Quality hotel conference center

We want to decrease HbA1c FROM 10 to 7 % of all patients visiting our health center. We have not started to implement our quality improvement plan. We have just starting training our healthcare staff to do so?
is it structure measure or process measure?

Disclaimer: Some of these have unknown April dates. They are identified with a '*'
1968 - The J5 perform at a campaign rally for Richard Hatcher in Gary with Bobby Taylor and Diana Ross & The Supremes among others. Hatcher was the first African-American mayor of Gary, Indiana for 20 years, from 1968 to 1988. At the time of his first election on November 7, 1967, he and Carl Stokes were the first African-Americans to be elected mayors of a U.S. city with more than 100,000 people*
https://imgur.com/a/QPykxSx
1970 - The J5 rehearse for their first concert tour, which would start on May 2nd*
1971 - The Jackson 5 play at the Mid-South Auditorium, Memphis, Tennessee
1972 - J5's cover of Bobby Day's “Little Bitty Pretty One” is released by Motown. It is also the first song where you can clearly hear Marlon's voice. It will reach #13 on the Hot 100*
https://imgur.com/a/77uT4hU
1981- Michael does backing vocals on Carole Bayer Sager’s song “Just Friends”. Michael had previously recorded Sager's "It's the Falling in Love" for Off the Wall. He was visiting Carole in the studio when she invited him to join the session. He came up with such a special part on the Bacharach/Sager composition "Just Friends" that they happily offered him a co-production credit*
https://youtu.be/bfGtCjIgnsU
1985 - Michael and seven members of USA For Africa are on the cover of Life Magazine
https://imgur.com/a/ZnDLbeA
1987 - Michael withdraws from The Jeovah’s Witness, a step that normally means he must be shunned by family members and friends who remain in the religious sect.
A representative of the Woodland Hills congregation where Jackson belonged said that the entertainer “disassociated” himself from the congregation and “no longer wants to be known as a Jehovah’s Witness.”
The official would not state what the implications of “disassociation” are, but when asked if they are serious, he responded, “Correct.”
Though Jackson’s anti-drug stance in public appearances was in keeping with the Witnesses’ clean-living codes, the entertainer’s Grammy-winning album Thriller produced tensions with the sect leaders in 1983 because of allegations the record and short film encouraged occult beliefs*
1988 - Michael plays the last of three nights at the Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut
https://imgur.com/a/g5555p4
The story of Anne Miner: Anne is a great-grandmother who never attended a rock concert and prefers Big Band-era music. She says she is 'excited' about going to see Michael Jackson with tickets she won from a radio station but plans on taking cotton with her for her ears
'I'm excited. It's a chance of a lifetime experience,' said Anne Miner, 70. 'How many times are you going to see Michael Jackson in concert?'
The Greenfield woman, who admitted her favorite group was the Glenn Miller Band, big in the 1940s, won the tickets in a Michael Jackson Trivia Contest sponsored by WHAI radio and the Pepsi Co.
A chauffeur-driven white stretch limousine complete with champagne were to pick up Miner and a guest at her home and drive them to Hartford Civic Center in Connecticut and back.
She even considered wearing her old black-leather coat to the concert. She intends to go with her 20-year-old nephew, Michael J. Smith.
Smith said he prefers hard-rock bands like Bon Jovi over Jackson, but still expected to enjoy the concert. 'I'm just glad (Jackson) doesn't wear that white glove anymore.'
The two were given floor seats worth $22.50 each to the concert, which sold out just hours after tickets went on sale.
To earn the tickets, Miner answered three questions:

• What's Jackson's current record label?
  
  • What's the identity of the celebrity who discovered him
  • Where did Jackson grow up?

Miner said she determined Jackson's record label was Epic by going to a record store and that she learned his hometown was Gary, Indiana at the Greenfield Public Library. She admitted she guessed that Diana Ross was the celebrity who discovered him
'I'm always winning something,' said Miner, a retired waitress of 41 years. She said she's a compulsive contest player who occasionally gambles on the Massachusetts State Lottery and always buys raffle tickets.
Miner said she has seen Jackson 'shaking around' on television and thinks he is a lot like Elvis Presley, but adds he 'looks like a girl.'
1989 -Michael is on the cover of Ebony magazine.
https://imgur.com/a/UeLPsn8
1989 - Filming of "Liberian girl" short film takes place over 2 days. Veteran video director, Jim Yukich, was brought in to help craft a memorable clip.
“CBS Epic called and Michael Jackson wants to do a video for this song ‘Liberian Girl’ and I hadn’t heard this song yet,” said Yukich. “I’m thinking like ‘Off the Wall’ or ‘Rock with You’ or just I figure it will be one of those classic Michael Jackson killer songs, right? And ‘Liberian Girl’ is not a killer song. It’s funny — what do you do? So again, we’re throwing the kitchen sink at it, and so I pitched the idea to Michael that we would have him shoot the video while all these are people waiting to begin the video, and they don’t realize it until the end is that he’s directing.”
“He loved the idea. We started calling people, and we just called in favors from friends. I had just done a television special with Richard Dreyfuss, and Richard said he’d love to be in it. He said, ‘Can I call up Steven?’ and I said, ‘Steven who?’ and he said ‘Steve Spielberg and Amy Irving, and I said, “Yeah!” So he called Spielberg and Amy, and then you start calling people saying you have these people, and I’d start naming names and it was easy. It was very easy to get people because as soon as you get a couple of big names, everybody wants to be in it.”
The shooting day basically consisted of Yukich and his crew filming all the celebrities on a soundstage as they wait for Michael to show up. The final list of guest stars served as, in retrospect, a truly strange snapshot of that year in showbusiness.Comedy writers were given the task of writing some interesting things for the cast to say on camera while they waited.
“So we just had two days, and we had the live audio with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John doing the scene when they sang together, and they hadn’t sang together onscreen since ‘Grease’, so it was something to do that, and we just shot this grand stuff of people talking, and the outtakes are incredible because it’s just people talking. The song is not even playing! It’s just great getting all these stars in a room and you’re just filming and they’re saying, ‘What are you supposed to do?’ and we’d say, ‘We’ll get back to you,’ and you’d just mike everybody and shoot stuff.”
Yukich said that in a room filled with stars, Steven Spielberg’s uneasiness on the other side of the camera was the biggest surprise. Yukich used a push-pull camera shot on Spielberg, who was the director that made that camera shot popular, hence its industry nickname – 'The Jaws Shot'
“He was nervous. We did that push-pull move for that shot, and he was more nervous than I was, you know, being on camera. He wanted to try to do this favor for Michael because he wanted Michael for a movie.” Yukich also said that working with Michael was an amazing experience, but required some on-set preparation.
“Incredible,” he said. “I mean, at first, it was funny because he sent his handlers in first, and they check, and they said he is coming in 10 minutes. They go in all the different rooms to make sure that no bombs were there and there were no fans hanging out, and they kicked people out, and it was almost like going through airport security or something. They basically kicked people out there who weren’t supposed to be there, and they bring in a microwave oven with bananas for Bubbles the monkey and Max which was the baby monkey. It was like a real rigmarole, and then when he showed up, you know, he was unbelievably nice. Such a pleasant person and a nice guy.”
Jackson also had only one request involving the removal of a person from the final cut.“He called me a couple of times after he saw the edit. He would make us do some things, like he took out David Spade. David Spade was in the original cut. He called me up and he said, ‘Jim, this is Michael,’ and you think somebody was fooling with you, basically. You would never know if it was really him until he started talking about specifics and you could say, okay, that is Michael. So he called us up and he on a walkie-talkie phone or something, or he’s up in Santa Barbara, and says, ‘You know, in 3 minutes and 20 seconds, there’s a guy blonde here. Who is that guy?’ I said his name is David Spade. ‘I don’t know who he is, take him out.’ So Spade was out, and I’m sure Spade was, like, pissed!” (Spade had not yet joined SNL)
Yukich is still aggravated that the song, and hence the video, was never released in America.
When Jackson died suddenly, Yukich immediately thought back to the video and a conversation the two had.
“To this day, I’ve been – I guess not so much anymore, because years have gone by — but I was convinced when he died that he didn’t die. We made that video, and he said to me, ‘I would love to be hiding and see what people say about me, you know?’ I mean, having shot all that footage and then he died? It was just kind of weird.”
The video is dedicated to Liz Taylor, who is in fact not a Liberian girl *
1996 - Michael starts filming the “Ghost” short film in Van Nuys studios in California. During breaks, he visits his family at Hayvenhurst disguised as the “Mayor”*
2002 - Michael is about to start shooting the “Unbreakable” short film when Sony announces that they won’t release the single. The promotion of the Invincible album is over with only 2 singles!!! *
2002 -Michael’s former business manager Myung-Ho Lee files a $13 million lawsuit claiming that on September 14, 2001 Michael met him in Los Angeles and signed an agreement to pay him fees but he never got them. Michael’s lawyer Zia Moddaber answsers that his client never signed anything and was not even in Los Angeles on that date…
In his suit, Lee claimed that Jackson hired him in the late 1990s to put the musician’s finances in order, only to turn a deaf ear when it came to taking Lee’s advice by refusing to curb spending. Lee then claimed Jackson never paid him, instead relying on “charlatans” and “hucksters” for advice.
In his court papers, Lee called Jackson a “ticking financial time bomb waiting to explode” who owed banks hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.
Michael would countersue claiming Lee and Union Finance swindled millions from him and destroyed financial records to cover up their misdeeds.
2003 - Michael and Chris Tucker visit lawyer Willie Gary in Stuart, Florida.
2003 - Vanity Fair (#tabloidtrash) reported that Michael Jackson had attended a voodoo ritual in 2000 where a witch doctor promised that Steven Spielberg and 24 other people would die. The people noted were on Jackson's list of enemies. Jackson also wired $150,000 to a voodoo chief named Baba who sacrificed 42 cows for the ceremony. The article also reported that Jackson wore a prosthesis that serves as the tip of his nose
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2003/4/losing-his-grip
2004 - Michael attended the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC to support The African Ambassadors' Spouses Association (A.A.S.A.). He was accompanied by the ambassador of Niger's wife, Haoua Piatta, and Mazie Green Holland. He watched a children's group dance before being awarded the Golden Elephant award for his worldwide humanitarian efforts, particularly the fight against AIDS in Africa.
https://imgur.com/a/HEpLUIO
https://youtu.be/gFBUiPkfisU
2005 - Trial Day 24
Michael goes to court with Katherine & Joe. Testimonies of Jeff Klapackis, Jack Green, Larry Feldman & Jesus Salas.
Larry Feldman, the attorney who first interviewed Michael Jackson's accuser testified that he was never asked to file a lawsuit against the singer.
However, he did acknowledge under cross examination, that the boy and his younger brother could file civil lawsuits until they turn 20 years old, the accuser being 15 years old now.
The prosecution had called Feldman to explain how the alleged molestation came to the attention of the authorities, but the defense used his appearance to try to show its belief, that the accuser and his family were out to get money from Jackson.
Jackson's defense lawyer, Thomas Mesereau grilled Feldman about the the impact of a criminal conviction, whether or not it would make a financial judgment easier.
"If Mr. Jackson was convicted of felony child molestation in this case, (the boy or his brother) could use that case to win a civil case alleging similar of same facts against Mr. Jackson, is that correct?" asked Mesereau.
"That is correct" said Feldman.
The two lawyers sparred over the exact requirements of a civil suit, and Feldman denied accusations of encouraging the criminal action, in an attempt to avoid incurring costs involved in preparing a civil lawsuit.
However, Feldman insisted that there would still be litigation expenses.
DA Tom Sneddon asked Feldman whether he was planning a lawsuit at the time, that he referred the accusing family to Santa Barbara prosecutors, to which Feldman replied "There was no lawsuit and there were no plans to file a lawsuit. It was up to you to investigate"
Feldman was permitted to tell jurors of a previous accusation against Jackson in 1993, where Feldman represented another boy, who won a monetary settlement. Jurors were not told how much the boy was paid, but Feldman said there were no trouble collecting it. An amount which has been reported to be millions of dollars.
Sneddon projected a photograph of the boy from the previous allegations on a courtroom screen, and asked Feldman to identify him.
"He was much better looking at that age. He was adorable," Feldman said, a remark which the judge ordered stricken from the record.
The picture showed a boy who many believe bears a striking resemblance to the current accuser.
Feldman said that while he met with the current accuser's mother many times after he ceased to represent her officially, he has "never been asked to file any lawsuit against Michael Jackson"
When Feldman walked outside the courthouse in an afternoon break in testimony, fans yelled "liar", "tell the truth" and "you're making money off the backs of these people"
Feldman said, he was first contacted by the family because of a dispute over the boy's appearance in the documentary, Living With Michael Jackson where he appeared holding hands with Jackson. Feldman then referred the family to psychologist Stan J. Katz "to make out some heads and tails of what was being told to me by the family"
Katz reported suspicions of molestation to authorities after interviewing the family.
Also on the stand Friday, was an an investigator who testified that linens seized by police from Michael's bed, had failed to yield any DNA linked to the teenage accuser or his brother.
In other testimony, Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Klapackis defends the scale of the effort, when 69 investigators served a search warrant at Neverland on Nov. 18, 2003.
The large number of investigators were needed, he said, because they had only been allowed one day to carry out the search, because the district attorney didn't want to "burden the ranch and its employees with our presence longer than that," Klapackis said. He also said that there were large buildings to search at the 2,800-acre ranch.
Klapackis also said, that they took all bedding during the search, because that is where the accuser and his brother claim to have frequently slept, and where they allege the molestation took place.
During cross-examination, Klapackis said authorities did not test bottle and glasses containing alcohol for fingerprints - found in Jackson's bedroom as well as the home's wine cellar and kitchen. Nor did investigators test furniture, boxes, mannequin toys and rails along Jackson's stairwell, or his bedroom doors for fingerprints.
When asked on redirect why, Klapackis said, "It didn't enter in the investigation at the time."
However, they did test pornographic magazines. The boy's brother testified how Jackson showed them magazines. A fingerprint analyst has testified earlier, that the prints of Jackson and his accuser were recovered from the same magazine.
Jack Green, president of a Ventura telephone systems company, testified that he had inspected Neverland's phone systems. He explained that it had a function to allow someone to listen in on other's calls, but there was nothing to prevent anyone from calling 911.
Prosecutors allege the family's calls were monitored by Jackson, whereas the defense say the family could have called for help, if they truly were captives.
https://imgur.com/a/DNEfibQ
2005 - Whoopi Goldberg defends him on Real Time With Bill Maher
https://youtu.be/wwDmVnXIT2Q
2009 - Michael has a business meeting with Dr. TohmeTohme at the Bel Air Hotel
https://imgur.com/a/XEhBA68
2009 - Miko Brando, Michael Bush, Dennis Tompkins & Karen Faye are back on the MJ team*
2014 - The album Xscape was made available for pre-order on iTunes, Amazon and MichaelJackson.com.

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Huang Yanqiu was born in 1956 in Dongbeigao Village in China's Hebei province. Little is known about his early life aside from the fact that he worked as a farmer in the village and his mother passed away while he was a child.
On July 27, 1977, Huang was 21 years old and still working as a farmer. Huang was recently engaged and planned on marrying his fiancee after the harvest season and the couple recently began building themselves a new home. At 10:00 PM Huang had just finished his farm work for the day and went to bed in his unfinished home. That was the last anyone had seen of Huang for a while as the next morning when the village woke up on July 28 Huang was nowhere to be found.
The village was greatly alarmed by Huang's disappearance and initiated a massive search effort to try and find him but there was no trace of Huang anywhere to be found. This worried and confused the villagers especially Huang's family as Huang never travelled far and only had a primary school level education. They searched the surrounding roads, ponds, cliffs and other unknown locations to try and find him and even contacted the nearest hospitals and police to ask if any unidentified bodies had been discovered but to no avail.
Fortunately, Huang would be found alive and unharmed but this only resulted in more questions. 10 days later on August 6 the village committee received a telegram from Shanghai. The telegram said that Huang was being held at a deportation center and that they were hoping for a local to come and pick him up. The telegram was late to arrive because it was accidentally addressed to the wrong village. There was just one problem, the telegram from Shanghai was dated at 9:AM on July 28 less than half a day after his disappearance. Huang was later returned by the police in Shanghai and it was indeed Huang. There was just one problem, Huang being in Shanghai that soon should've been impossible.
Huang was questioned by his fellow villagers and he could not provide an answer. According to him, he went to bed and when at 6:00 or 7:00 AM he was awoken by a loud noise, this noise wasn't that of the farm animals but instead the sounds of vehicles and numerous people. When he fully awoke he found himself on a sidewalk and that around him were cars, neon lights and tall buildings/skyscrapers. He wondered around and saw writing on the various buildings and businesses which said things such as "Nanjing Shopping Center", "Nanjing Restaurant", and "Nanjing Pharma" and that nearby was a large "swimming pool" which he later found out was Lake Xuanwu. It didn't take Huang long to realize that somehow he was in Nanjing the capital city of Jiangsu Province located 485 miles away from his home village.
While Huang who was now in complete and utter shock at his circumstance walked aimlessly around the unfamiliar city until he was stopped and approached by two police officers. Huang due to his state of shock and disbelief could barely answer their questions. When they asked Huang what he was doing or who he was he simply said that he was "really lost" the two officers led Huang to the Nanjing Rail Station and gave him a ticket to Shanghai and told Huang that they would be waiting for him and once he arrived he'd be taken to a "repatriation camp" for migrants and those without a hukou document. Huang not knowing what else to do and being in no position to disobey or resist bordered the train. 4 hours later the train pulled into Shanghai station and Huang headed out for the first police station he could find and to his confusion, the exact same police officers from Nanjing were already waiting for him despite being out of their jurisdiction, not boarding the train before him and most of all the train was the fastest method available at the time to travel between the two cities and the officers did not bored the train. Arriving to Shanghai before Huang should be straight-up impossible.
The two officers refused to let Huang enter the police station in Shanghai and instead dropped Huang off at the repatriation camp in Shanghai. Huang first told his story to a PLA soldier at the camp named Lü Qingtang and added the detail that the police officers in question were likely from Shandong province based on the ticket he was given. Huang stayed in the camp much longer than expected as when Huang woke up in Nanjing he didn't have any of his identity documents and when the telegrams were sent out to the village to come collect Huang they erroneously addressed them to Xinzhai Village instead of Dongbeigao Village. The confusion was only cleared up after Huang was identified via a birthmark and because the PLA soldier Huang talked to had relatives in the village.
As mentioned any questions the villagers had were multiplied as opposed to answered. Huang arriving in Nanjing that soon should be impossible. At the time trains in China were too slow to make such a fast trip. The nearest rail station was in the city of Handan which Huang would've had to find his way to in the dark despite having never even been to Handan before. But even if he did make it to Handan all by himself with next to no money the train would take 1 whole day to reach Nanjing as opposed to the 9-10 hours between when Huang went to sleep and when he woke up. And this is without taking into account the waiting time for the train to arrive at Haidan station and trains were notoriously late back them sometimes even being held back by an entire day and tickets were expensive.
Other methods of transportation also wouldn't work out. Planes and civilian aviation travel in China was still very new and of course expensive. The entirety of Hebei Province only had a tiny handful of airports with the closest one being in the north near Beijing located on the complete opposite side of Hebei from where Huang lived. It was deemed highly unlikely for Huang to make the trip there by himself especially as he wouldn't know the way and even if he did somehow make it to the airport there would still be the issue of paying for a ticket. A car also wouldn't work as nobody in Dongbeigao village owned a vehicle and even having a bicycle was considered immensely expensive and outside the means of the villagers. And even if he could use any of these methods it still wouldn't explain the short time as to even get from Dongbeigao village to the nearest city Handan would take 4 hours to drive from the village to the city by car. There was also the question of why Huang would assuming he wasn't lying would do this. Huang had never mentioned Nanjing or Shanghai at any point prior and the fact that leaving their ancestral village and families was frowned upon. How Huang made it to Nanjing in such a short amount of time is unknown but most villagers were prepared to accept it as a strange oddity and move on while others dismissed Huang as lying or bragging about visiting a city. That was until it happened again.
On September 8, 1977, it was harvest season in the village again and Huang and his fellow villagers were made to do backbreaking work during a meeting held by the village cadres. At 10:00 PM the head of the village gave Huang and a few other villagers permission to leave and go to bed early as long as they send and deliever manure/fertilizer the next morning. They all took the cadres up on this offer and went to sleep. The next morning on September 9 the villagers arrived at the fertiliser storage area only to notice that Huang was missing. Thinking that he had overslept they all went to his house only to find it empty. Something different caught their eye however, Carved into his bedroom wall was a message and that message said "Shandong Gao Dengmin, Gao Yanjin Relax"
Just like the last time Huang was in Shanghai and was quickly sent back to the village on September 11 and this time there were witnesses both in Shanghai and Dongbeigao. A majority of the village witnessed Huang go to his house and sleep before his disappearance the next morning and just like with his first disappearance Huang couldn't explain it.
According to Huang, he woke up at The Shanghai Rail Station due to a cold breeze, the same one the two mysterious police officers sent him to. Huang was again startled by his surroundings as it was the middle of the night and according to the Station's clock tower, it was 2:00 AM and as far as Huang could see there were no other people and the only light came from the stars and moon. Not only had Huang unknowingly travelled a far distance in an impossibly short time but he also did it at an inopportune time because along with the darkness Huang was constantly startled by the sound of thunder, lighting and battered by heavy rain and high winds because Typhon Babe had recently made landfall near Shanghai.
Huang who was now even more terrified than he was before could only think of Lü Qingtang, Lü was the PLA soldier who helped him after his first trip to Shanghai and was the one who ultimately helped him return home due to his relatives in the village. Lü was not only the only person Huang could think to help him but he was also the only person he knew at all in Shanghai. Finding Lü was not going to be easy as Huang wouldn't be able to navigate Shanghai at all let alone during a typhoon in the middle of the night with no people in sight.
As Huang began to walk he heard a voice coming from behind him hearing a man say "Hello there, you must be Huang Yanqiu of Feixiang County. Trying to head to the artillery division?" this shocked him immensely and he quickly turned back to see who this person was. When he turned around he saw two men dressed in military uniforms. They told Huang that they were soldiers belonging Lü's division and were assigned to pick him up from the railway station.
Huang followed the men who took various ferries and buses before arriving at the "artillery division" located in what is today the Pudong District. Despite how heavily guarded the area is the guards let Huang and the two men pass without issue. They then went to where Lü lived with his family and they were completely shocked to see them as well as Huang again. Lü however, wasn't home at the time. His wife Li Yuying was surprised that the three were even at their home because according to Li "When a relative comes to visit, they have to show their legal documents and sign in at the gate, we'll then come down and confirm their identities, then they can finally be let in. No way the guards and soldiers would let them in without any proceedings!" and years later Lü's son when questioned about the case would say that the two solider's uniforms looked off, he commented that . "...their uniforms looked quite the ordinary, yet not very fitting, especially their visors. One's shoes and visor are the most important part of the uniform,... their visors were too big, and their uniforms seem to have been borrowed, too."
Before his family could question the two they simply walked away and couldn't be found again. Huang being at the base was a major security violation and officials interrogated the guards on duty who all claimed to have never seen Huang and the two soldiers at any point. Once Lü returned home another telegram was sent directly to the head of Dongbeigao Village and they wanted to know every last detail about Huang and who exactly he was with the telegram even straight up asking if Huang was a spy. They received a response from the head of the village, telling them that Huang was just a farmer with no ill intent. Without any other information, the army decided to send Huang back to the village but sternly warned him that he'd be arrested if they ever see him again. He returned home on September 11. In their official reports the military was unable to explain how Huang got to Shanghai so quickly and managed to get into the base.
Due to the multitude of witnesses testifying that Huang went to sleep in the village and the military confirming that he was in Shanghai all those who felt that Huang was lying about his travels soon had their doubts erased. Huang became the most talked about resident of the village and not in a good way as he became the main subject of all the local gossip, rumours and of course superstitions. Many thought that he was possessed or haunted with that being the reason for his seemingly supernatural speed and ability to travel such short distances. The constant attention took a mental toll on Huang's fiance who sued his family for 200 yuan due to "reputational damages" and divorced him. This financially and emotionally ruined Huang and it was when he was at his lowest that the third and final incident happened.
Huang continued his work as a farmer and labourer for the village and on September 20, 1977, he had finished his work for the day and began walking home. According to Huang, however, so tired that he ended up passing out in the yard in front of his house and went missing again. He would stay missing until September 28 when he was found under a Jujube tree in the village and when asked where he had been he told them about the most extraordinary story yet.
According to him, after he passed out in front of his home he woke up and instead of on the sidewalk or in a deserted train station during typhoon season he instead found himself in a luxury hotel room. He looked around and behind him, he saw the same two men from the first two incidents. This time, however, they were both dressed in civilian clothing and introduced themselves. They told Huang that they were brothers from Shandong Province and identified themselves as Gao Dengmin, 26, and Gao Yanjin, 25. Huang also estimated that they were around 170 cm tall. They told Huang that they were the cause behind his disappearances and that they dressed as police and soldiers to help him find his way home, they said that they had something special planned for Huang and that during the next 9 days, they would take him to 9 major cities. Huang asked where he was right now and the brothers told him that it was still September 20 and that he was in Lanzhou located in China's Gansu Province the furthest he has ever been from home.
Soon Huang would learn how he had travelled so far so quickly because the next day on September 21 they made Huang climb onto their back and as Huang would later state "They took off" and quite literally flew away with just their bodies. Huang said that they were "flying" at a low altitude and that he didn't feel any wind, he also recounted that the brothers took turns carrying him on their back. In over an hour, the three had arrived in Beijing. They first went to the Chang'an Grand Theater without tickets and just like at the army base nobody stopped them. They watched an opera performance of Forced Onto Mt. Liang. Their next stop was Tiananmen Square and were in front of a Huabiao. The brothers who were now speaking standard Mandarin instead of their dialects introduced Huang to the surrounding areas and checked into a hotel showing the staff a "provincial-level introduction letter" for registration. That same day they then flew to Tianjin where they snuck into a movie theatre without tickets and watched a movie.
On September 22 they arrived in Harbin located in Heilongjiang Province. In Harbin, they visited a department store and then visited Changchun in Jilin Province. On September 23 they went to Shenyang in Liaoning Province. On September 25 they visited Fuzhou in Fujian Province before visiting Nanjing. They spend the next day in Nanjing. On September 27 they visited Xi'an in Shaanxi Province for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Also on September 27, they made their last stop returning to Lanzhou. When Huang went to sleep in their hotel room he woke up under the jujube tree mentioned earlier and was back in Dongbeigao Village
They travelled to every city via the brothers flying and according to Huang no matter how close or how far the city was the time it took to get there was always 1 hour. He also noted that the brothers could speak the local dialects of all the provinces they visited and whenever they went to hotels the brothers always had a "provincial-level introduction letter". One of the brothers always watched Huang while the other would borrow clothing such as police or military uniforms from somewhere Huang didn't know. Clothing and yuan for the accommodations and meals were the only items the brothers carried as they didn't seem to own items such as bags and wallets. Aside from their ability to fly to anywhere they wanted and their strange behaviour such as only carrying clothes and money, Huang said that they were seemingly normal human beings in every other aspect and ate and slept like anyone else. They also had the same body temperature as anyone else would The only rules they seemed to have were that Huang was not allowed to photograph them or anything and he couldn't keep any souvenirs from his trips. When Huang asked why they singled him out they wouldn't respond and when he asked if they could teach him how to fly like them or tell him how they learnt to do it they gave a firm "No" as their answer. Just as they had told him in the 9 days he was missing they had visited 9 different cities.
Huang was the talk of the village all over again and the superstitions that gods or ghosts were responsible continued. Eventually, the gossip around Huang had gotten to the point that the local police, propaganda department and the nearest military base had heard of Huang's story and began a very extensive investigation into Huang. Offical's believed that he was purposefully sabotaging the village's production and reputation and proceeded to classify him as a "class enemy" While being interrogated his behaviour was found to be "normal" and he showed no signs of mental illness or cognitive disorders. After they were unable to find any evidence of Huang being a threat they reluctantly let him go and revoked his "class enemy" status.
Huang's story became well known throughout China and is one of the country's most famous alleged paranormal events and even the government officially declares his case as "unexplained" This is not the end of Huang's story though.
On December 14, 2004, the case was reinvestigated by Zhang Jingping, an investigator of the Beijing Branch of the China UFO Association, Ji Jianmin, the chairman of the Feixiang UFO Association, and Dr. Wu, a famous Chinese hypnotist, professor of Peking University Medical Department. There was rather conclusive evidence of Huang's first two incidents as numerous witnesses as well as official telegrams all confirm that Huang had gone to sleep in his home village only to appear in Shanghai but there was far more doubt as to if he had been to any of the cities mentioned during his third disappearance.
Huang was put under hypnosis and asked what happened and he told the doctor the same story he did back in 1977. Huang eventually woke up from the hypnotic state claiming that one of the two brothers made him wake up. In 2004 a documentary was made by CCTV and several interviews and tests were conducted during the documentary. He was subjected to a polygraph test and he ended up failing the test and Huang refused to accept these results. Those administering the tests also admitted that Huang's declining memory, the 27-year gap between the test and the incident and the stress of being subjected to such a test for the first time may affect the results. During the documentary, the police based on Huang's descriptions also created composite sketches of Gao Dengmin and Gao Yanjin. Due to the advancement in China's transportation infrastructure, Huang was brought to Nanjing and he was able to retrace his steps and attempt to recreate his journey from the sidewalk to the former then non-existent military base.
They then brought Huang to the physiatric division of Beijing Anding Hospital where the lead doctor after reading his statements said that the brothers would've been travelling at supersonic speeds and that Huang had been sleepwalking or lying. Although nobody defended him from claims of sleepwalking his fellow villagers all refused to entertain the possibility that Huang was purposefully lying to them. They cited Huang's lack of motivation or ability to travel, how he travelled to Shanghai in such a short amount of time and how he had no reason to lie about it since telling his story caused him to become a laughing stock and lost him his fiance. Huang quite literally gain nothing from telling this story and it severely affected him negatively. Aside from a lack of evidence others supporting the lying theory state that Huang only claimed to have visited major cities prompting some to speculate that he just picked them out from a map and that oddly enough he never visited Shijiazhuang which is the capital of Hebei, the province that Huang actually lives in.
Huang was examined by other psychologists and mental health professionals who deemed Huang to be sane which is the source of the sleepwalking theory.
As this theory suggests, Huang was sleepwalking when he made his way to Nanjing and that the stories of the two brothers were just dreams he had while sleepwalking. Various Chinese netizens don't view this theory as credible since Huang while sleepwalking would need to either walk all the way to the train station in Handan (which would take 4 hours to drive to by car) and buy a tick with money he didn't have all while asleep. And while still sleeping once the train stopped in Zhengzhou he would've sleepwalked onto the next train to Shanghai all with nobody noticing he was sleepwalking and waking him up. Just to be sure though doctors performed an MRI scan of Huang's brain and the results came back normal.
The third theory is that Huang suffered from multiple personality disorder and that Gao Dengmin and Gao Yanjin were in fact Huang himself and that he just perceived them as different people due to his disorder. The Gao personalities are the ones that actually travel to the locations only for Huang's normal personality to take over once he arrives at the destination hence him waking up. This theory also states that Huang flying on their backs is actually just a fantasy of Huang Yanqiu's repressed personality. This theory doesn't stand up to scrutiny as various Mental Health officials have found Huang sane and that he would've shown signs of multiple personality disorder before and after the three incidents. This theory also wouldn't explain the short travel times and Lü Qingtang's wife and son also witnessing the two as separate people.
There is one more theory though it is from those who want to believe that it is all real and that Huang is telling the truth and that UFOs may be involved.
They looked further into Huang's claims to try and find any proof that he was in the cities mentioned during his third disappearance. According to one source when describing the weather they matched up with geological data at the time but this appears to be unconfirmed. A journalist went to the Chang'an Grand Theater in Beijing to look through their records and see if they ever held the same performance Huang claimed to have seen.
He discovered that the theatre closed due to the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake and wouldn't reopen until 1979 meaning that Huang could not have seen any performances in that theatre. However, there was another theatre nearby named the Jixiang Theater and they were open in 1977 and on September 21, 1977, the day Huang claimed to be in Beijing they held a performance of Forced Onto Mt. Liang. This journalist ruled that Huang hailing from a small and rural village could've easily confused two nearby and similar theatres in an unfamiliar environment such as the major city of Beijing.
There are also those who agree that Huang travelled at nearly supersonic speeds but instead have a more terrestrial explanation and that Huang fell victim to military experimentation.
This theory states that the military flew Huang to these cities for various experiments and that the Gao brothers were high-ranking officials in charge of the experiments. They then drugged Huang and made him undergo hypnosis to make him forget what he experienced. Many are skeptical of this theory because if the Chinese government wanted to conduct human experimentation they had a myriad of death row inmates and political prisons to draw upon so why instead abduct an innocuous rural farmer from his small village?
"The Huang Yanqiu Incident" remains one of China's most infamous unsolved mysteries but as of now, there have been no new developments as a now 67-year-old Huang has opted to live a quiet life in his village away from the cameras. The last bit of news from Huang came from 2008 when he underwent another round of mental evaluations
Sources
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%BB%84%E5%BB%B6%E7%A7%8B%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6/3270760
http://www.cctv.com/program/zoujinkexue/topic/science/C14443/20050729/100743.shtml
http://www.cctv.com/program/zoujinkexue/topic/science/C14443/20050729/100649.shtml
http://www.cctv.com/program/zoujinkexue/topic/science/C14443/20050728/102027.shtml
http://www.cctv.com/program/zoujinkexue/topic/science/C14443/20050727/102186.shtml
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/27626821

Looking for your next event after Adepticon? Look no further! MCM is the largest 40k ITC event in May, come join us! MCM is May 26-28 near Detroit, MI. We have a new and improved convention center as our venue, with a discounted room block at the attached Hyatt Hotel.
We have some of the best terrain of any 40k tournament. Our themed GW terrain tables are some the most balanced and best painted sets of any tournament. Additionally, we pair our mats with the terrain to complete the immersion on the table.
In summary, we have some of the most mechanically fair and competitive tables in the tournament scene, while still maintaining our signature themed tables.
MCM is a full con with the following events on offer:

• Warhammer 40k Main Event (Friday-Saturday & Sunday cut to Top 8, 256 Players)
• Warhammer 40k 2v2 Event (Sunday, 100 players)
• Warhammer 40k Friendly Event (Sunday, 40 Players)
• Warhammer Kill Team Event (TBD)
• Age of Sigmar Main Event (Saturday-Sunday, 100 Players)
• Star Wars Legion Event (Saturday-Sunday, 32 Players)
• Marvel Crisis Protocol Event (Saturday, 24 players)
• Lord of the Rings Singles Event (Saturday, 40 Players)
• Lord of the Rings Doubles Event (Friday, 40 Players)
• Bolt Action Events (Friday - Saturday, 42 Players)
• Conquest Event (Parabellum Games, Saturday, 12 Players)
• Painting Classes and Seminars by Eric Swinson and Impending Duff (All Weekend)
• Magic the Gathering Events (Drafts and Commander all weekend)

MCM WIP Terrain Link:
https://imgur.com/a/IrrTH9e
Join the Mayhem!
https://deathorglorygaming.com/motor-city-mayhem

A mobile future for e-commerce: Mikitani at New Year Conference
18 hours ago
t the Rakuten New Year Conference each January, Rakuten chairman and CEO Mickey Mikitani takes to the stage to share his vision for the future of the e-commerce and tech industries.
This year, Mikitani had one core message for the 30,000 Rakuten Ichiba marketplace merchants and stakeholders tuning in: Mobile!
Mobile matters more than ever
“In 2006, back when we were still using flip phones,” Mikitani reminisced, “I spoke at this very conference about how we needed to focus on Mobile! Mobile! Mobile! At a time when mobile sales made up basically 0% of our GMS (gross merchandise sales), I predicted that it would reach as high as 70% in the future.”
This prediction was fulfilled – and quickly surpassed.
“On this past New Year’s Day, 89.3% of total GMS came through mobile. What this means is that mobile is no longer just our main source of revenue: It’s becoming nearly all of our revenue.”
“THE WHOLE WORLD CALLED THIS A PIPE DREAM, BUT WE DID IT. AND OUR SOFTWARE IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY OPEN SOURCE – SOMETHING UNHEARD OF IN THE TELECOM SPACE.”
MICKEY MIKITANI, CHAIRMAN & CEO, RAKUTEN GROUP
For the 2023 conference, Mikitani deployed a new but familiar rallying cry: Mobile! Mobile! Mobile! Mobile!
“As you have no doubt read in the news, we are currently undertaking a new challenge in the form of Rakuten Mobile,” he reminded the conference. “But we are not trying to create just another mobile carrier like Softbank, au or Docomo. We are creating another enormous new platform to add to the Rakuten Ecosystem.”
Trailblazing, software-centric telecommunications
Powering its ambitious journey to become Japan’s fourth major mobile carrier is Rakuten Mobile’s adoption of a strong focus on cutting-edge software-based solutions – a pioneering approach that is sparking a transformation in the hardware-heavy telecom industry.
“The technology we have developed is simply unparalleled,” Mikitani explained with both pride and excitement. “Traditionally, mobile networks have always needed giant network hardware equipment from the likes of Huawei and Nokia. We’ve actually changed all of that to operate solely with software.”
The ambitious plan attracted its fair share of skeptics, but Mikitani believes the results speak for themselves, “The whole world called this a pipe dream, but we did it. And our software is becoming increasingly open source – something unheard of in the telecom space.”
This trailblazing network architecture has allowed Rakuten to provide a truly unlimited service at just a fraction of the cost of other networks. Mikitani revealed that subscribers of other carriers averaged just 9.3GB of data usage per month, compared to Rakuten Mobile’s 18.4GB.
“That is how we’ve achieved this extraordinarily fair and accessible plan – 2,980 yen no matter how much data you use. A mobile plan for the 100-gigabyte age,” he declared. “By freeing consumers from these extremely expensive, ludicrous mobile plans, we hope they’ll become fans of Rakuten Group and Rakuten Ichiba and choose to use our services.”
Rakuten Mobile empowering growth on Rakuten Ichiba and beyond
“The Rakuten Ecosystem consists of Rakuten Ichiba in the center, with services like Rakuten Card, Rakuten Securities and Rakuten Bank surrounding it as supporting pillars. And the strongest of these pillars will be Rakuten Mobile.”
“RAKUTEN IS THE ONE PLATFORM THAT CONTINUES TO GROW. THE MAIN REASON FOR THIS IS OUR ECOSYSTEM, AND THE STRONGEST PILLAR OF THIS ECOSYSTEM IS RAKUTEN MOBILE.”
Mikitani cautioned the merchants and stakeholders at the conference not to dismiss Rakuten Mobile as a separate undertaking, unrelated to Rakuten’s other businesses.
“This is all part of a plan to build an ecosystem that’s stronger than anything that has existed before,” he explained. “This is our strategy to boost GMS growth for everyone here and the biggest takeaway should be that this growth is closely intertwined with the success of Rakuten Mobile.”
Mikitani laid out his vision to grow Rakuten’s domestic e-commerce revenue to 10 trillion yen by 2030. Rakuten Mobile, he told the conference, would serve as a major pillar in this plan.
“Right now, domestic e-commerce GMS for Rakuten Group has reached 5.6 trillion yen,” he reported. “I believe that Rakuten Mobile will contribute around 2 trillion to this goal.”
Mikitani’s reasoning is simple: “Rakuten Mobile customers are buying more and more on Rakuten Ichiba. That means that as Rakuten Mobile subscriber numbers grow, so will your GMS.”
It’s more than just a hunch: Mikitani demonstrated the magnitude of this effect with hard data.
“WHEN USERS SIGN UP FOR RAKUTEN MOBILE, ON AVERAGE THEY’RE USING 4.5 RAKUTEN SERVICES. ONE YEAR LATER, THEY’RE USING SEVEN SERVICES ON AVERAGE. THAT’S PRETTY AMAZING.”
“Subscribers purchase an average of 49% more – nearly 50% – annually compared to before joining Rakuten Mobile,” he revealed. “86% of Rakuten Mobile users shop at Rakuten Ichiba… If Rakuten Mobile reaches 15 or 20 million users, everyone’s total GMS will naturally increase by at least 50%.”
There are several factors that could be driving this phenomenon, Mikitani thinks. These include the considerable savings Rakuten Mobile subscribers enjoy, freeing up household budgets and effectively boosting disposable income.
Rakuten’s highly popular loyalty point program is also likely playing a role: Mobile subscribers enjoy a higher rate of return when shopping on Rakuten Ichiba. A similar program was implemented for users of Rakuten Card, which now handles over 70% of all transactions on the platform and has seen almost 30 million cards issued in Japan.
“We want to do the same thing with Rakuten Mobile – but on a scale several times larger.”
Rakuten Mobile is also having an exciting effect on the wider ecosystem – namely, on user engagement with multiple Rakuten services.
“When users sign up for Rakuten Mobile, on average they’re using 4.5 Rakuten services. One year later, they’re using seven services on average. That’s pretty amazing.”
Growing Rakuten’s core and the ecosystem
“Rakuten is the only company in the world that can do this because we’re not just Rakuten Ichiba, but also Rakuten Travel, Rakuten Card, Rakuten Bank, Rakuten Securities and more – all working in tandem,” Mikitani argued. “Last year, almost all major e-commerce companies in the U.S. saw decreases in market share. The same probably happened in the Japan market, but Rakuten is the one platform that continues to grow. The main reason for this is our ecosystem, and the strongest pillar of this ecosystem is Rakuten Mobile.”
Mikitani touched on the skepticism directed towards the mobile business, comparing it to that received by Rakuten’s credit card, banking and travel businesses before each turned their respective industries on their heads.
“I truly believe that Rakuten Mobile can surpass the big three mobile carriers in Japan and I believe that its success is the most effective way to dramatically grow your business,” he told the conference attendees. “Everything revolves around a core. That core is Rakuten Ichiba. It’s our heart, and it makes it possible for us to continue to grow.”
https://rakuten.today/blog/a-mobile-future-for-e-commerce-mikitani-at-new-year-conference.html

“The lover carves into his soul the model of the beloved. In that way, the soul of the lover becomes the mirror in which the image of the loved one is reflected.” - Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato's Symposium
Nietzsche’s criticisms of Hegel are often conflated with Schopenhauer’s. Often by people who type things like, “I’m in the Schopenhauer camp when it comes to Hegel and his ilk.” In a series of Beeps-and-Boops they copy-and-paste Schopenhauer’s loathing without any of Schopenhauer’s substance (which would require actually engaging with Schopenhauer and Hegel) instead these Thinkers exists as little framed photos on a candle covered shrine in Geocities. Even if they’re correct they’re still wrong and worthy of immediate scorn and derision. We must express the most profound sense of Christian Pity and Charity at the sight of their nakedness.
It’s easy to spiral on this particular subject but unbecoming, revealing, even damning. What they don’t seem to process, is that the seethe and the scolding and the tantrums are in their manner the highest form of compliment either philosopher could muster. That the younger Schopenhauer’s response to Hegel’s semantic blunder should be a kind of ecstatic fury that propelled his career as a philosopher. That Schopenhauer is endearing when he puts pen to paper and writes:
“May Hegel's philosophy of absolute nonsense - three-fourths cash and one-fourth crazy fancies - continue to pass for unfathomable wisdom without anyone suggesting as an appropriate motto for his writings Shakespeare's words: "Such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not," or, as an emblematical vignette, the cuttle-fish with its ink-bag, creating a cloud of darkness around it to prevent people from seeing what it is, with the device: mea caligine tutus. - May each day bring us, as hitherto, new systems adapted for University purposes, entirely made up of words and phrases and in a learned jargon besides, which allows people to talk whole days without saying anything; and may these delights never be disturbed by the Arabian proverb: "I hear the clappering of the mill, but I see no flour." - For all this is in accordance with the age and must have its course.”
Tempestuous little man. Without Hegel’s error what would’ve become of Schopenhauer? Would he have attempted to actively compete against Hegel? Hegel as the Phantom of Eric Roberts in the Killers Miss Atomic Bomb music video? The Other-Ghost, Hegel’s Smirking Geist cucking Schopenhauer, Sophia in his arms, Schopenhauer casts the wedding ring to the ground and runs away. As was the case in respect to Kierkegaard. Cucked out of marriage by the Ghost & Machine. “And it’s all in my head, but she’s touching his chest now, he takes off her dress now, LET ME GO. And I just can’t look it’s killing me. And taking control.”
An error is a wound is a mercy.
Nietzsche is different. Unlike Schopenhauer he doesn’t pretend to create a superior metaphysical system (the Platonic Carnivalesque) to rival Hegel’s.
I think the spirit of a Nietzschean critique of Hegel is best exemplified by aphorism 317 in Daybreak,
“The judgment of the evening. - He who reflects on the work he has done during the day and during his life, but does so when he has finished it and is tired, usually arrives at a melancholy conclusion: this however is not the fault of his day or his life, but of his tiredness. - In the midst of our work we usually have no leisure to pass judgment on life and existence, nor in the midst of our pleasures: but if we should happen to do so, we should no longer agree with him who waited for the seventh day and its repose before he decided that everything was very beautiful - he had let the better moment go by.”
Hegel as a Christian Nihilist and the Dialectic as Slave Morality. All finite forms of life attain their truth in the process of self-overcoming. Hegel uses Negativity to pacify an excess of Negativity. Hegel’s System annuls the Abyss. The Truth of any given determination is realized in its exhaustion. This Truth is what Remains. As part of a Whole. Eternal. Defeat for Hegel is what brings us to our Truth. That the subject’s defeat should purify it of its particularities and its impositions. My thoughts are already part of reality. This Knowledge leads to renunciation. I’m no longer attempting to impose or enforce myself on reality, to shape it in the heat of my perverse gaze. I look up at the stars and recognize a series of sores oozing out a brilliant light. In the Beggar’s Eye I see Christ. Saint Lazarus draped in indigo rags surrounded by dogs. In the Eyes of the King of the World, Christ. In the Illness the Cure. In the Poison the Medicine.
Hegel stands next to his student, the student looks up at the starry sky in awe. “They are the abode of the blessed.” Hegel grumbles, “The stars, hum! Hum! The stars are only a gleaming leprosy in the sky.’” Like Lorde, he never watches the stars because there’s so much down here. As he puts it in one lecture,
“The human being is this Night, this empty nothing which contains everything in its simplicity - a wealth of infinitely many representations, images, none of which occur to it directly, and none of which are not present. This [is] the Night; the interior of [human] nature, existing here - pure Self - [and] in phantasmagoric representations it is night everywhere: here a bloody head suddenly shoots up and there another white shape, only to disappear as suddenly. We see this Night when we look a human being in the eye, looking into a Night which turns, terrifying. [For from his eyes] the night of the world hangs out towards us.”
Let us then briefly think with Hegel whose underling problem is, from the very beginning of his thought, that of love.
What is Blue?
According to Goethe in his Theory of Colors,
“As yellow is always accompanied with light, so it may be said that blue still brings a principle of darkness with it.
This color has a peculiar and almost indescribable effect on the eye. As a hue it is powerful — but it is on the negative side, and in its highest purity is, as it were, a stimulating negation. Its appearance, then, is a kind of contradiction between excitement and repose.
As the upper sky and distant mountains appear blue, so a blue surface seems to retire from us.
But as we readily follow an agreeable object that flies from us, so we love to contemplate blue — not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it.
Blue gives us an impression of cold, and thus, again, reminds us of shade. We have before spoken of its affinity with black.
Rooms which are hung with pure blue, appear in some degree larger, but at the same time empty and cold.
The appearance of objects seen through a blue glass is gloomy and melancholy.”
Goethe and a defense of Goethe’s critique of Newton’s Opticks unites Hegel and Schopenhauer. That color is produced by light and by what stands against it. Goethe who said that were the eye not of the sun how could we behold the light. Brilliant in the poetic continuity this expresses. A golden chain from Empedocles to Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics and so on. Summarized here elegantly by the physicist Arthur Zajonc, “the interior light coalesces with daylight, like to like, forming thereby a single homogenous body of light. That body, a marriage of inner light and outer, forges a link between the objects of the world and the soul. It becomes the bridge along which the subtle motions of an exterior object may pass, causing the sensation of sight.” Aristotle proposed the existence of a Proton Organon or Primary Instrument, an organ of congealed pneuma, located in the heart, that reconciles the division between the sensible and the intelligible. The Stoics would go on the rename this Mercurial (both volatile-subtle and fixed) Instrument, the Hegemonikon, the synthesizer or icon-maker. Whose function is to produce phantasms. The instrument through which the soul transmits all vital activities to the body and also the body’s way of capturing the sensations from the five senses and translating them into phantasms or images that could be understood by the soul.
The Lover longing loving unrequited. Smiling like she means it. Being-thrown into this World. Never fully at home, refracted, out of joint. That this affliction is our common inheritance. I think this is our patrimony. We are the heirs of this Abyss. It is to some degree I think fundamentally "Western" fundamentally "Romantic". Regardless of political opinion or alignment. It speaks to us. Through us. Perhaps it's because the Republic of Letters is largely comprised of Melancholic Perverts. Nostalgia or homesickness, as a longing for a reality which can only be possessed through the imagination and through the dream, the genuine site of anamnesis or recollection in the unreal. Evoking for us the movement of the soul described by the Venetian Magician-Philosopher Guilio Camillo; descending through the Lunar Gate of Cancer (of man), drinking from the cup of Bacchus and, depending on how much one imbibes, forgetting about all the things ‘up there’ before making our way back through the Saturnine Gate of Capricorn (of the gods). Tightrope walking to Luna. I see her so very clearly. My Corporeal Dasha, Giordano Bruno would rebuke me harshly, that I should Simp as I do for "these eyes, these ears, this blush, this tongue, this tooth, this hair, this dress, this coat, this little shoe .. . , this sun in eclipse, this crazy person, this slut, this stench, this deathbed, this privy, this mensturation, this corpse... which, by means of a superficial appearance, a shadow, a phantasm, a dream, a Circe-like charm in the service of procreation, deceives us by taking the form of beauty." Fuck it. Yet there is an Image behind the Image, a Woman behind my woman. The Platonic Dasha. Daria the Luminous Homunculi. Madonna Intelligenza who has served as a guide throughout this journey. “Keep your eyes on me.” I wobble on the tightrope, your eyes are what kept me, you and your rose-wreathed heart lit. A Unity-of-Opposites. Georges Bataille writes in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, “The image through which, in an instant, destiny has become alive thus finds itself projected into a world foreign to everyday agitation. The woman toward whom a man is draw, as to his human destiny, no longer belongs to the space that money controls. Her sweetness escapes the real world, through which she moves without allowing herself to be any more imprisoned than a dream. Misfortune would ravage the spirit anyone who lets himself be possessed by the need to reduce her.”
On Love Hegel writes, “Since love is a sensing of something living, lovers can be distinct only in so far as they are mortal and do not look upon this possibility of separation as if there were really a separation or as if reality were a sort of conjunction between possibility and existence. In the lovers there is no matter; they are a living whole.” That the Unity of Love is informed precisely by the division or difference between the Lover and the Beloved. The Union of Love, “…can remain so only as long as the separate lovers are opposed solely in the sense that the one loves and the other is loved, i.e., that each separate lover is one organ in a living whole.”
Here we might ponder Hegel’s Philosophy as a Philosophy of Death. The vespers-born melancholy conclusion is perhaps being that all Love is Unrequited. As Marsilio Ficino notes in his Commentary on Plato’s Symposium, “Insofar as it is death, it is bitter, and insofar it is voluntary, it is sweet. He who loves dies; for his consciousness, oblivious of himself, is devoted exclusively to the loved one, and a man who is not conscious of himself is certainly not conscious in himself. Therefore, a soul that is so affected, does not function in itself, because the primary function of the soul is consciousness…. Therefore, the unrequited lover lives nowhere; he is completely dead.”
Blue the color of Sulfur ignited. Blue the color of the Ocean of the Dead, of Dasein. The blue knees of a prayerful lover and the blue lips of the lovelorn fool, “Here’s to my love - O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. - Thus with a kiss I die.” That the smell of bitter almonds should remind the good doctor of unrequited love.
Such a melancholy conclusion can only be produced by a proper melancholic. Melancholy was regarded by Ficino as one of seven exemptions in which the bond between body and soul was weakened, allowing the soul to take flight and acquire the gifts of premonition and clairvoyance. Saint Albertus Magnus writes of the two kinds of melancholy. Hot melancholy and its two primary effects on the subject’s phantasmic activity he describes thusly,
“The first consists in the mobility of the phantasms within the subtle organism: the second, in the great capacity of phantasms to stay impressed upon the pneuma. This brings with it, besides a prodigious memory, an extraordinary capacity for analysis. This is why, Ficino tells us, 'all the great man who have ever excelled in an art have been melancholic. Either because they were born so or become so through assiduous meditation.”
Philosophy begins with this Unhappy Consciousness. The Alienated Soul lithe and loveless, which is the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being. Dissatisfied with its Self and the World it retreats inward, like a Nymph fleeing Pan, fleeing into Reflection, which might likewise take the form of a fleeing into Nature (think Thoreau’s Walden). Herein is the mirk. This Narcissistic dialectic between Subject and Phantasmata. The Ouroboric Narcissism of the Beautiful Soul.
Another affliction associated with Melancholy is Hysteria. The Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan refers to Hegel as the most Sublime Hysteric. The Hysteric asks questions because they experience their own desire as if it were the desire of the Other.
The Spirit retreats into a pre-rational state of life, a Life of Feeling, that this feeling expresses a movement in which the soul is no longer simply natural, but able to realize a mastery over itself.
“Finally, in the “feeling of self,” the individual becomes “a sensitive totality.” But the gradual formation of the ‘I’ is paradoxically accompanied by a loss of fluidity, leading to “ruin and disaster within the conscious spirit.” This crisis results from the fact that the subject, being constituted in a free relation to the self, feels at the same time like ‘another’, and this tension pushes it into a state of ‘trembling’ (durchzittern).” The Future of Hegel, Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectics, Catherine Malabou.
How does Hegel escape? Or perhaps more accurately how can we escape this trap? This Pneumatic Mirror-World. Of Subject-Mirror-Phantasmata. The Romantic Prison? Of one who learns of Love in order to be Loveless? Hold that thought.
Returning to the color blue, the psychologist James Hillman writes in Alchemical Psychology,
“This is the realm of the alchemical (kyanos, blue; kynos, dog); blue takes on a dog-like quality: hangdog and dirty dog, both. Why does depression seek porn? For arousal? For Eros and Priapos and Venus to come to life? Rather, I think, to maintain the depression, to re-direct the verticality of desire downward and backward (doggy fashion), clipping the wings of eros. Pornography - an opus contra naturam, a counter-instinct of the psyche, perverting the conventionally natural, enslaving, torturing; an erotics of despair.
To translate these esoteric references into the blue dog’s perverse obsessions we discover this: Invisible Hades appears in the world as Dionysus. There is a divine (i.e., invisible, unfathomable) impulse that seeks to enter ordinary life. It wants to know the soul in the Biblical sense. Carnal knowledge, intimate knowledge, knowledge of intimates. (Hence the innumerable images of copulation throughout alchemy.) The soul longs for this copulation, and sings its longing in the blues, blueing its own flesh, drawing the divine down into the ordinary body. (Hence the blues’ libidinous mood.)”
My Cup Overfloweth.
Pure thinking-subjectivity is phantasmological or hauntological. The role of the Phantasmata in the context of medieval philosophy, is described exquisitely by Mauricio Loza in The Hounds of Actaeon. The Phantasm or Phantom is understood “as a mental image with effects reaching not only the level of perception but that of social construction, the phantasm exists in the twilight between the objective and the subjectivity, the material and the immaterial, a zone of indistinction between reality and unreality. This is why the phantasm pulls us towards the twilight from whence it comes: Its central action is to drag us into the shadow of the world.”
Minerva’s Owls unfurls its wings only with the falling of dusk.
For the great Persian scholar Avicenna, sensory phantasms were processed through five virtues or powers corresponding to five cavities in the cranium; phantasy or common sense, imagination, cogitative virtue, the estimative virtue, and finally the reminiscent virtue. According to Georgio Agamben in his work Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, Avicenna conceives of this gradation through the inner senses as a "progressive 'disrobing' (denudatio) of the phantasm from its material accidents."
Material accidents in this instance, evoking the etymological origins and proliferation into common speech of the word "accident" itself.
Ad - 'towards to' and cadere - 'to fall'. The Latin Accident - 'happening' used in late Middle English to refer to 'an Event'. Used to refer to the parts of the sacred bread and wine that remained after the transubstantiation through the sacrament of The Holy Eucharist,
“Thus, throughout the history of Scholasticism we have to do with a sort of triangle of intellectual forces: Realism and Nominalism fighting a five hundred years’ war, and the Church, in its official capacity, anxiously endeavouring to hold the balance between them. One wonders whether the three parties to this ancient dispute may not have found symbolic expression in Tweedledum, Tweedledee, and the ‘Monstrous Crow’ of nursery legend. But it is no disparagement of the intellects of that day to say that to us the chief interest of their polemics lies in the many new and accurate instruments of thought with which they provided us. The common word accident is an excellent example. We use it every day without realizing that it was only imported from Latin by the indefatigable efforts of the Schoolmen to reconcile the doctrine of Realism with the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation. The accidents, when they first came into the English language, meant that part of the sacred bread and wine which remained after the substance had been transmuted into the body and blood of Christ.” History in English Words, Owen Barfield
Here we see a process of Pneuma returning to Pneuma through this process of Rising and Falling. That the Absolute Idea is a Radiant Star. That the Phantasm undergoes a kind of purification process, from the sensible to the spiritual to the mnemonic. That this purification entails a kind of excremental remainder. A material accident. An excess which goes?
This brings to mind the question that the Sophist Parmenides (in Plato's Parmenides) raises to Socrates, which forces Socrates to admit to his own limitations. It utterly stumps the Apostate Tragedian. That being whether or not there is an eidos or Pure Idea of the lowest material things. Things like excrement and dust and I might add these eyes, these ears, this blush, this tongue, this tooth, this hair, this dress, this coat, this little shoe .. . , this sun in eclipse, this crazy person, this slut, this stench, this deathbed, this privy, this mensturation, this corpse...
The Ghost and The Star
Recall the episode with Hegel comparing stars to leprosy sores. This got out around town and Hegel found himself having to address this controversy,
"It has been rumoured round the town that I have compared the stars to a rash on an organism where the skin erupts in an countless mass of red spots: or to an ant-heap in which too, there is Understanding and necessity. In fact, I do rate what is concrete higher than what is abstract, and an animality that develops into no more than a slime, higher than the starry host."
The rock is a rock.
Hegel defines the Domain of Art as the “sensible appearing of the idea”… or the Idea given expression in Sensuous Form. This is to be understood as The Star shining through The Ghost. This opposition between Form and Content. This Contradiction is what animates the Motion of Spirit. From Art towards Philosophy.
She is and is not. Ah wait. I'm not her. But in this regard I am the same and suddenly the Ghost is Concretized.
Alexandre Kojève in his Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit writes,
"It is known that Hegel asserted that his knowledge is circular, and that circularity is the necessary and sufficient condition of absolute truth - that is, of complete, universal, and definitive (or "eternal") truth."
The Hysterics quandary finds some resolution. The question of the Other is reflexively transformed into the answer to the question.
"In the Wise Man's absolute Knowledge, each question is its own answer, but is so only because he goes through the totality of questions-answers that forms the entirety of the System. Likewise, in his existence, the Wise Man remains in identity with himself, he is closed up in himself; but he remains in identity with himself because he passes through the totality of others, and is closed up in himself. Which (according to the Phenomenology) means, quite simply, that the only man who can be Wise is a Citizen of the universal and homogeneous State - that is to say, the State of the Tun Aller und Jeder, in which each man exists only through and for the whole, and the whole exists through and for each man."
We return to Self-Consciousness. We're not the same. We're different. Tonight.
Eros pins Pan. Chronos clips Eros’ wings. Compulsion is overcome by Love. Love is overcome by Time. Love can only be actualized and concretized through Time. When it must Dwell in a given Space. This is the Poetic-Plasticity. This is the Commitment.
“Desire has reserved to itself the pure negating of the object and thereby unalloyed feeling of self. This satisfaction, however, just for that reason is itself only a state of evanescence, for it lacks objectivity or subsistence. Labour, on the other hand, is desire restrained and checked, evanescence delayed and postponed; in other words, labour shapes and fashions the thing.” (Phenomenology of Spirit)
We begin with the Problem of Love and in the Problem find the Solution. Love is the Answer to the Question of Love. Loving is to give what one does not have.
Our Unrequited Love is Mutual,
“In fact, there is only one death in mutual love, but there are two resurrections, for a lover dies within himself the moment he forgets about himself, but he returns to life immediately in his loved one as soon as the loved ones embraces him in loving contemplation. He is resurrected once more when he finally recognizes himself in his beloved and no longer doubts that he is loved. O, happy death, which is followed by two loves. O, wondrous exchange in which each gives himself up for the other, and has the other, yet does not cease to have himself.” Commentary on Plato's Symposium, Marsilio Ficino.
To be Overcome is to Animate. This is the Labor of Love. Productive Labor as Art.
You understand why Hegel is so very frustrating? In his System. In the Movement from East to West back East. We find the Heiros Gamos, the Sacred Matrimony of Eros and Sophia, and in this Unity of Opposites the philosopher becomes the Sage. In the production of this Heiros Gamos, Hegel's System becomes the Perfect Pneumatic Circle.
​
I make of Nietzsche a traveling companion through Hegel’s Aesthetics. Why? Because The Birth of Tragedy is crudely Hegelian. Here we find ourselves encountering what is so very frustrating about Hegel and his Pneumatic Circle, his method and his system. From the occultists perspective this is because Hegel’s System is an Artifice of Sacral or Mythic Time, of Cyclical Time. The genuinely infuriating thing is realizing that the Artifice, the “Copy” is in fact the original. This is why some speak of the feminizing effect of Hegel. Feminizing in the way Achilles’ is feminized by Scamander. That not only do we never step in the same river twice and that the river is the site of the Doom-driven Hero’s self-fulfilling prophesy.
As Nietzsche himself puts it, “one cannot refute an eye disease.” I thought it would be stimulating to read The Birth of Tragedy through the lens of Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. Framing Nietzsche and his insights within a Hegelian Tableaux. Nietzsche who denounces Metaphysical Systematization. Demurely objecting he says, “unhand me woman,” with a little blush. Does he mean it? I don’t think it was Hegel’s Dialectical Method or Logic that Nietzsche objected too. Denouncing instead the refraction between the Philosopher and the Logic (an ironic detachment)… that the Philosopher and his Logic are not two separate beings. That for him the Philosopher is Alkahest or Universal Solvent. Body and Soul collapse into a singularity, Art and Artists. No, in a sense Nietzsche celebrates the animating antagonism at the Heart of Hegel’s work. That this refraction is what results in the System which Nietzsche saw as modeling contemporary German Bourgeois fearfulness and timidity simply solidifies into Consensus. “I’m old and I don’t want to be alone.” That the System should be a kind of Metaphysical Prison concretized around the Fiery Pneuma, the brilliance of Hegel’s Esprit.
The application of the Dialectical Method is evidenced throughout The Birth of Tragedy; The Apollonian thesis, the Dionysian antithesis, the Tragic synthesis. Or perhaps in a manner more accurate to Hegel; The Dionysian Abstract, the Apollonian Negation, the Tragic Negation-of-Negation, and the Socratic Concretization.
The section dedicated to a retrospective appraisal of The Birth of Tragedy in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche concludes that all the good things he had ever written about Richard Wagner were actually about him. He was talking about himself the whole time without even realizing it, “"Even psychologically all decisive traits of my own nature are projected into Wagner’s - the close proximity of the brightest and the most calamitous forces, the will to power as no man ever possessed it, the ruthless courage in matters of the spirit, the unlimited power to learn without damage to the will to act.” Poor Nietzsche he who was too high-strung for his own good. Comes to a conclusion paralleling Hegel as it concerns Art, specifically Music. Perhaps one day, there will be Dionysian future for music. But for now, the Pneuma roils through space-and-time, and it culminates in Nietzsche or Zarathustra, as the Last Philosopher or the first Tragic Philosopher. Who despite all the aristocratic pretensions cannot help but write in a popular and accessible manner. Writing into motion the conditions for the Dionysian resurgence he had once thought was being spearheaded by the compositions of Richard Wagner.
He goes so far as to be both Beethoven and Goethe’s response to Beethoven in the anticipation of his works and in the need for them to remain ‘exclusive’ despite their undeniably popular character. Goethe in his old age weeping softly to Beethoven’s sonatas, proclaims “If such music were performed by a large orchestra, it would destroy everything around it.”
The stylish and inspirited Vitalism of Nietzsche’s ruminations is Pneumatic. A red dot in the center of a dark blue sphere.
Dialectics reveals an Infinite Spiral. The Circle divided by a straight-line. Containing the spiral. The straight-line breaks through the circle. Above and Below. Revealing three other spheres. Above the configuration one spiral. Beneath it two spirals; one winding up and the other winding down. On a Hegelian theological note. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit proceed from God the Son. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1.
Here we might locate the Traumatic Temporality of Christianity. The introduction of History. Time as Chronos. With God the Son. Without the historical personage of Jesus Christ, there wouldn’t be a Trinitarian Unity and Division. From God the Son proceeds God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. In this wound we are brought to an awareness of another Time. A Timeless-Time or a Time sans History. “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” a time in which God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit had always been. The Triune God. Whether or not, in this Aionic Time, God the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father or from God the Father and God the Son, is the division between East and West.
This Times overlap and nowhere is this more evident than in the anachronisms or perhaps more accurately, the Archeo-modernity, of the romantic painting. Or perhaps further still, in the Ethiopian depiction of Christ, in the Korean depiction of Christ, and in the Italian depiction of Christ. Black Jesus, Asian Jesus, and European Jesus.
As that obscure note by Nietzsche produced by Gilles Deleuze in his work Nietzsche and Philosophy goes, “Universal chaos which excluded all purposeful activity does not contradict the idea of the cycle; for this idea is only an irrational necessity.” Here we see Nietzsche approaching something akin to the Infinite Dialectic realized and developed in Mao Zedong’s contributions to Dialectical and Historical Materialism. As Mao writes in On Contradiction, “The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.”
The stylish and inspirited Vitalism of Nietzsche’s ruminations is Pneumatic. Being Pneumatic it is Phantasmic. Here we locate the Girardian critique of Nietzsche. As Nietzsche proclaims in Ecce Homo that everything his was praising Wagner for is in fact praise he was unconsciously directing at himself, at his values or innate dignities, the obverse is true. For Nietzsche every great philosophical work is a confessional, an involuntary and unconscious autobiography. He invents the Overman and by extension the Last Man. Will to Power and Ressentiment. One cannot exist without the other and in Nietzsche they collapse into a singularity (a point worth keeping in mind when we eventually venture into Deleuze and his Anti-Hegelianism). The Last Philosopher. In sum Girard’s contention is that in the production of these Phantasmata, Nietzsche ends up offering to his audience another Scapegoat. The Man of Ressentiment and the Slave Morality. Obviously within Nietzsche the potential for this is treated triumphantly. Nietzsche refuses to have his Poetic Revelry stifled by timorous considerations. That stupid people might read his works and take it as an excuse to persecute Christians or to locate the Man of Ressentiment in their political adversaries. That they might completely forget the contradictions inherent to the very office of “Tragic Philosopher” and how the Vagabond and the Prophet are a singular figure, hybrid and lovelorn and glorious. “If I had power I’d know how to immediately and brutally exercise it.” None of this concerns Nietzsche. People will misinterpret you regardless. Still the points are well worth reflecting on and prove stimulating as we move from the Symbolic-Classical to the Classical-Romantic.

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Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: Asian
• Residence: US
• Income Bracket: 100-200k
• Type of School: Competitive Public (sends multiple ppl to T-20s every year, already had 3 people get into Stanford REA...)
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): none.

Intended Major(s): Political Science, International Affairs (depending on school), maybe double major with Econ
Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.92 UW (school doesn't do weighted)
• Rank (or percentile): N/A, school doesn't rank
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.:
  • did full IB Diploma and a total of 10 APs across high school, all other classes were "honors" classes.
• Senior Year Course Load: APES, Senior English, Orchestra, AP Micro and Macroeconomics, AP Stats (school allows us to do IB Diploma a year early so I completed it by junior year, and I'm mostly just taking filler classes this year).

Standardized Testing
List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.

• SAT I: 1520 (780RW, 740M)
• ACT: didn't take
• SAT II: none
• AP/IB:
  • Full IB Diploma, 41/45. (HL in English, Music, History).
  • 6 AP Exams taken: World History (5), Chinese (5), APUSH (5), French (4), English Lang/Comp (5), AP Gov (5)
• Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.): none

Extracurriculars/Activities
Details are edited to avoid doxxing lmfao:

1. Secretariat for largest Model UN Conference in my state. Ran conferences' outreach (researched contacts/wrote emails), supervised registration process for 600+ attendees, managed PR and hotel rooming.
2. President of my school's Model UN Club. Trained 50+ club members with weekly public speaking/debate lessons, oversaw members' conference attendance/logistics & club advertising/fundraisers.
3. Committee Director for 3 local Model UN Conferences. Oversaw 3 member dais team, spearheaded research into committees' topic, revised background guide research paper, lead debate on conference day.
4. President of local organization's Teen Board. Created board subcommittees to improve efficiency. Relay teen feedback to staff, run community bonding/service events, train new volunteers.
5. Internship at local law firm. Schedule consultations, contact old clients/close cases, assemble exhibit binders for trials, file case documents, act as receptionist.
6. Member of cultural organization. Volunteered at multi-cultural festivals (ran culture/game booths), created programming (videos, presentations, etc) to educate others about [my ethnicity's] culture.
7. Camp Counselor for special-needs kids. Organized arts/sports related activities for special needs campers aged 10-13, provide one-on-one guidance with them.
8. Pianist for 10 years. earned Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music Grade 8 Piano Performance Exam Distinction score (highest possible score).
9. Violinist. Been playing for 7 years, auditioned into and entered local youth symphony's top group in freshman year - present day, also a violinist in high school's top orchestral group.
10. Boba Barista (job!!). Worked like 8 hrs a week.

Awards/Honors (also edited to prevent doxxing)
List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. Presidential Volunteer Service Award Gold (Teen, 2020) Bronze (Young Adult, 2021 & 2022)
2. Nationwide Music Competition- 2nd Prize Winner, Piano (state-level)
3. All-State Symphonic Orchestra participant (11th and 12th grade)
4. Best Position Paper from local MUN conference

Letters of Recommendation
I waived my rights via FERPA so I’m just guessing here.
English Teacher (7/10): Had her for both junior and senior year, had a pretty good relationship with her in class and always did my work- nothing extraordinary. She's a good writer though, so I trust her letter!
Bio Teacher (6/10): TBH only really chose her because I thought you needed one STEM and one humanities rec for every school. She definitely saw my academic side (I pestered her a lot about my Bio IA...) but beyond that I'm not sure...
Counselor (7/10): Didn't really know counselor too well, but I filled out her worksheet pretty thoroughly. She also asked for some of my other teachers to give her insight, so I had my IB Music and my orchestra director give her more info about me from a different point of view. She has lots of experience writing letters so I'm sure she was able to put together a good letter from all of the info she got from me and other teachers.
Interviews
Georgetown (6/10): my first interview, it was in-person and in the interviewer's office. Needless to say, I was terrified and spent 5 minutes in my parent's car just doing last-minute rehearsing before actually getting out. It went OK- it was decent for a first interview, but I think I rambled a bit too much about my academic self and didn't really get into my personality/hobbies and what really made me, me. Interviewer's interests didn't really line up with mine beyond academics so thats what we naturally focused about. It was a solid hour, but very chill in the end (I shouldn't have been that stressed lol).
Princeton (7/10): Was much more prepared for this interview. It was virtual, and lasted like 40 minutes. She asked me a few questions- I think I was definitely able to express and articulate myself a lot better compared to my Georgetown one, but I'm afraid I was thrown a bit off guard about the "Why Princeton/major" question she asked me and so my answer for that wasn't as perfect. Otherwise, I spent the last like 10-15 minutes asking her about Princeton stuff. It was a standard interview.
Columbia/Sciences Po Dual Degree Program (9/10): this interview was definitely my best interview by far because I was hella stressed for it, so I researched as much as I could about it- I really demonstrated my interest in Asian politics through specific examples, and I was well-articulated about why I wanted to attend not one, but two prestigious schools in the span of 4 years (and like, why France specifically). The Sciences Po admissions officer was having some connectivity issues but besides that it was a very solid interview.
Franklin and Marshall (9/10): It was with a current, international student, and we basically bonded over wanting new experiences in college and like this idea of college in general. He said that I was one of his favorite interviewees so that was nice?? Got to ask him a lot about the school and I was very passionate in my answers, much more chill than Georgetown/Princeton ones (tbh those top-schools kinda psyched me out...)
Wesleyan (7/10): I can't really remember what went down in this one tbh. At this point senioritis was kicking in and everything was mostly a blur LMFAO.
Essays
My CommonApp essay was... probably not the best. Topic was kind of basic, and the writing was meh. Unfortunately, I didn't really have time to edit it, because I got super busy with MUN things in the fall + senioritis hit early... so I really tried to perfect my supps. It was still a solid essay overall and I liked it, but I wish I started brainstorming about it earlier so I could've found a more niche idea/used some of the ideas I had in my supps for this main essay. Definitely should've done my dream school applications (ie, Georgetown) last instead of first since I naturally got so much better over time. Don't underestimate how your writing ability can skyrocket in the span of 5 months!!
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)
Acceptances:

• COLUMBIA/SCIENCES PO DUAL-DEGREE PROGRAM!! (RD)
• WashU in St. Louis (RD) (holy shit this one spooked me, I only applied bc I got a fee waiver, I did submit the video though but didn't do an interview)
• George Washington University (20k/year Presidential Scholarship) (RD)
• William and Mary (RD) (got a likely too!)
• UC Irvine (RD)
• Franklin and Marshall College (15k/year Leadership Scholarship + Program) (RD)
• University of Wisconsin-Madison (EA)
• Whitman College (RD)
• UW Seattle (RD)
• Temple University (Honors Program/Scholarship) (Rolling)
• Arizona State University (Rolling)

Waitlists:

• Wesleyan University (RD Waitlist)
• Boston University (RD Waitlist)
• American University (RD Waitlist) (this one stung ;-;)
• UC Berkeley (RD —> Waitlist)
• UMich (EA —> Defer —> Waitlist)

Rejections:

• Northeastern University (EA Deferred Rejected)
• UCLA (RD Rejected)
• Georgetown (EA —> defer —> rejected)
• Princeton (RD —> rejected)
• University of Maryland (RD —> Rejected)

Additional Information:
This whole journey has definitely been a process. I came into the college app process thinking I had a solid chance at schools like Georgetown, Boston U, and Northeastern, with UPenn as a hard reach. I ended up not even applying to UPenn and getting rejected from Georgetown, BU, and NEU, but got some amazing acceptances that came really out of the blue (still reeling over WashU.... like I applied on a whim???).
I do really regret applying to all of the OOS public schools that I did- especially the UCs- since I can't afford OOS tuition, but I think overall my list was rather balanced. Seeing all of those reaches reject me stung (Georgetown sent me on an emotional rollercoaster and my heart dropped when I found out that BU had a 10% acceptance rate this year) but all it takes is one reach for there to be success! I'm most likely going to end up committing to Columbia/Science Po (top school in France AND in US??? Hell yeah!), but all in all I'm so glad that this process is finally over <3 going to take a long fucking nap.