Name Kumari Meaning, Origin etc. - Girl Names - Baby Name ...

what does kumari mean

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BRAHMA KUMARIS: "whose leaders teach that their followers will bring about the “Destruction” of the world, including the death of 6 Billion “impure” human beings by nuclear holocaust"

This one reads a bit too much like Sacred Games
WHAT THE BRAHMA KUMARIS DON’T WANT THE UNITED NATIONS TO KNOW
First Few Paras:
The Brahma Kumaris have, to date, largely been able to slip underneath the radar of New Religious Movement or Cult Watch groups. This is partly due to their passive front but largely because of their secrecy and highly centralised structure of control. Secrecy and control especially over its actual mediumistic teachings given to mass séances at its India headquarters. Teachings which the rest of humanity have “intellects too impure” to understand.
The Brahma Kumaris have, for decades, exploited a heavily invested but superficial relationship with the United Nations for the sake of their credibility and to gain access to politicians and VIPs.
It seems strange that an organization whose leaders teach that their followers will bring about the “Destruction” of the world, including the death of 6 Billion “impure” human beings by nuclear holocaust, should be accepted by the United Nations.
The Brahma Kumari teachings have, for 70 years, clearly and specifically stated, that the Brahma Kumaris will “give courage” or inspire the scientists to detonate the nuclear devices in order to “purify” an “impure” humanity, so that they – the Brahma Kumari leadership – might rule as emperors of a heaven on earth for 2,500 years.
Indeed, according to original documents held in the British Library, in its first decade, the Brahma Kumari leadership actually wrote to political and military leaders exhorting them to enact martial law and practise scorched earth.
“This letter is not about BK philosophies but rather their values. Whether the cycle is 5000 years long, is neither here nor there, but the way I was taught to feel and perceive my concerns, doubtless the two are connected. My observations and concerns about the Brahma Kumaris have built up over the last few years and if none of you knew how I was feeling despite the many years I’ve known you, well what does that show about the organisation? How can an organisation call itself your family if it knows nothing about you? For twenty odd years, I was unable to talk to my father because he was someone that needed to be served or saved. If he were lucky enough he would get a ticket to heaven just because he knew of me or us”, (his mother was a member, his father wasn’t, the parents were divorced. The Brahma Kumaris have a 70 years record of breaking families); “can you imagine trying to make small talk with your own father as a child because he was some kind of “Shudra”. (Shudra is the word that the Brahma Kumaris use for non-Brahma Kumaris it comes from the Indian which means untouchable. All other human beings are untouchables to the Brahma Kumaris. It’s used with the same sort of influence as perhaps nigger would be used in current society).
“And now to look back and see that I had a father but in my own head I didn’t, how much did I miss? When my parents split up because of Raja Yoga what did the seniors do for me then? Did they hold me when I cried? I might have been given an apple, although I am sure that I’d rather have had my parents back. As a BK child I was bullied at school and I found I had no ability to deal with people or confrontation. All I could do was cry and my mother would have to sort it out. I had no ability to socialise with people. That made me very lonely. I could never have any close friends and when I told other school children about the end of the world I was ridiculed for years after. Childhood in general was very mixed up for me. I do believe that it is for many Brahma Kumaris children. On one level it was taken away from me. I was told “you are an old soul” a-84 birth. People thought that I was like an old man when I was 12 and the responsibility of the world was placed on my shoulders. Let alone that of saving my own father it was not fair to give the children this kind of superiority complex and burden and yet treat them as children. Then again we were never allowed to grow up. For example my sister was always “the angel” until she became a teenager and fell from grace in the eyes of the others. However could she love herself when she could see herself changing from being a perfect angel to a menstruating, acne riddled teenager?”
You may not be aware of this, the BK actually believe they are becoming angels. They believe that all the memorials in history, all the renaissance paintings of angels are pictures of them. That through their practice they are actually going to become angels of light, saving the world. I am not using these words metaphorically they actually believe this.
[...]
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History of Akhand Bharat

Hindustan extended from present day turkey to Indonesia and Japan.
Benzeiten is the Japanese goddess of learning. That is our saraswathi. Benten in Japan is our brahma. Read about this on Wikipedia if you like.
The Kushan empire, based out of present day Afghanistan was one of the mightiest known to man. They occupied the same areas mentioned earlier. But they came later.
Semula was an island continent about 300 miles off the east coast of India. This was the site of the epic war between Shri Ram and Ravan. The war did not happen in Lanka.
Lanka was 20–30 miles away from Semula separated by sea. It was not more than that because periodically the parties would eyeball each other.
The present day Lanka is one small portion that is left over after Semula went beneath the waters in a cataclysmic volcanic eruption.
This Semula (or kumari kandan or Lemuria) is the same place known later as Atlantis that Greek philosopher Plato mentioned.
However, Plato did not discover this. He heard the story from another Greek, Solon. He too is not the original source.
Solon heard about it from Egyptian priests.
The Egyptians were land lubbers. Their sea going adventures were limited to the Nile and minor forays into the Red Sea.
So the priests heard this from Indian traders of that era. Indian traders built their ships out of teakwood. So these did not rot in salt water. They sailed the world and populated the areas of south and North America.
Look at the incas, Mayas and red indians. They are all brown skinned Indians. The swastika symbol is common all over South America. The temples in Mecca destroyed by Mohammad in 600–700 AD were all Hindu temples.
Before the Kushan line around 5000 BC came the Harappa civilization. By the way Mohenjodaro built at the same time was not a fancy touristy place. It was merely a place of burying dead bodies. There isn't even a semblance of living arrangements in that area. You conducted ceremonies and then cremated the dead in that place. Then you went elsewhere. The name Mohenjodaro is itself a clue. It means “mound of the dead”.
So that is the story. Or at least a bit of it.
And where is the rest of it you may ask. I'll share one more bit.
Suvarna Dwipa (sometimes spelt as Suvarnadvipa) is a term you come across often in ancient Indian literature. It means “The Golden Island”.
Our ancients had a tough time as it is making sure their knowledge was passed on to us.
Oral transmission to each generation worked to some extent. They sometimes painfully etched out granite stones with the highlights of their times.
Typically they left clues on their monuments and prayed that future idiots (me; you;) will decipher WTF they were communicating.
So ancient Indians would not invent grandiose words like this unless it meant something.
It does.
I will tell you about SD. Very briefly.
For reasons that I may share later Garuda (Shri Vishnu’s preferred ride) was extremely hungry. He was holding on to something when Hanuman set fire to the original Lanka. Garuda let go of what he was grabbing with his beak.
It turned to gold.
The heat of Hanuman’s pyrotechnics melted it. 1/3 rd of Lanka got covered in molten gold. That portion of the land sank beneath the waters.
Hanuman most definitely did not care about gold. Mortals living in that era did.
They may have attempted to retrieve the gold. On the day when they knew that their time on earth was over, they passed on that information to subsequent generations.
And that is the origin of the word Suvarna Dwipa.
Jai Shree Ram
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pritish nandy's interview with kishore kumar (april 1985)

Pritish Nandy: I understand you are quitting Bombay and going away to Khandwa…
Kishore Kumar: Who can live in this stupid, friendless city where everyone seeks to exploit you every moment of the day? Can you trust anyone out here? Is anyone trustworthy? Is anyone a friend you can count on? I am determined to get out of this futile rat race and live as I’ve always wanted to. In my native Khandwa, the land of my forefathers. Who wants to die in this ugly city?
Pritish Nandy: Why did you come here in the first place?
Kishore Kumar: I would come to visit my brother Ashok Kumar. He was such a big star in those days. I thought he could introduce me to KL Saigal who was my greatest idol. People say he used to sing through his nose. But so what? He was a great singer. Greater than anyone else.
Pritish Nandy: I believe you are planning to record an album of famous Saigal songs….
Kishore Kumar: They asked me to. I refused. Why should I try to outsing him? Let him remain enshrined in our memory. Let his songs remain just HIS songs. Let not even one person say that Kishore Kumar sang them better.
Pritish Nandy: If you didn’t like Bombay, why did you stay back? For fame? For money?
Kishore Kumar: I was conned into it. I only wanted to sing. Never to act. But somehow, thanks to peculiar circumstances, I was persuaded to act in the movies. I hated every moment of it and tried virtually every trick to get out of it. I muffed my lines, pretended to be crazy, shaved my head off, played difficult, began yodelling in the midst of tragic scenes, told Meena Kumari what I was supposed to tell Bina Rai in some other film – but they still wouldn’t let me go. I screamed, ranted, went cuckoo. But who cared? They were just determined to make me a star.
Pritish Nandy: Why?
Kishore Kumar: Because I was Dadamoni’s brother. And he was a great hero.
Pritish Nandy: But you succeeded, after your fashion….
Kishore Kumar: Of course I did. I was the biggest draw after Dilip Kumar. There were so many films I was doing in those days that I had to run from one set to the other, changing on the way. Imagine me. My shirts flying off, my trousers falling off, my wig coming off while I’m running from one set to the other. Very often I would mix up my lines and look angry in a romantic scene or romantic in the midst of a fierce battle. It was terrible and I hated it. It evoked nightmares of school. Directors were like school teachers. Do this. Do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. I dreaded it. That’s why I would often escape.
Pritish Nandy: Well, you are notorious for the trouble you give your directors and producers. Why is that?
Kishore Kumar: Nonsense. They give me trouble. You think they give a damn for me? I matter to them only because I sell. Who cared for me during my bad days? Who cares for anyone in this profession?
Pritish Nandy: Is that why you prefer to be a loner?
Kishore Kumar: Look, I don’t smoke, drink or socialize. I never go to parties. If that makes me a loner, fine. I am happy this way. I go to work and I come back straight home. To watch my horror movies, play with my spooks, talk to my trees, sing. In this avaricious world, every creative person is bound to be lonely. How can you deny me that right?
Pritish Nandy: You don’t have many friends?
Kishore Kumar: None.
Pritish Nandy: That’s rather sweeping.
Kishore Kumar: People bore me. Film people particularly bore me. I prefer talking to my trees.
Pritish Nandy: So you like nature?
Kishore Kumar: That’s why I want to get away to Khandwa. I have lost all touch with nature out here. I tried to dig a canal all around my bungalow out here, so that we could sail gondolas there. The municipality chap would sit and watch and nod his head disapprovingly, while my men would dig and dig. But it didn’t work. One day someone found a hand – a skeletal hand- and some toes. After that no one wanted to dig anymore. Anoop, my second brother, came charging with Ganga water and started chanting mantras. He thought this house was built on a graveyard. Perhaps it is. But I lost the chance of making my home like Venice.
Pritish Nandy: People would have thought you crazy. In fact they already do.
Kishore Kumar: Who said I’m crazy. The world is crazy; not me.
Pritish Nandy: Why do you have this reputation for doing strange things?
Kishore Kumar: It all began with this girl who came to interview me. In those days I used to live alone. So she said: You must be very lonely. I said: No, let me introduce you to some of my friends. So I took her to the garden and introduced her to some of the friendlier trees. Janardhan; Raghunandan; Gangadhar; Jagannath; Buddhuram; Jhatpatajhatpatpat. I said they were my closest friends in this cruel world. She went and wrote this bizarre piece, saying that I spent long evenings with my arms entwined around them. What’s wrong with that, you tell me? What’s wrong making friends with trees?
Pritish Nandy: Nothing.
Kishore Kumar: Then, there was this interior decorator-a suited, booted fellow who came to see me in a three-piece woollen, Saville Row suit in the thick of summer- and began to lecture me about aesthetics, design, visual sense and all that. After listening to him for about half an hour and trying to figure out what he was saying through his peculiar American accent, I told him that I wanted something very simple for my living room. Just water-several feet deep- and little boats floating around, instead of large sofas. I told him that the centre-piece should be anchored down so that the tea service could be placed on it and all of us could row up to it in our boats and take sips from our cups. But the boats should be properly balanced, I said, otherwise we might whizz past each other and conversation would be difficult. He looked a bit alarmed but that alarm gave way to sheer horror when I began to describe the wall decor. I told him that I wanted live crows hanging from the walls instead of paintings -since I liked nature so much. And, instead of fans, we could have monkeys farting from the ceiling. That’s when he slowly backed out from the room with a strange look in his eyes. The last I saw of him was him running out of the front gate, at a pace that would have put an electric train to shame. What’s crazy about having a living room like that, you tell me? If he can wear a woollen, three-piece suit in the height of summer, why can’t I hang live crows on my walls?
Pritish Nandy: Your ideas are quite original, but why do your films fare so badly?
Kishore Kumar: Because I tell my distributors to avoid them. I warn them at the very outset that the film might run for a week at the most. Naturally, they go away and never come back. Where will you find a producer-director who warns you not to touch his film because even he can’t understand what he has made?
Pritish Nandy: Then why do you make films?
Kishore Kumar: Because the spirit moves me. I feel I have something to say and the films eventually do well at times. I remember this film of mine – Door Gagan ki Chhaon mein – which started to an audience of 10 people in Alankar. I know because I was in the hall myself. There were only ten people who had come to watch the first show! Even its release was peculiar. Subhodh Mukherjee, the brother of my brother-in-law, had booked Alankar(the hall) for 8 weeks for his film April Fool- which everyone knew was going to be a block- buster. My film, everyone was sure, was going to be a thundering flop. So he offered to give me a week of his booking. Take the first week, he said flamboyantly, and I’ll manage within seven. After all, the movie can’t run beyond a week. It can’t run beyond two days, I reassured him. When 10 people came for the first show, he tried to console me. Don’t worry, he said, it happens at times. But who was worried? Then, the word spread. Like wildfire. And within a few days the hall began to fill. It ran for all 8 weeks at Alankar, house full! Subodh Mukherjee kept screaming at me but how could I let go the hall? After 8 weeks when the booking ran out, the movie shifted to Super, where it ran for another 21 weeks! That’s the anatomy of a hit of mine. How does one explain it? Can anyone explain it? Can Subodh Mukherjee, whose April Fool went on to become a thundering flop?
Pritish Nandy: But you, as the director should have known?
Kishore Kumar: Directors know nothing. I never had the privilege of working with any good director. Except Satyen Bose and Bimal Roy, no one even knew the ABC of film making. How can you expect me to give good performances under such directors? Directors like S.D. Narang didn’t even know where to place the camera. He would take long, pensive drags from his cigarette, mumble ‘Quiet, quiet, quiet’ to everyone, walk a couple of furlongs absentmindedly, mutter to himself and then tell the camera man to place the camera wherever he wanted. His standard line to me was:Do something. What something? Come on, some thing! So I would go off on my antics. Is this the way to act? Is this the way to direct a movie? And yet Narangsaab made so many hits!
Pritish Nandy: Why didn’t you ever offer to work with a good director?
Kishore Kumar: Offer! I was far too scared. Satyajit Ray came to me and wanted me to act in Parash Pathar – his famous comedy – and I was so scared that I ran away. Later, Tulsi Chakravarti did the role. It was a great role and I ran away from it, so scared I was of these great directors.
Pritish Nandy: But you knew Ray.
Kishore Kumar: Of course I did. I loaned him five thousand rupees at the time of Pather Panchali-when he was in great financial difficulty- and even though he paid back the entire loan, I never gave him an opportunity to forget the fact that I had contributed to the making of the classic. I still rib him about it. I never forget the money I loan out!
Pritish Nandy: Well, some people think you are crazy about money. Others describe you as a clown, pretending to be kinky but sane as hell. Still others find you cunning and manipulative. Which is the real you?
Kishore Kumar: I play different roles at different times. For different people. In this crazy world, only the truly sane man appears to be mad. Look at me. Do you think I’m mad? Do you think I can be manipulative?
Pritish Nandy: How would I know?
Kishore Kumar: Of course you would know. It’s so easy to judge a man by just looking at him. You look at these film people and you instantly know they’re rogues.
Pritish Nandy: I believe so.
Kishore Kumar: I don’t believe so. I know so. You can’t trust them an inch. I have been in this rat race for so long that I can smell trouble from miles afar. I smelt trouble the day I came to Bombay in the hope of becoming a playback singer and got conned into acting. I should have just turned my back and run.
Pritish Nandy: Why didn’t you?
Kishore Kumar: Well, I’ve regretted it ever since. Boom Boom. Boompitty boom boom. Chikachikachik chik chik. Yadlehe eeee yadlehe ooooo (Goes on yodelling till the tea comes. Someone emerges from behind the upturned sofa in the living room, looking rather mournful with a bunch of rat-eaten files and holds them up for Kishore Kumar to see)
Pritish Nandy: What are those files?
Kishore Kumar: My income tax records.
Pritish Nandy: Rat-eaten?
Kishore Kumar: We use them as pesticides. They are very effective. The rats die quite easily after biting into them.
Pritish Nandy: What do you show the tax people when they ask for the papers?
Kishore Kumar: The dead rats.
Pritish Nandy: I see.
Kishore Kumar: You like dead rats?
Pritish Nandy: Not particularly.
Kishore Kumar: Lots of people eat them in other parts of the world.
Pritish Nandy: I guess so.
Kishore Kumar: Haute cuisine. Expensive too. Costs a lot of money.
Pritish Nandy: Yes?
Kishore Kumar: Good business, rats. One can make money from them if one is enterprising.
Pritish Nandy: I believe you are very fussy about money. Once, I’m told. a producer paid you only half your dues and you came to the sets with half your head and half your moustache shaved off. And you told him that when he paid the rest, you would shoot with your face intact…
Kishore Kumar: Why should they take me for granted? These people never pay unless you teach them a lesson. I was shooting in the South once. I think the film was Miss Mary and these chaps kept me waiting in the hotel room for five days without shooting. So I got fed up and started cutting my hair. First I chopped off some hair from the right side of my head and then, to balance it, I chopped off some from the left. By mistake I overdid it. So I cut off some more from the right. Again I overdid it. So I had to cut from the left again. This went on till I had virtually no hair left- and that’s when the call came from the sets. When I turned up the way I was, they all collapsed. That’s how rumours reached Bombay. They said I had gone cuckoo. I didn’t know. I returned and found everyone wishing me from long distance and keeping a safe distance of 10 feet while talking. Even those chaps who would come and embrace me waved out from a distance and said Hi. Then, someone asked me a little hesitantly how I was feeling. I said: Fine. I spoke a little abruptly perhaps. Suddenly I found him turning around and running. Far, far away from me.
Pritish Nandy: But are you actually so stingy about money?
Kishore Kumar: I have to pay my taxes.
Pritish Nandy: You have income tax problems I am told….
Kishore Kumar: Who doesn’t? My actual dues are not much but the interest has piled up. I’m planning to sell off a lot of things before I go to Khandwa and settle this entire business once and for all.
Pritish Nandy: You refused to sing for Sanjay Gandhi during the emergency and, it is said, that’s why the tax hounds were set on you. Is this true?
Kishore Kumar: Who knows why they come. But no one can make me do what I don’t want to do. I don’t sing at anyone’s will or command. But I sing for charities, causes all the time[Note: Sanjay Gandhi wanted Kishore Kumar to sing at some Congress rally in Bombay. Kishore Kumar refused. Sanjay Gandhi ordered All India Radio to stop playing Kishore songs. This went on for quite a while. Kishore Kumar refused to apologize. Finally, it took scores of prominent producers and directors to convince those in power to rescind the ban]
Pritish Nandy: What about your home life? Why has that been so turbulent?
Kishore Kumar: Because I like being left alone.
Pritish Nandy: What went wrong with Ruma Devi, your first wife?
Kishore Kumar: She was a very talented person but we could not get along because we looked at life differently. She wanted to build a choir and a career. I wanted someone to build me a home. How can the two reconcile? You see, I’m a simple minded villager type. I don’t understand this business about women making careers. Wives should first learn how to make a home. And how can you fit the two together? A career and a home are quite separate things. That’s why we went our separate ways.
Pritish Nandy: Madhubala, your second wife?
Kishore Kumar: She was quite another matter. I knew she was very sick even before I married her. But a promise is a promise. So I kept my word and brought her home as my wife, even though I knew she was dying from a congenital heart problem. For 9 long years I nursed her. I watched her die before my own eyes. You can never understand what this means until you live through this yourself. She was such a beautiful woman and she died so painfully. She would rave and rant and scream in frustration. How can such an active person spend 9 long years bed-ridden? And I had to humour her all the time. That’s what the doctor asked me to. That’s what I did till her very last breath. I would laugh with her. I would cry with her.
Pritish Nandy: What about your third marriage? To Yogeeta Bali?
Kishore Kumar: That was a joke. I don’t think she was serious about marriage. She was only obsessed with her mother. She never wanted to live here.
Pritish Nandy: But that’s because she says you would stay up all night and count money..
Kishore Kumar: Do you think I can do that? Do you think I’m mad? Well, it’s good we separated quickly.
Pritish Nandy: What about your present marriage?
Kishore Kumar: Leena is a very different kind of person. She too is an actress like all of them but she’s very different. She’s seen tragedy. She’s faced grief. When your husband is shot dead, you change. You understand life. You realize the ephemeral quality of all things.. I am happy now.
Pritish Nandy: What about your new film? Are you going to play hero in this one too?
Kishore Kumar: No no no. I’m just the producer-director. I’m going to be behind the camera. Remember I told you how much I hate acting? All I might do is make a split second appearance on screen as an old man or something.
Pritish Nandy: Like Hitchcock?
Kishore Kumar: Yes, my favourite director. I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here. Do you know any spooks?
Pritish Nandy: Not very friendly ones.
Kishore Kumar: But nice, frightening ones?
Pritish Nandy: Not really.
Kishore Kumar: But that’s precisely what we’re all going to become one day. Like this chap out here (points to a skull, which he uses as part of his decor, with red light emerging from its eyes)- you don’t even know whether it’s a man or a woman. Eh? But it’s a nice sort. Friendly too. Look, doesn’t it look nice with my specs on its non-existent nose?
Pritish Nandy: Very nice indeed.
Kishore Kumar: You are a good man. You understand the real things of life. You are going to look like this one day.
source: http://songs.kishorekumar.org/pritish-nandy%E2%80%99s-extraordinary-interview-with-kishore-kumar-in-april-1985/
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When Kareena Kapoor called Salman Khan a very bad actor, who hams all the time.

Her surname precedes her and so does her reputation. Kareena Kapoor has walked into the industry escorted by a famous heritage and a temperament to match. She defies older sister Karisma's cool-n-composed approach and is eager to establish her own. "I hate being called a star, I'd rather be an actress," she declares flamboyantly. "I am here to work with the best. Second best simply won't do." Brave words from a newcomer, but Kareena just might have the mettle to match her mouth.
Comparisons are bound to be made between you and your elder sister Karisma, are you prepared for that?
You recently said in an interview that you don't want to work with directors like David Dhawan.
Do you regret not doing Kaho Naa Pyar Hai?
The film was made for Hrithik. His dad spent five hours on every frame and close-up of his, whereas not even five seconds were spent on Amisha. There are portions in the film where she has pimples and under-eye bags on her face. She just doesn't look beautiful, but every shot of his was a dream. If I were in the film, I would have definitely got a better deal, but I still feel that the attention would have divided between us. So, I'm glad I didn't do the film. I'm glad that even after I left the movie there is no problem between Hrithik and me. He's still a friend, I'm very happy for his success and we are even working in two films together.
I believe you are very upset with Sanjay Leela Bhansali for not taking you in Devdas after auditioning you and making you go through a special photo-session as Paro. Is it true that he had as good as committed the role to you before signing Aishwarya Rai?
You've said somewhere that you have a major crush on Shah Rukh Khan.
What about the other two Khans?
http://web.archive.org/web/20000818093514/cinemaa.indya.com/cinemaa/interviewskareena.html
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About time someone paid attention

I’m going to start by saying that, I’ve made the mistake in the past of trying to pander to the feelings of employees by trying my best to not say anything they could take offense to and get defensive over their work. However it’s been years of trying it like that and we don’t seem to be getting anywhere so here goes.
For those that don’t know I’m part of the Discord Moderator team for close to a year now and we have been fortunate enough to be able to take what’s written by the community and collate and provide it directly to Scopely along with the Content Creators. However it seems that a lot of what is sent is deemed not important to work on over content that can provide more income.
A lot of what I’m about to go through has been requested for many months and just doesn’t seem to materialise and what does, often gets twisted into something that isn’t an improvement.

Officers

• Fixing Tool-tips, this should take maybe a morning of a junior member to go through and fix them Change Pikes tool-tip to say “Increases the effectiveness officers bridge abilities by x% while in combat”
• Add in game tags to Officer abilities that just don’t work, so people can see the ability is bugged or turn the text Red or line through
• Burning and Hull Breach triggers don’t last for the full duration specified, so either change them to function as Morale does at start of round chance or lengthen all of the effects by 1 Players desperately want to be able to have load outs or a favourites system for officers.
• Officer Badges are so scarce, it drives away any ability to try new things as specific officers are always prioritised over others (Chen, Spock, Kirk etc) a way to earn these beyond just paying for them has been requested for well over 6 months
• Officers that just don’t function as they say, Marcus currently provides Armor Pierce instead of Shield Pierce. Dj’aoki currently functions the same way Zhou does by giving you mitigation rather than reducing the enemies. There’s more that either don’t work at all or partially function, Barot, Chang, Helvetia, Domitia and more.
We have seen examples of immediate fixes coming into play with Carol and so on being disabled or altered within the space of a day, yet the list of broken or partially broken officers is starting to outgrow those that do work and are useful.

Refinery

I will say that it’s my firm belief nobody in this game enjoys this mechanic, it’s a pure frustration tool and I personally believe the numbers are manipulated behind the curtain. I say this because it often appears like you’re soft capped on what the refinery can pay out in a 24 hour period let’s say? I can get a good set of pulls on in the morning, 25-38-21 as a random example and then I’ve often seen an occurrence where it’s 0-7-7 or 7-7-7 no matter the batches pulled proceeding a good pull. If it were truly random I believe the occurrence of 7-7-7 type scenarios would never be possible the way the game throws them at you. By soft capping or giving the player some form of diminishing returns it means you’re always going at the minimum pace set by Scopely and not one by true randomness.
I’m sure players would like to see a minimum guarantee for each type of batch they use, let’s say 1 batch it’s guaranteed at least 7 Uncommon and 1 Rare, 2 Batches 14 Uncommon and 2 Rare and 3 batches 21 Uncommon and 3 Rare, these would be BEFORE your randomly generated income that gets added at end result, a refinery style like this would improve the player experience dramatically and probably remove the negativity around it. Not everything in the game needs to be refined, resources should be farmed or fought over, time and investment should be a deciding factor - not arbitrary cool-downs that often make for a negative experience

Alliance Functionality

It’s not changed since the game release, if you go into the Alliance permissions there is still a “Tournament” access option. Guessing this was an idea by the original Digit team that got shelved
• Last Online
• Alliance wide PM to all members
• Alliance Alerts or Flags for systems / Call to Arms
• Alliance Market or Bank system
• Alliance Trading post
• Alliance Contributions overhaul
A lot of these systems have been suggested since the dawn of time, because they are pretty much in every type of MMO you’ve ever played, the only improvement made to Alliances was diplomacy flags which are nice but don’t necessarily bring a benefit to the alliance itself.
Events All in all, the events suck and have had the least amount of effort put into them. They are the main “new thing” to do in the game each day. I’d like Scopely to sit down and think to themselves, beyond players doing their dailies what reason do players have to login to the game and play it? Other than events I can only think of reputation farming. So it’s events and I’ve often said these are the main route to progressing your game as the refinery is just a small supplement and not consistent enough.
I wrote a document on why the Daily events are underwhelming and just plain bad. This was months ago and was fed back along with others showing clear examples of why they are bad here’s a link; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fd21wRpQFAsFc9B7RPHPpUj1MwEYn1-sVZjjvd0z5eU/ (Over 6 months have passed since writing this and it’s still very much the same)
This was written in December last year. We are now at the stage where lvl 39+ are banded in with everyone below for Officer XP and Station events which are returning G3 rewards. These daily events are well beyond needing a rework but a complete overhaul, decent suggestions of base line level banding has been provided but ignored.
Alliance and Solo events are becoming tedious and monotonous to say the least. It’s the same 4-5 events on a repeating cycle, nobody has any creativity to come up with something new. What happened to Call to Arms events? Burst style events? Events that run on a smaller schedule. How much more interesting would it be if Call to Arms was part of some background Burst events that could pop up at any time in the day and last for 1-3 Hours alongside any “monthly” events?
Another pattern that seems to be emerging which I believe is detrimental to the game play is that events are revolving around “Spending Materials”. This often turns into having to spend much more of one material to get a little back of another, slowly draining you of one resource in order to get another.
Lastly on this subject; as I could go on for hours. Nobody likes 5000 different event currencies for each new bit of content, just stop it.

Economy

Let’s start at the very beginning.
• Resource generators, completely defunct and a useless after a certain level but everyone is expected to dump resources into these useless buildings even though they provide nothing.
There have been many suggestions on this, simple things like upping the numbers. Scrapping the ware house so there is no limit and you can just continue to collect resources off generators all day.
• Parsteel Tritanium and Dilithium mining nodes. Another defunct mechanic past a certain level.
These need to be scaled upwards, add officers that increase protected cargo on ship by x% when mining these basic resources. So if I have a Survey mining on a 2M Parsteel node my protected would go upto somewhere like 500K, but only for these basics minerals. Even if the mining rates were a little slower - this would at least be something that people may entertain doing in the right circumstances, instead of just flat out ignored.
Ship XP needs to be something that’s more readily available or Survey class hostiles need to drop Survey class XP rewards in bulk. I don’t think any designer has tried to level a Botanay Bay up several tiers before without Latinum? The state of gaining XP for survey ships is dire.
Ship loot boxes need a major look at and it has been requested to fix the drops for well over 12 months. For those not in Deepspace yet which is basically the next expansion into G4, Vahklas and Kumari BPs are STILL dropping off hostiles there as well as G3 Ship Parts even though they are G4 in the loot boxes.
Redundant currencies, things from past events need to go somewhere and be useful. As do Modulators once you’ve got no more use for them
Payouts across the board need to be steadily increased to reflect the state of the game. Dark space is now more attainable, players who are approaching 34-38 bracket should not be forced to spend to progress. The bulk of your player base is in essence stuck in your old content/expansion.

Final conclusions

So in the above point I touched on the fact that players are in old content, but I guess that’s how the Developers would like you to think? But the harsh reality of it is, G4 and G3 are the exact same thing, just inflated numbers and more road blocks given to the player to progress.
The developers and designers are lazy. All the G4 ships have very basic abilities and have slightly altered looks of G3 ships. The players that do have G4 ships currently use them as paper weights unless you’re part of the 1% in this game where you’re happy to spend 30-100M Tritanium just to repair your ship while getting no where near that amount from anywhere but paying packs? Do people believe that Scopely will ever alter these numbers and avoid upsetting the people that have spent 100s of thousands of dollars on obtaining these latest ships? Seems highly unlikely as they haven't relaxed the G3 progression.
G4 and Deepspace was rushed out, and very badly thought out. It’s like no thought was given to “what happens when a large amount of players get here” and it was perhaps designed as an end game area they believe not many players will play in. You only have to look at the number of nodes per area, systems in general and the viability/warp times to get there.
Unfortunately, Scopely make it abundantly clear they are not here to provide a fun and engaging experience above profit margins, and they are in no way trying to hide it from you - If content and game features that could improve the game dramatically could be added and worked on but doesn’t provide some money it’s shelved or goes to the back of the list behind the new content that is copy and paste with a new skin I’ve the top of it. The QA team is either non existent or it gets ignored, so many bugs slip through the cracks that it’s not fathomable that things get play tested before being shipped. It seems in game resources are assigned real monetary value, packs, compensation, and events are all factored around how much the company says 1 Uncommon ore is worth in dollars for example.
You can make good profit without treating your players like cows, trying to milk them. Designers and Developers should be made to play the game as well as the product managers, and if you don’t then you should sure as hell be listening to your loyal players that have thousands of hours on your game logged and implement things players want.
Just like to say, a lot of this is my opinion and plenty of the above has been suggested by not just me, it’s a lot of community feedback from mods, content creators and normal players.
Thanks for reading
*edit - Apparently the last part was not clear, everything above is my opinion, I was merely trying to give credit to everyone else for suggestions and ideas that were not all mine or similar to others for improvements
submitted by thekautiousone to u/thekautiousone [link] [comments]

pritish nandy's interview with kishore kumar (april 1985)

Pritish Nandy: I understand you are quitting Bombay and going away to Khandwa…
Kishore Kumar: Who can live in this stupid, friendless city where everyone seeks to exploit you every moment of the day? Can you trust anyone out here? Is anyone trustworthy? Is anyone a friend you can count on? I am determined to get out of this futile rat race and live as I’ve always wanted to. In my native Khandwa, the land of my forefathers. Who wants to die in this ugly city?
Pritish Nandy: Why did you come here in the first place?
Kishore Kumar: I would come to visit my brother Ashok Kumar. He was such a big star in those days. I thought he could introduce me to KL Saigal who was my greatest idol. People say he used to sing through his nose. But so what? He was a great singer. Greater than anyone else.
Pritish Nandy: I believe you are planning to record an album of famous Saigal songs….
Kishore Kumar: They asked me to. I refused. Why should I try to outsing him? Let him remain enshrined in our memory. Let his songs remain just HIS songs. Let not even one person say that Kishore Kumar sang them better.
Pritish Nandy: If you didn’t like Bombay, why did you stay back? For fame? For money?
Kishore Kumar: I was conned into it. I only wanted to sing. Never to act. But somehow, thanks to peculiar circumstances, I was persuaded to act in the movies. I hated every moment of it and tried virtually every trick to get out of it. I muffed my lines, pretended to be crazy, shaved my head off, played difficult, began yodelling in the midst of tragic scenes, told Meena Kumari what I was supposed to tell Bina Rai in some other film – but they still wouldn’t let me go. I screamed, ranted, went cuckoo. But who cared? They were just determined to make me a star.
Pritish Nandy: Why?
Kishore Kumar: Because I was Dadamoni’s brother. And he was a great hero.
Pritish Nandy: But you succeeded, after your fashion….
Kishore Kumar: Of course I did. I was the biggest draw after Dilip Kumar. There were so many films I was doing in those days that I had to run from one set to the other, changing on the way. Imagine me. My shirts flying off, my trousers falling off, my wig coming off while I’m running from one set to the other. Very often I would mix up my lines and look angry in a romantic scene or romantic in the midst of a fierce battle. It was terrible and I hated it. It evoked nightmares of school. Directors were like school teachers. Do this. Do that. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. I dreaded it. That’s why I would often escape.
Pritish Nandy: Well, you are notorious for the trouble you give your directors and producers. Why is that?
Kishore Kumar: Nonsense. They give me trouble. You think they give a damn for me? I matter to them only because I sell. Who cared for me during my bad days? Who cares for anyone in this profession?
Pritish Nandy: Is that why you prefer to be a loner?
Kishore Kumar: Look, I don’t smoke, drink or socialize. I never go to parties. If that makes me a loner, fine. I am happy this way. I go to work and I come back straight home. To watch my horror movies, play with my spooks, talk to my trees, sing. In this avaricious world, every creative person is bound to be lonely. How can you deny me that right?
Pritish Nandy: You don’t have many friends?
Kishore Kumar: None.
Pritish Nandy: That’s rather sweeping.
Kishore Kumar: People bore me. Film people particularly bore me. I prefer talking to my trees.
Pritish Nandy: So you like nature?
Kishore Kumar: That’s why I want to get away to Khandwa. I have lost all touch with nature out here. I tried to dig a canal all around my bungalow out here, so that we could sail gondolas there. The municipality chap would sit and watch and nod his head disapprovingly, while my men would dig and dig. But it didn’t work. One day someone found a hand – a skeletal hand- and some toes. After that no one wanted to dig anymore. Anoop, my second brother, came charging with Ganga water and started chanting mantras. He thought this house was built on a graveyard. Perhaps it is. But I lost the chance of making my home like Venice.
Pritish Nandy: People would have thought you crazy. In fact they already do.
Kishore Kumar: Who said I’m crazy. The world is crazy; not me.
Pritish Nandy: Why do you have this reputation for doing strange things?
Kishore Kumar: It all began with this girl who came to interview me. In those days I used to live alone. So she said: You must be very lonely. I said: No, let me introduce you to some of my friends. So I took her to the garden and introduced her to some of the friendlier trees. Janardhan; Raghunandan; Gangadhar; Jagannath; Buddhuram; Jhatpatajhatpatpat. I said they were my closest friends in this cruel world. She went and wrote this bizarre piece, saying that I spent long evenings with my arms entwined around them. What’s wrong with that, you tell me? What’s wrong making friends with trees?
Pritish Nandy: Nothing.
Kishore Kumar: Then, there was this interior decorator-a suited, booted fellow who came to see me in a three-piece woollen, Saville Row suit in the thick of summer- and began to lecture me about aesthetics, design, visual sense and all that. After listening to him for about half an hour and trying to figure out what he was saying through his peculiar American accent, I told him that I wanted something very simple for my living room. Just water-several feet deep- and little boats floating around, instead of large sofas. I told him that the centre-piece should be anchored down so that the tea service could be placed on it and all of us could row up to it in our boats and take sips from our cups. But the boats should be properly balanced, I said, otherwise we might whizz past each other and conversation would be difficult. He looked a bit alarmed but that alarm gave way to sheer horror when I began to describe the wall decor. I told him that I wanted live crows hanging from the walls instead of paintings -since I liked nature so much. And, instead of fans, we could have monkeys farting from the ceiling. That’s when he slowly backed out from the room with a strange look in his eyes. The last I saw of him was him running out of the front gate, at a pace that would have put an electric train to shame. What’s crazy about having a living room like that, you tell me? If he can wear a woollen, three-piece suit in the height of summer, why can’t I hang live crows on my walls?
Pritish Nandy: Your ideas are quite original, but why do your films fare so badly?
Kishore Kumar: Because I tell my distributors to avoid them. I warn them at the very outset that the film might run for a week at the most. Naturally, they go away and never come back. Where will you find a producer-director who warns you not to touch his film because even he can’t understand what he has made?
Pritish Nandy: Then why do you make films?
Kishore Kumar: Because the spirit moves me. I feel I have something to say and the films eventually do well at times. I remember this film of mine – Door Gagan ki Chhaon mein – which started to an audience of 10 people in Alankar. I know because I was in the hall myself. There were only ten people who had come to watch the first show! Even its release was peculiar. Subhodh Mukherjee, the brother of my brother-in-law, had booked Alankar(the hall) for 8 weeks for his film April Fool- which everyone knew was going to be a block- buster. My film, everyone was sure, was going to be a thundering flop. So he offered to give me a week of his booking. Take the first week, he said flamboyantly, and I’ll manage within seven. After all, the movie can’t run beyond a week. It can’t run beyond two days, I reassured him. When 10 people came for the first show, he tried to console me. Don’t worry, he said, it happens at times. But who was worried? Then, the word spread. Like wildfire. And within a few days the hall began to fill. It ran for all 8 weeks at Alankar, house full! Subodh Mukherjee kept screaming at me but how could I let go the hall? After 8 weeks when the booking ran out, the movie shifted to Super, where it ran for another 21 weeks! That’s the anatomy of a hit of mine. How does one explain it? Can anyone explain it? Can Subodh Mukherjee, whose April Fool went on to become a thundering flop?
Pritish Nandy: But you, as the director should have known?
Kishore Kumar: Directors know nothing. I never had the privilege of working with any good director. Except Satyen Bose and Bimal Roy, no one even knew the ABC of film making. How can you expect me to give good performances under such directors? Directors like S.D. Narang didn’t even know where to place the camera. He would take long, pensive drags from his cigarette, mumble ‘Quiet, quiet, quiet’ to everyone, walk a couple of furlongs absentmindedly, mutter to himself and then tell the camera man to place the camera wherever he wanted. His standard line to me was:Do something. What something? Come on, some thing! So I would go off on my antics. Is this the way to act? Is this the way to direct a movie? And yet Narangsaab made so many hits!
Pritish Nandy: Why didn’t you ever offer to work with a good director?
Kishore Kumar: Offer! I was far too scared. Satyajit Ray came to me and wanted me to act in Parash Pathar – his famous comedy – and I was so scared that I ran away. Later, Tulsi Chakravarti did the role. It was a great role and I ran away from it, so scared I was of these great directors.
Pritish Nandy: But you knew Ray.
Kishore Kumar: Of course I did. I loaned him five thousand rupees at the time of Pather Panchali-when he was in great financial difficulty- and even though he paid back the entire loan, I never gave him an opportunity to forget the fact that I had contributed to the making of the classic. I still rib him about it. I never forget the money I loan out!
Pritish Nandy: Well, some people think you are crazy about money. Others describe you as a clown, pretending to be kinky but sane as hell. Still others find you cunning and manipulative. Which is the real you?
Kishore Kumar: I play different roles at different times. For different people. In this crazy world, only the truly sane man appears to be mad. Look at me. Do you think I’m mad? Do you think I can be manipulative?
Pritish Nandy: How would I know?
Kishore Kumar: Of course you would know. It’s so easy to judge a man by just looking at him. You look at these film people and you instantly know they’re rogues.
Pritish Nandy: I believe so.
Kishore Kumar: I don’t believe so. I know so. You can’t trust them an inch. I have been in this rat race for so long that I can smell trouble from miles afar. I smelt trouble the day I came to Bombay in the hope of becoming a playback singer and got conned into acting. I should have just turned my back and run.
Pritish Nandy: Why didn’t you?
Kishore Kumar: Well, I’ve regretted it ever since. Boom Boom. Boompitty boom boom. Chikachikachik chik chik. Yadlehe eeee yadlehe ooooo (Goes on yodelling till the tea comes. Someone emerges from behind the upturned sofa in the living room, looking rather mournful with a bunch of rat-eaten files and holds them up for Kishore Kumar to see)
Pritish Nandy: What are those files?
Kishore Kumar: My income tax records.
Pritish Nandy: Rat-eaten?
Kishore Kumar: We use them as pesticides. They are very effective. The rats die quite easily after biting into them.
Pritish Nandy: What do you show the tax people when they ask for the papers?
Kishore Kumar: The dead rats.
Pritish Nandy: I see.
Kishore Kumar: You like dead rats?
Pritish Nandy: Not particularly.
Kishore Kumar: Lots of people eat them in other parts of the world.
Pritish Nandy: I guess so.
Kishore Kumar: Haute cuisine. Expensive too. Costs a lot of money.
Pritish Nandy: Yes?
Kishore Kumar: Good business, rats. One can make money from them if one is enterprising.
Pritish Nandy: I believe you are very fussy about money. Once, I’m told. a producer paid you only half your dues and you came to the sets with half your head and half your moustache shaved off. And you told him that when he paid the rest, you would shoot with your face intact…
Kishore Kumar: Why should they take me for granted? These people never pay unless you teach them a lesson. I was shooting in the South once. I think the film was Miss Mary and these chaps kept me waiting in the hotel room for five days without shooting. So I got fed up and started cutting my hair. First I chopped off some hair from the right side of my head and then, to balance it, I chopped off some from the left. By mistake I overdid it. So I cut off some more from the right. Again I overdid it. So I had to cut from the left again. This went on till I had virtually no hair left- and that’s when the call came from the sets. When I turned up the way I was, they all collapsed. That’s how rumours reached Bombay. They said I had gone cuckoo. I didn’t know. I returned and found everyone wishing me from long distance and keeping a safe distance of 10 feet while talking. Even those chaps who would come and embrace me waved out from a distance and said Hi. Then, someone asked me a little hesitantly how I was feeling. I said: Fine. I spoke a little abruptly perhaps. Suddenly I found him turning around and running. Far, far away from me.
Pritish Nandy: But are you actually so stingy about money?
Kishore Kumar: I have to pay my taxes.
Pritish Nandy: You have income tax problems I am told….
Kishore Kumar: Who doesn’t? My actual dues are not much but the interest has piled up. I’m planning to sell off a lot of things before I go to Khandwa and settle this entire business once and for all.
Pritish Nandy: You refused to sing for Sanjay Gandhi during the emergency and, it is said, that’s why the tax hounds were set on you. Is this true?
Kishore Kumar: Who knows why they come. But no one can make me do what I don’t want to do. I don’t sing at anyone’s will or command. But I sing for charities, causes all the time[Note: Sanjay Gandhi wanted Kishore Kumar to sing at some Congress rally in Bombay. Kishore Kumar refused. Sanjay Gandhi ordered All India Radio to stop playing Kishore songs. This went on for quite a while. Kishore Kumar refused to apologize. Finally, it took scores of prominent producers and directors to convince those in power to rescind the ban]
Pritish Nandy: What about your home life? Why has that been so turbulent?
Kishore Kumar: Because I like being left alone.
Pritish Nandy: What went wrong with Ruma Devi, your first wife?
Kishore Kumar: She was a very talented person but we could not get along because we looked at life differently. She wanted to build a choir and a career. I wanted someone to build me a home. How can the two reconcile? You see, I’m a simple minded villager type. I don’t understand this business about women making careers. Wives should first learn how to make a home. And how can you fit the two together? A career and a home are quite separate things. That’s why we went our separate ways.
Pritish Nandy: Madhubala, your second wife?
Kishore Kumar: She was quite another matter. I knew she was very sick even before I married her. But a promise is a promise. So I kept my word and brought her home as my wife, even though I knew she was dying from a congenital heart problem. For 9 long years I nursed her. I watched her die before my own eyes. You can never understand what this means until you live through this yourself. She was such a beautiful woman and she died so painfully. She would rave and rant and scream in frustration. How can such an active person spend 9 long years bed-ridden? And I had to humour her all the time. That’s what the doctor asked me to. That’s what I did till her very last breath. I would laugh with her. I would cry with her.
Pritish Nandy: What about your third marriage? To Yogeeta Bali?
Kishore Kumar: That was a joke. I don’t think she was serious about marriage. She was only obsessed with her mother. She never wanted to live here.
Pritish Nandy: But that’s because she says you would stay up all night and count money..
Kishore Kumar: Do you think I can do that? Do you think I’m mad? Well, it’s good we separated quickly.
Pritish Nandy: What about your present marriage?
Kishore Kumar: Leena is a very different kind of person. She too is an actress like all of them but she’s very different. She’s seen tragedy. She’s faced grief. When your husband is shot dead, you change. You understand life. You realize the ephemeral quality of all things.. I am happy now.
Pritish Nandy: What about your new film? Are you going to play hero in this one too?
Kishore Kumar: No no no. I’m just the producer-director. I’m going to be behind the camera. Remember I told you how much I hate acting? All I might do is make a split second appearance on screen as an old man or something.
Pritish Nandy: Like Hitchcock?
Kishore Kumar: Yes, my favourite director. I’m mad, true. But only about one thing. Horror movies. I love spooks. They are a friendly fearsome lot. Very nice people, actually, if you get to know them. Not like these industry chaps out here. Do you know any spooks?
Pritish Nandy: Not very friendly ones.
Kishore Kumar: But nice, frightening ones?
Pritish Nandy: Not really.
Kishore Kumar: But that’s precisely what we’re all going to become one day. Like this chap out here (points to a skull, which he uses as part of his decor, with red light emerging from its eyes)- you don’t even know whether it’s a man or a woman. Eh? But it’s a nice sort. Friendly too. Look, doesn’t it look nice with my specs on its non-existent nose?
Pritish Nandy: Very nice indeed.
Kishore Kumar: You are a good man. You understand the real things of life. You are going to look like this one day.
source: http://songs.kishorekumar.org/pritish-nandy%E2%80%99s-extraordinary-interview-with-kishore-kumar-in-april-1985/
submitted by skinofsky to bollywood [link] [comments]

Join My Religion

Today, I am once again announcing the formation of a new Cult! Erase that, a new Religion that I will be the leader of. This Cult....why do I keep making that same mistake? This Pietism will not be based on Orthodox Practices or Religious Formalities from the past or the present. It is not a form of Spirituality that other Religious Groups practice. Such as; Animism, Asatru, Baha'i Faith, Brahma Kumari, Buddhism, Christadelphians, Christian Apostolic Church in Zion, Christianity, Confucianism, Divine Lightmission, Druze, Dualism, Eckankar, Hare Krishna, Hinduism, Islam, Jain, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonite, Mormon, Mysticism, Polytheism, Raja Yoga, Rastafarian, Ravidassia, Santeria, Satanism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism, Thelema, Traditional African Church, Unitarianism, Unitarian-Universalism, Unitas Fratrum, Voodoo, Yezidism, Zoroastrianism, or even the science in Scientology. Man, that's a lot of -isms! My Religion will have a band of fervent followers, who will follow the doctrine that I will lay down as Scripture, so none of us have to pay Taxes ever again! When you join, you do not join a Congregation or become part of a Laity. It does not matter if you are male or female. We all become the Clergy in my Religion. That way, none of us will ever have to pay any Taxes! It will probably start out slow, as far as recruiting new members are concerned. So, to start off, all of your worldly possessions and paychecks must be donated, totally, to the Cult. I mean, RELIGION! You will have the option of spending a percentage of the money you donate to the Church. I am not a cruel leader, as you can see by my sincerity. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Let's see now. First, we'll need 5% of your donations to buy land and build housing. We will have a communal dwelling for food and drink. So we won't have a problem there. Add 3% for that. Then we'll need 10% of your donations to pay for Lawyers. Because Religions just don't fall out of the sky and can declare themselves sanctuaries from Tax Liens. No sirree Bob they don't! And don't forget my administrative costs. That will be another 3%. And my private Jet. Another 5%. Finally, you'll have to pay, I mean all the Clergy will donate to, our very own Religious Retreat in the Bahamas! So everyone, when I'm not lounging on the beachfront with a Gin & Tonic, you too can have a Religious Experience Vacation from the grind of everyday life! 15%. Won't that be nice? So let's see here. That means, you'll be able to spend up to 59% of your donations on yourself! Tax Free! Won't that be a lot better than paying our Government the 33% in taxes they always ask for every year? Oh, yes. By the way. Please start making around a Million Dollars a Year. Because I can't wait forever for my Bahama Vacation Retreat! Or my Private Jet. I am your Leader, Jim Hauenstein, And,
“The Scooby gang doesn’t travel because they are looking for crimes to solve. They travel because they’re one step ahead of the de-programmers. Somehow, Fred’s got them all snookered. It probably has something to do with the Scooby Snacks." - John Scalzi, -
That is my story and I am sticking to it! Like what you are reading? Sign up as a Follower, or leave a Comment. If it's worthy enough, I'll answer you in a Post. Thanks for reading. Be Kind To Everyone. I'll Be Seeing You.
https://2buckhowie.blogspot.com/2020/08/join-my-religion.html
submitted by TwoBuckHowie to u/TwoBuckHowie [link] [comments]

From kaution

About time someone paid attention
I’m going to start by saying that, I’ve made the mistake in the past of trying to pander to the feelings of employees by trying my best to not say anything they could take offense to and get defensive over their work. However it’s been years of trying it like that and we don’t seem to be getting anywhere so here goes.
For those that don’t know I’m part of the Discord Moderator team for close to a year now and we have been fortunate enough to be able to take what’s written by the community and collate and provide it directly to Scopely along with the Content Creators. However it seems that a lot of what is sent is deemed not important to work on over content that can provide more income.
A lot of what I’m about to go through has been requested for many months and just doesn’t seem to materialise and what does, often gets twisted into something that isn’t an improvement.

Officers

Fixing Tool-tips, this should take maybe a morning of a junior member to go through and fix them Change Pikes tool-tip to say “Increases the effectiveness officers bridge abilities by x% while in combat” Add in game tags to Officer abilities that just don’t work, so people can see the ability is bugged or turn the text Red or line through Burning and Hull Breach triggers don’t last for the full duration specified, so either change them to function as Morale does at start of round chance or lengthen all of the effects by 1 Players desperately want to be able to have load outs or a favourites system for officers. Officer Badges are so scarce, it drives away any ability to try new things as specific officers are always prioritised over others (Chen, Spock, Kirk etc) a way to earn these beyond just paying for them has been requested for well over 6 months Officers that just don’t function as they say, Marcus currently provides Armor Pierce instead of Shield Pierce. Dj’aoki currently functions the same way Zhou does by giving you mitigation rather than reducing the enemies. There’s more that either don’t work at all or partially function, Barot, Chang, Helvetia, Domitia and more.
We have seen examples of immediate fixes coming into play with Carol and so on being disabled or altered within the space of a day, yet the list of broken or partially broken officers is starting to outgrow those that do work and are useful.

Refinery

I will say that it’s my firm belief nobody in this game enjoys this mechanic, it’s a pure frustration tool and I personally believe the numbers are manipulated behind the curtain. I say this because it often appears like you’re soft capped on what the refinery can pay out in a 24 hour period let’s say? I can get a good set of pulls on in the morning, 25-38-21 as a random example and then I’ve often seen an occurrence where it’s 0-7-7 or 7-7-7 no matter the batches pulled proceeding a good pull. If it were truly random I believe the occurrence of 7-7-7 type scenarios would never be possible the way the game throws them at you. By soft capping or giving the player some form of diminishing returns it means you’re always going at the minimum pace set by Scopely and not one by true randomness.
I’m sure players would like to see a minimum guarantee for each type of batch they use, let’s say 1 batch it’s guaranteed at least 7 Uncommon and 1 Rare, 2 Batches 14 Uncommon and 2 Rare and 3 batches 21 Uncommon and 3 Rare, these would be BEFORE your randomly generated income that gets added at end result, a refinery style like this would improve the player experience dramatically and probably remove the negativity around it. Not everything in the game needs to be refined, resources should be farmed or fought over, time and investment should be a deciding factor - not arbitrary cool-downs that often make for a negative experience

Alliance Functionality

It’s not changed since the game release, if you go into the Alliance permissions there is still a “Tournament” access option. Guessing this was an idea by the original Digit team that got shelved
Last Online Alliance wide PM to all members Alliance Alerts or Flags for systems / Call to Arms Alliance Market or Bank system Alliance Trading post Alliance Contributions overhaul
A lot of these systems have been suggested since the dawn of time, because they are pretty much in every type of MMO you’ve ever played, the only improvement made to Alliances was diplomacy flags which are nice but don’t necessarily bring a benefit to the alliance itself.
Events All in all, the events suck and have had the least amount of effort put into them. They are the main “new thing” to do in the game each day. I’d like Scopely to sit down and think to themselves, beyond players doing their dailies what reason do players have to login to the game and play it? Other than events I can only think of reputation farming. So it’s events and I’ve often said these are the main route to progressing your game as the refinery is just a small supplement and not consistent enough.
I wrote a document on why the Daily events are underwhelming and just plain bad. This was months ago and was fed back along with others showing clear examples of why they are bad here’s a link; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fd21wRpQFAsFc9B7RPHPpUj1MwEYn1-sVZjjvd0z5eU/ (Over 6 months have passed since writing this and it’s still very much the same)
This was written in December last year. We are now at the stage where lvl 39+ are banded in with everyone below for Officer XP and Station events which are returning G3 rewards. These daily events are well beyond needing a rework but a complete overhaul, decent suggestions of base line level banding has been provided but ignored.
Alliance and Solo events are becoming tedious and monotonous to say the least. It’s the same 4-5 events on a repeating cycle, nobody has any creativity to come up with something new. What happened to Call to Arms events? Burst style events? Events that run on a smaller schedule. How much more interesting would it be if Call to Arms was part of some background Burst events that could pop up at any time in the day and last for 1-3 Hours alongside any “monthly” events?
Another pattern that seems to be emerging which I believe is detrimental to the game play is that events are revolving around “Spending Materials”. This often turns into having to spend much more of one material to get a little back of another, slowly draining you of one resource in order to get another.
Lastly on this subject; as I could go on for hours. Nobody likes 5000 different event currencies for each new bit of content, just stop it.

Economy

Let’s start at the very beginning.
Resource generators, completely defunct and a useless after a certain level but everyone is expected to dump resources into these useless buildings even though they provide nothing.
There have been many suggestions on this, simple things like upping the numbers. Scrapping the ware house so there is no limit and you can just continue to collect resources off generators all day.
Parsteel Tritanium and Dilithium mining nodes. Another defunct mechanic past a certain level.
These need to be scaled upwards, add officers that increase protected cargo on ship by x% when mining these basic resources. So if I have a Survey mining on a 2M Parsteel node my protected would go upto somewhere like 500K, but only for these basics minerals. Even if the mining rates were a little slower - this would at least be something that people may entertain doing in the right circumstances, instead of just flat out ignored.
Ship XP needs to be something that’s more readily available or Survey class hostiles need to drop Survey class XP rewards in bulk. I don’t think any designer has tried to level a Botanay Bay up several tiers before without Latinum? The state of gaining XP for survey ships is dire.
Ship loot boxes need a major look at and it has been requested to fix the drops for well over 12 months. For those not in Deepspace yet which is basically the next expansion into G4, Vahklas and Kumari BPs are STILL dropping off hostiles there as well as G3 Ship Parts even though they are G4 in the loot boxes.
Redundant currencies, things from past events need to go somewhere and be useful. As do Modulators once you’ve got no more use for them
Payouts across the board need to be steadily increased to reflect the state of the game. Dark space is now more attainable, players who are approaching 34-38 bracket should not be forced to spend to progress. The bulk of your player base is in essence stuck in your old content/expansion.

Final conclusions

So in the above point I touched on the fact that players are in old content, but I guess that’s how the Developers would like you to think? But the harsh reality of it is, G4 and G3 are the exact same thing, just inflated numbers and more road blocks given to the player to progress.
The developers and designers are lazy. All the G4 ships have very basic abilities and have slightly altered looks of G3 ships. The players that do have G4 ships currently use them as paper weights unless you’re part of the 1% in this game where you’re happy to spend 30-100M Tritanium just to repair your ship while getting no where near that amount from anywhere but paying packs? Do people believe that Scopely will ever alter these numbers and avoid upsetting the people that have spent 100s of thousands of dollars on obtaining these latest ships? Seems highly unlikely as they haven't relaxed the G3 progression.
G4 and Deepspace was rushed out, and very badly thought out. It’s like no thought was given to “what happens when a large amount of players get here” and it was perhaps designed as an end game area they believe not many players will play in. You only have to look at the number of nodes per area, systems in general and the viability/warp times to get there.
Unfortunately, Scopely make it abundantly clear they are not here to provide a fun and engaging experience above profit margins, and they are in no way trying to hide it from you - If content and game features that could improve the game dramatically could be added and worked on but doesn’t provide some money it’s shelved or goes to the back of the list behind the new content that is copy and paste with a new skin I’ve the top of it. The QA team is either non existent or it gets ignored, so many bugs slip through the cracks that it’s not fathomable that things get play tested before being shipped. It seems in game resources are assigned real monetary value, packs, compensation, and events are all factored around how much the company says 1 Uncommon ore is worth in dollars for example.
You can make good profit without treating your players like cows, trying to milk them. Designers and Developers should be made to play the game as well as the product managers, and if you don’t then you should sure as hell be listening to your loyal players that have thousands of hours on your game logged and implement things players want.
Just like to say, a lot of this is my opinion and plenty of the above has been suggested by not just me, it’s a lot of community feedback from mods, content creators and normal players.
Thanks for reading
submitted by DerBlitzkrieger to u/DerBlitzkrieger [link] [comments]

[Manga Spoilers] A theory on the world of AOT, potential ending points to the story, and some real history lessons that some people may not be aware of!

This is quite a long post, however I truly urge you to have the patience to read it all as you may learn something new from it to spark an interest. Here it goes!
It's no surprise that Isayama has taken a lot of inspiration from real life history, however theres some parallels that people don't talk about because they aren't as well known. Yes, the Holocaust similarities caught on to everyone's eyes but there are other aspects of the story that, whether intentional or not, seem extremely similar to certain real life events.
We've all discussed the fact that Paradis Island resembles Madagascar next to Africa. However, there is another Island that this is extremely similar to, and once you finish reading this post explaining all the context of its mythical history, you may be quite surprised.
I'm talking about Srilanka. Let me explain.
Srilanka is an island next to India (of course) and is inhabited by mostly Tamil and Sinhalese people. More importantly, it has a history of a horrible civil war between the two races I just mentioned. The conflict ended with a massive genocide of the Tamil people and forced many Tamil families to run away from the Island and raise kids elsewhere.
Here is where it gets even more interesting. The Tamil race had their own army of soldiers that wanted to fight for their country. They were I believe called the LTTE (I am still researching this topic so forgive me for any mistakes) and get this. They were falsely accused of being terrorists for fighting back against the Sinhalese government for their country. In fact, even currently as of this moment, they are labelled as a terrorist group in 32 countries. And recently, it was announced that Switzerland spoke out about this and declared that they are not indeed a group of terrorists.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/law---order_tamil-tigers-acquitted-in-switzerland/45409056
A race falsely accused of being something terrible that they weren't, who also live on an island following a civil war...sound familiar yet?
Yep, this is literally a mirror to the Eldians being accused of being devils from Paradis Island, if I haven't got your jaws dropping yet, just wait, there's more...
We've spoken about the island, the races, the genocide and false accusations of being evil. Lets step away from politics for a bit and talk about some tales. It's time to talk about the forgotten continent of ancient Tamil civilization: Lemuria.
For some brief context, Lemuria, also known as Kumari Kandam, was an ancient lost continent that was connected to India, and the remains of it are told to be Srilanka. Now look at these two images of the same map, however one will be more zoomed in:
https://prnt.sc/qo7mwk The map itself. You can see that this continent actually connected Madagascar to India and Srilanka.
And now a closer look: https://prnt.sc/qo7njl
Has your jaw dropped yet? Literally the same name, Paradise.
Now I want you to see this too, another picture. https://prnt.sc/qo7pbx
An ancient continent, a bridge between an Island and main land, what does this all lead up to?
The bridge you see is called by scientists "Adam's bridge," which is, according to Christian mythology is what Adam used to cross the bridge from Srilanka to India after he was banished from Eden. And it was told that he went there to reach "Paradise."
However, another name this bridge has is "Rama's bridge," and the idea behind this was the Ramayana from Hindu mythology, that Rama and his army of ape men (Vanaras) constructed a massive land bridge composed of mountains to get to the Island to save his wife from the demon king Ravana.
Where else have we heard of mythical beings constructing massive land bridges for humanity? That's right, the Titans from Attack on Titan's history!
Now considering the current situation of Attack on Titan, how does this all relate? Well, we have a land bridge that could allow the Titans that Eren unleashed to travel to Marleyans to destroy them, maybe he uses the Wall Titans to harden and create a bridge between Srilanka and India...I mean Paradis to Marley. We also have a a mythical land that sunk into the oceans from continental shifts and flood levels, if Eren truly is going 100% aggression on Marley, what if he uses the Rumbling to cause these earthquakes and turn Marley into another Island, just like the forgotten Lemuria? What if AOT is a modern version of an Earth where Lemuria still existed, and it tells the tale of how it really got destroyed?
I think there are many points we can gain from these past history lessons. But whatever is true or not, it was fun to do this research and honestly, Isayama truly is a genius for creating a story that has so many areas of discussion with its community. I thank you for reading this! I look forward to hearing your theories!
Tl;dr: AOT heavily references Srilanka, an island where a horrible civil war between two races took place, a genocide, and tales of an ancient forgotten continent ,Lemuria, that also housed an island called "Paradise", and a land bridge "Rama's bridge" that connected the island to India which could be a possible connection to the Titans reaching Marley from the rumbling.
​
Edit: Another interesting point by this comment:
I’m a Sri Lankan Tamil and I saw those similarities too when I first saw the show on Netflix. The thing you missed is that right across the Island on the mainland is the Tamils’ original home of Tamil Nadu home to nearly 70 million Tamils. And on top of this is that the Sinhalese majority group in Sri Lanka base their history on an ancient tale of their origin on how they sailed from Northeast India and repelled South Indian Invaders (Tamils) for hundreds of years when in fact many of their ancient Kings and warriors are of South Indian descent and some of their former Presidents have recent Tamil origin too. jovijovi99
submitted by allsmighty to ShingekiNoKyojin [link] [comments]

Woman with 31 fingers and toes cruelly tag ‘witch’ by neighbours

Kumari Nayak, 63, was born with 31 fingers and toes.
She has spent her entire life hiding at home after being branded a witch by cruel neighbours.
According to medical report Kumari Nayak, 63, has polydactylism – a common abnormality at birth where the person has extra fingers and toes.
With 19 toes and 12 fingers, Kumari enters the Guinness World Records for having the most digits in the world. But she said her condition has plagued her for the entirety of her life and means she often feels forced to stay inside.
Kumari Nayak, does not have enough money to get medical treatment and claims some of her neighbours call her a ‘witch’ and avoid her in the street.
According to Kumari, she is from Ganjam district in Odisha, India, she said:
‘I was born with this defect and I couldn’t be treated as we belonged to a poor family.
‘It has now been 63 years that I have had this condition. ‘The residents nearby, who are too much into blind faiths, believe that I am a witch and keep away from me. They sometimes come to see my condition – but never help. ‘I am forced to stay indoors as I am being treated differently which is not a nice way of treatment from my neighbours
One of her neighbours, who is aware of Kumari’s condition, said others in their ‘small village’ put too much belief in superstition. The neighbour said: ‘I know that she has a medical problem and has nothing to do with what others believe her to be. ‘I feel so sorry for her that she cannot even afford to get herself treated.’ Across India, 134 people, mostly women, were killed for the alleged use of ‘black magic’ in 2016, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. In some parts of the country to this day, women accused of black magic are killed by lynch mobs under the guise of ‘witch hunting’.
See photos here
Source
submitted by naijaboss to india [link] [comments]

Feminism - ഒരു ചർച്ച

Inspired from the recent exchange between UdcKumari and Sabo..
ഫെമിനിസം എന്നാൽ എന്തു?
What is your definition of feminism? Who do you consider a feminist? What makes one a feminist?
For a while I thought I was a feminist, then I thought I wasn't one and now I am not sure..
സാദാ ചുറ്റുപാടുകളിൽ നിന്നു ജനിച്ചു വളർന്ന ഒരു മനുഷ്യൻ ആണ് ഞാൻ.. എൻറെ സർഗ്ഗവും വളരെ സാധാരണ മനുഷ്യരോടാണ് കൂടുതൽ.. അത് കൊണ്ട് തന്നെ ഒരു sociology ലെവലിൽ നിന്നോ ആ ഒരു കാഴ്ചപ്പാടിലോ എനിക്ക് എൻറെ ഫെമിനിസത്തെ define ചെയ്യാൻ പറ്റുമെന്നു തോന്നുന്നില്ല.. മാത്രമല്ല പല സന്ദർഭത്തിലും എൻറെ തന്നെ ആശയങ്ങൾ എനിക്ക് വൈരുധ്യം ആയി തോന്നിയിട്ടുമുണ്ട്..
എനിക്ക് തോന്നിയിട്ടുള്ളത്, and following are strictly my views - Feminism is about equality.. Equality in opportunities and equality in making choices. It is about treating a woman with the same respect as I would treat another guy. It is about believing women have the right to do, can do and should do the same things that guys are doing. It is about equal pay, equal respect and equal participation.
But does this mean women should be doing the same thing men are doing? Is feminism about wearing the same dress or the same haircut as a guy? I don't know and honestly, I don't think so, because feminism is not an attempt in imitation. And feminism is not about hating men too.
Is feminism about women raising voices in public and defending her views or opinions? Yes and no. While feminism is not about raising voices, it is also about defending oneself irrespective of their gender.
An year ago, I had a disagreement with someone whom I loved and cared a lot. While she was going to a very remote place in North India for a trip, I said something along the lines of 'be careful'. She replied to me asking why men assume women are weak and it is men's responsibility to protect the women. I had to tell her that I would tell the same to a guy if I cared that much; moreover it wasn't about seeing her weak, but it was about not trusing others. Regardless, that conversation with her made me realize, may be I am not a feminist as I think.
Couple of months later, I happened to have a conversation with a friend after a very long time. We somehow came to the topic of travel and he was telling about the solo trips his wife(also my friend) had made. Reminded of my earlier experience I asked him if he gets worried when she goes for trips.
To which he said - "The thing is all of us WANT our people to be safe. But we are not going to force our definition of safe on others. Do I want her to be safe? Yes. Will I stop her? No.
Being a feminist and liberal always comes at odds with being protective. Now I just trust the other person." In a way, his comment was enlightening. I was right in being protective and I was wrong in not equally trusting.
But how does this feminism play out while trying to do certain things Gentleman's way. Will I become an anti-feminist if I pay on the date, or if I hold the door or if I say 'Ladies first'? Would that make me less of a feminist? I don't know..!
വാൽകഷ്ണം : While typing this out, I messaged my close friend, someone who I trust the most, on what he thinks about feminism. And he replied "കല്യാണം കഴിക്കുന്നത് വരെ ഞാൻ ഒരു ഫെമിനിസ്റ്റ് ആണെന്നാണ് വിചാരിച്ചത്.. പക്ഷെ കഴിച്ചു കഴിഞ്ഞപ്പോൾ ഞാൻ അല്ലാതായി എന്ന് എനിക്ക് തോന്നുന്നു. പലപ്പോഴും ഞാൻ പറയുന്നത് കേൾക്കു എന്ന് ഞാൻ ഭാര്യയോട് പറഞ്ഞിട്ടുണ്ട്, അവളും എൻറെ അടുത്ത് അങ്ങനെ പറയാറുണ്ടെങ്കിലും, അത് കൊണ്ട് ഞാൻ ഒരു ഫെമിനിസ്റ്റ് ആണെന്ന് എനിക്ക് പറയാൻ പറ്റുമെന്നു തോന്നുന്നില്ല".
submitted by ChinnaThambii to Lal_Salaam [link] [comments]

The Sweet Escape [Part One]

I mutter faex on pure instinct as I blink away the sensations of a tremendous roar and find myself sitting in a wooden chair on a rickety porch somewhere unknown. The day is warm, distant pine trees murmur in a rich breeze, and the sky... shimmers. I recognize the subtle pattern instantly.
I'm home.
I'm home the way I remember it, from before the Troubles, the Time of Sickness, the Rotation, and the Grey Flood. All political issues aside, it was a natural paradise before, and this world is just as clean, beautiful, and safe as I remember it being when I was a child. From everything my Empire friends have told me about philosophies and religions, this has to mean...
I'm dead.
Sitting stunned for a moment and looking around to check the realness of the moment, I let the soft windy whispers fill my thoughts, so that I will not instead explode with a thousand pained emotions. After all that—after how far we went, how bitterly we struggled, and how deeply we refused to give up—to die simply because the Earth exploded underneath us—! Is it ridiculous that I still feel such an apocalyptic and cataclysmic death does not truly honor the bravery of the Second Tribe?
I didn't look when the time came, but Ed described what would happen well enough while we were hooking ourselves to conduit handholds during the ruby cube's ramping-up. The anti-gravity field, he said with sad eyes that now haunt my thoughts, might continue to grow until it pushes too deeply into the crust. Once it breaches even a small part of the inner magma, a catastrophic cascade of releasing pressure will eject core material in an explosion forceful enough to shatter the planet—and the moon, and everything else nearby. "It'll be so fast, so loud, and so hot, we'll die instantly," he said blankly. "There won't even be time to comprehend it happening."
And he was right. They were right. Here I sit, somewhere else, suddenly and unceremoniously deposited in paradise.
But if this is truly my paradise, a world crafted for me...
I reach down behind my chair, and my bare hand closes on an assault rifle.
I have not forgotten the promise I screamed into the storm.
I'm only clad in some sort of light sundress, but I'm on my feet, loading ammunition, grabbing gear from a nearby table, and running out across waving grass without hesitation. It doesn't matter which direction I go, just that I go with such speed that the forces of the afterlife will be caught off guard. Where are the others? There should be seven billion of us arriving around the same time.
My running gait feels off somehow, and I feel weaker than I remember, but I think it's because I'm merely human here. It doesn't matter. I've trained my whole life for physical exertion—and physically exert I shall. Curving around a corner in the path between trees, I recognize a wooden palisade and many rustic buildings. This is the distant town somewhere near New Moscow where my parents were exiled when I was young.
And the battle has already begun.
Two dropships lay burning on a green hill, but eighteen are unloading. Hundreds of soldiers clad in the colors of the Amber Three military spill out, only to be met by a screaming charge of green-and-brown-draped rebels from every direction. I run between two hills, dashing headlong into the sounds of gunfire, and I am soon joined by decrepit old men and fiery-eyed women. Exiled, outcast, they have nothing left to lose, and I can immediately understand why they are part of the rebellion.
But who is in charge? I release a small burst to down two of the closest enemies, then lead my stream of fighters around a low hill to fire from another angle, downing five more. There is no time for tactics or communication, but none is needed. It was obvious from the moment I left the trees that this was a trap laid by the resistance, and I continue in that vein, pushing forward, felling soldiers from a flank they don't expect. The old man to my left and the wild-eyed woman to my right dash with me to the nearest dropship with such energy that we crash right into the opposite inner wall at a full run, already firing. The men still inside die with a choir of surprised shouts. Only one manages to return fire.
The wild-eyed woman slumps, bleeding from six places, but the old man closes the back ramp while I push the dead pilots out of the way and grab the dropship's controls. Lifting off ever so slightly, I pitch the flying boat one way, then the other, getting a feel for it—then, I soar sideways, crushing an entire row of fleeing soldiers. It's a brutal action, but necessary, and I have a feeling those soldiers are less than real.
The battle is over.
Not from my actions alone, but it's over. The rest surrender.
I bring the craft to rest with an exhausted sigh. Combat is difficult and draining without the gifts of my father's lineage, but there is so much more ahead. Turning, I watch the rear ramp of the craft as it opens at the old man's behest.
My heart leaps in my chest.
Tacitus lowers his rifle and smiles.
But it is not he who speaks. "Venita, you pulled that crazy stunt?" Celcus pushes in quickly to check on me. "What are you even doing here? You promised you would stay home!"
From the back, tending to the injured woman, Porcia quips, "You know how hard-headed she is."
Rufus laughs. "You can say that again."
They're all here. They're all here! Flavia and Sampson pull dead soldiers out of the craft swiftly, readying for immediate takeoff. Looking at each of them with wide eyes, I ask, "Where's Septus?"
"That traitorous bastard?" Rufus asks. "At the target compound, if we're lucky. I'll shoot him myself."
There must be more to the ambush. "Compound?"
Touching my forehead, Celcus says with concern, "Yeah, the compound we're leaving to attack in two minutes? Legate Blue is supposed to be there in person today?"
Sitting roughly in the pilot's seat, I ask warily, "But we already—I killed him."
That gets their attention. Porcia asks hopefully, "Where? Was he in this dropship or something?"
"No, years ago," I tell them, feeling very strange. "I died doing it."
Sampson raises one eyebrow at Celcus, and my antikin puts a hand on my upper back. "Is the pregnancy making you hallucinate?"
Wait, what? I look down, only now noticing that I'm slightly fat. Is this why I find myself so tired? Also—what?!??!
I—
I'm—
If this is the afterlife, it has a very strange way of playing things.
No. Something's wrong. My entire life has been uprooted and rewritten. I can almost hear Ed's words, advising me to keep my 'yap shut' until I learn more. They're all here, and my heart is swelling with a storm of emotions I can't possibly face, but it's too much to accept at face value. There's only one person who might have answers for me. "Is my father in town?"
Compassionately, Celcus nods. "Yeah."
"I have to go see him right away." Halfway to the exit ramp, I pause. "Don't go attack that compound. It's a trap."
They all stare at me.
"Legate Blue's reaction to strife is to lock himself away behind a dozen walls and thousands of lackeys," I tell them from experience. "I guarantee he's not randomly at some base here in the middle of nowhere. It's a trap. They let you have this success just to get you to rush headlong into danger."
My squadmates look at each other worriedly.
If I stay, it will give them a chance to debate it. Knowing that, I leave quickly, not letting myself look back. If I look back, I'll stay with them, and I'll never want to leave.
Walking past hundreds of prisoners being corralled into one controllable area, I make for the town's entrance. I feel strange and sick watching the captured soldiers. I just crushed a swath of my fellow Ambers with a ship. What if they are real? It's not their fault the Legates are corrupt. My chest is a horrible vortex of hope, anticipation, sadness, and confusion. I fight to keep that all down as I enter the town proper.
The wooden palisade gates look exactly as I remember them, and I know the way to my father's little house in the back by heart. I shout as I approach, "Dad!"
He's already coming out, and he leaves the wooden door swinging open behind him. "Beloved daughter, what have you done?"
I throw my rifle aside and hug him hard. "I don't know. Where are we? What's going on?"
"I can only guess that Time suffered a schism, daughter," he says with awe and worry, clasping me in return. "A great deal changed in a single moment of blasting white. What did you do?"
Frowning, I think back on what happened. "Someone in the future told us we were all going to die. So we tried to survive. It doesn't make sense. We failed. We did die. I thought this was the afterlife!"
Letting me go, he regards me with a piercing gaze. "Are you sure you died? Did you feel the pain? Did you travel through the Restless Hedrons?"
"Well, no..."
"Then you have not died. More likely, someone was not where they were supposed to be when Death came for them."
They followed me... were we all supposed to still be hanging on to the conduits when the Earth exploded? "But we were going to die in a few seconds anyway!"
"Are you sure? Did you manage to save anyone who should have died?"
Trying to think through the emotions clawing for supremacy, I can't help but let a small brimming layer of moisture rise under my eyes. Billions dead in every which way, and all of it fated. It was a tapestry of pain and hopelessness, and, with all our years of struggle and sacrifice, we only managed to tug a single thread—the engineer, Neil, was headed off into the future on Gisela's ship despite Kumari telling us that never happened. "Just one."
My father nods slowly. "That would be enough. Time is a crystal lattice, and any change propagates outward in many dimensions." His eyes turn to the distant horizon. "This isn't supposed to be possible. It's never happened before. I'm going to retreat into my home and meditate on this. It may take some time, perhaps months. I will find you when I know more."
I understand, but I still feel strange watching him enter his house and shut the door. My rifle lies on the ground, and I am alone under a placid shimmering sky. Shimmering? I recognized it immediately when I awoke here, but I didn't think it through. If the sky is shimmering, the Inner Shields are still in place, which means the Crushing Fist never happened.
Is Ed still living in the Empire somewhere? All the people I've met, all the places I've been, all the victories we won together... is Cristina still out there, and still cold and hard without the lessons she learned along the way? Is Conrad still asleep in his distant facility? Is Gisela out there making machines in exile? All the threads of my life are separate once again, and I never knew how much I valued my experiences. I hated Gisela and waged war on her at one time, and thought Conrad an ass and an idiot for years, but now my ancestors will never know me. Cristina, too, the woman who filled the role of my mother in some part...
I do have a family. I sit in our house each day, surrounded by my brothers, sisters, and beloveds. Tacitus, Porcia, Rufus, Flavia, Celcus, Sampson; they move around me, saying and doing things in ways that I remember, alternately breaking my heart and making me smile. This is the life I once dreamt of, a dagger through my heart which was at its greatest when I aligned with Noah to sense the Empire and felt someone's whole lifetime go by in their red zone of fast-time.
But this is the Empire, and that timeline is gone. That person's life is gone.
This is what I wanted; what I felt incomplete without. My belly keeps getting bigger, and my family happier. The rebellion against the Legates goes well with my knowledge of events, and nobody understands how I know.
But it doesn't fit. It's wrong in a way I can't quite pin down. It's not the loss of my father's gifts. Those are still there in my genetics, just dormant, because I never went through countless near-death experiences to activate them through overwhelming stress. Flavia says it is due to 'epigenetic markers,' and I understand enough without needing to know the actual science: this Venita has made a trade. The Venita of this life chose family.
Some nights, I sit on a high hill near our house. The sunsets in this part of the world are pretty enough, but they hold nothing on the raw wild horizons I saw out in the multiverse. I was never more myself than wearing that jade armor and that grey uniform while sitting on a high crag and watching a blazing red or green sky sink into primordial night on a world that had never known mankind. Our enemies were so much more than the Legates; our challenges so much greater than mere soldiering. After such a bitter conflict against existence itself, why would Fate let us dodge out like this?
Epigenetic markers...
This Venita may have made a trade, but I don't have to. I absolutely love Valentina, my adorable little daughter, but she's a year old now, and can be without me for a little bit.
There is a facility on Amber Three that can sometimes send messages to the Empire, and I direct the others to assault it. For the first time since I got here, I go on the mission with them. The townsfolk will watch Valentina.
The mission goes smoothly, for the facility is of little tactical use to anyone else, and I find myself standing in a control room filled with darkened monitors. "Everybody out," I request calmly. "This is for me to undertake alone."
I sit, and I send out messages.
I get no response.
After the first week, Celcus suggests we return home. The forces of the Legates will eventually notice our presence.
"No," I tell him, and continue to keep my intentions secret.
The second week, I try a different tactic. I begin saying key words I heard in my previous life.
The third week, I start messaging out names that I remember.
Apparently, someone was listening, because eight seconds after I say, "Ward Shaw," one of the monitors finally flares to life.
A bearded man with a grim face stares back at me. "Stop spamming these channels."
"I know you!" I reply, energized at finally getting a response. "We need to talk about—"
His eyes grow dark, but not the black I heard about. "The timeline, I know."
"How do you—?"
"We all remember," he says, his tone haunted. "Every single citizen of the Empire is well aware that hundreds of billions died in another timeline. Our worlds are in absolute chaos."
I almost tell him that nobody on Amber Three remembers, but I realize why as soon as the thought occurs to me. "So what do we do?"
"Nothing. The Amber Worlds are surrounded by Shields. You can't get to us, and we can't get to you. That's it. That's how it is."
His monitor goes dark.
I guess I have my answer.
We abandon the facility and return to safer lands.
I sit each day at our house, watching our daughter grow up. She's two, then she's four, then she's eight.
The Legates cede power when she is sixteen. Our world is free at last.
It's strange, but not being allowed to fight makes my soul feel strange. There is nobody to resist, nothing to defeat, and nowhere to go. The Empire no longer sends us cultural media blasts every ten years, so we have no idea what is happening to them outside our Shield.
Every year, I wait and I watch for an opportunity to rise, but none ever comes. Is Fate actually going to leave us alone? This is safety, but also a prison.
It's taken two decades to feel this way, but maybe I should finally let myself be happy. I can't save the Empire, but I can be here for those I love. I encourage my daughter to go on a first date with someone, and, before I know it, Valentina is getting married. I'm at the wedding when my father finally emerges from his house.
He sits next to me at the reception table and picks up a name plaque with a worried gaze.
I haven't seen him since my first day in this timeline. "Father?"
"It's cruel," he whispers. "Beyond simple torture. Unbelievably cruel."
Alarmed, I ask, "What is?"
He finally looks at me. "My beloved daughter. I haven't been here for you, but I am now. It's me. Truly me."
"Truly you?" I sit up taller in my chair and smooth my dress down in anticipation of danger.
He looks past me at Valentina and her new husband, who dance on the floor in front of our friends and family. "I don't know how to get you out of this."
"Out of what?" I ask the question, but I think I always knew. I never let myself care too much, not like I did before. I was full of so much love in my previous life, but this just never felt right. People and events moved around me, rather than with me, and I always kept myself guarded against happiness. Fate was never going to simply let us live and be happy. It had simply been biding its time, waiting for us to lower our defenses—but I never did. Tacitus, Rufus, Porcia, Flavia, Celcus, Sampson—and now Valentina. I will never let the cruelty of the multiverse harm them. "How's the attack going to happen? What's it going to do to get at us?"
He's still looking at Valentina. "Is that your daughter?"
I nod warily.
"You should say goodbye to her."
How bad is it? Nearly in a trance, I rise and find her as the dance ends. She's smiling at someone, and I touch her shoulder.
She turns. "Hey, mom."
Strangely, it's like it's the first time I've heard her voice. Tears are brimming in my eyes. "This has all just happened so fast. I feel like just a moment ago, you were a baby."
She nods. "Time does fly." Her hair bounces with her nod. It's red like mine, and like my mother's before me. "I want you to know, I'm glad I got to exist."
I hug her hard. "You know about the other timeline?"
"Yeah." She grasps me back. "Aunt Flavia figured it out. I would have said something, but you and I didn't meet until just now."
I don't let go of her. "I want to stay. I want to see this, so badly."
"I know. But that's not the kind of person you are. Uncle Tacitus said you would do the right thing, and staying here isn't it."
Laughing and crying at the same time, I ask, "Tacitus said that?"
"He talks," she replies, also laughing and crying. "But only to me."
For some reason, the laughter in my heart swells, and I can face it for just a moment: this is, actually, completely, and literally what would have happened. The Purple Madness is a monstrous bastard like that; making people crazy with broken perceptions of Time instead of simple insanity. I pull back and memorize her face. Tears run down her cheeks, but she's not sad.
I mold my mind to the shape I learned from Noah, gaining his immunity.
The scene in front of me fades away in a tremendous monsoon of purple.
Glowing hurricane winds batter at every corner of me as I flail about—but I am not falling. Looking down, I see Sampson, wild-eyed and sweat-soaked, holding my ankle with one outstretched hand. With the other, he holds on to a pylon made by the black spheres. All around me, the Second Tribe is comatose, their bodies strewn about the structure or simply falling into open space. The all-encompassing winds of madness have them all locked in their own minds.
It wasn't real, but it would have been.
I can't breathe. For an interminable moment, the pain is physically too much to bear. The life I dreamt of—the family I wanted—and Valentina was such a kind soul—and I—
I kept myself wary and guarded.
For twenty years, I never let myself truly be there.
I... was no good at civilian life.
The pain passes, and I clench my fists before climbing back onto the structure with Sampson's help. He's at the end of his endurance, but he's saved my life yet again, and I clasp him with all the warm thanks my heart has to offer. Around us, without a guiding willpower, the spheres are beginning to lose cohesion. The structure bends; time is short. "Beloved, keep me safe for a little longer." He nods, and I close my eyes, letting the Noah-defense fall from my mind.
Edgar Brace sits eating cereal in his boxers in a small apartment.
Rachel walks in and shouts, "Jesus Christ, are you just going to play videogames the entire weekend? Shouldn't you be looking for a job?"
Miserable, he ignores her. It's not her fault. Their relationship just doesn't work, and he's driving her crazy by making promises he can't uphold. He looks out the window and sees a blazing angel searing a thin line of blue across the distant sky.
Casey sits in a living room with her husband, Cade. Those aren't their names, of course, but they had to change them to lay low, lest the First Worlders find her.
He's a farmer, and she's a teacher. It works. They were happy, for a time, but she knows the world is so much larger than some small plot of land in the middle of nowhere, and the home she ran from so long ago now calls her back. She worries what the people there might be doing as their wills to live continue to fade.
But Cade wouldn't understand any of that. There was a time he might have, but she kept it all hidden instead of revealing it to him. Now, Laura's off at college, and there's nothing to do but... be a farmer and a teacher. Honest work, but...
She looks out the window and sees a blazing angel searing a thin line of blue across the distant sky.
Conrad sits in a field on a summer day, constantly replaying the only moment he was truly and profoundly happy. Gisela sits across from him, smiling. She is not an Empress, and he is not an Emperor. There are no responsibilities today. The future holds horrible revelations and unending pains of a thousand different varieties, but today is pure, innocent, and warm.
He looks across the plains and sees a blazing angel searing a thin line of blue across the distant sky.
To himself, he whispers, "Hundreds of years in my life spent practically comatose thinking about this day, and I can't have five more minutes?"
The distant angel flares.
He grins.
I feel them, billions of them alone in their miseries, living the wrong lives in their heads. The destruction of the planet below us and the release of the conduits' energy was part of our plan, but nobody expected this. The people of the Second Tribe are an ocean of clever agonies, but I soar above their quiet desperations. I remember now, how to fly. I remember leading armies in dreams, and I raise my sword again, calling for them to follow me.
And they do. For a second time, they all follow me.
For they, too, can shape that part of themselves that is vulnerable to the Purple Madness. For those whose spiritual presence is weaker, well, they have less to defend. For those with greater presence, their ability to defend themselves is also greater. Together, our collective barrier is stronger than the sum of its parts.
The Second Tribe awakens.
I open my eyes, still in Sampson's arms, to see them grabbing on to the structure and helping each other recover. In equal measure, the spheres begin to reassert their proper shape, and the gigantic black lattice becomes strong again, standing firm despite the raging purple storm.
Below us, the anti-gravity field has continued to grow, and magmatic glows are visible around floating continents circling and crashing into one another. The vortex we rode to get here is gone, scattered by the explosion of the conduit network; it won't be long now before the planet's core ruptures outward.
I expected despair to surround me, but instead I sense the Tribe is unified in a new way. Like me, did they learn that there was never any other path for us? We can stop lamenting about timelines and futures we'll never have, because our choices brought us here. With any other choices, we wouldn't have been us anymore.
Finding the radio at my belt, I bring it up and ask, "Ed, or Casey. Can we land this sphere-ball thing?"
"Not with that in the way," comes Ed's response, referring to the ocean of floating continents and exploding magma below.
Beside me, Sampson judges the distant chaos below.
Breathing hard from the sheer overwhelming thought of what I'm considering, I ask, "If I can stop the ruby cube, end the anti-gravity field, what about then?"
It's Casey this time. "And how are you going to do that?"
Conrad answers for me: "She's going to jump."
"No way!" Ed shouts over the radio. "Those landmasses are ripping themselves to shreds down there. The ruby cube is in the middle of all that. You'll never make it!"
Sampson motions for my radio. "Not alone. If enough of us jump ahead of her, we can radio the right way."
"Yeah, just before you—"
"Die," Sampson says calmly. "I know. This is that kind of mission."
After a moment of silence, Ed says, "Then we'll use the flares. Vanguard tactics. Spread and compress the formation on the way down. They taught us that because it was the best way to make it through unknown territory at speed. It'll work. She can follow the flares better than trying to guess who's on the radio, anyway."
While Ed calls for volunteers, Sampson nods and hands me the radio.
Only then do I process the fact that he means to go himself. "No!"
He smiles wearily. "Remember what I said?"
I do. That morning, we were sitting on a high crag watching the dawn. He said, I know you. To save everyone else, you're going to jump right into the eye of the flaming storm. The absurd, exploding, flaming, crashing storm. Just know that when that moment comes, if you jump, you won't be alone.
He nods as I recall. A cloud of specks is already leaping off from the gigantic structure around us; men and women jumping to their certain deaths in formation simply to show me the way. I don't even know what I'll do if I manage to make it to the ruby cube. The plan isn't complete, but they're jumping anyway, because there's no time. The planet could explode at any second.
Sampson gives me no time to argue. I know that he knows that arguing with him will just cause a fatal delay. His weary smile becomes wide and unburdened; he salutes me, and falls backward.
Time's violin and my father's guitar are no longer playing. Though moons are crashing into one another around us and the Earth is in a volcanic death dance, space is silent as I leap after him. As that absurd, exploding, flaming, crashing storm of a planet fills my vision, there is no sound at all.
submitted by M59Gar to M59Gar [link] [comments]

Fractured Empire: Solo Event - Unbelievably Frustrating

I try to participate in most events but this one is insanely frustrating. I have to believe that even if you're a "pay to play" player this doesn't make sense because of the loss of speedups. I'm lvl 26 and I have to hit 33.75mm points to reach the top tier.
The best outcome has been with my Kumari because of the time involved. However, I have to suicide it around 25 times or more (assuming 1.3mm to 1.4mm average of points).
Assuming 25 suicide runs, that means 2.3mm in trit, 250k in dilithium, and 150 30-minute speed-ups. The speed-ups alone are pretty painful.
So - what do you net for this grind after subtracting resources for repairs?
Collectively:
While it does pay for itself in the upper tiers for resources, don't even start if you aren't planning to go all the way. I'm not sure the loss of speed-ups are worth it considering the exchange rate.
submitted by mrfurious2k to STFC_Official [link] [comments]

[Discussion] What was the “Dravidian movement” all about? Was it something that emerged all of a sudden with the DMK’s victory in 1967 TN elections - as an outcome of a mass outrage against “North Indian” hegemony and the imposition of Hindi? Read on

[Discussion] What was the “Dravidian movement” all about? Was it something that emerged all of a sudden with the DMK’s victory in 1967 TN elections - as an outcome of a mass outrage against “North Indian” hegemony and the imposition of Hindi? Read on
Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the Chief Minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu for 5 separate terms between 1969 and 2011, passed away on Aug 7th at the age of 94.
He was the most major and consequential face of the “Dravidian movement” since Annadurai’s death in 1969
A lot of obituaries will no doubt focus on his political career and his legacy. But in my view this is a good time to take a step back and better understand the “ideas” and prejudices that Karunanidhi championed.
"Views" that predate him by decades and that he did not originate. While it is all very well to focus on people, a discussion of ideas and their place in history is always more useful.
What was the “Dravidian movement” all about?
Was it something that emerged all of a sudden with the DMK’s victory in 1967 TN elections - as an outcome of a mass outrage against “North Indian” hegemony and the imposition of Hindi?
Or do we go further back and place its origins in the late 19th / early 20th century with the Justice Party and the Self-respect movement - a political assertion of the “non brahmin” tamil people against the perceived Brahmin dominance in Tamil Nadu during the British Raj?
But these are proximate ways of thinking about political movements. Which are not satisfactory. Why Tamil Nadu?
The Brahmins were arguably even more “dominant” (as measured by literacy rates and occupancy of government jobs) in Mysore than in Madras. Yet there was no “Dravidian movement” in Mysore / Karnataka.
The Brahmins were pretty “dominant” in Bombay Presidency as well, yet we didn’t see a “Non-Brahmin” maratha assertion in Maharashtra, until much later in the 20th century.
Why is it that this political movement rooted in
a. Tamil exceptionalism b. Dislike of the Brahmin c. Dislike of Northern cultural influences (Sanskrit, Hindi, “Brahminical” Hinduism)
Emerged ONLY in TN and not in other southern states, or in other non-Hindi parts of India?
These are questions that haven’t been asked enough by historians and discussed even less in media
This thread is a modest attempt to answer these qns, and examine briefly the political/social circumstances in Tamil Nadu over the past 1000 yrs, which help answer these questions
So let’s first try to understand the Tamil country. A land that has been extremely well integrated with “Aryavrata” for nearly 2000 years. In fact one can legitimately regard it as a part of “Aryavrata” starting with Pallava rule in the middle of the 1st millennium CE
The period from about 5th / 6th century CE to 13th century can be regarded as a “Golden age” for the Tamil country - a period when the land was first ruled by the Great Pallavas, and later the Cholas (with a brief Pandya revival in 13th cen)
It was a period when Tamil Nadu emerged arguably as the citadel of Hindu culture in all of subcontinent - a culture that enmeshed the great Sanskritic traditions of the north with the local Tamil traditions - and in the process enriching both
Now why do I regard the cosmopolitan Tamil culture of 6th to 13th centuries as the high point of Tamizh civilization? It is on account of its remarkable accomplishments
This period saw some of the greatest works in Tamil (and Hindu) literature - - The great Bhakti poetry of Azhwars and Nayanars (6th to 9th century CE) - Kamban’s Rama-avataram (12th century)
The period was also the emergence of the great Tamil empires - when Tamil maritime flourished like never before, and Tamil / Hindu influence extended into much of South East Asia
The Medieval Cholas were that rare Indian exception- an expansionist Indian Empire. An empire that defeated and subjugated the great Srivijaya kingdom of Indonesia, and also conquered much of Sri Lanka in 11th cen. Sri Lanka was under Chola rule for nearly all of 11th cen.
The period was also marked by great architectural innovation - all the great Chola and Pallava temples of Tamil Nadu - be it Brihadeeshwara & Airavateshwara (in Tanjore region) or Kailashnathar / Mahabalipuram (near Kanchi) date to this period of hectic architectural activity
Finally the period is most distinguished for its massive, I repeat massive, contribution to the Hindu religion. The Vaishnava and Shaiva faiths consolidated during this period.
The great Hindu theologians - Sankara and Ramanuja - belong to this period
It was also a period when Tamil devotional literature was integrated with the Sanskrit mainstream. The devotional literature gained intellectual legitimacy in temples across Tamil Nadu notwithstanding the low origins of many of the Tamil poets who wrote this literature.
So why are we discussing all this. The point to note here is that during this heyday of Tamil civilization, the Tamil country was arguably the shining light of India (esp given the decline that had set in much of the North after the fall of Harsha)
And this civilization was not marked by any “revolt” against brahmins or Sanskrit or northern influences. It was a confident Tamil culture that embraced northern influences as well as northern migrants.
One example of seamless migration from the north is that of the great Sanskrit writer Dandin, who was a part of the Pallava court in early 8th century. His family was one that had immigrated to Tamil Nadu from Vidarbha in the North in the 7th century
So it was a confident civilization, with none of the Tamizh insecurities that characterize the modern Dravidian movement.
So what changed?
Things began to change around the 14th cen, when Tamil Nadu gradually lost its political sovereignty. The Cholas faded. The Pandyas of Madurai were overthrown by Delhi Sultanate
The Madurai Sultanate’s rule of terror over southern Tamil Nadu in the 14th cen left tremendous scars
By the end of the 14th cen, all of the Tamil country was under Vijayanagar rule, which had its base in northern Deccan (Hampi). Following the fall of Vijayanagara, the Tamil territories came under the rule of the Nayakas - who were originally governors of Vijayanagara Empire
Post late 17th century the Nayaka influence also waned, and Maratha influence gradually increased. Thanjavur became a seat of Maratha power. Elsewhere in Northern Tamil country, the Muslim Nawabs established their rule centered in the town of Arcot (modern Vellore).
So what do we gather about this long period from 14th century to 19th century? It was a period of Non-Tamil rule in Tamil Nadu. Starting with Vijayanagara, then Nayaks, then the Marathas, the Nawabs, and finally the British.
Quite naturally it was also a period of Tamizh decline. Vast populations of non-Tamil origin (particularly from Andhra) moved into Tamil Nadu during this period, especially due to Vijayanagara patronage So Telugu (and to a lesser extent Sanskrit) became very dominant languages in the corridors of power. Tamil receded.
Telugu was perceived as the language with some class! The language used by respectable people. Tamil - the language of the masses and the subjects.
To me this phase of Telugu’s rise and Tamil’s decline cannot be over-emphasized. It is very important to understand the roots of Tamil rage and Tamil insecurities
One way to understand the predominance of Telugu in Tamil country is to examine Carnatic Music - an art form whose formal development was primarily in Tamil Nadu in late 18th / early 19th century
The three giants of this art form in late 18th century were - Tyagaraja, Shama Sastri and Muthuswami Dikshitar. Atleast two of them, we are sure, had Telugu as their mother tongue
But where did they live? In Andhra? No . They lived in the vicinity of Tanjore - the Tamil heartland
How about their compositions? - Well the compositions were primarily in Telugu, and some in Sanskrit. Hardly any in Tamil, the language spoken by the masses around them
So we have this long long period of Tamil decline, which no doubt hurt Tamil pride a lot. This is after all the land of Silappadikaram and Tirukkural. The land of Rajaraja Chola and Kamban
But by 19th century, the language and culture had been reduced to a second rate status thanks to the remarkable growth of Telugu - an upstart language which barely even existed in literary form back in the 1st millennium CE when Tamil was the pre-eminent southern language
There was a lot of frustration of course. And it needed venting. It also needed a scapegoat. Who to blame? You can’t blame old and bygone kings, nor can you blame “Telugu” people who were too numerous, and well integrated into Tamil society.
The scapegoat was the Brahmin and also his “Sanskritic” ways.
But why was the “Brahmin” singled out? Now to understand this we need to change our tracks a bit and now switch our focus to the British Raj
Let’s go the 1820s - a period when Thomas Munro reigned as Madras Governor. It still marked the initial phase of British rule over Southern India in its entirety
Munro undertook a survey to assess the educational conditions in the Presidency - the results of which are revealing
Does the survey suggest a very high degree of Brahmin dominance in education?
Let’s pick two districts in the Tamil country where the Brahmins were most numerous back then (> 5% of pop). These were also temple towns where much of the “brahmin cultural capital” was concentrated
Here’s the caste distribution of Male school going students in these 2 districts b/w 1822 and 1825
https://preview.redd.it/46gwajrslwe11.jpg?width=591&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eb3e93b7d4130c23b4f8e2c6f9701723747c4427
What do we notice -
Sure, there is some over-representation of Brahmins ( a share of 10-15% suggests a 2x over-indexing relative to their share in population - around 5% or more in these districts)
But this is far from the stereotypical view of education being denied to the non-twice born castes.
A very vast majority of students in both these districts were “Shudras” (which in the south is a blanket term covering over three quarters of the population)
So the educational reality of the 1820s did not warrant any grudge against the “Brahmins” as a class in society that monopolizes education
The data on schools back then was only indicative, as a very large section of kids used to be home-schooled. As per Munro’s own report, in the city of Madras, 26,446 boys were being schooled at home, in contrast to only 5,523 boys who were attending the Patha-shalas
We have these numbers thanks to Dharampal’s painstaking research whose book “The Beautiful Tree” demolished many myths about late medieval / early modern India, at the time of the British encounter
However as the 19th century proceeded, there was considerable social change. Firstly it was a period of relative economic stagnation / decline (a process that had started much earlier in 17th century), causing many traditional pathashalas to close down.
Secondly with the formal establishment of British Raj, and the new opportunities in the bureaucracy, and in urban professions, the Brahmin ascendancy began. An ascendancy without a precedent for the community in Indian history. Nowhere was this ascendancy more marked than in TN
By 1912, the Brahmin dominance was very real particularly in the British bureaucracy. Here’s a table from that year -
https://preview.redd.it/sci3i896mwe11.jpg?width=584&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=559feb7a2cd75f534aa675f287089b29a5a4c6f8
  • So what had changed between 1820 and 1912?
  • And who was to blame for this remarkable change in social equations?
  • That is a puzzle for which there are no simple answers
It is all very well to say the British “favored” Brahmins. But that to me sounds too fanciful and conspiratorial
What is more likely is that Brahmins embraced the change in climate better, and took to English education in a big way - unlike a lot of other communities
One way to understand the “Brahmin rise” is to look at specific cases of Brahmins whose lives were transformed during this period of late 19th century.
Take two famous instances - VS Srinivasa Sastri (1869 - 1946), Alladi Krishnaswami Aiyar (1883-1953)
The former became a famous Indian politician, diplomat and administrator. A famed “Moderate” leader of the Gokhale wing within Congress.
The latter was a famous lawyer and member of the Drafting committee and Constituent assembly which framed the Indian Constitution
Now why am I picking these two names? There is a common thread. Both were born in villages, and were sons of temple priests! They were not well-connected aristocrats. They came out of nowhere.
So in the 1820 setup, kids like these were no different from a thousand other kids (Brahmin or Non Brahmin) leading a mediocre existence in small towns. But the British Raj provided opportunities for several such “outliers” (incidentally Brahmin) to max out their potential
So this was the story of the 19th cen. A century during which there was considerable change in the economy. More opportunities than ever before for the creme-de-la-creme. But stagnation for everyone else
This meant greater social inequality, and a widening rift between castes. This was also coupled, if you remember, by the larger story of Tamil decline we discussed earlier.
But then 19th century changed the language equations for the first time in 500 years. Tamil made a comeback!
And this comeback was partly because of the rise of the professional middle class (mostly Tamil speaking Brahmin) without any “connections” in the old Telugu set-up. A lot of these new kids on the block were key in reviving the Tamil language
Take a couple of names -
  • UV Swaminatha Iyer - instrumental in the rediscovery of several Tamil Sangam texts
  • Subramania Bharati - a great Tamil poet, who was key in creating a Tamil consciousness that had been dormant for several centuries.
Interestingly both were Brahmin
Even the current obsession with Lemuria / Kumari Kandam among Dravidian chauvinists in our times actually dates back to the late 19th century - a period of Tamil revival
Lemuria interestingly was the speculation of a submerged continent connecting Australia and India - it was originally a theory suggested by 19thc European / American scholars - now a discredited theory ofcourse.
In the heady days of Tamil revival of late 19th century, connections were drawn between Lemuria and Kumari Khandam (a lost continent of Tamil civilization) which ironically first finds mention in a 15th century Tamil adaptation of Skanda Purana (titled Kanda Puranam).
This connection of Kumari Kandam with Lemuria was actually first made by a Brahmin young man named VG Suryanarayana Sastri - who died at 33
To him, Kumari Khandam was a part of Brahmanic lore, which he was indiscreet enough to connect with Lemuria -a discredited 19th c construct
Little did the young lad know that his fanciful speculations would capture the movement of the Dravidian movement in the decades to follow
So let’s get back on track on where Tamil Nadu stood at the beginning of 20th century -
On one hand, there was this increasing rift between Brahmin and Non Brahmin driven by education and the English language. On the other, we had a revival of Tamil consciousness
Both very much key to the emergence of the Dravidian movement. And not surprisingly this movement did not work out too well for the Brahmin. He was the scapegoat for 500 years of Tamil decline.
The earliest manifestation of this movement was not particularly rabid or secessionistic. It was in the form of a party called the “Justice Party” founded in 1916 by Sir Thyagaraja Chetty and TM Nair.
A point to note that the leaders of this non brahmin Justice Party - were by no means “low caste”. These were typically upper caste non brahmins - who resented the brahmin ascendance the most
This was also the period of Morley Minto reforms (1909) which had greatly increased Indian participation in provincial govt. So populism was very much in the air
A characteristic of Justice Party was that it combined anti-Brahminism with a hostility towards Home rule (Annie Besant and her friends were not viewed positively). It was also opposed to Gandhi and his noncooperation movement
Its stance was that home rule meant “Brahmin rule" So while it was radical in its anti-brahminism, it was oddly a conservative party in the way it stood right behind the British like a loyal bulldog
The Justice Party was no minor fish. It was the major political alternative to Congress in Madras Presidency and dominated power for 14 of the 17 years from 1920 to 37
Some of its prominent leaders included Subbarayulu Reddiar, Munuswamy Naidu, and the Raja of Bobbili
The Justice Party when in power, had some firsts under its name. It was the first govt in India to introduce caste-based reservations back in 1921 for certain govt jobs. A legacy that we are left with to this day.
To its credit, it did make voter-qualifications gender neutral and also allowed women to become legislators in 1921 (reversing a Govt of India Act policy from 1919)
In 1925 it passed an act which brought for the first time many temples under the direct control of state govt.
State meddling in temples is something that bothers conservatives to this day. The genesis for this lies in this act passed by the Justice Party govt back in 1925
The party leaders were drawn from the great landed castes. Given the dominance of zamindars in the party, it often supported the harsh measures of the British govt. An example being its refusal to support reduction in taxation in non-zamindari areas leading to peasant protests
It was a not a surprise then that this party of the elites united on a casteist plank of anti-Brahminism suffered a massive defeat in the provincial elections of 1937 - when the Franchise was much wider than in previous elections
The Congress under the leadership of the brahmin and Gandhian leader Rajaji assumed power in 1937. But the new Congress govt in its nationalist zeal, did a mistake, Rajaji introduced compulsory Hindi education in all schools in the Presidency in 1937 sparking great protests from ’37 to 40. An awful mistake by a wise politician
This was capitalized by an emergent face on the Dravidian front - EV Ramaswamy Naicker (also known as Periyar)
Periyar has to rank among the half-a-dozen most influential politicians in Indian history. Whether one likes him or despises him.
Now who was he? And where did he come from? He was born in 1879 in the town of Erode in Coimbatore district in a very rich Balija Naicker family of Kannada antecedents. It is even claimed that his mother tongue was Kannada not Tamil!
It was by no means a humble beginning Unlike Justice party leaders, Periyar has a Congress past. He had joined the Party back in 1919, and worked with Rajaji in organizing the non-cooperation movement.
But when he did not find enough support for his reservation campaigns, he left the party in a huff in 1925 He was a major figure in the Vaikom Satyagraha, a movement against untouchability circa '24-25
But Vaikom was a mainstream movement supported even by upper caste men like Gandhi as well as the regent of Travancore kingdom. So Periyar hardly was unique for his participation there.
But it was after the Justice party’s thumping defeat that Periyar found his big opportunity. There was a power vacuum in the party. In 1938 he took over as the President of the party.
And it was the Hindi imposition issue of 1937 - which gave him a big voice!
Under his leadership the Justice Party was transformed from a party of rich non brahmin landlords serving their own interests, to a populist, often rabble rousing outfit.
The fear of Hindi among the Tamils was exploited fully by Periyar in his rhetoric. He somehow succeeded in blending the Tamil fear of Hindi with the dislike of Brahmins and the “Sanskritic value system” more broadly.
It was a heady mix that was bound to work. In 1944, he renamed the party to Dravidar Kazhagam.
The DK employed the methods used by RSS in the north - volunteer efforts positioned as “social reform” that campaigned aggressively against the Hindu religion, brahmin priesthood, and so-called religious “superstitions”
While the DK did engage in some positive constructive measures like opposing untouchability, working for women’s education etc, this hardly distinguished it from the much maligned “brahminical” Congress (which also fought against the said evils).
What distinguished DK was its negative plank built on a dislike of brahmins and “Northern influences” but disguised very well under the garb of “rationalism” / “reason”
The Dravidar Kazhagam was also secessionist in its demand for a separate “Tamil nation”. This led to a split within the party in 1949 when Periyar’s disciple CN Annadurai left him to form “Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam” (Munnetra interestingly means “Progressive” in Tamil)
Anna sought a compromise with the Central Govt and Congress, where the Tamil country remains a part of the Indian Union albeit with greater autonomy
There was also a great deal of unrest within Dravidar Kazhagam against Periyar and his ways. In 1948 at the age of 70 the man married a 32 year old - a move that drew the ire of many of his own party members, causing the split
So while DMK tried to gain respectability to contest elections competitively in a post-independence India, Periyar and his DK continued with their extreme, often rabble-rousing positions against Brahminism, Theism among other things
While Periyar remained an important voice in Tamil Nadu, he was not in active electoral politics post split. He died in 1973 at the age of 94
CN Annadurai on the other hand, was the leading electoral leader for the DMK for much of the 50s and 60s. As we discussed, he was not always explicit and aggressive in pushing for the claim for secession. But he never abandoned the goal until the 60s. Nor did the DMK
In 1963, the 16th amendment to the Constitution was passed, which basically banned any party that is contesting elections from espousing secessionist principles. Annadurai actually debated against this amendment but could not prevent its passage!
Post this amendment, DMK had no choice but to give up entirely on the claim for Dravida Nadu. It was an ideal they had cherished, but gave it up in order to remain in the electoral game. The prospect of power was too attractive
For the period between 1952 and 1967, DMK gained in popularity in TN with every passing election.
But the Congress remained firmly in Power. Rajaji was the chief minister till 1954, to be succeeded by Kamaraj from '54 to '63, and Bhaktavatsalam from 63 to 67
The Congress was too strong to be uprooted throughout the 50s and early 60s. But again it was Hindi that did the trick for DMK. Things materialized In 1967
We have already discussed the first anti-Hindi agitation of 1937. In 1965, there was originally a plan laid out in the Constitution to make Hindi the sole official language of the country - a very impractical somewhat hare brained idea to begin with
As 1965 approached, the anti-Hindi sentiment rose by the day, Full-scale riots broke out in many parts of TN. The death toll was in several hundreds. Eventually the PM LB Shastri pacified the state by assuring that English would continue as the official language along with Hindi
But the anti-Hindi movement had done the trick for DMK - something that years and years of anti-brahmin and “rationalist” rhetoric had not managed to do
In 1967, when the assembly as well as general elections were held, the unpopular Congress govt headed by Bhaktavatsalam was trounced and Anna-led DMK stormed to power.
The Dravidian movement had triumphed
Since 1967 Tamil Nadu has been ruled by Dravidian parties. By DMK for much of the 70s, ADMK for much of the 80s, and then alternating between the two parties since. The national parties have not stood a chance in any election
From 67 to 69 - Anna was the CM. But in 69, he succumbed to cancer. The reins of the party now moved to M Karunanidhi, who we mentioned at the start of the thread
Karunanidhi, like his one-time friend, MG Ramachandran (MGR) came from the movie industry. He started his career as a screenwriter for Tamil cinema in the late 40s / early 50s and was an enormously successful figure
The DMK had started leveraging movie guys like Karunanidhi, MGR, Kannadasan, and others starting from the 50s, to increase its popularity in a state where Congress reigned supreme. Leveraging movie men has always been the tactic used by the Dravidian parties since independence
Karunanidhi became CM pretty early in his life. At the age of 45 in 1969. And he remained the Chief Minister of the state till 1976, when Indira Gandhi dismissed his govt during the Emergency
Post Anna’s demise , Karunanidhi had to contend with MGR, arguably a more popular leader with the masses. In 1972, MGR was expelled from the party. Which was inevitable, given Karunanidhi’s ambitions for his own family, as well as MGR’s discomfort with DMK’s explicit atheism
MGR was a Malayali Nair by origin, and was a devout man. He neither shared Karunanidhi’s anti-brahminism, nor his atheism. While very much a Dravidian populist, he felt he had a better chance in politics with his own front that was formed in 1972
It called itself Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam - invoking itself to be the true heir of Anna’s legacy - a legacy that Karunanidhi had purportedly betrayed with his corruption and nepotism
But Populism remained a feature of Dravidian politics in both parties right from 1967. Anna himself was the first politician in India to use a promise of “rice subsidy” to secure the win in '67
His election slogan was “rubaikku moonu padi arisi” (3 measures of rice for a rupee)
Karunanidhi continued in the same vein. He lifted Prohibition in 1971, not unexpected, as DMK’s materialist philosophy has always struck a contrast to the high Gandhian moralism of the high-minded Congress leaders like Rajaji and Kamaraj
In 1977, MGR led ADMK trounced Karuna’s DMK, and MGR became the CM of the state - a post he held from '77 till his death in '87 MGR was succeeded by his brahmin wife Janaki (who was CM briefly) and later by his protege J Jayalalitha (a cine-star of repute and also a Brahmin)
The two parties have established a more or less bi-polar set-up in TN with the Congress vote share waning with every passing election
Jayalalitha emerged as a worthy successor and a worthy rival to Karunanidhi, and was CM from 1991 to 96, 2001 to 2006 and then from 2011 till 2016 - though she was often made to step down for brief periods due to corruption allegations and arrests
Karunanidhi was CM during the late 90s (96-2001), and again the late 2000s (2006-11). Basically during the intervals when Jayalalitha was out of power
But broadly the two parties have contested on a plank of populism. There has been little to distinguish the two parties ideologically.
While DMK still retains an “anti-hindu” / “anti-brahmin” edge to its rhetoric - that flavor is increasingly irrelevant in a vastly different state where a good chunk of brahmins have bolted in search of jobs elsewhere
Tamil Nadu remains a deeply religious state and DMK’s atheistic rhetoric is now more of a liability than an asset.
The ADMK has always been without that edge to its rhetoric, while it has competed nonetheless with DMK when it comes to placating religious minorities for votes
Jayalalitha died in 2016 and Karunanidhi now in 2018. With the demise of the two great leaders, is there a vacuum that can be filled by the national parties - the BJP in particular?
Perhaps, but the national parties need to be mindful of the Tamil exceptionalism we have discussed in many parts of this thread. They need to groom leaders attuned to the Tamil psyche in order to succeed.
Something that they have traditionally failed to do. Tamil Nadu, notwithstanding the populism of its politics, has been one of the more successful states in the Indian union. It’’s PPP adjusted per-capita income of around $10.5K is well in excess of the national average of $7K.
Who should we credit for this?
The Dravidian parties will of course be glad to accept credit, by talking up their “social empowerment” as an enabler of economic success The truth however is more nuanced.
Maybe Tamil Nadu was always a “better than average” state in Indian history. Going all the way back to Pallava heyday. So it is not a surprise it is doing well
Populism still needs to be resisted. We must not fall prey to the post-hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and give credit to “Dravidian politics” for TN’s relative success
Tamil Nadu has done well despite its politicians and not because of them. If anything we must credit its people
Post-script : Thanks for reading, if you got this far!
Would like to acknowledge @entropied - my many conversations with him helped clarify some thoughts, and also thanks to his pointer to Dharampal's research on 1820 Madras school data - something that I was unaware of.
The entire thread can be found here - https://twitter.com/shrikanth_krish/status/1026967892125003776
@shrikanth_krish
Data scientist. NYC-based. Writes on Politics, Economics, Religion, Classics and Intellectual History
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what does kumari mean video

Karma, What is it and what does it mean? Mean free path by Sunita Kumari - YouTube Mohena Kumari On Sharing Her Covid 19 Experience Says ... Q and A and reading mean comments and good comments ... Commoners Are Mean & Personal in Bigg Boss 11: Jyoti ... 10:00 AM - Special Session Does NET Get 100% Government ... Roopa Nataraj Double Meaning Dialogues Kumari Mallika ...

Kumari What does the name Kumari mean? The different meanings of the name Kumari are: Sanskrit meaning: Youthful; Indian meaning: Youthful; The meaning of the name “Kumari” is different in several languages, countries and cultures and has more than one possibly same or different meanings available. What does Kumari mean? Pronounce Kumari [ 3 syll. ku-ma-ri, kum-ari] The baby girl name Kumari is pronounced as KuwMaa-Riy- †. Kumari is mainly used in the Indian language and it is of Sanskrit origin. The name's meaning is daughter. Advanced Word Finder. See Also in Japanese. 曇りガラス noun. Kumorigarasu cloudy glass, frosted glass. 曇 noun. Kumori cloudy, cloudiness, cloudy weather, shadow. Nearby Translations. In Nepal the Kumari is a prepubescent girl selected by a council from the Newari people that acts as a manifestation of divine female energy. A Nepali Kumari is believed to be the living incarnation of the goddess Taleju also known as Durga. This continues until after menstruation when the goddess Taleju vacates her body. A submission from Florida, U.S. says the name Kumari means "Kumari means "cloudy" in Japanese". A submission from Sri Lanka says the name Kumari means "Princess". Search for more names by meaning . Submit the origin and/or meaning of Kumari to us below. Origin of Kumari. kumari in British English. (kʊˈmærɪ, kuːˈmɑːrɪ) noun. 1. Indian. maiden: used in some courtesy titles for young women. 2. Also called: Kumari Devi Hinduism. a young girl specially revered as the living embodiment of the goddess Taleju until her menstruation, when she returns to being a common citizen. Wikipedia (4.00 / 3 votes)Rate this definition: Kumar ( pronunciation ; Sanskrit: कुमार) is a Hindu title, a given name, middle name, or a family name found in India, though not specific to any caste or community. It is a generic title which variously means son, boy, prince, chaste. Meaning of the name Kumari, analysis of the name Kumari and so much more… What does Kumari mean and its numerology, definition, origin, popularity and very interesting information. Please use the quick menu. advertisement advertisement Quick MenuInformation About The Name KumariThe Meaning Of The Name KumariStatistics Of The Name KumariThe Picture Of The Name KumariNumerology […] Indian Baby Names Meaning: In Indian Baby Names the meaning of the name Kumari is: Princess. Kumari. Kumari, or Kumari Devi, is the tradition of worshiping young pre-pubescent girls as manifestations of the divine female energy or devi in Hindu religious traditions. The word Kumari, derived from Sanskrit Kaumarya meaning "virgin", means young unmarried girls in Nepali and some Indian languages and is a name of the goddess Durga as a child.

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Karma, What is it and what does it mean?

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