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I might leave it at this until a little further into the year. Here’s 6 so far though

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The Gaang as some of my favorite text posts and tweets curated from too much time on Pinterest

Zuko:

Aang:

Katara:

Toph:

Sokka:

Suki:

Bonus:

Azula:

Pt.2 here Pt. 3 here

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Do you ever think about how 1 of the 1st waterbending moves that Katara learns, that she doesn’t come up with herself, is the water whip that she learns from that waterbending scroll, which also happens to be 1 of the final moves that she uses against Azula, using that move to manoeuvre Azula into a place more favourable for Katara??

Do you ever think about how in that same episode that Katara learns that, Sokka tries to steer a boat, and laments how he doesn’t know how, because that boat wasn’t made by The Southern Water Tribe, and then, later, steers an entire Fire Nation war balloon with precision and intent, and knows how to destroy them effectively and efficiently, while also being a co-inventor of the inspiration invention of those Fire Nation war balloons??

Do you ever think about how, when face-to-face with The Avatar in the Avatar State, after repeatedly threatening to imminently kill that Avatar like the other Air Nomads, Ozai’s 1st move is to firebend directly towards Aang’s left side of his face, the exact same spot that Zuko has his scar on??

Do you ever think about how Zuko was challenged to his 1st Angi Kai due to his desire to protect people being unnecessarily put in harms way, and his final Angi Kai was ended due to the same reason??

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girls will casually tell you the most traumatic backstory known to man and finish it off with "it's whatever though i don't really care"

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the fire nation royal academy for girls or whatever it’s called is such a funny piece of lore to me. like it’s simultaneously a posh girls’ finishing school and a brutal military academy. misogyny boot camp and also regular boot camp. and also it’s middle school. no wonder azula mai and ty lee are so tight, their friendship was forged in the (literal) flames of the hell they endured together.

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Incredibly specific moments in atla i think about ALL the time (i am Not normal)

Zuko's eyes slightly widening when witnessing Katara's bloodbending for the first time

Aang and Katara just missing each other looking back at the other after their argument in The Warriors of Kyoshi

Toph holding onto Sokka's arm once on Appa when he didn't have a saddle and once on the boat bringing them to the lake town

The moon being in full view as Suki tries to kiss Sokka in the Serpent's Pass, and the shadow returning as Sokka leaves

The "four seasons for love" motif coming back throughout the episodes of the Northern Watertribe and specifically as Sokka gives himself up to serve in the battle against Zhao's seige and Yue turns away and quietly cries as she watches him walk off

Longshot talking for the first time ever as Jet lay dying

In that same breath, the way Toph says "he's lying" as they walk away from Jet knowing that he's going to die

Aang looking back at the Southern Airtemple ruins along with Momo as they fly away from it, seeing it disappear behind the clouds (this one specifically makes me cry so much)

The chants as Aang gets summoned by the Lion Turtle in book 3 being the SAME as the chants when Aang fuses with the ocean spirit in book 1 (there's other moments with these chants i think but i can't remember them off the top of my head)

Aang taking down Ozai's airship in the finale as his first attack and Sokka cheering him on like a proud older brother

Katara immediately without a shadow of a doubt responding "Aang won't lose" when Zuko questions if he'll be able to take on Ozai

Aang knowing Zuko was gonna fire at him in the crystal catacombs as soon as Zuko laid eyes on him (he gasped before Zuko even made a move) when even Azula wasn't sure what Zuko was gonna do in that scenario

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Avatar: the Last Airbender + Twitter Posts

[Part 5][Part 4][Part 3][Part 2]

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I’m really fond of the idea of Zuko being a very competent bureaucrat. Is he an amazing fire bender by literally anyone other than the royal family’s standards? Hell yeah! But he’s also got an incredible head for facts and figures and his calligraphy is On Point and he can read really really fast so he’s just really good at paperwork.

And so one day Zuko gets fed up with Azula taunting him about being Fire Lord as soon as she escapes that he’s just like fine. And he dumps copies of rice tax allocations and legal petitions and a long list of candidates for a new Minister of Health and funding requests from the Minister of Education and the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Culture (all of whom he’s planning on firing but he gives them to her just to see what she does) and he says okay. Be the Fire Lord. Those need to be done by the end of the week. I’ll bring the rest down tomorrow.

And Azula’s beyond competent okay? She could do all of this and more. So she looks through everything, makes a few modifications, some of which Zuko even takes up because his little sister is a genius, but damn if it isn’t boring as hell. Sometimes when Zuko comes by she’s looking over a budget allocation for the Ministry of Agriculture and casually says, oh we had to arrest Minister Yu because he tried to assassinate me. His replacement gave us a new budget. And Azula’s eye twitches as she crumples up the parchment she was holding and thrusts her hand out to receive the new budget allocation form. She sets it on fire and pretends it’s the traitor. Nobody should get to kill her brother except for her.

And by Agni Azula knows what he’s doing because between the two of them there was one that actually enjoyed doing homework and one that would rather be outside practicing forms. But Azula Will Be Fire Lord mark her words. Azula was the politically savvy one. Azula was the one who knew how to maneuver all the pieces into place.

Azula wanted to burn all the paperwork, even if that was as good as admitting defeat.

She lasts until Zuko peers into her cell to comment on the fact that she couldn’t set a meeting with the cabinet on the day of the summer solstice without losing the support of the Sage’s (who were invaluable in maintaining the dynasty) that Azula loses it. She sets the paperwork on fire. Zuko opens the door to her cell and she stomps out.

Zuko is the Fire Lord, and the Lightning Princess stands at his side. Pointedly not doing paperwork.

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thinking about what zuko means to azula and weeping. he's a traitor but he's your brother. he held you when you were born. he's banished for being too weak to hurt your father and you learn to hate his goodness. he is somewhere in the world carrying your eyes. he misses your absent mother more than he loves you but that is the price you pay for being the one who stayed. he never grants you this same kindness. you are faster and deadlier and better but it doesn't change the fact that your brave big brother used to tell you stories of dragons every time it stormed because you were so afraid of the thunder. he is the only one who understands what it means to bear the brunt of your bloody inheritance. he crumbled under the weight of it, but you stayed. you always stay. he is half of you. you hate being betrayed.

you don't love him. he's your big brother. who could you possibly love more?

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you ever think about how Zuko had 3 years to come to terms with the fact that his father never loved him and Azula had like. two hours. like Zuko had this whole dramatic character arc where he struggled to do right and Iroh was there to support him meanwhile Ozai was like yeah here’s a hollow title shithead. gonna go burn the Earth Kingdom without you lol. if i got done dirty by my dad as bad as Azula got done i’d start shooting lightning with my hair down too.

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Ozai is so pathetic, like that “take his bending away haha he’s harmless now” trick would never have worked on Zuko, if you took his bending away he’d just grab his swords and come at you twice as hard, Azula doesn’t have swords or anything but she’s pretty good at hand to hand and amazing at talking her way out of problems, Iroh bust himself out of prison with no bending at all, meanwhile Ozai? Gets his bending taken away and then just collapses, doesn’t even try anymore, then just sits in prison and tries to get into Zuko’s head some more, he could have trained up and tried to break out too! But no! Bet he can’t break steel bars with his bare hands. Bet he can’t kick a steel lever in two. Bet he can’t even do a flip.

Also we never really see him do any really impressive firebending apart from when he has magic comet power, I guesss he shoots some lightning at Zuko, but that’s it and Azula is still better at the lightning thing. Azula has blue flames. Zuko can do firebreakdancing and bend with his swords. Does Ozai, who is not 14 years old, have blue flames? No he doesn’t.

He didn’t even do his coup himself, Ursa had to kill Azulon for him! Could have just challenged Iroh to an Agni Kai for the throne but he didn’t bc he knew he’d lose.

And then he only ruled for like 6 years! He lost a war that had been going on for 100 years bc of a bunch of kids.

Loserlord indeed

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is this old religion, are we calling it love?

{sweet movie, alisha dietzman / @gaphic / tiktok / @iamalivenow / on earth we're briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong / @manywinged / these violent delights, micah nemerever / the reader, bernhard schlink (trans. carol brown janeway) / hestitations outside the door, margaret atwood / a self-portrait in letters, anne sexton}

[ID: ten images of text together in a litstack

1: Confession: I will think of you forever

2: a post by gaphic: It’s only tragedy if you convince yourself, for even just a moment, that everything could be ok, despite knowing it won’t be. Tragedy lies in ‘so close, yet so far.’ It’s avoidable because it would only take a tiny alteration to prevent disaster, but human nature is in the way- not maliciously, not knowingly, despite trying so hard.

3: a tiktok comment and answer: Are they lovers? / Worse

4: a post by iamalivenow: gay sex won't fix this. it'll probably make this worse. that being said don't you want to see how much worse it can get?

5: Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.

6: tags from manywinged: #technically they know and understand each other better than anyone else alive #but they communicate that in the most fucked up insane unnecessarily complicated way and think thats normal

7: I don't think you've ever felt anything that didn't hurt you. / We've found each other, out of everyone else in the world. Does that hurt, too?

8: "I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do."

9: Should we go into it together / If I go into it with you I will never come out

10: of course the love is there. / still, / still, / still.

end ID]

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Management consulting translations

“This will only take 20 minutes” = This will take 2 hours

“This is a great learning experience!” = This is going to be hard as fuck

“As we discussed” = I already fucking told you

“I have an idea but let me make sure and circle back” = I have no idea but let me ask someone who does know

“This is a challenging client” = This client is fucking crazy, prepare to suffer

“We have some material we can leverage for that” = Copy a deck someone else did on this topic and change a few words

“Let’s table this discussion for now” = Shut up, we’re moving on

“Let’s take this discussion offline” = No one on this call cares about this topic except you and me

“We can revisit that at a later time” = In which case I hope you forget this request and we don’t have to do it at all

“This will expand our scope” = You’ll need to pay us more

“This job is 80% travel” = You will never see your friends and family again

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Hello, since you said you have been learning MBTI, I was wondering if you have used it in your consulting job, for example to approach a client from a different angle, and if you have any examples you are willing to share. Also what kind of people do you most often work with (MBTI-wise or personality-wise)?

Yes. I use it on a daily basis and it’s been an invaluable tool for relationship building, persuasion, damage mitigation, and conflict resolution for both clients and colleagues.

Two examples of when the MBTI saved our asses below.

Example 1: Fe Strikes Back

Problem: Ticked off a major hospital client because our communication style was too direct and ‘aggressive’ even though our intent was to finish the job as quickly as possible so we could save them money (we are very expensive to hire and it’s in the client’s best interests that they don’t drag their feet and have us stay longer)

Solution: Typed the client as primarily Fe-doms and softened our approach and communication style with the following adjustments: more open-ended questions, more generalized questions, more ‘flexible’ and rolling deadlines, fewer direct questions, more client input, more team lunches and dinners with them, and overall less of a militaristic approach

Result: Repaired the relationship, won a huge new extension to the project, and now we have great synergy

Example 2: Revenge of the Te

Problem: Stressed out the COO of a global biotech client during an engagement because we were ‘too accommodating’ of their staff’s schedules and too ‘friendly’ during a routine operational assessment which involved interviews and data collection. The major concern of the client was schedule and data integrity

Solution: Identified that the project stakeholder was an IxTJ of some sort who prioritized speed and results. The IxTJ was worried about subjectivity in our work because we appeared to be too friendly with their staff who we were interviewing to identify what the hell was wrong with their organization. We compressed the interview schedule from 3 weeks to 11 days, minimized any unnecessary communications, and escalated any pushback to the interviewee’s manager

Result: Addressed the project stakeholder’s concerns and made him happy with the deliverable which, in consulting, is all that matters because he’s the one paying the bills

In management consulting, the types I work with the most:

ENTJ

ESTJ

ENTP

INTJ

ESFJ

Almost exclusively extroverted thinkers with the exception of the ESFJ.

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Do you have any stories of worst applicants that you've interviewed?

A few, but one that’s really memorable. Story time.

Back when I was in consulting, whenever two candidates were neck and neck in the final round of interviews, the firm’s policy was to give them both an additional round called a stress interview to see who handled psychological pressure better. Stress interviews are exactly what they sound like– aggressive questions and uncomfortable exchanges designed to see how someone responds and performs. We were instructed to bend the candidates, but not to break them. For whatever reason, my colleagues always nominated me to give the stress interview.

I remember this one kid from the University of Notre Dame; tall and handsome kid from the Midwest, former lacrosse player, eagle scout, JROTC, business major, etc. I was interviewing him with my ESFJ colleague and we were doing a good cop/bad cop routine where I was the bad cop and she was the good cop. I asked him a market sizing question for cell phone sales in China, started hammering him with questions, and pounded on his thought process. Long story short, we saw beads of sweat pour down his face, mild squirming his seat, fidgeting, sweating, and then– finally– out of nowhere, his eyes began to glisten and water as if he was about to cry.

To make matters worse, the ESFJ sees this, tries to console him, and blurts out: “Oh no no no don’t get upset we don’t hate you or anything– we just hate your answer!”

He didn’t get an offer.

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Are there any resources you can point me to in order to improve my consulting math? Management consulting is a route I want to take after university but the biggest thing standing in my way is the lack of math skills I have (I study Law and Political Science).

Combined with the following ask:

Mr. ENTJ, I’m extremely artistically inclined but somewhat incompetent in mathematics. Yet I’ll be studying Commerce at the most prestigious university in my country in the Fall of 2018 for undergrad. To what degree do I need mathematical knowledge to be successful in business and how can I improve my grasp on mathematical concepts? I lack interest in numbers and symbols so I’m wondering if there’s a more creative/artistic way of looking at it.

Hi Mr-entj. How much math did you have to learn to be good at business? I’m horrible at it but looking for ways to improve and quickly before I graduate.

It depends on what kind of business you’re looking to do but generally the math concepts in college are much more complex than anything you’ll use in the real world. Unless you’re an analyst for a think tank in Washington D.C. weaving complicated macroeconomic models, consulting/business math is straightforward. Don’t be intimidated.

Business Math Concepts

Master:

Division

Percentages

Decimals

Probability

Statistics

Conversions (units of measurement)

Algebra (especially finding unknowns)

Basic Finance (especially interest, compound interest, risk)

For mental math (important in the case interview), the expectation is you can do problems like these in your head:

25% of $10 million = ?

$32,000 x 4 = ?

$1 million increased by 50% = ?

15,000 decreased by 30% = ?

The majority of business math will come in the form of word problems because the real world isn’t going to come up to you and ask: “Hey, my company is failing and I need to figure out what’s wrong, what’s 200x+3= 50,000? Solve for x, thanks.”

They’ll ask you questions like these instead:

“Hey, my company is failing and I need to figure out what’s wrong. Can you identify which department is underperforming the most, quantify by how much, and recommend solutions?”

“I feel like we’ve increased our financial performance this year, can you show me which specialization brings in the most revenue with the lowest overhead?”

“Our community clinic needs to save money to stay open, can you find a way to identify the least utilized services and the highest utilized services? Can you measure the impact to our patients if we change any of these services?”

“Hey, we put in that solution a month ago and we want to know how well it’s working. Can you figure out if we solved our problem and by how much?”

The key takeaway is you have to understand what’s going on, what message the data is telling you, and the cause and effect of your actions. Questions that might come up include:

What the hell is going on here?*

How are we measuring success? Is it making more money? Is it losing less money? Is it higher output? Is it better quality scores? Is it fewer errors? What’s the metric for success?

How do I know we’re successful? How do we quantify and measure it?

If I want to increase variable A, what do I need to change/move/increase/decrease/close/open to make it happen?

If I increase variable A, what impact (if any) will it have on variable B?

The data says that C has decreased, how much impact did D or E have on that change (if at all)?

*critical question to answer in any business environment.

Business Math Tools

Learn:

Data visualization. All data and insights gleaned from calculations need to be translated into a data visual (graph). People will run for the hills if you hit them with a giant wall of text summarizing week to week revenue reports; that’s not a stimulating read so use graphs. Learn histograms, line charts, pie charts, waterfall charts, etc. Know how to read them, how to use them, and when to use them.

Microsoft Excel like the back of your hand. This program will be used to run numbers and process data. Learn VLOOKUPs, pivot tables, shortcuts, and all the goodies.

Tableau is a powerful data visualization software that’s very popular. It’s used to produce dynamic charts and graphs that automatically update based on fresh data.

SQL if you’re a glutton for punishment. SQL is used to query for data, knowing SQL makes you infinitely more attractive in the job market.

Resources

Math: Consulting Math, Math 2, Math 3, Math 4, Business Math concepts, GMAT books are also useful

Graphs: 44 Types of Graphs and How to Use Them, Working with charts, graphs, and tables, Data Visualization 101, Types of Graphs

Excel: Excel Formulas, Formulas 2, Formulas 3, Excel Shortcuts, Shortcuts 2

Tableau: Tableau 101, Tableau Community Forums, Hot Keys & Keyboard Shortcuts

SQL: SQL Tutorial, SQL Tutorial 2, 18+ Best Online Resources for Learning SQL and Database Concepts (2018 revision)

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Your management consulting translations had me dying laughing. Do you have experience on the different consulting firms and how they're different from one another?

Related:

Management Consulting Translations

Each consulting firm has its own culture and type of people, generally speaking:

McKinsey: The genius and high-strung kids waiting to quit after 2 years so they can get into a top MBA program.

Bain: The smart frat boys/sorority girls who make questionable life choices, drink the company kool-aid, and get drunk at every happy hour.

BCG: The shy math nerds with bad posture who grew up to be somewhat cool but still can’t hold their liquor.

Deloitte: The ultra aggressive and competitive chip on the shoulder from not getting into McKinsey, Bain, or BCG kids.

PwC: The self-satisfied, excessive name-dropping, “Can you hold on one second? The firm is calling me with, you know, important consultant business” kids.

E&Y: The super friendly, kumbaya singing, cuddly, but laughably underpaid kids.

KPMG: The super chill, smokes a lot of weed on the weekends, “fuck this job, I’m leaving once I find something better” kids.

And each type of consulting has its own flavor and attitude:

Strategy Consulting: The “I want to tell people what to do but not do it myself because I don’t know how to do it” type.

Human Capital Consulting: The “I’m a former sorority girl/frat boy with a communications/sociology degree and no math skills who makes beautiful PowerPoint decks” type.

Technology Consulting: The “I majored in Computer Science/Engineering but didn’t want to be an actual engineer because I’m too social for that boring shit so here I am in an area between business and technology trying to figure out my life” type.

Federal Consulting: The “I love stability, grew up in the D.C./Virginia/Maryland/New England area, and one of my parents works for the federal government or is former military” type.

Financial Consulting: The “I tried to get into investment banking but got rejected so hopefully this job gets me into JP Morgan/Goldman Sachs/Morgan Stanley in the future” type.

Healthcare Consulting: The “I tried to get into medical school and couldn’t get in/I got into medical school but changed my mind/I’m a former healthcare provider (MD or RN) who got tired of patient care shit but still want to help the world without taking a pay cut” type.

Energy/Oil/Gas Consulting: The “I’m from the South and graduated from a top university there that no one has ever heard of (U of Texas, Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, etc.) and want to work for Chevron one day” type.

Tax Consulting: The “I hate my life but this shit pays way better than being an accountant” type.