Red Sox 2025 Preview Post

Posted on March 26, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Good reader, you might remember that last season I was unwilling to write a preview post because the ownership group that brought us so much joy, that broke the curse and then won three more World Series, decided not to retain the services of one Mookie Betts (still bitter), and then decided it was okay to run a payroll 60 million below the luxury tax (completely unacceptable when you charge $50 for a bleacher seat).

And here we are one mere year later, with the Sox sporting a $210 million dollar payroll. Still about 30 million below the luxury tax. But they did have an off-season that resembles what a major league team with significant capital would do if they were actually trying to compete. And so here I am writing a preseason preview. I don’t know how I feel about it, but here I am.

Let’s Start with the Rotation

I opened last year’s tirade screaming about how a team so far under the luxury cap didn’t pay for starting pitching, when a very good, Cy Young award winning pitcher, Blake Snell, was sitting there waiting to be paid. Well, this year we acquired a very good starting pitcher in Garrett Crochet. The prospect capital we gave up to acquire said pitcher is quite reasonable–while Teel and Meirdroth might become useful MLB players, neither are likely to shape the future of their franchises. Last year’s first round pick Braden Montgomery might be that guy, but he has yet to take a professional at-bat. And you risk that to get a pitcher of Crochet’s talent. He is a guy who can change the future of your franchise. He is a strikeout machine, with five pitches–one of which is one of the most devastating sliders in baseball. He also comes with a devastating injury history, one which led the White Sox to use him extraordinarily carefully last year. Essentially, they managed his innings as cautiously as possible to make sure he made it through the season and could be traded this offseason. So, yes, the Red Sox acquired two years of a phenomenal, top-of-the-rotation starter, but they shouldn’t have stopped there. [Sidenote: they still haven’t extended him, so let’s see if they are willing to pay 200 or so million that a pitcher of his value–injury history be damned–will command. Otherwise, it might be back to the boycott].

This season, 4 incredible pitchers were on the free agent market. Two of them went to the Dodgers, the aforementioned Snell and Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki. One–Max Fried–went to the Yankees. That left Corbin Burnes, who has one of the *best* health grades Baseball Prospectus writer Jeff Zimmerman has given in recent memory. Burnes isn’t Crochet–he doesn’t have that ceiling. But he has thrown more innings than anyone else in baseball over the past 3 seasons. And they have been really good innings. Burnes went to Arizona on a 6 year, $210 million contract that will pay him from his age 30 to age 35 seasons. Very reasonable–33 million a year for one of the (at worst) 7 best pitchers in baseball.

Ahem. Why were the Red Sox reasonable about this? This was not the time to be reasonable. As I wrote last year, the Red Sox have a number of high level prospects entering the major leagues this year–this warrants real excitement! But their minor league system does not contain a single pitching prospect of note. Fangraphs has not released their 2025 top organization prospects list for Boston yet, last year’s list only had two pitching prospects in the organization’s top ten, and one of them is now property of the New York Yankees. The remaining one, ranked #9 in the organization last year, Jedixson Paez (yes that is his name, I did not misspell that), is a good prospect, but isn’t the type of prospect that makes you giddy with anticipation.

My point is that Corbin Burnes was sitting there, waiting to be paid, and we had A LOT of money to spend. Before signing the zombie corpse of Walker Buehler, who I will discuss briefly below, we were about 55 million below the luxury tax threshold. Now, rumors are that Burnes took less money so that he could opt out in two years (and still have the remaining 6 years if some traumatic injury should find his right arm). YO. RED SOX OFFER THIS GUY MORE MONEY. That’s how this works. You don’t have to pay Walker Buehler’s zombie corpse 22 million dollars. Pay Corbin Burnes’ very healthy body 35 or even 40 million dollars. Especially if what he wants is an opt-out. Here’s a 7 year, 240 million dollar contract that pays you 40 million in each of the first two years, and then 32 million in the rest of the years. And, see, 40 is bigger than 33, and 240 is bigger than 210. Slight unreasonable? Maybe. But then we have a great, healthy pitcher at the top of the rotation and not a one-year deal with a zombie corpse.

And the reason, dear reader, this is so important is that 1) the rest of the Red Sox rotation is probably not good and 2) the AL East is in reach. Point 1: Bello, Crawford, Houck–these guys might be good. But they might not. They played well last year, but each has some kind of limitation that means that you really can’t count on them. Bello has one of the worst fastballs in baseball. See–that’s bad. He got by last year living off his breaking stuff, which doesn’t grade out as amazing but is deceptive enough to get by. But not having a fastball is bad. Crawford has a fastball, but that’s all he has. And that’s not good. It is bad actually, to only have a fastball. Houck also has a fastball so bad that he had to stop throwing it. Last year he lived of a sinker (a two-seam fastball), but that can be a fickle existence in the majors. His slider was okay (4% better than league average). His other pitchers were about 15% below league average. See-that’s bad too. Lucas Giolito, once a rising star, missed all of last season with an injury and was living off a junk ball repertoire before he got hurt (in both 2022 and 2023, 3 of his 4 pitches graded out below league average). That’s bad. Walker Buehler, who I perhaps unfairly referred to as a zombie corpse above, looked really mediocre last season returning from injury, aside from a few decent playoff starts. And Buehler wasn’t great in 2022 before his injury that cost him to miss all of 2023. At least his name will be fun to say with a Boston accent. That’s good. But his pitching? That will probably be mediocre or maybe even bad. And, oh, Bello, Crawford, and Giolito are all hurt to start the season. So enter Richard Fitts (who is actually a kind of fun prospect but also might give up so many home runs that he rides a ball back to Worcester). But, then, also enter a thing called “Sean Newcomb” who last had an effective major league season in 2018 and whose scattered statistics since 2021 are so bad as to make children weep. That’s your opening day #5 starter.

See what I am saying is that the Red Sox rotation is probably bad. And that, if it were good, we might win an AL East that should be really competitive this year, especially after the Yankees lost their ace in spring training. But, to *really* compete, we would have had to spend significant money on a long-term deal for a great player. And this fucking ownership group–this collection of assholes who let Mookie Betts leave–they don’t want to do that.

Moving onto the bullpen–it isn’t good. One guy, Liam Hendricks, is a guy for whom we should all root. Hendriks missed most of 2023 battling cancer, and returned to finish out the season. Amazing. Shortly after his return, he blew out his arm and needed Tommy John surgery. Tragic. The Red Sox signed him to a two-year deal, ostensibly paying for his rehab year and then getting the following year at a discount. I’m rooting for the guy. I am. But I am not sure how much will be in the tank. But signing him–that was a class move. It buys good will.

And how do the Red Sox spend that will, you ask? By signing Aroldis Chapman. Why does signing him squander good will? Because he was suspended for domestic violence, and was rather unapologetic about that fact. Fuck that guy. Why are we paying him? There were other younger and better relief options on the market. And they didn’t choke their girlfriends or “accidentally” fire a bullet while threatening them with the weapon. Sigh. SIGH. S-I-G-H.

The rest of the bullpen has some interesting/capable arms. Justin Slaten is the most talented of the bunch–he has a good fastball and some decent to good secondary pitches, but he isn’t an elite reliever. Hopefully old friend Garret Whitlock can be effective again after a few rough, injury-laden years. Beyond those two, there’s a lot of mediocrity, and if I am somewhat skeptical of this team reaching their Vegas over/under of 86.5 wins, the bullpen has a lot to do with it. Bullpens can be fickle–and so it is possible that these guys all overperform a bit and my concerns are exaggerated. But I don’t think that’s the most probably outcome, and neither does any projection system or baseball analyst you could find.

Hey, These Guys Can Hit!

Talking about the Sox’s offense is a lot more fun. This offense was good last year, and it figures to be much better this year. And not just because they signed Alex Bregman. Let’s start there–Bregman is a very good player who is being paid A LOT of money. He signed what is on the surface a 3 year, 120 million dollar contract. No one thought Bregman would get a $40 million AAV entering free agency. But the contract is only 3 years, and he has an opt-out after every year. So who knows how long he stays in Boston. While he is here, he gives us a desperately needed right-handed. And he gives us a potential defensive upgrade at 3B–though that has come with some bit of controversy, as incumbent third baseman, Rafael Devers, he who has a nice $313 million dollar contract (look, I know above I said the Red Sox won’t make long-term investments and you were probably thinking what about that Devers contract and thinking about the circumstances that led to that contract, like the way the team didn’t learn a thing from *not* extending Betts earlier in his career, led them to wait until the last possible moment to sign Devers after ownership was publicly booed at an event makes me very angry so I am not going to write about that any more). Okay, so, yes, your incumbent third baseman has a $313 million dollar contract and really wants to be your third baseman even if statistics and the ole “eye test” suggest he should not play third base. [EDIT: Almost immediately after posting this, Alex Cora announced that Bregman would be the starting 3B for the 2025 season, and Devers would start the year at DH]. So, I don’t know how the Bregman at third base thing will work out. It may be that Bregman moves to second. It may be that Devers moves to first. I don’t think moving Devers to first is a good idea, because his struggles at thirdbase are glove related more than they are arm related. This will be something to track early in the season as Devers works his way back from a spring training injury.

Let’s talk Bregman for a quick minute. Bregman has been a very good and consistent hitter. His “back of the baseball card” numbers are solid. He’s projected to hit .260 / .320 / .424 by OOSPY next year. It is that last number–the slugging number that OOPSY thinks will drop compared to his career slugging of .483. Why? Because Bregman played in a very hitter friendly park in Houston. Now, Fenway is also a hitter friendly park, but not for home runs. And especially not for the kind of home runs Bregman has hit. He isn’t a max exit velocity smasher. He’s a solid contact guy. Solid enough contact, clean enough barrels to get 23, 25, and 26 home runs to leave the park the last three years. But I’m not sure we should expect that in Fenway, it is likely that a lot of those home runs become doubles. And it is likely, as he ages into his 30’s that he loses a bit of power. Projection systems aren’t sure he can afford to lose much and still be a 20+ HR guy. But he is still a great teammate and defender, and the team is a lot better with him than without him.

What makes the “will Bregman play third” conversation a bit more spicy is that the Red Sox seemingly have their second baseman of the future, and his name is Kristian Campbell. In a way Campbell came out of nowhere last season to emerge as Kieth Law’s #6 prospect in all of baseball. Fangraphs has him at #7. He’s a bat-first prospect who has enough athleticism to spend time at CF and SS while in the minors (though you probably don’t want him playing either in MLB). Last year, he put up an amazing season across A+ (40 games), AA (56 games), and AAA (19 games) in his age 22 season: a .330 / .439 / .558 line with 20 home runs and 24 steals. He’ll be starting the season at second base and is expected to hit 6th. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him leading off or hitting 2nd by mid-season. Or, perhaps, I’m really hoping he plays well enough to earn that opportunity. And–again–if he does, it means that it is unlikely Bregman would get moved over to second base.

The other Red Sox uber prospect, Ramon Anthony, didn’t make the team out of spring training. That surprised me a bit–Anthony was incredible at AA and AAA last year–a .291 / .396 / .498 line. That’s lower than Campbell’s, but Anthony did it with a lower BABIP (less luck on balls in play) and a better BB rate. I am not sure what else he can learn/prove in the minors. I don’t want to think the Sox demoted him to manipulate his contract and playing time, so I’ll argue that they moved him down to showcase Wilyer Abreu, the staring LF, in preparation for a trade. Abreu himself is only 26 years old, and had a productive rookie season last year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Red Sox package him with Tristan Casas to acquire a starting pitcher. It was leaked that the Sox were close to trading Casas to Seattle for Luis Castillo, but the trade fell apart because the Sox wanted the Mariners to take on Yoshida’s contract, which they refused. Abreu could be on the roster all year, and I’d be fine with that. But eventually Roman Anthony is coming. Incumbent CF Ceddanne Rafaela is an excellent defender but comes with a lot of offensive questions, so Anthony might end up there. RF is claimed–I cannot see Duran playing anywhere else. So, it feels like LF is where Anthony will break in.

There’s another Red Sox prospect to discuss here–former #4 over all pick Marcelo Mayer. After a poor 2023 season that saw him struggle in AA, Mayer wrecked AA in 2024. In 77 games he hit .307 / .370 / .480. He only hit 8 home runs, but had 28 doubles, signaling that he has real line drive power. His defense at shortstop is questionable, and so it is uncertain where he might play when he does reach the league, but that will be a nice problem for the Sox to have.

Season Projection

Well. There’s other things to write, but I believe I this has gone long enough this year. I am back listening to spring training games and looking forward to opening day. There’s enough talent on this roster, or on its way, to be excited about their chances to compete for a playoff spot in 2025 (although the rotation depth and the bullpen give reason to temper the enthusiasm). This is a weird season for team projections. Fangraphs has the Red Sox, after the Bregman signing, as the 7th best team in baseball, projecting 85 wins. That should raise an eyebrow–the 7th best team in baseball only 4 games above .500? Weird. But they have 15 teams–half the league–winning between 86 and 82 games. Wild. That means the projection system sees a lot of parity, which is another way of saying has little idea who is actually good this year. Or, maybe, that we have a lot of good teams and baseball is too unpredictable to say who might be great. If you want to believe the Sox are great, then you don’t think about the bullpen, and you do look at all the good, shiny, young hitters who are about to join this team. I can’t overlook that bullpen, nor the question marks in the rotation, so I will say 84 wins. But this year, unlike last year, I’ll actually be happy if they over perform my projection. Maybe.

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ENG 319 11.M: Project 3, Reading Cavarero

Posted on March 23, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan

  • Project 3 Description
  • Hypothesis Social Annotation
  • Write Up #5
  • Play

Project Three Description

I want to think we can collectively build a better world, and I think rhetoric is essential to that possibility. We need to be able to help people recognize the value of change and to persuade them that the world can be built in more equitable ways. That seems like a pretty good definition of rhetoric–using communication to change the way people think about what is good for the world and what is possible to achieve in the world.

But what if rhetoric weren’t simply a matter of communication? Of speaking the right words or writing the best sentences? A video.

For years I have tried to design assignments that ask people to do things in the world. But it usually involved symbolic action–writing something or designing something or even creating a weird video about something or someplace. But, as I was reading Cavarero in my grad class in the spring of 2023, I started to think about a different kind of project.

I wrote the following paragraph in the fall of 2023, in a conference proposal, before I started teaching the spring 2024 section of this class. Here’s how I described what I thought would be the project you are about to begin:

Third, I will report on a project planned for a spring 2024 upper-division rhetorical theory class that will aim to stage an experience of political plurality. Students will read Arendt’s essay “Action and the ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’” selections on action, presence, and politics from The Human Condition, and Cavarero’s Surging Democracy. They will then collaborate to plan, organize, and execute what I have tentatively named a “rhetorical carnival” (I will charge students with renaming the event). The event will be a two-hour long gathering in the University Commons that includes a range of activities aiming to produce the “joy” that Arendt describes. A spring 2023 graduate seminar brainstormed a few possible ideas, many of which draw on elements of improv comedy and performance: a Soul-Train inspired dance line (as opposed to line dancing, which aims at homogenous movement), collaborative storytelling, and an anti-selfie station (based on Cavarero’s critique of the political selfie in Surging Democracy).

A few corrections/adjustments:

  • We might not have time to read the Arendt. I would rather spend more time carefully reading the Cavarero than trying to rush through more material
  • We will be participating in the UPC’s spring activities day. I will have more information about this participation soon
  • You will be designing a collection of activities that people will do
  • You will have to tell me what makes those events resonate with “public happiness” and the explication Cavarero provides for that term
  • I still want to know what an anti-selfie might be

As I mentioned earlier, I gave a conference presentation on this project at the summer 2024 Rhetoric Society of America conference, and that talk (slightly expanded) will be published in an edited collection called Just Rhetoric this summer. I will do my best not to steer you towards the conclusions (and activities) that we developed last year. This year is different–you are different, I am different, and our world is different–but I do want to sincerely say that I think this project, both its theoretical and performative dimensions, serve as a nice capstone to this seminar. At its core, it asks you to read some pretty intricate theory–on politics, communication, human being(s)–and then translate that theory into a list of criteria. We will use those criteria to both develop and critique experiences that can be included in our yet-to-be-renamed “Carnival.”

Reading to Develop Criteria

Our goal is to develop activities that promote the idiosyncratic experience of public happiness that Arendt describes. So, we need to make sure we have a critical vocabulary for developing and critiquing proposed activities and experiences. For what are we aiming? What must we avoid? These are the questions you will be trying to answer in your first reading assignment. As I mentioned before break, I will be away at a conference this Wednesday and Friday, so I am charging you with essentially three tasks.

  1. Read (and Annotate?) Cavarero
  2. Collaborate to Create a List of Terms, Concepts, Questions (with definitions and citation to pages). I am thinking that we will do this collaboratively in class next Wednesday–but you should be prepared to contribute. So if you aren’t using hypothesis (see below), then you better be keeping track of the five criteria in a google doc or something
  3. Do a Write-Up

Number One: Read (and Annotate?) Cavarero
We’ll start by reading pages 1-56 of Cavarero’s Surging Democracy. I would like to try using social annotation, which means I’ll ask that you create a free account with Hypothesis. Once you create your free account, follow these instructions to use Hypothesis’ social annotation tools. Note: I looked at a few different social annotation softwares and chose “hypothes.is” because-despite the annoying extra period–it has an excellent reputation for honoring user privacy and data.

As you annotate with hypothesis, I want you to use two kinds of tags.

  • Recall from the Preface that Cavarero introduces five key terms corresponding to Arendt’s notion of politics: plural, horizontal, nonviolent, generative, and affirmative (x). Okay, let’s tag passages that help us to understand what those words mean.
  • Use the tag “question” to indicate a passage that you want me to address in class, or one that you want to discuss with the class.
  • Use the tag “suggest” to indicate a potential new term or criteria for our activities that doesn’t fall into one of the five in the first bullet above.

Fingers crossed, I will do a quick in class demonstration.

Write-Up #5
I recognize that the first 57 pages of Cavarero will cover a lot of intellectual ground. I don’t want papers that simply try to summarize it, and it would be foolish to try and summarize all of it. We’ll be doing plenty of work in class that aims at summary. You can explicate–bring further explanation, try to understand, work through a difficult paragraph line by line–but don’t just summarize.

By this point in the semester, I am hoping that you can respond to the Cavarero–what parts of this grab your attention? What claims or characterizations would you challenge? How might Lanham/Miller/Blankenship respond to specific paragraphs? What sentence could you write a book about? If Cavarero were on [TV Game Show] what might the [Questions, topics, games, events, challenges] be?
How might [movie, story, video game] be different if Cavarero wrote it? If Cavarero attended the Sanders / AOC event on campus over the break, what might she say about it? What would you say to Cavarero living in America 4 years after the publication of her book? Which of Cavaero’s key theoretical terms make the most/least sense to you? Which seems the most/least pragmatic/possible in the current political context? Etc etc etc.

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ENG 231 11.M: Trolley Problems, Video Games, and a Wicked Brief Overview of Ethics

Posted on March 23, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Morals vs Ethics
  • [Absurd] Trolley Problems?
  • Wicked Brief Overview of Moral and Ethical Systems

Morals vs Ethics

This will be the shorter version of a longer lecture. The short version is that morals and moral reasoning is a rule-based reasoning. This might be religious, in the form of the ten commandments. This might be secular, in the form of a constitution, a military procedure, or an academic code. If you want to be a good person, follow those rules. When you encounter a real world situation, then consult the rules. The rules here “transcend” every day reality, they come from a higher place or source (whether divine or secular, God or Reason).

Ethics is often seen as how we make decisions when the rules don’t seem to apply, or conflict, or just feel off a bit. A now antique television show was quite good at exploring the space between moral law and ethics–NBC’s Law and Order. That show often tried to show us how the clean, black and white, abstract, transcendent nature of the law often felt off when applied to very messy, grey, imbricated, and material nature of human existence.

I think of ethics a bit differently than that. My understanding of ethics is heavily indebted to the work of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, a Jewish phenomenological philosopher who spent time in Nazi prison camps and was fortunate enough to survive. Levinas’s work encourages us to recognize our aversion to difference, and the lengths humans will go to eliminate alterity (that which is strange, different, unknown or unknowable to them). He jests that we have an allergy to the strange and different, to what he terms “the other” or “alterity.” We want to design a world with which we are already familiar, a world of “the same.” To eliminate questions that make us uncomfortable. Rather than deal with the other, we desire the same–we desire to know, label, categorize, understand something. Facing something we do not know, or cannot know, can bring out the worst in us. To be ethical, for Levinas, is to learn to inhabit this discomfort, disequilibrium and repress the desire to transform something other into something familiar, what he calls “the same.” To welcome the other as an other, to let them be different, rather than to convert them into the “same” thing that I already know.

So ethics, for Levinas, is learning to recognize and prioritize others, to put their needs ahead of our own. Ethics becomes extra-complicated when we realize that others make different demands on us–and no matter how generous we might want to be, we cannot give everything to everyone (the problem with the mantra “do unto others” is two-fold–first it assumes that the other would want what I would want, second it assumes all others would want the same things). To give to one other often means we have to take away from another other (Levinas, whose philosophy draws heavily on the first Testament and the Talmud, calls this the choice between the other and the neighbor). Thus, in his later career, Levinas pays more attention to the concept of justice. Justice requires I choose between the competing demands of the other and the neighbor–that I chose knowing I must betray one of them. Their is no justice without choice, no choice without imposition. [Levinas’s formula: to make the choice that causes the least amount of violence]. This hurts us twice: first, that we must acclimate ourselves, second that we must have the fortitude and courage to make a decision that will cause unhappiness, pain, or worse. There is no “pure” unfettered, nonviolent option.

More than just an analytical science of how we act, ethics for me marks our ability to handle, to process, the unknown. How do we feel, and respond to our feelings, when we encounter the strange? Do we curl back in repulsion? Express exasperation (*why do they do that? that’s so weird?*). Or do we become self-critical? Do we invite reflection (*why don’t I do that?*). In short, for Levinas ethics is a practice of hospitality. How/do we welcome the stranger? Something different? Further, what happens when we encounter something we cannot control, when we have to make a decision with no clear right answer, when we face something that resists our mastery? Do we have the strength to face and decide?

I believe that the more we recognize and study ethics (as moments of moral indecision), the better we become at carefully choosing how to act when we have no one true, certain, “right” answer to guide our choice. We have to learn to deal with complexity, and the icky feeling that it can produce in us. Video games can help us do that. The point of moral philosophy, of interrogating why we think or feel a particular way, why we make a decision, is to become more familiar with what we value. To reveal consistency, or inconsistency. To invite indecision or the second guess. To, hopefully, learn to live more thoughtfully. We have already talked about video games, procedurality (the power of making us do) and catharsis (the power of making us feel). Now lets cook this all together by adding in some cognitive friction (the power to make us ethically confused) and complicity (the power to make us feel responsible): so that video games train us to handle uncertainty and act ethically in the world by making us do things that feel bad and making us feel very, very responsible. Enter Detroit: Become Human.

Our last project, focused on the work of Miguel Sicart and the game Detroit: Become Human questions whether games, by constructing *sophisticated* ethical problems, can make players more ethical in the sense I have just worked out. The reading you will do for homework will provide us some insight into how Sicart thinks moral problems should (and shouldn’t) be formulated in games to best encourage the kind of critical thinking and questioning I describe in the previous paragraph.

Trolley Problems and Absurd Trolley Problems

Here is a link.

Do a thing!

A Wicked Brief Introduction to Moral Systems

Given the complexity of human decision making, there’s a lot of different theories and approaches to ethics. Let me lay out 4 of them:

  • Deontology or Moral Law
  • Teleology or Consequentialism
  • Virtue Ethics
  • Hospitality Ethics

Deontological ethics are based on identifying moral laws and obligations. To know if we are making the right decision, we ask ourselves what the rules are. For instance, if you didn’t lie to Herschel because lying is wrong, then you were invoking a deontological frame. You made a deontological decision. You worked back from the specific concrete moment to a (prior) conviction (philosophical knowledge that precedes any human experience, stuff we might “innately” know, is termed “a priori”–some empirical philosophers, like John Locke, argue that nothing is a priori, everything is learned). Deontological ethics get critiqued because sometimes moral laws come into conflict and because it requires absolute adherence to the law without thought of context. At core: God, Reason, Science, common sense dictate right from wrong. Hey, look, Kant.

Consequential ethics look ahead, from the action and decision, to its consequences. You use prior knowledge to make hypotheses about what will happen. Your focus here isn’t on what other people or institutions would declare right or wrong, but on producing “the greater good.” This is often called utilitarianism, which strives to imagine what will make the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Another form of consequentialism is hedonism, which strives to make the most (personal) pleasure and minimize (personal) pain. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you further or kick you out of the farm, then you probably made a hedonistic decision. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you and kick you and Clementine out of the farm, then you made a consequential decision. Consequential ethics get critiqued because they can lead us into hurting minority populations. One could argue, for instance, that slavery contributed to the “greater good”–that enslaving 3 people makes life wonderful for 7. I’d say they are wrong–but one can rationalize pain in relation to happiness, which can lead us down dark paths, trying to calculate levels of pain, which is precisely why Kant thought of consequentialist ethics as “wishy washy” and wanted to develop something more universal. At core: act in service to the greater good.

Virtue ethics are a bit different–though, like consequential ethics they rely on our imagination. Virtue ethics asks us to imagine, in that situation how a good person would act. This, in a sense, mixes deontology (who is the good here? what rules do they follow? what institutions would they represent?) with the situational flexibility of consequentialism. If deontology operates around rules that govern behavior, virtue ethics begins by establishing the characteristics common to good people (bravery, compassion, justice, etc). Often we tie virtue ethics to a particular person–for instance, we might cite Martin Luther King’s dedication to non-violence, self-sacrifice, and self-discipline (but, like, if you try to tell me that MLK was “cooperative” or “less radical” then you are simply telling me you haven’t read MLK. MLK’s domestication is a topic for another day). At core: imagine what a great person would do in this situation.
If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you believe a good person should tell the truth and be brave, and trust others (etc.), then you are exercising virtue ethics. Note: this is different than deontology, because here you don’t *have* to follow the rules, and there might be times that lying (say, to protect someone from Nazi pursuit), is justified.

Ethics of hospitality also involve an effort of imagination; this time it is our task to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and imagine a decision from their perspective. Is this a decision we would want someone to make if they were in our position? We can think of this as a more radical version of the Christian ethic of the Golden Rule (from Lev. “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), except here we are self-skeptical enough to realize that the other might not want the same things as us. So rather than assume the other is just like us, we train ourselves to recognize and honor their difference, their alterity. Hence hospitality, since we train ourselves to welcome the strange, the unfamiliar. Ethics, here, trains people to negotiate the unknown and the contingent. Ethics as the impossibility of ever walking in another’s shoes, but trying like hell all the same. At core: ethics as making “space” for other people.

Homework

There is no class on Wednesday or Thursday as I will be away at an academic conference. In lieu of class, do two things:

  • Read Sicart’s “Moral Dilemmas” essay in the Files section of Canvas and respond to the questions in the Canvas 11.M assignment
  • Download the PollEverywhere App for a cell phone, tablet, or create an account on a laptop. We will start using this in next Monday’s class to collaboratively play Detroit: Become Human
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ENG 319 8.W: “A” Book List

Posted on March 5, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Books!

From the syllabus (edited):

Read an additional book on contemporary rhetorical theory and write up an academic book review. I will have a list of books by week 5 8. Book reviews will be due after Spring Break. You will design a class presentation and activity for week 13, 14, or 15 (note: these can be collaborative team projects). You will do an additional write-up paper (up to two single-spaced pages) to share with the class during weeks 13 or 14.

Here is a list of potential books:

If you would like to read another book on demagoguery, race, feminism/queer theory, human difference and ethics, or “politics” (in the sense that Arendt/Cavarero offer) that *isn’t* on this list, email me and include a link to the work (Amazon links are fine).

Note that you still qualify for an A- even if you do not complete this extra reading (and provided you have completed all other assignments).

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ENG 328 7.W: Color

Posted on February 26, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Two Extra Credit Opportunities
  • Color Theory
  • Color Tools

Two Extra-Credit Opportunities

Two things:

  • Submit prose, poetry, or art to The Crucible
  • Attend our English Alumni Panel. Friday, Feb 28th, 4:00pm, Ross 0280. Two class of 2020 graduates, Winsome Lewis (Editorial Coordinator) and Jenna VandeBrake (Email and Content Manager)

Color Theory

What are a few ways we understand color?

    Color Theory (Color wheel, complimentary, analogous, etc)
  • Color Value (Hue, Intensity, Shade, Tint, Saturation–see new basics 85)
  • Color Meaning (Color in Motion

A video on using color.

Color Tools

First, some nuts and bolts of print publishing. We should talk about the difference between color in print designs (CMYK) and (RGB). Here’s a short video.

When a printing press uses color, every color is applied by a plate that makes a lot of dots (with different saturation levels). There are four primary plates (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK), printers adjust the color on each layer to produce the rainbow of colors you see. Designers can specify the use of very specific colors, but these get quite expensive to use.

What this means in practice: if your color document is getting printed off a regular color printer, then you can use as many colors as you want with no additional charge. However, if you are printing something like, say, a textbook, then you will pay more for additional colors (especially if your colors require the use of additional plates). This is why a lot of print color schemes will be 3-4 colors, since that is what most places will give you as part of a base “color printing” job.

Third, there are a lot of color palette generation tools out there. These can be particularly useful because they often do the hardest part–color value (matching hue, intensity, and saturation levels) for you. For instance, let’s play around with a Canva tool.

There’s A LOT of color tools and generators out there.

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ENG 328 5.W: To Book or Press Kit? Also, WTF is a Zine?

Posted on February 12, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Semester Map
  • Menu Project or Book Project
  • Zine Project

A Pretty Realistic Calendar

  • Week One: Flyer Fix (intro Photoshop, basic layout, contrast, padding)
  • Week Two: Flyer Fix / Brochure (intro InDesign, laying type, margins, repetition)
  • Week Three: Brochure (con’t)
  • Week Four: Music (color, typography, more practice with Photoshop-especially layers)
  • Week Five: Brochure revision
  • Week Six: Menu Project OR Book Project (near impossible typography challenge; working with columns in InDesign OR learning how to thread a very long document in InDesign). ALSO: What is a Zine? What would your zine be about?
  • Week Seven: Finish Menu / Book [chapter: hierarchy and visual flow]
  • Week Eight: Zine
  • Week Nine: Zine
  • Week Ten: BREAK
  • Week Eleven: Crucible Project
  • Week Twelve: Crucible Project
  • Week Thirteen: Crucible Project / Go West Project
  • Week Fourteen: Go West Project
  • Week Fifteen: Go West Project
  • Week Sixteen: Final Exam Day [there is a final exam. you get an A if you show up and do it]

What to Do Next?

Perhaps a choice?

Book Production Project

Book Production Project

For the next few weeks, you will be using InDesign and Photoshop to design, arrange, flow, and produce a book of poetry from an author in public domain (note: a few people have asked if they can produce a volume of their own work; I don’t have a problem with this, although you might end up working alone). I’ve selected poetry because it requires far more attention to layout and typography than a regular text.

You will be working in teams of two for this project. We will form those groups either at the end of class today or at the beginning of class on Thursday. Each group will select a poet and produce a book of approximately 30 pages. In addition to poems, each book must include:

  • A front and back cover design
  • A title page
  • A copyright/copyleft page
  • A preface [you are responsible for writing the preface, it should be at least two pages. If you run out of things to say, you can flow some Lorem Ipsum.]
  • A table of contents

You might include other pages–for instance, part of an introduction by your author. You should include page numbers. You might also want to think about the design of your pages and whether you can include simple illustrations (strategically, perhaps not on every page).

As with our first project, we will do research into poetry editions in order to inform our design process. This will involve both digital research (into the covers for previous editions, Amazon can help here) and physical research (going to the library and looking at previous editions of the poems, getting measurements of page size, checking out typography first hand).

You can find full .txt files of poetry in public domain at the Gutenberg Project. Here’s a small list of the many authors the Gutenberg project includes:

You are not tied to this list; I only ask that the poet you work with is in public domain, as are all the files stored on the Gutenberg website. Essentially, you will likely have to work with authors who published prior to 1920. In the other class, I have a few people who are working with the bible (specifically, the songs of Solomon).

Finally, I have a creative writer in the other class who is creating a volume of her own work, and another person who is creating a volume of a friend’s work. I have no problem with that so long as the author provides you permission.

WTF is a Zine

WTF is a Zine?

As I’ve previously indicated, next week we will begin working on the Crucible Fall 2021 Design project. I will provide more concrete details for the project on Monday, but here’s some preliminary info:

  • For this project, you will have the option of working individually or in teams of two
  • You will develop a front and back cover for the issue, using student submitted art
  • The aesthetic, stylistic inspiration for your design should be influenced by the zine

So that last one leads us to the question of the day: WTF is a Zine? Kenneth Burke would remind us, via the properties of identification, association, and the negative, that such a question also asks us WTF is(n’t) a Zine? Such is any ontological project haunted: to seek what something is, its properties essential and inessential, we inevitably bound upon its boundaries, borders, limits.

And so I turn to Google, contemporary arbitrator of the market’s interminable wrangle:

Okay, so what adjectives can we already use to talk about zines?

Some more resources:

Shared space: What is a Zine? Google Doc.

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ENG 231 3.M: Procedural Paper Assignment

Posted on January 26, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Quick Paper Specs
  • Canvas Grading Rubric
  • Thesis Paragraphs

Quick Paper Specs

Okay, I hate writing these things. I like to read papers that you enjoy writing. But teaching writing is hard, because everyone has different experiences and has been taught different things. Know this: if you try to write a detailed and engaging paper that attempts to do the things below, you will get at least a B. And you always have an opportunity to revise.

I’m looking for the paper to “close read” at least two different scenes or design elements. Each of these readings should have an argument or claim (e.eg., “The scoring system in this game encourages us to want to eat more ice cream”) and then point at evidence of how the game element does the thing it claims to do. Typically, in academic writing, you want a paragraph to open with the claim, and then present the evidence. (“The scoring system in this game encourages us to want to eat more ice cream. At the end of chapter 1, for instance, Gretchen reminds us that eating ice cream makes the cows happy. If you complete the chapter without eating any ice cream, then the cows will smash through a wall and attack you. Most players, however, are likely to have eaten some ice cream. If you haven’t collected enough ice cream, the cows grow sad. Beyond this emotional response, the game also rewards you with a power-up if you are able to eat all the ice cream available in the chapter. I would argue that eating ice cream symbolizes paying taxes in the real world.”) Remember as you move through your analysis to use terms from the Bogost reading, the list of mechanics we discussed in class. And remember that you are building a theory of what this game is saying about our real world. Or a theory on how the game is using mechanics to amplify its emotional/aesthetic intent (what it wants you to feel, why it wants you to feel that).

  • Should be between 5 and 10 pages, double-spaced
  • Should be in MLA and APA format (page numbers, citation format, works cite/reference list)
  • Should use the following section headings:
    • Introduction. One/two paragraph(s) on your game, when it was made, its genre, and a super quick overview of the plot, the major story beats, and theme. Then the thesis paragraph. See below.
    • Defining Procedural Rhetoric. At least one page single spaced, probably 2. Has to cite Bogost, Custer, and Love (see pages 7-9 for discussion of Bogost). Address: what is procedural rhetoric? Why is it significant/important? Upon what other theories/terms/thinkers does it draw? What are some examples of it?
    • Optional Section: Bringing Use Closer to a Part of Your Game (don’t name it that). If you are playing a long game, or analyzing a specific part of it, then you might need a few paragraphs of description that sets up the specific thing(s) you will analyze.
    • Procedural Analysis of [Game Title]. Every paper tends to be different. But what I want here is close analysis of particular scenes, mechanics, or events. Give examples. You are welcome to use screenshots. Make sure the language and terms from the “Defining” section show up here.
  • Should have a title that does not suck
  • Should have an introduction that ends with a detailed, front-loaded thesis that you wrote AFTER you wrote the paper. I will know if you didn’t write it after the paper. I just will.

Crafting a Thesis Paragraph

Below I articulate three important elements of writing that I will use to evaluate your first paper: developing a specific thesis, properly contextualizing and analyzing evidence, and maintaining logical development.

That said, every piece of academic writing should offer a “thesis” in the introduction. I tend to hate this word, because it comes with so much baggage. For me, a strong thesis lays out AS SPECIFICALLY AS POSSIBLE what information a paper will present. It is a kind of idea map. Let me show you a few potential thesis statements:

  • I/this paper explain(s) Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment
  • I/this paper explain(s) Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment, noting his key terms and summarizing his suggestions for new teachers
  • I/this paper explain(s) how Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment might create problems for teachers who prioritize grammar as the central concern of writing. instruction

All those examples are bad. Though not equally bad. The first one is an F. The second one is also an F. They are equally devoid of specific thought. They are a placeholder for a thought that, at the time of writing, the writer did not yet have.

The third one is better. It is in the high C, low B range. It could potentially be higher based on what comes before or after it. If the next sentence detailed a list of problems, then it would be an “A.”

Okay, so what does an “A” look like? Examples:

  • I explain how Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment emphasizes the importance of familiarizing students with assessment rubrics, often through practice norming sessions
  • I explain how Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment calls for teachers to separate grading and assessment from the act of providing feedback. When students encounter feedback alongside grades, they often receive that feedback as a justification for a (bad) grade rather than as an attempt to guide and develop their abilities. Inoue makes clear that providing distance between grades and feedback increases the likelihood that students engage and implement feedback
  • I explain how Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment challenges traditional enforcement of “standard” English on the grounds that it severely and unjustly punishes students from multilingual backgrounds. The evidence Inoue presents creates problems for teachers who prioritize “proper” grammar as the central concern of writing.

Here’s the deal y’all: WRITE YOUR THESIS LAST. Trust me, I’ll know if you write the introduction before you write the paper. I’m a Jedi when it comes to this. And I will die on this hill (those of you who have taken 301 should know why). Pro-tip: when you are done with your rough draft compare the thesis in your intro to the conclusion. You won’t know what a paper is actually going to say until you write it!

Pro-tip #2: academic and professional writing are not mysteries. This isn’t Scooby-Doo. Don’t keep me in suspense. Make sure all the important things you find in the course of a paper appear in the first few sentences, paragraphs, or pages (depending on the length of the paper). Front load, front load, front load. Write the introduction last, so that you know what you have to introduce.

Let’s look at a sample paper.

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ENG 231 2.F: Procedural Analysis Paper

Posted on January 24, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Talk about Papers Please
  • What Do I Mean By the “Theme” of Your Game

What Do I Mean By the “Theme” of Your Game

Games are very different. Not all games have explicit themes. Not all games even have an easily discernible topic (think back to Tetris). Sometimes games, and stories, have meanings that the creator might not have intended or recognized. So, one of the first things I want you to do is to think about your game a bit, and see which of the questions below help you to frame the purpose of your game.

You have to do this, because the paper project asks you to think about how the mechanics of a game augment or diminish its theme (its message, its purpose)!

  • What does this game represent/do? [What is the theme? Rhetorical Purpose? Argument? Message? What does it want to say about being human or living in the world?]
  • Is the game making an argument about how we should behave in the real world?
  • Is the game addressing a human problem we might face in the world? How does it suggest/teach us to deal with that problem?
  • Do you think you are feeling/experiencing/thinking something that the developer didn’t intend? Is that an accident or because the game pushes you to think something that runs different to your politics / ideology?

Note, it is also possible to write a “this game does something really, really cool mechanically” paper, and then write about how that could have been even cooler if the game was more artfully constructed.

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ENG 328 1.W: Sins, Redesign

Posted on January 15, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Lay Out Sins
  • Mini-Project 1: The Remake
  • Playing with Photoshop
  • Homework (Canvas / Template)

Lay Out Sins

Let’s check out the discussion board in Canvas.

Mini-Project 1: Re-Make It Work

For homework I want you to read chapter 3 of the WSINYE, in which Hagen and Golombisky share their “Works Every Time” layout. They outline 7 parts of the layout:

  • margins (no bleed)
  • columns (two)
  • visual (graphic image)
  • cutline (alt text for image, not common)
  • headline
  • copy (body text)
  • tags (logos, etc)

Note: if you do not want to use the “works every time” layout, then you might look at some of the other layout options Golumbiski and Hagen discuss in chapter 6, or that Miller lays out in Chapter 4 (see page 26 for a very short summary).

You should choose one of the flyers from your layout sins slideshow for this project.

What is a bleed?. While I am not going to ask you to print your design, I’m going to ask you to pretend we are. This project is about learning some fundamental principles on how to create something (relatively) quickly that is “good enough.” The basic C.R.A.P. as it were. Bleeds cost money.

Why We Are Using Photoshop
I’ve debated what technology to use for this first project. I’ve decided against Canva–what I really want you to practice/internalize here is Golumbiski and Hagen’s formula, the “works every time” layout. I want you to practice selecting and sizing text, blocking out a page (working with space, proximity). I want you to select colors that work together and develop contrast. So, rather than work with a template, I’d like you to design your 8 1/2 by 11 flyer from the ground up.

The pedagogical justification for the insistence on Photoshop is tied to my recent research on artificial intelligence, writing, and metacognition. Put simply, my seminar last semester showed that a writer’s metacognition of the “rules” for writing directly impacted the quality of the writing they and the machine could produce. In our context, I believe it is important that you learn the rules for design, that you start from a blank page, so that you develop the metacognition necessary to determine what is (or isn’t) a good template.

Also, veterans of 301 will know that I want you to be proficient in the tools that appear in job advertisements. While I do see references to Canva appearing in jobs, I thoroughly believe a working knowledge of Photoshop–even the basics (cropping, color/lighting adjustment, typography) will serve you well in the job market and in life.

Given what I have written above, I want everyone to try and use Photoshop for this project. I don’t expect mastery and beauty–this project is as much about learning a new technology as it is about learning the principles of design.

Saving and Submitting Your File(s)
I don’t expect anyone in here will have experience in InDesign or Illustrator, but you are free to use those if you want.

As you work in Photoshop, you should frequently save your file. The file will be a .psd. This is a proprietary Adobe file–it cannot be opened or viewed without Photoshop. It is a vector file (see Miller 7), it is editable, scalable (maybe), and maintains the various layers used in its production. However, you cannot submit this file to Canvas.

  • If you design this in Photoshop, then I will require you to turn in a .jpg or a .tiff. Do not turn in the .psd file. Photoshop naturally saves as a .psd file, which retains all the layers and is editable. You will have to export your project as a .jpg or .png file, which is smaller but no longer editable.
  • If you design this in InDesign, then I will require you to turn in a .pdf. Do not turn in the .indd file.
  • If you design this in Illustrator, then you will turn in a .png file. Do not turn in the .ai file.

One other thing: Golumbiski and Hagen’s “works every time” layout is designed around a strong, graphic image (“graphic” is a tricky word to define here–but it generally means something like stunning, engaging, vibrant, etc). I encourage you to take a photograph that you can use in your design. This could be a picture of a building, of students studying, of a book or pile of books, a tree–whatever fits your subject matter. If you can’t think of how to take a picture to fit your subject matter, talk to me! If you really, really don’t want to do this, then you can use an existing image for your design–but you might struggle to find a high-resolution image large enough that it doesn’t pixelate when inserted in a 8.5 x 11 inch document with a resolution of 300px (on that note…)

Setting up your file
One of the fundamental rules of digital composition concerns “resolution,” how many pixels (digital) or points (printing) are contained in a single inch of your design (see Miller 7). Generally, this is how it goes:

  • Will this thing be shared digitally? Then the resolution should only be 72px per inch (maybe 144px if I want it to be super beautiful and I don’t care if some people can’t load it or see it)
  • Will this thing be printed? Then the resolution has to 300px or it will look like shit

The resolution on the template I offer you is set to 300px, as if this project would be printed. And I encourage you to work with that if you can print out a color version of your flyer and hang it on a billboard! It is fun to design things and place them in the world!

But there’s two immediate problems that you’ll encounter working with a 300px resolution:

  1. File Size increases almost exponentially. A 72px 8.5 x 11 image will have a file size of about 1.5 mb. The same design, at 300px resolution, will be about 30mb, if not more (put a large 300px photograph from a high-definition smart phone camera in that thing and you will have a .psd file that can no longer be emailed via UNC’s system).
  2. Images from the internet become useless. Unless you are paying from images from a stock photo site, you will struggle to find any high resolution images that you can insert into your design. Remember, digital web images are 72px, and when you put a 72px image into a 300px Photoshop document, it will look kind of like a postage stamp. Shrinkage.

    3. If possible, I encourage you to take a photograph to use in the “works every time layout.”

    A few tips for taking a good photograph:

    • Lighting: if you are outside, make sure the sun is behind you casting natural light on your subject. If you are inside, you want indirect light behind you–if you have a lamp directly lighting your subject, then you are going to get glare. Throw a tee-shirt over a lamp (make sure the tee-shirt is not touching the bulb or you might start a fire). Do not use a flash.
    • Rule of thirds; this is a rule that you must follow until you have permission to break it
    • Zoom in with your feet. Don’t use the zoom on your camera. If you want to be close to your subject, then get close. The Zoom on cheaper iPhones (like mine) can create weird pixelization. More advanced phones with multiple lenses will of course give you more options.

    But, given that this is our first project, and I am giving you limited time to complete it, you might just want to turn the resolution down on your image to 72px. To do this, go to Image > Image Size and change the resolution on my template to 72px.

    Homework

    See the assignment in Canvas for more info and my template.

    Idea for a remake project. Here is the sad sign posted on the hallway door to the faculty offices in Ross.

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ENG 231 1.W: What Are Mechanics?

Posted on January 14, 2025 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Review
  • “Mechanics”
  • For Next Session (and Beyond)

Review

I talked about “procedural rhetoric” a bit-arguing that it is an approach to video games that thinks about how the non-symbolic (word/image) dimensions of a game tells us something, or tries to persuade us about, an element of the world and/or our existence in it.

We watched James play a bit of “Everyday the Same Dream” and conducted some close reading–trying to connect specific elements, decisions, moments, in the game to a theory of what that game’s themes might be, its purpose, what it wants us to think or do differently.

Discussion: What Are Mechanics?

Words will happen. I’m guessing we have 15 minutes here.

Marc, remember to discuss “serious” games. This is worth a bit of our time (say 10 minutes).

And then maybe we play this for 8 minutes or so. And talk about it for another 10.

For Next Session (and Beyond)

(10 minutes to discuss homework)
On Friday, we will be meeting in the Ross 1240 computer lab. It is downstairs, in the same hallway as the Writing Center. We’ll be “speed playing” a few different games in preparation for our first project.

Remember that the homework for Friday is to finish reading the Bogost article and complete the Canvas assignment.

Speaking of our first project, I’d like to talk about it a bit today since we do not have class on Monday. Your homework over the long break is to play a video game for two hours in order to construct a procedural analysis of it. Hopefully, after today’s discussion, you have a bit better of a sense of what you might explore (and, if things go as I hope, we’ll have revised the quick template I used for this project last year, the template that we will use for speed playing on Friday).

I have a list of games that people have played for this first project the last few years. Pick one! If you would like to play a game for our first project that *isn’t* on the list, that’s okay too. We should probably talk about it in office hours Thursday if you can make it–I just want to make sure that the game does something procedural / mechanically interesting.

The homework over the weekend will be to play whatever game you have chosen for at least 2 hours and have something interesting to say about it.

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