Wolf Moon - Eric Schwarz

1 Red Clown and 1 Dark Clown; Lego Prints (30x42) by Eric Schwarz / https://www.instagram.com/comicblues/

Am i crazy, i don't think so?! Masking ur neurotic patters with a dozen liters of 2-3 percent alcohol per day or 2 packs of cigarettes - both are called addictions, i.e. toxic coping mechanisms. Knowing ur own alcoholism and still choosing to do so on a daily basis does not mean facing it and dealing with it.

Don't make me or anyone else stupid into thinking that u r an extroverted sweetheart, interested in getting to know everyone, outgoing, chill and cool. U r probably a delusional attention whore who craves joy 24/7 and needs endless pampering! And trust me, I cannot envy ur always-cheerful clown mask; neither ur billion-dollar ideas that r never put together or implemented.

It's not always about forgiveness, it's about choosing to stop putting up with ur bullshit. Ghosting and setting boundaries r healthy choices, when the bullshit is bigger, then the good times 'n vibes. Sadly alcoholics never understand how often they hurt their friends, and like with clowns, it was all just a joke, right? Even more sadly their psyche cannot deal with criticism. They most likely cannot remember exactly what happened, or they hv replaced it with self-centered scot-free confabulations.

Now, whether any of u understand it or not, MY END OF THE STORY IS EQUALLY VALID. It is all i'm saying and the truth is that nothing is personal. Move on, some friendships expire over the summer, some don't spoil for decades and some last a lifetime.

Good luck to both of u, dear clowns 🤗🍀

feeling like this today, but there is no one to hold me (and maybe it never was)

By Gregory M. Lamb, CS Monitor, January 11, 2013 Boston--It isn't rocket science--though giving kids an opportunity to build and launch their own model rockets is often part of the program.

Eric Schwarz is remaking public education in the United States using a simple formula: Extend the school day, give kids adult mentors, and let them get their hands dirty.

The program, called Citizen Schools, has succeeded so well that Mr. Schwarz has been invited to the White House to explain how it works and has been featured in the new book "Everyday Heroes: 50 Americans Changing the World One Nonprofit at a Time."

Now at work in 14 US inner-city school districts and on one Indian reservation, Citizen Schools is seen as a model for making dramatic improvements at low-performing schools. To do that it partners not only with AmeriCorps, the quasi-governmental service organization, but with some of the biggest names in US business, including Google, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco Systems.

The idea is to level the playing field for students who grow up in low-income households.

"In this country we have a growing achievement gap based on family income. It's actually a bigger gap than it was 50 years ago," Schwarz says in an interview at the Citizen Schools headquarters in a renovated brick building on Boston's waterfront, just one pier away from the replica of the historical Boston Tea Party ship. "The reason is, I think, is not that poor kids are learning less, but that rich kids are learning more because their families are giving them all these opportunities to get violin lessons, go to robotics camp, get extra coaching and tutoring, and have lots of chances to be [around] successful adults.

"Those opportunities are incredibly unequally provided in our society, and Citizen Schools changes that."

A "second shift" of Citizen Schools instructors take over at middle schools (sixth to eighth grade) around 2:30 p.m. when the normal school day ends. For three additional hours teachers from AmeriCorps and volunteer mentors from the business community help students keep learning. Most of the time that means shoving the blackboard aside and giving students hands-on experiences that will fire up their imaginations.

Over its 18 years Citizen Schools has invited to be mentors dancers, children's book authors, bike repair experts, engineers, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, carpenters, lawyers, architects, "every profession you can imagine," says Schwarz, who is the group's cofounder and chief executive.

Classes can even involve rocket science. When an adult mentor comes in and helps students launch their own model rocket, he points out, they are forced to think about scientific concepts like velocity, resistance, and gravity if they want to succeed. "And that motivates kids to want to do the hard math" behind the experiment, Schwarz says.

The program is also opening a lot of adult eyes to new ways of thinking about education.

"As we've been able to prove more and more impact, and prove that this ... is actually changing schools and changing kids' lives, and leading to a 20 percent jump in graduation rates, and erasing the achievement gap between low-income and suburban kids, that has caught the attention of political leaders on both sides of the aisle and business leaders," Schwarz says.

"I've seen the Citizen Schools project within some of our most challenged schools and really seen that program play a role in the turnaround of some of those schools," says Mitchell Chester, the Massachusetts commissioner of elementary and secondary education. "I believe they played a substantial part in those turnarounds."

It's no coincidence that Schwarz has centered the program on middle-schoolers.

"It's a point in human development when kids are ... very desperate for chances to be successful, for chances to be mentored outside the family. They're desperate for chances to be very tactile, and build things, and see the relevance of school," he says.

It's the point, too, at which US education begins to fall behind. US students in third and fourth grades "are at the top of the pack" internationally, Schwarz says, but among industrialized countries, by the eighth grade they slip to the middle of the pack and then continue to fall back. "So middle school is really the forgotten part of the education reform chain."

I'm not sure what the occasion is -- is Halloween now in the spring? -- but I've seen quite a few articles digging into the chills and thrills category of games, including survival horror and fantastical components of "adventure" games. To recognize the trend, here's The Escapist on the topic:

One of the most devious ways in which horror games are able to keep the player on edge is through the use of save checkpoints or, even more maliciously, by only providing limited saves throughout the entire game. Resident Evil is famous for its typewriter save system, with the ink ribbons necessary to use them as limited just as any other resource. In horror games, a save point isn't just a chance to set the game down; it means respite from the constant danger, as well as a fresh start to attempt the next leg of the adventure.

Eric Schwarz goes on to compare recent releases -- your Dead Space's and FEAR's -- to the "classics". His view's almost as bleak as the horror games he talks about, but it's a good argument.

There's been a good number of articles posted on Gamasutra lately dealing with moral choice in games. After writing a number of comments of my own in response, as well as some more discussion in other venues, and my own private consideration, I'd like to provide my thoughts on a number of dimensions in designing moral decisions. While what's written below isn't necessarily a framework for going about designing such decisions and systems, it can be seen as a checklist of things to do or not do when considering how to build moral decisions. I also apologise in advance for my critical attitude – I love many of the games I use as negative examples, and can only provide them because I myself have considered them and engaged with them at such lengths in the past.

“Why am I doing this?”

When designing a moral decision in a game, the first question that should always be asked is, “why?” More specifically, why should the player care about the decision they're making, and why should they be given a decision in the first place? At first glance, sounds like a pretty simple question to ask, with an equally simple answer of “because we want the player to feel like he or she is in control of his or her destiny”, or thereabouts. “Either a game has moral decisions, or it doesn't” seems to be the current mode of thinking of many designers