and prevent trees from growing.  The ones that do grow can be cleared by the panel maintenance crews.  The power can be added directly to the grid.  Some of these corridors stretch more than a thousand kilometers.  A thousand kilometers translates into 500 square km, or 50 000 hectares, or 25 000 Hover Dams.  Let us assume that there is less land, some of the land is not suitable (lakes, boggy, cliff like) we are still talking about terrawatts and hour of power, ie no more coal fired plants anywhere.

People say but only during the day, like when the peak power uses are.  What about the night?  What if it is cloudy, not that it will be cloudy everywhere.  The wind blows at night, hydro power can be turned on at anytime to supplement.  Geothermal is constant, nuclear can be revved up to meet needs.

What if they produce too much power?  Store it.  Huge batteries are one solution, so is pumping water up hill behind a dam.  Yeah, did you catch that I said, what if they produce too much power.  If we fully use all our spaces that we just let sit, we could have too much power

Reflections from travel

Yesterday I drove my friend to BigSmoke to catch a flight to a sunny location far away.  Normally she would have to take a bus and a taxi to the bus depot and a bus to the airport and the same in reverse.  So me driving her saved her time, stress, and money.  So she took me out to dinner, in BigSmoke.  Dinner in Smallville means one of a half dozen restaurants and a few coffee shops and fast food outlets.  My friend likes good food, so that means in Smallville she does not eat out.  

The problem is that there is a limited number of good chefs in Smallville and they are dissatisfied with the work environment here so they move around a lot.  And the restaurants poach the chefs, but each restaurant is the same.  They spend their money on decorations or rely on past reputation.  Some of them have reputations of being five star quality for four star prices.  They are all three star quality at best.  It is the food that generates the reputation and they don't seem to get that, or they do and they don't spend money to keep the people.  Or maybe it is that they don't buy top quality foods.  People go out to be with friends and they expect to spend about $50 per person for a good meal, getting one for less is preferred, but quality is expected.  But when the food tastes as good or worse than something you could have made at home….  As my mother put it after an evening spent out with myself and my father, give me half as much money and I will make a meal better than this and there will be left overs.

So we dropped by the second choice of restaurant locations, because the first was not to open for 30mins.  Milestones.  I knew the quality, but it is a chain. And it has three star prices and four star food.  Well, that maybe it is three star, but compared to what is here in Smallville, it seems much better—and is priced appropriately.  The food was good.  I am a poor judge, my senses of smell and taste are not cultivated, but my friends are.  She told me that her chicken was perfectly cooked and spiced perfectly.  That is the thing, a good restaurant does not need to do a fancy set of menu items, it just needs to do some basic things really well.  

I sat down here to write about something else; a small thing.  The waitress.  My friend pointed out that I seemed to get along well with her and she was pretty.  My friend said beautiful.  She said I thought you had problems with talking to women that you don't know being demiromantic.  She did not get it.  A year ago I would have been trying to figure out if she were single and how to impress her so that I could start a relationship with her.  Being diagnosed as Demisexual has taken that off my sights.

I look at women differently.  I tell myself different things when I talk to people.  I go into EVERY conversation with a strange woman assuming that she is happily in a relationship and not available.  I did not even notice that she was good looking for that matter.  I never saw that before so maybe that is a clue.  Well that is not true, I DO see pretty women, but just because they are pretty does not mean anything special to me.  Another misconception that people assume when they hear the word asexual is at they are not interested in sex.  I guess true asexuals are not, but truly asexual people are so rare that they practically don't exist.  It is a spectrum, me being demisexual means that I am asexually thinking to most people.  I get lonely.  I get horny.  I 'spend time alone', just like most other people, but the thought of having sex with strangers or even friends is repellent or just simply does not happen.  

I am demiromantic too and people don't understand that either.  It means that I can't really meet new people.  Effectively.  The definition explicitly says romantically, but it is not because the barrier between friendship and romance is the same, just the ends are different.  One you enter into an intimate relationship where you spend a lot of time together and the other you do all that with kissing.  Think about it.  Tell me I am wrong.  All that you expect from a friend you expect from a date or at least a long term relationship.  Being demiromantic means that I have difficulty getting to the friends stage; I am honest and forthright and open about myself but I find it difficult to talk to people who I don't know, who I don't understand.  If I can't talk to you, how am I going to date you and kiss you—yeah I get that you can kiss a stranger and have sex with a stranger, I can do that too, but it does nothing for me.

I mean friends not acquaintances.  I mean that urge where you want to see them, because you like being around them more than being with just anyone.  

Anyways, I chatted with the waitress and my friend pointed out that I was conversing freely with her and comfortably with her.  She was this person who happened to be pretty that I had no connection to and I did not care to have a connection with her at all.  How could I?  I just met her and knew nothing about her.  Apparently what that means is that normal people that would be enough to have sex and then see if the rest of the stuff is there afterwards or to just go on with your day afterwards like nothing happened.  THAT is utterly alien to me.  I don't understand how people could do that.  But they do.  

Look over there at the cash register of the Tim Hortons that I am sitting in, that girl is cute, her and her friend.  If I slept with them, I would rock her night, both of them, more than once for hours.  Nothing about that statement has any appeal to me.  Casual reader, do you understand?

Oh one more thing, the trip was long.  Whenever I take my friend to the city in the winter it always seems to be in a blizzard.  Whiteout conditions, accidents people driving off the road and everything.  No deaths.  Nothing very serious.  People slow down, keep a good distance away, if you can't see the person in front of you, assume they are there and you can stop at the speed you are going when they slam on their brakes.  One close call, the guy who passed us ten minutes before hit someone and the guy in the pickup that just passed us went in the ditch to avoid them.  We hit the brakes and and slowly went by it all. Be smart

GoodReads challenge

Been reading.  The Goodreads Reading Challenge is good for that.  Since the New Year I have read 10 books of my 25.  I have more time now so reading more will allow me to meet the challenge.  I read about 25 novels a year, sometimes more, but usually I don't enter them into the GoodReads app until they are finished and that means they are not counted as part of the challenge.  

The first book I read this year was The Slow Regard of Silent Things, by Patrick Rothfuss.  A charming book about a tertiary character from the Kingskiller Chronicle.  It is the story about a person who believes everything is alive with intent and emotion.  It is a person whose sweet innocence has been left undamaged even though she lives in abject poverty and deprived of human content.

Next I finished a novel that I began three years previously.  It lay abandoned after the main character was killed off halfway through the book.  The book was called Red Mars.  The main character is infact not the human who was killed off buys the Planet Mars.  It is the story of the first human inhabitants and the terraforming of the planet over a small space of time.  Most people loved the book.  I did not.

Then I finished of a series that I started the year before, that is about 400 days previously.  Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet.  It was a good series, I had dropped it because I was reading it in a transition period and because the transition took a year to complete, it took me that long to start and finish the last two books.  But they were good.

Next I read two books from the Chronicles of Elantra series.  Michelle Sagara worked at a bookstore that I frequented and this was her first series.  I read the first book a few years ago and liked it, picking the next two books and putting them on the bookshelf until now.  Fun and easy to read, also formulaic, but that is not a bad thing.  

I started the Lightship Chronicles last year and this year I read Starbound, the second book.  It was another easy read and also fun.  Easy and fun can be a good combination so I finished Dave Bara's book quickly.

Last week I picked up and read a few short stories of Peter V Brett in a short book called The Great Bazaar & Brayan's Gold.  A short interlude from the past of the Demon Cycle books.  Very fun and easy to read and the characters are old friends.  

Last weekend I started The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Tronhiem.  It was a short book made easy to read by being set in a fictional town in a place not far from where I live.  The place names are mostly the same, the effect of history was almost the same but what happened was different because there were Dragons.  Dragons eat pollution.  But they also eat people and destroy stuff so they need to be killed.  Dragons are also utterly mindless in this world.  Fun fun fun.

Last week I read another alternate present SciFi, Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson.  This author has many award winning novels and this novel shows why.  It was a real page turner.  Alternate history where an alien is manipulating humans to make them more peaceful.  Sounds great right?  Set in the present with only a few people aware of exactly what is happening.  

Last book, the one I am reading now, is difficult.  And all the more addictive.  I have been looking up definitions of words at the rate of one every ten to twenty pages.  I have been reading in the dark, reading in bed at both ends of sleep and while eating.  The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold.  When I finish this one it will be eleven books read.  

I am a slow reader and I have been discracted by Neko Atsume app and computer games.  And cats.  And writing this and other stuffs.

Exalted Against the Slave States: Cult of Illuminated

 No Such Place: Cult of the Illuminated training camp

The Story:

What they know from first hand knowledge.  They were all exalted in the century after the Usurpation and they were trained by the Bronze Faction.  They know what they were told by them that things during the First age were great and good but slowly, the Solar Exalted began to make horrible decisions and began to endanger Creation.  Bored Solars turned off the defenses of Creation and invited the Fair Folk to invade Creation so that the Solars could test their Martial skills agains real foes and so how good their new weapons worked.  The Sidereal leaders got together to figure out what to do and they came up with a solution and that was to get rid of the Solar Exalted.  There was as general discussion amongst the general populous of the Sidereals and there was a bitter argument, but the one side prevailed with better arguments about how the prophesies all pointed to two destinations for Creation.  One where the Solar Exalted were reasoned with ended in the distruction of Creation and the other where the Solars were destroyed and prevented from being reincarnated where the world fell from its spectacular heights to a world that had major problems, but was still there.  

At this point, the Sidereal narrator pauses.  At least this is what we were told upon Exaltation.  It took us years to find out differently.  From the few of us that found each other and from various Celestial Gods, we were able to patch together a different story.  A few of our numbers, fifteen argued a different prophesied ending.  Some suggested that the Lunars would be best to fight the strong wills of the Solars, for each Solar had a mated Lunar who could help them work through the insanity that gripped them.  A slightly larger group argued that there was another prophesy that suggested that the Solars could be brought back to reason and their insanity removed from them and Creation pushed to still greater heights than were seen in that long past age.  The majority, said that the risks were too high, for although that path promised the greatest rewards, it also posed the greatest risks.  So, the majority ruled over their brethren and the Usurpation was set to be done.  

All three hundred Solar Exalted were to attend the Great Calibration Party in Meru on the slopes of the Pole of Earth and their Lunar Mates disgusted with the excesses of their Solar Mates, fled from the cities to the wild fringes.  A few Solars would not head the call and were out attending their own affairs away from the rest, but that was planned for as well.  Things were going perfectly, or as perfectly as they could plan for, but there were complications.

The first complication was Gold Faction as our former lives called themselves, they could not sit idly by and let the travesty happen and in doing so, we may have made things worse.  We tried to warn the Solars, we tried to tell them that they were in danger, but to no avail because the Solars thought the threat was small and their hubris was too large.  What did happen was that our brethren had to remove our former selves and our sudden arrival in Lytek's (the God of Exaltation) hands tipped him off that something was afoot.  Our murders also tipped off the half of the Gold Faction that were not assassinated and some of the Solar Police force that was not under the command of Terrestrials.  So that when the Usurpation occurred a few of the Solars were prepared and more of their Lunar Mates were on hand.  More of the stronger Sidereals had to be on hand to ensure things went smoothly and smoothly they did go except for one part.  The seizure of the Exalted Soulshards.  Because more of the Bronze faction was called to Meru, their most experienced were not on hand for the more delicate work and when they grabbed the Soulshards, care was not taken to grab only the Solar's.  All the Soulshards were taken and when the mistake was noticed it was too late.  According to Lytek, ninety-five percent of all the Solars, half of the Lunars, and the five remaining Gold Faction Sidereals left Creation that day, our souls were only spared because we were there on Lytek's person.  

We had been talking with Lytek and a few other gods that favour the return of the Solar Exalted for centuries, but before last month this was just an academic pursuit that we fantasized about in our spare time since the Usurpation.  The fallen world you see around you may have fallen further than even the others had foreseen, but they are still sticking to their story that it had to be done, what they did.  Last month, Lytek came to us, over joyed and yet still with some foreboding.  A flood of Soulshards came to him!  And he has been sorting and preparing them for exaltation as he was mandated to by the Incarna.  His good news was tempered by the numbers.  All of the Lunar and all of the Sidereal Soulshards are accounted for, but he received only forty of the Solar's.  He is worried and we are worried about where they might be.

We ask again, will you accept Our aid?

Politic: Integrity, Investigation, Socialize, Presence, Martial Arts

Warlord: Stealth, Survival, Martial Arts, Archery, War

Savant:  Martial Arts, Stealth, Lore, Linguistics, Occult

Five Manses/Demesnes

4 level 3 , two Lunar, one Solar and one Wood Manse

1 level 5 Air Demesne

All are Demsene except the Wood Manse, which is the Temple of a Terrestrial goddess,  goddess of the apple of the area.  It is within a large Orchard in the region.  During the first age this region was primarily a apple growing region, its apples exported across Creation and to the great city of Meru.  The flowers of the apple made the region a destination for thousands each year and the harvest brought even greater numbers.  It is the hope of the goddess that aligning with the Solar Exalted that a brighter future is ahead.  This Manse does not produce a hearthstone.  

The other locations are Demesne and the three other middling power would require a major effort to cap, many years and with much expense, the larger Air demesne would require years and an army of workers, not to mention a team of exalted engineers, Celestial Exalted.  

When the Gold Faction is drawn to Nameless they will offer him a deal.  They will provide him with: 1) the location of every Manse and Demesne in the Valley, 2) training to help him, 3) they will help him cap any Demesne in the Valley if they can get a portion for their recruits and allies, 4) training for his the former slaves to fight in future wars.

In exchange they desire of Nameless: 1) that he become a figure head of the training camp, 2) that he accept Missions from the leadership, 3) that he help recruit future Solars to the Cult of the Illuminated.

There is some negotiating room in these demands, but they are quite adamant about certain aspects of the deal.  The demand that he recruit Solars for the Cult is one such demand, because Solars will die without help bringing them to safe locations.  And they are quite disturbed by some of the information that Lytek has brought them, that there are so few Solar Shards left.  If this is a sticking point they will bring Lytek to Nameless to talk with him personally.  The missions that they wanted him to perform are rescue missions primarily, so if he won't except this part of the deal they will draw back some of their support, but not a lot.  Being head of the training camp was important to let new Solars feel comfortable.  If the Nameless accepts all their demands in the end, they will allow him to set a number of the goals of the missions and they will be very cooperative with him and treat him fairly.  They will tell him as much as they know about anything that he asks.  They will get his input on what skills he thinks are important and they will treat him as a very important but Junior member of the inner circle.  

They will not give him blind trust though.  They won't lie to him but they will decline to give him answers until he commits to the cause.  They understand that a lone Solar may not be particularly trusting and that he could have charms that would detect lies.  As such they will be honest about what they won't say too.  

Why BigSmoke, not LittleSmoke nor Smallville

I was trying to explain a few things to my friend.  She wanted to know if I were going to stay in Smallville or go and live in Big Smoke.  She was trying to convince me to stay in Smallville.  I told her that I can't.  But that I would be alright in the big city.

It came down to demisexualism.  The diagnosis allowed a few things to settle into place and it allowed me to see it.  Maybe I can explain it now.  I know a few things now that people know much earlier than me, it is like they know it and I had to figure it out.  I am not going back to Big Smoke to date any particular woman, but I am hoping to date people.  I met a wonderful woman last year and she told me that I lived too far away and therefore it would not work out, but we could be friends.  From that I know that me moving directly to her city means nothing.  I figured out that when you meet someone there is a critical time that you can date for it to go somewhere but after that time expires it ends.  It might have to do with learning to be with them or it might have to do with getting to know each other personally and not apart.  Once the period of time is done you can't get it back.  So me and her will be friends at best.  

My friend was worried I would be heading to the city to be with some particular person, and I am not.  But I discovered that I do like dating.  I discovered even though I did not, using the tired baseball analogy, get to first base it is a lot of fun.  And then there is my demisexualness and demiromanticness which changes the dynamic completely.  It changes it because it effectively changes the rules of the game for me, but not everyone else.  Come again you might say?  Typically people meet, they talk, they feel chemistry and they go off on their own and give everything a try and then they date and then cohabitate and maybe break up or have children or a pet together.  The meeting and the sex is usually over with within a week and the dating goes from there.  Not me.

I look at people and I can say that person is considered attractive, but usually I just see people.  I can't tell people that I find them attractive or not because for me, attractiveness is not based on appearance only, it is strongly based on what I know about them and how I feel about them.  I like to think about it like this: most people have been together for weeks, been having sex for weeks before they truly know the person they are with and that is the time that I become attracted to them.  The problem is that most people are through waiting and are no longer sexually receptive at that point.  I accept that.  I can change that and so I must accept it.  

I could go in two directions now and talk about how I got here or what I am going to do.  How.  I always figured it was Autism.  It is also my experiences with girls and women.  And how I thought relationships worked.  I thought about it a lot and it is likely a mixture of three things, being obsessed with one person,  how I thought women liked things—much of that coming from the mass media and the Disneyesk puritan values of the religious morality that ran the media, and the reaction of the said women to me.  

I thought women wanted a long courtship, TV told me so.  I thought that women wanted polite and proper gentlemen.  I thought women wanted men who were respectful of them and sensitive to their desires.  That comes from the media and it comes from their lips, but their actions spoke otherwise, I just could not read that.  

Of course, obsessions never work out well for either party, Captain Ahab and the Whale.  Given the former and the later, when I finally approached women I was interested in I never ended out on top.  After a while one begins to think every encounter is going to go badly and once that happens there is somewhat of a spiral.  The last time it happened it was eighteen months ago and I am determined that it never happen again.  

As I was telling my friend, I am not moving to BigSmoke to find a relationship, a lie and the truth.  I don't want to be alone, but I am not going there to hook up with someone; when I go I want that as far away from my mind as possible.  

I am controlling my thoughts to accomplish that goal.  Before I met a girl and asked myself if she was single.  Now when I meet a woman I am going to be assuming that she is happy with a life partner.  I am going to get a space that is good for my needs and not with the thought that anyone else will see it.  I am going to get a single bed, because it is good enough for my needs, more than good enough actually, because I don't move at night a lo.  My friend piped up then, what if you meet someone, it won't be enough for two people.  To which I stated, but I am not going there to meet someone.  If I do meet someone, then I will cross that bridge when I get to it, buy a bigger bed, spend nights at her place or something like that, besides it hasn't happened yet, why would I expect that to change now?  

The conversation went back and forth for a while, until I stopped and looked at her in the eyes and asked her to remember SuperGirl.  About how when I met her I was infactuated and probing her with words to see if she was compatible with me, trying to determine if she was a good match and then becoming besot with her.  My friend stopped and said you smothered her and she ran away as fast as she could.  Yes, and I don't want to do that again.  I am demiromantic, it takes me time to get to know people and discover that I like them enough to ask them out.  By the time I am secure enough to ask them out, they have determined that I am not interested and have moved on, so it is better for me to  just take a breath and pretend that from the start with every woman I meet.

She stopped and dropped the subject.  I am going to BigSmoke to meet people and make friends.  If I go back to LittleSmoke, I will be working with no time to do that, if I stay in Smallville I will have time to socialize but without anyone to socialize with.  I am not going to meet someone, I am going to meet a bunch of people.

ROE Blues

I am having some real difficulties this winter.  The weather is mild and there is not much snow, but I still don't have my EI.  It has been fifty days since I last worked and I still do not have my ROE, Record of Employment.  There was a mishap with the post office getting my mail redirected, but that has been fixed for three weeks and that would have meant all mail before the mix up was fixed would go to my old address.  It means that my first ROE went to my old address.

This brings up the subject about the importance of Friends.  Friends are people that you know that love or at least like you enough to help you.  The provide support and they will go slightly out of their way to help you.  When you send your friend your address and ask them to send you lost letters to that new address and they say, "No problem" you expect them to do it.  But here I sit forty days after making the request, three weeks after making the second request with no mail, no ROE.  I am asking myself if they are really my friend? I am supposed to go see him in three weeks– will he wait those three weeks and give me my mail then, another twenty days from now?  

Breathe deeply.  I am supposed to forgive my friends when they screw up, am I supposed to forgive them if they cost me $1500 a month?

My employer, I called them and left them messages and left my address change there on the message.  I could not get a person.

My anxiety is climbing.  Will I be able to afford first and last months rent now?  Will my credit card debt climb back up?  Sometimes I think I get lucky when I bad things don't happen but then I also have bad things happen to me all the time too, like this.  Perhaps my employer will have to send me my ROE for the third time.

Anxiety.  Frustration.  Exasperation.  Resignation.

Exalted House Rule change, Craft, Language, and Spells

*** house rules***

On Sorcery.  Many spells have spells of great power later with greater power, counter magic, demon summoning, travel spells.  Idea is that there is only one spell and when it is cast using a greater base charm, it has a greater effect, but it uses that same spell each time, with a little greater essence.  Demon Summoning is the spell, the Charm base determines the effect.  

Obsidian Butterflies is an Emerald Circle base spell, the Sapphire base adds two effects of: greater area, greater damage, armour piercing,  more precise targeting, bashing damage or elemental changes.  The Adamant version selects four of the previous, which are stackable and two of the following: friend/foe selection, holy/iron/Wyld, heal, ignore armour, caste power.

Spirit messenger is an Emerald Circle base spell, the Sapphire adds two way communication for a scene (through two spirits or one spirit with two bodies and one brain) and the Adamant version allows for the transfer of non living material (transport of documents or objects and such up to essence + occult pounds).  Each level is more expensive and requires the greater spell.

When a spell is based in Sapphire Circle it uses that same rules of expansion in Adamant Cirlce, but there is not a lesser Emerald Version.  Winged Beast of Transportation could upgrade with two stackable advances: increased speed, increased carrying capacity, free transportation device, involuntary transport.  

This means that spell purchases are more efficient and they have greater use over time.

To modify an Emerald Circle spell requires an Occult plus Intelligence roll (three successes) plus 1 xp preferred skill discounts apply and a prerequisite of Sapphire Circle Sorcery.  One week study per spell 8 hours a day

To modify a Sapphire Circle Spell requires an Occult plus Intelligence roll (five successes) plus 2xp and Adamant Circle Sorcery and five modified Emerald Circle Spells.  One month study per spell modified. Modifying an Emerald Circle spell to Adamant Circle power requires both applications to be completed.

To modify an Adamant Circle spell requires an Occult plus Intelligence roll (ten successes) plus 3xp and Adamant Circle Sorcery and five modified Sapphire Circle spells.  One year of study per spell modified.

Any charm that increases the speed of research is permitted, but the time must be spent

***

On Craft.  Craft skill is the character's overall skill.  Charms are based on the Craft skill level only

As per exalted rules, Craft only allows for a specific area of craft skill, one skill for each elemental direction.  This rule is modified as so:  Each Craft area is represented by a specialty (Air, Earth, Fire, Water and Wood) and each requires a minimum of one craft skill with the first Specialty gained with the first dot of Craft skill.

The Second dot in a specialty grants the craftsman Expertise in the craft type and the third grants Mastery.  Journeyman status allows additional crafting successes to make the item crafted Fine.  Expert status allows additional crafting successes to make the crafted item Fine or Exceptional.  Master level crafting allows that craftsman the option of crafting Perfect items or attempting Artifacts.  The specialty dots do not grant extra dice, but Mastery level reduces the difficulty of the roll by one.

First specialty is free with knowing Craft.  Additional craft areas must be purchased after the first.

Cost of Craft Specailties.  Exalted uses the standard skill acquisition formula, 3xp for new, 2xp for Expertise and 4xp for Mastery.  Mortals it is different.  Mortals have two paths, specialized and general.  Generalized Craft requires 12xp for a new Journyman Craft Specialty, 8xp for Expert and 16xp for Mastery,  but this grants them the full bredth of crafting in the elemental directions.  Or they can Specialize in one very narrow direction, like stone masonry, sword smithing or leather working.  This costs 4xp, 3xp and 6xp respectively.  Craft as a favoured skill drops the experience cost same as usual.

Certain Crafts specialties require a greater craft expertise and prerequisite craft specialties, Magitech would require a Craft skill of 5 and a relevant specialty of 3 plus Lore and Occult.

***

On Linguistics.  The skill is what is used for basic knowledge of speaking skill, oratory skill and composition in all language rolls and charm use.  

Starting characters have the number of additional languages equal to their Linguistic ability.  

In play, each advance in Linguistics does not increase the number of languages that they know, it just affects how well you use the languages you know.

Additional languages can be picked up over a three month period by spending 3xp or over a two month period by spending 2xp if Linguistics is favoured.  If you want to increase the role-playing opportunities you can say that the first xp gives you a working framework, 2xp competency and 3xp mastery.  But you don't have to.

Nameless, uneducated had a Linguistics of 0, so he had no additional languages.  He discovered that he needed to learn Riverspeak, so over a month he learned the basics of Riverspeak and then he went off to do other things.  He discovered that he needed to know Airspeak and Firespeak too and spent one month learning the basics of those languages over a two month period.  Later he entered a city in the North and had more exposure to Airspeak and spent some more time learning that language and spent another experience point so he could speak it better.  He met a woman on his travels who was a native Airspeaker and he spent a lot of time in her presence and soon had full mastery of the language and spent a total of 3xp.  Sometime later he picks up the basics of Old Realm, Waterspeak and Woodspeak.  Since he already spoke Realm, he now knows all the directional tongues at the basic level plus mastery of Airspeak and basic Old Realm for 9xp and nine months of time.  He still has a Linguistics of 0 and this means reading and writing in all those languages really sucks, even if he had a really high Lore.