#i get an average of 2-3 crushes per decade

[speed-seo]

Uncover the Underused B2B SEO Strategies Your Competitors Use to Crush Your Lead Gen

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often treated as an afterthought in B2B marketing. But what if I told you that a strategic SEO approach could help you generate, on average, 3X more leads than your top competitor in just 6-12 months? It's true - but you need to move beyond the SEO basics and get strategic with underutilized tactics tailored specifically to B2B buying cycles. In this comprehensive guide, you'll discover insider strategies on intent-based keywords, pillar content, backlink building, technical SEO, and busting myths holding your SEO back. With over 1,000 words of tactical advice, this is the guide your competitors don't want you to read! Laser-Focused Keywords Deliver 3X More B2B Leads Optimizing for informational, intent-driven keywords is a proven way to generate more leads, yet most B2B brands only target product and service terms. Here's how to uncover the questions and pain points your customers have at every stage of their journey. Move Beyond Keyword Checklists with This Research Rather than rely on generic keyword tools, take the time to dig into the search questions your ideal buyers have as they move through the funnel. Tools like Google's Keyword Planner certainly have a place, but also analyze chat logs, voice of customer data, and sales call transcripts to reveal actual language used. Surveys and support tickets are a goldmine for uncovering informational search terms. Align SEO to Each Buyer's Journey Stage With this expanded keyword research, you can now optimize pages and content to target each stage of the B2B buying journey. For example, attorneys in the awareness phase may search for "how to reduce legal discovery costs" while those evaluating solutions look for comparisons like "ediscovery software features". The Results: 3X More Leads in 6 Months One B2B client using this intent-driven approach saw a 206% increase in organic leads in just 6 months. Their competitor targeting the same persona saw only a 68% bump. By aligning SEO tightly to informational search queries, they tripled their competitor's leads. Pillar Content Sets You Apart as an Authority Forget thin blog posts that barely scratch the surface. To really demonstrate expertise around topics your prospects care about, you need pillar content. I'm talking epic guides, comprehensive ebooks and toolkits - the type of resources people happily hand over their email address to get their hands on. In my decade of doing B2B SEO, I've seen first-hand how pillar content can transform a company's lead gen strategy. Become a Trusted Resource Here's the truth - people want to learn from brands they trust. In competitive spaces like legal, finance and healthcare, establishing trust is everything. Pillar content is your secret weapon to position your brand as an authority buyers can rely on. Unlike short blog posts, pillars show you've done the work to create something truly valuable. We're talking Ultimate Guides with stats, actionable takeaways, and everything an ideal prospect needs to know on a topic. Don't hold back! Make it a beast of a download. Turn Pillars into Lead Magnets Now comes the fun part - turning that pillar into a lead generation workhorse. Gate access to the download with a simple contact form. Promote it heavily across channels for months. One client did this with a comprehensive SEO guide for attorneys and got 521 new leads in just 90 days. Invest Time for Maximum Impact I won't lie to you - creating awesome pillar content takes time and effort. But it's one of the highest ROI activities for long term lead gen. For a big impact across multiple personas, aim for 2-3 new pillars per quarter. Repurpose and promote them for months (even years) to maximize conversions. "Non-Traditional" Backlinks - It's All About Relationships Guest posting on other blogs is just one backlink tactic - and not always the best for B2B. The most valuable links come from active participation in your industry's communities. Become a Genuinely Helpful Expert Seriously - stop spamming forums and groups trying to sneak in backlinks. Instead, focus on building relationships by consistently providing value. Share insights, offer advice, be helpful. Organically weave in mentions of your relevant content if it benefits the community. HARO - A Goldmine for Quality Backlinks I can't stress enough how valuable HARO has been for one of my clients. It's a platform where journalists request expert sources for articles. In 6 months, they've been featured in mainstream publications like Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur - earning quality backlinks, branding wins, and new traffic. Measure Relationship-Building, Not Just Links Sure, track backlink growth from these sources. But also measure the relationships you're building in communities and with journalists. This compounds over time into insane authority-boosting wins. Technical SEO - The Competitive Edge With how much B2B buyers rely on search, technical SEO can make or break your marketing. How does your site stack up on crucial factors like speed, mobile optimization and indexation? Site Speed - Optimize for the Impatient Here's a scary stat: 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes over 3 seconds to load. B2B buyers are even more impatient - don't make them wait! Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom to catch speed issues. Mobile Responsiveness - No More Pinched Fingers Trying to read content on a non-mobile friendly site makes me want to chuck my phone across the room. Seriously, we're past the point where mobile optimization is optional - make it happen. Test your site on multiple devices and fix pesky issues like tiny text or wonky navigation. Indexation - Get Your Pages Found It means nothing to optimize content if Google can't index and surface your pages in results! Sneaky technical problems like crawling errors can completely hide your content from search. Stay on top of indexation with tools like Google Search Console. The key is constantly monitoring and improving technical SEO issues that impact user experience. It pays off big time. Conclusion and Next Steps Throughout this guide, we've explored proven yet underutilized SEO strategies tailored specifically to B2B buying cycles: - Intent-based keywords help you uncover the informational questions your prospects have at each stage, leading to 3X more leads. - Pillar content sets you apart as an authority, turning epic guides into lead generation workhorses that bring in 500+ new contacts. - Relationship-focused link building in communities and via HARO outreach leads to high-quality backlinks from trusted industry sources. - Fixing technical SEO issues like site speed and indexation creates a foundation for SEO success. These are strategic plays your competitors likely haven't tapped into yet. Adopting them now before the masses catch on provides a unique competitive advantage for your B2B organization. Imagine having a steady flow of qualified leads from across the buyer's journey - not just when they're ready to purchase. Envision closing deals faster because prospects already know and trust you. This future is possible when you align your SEO approach tightly to how B2B buyers research solutions. The time is now to transform your SEO. Click here to schedule a custom audit and roadmap to kickstart implementing these strategies. Our team is ready to uncover gaps in your current SEO approach and build a high-impact plan tailored to your business goals. Congratulations on committing to SEO success - let's talk soon! Read the full article

[wingedflight]

AO3 tag meme!

tagged by @bywayofmemory!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

I’ve got 54 pieces on AO3 and a whole bunch extra older stuff over on FF.net that I’ve never actually bothered to transfer over. Only answering these questions based on what’s on AO3 though!

2. What is your total Ao3 word count?

183,870 words. Which averages out to… almost 3.5k per fic? Although my older pieces are generally shorter and my newer ones are longer (or at least more wordy).

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

18 on AO3. A whole 40 of my fics are for Narnia.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Flashstream - Spider-Man, based off the end of the most recent Tom Holland movie

Regarding the Likelihood of Dodging Certain Death - an Artemis Fowl/Umbrella Academy crossover about stopping yet another apocalypse

Concerning the Daily Maintenance of a Large Country House - Narnia, in which there are a LOT more adventures in the Professor's big house

if the world has to end - Narnia zombie apocalypse AU!

An Unusual Dragon Situation - Narnia/Temeraire crossover featuring Eustace the dragon

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try! I do my absolute best to respond to anything I get within the first couple of weeks after posting a fic. After that, I’m less good at remembering to reply. But I do read and adore every single comment I receive!

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Maybe Witching Season -- where the king can’t keep it in his pants and therefore causes the downfall of his whole country.

Or the lingering strength of our love -- which is just Lucy sad pining for her past relationship with Aravis.

Or To The Victor Belongs The Spoils -- my first horror story I ever wrote, an AU in which Aslan is a demon and all the Pevensies become his soulless, mindless puppets.

7. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve ever written?

I love crossovers! And I adore doing really weird combinations, because it’s so fun to come up with a legitimate premise. Weirdest I’ve done lately has got to be Supernatural/Narnia, if one could drive forever. This was based on the Supernatural finale but written in the style of the end of Narnia’s Last Battle. Like, the part where everyone goes to Narnia heaven? Yup.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

LOL I once got a nasty comment on one of my dark AUs and I just Shut That Shit Down. I literally just laughed at the reader’s determination to read the entire fic and then complain about the very premise of it, which was evident in all the tags, summary, and pre-fic warning note. Luckily, that’s the only real notable one I’ve gotten--because I know how crushing this sort of bullying can be on people, and I seriously despise anyone who might ever consider leaving hate on another’s work.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope! Not my cup of tea. Witching Season is the closest I’ve ever come and it’s… not that close.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I literally had no idea fic COULD be stolen?? People DO that????

11. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Boy, have I ever! I’m the Winged half of Freudwithwings--we wrote a whole bunch of Artemis Fowl stuff a while back and then… never finished our giant big long fic. Oops. Maybe one day? Never say never?

12. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Absolutely Eustace/Jill. I honestly think that was the first thing I ever DID ship? And you can pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

13. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Artemis Fowl! I did a couple of one-shots that I’ve still got saved in a drive somewhere, and a long self-insert that has thankfully been lost to time. The archive those were all posted has been down for several years now though--maybe one day I’ll pull them out and see how far I’ve come.

14. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Huh. Great question, hard answer. Probably anything from my series In Some Darker Age, which are mostly-unconnected Narnia AUs featuring dark queens and powerful witches. Out of all these, I’d probably highlight by the blood of the stars, a SIlver Chair AU where I finally wrote down my witchy-Jill and imposter-Rilian headcanon that I’ve had for almost a decade.

Tagging: anyone who wants to play!

[romansrace]

Season 13 Sassy Reviews - Thoughts on Episode 04 ‘Rupaulmark’ & 05 ‘The Bag Ball’

The edit is starting to shape up and the producers are trying eargerly to paint our favorites for us. The fans, predictably, aren’t having it. Chaos ensues, as it does basically every season. (This season, we even have girls insisting that fans having opinions is inherently problematic 🙃🙃🙃)

Let’s get into it.

So the best way to do this is probably to go down each of the girls one by one and break down what the edit and framing is telling us, vs what is actually happening.

So from the top:

Kandy Muse is probably the top queen production wants viewers to be invested in. So far Kandy has shown questionable fashion knowledge and skill in designing, decent performance chops regarding comedy and acting, and alright lipsync ability when gifted a prop to help her out. Personality-wise, Kandy is...let’s say, sure of herself. On a positive note she’s a plus size queen who’s comfortable in her own skin. And that’s kind of where her edit stops. Criticism, even justified, of Kandy, is verboten, and any queen who dares to do so is immediately slammed by other queens production favours - followed up by Kandy outside the show justifying and defending herself on Twitter. It’s A Lot.

Gottmik is the show’s attempt to show that they are woke and have always been so by...over a decade in, allowing 1 (one) trans contestant and never referencing the fact that they previously point-blank refused to to the point of forcing multiple queens to detransition before being considered, and blacklisting cis and nonbinary queens who questioned that decision. So far Gottmik has proven herself to be very skilled at makeup. The show has concealed as far as possible her weaknesses at performance, acting and dance, and overemphasised her design skills by gifting her a design challenge win off the back of the two designs in the challenge that professional designers made for her. So there’s that.

Tina Burner rounds out the triple top favourites trio. She’s an experienced comedy queen and actress with a bit of a snarky tongue, per her edit. Per what we’re seeing, she’s also insecure, overinvested in being part of a clique (with the above two) and being seen as a frontrunner. She also has an obsession with the colours red and yellow that 5 episodes in hasn’t been remarked upon once by any of the judges. The judges, as in every season, include Michelle ‘I hate green’ ‘don’t wear that same wig every week’ ‘show us something different’ Visage and Ru ‘give us something feminine or gtfo’ Paul. Selective amnesia?

Tamisha Iman is so far pretty clearly the Miss Congeniality contender of the season and the best narrator/talking head of the whole group. Which...production seems to somehow have not noticed, going out of their way to paint her as an old hag out of her depth and as an ‘aggressive’ black woman by Kandy’s white friends after getting into a spat with her. Stay classy.

Denali  and Utica are clearly a pair with skills production didn’t anticipate in respectively performance and fashion design. The edit is trying manfully to downplay the skills of these two queens who out of the whole cast are two of the most likeable and compelling, especially as they don’t have the moneyed backgrounds of some of the contestants production is pushing hard.

Por ejemplo, Symone. An all-rounder and generally quite likeable herself, Symone is however relying heavily on her body in the runways and hasn’t yet been called on it. Still, the same schtick got Courtney Act and arguably Naomi Smalls to the finale several seasons ago.

LaLa Ri has thus far been a bit background despite being chosen to be one of the winners. Her runways have been generally underwhelming, culminating in her woeful design challenge in episode 5. Outside of being Symone’s shadow she hasn’t had much screentime. Oddly enough, the fact pushed in the Meet the Queens that she was Tamisha’s drag daughter was hardly hinted on in the show proper even after it was brought up ‘organically’.

Olivia Lux has been a little background too on a few episodes. I would say she was originally cast as the ‘young talent’ queen before they realised Symone, Gottmik and Kandy already had that category pretty filled out. Nevertheless, as one of the ‘winner’ group who thus far have been shielded from low placements, she’ll probably go far.

Joey Jay, Elliott with 2 Ts, and Kahmora Hall didn’t pick up much screentime either, with Joey’s storyline particularly being...Kandy’s crush on him. Elliott has been more infamous outside the show with some tone-deaf statements on race, and has been oddly uneven in the challenges, performing excellently in some episodes and being handed Safes and critiques, but on other episodes being just ok and overpraised. She feels like the definition of a filler queen.

And finally, Rosé, something of a dark horse of the bunch. Rosé continues to confuse me in terms of both what she is giving and her edit. Of all the queens except the Terrible Throuple, her edit is the most at odds with what her performances are serving us. Touted as an all-rounder, Rosé is nearly at every possible turn going the comedy route, giving references and kooky design elements rather than the classic drag out of the show she’s known for. I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible she’s actively trying to ape what Gigi Goode gave us in season 12 that the judges positively lapped up and couldn’t get enough of? In any case, it’s seeming like she’s being kept around to do well, but never quite good enough, an eternal Janning.

Once again at this stage I’m uneasy about this season. The heavy-handed editing jars particularly set against the extremely organic and natural-seeming Drag Race UK season 2, and the forcible ringfencing of Kandy, Mik and Tina in the face of really average performances over talents like Denali and Utica is really starting to smart as we go further in. Just let the queens’ talent speak for themselves! Or if you’re going to be manipulative, give us challenges suited towards particular queens’ skillsets like you did for Sharon in season 4, Raja in season 3 or Ginger in season 7! Come on, are you Emmy-award winning producers or not??

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: The Lost Prince

True Neutral Eldest of Forgotten Things, Sadness, and Solitude

Domains: Knowledge, Madness, Nobility, Repose. Subdomains: Ancestors, Insanity, Martyr, Memory.

The First World: Realm of the Fae, pg. 26~27

Obedience: Write down a memory on a piece of paper and then burn it. This must be a memory you’ve never used for this purpose or told anyone about. Benefit: You gain a +4 sacred bonus to AC and CMD against attacks of opportunity provoked by moving out of a threatened space.

This is one of the most open-ended Obediences in the game, and one of the easiest to complete. It doesn’t say how long the memory must be, what kind of memory it has to be, how large the paper must be, or if you, personally have to start the fire that burns it. For the sake of being fair to other deities, we’ll say it takes at the least 30 minutes of writing to fill a page with enough memories to satisfy the Lost Prince. The easiest way to think about it would be to view it as a diary--in fact, a diary is perfect. Fill a page with what you did the previous day, tear it out, and then burn it. Once a day, every day, until you need a new book.

The god of the boastful, the Lost Prince is not. A character that brags about their accomplishments will quickly find themselves without any memories to sacrifice to the melancholy fae, forcing them to keep on the down-low if they wish to have enough memories for tomorrow’s ritual. With that small downside aside, though, the Lost Prince holds the trophy for having one of the easiest Obediences to both perform and keep a secret. Who would question the nervous loner’s tendency to scribble in their diary? Who would bat an eyelid at a writer apparently growing frustrated with their stories before tearing them out and throwing them into a fire? The Lost Prince’s Obedience is also notable for being doable just about anywhere that’s not underwater or in an airless vacuum. No matter how deep and dank the dungeon, so long as you have access to ink, paper, and flame, you can perform your service to your god.

The benefit is also fantastic. It’s somewhat boring, but +4 AC when scooting your potentially-fragile butt out of some horror’s melee range is a (literal) godsend for just about anyone not wanting to take extra bruises in melee. It’s especially good when you consider that it’s strictly better than a feat that already exists--Mobility--and it can be taken by anyone without needing the fiddly Dex and Dodge prerequisites that Mobility does.   

As mentioned before, the Eldest do not possess the average Evangelist/Exalted/Sentinel spread, and use the Feysworn Prestige Class. The Feysworn Prestige Class can be entered at level 6; if taken as early as possible, you get the Boons at character level 8, 11, and 14 instead of 12, 16, and 20.

Boon 1: Knowledge of the Lost. Gain Identify 3/day, Locate Object 2/day, or Crushing Despair 1/day.

While Identify and Locate Object are both good spells when you’re on a quest for magical items, you’ll rarely need either of them more than once a day. That being said, have you recently found a forgotten hoard of treasure? Because if so, three Identifies will likely save your party a lot of pain (and cause the DM a little sadness) by sniffing curses out of the suspiciously attractive weapons, armor, and equipment. That being said, there’s also the potential to simply use Identify as a makeshift Detect Magic to spot magical traps or incoming enemy mages before the rest of the party sees them.

Locate Object is useful in situations where your party’s own belongings are stolen, though savvy enemies will likely place your goods in lead vaults, ruining the spell’s effectiveness. Against foes who don’t know about the spell, though, it makes tracking them trivial and turns you into something like the Terminator, carefully following behind them as you trace their every move.

Crushing Despair won’t win a combat by itself, but it can certainly get the odds more in your favor, especially with its lengthy duration (1 min/level). Since there’s no obvious evidence that you cast the spell yourself, hurling it into a crowded area to crush a whole crowd’s emotions at once during, say, an impassioned speech from someone you dislike, or during an enemy’s attempt to rally their troops, can do a lot more damage to morale than it would simply being cast in combat.

Boon 2: Forgetfulness. 3/day as a standard action, you may alter a target’s memory as if using Modify Memory. The casting time is always 1 standard action, regardless of how much or how little memory you alter. By expending 2 uses of this ability, you may alter up to 1 hour of the subject’s memory. By expending all three uses, you may alter up to 24 hours of the subject’s memory.

Now THIS is a power with some seriously sinister roleplaying potential! From 80 feet away (when you first get the power), in under six seconds you can simply rewrite the last five minutes of someone’s life if they fail the saving throw. Again, spell-likes have no obvious signs they’re being used, so someone having their brain scrambled has no idea where it’s coming from!

There are lots of uses for this power, both insidious and benign. Have you been barred from entering a plot location? No, you haven’t! Because the doorman clearly remembers you showing him your IDs saying you were allowed in! Embarrassed yourself in front of a party member? In front of an official you can’t afford to be embarrassed around? No, you didn’t! Because you’ve just erased whatever the awful moment was from their mind. Has an ally of yours experienced an event they wish they could forget? Well, you can help with that. Did you just kill everyone in a room and leave one of them alive? Well, thank god you just saved this person’s life from a horrible monster that slaughtered their comrades! Most combats are over in less than thirty seconds, after all.

And of course, note that you don’t have to erase their current memories. If you have an objective in mind, you can overwrite, edit, or erase VERY old memories in their heads, wiping out minutes from yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, or a decade ago. If the target is unwilling to have their mind tampered with, this power pairs well with any ability to delve into their thoughts, letting you sift through and cherrypick moments to edit... And this power becomes even scarier when you pour more juice into it, wiping out, editing, or blotting through hours or even a full day’s worth of memories at a time. Having the ability to steal an entire day from someone is a terrifying power to have, and easy to abuse once you’ve learned all the ins and outs of the ability... But if you’re Evil (or at least Chaotic), you probably don’t have to worry about that. Wipe away!

Boon 3: Absolute Solitude. Once per day, you may cast Imprisonment as a spell-like ability.

As I covered back with Shivaska, Imprisonment is an immensely powerful Save-or-Suck effect because only Freedom, another level 9 spell, can counter it. Anything else, even the otherwise all-solving Wish and Miracle, can’t undo it. Faesworn also get it at level 14, 2~3 levels before Wizards and Sorcerers can learn Freedom. The biggest downside to using this to instantly end an encounter is that someone who gets bopped below the earth takes all their gear with them. If the poor sap had an important item on them, trying to end an encounter quickly and easily may see you being forced to undertake a different questline entirely to undo the Imprisonment!

A handy spell, and extremely powerful, but one that must be used with caution. Erasing someone like this is tricky business, especially if they have interesting or important items on them. There are many, many ways to creatively combine this with Forgetfulness, though... Such as having the Evil Wizard Man’s #1 henchman suddenly recall that your party happens to be the Evil Wizard Man’s best friends, and that the Evil Wizard Man decided to teleport away to handle business on another world, beyond the reach of divination, never to be seen again and leaving his best friends in charge of everything.

It’s still scary how powerful overwriting someone’s memories can be, if you’re creative enough. It’s a hell of a get-out-of-jail free card, especially when the one person who resisted your spell mysteriously went missing...

You can read more about the Lost Prince here.

[starsuppcipgo1984-blog]

But in the winter, your skin may lighten up to three or four shades [source: Thomson]. If you use the same bronzer (or blush, for that matter), the results will come across looking unnatural. To keep that natural glow, simply lighten the shade of your bronzer or blush in the fall and winter.. My boob hurts. No lump, no rash, no redness, no dimpling. It a little swollen, but that about it. The seller has been dicking me around and now I pissed. I sent a refund request 2 days ago (the seller said it would take until the 15th of August to receive the item). As soon as I sent the refund request I got an email with a tracking number from them. And you are deleting comments because you think they are "mean" or whatever. And earlier I saw interject in a discussion that was really rather friendly if pointless because you thought it was "off topic" which honestly? Is just another way you support the spiral of silence going on in the sub that shows itself in the way that relevant but unpopular comments are constantly downvoted on here.Ameyaspeaks 4 points submitted 1 day agoThank you! I avoiding my friend as much as I can without it looking awkward.I know that there are resources online that I could look at or 평택출장마사지 seek professional help with my husband, but right now I so desperately want a magic wand to make these feelings disappear.I been asked out, by some attractive guys even, and I turned them down without being affected.I know that we will be able to work on our marriage once I finish school. I unable to get over my feelings for my friend and that makes me miserable.I read several other posts in which married people who have crushes ask for advice on whom to choose, but I already decided that.Dravvie 3 points submitted 1 day agoI suggest the long distance subreddits and stuff! They can be really helpful, if not a bit whiney tbh. I've averaged easily over 10 wins per run during the span of 20 runs. I've also had spans of 20 runs where I barely averaged more than 5.5 wins. I've always viewed the leaderboard as something you devote yourself to, an Everest for arena players. I feel like it gave red side fans much more appreciation for their velvet side. The repackage was truly a master stroke. I love peek a boo but I feel like as a title track for a 평택출장마사지 velvet album, it too "red". From what I recall it wasn't until recently that SotC was finally fixed to lower your weapon damage as indicated on the tooltip. It wasn't until last year that Consecration scaled with Int Spell Power and not with Attack Power. This bug had lasted a decade in the code core that all the major pservers used.. This trait allows the molecules of the adhesive to flow relatively easily, even though it's in solid form, into the pores of the substrate material. All it takes is a little pressure. And the better the ability to flow into the substrate, the stronger the physical bond.. I had just gotten maybe 7 things from the grocery store. I closed the garage door and ushered the boys to the back yard but the almost 4 year old came inside to argue about something and I just wanted another 45 seconds to put things away. I saw my baby (not a baby, 2.75 years old) walk past the window. Yeah, I see this mentality more and more too. I have to wonder what long term effects this is going to have on the PC community. It really is becoming too pricey. Not even comparable. It be more like if you found a way to open the same chest in a Raid over and over just by dying. Loot Cave was just an infinite spawn glitch.

[atreef]

Crush Your Future NOW | Quick Exercise For Smart Goal Setting

What you will get from this article:

Learn about your brain

Magnetic resonance imaging or MRI

6 simple steps to keep your mind sharp

Goal setting

Smart goal setting

Let's Start with the basics. The overlooked Secrets that only success hungry people will use 🧐

T The number of considerations given to topics such as personal growth, self-improvement, and self-development is just astounding. Virtually millions of people desire to enhance their lives in some shape or form! And each person deserves to be capable of changing their life. Thus, Here is the most overlooked approach that will serve anyone well on their journey.

"Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek."  -- Mario Andretti

The Power of your brain 🧠

Years ago, the Nobel Prize winner Dr. Albert Schweitzer, “Doctor, what is wrong with people?” The renowned doctor was silent for a while, then he replied, “People simply do not think!” Why do we limit the use of our brains and limit our thinking? The brain is truly a superb mechanism. It is competent in processing eight hundred inputs per second for seventy-five years without depleting itself. 

Scientists suggest that we as humans use approximately 2 percent of our brainpower that is available to us. Also, keep in mind that we are all equal and have the same 2% all across. As a society, a remarkable number of us have chosen not to utilize this powerful tool. We chose to let others do our thinking for us. Why is this? Ask yourself this question.

Have You Ever Wondered 💁

But is he right. I like the question that he has asked, but how much of your brain do we use in reality? If you have ever believed in the 2 or 10% brain myth, you might be shocked to hear that we, as humans, actually use virtually all and every part of our brains. Furthermore, throughout an average day, you use nearly 100% of your brain.

"The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe."  -- Michio Kaku

MRI

Researchers who have examined the brain with magnetic resonance imaging or (MRI) technology have discovered no dormant brain parts. Most of our brain is active virtually all of the time, and it is actively processing information.

This all makes sense when you acknowledge the significance of your brain and its power to our life. Even though your brain only makes up 3-5% of our body's weight, it uses up an unbelievable 20% of its resources in terms of oxygen and glucose.

😌 So, Don't think that you don't have the power. Actually, you do! All that you need is powerful steps in order to utilize the entire brain 😌

6 simple steps to keep your mind sharp at any age 😇

Everyone has expressed the moment that they may be gone into their room, and now they can't remember why or even at times can't remember a name during a simple conversation. This is because their mind is not trained and not focused. Out memory, lapses can happen at any time, age, or situation, and remember that aging alone is generally not a cause of the cognitive decline we experience. 

However, when vital memory loss happens among older adults, it is usually not due to aging but an organic disorder, brain injury, or even neurological illness. Research has revealed that you can help counter cognitive decline and decrease the chance of dementia with some basic good habits:

Stay active

Get enough sleep

Stop smoking

Have good social relationships

Limit your alcohol intake

Eating a healthy diet

Our memory and other cognitive changes can sometimes be frustrating, yet the good news is that you can now learn how to prepare your mind to stay active due to decades of research. There are many approaches we can use to help maintain our cognitive fitness. So, set your goals and keep up with them. 

Keep learning

Use all your senses

Believe in yourself

Prioritize your brain use

Repeat what you want to know

Never stop growling 

Now let’s talk about goal setting 🪴

Goal setting is truly vital to all of us since it can help you decide and even focus on what is important. Effective and realistic goal setting also lets you measure every progress you make, even overcome procrastination, and help you visualize your dreams. If you are unsure what you like to accomplish, you can't create a plan to get there. But if you follow on advice, you can master your life and start the life you dream of having. This is the process, and it is the most overlooked secret to getting what you want.

"Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success."  -- Pablo Picasso

WHAT IS GOAL SETTING?

Goal setting can seem somewhat varied depending on an individual’s lifestyle, decisions, and meaning of success. Your goals are truly unique to you and don’t require you to look like anyone else’s.

Traditionally the classic goal-setting definition surges down to the method of recognizing something you want to achieve and setting measurable objectives plus realistic timeframes on them to help you achieve such goals. Goal setting can assist you in several areas of your life, from reaching financial independence to even assuming a new healthy diet. When we learn how to set goals in our life, it becomes easier to set them in other areas.

Setting common goals that provide small wins encourages you to move on to larger accomplishments. These small goals lead to growth. In the video below, I clearly explain how one needs to set goals and find the right goal that can help them achieve their ultimate freedom.

What are some goal examples?

Lifetime goal: Move to California and find a job in media and grow my youTube channel!

Long-term goals:

Graduate from school.

Get accepted into a program.

Save up money.

Get certification.

Learn how to speak a foreign language.

Learn a music instrument.

get in shape.

Short-term goals:

Research a program that I like.

Start a language course.

Be minimal.

Start waking up early.

Open up a savings account.

Do more yoga

Get a part-time job.

You get the idea, we have 3 type of goals, see what is it that you like and start making your list.

"A goal properly set is halfway reached."  -- Zig Ziglar

The SMART goal setting 🤩

Bam! Now can you see how precise, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound a smart goal was? This approach can seriously help you visualize precisely how to achieve them—and be the person that you always dreamed of being!

Now no doubt you should understand and see the power of setting a SMART goal. Want to score high on your exams or start a new career, or do what you always wanted to do. Whatever your goals are, know they are truly reachable. All you need is the right plan of action.

Word of advice: it is quite normal not to reach a goal on day one. Goals can be fluid, or sometimes they end up taking a bit longer than you planned. It happens, well, it happened to me. But know that this is not the end of the world or your ambitions. If I want to be successful, I have learned that I must learn to re-group, adjust or even make a new smaller goal, and keep them the SMART way.

The Science & Psychology Of Goal-Setting 101

All effective goals are:

A – Achievable

B – Believable

C – Committed

Goal-setting is a psychological means for enhancing productivity that concerns five rules or criteria, known as the S-M-A-R-T rule. George T. Doran issued this rule in 1981 in a management research paper of the Washington Power Company, and I have to say that it is by far one of the most famous propositions of the psychology of goals.

Need Help Setting Goals? I Can Help

As goals are set, it’s essential to ensure that they’re measurable and have a designated time frame. As you hold yourself responsible for a plan in place, you’ll likely observe that each step wasn’t as daunting as you thought it would be, and every achievement brings you one step closer to success. 

And, if you just need a little more push, let me help you. I am here to guide you, provide you the tools, resources and even be a sounding board along your way. Learn more about my programs and the power that they can bring to your life.

[junker-town]

When MLB’s best team also blew a 12-run lead

Here’s what it was like to watch one of baseball’s biggest comebacks ... from the wrong side

I am a Mariners fan, which has led to many bad sports nights. The worst began with Dave Burba slopping what I can only assume was his take on a cut fastball a few inches off the plate away. Ichiro was at bat, Mark McLemore on deck, the twilight was falling on a beautiful Ohio evening, and the Cleveland Indians were hosting the 80-31 Seattle Mariners.

I’d never seen the Mariners on television before. I moved to Seattle when I was 10 and was a boring enough child to fall in love with baseball after my first visit to the Kingdome. Thanks to the vagaries of cable, however, I had to follow my team via radio and once-yearly excursions to the ballpark. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when you have Dave Neihaus guiding you through your favorite team’s golden age*, but it did leave me starved for non-aural baseball.

*As it turns out, 1995-2003 was also the Mariners’ only non-fecal age.

So starved, in fact, every time Seattle made it to a national broadcast, I would try to watch. And every time, for literally years, I’d get notified that, so sorry, your game has been blacked out. Until, suddenly, on Aug. 5, 2001, it worked. I was baffled by this turn of events, of course, but decided to take it as a note of benevolence from a higher power, and settled in to watch.

Pitch number two was in more or less the same place as Burba’s first offering. Three was an 84-mph fastball down the middle that Ichiro apparently thought would be too embarrassing to hit, a decision which cost him when he was called out on strikes a few pitches later. So far so bad, a younger, more innocent me must have thought.

The 2001 Indians were a good team and could pitch. A little bit. Bartolo Colon was in his intimidating pomp, and the arrival of rookie left-hander C.C. Sabathia helped give their rotation a one-two punch which was entirely irrelevant when Burba (or anyone else — Cleveland essentially ran a AAA rotation beyond the big two) was on the mound. At his best, Burba was slightly better than pure filler, but at 34 he was no longer at his best, and he was going up against a Mariners team that was set to absolutely torch him. Now he was up against Mark McLemore, who struck out too. Then Edgar Martinez chopped out to third.

If you follow baseball, you’re probably aware of this game, at least tangentially. And therefore you’re aware that this was something more disastrous than what was threatened in the top of the first: a mediocre pitcher chewing his way through a very good lineup. That’s a bad day, but not a traumatic one. Four batters into the game, when Kenny Lofton cracked a ground ball single back through the box, and hard, I feared a bad day. How disappointing it would be to have my first televised Mariners experience be a frustrating loss!

Aaron Sele wriggled his way out of the bottom of the first, which gives me a good opportunity to drop in this still from a between-innings commercial:

I think Pontiac would have been proud of how they’ve shaped modern society.

The Mariners scored four times in the top of the second. Two ill-considered dives produced a pair of hustle doubles, sandwiched around a Mike Cameron blast which bounced off the wall but would have gone about 20 rows deep if he’d been hitting the 2019 baseball. Ichiro then plated a pair with a delicate lob to left. Seattle was rolling, and I was happy.

I was still happier after the third. That inning went something like this:

Single Single Single Double Single Single Hit By Pitch Sacrifice Fly Walk Error Single Strikeout Lineout

It was worth eight runs and took the score to 12-0. No baseball team in 75 years had come back from a 12-run deficit. The Indians, who’d already been beaten twice at home by Seattle that weekend and were starting to look in trouble in the AL Central race, were staring at a blowout. No baseball team in 75 years had come back from a 12-run deficit.

Then one did. This game is in the record books as the greatest comeback of all time, the one in which Cleveland clawed their way back from a ludicrous deficit to win the game in extras. Blowing a 12-run lead over any length of time is difficult enough, but the sheer scope of the Mariners’ collapse is extraordinary. The teams each scored two runs in the middle innings, leaving the score at 14-2 during the seventh-inning stretch. The Indians had to compress history (and, for me, misery) into three innings.

They did so without the heart of their fearsome batting order. By the time the comeback began, both lineups had seen a slew of changes. Ichiro, Martinez, and Olerud were on the bench, as were Alomar, Juan Gonzalez, and Ellis Burks. The only really dangerous bats left available to either team were Jim Thome and Bret Boone, and the latter had been given the day off anyway. Despite the two clubs sending seven hitters to the 2001 MLB All-Star game, only Mike Cameron played the full 11 innings of what was to prove one of the most memorable games of the decade.

Anyway. By the middle of the seventh, I was in a pretty good mood. I was getting to watch (not listen!) to one of the greatest teams of all time kick the ever-loving shit out of some pretty capable opposition, and although it was a little annoying that most of the big bats were out of the game, all the Mariners needed to do to ensure my evening finished happily was not blow a 12-run lead.

AN ASIDE: Whatever happened to this dude? Did we lose him during our difficult transition to being a civilization of Mango Freaks?

END ASIDE

Through six innings, Sele had given up six hits, a walk, and two runs. Russell Branyan, on for Burks, greeted him with a screaming line drive into the right centre field seats. 14-3. The comeback was on. Only, it didn’t really look it. Two batters later and the Indians needed 11 runs to tie the game, and had seven outs to do it. Solo home runs weren’t going to do it.

If we had to pick a turning point, the plate appearance which made all that followed possible, it might be Lofton’s walk. With two outs, Einar Diaz smacked a two-hopper up the middle and well out of Carlos Guillen’s reach, but Sele was still cruising and quickly got Lofton 0-2 thanks to a generous called strike and a foul ball. One more strike would have sent the Indians into the eighth inning in an (even more) impossible hole. Sele threw exactly zero more strikes.

Lofton took four straight fastballs away. None of them were close. Omar Vizquel followed that up with a four-pitch walk, and suddenly Sele, who averaged just 2.1 walks per nine innings for the entire 2001 season, had walked the bases loaded. The clouds were gathering. Lou Piniella seeded them further by going to blowout specialist John Halama.

Halama, part of the return for Randy Johnson in 1998, was a terrible pitcher, AAA no-hitter aside. He somehow logged 110 innings for the 2001 Mariners, which is remarkable considering he didn’t strike anyone out and got absolutely blitzed by opposing hitters. The ‘01 Mariners had one of the strongest bullpens ever assembled, headlined by Kazuhiro Sasaki, Arthur Rhodes, and Jeff Nelson. Even the best bullpens, however, have their fair share of dreck. With an 11-run cushion and someone named Jolbert Cabrera at the plate, dreck should have been fine.

It was not fine. Cabrera took a big swing on a changeup away, and yanked the ball into left. That fooled Martin, who froze, took a step backwards and then charged in, allowing the ball to drop a step or two in front of him. Two runs would score, and the seventh inning ultimately ended, 14-5.

The Mariners’ bats seem to have considered their job done. After the fifth, they went a combined 3-18, with three singles. Having scored 14 runs in that early blitz, they quite reasonably went into cruise control. They’d never come back out.

Meanwhile, the Indians were treating Halama like a piñata. Thome, whose two-run home run in the fourth got Cleveland on the board, flipped a 2-1 “fastball” into the left field corner for another homer. 14-6. Marty Cordova joined him in the home run parade after a Branyan hit-by-pitch — 14-8. Suddenly the game was within reach, and after a pair of singles Halama was done. Norm Charlton was called in from the pen.

Charlton wasn’t one of the big three Mariners relievers, but he wasn’t bad either, and Piniella would have been expecting him to hold down a six-run lead even in a tricky spot. He probably should have, too. Vizquel was jammed on a 95-mph fastball away, but he somehow kept it fair and the ball looped down the left field line for a double and a 14-9 score. The Mariners then got a break in this breakless of games — Lofton misread a ball which bounced off Tom Lampkin’s right leg and was thrown out trying to score, which allowed Charlton to escape to the ninth with a five-run lead.

I didn’t yet know to be nervous. Eighteen years ago, the Seattle Mariners were not the Seattle Mariners™. They had not yet become the unbridled force for misery which has shaped the way I look at sports. Their playoff drought was zero years. They had reached the ALCS in 2000, they would again in 2001. They were phenomenal, and I expected them to win more or less whenever they played, whatever the situation. And when they lost ... well, that happened. I suppose. Infrequently.

Ed Taubensee led off the bottom of the ninth with a single. With Thome and Branyan next up, the situation looked perilous, but Charlton made quick work of them. Two outs, down five, and a runner on first? That should have been game over. Then the wheels really came off.

I hadn’t watched this inning since I saw the calamity unfold live, but it’s seared into my memory regardless. Cordova absolutely crushed a pitch off the left-field wall to knock Charlton out of the game. Nelson was summoned. He got Wil Cordero to 3-2, then struck him out looking on a wicked slider:

Well, he should have struck him out with that slider. Instead was called ball four. Missed calls have been more egregious, of course, but this one had a profound effect on my young psyche, for six pitches later Nelson himself was knocked out of the game by a line drive into left off Diaz’s bat — 14-11. Suddenly it was a save situation, and it was clear to teenage me that something had gone terribly wrong.

I was ‘watching’ with my hands over my eyes as Lofton scooched a single past David Bell to bring up the go-ahead run in Vizquel. Not a soul in Jacobs Field was sitting down. This was it. Sasaki started Vizquel off with a splitter that he swung over for strike one. A second splitter followed, well out of the zone. The battle would end up lasting some time.

Baseball is a sport devoted to tension. Stress is the soul of the game and has been since the foul-ball rules were finalized. In a sport with a clock, key moments are just that: moments. They come, they go, they are finished with and done in a flash. Baseball stretches its moments and its fans to a breaking point. I am reliably informed that during Vizquel’s at-bat I was having what looked like a small seizure. All I really remember is the creeping horror, every pitch promising redemption or catastrophe but only serving to prolong the moment and ratchet up the stress.

Sasaki’s fifth pitch to Vizquel was a 91-mph fastball down the middle and at the knees, called a ball for reasons I suspect are related to the will of some malevolent deity. Pitch six was just about fouled off, an emergency swing sending a splitter trickling off behind home plate. Pitch seven was popped into the stands on the third base side. And then pitch eight was guided by the despotic hand of fate onto the label of Vizquel’s bat.

The subsequent weak grounder was perfectly placed, right down the first base line. Ed Sprague was a) playing in and b) not John Olerud, so his desperate dive ended in failure. Lofton was 34, and not as fast as he once was, but the ball was so well-placed — and the Mariners’ defense so thoroughly depleted — that he scored from first with 40 feet to spare. 14-14. Tie game.

For some reason I watched to the bitter end, even though extra innings were essentially and entirely denouement. Cleveland had already won the game by drawing level, and the Mariners had already lost it by blowing the biggest lead in MLB history. Cabrera’s walk-off single in the bottom of the 11th marked only the final blow in a disaster that had already unfolded.

Eighteen years later, this still haunts me. Not like it did then, when it was merely a humiliation, a nationally televised scandal of a game in what was otherwise an enormously successful season. But now, with the Mariners mired in year after year of pain, when the organization considers mediocrity aspirational, it’s hard not to see this as a harbinger of the misery to come, an early visitation of the Mariners in their true colors.

Sometimes I wonder if the current incarnation of the team, the one slowly draining the hope out of my fandom since 2004, is somehow inhabited by the ghost of Aug. 5. It’s ridiculous, of course — a single game, record books or not, has no bearing whatsoever on the standings 18 years later.

But. Still. What if?

Correction: This article originally stated that no team in history had ever come back from a 12-run deficit. In fact, it had happened twice prior to 2001, most recently in 1925.

This article originally ran before Secret Base launched, but it’s a very us story, and we like to think it’s worth reading. So here it is again!

[sunshineweb]

The Hedonic Treadmill

Here are the best things I read and thought about today –

Bloomberg carries this nice piece (Tip: If your Bloomberg free articles limit is over, you may try opening this article in an incognito browser) from Nir Kaissar and Barry Ritholtz, where the authors write to answer this question – How do you get rich? By earning a lot or saving a lot?   Here is Barry’s point of view on the subject of “frugality” –

I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of “sustained and disciplined frugality.” With that said, here’s what to keep in mind:

1. Focus on the big things; the little things will take care of themselves 2. We all only have so much internal discipline, a consequence of limited mental bandwidth. Don’t fritter it away on things that don’t matter very much. 3. Spending should always be a function of what you can afford, not a slavish devotion to some puritan ideal. 4. Money can bring security, comfort and happiness, but beyond a certain point returns on having more of it diminish rapidly. 5. Experiences tend to beat material goods in terms of money well spent.

First, the big things: Your education, your career choice, your work ethic, who you marry, who you work with, your skill set, your compensation, your health, your outlook, how you think about the world and the commitment you make to yourself about continually learning and improving. Get those right, and those $5 lattes become pretty irrelevant.

Basically, the advice is this – avoid the hedonic treadmill and you will be much better off in your financial life. “Hedonic treadmill” is basically a theory positing that people repeatedly return to their baseline level of happiness, regardless of what happens to them. It is an important concept to grasp when it comes to understanding happiness, which we often lose in forever chasing rainbows.

By the way, here is a quadrant I drew recently on how to get rich without being on the hedonic treadmill (for long) –

  Continuing with the subject of personal financial planning, here is a Morningstar post titled It’s Time to Think Big where the author suggests using this quiet period to introspect and improve our financial plans in a big-picture way.   On the question of defining how much money is “enough” for us, she writes –

Many of us are operating with an incredibly vague notion of how much we really need to save in order to achieve our financial goals and find security. And even financial planners might rely on rules of thumb when setting your retirement-savings target–for example, they might assume that you’ll need 80% of your working income in retirement and extrapolate the rest of your plan from there.

As humans, we often have a natural tendency to reach for more more more, regardless of whether that “more” is actually bringing more happiness and security. Trying to keep up with the people around us, in terms of possessions and outward signs of success, can get exhausting and may not get us any closer to our life’s goals. That’s why, in this period of limited activity, spending, and social contact, it’s so worthwhile to think through your own definition of enough–both now and for the future. Jack Bogle wrote a wonderful book called Enough that I would recommend; the genesis for the book was a memorable commencement address that he delivered in 2007. (If you haven’t heard the Joseph Heller/Kurt Vonnegut story that serves as the title of the book and speech, I guarantee that you’ll be repeating it to someone soon.)

Well, I had talked about Joseph Heller’s story in my lecture at IIM Lucknow in December 2018.

And here is the transcript of my talk to a group of friends in Silicon Valley in early 2018, where I tried to answer my version of the “how much is enough” question.  

Mental Models For a Pandemic is wonderful post published on Farnam Street. One of the models talked about is “antifragile,” a concept that Nassim Taleb described thus –

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance … even our own existence as a species on this planet.

Here is the point about antifragility in Farnam Street’s post –

…we need to ask ourselves how we can improve our antifragility. How can we get to a place where we grow stronger through change and challenge? It’s not about getting “back to normal.” The normal that was our world in 2019 has proven to be fragile. We shouldn’t want to get back to a time when we were unprepared and vulnerable.

And here is Safal Niveshak’s version of this very important mental model of antifragility.  

The Atlantic carries a biweekly column by Arthur Brooks titled “How to Build a Life,” wherein he tackles questions of meaning and happiness. His latest post talks about four rules for identifying your life’s work, and it’s really good.   Brooks’ rule number one reads “the work has to be the reward” –

One of the biggest mistakes people make in their careers is to treat work primarily as a means to an end. Whether that end is money, power, or prestige, this instrumentalization of work leads to unhappiness. The psychologist Elliott Jaques — famous for inventing the term midlife crisis — once quoted a middle-aged patient as saying, “Up till now, life has seemed an endless upward slope, with nothing but the distant horizon in view. Now suddenly I seem to have reached the crest of the hill, and there stretching ahead is the downward slope with the end of the road in sight.” Later, he admitted that he himself was this “patient,” and this was his own lament. He had worked away for years in his career to get some fabulous reward, and then realized that there wasn’t much reward ahead at all, just aging and death.

When your career is just a means to an end, the payoff, even if you get it, will be unsatisfying. Don’t make that mistake. Your work won’t give you joy and fulfillment every day, of course. Some days it will feel pretty unsatisfying. But with the right goals — earning your success and serving others — you can make the work itself your reward.

What a fine advice this is!  

Forbes carries an insightful investigative piece on the $2.5 trillion debt binge that has taken some of America’s leading companies including Boeing and AT&T from blue chips to near junk –

According to a Forbes investigation, which analyzed 455 companies in the S&P 500 Index — excluding banks and cash-rich tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft — on average, businesses in the index nearly tripled their net debt over the past decade, adding some $2.5 trillion in leverage to their balance sheets. The analysis shows that for every dollar of revenue growth over the past decade, the companies added almost a dollar of debt. Most S&P 500 firms entered the bull market with just 20 cents in net debt per dollar of annual revenue; today that figure has climbed to 38 cents.

But as the coronavirus pandemic cripples commerce worldwide, American corporations face a grim reality: Revenues have evaporated, but their crushing debt isn’t going anywhere.

As Prof. Sanjay Bakshi wrote in his tweet sharing this post, these are “useful case studies on distortions in capital structure caused by many factors including artificially low interest rates, perverse incentives for senior management, and a myopic market fixated on cash flow returns to stockholders instead of long term strength of businesses.”

Indian companies are yet to test such level of madness, at such a large scale, but many are almost there (plus we have ample experience from the past) with their bulging balance sheets and run by managers that do not know of anything but instant gratification at the cost of long term business growth, stability, and value creation. Beware of them!  

An old tweet from James Clear, where he suggests what we can do with 5 good minutes –

5 good minutes of:

-pushups is a solid workout -sprints will leave you winded -writing can deliver 1 good page -reading can finish an insightful article -meditation can reset your mood

You don’t need more time — just a little focused action.

* * * That’s about it from me for today.

If you liked this post, please share with others on WhatsApp, Twitter, or just email them the link to this post.

Stay safe. Stay focused.

With respect, — Vishal

The post The Hedonic Treadmill appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

The Hedonic Treadmill published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

[thecrimsonarcher]

Expose on the Order of the Southern Sky, Part 3--Kevin's Tale

As I had mentioned before, I accidentally witnessed the creation of a Legion soldier when I was a teenager. This would’ve happened around 2011, when I was 16 years old. During this time period, they weren’t very diligent in building them up. They were only averaging just a handful of troops per year. If you compare that to the time frame of early 2012 to June of 2013, its insignificant. You’d think they’d be scrambling as quickly as possible to build their army in preparation for what they referred to as the “New World to Come”, when the lower class citizens were purged from Zion Mountain and the wealthy would rule the roost.

When I wasn’t helping out with the rituals, my other duty was to help out with the Youth Group. The Youth Group consisted mostly of pre-teens and teenagers that ranged in age from 11 to 17. While the adults were in the fellowship hall upstairs for morning and evening sermons, the children and young adult’s classes were held downstairs. Now, I would be in charge of teaching the morning Sunday school classes to the Youth Group, but sometimes, I’d have a little bit of help from Madison Tallent. Madison was about my age, maybe slightly younger.

The classes were broken into in separate age groups. Since infants could not understand the concept of religion, they were kept in day care while their parents were away for worship. The Juniors were from 2 to 6 years old and held their classes in the first room to the left. Explorers were 6 to 10 years old and their classes were directly across the room from them on the right.

I cannot forgive myself for being a willing participant in the very act of brainwashing impressionable kids who were unable to think for themselves and to process how ridiculous it all was. I allowed myself to poison their minds with the same hateful rhetoric the Order spewed. For many years, I struggled with that guilt, allowing it to become a huge burden on my soul. I finally came to terms with it after many, many sessions with my therapist. I was young and just as naive as the others. I had no idea what the adults were really up to, not until it was too late.

The church did things a little bit differently than your average congregation. Since all of the Order members were very wealthy, respectable people in Zion Mountain society, they were seen as somewhat of a meal ticket for both the church and Paul Yearwood. Every member was asked to let the church have access to their bank accounts, charging a fee of about 20 or so odd percent of their income for “upkeep”. By upkeep, I mean adding unnecessary additions to the church, as well as the funding to create the Legion soldiers and to amass a ridiculous amount of firearms and other weaponry to arm them with. None of that money was ever used to help the smaller churches out. It just wasn’t their style. They merely pretended to be pious under the guise of sociopaths who cared only about themselves and not about the needs of others. All they wanted was to keep the status quo upheld so they can ensure their place in “Paradise” when the time came.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can remember it as if it were yesterday. This would’ve happened around 2011, when I was 16 years old. After church services, the youth group instructors were tasked with cleaning downstairs in the youth fellowship hall and the main congregation hall upstairs. It was during the winter because it had snowed earlier in the day and I was the only one who wore the appropriate shoes to wear outside. Now, the church had an out building that stood to the far right, close to where the church buses were usually parked. It was made of metal and had a red aluminum roof that made it stand out like a sore thumb in comparison to how big and elaborate the church was. We used it primarily as a storage room to keep things such as holiday decorations, extra wine glasses for communion, tools, old church pews we didn’t use anymore, and other assorted items that were placed on a big, metal shelf that had been built into one of the walls. It was even hooked up to electricity and had running water. Why it had running water, I’m not even sure. It didn’t have restrooms, but it did have an industrial sized stainless steel sink towards the back end.

On that night, I was having to go in there to get some of the Christmas decorations out so we could start decorating the youth fellowship hall when I had noticed there was light coming out from under the front door. Mind you, no one should have been inside the building at the time since the services were long over. The only people who should’ve been there were all in the church, which I found to be rather strange. Thinking that someone may have broken in and was attempting to steal some of the stuff out of there, I grabbed my pocket knife I had in my back pocket, opened it up, and slowly turned the door knob to where I wouldn’t make much noise. I could hear voices coming from within–two male voices, to be exact. I tried to be as quiet and inconspicuous as possible so that I didn’t startle them. I really did.

When I went to push the door the rest of the way open, it made a loud creaking noise that startled the two men, causing them to freeze in their stances as I nervously walked in. They were both standing over something, but I couldn’t tell what it was at the time. My heart was racing and my mind was flooded with different scenarios on how to properly deal with this situation.

“You’re not supposed to be in here.” I was as nervous as hell. “The sermon ended 30 minutes ago.”

When they both turned to face me, I immediately recognized them the moment I laid my eyes on them. They were both local doctors who worked in the Grundy General Hospital, Dr. George Tallent and Dr. Robert Morris. They were two of the highest ranking members of the Order. Dr. Tallent was an orthopedic surgeon who worked for the Grundy General Hospital and Dr. Morris was a general surgeon whose main specialty was vascular surgery.

Now, they had been suspiciously absent during that evening’s sermon, which I had assumed was due to their shifts at the hospital. Never in a million years would I have guessed they’d be involved in such a diabolical act. They were both wearing big, heavy black aprons over their clothes, rubber gloves that went to their elbows, safety glasses, and rubber boots. Their appearance was unkempt as if they had been working on whatever the hell it was for several hours straight. To say Dr. Tallent was pissed off by my being there would be an understatement. He was holding a big drill in one hand and had a cigarette in the other. I found it odd that he wasn’t using a typical surgical drill like he’d use at the hospital, but then again, if they had discovered he was using his surgical tools outside of the workplace to perform unethical treatments, he’d be stripped of his medical license. It was one of those big Black and Decker power tools with a diamond head drill bit like you’d get at the hardware store.

“Fuck! I told you to lock the door, Rob!” He shouted angrily, much to my surprise. Dr. Tallent was always soft spoken to his patients, even when they gave him problems. “As for you, kid….you shouldn’t be in here if the sermon ended 30 minutes ago. You should be at home before the Legion starts their patrols.”

In the last few years prior to the Incident, Paul Yearwood began to harbor intense paranoia, fearing the church was being watched by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The Sheriff at the time was his own stepson, Joseph Yearwood. If rumors are to be believed, Sheriff Yearwood had his eye on the Order’s activities for several years. To make matters more complicated, Joseph’s relationship with his family was non-existent. From what I’ve understood, he cut off all ties to his family after his daughter was born and his wife died during childbirth, but only maintained contact with his older brother, Greg, who was the store manager at the Piggly Wiggly. I don’t know what tipped him off, but he seemed to believe that Joseph had contacted the TBI and had “spies” planted in the Order’s ranks, along with having their phones wire tapped. By then, Paul was suspicious of everyone, even those who were in his inner circle. He lived in a constant state of fear, believing the Feds could come in at any moment and raid the church, destroying the “empire” he had painstakingly built over the last few decades. To keep that from happening, he came to Isaiah and begged him to send in extra Legion soldiers to patrol the streets at night. The town curfew was at around 9PM. All businesses within the city limits had to be closed by that time or else they could face execution, no questions asked. I’m thinking it was around 8PM when this happened because the sermons usually ended around 7:30.

“We’re decorating the Youth fellowship hall for Christmas and I was just needing to come in here to get a few things, sir. That’s all I need.” I was nervous as hell, especially seeing how he had a big drill in his hand and smelled like death. I just happened to take a step to the side while I was talking to him when I saw it, a horrible sight I will regret seeing for the rest of my life.

There was the body of a young man laid out on this big stainless steel surgical table, completely stripped of his clothes. Bad thing was, I immediately recognized him. A week prior to that, there was a terrible accident between Zion Mountain and Grundy involving a motorcycle and a pickup truck. The guy on the table was driving the motorcycle. From what I can remember, the motorcyclist was heading towards Zion Mountain on Highway 13 and the truck pulled out from a side road around Laurel Cove. Guess the truck driver wasn’t paying attention when he nailed him. The poor guy was thrown several feet and rolled down into a ditch, the motorcycle still with him. Not only did he sustain massive internal injuries from being hit by a truck, but he was also crushed by his bike. I can’t remember his name, but I do know he had just graduated from high school and had a full ride scholarship for the University of Tennessee because he was the star player on the basketball team. You can guess what church his family belonged to.

It was horrible. Before walking into the building a few minutes earlier, I could hear the sound of a drill grating against bone in a loud, shrill hum, followed by Dr. Tallent becoming frustrated at his inability to secure the screws holding these metal braces in place into his decaying flesh. They were working on his legs at the time. The scene was like something from a horror movie, as if I had walked in on a mad scientist creating his own Frankenstein’s monster. You can’t even begin to imagine how horrifying the smell was. It was a putrid combination of a rotting corpse, burnt wires, and formaldehyde. The formaldehyde was kept in a big, metal vat that had hoses running from it. Whenever the process was completed, they would pump the corpses full of it in an attempt to preserve them prior to the ritual they performed to reanimate them.

I can remember feeling physically ill by what I had witnessed. Standing before me were two of the most prominent men in the county, men who were beloved for their ethics in concern to the treatment of their patients. They treated thousands over the course of their careers, winning many awards in the process.

I saw their true colors that day. Everything they had ever done for this community was based on a lie they had somehow upheld for many years. By day, they treated the living with a superficial facade, acting as if they truly kept their best interest in mind. By night, they were Angels of Death who purposefully mutilated, dismembered, and tortured scores of young men, both living and dead, in order to appease Kalona and build their own army. They never cared for anyone else other than those who were like themselves, the elite upper class in the Order’s highest ranks.

Horrified, I asked them what the hell they were doing, desecrating a corpse like that. The guy had literally been dead and buried for over a week by that point. I didn’t have enough courage to question how they were able to get access to his corpse. I probably don’t want to know the answer, truth be told.

“We’re having to take extra precautions.” He was so nonchalant about it, like it was the most normal thing a person could do under the circumstance. “He suffered massive internal injuries during the crash. The impact shattered every bone in his body, so we’re having to make sure we preserve his overall bone structure so he can stand properly.”

I don’t remember the exact details of what had been exchanged between the three of us, but….the way Dr. Tallent and Dr. Morris presented themselves as their own personal gods who breathed life into these abominations that have no business existing in this world was nothing short of unnerving considering their “untarnished” reputation at the time. Dr. Tallent performed knee replacement surgery on my Mamaw several months before and he presented himself as a kind, caring gentleman who made sure Mamaw was able to get the post-op care she needed. It was nothing more than a front, a carefully constructed facade to hide how truly demented and morally depraved he was.

After speaking with me for a few minutes, they stepped out of my way and allowed me to get the supplies I needed for the youth fellowship hall. The entire situation was awkward. I could feel their eyes on me, watching my every move like a hawk me ready to pounce when the need arose. The whole conversation made me feel violated, despite having no sexual overtones at all. Everything I thought I knew about the Order of the Southern Sky was wrong. It was horribly wrong. I had been a fool for believing it, for going along with their lies. The Legion wasn’t created for our protection, but rather the destruction of everything that was ever good in Zion Mountain.

Before I walked out the door, Dr. Tallent called out to me for one last time. To this day, I can still remember the tone of his voice, a threatening growl that gives me chills even as I’m typing this out, “Son, if you tell anyone about what you saw here this evening, I’ll make damn sure you end up on this table. I could care less if Brother Paul thinks you’re special.”

I never returned to the out building after that. I was so traumatized by the experience that I would purposely do everything in my power to get out of their way if I had seen them during church. I feared them, knowing what they were capable of. I started having doubts about the Order and its teachings not long after that. I spent years convinced we were doing a service to this community, by spreading the gospel to others who had lost their way. In reality, it was the Order who had lost their way by forgetting the basic principles of what it truly means to be human. We live in a broken world and that brokenness only makes it easier for people who harbor hatred in their hearts to feel empowered, to feel justified in their delusional viewpoint of humanity and it's many faults. However, if you stand on a platform spewing hatred until you can no longer speak, nothing could ever be done. The Order of the Southern Sky mastered this art. They complained about the world being a horrible place to live, but offered no rational solutions to help change it, except for their opinion, which they didn't seem to have a shortage of. The problem with offering your opinion is that it contributes to nothing. You are only speaking to the atmosphere, unknowingly furthering someone's agenda elsewhere. Every time something bad happened in the world, they would repeat the same thing over and over-- "This world's going to Hell in a hand basket. The End of All is coming soon and what a joyous occasion it'll be, to reunite with Kalona in Paradise while all sinners are forced to spend eternity in the Other Plane." That was their automatic response to everything. Despite their so-called faith, they had absolutely no faith in humanity whatsoever, displaying no love for anyone else but themselves and others like them. They were selfish, weak, and resigned themselves to giving up when so much could be done to help! I know it's impossible to change the world. There's too many people who are suffering and there's many more who object to it because peace is an inconvenience. However, you can contribute by changing the worlds of a few. The only gospel you'll ever need is compassion, love, empathy, acceptance, and understanding. Nothing good will ever come out of denying humanity the same respect you'd want. Nothing good will ever come from barring them from society, to deny them happiness, and the right to exist in their own truth. Nothing. That's why Zion Mountain was destroyed, why everyone that I had ever known and loved were ripped away from me, because the Order could not imagine living in the same world as the very people they oppressed. Getting along with others and finding a common ground is not hard once both parties begin to understand each other. Rather than to live in peace, they[the Order] chose the only solution their minds could allow them to comprehend--to destroy themselves and take everyone else down with them.

[commiedervish]

Masterpost on the United States of America

[posted by /u/user_name_101ofcl on /r/communism]

This master post is divided into 2 parts:

The failure of the USA to protect its citizens

A list of US imperialism and the crimes they have committed

The Failure of USA to protect its citizens and the crimes committed in her own country

The USA is the largest and most powerful capitalist country to have ever existed. It has had the pleasure of

Being the most powerful country in its continent for about 150 years

Has the most favourable terrain imaginable. With fertile river valleys covering its land and all of its borders surrounded by forests, a large desert or oceans, practically making an invasion almost impossible.

Has plentiful resources like iron, coal and oil.

And lastly, a large amount of immigration. So a lack of a labour force won't ever be a problem

With such favourable material conditions, if we want to prove that capitalism works, the USA should be the best example of it. Let's look at how the US population is doing.

Worker rights and public services in the USA

The US has always repressed its workers. The federal minimum wage (7.25 $) is so low it barely allows people who are paid in it to live. The workers can not ask for a better wage, because they will get fired if they do.

The US has the least powerful unions and the workers stand alone against the capitalists. Basic things like paid maternity leave are optional and up to the employer. The US used to imprison and assassinate Union leaders so they wouldn't spread a pro worker message.

Privatisation is also a major thing in the US. The railways have always been private and this has resulted to them underperforming in speed, cost and affordability. In countries where it is nationalised, like China, the railways are extremely efficient.

The healthcare system in the US is private and this, according to Harvard, results in 45 thousand preventable deaths each year.

An other thing that is privatized, at least partly, is the prison system. Private prisons cost less to the government, about 17 $ less per prisoner per day but have more violence, worse facilities and are less likely to give parole than government ran prisons.

Poverty in the USA (statistics)

41 million Americans go hungry, including 13 million children and 5.4 millions seniors

More than 1 in 5 children in America (21.8%) are living under the official poverty line. Half of all children will be on food stamps before they turn 20, including 9 out of 10 black American children

Only 48% of Americans can handle a $400 emergency

For every 22 empty homes, there is 1 homeless person

Democracy in the USA

The USA prides itself in being the most democratic country, "the leader of the free world" but in reality the citizens of the USA have no real say on what their government does. The United States government only serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.

Don't believe me? Well, a recent report shows that about half of Congress and two thirds of the Senate are millionaires.

The elections are also completely undemocratic. The power of political lobbying in the USA is unprecedented. Both parties rely on the support of the bourgeoisie to win.

We shouldn't also forget the extreme gerrymandering that has been happening lately by both parties. Voting districts have been purposely redrawn across the country so the parties can keep their seats.

Now let's talk about voter suppression. The US has suppressed the vote of minorities since its creation. When the USA was created, only white male protestant land owners were allowed to vote. Gradually the USA was forced by civil rights activists to allow minorities and women to vote, but this doesn't mean that voter suppression doesn't exist. To this day incidents of voter suppression happen in states like Texas, south Carolina and Georgia. They specifically target black Americans, to stop them from voting.

An other way the US tries to stop black Americans from voting is felony disenfranchisement. Basically in most of the US, if you commit a felony, you are no longer allowed to vote (end in some states even if you get out of prison). This targets black and hispanic people in more than a few ways. They commit more crime than usual but they also get arrested more often than white people for the same crime.

The awful treatment of minorities in the USA

The US has historically oppressed every minority in its territory. From blacks to native Americans, from Latino communities to asians.

As I said above, only white men where allowed to vote when the US was created. In fact, not only where black people not allowed to vote, but they were slaves and where worth "three fifths of a white person". They were also not considered citizens despite them being born in the US.

When slavery was abolished the oppression continued. Segregation was the official policy of most states. They claimed that it was a policy of "separate but equal" but in reality it was far from that. White people had access to better schools, healthcare, housing and transportation.

Today although segregation being officially over, black people still face discrimination and disadvantages in schooling, police (we will get to that in a minute), healthcare, voting (as I showed you above), housing, and many other fields. Let's also not forget that the US has not paid ANY sort of reparations to black Americans. This and the effects of the institutionalized discrimination has left a unimaginable difference in the average wages and living standards of black Americans.

The median net worth of whites remains nearly 10 times the size of blacks. Nearly 1 in 5 black families have zero or negative net worth — twice the rate of white families.

(This even comes from a liberal source)

Let's also not forget the awful conditions in native reservations, with some lacking safe drinking water and some suffering from overcrowding. There is also a lack of wifi on a lot of these places.

And finally, the US literally has literal concentration camps in the border to place illegal migrants and their children, even though the illegal immigrants are fleeing violence and poverty the US caused in Central America (we will get to that)

Police brutality

Police brutality in the US has always been an issue. The main target are black people, worker rights activists, Muslims (especially after 9/11) latinos and some LGBTQ rights activists.

Police killed 1,147 people in 2017. Black people were 25% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population.

Black people are 25% more likely to be killed by police than white people

21% of black victims were completely unarmed

(This doesn't account for the people that were armed but didn't do anything wrong and cooperated with the police)

In 99% of cases the police officer was not convicted of a crime

A list of US imperialism and the crimes they have committed

This will be a list of US interventions from 1946 to 2019, this proves that the US remains an imperialist power and the primary threat to democracy

1 ) The US openly backs Greek nationalists in the Greek civil war against the communists, despite the communists having by far more support(1946)

2 ) The US helps with the creation of Israel(1948-1949)

3 ) The US helped in the establishment of the FRG (West Germany)

In 1957, 77% of the ministry's senior officials were former Nazis, which, according to the study, was a higher proportion that during Hitler's Third Reich government, which existed from 1933 to 1945.

A report released late last year found that between 1949 and 1970, 54% of Interior Ministry staffers were former Nazi Party members, and that 8% of them had served in the Nazi Interior Ministry, which at one point was run by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

Also when the Stalin notes came, calling for a neutral unified Germany with elections , the US refused

4) CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion in the Philippines (1948-54)

5) Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce, Puerto Rico (1950)

6) The US, after expelling a workers government in South Korea, establishes a fascist dictatorship and helps it fight the communists (1951-53)

7) CIA overthrows democracy in Iran, installs Shah. (1953)

8) The CIA directs a coup in Guatemala after the democratically elected government nationalised fruit land from cooperations that were exploitating the Guatemalan people(1954)

9) The Suez crisis in Egypt (1956)

10) Army & Marine occupation against rebels in Lebanon (1958)

11) Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam, 1 million killed, atomic bomb threats in 1968 and 69 (1960-75)

12) CIA-directed Bay of Pigs exile invasion fails in Cuba (1961)

13) Caused an international crisis over missiles in Cuba while they had similar ones on Turkey (1962)

14) CIA organizes coup in Iraq that killed the president, brings Ba’ath Party to power, Saddam Hussein as secret service head (1963)

15) The terror to black American communities and the black Panthers massively increased. Assassinations left and right, including M.L.K (1963-66)

16) People in Panama shot for urging canal’s return (1964)

17) 3 million dead in a CIA backed coup in Indonesia (1965)

18) CIA backed coup in Greece against democratically elected leftist (1967-73)

19) Cia backed dictator, up to 2 million killed in decade of bombing, starvation, political chaos (1969-75)

20) US directs Iranian marine invasion in Oman (1970)

21) US directs South Vietnamese invasion in Laos,“carpet-bombs” countryside around Ho Chi Minh Trail (1971-73)

22) Democratic elected leftist president in Chile replaced with a fascist US backed regime (1973)

23) Telling Turkey to invade Cyprus so they can't join the Warsaw pact(1974)

24) Assists South African-backed UNITA rebels in Angola (1976-92)

25) Iran, raid to rescue embassy hostages, 8 troops die in helicopter-plane crash, bombing aborted. Soviets warned not to get involved in revolution. (1980)

26) The US helped Islamic extremists against socialist Afghan government(1981-1989)

27) CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against Sandinista revolutionary gov’t. (1981-90)

28) Lebanon, Marines expel PLO and back far-right Phalangists, Navy bombs and shells Muslim rebels, Syrian forces (1983)

29) Invasion topples 4-year leftist revolutionary gov’t in Grenada (1984)

30) Honduras, Maneuvers help build bases near Nicaragua borders (1985)

31) Air strikes to topple Qaddafi gov’t in Libya (1986)

32) Army assists raids on cocaine region in Bolivia (1986)

33) U.S. intervenes on side of Iraq in the Iraq - Iran war (that Iraq started by the way), defending reflagged tankers & downing civilian jet (1987-88)

34) Panama, Noriega gov’t ousted by 27,000 soldiers,2000+ killed. Canal Zone & bases returned in 1999 (1989-99)

35) Iraq countered after invading Kuwait. 540,000 troops stationed also in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel. (1991)

36) No fly zones and sanctions on Iraq (1991-2003)

37) Intervention in Croatia(1992-94)

38) Rigging of Russian elections so the communists would not win (1993)

39) No-fly zone in civil war; downed jets, bombed Serbs (1995)

40) Zaire, Troops at Rwandan Hutu refugee camps in the area where Congo revolution began. (1996-97)

41) Heavy NATO air strikes after Serbia declines to withdraw from Kosovo. NATO occupation of Kosovo. (1999)

42) The US invades Afghanistan (2001-now)

43) Yemen, Drone missile attack on Al Qaeda, including US citizen (2002)

44) The war on Iraq, Saddam Hussein regime toppled in Baghdad. 250,000+ U.S. personnel participate in invasion. US & UK forces battle Sunni & Shi’a insurgencies. 160,000+ troops & many private contractors stationed on bases (2003-11)

45) Haiti, Marines & Army land after right-wing rebels oust elected President Aristide, U.S. forces him into exile (2003-04)

46) Pakistan, CIA drones, air strikes, Special Forces raids on alleged Al Qaeda & Taliban refuge villages kill multiple civilians. Drone attacks on Pakistani Mehsud network (2005-now)

47) Libya, NATO coordinates air strikes and missile attacks vs. Qaddafi government during uprising by rebel army (2011)

48)Air strikes & Special Forces intervene vs. Islamic State insurgents, training other Syrian rebels, bomb alleged Syrian gov’t chemical arms sites (2014-now)

49) Coup in Bolivia against a democratically elected president, replaced with a religious fascist that also hates indigenous people (2019)

50) Meeting with and funding the Hong Kong protestors (2019-now)

51) The killing of an Iranian general (now)

The photo I used - http://imgur.com/gallery/HvyTkEh

List of US atrocities: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md

Sources

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/

https://www.rollcall.com/news/hawkings/congress-richer-ever-mostly-top

https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Poverty-Fact-Sheet-Feb-2015-final.pdf

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/01/09/most-lawmakers-are-millionaires

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/court-north-carolina-voter-id-law-targeted-black-voters/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/19/georgia-governor-race-voter-suppression-brian-kemp

https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472617/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/10/24/us/ice-kids-detention-invs/index.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/28/black-and-hispanic-families-are-making-more-money-but-they-still-lag-far-behind-whites/%3foutputType=amp

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Police-Brutality-in-the-United-States-2064580

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org

https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/wp-content/uploads/sites/358/2019/11/InterventionsList2019.pdf

[The rest of the sources were not included in this post due to the character limit. However, they can be seen in the original post on reddit.]

[yourdanthemanfan]

A1 Critical Analysis Folio

Design innovation of the redevelopment of Adelaide Oval.

Since the redevelopment to the venue in 2014 and with the connection of the foot bridges to the CBD has become a bit of a precinct and there’s been lots of strategic design involved quite heavily. One of the most inventive creations was the roof, obviously there was lots of focus in the design elements for the roof. On top of that Adelaide oval now has another revenue stream since the redevelopment of the stadium it’s called ‘Adelaide Oval roof climb’. The tour includes history of the ground and it sports ‘ideals’ (City mag In Daily, 2018), whats quite remarkable about the veune is the lighting at night the stadium is very colourful and overlooks the water with the restaurants and bars that are booming.

The heritage the ground has is still strong, the pre-existing scoreboard under heritage regulations cannot be changed or taking down. To this date it is the only sporting venue in Australia that has a traditional scoreboard (non screen). As well the ground on the northern side of the ground has still kept the culture of the indigenous trees which, is one of the oldest heritage listed connected to the oval.  As part of their long history also the stadium has kept its Sheffield grandstand. 

The standing area around the whole venue has been expanded so there’s plenty of room for people attending events, and allows for a higher customer satisfaction. With the implantation of connecting the foot bridges to the CBD was one of the clever ideas in the redevelopment which, allows for easier access and its shorter in duration to walk the distance to matches. Other designs were included in the redevelopment phase to make the venue a more popular venue and allowing for more accessibility. The stadium now has multi coloured led lights around the stadium which adds to the atmosphere at night, which makes it more appealing for families and in general. The lighting is so important as it really boosts some eye catching moments.

‘Cultural sites’ often produce a range of competing meanings with the dominant ones reflecting existing power relations. By knowing how really significant the relations of power is most important in conjunction with mapping preserving life, and operating at highest capacity of these particular sites.

Old history in going in depth of importance regarding cultural landscape around Adelaide Oval. Including the establishment of a monument. With the establishment of the year 2000 Reconciliation march, out the back of Adelaide Oval’s Victor Richardson Gates. Adelaide quite remarkably is framed by one of the dominant ‘tropes’ of Australian identity- Australia as a new Britannia. Overall the stadium is successful due to its ‘sports fan engagement’ Red Falcons (2013)

Source 1: (Red Balloon, n.d.,)

Source 2: Red Balloon, (n.d.,)

Source 3: (The West Australian, Feb 18th, 2018)

Source 4:(The conversation, Dec 10th 2013)

References:

https://citymag.indaily.com.au/commerce/how-the-commonwealth-games-could-save-adelaide-https://dspace2.flinders.edu.au/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2328/14705/2003052331.pdf?sequence=1part-three/

https://www.coxarchitecture.com.au/project/adelaide-oval-redevelopment/

https://dspace2.flinders.edu.au/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2328/14705/2003052331.pdf?sequence=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xvpoHDtNkk

The Big Bash League MCG Sports Fan Activation Innovation 

The Big Bash league has become quite an amazing aspect to sporting history and the League implements good fan experience for fans/family. The Big Bash offers and is appropriate for any age bracket, no other form of cricket could be as pleasing. The Big Bash has become easily the most popular from of cricket there is and in such a short amount of time.

The fast pace family friendly game is what makes it more popular for viewers. Instead of watching a whole test or one day why not come for 3-4 hours and enjoy a fast pace game. There’s plenty of entertainment, viewers get free music played between balls, ‘The Big Screen’ offers crowd engagement, the athletes uniforms are colours instead of just white. The best thing is there is more sixer’s being hit more than ever. What is iconic about this form of the game is there’s plenty of entertainment for the family outside the ground which, is quite extensive in terms of innovation/ crowd engagement compared too many sports held in Melbourne. With plenty of face painting, jumping castles, slides, or having a hit with your friends, or the blockbuster activities the Big Bash ticks off. With the game being so popular what it does is it disadvantages test cricket and other forms, there is a big decrease of people watching the older traditional forms of the game.

After a few years of the game being implemented, the fans wanted more games as they were discussing they wanted more throughout the summer. So the fans got what they wanted, late 2018 summer & 2019 summer. Let’s not forget about the all-important value, the value is surprisingly so cheap for a family pass, in the end of the day the audiences seek value to get into the doors.  Meaning fans are going to want to keep on buying tickets more frequently, which end up good for the sport as it brings more fans in, ticket sales and more.

I haven’t even mentioned the entertainment from the 1st Big Bash Game of the season. Motorbike freestyle and fireworks, these two will leave you on the edge of the seat.  The men’s get 947,000 average viewers per match, the attendance for the whole 2017 season was 1,143,763, The game is enabled to watch through 122 countries.

References:

https://www.melbournerenegades.com.au/video/freestyle%20motocross%20at%20etihad%20stadium%20bbl%2005/2015-12-30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZnFKAKZ-cc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyzZnEKkSI0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lA13GJ_xp8

https://www.Bigb\Bash.com.au/bbl/plan-your-night#match-experience-1

Source 1:

Source 2:

Source 3:(Digital Sports Labs Jan 21 2108)

Source 4:(TV Black Box Jan 23 2019)

Hillsborough Disaster

Between Liverpool and Nottingham forest in the FA Cup semi-final. The major disaster was that too many people were entering from the Leppings Lane. With just 7 turnstiles. As soon as fans go through the lane, they go into just bay 3 and 4 and are forced to have across to other bays with just 1 main entrance. Causing fans down the bottom of the gate to be squished and pushed over the gate.

Super Lieutenant and officers on the ground decided not to delay the match even though many fans were going to miss the start or all the game. What good that happened was gates were open by Leppings Lane to relieve pressure and to get fans in early. Another major issue was that there was simply not enough communication between all officers and people working around the ground. This was evident that when the gates were open the officers could not control or steady the crowd meaning the organisational structure was poor.

They shouldn’t have started the game early as it causes more anger and frustration towards fans coming into the event. There certainly weren’t enough stretchers as the video suggests with that not enough health and safety equipment for those who needed it. So perhaps there wasn’t enough first aid, ambulance, police guards and enough seats for people to be seated, as the stadium did become like group of bees. The total deaths that occurred were 96 some varied either suffocation, being cut by sharp objects, or shooting taking place. This particular sporting event was truly a ‘disaster’ this happened to the dilemma of overcrowding the ground and letting people too many people in with not enough control or security.

“They died so young”

” This was the nightmare of Hillsborough. Young fans battle for breath as they are crushed in the soccer disaster that claimed 94 lives. Fencing designed to stop hooligans had killed the innocent.”

“Because of how squished we were people were allowed to rob each other?”

References:

redandwhitekop.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNS26Oj9B4o

Source 1: Ingham, P, (2018)

Source 2:Independent, (2019)

Source 3: City data (2019)

Sport event infrastructure (transport) enhancement 

When considering sport, it needs a good level of ‘infrastructure and services’ in order to bring the host location to a higher level of efficiency beyond the events and project duration. Sometimes improvements are needed for major events, this example is London that hosted the Olympic Games in 2012.

London realised they needed to improve their transportation system as they felt if they didn’t, people getting to the event would prove to be too hard and wouldn’t be convenient. London by 2012 there will be a total of ten public transport lines feeding into Stafford, representing the capability of a train arriving in the area every ‘15 seconds’ Railway Technology, (2019). With the start of the plan to be commenced in 2007. Building this infrastructure, London believes it will see much value in doing so for the future even from a ‘decade’ onwards. London also has transport connections near the site of the Olympic Park which is good as it’s a short distance to walk to the event. Their significant problem was to be able to do so, a big amount of money was needed to make the site accessible. The total costs for direct investment in transportation for the event estimated to 900m euros in Australian dollar, $1.8 billion in total. In direct investments in transport particular at Stafford International and other public transport services, both public and private, are estimated at $2 billion annually from 2007-2012.

Having a well-established transportation system does help to increase ‘tourism’  which, the new upgrades will contribute well to increase in tourism. London wanted to make sure that they were being proactive, as they transportation system will be beneficial not just for the Olympic Games but will be used regularly.

When hosting big games most things that are built if possible should be built for ‘multi-purposes’ Lecture, (2019) not left to decay otherwise what’s the point in making big investments in these things. From the year 1863, London had the oldest ‘subway system’, each day 3 million people use the system, which is comprised of 250 miles of track, the second-longest in the world behind Shanghai. It was in 2005, London was appointed to host the Summer Olympics Games, and people that use the transportation daily knew the underground system needed improvements. As well many stations were invested for upgrades, the underlying focus was to make stations more accessible. In reviewing the impacts, the new upgrades had for the games and for future purposes was quite successful.

 References:

https://crossworks.holycross.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://scholar.google.com.au/&httpsredir=1&article=1146&context=econ_working_papers

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/cash-strapped-cities-eye-infrastructure-as-ad-space

https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/london-olympics/

http://www.transportnexus.com/olympic-games-4/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMSuo643KcY

Source 1: Davis, M, (2018)

Source 2:Mayor of London (2012)

Source 3;

[junker-town]

Happy 18th birthday to the most upsetting baseball game of all time

The worst sports night of my entire life began with Dave Burba slopping what I can only assume was his take on a cut fastball a few inches off the plate away. Ichiro was at bat, Mark McLemore on deck, the twilight was falling on a beautiful Ohio evening, and the Cleveland Indians were hosting the 80-31 Seattle Mariners.

I’d never seen the Mariners on television before. I moved to Seattle when I was 10 and was a boring enough child to fall in love with baseball upon being dragged to the Kingdome for the first time. Thanks to the vagaries of cable, however, I had to follow my team via radio and once-yearly excursions to the ballpark. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when you have Dave Neihaus guiding you through your favorite team’s golden age*, but it did leave me starved for non-aural baseball.

*As it turns out, 1995-2003 was also the Mariners’ only non-fecal age.

So starved, in fact, every time Seattle made it to a national broadcast, I would try to watch. And every time, for literally years, I’d get notified that, so sorry, your game has been blacked out. Until, suddenly, on Aug. 5, 2001, it worked. I was baffled by this turn of events, of course, but decided to take it as a note of benevolence from a higher power, and settled in to watch.

Pitch number two was in more or less the same place as Burba’s first offering. Three was an 84-mph fastball down the middle that Ichiro apparently thought would be too embarrassing to hit, a decision which cost him when he was called out on strikes a few pitches later. So far so bad, a younger, more innocent me must have thought.

The 2001 Indians were a good team and could pitch. A little bit. Bartolo Colon was in his intimidating pomp, and the arrival of rookie left-hander C.C. Sabathia helped give their rotation a one-two punch which was entirely irrelevant when Burba (or anyone else — Cleveland essentially ran a AAA rotation beyond the big two) was on the mound. At his best, Burba was slightly better than pure filler, but at 34 he was no longer at his best, and he was going up against a Mariners team that was set to absolutely torch him. Now he was up against Mark McLemore, who struck out too. Then Edgar Martinez chopped out to third.

If you follow baseball, you’re probably aware of this game, at least tangentially. And therefore you’re aware that this was something more disastrous than what was threatened in the top of the first: a mediocre pitcher chewing his way through a very good lineup. That’s a bad day, but not a traumatic one. Four batters into the game, when Kenny Lofton cracked a ground ball single back through the box, and hard, I feared a bad day. How disappointing it would be to have my first televised Mariners experience be a frustrating loss!

Aaron Sele wriggled his way out of the bottom of the first, which gives me a good opportunity to drop in this still from a between-innings commercial:

I think Pontiac would have been proud of how they’ve shaped modern society.

The Mariners scored four times in the top of the second. Two ill-considered dives produced a pair of hustle doubles, sandwiched around a Mike Cameron blast which bounced off the wall but would have gone about 20 rows deep if he’d been hitting the 2019 baseball. Ichiro then plated a pair with a delicate lob to left. Seattle was rolling, and I was happy.

I was still happier after the third. That inning went something like this:

Single Single Single Double Single Single Hit By Pitch Sacrifice Fly Walk Error Single Strikeout Lineout

It was worth eight runs and took the score to 12-0. No baseball team in history had ever come back from a 12-run deficit. The Indians, who’d already been beaten twice at home by Seattle that weekend and were starting to look in trouble in the AL Central race, were staring at a blowout. No baseball team in history had ever come back from a 12-run deficit.

Then one did. This game is in the record books as the greatest comeback of all time, the one in which Cleveland clawed their way back from a ludicrous deficit to win the game in extras. Blowing a 12-run lead over any length of time is difficult enough, but the sheer scope of the Mariners’ collapse is extraordinary. The teams each scored two runs in the middle innings, leaving the score at 14-2 during the seventh-inning stretch. The Indians had to compress history (and, for me, misery) into three innings.

They did so without the heart of their fearsome batting order. By the time the comeback began, both lineups had seen a slew of changes. Ichiro, Martinez, and Olerud were on the bench, as were Alomar, Juan Gonzalez, and Ellis Burks. The only really dangerous bats left available to either team were Jim Thome and Bret Boone, and the latter had been given the day off anyway. Despite the two clubs sending seven hitters to the 2001 MLB All-Star game, only Mike Cameron played the full 11 innings of what was to prove one of the most memorable games of the decade.

Anyway. By the middle of the seventh, I was in a pretty good mood. I was getting to watch (not listen!) to one of the greatest teams of all time kick the ever-loving shit out of some pretty capable opposition, and although it was a little annoying that most of the big bats were out of the game, all the Mariners needed to do to ensure my evening finished happily was not blow a 12-run lead.

AN ASIDE: Whatever happened to this dude? Did we lose him during our difficult transition to being a civilization of Mango Freaks?

END ASIDE

Through six innings, Sele had given up six hits, a walk, and two runs. Russell Branyan, on for Burks, greeted him with a screaming line drive into the right centre field seats. 14-3. The comeback was on. Only, it didn’t really look it. Two batters later and the Indians needed 11 runs to tie the game, and had seven outs to do it. Solo home runs weren’t going to do it.

If we had to pick a turning point, the plate appearance which made all that followed possible, it might be Lofton’s walk. With two outs, Einar Diaz smacked a two-hopper up the middle and well out of Carlos Guillen’s reach, but Sele was still cruising and quickly got Lofton 0-2 thanks to a generous called strike and a foul ball. One more strike would have sent the Indians into the eighth inning in an (even more) impossible hole. Sele threw exactly zero more strikes.

Lofton took four straight fastballs away. None of them were close. Omar Vizquel followed that up with a four-pitch walk, and suddenly Sele, who averaged just 2.1 walks per nine innings for the entire 2001 season, had walked the bases loaded. The clouds were gathering. Lou Piniella seeded them further by going to blowout specialist John Halama.

Halama, part of the return for Randy Johnson in 1998, was a terrible pitcher, AAA no-hitter aside. He somehow logged 110 innings for the 2001 Mariners, which is remarkable considering he didn’t strike anyone out and got absolutely blitzed by opposing hitters. The ‘01 Mariners had one of the strongest bullpens ever assembled, headlined by Kazuhiro Sasaki, Arthur Rhodes, and Jeff Nelson. Even the best bullpens, however, have their fair share of dreck. With an 11-run cushion and someone named Jolbert Cabrera at the plate, dreck should have been fine.

It was not fine. Cabrera took a big swing on a changeup away, and yanked the ball into left. That fooled Martin, who froze, took a step backwards and then charged in, allowing the ball to drop a step or two in front of him. Two runs would score, and the seventh inning ultimately ended, 14-5.

The Mariners’ bats seem to have considered their job done. After the fifth, they went a combined 3-18, with three singles. Having scored 14 runs in that early blitz, they quite reasonably went into cruise control. They’d never come back out.

Meanwhile, the Indians were treating Halama like a piñata. Thome, whose two-run home run in the fourth got Cleveland on the board, flipped a 2-1 “fastball” into the left field corner for another homer. 14-6. Marty Cordova joined him in the home run parade after a Branyan hit-by-pitch — 14-8. Suddenly the game was within reach, and after a pair of singles Halama was done. Norm Charlton was called in from the pen.

Charlton wasn’t one of the big three Mariners relievers, but he wasn’t bad either, and Piniella would have been expecting him to hold down a six-run lead even in a tricky spot. He probably should have, too. Vizquel was jammed on a 95-mph fastball away, but he somehow kept it fair and the ball looped down the left field line for a double and a 14-9 score. The Mariners then got a break in this breakless of games — Lofton misread a ball which bounced off Tom Lampkin’s right leg and was thrown out trying to score, which allowed Charlton to escape to the ninth with a five-run lead.

I didn’t yet know to be nervous. Eighteen years ago, the Seattle Mariners were not the Seattle Mariners™. They had not yet become the unbridled force for misery which has shaped the way I look at sports. Their playoff drought was zero years. They had reached the ALCS in 2000, they would again in 2001. They were phenomenal, and I expected them to win more or less whenever they played, whatever the situation. And when they lost ... well, that happened. I suppose. Infrequently.

Ed Taubensee led off the bottom of the ninth with a single. With Thome and Branyan next up, the situation looked perilous, but Charlton made quick work of them. Two outs, down five, and a runner on first? That should have been game over. Then the wheels really came off.

I hadn’t watched this inning since I saw the calamity unfold live, but it’s seared into my memory regardless. Cordova absolutely crushed a pitch off the left-field wall to knock Charlton out of the game. Nelson was summoned. He got Wil Cordero to 3-2, then struck him out looking on a wicked slider:

Well, he should have struck him out with that slider. Instead was called ball four. Missed calls have been more egregious, of course, but this one had a profound effect on my young psyche, for six pitches later Nelson himself was knocked out of the game by a line drive into left off Diaz’s bat — 14-11. Suddenly it was a save situation, and it was clear to teenage me that something had gone terribly wrong.

I was ‘watching’ with my hands over my eyes as Lofton scooched a single past David Bell to bring up the go-ahead run in Vizquel. Not a soul in Jacobs Field was sitting down. This was it. Sasaki started Vizquel off with a splitter that he swung over for strike one. A second splitter followed, well out of the zone. The battle would end up lasting some time.

Baseball is a sport devoted to tension. Stress is the soul of the game and has been since the foul-ball rules were finalized. In a sport with a clock, key moments are just that: moments. They come, they go, they are finished with and done in a flash. Baseball stretches its moments and its fans to a breaking point. I am reliably informed that during Vizquel’s at-bat I was having what looked like a small seizure. All I really remember is the creeping horror, every pitch promising redemption or catastrophe but only serving to prolong the moment and ratchet up the stress.

Sasaki’s fifth pitch to Vizquel was a 91-mph fastball down the middle and at the knees, called a ball for reasons I suspect are related to the will of some malevolent deity. Pitch six was just about fouled off, an emergency swing sending a splitter trickling off behind home plate. Pitch seven was popped into the stands on the third base side. And then pitch eight was guided by the despotic hand of fate onto the label of Vizquel’s bat.

The subsequent weak grounder was perfectly placed, right down the first base line. Ed Sprague was a) playing in and b) not John Olerud, so his desperate dive ended in failure. Lofton was 34, and not as fast as he once was, but the ball was so well-placed — and the Mariners’ defense so thoroughly depleted — that he scored from first with 40 feet to spare. 14-14. Tie game.

For some reason I watched to the bitter end, even though extra innings were essentially and entirely denouement. Cleveland had already won the game by drawing level, and the Mariners had already lost it by blowing the biggest lead in MLB history. Cabrera’s walk-off single in the bottom of the 11th marked only the final blow in a disaster that had already unfolded.

Eighteen years later, this still haunts me. Not like it did then, when it was merely a humiliation, a nationally televised scandal of a game in what was otherwise an enormously successful season. But now, with the Mariners mired in year after year of pain, when the organization considers mediocrity aspirational, it’s hard not to see this as a harbinger of the misery to come, an early visitation of the Mariners in their true colors.

Sometimes I wonder if the current incarnation of the team, the one slowly draining the hope out of my fandom since 2004, is somehow inhabited by the ghost of Aug. 5. It’s ridiculous, of course — a single game, record books or not, has no bearing whatsoever on the standings 18 years later.

But. Still. What if?

[sunshineweb]

The Hedonic Treadmill

Here are the best things I read and thought about today –

Bloomberg carries this nice piece (Tip: If your Bloomberg free articles limit is over, you may try opening this article in an incognito browser) from Nir Kaissar and Barry Ritholtz, where the authors write to answer this question – How do you get rich? By earning a lot or saving a lot?   Here is Barry’s point of view on the subject of “frugality” –

I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of “sustained and disciplined frugality.” With that said, here’s what to keep in mind:

1. Focus on the big things; the little things will take care of themselves 2. We all only have so much internal discipline, a consequence of limited mental bandwidth. Don’t fritter it away on things that don’t matter very much. 3. Spending should always be a function of what you can afford, not a slavish devotion to some puritan ideal. 4. Money can bring security, comfort and happiness, but beyond a certain point returns on having more of it diminish rapidly. 5. Experiences tend to beat material goods in terms of money well spent.

First, the big things: Your education, your career choice, your work ethic, who you marry, who you work with, your skill set, your compensation, your health, your outlook, how you think about the world and the commitment you make to yourself about continually learning and improving. Get those right, and those $5 lattes become pretty irrelevant.

Basically, the advice is this – avoid the hedonic treadmill and you will be much better off in your financial life. “Hedonic treadmill” is basically a theory positing that people repeatedly return to their baseline level of happiness, regardless of what happens to them. It is an important concept to grasp when it comes to understanding happiness, which we often lose in forever chasing rainbows.

By the way, here is a quadrant I drew recently on how to get rich without being on the hedonic treadmill (for long) –

  Continuing with the subject of personal financial planning, here is a Morningstar post titled It’s Time to Think Big where the author suggests using this quiet period to introspect and improve our financial plans in a big-picture way.   On the question of defining how much money is “enough” for us, she writes –

Many of us are operating with an incredibly vague notion of how much we really need to save in order to achieve our financial goals and find security. And even financial planners might rely on rules of thumb when setting your retirement-savings target–for example, they might assume that you’ll need 80% of your working income in retirement and extrapolate the rest of your plan from there.

As humans, we often have a natural tendency to reach for more more more, regardless of whether that “more” is actually bringing more happiness and security. Trying to keep up with the people around us, in terms of possessions and outward signs of success, can get exhausting and may not get us any closer to our life’s goals. That’s why, in this period of limited activity, spending, and social contact, it’s so worthwhile to think through your own definition of enough–both now and for the future. Jack Bogle wrote a wonderful book called Enough that I would recommend; the genesis for the book was a memorable commencement address that he delivered in 2007. (If you haven’t heard the Joseph Heller/Kurt Vonnegut story that serves as the title of the book and speech, I guarantee that you’ll be repeating it to someone soon.)

Well, I had talked about Joseph Heller’s story in my lecture at IIM Lucknow in December 2018.

And here is the transcript of my talk to a group of friends in Silicon Valley in early 2018, where I tried to answer my version of the “how much is enough” question.  

Mental Models For a Pandemic is wonderful post published on Farnam Street. One of the models talked about is “antifragile,” a concept that Nassim Taleb described thus –

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance … even our own existence as a species on this planet.

Here is the point about antifragility in Farnam Street’s post –

…we need to ask ourselves how we can improve our antifragility. How can we get to a place where we grow stronger through change and challenge? It’s not about getting “back to normal.” The normal that was our world in 2019 has proven to be fragile. We shouldn’t want to get back to a time when we were unprepared and vulnerable.

And here is Safal Niveshak’s version of this very important mental model of antifragility.  

The Atlantic carries a biweekly column by Arthur Brooks titled “How to Build a Life,” wherein he tackles questions of meaning and happiness. His latest post talks about four rules for identifying your life’s work, and it’s really good.   Brooks’ rule number one reads “the work has to be the reward” –

One of the biggest mistakes people make in their careers is to treat work primarily as a means to an end. Whether that end is money, power, or prestige, this instrumentalization of work leads to unhappiness. The psychologist Elliott Jaques — famous for inventing the term midlife crisis — once quoted a middle-aged patient as saying, “Up till now, life has seemed an endless upward slope, with nothing but the distant horizon in view. Now suddenly I seem to have reached the crest of the hill, and there stretching ahead is the downward slope with the end of the road in sight.” Later, he admitted that he himself was this “patient,” and this was his own lament. He had worked away for years in his career to get some fabulous reward, and then realized that there wasn’t much reward ahead at all, just aging and death.

When your career is just a means to an end, the payoff, even if you get it, will be unsatisfying. Don’t make that mistake. Your work won’t give you joy and fulfillment every day, of course. Some days it will feel pretty unsatisfying. But with the right goals — earning your success and serving others — you can make the work itself your reward.

What a fine advice this is!  

Forbes carries an insightful investigative piece on the $2.5 trillion debt binge that has taken some of America’s leading companies including Boeing and AT&T from blue chips to near junk –

According to a Forbes investigation, which analyzed 455 companies in the S&P 500 Index — excluding banks and cash-rich tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft — on average, businesses in the index nearly tripled their net debt over the past decade, adding some $2.5 trillion in leverage to their balance sheets. The analysis shows that for every dollar of revenue growth over the past decade, the companies added almost a dollar of debt. Most S&P 500 firms entered the bull market with just 20 cents in net debt per dollar of annual revenue; today that figure has climbed to 38 cents.

But as the coronavirus pandemic cripples commerce worldwide, American corporations face a grim reality: Revenues have evaporated, but their crushing debt isn’t going anywhere.

As Prof. Sanjay Bakshi wrote in his tweet sharing this post, these are “useful case studies on distortions in capital structure caused by many factors including artificially low interest rates, perverse incentives for senior management, and a myopic market fixated on cash flow returns to stockholders instead of long term strength of businesses.”

Indian companies are yet to test such level of madness, at such a large scale, but many are almost there (plus we have ample experience from the past) with their bulging balance sheets and run by managers that do not know of anything but instant gratification at the cost of long term business growth, stability, and value creation. Beware of them!  

An old tweet from James Clear, where he suggests what we can do with 5 good minutes –

5 good minutes of:

-pushups is a solid workout -sprints will leave you winded -writing can deliver 1 good page -reading can finish an insightful article -meditation can reset your mood

You don’t need more time — just a little focused action.

* * * That’s about it from me for today.

If you liked this post, please share with others on WhatsApp, Twitter, or just email them the link to this post.

Stay safe. Stay focused.

With respect, — Vishal

The post The Hedonic Treadmill appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

The Hedonic Treadmill published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

[wayneooverton]

Tips for surviving long-haul flights from a professional flyer who hates flying

I first started seriously traveling over a decade ago, mostly back and forth between Washington DC and Europe, when I was living in Spain. I hated the travel. In fact, I still do.

Ironic right? The professional travel blogger who hates flying. Who would have thought?

I can still easily recollect the utter agony I felt at those overnight flights that felt like they would never end. I mean 7 hours crammed in a metal tube surrounded by equally grumpy people who wish they could be anywhere else; could it get any worse?

Wait guys, it totally can!

Then I moved to New Zealand, aka the end of the world, where everything is approximately a 24 hours of flying away! What was I thinking?!

These days I yearn for those 7 hour overnight flights. For me, I now count anything less than 8 hours as a short flight. Talk about perspective.

As I began writing this from 40,000 feet in the comfort of business class on one of the longest flights in the world, 17 hours from Dubai to Auckland (don’t hate me cuz you ain’t me), I can’t help but reflect on over a decade of solo travel that often involved long ass flights, most of which made me want to kill myself, and how I managed to survive.

Blah blah privelage blah blah. Let’s move on to the real stuff.

I’m not a good flier, and I never have been, but now surviving long haul flights is kinda my speciality.

I have severe anxiety, depression and insomnia, not a good combination for someone whose job requires them to board planes all the damn time. It’s not the act of flying that stresses me out, and I’m not worried about crashing, it’s rather the whole process of airports and travel that literally gives me nightmares.

I’m not kidding. I actually do have regular nightmares about packing suitcases, losing things, arriving late to the airport, and checking in. All the time.

10 Things I Really Wish People Would Stop Doing on Airplanes

My flying anxiety mostly comes from being surrounded by so many people (so annoying) and unable to get away from them. What on earth does that say about my character? Wait, don’t answer that.

So I feel duty-bound and honored to share the wisdom that hundreds (yes hundreds) of long-haul flights have taught me about how to survive stupidly long trips. The past two years I’ve averaged around 100 flights per year, so I consider myself something of an expert on the matter.

And even with all those miles and carbon emission offsets under my belt, I still hate flying. But I’ve learned to make it a lot more palatable, and no, it’s not always because I’m drunk or popped some Xanax. Or both.

With more people traveling than ever these days, getting on planes is an inevitable part of the process, unless you’re one of those badass people who hitchhike on cargo ships or bike packs around the world, and if you are, I salute you.

But for the rest of us, how do we make flying more bearable? Like really? Here’s my best guide of real, honest, tried and tested tips to surviving long haul flights. Enjoy!

1. Weasel your way into business class

Ok, ok, don’t stop reading just yet. Hear me out.

Most of the time I fly long-haul these days, I fly premium, usually in business class BUT I almost never buy business class tickets because they are usually very pricey. And let me be the first to tell you that as soon as you fly in business or first class, the entire airplane experience becomes INSTANTLY more palatable, dare I say, enjoyable?

While this deserves a blog post entirely on it’s on, my biggest tips for getting an affordable business class long haul flights are last minute upgrades and airline loyalty. Start collecting miles and pick an airline to build an alliance with. Use those points or miles to cash in for upgrades, and often you will receive cheap upgrade offers. And always ask when you check in at the airport how much an upgrade would cost. Most of the time it’s a lot cheaper than buying a premium ticket, and airlines always look more favorably on guests who have status with them. And the first people who get upgraded for free are usually the ones with high status – this happens to me ALL THE TIME on overbooked flights.

They also look more favorably on people who don’t look like shit so don’t show up to the airport in your sweats. Trust me, this works.

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Tara Milk Tea (@taramilktea) on Nov 18, 2018 at 3:13am PST

2. If you can’t get upgrade, at least weasel your way into good seats

When I was dirt poor traveling on pennies for years, sleeping my way through European airports and 30 bed hostel dorms, I quickly figured out how to ninja my way into good seats in economy, in particular how to get a row to myself.

Depending on the size of the plane I usually found the back to be emptier, and as soon as I booked I’d go online and chose my seats. If it’s full and I don’t think I have a chance of scoring a row to myself, I’ll pay up for an exit row or a premium seat. If I have money to spare, I’ll splurge on airlines like Air New Zealand that have the Skycouch option in economy where you can get the whole row to yourself or go up into Premium Economy with them or Cathay Pacific.

But here’s one of my best secrets: certain airlines will even let you buy the seat next to you, they call it a comfort seat, for like $100. Not having anyone to fight over the armrest with or drool on you? Hell, that’s worth $100 to me.

My other big trick is that I always chat up the staff at check in to see if I can move my seat around to a better one, and even at the gate too. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

3. Stop flying shitty airlines

Not all airlines are created equal, and there is a big difference between flying a budget airline for 12 hours and a nice airline for 12 hours.

Do your research (here for seats and set up and here for the best 2019 airlines).

Air New Zealand has and always will be my favorite airline, and I can’t recommend them enough!

4. Candy Crush your way around the world

Last year as I boarded a red-eye Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur and made way through the overbooked economy section full of cramped seats on one of the oldest and most rattliest airplanes I’ve ever been on, I almost had a panic attack. It was really old, stinky, and rusty, three things I do not want to see on a plane. You just knew it was going to be hell.

We were delayed for hours sitting on the runway for maintenance. The whole time I was thinking no wonder one of their planes went down. As I was crammed in my seat on the waiting, I really really want to stand up and say “let me off right this minute” about to have a panic attack.

Wondering how I was going to survive the next 12 hours, literally and figuratively, without thinking I downloaded Candy Crush right before takeoff.

I think I came up for air 5 hours later. Damn that went by fast!

5. Excuse me, where’s my Xanax?

You know those people that say things like, “oh the flight was great, I slept the whole way” I have a special message for you –  screw you!

Why are some people blessed with a thin physique and ability to sleep sitting up? It just isn’t fair!

You’d think for someone who flies as much as me that I’d be able to sleep on planes but the truth is I can’t. I need to be completely horizontal and either drunk or medicated to sleep on a plane.

Since I’m being super honest on here, even now I usually need some kind of medical or liquid assistance to relax me on planes. From sleeping tablets to melatonin, to sleepy teas to all the wine, anything that can help my jitters and anxiety disappear, is great.

I’ve only just started to meditate on use the Headspace app on trips, which has been great so far!

6. Take a break

I know this one is a bit of a luxury but if I have the time and can afford it, I’ll book stopovers on my trips to avoid back to back long haul flights. Now that I live in New Zealand, if I want to get to Europe or Africa or the East Coast in the USA, I am looking at back to back long-haul flights which is THE FUCKING WORST.

One long haul flight sucks. Two in a row? Kill me now.

My usual flights to Europe involve the following: 2 hours Queenstown to Auckland. 17 hours Auckland to Dubai. 7 house Dubai to Europe. I often intentionally book flights with long layovers or multi-day stopovers.

I’ll stop in Dubai for a night or too to relax, and sometimes airlines will give you a free hotel room if you have a super long layover. I even have booked rooms at the airport hotel INSIDE Terminal 3 in Dubai; they have hour specials as well, so sometimes I’ll book a 6 hour stay there on a long-ish layover.

It’s so worth it.

7. Change your clothes, for you and everyone else

I don’t think I started packing a change of clothes in my carry-on until I moved to New Zealand, and honestly I don’t know how I survived flying before. Or how the people next to me survived. I’m so sorry.

Nowadays I usually bring 2-3 changes of clothes in my carry-on, and I have a strict routine.

As soon as I board a long-haul flight, even before takeoff, I go to the bathroom and put on my airplane pajamas. These are pajamas that don’t look like pajamas; how you style them is up to you. Sweatpants. Thick socks. Comfy t-shirt (no bra – again sorry guys) and cozy sweater hoodie thing that is stylish. You don’t want to look like a total bum, especially if you’re in business class.

I never fly without wearing my beloved Allbirds, the perfect travel shoe.

I don’t know about you, but nothing puts me in a cranky mood like dirty underwear.

8. Don’t let yourself dry up or smell bad

First pull out your fancy jade roller and work out those puffy cheeks. Don’t forget to hydrate!

I’m just kidding, god how annoying are beauty bloggers?

I don’t have some fancy flash routine for flying, but I do always bring a small bottle of face lotion, body lotion, toothpaste and deodorant with me. And I have been known to slap on a $4 Sephora face mask halfway through a 15 hour flight, but honestly, can you blame me?

Airplanes are notorious for their dry air, so make sure to moisturize and drink heaps of water.

9. Binging makes everything go faster

Part of my travel routine is to download at least 10 hours of a new podcast or tv show on my phone, just in case I need entertaining or the movies suck. Usually I have a book or two with me.

I know that might go without saying but it has truly saved me on several flights. I first listened to Serial years ago on a flight from Vancouver to Auckland and it truly changed how I travel. The trick is finding podcasts that are really “binge-able” that you can’t stop listening too. It makes the trip go by fast.

But did he do it?

10. If you can’t see or hear anyone, are you alone?

I never travel without really good earplugs and a comfy dark eye mask. If you fly business class on long-haul flights these are usually provided.

It makes things so much better, and I found even at my most anxious when I slip them on, it’s like I’m not even there.

Oh, and window seat, always.

Do you have any tips or secrets for surviving long-haul flights? Are you as neurotic as me flying? Spill! 

The post Tips for surviving long-haul flights from a professional flyer who hates flying appeared first on Young Adventuress.

from Young Adventuress http://bit.ly/2RVSG7v

[jamieclawhorn]

I’d buy this 11%-yielding FTSE 250 dividend stock before the market comes to its senses

Bovis Homes Group (LSE: BVS) saw its share price collapse a shocking 22% in 2018. I’ve said time and again that the market is far too pessimistic over the profits outlook for the homebuilders. There’s plenty of evidence surrounding the health of the homes market that has instead reinforced my positive view of the builders, and two pieces of news in recent weeks underline why I think the future remains extremely bright for these construction stars.

Exhibit A

Brexit may be playing havoc with much of the construction industry, but concerns over the manner of European Union withdrawal hasn’t prompted Bovis and its peers to pull up the drawbridge. Latest data from the National House Building Council (NHBC) showed that 15,155 new homes were registered for construction in November, up 2% year-on-year and the second-highest figure for 2018.

And on a rolling quarterly basis, between September and November 43,745 new homes were registered to be built versus the comparable period in 2017, an annual increase of 7%.

Let’s make no bones about it: even if Britain embarks on a disorderly European exit in the next couple of months, and broad homebuyer confidence takes a whack in response, there are still unlikely to be enough homes to go around. And that’s why the builders feel confident enough to keep bumping up production.

Exhibit B

The failure of government to get on building was laid bare by a fresh report by the Center for Policy Studies which predicted that an average of 130,000 new properties per year will be built between 2010 and 2019, the lowest rate of new homes put up each year since the Second World War.

In the prior decade, some 147,000 homes were built on average each year, with 150,000 built annually in the 1990s, and the anticipated quantity of new-builds per year for the 2010s look set to be half of the level recorded in the 1960s and 1970s.

To put this in context, during the 1960s, approximately one new home was built in England for every 14 people over the decade. Rampant population growth, coupled with insufficient build rates mean that, since 2010, this ratio has stretched out to one new home for every 43 individuals.

Those 11% dividend yields

In this context it’s hardly surprising that the homebuilders continue to churn out positive trading releases in spite of the ongoing Brexit saga, the latest of which was put out by Taylor Wimpey just this week.

These construction corkers have proved their resilience in trying times since the 2016 Brexit referendum, a period that has seen average home value growth slow to a stutter. Indeed, the City still sees scope for Bovis for one to continue churning out decent profits growth for some time yet, and rises of 4% and 3% are predicted for 2019 and 2020 respectively.

The FTSE 250 firm has vowed to splash out special dividends through to the next decade and beyond, and with earnings expected to keep bounding higher, the number crunchers unsurprisingly expect it to make good on this promise. Consequently Bovis carries giant yields of 10.9% for this year and 11.1% for 2020.

I believe that Bovis has what it takes to continue generating solid profits growth and gigantic dividends long into the future. At current prices it boasts a forward P/E ratio of 8.8 times, and I reckon this makes it a steal.

Want To Boost Your Savings?

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The report is entirely free and available for download today, so if you’re interested in exiting the rat race and achieving financial independence, click here to download the report. What have you got to lose?

More reading

Why this firm is one of the most attractive retail shares I know

Why I think the Tesco share price could crush the FTSE 100 this year

Why I think it’s time to be greedy with the SSE share price

One of these high-risk stocks could make you rich, but I wouldn’t touch the other

Why I’d dump this 6%-yielder and buy the National Grid share price instead

Royston Wild owns shares of Taylor Wimpey. The Motley Fool UK has no position in any of the shares mentioned. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

[kennethherrerablog]

Here’s How Much it Cost One Woman to Fund Her Drug Abuse, Then Get Sober

The first time Amanda McKiernan took drugs intravenously, she was sitting on the edge of her then-boyfriend’s bed. At 21, she was nervous but ready for a stronger high.

She had used opioids in the past but had stuck to swallowing the pale blue, 30mg Roxicodone pills whole or snorting them crushed. This was different.

“It was an overwhelming, foreign feeling,” McKeirnan, now 30, told The Penny Hoarder. “This really strong drug just hits you all of a sudden. You just feel it throughout your whole body. I remember panicking for a minute.

“It passes, but then that feeling is what it becomes about,” she added. “That’s the feeling you’re trying to get to. It’s terrifying at first, but then that’s all you’re after.”

It’s impossible to quantify everything McKiernan lost each time she got high in her 10 years of misusing drugs  — a relationship with her younger sister, lifelong friendships, the career in photography she dreamed of as a high schooler. It’s easier to measure those years, and her three years of sobriety since, in cash.

That high cost her $15.

Cough Syrup, Then Cocaine, Then Opioids

Her addiction didn’t start with opioids.

When McKiernan was a 14-year-old cheerleader, a friend told her if she took enough cough medicine, she’d feel a buzz. After that, it was marijuana.

By 16, she was using cocaine.

For her first six months on the drug, she and a friend would spend $60 on 1 gram of cocaine every Friday. That would be enough to last them the weekend.

By the end of her junior year of high school, that went up to 2 grams. Her senior year, it was 3 1/2 grams, or an “eight ball.” That would last them the week.

She and the friend she used with had their daily ritual: They both caught the bus to school, and whoever got there first would wait for the other in the bathroom near the art classrooms. They could usually count on that hallway being deserted.

The walls and floors in the small two-stall bathroom were covered in white tiles. The first stall was larger — big enough for both girls to fit inside.

“We definitely tried to make sure — if at all possible — that no one was in there. But if someone was, we would either flush the toilet or turn the sink on, so if we were snorting a line, they couldn’t hear it.”

They wouldn’t talk much in there. They had to be quick if they were going to make it to class. At lunchtime, they met up again — this time in the concrete outdoor bathroom near the cafeteria.

Estimating conservatively, McKiernan and her friend used more than $9,300 worth of cocaine during their final two years of high school.

That doesn’t include the money she spent on Parrot Bay rum nearly every weekend or the times she was short on cash and someone else would cover the cost. It doesn’t even include her summertime drug use, which was often more frequent but varied too widely to calculate.

To fund the drug abuse, McKiernan worked part time at a grocery store, and then at a pizza shop. Her friend worked as well, and the two split the cost of the drugs.

After high school, McKiernan’s drug use rose and fell depending on how much money she was making, and which friends she saw most often.

First, she stuck to cocaine. Then she tried meth and crack, but neither became a habit. Later, she tried muscle relaxers. By 21, her drug use grew to include heroin and powerful prescription painkillers.

Prescription opioids and illegal opioids like heroin caused more than 42,000 overdose deaths nationwide in 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Last year, President Donald Trump said the ubiquitous cases of opioid addiction and deaths had become a national health emergency.

The first time McKiernan tried the Roxicodone pills, she balked at the $15-per-pill price tag.

But then, “I did it and it was so strong, and I thought, ‘This is why this costs so much money,’” McKiernan said.

Within a year, she was shooting up Roxicodone with the help of her boyfriend, who would eventually father her daughter Calie, now 8.

At Least $300 a Day on Drugs

By 22, McKiernan was a single mom to a 6-month-old daughter. She took a job as a dancer at a South Florida strip club.

There, she could make more than $1,000 in a single night. Suddenly flush with cash, McKiernan and her friends had more access to drugs.

She went from one pill at a time to buying 30 pills at once. At the time, that was only enough to last three days. Then she moved on to the Dilaudid pills, an even stronger opioid that cost her up to $30 each.

She spent two years taking between six and 10 Dilaudid pills a day.

While working at the strip club, McKiernan said she got close to one of her regulars, a wealthy South Florida businessman. Soon, she stopped going to the club, because he covered her expenses.

He rented her an apartment in a building near the beach. He bought her a series of high-end cars that she either wrecked or failed to maintain. And every time she saw him, he’d give her money that she would spend on drugs.

One weekend, he gave her $14,000 and she spent every penny of it on a hotel suite, drugs and alcohol for a party she had with a few friends.

On an average day, she spent about $300 on Roxicodone, Dilaudid or other drugs.

A conservative estimate of the cost of her regular drug abuse over the span of a decade is nearly $385,000.

That number does not include the amount she spent on alcohol or the periods she spent using less expensive street drugs. During those times, the cost of each drug and the length of time she used it varied too widely to come up with an accurate estimate.

Still, those costs were only slightly lower. When she was tight on cash and couldn’t afford the painkillers, she’d get heroin instead. That could cost between $80 and $120 a day.

Except for a few brief stints in rehab — one lasting 24 hours and the other 48 — that were each thwarted when the withdrawal symptoms kicked in, McKiernan didn’t give quitting a serious try until she was arrested in Martin County, Florida, with pills, marijuana and a crack pipe in her car in 2015.

She was 27 and faced a felony drug possession charge.

The Cost of Getting Sober

To avoid a felony conviction, McKiernan agreed to enroll in drug court, a substance abuse treatment program for first-time offenders. The agreement was that if she made it through the program successfully, her charges would be dismissed.

But as she soon learned, sobriety comes with costs, too.

McKiernan went through two rounds of drug court. The first lasted about four months. Each week, she had to pay $30 to cover the cost of mandatory drug testing and another $30 for counseling. If she missed or failed a drug test, she was off to jail.

That happened twice. The first time, she spent three nights in jail, and the second time it was two weeks.

“I used to pray for her to get arrested,” McKiernan’s mother, Pam, said. “If she’s in jail, she can’t do drugs. She won’t die.”

After being jailed the second time, McKiernan had two options left: Spend a court-ordered 10 months in a Pembroke Pines, Florida, rehabilitation facility for mothers fighting addiction or spend that time in jail.

She chose rehab, where she could be with her daughter.

For the next 10 months, McKiernan’s parents bore the brunt of the cost of their daughter’s addiction.

Every Friday, they drove the 90 miles south from their home in Hobe Sound, Florida, to Pembroke Pines to see McKiernan and pick up Calie. Then every Sunday, they would drive down again to bring Calie back to her mother. It cost about $45 in gas for the two round trips each weekend.

Over the span of 10 months, that’s $1,800 in gas alone.

On average, her parents spent another $100 a week paying for food and clothing for McKiernan and her daughter, while also making sure Calie had toys. That’s another $4,000.

But the thousands of dollars they spent in the 10 months McKiernan was in rehab was just the most recent of the expenses her parents took on from her addiction.

“The emotional part you can imagine,” Pam McKiernan said. “Lots of sleepless nights, lots of crying, lots of begging… But there’s the financial part, of course. We took care of Calie most of the time. So we had the extra expense of that.”

Before Amanda McKiernan went to rehab, most of the responsibility and the expense of child care for Calie fell on her parents’ shoulders. Day care alone cost between $85 and $120 each week for four years — more than $17,000 total.

Pam McKiernan estimates she and her husband spent at least an additional $10,000 helping to care for Calie and buying groceries for Amanda over the years.

And the expenses didn’t stop once McKiernan left rehab. She immediately had to begin her second round of drug court. That meant another six months of drugs tests and counseling sessions for $60 each week.

Her parents covered the cost for the first three months before McKiernan got a job at Dunkin’ Donuts. Her minimum wage pay was nothing compared to what she had pulled in as a dancer.

If she made that kind of money now, she probably wouldn’t be sleeping in a bottom bunk bed in her parents’ two-bedroom house. Her daughter sleeps on the top and her sister sleeps in a separate twin bed in the same room.

McKiernan said she visited her old strip club a couple times after she completed rehab and drug court.

“I would have to be high to work there, and I didn’t want to get high,” she said, making it clear that even if sobriety meant a financial setback, it was worth it.

The Lasting Costs Are Financial, Emotional

This summer, McKiernan was invited to speak to a group of people in drug court. Some were graduating, while others were just starting.

Among them was a graduate who managed to stay sober even after her sister’s overdose death and another just starting out who wasn’t sure if she’d be able to go without using for the next two weeks before her drug court officially began.

“I’m scared for them and their families,” McKiernan said after she spoke to the graduates who would no longer be required to take weekly court-ordered drug tests. “Tonight is going to be a hard night.”

For McKiernan, the past three years of sobriety have been about slowly forgiving herself, regaining the trust of her parents, rebuilding the relationship with her sister and making up for all the years she lost.

Weeks before her drug court speech, she quit her job at Dunkin’ Donuts. She graduated from a medical assisting program and got a new job that pays a bit better. She still can’t move out of her parents’ home yet, but that’s OK. She doesn’t want to rush things and get in over her head.

Her father is proud. He said he never thought he’d get to see her graduate from the medical assisting program. He couldn’t be happier about the change he’s seen in his oldest daughter.

The costs her parents bear now are minor in comparison to the years prior — their electric bill is a bit high because of the extra people at home.

But they don’t focus on that. Instead, they revel in having their daughter back. They work quickly to build up their retirement funds now that they have the money to do so.

“You don’t see the pain and the hurt that you’re causing while you’re in it,” McKiernan said. “Now, I have a kid. I would never want to go through what my parents went through — just not having any control and just wanting and wanting and wanting your kid back, and you can’t do anything about it.”

Occasionally, McKiernan will drive past where she was arrested or a place she used to use drugs. She has even crossed paths with her old dealer. He was happy to see her sober and didn’t try to offer her drugs.

These run-ins with her old life were tough at first. Now, they simply remind her of how far she has come.

If you or a loved one is in need of addiction treatment, click here to learn about affordable options.

Desiree Stennett (@desi_stennett) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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Here’s How Much it Cost One Woman to Fund Her Drug Abuse, Then Get Sober published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/