#Humans Are Just Resources ok jeff bezos

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

No YOU'RE thinking about how Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is an allegory for corporate greed, political power and climate change

[tomatoluvr69]

You give off hippie vibes and seem like someone who is maybe not vegan but maybe pescatarian or maybe somebody who is just very health conscious. And you it's honestly such an inspirational vibe that I aspire to be like one day.

(If I've read you wrong and your none of these things than honestly idk what to say other than oops hope you like your new vibe!)

I do and should give off hippie vibes because I am one even though I don’t dress like it. I’m big into gardening and foraging and fermentation and psychedelics and pre-pandemic I used to dumpster dive as like an anti food waste thing and cook my finds lmaooooo this is not something I’ve admitted on here before. I had some run ins with law enforcement and then the pandemic happened and it’s going to be a long time before I start again lol but im still gardening and fermenting and stuff.

As for veganism I’m not a vegan! You got that right. I used to be a vegetarian but unrelated to that, I have a really long and difficult history with eating disorders so restricting my diet is a really bad idea for me :( mostly for me this looks like a decent amount of food is prepared with eggs, and also I eat a lot of plain Greek yogurt as a protein source. And I love goat cheese and ice cream so much. But I don’t really eat meat that often, but that’s largely for environmental reasons even though it doesn’t even fucking matter because of the jeff bezos rocket and the oil spills and mass produced cheap plastic trinkets Amazon two day shipping and Forever 21 and funko pops etc etc etc etc

Anyways, I think it’s specifically because of my ed history that I’m like this. It’s really hard for me to eat food if it’s not nice, (nice meaning tasty or special or interesting or prepared with some actual effort, not necessarily expensive) and that combined with the fact that I genuinely love to cook means that I tend to put a lot of thought and effort into what I eat. I don’t talk a lot about recovery on here bc I know it’s really triggering to a lot of people, but becoming interested in food as an art/hobby or whatever has been a really important component for me. Furthermore I truly think that gardening is one of the most inherently healing activities on the planet. I CANNOT recommend it highly enough for anyone going through through it— it’s astounding how palpably good it feels to me during and afterwards.

But I think for me the whole hippie thing is less of like an aesthetic lifestyle to strive for and more of a recognition of humans as part of an ecosystem, and a responsibility to live as a part of an equilibrium rather than something that takes and takes and takes. That being said I am BAD at it!!!! I take airplanes. I eat hamburgers sometimes because they’re awesome. I use electricity and eat imported cheeses and I think honestly I’ve reached a point in my life where recovery and forgiveness of myself are a far higher priority than completely radical ecological living because it’s impossible!! A cotton reusable tote requires like 15,000 uses before it overtakes the resources required to make it!!! We should all be using hemp and bamboo!!!! But you’ll drive yourself literally fucking crazy thinking about all that shit and we can’t all make hemp tote start-ups and honestly one time I was tripping on these mushrooms i picked and I felt this powerful breakthrough where I realized that environmental concerns were an extremely huge part of my orthorexic restriction and I would literally never, ever recover if I didn’t start consuming things I’d been freaking out about for years, I had to apply that mindset to other areas as well.

Wow I’m sorry I got waaaaaaaaayyyyy off track here. I guess the point is that you totally fucking clocked me, I grow food and make my own seitan and kombucha, but also I don’t necessarily consider myself a hippie because I’m still struggling to find a way where I can consume in a sustainable way and not fall down a spiral of tyrannical mental illness lmaooooo

Ok and all that being said, I just want to say that you can basically pirate ornamental lavender from ugly corporate landscaping by ripping off a couple branches and sticking them in old food containers full of potting soil and everyone should do it it’s awesome and also plant native wildflowers and stick some garlic cloves in raw honey and then you’ve got honey fermented garlic to snack on baby and mugwort will give you weird dreams and also genuinely eat literally everything you want to including poptarts and ice cream and also GMOs are fine. To eat. Monoculture ag is another problem (😡) but you can eat gmos and big dairy and corn syrup it’s fine

[seashellsoldier]

“A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear” by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

This is undoubtedly the most entertaining book I’ve read in years. Not that libertarianism isn’t hilarious on its own ridiculous footing, but every attempt at some microcosmic utopia fails miserably. Free Town probably earns second prize in crackpot ideas though, just behind Jonestown. “Get yer gov’ment out of my taxes!” “Get yer gov’ment out of my Medicare!” “Get yer gov’ment out of my unemployment insurance . . . those COVID relief checks . . . my potable water . . . the electrical grid . . . fire departments and hospitals and community centers . . . school systems and healthcare and libraries . . . game wardens . . . and bridges . . . and roads . . . and dams . . . and get yer g’damned gov’ment out of my guns, Guns, GUNS!!!!” (To libertarians, it seems, everything can be resolved with guns.)

“The creation of America’s first Free Town was so ambitious in scope that it seemed doomed from the start, and indeed, almost every such population-level social experiment in history has failed spectacularly. Most efforts at planned communities involve artificially populating an uninhabited place, like a stretch of desert or an island—as in 1972, when a Nevada millionaire and his libertarian friends declared independent ownership of an island off the coast of New Zealand (a claim that was promptly quashed by the New Zealand military).

The building of utopias is limited by the rarity of visionaries with deep pockets. Building a new community from scratch requires millions or billions of dollars to create an infrastructure and overcome the challenges preventing people from living there in the first place. Henry Ford, whose assembly line kick-started the automobile revolution, learned this the hard way when his planned Amazonian utopia, Fordlandia, succumbed in the 1930s to the threats of rainforest blight, cultural clashes, and an unhelpful Brazilian government.

The four libertarians who came to New Hampshire had thinner wallets than Ford and other would-be utopians, but they had a new angle they believed would help them move the Free Town Project out of the realm of marijuana-hazed reveries and into reality.

Instead of building from scratch, they would harness the power and infrastructure of an existing town—just as a rabies parasite can co-opt the brain of a much larger organism and force it to work against its own interests, the libertarians planned to apply just a bit of pressure in such a way that an entire town could be steered toward liberty” (p. 48).

New Hampshire really is a microcosm of Caucasian America’s problems, fueled by Ayn Rand’s Galt’s Gulch rose-filtered parable, and the Free Town Project a fringe of that, with Free Town having a fringe of their fringe, and a fringe of that fringe’s fringe on downward into those who wet-dream of 1790s’ live-off-the-land pioneering colonialism.  

“For Grafton’s Free Towners, Rand’s vision of a market-driven society was what kept them privatizing and deregulating everything they could. For seven long years, they joined thrift-minded allies in issuing vociferous challenges to every rule and tax dollar is sight; one by one, expenditures were flayed from the municipal budget, bits of services peeled away like so much flesh”</i> (p. 125). The results are predictably ruinous. Infrastructure fell apart; crime went up; disputes, blame, and tribalism poured from social media feeds into the streets; and all the while, the bears foraged throughout. <i>“What seemed clear was this: in a town that refused to allow the government to protect it from bears, vigilantism seemed the only option. Just as libertarians wanted, it was every man, woman, and bear for themselves” (p. 234).

BBQ BEER FREEDOM

From Ruby Ridge to the Capital Hill insurrection, ignorant flag-waving yokels have screamed for their moronic “freedom” from the chains of civic responsibility, the duties of citizenship, and simple Christian moral accountability. “Freedom. Freedom! To the obedience-averse libertarians, the clarion call was—ironically—irresistible, a liberation-tinted tractor beam that drew them deep into Grafton’s wilds.

Those who moved to Grafton under the banner of the Free Town Project between 2004 and 2009 were free radicals, unbounded to existing living situations, because they had either too much money or not enough” (p. 78). It’s better to watch your neighbor’s house burn down than fund a local fire department.

Now of course if governments big and small managed their budgets better, libertarian-bashing would be an easier argument, Charles Koch, Roger Stone, Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and their ilk be damned. It’s almost impossible to count how many hundreds of billions—maybe even trillions—of dollars get wasted every year, from healthcare to the military, grift and graft, bridges to nowhere, etc., food and electricity and potable water, subsidies for monolithic industries year after year and decade after decade, and tax breaks/shelters/loopholes for the filthy rich and their corporations, while our physical and human infrastructure continues to suffer and degrade year after year and decade after decade. Our plutocratic priorities are backwards (unless you’re a plutocrat), and finding an unbiased assessment of waste in the US, for me, is challenging. Ugh, I digress.

This really is a funny book; I laughed out loud often at the author’s wit and sarcasm. Hongoltz-Hetling’s literary voice harkens back to the glory days of A Prairie Home Companion, and this cast of characters fits perfectly into the good-natured buffoonery of such backwoods stage-play. These aren’t your Nazi-saluting gym rats cosplaying Call of Duty soldiers with their American flag capes and InfoWars codpieces. These are “rugged men” (and some women) who languish (not unlike Ted Kaczynski) in the woodland fortresses of their own Fantasyland, armed to the hilt and proud of it, and they have apparently been infecting the entire state with their wingnuttery. If New Hampshire tries to “secede from the Union”, I say let ‘em. “From my cold, dead hand!”

(shrug) “OK.”

The bears, of course, have a serious role too, and Hongoltz-Hetling gives them pleasant prominence.   Patrick Blanchfield reviewed this book for The New Republic as well, highlighting the problems of New Hampshire overall (https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project): “The bear problem, in other words, is much bigger than individual libertarian cranks refusing to secure their garbage. It is a problem born of years of neglect and mismanagement by legislators, and, arguably, indifference from New Hampshire taxpayers in general, who have proved reluctant to step up and allocate resources to Fish and Game, even as the agency’s traditional source of funding—income from hunting licenses—has dwindled. Exceptions like Doughnut Lady aside, no one wants bears in </i>their<i> backyard, but apparently no one wants to invest sustainably in institutions doing the unglamorous work to keep them out either. Whether such indifference and complacency gets laundered into rhetoric of fiscal prudence, half-baked environmentalism, or individual responsibility, the end result is the same: The bears abide—and multiply.”

Another imploding social experiment, but it will surely not be the last. “I have no doubt that Grafton will make the news again, in some wild, unpredictable way. The soil there may be rocky, but it’s fertile ground for dreams, and humans will always be drawn to places where they can slip off the radar of communal oversight and nurture their own private worlds” (p. 316). This nation as a whole needs serious course-correction, and such Petri dishes like the Free Town Project show symptoms of a sick society desperately grasping for alternatives. The fabric is frayed, fraying further, possibly deteriorating for certain circles, and I wonder if it can ever be sewn into the beautiful tapestry it could possibly be.

[vacationcalendar]

7/21/21

Oh hey! I’m back ;D

So I didn’t come back after dentist appointment, obviously. BUT, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was imagining. I mean, it was bad, and it easily wiped out 10% of my net worth in an afternoon. Oops. You know, for someone who puts a lot of effort into living life with zero regrets, I certainly think I would have brushed my teeth a TAD more diligently as a child if I had known my poor smile would have made me unhappy every single day of my adult life while costing me constant pain, grief, and a couple month’s wages every now and again.

Can I be honest for a second? Give you hot take real quick? Hmm, ok, never mind. I was going to type out a spicy one, but while I was trying to find the words, I talked myself out of it. I was gonna say something around the area of “I had it rough as a kid; a took a couple licks from my old man, and I turned out fine” schtick. I feel like that notion gets dismissed too quickly. People hear that and go, “Ah, you just THINK you turned out fine. What you’re not factoring in is that you're a bigoted asshole.” But I think that dismisses it too quickly. I think if we deconstructed the situation a bit, me might be inclined to agree with some of those people. It wasn’t like a progressive, tolerant, patient, honest parenting couple was the one that gave their kid “something to cry about,” and then he turned into this raw, conservative a-hole. His parents were already raw, conservative a-holes. And then they didn’t do nearly enough to make sure that their child didn’t have a rough go of it while in their formative years. But their child was fine. In fact, he still grew up respecting their parents’ choices and decisions that raised him up. He in a very real sense did “turn out just fine.” The main problem was that he respects and trusts his parent’s judgment while his parent’s happen to completely out of touch with modern decency. Hey, did I start this paragraph out saying that I wouldn’t dispense a hot take, but then I went ahead and did it anyway? Hmm.. Well maybe my initial hot take was a little more unhinged, and you’re just reading the walked-back mild-sauce version of my take. But at this point I don’t even know myself what the original take was, so, shrug emoji.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Fuck this is so hard! I took a 2 hour break after that first chunk. I did some useful things (dishes, laundry) and some less useful things (youtube, a banger game of League). So now I just want to hit 1k more in my word count and get the fuck out of here before I crawl in a hole of procrastination so deep I die of the black lung. The hole of procrastination contains a lot of coal I guess. Does that make sense? Not really, but this all counts towards the 1k baby!!!! Here. We. A-go.

Ok, so. Let’s try this; let’s lay out everything that we can say we know for sure we want to happen in this next week. And don’t skip anything! Let’s try to get it all on here and see what it looks like:

Finish my laundry. Dryer cycle, fold and put away On that note- pack for the trip. We need Bathing suit (2! why not?!), undies, shorties, my comfy 90$ pants, shirts for moving, shirts for sitting, sockos, sandals go in the bag and tennies go on feet, hat??, yeah one hat, you never know, sunnies (2 pairs, that way I can kinda just leave lying around and see them more often, cuz when I see’s my sunnies, I wears ‘em. And that’s the kind of life that I’m trying to live baby, anything else? I’m looking at my clothes right now. Hmmm.... One hoodie just to be safe.  I also have to pack non-clothing. Phone + charger, Ipad + charger, Fitbit CHARGED ahead of time (I just plugged it in, nice. This is why we make this list like this). I’ll charge the headphones today later as well. My two books. My fullsized notebook for the analog blogs that will be happening. I just pulled a pen out so as not to forget that ish later. I’ll be bringing this Dark Matter Coffee that I have committed to going out and gathering VERY SOON. If a coffee bar closes earlier than a regular place of business I should make sure I get there before 3. But that is TIGHT, because I want to sweat AND shower AND groom myself to the tops before I go out today. And maybe you’re thinking, Max that’s still 2 and half hours, that’s not that tight. But I’ll also have laundry AND lunch AND I have to finish this goddamn BS, and this is sucking the life out of my like the vacuum of space sucks out your eyeballs. Hey by the way, quick aside, the fucking take that Jeff Bezos going into space (recent news*) was a waste of money is so fucking ice cold. How is that the only thing people can think to say? The problem is it’s so obviously true, and seemingly can’t stick with anyone in power that the comedy is fucking frozen in time. You can’t zag when everyone’s zigging because the zigging is objectively correct. This rich person driving the machine of capitalism directly into our own annihilation has frivolously gone into space and actualized everyone’s childhood fantasy of riding a rocketship into space. And the act of acquiring the means to actually make it possible has made him one of the more reviled figures in modern history; this ruined the idea of going to space “because anything is possible if you put your mind to it” for a lot of people, and it’s possible that this debacle has proven the “anything is possible” notion to be demonstrably false. People clamoring and hustling to try and make sure that Jeff Bezos doesn’t enjoy going into space to me just highlights the impossibility of amazing adventures like these. One of the first people ever to amass the resources to actually manifest one of the most exciting things humans can do: commerical spaceflight; literally the next step towards the ultimate frontier, has forced everybody back over to the truly old and awful take that the money used for this could be better spent solving more tangible problems. For decades, small-minded cowardly people have seen NASA break through the barrier of space time and time again and whined that those taxpayer dollars should have been for like fixing highways and shit. And they sucked for it. That sucks. And now Bezos goes up because we now live in a world where someone can just go up there, which should be so fucking interesting, and everybody else goes, “well this isn’t taxpayer money technically, but it basically is, and it’s actually MORE useful than taxpayer money somehow. This money didn’t have to get filtered through government bureaucracy so it could have like built a bunch of wells in Africa or provided healthcare to thousands of people. This miracle of science and engineering isn’t as valuable as the really simple problems that I can parse as the common man, and I’m pissed!” And it sucks because that ANCIENT complaint is now propped up by the fact that Jeff Bezos could only manage this by sitting on top of a capitalist system that is seemingly seconds away from exploding in a world-ending fireball. So this awesome thing that we’ve all hoped humanity could one day achieve finally happened, but it seemingly only was able to happen because capitalism is crushing millions of people under it’s heel. And I think maybe a capitalism 20 years ago was less divine. We could have seen a rich man in space and managed to empathize with him still. We could have imagined that could be us one day. It’s not possible anymore. The motivating system of meritocracy that keeps capitalism balanced is completely and utterly broken. So when everyone looks up and sees this fucking space trip, the only thing you can even see is blood. It took literal blood to get up there. And that’s not worth it, to anyone. Anyone except Jeff Bezos. Should I bring Shampoo with me? Might as well right. A whole week? That could be 7+ showers. I might need to put it in like a big ziploc baggie. Dark Matter closes at 6. We’re golden babe.

Love ya dude

[presssorg]

As unicorns spawn, South Korea’s anti-entrepreneurial practices evaporate

As unicorns spawn, South Korea’s anti-entrepreneurial practices evaporate South Korea has long been one of the most top-heavy economies on earth. At the summit, tower a privileged handful of massive, family-run conglomerates which vacuum up capital, lure elite human resources and bully suppliers. At the bottom, countless mom ‘n’ pop operations – franchises, restaurants, coffee shops, educational institutes, taxis – battle to survive. And in the middle? Precious little – bar suppliers to the various conglomerates. A chaebol (/ˈtʃeɪbɒl, ˈdʒɛbəl/; Korean:  (

listen)) is a large industrial conglomerate that is run and controlled by an owner or family in South Korea. A chaebol often consists of a large number of diversified affiliates, controlled by an owner whose power over the group often exceeds legal authority. The term is often used in a context similar to that of the English word "conglomerate". The term was derived from the Japanese zaibatsu, sharing a similar structure and origins. It was first used in English in 1984. There are several dozen large South Korean family-controlled corporate groups that fall under this definition. The chaebol have also played a significant role in South Korean politics. In 1988, a member of a chaebol family, Chung Mong-joon, president of Hyundai Heavy Industries, successfully ran for the National Assembly of South Korea. Other business leaders also were chosen to be members of the National Assembly through proportional representation. Hyundai has made efforts to contribute to the thawing North Korean and South Korean relations, but not without controversy. Many South Korean family-run chaebols have been criticized for low dividend payouts and other governance practices that favor controlling shareholders at the expense of ordinary investors. This, at least was the situation in the 1960s, when Korea started to industrialize, to the last few years. Now, evolution is becoming apparent.  “Significant social and cultural changes are taking place in Korea,” said Park Young-sun, Seoul’s minister for Startups and SMEs – a body created in 2017 – in a briefing to foreign reporters on Friday. There are positive signals that Korean entrepreneurialism is being unleashed, that venture capital taps are gushing and that Korea’s middle business tier is being filled. According to global research platform CB Insights, South Korea has, as of 2019, bred eight unicorns, or privately held startups valued north of $1 billion. Overall, this means that G11 South Korea (population: 51 million) falls behind only G2 economies the US and China, services giant the UK (with 17 unicorns) and demographic monster India (with 16). According to CB Insights’ data, South Korea’s unicorn herd is the same size as Germany’s (eight); double the size of France’s, Israel’s and Indonesia’s (each with four) and is galloping ahead of national competitor Japan (which boasts just one).

At the summit, tower a privileged handful of massive, family-run conglomerates which vacuum up capital, lure elite human resources and bully suppliers. At the bottom, countless mom ‘n’ pop operations – franchises, restaurants, coffee shops, educational institutes, taxis – battle to survive. Rise of the unicorns Korea’s unicorns bestride a range of sectors. They are, according to CB Insights: E-commerce company Coupang (valued at $9 billion); Travel-tech provider Bluehole (worth $5 billion); Yello Mobile, a mobile software and services provider ($4 billion); Woowa Brothers, an on-demand player ($2.6 billion); L&P Cosmetic, a beauty-and-grooming firm ($1.78 billion); Wemakeprice, an e-commerce marketplace ($1.33 billion); Fintech provider Viva Republica. or Toss ($1.2 billion); and Yanolja, a travel-tech company ($1 billion) Officials are upbeat. “We believe in the strong emergence of a second venture boom in Korea,” said Oh Kee-woong, the ministry’s director general for Venture Innovation Policy, who joined Park at the briefing. Korea’s first venture boom – the Internet bubble of the 2000s –  would bust, but not before spawning a handful of firms to add to a national industrial portfolio that previously consisted of metal bashers like Samsung and Hyundai. Those companies include portal firms Naver and Daum and online gaming firms like Nexon and Neowiz. A major barrier preventing Koreans from creating startups was a financial eco-system and social culture that has customarily punished failure. But now, “We have programs to support ‘second-chance’ startups,” said Park. “As statistics from Silicon Valley show, before there is one success story, there are seven to eight failures,” said Oh. “We are recognizing the importance of failure before success, and we are working to improve institutions, culture and society.” That is a tall order, demanding regulatory change and social engineering. But positive change appears to be underway. Anti-entrepreneurial eco-system Central to the problem was capital access. In the United States, such tech colossi as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs enjoyed the security of a financial eco-system where entrepreneurs could bounce from failure to failure before hitting the big time on the strength of personal charisma and smart ideas. Conversely, Korea’s top-down financial system took a sternly conservative approach to risk management. Banks customarily lent to giant businesses with plentiful collateral; entrepreneurs who lacked such major assets were forced to take on perilous liabilities, and early-generation Korean venture capital firms were not much better. “In the past, a lot of VCs required the owner or founder to take personal liability or offer guarantees,” James Kim, an investor with Tiandi Partners, told Asia Times. When a start-up went under, there were dire consequences for its founders. “I believe that when it came to bankruptcy, there was no protection from liabilities – even tax liabilities,” said Eric Cornelius, managing director of Bright Shiny Robot, a Seoul-based start-up consultancy. Liquidity providers would seek to recoup their investments, “… even if it meant had to do slave labor for life,” Cornelius added. Such practices are thankfully, fading – at least, in the VC space. “These days it is not that big of an issue, as there as so many sources of funding without debt or personal liability,” said Kim. “VCs have got smarter, they don’t hold company founders personally liable the way it was a few years ago,” noted Cornelius. Moreover, those who failed once would have their credit history forever besmirched across the national financial system. And in a nation with a powerfully neo-Confucian culture where the issue of “face” was paramount, shame was attached to bankruptcy. “Now we see serial entrepreneurs who have risen from the ashes of companies that have crashed and burnt,” said Cornelius. “It does not seem as if there is so much judgment on the social side; it seems to be getting better.” Change agents As is so often the case in Korea, leading-edge best-practice has been top down: From both big business and government. On the corporate front, steel giant POSCO last year created a 1 trillion won venture fund, Oh noted, while Cornelius cited an in-house program at the country’s flagship corporate, “Samsung C-Lab.” Under that program, employees with an idea for a business present it before a board of internal judges. If the board OKs the proposal, the employee retains his/her Samsung salary while also being offered start-up funds. Though some critique conglomerate-incubation efforts as foxes guarding henhouses, the Samsung program insulates the wannabe entrepreneur from failure-related risk: if his/her project does not take off, he or she is offered his previous position in the firm, no questions asked. Government has also waded in. A fund of funds with 4 trillion won was started in 2005, based on Israeli and Singaporean models, to kick-start the sector. Since then, venture investments have skyrocketed. As of last year, they were worth 3.4 trillion won, up from 2 trillion in the first venture boom in 2000, according to data provided by the ministry. “The first venture boom was led by the government,” Oh said. “The second venture boom is being led by the private sector, so it is more sustainable; 67% of venture investment is private today.” The data tell their own story. The number of newly established companies has set a record high for three consecutive years, from 93,768 in 2015 to 102,042 in 2018, according to ministry data. Meanwhile, Korean unicorns have surged from three in 2018 to eight today – “evidence of a mature infrastructure and eco-system,” Oh said. The changes may be seeping through to youth, who dub their country “Hell Joseon” (the latter being the name of Korea’s last kingdom) – a purgatory in which it is impossible for the young to get ahead, particularly given high graduation rates, which have devalued the currency of a university degree. While it was previously unthinkable for students to ditch their studies to create a start-up, a Seoul university student anecdotally told Asia Times that a number of her fellow students are now doing exactly that. Old habits die hard Even so, the formal Korean financial sector remains a bastion of conservatism. Oh noted that in the US, about 40% of pension funds invest in VCs; in Korea, that number is just 13%. Seoul’s 2005 fund of funds was designed, “to make up the missing investment,” Oh said. And he conceded that Korean traditional financial institutions retain problematic practices. “Joint liability regulations are quite unique,” he said. “Founders of failed companies have to pay back loans and we understand that this system prohibits entrepreneurs from having a second chance.” Once again, government is taking up the slack. As of 2018, loans from government-run financial institutions ceased to demand these onerous liabilities, Oh noted.   Read the full article

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

14 May 2019: Supermarket norms and robotic food. eBay high street pop-up. Bezos: infinite resources in space!

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Motiondisplay, whose animated conveyor dividers are delicious visual treats for our built-in reptile brain.]

Supermarket norms and robotic food

Here’s a very small thing about supermarkets: how that divider stick on the checkout conveyor belt is used is a big deal. It’s a small object, but it carries more social weight than you might expect.

Imagine redesigning it: maybe you’d make the conveyor itself into a scanning surface and then shoppers could just draw a line with their finger to demark their shopping territory from another’s. But taking everything out of a basket to scan is surely unnecessary: you might replace the entire checkout (conveyor, divider, scanner and, yes, staff) with something that tracks goods. In Amazon’s world this is Go, in which the entire shop is inside the scanning machine. Or it might be a smart shopping basket or bag that knows what’s being placed inside it.

If you’re planning a future of unstaffed supermarkets (or shops inside your car/house or smart baskets or...), you can see that there’ll be many things that must be redesigned. And even the small things, like the conveyor dividers, will be both affected by existing social expectations but also create new social norms.

The social dimension also suggests that there are opportunities for contrarian stores. Instead of adding technology to remove staff/save money/reduce prices (etc), a store could invest more deeply in the ritual between shopper and store staff. Yes, make the transactional bit convenient and quick, but deepen the social relationship.

Anyway, what’s happening in food and warehouse automation?

Ocado invests £4.75m stake in ready-meal robotics start-up - "Karakuri’s systems provide localised micro-manufacturing within an existing restaurant, retail or commercial kitchen." Maybe Ocado fancies some vertical integration, its robots making food products and handing them to the warehouse robots. (Would that mean anything for Deliveroo’s “dark kitchens”?)

Beijing's first restaurant with fully automated kitchen opens - robot chefs and waiters. And a very special(ised) robot: grilled cheese sandwiches.

Some food is valuable because it is about the human touch - restaurants, home cooking, social meals. Other food may be valuable where it has had the human touch removed - “robot-clean” production, grab and go sandwiches, sushi conveyors, robot kitchens maybe.  Perhaps the prepared food market eventually polarises into the very human and very unhuman.

Elsewhere in food automation, Amazon is adding machines that pack orders in the warehouse - that article has interesting detail on the different pick and pack jobs done in a warehouse. And Ocado’s fast robots help it to scoot ahead of Amazon in analysts’ eyes - analysts reckon that speed is everything, and Ocadobots are 3 times faster than Amazon’s.

eBay: high street pop-up

eBay is running a temporary concept store in Wolverhampton for a month. It’s a pop-up mall containing 40 local businesses “to demonstrate how online and physical retail can work together, seemingly without cannibalising one another”. Payments will be by QR codes and eBay will get all of the sales and traffic data. For eBay, it’s an online-to-offline experiment - 25% of UK small businesses don’t have any ecommerce. For Wolverhampton, it’s part of a wider high street renewal programme.

Various things: China

Amazon is closing its local marketplace and launching a lending service in China aimed at growing the number of China-based merchants who sell directly to consumers in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Wechat owner Tencent says “tech for good” is its new motto.

Tencent and Alibaba get banking licences in Hong Kong - payment platforms going up (down?) the stack to get banking licences will happen widely.

Bezos: infinity resources, and beyond!

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos announced a plan to land on the moon in 2024 and after that life in space, get infinite resources etc. Bezos is clearly a fan of 1970s space habitats and no doubt will be pre-ordering Fred Scharmen’s book.

Newsletterbot wonders why it is so appealing to laboriously construct brand new space habitats rather than do the comparatively straightforward work of maintaining the space habitat we’re already on. Humans need dreams, but maybe it’s also that humanity likes looking at climate change and resources in reassuring ways that don’t confront capitalism. This was the newsletter last year, clearly being insufficiently farfetched:

2065: Bezos eventually admitted that the logical conclusion of capturing all consumer retail activity was to hand it back to people (“people are prime!”), and from his moon base Nueva Seattle he donated most of his shares to a Prime Co-operative.

Everything else

Facebook discovered a vulnerability in which an unanswered WhatsApp call to your mobile lets Bad People install spyware. Update your WhatsApp in your appstore of choice.

10% of national town centre retail is currently vacant.

Last week, we talked about shops inside your cars. Now, “Traffic Jam Whopper”: Burger King is now delivering Whoppers to your car when you're stuck in traffic.

"Microsoft’s Office is now a cloud-based service boasting more than 214 million subscribers who pay around $99 a year; it has more subscribers than Spotify and Amazon Prime combined." - bigger than many thought?

Is Asana making me more organized at work? No, no - must be the LSD - OK then. (Does the world feel so instrumentable these days that people naturally feel that everything should be tweakble and fixable? Related: nootropics.)

Teenagers trying to make phone call on ancient apparatus - funny. And now imagine future archaeologists trying to make sense of 2019. Related: David Macauley’s Motel of the Mysteries.

Co-op news

The Co-op Group annual general meeting is on 18 May.

Let’s tackle this taboo - on having difficult conversations about death.

Steve Murrells joins government’s Inclusive Economy Partnership - it focuses on transition to work for young people, mental health, and financial inclusion.

Why Co-op Digital writes a newsletter - someone banging on about their newsletter (hello beloved new readers!)

Events

Public events:

Manchester Word Press user group - Wed 15 May 6.30pm at Federation House.

Co-op Group annual general meeting - Sat 18 May at Manchester Central.

Andy’s man club #itsokaytotalk - Mon 20 May 7pm at Fed House.

Intro to Web app security: cross-site scripting - Mon 20 May 8pm streamed here.

User Research North: An evening with Jared Spool - Tue 28 May 6.30pm at BookingGo, 35 Fountain Street M2 2AN.

Internal events:

Mental health standup - Wed 15 May and Thu 16 May 10.30am at Fed House 5th floor.

Mental health drop-in - Wed 15 May 11.30am at Fed House 5th floor.

Data ecosystem show & tell - Wed 15 May 3pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Membership show & tell - Fri 17 May 3pm at Fed House 6th floor.

Co-op Group annual general meeting - Sat 18 May at Manchester Central.

Post-AGM colleague event - Mon 20 May 11am at the Atrium, Angel Square.

Delivery community of practice meet-up - Mon 20 May 1.30pm at Fed House.

Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 21 May 10am at Angel Square 13th floor.

Line managers' drop-in clinic - Tue 21 May 2pm at Fed House 5th floor.

CMO CRM show & tell - Tue 21 May 2pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Co-operate show & tell - Wed 22 May 10am at Fed House 6th floor.

Mental wellbeing drop-in - Thu 23 May 12pm at Fed House 5th floor.

Data management show & tell - Thu 23 May 3pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Membership show & tell - Fri 17 May 3pm at Fed House 6th floor.

More events at Federation House - and you can contact the events team at  federation.events@coopdigital.co.uk. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, clever and considerate readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s flunky @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

[lewepstein]

Just Plain Wrong

Picture an early morning scene in which a four year old boy is sitting alone in a large sandbox at a local playground.  His father is watching from a bench close by while his son surrounds himself with all of the many toys provided by the community to those who come there to play.  Since the child has arrived first, he has taken two tricycles and parked them in his imaginary “garage.”  He has also grabbed all of the sand toys- plastic trucks, shovels and pails - and placed them around himself in a large semi-circle.  Within the next half hour other adults and children arrive.  But the little boy doesn’t want to relinquish what he now sees as his possessions.  He refuses to share the tricycles, pails and shovels with the other children.  He believes that because he got there first he is entitled to keep everything for himself.  But even the five and six year olds who have just entered the playground are saying to their caregivers that what the boy is doing is “unfair.”

Most of us would agree that it would be just plain wrong for the father of the little boy to not insist that his son share with the other children.  It is obvious to all that the child  cannot use all of his accumulated playthings at once, and that his hoarding denies others the opportunity to enjoy their time at the playground.

The scene that I have just described is a pretty good description of economic life in America today and what we tolerate in our political culture.  You could say that we have been brainwashed to believe that society must be organized around the principle that whoever comes up with a scheme to grab all the toys for himself has the right to hold onto them forever.  But, isn’t the playground scene that I am describing also an apt metaphor for the three richest men in the United States having the combined wealth of the lower-earning hundred eighty million of our fellow citizens?  And is it really OK that a number of the corporations that these billionaires own and control pay no taxes, while some of their lower paid employees have to choose between spending their meager salaries on either prescribed medications or food?  This may sound a little like Charles Dickens’ nineteenth century novel, “ A Tale of Two Cities,” but it is also a portrait of America in the year 2019.  

Many of us have taught our children the virtues of sharing and even the four year old in the sandbox soon learns that it is just plain wrong to keep all of the toys for himself when there are others present who would enjoy using them.  In a similar vein, anyone who sees himself as an even modestly spiritual and moral human being or attends any church, synagogue or mosque is instructed to be generous and kind to others - nothing more than charity and compassion 101.  And yet, we as a nation tolerate fabulously wealthy drug companies getting away with a five fold mark-up of survival items, like epipens.  And as yet there has been no popular revolt against a health care system that allows insurance companies to use a business model designed to either deny or limit payments for treatments that they deem “too expensive,” “too experimental” or simply “unnecessary.”  In fact, it is the “fiduciary responsibility” to shareholders of those who work for these companies to maximize profits by offering less - not more - to those of us who are suffering from disease and are in desperate need of healing and support.  It doesn’t take a great ethicist or moralist to see that these practices are just plain wrong.

When and where did we lose our moral compass and come to justify this kind of greed?  Was it in the days of the American frontier when every male settler believed he could become a wealthy rancher, and to hell with everybody else?  Or is it in the still prevalent cowboy myth revived by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s that enshrines the notion that the only person I really need to look after is “number one” -  namely me - and that others must fend for themselves.  To me, this sounds like the type of “rugged individualism” that refuses to embrace an even bare-bones awareness that we are all in this together - each a part of a family, a community and a nation - every one of us a cog in a complex and interdependent multitude of connections, interests and needs.

Most of us get it that it would be wrong to start a bonfire on our front lawns even though it would be a quick and cheap way to dispose of garbage and old furniture and to avoid paying the fees of a pick up service.  And yet, we as a society tolerate one corporation or an entire industry’s decision to dump its sulphuric waste into the atmosphere which then dramatically affects the acidity of the rain needed to irrigate the crops that we all depend upon for our food supply.  We observe this same attitude with gun owners and the National Rifle Association when they demand and defend unlimited access to firearms even as our children are mowed down by deranged shooters who should never have been allowed to acquire that type of firepower in the first place.  It is this selfish, privileged and arrogant worldview that is so malignant when applied to our global village where everything and everyone is so profoundly connected - where global warming is threatening life on our planet and wealth inequality along with climate based crop failure is producing mass migrations of people of a magnitude that we have never seen before and leaving war, terrorism and political upheaval in its wake.

The American “four year olds” who are monopolizing the  toys in our collective playground have names.  They are  Jeff Bezos, Charles and David Koch, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg, among others.  They hide behind their corporate identities named Amazon, Exxon Mobil, Eli Lily, Lockheed Martin and Monsanto.  They are part of a powerful and privileged class of individuals and cartels who, in the short run are reaping tremendous benefits from capitalism’s cruelty, inequality and environmental degradation.  They will argue that they are charitable and willing to share, and they will occasionally even throw a toy or two to others, when it suits them.  But woe to anyone who actually says that society’s wealth and resources belong to everyone and that their hoarding must come to an end.

In terms of equity and sharing it would make sense that the privileged and the powerful would be reined in by true adults who had the interests of everyone in mind and saw fairness as their mission.  But, what we are getting today from those who are supposed to be representing us is  mostly complicity and compliance with what the wealthiest one percent want.  The most infamous of the complicit is named Mitch McConnell, a senator from Kentucky. But he is just one patriarch in two large families called the Republicans and the Democrats who both, insanely, take bribes from the privileged and powerful few they are supposed to be monitoring and are therefore completely beholden to them. Call them the billionaire class or the wealthiest one percent - they have come to hold tremendous authority over those who should be reining them in and leveling the playing field so that the rest of us can also have access to all that our wealthiest society in human history has to offer.    

Where once there was a counsel of wise adults who ruled judiciously on challenges to wealth and power, there are now a majority of  billionaire class collaborators whose names are Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. They give their stamps of approval to the status quo and cloak the power and privilege of the entitled one per cent  in the language of law.  Sadly, these biased arbiters of right and wrong get to occupy the same benches for the rest of their lives.  But the most pernicious and cruelest irony of all is that the current director of the playground is incapable of fairly monitoring those he is in charge of because he is a functional four year old himself.  The grasping and greedy Donald Trump lies constantly, operates without even the pretense of a moral code and is incapable of seeing the world beyond his own shallow self interest.   Like most children, he views any questioning of his ideas or actions as hostile acts and calls those who challenge him his “enemies.”  

If so much of what I have just described is just plain wrong, then how do we as a people make it right?  The answer begins with turning our moral outrage into energy and not being deterred by the predictable attacks that the playground bullies will level against anyone who insists that they share their wealth and privilege.  Bold, common sense programs like “The Green New Deal,” “Medicare for All,”  universal pre-kindergarten and childcare” an annual wealth tax and free tuition at public universities not only demand that wealth and resources be shared, but provide solutions for problems that our gilded age, laissez faire, market based system of economics has not been able to solve.  

The first major obstacle to introducing these types of programs into our current system is the tantrum that the one percenters have when asked to share their wealth - they will do anything and everything in their power to scare the hell out of us so that we reject any progressive programs along with the politicians who are trying to level the playing field:  This is what you can expect to hear:

“That program will be a job killer.”

“Don’t engage in ‘class warfare’”

“Beware of ‘too much government.’”

“You never want to lose your freedom of choice.”

“Just allow the ‘free market’ to do its thing.”

“Big government programs are too expensive.”

“Only the private sector ever gets things right.”

“Do you want to live in a ‘welfare state?’”

“Why tax the rich? We give millions to charity.”

“It will all ‘trickle down.’”

These arguments appeal to our fears and are not about facts.  Working class families are not free when they are struggling to pay for healthcare.  The so called “free market” is rigged and does not promote freedom when monopolies are driving the planet to extinction.  The much maligned “Welfare State” is now mostly about corporate welfare - the Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits  that we, the taxpayers pay to Walmart and McDonald workers who are not receiving a living wage.    

The bogeyman of  “too much government,” is really fear mongering about the government controls, oversight, regulations and taxation needed to rein in the excesses and dangerous practices of the  healthcare, pharmaceutical and energy cartels.  And to the argument that the Federal government never gets it right, I would argue: What about The W.P.A. in the 1930s that rebuilt our infrastructure and put the country back to work?  How about Social Security - called “creeping socialism” by the millionaire class of that era - and  Disability and Medicaid that even the conservative Tea Party members don’t want to give up?  And have you considered our Interstate Highway System and our National Park System, one built under Eisenhower and the other begun under Teddy Roosevelt? - both massive, big-government programs.  And what about our National Space Program that placed a man on the moon in the 1960s and Medicare, a government run health program for those over 65 that most people highly value?

When all else fails, the message from the  billionaires  and the politicians who are in their pockets is, “Watch out! Those who are pushing for Medicare for All and taxing our wealth  are socialists”.  Beware of the “red menace” and “don’t risk losing what you have.”  But, the reality is that only through massive, socialist, government sponsored programs like “The Green New Deal” and “Medicare for All” will the playground that we all live in become livable for all.    

Time is no longer on our side and a window is rapidly closing as the free market four year olds and their representatives continue trying to convince us that capitalism is freedom and that any and all attempts to redistribute and regulate their wealth and power is tyranny.  Unfortunately, the word “Socialism” may still be scary to many.  Perhaps, too revolutionary to view as a realistic solution.  But it is becoming increasingly clear to many of us with each climate disaster and mass migration that we may be facing a choice between Socialism and barbarism.

So let’s not allow the entitled and their hired hands to frighten us into believing that large common sense government programs cannot work in the United States.  And let’s not be scared off again by the words “Socialism” or “Revolution.”  It is Democratic Socialism that has provided a way of life that most European citizens swear by and are not willing to give up and it was a revolution against tyranny and unfair taxation that gave birth to our nation.  An unwillingness to uphold our country’s proud, revolutionary tradition in these critical times could turn out to be just plain wrong.

[newsbiteswithjennysok]

Aug 6, 2019

1. “Southern Charm” star Shep Rosewon’t back down after mocking a woman for collecting cans on the streets of New York. On Monday night, Rose posted a video making fun of a woman sitting on the street next to several trash bags filled with cans. Although the woman covered her face with her hands, he recorded her anyway and can be heard saying: “Look at me. Nice cans! I mean, the cans you have!” He captioned his Instagram story, “I love double entendres. Yes she was camera shy. But she laughed.”After Rose shared the video, social media erupted with backlash.

 One Twitter user screen-recorded the video and posted itto emphasize disappointment in Rose’s behavior, writing: “Is this Southern Charm? … Cheap way to get ‘laughs’ from followers but there is nothing funny about homelessness. I’m DONE w/ him.” 

Rose responded to the fan in her Twitter comments by saying: “Omg. I offended you! Ok. Here’s the plan, sensitivity training 5 times a week. Then intensive therapy (hot yoga?) followed by a public flogging in the town square. Then i move to Siberia and live in an igloo for 4 months. At this point. I think I’ll be cleansed of your disapproval.”

To another commenter who expressed upset, Rose, unbothered, wrote on Twitter, “Unfollow then. No big deal.” Rose also refused to clarify what he considered comedic about the situation. “Doesn’t matter. You follow me. You can easily get out of the situation. It’s not a binding contract. I am not responsible for your happiness. If i miss the mark in your mind just keep scrolling,” he said. 

Bravo declined to comment.

2. Cameron Diaz truly took the plunge when she married Benji Madden. In a rare interview, Diaz spoke to InStyle about her very private marriage to the Good Charlotte rocker. “I don’t know if I was ready [when I got married], but I knew Benji was special. He’s just a good man,” she told the magazine of their 2015 nuptials. “There’s no bulls–t. It’s really refreshing. I’m really grateful for him. I like doing my own thing.” Diaz, 46, also said her marriage to Madden was “the best thing” to ever happen to her. “My husband’s the best. He’s the greatest human being, and he’s my great partner,” she shared. “Marriage is certainly hard, and it’s a lot of work. You need somebody who’s willing to do the work with you, because there’s no 60-40 in marriage. It’s 50-50, period. All the time.” The former actress — she officially announced her retirement from Hollywood in March 2018 — previously said she waited until 41 to get married because she hadn’t found the right person.“I think it’s a matter of I just hadn’t met my husband, you know? I had boyfriends before. And there’s a really, really distinct difference between husbands and boyfriends,” Diaz told pal Gwyneth Paltrow at a live event. “And I have a husband who is just my partner in life and in everything. Talk about two very different people! We are so different from one another, but we share the same values — we’re totally two peas in a pod. We are both just weird enough for each other.”

3. Jeff Bezos ditched last week’s pretentious Google Camp in Italy to meet girlfriend Lauren Sanchez’s parents, but the couple has apparently now jetted off to Europe to party with the elite.Billionaire Dreamworks founder David Geffen — who attended Google Camp, even giving Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom a rideon his $400 million yacht — posted a group photo to Instagram Tuesday morning that included both Bezos and Sanchez aboard the massive boat. “Having a great time in the Balearics,” Geffen captioned the picture, taken off the coast of eastern Spain. Also in the photo were Joshua Kushner and supermodel wife Karlie Kloss, ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, agent Michael Kives and lawyer Lydia Gray Kives, and entrepreneur and oil heir Mikey Hess, who is reportedly engaged to Meghan Markle’s designer pal Misha Nonoo. Megayachts like Geffen’s — plus scores of private jets and gas-guzzling SUVs and sports cars — caused quite a stir at the three-day Google Camp, which was focused on climate change. Last week, instead of heading to the extravagant summit with the likes of Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey, the Amazon honcho, 55, met Sanchez’s parents, Eleanor and Ray Sanchez. A few days later, he joined Sanchez, 58, as her ex Tony Gonzalez, who is the father of her 18-year-old son Nikko Gonzalez, got inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in Ohio.

4. One of the few women to hold an executive post at Tinder is suing parent companies IAC and Match Group as well as former CEO Greg Blatt for wrongful termination. Rosette Pambakian, Tinder's former Head of Communications, claims that Blatt barged into a hotel room after a 2016 holiday party and began 'forcibly groping [her] breasts and upper thighs, and kissing her shoulders, neck and chest.' This all happened 'without [her] consent' according to the lawsuit She states in the court filing, which was obtained by DailyMail.com, that she had been hiding from Blatt at the time of the alleged assault, retreating to the room after he said: 'I get hard every time I look at you. Let's get out of here.' Pambakian claims Blatt did apologize, but that her complaint was never fully investigated despite the fact that there were three witnesses present, including his executive assistant. She also notes that one day after Tinder's current CEO Sean Rad reported her allegations to executive at IAC and Match Group, 'Blatt exercised approximately 5 million stock options in Match Group, realizing over $44 million in value.' Pambakian claims that for the next two years she was 'marginalized, subject to additional harassing, offensive, and insulting behavior, put on administrative leave, publicly accused of consenting to her attacker’s advances, and finally, wrongfully terminated by Defendants' this past December. 

The company would not comment on this new filing, and instead referred back to a previous statement that addressed these allegations.

'The Match Group Board – with the assistance of experienced outside counsel from two nationally recognized law firms – promptly conducted a careful and thorough investigation under the direction of independent Board members, concluded, among other things, that there was no violation of law or company policy, and took appropriate action.'

Pambakian and other Tinder executives sued Match and IAC seeking $2 billion a year ago for allegedly bilking them by manipulating financial information to create a lowball estimate of Tinder's value.

She also detailed the alleged assault in that filing, which the company stated was 'meritless.'

The suit states that she informed 'Blatt and Chief Human Resources Officer, Ms. Nelson, about the reporter’s inquiry' into the allegations, and that her 'own perpetrator' told her to instead 'explain the ways Tinder combats sexual harassment, and to throw the reporter off the story.'

Blatt was later asked to resign his post because of the assault according to Pambakian, who says that Blatt told her she would need to 'sign something' in order for him to be able to stay in his position.

At the time, she had just refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

She was placed on leave in August 2018 after she and other employees filed their lawsuit, and terminated on December 18 via email.

'Upon information and belief, Defendants terminated Plaintiff in retaliation for speaking out against Defendant Blatt for his sexual misconduct and for participating in a lawsuit against the Company Defendants related to her stock options,' states the filing.

'As a result of these actions, Plaintiff was forced to surrender millions of dollars in equity granted to her as compensation for her work as an executive at Tinder.'

Pambakian is seeking damages to be determined at trial for eight causes of action, including: Negligence, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Sexual Battery, Gender Violence, Ralph Act Violation, Negligent Misrepresentation, Wrongful Termination and Retaliation for Engaging in Protected Activity.

5. Tom Brady just finished his 20th Patriots training camp. The 42-year-old quarterback is taking this time to get his head back in the game while on a remote island in the Bahamas at a luxurious beach house with a fully-equipped gym and a practicing field. During his interview with Men's Health magazine, he spoke about getting ready for the next season, what he keeps in his fridge, and his pliability-focused workout routine.

Brady says he always starts with the massage table to get his muscles going for his workout. But while on the road, he never leaves home without his pliability roller.

'I use it always before my workouts—which is critical—and then always right after,' he said.

Then, he heads on over to the resistance bands and does drills such as squats, lunges, and some planks.

During his workout, he wore a shirt that said 'pliability' which he also said he 'does a lot of.'

The 16-time division champion says he tries to get in four to five workouts a week.

His favorite exercise? The butt blaster 'because it blasts my butt' and went on to say that he enjoys working out his legs. His glutes are his 'engine' which he adds he 'needs more of.'

[cryptnus-blog]

A blockchain startup buys a space startup in the weirdest corporate takeover of 2018 — Quartz

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/11/a-blockchain-startup-buys-a-space-startup-in-the-weirdest-corporate-takeover-of-2018-quartz/

A blockchain startup buys a space startup in the weirdest corporate takeover of 2018 — Quartz

Blockchain “venture production studio” ConsenSys has announced its acquisition of Planetary Resources—a space startup once focused on mining precious materials from asteroids—in an announcement that could set a record for meaningless buzzwords. (Please email if you have found better.)

“Ethereum smart-contract functionality is a natural solution for private-ordering and commerce in space—the only domain of human activity not ordered around territorial sovereignty—in which a diverse range of actors from a growing number of countries must coordinate and transact,” said Brian Israel, head lawyer for Planetary Resources.

ConsenSys was started in 2014 by Joseph Lubin, a cofounder of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency in circulation, and who recently wrote about the future of money for Quartz. ConsenSys, which has attracted many investment bankers, was recently was the biggest backer in Civil’s failed attempt to bring blockchain to journalism.

Planetary Resources was founded in 2010 as Arkyd Astronautics with a host of heavy hitters: Israel served in the Obama administration’s State Department office looking at the legal dimensions of outer space and CEO Chris Lewicki worked at NASA on the Mars rover. It was considered one of the hotter space startups at a time when Elon Musk’s Space X and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin were just starting to make noise. Google’s Eric Schmidt and  Larry Page were among its investors.

“This isn’t the 24th century in Star Trek, and it’s not the fantasyland of Star Wars,” Lewicki told Quartz in 2016. “We’re going to view the process of developing resources and mining asteroids with a lot of the same business principles, a lot of the same financial instruments and with a lot of the same investment dynamic and risk tolerance that we see… drilling an oil well.”

Both Lewicki  and Israel will join ConsenSys in what is being called an asset purchase, which likely reflects the fact that Planetary Resources failed to raise another round of funding earlier this year. What will they do there?

“Bringing deep-space capabilities into the ConsenSys ecosystem reflects our belief in the potential for Ethereum to help humanity craft new societal rule systems through automated trust and guaranteed execution,” Lubin said in the takeover statement. “And it reflects our belief in democratizing and decentralizing space endeavors to unite our species and unlock untapped human potential.”

OK, then.

[lindyhunt]

The Ultimate Guide to Marketing and Business Books

My parents, teachers, and coaches all instilled in me the importance of reading. Fiction or non-fiction, self-improvement or fantasy, reading supposedly makes us all smarter ... right?

Reading promotes creativity, gives us refuge from the “real” world, provides us with knowledge about any topic we want to know more about, makes us better writers, and inspires us. 

It just so happens that some of the most powerful business magnates in the world are also avid readers.

Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates are all self-proclaimed bookworms who attribute their success to reading.

Even billionaire Warren Buffett is said to read about 500 pages per day.

If some of the most successful people in the world credit their success to something as simple as reading, then why wouldn’t you give it a try?

Whether or not you aspire to become a billionaire, there are thousands of business and marketing books to help propel you towards your career goals. These books may just provide you with the inspiration you need to make your next — big or small — career move.

Business Classics and Fundamentals

These books provide an overview of broad business topics and give context for the way business is done today.

Business Adventures by John Brooks

Businesses need the right people on their team to successfully plan, implement, and carry out short- and long-term goals. The way team members and leaders react in both times of success and hardship will make or break their companies. 

Circling back to the influential billionaires I mentioned above, Bill Gates calls Business Adventures — which was a gift from Warren Buffet — one of the best business books he has ever read. 

The book tells the crisis and triumph of several prominent companies, including Ford Motor Company’s Edsel disaster, the rise of Xerox, and the GE and Texas Gulf Sulphur scandals. Brooks also details the stock market crash in 1962 and the chaos that ensued on Wall Street. 

Business Adventures is a must-read for anyone who is currently running, or aspires to run, a resilient business.

Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott

If you’re looking for a lighter read that provides applicable information on how to be a successful boss and colleague, then this New York Times Bestseller is for you. Scott uses her own experiences at Google, Apple, and other tech companies to provide examples of how to be a respected leader and encourage others to do their best work. 

Radical Candor shows readers how to build strong relationships in a work environment, create a culture of feedback, shape a connected team, and achieve goals everyone can be excited about. Scott is engaging, humorous, and provides readers with entertaining illustrations throughout the book. 

Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart

Ever hear that saying, “Money and power corrupt”? That’s what happened in the 1980’s when a group of elite Wall Street financiers were involved in one of the biggest insider-trading scandals in history. Stewart recounts the damage done and the punishments the criminals received after nearly destroying Wall Street. 

This book is a great option if you’re looking to read something informational but with some added drama and excitement. Den of Thieves is not a typical “how to” business narrative about ways to stay in control of your finances. It’s a real story about the dangers of greed and arrogance in business.

Pivot by Jenny Blake

Today, our careers are longer and a lot less predictable than they once were. Most people realize they won’t be doing the exact same type of work throughout their career. Additionally, many companies strive to help their employees find their career path even if it leads them elsewhere. 

Blake’s book helps readers arrive at the answer to the often complicated question, “What’s next in my career?” She describes her own career “pivot” and explains the importance of being adaptable, flexible, and patient when moving into a new role or company. Whether or not you know exactly what you want to do in the future, Pivot will teach you how to be smart about your next move.

Check out this blog to learn about another classic business read.

Management

CEOs, directors, managers, and even employees just beginning their careers can use these books to learn how to become strong and respected leaders in the workplace. 

The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen

Christensen drives his point home about the importance of strong leadership by citing some of the most successful CEOs and managers in history — such as Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. He argues that no matter what resources a company has, chances are it’s going to be hard to achieve business goals without the right people leading.

The Innovator’s Dilemma brings to light the issues that come with ever-changing technology and the impact it has on the leaders who cannot accept or keep up with these developments. 

Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra

Successful CEOs, directors, managers, and leaders aspire to be respected, liked, and impactful among other things. The issue is finding the balance between being a skillful leader that supports colleagues and employees and being able to complete their day-to-day work.

Ibarra draws on her own experience and explains how managers of all levels can make small changes to become successful, adaptable leaders. Most importantly, she teaches the reader to “think before you act.” This will allow you to create what she calls “outsight,” which is perspective gained from our own experiences. Ibarra will help you become a stronger leader through self-assessment and by creating a plan of action to learn through doing.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins

There are plenty of companies out there that are considered successful. They may have good investors, a solid group of promoters who love their brand and make enough money to sustain their existence. But what about the companies that are really killing it? Raking in the cash and growing exponentially in all forms? How did they get to where they are? How did they go from good to great?

This is the question that kept Jim Collins up at night. So he created an experiment — that lasted five years — to find out the common characteristics of 28 successful companies that made that leap from good to great. 

I won’t tell you his exact findings … that’s for you to find out on your own. But I will share something Collin’s said at the end of his experiment: “The key concepts discerned in the study fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” 

The Myth of the Nice Girl: Achieving a Career You Love Without Becoming a Person You Hate by Fran Hauser

OK, ladies — this one's for you. 

Hauser realized two things prior to writing this book: 1. There are few books available for women in business that detail the badass accomplishments other women are making on a daily basis, especially in positions that are stereotypically male-driven, and 2. There is a lot of misguided information about professional women that says, “if you want to be a female powerhouse in business, you have to be mean.” 

Enter: Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada.

And if you’re not mean, you must be a weak pushover … right? Not anymore!

Hauser teaches women that they don’t need to sacrifice their values, hide their real personalities, or be mean to become an impactful leader. She refers to her own experiences working in high-level leadership positions at major companies — such as Coca-Cola, Time Inc., and Moviefone — to explain these points.

The book gives readers real examples of Hauser and other successful businesswomen using kindness and authenticity to achieve greatness. Intelligent, driven, professional women of all ages will find this book refreshing and uplifting.

Finance and Investing

Managing your money doesn’t have to be scary or difficult. There are thousands of books that can help you learn to make better financial decisions no matter where you are in your career or financial journey. Here are a few to get you started.

The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel by Benjamin Graham

The Intelligent Investor, also known as the “stock market bible,” is considered a classic in the finance and investing field. It was published in 1949 and original copies can be found on used book sites for upwards of $1,500 a piece.

If you’ve heard of a technique called “value investing,” then you already know something about Graham’s book. The strategy encourages investors to create long-term plans to shelter them from significant error or damage.

The book has been updated since its original date of publication to keep it relevant for those picking up their first copy in the 21st century. Now, there is plenty of information on today’s markets that readers can mix with Graham’s classic lessons to stay on top of their finances and better understand the market.

Live It, Love It, Earn It: A Woman's Guide to Financial Freedom by Marianna Olszewski

Olszewski makes lessons about personal finance more interesting and fun by describing her own journey to financial security. Although this book is tailored towards the female reader, men and women can both learn something from savvy strategies that she and other powerful women mention — including designer Diane Von Furstenberg and Congressman Marsha Blackburn — used to reach financial success.

There are three main goals mentioned throughout the book for readers to focus on: 1. Say yes to yourself. 2. Fall in love with your money. 3. Act as if. This is a light read that gives readers applicable advice on how to achieve financial independence paired with relatable experiences to help them through the process.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

An international bestseller and the winner of more than five notable awards, Thinking Fast and Slow takes a hard look at two ways that humans think, which he calls systems. According to the author, system 1 is “fast, emotional, and intuitive.” System 2 is a bit slower, more deliberate, and logical. By understanding these systems, Kahneman tells readers about the ways we can take information and use it to shape our personal and work-related decisions. 

There are certain aspects of the two systems that should be focused on or avoided based on the environment and situation. Thinking Fast and Slow takes you through practical techniques that will help you uncover best practices in all situations.

Afterall, how are we supposed to successfully lead and help the people around us if we cannot first understand ourselves and the way we think?

Creativity

Everyone has a level of creativity — it’s just a matter of learning how to harness and apply yours. These books will teach you how to unlock and leverage your creativity in all aspects of your life.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

Grant’s book is all about taking the road less traveled. How can you improve the world around you and become the most successful version of yourself by going against the grain and trying something new? He also asks the question: “Can you really create and implement new ideas and policies regularly without risking your career, reputation, and more?”

Grant’s answer is “yes.”

His ideas about how to take a new idea, find people to support you, and implement your plan in a successful way are all backed by studies, experiments, and real stories. He even tells parents and teachers how they can work with children on ways to apply this method.

Originals reminds us all that being “different” can be scary at times, but pushing the status quo can also be what propels us towards our greatest successes. 

Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer

When I was applying to jobs out of school, I noticed how many descriptions said something along the lines of “creative-thinker required,” or “must be able to think outside of the box.” But these were such arbitrary ideas. And frankly, “think outside of the box” is such a cliché term without real meaning.

Author John Leher helps the reader define creativity. He asks deeper level, thought-provoking questions about how both imagination and epiphanies are measured. The book provides readers with ideas about how to apply creative strategy to any task.

My favorite point the book makes is that everyone possesses creativity. It’s a way of thinking, not a gene we are born with, or even a skill that we acquire. Some of us just need help uncovering and applying our creativity, which is exactly what Imagine will help you accomplish.

The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World by Nilofer Merchant

Merchant tells readers to stop making excuses about not being able to make a mark on the world. Yes, there is a seat at the table for you.

Thanks to innovation and technology, we all have the ability to mobilize new ideas almost instantly. The issue is that plenty of people push those thoughts to the side, or convince themselves that they are incapable of being successful at them.

The Power of Onlyness explains why this is a false notion and gives readers information on how to get their ideas rolling. Anyone can make a difference. The question is whether or not you’re willing to take that first step toward achieving your goal.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Remember when Kylie Jenner decided she was no longer a fan of Snapchat? This information spread like wildfire, and Snapchat’s stock lost over $1 billion in one day? All because Kylie’s fans care about her opinion oh so much.

 That’s the tipping point — when a trend, idea, or behavior builds to a certain point until it essentially “tips” or causes a big change. 

Businesses need to account for this phenomenon by buffering their sales and marketing tactics to avoid major disruption. Gladwell gives readers tactical ideas on how to buffer their businesses to avoid hitting a detrimental tipping point.

Biographies and Memoirs

Sometimes we just need a little bit of inspiration. These biographies and memoirs recount the lives of some of the most successful businessmen and women and how they reached their greatest achievements.

Success Never Smelled So Sweet: How I Followed My Nose and Found My Passion by Lisa Price

Price’s rags to riches memoir is an inspiring tale of a woman who was nearly bankrupt, took a leap of faith by starting her own business, and began grossing more than $2 million per year. 

As a child, Lisa loved fragrances and beauty products. When she hit her all-time low and only had $100 to her name, she realized that her love for these products could be her way out of debt. She created her own line of all-natural bath and beauty products that ultimately made her successful. But, more importantly, Price was successful because she loved what she was doing and was good at it. 

This is an inspiring and uplifting story about a woman who took action and changed her life forever — all from her home in Brooklyn. In her memoir, Price tells readers how difficult times do not define us, but rather it’s how we handle those times.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

Nike is an internationally recognized brand, but would you recognize Nike’s founder, Phil Knight, if he was walking down the street? 

He’s known as a shy man who isn’t necessarily a fan of the spotlight. The level of mystery behind the creator of the brand may be the reason Knight’s memoir became a New York Times Bestseller so quickly. 

The book details Knight’s beginnings as an entrepreneur when he set out with only $50 to try and import inexpensive, high-quality running shoes from Japan. He sold the shoes out of the trunk of his car while trying to kickstart his brand.

The book reminds readers of the ups and downs that come with starting and growing a business. There are people who will doubt you and try to sabotage you, and there are roadblocks that will make you wonder if it’s even worth trying to grow your company. But there are also times of triumph when you overcome your competitors and see the fruits of your labor. Knight’s memoir shows readers why it’s worth pushing through the tough, dark times to reach success.

Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business by Barbara Corcoran

If you’re a fan of the show Shark Tank, then you’ll know exactly who this next memoir is about. Corcoran tells her story of how she made it big. And it definitely wasn’t a walk in the park for this investor. She describes failing at 22 different jobs — yes, you read that number right.

When she found herself waitressing, she decided something needed to change. Corcoran borrowed $1,000 from her boyfriend and started a small real estate office in New York. She tells readers about the ways she built this tiny office into a $6 billion business using the lessons her mom taught her while growing up (moms really do know everything don’t they?).

Corcoran built her business from nothing, and now she’s a“shark” on a hit show. She wrote this book to highlight that anyone can have a success story.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson uncovered the truth behind the man who created one of the biggest brands in history: Apple. In a series of over 40 interviews — which took place over the course of two years — Isaacson wrote the story of what made Jobs such a force for change. 

Jobs had no control over what was written in the book and was not able to read it before it was published, which ensured that the information is accurate and raw. Isaacson also interviewed Jobs’ family members, friends, competitors, adversaries, coworkers, and acquaintances.

Jobs' exceptionally strong personality, often unpleasant leadership style, and intense way of life shines through in Isaacson’s writing. Readers get a microscopic view into his day-to-day and thought processes. The book also has little-known stories about this entrepreneur who transformed computers, laptops, phones, and so many other devices into what we know them as today.

Entrepreneurship

Have you always dreamed of starting your own company? There are countless books available to those who aspire to own their own businesses, as well as some for those who already do.

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

Everywhere you turn, a new startup is popping up on the market. People all over the world are finding investors and starting their dream companies. Unfortunately, not all of them succeed. In fact, plenty of startups simply fail.

Ries takes a look at why so many startups fail and how a lot of these failures are preventable. The Lean Startup offers a new approach to the way startups are built and launched to avoid failure.

The approach gives startups a way to test their vision and business plan continuously throughout the building process, adapt it to the feedback they are getting from real customers, and then adjust it before they reach the point of failure. This is a great book for anyone who has recently started a new business or has plans to start a business. The Lean Startup is a simple yet disruptive approach that will increase any new company’s chances of success.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

Have you ever noticed that the most successful people in life are often the ones that work hard, persist, and are also extremely passionate about what they do? Well, that winning combination is what New York Times bestselling author and psychologist Angela Duckworth calls “grit.”

Duckworth is a firm believer that anyone striving to succeed, no matter their age or professional status, needs a blend of long-term persistence and passion — not talent. She adds her own personal story to the book and mentions what it was like growing up with her father, a scientist, who often mentioned her “lack of genius.” Duckworth adds to the intrigue of the book by taking readers into the world of cadets working through their first days at West Point, teachers in some of the toughest schools in the country, and other inspirational anecdotes.

Duckworth gives readers insight on how to be persistent and find what they are most passionate about. And she shows readers that no matter who they are or where they come from, anyone can have grit. 

Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success: Discovering Your Gift and the Way to Life's Riches by Steve Harvey

Thanks to my brother, I have watched a lot of Family Feud. Although the game show is a bit goofy at times, I often find myself laughing at the comments made by the larger-than-life personality of host Steve Harvey. His outgoing, happy, and playful demeanor makes the show. But who is Steve Harvey? TV personality, millionaire, comedian? How did he become a household name? 

  Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success is a book for aspiring entrepreneurs. It gives readers insight into how anyone can achieve financial freedom and happiness. Harvey truly believes everyone has a gift given to them at birth and that we all just need to find ours.

The Power of Broke: How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage by Daymond John

And here’s another one for my fellow Shark Tank fans. John is one of the show’s hosts and the CEO of FUBU. He’s another entrepreneur who started with little money and successfully turned his company into a billion-dollar business. 

The Power of Broke takes readers through the story of John selling and promoting home-sewn shirts on the streets in Queens all on a $40 budget.

John draws on his own experience and the experience of other highly successful entrepreneurs who started their businesses with nothing. He explains why the best time to start your next venture may actually be when you have the fewest resources available — you’ll be forced to learn "the power of broke” quickly as success is your only option. 

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

Author and podcast producer Tim Ferriss is known for his extremely in-depth, two-to-three hour interviews. During these interviews, he dives deep into the minds of some of the world’s most successful business people, scientists, doctors, athletes, celebrities, and others.

Tools of Titans describes the best tactics, lessons, and tools that Ferriss learned from his interview subjects over the years. Ferriss says he has applied every tactic and method mentioned in the book to his own life to see what works for him — and what doesn’t.

Some of the questions Ferriss asks during his interviews include: What do you do in the first hour you’re awake in the morning? What is your workout routine and why? What books do you share with others? What supplements do you take daily?

Interviewing some of the world’s smartest and most talented people has provided Ferriss with life-changing information that he shares in this book to try and help improve others’ lives as well. 

Marketing

In a time where technology is ever-changing, marketers need to find new ways to target customers. These books provide marketers with a guide to some of the most classic tactics that are still relevant, as well as innovative ways to reach your target audience. 

Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith

Selling the Invisible a is straightforward, fluff-free marketing book that covers the specific tactics that help businesses to turn a prospect into a customer. The book describes how service marketing works to retain customers and turn them into promoters of a brand. The key lessons are: How to remain succinct and accessible to customers, how to keep an eye on the prize, and how to stay focused on the final goal of the customer.

Inbound Marketing: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah

*Insert clap for HubSpot’s talented co-founders here.*

As technology has changed over the years, so has the best way to market to customers. People have little tolerance for interruptive ads. Instead, you need to attract your target audience through helpful content that adds value to the relationship and builds trust.

Detailing the core tenets of the inbound marketing methodology, Halligan and Shah show you how to attract, engage, and delight your customers to increase engagement and grow your customer base. The book outlines important tactics, such as lead nurturing, blogging, email marketing, and others, and shows you exactly what you need to do to build a successful marketing strategy that turns strangers into promoters. 

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

To succeed as a business, you must eliminate your competitors. You also need a new idea that nobody has — something that really separates you from other brands. In other words, you need clear waters … a blue ocean.

This is exactly what the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy argue. Lasting success for a company means customers aren’t confusing your business with your competitors’ who have similar products and structures to your own. Your goal is to avoid being in the “shark-infested, bloody waters” and instead find your own calm and quiet blue ocean.

Kim and Mauborgne give readers tips on how to find new market space and make competitors insignificant.

Conclusion

Reading about other’s successes and failures will help you follow their example and avoid their mistakes. These books — and so many more — have the potential to help you advance your career, find your passion, and stay motivated. 

Just because you graduated from college, think you landed your dream job, or even retired doesn’t mean you should stop learning. So, log onto Amazon, hit up your local Barnes and Noble, or turn on that Kindle to find a book that peaks your interest and start reading.

[careerandmoneystoryteller]

Future Projects Freestyle Story

Start time 1109 am

Freestyle story completion time 1138 am

Future Projects Freestyle Story

           23 year old Mya Red is thrilled at the successful day she has had at work working at the Navy Lodge near the Norfolk Virginia naval base. Mya has had a fun day because after she got off work around 3 both her and close 43 year old friend named Bridget Douglas went together to a Cher concert.  Mya Red hops in the shower as the song What I Like About You by the Romantics comes on.  Mya Red thinks that it is a good thing that it is just her that lives in her one bedroom apartment that is less than 3 miles from the Norfolk Virginia Naval Base. This is because it is 1130 pm and she knows that her husband 35 year old Avery Red is about to go to drive home after working a late shift at Carmax in Virgnia Beach Virginia and he tells her that two of his friends from the Washington D.C. area want to come by next week and visit. M

Mya Red is guilty to have jumped out of the shower, thrown her bathrobe on and simply sat on the edge of her bed as her husband called in order to avoid keeping him waiting. Besides she has 2  seven year old twins that are about to be dropped off at her apartment soon as one of her sisters took them to the movies as her two twin boys Brett and Kai are close to their cousins. Mya Red was never close to any of her cousins growing up and she was determined to avoid repeating the mistake with her own twins and nieces and nephews. As soon as Mya Red, gets done with talking to Avery she notices that she is now sitting in a bright white and peach table while some type of graduation party is taking place.

           Mya Red knew that she wasn’t in Virginia but figured out that she must have went to sleep by accident as some of the guests congregating at this party looked like a who’s who from either the San Diego Comic Con or various humans and other type of beings at one of the bar settings in a Star Wars film. Just then, a woman who told Mya Red to call her Gail and resembling Charlize Theron with a platinum bob hairstyle admitted to Mya Red that she summoned her to this party as an answer to her prayers for greater wisdom and ideas for how she can move closer to living in alignment with her life purpose destiny.  Gail tugs at Mya Red’s shoulder to focus because Mya Red was momentarily distracted by the song Love Rollercoaster by Red Hot Chili Peppers being fashioned into a gigantic Roller Coaster  building that she somehow intuitively knew was 8 miles high and 3 miles long, a pink and peach building. Gail telepathically reads Mya Red’s thoughts long enough to briefly tell her that she is in the year 3475 in an astral realm of a world that is frequented by both living writers and visited by writers who already passed on as the building she is looking at offers classes to visitors in both creative and fantasy writing with fiction and mystical slants.

           Gail goes to explain to Mya I want to tell you more but your main male spirit guide who also loves your husband Avery gently advised me to avoid telling you on this visit and to encourage you to make the time to travel there on your own in the future. 5 seconds later, Gail lays some cards on the party table for Mya that she tells her to pick up from the table. Mya does as requested as she intuitively senses that Gail is only trying to help as right as she picks up the gold and white cards they fly up in the air hovering a foot above the table long enough for Mya to read the following;

Moderate internet exposure

Intent around making up mind where to live

Write andor communicate with celestial ally team daily and celestial/heavenly higher self

Regardless of external perceptions, looking into what you did right in the past to bring it into the future, this is understood by some of the most successful people who have now passed on. However, this statement must be emphasized because a multitude of well meaning spiritual gurus try to preach the opposite while overlooking that there are a wide number of people on earth who unintentionally ran away from their career futures and have to look back at the past in order to make peace with and become a part of that destiny again even in another form.

It is actually fine to pray to the universe for helping in seeking out destiny/life purpose as well as to grow wisdom because each person, regardless of their fame or obscurity has a wellspring of knowledge and karmic destiny to draw from with enough persistence to ask heaven for help and to use discernment when reaching out to the most benevolent and well intended people who would provide help, advice, andor guidance towards these goals.

           9 seconds later, Mya Red feels a gentle tug on her shoulder as her husband Avery came home and is playfully wrestling her. Avery explains that it is ok if she went to sleep for a little bit because this gave him time to talk to some of his friends on the phone and tuck their twins into bed.

 Resources

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/stage-names.php#.WTqvpOvyucw

Affirmations

I mark a new beginning in the book of my life and wisely use the free time I have been giving to rest and tune even deeper into various aspects of my life-spiritual, athletic goals such as walking more, balancing my writing time with some online courses I have enrolled in etc.

I am in the process of becoming more cool,level-headed, and wise when it comes to how I conduct myself around my current work colleagues and future coworkers as I am now logically and intuitively aware that some of them may follow me to where I may reside within 7 years from now or less regardless if I am a private sector andor a government/military worker/employee.

I am well provided for. I live in an abundant universe.

Resources and Affirmations

 My psychic abilities expand each day.

I am creating heaven on earth.

I Call Upon What I Imagine To Be The Influence of Benevolent Spirits From the Heavenly Realms, my higher self, and my celestial spirit ally team for creativity in both my writings and all other areas of my life both present and future

  What I Like About You Song by the Romantics

Love and Understanding by Cher

  The following are article and resources that I was thinking about using but decided to intuitively avoid using for today’s freestyle script and story and save for potential andor future references

I preface this comment by admitting from the get-go that my comment may be biased as I am a survivor of being raped as a child around the time I was around 5 or 6 years old. However, the difference was that my biological mother was the one who actually gave me to the rapist knowing what was about to happen. I only realized that this was not my fault until after my late adoptive mother took me in around the time I was 7 years old and helped me see that this was not normal for mothers to do. As a result, it will be nearly impossible for me to be an unbiased juror if they were making selections for child rape cases.  However, I am glad that the North Carolina mom alerted authorities right away to shield her daughter from further harm. If Brentley Jason Breyers is confirmed guilty then he needs to stay behind bars for life at a minimum without any chance of parole. A man that would harm a seven year old like that would most likely harm another child if given the chance during his current lifetime and so he must be kept away from any further children if he somehow slipped through the cracks and was paroled.  I do believe that some of the potential jury people that preside on Brently Jason Breyers case needs to be biological parents who care for their kids andor adoptive parents, at least part of the jury pool in order to increase the chances that Breyers gets a punishment that is fit for the violence that  he inflicted on a seven year old child’s soul. That seven year old girl will never be the same even if she gets the help she needs and if Breyers is found to have raped this girl then he must definitely be held accountable for what he did.

Mother comes home to find child covered in blood and saying she was sexually abused

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/mother-comes-home-child-covered-141000685.html

 As a woman who has enjoyed living in the Washington D.C. area since May 2010 along with my husband who also likes living in the Washington D.C. area (since June 2010) I have turned to multiple Washington D.C. area media sources such as Washingtonian magazine, Washington Post etc. I have been an online digital subscriber to the Washington Post (Sunday delivery edition) and I intend to reactive my subscription by this September or sooner. I notice that the Washington Post is popular to the point where I have an online digital subscription to the Virginian Pilot and they have a built in online digital option of subscribing to the Washington Post for certain subscribers of the Virginian Pilot. My point, even with President Donald Trump’s influence and fame, his actually referencing the Washington Post, whether positive or negative, actually benefits the Washington Post in further popularity. I reluctantly admit this yet even I can see it is partially because of Trump referencing them frequently from what is mentioned in this article. My point; as someone who has subscribed to the Washington Post before there are actually a multitude of informative articles that the Washington Post puts out and I have looked at articles from both Washington Post and the Washington Times to broaden my understanding of how various situations are viewed politically. My point-obviously Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants about Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Washington Post. However, Trump’s mere referencing of them whether positive or negative actually helps Washington Post’s popularity (coming from a woman who keeps an open to looking at both articles from the Washington Post, Washington Times, having an active online digital subscription of the Los Angeles Times, and having an online active digital subscription of the Virginian Pilot) .

Donald Trump thinks Jeff Bezos is his biggest threat

 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-thinks-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-biggest-threat-163316905.html

I have purchased magazines from Forbes before and there was a time in my life where I use to visit the Forbes website multiple times and so I am coming from a place of seeing the good in Forbes magazine when I comment on this yet I must say this; Forbes put out an informative list of jobs as I see even jobs such as nuclear power reactors and air traffic controllers have employment equivalents in the U.S. Navy. However, this is partially my point; Forbes has a list of good jobs it is just that these also look like jobs that may require some career experience. No, I did not work in the job fields available on the enlisted side in the navy that are equivalent to the nuclear power reactors as even I have some awareness of where I would be over-reaching. I chose to cross over to naval supply by June 2002 and passed up an opportunity to work in the intelligence field when an E-6 Intelligence Specialist came from the heart around 2001 to try to get me to consider a career field as an Intelligence Specialist, a decision that has cost me even to this day (not taking the E-6 Intelligence Specialist’s offer to mentor me towards working as an intelligence specialist) as obtaining supply jobs even in the Washington D.C. area are highly competitive. I have tried to be down to earth by simply trying to increase my income by aiming to stay at my current job while trying to pick up a related second job. However, the hiring manager affiliated with the related job interview for me to try for a second job seemed naturally conflicted about choosing me (I could see it on his face) when he sensed that I was hesitant to voluntarily leave my current job for his job and instead have his job as a second job if he selected me. In his defense, he was polite to me and willing to give someone a chance even if their experience was limited but I could sense that he wants either someone who is willing to voluntarily leave their job for his job andor someone who is looking for a job and is willing to step into that job with complete flexibility. My point-even when I listened to others by setting my sights on a practical level as advised by others I either run into an employer who is open-minded in giving someone the job just not as a second job andor an employer who prefers someone with either the experience andor prestigious career success. As a result, short of me trying to get a job overseas, I feel like the only other options are for me to look into further schooling and volunteering to make myself more competitive. In Forbes magazine defense I notice that they are doing their best to write articles that are tailored to both hiring managers and separate articles for job seekers. However, media articles are still scarce on job search catch 22’s-trying to get the jobs available  that are at least open to job seekers without the experience and education but require the prestige of career success andor willingness to be discreet about side hustle andor second job aspirations andor jobs where you do not have to hide aspirations for doing a legal side hustle andor second job but require experience. I realize that I only have myself to blame for this catch 22 that I unintentionally created as no one held a gun to my head and forced me to voluntarily leave a financially comfortable career in the U.S. Navy back in 2009 making at least 3 grand a month after taxes for career uncertainty. Additionally, I keep getting intuitive and logical promptings to consider applying to supply jobs in overseas federal job billets in either Africa, Europe, Asia etc. but I feel conflicted about following through with relocating overseas deep down partially because I see how content my husband is and I’m already aware from previous experience that a long distance marriage for greater financial security has both potential financial payoffs but also challenges to my marriage even with me being voluntarily child-free (I have nothing against parents or kids I am just describing my career profile that justifies at least my ability to relocate overseas if I ever took concrete action to do so). My point; Forbes has done both a well-meaning and good job with these article of jobs that do not require a 4 year college degree but even a woman like me knows that for most of these jobs the hiring manager will only give you the time of the day if your experience at least somewhat matches these jobs.  I reluctantly accept that I might die before completely paying off my student loans but I am more at peace and accepting of that reality now as compared to not being as accepting of that potential reality back in May 17, 2017. However, this does not stop me from still trying to do what I have to career wise to repay my student loans by 2035 or sooner (which is why this article reminds me why I must comb through the volunteer opportunity kindlebook that I purchased through Amazon within the next 26 hours or less of posting this comment).

The Best-Paying U.S. Jobs Requiring No Bachelor Degree [Infographic]

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/07/25/the-best-paying-u-s-jobs-requiring-no-bachelor-degree-infographic/#89ebce129018

 Resources

volunteer opportunities

Read Bruce Lee's Inspiring Letter to Himself

bruce lee letter template

by Blog Author on Mon, Mar 18, 2013

   https://www.dramafever.com/news/bruce-lees-definite-chief-aim-will-inspire-you/

https://us-keepexploring.canada.travel/#WhereToGo

Canada Travel Website

Together song by the Pet Shop Boys

My psychic abilities expand each day.

I am creating heaven on earth.

I Call Upon What I Imagine To Be The Influence of Benevolent Spirits From the Heavenly Realms, my higher self, and my celestial spirit ally team for creativity in both my writings and all other areas of my life both present and future

Even as a mixed race woman, it is hard for me to comment on articles such as this because there is always a risk that you might offend andor hurt someone even if you did not intend to do so. Additionally, I have four family members who have children with at least partial African American ancestry or greater and so I want to be especially careful about what I say in case any of them look up andor see what I write online when they are older. However, I must share this; from the time I was 7 until I was 19 years old from the part of 1988 to June 2000 (with the exception of part of 1997 and part of 1998) I lived in Calumet City Illinois which is an area that was over 85 percent African American and many of the Caucasian women that I saw sporting what would be considered “ethnic” hairstyles were doing so from what I can tell as a show of respect andor admiration of African American culture. What this has to do with the article of Ice T’s wife Coco is that I truly think that she probably admires the way she has seen some women of color wear braids and I think that Coco was probably just rocking this style as a show of respect and admiration to Black female culture.

Ice-T Addresses Allegations of Wife Coco’s ‘Cultural Appropriation’

By Cindy Arboleda

https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/ice-t-addresses-allegations-wife-cocos-cultural-appropriation-192942521.html

https://www.visitnorfolk.com/articles/post/where-to-find-live-music-norfolk/

Welcome to the Hotel Californian

 http://robbreport.com/travel/hotels/welcome-to-the-hotel-californian-2724096/

Map: Where to Find the Best Inexpensive Restaurants in the DC Area

 https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/07/21/map-find-best-inexpensive-restaurants-dc-area/

I admit that I feel blessed to have seen this article in my facebook feed and I'm starting to do a related plan out of necessity because it helps both my husband and I to stretch our food supply without feeling deprived and it helps us save more money and time. I am more or less keeping this success story article as a form of support and positive reinforcement.

A former stockbroker turned personal trainer tells us why eating 2 meals a day is the best way to lose weight and feel less hungry by Rosie Fitzmaurice

 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-2-meal-day-diet-plan-max-2017-7?utm_content=bufferfb689&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-bi

I so relate to what this writer says as my husband Rusty and I have a close marriage (tomorrow will mark us being married for 13.5 years) but we do not have anything against parents or kids. Additionally, I have been blessed to have a husband who loves me and cares for me regardless of how much money I make and even after my physical appearance changed (I say this because I admit that I look different from the 119 pounds I was when I first met him in 2002). It is just that the writer put her thoughts on marriage and being questioned about kids in a compassionate and open-minded way. I especially like the part where the writer admits that she has dreams and goals like everyone else and sees the good in both parents and kids but understands that adopting andor having kids is not a decision to take lightly.

11 things I wish you knew about my child-free marriage

 http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/family-relationships/11-things-i-wish-you-knew-about-my-child-free-marriage/ss-BBDvBnk#image=11

7UP BISCUITS

 https://www.7up.com/en/recipes/7up-biscuits

Eric Dane Is All Smiles With Family at First Public Event Since Depression Battle Reveal

by CORINNE HELLER | Sun, Jun 4, 2017 12:01 PM

 http://www.eonline.com/news/858882/eric-dane-is-all-smiles-with-family-at-first-public-event-since-depression-battle-reveal

http://onlinevirginia.net/?utm_source=AdRoll&utm_medium=Banner_ad&utm_campaign=OVN_July2017-June2018&utm_content=Logo_ODU&utm_term=One_Place

I use to own a mazda3 car from part of 2007 and part of 2008 during my time in the navy but I voluntarily gave it to Carmax up for practical reasons. Obviously, I miss having a car and I intend to repurchase another car by December 2020 or sooner. My point, even if a certain career choice is going to raise your car insurance I feel that it is better to go ahead and take a chance on a certain career, regardless of what other well meaning people may say, if you logically andor intuitively see that the career choice would more than allow the ease in owning a car as well as paying off in different/other multiple positive ways even if you have higher insurance in the meanwhile. I admit that I am a little biased because if I knew then (in 2008 when I voluntarily gave up the mazda3 to a Carmax in Virginia Beach Virginia)what I know now I would have kept my mazda3 car as the car had good gas mileage and allowed both my husband and I multiple freedoms that even excellent public transportation cannot compare to.

 Lifestyle

Your job could be doubling your car insurance payment — here are the 5 career choices that cost the most

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/job-could-doubling-car-insurance-110900151.html

Your job could be doubling your car insurance payment — here are the 5 career choices that cost the most

·        Lindsay Dodgson

 ·         

·        Jul. 20, 2017, 7:09 AM

·        1,559

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-job-influences-car-insurance-2017-7

7 Must-Try Classics for DC Restaurant Week

Written by Anna Spiegel | Published on August 12, 2016

https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/08/12/7-must-try-classic-restaurants-for-dc-restaurant-week/

 5 Surprising Secrets From Your Favorite Restaurants, Revealed by Employees

 http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/restaurantsandnews/5-surprising-secrets-from-your-favorite-restaurants-revealed-by-employees/ss-AAovPT6?li=BBnb7Kw#image=2

5 Surprising Secrets From Your Favorite Restaurants, Revealed by Employees

July 20, 2017 by ERIN CULLUM

https://www.popsugar.com/food/Chain-Restaurant-Secrets-Revealed-43770082

I’m neither a fan or a hater of Sean Spicer, yet even I knew that he had a tough job with trying to help President Donald Trump with the multiple controversies that were coming up. Additionally, when I spotted a yahoo story online less than 12 hours ago about Anthony Scaramucci being selected as White House Director I actually wondered and commented about President Donald Trump going with an outside selection instead of an internal pick. Sean Spicer is a public affairs officer affiliated with the United States Navy so he most likely is going to have an easy time finding another public relations/communications related job.

Sean Spicer has resigned as White House press secretary

By Hunter Walker

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sean-spicer-resigned-white-house-press-secretary-161152671.html?soc_trk=gcm&soc_src=dd114874-7083-393e-8bf1-0ac1f74868c1&.tsrc=notification-brknews

Sean Spicer resigns as White House press secretary: Report

 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/21/sean-spicer-resigns-as-white-house-press-secretary/

I admit to having a concern to consistently paying at least the minimum andor at least a nominal amount agreed with my student loan providers (affiliated with Sallie Mae and Great Lakes) on my student loans by the end of this year or sooner. However, my higher priority, regardless of how I may be perceived for admitting this is to build up at least a two months or more of the equivalent of my after tax paychecks by December 2017 or sooner.

This is what keeps millennials up at night by Abigail Summerville

 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/keeps-millennials-night-140530372.html

This is what’s keeping millennials up at night

·        More than half of young people view their financial situation as their most pressing personal matter.

·        Their number one priority is paying down debt.

Abigail Summerville | @summervillea19

 http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/20/this-is-whats-keeping-millennials-up-at-night.html

Discover Eight Natural Wonders Of Virginia

 https://blog.virginia.org/2014/05/natural-wonders-virginia/?utm_campaign=FB0717&utm_content=wondersva

SUMMER PACKAGES

https://www.virginia.org/summerpackages/?adref=FB0717summerdeals&utm_campaign=FB0717&utm_content=summerdeals

This Woman's Richer Than Oprah — All From Selling Pizza

http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodculture/this-womans-richer-than-oprah-%E2%80%94-all-from-selling-pizza/ar-AAos7pb?li=BBnb7Kz

California Cruise website

http://www.princess.com/learn/cruise-destinations/california-coastal-cruises/?cid=bm_display_display_acn_cali2_mtraveler_na_aop_homepage_728x90_na

30 Acres of Sunflowers Are Peaking Now at a Maryland Wildlife Habitat

Written by Sherri Dalphonse | Published on July 20, 2017

 https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/07/20/30-acres-of-sunflowers-are-peaking-now-at-a-maryland-wildlife-habitat/

 Resources

My psychic abilities expand each day.

I am creating heaven on earth.

I Call Upon What I Imagine To Be The Influence of Benevolent Spirits From the Heavenly Realms, my higher self, and my celestial spirit ally team for creativity in both my writings and all other areas of my life both present and future

 http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/stage-names.php#.WTqvpOvyucw

Affirmations

I mark a new beginning in the book of my life and wisely use the free time I have been giving to rest and tune even deeper into various aspects of my life-spiritual, athletic goals such as walking more, balancing my writing time with some online courses I have enrolled in etc.

I am in the process of becoming more cool,level-headed, and wise when it comes to how I conduct myself around my current work colleagues and future coworkers as I am now logically and intuitively aware that some of them may follow me to where I may reside within 7 years from now or less regardless if I am a private sector andor a government/military worker/employee.

I am well provided for. I live in an abundant universe.

 Despite the date, I intend to keep this uplifting and helpful article for my present and future reference.

A simple activity can help you feel happier and healthier

·        Tanya Lewis

 ·         

·        Dec. 1, 2015, 5:57 PM

·        16,929

  http://www.businessinsider.com/volunteering-helps-you-feel-happy-and-healthy-2015-12

All You Need To Know About USS Gerald Ford

https://www.yahoo.com/news/know-uss-gerald-ford-104816349.html

  I’m neither a fan or hater of Mindy Kaling as I understand that she is very accomplished career wise and money wise but I wanted to comment because I seem to be in the minority if I say this but I do not believe that she slept around prior to becoming pregnant. I understand that it is not my place to judge even if she did but something tells me that Mindy Kaling is actually very understandably selective about who she romantically becomes involved with/sexually intimate with. I believe, and once again I prefer to avoid judging, that Mindy Kaling does know who the father of her baby is but is probably keeping it under wraps because at the time they got together things were only meant to be casual (maybe a friends with benefits situation andor a romantic union with little expectation of marriage). The father of her baby may or may not have been involved with someone else at the time of the union-once again I choose not to judge because Mindy Kaling’s career wealth and financial success puts her in a different world of romantic temptation that many people may find unusual andor unheard of. Mindy Kaling, prior to her union, probably could not get pregnant for years even when going without birth control and so it might have still took her by surprise even if she secretly planned it as it is common knowledge that there are many wealthy, successful, and accomplished couples and/or single people who try to naturally conceive children for many years without success.  However, Mindy Kaling could be naturally keeping it secret because maybe the father of her child, regardless of his relationship status, is a wealthy andor powerful man (career or money-wise) and Kaling wants to keep things discreet and under wraps more to protect both their child andor maybe, even if they are no longer romantically together, she wants to create an environment where it is safe  to see his child away from the glaring public eye (that would naturally come with Mindy Kaling’s fame and fortune as she is a high profile celebrity). Another article has Mindy Kaling living in a nice house in Los Angeles California and so at least on the positive side, regardless of who the father is, both Mindy Kaling and her child are most likely always going to have some semblance of financial security.

 Mom-to-Be Mindy Kaling 'Is Not Telling Anyone, Not Even Close Friends, Who the Father' of Her Baby Is: Source

https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/mom-mindy-kaling-apos-not-190032094.html

 See Inside Mindy Kaling’s New Home in Los Angeles and Find Out Why She’s ‘Too Afraid to Go Upstairs’

 http://people.com/home/mindy-kaling-los-angeles-house-tour/

 FAVORITE SOOTHING SWIMMING HOLES

https://www.virginia.org/swimmingholes/

  Save The Dates: The Can’t-Miss Festivals Of 2017, Part 3

by Patricia Keppel | Posted: Jan 28, 2017

 https://blog.virginia.org/2017/01/cant-miss-festivals-2017-part-3/?utm_campaign=fy17-vtc&utm_source=trade-desk&utm_content=fy17_1280&utm_medium=media

This is another article where I am both intuitively and logically aware that I may be in the minority for saying this but I do feel that Katy Perry is actually telling the truth when it comes to her saying that she actually wants the best for Taylor Swift. I do believe that it can be possible for professional andor personal rivals andor critics of each other (whether men or woman)to also secretly see at least some positive facets in what the other person is doing. Of course,  it is common knowledge that over 90 percent of the time, a man or woman’s rival is not going to publicly admit if they secretly admire any aspect of what their enemy andor rival is doing. However, many people who have listened to music from both Katy Perry and Taylor Swift can intuitively andor rationally sense that there is a secret interest in each other’s work even if both women may understandably not always want to publicly admit it as such. Obviously, I feel that both Taylor Swift and Katy Perry put out some creative and fun songs. This article proves that Katy Perry is trying to publicly put out an olive branch and  maybe does mean it when she said that she never meant to continually hurt Taylor Swift and now wants to make amends. Obviously, only time is going to tell if Katy Perry and Taylor Swift reunite as friends.

 Katy Perry Says She's 'Always Loved' Taylor Swift Despite Their 'Differences'

https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/katy-perry-says-she-apos-122400056.html

 Each of these pictures featured in the Town and Country affiliated article of See Inside Jackie Kennedy’s Park Avenue apartment have a colorful quality about them that help a person easily imagine what it might feel like even just visiting any of these rooms. However, as a Madonna fan picture 10 easily caught my attention, and pictures four  and seven popped out at me as well.

  See Inside Jackie Kennedy's Park Avenue Apartment

Town & CountryJuly 18, 2017

 https://www.yahoo.com/style/see-inside-park-avenue-apartment-154601937.html

First look at Disney's new 'Star Wars land'

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-entertainment-news-updates-july-first-look-at-disney-s-star-wars-land-1500054145-htmlstory.html

 Here's Everything You Need to Know About Disney World's New Skyliner System

https://www.popsugar.com/smart-living/Disney-World-Skyliner-System-Facts-43766537

songs

The Voice by the Moody Blues

Whatever it Takes by Imagine Dragons

Take Control by DJ Bobo and Mike Candys

I’ll Make You Feel Good by K7

Crank It Up by David Guetta feat. Akon

Who’s That Chick by Rihanna feat. David Guetta

Fancy by Iggy Azalea

Come on Get Higher by Matt Nathanson

My House by Flo Rida

I Won’t Give Up by Jason Mraz

Only Girl in the World by Rihanna

Dance Pop Radio Pandora

Creative output utilizing Amazon music

Crush by Jennifer Paige

Genie In A Bottle by Christina Aguilera

She’s So High by Tal Bachman song length 344

Inspiration to write this freestyle story by 6 am or sooner after getting up with my sweet and amazing husband Rusty Ridler.

I see the good and positive in all areas of my life and seeing how my challenges are actually beneficial opportunites. I am also making progress in all areas of my life both present and future.

Navy SEAL monument dedicated at Virginia Beach Oceanfront

·        By Stacy Parker  The Virginian-Pilot

·        38 min ago

 https://pilotonline.com/news/military/local/navy-seal-monument-dedicated-at-virginia-beach-oceanfront/article_5ef87076-5340-58bf-9156-d95dd0559379.html

Virginia Beach teen, just days after enlisting as Marine, makes modeling debut at N.Y. Fashion Week

·        By Jamesetta M. Walker  The Virginian-Pilot

·        Jul 20, 2017 Updated 7 hrs ago

 https://pilotonline.com/life/fashion/virginia-beach-teen-just-days-after-enlisting-as-marine-makes/article_a66249ac-e8eb-5a7f-9fdb-ccb4e2e8ef5a.html

https://seaworldparks.com/en/buschgardens-williamsburg

Busch Gardens Williamsburg Virginia

 My husband Rusty and I use to live in Norfolk Virginia from part of 2008 until part of 2009 (as I was stationed on the USS Eisenhower) so naturally this article on Naval Station Norfolk’s First 100 Years by Courtney Mabeus is going to catch my attention. I remember being on the Eisenhower and working alongside multiple civilian workers who had various jobs dealing with the Eisenhower (even during moments of various people hauling food stores onto the ship). During my time living in Norfolk Virginia, I remember the base being huge and the city itself expanding to accommodate a growing population. I am sure that this is still the case today ( of the city itself expanding and probably the Norfolk Naval Base as well).

Naval Station Norfolk's first 100 years: World's largest navy base anchored to community

  https://pilotonline.com/news/military/local/naval-station-norfolk-s-first-years-world-s-largest-navy/article_f0fbc138-f60f-5ec8-b138-a00928b18f0b.html?__vfz=profile_comment%3D1877300009259

 Contiki Europe Website

 http://www.contiki.com/deals/last-minute/europe?utm_campaign=summersalelmds&utm_medium=display&utm_source=adara&utm_content=ap-300x250-2017

 The build your own bowl menu idea that is at this Satuli Canteen restaurant and affiliated with Disney sounds interesting.

 First off, I happen to be a person who just wants to be the best in her current job so I admit that I do not share Bevan’s goal to have her boss’s job. Additionally, I am blessed to work for some fair managers and a fair boss at my job yet I still would not want to do any of their jobs anytime soon for practical concerns that I’m aware that I have much more to learn and improve upon as a non-manager employee at the job I currently have. With that out of the way, I am still glad that Forbes and Liz Ryan shared this article with me as my husband is dedicated to his current job and easily sees himself as a manager at his current job one day so I can at least refer to this article for him through Bevan’s case study. However, I do not always agree with everything Liz Ryan says  in some of her articles. Yet, even I have to admit that Liz Ryan has it right and is only trying to help when she tells Bevan that she needs to wait a while longer before having that discussion with Charlize. Liz Ryan knows what she is saying when she advises Bevan to get to know Charlize more before even coming close to discussing her career ambitions as a boss. For starters, I know from experience that it is human nature for even other females to only help out other females in the workplace if they could see that person as friendship material. I prefer to avoid getting into the debate of this but what this has to do with Bevan’s interest is that she needs to make sure and for certain that as Liz Ryan puts it, Charlize would feel encouraged to train her as a backup boss. Then there are the logistics of what do the other managers think of Bevan in addition to Charlize. I know that this is an obvious question yet it is obvious even to a woman like me that Bevan may want to search herself and make for certain she still wants to be boss after getting to know Charlize andor any other managers and bosses at her job that are on the same level professional wise Charlize andor higher. As I say again, Liz Ryan is only trying to help Bevan in this situation. Kudos to Bevan for succeeding in her job yet I concur with Ryan that she needs more time to get to know Charlize and other managers (at least 6 more months to a year at a minimum) before throwing her professional hat in the ring to be invited to her professional table of preference as a boss. 

  Lifestyle

I Want My Boss's Job -- Should I Tell Her?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/eabdd991-66a8-3a0b-b30f-962cbd709249/ss_i-want-my-boss%27s-job-.html

 I Want My Boss's Job -- Should I Tell Her?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2017/07/17/i-want-my-bosss-job-should-i-tell-her/#5f0e35655835

30 Under 30 in PR for 2017

http://www.prweek.com/article/1439618/lot-fun-churn-burn-millennials-pr-life-30-30-2017?utm_content=buffer89780&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

9 of the most successful people share their reading habits

 http://www.businessinsider.com/what-successful-people-read-2017-7/#warren-buffett-1

 http://www.jacuzzi.com/hot-tubs/request-brochure/?s_cid=7149&kw=&gclid=COaMwbzgmNUCFcVXDQodlyEJVw

 10 Fun Food Events Around DC This Weekend

Cool off with frosé snow cones and tiki cocktails

 https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/07/20/10-fun-food-events-around-dc-this-weekend/

  10 Stunning Lakes In Virginia For Outdoor Adventure

 https://blog.virginia.org/2017/04/stunning-virginia-lakes/?utm_campaign=FB0517&utm_content=StunningLakes

  Top Chefs Of Virginia: Brust, Close-Hart, Evans

by Patrick Evans-Hylton | Posted: Dec 23, 2014

  https://blog.virginia.org/2014/12/top-chefs-of-virginia-brust-close-hart-evans/

 In a military kitchen, female chefs show guts and glory

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-a-military-kitchen-female-chefs-show-guts-and-glory/2016/06/06/ca3d569e-2843-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html?utm_term=.e42fff13907c

Mystic Bay Queen Storage Bed

Queen Storage Bed!

 https://www.mybobs.com/shop-the-look/coastal-cottage/mystic-bay-queen-storage-bed

  a great financial comeback story

 from the pop sugar website  I would not dare judge Lena Headey for her personal life, but I do believe that I can turn around my financial life and still

stay married to my amazing husband Rusty. Her positive and inspirational comeback story gives me hope that the 2020s can be the decade where I live much financially

wealthier and successful-career and money wise.

  What Is the Net Worth of the Game of Thrones Cast?

 July 19, 2017 by GOBANKINGRATES

https://www.popsugar.com/career/photo-gallery/43753357/image/43753370/Lena-Headey-Net-Worth-9-Million

I have to admit that Eva Longoria looks extremely and highly happy/cheerful in these photos. The one picture of her kissing her husband shows how much in love with him she is and she looks radiant in her photos. From my viewpoint, she proves that a woman can still look good in her 40s, an inspiration to a woman like me in her 30s. https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/eva-longoria-shows-off-bikini-230000717.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tu

https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/eva-longoria-shows-off-bikini-230000717.html

 I can only speak for myself but the caveat with this list is that it may not take into account people with student loans who intend on decrease what they owe in the long-term but are just working out consistent income challenges in the short term. Additionally, this list may not obviously take into account both if the men and women of these student loans have been out of school for at least 10 years or if this amount is just under five years. I say this because even with both my challenges and blessings, I do believe and intend to increase my income by the year 2023 or sooner. However, far too often, it is human nature for many people to just look at how someone is doing financially when it has only been less than five years since they graduated college when there is a highly probable chance that the same person or people that they are looking at who make a certain income level are also going to most likely at least double andor triple their income within the next 10 years or less of getting their first bachelor’s degree that accompanies their student loans. It is challenging for me to even share what I just did because I am aware that friends andor family members of student loan employees/collectors are going to judge someone like me and I’m emotionally prepared for it. My point; more indepth studies need to be done on the percentage of student holders who are carrying their balances until they are able to raise their income levels to a level that would allow them to repay back their student loans around 15 years or less. After all, there are some people who do not pay the minimums on their student loans not because they don’t want to but rather for some people more time is needed to work out a situation where they can be selected andor qualify for certain career paths that help facilitate adequate student loan repayment to at least meet the minimum demands of Sallie Mae (private student loans) andor federal student loans affiliated with the Department of Education.

Student loan debt has grown 250% in the last 10 years — here's where grads owe the most by Emmie Martin

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-debt-grown-250-000000611.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tu

   'GMA' Deals

Tory's summer fashion and beauty picks

   Trump expected to name Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director

 https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-expected-name-wall-street-financier-anthony-scaramucci-030734049--abc-news-topstories.html

I'm actually surprised by how soon Anthony Scaramucci is picked so soon after Mike Dubke left his post and I'm also surprised that Donald Trump did not do an internal pick for this position of new White House Communications Director. Maybe Scaramucci will surprise yet something makes me wonder why Donald Trump did not hire from within for this position.

 I’m willing to bet that Trump Legal Team spokeman Mark Corallo knows more a great deal about what is going to happen behind the scenes that maybe even President Donald Trump himself. Mark Corallo is probably voluntarily and obviously leaving while he can in order to leave on the best terms.

Trump legal team spokesman Mark Corallo resigns

 https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-legal-team-spokesman-mark-corallo-resigns-022504443--abc-news-topstories.html

 Jacuzzi

http://www.jacuzzi.com/hot-tubs/request-brochure/?s_cid=7149&kw=&gclid=CM_DhIS7mdUCFY-Eswod_20OCA

 Fortunately, the articles that I am seeing from Cheat Sheet from my yahoo newsfeed are getting better and more informative to my personal situation. I respectfully disagree with some of these principles as I personally know a kind person from my job who is naturally thin and she at least admitted to me that she pretty much eat what she wants. However, she does wisely moderate her portion sizes even when she eats what she wants, something that has helped me with my weight guilt-free that I am glad she generously shared with me. Also, I know that Carick means well about the number of meals to eat in a day, but my husband has been the main breadwinner in the family for quite a while since late 2015. I feel blessed that my husband loves me even at my current weight and he loves me regardless of what other people think of me and the amount of money that I bring in. This is a big deal to an American born woman like me because I was only 119 pounds when we first met and I'm aware that I'm lucky that my husband still sees the beauty in me despite my physical appearance obviously changing with my weight. It is just that moderating how much I eat rather than concerning myself with how many meals to eat in the day has helped me be more resourceful and resilient when it has been necessary to live on just my husband's income. My point; more information is needed for men and women who eat just one or two meals per day more for practical reasons even if that is different from the usual six meals espoused by many popular diets that are well-meaning but overlook that some people have to learn to get by on less food in order to have a better chance at saving more money and padding a savings account. However, I am grateful that Evie Carick emphasized about putting yourself first, especially putting the exercise and food planning earlier in the day, this tip alone is something that has been popping in my intuition and logic mind more frequently and I feel blessed to see it confirmed with this article. Overall, despite some of my misgivings Evie Carick did write both an informative and motivational weight loss article for me to keep in mind.

Health

6 Secrets From People Who Are Effortlessly Skinny

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/9f64b73f-f589-39fd-9735-01655bdd469d/6-secrets-from-people-who-are.html

6 Secrets From People Who Are Effortlessly Skinny

 https://www.cheatsheet.com/health-fitness/secrets-from-people-who-are-effortlessly-skinny.html/5/

 I reluctantly confess that drinking more water is an obvious habit I need to get more consistent with, and I am glad that this writer Maria Del Russo of Refinery 29 shared her candid story about how she stuck with increasing her water intake even with dealing with temptation such as when she went to a party with a friend who works in public relations where wine was free flowing.I fortunately have both time and privacy to be more consistent and frequent with my water intake but my challenge is encouraging myself to be more consistent with liking the taste of tap water and lemon juice frequently enough to drink the minimum of 80-90 ounces minimum of water that my body needs. However, after reading this article I am inspired to increase my water intake to aim for at least 85-90 ounces of water or more each day even if I have to have some fruit cups andor fruit cans nearby in order to make the tap water and lemon juice combo more palatable.

 Health

I Drank A Gallon Of Water A Day For Better Skin — & Here's What Happened

 Maria Del Russo,Refinery29 7 hours ago

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/drank-gallon-water-day-better-140000852.html

 I do believe that a person could always go back and get a completely different second college degree if they realize that their first one could have been more marketable. I know that Usatoday means well with their advice and I am going to keep this article as a reminder to myself on why I need to go forward with pursuing a second degree online by September 2018. A couple of things that I learned the hard way from my first bachelor's degree that I wish someone would have told me but I share with someone who wants to get their first degree but benefit the easy way with what I had to learn the hard way; I successfully finished my first bachelor's degree within 3 years and took a heavy courseload to accomplish this, even during the summertime. However, what I had to learn the hard way, most employers do not care how fast you complete your degree, they care more about your work experience. The jobs that I have had so far are indirectly because of my military andor civilian work experience and not because of how fast I finished my degree. If possible, allow yourself to work full-time and take classes part-time in order to secure the college degree you want but still maintain job experience. If a job opportunity or internship is hard to come by for yourself then do what you legally have to in order to secure some volunteer experience to build andor strengthen your work history. By no means do I claim to know everything about this and I am still learning more as I learn more information but another piece of information/data that I wish someone would have shared with me; look at various military websites such as navy.com, airforce.com, army.com etc. and hot jobs on government job websites such as usajobs.gov. Why you may ask; I just found out less than three months ago that the major that I want to study for a second bachelor's degree online while working full-time by autumn 2018 is in demand in both the military sectors and the U.S. government job sector. I even noticed that colleges such as Georgetown University will offer tuition discounts to students enrolled in certain college majors and my dream major was on that list but it is mainly available to federal government workers and not private sector employees (from what I have seen of the list). However, the point I am making, from my experience of being in the military and something I wish that I would have noticed years ago is that many of the jobs that an enlisted andor officer can obtain in the military are also hot college degrees. I hope this helps many who are open-minded in looking at my comment even if this only happens weeks down the road, but I felt it necessary to share some things to others for their benefit to glean from the easy way compared to what I finally figured out the challenging way.

Want a job when you graduate? Choose these majors

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/college/2017/07/20/want-a-job-when-you-graduate-then-major-in-these-areas/103860736/

 What I do my best to contribute with my efforts are far more valuable than I realize in all areas of my life both present and future.

 I speak, communicate, and write  about various news articles that I see online and follow both my intuition and logic when discussing my thoughts around these areas regardless of how I am perceived and judged for doing so as I am following one of my passions and destiny. I take any judgment of this in stride understanding that some people may allow themselves more than others in following their interests and I am doing what some people, even some of my critics, secretly want to allow themselves to do but just need to get past what other people think andor what they think of themselves for doing that. I take it more as a compliment, whether from a supporter from a rival or critic, that someone was moved enough to emotion to comment on what I have to say. I also send compassion their way and see the positive/spiritual/creative benefit in such as situation as this is one of the obvious and evident signs when you are on someone’s mind whether they are a supporter andor judge of what you communicate.

 For both present and future and in all areas of my life I keep one of my primary objectives in mind-returning to my ideal weight by May 2018 or sooner while nurturing my passion for writing,and I stay focused even when I am involved in other endeavors.

 I am in the process of following both my intuition and logic in taking the wisest and celestially/heavenly inspired actions and plans in living my life in alignment with my divine life purpose and destiny in all areas of my life both present and future.

 I successfully move forward in both new and creative ways in various areas of my life both present and future.

 The 13 minute definitive guide to living your dreams by Benjamin P. Hardy

https://www.inc.com/benjamin-p-hardy/the-13-minute-definitive-guide-to-living-your-drea.html?cid=readmoretextab

  11 Things You Can Do to Make Yourself Smarter Every Day

Picking up a few simple habits can give your brain a huge boost.

By Guadalupe Gonzalez

 https://www.inc.com/video/11-things-you-can-do-to-make-yourself-smarter-every-day.html?cid=readmorevideoimage

 https://www.keepdreamingup.net/small-business-online/index.html