#it is mathematically impossible she is not trans

[d1nnerd0g]

scraps from a human au i was excited abt last month

[deerydear]

I thought of her story again, because I had remembered something she had said about Obsessive-compulsive disorder:

I'm not entirely convinced that someone can not spontaneously develop gender-dysphoria after being exposed to trans messaging. To make an easy comparison, if you have OCD, it's pretty easily to accidentally pick up new anxieties and body dysmorphic traits, think about all of the young women who develop anorexia after comparing themselves to hungry skeleton fashion models, and having friends who are anorexic. Transsexuality has been observed to function like a social contagion, and it might be reasonable to suspect the actual disorder might be catching too. Couple this with the fact that being trans gets entangled with their identity, and it seems like a spreadable disorder that would be hard to treat. Remember, it is impossible to get better if you identify as a victim, and  every trans person I've ever met considers themselves a victim- a victim of circumstance, of mental illness, of transphobia, and so on.

I saw this comic. The little monk is a caricaturization of OCD logic.

"This could be you."

I.... legitimately transplanted a mathematical-obsession over my scrupulosity-obsession, because morality is fucking subjective and situational. Math has an answer, numbers are sweet. I'll just look at the numbers.

but some part of my mind, a gentle little voice would say:

"Hey, you know that this isn't that serious, either? "

... I was seeking distraction.

I like thinking of the trans arc as just another branch of the same faulty logic, in my life. Same shit, different hat. It ain't that deep.

[jewishfem]

do you know any ways that alleviate dysphoria without transitioning? i kinda just woke up from my trans nightmare. i'm female if ur wondering. if you don't know, could you redirect me to a blog that does?

Hey anon, so, i had written down my own advice, and also asked my friends, many of whom are detrans and have suffered from dysphoria.

But first I want to say that I'm glad you woke up. It's hard to leave and change a mindset that felt right with our feelings even if not with our common sense.

Forst are my friends' advices. I'm copying it as they are, without paraphrasing (only certain replacement, [like this]. My own advice is below my friends', as i believe theirs to be more experienced.

Without further ado, here are all the advices:

——

— Hello!

It's been a LONG time since I've experienced dysphoria(I detransitioned).

It feels like your mind doesn't belong in the current body you're in and that you want to just rip [your] skin off. (Mental health issue)

For me, I wished I could just close my eyes and never wake up. Or be "reborn" a male instead of female and just some...other thoughts along the lines.

How did I "get over it"?

I...guess I surrounded myself with more positive influences. I grew up in an abusive household that held sexist views. When I left, I could think clearly for myself.

I suppose my suggestion for her would be to try and find some positive influences(ex. Could be as simple as hangout out with loved ones, finding role models,etc) in her life and think critically(ex. "Why would you feel better if you transitioned to male?")

I realized I wanted to transition to escape my life...and also because I had internalise misogyny to where I did not think I was "allowed" to do certain things because I was born a female...

— Something to have her consider is that what she likes, and who she is doesn’t change what she is. She is female. A woman. A girl. Zero percent of her outside world or her mind can impact this. I hear a lot of young women trans [recte transition] because they feel like they enjoy masculine things. Well, if a woman does it it’s a women’s thing. Gender tells us women should only pursue and enjoy certain things and not others. This is just simply, False with a capital F.

Another help is recognizing that the way porn and indeed most media presents women to the world is also False. That is not what and how sex is. You don’t have to like it or accept it to be a woman. It is at odds with womanhood.

To reconnect and learn to love your body and accept it, a trick I learned a long time back is to focus on what your body does for you. Rather than how it looks while it does it.

Look at your bones and muscles working together so you can walk and stand and pick things up. Dance. Run. Your throat and lungs do this cool thing where you can speak. Sing. Your heart, keeps your body supplied with nutrients from your digestive system. Digestive system all on its own without any prompting, turns food into fuel for this amazing robot suit that is your body. Brain can interpret every single impulse from every nerve in your body. In real time. It allows you to connect with the outside world and experience it. But you also get to control it. Meditation, therapy exercises, physical exercise, these things have an impact on your brain. And you choose to do them.

Your body and your experience in it is really remarkable.

Thighs aren’t fat. They’re strong for carrying you around. Arms aren’t skinny. They are perfect for hugging loved ones. Eyes aren’t too small, they allow you to see the world around you. Focusing on what the body does takes that focus away from what it doesn’t look like. Breasts? Nourish new life in a way nothing else can. Don’t want children. That’s ok. Just recognize what your breasts can do. They don’t have to do it. Uterus and ovaries? Literally creates a human life from two single cells. You have the power of creation in side you. Whether you use it or not. Period? This amazing way your body protects itself from non viable pregnancies and keeps your body safe. Periods are the ultimate cleanse. And your body does it for you. All on its own.

These are the thoughts that help me deal with having a female body and accepting it.

— The thing that helped me most was radical body acceptance. Just 'this is me and I accept that I am the way I am'. Idk how effective it would be for that individual but it was foundational for me overcoming my dysphoria

====

My advice:

~ it's sometimes impossible to look at the mirror. The body feels bad and ugly and overall just wrong. But it's ours. It's ours to keep, and not to destroy. Expose yourself to yourself gradually. Especially the parts that make you at most unease. Treat it like a phobia, or some forms of allergies. Gradual exposure can help. First, love the parts you can't see — your heart, your lungs, dammit, tell your tendons you love them (!) because they're part of you.

Slowly reach parts you feel most dysphoric about. You'll already know how to love your other parts. Your hands that let you touch loved ones, hold them, rub a cute cat or dog. Your mouth and your stomach that tear apart these nutrients into the most basic units. Your skin that protects you and that lets you feel sunlight and raindrops. And then, when you know how to love these more or less basic parts of you, reach the complex ones. You don't need reasons at some point, but you have the love to give and it's enough. You don't need any reason besides it's yours.

~ i suffered (and still sometimes relapse) from body dysmorphia, and well, music and self reminders helped me a lot. I drew on my skin with pens and sharpies, soccer teams logos, random lyrics. My reminder to myself, before i started giving myself good reminders was "don't fear death"" but to not fear death,,, i needed no more reminders of that. then I realized, i can remind myself more important things, of better things. Birthdays, my favorite teams' wins, my most hated teams' worst losses. Then it went to 1238 "grammar teacher said something grammatically wrong", "x mathematical axiom", drew emojis and flowers. I did so to remind me to smile, to breath clean air (as clean as possible at least). At this time of self isolation, you can leave the notes at your house. Sticky note with "the only parabola that matters is the smile" or some other body positive puns. Dysphoria is a different hatred of your body, but all self hatred can be fought with self love.

~ a feeling I still feel a lot is hat i don't deserve to live, i only take too much space. It's what brought me so quickly into dysmorphia. Try to find what brought you to dysphoria pull out the source, or face it so you know how it looks like when it sneaks up to you. Recognition and acknowledgment means you can deal with it better as it won't shock you. You'd be able to throw it out before it attacks you.

~ surround yourself with positive influences, and also avoid negative influences. If your close friend group is sexist and/misogynistic, then distance yourself from them. A lot of the self hatred comes from what we've been taught for years about ourselves. Female role models, positivity, cute little notes, etc, and surround yourself with actual body positivity.

~ creativity: Maybe start a cute bullet journal or something similar. Create things and surround yourself with your own creations. Bullet journals are a fun way to keep you busy while also help you be more productive in school and/or life. You can fill it with quotes and pretty pictures and fun doodles.

~ you and your body are not different entities. It's part of you, part of your life since birth, especially because you're female. It feels a bit degrading at first, but in reality, we are our bodies. When were stressed, our body reacts physiologically. When we see someone we love, our heart beats faster.

I remember reading something another woman wrote, saying her dysphoria is at its worst during her period, she got panic attacks every time she started getting it. We're told that our period is what makes us gross but also what makes us women/feminine, but it only makes us women, not feminine, and it's part of our physiology, it made us have lower social standing but only because men decided so. Some women don't get periods, but all those who get periods are women (and I'm not talking about TiM "periods" but real ones). It's one of the parts that can be the hardest to embrace, but it's also a reminder that we, women, are actually the most ideal creation of mother nature regarding humans. Long lasting, unrelenting, strong and (usually) the actual creating power. We're the power of creation as a means for creation, and men? Most of them only create as a means for destruction.

~ healthy lifestyle: a lot of things start looking better when we start a healthier lifestyle, especially life. Add a salad to one of the meals

~ lastly but most helpful for me was writing all my negative feelings down and then just tearing the paper apart, and afterwards throw it to different trashcans, like you'd do with an old credit card. It helped me during some of my most depressive episodes.

[proofthatihaveaheart]

natasha’s book recs > ninefox gambit by yoon ha lee

“All communication is manipulation,” Jedao said. “You’re a mathematician. You should know that from information theory.” 

THIS BOOK!!!

the story follows disgraced captain kel cheris who is charged with taking back the fortress of scattered needles - a challenging and possibly impossible task

to do this, she chooses to have the mind of an undead/immortal ex-general, brilliant tactician, and traitor, shuos jedao, placed within her 

and then they get to work laying siege to this fortress 

there’s rich world-building with distinct identities for each faction of the hexarchate drawing on inspiration from east Asian cultures 

also math! a lot of math! but it’s incorporated in a really cool way

in short, the hexarchate and its technology function on an imperial calendar system and use mathematical equations to drive military formations. it requires people’s belief and adherence to the calendar for things to run properly and there are strict rules about stepping outside of their doctrine. the opposing side, rebels or heretics based on who you ask, use a different calendrical system

there’s definitely a steep learning curve - lee drops you into the middle of it and never stops to exposition-dump, which is good - but eventually you become familiar with the terms 

and then what you have is a complicated and beautiful story with big battles and political intrigue, all about tyranny and the costs of war

also some really excellent character work

some of the best scenes are between the two main characters, their conversations crackle with energy, as cheris tries to figure out jedao and jedao guides her

also while there isn’t a central romance, there are a lot of queer characters including cheris and jedao (lee himself is trans and queer)

overall lots of games being played, lots of plots and subplots going on, dense worldbuilding, though the core of the book is cheris and jedao and their relationship to the empire 

NOTE: lots of content warnings apply to this book, message me if you want a list 

[rickktish]

BNHA Headcanons

Yagi Toshinori | All Might is asexual. He has had romantic relationships before and did enjoy them, but he’s a complete virgin and satisfied to remain such. He’s not utterly sex-repulsed, but he is rather uncomfortable with the idea of it. He generally assumes that if he met the right person he would be okay experimenting, but none of his past romantic partners have been “the right person,” so it’s kind of more of an idea than a practice.

Aizawa be trans.

Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic grew up with deaf lesbian moms.

Aizawa is a little bit autistic, mostly in regard to sensory issues and social cues. He doesn’t really portray a lot of overt autistic behaviors outside of his home because he’s very good at masking.

Iida is also a little bit autistic, and possibly Tsuyu though not as much for her.

Todoroki has never been diagnosed as autistic in any way. This will probably not change any time soon. He was so isolated growing up that it’s impossible to tell what social queues he misses because of inexperience and what may have less environmentally determined reasons.

If Todoroki ever was diagnosed as being autistic, his father would deny it to his dying breath and bury the evidence deep. No proof will ever arise of any particular doctor’s visits in his childhood having ever taken place. At all.

Todoroki was not allowed in the same room as his siblings from the time he was six to when he started high school. When Fuyumi started cooking she was required to leave his food in the room before he finished training and leave before he arrived. His only interaction with people other than his father for most of his life has been what he can catch on tv and radio and listening and sometimes talking through the walls with his siblings. The only exception was when dressing wounds, but whoever was sent to clean him up after training wasn’t allowed to speak to him nor he to them.

Izuku has never knowingly met another quirkless person, but he did grow up hearing about quirkless suicides on the news. During his late elementary school years, he started trying to attend the funerals for those he heard about on the news whenever he could make it. Some of them had a good-sized gathering, but others were empty, lonely affairs with only one parent attending— two is rare in households with quirkless children— and sometimes not even that. It’s left deep scars and he remains terrified of being revealed to have been quirkless previously.

Midoriya never really gets much taller. Where All Might is this giant— 7 foot something and before he lost all his power an enormous slab of meat and almost nothing else— Midoriya is just this little stocky determinator who definitely never breaks 5’10”-- if he even hit 5’8” it must have been a miracle. He beef, of course, but he short beef, not tall beef.

Todoroki is taller (6’- 6’2” ish) but slimmer than Deku and can curl up very extremely small. Sometimes he has bad days and comes home and curls up into a ball on the couch and when Deku comes home he just picks him up like nothing and holds him in his lap even though his thighs might actually be longer than Midoriya’s torso. Todoroki inherited his mother’s slim build, which translates on him as scrawny, wiry muscle where Deku may be smol but he got BUILT. His arms can cover Todoroki like a blanket, which is exactly what Todoroki needs on bad days.

Deku does the same fairly often for Iida, who has several weighted blankets but they’re just not the same as a warm person who knows what is okay and how to ask and cares and is the best friend he’s ever had

He’ll also occasionally hold Uraraka this way, but mostly only when she’s drunk. She’s a very cuddly drunk.

Actually a lot of the class has found themselves randomly curled up in Deku’s lap at some point for one reason or another and it’s honestly one of the most comforting things. Kaminari had a bad breakup, Tsu got really sick for about a week, Sato had a mild breakdown after a series of really difficult family challenges that culminated in his grandma dying, Tokoyami and Dark Shadow got in a fight that Deku ended up helping to resolve where they took turns with one of them in his lap and the other behind the couch until he got them to talk through it, Aoyama went through a bit of a rough patch with his French parent involving his parents’ messy divorce, it’s kind of just become a thing. For some it’s a one-off, a one-time thing that they’re grateful for but never repeat, for others it’s a regular event when circumstances align, and even those who have never actually wound up curled up in a messy ball of suffering of one kind or another have found themselves draped across or leaning against Deku at one time or another during some kind of distress. He’s very tactile and very comforting. He’s just a magnificent bean who kind of accidentally became dorm parent at some point and then stayed group parent even long into their hero years.

Deku has a habit of randomly picking people up and carrying them. It startled a few of his friends at first, but they all adjusted rather quickly and now it goes without comment. Besides, Deku gives the best hugs (aside from Shoji, Literal Huggin Machine), and being carried by him is basically just an extension of that.

Anyone whose legs are too long for him to piggyback rides on his shoulders, upright, like a toddler. Sometimes he’ll have one person on each shoulder. Giggles abound, but for the most part, they just keep conversing like nothing has even happened.

Various members of class B have wandered past or walked in on conversations between Deku and any combination of people he’s carrying and people he’s not. None of them are quite sure what to make of it. It becomes such a casual part of Class A’s lives that none of them can figure out why Class B is staring.

Uraraka has a bunch of planet mobiles that she sometimes sends floating around her room. She calls it quirk training, but really, she just really likes space.

No one in their class realizes what a space nerd she is until they’re in a science class and start talking about space and she can name every single thing and answer random obscure questions.

The whole class goes stargazing at some point and Uraraka points out every single constellation in the damn sky and it’s a wonderful evening. Someone responds by buying her a shirt with an otter in a flying saucer, backed by faint stars, captioned “i’m off to otter space”

She and Tsu also have paired Tshirts that both have a starry sky, where one is captioned “I have no idea where I am” and the other has an arrow pointing at a single star and says “You are here.” They trade who wears which regularly and never wear one without the other.

She jsut has a lot of space stuff, okay? She really likes space that’s all im tryina say she just really fucking likes space.

She is of an undecided opinion on Aliens and hasn’t explored the idea a lot

Sero is the aliens guy. Uraraka can tell you about celestial movements and the history of the discovery of the stars and constellations from three different cultural beliefs. She can describe interplanetary motion and actually understands the mathematics behind light and space travel. Sero is the aliens junkie who can tell you about coverups and mysterious floating lights and things.

Sero and Kaminari are conspiracy theory nuts and as far as anyone else is concerned they deserve each other.

Even Deku can only listen to so many “the US planted chemicals in the Luminous Baby’s home town and then spread them all over the world when the mutation worked” spazz-outs before getting a little twitchy-eyed.

Deku’s response to things he likes in chats is “my skin is clear, my crops are watered, my father has returned” and all his classmates are Concerned.

Midoriya Inko and Bakugou Mitsuki went to the same middle and high school, but Inko is two or three years older, so they were only there together in her last year of each. Still, they hit it off well in middle school and it meant that they stayed friends while they were at different schools.

At some point while Katsuki is in middle/high school, he and his mom have a huge fight that ends with everyone in the house in tears. His mom decides at that point that she needs to go to therapy to figure out how to be a nicer person. It’s a work in progress— it will always be a work in progress, her therapist tells her, and that’s normal and that’s all right— but their relationship is slowly improving. It gets even better when Katsuki starts attending therapy himself and working through his own issues, both those that are a result of his mom’s behavior and those that are entirely his own. Coincidentally, his other relationships also begin to improve at that point.

Bakugou is trans.

Bakugou transferred into Deku’s preschool halfway through the year. Initially, he was attending another preschool, but problems arose with the teacher when Bakugou declared his gender. Before he arrived, Deku had a fair group of friends who he played with. They were all equals, but Deku was the central figure of the class, being friends with literally every one of the other friends groups within. When Bakugou arrived, he asserted dominance by turning Deku into the laughing stock of the class, and it continued through middle school that way. This is why he describes the method he does during the special training with the kids— that’s what worked for him.

Deku knew Bakugou before that, because their moms were friends. He calls him “Kacchan” because they’ve known each other literally since they were in diapers, when both their moms would refer to them as “Kacchan” and “Zu-chan” because they were both so damn tiny and cute and precious. Zu-chan just didn’t stick the way Kacchan did.

Both Present Mic and Bakugou have some level of hearing loss due to their quirks. Mic is fluent in sign language, as is Aizawa. Bakugou doesn’t talk about it.

Deku learned sign language when he found out Kacchan was losing his hearing. He only brought it up once. It did not go well. He stays on top of it though, practicing with Present Mic whenever he gets the chance, just in case he needs it someday.

Bakugou has reading glasses that he hides very carefully in his dorm and never wears to class in spite of it probably making his life easier if he would.

When Bakugou and Kirishima get married they do in fact decide to have biological children.

They all have dark brown/black hair, because genetics, but at least one or two are born with blond hair that darkens over time instead of just having straight black straight away.

The mommy/daddy question is a real one, Bakugou struggling with questions of his identity as he tries to decide what he wants his kids to call him. He ends up being mum-mum for a short while in the midst of it all (he chooses to breastfeed because it’s better for his kids, dammit, he’s not gonna have them developing hearing problems because of improperly shaped ear canals or anything else of the kind that he’s heard can happen, and when his oldest starts babbling Kirishima has been calling feeding “num-nums” for so long that the kid starts saying “mum-mum” every time he’s hungry and it just goes from there), but eventually by the time all his kids reach middle school they all call him dad or pops. Kirishima is Daddy or Papa all the way through though.

They have three kids, one girl and two boys. It goes boy-girl-boy. Their eldest has a mutation quirk that makes his skin highly resistant to high temperatures. Their daughter has a slight mutation that makes her hands very rough but also an emitter type where she sweats not nitroglycerin but something chemically similar. Their youngest can transform his head, neck, and shoulders to be hard and sneezes nitroglycerin.

Kirishima was sexually abused by a relative as a child and struggles deeply with his sense of self-worth and esteem as a direct result. Starting high school was when he decided to stop letting his fear and pain control his life, hence the hair dye and other changes he made to himself.

Shinsou gets migraines when he overuses his quirk that aren’t really painful but leave him in a weird confused state where everything is too loud and too bright and he can’t really follow words because they just sound like noise. He goes nonverbal, closes his dominant eye against the brightness, and tries to keep going as normal but usually gets caught and pulled gently into a dark, quiet room to recover. They go away after he sleeps.

Bakugou has the most fashion sense out of any of class 1-A.

Hagakure is NLP blind from birth, since she was born invisible and light cannot bounce off her retinas because they reflect no light. She can, however, perceive the reflection and refraction of light around her, which is a semblance of sight for her, except that she senses it with her whole body like heat, not through her eyes. This is part of why she chose to be in the nude for her costume, because she can sense light better when it’s not blocked by her clothes. Eventually she gets clothes that are made of her DNA like LeMillion has which are invisible like her, but she dislikes how it blocks her light perception.

She reads by holding her hands over the page and feeling where the light is reflecting and where it is not. It takes a lot of concentration. She can also read Braille, and that’s easier on her, but often far less available. She has accommodations for quiet rooms to read in and sometimes to take tests in, though she’s embarrassed about it and often doesn’t take advantage of it.

The Todoroki siblings are all very different people, who went through different kinds of trauma as a result of their awful home life and grew up with very different attitudes about many things.

This said, there is exactly one moment in each of their lives in which they all behaved in the exact same way, thinking the exact same words.

At some point in their early adulthood, each of them independently stood in line at a store and noted a small stuffed animal on display. None of them were allowed stuffed animals as children.

None of them were allowed any soft toys as children.

Independently, several years apart from each other as each of them reached their majority and began living alone and free of Endeavor, four hands reached out and picked up the stuffed animal. Four minds thought to themselves, fuck you, Endeavor; I can have this now. And four siblings, never knowing that their older or younger siblings had done or would do the exact same thing, began collections of stuffed animals which no one except their most trusted friends ever saw.

Natsuo showed his husband. Fuyumi showed her spouse. Shouto showed Izuku. None of them ever knew about each other’s collection.

(Touya showed Hawks. It was the beginning of the end for Endeavor.)

Himiko and Twice know about Touya’s stuffed animal collection. He’s never told them, they just know, for their own reasons. Both of them have randomly attached little stuffed animals on keychains to various parts of his body and outfit, ostensibly to mock him, but actually to help contribute to his collection.

Kurogiri also knows, because he is the only well-adjusted adult in this whole damn scene, damnit, and he’s basically already parenting these absolute CHILDREN anyway he might as well spoil them a little as well sometimes. He doesn’t actually tell Dabi he’s doing anything, but he’ll randomly teleport a toy or two into the space where he knows Dabi keeps his Pile. Dabi is occasionally confused when he finds a toy he doesn’t remember purchasing, but kind of just tries not to think about it and appreciates the fluffy.

Shigaraki has a single thimble he uses to keep from disintegrating things he wants to pick up. It’s just big enough to cover enough of one finger to disable his quirk, but is too small for him to get all fingers on at once. It’s also pink.

Shigaraki can neither read nor write, nor can he tell time from anything other than a digital clock set to twelve hour time, not twenty-four. AFO got him young and never bothered to teach him, only indoctrinated him and trained him in what he would need to know in order to one day rule the earth. Which did not include reading, writing, or telling time in more than the least complicated way. He’ll have minions to do those things for him, so best not to bother.

[qqueenofhades]

March is Women's History Month and I got myself thinkin' about how grateful I am for the gal pals in my life (of which you are most definitely one!), and I was wondering - what are some of your favorite historical female friendships and why?

Happy Women’s History Month indeed. Let’s get some ladies up in this joint and do some learning.

Below, in (approximately) chronological order:

1. MurasakiShikubu and Empress Shoshi (10th/11th century)

Murasaki Shikibu was a lady-in-waiting to the Japanese empress Shoshi in the late 10th/early 11th century, and is credited as the author of the first novel, The Tale of Genji. She also kept the Diary of Lady Murasaki, which records details of court life and her relationship with the empress, who was her patron and supported her literary pursuits. Allegedly, Shoshi asked Murasaki to write some more stories when she needed something new to read, and they eventually retired together to the country once Shoshi’s son became emperor. Shoshi herself was a shrewd political operator who carefully managed her family and dynasty’s fortunes, became a Buddhist nun, and died at the age of 86.

2. Christinede Pizan and Anastasia (14th/15th century)

Christine de Pizan was an Italian-French author in the late fourteenth/early fifteenth century, who wrote what are often characterized as many early feminist texts and literary critiques. She wrote blazing responses to popular romances written by men (which were often horrendously misogynist) and was in demand as an author; her texts were commissioned by royalty and kept on elite library shelves. She also sought out other women to collaborate with, including Anastasia, who we know only by her first name. Christine praised her as the finest manuscript illuminator and illustrator in Paris, whose work was hotly in demand, and who had worked on several projects for Christine herself.

3. The Rain Queens of the Lovedu (16th century-present)

This is technically about mothers and daughters, but shh, it counts. The South African tribe of the Lovedu has been ruled for centuries by a “rain queen,” whose wisdom passed from mother to daughter, and who was presented with wives by surrounding chiefs in recognition of her magical powers. If it doesn’t rain, the queen doesn’t get blamed, her (male) rain doctors get blamed instead, and any children of her “brides” are regarded as hers. It created a mystical, matriarchical tradition in the tribe throughout generations, though in the 21st century it has run into modern political difficulties.

4. Queen Elizabeth I and Grace O’Malley (16th century)

Queen Elizabeth I needs no introduction, but Grace O’Malley was an Irish pirate queen who ruled around the Connaught area of Ireland in the late 16th century. When she and her sons ran afoul of English justice, she applied to Queen Elizabeth directly for an audience, which eventually happened at Greenwich in 1593. Elizabeth spoke no Irish and Grace spoke no English, so the two women spoke Latin to each other. Grace must have also made quite an impression on her fellow queen, as Elizabeth released her sons and granted her a pardon, as long as she didn’t return to her reaving ways.

5. Julie d’Aubigny and Fanchon Moreau (17th century)

Julie d’Aubigny, or “La Maupin” had an almost ridiculously eventful life. A cross-dressing, bisexual, sword-fighting opera singer, she famously burned down a convent to run away with her nun lover, kissed a girl at a society party and beat all three of the noblemen who challenged her to duels as a result, and had a noted career in French theater. Fanchon Moreau was one of the actresses that Julie fell in love with, allegedly trying to commit suicide when Fanchon took up with another lover. She later died at the age of only 33.

6. Christina,Queen of Sweden and her many female friends (17th century)

To speak of impossibly colorful and interesting 17th century women: Christina, Queen of Sweden was also a cross-dressing expert swordswoman, rider, and hunter who spoke ten languages, ruled as queen of Sweden for twenty-two years, then resigned the throne and went to Rome, was ferociously brilliant and educated, and has been sometimes regarded as possibly intersex or trans, though she denied that she was a “Male or Hermaphrodite,” as she had often been accused of. She was also either bisexual or a lesbian, who had many relationships and friendships with women, including possibly with Gabrielle de Rochechouart de Montemart, a dazzling beauty and wit who was the older sister of Louis XIV’s famous mistress, Madame de Montespan. (Gabrielle’s BFF was also the openly gay Philippe, duc d’Anjou, Louis XIV’s younger brother.)

7. Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill (18th century)

Queen Anne was known for her passionate and long-running friendships with women, as I wrote about in the post above, and Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, was the longest-lasting and most influential of these. Anne was in love with her, while Sarah was more pragmatic about her relationship with the princess and then queen, and used her considerable intellect and political opinions in the early years of Anne’s rule. Their relationship broke down in 1708, at the death of Anne’s beloved husband George, and Sarah’s unflattering portrayal of Anne would hold sway for many years after.

8. Anne Bonny and Mary Read (18th century)

If you’ve watched Black Sails, you know about these two, but their real-life counterparts were probably even more colorful. They were swashbuckling female pirates who drank, fought, swore, and fucked as hardcore as their male counterparts, and who fought to the end when their ship got captured, while Calico Jack Rackham hid below deck. (Sorry, Jack, but Black Sails was definitely nice to you.) And yes, the real Anne and Mary were probably in a relationship, though we don’t know for sure.

9. ElizabethFreeman and Catharine Sedgwick (18th/19th century)

Elizabeth Freeman, or “Mum Bett,” was a slave who sued the state of Massachusetts for her freedom – and won – in 1780, and after telling her former master to get fucked, took a paying job with the Sedgwick family. She raised Catharine as a child, and Catharine later wrote her life story, the reason we know about her. Catharine grew up to be a successful novelist whose heroines often rebelled against the strictures of 19th-century American society, and she and Elizabeth are now buried side by side in the Sedgwick family plot. (Does anyone else suddenly have something in their eye? Just me?)

10. Ada Lovelace and Mary Somerville (19th century)

Ada Lovelace, nee Byron, was the only legitimate daughter of the infamous Lord Byron, a brilliant mathematician, and the founding mother of computer science, along with her friend and colleague, the great Victorian inventor and eccentric Charles Babbage. However, she was tutored in her young adulthood by the equally brilliant Mary Somerville, a prolific scientist and author of mathematical and astronomical papers and textbooks, and they were close friends; if Ada had a pressing mathematical problem, she would stop by Mary’s for a cup of tea and a brainstorming session. Somerville College in Oxford is now named in Mary’s honor, after she died at the age of ninety-two.

11. Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin (19th century)

They were sisters, but shh, again, it counts. Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president of the United States (in 1872, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate) and she and Tennessee were journalists, stockbrokers, and advocates of free love who fought with Party Pooper Extraordinaire and self-appointed guardian of 19th-century American virtue Anthony Comstock, as is written about in the Historical Hour With Hilary entry above. They lived in New York together and ran Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, a newspaper, and gave blazing speeches for female suffrage and equality.

12. Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Eleanor Roosevelt (20th century)

Ukrainian-born Lyudmila Pavlichenko was the best female sniper of all time, serving in the Red Army during WWII and recording a total of 309 confirmed kills. That was a lot of Nazis, and she was very proud of killing them. She was one of the rare Soviet citizens invited to America for a victory tour, where the American press fixated on idiotic questions about whether she wore makeup while fighting and that her uniform made her look fat (no, really). However, Lyudmila also met First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and they struck up an unlikely friendship. Eleanor helped Lyudmila tell the sexist asses where to stick it, and they ended up remaining friends for the rest of their lives, including a meeting 15 years later, in 1957, when Lyudmila was living in quiet obscurity in Moscow.

[tinymixtapes]

Music Review: King Vision Ultra - Pain of Mind

King Vision Ultra Pain of Mind [Ascetic House; 2018] Rating: 4.5/5 “It was like bondage for me. It was like slavery.” – a voice, emanating around 35:50 “In the wake, the semiotics of the slave ship continue: from the forced movements of the enslaved to the forced movements of the migrant and the refugee, to the regulation of Black people in North American streets and neighborhoods[,] to the reappearances of the slave ship in everyday life in the form of the prison, the camp, and the school.” – Christina Sharpe, In the Wake Sound thumps through registers of the stereophone (the ineluctable modality of the audial), and it is so loud and the cells — swanging. Boom-bap billows heave in on around despite. Place unfurls into space and sound (interning everything in its wake by and with its carceral panoptics) just as those markers (but not the marked) disintegrate as the hold erases specificities, bodies, attachments, gestures. Lockjaw, locked up, lockstep, sawed off, there is a thump there and a rattle, too. There is no there there, except the voices and the scratching of the cockroaches, the pleading and the negotiating, the longue durée of G-funk plunderphonics drifting into the sound of the alarm, the sound of the baton, the rattles and rackets and ruptures of the captivity of human beings. We slink with King Vision Ultra (Val Bertelsen) into Rikers, into the hold, a present incarnation of the incarceration, disciplining, and dehumanization of black life undertaken to secure and securitize racial capital in the long half-millennium since its colonial inception. The pitched-up, pitched-down, scatterbrained, and scattershot voices churn in the hold of the prison, the hold of the ship, their disembodied (inter/trans)locutors ungendered and the atmosphere that they create and by which they are in turn inflected ungenred (“genre,” of course, marks the closest word the French language has to express “gender”). Hortense Spillers (2003, 214) writes, “under these conditions [of the abduction and subsequent deportation across the Atlantic of enslaved Africans] we lose at least gender difference in the outcome, and the female body and the male body become a territory of cultural and political maneuver, not at all gender-related, gender-specific.” Emblematizing what Christina Sharpe (2016) calls wake work, Bertelsen’s cassette for Ascetic House presents “a mode of inhabiting and rupturing this episteme [of violent ubiquitous dehumaning antiblackness] with our known lived and un/imaginable lives [in order to] imagine otherwise from what we know now in the wake of slavery” (Sharpe 18). Bertelsen ushers us into one of the contemporary iterations of the hold so that we might know its pain and its place, so that we might see its dehumaning dysgraphia as part and parcel of “the ongoing willful disasters of the wake” (Sharpe 94). Underwritten by the slave ship, the coffle, the enslaved woman’s womb, the prison and as the black people shuttled and violated within them, the “anagrammatical blackness that exists as an index of violability and also potentiality” (that damning doubling that articulates the simultaneous liquidation of black life and optimization of black bodies’ abilities to produce and reproduce) disrupts and forecloses the moves made by Bertelsen. Mixed up, twirled, torqued, twerked, refusing the slaveholding logics of partus sequitur ventrem (that which is brought forth follows the womb), the oral offspring of Bertelsen’s incarcerated (inter/trans)locutors garble into unplaceable static, unmappable, no longer owned. Living in/as/with and sublating “the afterlife of property,” Bertelsen’s aural poetics here muddle the performative capture of the bequest — the intergenerational transmission of property perfected in its contemporary form, as shown by Jennifer Morgan, through the bodies and futures of enslaved black people — stuttering and jumbling its passage into ownership and valorization (Sharpe 15). Bertelsen scrambles the hermeneutic of valorization through devaluation (of the human through the recognized and surveilled and algorithmically predicted and held and held and held), scribbling a palimpsest over the anagrammatic orthography of antiblackness of but also always gurgling somewhere beyond the wake. As Morgan notes, “the archive [and the scenes it discloses] is [not only] a site of violent dispossession [but also] a point of departure, not a conclusion” (Morgan 2016, 186); Bertelsen’s speakers speak out as they “are constituted through and by continued vulnerability to this overwhelming force [but] are not only known to [them]selves and each other by that force” (Sharpe 134). Schizophrenia, the voices always talking: another hold, another capture, reiterating the orthography, verbalized and dissociative. Lives rent by the wake tearing into multiplicities, into impossible contradictions, productive contradictions: the contradictions that intercept the aspects of life that can’t be funneled into the production of surplus value. Pain of mind as analytics, as a vice of the hold. When she cut her wrists with shards of glass, she was slapped with 90 days in solitary for possession of contraband. Her refusals to stop trying to kill herself often resulted in more time. More time: more decomposing of time and agency, more disciplining into the “numbers, the arithmetics of the skin, the shadow of the whip” (McKittrick 2014 23). When she was denied sanitary pads and used her jumper to stop the bleeding, that earned her time for destruction of jail property. Doing time for destruction of jail property: life in the wake is/as (the conjuncture of is and as — verb and preposition — articulating the ongoing processes of dispossession and incarceration conjugating the present tense with confinement within the hold policed by antiblackness and the criminalization of poverty) life in the longue durée of the inhospitable weather that authorized (and continues to authorize) the transubstantiation of black life into property “(by which process we might understand the making of bodies into flesh and then into fungible commodities while retaining the appearance of flesh and blood)” (Sharpe 29). The mathematics of black life (McKittrick) as that demonic orthography that trans*literates social poesis into production, into quantized and quantified appendages brutalized in and by the ledger. From Saidiya Hartman (2008, 6): “Black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery — skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, impoverishment.” A voice telling you: You are going to fail before you do anything. Pain Of Mind by King Vision Ultra Blackness as debit: an entry recording an amount owed, listed on the left — hand side or column of an account (OED), the ditto ditto of the slaver’s log evacuating the black enslaved individual of any ontological claim beyond the production and reproduction of dead labor (cargo and its afterlives as property); blackness as debt (Moten), the lived excess of the commodity form excised and abjected and abjured, the ongoing structural constitutive violence of Western Modernity, uncreditable, incredible, always charged but never payable, both owing and threatening the contract that criminalizes the humanity it forlornly holds. I would just pray and think of a way to kill myself. Pray to God that I would die, and ask him why am I being punished like this if he knows I’m innocent. Blackness as incurable guilt, as the purgatory of penitence, as the penitentiary of purgatory. What makes Pain of Mind wake work rather than another genre of radical discourse is that it ascertains the conditions of the possibility of antiblackness beyond what Frank Wilderson calls the “contingent violence” of situations and tessellates the imprisonment, degradation, and state violences of the prison within the orthography of the wake as an ongoing and “gratuitous” mode of forcibly, violently, fatally circumscribing black being (or blackness as non-Being) (Wilderson 2010, 56). I see things that other people don’t see and stuff like that: the first words we hear on the project speak to a re-cognition (not recognition) of the frameworks that subtend the everyday devaluation, incarceration, dispossession, and traumatization of black people living in the wake. Motivating the conflagration of catastrophes (minor and major) is Bertelsen’s indelible labor of care: care as an analytics, care as an ethics of engagement, care as an aesthetics. As wake work — as visitation, as uncapitalizable exchange, as discomfiting but kinmaking being-with — brings us to linger, to “stay in the wake with […] those whom the state positions to die ungrievable deaths and live lives meant to be unlivable” (Sharpe 22), we glimmer alongside and beside, beside ourselves (the voices) and beside the people systematically expropriated and brutalized as the insurance in bodies crediting the extractive flows of racial capitalism. Besides, despite the ontological and phenomenological facts of their lives in the hold — the enveloping valences of their incarceration — the people we hear on Pain of Mind are granted a venue in which to be otherwise, in which to be beheld. That which is beheld is insisted and insisting, and we become beholden to them, duty bound, no longer twain (of mind), “intramural” (Spillers 1998). And just as the verb “to behold” improvises across bodies and subject positions (the beholden behold the beheld), Pain of Mind cuts across the shattered coordinates of antiblack violence and refuses to plot them (in a line, as a graph, as development) along the violent calculus — that spectral residue of the integral — of mathematized blackness. Pain of Mind invites us to “sit[] in the room with history” (Dionne Brand 2002, 28), the past that is not yet past (Brand), the schizophrenic mind, the cell, the hold, the wake. In this wake, we float past the passé, past-tense, hogtied, handwringing, hamstrung, dispossessed, gentrified idiom of “woke” — always already prefigured by the black death that necessitated its inception — as Bertelsen, along with Sharpe, Brand, Spillers, Hartman, McKittrick, Moten, Wilderson, rouses us into the oceanic vastness of care. A/wake. http://j.mp/2N5c2pr

[hopingfordawn]

/1-99 of the ‘Get to know me’ meme ;3

You are such an overachiever, Em. *sighs* Well, here it is:

1) Sexuality?  Pansexual2) If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?    I would have to go for Wentworth Miller. Why? Well, there is alot about him that I admire, his strength to be open and speak so freely about his troubles with Depression, Suicide and Eating Disorders. The troubles with being homosexual and in the spotlight. He is a very intelligent men with a very troubled past that I identify myself very much with. I would love to be able to sit opposite him and talk to him about his experience with his struggles, about my experiences with it and what he, as a much more mature person, would give me with on my further journey. He has made it so far, overcome so many obstacles and I wish that I am able to do the same.3) Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.From: Derecho Penal 2, Parte Especial “un estado de completo bienestar físico, mental y social, y no meramente la ausencia de enfermedad o invalidez.” - Tema 03: Lesiones Leves y Graves

4) What do you think about most?Honestly? About 90% of the time I imagine myself being someone else and having adventures. Basically, I am living fanfictions in my head, constantly.5) What does your latest text message from someone else say?“Dad sent it.” - My sister6) Do you sleep with or without clothes on?With. Definitely with.7) What’s your strangest talent?8) Girls…. (finish the sentence); Boys…. (finish the sentence)Girls AND Boys are works of art. Why would I need 2 sentences for that?9) Ever had a poem or song written about you?No. Who would ever do that?10) When is the last time you played the air guitar?When I was about 7 and then my sister told me, repeatedly, that I was embarrassing.11) Do you have any strange phobias?It’s less strange per se, as in a weird form of it. I hate small bugs/ spiders etc. But ONLY the very small ones. I am totally fine with the large ones. Give me a really large and hairy spider and chances are I will try to pet it. But the small ones? You never know where they are! They disappear so fucking quickly! What if they crawl in your ears, what if they are hiding in your hair, what if they crawl up your butt… I don’t know it just scares the fuck out of me.And phone calls *coughs*12) Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?Haven’t we all? As a child almost everything went up there. Especially small ball shaped objects that I later couldn’t retrieve without help… those memories.13) What’s your religion?None. I have nothing against beliefs. But I am against what it leads to and it is so sad that it comes to that. I believe, that everyone has the right to do whatever they want to do, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. Everyone has their freedom, but their freedom ends, where they start to take away the freedom of others. All the wars, the witch trials, the homophobia, the way woman are still seen as less than men. The nonacceptance of other religions. I don’t need religion to know, that I shouldn’t hurt anyone, kill anyone, steal. I don’t need religion to be a good human being. And when someone tells me, believing in God makes them happy, then I am happy for them, because what is right for me is not necessarily right for other people, too. 14) If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?Buying something and making my way back home. Or being on my way to a tech-store looking at their franchise. Probably on my way to or back from college. 15) Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?I would love to be in front of the camera, but I am so uncomfortable with myself that I can not be in front of a camera without hating everything I see afterwards. So at the moment. Probably behind the camera while I silently wished I was in front of it.16) Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?I don’t have a thing like a favorite band. I like songs, not bands, normally. I have a wide variety of music genre on my playlist. But who do I really, really like? Probably Sia, I adore her and her music. The fact that her songs are about such dark themes most of the times and she works them into pop music without them sounding too happy, that’s art.I have a huge respect for her, with all of her personal problems to have still had such success gives me hope in my future.17) What was the last lie you told?“I’m fine. Everything is alright here.” - To my mom.18) Do you believe in karma?No. If it did exist, the really bad people wouldn’t be so successful. Why do so many, extremely good people suffer so much? I wish it did, really, I do.19) What does your URL mean?Well, for one it is a play on the Title from the Game “Until Dawn”, but on the other hand it means: Waiting for a light to break the darkness. Hoping for the morning to come. Because even though I am still struggling, I am also still hoping for it to pass.20) What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?My greatest weakness: My mind. My greatest strength: I care a lot about others. (Is that a strength?)21) Who is your celebrity crush?Rami Malek. Does it count as a crush even though I would never want to be in a relationship with him? I mean, I love him, but I don’t see myself dating him. Not as a woman. This is awkward. 22) Have you ever gone skinny dipping?No. Not after the age of maybe 8.23) How do you vent your anger?Crying. When I was at one of the hospitals they had this sound proof room I would go to, just to scream. But sadly, mostly eating until it hurts and I puke.24) Do you have a collection of anything?Sadly, no. :C25) Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?Fuck the phone. I hide from it when it rings. Video chatting all the way.26) Are you happy with the person you’ve become?That’s a tough question. I am not extremely unhappy with my character as a person, because technically I know I am not a bad person. But I am unhappy with so many things about me that I can not with a straight face say that I am happy with who I am today.27) What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?I love the sound of the wind, especially when it is blowing strongly through the leaves of the trees. And I hate the sound a fork makes when it scratches against a plate. 28) What’s your biggest “what if”?What if I had had all the knowledge that I have now, when was a child? I could have kept my mother from staying in a doomed relationship for the sake of her children. I wouldn’t have spent so many years, trying to die without even knowing why I felt that way, I could have worked on my problems properly so much sooner. I would have come out as trans to my parents before puberty hit me and avoided the changes in my body. But the most important thing: I would have known, that my mother, well my grandmother who raised me and who I called mother my whole life, would suffer a stroke and we would have been able to help her. Actually help her instead of her having to live the last years of her life in agony. 29) Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?Yes and Yes. To the ghost, yes even though I know that it is probably farfetched. But everything in this world is about energy, our life is energy. What we perceive as “soul” is energy. After we die, our energy doesn’t just disappear, physics has thought us that energy only ever changes forms. So if it doesn’t disappear, what happens to it? Would it be possible that some remnants stay and we perceive them as “ghosts”? To aliens: To be honest? You would be crazy not to believe in aliens. The universe is endless and always expending. We have an unlimited amount of universes and planets out there. An unlimited amount of possibilities for life in Space outside of our Planet. To believe that we are the only ones in an unending amount of possibility is mathematically impossible. So aliens? Yeah, definitely.30) Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.Right arm: Pullover draped over a chair.Left arm: Matryoshka31) Smell the air. What do you smell?Nothing. I am allergic and my nose is constantly blocked. I hate my life.32) What’s the worst place you have ever been to?AWO Psychiatric Center Intensive Care, Worst Hospital stay ever33) Choose East Coast or West Coast?I have to go with East Coast, only because the west coast is too close to the edge of the world map for me to be comfortable with.34) Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?Honestly? I listen to songs, I don’t ever look at their faces. Erm. I have no idea how the singers I listen to look like? But I think Halsey looks fantastic although she is technically the same gender as me… oh well.35) To you, what is the meaning of life?Be happy. Enjoy it. At the end of it, be able to look back and say “Yeah, that was a fucking great time”. 36) Define Art.Can’t be defined. Art is relative.37) Do you believe in luck?Ooooohhhh yes. Luck exists alright. And it loves to just forget about me.38) What’s the weather like right now?Burning hot outside. Freezing cold inside. 39) What time is it?13.30 Midday.40) Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?No, I don’t have a license. I can drive, but I am not allowed to.41) What was the last book you read?Mental Ills and Bodily Cures - Psychiatric Treatment in the first half of the Twentieth Century by Joel Braslow -> I recommend it, incredible read. Very informative!42) Do you like the smell of gasoline?Oh please no. I get headaches from it.43) Do you have any nicknames?*sighs* I was called Sissi-pissy in school. Because it rhymes so well. Assholes.Fatty. The usual.44) What was the last movie you saw?Spider-man: HomecomingIncredible Movie. I really loved it. Best Spider-man yet, in my opinion!45) What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?Accident or self inflicted? Erm. Accident would be, when I was about 9, I think, I was in a car accident with my father and sister. And we used to make the backseats of the car into a flat surface, to make it into some kind of bed for the ride over to Spain (it used to take us almost 2 days then). My father would strap sheets on it etc, make cocoons so we could hide inside them and safe if something were to happen, but I had just fought with my sister over who would get to sit shotgun, and she won, and I was mad, so I didn’t get inside the sheets ride away and that’s when we were hit by a car. And I remember it felt like flying, and I hit something hard with my right forearm. Next thing I know is, I was bleeding so badly, but it didn’t hurt and my father was frantic. Of course an ambulance was called but it didn’t hurt, you know? It really wasn’t that bad. But my father kept telling me to cry, to make it looks worse than it was. To just, make fuss. So I did. And when the ambulance came, I was crying and I boarded it and the first I said to the paramedic was, I will never forget it: “This is so cool! I have never been on an ambulance!” I remember he started laughing. He wrapped me up, later on the driver had to pay me a thousand euros for my pain and my vacation was ruined because I wasn’t allowed to go into the sea. Self inflicted would be, erm, well. I downed a whole bottle of promethazine, slit both my wrists open and and almost bled out on the hospital bathroom floor. Woke up three days later in another Hospital intensive Care Ward . Bit’s and pieces of those three days are still lodged in my head and, it was awful. I was so out of it, I only know I was strapped to the bed because I remember waking up one time and seeing the cuffs on the bedside table and being scared, telling the nurse that I swear I didn’t steal them, I didn’t. Stupid shit. My liver still hasn’t really recovered.46) Have you ever caught a butterfly?As a child a caught a ton! i used to run around with a box and every time I caught one I put them inside with the others, but about an hour later when I had to go home, I would let all free again.47) Do you have any obsessions right now?Rami Malek: Do I have to say more?48) What’s your sexual orientation?See question 1.49) Ever had a rumor spread about you?Yes. A huge amount of times. Fucked me up.50) Do you believe in magic?Not sure. I wish it did exist though.51) Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?Depends on what kind of wrong they did me.52) What is your astrological sign?Gemini53) Do you save money or spend it?Both, I guess. I spend a part and save another.54) What’s the last thing you purchased?Food. *laughs*55) Love or lust?Love56) In a relationship?Nope.57) How many relationships have you had?One, if you could call it that.58) Can you touch your nose with your tongue?No.59) Where were you yesterday?At home. No witnesses.60) Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you?A small packet of mini nail files.61) Are you wearing socks right now?No and I am cold. :C62) What’s your favorite animal?I love them all equally. (But I think that owls are very neat, and polar foxes, too!)63) What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?Be yourself. There is no point in having someone like you for something you are not. If they don’t like for who you are, then it’s no real loss for you.64) Where is your best friend?On the other side of the world, in Germany, while I am currently in Peru. :C65) Spit or swallow?(;Swallow ;D(I don’t know, but this is my instinctual answer)66) What is your heritage?German, English, Peruvian, Chinese, Chile, Spanish, Russian and I don’t know what else. 67) What were you doing last night at 12 AM?Reading Coldwave Fanfiction.68) What do you think is Satan’s last name?Feelgood.That was the first that came to mind. He must feel good about himself, punishing all the bad guys. Why does he have such a bad reputation? Isn’t he more of the supernatural version of a Judge? Never made the rules, he just deals the punishment.69) Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off?Of course. Who hasn’t? ;)70) Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?Honestly? Yes. I think so. And that’s the weird part, for all I don’t I don’t like myself. If I was my friend, I would love me, I would coddle me. So why can’t I do that with myself?71) You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?Jump in, get the dog out. Search for a new job. Because I wouldn’t want to work for such a fucktard anyway. And I would make a public statement and he would be so fucked.72) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?I don’t know if I would tell anyone, because they would immediately change the way they act around me and start to use up my time. I think I would start making amends and visiting all of the important people in my life on my own time and in my own way. I would Definitely go to amusement parks. Go to the movies. Just in general have a good time with my friends and family. But normal. Without the gloom hanging over their heads. And of course I would be afraid. When the time runs up I guess I would tell them, because you always need someone to talk to and I wouldn’t want to die alone. And I know that is a huge burden, but I think I would be allowed to be egoistical in this moment. I would be so fucking afraid but I guess, that is only human.73) You can only have one of these things; trust or love.You cannot love without trust. So I go with trust.74) What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?“Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me…” All Star by Smash Mouth75) What are the last four digits in your cell phone number?085476) In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?When you can say that your partner is not only your lover but also your best friend.77) How can I win your heart?Be my friend. Be yourself. And if we are compatible, then we might work out. :)78) Can insanity bring on more creativity?Yes. Because Insanity gives you another kind of reality that you can then depict with art and for everyone else, it is different and therefore more creative than what they normally see.79) What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?When I moved away from my mother to my father. In that time it was the best decision I could have made. Even though now, that I am older, I realize that my father is not the man I thought he was. My mother was not good for me then, she has changed a lot since.80) What size shoes do you wear?German: 39Us: 7,5UK: 5,581) What would you want to be written on your tombstone?Haven’t thought about it. Finally chilling? No Idea.82) What is your favorite word?Authentic 83) Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart.Beat84) What is a saying you say a lot?“No hay mal que por bien no venga.”There is no bad that doesn’t come to bring to bring good with it. Basically. Anything bad also has something positive in it’s heart.85) What’s the last song you listened to?Centuries by Fallout Boy86) Basic question; what’s your favorite color/colors?Blue, Green, Purple and Blood red87) What is your current desktop picture?Sadly I can’t put it here but it is a picture of a fantasy forest.88) If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?Tough question, because the obvious answer would be Trump, but even though he is a HUGE asshole. He is not the real problem right now. You what I mean? The ones who pull the strings are not the ones who show their faces.So if Trump goes, another asshole follows. Nothing much would change. But, because I don’t know right now who really would make a difference, I’ll still go with Trump.89) What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?I don’t know. I am very honest. The bigger question is: Who would I be afraid to tell the truth to? My family. My parents.90) One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren’t really doing anything, they’re just standing around your bed. What do you do?Ask hopefully: Ahkmenrah?As long as all of them look as hot as Rami I am set.91) You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?Body morphing. I could be a guy (finally). a real guy. I would never grow older, because I chose my cells to stay the same. I may not have healing abilities in the old school way, but if I ever have a wound, I morph my body to close it, so in some way, I still have healing abilities. I want to fly, I turn into a bird, or just grow wings. I want to be another person. I change appearance. So yea, body morphing.92) You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?When my grandmother/ mother was around and I lay on her chest and we slept we slept, and I heard her heartbeat beneath me. I felt like he world was alright. Everything was going to be fine. I was at peace. I felt safe.93) You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?My first suicide attempt and the after. The looks on my parents faces. The mortification I felt. It was horrifying.94) You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?Why music celebrity? And why does it have to be about sex? I would rather be best friends! Erm, Singer from Imagine Dragons? Was the first to come to mind. That’s it. No deeper meaning about that.95) You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?But lodging is paid for, too, right? Los Angeles. Hollywood.96) Do you have any relatives in jail?Not that I know of. But my cousin was convicted of theft a few times as a teenager. 97) Have you ever thrown up in the car?Proud to be able to say: No.98) Ever been on a plane?Even prouder: No.99) If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say?Every single one of you is wonderful. And every single one of you is entitled to their own decisions, beliefs and feelings. Stop hurting each other over disagreements. Just live in peace and accept your differences.

[leftpress]

'It’s Hard to Show the World I Exist': Chelsea Manning's Final Plea to Be Seen

In 2010, Chelsea Manning leaked thousands of classified documents in an attempt to shed light on the "true cost of war" in the Middle East. But while other whistleblowers continue to attract media attention and concern, Manning is locked in a maximum-security prison, six years into a 35-year sentence. On the heels of a last appeal to President Obama for clemency, Manning tells Broadly about her struggle for visibility and justice.

by Diana Tourjee | DEC 29 2016

Chelsea Manning is currently incarcerated in a maximum-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She's been in United States custody for six years, and spent months in solitary confinement. For that entire time, she has been forced to dress like a man, with her hair cropped close to her head. Her connection with the outside world is limited: There are extremely strict rules about who can visit her, and media isn't allowed to speak with her directly, though she can correspond with journalists by mail. At times, her situation seems hopeless, but she has tried to persevere.

"Courage is not fearlessness," she wrote in a letter to Broadly this December. "Courage is the ability to keep going, even when you are unsure of yourself, even when you are nervous, and even when you are terrified. If you can still fight when the odds appear to be against you, and when it looks like you might be fighting it alone, then you are genuinely brave."

In May of 2013, Chelsea Manning was convicted of six counts of espionage and sentenced to 35 years in prison. The former military specialist is responsible for what is considered the largest leak of classified government documents in American history—they include the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary, two data troves that she believed would shed light on the "true cost of war" in the Middle East, such as the United States' failure to investigate thousands of claims of torture in Iraq, the detainment of innocent or low-threat-level individuals at Guantanamo Bay, and thousands of civilian deaths.

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Manning's sentence is extreme by any metric. Other convicted whistleblowers have had to serve far less time, often in the range of one to three-and-a-half years—though Manning is just a sixth of the way through her sentence, she has already been incarcerated twice as long as most other convicted whistleblowers. Earlier this year, she made a plea to President Obama to alter her sentence from 35 years to time served, which would free her immediately while recognizing her guilt. Last month, over 100,000 people signed a White House petition making the same demand. The President's second term will end in January, meaning he has less than a month to take action.

Though some people celebrate Manning as a whistleblower—she was the 2013 recipient of the Sean MacBride Peace Prize—others see her actions as treasonous and damaging to the state. "Let's charge [her] and try [her] for treason," a FOX news national security expert, KT MacFarland, wrote of Manning in 2010. "If [she's] found guilty, [she] should be executed." President-elect Donald Trump has selected MacFarland to be his deputy national security adviser, according to CNN.

And even among people who prize government transparency, Manning is often overlooked. The world seems to have rallied behind other, more visible whistleblowers, such as Edward Snowden, who has become something of a celebrity from his recluse in Russia. One of the main reasons for this, according to Evan Greer, one of Manning's biggest advocates and the campaign director of Fight for the Future, is that Manning is hidden from sight in prison, denied the right to speak for herself.

"Prisons are designed to dehumanize and hide people from the public. No one can see Chelsea, and very few people can actually hear her voice," she explains. (I conducted my interview with Manning through one of her lawyers at the ACLU, Chase Strangio, who had one of Manning's contacts dictate my questions to her over the phone.)

Manning agrees with this characterization. "I have been disconnected from the world for what's becoming close to a decade now. There isn't even a good photograph taken of me since 2013—and these were taken during my court martial," she said in her letter to Broadly. "It's hard to show the world I exist anymore."

Throughout her life—and certainly her life as a public figure—Manning has struggled against forces that would silence her. She grew up in a society that rejected her womanhood; she later joined the military, a hyper-masculine institution that has been described as "openly hostile" towards gay and trans soldiers; while serving in the armed forces, she witnessed injustices that were classified by the state; she was subjected to "cruel and inhuman" treatment in the custody of the United States government, according to a UN investigator; when she finally came out as transgender in 2013, she was frequently and intentionally misgendered in the press; and now, incarcerated in a high-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, she must fight against a system that may soon destroy her.

"Chelsea has a huge amount of support," adds Greer, "but we are fighting an uphill battle against the US government's attempts to silence her important voice through incarceration."

During Manning's childhood, "it was like trans people didn't exist at all," she told Broadly. She remembers the difficulty growing up as a young, feminine person. She had never heard about real people who had changed their sex, or escaped its strictures; the only representation of transgender people that she remembers from back then were characters from horror stories, like Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, and caricatures on sensational crime dramas, like Law & Order.

Today, Manning reflects on her coming of age with the understanding that she was "shoved into the social role of a male." She believes her attempt "to meet other people's expectations of what a 'man' should be like" influenced the choices she made throughout her life. She once said she was bullied for being a "girly boy" when she was young. Hoping to curb discrimination in school, she tried to disappear among the boys by playing sports. Later, as an adult, Manning was encouraged by her father to join the army, and she enlisted in what is perhaps the most aggressively masculine institution imaginable in the summer of 2007—three years before she was arrested, and six years before she came out as transgender.

Before she was deployed to Iraq in October of 2009, Manning was stationed at Fort Drum in upstate New York. For the six months she was there—between February and August—she corresponded via AOL Instant Messenger with atheist vlogger Zinnia Jones. Jones was a young queer person with a relatively large audience. At the time, neither she nor Manning had come out as transgender or begun transitioning. Manning was presumably drawn to Jones because they both identified as gay men at that time, and they were both atheists who were interested in computers and mathematical theory.

Jones' videos, which she still makes today, had titles like "The Meaningless Death of Jesus," and "It Doesn't Matter if Being Gay is a Choice." Manning quickly opened up to her, telling Jones about her life and discussing her experience in the military. "It took them awhile," Manning wrote, referring to her fellow soldiers, "but they started figuring me out, making fun of me, mocking me, harassing me, heating up with one or two physical attacks."

While other soldiers succeeded in completing basic training in the standard 10 weeks, Manning—who is slender and stands 5'2" tall—said that it took her six months. Eventually she got through the program, despite her small size, and entered the army as an intelligence analyst. The broad, dark green military uniform sat heavily on her slight frame; she had officially become Private First Class Manning, someone her father had wanted her to be. In 2009, she was deployed to a remote location outside of Baghdad.

In the writing she produced during her service—correspondence with people such as Jones—Manning says that she feels an immense sense of responsibility to the men and women that she worked with. Though she took her work seriously, and she was good at it, that did not reconcile the deep anguish she experienced because of her gender identity. While Manning was working hard, she was also coping with worsening gender dysphoria. No one knew her as a woman, and she was alone in that way.

In November of 2009, one month following her deployment, Manning was reportedly in contact with a "gender counselor" back in the United States who specialized in treating military personnel with gender identity issues. She told him she felt "like a monster." According to the American Medical Association, if left untreated, gender identity disorder "can result in clinically significant psychological distress... debilitating depression and, for some people without access to appropriate medical care and treatment, suicidality and death."

On April 24, 2010, Manning confessed her gender identity issues to her superior, master sergeant Paul Adkins, in an email. A few days later, she sent a similar email to military psychologist, Capt. Michael Worsley. Manning attached a grainy black and white photograph of herself wearing a wig to the email and wrote, "This is my problem. I've had signs of it for a very long time. I've been trying very, very hard to get rid of it. It is not going away." In the email, she told Adkins that these issues were the cause of her "pain and confusion" and that they made "the most basic things in my life very difficult."

"It is difficult to sleep and impossible to have conversations. It makes my entire life feel like a bad dream that won't end. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do," she continued. "I don't know what will happen to me. But at this point I feel like I am not here anymore. Everyone is concerned about me, and everyone is afraid of me. I am sorry." Adkins later testified that he didn't pass the message onto military commanders because "I really didn't think at the time that having a picture floating around of one of my soldiers in drag was in the best interests of the intel mission."

On May 8, 2010, Manning was found curled in the fetal position, having carved the words "I want" into the back of an office chair. "[She] felt that [she] was not there; was not a person," master sergeant Adkins wrote in a memorandum read at trial.

"They treated all of this with deliberate ignorance, assuming the situation would simply go away," Jones claims. "Gender dysphoria does not go away. I am very certain that this deliberate medical neglect and intentional withholding of necessary mental health treatment contributed heavily to her ongoing distress at that time. The Army failed her on this front."

There were other reports of unstable behavior during Manning's service: She lashed out at her colleagues and allegedly displayed "erratic" conduct. But those who knew Manning personally caution against conflating her deteriorating psychological state with her decision to leak classified materials, as if the former wholly explains the latter. "I trust that her decisions hold more significance than some random event emerging from processes of pathology," says Jones. "I would be very hesitant to describe her disclosure of materials as being the byproduct of a mental health condition."

Indeed, Manning believes in government transparency and has been vocal and passionate about her politics since before she deployed to Iraq. In her correspondence with Jones in 2009, she fiercely critiqued the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. When she was stationed at Fort Drum in Upstate New York prior to her deployment to Iraq, Manning participated in a rally protesting Proposition 8.

During Manning's trial, her ACLU lawyer, David Coombs, called on Jones to testify, speaking to the defendant's character. "He felt my story would provide information that would be helpful to Chelsea," Jones says, "by showing that she understood the importance of national and global peace and security and that she did not intend to harm the United States."

Manning has said that she wanted to help people in this nation to be informed and to have a say in the actions of their government, and still, after everything, she believes in this country. "It is so important that we continue to fight, even when we are cornered, even when we are desperate, and even when we are afraid," she wrote in her letter to Broadly, referring to LGBT Americans who may feel hopeless during these difficult political times. "There is a tendency in certain parts of our community to take a step back during a crisis, to wait and see what happens, and hope for the best. We absolutely cannot afford to do that."

Illustration by Julia Kuo

On February 3—almost three months before she emailed Adkins about her struggles with gender identity—Manning uploaded the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary to WikiLeaks, a media organization that accepts anonymously submitted classified documents in the interest of transparency. Manning had first tried to bring the files to the Washington Post and the New York Times, but she felt the former didn't take her seriously, and the latter did not return her phone call. She then turned to WikiLeaks, which she had previously become aware of after seeing the site publish a collection of pager messages from 9/11 that she immediately recognized as authentic documents from the NSA. When Manning leaked the Iraq War Log and the Afghan War Diary, she was in the US on leave from her deployment in Iraq.

Manning returned to Iraq on February 11. During that timeframe, she overheard some of her colleagues discussing footage in an Army server that showed an American Apache helicopter firing on a group of men on the street in Baghdad in 2007. She researched the time and date of its occurrence, and what she found shocked her: The footage shows soldiers in the US military aircraft opening fire on a Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, mistaking the telephoto lens in his hand for an rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). Noor-Eldeen appears to die immediately, though the helicopters spray the area back and forth with heavy artillery, killing several Iraqi men in the crossfire. Saeed Chmagh, Noor-Eldeen's assistant, begins to crawl away from the dead bodies, pulling himself onto the sidewalk in an effort to find safety, and the soldiers beg for an excuse to kill him; they say they hope he'll reach for a weapon, any weapon, apparently so that they will be allowed to shoot him.

When a van of good Samaritans appears and tries to help Chmagh into their vehicle, the soldiers in the helicopter beg again for, and are granted, permission to fire. They were unaware at the time that children were inside the van; a US military ground unit would later find the kids alive but injured. In all, 12 people were killed in the air strike.

Manning eventually uploaded the video to WikiLeaks on February 21 of 2010, and the organization published it on April 5, 2010, dubbing the footage "Collateral Murder." (At this point, the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary had not yet been published.) The "Collateral Murder" footage directly, and damningly, contradicted the US military's official account of what had taken place that day: In response to a Freedom of Information Act filed by Reuters in 2007, the military had claimed it could not estimate when, or if, the footage could be produced, saying in a statement released after the shooting that both Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh died as the result of an attack following insurgent fire, including RPGs.

"The most alarming aspect of the video to me," Manning later testified, "was the seemingly delightful bloodlust [the US soldiers] appeared to have. They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging, and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as 'dead bastards' and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers." She also likened one soldier's behavior to "a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass." 

The release of the footage was met with outrage toward the army's apparently indiscriminate killings, both by the American public as well as people in Iraq. "At last the truth has been revealed," said Noor-Eldeen's father after the footage was leaked, according to the New York Times. "I would have sold my house and all that I own in order to show this tape to the world."

Manning had a reasoned explanation of her motivation for the leaks, which she told to a hacker named Adrian Lamo in May of 2010. "I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are, because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public," she wrote.

When Manning uploaded the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary to WikiLeaks in February she added a note, which ended this way: "This is possibly one of the most significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare."

In May of 2010, Adrian Lamo, the hacker with whom Manning had corresponded after uploading massive amounts of data to WikiLeaks, turned her over to the Department of Justice. She had sought out Lamo a week earlier, apparently lonely and trying to make some human connection. Lamo was publicly connected to WikiLeaks, which may have made Manning see him as a relevant contact.

On May 27, Chelsea Manning was arrested. She was put in an "8' x 8' x 8' wire mesh cage in Kuwait," according to VICE, and held for two months before being transferred to the United States, where she was put in an even smaller cage at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. Here, Manning was kept in solitary confinement for nine months, frequently stripped and left naked, and awoken when she fell asleep. A dentist provided mental health evaluations.

During this period, WikiLeaks was actively publishing the rest of the documents that Manning sent to them, including the Afghan War Diaries, the Iraq War Logs, and a massive collection of US diplomatic cables. (Manning's leaks clarified previously opaque international affairs and embarrassed US state officials, but their impact on our nation's relationship with foreign powers were "fairly modest," according to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.)

While Manning's actions as a whistleblower sent shockwaves around the globe, the American government's treatment of her in state custody has become a human rights crisis in itself. In 2011, PJ Crowley, then the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, resigned from his position following public remarks that he made about Manning. "What is being done to [Chelsea] Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the Department of Defense," Crowley had said. His statement prompted President Obama to speak on Manning's experience at Quantico. At a press conference in 2011, Obama appeared satisfied with the Pentagon's assurance that the treatment of Manning was "appropriate."

A month after Obama was forced to confront Manning's treatment at Quantico, he publicly stated that she "broke the law," despite the fact she had not yet been convicted of any crime. Manning's defense attorney would later cite this statement by Obama as an example of the way that the US government affected public perception of Manning's guilt prior to her trial. In January of 2013, the pretrial imprisonment of Manning was indeed deemed illegal in a court ruling.

Photo via Flickr User Matthew Lippincott

When her trial finally came, Manning pled guilty to lesser charges in hopes that the judge would be lenient in sentencing. She did not plead guilty to the charge of aiding the enemy. As the prosecution prepared to argue that Manning had aided an enemy of the state, Crowley spoke out again, this time in a column for the Guardian in which he lambasted the US government for "making a martyr" of Manning.

Manning was ultimately acquitted of the aiding the enemy charge, but she did not receive the leniency she had counted on.

The conditions Manning faces in prison are brutal, and some of her advocates say they're tantamount to state-sponsored harassment. "The US military has kept her in a constant state of stress by continually harassing her with frivolous prison infractions," said Greer, the advocate who helped Manning to petition President Obama. Like Manning's lawyers and other supporters, Greer believes that Manning is "being denied the mental health support and gender-related health care that she desperately needs."

Until 2015, Manning was denied hormones to help her transition, and she's still required to wear her hair cropped closely to her head, in line with the military's standards for male inmates. In 2015, she was threatened with indefinite solitary confinement for possessing "contraband"—toothpaste and LGBTQ reading materials. This summer she was placed in solitary, as punishment for attempting to take her own life. In September, after Manning staged a hunger strike, the military guaranteed in writing that it will provide her with gender reassignment surgery, though she has yet to receive that treatment.

To some, Manning's treatment at the hands of the US military and her prolonged suffering is justification enough to commute her sentence. "Chelsea's mistreatment by the military and in their custody has been so protracted and indefensibly cruel that she should certainly be released immediately," insists Jones. Others, like Greer, note that Manning's continued incarceration essentially deprives the world of a vocal advocate for freedom and transparency. "She is an incredibly strong person with a brilliant and strategic mind, and she wants to use her talent and passion to make positive change in the world," Greer says. "The fact that she is kept away from us, locked behind bars, is truly a tragedy for our whole society."

Manning's lawyers at the ACLU, conversely, argue that her sentence should be overturned because her First Amendment rights were violated during her prosecution. In a brief filed earlier this year, the organization argues that the fact that she was prosecuted under the Espionage Act—a law first introduced during World War I that targets spies and traitors but has been used against whistleblowers and government officials who have communicated with the press in recent years—was unconstitutional.

One thing most of Manning's advocates unequivocally agree on is the fact that she will suffer immensely if she's not freed soon—and, with a looming Trump presidency, that her future may be frighteningly uncertain. While conditions have been brutal, Manning has at least finally been able to access healthcare. Many fear that such treatment could be threatened under Trump, who has been openly dismissive of the rights of trans people serving in the military.

Manning told Broadly that she suffers from feelings of desperation at times. "Sure, I have been surviving, and I plan on fighting to survive and move forward in the years to come," she said. "But I have no idea what challenges lie ahead."

Many advocates acknowledge that the present situation isn't very encouraging: President Obama has been notoriously tough on the prosecution of whistleblowers, and it doesn't help that many in the government still see Manning's actions as harmful to national security. "I will be surprised if President Obama commutes her sentence," PJ Crowley tells Broadly, adding that he does not consider Manning to be a whistleblower and considers her actions irresponsible and dangerous: "While serving in a war zone, she forwarded intelligence information and other sensitive material to someone not authorized to possess it," he says.

But even an establishment figure like Crowely, who believes that Manning's sentencing was just, recognizes that she should not have to spend 35 years in prison. "Chelsea Manning should be paroled at the first opportunity and allowed to go home and reconstruct her life," Crowley said.

According to Manning's lawyer, Chase Strangio, she "is seeking clemency and relief from her egregiously long sentence precisely so that she can, as Crowley suggests, 'go home and reconstruct her life', and so that she can, as Manning explains, finally live as the woman she was always meant to be." Strangio reiterates that Manning pled guilty, that she's not asking to be pardoned, and that she understands that she will "continue to face the consequences of her actions." Those actions, Strangio emphasizes, were motivated by a sense of duty to the American people.

"Chelsea acted in the service of the public interest to disclose information she believed imperative to inform people of harms perpetrated in the government's name around the world," Strangio explains. This is something that President Obama could consider when deciding whether or not to commute Manning's sentence to time served before he leaves office in January. According to Strangio, "her chances of surviving in prison much longer are slim, and action now will prevent the government from overseeing her unnecessary and untimely death."

Due to her belief that the American people have a right to know what their representative government is doing, and at whose expense, a woman is now locked in a prison in Kansas, where, among other injustices, she has been forced to fight legal battles to be given healthcare, punished for attempting suicide, and required to cut her hair because the state considers her to be a man. With incoming President Donald Trump's expansive military and surveillance powers, his apparent disinterest in truth, and cavalier attitude toward potential Russian interference in American politics, transparency in government is more important than ever before, as is the informed participation of the public in the sometimes disturbing behavior of the state.

Though there are platforms that share her writing, Manning, who risked her life and liberty to advocate for transparency, is now barely visible. Other than a digital black and white photograph taken during the first time that she dressed as a woman, the world has never even seen her. "I often worry that I have become more of a symbol than human," Manning wrote in her letter. If people forget that she is more than a whistleblower or a hero, then they'll never really know her, or understand the urgency and the severity of her situation.

"The truth is that I am just as vulnerable, and lonely at times, as everyone else," Manning continued. "I have my flaws. I have strengths. I have weaknesses. I also have talents. I have faults. There are a lot of things I can do. But there are also a lot of things I cannot do. I am only human."

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[bellabooks]

Queer women who should run for President of the United States in 2020

Hey, America, we’ve come a long way, but we’ve got oh-so-far to go. I know we have it in us to forge ahead and make progress that will enhance equality and protect the rights of everyone, not just the largest groups with the loudest voices. What a milestone we reached in electing our first African-American president and re-electing him for a second term. I am so proud of our country for that. However, while I don’t know what the next four years will hold, I am not proud of America’s choice for the 45th President of the United States. I believe in our country though. I know that progress isn’t always a linear path. I believe that we’re more than ready to elect our first female president. Not only that, but I believe we’re ready for our first queer female president. I think that by 2020, we’ll be hungry for that kind of progress. “But Rachel, what queer women should we even consider for the presidency?” you may ask. Here’s my list of four suggestions for queer women that I think would each make a kickass president for 2020.   Mia Yamamoto via Facebook Mia is LA’s first out trans public defender, according to the It Gets Better Project. Her life began when she was born in a Japanese-American Internment Camp. “I often tell my clients that I was born doing time, because one has to see discrimination to sort of recognize it. It reflects upon my work today,” she says in a video for The Lavender Effect. She’s also a veteran. Mia served in the Army from 1966-1968 and earned multiple medals, including a Vietnam Campaign Medal, according to that project. Mia has earned numerous legal awards and honors. In 2002, for instance, the California Daily Journal named her as one of their “100 Most Influential Lawyers in California.” She’s also earned prestigious awards for her advocacy for the LGBT community, including the Liberty Award by Lambda Legal and the Harvey Milk Legacy Award by Christopher Street West/LA Pride. With her strong legal experience and unique background, I think Mia could do much to make America a safer and more equal place for all. And I believe she could do so without resorting to drastic measures, like trying to build a $25 billion wall along the Mexico-US Border that architects say would be almost impossible to construct.   Cameron Esposito via Facebook Hear me out on this one. I’m not just suggesting Cameron because she’s my favorite comic and has awesome hair, although both are true. In a video for CNN, Cameron said “We’re on this trend where comedy is going to help us fix the world. I totally believe it is possible.” In the same video, she added, “It is so important to me that every human being is approached with dignity and respect and also guaranteed the right to be with the person they love at the worst and best moments of their life.” Somehow I think the kind of dignity and respect Cameron would advocate for doesn’t include talking about grabbing women or establishing registries for Muslims, for instance. Cameron’s used comedy to discuss important issues, like gun control and abortion. I think the beliefs she expresses about these issues in the videos below are ones we could use in the White House.     Chai Feldblum According to her Twitter profile, Chai is the “first out lesbian EEOC Commissioner w/hidden disability of anxiety disorder,” a “former Georgetown law prof” and a “discrimination buster.” The senate confirmed her for a second term on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which will end in 2018, according to EEOC.gov. “She has focused in particular on the employment of people with disabilities, pregnancy accommodation, sexual orientation and transgender discrimination, harassment prevention” and other concerns, according to that site. She has been credited by the EEOC with helping draft the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which provides anti-discrimination protections for people with disabilities, as well as helping pass the ADA Amendments Act in 2008. She is also described as an “expert on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act,” which would prohibit employers and other entities from “engaging in employment discrimination on the basis of an individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.” In 2015, she also received an award from the American Bar Association for her “commitment and service as a disability rights advocate.”   Ellen DeGeneres After all, President Obama just awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom as he remembered “Just how important it was not just for the LGBT community, but for all us to see somebody so full of kindness and light—somebody we liked so much, somebody who could be our neighbor or our colleague or our sister—challenge our own assumptions, remind us that we have more in common than we realize, push our country in the direction of justice.” That kind of courage and progress in the direction of justice is what we need right now, as we grapple with issues ranging from bathroom bills that could increase the risk of suicide for people who are trans to attempts to scrap the Affordable Healthcare Act that helped the rate of uninsured Americans fall to “the lowest uninsured rate in 50 years.” Bonus! Ellen has the skills to interact with people. I envision that if she were President of the United States, Ellen would use her ability to talk with people of diverse backgrounds to promote unity, both nationally and internationally. There’s also one queer woman that I think would make a great president for 2020, except there’s one catch: she won’t be old enough by then.   Park Cannon Last March, when CNN called Park Cannon “the queer black millennial who plans to shake up Georgia politics,” she was 24 years old and the youngest lawmaker in Georgia. Park is the Democratic State Representative for Georgia House District 58. One of her “earliest political memories,” she says on that site, is “watching local residents drive around with confederate flags and KKK materials.” Park writes that when she was in college at Chapman University in Los Angeles, her dorm room door was defaced with a racial slur. When she reported the incident to the university and black student union, “these individuals actions, coupled with the community’s inaction, sent me aback,” she writes. She returned to Georgia for a year, then transferred to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she eventually graduated with “two majors – Hispanic Linguistics and Linguistics and a minor in women’s and gender studies.” Park ran for the seat because “Rep. Simone Bell, a staunch pro-choice ally at the Capitol… announced she was accepting a new position at Lambda Legal” and “personally called me to ask if I would run for her seat,” she writes. Park doesn’t seem afraid to tackle tough issues. For example, that same story by CNN says that in her first month as a state representative, she asked a question about Georgia’s “religious freedom” bill: “Wouldn’t it be true that if this bill is passed, as amended, that in a domestic violence situation, in a same-sex couple, that a person could be denied care?” While the Georgia General Assembly passed the bill, Governor Nate Deal later announced he would veto it. On ParkCannon58.com, Park promises voters that she will “fight everyday” for things like “Medicaid expansion,” “the creation of more jobs with good benefits,” “good transportation options in every neighborhood so we can get to our jobs,” “safer communities where we can raise our families” and against “any religious freedom bills that may negatively affect Georgia families.” If she were to bring a similar platform to Washington once she’s old enough to run for president, I believe that she could affect a lot of positive change in our country. I don’t know about you, America, but as we prepare to inaugurate a 45th President of the United States about whom so many have chanted “Not my president,” rather than focusing on my fear of what’s ahead, I’m choosing to focus on a future beyond the next four years. And the way I see it? There’s no good reason why that future can’t be queer and bright. So there you have it, America – my list of five queer women that I think would make phenomenal presidents. Of course, this is just a starting point. There are so many queer women, from actresses to non-profit leaders, who seem poised to make a difference. This is just a preliminary list to show, you know, that for the 2020 U.S. presidential race, we don’t have to elect another white, cisgender, heterosexual, male president that will inspire a “Golden Showers” burger.     Rachel Crowell is a freelance writer who usually focuses on math and science stories, but she’s open to writing any story worth telling. She’s written stories for Rewire.org, EARTH, the American Mathematical Society’s Math Digest, and others. http://dlvr.it/N7Xg3x

[a1detective]

OPINION: BY JEFFREY A. FRIEDBERG

Impolite, and not chronicling the “news” politely….

MAXINE WATERS, THE FACE OF A RAVING LUNATIC, THE PARTY OF TREASON – Gellerreport.com

liberalarts.oregonstate.edu

sjpl.org

Hiskind.com

bythebloodofthelamb.files.wordpress.com

i.mmo.cm/

  “PREGNANT ‘MAN’” (oh, right this fooled me totally—I thought it was a MAN!) – “Hayden Cross was born a girl and was legally male when he paused transgender hormone treatment to conceive using a sperm donor he had met on Facebook.” (Oh, that’s DELICIOUS! “FACEBOOK.”)

…During Wednesday night’s first Democratic presidential debate, San Antonio mayor Julián Castro stated he supports taxpayer-funded abortions for “transgender women.”  “I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom; I believe in reproductive justice,” he said.  “And what that means is just because a woman, or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community — a trans female — is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exercise that right to choose….”

…Let’s assume, however, that Castro didn’t misspeak and that he indeed supports taxpayer-funded abortions for “trans women,” which is most likely the case.  Why would Castro want taxpayers to fund something that is currently biologically impossible?  Perhaps a “trans female” is a woman who becomes a man?  Not at all.  Although progressives are constantly altering and updating terms relating to sex and sexuality to fit their current political narrative, science be damned (he who defines the terms controls the argument), the latest liberal terminology defines a “trans female” or “trans woman” as a man who “becomes” a woman.

According to Wikipedia, which is the gatekeeper of all things progressive:

A trans woman (sometimes trans-woman or transwoman) is a woman who was assigned male at birth.  Trans women may experience gender dysphoria and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and sometimes sex reassignment surgery, which can bring immense relief and even resolve gender dysphoria entirely.  Trans women may be heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, asexual, or identify with other terms (such as queer)….

….Now, let’s suppose, years in the future, when science has worked out all the bugs, that a man decides to undergo all the risks and grueling preparation involved with a uterine transplant (instead of simply adopting, which would be a lot easier, safer, and more sensible).  And let’s say it works, and he finally gets pregnant.  And let’s say he wakes up one morning and thinks, Hmm, I don’t think I want this baby after all.  I want to get rid of it, and I want the government to pay for it. 

In this case, I guess Julián Castro’s support for transgender abortion contains some semblance of warped logic.  Not that this highly implausible and as yet scientifically impossible scenario is worth mentioning in a presidential debate when you are already limited by time and must choose your words wisely.  And not that there are other more practical, more pressing issues to be dealt with.  But that’s what you get from a political party that wants to fund the kinds of procedures that could put babies inside men’s bodies, while simultaneously fighting for laws that would allow these same babies to get ripped out again.

—americanthinker.com

Julian Castro. A Pregnant Male? Nahhhhh! Just Another OBAMA Whack-Job. 

…Castro served as the mayor of his native San Antonio, Texas from 2009 until he joined Obama’s cabinet in 2014. He was mentioned as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.[2][3] Castro is the twin brother of Congressman Joaquin Castro.

On January 12, 2019, Castro launched his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2020 in San Antonio….[4]

…Castro[5] was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Maria “Rosie” Castro and Jessie Guzman.[6] 

[His] mother was a Chicana political activist who helped establish the Chicano political party La Raza Unida,[8] and who ran unsuccessfully for the San Antonio City Council in 1971.[5] Castro once stated, “My mother is probably the biggest reason that my brother and I are in public service. Growing up, she would take us to a lot of rallies and organizational meetings and other things that are very boring for an 8-, 9-, 10-year-old”.[9] His father, Jessie Guzman, is a retired mathematics teacher and political activist. Never married, Rosie and Jessie separated when Castro and his brother were eight years old.[8] Castro’s Texan roots trace back to 1920, when his grandmother Victoria Castro joined extended family members there as a six-year-old orphan from northern Mexico.[5]

—https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Castro

So, it seems  Castro is just another spawn of liberal, progressive, Democrat, “Mexican” descent.

Whose Leftist parents were flaming, raging Liberal,”Progressives,” who taught him the Liberal Way.

”Progressive Socialist” sounds sooo much nicer than its true, parasitic name of “Communism.” Which has never worked out—ANYwhere it was tried.

It’s no wonder to me Castro is running for cartel-controlled, sissy President of Mexico…whoops, I mean President of the defunct, Russian, communist USSR—Oh, wait…what is he actually running for?

“JULIAN CASTRO”

He’s running for President of what—gay liberals? Or what?

What the hell are Democrats doing? WHO is their Target Audience? What are they fishing for? Does Open Borders, Unlimited “Migration,” Free Everything for Illegals, and all this “Gay” and “trans” stuff sound like a winning Platform?

Yes; maybe.

Because Democrats are targeting the votes of every illegal invader-voter; every lost- cause alien; every angry misfit, criminal, prevert, suburban housewife, uninformed, disinformed, lied-to, delusional, insane, crazed, brainwashed, feel-good, TV-and-drug-addicted, I-want-to-help-my-fellow-humans, Democrat-inclined voter.

The Democrat Party of Harry Truman, JFK, Hubert Humphrey, and the great Daniel Moynihan, is GONE. They are dead. And so is the Democrat Party.

What we face now is The Party of Death—abortion, jihad, riots, dead cops, American murders, open borders, free everything for everybody, and World Communism with Democrats in permanent totalitarian power.

It’s no wonder Julián or Julian (or Julio, or whatever) is named “Castro.”

Like Communist Cuba—“Castro” is a perfect fit for a Communist America—by the Alien-Communist Democrat Party.

America was never founded as a communist state. It was meant to be open, successful, and moral. It has been under attack by Democrat communists for a hundred years.

But—you see—they must eradicate America’s Constitution and guns to make their takeover coup successful. And that doesn;t seem likely to work out well for them.

As in: Kids, a Democrat takeover-coup will never happen in America.

Donald Trump has already won the 2020 election. He has “pushed” the democrats so far left, they cannot possibly sound like winners to a majority of Americans, and win.

Democrats will lose. And then they will react as never before. They will be inconsolable and uncontainable. They will march, burn, kill, “protest,” and destroy. After a while, this will not sit well—with practically everyone.

At that point Julio Castro can trot out his plea for transgender pregnant males, and all fighting and opposition will spontaneously cease, from pure joy. We will all join hands and sing the gay national anthem…or communist…or something.

Yeah…right.

<<<—————->>>

    THE SCIENCE FICTION OF PREGNANT MALES—AND JUST WHO THE HELL IS Julián (?) Castro? OPINION: BY JEFFREY A. FRIEDBERG Impolite, and not chronicling the “news” politely.... ...During Wednesday night's first Democratic presidential debate, San Antonio mayor Julián Castro 

[shenzhenblog]

StartmeupHK Festival 2019 - Day 5 Highlights (25 Jan, Fri) - AI & Education

AI & Education looks beyond classic friend-or-foe relationship between AI and humans to explore how technology can make us better humans

On the final day of this year’s StartmeupHK Festival 2019, the AI & Education Conference, hosted by EdTech Asia, went beyond the classic friend-or-foe debate on the role of AI and discussed what would happen to people when AI starts to be integrated into workplace and how we augment what we do with AI. The essential message to emerge was nicely summarised by Diana Wu David, who recently released a new book Future Proof: “AI helps unlock a lot of potential. The future is not about being technical, but to be more human.”

After a welcome by Jayne Chan, Head of StartmeupHK at Invest Hong Kong, Mike Michalec, Founder and Managing Director of EdTech Asia recalled how EdTech Asia started off as a community network and grew into a collaborative learning innovation community across Asia.

Machines can now teach themselves to think

Duc Luu, Chief Strategy Officer of RISE Education told a story of how he turned from a dishwasher on a meager hourly wage into a successful tutor and entrepreneur. He founded The Edge in 2008, an education startup embodying what he believes education should be that rose to become Nasdaq-listed RISE Education in 2017. His advice to others is to choose your investors wisely, identify the total addressable market, examine your business model, and most of all “find your market and plough a truck through it.”

He took a deep dive into three kinds of AI learning style – unsupervised learning, supervised learning and reinforcement learning – along with their underlying mechanisms. At the cutting edge is reinforcement learning, which allows a machine to learn and evolve according to the feedback it receives from its environment as a result of its own actions. The constant improvement culminated in the remarkable defeat of 18-time Go world champion Lee Sedol by AlphaGo in 2016.

AI to eliminate tedious jobs, leaving creative ones to humans

Moderated by Uptin Saiidi of CNBC, the panel that followed saw Daniel Callaghan, Head of Adecco Group X, APAC; Yat Siu, CEO of Outblaze; Juliette Li, Regional Director of Navitas; Yoshi Okamoto, Founder and Executive Director of SHO-zemi Innovation Ventures and Jessica Kennedy White, EdTech Consultant taking education beyond school and discussing the impact of AI on the future of learning and work.

Uptin quoted a recent research report that predicted 50% of jobs will be outsourced to AI in 20 years and asked if the nature of future jobs will become more social and creative, or will we, as a workforce, be more reliant on data to create algorithms. Yat Siu of Outblaze believed that the future jobs would bifurcate – while repetitive jobs will be automated and taken up by machines, the human workforce would gear towards the creative side.

“Tools make it so easy… Everyone can be a photographer. It leads to ‘mass amateurisation’, so instead of having ten people do ten things, we can have one person do ten things,” he said, meaning that AI would act as a liberating force and leave us more time to learn and be more versatile.

Yat Siu’s comment struck a chord with Daniel Callaghan of Adecco Group X, who said: “You can’t fuel this paranoia with doomsday scenarios.” He quoted an unnamed source at the World Economic Forum: “If your child is between five to ten years old today, in 25 years’ time, about 60% of that child will be in a job that does not exist today.”

Unlikely capitalist: Transforming an NGO into a scalable and profitable startup

If surviving and growing a startup into a large profitable company is hard, starting as a non-profit organisation is even harder. Yet, while it may sound next to impossible, it is the natural course of action. “The only way to scale is to go for-profit,” said Steven To, VP Strategy and Operations of Onion Math.  Formerly Sunshine Library, an NGO co-founded in 2011 by Yang Linfeng and Zhu Ruochen, graduates of Harvard University and Duke University respectively, the company turned into a for-profit business called Onion Math that provides videos and games to over 20 million students in both rural and urban areas of China to help them learn mathematics.

Having acquired the right users and maintained high quality at scale, while monetising products, Mr. To said the ultimate challenge is to bring educators, programmers and business leaders together to strike the right balance between ‘education’, ‘internet’ and ‘business.’  He said the recipe for success is to understand what lies at the heart of these – namely ‘impact’, ‘user’ and ‘profit’.

In an era of technology, soft skills strive

Next up was a panel discussion on big data for workforce analytics and career guidance with Pei Ying Chua, APAC Team Lead of Economic Graph Analytics at LinkedIn, Candace Cheung, Senior Manager of Strategic Marketing, Hong Kong of eBay and Dicky Yuen, Founder and Managing Director of Venturenix, moderated by Will Greene, Director, Tigermine Research.

LinkedIn manages a huge database covering over 519 million members, 30 million companies, 13 million jobs, 4,000 schools and 50,000 skills worldwide. It analyses all the data to understand the labour market dynamics by looking at the hiring rates, growth of different industries, migration patterns across countries and industries. By identifying the imbalance of supply and demand of talent and skill sets, it helps governments to formulate education policies to plug skill gaps, such as its partnership with SkillsFuture Singapore, a government initiative to help its workforce upskill to meet market needs.

In the private sector, Hong Kong-based Venturenix uses LinkedIn’s data to provide tailored recruitment services and training. By offering scholarships to graduates and placing graduates with potential employers, the company collects a percentage of the fees from the employers, thereby making learning affordable for students and supercharging their careers at the same time.

In addition to hard skills, LinkedIn also tracks soft skills. The company found that although that technical skills are of growing importance, soft skills like communication, leadership and management skills are what make people stand out from the crowd and make career advancements.

Future proofing and being human

Diana Wu David, author of Future Proof, concurred. Future-proofing refers to the process of anticipating the future and developing methods to minimise the effects of shocks and stresses of future events. Ms. David advocates moving beyond knowledge, which may become obsolete one day, to focus on connection and collaboration – what makes us human at the first place. By citing an example of how a recently launched VR-enabled speaking skill training software can help analyse speech pace and attention spent looking at the virtual audience, she illustrated that instead of trying to outcompete robots, we can make ourselves better humans with technology.

“The root of creativity is asking why – why is it the only way… It’s a sad irony that everyone in the tech space is actually repeating the same phrases,” said Jordan Kostelac, Director of PropTech of JLL Asia. He encourages people to embrace critical thinking, adding: “AI and algorithms tend to be more repetitive. Does it mean that doctors necessarily have to stick to the same diagnostics and treatments? No.”

He thought that people should not be worried about their job being taken away by computers. “Tedium is what’s being replaced,” he said. “The ability to repeat things is not the same as intelligence.”

On diversity and equality

A discussion on AI & ethics followed. Rachel Brujis, Head of International Market Development, UK Online Programmes of Pearson, Chris Geary, CEO of BSD Education, Raphael Nolden, CEO of Jaipuna, Son Minh Tran, Director of AI of Topica EdTech Group and Jessica Kennedy White, EdTech Consultant all stressed the importance of diversity and equality in the accessibility of education opportunities.

“Accessibility and costs go hand-in-hand. When you set up an educational organisation, it’s important that you set out your organisation’s mission. For us, it’s to ensure that children have access to digital skills,” said Mr. Geary. He went on to explain that the future of children nowadays hinges on the possession of digital skills. He also warned people not to misuse technology: “If you don’t know what you’re measuring, don’t measure people. Don’t over-measure people by fitting them into summative measures.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Nolden emphasised that it is important for software engineers to get to know the users when designing edtech products: “You might be experts (in technology), but you really know nothing about education. You have to work with teachers all the time, rather than seeing it as just yet another box to tick.”

Greater Bay Area as a global hub for technology

The day wrapped up with Philip Kung, Head of Business and Professional Services at Invest Hong Kong, Edward Chan, Senior Business Development Manager, Mainland and International of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks and Data Ng, Representative, EdTech Subcommittee of Cyberport Startup Association. The session was moderated by Youssef El Kaddioui, Innovation Partner of Metta, featuring sharing from Bhavneet Chahal, Co-founder of GoSkills, as a beneficiary of supportive government policies in the Greater Bay Area.

Mr. Kung said: “If you want to grow your business, or if you want to commercialise your knowledge, products or services, Hong Kong, together with the Greater Bay Area, can help you achieve your goal.” He added that the most important element of the Greater Bay initiative is the establishment of an integral market. Large corporations, and medium and small startups alike, need to have technology, know-how, capital and vision to succeed. Above all, they have to be in the right market at the right time. Thus, the Greater Bay Area is where the opportunities lie and hence the ideal place for technology companies to set their bases in.

StartmeupHK Festival 2019 – Day 5 Highlights (25 Jan, Fri) – AI & Education was originally published on Shenzhen Blog

[touristguidebuzz]

Meet the Team: The Many Faces of Nomadic Matt

From tech and coding to design to fixing bugs getting readers books when downloads fail to scheduling social media or running the forums, it takes a village to run this website. I simply couldn’t run the website, write, travel, eat, sleep, or anything in between if I didn’t have the support and help of an amazing group of people – and I think it’s time you formally met them all! So, without further ado, here’s team Nomadic Matt:

Erica

Erica has been working for me for over three and a half years and is my director of global operations i.e. right hand woman. She keeps this ship afloat. In her own words:

I grew up in Connecticut and went to school in Virginia. During a quarter-life crisis at age 21, I chose to finish my last year of college on an adventure in Qatar! From that moment on, my life revolved around traveling cheaply with the money I earned from waitressing. That budget got me to teach English in Isaan, Thailand, and South Korea; farm on St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean; and volunteer in rural Zambia. At age 26, I returned home to Connecticut, determined to get a job in travel. Soon after, I met Nomadic Matt at a travel meet-up in NYC, and the rest is history.

I whole-heartedly believe that traveling makes friends of strangers, and the more friends there are in the world, the more peace there is in the world.

13 Facts about Me

At 15, I helped build a schoolhouse in Nicaragua.

Living in a termite clay hut without electricity or running water in Zambia for six months was probably one of the most trying (and simple), exciting (and boring), and perspective-shifting experiences of my life.

I’ve cut off my hair and donated it to Locks of Love, twice!

I once hunted for possums on the island of St. Vincent with a bunch of Rastafarians. We caught four and made soup.

In Costa Rica, I stayed at in a sustainable living community called Rancho Mastatal, where I learned how to farm yuca, make beer out of turmeric, and build a house out of cob.

When I was 15, John Stamos kissed my cheek after I saw him in Cabaret on Broadway.

I taught English in South Korea for 14 months and was able to easily save enough money for 21 months of non-stop travel.

This music video I made used to be one of the top hits when you searched for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

In Zambia, my friend and I were given a live chicken as a present. We were vegetarians, so we traded it for a pair of second-hand jeans at the market.

I got 19 people (the students and teachers on the FLYTE trip) into an airport lounge for free. I think that’s a travel hacking record!

I’ve attended a Qatari princess’s wedding sporting mink eyelashes.

In Korea, I dated a guy who spoke no English and we basically communicated through drawing pictures and reciting American rap lyrics.

I think Matt spends a majority of his day editing out my exclamation points from my research, emails, newsletters, etc! (Matt says: This is very true.)

Christopher O.

Chris joined the team as the part-time manager of the forums back in 2015. Since then, he’s branched out into the Superstar Blogging program and our soon-to-be-launched community platform, Nomadic Network. In his own words:

I grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada, and spent my formative years listening to punk rock, reading Star Wars novels, and generally getting up to no good. After ditching my lifelong plan to be a lawyer, I decided to give travel a try. I headed to Costa Rica on a whim and have never looked back! It wasn’t long after that trip that I took a break from university (where I was studying history and theatre) to move to a monastery in Japan in 2007. I’ve more or less been wandering around ever since. Some notable adventures include taking the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia and Mongolia, walking the Camino de Santiago twice, and going on a 10-day road trip around Iceland with complete strangers. When I’m not traveling, I live in Sweden and can be found reading, writing, or struggling to improve at chess.

13 Facts about Me

I spent nine months living in Buddhist monasteries.

I lived in a tent for a year.

I was once stalked by a jaguar and chased by a crocodile — on the same trip.

I haven’t had alcohol in 13 years.

I’ve broken all my fingers and toes, and my nose three times, and I’ve fractured both my wrists.

I worked on an organic farm for 11 years.

I co-owned a restaurant in Canada.

I grew up next door to Avril Lavigne.

I once ate an entire nine-course meal (I was the only person there to eat everything!).

I played inter-mural Quidditch in high school and was our team’s Seeker.

I have a Star Wars tattoo.

I’ve been vegan for 12 years.

I have a scar from a fight that broke out over which Norse god was “the best.”

Chris R.

Chris, aka The Aussie Nomad, is a (kinda) former blogger who does all the tech and development work for the website. He keeps it running, fixes any errors you find, and deals with my constantly changing design desires. In his own words:

I’m living the good life in Western Australia by the beach with my amazing family. I got into the world of blogging after quitting my job, backpacking around Europe and, as all Aussies do, undertaking a working holiday in the UK. Like all of us who travel and fall in love with it, nobody wants to go home afterwards.

That adventure got me into creating a travel blog many years ago, which is how I first came to know Matt. I have since repurposed my IT skills from my old life and formed my own business to help out other bloggers with their websites.

13 Facts about Me

I love Belgian beer (and I even married a Belgian).

I’ve worked with Matt the longest out of anyone here. (Take that team!)

I took off to backpack Europe when I was 29.

I’m an advocate for Vegemite and believe all visitors to Australia must try this national treasure.

One of my favorite activities is to take a long road trip, especially with family and friends.

I have no idea how four-way stop signals in the U.S.A. don’t all end up as accidents.

I do not drink Fosters. It’s a terrible beer. No one in Australia actually drinks it.

I like to think of myself as an amateur photographer.

I failed kindergarten as I wouldn’t say goodbye to the teacher.

My first job was working in a supermarket.

I can’t sleep on a plane – no matter how long the flight is.

I can name every Thomas the Tank Engine character thanks to my son.

I don’t drink coffee or get people’s love for it. Tea all the way!

Raimee

Raimee is the newest team member and does all our social media. She schedules posts, tweaks my terrible photos so they look good on Instagram, builds our content calendar, and creates all our quote & Pinterest graphics! In her own words:

When I was just 14 years old, I took my first international trip to Honduras and Belize with my family. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked on experiencing new cultures, connecting with people from all walks of life, and learning about myself and the world through the power of travel! After graduating with a degree in advertising and marketing from Michigan State University and four years as a digital marketing specialist, I realized that corporate life was not for me. My insatiable need to experience the world beyond a desk led me to search for a job-related to travel. I’ve followed this blog for many years, and now I get to work for it remotely while I strategize, manage, and report on the social media accounts — and I love every second of it!

13 Facts about Me

I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. I’ve read each book at least 10 times, and, if I told you how many times, I’ve watched each of the movies, you probably wouldn’t believe me.

I once “hung out” with Daniel Radcliffe at a Red Wings game in Detroit, and actually kept my cool the entire time.

Visiting the Harry Potter studio tour in London was one of the best days of my life.

My mom was obsessed with the 80’s horror movie Evil Dead directed by Sam Raimi, so she named me after him.

After having visited about 30 countries, Iceland is still my favorite.

My biggest travel dream is to take a road trip around New Zealand!

The most fun I’ve had on a trip was on my first solo backpacking trip through Europe when I used Couchsurfing.

I used to play the saxophone.

I conquered my fear of heights by jumping off a cliff in Croatia — twice!

I love languages and was close to being fluent in German during college.

I’m terrified of flying.

In another life, I would have been a film director/producer. Maybe some day!

My favorite number is 13.

Nomadic Matt

And, finally, there’s me. You probably know a lot about me after nine and half years of blogging (sometimes I forget how long it’s been), but here’s a quick refresh:

Growing up in Boston, I was never a big traveler. I didn’t take my first trip overseas until 2004. That trip changed my life and opened me up to the possibilities the world had to offer. One year later, I went to Thailand, where I met five backpackers who inspired me to quit my job and travel the world. In 2006, I left for a yearlong backpacking trip — and have been “nomadic” ever since.

13 Facts about Me

I love politics as much as I love travel and will debate for the joy for it.

I love to cook — and I’m kinda good at it too!

When I was in high school, I was my state’s champ in “Magic: the Gathering.” I know — super nerdy, right? It got me a free trip NYC with my friend (who came in number two!).

I always worry about the future and often use my time back home to develop skills needed for the Zombie Apocalypse. Shout-out to my prepper friend Vanessa for teaching me about seeds!

I once met Paul Giamatti on the streets of NYC and he was as grumpy as I imagined.

I am an unabashed Taylor Swift fan and can’t wait for her new album!

Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor, and I’ve seen The Usual Suspects twenty times.

I believe aliens exist. It’s mathematically impossible they don’t.

I’m terrified of flying.

I learned to swing dance so I could throw myself a Gatsby-themed birthday party.

Both sides of my family came through Ellis Island and you can see their names on the wall where they list all the immigrants.

I used to be the head of a program by the Massachusetts Sierra Club that promoted energy efficiency.

I went to college to be a high school history teacher.

***Also, I’d like to acknowledge our part-timers too: Candice, who helps with admin and research; Richard, our fearless copyeditor (whose efforts I often ruin by changing posts last minute); Keith, our design genius; Brice and Julie, our user experience gurus; and Courtney, who keeps our charity, FLYTE, up in the air with her executive directing wizard ways!

So there you have it! The Nomadic Matt team! It’s weird to think this blog I started to simply be online résumé for freelance jobs now requires eleven people to run. I always thought the more systems, automation, products, and passive income I set up, the easier it would be. I could just sit on a beach. But it seems the more we do, the more we create, the more projects I tell the team we’re taking on, the more help we require. I guess that is the nature of the beast but I would have it no other way. I love what we do here. We help a lot of people realize their dreams.

And a guy couldn’t ask for better co-workers to help make that happen.

The post Meet the Team: The Many Faces of Nomadic Matt appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

[fadingfartconnoisseur]

Meet the Team: The Many Faces of Nomadic Matt

From tech and coding to design to fixing bugs getting readers books when downloads fail to scheduling social media or running the forums, it takes a village to run this website. I simply couldn’t run the website, write, travel, eat, sleep, or anything in between if I didn’t have the support and help of an amazing group of people – and I think it’s time you formally met them all! So, without further ado, here’s team Nomadic Matt:

Erica

Erica has been working for me for over three and a half years and is my director of global operations i.e. right hand woman. She keeps this ship afloat. In her own words:

I grew up in Connecticut and went to school in Virginia. During a quarter-life crisis at age 21, I chose to finish my last year of college on an adventure in Qatar! From that moment on, my life revolved around traveling cheaply with the money I earned from waitressing. That budget got me to teach English in Isaan, Thailand, and South Korea; farm on St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean; and volunteer in rural Zambia. At age 26, I returned home to Connecticut, determined to get a job in travel. Soon after, I met Nomadic Matt at a travel meet-up in NYC, and the rest is history.

I whole-heartedly believe that traveling makes friends of strangers, and the more friends there are in the world, the more peace there is in the world.

13 Facts about Me

At 15, I helped build a schoolhouse in Nicaragua.

Living in a termite clay hut without electricity or running water in Zambia for six months was probably one of the most trying (and simple), exciting (and boring), and perspective-shifting experiences of my life.

I’ve cut off my hair and donated it to Locks of Love, twice!

I once hunted for possums on the island of St. Vincent with a bunch of Rastafarians. We caught four and made soup.

In Costa Rica, I stayed at in a sustainable living community called Rancho Mastatal, where I learned how to farm yuca, make beer out of turmeric, and build a house out of cob.

When I was 15, John Stamos kissed my cheek after I saw him in Cabaret on Broadway.

I taught English in South Korea for 14 months and was able to easily save enough money for 21 months of non-stop travel.

This music video I made used to be one of the top hits when you searched for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

In Zambia, my friend and I were given a live chicken as a present. We were vegetarians, so we traded it for a pair of second-hand jeans at the market.

I got 19 people (the students and teachers on the FLYTE trip) into an airport lounge for free. I think that’s a travel hacking record!

I’ve attended a Qatari princess’s wedding sporting mink eyelashes.

In Korea, I dated a guy who spoke no English and we basically communicated through drawing pictures and reciting American rap lyrics.

I think Matt spends a majority of his day editing out my exclamation points from my research, emails, newsletters, etc! (Matt says: This is very true.)

Christopher O.

Chris joined the team as the part-time manager of the forums back in 2015. Since then, he’s branched out into the Superstar Blogging program and our soon-to-be-launched community platform, Nomadic Network. In his own words:

I grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada, and spent my formative years listening to punk rock, reading Star Wars novels, and generally getting up to no good. After ditching my lifelong plan to be a lawyer, I decided to give travel a try. I headed to Costa Rica on a whim and have never looked back! It wasn’t long after that trip that I took a break from university (where I was studying history and theatre) to move to a monastery in Japan in 2007. I’ve more or less been wandering around ever since. Some notable adventures include taking the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia and Mongolia, walking the Camino de Santiago twice, and going on a 10-day road trip around Iceland with complete strangers. When I’m not traveling, I live in Sweden and can be found reading, writing, or struggling to improve at chess.

13 Facts about Me

I spent nine months living in Buddhist monasteries.

I lived in a tent for a year.

I was once stalked by a jaguar and chased by a crocodile — on the same trip.

I haven’t had alcohol in 13 years.

I’ve broken all my fingers and toes, and my nose three times, and I’ve fractured both my wrists.

I worked on an organic farm for 11 years.

I co-owned a restaurant in Canada.

I grew up next door to Avril Lavigne.

I once ate an entire nine-course meal (I was the only person there to eat everything!).

I played inter-mural Quidditch in high school and was our team’s Seeker.

I have a Star Wars tattoo.

I’ve been vegan for 12 years.

I have a scar from a fight that broke out over which Norse god was “the best.”

Chris R.

Chris, aka The Aussie Nomad, is a (kinda) former blogger who does all the tech and development work for the website. He keeps it running, fixes any errors you find, and deals with my constantly changing design desires. In his own words:

I’m living the good life in Western Australia by the beach with my amazing family. I got into the world of blogging after quitting my job, backpacking around Europe and, as all Aussies do, undertaking a working holiday in the UK. Like all of us who travel and fall in love with it, nobody wants to go home afterwards.

That adventure got me into creating a travel blog many years ago, which is how I first came to know Matt. I have since repurposed my IT skills from my old life and formed my own business to help out other bloggers with their websites.

13 Facts about Me

I love Belgian beer (and I even married a Belgian).

I’ve worked with Matt the longest out of anyone here. (Take that team!)

I took off to backpack Europe when I was 29.

I’m an advocate for Vegemite and believe all visitors to Australia must try this national treasure.

One of my favorite activities is to take a long road trip, especially with family and friends.

I have no idea how four-way stop signals in the U.S.A. don’t all end up as accidents.

I do not drink Fosters. It’s a terrible beer. No one in Australia actually drinks it.

I like to think of myself as an amateur photographer.

I failed kindergarten as I wouldn’t say goodbye to the teacher.

My first job was working in a supermarket.

I can’t sleep on a plane – no matter how long the flight is.

I can name every Thomas the Tank Engine character thanks to my son.

I don’t drink coffee or get people’s love for it. Tea all the way!

Raimee

Raimee is the newest team member and does all our social media. She schedules posts, tweaks my terrible photos so they look good on Instagram, builds our content calendar, and creates all our quote & Pinterest graphics! In her own words:

When I was just 14 years old, I took my first international trip to Honduras and Belize with my family. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked on experiencing new cultures, connecting with people from all walks of life, and learning about myself and the world through the power of travel! After graduating with a degree in advertising and marketing from Michigan State University and four years as a digital marketing specialist, I realized that corporate life was not for me. My insatiable need to experience the world beyond a desk led me to search for a job-related to travel. I’ve followed this blog for many years, and now I get to work for it remotely while I strategize, manage, and report on the social media accounts — and I love every second of it!

13 Facts about Me

I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. I’ve read each book at least 10 times, and, if I told you how many times, I’ve watched each of the movies, you probably wouldn’t believe me.

I once “hung out” with Daniel Radcliffe at a Red Wings game in Detroit, and actually kept my cool the entire time.

Visiting the Harry Potter studio tour in London was one of the best days of my life.

My mom was obsessed with the 80’s horror movie Evil Dead directed by Sam Raimi, so she named me after him.

After having visited about 30 countries, Iceland is still my favorite.

My biggest travel dream is to take a road trip around New Zealand!

The most fun I’ve had on a trip was on my first solo backpacking trip through Europe when I used Couchsurfing.

I used to play the saxophone.

I conquered my fear of heights by jumping off a cliff in Croatia — twice!

I love languages and was close to being fluent in German during college.

I’m terrified of flying.

In another life, I would have been a film director/producer. Maybe some day!

My favorite number is 13.

Nomadic Matt

And, finally, there’s me. You probably know a lot about me after nine and half years of blogging (sometimes I forget how long it’s been), but here’s a quick refresh:

Growing up in Boston, I was never a big traveler. I didn’t take my first trip overseas until 2004. That trip changed my life and opened me up to the possibilities the world had to offer. One year later, I went to Thailand, where I met five backpackers who inspired me to quit my job and travel the world. In 2006, I left for a yearlong backpacking trip — and have been “nomadic” ever since.

13 Facts about Me

I love politics as much as I love travel and will debate for the joy for it.

I love to cook — and I’m kinda good at it too!

When I was in high school, I was my state’s champ in “Magic: the Gathering.” I know — super nerdy, right? It got me a free trip NYC with my friend (who came in number two!).

I always worry about the future and often use my time back home to develop skills needed for the Zombie Apocalypse. Shout-out to my prepper friend Vanessa for teaching me about seeds!

I once met Paul Giamatti on the streets of NYC and he was as grumpy as I imagined.

I am an unabashed Taylor Swift fan and can’t wait for her new album!

Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor, and I’ve seen The Usual Suspects twenty times.

I believe aliens exist. It’s mathematically impossible they don’t.

I’m terrified of flying.

I learned to swing dance so I could throw myself a Gatsby-themed birthday party.

Both sides of my family came through Ellis Island and you can see their names on the wall where they list all the immigrants.

I used to be the head of a program by the Massachusetts Sierra Club that promoted energy efficiency.

I went to college to be a high school history teacher.

***Also, I’d like to acknowledge our part-timers too: Candice, who helps with admin and research; Richard, our fearless copyeditor (whose efforts I often ruin by changing posts last minute); Keith, our design genius; Brice and Julie, our user experience gurus; and Courtney, who keeps our charity, FLYTE, up in the air with her executive directing wizard ways!

So there you have it! The Nomadic Matt team! It’s weird to think this blog I started to simply be online résumé for freelance jobs now requires eleven people to run. I always thought the more systems, automation, products, and passive income I set up, the easier it would be. I could just sit on a beach. But it seems the more we do, the more we create, the more projects I tell the team we’re taking on, the more help we require. I guess that is the nature of the beast but I would have it no other way. I love what we do here. We help a lot of people realize their dreams.

And a guy couldn’t ask for better co-workers to help make that happen.

The post Meet the Team: The Many Faces of Nomadic Matt appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

via Travel Blogs http://ift.tt/2w7dY8V

[theladyjstyle]

From tech and coding to design to fixing bugs getting readers books when downloads fail to scheduling social media or running the forums, it takes a village to run this website. I simply couldn’t run the website, write, travel, eat, sleep, or anything in between if I didn’t have the support and help of an amazing group of people – and I think it’s time you formally met them all! So, without further ado, here’s team Nomadic Matt:

Erica

Erica has been working for me for over three and a half years and is my director of global operations i.e. right hand woman. She keeps this ship afloat. In her own words:

I grew up in Connecticut and went to school in Virginia. During a quarter-life crisis at age 21, I chose to finish my last year of college on an adventure in Qatar! From that moment on, my life revolved around traveling cheaply with the money I earned from waitressing. That budget got me to teach English in Isaan, Thailand, and South Korea; farm on St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean; and volunteer in rural Zambia. At age 26, I returned home to Connecticut, determined to get a job in travel. Soon after, I met Nomadic Matt at a travel meet-up in NYC, and the rest is history.

I whole-heartedly believe that traveling makes friends of strangers, and the more friends there are in the world, the more peace there is in the world.

13 Facts about Me

At 15, I helped build a schoolhouse in Nicaragua.

Living in a termite clay hut without electricity or running water in Zambia for six months was probably one of the most trying (and simple), exciting (and boring), and perspective-shifting experiences of my life.

I’ve cut off my hair and donated it to Locks of Love, twice!

I once hunted for possums on the island of St. Vincent with a bunch of Rastafarians. We caught four and made soup.

In Costa Rica, I stayed at in a sustainable living community called Rancho Mastatal, where I learned how to farm yuca, make beer out of turmeric, and build a house out of cob.

When I was 15, John Stamos kissed my cheek after I saw him in Cabaret on Broadway.

I taught English in South Korea for 14 months and was able to easily save enough money for 21 months of non-stop travel.

This music video I made used to be one of the top hits when you searched for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

In Zambia, my friend and I were given a live chicken as a present. We were vegetarians, so we traded it for a pair of second-hand jeans at the market.

I got 19 people (the students and teachers on the FLYTE trip) into an airport lounge for free. I think that’s a travel hacking record!

I’ve attended a Qatari princess’s wedding sporting mink eyelashes.

In Korea, I dated a guy who spoke no English and we basically communicated through drawing pictures and reciting American rap lyrics.

I think Matt spends a majority of his day editing out my exclamation points from my research, emails, newsletters, etc! (Matt says: This is very true.)

Christopher O.

Chris joined the team as the part-time manager of the forums back in 2015. Since then, he’s branched out into the Superstar Blogging program and our soon-to-be-launched community platform, Nomadic Network. In his own words:

I grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada, and spent my formative years listening to punk rock, reading Star Wars novels, and generally getting up to no good. After ditching my lifelong plan to be a lawyer, I decided to give travel a try. I headed to Costa Rica on a whim and have never looked back! It wasn’t long after that trip that I took a break from university (where I was studying history and theatre) to move to a monastery in Japan in 2007. I’ve more or less been wandering around ever since. Some notable adventures include taking the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia and Mongolia, walking the Camino de Santiago twice, and going on a 10-day road trip around Iceland with complete strangers. When I’m not traveling, I live in Sweden and can be found reading, writing, or struggling to improve at chess.

13 Facts about Me

I spent nine months living in Buddhist monasteries.

I lived in a tent for a year.

I was once stalked by a jaguar and chased by a crocodile — on the same trip.

I haven’t had alcohol in 13 years.

I’ve broken all my fingers and toes, and my nose three times, and I’ve fractured both my wrists.

I worked on an organic farm for 11 years.

I co-owned a restaurant in Canada.

I grew up next door to Avril Lavigne.

I once ate an entire nine-course meal (I was the only person there to eat everything!).

I played inter-mural Quidditch in high school and was our team’s Seeker.

I have a Star Wars tattoo.

I’ve been vegan for 12 years.

I have a scar from a fight that broke out over which Norse god was “the best.”

Chris R.

Chris, aka The Aussie Nomad, is a (kinda) former blogger who does all the tech and development work for the website. He keeps it running, fixes any errors you find, and deals with my constantly changing design desires. In his own words:

I’m living the good life in Western Australia by the beach with my amazing family. I got into the world of blogging after quitting my job, backpacking around Europe and, as all Aussies do, undertaking a working holiday in the UK. Like all of us who travel and fall in love with it, nobody wants to go home afterwards.

That adventure got me into creating a travel blog many years ago, which is how I first came to know Matt. I have since repurposed my IT skills from my old life and formed my own business to help out other bloggers with their websites.

13 Facts about Me

I love Belgian beer (and I even married a Belgian).

I’ve worked with Matt the longest out of anyone here. (Take that team!)

I took off to backpack Europe when I was 29.

I’m an advocate for Vegemite and believe all visitors to Australia must try this national treasure.

One of my favorite activities is to take a long road trip, especially with family and friends.

I have no idea how four-way stop signals in the U.S.A. don’t all end up as accidents.

I do not drink Fosters. It’s a terrible beer. No one in Australia actually drinks it.

I like to think of myself as an amateur photographer.

I failed kindergarten as I wouldn’t say goodbye to the teacher.

My first job was working in a supermarket.

I can’t sleep on a plane – no matter how long the flight is.

I can name every Thomas the Tank Engine character thanks to my son.

I don’t drink coffee or get people’s love for it. Tea all the way!

Raimee

Raimee is the newest team member and does all our social media. She schedules posts, tweaks my terrible photos so they look good on Instagram, builds our content calendar, and creates all our quote & Pinterest graphics! In her own words:

When I was just 14 years old, I took my first international trip to Honduras and Belize with my family. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked on experiencing new cultures, connecting with people from all walks of life, and learning about myself and the world through the power of travel! After graduating with a degree in advertising and marketing from Michigan State University and four years as a digital marketing specialist, I realized that corporate life was not for me. My insatiable need to experience the world beyond a desk led me to search for a job-related to travel. I’ve followed this blog for many years, and now I get to work for it remotely while I strategize, manage, and report on the social media accounts — and I love every second of it!

13 Facts about Me

I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. I’ve read each book at least 10 times, and, if I told you how many times, I’ve watched each of the movies, you probably wouldn’t believe me.

I once “hung out” with Daniel Radcliffe at a Red Wings game in Detroit, and actually kept my cool the entire time.

Visiting the Harry Potter studio tour in London was one of the best days of my life.

My mom was obsessed with the 80’s horror movie Evil Dead directed by Sam Raimi, so she named me after him.

After having visited about 30 countries, Iceland is still my favorite.

My biggest travel dream is to take a road trip around New Zealand!

The most fun I’ve had on a trip was on my first solo backpacking trip through Europe when I using Couchsurfing.

I used to play the saxophone.

I conquered my fear of heights by jumping off a cliff in Croatia — twice!

I love languages and was close to being fluent in German during college.

I’m terrified of flying.

In another life, I would have been a film director/producer. Maybe some day!

My favorite number is 13.

Nomadic Matt

And, finally, there’s me. You probably know a lot about me after nine and half years of blogging (sometimes I forget how long it’s been), but here’s a quick refresh:

Growing up in Boston, I was never a big traveler. I didn’t take my first trip overseas until 2004. That trip changed my life and opened me up to the possibilities the world had to offer. One year later, I went to Thailand, where I met five backpackers who inspired me to quit my job and travel the world. In 2006, I left for a yearlong backpacking trip — and have been “nomadic” ever since.

13 Facts about Me

I love politics as much as I love travel and will debate for the joy for it.

I love to cook — and I’m kinda good at it too!

When I was in high school, I was my state’s champ in “Magic: the Gathering.” I know — super nerdy, right? It got me a free trip NYC with my friend (who came in number two!).

I always worry about the future and often use my time back home to develop skills needed for the Zombie Apocalypse. Shout-out to my prepper friend Vanessa for teaching me about seeds!

I once met Paul Giamatti on the streets of NYC and he was as grumpy as I imagined.

I am an unabashed Taylor Swift fan and can’t wait for her new album!

Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor, and I’ve seen The Usual Suspects twenty times.

I believe aliens exist. It’s mathematically impossible they don’t.

I’m terrified of flying.

I learned to swing dance so I could throw myself a Gatsby-themed birthday party.

Both sides of my family came through Ellis Island and you can see their names on the wall where they list all the immigrants.

I used to be the head of a program by the Massachusetts Sierra Club that promoted energy efficiency.

I went to college to be a high school history teacher.

***Also, I’d like to acknowledge our part-timers too: Candice, who helps with admin and research; Richard, our fearless copyeditor (whose efforts I often ruin by changing posts last minute); Keith, our design genius; Brice and Julie, our user experience gurus; and Courtney, who keeps our charity, FLYTE, up in the air with her executive directing wizard ways!

So there you have it! The Nomadic Matt team! It’s weird to think this blog I started to simply be online résumé for freelance jobs now requires eleven people to run. I always thought the more systems, automation, products, and passive income I set up, the easier it would be. I could just sit on a beach. But it seems the more we do, the more we create, the more projects I tell the team we’re taking on, the more help we require. I guess that is the nature of the beast but I would have it no other way. I love what we do here. We help a lot of people realize their dreams.

And a guy couldn’t ask for better co-workers to help make that happen.

The post Meet the Team: The Many Faces of Nomadic Matt appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

Meet the Team: The Many Faces of Nomadic Matt http://ift.tt/2w7dY8V

[tamboradventure]

Meet the Team: The Many Faces of Nomadic Matt

From tech and coding to design to fixing bugs getting readers books when downloads fail to scheduling social media or running the forums, it takes a village to run this website. I simply couldn’t run the website, write, travel, eat, sleep, or anything in between if I didn’t have the support and help of an amazing group of people – and I think it’s time you formally met them all! So, without further ado, here’s team Nomadic Matt:

Erica

Erica has been working for me for over three and a half years and is my director of global operations i.e. right hand woman. She keeps this ship afloat. In her own words:

I grew up in Connecticut and went to school in Virginia. During a quarter-life crisis at age 21, I chose to finish my last year of college on an adventure in Qatar! From that moment on, my life revolved around traveling cheaply with the money I earned from waitressing. That budget got me to teach English in Isaan, Thailand, and South Korea; farm on St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean; and volunteer in rural Zambia. At age 26, I returned home to Connecticut, determined to get a job in travel. Soon after, I met Nomadic Matt at a travel meet-up in NYC, and the rest is history.

I whole-heartedly believe that traveling makes friends of strangers, and the more friends there are in the world, the more peace there is in the world.

13 Facts about Me

At 15, I helped build a schoolhouse in Nicaragua.

Living in a termite clay hut without electricity or running water in Zambia for six months was probably one of the most trying (and simple), exciting (and boring), and perspective-shifting experiences of my life.

I’ve cut off my hair and donated it to Locks of Love, twice!

I once hunted for possums on the island of St. Vincent with a bunch of Rastafarians. We caught four and made soup.

In Costa Rica, I stayed at in a sustainable living community called Rancho Mastatal, where I learned how to farm yuca, make beer out of turmeric, and build a house out of cob.

When I was 15, John Stamos kissed my cheek after I saw him in Cabaret on Broadway.

I taught English in South Korea for 14 months and was able to easily save enough money for 21 months of non-stop travel.

This music video I made used to be one of the top hits when you searched for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

In Zambia, my friend and I were given a live chicken as a present. We were vegetarians, so we traded it for a pair of second-hand jeans at the market.

I got 19 people (the students and teachers on the FLYTE trip) into an airport lounge for free. I think that’s a travel hacking record!

I’ve attended a Qatari princess’s wedding sporting mink eyelashes.

In Korea, I dated a guy who spoke no English and we basically communicated through drawing pictures and reciting American rap lyrics.

I think Matt spends a majority of his day editing out my exclamation points from my research, emails, newsletters, etc! (Matt says: This is very true.)

Christopher O.

Chris joined the team as the part-time manager of the forums back in 2015. Since then, he’s branched out into the Superstar Blogging program and our soon-to-be-launched community platform, Nomadic Network. In his own words:

I grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada, and spent my formative years listening to punk rock, reading Star Wars novels, and generally getting up to no good. After ditching my lifelong plan to be a lawyer, I decided to give travel a try. I headed to Costa Rica on a whim and have never looked back! It wasn’t long after that trip that I took a break from university (where I was studying history and theatre) to move to a monastery in Japan in 2007. I’ve more or less been wandering around ever since. Some notable adventures include taking the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia and Mongolia, walking the Camino de Santiago twice, and going on a 10-day road trip around Iceland with complete strangers. When I’m not traveling, I live in Sweden and can be found reading, writing, or struggling to improve at chess.

13 Facts about Me

I spent nine months living in Buddhist monasteries.

I lived in a tent for a year.

I was once stalked by a jaguar and chased by a crocodile — on the same trip.

I haven’t had alcohol in 13 years.

I’ve broken all my fingers and toes, and my nose three times, and I’ve fractured both my wrists.

I worked on an organic farm for 11 years.

I co-owned a restaurant in Canada.

I grew up next door to Avril Lavigne.

I once ate an entire nine-course meal (I was the only person there to eat everything!).

I played inter-mural Quidditch in high school and was our team’s Seeker.

I have a Star Wars tattoo.

I’ve been vegan for 12 years.

I have a scar from a fight that broke out over which Norse god was “the best.”

Chris R.

Chris, aka The Aussie Nomad, is a (kinda) former blogger who does all the tech and development work for the website. He keeps it running, fixes any errors you find, and deals with my constantly changing design desires. In his own words:

I’m living the good life in Western Australia by the beach with my amazing family. I got into the world of blogging after quitting my job, backpacking around Europe and, as all Aussies do, undertaking a working holiday in the UK. Like all of us who travel and fall in love with it, nobody wants to go home afterwards.

That adventure got me into creating a travel blog many years ago, which is how I first came to know Matt. I have since repurposed my IT skills from my old life and formed my own business to help out other bloggers with their websites.

13 Facts about Me

I love Belgian beer (and I even married a Belgian).

I’ve worked with Matt the longest out of anyone here. (Take that team!)

I took off to backpack Europe when I was 29.

I’m an advocate for Vegemite and believe all visitors to Australia must try this national treasure.

One of my favorite activities is to take a long road trip, especially with family and friends.

I have no idea how four-way stop signals in the U.S.A. don’t all end up as accidents.

I do not drink Fosters. It’s a terrible beer. No one in Australia actually drinks it.

I like to think of myself as an amateur photographer.

I failed kindergarten as I wouldn’t say goodbye to the teacher.

My first job was working in a supermarket.

I can’t sleep on a plane – no matter how long the flight is.

I can name every Thomas the Tank Engine character thanks to my son.

I don’t drink coffee or get people’s love for it. Tea all the way!

Raimee

Raimee is the newest team member and does all our social media. She schedules posts, tweaks my terrible photos so they look good on Instagram, builds our content calendar, and creates all our quote & Pinterest graphics! In her own words:

When I was just 14 years old, I took my first international trip to Honduras and Belize with my family. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked on experiencing new cultures, connecting with people from all walks of life, and learning about myself and the world through the power of travel! After graduating with a degree in advertising and marketing from Michigan State University and four years as a digital marketing specialist, I realized that corporate life was not for me. My insatiable need to experience the world beyond a desk led me to search for a job-related to travel. I’ve followed this blog for many years, and now I get to work for it remotely while I strategize, manage, and report on the social media accounts — and I love every second of it!

13 Facts about Me

I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. I’ve read each book at least 10 times, and, if I told you how many times, I’ve watched each of the movies, you probably wouldn’t believe me.

I once “hung out” with Daniel Radcliffe at a Red Wings game in Detroit, and actually kept my cool the entire time.

Visiting the Harry Potter studio tour in London was one of the best days of my life.

My mom was obsessed with the 80’s horror movie Evil Dead directed by Sam Raimi, so she named me after him.

After having visited about 30 countries, Iceland is still my favorite.

My biggest travel dream is to take a road trip around New Zealand!

The most fun I’ve had on a trip was on my first solo backpacking trip through Europe when I using Couchsurfing.

I used to play the saxophone.

I conquered my fear of heights by jumping off a cliff in Croatia — twice!

I love languages and was close to being fluent in German during college.

I’m terrified of flying.

In another life, I would have been a film director/producer. Maybe some day!

My favorite number is 13.

Nomadic Matt

And, finally, there’s me. You probably know a lot about me after nine and half years of blogging (sometimes I forget how long it’s been), but here’s a quick refresh:

Growing up in Boston, I was never a big traveler. I didn’t take my first trip overseas until 2004. That trip changed my life and opened me up to the possibilities the world had to offer. One year later, I went to Thailand, where I met five backpackers who inspired me to quit my job and travel the world. In 2006, I left for a yearlong backpacking trip — and have been “nomadic” ever since.

13 Facts about Me

I love politics as much as I love travel and will debate for the joy for it.

I love to cook — and I’m kinda good at it too!

When I was in high school, I was my state’s champ in “Magic: the Gathering.” I know — super nerdy, right? It got me a free trip NYC with my friend (who came in number two!).

I always worry about the future and often use my time back home to develop skills needed for the Zombie Apocalypse. Shout-out to my prepper friend Vanessa for teaching me about seeds!

I once met Paul Giamatti on the streets of NYC and he was as grumpy as I imagined.

I am an unabashed Taylor Swift fan and can’t wait for her new album!

Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor, and I’ve seen The Usual Suspects twenty times.

I believe aliens exist. It’s mathematically impossible they don’t.

I’m terrified of flying.

I learned to swing dance so I could throw myself a Gatsby-themed birthday party.

Both sides of my family came through Ellis Island and you can see their names on the wall where they list all the immigrants.

I used to be the head of a program by the Massachusetts Sierra Club that promoted energy efficiency.

I went to college to be a high school history teacher.

***Also, I’d like to acknowledge our part-timers too: Candice, who helps with admin and research; Richard, our fearless copyeditor (whose efforts I often ruin by changing posts last minute); Keith, our design genius; Brice and Julie, our user experience gurus; and Courtney, who keeps our charity, FLYTE, up in the air with her executive directing wizard ways!

So there you have it! The Nomadic Matt team! It’s weird to think this blog I started to simply be online résumé for freelance jobs now requires eleven people to run. I always thought the more systems, automation, products, and passive income I set up, the easier it would be. I could just sit on a beach. But it seems the more we do, the more we create, the more projects I tell the team we’re taking on, the more help we require. I guess that is the nature of the beast but I would have it no other way. I love what we do here. We help a lot of people realize their dreams.

And a guy couldn’t ask for better co-workers to help make that happen.

The post Meet the Team: The Many Faces of Nomadic Matt appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

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