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recentlyheardcom · 1 year

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This is part of Slate’s daily coverage of the intricacies and intrigues of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial, from the consequential to the absurd. Sign up for the Slatest to get our latest updates on the trial and the state of the tech industry—and the rest of the day’s top stories—and support our work when you join Slate Plus.Sam Bankman-Fried deduced at an early age that neither Santa Claus nor God is real. “Mass delusions are a property of the world, as it turns out,” he tells Michael Lewis. It’s an insight into the power of myth-making that would eventually serve the crypto mogul well.By the time he became famous as an oddball billionaire, SBF was casting his own reality-distortion field, and its effect on Lewis appears to have lingered. In Going Infinite, the author applies his long-standing brilliant-underdog formula to a study of the FTX founder, who now stands accused of committing one of the largest financial frauds in American history. Lewis had unparalleled access to Bankman-Fried, including during his companies’ dramatic downfall last year. The result, unfortunately, is dissonant hagiography of the world’s most boring second-tier villain.Bankman-Fried’s early years are somehow eccentric yet unremarkable, according to the subject himself. “I’m a little confused about my childhood. I just can’t figure out what I did with it,” he tells the author. Lewis details Sam’s many dislikes (books, fashion, Europe, facial expressions) while sketching his family’s unusual dynamics. His brother Gabe says of Sam: “We weren’t close growing up … I would interact with him as another tenant in my house.” Like the peevish alien Roger from American Dad, Sam’s general attitude toward the human world in which he finds himself is equal parts incomprehension and condescension. His fellow students are stupid, school is boring, religion is absurd.Lewis hammers on two things that young Sam does like: math camp and games. At math camp, Bankman-Fried finally finds his tribe alongside fellow nerds who model probabilities rather than expressing opinions (Sam does not like opinions). Their thinking is quantitative instead of qualitative, appealing to Sam’s upbringing as a utilitarian. Plus, they play games. Sam loves playing games. His cool, analytical mind functions well under pressure (or so he thinks) and his risk tolerance is off the charts. A singular focus on producing the highest expected value turns every interaction at math camp into the video-game version of real life: The only goal is to rack up the highest score.At MIT, Bankman-Fried stumbles into an internship at Jane Street Capital, a prestigious trading firm. His gaming obsession proves well-suited for Wall Street, and initially he thrives. But he rubs some colleagues the wrong way. He outfoxes and humiliates a fellow intern.He’s overly brusque with a superior. When given some constructive criticism from his bosses, Bankman-Fried begins practicing facial expressions so as to more closely resemble an empathetic human being. It’s like watching the formation of a serial killer over 250 pages: Patrick Bateman as played by Jesse Eisenberg with a Jewfro.As with everything else, Bankman-Fried soon gets bored of Jane Street and leaves—but not before making “the single worst trade in Jane Street history” on a bet that U.S. markets would turn south with Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. Instead, they do the opposite, and the firm loses $300 million. For most people, costing your employer that much money might serve as a cautionary tale. For Bankman-Fried, the takeaway is that he needs to dream bigger.W.W. Norton & CompanyA third of the way through the book, SBF’s boundless confidence finally meets its absurdist match in Bitcoin, a fictitious “currency” devoid of any real-world use cases other than gambling and crime. Its price is determined solely by the supply of greater fools willing to buy it. Bankman-Fried is unmoved by the Bitcoin community’s libertarian ideals, but he spots an arbitrage opportunity: exploiting the difference between the price of Bitcoin in one place and another.

He creates a hedge fund, Alameda Research, to take advantage of it, and recruits a motley group of millennials to join him.Initially they have some success. In 2017, the crypto market is even more dysfunctional than its current manifestation. Sam and the gang buy Bitcoin in the U.S. and sell it in Asia, taking the spread as profit. Looking to increase profits further, Sam creates an automated trading program called ModelBot. It fails repeatedly, and the outcomes it produces are so volatile that an employee frets that if it were left unguarded it could bankrupt the company within an hour. Alameda’s co-founder, Tara Mac Aulay, pleads with Sam to keep ModelBot turned off when there is no employee to supervise it. Bankman-Fried initially agrees, but then flips it on anyway and falls asleep. He quickly manages to piss off the majority of his colleagues.The company’s internal controls and record-keeping are nonexistent; $4 million of a token called XRP goes missing. At the same time, the Bitcoin arbitrage opportunity vanishes, and with it, Alameda’s profits. Much of the staff flees.The only ones left are the true believers in the genius of Sam. Among them are Gary Wang, the coder; Nishad Singh, another coder who served as Sam’s fixer; and Caroline Ellison, a former fellow trader at Jane Street. As Lewis puts it, “The people inside were those most able to tailor their thoughts and feelings to those of its creator.” In other words, Alameda was now a cult.Desperate for new funds, Bankman-Fried relocates the operation to Hong Kong, where he recognizes a potential goldmine in creating a futures exchange for cryptocurrency to service the booming Asian market. He also finds a willing investor: Changpeng Zhao (known as CZ), CEO of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance. After initially turning him down, CZ invests $80 million in FTX and receives 20 percent of the business in return. FTX has been miraculously saved. Very quickly it balloons into one of the biggest crypto exchanges on the planet. A classic Lewis protagonist—the aberrant thinker, the guy who can hear past the noise—has done it again.This is where things get squirrely in Lewis’ telling. Whereas before, we hear perspectives from outside of Bankman-Fried’s camp, the author now relies heavily on the CEO’s recollection of events, as well as an FTX employee named Zane Tackett. Neither should be considered reliable. Tackett previously worked as the public face of the exchange Bitfinex, which is run by the same guys who started a notoriously shady stablecoin called Tether. (In 2021, Tether paid an $18.5 million fine to settle charges brought by the New York attorney general that its coins were not fully backed by real dollars, as the company claims. It also paid a $41.5 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to settle similar charges.) Tackett left that gig and ended up working at the “over-the-counter” desk of a company called B2C2. An OTC desk is where crypto is exchanged for real money, often without any record of the transaction having taken place, even on the blockchain. As Lewis blandly notes, OTC desks sell to private parties “who for various reasons wished to avoid revealing their hand on public exchanges.”Lewis, who shadowed SBF for more than a year, doesn’t explain this, but I will. A good portion of what drives crypto demand is the desire of wealthy individuals and criminal organizations to transform their local currency into crypto in order to send it all over the world, with the goal of transforming it into another currency (ideally dollars) on the other end. Avoiding capital controls is one use for crypto. Money laundering, sanctions evasion, and tax evasion are others. In Going Infinite, Lewis portrays Bankman-Fried’s miraculous resurrection via FTX as a kind of deus ex machina. The fact pattern suggests a different story: He moved to Hong Kong and got into business with some folks with, let’s say, colorful histories. (CZ’s exchange Binance has been

sued by both the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Reuters has reported that the Department of Justice is considering charging it with money laundering and sanctions violations.)However it went down, FTX mushroomed alongside the broader crypto markets during the bull run of late 2020 and 2021. Bankman-Fried moved his operation to the Bahamas and embarked on a legendary spending spree, buying up luxury real estate, investing billions in obscure venture capital projects, gorging on celebrity endorsements, making an alleged $100 million in political donations, and giving to charitable causes. Lewis clings to that last part as proof of Bankman-Fried’s good intentions. He reminds us ad nauseam about his subject’s professed effective altruism. His mission was to “earn to give”, i.e., make as much money as he could so that he could give it all away.For a brief, shining moment, Bankman-Fried might have appeared to have accomplished his goal. But in the fall of 2022, his empire collapsed just as spectacularly as it had arisen. On Nov. 2, Alameda’s balance sheet leaked to the crypto press. What it revealed was an unholy mess: illiquid crypto shitcoins, huge loans made to FTX employees, sunk investments. The equivalent of a bank run on FTX ensued, and Bankman-Fried was forced to declare bankruptcy nine days later. Criminal charges were filed against him the next month. It was over.Perplexingly, Lewis spends the last 50 pages of Going Infinite attempting to explain how it all could have gone so wrong without Sam’s knowledge. He blames Bankman-Fried’s colleagues for their incompetence, despite the fact that the CEO hired them and was their boss (spare me the part about FTX and Alameda being separate companies). Lewis re-creates a conversation that was alleged to have occurred between Bankman-Fried, Nishad Singh, and Gary Wang during the final days of FTX. According to the author, Singh approaches his superiors. He asks Bankman-Fried to vouch for him if the authorities come calling. SBF refuses.“You are saying that I should say that you know nothing about something I know nothing about. How is that even possible? It makes no sense.” “But I didn’t know,” said Nishad. “Then say that,” said Sam. “It’s not going to work for me,” said Nishad. “Because there is code-based evidence of what I did.” Singh appears to implicate himself in committing a crime, while Bankman-Fried appears to be ignorant, but there’s a footnote. In it, Lewis acknowledges his only source: “This conversation comes from Sam’s memory soon after. The rest of the account of the crisis was confirmed by others in Sam’s sleeping quarters.” Meanwhile, the reader is left to speculate as to Gary Wang’s recollection. I may be new to the field of journalism, but sourcing such an important exchange from one very interested person’s account strikes me as irresponsible at best.Lewis echoes SBF’s post-bankruptcy criticisms of Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm hired by FTX. The attorneys do not exactly come across as heroes, but unless there’s an email where they counsel their client that it’s OK to commit a massive act of fraud—Bankman-Fried is accused, among other things, of having inappropriately allowed his customers’ funds to be tapped for risky bets and other uses—they aren’t culpable for something they claim to have known nothing about. Bankman-Fried had apparently been considering an advice-of-counsel defense in court, where he would need to provide evidence of Sullivan & Cromwell’s complicity. Lewis certainly doesn’t provide any.Lewis almost completely ignores the relationship between Tether and Alameda Research. It’s a glaring omission. Alameda was one of Tether’s biggest clients. According to the crypto publication Protos, the company issued 36.7 billion Tethers to Alameda, which would mean Alameda forked over $36.7 billion in real U.S. dollars to Tether in exchange. How? Alameda never had $36.7 billion. FTX/Alameda and Tether also each had a banking relationship with Deltec Bank, headquartered in the Bahamas.

Whatever was going on inside of FTX/Alameda, understanding its relationship to Tether is crucial.By the end of the book, it’s clear Michael Lewis thinks he knows the story of FTX’s fall better than numerous former colleagues of Sam’s who saw it all go down, his former lawyers, and the CEO handling the bankruptcy, who now has access to the financial documents of FTX/Alameda. (Ray also served as the CEO of Enron during its bankruptcy process, so he might know a thing or two about fraud.)Instead of this torturous apologia, Lewis could have acknowledged the obvious: He was duped. One of the most successful financial journalists alive appears incapable of understanding that Bankman-Fried was lying to everyone, perhaps including himself. Bankman-Fried may believe he is innocent, but four of his former colleagues are under no such illusions as to their culpability in the scheme. Ellison, Singh, and Wang all pleaded guilty to various charges of fraud and agreed to assist the prosecution in the case against their former boss. Another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws and operating an illegal money-transmitting business.Bankman-Fried now gets his day in court, but the jury is still out as to how crypto should be treated moving forward. After spending the past several years investigating the industry, my vote is: Burn it all down.I first started writing about cryptocurrency with journalist Jacob Silverman almost exactly two years ago—beginning in Slate, in fact. We interviewed hundreds of people both inside and outside of crypto, from average traders to Sam Bankman-Fried himself. While the former were often sincere in their beliefs, that does not make what they believe true. SBF was something else, and the hour or so I spent with him last July was enough to convince me that he was completely full of it.During our interview, which was conducted on camera, I started out with what I thought was a softball. Could he give me one use case for crypto, something it did that couldn’t be done better by other means? Bankman-Fried answered with remittances, sending money across borders. I replied that I had just come from El Salvador, the only country trying to use crypto as real money. El Salvador’s economy is heavily reliant on remittances, which are roughly a quarter of its GDP. Despite the Salvadoran government declaring Bitcoin as legal tender the year prior, almost no one in the country was using it to send payments back home. According to the government’s own figures, less than 2 percent of remittances used the Chivo wallet system it set up. (Now that number is less than 1 percent.)Later, when I asked Bankman-Fried to name a single crypto project with some utility in the real world, he hemmed and hawed and mentioned the speed of the blockchain called Solana, and its associated token of the same name. That felt awfully self-serving. As Lewis points out, SBF owned a lot of Solana, as much as 15 percent of its total supply. Did he really believe in it, or was he just pumping his bags? Solana, by the way, has the unfortunate tendency to shut down. It has stopped working more than a dozen times in its history, including once for more than 18 hours straight in February of this year. How could Solana ever function at scale as a payment method?One of the biggest tells was when I pressed SBF on his supposed effective altruism. I asked him how much he had spent in total on selfless causes (pandemic preparedness, mosquito nets, etc.). He estimated $50 to $100 million. I asked him how much had donated to politicians.He turned 90 degrees in his seat, began fidgeting even more than usual, and refused to give me a straight answer, saying it was only “in the tens of millions of dollars.” We know now that Sam was alleged to have given $100 million to both parties, some directly and some through dark money and other means.But it was the end of our interview that left a pit in my stomach. When Sam thought it was over,

and the cameras weren’t rolling (they were), he proceeded to talk trash about Tether, arguably his biggest business partner. “Weird fucking dudes. Like really weird.” He offered an unusual comparison: “It [Tether] bears some resemblance to Binance as a company.” This was not a compliment. Sam was now slagging one of his original investors, who then became his biggest competitor. He also talked smack about another crypto mogul, Justin Sun. I left the interview in a daze. I suspected then that he was trying to direct my attention elsewhere.The myth of Sam Bankman-Fried evaporated within moments of meeting the real deal. He was no genius, no mogul in any way that could last. I wanted to feel sorry for him, but instead I was angry that it had gotten this far.

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payroll2bangladesh · 2 years

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kuramirocket · 3 years

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Growing up in California in my grandmother's house, surrounded by tías, tíos, and all my cousins, I always felt a deep connection to my Mexican-American roots. Every generation of my father's family has had incredibly different experiences that reflect much about American history.

My great-grandfather on my abuela's side, Daniel Martinez, grew up in Mexico and immigrated to Los Angeles. Eventually, he saved enough money to open a neighborhood market, which is where he met my great-grandmother, Guadalupe Miranda Martinez. She had come from Mexico to Los Angeles with her mother and brother as a young teenager. They soon married and began having children. When he lost his business in the 1920s, the family turned to migrant farm work. They were forced to use segregated water fountains and bathrooms and my darker-skinned tíos and tías were sent to Mexican schools, while those with light skin and blonde or red hair were allowed to attend schools with white students.

Unhappy with the segregated schools, my great-grandfather joined up with other families to open the East Barrio School for Latinos in Claremont, CA — fighting the status quo is part of my heritage! They taught reading and writing in Spanish and learned Mexican history at a time when it was hard to show pride about being Mexican.

My great-grandfather on my abuelo's side, Catalino Alba, came from Mexico during the Revolution. He met my great-grandmother when he immigrated to Gallup, NM, where he helped build the Santa Fe Railroad. He was a musician and inspired my abuelo José Alba to sing, practice traditional Mexican dance, and become an accomplished classical guitarist. As a child, there was never a family party where my abuelo didn't play guitar while my abuela, tíos and tías, and cousins sang along. Perhaps this is where I got my love for the performing arts!

My great-grandfather moved to San Bernardino, CA, to work on the railroad and my abuelo José Alba grew up in the barrio where he and his siblings slept head to foot. With little food at home, he often asked the neighbors for fruit from their fruit trees. He was compelled to eat dirt, which he later learned was a natural response to the lack of iron that he needed in his diet. As a kid, he wasn't allowed to swim in a public pool without a certification of vaccination. He would often get glass stuck in his shoes because the soles were so thin and worn out — he couldn't afford anything else. At one point, glass punctured his foot, and as a result he developed lockjaw, which was nearly fatal.

When he could work, he made money selling oranges and picking potatoes. He says the first thing he did when he had money was to go down to Main Street to have his shoes shined by a young boy. He told that boy that he would come every week because he knew he was trying to make his own way too.

There were 12 kids in the family and my abuelo is proud that his mom figured out a way to send them to school as soon as it was possible. She understood the value of education. Even though it was hard for them, she made it a priority.

This is my abuelo and abuela's wedding above — so classic. I always thought our ancestors were Spanish, but I learned through genetic testing that they were Native American, with roots that may go back as far as the Mayan civilization. We've been here from the beginning!

My parents, Mark and Catherine Louisa Alba, were so different . . . but they had the same hairstyle! I know that when my dad was growing up it was difficult for him and his parents to be Mexican-American. The hyphen wasn't an option back then.

My abuelo had only learned English when he transferred to grammar school at around 6 years old, and he was way behind as a result. Like many others of their generation, my grandparents didn't teach their children, including my dad, to speak Spanish. My abuelo says that he didn't even think about it, but I wonder if he associated it with a difficult transition in his life.

I want my girls to embrace their Latino roots, know how much we have contributed to this country, and understand that the road ahead is richer when we acknowledge and embrace our heritage. I want them to learn Spanish like their great-grandparents. I'm incredibly proud of my diverse heritage and I want my daughters to feel the same way.

Jessica Alba is something of a triple threat: She's managed to achieve major success as an actress, fashion designer, and business mogul. It's hard to imagine anyone not wanting to work with Alba, but early in her career she had a hard time getting roles because of her race.

"They couldn't figure out my ethnicity," Alba said. "I would always go out for 'exotic.' They were like, 'You're not Latin enough to play a Latina, and you're not Caucasian enough to play the leading lady, so you're going to be the "exotic" one.' Whatever that was."

Of course, Alba eventually ended up starring in hits like Fantastic Four, Into the Blue, and Good Luck Chuck. So, yeah, it's safe to say she proved those people wrong.

And not only is this actress leading by example; she's also taking steps to change the game herself. The creation of Alba's cosmetics line, Honest Beauty, which she founded as part of her brand, The Honest Company, in 2015, stemmed from her own struggles as a young girl trying to find a foundation that matched her unique complexion. "I didn't feel like, when I was younger, that there were a lot of things offered to women of color," she said.

So Alba went out and made her own. "The philosophy around starting this beauty line is about enhancing who you are instead of cover up and turn you into somebody else," she said.

Jessica Alba’s startup The Honest Company is a veritable success — approaching over $350 million in sales during a year in which many companies struggled — but venture capitalists turned up their noses to the idea at first.

In 2009, Alba had a real issue: She couldn’t find baby products for her newborn that were guaranteed to be safe and eco-friendly. After having an allergic reaction to one of the allegedly baby-safe detergents she bought, she developed her idea the same way many successful entrepreneurs get started: She pitched building the solution she herself wished was on the market.

Alba pitched serial entrepreneur Brian Lee on her idea, who reportedly passed after saying it wasn't “very promising.” The feeling that others don’t see potential in you or your business idea is a familiar frustration for budding entrepreneurs. At the time, Alba remarked that she felt nobody took her seriously as an entrepreneur, or even believed in her idea, even though she knew there would be demand.

But just five years later, The Honest Company reached unicorn status, valued at over one billion dollars. What changed in those five years that let her take her failed pitch to becoming a success story?

To perfect your pitch, experiment

Fast forward to 2012. Alba is now in Washington, lobbying for an update to reform the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. Buoyed by her growing knowledge on the subject, she went back to Lee and pitched him again.

This time, her deck was much more concise, down to less than 30 minutes from start to finish. In a world where most entrepreneurs give up after a rejection or two, Alba instead had spent the years between their two meetings pitching her idea to friends, getting holes poked in her positioning,and answering each and every supply chain question that arose.

Another change had happened over the last three years: Venture capitalists like Lee, whom she was pitching, had all started young families. Alba’s pitch was rock solid, and as an added bonus her prospective investors wanted the product themselves.

Lee said yes to the second pitch. The first year The Honest Company was in business, it reported an astonishing $12 million in revenue, a number that has only increased each year. After facing initial rejection on her pitch, Alba’s decision to persevere has led The Honest Company to dramatic success.

At first, everyone told Alba she should start with one product, then expand once that was successful. But this didn’t gel with Alba’s vision of a complete line of baby-safe products; the founder knew parents who wanted clean products wanted a brand that could provide multiple solutions.

Ultimately, Alba ignored the conventional advice and launched with 17 products, which many people believed was too many. But because she didn’t compromise on that, either to venture capitalists or herself, the launch was a total success.

Sources: (×) (x) (x) (×)

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crazy-lazy-elder-sims · 3 years

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Vent about my days in fashion major and how horribly i was treated by my professors because i wasnt super girly and happy all the time.

Woke up today with the memory of my trying to explain to my fashion professors my idea for my final project that unisex clothes and patterns are much more sustainable for the environment and for the fashion industry and they should be introduced to the market where i live in north Africa only to be immediately met with them loudly whispering to each other in a disgusted tone that they knew i wasnt "normal" aka androgynous or non binary or not really a woman (they meant trans)

and that they knew that there was somthing wrong with me fr9m tge first year of university cause i didn't fully try to look and act and think 100% feminine (i was born female) and how they knew that i was "diffrent" and that i would try to force my disgusting differences on them through my projects...

The plot twist was at that point to everyone around me i was fully straight and 100% identified as a cis woman and i never even eluded to idea that i was non binary.

what they were seeing was my depressed self not dressing well or taking care of my looks or brushing my hair and they just assumed i was trying to be a boy . They are the most disgusting people i have met to date tbh.

Ofc i ended up going forward with my idea and presented it as my final project and i got an okayish grade with side looks from everyone because they trash talked me to everyone, because how dare i suggest men and women dress in the same clothes even thou i clearly showed in my photo shoots that the same piece od clothes looked diffrent on the two bodies because it was the body type that shaped the clothes in this collection in particular and gave them an identity not the other way around and that non of this is the point its that ITS SUSTAINABLE AND ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY AND CAN STOP FAST FASHION AND MICRO TRENDS and greatly minimize the pollution from the fashion industry but no they all just pushed that to the side and assumed i was trans 👁👄👁

Now i always had a very complicated relationship with my gender as i have always considered myself pretty androgynous but i never expressed this out loud or in the way of dressing and never came out as its dangerous where i live so i really tried to ignore all that and just focus on my projects and my ideas but they (the fucking professor) couldn't get past that and they actively hid me and my projects away and gave me less time to present and when the time came for brands and companies from the outside to come in and view our projects and maybe give us a chance to work with them if they like the concept my professors steered them away from me and told them i was one of the not creative students and that they dont think am gonna continue in this field or add value to the brands just to bad mouth me and steer them away so they (in thier heads)save thier image from being tarnished by a potentially LGBTQIA+ person.

The second plot twist and the bigger one is the guy they ended up pushing so hard that he became a famous designer and became a famous contestant on the arabic fashion runway show that was watched by millions he was gay but also was outed last year for asking nudes from models that are minors trying to hookup with model minors and sexual assault on male AND female models and threaning to end careers of young models if they refused to hookup with him aka rape.

And i got completely turned off from fashion design for 3 years after paying all the money i saved up for collage to study properly and i became unable to deal with society abd people like this here and just hid away in my room for 3 years being completely depressed and contemplating suicide not even beeing able to hand sew a single hole shut in my clothes because i have a breakdown and remeber how i was treated.

This week am starting to get the itch to design again and i want to make somthing but i just don't know how the fuck am i gonna manage when 1. Its pretty expensive and i barely have money 2. I am genuinely scared.

Yeah just a genral vent and stuff nothing to see here lol

#non sims #personal

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romancandlemagazine · 5 years

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An Interview with Peter Saville

Peter Saville doesn’t need much of an introduction. Not only was he the man responsible for what might be called the ‘visual language’ of Factory Records, designing record covers for the likes of Joy Division, New Order and A Certain Ratio, but he’s also produced powerful imagery for David Byrne, Suede, Pulp, George Michael and countless other icons of audio.

And, if all that wasn’t enough, he came up with that dynamic logo that’s on the side of those yellow trams that roll through Piccadilly Gardens every few minutes.

I called him up to talk about his work today, Manchester in the 70s and his idea of 'the interzone'.

Are you busy at the moment, have you got a lot on?

Yes, even when I think I’m not busy, things just seem to come up. As you get older you tend to think things will change, but actually, they don’t change at all. Anyway, it’s better to have something to do than nothing, so I’m not going to complain.

What have you been up to lately?

The highest profile project over the last 12 months has been Calvin Klein — the redesign of the Calvin Klein identity for Raf Simons.

What does that involve then? What would you call that? Is it ‘branding’?

I try to avoid the term ‘branding’. It’s a useful word to understand the context of the work, but it’s not a process that I wish to perform. It’s a strange hybrid between design, advertising and PR. It’s almost entirely commercial, and therefore, it’s not something I want to be involved with.

So you’re not getting bogged down with the commercial stuff?

The capturing of markets and controlling of markets is not something that I wish to be associated with. My work, and any reputation I have, is based on giving something to people, not leading them to a market.

The Factory Records covers were not about making people buy the records. They didn’t even try to make people buy the record. They existed independently to the music, and therefore people’s relationships with them were quite different. The people who liked the covers or became interested in the covers saw them as possessions - they learnt through them, things they maybe didn’t know before.

Was that the intention of those covers? To show people the things you were into?

That was my intention. I was learning and so, I was sharing. The nature of Factory Records was that I had complete autonomy to do that. There was no marketing and no one was trying trying to sell records. Factory was a situation that allowed a group of individuals to do what they wanted to do. If other people liked it and supported it, then fine.

That was what Factory was about. And it was the same with The Haçienda. It wasn’t run as a business, trying to take money off the kids of Manchester, it was a gift to the kids of Manchester.

Something separate from money and business?

Yes, you did it because you could. But you’ll know very well that in the contemporary market place, there are very few companies who are doing things just because they can. They do things to make money. That’s business.

For a period of time in my career, I needed to engage with business. I was not an up-and-coming young designer, nor was I a ‘statesman’ of popular culture — it was an in-between period - in the ‘90s I needed to have a relationship with business.

Everyone’s got to eat.

Yes exactly, you’ve got to make a living. I had this uneasy relationship with different sectors, but I didn’t find a comfort zone for myself.

So at the end of the 90s, I stopped looking. I did a retrospective book and a show, and I closed the studio. I didn’t want to go into fashion marketing or branding or retail. I didn’t really want to do that. So I just had to be on my own. Since the early 2000s, I’ve operated independently.

I suppose you’re maybe in a comfortable position where you can pick and choose a bit, thanks to all the things you’ve done in the past.

I’m fortunate that just enough people engage me with work and commissions that I can address on my terms.

When Raf Simons phoned and asked me to look at the issue of the Calvin Klein identity – I was able to identify with his position. He is not Calvin Klein — Calvin Klein is Calvin Klein, and Raf is someone else. So I had to say to myself, “If I was in Raf’s position, what would I do?” So I changed the original Calvin Klein lettering from upper and lower case to upper case – it became capitals. It’s evolved from the subjective to the objective, but it still looks like Calvin Klein.

When you’re asked to intervene in aspects of cultural history, it’s quite an honour. You feel a sense of responsibility in responding to the challenge.

To respect what’s gone before?

Exactly. So in certain situations, I’m really happy to do that. But when someone is approaching me with something that has absolutely no virtue other than profit, because I don’t have a company to carry, I don’t have to do it.

When I first started to learn about art and design history, I was frustrated. Going right back to the ‘70s in Manchester, I would sit in the library at what was then Manchester Polytechnic, looking at the history of art and design, and simultaneously looking out of the window at Oxford Road, and feeling an enormous disconnect, and a sense of frustration. I was angry.

Because you were so far away from the things you were reading about?

Yes, because the everyday world wasn’t the way it could be.

What was it like back then?

It was terrible. When I was 20, in 1975, buses, cinemas, bus stops, railway stations, department stores, taxis, packaging, signs, logos… they were appalling. There wasn’t any awareness of contemporary design — of how design led thinking could make things better. That frustrated and upset me. And I felt very strongly then, as I do know, that our everyday world can be better.

Now what ‘better’ is, is a kind of variable. We saw a lot of ‘design’ begin to get rolled out in the 80s and 90s, but then it got rolled out to the point of ad infinitum, and lost its significance.

Things merely only looking good is not necessarily better, and an awful lot of art and design has been co-opted to camouflage the intent of things. And that’s not better. Using our cultural heritage, our civilisation, to sell mobile phone minutes or cheap holidays or gratuitous fashion — using it as merely packaging for the unnecessary — isn’t good.

And a lot of that started to happen. Business, as ever, takes a lead from the avant-garde, and begins to copy it, but without values. I try to do things well, and to improve the look of things that have values. But if it’s something with no values, it’s kind of wrong to wrap it up as something important.

There’s a lot of that these days… a lot of things look pretty slick, but beyond the fancy shell, there’s not much to them.

The one thing that has upset me over the last 20 years is the way that the canon of culture has been used in ways that we no longer trust. 30 years ago if you did something better, it meant it was better… someone was trying to make a better pair of jeans or a better car. But now, it’s just a look.

I suppose it’s hard to put effort and thought into something you’ve got no belief in.

Exactly. As you grow up and get to understand the world better, you question things. Some of the things I used to take for granted when I was 25 or 30 — I now look at in a completely different way. Once upon a time I might have thought it was nice to do the identity for something like a bank. But who wants to work for a bank now? They’ve shown themselves to be utterly disreputable.

So the understanding of the work and the world and the people who approach is constantly changing. You have to try to hold on to your own values. My reputation, the fact that some people have some admiration for me, is because my work meant something to them.

But if you suddenly starting doing some naff work for a bank, it’d discount all that.

Exactly. I became more concerned with my own identity than in just being prepared to work for people who’d pay me money. And I’m quite happy being me, trying as much as I can to be genuine about the things I do. It’s not easy. We have to earn a living, so it’s not all spiritual… we have to engage with reality.

Going back to what you were saying about looking after Oxford Road and feeling distanced and frustrated. Was that what spurred you on to do those first designs for Factory?

In 1978, the year I graduated from college, I wasn’t being asked to do anything for the infrastructure of the country. But someone did ask me to do a poster. There were things happening – the whole post-punk scene and the notion of independence in music. All of the venues that Manchester had for punk and new wave bands were being closed for one reason or another, and on behalf of the youth culture of the city, Tony Wilson took it upon himself to organise a venue.

Factory was nothing more than what is referred to these days as ‘a night’. It was Friday night every two weeks for two months, and that was it. I knew he was doing this, so I went to see him and said, “Can I do something.” And he said, “Do a poster.”

In doing that poster, I tried to put a better poster, a more intelligent and more beautiful poster, on the walls of Manchester than the ones that were already there. And that led to Factory records where I was given the freedom to express my will and my wish for how things should be,

It was an autonomous situation; it was not a proper company and everybody what they did in the way they wanted to do it. Nobody had any former experience, no one told anyone else how they should do what they were doing, we all performed autonomously. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

Were you ever questioned or disputed at all?

Not really no. Famously, ‘Blue Monday’ went straight from me to the printers. No one saw it.

Did you listen to the music when you were designing the covers?

If I could, but very often that wasn’t possible. But the covers weren’t about the music, they were about the moment. But then the bands were making music about the moment too.

There was always accidental parallels. I was into the aesthetics of computer systems that people were talking about a lot in the 70s and 80s. I didn’t have a computer – it wasn’t a part of everyday life, but people talked about them in the way that people talk about artificial intelligence now. You haven’t met a robot, but you know they’re coming.

So in the late 70s and 80s, computers were on my mind, and I was thinking about the visual side of it. And at the same time, New Order were looking at the significance of computers in making music. So what I did on the cover of Blue Monday had a parallel to what they did. In fact, the floppy disk was the common factor between the two. The first time I saw a floppy disk was the day Stephen Morris gave me one, and that became the basis for the cover.

It wasn’t about the music; it was about music as part of our culture. We were interested in the now. They expressed it musically, I expressed it visually.

The significant word to mention in any kind of understanding of me is the word ‘interzone’.

What do you mean by that? What is the ‘interzone’?

The interzone is the space between design, art, fashion, music, movies, photography, architecture, interior… it’s what people talk about now as convergence. And that was what interested me, even as a teenager. I was interested in the leading edge of mass culture, and how the new ideas would define themselves in different ways.

The feeling of the now is the feeling of the now. Musicians express it one way, film-makers express it another way and photographers express it in yet another way – but it’s all the same spirit. We know that now.

It’s all the same thing.

It’s all the same thing. That was my view 40 years ago in college, it’s just that I happened to want make art, which I saw as record covers, so I went to study graphic design. But what I found there was a closed mind-set — graphic people were into graphics, and weren’t very aware of what fashion or music was doing. This notion of the interzone wasn’t really appreciated.

I was never particularly interested in graphics or typography, I was interested in how two dimensional culture could capture the mood of the moment — the feeling of the now. So I studied graphics, but I spent more time in the fashion department than the graphics department.

If you just started pasting posters up yourself, but they weren’t linked with music or an event, they would just be a bit of paper on a wall. They might be interesting, but they wouldn’t be tied in with anything.

If you just make work that is not applied to any situation, then it’s art. These days art is quite a credible thing to do, but in the mid-70s in the North of England, you were more likely to become an astronaut then be an artist.

The only art that I saw was on record covers, so I wanted to do record covers. The record cover was the only place where you could see freeform visual thinking.

So Malcolm Garrett and I both wanted to do that. In a way we both wanted to be artists, but we didn’t know anything about art. So what was important to me was this broader feeling of the now.

As someone who is so into ‘the now’, what are your thoughts on the nostalgia that surrounds Factory? Why do you think people look back at that stuff so fondly?

I think there’s nostalgia about things that seem to have values. People are seeking authenticity and meaning. So things that have authenticity and meaning never die, because they’re more than just surface.

People still talk about Coco Chanel because she changed the way women could be in the world. She didn’t found Chanel to make money, she found Chanel to express herself and what she cared about.

Companies exploit these values — they continuously harvest them like GM crops, to the point that the market and the audience become tired of it. But they’ll carry on wringing it out until there’s nothing left. It’s desperate and it’s tedious to see the way the world operates.

In regards to the nostalgia thing, do you think people often take the wrong things from history? Instead of being inspired by the free way you lot worked at Factory, people just rip off your graphics.

Yes, unfortunately the mass market can be rather superficial. They get the look more than the attitude. But it’s a long process of familiarisation. We are living in an era of the dissemination of privilege, it is really only in the last 50 to 100 years that ordinary people have actually been allowed to share in privilege.

Do you think the internet has had an effect on that?

It’s one step forward, one step back. The internet allows for the unfettered distribution of a message, and at the same time it allows for confusion and fake news. The problem with the internet is trying to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not.

Almost everything that we invent which is a benefit to society just becomes a problem sooner or later. The motorcar was brilliant – now it’s a problem. That’s just life.

Where do you see things going?

I don’t know. I don’t care anymore. Next month I’m 62. It is other people’s responsibility now. I don’t have any children, but if I did, I would be very concerned. I’m passing the baton of the ones coming up.

What would you say to them as you pass the proverbial baton?

Do things you believe in. There’s a constant battle between good and bad, but as least if you do things you believe in, you’re trying to keep it on the right side of good.

It’s very difficult for every new generation, as they face a new set of challenges that the generation before didn’t even dream of. I thought I had a lot of people to compete with in the 80s, but now there is a 1000 times more. It’s really difficult.

It’s not even easy to find somewhere to live, or to find a job of any kind. The safety net that I sensed as a young person in the UK in the 70s – how the state would stop you from falling – is not there anymore. I think it’s increasingly difficult for every next generation.

As far as you can, try to do what you believe in, because then you hold on to yourself. I don’t really have much money – I don’t own my home, but I’m happy with what I’ve done. I might regret some mistakes I made, but I don’t regret the work I made.

Interview originally published in 2018.

#peter saville #factory records #manchester #joy division #Interviews #new order

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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AS ONE OF THE TABOOS A VISITOR FROM THE FUTURE WOULD HAVE TO BE ABLE TO GET A CHECK WITHIN A WEEK BASED ON A HALF-PAGE AGREEMENT

You would not believe the amount of stock to give him. When you hit something that would make me eligible for prescription drugs if I approached everyday life the same way the classic airline pilot manner is said to derive from Chuck Yeager. But in fact it was the basis of Amsterdam's prosperity 400 years ago. Tip: for extra impressiveness, use Greek variables. Which is to say that it's heretical. The right tools can help us avoid this danger. And as you go down the food chain the VCs get rapidly dumber.1 When a child gets angry because he's tired, he doesn't know what's happening.

A silicon valley has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Related fields are where you go looking for trouble. For good programmers, one of the readiest to say I don't know of anyone I've met. What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM every night, seven days a week. Politicians are caught between a rock and a hard place here, however: make the capital gains rate low and be accused of creating tax breaks for the rich, or make it high and starve growing companies of investment capital. The influence of fashion is not nearly so great in hacking as it is in painting. It's like light from a distant star. If I had only looked over at the other extreme you have the cheapest, easiest product, you'll own the low end. Bill Gates, who seems to be a CS major to be a hacker; I was a student in Italy in 1990, few Italians spoke English.

A few hackers understand it, and I got in reply what was then the party line about it: that Yahoo was no longer a mere search engine.2 This is their way of weighing you. Forty-two years later you'll be making $4. Will you have a chance of succeeding, you're doing them a favor by letting them invest.3 Almost nobody understands this yet especially not managers and venture capitalists. You're better off starting with a blank slate in the form of a small town. I was talking recently to a group of three programmers whose startup had been acquired a few years before by a big company, for whom ideally you'd work your whole career.

Now how are you doing compared to the rapacious founder's $2 million. This works in America, but it feels young because it's full of rich people.4 The way to do that is to implement it. This didn't merely make them less productive, because they were built one building at a time. So hackers start original, and get original. Should you take it? Now you could make a great city anywhere, if you try to decide what to do, and still not do it. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are all nearly impossible to fire. So what makes a place good to them? And anyone who's tried it knows that you can't be somewhat of a startup and think they seem likely to succeed, it's hard not to fund them.5

Even other hackers have a hard time doing that. This essay is derived from a guest lecture at Harvard, which incorporated an earlier talk at Northeastern. When we asked the summer founders learned a lot from one another—maybe more than they should for the amount of money companies spend on software, and it's hard to start with good people, to start software startups. Even a lot of things e. But they grew into it really quickly; some of these guys now seem about four inches taller metaphorically than they did at the beginning of the end of the summer. Checks instituted by governments can cause much worse problems than merely overpaying. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and smart people by their ability to say things you couldn't say anywhere else, and this can be enormous—in fact, discontinuous. Are People Really Scared of Prefix Syntax?6 If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it.

7% of the upside, while an employer gets nearly all of it.7 Y Combinator is just accelerating a process that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of the US either. Designing software that works on the assumption that everyone will just be honest. The mathematicians don't seem bothered by this. In hacking, this can literally mean saving up bugs.8 Otherwise I just worked. If you find yourself in the computer science department, there seems to be a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists seem to be bad ways of using them. Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. In every period of history, the answer is almost certainly no. In it he said he worried that he was fundamentally soft-hearted and tended to give away too much for free. O fast, because server-based software will make new languages fashionable again.

It might dilute the value of safe jobs. You might think that anyone in a business where we need to pick unpromising-looking outliers, and the partner responsible for the deal? Gradually the details get filled in. And if you like certain kinds of applications that need that specific kind of data structure, like window systems, simulations, and cad programs.9 It would be too easy for clients to fire them.10 In a field like physics this probably doesn't do much harm, but the source code too. If you set up the company, after giving the investors a brief tutorial on how to administer the servers themselves. We did.

Suppose you realize there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded fashion, there is probably at most one hop. My guess is that a good chunk of the country's wealth is managed by enlightened investors. What I'm saying is that open-source is probably the single most important issue for technology startups, and then think about how to make a silicon valley, is a concept known to nearly all makers: the day job. I think it's better to follow the opposite policy.11 Startups are marginal.12 They just smelled wrong. At the very least we want options. Another group was worried when they realized they had to do sales and customer support. Yahoo's market cap then was already in the billions, and they were still worrying about wasting a few gigs of disk space. This should be the m. What groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to suppress? In one culture x is ok, and in most of Europe it's not.

Notes

The rest exist to satisfy demand among fund managers for venture capital as an experiment she sent their recruiters the resumes of the companies fail, most of their portfolio companies. When an investor in!

The person who wins. Could you endure studying literary theory, combinatorics, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be high, and we did not start to pull ahead in the sense that they take away with dropping Java in the last step is to try to ensure there are certain qualities that help in that category. I was as bad an employee as this. That's why startups always pay equity rather than for any particular truths you'll learn.

You leave it to colleagues.

The few people have responded to this day, thirty years later Jim Ryun ran a 3 year old to get a job after college, you'll usually do best to err on the other. I had no idea whether this would be unfortunate.

These were the seven liberal arts. At first I didn't like it if you agree prep schools do, and graph theory. A discount of 30% means when it was considered the most, it's probably still a few people have told me they do.

We fixed both problems immediately. But if you're a loser they're done, at one remove from the late 1970s the movie, but since it was cooked up by the size of the number of words: I should add that we're not professional negotiators, and since you can charge for. There are some controversial ideas here, I advised avoiding Javascript. Our founder meant a photograph of a startup was a small amount of damage to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it.

If you're a YC startup you can do it now. This is almost pure discovery. 107.

For example, would probably be to diff European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, they cancel out and you have for endless years of bank dependence, reinforced by the investors. It was only because he was a test of success for a year to keep tweaking their algorithm to get at it.

Though you should never sell i.

The existence of people we need to. Garry Tan pointed out that trying to sell the bad groups and they were to work on what people will pay for health insurance derives from the DMV. Since they don't yet have any of the company goes public. It should be your compass.

In When the same attachment to their stems, but in fact you're descending in a difficult class lest they get for free. But they've been trained.

After Greylock booted founder Philip Greenspun out of school.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, and Sarah Harlin for reading a previous draft.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #Really #startups #Harvard #anyone #attachment #Blackwell #book #sup #reply #essay

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doomedandstoned · 5 years

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Closer To The End (part III)

I contend that human beings are not suited for the world we've fashioned for ourselves. Cases of anxiety and depression are practically ubiquitous, and suicide in all age groups is once again on the rise. Some will suffer mental afflictions that last years -- perhaps even for a lifetime. This is the third and final part of my story.

~By Billy Goate~

Cover art by Ruso Tsig additional art by Karl Briullov

I'm so tired of hearing that I'm wrong Everyone laughs at me, why me? I'm so tired of being pushed around I feel like I've been betrayed

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We take each other's love, forget to give back Isn't it a pity, how we break each other's hearts I know we're only human and not to blame But who the hell are you to cause so much pain Why...

MEDICATION

My parents have been anti-establishment for as long as I can remember. In the climate of the 1980s, the institutions of the day were being called seriously into question. One of them was the authoritarian nature of public education (there's a reason why Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" resonated so strongly with people). It's no surprise that my family got caught up in the first wave of the homeschooling movement. Other areas of modern life began to be called into question, as well, taking the family down a dark, windy road that led into conspiracy culture, extreme libertarianism, and religious dogmatism.

This distrust of the "experts" put us at odds with the medical establishment, too. "Doctors only know how to do two things," mom would often proclaim loudly in one of her famous rants, "cut you open or prescribe you pills." Natural medicine held the keys to recovery from all ills, be it cancer or the common cold. "All those chemicals aren’t good for your body," she insisted. "God put everything we need for healing in the ground." I’m not here to knock naturopathy (I was an ardent follower of this way of life for years) nor my mother for her convictions, but there are some things that can’t be cured by Saint John's Wort and herbal tea -- major depression being one of them.

At one point, my anxiety, melancholy, and a generalized feeling of social isolation reached such a heightened state I turned to hypnotism, enamored by an obscure radio program hosted by Roy Masters and his Foundation for Human Understanding. I was too young to understand the significance of most of the bullshit he was spewing, but it was the comprehensive approach to life that appealed to me. I wanted answers -- all of them. About the only thing I got out of it, though, was learning how to make my own arm go numb through self-hypnosis.

Later, I'd get caught up in a movement of Biblical counseling that rejected psychiatry altogether. "Christ has given us all things we need for life and godliness," says the holy writ, ergo we need none other than Jesus to cure our mental ills. Furthermore, the thesis said, since "God has not given us a spirit of fear" it must mean that the root of depression and anxiety is ultimately sin against God. The answer? Confess your sins and walk by faith, not by sight. In short, pray the sadness away. All of this had limited effectiveness in coping with the claustrophobic cloud of melancholy that was constantly with me.

Cough & Windhand: Reflection of the Negative by Windhand

The stigma of psychiatry and modern medicine kept me from treating my depression for damn near a decade. Somewhere in my late twenties, after a prolonged and particularly dark depressive spell, I decided to talk to my medical doctor about antidepressants. He started me on the industry standard, the well-known and well-marketed Prozac, which became a household name in the '90s. I took the first dose at bedtime and when I woke up, I was seriously hating the daylight. Feeling extraordinarily fatigued, all I wanted to do was sleep. I called in a rare sick day from work. The next day I was feeling groggy, but well enough to return. Giving it the good ol' college try, I took Prozac for several weeks as directed, but the side-effects just weren't worth it for me. That’s when I was referred to my first psychiatrist.

It was a weird feeling sitting in the waiting room for my appointment. I felt like I’d joined the ranks of the fragile, broken, and confused, perhaps even the insane. It was hard for me to see myself sharing anything in common with the others that shared the tiny lobby. The psychiatrist who greeted me looked like a regular chucklehead -- you know, one of those sidekicks from a sitcom that's not coming to me now. (It just came to me: Glen from the Tom Green Show.) A paunchy man in his 30s with wavy dirty blonde hair parted to the side donning wire-rimmed glasses, the shrink pulled out a notebook and started asking me about my background, while he busily took notes. Turned out, the man was very methodical in his approach. Over the course of the year, we cycled through all kinds of drugs -- Paxil, Effexor, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, Zoloft, and a lot of other names I'm not remembering, before finally settling on Cymbalta.

Certainly, this was something I didn't want to share with my coworkers, much less mom and dad. The first time I told my brother I was taking antidepressants, he was outraged. “You don’t need that stuff in your body. You don’t need pills to feel good.” I don’t know what it is about antidepressant medication that offends people so badly, but some people feel it is their personal mission in life to get you off of them. Why all the evangelical fervor? Are they secretly afraid they are "nuts," too? It’s not like I’m trying to get everyone else to take my medication, but suddenly these people, well-meaning or not, are trying to get you off of your meds.

I’ve seen YouTube videos from a guy claiming that God has cured him of his bipolar disorder and he flushed all his pills down the toilet (bad idea, by the way). Then a month later, he comes back online crying uncontrollably, talking about how he feels like God is testing him and asking viewers to pray to stop Satan’s onslaught. Moral of the story: It's dangerous to let people's religious opinions and untested hunches drive the agenda for our mental health.

I'm very reluctant these days to talk to anyone about my depression, because of all the rush to judgement involved. Ironically, it's this breakdown of community that I believe is at the heart of much of our mental health issues as a society. Look at the comments on any confessional video addressing burnout, depression, or anxiety and you'll find everyone is suddenly an expert who knows so well the precise and perfect solution to your problems. Well-meaning or not, it's incredibly annoying and I'd rather not have trouble with it. Hell, it took me two years to finish this article.

Depressed people are often viewed with the same cynical dismissiveness ascribed to angsty hormonal teens. "It's just a phase, you'll get through it," you're told with the reassuring wave of a hand. Besides, they remind you, "Happiness is a choice!" Because they are feeling chipper today, they have little patience for you dampening their mood. Others call you edgy when you say the pressures of life are so great that you feel like just turning off the lights on all of it. Still others will view you as selfish for leaving the family reunion early (or not wanting to participate in holidays at all). When you spend the whole weekend in bed sleeping, they'll accuse you of being indulgent, not realizing sleep gives you a respite from the hurt, guilt, and regret of painful memories or the misery of an unstable home life. Or the well-meaning "It Gets Better!" It doesn't always get better as life moves on.

Then there are those who try to talk you off your meds, entirely (cue: the ridiculously overwrought Facebook posts). We've all been privy to those conversations that strike a conspiratorial tone about how it was really the pharmaceutical companies that led to Chris Cornell's death. "You should just get off the stuff," they argue -- be it from noble intentions or just pride from clinging to an opinion they've stubbornly invested in.

Then there are those who are convinced that since Jesus (or Buddha, Allah Oprah, Jordan Peterson or juicing) gave them an escape from their depression, certainly it is the universal cure for all that ails you. Understand that I was a committed Christian for decades. I know what it is like to feel spiritually serene and I value many of the things the church gave me as a young adult, namely the fellowship, tolerance, and love. I know the feeling of peace that comes from believing in someone who reigns over the chaos and cares about your every need -- an ultimate being who will make sense of the nonsense one day.

I don't wish to diminish anyone's faith or diminish your personal experiences. The fact is, however, that major depression is as much a physical illness as cancer is. Certainly, there are transitional feelings of unhappiness, emptiness, and despair that come from facing situations that seem out of one's control -- the nightmare roommate, being laid off from a job, losing a loved one. It's also true that in most cases, this sadness can be overcome by a new perspective, trying better strategies, or simply allowing the passage of time to do its healing work. Depression can be impacted by one's beliefs, but there is a kind of depression that exists independently of one's perspective on life.

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

Apart from this series of articles (which took me a good two years to publish), I've stopped sharing my depression with other people. It's annoying, because most people don't know how to listen and empathize. They want to jump in with a solution that, if implemented by nightfall, just might make a difference by daybreak. It's just more hassle than it's worth. Over time, I've gone from being someone with an intense need to belong, to not caring what people think about me at all. I'll often go out of my way to avoid anything deeper than transactional relationships. Once a social butterfly, you'll find me quite the hermit these days. As a consequence, while I was once open to sharing my feelings of loneliness and despair, I rarely mention them any more on social media and practically never to my IRL friends. I would be the last person to call a suicide hotline, by the way. Judge me if you wish, but I'm just being honest. If you want to know what is going on in the head of a severely depressed person with suicidal ideation, here's a least one brain you can peer into.

There's a general consensus that suicide is a selfish decision, even a cowardly act. This was a casual opinion of my own for years, as well. Not until suicide touches someone in your life -- or when you enter its despondent realm yourself -- does the ridiculousness of that notion becomes apparent. Understand that for a person to commit suicide, they have to overcome the brain's own strong predilection for self-preservation. It's not so easy to take the step of ending your life. Something has gone terribly wrong with the brain's ability to convincingly cry, "STOP!" for that to happen.

In my worst bout of depression, following the demise of long-term relationship, I reached the point where every waking moment was sheer misery. Some call this anhedonia -- the inability to feel pleasure. Normally, when we are feeling blue, we seek out something to stimulate our pleasure receptors. That's why ice cream, chocolate, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are popular go-tos for the bummed out. For me, it's always been music and movies. On this particular week, though, I had somehow lost the capacity to find any joy whatsoever in the usual pastimes. Anything that attempted to pacify my mood met with my contempt. The only thing I could do to escape the agony of just being alive and conscious was to sleep...and sleep I did. At first 8 hours a night, up from my usual 7. Then it advanced to 9, 10, 11, 12 hours. When dawn came, a wave of misery washed over my mind again.

Once, I woke up feeling so despondent that I knew with absolute clarity that I could end my life. Today, I could actually do it. Immediately upon this realization, I wept bitterly. I've not cried like that before or since. If anything, I've become more stoic about the idea of suicide. Don't get me wrong, my internal sense of self-preservation is still quite strong. The problem is that in moments of severe depression, that instinct is dampened. You'll do just about anything just to get rid of the feeling of misery making it unbearable to be awake.

DOOM AWAKENING

One of the most important developments in treating my depression, besides medication and therapy, was the discovery of doom. There's an old expression that misery loves company. I don't know about you, but when I listen to music it's not generally to cheer me up. No, I want my tunes to have a certain level of commiseration with what I'm feeling and going through at the time. When I discovered (quite by accident) Saint Vitus, I knew I'd found my soul food. I can't fully explain that eureka moment when Dave Chandler belted out that first downtuned note on the guitars on "Born Too Late" or when Wino joined with plaintive lyrics for "I Bleed Black." This resonated with me powerfully. It brought chills. This was medicine for my weary head, a kind of mental morphine to dull the pain. I'd come to the Roseland Theater for Down and left with Saint Vitus.

As a funny aside, my roommate (who accompanied me to the show) and I rehashed the bands of the night, giving our two cents on this or that. One thing he said still makes me smile a little inside. "What did you think of Saint Vitus?" I asked. "I don't think they're the kind of band that will withstand the test of time," he remarked. "Well," I rejoined, "they have been playing now for over 30 years and were the co-headliners on a national tour, so their sound must be resonating with a good number of people." Sure, it wasn't for everyone, but on that night my doom had come.

Every song on 'Born Too Late' (1986) so perfectly captures the malaise of the deeply wounded soul, not just in lyrics but in the whole vibe. There's a thick, smoky haze permeating the record and it reminds me a lot of what it feels like after you've poured out your heart until you've got no more tears left to cry. Come on, don't pretend you're so macho that normal human emotions elude you. It's hard to put doom into words, but I'll try: on the one hand you feel emotionally exhausted because you've emptied out all those pent up feelings of loss, fear, regret, and frustration, on the other hand there's a feeling of "reset" and it often makes things much clearer to sort through. For me, when I've exhausted all my emotional resources, I'm left with a feeling of blithe acceptance. A sense of being dealt a set of cards by the impartial hand of fate. That's the kind of vibe that Saint Vitus captures perfectly for me on this record.

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I spent entire weekends on those long, wonderful rabbit trails of discovery. "Dying Inside" led me to Trouble's "The Tempter" with its oh-so-tragic central riff. Lyrically, the songs I was running across could not have been more apropos.

Pentagram, The Skull, and Candlemass were not lingering far behind. Then came the more recent monoliths of doom: Electric Wizard, Windhand, High on Fire, Burning Witch, Khanate, Pilgrim, Serpentine Path, Usnea, Demon Lung, Ancient VVisdom, Dopelord, and the NOLA sludge scene, along with lesser known but equally as powerful acts like Undersmile, Shepherd's Crook, Reptile Master, Purple Hill Witch, Witchthroat Serpent, March Funèbre, Beldam, Hooded Priest, Regress, and 71TONMAN (listen to the Spotify playlist).

Doom metal spoke to me with a sharp realism that I connected with immediately. When you have no strength left to get angry at the world, you switch your listening habits from Car Bomb to Cough. You can say, I suppose, that doom was my salvation. It kept me hanging on a little while longer. The salve of those slow, low riffs gave me a strange feeling of consolation. "We know life sucks, too. Welcome to reality." It's like being awakened to the Matrix, but feeling there's not a damned thing you can do to change any of it. Your fate is sealed. It's an honesty that is both refreshing and freeing, I suppose, though one does wish to reclaim the notion of hope.

Believe it or not, even after writing all of this, optimism is my default mode. When I'm feeling well, and even when my depression is at low levels, the needle always leans towards inspiration, creativity, even a mischievous sense of humor and an aw, shucks smile that people tend to notice. I don't want to be depressed. The problem is that severe depression can make you feel, illusion or not, like you're paralyzed from doing anything about it.

As I've experienced more and more cuts and scrapes of life, I've become increasingly numb to it all, like the massive build-up of scar tissue. Things that upset me easily in the past might still hurt, but I've come to expect them, so they have the impact of a dull table knife. Perhaps I'm becoming a nihilist, despite my optimistic tendencies. It's hard not to be. Don't worry about me, though. If anything, I want to stick around to see what's going to happen next. It's the inborn curiosity we all have inside of us -- the same thing that I imagine kept Stephen Hawking going for decades after being wrecked by a disease that cruelly mangled his body into its famously misshapen form, stealing away his most basic expressive freedoms -- save for the power of his eyes and the thoughts behind them.

I've also made a deliberate attempt to pursue treatment (both psychiatric and psychological care) for my depression, which I urge you to do if you are likewise laboring under its crushing weight. The perspective of time, coupled with a remedy for mind and body can have a significant impact on your perspective, if not your life circumstances.

THE WINDY ROAD AHEAD

Learn from your mistakes, don't dwell on them. Repeated affirmations like this one may seem trite, but they are ultimately true. You can be free from the chains of guilt and move forward, as one performer puts it, "from strength to strength."

Don't kill yourself (literally or metaphorically) for someone else or for someone else's decisions. It may bum you out that a roomie decided to take your money and run or that you were rebuffed by a long-time crush or made jobless through corporate-wide cuts. You don't own that, they do.

Walks

Get off the couch, move that bod. Something as simple as a walk down the block or a drive out of town can do wonders for your perspective. As a homeschool teen living under the strict rule of a radical fundamentalist household in rural East Texas, my one salvation were those long walks in the open field -- especially when my parents started having loud, intense fights related to my mom's own mental health. I sorted through so many of life's problems (most of which seemed much larger then than they do now) through those solitary, hour-long strolls.

I really miss that where I live now, in a more congested neighborhood, so I have to find other ways of getting away from it all (getting up and out a half-hour before the other walkers, for instance, helps). Even if I don't want to rustle myself awake and move around to do as simple a task as taking out the trash, sometimes the feeling...let me revise that...quite often the feeling follows after the decision has been made and the body is in motion.

Projects

Another piece of advice I have for coping with depression is to channel your frustrations in projects. When I'm depressed, I throw myself into my work. Hell, Doomed & Stoned started because I needed a project to pour myself into. My counselor asked me once, "If you woke up tomorrow without depression, what would be different about your world?"

She encouraged me to start with the things that were in my immediate vicinity. "Well, there wouldn't be mail strewn all over the floor. My dirty clothes would be in the hamper, my clean clothes folded and put away. I'd take the time to cook myself a meal, instead of running out the door eating a quick bite out of some package."

Good, let's make a list and start there. Do at least one of the things on your list between now and the time we meet again next week.

Talks

Despite my isolationist ways, I begrudgingly admit that talking often helps, too. Though I'm an introvert and am horrified at the idea of sharing my feelings with others, I've reached points in my depression where I was compelled to tell others about it. It's as natural to do that as to cry out when your body is experiencing jolting pain. I'm one of those verbal processors that tends to sort through my problems by talking to someone else. Often, pride or shame or lack of trust gets in the way of sharing with our family and friends, so at the very least the much talked about Suicide Prevention Hotline could actually help you gain perspective on your situation.

Journals

If you don't talk, at least journal. Again, I'm not a journaler and this is the first time in almost three decades that I've written about anything related to my depression. Role play with me. You're a scientist studying the human psyche. How would you describe those feelings you call depression? When I was first asked to describe it to a counselor, I found myself at a loss for words. She helped me with prompts:

Can you tell me what it feels like?

"I walk around feeling like a dark, thick raincloud is hovering all around me all the time."

Do you feel it in a part of your body?

"Well, yeah, I guess. The head. And the chest. It feels like there's pressure building from all around me, like my head is going to explode. My heart feels like it's going to leap out of my chest."

What's happening around you when these feelings arise?

I'd then go on to detail some recent happenings. She'd press me further to describe the kinds of thoughts racing through my head in these situations. All of this was really helpful in getting me to define this nebulous, gray malaise that was following me everywhere I went.

I don't keep a journal, per se. Something about it feels needlessly egotistical, a vain attempt to reinforce the illusion in our YouTube fame crazy world that my life is worth discovering and remembering at some point in the distant future. And yet, writing down one's thoughts can be another effective way of untangling that anxious ball of feelings that keeps me from thinking rationally about the depression I'm feeling.

Today is my birthday, but I couldn't care less. It's not about getting old. I stopped caring about that 10 years ago. It's something about celebration, specifically when the attention is on me. I can't adequately describe how contemptuous I find it. My last birthday was spent alone in an empty house and a bottle of Scotch, catching up with past seasons of Game of Thrones. I was so glad it was over and the happy birthday wishes stopped. There's nothing special about this day for me.

At some point, my family stopped celebrating birthdays and holidays. I'm not sure when it happened or why. Certainly not for religious reasons, more probably for financial ones. I grew up in a family that barely scraped by, so birthdays seemed a luxury we couldn't afford. Now, it just feels indulgent. More than that, it feels sad. It reminds me of all the disappointments, hurts, and failures of the past year. It's not as though it's all bad, of course. If nothing else my birthday gives the illusion that a chapter has turned, with new possibilities for the future. I also have to come to terms with how many people out there actually seem to care about me, maybe even love me.

And later that day, I forced myself to go to a show I was quite enthused about, but didn't factor in depression being the party pooper.

I can't account for what it is that comes over me. There are people here that genuinely like me, who probably even want to get to know me better, but I push them away. Not so much directly, but indirectly, by excusing myself to use the restroom and then changing my mind midway and just leaving the venue -- without even the courtesy of a "goodbye" to friends or a "great show" to the bands. I feel awful about it afterwards, but in that moment it's like a flood of emotional pain washes over me and it feels like I'm carrying an anchor chained around my neck. I feel the great urge to find my way to unlit corners. To look busy and preoccupied. Would it hurt me to say hello? To smile? Perhaps not, but right now my psyche is tingling like some kind of Spidey Sense telling me, "Get out of here! Just get your shit and leave...NOW."

As dour and hopeless as that may feel, just the act of writing it down afforded me a release, which incidentally I did not feel until the writing was all said and done.

Hope, a new beginning Time, time to start living Just like just before we died

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Hurt, falling through fingers Trust, trust in the feeling There's something left inside There's no going back to the place we started from.

ONE MORE THING

For those of you who are wondering what you can do for a friend, family member, coworker or just someone you know casually from shows you both frequent, I couldn't say it better than one of my longtime fellow travelers in doom, who offered up this advice:

"While it's all very well and fucking dandy that there are so many people telling those who are struggling to reach out to them, I don't think people are quite understanding just how mental illness works sometimes. People quite often don't reach out, because those that are suffering from mental illness, at times, feel like they are a burden by unloading their shit onto someone else, despite the invitation to do so. It's generally the same concept that leads on to suicide.

I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself when I say the last thing I want to do is reach out to anyone because I feel like I am a burden and everyone would be better off without me -- and that is ultimately why I don't reach out. The point that I'm trying to get at is if you see someone struggling YOU reach the fuck out. If you don't see someone who used to be around, YOU reach the fuck out. Think about it. It's not that hard."

Well said and completely on the mark. At the same time, if you're feeling alone and uncared for, you may look at people’s lack of inquiry as more confirmation that you are worthless trash. You may interpret a busy person's slight as utter rejection. Don't worry about what others may or may not think of you. You need to take care of you, for you. The future is fickle. Your fortunes can change on a dime, so why base your self-worth and your decision about whether to live or die by how you feel right now? Ride it out, seek out help, get a game plan in play.

I say this as someone who knows how hard it can be to get mental health. I was double insured -- through my employer and the Veterans Administration -- and I couldn't get a god damned psychiatric appointment to reevaluate and adjust my meds. I called all over town trying to get in with someone. "Sorry, we're not accepting new patients" was the universal refrain. The VA would just be too many month's wait, I told myself, based upon how long it has taken me in the past to get a conventional medical appointment. In desperation, I called up my primary care doctor who asked if I was suicidal. For the first time in my life, I knew with full certainty the answer was yes. The more miserable I felt, the more I contemplated dying. If I did it, it would be something quick and sudden, I would daydream in my most despondent moment. "You need to check yourself into the hospital now," she told me adamantly. I did exactly that. I walked into the ER and told them I was suicidal. They led me to a room, had me take off all my clothes, and put on a hospital gown. I stayed in a padded room waiting for a social worker to see me. It was a desperate move, but it did pay off in getting me fast-tracked to see a psychiatrist.

One thing I learned about medication from my new psychiatrist (because he was very caring, very careful, and hence very effective at his job) is that everyone’s brain chemistry is uniquely different. There can be other issues impacting mood, too, such as thyroid, environmental stressors, sleep problems, vitamin deficiencies, and so on. Again, it’s often hard to see whether the cart is leading the horse or the horse is leading the cart, in terms of the mind-body connection. Long story short, this doctor adjusted my meds to near perfection to get me through the rare summer-long depression I was experiencing.

Just a few months later, he got hired away to work for the County and I was left back in the same boat once again. I got a great referral, but didn't realize until bills came in I couldn't pay that the doctor was out of my insurance network. Believe me, many people prefer to go without care entirely than to go into debt and I was one of them (truthfully, I still am). I went another year until I couldn't take it anymore and this time in my desperation reached back out to the VA. Surprisingly, they saw me within a week and prioritized my suicidal depression. I'm now in a good spot as a result, but it was a long, windy, uncertain road getting here. I know it's hard to find help. Sometimes you don't know what's available to you until you knock a little louder and get people's attention.

The older I get, it seems the more stubborn I am, particularly when it comes to reaching out and asking for help. Perhaps I've always been that way and am only now realizing it's become a liability. After taking off three weeks during the holidays to catch up with the many projects that were piling up around me, I realized that my depression was sometimes stronger than my will to power through and do my best work. I would find myself sitting at the computer for hours trying to get started with a story, trying to edit audio for a podcast, trying to prepare a team member's submission for publication, and every time I would find myself coming up against something painful, perhaps similar to the long recognized creative crimp known as writer's block. I describe it as an inhibitor chip in my brain that sends pain signals to my psyche whenever I contemplate moving forward.

Of course, rationally, I know it's all just a matter of the will, right? That's what those who aren't experiencing depression will tell you, at least. They don't want to go to the gym, but they make the choice to do it anyway, so why can't you just "man up" and do what needs to be done? Well, those aren't so much the messages other people give me, as they are my own conscience. The guilt itself from a day coming and going without results adds its own layer of complication to my mood. Thankfully, I have a wonderful counselor who understands and is helping me to tackle this with cognitive strategies. This, coupled with sensible medical treatment, has at least helped me to find "even flow" again.

Finally, you're going to have some bad days where you may even want to be productive, but your body feels like it's in revolt. As a creative person who loves to pour myself into as many projects as I can when I'm feeling good, it can be extraordinarily frustrating to not even feel the will to check email, open a letter, or listen to a stitch of music. Most days, I'm trying to work in concert with my body's natural rhythms. I'm more of a morning person and get my best work done between 8AM and 11AM. Anything after that is going to be hit or miss with diminishing returns. With that in mind, I have to hold back from starting new projects before the ones already on my plate are finished, because when I'm feeling good, I think I can take on the world.

This is all a part of me rediscovering what it's like to feel balanced, bright, and in love with life. It can be frustrating to have that feeling back, only to watch it wither away as the week progresses. Since I have very high expectations of myself, it's natural for me to heap guilt upon guilt for all the missed opportunities, but beating myself up only compounds the problem (it took me a long time to really get this about myself, too). Every day is a struggle, but I've decided I'm staying in the fight for the long haul.

In short: Be patient with yourself. Be fair with yourself. Be good to yourself. Remember, this too shall pass.

"Someday you're going to die, just like some day I'm going to die. But until then, you fight like hell to stay alive, you get that?!"

-- William Holden, The Earthling (1980)

#Closer To The End #Depression #Suicide #Doom #Metal #Saint Vitus #Trouble #Alice in Chains #Windhand #Doomed & Stoned

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viktorbezic · 6 years

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Constraints Journal: How Rei Kawakubo Built a Fashion Empire Through a Quiet Culture of Making

Discipline: Fashion

Born in Tokyo in 1942, Rei Kawakubo, the oldest of three children and the only daughter, grew up in the post-war US occupied Japan. It was a time of poverty and humiliation in Japan, the occupation would end in 1952. Kawakubo had a close-knit family where her mother made all of the children's clothes. When Kawakubo grew up, she would enter Keio University where her father worked, and graduate in 1964 with a degree in “the history of aesthetics,” which included studies of both Asian and Western art. As Japan grew in the 60s, the young Japanese embraced the western counter culture of the 60s and Kawakubo had an interest in the punk movement. At 22 she left home with no explanation to her parents or any real plans. She moved into a shared apartment in Harajuku, where a lot of the youth would hang out and display the latest in street fashions.

Kawakubo’s initial instincts were to be self-sufficient. She found a gig at the bottom of the ladder at an advertising agency of a textile manufacturer, Asahi Kasei. She had no desire to wear the traditional uniform of the company and refused. Her boss gave her some freedom in dress and also in scouting props and costumes for photoshoots. After a couple years on the job, one of her colleagues who’d later become an influential fashion journalist encouraged Kawakubo to go freelance as a stylist in 1969 (1). Dissatisfied with the clothes that she was given for photoshoots she started making her own clothing. This was with zero training in fashion or a formal design education. Her unique vision came from seeing things as a stylistic whole and thinking about what would make an interesting image. As opposed to focusing on a single article of clothing. The clothes that she made for photo shoots, Kawakubo would later sell to maintain her independence (2). She sold them under the label Comme des Garçon as she liked the way the French sounded. By 1969 she was using whatever funds she had from her stylist work to create a youthful sportswear line that was carried in trendsetting shops. She rented a space in a graphic arts studio and hired a few assistants. After a decade by 1980, Commes des Garçon would grow to have a hundred and fifty franchised shops across Japan (3).

Kawakubo describes her early creative success as a result of focusing on her independence. “I tried to achieve my aim which was to do something by myself, Kawakubo explains further, "Oh, of course, I loved to work in the fashion world, but as a first priority, I wanted to work as an independent person. I just happened to find my own job in the fashion field.” Fans of the brand were obsessed. The aesthetic at this time was inspired by the loose and rustic garb of Japanese fisherman and peasants. At the age of 40 in 1981, although well known in Japan Kawakubo was an unknown in the west, she had her first runway show in Paris. The show caused controversy but also put Comme des Garcon on the map, Kawakubo’s response, "I only came to Paris with the intention of showing what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s.” Her alternative view to that of the fashion establishment also applied to other areas of her business. She would typically work with models that were overlooked by other fashion houses. Again she’d look at a model as a whole person. This included both image and attitude. Kawakubo would find one of the traits she values most in the models. Independence. In Kawakubo’s words, “People interest me. I am inspired by the people surrounding me. Beautiful or stylish is a personal feeling. I don’t have a definition of beauty. I don’t have an establishment view of what beauty is. My idea of beauty keeps changing. When I choose models, I like a strong, independent person, maybe who is disliked by other people. I want to see an all over feeling, not just from an architectural point of view. I want to see wide angle (4).”

Another critical component of her continual creative breakthroughs, in addition to going against the grain, is the strong desire to create something entirely new every season. Kawakubo call’s the process starting from zero. Not building on what was done previously or relying on hits from last season. She tries to minimize as much outside influence as possible. As she noted, it gets harder and harder to start from zero as you get older. You begin to acquire more and more baggage. Kawakubo agonizes over trying to get something new with every collection. She enjoys the journey no matter how hard it is. "It’s boring if things are accomplished too easily, right? When I work, I think about the excitement of achievement after hard effort and pain (5).” This inward creative focus is also imparted on her staff. Her directive to them is to find the new, but doesn’t want to influence the results by describing in exact detail what her vision his. They look inward instead of to her to uncover the new. This includes everyone from the pattern cutters and designers.

Attention to detail and trying to push the boundary of what’s possible put Comme des Garçon in a class of its own. This attention to detail is part of the brand’s DNA. The clothes aren’t expensive because of the name that’s on it but because of the experimental techniques that are used to make them as Kawakubo explains, “My Clothes perhaps end up expensive, not because the company is making a huge profit, but because we create special fabric, and there are certain techniques involving lots of details. Instead of buying three pieces of clothing in a month or a year, why not buy one thing they can afford and enjoy it. Rather than a lot of clothes, I wish people would value creativity so that the world would not be filled up with rubbish clothes.” Kawakubo also resists the uniformity of machines in the process. She doesn’t want things to be perfect, she wants them to be human. Kawakubo hints at the idea of special wrongness. The unique quirks that make something special. Kawakubo explains, “The machines that make fabric are more and more making uniform, flawless textures. I like it when something is off - not perfect. Hand weaving is the best way to achieve this. Since this isn’t always possible, we loosen a screw of the machines here and there so they can’t do exactly what they’re supposed to do (6).”

Kawakubo has built her creative empire through making. Creating is the first priority. She is famously private. Kawakubo rarely gives interviews and is not active in the fashion entertainment press. Her clothes and her work do all the talking. Kawakubo stresses the importance of silence, “Silence is very important to me. I find being alone rather relaxing. I must be a very obstinate woman (7)." It’s clear to me that she is tapping into her introverted superpowers. Looking inside for inspiration, not getting influences from elsewhere. She takes this same approach with the Comme des Garçon brand actively cultivating talent internally. She asks her designers if they want their own line. It takes a ton of confidence in your own creativity to do that. But I also think it’s how she keeps the team motivated to discover the new. The team doesn’t toil in obscurity for the sake of her name and the Comme des Garcon brand. This is a very unselfish move. She does because she put herself in the shoes of her designers. It probably attracts top talent for the brand. Examples of her team who have created their own lines include the founder of Sacai, Chitose Abe and Kawakubo's protege Junya Watanabe who not only has is own line but has notable collaborations with Converse, Puma, Carhartt, and North Face (8).

Other designers that have struck out on their own with Kawakubo’s backing who ultimately weren’t cut out for the task could come back into the Comme des Garçon fold and work for Kawakubo. Experimentation without consequence. She instinctively knows that allowing her designers to build their own brands and labels ultimately make Commes des Garcon brand stronger. It makes Commes des Garçon a magnet for design talent. Knowing there are opportunities to maximize their own creative potential with the support of Kawakubo. This philosophy also extends to the new retail experiences she’s built with her partner Adrian Joffre in Dover Street Market.

Dover Street Market retail concept was started in 2004 on a side street in London’s Mayfair district. Rent for the space came as a whole, and it was a ton of space. The couple didn’t want to share the area on someone’s else terms so they would lease out the whole space and do things their way. Inspired by the stalls of Kensington Market they wanted to put together different designers together in a sort of marketplace. A fundamental tenet was putting established designers alongside emerging designers creating a unique offering over traditional retailers. It took people some getting used to, they didn’t initially understand it and would describe it as being “mixed up.” Kawakubo and Joffe’s response was, “deal with it. It’s not like the department store; this is different.” There is a mix of pop-ups, special collaborations, and art installations. The precursor to Dover Street Markets would be temporary as what they referred to as guerilla store in various cities around the globe, which included Reykjavik, Warsaw, Barcelona, Stockholm, Athens, and Beirut. Permanent Dover Street Markets can be found in London, New York, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Beijing. The shops close up and change format regularly to bring in a new mix of art and collaborations. They cost a fraction of what their luxury counterparts invest in their spaces although they carry capsule collections or unique collaborations from the same luxury brands in their shop. Content matters, more importantly, diversity of content with a unique point of view. Walking through a Dover Street Market is definitely a unique experience, not something that could be easily replicated online.

All growth to date is organic and in the service of creativity. Comme des Garçon is more like an ecosystem versus a hierarchical brand. Brand extensions and products lines expand freely off of Comme des Garcon’s core brand. It’s a very flat structure. According to Joffe, “We keep things on a parallel level, we can’t grow deeply, we’re not big enough or rich enough to open flagship stores around the world like multi-national corporations, so we have to grow the company laterally. That’s why we’ve got 17 brands. We’ve just got to continue, organically and naturally. Slowly, slowly, little growth. We don’t want to double overnight. We’ve never had investors or anything like that." What they are doing is working. Dover Street Market now makes $130 million/year across five stores which is a 130 percent increase over last year (9).

At the age of 70 Rei Kawakubo continues to be a force in the fashion world. Comme des Garçon generates $220 million in revenues and employs over 800 people (10). Creativity remains to be the critical priority not only for Kawakubo but for the brands and designers she touches. And constant change fuels growth.

References

1. Thurman, Judith. “The Unsettling Vision of Rei Kawakubo.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 10 July 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/07/04/the-misfit-3.

2. Kawakubo, Rei, and Terry Jones. Rei Kawakubo: Designer Monographs. Taschen, 2012.

3. Thurman, Judith. “The Unsettling Vision of Rei Kawakubo.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 10 July 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/07/04/the-misfit-3.

4. Kawakubo, Rei, and Terry Jones. Rei Kawakubo: Designer Monographs. Taschen, 2012.

5. Ibid

6. Ibid

7. Ibid

8. Rabkin, Eugene. “The Children of Comme.” The Business of Fashion, The Business of Fashion, 6 May 2015, www.businessoffashion.com/articles/people/the-children-of-comme.

9. Marshall, Alexandra. “Dover Street Market Expands While Defying Retail Convention.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 14 Aug. 2018, www.wsj.com/articles/dover-street-market-expands-while-defying-retail-convention-1534253394.

10. Kansara, Vikram Alexei. “Adrian Joffe, Tending the Garden of Comme Des Garçons.” The Business of Fashion, The Business of Fashion, 28 Sept. 2013, www.businessoffashion.com/articles/people/adrian-joffe-rei-kawakubo-tending-the-garden-of-comme-des-garcons.

#my writing #writing #long reads #constraints journal #writers on tumblr #creative constraints #rei kawakubo #comme des garçons #fashion #apparel

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philomathresearch · 2 years

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Market Research on social media: How to Recruit Influencers

Adolescents and young people may have a bad reputation in the world of research. Researchers often don’t know how to approach and engage with them, and thanks to their notoriously short attention spans, it’s no surprise that researchers can find it difficult to target younger generations and ever more. -May even have to contend with low response rates.

However, Millennials and Generation Z are the influencers of tomorrow, so it’s really important that we find a way to reach them – and luckily the rise of social media over the past decade has allowed researchers to do just that! Read on to discover our top four tips to help you recruit youth through social media for your qualitative market research

1. Use Targeted Social Media Campaigns for Optimal Performance

We have been very vocal about how much we rate targeted social media campaigns in our last few blogs and how beneficial they can be to recruiting qualitative market research. Using Facebook, researchers can target people based on demographic information, such as their age, gender, lifestyle, relationship status, job title, and more, such as location, page likes, brand preferences, and buying behaviour. Can also target based on specific things. It’s one of the best ways to reach people based on specific criteria – so if you’re looking for women aged 18-25 who live in Liverpool, love to shop and regularly share their iPhone reads fashion blogs on Facebook, they’ll find it! This means you can reach respondents no matter what type of participant you are looking for – and it will also give you an estimated audience size, so you know how many people you are potentially reaching.

2. Clearly explain the benefits of participating

No matter how bad their representative may be, the truth is that the younger generation really cares about the world and wants to make a difference. For example, 42% of Millennials are interested in helping companies develop the products of the future – which is not surprising since their age group is known as the ‘why’ generation who like to collaborate, want to know what is the end goal of things and most importantly, want to know why it can benefit people.

This means that if you want to encourage youth to participate in your market research, you need to include a clear overview of your study, what the end goal is and clearly state why it should be posted on social sites and how can people benefit while doing it? Millennials want to deal with brands that match their personalities and share similar values – so gain their trust by giving them as much information as you can about yourself and making sure your social media posts reflect your personality. You can’t go too wrong!

3. Make Sure Your Posts Are Interesting

Reaching the Millennial population requires a tailored approach with an emphasis on digital. This generation is very much engaged; They love Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest – so you should make sure you include photos and videos in your posts to capture their attention.

Additionally, because they are used to digesting information immediately, the attention span of this ‘Snapchat’ generation is very short – meaning you have just 8-12 seconds to catch their interest. Basically, if you want young people to stand up and pay attention to your ad, you need to make sure it stands out! By making your ad a bit exciting and interesting, you will not only have a better chance of grabbing their attention initially, but it will also keep them interested and engaged in research. Here are some key points to get you started:

· Sure, it’s interesting to watch

· Include photos and videos where you can

· Keep it short and sweet

· Ensure that it stands out

4. Make sure you post on all platforms

Yes, Facebook is the most famous social media recruitment tool for market researchers, but don’t forget to post on all other platforms as well. Instagram has 1 billion monthly users, 61% of whom are in the age group of 18-34, which makes it a really useful platform to reach young people, while Snapchat has over 300 million monthly users, 78% of whom Are 18-24 years old. Twitter is still popular with younger generations as well, with 335 million monthly users, of whom Twitter itself says 80% are ‘rich millennials’ – and don’t forget Pinterest, which has over 200 million monthly active users and it is a women-centric platform. It only takes a few minutes of your time to post across the board and can get some good participants – so what are you waiting for? It’s time to get posting!

In conclusion, social media provides the modern researcher with a powerful tool from target recruitment to feasibility testing. Using targeted marketing allows you to target specific audiences more accurately than ever, so you can be certain that your research will reach the right people, and Gen Z’s propensity to share on social media makes it possible to reach larger numbers than ever.

Whether it is about relevant rules and regulations or selecting the right methodology, our expert team of qualitative market researchers works with kids and youth. If you need more information on how to conduct qualitative market research with children and youth, please visit our website at www.philomathresearch.com

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foisalarif · 3 years

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Struggling to promote your brand? Have an influencer do it for you!

According to Forbes, with the advancement in Technology, it is now easier to reach your target audiences with the help of Influencers (Mathew,2018).

Influencer marketing is not done just by attaching a popular celebrity to a brand. The influencers must be that can be trusted, belongs to a decent community, and possesses loyal followers. Also, they must have a profound knowledge about the product that the business wishes to promote. For example, a well-known fitness vlogger on YouTube who has decent amount of knowledge about proper nutrition and weight training can be asked to create an advertisement for a supplement company or sportswear. Some of the common influencer categories include Food Enthusiasts, Beauticians, Photographers, Athlete, Adventurists and the list on.

The monetary value of an influencer is generally calculated by the number of their online followers as well as the social platform that they are using. Take Instagram for example, experts suggest that $1,000 for every 100,000 followers they have. This amount can be fluctuated depending on the relevance and reach of the Influencer. On YouTube, for every 1,000 views, $100 is the standard price point.

The Value of Influencer Marketing:

Whereas Instagram Influencer Marketing is a popular strategy, many other similar platforms are growing for Influencer Marketing. According to Adweek, the industry is set to reach $10 billion in worth by 2020.

At the end of 2018, Influencer Marketing Agency Mediakix surveyed the Marketers to research what they thought about Influencer Marketing for the New Year.

With those surveyed, 89% said ROI from Influencer Marketing was better than or at least comparable to other networks.

How to look for Potential Influencers and determining their Price Point:

Initially, choose the best platform for the product and stick to it. Make sure that the right platform is chosen for the right product. For example, Instagram and YouTube is popular for Fashion and Lifestyle, Twitch for Videogames and so on.

In 2017, Influence.co published the results of their research into Instagram influencer payment. They looked at the average cost per Instagram post and found:

The overall average price was $271 per post.

The average price for micro-influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers was $83 per post.

The average price for influencers with more than 100,000 followers was $763 per post.

What to look out for:

A brand must make sure that the Influencer’s content matches with their overall image. If the Influencers promote the wrong or offensive way, it will damage the company’s reputation and affect in the long run. This is especially important when the promoter is young or a teenager who might lack maturity or professionalism.

Companies should also look out for fake followers. An influencer might be having thousands of fake followers. Applications such as InstaCheck can check for fake profiles.

Although there are issues regarding Influencer Marketing, I would personally still choose to promote my business this way and at the same time make sure that my investment is well spent.

Reference:

1. Mathew, J. (2018). Council Post: Understanding Influencer Marketing And Why It Is So Effective. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2018/07/30/understanding-influencer-marketing-and-why-it-is-so-effective/?sh=5ea6201371a9.

2. Chen, J. (2020). What is influencer marketing: How to develop your strategy. Sprout Social. Retrieved from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/influencer-marketing/.

3. Newberry, C. (2021). Influencer Marketing in 2021: How to Work With Social Media Influencers. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/influencer-marketing/.

#influencermarketing #instagram #digitalmarketing

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idryusan · 6 years

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part 8. entangled.

solo, detail your parent’s initial and current thoughts on your career choice ( development prompt, +5 exp )

san’s relationship with his parents, with that added element of fame is somewhat complicated. his father? well, truthfully his father has never played a large part in san’s life. stoic, traditional. he’d let his mother take the reigns of san’s life and pull him wherever she’d wanted to. she was like that. all bigger than life, and he was content to work his way into obscurity. they clashed, he thinks. but there had never been room for arguments. san got turned into her hobby, a pet project, and it occupied her time. he was left to his own devices, and his own devices didn’t include san. the man feels like a stranger to him, but he can’t bring himself to mind.

san’s mother though? her thoughts haven’t changed. they’ve remained constant throughout the course of his life. from when he was still a trainee, to debut, to becoming a veteran. she’d always wanted it more than he did. he’s not even sure she’d ever really wanted a son. she just wanted a body to toss residual dreams on top of. that idealization of fame, of having something she could point to, declare was hears. stir up jealousy, or wonder. capitalize off of it. there’s a cafe in seoul, now. inSANiTEA, and it’s something she markets toward the fans. overpriced teas and espressos. memorabilia of olympus strung across the walls, his own signature scratched across the majority of it. pins and travel mugs for sale lining the shelves.

she was the one who turned him into the person that he is. she was the one who forced him into taking dance, acting, piano, singing lessons. she was the one dragging him along to photoshoots as a child. barely five and getting tucked into toddler-sized outfits for clothing shops and campaigns. he had a pretty face, he always had, and she’d taken advantage of that. was hell bent on turning him into a package deal. was hell bent on getting his name strung up in lights, and it didn’t matter how. san, as a child, did what she wanted. of course he did. he wanted his mother to love him. he wanted her to pay attention to him. and that really only happened when he did a good job. when he sat still, when he didn’t whine and cry about itchy fabrics or clips poking into his back. when he wasn’t being dragged off into a hallway, fingers curled tight around his arm and half-stumbling on over-sized shoes shoved onto his feet so that she could lecture him away from the staff. you’re humiliating me. you’re being embarrassing. at four, five, six, seven, he felt bad about that sort of thing, would squirm underneath the pressure of her fingers against his bicep. would blink in a harried fashion when she would get even angrier at the threat of tears. you still have pictures to take. what are you doing. are you a baby? he’d shake his head no. but he sort of was. was at least young enough to be overwhelmed by everything she expected out of him.

by the time he hit eight he had gotten better at sitting pointedly patient between takes. curling fingers in against the underside of his chair and playing boring games by himself. counting cameras, or floor tiles. if he was good enough, she’d buy him a mocha and let him take big gulps in between pictures, lick whip cream off the end of the straw. it’s probably twisted that san considers those moments, of her hand hovering just in front of him, leaning in to suck at a neon colored straw to be some of his favorites. a mother’s love, and she always showed hers through chocolate and caffeine. even now, when he realizes what she’d been doing. keeping him awake, he still can’t manage to paint over those days in a bad light. even now, it’s something he indulges in if he wants to feel better, even if he’s moved on to americanos. but that’s the thing about it, their relationship is odd. it’s cloying, and at times overwhelming. she was a force, one that shoved him toward his future. but without her and san isn’t sure who he would be. he hates her and he loves her all at once.

by the time he was eleven, twelve it was apparent he was skilled in dance. that was where he shone. mediocre in singing, alright at piano, abysmal at playing the part of an actor. but dancing? he could do that. it was decided he’d walk the path to becoming an idol when his instructor imparted this fact onto his mother. and that was how it began. when midas decided that they’d take him, his mother had been overjoyed. san took to trainee life better than most. he was used to the constant criticism, the verbal abuse that got hurled around and masqueraded as advice. was used to working himself to the bone, and used to failing to meet expectations set too high. thirteen, fourteen year old’s probably shouldn’t be. but maybe that was why he succeeded. maybe that was why they stuck him in olympus before his voice even finished maturing. they figured he could take it. and he could. his mother made sure he could. she’d tied a red string of a fate around his neck and forcefully dragged him, choking and struggling toward the checkpoints of his life.

he didn’t like his concept within the group, but she would chastise him if he brought it up. don’t be ungrateful. midas is a big company. do what you’re told, san. do you know how much money they’ve spent on you? and he has, hasn’t he? always done what he was told. at times it feels like his body is covered in hives. that he wants to itch his way out of it. he’s never constructed anything by himself, not entirely, but part of him feels grateful for that. he’s never been given the tools, and at this point he doesn’t even know how. where to begin. he’s been conditioned into depending too much on everyone around him, and it’s left him in a vulnerable position he doesn’t quite understand he’s in. doesn’t quite realize that it’s overwhelmingly difficult, at this point, not to turn and look at someone else. wait for them to make the end-point decision for him. asking for permission on a grand scale.

she’s here for his name value. she’s here to try and push him toward more. suggests acting, suggest chasing after higher acclaim. moves into his apartment for months at a time when he finally has one. pretends it’s like bonding, but it usually consists of more lectures. she has a way about her, a way of making him feel like he’s a child all over again, doing everything wrong. not living up to expectations. san might be hard now, indifferent, angry and stony to the world around him. but all she has to do is level him with a look and it all crumbles away. he’s ashamed, lacking once again. he’s not working hard enough. not listening well enough. wasting space, wasting his life, wasting everything all at once. he’s not sure how anymore, it feels like he’s given every single piece of himself away. what’s left of there to waste? but when she sits him down on the couch and starts in on one of her tirades he believes it. lets his mood sink down deep until all that self-hatred bubbles back up to the surface. everything ends in apologies from his own mouth, mumbled out, nearly apologetic sounding i love you’s before he leaves for a schedule. words that he means. genuinely.

he feels pathetic, sometimes.

he has memories of her watching his rehearsals as a trainee. throwing out barbs of criticism. of her catching him sneaking out of practice early to swallow down ice cream with his friends before he debuted. of getting berated about it for so long, so brutally until he cried. and san had already given up on the concept of crying at that point. he has memories of her ignoring him for three weeks after midas gave him bad feedback to a showcase she’d sat in on. he’d been fifteen, would come home after practice to their shared apartment and sit himself down on his mat. pick at his fingers and occasionally glance up at her profile as she read. hopeful questions, quiet and uncertain that would tumble from the tip of his tongue. do you want tea? or else, i did better today, i worked hard. that would go unacknowledged. until he got thrown into a dance project rehearsal and had wrung compliments out of the evaluators. then she’d decided to stroke his hair back from his face, lay compliments over a tired body, take him out. buy him sugar-laden coffee. tell him she was proud to have him for a son. hot and cold, and san had always been in a shocked state of trying to figure out how to handle that. trying to figure out what constituted as love. he’s learned it’s conditional. if he does well, he’s allowed to have it.

she doesn’t want to hear about his hardships. she doesn’t want to be witness to moments of defeat. doesn’t want to hear about how he collapsed after a concert. just says it was a smart decision when san admits that the article midas put out about him having anemia is fake. not to worry. a silly notion, she doesn’t worry. not about that. she knows san. she knows how strong he is, how far he can go. or that’s what he believes. because what is there left to, if he can’t believe the best of her? if he can’t believe that one day he might hit a point where all that judgement disappears? eight years into a group and it feels like he’s constantly running toward the end of a rainbow, something that’s gone by the time he makes it there.

but one day. one day he’ll find that gold. paint himself with it, a reflection of what midas wants to make him into.

golden. perfect.

it’s warped, what they have. she’s happy to pat at his back, his hair, when she appears on a variety show, in front of a camera. he’s all of seventeen and sobs when he sees her, for the first time in a year after a string of debut schedules, a constant flurry of activity. he’s embarrassed and choking back sobs and crouches in the corner upon the surprise visit of olympus’ relatives. she swipes away the tears on his cheeks, heartwarming captions appear underneath the screen. genuine. and it had been. he’d hugged her, and he can’t remember ever doing it before. ever doing it again after. there’s a discomfort found in physical affection for him sometimes. it feels wrong. he’s not sure why. but it does. maybe because he’s never really had it offered to him.

so san loves her. he does. and there’s a part of him that hates her, too. hates being an idol. hates being apart of olympus. hates having his entire life robbed from him. hates what people have turned him into, have done to him. what would have become of him if she had been just as placid as his father? he can’t even picture it. he was never allowed to opportunity to come up with pipe dreams. he was always in a race to impress. to reach those prescribed milestones.

so his mother says she loves him back. but sometime’s he’s not so sure if she loves him, or the concept of him. the image of san that gets plastered on billboards, the name value of olympus propping him up. shiny, manufactured. known.

maybe she just loves the fame. but it’s hard for san to bring himself to blame her. he’s not sure what else there could be left in him to love. if there was ever anything much to begin with.

#index.#solo.#solo.8 #oops this is long

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inamindfarfaraway · 3 years

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My My Hero Academia Ocs 3!

More Quirk and corresponding side character ideas for Unsung. The characters should really come before the Quirks, but that’s my creative process for you.

Spines - Transformation - the user can extend their head and body hair into long spines and bristles that can be fired as projectiles and grow back abnormally fast, although overuse will result in longer and longer gaps and eventually permanent baldness

User - Akio Yashima, the Pro Hero Porcupine and Class 1-D’s strict, irritable, deadpan, but wise and efficient form teacher who does care about his students’ welfare deep down and turns out to have a knack for recognizing when they need help, and is touchy about his receding hairline; has learned to limit his adrenaline production and control his responses to it because goosebumps can trigger his Quirk with hazardous or at least inconvenient results

Tardigrade - Transformation - the user can willingly enter a state of cryptobiosis wherein they are immune to the effects of radiation, oxygen deprivation, extreme temperatures and pressure, thirst and starvation

User - Iemochi Suda, an aristocratic boy and science fiction geek in 1-D with three pairs of arms and symbolic pig motifs, easygoing, hopeful, innocent, inquisitive but fundamentally complacent (his talk outweighs his action), and totally unafraid, has a mad scientist’s hamminess and brilliance and little sense of practical or emotional self-preservation, a top student, several teachers’ pet, even Udo’s, and an apologetic snitch, respects and trusts in rules and authority figures above himself, casually greedy and wasteful of material goods and knowledge alike, unhesitatingly, unconditionally protective of and faithful to his friends; fascinated with the possibilities of science and technology and all too happy to follow his parents’ plan that he inherit and expand the family smartphone company, but ashamed that he can’t ever seem to have an original idea of his own; Goto’s best friend who couldn’t care less about his image, to Goto’s bewilderment, he and Goto are each other’s voice of reason in different situations, him encouraging him to unwind, and have complimentary academic drives; a huge fanboy of Inácio Pedreira

Salinity - Emitter - the user can produce sodium chloride in crystals of different sizes, control it, and detect it in food and organisms, but overuse depletes sodium in the blood and high quantities of salt must be eaten to use the Quirk regularly

User - Emiri Wakimoto, the dynamic, optimistic, passionate, overachieving, overbearing class representative of 1-D, a girl with black hair and inherited mutations of red eyes, fangs and bat wings (ironically salt is sometimes believed to ward off vampires), who always tries to foster cooperation and productivity despite the challenges, but can be bossy and deaf to other voices and is far more dependent on groups to define herself than she’ll admit, fundamentally a giver, secretly not as poised as she acts and pressured to uphold her role as a paragon of idealism and leadership to her classmates and her arc revolves around maturing into that role for real; has grown to hate the taste of salt after eating excessive amounts of it raised her blood sodium levels dangerously high, causing her to faint from hypertension and inspiring her interest in nutritional health and desire to be a doctor, now carries a backpack of healthy snacks and a water bottle everywhere, exercises regularly, is a vegetarian, highly critical of the capitalistic food industry (sensing the added salt in everything will do that) especially for fraud and environmental damage, the fittest of the class; also interested in archeology and lost civilizations; Goto’s other best friend, her meticulous approach and positive attitude balances out his spontaneous and negative ones, and they bond over their experience with expectations and nerdy ancient interests, though she’s popular among the whole class besides the bullies

Pause - Emitter - the user can stop time in the surrounding area and move around within a tight ‘bubble’ of continuous time two metres in diameter for as long as they can concentrate on it, but the bubble is immobile and they cannot see or hear anything outside it because the air, light rays and sound vibrations are frozen, not to mention the bubble has a limited air supply

User - Kin Hattori, the stoic, taciturn, isolated vice class representative of 1-D who’s sworn off his Quirk due to being traumatized by the sudden loss of sight, hearing, and movement it causes as a young child, willing to be considered Quirkless, having panic attacks when he tries to activate it, and envying heroes and Department of Heroics students (or anyone else with Quirk privilege) for their supposedly innately better Quirks, but has his own Quirk-based prejudices due to taking his experiences as proof that some Quirks are nothing but harmful; only talks when he feels he absolutely needs to, responsible, philosophical, agnostic, consistently does well in all his classes but doesn’t excel in any, surprisingly upstanding, nurturing and attentive once his icy shell thaws, ecstatic to no longer be alone; an aikido expert because he got bullied for his ‘Quirklessness’ and decided to learn self-defence, but found a real appreciation for the martial art’s discipline and tradition; a slow burn love interest to Nozaka and friend to the other protagonists, who help him realize that his trauma doesn’t define him

Mouth Shifter - Transformation - the user can acquire the jaws, teeth and/or mouthparts of any animal, but overuse causes severe aches and temporary speech impediments

User - Tani Nozaka, the rebellious, mischievous but benevolent and amiable class clown of 1-D, who while her pranks can get out of hand and her mouth can be faster than her thoughts truly wants to spread happiness and laughter, believes that humans are basically good, actively opposes the bullies and has no tolerance for the mistreatment of innocents, wishes to help the joyless Hattori and is in a sense the class’s moral compass, wants to be a comedian; a nominal Shintoist from a much more devout family struggling to balance her religious upbringing and increasingly secular lifestyle, but getting back in touch with her spirituality, attaining greater mindfulness and sensitivity, and mending her family bonds turns out to be key to improving her relationship with Hattori and previously subpar performance in school; Goto’s third friend, challenges him to leave his comfort zone and defends him from external threats, becomes something of a playfully annoying sister to him; but also a good friend to Pedreira, who’s much more likeminded with a chaotic, fun-loving side and strong sense of justice that accentuate hers and shared issues about being ‘seen’ by their distant family

Crocodile Tears - Emitter - the user can control tears, firing them as hardened beads or liquid jets or even choking people with them, and willingly activate and deactivate the lacrimal apparatuses of themselves and others, but overuse causes sore eyes and difficulty controlling their tear flow

User - Kaoru Murata, the resident bully, worst student and biggest outcast of 1-D who loves making his victims cry, not necessarily through his Quirk, is rude, underhanded, violent and prejudiced against Mutant Quirks, has a ‘might makes right’ power-centric morality and will harass anyone he deems a threat or who simply rubs him the wrong way, cannot imagine a beneficial application of his Quirk and clings to bullying because he knows it’s the only thing he’s good at, resigned to a poor future; emulates and echoes his toxically masculine, emotionally abusive single father, a member of the Creature Rejection Clan, to feel connected to him; nobody, least of all him, knows how he passed the entrance exam; turns out he’s much cleverer than he acts and is subconsciously absolutely desperate to at least give himself the opportunity to move up in the world, hence why he can never bring himself to do something that would actually get him expelled

Blinkers - Emitter - the user can selectively amplify and reduce the interest of others, making them focus solely on something or blocking it from their minds completely, and everything in between, represented by the subject of attention or ignorance gaining a white or black aura, respectively, and the user’s irises changing the same colour, but overuse causes migraines and trouble concentrating

User - Tomomi Oyakawa, the other antagonistic student in 1-D, a manipulative, ambitious drama queen bee who uses her Quirk to stoke her ego and humiliate unfortunate classmates or get them unnoticed and excluded, but has used her Quirk on her clique so much she’s paranoid they’d abandon her should she stop and is dependent on it to function, her entire self worth tied to her popularity; genuinely values her childhood friend Shirayama, treats her with respect, hates Murata because of his bigotry toward her and other mutants and even feels for her romantically but is reluctant to act on it, assuming she only spends time with her for using her Quirk to manage the negative effects of her ADHD; plans to study psychology and go into marketing

Owl Head - Mutant - the user has just that, the round, feathered head of a Ural owl that they can rotate 180 degrees and gives them the bird’s vision and hearing, and their speech is littered with owl noises

User - Aoi ‘Shira’ Shirayama, not the brightest girl in 1-D, quite foolish, impulsive, gullible, and oblivious in fact, her ADHD not helping her marks, but a star gymnast and softhearted friend to everyone despite being Oyakawa’s unwitting accomplice and has a massive crush on her, gradually grows a spine and establishes herself as her equal; loves fashion and wants to be a model to increase the fashion industry’s inclusivity of noticeable Mutant type Quirks

Aero - Emitter - the user can manipulate air to cast winds, sense movement, lift themselves, and create vacuums

User - Kozakura Reizei, a lazy, uprincipled, prickly, vastly enigmatic but clearly troubled older girl who was expelled from U.A.’s hero training course eighteen months ago in her first year following an incident where she reacted badly to a mean trick and accidentally sent a classmate to hospital in excessive self defence, was tried for grievous bodily harm with lower culpability, moved to a juvenile detention facility, and given a chance to restart at U.A. but forbidden from heroics and with mandatory counselling sessions, now embraces her delinquent label and operates a contraband smuggling ring in the Gen. Ed. Department, never speaks of why she aspired to be a hero; looks down upon and ignores most of the others, when not sowing discord to keep the faculty off her back and amuse herself, but takes Hattori under her wing early in the year and is oddly protective of him, having figured out his Quirk and promised to keep it secret, which slowly comes to border on possessive blackmail the lower she sinks into immorality; the main antagonist of Goto’s story in class

Resonance - Emitter - the user can synchronize the frequency of their molecules to the frequency of any vibrating solid or liquid matter, including organic matter, and channel those vibrations into any other matter they touch, but cannot stop their own body vibrating during though the Quirk prevents them being harmed by it and channelling a very high frequency and/or for a long time makes the user tremble uncontrollably and have trouble keeping their balance; they also have a heightened sensitivity to vibrations and can seismically communication with animals

User - Etsuko Noguchi, a sweet and plucky but timid and comedically unfortunate minor character in 1-D, a talented origami folder and fan of magical girl anime and manga who cosplays as her favourite characters and original personas and draws fan manga; doesn’t become a magical girl-style hero because she doesn’t want her escapist hobby to be spoiled by tough responsibilities and violence

Saccharine - Emitter - the user can produce sucrose, and by extension glucose and fructose in crystals of different sizes, control them, and detect them in food and organisms, but overuse depletes sugar in the blood and high quantities of sugar must be eaten to use the Quirk regularly

User - Daichi Wakimoto, Emiri Wakimoto’s moody older brother in 3-F and at first glance her opposite in every conceivable way except their interest in biology, specializes in expanding off of and integrating his technology with heroes’ anatomy, physiology and Quirks, so tends to develop more personal relationships with his clients than most Department of Support students, but otherwise mostly keeps himself to himself, an all or nothing kind of person, regularly alternates between hyperactive and jittery and drowsy on a sugar crash; supportive and proud of his younger sister, but can’t help but resent her charm and popularity, unaware of how hard she works to maintain it; Riiha Okano’s friend and ex-boyfriend (neither acknowledges it, but it’s obvious she befriended and dated him out of pity); has inherited mutations of pink eyes, fangs, and stubby, slightly translucent white vestigial bat wings

#mha ocs #mha original quirks #me? not being bothered to write a full bio and instead using semicolons like CharlesDickens?#it’s more likely than you think

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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BUT IT DOES MEAN THAT THERE IS MORE CHANCE OF MISSES

What airborne means depends on the people rather than the topic, it's a vote of no confidence. If you use all the tokens, meaning they reduced e. Into this already bad situation comes the third problem: Sarbanes-Oxley deters people like him from being CFOs of public companies, that's proof enough that it's broken. Obviously that's false: anything else people make can be well or badly designed; why should this be uniquely impossible for programming languages? A price range like $20-25 yields two tokens, $20 and $25. This was particularly true with investors: In retrospect, it would be even harder than making money from it, you can always tell.1 Know everything about your market. They were all just side projects.2 Didn't it get boring when you got to program even less: Your job description as technical founder/CEO is completely rewritten every 6-12 months. Most are equivalent to the ones that matter anyway. They don't even know that.3

They're like property management companies run by madmen.4 I think I can fix the filter not to catch some of these.5 I look closer I'll be able to have them, just as property managers can't save you from the other direction. You know from an early age that you'll have some sort of job, because everyone asks what you're going to be when you grow up.6 A price range like $20-25 yields two tokens, $20 and $25.7 In 1989 some clever researchers tracked the eye movements of radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer. It's when you can convince investors, and you need to, and forget after you've done it.8

The remaining 5% want you to call a phone number, reply by email or to a US mail address, or in a few cases to buy a certain stock. Why did no one propose a new scheme for micropayments? An angel who wants to insert a bunch of young guys millions of dollars just for being clever. The mistake is to be fanatically attentive to customers' needs. If founders could sell a little stock early, they'd be amazed at how little there is and how little it does?9 In Microsoft's case, it is probably fairly innocent; spam words tend to be exactly the ones you'd want to; someone who really, truly doesn't care what his peers think of him is probably a 20th of what it is in Silicon Valley, and all users care about is whether your product does what they want is easy. At one point they ran out of money. And one guy is more than 10x cheaper than ten, because a lot of things for the better. If you've never seen, i. They're the ones that are best at selling themselves to VCs.

Notes

By painting portraits.

Peter Norvig found that 16 of the biggest sources of pain for founders; if anything Boston is falling further and further behind.

In part because Steve Jobs got pushed out by John Sculley in a startup enough to absorb that.

The shares set aside a chunk of stock options than any design decision, but have no idea what they claim was the reason there have historically been so many others the pattern for the linguist and presumably teacher Daphnis, but its value was as bad an employee as this. What you're looking for initially is not to. It doesn't end every semester like classes do.

Some find they have that glazed over look. The other reason they pay so well. What has changed is how intently they listened. If doctors did the section of the kleptocracies that formerly dominated all the free OSes first-rate programmers.

Perhaps the designers of admissions processes should take more than the 50 minutes they may try to raise a series A round, you can't tell you alarming things, like arithmetic drills, instead of using special euphemisms for lies that seem excusable according to present fashions, I'm guessing the next investor. One valuable thing about startup school was that they don't have to be sharply differentiated.

Japanese car companies have been the first couple times I bailed because I can't tell what the attitude of a handful of lame investors first, to pretend that the stuff they're showing him is something there worth studying, especially for individuals.

He had equity. This has already happened once in China, Yale University Press, 1983. I got it wrong.

Yes, actually: dealing with one of the more powerful version written in Lisp, which means you're being asked to choose between great people.

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multipleservicelisting · 4 years

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Biggest fashion trends reflect a world in crisis

Written by Fiona Sinclair Scott, CNN

To look back at the year in fashion is to look back at a year of crisis. In the first few months of 2020, as the severity and scale of the coronavirus pandemic became clear, businesses around the world faced incomparable challenges posed by the largest global public health crisis in generations. The fashion industry was not immune.

Making clothes became extremely difficult, and many of us — forced to stay at home amid job insecurity and health concerns — lost our appetite for buying them.

A recent report by consulting firm McKinsey and The Business of Fashion showed that fashion sales in China dropped significantly at the beginning of the year, while in Europe and the US they fell off a cliff edge in March. The same report predicted that fashion companies’ year-on-year profits will decline by approximately 90 percent for 2020, following a 4% rise the year before.

But the pandemic wasn’t the only crisis the industry faced. While the fashion world was already reckoning with uncomfortable truths about its impact and practices — from its role in the climate crisis and poor working conditions for garment factory workers, to its failure to create inclusive, diverse workplaces — the events of 2020 have only served to further highlight these problems.

Suddenly, fashion had to find its place in a world ill-at-ease with the ideas of fantasy, frivolity and indulgence that it has long depended on.

Dita von Teese walks the runway during a Jean Paul Gaultier show in January, shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic brought physical fashion shows to a halt around the world. Credit: Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images

For Shefalee Vasudev, founding editor of India’s Voice of Fashion magazine, this year has heralded “the great unmasking” of fashion. “The unseen other side of what we bring back home as a beautiful garment or product was revealed,” she wrote via email from Delhi. “Migrants walking back to their homes in villages, disowned as they were by the cities and their employers, was among the most poignant images that surfaced from India.”

Vasudev, who authored “Powder Room: The Untold Story of Indian Fashion,” pointed to “poorly paid laborers, unequal profits and (lack of) copyright credits to artisans,” as some of the most pressing issues laid bare by the pandemic in India. Meanwhile in the United States, and then countries around the world, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement put the issue of systemic racism firmly on the industry’s agenda. Brands awkwardly grappled with how to respond. Many got it wrong and were quickly called out for making token gestures.

A protester holds up a sign during a Black Lives Matter protest in front of the US Embassy in Vienna, Austria on June 5, 2020. Credit: Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images

“Plain and simple, I don’t think there is the intention behind (online gestures) to make long-lasting, sustainable change,” said Teen Vogue editor-in-chief, Lindsay Peoples Wagner, in an email to CNN in June. “Everyone can hop onto the BLM movement right now on social media, but what are you doing in your home, in your corporate office, with your connections, with the power you have?”

Months later, Wagner launched the Black in Fashion Council (with publicist Sandrine Charles) to drive better representation, advance opportunities for Black people in fashion and hold the industry accountable.

Writing from Nigeria, a country that experienced its own set of crises this year, Omoyemi Akerele, founder of Lagos Fashion Week, said along with the coronavirus pandemic, “civil unrest across African countries and the pandemic of racism, have been human disasters of epic proportions with countless lives lost, reminding us of the one thread that binds us all together: our humanity.”

To talk about fashion trends following a year defined by crisis may seem nugatory, but the themes that emerged offer a window into these extraordinary times.

Read on for one last look at fashion around the world in 2020.

Functionality

Face masks became the unrivaled accessory of the year. People made their own, brands produced unique designs and, almost overnight, they became the finishing touch to many outfits.

A face mask by Burberry Credit: Courtesy Burberry

Some labels went a step further by marketing new accessories — and in some cases, entire clothing lines — as having antimicrobial properties. While experts say it is difficult to assess whether antimicrobial treatments can protect wearers from Covid-19, the concept of protective fashion is itself a defining trend. We also saw high-fashion riffs on the idea, including Kenzo’s fetching beekeeper-inspired looks presented during Paris Fashion Week in September.

Comfort

Fashion platform Lyst looked at search data from over 100 million online shoppers and, in its annual report, found that Birkenstock clogs, Crocs, UGG slippers and Nike joggers were among the year’s most sought-after items of clothing.

Anna Wintour shocked the fashion when Vogue posted a photo of her wearing sweatpants to Instagram. Credit: From Vogue Magazine/Instagram

Reflecting a shift in both reality and mindset, loungewear replaced office attire, and floaty “house dresses” — comfortable enough to take you from home office to daybed — rose in popularity. The term “cottagecore,” an internet trend encapsulating the spirit of cozy, rustic living, generated huge buzz as TikTok users showed off their attempts to channel the aesthetic at home.

Pop culture, of course, helped underscore these trends. BTS’ music video for “Life Goes On” showed the boyband in matching pajamas, playing video games and staring wistfully out of windows. Oh, to be a young, rich, self-isolating idol.

From Big Hit Labels/YouTube

Statements

Statement-wear took on an entirely new meaning in 2020. From protest T-shirts in support of the Black Lives Matter movement to political merchandise in the lead up to the US election, people dressed not to impress, but to convey powerful messages.

A protestor wears a T-shirt reading “I can’t breathe” during a Black Lives Matter rally in Marseille, France. Credit: Clement Mahoude/AFP/Getty Images

According to Lyst data, searches for terms including “vote” were up 29% week-on-week in the US the month before the presidential election. And when When Michelle Obama wore her now famous “VOTE” necklace, designed by Chari Cuthbert, demand for the item skyrocketed.

Pre-election, Instagram was awash with celebrities posting selfies in hot pink power suits thanks to a campaign launched by workwear brand Argent and advocacy group Supermajority, encouraging women to exercise their voting power and further bolstering the power of pink to signal strength and female solidarity.

Whether intentional or not, Savannah Guthrie’s choice of pink suit (not by Argent) to interview President Trump during the NBC town hall did not go unnoticed.

Savannah Guthrie pictured during an NBC News town hall event in October 2020. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Conscious

Growing demand for local, handmade, sustainable clothing isn’t a new trend. But the pandemic saw a rise in values-driven shopping, reflecting a shift in mindset among more prudent spenders, who, perhaps, also had more time to think about the brands they lent their loyalty to.

In a report issued in April, Lyst noted a 69% increase in searches for “vegan leather,” year-on-year.

In Nigeria, Akerele said that sourcing materials internationally became challenging, so designers and the wider community were incentivized to build more vertically integrated businesses. This, she said, reduced the industry’s carbon footprint: “It’s helped reduce waste in the system in a way that only sourcing locally on demand can; and empowered our community of artisans, craftsmen and local supply chains by generating income for them in the midst of inflation.”

Vasudev said that, in India, she noticed two shifts in behavior, both benefiting local artisans: “One was the overwhelming response to artisans selling directly online (aided of course by NGOs and crafts collectives). Two, a number of artisan funds and charities went up,” she said. “Indian consumers went out of their way to support the ‘karigars’ (artisans). By buying, donating, by prioritizing Made in India.”

Digital

From Shanghai to London, fashion weeks throughout the year went digital to present new collections safely. During London Fashion Week in September, Burberry streamed its show — filmed live in the woods — on Twitch, a social media platform more popular with gamers than fashionistas. Later that month in Milan, Moschino creative director Jeremy Scott swapped models for marionettes, cleverly presenting a micro-sized version of his collection in a video that embraced the absurdity of the moment.

Fashion designer stages show with puppets

Months before in May, Congolese designer Anifa Mvuemba, founder of the label Hanifa, streamed a mesmerizing 3D collection of her latest designs on invisible models. The innovative idea went viral, racking up millions of views on Instagram.

While e-commerce has been growing in popularity for years, the luxury fashion sector has, historically, been slow to embrace its digital future. The industry’s common gripes are about the loss of the physical luxury experiences like walking into a beautifully designed store, flipping through the pages of a glossy magazine or attending exclusive fashion shows.

While these attitudes were slowly changing before the pandemic, this year has drastically accelerated the shift to online. According to the aforementioned McKinsey report, we have “vaulted five years forward in consumer and business adoption of digital in a matter of months.”

Grégory Boutté, chief client and digital officer for Kering (which owns Gucci and Saint Laurent, among other brands), spoke to the Business of Fashion in December, telling the title: “Our e-commerce revenue during the first half of 2020 went from 6 percent to 13 percent of overall retail revenues year-over-year. In North America we were as high as 26 percent e-commerce — so already ahead of the 20 percent McKinsey expected for 2025.” He noted that he expects these gains to normalize, given these numbers reflect the fact that the businesses brick-and-mortar stores were closed for large parts of the year, leaving buyers with no option but to shop online.

The future

Fashion’s recovery from the pandemic is set to be slow, with experts predicting a difficult year ahead for businesses. Trends seen during a year defined by crisis will not be left at 2021’s door, and they may permanently change the shape of the industry.

Some of these changes are positive and, when it comes to questions of inclusion and sustainability, long overdue. This year may have also accelerated fashion’s compulsion to look ahead in search of a brighter future. This is, after all, an industry filled with dreamers.

Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer 2021 collection presented in Shanghai Credit: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton

Bohan Qiu, founder of Shanghai-based creative and communication agency Boh Project, said he can already see more exuberant fashion displays emerging in China as the country returns to some semblance of normalcy. “I feel like people are actually going more vibrant, more experimental, more interesting rather than going more conservative,” he said via voice message. “And you can really see on the streets or at parties or at events in China, or at shopping malls, all the brands are displaying really colorful patterns, prints and embellishments. I feel like that’s really coming back, it’s like we’re celebrating.”

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