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[imblogger99745]

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[the-badger-mole]

What is your NUMBER ONE headcannon for each person in the Gaang (Katara, Zuko, Aang, Toph, Sokka, Suki [and Appa and Momo if you feel so inclined])

Katara: After the war, she goes back to the NWT to train with Yugoda and becomes a master healer as well as a master of the NWT fighting style. From there, she goes back to the Foggy Swamp Tribe and masters their bending style, too. With the help of Sokka, Zuko, and (in some headcanons) Hama, she also rediscovers SWT waterbending and not only masters it, but teaches it to the new benders in the SWT. By the time she leaves the SWT, there has been a school established where all bending styles are available for study. She's one of the few who actually has mastered them all, though.

Sokka: He is eager to return home after the war. He throws himself into infrastructure and policy revamps, and he almost singlehandedly staves off the soft colonization attempts of the NWT. Under his efforts, the SWT rebuilds and reestablishes parts of its culture that had been lost during the war. With the discovery of oil on SWT land, he is also instrumental in establishing eco minded extraction techniques, and in trade ties with the rest of the world (although he is very much helped by his sister's deep ties with the Fire Lord). It's a surprise to no one when he's chosen to lead the SWT after Hakoda retires.

Toph: She does not become a cop. Instead, she goes back home and takes over the Earth Rumble, taking it from an underground even to a world wide phenomenon. She eventually allows benders of other elements to join, and the Earth Rumble becomes pro bending. She does also establish a metal bending school. In the end, she is wealthier than her parents, but because she couldn't really care less about money, she keeps enough to live at the standard she wants, and gives the rest away to causes that interest her...like the guy who wanted to set the record for the biggest bao bun ever, and needed funding for an oven big enough to cook it. She also establishes a halfway house for runaway teens.

Zuko: During his tenure as Fire Lord, he establishes a robust social services program that includes subsidized healthcare, education, and housing for the lowest income families. Under his reign, the Fire Nation becomes home to some of the earliest pioneers of mental health. At his wife's advice, he also makes paid maternity leave standard across the nation, and includes several programs to help single parents stay afloat. Taking inspiration from the SWT, Zuko makes some changes to how his advisory staff is selected. Instead of choosing from among the nobility, Zuko has the different provinces elect a representative to speak on their behalf. A lot of the nobles hate this, blaming his wife's influence, but the people adore their monarchs and despite their best efforts, there's little the nobles can do except start campaigning in their home provinces. It's not a perfect system, but it does open the door for the Fire Nation to end the monarchy within a couple of generations.

Suki: She continues to lead the Kyoshi Warriors for a few years after the war. She also helps train troops around the world as they pivot from active war service to more local work. She helps establish something like the coast guards for several different countries. Eventually she retires from that to help her husband run the SWT. She and Sokka make a wonderful team as he handles the domestic policies and she handles foreign affairs. She often jokes with her sister in law, Fire Lady Katara that they ended up with the same job.

Aang: I'll go with my most optimistic headcanon for him. He's an okay Avatar. Not great. Not the worst. After the war, he tries to take part in rebuilding efforts around the world, but he finds his help isn't needed much. He turns his attention back to salvaging what's left of the Air Nomad legacy, and discovers that there are actually airbenders still around. A few of them are even interested in learning to live like the Air Nomads. Many of them aren't, though, and after learning how to actually use their powers, they go off and do their own thing. To Aang's shock and dismay, eating meat has no effect on the strength of their bending, He does learn to deal with it and enjoy his time with the air benders who embrace the Air Nomad culture. He does go on to have kids, and he still favors the benders over the nonbenders. Ultimately, his legacy as Avatar boils down to taking Ozai's bending, and that's it.

[fans4wga]

[September 1] Don’t Fall For Hollywood Bosses’ New PR Spin

'Today marks the 122nd day of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike and 48th day of the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike. The dual work stoppages have brought Hollywood to a standstill, with production halted on films and television programs, and premieres and other promotional events either scaled back or canceled. Both guilds are striking over demands that are more than reasonable, particularly given studio executives’ record pay. These demands include fair compensation for streaming media (particularly better residuals, which currently pale in comparison to what they are for network and cable broadcasts), robust studio support for health and retirement funds, and safeguards around the use of artificial intelligence. (For more on why WGA and SAG-AFTRA are on strike, read the excellent reporting of Jacobin’s Alex Press). 

In a move that has shocked…pretty much no one, Hollywood bosses don’t want to share their earnings with the very storytellers responsible for generating them. At the same time, they’re happy to make workers pay the cost for their own miscalculations about streaming.

The major Tinseltown studios – organized under the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) trade association – remain stubbornly opposed to striking a fair deal with either guild. Under the leadership of AMPTP president Carol Lombardini, studios have employed brutal tactics to bust the strike, including threatening to drag things out until writers lose their homes and using management-friendly trade publications to pressure the guilds into accepting lowball offers. These tactics have backfired spectacularly: not only have they failed to end either strike, but they’ve also turned the public overwhelmingly against the AMPTP. A new Gallup poll finds that Americans back the WGA over the AMPTP by 72% to 19%, and SAG-AFTRA over AMPTP by 64% to 24%.

Aware of their reputational damage (but willfully ignorant of the anti-worker attitude that caused it), the AMPTP announced a “reset” to its approach this week – not by negotiating in good faith or meeting the guilds’ demands, but by hiring a pricey crisis-management PR firm to revamp its image! According to Deadline, the AMPTP has hired The Levinson Group – a D.C.-based PR shop best known for representing the U.S. Women’s  National Soccer Team in its campaign for pay equity – to “reframe the big picture for studio and streamer CEOs who have been characterized as greedy, imperious and out of touch.”

If you’re feeling like you’ve seen this movie before, you’re not wrong. During the last WGA strike 15 years ago, studio bosses hired former Clinton comms strategists Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane to revive the AMPTP’s flagging public image. The revolving-door duo were paid a jaw-dropping $100,000 per month by the AMPTP to strike-bust, deploying campaign-style spin attacks designed to break the WGA’s resolve. 

As I wrote for The American Prospect in May:

“Fabiani and Lehane created a website with a live tally of the millions of dollars in income that guild members and on-set crew had purportedly lost by striking. They urged studio CEOs to publicly refer to WGA representatives as “organizers” rather than “negotiators” because the former “sound[ed] more Commie.” Lehane even told the press at one point that striking writers were “making more than doctors and pilots,” cynically arguing that the strike was harming “real working-class people” like below-the-line workers who had lost income from struck late-night talk shows […] Fabiani and Lehane were [also] the brains behind a “strongly worded and downright menacing” AMPTP press release breaking off negotiations with the WGA in December 2007. This move allowed the studios, which cited a protracted strike as an “unforeseeable event,” to invoke force majeure contract clauses and cancel multiple writer-producer deals worth tens of millions of dollars, severely demoralizing the WGA’s rank-and-file members.”

The parallels between 2008 and today are striking. Like Fabiani and Lehane (who have worked for scandal-plagued clients like Gray Davis, Bill O’Reilly, Lance Armstrong, and Goldman Sachs) the Levinson Group has no qualms about representing greedy and unsavory characters. Over the years, Levinson has done PR for predatory student lender Better Future Forward, reviled monopolist Live Nation/Ticketmaster, a talc mining company linked to the Johnson & Johnson baby powder cancer scandal, and Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes. 

And just like the ex-Clinton spin doctors, the Levinson Group boasts close revolving-door ties to powerful politicians and the news media. The firm currently represents President Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer and previously represented John Podesta’s family lobbying firm. Levinson partners have previously worked for an array of influential politicians, including former President Bill Clinton, Senators Jon Tester and Amy Klobuchar, Representatives Maxine Waters and Ted Lieu, and former and current Los Angeles Mayors Eric Garcetti and Karen Bass. The firm’s founder and CEO Molly Levinson spent eight years working for CNN and CBS, while two of the Levinson Group’s top managing directors are alumni of CNBC and The Wall Street Journal. With a web of strong connections to power players in the entertainment industry’s twin capitals of LA and New York, along with the nation’s capital, Levinson could help the AMPTP tilt the regulatory and media scales back in the bosses’ favor. 

Though this may sound demoralizing, striking writers and actors shouldn’t lose hope. For one, consider a surprisingly uplifting parallel between 2008 and 2023. Fifteen years ago, after Fabiani and Lehane took the AMPTP’s contract, the SEIU and other unions that had previously worked with the duo severed ties with them for trying to bust the writers’ strike. Fast forward to this week: the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team Players Association (Levinson’s star client!) publicly rebuked the firm for doing the AMPTP’s dirty work and voiced support for the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. If history is any indication, it’s only a matter of time until other pro-union Levinson clients – like the majority SEIU-owned Amalgamated Bank – follow suit and sever ties with the firm. 

There is also one crucial way in which 2023 is thankfully not like 2008: The Levinson Group is bad at their jobs. 

Consider an August 27th New York Times article about AMPTP President Carol Lombardini*, which was almost certainly pitched or otherwise molded by Levinson flacks. The article goes to ridiculous lengths to rehabilitate Lombardini’s image:

The article passively describes Lombardini’s tenure as “marked by labor peace until now” (a peace that she has now broken) and shifts blame for her unpopular decisions to anonymous AMPTP members (how convenient!).

Article co-authors Brooks Barnes and John Koblin quote a 2014 email from then-WarnerMedia CEO Kevin Tsujihara praising Lombardini’s negotiation skills and recommending she receive a $365,000 bonus. Curiously absent from the article is any mention of Tsujihara’s high-profile 2019 resignation from WarnerMedia for pressuring actresses into non-consensual sex.

Barnes and Koblin attempt to paint a “she’s just like us” picture of Lombardini (who reportedly earns a $3 million annual salary), mentioning her upbringing in a “working-class town outside Boston” and love for Red Sox and Dodgers games.

Barnes and Koblin paint a rosy picture of the AMPTP’s “sweetened proposal” (their words) to the WGA, describing the studios’ August counteroffer as “including higher wages, a pledge to share some viewership data and additional protections around the use of artificial intelligence.” Barnes & Koblin never quote the WGA’s well-founded reasons for turning down this lowball offer, saying only that the WGA is “holding firm to demands related to staffing minimums and transparency into streaming-service viewership.”

Bizarrely, the core issue of underpaid streaming residuals (the main reason writers are demanding greater streaming transparency) is never mentioned in the article.

Barnes and Koblin frequently imply that criticism of Lombardini is unfair, describing her as an “easy target” for the “grievances of striking workers” and singling out a tweet purportedly “mocking [Lombardini] as a fuddy-duddy who hangs out at chain restaurants”.

Barnes and Koblin quote a pre-strike September 2022 Deadline interview with Teamsters organizer Lindsay Dougherty to claim that Lombardini has the “grudging respect” of union leaders who see her as a “fair individual.” They did not quote more recent statements from Dougherty, who last month tweeted that the “greedy” AMPTP had “declared war on Hollywood Labor” by refusing to negotiate in good faith with WGA and SAG-AFTRA.

In one unintentionally eyebrow-raising line, Barnes and Koblin state that Lombardini was “inspired to become a lawyer by reading articles about F. Lee Bailey.” Neither Bailey’s sordid clients (like OJ Simpson) nor his multiple disbarments are mentioned in the article.

And it’s not just me who finds the Levinson Group’s efforts laughable. Discussions of the NYT story on Reddit and Twitter are dominated by comments tying the story’s blatant reputation laundering for Lombardini to the AMPTP’s concurrent hiring of Levinson. A recent New Yorker puff piece on Warner CEO David Zaslav has been met with similar ridicule – with many commenters also pointing to Levinson’s potential influence. So too have recent stories from management-friendly trades like Deadline – all of which have failed to make a dent in strong public support for WGA and SAG-AFTRA. This is a good sign: not only is the public more inclined to side with striking workers than it was in 2008 – it’s also seemingly more attuned to the role of corporate PR flacks in shaping the media narrative. If studio bosses think they can remake the same movie and end another strike with flashy spin-doctors, they’re sorely mistaken. 

So here’s my advice to the AMPTP (and it won’t cost you six figures per month to hear it): the way to fix your reputation problem is to end the strike by giving writers and actors what they want. No strike-busting comms team can rescue you from the hole you’ve dug yourself into. 

As the LA Times’ Mary McNamara recently put it, “You’ve lost the war. The best thing to do now is negotiate the terms of surrender.”'

[thrawns-babygirl]

The Gallery (Thrawn x F!Reader 18+)

SO! A few things before we get started.

I know nothing about art. I tried my best to make this seem somewhat believable but I'm not an artist, nor will I ever be.

The "dates" I used were in the form of the 'Coruscant Reckoning Calendar' or C.R.C since the battle of Yavin hasn't happened yet and I hate BBY and ABY as in universe measures of time. However they aren't real dates I just threw random numbers into the format and hoped it looked semi believable

I am aware this is really derivative and I'm sorry in advance lmao

This is my first time writing Thrawn, and while I read copious amounts of Thrawn fanfic, I'm still nervous about how I write him so constrictive criticism is encouraged.

I hope y'all enjoy this, I had fun writing it. Been over a month since i wrote anything and it shows.

Rating: E (18+) Word Count: 3800+ Warnings: Unprotected PiV, Oral (F receiving), the tiniest breeding kink if you squint and tilt your head sideways, Art

Masterlist

You looked around the halls of the Imperial Palace and sighed. These galas were boring, atrociously so. But alas, if you wished to maintain funding for your gallery you had to at least make an appearance, rub elbows with the Imperial elite, sweet talk some moderately intoxicated senator or delegate into agreeing that your program was in fact not a waste of credits, and was actually something that the Empire should foster. A civilization without the arts was barely a civilization at all. You sigh, swirling the obnoxiously expensive drink you have in your hand as you stare up at a large canvas painting on the walls of the hall.

Pre Republic era, oil on canvas, looks to be-

“Coruscanti in origin, an interesting blend of ancient human styles native to the planet with a Duros influence, I’d date it around 3591.39.5, what do you think?” as smooth, calculated voice drawls from beside you.

You hum in thought, as you continue looking up at the artwork. “Perhaps earlier, the dot work is absolutely indicative of Duros influences, maybe even around 2280.124.43, when Duros traders started using hyperspace routes to explore the galaxy and foster trade” you turn to face the mystery man and stiffen as you notice the crisp white uniform of a Grand Admiral, but perhaps even more intriguing was his cerulean blue skin, and more intriguing than that, his red eyes that glow softly.

Without taking his eyes off the painting he continues “an interesting theory, however, I would date it after that. The artist was obviously human, their style indicating that they grew up around humans, the brushwork is similar to most works of that period, however the Duros influence would indicate it would have been some time after Humans had made contact with other races. Humans of that era were exceptionally isolationist, their artwork reflects that, this piece shows of an artist who is comfortable with outsiders enough to incorporate them into their medium” the man takes another sip of his drink before turning to you, fixing you with those enchanting eyes “what do you think?”

You’re taken aback, this man, this Grand Admiral, knows what he’s talking about, in fact he may even know more than you about the topic, you scramble to think of something, anything to say. Your face heats up as you think back on human art and history from that era and realise, he’s right. You take a sip of your drink to steel your nerves, warmth flooding your cheeks that you hope he doesn’t notice as you turn back to the painting.

“I think you might be right; I forget about how isolationist humans were back then; it would have taken a long time before they would have taken on facets of other species art in their own” you say thoughtfully as you look up at the painting. It really was a beautiful piece of art. You look back at the stranger to find him also gazing up at the painting with a thoughtful look on his face. Perhaps this art enthusiast of a Grand Admiral was the person you were looking for this whole time? Steeling yourself again you turn and give him your name.

“I curate the Royal Imperial Gallery here on Coruscant, a pleasure to make your acquaintance” You incline your head respectfully as he turns to face you again.

“Grand Admiral Mitth’raw’nuruodo, however you may call me Thrawn, and I am aware of who you are” Thrawn takes another sip of his drink as he turns his gaze back up to the painting. You eye him curiously as he drinks, his throat bobbing as he swallows and turns back to you.

“You do?” your tone slightly more accusatory than you wanted it to be, Imperial Grand Admirals tended to be the types of people who rallied against your requests for more funding, claiming that the money could be better spent on the Imperial Navy or the Stormtrooper Corps.

Thrawn’s mouth quirks slightly, as if he were attempting to stifle a smile before he speaks again, his voice low “Of course, I am a regular at your institution, I also appreciate your holo galleries so that I may appreciate new instillations while I am away on long campaigns. It is obviously, a crude imitation of having the original piece in front of me, but I will make do with what I can” he eyes you seriously. “I especially appreciated your most recent display of Pantoran tapestries. Pantora is a hub of so many different species and cultures, their art always provides an interesting challenge to see what visiting species influenced what pieces”.

You stare at him wide eyed as he speaks, this man, this Grand Admiral, was an art enjoyer, no an art enthusiast. Perhaps this meeting was destined, perhaps he was the one who would help you retain funding for your gallery before it was all syphoned off and spent on warfare. You open your mouth to speak but it’s like he could read your mind. “I have already spoken with the Emperor, he agrees with me that maintaining the fine arts is important for any society. Your funding is secure” he turns back towards the painting and takes another sip of his drink.

He spoke to the Emperor himself? And the Emperor himself agreed to maintain your funding? Your head was spinning. This is not at all what you expected when you came here tonight, you were expecting to have to plead your case to stuffy senators and businesspeople for them to even consider the possibility that your gallery was worth it. You shake your head as you realise you’ve been staring at him in stunned silence for longer than what would be considered polite. “I… Thank you Grand Admiral. That is… that is wonderful news” you fight to keep the emotions out of your voice, finishing your drink quickly “I don’t know how I can repay you” his lip quirks again in that almost smile before he too finishes his drink.

“No thanks is necessary, and please call me Thrawn, although I would love to hear about what new instillations you are planning for the gallery in the coming months, I have some time planetside and would be remiss to not attend a new display should you be preparing anything exciting” he waves over a serving droid as he talks and takes two more glasses of the overly expensive amber liquid, offering you one which you politely accept before he takes a sip of his.

And just like that, the hours melt away as you walk with Thrawn around the hall, speaking quietly to one another about the intricacies of the art hanging on the walls, from paintings to tapestries to the small statues lining the hall, Thrawn had something to say about all of it. For a military man, he was very, very well educated.

And very, very handsome.

You shake your head as you finish your drink, maybe you have had one too many glasses of Chandrillan Sweet Wine you think to yourself as Thrawn continues speaking about the techniques used to weave a particularly intricate tapestry the two of you were standing in front of. You wanted to listen to him, you really did, but watching the way his lips wrapped themselves around the words he was speaking combined with the melodic sound of his voice had your mind wandering to places that could be considered vastly unprofessional.

As if sensing your fleeting attention to what he was saying he turns to face you, raising a single eyebrow as his lips quirked once again in a ghost of a smile. “Apologies my lady, I do tend to get ahead of myself when discussing art, if you wish to take your leave I will not be offended” you falter slightly because no, you don’t want to leave, you could spend forever listening to his peculiar accent and you rack your brain for something that would keep him in your presence. So, you decide to take a small risk.

“No Thrawn, not at all, in fact I was just wondering if you would perhaps like to join me for a small excursion to the gallery. I could give you a sneak peek of the next exhibition we will be opening in the coming weeks, provided traditional Rodian woodwork is a topic you would be interested in?” you say hopefully, willing the heat away from your cheeks as you place your empty glass on a passing serving droid.

He smiles this time, not just a slight movement of his lips, but a genuine smile that has your heart beating slightly faster and your face burning. He too places his glass on a passing droid and gestures with his hand towards the door. “Lead the way”

The speeder ride towards the gallery is quiet, the lights of Coruscant illuminating the cab as the pilot droid takes you both towards the gallery. You shift in your seat, gazing at his profile from the corner of your eye. His long nose and pronounced cheek bones illuminated by the slight glow of his eyes. You wish you could think of something to say as you fiddle with the hem of your dress, but he doesn’t seem to mind the silence, in fact he seems to be the type that enjoys comfortable silence over inane small talk, so you keep your lips sealed, willing yourself to stop acting like a blushing schoolgirl as the cab stops in front of the gallery.

The gallery is dark, quiet, giving it an almost eerie quality as you walk through the halls, you unlock the door to your office and step to the side to allow Thrawn through, turning on the lights to reveal a small room, a moderately sized desk with a few shelves and a window that looks over the city.

“We haven’t gotten all the pieces yet, so this is only a taste of the style of art we will be displaying soon” you unlock another door that leads to a storeroom, pulling on some gloves, passing him a pair and grabbing a few of the intricately carved wooden sculptures to show the Grand Admiral. He takes them off you and studies them closely, his intense eyes scanning over every detail of the wood before moving over to another sculpture, then another. At the last sculpture he pauses, studying it even more intently than the others before looking up at you. “Do you know the importance of this piece?” he inquires as he holds the small wooden figure towards you.

You take it off him, studying it closely, noting the ridges and bumps. Unfortunately, Rodian art and wood carvings in particular have never really been your area of expertise, although you have a feeling that you’re about to learn. “Unfortunately, Thrawn I am not very well versed in Rodian woodworking, I have a few on staff that would know more than I do” you place the statuettes back into the storeroom and lock the door before turning back to him only to find him looking at you intently.

“That particular sculpture is known as a ‘Prwiss’ it was used as part of a fertility ritual on Rodia centuries passed. The statue would be placed near the bed of the couple attempting to conceive as they partook in intercourse in order to increase the likelihood of fertilization” he explains evenly.

You feel heat rising to your cheeks. ‘Definitely too much wine’ you think to yourself. The words ‘intercourse’ and ‘fertilization’ shouldn’t have such a visceral effect on you. All you can think of is having such a statue over your own bed as Thrawn runs his large hands all over your body, as he thrusts in and out-

“Do you know of my species?” Thrawn asks suddenly. You shake your head, mouth dry as you respond “No… I don’t” his shoulders rise and fall slightly, something that could potentially indicate a chuckle from the stoic man.

“I am Chiss” he says slowly walking towards you “and being Chiss has many benefits” he continues approaching you, in any other context, you could almost compare his slow steps to a predator stalking its prey.

“My eyes for example, I am able to see things that humans cannot. Heat for example” he says as he stops directly in front of you. You blush again, a fact made worse now knowing he’s been able to see your blushing so clearly the entire night the two of you have been together. You swallow, not trusting your voice as he stares you down. You take an unconscious step backwards, Thrawn following you until the backs of your legs meet the solid material of your desk.

“At first I simply thought that you were flushed from the alcohol but… now I have come to a different conclusion” he leans his face closer to yours, you can feel his warm breath against your lips as he holds his lips above yours. A moment for you to back away should you not wish him to go further.

You stare into his bright eyes as your face warms further and heat pools between your legs. Would he be able to see that beneath the layers of your dress? Your thoughts are abruptly cut off as he places his lips over yours, one hand coming up to cup your cheek as he presses you against your desk. You meet his lips in a passionate kiss, the heat from the night reaching a boiling point as he removes his gloves and places his hands on your hips, following his lead you do the same before tangling your hands in his soft hair.

After what feels like an eternity he pulls back, his lips slightly swollen from the kiss and a faint dusting of purple along his sharp cheekbones. He presses you further against your desk and you get the hint, moving some small items out of the way before sitting on the desk.

Thrawn attacks your lips again, a hunger present behind his movements as he situates himself between your legs, his fingers digging into the skin of your hips as he begins kissing along your jaw, down your neck. You gasp as you feel him suck a dark mark into the skin just above your collarbone, you tug at the soft strands of his hair eliciting a low growl that rumbles through his chest as he moves his hips against your core. You can feel a definite hardness in the front of his pristine while uniform pants as he moves his body against yours, dragging small sounds of pleasure out of you.

His hands begin moving all over your body, running up your sides around to your back where he begins unfastening your dress, his movements pausing for a moment as he looks at you. You answer his unspoken question with another fiery kiss as his hands work methodically behind you to unfasten your dress, letting it pool on the desk as he moves over towards your breasts. His long fingers tweaking and pinching at your nipples through the thin material of your bra as his other hand moves down your side to help totally remove the dress from you.

He pulls the dress over your head, pausing to haphazardly fold it and place it on your desk before his hands are all over you again. One runs along your thigh while the other expertly unclasps your bra, he pulls the fabric away from your body before moving his lips to your jaw and neck again. You move your hands to his hair again as he kisses down your neck towards your chest.

“Watching the blush crawl up your skin” he mumbles against your neck, voice husky “is truly the most beautiful thing in this entire gallery” he says before taking one of your nipples in his mouth and sucking, rolling the nub around his mouth, his tongue lathing over it. His tongue has an odd texture to it, you note, as he shifts his focus to your other breast, and you can’t help but wonder what that tongue would feel like against your clit. You arch into his touch as he kisses along your chest, lightly biting into the soft flesh, leaving dark marks against your skin as he slowly begins moving to his knees, kissing down your body as he goes, pausing at the fabric of your panties and placing a long passionate kiss on the damp fabric before he pulls the delicate material to the side and sinks his tongue into your cunt.

You moan, throwing your head back in bliss as he eats you like a man starved, lapping at your juices with fervour, your hands finding their way back into his soft hair as his tongue works magic against you. He alternates between rolling his tongue around your clit and shoving it as deep inside you as the muscle will go, bringing you closer and closer to the edge.

You tug on his hair causing him to groan into you, the vibrations making your walls clench as he focuses extra attention on your clit and suddenly the wave of pleasure crests as you climax, your eyes screwed shut and hips moving on their own accord as you all but ride his face through the precipice of your orgasm.

As you come down you open your eyes and look down at him, noting the sound of flesh on flesh and the movement of his arm another white-hot wave of arousal runs down your spine as you realise, he’s stroking himself.

A Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy, on his knees in your office, touching himself while pleasing you with his mouth. The thought alone is almost enough to send you over the edge again.

His glowing red eyes look up at you, and he slowly stands from his position kneeling on the floor. You hold your breath as he rises, trying not to look too eager to get a look at what is between his legs. Do Chiss look like humans? Is he totally alien down there? Your eyes widen as your question is answered, despite the colour and a few, quite pleasurable looking, ridges, he looks remarkably human. Remarkably human and remarkably large.

The vision of the stoic Grand Admiral, still dressed in his white uniform with his trousers open and his rock-hard length on display is enough to make you lick your lips, your pussy clenching around nothing as fresh wave of arousal washes over you.

He takes himself in his hand, stroking himself a few times, placing the blunt head of his cock against your wet entrance before pausing. “A moment” he says as he looks around your office, retrieving your key card from the desk next to you before walking over to the storeroom and taking out the statue he had spoken about before and placing it on the desk next to you before taking his place between your legs at your entrance again.

He places both hands on your hips as he lines himself up with your slick cunt and slowly pushes inside of you. His uniformed chest rising and falling as he struggles to maintain his tenuous control over himself. The feeling of his girth stretching you open has you gritting your teeth, and screwing your eyes shut. Each ridge of his cock rubbing perfectly against every nerve making you see stars.

You’re both panting as he bottoms out, a low rumbling groan coming from deep in his chest as the feeling of your walls choking his length has him gritting his teeth as you wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him even closer, even deeper.

He lets out a hiss as he begins moving his hips, you resist the urge to close your eyes at the pleasure, wanting to watch each reaction you could earn from the usually pristine grand admiral. Watching the way his jaw clenches, the muscles around his neck tensing, the way his nostrils flare as he struggles to maintain his composure is like a drug to you.

You moan as his thrusts begin to become more forceful, the sound of flesh against flesh filling the confines of your office. He leans over your body, his lips finding yours again as his hips move with more purpose, harder and faster, the ridges of his girth causing you to cry out, his mouth swallowing your sounds as his pace continues to get more intense, more passionate.

He brings one of his hands down in between your bodies, his long, skilled fingers expertly finding your clit, drawing tight circles over it as he pounds relentlessly into you. The sensations becoming too much too quickly as another orgasm begins building in your core, your muscles tensing around him as your walls flutter and tighten, forcing his mouth to part from yours as he lets out a low moan of your name.

Hearing his voice, full of hunger and desperation moaning your name is what does it for you, pleasure cascades through your body as you wrap your arms around his back to ground you, the course texture of his uniform heightening the experience as wave after wave of pure ecstasy rips a harsh moan of his name from your lips.

His pace becomes even more forceful, his hips slamming almost painfully against yours as he chases his own high. His mouth finds your neck again, biting down as you feel his muscles tense, letting out a long low groan against your neck as he finishes inside you. You feel each throb and pulse of his cock as he fills you, his hips moving in short thrusts as he rides out his own high, his breathing ragged.

You both stay there, panting, bodies entwined as you come down. He gives you a long, passionate kiss before extracting himself, pulling out slowly, he looks down at your cunt, his cum slowly beginning to leak out of you and his mouth quirks again, into that ghost of a smile, like he’s proud of himself, before he moves your panties back into place and begins to straighten himself out.

You have no idea what to say as he tucks himself away and smooths his hair, after a short time, he looks immaculate yet again, barely a hair out of place, nor a crease on his uniform, meanwhile you look like well fucked mess, hickeys and love bites litter your neck and chest as you move off your desk on unstable legs to grab your bra and dress, you pause as you see the small statue, the ‘Pwriss’ as Thrawn had called it sitting on your desk. You blush as you move to put it away in the storeroom again.

Thrawn is standing, back straight as he looks at you from across your office, hands clasped behind his back. “I appreciate you taking the time to show me the artwork the gallery has to offer” he inclines his head politely “I’m glad the sculptures were to your liking” you smile at him as you redress.

“Oh yes, I suppose the sculptures were lovely too”.  

Not tagging my usual Crosswhore taglist because IDK how many of you are interested in Thrawn, but I'm tagging some people I think might be interested. Let me know if you don't want me to tag you in the future.

@khapikat222 @vibratingbonesbis@al-astakbar

[kovilm]

Rada Krivokapic Radonjic is a famous fashion designer and stylist whose signature style of classic, elegant yet luxurious ready-to-wear helped introduce ease and streamlined modernity to 21th-century dressing.

Early life

Rada Krivokapic Radonjic is originally from Kotor, Montenegro. Her parents are father Djuro Krivokapic and mother Vidosava Kaludjerovic. She also has an older brother named Radoslav Rajo Krivokapic. Her brother is a sailor, her mother a health care worker/nurse at Kotor General Hospital, and her father a factory worker.

Education

Talking about her educational background, she passed her Master's level in 2018. The program was funded by the German Government and was also designed according to the German education system. She had enrolled in Law, Professional, and Occupational Pedagogy, Trade, and Economy. She joined the School of Fashion and Specialization for Fashion Designer and Stylist. She graduated from this school of fashion from Belgrade in 1996, which was under the Paris system in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts. For her fashion school, she did an internship under Giorgio Armani Milan in 1997. Working for one of the world's most famous fashion creators, she got the opportunity to meet the best fashion creators to advance her knowledge base. Likewise, she completed her Ph.D. in Fashion Design in Belgrade in 1998.

Rada Krivokapic Radonjic, a visionary in the world of fashion, hails from the picturesque town of Kotor, Montenegro. Her creative journey has been nothing short of exceptional, combining classic designs with a deep commitment to sustainability. Born into a humble family, Rada’s passion for fashion stemmed from her early exposure to the industry through her work with esteemed designers like Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Valentino Garavani, Karl Lagerfeld, and Roberto Cavalli.

Professional Life and Career

Talking about her professional life, she is famous as a designer and a stylist. She is the founder of Rada Krivokapic Radonjic, Kovilm and Rada Radonjic luxury clothing brands. They were established in the city of Kotor, Montenegro. In 2006, she designed the collection "Ostvarene Rijeci". The collection was inspired by her deceased father. Moreover, she collaborated with model Filip Kapisoda in 2010 and had a number of fashion shows in 2018. Furthermore, she also organized several fashion shows in the city of Yugoslavia. She also work as Costume Designer in Kotor. Moreover, Rada also designed a new fashion accessory called "Kovilm". She designed it for the 2019 fashion show called "Svijet Bez Sukoba". Kovilm is a garment worn around the neck, which symbolizes the transformation from tie and bow-tie. Additionally, Rada has also written the books 'Odijevanje' that translates to "Dressing" and 'Krojenje i sivenje' that translates to "Tailoring and sewing". Her books are related to the issues in the fashion and clothing world, which is influential for aspiring models, designers, and stylists. She is mostly based in her hometown Kotor. However, she also has her professional links in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. She designed common folk costume called Zentivns 2022.

Awards, Net Worth

Rada Krivokapic Radonjic has won several awards for her humanitarian contributions and assistance. She has also received Humanitarian Contribution Awards. In 2023, Rada Krivokapic Radonjic is The World's Best Fashion Designer of The Year 2023 London, United Kingdom by Corporate LiveWire.

Personal Life

Reflecting on her personal life, Rada Krivokapic Radonjic gave birth to four children Nedjeljka Nadja Radonjic (1999), Valentina Radonjic (2001), Nebojsa Radonjic (2007) and Teodora Radonjic (2013). Furthermore, she maintains a good professional and personal life, free of scandals and controversies.

[runwayrunway]

No. 7 - A jetBlue FaMintly ReBluenion - The Quest for the Bluest Plane

And now, for something completely different.

We're done with jetBlue. I said that and I meant it. But we're not done with this train of thought. This post might not be what you expect. This is a very long post (and I do mean very long), a journey through the history of the US low-cost airline, the cognitive dissonance of the everyman millionaire, the thinly-veiled cynicism of the start-up airline, human kindness squeezed through cracks of a soulless machine which can never stop churning, and above all one man's quest to make the bluest planes he can, and my quest to tell you all if they look bad or not.

Let's begin here: have you ever wondered how new airlines are started? Well, when a wealthy individual or group of individuals love making money very much, they get together and incorporate a publicly traded company, lease a few airplanes, buy some airport slots...

I'll get to the point. Readers, there's somebody I'd like you to meet.

"Never speak to me or my daughter ever again." image: Rick Maiman

This is David G. Neeleman. He's jetBlue's dad. And jetBlue...has siblings.

David Neeleman is a Brazilian-American-Cypriot businessman I would best describe as a serial airline founder. Normally the description 'serial entrepreneur', to me at least, implies flakiness and perpetual failure to get anything properly off the ground, but that's not the case for Neeleman. He's very successful. He's probably some sort of pioneer. I've seen him compared to Howard Hughes. There's really only one stain on his record, one failure to speak of, and it's been over ten years. He has a net worth of 400 million dollars.

image: bloomberg

He's an...interesting person. Very interesting. He was born in Brazil and raised in Utah by a wealthy Mormon family. There are many very funny images of him available through Google. He has ten children, an ADHD diagnosis, no university degree, a whole lot of money, and a weird, weird, weird personal philosophy.

This interview is hard to sum up, but there's clearly a lot going on here. This is a guy who wants so desperately to be down to earth and kind and generous, who thinks he is down to earth and kind and generous, but who just can't take the extra step to realize the implications of the truly obscene wealth involved in venture capital and the inherent contradiction of that with his own ostensible charity and drive towards a fair and comfortable experience for passengers. In a way he seems like he's just too wealthy to really understand what being wealthy means. (It's also an older interview, and I imagine any scrap of genuine convictions he held through cognitive dissonance are now long-gone, given the CoViD thing.) He's also clearly got a chip on his shoulder about being fired from jetBlue. To be fair, having seen what they've done with their livery...I get it.

What else...he's also been CEO of airline booking program Open Skies, was involved with bizjet charter airline Superior Air Charter (then known as JetSuite), is founder and chairman of security company Vizgul for some reason, and is a minority owner of TAP Air Portugal. His nephew Zach Wilson is quarterback for the New York Jets. Oh, and he funded a study to underestimate the prevalence of CoViD. Classy, David. Real classy.

This isn't about David Neeleman. Not really. Not yet, at least. At some point it becomes about him, about his journey, but even then it isn't. When you have 400 million dollars you cease to become a meaningful subject as a person and become a meaningful subject as a distilled effigy of the things which the money came from. I dislike the Tony-Starkification of real people and I refuse to approach him in a way that supports that view of him. His life only matters to me in the context of the airlines he makes, and in what the way he changed over time represents. There's at least one biography out there for anyone particularly interested in the lives of Mormon multimillionaires who take issue with making people die less because they want the line to go up more. He is worth 400 million dollars, which is roughly a million dollars times what I make in one paycheck, delivered every two weeks. He's a creature in a suit who owns an absurd amount of wristwatches, each of which could pay for some sort of surgery for someone out there. There's a bunch of those in the world and this one happens to have made something which eclipses him, and that something is what's been occupying me since Wednesday.

If you're a book-reader - and I recommend being one - I think you're probably better off reading Barbara S. Peterson's "Blue Streak: Inside jetBlue, the Upstart That Rocked an Industry", which talks specifically about jetBlue and the way it pioneered what we now consider normal for aviation in the US. Reading it brought back memories for me of seeing adverts for jetBlue's planes on television, guaranteed to have a TV screen on every seat, and having my little mind which was still scarred by hours upon hours of complete boredom flying all the way from Tokyo to the American Northeast completely blown. Air travel really is unrecognizable from what it was when I was a child, although 20 years feels a lot shorter than it really is when you've lived it. There was no one factor that changed aviation so much in my lifetime, but there were a lot that contributed. ETOPS, 9/11, the recession, geopolitics, gas prices, the internet, legacy airline mega-mergers, privatization...and the jetBlue way of doing things.

It's easy to forget from our current vantage point but low-cost air travel wasn't always like this. Southwest did a lot to pioneer the modern low-cost model but jetBlue is probably the second-biggest player in the airline industry's shift to a culture which tries less to be glamorous and tries more to be fun and approachable (they by no means invented the Fun Airline, but PSA had been gone for 20 years at that point and the market had a gaping hole). They were a huge player in the rise of in-flight entertainment as standard even on low-cost flights. They helped keep aviation going after 9/11, when it was one of the few airlines to actually make money. And jetBlue's story isn't Neeleman's story, even though he founded it. I literally just listed four other major involvements of his, and he hasn't been involved in the business side of jetBlue since 2008. His story involves the founding of four - count em! - other airlines. Let's take a look through them and see if we can spot any patterns.

Morris Air (1992-1994)

sources and further reading: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

Never heard of Morris Air? Can't blame you. jetBlue's oldest sibling existed for two years in the 90s. Two years. That's pretty miserable. ValuJet was around for twice that. That said, you're actually probably more familiar with them under a different name: Southwest.

No, Morris Air did not become Southwest. Southwest existed at the time, and it was in fact Southwest which gave birth to Morris Air.

Morris Air was named for its founder, June Morris, who operated one of Utah's largest travel agencies. In 1984 she partnered with a then 25-year-old David Neeleman to launch Morris Air Service. The two had realized something that was about to shake the airline industry: plane tickets were really expensive, and you could charge even less than major budget carriers like Southwest by just buying all the seats on a charter flight and selling them on to customers at an attractively low price. If you did this, even regular working-class people trying to book a trip to Hawai'i or Disneyland could actually afford a plane ticket. This worked successfully, enough that Morris sold off her travel agency, until they incurred a large fine from the DoT for pushing too far and fraudulently passing themselves off as a scheduled airline (which mattered because commercial charters are operated under Part 135 regulations while scheduled services are governed by the much more restrictive Part 121). In response, girlboss queen June Morris and her investie David Neeleman went and started up Morris Air as an actual, genuine, fully certified part 121 carrier, making June Morris the only female jet airline CEO in the US. They operated a fleet of 21 737-300s around the west coast on both scheduled and charter flights, pioneering such cost-cutting measures as e-tickets (wrongly attributed to Southwest, they were actually first used by Morris). This fleet included N75356/N764MA/N697SW, the airframe involved in the TACA 110 incident, which was successfully landed on a levee after losing power in both engines.

image: Richard Silagi

Now, I don't know about you, but these planes don't scream 'vacation' to me. In fact, they don't scream anything. They barely whisper. They breathe lightly on my ear. There are a couple planes in their fleet with weird features, like multicolor painted noses or cheatlines, but these seem to be one-offs and I wouldn't even be surprised if they were just leftovers from previous paintjobs (the one with the cheatline does look suspiciously like the one used on Sierra Pacific planes, one of the operators Morris chartered from). So they don't count. What counts is this.

Maybe if Morris Air didn't want to be instantly forgotten they shouldn't have made their planes completely generic. I'm not sure they cared, though. They wanted to make money and they made money.

A D- for Morris Air.

In 1992, less than two years after gaining its air operator's certificate, Morris Air merged with Southwest and the brand was retired. Despite having posed a legitimate threat to the titan that was Southwest at the peak of its relevance, it's since largely been forgotten. June Morris and David Neeleman both worked in Southwest's upper management for some time, but it was only five months before Neeleman left Southwest for other ventures. Soon, something more familiar would spring up, fed by the dying rays of Morris Air's gargantuan profits.

WestJet (est. 1994, began operation 1996)

Not exactly a deep cut, is it? WestJet is actually the second largest carrier in Canada and the ninth-largest in North America. They carry over 25 million passengers a year. I've never been one of them, but David Neeleman probably has, because he was one of the group of absurdly wealthy individuals who founded this incredibly successful airline in 1994.

WestJet operates a primary fleet of over 100 Boeing 737s of various models and seven Boeing 787s; in the past they also operated the 757 and 767. They operate both scheduled passenger and charter flights, as well as having a cargo division, a fully-owned regional subsidiary, and a Delta Connection/United Express-style brand name under which Pacific Coastal Airlines operates.

These all use more or less the same livery, which has only slightly changed since the beginning of operations in 1996. Pictured above is the original livery. I like the colors, I like the angularity on the tail, but I despise the style of livery with just the isolated tail colored in. This said, they introduced a new, updated livery in 2018.

I am a very predictable person. Given a livery mostly seen on 737MAXes and Dreamliners, I will always pick the Dreamliner to use as a visual example. This is not a slight to the MAX. They are nice looking planes, but the Dreamliner's planform is just on another level. Look at that wing sweep. Immaculate.

I like this color scheme a lot. I just happen to really like sea-green-adjacent colors, this is not the first time I've mentioned this. The font is nice, big, legible. I like the all-caps, I like the descender on the J. I think removing the logo mark on the wordmark and making it solid color was fine as a choice, makes the whole plane feel more balanced between the turquoise and the dark blue. The 'l'esprit du Canada' feels utterly pointless and is blocked by the wing and too small to be clearly read anyway. Tail design not limited to the tail, but mostly white fuselage regardless. Boring, but there's nothing here I can really call...bad? It's what they don't do that feels like the issue here, not what they do. Like, some sort of design on the nose and directly above or below, maybe? I didn't even realize there's any paint on the engines until I was editing my first draft and from most angles you just can't see it. Come on.

Grade: D+

Before I move on, there is something I have to mention. And that is WestJet's sub-brands. WestJet Encore is a fully-owned subsidiary which operates a respectable fleet of Bombardier Dash 8 Q400s, and WestJet Link is a brand name under which Pacific Coastal Airlines operates a couple Saab 340s. And that is...fine, normal, even, but...

Is this a joke to you?!

Change your name to WestProp. Now.

...

Hey. Wait a minute.

David! The large blue plane is coming! It has no engine power because it ran out of fuel and is about to hit you on the racetrack during family day! Oh no, he has airpods in! He can't hear us! image: Cean W Orrett

This guy. David Neeleman. Yeah, him. We were talking about him. I mean, it's been a minute since he came up because as far as I can tell after founding WestJet he did nothing of note related to it again, but...what's he been doing? Wait...wait a minute. This is becoming a habit, David. All your airlines are...well...they share a certain trait, in a very specific area.

David knows what I'm talking about. After all, his next move, in 1998, was to found NewAir, which would shortly become jetBlue.

I have not stopped to count how many words I have written about jetBlue this week. It is a lot. I already delivered a verdict. We are moving on.

Because David didn't stop here. Why would he? It's 2008 and he just got fired from his own company because a winter storm went Southwest-holiday-scheduling levels of horrendous for the airline he raised from infancy. He's got time to kill and money to burn and he wants the line to go up, damn it! Well, maybe he can be in the right place at the right time again. Make a second jetBlue, win back what he's lost. After all, he's got something else up his sleeve - dual citizenship.

Just your regular average Mormon, lurking in forests with a model plane. Nothing sinister about that. image: conde nast traveler

I did mention earlier he was born in Brazil, right? That's always been part of his life. When he was in charge, jetBlue was actually the launch customer for the Embraer E190, an incredibly popular mid-sized regional jet made by Brazilian manufacturer Embraer.

Is it just me, or do the men in this picture somehow look like cardboard cutouts holding a real airplane? There is something very strange about this image. I would go so far as to call it unsettling. image: The Gainesville Sun

So, figuring he'd bled the US dry, I suppose, he moseyed on down to his birthplace with his millions of dollars and presumably a couple little blank model planes waiting to be painted and shown off at a press conference. If you've seen a pattern emerging, prepare to see it continue.

Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras (est. 2008)

Mmm. Helvetica Neue Heavy. Not impressed.

Okay, sure. Technically there was a 'naming contest' and this name 'was the most popular'. But I think at this point I would believe that David Neeleman botted his own vote years before I would believe that Blue Airlines of Brazil just happened to be the winning name.

Okay, all else aside, I would really love to gently hold a plane like this. There's a certain caressing nature to the way he's holding this plane's snout which I crave to someday replicate with a similarly sized model aircraft. image: Paulo Whitaker

Much like jetBlue, Azul began operating Embraer 190 and Embraer 195 aircraft before expanding its fleet to include Airbus models, a handful of ATR 72 tubroprops, and two Boeing 747s for cargo. They started with just five aircraft but grew rapidly, absorbing a bunch of other airlines and securing large investments from the likes of United and Hainan Airlines. Today they operate a fleet of over 150 planes to 161 destinations and are the third largest airline in Brazil. They have a set of crossover liveries with freaking Disney. (I might review those sometime.) They also have a crossover livery with John Deere for some reason. You know, the tractor company. In 2020 TripAdvisor named them the world's best airline.

In addition to the name of the company, they also name their airplanes. I do not speak Portuguese, but thankfully a close friend, @ametri-e, does. I asked him if the names were silly puns like jetBlue's are, and I got this response:

some of these are puns but not particularly funny, some of them just have the word blue in them, and one was funny

So there you have it!

Unlike Morris, which no longer exists; WestJet, which he seems to have minimally contributed to past its founding; and jetBlue, which tossed him unceremoniously on the tarmac with his bags, he remains the chairman of Azul at time of writing.

I find myself briefly wondering if this is all an attempt to recapture his lost glory. Is jetBlue, larger even than the impressive heights Azul has reached, the one that got away? Is he now forced to go forward modeling his work in the image of that which he was robbed of, that which he can never go back to?

I don't know and I don't care. I care about if the livery looks good or not.

Well, I wasn't just going to leave the John Deere plane out. It's a bit underwhelming, though, isn't it?.

So Azul is pretty different from jetBlue at first glance. Mainly, it uses a much darker blue and has a logo to go with the wordmark - a cute little pixel Brazil that looks a bit like a heart to me because of the specific way it's drawn. Everything is scaled nicely so it looks pleasing on the turboprop and I think the dark underside and the way it curves around the ventral fairing actually looks really good with the ATR's airframe, which has a very pronounced ventral fairing relative to similarly-sized props. But, okay, let's look at a jet.

This...is not terrible. I really like the highlights on the trailing edges of the winglets and the end of the rudder, and bordering the deep blue belly. Not crazy about the Helvetica Neue still. Why doesn't the 'u' being cyan carry over to the actual livery? Also, Detached Tail Syndrome. In fact, although it has features beyond this which make a further discussion worth having, the basic layout is what I call the 'Deltalike' because that's the airline I associate with it despite them certainly not being the first to use it - detached tail, painted engines, painted underside that's large enough to see from the sides. It avoids a lot of pitfalls of the other popular archetype, that of the very tail-heavy (which WestJet fell into), but has its own loathesome features. All said, though, I do think Azul is one of the better takes on the Deltalike.

In the first picture the highlights look green, but in reality they're one line of green and one of yellow, for the Brazilian flag. I think they look really nice with this particular blue color, but I am exhausted of this man naming his airlines blue and then having the planes be majority white. They have such a nice shade of blue here, couldn't they make that the primary color of the body?

That aside, the way that the line curves up towards the middle of the plane combined with the tailing-edge highlights creates a sort of aerodynamic feeling. You even see them in other colors sometimes, like the pink ones on the E190s and blue ones on the E195.

It also comes in pink! Were this not a one-off I would ask them to change their name to Rosa Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras, but it is a promotion.

It seems like reconnecting with his origin has given David Neeleman the creative push he needed to beat jetBlue in at least one way - livery. All said, Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras clocks in at a final grade of...

C+

Aww, not quite a B for Brazil. Better luck next time! Though I'll admit I considered putting it there for a bit. This is a very high C+. Still, no cigar. Next time try putting less white on the plane. If you're all about blue, why are all your planes still so white? Come on, David. You are spreading blue paint on every airline you've ever touched but never letting it get past the tailfin. Who are you kidding? You know you're holding yourself back. There's a desire deep in you. You know it's there. I know you want to. It's just a matter of when. You are going to give in to your most animal urges. This isn't enough for you.

You need a bluer plane.

You can feel the thirst for a plane blue enough that you might as well own a piece of the sky straining against the bonds you've tried so hard to impose on it all these years. When will you finally unleash it?

Breeze Airways (commenced operations 2021)

image: inc. usa

Here we are, David. Time has almost caught up to us. It's just you, me narrating, and a very, very blue plane indeed. We have finally reached jetBlue's youngest baby sibling.

"Together, we created Breeze as a new airline merging technology with kindness," David Neeleman said. ​"If you can just be nice, the people will be nice to you in return and your job will be more fun.”

This is an interesting pitch. When Cape Air, with its fleet of tiny airplanes and its founder who started the airline with himself as pilot just to fly one route that he found himself needing to travel regularly, makes their motto Make Our Customers Happy And Have A Good Time Doing It (Mocha Hagodti), it feels...well, it feels like the person who said that didn't understand yet what a company was. Cape Air is its own story with its own contradictions and the vicious cognitive dissonance of capital on stark display but you can sense the desire in its inception to provide a service before running a company. It is the opposite of cynical - it is naïve. It is hopeful and human and starry-eyed.

When a man on his fifth airline makes a pitch like that it's like trying to cloud-watch looking at the ceiling.

That's not the only pitch for Breeze. I mean, even if you've started four successful airlines already and it seems like everything you touch goes on to revolutionize some part of the industry I think that would be a hard sell to investors in 2021. There's a bit more going on here. I'm going to start with the bit that's boring and makes me roll my eyes.

Ever since JetBlue, Neeleman has, like the kid peering into the circus tent, longed to get back into the U.S. airline industry. 

Bill Saporito writes for Inc. USA. I let out one tepid physical laugh. Yeah, David. You've got something great going in Brazil right now, but you want more. You want jetBlue and you can't have it. So instead...you give us an app.

The Breeze app is designed to eliminate chokepoints between passengers and planes. That means fewer people on the ground and lower cost.

Is this revolutionary? Is this destined to end in a Southwest-tier scheduling catastrophe? I'm not sure. I think David Neeleman's history suggests he could make this work, and I think the history of apps being used for things that didn't have apps before suggests that this could horribly blow up in his face. It seems to have gone fine so far, as I haven't heard anything else about it. To be fair, I wasn't exactly invested in the idea, so I haven't been looking. There's always time for some situation to happen nobody had foreseen and it all to go belly-up. Saying you never cancel flights works fine until a blizzard hits and then you have to start all over again, but he didn't build jetBlue by being afraid to take risks.

More interesting is the service they offer. Breeze has a bit of an identity crisis. Breeze wants to be an ultra low cost carrier with a first class cabin. That sounds contradictory because it is. The ULCC model as used by airlines like Ryanair and Spirit fundamentally relies on charging a low fare upfront with the expectation that customers will not receive a crumb extra without paying for it. Everything from seat reservations to snacks to anything else you can think of, you can pay extra for or you can do without. Breeze also follows other trends common with ULCCs, like a lack of seatback screens (the very thing jetBlue pioneered!) and flying point-to-point to smaller airports located outside of major metropolitan areas rather than routing through hubs. Yet Breeze insists it wants to have a first class cabin!

It does have a first class cabin, apparently. The classes are called Nice, Nicer, and Nicest. I wish airlines wouldn't do this. Air travel is the floorboards of stand-up comedy. Everyone already hates flying except weirdoes like me who spend enough time looking at pictures of airplanes to write reviews of their paint jobs, and even I get pretty tired of it if I go too long sitting there without the plane doing some sort of plane thing. You can be honest. You can call the classes Bearable, Unpleasant, and Painful. We all understand. It's okay. I would rather buy a ticket for Miserable But Cheap class than Nice. It probably won't actually be that bad, since Breeze doesn't do long-haul, which makes the presence of first-class even more bizarre. If you want first-class short-haul and have that sort of money just charter a private jet! And David Neeleman has been involved with at least two private jet charter companies too, so...what is he doing?

In 2011, almost exactly 10 years before Breeze began operation, Neeleman was interviewed for Business Jet Traveler. I linked the interview above. It's a powerful display of the cognitive dissonance of a man who considers himself a regular everyday Mormon dad, who donates his salary to his employees, who insists on calling his employees crewmembers, even as the line goes up, and up, and up. I've heard anecdotes about him sitting in the backs of his own planes at jetBlue, observing what he could change to make the experience better for the cabin crew and passengers, noticing a lot of those things could even save money, and I have no reason to disbelieve them.

As the head of a company he is by necessity exploiting those under him, as a businessman he is providing a service not from altruism but because he knows that people need it enough they'll give him money, and the more comfortable the experience for both the less likely he'll lose their labor and their money. Conscious or not, altruism is a means to an end, but it is still startling surrounded by airlines which don't even go that far. 'Nice' as a name for economy class is a pretty good summary of the man David Neeleman was, and the one he still tries to present himself as. But there's a specific question, and a specific answer, which I feel the need to place here.

The airlines have been cutting back on frills and first class, which is driving more people to business aviation. Do they need to find ways to treat their high-end customers better? Well, JetBlue doesn't have first class. We treated everyone the same. Maybe it's funny I'm in the JetSuite market because it's so weird to me that on a plane with 150 seats, you give 12 people a great ride and you stick it to 138-squish them all back there because of 12 people. There's something about that that just feels wrong.

Does it still feel wrong, David? Did something change about you between the first million and the 400th? When did this transformation happen? Was it the Ship of Theseus effect? Or...was this what you inevitably were working towards all along? Was it a fool's errand to pretend that there is a difference between what you do and what you are? Aviation is not immune to the society which it is built to serve - it is shaped by it. It feels wrong for 12 people to have a nice ride while 138 are squished in the back, but if you think about the life that 5 million Americans live and the life the other 326 million have to live, all squished back there so the lucky few can have a nice ride, doesn't it feel a little less wrong? After all, you've got the reclining bed. You can just pull the curtain closed. You've probably known what you were all along.

The airlines are a tough business. Why start another after JetBlue? Well, I've done this three times. It's what I know. I've always made money at it, always been successful. I figured out a formula that works and Brazil really needed it. And I had this idealistic view of trying to make a difference. I've got 3,000 people in Brazil that work for us and love their jobs and we flew four million people this year and a lot of those people had never flown before.

Air travel is life-changing. It's not just for those of us who stand outside airports and take a picture of every airplane we see. It is a faster, safer, easier way of getting people and things from one place to another. There are people who live in the remotest places in the world, who deal with mountains and oceans and even just being so far away from anywhere else. They can travel now, and they can do more than that. They can visit their family. They can get places even if they're somewhere railroads don't run to. Cargo planes bring these remote communities necessities. They take their children to university and its sick to lifesaving treatment. It's a lifeline and a fundamental part of infrastructure. Once we invented it we stopped being able to go back.

It isn't an inherently cynical thing to start an airline - not more cynical than starting any other company, anyway. At least, it shouldn't be. But I think it's an inherently cynical thing to start five. To have your position at Azul, which is both massively successful and your own brainchild, which you think is doing good...and to say to yourself "I need more. I need America. I need what I was robbed of when I lost jetBlue."

Very few people have ever started one airline successfully. David Neeleman started four and sat at the helm of Brazil's third-largest airline and decided it wasn't enough for him. He's always made low-cost airlines. To a not-insignificant degree he made the low-cost airline what it is today. But he needs a first-class cabin.

The Inc. piece on Breeze continues to discuss the airline's planned operations. In 2011 Neeleman's employees were crewmembers.

Breeze is also introducing a program in which it will hire college interns from Utah Valley University and mold them into customer-service machines. In exchange for salary, free tuition, and housing, the students will undergo training and then work 15 or so days a month while taking their college courses online. "The big thing is we are going to provide a great service with kind people on a beautiful airplane with a fun atmosphere," says DePastino.

In 2021 they are customer-service machines. They will spend not just their days but their nights in Breeze's living spaces at one of the most vulnerable times in a person's life, learning how to be cogs in a machine right when they're transitioning from being students to entering the turbulent world of trying to find a job. And all of us want a job that makes us feel like we're still us, doing something that makes the world better and that helps us touch the tip of Maslow's pyramid. Almost none of us get it. Most of us slog through something utterly pointless that is entirely separate from our own self-identity to just keep our heads above water. Breeze turns this into a machine and it starts its cogs young.

Would I take this deal if it was offered to me? I'm a university student with barely enough money to keep myself afloat in a very expensive city while paying for university and for medicine and for anything else that may suddenly come up. I love aviation. I have customer service experience. I work in customer service right now and will probably continue to for a long time. I would hypothetically be an ideal candidate for this sort of program. Would I take this offer knowing that nobody, myself included, says to themself as a child that they want to be an airline customer service representative when they grow up? College is supposed to be the place you lay the groundwork for trying to start a career. Nobody wants their career to be 'customer service representative'. Nobody wants their obituary to say 'beloved son, husband, middle management at an airline's call center'. Sure, lots of people end up there, and plenty of them are happy and fulfilled and they have nothing to be ashamed of, but nobody's 18, going into college, and thinks that's what they want to live and breathe for years. They want to intern in the accounting departments, to shadow engineers, to see the sleek jets and peer in on the lifestyles of the people who built this. They want to be David Neeleman. But that's not an option for most of us.

So what would I do? Live this concession to the inevitability of automation which overtakes much more than the flight deck? I might, because at least it's a guarantee of shelter and stability that I don't have trying to stumble my way through an utterly shambolic job market caught between the price of school and the need to earn that money and the costs inherent to autoimmune disease and the number of hours there are in a week. I want to write, or even just to do something that involves words, because even a data entry job might let me pretend I'm still the person I thought I would grow up to be, and even that seems off the table. But it's one thing to know your dreams are never going to be realistic and another to say it out loud and yet another to commit to it in a place that even refers to you outright as a machine as if they don't understand the weight of that word when you provide someone's lodging and pay and everything else they rely on. This is a few steps short of being a company town populated exclusively by the young and vulnerable who think they're going to be entrepreneurs one day.

"When I started JetBlue, it was a customer service company that just happened to fly airplanes," Neeleman says. "Breeze is a technology company that just happens to fly airplanes."

He was talking about the app when he said this, but I think it comes through in a broader sense. jetBlue was a customer service company. Humans interfaced with humans. The idea was in nature lively, giving names to inanimate flying machines. It was a corporation, it made money, it did not actually care about people and it could not because it was not itself human, but it did not wear this fact proudly. It was a regrettable necessity of running an airline, and the CEO donated his salary to the employees. jetBlue under Neeleman and beyond clung to the human element, and to kindness and to making low-cost flight fun and comfortable even though there was nobody on the plane with a first-class ticket. You might be part of a fundamentally unethical system known for cutting corners and lying and sweetheart deals and never suffering consequences when something as simple as a jackscrew nobody lubricated kills 88 people, but you're going to at least try to dampen that impact. It might kill you just as dead but it can hurt less, maybe so much you never realize jetBlue occupies the same slice of the world as Pan Am and as ValuJet.

Breeze Airways lodges young individuals and molds them into machines. It is an ultra-low-cost carrier with a first class cabin. It presents a scenario where people are optimally herded by an app, served by employees who go home at night to the same place they work, and all of it can be reduced down to numbers so easily. It takes the human and it makes it technology. It makes it profit. The human element is gone. It doesn't matter how much it hurts you because if you aren't a person there's nothing to kill. It says the quiet parts out loud and makes you get on the phone and tell your family you're happy here with a gun to your head. It is a machine built of anonymized mannequins who, irrelevant to their role in it, happen to be alive, and it calmly tells you that this is a good thing, and that is a threat. The lowest category of experience you can have is 'nice'. Breeze Airways does not name their planes.

When I was a child I thought airlines were people and airplanes. I've flown many times in my life. There aren't many other ways to get from Japan to the East Coast these days. The world is huge but we can see it all so easily, assuming taking us there can make someone money. I remember being eight and having the pilot standing by the door to greet passengers, having him hand me a little pair of plastic pilot wings I still have now. I remember the stormy night I flew alone for the first time and the stewardess who let me sit next to her for a little bit and answered all my questions about the noises the plane was making. I remember the first time I flew on a propeller plane and the pilot who explained to me what all the gauges meant, and who insisted there was nothing to be afraid of and pointed out all the landmarks we flew past, who clearly knew this route by heart.

That's not what aviation always is. That's not what it usually is. People don't usually start airlines because they wish they could fly everyone around in their little single-engine plane on a commuter route from Boston to Provincetown, from Hyannis to Nantucket, provide that service to the people who don't have a plane and a license of their own, but they just can't do it all themselves. People who start airlines aren't usually intrepid pilots searching for new heights to push themselves to or flight instructors looking to fly people around in a single rented DC-3. They're businessmen. They want money. Juan Trippe was a businessman. Howard Hughes was a businessman.

The corporation is where passion goes to die if it existed to begin with. They build machines to suck the life out of pilots, exhaust them, put them in planes that are falling apart and let them take the blame when they fail to do things they failed to teach them. These people aren't your friends and they don't care about aviation, and if they do it's in the way an American child plays soldiers at the same time a school in Syria is being bombed. They're usually not even pilots. They're people with a lot of money who want even more money. jetBlue isn't unique in that sense and neither is Breeze. One just says it a lot louder.

Sometimes an airline is a technology company that happens to fly airplanes. That's true. Every single positive experience you have is with people, not airlines. I've never once spoken to jetBlue, just a matrix of pilots and flight attendants and customer service representatives who make up its many limbs. Maybe it should come as a relief, a sort of coming clean, that Breeze is tearing back the curtain and reminding you that the time a stewardess calmed you down during turbulence isn't really any different from the time a drugstore cashier let you off even though you were a few cents short of your total and said they'd take care of it. It's not CVS doing that. It's always people.

So many businessmen say they're here to do good, to make the world a better place, to reconcile kindness with venture capital. Any of them could build a tower that reaches all the way to the edge of the solar system and let us all know how many beautiful things there are that we can reach if they can find a profitable way to get us out there, and yet it's still the people who see your transit card is out of money and scan you in using theirs that make me remember that we are capable of kindness despite our surroundings. It is up to all of us whether we wish to be kind or not and it's not something anyone else can build for us.

Companies can't build a kinder, softer, funner, more human place. They can make money. They can provide a service. A service you need, at a cost you can afford, predicated on the fundamental question: whether they think you can make them money. Desperation, need, giving people a non-choice, that's how you make money and kill criticism. That isn't kindness. That's finding a gap in the market. Always has been.

I read that at JetBlue, you also didn't have your own parking spot and you donated your entire salary to a crewmember crisis fund, saying, "It seemed hoggish of me to have all this stuff when others didn't because every time I would get something someone else would have less." Yet then I read about your $14 million mansion in Connecticut. It's my wife's mansion. I never would have built that, ever. I think she's repentant. It was a project for her and it kind of got out of hand. But we all felt funny moving in. That's why we want to sell it.

I'd wondered how you reconciled the mansion with your philosophy. I don't.

image: Bill Bernstein

Okay, Marx or Megatron or whoever you think you are, that's enough of that depressing schlock. You are a tumblr.com airline livery review blog. We're here to answer if the plane looks good or not.

It's not like Neeleman's only goals are money and vapid personal satisfaction. We've been with him from the start. It was just an unacknowledged bit of the tail. He probably didn't notice it at first, but we did, with the gift of hindsight. It germinated. It took root. It grew. It became identity. It became his white whale. Are the planes blue, though?

Well, everyone, meet N206BZ. She's an Airbus A220-300. She's just a year and a half old and was delivered brand-new to Breeze Airways. She doesn't have a name, just a registration, but that's sure one blue plane if I've ever seen one!

The color scheme is visually pleasing. It's all over but it keeps visual interest with the darker tail and rear fuselage, the darker engines, the big white check-mark that serves as an instantly recognizable emblem for the airline. The repetition of it on the winglets is a nice touch.

I hate the wordmark, honestly. The text feels like it's located too low, the lightest blue blends in with the main fuselage until it borders on illegible. As far as I can tell, the typeface is custom. I hate it. It's ugly. The text is bad and it weighs down the rest of the plane.

A lot of how a livery looks depends on the lighting. So let's look at another example. I'd like to introduce you to N140BZ. She's an Embraer E195-200 and she's coming up on 15 but she hasn't slowed down any. She flew for Air Europa for a long time, but from 2016 on she was in limbo, all sorts of holding groups leasing her to each other but nobody putting her into service. Now she's with Breeze. They'll retire their E190s somewhat soon, but for the moment they like to have them. It allows them to operate shorter routes and free up time for charters on other days, just to maximize productivity. She doesn't have a name either. I'd say she still looks pretty blue. A lot of the concept art has a very metallic and reflective feel which I'm glad isn't as present in the actual planes, because it looked a bit sci-fi movie and not in a campy way. It was very blue chalk marker.

I like these colors just as much in this sort of washed-out environment as I do in direct sunlight gleaming at full intensity. Maybe more, even, since the text of the wordmark is so much more legible now and you can even see that the checkmark itself is blue. There's almost nothing on this plane that isn't blue. The only thing not blue about this airplane is that she doesn't have a name to revel in it.

The Breeze livery gets a B-.

It is a competently executed version of the thing it wants to be. There's visual interest. There are choices made. It's more than a logo slapped on a tail and sent off to sit on the tarmac with hundreds of other primarily white airplanes. I like it, I think this is the best Neeleman livery. It's also the bluest.

I find myself thinking the checkmark is an apt logo. Azul wore the shape of Brazil - a country full of people. Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras S/A is a company. It cannot have a soul. But its founder says it does. He wants to make something better for people. Breeze Airways is a checkmark. It satisfies a need. It is 'nice' but there is no pretense that it is people.

The pilots will be kind all the same, and the stewardesses. People will agree to swap seats so families aren't separated. People will compliment strangers' outfits and help the person in line in front of them who's fifty cents short for a bottle of water. We will hold the door for elderly men with canes and exhausted women with strollers. We will take every little chance we can to be kind. We do this because we are people, and not because of where we work, and it's definitely not the people with 400 million dollars to put down on a shiny new airline making that happen. Everything is scheduled through an app, minimizing contact with humans even as the ones we do talk to are 'molded into customer-service machines' over the course of years. N140BZ wears her blue colors well, and not having a name doesn't make her any uglier. So what is it that's changed?

David Neeleman can't make jetBlue a second time. But he doesn't know that. To a man with so much, maybe it makes sense how he could fail to realize that. When you're high enough in the air a thriving uptown and an area of condemned slums look more or less the same, just little blocks of color all the way down there. He doesn't even realize he's given up the ghost. This is only a tragedy if your definition of a happy ending was us believing someone is better than they are instead of being left no room to continue failing to recognize what money is and what money does. The corporation wears two masks - the mask that it wears when it is a corporation wearing a mask, and the mask it wears when it is so close to human that you mistake it for your friend. The businessman wears these masks too. To be sad they've taken them off is to invest more in the virtue of these men than they ever do in the life or death of the 138 people squeezed in the back.

There it is. Two decades, five attempts, the bluest plane. If you've kept reading all the way to the end let me know in the replies what your favorite Neeleman-proximate livery is. I'll see you all tomorrow for our regularly scheduled Runway Runway livery review, and I hope you all have a wonderful night.

[chronicallycouchbound]

Unhoused Solidarity In Action

This is a non-exhaustive list of resources you might have access to, or know of, that can be used to aid unhoused community members directly. Many of these focus on direct mutual aid as individuals but can be helpful to consider when in community organizing settings. - What do you (or someone you know) have access to, that you can provide to the community? - Can they be accessed, used, or provided: regularly, occasionally, only in emergencies, weekly, daily, sporadically, consistently, etc.? - Consider seasonal needs (winter coats don’t help us when it’s 90 degrees out!) - Remember to practice active, informed consent with individuals and ask if these would be helpful! Don’t take it personally if your offer isn’t helpful to someone, it might help someone else. - These should be realistic and not compromise your safety or well-being. Remember to prioritize safety over comfort.

Housing

- Consider your relationship with this person (generally, don’t offer complete strangers into your home)

- Location matters a lot. Unhoused people often need to be near “hubs”/cities, close to resources and systems of care.

- Some people can’t live in hotels, couch surf, or any of these options without losing their housing vouchers, and in some cases health insurance or other assistance programs. Legal definitions of homelessness (used by voucher programs) usually don’t include people living in hotels/motels, or couch surfing (including most of these options). Check with the individual to see if this might be helpful.

Extra bedrooms

Campers, trailers

Couches

Apartments

Land/yards to camp on, park at, etc.

Donate funds or points for a hotel room

Shelters

Floor space

Safe parking lots to sleep in your car in (sleeping in your car is considered legal homelessness in most places)

Time

- Emotional capacity and minimizing the risk of burnout are important here especially

Do outreach with a community org

File for grants

Provide education materials

Share knowledge regarding resources

Emotional support - build genuine connections with your local unhoused neighbors

Reach out to companies for donations

Create or add to lists of resources, open bathrooms, etc.

Transportation

- One of the biggest barriers to accessing existing resources is transportation (also mailing addresses, internet access, and active phone service)

Personal car, ride-sharing/carpooling

Bus tickets/passes

Old/not frequently used bikes

Taxi services/vouchers

Uber/Lift gift cards

Carpooling

Coordinate rides for people

Food

- A lot of unhoused people prefer “comfort foods” to “health foods” - Ask about dietary restrictions, the cooking ability of the unhoused person, the cooking equipment, etc. - Soft foods are frequently more accessible to us as dental issues are very common - 100$ in fast food is significantly less than 100$ in homemade food

Can cook hot meals

Can pay for meals

Knows someone (person, business) who can supply food

Inviting people over for a meal

Gifting food (be sure to be considerate of dietary restrictions, cooking ability, equipment needed to cook, etc.)

Have a community dunkin gift card

Make or add to a fruit tree map (fallingfruit.org, community gardens, federal university campuses)

Money

- Money should be freely given, with no strings attached - Ask what form works best for them— cash apps/virtual, physical cash, gift cards, quarters, etc.

It is best to provide cash donations directly to impacted individuals (or organizations) with no strings attached

Provide relevant, local chain store gift cards (Grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants)

Coordinate fundraisers

Apply for grants

Supplies

- Ask individuals what they need most!

Purchase and donate supplies directly to individuals or organizations

Reach out to businesses

Donate old phones or computers

Add someone to your family phone plan

Donate professional clothes for interviews

Donate an outfit you would actually wear

Talents, Trades, Skills

Your hobbies might be helpful! Crochet is extremely trendy right now (easy to learn, you could make hats/scarves for community members)!

Professional ties/experience Examples: You’re a cosmetologist who can do free haircuts for an hour each week, or you’re a graphic designer who can create a website for an organization for free, or you’re a nurse who can provide wound care to encampments

Community gardens

Connect with and partner with non-profits or community-based organizations in your area (or help start one if there’s none!)

Allow people to use you as a reference for job interviews

Bathrooms

- Not just toilets, but showers and mirrors are important too

Ask businesses to pledge to have open, public, accessible, and free restrooms

Your personal restroom

Make a list of local public restrooms

Free gym memberships or add someone to a gym plan

Services

- In order to access most services, you need most, if not all, of the following: transportation, identification, important paperwork, printing/faxing access, mailing addresses, internet access, active phone service, free time during business hours, and emotional and mental ability (and capacity) to complete everything required (forms, applications, phone calls, interviews, annual reviews, verifications) in a timely manner (usually on a strict deadline)

Case management experience you can volunteer

Peer support for service navigation (great option for people with prior lived experience)

Advocacy within services

Offer to provide a P.O. box or use your address to receive mail

Housing skills

Allow someone to use your library card for books, computers, the internet, etc. (most libraries won’t allow unhoused people to get a library card)

Volunteer at a shelter

Allow someone to use your home wifi, printer, phone number, mailbox, email, etc.

Fundraising

- If you can’t donate your own personal funds, fundraising is a great way to help out

Community mutual aid asks (in person or online)

Art walks

Skate competition

Concerts

Tip jar

Gift basket raffle

Clothing and food drive

Game tourney

Live streams

Start a GoFundMe for individuals/orgs

I strongly encourage you to look over the matching slides I created for this workshop: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VDngImsMByUFmKX611zAJ43a0UcYIfMBxrbh_g1IJvc/edit

As a disclaimer: I have been homeless/unhoused for over half of my life. My experiences of homelessness have included while being a infant, toddler, young child, preteen, teenager, and young adult. I am 24 years old. My most recent experience of being unhoused was last year, and I am currently precariously housed (meaning: at high risk of losing housing again). My experiences of homelessness have included sleeping outside in a tent, sleeping on park benches and under freeways, walking around all night to avoid hypothermia and freezing to death (something that has happened to several of my friends), couch surfing, sleeping in cars, squatting, sleeping in motels, living in a shelter, and institutionalized. I have been homeless with family a few times during early childhood and again when I was 15. All of my other experiences of homelessness have been on my own starting at age 9 or 10, and the last time I lived with a parent I was 16. I have been homeless in both rural and urban areas. I have been homeless in New England/Northeast United States as well as the Pacific Northwest.

In addition to this, I have many contributing factors to my experience, including being disabled, a person of color, trans, queer, a survivor of child abuse and CSA, being trafficked, and a drug user and a SWer, amongst other marginalized experiences.

That being said: my experience of being unhoused/homeless is not the universal experience. While I know many people of all different demographics who I’ve met on the streets, I cannot speak to every single person’s experiences. I especially cannot speak to experiences outside of the United States, aside from what I hear secondhand.

This is meant to serve as a general guide to accompany a workshop I created, and might not be helpful for everyone. If it’s not helpful, I hope it inspires others to offer creative solutions. I’m always working on expanding this list. Thank you for reading.

[riyagupta0472]

Finding Your Investment Path: A Simple Guide

In the vast ocean of financial opportunities, finding the right investment scheme can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Every individual's financial goal, risk tolerance, and investment horizon are unique, making it crucial to navigate through the diffrent of options available in the market. From fixed income to equity and everything in between, understanding the various investment schemes is key to building a robust and diversified portfolio tailored to your needs.

Fixed Income: Let's begin with the fundamentals. Your investment portfolio's fixed income investments are similar to the consistent beat of a drum. The traditional examples are bonds and certificates of deposit (CDs). They are the best option for people looking for stability because they provide predictable returns at a lower risk. And you can earn average 8-10% return. Managed Portfolios: Do you like someone else to do the grunt work? You may want to consider managed portfolios. These expertly managed funds provide a hands-off approach to investing, catered to your financial objectives and risk tolerance.

Insurance: Although the main goal of insurance is to provide protection, several plans also include investment options. For example, life insurance policies give you coverage and the opportunity to gradually build up cash value; for the astute investor, this is a two-for-one offer. Derivatives: At this point, things become a little more intricate. The value of derivatives is derived from underlying securities or indexes. This group includes swaps, futures, and options. They can be employed speculatively or for hedging, but they're not for the timid. but do not invest in derivatives until and unless you are expert in this field.

Credit Instruments: Now let's talk about credit instruments, which include peer-to-peer lending websites and corporate bonds. With the range of risk and return potential offered by these products, you can tailor your portfolio to your degree of risk tolerance. Equities: Ah, the stock market, the global investor community's playground. Purchasing stock entails obtaining ownership of shares in publicly traded corporations. It's all about dividends and growth potential, but be prepared for market turbulence. Keep it straightforward: align your investments with your time horizon, risk appetite, and goals. To distribute the risk, diversify between several programs. And keep up with market developments at all times. Recall that there isn't a single, universal strategy for investing. Discover what works for you and get to work accumulating wealth!

[nwbeerguide]

Maui Brewing Company raises $1.5 million for Maui wildfire relief via their Kōkua Project.

image courtesy Maui Brewing Company Press Release Kihei, Hawaii … In response to the wildfire tragedies across the island of Maui, Maui Brewing Company spearheaded the Kōkua Project, a collaborative beer effort inspired by Sierra Nevada’s Resilience project of 2018 to raise money for those in need. Translated as “extending help to others” in the Hawaiian language, the Kōkua Project was touted as “one beer, brewed by many, to support the people of Maui”. Over 700 breweries across the United States and internationally participated in the project which began in late August to raise funds for the people of Maui. While Maui Brewing Company coordinated the efforts and provided the recipe for their suggested brew, brewing material partners jumped in with support by donating the yeast, hops, malts, and more to breweries that reached out for supplies. Ongoing email marketing kept brewing participants up-to-date on recipes, participating vendors, foundation information, events, marketing assets and logos, tap handles, and merchandising kits “From New Zealand to Japan and every US state in between, the brewing community has come together in a powerful and humbling way to support the people of Maui,” said Maui Brewing Company Founder and CEO, Garrett Marrero. “As one beer, brewed by many, Kōkua supports our Maui ‘Ohana who have been affected by the tragic wildfires. We are grateful to every brewery who has participated this year.” Maui Brewing partnered with Global Empowerment Mission to facilitate the fiscal responsibilities for the Maui Brewing Company Fire Fund. While participating breweries were encouraged to send their donations to GEM, some breweries opted to donate to Hawaii Community Foundation, Makai Foundation, or other legitimate non-profit organizations including Legacy of Aloha. Legacy of Aloha benefits Maui Brewing and TS Restaurants teammates that have been displaced and lost their belongings and livelihoods. The two restaurant groups partnered for the largest impact. Across these collaborative efforts, the beer community has raised $3M for Maui’s relief efforts with $1.5M pledged through the Kōkua Project. President and CEO of Maui Brewing Co. Restaurants, Chris Thibaut sent the update, "We're stoked to share that we've hit the $1.77M mark through the Legacy of Aloha program! The amount of support and aloha our community has shown these past few months has been truly amazing. Huge Mahalo for making a real difference in the lives of our Maui 'Ohana!" The financials provided by Legacy of Aloha did not only include brewery contributions from the Kōkua Project. The Maui Brewing Company team led by Garrett Marrero have been providing ongoing support to Maui, also facilitating supply missions, collecting vital items for the survivors, and delivering emergency drinking water to communities affected by the wildfires. As a result earlier this month, the brewing trade publication Brewbound announced their Best of 2023 Award Winners. Marrero was presented with the Person of the Year Award for “exemplifying the spirit of the craft brewing industry”. Beer lovers and those looking to support Maui’s relief efforts can donate directly to the Maui Brewing Company Fire Fund online HERE. For more information, visit MauiBrewing.com or follow @MauiBrewingCo on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. ### About Maui Brewing Company Founded in 2005, Maui Brewing Company is Hawaii’s largest craft brewery. MBC is based on Maui, with its grid-independent production brewery, restaurant and tasting room in Kihei, as well as restaurants in Kahana (Maui), Ka'anapali (Maui), Kailua (Oahu), and Waikiki (Oahu). Maui Brewing Company is available in 26 states, 1 district, and 3 international countries with more areas to follow. … from Northwest Beer Guide - News - The Northwest Beer Guide https://bit.ly/4aFdA4p

[bespokefunding]

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[coochiequeens]

Ladies please share this with any women you know starting their own business or non-profit

Business grants for women can help you grow your business for free, as opposed to small-business loans or other types of debt-based funding that you must pay back. But competition for small-business grants is fierce, and it takes considerable time and effort to win them. 

If you’re up for the challenge, though, grants can be a great way to fund your new or existing business. Here are 18 places women entrepreneurs can look for small-business grants and other free financial resources.

Private small-business grants for women

Some private corporations and organizations offer business grants for women. Here are six to consider:

1. Amber Grant

Every month, WomensNet awards a $10,000 Amber Grant to a woman-owned business in a specific, rotating category. The categories for 2023 are as follows:

January: Skilled trades

February: Health & fitness

March: Food & beverage

April: Sustainability

May: Mental & emotional support

June: Business support service

July: Animal services

August: Hair care & skincare

September: Education & child care

October: Creative arts

November: Technology

December: Fashion & interior designers

On top of that, the organization awards a second $10,000 monthly grant to a woman-owned business and a quarterly $10,000 grant to one startup and one nonprofit.

At the end of each year, two of the 12 general grant winners and one of the industry-specific grant winners are awarded an additional $25,000. 

The application is relatively simple: Explain your business, describe what you’d do with the grant money and pay a $15 application fee. The foundation’s advisory board chooses the winners, looking for women with passion and a good story. Businesses operating in the U.S. and Canada are eligible.

Because there’s no time in business requirement, companies seeking startup business grants for women may want to prioritize the Amber Grant.

2. IFundWomen Universal Grant Application Database

IFundWomen is a grant marketplace that specializes in funding and coaching for women-owned businesses. You can submit one application and when IFundWomen adds a grant from an enterprise partner, it will match the partner’s grant criteria to applications within the database.

If your business is a match, you’ll receive a notification and invitation to apply. Previous grant partners have included companies like Visa, Neutrogena and American Express.

3. SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant

The SoGal Foundation — along with company sponsors like Bluemercury, Twilio and others — offer startup grants to businesses owned by Black women or Black nonbinary entrepreneurs. Grants are available in amounts of either $5,000 or $10,000.

Awardees also receive fundraising advice, with a focus on investor financing, and lifetime access to the SoGal Foundation team. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, so you can apply on the SoGal website at any time.

4. Fearless Strivers Grant Contest

The Fearless Fund, in collaboration with Mastercard, offers $20,000 grants to businesses owned by Black women through the Fearless Strivers Grant Contest. The winners also receive digital tools to help them get and sustain their businesses online and one-on-one mentorship with a Mastercard small-business mentor.

The Fearless Fund runs a national grant program, as well as city-specific grant contests in Atlanta; Birmingham, Alabama; Dayton, Ohio; Los Angeles; New Orleans; New York City; and St. Louis. To qualify for this small-business grant, you must have a U.S.-based business, 50 or fewer employees and have made $3 million or less in annual revenue in the past year.

» MORE: Best business grants for Black women entrepreneurs

5. Cartier Women's Initiative Awards

Every year, Cartier awards three grants to women-owned businesses in nine different regions around the world. The Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards program is designed to support early-stage businesses that are focused on a range of social, economic and environmental development issues.

The first-place business is awarded a $100,000 grant, second place receives $60,000 and third place gets $30,000. Winners also receive executive coaching and the opportunity to participate in a variety of training workshops.

6. Comcast RISE

Comcast awards $10,000 grants to businesses owned by women and people of color several times per year. Each Comcast RISE Investment Fund application cycle is open to entrepreneurs in specific target cities. You can also apply for “marketing services and tech makeovers,” which don’t include cash prizes but can still help your business grow.

7. High Five Grant for Moms

The Mama Ladder organization — along with co-hosts Proof, Belly Bandit and Caden Concepts — offer an annual small-business grant specifically for moms. This grant, called the High Five Grant, is designed to support women caregivers with child(ren) of all ages, including first-time expecting moms, stepmoms and foster moms.

Entrepreneurs can submit an application online and share the story behind their business on social media. Finalists will be chosen by a panel of judges and then a public vote will determine the top three winners. The top business will receive a $25,000 grant, the runner up will receive a $10,000 grant and the third place finalist will receive $5,000.

Additional private business grant options

Although these options aren’t specifically for women, they’re good small-business grants to consider for any entrepreneur.

8. FedEx Small Business Grant

FedEx awards up to $30,000 apiece to 10 small businesses annually. One veteran-owned business from among those 10 winners can receive an additional $20,000 from USAA Small Business Insurance. Winners also receive money to use toward FedEx Office print and business services.

The application requires an explanation of your business, how you’d use the money, photos of your business and — this part is optional — a short video explaining your business. To be eligible, you must operate a for-profit business with fewer than 99 employees and at least six months of operating history.

9. National Association for the Self-Employed Growth Grant

Every quarter, the NASE awards up to $4,000 to up to four small businesses via its growth grants. These funds can be used for a variety of business needs, including marketing, advertising and hiring employees.

To apply for this grant, you must be a NASE member in good standing for at least three months. Annual members can apply at any time.

10. Halstead Grant

The Halstead Grant is an annual award for entrepreneurs looking to break into the silver jewelry industry. The winner receives a $7,500 startup grant, as well as $1,000 in jewelry merchandise. Five finalists and semi-finalists also receive $250 or $500 and help with promoting their businesses.

Both men and women-owned businesses are eligible for this small-business grant. To apply, you must answer 15 business-related questions and submit a design portfolio. Applications are due August 1 each year.

11. Fast Break for Small Businesses

These $10,000 grants — funded by LegalZoom, the NBA, WNBA and NBA G League and managed by the Accion Opportunity Fund — are available twice a year. Winners also receive LegalZoom services worth up to $500. You can sign up on LegalZoom’s website to be notified when applications open.

Federal small-business grants for women

Some federal government grants for small-business owners are designated for specific purposes, such as research and development projects, or for businesses in rural areas. Government grants typically can’t be used for startup costs or day-to-day expenses.

12. Grants.gov

Grants.gov is a database of federally sponsored grants, including grants for small businesses. Although these grants are not exclusive to women-owned businesses, this database is a great place to start if you’re looking for free financing.

To apply, you must obtain a Unique Entity ID for your business (a 12-character alphanumeric identification number), register to do business with the U.S. government through its System for Award Management website and create an account at Grants.gov.

To view grants specifically for small businesses, filter the results on the left side of the page under “eligibility.”

13. Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs

The SBA facilitates these two competitive programs, which provide grants to small businesses that contribute to federal research and development. Eleven federal agencies — including the departments of Agriculture, Defense, and Health and Human Services — post business grant opportunities on their websites. You can search current grant opportunities on the SBIR website.

To qualify, you must operate a for-profit business with no more than 500 employees and meet other eligibility requirements.

14. Program for Investors in Microentrepreneurs (PRIME)

Although the SBA coordinates some grant programs, the agency doesn’t typically offer grant funding directly to small businesses. With the PRIME program, however, the SBA provides federal grants to microenterprise development organizations so that they can offer training, technical assistance and coaching to disadvantaged small-business owners.

These grants are available to nonprofit, private, state, local or tribal-run organizations, including those that focus on working with women-owned small businesses. The Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation, for example, was awarded a $200,000 grant in 2022.

» MORE: Business grants are ‘just not that easy.’ Here are some tips to help

State and local small-business grants for women

Because federal small-business grants are limited in number and often very competitive, you may have better luck seeking out grants for women at the state and municipal levels. You’ll have to do your own research to pinpoint specific grant programs in your area, but here are some places to help you get started:

15. Women’s Business Centers

The SBA sponsors more than 100 Women’s Business Centers nationwide, designed to help women entrepreneurs with business development and access to capital. Some, such as the California Capital Financial Development Corp., lend money directly while others help you find small-business grants and loans that you may qualify for.

16. Economic Development Administration

Every state and many cities have economic development resources focused on promoting strong local economies. For example, New York has several economic development districts, such as the Lake Champlain - Lake George Regional Planning Board, which helps local businesses access state and federal funding.

17. Small Business Development Centers

There are hundreds of SBA-sponsored Small Business Development Centers around the country, typically housed at colleges and universities. SBDCs offer free, one-on-one business consulting, such as help with developing a business plan, researching markets and finding financing — including grants, business loans and crowdfunding.

Some SBDCs offer training on certification programs like the SBA 8(a) Business Development Program and Minority and Women Business Enterprise Certifications. These programs can help businesses level the playing field when competing in the public and private sector.

18. Minority Business Development Agency Centers

The MBDA operates a network of business centers across the country that are designed to help minority business owners access capital, secure contracts and develop financial strategies. Your local MBDA business center can work with you to identify the right financing options for your business, including federal, state and private small-business grants.

The MBDA also runs the Enterprising Women of Color Initiative, or EWOC, to support minority women in their business endeavors. The EWOC provides access to resources, events and other opportunities for women minority-owned businesses.

» MORE: Find small-business grants for minorities

Alternatives to small-business grants

Finding and applying for business grants can be difficult, as well as time-consuming. If you don’t qualify for certain grants — or simply want to explore other ways to fund your women-owned business — here are some avenues to explore:

Best small-business loans for women: Compare SBA loans, online term loans, lines of credit, microloans and learn about other available resources for your business.

Crowdfunding for business: Tap into the power of the internet to raise money for your business and promote your company’s product or service.

Small-business credit cards: Compare dozens of cards and find the best choice for financing your everyday business purchases — and earn rewards in the process.

SBA microloans: Work with a nonprofit financial institution to apply for these government-backed loans, which can be a good choice for new or very small businesses.

[indiesellersguild]

December 2023 Newsletter – Year in Review

Here is our December Newsletter!

Main event:

As we end 2023, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on our victories for the year. Truly, it has been an incredible ride, with far more success than we could have hoped for.

The rest of the text is under the cut; relevant links are embedded in the text on our website.

Lobbying with the US Senate: We worked with Senator Baldwin’s office to help the COOL Online Act (a bill to crack down on dishonest resellers) pass committee. Read our analysis of the bill here.

Fighting Etsy’s Reserve Payment Policy: Our work, combined with the heroic efforts of UK sellers and the media, pressured Etsy to reduce or lift their devastating payment reserve policy for many sellers. Samantha Vass, a prominent UK seller who spoke out, had her Etsy shop suspended, learn more and support her business here.

Feedback to the FTC: An US Federal Trade Commission lawyer reached out to us for feedback on a new FTC rule against unfair and deceptive business practices around online platform fees. Learn more here.

Presentation to UK Small Business Commissioner: We were able to discuss the issue of online platforms messing with indie sellers’ money in a series of meetings with UK Small Business Commissioner Liz Barclay. Watch a video of the presentation here.

Marketplace Research Project: We had over 1,000 participants in our research survey on what creative indie sellers and their customers want from an online marketplace. Read more about how we will use that data to hold marketplaces accountable here.

In the works:

The first annual ISG virtual convention will be April 13-14, 2024!

We will launch our Marketplace Accreditation Program, unveil our new membership site, and discuss how we can continue to fight the exploitation of creative indie sellers by big tech platforms.

Panels will include:

What to do if you get screwed by a tech platform. – with Katharine from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Etsy Alternatives: Data and tools to help you find the best marketplaces for your business

How to use your Etsy shop to direct traffic to your own site (without breaking Etsy’s rules) – with Kristi Cassidy, ISG President

Results from our Marketplace Research Project: What do sellers and customers really want from an online marketplace – with Samantha Close, Ph.D.

Interview with Racheal from Mayfli marketplace in the UK

Interview with Jon from goimagine marketplace in the US

Get your ticket now to reserve your spot! Tickets only cost $1 to help cover the costs of the convention.

Share your story!

The FTC is seeking public comment on their proposed “Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees”. After our meeting with the FTC, we are excited about the rule because it will also protect creative indie sellers from unfair and deceptive fees from marketplaces. If the rule goes through, we hope to use it to combat Etsy’s forced off-site ads and other unfair practices.

Please take a moment to share your thoughts in a public comment, we want to make sure the perspective of creative indie sellers is represented!

We heard you:

We know that the seller member directory, and members-only parts of the website in general are a bit difficult to navigate. One of our first goals in 2024 is to update our membership with new software and far more features. Stay tuned for information on how to set up your profile on the new site!

What ISG needs right now:

While we’ve managed some amazing things with a very small budget, thanks to our amazing volunteers and open source software, we need more funding for 2024 to continue to grow and advocate on your behalf.

Please consider making a small donation to the Indie Sellers Guild. If half of our members donate just $5, we will raise enough funding for the next 6 months. Or you can buy one of our awesome merch items so you can represent the Guild and show off the work of your fellow artists. The Guild receives $5 from every merch purchase.

Thanks so much for your support!

[plethoraworldatlas]

1. The ACC will train and employ 20,000 people in climate and clean energy jobs

The ACC will mobilize a new, diverse generation by training them in skills crucial to combating climate change—everything from installing solar panels to improving communities' natural disaster resilience to restoring critical ecosystems. And with a shortage of skilled clean energy workers, the ACC couldn’t come at a better time. We need more tradespeople, installing things like electric vehicle chargers and heat pumps, to decarbonize our economy. 

There’s an emphasis on building career pathways, not just jobs. To achieve this, the White House will partner with unions and is committed to providing members with the hard skills and transferable credentials that will allow them to find good-paying jobs or seek further training through apprenticeships and trade schools after their service. This includes potentially expanding access to scholarships and awards that would support post-secondary education and training or reduce student debt and streamlined pathways into civil service. The best part? No prior experience is required for most positions, and very few will require college degrees.

2. The ACC prioritizes equity and environmental justice

While the ACC draws upon the ambition of The New Deal and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, it also learns from its fundamental flaws.

FDR’s Corps lacked diversity, perpetuated white supremacy, and almost entirely excluded women, but Biden’s Corps puts equity and environmental justice at its core. It prioritizes communities traditionally left behind, including energy communities, whose lives have been dominated and shaped by the fossil fuel industry, and disadvantaged communities, who disproportionately suffer from a combination of environmental, economic, and health burdens.

The ACC follows the same targets of the administration’s Justice40 goal, where 40 percent of the benefits must be directed towards disadvantaged communities.

3. The ACC employs an all-of-government approach

The ACC is built on a hub-and-spoke model with AmeriCorps at the center. The White House is launching a dedicated ACC recruitment website, where participants can learn about and apply for opportunities in their communities, and across the country, that span all spheres of the clean energy economy.

The administration is partnering AmeriCorps with at least five other federal agencies (Department of Labor, Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Department of Energy) to pool resources, coordinate recruitment, and fund corps members to work on specific projects that address the climate crisis.

Additionally, the administration will partner with at least 10 states. California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, and Washington have already launched similar programs, while five more (Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Utah) are creating their own Corps.

[investmentassistant]

Overview of WL COMPANY DMCC financial marketplace

The company we want to talk about today is called WL COMPANY DMCC. WL Company DMCC (License Number DMCC-89711, Registration Number DMCC19716, Account Number 411911), registered in Dubai, UAE whose registered office is Unit No BA95, DMCC Business Centre, Level No 1, represented by the Director, Stephanie Sandilands.

DMCC is the largest free trade zone in the United Arab Emirates, which is located in Dubai. It was established in 2002 and now serves as a commodity exchange that operates in four sectors: precious goods; energy; steel and metals; agricultural products.

Main services and activities

WL COMPANY DMCC is a financial marketplace, the direction of which is financial services, consulting, management, analysis of services, provision of services by third parties to the end user. The list also includes:

• Investment ideas;

• Active product trading;

• Analytical support for traders;

• Selection of an investment strategy in the market using various assets.

WL COMPANY DMCC operates on the MetaTrader 5 trading platform. There is a convenient registration, detailed instructions, as well as the ability to connect a demo account for self-study.

Among the main services:

1. Trading.

2. Social Services.

3.ESG Investment.

4. Analytics.

5. Wealth management.

Company managers will help with registration, with opening an account, with access to the platform. After training (if required), you can make a minimum deposit of 500 USD and start trading.

Main advantages and disadvantages of WL COMPANY DMCC

Before going directly to the benefits of the marketplace, it is worth saying a few words about the loyalty program. Depending on the amount of investment, the user receives one of three grades. Each of them gives certain privileges. The program itself makes it possible to get the maximum effect from investments in a short time.

Now about the benefits of WL COMPANY DMCC:

1. Availability of a license in the jurisdiction of the DMCC trading zone.

2. No commission when making SFD transactions on shares.

3. More than 6700 trading instruments.

4. High professional level of support.

5. Very strong analytical support (client confidence level 87%).

6. Weekly comments and summaries from WL COMPANY experts.

7. Modern analysis software.

8. Large selection of investment solutions.

9. Own exclusive market analysis services in various areas.

10. Own analytical department with the publication of materials in the public domain.

11. Modern focus on social services.

The feedback from WL COMPANY DMCC clients highlights the positive characteristics of the work of marketplace analysts, the convenience of a personal account, the speed of processing positions, analysis tools, and low commissions.

Negative reviews relate to the freezing of the system, delays in withdrawing funds for a day, and the small age of the company. Also, for some users, the application for withdrawal of funds was not processed the first time, and someone could not instantly replenish the deposit. North American traders complain that WL COMPANY DMCC only has a presence in Dubai.

At the same time, the financial group received several significant awards:

• Best MetaTrader 5 Broker 2022

• The Most Reliable Fintech Service 2023

Outcome

According to the information received, it can be concluded that WL COMPANY DMCC can be called a good financial marketplace in the modern market. By registering with the DMCC, the company can be called reliable and trustworthy. There are also negative reviews, but they relate mainly to the technical component.

For August, 2023 WL COMPANY DMCC has about 12000 clients worldwide. The main regions are North America, Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Traders can act independently or use the advice of marketplace experts.