Pokémon GO Outing

(From a Facebook post)

So, I'd decided to spend part of my day off at Mercer, because it's (sadly, some might say) got a variety of pokémon and a few pokéstops.

It kind of turned into some fun afternoon of anthropological observations for me, too.

• 20-something Asian female obviously doing the one-finger flick one does when trying to capture a pokémon 

• 20-something White female in athletic clothing walking with her phone (and I think we both went for the same nidoran♂, but she got it)

• group of 13 pre-teen and teenaged summer campers gathered around two different pokéstops with lures engaged every so often squealing with glee as they capture various pokémon (with one newly-deepened voice yelling "OMG, there's a squirtle over there!" and the rest scampering after him), after which I verbally comment "Oh, youthful exuberance…"

• 20-something White male with a man bun/top knot who's putting #PokémonGO into his fitness regimen because he's obviously been jogging back and forth between the five six pokéstops spread across campus

•40-something African male who's been walking between pokéstops with his phone with a sheepish, but slightly embarrassed, look on his face whenever we cross paths at said pokéstops

• 20-something athletically fit White male stopped in the shadow of a tree in front of the student center/campus pokémon gym (currently under #TeamInstinct) furiously tapping at his iPhone screen

• 50-something Black female who nearly collided with a parked 2012 Ford Taurus while scouting pokémon

I love when I'm actually able to use my major actively.

#GoFIUAnthropology #SuburbanAnthropologist

Stitcher Down

Sometimes it takes not having one thing to shed light on another.

I remember back when Apple first debrided their podcasts from the main iTunes app and made the separate Podcasts app.

I was a little miffed. This was back when I'd had my iPhone 3GS with limited screen space, and so one extra app would mean I would more than likely have to get rid of another app so everything would be even (I'm also very OCD in some things).

I did like its design, though, because it had this recorder reel theme under the hood that struck me as quirky and likable. The social media aspects of it, though, weren't what I was expecting. This is because I was already using Stitcher.

I'd decided to start using Stitcher on April 10, 2010 shortly after I'd moved to Georgia. This app did streaming podcasts, which meant that with my limited storage capacity (and unlimited data plan), I didn't have to worry about much and still could enjoy podcasts and my voracious appetite (especially) for news.

Sticher added more features as they went on, and so I'd put the Podcasts app to the side because it didn't do streaming of podcasts especially well under enhanced 3G conditions. I'd known Apple kept adding little things to the Podcasts app as they'd updated iOS, but I'd still not paid it an incredible amount of attention.

Then the last few days came.

Stitcher has been down for an unknown maintenance they've been doing, and to satiate my podcast thirst I've been playing around with the latest iteration of the Podcasts app on my iPhone 6 Plus (which by now ships with the Podcasts app inbuilt to iOS), and it's been pretty all right, actually. Aside from the insanely long links that occur when you want to share a podcast to social media, it's been pretty nice.

As I play around with it more, I wonder about Stitcher. I mean, I've had almost 6 years with it now, and the history function is certainly one thing I like,

Now I wait to see what Stitcher is doing with themselves.

Sometimes I Wonder if I Waste My Time

So, I'm a watcher of sorts. I've always felt my purpose in life was to observe and record, when possible, somehow elements of humanity. This can be in reading, watching things, listening to music, and hearing people's stories.

One if the most frustrating ones have been TV shows of late.

So, a brief, and probably incomplete, list of shows I've gotten into within the last 5 years is:

• Tyrant

• The Whispers

• Once Upon a Time

• Manhattan Love Story

• Selfie

• The Messengers

• The Tomorrow People 

• Reign

• The Returned

• Helix

• Archer

• American Horror Story

• Bates Motel

• Better Call Saul

• Dominion 

• Scream Queens

• Teen Wolf

• The 100

• The Librarians

• Stalker

That makes 45% of the shows I've gotten into of this list cancelled. And it seems it's getting more frequent than not that I pick up a show and they cancel it, within the season, shortly after the run, or by the next season.

A couple of them, I'd pretty much figured they'd cancel, but others I'd held out so much hope for.

Only for them to dash dem weh.

Forty-five percent is pretty bad. Hopefully my odds improve this season.

Magnamon the Jihadist

So this is a throwback from my burgeoning adulthood, a card I'd seen from one of my all-time favorite series Digimon.

A little background for the unaware:

Digimon are digital monsters, creatures that exist in a virtual/computer world that have the ability to evolve into superior forms as their energy increases. In the case of this one, Magnamon, a specific lower-level digimon (often one called Veemon) takes hold of something called a digimental (an ancient power object, essentially) and evolves into Magnamon, one of the most powerful digimon in existence.

As a rule of anime in general, whenever there are named attacks, the attacker (often a good guy and often the leader-type) has 必殺技 (hissatsu waza, or a “sure-kill attack”), an attack that completely disarms, makes harmless, or destroys the target.

In the English versions of the cards (and in the anime dub), they've interpreted Magnamon's sure-kill attack to be "Magna Blast". For the record, though, I've included the image of an original Japanese card to show what the original name of the attack is, bringing me to the point of this post.

Anime has been a hot-button topic for a lot of people because the Japanese creators of these manga/shows often seem to have blissful ignorance of what the things they create might mean to audiences outside Japan, or how sensitive they might be to it (at least until the late 90's to early 2000's when it really took off internationally).

I mean, I don't think many Japanese had even thought about jihadism until the IS/ISIS/ISIL agent "Jihadi John" beheaded two of their citizens recently, so Magnamon's "Japanese-language" attack (even though it is, essentially, borrowed English) would barely phase them whereas the rest of the world would probably be in an uproar because of it.

Magnamon's sure-kill attack is エクストリーム・ジハード.

Literal translation into English is "Extreme Jihad."

Expansion: I have been remiss to mention the character of Magnamon is a holy warrior in the card mythology.

Got Children?

Home Office says Nigerian asylum-seeker can't be a lesbian as she's got children
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/home-office-says-nigerian-asylumseeker-cant-be-a-lesbian-as-shes-got-children-10083385.html

I'm sorry, the only word I have for this is "W(ə)T(ə)F(ə)…"