#europe is apparently just a region in asia if you get down to it

[andnowanowl]

When you get down to it, the politics around the continents is sort of insane. Say you don't consider North and South America separate because the Panama Canal is artificial (and only so deep), but what about the Isthmus of Suez? It's entirely natural but humans have expanded the waterways around it artificially. Does that mean Africa is not part of Eurasia?

Do you only consider certain continents separate because of continental drift in the recent past? India is considered a subcontinent because it used to be separate from the rest of Asia.

[earaercircular]

There are no farmers on a dead planet

From the plague over corona to the agricultural and environmental crisis: historian Maïka De Keyzer investigates what makes societies vulnerable or resilient in the event of catastrophes. "I don't see any historical evidence of the notion that you shouldn't question the system because technology will solve everything."

Lightning fast and unstoppable: in 1349 the plague raged through Europe. Resulting in unimaginable havoc among the population. In Flanders too, villages and towns saw a third to a half of their inhabitants die in a terrible way. That was convincingly reminded to TV-watching Flanders last Sunday in the series The story of Flanders[1], including by historian Maïka De Keyzer (35) of KU Leuven.

She specialized in ecological historiography, and focuses on the question of what makes societies resilient or vulnerable to catastrophes and crises. Coincidentally, a book[2] compiled by De Keyzer was also presented the day after the broadcast. It is about a contemporary crisis, that of the environment and agriculture. From the plague to nitrogen, for an ecological historian the leap is less than it seems.

First the plague. When you see that passage in The Story of Flanders, as a television viewer you are immediately reminded of the corona virus.

“Which also comes from Asia, just like the plague. Only it didn't take twelve years to corona to reach Europe - like the plague - but a few weeks at the most. That shows how globalised the world is today. But once the plague had reached Europe, it also spread very quickly due to the intense trade contacts. With the exception of a few isolated mountain villages, no region was able to escape it. The big difference with corona was that the medieval people did not know what hit them. The plague came out of nowhere and no one could have done anything to stop the disease.”

“We could have been prepared for corona, on the other hand. There had already been SARS, we know what viruses are and we know the concept of a pandemic. Yet as a society we have allowed ourselves to be surprised. Then I think as a historian: how is that possible? Why could we no longer imagine that such an epidemic could still hit Europe? Why are we learning so little?”

You can give the answer yourself.

"Because policymakers are apparently unable to pre-emptively impose a short and powerful travel ban as long as there is no support for it first. Corona was called a flu, although experts really knew what was coming. That vulnerability remains in our system.”

It was remarkable how quickly Flanders recovered from the plague. A period of great economic prosperity followed. How do you explain that?

"Due to the high mortality, the relationship between the work that had to be done and the available labour force changed. People could demand higher wages, which increased their purchasing power and led to prosperity. We notice this, for example, in the increasing consumption of meat."

"It is remarkable that other regions, such as England or Italy, recovered much less quickly from the plague. For a long time, historians thought that this was because the epidemic had hit less hard in the Low Countries. People spoke of 'the light touch of the black death'. However, more recent research shows that mortality here was at least as high, but that the social structure was more resilient. In Italy, wealth remained concentrated in a top layer of wealthy merchants in a number of cities. The economic trickle-down effect played a lesser role, and prosperity did not get through to broad layers of the population. Even before the plague, stronger middle groups had emerged in our regions that had a say in government. In general, egalitarian societies are more resilient to crises than their counterparts where there is more inequality.”

“You saw the same pattern with corona. Countries with a strong social safety net and good health care, such as Belgium, not only endured the pandemic better, but also recovered economically more quickly afterwards. In England, on the other hand, Covid has pushed an already weakened healthcare system even deeper into crisis, with one wave of strikes after another. You can't explain that difference by the virus, but only by the way a society is organised."

But it costed a lot of money to Belgium

"Indeed, but that is a choice you make as a society."

One choice society is facing today is what kind of agriculture we want. You compiled the book To the bottom about this, with contributions from 26 experts. What was the intent? Because you are not an agricultural expert yourself.

"I am an Antwerp city girl (laughs). You don't have to be a contemporary agricultural expert to determine that agriculture is in a systemic crisis. The nitrogen emissions, the low prices for agricultural products, the manure surplus, the dramatic loss of biodiversity… For me as a historian, these are all signs that our agriculture has become particularly vulnerable. The question is: why is that and what can we do to make the model resilient, sustainable and fair? I have asked 26 experts to look into that in depth."

What conclusions do you draw from their contributions?

"I now speak in my own name, not for the authors. First of all: purely technological solutions for a systemic crisis always come with side effects that can cause the next crisis. If you had told a Kempen[3] -based farmer 300 years ago that Flanders would have a manure surplus in 2023, he would have been flabbergasted. Farmers then struggled with a shortage of fertilisers, often resulting in hunger. Today we have chemical fertiliser, but it contributes to the pollution of the water. Intensive agriculture brought food security, but also nitrogen problems. Industrialisation has caused food prices to fall, but farmers are barely making ends meet. That is a common thread through the past: technofixes alone will not get you there."[4]

"A second important conclusion is that there are no partial solutions. It is not by cutting away a few large farms near natural reserves that the nitrogen problem disappears. That is too often the approach in Flanders: ad hoc solutions without questioning the system. But agriculture is so complex and reaches out for so many other areas of society that only an integrated and coherent policy offers a way out."

"Integrated and coherent policy". Isn't that a killer? What can be a first, concrete start?

“First of all, the recognition that agriculture has exceeded the limits of what our planet can handle in terms of nitrogen emissions, biodiversity loss and deforestation. There are still stakeholders who do not want to face that. It is not about 'a plant species' for which farms have to make way, it is fundamentally about our health, water management and environment. There are no farmers on a dead planet either.”

“But we also have to recognize that many farmers do not receive a fair income. And that we absolutely need agriculture to provide our own food. Farmers are not the enemy, but also the victims of a system that is too dependent on the import of super cheap animal feed from third world countries. Sustainability must also be socially and economically responsible.”

“Farmers and nature are the big losers in this crisis, whereas the distribution chains and the agro-industry remain on the winning side. Yet in every agricultural debate it is precisely the losers who face each other. They're targeting the wrong enemy. It is in the interests of farmers to move away from a system in which they are mere price takers, rather than price setters. They are completely dependent on the distribution chains for the sale of their products and on the supply chain for raw materials, pesticides and fertilisers. The billions from the European agricultural policy will at most ensure that they can merely survive.”

A period of rising food prices is not the right time to advocate systemic changes. This is also evident in the energy crisis. The consumer wonders whether he will still be able to pay his bill.

“However, in both the food and energy crisis, it is the big companies that are making huge profits. They take advantage of the scarcity to pass on costs or to make products artificially more expensive. By skimming off those profits, the farmer would receive a fair price for his work and at the same time the food would remain affordable for the consumer.”

In the case of a plea for systemic change, the risk is that the ambition is so great that it seems unrealistic and has a paralyzing effect.

"That is why the book offers concrete and manageable solutions to, for example, improve the water management of a landscape or to increase the biodiversity around fields. We also give examples of farmers who succeeded in breaking through their dependence on large supermarkets and creating their own sales channels: farm shops, picking farms, new supermarkets, cooperatives, etc."

These are all charming initiatives, but they are to be considered as applied by a minority and therefore marginal.

"What prevents us from scaling up those models? I'm not advocating small-scale. On the contrary, the experiments of these pioneers should become the norm.”

There is also the school that advocates more intensive and high-tech agriculture. Producing more on less land, freeing up more space for nature.

"In the book a chapter is also devoted to that model. One condition is that the released land is effectively returned to nature, and is not used to grow even more potatoes for the export of chips."

“Actually, that was the starting point of the father of European agricultural policy, Sicco Mansholt.[5] He wanted to make hunger disappear from Europe through economies of scale and technological progress, and to make food affordable for everyone. We succeeded. Only, once that self-sufficiency and food security were achieved, people continued to produce extra, resulting in huge surpluses, which we exported to the world market. Mansholt was a socialist, his policies were essentially progressive and integrated. But at the end of his life, he realized that it had completely gone too far. Today we are still clearing the rubble.”

Why did you not request a contribution from the Boerenbond?

"Because in the search for an alternative to the current agricultural model, it makes little sense to let the people who are responsible for that policy have their say. Let's be honest: in the current model, the agro lobby holds the pen, both in Flanders and at European level. They stick to the status quo.”

"With this book we follow suit. We do not place ourselves in the court of the traditional opposition between nature and agriculture. We expressly oppose the argument of the Boerenbond[6] and the agro-industry that there is no alternative to this model. Every policy is a choice. This model is fundamentally in crisis. And we provide a progressive answer to that.”

Back to the plague. People were then defenceless for lack of knowledge. We overcame Corona thanks to science and the pharmaceutical industry. Why shouldn't human ingenuity also cope with the environmental and climate impact of agriculture?

“I welcome any major technological breakthrough that provides an answer to the current crisis. It is a misunderstanding that agroecology is not open to technological innovation. Small robots, for example, that permanently remove weeds, would greatly improve productivity and efficiency.”

“But history shows that ultimately it is the social blueprint that determines which kind of society is resilient enough to withstand major shocks. So I don't see any historical evidence for the popular tune that one shouldn't question the system itself, because technology is able to solve everything.”

Source

Lieven Sioen & Tom Ysebaert, ‘Op een dode planeet zijn ook geen boeren meer’, in: De Standaard, 4-02- 2023, https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20230203_97918981

[1] Het Verhaal van Vlaanderen (The story of Flanders) is a historical documentary television series on the national television station of the North of Belgium from De Mensen, presented by Tom Waes, about the history of Flanders. The 10 episodes is broadcast weekly by VRT from 1 January 2023.

[2] “Tot de bodem” (To the bottom) offers a first step towards a coherent and progressive agricultural policy for Flanders. https://lup.be/blogs/authors-corner/maika-de-keyzer-tot-de-bodem

[3] De Kempen (Dutch) or la Campine (French) is a natural region situated chiefly in north-eastern Belgium and parts of the south-eastern Netherlands which once consisted mainly of extensive moors, tracts of sandy heath, and wetlands. It encompasses a large northern and eastern portion of Antwerp Province and adjacent parts of Limburg in Belgium, as well as portions of the Dutch province of North Brabant (area southwest of Eindhoven) and Dutch Limburg around Weert.

[4] Read also: Louis Delcart, Selling Agricultural Products through the Short Food Supply Chain: It is Becoming Increasingly Popular, in: International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Studies Volume 8, Issue 8, 2021, PP 7-13, 2.pdf (ijrhss.org)

[5] Sicco Leendert Mansholt (13 September 1908 – 29 June 1995) was a Dutch farmer, politician and diplomat of the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) and later the Labour Party (PvdA), who served as the President of the European Commission from 1 March 1972 until 5 January 1973. He was known for his abilities as a negotiator and manager. Mansholt continued to comment on political affairs as an elder statesman until his death. He holds the distinction of being the longest-serving Minister of Agriculture, the longest-serving European Commissioner from the Netherlands, the longest-serving European Commissioner for Agriculture and the only Dutchman to have served as President of the European Commission. He is recognised as one of the Founding fathers of the European Union.

[6] The Boerenbond (Dutch, or German: Bauernbund; literally "Farmers' League") is a professional association of farmers active in the Flemish and German-speaking communities of Belgium. Founded in 1890 and based in Leuven, the Boerenbond is an organisation promotes the interests of farmers working within its regions of activity and has historically been closely associated with Catholic political parties. In the 1920s, it had 100,000 members divided into 1,050 guilds, and it was "intimately connected with the Catholic church". In politics, it was "an important part of the strong Catholic party".

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Why Wolverines Are Awesome

I’m in the middle of reading The Wolverine Way by Douglas Chadwick. I knew that wolverines (Gulo gulo), the largest terrestrial mustelids in the world, were tough animals, but reading about the severe conditions they’re able to survive under, and how they can scale nearly sheer cliff faces--and do so on a regular basis--really makes me respect them even more.

When you hear that your largest wolverines don’t usually top out at more than about 60-70 pounds, you might be surprised. After all, these fierce animals take on grizzly bears and packs of wolves for the right to a carcass--and the wolverine is often the victor in these conflicts. They have been known to take down prey much larger than they are, including (but not limited to) full grown deer. One might imagine that over the generations only the toughest individuals survived to pass on their genes.

It’s not just attitude that gets these animals where they’re going. Large, flat feet allow them to travel across the snow where larger animals might waste energy postholing into the banks. Their fur is hydrophobic and very thick, which makes it quite capable of keeping them warm in temperatures far below freezing, and amidst snowstorms and high winds besides. Underneath all that fur they have surprisingly long legs that allow them to chew up long distances each day:

But it’s the wolverine’s digestive system I find really amazing, starting with that skull. Heavy jaws and strong teeth are powered by the temporal muscle attached to a significant sagittal crest at the back of the skull. The larger the crest, the larger the muscle, and the stronger the bite. This allows the wolverine to not just shear through frozen meat, but crunch and consume bones; dead wolverines have been found with large amounts of bone fragments in their stomachs. And they have one set of molars that points toward the inside of the mouth that further helps them to tear apart a frozen carcass. These natural carcass dismantling tools then send all that meat and bones to the stomach and intestines, which work together to extract as much nutrition from their food as possible, even the marrow of the bones.

In spite of their reputation as loners, Chadwick wrote about how he and other researchers frequently observed individual younger wolverines, below the age of two years, traveling with one or the other parent. While it might be expected to see them with the mother who primarily raised them, the father was almost as likely to be found in the company of his older offspring. While they wouldn’t share a territory long-term, the young would often hang out near their parents’ territories for some time, periodically spending time with the adults and ostensibly learning more about how to be a successful wolverine.

Territories are incredibly important to consider when thinking about wolverines, Each animal needs a very large space to itself. A single female wolverine’s territory might be as large as 100 square miles; males require even more space, up to 250 square miles for one individual male. A young wolverine may travel thousands of miles before finding a suitable territory of its own.

Wolverines were once found all across arctic, subarctic, and boreal regions of North America, Europe, and Asia. Their numbers have decreased sharply in the past couple of centuries due to hunting and trapping, habitat loss and fragmentation due to logging, agriculture, and other human activities, and concentrated extermination efforts by humans. Because they may live in very remote areas that are difficult to access, and because they have such large territories, it can be challenging to pin an exact number on the current wolverine population in a given area.

What is apparent is that they are missing from much of their historic range in the lower 48 United States, and attempts to gain the remaining individuals protection under the Endangered Species Act have been met with inaction or resistance. While the IUCN Red List’s 2015 assessment of this species labeled it as “least concern” due to it being widespread, the report also acknowledged that the population is decreasing with “continuing decline of mature individuals”. The lack of information on exact populations and ranges is a hindrance to getting wolverines more protection under national and international wildlife laws. Ironically, as their numbers drop it will be even more challenging to get the information needed.

Climate change further threatens these animals. Female wolverines den in deep snowbanks, and as warming temperatures cause less snowfall and earlier melting, there will be fewer suitable nesting sites. Boreal forests are at risk due to warmer winters allowing more parasitic insects and diseases to flourish, and as species move northward to avoid hotter temperatures further south, ecosystems will be thrown into greater imbalance, to include those the wolverines rely on. Whatever habitat hasn’t been directly damaged by humans is at great risk of disappearing due to anthropogenic climate change.

While the wolverine isn’t as popular as its neighbors the gray wolf and polar bear, it thankfully has its champions. Here are just a few of the organizations working to help these magnificent animals:

The Wolverine Foundation

Conservation Northwest

The Defenders of Wildlife

[anachronisticcrab]

Nico and Portuguese

I don’t know if this bugged anyone else, but in the Hidden Oracle it didn’t sit right with me that Chiara and Apollo, who were both fluent in Italian, couldn’t understand Paolo when he spoke Portuguese, even though Nico could understand him because he speaks Italian (as seen in BoO when he read the Portuguese inscription in the Church of Bones, and when he was able to translate that Paolo wanted Apollo to have his lucky bandanna). At first I figured it was just weird Uncle Rick discrepancies and stuff, but then I figured why not do a bit of googling to see if I could find an explanation. I did a bit research on Italian dialects and second languages, as well as its connections to Portuguese, Catalan, and Spanish, and I think I discovered why Nico could speak with Paolo and understand Portuguese when no one else could

Just as a forewarning, I want to say is that I don’t speak Italian or Portuguese, I have never been to Italy or Portugal (or any other country that speaks Portuguese), and I am in no way an expert on the subject of any language. If you have any information on this topic, please correct any mistakes I make and feel free to add anything related to this. That being said, let’s get into this monster of a post

First of all, obviously Italian and Portuguese are very close together (they are both derived from Vulgar Latin, and have at least superficial similarities). However, this post will be looking into specific dialects and historical facts that would support Nico understanding Portuguese from Italian whereas the other two people who are confirmed to be fluent have no idea what Paolo says

I started trying to find out a bit more about Italian (because I knew there were differences in the language depending on where you are in the country, because everything in Italy varies from region to region). It turns out there are around 34 recognized spoken dialects within the country of Italy, and Standard Italian comes from Old Tuscany/Florence. The dialects vary from region to region, and even city to city in the country. All the different dialects are vastly different, especially between North Italy and South Italy. If you had a southern Italian speaking their native dialect and a northern Italian speaking theirs, neither of them would have any idea what the other was saying, unlike with different dialects in English, where you still know what the other person is saying. For example, in Venice, the dialect changes depending on the island you are on (ie. Burano to Pellestrina)

If we look specifically at the Veneto Region (where Venice and Verona are, and where Nico is from), one of the dialects is Venetian, although there isn’t a lot of information on the language that I could find, and even less about it’s roots. However I did find out that it is closer to Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese than it is to Standard Italian (Tuscan), and the language isn’t just spoken in and around Venice, but also in Trieste, Croatia (which led me down the path of Croatia and Venice thanks to Nico visiting there, and I’m gonna make a post about that too now because it’s really cool to me and I’ve got ideas for that) , Slovenia, Mexico and Brazil

Apparently, in certain parts of Brazil, the Talian dialect of Venetian holds co-official status with Portuguese. (I couldn’t find a whole lot of info on this, so I’m not sure where or if this is a true/accurate fact). From around 1875 to the 1920′s, there was a mass boom of Venetian immigrants to Brazil, and of the largest place in the world for people of direct Italian descent is actually Sao Paolo, Brazil. The only article I could find on the Talian dialect cut off two paragraphs in and required a paid subscription to read more (which I couldn’t do since I’m broke), so all I know is that a Portuguese dialect of Venetian is spoken in some areas of Brazil, more of them down south from what I could gather

In my research on Talian, I found out about another dialect, this one of Portuguese. It is called the  Paulistano dialect, and is spoken in and around Sao Paolo, the city I brought up before. Paulistano has direct influences from the Venetian language, as it was created thanks to Northern Italian immigrants who spoke with think foreign accents, and a new dialect was created, and preserves characteristics from Venetian

Not gonna lie, I think that they might just be different names for the same language, but I’m probably wrong about that. As I said, I really couldn’t find a lot of information on this topic so I’m probably very wrong by saying that

On top of that, historically, Venice and Portugal (the places that created both languages) have had extremely close relations. In the 15th century, the Portuguese kings used Venice’s ports to help with the spice trade from Asia, South America, and Europe. There were Portuguese and Spanish people coming in and out of Venice’s docks all the time. This is presumably why Venetian is much closer to Spanish and Portuguese than it is to Italian

As you can see, Venetian and Portuguese have deep rooted histories and simmilarities, and show how Nico would be able to understand Portuguese. Nico would’ve grown up speaking a very similar language to Paolo’s, and Paolo may have grown up speaking a dialect inspired by Venetian

I did try to use Paolo’s name to see if I could get an idea of where in Brazil he might be from, but I have absolutely no idea. Montes was originally a French or Spanish surname, suggesting he might have had French or Spanish roots, but that could also be pure bullshit, because I genuinely don’t know. If he was Spanish somewhere along the line, he most likely lived towards the south, closer to Sao Paolo and probably knew either Talian or Paulistano

At this point, you might be wondering why Apollo or Chiara can’t speak or understand Portuguese, and my answer is the following:

Apollo was probably only fluent in Standard Italian/ Tuscan after the country unified in 1861. After all, Italy is the capital of music, art, and is well known for being sunny and warm all the time, and Apollo is the god of all that stuff. Therefore, he probably learned the standardized language, and didn’t bother with any local dialects (after all, most people don’t speak the individual dialects with tourists/foreigners)

Now Chiara was a bit different. She was from Italy, so she would’ve known a regional dialect, and I came up with an issue there. She could have been from Venice, and that would have thrown this whole thing into the trash. That would have thrown out this idea, and mean that my research would have been for nothing, and that it really was just a stupid error on Rick’s part

So I looked up the origins of her name to check this out, praying to all the gods I could think of that my two days of research and googling wasn’t for nothing. The first thing I saw was that most Italian surnames with an ‘i’ at the end are from northern Italy. Just as I was about to start crying, I found a link on ‘The Noble House of Benvenuti’, and it turns out she was most likely Tuscan. Therefore, she probably speaks a regional dialect of New Tuscan or something of the like, and wouldn’t know Venetian

Also, after a bit more digging just to double check some of the facts in this post, I found out that even if she was Venetian, she might not have spoken it. Since Venice is a dying city, apparently Venetian is a dying language, and most people who are fluent in it are older, and there are lot’s of other dialects in the Veneto region anyways. Nico probably only knows it because he lived in Venice before the city started really dying out! The only reason Paolo can communicate with someone could be because of the whole hotel thing!

[fefipranon]

Let’s talk about depression

In my latest book ‘The Power of Death’ I talk about this topic in depth. I will post the links to it at the end of this post if you are interested in reading it. If there is one part of the book that resumes the message that I wanted to transmit, it’s Mikasa’s (The main character) press conference at the end of the last chapter. 

It’s okay if you don’t read the whole book, but at least, read the following extract from the book (some stuff removed to avoid spoilers): 

Standing behind the podium Mikasa started the conference by saying, 

"Paradis island doesn't have studies about the topic we are about to discuss, but other countries do. In the United States, in 2019, a total of 47,511 Americans died by suicide and an estimated 1.38 million attempted it. [2] What about other countries? you may ask, well, overall, suicide was in the top 10 leading causes of death across Eastern Europe, Central Europe, high-income countries within the Asia Pacific, and Australasia. Within regions and countries, though, suicide rates soared among people with lower social and economic status. [3] This data comes from research made by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Washington, Seattle. [4] This goes without mentioning that for every suicide, it is estimated that there are seven to ten people intimately affected."[8]

Mikasa stopped to take a sip of water and looked back at the audience to continue her speech, 

"Untreated depression can, and possibly will lead to suicide, death. In biology, homeostasis is the state of steady internal, physical, and chemical conditions maintained by living systems. [5] Depression does have an impact on this. Research shows that the hippocampus is smaller in some depressed people. For example, in one fMRI study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, investigators studied 24 women who had a history of depression. On average, the hippocampus was 9% to 13% smaller in depressed women compared with those who were not depressed. The more bouts of depression a woman had, the smaller the hippocampus. [6] The hippocampus is not the only area of the brain affected by depression, the Amygdala, and Thalamus are also affected.[6] Depression is, and should be treated as, an illness that, if left untreated, can be lethal. Just remember the statistics I gave you about suicide at the beginning of my speech. With that data as the base of my argument, it is safe for me to say that depression is one of the top life-threatening illnesses having, in some countries, the top mortality rate overall."

A woman from the public raised her hand and when allowed to talk she said, 

"How can you call an illness to something that can be 'cured' by just talking to a so-called doctor about your issues?" 

Mikasa gave the woman a serious look and said, "Therapy, is not just talking. Psychotherapy stands over years of research and development going as back as the 19th century. There is extensive evidence of its effectiveness. Also, most cases of depression treatments include medication." 

Then a man shouted, "So now doctors will give our kids a bunch of pills just because the child is feeling a little sad?!"

"Several tests are usually performed before a psychiatrist gives a diagnosis of depression. Tests like: physical exams, lab tests, psychiatric evaluation, and the country's manual of mental health like for example the DSM-5 which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from the American Psychiatric Association, is applied. After that, the psychiatrist might do more testing to see if medication is an option. Because they are physicians, psychiatrists can order or perform a full range of medical laboratory and psychological tests which, combined with discussions with patients, help provide a picture of a patient's physical and mental state. Their education and clinical training equip them to understand the complex relationship between emotional and other medical illnesses and the relationships with genetics and family history, to evaluate medical and psychological data, to make a diagnosis, and to work with patients to develop treatment plans.[7] In other words, for a doctor to prescribe medication to your child, it has to first do an extensive evaluation on the kid before even start to consider medication in the first place. If in the end, medication is needed, then it would mean that your kid is not only 'feeling a little sad', it means that there is a deeper problem that needs to be addressed and the physician will have a lot of evidence to back up his claim.", Mikasa said. 

She stopped talking and pinched the bridge of her nose out of frustration, then she looked seriously at the same man she was addressing before, and said, "Would you rather lose your child to suicide or seek valid, scientific-based help to save the kid's life?"

The man was frozen in place. He was not expecting to be put in the spotlight this way. Mikasa noticed the teenage kid who was seated next to him with his head bowed to the floor. Before he could answer Mikasa said, 

"Do you even know how depression feels like? To have your own mind to conspire against you? To illogically feel worthless, alone, like nobody can understand you, or at least, nobody that hasn't been through the same darkness as you. Do you know how it feels when people tell you worthless crap like, 'get over it', or 'just stop being sad' like being sad is just an option you chose because apparently, you like to torture yourself? Have you ever contemplated to end your life out of desperation to get an out, a break, from your own mind?"

By this point, the kid was looking straight at Mikasa with tears pouring down his eyes. Mikasa knew she was getting through him. She grabbed the microphone and started to walk while resuming her speech, 

"To feel like you are constantly drowning. To feel like an ungrateful ass because logically, you should be happy because you have everything. But you aren't... Thinking that there must be something really wrong with you for you to feel this way without an apparent reason. To feel lost, alone with this feeling that is eating you inside slowly until it gets to the point where you desperately want to rip your soul out of your body. When it gets so bad that causing physical pain to your body is an option since, at least, for a brief moment, your mind focuses on the physical pain which is better for you because the emotional pain is so much greater than a little cut on your forearm."

The man realized that she was no longer addressing him but the person seated next to him, his own son. Mikasa stood right in front of his son and looked at him in the eyes. She lowered the microphone and while brushing her fingers through the kid's scars on his forearm she said to him, 

"You are not alone."

Then, she showed him her own scars and the kid stood up pulling her in for a hug while repeatedly saying, "Thank you"

Reporters were recording the whole encounter. It was real. Depression was real, and it was being recorded. The father of the kid sat back down while looking at his son in shock. Trying to find the words to say he just pulled him in for a hug while saying, 

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"You never really asked.", the boy replied. 

"I'm sorry. I will do better. You deserve better.", his dad replied with a broken voice. 

Mikasa lifted the microphone again to talk and said, "Depression is a silent killer. It could be your child, partner, parent... it could be closer to you than what you think. So before you speak about the topic remember that. Your words could be hurting one of your own for your lack of empathy."

She walked towards the podium again to start answering reporter's questions,

 "What would you say to someone who is going through this?"

Mikasa lowered her head lost in thought and said, "You don't need to have a traumatic event in your life to have depression. Depression is not just sadness and is not only caused by personality type or environmental factors. Genetics and biochemistry are also a big part of it, and those two have nothing to do with how much crap you've been dealt in life. What I am trying to say it's that, it's okay to not be okay, you don't need a reason to, and you don't need to feel worse about it for not having a reason. Being sad is not a right you earn after a certain amount of societally accepted shit has happened to you. Just seek help, see the situation logically, and not let people bring you down. If possible, educate others on the topic. Be the change you want to see in the world."

She paused, thinking of her own struggles with depression, and the stability and peace she finally felt once the pills started to work on her. Sure, dark thoughts still lingered at the back of her head, but, it was no longer unbearable, now, it was manageable. With time and therapy, she had managed to live with it, minimizing their negative effect on her. With this in mind, she said,

"Do not get frustrated if anti-depressants don't work at first, sometimes it takes a couple of tries with different types of medications to get the one that works for you. Researchers are exploring possible links between the sluggish production of new neurons in the hippocampus and low moods. An interesting fact about antidepressants supports this theory. These medications immediately boost the concentration of chemical messengers in the brain (neurotransmitters). Yet people typically don't begin to feel better for several weeks or longer. Experts have long wondered why, if depression were primarily the result of low levels of neurotransmitters, people don't feel better as soon as levels of neurotransmitters increase. The answer may be that mood only improves as nerves grow and form new connections, a process that takes weeks." [6]

She paused and looked at the crowd. Then, she said, 

"In the meantime, stay alive, even if it feels against your will. Do not give a permanent solution to a temporary problem, because trust me, it DOES get better."

Stay Alive

Feel free to share this to raise awareness. This book has all the things I wish someone had told me in my darkest moments, and I hope, it can help someone out there who is going through the same painful path in life. Remember, it's not your fault, you are not alone.

Resources used in this part: 

[1]  Oswego City School District Regents Exam Prep Center. Archived from on 25 October 2012. Retrieved 12 November 2012. URL: homeostasis

[2] American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: suicide-statistics

[3] global-suicide-rates-study

[4] Global, regional, and national burden of suicide mortality 1990 to 2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016: content

[5]  Gordon., Betts, J. Anatomy and physiology. DeSaix, Peter., Johnson, Eddie., Johnson, Jody E., Korol, Oksana., Kruse, Dean H., Poe, Brandon. Houston, Texas. p. 9. ISBN 9781947172043. OCLC 1001472383.

[6] What causes depression? Harvard Medical School: what-causes-depression

[7] What Is Psychiatry? from the American Psychiatric Association. URL: what-is-psychiatry

[8] Lukas, Christopher; Henry M. Seiden (1997) [1987]. Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide. Northvale, New Jersey: Jaron Aronson. p. 5. ISBN 0-7657-0056-5.

Book Summary: 

Mikasa is a woman suffering from clinical depression. There is one thing that she is sure of: she wants to die. But when she received some unexpected news that makes her death wish a reality, she starts to wonder if that was really what she wanted. She starts a journey to discover the truth about her biological parents that gave her up for adoption when she was a baby. This journey will guide her to cross paths with someone as broken as her, someone that hates her to death for what her biological family did to him. Will she have the courage to, for once, fight to live? or will she let him drag her to hell with him?

The book is tagged as an ‘Attack on Titan’ Alternate universe fanfic but honestly you don’t need to know anything about the anime to read it. The story has nothing to do with it so feel free to read if you haven’t seen it. 

You can find the story in the following links: 

Archive of our own:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30452145/chapters/75087657

Wattpad:

https://www.wattpad.com/story/264598251-the-power-of-death

[bigskydreaming]

For @imashittalkingmushroom who requested some Tim content. Excerpt from one of the seemingly endless WIPs I toil away at in my downtime because me pace myself, in this economy, hah. This one’s called “The Vienna Game” and is Batfam ensemble versus a new rising threat, which Tim has a revelation about here. This part is just a rough draft for the moment, but you get the idea.

THE VIENNA GAME

Chapter Five: Pawn Storm

Barely five minutes after Tim’s head hit his pillow, he sat bolt upright in bed, heart hammering in his throat.

“They’re all connected,” he said, wide-eyed to an empty room. The lack of a response bequeathed by his surroundings was a bit, well, lacking, so he leaped to his feet and raced down to the hall to the Batcave’s nearest access point.

“They’re all connected,” he shouted again as he took the rough-hewn stone stairs three at a time. His words bounced and rattled off the walls of the cave, winging upwards into its darkest recesses and rousing the bats from their nests overhead. They scattered in every direction, deeper into the darkness, as they reacted to his urgency and intensity with shrieking complaints.

If only his actual family could be similarly moved. But no, they had to suck instead.

“Whozit whatzit howzit?” Dick swiveled in his chair, just enough to shoot the younger boy a quizzical eyebrow but not enough to necessitate removing his feet from next to the Batcomputer’s keyboard, where Bruce was currently drilling holes into them with a patented (and thus wholly ineffective) Batglare.

“What is it Lassie? Did Timmy fall down the well again? One bark for yes, two for no,” Jason said brightly. He bent at the waist and braced his hands on his thighs as though actually talking to a dog; it had the unfortunate side-effect of making his stupid brother a stupid firmly planted rock that did little more than shift the merest micro-meter when Tim rolled his eyes and brusquely shouldered past him.

“That doesn’t even make any sense. I’m Timmy,” he said irritably. Too late he realized the trap he’d blearily wandered into as his jackass brother practically cackled with glee. Tim reddened and quickened his pace to the Batcomputer. “Oh shut up.”

Jason swivelled, but whatever his intended follow-up, he abruptly cut off as an apple core arced out of the shadows and bounced off his head. The second eldest pivoted sharply once more and scowled in the direction it’d come from as Tim absently took note of the several other apple cores scattered around Jason’s feet.

“Would you stop that?”

Cassandra, target of his ire, merely contemplated him for a beat before shaking her head. 

“No thank you,” she politely declined, and she bit into a fresh apple with a loud crunch.

“You will be cleaning those up, not Alfred,” their father said, wearily enough Tim got the sense this had been going on for quite some time. His sister just shrugged. 

“Worth it.”

Bruce exercised the better part of valor and shifted his attention back to Tim. “And didn’t you say you were going to bed?”

“I did say that,” Tim said agreeably as he barreled forth unto the Batcomputer. He batted (hah - oh no, the sleep deprivation was real) Dick’s feet aside and rebutted Dick’s injurious expression with an apologetic one of his own; apparently appeased, Dick just lithely shrugged and lifted his linked legs straight off the desk’s surface and then just never stopped. Instead he kept lifting his legs up, up and away until he’d transitioned into a perfect handstand on the seat of the chair, which he then transitioned out of by gracefully flipping over the chair’s back and onto his feet. Because see, Tim’s eldest brother’s middle name was not in fact ‘John,’ it was ‘Just That Extra.’

“I even did that,” Tim continued as he set his fingers to dancing swiftly across the keyboard. “But then I realized something.”

“You look ridiculous when you pop your collar,” Steph said knowingly.

“What? No. Wait, when have I ever done that?”

“Umm, the last time you were drunk, duh.”

Tim paused just long enough to shoot his ex an absolutely baffled look, over where she was lounging bonelessly next to Cass. 

“When was I drunk?”

Steph tilted her head to the side and squinted in thought. “Drunk, concussed....whatever. It was definitely one of those two. I have pictures. They’re not good.”

Perhaps sensing his impending spontaneous combustion, Bruce interceded, raising a hand to quiet the perpetual storm of sibling (and Steph) nonsense.

“What’s this about, Tim?”

“Our newest Rogue, the one we just finally caught last week,” Tim reported, turning his attention back to the Dance of the Keystrokes. “We have a problem.”

Their father frowned. “Desperado? What’s the problem?”

“His name,” Tim said grimly. He finished pulling up the string of files he’d only minutes ago linked together in his own mind. Flashing into existence on the wall to wall screens before them were all the notes the various members of their family had compiled on the new villain in town, as well as a number of other files for a good dozen or so other relatively new or unknown villains scattered across the globe, with these latter documents pulled from the digital archives of various superhero teams and law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Blitz, a speedster located in Southern California, their indistinct form pixelated and blurred virtue of the crackling halo of electrical energy they seemed to wear like a cloak of St. Elmo’s Fire. 

A Filipino man and woman purported to be fraternal twins operating out of a number of hotspots throughout Southeast Asia, with a combined name whose translation from Tagalog roughly amounted to ‘Double Check.’

A young brunette woman seemingly barely out of her teens, with eyes hidden behind an overly large pair of sunglasses, linked to a series of crimes in Argentina and Chile and allegedly going by the name ‘Swindle.’

A black man in his mid to late twenties, moving across the Iberian peninsula, with no reported name given, just a strange adherence to a symbol that appeared to be of a windmill, of all things, and that had local press dubbing him ‘Don Quixote.’

King March, a white man in his late forties to early fifties, with black hair and greying temples and a stern but smug disposition in all the files Interpol had compiled on him due to his frequent appearances as a person of interest throughout Eastern Europe.

A short, acrobatic Latino teleporter who offered up only the name ‘Castle’ in his sporadic run-ins with various hero organizations across the globe. 

Tempo, suspected to originally hail from Sri Lanka, and last sighted in Hong Kong of all places...and by no means the only one of this assortment of individuals engaged in criminal enterprises in a city known for its Batman Inc presence. 

Undermine, a masked man so far content to operate just out of Australia.

Flag Fall, another masked individual largely spotted in the Southeastern U.S.

An unseen person or persons known only by a calling card left in various Saharan regions, identifying them as someone named ‘Tabia.’

And lastly, a mature black woman out of the UK, sporting a wry, enigmatic smile in the only known picture of her, alongside her alleged pseudonym: Zugzwang.

“It was pretty much total coincidence I put it together,” Tim said as his family gathered more closely behind him to survey the assembled files over his shoulder. “I’d come across most these files over the past couple months, just in passing, as I like to familiarize myself with the various players in most Batman Inc. operating cities, and I was just reading this last file before bed, just to kinda wind down, y’know....”

“That sentence makes me so sad I don’t even have the heart to make fun of you,” Jason interrupted. He frowned. “Wait, that implies I have a heart. Hang on, that doesn’t sound right. And is this, what, sympathy I’m feeling right now? Eww, that is not the emotion I ordered. Take it back.”

Tim glared at him briefly, and then foraged on. “Anyway, as I was saying, I happened to be reading this last file before bed, and her name stuck out for me and from there I just started connecting some dots. See, alone, none of these names stand out as particularly significant, but put them together, and what happens?”

“They all have multiple meanings,” Damian said, scowling at the screens with focused intensity. “Mostly innocuous, but they’re also all....hmm. Chess terminology.”

Tim nodded enthusiastically. “Bingo! Ten points to Stabby Smurf.”

He bent over the keyboard again and started pulling up various video files, catching sight of reflections out of the corner of his eye as he did so. Duke seemed to be mouthing “Stabby Smurf” with a kind of horrified awe and Damian himself seemed unable to decide if he was offended or not. Whoops, that part hadn’t been meant to come out aloud. Tim coughed to cover a grimace slash smirk and hastened back to his point. 

“For instance, based on geographical location alone, Flag Fall seems to be an obvious reference to an actual flag, but the term also refers to timed chess matches, when a given player has run out of time to make a move. Swindle isn’t just a term for cheating or fraud, but in chess, refers to when a losing player tricks their opponent into falling for a decoy move that ends the game in a draw instead of a loss. King march is a term for when you advance your king up the board, tempo is a single turn or move, a double check is when two different pieces put an opponent’s king in check simultaneously, and undermining is when you capture a defensive piece of your opponent’s and leave their king undefended.”

He stopped for a breath and Damian quickly stepped into the breach and picked up where he left off, seamlessly following the train of thought. “And Tabia comes from the Arabic for ‘essence,’ but in chess is a key point, specifically a point of departure from which you can perform any number of signature moves. The windmill symbol utilized by this individual in Spain and its surrounding regions most likely then does not reference Don Quixote, but rather a looped series of moves, usually brought upon by a rook and a bishop, which forces an opponent’s king to ‘windmill’ back and forth between just two or three squares in order to keep out of check.”

“And then Blitz of course refers to a specific opening gambit, that can bring about checkmate in four moves or less,” Tim resumed. “And while Castle has so far been assumed to be nothing more than a surname according to various heroes who have encountered him, largely no doubt due to the fact that he doesn’t affect any kind of costume or disguise, when you consider that pretty much all his demonstrations of teleportation utilize a kind of ‘switching’ of two persons’ relative placement in space/time, either as a signature or an actual staple of his power, its far more likely his name is a reference to ‘castling.’ Which of course then just brings us back to Zugzwang, which is a German term that loosely translates to ‘compulsion to move’ and specifically denotes any scenario in chess in which a player has no choice but to move, even though all moves available to them are inevitably going to worsen their position.”

They all took a minute to absorb that then, speed-reading their way through the various files with all the quickness that made it an actual possibility one or more of them might someday make it all the way through a read-through of the entire Wayne Manor Library, even taking into account the minimal time any of them allotted to the having of actual ‘hobbies.’

It was Cass who found something new to seize upon next, though she never once flicked her eyes away from where they tracked the movements of one videoed individual to the next, screen by screen. 

“It’s not just the names,” she reported, scrutinizing each figure intently. “They move alike. When they fight. Its not a lot. But enough that they probably trained together, or at least shared a teacher.”

Tim nodded again. “I thought so too, but I wasn’t sure. I don’t have your eye for that, but it seemed like they might.”

“Reeet, record scratch,” Steph jumped in then. “Not to be all ‘talk nerdy to me, baby,’ since we don’t do that any more and whoops, totally forgot for a second that your dad is legit standing right here, wow, awkwaaaaaard, but for those of us still waiting to buy a vowel, why is this a problem with that Desperado dude specifically?”

“Because we’ve been operating off of the assumption that he chose his name as a more obvious reference to simply being some kind of outlaw,” Bruce said. “But in terms of chess specifically, a desperado piece is any piece that is trapped or in danger, and then sacrifices itself to achieve some kind of maximum damage or compensation that greatly outweighs the loss of itself.”

Steph nodded and pursed her lips. “Cool, cool. Okay so first off, let me just say how glad I am that it was you in specific that decided to follow up on that. Definitely the best of all timelines there, like just so, so absolutely stellar, that. It in no way compounded the awkwardness of the moment or contributed to my pending death by mortification. Secondly, oh, like. Yikes, so that’s not great, huh.”

“No, its not,” Bruce said seriously, with only the barest of twitches in the proximity of those things other people use to smile, aka lips. “If all of this turns out to bear fruit, as I suspect it will, the relative ease with which this Desperado was captured is nothing short of ominous. But luckily, we now have a chance to get ahead of whatever else might be in the works there. Excellent work, Tim.”

Tim squirmed, digging deep into the well of his bodily mastery and various techniques for exerting mind over matter. Don’t blush, don’t blush, you’re a super cool crime-fighting dude, not a total dweeb. “Like I said, it was mostly just dumb luck.”

“Hey now, none of that, Baby Bird,” Dick said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You still had to spot the pattern and connect the dots no matter how circumstantial you feel happening across the first dot was. That’s all you, kiddo.”

“Dick, I’m almost eighteen,” Tim whined. Ugh, his brother was the worst. He was going to be calling him Baby Bird when he was eighty at this point. And there went all his attempts at bodily mastery. Insult was added to injury when he stumbled to the side, then, though that had more to do with Jason hip-checking him out of the way so he could take over at the Batcomputer’s keyboard.

“Hey! What the hell was that for, Jay?”

“Umm, saving your ass, duh,” his other older brother said. Tim narrowed his eyes.

“That tracks how, exactly?”

“You were well on your way to immolation by way of embarrassment thanks to all the attention, so I’m stealing your thunder, double duh. Like I said, saving your ass. You’re welcome,” Jason said distractedly, busy with whatever else he was doing aside from being King of the Assholes.

Correction. That brother was the worst.

“Gee, thanks ever so much,” Tim intoned acidly.

“Don’t mention it, brat.”

Tim was still working on a return volley when Jason found whatever it was he was looking for and called up some more files onscreen.

“Okay, so check it out. Remember back in March, when we caught wind of some ‘new talent’ looking to establish a foothold in the local underground, and once we routed them, the only head honcho we could seemingly trace all of that back to was someone we assumed to be named Cassie or Cassandra based on what little we could decrypt of her communications? So now I’m thinking what if we filled in the gaps there wrong, and her name actually was Caissa?”

Tim looked around, but the name didn’t seem to be ringing any bells for anyone else either. 

“Okay, I’ll bite. Who the hell is Caissa?”

“The fictional regurgitation of some plagiaristic hack from two hundred years ago.”

“Jason,” Bruce sighed. Jason rolled his eyes.

“Fine, whatever. So there’s this poem by this untalented dumbass named William Jones back in the 1700s, about a made-up Greek goddess of chess, named Caissa. But really, its just a rip-off of a much older poem from the 1500s by an Italian dude named Hieronymus Vida, in which the character of Caissa was originally named Scacchia. So I mean, I’m just saying, if this chick was going by the name Scacchia, I would have pegged what that was a reference to right away, because like, I have taste and so I’m way more familiar with the original version than the ode of a derivative hack. But I guess you just can’t count on bad guys to default to the superior take,” he lamented with a mournful sigh.

“But wait, aren’t you a bad guy?” Duke inquired, all bright eyes and fake innocence. Jason shot him A Look.

“Not this week, duh. Keep up.”

“Oh, sorry, my bad. I forgot to look at the calendar again.”

“You’re forgiven,” Jason said magnaminously. “Anyway, might just be a hunch, but worth looking into, I’d say. If her name really was actually Caissa, this Desperado could be working for her, and he might actually just be Round Two.”

Cass nodded. “Makes sense. Also restores my good name. Thanks little brother.”

“Any time, little sister. This mean you’ll stop throwing shit at me now?”

“Nope.”

“I hate you.”

“I know. Keeps me up at night.”

“You’re nocturnal, you bipedal asshat.”

Cass just smirked some more and sashayed away. Then flipped into a handstand and started walking away on her hands because clearly, she’d been spending too much time with Dick.

Which reminded him - Tim turned his attention back to his oldest brother, mortification forgotten or at least put on hold for the moment. 

“Hey, so, a lot of the files noted that several of these people are likely polyglots,” Tim said. “Since Cass thinks they have some kind of shared combat instruction in their background, I’m thinking there’s a chance we could get a better idea of what regions they all might have been in, in order to get that shared instruction, if we could isolate what languages or dialects or even accents they might have in common, y’know? You’ve got the best ear for languages, what do you think?”

Dick nodded thoughtfully as he perused several of the files. “Its a good idea. I’ll get into it. First though, I’ve gotta make a few calls.”

Their father shot him an appraising glance. “Harper?” He asked.

Dick nodded again. “Yeah, Roy, but also Helena and Tiger. Can’t hurt to have all three of them read in on this. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and where there’s chess, there’s bound to be Checkmate. I’d find it way too big a coincidence if there’s not a connection there somewhere, and if there is one to be found, I’d say those three are our best chance of finding it.”

Bruce made a sour face. Dick arched a challenging eyebrow. Bruce sighed.

“I’m not disagreeing, I just don’t like it.”

Dick laughed. “Well, you don’t like anything, so really we’re all just in awe of your dedication to your Brand, Pops.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and sighed again, before turning his attention back to Tim. “As for you, I think you’ve contributed enough for one night, don’t you? Why don’t you get back to what you were doing before this....what was that again....oh right, getting some sleep?”

Tim made a face of his own. He was way too keyed up now - again - still - to go back to bed now. And again, must he reiterate, he was almost eighteen, helloooooo.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“Oh good, I’m so glad that’s what’s catching on as the family motto.”

“Don’t see you going to bed,” Tim sulked in a most mature fashion. The absolute height of maturity. Nay, the apogee, the zenith, we’re talking orbital here.

“Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne,” Jason interrupted in a thunderous facsimile of their father’s impressive baritone. “This is a Do As I Say, Not As I Do household!”

“This from the son who makes an art form out of never doing either,” Bruce said dryly.

Jason shrugged and buffed his nails against his chest, blithely unconcerned. “I go my own way. Its part of my charm.”

“Oh cool,” Duke cut in excitedly. “Are we playing that game again where we just make up our own definitions that have nothing to do with the actual words we say?”

Jason gasped and pressed his palm flat over his heart. “Et tu, Daisy Dukes?”

Duke nodded gravely. “Et mi, Sweeney Todd.”

“Boys,” Bruce said wearily. 

Both stopped and shot him expectant looks.

“What?”

“I actually have no idea, to be honest. It just feels like one of those things I should attempt to say periodically. Never mind. Carry on.”

Jason snorted and rolled his eyes at Duke as the two of them wandered off towards the opposite end of the cave. “As if we were ever going to do otherwise. He’s so weird sometimes, I swear.”

Duke hummed in agreement. “I think its on account of him being an ancient eldritch being.”

“I’m only forty-two,” Bruce called after them, aggrieved. They ignored him.

“Did you know, he was actually there to witness the actual dawn of time,” Jason said. “And yet, wake him up before noon and its like you’ve committed murder. And I would know. I’ve actually murdered people.”

“That’s true, you have.”

[sunflowers-and-forgetmenots]

I remembered my rant proceed with caution. If you're easily offended then I dont recommend reading. This is not a post about any sort of supremacy or anything like that so dont even come at me about it. And if you have a problem with what you read from here on out then oh well, and don't expect an apology.

I don't care who unfollow me or who wants to pick a fight with me about this but PLEASE stop! It's not about "white people" most people that you think are white aren't!! My best friend is mostly Middle Eastern, Romanian (which isnt white contrary to popular belief) Native American, and Japanese and she got chased while she was walking her dog by a guy on a moped because she is pale and he thought she was white. He was literally yelling at her about how she "kills n***s" (literally what he said) and she would never hurt anyone! There's also a very sweet Colombian lady I know who has never hurt a fly, and some guy pulled a gun on her in the subway because he thought she was white! Literally the only thing that saved her was that she started speaking Spanish! This has gone too far!! It needs to stop before a bunch of people end up dead!

Everyone wants to protest and fight and scream and abolish racism but then these same people use it as an excuse to bash all white people and people they perceive as white! The world isn't only black and white guys!! There's so much more skin tones than that! Also not all black people got over here by being sold, and the ones that did it was human trafficking, so why aren't we fighting like this over ALL people being sold?!?!

I can't tell you how many people I meet in NYC that believe they are entitled because they're black, and these are people who literally JUST fucking moved here from another country of their OWN CHOICE!!!! And then they turn around and yell at me or my friend because we don't kiss their asses!

Also I used to get severally bullied for the time I was in public school because no one believed I was Native American. And everytime I try to say something about my culture or use a phrase or term from my culture I still get attacked for "cultural appropriation" and it takes everything in me not to lose my fucking mind! I'm not allowed to live and be and participate in my culture and learn about my heritage without getting corrected by some random person that isn't actually Native American.

Do you know the American and Canadian governments are still committing genocide against Native Americans?? How about to Latino people?? How about to Middle Easterners? I mean fuck how long have we been invading the Middles East for resources?? Or assuming all of them are terrorists??? No one is allowed to even be Asian because there's only black and white apparently! I've seen people just put me and other people I've known down as white/caucasian before even fuckkng asking and now we're being attacked because we're too fucking white. I can't help how I look!! And none of my ancestors had slaves! I know because I did all this research to find out about my family. And even if they did I'm not them and I can't rewrite the past!

And about the misuse of the word Caucasian:

The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid) is an outdated grouping of human beings historically regarded as a biological taxon which, depending on which of the historical race classifications is used, has usually included ancient and modern populations from all or parts of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.

First introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, the term denoted one of three purported major races of humankind (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid). In biological anthropology, Caucasoid has been used as an umbrella term for phenotypically similar groups from these different regions, with a focus on skeletal anatomy, and especially cranial morphology, without regard to skin tone. Ancient and modern "Caucasoid" populations were thus not exclusively "white", but ranged in complexion from white-skinned to dark brown.

Okay that was my rant, I'm done. I'm not feeling better though because it's still going to be happening when I hit post and because unfortunately too many people are too selfish to care about anything but their own agenda. That being said I hope everyone stays safe. Xoxo

[johnboothus]

Wine 101: Fortified Wines

This episode of “Wine 101” is sponsored by Taylor Dessert Wines. Founded in 1880, Taylor Desserts offers a line of superior ports, sherrys, and other traditional dessert wines from the Finger Lakes region of New York State. With a special selection of high-quality, sweet, and smooth dessert wines, Taylor is great for cooking or simply enjoying as an after-dinner treat. Available in a variety of sizes and flavors, Taylor dessert wines are a delicious addition to any home or restaurant. Bring home a bottle of Taylor Dessert Wine, and let our traditions become part of yours.

In this episode of “Wine 101,” VinePair tastings director Keith Beavers discusses fortified wines. Fortified wines are the result of adding a spirit to a wine, which adds alcoholic strength to the final product and limits the amount of sugar produced by yeast cells during distillation. Listeners will learn about the complex history of fortified wines, specifically that of three major categories: port, sherry, and Madeira.

Then, Beavers lists styles within each of those major categories. The port category is made up of a dozen styles, including ruby port, tawny port, and vintage port. Some sherry styles include fino, amontillado, and cream sherry. Finally, popular Madeira styles include Malmsey and Boal.

Tune in to become an expert on all things fortified wines.

Listen Online

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Or Check Out the Conversation Here

Keith Beavers: My name is Keith Beavers, and raise your hand if you’ve read the first novel of “The High Republic,” the new “Star Wars” saga. Me, too!

What’s going on, wine lovers? Welcome to Episode 17 of VinePair’s “Wine 101” podcast, Season 2. My name is Keith Beavers and do you know who I am? I’m the tastings director of VinePair.

We’ve talked about red wine, we’ve talked about white wine, rosé, bubbly, and all kinds of cool stuff, but we have not talked about fortified wine. And here we are. We’ve got to talk about it. It’s unique. There are misconceptions. Let’s get into it.

Wine can be so overwhelming. You might think “OK, Keith, that’s why we’re listening to ‘Wine 101.’ Thanks, dude.” But it is. It’s been around for so long, and so many humans have been experimenting with the practice of winemaking for so long. And so when you just dive into it, you’re diving into something that’s been around since antiquity and is as complex as humans can make something. It’s insane. It’s really just the history of humans tinkering and finding out the best way to make wine in their part of the world.

The grapes that are there, the climate they have, the challenges in the vineyard and in the wineries that are unique to them in that place. Then, when we as humans figure out how to make something work and the resulting product just hits right, it catches and becomes a standard. That only leads to more experimentation because we as humans and winemakers can never get enough. Winemakers always want to try something new. And all this is how different wine styles are born. When we started adding spirits to wine, a whole new world of experimentation opened up for us. This is the world of fortified wine.

Fundamentally, the idea of fortified wine is the practice of adding a spirit to wine. The whole principle behind the idea of fortified wine is you’re fortifying and strengthening wine. You’re adding alcoholic strength to wine, but what you’re also doing is you’re limiting the amount of sugar a yeast cell can produce. The result is often a boozy, somewhat sweet, sometimes very sweet, wine. Often, you’ll find that fortified wines come from some of the warmest, driest, or hottest regions in the world for wine.

In the Douro Valley of Portugal, they make a fortified wine called port. It’s a very hot, very unforgiving, dry climate. In the Jerez region, in southern Spain, there is a fortified wine called sherry. Southern Spain is very hot, very dry. In western Sicily, there’s a fortified wine called Marsala. Western Sicily is very hot and very dry. Of course, today, these wines are made all over the place. There are actually port-style wines being made in the United States in places like Missouri, and that’s not very hot and very dry. But traditionally, this is how these wines came to be.

If you think about it, fortified wine, as a style, is a fairly short list of wines compared to the wider world of red, white, and sparkling wine out there. Here’s the capper, and this is what’s tricky and this is why when people look into fortified wine, they dip their toe and go, “Yo, this is too much. I’m going to just back up here for a second. Thank you.” The thing is, even though there’s a short list of fortified wines out there, within each category of each wine is a laundry list of styles. And it’s overwhelming.

I said at the beginning of the episode and it’s where I was getting to is, man, it’s overwhelming. Port itself has at least a dozen different styles. Madeira, an island about 600 miles off the coast of Portugal, it’s an island that makes fortified wine. They have, I think, 13 or more styles within their fortified wine category. Some of those styles are so old that they’re not even made anymore. They are just talked about. It’s insane. This is what I’m talking about, with figuring out, having a challenge in your region, figuring it out, and then running with it and continuing to experiment with it to the point where you actually lose some of the things you’ve been doing throughout history.

What’s really wild about this is that the idea of fortified wine, I’m sure, it’s been around for a long time. Distillation is ancient, winemaking is ancient, but the idea of putting the two together — when I talk about prominence — this all started happening in the late 17th, early 18th century. The reason we know fortified wine today is mostly because of the relationship between England and Portugal. In 1703, there was a treaty between Portugal and England called the Methuen Treaty.

At the time, France and England were fighting. They had a history of trading together, but this was basically a trade war. It was also a time when Spain didn’t have a leader, and there was a lot of fighting to figure out who was going to take the throne. It was called the Spanish War of Succession. This was all happening right before the 1700s. In 1703, the Portuguese and England had a great relationship. They did in a previous war where they helped each other. England didn’t like France, so the Methuen Treaty said, “We are going to give preferential treatment to all imports from Portugal over any other country in Europe, especially France. We are taxing everybody else. We’re not going to tax you guys or we’ll tax you less. Therefore, we will now be doing business with Portugal. All trade stops with France.”

English wine merchants thought, “Well, I guess we’re going to Portugal.” English wine merchants start working their way into Portugal, specifically northern Portugal, into the Minho region. That’s in the northwestern part of the country. This is where the Vinho Verde wine region is. Vinho Verde these days is mostly white wine, but there was a lot of red wine being made back in the day there. It was fizzy and it was a little bit astringent — a little bit lean for the British palate — so they started moving further down the Douro River and they found the Douro Valley.

There they found red wine being made, but this was the complete opposite of the astringent, thin wine of Vinho Verde. This was austere, heavy, tannic, slap-you-in-the-face red wine. It came to be known by the English as black strap wine. Merchants in this area would actually shock it or dose it with a grape spirit to fortify or strengthen the wine and stabilize it — killing all the bad bacteria and all the yeast cells so they don’t start reproducing or fermenting in the bottle. They did this so that it survives the river all the way across the ocean to England. But it was still rough to drink.

The story goes that there was an English wine merchant who sent his two sons into Portugal to look for new wine. Apparently, the black strap was intense and they were looking for new wine as a business person. The sons go north of the Douro Valley into a place called Trás-os-Montes and they find, wait for it… a prominent monastery! Oh, my God, the monks are here, people. The monks are here, and leave it to the monks to figure it out.

To them, they were adding grape spirits as well to their wine, but they weren’t doing it after it’s all fermented and before bottling. They added grape spirit right in the middle of the fermentation process. What that did was just stop the fermentation in its tracks, killed off the yeast, all the volatile bacteria, and retained the amount of sugar that had not been converted by the yeast. The result was this red, boozy, soft, fruit-forward wine. And these guys thought, “Wow, this is absolutely delicious. This is amazing. Do you know how much money we can make on this?” But in British accents.

Then, they took that idea back to the Douro Valley, back to that wine region, and the idea of port wine was born. The word “port” is named after the second-largest city in Portugal on the Douro River called Oporto. That started it all pretty much because, at this time in history, the seafaring nations were out there looking for other places to live. The colonies over on the East Coast of the United States started happening from England. There was this island about 600 miles off the coast of Portugal called Madeira, and it was a major port of call between the Iberian Peninsula, Asia, and Africa. The seas were filled with ships either on trade routes or exploration campaigns, and it was the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, and the English just all out there.

They were traveling hundreds of miles away from their homes, possibly months or years at a time. This style of wine had a few advantages for what was going on around this time. When you dose wine with a spirit, a few things happen. Number one, I’ve mentioned this before, it kills off or renders impotent any yeast cells doing any activity in the wine. It also takes care of any volatile bacteria. So with the fermentation process stopped in the middle of the process, there’s a lot of sugar that hasn’t been converted, so the resulting wine is going to be sweet and a little boozy because you’ve brought this wine up to about between 15 and 20 percent alcohol by dosing it with a grape spirit.

The third thing — and the one thing that really brought this style of wine to the rest of the world — is the fact that all those things I mentioned make this wine very reliable for long traveling distances. In fact, the fortified wine made on the island of Madeira became very popular in the North American colonies that would be the United States. The fortified wine and barrels making the journey to the colonies actually improved by the time it got to the colonies. They actually tried to replicate that on land to have that quality of wine before it ships out. Just as a side note here, the fortified wines of Madeira are some of the most aged wines on the planet. The oldest wine I have ever tasted was a Madeira. Somebody said to me, “Hey, do you want to taste a wine that was made when Abraham Lincoln was president?” I was like, “… yes.” And he poured me a glass of 1865 Madeira. And it was awesome. Deep, dark, caramel, and almond. Oh, it was great. These wines are nuts, guys.

Another important port of call was Andalusia in the southern part of Spain. This is where the town of Jerez is. This is the holy triangle of sherry, meaning there are these three towns that form a triangle, and within that triangle is the growing region for sherry wine. This wine is unique because of the winemaking process. The yeast that is used is a different strain of yeast than we’re all used to for just regular wine. It’s a strain of yeast called flor. It’s a blossoming yeast, and it covers the wine in the barrel and protects it from oxygen while the yeast feeds on the sugar in the wine. It is a very unique style.

They then dose the resulting wine at the end of the fermentation and end up putting the wine in something called a solera system, where you have up to 12 barrels stacked on top of each other and connected. The wine stays in these barrels, and it filters down to the bottom layer, which is the oldest wine, and you draw off the oldest wine, and then everything filters down. This is called the solera system. Again, this is very unique to this area. This is something they came up with with the challenges they had. This is what’s so crazy about wine, especially this style. It’s really port, Madeira, and sherry. These are the big three that we see on our market to this day because they were very popular wines in the American colonies.

We were trying to make wine in the American colonies on our own, but while we were doing it, we were drinking fortified wine mainly from Spain and Portugal. As I said in the beginning, when you add a grape spirit to wine, whether it’s before the fermentation when you put it in the must and then let it ferment from there as you do in Australia for a wine called topaque muskat, which is extremely sweet — they have to get it started just before the fermentation process; or, whether you put it in the middle of the fermentation process or towards the end, it just opens up a whole new possibility of stuff.

So what’s happening here is the wines of port and Madeira and maybe sherry, but mostly port, became so popular in England, it was called the Englishman’s wine, and that’s a pretty big endorsement. With that popularity, all these different types of port came about throughout the years. And Madeira. Oh, my gosh, because Madeira was very popular in England, but it was very popular in the American colonies. So they had this new style of wine that was very popular, sweet, and it could travel. People were just creating all different kinds of ports to sell. They wanted to keep it interesting. I mean, they were experimenting with this stuff and they were creating these new styles within their category, but they were also hoping to sell the stuff and get it popular in England and all the other colonies.

I’m going over port because it’s just insane. You’ll see more port than any other fortified wine, really, on the American market. I mean, we’re actually making port stuff here in the United States but you’re going to see ruby port, which is the entry-level, easy-drinking, inexpensive style of port. Then, you’re going to see a reserve port, which is a premium ruby port with a little more depth and concentration. Then, you’re going to see tawny port, which is an amber-colored caramel, easy-drinking port. You’re going to see the aged tawny port, which is a higher quality of wine for tawny and it ages at least six years in wood. Then, there’s tawny age reserved, which has to see at least seven years in wood. Wood meaning barrels.

Then, there’s colheita port, which is a port from a single year, blended and not multiple vintages. Then, there’s the vintage port, which is different from the colheita port in that it has to be declared by a governing body to be a vintage. Finally, there’s the top of the top, the single quinta vintage, which is basically one property making the wine in a single vintage, and it’s very expensive. The last two we don’t see a lot of, but that’s just port.

For Madeira, the wines are either named after the variety in which the wine is made from or just the categories of dry, medium-dry, medium-sweet, medium-rich, rich, or sweet. And the names of the grapes are Verdelho, Boal, and Malmsey which is basically Malvasia. Malmsey is one of the most long-lived. That’s why when you listen to pirate stories in the Caribbean, they’re either drinking rum or Malmsey, because it could last on the ship forever.

And that’s not counting what is called the historical styles of Madeira. As I said in the beginning, styles are just lost to history. And I think there are like 11 of those. In Andalusia, in southern Spain where sherry is made — near Jerez in the surrounding towns — they do it a little bit differently with the flor and then they dose at the end, and they put it into the solera systems. These styles have the lighter style of sherry, which is very pale in color. They’re called fino or manzanillas. Then you have the darker sherries, which are called amontillados or olorosos. Oloroso means aromatic. They’re dark and caramelly.

Then, there is a very sweet style that the British called cream sherry, which is you take an oloroso and you dose it with a little bit of a sweet wine made from a grape called Pedro Ximénez, also just known as PX.

How’s your head? Are you a little bit dizzy? Was that a lot of information? Well, it is a lot of information, and that’s just scratching the surface. We didn’t even talk about Marsala. Also, in Roussillon in southern France, there’s an awesome style of fortified wine called Vin Doux Naturel. They’re not natural wines. Naturel just means natural flavors, which relates to them putting this wine into glass carboys or just big glass jugs and letting them sit outside in the sun for a very long time. We’re talking 20 or 30 years.

Then, they bottle them. And they are just nutty, almondy and sometimes they are called ranco. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right, but it means rancid. That’s just a rank. It’s not nasty, but it has a very intense smell, as this wine has been sitting in the sun for so long.

It’s just wild stuff, guys. And at some point on “Wine 101,” we’re going to go into each of these places and talk about them and get details. I’m going to get you guys all set up. This is just a nice, well-rounded discussion about fortified wine. We dipped into history a little bit. This will get you set up and get you to understand what these wines are about. So when you’re out there, you get a sense of what you’re about to buy or what you are looking at.

@VinePairKeith is my Insta. Rate and review this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from. It really helps get the word out there. And now for some totally awesome credits.

“Wine 101” was produced, recorded and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big ol’ shout-out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. And I mean, a big shout-out to Daniel Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darbi Cicci for the theme song. Listen to this. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new every day. See you next week.

The article Wine 101: Fortified Wines appeared first on VinePair.

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[thetaplowgroup]

Taplow Group – 6th Pandemic Business Overview

The Taplow firms have been active throughout the pandemic, this is the sixth in our Business Updates series from our partners around the world. The situation is showing clear signs of recovery although nuances exist in every country and region Human Resources Consulting Firm .

Key Findings:

Business Leaders: With re-start plans under way across sectors, leaders are watchful of subsequent “virus waves” and revising their plans to carry on working if sub regional lockdowns occur .

​Employees: Those who have restarted work are juggling employer and Government advisory notices with delivering within their roles. There is a growing impatience from those still in lockdown and Governments seem to be experiencing restlessness across workforces to return to work.

Companies: Positive signs from countries that have ensured they were active in locking down their countries, point to a V shape recovery. Problematic recovery is seen where Governments are not controlling the virus and economic indicators point to an L shape economy in 2020 with hopes of a bounce back in 2021 board member recruitment consultants .

AFRICA:

South Africa:

The pandemic is seeing countries in Africa going into various versions of “lockdown”.

The business community is striving to come to terms with the situation with the backdrop of little or in some countries no assistance.

Although Africa has not seen as many cases primarily due to there being less travel spreading the pandemic, there are notable clusters emerging.

ASIA: Australia:

Progress continues to be made in Australia on economic recovery and movement.  Several state borders have been opened for travel internally.

There continues to be some community transmission of Covid-19 that is untraceable, and this is slowing progress for a return of office workers. Major Central Business Districts continue to have Government directives to work from home if you can. Traffic has noticeably increased indicating there is increased movement of people for work.

The equities markets continue to rally towards pre Covid-19 levels. June 30th is the end of the Australian financial year. Companies and individuals will be finalising    affairs for this. There have been some indications Government will continue the fiscal and economic stimulus, particularly with the reporting that employment has reached 7.1% nationally.

There were some protests held in major Australian cities that resulted in large gatherings of protesters. The timing of the protests has been questioned when the health of the Australian people has been such a high priority. Major sporting codes have resumed competition with crowd attendance at the stadiums.

Australia’s international borders remain closed with very limited air travel services available.

India:

India, the third largest oil consumer, expects fuel demand to return to normal earlier than projections by the International Energy Agency and OPEC. At the end of June, India has already achieved 85% of demand compared to June 2019.

For defence procurement, the Government has enhanced the FDI limit through the automatic route from 49% to 74% to help global players to set up manufacturing facilities within the country and thereby supplement the domestic manufacturing capabilities.

​As a positive indicator, Reverse Migration has started in India i.e. several trains bound for major Indian cities housing Industrial complexes have started running with over 100% booking, since migrant workers are coming back to work showing signs of revival of economic engine.

India’s first Payment bank - Airtel Payments Bank's revenues rose 87 per cent to Rs 474 crore during FY20, driven by surge in digital payments, money transfer and offtake of new services, The Payments Bank sees a "massive headroom for growth" and its promoters remain committed to unlocking this potential.

​Indian Government is planning to launch Bharat Craft, an e-commerce portal, on the lines of Alibaba, and should soon see turnover on the platform to the tune of Rs 10 lakh crore in the next few years and this would benefit MSMEs in a big way. State Bank of India is working on setting up an e-commerce portal for marketing of products manufactured by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the country. The bank and the Government would jointly run the portal called Bharat Craft.

Singapore:

Up to S$920 million has been set aside to extend foreign worker levy rebates for firms in the construction, marine shipyard, and process sectors until the end of 2022. This will help these industries cope with significant higher costs of implementing safe management measures at workplaces.

Singapore’s manufacturing output fell 7.4 per cent year-on-year in May after two straight months of increase as demand weakened across most segments, with only the biomedical manufacturing cluster reporting gains. Excluding this cluster, the country’s output fell 10.4 per cent.

​Singaporean’s will be heading to the polling station on 10th July. This comes shortly after the announcement by the Singapore Government to dissolve the Parliament last week, paving way for the elections to be held just as Singapore emerges from Phase 2 Circuit Breaker.

A Fair Tenancy Pro Tem Committee under the Singapore Business Federation, SBF has been set up to develop a tenancy framework to deal with current and long-term issues, as well as establish industry norms on tenancy practices and terms between retail tenants and landlords. The formation of this new committee comes after months of simmering tension between retail tenants and their landlords.

New Zealand:

BNZ (one of New Zealand’s major banks) states that it is fortunate New Zealand is so exposed to the Asian region (especially China) and less exposed to the “old-world” countries of the United States, Europe, and United Kingdom. To put this in perspective, at the end of the June quarter, US economic activity is forecast to be 10.7% down on year earlier levels. Over the same period, the UK takes a 15.9% hit and the Eurozone 15.8%. Compare this with China +1.2% (though admittedly, its big hit was in Q1 when the annual decline was 6.8%), Korea -2.2% and Taiwan -2.2%. Putting all this together, New Zealand’s trading partner activity decline troughs at an annual -5.5%.

According to BNZ forecasts, New Zealand doesn’t get back to its pre-Covid starting point until Q3, 2022 but BNZ concedes that there are upside risks to its GDP growth view. To start with, BNZ has weaker-than-consensus expectations for New Zealand activity. BNZ is forecasting a contraction of 8.0% for calendar 2020 followed by a bounce of 4.8% in 2021. The consensus view is -6.1% and +5.9% respectively. Secondly, if the trading partner forecasts that are being espoused prove accurate and, in particular, if China takes off in the manner assumed, then it may be that New Zealand’s export performance will turn out to be stronger than BNZ has anticipated.

​Domestic air travel capacity in New Zealand continues to recover with expectations that it will recover to just under 80% of its pre-Covid-19 levels by the end of 2020  Life science executive search .

EUROPE: The EU region has seen a remarkable recovery in the past few weeks, Governments have reopened borders with neighbouring countries and regionally business life is returning in stages with positive results. Recent changes to regulations by the EU look to have saved Europeans “Summer Vacation plans” which are incredibly important for Southern European nations.

France:

The French economy is expected to experience one of the worst recessions in the world in 2020, according to the new forecasts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which now anticipates a 12.5% drop in 2020, compared to 7.2%, initially announced in April, in its latest global forecast. A recession close to that of Italy (-12.8%) and Spain (-12.8%).

IMF anticipates a rebound in growth for France at 7.3% in 2021, a figure close to that expected by the Banque de France (7%). This would be one of the strongest growth rates among developed countries. France is thus ahead of the United States (+4.5%), Germany (+5.4%), Italy (+6.3%) and Spain (+6.3%), according to IMF forecasts. However, "this apparent strong rebound would not allow the level of activity at the end of 2019 to be restored before mid-2022," the French central bank has already warned.

​The business climate in France recovered significantly in June, although it is still at a low level, according to data published on June the 23rd by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), the synthetic indicator of the business climate in France gained 18 points in June, to 78. If it "exceeds the level of the trough reached in March 2009 (70)", it "remains well below its long-term average (100)," INSEE said. The rebound in the indicator "is explained in particular by the more optimistic view that companies have of their business prospects, in all sectors, under the effect of the deconfinement," says the INSEE.

The deconfinement having "mechanically led to a recovery in employment in a number of sectors", these figures "are a sign of a gradual recovery in activity, but the situation remains difficult", the Labour Ministry stresses in a press release. Another indicator suggesting that the recovery is beginning on the French labour market, reports of hiring for more than a month in the private sector, excluding interim workers, jumped 75.9% in May in France, after two months of sharp decline.

To accompany the recovery, while trying to spare public finances heavily impacted by the measures put in place to try to avoid an explosion in the unemployment rate, the Government has notably decided to lighten the health protocol imposed on companies since June the 22d and is changing the partial coverage of activity with new regulation that will start from the first of July. Discussions are also under way with the social partners to change the unemployment insurance rules.

Germany:

Lufthansa gets funding of 9 billion EUROs to support the aircraft sector.

The Government's economic stabilisation fund is to acquire 20 per cent of Lufthansa shares worth 300 million euros, plus two silent partnerships worth 5.7 billion euros. Three billion euros will be borne by the development bank KfW. In addition, the Federal Government will be represented on the Supervisory Board through two mandates, whereby the mandates will be awarded to independent experts. The EU Commission's competition authorities have released the Lufthansa rescue package. However, the EU Commission has made its approval subject to conditions. The release of the recapitalization aid in the amount of six billion euros is subject to the condition that the largest German airline complies with obligations to avoid distortions of competition. These include that Lufthansa must relinquish take-off and landing rights at its main locations in Frankfurt (Main) and Munich.

At The Taplow Group Germany, Clients are reviewing their HR-strategy for 2020 and are starting to hire again – e.g. Electrical engineering and IT-companies. Others are planing to hire from September again.

Russia:

With the daily infection rate slowly decreasing since the beginning of June, Russia is further easing restrictions, and more companies are starting to shift back to working from the office. The country is now also allowing a one-time entrance to foreigners that are holding a highly qualified specialist Visa (HQS). This is an incredibly positive and essential step for businesses, as many expatriate General Managers were not able to return to Russia before this.

Like in many other countries, the automation and robotics industry was able to grow during the time of pandemic due to the high and urgent demand of mask and disinfectant producers to increase production capacities. Furthermore, we can see the trend towards automation growing in Russia in other industries as well. For example the first fully automated “no-contact” KFC opened in Moscow this month. Other sectors like pumps and pipelines have not been affected by Covid-19, but the ongoing low oil prices are influencing their business negatively. The fashion retail industry did suffer losses during the pandemic; however, leisure and sportswear producers were able to stabilise and, in some cases, even increase their business due to strong online business and advanced delivery services. In general, companies in Russia are trying their level best to keep their staff and are aiming at returning to business by the autumn and also restart recruitments by then.

Taplow Russia is receiving more requests for targeted salary research by local subsidiaries, as the salary statistics provided by the headquarters are too general and not specific enough for crucial positions. Salaries in Russia are varying a lot with wide ranges strongly dependent on the Region. Hence a general overview can seldomly showcase the real picture.

Spain:

Spain will be one of the countries that will suffer the greatest recessions among the main advanced economies and emerging markets.

12.8% contraction in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020.

CEOE gives green light to the extension of the ERTE (Temporary Employment Regulation Scheme) until 30 September.

UK:

The UK Government announced a reduction to the pandemic risk. This now sees retail, holiday venues, cinemas and importantly restaurants and pubs reopening from July 4th – dubbed as “UK Independence Day” by the media.

The airline industry is restarting but the Government’s 14 day “self-Isolation” scheme on entering the UK will severely restrict the travel industry to relaunch. There are plans being announced to form “Air Corridors” with EU and other European Countries. This will see UK summer holidays being saved along with a return to European business travel in Q3 2020.

Recruitment sector has returned. Many projects that were “stopped” have been reactivated and some businesses are starting to reassess their growth strategies now as they can see how the business has survived in the lockdown period.

AMERICAS: Latin America is the latest centre of the pandemic, North America is seeing signs of recovery but with numerous states seeing a rise in pandemic numbers, the situation could deteriorate quickly without clear leadership and plans.  

Brazil:

Brazil is seeing its fourth month of the pandemic impact. Number of cases and deaths are relatively high, comparable to the countries of highest indexes in Europe, but still below the US, in terms of absolute numbers.  The State of São Paulo responsible for a little over 20% of all cases in Brazil, both in infected population and in deaths started its gradual, well-structured recovery plan back starting June 15th. There is no collapse of medical or hospital/intensive care attendance, but only in a few cases in the Northern area some weeks ago.

The Brazilian economy has shrunk 6% in March and another 10% in April, according to bona fide sources. The numbers for the month of May are still being analyzed but should not be worse than April. According to the INC (Industry National Confederation), in May, the country has seen more industrial activity, an almost regular activity in the field. As a matter of fact, our crop this year will be a all times harvest record, estimated to reach 246.4 million tons of cereals, leguminous, and oleaginous crops, higher than 241.5 million tons in 2019.

Our official annual interest rate/SELIC  has dropped to 2.25%, and our current annual deflation rate is -1.6%, the smallest rate since 1979,  due to the current stage of depression. In fact, our 2019 unfinished recession was hit by this current pandemic recession.

Current key world-wide and our own strategic concern points out to the potential, eventual second Covid-19 pandemic wave and its consequences to the world economies.

USA and Canada:

North American markets have been very measured during the last almost 90 days since the COVID19 disruptions and lockdowns have been in place. Several phenomena are noticeable.

Current executive search and consulting assignments are moving slower as our clients are being very measured about adding more staff and team availability to participate in consulting efforts has been limited.  New roles are being actively considered but timing for hiring is still reasonably uncertain.  Action oriented consulting on new markets and new approaches to market are moving at a sub-optimal pace.

Some of our clients appear to be using the current environment to release their less successful employees and are being incredibly careful to avoid legal risk with re-alignment of functions.

Opportunities to revise organizational design and realign functions are being hampered by the lack of certainty.

The recent and continuing racial discord is distracting as corporations and faith communities are taking center stage rather than leadership from national or in some cases, state officials.

Curfews and “stay at home” orders are still in places in some areas causing significant distractions.

The news of this week about an increased rate of new COVID19 cases is not surprising as the lifting of “lock downs” is now elapsed for over 14 days.

Cautious optimism is just beneath the surface, but the unnecessary distractions must be mitigated.

We hope that you, your family, and work colleagues continue to stay healthy and safe. We at The Taplow Group are here to support you and your company through this crisis and beyond. We will be back with more updates soon!

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The personal state of affairs and troublesome kompakti?kas have helped to maintain a really homogeneous occupants of authentic Slavic persons.

This previous Soviet republic is essentially one of the most isolated country in The european countries.

They place great really worth of marital life and family group life.

An apparent favourite-Russia makes each of our record as a result of sheet amount of single, spectacular and engaging gals.

The conditional standing may be removed after two years of marriage.

One of the latest standard developments in this area is to hunt for brides to be in his campany regard to marital existence by ethnic. The fact is many people select to pay a modest amount of money to continue across the internet and look for excellent candidates. The World Huge Web is simply a chance to be able to get married in the best and plenty of cost efficient technique. In previous instances Hard anodized cookware wedding ceremony birdes-to-be to acquire conjugal romantic relationship have been deemed simply because which has a substantive amount of suspicion. Thank goodness in recent times the net has made this possible for Hard anodized cookware girls to showcase their particular supply relating to partnerships. A lot of individuals could feel that Hard anodized cookware birdes-to-be to receive conjugal relationship occur to end up being conceivable. On the other hand, they're usually noticed simply by trying to find emails, mailing handle or simply cellphone quantities.

A situation You Must Never Do With Find A Foreign Man

Experian, an industry research organization, reports the highest 10 worldwide internet dating sites attracted 12 million guests in 03 2013, up 29% via March 2012. International online dating websites present a wide variety of online communication, which include prompt messaging, e mail correspondence, webchat, phone number translation, digital items, stay games, and cellular-primarily primarily based chat. Foreign marriage businesses are regularly labeled as "mail-order bride" businesses. Oriental brides meant for matrimony are basically acquireable over the internet. It has resulted in it actually is healthier to get a loved one within the UNITED STATES or any kind more portion of the world. For the reason that with a number of internet sites you may submit a great utility for your spouse on the internet and could also be out-and-in inside the region in a couple of days. In lots of ways we certainly have become slightly extra merged into your ecu persuits.

The key's to find nationalities that retain their traditional values yet don't repress their municipal liberties of it is individuals too much. The balance between typical ideals and a free society can be difficult to hit. However , you will discover nations which may have accomplished just that. When one girls are believed of older at the age of 40, it reephasizes girls to search out the best person attainable in a young time. It creates an setting the place girls make smarter and much healthier decisions within their romantic human relationships. Women will probably worth hard-working, responsible, and sort guys versus “dangerous boys”.

How do you speak to a unique girl internet?

Top rated Tips for Beginning Conversations with Girls Web based 1 . Have a tendency say the initial thing that leaps into your head. 2 . Do say nearly anything like "Ur gorgeous. inch Women hear compliments like this all the time. four. Stop trying to be cool or perhaps arrogant. 4. Tease. 5. Always be fun loving and confident. 6. Chill out if this girl doesn't respond. More items•

The women had been advertised in on-line and offline "catalogs" to Southern Korean guys. It is not odd to find that many of girls on the lookout for partners are also able to solve down with all over the world brides. Even so, the go up within the quantity of overseas wedding brides is usually motivated by the established problem of ladies so , exactly who face cost effective constraints of their nations. Typically, the handful of can easily get a properly-educated and skilled gentleman in a in foreign countries country but still have him get married to the girl that has willing to whole abroad for your better position. Study a lot of details of the a number of around the world areas which were receiving such girls of all ages with regard to marriage.

An worldwide marital relationship agency can be described as business that endeavors to introduce both males and females of different international locations for the purpose of marriage, marriage, or communication. foreign bride matrimony Many of these marriage companies are based mostly near ladies in developing international locations. International marital life companies encourage girls to join up for his or her service providers, and aid communication and conferences with males via developed areas of North America, West Europe, Southern Korea, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Many people use the online world to discover local Hard anodized cookware brides to get. Matrimony is certainly an especially party together with the all over the world net has got taken idea one stage additional.

Who is the most beautiful lady inside the Philippines?

marian regato. Most Beautiful Female in the Thailand 2020. Nadine Lustre. Sanya Lopez.

Do you would have have any advice on romantic relationship for Dark-colored men? I discover it very exhausting to fulfill a mate within America. I did meet a Lebanese gal in school once and we got great biochemistry and biology. Whether you love to run, walk, or… walk (get your mind out of the gutter, folks, this web site is PG-thirteen! ) working out is a good approach to fulfill a potential mate while on trip. I’ve joined working groups and walking adventures in the mixed international cities I have travelled to and lived in, containing opened me as much as get together a complete new phase of hot, wholesome(! ) guys, each local people and visitors alike.

Peep Meetups. com, Couchsurfing, Facebook, Instagram, and/or the message board in your hostel or hotel for extra details about virtually any events to be had while youre on the town. We converse right from experience; I have had my fair share of romantic ventures (and misadventures, let’s be honest) while travelling. I have dated upon 4 prude and even reached the person I would personally finally arrive to marry in a special in Hong Kong (yes, within a membership in Hong Kong. Research our appreciate story here). Considering each of the research a single guy features doing prior to getting a wedded relationship partner. Relationships will simply endure inside the event you both are qualified to make eschew inside your wedding party. Gravitate toward dudes who definitely are in a position to preserve a constant operate, and when a man is jobless, make an effort to discover why. Straight, Bisexual… — — Adopt this link to see Test Cheater detail Message from your President Recently disregarded via the web-site.

Frequently, the aim of bots is to gain belief and get you pertaining to cash! It is an effective probability that your bride can be real if you happen to don't look at her requesting for money. One can possibly agree that a good day requires spending much money. To make a good impression in your day, you need to be in a position to spend a small bundle of money. Although displaying your time that you are able to create her think that a princess is a competent thing, it might be quite wasteful when you are uncertain whether the girl with the one or perhaps not. Nevertheless , online interaction does not require you to spend 1000's of us dollars on one lover.

Xem bài nguyên mẫu tại : It is far from Odd To locate That Many Of girls In Search Of Partners Are Additionally Ready To Fix Down With Worldwide Wedding brides However , The Rise In The Variety Of International Birdes-to-be Is Usually Fueled By The Determined Problem Of Girls So , Exactly who Face Inexpensive Constraints In Their Countries. Commonly, The Handful of Can Easily Get yourself a Well

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[ramrodd]

Top 10 CRAZIEST inventions of the Roman Army!!

COMMENTARY:

Let's say you were a senior centurion, roughly the equivalent of a Sergeant Major/Chief Warrant Officer, in Caesarea when Tiberius was Emperor and Pontius Pilate was your boss. You were a hereditary member of the Praetorian Guard, aka "The Italian Cohort", because you were a natural born Italian. You were at the climax phase of your career, but you could stay on the payroll the rest of your life without doing much more but keep busy in a centurion kind of way.

You had come to Palestine with Pilate, who. like Julius Caesar, was on an executive track in the Praetorian Guard. You had enlisted in the Italian Cohort, like Fergal O'Hanlon, you wandered away to take your own part in the Patriot's Game, though you joined the occupying force of the world and spent a great deal of time spying on the rebels in town. And crucifying them when you knew what you needed to know and you caught.

One of the things that kept you busy was running Pilate's intelligence services. Your actual boss, in many ways, was the spy master of the Praetorian Guard, Theophilus, back in Rome. Theophilus reported to the Praetorian Perfect, Sejanus, and was part of the functions Sejanus installed in the Praetorian Guard as part of his plot to become Emperor at Tiberius's expense. but, at the time you were in Palestine, you were busy implementing those same reforms at the various regional headquarters all over the world. You were the leading edge of what would become the Army General Staff in the American Pentagon and what ever ambition Sejanus may have had was above your pay grade and, as it turns out, above Pilate's pay grade.

About five years into Pilate's tenure (you will retire in Caesarea and maintain a little summer villa in Sopphoris, which combined the delights of the Galilee without all the Jewish stuff cluttering up the market place and la dolce vita of the region), a couple of things happen at the same time: you begin to surveille a Jewish holy man associated with another agitator called by the soldiers and spies "The Dunker" for doing some Jewish mumbo-jumbo down by the river and half-drowning his recruits to get in to his gang and Sejanus dragged out of the Senate and executed by decimation as an enemy of Tiberius.

This Jew, who your spies identified as Jesus of Nazarus, a little hamlet just down the road from Sopphuris, was the real thing. You didn't know what that real thing was, but He was about His Duty in the same way you are and, the longer you watched Him, the less dangerous He appeared (he could put a legion of fit young men the field, organize them and feed them in the blink of an eye, but the only thing He seemed to want to do was to entertain them and give them a good meal.

And, oh yes, heal people. Your own houseboy had become sick with some wretched local contagion and, on the advice of one of your Jewish intelligence assets, the leader of a Jewish community center you were financing as a listening post, suggested you ask this guy to do his magic and get your boy back on his feet. You owned him, the boy, but you loved him as your own son and would free him at his majority. So you did and, lo and behold, this Jesus told you your love for the boy healed him and that you were first among equals among the saints of the Jews. You don't know what THAT means, but is has something to do with being a faithful servant to Tiberius and a leader of your own servants. This Jesus was not afraid of you, nor angry, but pleased to meet you. It's like He had found something in a Roman soldier He couldn't find among his own people.

That was two years ago and you kept Him in the corner of your eye while you busied your self with stringing out your intelligence network out along the trade routes running across the land bridge into Africa from Europe and Asia.  Your encounter with this Jewish faith healer has quckened your interest in the Jewish religion and your listening post allowed you to indulge this fascination with their legends and traditions and apparently God-given need to argue over stories out of the great scrolls they trotted out on their idle day.  You knew their God, this Yaweh: you had heard Her ululations over the frenzy of battle, urging you forward "Follow ME! Follow ME!" and, onward, Roman soldier, you went. There was a great deal of their lives you couldn't share or witness because, well, you had to hack off part of your dick for full membership and you were perfectly content to keep it at the level of a hobby. You like building things and you hear gossip that helps you connect the dots with the material coming in from your spies. All in all, this Jesus was something of a Will O' the Wisp, not because He was concerned about Rome but from getting stabbed in the back by religious rivals. These Jews argue about everything.

And the fallout from the Sejanus purge added the personal interest of Tiberius in everything Sejanus touched, especially the executive side of the Praetorian Guard. Tiberius wasn't concerned by the reforms, in fact , endorsed them, but there were issues of loyalty that needed to be sorted out and Pilate had received a number of directives on dealing with the Jewish authorities that somewhat blunted your own effectiveness. Sometimes, it was useful to hack up a couple hundred locals just to make sure they are paying attention. Especially in Jerusalem, where arguing was the stock in trade of their fabulus temple, something Agustus would have erected in Rome. They were touchy about everything to do with Rome all the crosses in the world couldn't discourage and Tiberius ordered Pilate to accept it.

So, when this Jesus shows up on the doorsteps of the Pratorium in Jerusalem with a Jewish lynch mob demanding a lynching from Pilate, Pilate had his marching orders to kiss the Jews' ass and do what they wanted. You had never really briefed Pilate on Jesus because he wasn't a problem and Pilate had nothing but contempt for their religion. I mean, what god expects you to remain idle one day out of 7 ?  It was enough that they had a special legal arrangement to pray for the Emperor without sacrificing to him. Having to do their wet work for them with this harmless religious entertainer was the final insult. Pilate had the last laugh when he crowned this hapless man "King of the Jews"! Those Jews did back flips and chewed their scraggly beards in rage, but complaining to the Emperor that Pilate had fulfilled their request wasn't possible.

So, you hung this guy out to dry and Pilate was able to get another little jab at the Jews by letting friends of Jesus bury Him properly instead of leaving Him for the dogs or to rot on the tree. The Jews wouldn't leave it alone, though, and demanded Pilate post soldiers to keep the friends of Jesus from stealing His body and making trouble. So, you did and figured that would be the end of it,

But the next morning, when the soldiers came back from guarding the tomb, they had an incredible story about this Jesus coming back alive and escaping with the help of angels. Sixteen soldiers and the centurion in charge all had exactly same story about this Jesus getting away. Everything they said was incredible, but a lot of strange stuff happened around this Jesus and your first thought was to cover everybodies' ass if the question of someone walking away from a crucifixion and falling asleep while on duty came up.

You sent them to the Jews in charge of the lynch mob and explain what had happened. This was their mess and they needed to protect your men by protecting their own political interests, That worked out better than you expected, when the Jews gave them a healthy chunk of change to support the official Temple version that Jesus' followers had stolen the body.

The next thing you did was to take the story to Pilate and to prepare a report to Rome explaining what had happened and what background you had and let Tiberius know this was going on, which you sent up the chain of command to Theophilus. Another difference after Sejanus' execution was that Tiberius got the report, which he took to the Senate.

The way you know that Tiberius got the report is because everyone in Rome began to call the people who were followers of this Jesus "Christians", who had already begun to show up in Rome by the time Tiberius addressed the Senate. Your report gave Tiberius the word and Tiberius gave it to Rome.

As an invention of Roman soldiers, "Christian" would come to define the empire. Now, that's some CRAZY!

[ladystylestores]

WHO sounds warning on coronavirus ‘second peak’: Live updates | News

  The World Health Organization has warned of the risks of an “immediate second peak” as countries ease up on lockdowns, urging governments in Europe and the US to step up surveillance, testing and tracking measures to keep the disease under control.  

Spain has revised its death toll downwards by nearly 2,000 people after checking data from the regions and discovering some deaths had been recorded twice while others had not been the result of the coronavirus. 

Public anger continues to simmer in the UK over Dominic Cummings, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief political adviser, who apparently flouted lockdown to drive from his home in London to his parents’ house in the north when he suspected he had coronavirus. Cummings adopted a conciliatory tone at an extraordinary news conference on Monday but did not apologise.  

Nearly 5.5 million cases of coronavirus have been confirmed around the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 346,000 people have died, while more than 2.2 million have recovered.

Here are the latest updates:

Tuesday, May 26

06:00 GMT – Social distancing to be extended until June 29 in Germany

Germany plans to extend social distancing until June 29, newspaper Bild cited a draft document that still needs to be approved by the federal states as saying.

Asked about the report, a spokesman for the German government said talks were ongoing.

Bild said meetings in public places would be limited to a maximum of 10 people or members of two households.

Hello, this is Linah Alsaafin taking over the blog from my colleague Kate Mayberry. 

05:30 GMT –

I’m handing over the blog to my colleagues in Doha. Before I go, an update of developments so far this morning. As more countries ease their lockdowns (Saudi Arabia is the latest to announce a relaxation), the WHO is warning again of the dangers of a ‘second peak’. On the medical front Japan’s tests of Avigen as a coronavirus treatment have been delayed while US firm Novavax has started phase one trials for its vaccine in Australia. Meanwhile, a study has found some 8,000 more people died in Mexico city in the first months of 2020 than the average of the same period over the previous four years. 

05:20 GMT – Novavax starts coronavirus vaccine trial in Australia

US biotech firm Novavax has started trials of the novel coronavirus vaccine it’s developing.

It expects preliminary results from the phase one trial of NVX-CoV2373 by July.

The phase one trial is taking place in Australia. The second phase will include more countries.

04:35 GMT – Fujifilm COVID-19 drug research spills over into June

Research into Fujifilm’s Avigen drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19 will continue into June.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had said he hoped the drug would be approved in May if its efficacy and safety could be confirmed.

“The company will continue research into next month or so, and if an application for approval is received from the company, it will be promptly reviewed,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a regular briefing when asked about Avigan.

Suga said trials of a coronavirus vaccine could begin as early as July, raising expectations about a candidate developed by Osaka University and biopharmaceutical firm AnGes Inc .

Avigan is the subject of at least 16 trials worldwide, though there is concern the drug has been shown to cause birth defects in animal studies.

Japan has given up on approving Fujifilm Holdings Corp’s anti-influenza drug #Avigan this month for the treatment of patients infected with the new coronavirus, health minister Katsunobu Kato says.https://t.co/katTFchGxm

— Kyodo News | Japan (@kyodo_english) May 26, 2020

03:50 GMT – Australia borders won’t open “anytime soon”: PM Scott Morrison

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the country won’t open its borders “anytime soon” but the government was continuing to discuss a travel corridor with New Zealand. 

“I was speaking with Prime Minister (Jacinda) Ardern this morning and we’ll continue to have our discussions about the trans-Tasman safe travel zone,” Morrison told the National Press Club in Canberra.

03:15 GMT – Doctors group in Japan warn against masks for infants

Children under the age of two shouldn’t wear masks because they can make breathing difficult and increase the risk of choking, the Japan Pediatric Association has warned.

“Masks can make breathing difficult because infants have narrow air passages,” which increases the burden on their hearts, the association said, adding that masks also raise the risk of heat stroke.

“Let’s stop the use of masks for children under 2-years-old,” the association said in a notice on its website.

It added that there had been very few serious coronavirus cases among children and that most kids became infected from family members, with almost no outbreaks at schools or day care facilities. 

03:00 GMT – Mexico City registers more than 8,000 more deaths than usual 

Mexico’s capital registered 8,072 more deaths in the first five months this year than the average from the same period over the previous four years, an analysis by independent researchers showed on Monday, suggesting a possible surge in fatalities to the coronavirus pandemic.

Health officials have reported 1,655 deaths from the virus in Mexico City, out of 7,394 deaths nationwide. They have also acknowledged that the true death toll is higher, but difficult to estimate because of the low testing rate.

Read more on the study here.

Mexico has been hard hit by the coronavirus [File: Gustavo Graf/Reuters] 

02:50 GMT – Hong Kong airport to open for transit passengers

Hong Kong International Airport will open for some transit services from June 1, chief executive Carrie Lam said on Tuesday.

01:35 GMT – Saudi Arabia to loosen curfew from Thursday

Saudi Arabia will loosen its curfew for everywhere but Mecca from Thursday, according to the state news agency.

The curfew will be in force from 3pm (12:00 GMT) to 6am (03:00 GMT) local time.

From May 31 to June 20, it will also allow prayers in mosques with the exception of Mecca. The curfew and restrictions on prayer there will be relaxed from June 21, it said.

You can read more on that story here.  

More:

01:25 GMT – South Koreans required to wear masks on public transport

South Koreans now have to wear masks whenever they use public transport or take taxis.

Health Ministry official Yoon Taeho says masks will also be required on all domestic and international flights from Wednesday.

South Korea was reporting 500 new cases every in early March before it largely stabilised its outbreak with aggressive tracking and testing. But infections have been rising slightly since early May, with more people going out during warmer weather and eased social distancing guidelines.

“Until treatments and vaccines are developed, we will never know when the COVID-19 crisis could end, and until then we will have to learn how to live with COVID-19,” Yoon said.

00:00 GMT – WHO warns of “second peak” where COVID-19 apparently in decline

The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning that countries in which coronavirus appears to be in retreat could still face an “immediate second peak” if they let up too soon on measures to halt the outbreak.

WHO emergencies head Dr Mike Ryan told an online briefing that, while cases were declining in many countries, they were still increasing in Central and South America, South Asia and Africa.

Ryan said there was a chance infection rates could rise again more quickly if measures to halt the first wave were lifted too soon.

“We need to be cognizant of the fact that the disease can jump up at any time,” he said. “We cannot make assumptions that just because the disease is on the way down now it is going to keep going down and we are get a number of months to get ready for a second wave. We may get a second peak in this wave.”

He said countries in Europe and North America should “continue to put in place the public health and social measures, the surveillance measures, the testing measures and a comprehensive strategy to ensure that we continue on a downwards trajectory and we don’t have an immediate second peak.”

Reopened shops in Europe eagerly await the return of tourism

  Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m Kate Mayberry in Kuala Lumpur.

Read the updates from yesterday (May 25) here.

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[kakivino]

Great Wines of Italy 2018 Bangkok

Another December, another round of wine scrum. There I was, again, negotiating a capacity crowd of stemware-wielding, purplish teeth-baring oenophiles for my vinous spoils.

To be exact, a staggering 191 premium wines from 98 producers. James Suckling’s Great Wines of Italy 2018 Asia tour was back and bigger than ever.

The bustle of Bangkok was nothing compared with frantic scenes in Hong Kong or Beijing, observed visiting winemakers. That said, no sooner had the door opened things got into full swing.

More wines, less time

Something tells us perhaps the shortened programme — there goes our one-hour head start before people clock out from work — has something to do with cost management. Omission of some big-name labels suggests as much. Then again, it remained a small price to pay for the admission price we paid, in a country where wine spells luxury.

But I digressed. Naturally, the early birds flocked to wherever 100-pointer juice flowed, drained and vanished in record time, leaving a trail of empty Ornellaias or Tignanellos exhibited posthumously to disgruntled latecomers.

However, the sheer number of exciting picks meant there was no time for regret. Something else would come along.

Suffice to say, I was extremely content to have followed the heart rather than the points. Though I barely scratched the surface, my experience was all the more rewarding for when winemakers reciprocated aficionados’ enthusiasm with full attention and spirited exchanges in between pours.

Here’s my far-from-exhaustive fabulous dozen from the walk-around tasting:

Riecine ’14 Toscana Rosso Riecine Visibly limpid, hauntingly weightless. Beautiful mesh of red fruit, violet, white pepper and blood orange, laced with racy acidity and minerality. Smart, trim, nothing in excess. Picture a whispery tête-à-tête with Rooney Mara. Incredibly cerebral, soulful sangiovese in purezza. Some whole bunch, extended skin maceration, élevage in concrete.

Riecine ’15 Toscana Rosso La Gioia More quintessential Chianti Classico: richer, fuller by comparison. Expressive sour cherry and red fruit emerges front and centre, as sweet spice, sandalwood and leather chime in harmoniously. Judicious oak and supple tannins add substance to style with plenty of verve. A classy 100% sangiovese which lives up to its name: true joy in a glass.

The reason these translucent beauties shun the Gran Selezione pedestal, according to the engaging winemaker Alessandro Campatelli, is colour-obsessed red tape no less. To think that the Consorzio would’ve learned a thing or two from past blunders...

Pieropan ’15 Soave Classico Calvarino Heady aromas of pear, apple, grapefruit and spring flowers wow the senses with real piquancy and thrust. Dripping with pristine orchard fruit, chalky minerals and brisk acidity on the sapid palate. Leesy and complex, it closes long with a peculiarly saline, nutty twang. Decidedly scintillating. 70% garganega and 30% trebbiano di soave on volcanic soil, aged sur lie in concrete vats.

Pieropan ’15 Soave Classico La Rocca Harvested late and oaked, this radiant white bears richer concentration and definition, with a tropical (papaya!) twist. Honeyed and minerally, bright acidity lifts the tactile palate as it powers to a flavoursome finish. A peach of a wine, this offers fascinating contrast side by side with Calvarino yet there’s very little to separate them. 100% garganega on chalky clay, aged sur lie in large old casks.

Pietradolce ’14 Etna Rosso Vigna Barbagalli Lady Etna is enigmatic: floral, briary, smoky, with tar and menthol in the bouquet. Concentrated wild berry and slick oak inform the smoldering, youthfully austere palate. Distinctively earthy with pu’er-like finish. Mind the silken yet potent tannins. Has the stuffing, both gravitas and grace not unlike nebbiolo. From century-old, pre-phylloxera vines at contrada Rampante.

Alta Mora ’14 Etna Rosso Guardiola Likewise earthy disposition to this fragrant single contrada. Mineral vein underscores dark fruit, wet clay, tar, florals, pomegranate and Mediterranean herb, all framed by dense noble tannins. Tightly-knit and sleek rather than sinewy, with excellent complexity, line and length. More animated and savoury than Barbagalli. Nebbiolo again pops into mind yet with a personality all its own. A winner from 150-year old vines.

Nittardi ’15 Chianti Classico Casanuova di Nittardi Pure sangiovese from acidity-retaining altitudes at Castellina. Just old tonneaux and some time in concrete. Bright cherry is joined by violet, dark berries and a whiff of good ol’ barnyard. Sappy palate grips and extends with a dusty, spicy kick. Riveting. One-time owner, Renaissance rockstar Michelangelo Buonarroti — hence the artsy label tribute — makes for an excellent conversation piece.

Proprietor Léon Femfert revealed that Rhys, one half of the mischievous Matthews on The Wine Show — and an Emmy-winning actor — downed a glass filled to the brim, presumably in desperate need of inspiration for his label doodling showdown with co-host Goode. Guess what, it did the trick.

Castello di Volpaia ’15 Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Coltassala Red fruit, incense, florals and vanilla leap out of the glass. The extravagant perfume a result of sandy soil at Radda altitudes and 24-month worth of new French oak. Deep sweet cherry luxuriates in milk chocolate in the mouth, rendered a voluptuous spin by said wood. Fresh acidity and firm ripe tannins provide impeccable balance. Freshly-minted Gran Selezione, kind of self-explanatory if you find it a touch modern.

San Polino ’13 Brunello di Montalcino Helichrysum Spellbinding aromatics. Ample acidity and a wall of mouth-coating tannins shape the chiseled architecture which frames black cherry, raspberry, blue flowers, new leather, tobacco and baking spice. Brooding and tight, there is no doubting the latent potential i.e. depth, intensity and vigour. Long ferment, large Slavonian cask aging equal classic brunello par excellence.

It was the Fanti rep Luca Vitiello who pointed me in San Polino direction when I requested his recommendation. Nice lad. Speaking of which, his lithe, fresh-fruited Fanti ’13 Brunello di Montalcino is disarmingly charming, delivering succulent berries and watermelon with lip-smacking immediacy, not that it won’t benefit from some bottle age.

Argentiera ’15 Bolgheri Superiore Ornellaia next-table might have stolen the limelight, but this snazzy overachiever stole the show. Blueberry, blackcurrant, cedar, wood spice and graphite meld seamlesssly with super polished tannins and opulent oak to compose a symphony of decadence. Apparently well-endowed yet supple in its caress. The proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove.

Jermann ’16 Vintage Tunina Venezia Giulia An intriguing blend of chardonnay, sauvignon with autochthonous ribolla gialla, malvasia istriana and picolit. Intense nose and full-bodied palate are handsomely laden with gooseberry, apricot, white blossom and lemon drop in citrusy overtone. Steely acidity balances juicy weight with aplomb, as pithy aftertaste lingers on. Not for nothing does it consistently rank as one of Italy’s top whites.

A winemakers’ vintage

To say barolo is conspicuous by its absence would be an understatement. With 2014s’ bad rap weighing on my mind, this wettest of vintages in recent memory seemed to have put a damper on barolo’s hot streak at first taste. A weaker field and palate fatigue arguably didn’t help.

But hindsight is a beautiful thing, in all probability, so could be some of these ugly ducklings. What this winemakers’ vintage might lack in flesh and bones, it more than makes up for in finesse and sultry appeal, eager to please with minimal cellaring. 2014 might turn out to be nothing more than just a speed bump.

Between the inebriation and camaraderie, the wine-drenched evening was a lot to take in. Evidently, Bangkok embraced vino italiano with gusto — some had one too many, those jovial strangers who egged me on to give the irrepressible Frescobaldi ambassador, Erika Ribaldi a peck on the cheek, to which I respectfully obliged.

Good-natured fun apart, the tasting is always about finding that something which tickles your fancy. I’m constantly told, and often repeat, that to get to the bottom of Italian wines, non basta una vita. — KY

*** This is a sponsored post *** The sixth Asia’s largest Italian wine showcase will return to Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel on Nov 27. Visit jamessuckling.com/event for tickets or more info. James Suckling is one of the world’s foremost wine critics, having tasted more than 200,000 wines over three decades. A resident of Hong Kong, he lives most of the time on Cathay Pacific flying to the most popular wine regions in the world and tasting the best wines. James organises regularly large premium wine events in Hong Kong, Thailand, the US and Europe. Visit them at jamessuckling.com.

[fapangel]

So what is it with Trump sending troops to Afghanistan? I thought we were over this and Trump said he'll keep us out of unnessacary wars.

First off, I’d like to say that the worst part of the Republican’s revolt against their (neo)conservative establishment hacks is this sudden knee-jerk hatred for any foreign wars. When you see people calling the Afghan war against the Taliban and Al Quieda - you know, the PEOPLE WHO BLEW UP THE TWIN FUCKING TOWERS - as an “unnecessary war,” you know people are going full retard. I usually love Ann Coulter and her commentary, but I also remember her scathing attacks on the leftist wailing and crying over daring to involve ourselves in Afghanistan to root out the people who attacked our nation and murdered three thousand American citizens - so her current about-face whining about our presence in Afghanistan pisses me off no end. I’m sure there’s some Nuanced Reasoning for her change of heart, but the conclusion is still wrong. 

Afghanistan is neither a sideshow nor a “quagmire.” It’s something else entirely. Just look at a map: 

Afghanistan in the middle - to the east, China, and to the west, well, the west - or what the West calls the Middle East. Er, you get my point - it’s smack-dab in between Asia and the Middle East and Europe. 

Sun Tzu - (using the phrasing in the Denma Translation,) would’ve identified this as “dispersed ground,” “contested ground,” and “spread-out ground” all at once - as a crossroads, it’s often fought over by everyone (thus best avoided, if possible,) contested, (it’s valuable to you and your enemy, so it’s best to take it first,) and spread-out (difficult terrain that makes it hard to concentrate force, leaving you vulnerable to ambush, so you shouldn’t linger.) The difference between dispersed ground (where the local feudal lords are constantly warring for it) and contested ground (valuable ground you should take for your benefit and to deny it to your enemy,) depends on if you are one of those “feudal lords” that finds themselves in need of it or not. If not, stay the hell out. If you do need it, you have to take it, and quickly - and because of its location, there’s always someone that will want or need Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been the invasion route for the armies of Darius I, Alexander the Great, Qutaybs ibn Muslim, Mahmoud Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori, Ghengis Khan, Tamerlane, Babur, Ahmad Shah Durrani, the English Empire (three times,) and the Soviet Empire. It will never, ever not be strategically important. 

Which is probably why our alleged “allies,” the Pakistanis, are supporting the Taliban in their war against us in Afghanistan - which is extremely alarming, considering that the Pakistanis are getting really, really cozy with our de-facto enemy China. China, unsurprisingly, wants to rebuild the old Silk Road in the form of the “One Belt, One Road,” which - surprise! would have a branch that runs right through Pakistan. Thus it’s no surprise that the Chinese are actively working against American influence in the area by stroking the Pakistanis, because they want hegemony over the region and the trade route they’re attempting to build. This means they also support the Pakistani’s support of Islamic militants and terrorists (including the Taliban) inside Afghanistan as a way to fuck with the United States. Not all that indirectly, either; they’ve actually used diplomatic clout to defend Pakistani-based terrorist groups. And of course, because the miserable hellspawn bastards just can’t help themselves, the Russians are trying to cram their dick into Afghanistan again as well. 

You see the problem? Pulling out of Afghanistan surrenders central Asia to the Chinese and possibly the Russians. The problem, of course, is that whoever’s in Afghanistan is at a disadvantage, as they’ve got to fight the ground war, while their enemies outside of Afghanistan can use the radical Islamist fighters as a pawn against them. As it turns out, America is rather better at fighting a sustained war in Afghanistan than the decrepit and failing Soviet Union was, but it’s still a losing game, in the long run, to just keep throwing troops, lives and money into the nation if there’s no ultimate, permanent victory to be had…

… and Trump seems to agree. As the Guardian reports, Trump wasn’t too thrilled with a prior Pentagon plan to simply increase troop numbers - that was apparently the source of Trump’s displeasure in that meeting early this month that the media extensively smeared him over, accusing him of ignoring the experts in favor of his own restaurant-management experience. Naturally, these same disingenuous lying fucks are currently plastering the web with claims that Trump will definitely order thousands more troops to Afghanistan. That, of course, flies in the face of something Mattis said in an interview in an aircraft on its way to Jordan [archive] - most Western news outlets (NBC, CNN, etc.) I’ve seen have quoted - or more often paraphrased this line: 

“I’m very comfortable that the strategic process was sufficiently rigorous, and did not go in with a preset condition in terms of what questions could be asked and what decisions could be made,” he said.

 But I had to google for 45 damned minutes before I tracked down this, from the same damn interview: 

The president had to make strategic decisions,“ Mattis said.

"He delegated to me, when he came in, the tactical and operational decision. He did not delegate one ounce of the strategic decision.”

“He really did come in with very different courses of action, and I think he now needs the weekend to collect his thoughts about how he’s going to explain it to the American people.”

That’s a bombshell of a quote - that indicates Trump’s Afghanistan strategy is going to be significantly different. In the context of his open defiance of the Pentagon’s first plan, it’s clear that Trump doesn’t want to simply repeat the mistakes and ineffective policies of his two predecessors in Afghanistan - he’s looking for something new. And considering that, as Mattis said, even the budget officials were party to the talks - as well as his much-sneered at questioning of whether Afghanistan could help pay for the costs with their mineral wealth - it’s clear that Trump is interested in sustainable solutions; ones that we can find funding for indefinitely. In other words, a way out of the zero-sum game, a way to make it impossible for the radical Islamic terrorists and their patrons - China, Russia, and Iran - to exploit the attrition math that strongly benefits insurgencies. 

Note that the Daily Mail, the much-mocked UK tabloid, also quoted these very important parts of Mattis’s comments, but the Washington Post did not, (despite finding column inches to mention Charlottesville again for no damned reason,) and paired it with this lovely op-ed predicting Trump would just bump troop levels and reveal no new strategy of any consequence, because ho-hum, it’s just hopeless, it’s just a quagmire. 

Once again, you have been misled by the media’s control of the information flow, their lies of omission - and once again, all their lies and smug prognostications are going to be shoved right down their throat when Trump climbs up on that podium at 9PM. 

They never, ever learn. 

[jcbanana-blog]

A Child in China

I was born on the 9th of November 1996 from the south of China in the Guangdong province a city-town named Tai-Shan. Tai-Shan is a miniature city not big enough to be called a city but slowly developing into one also they are becoming more and more modern. My parents were not from a rich family, they were very poor. They had to sell fruits and many little snacks on the street to make a living. Before they decided to live in the city, they were living in a small village called JiShui it’s in the area of Shuinan just south of Tai-Shan. The reason why they decided to move into the city is that they had their first child and that was my sister. They want a better life for her and did not want her to be trap in the village where there was no future, therefore, they left to the city to make a better life and opportunity for her and for themselves. Six years later I was born, I didn’t have much memory when I was a child in China as I was too young to understand a thing. I didn’t remember the times I lived in China; they were not clear memories but I can pick up little by little of each piece of the puzzle. With the help of my grandma, I was able to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together, didn’t know if it’s true but it was better not knowing anything at all. So apparently on the day that I was born my father was not there, when my mother gave birth to me, it was my grandmother and her younger brother that stood beside her. As my father has already left to New Zealand working as a chef in a Chinese restaurant, he accepted the offer or should I say he had no choice but to go as we needed money. So yea the day I arrived in this world my father was not there, but this is considered to be quite common in China during those times as when you are from a poor family, the first priority was to earn money to support the family. According to ‘Academy for cultural Diplomacy the first set of Chinese Diaspora happened between 1850 to 1950, many Chinese workers left their homeland in search for employment in Southeast Asia and they were mostly male peasants from the coastal province’. During the 1950s to the 1980s, there were widespread violence and instability in the region so the Chinese migrants shift to more industrialized areas such as North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia’.  

“Chinese Diaspora.” Academy for Cultural Diplomacy. Accessed May 26, 2019. http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/index.php?chinese-diaspora.

(Ding,2010) Ding, S. (2010, July), “Sons of the Yellow Emperor Go Online: The State of the Chinese Digital Diaspora”, Global Migration and Transnational Politics, Working Paper No. 13, Available at:http://gmtp.gmu.edu/publications/gmtpwp/gmtp_wp_13.pdf

After my grandmother told me about this, I was not mad of my father I was grateful because without my dad’s decision I won’t have come to New Zealand and met so many great people.

During the time I lived in China, my family faced a very serious problem, and that problem was me. As the one-child policy still exists during my time of birth, therefore they had to pay a fee so that I could get an identity to live in this world. This was one of the hardest times for my family as they had no money to pay for the fee and they couldn’t ask for help either as other members of the family were also poor. But I got lucky my mum’s aunty from America was coming back to China for a visit and heard about my family’s situation so she decides to help us to pay for the fee. What I got told was not a small lump of money, the fee was about 24,000 yuan and this considers being a lot of money during that time. I was happy when my grandma told me about this, I was very thankful towards her and I’m still is, saving my family and my life from this terrible occurrence. I felt like I owe my mum’s aunt a great deal as she was the one who gave me a second life in this world.

A few years later my dad came back to Tai-Shan to visit the family and also this was the first time I met my dad and it did not end well. I feel like this was where the conflict between me and my dad all started. The first time I encountered with my dad was that he picked me up as soon as he entered the house and I gave him a hard slap on the face as I did not know he was my dad. Honestly, I don’t remember this happening at all, I have got this information out from my grandmother. He put me down straight away and the whole family was in shock. This was the first time I ever hit my dad and it also will be the last. After he stayed for a week, he went back to New Zealand as he was working on getting the rest of the family over. Once my dad got it sorted, my mum, sister and I moved over to New Zealand shortly after. Apparently, I did not want to leave at the start as I was scared of what was going on so I hanged on to my uncle’s leg and wouldn’t let go but at the end, they tricked me with candy so I let go and then we were on the plane to New Zealand.

[sophiatekra]

Baku Azerbaijan Tour Package From Just Click Travels Pvt. Ltd.

Azerbaijan, the ultimate Caucasian country and, probably, one of the least visited places in both Europe and Asia, is a fascinating and unique country, as it is the place where East literally meets West.A real blend of Europe, the Middle East, and the Soviet Union, for years, people have struggled to figure out where it actually belong:Is it part of Asia or, perhaps, Europe?Well, the truth is that you really can’t tell, because the imaginary line that separates Europe from Asia goes through the middle of Azerbaijan.This imaginary partition is not only geographical but it has also defined the cultural lifestyle of the Azerbaijanis who, due to their geographic location and history, have adopted customs from both continents.After going backpacking in Azerbaijan twice, I have compiled all the places I visited in a 1 to 3-week itinerary by Just Click Travels Pvt. Ltd New Delhi India, including plenty of places off the beaten track.Backpacking in 

Azerbaijan: 1 to 3 week itinerary

Quick tips for backpacking in Azerbaijan

When to go – If you want to visit the mountains, the best to visit is from April to October, or only summer, if you want to do some trekking. In Baku and around, the climate is continental, which means that summer is utterly hot and winter extremely cold. Therefore, unless you want to do some serious trekking, mid-spring, and mid-autumn would be the ideal time to go backpacking in Azerbaijan.Visa for Azerbaijan – When I first visited the country in 2016, you had to apply through the classic embassy process but now, since January 2017, the Government has liberalized its visa regime and most countries can apply for an e-visa through this portal. Typically, it costs 23USD and takes 3 working days. The urgent visa costs 50USD.How to move around – Backpacking in Azerbaijan is very easy, as there is a wide public transportation system, even to the remotest towns and villages. Typically, locals travel in marshrutkas, the small mini-vans from the former Soviet Republics. They leave once they are full and are very, very cheap. Local shared taxis are also common.

Azerbaijan is an adventurous destination and, as such, you must go there with the proper travel insurance.I strongly recommend World Nomads for the following reasons:

It is the only company that covers you with an unlimited budget

It covers the largest number of adventurous activities, something really useful in this kind of country

You can apply while on the road (many companies don’t allow that)

Backpacking in Azerbaijan – 1-week itinerary

Most travelers I met were backpacking in Azerbaijan for just 7 days.No problem because a 7-day Azerbaijan itinerary is enough to get a decent feeling of the country.1-week Azerbaijan travel itinerary – Map

Day 1, 2 – BakuOnce the world’s top oil producer and one of the top candidates for the World Expo in 2025, today Baku is a modern metropolis which will leave the visitor more than surprised.Despite being a Muslim capital, it has only a small number of mosques, which means that Baku is mostly secular but people are still quite traditional.From a pretty, historical old city, to the most extravagant luxury buildings and all sort of pubs, bars, and restaurants, Baku has it all.

Things to do in BakuYou can visit the Old Town, where you can find perfectly restored buildings from the 7th century; stroll down the promenade, visit ancient temples or check out some futuristic buildings.For more information, I wrote a very comprehensive guide:Where to stay in BakuBackpackers Hostel – Sahil Hostel – A very busy hostel, as it is cheap and the facilities are great. It is also a cool spot to meet fellow-travelers.Budget Guest House – Khazar Old City Guest House – A beautiful traditional house in the heart of the old city. Recommended for couples or those who are on a budget but don’t want to stay in a hostel.Mid-range Hotel – Denize Inn Boutique Hotel – The boutique hotel with the best reviews in town, also located in the old part of Baku.Top-end – Four Seasons – Located in a very beautiful building, this is the best 5-star hotel in Baku.

Located 50km south of Baku, Qobustan is one of the country’s top tourist sites for having some of the most ancient petroglyphs ever found, but also, this is the place where you will discover the real ex-Soviet Azerbaijan.I recommend you come here on a day trip from Baku.

Things to see and do in QobustanPetroglyphs – During the Stone Age, around 12,000-15,000 years ago, when the Caspian coast was richer and more fertile, a big group of hunters settled down in a set of caves in which they carved more than 600 petroglyphs (from the Greek words petros meaning “stone” and glypheinmeaning “to carve”). Today, many of these stone carvings still remain and, the Qobustan Petroglyph Reserve has become a UNESCO-listed Heritage Site.Mud volcanoes – Azerbaijan has the largest mud volcanoes in the world, which are formations created by geo-exuded mudBy the way, if you want to make things easier and go on a tour, I recommend the guys from GetYourGuide, which offer a tour that includes a visit to the petroglyphs + mud volcanoes + an ancient mosque from the area.

Day 4, 5, 6 – Quba, Xinaliq, LazaA region with immense historical importance, the Greater Caucasus has some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe and, in Azerbaijan, Quba is one of its main gateways.Located 180km north of Baku, Quba is a small city and a great base for exploring the Caucasian villages around it.QubaQuba doesn’t really have touristic sites but it is a very local city with a great bazaar and a very tangible local vibe.Some travelers prefer to stay here and then do day trips to Laza or Xinaliq, while the most adventurous prefer to stay in a mountain homestay.I decided to stay in Quba for 4 nights because I came in November and it was cold in the mountains.If you are short of time, you could actually skip Quba and go straight to Xinaliq from Baku, stay there overnight and come back to Baku on the next day.Otherwise, I recommend you spend the first night here, check out the local vibe and go to Xinaliq on the day after.Where to stay in QubaBackpacker Hostel – Hostel Bay Quba – If you are looking for a budget option, as far as I know, this is the only hostel with dorms in town. However, neither cleanliness nor facilities are their strength precisely but, at least, the owner is kind.Guest House – House in Quba – A great, traditional guest house, a bit expensive for solo travelers but it has 3-bedroom rooms which are great value for money.

How to get to Xinaliq from QubaThere is no public transportation and the road is a muddy mountain road, but an amazing one.In high season, you can find local shared taxis but I came out of season and had to go on a private taxi. In 2016, I paid 30AZN (18USD) for a round-trip taxi. The waiting time was pretty much the whole day, basically because the driver was from there and he had some business to do.In 2018, they were already asking for 40AZN (23.50USD), which is understandable, as the tourists in the area have increased exponentially.Where to stay in XinaliqThere are quite a few homestays in Xinaliq, most of them being brand-new.One piece of advice is that you should choose a guest house that includes breakfast because those that charge it separately ask for a lot of money for every meal.

LazaLaza is another Caucasian village, not as high as Xinaliq, but very beautiful as well.In winter, it becomes the most popular ski resort in the country, so there are all sorts of accommodation, from budget lodges to 5-star hotels and homestays.The village itself, nevertheless, is still untouched and there are many day-trek opportunities.Some readers of Against the Compass who didn’t have a lot of time asked me whether I would recommend Laza or Xinaliq. Both places are equally pretty but Xinaliq is higher and the road to reach it is epic, so I would choose Xinaliq.Like Xinaliq, visiting Laza from Quba requires a full day, so plan accordingly.

How to get to Laza from QubaA one-way taxi costs 15-20AZN (9-12USD).If you want to go by public transport, you first need to take a bus to Gorus (1AZN, 20 minutes).From Gorus, you have two options: either take a direct taxi to Laza (10AZN) or catch the noon bus to Kozam. You should let the driver know that you are going to Laza, so he will tell you where to get off. From there, you have to walk up the road for around four to five kilometers but you can hitchhike.Where to stay in LazaBudget Homestay – Laza Guest House – If you want to stay in a cheap, traditional house with a super, lovely family, this is your place.Day 7 – Back to BakuThere are, of course, many marshrutkas going back to Baku. If you miss the last one, there should be local shared taxis. The taxi station is outside of the bazaar and the bus station is here: 41.371446, 48.553006. Backpacking in Azerbaijan – 2-week itineraryIf you are backpacking in Azerbaijan for 2 weeks, after Quba, you can go all the way to Sheki and Zaqatala and visit some cool spots in between.2-week Azerbaijan travel itinerary – Map

Day 1 to 8 – Baku, Qobustan, Quba, XinaliqAlready explained but, if you have 2 weeks, I would definitely stay 1 extra day in Baku and even 1 extra day in the mountains around Quba.  Day 8, 9 – LahicHome to artisans and blacksmiths, Lahic is the Azerbaijani capital of handicrafts, a region that, due to its harsh mountain climate and isolation, developed other types of subsistence.Lahic is a medieval-looking town full of handicraft shops which can only be reached through a spectacular road that goes along the edge of some very jagged, frightening cliffs.The landscape is composed of velvet-smooth rolling hills, similar to

Kyrgyzstan

, so trekking here is dope.You can actually trek from Lahic to Xinaliq in 2 days and, apparently, it is a really awesome trek, but you should only attempt if you have some experience, as there is nothing in between, so you need to be self-sufficient. The trail is on

maps.me

.How to get to Lahic from BakuAgain, marshrutkas leave from the main bus station in Baku. The easiest way would be to take one to Ismaili and, from there, find a second marshrutka or local shared taxi to Lahic.Ismaili is located after the intersection that leads to Lahic, so a more adventurous and quicker way would be getting off before, at that intersection, and hitchhiking (or waiting for a marshrutka) from there.Where to stay in LahicHomestay – Ancient Lahij Guest House – Lahic is about homestays and this one is the most comfortable and recommended, run by a lovely local family that makes amazing local, warm meals. Look no further.Day 9, 10 – IvanovkaSorry for the expression but I fucking love Ivanovka.Most people don’t, but I do.Ivanovka is, in fact, not a place for everyone but, if you are interested in history and dark tourism, you are going to absolutely love this place, as it has a significant population of Molokans, a Christian branch, or a sect, from eastern Europe, mainly Russia, that didn’t get along with the Russian Orthodox Church.Two centuries ago, during the Russian Empire, the Russian Orthodox Church kicked the Molokans out of Russia and, for some reason, they all ended up in a small village called Ivanovka, located in today’s Azerbaijan.In Ivanovka, most signs are in Russian and many of its inhabitants are blue-eyed blonde people.

What to actually do in IvanovkaThe main reason to come to Ivanovka is to visit the collective farms.And what is a collective farm?To make it even more surreal, this is one of the very few places in the world where Soviet collective farms still exist.Basically, they are farms which, during Soviet times, were controlled by the Soviet government, meaning that they were like public companies where the farmers were just employees.Today, these farms are fully functional and not much has changed since the Soviet Union: they still use the same rusty machinery and people working there are employees. To be honest, the ownership is partially private now but I was told that the Government still has a big share.

In my second visit, in 2018, I entered the complex twice and spent one hour there until a big guy with a fancy car came and, gently, kicked me out. He was a big boss but workers just ignored me.Many people have emailed me saying that they either didn’t find it or they were not allowed to get in. The reason is that the main entrance is secured by a guard, so you need to enter from the other side:The yellow pin is John & Tanya Guest House.The red pin is center of the actual Collective Farm complex.The green pin is where you can access from.

Seriously, if you have the time, don’t miss Ivanovka in your Azerbaijan travel itinerary.How to get to Ivanovka from BakuFrom Baku, take a marshrutka to Ismaili, located on the main road, 22km from Ivanovka.Once there, take a taxi to Ivanovka, which shouldn’t cost you more than 3-4AZN. Hitchhiking is also possible. I did it on the way back.Where to stay in IvanovkaBudget Guest House – John and Tanya Guest House – The owner is a young local guy from Baku (son of Tanya). It is a good guest house. I stayed here twice, in 2016 and 2018. The rooms haven’t changed much but, when I first came in 2016, they were offering local home-made meals which were delicious. In 2018, they have a set menu which mostly consists of international food, so that was a huge downgrade for me.

Also situated in the heart of the Caucasus, Sheki is, by far, the most tourist-friendly destination in Azerbaijan, as it’s home to a large cultural heritage, defining almost 3,000 years of Azerbaijani history.Sheki was an important market place on the Silk Road, linking the Caucasus with Russia.Awesome day hikes, the best local food and beautiful medieval architecture which reminds one of many villages in Europe, make Sheki a must place to visit.Most cultural heritage can be found inside Sheki’s fortress and the Palace of Shaki Khans, which used to be the Khan’s administrative building, is claimed to be the most iconic building in South Caucasus and, also, a UNESCO-listed site.

Visit Kish on a day tripAround 10 kilometers from Sheki, Kish is a lovely village with tile-roofed houses and stone pavements, located in a valley that looks towards high-altitude snowy peaks.Kish can be easily visited on a day trip from Sheki. I walked there and took me around two hours, with frequent stops.The village has a beautiful cemetery with epic valley views. The most iconic building in Kish is an Albanian church, which was built by the commonly called mysterious Caucasian Albanians, a Christian nation that once lived in the northern part of Azerbaijan.

How to get from Ivanovka to ShekiFrom Ivanovka, you must go back to Ismayili and get off at the exact same place where the bus coming from Baku dropped you off.Simply, wait there for any local bus going to Qabala. From Qabala, take a second bus to Sheki.

Where to stay in ShekiBudget Homestay– Ilqar’s Guest House – Ilqar is a knowledgeable, local guy who speaks awesome English. He has a couple of double rooms which can be shared with other backpackers. It’s a great homestay for the most budget travelers.

Guest House – Guest House Sah Ismayil – One of the best guest houses in Sheki this is the best choice for couples or travelers who are looking for something which is not a hostel for backpackers. It’s very affordable too and it has a lovely garden where to hang out.

Day 13, 14 – Zaqatala, back to Baku or go to GeorgiaFor the following days, your Azerbaijan itinerary will depend on where you are going next.Going back to Baku requires a full day, so if you need to catch a plane, better go there the day before.If you are going to Georgia, I recommend you stop in Zaqatala. That’s what I did. I spent a few hours there, just exploring its fortress and busy square. It has its own charm.The place is also famous for dushbara, a local dumpling soup. You can find it in some restaurants in Baku but it is originally from here, so you will find the best. Just go to any of the local restaurants nearby the station, in the center.How to go to Georgia – From Zaqatala, take a marshrutka to Balakan (like 1AZN) and, from there, take a taxi to the border. Very easy and straightforward. Once in Georgia, you will officially be in the wine region called Kakheti and, from the border, you can find transportation to Signaghi.If you have more days, continue reading 🙂

Backpacking in Azerbaijan – 3-week itineraryIf you have 1 extra week for backpacking in Azerbaijan, consider exploring the region around Ganja and go to my favorite place in the country: Nakhchivan.The only problem is that, in Azerbaijan, you can’t really follow a loop but you always have to go back to Baku and make some inconvenient detours.3-week Azerbaijan travel itinerary – Map

Day 1, 2, 3, 4 – Baku and QobustanAlready explained.Day 5, 6, 7 – Autonomous Republic of NakhchivanHave you ever heard of Nakhchivan?Nakhchivan is an exclave of Azerbaijan, which means that it is geographically separated but it belongs to Azerbaijan.It is actually located between Turkey, Armenia, and Iran.Nakhchivan was actually the first territory to ever declare its independence from the Soviet Union, becoming the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan and, one year later, it became part of Azerbaijan. Today, it is an autonomous region with its own Parliament and Ministries.

For decades, this region has been in complete isolation, so that’s why the people there have a distinct culture and, basically, you won’t see any tourists at all.In fact, this is one of the most off the beaten track places I have ever visited.To be very honest, if I was you, I would go to Nakhchivan even if I only had 7 days in Azerbaijan.

There are loads, loads of things to do in Nakhchivan and you really need a few days to visit it.Nakhchivan City – The capital of the region has plenty of mausoleums, like the one where Noah is buried. Actually, it is said that Noah anchored his ark right in the middle of Nakhchivan.Alinja Castle – An epic medieval castle placed in an even more epic location.Ordubad – The second largest city has a beautiful historical old town.Qarabaglar – Beautiful mosque and MausoleumFor more information, read this post I wrote for Chasing the Donkey:

How to get to NakhchivanIf you are in Azerbaijan, the easiest way is flying in from Baku. Tickets are inexpensive and the rate is always flat. You can book them through Azerbaijan Airlines.Alternatively, you can enter from Iran but just the Iranian visa costs more than a round-trip flight from Baku. You could also travel overland from Turkey.Where to stay in NakhchivanThere are only 2 hotels and neither of them are budget.Alternatively, you can try to Couchsurf. There are 1 or 2 active profiles.Tabriz Hotel – Located in the city center. I used to come here for coffee and work for 2 hours in the morning. They claim it is a 4-star hotel but it isn’t really. Still, it is the best option in town.

Duzdag Hotel – Fancier but the location isn’t great.

Already explained. After flying back to Baku, go north. Day 11, 12, 13 – Ganja, Dashkashan and GöygölAfter visiting the mountains, you need to go back to Baku and, from there, take a marshrutka to Ganja.Ganja is the second largest city in the country but, since it is not on the way to Sheki and northern places, not many travelers visit it.The first thing you need to know about Ganja is that, despite being the second most important economic center, it is miles away from the modernities of fancy

Baku

.In fact, I was very surprised to see some streets in the city center are still unpaved, which clearly shows the obvious corruption that tended to focus all resources on the capital.If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know that I always defend this sort of barely-visited destinations but this time I won’t, because I really didn’t like Ganja.I didn’t like it because it is just a big city where there isn’t much to do besides visiting some buildings in the city center and a lively market. You can see nice markets all over the region, and I personally think that Ganja is not worth the detour.However (there is always a however 😉 ), Ganja is a great base to explore some wonders which are very close by plus it is on your way to Georgia if you plan to cross the southern border, the closest to Tbilisi.Day trip to DashkashanWOW, Dashkashan was a big surprise to me.I remember talking to a local woman in the train from Tbilisi to Baku, when I asked her to tell me her favorite place in Azerbaijan.She said: Dashkashan.I saved it on my map and since I had some spare days to visit around Ganja, I decided to go there based on her recommendation but I didn’t look for any information about the place.That woman had told me that the area was very beautiful, and those mountains were nice indeed, but what she didn’t tell me is that Dashkashan was an old Soviet mining town.

When I arrived there and saw those big skyscrapers popping out among mountains, I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on but then, when I kept walking, I suddenly saw a huge abandoned mine, so I realized that Dashkashan must had been a very prosperous mining town during the Soviet Union, similar to Chiatura in Georgia, so that is why they built all those big buildings.The mining activity has decreased but, today, they still extract some gold and other minerals.I spent just a few hours going around but I wish I had more time. I also hired a taxi driver who took me around to a couple of places for 8AZN.How to get to Dashkashan from Ganja – Easy-peasy. You first need to go to the bus station on the western part of the city. Here: 40.702096, 46.320566. A taxi shouldn’t cost more than a few Manats.  From there, you need to take a marshrutka that costs 1 miserable Manat. The journey takes around an hour and a half.

Where to stay in GanjaBudget Hostel – VM Hostel – A pretty quiet and cheap hostel but everything super new and clean. Besides me, there was one German backpacker, that’s it. Highly recommended as a base to explore around Ganja.Nicer – House in Ganja – Centrally located run by a very hospitable local couple. It’s like an apartment and they rent rooms.