#(until they reduced their own pay so their co-stars would get more if that story is to be believed)

[clouds-of-wings]

Amy and Sheldon in their HP merch through the seasons. Amy is a Hufflepuff (confirmed 2 times) and Sheldon is a Gryffindor (confirmed 3 times). I think it's a nice touch that the writers didn't go "their nerds lol their obvs Ravenclaws".

I think it sort of fits? Amy is very unpretentious and loyal, Sheldon has a kind of bravado about him. Both have, in each their own way, a strong sense of fairness. It's a small detail, but I like that they don't get reduced to their intellect.

[4dtk]

hi i would love to if you could write a story with jaehyun where he gives y/n a massage and then fucks y/n

long. enjoy, 1.8k baby. dont think i'll give this one a name either LOL

warnings: fingering, doggy, reverse cowgirl, breeding kink

NSFW UNDER THE CUT, MINORS DNI!

“hey. how was work?” you were often the culprit of jaehyun’s questions when your foot first lands in your apartment, toeing off your shoes with ease as he welcomes you with a peck to your cheek. he holds your waist loosely while you massage your ankles and toes, glad for a breath of fresh air even if they were hidden behind socks.

jaehyun drags you into the living room before you can speak, manspreading like he’s done it a hundred time before and pats his thighs. it makes you smile and raise an eyebrow. settling in front of him felt good, although he yanks you back onto his chest a little enthusiastically than usual that you let out a squeal. you just pass it off that he’s happy to see you after a day of doing nothing.

in a way, he has done it a hundred times. it was routine at this point, where you’d just sit against his back and lay against him, sometimes tilting your head back to admire his side profile. you’d talk about co-workers, your lunch, your overbearing tasks, all while jaehyun gently massages your sides with alternating hands, always sure to apply a fair amount of pressure to ease out your nerves.

he laughs into your neck at your reaction, but other than that, he remains quiet as you start on your rant, gesturing widely to this one annoying colleague that’s been getting on your nerves for the past few weeks. always talking over you for the tasks assigned to you, dropping badly-timed statements that definitely could be defined as a backhanded compliment; you could go on and on about the co-worker that you don’t notice jaehyun’s hands retreating from your waist to push you away from his body, travelling up your back instead.

they slowly feel up your back like an experienced masseuse, testing the waters with his thumb in a particularly deep dig in between your shoulder blades. it makes you gasp, the rant about how the same co-worker had accidentally interrupted by your sound of surprise. it’s the exhale of breath, however, that resembled something dangerously close to a whimper and you hope to god that jaehyun doesn’t hear it.

“you gotta relax for me, baby,” jaehyun grunts, continuing to sort out the kinks and aches in your back, no doubt brought about by your bad posture. at least if you were working from home, jaehyun would be able to provide you with hourly reminders to stretch out your back. ah, well, this would have to suffice.

jaehyun was talented with his hands, portraying his efficiency in relaxing the tension in your back with how intimately they moved from one area to another. another crack resonates throughout the room, making you moan out at the released tightness.

jaehyun loses his grip on sanity each time his knuckle, thumbs, fingers meet every inch of your back, eliciting countless other sounds that went south with how lewd they sounded. when you whimper again, he sighs with a little praise of good girl, breath tickling your ear lightly that it causes you to giggle. you’re at ease now, leaning back before he seemingly massages out the last ache in your back.

“you’re a bothersome little minx, aren’t you?” the other smirks against your neck, another giggle escaping your lips when you feel his hand prying your thighs apart. “well, thank fucking god you wore a skirt today.”

jaehyun’s smirk stretches into a grin when he feels how there’s a wet patch on your underwear from the suggestive session where you could feel his hardening erection against your bum. it played out like a bad sex scene from a movie, but you couldn’t complain when you were the stars of the show, able to feeling jaehyun’s fingers on your hips, on your thighs. he drags a finger to your centre painfully slow that you thrash gently against his hold, but it only makes him reinforce the secure arm he has around you. “patience, angel.”

“sorry, hun, but your massages are always so good. i still wonder why we didn’t do this earlier.”

“then… let’s change up our tradition a little, huh?” he purrs, panties already to the side before jaehyun slips a sneaky finger in. your hole sucks him in so easily that a groan is heard, possibly from the both of you. you’re not even sure any more, body overtaken by pleasure as he adds a second finger. you’re so wet that it’s no trouble for the man, who marvels over your shoulder at how good you’re taking his digits.

“haah… j-jae…” he chuckles against your shoulder, eyes never leaving how he’s pumping his fingers into you. they stretch you out so good and you can barely manage words, reduced to nothing but breathy moans and whines while he fucks you open. you mewl on a sudden hard thrust where his fingers are so deep that it’s up to his knuckle. he laughs again.

“you’re doing so good, baby,” jaehyun murmurs, “but i don’t think i can hold it in any longer.” the emptiness you feel when he removes his fingers was criminal, but you can’t complain when you’d be getting his cock in a second or two, already eyeing the bulge that showed itself through his sweatpants. your mouth drops open when he pulls it down in one swift pull, not so much for his length but more of the fact that he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“of course you aren’t wearing boxers. you’ve been planning this, haven’t you?”

“caught red-handed. a smart one, aren’t you?” jaehyun speaks through pants while he lubes up his cock with his pre-cum, boring holes into your eyes with his with a lazy smirk. he doesn’t miss the way you’re rubbing circles onto your neglected cunt. “guess i’d just have to fuck the smart out of you.”

he uses his strength to turn you over, smushing your face into the cushions below you before he eases himself into you, groaning at how fast you clench around him. jaehyun can forgive you for that, since he’s left you on edge with a gaping hole that showed how good his fingers could stretch you out. he reaches a hand over to push your hand from your clit gently while he lets you get used to his thick length resting into you and he swears he feels you clench again when his fingers play with your bundle of nerves.

“let me take care of you tonight. leave it to me.” jaehyun snaps his hips against your ass, propelling you forward just a little from the force. it draws out a slurred moan, even more when he starts his assault on your pussy, sliding in and out of you deliciously.

“mmhm uh- uh- jaeee…!” the fabric below you is stained with your drool.

jaehyun’s already sure you’d get a noise complaint filed against you tomorrow morning, but he can’t care much when the sounds falling from your lips are his favourite song, while his name is like a prayer that you recite every night. tonight just so happened to be the first, with many more sessions involving your begging for him to fuck you harder, faster, deeper. you’re so fucking desperate for his cock when you push back onto him, meeting his thrusts with your own rhythm while the cushions soak up your moans.

eyeing the tv for a second, the male has never felt so glad that he’s set the screensaver to be a boring black screen. it mimics a mirror with the exception of a few blurred visuals due to the semi-matte protector you opted for. “w-wha? jae-“ in a second, jaehyun hauls you up to rest against his chest again, the friction of your shirts uncomfortable from the sweat that manages to seep through. none of you pay much attention, rather to the black screen in front of you that shows how pliant you are for jaehyun.

thighs wide open, while your greedy cunt takes in every inch of jaehyun. it makes him cum right then and there but he holds himself bask the best that he can. “look at you, pretty girl. split open by my fat cock, whining like a good little girl.” the words drives heat up your body like electricity and your body can’t deny itself any longer, grinding down on the length that’s buried deep in you; the sight in front of you only turns you on more. jaehyun is true to his word like a gentleman, driving his dick deep into you instead of making you do the work and soon, he settles into a comfortable pace.

“j-jaehyuuun… shit..” your head finds home on his shoulders, thrown back while his hips continue to piston into you endlessly, heeding your word when you ask him to pick up the pace. “yeah? feel good, darling?” your moans and his combine with the loud, pornographic sounds coming from in between your legs, cunt dripping with arousal with every pump of his pelvis. giddily, you nod at the question, hands tightly wrapped around his arms that were holding your legs open.

“look at the screen, pretty girl.” and you do, mewling in excitement when you witness a white ring of cum at the base of his cock. “should i cum in you? would you like that, hm?” you’re rendered speechless by he fills you up to the brim with his hard thrusts, pussy fluttering around him when you think of him filling you up in another way and you nod again like a dumb little bitch.

“yes- yes yes! fuck, cum in me.” with your confirmation, it unleashes something feral in jaehyun, delivering faster thrusts that you start crying out, reaching all the corners of the small apartment. it contributes to the heat growing in the pit of your stomach, “fill me up, p-please…!” jaehyun emits a deep groan when you say the words, snapping up into you until they get sloppier and messier, thighs tired from his constant movements.

“cumming, cumming, cumming!” you announce it, pussy clenching tight around his cock as you release your juices all over it. jaehyun follows quickly after, hips stuttering before pumping you full of his cum, spurting his seed deep into your womb. the feeling has you shaking, licking your lips in a thrill when the first drop of cum oozes out of you. littering small kisses down the length of your neck, he uses his finger to stuff it back into you. “shit… we can’t waste any of it, can we?” you roll your eyes, turning your head to the side to meet his lips with a smile, silently thanking him for the destress.

-

“fucking hell, seriously?” holding a piece of paper the next morning, you faintly make out the words through the morning vision. jaehyun looks over your shoulder and lets out a loud laugh, barely escaping your poorly aimed smacks as you figure out how to sort out the noise complaint. “your pussy was just too wet, waking up the whole building-“

“jaehyun!”

[cardstumble]

"So many others LIKE trump"? YES

So many others like trump in business, the entertainment industry and politics. Bernie Madoff, Harvey Weinstein and countless others in positions of power and prestige showed contempt for the law. They pervert justice because they think the law is an obstacle to be overcome.

First, the powerful claim they are immune from the law. Often, they prove this to be true. Some like Bill Cosby claim immunity from prosecution because their lawyers negotiated a strategically advantageous deal with prosecutors. Others claim immunity from prosecution because they are U.S. presidents. They hide behind a constitutionally dubious presidential immunity theory blessed by the Department of Justice in three separate memoranda written during the presidencies of Nixon, Clinton and Trump. Donald Trump’s own lawyers, appearing before the 2nd Circuit in their effort to prevent the Manhattan DA from subpoenaing Trump Organization tax records, claimed the president was immune from subpoena and even could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still be immune from prosecution.

Trump’s defenders would have us believe that it’s the law, not his actions, that are wrong. Others in positions of power — many child molesters, for example — claim immunity because they avoided getting caught until after the statute of limitations expired. Still others think their immunity stems from their social class. As New York real estate mogul Leona Helmsley famously told her maid, “Only the little people pay taxes.” Unfortunately for Helmsley, she was not immune from prosecution and was carted off to prison.

A second approach is to attack those who enforce the law, whether it be Mueller and his band of “angry Democrats,” the four agency inspectors general fired by Trump in the middle of investigations, the United States attorney in Manhattan also fired by Trump in 2020, or now the verbal assaults launched at the Manhattan DA from Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s strategy appears to be: When caught violating the law, deflect one’s own narcissism onto law enforcement and hope that sticks in the court of public opinion.

A third related strategy is to denigrate the rule of law itself. Claim that the law is perverse, either because the law is just political or because the law is irrational in making some things illegal and others not. A growing chorus of pundits, politicians and even academics thus depict the law as being grounded in irrationality and being just political. In the far-right media, if Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden did it, it’s per se criminal. If Trump did it, it’s perfectly legal and any prosecutor, inspector general or member of Congress who suggests to the contrary is just on a witch hunt. Many on the left have a similar narcissistic attitude, even if not the media platform to express it, often insisting that law is defined by politics and has no moral integrity on its own.

The law is not perfect and neither are those who enforce it. But the law is not simply perverse or political either. For over a century, nihilistic legal commentators have re-enforced this view. The German theologian and legal philosopher Carl Schmitt in the 1920s published “The Concept of the Political,” in which he argued that law is not based on neutral principles but is simply a byproduct of politics. Academic commentators on the far right and far left today quote Schmitt, who joined the Nazi Party in 1933, frequently for the same proposition: Law is all about politics. There is no objective truth, no just concept of right and wrong underlying the law. This nihilism, like bad wine, is poured into the fancy bottles of academic theory, but it is peddled to a far larger audience under the more plebeian labels of right-wing radio, TV and internet.

Finally, there are the many clever ways to get around the law. In the 1970s, before Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan reduced taxes on the rich, some academic economists sympathized with those who did not want to pay whatever taxes the legislature deemed to be their fair share. Arthur Seldon of the London School of Economics and a group of co-authors coined the term “avoision” to describe manipulative tax strategies that combined ethically problematic but legal tax avoidance (for example, moving from one jurisdiction to another to pay lower tax) with illegal tax evasion (for example, pretending to have moved from one jurisdiction to another in order to pay lower tax).Another common avoision strategy is paying an employee’s rent, private school tuition or other benefits rather than paying reportable income. This, of course, is what the Manhattan DA now alleges the Trump Organization and its CFO did to avoid paying taxes. More from MSNBC DailyMust reads from Today's list

📷 RIP TO THE VRAThe Supreme Court's Arizona voting decision was worse than expectedJessica Levinson 📷 PLOT TWISTWhy Trump might turn out to be Republicans' worst enemyMichael A. Cohen By the 1990s Seldon’s phrase “avoision” was so widely used that it appeared on “The Simpsons” as Bart Simpson explained why Krusty the Clown was in prison for tax fraud: “I don’t say 'evasion.' I say 'avoision.'”According to a 2019 New York Times article, several generations of the Trump family have been doing just that to “avoid” taxes since the 1970s. And on Wednesday, the Manhattan DA, after a lengthy fight just to get the Trump Organization's financial records, and a 2020 victory in the Supreme Court, finally had enough evidence to hand down an indictment.Trump is the epitome of the avoision man. And the law may be catching up with him.But we cannot just focus on Trump without looking at the underlying problem ­— the narcissistic view of the law that gave rise to Trump and caused so many to celebrate him first as a real estate tycoon, then as a media star and finally as a president.The law is not perfect and neither are those who enforce it. But the law is not simply perverse or political either; it is grounded in a collective sense of right and wrong. One of the law’s imperfections is that those who flout the law, who think they are too powerful ever to get caught or prosecuted for violating it, are far too often right.That’s about to change with the small but important step taken by the Manhattan DA on Wednesday. Respect for the law, and enforcement of the law, are crucial to maintaining the rule of law. And that goes for everyone — even a business empire run by a man who once was president of the United States. Stories

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/trump-organization-indictments-allen-weisselberg-small-important-step-n1272896

[jaybe11]

he music business is full of hard-luck stories, but no Austin band rose faster and fell harder than metal band Pariah in the 1990s. Like Guns N’ Roses three years earlier, they were signed to Geffen Records by golden boy talent scout Tom Zutaut. But there were no multiplatinum records or stadium tours for the former classmates at Clark High School in San Antonio.

“We were on the label for five years and have only one album to show for it,” said singer Dave Derrick. “It was a frustrating time, to say the least.”

After relocating to Austin in 1990, Pariah regularly sold out 1,000-capacity venues, but on their final show, soon after officially being dropped by Geffen in 1995, they played to less than 300 at their home club, the Back Room.

Two weeks later, the band’s bassist and driving force, Sims Ellison, put a shotgun to his face and pulled the trigger.

But in taking his own life, Ellison, who suffered from anxiety and depression for years, eventually helped save the lives of other musicians. His suicide was the inspiration for the SIMS Foundation, which provides low-cost mental health services to uninsured musicians who, because of irregular working hours, low pay, easy access to alcohol and drugs and often-volatile intraband relationships, have a unique set of psychological needs.

“Anytime SIMS sets up anywhere in the public, we have at least one person come up to us and say they wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for SIMS,” said Tricia Forbes, executive director of the foundation.

Ellison didn’t drink or smoke, but the band was his life. When it crumbled and his mates, including younger brother Kyle Ellison, went their separate ways after nearly 10 years of constant camaraderie, it was apparently too much for 28-year-old Sims Ellison. On top of that, his girlfriend of nearly three years, then-unknown actress Renee Zellweger, had broken up with him six months earlier.

“I miss him every day,” says Pariah singer Dave Derrick, who will play a Pariah tribute set Saturday at the Austin Music Hall as part of the 15th anniversary SIMS Foundation Benefit Bash. “It bothers me that most people only remember Sims as the guy who killed himself, if they know him at all. He was the sweetest guy you could meet, with a goofy sense of humor. He spent every waking hour working on making Pariah as successful as possible.”Pariah drummer Shandon Sahm, who currently plays with the Meat Puppets, recalls Sims Ellison as full of nervous energy. “He used to say, ‘If you ain’t stressed, it ain’t happening,’” said Sahm, the youngest son of Texas music legend Doug Sahm.

“If he was in a place where people knew him as Sims, the bass player for Pariah, he was totally cool,” said Derrick. “But if he was in any other social situation, he couldn’t cope. He’d show up at a backyard barbecue and pace for 10 minutes and leave.” Derrick said he never saw Sims Ellison finish a plate of food. “He would constantly stir his food, but not eat it.”

Derrick wondered if two middle school incidents forged Sims Ellison’s social phobia. “When he was about in eighth grade he bought a Mötley Crüe T-shirt at a concert and was robbed of it at knife-point in the bathroom. Then a few months later, a bully went up to him at the mall in front of his friends and cold-cocked Sims for no reason. Knocked him out just to show off,” Derrick said. “He knew that, as a member of Pariah, he was protected — no one was going to hurt him.”

The three years with Zellweger, when the band was signed to Geffen, were Sims Ellison’s happiest, Sahm said. Zellweger’s best friend at the time, her “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation” co-star Lisa Newmyer, dated Kyle Ellison, younger than Sims by three years, and the four practically lived together at the Railyard Apartments downtown.

In December 1994, Zellweger split with Sims Ellison and moved to LA, where “Jerry Maguire” would make her a star less than two years later.

Derrick said Sims Ellison bought himself a shotgun for Christmas that month.

Meanwhile, Geffen Records had decided to drop Pariah and pay the band $50,000 to dissolve the two-album deal. The band, rounded out by guitarist Jared Tuten, decided to take a hiatus after one last show at the Back Room.

“Sims was really bummed about everything,” said Derrick, “and I told him he really should get a dog. His eyes lit up and he said, ‘That’s a great idea!’” That was the last time Derrick saw Sims Ellison, who got a job at Urban Outfitters on the Drag two weeks before his death.

“Some people were theorizing that he killed himself because Renee left him or because the band was being dropped, but it was deeper than that,” Derrick said. “Being on Geffen was worse than being dropped by Geffen. That wasn’t it. There was something inside him that none of us could see. You play it back in your head, like ‘I should’ve done this or done that,’ but the truth is that we were all in shock when it happened.”

David Garza, who will serve as music director for Saturday’s benefit, is one of thousands of Austin musicians helped by the assistance program inspired by the Sims Ellison tragedy. “I was having a hard time a few years ago with a personal relationship and with my label,” said Garza, who released two critically acclaimed but soft-selling albums on Atlantic in 1998 and 2001. “I was raised Mexican American Catholic. We didn’t go to therapy — that was for weirdos. If you had a problem, you went to confession.” But Garza had musician friends who’d been helped by SIMS, which provides counseling and psychiatric services and refers clients to a network of 60 therapists and treatment centers that charge greatly reduced rates. With an operating budget of $600,000 a year (about 25 percent of which comes from KGSR’s “Broadcasts” CD), SIMS helps an estimated 600 Austin musicians a year.

Obviously, such musician-aimed services weren’t available to Pariah, whose disappointing career could be summed up by the night in early ’94 when the members gathered around the TV to watch their video for “Powerless” debut on MTV’s “Headbangers Ball.” They waited and waited for almost three hours until just before 2 a.m., when their video aired, the last one of the night.

Signed after a South by Southwest showcase in 1990, Pariah had to wait almost three years until the release of “To Mock a Killing Bird” in 1993. In between, Nirvana exploded and grunge made Pariah’s brand of glam metal obsolete.

“Pariah had the worst timing ever,” said the band’s co-manager Wayne Nagel, who founded the SIMS Foundation in June 1995 with his Austin Rehearsal Complex partner Don Harvey and Sims’ father, Houston oil engineer Don Ellison. “If the record had come out the year after they were signed, it would’ve been a whole different story.” Instead the band was forced to wait more than two years while Geffen threw all its clout and resources into the much-delayed Guns N’ Roses “Use Your Illusion” two-album project.

“Sims was saying, ‘What are we going to do? Metal’s not cool anymore,‘” Sahm said of one of Ellison’s obsessions. “We started off as a hard rock band like Guns N’ Roses and somewhere along the line we turned into Smashing Pumpkins. Still, I think we were getting better as a band by expanding our horizons.”

Geffen didn’t see it that way, according to Nagel. “Zutaut was the king of metal,” Nagel said of the A&R man who signed Mötley Crüe and Metallica before Guns N’ Roses. “He wanted the band to keep it metal.”

Treated like kings by Geffen before “To Mock a Killing Bird” came out, the band couldn’t get phone calls returned when the album didn’t take off.

Pariah met Zutaut, who did not answer an e-mail request for comment, backstage at SXSW 1990 after a scorching set at the Back Room. “He said he didn’t have time to sign another band, but that, just by him coming backstage, we were going to get signed,” Sahm said, with a laugh.

Nagel said Pariah received eight offers from labels after that SXSW appearance. It turns out that Zutaut did sign Pariah to Geffen, but he wasn’t kidding about being too busy. “It was all about Guns N’ Roses,” said Derrick. “We weren’t the only band put on hold.”

Sahm said, looking back, the band should’ve signed with Chrysalis, who Photoshopped a group photo of the band so they looked at home inside the label’s headquarters. “They loved our song ‘Shatter Me’ and were ready to put it out to radio right away. But instead we went with the big shot. Chrysalis couldn’t give us a $100,000 advance, but Geffen did.” The label also gave Pariah a $250,000 recording budget that soared to $500,000 by the time the album was finished at Madonna’s Maverick recording studio in LA. (Sims Ellison hit it off with Madonna and appeared in her “Deeper and Deeper” video.)

“We were young and stupid,” Derrick said of signing with Geffen for the upfront money. “But we were all in it together. If there was any motto with Pariah, it was ‘The band comes first.’”

The SIMS Foundation, named after a lovable, yet troubled Austin musician, was formed for what comes next.

[its-ashleyreads]

FInished: 05/05/2020

Love at First Like by Hannah Orenstein

Rating:  ★★★★★

Okay, so to preface this review I feel like I need to say that I don’t typically rate romance novels highly. Not because I believe that they aren’t deserving of high ratings but more often than not there is some problematic element that I just don’t jive with. That being said, this book definitely had a problematic element to it but it was dealt with in such a way that enhanced the characters and their development instead of being problematic for the sake of shock value.

Also, just a warning that I had a LOT of thoughts on this book so the review is quite lengthy. I’ll put little headers on each paragraph so if you’re only interested in thoughts on certain aspects you can scroll down and find them easily.

Summary

“Love at First Like” by Hannah Orenstein, is about Eliza, a 20-something jewellery store owner in New York who sells happily ever afters but can’t seem to find her own. One night after a train wreck of a first date she scrolls through Instagram and finds out that her ex-boyfriend, who said he wasn’t the type to settle down, has gotten engaged. Eliza does what everyone does after finding out their ex has moved on, she gets drunk. After drinking through the better part of a bottle of whiskey Eliza thinks it’s a good idea to go into the jewellery store, she co-owns with her sister and take pictures of engagement rings on her finger.

The next morning, she realises that in her drunkenness she accidentally posted one of the photos on Instagram and her 100K followers now believe that she’s engaged. Her first instinct is to take the photo down but after seeing the influx of sales, at a time when the business sorely needs them, she decides to milk it a little longer. With so many questions surrounding who she’s engaged to and no man in sight, Eliza and her best friend Carmen, decide to hold an audition of sorts for someone to play the groom-to-be. The audition turns out to be a complete bust but shortly after Eliza meets Blake. Blake is everything a girl like Eliza wants, he’s attractive, charming, and he owns a men’s luxury watch company; they’re a match made in heaven. They start dating because this is someone who Eliza can really see herself settling down with, but she hasn’t told him that she’s fake engaged, or that she’s planning to stage a fake wedding to drum up even more sales for her business. Throughout the book Eliza struggles with whether to tell Blake the truth, or risk losing him for good.

 Review *Contains Spoilers*

Eliza

When I first picked up this book it was in one of those 3 for £10 sales and I needed a third. The premise sounded ridiculous and unrealistic and I thought it would just be an easy read that I rolled my eyes at, like most chick-lit. I was so pleasantly surprised by this book. I thought this was going to be a 1/5 but somehow, I’m giving it a gold star and a 5 out of fucking 5.

The main character, Eliza, is not someone I totally relate to, in fact her impulsivity is one of the qualities I hate most in anyone. As a dedicated planner and organiser, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves, but despite that I actually really liked Eliza’s character. Her bad/irresponsible choices in the beginning mostly just seem like a way to get the plot moving but I can still see how her character got to the place to make those choices. We’re given just enough backstory to understand how much her jewellery store, Brooklyn Jewels, means to her and how she would do anything to keep it from going under. Which is why when sales go up after the accidental engagement photo, I totally understand why she didn’t delete it, even if I don’t agree with it.

Secondary Characters/Friendships

I also absolutely loved that side characters like Carmen, Sophie and Raj all got to be real, fleshed out characters. Often, I find that secondary characters, in romance especially, don’t really get to have arcs or personalities other than whatever stereotype or trope they’re based on. Carmen in particular I thought was really well done. When we’re first introduced to her I thought she was just going to be a fun BFF that serves up one-liners to get laughs. Yes, Carmen can be a funny character at times, but that’s not who she is. Despite us only having small glimpses into this character, as we only see her through Eliza, Orenstein uses Eliza’s history with Carmen to show us how she’s evolved over the years in her career goals particularly. The second encounter we have with Carmen is almost entirely centred on her and her idea of an app that she wants to launch, where Eliza intones that previously “[Carmen] said she’d rather do excellent work for a company and collect a steady paycheck. [Eliza] never thought she'd strike out on her own.” (60) The rest of this encounter is spent with Eliza offering to provide business advice and support to Carmen as she knows how hard starting a business can be.

I absolutely adore Eliza and Carmen’s friendship because it doesn’t revolve around Eliza and her boy trouble. Their friendship is a two-way street where they lift each other up when they doubt themselves, like when Carmen was nervous about making a presentation to investors and Eliza went through it with her until she’d perfected it. And they ground each other when they’re becoming too idealistic, like when Eliza keeps stringing Blake along and Carmen reminds Eliza that he’s a person with real feelings who doesn’t deserve to be played with. Their friendship is so authentic and true to real life experience that I honestly want another book about just the two of them living it up in NYC.

Eliza as a friend in general, I found was quite refreshing. In a lot of romance the heroine tends to be quite selfish and shitty towards their friends, if they have any at all, but Eliza hit the perfect balance of caring for her friends and caring for herself; not being a martyr, but also not being greedy. I loved how excited she got about her friends lives and achievements, and how when she saw that Raj, a web engineer, was bar-tending between gigs she hooked him up with Carmen who was in need of exactly what he had to offer. I also like how it was mentioned that Carmen paid Raj because I think sometimes things like that get reduced to a friend doing another friend a favour, instead of the fact that Raj is a trained professional and deserves to be paid for his time and expertise.

Sophie

However, someone who did not deserve to get paid, was fucking Sophie. Let me clarify, Sophie deserved to be paid for the work she did at Brooklyn Jewels, but she did NOT deserve a $15K bonus right as their business was going through a tough time financially. This made me unreasonably angry, I had a full freaking meltdown because it was so ridiculous to me that she would even ask and even more so that Eliza said YES. Sophie needed the money to go through IVF treatments because she and her wife wanted to have a baby, fair enough. I personally don’t believe in going through that kind of treatment when there are so many kids in the world without families but whatever, to each their own. But what really irked me was the fact that Sophie, who is in her early thirties, had already attempted this method of conception and it didn’t work. So, she was willing to take a gamble with money that was greatly needed to help keep their business afloat because she couldn’t just wait a fucking year or two. Not to mention the fact that if she did get pregnant and has this baby only for her business to fail, then she wouldn’t have a steady income, health insurance, maternity pay and she would have also screwed her sister out of her dream. Luckily everything works out for the best, Sophie gets pregnant and Eliza saves Brooklyn Jewels, but it so very easily could have destroyed multiple lives. The fact that Sophie is meant to be perceived as the ‘responsible’ sister astounds me. When Eliza was trying to save their business by offering solutions Sophie kept shooting every idea down and her only contribution to that conversation was that she wanted to fire their only employee who got paid shit-all anyway. Honestly, I could write a fucking essay on why I hated Sophie but I guess I’ll settle for a really long paragraph.

Love Interests

The problematic element in this book was definitely the ridiculously elaborate plot for Eliza to lure Blake into marriage to cover her fuck-up. As I was reading I marked three places where Eliza could have told Blake the truth in an organic way so that it wasn’t just like she was dropping a bomb on him. Despite my frustration with Eliza, her internal monologue again, made me understand why she wasn’t doing things how I wanted her to. Although, even though I understand her reasoning, it still doesn’t make what she did to Blake right, and I absolutely love how he couldn’t trust her again and that they didn’t get back together. I hate the ‘love concurs all’ trope and I’m glad that the author showed how Blake, who was clearly way more in love with Eliza than vice versa, couldn’t get past the fact that she used and lied to him. Part of me wishes that was how the romance in this book ended, with no happily ever after, maybe Raj pretending to be her fiancé to save Brooklyn Jewels, but no happy couple at the end.

The other part of me feels all warm and fuzzy because Raj and Eliza are unbelievably cute together. Orenstein could have fucked this romance up so hard, especially because it comes in so late in the story and Eliza was (kind of) on the rebound. But she takes the readers thoughts of, ‘Did Eliza really not notice her feelings for Raj until now?’ and ‘Is Raj just second place because Blake dumped her?’ and turns them into questions Raj uses to stand up for himself. Raj has clearly liked Eliza since they first met and I loved that he was willing to fight for what he believed he deserved. Raj and Eliza have such great chemistry as characters, but they were ultimately their own people who made their own choices, even after getting together. The way Orenstein wrote both Blake and Raj was a breath of fresh air. To see two male characters not being aggressive, but still standing up for themselves and not blindly bowing down to what the female love interest wanted, was something I don’t think I’ve ever read before. I think that comes from the fact that yes, Eliza is the heroine of this story but it’s not just about her. Like, I could tell while reading from Eliza’s point of view that there were other things going on in this world that just didn’t include her. So, while she was our main character, she wasn’t the main character of the world she was living in.

Representation

One of the things I loved most about this book was the casual representation. This was the truest to life representation I’ve seen in a romance novel thus far. Orenstein doesn’t make a big deal about her minority characters because they’re not minority characters, they’re characters who happen to be minorities. This book isn’t about race or LGBTQ+ rights so there’s no real need to dwell on those things, but she does acknowledge those parts of her characters in small ways throughout. This is how more fiction should be, because the more we normalize diversity in the media we consume, the less we’ll think of minority groups as ‘other’ (or so I hope).

Rating

Ultimately this book was not perfect. I definitely had problems with it (mostly named Sophie) but it was a fun read from beginning to end with some thought provoking themes which will stick with me for a while yet. Honestly, this book could have been complete garbage, but Orenstein’s writing and character development made me connect to almost every character (except for Sophie of course). I can’t wait to read her other works. 5/5. Brava!

[ryanmeft]

Robin Hood Movie Review

Robin Hood is the ultimate timeless legend, which is entertainment executive-speak for “bankable property we don’t have to pay royalties on”. He therefore gets trotted out in much the same way as bowel movements: regularly, with little thought, and sometimes it’s painful, especially if you’ve had Chipotle. I sorta lost control of that analogy. Anyway, the latest iteration has some genuinely good ideas and tries to tie the legend more directly to the world modern audiences live in, but also much like food from Chipotle, it’s overburdened and leaves you feeling like you really could have made a better decision.

The story takes no beats you don’t know, though it handles a few in inventive ways. Friar Tuck (Tim Minchin) lets us know in a voiceover that he COULD tell us the history of the story, but we don’t care, which---I mean, outright telling the audience they won’t have to think much is a novel approach, and probably welcome. The movie then proceeds to whet our whistle with a scene of Marian (Eve Hewson) attempting to steal a horse from Robin (Taron Egerton); though disguised, the costume department made sure to display her cleavage, which seems impractical. The idea that this version of the story might have a poorly disguised Marian joining in the sheriff-robbing fun is quickly dashed, as a charming word turns her from rogue into arm candy for Robin.

Then he’s drafted for the Crusades, which seems odd for the 1190’s until he gets there. His time in the Holy Land is the film’s one truly gripping risk. The movie dares to visually, thematically and through the use of a Hollywood version of PTSD, tie the Crusades to the modern military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldier whose leather armor mimics bulletproof vests slowly advance through the streets of a generic middle eastern city as a sniper with a repeating balustrade attempts to pick them off, and the only difference between this sequence and an actual modern war movie are the weapons used. Some may find this offensive, either feeling it co-opts very real modern trauma for an action movie, or bastardizes the real history. I can see why the first complaint matters; the second, not so much. Like with the great, underrated Marie Antoinette, the present is used to render the past understandable.

The movie doesn’t remain that thoughtful for long. When Robin fails to stop a sadistic commander from beheading a young soldier, he is sent back to England and the dead boy’s father, the movie’s version of Little John (Jamie Foxx) follows him. Nottingham is, of course, being ravaged by the Sheriff (Ben Mendelsohn), whose plan is, as usual, to put himself in command using stolen gold. The movie paints this in terms of the modern struggles between the 99 and 1%, and at first this is a rather engaging take. After a while, though, it’s using a club to make the point, and not even the dimmest, most checked-out of viewers could fail to get it; by the time Robin leads a street rally in which he yells “Who’s ready for some wealth redistribution?”, I was fully expecting a cameo from Bernie Sanders. When he isn’t robbing from the rich, he poses as a loyal nobleman, which cover seems like it would be compromised by the fact his mask is always coming off while he’s shooting a soldier in the face.

The worst part of a bad movie that’s almost something is that you can see where it could have been good, and in the case of Robin Hood, you can see exactly why it isn’t. Whenever possible, the movie abandons more intriguing ideas and a little genuine chemistry between the actors in favor of stultifying action scenes with all the pizzazz and creatively of a sinking fireworks barge. Robin breaks into a place, shoots some guys with arrows, takes some gold. He breaks into another place, shoots some other guys with arrows, takes some gold. In a major twist, he breaks into one place, shoots some guys with arrows, and doesn’t get any gold. And when it’s time for the final battle, we get a CG-stuntfest that reminds me of a comment about about the fight with Smaug in the second Hobbit movie: it’s so overly engineered and unnatural that I kept expecting “Tap the A button repeatedly!” to appear onscreen. Robin is known for his quick reactions and quicker wit, and a huge part of the appeal of versions like the ‘38 Errol Flynn classic and the (in my mind, critically underserved) 1991 Prince of Thieves is the glib, boyish enthusiasm and devil-may-care suaveness of the main character. Egerton’s version gets precious little of that, though I’m not sure where he’d find time to work in a wink, nod and taunting line, since the movie is constantly employing slowdown lest we miss the granular detail of each flying arrow. After her few seconds of promising introductory screen time, Marian is reduced to a plot device. Will Scarlet (Jamie Dornan) here serves as a dull-as-bricks secondary antagonist; his principled-but-ambitious rebel leader could have been something if the movie had bothered.

This is the kind of movie where writers and directors play second fiddle to studio executives and editing rooms, but the story by Ben Chandler manages to occasionally work some good bits in. Particularly engaging is Mendelsohn’s skin-crawling take on the Sheriff, who carries himself like he’s about to go on Youtube and explain why he jacked the price of some live-saving drug by a thousand percent for his customers’ own good. Unlike most iterations of the character, there’s some damage to his madness, as he tells Robin of his constant youthful mistreatment at the hands of the priesthood; sexual abuse is heavily implied in some horrific ways. The costume department has done its job well, ad the city of Nottingham is effective for a while until the dreariness of it wears on us; it seems to be a place that never sees the sun, and if there’s one thing Robin Hood should not be, it is dreary.

It’s pretty easy to disparage a movie with so little soul, but it’s harder when the promise of what could have been sometimes forces its way out with such gusto. I feel for director Otto Bathurst, who has gotten a BAFTA award for his work in British television, but here was likely little more than a middle manager for stockholders and demographically arranged focus groups. The resulting movie is a muddle where good ideas go to die.

Verdict: Not Recommended 

Verdict: Must-See

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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All images are property of the people what own the movie.

[xxkellsvixen19xx]

You Light Up My Life David x Andrew AU

A/N: a request for David & Andrew from ACS Versace, did as an AU/holiday theme hope you don't mind please enjoy!!

As beautiful and as clichéd it sounds, Andrew and David's lives had problems underneath the surfaces. Their relationship had been pushed and tested to its limit, binding them together closer than before.

It wasn't always easy and their love wasn't a fairytale, though the way they met and the memories they created - and continue to make - may just feel like something from a bestselling romance novel. It was something for people to see and for people to read, but no one would ever truly know the deeper secrets and the deeper meanings of the story. Those were for David and Andrew only.

- - - - - - - - - -

THREE YEARS AGO:

Over the winter months, the Starbucks in which David worked at only got busier.

Men, women, children, teenagers, elderly - all types and all ages of people showed up to purchase anything that'd keep them from freezing in the harsh English winters.

David and his other co-workers,  worked their asses off serving these people. From the time of frosty sunrises to the time of chilly sunsets (unless it was a school day, then it'd be from the moment school ended until the moment the shopping centre closed), they worked as a team to provide each and every customer with overpriced caffeine from a mainstream chain of coffee stores.

As Christmas grew nearer, David noticed the amount of workers in the shopping centre starting to set up all the decorations. The tallest Christmas tree he'd ever seen was put up in the main centre, covered with festive baubles, tinsel, lights, fake snow and the traditional gold star on the very top.

Other decorations covered the square and Christmas music played, putting David in a more festive state of mind. More families came to the coffee shop and they even bought in a brand new stock of Christmas themed cups. Call David overexcited, but he loved Christmas more than anything.

Especially when 'Santa' and the 'helpers' came.

Every year, a workshop was built in the centre by the Christmas tree. Santa, or who the kids thought was Santa, came every year, and the children would go into Santa's workshop to talk to him about what they wanted for Christmas before Santa gave them a small gift each and sent them away with their families again.

The 'helpers' were always lovely too. The girls dressed up in elf costumes would often come to the coffee shop after their work shifts, and David would serve them and talk to them. This happened every year, and it was the period of time when David loved his job the most.

His favourite year though was three years ago.

David was working his shift on a Saturday – the first day that 'Santa' and the 'elves' came that year – when he looked up to see them walking in.

One of them, he noticed, was shoved to the side. He also noticed that this particular one was male unlike the others, which made him warm to the boy almost straight away.

He served the girls first, making small conversation, before serving the boy.

He noticed the painted blush on his cheeks and the red on his nose. He noticed the elf hat he was forced to wear and the stupid but cute costume. But, he also noticed his feathery brown hair and the way it poked out of his hat; covering his ears, forehead and constantly falling into his eyes, which were a bright shining brown.

And David liked him as soon as he laid eyes on him.

"I'll just have a hot chocolate..." he said, voice high but soft and innocent. He sounded shy, unlike the other girls. David thought it was just because Andrew hadn't been to the shop before.

He nodded anyway, and put in the order.

"Name?" David asked him, and Andrew swore he completely forgot his name at that point, as well as forgetting to breathe.

“A-A-A Andrew.." He stammered.

"You sure?" David  joked.

Andrew  just nodded quickly in response, blushing redder than the face paint on his nose.

He watched as David wrote his name on the cup and made the drink for him, taking in the sight of the bright blue eyed, lanky, blonde haired boy behind the counter. Andrew  wanted to pounce on him.

"Here you go..." David smiled warmly as he handed Andrew his drink.

He then handed David the exact money and nearly fainted when their hands touched. Andrew smiled awkwardly though, taking the drink and the receipt before brushing his fringe out of his eyes and glancing at the name on the cup.

Written on there was his name, spelt in the only possible way that annoyed him and in all caps:

ANDREW.

After Christmas was over, Andrew still came to the coffee shop every day. It turned out that he worked as a waiter in one of the restaurants on the other side of town, and worked in the mall's centre extra hours at Christmas.

Andrew and David started dating at the end of January. It turned out their feelings for each other were in fact mutual, and Andrew happily agreed to be David's boyfriend after their first two dates.

After that, Andrew and Davif both came out to their families. David's father was extremely happy for him and accepted them. It was lovely to see and experience, and gave Andrew a boost of confidence for coming out to his own family.

But, he wasn't so lucky. His mother turned her nose up and gave up making effort to talk to them on a regular basis  which took an indescribable toll on Andrew.

However, David then decided it was best for them to move in together. They both found a small apartment building to suit them, and moved in as soon as possible. They were both a lot happier after that.

️- - - - - - - - - -

Over time, David left his job and struggled to find another. Andrew was the only one to bring in any money and David was under a constant strain to find a job.

He eventually got a job as a cashier at Tesco, but with rises in energy and water bills and even taxes, the money they both brought in was barely enough.

After moving into a cheaper apartment building, they both found it a little easier and payed off their debt, but still had little money for food and other things they wanted for themselves.

Sacrifice after sacrifice they made, and eventually they both fell into a routine of non stop exhaustion. David was stressed, and Andrew blamed himself.

They both lost contact with their families, who wouldn't have been able to help them anyway and it got to the point where they had one phone between them both and one laptop they had to share. They couldn't afford a TV and sometimes had to sing in the shopping centre to scrape in some money so they could afford food.

Andrew was often reduced to tears every night and David's sweet nothings were the only thing that could calm him.

It was tough, but they were both still happy when they were together. Because, sure, getting by and having to deal with a crippling financial stability was difficult, but it didn't stop them from being in a happy relationship. They were content together, and neither could get by without the other.

They were like a unit, and one couldn't progress without the other. Without each other, they were like broken machines waiting for a purpose, and when they were together the machine would come to life again - fully functional and strong.

David loved Andrew endlessly and Andrew loved David more than anything.

David was determined to ask Andrew to marry him some day, but knew he couldn't afford it. He just knew that he had to get them on steady feet first, and decided that Christmas was the perfect time to propose, supposing that he could manage.

[orbemnews]

Fact, or Corporate Fiction? Facts and foolishness Announcing phony news on April Fools’ Day is one of corporate America’s favorite occasions for shameless publicity stunts. But when stonks, Dogecoin and $69 million JPG files are real things that warrant serious business coverage, the risk of jokes being taken seriously could hardly be higher. Some say that’s a good reason to skip them, not to mention the gravity that a pandemic has cast over things. With that in mind, can you spot the prank among these recent announcements? (Scroll to the bottom for the answer.) A: To celebrate National Burrito Day today, Chipotle is giving away $100,000 worth of Bitcoin. B: Volkwagen’s U.S. operation is changing its name to “Voltswagen” to emphasize the company’s push into electric vehicles. C: Robinhood is nixing a confetti animation when app users make a stock trade to reduce “distraction.” D: Krispy Kreme is giving anyone who shows proof of Covid-19 vaccination one free doughnut per day for the rest of the year. E: Managers at Goldman Sachs are giving junior bankers gift baskets with fruit and snacks in response to complaints about burnout. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Business groups challenge President Biden’s proposed corporate tax increases. The Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce were among those that praised Mr. Biden’s plan to spend trillions on infrastructure. But they rejected his idea to pay for it by raising taxes, saying that doing so would endanger the economic recovery. The latest setbacks in quelling the pandemic. Johnson & Johnson said it would delay future shipments of its vaccine after a mix-up at a manufacturing plant. A top E.U. official said the bloc would allow “zero” shipments of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to Britain until the drugmaker fulfilled its commitments to Brussels. And France announced a third nationwide lockdown as its cases mount and inoculation efforts lag. A tough day for initial public offerings. As Deliveroo had “the worst I.P.O. in London’s history,” other offerings also struggled. In the U.S., the SoftBank-backed real estate brokerage Compass priced at the bottom of a reduced range, while the low-cost airline Frontier sold at the low end of expectations. And in Canada, the space tech company MDA priced below its range. Microsoft wins a huge contract to make augmented-reality headsets for the U.S. Army. The tech giant will receive up to $22 billion for equipping soldiers with sensors based on its HoloLens technology. It’s another big defense contract for Microsoft, which beat out Amazon to provide a $10 billion cloud computing system for the Pentagon. Executives get a ‘sense of urgency’ in Georgia A day after 72 Black executives signed a letter calling on companies to fight restrictive voting bills more forcefully, executives have begun speaking out more directly about laws that limit ballot access. But their statements came too late to affect a sweeping law passed last week in Georgia that added new requirements for absentee voting, limits on drop boxes and other restrictions that have an outsize impact on Black voters. Today in Business Updated  April 2, 2021, 3:58 p.m. ET Delta and Coca-Cola reversed course. Ed Bastian, Delta’s C.E.O., told employees, “I need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.” James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s C.E.O., said he wanted to be “crystal clear” that “the Coca-Cola Company does not support this legislation, as it makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.” The statements by the Atlanta-based companies angered local politicians, including Gov. Brian Kemp. In the past, corporate stands on controversial issues have led to political retribution: In 2018, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle stripped a tax break proposal from a bill that would benefit Delta after the airline ended a promotional discount for N.R.A. members. The State House passed a similar measure yesterday, but the Senate didn’t take it up before the chambers adjourned for the year. Retaliation also goes the other way: In an interview with ESPN, President Biden said he would “strongly support” moving Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game from Atlanta, scheduled for July. “It is regrettable that the sense of urgency came after the legislation was passed and signed into law,” said Darren Walker, the Ford Foundation president, who is a board member at Pepsi, Ralph Lauren and Square. Others companies based in Georgia remained circumspect. A UPS spokesperson said the company stood “ready to continue to help in ensuring every Georgia voter has the ability to vote.” A spokesperson for Home Depot reiterated the company’s stance that it believes “all elections should be accessible, fair and secure.” A spokesperson for Inspire Brands, the owner of Dunkin’ Donuts and Arby’s, said that it “values inclusivity” and believes that “every American should have equal access to their right to vote.” “The argument is they are recruited, they’re used up and then they’re cast aside without even a college degree. So they say, how can this be defended in the name of amateurism?” — Justice Samuel Alito, assessing the “stark picture” painted by college athletes in an antitrust case against the N.C.A.A. that the Supreme Court heard yesterday. The Red Sox sold a stake to private equity. Now what? RedBird Capital Partners confirmed its deal to buy a stake in Red Sox parent Fenway Sports Group, a transaction that values the company at $7.35 billion. DealBook spoke with RedBird’s founder, Gerry Cardinale, and Fenway’s chair, Tom Werner, about what happens next. Buy and build. RedBird plans to acquire more teams: Mr. Cardinale noted that his company doesn’t own teams in the N.B.A., N.H.L. or M.L.S. For its part, Fenway plans to tap new opportunities in ticketing, sponsorship and media. (As part of the RedBird deal, the N.B.A. star LeBron James bought a stake in Fenway.) In media, Fenway controls NESN, and RedBird owns a stake in the YES network. “You should expect that we’re going to continue to look for ways to innovate in that area,” said Mr. Cardinale, who helped create the YES network. Deepening ties with online gambling is also on the table. “We do have an excellent relationship with DraftKings,” Mr. Werner said, “and we’ve already had some conversations with them about partnerships.” The deal was a better fit for the private market instead of a SPAC, the executives said, after talks to take Fenway public via a blank-check firm fell through. “In the middle of Covid, with the mandate to re-underwrite the next wave of growth for Fenway Sports Group, we probably would be better off doing that privately and then give ourselves the option down the road,” Mr. Cardinale said of going public. He also called the current SPAC market “very frothy.” What worked at WeWork WeWork was founded in 2008, rose spectacularly, reached a $47 billion valuation and famously crashed before a planned I.P.O. in 2019. (It announced a deal last week to go public by merging with a blank-check firm that valued it at roughly $8 billion.) A new documentary, “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn,” tries to find lessons among the ups and downs. It streams on Hulu, starting tomorrow. Jed Rothstein, the director, told DealBook that he believes what’s most compelling about WeWork isn’t what went wrong, but how it initially succeeded by turning strangers into a kind of tribe. “We still need that,” he said. “The core idea of WeWork met a real need for community,” Mr. Rothstein said. “The voids people were trying to fill have only become more real.” After a year of social distancing, he likes the notion of curated communal spaces, which is what WeWork offered. Talking to early WeWorkers who bought the vision and later felt betrayed, he was surprised to find how much the company gave its devotees, notably a feeling that they were part of something bigger. That is worth acknowledging in a world where people will increasingly work remotely and for many different companies in their careers, Mr. Rothstein said. WeWork’s co-founders, Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey, both had communal childhood experiences. Mr. Rothstein said he thought they sincerely wanted to replicate the good in group life and inspired people who hadn’t seen that before. But Mr. Neumann also focused on what he didn’t like — sharing equally — and emphasized an “eat what you kill” mentality. Ultimately, his hunger turned the community dream into a nightmare for many. After the director talked to people who followed the initial vision, his perspective changed. “People in the film experienced real growth and fulfillment mixed with their anger,” he said. “I realized the story is much more nuanced.” THE SPEED READ Deals The media conglomerate Endeavor filed to go public for a second time, while raising $1.8 billion to buy full control of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It also added Elon Musk to its board. (WSJ, CNBC) Vice Media is reportedly in talks to go public by merging with a SPAC. And the S.E.C. issued two notices for companies looking to go public via SPAC. (The Information, S.E.C.) Junior bankers aren’t the only ones feeling burned out. Young lawyers are, too. (Business Insider) Politics and policy New York became the 15th state to legalize recreational marijuana. (NYT) Efforts by aides to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to hide New York State’s Covid-19 death toll coincided with his efforts to win a multimillion-dollar book deal. (NYT) An accidental disclosure by the I.R.S. revealed a $1 billion tax dispute with Bristol Myers Squibb. (NYT) Tech Best of the rest The ad agency Deutsch is doubling referral bonuses for Black job candidates. (Insider) Amazon wants its employees mostly back in its offices, while the Carlyle Group and IBM favor hybrid working models. (Insider, Bloomberg) Paul Simon is the latest musician to sell his entire back catalog: Sony Music Publishing will buy the collection, including classics like “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” for an undisclosed amount. (NYT) Feeling burned-out? As more workers consider a return to the office, our colleague Sarah Lyall is writing about late-pandemic anxiety and exhaustion. Tell her about how you’re coping. April Fools’ Day quiz answer: B. If you were fooled by Volkswagen’s prank, you’re in good company. Volkswagen reportedly told journalists that a draft of the announcement was not a stunt. It later called the stunt just “a bit of fun.” Source link Orbem News #corporate #fact #Fiction

[otisdyke]

Top Tips From The Horses Mouth

https://ift.tt/2OyIIsD

Daniel Ramot

The cofounder and CEO of Via Transportation, a carpooling service that has raised almost £300 million in funding, reveals what he has learnt…

“I think who you spend your time with can be more important than what you’re working on. When launching Via, I had a network of the smartest people [from university] I could hire to build our algorithm and technology.”

It’s never too late to change track

“I realised in my third year that academia wasn’t for me. I was reverse engineering when really I wanted to build things. I still finished my degree and my experience working with data has proved very useful.”

Don’t rush

“I didn’t rush to start a business, because, as a graduate student, I was financially unstable, but also none of my ideas were good enough – and I didn’t have the right partner.”

Prove your product

“We thought we could build the technology and that every city in the world and every public transportation authority would want to use it. We soon realised we had to build the product to show them it actually worked.”

Stop talking about it

“We took six months to convince ourselves that our idea would work. But we should have launched right away. You think you’re reducing your risk by doing diligence around your idea, but actually the risk of someone else launching your idea increases.”

Nothing is above your pay grade

“I’ve started to hear the phrase ‘above your pay grade’, which I dislike. I expect people at Via to try to engage with every problem. If you’re ambitious, then your goal should be to engage with problems one or two levels higher than you.”

David Hieatt

The cofounder of Hiut Denim Co, the jeans label worn by everyone from the Arctic Monkeys to Meghan Markle and now with a three-month waiting list for orders, reveals what he has learned…

Put yourself in a corner

“I quit my A-levels and started a sports clothing business. The petrol gauge in my car didn’t work, so I never knew if there was any petrol – the only sure-fire way to make sure I got home was to sell like hell.”

Read up

“I was unemployed for over a year until I read Ogilvy On Advertising, which said you don’t need any qualifications to work in the creative department of an advertising agency.”

It’s about your boss, not your pay packet

“My boss Paul Arden was the Steve Jobs of advertising. He taught me never to compromise for financial reasons. Who cares about your job title? The real question is: who’s your teacher?”

Make a splash

“I wanted to exhibit our T-shirts at a show, but it was £5,000 for a stand. So I just painted two models as if they were wearing the T-shirts. We were banned within 30 minutes, but every single magazine – and the event – ran images of the stunt.”

Tell a story

“A great brand is a great story. For Hiut Denim, our small town in Wales used to make jeans, so we wanted to give 400 people their jobs back. That’s a great story.”

Don’t rush to sell

“Sell your company once you don’t love it any more. If you sell what you love and someone else messes it up, you’re going to feel it. If you’re enjoying the ride, stay on the horse.”

Ryan Prince

The founder and CEO of hotel-style apartment rental chain Uncle, which owns more than 1,200 properties with £500 million worth of assets, reveals what he has learnt…

Beware the shortcut

“I realised I could cram my entire university schedule into two days, leaving a five-day weekend. I ended up regretting never taking advantage of all the great things I could have done. Now I’ve gone 180 degrees the other way.”

Embrace your anxieties

“My father arrived in Canada after the Second World War with his parents, who were Holocaust survivors. He was born in a displaced persons camp. I grew up mindful that I had nothing to fall back on and you never know what’s around the corner. I had to look after myself financially.”

Trust your mid-life crisis

“I had a mid-life crisis at 25. I realised I was much too much of a control freak to passively invest in business and just hope they did well. I needed a more reliable career.”

Reconsider the norm

“You judge hotels according to their brands and reviews, but when renting you have no idea what you’re signing up for. That’s backwards. So I thought, why isn’t there a hotel brand for living? Uncle was born out of that question.”

Track consumer trends

“I realised affordability in cities was going down, renting was growing and its stigma decreasing. It was once a badge of honour to own your car, now people will say why waste money doing that?”

Guy Ivesha

Meet the man behind London’s £40 million co-working members’ club Mortimer House

Delegate to busy people

“I learnt in the army that if you want something done, give it to someone busy. I found that if I gave it to someone with all the time in the world on their hands, they didn’t do it quickly.”

Keep abreast of industry news

“I subscribed to all the hospitality publications and one day learnt an Israeli billionaire [Yitzhak Tshuva] had acquired the Plaza Hotel in New York. Seven months later I managed to get a meeting with him through a mutual friend and he gave me a job.”

Get to the table

“For six months I wasn’t invited to meetings, until one day I saw an empty seat and sat down. I came every week until, months later, I found I was the closest person to the CEO.”

Can not can’t

“My father taught me never to admit you couldn’t do something. You can always find a way, even if you don’t know the answer yet.”

Opposites attract

“It’s wise if each partner brings a different set of competencies and qualities. My business partner doesn’t understand the hospitality world from the inside, but he very much understands property and finance.”

Staffing is a balancing act

“If you bring people onto the payroll too early, it can be heavy on working capital. But if you bring them in too late, then you can’t run the place.”

Will Dean

The cofounder and CEO of Tough Mudder – which hosts endurance events in eleven countries and now turns over more than $100 million a year – on mentors, marketing and the power of a Harvard MBA

Status matters

“Being able to go into a meeting with ‘I’m a Harvard MBA’ means people give you the benefit of the doubt and in certain situations that’s very helpful.”

Punch above your weight

“Aged 16, my schoolfriend Guy Livingstone and I made £20,000 from selling colour-changing nail varnish via Young Enterprise. To seem authoritative to distributors, I’d make them wait on the phone, saying, ‘Please hold while I put you through to Mr Dean.’”

Learn the basics

“I didn’t understand how marketing and advertising were different, so the Mirror helped me articulate a value proposition, keep customers happy and measure customer sentiment.”

Find a mentor

“The CEO of Take-Two [publisher of Grand Theft Auto], Strauss Zelnick, is good at giving me a prescriptive answer.”

Don’t be monomaniacal

“If you bring intense focus to everything you do then you burn through things quite quickly and your ideas won’t seem as exciting. I try to be more balanced now.”

It’s not going to calm down

“Young entrepreneurs think that in six months it calms down. But in six months it will have gone from 10/10 intensity to 9.8. If you do a good job, in two years it’ll be 8/10.”

Ben Silbermann

The CEO and co-founder of Pinterest, the £8.6 billion visual discovery app that ‘pins’ a trillion lifestyle recommendations a year, reveals what he has learnt…

Don’t over-research

“If you can build the product almost as quickly as you can research it, then you should just build the product. It’s better to get it into somebody’s hands.”

Listen and learn

“I learnt to listen very carefully to clients when I was consulting, which meant that at Pinterest our customer service was highly personal. I even gave my email and mobile number to customers.”

Sell and anti-sell

“We’d say to investors, ‘This is what Pinterest could be, but these are the risks.’ People that opt in knowing the risks are the partners you want.”

Don’t separate work and play

“You need to integrate your work and personal life. I don’t think it’s practical any more for people to have this really clean split. You need to develop patterns that work for your family as well as your job. You don’t want to be half on, half off all the time. It’s not a good way to live your life.”

Think laterally

“It was difficult to raise funds for Pinterest because of the financial crisis. So I entered a college business plan contest and the prize was meeting with venture capitalists First Market Capital in New York, which gave us half our money.”

Fabien Riggall

The founder of Secret Cinema – the immersive cinematic experience that has sold more than half a million tickets since 2012 – reveals what he has learned.

Break the rules

“After watching Dead Poets Society, I escaped from school with £5 to start a life in London. I was inspired by the idea of romantic adventure. There was a huge search party and I was found.”

Look up the ladder

“I wanted to direct and produce, but I could see unhappy 50-year-old second-assistant directors with no hope of producing because the climb was so hard. So I started making short films.”

Blag it

“The confidence I got from telephone sales helped me as a producer. I’d get through to CEOs by pretending to be my own assistant and creating an illusion that I was successful.”

Manners maketh man

“We grew the Future Shorts community by sending the audience notes saying, ‘Thank you for coming. We look forward to seeing you again.’ We asked them to let us know their thoughts on the films.”

Dust yourself off

“Our Back To The Future screening was our biggest to date, selling 80,000 tickets. Next year, we went bigger with Star Wars and sold 100,000 tickets.”

Change your scene

“Last week I felt down so I went to Paris, walked around, sat in cafés and wrote. I immediately felt better. Similarly, when I moved to New York, it gave me a sense of optimism and the feeling that anything could happen.”

Ayman Hariri, Vero

Ayman Hariri, founder of the ad-free media-sharing platform Vero, which currently operates across 100 countries, reveals what he has learnt…

Learn from the masters

“I’ve used every single product that Apple has released in the last 15 years. The team and I try to apply Apple’s pursuit of simplicity and usefulness in everything we do with Vero.”

Have the last word

“We had to close Epok because we didn’t design things the right way. We should have taken out more of the decision makers and created something far more centralised.”

Nail the snowball effect

“When we hit one million users, we will start charging membership of the equivalent of a couple of cups of coffee. A million is a good starter for the snowball effect; after that point, the snowball accumulates and rolls down the hill.”

Emails aren’t real work

“Working with massive teams on huge construction projects, I learnt that there’s no replacement for human communication. Saying, ‘I sent them an email’ doesn’t mean you did your job.”

Work remotely

“If you find someone you want to recruit somewhere else in the world, why make them relocate? They are probably amazing because of the culture they live in. Vero has no office, we all work remotely using [team messaging app] Slack.”

Start what you finish

“I don’t understand companies who start their marketing push and say they’ll figure out their monetisation strategy later. Very few businesses have been able to be successful on the advertising model.”

Follow us on Vero for exclusive music content and commentary, all the latest music lifestyle news and insider access into the GQ world, from behind the scenes insight to recommendations from our Editors and high-profile talent.

James Park, Fitbit

The cofounder and CEO of the £6 billion activity tracker company Fitbit, which now has more than 23.6 million active users worldwide, reveals what he has learned.

Don’t rush

“Epesi was not successful – so many things went wrong. I was only 22 at the time, very inexperienced, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I realised I had some more growing up to do. I needed more time and to meet more people.”

Hire up

“We started Fitbit with only two employees: a monumental task. You don’t want to over-hire before you’ve nailed your product, but a few more hands would have helped.”

Go public or go home

“Going public is good for investors and employees. Ours was the largest consumer electronics IPO in US history.”

Trust your gut

“I dropped out just before finals because I got an internship at Morgan Stanley. As an entrepreneur, you have to take risks. But as an engineer, there’s always a backup.”

Watch and learn (and copy)

“When the Nintendo Wii came out, I was interested in its sensors, as well as how it turned gaming into something friendly and active. This was technology with positive impacts. I wanted to put this magic into something more portable.”

Get enough capital

“In software you can make mistakes and learn from them cheaply; in hardware every mistake is expensive to fix and takes much longer. If I could go back, I’d make sure we were better capitalised to cushion our mistakes and sleep sounder at night!”

Kris Thykier, Archery Pictures and PeaPie Films

The producer responsible for Harry Brown, Riviera and Kick-Ass – and founder of Archery Pictures and PeaPie Films – reveals what he has learned…

Degrees aren’t everything

“I asked to defer because I got a job as a film runner. Then I deferred another year and, two years later, I was already starting to hire people who had degrees. I thought, ‘Well this doesn’t seem to be an issue.’ I never took up my place.”

“Partnering with Matthew Vaughn on MARV Films was interesting. He’s incredibly tough in his deal-making, very involved in the detail. That was a side of producing I hadn’t understood yet. We were a good balancing act. I think I tempered him.”

Move with the times

“I began watching a lot more TV and realised it was as exciting a medium for original storytelling as film. So I raised some money to build a new business, focusing on both.”

Turn your passion into your career

“My aunt was a cineaste and took me to inappropriate films such as Alien when I was very young. If questioned, she said it was incredibly rude to mention my dwarfism.”

Keep your ego in check

“At MARV, we made four films in 18 months and I thought I was born to be a producer and that I was a genius. But then, when I set up PeaPie, nothing worked [initially] and all my projects fell apart. It was a valuable lesson in hubris.”

Taavet Hinrikus, TransferWise

The CEO of money-sending service TransferWise – a unicorn startup on track for revenues of £100 million this year – reveals what he has learned…

Weigh up your options

“I dropped out of university to become the first employee of Skype, because I knew I would learn so much more there. If Skype had gone bust, I could always have returned to university, and I’d still have been a little smarter than before.”

Don’t rush into a job

“I did an MBA because when I left Skype I didn’t have a clear idea of whether I wanted to create or join a company. But you don’t need an MBA to become an entrepreneur.”

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig

“No amount of PR works if you’ve got a bad product. It has to be better than the competition and that comes down to making sure you do one thing really well.”

Pace yourself

“Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint. I don’t believe it when people tell me they’ve been working 80-hour weeks for five years in a row. I just don’t think that’s possible.”

Look beyond the money

“Doing something that empowers people makes you realise how boring it would be to work for a place where the goal is just to make more money. It’s much easier to get out of bed and look forward to 12 hours of work if you’re making the world a better place.”

Get your pitch right

“A good pitch for funding requires clarity. You need to understand the problem you’re solving, why you’re in a good place to do it and your solution needs to be ten times better than the existing one. It also has to be a big problem.”

Mark Wogan, Homeslice

The co-founder and Creative Director of Homeslice (along with his Executive Chef Ry Jessup and his brother and Homeslice Managing Director Alan Wogan) a former street-food pizza stall that now turns over £4.5 million a year across three permanent London sites, reveals what he has learned.

Don’t underspend

“We thought we’d saved a lot of money when we opened the restaurant for only £200,000, but then we had to shut it three years later to install a new kitchen. What you think is important, like the light switches, isn’t. Instead, ask yourself: does your fridge work?”

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

“I was working 16-hour days, six days a week and it nearly killed me. I had no personal life. But if you want to work in the hospitality industry, it’s vocational, not something you do on the side.”

Academia isn’t everything

“I was moved on after my headmaster found an empty bottle of vodka and two of his crystal tumblers in my bedside cabinet. I only got three GCSEs. We all make mistakes; the point is not to be defined by them.”

The best part of a pitch is passion

“We did a very poor pitch to our first landlord: a four-page PowerPoint presentation and some pizza. An experienced restaurateur would have said, ‘They don’t have a clue.’ But we were passionate. Starting out, to win a pitch you need to get your passion across.”

Don’t look like a chain (even if you are)

“Aside from the wood-fired oven (hand-built by Ry), the décor in each Homeslice is completely different. Never hand over the creative reins to somebody else. We say exactly what themes, colour and furniture we want.”

Brian Chesky, Airbnb

The CEO and cofounder of Airbnb – the $31 billion home-sharing company that operates across 191 different countries with more than 150 million users – reveals what he has learned…

“At school, my teachers would say, ‘You’re a designer. You could design the world you live in.’ That was very inspiring. But, at 3DID I was designing products that would end up in landfill. I quit my joband left LA with $1,000 in my bank.”

Stop fretting about copycats

“I remember when I started Airbnb, somebody told me, ‘Don’t worry about someone stealing your idea. They will only dismiss it.'”

Go direct to source

“By picking the right source, you can fast-forward learning something new. I’m pretty shameless when asking for help, including from Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett. The circumstances might be different, but you can learn the outlying principles and see if they apply to you.”

Choose failure over regret

“Jeff Bezos’ ‘Regret Minimisation Framework’, advises choosing fewer regrets over fewer failures. Each year, it’s harder to do something new – you have one less year of your life to do it.”

Live with your cofounders

“The turning point for Airbnb was when my two cofounders and I lived and worked together seven days a week. Bouncing ideas around late at night formed some magical moments and that close bond is what builds your company.”

Grip any crises

“We had a PR nightmare after renters trashed a home in San Francisco. I was advised to increase the guarantee for hosts ten-fold. In a crisis, if you move in one direction, you’re usually OK.”

Blaise Belville, Boiler Room

Founder and CEO of Boiler Room, the live club music platform that has streamed over 3.5 billion minutes since launch and made £6.5 million last year, reveals what he has learned…

Get out of your comfort zone

“I started selling makeover vouchers at Oxford Circus for £400 a day. After I gave one to my girlfriend, I realised it was a scam, but it was interesting because I had to go up to people and put myself out there like some awful kind of salesman.”

Don’t get stuck making easy money

“Running a club night was making me £2,000 a week in cash, but upon turning 20 I met a 30-year-old club promoter and thought, ‘I do not want to be that guy.'”

Don’t be so sure of yourself

“Everyone told me not to do it, that it made no sense to refurbish a building I didn’t own. It was, indeed, a disaster. After five years of work, getting vitiligo and tuberculosis from stress, I almost bankrupted myself and those involved. It was a good lesson to be less arrogant.”

Start young

“My parents went bankrupt, so I started a CD-burning business and sold them at school. This developed my confidence that there were ways outside the traditional system to make money.”

Follow your itchy feet

“The magazine became pretty popular and Vice saw us as a competitor. But two and a half years in, I realised it wasn’t really going anywhere. I was 26 and bored of doing all this work and not having enough cash, so I moved on.”

Put the vision first

“When you first go into something creative, it’s a mistake to focus on the money. Do it for the right reasons and it’s more likely to turn into a business than if you try and force it.”

William Shu, Deliveroo

The co-founder and CEO of Deliveroo, the largest UK-based ‘restaurant-to-home’ delivery service, which operates across 12 countries and is now valued at $1 billion, tells us what he’s learned…

Embrace your (stranger) quirks

“When I started, the bank gave me $25 a night for dinner. On the first night I was so excited I ordered 25 burgers to the office from Burger King, as they were 99 cents each. It sounds odd to be so passionate about food delivery, but I never get bored talking about my [current] job.”

Ignore baffled friends

“I’d identified this huge gap in the market [for Deliveroo], but the average Londoner thought it made no sense. No one outside New York understood either, but I went ahead anyway.”

Do it yourself

“I was the first Deliveroo rider, seven days a week for eight months. My flatmate thought I’d lost my mind. I still do it now, once or twice a week. It allows me to see what’s going on.”

Don’t shy away from small jobs

“I was a waiter at a restaurant called Frank’s near campus for three years and it taught me how to be professional towards people. It’s not something you learn at school.”

Right idea, wrong time? Hold fire

“Smartphones and tablets didn’t exist and riders needed them. It wasn’t practical until the tech took off, which coincided with my tenure at business school. I was confident my idea would work eventually – things always change.”

Avoid business for business’ sake

“I met this super-smart guy from business school who was about to launch an online marketplace for handmade pet accessories. When I saw him a year later, he said he’d dropped it. Why? He realised he didn’t like dogs. If your start-up has no emotional resonance, it’s problematic. You’re going to get bored.”

Kayvon Beykpour, Periscope

The CEO and founder of live-streaming app Periscope, which has just celebrated it’s second-year anniversary, reveals what he has learned…

Have some gumption

“I got my biggest break by relentlessly hanging out in the photo studio. Eventually, one of the main photographers was out for lunch when he was meant to be on a shoot, and I got to take his place.”

Life’s too short not to travel

“‘F*** it, go travel'” was a colleague’s advice as I was debating whether to take time off. Travelling helped me build empathy with others.”

Keep your ambition sky high

“When we see Periscope being used in places like Ferguson or the House Of Representatives, in Nepal after the earthquake, or in the Middle East during the migrant crisis… it validates our vision.”

Know when to let go

“At Goodby, and then at Terriblyclever, we moved from project to project very quickly, working for several different big companies without being able to sink our teeth into anything. I didn’t find it satisfying.”

Never idle

“My work ethic was inspired by a scolding I received when I was 12, getting lunch money by cleaning fire extinguishers for hospitals. I was twiddling my thumbs having finished my work and my boss said, ‘If you have nothing to do, sweep the floor. Don’t just sit around.'”

Trust your gut

“We didn’t know if Periscope would work, but we didn’t care. We thought it should exist – that the world deserved a teleportation device.”

Carter Cleveland, Artsy

Carter Cleveland, the founder and CEO of Artsy, which allows buyers to choose from over 500,000 works held by galleries and auction houses, reveals what he has learned…

Listen to your quirks

“I knew my idea for Artsy was an uncontainable passion when during job interviews I would start pitching the idea to employers. It was a completely irrational interview technique.”

Torture thyself

“I joined Princeton’s dance company and before our first big performance, I was vomiting with nerves. Without that experience, it would’ve been harder for me to take the risk of starting my own company.”

Strike while the iron is hot

“Timing was the main reason why Artsy succeeded. A year earlier it would have been too hard a sell for galleries; a year later and we would have been followers, not leaders.”

Don’t adopt your father’s workweek

“We have as few rules as possible. We don’t have mandated vacation, and we don’t have specific working hours. It’s impossible to know what the ‘best way’ is to achieve goals. It’s up to the individual.”

Relinquish control

“Our head of product suggested purple as our brand colour. I hated purple, so drafted an email arguing against it. Then I realised that you don’t hire the best person just to overrule them. I never sent the email.”

Be strict about your bedtime

“I began Artsy working 120 hours a week and staying in the office until 4am. I worked weekends and felt guilty getting more than four hours sleep. In the end, my body shut down and I was unable to type.”

The post Top Tips From The Horses Mouth appeared first on Otis Dyke.

from The Otis Dyke Lifestyle Blog https://www.otisdyke.co.uk/top-tips-from-the-horses-mouth/

[cookinguptales]

So I ended up being so bummed out about the shorts that I neglected to do a write-up for The Lego Batman Movie, which I saw the same day. But TLBM came up like 5 times on my dash today bc bigoted critics are lambasting it for being “pro-gay” so I thought it’d be a good time to talk about how much I enjoyed it! I don’t think I liked it quite as much as the original Lego Movie, but it wasn’t really trying to be the same kind of movie as TLM. It wasn’t quite aiming for that meta angle, and I don’t think it necessarily needed to. It was just a super fun movie -- and one that was really gratifying in some ways to someone who got really burned out on the comics.

Full review and slight spoilers below the cut.

So the basic plot of the movie is what you’d gather from the trailers: Batman (aka Bruce Wayne) is a weird reclusive loner who lives in his giant mansion/bat cave with no one but the butler who raised him, and he has to learn to stop doing shit himself and being such a goddamn asshole. It was kind of nice because he was constantly called out on the stuff that he’s gotten away with doing in a lot of Bat media. Barbara Gordon talking about how he never created lasting institutional/structural solutions to problems, but instead fed his ego by punching poor people felt really good haha. (More on Babs later.) It’s your basic “dickhead has to learn how to use social skills” film, but with a lot of humor and heart that prevents it from getting sappy. And Batman seriously never gets away with his bullshit. He is constantly called on the way he hurts people, and instead of the somewhat shallow lip service that has always been paid to his antihero status, I felt like this film really interacted with those ideas on a hopeful and emotional level. He wasn’t treated like a villain because he was ~dark and brooding~. He was treated like a villain because he went off half-cocked because of his own issues, and because he didn’t care who he hurt in the process. It wasn’t just a story about Batman learning to make friends -- it’s a story about Batman learning to set aside his own ego so he can work together with public officials to create long-term stability and safety for the town he purports to care about. It’s a movie that calls for kindness, compassion, and accountability in crime-fighting -- and in a world torn with debates about increased militarization and police brutality, that’s a conversation that’s pretty damn important.

The audience is there for a comedy, though, and the movie is hilarious. I was cracking up before the movie even technically started, because Batman’s narration and criticism of all the production logos was great. And I basically kept laughing the entire time. The movie pokes loving fun at pretty much every kind of Batman media that exists, from the biggest blockbuster movie to the smallest limited run mini, and there are tons of sly little jokes that will make a comics fan laugh. (No spoilers, but one of the more overt and more hilarious comics jokes was basically the entire Nightwing segment. It is not to be missed.) The characters are all incredibly endearing, especially a shockingly adorable Robin, and I genuinely enjoyed watching them go on their batshit adventures. I won’t give away where the plot goes, but I will say that things just kept escalating until I was impressed (and cracking up) at how bizarre things got. Just really, thoroughly enjoyable. The slapstick humor and mile-a-minute jokes could have gotten old very quickly, but the warmth and heart really helped pull things together.

The interpretations of the characters were all pretty interesting. Robin’s childlike wonder and naivete was really emphasized, whereas Alfred’s RAF background came quickly to the fore. Barbara Gordon was perhaps the most interesting interpretation of them all. As a disabled ex-comics fan, I’ve always had pretty complicated feelings about Barbara and I was nervous going into this. I will say right now that as far as I could tell, there were no real allusions made to Oracle in this film. I am bummed about that. Babs made the transition to Oracle before I was even born, and her journey has been important to me. (But I guess that’s a rant for another day.) But the Barbara that was introduced in TLBM wasn’t really Batgirl, either, despite allusions being made to the moniker. She’s the new commissioner of Gotham City, and she’s strong, fierce, intelligent, and committed to making structural changes to Gotham’s criminal justice system in order to create a safer environment for both Gotham’s innocent citizens and its seedier ones. She refuses to just delegate her duties to Batman, and she believes that things can be so much better than they have been -- and she’ll work hard to accomplish that. Perhaps most striking of all, despite Batman’s obvious infatuation with her, she does not reciprocate his advances. She wants to be his ally and his friend, but she is her own woman. (”If you call me Batgirl, does that mean I can call you Batboy?”) She’s not the protagonist of this film (and after three lego franchise films, they really are due for a female protagonist) but she’s also no sidekick. She advocates for responsibility, but she’s not the ~boring nag~ that female characters are often reduced to. She’s the voice of hope and reason in a culture of toxic masculinity, and Batman has to realize that her ideas are just as important, if not more, than his. She wasn’t Oracle, but I found that I still ended up really loving this version of Barbara.

Finally, all that gay shit! As I said, Batman has an obvious crush on Barbara. But he definitely has an overtly homoerotic relationship with the Joker, too. Their foemance is constantly put in terms of a relationship, with the main thrust of the plot being inspired by the Joker wanting Batman to pay more attention to him and treasure him as his most important adversary -- frankly, the Joker wants to be Batman’s most important person. I was tickled to find after I got home that I was not the only person that half-expected a kiss in one of their final tension-laden scenes. If Batman had to grow to appreciate his family (re: Robin and Alfred) and his political allies (re: Barbara), he also had to grow to appreciate the Joker, and perhaps in a more heated and intimate way than any of the others. It really is a story about their relationship, strange as that sounds. It’s not a canon gay pairing. Batman has a thing for Barbara, and the Joker and Harley are a (remarkably healthy and cute) item. But damn if it’s not basically rolling around in all that subtext. It’s the kind of film a fanficcer would have a field day with, frankly. There’s a lot of room for exploration. (Basically, if you like Kate Beaton’s Nemesis comics, you’ll like the Batman/Joker relationship in this film.)

Hilariously, the other potential pairing in this film is Bruce Wayne/Batman. It’s never directly stated, but I’m pretty sure Robin thought they were a thing for much of the movie. He definitely thought he was being co-parented by the two of them. And he was psyched! Robin loved having two dads! He went from having no dads to two dads! (“It’s raining dads!”) Like there is zero judgment from anyone about the concept of Robin having two adoptive fathers, even though it was never explicitly stated that people thought his two fathers were dating. (Related -- I kind of want to write fic about the Bruce/Batman that people lowkey thought was going on.) Like both of his dads were shitty, but that was clearly portrayed as a Batman thing, not a gay parenting thing. The film actually had strong messages about the importance of adoption, both by exploring Batman’s relationship with his new son and by exploring Alfred’s relationship with Batman.

tl;dr, the fundies aren’t crazy. The movie is definitely homoerotic and pro-gay parenting. AND I LOVED THAT.

Anyway, overall I really enjoyed the movie. It wasn’t the deepest film in the world, but it was really, really fun. I liked the plot and the characters and the jokes were great. There’s a lot there for both the passing fan of Batman and the superfans who’ve read comics for years. And frankly, it’s the kind of modern film that the franchise has needed for a while. It dissects some of the messages that have been put forth in many of the movies and comics that have starred Batman (and that have made him popular amongst angry wannabe grimdark vigilante dudes for decades) and shows why they’re actually quite dangerous on both a personal and societal level. Really good film.

[asfeedin]

The true, cocaine-fueled story behind Back to the Future’s DeLorean

What’s the link between Hollywood, an American businessman, time-travel, and a mountain of cocaine big enough to make even Keith Richards’ knees tremble? Answer: the DMC DeLorean, AKA the DMC-12, AKA the car from Back to the Future.

This weekend marks the 35th anniversary of Back to the Future, so let’s travel back in time and pay homage to the real version of that Mr Fusion-powered 88 mph gull-winged chariot. Strap in, because it’s a wild ride.

[Read: Remembering the Nucleon, Ford’s 1958 nuclear-powered concept car that never was]

But why a time-travelling DeLorean?

Most of the world, certainly outside the US, probably had no idea about the eponymous DeLorean until it featured in Back to the Future, which first hit screens in 1985.

First off, the time machine in Back to the Future was never actually even meant to be a car, let alone a DeLorean. According to director Robert Zemeckis, speaking on the DVD commentary of the films, the time machine was first a laser device, which was scrapped because, uh, dull!

In the second draft it was a refrigerator. But apparently the filmmakers were concerned it would encourage children to climb into fridges and get stuck, so that idea was scrapped too.

Credit: Ewan Roberts

The DeLorean dressed up as it was in Back to the Future Part 3. Arguably the best of the trilogy?

Eventually, the film’s producers decided that you’d want the time machine to be mobile, so they looked to cars. The DeLorean was chosen because of its radical look, and iconic gull-wing doors. Incidentally, its “spaceship” like appearance has been credited as one of the main reasons for it being chosen as well. The DMC-12 was made of brushed stainless steel and was left unpainted, because DeLorean apparently didn’t want to spend money on painting equipment.

In an interview with Esquire, the film’s co-creator Bob Gale said that the film was offered $75,000 to use a Ford Mustang. Gale basically told Ford to get stuffed, and responded with: “Doc Brown doesn’t drive a fucking Mustang!” and so, history was made.

Credit: Wikimedia CC

Original artist designs for the DeLorean time machine were “too good.” Film makers wanted it to look like the Doc had indeed made it in his garage. Many hardcore film fanatics restore and build up Back to the Future DeLorean replicas, just for fun. (This one seems to have something to do with Uber, eurgh.)

The importance of Gale’s remark shouldn’t be understated. The films were littered with other product placements — everyone remembers Nike’s self-lacing shoes and Mattel’s Hoverboard. But by 1985, the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) had already folded, meaning Gale’s steadfastness on the DeLorean was even more valuable and stopped the car from being lost in the annals of time. Instead, we got one of the most iconic film cars ever.

By the time the films were released, the car had already developed a name for itself, for reasons that had little to do with the vehicle and everything to do with the jet-setting playboy that invented it.

The man, the legend

John DeLorean, the man who would later go on to found the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC), was a stalwart of the automotive world. He was the lead engineer behind iconic muscle cars, like The Pontiac GTO, and the Pontiac Firebird. He worked for many years at General Motors before parting ways with the American automotive giant in 1973.

In 1975 he set up the DeLorean Motor Company with the goal of producing an “ethical” sportscar. One that’s safe, reliable, and built to last. Think of DMC as the Tesla of its day. It wanted to challenge the status quo.

Credit: Wikimedia

John DeLorean was born in 1925. He rose through the ranks of the automotive trade thanks to his risk taking, take no crap attitude. He’d end up being one of the youngest high-ranking executives at GMC by 40 years old.

For design of the DMC-12, DeLorean called on one of the most influential yet unknown car designers, Giorgetto Guigiaro. The Italian designer had a way with the pencil that would see his designs go from paper to the silver screen on more than one occasion. His Lotus Esprit went on to become James Bond’s famous underwater car.

With such pedigree behind the project, you’d think the DMC-12 would find its way into the history books on its own merit. But that wasn’t to be, as the car wasn’t exactly any good and John DeLorean had a habit for going a bit over the top.

The first and only, DeLoreans

The first DMC-12 made its way onto the road in 1981, and around 9,000 units were ever made.

To build the car, DeLorean approached the British government, which threw £100 million of tax payer money at him to build a factory in Northern Ireland. The British government thought they were generating thousands of jobs in an area struck by war, DeLorean thought he was getting a great deal to realize his dream.

DMC-12s had a 2.85 liter V6 motor, putting out 130 hp, mounted behind the drivers powering the rear wheels. Drivers had a choice of 5-speed manual or 3-speed automatic transmissions which were pretty typical for the early 80s.

Credit: Wikimedia CC

The DMC-12 was ran on a 2.85 liter V6 made my Peugeot, Renault, Volvo. Nothing screams pedigree like those three names, right?

There was just one body style, featuring those iconic gull-wing doors, and no choice of paint. Every car was finished with brushed stainless steel, which some owners maintain using WD-40, not soap and water like every other car.

All of this came together to produce a car that wasn’t practical, particularly fast, and didn’t handle like a sportscar should. And because of mechanical flaws that needed to be worked out, production was delayed, and the car ended up costing far more than was initially forecast.

It was called the DMC-12 as it was originally going to be sold for $12,000, but various overruns and production challenges pushed its price tag closer to $25,000.

Credit: Wikimedia CC

Perhaps the most iconic part of the DMC-12 are its gull-wing doors. Any guesses where Elon Musk got the idea for his “Falcon” doors from?

Even though no accurate records exist of how many DeLoreans were ever sold, reports suggest the car had no problem initially capturing the hearts and minds of the American motoring public. But it couldn’t turn the initial interest into consistent sales.

A year later in early 1982, nearly a decade after DeLorean left GMC to set up his eponymous company, some 7,000 vehicles remained unsold.

Add this to economic recession and DeLorean‘s company was on the ropes.

A slippery slope

The British PM at the time, Margaret Thatcher, ordered DeLorean to raise more money to keep the company in business and support his employees. DeLorean, enraged, claimed that the British Government was closing his Northern Ireland plants on the grounds that its Catholic employees were “tithing the Irish Republican Army.”

But the reality was that DeLorean needed some $17 million to save his company from bankruptcy — that’s $46.5 million accounting for inflation.

Over the course of 1982, DMC’s financial situation worsened, and DeLorean was left with few options.

In October 1982 he found himself in a Los Angeles hotel room with a man he half-trusted in the hope he could save his company. The man, James Hoffman, a previously convicted drug smuggler, alleged that DeLorean had come to him looking to carry out a cocaine deal to generate funds to support his failing business.

During the meeting a briefcase supposedly filled with 27 kg (about $6.5 million worth) of cocaine was laid out on a table. Discussions had also alluded to a bigger deal, in which DeLorean would part finance the sale of $24 million worth of the drug. He agreed and was even recorded on video as saying the white stuff is “better than gold.”

Credit: Jason Leung

Despite not being the best car, even at its time, the DMC-12 has a dedicated following. Many enthusiasts restore and care for their beloved vehicles. According to classic car forum Honest John and the DeLorean owners club, in July 2019 there were about 150 in the UK. Not all were registered, though.

DeLorean was promptly arrested at the hotel on grounds of narcotics law violations.

However, James Hoffman was working with the FBI as an informant. According to reports, DeLorean never actually wanted to go along with the cocaine trafficking. In fact, it was Hoffman who approached and coerced DeLorean into the bogus deal, in an attempt to provide information to the FBI and have his own sentence reduced.

DeLorean was able to prove that he had been “play-acting” all along. He went along with Hoffman after threats were made against his family.

By August 16, 1984, DeLorean was acquitted on grounds of government entrapment.

DMC will never be forgotten

Sadly, a week after DeLorean’s arrest, his company filed for bankruptcy and by December 1982, just two years after the first cars were sold, DMC was no more and the British government shutdown his NI factory.

It wasn’t just DeLorean’s drug smuggling antics that landed him in hot water, he also had a track record of misappropriating company funds. DeLorean went on to spend many years unpicking legal cases related to the downfall of his beloved car business. In 1999, he declared bankruptcy. The story of his life has been made into a film of its own, called Framing John DeLorean.

Back to the Future press poster, look for the subtle presence of the DeLorean, the film’s true leading star.

DeLorean never gave up on his dreams and in his final years he attempted to resurrect DMC by designing and selling watches, eyeglasses, and sunglasses. He hoped he would eventually be able to drum up enough support and funding to relaunch his car company. In March 2005, John DeLorean died of complications from a stroke.

The DMC-12 might not have been DeLorean’s greatest car, and it may have met its premature end because of his Machiavellian antics. But it was those antics and self-belief that gave birth to the idea in the first place, and eventually led Back to the Future’s filmmakers to pick it as their time machine.

Back to the Future may have helped make the DMC-12 one of the most iconic cars ever, but it — and its creator — should be remembered for so much more than that.

Sources: Reuters, Washington Post, New York Times 1, New York Times 2, Volo Auto Museum, Drive Tribe, Esquire, Back to the Future DVD commentary

Read next: Elon Musk bought $45M in Tesla stock since ‘that weed joke’ — now it’s worth double

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Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Shall I Let You Cry Some More?

Six months ago, I gave birth to a wonderful baby whom we named Helios. During these six months, I’ve literally lived for him and him alone. I stopped working and exercising. I saw friends only occasionally. I ate fast, like really fast. I even felt like I didn’t even breathe anymore sometimes. I guess I needed to do everything that I ever told my students and other people who came to me for advice. As a first-time mom, however, it’s not so easy with my little star. Maybe you’re thinking that I should have read some books about parenting first. I actually read many books about parenting, sleep habits, and so on, but if I’ve learned something valuable in these past six months, it’s that every baby is unique and parenting is not something that comes with a manual. Let’s start from the beginning shall we? I had a wonderful pregnancy. (Some of you may have read my previous articles about it.) I was as healthy and as energetic as ever. I continued eating healthily, exercising regularly, and sleeping well. I didn’t experience any of the common problems during pregnancy, and I even worked out on the day I went into labor (two hours of walking and 45 minutes of Pilates). I had hoped to have a natural delivery without an epidural, but life is not always so accommodating. After some three hours, I was so tired that I asked for the epidural (my dilation was at five), because I came to believe I wouldn’t be able to push when the time came. The wise lady also told us that without it, it would take at least another five hours before I was completely dilated, so I followed her advice. The epidural in itself was very painful, but I could at least then finally rest a little. Two hours later, I was ready for the delivery, but I also started to feel the contractions, so I asked if it was possible to have a little more medication if the delivery was too painful. The wise lady recommended against it so I could feel the pushing, so I again followed her advice, and it was really easy to manage the pain. After a few minutes, however, she came and administered some more medication anyway! It was not just a little either but rather a complete dose! From that moment on, I didn’t feel anything at all, not even my toes! This meant I couldn’t push the baby. I was so frustrated and disappointed in myself. All those delivery preparation classes I took had been for nothing! What’s more, the doctor said the baby was positioned too high, so he needed to use forceps. This was a real disaster for me. Finally, the baby arrived with no health problems, but mommy was not fine at all. Three days after the delivery, I still couldn’t walk. Every time I tried, I just bent over double. I started to feel severe neck ache as well. A few days later, a nurse told me I had a breach in my spinal cord due to the epidural! My options were clear: I could stay like this for lord knows how long, or I could undergo a blood patch. This procedure resembles the original epidural, but instead of medication, the patient’s own blood is injected into the spinal cord to repair the breach. I chose the blood patch, and two days later, I was finally sent home! During these five days in the hospital, I would lie on the bed while my husband cared for the baby. He changed his diapers and learned how to wash him. All I could do was to breastfeed him. Following the delivery, Helios stayed with me, skin to skin, for some time. The nurses later took him away for an examination, and when they returned, they placed him in a crib so I could rest as well. He slept and didn’t eat for a long time. Around midnight, he woke up and started crying. I fed him, but he continued crying. The nurse suggested he was realizing that he was separated from his mommy, and this was why he cried. I therefore took him into bed with me and since then, we always slept together. Whenever I tried to leave him in a crib, he would wake up. He just couldn’t sleep alone, and I have some theories about why: I was so disappointed at not being able to push during the delivery that I wanted to at least keep him close and help him sleep. He became stressed when separated from his mommy during the blood patch procedure, so he now wanted to stay with me constantly. He was abandoned in one of his previous lives, so he is afraid of being abandoned again and wants to stay close to his mommy. His father is so afraid he might die of cot death that he doesn’t want to be away from his baby, so Helios senses this anxiety. We have what we call a family bed, and the three of us slept together in it. Helios had his own room with his own crib, and there was a co-sleeping crib next to our bed. None of this mattered, though, because he always wanted to sleep with his mommy. I can see the situation evolving now, however. At first, he couldn’t be apart from me for more than five minutes, even when he was awake. He hated his stroller, so I used a sling to walk with him. Someone else had to hold him so I could eat. Today, he can sleep for 30–120 minutes alone, at least if I settle him down first. By his fourth month, I had started putting him in his crib during the day. If he didn’t want to be alone, I never forced it but rather lay down with him. He also likes his stroller as well now, so we can walk for hours without any complaints. For all these improvements, I had to be very patient. Most times, it meant I couldn’t do anything other than sit on the couch with him sleeping in my arms. Of course, I later started to have serious back problems, because sitting for so long is very dangerous. I then started to sleep with him instead. I sometimes had the feeling I did nothing other than eat and sleep. Last week, however, I started to get back on track: I now do yoga and Pilates regularly and teach my Pilates classes again. I also write articles and study for my nutrition courses. I admit that I didn’t enjoy all those hours sleeping and sitting. I was mildly depressed for a couple of weeks, and during this period, I read much about baby sleep problems and techniques to help them sleep. Here is some of the advice I found: Cry it out: Kiss the baby and say “Night, night” before placing him in his crib. If he cries, don’t come back but rather ignore it. He should stop and fall asleep eventually. Reduce parental presence: Place the baby in his bed, with you either sitting on a nearby chair or lying down with him. Each day, pay less attention to him, stay less with him, and try leaving the room before he sleeps. Come back before he cries, however, to show that you can be depended upon. In the end, he will learn to become more comfortable and fall asleep. The 5-10-15 method: Put your little one in his bed before leaving the room and closing the door. Five minutes later, come back to say you love him and tell him it’s time to sleep. Do not stay more than a few minutes with him. Your next visit will be in 10 minutes time, with another one 15 minutes later. Even if he cries, you should not go to him before it’s time. This continues until he falls asleep. Routine: Whichever method you decide upon, you should first set a predictable sleep routine for your baby. It might involve singing a few songs, taking a relaxing bath, or reading stories to him, basically anything you enjoy that will calm your baby. With this routine, he’ll come to associate it with sleeping time. The predictability will also reassure him. You should also set a wake up routine to start the day. Put your baby to bed when he’s drowsy but not yet sleeping: Whatever you do, do not let your baby sleep in your arms. Put him to bed when he’s drowsy enough but not yet asleep. This way, he’ll know how to fall back to sleep if he wakes up. After reading all this, the only thing we did was to set bedtime and wake-up routines. Helios takes a bath or watches me shower, and then his father gives him a massage and changes his diaper. I then feed him and sing to him. We also sometimes dance a little before the final song because he just loves the motion. After a while, he falls asleep in my arms with my breast still in his mouth. I’m sure the other advice works fine for many babies and parents, but it just didn’t fit with Helios and our family. We are Mediterranean folk. Where I grew up, mothers have coaxed their babies to sleep for centuries. Maybe it takes hours to nurse a baby in the arms, on the legs, or on a swing, but the mother never leaves the baby alone until he or she is sleeping. This is also how I see it: A mother nurses her baby to sleep. As for Helios, even when I tried putting him to bed while sleeping, he always immediately woke up. How was I supposed to put him to bed drowsy and expect him to fall asleep on his own? He is the kind of baby who doesn’t cry unless he feels pain, but he complains a lot when we let him play on his mat. He simply wants to move, but he can’t on his own for the moment. The complaints very easily turn to crying, and he can keep this up for some time. This crying is the main subject of this article! Letting a Baby Cry Causes Stress Imagine that you had an accident and couldn’t talk or walk. You would need someone to take care of you, right? You are all alone in your bed, and you want your nurse to come and help you with something, but you cannot call out. What would you do? You would cry of course! If your helper still didn’t come, and you knew he or she was nearby, you would get angry and cry louder. Now, would you still trust this person? How would you feel in this situation? You would likely become distressed. This is exactly what happens to babies every time they cry but nobody comes to help. When our friends learned about how we slept with Helios and never let him cry, they said he needs to cry in order to learn about frustration. However, the first three months of a baby’s life can be regarded as the fourth trimester of pregnancy. This is when a baby gets to learn about his or her new surroundings. Babies come from their mothers’ womb of course, which is a warm, cozy place with many sounds, motions, and an abundance of food and no need to even breathe. Then we ask then to change all their habits and become what we want, to sleep quietly without contact from momma or poppa. They need to ask for food when they are hungry, but they shouldn’t just cry for it. How would you feel if you were forced to sleep in a strange place, were fed less, and could never ask for more? You would surely need some time to adapt, and it’s just the same for your baby. Babies need time to get used to their new surroundings and living conditions. Holding them in your arms is just welcoming them as they deserve to be, and by sleeping with them, the smells they remember from the womb comfort them (breasts have the same odor as the placenta). After three months, you can start teaching your baby new things, but I preferred to be as gentle as possible until then. Why on earth would I want my baby to learn frustration? Here are some things Helios would learn if we let him cry: Momma and poppa don’t care about me, and I can’t trust them! I’m alone on this strange planet where I don’t understand anything. No one listens to me, not even my parents. Maybe I should cry even louder and force them to listen to me if I need something… Anger, sadness, disappointment, fear, loneliness are some of the feelings that result when you ignore babies and let them cry. Moreover, when parents are tired from the grind of everyday life, they lose patience very quickly. Instead of calming their babies, they sometimes shout at them: “I’ve had it with you! Stop acting so spoiled! You cry for no reason, and you never do what I tell you to. I don’t want to hear you anymore.”  Stress is the inevitable outcome of all this. Stress Is Toxic for an Organism Stress triggers a flow of adrenaline, noradrenalin, and cortisol. Adrenaline and noradrenaline are released by the adrenal glands. In normal amounts, an individual feels very energetic. When the amount increases, however, the same person grows anxious and/or angry. He or she becomes filled with fear and the body becomes hyper-vigilant, ready to attack or retreat. Cortisol, likewise, is very useful in moderate amounts. It increases the amount of glucose (sugar) in the blood, calming a stressed body. A higher amount of cortisol, however, creates a feeling of powerlessness, discouragement, sadness, and insecurity. A prolonged elevation of cortisol can also modify the metabolism and the immune system. This can then lead to autoimmune and other chronic illnesses like diabetes, polyarthritis, and so on. If you think about the undeveloped brain of a baby or young infant, the damage can be very severe. The secretion of these three substances also explains the behavioral changes in our little ones. They lose confidence as they feel threatened by the world and the people around them. This distrust leads them to become depressed, to isolate themselves, or to become aggressive and antisocial. Fortunately, the body also secretes an anti-stress hormone called oxytocin. This anxiolytic (something that prevents anxiety) is secreted when a person is in a positive situation, decreasing the secretion of cortisol and calming the person. When your baby is in contact with you, such as sleeping in your arms if he or she needs it, his or her body secretes oxytocin. My husband and I do our level best to keep our son full of this hormone. Sleep Is a Complex Phenomenon Think about yourself. How do you sleep? It’s really a complicated issue. In order to sleep, you need to relax and let your body go. For that, you need to feel safe in your environment and trust the people around you. You need to feel secure. These feelings can take some time to cultivate in a baby whose brain is not yet developed. Letting a baby cry could only make things worse. In many cultures around the world, parents sleep with their babies for a long time, even a year or two. What’s more, think about African women working in the fields. They keep their babies with them constantly. These babies get to be with their mothers all the time. In Western culture, we try to rush things. It’s ironic how we want babies but expect them to behave like adults and adopt the routines and behaviors we promote to them. We want babies, but we want to get away from them as soon as possible without giving them the time to construct a healthy relationship with their new surroundings! We let respect and love rule in our family. We do not try to enforce behaviors and habits on Helios. We accept that he has his own personality, even just after birth but more so at six months, and we help him like we would an adult. I wouldn’t let an adult cry if I could help, so I also don’t let my son cry alone. (If he happens to cry while he’s with us, we try to understand why and demonstrate how we care.) If he wants to sleep with me, I’m happy to let him. What do you think the early humans used to do? Did they hide their babies away, so they could learn to sleep alone and become independent? Am I too traditional? If so, so be it, but I will never let you cry, my little star Read the full article

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hartford auto insurance quote online

[kennethherrerablog]

I Need to Get Rid of $5,000 in Credit Card Debt. What Should I Do?

If I owe my co-worker $5 for pizza, I feel little angst as I Venmo the payment.

But when I owe, say, my credit card company $5,000, I’m prone to panic (and stress eating more pizza).

But when you break it down into more digestible amounts, $5,000 is a doable amount over time, so long as you create a plan of attack.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to start selling everything you own to make a payment (or stop eating — heaven forbid). Sometime it just takes a little digging to find extra cash where you’re already spending.

How to Pay off $5K in Credit Card Debt

Creating a plan of attack for paying off debt can feel overwhelming at first, but it doesn’t have to be, especially if you break down payment schedules to fit your budget.

Rather than going it alone, check out these resources for ways to help pay down your credit card debt. So you can get back to more important things. Like pizza.

1. Let This Company Pay Off Your Credit Cards

When you think about how much debt you have, you might feel a little anxious.

That’s where a company like Fiona can be helpful. It can help you find personalized lending options to refinance or consolidate your debt to potentially save thousands of dollars in interest.

Fiona will show you all the lenders willing to help you pay off your credit card and eliminate the headache of paying bills by allowing you to make one payment each month.

You can borrow up to $100,000 (no collateral needed) and compare interest rates, which start at 4.99%. The idea is to secure a loan at a lower interest rate, potentially helping you save thousands. Repayment plans range from 24 to 84 months.

Take, for example, Katherine, who faced $12,000 in credit-card debt. Holding her back? The 15.24% interest rate. By refinancing with a 5%-interest, seven-year personal loan, she saved $12,000 in interest.

If she’d kept on the same road, she would have paid something like $14,000 in interest alone over 25 years. Yikes.

So even if you’re simply curious about what’s out there, know that checking rates on Fiona won’t hurt your credit score — and can probably save you in interest.

2. Find out Whether You’re Paying Too Much for Car Insurance

You’re probably overpaying for car insurance. And how would you know, really?

Have you shopped around lately? Have you compared rates from the 20 largest auto insurers that do business in your area? That sounds kind of difficult and time-consuming, doesn’t it?

Fortunately, a service called Gabi will do it for you, and you don’t even have to fill out any forms. Simply link your insurance account and provide your driver’s license number, and Gabi will go to work.

Once you link your insurance account to Gabi, it will:

Scan your existing insurance plan.

Analyze what coverage you have.

Compare the major insurers’ rates for that same coverage.

Help you switch on the spot if it finds you a better rate.

Gabi says it finds an average savings of $720 per year for its customers.

It is a true apples-to-apples comparison at the same coverage levels and deductibles you currently have. Once you sign up, you never have to shop again. Gabi’s software has your policy on file and keeps on monitoring for savings as your life changes.

3. Find Some Hidden Cash

Before you start hashing out a plan to tackle your debt, it might make you feel better to find areas in your life where you can save. Then you can funnel that money directly toward those outstanding balances.

Sure, a lot of us know how to save money on groceries, but what about everything else?

For consistent savings, download TrueBill, an app that’ll negotiate your bills, cancel unwanted subscriptions and refund your bank fees. On average, Truebill customers get $12 in credits off their cable bills each month.

You can also try digging up some extra cash with Paribus — a tool that gets you money back for your online purchases. It’s free to sign up, and once you do, it will scan your email for any receipts. If it discovers you’ve purchased something from one of its monitored retailers, it will track the item’s price and help you get a refund when there’s a price drop.

One of our favorite ways to save on everything is with Ebates, a cash-back site that rewards you nearly every time you buy something online. For example, Ebates gives you 10% cash-back on online purchases at Walmart. Plus, you’ll get a free $10 gift card to Walmart for giving the site a try.

Disclosure: Paribus compensates us when you sign up using the links we provide.

4. Earn Rewards When You Repay Your Debt on Time

When you were a kid, your mom probably gave you an allowance for washing the dishes and sweeping the floor. Now all you get for doing that is a kitchen that’s clean for, like, 15 minutes.

Now that you’re a grown-up, you no longer get rewarded for just doing the things that are expected of you — like, for instance, paying bills on time.

Not until now, anyway. MoneyLion, a free app for managing your personal finances, will reward you for things like paying your bills and monitoring your credit — even just setting up an account in the app.

Much like that childhood allowance, it’s basically bribing you to be good.

You’ll earn points in the app’s rewards program, and you can redeem them for gift cards to more than 15,000 retailers, including places like Walmart, Applebee’s and Amazon.

If you want to take it a step further and work on paying down debts, for example, MoneyLion can help with a loan to consolidate your debt and potentially reduce your interest rates. And it’ll reward you for that, too!

5. Start Saving Without Trying

Saving money is tough. So what if you could do it in a way where you wouldn’t even notice?

Digit makes that possible.

This innovative app automates saving for you. Simply link it to your checking account, and its algorithms will determine small (and safe!) amounts of money to withdraw into a separate, FDIC-insured savings account.

Bonus: Penny Hoarders will get an extra $5 just for signing up! Additionally, savers will receive a 1% bonus every three months.

Using this set-it-and-forget-it strategy, one Penny Hoarder saved $4,300 without noticing — read his Digit review.

If you need that money sooner than expected, you’ll always have access to it within one business day.

Digit is free to use for the first 30 days, then it’s $2.99 per month afterward.

6. Make Extra Money Hanging out With Pups

If you’re looking for a flexible, independent way to earn money — and you love hanging out with dogs — Rover might be your perfect gig.

The online network connects dog walkers and sitters to local dog owners through its 4.9-star-rated app, so you don’t have to staple flyers on every utility pole across town.

Rover says sitters can earn as much as $1,000 a month.

Rover dog-sitter requirements vary by location. In general, you must:

Be 18 years or older.

Pass a background check.

Have access to the Rover app (iOS or Android).

Here’s how it works: You’ll create an online sitter profile where you’ll answer questions about your experience with puppers and your schedule availability.

You can choose to offer a variety of services, including dog walking, overnight boarding at your home or theirs, and daycare. Boarding is the app’s most popular service, so offering it can get you more gigs. You set your own rates. (Rover keeps a small percentage as a service fee.)

Dog owners will reach out to you. Accept which gigs you want, then start snugglin’ pups. As soon as you complete a service, you’ll be paid within two days.

Tiffany Connors is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.

I Need to Get Rid of $5,000 in Credit Card Debt. What Should I Do? published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[theinvinciblenoob]

Roman is a rocket ship, and I’m not talking about how it sells Viagra and Cialis. Less than a year after launching its cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction with $3 million in funding and a five-person team, Roman has grown to seventy team members and a revenue run-rate in the 10s of millions — up 720 percent since January. It’s sparked over a million patient-physician visits, phone calls, and text conversations through its telemedicine portal for getting diagnoses and prescriptions.

And now Roman is ready to expand beyond men, so it’s dropping the ‘Man.

Today, the newly renamed ‘Ro’ unveiled its next product, Zero, a $129 ‘quit smoking’ kit. It contains a month’s worth of prescription cessation medication bupropion and nicotine gum, plus an app for tracking progress and learning how to stay motivated through hunger, nausea, and cravings. Pre-orders open today.

“Erectile dysfunction medication is a knee brace. It helps you to walk again but the goal would be to not need a knee brace” says Ro co-founder Zachariah Reitano, who started the company because he lives with ED himself due to a heart medication side effect. “Some people will need ED medication but we’re hoping that a lot of people, through lifestyle changes or quitting smoking, won’t need us any more.”

To get the word out about Zero to women and men alike, as well as build a physician’s electronic medical record system, Ro has also raised a jaw dropping $88 million Series A round. It was led by FirstMark Capital and joined by SignalFire, Initialized Capital, General Catalyst, Slow Ventures, Sinai Ventures, Torch Capital, BoxGroup, and Tusk Ventures. Initialized and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and FirstMark managing director Rick Heitzmann will both join Ro’s board to steward this massive infusion of capital.

Roman board member Alexia Ohanian sporting a Roman Zero hat while cheering on his wife, tennis star Serena Williams

“The plan for the money is to continue to build out our own pharmacy” as well as “a lot of the backend infrastructure that we call ‘Ro’ that will allow us to launch these other products and verticals over the next two to three years, including women’s health products, Reitano tells me. Ohanian writes that “The only thing that exceeds Ro’s execution to date is their vision for the future of healthcare. Unlike other companies in the space, Ro is full-stack and is actually rebuilding the health care experience from the ground up, which means they are able to deliver unrivaled care for patients across the country.”

Ro’s Zero kit

Until recently, 80 percent of Viagra sold online was counterfeit. That not only made it awkward to buy medication for erectile dysfunction, but also dangerous. Yet that number is starting to drop thanks to the explosion in popularity of Roman, as well as fellow direct-to-consumer men’s health startup Hims. “Roman doesn’t lend itself to the typical Instagram unboxing experience, but we get a lot of one-to-one word of mouth” Reitano says with a chuckle. SEO has also been key to revenue growth, as it’s the first organic search result for ‘buy Viagra’.

“One of the thing that’s helped has been me sharing my story [he’s dealt with ED since he was 17], and this ‘check engine light’ concept” that views erections as indicators that a man’s body is in working order. Roman even built a somewhat-silly app called Morning Glory to help men track morning erections. Roman’s whole experience is designed to make patients comfortable with a fundamentally uncomfortable topic. “The fact that this stigma exists is why people don’t talk to their doctor or their partner” Reitano says.

Roman co-founder Zachariah Reitano

Now Ro wants to take the same clear-eyed approach to helping people quit smoking, starting by getting you to chat with its “telehealth assistant” to get paperwork sorted before you speak with a Ro doctor. The startup says that of the 37.5 million people in the US who smoke, 70 percent want to quit and 50 percent try to quit each year, but only 3 to 5 percent are smoke-free after six months. But with medication, nicotine replacement therapy like gum, tapering down smoking before stopping, and counseling, the quit rate drastically improves to 33 percent after six months.

You get all that from Zero’s kit for $129 per month, compared to $120 on Amazon for just the nicotine gum. Reitano admits that “the margin actually is not fantastic to start. Let’s say it’s slightly below what a typical commerce purchase would be.” But the idea is that if Ro and Zero can help someone quit smoking, patients will turn to it for more of their online pharmacy needs.

One barrier for Ro is that it currently doesn’t accept insurance for its $15 telemedicine appointments, Roman pills, or the Zero kit. Eventually it wants to accept FSA cards for tax-favored spending in hopes of reducing the cost for some patients, but otherwise Ro will require people to pay out-of-pocket, restricting it to wealthier segment of the population. Reitano admits that “In any space that’s incredibly competitive and highly regulated, there are things out of your control. In our control, there’s an incredible opportunity to make sure we take advantage of the infrastructure we have.”

Reitano concludes, “Honestly, I hope we can live up to what we want to build.”

Roman is a cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction

via TechCrunch

[amyddaniels]

Inside the ASMR Meditation People Are Calling a Brain Orgasm

One Yoga Journal editor replaced her daily meditation practice with ASMR YouTube videos for a week. Here’s what happened.

Curious about the ASMR meditation technique some people are calling an orgasm for your brain? We were, too, so we had one of our editors try it. Here’s her story. 

“O.K., I have to give you a shot; but it’ll only hurt for a second,” my little sister says to me as I lie completely still on her bed. We’re ages 4 and 6, and playing “doctor” is one of our favorite games. In a few months, she’ll decide on a career in dentistry (she’s since changed her mind), and our mock physicals will quickly morph into make-believe oral procedures. I’ll open wide in our cotton-candy-blue bathtub (“the dentist’s chair”) and she’ll count my teeth thoughtfully one by one.

Rarely would you find me on the other side of the table, so to speak. Being the administrator of mythological medicine never interested me. Yet being still and quiet while my sister “fixed” my feigned ailments relaxed me in a way I could never describe. It was just like the feeling I’d get when we’d sneak into our mom’s bathroom and steal her makeup brushes, taking turns whisking the soft bristles across each other’s faces: gentle tingles running up and down my spine, dancing around my scalp—like tummy butterflies for the spinal cord. But no one else I knew ever mentioned butterflies of the brain; no one talked about it on TV. So, I figured it was just me.

See also How to Meditate Daily 

What is ASMR Meditation?

Two-and-a-half decades later, and the euphoria I felt from getting fake fillings has a cult following to rival Game of Thrones. Dubbed ASMR (short for autonomous sensory meridian response) in 2010, it’s a highly relaxing, pleasurable tingling that’s felt on the skin and scalp after certain stimuli. The phenomenon gained a huge online following after someone asked the internet about “head orgasms” back in 2007. All of a sudden, people like me were realizing they weren’t alone in their tingling—and wanted to know more about what made them feel great.

Fans quickly took to YouTube, posting videos of mock physicals, face massages, and even crinkling potato chip bags—all intended to trigger the zombie-like relaxation that comes with what became known as ASMR. While the sensation itself is still clouded in mystery (no one knows why some people are triggered and some aren’t), experts now say that for those who experience it, it can be as powerful a tool as meditation. To wit: New research from Sheffield University, published in June in the journal PLOS One, found that ASMR was associated with reduced heart rate and increased skin conductance levels (a fancy term for physical arousal that’s linked with better attention and memory). The researchers determined that ASMR is, in fact, a physiological experience that could have therapeutic benefits for mental and physical health—with the potential to minimize depression, anxiety, insomnia, and chronic pain.

Unfashionably late to this particular party, I first read about ASMR in a Sunday New York Times this past February. In an article titled “The Currency of a Relaxing Sound or Tingle,” reporter Andrea Marks described a therapeutic, interactive theatrical experience where participants played passive roles in scenes including “sitting at a table while someone crinkles paper in your ears, visiting a ‘doctor’s office,’ having your face stroked with makeup brushes, and a hair-brushing encounter.” (Insert brain-exploding emoji here.) The Brooklyn pop-up performance was orchestrated by San Francisco's Whisperlodge—an immersive traveling show that curates intimate, one-on-one ASMR experiences for audiences that usually emerge from the quiet cocoon in a zen-like haze.

“There’s a tangible benefit you can feel in your body after you exit our performance, but we haven’t been able to back it up with science until now,” Whisperlodge co-creator Melinda Lauw says of the University of Sheffield findings. It’s similar to meditation, she says, because “it’s about paying attention—to small sounds and sensations. You become super quiet and aware.”

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Down the ASMR Meditation Rabbit Hole

As someone who’s struggled diligently for years to achieve euphoria through meditation, I wanted to see what would happen if I subbed a daily ASMR YouTube video for my regular meditation practice. The first one I launched was called “Taps for Your Naps,” created by ASMR darling Maria (she prefers not to reveal her last name), the personality behind popular YouTube channel Gentle Whispering ASMR.

After you skip an advertisement, tourmaline-looking gemstones fill the screen. They line a plastic sheet of paper like stars on an American flag, and a pink-and-white manicure atop ten flittering fingers tenderly strokes each row, producing tingle-inducing little tapping sounds with each stroke. There it is. That inexplicably warm, all-encompassing feeling engulfs my skull like a massage shampoo. My limbs sink a little deeper into my couch cushions as I slowly exhaust the “Up Next” queue.

Your Brain on ASMR

But what is it about soft sounds and borderline-creepy caregiver videos that make some of us—an estimated 20 percent of the population—melt into our mattresses? More neurological research is needed to know for sure, but biopharmaceutical sciences professor Craig Richard, PhD, author of the forthcoming book Brain Tingles: the Secret to Triggering Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response for Improved Sleep, Stress Relief, and Head-to-Toe Euphoria and co-founder of the ASMR Research Project, thinks it’s a genetic response that’s designed to help us feel relaxed, mitigating stress hormones and promoting overall health in the process. “Almost all of our biological functions and reactions are to our benefit,” he says. “So why have we evolved? Why might this be?”

The answer may be in the basic way primates soothe their offspring, he says. How a mother coos and nurtures her fussy babe: She hushes her tone, offers a caring gaze and a gentle touch, conveying with every molecule that It’s alright. You’re OK. “That’s what these videos are doing,” says Richard. “They’re sending a signal to viewers that they’re safe and cared for in a non-threatening way. When a child scrapes his knee, it’s hugging; it’s lowering your voice; it’s focused personal attention. Our brains are hardwired for patterned recognition of those stimuli.” Most likely, certain brain chemicals are at play, Richard says. Research has shown that when a parent soothes an infant, or a teacher comforts an unhappy child, a “brain cocktail” of endorphins, oxytocin (love hormone), dopamine, serotonin (happiness hormone), GABA (relaxation and sleepiness stimulator), and melatonin (sleep hormone) are released, which probably work together to evoke ASMR.

If our brains are primed to feel good when we’re pampered, why is it that we all don’t bliss-out watching Bob Ross paint on PBS (a common ASMR trigger)? It’s likely that a genetic mutation is responsible, says Richard.

We can think of ASMR like the mirror image of a panic attack, he says—an extreme negative reaction to an event or experience. Most of us might get agitated on a crowded subway platform, but fewer of us are apt to feel faint. “We know about phobias and anxiety,” he says, (genetics play a role in both). “But there was no word for the opposite—the other extreme, where people are highly relaxed by certain stimuli.” That is, of course, until ASMR earned its title.

It’s still a new frontier. Richard and Lauw hope forthcoming studies will prove ASMR’s potential health benefits by comparing blood pressure, cortisol levels, and brain scans of people experiencing ASMR against control groups. Anecdotally, devotees already claim that ASMR has helped them overcome anxiety, insomnia, drug addiction, and PTSD.

See also 5 Yoga Teachers Who Overcame Addiction

You can access ASMR on YouTube in the comfort of your own home.

ASMR and yoga—and me

On a Friday afternoon, a week into my ASMR experiment, I propped up on my sunroom sofa to try out a new (to me) YouTube ASMRtist. I had plans to meet a friend at 5 o’clock. But at 4:47, there I remained, limp-limbed on the couch while a 40-something redhead performed “skin treatments” into the camera—wafting essential oils in front of “my nose” and encouraging me, in a British accent, to “take deep, slow breaths.” I couldn’t move—let alone call a Lyft. Like sinking deep into Savasana (Corpse Pose) at the end of a restorative yoga class, all desire to re-enter the so-called real world had diminished. In this moment, it dawned on me that I’d been experiencing ASMR in my favorite yoga classes all along.

Richard says that yoga classes that incorporate ASMR are a no-brainer, although as founder of ASMRUniversity.com, he may be biased. Not unlike the intimate in-person experiences curated by Whisper Lodge, he says, yoga classes try to foster safe environments where one can relax and make room for self-nurturing. To this end, Kim, a New Zealand yogi and ASMRtist (who goes by the moniker Miss Synchronicity and like most ASMRtists, chooses to keep her last name private), has integrated yoga into some of her ASMR videos, and her audience loves it. She’s not alone: More and more instructional yoga videos are popping up on YouTube that incorporate ASMR triggers like whispering, tapping sounds, and pretend pampering. “Just like ASMR, yoga brings together the body and mind, expressing relaxation and mindfulness through the breath,” she says.

I can vouch for this. After my daily ASMR sessions, I find myself breathing deeper, moving slower, staying more in the moment, and feeling less attached to future results and outcomes. This new-found chill can last from 30 minutes to a couple of hours.

And the best part for me? Unlike my oft-failed attempts at getting present through meditation, ASMR works every time.

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About the Author Lindsay Tucker is a senior editor at Yoga Journal.