As a historian, it's sometimes discouraging to see how often different historical figures and periods are misunderstood by society at large. To be totally clear, I don't mean that in some silly "people are sheep!!" sorta way. Rather, I think our K-12 system doesn't always teach history well- not because of teachers (or at least not because of all of them, bad teachers definitely exist), but because of a variety of factors, including forced standardized testing, large classroom sizes, and administrative/parental pressures to not teach in "controversial" ways. All of these make it pretty hard to teach history in as engaging and challenging a way as many teachers would like.
On the other end of things, it's also hard to do further historical research after high school (or college, if you went). I do not share that "if only everyone were better studied in my subject, the world would be a better place!" view a lot of academics have. Yes, it'd be great if people went out of their way to delve into history to gain a better understanding of it. It'd also be great if people went out of their way to become well-versed in economics, nutrition, sociology, psychology, physics, cars, urban planning, software engineering, journalism, astronomy... I think you get the point. There's simply too many worthwhile fields of knowledge for anyone to arrogantly say people are awful for not choosing to look more into your area of expertise. We can only learn so much.
So, with all that being said, it's understandable that society as a whole doesn't have a great grasp of history, but it's still a bummer. There is perhaps no better example of this bummer than the civil rights movement. There's a lot of misconceptions about that time period, from the watered-down memory of Martin Luther King Jr to the erasure of the economic component of the civil rights movement to the implication that the movement sorta just died off after the federal legislation of 1964 and 1965. What I wanna focus on here, however, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr Day, is how one particular aspect of the civil rights movement that we often don't think about can be used to give us hope for the future.
I'm talking about its timeline.
I promise my post will be less convoluted than this mess of a timeline.
When we think of the civil rights era, we think of everything starting with the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision and Rosa Parks bus boycott in 1955, and we think of it ending with the 1964/1965 legislation that Lyndon B Johnson signed into law. The fact of the matter, though, is that Brown v Board of Education came about after decades of hard organizing work from a variety of individuals and organizations, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and the NAACP. Civil rights activism in generalexisted well before the 1950s, and it was that very foundation that made what we usually consider the civil rights era possible. The hard work, mistakes, disagreements, and coalition-building of earlier times is what made the movement's 1954-1965 hallmark achievements possible.
Basically, the civil rights era wasn't a neatly contained, isolated, perfectly organized and executed time of activism with a clearly defined beginning and end. No era of change ever is. Rather, it was a time of people organizing, in all their imperfections, to imperfectly build a movement that took incredible amounts of effort, consistency, compromise, debate, diversity of tactics, and finding of common ground to eventually start gaining momentum. The less effective movements of earlier times taught lessons to those who cared about equality and justice, who kept going forward after each setback to continue building a movement for a better tomorrow.
So why should this give anyone hope about today, or the future?
The earliest activism of the 2010s most people remember today is Occupy Wallstreet, which came about after people started to feel the ripples of the Great Recession. While the movement did a great job of bringing attention to income inequality and corporate money in politics, many rightfully criticized its lack of focus. Many (though not all) of the Occupy protests around the United States and other parts of the world involved vaguely protesting those issues without any clearly defined platform of tangible ways to tackle those issues.
"We personally believe the best approach would be countless sit-ups and a lack of shirts."
The same has been said of Black Lives Matter, today's biggest movement, though to a lesser extent. Coming about as a result of George "Human Garbage" Zimmerman being acquitted after killing Trayvon Martin, Black Lives Matter has been at the forefront of fighting violence against black people and police brutality, in the latter case even when the victims of police brutality are white. Black Lives Matter actually has come up with a platform, and there are people doing some important work around those issues. But, as a whole, most Black Lives Matter actions are in reaction to specific deaths of black folks to hold their murderers accountable (which is also super important), rather than being organized around specific, structural, widespread change.
A lot of people have therefore written off the possibility of real change in the near future. It's an understandable impulse considering how social movements for change have been on the defensive for the last few years, not to mention how exhausting politics have become under the avalanche of bullshit that is the Trump administration.
Historically speaking, however, that impulse could not be further from the truth.
Taking everything discussed above about the civil rights movement to heart, it's important to reiterate how gradually the civil rights movement happened. It did not come overnight. Important change never does. It didn't even come in a decade. Nor was everyone in agreement about goals and strategies: different groups each came up with their own. As mentioned above, only years of hard work brought these different groups together to form coalitions and create more organized, focused platforms.
In other words, the idea that the flaws of today's movements doom them to failure is simply not true. Like people, movements must be allowed to make mistakes and grow. What we saw with Occupy was the burgeoning steps of a new generation of activist ready to fight the good fight. We're seeing a more sophisticated one now with Black Lives Matter, among other current movements. Whatever issues there are in these movements today, they have time to keep building, improving, focusing.
"Can we fix [the issues inherent in any young social movement]?" "Yes we can!"
That being said, we can't just nod and think "ahh, good point, I guess things will work out!" We have to make them work out. As Martin Luther King Jr put it: "change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle." We can't think of change as resulting from some sort of inevitable force that just sorta happens; we have to fight for it. I have confidence we can.
It's not baseless optimism I'm going off of, either (contrary to what this post implies, I generally err on the side of pessimism). I remember before the Great Recession, one of the biggest criticisms of my generation was that we didn't care at all about politics. Then we started discussing issues revolving around racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia; we voted for Obama in 2008/2012 and Bernie in the 2016 primaries, among other politicians, showing our willingness to vote if we felt a candidate truly represented our interests; we have organized and shown up to demonstrate for causes important to us, even if not in quite the numbers we need (yet). We are now dismissively called 'social justice warriors' by the same people who complained about our lack of political involvement a decade ago.
On a more personal note, when I was getting my MA in History at SDSU, I worked my second to last semester as a teaching assistant. The professor I worked for, who has been teaching for the last couple decades, warned us TAs ahead of time that issues like the labor struggles and anti-lynching crusades of the late 1800s was something that lost the attention a lot of students. "Just try your best to get through it until we get to World War 1 & 2," he advised us.
When I went over those in the discussion sections I led, however, my students were incredibly engaged.
They still seemed pretty unreceptive to my proposal to use the Necronomicon to revive Ida B Wells
and help her run for president for some reason, though. Kids these days, right?
As much as I'd love to pretend it was because I was an amazing TA, the truth of the matter is that students in their late teens and early twenties came of age in a vastly different world than I did, despite me being only slightly older than them. I'm twenty eight. I was eleven when 9/11 took place. To say that event had an impact on myself and people my age or older is an understatement. Those currently in their teens and early twenties, however, came of age during the Great Recession. In talking to them, that event defined their life experiences and subsequent worldview. It's their 9/11.
Combine that with the fact that social media has given marginalized people the chance to share their stories, have dialogue, and organize in an unprecedented way, and you can see why so many young people are gaining an understanding of social justice issues. Black Lives Matter began as a hashtag, after all. It started there and became a movement thanks to the excellent work of many black organizers, including the three black women who founded it. Same with the Me Too movement that took off last year.
Now, I'm not saying that whatever movement comes about will fix all of society's ills. The civil rights movement didn't, the labor movements of the 1930s didn't, the Progressive movement of the beginning of the 1900s didn't. There will probably never be a movement that results in a perfect society, and if there is, I doubt it's coming in our lifetime. Nor am I saying all young people are gonna be great, human rights-oriented agents of change. There are apolitical people, as well as bigots and assholes, in every generation. We're no different.
What I am saying is that we can't lose hope for things to get better. There's plenty of evidence that we have what it takes, as well as evidence that we're starting to understand this fact. It's on us to decide if we will do something with it.
With 2017 now behind us, tons of media outlets and blogs are spending time reviewing everything that happened this past year. Articles about people's favorite movies, the most influential news stories, stand out sport stars, and other such lists focused around a particular topic are filling the internet. Plenty of those lists are gonna be worth reading.
For me, though, I find too many things interesting to focus on only one subject. So, like I did for 2014, 2015, and 2016, I'll be reviewing my top pick for a variety of different categories from 2017, including multiple movie, MMA, science, and news story categories. They're subjective as hell, but who's top list isn't? The sort of people who pretend ranked lists of their favorite things are objective are the kind of people you don't wanna talk to at a party.
Anywho, here we go!
(Spoilers have been avoided for all the entries about movies)
MOVIE: Blade Runner 2049
This was the hardest entry for me to pick on this list. Not just among the movie categories, but the list in its entirety. Blade Runner 2049 and Get Out were both such excellent movies in such different ways that I had no idea how to figure out which one I liked more. I opted for Blade Runner 2049 just so that I could also make up for not choosing Arrival as my favorite movie of 2016 on last year's post, as I didn't see the movie until after I wrote it.
Enough about other movies, though. Let's talk 2049. Going into this movie, I was more than a little skeptical. While I love the original Blade Runner, I just couldn't see any sort of need for a sequel, especially with so many of the questions raised by the end of the film. Where could they go in a sequel that would both feel fresh while also connecting to the first in a meaningful way?
This movie put my fears to rest. The movie connects well to the first Blade Runner and its themes while still being distinct enough to not feel like a rehash. Like with the first one, the plot uses both human and non-human characters to explore its central question: what does it mean to be alive, to be human? Yet it approaches these questions from a different angle than the first one, starting with Ryan Gosling's character K, who is a very different protagonist than Harrison Ford's Richard Decker.
This movie has everything you'd hope for in a Blade Runner movie: thematic depth, great writing, memorable characters, and a gorgeous, superbly-shot world. It also has a memorable ending scene, whose final moments have stuck with me in a way few movie endings have. While the movie does have a few minor stumbles, overall it is a worthy successor to the original movie and not just my favorite movie of the year, but (along with Get Out) one of my favorite movies of the decade so far.
COMEDY MOVIE: The Big Sick
Structurally, The Big Sick isn't any different from most other romantic comedies. The general formula for the genre is that the couple meets, attraction happens, adversity ensues, it breaks them up, they marinate on their feelings, they end up back together. This is exactly what happens in The Big Sick.
What makes the movie so outstanding, though, is the execution. The performances by every member of the cast are top notch, the "comedy" part of "romantic comedy" is actually given serious attention (as well as often used in service of the characters), and there is real conflict based on Kumail having to choose between his new romantic interest and making his family happy with an arranged marriage (more on that in a moment). The lack of meaningful conflict in most romantic comedies is why I cannot stomach most of the genre. Most couple "conflicts" in these movies are due to some sort of ridiculous misunderstanding that any adult (or teenager, or child) with any sort of human communication skills could easily explain. It's manufactured, lazy drama brought up simply to drive the couple apart without making the audience mad at either romantic partner.
Not here, though. Kumail has real reason to be conflicted. What I love about the way he resolves it, though, is that he is careful not to reject his parents' way of life. He emphasizes that it doesn't work for him while recognizing that it has worked for them and made them good people. So many movies involving kids rejecting the wishes of their parents in favor of true love involve the kid wholly rejecting their parents and the movie wholeheartedly agreeing with the kid's decision. It's nice to see a story where Kumail loves his parents and their culture, even if it doesn't work for him.
Also, it's worth driving home how funny this movie is. Kumail's background as a comic really comes through, yet he also gives great lines and moments to other characters, too (my personal favorite being Ray Romano's line about cheating and loving someone). The humor is also an integral part of the movie, not just because Kumail is a comic, but because his way of using humor to cope with a lot of uncomfortable moments tells us a lot about him as a character. The humor here not only works, but services the characters and plot. That's how you make a comedy, romantic or otherwise.
ANIMATED MOVIE: Coco
The above image from Coco isn't of the protagonist or his family, but to me it sums up what this movie is about better than any promotional poster can. In my opinion Coco is prime Pixar, right up there with Wall-E, Up, Inside Out, and the Toy Story movies. It has stunning visuals, a well-realized theme about balancing family loyalty with pursuing your dreams, and emotionally impactful moments that feel truly earned. The only weakness it had was a plot-twist that can be seen coming a continent away, but as someone who personally doesn't care much about the surprise factor of plot twists in movies, it didn't take away much from my overall enjoyment of the film.
There's so much to say about how well this movie explored the theme of balancing the pursuit of your dreams with obligations to your family. To start with, the family members who try to prevent Miguel from pursuing music aren't the normal "fuck your dreams!" plot devices that do nothing other than grumpily block the protagonist's path just because. In Coco, we see the hardship and trauma that music has brought to the family. What's more, we get a heartfelt speech from his abuelita about how much family means to her, and we see her pain in having to take care of a mother (Miguel's great grandmother) who doesn't even recognize her anymore. This is not an abuela who wants to angrily block her grandson's dreams just because, but rather one who cares deeply about her family sticking together and being there for each other.
Aside from creating a family that is given a meaningful reason to reject music, the way the plot moves in service of its themes is also worth looking at. The overall trajectory most of these "chase your dreams, even if it means defying your family!" movies follow is that the protagonist disobeys their family and their family is upset, but eventually they come around to see just how wrong they are. Not here, though. Instead, Miguel comes to learn the dangers of being the kind of person who is willing to throw away everything in order to get what they want.
Of coure, the family does come around, but the reconciliation that inevitably happens between them isn't the result of Miguel relentlessly chasing his goals while his family sorta just realizes the error of their ways. Rather, Miguel shows them just how meaningful music can be, even for a family for whom music has left so much trauma. One of my favorite scenes of the movie is when a family member who had constantly been dismissing music up to that point is put in a situation where she has to sing, and you can see how healing it is for her. The whole family heals and grows together, creating poignant moments toward the end that are vintage Pixar.
As someone who is half Mexican, it was also wonderful to see a good-faith effort at inclusion of Mexican culture. Of particular importance is the fact that there is representation behind the camera in addition to in front of it (or, in this case, in addition to the voice acting). The choice of having Mexican and Mexican-American folks working on the project, particularly writer and co-director Adrian Molina, really made a difference. Hopefully the success of this film can lead to more good-faith representation of different cultures that includes not just more diverse groups of actors, but also directors, writers, and other behind the scenes workers. As Coco proves (as well as other films on this list, like The Big Sick and Get Out), the results are worth it.
ACTOR: Daniel Kaluuya
I'm basically doing some Oscars politics shit here by choosing the actor in my second favorite movie of the year (possibly first, who even knows, both Blade Runner 2049 and Get Out are too damn good to choose just one, and as I'm writing this I'm currently having a fierce internal debate about whether I should've chosen Get Out as my top movie and put Ryan Gosling in this spot, but I'm already this far, and also I'll end up regretting my choices either way, sooo...). Ahem.
Luckily, Kaluuya puts in such a great performance in this film that he deserves this spot regardless of whatever dorky internal debate is going on in my head. Kaluuya plays Christ Washington, a photographer with an eye for beautiful, melancholy shots and a white girlfriend who wants to take him home for the weekend to meet her family. Considering the fact that it's in the horror/suspense genre, the weekend is predictably far from leisurely.
The role of Chris Washington is a quiet but expressive one that really lets Kaluuya shine. His performance is grounded yet ranged, doing a great job of giving us such a variety of Kaluuya's emotions in subtle, quiet ways that show his abilities to emote without the need for excessive dialogue (though he does a good job with his lines, too). This is important, especially where he is exasperated with the small forms of every-day racism in earlier scenes and terrified in later scenes for reasons I won't spoil.
Everything comes together perfectly in this movie. Jordan Peele's writing and directing does a great job of exploring the black psyche and its fears in modern US society, with many parts of the movie brilliantly subverting the ways black folks are typically portrayed in popular US media. Kaluuya gives Jordan's ideas amazing life, though, and makes Chris Washington a character to remember. I can't wait to see his role in Black Panther.
ACTRESS: Sally Hawkins
This was a tough one, not only because there were two performances I loved this year, but because both were performances from lesser-known, offbeat, excellent movies that I'd love to give recognition to, so I couldn't even use that as a tie-breaker criteria. I ended up going with Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water because, while I actually liked Colossal a little more as a movie, The Shape of Water does demand a little more of Sally Hawkins than Colossal does of Anne Hathaway (though don't get it twisted, Hathaway plays a character well outside of her normal range of roles and absolutely nails it).
Anywho, on to my actual pick. I was excited going into The Shape of Water because I love Guillermo del Toro, a master of dark fantasy stories with rich atmospheres and memorably odd characters. However, I wondered going into the movie if I would be able to buy a Beauty and the Beast-type love story set during the Cold War with an amphibious creature as the love interest. I feared that, despite my love for del Toro, this would just be too silly for me to take seriously.
Like my concerns with the Blade Runner sequel, this movie assuaged my fears. Or, more accurately, Sally Hawkins did. She plays the protagonist of the film, Elisa, a mute custodian at a top secret government facility who falls in love with the aquatic specimen in one of the labs. She assumes the role with a quiet (obviously) but distinct warmth that makes it hard not to buy her character's thoughts and feelings at every step of the way, even when they would sound silly on paper. Her ability to emote without the need of dialogue is truly outstanding.
Every other performance of the movie is excellent, too, particularly Richard Jenkins as her closeted best friend, Michael Shannon as the orderly yet unhinged villain, and Michael Stuhlbarg as the government scientist whose real allegiances you're kept uncertain of until the end. With beautiful cinematography (seriously, look at what he does with the color green here) and an engaging, character-driven story, The Shape of Water was one of my favorite movies of the year. And none of it would've worked without Sally Hawkins and her Oscar-worthy performance at its core.
MMA PROSPECT: Gökhan Saki
In a way, this entry feels like cheating. Anyone who follows kickboxing knows who Gökhan Saki is. For those who don't, Saki is a high level Dutch kickboxer with both knockout power and good fight craft. He has a versatile left hand which he uses to throw unpredictable combinations of hooks, body hooks, and uppercuts, sometimes two or three times in a row, and he often finishes his punching combinations with a chopping kick, usually to the leg. He was the light heavyweight champion of Glory, currently the best kickboxing organization in the world. Still, this entry is about his prospect as an MMA fighter. After being out of kickboxing for two years, he made his UFC debut in the light heavyweight division against Henrique da Silva in 2017. In the fight his technique looked incredible. He had also clearly been working on his takedown defense, having no trouble whenever da Silva shot for his hips or tried to get him into the greco clinch. Because kickboxing rounds are each two minutes shorter than MMA rounds, however, Saki began to slow down toward the end of the first round (though it is also possible two years away from professional competition contributed to this as well).
Henrique da Silva began to find success as Saki tired, especially with some wonderfully placed knees. Unfortunately for him, though, the more he gained momentum the more recklessly he decided to hunt the knockout. As da Silva stood right in front of Saki and swung away without much thought given to defensive, Saki countered with a left hook so powerful it threw off the earth's orbit around the sun. His entrance had been made.
I truly hope that Saki can make it to the top of the division. It's no secret the division in serious need of some new top contenders, especially with Jon Jones having such an uncertain future. Aside from Alexander "Incapable of Boring Title Fights" Gustafsson and rising contender Volkan Oezdemir, there are no serious threats to champion Daniel Cormier on the horizon. Texeira, Manuwa, and OSP are all fine fighters, but it's pretty clear none of them are competitive with the likes of Cormier or Gustafsson. Hopefully Oezdemir does well against Cormier at UFC 220, win or lose, and Saki continues to do well. If that can happen and Jon Jones is also proven innocent in his USADA trial, we'll be back to a light heavyweight division as exciting as its mid-late 2000s glory days.
MMA FIGHTER I'D LIKE TO SEE BOUNCE BACK:
Yair Rodríguez
Yair Rodríguez was one of the most exciting prospects of the MMA world in the featherweight division, which to me is one of the most exciting divisions in the sport (if not the most exciting division). His kicking ability is among the most exciting of MMA world today, throwing sidekicks the way most fighters throw jabs and chaining together round kicks in a way you usually only see in fighting video games. In May of last year, however, Frankie Edgar put a stop to Yair's unbeaten streak in the UFC by hitting him with so much ground and pound that the left side of Yair's face was almost sent to a hamburger meat processing factory by mistake. Edgar relentlessly closed the distance between him and Yair with a crafty combination of feints, intelligently aggressive footwork, and mixing up the threat of his punches and takedowns to keep Yair uncomfortable. Once he got Yair on the ground it was mostly over, though Yair was never completely out of the fight, going for things like kneebars and back takes whenever he could. I hope the fight ends up proving to be a growing experience for Yair. Going forward, he of course needs to work on dealing with elite wrestlers. His punches could also use some work too, as he often ignores his reach advantage and gets into brawls where he throws long, loopy hooks whenever his opponent gets into boxing range. I think he would benefit tremendously from studying lanky Jackson-Winkeljohn fighters like Jon Jones, Carlos Condit, and Donald Cerrone and how they so perfectly use their reach advantage. Specifically Jones's stiff-arming, Cerrone's counter step-knees that he throws whenever someone charges in on him, and the counter-elbows all three have been using when opponents charge in. All of these could be an invaluable asset to Rodriguez. Overall, Yair has world class kicks, speed, and a penchant for putting on exciting fights. If he can sharpen up other areas of his game, become better at setting up his kicks instead of just throwing them in volume, and learn how to use his strengths in different ranges, he could be champion someday. Hopefully 2018 sees Yair's return to the win column and continued ascent up the featherweight rankings.
MALE MMA FIGHTER: Demetrious Johnson
What can we say about perhaps the most well-rounded MMA fighter in the world right now? This year he beat Wilson Reis and Ray Borg to set the UFC record for most consecutive title defenses with eleven, beating Anderson Silva's old record of ten. While Reis and Borg aren't the toughest competition he's fought (Joseph Benavidez, John Dodson, and Kyoji Horiguchi are arguably the best fighters he's beaten), the skill and preparation it takes to consistently stay on top for so long is mind-blowing. Until the rumored fight between him and TJ Dillashaw takes places, there don't seem to be too many significant challenges to Johnson's reign any time soon.
FEMALE MMA FIGHTER: Rose Namajunas
Could there be any doubt about who would get this spot? Going into this year, Joanna Jędrzejczyk looked unstoppable. Her world-class Muay Thai made her look like an assassin against elite competition like Jessica Andrade and Karolina Kowalkiewicz, using her world class footwork, straight punches, and well set up kicks. Going into her fight with Rose and UFC 217, few people gave Rose much of a chance. No one gave her a chance of winning by knockout. This fight perfectly proved the saying "anything can happen in MMA." Rose's gameplan was to give Joanna something she wasn't used to: a cautious style centering around the use of feints. It was clear in this fight that Joanna had gotten used to her opponents coming toward her as the aggressor. Rose, on the other hand, forced Joanna to lead and used an impressive amount of feints to throw her off. The thing about well-done feints is that they make reacting really difficult for your opponent. Mixing in feints and actual attacks makes it hard for your opponent to know whether your next movement will be another feint or an actual attack. Every singe time Rose so much as twitched, Joanna never knew what to expect. This left Joanna profoundly uncomfortable, as she hadn't had to worry as much about this in her previous fights, especially against her last three forward-charging opponents. The knockout came when a frustrated Joanna moved forward and was clipped by a perfectly timed left hook from Rose. Seeing an underdog beat perhaps the most respected female MMA fighter fighting today was quite a treat. A rematch seems inevitable, and I personally can't wait to see it. We'll see if everything that has been said about Joanna underestimating Rose holds up. Was it a fluke, or does Rose have the skills and gameplaning abilities to beat Joanna a second time? Only time will tell, but either way, it'll be something truly exciting to witness.
MMA FIGHT: Eddie Alvarez vs Justin Gaethje
Honestly, as we drew closer toward the end of the year, there were no fights that wowed me on a deep enough level that made me think "ah, yes, this fight is clearly a contender for my fight of the year." Don't get me wrong, there were quite a few fights I enjoyed in 2017. I can't remember any card not having at least a couple fights that left me satisfied. Still, nothing really stuck with me the way fights like Lawler vs Condit did last year. Then Eddie Alvarez vs Justin Gaethje happened. This fight had everything any type of fight fan could ever want. Many descriptions of this fight frame it as a primal, vicious brawl, and on some level it was, but both fighters were doing more than just swinging like some sort of Wanderlei Silva vs Brian Stann sequel (which, don't get me wrong, was a fight I loved also). In this fight Alvarez used excellent head movement, doubled up on punches with the same hand, feinted takedowns to set up strikes, and switched between attacks to the body and head. When Gaethje started defending Alvarez's body shots, Alvarez would to go the head. When Gaethje started holding his hands high, Alvarez went to the body. Add in some superbly faked takedowns (with the occasional attempt for a real one) that further threw off Gaethje's defenses and you can see why Alvarez is at the very top of the sport.
Meanwhile, while Gaethje's approach was a little less sophisticated than Alvarez's, he was still strategically using his leg kicks to wear Alvarez down throughout the fight. During his best moments, he brilliantly used the threat of leg kicks to set up other strikes. His most successful punches came while Alvarez was worried about taking more abuse on his legs, particularly his lead leg, and especially in the later rounds. While Gaethje lost, the fact that Alvarez could barely stand shows just how important a weapon leg kicks can be. This match will go down as an all-time great fight, as it was the rare type of fight that satisfied everyone from the chaos-loving casual fan to the more technical-minded hardcore fans. Considering Gaethje, a relative newcomer, did so well against a fighter of Alvarez's caliber, his performance is hardly anything to be ashamed of. The only real losers of the bout were Henry Cejudo and Sergio Pettis, who had to fight immediately after this instant classic. Hopefully this fight ends up giving both Alvarez and Gaethje more recognition among casual MMA fans. They both more than deserve it.
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY: Brain Benefits of Exercise
Everyone knows that exercise is good for your body. Most of us have even heard that it's good for our mental health, and those of us that exercise regularly can tell from first hand experience that it does with great certainty. But how about helping our brain as a whole?
More and more research over the last few years has delved into the effect that exercise has on our brains. Not just the ability to temporarily boost mood, but on the more profound neurobiological effects on your brain chemistry. The results have been pretty dramatic. Exercise has been shown to help memory and prevent neurologically degenerative diseases like dementia and Alzhiemer's as you age.
The reason exercise benefits your brain is because of the process of neurogensis. Don't be fooled by the sci fi-sounding name, neurogensis simply means the creation of new neurons in your brain. The newest scientific studies are showing that exercise benefits neurogenesis, both in creating healthier neurons and engaging in neurogenesis more often. Mixed with the fact that exercise has already been shown to reduce signs of depression for a long time, it's time to start thinking of exercise as not just important for physical health, but brain health.
Maybe the jocks were the smartest of us all in high school?
SCIENTIFIC INVENTION: Floating Wind Farms
Wind energy is rad because it doesn't create carbon emissions, which is kind of a big deal when scientists agree man-made climate change is a thing. Alternative forms of energy are vital when it comes to keeping society going while also making sure we don't completely wreck our planet. Or, more accurately, affect our planet in a way that adversely affects most life on Earth, including us. Earth will be fine whether or not we survive.
One of the issues with wind energy, however, is that it requires immense amounts of land to properly operate. While we aren't exactly facing land shortages in the United States, that isn't necessarily the case in other places. Luckily, another location for wind farms has emerged: the water.
Earlier this year, Scotland opened the world's first floating wind farm. The technology uses an incredibly sophisticated software that responds to the wind and water current at sea which allows the wind farm to be productive out on the water. Considering water makes up 71% of Earth's surface, floating wind farms could someday be an even bigger source of power than landed wind farms.
The costs of a floating wind farm are still far too high for it to be used on a wider scale, but estimates are that costs can be made affordable by 2030. If that happens, Scotland's bold first step could be an important one in creating a future where energy is sustainable and we aren't wrecking our environment. Let's hope so.
BULLSHIT NEWS STORY: Trump in General
Usually this spot is reserved for silly, apolitical false news stories that reveal something about us as a society. I'm kinda sad that can't be the case this year. Not because I don't like getting political, but because this is usually the one place on the list I can flex my social psychology muscle. With Trump's penchant for making things up and calling everything he dislikes "fake news" to no negative consequence, however, it's a little disingenuous to have a category about bullshit news and not bring this up. As a historian, it's hard not to be at least a little concerned.
There's a countless amount of blatantly false things Trump has said this year, to the point where articles consulting psychologists have been written to analyze what Trump's lies mean for our national psyche. Politicians of every political party lie, but the amount and scope of Trump's lies are truly unprecedented. Most concerning are his lies that stoke fires of bigotry, such as his completely unsubstantiated claim back in 2016 that he would've won the popular vote if undocumented immigrants hadn't engaged in mass voter fraud. This anti-immigrant rhetoric has real consequences in the form of hate crimes and anti-immigration legislation, so it's anything but harmless.
Now, when it comes to his accusations of "fake news" against mainstream news outlets, I wanna be careful here and point out that mainstream news outlets aren't perfect. Aside from normal human errors that will happen in any human endeavor, mainstream news outlets are motivated by profit, resulting in misleading clickbait articles that have attention grabbing-headlines that often end up being bullshit. Also, news outlets are corporations, and corporate conflict of interests do have an effect on the news we read.
But Trump isn't talking about that. To him, credible news is news that covers him favorably, and fake news is news that covers him unfavorably. That should alarm anyone who gives a shit about democracy. While I don't think Trump is going to destroy what democracy we do have or turn the US into a dictatorship, or even think that it's a concrete goal of his, his disdain for the free press is alarming, and he could very well lay the ground work for the erosion of free press and democracy in the future. It sounds hard to believe, but history shows us that every society and its institutions are vulnerable to decay. Never think that things will always remain the way they are.
ACTUAL NEWS STORY: Me Too
Could there be any doubt? Created by Tarana Burke in 2007 as a slogan of sorts for her non-profit Just Be Inc, a nonprofit dedicated to helping survivors of sexual assault, the movement took off in October of this year amid the uncovering of the Harvey Weinstein's heinous, extensive list of sexual assaults he committed using his position of power. As more women came forward, actress Alyssa Milano used the hashtag #metoo as she voiced support for Rose McGowan and other survivors of sexual assault.
The flood gates opened. The Me Too movement has become an incredibly powerful one that has allowed countless sexual assault survivors, primarily women but also men and non-binary folks, to come forward about their experiences and, this is the big one, possibly even see consequences for the predators. Many famous and/or powerful men have been called out. It's nice to see that more people feel able like they can talk about their experiences and even see consequences for their abusers to prevent them from doing the same thing to more people in the future.
There are only two issues that muddy the waters. One is the fact that, in the wake of a wealthy white woman being the one to spread this hashtag, the truth that Burke coined this phrase is being pushed aside in many conversations about the Me Too movement. Now, it should be noted that Milano herself has done everything she can to give Burke credit, but quite frankly, too much of the media covering this is still attributing things to Milano. This is an ugly continuation of the historical trend of prioritizing powerful women, particularly white women, over less powerful women, particularly women of color.
The other issue is that a lot of this has been framed as a problem of sexual assault in the entertainment industry, when there are also politicians (of both major parties) and business people who are being accused, but often not receiving quite the same attention. President Trump is one of them. And it'd be fucking ridiculous to pretend it only happens in those industries, too. It's just that powerful women in the entertainment, political, and business industries will have more ability to call these things out than everyday women.
Still, it's nice to see such a reckoning of terrible people happen, and I hope it doesn't fade from the public eye soon. We need to make sure all predatory people of all types, in all industries, are held accountable. Hopefully this trend continues, and that those who sexually assault less powerful women begin to see consequences, too.
MEME: Distracted Boyfriend Meme
This meme may have been over-saturated by the end of its run, like all popular memes, but people have created some truly outstanding ones. Here's a great collection of them.
VIDEO: "Keep Politics Out of Games"
One of the hottest topics in the gamer community is whether or not video games should be considered art. Obviously, most people in the gamer community say yes. Personally, I fall somewhere between "yes, because video games at their best can offer thoughtful, poignant experiences comparable to other creative mediums at their best" and "who cares, the concept of 'real art' is often arbitrary, elitist, and ultimately pointless."
However, despite our fervent defense of games as art, it's also become a rallying cry of gamers upset with critical analyses of gaming to respond with the rally cry "it's just a game, get your politics out of my fun past time!"
We can't have it both ways, gamers. I've written about the subject before. But this video from Games As Literature articulates a similar argument with much more detail and historical context than my post does. Definitely give this video a watch, as well as the Games As Literature channel in general. He has great analyses of the literary story-telling devices in games that I haven't seen anywhere else on the internet (my personal favorite being his analysis of the underrated RPG Legend of Dragoon).
PHOTO: Richard Spencer Catching Those Hands
Glorious.
BADASS: Female YPJ Forces
Tracing its roots back to the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War began with demonstrations against the Bashar al-Assad regime that escalated into armed conflict in March of 2011 thanks to the authoritarian violence of Assad. The war has raged on since. The death toll has been enormous, and that's saying nothing of the people who have been displaced or the infrastructure that has been destroyed, which in turn results in basic needs of many of those in Syria not being met.
One of the least encouraging parts of the early days of the Syrian Civil War was how chaotic it was, and how the opposition against it was so splintered. The only organized opposition at first seemed to be ISIS/ISIL, aka the Earth's biggest assholes, so it became a bit of a conundrum. Who do you support in the battle between Assad's violent secular authoritarianism and ISIL's violent religious fundamentalism? Things seemed grim for people who wanted basic human decency to win out in Syria.
Since then the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have emerged. Initially a majority Kurdish force despite Kurds being a minority in the region, it has since grown and includes a large amount of Arabs as well. The SDF fights for secular social democracy in the region, standing as an important contrast to both Assad and ISIL.
Among the fighters of the SDF are the Women's Protection Units (or YPJ, which is the Kurdish acronym for these forces). Because the SDF's goals include the liberation of women, women have organized and fought in these YPJ units against Assad, ISIL, and other regressive forces in Syria. More can be found out about these women here. Long story short, though, these women are incredibly brave badasses who face especially dire consequences if they fail (especially against ISIL for what they do to women), but they keep fighting on and gaining ground despite the risks.
