Phial of elemental chaos recipe

Any recommendations for seasoning for smoked chicken wings?
My first time doing them so I’m not sure what the base flavor will be. I was thinking of either seasoning with a ranch based rub(rip-off wild wing cafe recipe) ahead of time or just tossing them in bbq sauce or buffalo sauce afterwards.
Any tips? Has anyone tried to smoke in a ranch rub before?
Thanks for the tips!

I want to make some sweet egg white protein oats for dinner (I like dessert type foods for dinner sometimes). I eat most of my calories at the end of the day so I want it to be a huge portion. Can you guys give me tips on how I can improve this recipe? I haven't tried it yet, but this is what I have so far, for chocolate strawberry protein oats:
Oat Bran: 80g, 310cal
2 Large Whole Eggs: ~160 cal
Psyllium Husk: 15g, 54cal
1 Carton Egg Whites: 454g, 250cal
Cacao Powder: 15g, 60cal
Garden of Life Protein + Greens Vanilla Protein Powder: 34g, 125cal
1 Bag FullGreen Riced Broccoli and Cauliflower (added for extra volume): 35cal
Vanilla Almond Milk: 480ml/2 cups, 60cal
Strawberries: 311g, 100cal
Vanilla Extract: 12g, 35cal
Stevia, Monkfruit, and Erythritol sweeteners to taste
Pinch of salt
Process:

1. Chop strawberries and mix in a pan with oat bran, riced cauliflower, almond milk, and salt, and bring to a boil on the stove. Mix in psyllium husk.
   
2. Whisk egg whites together in a separate bowl with whole eggs, cacao powder, protein powder, sweetener, and vanilla extract.
   
3. Add egg white mixture to hot oats and stir for a few minutes
   
4. Pour into a big bowl and let cool
   

Any tips to refine/improve this recipe and process to make it are appreciated! I've never made protein oats before, so this is just a recipe plan so far.

Point 1. Normal dragons breathe fire, breathe ice, breathe acid or breathe poison. Do some even breathe rocks? So could you have a dragon that breathed radioactive fire?
Point 2. My home brew setting has a healthy helping of SciFi, so normal Element creation is there (and most fantasy has iron and platinum and gold, etc, so I’m guessing they would have some radioactive elements.
Point 3. I have a (b)BEG who is tricking miners, dwarves and Drow out of all the Cobalt they can mine as worthless non-magical/non-martial metal, so why not some uranium mines?
Point 4. How cool would a lair be where at one point you stop meeting corpses with giant spider bites and sword wounds and just find ones curled up in foetus position for no apparent reason?
Point 5. I really want a radioactive dragon.

Hey,
I used this sub one time and a chad guessed my question at the first time. Now Im searching for an old game! Im 33 and around 20 yearish ago I was playing a game at my ps2 (highly likely this console); I was playing with some ninja looking, rope wearing characters. They were different types of colors for ropes and I believe you had to choose one of the ''ninjas'' for that playthrough.
The camera angle was isometric and I remember some jungle, lots of greens and waterfalls. There might had some platforming elements as well.
​
I know this is hard but I try to find this game since couple of years now. lol

Hi All,
I've been looking at ways to setup a protected route in React Router v6 and it seems like it's pretty tricky. I've been trying multiple methods I've found online but none seem to work correctly.
This is my current implementation and right now the issue is that after logging in, it doesn't redirect from the LoginPage to the Application Page. The opposite is also true, if I open an incognito window and navigate to /app, it just shows a blank screen instead of redirecting back to the LoginPage.
​
Could anyone please shed some light on why this might be happening/provide the correct way to implement this?
​
I was referencing the V6 accepted solution from here just fyi: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66289122/how-to-create-a-protected-route-with-react-router-dom?noredirect=1&lq=1
​
PrivateRoute.tsx:

const PrivateRoutes = () => { const location = useLocation() const { user } = userAuth() as authTypes if (user === undefined) { return null // or loading indicatospinneetc } return user ?  :  } export default PrivateRoutes 

App.tsx:

function App() { return (  } /> } /> }> } path='/app' />   ) } export default App 

​
main.tsx:

ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById('root') as HTMLElement).render(       , ) 

I have some frozen okra and I like it in stews. I'm used to the tomato based ones and I'm not a big fan. The only idea I have rn is the curry version.
I'd prefer a recipe with chicken, stew meat or no meat at all. I can't afford ground beef or other kind of meats.
Thank you!

I ve been playing all Diablo games and enjoyed all of them for god knows how many hours. D3 was my least favourite but I still played it a lot and enjoy it.
As for Diablo 4.
The GOOD:

• GRAPHICS: The overall visuals are detailed and on point. There is a lot of small detail in cities and so on which is nice to look at. There are some hiccups like the necro skeletons (cartoony and with an odd glow which doesn t match the rest of the game) and the necromancer bodies (why we need a set of extra highlighted corpses when the ones from the mobs you just killed are on the ground...can t comprehend. was the same in d3).
  
• MUSIC: The music and ambiental sounds make for a pretty good diablo atmosphere overall. The music in D3 wasn t bad, it was just very fanfare and theatrical too often for a game about killing demons in the dark.
  
• TRANSMOG/CHARACTER APPEARANCES: These are very nice and really make your characters look cool. A small note: since it looks so great overall, It could use having more faces/hairstyles/beards etc. Kinda of a waste to have so few hairstyles and faces etc for such a good system.
  
• THE DIALOGUE/STORY: So far it seems to have a less bombastic in your face approach like in D3. The story also has a slower, mystical air to it, opposed to the D3 saviour of the universe.
  

The BAD:

• INNOVATION AND COMPLEXITY, although having a good foundation, feels like a very basic or bare-bones aRPG. It feels like an improved Diablo 3 which should ve come 5 years ago. Given that these games launch about 10 years apart, you would expect more interesting features and systems for them.
  
• Sure, you don t need to reinvent the wheel, but it s not the case here. I know it s just level 25, but we ve seen a lot of the basic systems and the community updates. As someone on this reddit said, "here s an improved d3 with a play schedule". I ll further detail individually down why I think the game is a bare-bones aRPG.
  
• SKILLS: There are less/almost equal skills (not to mention Runes) for D4 than in D3. You take the Necromancer for example. It has around 19 active skills in D4 plus one of two runes you can pick from. There are also few passives scattered around. In D3 you have 21 skills with 5 runes each. Factoring in the runes, it does seem like there are more skills in Diablo 3. We could maybe add The Book of the dead Skeleton and Golem skills and maybe we get on par. With so few skills in D4 it seems like there won t be too many different builds. Sure, endgame gear and paragons can alter these skills a lot but..it s the same few skills at the end. Maybe they started with few skills so they can add more over time.
  
• STATS/ITEM STATS: We get more or less the exact same stats/amount of different stats like in Diablo 3. They are boiled down into attack defense and regeneration. Looks like a mobile game honestly. Item Stats themselves are rather boring and insignificant except for few like +to X Skill. Items are pretty boring (I know it s lvl 25 but we ve seen many items over time).
  

It all boils down to the most important stat, the legendary power. It was always the plan for this since they announced D4 and you could see that they tried to make item stats look more complex but kept the original idea: Legendary power is what matters most. The rest is filler for the attack/defense/regeneration display. Since these are the items, the gems fall in the same category, no interesting stats just basic dull stuff.

• ENEMIES: There seem to be few monster types so far, which you encounter repeatedly and very often. Most of them do not seem to have some unique feature/mechanic besides name and model or some noticeable unique feature mechanic. They seem to be just fodder for champion/elites affixes to stick to. Mob density is very low regardless of taking the giant empty world zones in account. Might be level related. Bosses/Mini Bosses seen so far aren t memorable at all and seem to have AI generated clunky names, like in wow. But wow has thousands of npcs and bosses and mobs created over 15 years..understandable. But D4? eh.
  
• UI: The Interface is hard to understand often, even considering it s been designed for consoles. Some things are really impractical, like the minimap which is irrevelant since zones are so big and you don t see much on the minimap. There is no transparent map overlay which forces you to press M to open the giant map very very often. A simple D2 overlay would fix this. After all, it can be disabled.
  

The font used for the items on the ground is horrid, as in it is the basic font used in all pseudo-games/rpgs on mobile. Not only it doesn t look like the rest of the game, but it s ugly {personal opinion}. Probably it was chosen because it is a clearer font for consoles. This font is used in mobile games because of the small screen they are being played on. With consoles and pc's this shouldn t be the case. Also why isn t the central skill bar tied to the bottom edge of the screen? It s just wasted space.

• Performance/Bugs/Servers I do understand this is an open beta, but this game is 2 months away from launch. You can imagine that not much can be done even by a big team in that timespace. We ll leave aside the fried cards. The game's performance is bad, with frequent stutters (as in fps drops) and freezes and crashes. This isn t hardware related I think, as I ve tested different settings, different computers with different above recommended specs. This problem also persists on the PS4 identically. This occurs more often when you cross zones.

On top of these, there are the server issues which will likely persists at launch as all blizzard releases. The rubberbanding and invisible walls are also terrible additions. The fact that the game is online only even while playing alone..doesn t help.

• MMO Features: It seems that D4 tried to be Lost Ark and failed. Badly. Having played both, D4 gives you the feeling of a primitive Lost Ark. Of course, you can t play alone and are forced to see many players around you in towns, so that you see their interesting shop bought cosmetics so you want to buy em too. This was probably planned way before development started. It s annoying to see this many players especially in towns. It s just a visual clutterfest of annoyance. Add in the performance issues and you ve got yourself an active player wish to avoid especially big towns or towns in general.

They took from wow few of the most annoying mmo features: scheduled gameplay and daily quests. It s a psychological tool to force you to log in every day or set time, so that their engagement metrics are high and investors think everything is great. The world boss is a terrible system. You need to play EVERY week, or you ll miss out on the free rewards. Why are they free? Because like in WoW you can just go there, land a hit onto the boss, die, wait or die again and others will kill the boss and voila, you get the same loot as them. No effort, no skill or brain activity needed, just _ your pressence at that fixed time every week_. Just your sole existence. The EMOTE WHEEL is an uncessary and idiotic feature I cannot comprehend. I guess it has it s advantages for consoles. But going to a statue and dancing or clapping your hands for quest rewards or buffs isn t really a gameplay which should exist in an arpg. Maybe in SIMS.

• OTHER SYSTEMS: Gambling, Potion Upgrade, Item Upgrade. This is your usual well known basic stuff. Nothing special. I have to admit the Potion system with craftable extra potion is a step up from D3.
  
• DUNGEONS: Dungeons are very repetitive and seem to be made from few very often repeating tiles which you can notice right away. They look nice and have lot s of details in those specific tiles though. There aren t many mobs and often you have some generic, often repeating events. Dungeons aren t unique, they are more like some pre-generated rifts which require a lot of backtracking. Monsters aren t the objective, they are just the barrier before the objective which is press this switch or that lever. Monsters aren t difficult either and there aren t specific dungeon mechanics or traps or whatever to fill up the empty void of long nothing the dungeons are. Honestly, they feel worse than D3 rifts and I did those thousands of times. Here I could barely do each one once.
  

The game feels often pointless, as you are wandering big pretty and empty zones, barely seeing mobs, or some insignificant forgettable ones. To what good is a big open world if it is empty. Never had that feeling in D3, each zone had a specific story role, purpose, event, mob type and wasn t too big. I can remember them all by names. Here I can remember the main town and another one because it has a blacksmith. Otherwise just ai generated name zones which have nothing to do or to offer besides being just filler.
I didn t want to pre-order and this beta convinced me that I shouldn t even buy the game at launch. It is doubtful that the technical issues will be fixed in such a short time. Not to mention the rather repetitive and empty open world and the bare-bones arpg feature. The game skeleton is there but that s it mostly. Maybe he also has a hood. Or maybe not. Sure if the game did not cost 70$ and would ve been marketed as early access yeah. But with other competitors it s just not worth it in my opinion. PoE is free, PoE 2 will be free, Last Epoch is far cheaper and so on.
The only thing this game currently has over the others is the Diablo franchise name and some tied in nostalgia with npc and item names. Just like the initial runewords plan for D4. They were adding something which used the name but had nothing to do with the original feature. This is how Diablo 4 feels to me overall. Sure, the bigger budget shows in many aspects compared to the other listed aRPGs. But damn it, even Wolcen at its disastrous launch had more innovative elements and less game breaking bugs and technical issues. At least you could avoid the server issues playing offline.
If anyone disagress with stuff here just bring an argument for a discussion don t just call me whatever. What I say here could be wrong but it s just how I see the game currently. Maybe devs read feedback and try to do something. I do want this game to get good and to play it for a long time. Not one gazillion years like d2 or half gazillion years like D3, but something longer than few weeks. It seems to me that the art and music devs had a lot of creative freedom. I don t think the systems devs had so much creative freedom, hence we get this basic rpg with no innovative features at all. This could ve easily been D3 - remake. I am sure that the devs with more creative freedom, would ve done interesting and innovative aRPGs like the competitiors.
I ll keep checking on the game. Maybe after half a year a lot of the stuff gets fixed or corrected or re-made. Maybe it will be bundled with a game-fixing expansion, who knows.

Let me start by saying: obviously everyone's preferences and tastes in media differs somewhat so this is my opinion based off watching his series and multiple critiques and theories about it. Also, I agree Kane's visuals and sounds and music and all that media stuff is great. He' definitely skilled when it comes to creating art. I don't know how to section this rant thingy out so I'm gonna make two paragraphs, one more focused on the lore and the second about the series story.
I remember watching the first Found Footage and being hella impressed. I thought "wow finally some good backrooms content". Then the follow-up video killed all hope I had. The Third Test shifted the entire premise of the Backrooms to being 'opened' or 'unlocked' or even possibly created by Async. Over writing the previously established and well liked lore; that it's a random thing in the universe and there's no controlling it. I know that wasn't written in the original 4chan post but no one actually sticks to that as it's like two sentences. It was pretty much across the board that entry into the Backrooms wasn't something to be done intentionally, and neither was exiting. To which Async just says "screw that we're making a door". At the same time original noclipping is partially kept with things like the car or the countless people who go missing. Then again there's also apparently naturally occuring fixed points, such as the one in Found Footage 2 in the garage floor. You could say it's "adding on to the lore". I think it's just sloppy writing to make cool spooky shit happen. Which is totally fine, but let's not pretend it's genius writing. It's contradictory to the original lore, and itself. Then there's the monster, the Bacteria. This thing so far is still unexplained for the most part. We only know its most likely Hay Bacillus that has mutated. But there are hella 'clues' that point to it being some of the missing people. So it's again up in the air. Which is my main gripe with the "lore" of this series. So many things aren't confirmed. I know it's supposed to be a mystery that get's pieced together. But not even the hardcore fans agree on everything, which is an issue. Even confusing shit like Elden Ring has it's lore strewn about in a way that everyone can agree on things. I remember on the Kane subreddit people arguing about whether Async made the backrooms or simply found it. That type of information shouldn't be left up in the air. There should be certain parts of the story which confirm lore elements. Which brings me to my next issue, the story.
For the first few videos there was essentially no story. There were details such as 'Async' and stuff, but only cause it was required to have "company name" and other variables there for the video to work. Now there is definitely a story going on. But it's nothing I find interesting really. I mean it's still just about Async's shenanigans. Almost 0 backrooms stuff going on. I liked the story that started with the guy who jumped forward in time and they tried to make it seem like he went AWOL but then they killed him right away and that story was done. The one shred of relatability in the story was gone. There was a person that got lost in the backrooms and went crazy, trying to escape. That's a good emotional connection that people can relate to. They can imagine being lost, the fear of never seeing their family and friends. Thinking your free only to learn it's only worse. But no let's kill him and go back to big bad science facility doing oopsie. Show the cover up, neat I guess. All we've really seen so far is a science lab covering up a fuck up that opened a portal to another dimension that people start disappearing into. They try to fix it, the government is involved. Theres a gangly monster on the other side. Idk just seems like Stranger Things to me without the main cast. Like from the perspective of the lab instead. I don't find the story that does exist to be interesting or unique. And I don't find it to really be a backrooms focused story either. Just a story that has the backrooms in it some times. This could all be shown without ever showing the backrooms and it'd tell the same story. Maybe even be more suspenseful.
Long read I know. I'm hoping the movie is good and has nothing to do with Async and this current story. We'll have to wait and see though. Correct me if I got any details about his series wrong as well.

Hey everyone.
I spent some time running 1,000 Unusual Gem Blueprint Wings. Initially I just wanted to get a good estimate of the probability of getting a Prime Regrading Lens. In the first Wing I realised I should record everything, so here is some data, with some pre-amble.
1) My Rogues were "geared". Every Rogue had a 15% currency duplication Foliate Brooch on. As many as made sense had a "+1 to level of all jobs for heists" Tool (Regicide mask, Lockpick etc). Every Rogue had a Whisper-Woven Cloak with "12% reduced raising of alert level from opening chests"
2) I was also geared. I had a "1% Chance in heists for chaos orbs to drop as Divine orbs instead" Trinket on.
3) Blueprints were all ilvl83 except for around 10-15 being ilvl 81/82.
4) Blueprints had only Wings (Curio Reward Rooms), Currency Rooms and Divination Card Rooms revealed.
5) I used 132 x 3-wing Blue prints (396 wings total) and 151 x 4-wing blueprints (604 wings total).
6) There were 1189 Currency Rooms total (1.189 per wing) and 472 Divination Card Rooms (0.472 per wing)
DATA:
Of the 5,000 rewards offered, 4857 were gems.
2,644 Anomalous - (For a chance of 54.43% for a gem reward to be Anomalous, or a 52.88% chance to be offered an Anomalous gem as a reward.)
1,868 Divergent - (For a chance of 38.46% for a gem reward to be Divergent , or a 37.36% chance to be offered a Divergent gem as a reward.)
345 Phantasmal - (For a chance of 7.1% for a gem reward to be Divergent , or a 6.9% chance to be offered a Divergent gem as a reward.)
Of the 5,000 rewards offered, 143 were not gems.
Prime Regrading Lenses were offered 93 times with a 1.86% chance to be offered as a reward.
Secondary Regrading Lenses were offered 39 times with a 0.78% chance to be offered as a reward.
3 Unique items were offered as rewards. Crest of Desire (4 times with a 0.08% chance to be offered as a reward), Font of Thunder (also 4 times with a 0.08% chance to be offered as a reward) & The Iron Mass (3 times with a 0.06% chance to be offered as a reward).
In total, revenue was around 200 Divines from Gems, and 250 from Currency and currency like items (Lenses, stacked decks etc). This works out at around 0.45 Divines per wing in revenue.
To answer a couple of questions that I foresee:
Can you be offered the same gem twice in a wing? - Yes, multiple instances of this occurred.
Can you be offered an identical Non-Gem reward twice in a wing? - Yes, multiple instances of this occurred, both 2x Prime Regrading lenses being offered, 2x Secondary Regrading Lenses being offered and both Prime and Secondary Regrading Lenses being offered in the same wing. Due to low offering of unique rates I can say that I did not see a Regrading Lens and a Unique offered at the same time, but it seems likely that it is possible to be offered both. The game seems to roll once on a rewards table for each offering, and not be excluding items based on other rewards/rolls.
Did you get many Double Divine Drops from chests/other? - Yes, 21 Double Divine drops from chests, 1 instance of 4x Divines in a single drop.
Does Vinderi double the reward and then the brooches double too, or the other way around? - No. There is a combined doubling chance that the game rolls to figure out if your rewards are going to get doubled. If you have 3x currency brooches, and Vinderi on a wing, you have a 61% chance to get any currency dropping from chests to be doubled. More info in the video below.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. What this is NOT, is a "x divines per hour" strategy or guide. It is just the facts, Ma'am.
Hope this data is found to be useful!
I have made a video presentation of the data along with more info here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnA7uunJHQ8
Here is a link to the raw data in a google sheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E1HuGRI9jTXjEzpxuyD6sXDGZhRgivY2Axx4c2DFI1g/edit?usp=sharing

HelIo everyone!
'm wondering if WH3 will bring any updates or improved mechanics or UI in addition to new faction and campaign content?
Is there any other reason to buy WH3 in addition to getting China & Chaos factions?
Can I play Cult of Pleasure in WH3 as well?
What's your favorite change / mechanic / content in WH3?
Thank you!

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How do we get new results? We take new action. We become the type of person that takes consistent action in the direction of the results we want. Today is about expanding your identity and becoming MORE!
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What if none of the headlines about recession and inflation affected you? When you are able to step out of the chaos and create your own economy, you can support yourself and your family no matter what else is going on. And it’s simpler than you might think…
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Don't know if Bungie mentioned anything but feel the older Raids and Dungeons require some Origin Traits now - Few Ideas
Grasp - Plundered Loot Slightly Increase Glimmer Dropped from enemies defeated by these weapons - Collecting Glimmer grants a 5% Damage Increase for 4 seconds and collecting an Engram boosts damage by 7.5% for 12 seconds
Prophecy - Yin Yang Every 6 seconds Defeating an enemy in light creates a Light Mote - Defeating them in shadow creates a dark mote. You or an ally can pick up these Motes
Light Motes grant MORE ability energy for Light Subclasses and Dark Motes grant MORE ability energy for Darkness Subclasses (7.5% For the Right Mote and 3% for the wrong Motes)
Pit of Heresy - Ruinous Rounds Defeating an enemy with a precision damage creates a Poisonous Well of Ruinous Resonance that damages enemies slightly when they stand in the area (Think Witherhoard but lot less damage)
Shattered Throne - Blighted Rounds These weapons deal 15% more damage to Taken Blights and 7.5% to Taken enemies and Invaders overshields and puncture through Vandal Shields - Defeating a Taken enemy or Invader grants enhanced Reload speed for 5 seconds
VOG - Chrono Charged Every 10 seconds These weapons Boost Fire Sprites, Breaches, Tracers, Shards and Tangles created when this weapon is equipped or stowed. Granting a 5 second Temporary Armour Charge when collected, destroyed or thrown. Shards will become Elemental Shards granting Energy for Grenade and Class. Only activates with a Blue Mod Equipped.
LW - Heartstopper Ability Defeats grant Heartstopper Weapons increased Reload, Handling, Range, Recoil and Stability for 8 seconds

STUDIES ON HUMOR IN THE ZHUANGZI
In one of the now classic studies on humor in ancient China, David R. Knechtges (1970–1971, 80) summarizes what may have been at the time a widespread scholarly view about a relative lack of humor in ancient Chinese texts: “It has been observed more than once that humor does not occupy a prominent place in traditional Chinese literature.” Toward the end of his essay, Knechtges concludes that, while indeed some humorous texts or passages can be identified in ancient China, “most of early Chinese humor is essentially didactic and moralistic” (95). In comparison with this rather unexciting estimation, Knechtges’s view on the Zhuangzi is quite remarkable: he writes that this “entire work is made up of a series of incongruities strung together in the aimless manner of sustained humor” (97). It seems that Knechtges felt slightly uncomfortable with conceding such a dissonance between the strikingly humoristic features of the Zhuangzi and the “essentially didactic and moralistic” humor anywhere else in ancient China, so he thought it better to surmise cautiously that Zhuangzi was probably just a madman with a “fondness for the bizarre and unconventional,” whose humor was “unintentional” and a mere “by-product” of a strange imagination (97).
Knechtges was by no means the first to ascribe exceptionality to the Zhuangzi as a humoristic work in ancient China. In 1932, Lin Yutang published an influential essay called “On Humor” (Lun youmo 論幽默) in which he commended the spiritual merits of humor in the world in general and China in particular. He identified various humorous traditions in ancient China and labeled Daoism (mostly referring to Laozi and Zhuangzi) as the “humorous faction” in the history of Chinese thought, as opposed to the “orthodox faction” of Confucianism (Sample 2011, 174; see also Liu Jianmei 2016, 106–11). Among the Daoists, he singled out Zhuangzi as “the father of Chinese humor” (Sample 2011, 173). He thereby seems to have set the tone for similar judgments, such as a more recent one by Xiao Dong Yue (2010, 403), who states that Zhuangzi “is recognized as the very first humorist in China.” As a rule, most contemporary interpreters of the Zhuangzi grant that it is an often witty text that uses humor among many other literary tools. Eske Møllgard (2007, 6), for instance, affirms that the Zhuangzi “employs prose poems, fables, satire, song, fictitious dialogue, spiritual exercise, didactic verse, aphorisms, and a number of literary genres we have still not identified and understood.”
While statements of this kind abound in the literature—both academic and popular—devoted to the Zhuangzi, in-depth studies on its use of humor as either a literary or a philosophical device are more difficult to find. Nonetheless, one attempt to assess the philosophical function of humor in the Zhuangzi was made by Erik Schwitzgebel (1996). According to Schwitzgebel, humor in the Zhuangzi has the therapeutic function of making its readers capable of taking truth claims or assertions of facts less seriously and thus allows them to adopt a more flexible attitude toward pronouncements in language. He says that Zhuangzi simply “would like to see us take what people have to say less seriously” so that we are “willing to play around with it in a disrespectful way for humorous or other ends” (70–71). We sympathize with this view, particularly since it echoes our point that its similarity to play is a philosophically relevant aspect of humor, but also because it resonates with our claim that humor dissolves moral seriousness and empties out meaning. Perhaps the most comprehensive attempt to analyze humor in the Zhuangzi from a literary studies perspective has been presented by Youru Wang (2003). In Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism: The Other Way of Speaking, Wang adopts a deconstructionist perspective and deals specifically with “denegation” (i.e., negating and self-negating language such as the “negation of all polarities and double negation” [153]), paradox, and irony in the Zhuangzi, all of which he ties to the Zhuangzi’s self-ascribed use of the much-discussed “goblet words” (zhi yan卮言; for interesting discussions of this elusive term, see Wang Bo 2004; Fried 2007; Morrow 2016).3 According to Youru Wang (2003, 153), “the Zhuangzian denegation disagrees with the Derridean interpretation of denegation.… This Derridean interpretation still falls into a negation privileged over affirmation. Zhuangzi does not privilege negativity over positivity.” Instead, Wang believes that denegation as found in the Zhuangzi expresses a playful toying with the relation between language and the ineffable, while uses of paradox illustrate “the dynamic convergence of various opposites.” He thus links humorous rhetorical techniques to philosophical interpretations of the indirect “strategies of communication” (see Kupperman 1989) and “antirationalism” (see Carr and Ivanhoe 2000) found in the Zhuangzi. Wang (2003, 158) concludes, “When the use of denegation or paradox brings about self-negation or self-contradiction in an unanticipated manner, especially when it occurs in a form of self-mockery or self-ridicule, it involves irony.” In short, for Wang, irony emerges as the major humoristic device in the Zhuangzi and, philosophically speaking, it “calls into serious question any logocentric or metaphysical closure in a frivolous or humorous way” (159). Lee Yearley (2005) has also presented some ideas on “Zhuangzi’s kinds of language” and, like Youru Wang, combines a literary analysis with philosophically relevant conclusions. Unlike Wang, though, he does not use a deconstructionist conceptual framework. His intention is to interpret Zhuangzi as a religious ethicist who uses “literary devices like satire or parody” (516; another interpretation of Zhuangzi as a religious ethicist is presented in Lee 2014) to convey a spiritual message and to call for moral self-reflection. According to Yearley (2005, 516), these humorous devices in the Zhuangzi are intended to provoke “hermeneutical crises that have spiritual implications” for readers so that they will eventually be forced to “evaluate their own spiritual maturity.”
From a different philosophical perspective, James D. Sellmann (1998, 165) ascribes a transformative “mystical” meaning to humorous language in the Zhuangzi. He affirms that “storytelling, irony, jokes, even a simple pun—all of the elements that make up comedy, laughter, and forgetting … are the literary devices employed in the Zhuangzi.” Influenced by Kuang-ming Wu’s (1990) approach to the Zhuangzi and partially reminiscent of Robert E. Allinson’s (1989) reading of the text as a guide for “spiritual transformation,” Sellmann further argues that through such devices the Zhuangzi shows “how one must awaken to ‘transformation’ and ‘humor’ by beginning to live the life that affirms one’s own personal mutation” (172).
With fewer philosophical (but more historical and philological) ambitions than Wang, Yearley, or Sellmann, Shirley Chan (2011) has made an attempt at “identifying Daoist humor.” While her specific focus is on the Liezi列子, much of what she says is also applicable to the Zhuangzi, since several of the textual examples she discusses appear in both texts. Chan, too, pays attention to specific literary devices and points to “metaphor, exaggeration, hyperbole and reductio ad absurdum” (87). Interestingly, she connects both the Liezi and the Zhuangzi with the ancient Chinese category of “huaji-ists,” or “humorists,” who, as Knechtges (1970–1971, 82) remarks, “were considered important enough for Sima Qian to compile a monograph on them in his Records of the Historian [Shiji史記].” They were “jesters at the courts of the Warring States kings and Han emperors” (83) and spoke “wittily and relevantly to persuade their lords to accept their advice” (Shirley Chan 2011, 75). Knechtges (1970–1971, 83) states that huaji滑稽 “in the early period meant something like a ‘smooth talker.’ ” The term’s connotations were not necessarily positive, and so it makes sense that Chan reads the expression huaji猾稽 as huaji滑稽, or “humorists,” in an interesting statement made in the Shiji’s biography of Xunzi 荀子. In Chan’s reading, this statement has Xunzi dismissing Zhuangzi as someone “who attacked Confucian social conventions by being a humorist” (huaji luan su滑稽亂俗 [Chan 2011, 232n11; see Shiji 74.11]).
The anti-Confucian trajectory of many of the humoristic passages in the Zhuangzi is discussed in further detail in a more recent essay by Katrin Froese (2014). Froese notes that Confucius is not only sympathetically depicted as a spokesperson for Daoism at times but also ambiguously “at the receiving end of so much biting satire” in the Zhuangzi (310). Although Froese does not explicitly refer to Henri Bergson—whose interesting but unfortunately now-ignored theory of humor assumes that laughter results from perceiving something human as nonhuman, as mechanistic or lifeless (Bergson 1924)—she identifies the function of anti-Confucian humor in the Zhuangzi very much in Bergsonian terms. According to her, the Zhuangzi mocks the at times “mechanist” Confucian attitude to ritual. She writes, “For the Daoist, ritual, when held up against the spontaneous and yet harmonious movement of nature, will always be comic because it is mechanistic, artificial, and forced” (Froese 2014, 210). In the context of a collaborative comparative study on Kierkegaard and Zhuangzi (Carr and Ivanhoe 2000), P. J. Ivanhoe has discussed humor in the Zhuangzi by testing the text against the humor theory of D. H. Monro (1963), which preceded the present standard accounts by Morreall and others. Ivanhoe “ticks all the boxes” and attests that the Zhuangzi contains forms of humor that are compatible with any theory tracing humor back to “feelings of superiority, incongruity, ambivalence, or relief from inhibition or restraint” (Carr and Ivanhoe 2000, 136). Besides proving the Zhuangzi’s humorous versatility and its capacity to live up to contemporary humor theories, Ivanhoe is particularly keen on defending Zhuangzi against any accusations of using humor in a morally suspicious way. For this purpose he suggests a strict distinction between the good-humored, authentic Zhuangzi who speaks in the Inner Chapters and the inauthentic falsifiers of him present in the Outer Chapters. He believes that “it is not too strong a claim to say that sections of the text that criticize Kongzi [Confucius] himself in a severe and malicious way are immediately suspect as the work of late pretenders to Zhuangzi’s mantle.” He specifically points to “the ‘Robber Zhi’ chapter,” which he takes to “have been confidently identified as of rather late origin” (11). In the same vein, he categorically states that “one does not find the mocking humor of the assassin in the authentic parts of the text” (138).
Ivanhoe establishes a stark moral contrast between the mild, ethically instructive, and restricted humor of the genuine Zhuangzi on the one hand and, on the other, the “malicious” “humor of the assassin” of the “pretenders to Zhuangzi’s mantle.” Apparently he assumes that there is a kind of “devil in disguise” hidden in some parts of the book and thinks that the conscientious reader should beware of it. Perhaps Ivanhoe’s drastic good/evil and authentic/inauthentic distinction is due to an influence of the long history of the moralistic “traditional rejection of humor” documented by Morreall (2009). Ivanhoe’s distinction between good and evil humor in the Zhuangzi echoes the “moral fear” that has haunted philosophical and religious condemnations of humor for centuries in both East and West. It is therefore not surprising that it resurfaces in some of the literature on humor, including literature on the humor of the Zhuangzi. Accordingly, Ivanhoe is not the only one to judge Zhuangzi’s humor morally; other authors, too, make an effort to identify an ethically clean humor in the Zhuangzi that is free from immoral or harmful traits. Lee Yearley (2005, 516), for example, writes, “Zhuangzi’s humor rarely, however, just distances in a way that allows us to feel superior.” Youru Wang (2003, 158) finds (inoffensive) irony in the Zhuangzi but not (offensive) sarcasm, saying that irony “differs from sarcasm, because sarcasm laughs at the hearer.” Lin Yutang points out that Daoists “could have become cynical and disgusted with the world, but by arriving at cynicism and disgust, they would have lost an essential element of true humor” (Sample 2011, 175).
Unlike some of the authors quoted in the preceding, but in line with newer humor theories, we reject the traditional superiority perspective on humor that tends to find unchecked laughter morally suspicious. In our opinion, the ascription of such ethically negative attributes to humor results from a moralistic prejudice against humor. We intend to argue instead from an amoral perspective beyond good and evil that looks at humor as being, among many other things, a way to escape moral fear and not as a dangerous rhetorical device that, if not properly reined in and cleansed, will serve to assert one’s superiority over others. We have therefore made our preceding sketch of several characteristics of a Daoist theory of humor in response to a not uncommon impression among readers of the Zhuangzi addressed by Brook Ziporyn (2009, viii): “Profound comedians have always been hard to come by; funny philosophers perhaps even more so. To enter into this work attributed to Zhuangzi is to find oneself roused and enraptured by its intellectual and spiritual depth, but also by its provocative humor.” What we intend to do is make sense of the provocative humor of the Zhuangzi within a philosophical framework. This framework looks at Daoist humor, on the one hand, as a subversive reaction to the impossible existential demands of an ethical regime of sincerity and, on the other hand, as a way of experiencing the playful pleasure, effortless skillfulness, and childlike sanity of a genuine pretender.
From: TOWARD A DAOIST THEORY OF HUMOR
Book: HANS-GEORG MOELLER & PAUL J. D’AMBROSIO GENUINE PRETENDING ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ZHUANGZI COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS New York

Max Verstappen has hit some opposition in the form of apparel giant Nike as he looks to delve into the clothing world.
The Dutchman’s on-track activities in Formula 1 are currently taking him to continuously greater heights. Already a two-time World Champion, Red Bull’s dominant start to the F1 2023 campaign has made Verstappen the overwhelming favourite to make it three in a row this season.
And with his Red Bull contract running until the end of 2028, Verstappen’s Formula 1 endeavours will continue to be the centrepiece of his career for many more years to come.
However, having suggested that he wants to leave Formula 1 for other racing challenges after that, even though he will have only just moved into his 30s by that time, Verstappen already is giving great focus to his life outside of Formula 1.
That is not only in relation to racing either as it would seem Verstappen also wants to launch his own clothing brand.
The plan was to call it ‘Max 1’, though De Limburger reported that Nike have taken issue with that name as they believe it is too similar to their Nike: Air Max shoe range.
And the region’s trademark agency, The Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP), has issued a report that confirms its investigation and opposition from Nike, with the reasons why a roadblock has been put in front of Verstappen’s plans.
As well as suggestions that the similarity of the names could lead to confusion for the public, who may assume there is an affiliation between the brands, the styling also appears to be an issue.
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The report states: “Both signs contain the word MAX, albeit in a different place. In the trademarks invoked, the elements AIR and MAX have equal weight in the overall impression. In the contested sign, the emphasis is on the word MAX. The number 1 will be regarded as a specification of MAX. To that extent the signs agree.
“The goods in question (Nike and Max) are partly identical and partly similar. Visually and aurally, there is a certain degree of similarity between the signs.
“Based on these and the other factors mentioned above and given their interdependence, the Office considers that there is a likelihood of confusion in the sense that the public may believe that the goods covered by the trade marks invoked and those of the contested sign belong to the same undertaking or, as the case may be, from economically linked companies.
“Since it is common practice in the clothing sector for the same mark to be configured in different ways, the relevant public might also think that the contested sign is a sub-mark of the opponent (Nike).”
You can read the full report here.
While Verstappen sets about finding a new route to getting his clothing brand off the ground, he also seemingly has opposition to his World title quests in Formula 1 in the form of Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez.
The Mexican racer is yet to sustain a challenge against Verstappen across a season, but his impressive performance in Saudi Arabia suggested that could be about to change as he kept Verstappen comfortably at bay on his way to victory, thus sending quite the warning shot.
Verstappen did at least snatch the fastest lap bonus point from Perez, meaning he goes into the Australian GP with a one-point lead over his team-mate.


Source: https://www.planetf1.com/news/nike-max-verstappen-max-1-opposition/