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oceansmelodysblog · 4 years

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Hyrule High School

Promotional fiction for @zelquiwi ‘s fanart on Twitter

Chapter 1

Zelda said goodbye to her ballet coach and stepped out into the sultry evening sun. A cooling breeze blew into her face and dried her sweaty face. She undid her braid and let the breeze blow through her hair. Zelda relaxed mentally and walked along the pavement. Bicyclists sped past her, twirling her white polka-dotted red summer dress. She shyly held her hem so as not to expose too much, as the dress only covered half of her thigh. She wore a white short shirt under her dress, white sporty shoes and a small bag with her ballet clothes.

The roar of cars and motorbikes deafened her ears, pedestrians shouted at each other, the paths were too crowded. Fathers and mothers with prams and people in wheelchairs were disregarded and jostled.

Dogs barked at each other while being held back with difficulty by their owners.

Zelda found the chaos too much, so she decided to take a diversion today, away from the main roads.

Fascinated, she watched the retro facades of the narrow streets, the colourful hubbub of the restaurants and the welcome invitations from the waiters to take Zelda to the restaurant. She smiled off gratefully and walked briskly along the paths.

She loved to stroll the streets after her hard ballet practice before returning home bored. As the 15-year-old pubescent daughter of a diplomat and a lawyer, the highest discipline was expected of her. It was tough, but she couldn't complain as it opened many doors for her.

When Zelda finally arrived at her front door, she sighed loudly. She knew the summer holidays were coming to an end and with it her freedom to devote herself fully to her hobbies.

Zelda moved gracefully through the corridors of the school to her classroom in her white blouse, navy blue school uniform blazer and matching skirt and was greeted warmly by her classmates, although she treated everyone equally, she felt most comfortable in the presence of her best friends Impa and Purah. The two were siblings with a year's difference, though they could be as different as night and day. While Purah was older than Impa, she was still a bright and fashionable model student in science. Impa, on the other hand, was the more sensible of the two, very well-versed in languages, politics, history and the subject of Hylia's teachings. While Zelda excelled in all subjects, the poor marks in the teachings of Hylia cast a mocking shadow over her report cards every time.

While Mipha, Robbie and Revali joined them, they were talking about their experiences of the summer holidays when the other students suddenly fell silent. It was still too early for one of the teachers, so the troop turned around curiously.

A young man about their age with blond spiky hair tied back stood in front of the blackboard and greeted everyone curtly. He stood there with his chest erect and sporting clothes, scratching the back of his head nervously.

" Are you lost Link?" asked Revali mockingly.

"Revali don't be so rude. I hope you are all right." intervened Mipha. A girl who was always sweet and polite to everyone.

"Where the heck have you been all these holidays!" blurted out Impa.

"I'm fine, thanks," Link said, giving Mipha a smile without bothering to give Revali a glance. "I've been helping out in the countryside all summer." His gaze drifted from Impa to Zelda, who paid him no attention. "Hope you didn't miss me too much." He winked at Paya , Impa's and Purah's cousin, who blushed every time Link flirted with her.

He immediately noticed that the rest of the girls were also looking in his direction, whispering and giggling amongst themselves. They couldn't be blamed, because Link had an attractive charisma, fascinating blue eyes, an athletic figure and above all something mysterious about him, which was attractive to many girls.

"Don't pretend you'll be missed, you poor beggar have to sweep up cows' shit on your farm."

He whirled around and stared renegade at Revali, running towards him, but when both grabbed each other by the collar, Sakasai intervened while Cado and Dorian held them back.

"The holidays are only over, yet you are feuding blood. Let's enjoy this year peacefully!", Sakasai soothingly talked to them. His poetic expression was able to melt even ice-cold icebergs.

Just when the situation had defused, the bell rang for the start of class and the teacher, Mr Daruk, entered the room.

"Link, Revali. As soon as you make eye contact, you bark like dogs fighting for territory in the street. I have a new seating plan here that will make sure you two sit far apart."

Mr Daruk was the linguistics and labour teacher. He was dark-skinned, broad-shouldered, with a muscular chest and a round beer belly. His white hair pointed in all directions and his full white beard went down to his stomach. He always prepared us, apart from the lessons, for the hard life after school. For which Link was particularly grateful, as he had to struggle especially hard in his neighbourhood.

"Revali, you will sit in the front row next to Mipha. Sakasai, please sit next to Paya. Link, you will sit next to Zelda." As an indignant murmur went through the class, the teacher thumped the teacher's desk, creating a silence that had never existed before. "I demand discipline! Now sit down at your assigned seats. You will see that you and your new neighbours will complement each other. Now to the order of the day..."

As he sat down, he felt how uncomfortable it was to sit next to Zelda, as she obviously couldn't stand him.

Therefore, he slid as far as he could to the edge of his chair so as not to get too close to her.

Link barely caught what the teacher was saying, he was too taken with her closeness. To keep a clear mind, he pulled his hood over his head and rested his head on his arms, which were folded on the table. He sighed. It was going to be a busy day at school, he thought to himself.

"Hey bro, you alright? Up for basketball?" asked Sidon, who was his best friend, despite the fact that he was in a different class from his year. He was a hunk and towered over him by several heads. He had red hair, like his sister Mipha, but gold-shimmering eyes. Despite his imposing and intimidating manner, he was the most likeable Hylian he knew.

"Ayyo Bro, how you doin'? Throw me the ball!"

Link took off his hoodie and bared his muscular torso. He wanted to clear his head and stop thinking about how annoyed Zelda was at his presence. He wasn't even sure why she was and assumed she was looking down on him with her domineering appearance.

The mere fact that he had put his head down on the table and was boredly playing with his pens made her breathe an annoyed sigh and tap her foot impatiently. She was also the first to immediately pack up her utensils and disappear out the door without giving him a glance.

While he was shooting baskets with his best buddies, he was joined by the rest of his friends, including Cado and Dorian, one slim and athletic, the other broadly built. More boys gathered around him, whom he knew from his neighbourhood or from his sports clubs. He greets them all with a handshake and a brotherly hug: a fist to the brother's shoulders. This is how they signal solidarity and friendship to each other.

Sometimes they were joined by Impa, who would then go up against the boys and single-handedly finish them off in every game. Impa was a girl Link liked to have around because she was unbeatable. She was like a second sister to him, whom he respected and wanted to protect at the same time.

But when Link looked out for her, he found her agog with Zelda Purah and Paya discussing something and smirked. He could only guess what they were so animatedly discussing at the moment.

"Phew, Link put some clothes on, your armpits stink big time."

Abruptly Link's mood changed, as if someone had hit him in the head with a shovel.

"It only started to smell when you got here, Revali."

The young Revali was not much taller than Link, had his hair braided into a boxer braid while two white dyed strands hung out of his braided hair. He had the eye shape of a snake and his eye colour and character were just as venomous. He was always out to make Link's life difficult and to flaunt his parents' wealth.

"Do you want to mess with me? You street dog have nothing to say to me, is that clear?" said Revali provocatively. Just like Link, he was surrounded by his boys waiting to bash each other's heads in.

"You can't do anything but play hardball, come on get lost with your wannabe gangsters."

A horde of girls from different years, cheered Link's and Revali's names as if it was some kind of competition.

Link wrinkled his nose contemptuously and stared renegiously into Revali's eyes. As a final sign of warning.

Sidon noticed the sparkling fire in the eyes of the two rivals and walked between them and stood protectively in front of Link.

"Hey yo bro, how about we settle this problem between you with a contest".

The girls who were just now cheering and gushing for Revali or Link were now screeching Sidon's name together as if his presence could put all disputes aside.

"A competition? Only if I choose the discipline. ", Revali said, but Link was about to intervene when his best friend held him back.

"We will choose three disciplines. Everyone will get one discipline they are particularly good at, while the third will remain neutral. Okay?" asked Sidon. Link nodded in agreement. Now it was up to Revali.

"On one condition, we're going to put this competition out to the whole school so everyone can watch me kick the shit out of that son of a bitch."

"Be careful what you say, we don't want your ego to be hurt anymore." Countered Link and turned away. It was already a foregone conclusion for him that he had to face his rival and win.

Zelda watched the action of the rival boys while Impa and Purah argued about which motto would be more appropriate as a house party. She squinted over at the silent Paya looking distressed at the tense troop of boys on the basketball court. Zelda followed her gaze and immediately understood her expression. It was Link, who moved away from the group and sat down on a wooden bench, running his hands through his hair.

"Paya, go to him. He will be very happy to receive emotional affection from a pretty girl, like you. He might fall in love with you after all," Zelda said hopefully.

She shyly looked Zelda in the eye and turned bright red in the face. Purah and Impa interrupted their discussion and listened in wonder.

"That's right, Paya! Go get him!" Purah, Paya's eldest cousin, motivated her. Everyone knew that Paya was crazy about Link but was too shy to talk to him.

When Paya finally decided to go to him, Impa was about to stop her, but Zelda and Purah held her back. Impa didn't like it, because she knew Link very well and also knew what his heart was like. Her gaze rested on Zelda, who was looking contentedly behind Paya. Maybe she had to get involved after all and a house party by the pool would be the best option.

#zelink #botw zelink #zelink fic #zelink au #zelink fanfic #aoc zelink #zelda x link #link x zelda #linktober #botw fanfiction #zelda fanfiction #zelda fandom #zelink fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction author #high school au

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keire-ke · 5 years

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I think it's the very act of creating a whole new timeline /reality that gets me. If he was stranded there. If he was somehow shifted through time and found himself in Valkyrie and make different choices (bc he knows how to pilot now). But the thought that he was so dissatisfied with his life that he went to create a whole ass new timeline to live in, and in the past! - that's just so incredibly depressing?? And how could Peggy moved past it? He knew old her in his timeline, knew she was happy

And had a full life and said, nah let’s try again, with me this time? People make nice headcanons about him living with Peggy 2 and Steve 2 but how do get past the fact that your whole reality exists bc one dude wanted to make himself feel better? Literally, it’s just so he could feel better, it doesn’t affect his prime timeline. Pls make it make sense :((((

Full disclosure, I am drunk as I type this, because prosecco is an amazing invention. Take what follows accordingly.

Anon, I couldn’t agree more. The ending where he stays in the past with Peggy could have worked, there were so many ways for it to work. Off-hand: Steve runs out of magic juice, tech malfunctions, mindstone blows up in his face and fucks with his memory - so many ways of making this ending a fitting end for Captain America As We Knew Him. Dozens. Except the one they went with.

In the end you can’t escape the conclusion that the best case scenario is that Steve decided to reboot his life like a video game, with all difficulty settings on mega easy. The whole concept feels, and I type it with 100% certainty, as a drunk fantasy of getting all the major plotpoints of your life right. But sooner or later you will wake up, deal with the hangover, and face reality. You won’t necessarily regret what you’ve done or thought while drunk, but you will wake the next morning richer for having experienced the weightlessness, and armed with the power of hindsight.

We should expect better from our heroes. We should expect better from Steve Rogers. We deserve a Captain America 3 movie, in which Steve grows enough to leave the childish notions of fairy-tale endings of a fixed world behind and chooses to become a real boy and then a man, in the real world.

tl;dr the ending of Steve’s story feels less like an ending and more like a drunken fantasy of a world were everything went right, right before waking up.

However.

There’s this truly excellent thread on Twitter, it is not technically Egg related, but it outlines the major problem in fandom: we (as a whole) tend to complain and yell and rage when things don’t go the way we wanted. It is important to distinguish the things we want from the things that compliment and round up the narrative. We need to distinguish developments that come out of nowhere from developments that are grounded in text - and Steve being a selfish asshole is thoroughly grounded in text - but poorly realised on screen.

We are not entitled to the ending we wanted, however we are entitled to a well-done product.

#anonymous request #spoilers #kk answers asks in as many words as possible #prosecco is an amazing invention #MCU: forever salty #Endgame WTF

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breakingmllc · 4 years

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CRITICAL TO UNDERSTAND THIS IS GOING THIS IS WATER ON ALL THE Sharks I'M Sorry For What I Said When I Was Hungry Vintage T Shirt PLANETS ARE ALL THE MOONS IT’S VERY VERY PREVALENT SO THE OPPOSITE THAT WE’VE BEEN TAUGHT THE WATER DOESN’T EXIST IS WRONG SO I THINK THIS’LL BECOME MORE MORE MAINSTREAM INFORMATION AS TIME GOES BY NIGHT I SINGLENESS OUT THIS TIME I CAROL BECAUSE. Victory how would his relationship with Dr Melfi play out what he walk away from the life altogether we get answers to some of these questions Dr Melfi cut them off when she realizes Tony is a lost causeand Tony does not walk away from the life the final scene in the show takes place at a diner where Tony scheduled to meet his family for a regular dinner Carmela shows up his daughter has some difficulty parking we noticed that several of the other patrons in the diner are acting kind of suspiciousand giving Tony decide I journeys don’t stop believing increases in volume to the point that it’s almost overwhelming is really dissonant dark comedic tone seen as buildingand building intentionand then cuts to blackand that is the end of the Sopranosand as came from 12 years later the loss will be one angry creator David Chase knew how is going toand for a while saying no one was trying to be audacious honest to God we did what we thought we had to do no one was trying to blow people’s minds are thinking wow this will piss him off people get the impression that you’re trying to fuck with themand it’s not true I actually really like the ending of the Sopranos I think it works both thematicallyand dramatically Tony might’ve died in a moment cut black or he may just have had a boring dinner but as long as he stuck in that life he’ll always be living on a knife’s edge going to do differently with the little things but the Sopranos set the stage for memorable endingand another lesson was learned here the wrong one in my opinion a memorable even controversial ending is the same as a good one service also merits discussion here because fans in recent years have had a much more active role in shaping media typically the longer thing goes the more fan service gets jammed in the keep people engagedand not all fan services bad one of the positive changes from the books of the fight between Breannaand the hound in season 430 to what she in the book the hound goes down from blood raising from a stupid wound he gets in a bar fight but in the show you have two characters both care about fighting over aria to the death Lake was involved in a big no no my children screaming so click gain bull dog nightand best gain bowl is was abandoned the that combine both bookand a lot of Internet mean cultureand the burning desire to see this giant man to be asked of this other giant man revenge fight so epic that it would rock the foundations of Western’s itself you will see the hound looks the way he doesand is afraid of fire because brother the mountain shoved his face into a fire when they were kidsand ever since then he’s wanting some revenge for thatand some other things all about that revenge is really really needs that mountain that ride Satan is a live eights in the hound for memorable list once revenge yesterday itself was a lot of fineand we got everything is a plot point it down through down one not only is the mountain functionally dead by this point like overand Martel killed himand what we have now is basically just a mindless zombie that does whatever Circe says but to the books make it pretty clear that Sandor is finally at peace with himselfand his need for revenge Georgia room being mistaken for justice is a big thing in the booksand we will get to that later his art wasn’t about getting revenge it was about moving past the show. On the masses they are the same as the same yes now the so called Iris didn’t bonding America day ago people this is okay gonna do it is divide and conquer as his finest the oldest trick in the book Anatolia America is all about that that’s what they about that you don’t have to ask when you see the callout of flags what’s wrong to be fair is what works for tourism is not here we go with our service is a look at these people and they gonna bring that all your people you never get it to Seth Scholl daft to bring the so called black people to talk about it because a so called Iris is black and these people is fighting for black people you believe it on TV fake that if you take them as black people are fighting for you dumbass tall steel is like she was born American dream is born in Oakland California and how stainless work bloodstream MRI to the bloodstream and pay attention people remember the election is so called November watch out for the drama that gonna come with it under divide and conquer what

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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ESSAY: Is Filler Really That Bad? A Simple Inquiry Into the Nature of Time

It is 2006. You are enjoying the exciting battle where Naruto’s teacher Jiraya and his friend Tsunade fight it out with the evil Orochimaru. Excited to see what will happen next, you start the next episode only to see Jiraya cry out “Oh, a hot spring?” You are taken aback. This wasn’t in the manga! What is going on? Long-suffering anime fans shake their heads. “We knew this would happen,” they say. “Naruto has entered THE FILLER ZONE.”

THE FILLER ZONE is not as common as it once was. In this era of explosive anime production, adaptations are more likely than they were to stop and recharge than to plunge into original material. But those who grew up watching anime adaptations of Shonen Jump comics like One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto remember — when the anime begins to catch up with the source comic, the staff will produce original content to buy time for the original artist to draw more material. It’s a phenomenon so infamous that the long-running comedy series Gintama riffed on it:

Fan tolerance for THE FILLER ZONE varies. One Piece, for instance, is structured so that original material may be easily inserted in between major story arcs without disrupting the narrative. Then there are curious cases like Fullmetal Alchemist, whose fanbase is split between the anime-original conclusion of the 2003 series and the manga-faithful remake Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. But a more common fan response is outrage: complaining when a series begins a filler arc, warning people to skip it, even compiling websites to help other fans skip “non-essential” episodes. For animators, THE FILLER ZONE is an emergency tool to be kept behind glass with other such devices like THE RECAP ZONE. For fans, it is a wasteland where animation quality suffers, heroes behave out of character, and nothing that happens ever seems to matter.

There is plenty of filler that I do not enjoy. Some of it is outsourced, some reeks of desperation. Even well-made original material in a long-running adaptation isn’t quite as fun when you know that nothing in it is allowed to affect the main story or change the characters and their relationships. But as time went on, I noticed something strange. I began to hear people talk about “filler episodes” in the original series, not ones adapted from the source material. “Don’t watch the Eureka Seven soccer episode, it’s bad!” “Don’t watch 'Jet Alone,' it doesn’t add anything to Neon Genesis Evangelion.” Certainly, there are episodes (especially in long-running shows) that are infamous for being below par, like the island arc in Nadia of the Blue Water. But this is something else: episodes that are criticized for “not advancing the story.”

I think these people have misdiagnosed the problem. This is not a question of THE FILLER ZONE, but a question of structure and pacing. Episodes like "Jet Alone" and the Eureka Seven soccer episode serve their purpose, in that they provide breathing room and allow for other characters to shine. "Jet Alone" highlights the difficulties Misato and Ritsuko face in a predominantly male industry, and foreshadows how NERV games the system behind the backs of even its own employees. Eureka Seven's soccer episode is silly but gives some much-needed levity just before the series plunges into the final arc. In today’s era of anime, having that breathing room is a luxury most projects cannot afford.

“Breathing room” is what gives entire genres of anime its staying power. Think of the first season of Sailor Moon, which takes the first few volumes of the original comic and blows it up to 50 episodes. It may be scattershot compared to the concentrated appeal of the source material. But it works because the increased time you spend with the cast, even in seemingly unimportant moments, endears you to them. Frankly, magical girl shows flip THE FILLER ZONE on its head: rather than the filler material serving as a distraction from the good episodes, the good episodes only work because they are given context and weight by the "filler" material. After all, you can only subvert expectations if you have expectations to begin with, and nothing is better at setting expectations than playing out the daily lives of the characters for a whole year.

Another great example of the passage of time being leveraged to affect the viewer is the infamous "Endless Eight" arc in the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. For eight episodes, Kyoto Animation obsessively recreated the same episode with variations to simulate a time loop for its audience. For eight weeks, the show's fans threw a fit as their new favorite anime's second season was inevitably gobbled up by "Endless Eight." It's a creative choice that divides the fanbase to this day. But one thing is for certain: you could not replicate the psychic assault of "Endless Eight" any other way. True to Kyoto Animation's habit of adapting work with the most authenticity possible, "Endless Eight" does everything it can to place the viewer in the shoes of people forced to relive the same episode of anime over and over again. Their catharsis at breaking the loop is your catharsis. The time that you wasted was the point.

Not every show can or should be paced like a Shonen Jump comic. There are certain times a series can drag, or even run out of ideas. But time spent in a story giving the cast time to grow or react or even exist is not time wasted. As anime projects become more and more compressed and the number of series produced grows exponentially, I hope the industry does not forget the utility of time as a storytelling tool. Perhaps then we’ll have a new phenomenon they’ll make Gintama episodes about: THE CHILL ZONE!

Do you have a favorite filler arc? A favorite anime original ending? Is there an episode of anime you hold dear to your heart where nothing really happens? Let us know in the comments!

Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't exploring the limits of space-time, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

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CAIRO — For months, one enduring mystery of the coronavirus was why some of the world’s most populous countries, with rickety health systems and crowded slums, had managed to avoid the brunt of an outbreak that was burning through relatively affluent societies in Europe and the United States. Now some of those countries are tumbling into the maw of the pandemic, and they are grappling with the likelihood that their troubles are only beginning. Globally, known cases of the virus are growing faster than ever with more than 100,000 new ones a day. The surge is concentrated in densely populated, low- and middle-income countries across the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and South Asia. Not only has it filled hospitals and cemeteries there, it has frustrated the hopes of leaders who thought they were doing everything right, or who believed they might somehow escape the pandemic’s worst ravages. “We haven’t seen any evidence that certain populations will be spared,” said Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida. For those not yet affected, she said, “it’s a matter of when, not if.” Several of the newly hit countries are led by strongmen and populists now facing a foe that cannot be neutralized with arrests or swaggering speeches. In Egypt, where the rate of new confirmed infections doubled last week, the pandemic has created friction between President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and doctors who have revolted over a lack of protective equipment and training. In Brazil, the total death toll surpassed 32,000 on Thursday, with 1,349 deaths in a single day, dealing a further blow to the populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has continued to minimize the threat. “We are sorry for all the dead, but that’s everyone’s destiny,” he said Tuesday. In Bangladesh, natural disaster helped spread the disease. Cyclone Amphan, a deadly storm that tore through communities under lockdown there last month, helped drive cases up to 55,000. This week Bangladeshi authorities reported the first death from Covid-19 in a refugee camp, a 71-year-old Rohingya man from Myanmar — an ominous sign for wider worries about the plight of vulnerable people huddled in hundreds of such camps in the world’s most fragile countries. The upswing marks a new stage in the trajectory of the virus, away from Western countries that have settled into a grinding battle against an increasingly familiar adversary, toward corners of the globe where many hoped that hot weather, youthful populations or some unknown epidemiological factor might shield them from a scourge that has infected 6.5 million people and killed almost 400,000, over a quarter of them in the United States. Some countries now being overrun by the virus seemed to be doing the right thing. In Peru, where President Martín Vizcarra ordered one of the first national lockdowns in South America, over 170,000 cases have been confirmed and 14,000 more deaths than average were recorded in May, suggesting there were many more virus fatalities than the official count of about 5,000. South Africa, Africa’s economic powerhouse, banned sales of tobacco and alcohol as part of a strict lockdown in March, yet now has 35,000 confirmed infections, the highest on the continent. Even so, President Cyril Ramaphosa eased the restrictions last week, citing economic concerns. The pandemic’s new direction is bad news for the strongmen and populist leaders in some of those countries who, in its early stage, reaped political points by vaunting low infection rates as evidence of the virtues of iron-fisted rule. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose delivery of a planeload of medical aid to the United States in March was seen as a cocky snub, is grappling with the world’s third-largest outbreak, with 440,000 cases that have enraged the public and depressed his approval ratings to their lowest in two decades. For Mr. el-Sisi of Egypt, the outbreak has posed a rare challenge to his preferred narrative of absolute control. Although Egypt’s 30,000 cases are far fewer than those of several other Arab countries — Saudi Arabia has three times as many — it has by far the highest death toll in the region and its infection rate is soaring. Last Sunday the government recorded 1,500 new cases, up from about 700 just six days earlier. The next day the minister for higher education and scientific research warned that Egypt’s true number of cases could be over 117,000. Some hospitals are overflowing and doctors are up in arms over shortages of protective equipment that, they say, has resulted in the deaths of at least 30 doctors. Outrage crystallized last week around the death of Dr. Walid Yehia, 32, who had been denied emergency treatment at the overwhelmed Monira general hospital where he worked. Fellow doctors at the hospital went on strike for a week to protest his death. The main doctors union issued a statement accusing the government of “criminal misconduct” and warning that Egypt was veering toward “catastrophe” — strong words in a country where Mr. el-Sisi has jailed tens of thousands of opponents. Last week, Mr. el-Sisi railed on Twitter against unspecified “enemies of the state” who attacked government efforts to combat the virus. Earlier, Egypt’s public prosecutor warned that anyone spreading “false news” about the coronavirus faced up to five years imprisonment. Doctors at several hospitals said they had been threatened by Mr. el-Sisi’s feared security apparatus for daring to complain. The doctors interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal or arrest. When doctors at the Mansheyat el Bakry hospital threatened to strike last month to protest the lack of training and protective equipment, they received a warning from a hospital senior manager: Anyone who failed to turn up for work the following day would be reported to the National Security Agency, which human rights groups have accused of torture and other abuses. Reached by phone, the manager, Dr. Hanan el-Banna said the message was part of “normal disciplinary measures.” Then she denied that she had sent it. A spokesman for Egypt’s Health Ministry did not respond to questions about the message, or other complaints from doctors. The power of the virus was brought home to Mr. el-Sisi in the early stages of the pandemic, when two senior generals died from Covid-19. Yet his government has frequently seemed determined to put a Panglossian spin on how well it is being handled. Updated June 2, 2020 Will protests set off a second viral wave of coronavirus? Mass protests against police brutality that have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across America are raising the specter of new coronavirus outbreaks, prompting political leaders, physicians and public health experts to warn that the crowds could cause a surge in cases. While many political leaders affirmed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear face masks and maintain social distancing, both to protect themselves and to prevent further community spread of the virus. Some infectious disease experts were reassured by the fact that the protests were held outdoors, saying the open air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission. How do we start exercising again without hurting ourselves after months of lockdown? Exercise researchers and physicians have some blunt advice for those of us aiming to return to regular exercise now: Start slowly and then rev up your workouts, also slowly. American adults tended to be about 12 percent less active after the stay-at-home mandates began in March than they were in January. But there are steps you can take to ease your way back into regular exercise safely. First, “start at no more than 50 percent of the exercise you were doing before Covid,” says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Thread in some preparatory squats, too, she advises. “When you haven’t been exercising, you lose muscle mass.” Expect some muscle twinges after these preliminary, post-lockdown sessions, especially a day or two later. But sudden or increasing pain during exercise is a clarion call to stop and return home. My state is reopening. Is it safe to go out? States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people. What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface? Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks. What are the symptoms of coronavirus? Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days. How can I protect myself while flying? If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.) How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.? More than 40 million people — the equivalent of 1 in 4 U.S. workers — have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic took hold. One in five who were working in February reported losing a job or being furloughed in March or the beginning of April, data from a Federal Reserve survey released on May 14 showed, and that pain was highly concentrated among low earners. Fully 39 percent of former workers living in a household earning $40,000 or less lost work, compared with 13 percent in those making more than $100,000, a Fed official said. Should I wear a mask? The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people don’t need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks don’t replace hand washing and social distancing. What should I do if I feel sick? If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others. Last week the Health Ministry published a promotional video that showed coronavirus patients in a hospital praising their care and hailing Mr. el-Sisi. “I can’t believe this, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,” says one masked patient. “I can’t believe what he’s doing for our sake.” A very different picture emerges on Facebook, where desperate patients or their relatives have posted videos pleading for help. In one widely circulated recording, a weeping woman says that her ailing father was refused treatment at several hospitals. In another, a man with coronavirus symptoms remonstrates with hospital security guards who turn him away. “Take your complaint to the police,” they tell him. Even if Egypt’s doctors were not muzzled by their government, Western-style social distancing would be nearly impossible in a chaotic, densely populated city of 20 million people like Cairo where many families survive on day jobs. Mosques, churches and airports remained closed, but the decision to relax a night curfew during the holy month of Ramadan — ostensibly to allow people to break their daily fast together — may have accelerated the spread of the virus, experts say. Many low- and middle-income countries, now grappling with surging cases, are also struggling to balance public health against the realities of poverty-stricken societies, said Ashish Jha, professor of global health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “At some point the lockdown becomes intolerable,” he said. “The human cost to day laborers, many of whom are already barely surviving, is enormous.” The hopes of some countries that they could somehow avoid the pandemic are likely to be dashed, he added. “In the early days, people were seeing patterns that were not really there,” he said. “They were saying that Africa would be spared. But this is a highly idiosyncratic virus, and over time the idiosyncrasy goes away. There is no natural immunity. We are all, humanity-wise, equally susceptible to the virus.” Experts say that Mr. el-Sisi’s obsession with showing that he is beating the pandemic may have encouraged some Egyptians to drop their guard — a phenomenon similar to that in the United States, where some Americans have taken comfort in President Trump’s breezy reassurances. Unfortunately, such heedlessness can have dire consequences. In March, Mohammed Nady, 30, an employee at the Sheraton hotel in central Cairo, posted a video to Facebook dismissing the virus as an American-engineered conspiracy to humiliate China. A few weeks later, he posted a second video from the hospital announcing that he had contracted the coronavirus. A third clip showed him in bed, struggling to breath. “I am dying,” he said. “I am dying.” He died in April, three days before his father also died from the disease. Reporting was contributed by Nada Rashwan in Cairo, Michael Cooper in New York, Manuela Andreoni in Rio de Janeiro, and Mitra Taj in Lima, Peru. The post Coronavirus Rips Into Regions Previously Spared appeared first on Sansaar Times.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/06/coronavirus-rips-into-regions.html

#SEO #Local SEO training #daily news paper #daily news india #daily news newspaper #technology news a

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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Trump’s good week

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/trumps-good-week/

Trump’s good week

President Donald Trump was visibly elated on Wednesday as Mueller’s testimony in back-to-back hearings unfolded on national television | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

white house

For a few days, at least, the president was on top of the world.

In a 72-hour stretch this week, President Donald Trump went a long way toward putting two looming threats to his bid to retain power to rest.

The first, impeachment, took a blow on Wednesday when former special counsel Robert Mueller delivered muted and sometimes shaky testimony before two House panels — and failed to serve up the sort of compelling fresh red meat that might sway Democrats who have been reluctant to launch an impeachment inquiry.

Story Continued Below

The president also threw his weight behind the budget deal negotiated by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, heading off another government shutdown that could have led to political damage, and he swore in a new secretary of Defense, ending the longest vacancy atop the department in U.S. history. Late Thursday afternoon, the House passed the bill by overwhelmingly.

“Landing a budget deal, watching the Democrats’ self-imposed implosion on national TV, and filling the defense secretary slot would in anyone’s mind constitute a pretty good week,” said the Republican strategist Chris LaCivita.

Trump also had his handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, confirmed by the Senate. The upper chamber is on the verge of ushering through Kelly Craft, who he tapped to be U.S ambassador to the United Nations in February. And Trump pal Boris Johnson replaced Theresa May as prime minister of the United Kingdom, to boot.

The spate of good news for the president may be short-lived, of course. North Korea fired two missiles Wednesday evening that the South Korean government quickly described as a new type of short-range missile. The U.S. government has yet to offer an official response.

Democrats haven’t yet thrown in the towel on their various efforts to investigate his administration and subpoena top officials, either — and a number of court cases are pending that could rain on the president’s parade.

And with the president slated to travel to Cincinnati next week for a rally, the latest major poll of Ohio voters shows him trailing putative rival Joe Biden there by 8 percentage points — in a state he won in 2016 by nearly 9 points.

Still, in a short span this week Trump helped to minimize some of the obstacles to his reelection, and the shift in his mood was evident.

He was visibly elated on Wednesday as Mueller’s testimony in back-to-back hearings unfolded on national television, according to two people who spoke with him, telling aides and allies he believed it would quash momentum in the Democratic party for an impeachment inquiry.

He spent Wednesday evening traveling to and from a fundraiser in Wheeling, W.Va., where he was monitoring analysis of the hearings from Air Force One. He thanked the Trump-supporting hosts and guests at the Fox News channel, from Tucker Carlson to Sean Hannity to the talk radio host Chris Plante, blasting out video clips of them celebrating the Democrats’ perceived failure on Twitter. He plans a victory lap on Hannity’s show on Thursday evening, where he’s scheduled to do a phone interview with the decidedly friendly Fox host.

The thank yous, as if being doled out to acknowledge key supporters after an election victory, continued to stream from his Twitter feed late into the evening. “Appreciate it @LindseyGrahamSC, thank you!” an ebullient Trump wrote after Graham, the South Carolina Republican, told Hannity that Mueller’s seeming unfamiliarity with the report was a clear indication he didn’t write it. “This clearly wasn’t the Mueller report, it’s just a name. I had more to do with the Mueller report than he did.”

The president also put his stamp of approval on the budget deal negotiated by Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that raises the debt ceiling and sets spending levels until after the 2020 election.

The president’s support for the deal had been something of an open question, with many of his advisers worrying aloud that conservative critics on Fox News or talk radio would turn him against it. But the president put those worries to rest on Thursday, urging Republican lawmakers — many of whom are not inclined to back the agreement — to get on board. “House Republicans should support the TWO YEAR BUDGET AGREEMENT which greatly helps our Military and our Vets. I am totally with you!” the president tweeted on Thursday.

The president faced resistance on the budget deal from some of the Republicans who served as his staunchest defenders against Mueller, including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who are complaining it does little to curb discretionary spending.

“At a time when all of these things seem to be going our way, we’re enjoying a relative peace in the world and in our country. And yet we’ve got record-breaking deficits. And this budget and debt-ceiling deal would expand that path,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on the Senate floor on Thursday. “If we can’t control spending now when the economy is performing about as well as it possibly can, then when can we?”

Jim DeMint, the former president of The Heritage Foundation and tea party leader, derided the agreement as a “disaster waiting to happen.”

“Every time you make a deal, you give everyone everything they want and continue to blow the budget up. Obviously, I’m sick and tired of it,” DeMint told POLITICO.

But the Republican opposition is unlikely to torpedo the bill in the Senate, which has Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s enthusiastic support.

And the budget deal may be good election politics for the president. Many Republicans blamed the 2013 government shutdown, led by conservative Republicans, for election losses in Virginia that year and in the 2014 midterms when Democratic Mark Warner beat Ed Gillespie, the longtime Republican operative, by less than 1 percentage point.

Trump’s decision to embrace a budget that does nothing to curb spending and is generating heat from some of his allies is a signal that he likewise sees this past winter’s shutdown as a political loser, and wants to protect the economy from any potential disruptions heading into next year’s election.

He even plugged the deal on Thursday at the swearing-in ceremony for his new secretary of Defense, focusing the crowd’s attention on the amount devoted to defense spending.

“We had a budget approved when I first came in. Billions and billions of dollars more than it was previously, in the previous administration: $700 billion. Then I went to $716 billion. And I won’t even tell you what this one is,” he said. “I can only tell you it’s even more. Because we have rebuilt things that nobody ever even thought of rebuilding. We’ve added the greatest planes in the world, the greatest missiles in the world.”

Esper’s confirmation and swearing-in this week put an end to one of the rockiest chapters in the recent history of the department. The resignation of James Mattis late last year gave way to the resignation of acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan in the wake of news reports about family violence — before Esper was finally nominated last month. The lack of a permanent leader at the Pentagon had irked Republican senators, who openly criticized the president’s lack of urgency at a time of tensions with Iran and a burgeoning confrontation with China.

At the swearing-in ceremony, the president made light of those troubles, and other times he has had difficulty winning bipartisan support — let alone the backing of his own party — for many of his nominees.

Referring to Tuesday’s Senate vote, Trump said to Esper, “You got 90, right? Can you believe this? Ninety to eight, right? I don’t know, I haven’t heard that sound in a long time, Mark. Now I’m worried.”

#Foreign #Politics #Trump

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latestnews2018-blog · 6 years

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UK watchdog orders Cambridge Analytica to give up data in US voter test case

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/uk-watchdog-orders-cambridge-analytica-to-give-up-data-in-us-voter-test-case/

UK watchdog orders Cambridge Analytica to give up data in US voter test case

Another big development in the personal data misuse saga attached to the controversial Trump campaign-linked UK-based political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica — which could lead to fresh light being shed on how the company and its multiple affiliates acquired and processed US citizens’ personal data to build profiles on millions of voters for political targeting purposes.

The UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, has today announced that it’s served an enforcement notice on Cambridge Analytica affiliate SCL Elections, under the UK’s 1998 Data Protection Act.

The company has been ordered to give up all the data it holds on one US academic within 30 days — with the ICO warning that: “Failure to do so is a criminal offence, punishable in the courts by an unlimited fine.”

The notice follows a subject access request (SAR) filed in January last year by US-based academic, David Carroll after he became suspicious about how the company was able to build psychographic profiles of US voters. And while Carroll is not a UK citizen, he discovered his personal data had been processed in the UK — so decided to bring a test case by requesting his personal data under UK law.

Carroll’s complaint, and the ICO’s decision to issue an enforcement notice in support of it, looks to have paved the way for millions of US voters to also ask Cambridge Analytica for their data (the company claimed to have up to 7,000 data points on the entire US electorate, circa 240M people — so just imagine the class action that could be filed here… ).

The Guardian reports that Cambridge Analytica had tried to dismiss Carroll’s argument by claiming he had no more rights “than a member of the Taliban sitting in a cave in the remotest corner of Afghanistan”. The ICO clearly disagrees.

Cambridge Analytica/SCL Group responded to Carroll’s original SAR in March 2017 but he was unimpressed by the partial data they sent him — which ranked his interests on a selection of topics (including gun rights, immigration, healthcare, education and the environment) yet did not explain how the scores had been calculated.

It also listed his likely partisanship and propensity to vote in the 2016 US election — again without explaining how those predictions had been generated.

So Carroll complained to the UK’s data watchdog in September 2017 — which began sending its own letters to CA/SCL, leading to further unsatisfactory responses.

“The company’s reply refused to address the ICO’s questions and incorrectly stated Prof Caroll had no legal entitlement to it because he wasn’t a UK citizen or based in this country. The ICO reiterated this was not legally correct in a letter to SCL the following month,” the ICO writes today. “In November 2017, the company replied, denying that the ICO had any jurisdiction or that Prof Carroll was legally entitled to his data, adding that SCL did “.. not expect to be further harassed with this sort of correspondence”.”

In a strongly worded statement, information commissioner Elizabeth Denham further adds:

The company has consistently refused to co-operate with our investigation into this case and has refused to answer our specific enquiries in relation to the complainant’s personal data — what they had, where they got it from and on what legal basis they held it.

The right to request personal data that an organisation holds about you is a cornerstone right in data protection law and it is important that Professor Carroll, and other members of the public, understand what personal data Cambridge Analytica held and how they analysed it.

We are aware of recent media reports concerning Cambridge Analytica’s future but whether or not the people behind the company decide to fold their operation, a continued refusal to engage with the ICO will potentially breach an Enforcement Notice and that then becomes a criminal matter.

Since mid-March this year, Cambridge Analytica’s name (along with the names of various affiliates) has been all over headlines relating to a major Facebook data misuse scandal, after press reports revealed in granular detail how an app developer had used the social media’s platform’s 2014 API structure to extract and process large amounts of users’ personal data, passing psychometrically modeled scores on US voters to Cambridge Analytica for political targeting.

But Carroll’s curiosity about what data Cambridge Analytica might hold about him predates the scandal blowing up last month. Although journalists had actually raised questions about the company as far back as December 2015 — when the Guardian reported that the company was working for the Ted Cruz campaign, using detailed psychological profiles of voters derived from tens of millions of Facebook users’ data.

Though it was not until last month that Facebook confirmed as many as 87 million users could have had personal data misappropriated.

Carroll, who has studied the Internet ad tech industry as part of his academic work, reckons Facebook is not the sole source of the data in this case, telling the Guardian he expects to find a whole host of other companies are also implicated in this murky data economy where people’s personal information is quietly traded and passed around for highly charged political purposes — bankrolled by billionaires.

“I think we’re going to find that this goes way beyond Facebook and that all sorts of things are being inferred about us and then used for political purposes,” he told the newspaper.

Under mounting political, legal and public pressure, Cambridge Analytica claimed to be shutting down this week — but the move appears more like a rebranding exercise, as parent entity, SCL Group, maintains a sprawling network of companies and linked entities. (Such as one called Emerdata, which was founded in mid-2017 and is listed at the same address as SCL Elections, and has many of the same investors and management as Cambridge Analytica… But presumably hasn’t yet been barred from social media giants’ ad platforms, as its predecessor has.)

Closing one of the entities embroiled in the scandal could also be a tactic to impede ongoing investigations, such as the one by the ICO — as Denham’s statement alludes, by warning that any breach of the enforcement notice could lead to criminal proceedings being brought against the owners and operators of Cambridge Analytica’s parent entity.

In March ICO officials obtained a warrant to enter and search Cambridge Analytica’s London offices, removing documents and computers for examination as part of a wider, year-long investigation into the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors. And last month the watchdog said 30 organizations — including Facebook — were now part of that investigation.

The Guardian also reports that the ICO has suggested to Cambridge Analytica that if it has difficulties complying with the enforcement notice it should hand over passwords for the servers seized during the March raid on its London office – raising questions about how much data the watchdog has been able to retrieve from the seized servers.

SCL Group’s website contains no obvious contact details beyond a company LinkedIn profile — a link which appears to be defunct. But we reached out to SCL Group’s CEO Nigel Oakes, who has maintained a public LinkedIn presence, to ask if he has any response to the ICO enforcement notice.

Meanwhile Cambridge Analytica continues to use its public Twitter account to distribute a stream of rebuttals and alternative ‘facts’.

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

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endenogatai · 6 years

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UK watchdog orders Cambridge Analytica to give up data in US voter test case

The UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, has today announced that it’s served an enforcement notice on Cambridge Analytica affiliate SCL Elections, under the UK’s 1998 Data Protection Act.

Important development. @ICOnews agrees with our complaint and orders full disclosure to @profcarroll following findings of non-cooperation by Cambridge Analytica / SCL. We look forward to full disclosure within 30 days. Decision here: https://t.co/X5g1FY95j0 https://t.co/ZsonQhPsKQ

— Ravi Naik (@RaviNa1k) May 5, 2018

It also listed his likely partisanship and propensity to vote in the 2016 US election — again without explaining how those predictions had been generated.

So Carroll complained to the UK’s data watchdog in September 2017 — which began sending its own letters to CA/SCL, leading to further unsatisfactory responses.

In a strongly worded statement, information commissioner Elizabeth Denham further adds:

Though it was not until last month that Facebook confirmed as many as 87 million users could have had personal data misappropriated.

“I think we’re going to find that this goes way beyond Facebook and that all sorts of things are being inferred about us and then used for political purposes,” he told the newspaper.

Meanwhile Cambridge Analytica continues to use its public Twitter account to distribute a stream of rebuttals and alternative ‘facts’.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/2KDyRzt via IFTTT

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abckidstvyara · 6 years

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UK watchdog orders Cambridge Analytica to give up data in US voter test case

The UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, has today announced that it’s served an enforcement notice on Cambridge Analytica affiliate SCL Elections, under the UK’s 1998 Data Protection Act.

— Ravi Naik (@RaviNa1k) May 5, 2018

It also listed his likely partisanship and propensity to vote in the 2016 US election — again without explaining how those predictions had been generated.

So Carroll complained to the UK’s data watchdog in September 2017 — which began sending its own letters to CA/SCL, leading to further unsatisfactory responses.

In a strongly worded statement, information commissioner Elizabeth Denham further adds:

Though it was not until last month that Facebook confirmed as many as 87 million users could have had personal data misappropriated.

“I think we’re going to find that this goes way beyond Facebook and that all sorts of things are being inferred about us and then used for political purposes,” he told the newspaper.

Meanwhile Cambridge Analytica continues to use its public Twitter account to distribute a stream of rebuttals and alternative ‘facts’.

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techietrends · 6 years

Link

The UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, has today announced that it’s served an enforcement notice on Cambridge Analytica affiliate SCL Elections, under the UK’s 1998 Data Protection Act.

— Ravi Naik (@RaviNa1k) May 5, 2018

It also listed his likely partisanship and propensity to vote in the 2016 US election — again without explaining how those predictions had been generated.

So Carroll complained to the UK’s data watchdog in September 2017 — which began sending its own letters to CA/SCL, leading to further unsatisfactory responses.

In a strongly worded statement, information commissioner Elizabeth Denham further adds:

Though it was not until last month that Facebook confirmed as many as 87 million users could have had personal data misappropriated.

“I think we’re going to find that this goes way beyond Facebook and that all sorts of things are being inferred about us and then used for political purposes,” he told the newspaper.

Meanwhile Cambridge Analytica continues to use its public Twitter account to distribute a stream of rebuttals and alternative ‘facts’.

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2KDyRzt via

#Blogger #technology #tech news

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talabib · 6 years

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Leadership journey: Ellen Pao

The Pao vs. Kleiner case garnered some heavy media attention, and there’s a good chance you’re aware of it. But perhaps the struggles and obstacles Pao had to endure leading up to the trial are less well known.

What was it like working at Kleiner? What were the challenges faced by Pao and other women working at the firm? And how did she come to pursue a lawsuit against one of the most powerful venture capital firms in the world?

This post will give you an insight into the events leading up to and surrounding the case, as well as how Pao dealt with the blow of losing to Kleiner.

Deeply ingrained sexual discrimination makes it hard for women to succeed in the workplace.

Ellen Pao grew up believing that a good education would inevitably lead to success, and so when she graduated from Harvard Law School in 1994, she saw endless career opportunities laid out in front of her. When she began working at the well-known New York City law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore as a corporate lawyer, however, she quickly realized things weren’t going to go quite how she’d expected.

One of the things Pao noticed was that sexual discrimination had become so deeply rooted in the workplace that it often happened without anyone noticing it, sometimes not even the person on the receiving end.

A coworker who was black and female was constantly mistaken for an administrative assistant or a paralegal, despite being dressed in suits donned only by attorneys. Furthermore, even though as a lawyer she had the authority to use company cars, Pao’s coworker faced difficulties in doing so.

At the time, Pao’s coworker didn’t think too much about it, and thus never reported what happened. Ultimately, however, she was so distressed by these experiences that she ended up leaving the profession entirely.

The case of Pao’s coworker serves as a reminder of how it’s nearly impossible to ascend the corporate ladder if you’re not one of “the boys,” despite your hardest efforts.

Pao relates a time when the head of her department invited 12 male coworkers to dinner, following it up with a visit to a strip club. Pao pointed out that going to the strip club allowed the male coworkers an opportunity to get to know their boss on a more personal level, which is a massive advantage.

These men-only events happened all the time. Pao managed to get a ticket to a hockey game once, but she was only allowed to come if she didn’t sit beside the senior partner.

Such behaviors excluded women from important conversations and opportunities, and as a result, they had to double their efforts just to keep pace with their male counterparts.

In the venture capital world, the “boys club” culture celebrates tenacity in men but not in women.

Pao finished her two-year MBA at Harvard Business School and in 2005 joined the influential venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as chief of staff. Venture capital firms receive financial support from wealthy individuals, universities, families and pension funds, which they invest into startups, hoping for a return on investment.

The venture capital industry is dominated by men, being a real “boys club”, and is predominantly white.

On a business trip to New York, Pao shared a table with four white male colleagues, one of whom was a tech CEO and investor named Ted. The tech CEO expressed his desire to have a woman join his board, which consisted of only men, and Pao suggested that he invite one of Google’s founding partners, Marissa Mayer. Upon Pao’s suggestion, Ted said Mayer would be “too controversial,” while the rest of the men remarked that they would like her to join because she was hot.

The men at the table then continued to openly discuss the type of sex worker they liked and bragged about meeting Jenna Jameson, a porn star, leaving Pao cringeing and uncomfortable. She was aware that the male colleagues didn’t like her being there. This feeling of exclusion was confirmed when they landed at Teterboro Airport, and the men organized a night out without extending an invitation to Pao. As a result, Pao missed out on the exchange of advice and information that occurs during these men-only events.

A sad reality of the business world is that men are praised for having ambition and being forward-thinking; however, when women show those qualities, they’re often ignored.

During the early days of Twitter, Pao saw promise and potential in the platform’s ability to connect people all over the world, and so she decided to get in touch with their CEO, Jack Dorsey. She then pitched Twitter to a partner at Kleiner, but he showed no interest and dismissed her proposal.

Almost four years later, Kleiner would finally invest in Twitter, upon the suggestion of a male junior partner, of course. By that point, Twitter’s value had gone up by 400 percent, but the male partner was celebrated as a genius nonetheless, while Pao’s foresight was completely disregarded.

Pao’s colleagues at Kleiner still treated her as before, despite her promotion to junior partner.

Though she was aware of the inequality rampant in the world of venture capital, Pao decided to stay at Kleiner because she enjoyed the work.

Even following her promotion to junior partner in 2007, her male coworkers still didn’t take her seriously nor did they listen to her opinions.

One incident that comes to mind is the pitch of an Indian classifieds website to their fund’s investors. During preparation for the pitch, a colleague of Pao’s suggested that she “search for turbans!” When she refused to do so, her colleagues branded her a “killjoy.”

Furthermore, when Pao brought this incident up with her managing partner, he simply told her she was overreacting and making a big fuss about nothing. The managing partner repeated the same distasteful joke at a fundraising meeting and had to apologize immediately when he saw that one of the investors was an Indian woman.

This insensitive behavior towards women in the workplace is perpetuated by the “boys club” dogma of protecting its own members.

While on a business trip, Pao’s coworker Ajit Nazre told her that he believed they would make a good couple, even though he was a married man at the time. After he told Pao that he’d separated from his wife, the two began dating. He would give her the inside scoop on who had left the company and share Kleiner’s various philosophies and beliefs on investment. During this time, Pao felt like she’d finally been accepted and seen as an equal at the firm.

However, it turned out that Nazre had lied to Pao about divorcing his wife, and so when Pao learned the truth, she stopped seeing him romantically. The problem was that she still had to face him at work.

It became evident that since the break up, Nazre was intentionally misleading Pao and excluding her from important email threads and meetings. Pao alerted her managing partner, Ray Lane, to Nazre’s misconduct, but her concerns fell on deaf ears. Lane had gotten to know Nazre from the male-only dinners and events, and they bonded over conversations about women. Due to Lane’s fondness for Nazre, the managing partner defended him in the face of Pao’s complaints.

Pao was victorious in a claim of discrimination at Kleiner, but this was only the start.

Having been promoted to senior partner, Nazre was now in a higher and more powerful rank than Pao. He gained the authority to impede her career aspirations by writing negative performance reviews about her. In an attempt to do something about this abuse of power, Pao filed a number of verbal and written reports, but, after a while, the HR consultant at Kleiner told her to stop complaining.

Additionally, Pao confided in her fellow junior partner, Trae Vassallo, about her unfair treatment, hoping to build her case.

Much to her surprise, however, Vassallo admitted that Nazre had sexually harassed her. Nazre had asked Vassallo to join him on a business trip to New York – which turned out not to be a business trip at all. Nazre had lied, again, and showed up at her hotel room wearing nothing but a bathrobe, unsuccessfully insisting that she let him in.

With this story up her sleeve, Pao relayed Nazre’s series of misdemeanors to the managing partners at Kleiner. He finally left the firm after negotiating the conditions of his severance package for two months.

Though she had won this small battle, Pao wasn’t satisfied. She wanted to see real, long-lasting change and to eradicate the “boys club” culture at Kleiner.

Furthering her efforts, Pao convinced the firm to hire an independent investigator, but Kleiner seemed less than interested in her and Vassallo’s experiences of harassment in the workplace. This disinterest became apparent when Kleiner failed to introduce anti-discrimination and anti-sexual harassment training in the workplace.

Unsatisfied with these results, Pao contacted the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing and filed a lawsuit against her company for their inaction, the inadequate investigation efforts and the unfair treatment and exclusion of women in the workplace.

She was advised by her lawyer to continue working at Kleiner, as this would strengthen her case. But she only lasted a few months before being fired on the claim that she had performed poorly in her latest review.

While the lawsuit was underway, Pao became the CEO of the social media website Reddit.

Pao vs. Kleiner escalated when the company’s lead defense lawyer started to publicly shame Pao, using private information from her therapy sessions and from conversations between herself, her husband and her lawyers.

Public shaming, Pao discovered upon becoming Reddit’s CEO, is found all over the internet.

Back then, Reddit was a small startup that called itself “the front page of the internet.” Reddit users could share news and photos that would be either upvoted or downvoted in real time. It was through Reddit that Pao familiarized herself with the dark side of the web.

Journalist Eron Gjoni created a blog in August 2014 called “The Zoe Post,” where he wrote about his ex-girlfriend Zöe Quinn’s infidelity. Via the internet, he rallied supporters whom he would encourage to continue publicly shaming her on other platforms, such as 4chan, 8chan, Internet Relay Chat, and of course, Reddit. His supporters published her personal information online, hacked into her account, sent her death and rape threats and made computer games depicting violent acts against her.

This type of online behavior was unacceptable to Pao, and, in 2015, she banned revenge porn and unsolicited nudes on Reddit. Her actions encouraged many well-known websites, like Facebook, to take the same zero-tolerance attitude.

Emboldened to do more, Pao employed Reddit and the internet as her weapons to take down discrimination and harassment.

To help her with her ambitious task, Pao sought the advice of investor and entrepreneur Susan Wu. Wu became an activist after hearing about the case of a woman raped by Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner. Wu created the hashtag #IWasRapedToo in an attempt to encourage more women to speak up about their experiences.

Meanwhile, online press coverage began picking up Pao’s lawsuit against her former company, and many women reached out to her. It was clear that sexual discrimination was happening everywhere. Reporters began to call this sudden flood of women speaking up about their experiences the Pao Effect.

Pao lost the case against Kleiner, but the support she received led her to create Project Interlude.

Pao was convinced that she had enough evidence to win the case against her former employer, but the firm had the financial capabilities and the human resources to build a strong defense based on hundreds and thousands of emails.

During her trial, Pao was also busy with two full-time jobs: being the CEO of Reddit and a mother. On 27 March 2015, the final verdict was in: Pao had lost the case.

Nevertheless, the support she received throughout the trial was of immense importance. Though she had lost, Pao never once felt she was alone in her battle. She was forever grateful for the support of her family and friends, who stuck with her right to the end.

She also received a lot of unexpected support from women all around the world. Her inbox on LinkedIn alone was flooded with hundreds of supportive messages. Pao hadn’t won the case, but she’d won the hearts and minds of many women across all industries, including the tech industry.

With this overwhelming support, Pao decided to gather other women in executive positions to brainstorm how they could reset the tech industry.

Pao’s initiative resulted in the founding of Project Interlude, with a mission to provide CEOs and venture capital firms with the tools and solutions they needed to effectively fight against workplace discrimination.

The co-founders are influential women who all share similar experiences, like former Google engineer, Erica Joy Baker, diversity advocate Brianna Wu and Pinterest engineer Tracy Chou. These women developed the project’s three core solutions to combat discrimination at work: inclusion of all employees, comprehensiveness and accountability.

Project Interlude gives CEOs useful advice on how to diversify their teams and lead them to success. Since its founding, the project has become an award-winning non-profit organization, spreading the word for more inclusivity in the workplace.

No matter your race, gender, age, sexuality, disability or if you’re pregnant, everyone is entitled to equal career opportunities. This means fair allocation of jobs, a workplace that doesn’t tolerate discrimination or harassment, and the assurance that every employee is paid according to their performance. Pao’s journey shows us that we shouldn’t be discouraged after one knockback, and that speaking up against these injustices can have wide-reaching effects.

#Ellen Pao

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ronaldmrashid · 7 years

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The Google Manifesto: Conform Or Perish

Once upon a time, I was 28 and dumb. But I was never as dumb as author James Damore who wrote a 3,200 word manifesto saying the reason why women and some minorities aren’t more represented at his firm is due to biological differences. That’s just offensive to the women and minorities who made it to Google.

Overall, Google’s workforce is 69% male, 31% female. However, when it comes to technical positions, just 20% of the jobs are filled by women. 56% of the workforce is White, 35% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 2% Black, 4% bi-racial, and less than 1% Other.

After a decade of trying to become more diverse, Google is clearly has not done a great job since African Americans represent roughly 12.4% and Hispanics about 17% of US the population. Interestingly, when it comes to diversity, Asian Americans don’t seem to count for some reason, even though they are an even smaller minority at only 6% of the US population.

Given Damore is now unemployed and facing potential financial difficulties (if he doesn’t win his lawsuit), I wanted to discuss some important lessons everybody who depends on a job to survive should think about. This is a site about financial freedom after all.

Lessons Learned From The Google Manifesto Fiasco

1) If you are not financially independent, never offend anybody. Something must have really bothered James to spend hours writing his manifesto. I’m guessing he was ticked off because he was passed over for a raise or promotion, and found it unfair that Google has career help programs specifically for underrepresented groups of people.

Welcome to the real world, where even working at one of the most prestigious organizations can make you unsatisfied. Even though you’ve already won the job lottery (0.2% acceptance rate), you curiously think the system is stacked against you.

Check your bank account. Do you have at least a couple years of living expenses locked away? If not, then keep quiet. Check your net worth tracking account. Does it at least equal 20X your gross annual income? If not, then shut up. Check your passive income streams. Can they cover all your living expenses? If not, then what the hell are you doing trying to piss off your managers and peers?!

Performance is only 50% of the way to get ahead at a large organization. The other 50% is developing a large support network who will fight for you at every rung of the ladder. Ostracizing 30% of your peer group when you need a consensus to ascend is a career limiting move.

A List Of Career Limiting Moves To Blow Up Your Future

Once You Have F U Money, It’s Hard To Tell People To F Off!

2) Conform or perish. Before joining a company, you need to have a thorough understanding of the company’s culture and ideology. Every large tech company in the SF Bay Area like Facebook, Google, Salesforce, Airnbnb and Apple has a left-leaning ideology. Therefore, after accepting a job offer, it’s unwise to come out against your company’s ideology.

Damore writes, “When it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.”

That’s just the way it is James. If you decide to parlay your Harvard Master’s degree in Systems Biology to become a software engineer at a company you don’t respect for the sake of money and prestige, then that’s on you. Find a company that has the ideology you believe in.

No student is going to the University of Michigan to wear Ohio State sweaters to class. No person expects to live long if they continuously overeat. No financial freedom seeker expects to be rich without investing. Be congruent in your thoughts and actions.

Related: What If You Go To Harvard And End Up A Nobody?

3) Women have a powerful voice in the media. If you write about anything that may be construed as anti-women, you are putting your career and reputation in peril. The vast majority of people who have written about the Google Manifesto fiasco are women. Here’s a list of organizations that wrote about the subject and their authors:

NBC News – Alyssa Newcomb, Jo Ling Kent

Fortune – Ellen McGirt

Gizmod0 Kate Congert

Quartz – Gwynn Guilford

Wired – Nitasha Tiku

Inc. – Suzanne Lucas

Motherboard Vice – Louise Matsakis

Recode – Kara Swisher

Pando – Sarah Lacy

In many large organizations, women are well-represented in diversity leadership positions and HR roles. Don’t make enemies with the very people who can decide your fate. If you are a heterosexual male who was constantly rejected by women growing up because you were a super nerd, instead of being angry, work on your communication skills instead.

Related: The Difficulties Of Pregnancy: More Help Needed For Working Moms

4) Lack of diversity is not hard fought across job functions. Someone on the Twitter echo chamber brought up a good point, “Nobody fights about lack of diversity in modest paying jobs.” So true if you think about different industries with a disproportionate number of men or women. For example, I don’t recall seeing any outrage about the lack of men teaching K – 12 even though women make up ~75% of all teachers. Maybe I just missed it.

Teaching is one of the most important occupations in the world. Why aren’t more equal rights advocates up in arms about the lack of equality? The simple and sad reason is because the median pay for an elementary teacher is only about $40,000 compared to a software engineer who can easily make $200,000+ in salary and stock.

Society is so wrapped up in money and prestige that they conveniently forget there is inequality everywhere, not just at famous companies which pay handsome salaries. If you choose to fight for equality, try to fight for equality for everyone. The people who make less probably need more help.

After the teaching industry, let’s look for more racial representation in the NBA. I’d love to see at least 6% of the players be Asian. Basketball is huge in Asia and amongst Asian people in America. With over 4 billion Asian people in the world (more than half), more Asians in the NBA would be great for business.

After Five Years Of Unemployment I Finally Found A Dream Job

Why Don’t More Men Go Into Teaching? (NYT)

5) Employment is at-will. Unlike countries like France or Japan, where getting fired is unheard of, employees have little protection here in the United States. Allowing companies to fire employees for whatever reason is part of why we’re the leaders in innovation. America is a cut throat society that thrives on capitalism.

See what the Supreme Court of California has to say about at-will employment.

“An employer may terminate its employees at will, for any or no reason … the employer may act peremptorily, arbitrarily, or inconsistently, without providing specific protections such as prior warning, fair procedures, objective evaluation, or preferential reassignment … The mere existence of an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectable by law, that employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the parties have actually adopted such terms.”

As soon as you become mindful that you can be fired at any time, you’ll be more willing to assimilate into the Borg. Make no mistake. If you do not moonlight or build alternative income streams, you’ve chosen to put your entire livelihood in the hands of an organization.

Related: Ranking The Best Passive Income Investments

6) Go Small Or Go On Your Own. If by now you’re upset about having to conform to groupthink, then leave and join a much smaller company or become an entrepreneur. Large companies naturally become more bureaucratic because they employ a larger representation of the American people (except for Google and many of the other tech companies per their diversity reports). One of the biggest fears every company has is getting sued for discrimination. Therefore, a tremendous effort is made to ensure proper systems are in place to make sure everybody gets along (except for at Uber).

As an entrepreneur for the past five years with only my wife to report to, I’ve found making work decisions to be 10X faster than when I worked at a firm with tens of thousands of people. We work with online contractors we’ve never met before e.g. our system administrator. We’ve had business meetings with hundreds of different men and women from all races and backgrounds. Not once did a person’s sex or race come into consideration for working together. It always came down to whether the product was a natural fit for my writing or whether the person was competent to produce good work.

You should not turn into a cancer that negatively affects everyone you’re working with. Someone else will happily take your place if you don’t want it. After getting a terrible bonus despite strong performance, I decided to engineer my layoff instead of complain. I believed in myself more than my company believed in me.

Either take the money and stop biting the hand that feeds you or move on.

If You Need Money, Proceed With Caution

Life is already hard enough as it is. Don’t make things harder on yourself by blowing up your career if you aren’t already rich. It’s OK to speak your unfiltered mind if you are OK with the consequences. Just know that whatever you write will last forever on the internet. Pick up the phone or meet someone face-to-face if you want to insult them. But before you do, learn some self-defense!

Related: Are You Smart Enough To Act Dumb Enough To Get Ahead

Readers, did you read the Google Manifesto? If so, what do you think? Why don’t more people fight for equality in modest or lower paying jobs? Has society become so infatuated with the top 1% that they’ve ignored the plight of everyone else? Why do people who don’t have FU money like to make life harder on themselves?

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/the-google-manifesto-conform-or-perish/

#Financial Samurai

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bestnewsmag-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Bestnewsmag

New Post has been published on https://bestnewsmag.com/samsung-newss8-update-brings-some-good-news-and-some-very-bad-news/

Samsung newsS8 update brings some good news - and some VERY bad news

Pre-orders for the latest flagship Samsung update handset have been 30 consistent with cent better than the ones for Galaxy S7 remaining 12 months, the South Korean technology enterprise has confirmed the news.

But, some Galaxy S8 proprietors have observed problems with the brand new handset.

a few clients who pre-ordered the handset, and obtained it ahead of the worldwide release date, have observed an issue with the brand new Infinity Show.

A number of early adopters have complained approximately a “crimson tint” to the display screen.

View photo on Twitter View picture on Twitter Follow Rikin Trivedi @Rikins #SimplyRik – Samsung guarantees fix for Galaxy S8’s crimson display problem #TechNews #TRP 9:31 PM – 24 Apr 2017 1 1 Retweet likes The tinge is most significant on uniform white displays, just like the settings menu, in line with those with affected handsets.

Pics of Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphones with a pink hue to the Show have flooded onto social media websites Twitter and Instagram.

In South Korea, “Galaxy S8 red display screen” began to trend at the county’s seek engine, Naver, within days of the first handsets landing inside the hands of clients.

That is no longer perfect, But Samsung has confirmed the issue – and supplied a restoration.

Samsung confirmed to The Wall Road Journal that there’s no hardware disorder with the Show and that any pink-tint can be fixed with software.

Samsung Galaxy S8 launch – present day cell phone in pics Wed, March 29, 2017

PLAY SLIDESHOW Samsung Galaxy S8 launch in pics Explicit NEWSPAPERS 1 of 35 Samsung Galaxy S8 release in photos

The generation enterprise has announced plans to roll-out a new software update for the telephone a good way to permit customers extragranular controls over the Show’s look.

This software update ought to remedy any frustrations with the Display, Samsung advised The Wall Street Journal.

When the software program is ready, customers will be asked to put in the update through the Settings menu.

Samsung is working on a restoration for the screen issue, it has confirmedEXPRESS NEWSPAPERS Samsung is working on a fix for the display screen difficulty, it has showed Speaking to Stressed Mag, a spokesperson for Samsung delivered: “The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are prepared with Wi-fi AMOLED Show to provide wealthy colors with high sharpness and contrast.

“in the beyond, we’ve acquired remarks that customers wanted the ability to customize the coloration putting of their Galaxy devices because of herbal versions in shows, and we furnished the option to accomplish that in preceding software program updates.

“Even as the Galaxy S8 and S8+ have the potential for the consumer to modify the color of the Display, Samsung has listened to comments and has determined to release a software update beginning from this week with a purpose to provide clients with a in addition more desirable capacity to adjust the color placing to their desire.”

Samsung additionally hopes to solve a few c084d04ddacadd4b971ae3d98fecfb2a troubles that Galaxy S8 owners inside the Korean market have skilled.

3 Ways To Avoid The Negative News About The Economy

The negative news about the economy is dominating our television sets and other news sources these days and it is especially challenging to avoid the news if you are job searching. I was really upset a few years back because there are so many young people in the United States that did all the right things, played by the rules, and went to college. They put in all that time and effort to get their degrees. As they have gotten these degrees and are now looking to enter the labor market, they can find no job. It is really a blow to your self-esteem if you have a college degree and after sending out over 500 resumes and filling out many other applications you cannot find a job. You wonder if it is your fault that you can’t find a job. You begin to wonder if there was any point in getting that college degree. You feel like you are helpless and don’t know where to turn for an answer. If you have experienced all these feelings, you are not alone.

Your next question will be how do I avoid these negative news stories about the economy and still be productive? There is no easy solution to this situation. It is very likely that you will hear about this negative news from someone who you know or you will be exposed to it while you are browsing the internet. The important thing is to at least try to stay away from this news and I know that this is not an easy thing to do. Here are three suggestions for minimizing the impact of this negative stuff on the news so that you stay sane and productive:

1. Read a book that you enjoy. If you are reading something, you may as well spend that time reading something you have a genuine interest in. You can also drink a nice cup of tea while you are reading that book and it would make for a very relaxing occasion.

2. If you see yourself becoming overwhelmed by the negative news, write about your feelings. Writing your feelings and expressing them is a way to get that toxicity out of your body. This is because when you write about your feelings, you release the frustration, anger and negativity that have built up inside of you. I get down sometimes too and it was an especially hard day for me today too. Writing and publishing your work helps to keep you active and sane so that you feel better. When your mind is busy with a task, you won’t have time left for any worries. This is perhaps the most effective tip that I can offer. But let me tell you that nothing works 100% of the time.

3. On a related note, write as often as you can especially if you have your own website. Regular writing also helps you attract more visitors to your site and you feel better because you will know that you have been productive. New content is really important. Fresh content leads to more regular visitors and possibly more money made through advertising or other ways. You should be creative to figure out how to do this. There are many ways to monetize your website.

These are a few tips of advice to help you get started on the path to becoming a more relaxed person in these hard and challenging times. I know that for many others these hard economic times have devastated. I have been there and I am still struggling like many of you are and all we can do is keep on applying to jobs and networking. And most of all, never give up on your life.

Consider the Advantages of a Samsung Refrigerator

Samsung is a well-known name in the electronics industry, but it should be known that this company also makes quality appliances. You should learn a little about the Samsung refrigerator before shopping for a new fridge. Find out what sets this company apart from other manufacturers of appliances, as you just may be interested in purchasing this kind of fridge once you know about more about it.

Like some of the top fridge manufacturers, Samsung makes a few types of refrigerators. Of course there is the popular side-by-side fridge, which features the freezer on the left and the refrigerated space on the right. This is quite commonly seen in most modern kitchens since the technology is still fairly new, but the fridge is typically affordable. The Samsung refrigerator can also be found in another popular style known as the bottom freezer fridge. Just as the name indicates, this model features the freezer on the bottom, usually as a drawer that pulls out. The refrigerated space takes up the entire top of the appliance, as is usually seen French door style, with two doors side by side.

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

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Coronavirus Rips Into Regions Previously Spared

Now some of those countries are tumbling into the maw of the pandemic, and they are grappling with the likelihood that their troubles are only beginning.

Globally, known cases of the virus are growing faster than ever with more than 100,000 new ones a day. The surge is concentrated in densely populated, low- and middle-income countries across the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and South Asia.

Not only has it filled hospitals and cemeteries there, it has frustrated the hopes of leaders who thought they were doing everything right, or who believed they might somehow escape the pandemic’s worst ravages.

“We haven’t seen any evidence that certain populations will be spared,” said Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida. For those not yet affected, she said, “it’s a matter of when, not if.”

Several of the newly hit countries are led by strongmen and populists now facing a foe that cannot be neutralized with arrests or swaggering speeches. In Egypt, where the rate of new confirmed infections doubled last week, the pandemic has created friction between President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and doctors who have revolted over a lack of protective equipment and training.

In Brazil, the total death toll surpassed 32,000 on Thursday, with 1,349 deaths in a single day, dealing a further blow to the populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has continued to minimize the threat.

“We are sorry for all the dead, but that’s everyone’s destiny,” he said Tuesday.

In Bangladesh, natural disaster helped spread the disease. Cyclone Amphan, a deadly storm that tore through communities under lockdown there last month, helped drive cases up to 55,000.

This week Bangladeshi authorities reported the first death from Covid-19 in a refugee camp, a 71-year-old Rohingya man from Myanmar — an ominous sign for wider worries about the plight of vulnerable people huddled in hundreds of such camps in the world’s most fragile countries.

The upswing marks a new stage in the trajectory of the virus, away from Western countries that have settled into a grinding battle against an increasingly familiar adversary, toward corners of the globe where many hoped that hot weather, youthful populations or some unknown epidemiological factor might shield them from a scourge that has infected 6.5 million people and killed almost 400,000, over a quarter of them in the United States.

Some countries now being overrun by the virus seemed to be doing the right thing. In Peru, where President Martín Vizcarra ordered one of the first national lockdowns in South America, over 170,000 cases have been confirmed and 14,000 more deaths than average were recorded in May, suggesting there were many more virus fatalities than the official count of about 5,000.

South Africa, Africa’s economic powerhouse, banned sales of tobacco and alcohol as part of a strict lockdown in March, yet now has 35,000 confirmed infections, the highest on the continent. Even so, President Cyril Ramaphosa eased the restrictions last week, citing economic concerns.

The pandemic’s new direction is bad news for the strongmen and populist leaders in some of those countries who, in its early stage, reaped political points by vaunting low infection rates as evidence of the virtues of iron-fisted rule.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose delivery of a planeload of medical aid to the United States in March was seen as a cocky snub, is grappling with the world’s third-largest outbreak, with 440,000 cases that have enraged the public and depressed his approval ratings to their lowest in two decades.

For Mr. el-Sisi of Egypt, the outbreak has posed a rare challenge to his preferred narrative of absolute control.

Although Egypt’s 30,000 cases are far fewer than those of several other Arab countries — Saudi Arabia has three times as many — it has by far the highest death toll in the region and its infection rate is soaring.

Last Sunday the government recorded 1,500 new cases, up from about 700 just six days earlier. The next day the minister for higher education and scientific research warned that Egypt’s true number of cases could be over 117,000.

Some hospitals are overflowing and doctors are up in arms over shortages of protective equipment that, they say, has resulted in the deaths of at least 30 doctors. Outrage crystallized last week around the death of Dr. Walid Yehia, 32, who had been denied emergency treatment at the overwhelmed Monira general hospital where he worked.

Fellow doctors at the hospital went on strike for a week to protest his death. The main doctors union issued a statement accusing the government of “criminal misconduct” and warning that Egypt was veering toward “catastrophe” — strong words in a country where Mr. el-Sisi has jailed tens of thousands of opponents.

Last week, Mr. el-Sisi railed on Twitter against unspecified “enemies of the state” who attacked government efforts to combat the virus. Earlier, Egypt’s public prosecutor warned that anyone spreading “false news” about the coronavirus faced up to five years imprisonment.

Doctors at several hospitals said they had been threatened by Mr. el-Sisi’s feared security apparatus for daring to complain. The doctors interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal or arrest.

When doctors at the Mansheyat el Bakry hospital threatened to strike last month to protest the lack of training and protective equipment, they received a warning from a hospital senior manager: Anyone who failed to turn up for work the following day would be reported to the National Security Agency, which human rights groups have accused of torture and other abuses.

Reached by phone, the manager, Dr. Hanan el-Banna said the message was part of “normal disciplinary measures.” Then she denied that she had sent it.

A spokesman for Egypt’s Health Ministry did not respond to questions about the message, or other complaints from doctors.

The power of the virus was brought home to Mr. el-Sisi in the early stages of the pandemic, when two senior generals died from Covid-19. Yet his government has frequently seemed determined to put a Panglossian spin on how well it is being handled.

Updated June 2, 2020

Will protests set off a second viral wave of coronavirus?

Mass protests against police brutality that have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across America are raising the specter of new coronavirus outbreaks, prompting political leaders, physicians and public health experts to warn that the crowds could cause a surge in cases. While many political leaders affirmed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear face masks and maintain social distancing, both to protect themselves and to prevent further community spread of the virus. Some infectious disease experts were reassured by the fact that the protests were held outdoors, saying the open air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission.

How do we start exercising again without hurting ourselves after months of lockdown?

Exercise researchers and physicians have some blunt advice for those of us aiming to return to regular exercise now: Start slowly and then rev up your workouts, also slowly. American adults tended to be about 12 percent less active after the stay-at-home mandates began in March than they were in January. But there are steps you can take to ease your way back into regular exercise safely. First, “start at no more than 50 percent of the exercise you were doing before Covid,” says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Thread in some preparatory squats, too, she advises. “When you haven’t been exercising, you lose muscle mass.” Expect some muscle twinges after these preliminary, post-lockdown sessions, especially a day or two later. But sudden or increasing pain during exercise is a clarion call to stop and return home.

My state is reopening. Is it safe to go out?

States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

How can I protect myself while flying?

If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

More than 40 million people — the equivalent of 1 in 4 U.S. workers — have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic took hold. One in five who were working in February reported losing a job or being furloughed in March or the beginning of April, data from a Federal Reserve survey released on May 14 showed, and that pain was highly concentrated among low earners. Fully 39 percent of former workers living in a household earning $40,000 or less lost work, compared with 13 percent in those making more than $100,000, a Fed official said.

Should I wear a mask?

The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people don’t need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks don’t replace hand washing and social distancing.

What should I do if I feel sick?

If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

Last week the Health Ministry published a promotional video that showed coronavirus patients in a hospital praising their care and hailing Mr. el-Sisi. “I can’t believe this, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,” says one masked patient. “I can’t believe what he’s doing for our sake.”

A very different picture emerges on Facebook, where desperate patients or their relatives have posted videos pleading for help.

In one widely circulated recording, a weeping woman says that her ailing father was refused treatment at several hospitals. In another, a man with coronavirus symptoms remonstrates with hospital security guards who turn him away. “Take your complaint to the police,” they tell him.

Even if Egypt’s doctors were not muzzled by their government, Western-style social distancing would be nearly impossible in a chaotic, densely populated city of 20 million people like Cairo where many families survive on day jobs. Mosques, churches and airports remained closed, but the decision to relax a night curfew during the holy month of Ramadan — ostensibly to allow people to break their daily fast together — may have accelerated the spread of the virus, experts say.

Many low- and middle-income countries, now grappling with surging cases, are also struggling to balance public health against the realities of poverty-stricken societies, said Ashish Jha, professor of global health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“At some point the lockdown becomes intolerable,” he said. “The human cost to day laborers, many of whom are already barely surviving, is enormous.”

The hopes of some countries that they could somehow avoid the pandemic are likely to be dashed, he added.

“In the early days, people were seeing patterns that were not really there,” he said. “They were saying that Africa would be spared. But this is a highly idiosyncratic virus, and over time the idiosyncrasy goes away. There is no natural immunity. We are all, humanity-wise, equally susceptible to the virus.”

Experts say that Mr. el-Sisi’s obsession with showing that he is beating the pandemic may have encouraged some Egyptians to drop their guard — a phenomenon similar to that in the United States, where some Americans have taken comfort in President Trump’s breezy reassurances.

Unfortunately, such heedlessness can have dire consequences.

In March, Mohammed Nady, 30, an employee at the Sheraton hotel in central Cairo, posted a video to Facebook dismissing the virus as an American-engineered conspiracy to humiliate China.

A few weeks later, he posted a second video from the hospital announcing that he had contracted the coronavirus.

A third clip showed him in bed, struggling to breath. “I am dying,” he said. “I am dying.”

He died in April, three days before his father also died from the disease.

Reporting was contributed by Nada Rashwan in Cairo, Michael Cooper in New York, Manuela Andreoni in Rio de Janeiro, and Mitra Taj in Lima, Peru.

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abckidstvyara · 6 years

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The UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, has today announced that it’s served an enforcement notice on Cambridge Analytica affiliate SCL Elections, under the UK’s 1998 Data Protection Act.

— Ravi Naik (@RaviNa1k) May 5, 2018

It also listed his likely partisanship and propensity to vote in the 2016 US election — again without explaining how those predictions had been generated.

So Carroll complained to the UK’s data watchdog in September 2017 — which began sending its own letters to CA/SCL, leading to further unsatisfactory responses.

In a strongly worded statement, information commissioner Elizabeth Denham further adds:

Though it was not until last month that Facebook confirmed as many as 87 million users could have had personal data misappropriated.

“I think we’re going to find that this goes way beyond Facebook and that all sorts of things are being inferred about us and then used for political purposes,” he told the newspaper.

Meanwhile Cambridge Analytica continues to use its public Twitter account to distribute a stream of rebuttals and alternative ‘facts’.

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