#* only 2 more weeks of this bs. -- tech 3 but that will kill me if i think like that...

[shermandelux-blog]

HOW TO NEVER EVER OFFEND ANYONE ONLINE...EVER!!!

***spoiler alert....it's not possible!! so HERE's what to do when the internet  TURNS ON YOU!

So I'm walking out the front door of the brewery the other day and there at the bar was great friend and fellow brewery owner from down the block Damon Moreau of Common Crown Brewery. "How's it going buddy?" I blurt out, happy as always to see fellow brewers in our taproom. The somewhat fatigued look on his face said everything but yet he replied "Well our new beer just launched and social media is EXPLODING right now!!" Well, that's GREAT news I begin to attempt to congratulate him but he stops me in my tracks with a "yeah but NOT in a good way!" The reaction to the name "Cherry Karen Sour” hit fast and hit hard.  Some people were clearly offended by the use of the Karen meme on their cans and accusations of ignorance and racism began to fly. 

From my viewpoint, I thought it was a clever play on a sour beer being named after a sour personality. I've seen enough of the Karen meme vids and GIF's online to get the connection and was truly surprised to see such anger and attacking comments towards them. Of course, I'd witnessed the Karen meme developing over the years since seeing #FuckYouKaren on Reddit YEARS ago. I'd heard the many tales of  "the Karen in the dental chair" when my wife comes home from work. I'd just simply never EVER associated this meme with anything racist. My thoughts on the worst part of the Karen meme was the unfortunate effect on the poor ladies who, despite being incredibly nice, respectful, lovely ladies who DO NOT need to speak to the manager and simply happen to be named "KAREN"!

Growing up a redhead I've certainly dealt with my share of being the TARGET of the internet's "less than flattering" meme's that range from my obvious lack of any semblance of a soul, all the way to people celebrating "kick a ginger day" (thanks south park) essentially mobilizing the world towards an entire day of the year promoting actual ASSAULT on myself and my fellow soul-less Gingers. 

To be clear, I do not think my personal experiences as the target of the latest internet meme excuses ignorance towards other internet meme's. I do wonder, however, how much responsibility we are to shoulder for keeping up to speed with the latest EVOLUTION of a meme? From my ignorant line of sight "Karen" had not yet manifested herself into a racially charged concept causing fear and possible harm to people of colour. 

"Karen" had been making us laugh since 2017 on Reddit but a quick search of Karen on "Know Your Meme" cites that a pretty significant change happened in 2020! May 25th, 2020 to be precise! That day saw the global pandemic collide violently with the killing of George Floyd AS WELL AS the Amy Cooper Central Park incident. Dr. André Brock, associate professor of Black digital culture at Georgia Tech stated "..the viral widespread resonance of “Karen” footage now is the result of an interest convergence where the coronavirus pandemic intersected with collective outrage over police brutality. The weekend that the video of Amy Cooper in Central Park went viral was the same weekend that George Floyd was killed after now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck, suffocating him. The Central Park video only highlighted the extreme violence — and potentially fatal consequences — of a white woman selfishly calling the cops out of spite and professed fear."

That happened May 25th, 2020. 50 days ago at the time of writing this. My point about the timeline of the evolution of the meme is that, as a fellow brewery owner, I can say with certainty that ‘50 days ago’ our friends at Common Crown Brewery would have still thought Karen was funny! They also would have already ordered beer cans labeled with Karen based artwork and they would have been so head down, consumed with keeping their business alive during the pandemic that they would have most likely missed the significance of Karen’s shift over the past weeks. I know i missed it. There's simply no way anyone could convince me that any of the fine folks at Common Crown would ever intentionally offend anyone with their branding and I'm positive that every single person who has ever met them feels the same way. So WHY such a violent and angry outcry towards them? I think Ricky Gervais from his time eating vegan wings on "hot ones" has some relevant insight! 

 The video above is obviously an overgeneralization of this new world we live in but it's also hilariously accurate. When did we become a generation of people swiping endlessly through other people's lives, waiting eagerly for OUR turn to be offended and stoke the internets mob justice flames? In today's day and age, I wouldn't feel safe announcing ANY kind of beliefs online be it political, religious, medical, sexual, etc. The internet is now a terrifying place, ready to attacknat a moments' notice and bully you for announcing that you wanted the Olympics in Calgary, or that you voted for Nenshi, or that you drive a Tesla, or, or, or,....

So NOW what!!?? Imagine you're a small business owner and despite your best efforts to make your customers happy, to make a living doing what you love, and to create a great environment for your staff to call home, you find yourself on the receiving end of the angry internet? Recently my good friend and fellow business owner James Boettcher of Righteous Gelato (the artist formerly known as Fiasco Gelato) found himself in this similar situation. After releasing a Black Lives Matter Gelato the internet backlash was swift. I watched terrified from the sidelines as my good friend and true Canadian LEGEND of an entrepreneur battled his way through a minefield. What started as criticism quickly turned into a pretty savage attack with people assaulting him as a person and as a business owner. It was brutal. And knowing the incredibly high level of intentions that both Righteous Gelato AND Common Crown Brewery uphold in every decision they make, I'm sure more and more people are thinking "when is it going to be ME who makes a mistake? When will I be the target of the internet's wrath? And what will I do when it happens to me?" 

Having caused a few controversial nationally viral stories myself, I'm no stranger to picking a fight and I'm no stranger to spending 24 hours a day for up to a week at a time responding to every single engagement, every single opinion, every single review, and every single media request during these times and I have a few suggestions for you if your turn ever DOES come around!!

1. Take a Deep Breath - Right or Wrong, Good, Bad or Ugly when you find yourself staring down the loaded barrel of an angry internet, the first step is to recognize that these situations are INCREDIBLE opportunities to let the world see who you really are! What you do next will be a defining moment in the history of your business, so take a deep breath and think "how do I let the TRUE spirit of my company's DNA shine through." 

2. Decide COLLECTIVELY on your position - We often react quickly with anger or defensiveness towards a seemingly unjustified criticism aimed at ourselves or our business. And why WOULDN'T we? NO ONE knows how hard we've worked as business owners to get to where we are right?? But that type of thinking is like a biased parent who's kid can do NO WRONG!! Anyone with kids on a sports team knows those parents! They are the WORST and usually have the worst kids! haha. But by involving your entire team to address the situation cooler heads can often prevail and can help a business see the situation from another position. Compassion, sympathy, and understanding of how others see our actions differently than we do is a hard skill to master. It's also perhaps the most important first step in admitting that we may, have truly made a mistake and need to genuinely make things right. Collectively Involving your team members with a less emotional connection to business is a great way to show them your level of respect for their insight as well as arrive at a position that the entire business believes and OWNS!

3. OWN your position...GENUINELY! - The internet can spot a fake a MILE away. Bullshit meters these days are finely tuned to sniff out shallow apologies, or disingenuous attempts to make the situation "go away". As Ricky Gervais stated above, it's OK if people don't agree with your decisions, even if they're MAD at your decisions. But don't waffle. If you were wrong...OWN IT! Apologize and mean it! Here's a sniff test example of whether you own an apology or not: If you apologize online for your actions and then someone posts in support of you that they thought your actions were justified....and you don't CORRECT them? then guess what? YOU'RE NOT SORRY so don't say that you are.

4. Don't delete the thread! - I love reading other business' reviews online! But I never waste my time with the 5-star reviews. I always feel they're either fake or the business owners' parents! either way, there's no value to me reading them. It's the ONE-star reviews that show me how a business responds to the challenges of business and most of THOSE are BS as well. When a bar gets a one-star review because some jackass felt vindictive towards the bartender who "cut him off" for the night. I laugh at the drunk idiot who thinks that bad review of this nature makes ANY negative impact on the business. On the contrary, a witty, clever response to a one-star review of this nature can do wonders for letting the world see your business's personality. And when a REAL one-star review comes in. It's a TRUE opportunity to show how your business is managed and you "right the wrongs". But somehow as business owners, we FEAR the one-star review!! Don't! Trust that the public will read between the lines and make their decision based on all the information. Again, we all have highly tuned bullshit meters, and deleting threads of this nature not only stop the public from gaining the full context of the situation you may find yourself in. It also, more often than not, creates a perception of guilt. If I hear about a company experiencing something similar and I look them and can read the threads I can make my OWN decision on where I stand on the matter. But if the threads have been deleted, I instinctively assume "boy they must have really screwed up!"

5. Don't be intimidated by the volume of the angry - People who "oppose" are ALWAYS louder that those who "support". Just because you've never had this much attention on your social channels and it ALL appears to be negative. You have to know that in general people who support you are much less likely to dive into shark-infested waters with you. However other SHARKS smell blood and are MUCH more likely to join in on the feeding frenzy. I guess it's just not as fun to stick your neck out there when you can safely watch the attack from the shore. Have faith, however, that despite the feeling of helplessness and the isolation of feeling totally alone in these times, there are TONNES of people who will read the posts, perhaps see both sides and potentially send you some support on a private DM, email, or phone call in support of what you're going through REGARDLESS of whether you're right or wrong. OTHER business owners are the friends you need to lean on, or shoulders to cry on during these times. The “swim in the deep end with me” quote from the video above is awesome to me as I’ve sent up the bat signal in my business before and called upon my pal Jim button of Village Brewery to wade into deep waters with me on issues in the past. It meant EVERYTHING to me that he dove in, headfirst with me!  It’s incredibly important to have people around you who, when they believe in your cause, are willing to stand with you on the front lines taking fire while  helping keep the flag in the air! Have those people around but also BE that person when YOU’RE called upon.

6. LEARN, LEARN, and LEARN SOME MORE- Regardless of the situation you've experienced, if you come away without learning and actively attempting to be better moving forward than you're an idiot. The entire WORLD is receiving a crash course on what acceptable behaviour looks like from all corners of humanity. The last few years have exposed a lot of mistakes humanity has made. The #MeToo movement, #BlackLivesMatter, and LGBTQ issues (to name a few) have allowed the world to learn how our past behaviours, past stereotypes, and even past ways of thinking are just not enough anymore. Being truly open to learning about what matters in the lives of those around us is truly eye-opening and incredibly important for loving forward progress of humanity. And without willing hearts, open to the opportunity to LEARN we'll all just be s bunch of angry internet trolls looking for people to attack who don't think the exact same way WE do or vote the same way WE do, etc!!

Finally, My hope for this blog is a call for PASSIONATE understanding and forgiveness. It's OK to be offended and it's OK to let a person or a business know how they've offended. The piece of the puzzle I've seen missing for some time now, however, is understanding and forgiveness. UNDERSTANDING that the initial outward appearance of a can of beer named after "KAREN" does not reflect the INTENTIONS of the great people trying to do great things for our community. But also the FORGIVENESS towards them once the issue has been raised. Most businesses today would stand stunned, eyes wide open, paralyzed in fear, and totally unaware of what to do next when faced with the attacks I've witnessed over the past year. Forgiveness is LIBERATING. It feels GOOD! But it takes empathy and compassion.

Imagine a thread someday where the offender realizes their mistake after reading criticisms they receive online. They regret it. They genuinely apologize. They learn a tonne, become more culturally aware, and the offended parties empathize with them, show them compassion, and openly forgive them for their mistake? Jack Handy probably said it best..."I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it"

[divulgacion-alternativa]

Ben Ful Links - February 22/2021

Weekly Geo-Political News and Analysis

Benjamin Fulford. February 22, 2021

Massive March Campaign Planned Against Global Idiocracy

Source: benjaminfulford.net

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Ben Ful Links - February 22/2021:

For example, the peer-reviewed scientific report sent to us by British and French intelligence says:

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on August 23, 2020, ‘For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.  For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.’”

(Science, Public Health Policy and the Law Volume 2:4 October 12,2020) https://jdfor2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/adf864_165a103206974fdbb14ada6bf8af1541.pdf

Here, for example, is a link to a scientific report admitting CRISPR is used in “Covid-19” vaccines. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7469881/

The Cabal’s state actors are now under increasing attack for their criminal activities.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told puppet President Biden off last Wednesday after China Joe instructed him to shut down the state because of the fake Pandemic.  Speaking to vaccine czar Dr. Anthony Faustus DeSantis asked, “How much do you stand to earn from these vaccines, Dr. Fauci?”  He then added, “And, Joe, if you continue with this course of action, I will authorize the state National Guard to protect the movement of Floridians.”  When Biden replied, “Address me as Mr. President or President Biden,” DeSantis replied “I will not, and you can go fuck yourself,” before hanging up. https://realrawnews.com/2021/02/gov-desantis-tells-biden-go-fuck-yourself/

The situation on the ground is now so dire that, in just one example, a new survey by the NYC Hospitality Alliance reveals that 92 percent of New York restaurants couldn’t afford to pay December rent. https://thenycalliance.org/information/december-2020-rent-report

Also even to corporate propaganda media is starting to revolt against their fake narratives.  For example, in an appearance on MSNBC, White House COVID adviser Andy Slavitt said the fact that Covid infection patterns were identical in no lockdown Florida and hyper-lockdown California was “a little bit beyond our explanation.” https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/watch-biden-adviser-struggles-explain-similar-covid-numbers-ca-fl-despite-opposite

The Cabal is now desperately dialing down the fake pandemic as reality becomes impossible for them to deny any longer.  That is why they are reporting a huge drop in “Covid” cases and propaganda news articles are now saying the entire “pandemic” could be over by April. http://www.battleforworld.com/2020/08/01/covid-19-where-does-it-end/#CovidCasesDrop

https://www.statista.com/chart/22067/daily-new-cases-by-world-region/

Of course, we must never underestimate these criminals because they have literally thousands of years of experience in herding humans as if they were livestock.  The attack on Texas -which involved deliberately shutting down their power grid in the middle of a cold snap- is one example.  This came after Texas Congressman Ron Wright “died of Covid-19,” and as an election for his replacement looms, the corporate propaganda media is full of articles criticizing the Texas establishment for “mishandling,” its energy grid. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/17/texas-shows-that-when-you-cannot-govern-you-lie-lot/

Now, NSA sources are telling us the next thing the criminal regime is planning is food shortages. The NSA notes:

1) Small farms shutting down world-wide.

2) Over 1,000 ships off our coast with food as the FDA keeps them out at sea; allowing the food to rot,

3) China is outbidding everyone for food worldwide as their crops fail,

4) This NASA-created freeze is not allowing food shipments across the nations; USA, Europe, etc.

Furthermore, the NSA notes railroads are sitting idle so trucks must pick up the slack meaning shipping costs went from $1,000 per container to $10,000 per container from Seattle to Chicago.  They note the same trouble in Japan as ports need constant upgrades due to shaking.  To top things off, they say “Biden is shipping USA Grain Reserves to China again.” https://news.yahoo.com/world-pay-more-meat-food-050000496.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/amid-soaring-food-prices-kraft-heinz-conagra-brands-set-raise-prices

The cabal has also been tearing down power substations in the U.S. for years “so a 3-hour power outage becomes a 3-week power outage,” the sources note.  They say what happened in Texas was “just a foretaste.” https://www.revolver.news/2021/02/texass-power-grid-disaster-is-only-the-beginning/

In addition to economic sabotage, the Cabal is now promoting multiple space missions to gather money. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9273375/Seven-minutes-terror-NASAs-Perseverance-land-Mars-TODAY.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/worldnews/14089099/russia-china-sign-historic-deal-build-first-moon-base/

Now let us look at a recent snapshot of some of the moronic policies the Cabal is trying to impose on the world.  For one thing, they are still harping endlessly about Iran and its so-called “nuclear bomb.”  Here for example is a Mossad linked Debka comment saying “the blank wall reached by President Joe Biden’s policy for re-engaging Iran in nuclear diplomacy is that his advisers could not get together on a strategy for stalling its progress towards a bomb.”  This is the same BS they have been repeated endlessly for over 30 years. https://www.debka.com/are-bidens-moves-for-nuclear-diplomacy-with-iran-stuck-in-the-sand/

Of course, if you take a look at Iranian leaders wearing their sheep masks, you can tell Iran is also just a cabal colony playing their role in trying to get us all to kill each other in WWIII.  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/white-house-signals-iran-its-ready-eu-sponsored-talks-major-nuke-deal-breakthrough

In Israel meanwhile, the sheeple there are now being given the mark of the beast vaccination certificates that allow them to go shopping, etc.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-re-opens-further-with-green-pass-for-vaccinated/ar-BB1dSlf1

And then we have German Chancellor Angela Hitler saying, “the pandemic is not over until all people in the world have been vaccinated.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics-g7-merkel-idUSKBN2AJ1WG

Of course, any nations opposed to this are “rogue nations,” opposed to a “rules-based world order,” which is why NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “China and Russia are trying to re-write the rules of the road to benefit their own interests.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-nato-idUSKBN2AJ24G

The Pentagon is on board with the plan to occupy Israel and so are the Russians.  “Russia is the last island of freedom,” State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said recently adding, “Do you see what’s happening in the United States of America?  The country is dying, everything has been canceled out.” https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/02/17/russia-is-the-worlds-last-island-of-freedom-parliament-speaker-says-a72995

Several targets have been outlined for the spring offensive against the cabal.  In addition to Israel, any world leader pushing for Covid-19 vaccines has to be removed ASAP.  These include Boris Johnson of the UK, Justin Castro of Canada, Angela Hitler of Germany, Joe CG Biden of the U.S. etc.

Removing Justin Castro in Canada is a high priority because it will allow Canadian troops to join their compatriots in states like Texas and Florida to fight against the Khazarian mafia strongholds like California and New York.  https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/14-5m-canadians-to-be-immunized-by-june-updated-vaccination-timeline-shows-1.5314048

Also, Google and Facebook were created with taxpayer money and then given to private individuals.  They are now taking over power from elected governments and must be nationalized.  “Freedom of speech is not something that anonymous moderators working for private companies should decide,” Deputy Polish Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta said recently.  “Instead, that is for the national body; duly elected officials,” he added.   https://www.foxnews.com/world/poland-fights-big-tech-push-block-social-media-censorship?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-foxnews&utm_content=later-14580965&utm_medium=social&utm_source=instagram

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-admin-working-directly-big-tech-crush-vaccine-dissent

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[midwestsidequest]

Institute Criticism under the Cut

Alright, so I believe I have finished The List (TM) of everything wrong with the Institute to make my usual squabbles easier, and I’m just going to put it up on here to copy-paste. If you can think of something I’m missing in here, feel free to leave a comment. If you disagree... well, I’m always down for an argument.

A list of why the Institute is evil. Hello, you're reading this copy-paste list that exists because there are too many people on this bitch of an earth that openly support the institute and treat them like they're the good guys, and I'm tired of writing out the same stuff every other week to fight people over it. spoilers ahead.

1. Every single one of the infinitely spawning Supermutants was someone that the instute kidnapped and experimented on with the FEV, effectively killing them since a normal supermutant doesn't retain their old human self. Virgil had to make a special version to keep himself as, well, himself.

2. Synths are slaves. No really. Their brains aren't computers, they're human brains built from the ground up, so third generation synths aren't faking emotions, they actually have them. "but they made them so they own them!" they shouldn't have made them, they should've stuck with the second generation synths that were actually robots, and even then several second generation synths display the ability to think and feel for themselves as well, see Nick Valentine and all of the Gen 2 synths that help with the railroad undercover missions in the institute. And don't you dare just take a jab at this point in a retort ignoring everything else. I know that this one is the quickest to attack because "Duh but ther Robots, they don't have soul, I've never studded about AI or philosophy," but you better have responses for the rest too.

3. Kidnapping and replacing people. I swear to god that if I get any responses to this point that they don't kidnap people because we saw ONE instance of them asking someone to come, I'll be fucking livid. That was a scientist that they were trying to coax in. They kidnapped Hancock's brother the real McDonough, they kidnapped Rodger Warwick, they kidnapped YOUR SON, they kidnapped every single person that was turned into a supermutant.

4. Experimenting on the citizens of the Commonwealth. I mentioned Rodger Warwick before. They kidnapped him, interrogated him, killed him, and then replaced him with a synth duplicate. Their terminal entries also mention that at the end of this mission, they'll be burning Warwick homestead to the ground to erase all evidence, killing the rest of the Warwick family in the process. Gosh, this must be for a heavy espionage mission. maybe it's to track down the railroad or infiltrate the Minutemen or- or it's just to see if they can grow a gourd bigger. All that, kidnapping, torturing, murder, arson, JUST TO TEST OUT THEIR NEW GOURD. And you thought Monsanto was evil, sheesh.

5. You're the boss, boss. Ah yes, it's great being in charge... wait, I don't have many options on what to do down here. But I'm the leader right? I'm the director! I mean, they wouldn't just cave in and let me become a director just because it would give the directorate a puppet figurehead while they actually control everything effectively meaning that the institute will just keep going the way they're going regardless of what I say, right? Right? Oh god they duped me and I killed the only people that could help me stop them.

6. No regard for the commonwealth. they view it as a scavenging yard, and they don't regard the people as PEOPLE, instead talking about them like they're savage animals. They say that they're planning for the future, but it's very odd that they're only planning for their own future and disregarding the people of the commonwealth altogether, almost as if they plan to take them out of the equation. Fucking Eugenics.

7. They killed the Commonwealth Provisional Government. In fact, they killed the Commonwealth Provisional Government AND THEN immediately after began kidnapping people for the FEV supermutant experiments. Don't give me Shaun's BS he gives about "oh they all killed each other while our synth just stood there doing nothing," that's bullshit and you know it.

8. Divide and conquer: GENOCIDE EDITION. Fucking Diamond City. So the institute installed the fake mcdonough. Cool. Great. Fantastic. So this was for surveillance right? Okay. Yeah. Seems legit. Except for the fucking GHOUL RACISM THEY HAD HIM INCITE. THE ONE WHERE GHOULS WERE DRIVEN OUT OF TOWN OR KILLED? FUCK HOW CAN YOU PEOPLE DEFEND THE INSTITUTE?

8. Why do I need to keep going on this list? Look, hopefully at this point I've turned your perspective a bit and gotten through the brainwashing the Institute put you through. Nearly every companion in the game has negative reactions to the Institute ending, and they have good reason to. They've been living with the fear of an enemy that they can't see taking them or their loved ones in the night, with nobody being able to tell because they left a replacement. But I'm tired. I've had to explain this a dozen times to people, and I don't understand why. the game clearly spells out for you that the institute is evil, so long as you pay attention to anything besides what your creepy science overlord "son" has to say, and even then he says questionable things. No faction in this game is good. The Railroad only recently got better at espionage because of ONE man, and their method of hiding synths by planting new memories into them isn't exactly the most ethical option. The Brotherhood of Steel would purge Ghouls an Supermutants from the wasteland, which is ironic considering that they fought the Enclave over that idea for wanting to do the exact same thing but including humans with minor mutations. The Minutemen are hardly more than a mercenary government group. But the Institute? They're wrong in a' whole 'nother way. Because they believe that what they are doing is right; they honestly believe that all the kidnapping and torturing and experimenting is for the greater good, despite the fact that they have only one significant advancement in tech, the relay system. They can make robots, and they can make robots out of flesh, and that's about it. their laser weapons use as much energy as other laser weapons, but they're weaker, and that really says something about their R&D work. They've been kidnapping, murdering, and experimenting for 200 years with absolutely no restrictions, and they have nothing to show for it that surpasses the Big Empty, who were restricted to only the mountain and also had teleportation tech. Five insane brains in jars got more done in 200 years than the humans under CIT. There is no greater good here, though. There's just pointless killing to see what they can do. Please don't try to say "just let people enjoy what they want" to me either about this. This is just as bad as if someone were trying to defend Fallout 2's Enclave or Vault-Tec or our own real-life Government in the US, and I can't morally sit by that.I said before that I don’t understand why people defend the Institute, but that isn’t quite right. I understand why. Because they’re “family.” This is the same tactic used in George Orwell’s story, Nineteen Eighty-Four, with the famous line “Big Brother is watching you.” Because this comparison exists, it isn’t the “why” so much as the “how,” how people can still be brought to believe that a group so sinister and vile are working for the greater good of the people.

[onceuponarrow]

Hey all! I’m back with some more random thoughts and musings about Arrow. This is a mashed up post on my thoughts on the last 2 episodes and some future speculations.

So last week episode 12 All for Nothing was truly all for nothing for me. I barely paid attention to the flashbacks. Although what I saw of them they were almost entirely a rehash of things we already knew. For me it was too little, too late to try and build up any sort of connection to Dinah and Vince’s (? I can’t be bothered to remember his name) relationship. So I didn’t really feel that bad that he was killed right in front of her. Plus I have a memory and I know that 2 episodes ago Vigilante was holding down Oliver so Bertinelli could kill him. So yeah, you tried to kill Oliver therefore I don’t care you are dead. Speaking of, who works for Arrow’s continuity department? Do they even have anyone? Do the episode writers not communicate with each other about actions they are having characters take? Whatever, back to the episode. Why couldn’t Dinah use her canary cry on Black Siren and Cayden James? I also kind of feel like Dinah showing up to rescue Vince is the reason he ended up killed. If no one showed up to try and rescue him I don’t think James would have had any confirmation he was betrayed and wouldn’t have killed him. Also on the subject of that rescue mission. I get the writers thoughts on trying to set up this not team arrow family thing, but Rene, his daughter lives in the city. If they don’t find the bomb, which Oliver said the warehouse was too big for him and Diggle to search themselves, James would still have the ability to destroy the city. The city Rene’s daughter is in, the daughter he betrayed Oliver for. Come on writers.

Last night I didn’t watch cause it didn’t sound like I would enjoy it and the Olympics are on. I’ve seen some clips, watched part of the episode this morning, and read a bunch of reactions and apparently I didn’t miss much. So I don’t get Cayden James at all. It’s Deathstroke 2.0, a man that is going to kill the entire city to get back at Oliver. Like I get it, its that comic book, tropey evil bad guy going to do illogical things for revenge, but I’m tired of it. Anyway, Cayden James, what an absolute let down. We have spent so much of this season on him and his cabal of bad guys for it to turn out that he isn’t the season’s overall big bad. What a waste of an actor and a huge portion of the season. So Dragon is the real big bad? I haven't seen the end of last nights episode but I gather he has control of the cops and set up Oliver to be outed as the Green Arrow. But he was really going to just leave town when it looked like James was going to blow the whole city? Why didn’t he just kill James at the beginning of the episode? All his planning to take over the city was for not and he’s just going to run away? And I’m supposed to be scared of this big bad? And think he has the intelligence to pull off all these sophisticated behind the scenes manipulations and digital trickery that fooled both Cayden and Felicity? I’m not buying that, unless Alena is the real mastermind behind all of this, but I would be utterly shocked if the Arrow writers actually go that way.

So random speculations and personal wants for the rest of the season and beyond. Rene, as I’ve talked about before I don’t like him and have never liked him. I want him gone. Either kill him and let Oliver and Felicity adopt Zoe (that actress is super cute and can act) or have him decide to leave the city with Zoe to get a start somewhere else. I’m not a fan of kids on this show but we’ve got William and they aren’t going to kill him or ship him off somewhere permanently so lets just go ahead and add another teen to the Smoak-Queen family. The way Rene has been portrayed I just can’t fathom how he can be realistically ever trusted again or why OTA would even want him back on the team.

Curtis can he just leave and try to reconnect with Paul. I’m over him. I hold him responsible for the utter lack Felicity’s company storyline and her sudden need for his help with hacking and building of tech. Yeah I know that might not be truly accurate but I can feel what I feel and it’s unfortunate that a character I initially enjoyed has been become such an irritant. If he’s gone we can get back to Felicity being the brains behind all things tech once again.

Dinah the way they have set up her personality I just can’t see her working long term on team Arrow. She’s supposed to be a cop so she should understand chain of command, which they have shown to be the case at times. But other times it feels like they are trying too hard to be comic accurate with Black Canary is Oliver’s equal and doesn’t need him. Which seems to be what they are going with especially in the next episode. Plus she’s a meta and I am still firmly with I don’t want to see metas on this show. I started watching because of the based in reality aspect, and I know shows change and morph, but I’m still going to want the non-reality based elements kept to a bare minimum so meta humans are not something I’m going to want to be a main character.

Anyway like I’ve mentioned before I hope all this ridiculous civil war stuff is a way to set up the ability to trim down the cast. Since Roy is returning as a way to write off Thea (I think that is all but confirmed based on spoilers) that’s one cast member gone. They have certainly set up non team Arrow in a way that most viewers wouldn’t be sad to see them leave or be killed. That’s 3 more salaries saved (plus the special effects needed for the canary cry and t-spheres). Lance what are they doing with him? They seem to be setting him to either be killed by BS or have an emotional break down. Either return him to his job of police chief and give him purpose beyond dead daughters or write him off. Black Siren I don’t know what they are doing with her. I’m beyond bored with her and don’t care if she’s redeemed or not. I can only see 3 ways to end the season with her. She’s redeemed (somehow and that seems unlikely) and returns to Earth2, she’s imprisoned in the meta human prison again (or by ARGUS), or she’s killed by Dinah. Any of those 3 options pretty much removes her from main cast again.

So my dream for the next season is a return to just OTA. Which would lead to hopefully better stories for my faves. More stories for Diggle. Can we see more of his family? Can he have a job again? Make him the head of security for either the mayors office or Smoak Tech. Or hell have him start a non-profit mentoring facility so he can also be a positive force for change for others like he was for Oliver. Speaking of can we get Smoak Tech for real this time instead of just teased for Felicity. Could we see her being an awesome force for change in the tech world? And since we have William and he’s not going anywhere lets add Zoe to the mix. I’m not crazy about that but she doesn’t irritate me as much as William and tends to be written more age appropriately so maybe that would rub off on Williams writing as well. We could even have some flash forwards with them being the next generation of team Arrow. Either way with a much smaller cast we could have some really cool stories that aren’t rushed. We could see them trying to balance the vigilante life with their real lives. Who am I kidding, none of that is going to happen, but I can always dream!

[jdaze-things-blog]

Food for thought if you care to read. This is not mine, but copied from another blog. However I wholeheartedly agree with it.

This is facts, not false Facebook and twitter memes

Bryce Bowling

February 21 at 9:31pm

·

Someone told me today that they were shocked that I haven't given my viewpoint on the gun debate. I was going to stay out of it, but honestly, it's been a week of the same garbage, so I'm going to speak on this briefly (well, not so briefly ..... here goes).

A Point-by-Point primer on the gun debate (from a legal gun owner and father)

I have 2 little girls in school right now. I am a member of the NRA, I shoot competitively, and I own a lot of guns. But if you told me that giving up all of my guns would ensure there would never be another child murdered by a lunatic, I would voluntarily give them up in a heartbeat. I think most legal gun owners would do the same. Would it help? No.

The only thing I have seen on TV and rampant on Facebook for the last week is how we must ban AR-15's. I've actually seen some destroying or turning in their AR-15's to law enforcement for some unknown reason.

Most people screaming for a rifle ban couldn't pick an AR-15 out of a lineup if it saved their life. Most people can't tell you the difference between automatic weapons (which, by the way, are illegal without heavy licensure) and semi-automatic. Most can't tell you what an "assault rifle" is - mainly because that's a "BS," made-up term. So, I'm going to present some facts - backed up by evidence and statistics - to help paint a picture of why banning a weapon will do nothing. I ask you gun control advocates to keep an open mind as you read (if you choose to read). But at the same time, I will offer a suggestion on something I have written the White House and our State Senator about that has the potential to help. So, here we go - facts and stats 1st:

-The USA has, by far, the highest per capita gun ownership in the world. What is per capita gun ownership? Basically, when measured by number of guns owned per 100 residents - the USA leads the list at 90. 90 guns owned per every 100 residents.

-The estimate is that a total over 360 million guns are privately owned in the US. 15 million of those 360 million are AR-15s.

-The AR in AR-15 does not stand for Assault Rifle and it doesn't stand for Automatic Rifle either. The AR stands for ArmaLite Rifle, after the company that developed it in the 1950s. "Assault" is a verb - not a noun - assault is what you do with a weapon.  I can assault you with a stick (it doesn't make it an "assault stick" or maybe it does). I own an M4 (a beefed up, full bolt version of the AR-15), and yes, for all the people that say "why do you need that?", I do hunt with it depending on the hunt. I also shoot competitively - not only with my rifles, but with shotguns and pistols.

-Have you heard that these "assault rifles" are used in the majority of homicides? I heard that - this week. On the news. Is it true? Not even close. According to the FBI, rifles of all kinds account for 3% of firearm homicides. Clubs, hammers, hands, fists and knives are all used to kill much more frequently than a rifle. According to FBI statistics, you are 3 times more likely to be stabbed to death than to be killed with a rifle.  Don't think you can mass kill with a knife? Just 3 years ago, a group of 3 men in China went on a killing spree in a train station. They killed 33 and wounded 130 more. Not a single gun was used - they only had knives.

-Contrary to what news outlets like to convey, the vast majority of mass shootings involve pistols.  How many CNN anchors have you heard this week claiming the AR-15 to be the "weapon of choice for mass shooters?" Again, more "BS." In a review of mass shootings from 1982-2012, 66 percent of the weapons used in mass shootings were pistols.  That same review found that only 14% of weapons used in "mass shootings" would qualify as an assault weapon under the definition used in a 2013 bill sponsored by Dianne Feinstien (D-Calif).

-In a secondary review of mass shootings from 1982-2017, about 1/4 of mass shootings involved a rifle (of any type - including but not limited to the AR-15), almost 1/4 of mass shootings were performed using a garden variety shotgun. Well over 1/2 of all mass shootings in that same time period used pistols only.

-The Va Tech shooter killed more than double the amount of students recently killed in Florida. He only used pistols. No rifles were used in that spree ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html ).

So, will banning the AR-15 do anything? No, and here's why. A person dead set on committing murder doesn't care about your law. If he can not legally buy an AR-15, he'll get one illegally, on the black market. Remember he/she is a criminal; they don't care about your law. So, let's play devil's advocate and say we confiscate, and even eliminate all AR-15s and similar rifles, and they aren't available - even on the black market. The criminal will still mass murder - using a shotgun. Remember, almost as many mass shootings have involved garden variety shotguns. So, we'll ban, confiscate and destroy shotguns. OK, the criminal will move to pistols - banning the rifle or shotguns will simply change the 66% of mass shooting being with pistol to 90+%. So, ban the pistols then. They'll move to knives, they'll go on the dark web and find instructions that allow them to make a bomb (capable of killing and maiming hundreds at a time) that they can make out of household items in less than 10 minutes.  Banning an AR-15 simply takes it out the hands of the legal gun owners. It won't keep it out of the hands of criminals - and even if it does, it will simply drive them to change the instrument. It's like taking away the truck they would use to drive to the mass shooting. They'll find another way ( maybe a box truck rented from Home Depot - https://tinyurl.com/y9p4cqlm ).

So, what about people that buy it legally and then snap? Ahh, there's where the problem lies.....and there is where we can make a difference. How?

Everyone likes to yell "gun control," but no one seems to be able to give a detailed answer on what that means (outside of ban, ban, ban!). We have gun control laws now. The problem is they aren't enforced. And now that the details start to emerge we can see how many red flags were overlooked with this kid in Florida. He told people he was going to do this. He was reported to the FBI. Twice! He was treated in a mental health facility for psychiatric illness and yet he was still able to purchase this weapon legally. That is absurd. This is the heart of the problem.

Show me a mass shooter in recent memory that has not had a documented history of psychiatric illness. I am a physician and I'm all for following HIPAA guidelines but we must lighten up on HIPAA guidelines and merge the ICD-10 diagnoses codes for mental illness from the electronic medical record to the FBI Background Check National Database so that individuals who have a history of psychiatric illnesses that predispose them to homicidal and suicidal tendencies, are kicked out of the system just as any felon would be.  If I smack my wife, she reports it, and I go a month later and try to buy a gun, I can't.  But I can threaten to kill people, actually promise to be a "school shooter," even be treated for schizophrenia and still LEGALLY purchase a firearm.

In an effort to enact some form of change, I have written both the President and Tennessee State Senator Lamar Alexander. (Who of you would have ever thought the first time I'd write our President or Senator would have been in the name of gun control?) Will it fix everything? No way, but it's a start, and it does have the power to prevent a person with schizophrenia from walking in to Bass Pro Shop and leaving with an AR-15 and 500 rounds in 20 minutes. Please recall, most every person who committed a mass shooting in recent memory obtained their gun legally.  There's no excuse for that.

Until we enforce our current gun laws and do everything possible to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, this problem will not change. And it has to change. It just simply doesn't change by targeting a weapon that looks "scary." I hope I've opened a few eyes here.

Disclaimer: These are my views. They may not be your views. I won't get in to a verbal sparring match with you over this. If you'd like to talk more about this, call me. I'll have you over to my house and we'll discuss it. I'll provide the cigars.

[davewakeman]

Talking Tickets--1 May 2020--Refunds! Marketing! Seth Godin! And, More!

Hey! 

How is everyone holding up?

I just want to take a second to thank all of you again for being here. If you need anyone to talk with or just to bounce an idea off of, let me know. I’m here for y’all.

Prioritize your mental health and if you don’t want to listen to me, listen to Harry Winks.

If you are enjoying this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to sign up by visiting this link.

I’m still dealing with intermittent internet issues that hopefully can be resolved soon so I can do some more webinars and such. I will still be co-hosting the Sports Biz Happy Hour with my buddy, Ken Troupe this afternoon at 5PM EDT. So come share a drink with us and our other hardcore happy hour colleagues. We will be voting on Ken’s new profile picture for Twitter this afternoon!

Get into our Slack group as well. We talk beef, business, and BS.

To the tickets!

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1. We Will Come Out Of This Period: 

There is no doubt that folks will be at venues, cheering, dancing, and connecting sooner rather than later, but we still have a long road back.

What is great is that we continue to see a bunch of efforts from folks all over the world that are working to help educate folks and get people prepared for relaunching the ticket industry.

We Will Overcome was started by my friends, Einar and Martin, from Activity Stream and includes support from folks around the world like  Frederic Auoad, Angela Higgins, Andrew Thomas, Derek Palmer, and too many folks to list in one email.

I’ve been pretty up front about taking care of yourself and reaching out to your community for support throughout this crisis, but as we enter May, I also want to make sure that we all spend time doing some planning and setting ourselves up to be successful when things begin to return to normal.

Trust me, they will. It is just what will the return of events look like and what will the market for folk’s attention look like…that’s what we have to really think about now. And, there are a bunch of really great resources to help you think through this, here are a few:

Eric Fuller is hosting a virtual conference called “Rescue Meet” and he’s launching on May 19th with a 60-75 minute web meeting and he’s asked me to participate along with folks from Live Nation and many other industry leaders.

Ticketing Professionals Conference in Birmingham is hosting many of their speakers and this year’s presentation online now. You can check out their listings and sign up for one, many, or all of them.

The Society of London Theatre has a bunch of webinars and information that they are sharing.

INTIX continues to host weekly lunches on Wednesdays and has a bunch of resources on their dedicated landing page for Covid-19 resources.

IQ is launching a virtual panel series as well with a pretty good lineup built around a lot of music and festival content.

If there is some resource or idea you are looking to learn or find out more about, let me know and I will help you find it. We will recover and we need folks to pull together and work together to get there. 

2. What Will Things Look Like When We Return? 

The truth is, none of us know.

The article above talks about a bunch of venues in the DC area and how they are planning….and, the truth is, no one knows anything right now.

Oli Shawyer wrote about the need to be clear and thoughtful in how we think about what our future selves might look like and his analysis of the current reality is right on. Right now, we think we are going to do one thing and in the future, we are likely to find that our actions are entirely different than what we imagined we would do…or, we may just be ready to do anything besides sit at home.

We have already seen organizations adapt and change to engage with people, entertain them, and stay connected. As a friend at an iconic venue noted to me, “it is amazing how we were able to become a digital content production facility in a week.” After struggling to get the necessary investments in tech prior to the coronavirus.

The only correct answer here is that we don’t know what things will look like when more countries start opening up again and we start seeing social distancing loosen up.

I have talked to a lot of folks about the idea of social distancing within venues and it is pretty unrealistic, difficult, or not entirely financially feasible to do the large scale social distancing that has been talked about in a few places this week. Most of the time, you have to look at the sources and the angle to know if there is some bias in these pieces and some of the ones in sports definitely have the hint of someone trying to drum up demand like Scott Boras does with his notebooks on his clients.

I do think that as you prepare for the return, it is important to think through the entire experience you want to provide from start to finish, how you can better curate your event, and walk through the concerns and questions your guests are going to have.

Repeat: start by understanding the value you want to create for your guests and work from there.

3. Refunds are starting to become a little clearer now: 

MLB teams started announcing their plans for refunds and cancellations this week with the Red Sox, Cubs, and Cardinals leading the way. But it hasn’t been nearly fast enough for the people that have been left in limbo by the fact that games and events have been postponed due to the coronavirus.

And in Europe, Ligue 1 was the first major league to call it quits for the season.

Admittedly, teams and organizations have been slow to announce refund and exchange policies or they have had to adjust them because of the nature of the virus, the shutdown, and the uncertainty.

From my point of view, StubHub got killed for going first and trying to do right by their stakeholders early on when things were so crazy, but the bigger issue for the organizations around the world has been in not communicating with their customers, in many cases, at all.

As an example, I had conversations with folks in several cities over the last week from around the country and these corporate ticket buyers told me that in most cases no one has called to talk with them about what is going on right now with their tickets, with updates, or just to check on them…from my conversations that included teams in most of the major sports. If that is widespread, that’s unconscionable and it will be tough for teams to ever overcome.

You may not know anything, but you need to at least communicate enough with your customers to let them know that you can’t give them an answer yet. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and imagine how you would feel.

It is this lack of communication and the changing nature of the policies that some organizations have been rolling out that has likely led to these lawsuits being filed this week…

In England, Brighton and Hove Albion announced their plans for next season as a hopeful sign that football will return sooner rather than later…I’m hoping that this season of the Premier League can be completed because if not Spurs will be out of European competition next year and I don’t like that.

The NFL is looking to announce its schedule next week and there is a bit of a conversation around whether or not putting out the schedule and selling tickets is a wise decision.

What do y’all think?

For me, it would be pretty risky for the NFL to start selling tickets…especially understanding what the current environment with refunds looks like, but what do I know? (Shameless plug…I was quoted in SBJ this week.)

Maybe, we can all just buy tickets for our cardboard representations?

4. Marketing, Community, and Connection Will Matter More Than Ever:

This is awesome because I get to write about Seth Godin in my ticket newsletter.

The backstory is that Seth put out a manifesto called Stop Stealing Dreams about 8 years ago and he challenged folks that read his stuff and follow him to find ways to share the content. I’d just bought a new iPad and was testing out GarageBand, so I did the first audio version of the manifesto.

With that, I got my first dose of internet fame! Now, look at me?!

The podcast and the article that introduce the podcast are totally worth the hour, even if you aren’t in the arts.

Seth hits on some ideas that have been at the core of my work in marketing and tickets over the years as well like community and connection.

I was on the internet with Frederic Aouad from Stay 22 on Thursday and we talked about the need to be better at marketing because the world that we will return to is going to be more competitive than ever and the need to give people a clear reason to come visit is going to be more important than ever before.

I’ve been writing and speaking about marketing and strategy for about a decade and what I found was that folks know they need to be better marketers and want to sell more stuff, but the “way we’ve always done things” is a tough competitor to change.

Now, we find that it isn’t possible to go back to the way things have always been done. We are seeing organizations change in a week or less, rethink their value, and brainstorm tons of new solutions…in tickets and everywhere.

The fact is that marketing is magic. That’s where the money is. That’s where the stories are. That’s where you can build relationships with your audience that can take you all over the world and to places you’d never imagine. (I’m speaking for myself here.)

But being good at marketing is tough.

You want a jumping-off point, start here with Rory Sutherland.

But all of us are going to need to sharpen our marketing knives because we are going to need them in the coming months and years. And, just giving into the tactical aspects of marketing isn’t likely to win you the business you need or the support you have to have to be successful.

I could go on all day about marketing and the need to market more effectively, but I won’t today.

5. Here are a few things that I loved or thought were interesting this week that don’t have a common theme:

First, how about that Post Malone fundraising concert where he covered Nirvana songs. I thought it was pretty good. And, he’s raised some serious coin for the WHO.

Every morning I read a newsletter called, “The Daily Coach” from George Raveling. Coach Raveling coached Harold Miner at USC and was instrumental in getting Michael Jordan to sign with Nike. The newsletter on Thursday was all about leadership and the first two points are super important right now.

The Mayor of London announces a fund to support the arts and culture. We need similar things in the States, but I’m not holding out on that one.

Live Nation is being sued for monopolizing ticket sales.  To quote Scott Galloway, it is good to invest in unregulated monopolies. This will be interesting to watch because the government has approved the deals that Live Nation has made and antitrust enforcement as a way to increase competition in the market hasn’t been a priority for a long time. So we will see. I’ll be watching it.

J Cobb shared the video of the world’s worst Old Fashioned and the redemption story that followed. This is fun and maybe that’s what I will drink this afternoon at happy hour.

Mark Pollard is an advertising strategist in NYC and he came up with the idea for a summer camp to help folks focus on their strategy. I’m going to talk with Mark about this and maybe as we work our way out of this shutdown, we can do something similar for marketing and selling tickets. I mean, 100 days for like $30 with 100 new exercises. That’s like the price of a book! 

—————————————————————————————————————-

What am I up to this week?

You know, teaching fourth grade…poorly.

I’ll be in the home office all week, if you want to chat, let me know. My Internet connection is still a bit iffy due to my blown cable box, but the McGyver move I pulled to get it to work is genius. So I’m holding off on a lot of things that need the technology boost to produce them. 

Please follow and like us:

Talking Tickets–1 May 2020–Refunds! Marketing! Seth Godin! And, More! was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[expatdaduniverseemigrating-blog]

Why we’re leaving the US for good, USA → EU: (A quasi FAQ on why even skilled STEM professionals are also ditching the US: predatory end stage capitalism, workplaces that break your health, myths about US salaries, the gigantic debt trap that is US modern society)

I’m one of 3 siblings, 2 brothers and a sister, all of us parents and established well paid STEM professionals (at least formerly so, with reasonable working conditions), who are emigrating from the United States with our kids and resettling in the European Union, one of us along with extended family, having already completed the process. We’ve received countless queries and expressions of surprise about our emigration since we as senior STEM professionals are supposed to be “the exception” for whom the USA is a highly paid Shangri La, so we got suggestions to post why we’re leaving here. In fact we’ve gotten so many questions on the “why” of our emigration that we’ve opted to answer all the issues that come up in one place, so this is long but hopefully informative and helpful for all of you.

None of our reasons have anything to do with politics, they have everything to do with the fast deteriorating work and work-life situation even for high skilled Americans (myself an engineer and ex-Fortune 500 senior manager, my brother a doctor, our sister a teacher turned high paid tech wizard), how corrosive the US workplace has become for even the “winners” in terms of our health, families and peace of mind, and how so many supposed advantages of a US posting (salary, taxes, red tape) are now a mirage. Our single biggest regret was not leaving much sooner, even as we saw where things were going a decade ago. In addressing the “why” here (as many others have addressed the “how” better than we could), our main goal is to help others mulling emigration out of America to avoid the same mistakes and costly delays, in big part due to all the myths we fell for, that we did. So the details below are a hive mind reflection of what all 3 of us, and some extended family, have observed to push even us, of the supposedly well heeled professional class, out of the US for good. Much of this is a joint effort so please excuse the “we” and “us” alternating in with conclusions of “I” and “me” the engineer in the family.

We’ll summarize it in blunt terms. America as of 2019 and 2020 is in a state of what we can only call “end stage capitalism” or maybe late stage capitalism if you prefer, a horribly exploitative, predatory, crony capitalist transformation of the saner capitalist system we once had, that delivers the worst of the both worlds even to high skilled professionals — terrible work-life balance, family unfriendly, abusive workplaces by design, horrible health and diminishing incomes relative to cost of living and hours worked, plus high taxes (overall) with decreasing levels of public benefit, and disastrous public outcomes, the Boeing 737 the keynote example in my field. Irony is that, yes, we ourselves are descendants of pre-Ellis Island immigrants from Europe, and on paper we’ve lived the American Dream, moving up from working class to become STEM professionals and (allegedly) part of the 1%. But the cost to health, family, creativity and security in this end stage capitalist America is becoming so great that we don’t want our kids (many of us have to start families late in our fields) to grow up in it, and our expat colleagues in Europe have been experiencing greater social mobility than North America now. The essentials:

 — — The ravenous short-term profit demands of late stage capitalism have made it so the American workplace over the past decade has become toxic to the point of breaking its workers, even very high skilled and paid STEM professionals, in mind, body and soul. It’s not only the mounting work hours themselves, it’s also the multiplying administrative and compliance demands that pile up more and more with little being removed, the emphasis on public humiliation and gaslighting (more on this below) as a way to “motivate” workers and discourage wage increases, fire at will policies that are more and more capricious, lack of vacation or maternity leave to recover, horrible safety nets and bankrupting healthcare and daycare costs, worsening litigiousness and constant risk to decades’ worth of savings, a toxic environment that discourages creativity and entrepreneurialism and — a driving force for all this — capture of the American government and lawmaking apparatus by the oligarchs who profit from it. We’re supposedly the “winners” of the American rat race, yet in reality the US workplace is now like that old Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man, a constant deathmatch where any tiny slip up (or none at all) will torpedo your career even with insane 80 hour weeks, and the “winners” win only by sacrificing their own health, family and peace of mind. The USA is now the only advanced country with a declining life expectancy, and exhausted workers literally dropping dead (all 3 of us are seeing more and more of this) is a big part of it — Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book Dying for a Paycheck produces the grim numbers if you’re interested. It didn’t use to be this bad, and you may be lucky to avoid this.. for a while. But this “grind the workforce into powder” mentality is now a metastasizing cancer in the US due to the form of capitalism that’s become predominant, and it will come for you eventually, as it did for my own once humane company. And these conditions will literally break your health and kill you, as recent research is proving, a link if you’re interested: https://www.seattletimes.com/explore/careers/excessive-work-hours-and-job-stress-can-be-deadly-un-report-says/

 — — The myth about America having higher salaries in STEM careers than Europe — yes we were bamboozled by this, it’s a big reason we hesitated for so long. It misses several bits of fine print. One is the HOURLY pay in STEM is, with ever greater prevalence, now lower in the US than in many European STEM centers, particularly in the more developed countries — Netherlands, Nordics, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the STEM hubs in Belgium, north France, even a few tech hubs in Spain and Italy. Over the nearly 3 decades I’ve worked in American STEM companies, the hours the engineers have to work has gone up — way, WAY up, from around 40–45 hours a week to routine expectations of 60–80 hour weeks in a growing collection of firms, and sometimes more like 80-100 hours a week, with impossible workloads and project deadlines. Yet salary hasn’t gone up anywhere near the same proportion. And those are stressful hours with no “reward” other than being belittled and gaslighted by senior managers for inadequate output and “laziness” even as the engineers are guzzling caffeine and energy drinks to stay awake. (Part of my job as a senior manager was to be one of those “whip holders” I’m now ashamed to admit, it’s why I ultimately bolted for another company that soon turned out to be not much better.)

I finally opened my eyes on assignments in Europe and noticed that my engineering colleagues there, even though they usually made a little less (*usually*, not always, in many cases their primary tech jobs *did* pay more than Americans in absolute terms on a monthly basis!), had much more reasonable hours, some not even 40 hours a week, and were almost to a person making a much better hourly wage than the American engineers were. And they were getting more done — maybe because Europeans work shorter hours, there’s less of the endless, useless BS with meetings and constantly mounting admin tasks. This meant our European counterparts, in the large majority, had more time to start their own businesses, make smart investments, and do other highly paid consulting or freelancing if they wanted — impossible for American STEM professionals to do when they’re slaving away for 80 hours a week. So the European hours not only made for better health, less stress and improved productivity in STEM, it also allowed more freedom for income making opportunities and becoming an entrepreneur. There’s also constant downward wage pressure on American STEM professionals’ salary from the way the H-1B is, even now, abused and its restrictions poorly enforced for some sectors and companies.

Meaning that, even on a purely monthly income basis as well, most of the European engineers and programmers were doing better financially than their American counterparts, with a lot more discretionary and disposable income, while having more control over their schedules, more manageable working hours and work-life balance, and having more opportunities to build up their skills, credentials and careers. Plus our Euro counterparts were also getting healthcare coverage, university and childcare in the bargain. Putting it all together, the European STEM professionals’ disposable, discretionary income per month and year, and even more so per hour, was above our American workers, yet with much more manageable working hours, work-life balance and options to start their own businesses, and they finished their university with no debt unlike American kids. Not to mention cost of living in US tech centers esp. Silicon Valley and Seattle is so outrageously high that American STEM pros’ real disposable income is even lower in reality. That’s the apples to other apples comparison, and most of the engineers in Europe (Europeans and expat Americans) were better off financially than Americans were in real, disposable income, job and income security and especially savings, with much less debt than Americans.

 — — And that’s only the obvious, dollar for dollar or Euro for Euro calculation on why real wages are NOT higher for STEM professionals in the US than Europe when you consider hourly and disposable income, and especially debt and savings. The so called intangibles are much, MUCH worse for American STEM workers, and these were the push factors that finally pushed us out to raise our families in the EU. For one, again, the horrible hours, constant psychological abuse and gratuitously stressful conditions in the US workplace will take a toll and break your health in due time, no matter how tough you’ve always been. Let this again sink in — the United States is the only developed country to be seeing a falling life expectancy (and it’s already much lower than Europe), and no, this is not just because of opiate overdoses in Appalachia. It’s because American workers, even highly skilled STEM professionals, are being overworked to sweatshop levels and literally being worked to death. Even if American STEM professionals made more money than Europeans (and again we don’t in reality, as we laid out above), the cost to health would more than outweigh any such added salary. What would be the point of earning a little extra money as an engineer in the US if you wind up dying decades sooner from the increasingly corrosive, toxic American workplace?

When I started my career, only 6 of my forty- and fifty-something associates and mentors passed away over a decade. But in the past 5 years alone, I’ve lost almost two dozen of my associates in that age range from diseases and accidents clearly related to overwork and work stress and even scarier, a lot of twenty-something and thirty-something coworkers and proteges too! One had his heart literally burst after working almost two years straight of 80–100 hour weeks and downing energy drinks to stay awake, barely a week of vacation and fear of losing his job if even dared to call in sick, my doctor brother I think said it was a heart wall rupture or something similar. Another with a similar horrible schedule took his life when his wife left him and took the kids, so he was dealing with an emotionally and financially crippling divorce on top of his horrible working conditions. Another, a young protege of mine right out of college, was compelled to work non stop 80–90 hour weeks under abusive conditions to “prove herself”, causing her to fall asleep at the wheel one night and die after crashing her car against a guard rail. Their (possibly) higher salaries in the US meant nothing when their jobs were literally killing them!

As bad as job conditions have been in me and my sister’s fields, my brother the doctor has had it even worse. He’s worked 100 hour weeks almost nonstop for the past 5 years, and he’ll often work 120 hours a week! No that’s not a typo, and seems it’s not uncommon for his field in the US. I’ve been to my brother’s hospital many times and the doctors and nurses there are one step away from being zombies, they look sicker than their patients! Even worse, they all say most of that insane work week and workload isn’t even for patient care, it’s now mostly dealing with paperwork, insurance and writing up uselessly long medical documents. Even when my brother gets home, he gets to “enjoy” about 10 minutes of dinner with his wife and kids, then go down to his basement dungeon, that’s what we call it, to work for 3–4 more hours to do his medical documents (he has to lock himself in a windowless room due to Hippa, I think that’s the term for the privacy policy at his hospital), sleep a couple hours then wake up again at 4:30 a.m. the next day to start all over, including weekends.

Funny part is, when you break down his salary on an hourly basis — even more when subtracting all his insurance and other costs — it’s a whole lot less than most other professionals, STEM and non-STEM, on top of crippling levels of stress, even without considering he basically made a pittance in his years of extra training after medical school with debt gaining interest. He had a heart attack himself 2 years ago, another sign that it’s time to leave. I’ve seen sweatshops in SE Asia with better working conditions than what American doctors and nurses have to deal with, and it’s literally killing them from what my brother has said, US doctors and nurses have the highest suicide rate of any profession and thousands of others die from exhaustion-related diseases and car accidents every year. (The US is going to have one hell of a doctor shortage at the rate the docs are burning out and literally dying from overwork, so chalk that up as yet another reason to emigrate from America.)

— — For these and other reasons, the US has become a horrible place to raise kids. The insane workload demands especially in fields like STEM, and the constant and worsening stress, make it difficult to spend even a few minutes a day with your kids on many stretches, let alone to relax enough and block out activities to be a good mother or father. My poor doctor brother fell into depression last year after a horrible 120 hour work week and his own heart attack a couple years ago, when he realized that his own kids had become virtual strangers, unable to see him even when he finally did come home staying up with medical documents all night. I’ve had the same painful realization with my own kids, our emigrating cousins and extended family the same. This terrible lack of work life balance hampers kids’ development and endangers their long term prospects and safety. Child care is outrageously expensive in the US cities that have jobs, there’s no family leave and especially in the brutally cutthroat world of American STEM, if you have to take a day off to care for a sick kid (or get sick yourself), it’ll often cost you your job and with it, your health insurance. Extremely expensive private schools are more the norm in a lot of regions to get your kids a quality education, not to mention shield them from crime and drugs which are sadly more and more common even in affluent US suburban schools.

 — — The USA now has downward going mobility — not only is social mobility now higher in Europe and Asia (you’re now more likely to rise from the middle or working class to make millions in Europe for ex., if that’s your thing), but even Americans in the middle and upper classes are at much greater risk of losing it all than any other advanced country. So even if you’re able to overcome all the toxic elements of the modern US workplace and save up some money, there are debt traps, hidden costs and risks lurking everywhere. A bad illness often ruins even very wealthy Americans financially because you have no security against crushing medical bills, even if insured. Out of network balance billing can cripple you with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in costs, and there’s not a thing you can do about it, as my (once-wealthy) cousin learned to her dismay when her daughter suffered a chronic autoimmune disease. I knew a wealthy entrepreneur from Italy who fulfilled his “American Dream” urgings in Texas, on an EB-5 visa, that turned to be a mirage when he was injured in a car wreck and learned his expensive insurance wouldn’t cover the costs. After that and a rival’s lawsuit,  he lost everything, hundreds of thousands of dollars in family money plus what he’d saved up initially in Europe, returning to Italy penniless.

And on that topic, crazy litigiousness and complete lack of job security also contribute to the current American lack of financial security — no matter how many decades you’ve trained, worked hard, built up your life savings, you are never secure in the USA of 2019 and 2020. Ridiculous lawsuits will crop up for the most nonsensical reasons, and a single one can bankrupt you. My brother and his fellow doctors are at constant risk of losing their life savings in a malpractice lawsuit, even with their (more and more expensive) insurance, even if they’re perfect, a tall order with the long hours and their fatigue working 100 hours a week. My poor primary physician is under terrible stress caught in a damned if you do or don’t situation with opiates. If she is seen to “overprescribe” them, even if cases of clear medical necessity, she can have her license terminated and be sued into bankruptcy. But if she doesn’t prescribe opiates, some patients can downgrade her rating and sue her for that too — again terminating her license and depleting her life savings, as has sadly happened to several doctors my brother has known. And even if they’re “successful” in fighting the lawsuits, attorney fees can suck away hundreds of thousands of dollars in US courts, after all lawsuits are a “profit opportunity” too. Even my sister, when she was working as a teacher, had to deal with a constant lawsuit risk dangling over her head which did strike many of her fellow teachers. It’s part of what drove her to leave the profession, and then the country.

Divorce is also horribly common in the US and it’s often a catastrophe for both spouses. Ironically if you have a high-paying STEM job, the family courts can crush you financially — many states get a nice cut of spousal and child support payments, which creates all kinds of terrible incentives — by imputing an arbitrarily high earning expectation that may be way outside of your actual ability, and refuse to adjust it. Want to re-train, dial down your hours, deal with an illness or bad economy that temporarily reduces your earnings? Too bad, they won’t adjust it for you, and it’s pay up or go to prison. One of my own best friends from college, a doctor herself like my brother, had to deal with this horror after her own divorce and it nearly (literally) killed her. In fact my brother’s wife wanted to leave him due to his own horribly long hours and take the kids away, leaving him liable for hundreds of thousands in support payments, with my wife talking her out of it at the last second. If he had to face this, on top of working 100–120 hours a week, I have little doubt he too would have wound up one of the doctor suicide statistics. As bad as some European economies may have had it after the 2008 crisis, I never once encountered Europeans being utterly wiped out like this — the kinds of debt traps, catastrophic medical bills, divorce wipeouts and crippling injury costs, that can drain away the savings of even wealthy Americans in a single stroke, just don’t exist in Europe, which make your savings a lot more secure there.

Notice too how the toxic American workplace described above not only cripples your health and relationships these days, no matter how much you’re making, but also makes it harder for you to hold on to whatever savings you’ve made for all that crushing hard work — the health problems, divorces and car accidents that result from those brutal American work schedules will not only sap your health, but sap your hard-earned savings too! And on top of that, American companies are now ever more willing to terminate you at the drop of a hat if you’re even slightly down and out, no matter how many years of good service you’ve provided. This happened too often at my old company and it corroded the souls of the managers who had to deliver the news to some poor soul that the corporate suits were kicking him while he or she was already down battling a severe illness or other setback.

 — — Europeans in at least some EU countries are now more entrepreneurial than Americans now by a widening margin, so the “business-friendly US” stereotype is false. Example:

https://voxeu.org/article/how-sweden-became-more-entrepreneurial-us

This is not because of a lack of American ingenuity or entrepreneurial spark, but because of the issues spelled out above — the tightening corporate control of Americans’ lives (even outside of work) leaves little time or energy for your own entrepreneurial and creative pursuits, which are frowned upon by management as a fire-able offense. In just about any industry you all but owe your soul to the US company store, among other things because you also lose health insurance when you go entrepreneurial. Europeans with their more manageable work weeks, 6 weeks of vacation and long maternity and paternity leave? That’s not for lazing around — they’re better rested and more productive, and have the breathing room to innovate, be creative and start their own businesses, that’s in fact become a huge competitive advantage compared to the insane “work the wage slaves until they drop” style of North American capitalism now.

 — — Even if your job is listed as having a high salary, especially in STEM, beware — in end stage capitalist America, capital is at war with labor, and there’s an increasing minefield of horrible, outright awful practices that are more frequently used to strip away what you’ve earned with your hard work. One of the worst is the ever expanding ways that US companies use to dock your pay, something I saw constantly, to my mounting rage, as a senior manager. For American engineers and programmers in particular, more and more companies employ a nasty practice where they’ll give you an impossible workload and impossible deadlines, even working 80–100 hour weeks, and then dock your pay severely when (inevitably) you and your team fail to meet those impossible demands. So that sweet $150,000 annual salary you thought you were signing up for? You’ll find out, to your dismay, that in reality the company was suckering you in, giving you impossible projects and then repeatedly docking your earnings, with your managers gaslighting you that despite your incredibly long hours and hard work, in reality you’re just incompetent and lazy and don’t deserve the salary you thought you’d signed up for. (I was actually given a damn script about this as a senior manager, to read to the engineers in my team to “justify” this horrible practice often in performance reviews, and sadly, the ones most severely affected were the ones with the best work ethics.)

So the company has broken your health, gotten 80–100 hours per week of your hard-earned, highly skilled labor, then used a slick deception to steal your labor for free. I was compelled to do this to countless earnest, hardworking, good people, and I hated this neo-slavery practice with every fiber in my body, it was ultimately the last straw that drove me to leave the company. And if you think this practice is illegal, think again — wealthy corporate donors and lobbyists all but control our legislatures and courts, and end stage capitalist America has virtually no labor protections, so this sort of horror is becoming ever more prevalent across corporate America as a way to “cut labor costs” and boost profits. (And again to be clear this isn’t a political statement, I’ve encountered this working in Red States and in Blue States just the same.)

Even pay-docking practices and salary cuts that should be completely illegal have a nasty set of well-developed protocols that make them “legalish” enough to survive scrutiny. For example, ever been shocked at that dispiriting, demoralizing performance review you got, despite the long hours you were putting it and objective achievements and goals you met? Well there’s a reason for it in American STEM companies — the negative review gives them legal cover and leverage to later arbitrarily dock your pay, suspend you or lay you off to boost their quarterly report, while also having the “side benefit” of gaslighting you into doubting your own competence and work ethic, so the company can extract even more hours out of you and discourage raises. Ever wondered why what you thought was regular salary has been sneakily reclassified as “incentive pay”? Makes it much easier to dock the pay legally. And if you think you’re in the right enough to challenge these unfair practices, you probably are in the right — and you’ll still get nowhere, because the company has much more high powered attorneys than you can ever afford, and they will use them against you. Don’t think you’ll be an exception. You may be lucky for awhile but remember, in end stage capitalist America, labor is at best a necessary evil and cost to be minimized, and you being a highly skilled STEM professional doesn’t change that. If anything it makes you an even bigger enemy to the corporation’s profit goals since you can demand a higher salary. It’s things like this that make you realize the value of Europe’s labor protections, however imperfect.

 — — As we alluded to earlier, the United States is now one gigantic debt trap, and no matter how aggressive you are at saving your earnings and avoiding debt, the structure of the US economy will make it impossible. This applies to almost everyone, even for most of the proverbial 1 percent — we have supposedly ascended to this level, yet we and those in our neighborhood are in constant fear and insecurity because the downward going mobility we mentioned above applies to us too, and the debt traps are real. We’ve mentioned some of those above — there’s college debt of course, and this is a hazard even if you’re frugal and try to do the old fashioned “state school” or community college route. Those costs are shooting up, but in the US, it’s pay to play, more and more you can’t get the needed skills for a good job without that college debt. Even trade schools have ways of putting you in the hole, and without a college degree, HR will largely toss out your CV wherever you’re applying. Medical debt from surprise medical bills is a constant nightmare and has, in fact, bankrupted many of our insured (and presumably well-off) neighbors and colleagues. And as mentioned divorce is catastrophic financially for both spouses in the United States, and a supposedly “wealthy” spouse will be drained almost perpetually financially for support payments because, again, the states get a big share of those payments themselves.

But there are other crippling debt traps too, which we often just take for granted and miss because the US economy itself is now debt-fueled. For example, when we mentioned above that the major US tech hubs (esp. Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, New York, increasingly even Austin and Denver) have such outsize costs of living that your “salary premium” is virtually worthless there? Part of the reason for such outrageous Americans costs of living in jobs hubs is that the US financial system has been structured to make debt the only way to cover the costs of essentials like college, healthcare bills and, yes, housing. The 30 year mortgage was almost unheard of in the US a few decades ago and such debt instruments are despised in most other First World economies, but they’re the norm in the US now, especially in the expensive cities with the most tech jobs. So on top of the multiple hits to your real earnings and disposable income above, you’re going to be sucked into a housing bubble with massive interest to be paid on the loans you take out for a home, whether you like this system or not, because it’s the only game in town and it’s inflated your home prices to madness levels.

Vehicle loans are now also at a record and they’ve been a factor at driving the cost of cars through the roof. Then there’s that curious, dangerous animal called tax debt in America. The tax authorities in the US right now are ruthless with the middle class, entrepreneurs and the “sub-billionaire” 1 percent, and once you’re in their cross-hairs you’ll become a cash cow for them, trapped in debt and likely never get out. Billionaires can buy Senators and politicians, but if you have assets and savings without enough to practically own a politician (high paid STEM professionals and entrepreneurs, that means you), you’re going to be a ripe, easy target. An associate and mentor of my sister’s, a software engineer who had helped her design her own online business, did very well for himself and was almost obsessive with making sure his taxes were paid to the letter, hiring two expensive accountants to make sure everything was done right. Didn’t matter — he was audited over a virtual triviality, stemming from minor paperwork filing errors which now, conveniently enough, are liable for massive fines even outside of any actual tax liability. Not only the debts levied, but also the time it took to deal with the auditing demands crippled his business and his health, and he eventually lost his home and his business, reduced practically to poverty. And this isn’t an uncommon story anymore, with the USA now $24 trillion in debt (and the states and localities struggling), and with the billionaire heir class virtually untouchable, the professional class and “tech gentry” as one of my old associates put it, are prime targets to drain revenue from for these deficits. So beware, even if you somehow dodge all the other debt traps and the health crushing, soul sucking world that is the US tech workplace these days, even your hard earned assets are vulnerable to be taken away from you.

And there are so many other subtle, unexpected debt traps lurking in end stage capitalist America, which can drain away years worth of savings in a single stroke. Privacy rights and protections in the US are horribly lacking, another disadvantage of America compared to other developed countries especially the EU, where privacy has strong protections. Result is that your personal data is in constant danger of being stolen and identity theft can cripple you. This happened to my niece (a doctor like my brother) and her husband as result of an unethical and corrupt merchant who sold her personal data for profit — an awful practice that was somehow, all the same, still legal. And it took a year of record gathering and tens of thousands of dollars (all while she was too busy at the hospital to pay much attention to it) to get things settled. Again it needs to be said, there is no financial security in the US anymore, not even for the supposedly comfortable 1-percenters, and downward going mobility is becoming the norm.

 — — And on that topic, to wrap things up as far as push factors in case this comes up, our taxes in Europe — as we’ve confirmed among those of us already moved there — are NOT higher than in the US, another myth. Federal taxes and VAT are higher in Europe of course, but the US has a flaming pile of other taxes like FICA/Medicare payroll, state, local, transaction, plus things like vehicle license fees and ever escalating parking and traffic fines, not to mention the often crippling surcharges on support payments from a divorce, which again, many states get a cut of. There are overt taxes and hidden taxes across the US and they at least equal European taxes, and often exceed for some states, but with the difference that you, as a non-oligarch in America, will see very little benefit for your taxes. All while our counterparts in Europe, and more and more countries in Asia and South America, get the core social benefits (covered healthcare and university, childcare, family leave, startup support, better infrastructure) that lead to better health, life expectancy and social mobility, compared to the US. Some European taxes are even lower than those in the US, for example property taxes which are a much lower burden — a lifesaver if you’re retired on fixed income, or dealing with the ballooning costs of US starter homes. We’re not at all anti-tax, but one of the more dispiriting elements of living in the US these days is that our taxes more and more go to help fund American wars and benefits for the oligarchs who control the government, not for public benefit. Europe, Asia, Australia and South America aren’t utopias by any means, but for all their flaws, taxes there really do support the public benefit and well being of the people.

 — — If even after all this, you’re still considering joining the meat grinder that is the American STEM workplace these days (or are stuck here as an American born citizen for the time being), then we’d strongly advise some precautions and a particular outlook to survive. For one, it’s now best to consider the USA what we in the business travel world and the diplomats call “a hardship posting”. Under some circumstances and contracts, if you can arrange it, you can make a lot of money here working for a few years, but it’s a temporary posting and absolutely not a place to settle down — basically a third world country where you can (sometimes) get a hazard pay premium due to the deteriorating conditions around you. That’s not an exaggeration anymore. The exploitation, overwork and debt traps in the US are so awful that you are literally endangering your health, and that of your family, by staying here. If you’re born here and can find a high paying STEM job and a way to save up, then start making your exit plan before the horrors of end stage capitalist America come for you. And keep in mind, all that glitters isn’t gold, and a lot of the common tropes about high paying US STEM jobs (especially ones that won’t ruin your health or in cities that won’t drain away your savings) are myths and hype.

Also, read every single word of your employment contract, down to the letter. This is true if you’re a born and bred American, even more if you’re coming to work in STEM as an H-1B or other work visa. Never, ever accept a position where your pay can be “docked for performance reasons” — this is a trap! You may pride yourself on your work ethic and your ability to “suck it up and get things done”, but in America today, the company sees you as a sucker easy to exploit, and they have no respect for you or your work ethic except in terms of what they can extract from you by guilt tripping and gaslighting you. Also beware of positions that for seemingly mysterious reasons, shift what should be regular salary over to be classified as “incentive pay” or something similar. This may seem like semantics to you at first glance, but in reality, it’s one of the many horrible methods that many US STEM companies are now using to “cut labor costs” — giving you impossible assignments you couldn’t complete even if you could work 30 hours a day, then docking your pay for “subpar performance”.

 — — Finally we’ve focused on the “why” because the “how” of emigrating out of the US (especially to Europe) has already been covered much better by other Redditors, and the individual path to the EU, or destinations in Asia, Australia or South America will vary so much from person to person. A few pointers that can be generally helpful:

1. Remember that the EU has 27 countries to choose from after Brexit, and you don’t necessarily have to start in your goal country if the visa process is too challenging. Once you become established in one, you have free movement rights to the others. One of our cousins took advantage of this — not even in STEM himself, with no more than basic trade school education — to go to one of the Baltic countries in the EU where even his basic skills were in demand due to the shortage of so many young workers moving out to Western Europe. He, his wife and kids picked up enough of the local language to get settled (with very low costs of living), saved up and eventually moved to France, his original goal. (Other expat Americans, originally with similar goals, have fallen in love with the Baltics or other eastern European EU countries and planted roots there).

2. Have a long term plan in mind, especially if you have or are planning kids and thinking about where to raise them. This is one of the reasons we’re all headed to the EU in my close family (with two other extended family members going to Argentina and a wealthy region in Brazil). I loved Canada, the UK and Australia when I was posted there, but unfortunately, the US as “head country of the Anglosphere” is more and more infecting the rest of the English-speaking world with its end stage capitalism style, and we’re starting to see the same madness slowly pop in those countries too. For whatever its flaws, the European Union has much stiffer and permanent protections for workers to the point that the EU defines itself to a big extent around this philosophy. Not just as a matter of principle but practicality — EU workers are more productive, and since they’re healthier the healthcare costs there are less than America’s. It’s a smarter, much more First World way of running an economy. We’re not saying the EU is a paradise, we’ve had our share of irritations dealing with some elements of its bureaucracy, and there are certainly some areas for improvements. (Especially transporting pets--it’s obviously important to take reasonable precautions but the EU red tape around house pet transport is often horrible.) But when it comes to the big things most relevant to quality of life, health and opportunities, the EU gets it right, much more than the US does, and it’s why Europeans are now healthier and more productive than Americans, with much greater social mobility than North America now has.

3. Learn as much of the language as you can, but if you have an offer or option, don’t hesitate to make the move to the EU. We’ve been prepping our move to Europe for years so we’ve worked to learn the languages of where we’re going. But I talked to many American expats who, when they made their permanent moves, were not close to being fluent in French, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish or whatever the language was common where they were moving. In STEM, for now at least, you can often get by at first in the EU (even outside of Ireland) with English — operative phrase being “at first”. If you’re going to settle down there long term, it’s important to make some effort to pick up the language, after you’ve moved if you haven’t done so before, or you’ll be stuck as a social outsider even if you can use English where you work. Fortunately EU countries tend to be helpful in this and many even have free language classes especially for the bigger languages like French, German and Italian (one of our nephews took advantage of this), and of course it’s doubly important for your kids to be immersed as much as possible in the regional language. But again, don’t let your lack of language skills hinder you if you do have an opportunity to move.

4. Some EU countries have smoothed emigration process considerably in recent years for skilled and semi-skilled workers from outside the EU to move in. Germany in particular is one, and although I’m not too up on the details, I think it’s called the Skilled Immigration Act and functions something like Canada and Australia’s points system. If you’re able to show that you have needed skills and experience, won’t require public assistance and ideally can speak (or motivated to learn) German, you’ll have an expedited path to getting in. Some other EU countries have similar programs to lure in skilled workers.

5. And on that topic when it comes to the specifics, we had personal contacts to help us with the practical elements of our move, and I had the good fortune of years of exposure through business travel especially in Europe. But there are so many American expats now, especially in Europe, that there’s a wealth of information and initial contacts to smooth the process. So use and take advantage of every resource you can, and good luck to all of you.

[soundlessdancer]

top 5 roles you've been in?

This is a super old ask but I still really wanna answer it! I haven’t been doing much acting lately and since I was more focused on my mental health in hs I don’t have as many options as I would like to choose from but in no particular order….

1. This role was legit just called “Human” for a senior-directed one-act I did my senior year of high school and my director actually wrote her show as well as directing it! It was similar to Inside Out but a lot darker and I was actually given a form to fill out info about myself so the script would be tailored for the people playing my ‘emotions’ (doubt, regret, frustration, and depression in this case) and what they would talk about. I was in none of the rehearsals and both my audition and performance relied on natural reaction and improv. It was amazing because I was very open with my answers and I had friends in other one-acts tell me how they started crying as a stand-in during the tech rehearsals for the show. It was called Mind Space and honestly was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in theatre.

2.I played various D&D monsters a little over a year ago in a play called ‘She Kills Monsters’! It’s a super queer-friendly show and is fairly accurate for 1990′s D&D (the show is set in ‘95). It’s all about this girl connecting with her late sister who was a big D&D nerd and through playing this homebrew her sister had made years ago she finds out a bunch of things she never knew about her. Plus since I was only playing monsters I was a strictly stage-combat role and while it took a toll on me physically it was SO MUCH FUN. I got to run around with a top-heavy paper-mache dragon head for the final boss battle against Tiamat.

3.I never actually got to perform this show because the entire cast (including myself, this was an independent study class) wasn’t ready come showtime but it was still a super fun process. I played Barbara in the show Nickel and Dimed (Look up the title, it’s based off a woman’s real experiences) which was the principal role and honestly was a lot to handle for being 15 and having my first role in two years at the time.

4. From another show I never ended up doing and was cut pretty early on in the same class the following year. The play was called Leaves and I played the role of Lori, the oldest of three girls in a family in Belfast. She isn’t even in the first act but so much of the show is focused around her as she comes back from her first year of university after a suicide attempt. My classmates dropped the show and went for this other play full of mini-skits that I honestly did not like at all and they did this on a day that I was HOME SICK. Also there was a girl in that class (these were small classes of like 8 people max.) who was super controlling and rude and like…..honestly all I can say is she was a bitch? She was so mean! It was absolute bs!

5. My first principal role! Ida Claire Yall in the show Holder Posey: The Felonious Photographer (Or: Step Into My Dark Room and See What Happens). This was actually my last show in middle school (and was when I started going out with my first boyfriend for two days, I broke up with him via text on Valentines Day. NOT TO MENTION WE WERE THE ROMANTIC LEADS IN THE SHOW. It was only awkward for like a week, and he’s gay! He’s like my little brother, we’re still really good friends) But the show was a complete over-the-top melodrama and was honestly hysterical, including goofs that happened during performances i,e: I had to grab ice cream for myself and the guy player Holder Posey (YES ALL THE CHARACTER NAMES WERE PUNS) and I saw someone take the spoons from the bowls I was supposed to grab and the only plasticware they had left were knives so I just….took the knives. Since I had no dialogue left in the scene (or very little) along with Holder, he just pulls the knife out and gives me this look, poking me with the knife while I’m holding back laughter and you could hear chuckles from some people in the audience. The scene ends and the two of us had to take the bench we were sitting on off stage and since we were mic’d you would just see two silhouettes shaking with laughter. Honestly one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen or done on a stage production.

Also this went on much longer than it should’ve, but eh. 

Feel free to send in any questions, I’m a fairly open book! (ALSO I JUST PASSED 666 FOLLOWERS AND DIDN’T SCREEN CAP IT)

[daleisgreat]

National Treasure

In my high school and college days, history was always my favorite class. In elementary school I would learn the order of all the US Presidents and all the US capitols and in down time would look up presidential election results and population sizes on state atlases. For fun! Yup, I was that kid. I also like treasure hunter type films like Indiana Jones (which I plan on covering here down the line), so I was absolutely giddy when history and treasure hunting combined for 2004’s National Treasure (trailer). National Treasure features Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Gates, who is a modern day treasure hunter spending most of his life chasing after a long lost family treasure that has ties all the way back to the original founding fathers of the country. The film kicks off with Gates, his assistant tech wiz, Riley (Justin Bartha) and his investor partner Ian (Sean Bean) finding a major clue to the family treasure they spent decades searching for. Their discovery contains a riddle that Cage does a masterful job hamming it up like only he can when he solves the riddle and deduces that the Declaration of Independence has a secret treasure map on it. Ian matter-of-factly states “ok, time to steal this sacred document” and of course Gates is not about that so Ian turns on him right there. Now, both men are off to steal the Declaration and set about a greater chase with Ian right on Ben’s tail to track down the sought-after family treasure.

The history fan in me is incredibly biased towards this movie. Gates is constantly spouting quick history anecdotes as him, Riley and Declaration expert Abigail (Diane Kruger) venture on their expedition across historical US cities such as Philadelphia, Boston and Washington DC. There is a big setup for the Declaration heist, and as far-fetched as the whole ordeal is, I still enjoyed the big heist scene. Cage is perfect as treasure hunter in over his head, and is awesome whenever he shows off his uncanny acting ability at solving riddles. Ian is a serviceable antagonist, and as expected is always one step behind Gates, but he has a few tricks up his sleeve later on in the film to keep the heroes constantly watching their back. As much as I love this film I could see why others would dislike it. If you do not have an interest in US History, I can see how some would dismiss National Treasure with a ‘hard pass.’ Like other treasure hunter franchises such as Indiana Jones and Uncharted expect many ‘yeah right’ and ‘BS’ stunts/heroics throughout the film. If those kinds of stunts can ruin a film for you than there are a few eyebrow-raising scenes in National Treasure that will most likely infuriate you. Again, the history nut in me made it easy to justify these faults with some convenient lines of dialogue or other Hollywood tricks, but be forewarned, expect some ridiculous-ness.

The BluRay is stacked with extra features. There is 75 minutes of bonus material broken up into 10 parts. I would recommend cruising through the deleted scenes with director introductions as there are a few fun scenes I wished that would have made the cut with a unique strip club scene standing out the most! Of the many behind-the-scene features included the two I would recommend the most are Ciphers, Codes & Codebreakers and To Steal a National Treasure. The former is about how deciphering codes has evolved over time and the latter is about how the filmmakers researched breaking into the National Archives with its then severely-outdated security system. There is also an entertaining commentary with director Jon Turtleaub and Justin Bartha worth checking out. It is one of the better commentary tracks I have endured as the duo are constantly self-deprecating and have a good rapport throughout. They react to criticism to the film, jest about how dated the film’s effects will look in several years and Jon recites old high school stories of Nicolas Cage. Finally, there is an interactive Declaration of Independence where you can use your BluRay remote to ‘decode’ various phrases from it to unlock mini-documentaries relating to Colonial life at the time of the document’s inception. If you are patient enough with it, there is a ton to unlock and check out!

13 years later National Treasure still holds up. The special effects are not as dated as Jon & Justin hint they might be, and it is a fun, by-the-numbers treasure hunt/chase film. Again, being at least a little bit of a fan of US History is recommended going into this, but if you are not you may be into this if all you are looking for is a good ‘ol fashion treasure hunting film. I plan on covering the sequel, Book of Secrets next month so please join me again in a few weeks for one more round with Cage and company! Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Creed Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Hercules: Reborn Hitman Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jobs Man of Steel Marine 3-5 Mortal Kombat The Replacements Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars The War Wild The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past

[icodogio]

Story of ICO DOG | It’s our Birthday!

What a year it has been! Not only for me but for every ICO DOG core member and the rest of the pack. Exactly one year ago, I started the ICO DOG twitter channel together with the hashtag #YearOfTheDog. 

#YearOfTheDog

We started ICODOG in February 2017, everybody was still full of enthusiasm and still high of the ICO rush of 2017. Yes, the market dumped hard, in January, but it would recover in March for sure. At least that’s what we were all thinking back then. March turned to April, followed by May, June, and July. Every month was tougher to handle. The ICO space took a particularly big hit in Q3 and Q4 of 2018, but we didn’t care. It was our year and knew that we had to try our best to make something out of it.

And we did. 

Fast forward to today. Year of the dog is almost over, and it was one of the most exciting years of my life. We managed to learn and achieve so much in just a year. A year where everything was working against us. 

  The last 12 months in 1000 words

Origin of the name ICO DOG, January 2018:

 A friend and I were discussing; what I should call the twitter channel for the ICO reviews? He said, well Brian (my dog)  is here, let’s see if ICO DOG is still free. It was, and so was ICO_DOG born.

Birth of the ICO DOG POOL: February 2018

It was a chaotic time, people were killing each other to get into ICOs. The solution for many was the Pre Sale Pools. People asked me on twitter if I could open a primablock pool so that we can get into those sexy ICOs again. I knew that someone from the balina group was talking about pooling. He made a new telegram group for organizing the pools. I joined the group and, offered the head my twitter channel, he was an idiot and also ruthlessly greedy. After I told them that the ICOs that they were opening were scams or shitty projects, they decided to ban me. I then went to the founder and told him he could screw himself and I’d make my own pool. A better and bigger one. 

That group later became the biggest pool group in the world. The ICO Participation Capital and we became ICO DOG. 

ICO DOG Core Team Emerged: March 2018

ICO DOG grew quickly and the pool telegram channel was active 24/7. We even had a night shift admin, he lived on the other side of the world and could take over when we needed to sleep. The group became bigger, ken, jedi, mo and many others joined in and in March our tech genius Gio joined the dog. 

Birth of the first ICO Presale Platform: April 2018 

ICO hype was slowing down, but there was one project that everybody still wanted to get into. It was One Ledger. Everybody was saying 5x, 10x to the moon, myself included. Somehow I managed to get my hands on a one ledger allocation and people tried to bribe me to an allocation. Most people would have just given it to the highest bidder, but at ICO DOG we do things differently. I always knew about the proof of care system that some ICO adopted to select the people that should be able to invest. 

We decided to do the same, little excel sheet and basic proof of care to see who deserves the allocation the most. It was a huge success, our growth tripled. People were happy, and so was the team. 

We decided to build a platform for pooling that enables the best people to get allocations. This was the birth of the ICODOG Platform.

ICO DOG NO BS Reviews: May 2018

We knew that we needed a better ICO review page. Most, if not all ICO rating sites were nothing more than a rating shop, or a shill fest for VCs and influencers. We needed a place that had a quick overview and breakdown of ICOs, but on a platform that people trust. So we decided to do it ourselves. In the beginning, I tried my best together with Ken to build the website. The early version was, clunky looked like a bad 90s domain and was slow, but at least it was never paid or shilled for.  As we grew, so did the quality of the website. 

                                Old version of ICO DOG Reviews                                                                                  New version of the Website New

                                    Big Expansion & Growth: July 2018

Its six months into the bear market and people started losing faith and leaving the ecosystem. Many projects started to struggle, but the sun could not have shinned for the ICO DOG team. We had the platform and the reviews done, and an army of supporters shilling us like mad. Every day our reviews got better, and the telegram group was booming. 

I remember when one one of my tweets had around 180.000 impressions on Twitter, our telegram was packed and every day 100s of new users registered on the ICO DOG platform. It was the last big dead cat bounce before things turned really dark.

The Post One Ledger & Atonomi ICO Market: All of Q3 2018

ICOs were dumping like crazy, retailers dropping like flies and crypto startups going bankrupt on a weekly basis. Things were bad, but everybody remained hopeful. That quickly changed on the day that One Ledger and Atonomi both dumped hard. Atonomi and one ledger were one of the most hyped and anticipated projects of the year. Nobody expected them to underperform, yet alone to dump, but they did. After that, the ICO game was officially over for many. The majority of people started to finally give up and leave crypto. 

It was a tough spot as a pool. People were pissed, everybody lost money. A lot of money. Even the best ICOs failed. The final nail went into the ICO coffin was Fantom. Very hyped Asian project that dumped just like everything else. After that, people had enough of the ICO space.

After One Ledger failed, we knew we had to change our business model, otherwise, we’d be out of business before the end of the year. We looked at all the problems that were plaguing the ICO system and decided to become the company that would slow the problems that decentralized companies face. Not only until the ICO raised money, but we would focus on helping these projects post ICO to become a decentralized entity.

  Birth of the DAO Maker: Q4 of 2018

In the last few months, the team worked hard on building a plugin solution that could help ICOs with all of their problems. There are millions of software solutions for centralized companies, but 0 for decentralized companies. Blockchains like steem are still plagued by a lack of organization, and the DAO is still a dream. The closest thing to a DAO is still bitcoin.  

We were on a tight time schedule; with revenue gone, we only had a few months to pull this off. Finish the platform and get paying clients and all before the end of the year. 

We took our platform solution and improved it, added blockchain interactions to detect hodlers on and off chain, ERC20 or mainnet. Integrated real-time 5th directive KYC & AML services. Added marketing tools, community management tools, discord integrations and much more. The final product was pretty boss. After 3 months of work, we were ready for our first test client. 

We were pretty happy with the ICO LTO Network, established company very transparent and uses a solution that seems to utilize the power of decentralized systems. Before the end of the year, we had our first deal signed and paid and saved our ass in the process. 

Two days after platform integration LTO network started to moon in terms of awareness. ICOs public sale was said to be dead. Only option would be a IEO (Initial Exchange Offerings), however, LTO managed to raise over $1M on the ICO DOG platform and has been growing very rapidly since. 

Around 4 million USD was raised through crowdsales in 2019 (excluding IEOs) and $1M were raised on the ICO DOG solution. 

    ICO DOG Mass Media: November 2019 

We noticed there is a lack of high quality general educational material in crypto. We had an abundance of crypto mainstream news pages. Such as cointelegraph, coindesk and all the other coins. As well as a huge diversity in ICO review pages, but it was hard to find a place that would just present useful information on crypto related topics on a daily basis. 

We decided to do it ourselves. The beginning was a bit tough, very few readers and our website analytics looked like a desert, but we pushed through and the results started to become visible. It’s January 2019 and we now have “Crypto guides”, “Crypto Stories”, “ICO Deep Dives”, and coming up are the influencer reviews. 

Although we still have a long way to go as a mass media site, the progress is clearly visible. Also, check us out on steemit.com/@icodog

  Roadmap for Q1 of 2019

First lambo, then moon. 

Decentralized Post ICO analysis

Jokes aside. Q1 of 2019 is very exciting for us. We are in the midst of planning our community token. With the help of some fancy token economic theories, we are planning to build a second layer on top of the icodog page for decentralized ICO reviews. The idea is that ICO and crypto shill industry is plagued. Everybody lost trust in reviews, and that’s good. That’s why we are planning to start a little crypto social experiment. More news soon.

DAO Maker upgrades

We are currently in discussions with 3 more projects to implement ICO DOG solutions. Last week we implemented an upgrade that fixed over 100 bugs and implemented the blockchain detection functions as well as improved bot functions to find better community members and also working on some cool features like the anti-Fud button. Community responsibilities and elections, task leaders and a bunch of other cool things. We will present the changes in a joint blog with LTO Network. 

ICO DOG Masternodes are coming back

Our first attempt at the masternodes, was pretty rekt. We started them mid-july just before the second downturn of crypto. We are implementing Masternode overview on the platform and will feature only the top coins that have real utility. 

ICO DOG Crypto Education

We will make some major changes to the icodog website again, but hopefully this time we will finally be happy with the overall user experience and design. We are aiming to become more like an educational cryptocurrency platform and will start designing the overall changes and topics in the next 2 months. 

We are continuing to push more articles and build up our following on all major social media sites. Best time to do marketing is during a bear market. This is the time that you can find the best people and have the least amount of competition.

  If you’re reading this and have been with us since the beginning, then you’re amazing. Thank you so much for  your continuous support through these crazy times. If you’re new or recently found ICO DOG, then welcome to the pack. Let’s make the world decentralized! 

The post Story of ICO DOG | It’s our Birthday! appeared first on ICODOG.

source https://icodog.io/crypto-stories/story-of-ico-dog-its-our-birthday/

[jessicakehoe]

Everything That Upset the Internet This Week

What is the web-o-sphere angry about this week? A despicable and unhumorous comedy set, an infringement of free speech, and the absolving of someone who never apologized for his mistakes. Here’s everything you need to know.

Louis CK’s Latest Comedy Set

THE STORY: On December 31, instead of Twitter exploding with New Year’s resolutions and year-end lists, it was full of tweets about a comedy set Louis CK had done the night before. The disgraced comedian began plotting his comeback with a series of unannounced appearances at comedy clubs just months after it was revealed that he masturbated in front of women at work. Leaked audio of his latest set quickly spurred outrage, and rightly so: CK’s “jokes” spanned everything from homophobia (mocking people who want to be addressed by gender pronouns like they or them) to racism (trotting out a tired routine about Asian men’s penises) to scoffing at the teen survivors of a school shooting.

THE REACTION:

This hacky, unfunny, shallow routine is just a symptom of how people are afraid to feel empathy. It’s much easier to laugh at our most vulnerable than to look at their pain directly & show them love and concern. Louis CK is all fear and bitterness now. He can’t look inward. https://t.co/aQVG0rk87y

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) December 31, 2018

This is what passes for humor now by Louis CK. No one should support this racist, misogynistic piece of garbage. pic.twitter.com/PPxxT8TH9V

— Jay Kuo (@nycjayjay) January 3, 2019

one thing i can’t stop thinking about in the leaked louis ck stand up set is the guy in the audience who yelled “fuck em!” when ck was mocking, i guess, trans kids and teens who were shot at in their high schools

someone find that man and bring him to me

i just want to talk

— Scaachi (@Scaachi) January 2, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: When CK issued a public apology in November 2017 after the news of his behaviour broke, he wrote: “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.” So he listened for a year and decided that since he had nothing to lose—because his “life is over”—why not verbally attack everyone he can think of? More than anything else, what this comedy set shows is that CK learned nothing in the past year except how to fuel his own bitterness over “political correctness” and how to lash out instead of introspect. But the cultural climate has changed enormously since 2017, even if he hasn’t, and people are no longer willing to accept inoffensive material cloaked in the thin veil of humour.

Netflix Pulls a Patriot Act Episode in Saudi Arabia

THE STORY: Hasan Minhaj’s political comedy show Patriot Act launched on Netflix last October. The second episode of the series, aired on October 28, delved into US-Saudia Arabia relations and the latter’s possible involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (which has since been confirmed). Now, the Saudi government claims that this episode violates the country’s cybercrime laws, and requested Netflix to block streaming of the episode in their country—which they’ve done. “We strongly support artistic freedom and removed this episode only in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request — and to comply with local law,” said Netflix in a statement to NPR.

THE REACTION:

This is disturbing. Love Patriot Act and I’m really bothered that Netflix took this down. https://t.co/5zV55v2NPZ

— Erin Jean Warde (@erinjeanwarde) January 1, 2019

This is insanity.@Netflix pulls 'Patriot Act' episode in Saudi Arabia after it criticized official account of Khashoggi killing: https://t.co/BaYKmUxq60

Seems @hasanminhaj is doing something right. I hope this drives more people to watch his excellent show.

— Ali A. Rizvi (@aliamjadrizvi) January 2, 2019

Seriously, @Netflix? https://t.co/GTUrB9P9x7

— fatima bhutto (@fbhutto) January 1, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Netflix basically capitulated to an authoritarian regime bent on curtailing free speech. And it did so by taking down content that itself addressed the regime’s history of curtailing free speech. Meta. At a time when journalists around the world are being attacked or killed for their work, and people’s right to information is being threatened, tech giants like Netflix need to step up and be on the right side of history. By restricting Saudi Arabian citizens’ access to the truth, they’re enabling a serious problem and also setting a dangerous precedent. However, they did leave the episode up on their YouTube channel, so lets see where this story goes next.

Ellen Degeneres Calls for Kevin Hart to be Reinstated as Oscars Host

THE STORY: A few weeks ago, after a bunch of Kevin Hart’s homophobic tweets from the past resurfaced, the internet was, understandably, upset. But not so upset that a heartfelt and honest apology wouldn’t fix it. Hart, however, who had just been announced as the host of the 2019 Oscars, had no intentions of issuing any apologies—instead, he chose to wax on about how he had grown and evolved as a person, and that since he’d apologized in the past, he didn’t need to do so again. The Academy removed him as an Oscar host and ostensibly began searching for a replacement. But as the world found out today, in a clip from his his forthcoming appearance on The Ellen Show, it turns out that Ellen Degeneres not only accepts his “apology” but she also recently called the Academy requesting that he be reinstated as host.

THE REACTION:

In light of Ellen absolving Kevin Hart for his history of homophobic remarks, this seems like a good time to reiterate that no one member of a marginalized identity can forgive a bigot on behalf of the entire group.

— ella dawson (@brosandprose) January 4, 2019

People apologize. People deserve forgiveness.

Kevin Hart never apologized. Kevin Hart doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

— Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) January 4, 2019

Regarding Ellen DeGeneres…

She condemned Kim Burrell for making homophobic comments that are no different from what Kevin Hart tweeted. The reason why she excused Kevin is because they’re friends. I think that’s bs.

Start holding your friends accountable for their shit.

— Quenchi (@MrQuenchiAdams) January 4, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: There are many things wrong with the conversation that took place between these two. For one, Degeneres has decided to paint critics of Hart’s homophobia as “haters,” saying “That’s a small group of people being very, very loud.” Now Degeneres has no right to dismiss the fact that people have been genuinely offended and hurt by Hart’s words, and also shouldn’t be commenting on how small or valid she thinks that group is. Two, Hart seems to think that the reason his past tweets resurfaced is because internet trolls are out there trying to “destroy” him. His perception of the situation makes clear that instead of regretting the pain he’s caused people with his comments, he’s upset at them for trying to hold him accountable. Degeneres seems to agree with this positioning of Hart as a victim, saying that by hosting the Oscars he wouldn’t let “whoever’s trying to hurt” him win. This bizarre conspiracy theory that people are just out to hurt Hart is baffling, and absolving him of all culpability—because he happens to be her friend—so that he may pursue his dream of hosting the Oscars is something Degeneres simply doesn’t have the right to do.

The post Everything That Upset the Internet This Week appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Everything That Upset the Internet This Week published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

[thehowtostuff-blog]

What is the web-o-sphere angry about this week? A despicable and unhumorous comedy set, an infringement of free speech, and the absolving of someone who never apologized for his mistakes. Here’s everything you need to know.

Louis CK’s Latest Comedy Set

THE STORY: On December 31, instead of Twitter exploding with New Year’s resolutions and year-end lists, it was full of tweets about a comedy set Louis CK had done the night before. The disgraced comedian began plotting his comeback with a series of unannounced appearances at comedy clubs just months after it was revealed that he masturbated in front of women at work. Leaked audio of his latest set quickly spurred outrage, and rightly so: CK’s “jokes” spanned everything from homophobia (mocking people who want to be addressed by gender pronouns like they or them) to racism (trotting out a tired routine about Asian men’s penises) to scoffing at the teen survivors of a school shooting.

THE REACTION:

This hacky, unfunny, shallow routine is just a symptom of how people are afraid to feel empathy. It’s much easier to laugh at our most vulnerable than to look at their pain directly & show them love and concern. Louis CK is all fear and bitterness now. He can’t look inward. https://t.co/aQVG0rk87y

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) December 31, 2018

This is what passes for humor now by Louis CK. No one should support this racist, misogynistic piece of garbage. pic.twitter.com/PPxxT8TH9V

— Jay Kuo (@nycjayjay) January 3, 2019

one thing i can’t stop thinking about in the leaked louis ck stand up set is the guy in the audience who yelled “fuck em!” when ck was mocking, i guess, trans kids and teens who were shot at in their high schools

someone find that man and bring him to me

i just want to talk

— Scaachi (@Scaachi) January 2, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: When CK issued a public apology in November 2017 after the news of his behaviour broke, he wrote: “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.” So he listened for a year and decided that since he had nothing to lose—because his “life is over”—why not verbally attack everyone he can think of? More than anything else, what this comedy set shows is that CK learned nothing in the past year except how to fuel his own bitterness over “political correctness” and how to lash out instead of introspect. But the cultural climate has changed enormously since 2017, even if he hasn’t, and people are no longer willing to accept inoffensive material cloaked in the thin veil of humour.

Netflix Pulls a Patriot Act Episode in Saudi Arabia

THE STORY: Hasan Minhaj’s political comedy show Patriot Act launched on Netflix last October. The second episode of the series, aired on October 28, delved into US-Saudia Arabia relations and the latter’s possible involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (which has since been confirmed). Now, the Saudi government claims that this episode violates the country’s cybercrime laws, and requested Netflix to block streaming of the episode in their country—which they’ve done. “We strongly support artistic freedom and removed this episode only in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request — and to comply with local law,” said Netflix in a statement to NPR.

THE REACTION:

This is disturbing. Love Patriot Act and I’m really bothered that Netflix took this down. https://t.co/5zV55v2NPZ

— Erin Jean Warde (@erinjeanwarde) January 1, 2019

This is insanity.@Netflix pulls 'Patriot Act' episode in Saudi Arabia after it criticized official account of Khashoggi killing: https://t.co/BaYKmUxq60

Seems @hasanminhaj is doing something right. I hope this drives more people to watch his excellent show.

— Ali A. Rizvi (@aliamjadrizvi) January 2, 2019

Seriously, @Netflix? https://t.co/GTUrB9P9x7

— fatima bhutto (@fbhutto) January 1, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Netflix basically capitulated to an authoritarian regime bent on curtailing free speech. And it did so by taking down content that itself addressed the regime’s history of curtailing free speech. Meta. At a time when journalists around the world are being attacked or killed for their work, and people’s right to information is being threatened, tech giants like Netflix need to step up and be on the right side of history. By restricting Saudi Arabian citizens’ access to the truth, they’re enabling a serious problem and also setting a dangerous precedent. However, they did leave the episode up on their YouTube channel, so lets see where this story goes next.

Ellen Degeneres Calls for Kevin Hart to be Reinstated as Oscars Host

THE STORY: A few weeks ago, after a bunch of Kevin Hart’s homophobic tweets from the past resurfaced, the internet was, understandably, upset. But not so upset that a heartfelt and honest apology wouldn’t fix it. Hart, however, who had just been announced as the host of the 2019 Oscars, had no intentions of issuing any apologies—instead, he chose to wax on about how he had grown and evolved as a person, and that since he’d apologized in the past, he didn’t need to do so again. The Academy removed him as an Oscar host and ostensibly began searching for a replacement. But as the world found out today, in a clip from his his forthcoming appearance on The Ellen Show, it turns out that Ellen Degeneres not only accepts his “apology” but she also recently called the Academy requesting that he be reinstated as host.

THE REACTION:

In light of Ellen absolving Kevin Hart for his history of homophobic remarks, this seems like a good time to reiterate that no one member of a marginalized identity can forgive a bigot on behalf of the entire group.

— ella dawson (@brosandprose) January 4, 2019

People apologize. People deserve forgiveness.

Kevin Hart never apologized. Kevin Hart doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

— Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) January 4, 2019

Regarding Ellen DeGeneres…

She condemned Kim Burrell for making homophobic comments that are no different from what Kevin Hart tweeted. The reason why she excused Kevin is because they’re friends. I think that’s bs.

Start holding your friends accountable for their shit.

— Quenchi (@MrQuenchiAdams) January 4, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: There are many things wrong with the conversation that took place between these two. For one, Degeneres has decided to paint critics of Hart’s homophobia as “haters,” saying “That’s a small group of people being very, very loud.” Now Degeneres has no right to dismiss the fact that people have been genuinely offended and hurt by Hart’s words, and also shouldn’t be commenting on how small or valid she thinks that group is. Two, Hart seems to think that the reason his past tweets resurfaced is because internet trolls are out there trying to “destroy” him. His perception of the situation makes clear that instead of regretting the pain he’s caused people with his comments, he’s upset at them for trying to hold him accountable. Degeneres seems to agree with this positioning of Hart as a victim, saying that by hosting the Oscars he wouldn’t let “whoever’s trying to hurt” him win. This bizarre conspiracy theory that people are just out to hurt Hart is baffling, and absolving him of all culpability—because he happens to be her friend—so that he may pursue his dream of hosting the Oscars is something Degeneres simply doesn’t have the right to do.

The post Everything That Upset the Internet This Week appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

from FASHION Magazine http://bit.ly/2Trg3qP

[lindyhunt]

Everything That Upset the Internet This Week

What is the web-o-sphere angry about this week? A despicable and unhumorous comedy set, an infringement of free speech, and the absolving of someone who never apologized for his mistakes. Here’s everything you need to know.

Louis CK’s Latest Comedy Set

THE STORY: On December 31, instead of Twitter exploding with New Year’s resolutions and year-end lists, it was full of tweets about a comedy set Louis CK had done the night before. The disgraced comedian began plotting his comeback with a series of unannounced appearances at comedy clubs just months after it was revealed that he masturbated in front of women at work. Leaked audio of his latest set quickly spurred outrage, and rightly so: CK’s “jokes” spanned everything from homophobia (mocking people who want to be addressed by gender pronouns like they or them) to racism (trotting out a tired routine about Asian men’s penises) to scoffing at the teen survivors of a school shooting.

THE REACTION:

This hacky, unfunny, shallow routine is just a symptom of how people are afraid to feel empathy. It’s much easier to laugh at our most vulnerable than to look at their pain directly & show them love and concern. Louis CK is all fear and bitterness now. He can’t look inward. https://t.co/aQVG0rk87y

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) December 31, 2018

This is what passes for humor now by Louis CK. No one should support this racist, misogynistic piece of garbage. pic.twitter.com/PPxxT8TH9V

— Jay Kuo (@nycjayjay) January 3, 2019

one thing i can’t stop thinking about in the leaked louis ck stand up set is the guy in the audience who yelled “fuck em!” when ck was mocking, i guess, trans kids and teens who were shot at in their high schools

someone find that man and bring him to me

i just want to talk

— Scaachi (@Scaachi) January 2, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: When CK issued a public apology in November 2017 after the news of his behaviour broke, he wrote: “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.” So he listened for a year and decided that since he had nothing to lose—because his “life is over”—why not verbally attack everyone he can think of? More than anything else, what this comedy set shows is that CK learned nothing in the past year except how to fuel his own bitterness over “political correctness” and how to lash out instead of introspect. But the cultural climate has changed enormously since 2017, even if he hasn’t, and people are no longer willing to accept inoffensive material cloaked in the thin veil of humour.

Netflix Pulls a Patriot Act Episode in Saudi Arabia

THE STORY: Hasan Minhaj’s political comedy show Patriot Act launched on Netflix last October. The second episode of the series, aired on October 28, delved into US-Saudia Arabia relations and the latter’s possible involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (which has since been confirmed). Now, the Saudi government claims that this episode violates the country’s cybercrime laws, and requested Netflix to block streaming of the episode in their country—which they’ve done. “We strongly support artistic freedom and removed this episode only in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request — and to comply with local law,” said Netflix in a statement to NPR.

THE REACTION:

This is disturbing. Love Patriot Act and I’m really bothered that Netflix took this down. https://t.co/5zV55v2NPZ

— Erin Jean Warde (@erinjeanwarde) January 1, 2019

This is insanity.@Netflix pulls 'Patriot Act' episode in Saudi Arabia after it criticized official account of Khashoggi killing: https://t.co/BaYKmUxq60

Seems @hasanminhaj is doing something right. I hope this drives more people to watch his excellent show.

— Ali A. Rizvi (@aliamjadrizvi) January 2, 2019

Seriously, @Netflix? https://t.co/GTUrB9P9x7

— fatima bhutto (@fbhutto) January 1, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Netflix basically capitulated to an authoritarian regime bent on curtailing free speech. And it did so by taking down content that itself addressed the regime’s history of curtailing free speech. Meta. At a time when journalists around the world are being attacked or killed for their work, and people’s right to information is being threatened, tech giants like Netflix need to step up and be on the right side of history. By restricting Saudi Arabian citizens’ access to the truth, they’re enabling a serious problem and also setting a dangerous precedent. However, they did leave the episode up on their YouTube channel, so lets see where this story goes next.

Ellen Degeneres Calls for Kevin Hart to be Reinstated as Oscars Host

THE STORY: A few weeks ago, after a bunch of Kevin Hart’s homophobic tweets from the past resurfaced, the internet was, understandably, upset. But not so upset that a heartfelt and honest apology wouldn’t fix it. Hart, however, who had just been announced as the host of the 2019 Oscars, had no intentions of issuing any apologies—instead, he chose to wax on about how he had grown and evolved as a person, and that since he’d apologized in the past, he didn’t need to do so again. The Academy removed him as an Oscar host and ostensibly began searching for a replacement. But as the world found out today, in a clip from his his forthcoming appearance on The Ellen Show, it turns out that Ellen Degeneres not only accepts his “apology” but she also recently called the Academy requesting that he be reinstated as host.

THE REACTION:

In light of Ellen absolving Kevin Hart for his history of homophobic remarks, this seems like a good time to reiterate that no one member of a marginalized identity can forgive a bigot on behalf of the entire group.

— ella dawson (@brosandprose) January 4, 2019

People apologize. People deserve forgiveness.

Kevin Hart never apologized. Kevin Hart doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

— Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) January 4, 2019

Regarding Ellen DeGeneres…

She condemned Kim Burrell for making homophobic comments that are no different from what Kevin Hart tweeted. The reason why she excused Kevin is because they’re friends. I think that’s bs.

Start holding your friends accountable for their shit.

— Quenchi (@MrQuenchiAdams) January 4, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: There are many things wrong with the conversation that took place between these two. For one, Degeneres has decided to paint critics of Hart’s homophobia as “haters,” saying “That’s a small group of people being very, very loud.” Now Degeneres has no right to dismiss the fact that people have been genuinely offended and hurt by Hart’s words, and also shouldn’t be commenting on how small or valid she thinks that group is. Two, Hart seems to think that the reason his past tweets resurfaced is because internet trolls are out there trying to “destroy” him. His perception of the situation makes clear that instead of regretting the pain he’s caused people with his comments, he’s upset at them for trying to hold him accountable. Degeneres seems to agree with this positioning of Hart as a victim, saying that by hosting the Oscars he wouldn’t let “whoever’s trying to hurt” him win. This bizarre conspiracy theory that people are just out to hurt Hart is baffling, and absolving him of all culpability—because he happens to be her friend—so that he may pursue his dream of hosting the Oscars is something Degeneres simply doesn’t have the right to do.

[technicallymedia]

Meet Christopher Wink: an interview with Technically Media’s Cofounder/CEO

What did you think of Brian James Kirk when you first met him and when were you like "yeah dude I wanna be partners in business with you for the next 9+ years"

I first met @brianjameskirk as undergrads at our college newspaper and I absolutely saw Brian as this stoner designer dude. He saw me as a preppy kiss ass. It took a year for us to come together. We’ve grown and changed together a ton. Here we are now!

What were you like as a teen, were you nice to nerds?

I was surely the nerd to some myself. I think I had become a decent dude by high school. In contrast, I was a bit of a brat in elementary and middle school. I was always an "involved" person but by my teens I was likely even more similar to how I am now: I said a lot of ridiculous things and always had some scheme or project. I think that and playing sports (basketball and soccer) let me dip into several social groups.

When are you running for office and what's your policy platform?

If I'm running for office (which is clearly not in any immediate horizon for me), my platform would be very centrist-y and trying to make the word "compromise" distinct from "compromised." Historically social movements have lasted when they've been about gaining widespread popular opinion. Economic development through entrepreneurship would be a focus.

Who is your favorite person besides Shannon and Brian James Kirk?

My father is deeply influential on me, I’ve traveled on annual road trips with my childhood friend Michael. Considering what you’re asking me, Patrick BIG TIMBS McNeil is my best friend and would likely be the person I have the most intimacy beyond Shannon and Brian James Kirk.

What's one thing you never expected to be hard about starting a company?

I think I remain surprised by how many decisions are neither the RIGHT nor WRONG one but instead are simply choices. Choices that WILL hurt someone and help someone else. I find clean decisions are very rare. Life is messy and you get put in a position of guess work. Growing a company is 1,000 choices that in the moment no one very much agrees on.

What's your spirit animal?

Spirit animal. I'm gonna be real with you, I'm v into the domestic house cat. But I might go with a nurse shark because they look fierce but they actually don't kill, they're just kinda badass. I saw a bunch of them while snorkeling off the coast of Belize last year and was blown away.

What did running with the bulls in Pamplona feel like and was it worth it?

Running with the bulls probably best travel decision of my life. The moments before it started was the most scared I had felt in a "safe" public place.

Gratuitous video of part of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziZyUa9Dt24

You're tall as hell dude, did you ever consider playing basketball ? I'm thinking you coulda played small forward at a Div 2 school at least bruh.

I played basketball growing up and into high school! Last night I was telling the story that so crystallizes the kinds of relationships I tend to have. When I was a senior, we had an exceptional point guard (1k+ career points) and so my entire job as the other guard was to just give him the ball and then go play defense. Late that season against our arch rivals, the team came out and started immediately double teaming him. I was open a lot and got hot and scored 20 points in the first half (mind you, I’m maybe averaging 7 points per game). At halftime my closest high school friend says to me "I guarantee you don't score another point in this game." .......He was correct

Did you win a high school superlative? If so, did you ask people to vote for you?

Yes! I was "Class Clown" and "Most Involved. " I was runner up for "Most Likely to Succeed" and still plan on surpassing that friend to own it. Admittedly, I went to a pretty small school :)

What's your favorite Technical.ly memory to date

Favorite Technical.ly memory to date. Real talk, I always have a favorite moment that happened in the last few weeks because I really seriously no BS love the evolution and growth and seeing us get better together. So always a v recent thing is my favorite memory. But because I don't think that's really what you want meant to say, I'll instead say the kickoff of Philly Tech Week 2013 when we did our first outdoor kickoff and after we almost finished the later-Guinness Book of World Records confirmed world's largest video game by playing Pong on the Cira Center, a torrential storm crashed over us. This photo is @brianjameskirk Corinne Warnshuis, Juliana Reyes, Andrew Zaleski and I holding tarps over arcade games we had rented and were afraid we’re gonna get destroyed

Can we get an office dog? just met a really cute Australian shepherd puppy

Communities are platforms on which collective action can take place. You are empowered to gain consensus among the team and keep, maintain and care for a dog, yes.

What advice do you give 21 year old CGW?

Advice I'd give 21-year-old CGW? (1) Do not self-deprecate needlessly. (2) Start a focus on email subscribers sooner with Technical.ly (3) Do more family stuff

What's your favorite story that's ever run in any of our markets/brands?

Favorite story that has run in our markets, I'm gonna go with two because there have been thousands. Off-hand, the Tyler Woods Startup Founder on Welfare story stuck with me and I think about it a lot. Yes, it isss probably something that would run elsewhere but it felt v much OF us, like a relationship built because of deep ties that was trying to be REAL about something. PRODUCTIVE https://technical.ly/brooklyn/2016/01/12/inside-welfare-office-anonymous-startup-founder/

And I'd sadly point to a byline of mine but more because of what it was for the org as a whole. This piece was a big pivot point for us

https://technical.ly/philly/2011/04/25/how-open-data-philly-got-done/

When we were INVOLVED in launching OpenDataPhilly and I can't underscore how WEIRD that was. We had a lot of internal conversations, including @brianjameskirk and I about whether it was OK that we had reported on WHAT the city needed and could we be INVOLVED In it

I think about the full disclosure at the top of that story a lot. It threw us into a lot of open data and civic conversations, but it also set up HOW we approached being a PART Of our community. I think not long after we changed the tagline to "Better Cities through Technology"

Fave place you've traveled

I lived in Tokyo for a bit less than a year and so fitting in my interest in time to get to know a place, that stands out to me a bunch. It is this international city so it’s so easy to go and it not be special but living in a neighborhood and having neighbors and a grocery shop was really profound. I did so much writing and reading it was profound. It was also where I first started as a bicycle commuter.

What's the most embarrassing professional moment you've ever had and, I guess, what did you learn from it?

Early on, I remember not knowing what SaaS was during an interview and I fumbled my faking it and it resulted in several weeks of me having nightmares of being on CNBC for an interview and embarrassing us all. So I got obsessed with returning to a basic business and tech background, preparing for disruptive questions

If you could pick, what would be your superpower?

Invisibility always stands out to me as lowkey powerful. But maybe SUPER LINGUAL, like, where I could speak any and all languages

What was the most hilarious/ridiculous thing that happened to you in a professional moment?

My oft-cited memory of me finding out I had a giant hole in the crotch of my only pair of thrift store khakis after I had sat down w/ my first big client meeting (that is the rock bottom moment that turned around my relationship with clothes)

Is the future of journalism bright or dreary?

Journalism bright or dreary? Yah, for me, journalism is a THING you do, like producing software open source, so I think its future is super bright, so long as there are practitioners like us passionate about its utility. I was able to pull five-county criminal records last night in an hour online for this story I'm reporting. I am better sourced because of web tools, so journalism is easier to do. Building it into business models (like we're doing,) that is really hard and it's the most important thing I think I'm working on but the strategy of making public information that is true accurate and helps other people is v bright

What's your inbox at rn?

Ooff, rn I'm inbox 64, with 25 unread!!! It has been a busy yesterday and this morning. I'll leave today with that at 20~ with all read and w/ necessary actions cleaned up in Asana.

What's the next Chris Wink side project after the retirement of Story Shuffle?

I came to reporting from the writing side first. There is nothing I love more in the world than writing. In the last 18-months I've been picking back up some creative writing and so I'll be putting some real time into getting a few modest pieces published on that form. I def self-identify still as a journalist but really, more than reporting, it's the writing I love. I want to move a bigger effort there (Story Shuffle was always part of that longer term strategy too )

You're good at talking about yourself and exceptionally self-aware. Advice for knowing when to STFU and when to dig deeper?

I think journalism training is soooooo good for self-discovery. I think it really starts with accepting yourself. You'll get teased for (as I do) for being self-referential or self-involved but I think it's really important to be able to say I REALLY LIKE THESE THINGS ABOUT ME but also be able to say THESE ARE THINGS I REALLY WISH I WAS BETTER AT. And then attacking both of those with questions. You can internally interview yourself like you would. I want to be able to understand why I am good at some stuff and why I'm crummy at other stuff. Self-improvement is v cool,but it starts w/ some self-love.

Do you like being surprised?  

Nah, I don't like being surprised. It's probably part of the whole reporting love. I want to be the one who knows stuff, not surprised.

If you were not the CEO of Technically Media, what would you be doing?

If not in my job now? Realistically, probably a reporter somewhere, likely in/around politics/government. Less likely but relevant, maybe ended up cofounding a dif kind of company or in some other purely writing role.

When you come back into the office can you show us your signature dance move?

I assume you mean my interpretive dance performance "Swallowed frog." No! I'm all for embarrassing shit WITHOUT CAMERAS. I say let people live and be silly and keep the cameras for things strangers can see. Intimacy doesn't do well w/ recorded archives

Best marriage advice?

Take a half-hour walk every single night together.

When did you get your first phone? What type of phone was it? What was your background picture? And, did you have a ringback tone (if so, what song).

I got my first phone when I was a sophomore in high school (!) when I got my learner's permit for driving. I remember using a pay phone to get picked up as an 8th grader. I'm pretty sure that phone literally did not support background images or ringtones.

Been wanting to visit Tokyo for years. Any tips for traveling there?

Tokyo (Edo) was constructed over time as a medieval place to protect from attack, so the streets intentionally do not make sense. It's the opposite of Center City. (London got confusing just over time, Tokyo is intentionally built as a confusing fucking place to navigate. ....So def have .GPS access...or don't and just leave time for getting lost. Eat at every ramen shop under a train stop. The tiniest old men with craggy faces and expressionless smiles will serve you at the counter and then bow, and you will bow in return. It will be nice.  Fun Tokyo story we've already talked about, I was part of a lil NBCU pilot online reality show jawn and I got lost in all the episodes

Who's a person outside of Technical.ly (or Shannon) you would turn to for management advice?

I talk to my father weekly on the phone and I find his perspective interesting. He works at a small concrete, stone and tile manufacturing company and I find his perspective on what is normal in the workplace. I also have always been moved by his pragmatism and quiet generosity.

What motivates you?

It is v internal facing. I am v demanding of myself to be better than I was before. I don't like things that I don't understand how to get better at. So: to be a better version of myself than I was. Shannon and I talk about that: that we're supposed to keep becoming better versions of ourselves for the other

Who are the top 3 journos out there you would pay / do pay to read?

So the Economist famously does not have bylines so I don't think I could name one but I am a very happy proud longtime print subscriber so surely someone there. I truly love the ways we approach storytelling here, so those bylines from Julie Zeglen Stephen b Tyler Woods Tony Abraham Juliana Holly Quinn Zack Seward etc, do mean alot to me, I would consume them. ...And, yeah, I'm a George Saunders fanboy and so I like when he's been pulled into doing fun profiles

Name three Philly tech scenesters you're truly fond of / name one that you... could do without?

Robert J. Moore and Jon Gosier on the founder front, I'm v impressed w/ them and always feel smarter when I talk to them. (Garrett Melby is that too). I make no secret that I have a real soft spot for Archna, whom I long found one of the most under-celebrated for her relative impact. And on the v young front: Dawn McDougall. I think she took a v mature pathway to not wanting a full-time director role for Code for Philly because she wanted to gain some experience at an org. She showed some power. For someone to get rid of? I don't think I can put that in writing.

What's the main reason Yuriy Poritko fascinates you?

Two things on the Yuriy front (for others, he's a Philly organizer who has been around forever and I'm writing a lil something on him that's gonna run next week). I try to write something for one of our markets every six weekssss~ and so I always wanted to do something on him just because he is eccentric and colorful. So it started just that he is interesting. But then other pieces started coming together, and I started putting more time into it once I wrote my nut graf. I found that I could connect him to a bigger/broader lesson that I think other communities face too. So (a) he's interesting and (b) he does represent something. He has caused some real pain and damage, but he has done genuine good. I don't find EVIL or GOOD characters interesting. I think people who are complex and complicated are far more challenging to write. I am not aiming to judge the man in this piece, I’m aiming to better understand why he is who he is. I think that’s the kind of community reporting and business journalism I love most.

What do you do when you’re bored?

I’d say I can’t remember the last time I was bored but I know what ya mean. I watch a ton of science and history Youtube videos when I’m eating at home. I also am basically always tryyyyying to write, whether that be my iPhone notes app open or scribbling in a pad. ..Also Twitter is an incredible place to learn if you curate your followers thusly :slightly_smiling_face:

What are your thoughts on early let outs on Fridays before national holidays?

:eye-roll: Seriously I always find those questions weird, I am not tracking anyone's hours, never have been! Get your shit done. Work hard! Do your time most weeks and take time for you other times. It's so simple, if you're doing good work and giving :100: and build a relationship of trust with your team, then choose when it's right for you. I guess I can do a better job of communicating that but there is no magic time that you can work toward and I am HAPPY. If you're supporting your team and doing great work and you are EXCITED About being here, I don’t think anyone says anything. So, idk, go home!

How about some book recommends for another avid reader?

I am not a fast reader, my wife has me beat. I'm trying to simply get back to a book a month (have a resolution of reading a writer of color for the first time each month this year) and not nailing that but I loved Zadie Smith's throwback White Teeth.

Who here is most likely in 10 yrs to write the book on Technically Media?

Probably you [Cary Betagole, Senior Product Manager). You have a low key historian's view and a smart distance

[jessicakehoe]

Everything That Upset the Internet This Week

What is the web-o-sphere angry about this week? A despicable and unhumorous comedy set, an infringement of free speech, and the absolving of someone who never apologized for his mistakes. Here’s everything you need to know.

Louis CK’s Latest Comedy Set

THE STORY: On December 31, instead of Twitter exploding with New Year’s resolutions and year-end lists, it was full of tweets about a comedy set Louis CK had done the night before. The disgraced comedian began plotting his comeback with a series of unannounced appearances at comedy clubs just months after it was revealed that he masturbated in front of women at work. Leaked audio of his latest set quickly spurred outrage, and rightly so: CK’s “jokes” spanned everything from homophobia (mocking people who want to be addressed by gender pronouns like they or them) to racism (trotting out a tired routine about Asian men’s penises) to scoffing at the teen survivors of a school shooting.

THE REACTION:

This hacky, unfunny, shallow routine is just a symptom of how people are afraid to feel empathy. It’s much easier to laugh at our most vulnerable than to look at their pain directly & show them love and concern. Louis CK is all fear and bitterness now. He can’t look inward. https://t.co/aQVG0rk87y

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) December 31, 2018

This is what passes for humor now by Louis CK. No one should support this racist, misogynistic piece of garbage. pic.twitter.com/PPxxT8TH9V

— Jay Kuo (@nycjayjay) January 3, 2019

one thing i can’t stop thinking about in the leaked louis ck stand up set is the guy in the audience who yelled “fuck em!” when ck was mocking, i guess, trans kids and teens who were shot at in their high schools

someone find that man and bring him to me

i just want to talk

— Scaachi (@Scaachi) January 2, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: When CK issued a public apology in November 2017 after the news of his behaviour broke, he wrote: “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.” So he listened for a year and decided that since he had nothing to lose—because his “life is over”—why not verbally attack everyone he can think of? More than anything else, what this comedy set shows is that CK learned nothing in the past year except how to fuel his own bitterness over “political correctness” and how to lash out instead of introspect. But the cultural climate has changed enormously since 2017, even if he hasn’t, and people are no longer willing to accept inoffensive material cloaked in the thin veil of humour.

Netflix Pulls a Patriot Act Episode in Saudi Arabia

THE STORY: Hasan Minhaj’s political comedy show Patriot Act launched on Netflix last October. The second episode of the series, aired on October 28, delved into US-Saudia Arabia relations and the latter’s possible involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (which has since been confirmed). Now, the Saudi government claims that this episode violates the country’s cybercrime laws, and requested Netflix to block streaming of the episode in their country—which they’ve done. “We strongly support artistic freedom and removed this episode only in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request — and to comply with local law,” said Netflix in a statement to NPR.

THE REACTION:

This is disturbing. Love Patriot Act and I’m really bothered that Netflix took this down. https://t.co/5zV55v2NPZ

— Erin Jean Warde (@erinjeanwarde) January 1, 2019

This is insanity.@Netflix pulls 'Patriot Act' episode in Saudi Arabia after it criticized official account of Khashoggi killing: https://t.co/BaYKmUxq60

Seems @hasanminhaj is doing something right. I hope this drives more people to watch his excellent show.

— Ali A. Rizvi (@aliamjadrizvi) January 2, 2019

Seriously, @Netflix? https://t.co/GTUrB9P9x7

— fatima bhutto (@fbhutto) January 1, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Netflix basically capitulated to an authoritarian regime bent on curtailing free speech. And it did so by taking down content that itself addressed the regime’s history of curtailing free speech. Meta. At a time when journalists around the world are being attacked or killed for their work, and people’s right to information is being threatened, tech giants like Netflix need to step up and be on the right side of history. By restricting Saudi Arabian citizens’ access to the truth, they’re enabling a serious problem and also setting a dangerous precedent. However, they did leave the episode up on their YouTube channel, so lets see where this story goes next.

Ellen Degeneres Calls for Kevin Hart to be Reinstated as Oscars Host

THE STORY: A few weeks ago, after a bunch of Kevin Hart’s homophobic tweets from the past resurfaced, the internet was, understandably, upset. But not so upset that a heartfelt and honest apology wouldn’t fix it. Hart, however, who had just been announced as the host of the 2019 Oscars, had no intentions of issuing any apologies—instead, he chose to wax on about how he had grown and evolved as a person, and that since he’d apologized in the past, he didn’t need to do so again. The Academy removed him as an Oscar host and ostensibly began searching for a replacement. But as the world found out today, in a clip from his his forthcoming appearance on The Ellen Show, it turns out that Ellen Degeneres not only accepts his “apology” but she also recently called the Academy requesting that he be reinstated as host.

THE REACTION:

In light of Ellen absolving Kevin Hart for his history of homophobic remarks, this seems like a good time to reiterate that no one member of a marginalized identity can forgive a bigot on behalf of the entire group.

— ella dawson (@brosandprose) January 4, 2019

People apologize. People deserve forgiveness.

Kevin Hart never apologized. Kevin Hart doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

— Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) January 4, 2019

Regarding Ellen DeGeneres…

She condemned Kim Burrell for making homophobic comments that are no different from what Kevin Hart tweeted. The reason why she excused Kevin is because they’re friends. I think that’s bs.

Start holding your friends accountable for their shit.

— Quenchi (@MrQuenchiAdams) January 4, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: There are many things wrong with the conversation that took place between these two. For one, Degeneres has decided to paint critics of Hart’s homophobia as “haters,” saying “That’s a small group of people being very, very loud.” Now Degeneres has no right to dismiss the fact that people have been genuinely offended and hurt by Hart’s words, and also shouldn’t be commenting on how small or valid she thinks that group is. Two, Hart seems to think that the reason his past tweets resurfaced is because internet trolls are out there trying to “destroy” him. His perception of the situation makes clear that instead of regretting the pain he’s caused people with his comments, he’s upset at them for trying to hold him accountable. Degeneres seems to agree with this positioning of Hart as a victim, saying that by hosting the Oscars he wouldn’t let “whoever’s trying to hurt” him win. This bizarre conspiracy theory that people are just out to hurt Hart is baffling, and absolving him of all culpability—because he happens to be her friend—so that he may pursue his dream of hosting the Oscars is something Degeneres simply doesn’t have the right to do.

The post Everything That Upset the Internet This Week appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Everything That Upset the Internet This Week published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

[jessicakehoe]

Everything That Upset the Internet This Week

What is the web-o-sphere angry about this week? A despicable and unhumorous comedy set, an infringement of free speech, and the absolving of someone who never apologized for his mistakes. Here’s everything you need to know.

Louis CK’s Latest Comedy Set

THE STORY: On December 31, instead of Twitter exploding with New Year’s resolutions and year-end lists, it was full of tweets about a comedy set Louis CK had done the night before. The disgraced comedian began plotting his comeback with a series of unannounced appearances at comedy clubs just months after it was revealed that he masturbated in front of women at work. Leaked audio of his latest set quickly spurred outrage, and rightly so: CK’s “jokes” spanned everything from homophobia (mocking people who want to be addressed by gender pronouns like they or them) to racism (trotting out a tired routine about Asian men’s penises) to scoffing at the teen survivors of a school shooting.

THE REACTION:

This hacky, unfunny, shallow routine is just a symptom of how people are afraid to feel empathy. It’s much easier to laugh at our most vulnerable than to look at their pain directly & show them love and concern. Louis CK is all fear and bitterness now. He can’t look inward. https://t.co/aQVG0rk87y

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) December 31, 2018

This is what passes for humor now by Louis CK. No one should support this racist, misogynistic piece of garbage. pic.twitter.com/PPxxT8TH9V

— Jay Kuo (@nycjayjay) January 3, 2019

one thing i can’t stop thinking about in the leaked louis ck stand up set is the guy in the audience who yelled “fuck em!” when ck was mocking, i guess, trans kids and teens who were shot at in their high schools

someone find that man and bring him to me

i just want to talk

— Scaachi (@Scaachi) January 2, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: When CK issued a public apology in November 2017 after the news of his behaviour broke, he wrote: “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.” So he listened for a year and decided that since he had nothing to lose—because his “life is over”—why not verbally attack everyone he can think of? More than anything else, what this comedy set shows is that CK learned nothing in the past year except how to fuel his own bitterness over “political correctness” and how to lash out instead of introspect. But the cultural climate has changed enormously since 2017, even if he hasn’t, and people are no longer willing to accept inoffensive material cloaked in the thin veil of humour.

Netflix Pulls a Patriot Act Episode in Saudi Arabia

THE STORY: Hasan Minhaj’s political comedy show Patriot Act launched on Netflix last October. The second episode of the series, aired on October 28, delved into US-Saudia Arabia relations and the latter’s possible involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (which has since been confirmed). Now, the Saudi government claims that this episode violates the country’s cybercrime laws, and requested Netflix to block streaming of the episode in their country—which they’ve done. “We strongly support artistic freedom and removed this episode only in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request — and to comply with local law,” said Netflix in a statement to NPR.

THE REACTION:

This is disturbing. Love Patriot Act and I’m really bothered that Netflix took this down. https://t.co/5zV55v2NPZ

— Erin Jean Warde (@erinjeanwarde) January 1, 2019

This is insanity.@Netflix pulls 'Patriot Act' episode in Saudi Arabia after it criticized official account of Khashoggi killing: https://t.co/BaYKmUxq60

Seems @hasanminhaj is doing something right. I hope this drives more people to watch his excellent show.

— Ali A. Rizvi (@aliamjadrizvi) January 2, 2019

Seriously, @Netflix? https://t.co/GTUrB9P9x7

— fatima bhutto (@fbhutto) January 1, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: Netflix basically capitulated to an authoritarian regime bent on curtailing free speech. And it did so by taking down content that itself addressed the regime’s history of curtailing free speech. Meta. At a time when journalists around the world are being attacked or killed for their work, and people’s right to information is being threatened, tech giants like Netflix need to step up and be on the right side of history. By restricting Saudi Arabian citizens’ access to the truth, they’re enabling a serious problem and also setting a dangerous precedent. However, they did leave the episode up on their YouTube channel, so lets see where this story goes next.

Ellen Degeneres Calls for Kevin Hart to be Reinstated as Oscars Host

THE STORY: A few weeks ago, after a bunch of Kevin Hart’s homophobic tweets from the past resurfaced, the internet was, understandably, upset. But not so upset that a heartfelt and honest apology wouldn’t fix it. Hart, however, who had just been announced as the host of the 2019 Oscars, had no intentions of issuing any apologies—instead, he chose to wax on about how he had grown and evolved as a person, and that since he’d apologized in the past, he didn’t need to do so again. The Academy removed him as an Oscar host and ostensibly began searching for a replacement. But as the world found out today, in a clip from his his forthcoming appearance on The Ellen Show, it turns out that Ellen Degeneres not only accepts his “apology” but she also recently called the Academy requesting that he be reinstated as host.

THE REACTION:

In light of Ellen absolving Kevin Hart for his history of homophobic remarks, this seems like a good time to reiterate that no one member of a marginalized identity can forgive a bigot on behalf of the entire group.

— ella dawson (@brosandprose) January 4, 2019

People apologize. People deserve forgiveness.

Kevin Hart never apologized. Kevin Hart doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

— Alex Goldschmidt (@alexandergold) January 4, 2019

Regarding Ellen DeGeneres…

She condemned Kim Burrell for making homophobic comments that are no different from what Kevin Hart tweeted. The reason why she excused Kevin is because they’re friends. I think that’s bs.

Start holding your friends accountable for their shit.

— Quenchi (@MrQuenchiAdams) January 4, 2019

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE RAGE: There are many things wrong with the conversation that took place between these two. For one, Degeneres has decided to paint critics of Hart’s homophobia as “haters,” saying “That’s a small group of people being very, very loud.” Now Degeneres has no right to dismiss the fact that people have been genuinely offended and hurt by Hart’s words, and also shouldn’t be commenting on how small or valid she thinks that group is. Two, Hart seems to think that the reason his past tweets resurfaced is because internet trolls are out there trying to “destroy” him. His perception of the situation makes clear that instead of regretting the pain he’s caused people with his comments, he’s upset at them for trying to hold him accountable. Degeneres seems to agree with this positioning of Hart as a victim, saying that by hosting the Oscars he wouldn’t let “whoever’s trying to hurt” him win. This bizarre conspiracy theory that people are just out to hurt Hart is baffling, and absolving him of all culpability—because he happens to be her friend—so that he may pursue his dream of hosting the Oscars is something Degeneres simply doesn’t have the right to do.

The post Everything That Upset the Internet This Week appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Everything That Upset the Internet This Week published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/