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snifflesthemouse · 3 years

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Why isn’t the second-born of the second-born listed on the Royal website’s Line of Succession Page? Still yet?

Hello and Good Day! I hope this post finds you all well, happy, and healthy. As for this author, please rest assured my silence has nothing to do with the content of this space and everything to do with personal preferences. In other words, I have been absent simply because I wanted to take a break from it all. During this break, there have been plenty of things worthy of discussion.

However, many of those discussions are discussions we’ve already had before, long before the press decided to make it officially newsworthy. It would seem the news and media are slow to catch onto what we’ve ALL known for quite some time. For example, we all knew the couple were planning money moves and business dealings long before the official “We quit!” announcements. We already knew, long before the news started discussing it, that the couple were trying to monetize their links to the Royal Family. And we all already knew that bullying claims and horror stories existed long before any official third-party investigations. This post will focus on the big question(s) of late: Why hasn’t the second-born of the second-born been added to the official Royal Family Line of Succession list?

The Royal Line of Succession (found here: https://www.royal.uk/succession) still suggests the second-born of the second-born is not in the official line. This could all very well be a big misunderstanding. Occam would suggest the simplest solution is the correct solution, right? So, the simplest solution would be that IT (or the responsible party for managing changes to the Royal UK website) hasn’t got around to making the changes to the Line of Succession.

According to the Mirror, (article link: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/royal-familys-website-yet-add-24565116) updates or changes to the line of succession page can vary. It took 12 days for HRH The Prince Louis of Cambridge to be added. It took 15 days for Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor to be added. Master August Philip Hawke Brooksbank was added to the official line of succession page 61 days after his arrival. The article didn’t mention how long it took after Master Lucas Tindall was born for his name to be added to the page.

The important fact, though, IS that both August and Lucas are on the list. Neither child has been christened in the Church of England. August’s christening had to be rescheduled. Lucas’s christening has yet to be scheduled or announced. It is worth noting, however, that Zara Tindall is not a working royal. Her first two children, Mia and Lena, were both christened at St. Nicholas’s Church in Gloucestershire several months after they were born. Both christenings were privately held with Her Majesty the Queen present. The godparents weren’t made public, either; yet it is known Prince Harry was named as one of the godparents for Lena.

It has been suggested Zara and Mike will follow suit with Lucas and hold a private christening at St. Nicholas’s Church in the near future. Some even suggest it will be around Christmastime when they do so, and that the Queen will be present for the christening. The Queen was suspected to attend the christening for August at Windsor before the worldwide bug caused the event to be rescheduled. The point of all this is that being christened has NOTHING to do with being added to the line of succession. We can see that is true since Lucas and August are yet to be christened.

According to Tatler, (article found here: https://www.tatler.com/article/surrogacy-and-peerages-legal-issues-family-law-marchioness-of-bath) titles and succession rights rely on the terms of the original grant. When it comes to the line of succession for the Royal Family, the royal.uk website explains clearly what requirements must be met for someone to hold a spot in line. These requirements have changed very little over the centuries. For someone to be in the line of succession, they must be legitimate-born Protestant descendants of the Princess Sofia, Electress of Hanover. Before the law changed, male descendants took precedent over females. Children born AFTER 28 October 2011 no longer adhere to the male-preference.

When the laws changed, with them also changed who needed consent from the Sovereign to marry. The updated laws stated only the first six in line to the throne needed Sovereign consent to marry. The law also changed the rules against descendants marrying Roman Catholics. Now, a descendant of Princess Sofia can keep their spot in the line of succession if they marry a Roman Catholic. When one thinks about it, it would seem like Her Majesty could predict the future.

The changes to the law essentially made sure that any female children of Prince William’s wouldn’t be knocked out of place. It also ensured Prince Harry would have to get permission to marry. However, nothing much else changed regarding the rules. So, any child added to the line of succession still needed to be a descendant of the Princess Sofia, Electress of Hanover. They had to be Protestant (only the Monarch need to be in communion with the Church of England), and they had to be legitimate. What exactly dictates legitimate, though?

Legitimacy requires the children be born to married Protestant parents, one of which who also descend from Princess Sofia. Therefore, children born out of wedlock are ineligible. Children born of surrogacy, regardless of the type of surrogacy used, are treated like adopted children. Adopted children are ineligible for the line of succession. Which brings us to the next point.

Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor is in the line of succession. This tells us that he is a legitimate heir to the line of succession. So, he was born to married Protestant parents, one of which is a direct descendant of the Princess Sofia. Now, I’ve seen the theories regarding Archie. That’s a hot button topic for many. But the fact remains he is in the line of succession. There are several unanswered questions surrounding his birth. As I��ve mentioned before, the easel announcement had to have been created specifically for his birth since the document format was entirely different. No lines were even placed because there were never going to be any signatures.

If Archie were born with the use of a surrogate, it would mean one (or more) of the following:

1. The Royal Family either knew from the get-go and facilitated a cover-up

2. The Royal Family didn’t (or doesn’t still) know anything is amiss

3. The Royal Family learned about the surrogacy AFTER the fact, and the decision to leave Archie in the line of succession was a strong-armed, forced decision put upon the Royal Family

a. If this is the case, it would mean nobody saw #6 or his wife in private, behind the scenes to notice something was amiss

b. The Royal Family DID see the duo and caught on, deciding to distance themselves from the whole ordeal

c. It would also suggest Megxit was more about them saving face and ridding themselves of the deceitful duo now residing in Montecito.

4. The Deceitful Duo lied and deceived everyone, kept a distance from everyone, and used their “rift” with the other Royals as an excuse to keep them at bay.

Think about it. Buckingham Palace botched the announcements. First, they announced the couple were in labor in the afternoon, even though Archie was born early on that morning. The birth announcement/easel wasn’t signed, and it was entirely changed to fit the situation. Then, there was that questionable tweet from Kensington. Coupled with the alleged statement from the alleged Doctor’s husband that his wife did not deliver the child.

Now, either Archie’s mother saw an opportunity to fuel rumors, speculation, a family rift, etc. and decided to purposely make everything mysterious to drum up drama and attention. Or… the truth is there is a coverup at play. We may never know. But it does speak volumes to how things are playing out now with their second child.

Their second child was born in California on 4 June. There are already stories making the rounds regarding the second-born. First, it was #6 demanded a private christening at Windsor with the Queen in attendance. Then, it was #6 was supposed to acquire the baptismal gown and bring it back to California, so the child could be baptized stateside. Allegedly, the Queen said, “NO, NO, and NO!” to all of the demands (i.e. private Windsor ceremony, borrowing the gown, etc.).

New Idea reported the gossip (article found here: https://www.newidea.com.au/lilibet-christening). Saying all those “No’s!” enraged the couple, so they are banning Royals from the christening and having their own private ceremony stateside. Potentially, even having a Roman Catholic christening. That would end up being the perfect coverup…

If they decided on a Roman Catholic christening, they know it would force the second-born out of her spot in line. It would also become the scapegoat excuse. They could say the cruel Royals forced their hand, in turn forcing them to forfeit their second child’s spot in line. The same couple obsessed with the titles, who also denounce needing titles to serve since service is universal, would have the perfect excuse. Nobody would question it further (in their own minds, anyway).

But all that is speculation. Let’s look at facts. Facts state that a child must be legitimately born to a descendant of the Princess Sofia and baptized as Protestant. That is all. The disqualifiers are being born out of wedlock, being adopted, or being born of a surrogacy (again, regardless of the type of surrogacy). Children born of surrogacy are treated as adopted children. A child could be 100% conceived from both married parents’ gametes (meaning the child was conceived using both parents’ egg and sperm) but carried by a gestational surrogate… AND STILL be disqualified from succession rights. The law sees it that the surrogate carrying the genetic child of the married Protestant parents breaks the chain of descent. These are the facts of law.

So, whether the omission of the latest Montecito Mansion addition is a snub, the result of someone in a tech department somewhere failing to get around to changing the official webpage, or legitimate, we may never know for certain. Who knows? Maybe time will prove us all wrong, and the omission will be amended on the website. What we do know for certain, however, is being christened isn’t a prerequisite. This is true because, as of today right now, 2 of the 22 names on the line of succession are not christened. Prince Louis wasn’t christened within 12 days of his name being added, either. Nor was Archie christened within those 15 days of being added.

And remember… a DNA test would only prove whether a child is genetically its parents. A DNA test doesn’t prove whether the child is born naturally, via c-section, surrogate, or anything else. DNA only declares biological relations. It declares the “who” but not the “how”.

I’ve listed several websites that I have pulled information from below for anyone interested.

It’s also worth a look to see how much the Montecito Muppets try so hard to copy Zara and Mike Tindall. You see, Zara and Mike Tindall didn’t do a formal photo call for the birth of any of their children. No pictures on the steps of the hospitals. Mia (the oldest of Zara and Mike’s children) was introduced to the world via a photo spread with Hello Magazine. The couple chose to do the photo shoot, as well as being on the cover of the magazine, because they felt people wanted it. They did the shoot as World-Class athletes, not as Royals. Lena was introduced in an advert for Land Rover’s all-terrain pram. The announcements for Lucas (both the pregnancy announcement and the birthing announcement) were made by Mike on a Rugby podcast.

Zara and Mike Tindall, being non-working Royals, must make their own money. They have no titles. Their children have no titles. They have no Sovereign Grant money. They have no Royal Protection Officers protecting them 24/7 either. Their children were christened in private, and the godparents weren’t made public. Well, except Prince Harry was named as Lena’s godparent. He was married at the time of Lena’s christening. His wife was pregnant at the time, too. One wonders if the wife was also named as a godparent. One also wonders if the wife got the idea of half-in-half-out from seeing how successful The Princess Royale’s children have been in life sans titles.

It’s like they saw these hard-working people who happened to be related to the Monarch, who just so happened to be of Royal blood and descent. Who didn’t have to answer to the public as much as senior “working Royals” because they didn’t take tax dollars. But the truth is, they can never have what they envy so much about The Princess Royal’s children. They lack the talent, skill, grace, and understanding that The Princess Royal instilled in her children. That’s why they constantly depend on “bombshells” for attention and revenues. But that itself is a discussion all its own…

ARTICLES FOR YOUR INTEREST AND CURIOSITY:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1415464/zara-tindall-princess-eugenie-royal-baby-news-christening-tradition-evg

https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/celebs-tv/inside-two-cotswold-churches-fit-5544053

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/royal-baby-christening-traditions-gowns-24301504

https://celebrity.land/en/royal-fans-should-prepare-to-wait-for-glimpse-of-princess-annes-first-grandson-lucas-tindall/

https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1462070/zara-tindall-news-mike-tindall-lucas-mia-lena-royal-baby-talk-interview-royal-family-spt

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9777651/Princess-Eugenie-forced-cancel-Windsor-christening-son-August-following-Covid-scare.html

https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/royal-succession

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/20/enacted

https://www.royal.uk/succession

https://www.tatler.com/article/surrogacy-and-peerages-legal-issues-family-law-marchioness-of-bath

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-law-journal/article/abs/significance-of-status-and-genetics-in-succession-to-titles-honours-dignities-and-coats-of-arms-making-the-case-for-reform/3B2FBB705EEFCE82E04E80002D4D486A

https://www.thejournal.ie/royal-inheritance-succession-explained-701049-Dec2012/

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/royal-familys-website-yet-add-24565116

#line of succession #megxit #yankeewally #legality #why

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gumnut-logic · 3 years

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The Castle (Part 2)

Part 1 | Part 2

Okay, this is a fic resurrected from two years ago. It was originally just a short, but I thought I would add to it because I had multiple responses wanting exactly that, but most of all for @janetm74 who has been an amazing support to both me and a good chunk of Thunderfam ::hugs her lots:: And also for @the-original-sineater who has been a great cheerleader on Ao3 for a long time and also prompted me to write more for this. Thank you both so much.

So if you are wlling to drop in on Part 1 from 2019 (it was a nuttyfic reblog just recently as well, and the first couple of paragraphs of this part were posted last night cos I couldn’t help myself), hopefully you will enjoy reading this. Part 3 has already been started.

Warnings: Because this is remnant from my Virgil/Kayo period, it is indeed Virgil/Kayo, but that is not the focus of the fic, Scott whump which will be detailed more in the next chapter, oops, a little Virg whump too, cos let’s face it, it is me, and lots of action in this bit. 1664 words.

I hope you enjoy it :D

-o-o-o-

Tanusha Kyrano, at her heart, was a gentle soul. If circumstances had been different, perhaps she would be content snipping bonsai branches and putting her interest in engineering to a more benign use.

But circumstances were what they were and life had not been kind. In turn, Kay, as Virgil liked to call her, or Kayo, as Alan had christened her all those years ago, had learnt to fight. What her uncle took from her she clawed back. What her uncle took from the Tracys...from her father…hell hath no fury to compare.

Scott, her beloved brother, tried his best to keep her following the philosophy of the Tracy family. He meant well.

He meant good.

But Tanusha was not a Tracy.

She was a Kyrano. Descended down a long line of honourable men and women with enough fire to defend their own.

Fire she stoked. Because the Tracys were her own and she would defend them with everything she had.

So, to see what that bitch had done to that same cherished brother was enough to set her screaming inside.

She watched as Virgil ran the mediscanner over Scott’s emaciated body. Ever so gently.

Her heart hurt.

So much.

But her senses were primed and the clock was ticking. “Virgil, we need to move.”

“I can’t…he’s…” Painfilled dark eyes looked up at her, but Virgil was a trained emergency responder and she saw the calculations roll in his head, the automatic control slam down, and the reality of the situation hit home.

He turned back to his brother. “Scott, we’re going to get you out of here.”

Weak blue eyes followed Virgil’s every move as if he was life itself. Kayo wasn’t sure if Scott knew anyone else was here.

He looked so hurt.

It was her turn to slam down shutters.

Her hand tightened around the gun grip.

“Scotty.” Virgil’s voice was hoarse, but determined. “I’m going to give you something to help you relax.” The medic held up one of the light tranquiliser shots International Rescue kept in their kit for hysterical rescuees in extreme situations. It wouldn’t quite knock Scott out entirely, but would remove him to a painless, oblivious state.

Virgil hated them with a passion, but it was obvious even to her that moving Scott in this condition was going to hurt.

Scott tried to bat it away, but Virgil did what he had to do.

“I’m sorry, Scott.”

She didn’t know her heart was capable of breaking further.

Their big brother fell limp into Virgil’s arms.

She didn’t miss him gently nudging Scott’s head into the crook of his neck. Virgil’s cheek rested softly on dirty hair and he mumbled something she couldn’t hear.

But then he was moving. Shoving the medipack back into the black of his uniform, and wrapping one arm around his brother’s back and the other under his knees, he lifted him smoothly.

Virgil turned to her, and despite technically being in charge, he awaited her order.

Kayo nudged her comms. “Target acquired and mobile. Execute.”

Penelope’s FAB was short and sharp.

Kayo led the way. The alarm was still blaring outside the prison cell and, in the distance, there was the clattering of many feet.

The corridor was quiet and reeked of trap even more than when they had entered. John was listing life signs narrowing in on their location.

They needed an out.

They needed it now.

A sharp snap and rumble in the distance signified Gordon and Penelope had met their explosive obligations.

The stone walls groaned.

Kayo both led and hovered about Virgil. He was vulnerable with his arms full of ill brother. Twice she had to take out opposition who saw that as an opportunity.

Gordon and Penelope met them at the last turn. The sound her fish brother made at the sight of Scott was one she would be happy to never hear again.

But there was no time.

And Gordon was a professional.

As one they exited the gloomy building.

Only to be immediately surrounded. John swore in her ear. Someone was clapping.

The triumphant, smug sound set Kayo moving before thought.

It had been a trap as suspected. Obviously somehow cloaked from their Eye in the Sky.

But still, no matter.

She spun, mud sliding beneath her feet, gratified to feel teeth connect with the heel of her boot even as she fired rapidly at the immediate targets. She didn’t pause. Her movement kept them unsure and they were armed. She had brothers, a friend and a lover to protect.

It all became a blur of blood, pain and cursing. She was aware of Penelope beside her, giving hell all of her own, and Gordon, ever efficient.

The hiss of stun pellets and the resultant yelps were rather satisfying.

The terror of gunshots.

But she fought on unimpeded by serious injury until the scene was startlingly quiet beyond groaning bodies.

“You know, I have to give you credit. Three against thirty is rather impressive, but you knew all along that your boyfriend was the weak point, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question, and the voice far too familiar and ire inducing to be ignored.

Kayo let go of the henchman in her hands but gained no gratification when he fell face down in the churned-up mud and didn’t move.

Turning, she knew what she would find.

Of course, the villain formerly known as Havoc, her cousin who didn’t deserve any moniker other than her birth name of Louise, had a gun to Virgil’s head.

Virgil her beautiful and caring man, currently clutching their sick and injured brother to his chest.

Her vulnerability.

Louise was grinning manically, ever confident in her superiority of position. She had Virgil and Scott, so Kayo was pinned.

The woman hated Kayo with a passion and Kayo had no doubt that she was the reason Scott had been nabbed. A little pleasure with purpose. Ever since Gordon had separated Fuse from his adopted sister, Louise had fallen further and further into the darkness.

She had been awful enough to begin with, but now, Louise was truly horrid.

She had done this to Scott and would do it again to Virgil, to Gordon, to Penelope, and to Kayo, if she was allowed to persist.

Scott would argue that she was worth saving anyway.

But Kayo wasn’t a Tracy and now more than ever she valued that difference because there were things she was capable of that no Tracy would ever dream of.

She took a step forward.

“Now, Kayo, you know better than that.” The gun at Virgil’s temple jammed in tighter, causing the man to wince.

Penelope stepped up beside Kayo and beyond her, Gordon was glaring at Louise, perhaps in the hope that the gesture would laser her from existence.

The ground was littered in bodies, several groaning, but still a handful of henchmen moved to protect Louise.

Virgil caught her gaze.

His eyes were the most beautiful colour. They reminded her of the coffee he drank every morning, lit by the sun through a window, a warm scent that hovered about him.

And she knew exactly what he was going to do.

He stepped back into Louise, his hard boot coming down on her foot and the back of his head slamming into her nose. With his arms full of Scott, he did not have the balance to maintain his footing and with Louise’s yelp of pain, he and Scott fell on top of her, his weight pinning her down.

Louise still had her gun.

Virgil struggled to knock it from her hand.

But Kayo was moving, and Penelope and Gordon with her.

The gun fired a second before Kayo’s fist slammed the woman into unconsciousness. But the crunch of bone was not enough to satisfy the sudden fear of where that bullet landed.

There was blood welling in a trail across Virgil’s face... “Virgil!”

He blinked and winced, head dropping back against Louise’s armour. Red dribbled down his cheek from a burnt gash starting just below his right eye, cutting across his cheekbone and taking the very tip off his nose.

He cursed silently, but Scott, still held securely in Virgil’s arms, moaned and the medic’s attention shifted, his head coming up again, focussing on his brother.

Gordon was suddenly there. “Woah, Virgil.” His eyes widened, but he was all business. “We need to move. Luigi wasn’t alone and there are more coming.” He eyed Scott as he helped Kayo get Virgil to his feet.

Kayo frowned at Virgil’s injury. It was both cauterised in part and bleeding.

And so close.

But Virgil’s eyes were only for Scott, checking him over.

Scott mumbled Virgil’s name.

They had to move.

The medic stumbled forward, blinking, obviously affected, possibly with a concussion.

Hell.

“Gordon, assist Virgil. We’re leaving.” She eyed Penelope, Kayo’s fingers twitching in a signal.

The agent nodded once, expression firm.

Hugging the wall of the castle, Kayo called her ‘bird. Penelope did the same with FAB1 and moments later, the ‘birds were landing silently in front of them.

Shadow was little more than her name and the usually pink limousine blended smoothly with the grass.

One of the henchmen grabbed at her ankle as Kayo stepped past.

Her kick silenced him, possibly permanently.

Virgil was attempting to hurry, but he was wobbling. Gordon kept him going, directing him to FAB1 and into the backseat. Penelope took the front and within moments they were airborne.

Kayo appraised the scene one last time as she threw herself into Shadow. Louise’s overconfidence showed in every move. It was the woman’s fatal flaw.

The GDF would clean this up, but Kayo had no doubt the woman would find another way to haunt them.

Shadow’s VTOL fired and Kayo left the Earth littered with unconscious and injured bodies as she listened to John directing the GDF in.

Perhaps if she had hit a little harder she could have ended this dance forever.

-o-o-o-

TBC

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #Kayo Kyrano #Virgil Tracy #Scott Tracy #Penelope Creighton-Ward #Gordon Tracy

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thevindicativevordan · 3 years

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I really like this blog, your analysis and ideas for Superman and his characters was great to read! I hope you don't mind, may I ask what do you think about Hank Henshaw? Do you have any ideas for him?

I think he needs to be radically changed in order to keep working, because as of right now his entire character is "hey remember Reign of the Supermen? That was cool amirite?"

Henshaw was created in an era where the editorial mandate was "the only survivor of Krypton is Clark", and that meant Superman didn't have an "evil Superman" counterpart Rogue in the Post Crisis era the way Pre Crisis did. So the writers had to come up with ways to get around that, some of the workarounds I liked such as Bizarro becoming a clone that Lex makes, and some of which were just so goddamn stupid like the Pocket Universe. But all of the Post Crisis evil Superman counterparts got killed off relatively quickly, including both Bizzaro and Zod after they were used.

Henshaw though was in one of the most popular Superman stories of all time, and he was Jurgens baby, so he got to stick around. But he was a character who was created to serve a purpose in that one specific story, and outside of that what does he have to offer? Disguising himself as Clark and setting out to ruin Superman's reputation since Doomsday robbed him of killing Clark was a great motivation, but once Clark returns and exposes him as a fraud, Henshaw just doesn't really have the character potential to justify keeping him around as is.

Henshaw wants to kill Superman. Great! That sums up the complete motivations of 90% of the rest of Superman's Rogues (which is in part why they aren't on the same level as Batman or Spider-Man's). Henshaw is really strong and tough and can hurt Superman with brute force. Again, a lot of Superman Rogues can do that too. Henshaw is an "evil Superman" design wise. Putting aside the multiple evil Supermen we get these days, most of them just variants on "real" Superman gone bad, Zod and Bizarro are better known and more popular. Henshaw can manipulate technology and rebuild himself from anything. Brainiac, Livewire, and Metallo also do that. Henshaw can't die? Well he's eclipsed in that regard by Doomsday.

He's overshadowed in the aspects that most people focus on by multiple other villains, with only his ties to Reign keeping him relevant which is why Jurgens always calls back to that storyline with him. His motivation is just generic revenge which doesn't work because if he has no goal other than killing Superman, all he can do is fail. His name "Cyborg Superman" is dumb because it only works within the context of Reign when people thought he might be the legit Superman reborn. It's just not a particular inspired name for him to keep using anymore.

If it sounds like I'm just ragging on him I totally am. He just doesn't work for me in his current role as 90s nostalgia. But I do have some ideas for how he could be reworked to be better utilized in the modern day.

What I Would Do With Hank Henshaw

So first we need to change a lot about him while still working with what came before. Right off the bat I'm having Henshaw ditch the "Cyborg Superman" name and form, and use that all too brief "data form" he had in Action Comics Rebirth.

That looks cool! Now we need to address Hank's biggest problem: what does he want exactly beyond just killing Superman? What are some goals he can feasibly achieve that make him a compelling threat? They've tried giving him a new motive a couple times, such as making him a nihilist who only wants to die in Sinestro Corps War, but ultimately he needs a reason to keep existing. If he just wants death he can track Doomsday down or throw himself into a black hole. I've got two roads to take Henshaw down, one that's pretty simple but justifies keeping him around as a threat and allows him the ability to maybe "win", the other more complex.

The simple route is that we merge Henshaw with the Metaleks. These guys were an army of xenoforming robots who were sent out by some unknown alien race to transform planets into something that's more to that race's liking.

Their creators are long dead, but the Metaleks continue the task they were built for. Henshaw catches wind of them, decides they'd make for an excellent army to do his bidding in the same way the Manhunters were, and attempts to seize control. Instead he gets absorbed into their collective hive mind, his hatred infecting them until it warps their programming, his malevolent mind guiding them and lending them his intellect. Now the Metaleks are a swarm of locusts, out to cleanse the entire galaxy of all life, with Henshaw as the Metalmind behind it all (yes that is his new name, shut up I'm not getting paid for this). With Clark going cosmic, this makes for a good way to keep the two foes fighting each other. Henshaw doesn't have enough control to make the Metaleks focus solely on killing Superman, but his upgrades and coordination means the Metaleks are a much greater threat to other planets than they were previously. Henshaw can now potentially "win" by cleansing a world of life, something that is going to hurt Clark bad given Clark's entire background, and because anywhere not named Earth gets wrecked all the time.

That's the simplistic route. Upgrades Henshaw as a threat while reducing his motives to "kill everything". The more complex route leans into Henshaw's origins as a Reed Richards expy, by basing him off that other evil Reed Richards:

Jurgens had Superman imprison Henshaw within a fake life with his family and friends who died in the accident that gave him powers. I'd have that fake life knaw at Henshaw until ultimately he realizes that his feud with Superman is a pointless waste of time, and what he really wants is his family back and his status as a respected leader restored. But he's a mass murderer and there's no redemption for him at this point, so Henshaw embarks on a quest to build his own little world for him to rule over.

First he seizes control of the Metaleks as in above, but in this route he manages to bring them under his control, christening himself their Metalmind. With an army of terraforming robots on his side, Henshaw begins terraforming his own world. He also retrieves the corpses of his family who died from their mutations and begins working on resurrecting them. At this stage you can have Henshaw in any number of schemes to acquire the resources or tech he needs to build his own kingdom, or to acquire the bodies.

At the second stage once he's got what he needs, he'll start building. First he revives his family (while ensuring that they will be loyal to him above all else). Then he starts creating his "children":

He's been around long enough to know either Superman or someone else will come after him eventually, and Hank Henshaw is prepared. He creates a race of beings who view him as both father and god, who will give him the adoration he craves and showcase his intellect. At this stage you can have stories involving Henshaw where he dispatches his "children" on missions to prove their worth and test their capabilities. Clark has to find and stop these agents while also trying to figure out where they're coming from.

The final stage is when Henshaw is confident that his forces are powerful enough to take on Superman, and then he does the unthinkable. He petitions the United Planets to join as a member. To Clark's horror they accept, and as the head of a planet Henshaw now enjoys intergalactic diplomatic immunity. His creations are now seeded inside the United Planets itself, and Henshaw can put his efforts wherever he wants. He can run twisted science experiments with his family, be the fist of the United Planets alongside Zod, helping the organization grow in ways Superman would abhor, he can try to kill Superman whenever Clark attempts to block his schemes, with his ability to still wrangle concessions from the UP as a way to keep him from just losing all the time. He can be Clark's Dr. Doom in other words, that long term opponent who is always working an angle, and has an entire nation/world behind him he rules as a god.

To me that's a much more interesting angle than him talking about that one time back in the 90s when he was cool anyway.

#superman #cyborg superman #dc comics #hank henshaw

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trouble2381 · 4 years

Text

Bird Song and Scum

This is the first chapter of a story that I'm writing for/with a friend. I thought that it might not be the worst thing to put up here first.

Chapter 1

"You can't tell me it's not a good idea,"

"No, I can't, but it's not going to happen,"

"And why not! It lines up perfectly with what they've done with the series so far,"

"True but I don't think that's what they're going for,"

"You don't know that,"

"No. No, I don't. But I do know Hollywood and they don't really go for things like that,"

"You two do realize you've been hot miccing this entire time, right?" Came a third voice over the radio. The car suddenly filled with alarmed screams at the sudden voice.

"Shit. Raven we're sorry," Said driver suddenly embarrassed as spouting her movie theories to not just her passenger but also the entire crew.

"It's fine Finch," Said Raven calmly "Besides, I agree with you on some of those points. Crane you gotta remember that Hollywood is under a lot of pressure to diversify now making a lead character gay would give them a lot of good publicity,"

"Hah," Finch all but spat at Crane, making sure to turn their microphone off first.

"But I do have to say that it was really unprofessional. Especially when I've got the new kid beside me,"

In Ravens car the "new kid" looked down nervously at his new mask. It was shaped like a bird and coloured a jet black with feathers stuck on as well to really help with the bird motif. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Raven leaned back into his seat, finger lifting from the mic's broadcast button. His face was hidden behind a mask of his own. It was similarly black but his eye lenses were coloured a deep scarlet.

"You'll have to put that on eventually kid," He said, not turning in his direction. His attention seemingly glued to the highway before them, waiting for the mark.

"I know. It's just... I don't know how to word it," he replied, his voice trailing off as he trying to find the correct words.

"You feel as though when you put it on you won't be able to take it off."

"Uh... Yeah, I guess,"

"I know that feeling. Though not from personal experience. The other members of the crew most of them felt the same. Look," He said turning his head and lifting the mask up exposing his dark-skinned face. It looked kinder than the mask but the new kid assumed that was the point. "It comes off easy enough," He smiled and lowered it back down, adjusting the straps at the back as he did.

Taking a deep breath as he turned back the mask in his hands, he raised it up to his face and put his on. The first thing he noticed was how comfortable it was, sure a part jabbed him here and there but given that it hadn't been fitted for his he was surprised. The second thing was how well he found he could see.

"There we go. Just like your name now. Welcome to the team, Crow."

Crow, as he had been christened, nodded his acknowledgement before reaching down and pulling up a laptop that has been sitting at his feet. He opened it up and, once it was fully loaded, prepared to infiltrate the IP address of their target.

"Shouldn't be long now," Spoke Raven, now holding the microphone to his mouth. "Remember, the target is an armoured van transporting a piece of equipment that shouldn't be too missed but will provide us with a decent amount of funds at the end. If we're lucky there should be a small police presence,"

"You mean unlucky," Came a new voice, gruff and female.

"Calm it now Vulture. The last thing we need is the police on our backs," Raven said calmly. "When we do acquire what we're here for lose whatever tail you might have gain and meet back at base."

"You mean the Nest," Came Finch's voice.

"We are not calling it that," Said Crane, in a tone that suggested that this hadn't been the first time this had been suggested. If they argued longer about its Crow didn't hear it as they must have learned from, they're past experience with being accidentally live.

Crow suppressed a small giggle hidden more by his mask. He let out a small breath before his screen suddenly lit up.

"Raven," he said, pointing at the screen. Raven must have known what he meant as a second later he heard Raven speak again.

"Target it in wireless range," In front of them the road lit up with flashing red and blue as the small police escort drove past them followed by the target and then two more small police vehicles. "Visual on target. Moving to pursue," Raven put the mic down and slowly started to pull the car out onto the highway a couple of Kilometres behind the convoy. Squinting, Crow could see another car pull out in front of the van. He prepared himself for what he knew was about to come next. "Now!" Raven shouted down the radio.

A few moments later a large armoured truck barrelled down the hill and slammed into the vans side, instantly flipping it over. The police around them instantly slammed their breaks, one of them colliding with the side of the attacking truck.

Crow quickly suppressed the alarms on his laptop, cutting off their radio connections as well as their silent alarms. He nodded at Raven who nodded back, leaving the car while pulling out his assault rifle from its holster beside the door. As much as Crow tried to focus on the laptop his attention kept being stolen by the loud sound of gunfire outside. He looked up to see cops taking cover behind their doors as Raven fired shots into them.

He could also see Vulture, wearing the appropriate mask, prying open the doors into the back of the van which had landed on its side. Behind the carnage he saw the other two police vehicles being pinned down by fire from two other masked assailants that Crow knew was Finch and Crane. He quickly stroked a few more keys on his keyboard, grabbing a few things as he watched Vulture leave the van carrying a large electrical looking device.

Crows attention was grabbed by the sight of a large man wearing a bird mask running in his direction, he tried not to laugh at the absurdity that he was witness to. Raven threw open his door, threw his gun in the back seat and slammed the car into reverse and turning them around in one smooth motion. As he sped away Crow glanced behind them to see the armoured truck following close behind before it turned into a slip road that Crow hadn't noticed.

"We still silent?" Raven asked, his head turning to look in the mirrors.

"Yeah. I still have connec- never mind. We still have a couple of minutes before they can call out."

"Good, standard procedure is to blow out the tires so we should be long gone before they even know to start looking for us. Hiring you might have been the best idea I've had,"

"I could have told you that," Said Crow jokingly. In more of an experimental way. He breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Raven chuckle.

"You can relax. I ain't gonna throw out for a couple of jokes. I can hear the stress in your voice. Just think. We pissed them off today. Be glad about that."

And Crow did. He thought about how good that felt as he looked out over the

#original writing #original content #writing

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europythonsociety · 4 years

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List of EPS Board Candidates for 2020/2021

At this year’s EuroPython Society General Assembly (GA), on September 20th, we will vote in a new board of the EuroPython Society for the term 2020/2021.

List of Board Candidates

The EPS bylaws require one chair, one vice chair and 2 - 7 board members. The following candidates have stated their willingness to work on the EPS board. We are presenting them here (in alphabetical order by surname).

We will be updating this list in the coming days. Please send in any nominations or self-nominations until 2020-08-29 to [email protected]. The final update will happen on 2020-08-30.

Please note that our bylaws do not restrict nominations to people on this list. It is even possible to self-nominate or nominate other candidates at the GA itself. However, in the interest of giving members a better chance to review the candidate list, we’d like to encourage all nominations to be made before the GA.

Prof. Martin Christen

Teaching Python / using Python for research projects

Martin Christen is a professor of Geoinformatics and Computer Graphics at the Institute of Geomatics at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). His main research interests are geospatial Virtual- and Augmented Reality, 3D geoinformation, and interactive 3D maps.

Martin is very active in the Python community. He teaches various Python-related courses and uses Python in most research projects. He organizes the PyBasel meetup - the local Python User Group Northwestern Switzerland. He also organizes the yearly GeoPython conference. He is also a board member of the Python Software Verband e.V.

I would be glad to help with EuroPython, to be part of a great team that makes the next edition of EuroPython even better, wherever it will be hosted (even online).

Nicolás Demarchi

Pythonista / Software Engineer

Nicolás is a self-taught software engineer working professionally for more than 15 years. After participating on some Linux User Groups and the Mozilla community, Nicolás joined the Python community around 2012, fell in love with it and never left. He is a founder and has been a board member of the Python Argentina NGO since 2016. In the PyAr community, as an organizer, he participated several events and conferences as organizer and/or speaker, ranging from Python Days in various cities, PyCamp and the Python Argentina national conference, being a core organizer in the 2018 one in Buenos Aires (an open and free conference with ~1500 attendees). Since 2014 Nicolás has been maintaining the Python Argentina infrastructure that supports the mailing list, webpages, etc. He was (still helping a bit) the host of the Buenos Aires Python Meetup. In June 2019, Nicolás moved to Amsterdam and he is currently living and working there. A few months after the move, he joined the organization of the Python Amsterdam meetup and he is working with a small team to build the local community: py.amsterdam. He also joined the https://pycamp.es/ team trying to replicate the Pycamp Argentina experience in Europe. In 2020 he volunteered in the Media Workgroup of Europython 2020 online as a core organizer.

I would like to join the EPS board members because I think Europython is the event connecting all european communities and therefore the right place to invest my time. In addition, I believe I can learn a lot as a volunteer and my experience and contacts in Latin America can also result in fruitful exchanges with the EPS.

Raquel Dou

Linguist / Python enthusiast

Raquel befriended Python in 2013, during her MSc in Evolution of Language and Cognition, where she used Python to model a simple communication system’s evolution over time. She runs a business providing language services and often uses Python to make her work and life easier and more fun.

She was an onsite volunteer in 2018 when EuroPython took place at her doorstep (Edinburgh), and has since been helping with preparations for the 2019 conference in the support and sponsor workgroups. In 2020, she served on the board and had the honour of working with a cracking team in the media workgroup bringing EuroPython 2020 online. Whatever uncertainty is ahead in 2021, she trusts our amazing team will bring us to a good and exciting place, and would love to be part of the exhilarating journey again.

Anders Hammarquist

Pythonista / Consultant / Software architect

Anders is running his own Python consultancy business, AB Struse, since 2019 and is currently mostly involved with using Python in industrial automation. He has been using Python since 1995, and fosters its use in at least four companies.

He helped organize EuroPython 2004 and 2005, and has attended and given talks at several EuroPythons since then. He has handled the Swedish financials of the EuroPython Society since 2016 and has served as board member since 2017.

Cheukting Ho

Pythonista / Developer Advocate / Data Scientist

After spending 5 years researching theoretical physics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Cheuk has transferred her analytical and logical skills in natural science and built a career in data science. Cheuk has been a Data Scientist in one of the biggest worldwide wholesalers in the travel business; an AWS partnered consultancy which delivers machine learning model; a startup aiming to revolutionise revenue management with data science and; a global bank using machine learning to investigating financial crime. Now Cheuk is working in a team of developers building a revolutionary graph database. Cheuk constantly contributes to the community by giving AI and deep learning workshops and organize sprints for open source projects, at the same time contribute to open source projects including Pandas, Keras, Scikit-learn, Dateutil and maintaining open-source libraries. Cheuk has also been a guest speaker at Universities and various conferences. Believing in gender equality, Cheuk is currently a co-organizer of AI Club for Gender Minorities to support Tech Diversity and Inclusion. On top of speaking at conferences, Cheuk has joined the organizing team of EuroPython as a member of the programming workgroup since 2019 and was hosting the lightning talk in the same year.

Learning from the experience of EuroPython 2020 which is an online edition, using the internet for participation and getting involved becomes an option. With this in mind, Cheuk would like to be part of the EPS board to make Python communities to be more connected, more diverse and inclusive. She would like to make EuroPython more accessible to Python lovers across the continent or even across the globe. She would also like to be an ambassador to engage conversations with various Python communities around the world.

Marc-André Lemburg

Pythonista / CEO / Consultant / Interim CTO

Marc-Andre is the CEO and founder of eGenix.com, a Python-focused project and consulting company based in Germany. He has a degree in mathematics from the University of Düsseldorf. His work with and for Python started in 1994, in 1997 he became Python Core Developer and later designed, implemented and maintained the Unicode support in Python. Marc-Andre is a founding member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and has served on the PSF Board several times.

In 2002, Marc-Andre was on the executive committee to run the first EuroPython conference in Charleroi, Belgium. He was elected as board member of the EuroPython Society (EPS) in 2012 and enjoyed the last few years working with the EPS board members on developing the distributed EuroPython workgroup structure, while maintaining the EuroPython spirit and fun aspects of the conference.

For the EuroPython 2017 - 2020 editions, Marc-Andre was chair of the EuroPython Society and ran lots of activities around the conference organization, e.g. managing the contracts and budget, helping with sponsors, the website and conference app, writing blog posts and many other things that were needed to make EuroPython happen.

Going forward, he would like to focus on having the EPS provide more help for other organizers of events and conferences in Europe, not only financially via the grants program, but also by helping with our acquired knowledge and experience in running community events. In addition, of course, to running the annual EuroPython conference and starting experiments with additional smaller events.

Jason C. McDonald

Author, Software Developer, Python enthusiast

Jason C. McDonald has been coding and writing about software development since 2010, first picking up the Python language in 2012. He’s the founder of MousePaw Media, an open source organization that trains software development interns through a year-long remote program designed to equip them for a successful career. He has developed desktop applications, games, and libraries using the Python and C++ programming languages.

Jason is the author of the forthcoming “Dead Simple Python” book from No Starch Press, which is based on his popular article series on DEV, explaining the finer points of Python for newcomers to the language. He is an active member of the Python community via Freenode IRC, where he enjoys answering questions and debating the finer points of Pythonic practice. He was the first tag moderator for the Python tag on DEV, where he continues to regularly advise on moderation policies as one of the community moderators, to foster the safe and healthy community DEV has come to be known for. He’s an outspoken advocate for diversity, inclusion, and mutual understanding through communication.

Jason first joined EuroPython 2020 as a volunteer to help with the transition to an online format, and fell in love with the conference and its diverse and distributed community.

Francesco Pierfederici

Pythonista / Director of Engineering / Python Trainer / Python Author / Beer Brewer / Astronomer

The year 2000 was supposed to be the distant future for Francesco’s generation. We were supposed to be driving flying cars, being able to golf on the ocean floor, wear spandex suites and vacation on Mars.

While nothing of that sort came to be, something incredible happened that year nevertheless: Francesco stumbled upon an amazing language called Python and was immediately enthralled by its elegance and speed of development. He soon threw away C, Java and (gasp!) Perl and has not looked back since.

While in the US, together with amazing folks like Perry Greenfield, he spearheaded the Python revolution in astronomy. He is the author of the Python pipeline frameworks used on the NASA HST, JWST and HLA missions. Back in Europe, he introduced Python in the core business of one of the largest and most conservative companies in the world. He ran Python on the top 10 most powerful computers processing weather simulations. He is currently serving as Director of Engineering at IRAM (https://www.iram-institute.org), driving one of the largest radio telescopes in the world with (you guessed it) Python. I his free time, he is trying to optimise his beer brewing with a host of sensors and micro controllers running MicroPython.

Francesco has a degree in astronomy, has been programming since BASIC was cool and lives in southern Spain with his wife and two cats. Francesco is currently organising the 2020 edition of ADASS (https://adass2020.es), the premier conference on astronomical software development. He has been volunteering at EuroPython since the conference in Rimini in 2017 and has helped with the ep2019 website and its port to Python 3.

Why serve on the EPS board? Francesco loves the EuroPython conference and its volunteers, organisers and attendees. He would love the opportunity to give back to this community and to the Python community in general. A community that has given him so much.

Silvia Uberti

Sysadmin / IT Consultant

She is a Sysadmin with a degree in Network Security, really passionate about technology, traveling and her piano.

She’s an advocate for women in STEM disciplines and supports inclusiveness of underrepresented people in tech communities.

She fell in love with Python and its warm community during PyCon Italia in 2014 and became a member of EuroPython Sponsor Workgroup in 2017.

She enjoys a lot working in it and wants to help more!

Stéphane Wirtel

Pythonista / CEO / Software Architect / Consultant / Coach

Stéphane is the CEO and founder of mgx.io, a Python-focused consulting company based in Belgium since 2017. He has started to use Python in 2001 with the Aragne company in Belgium and was a helper for the two first EuroPython in Charleroi (his hometown).

Formerly core dev of the Odoo software, Stéphane is a fellow member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) since 2013 and works with the marketing and fellowship teams of the PSF.

He has also received a Community Service Award from the PSF during PyCon 2017 for the creation of PythonFOSDEM and contributions to the Python Ecosystem in Belgium.

In July 2014, Stéphane became a member of the EuroPython Society and started to contribute to the web site and some other topics of EuroPython, he was also the financial auditor of EuroPython Society for EuroPython 2017/2018/2019.

He gave a lot of Python talks at EuroPython, PyCon France, UK, PyCon Ireland, Canada, Italy, Germany, Ukraine, and Slovakia.

He became a Python Core Developer in 2019 and Board Member of EuroPython Society for EuroPython 2020 in Dublin, where he worked in the Program WG, Communication WG, Sponsors WG, and Web WG.

In 2020, he became a Director of Python Ireland where he works on the web site and the several components of the Python Ireland infra.

For the future, I would like to help the organizers of the European PyCons with the EuroPython Society and continue EuroPython 2021 in Dublin and the next EuroPythons in Europe.

What does the EPS Board do ?

The EPS board runs the day-to-day business of the EuroPython Society, including running the EuroPython conference events. It is allowed to enter contracts for the society and handle any issues that have not been otherwise regulated in the bylaws or by the General Assembly. Most business is handled on the board’s Telegram group or by email on the board mailing list. Board meetings are usually run as conference calls.

It is important to note that the EPS board is an active board, i.e. the board members are expected to put in a significant amount of time and effort towards the goals of the EPS and for running the EuroPython conference. This usually means 200+ hours work over a period of one year, with most of this being needed in the last six months before the conference. Many board members put in even more work to make sure that the EuroPython conferences become a success.

Board members are generally expected to take on leadership roles within the EuroPython Workgroups in order to facilitate good communication and quick decision making. They should be passionate about EuroPython, the Python community and working in a team of volunteers.

Thanks, – EuroPython Society

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ibilenews · 4 years

Text

Why Nigeria must invest in open, distance learning by Prof Jegede

Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of educational institutions across the country, pioneer vice chancellor, National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN, Prof Olugbemiro Jegede in this interview with IYABO LAWAL said there must be a massive commitment and robust policy direction from government on open and distance learning for the sector to meet global challenges.

With the global Corona Virus (COVID-19) epidemic, schools have been forced to shut down to prevent a further spread of the virus. What is your take on this? As we say, Education provides knowledge and knowledge rules the world. But for a start, since we are talking about education and knowledge, it is expedient and indeed imperative that we start by understanding what COVID-19 is. The disease called, Coronavirus disease 2019, christened by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as COVID-19 is caused by a virus called severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (2019-nCOV or SARS-CoV-2). Although its origin has not been definitively ascertained, COVID-19 may possibly have originated from the wet animal market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. A strain of the same virus known as SARS-CoV-1 affected more than 8,000 people in 2002/2003. The COVID-19 enters the body through nose, mouth, or eyes and attaches itself to cells in the respiratory tract (airways from nose to vocal chords), and can spread to lungs and if not cured leads to death.

The world has experienced a number of epidemics and pandemics, although none had defied full understanding and quick solution like COVID-19. During the 14th century, bubonic plague affected 25 million in Europe with a total population of 100 million. In 1432, a devastating epidemic hit Lisbon, spreading to the entire country of Portugal. Tens of thousands were killed.

From 1918 to 1920 there was an influenza pandemic which killed over 50 million people. In1981, AIDS has killed over 25 million people with 33 million living with HIV. The fear globally right now is that COVID-19 will sweep many millions away than any other pandemic the world has had to date. This is because Covid-19 appears both more deadly and contagious than other well known influenzas: a main cause though is the lack of a vaccine.

The characteristics of the young people, the fact that they, by regulation, congregate in schools and other institutions to study and therefore very vulnerable as victims and carriers, are some of the main reasons while schools have been closed. All school and universities have been formally closed from March 20, 2020 although many private institutions had already sent their students away up to a couple of weeks earlier.

According to the United Nations assessment, as at March 15, 2020, more than 770 million learners are now being affected by school and university closures all over the world as a result of COVID-19. With this unexpected turn of events, we now have a monumental issue in our hands regarding what to do with these normally restless students stuck at home with their parents for hours and days on end. From indications, many students will have to remain at home for the remainder of this academic year. It is conceivable that schools many not resume till September 2020. The only alternative left for learners in this COVID-19 period is ‘home-schooling’ or online learning.

With schools closure, the issue of online learning has been at the front burner, is Nigeria truly prepared for online learning? Yes, online learning or e-learning or open distance and electronic learning (ODeL) as others would call it has of necessity come to the front burner. For years, we in distance learning have been working assiduously for ODeL to become mainstream like the formal face-to-face, brick and mortar type of classroom learning. ODeL, as the mainstream educational instructional tool is now here, willy-nilly. It is no more on the way as a dominant force in teaching and learning in the 21st century; it is now, or already, here.

Many countries have already implemented the use of online learning to cope with the closure of schools and universities. Some states in the United States have made it mandatory and many countries have deployed their facilities for online learning. A number of states in Nigeria including Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Borno, and Kaduna have or are looking into the use of online learning to solve the issues of schooling created by COVID-19. Once ODeL becomes the new normal, a whole new dispensation which will change, forever, the world’s landscape of teaching and learning (with specific focus on online learning for everybody) as we knew it.

Two things are now happening within the educational space because of COVID-19. First, the formal face-to-face teaching and learning is changing and giving way to ODeL as the mainstream teaching and learning vehicle. Second, the way is being paved for the eventual merger of the face-to-face instruction and ODeL instruction. Very soon no one will know the difference and the emphasis will no more be on what mode a learner used to study and graduate but what are the major academic contents learned, what skills and transpersonal learning, which is a major ingredient for the development of the skills needed for the 21st century world of learning, meaningful living and work, has the learner acquired? My vision is to see digital transformation, in Nigeria and the world at large, that will lead to transpersonal learning.

What is your take on open and distance learning in the nation’s education system? Since the emergence of distance learning in the world (then called Correspondence Education) when Caleb Phillips and Anna Tickner used it to teach short hand to their students in 1728 and Sir Isaac Pitman also used Distance learning to teach short hand and extended it by making feedback on assignments in 1840, the world began to realise and appreciate the advantages of distance education.

As a result of this global development and the need to use distance education to solve the issue of shortage of institutions and placement in higher education in Nigeria. Distance learning began in 1947 through Oxford University extra mural studies at the University College Ibadan, the GCE of London and Cambridge correspondence education and the Rapid Results College and Wosley Hall as first set of organised distance learning programmes in Africa.

Things progressed with distance learning surfacing in Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria as ABU University of the air in 1972 and the University of Lagos starting distance learning in 1974 while National Teachers Institute, Kaduna began the training of teachers for the Universal Primary Education scheme in 1978. Since then the National Open University (NOU) was formally signed into Law on July 22, 1983 and promptly closed on April 25, 1984. A brand new National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) started in 2002.

Currently, with the encouragement of the Federal Government and the abundant interest of the current minister of education to implement the outcomes of the 2017 presidential summit on education, at least 30 universities in Nigeria now operate or have sought for NUC’s licence to operate distance learning making them dual mode universities.

However, to answer your question, my take on distance learning in Nigeria is that we are not where we should be. Things are still in their fledgling state, quite fragile, insufficient and require massive commitment and robust policy direction.

I say this because, the statistics we have indicate that the formal system we have from primary to the tertiary levels can no more cope with the demands of learners in Nigeria. Currently there are about 20 million children in over 41,000 primary schools. The national average teacher: pupil ratio is1:45 with the highest (1:94) in Yobe state and the lowest (1:20) in Anambra state.

By the next academic year beginning September 2020, about 37.5 million will be in the primary school system. This will have a knock-on effect on the secondary school level.

With 172 Universities in Nigeria currently taking care of less than 4 million students at the university level, we will require 70 more universities to cater for our higher education needs at the rate of about 25 percent of admission from the yearly 1.9 million students seeking admissions through JAMB. Nigeria therefore requires and must invest on open and distance learning.

A cost-effective system of instruction independent of time, location, pace and space must be sought to be used for a variety of learning situations: primary, secondary, tertiary, vocational and non-formal education with emphasis on enhance education for all and life-long learning initiatives and using modern instructional and communication technologies.

What are the problems of distance education in Nigeria? The problems confronting distance education in Nigeria are multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. But the main ones relate to lack of serious advocacy, unacceptable public perception of distance learning as a poor cousin of face-to-face formal learning system, excessively and unnecessarily expensive broadband internet connection, unstable communication networks, unreliable power situation, lack of appreciation even by academics and other academic institutions of the rigour that establishing and managing distance learning requires and ineffectual personal discipline by students in coping with the demands of studying on their own.

With poor infrastructure and epileptic power, can e-learning thrive in Nigeria? Having listed some of the problems with distance education in Nigeria in the previous question, I am sure you would expect me to say that e-learning cannot thrive in Nigeria. I would like to shock and disappoint you by saying that e-learning can and should thrive in Nigeria. If in spite of comparatively more difficult environment and paucity of infrastructure, distance learning survived and was successful in the 50s, 60s and 70s, there is no reason why e-learning cannot thrive in the 21st century when situation has markedly increased. Indeed, we can find more innovative and creative ways of making e-learning thrive. Almost all learners have mobile phones, which can be deployed for e-learning. We can customize solar energy and other types of energy freely and cheaply available in Nigeria to power the distance learning system. I designed, in 2002, a comprehensive communications network architecture for Nigeria. With a bit of modification, it can serve the country beyond expectations.

Are our teachers well equipped for this task? Any educational system is only as good as its least equipped teacher. Aside from the fact that we do not have enough teachers (the latest UN projection is that the African tertiary education system requires about half a million academics), most of them are not very prepared for normal face-to-face teaching let alone distance teaching. As the first and, to date, the only professor of ODL in Nigeria, I can categorically tell you that Nigeria requires massive training of teachers to teach at a distance and in the use of e-learning. Teaching online is much more difficult than teaching face-to-face. We must take this seriously.

What should be the role of government in all these? Government should review all policies on, and related to, open and distance learning and follow through with all aspects that will raise our game in ODL to the highest level.

Government must pay additional and effective attention, at the national level, to the management, coordination, quality assurance and daily practical offerings of ODL, especially as ODL is expanding rapidly in Nigeria and will soon overtake the face-to-face mode of instruction.

But government cannot go it all alone. We must involve other stakeholders including the organised private sector, professional bodies, civil society, the International Development Partners, parents, Micro and Small Medium Enterprises (MSME), and all those interested in life-long learning.

As a former Vice Chancellor of National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), is distance learning a viable alternative to the conventional learning? Unequivocally yes, distance learning is a viable alternative to the conventional learning system. My experience in many countries informs so. My experience as the foundation Vice Chancellor in setting up the National Open University of Nigeria tells me so. We started with just about 50,000 students in 2003 and now in 2020, we have close to 600,000 students. In a couple of years hence, NOUN registration will hit one million students reaching over 30 per cent of all University registrations in the country.

How do you think the distance learning system can be strengthened to attract more students and reduce the pressure on the conventional schools? We can strengthen the distance learning system in a number of ways. Increase and diversify the programme offerings. Explore ways of meeting the learning need in areas the conventional universities and higher institutions do not take care of or not really interested in. Develop more creative and innovative ways of developing quality course materials, using the e-learning platform, quality assurance, de-emphasise testing and examination in favour of skills acquisition and portfolio methods of assessing learning.

The future of learning worldwide is open and distance learning, and especially online or e-learning. Most countries are planning on their education using ODL and online learning as the fulcrum. Nigeria must not and should not be left behind.

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digital-strategy · 5 years

Link

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The women-focused Refinery29 is being acquired by Vice Media for mostly stock, ending its 15-year run as an independent digital-media company.

Refinery29 bootstrapped for eight years, then raised $133 million from investors, including Turner and Scripps, and became a pioneering progressive voice for women, only to face the possibility of running out of money this year.

Its story is part of a consolidation trend that's sweeping digital media and a cautionary tale about the risks of being advertising-dependent.

Here's the inside story of its trajectory and disappointing exit.

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Once a quarter, Justin Stefano and Philippe von Borries would gather Refinery29's staff to celebrate victories and share the goals of their women's lifestyle media company.

At one of these meetings a few years ago, they introduced a spaceship as a metaphor for the company. Each part of the ship represented a portion of the business that helped it soar. Employees got stickers of astronauts and stars.

While the symbolism was clear — this was a soaring company shooting for the stars — the reality was different.

By 2017, Refinery29 had already had at least one round of layoffs. More would soon follow as the company cast about for a new revenue stream. Digital advertising had sustained the company up until then, but it was getting harder to win business against tech giants like Facebook and Google.

By 2019, people with direct knowledge of the company's finances said Refinery29 was running out of money. In the spring, Refinery29 raised $8 million in the form of debt. This past week, it found a savior in the much bigger Vice Media, which agreed to acquire Refinery29 for mostly stock.

It's an uneasy marriage. Refinery29 presents itself as the voice of female empowerment. It was early in publishing stories celebrating body positivity and ethnic diversity. Vice Media has a mostly male audience and is known for its edgy content, and it has historically fought a reputation that suggests its culture is hostile toward women.

Read more: Read the memo Refinery29 leaders sent to staff about Vice Media buying the company

Both publications are losing money. Media is consolidating, and there are few buyers willing to pay cash for such companies, particularly when they've been valued at hundreds of millions and billions of dollars by venture capitalists. The theory is that slapping together two unprofitable companies can help both live to see another day by cutting overlapping costs and having a bigger, broader audience that makes the remaining entity more attractive to advertisers.

"If this [merger] means Refinery29 can keep going, let's try it," one Refinery29 employee said.

Refinery29 execs declined to comment for this story. But Business Insider spoke with numerous current and former employees and other people close to the company who described the rise and disappointing exit of Refinery29.

They described it as a publisher that became one of too many midsize options for readers and advertisers, and struggled to stand out to both readers and advertisers on social platforms.

The founders were accidental publishers

Co-CEOs Justin Stefano and Philippe von Borries were media outsiders and accidental fashion publishers when, in their early 20s, they left their jobs in law and politics, respectively, to start the company.

They created Refinery29 in 2005, along with Piera Gelardi and Christene Barberich. Living in Brooklyn, New York, they saw Refinery29 as a way to spotlight the up-and-coming designers and creative types surrounding them, like Steven Alan and Rag & Bone.

The "29" referred to the 29 most interesting brands and designers of the time.

Initially trying to appeal to men as well as women, they ended up focusing on fashion companies and boutiques because those benefited the most from Refinery's exposure, and women, who responded the most to their stories. They made money via advertising and providing a digital storefront for those companies.

Venture-backed digital-media companies often get a bad rap for expanding too quickly, fueled by millions in funding and cheap Facebook traffic. Refinery was different in a couple ways. As first-time entrepreneurs, the founders bootstrapped the company for eight years, until 2013, when they raised $4.2 million from First Round Capital, Floodgate, Lerer Ventures, and Hearst.

Read more: Vice Media shuffles leadership at its agency as another key exec heads for the exit

Also, Facebook hadn't yet become a major force for publisher distribution. Refinery29 built its audience around an email newsletter that they used to promote the fashion boutiques. The founders said the newsletter roots meant they had a deep connection with their audience.

Combining commerce and content is hard, though, and the company eventually ditched that approach to focus on being an ad-supported publisher with click-to-buy links integrated into its articles. The company became overwhelmingly ad-driven.

Building a sustainable, ad-supported media company brought other challenges. Refinery29 had to scale up, which it did by expanding to other content categories, including news and sports.

Refinery29 bootstrapped, then attracted big media investors

Along the way, the company started to attract more investment from traditional media companies that wanted the young audiences Refinery29 and other digital-media companies, like Vice Media and BuzzFeed, commanded. In 2015, Refinery29 raised its biggest round of financing to date, $50 million, led by Scripps Networks and WPP Ventures. Turner followed in 2016, leading a round of $45 million, which theoretically valued it at $500 million.

Then-Turner President David Levy, who was a big champion of Refinery29, at the time cited its "highly coveted following of millennial-minded women, strong capabilities in digital products, event marketing, and content creation, as well as an attractive advertiser base."

By 2019, Refinery29 had raised $133 million. It made around $100 million in revenue last year and was still growing, though not profitably.

Refinery29 was still a midsize media company, though. And its early advantage from email newsletters didn't last as social apps like Facebook and Snapchat took over how people engaged with media.

So, like many other digital-media companies, Refinery29 started taking advantage of the cheap distribution Facebook offered. Writers were pushed to pump out lots of quick hits to feed the social news feed and, later, Google search.

Refinery29's founders also wanted the site to be known as more than just a fashion destination. Around 2015, they started pushing into hard news under the direction of Kaelyn Forde, a news vet, but she soon left. They played up a 2015 interview with Hillary Clinton on the presidential campaign trail and pushed for awards. "They were obsessed with winning a Pulitzer," Susie Banikarim, a veteran journalist who interviewed for a senior editorial role there, said.

Insiders spoke of aggressive publishing goals

The reality was somewhat different. Starting in 2015, Facebook was sending less and less traffic to publishers as it cut back on the articles it showed people in its news feed. In January 2017, Refinery29 was averaging 5.6 million interactions a month on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle; by this month, that figure was below half a million. Other digital publishers have seen similar trajectories.

To maintain traffic, staffers said they were told they had to bank one or two stories a day for each day they were on vacation. Stories on the net worth of famous people became a running joke because they would guarantee traffic.

"It felt like we were playing catchup with the whims of Facebook and Google," one veteran said.

As Refinery29's online growth slowed, with 27 million monthly unique visitors in 2016 compared with 25 million a year earlier, its leadership tried to find new ways to make money off the audience. In 2015, the company launched 29Rooms, a made-for-Instagram series of galleries that made money from sponsorships and ticket sales, which would become a widely imitated template for others. It started to expand internationally.

But the big priority for publishers like Refinery29 to become sustainable was video. Facebook and other platforms, like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon, were emerging as new marketplaces for long-form video. With the $45 million in Turner-led funding in 2016, Refinery29 joined the industrywide shift.

Jason Anderson, the founder of Quire, a strategic-advisory firm, was hired to advise Refinery29 on video. "They wanted to do something that felt like Condé Nast TV — shows around personality and lifestyle that would resonate with the Refinery29 woman," Anderson said. "Once you stop scaling, and you're under 50 million uniques, you have to figure out other things, like 29Rooms, and, 'How do we get the audience to touch us in different ways?'"

Video became only 7% of revenue

Newer investors who were from the media and ad world believed video was worth the bet and pushed ahead, over the hesitation of earlier investors on the board who were antsy to see a return and could see digital-media companies like Mashable and Mic starting to hit a wall.

Anderson said Refinery29 leadership seemed distracted, though, and things didn't go according to plan. Other digital-media companies saw 15% of revenue from long-form video as a benchmark to strive for; by 2018, video was only 7% of Refinery29's revenue. Refinery was still largely ad-dependent, with 70% of revenue coming from advertising, down from 100% in 2016.

Refinery made headlines with its events, but the margins on that kind of business are slim. Refinery29 didn't try selling subscriptions, another way digital-media companies are trying to diversify revenue streams — some more successfully than others.

Part of the problem was that Turner still only owned 10% of the company, which limited its ability to push the video plan forward. People close to the company said Refinery29 also lost big allies when Levy and Turner CEO John Martin left Turner after its parent company, Warner, was acquired in mid-2018 by AT&T. The Turner investment was not just financial; the two companies were supposed to work together on content creation and development, as well as ad sales. In an ideal situation, Turner would've provided distribution for Refinery29 shows, and vice versa.

"Long-form linear video never became a huge part of Refinery's revenue," Anderson said. "The hard, grind-it-out execution didn't happen. This was one of the biggest opportunities the company had, and it just felt like there was so much going on."

Other signs of trouble were mounting. The company went through a fourth round of layoffs in fall 2018. Several senior sales executives, including Kate Hyatt and Ashley Miles, left this year. Employees noticed little things, like the quality of snacks seeming to diminish, and Refinery29 sat out this year's NewFronts, an annual digital-video-sales showcase put on for advertisers.

Secret meetings stirred speculation

There were news reports over the summer that Refinery29 was in talks to sell to its fellow digital-media company Group Nine, then Vice, and leadership met in conference rooms with papers tacked up to cover the glass doors, stirring speculation of a deal. Still, leadership was tight lipped. Employees felt tense.

On Wednesday, the founders gathered staff to discuss the long-awaited Vice deal. The official line was optimistic: The company was excited to benefit from Vice's resources, and the deal would ensure the brand's continuation. Barberich appeared emotional in a meeting with the whole editorial staff. There were many questions about whether there would be layoffs and how much help Vice would really provide.

"I hope it means the company has a future," one attendee said.

That will depend on whether Vice and Refinery's combination offsets the consolidation of digital advertising. Advertisers are spending more of their dollars with fewer companies and favoring ad platforms that can ensure accountability and results, especially with a potential economic downturn coming, said Doug Rozen, the chief media officer at the digital agency 360i.

"To me, this is further evidence that a quick activation, no matter how cool, is just not sustainable," he said. "Sure it can drive headlines, but the question is: Can it drive enduring sales? I suspect brands will be shifting away these type of activations for greater accountability, especially with a potential economic downturn looming."

via Business Insider

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vinylbay777 · 5 years

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Warner Records Rebrands, Changes Name & Logo after Six Decades

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a brief look at the past and future of the iconic label

News broke this week that iconic record label Warner Bros. Records has changed its name and logo. Now known as Warner Records, this is the first time the label has made any huge changes to its outward name and appearance in its more than six-decade history.

The lapse of a 2004 deal between Time Warner and a group of investors, which stated that the company must use the Warner Bros. Records branding for at least 15 years, this year led to this penultimate part of the company’s rebranding process.

The new name and logo follow a handful of recent changes to the label’s staff. In 2018, Warner’s US branch got a new Co-Chariman and CEO in Aaron Bay-Schuck and a new Co-Chairman and COO in Tom Corson. The UK branch named Phil Christie its new president in 2016. Warner Chapel also got a new name and logo of its own this month, as well as a couple of new co-chairs. That’s not to mention that the company left its Burbank headquarters of 44 years in March for a new one in Los Angeles.

Said Bay-Schuck and Corson in a press release about the changes; “For the first time in the label’s history, we’ve had the opportunity to create a distinct, modern identity entirely of our own. The timing couldn’t be better, since we all feel the label is at a moment of reinvention that builds on our legacy, while moving into a future driven by fearlessness and creativity. We have a growing roster of world-class artists, a rejuvenated team, and an incredible new location. It’s a new day for Warner Records, an iconic label that was born in the California sun, and is at home everywhere on earth.”

Christie’s approach to the rebranding is less flowery and more artist-based, noting in the release; “We’re signing and developing the next generation of British artists to move global culture, so we wanted the Warner Records brand to have the power and freedom to mean different things to different people around the world. A new logo isn’t meaningful on its own, and our label will always be defined by the originality of our artists, our music and our people.”

Formed as the music division of the Warner Bros. film studio in 1958, Warner Records has become an iconic company in its own right. The label signed its first big artist the Everly Brothers, in 1960. Though the company had a few successes with the Everlys and a couple of other early artists like Petula Clarke, they found it hard to produce hit records during their first decade of existence. After a handful of buy-outs, first by Seven Arts in 1967, then by Kinney in 1970, Warner finally hit its groove in the late 1960s and early 1970s, signing a wealth of popular artists and developing into a major label player in the music industry. Over the years, the label has been home to many of the industry’s biggest artists, including Madonna (on Sire), Prince, Grateful Dead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day (on Reprise), My Chemical Romance, Fleetwood Mac and Black Sabbath, to name only a few. Warner, along with its acquired labels like Sire, Reprise and Atlantic, is currently the third largest record label behind Universal and Sony.

Like with anything new, there are some who feel like some of these changes weren’t thought through. The new logo, especially, has been getting some flack in the day since being revealed. Featuring the company’s name in bold, white block letters set against a black backdrop with a large white circle to the left of the words, a design far from the roundedness of the original shield logo, the company has described the new design as “artful simplicity and impactful typography that are ideally suited to the digital world,” with the circle “suggesting a record, a sun, and a globe, [as] a nod to the label’s past, present, and future.” Not everyone is seeing it as such, though, as many people with former ties to the company have been calling the new design “bland,” “uninspired” and “generic at best.”

Though some may not like the changes, the newly christened Warner Records name and logo are now part of the label’s more than six decade story. With the rebranding, the company completes a transformation that has been years in the making. Now, Warner looks towards the future, continuing to focus on their artists and usher in a new era of musical creativity.

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#Warner Records #Warner Bros.#record labels

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toomanysinks · 6 years

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NVIDIA and OpenAI’s capped returns

Editor’s note: Starting as a trial, the Extra Crunch Daily newsletter is going to be delivered Tuesday-Saturday, in order to faithfully analyze the happenings in the startup and financial world Monday-Friday.

Open AI’s capped returns

OpenAI announced yesterday that they are going to be offering a “capped return” security for investors as part of the for-profit/non-profit split the organization is creating:

As mentioned above, economic returns for investors and employees are capped (with the cap negotiated in advance on a per-limited partner basis). Any excess returns go to OpenAI Nonprofit. Our goal is to ensure that most of the value (monetary or otherwise) we create if successful benefits everyone, so we think this is an important first step. Returns for our first round of investors are capped at 100x their investment (commensurate with the risks in front of us), and we expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds as we make further progress.

I candidly don’t understand this structure at all. For venture capitalists — and particularly early-stage investors — returns are driven by one, maybe two, and extremely rarely three startups in a portfolio (that would be Benchmark’s 2011 fund, which includes Uber, Snap, and WeWork). That one outlier investment may drive a majority of all fund returns. If OpenAI were to be that investment, how you could you possibly relinquish the remaining upside? Maybe you could prospectively sort of accept this, but how would you explain to LPs that “ah, yes, seven years ago we decided to give up that next 150x” or whatever.

OpenAI LP (the for-profit entity) is trying to target more mission-oriented investors, who presumably value incentive alignment but not (huge) profits. That’s fine, but the idea of capping a return as a mechanism to capture run-away value creation seems really off to me and should be discouraged.

My colleague Devin Coldewey also had a negative take, but sort of in the opposite direction — that OpenAI “may not be quite so open going forward” and is going to focus more on profits than science. That’s a fair criticism as well, although I think the profit motive will get us to AGI faster.

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With Mellanox deal, NVIDIA buys a chance to salvage its growth

Photo by David Becker/Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

NVIDIA confirmed whispers Monday when it announced it was acquiring adjacent semiconductor player Mellanox for $6.9 billion. Mellanox specifically focuses on interconnects and networking components that transfer data between cloud compute and storage resources.

The strategic rationale for NVIDIA is fairly straight-forward despite being a little outside of the company’s core competency. As we’ve discussed a few times before, NVIDIA got absolutely crushed towards the end of last year as the company struggled to find growth while facing headwinds from a dried up crypto market, a testy geopolitical backdrop, customer erosion, and increased competition. NVIDIA cuts its sales guidance by $500 million in the last quarter which, as the NYT pointed out, CEO Jensen Huang called “a real punch in the gut.”

NVIDIA has been betting the farm on diving into the data center, cloud computing, and supercomputer/AI markets that require parallel computation well served by NVIDIA’s graphical processing unit (GPUs). With Mellanox, NVIDIA will not only gets access to a segment with higher margins than its current operations but will, more importantly, be able to offer solutions across the full compute stack for data storage and AI/ML.

As TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden put it:

“While NVIDIA has focused its energies on computing, Mellanox works across Ethernet and other networking technologies — complementary areas for the two when addressing new computing and data transfer challenges brought about with the rise of AI, cloud services, an explosion of smartphone and other connected device usage and as-yet nonexistent tech like self-driving cars, which will put even more strain on our data infrastructure.”

The deal had been fairly well-telegraphed prior to the official announcement and is expected to be cash and earnings accretive. And the purchase price doesn’t appear to be too outlandish either — especially given a bidding process Huang described as “very competitive” — coming in slightly below the over $7 billion NVIDIA was rumored to be offering in order to outbid Intel, Xilinx, and Microsoft, all of whom had been linked as potential buyers during the past year in which Mellanox has reportedly been up for sale .

Notably, Intel seems to have missed out again here during a time where the company has been pouring money into R&D trying to play catch-up after struggling in recent years to keep up with the industry’s transition to new technologies.

NVIDIA stock was up around 7% on the day and Mellanox traded up to roughly $118 — just below the $125 per share acquisition price — with the market seemingly baking in a five-to-six percent chance of the deal not going through given the US government’s increased scrutiny on the global chip industry and pushback seen in prior semiconductor transactions. While a rejection of the deal would certainly be negative for NVIDIA, the company would only have to cough up a termination fee of $225-$350 million if the deal is blocked by shareholders or regulators and both leadership teams seem to be on board.

For NVIDIA, it seems like a small price to pay for a new shot at growth and a chance to quickly gain share in an increasingly competitive market.

Where is China’s new NASDAQ?

Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images

China has a money problem (well, it has a lot of money problems, but let’s just focus on one for today). The country has produced a dizzying array of global-scale technology companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, and many more. The problem is that these startups grow up in China, but perform their IPO debuts overseas, typically in New York and also often in Hong Kong. There are a whole lot of reasons why this happens, but it annoys the hell out of the senior Chinese leadership.

So the Shanghai Stock Exchange, one of the two leading markets in the country, has been working with regulators to introduce a “NASDAQ-style” trading board that would have fewer rules on new issues. Those more lenient rules would include allowing companies to be unprofitable at IPO and to allow for multiple share classes, presumably with differential voting rights. In other words, they are designed for Silicon Valley-style startups.

We learned last week that the board’s introduction will come near the end of May, and it unveiled a nearly final set of rules for the new exchange last week. That’s months late though, since back in December, the exchange had said that new equity issues could begin trading as early as March.

The reason all of this minutia matters is because of Ant Financial . The Chinese fintech company was last valued at $150 billion, and its IPO, which has been rumored for months now, will be one of the major financial blockbusters of the year.

Where Ant Financial chooses to debut is a hugely important question for these exchanges, and for getting a read on the future divide between U.S. and Chinese capital markets. At its scale, it could almost single-handedly christen Shanghai’s new board, and indeed, it is rumored that the company wants to do just that. Certainly the Chinese government wants the company to trade locally.

So the question is whether it has the time to wait for Shanghai to get all of its pieces in order, while also ignoring the large capital markets in New York, London, and Hong Kong that would almost certainly have to be tapped for a company its scale.

LinkedIn’s failures in China

Illustration by Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

It’s not every day you get a direct takedown of a product by that product’s former leader. But over the weekend, former LinkedIn China president Derek Shen blasted the company’s approach to China, according to a translation by Jill Shen at TechCrunch editorial partner TechNode (who I presume is unrelated):

“It’s horrible that the LinkedIn product managers don’t even realize they have lagged way behind a list of new social networking services such as WeChat, feeling good about themselves instead,” said Shen in a LinkedIn post on Monday. The former LinkedIn executive said that he tried to improve the platform when he joined the company six years ago, but struggled to make progress as it involved so many stakeholders within the organization.

(Of course, knocking LinkedIn’s product is a favorite pastime of pretty much any worker in Silicon Valley today).

LinkedIn first took China seriously in early 2014, and has had reasonable success in the interim, growing to around 41 million users. LinkedIn is unique among Western-run social networks in having (any) access to the Chinese market — essentially no other major network (including Twitter and Facebook) has passed through the Great Firewall.

Yet, its fortunes appear to be turning. LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, is feeling a bit of a pincer from both Chinese and Western critics. The professional network has followed the censorship edicts of Beijing, much to the chagrin of human rights organizers. It has also added in a real name requirement linked to mobile phone numbers, which is now mandated by the government.

Meanwhile, domestic competitors like Maimai (脉脉) and Zhaopin (招聘) are building traction with more native products, to Shen’s point above. Maimai in particular has raised hundreds of millions in venture capital and is rumored (like all late-stage companies) to be targeting an IPO.

We talk a lot about the market-entry barriers that China’s government has placed on Western tech companies, but at least when it comes to consumer apps, it is also important to note that product cultural awareness doesn’t come instantly. Even if China’s markets opened tomorrow, these apps would still have to compete in the marketplace, and there is no guarantee that Chinese professionals want garbage InMail offering “growth services” any more than Silicon Valley workers do.

Eliot Peper and “narrative responsive design” on the web

Novelist and strategist Eliot Peper gave Extra Crunch readers a lengthy reading list of great speculative fiction a few weeks ago to help inspire the creation of startups. Now, one of his major projects has been published.

A few years ago, Peper published True Blue, a short story about discrimination in which people’s life outcomes are determined by the color of their eyes. It’s a parable to our own world, infested with the kind of speculative details that Peper is known for.

After publishing the short story, he teamed up with Phoebe Morris and Peter Nowell to bring a fully-illustrated and responsively-designed version of the story to life, with some funding from TechStars founder David Cohen.

What’s quite exciting about this project is seeing how artists are using the web as a deeper narrative platform. From Peper’s discussions of how the team made the product:

One of the counterintuitive lessons we learned was how powerful it is to obscure certain details, letting readers bring more of their imagination to the story. Specifically, we discovered that detailed lines often trigger the sense of something being depicted for you, so we smudged and faded and shadowed until we felt the right balance of detail and suggestion. This philosophy carried through to design — which so often aims to reduce tension by making experiences simple, intuitive, and convenient. But stories thrive on conflict, and Peter challenged himself to use design to evoke tension instead of erasing it.

He even engineered a new tool that cropped images so that they adapted to different devices and screen sizes not only by changing size, but actually changing image composition to preserve narrative content and emotional impact. When I told him about the project over a slice of Arizmendi pizza, author/friend/media experimenter Robin Sloan coined a term for this new technique: Narrative Responsive Design.

A lot of work yes, but the wait and effort I think are worth it. Read the story and learn more about the process of making it.

Editor’s Note

We are slowing down a bit on the infrastructure side that we have been discussing ad nauseam.

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to [email protected].

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

You’re reading the Extra Crunch Daily. Like this newsletter? Subscribe for free to follow all of our discussions and debates.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/nvidia-and-openais-capped-returns/

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fmservers · 6 years

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NVIDIA and OpenAI’s capped returns

Open AI’s capped returns

OpenAI announced yesterday that they are going to be offering a “capped return” security for investors as part of the for-profit/non-profit split the organization is creating:

You’re reading the Extra Crunch Daily. Like this newsletter? Subscribe for free to follow all of our discussions and debates.

With Mellanox deal, NVIDIA buys a chance to salvage its growth

Photo by David Becker/Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

As TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden put it:

For NVIDIA, it seems like a small price to pay for a new shot at growth and a chance to quickly gain share in an increasingly competitive market.

Where is China’s new NASDAQ?

Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images

LinkedIn’s failures in China

Illustration by Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

(Of course, knocking LinkedIn’s product is a favorite pastime of pretty much any worker in Silicon Valley today).

Eliot Peper and “narrative responsive design” on the web

What’s quite exciting about this project is seeing how artists are using the web as a deeper narrative platform. From Peper’s discussions of how the team made the product:

A lot of work yes, but the wait and effort I think are worth it. Read the story and learn more about the process of making it.

Editor’s Note

We are slowing down a bit on the infrastructure side that we have been discussing ad nauseam.

Thanks

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

You’re reading the Extra Crunch Daily. Like this newsletter? Subscribe for free to follow all of our discussions and debates.

Via Danny Crichton https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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hottytoddynews · 7 years

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Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus addresses sailors on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan as it arrives at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Paolo Bayas/Released

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (BA 69) manages a $170 billion budget and is responsible for the well-being of more than 900,000 enlisted personnel stationed on ships or at naval bases around the world. A big job, and whenever the weight of his position gets too heavy for his shoulders, he gazes at six small, round glass jars sitting on a window ledge across from his desk. Each jar holds sand collected from a beach the Marines invaded during World War II.

“It’s a reminder of the importance of what I do,” Mabus says quietly from his office in the Pentagon. “I visited each of those sites. I look at those jars and feel humbled, then awestruck by what those Marines accomplished.”

Asked if he ever feels overwhelmed by his responsibilities, Mabus breaks into a gentle laugh.

“Overwhelmed, no. Amazed, yes. Back when I was governor of Mississippi, I was young and kept expecting someone to come up to me and say, ‘Hey, kid, get out of here, the governor’s coming.’ My secret weapon is I work with the best people in the world. In fact, I have the best job in America.”

Mabus delivers remarks at the 240th Marine Corps Ball in Azerbaijan. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Armando Gonzales/Released

Mabus has been secretary of the Navy since 2009 — the longest-serving leader of the Navy and Marine Corps since World War I and the fifth longest in the 240-year history of the armed forces. Under his watch, shipbuilding increased from five per year to now having 70 vessels under contract. Mabus promotes environmentalism through the Great Green Fleet program and mandated the Navy to develop alternate sources of energy and cut its reliance on fossil fuels in half by 2020.

In recognition of the stress that servicemen and women undergo while on active duty — especially since the second Gulf War — he inaugurated programs such as the 21st Century Sailor and Marine Initiative, which offers counseling programs for personnel in the service who are having difficulties coping with the strain of battle, and career and emotional counseling for those transitioning out of the service.

Bryan Clark, a retired Navy submarine commander and now senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit public policy research group that focuses on national defense, says Mabus “is doing a terrific job focusing on essential missions to improve the Navy, both from within and without. He’s also initiated the role of being an interlocutor between our Navy and the navies of our partners throughout the world. He’s done quite a lot of traveling during his time in office.”

During the last Mideast conflict, Mabus traveled to Afghanistan 12 times to meet with sailors and Marines deployed in combat zones. He continues traveling today, logging more than 1.1 million miles and visiting more than 140 countries since taking office. But no matter where he goes, he takes a little bit of America with him.

“Last year, I watched the Ole Miss football team play Arkansas on my cell phone in Tajikistan,” he says with a grin.

Support for Service Personnel

Clark appreciates that Mabus understands how important it is to improve the personal lives of servicemen and women.

“The challenge facing Navy and Marine Corps personnel at the tail end of our role in Afghanistan was they were dealing with a lot of stress,” Clark says. “There were a lot of suicides in the military, and a rise in sexual assault, drug use and behavioral issues. A decade of war takes a toll on soldiers.”

Mabus speaks with media after the christening ceremony of the future littoral combat ship USS Detroit at Marinette Marine Corp. shipyard in Marinette, Wis. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Sam Shavers/Released

To alleviate some of that stress, the 21st Century Sailor and Marine Initiative is an umbrella program that unites and expands a slew of supportive programs that previously existed as separate entities. New items include the Safe Harbor Program, where wounded personnel (pertaining to both physical wounds and emotional scars associated with post-traumatic stress disorder) will receive both physical and mental health care — even if all the person needs is a ride to a Veterans Affairs hospital or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Under the Transition Assistance Program, people leaving the military can get help seeking education and career training to make an easier transition to the private sector.

“We also want to make the military service more family friendly,” Mabus says. “Women are a valuable asset to the military, and we recognize that we need to do more to keep them in the service.”

To that end, in 2009, Mabus pushed for women having more of a role in combat, including serving on battleships and submarines. That feeling was recently echoed by U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who ordered the military to open all jobs to women, including those at dangerous and grueling posts.

“We’d lose a lot of women because they’d want to start a family, or they’d leave to take care of an aging parent or loved one,” Mabus says. “Besides tripling paid maternity leave, we now open child care centers on bases two hours earlier and close them two hours later. We also offer the Career Intermission Program, where people can take up to three years off during their service to take care of personal matters and then return to active duty.”

Another innovative program is the Secretary of the Navy Tour of Industry, where people can spend a year working at a company such as Amazon, Facebook or Google, and later return with both career experience and new skills that can be applied to military life.

Environmental Concerns

Mabus has also paid attention to energy usage not only to protect the environment but also to protect personnel.

“Fuel can be used as a weapon,” Mabus says, explaining why he wants to change the way the Navy and Marine Corps produce and acquire energy. “At the height of the war [in Afghanistan], we were losing one Marine for every fuel convoy brought in. That’s why we need to focus on our energy usage, to make us better fighters.”

In a 2012 speech at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo., Mabus said, “We wouldn’t allow some of the places that we buy fossil fuels from to build our ships, to build our aircrafts or to build our ground equipment. … And yet we give them say on whether those ships sail or whether those aircrafts fly or whether those vehicles run, because we buy fuel from them. Why would we do that if we don’t have to? The less we depend on foreign oil, the more secure we become as a nation.”

Mabus has set a goal of relying on alternative sources to supply at least 50 percent of the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ energy needs by 2020. In 2012, the Navy unveiled the Great Green Fleet, a carrier strike group of which every participating ship and aircraft operates on alternative energy sources such as nuclear energy and biofuels.

“Our newer ships now need to refuel less often,” Mabus says. “They’re cleaner and quieter. And our Marine field teams are using solar and other alternate energy forms to purify water so they can stay out in the field much longer.”

And in an effort to create more efficient energy sources, the goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy at naval bases and Marine Corps installations — that’s 50 percent of total shore energy needed.

Mabus discusses ethics and its importance in leadership with students, staff and faculty during an all-hands call at the U.S. Naval War College. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Sam Shavers/Released

In July 2015, the Navy signed an agreement to build a 210-megawatt direct current solar plant that would feed power to 14 facilities across the country. More than 650,000 photovoltaic panels on ground-mounted, horizontal single-axis trackers will be installed, providing a third of the energy needed to power the Navy and Marine Corps installations. Adding solar power to naval installations will provide long-term cost stability, which ultimately contributes to the Navy’s energy security priorities. The project is slated for completion by the end of 2016.

But security and combat effectiveness aren’t the only reasons Mabus is committed to upgrading the military’s energy use.

“We’re also concerned about climate change,” he says. “We all need to be better stewards of the environment.”

Education First

Mabus grew up in Ackerman watching minor league baseball and Ole Miss football. Though he dreamed of being a major leaguer every time he wore a mitt or donned a helmet, his hero wasn’t a sports star.

“I’ve only had one hero in my life — my father, Raymond (BSCvE 22),” he says. “I was 38 years old when he died, and in those 38 years I never heard him raise his voice. He was always kind and was one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. During the civil rights movement in the ’60s, he always talked about the dignity and the equality of all people.”

After graduating summa cum laude from Ole Miss in 1969 and winning the Taylor Medal in political science the same year, he earned a master’s degree in political science at Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. After Johns Hopkins, Mabus served in the Navy as an officer aboard the cruiser USS Little Rock.

“What I learned at Ole Miss has stayed with me throughout my life,” Mabus says. “Ole Miss offered the type of education everyone should get. People at the school cared about me. They’re the reason I became so interested in public education: Education is the one skill that can guarantee you the opportunity for success. There are no jobs today for people with strong backs and weak minds.”

When Mabus was elected governor of Mississippi in 1988, he made public education a priority by passing the Better Education for Success Tomorrow program, which gave teachers the largest pay raise in the U.S. Fortune magazine named him one of the 10 best “education governors.”

Terry Cassreino (BA 85) was the Capitol bureau chief for the Biloxi Sun Herald during Mabus’ tenure as governor. Today, he teaches English and journalism at St. Joseph Catholic School in Jackson and remembers Mabus as a “down-home nice person who really had the goodness of the state at heart.

“He believed wholeheartedly in public education,” Cassreino says. “He thought an educated populace was the best way to attract business to the state. I was always impressed by him as governor, as I am now in his role as secretary of the Navy.”

Studying at Harvard also reignited Mabus’ love for baseball, and today, the die-hard Boston Red Sox fan claims a record feat — he’s thrown a ceremonial first pitch in each major league ball park. At the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony in July 2015, in Cooperstown, N.Y., Mabus named the Navy’s newest warship USS Cooperstown, to honor the 62 Hall of Fame members who have served in the military.

While Mabus is proud of his achievements, the most important aspect of his job is the men and women he is privileged to serve alongside.

“I can’t express the overwhelming feeling of pride I have for every single Marine and sailor I’ve met, whether they’re soldiers on the ground or in the air,” Mabus says. “They’re all volunteers, and every single one is a hero.”

By Benjamin Gleisser

This story was reprinted with permission from the Ole Miss Alumni Review. The Alumni Review is published quarterly for members of the Ole Miss Alumni Association. Join or renew your membership with the Alumni Association today, and don’t miss a single issue.

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