Zaine

If you're good with audio books, I find that older books work a lot better when listened to. I do read a lot of science fiction. Sci-fi/Fantasy is largely what I read for entertainment.

I'm not really a horror movie guy, they just don't interest me that much. That is, unless there are zombies involved. I love a zombie movie. Night of the Living Dead wasn't the first zombie movie I ever watched, but it is the one I probably I watch the most.

I share your worries, Bob. The negative impact of AI use aside, as a writer and scholar I hate what it's doing to academia and creative writing. AI should be a tool to assist us, not take over. I don't want to see AI videos, I don't want to read AI stories, I want human interaction. In this, I saw someone post either last year or early this year that "AI accidentally made me believe in the concept of a human soul by showing me what art looks like without it." There was an AI model that, despite not being initially designed to do so, learned how to detect cancer far earlier than we could. That's what AI needs to be used for.

Excited to see what you think about it! The language can take a minute to get used to, but once you do it's smooth sailing.

+1 for reading Frankenstein. A lot of books from that era are written to the audiences of that era and can feel archaic to modern readers. Frankenstein grips you, though. Mary Shelley hit it out of the park. Also, it's the first sci-fi novel ever and, if nothing else, understanding the origins of sci-fi is a really interesting use of time.

One can only hope!

We're really excited for the upcoming Frankenstein by Guillermo Del Toro.

I posted this and then had more thoughts. I want to come back to this point, in particular, because doing this really created a lot of growth in my martial arts. As we know, kata is not a choreographed fight. No one with any actual understanding of kata who was unfortunate enough to need to use their training in a real situation would start doing pinan shodan to get out of it. Instead, if they have worked the techniques in pinan shodan with a partner, they might be inclined to use a particular technique from that kata in their attempts to get away from the confrontation. By adding restrictions to your kata, you open up lines and variations in your technique. You start to ask yourself "how would this work if I couldn't take a step? How would this work if I couldn't extend my arm all the way?" These questions and concepts can then be drilled with a partner. You end up exploring more than the surface level of a kata. It's an incredible way to gain understanding. When I started doing this, I was already a black belt. The growth you experience as you rank up becomes increasingly incremental and you learn to look for the change in different ways. Doing this, on the other hand, was anything but incremental for me. It really pushed me towards growth much faster than I had expected.

It really depends on what I'm doing. Sometimes I go slow to help emphasize techniques and feel them through. When I do this, I often employ some amount of dynamic tension (similar to Sanchin). Sometimes I do it faster than I would normally go so that I can push myself. When I do it for tests I do it at what I consider a normal speed. A valuable practice is changing up the cadence of your kata. What does it look like if you can't move your feet? What does it look like in a space too small for the kata? All this changes, of course, when you want to compete. The kata becomes less about the effectiveness, and more about the performance. You benefit from taking dramatic pauses, going fast with some sequences, and slower with others. This may seem silly, but I have found use in practicing kata this way, as well. Plus, if you're doing demonstrations (in public places or even just in front of peers) it does look cool if done with skill.

I've been enjoying it immensely. It's can be hard to teach your children, especially at first. You're their parent, and kids have a hard time switching into that mode of learning rather than just being your child. Anyone with a child who was in school during lockdown can tell you this. However, it is very rewarding.

I do think that there is some nuance here. If the TKD tournament restricted poomsae (kata) to only TKD forms, then I can see an argument being made that the black belt should be allowed to compete in a lower rank for the poomsae section. However, personally I disagree with the argument as presented. A black belt in another system will, all things being equal, have much more technical prowess over their poomsae than someone at the same level. In this case, all roads, regardless of merit, lead to the competitor only competing in the BB divisions.

It's almost a rite of passage to ruin a white gi with bleach

I take an active part in a local tournament circuit. When I started attending that circuit, I was either a 4th or 3rd kyu. I went as a black belt, because that was the highest rank I had attained. It didn't matter to me that I wasn't a black belt with the current school. I had attained a black belt in my first school. For me, there was of course the ethics of competing at a lower tier. It's unfair to the other competitors who trained very hard to compete. More than that, though, was that I had no desire to compare my skills to lower ranks. Playing a video game using cheat codes isn't nearly as fun as playing it as intended. Similarly, I want real stakes. I want to be able to lose. I want to be up against people who are not only at my skill level, but above. I want to learn. I can't do that sweeping the green belt division. Similar to what others have said, if I found out that anyone was lying about their rank to get an easier competition, they would be expressly forbidden to coming to any more tournaments.

My first student was my child. Unless you want a more philosophical answer, in which case I was my first student.

I would take it to a cleaner. Cleaners are pretty inexpensive, just do some research to make sure that you're taking it to someone who looks trustworthy.