#like a real career start job as opposed to a trade

[wizardlyghost]

fuckin. i thought i was done with the "agonizing over career choices" part of job hunting when i submitted a resume, but out of goddamn nowhere another apprenticeship opportunity has fallen right into my lap. with applications closing tomorrow. so now on this day when i am so very exhausted i have been launched straight into the incredibly stressful business of asking myself what i want. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[tickldpnk8]

On Hob and William Caxton

So a stray comment on this meta thread had me adding my thoughts to the end on Hob’s mention of going into printing. But I don’t think my thoughts got seen much because they were fairly off topic. But! The history of printing is a particular pet topic of mine so I wanted to expound on this a bit. Because it’s one of the echoing storylines that Gaiman weaves through the centuries to show how interconnected that time is. And it’s also an echo we see in the larger series about literature, stories and language.

In 1489, we get this panel where Hob mentions that he’s taken up a new trade called…printing. (Not that there’ll ever be real demand for it)

But it’s not until 1589 that we learn the name of this mysterious friend: William Caxton. (Mentioned by Hob as Billy Caxton)

But who was William Caxton?

Caxton was an Englishman in the mid-1400s who started his career as a cloth maker and merchant. By the 1450s, he was living on the continent in Bruges and by 1465, he had turned to politics. With the War of the Roses underway in 1470, he had turned his attention to bringing printed books to the untapped market in England.

Printing was a new industry in the mid-1400s in Europe. (As opposed to the printing traditions of Asia.) Gutenberg had used his jewelry-making expertise to cast individual letters for printing around 1440, and developed a printing press that revolutionized books, publishing and illustration in Western Europe. Caxton likely traveled to Germany and saw a press in action around 20-30 yrs later before buying his own and setting up shop on the continent. Demand for works in English was low on the continent, so he soon moved his shop back to London.

What Caxton did was revolutionary for the time. No one was printing books in English. Even in England, scholars preferred Latin and French, considering them more beautiful and more expressive. Caxton not only brought a whole new trade/industry back to England…he also played an important part in our linguistic history. By translating works into vernacular English—specifically his London dialect—he was saying that English literature traditions were just as worthy as Latin or French for scholars and the masses. His work helped to standardize spellings at a time of great linguistic change. And his dialect that he was using became more widespread through his publishing. Plus, through his poor translation, English adopted a number of loan words.

The first book he printed once back in England? None other than Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. He later published a second edition containing woodcut illustrations. He mostly published works he thought would be profitable with the gentry and then expanded his market by publishing works of popular fiction. His translation of La Morte D’Arthur helped popularize Arthurian legend.

What did a 15th century print shop look like?

I imagine that when Caxton started out, he might have had to wear many hats. In this woodcut from 1568, two men are setting type into forms in the background while one person inks the form on press and the other pulls the print. Not pictured are separate jobs for folks to carve illustrations like the above out of wood (or use other printing making methods like intaglio, etc) and to bind the books.

Pulling a print could be manually hard work. Once the form is inked and the paper put into place behind a frisket, the whole apparatus is rolled under the platen on the right. Pulling the big level attached to the screw above the platen would apply even weight to the inked form, leaving an impression on the paper. Then, the apparatus would be rolled back out, the paper removed and the process started again. Once all the pages were printed, they would have been bound by bookbinders.

By the 1600s, the print shop could have had multiple presses with even more staff as shown in this engraving. Guilds would have been set up with proper channels for learning the craft. Plus, a whole merchant system was in place to sell all those books, pamphlets and prints.

You can see a press like this in action in this video:

How does this tie into Men of Good Fortune?

Men of Good Fortune is as much a history of England overview as it is a history of English literature/language. By spacing his references out, Gaiman is able to allude to its evolution concisely for the purposes of his story and the limited real estate of his panels.

So here are Gaiman’s key references by date:

In 1389, we see Chaucer out for a drink with a friend in the midst of writing The Canterbury Tales.

In 1489, Hob is working with Caxton to set up his publishing business. Who would then go on to print several editions of Chaucer’s works.

In 1589, Hob refers back to Caxton by name, and we meet Shakespeare.

In 1689, no literature references

In 1789, Hob refers back to Shakespeare’s King Lear having a happy ending and asks after the nature of Morpheus’ deal with him.

In 1889, no literature references

In 1989, up to your imagination!

Hob and printing

For Hob specifically, his involvement could have meant many things. He could have become a typesetter and learned his letters. He could have been pure muscle pulling prints. He could have bound the books or carved the illustrations. And he could have branched out into being a merchant by selling said books. Or…all of the above.

As I’ve been writing this over the past week, @teejaystumbles just posted a printer!hob illustration. Was super excited to see it! Anyways, I’m hoping that this context was interesting for folks and I can’t wait to see if anyone writes/draws more printer!hob, because I can’t wait to read/see it!

[thelastspeecher]

D R A M

The title of this post is actually what I named the Word doc that I wrote this up in.  This write takes place in an AU inspired by a post that said something along the lines of “supervillain winds up marrying the ex-spouse of their superhero archnemesis”.  I saw that post and was like “time to make another version of the Superhero/villain AU”.  So here you go.

——————————————————————————————

              Stan slid into his regular stool at the bar. At the sound of soft muttering, he looked over.  He raised an eyebrow.  Normally, no one sat next to his stool.  But today, a young woman sat there, staring morosely at her drink and mumbling something.

              “Hey, hot stuff,” he said cheerfully, leaning in. She held up a hand.  Light glinted off the golden band around her ring finger.

              “I’m married,” she said dully.

              “You don’t sound too happy about it,” Stan remarked. She glared at him.  “I call it like I see it, toots.”

              “Don’t call me ‘toots’,” she snapped.

              “Fine.  What should I call you, then?”

              “By my name.”

              “Which would be…?”

              “…Angie.”

              “Angie.”  Stan held out a hand.  “I’m Stan.” Angie shook the offered hand. “So, what brings a troubled wife to my favorite dive?”

              “My dick of a husband,” Angie groused.  She slumped over the bar.  “I swear…some days he acts like a completely dif’rent man than the one I married.”  Tears shone in her voice, along with a distinct southern accent.  She picked up her drink and pulled on the straw.  It rattled in the ice at the bottom of the otherwise empty glass.  “And I’m all out.”

              “I’ll cover it.  What’s your drink?”

              “Long Island iced tea.”

              “Oof.  Maybe I shouldn’t get you a second one of those.  Those are a bad decision in a glass.”  Angie straightened, her eyes boring into Stan’s.

              “I can handle my liquor, sir.  I bet I can handle it better ‘n you can,” she snarled. Stan held his hands up.

              “Okay, okay, I believe you.  Man, you’ve got claws, don’t you?”

              “Maybe.”

              “Heh.  I like a woman with a bit of fight in her.”  Stan winked.

              “Still married.”

              “To that dick?  Why?”

              “He treats me right,” Angie mumbled into her drink. “…Sometimes.”

              “Sometimes?  What about the rest of the time?”

              “He tries to get me to quit my job and be a housewife.”

              “Why?”

              “If I knew, I’d tell ya,” Angie said with a shrug. She tapped the rim of her glass. “So, about that drink…?”

              “Hey, barkeep?” Stan called, flagging down the bartender.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one corner of Angie’s mouth turn up, into a ghost of a smile.

-----

              Stan had just about finished putting his boots on when his favorite coworker, Undertow, stormed into the locker room.  He watched with a raised eyebrow as Undertow tore open his locker, muttering under his breath.

              “You’re in a mood today,” Stan commented.  Undertow sighed.  He looked back at Stan.  The crew’s general policy was to keep masks on at all times in HQ, since there were some new heroes with telepathy who might be able to take a peek at a villain’s memories.  Undertow’s outfit had a full cowl, rather than a domino mask like Stan’s, but even partially obscured, he had one of the most expressive faces Stan had ever seen. And at the moment, Undertow’s expression was frustrated and saddened.

              “I thought she was fin’ly goin’ to leave him,” Undertow said.  Stan’s second eyebrow raised to join his first.

              He’s pretty damn upset.  Normally, he keeps that accent in check.

              “Who?” Stan asked.

              “My sister.”

              “You have a sister?”

              “Two.”  Undertow sat on the bench next to Stan.  “But the one I’m speakin’ of is my twin sister.”  Stan racked his brain for any hints about Undertow’s background.  As someone without villainous family connections, he wasn’t privy to information that some of his coworkers had.  But he remembered hearing once that Undertow came from a long line of villains.

              “Is she…in the trade?” Stan asked.  Undertow shook his head.

              “No.  When we were younger, she wanted to be.  But she decided not to, when she started datin’ the feller what became her husband.” Undertow scowled.  “Her husband’s a real piece of shit.”

              “Did he prevent her from being a villain?”

              “Nah.  He don’t know ‘bout our fam’ly bein’ full of villains.  But he’s on the straight ‘n narrow, and wouldn’t have liked his wife to be breakin’ the law.”  Undertow sighed heavily.  “As it is, he don’t really like his wife doin’ much of anything.  Which is why my sister needs to dump his sorry ass.”  Undertow rubbed his face.  “And I thought she was goin’ to do it this time.  But she didn’t.”

              “What happened?”

              “They had another argument about how he wants her to start poppin’ out kids.  She don’t want to yet, ‘cause she feels like takin’ maternity leave right now would cripple her career trajectory.  And his response was that she won’t need maternity leave, ‘cause she can just quit her job.  He keeps pushin’ that issue over ‘n over.  He don’t like her workin’.”

              “Sounds like a douche.”

              “He is!  And after that fight, she came to my house fer a shoulder to cry on.  I did my best to sway her, but she still went back to him once she’d calmed down.”  Undertow groaned loudly.  “Honestly, at this point, I can’t think of a single thing that’d get her to leave him.”

              “Maybe I should make a pass at her,” Stan joked. Undertow snorted.

              “I wouldn’t be opposed to that.  You’d be better fer her than what she’s got right now.”

-----

              Stan went to the bar every night, hoping to see Angie again, but it took a month before she showed up.  This time, she arrived after he did, visibly in tears. She made her way to the stool next to Stan’s and sat down.  Faint breezes danced around her, kicking up her caramel-colored hair.

              Is…is she a super?  I knew she was something special.  Stan wordlessly slid her his whisky, which she downed in one swallow. He winced.

              “Your husband again?” he asked.  Angie nodded morosely.  “Well, at least he lasted a month before he pissed you off enough to make you drown your sorrows.”

              “Nah, I just went to my brother’s last time,” Angie said hoarsely.  “He’s got real moonshine, and I wanted somethin’ strong.”

              “If your brother’s got hooch, why are you coming here?” Stan asked.  Angie slid Stan’s empty tumbler back to him, determinedly avoiding eye contact.

              “I…wanted to talk to you.”

              “…Really?”

              “Yes.”

              “Look, lady, I’m not a marriage counselor.”

              “I know.  But you don’t have an agenda.  My brother does.  My whole fam’ly does, all my friends do.  All they say is ‘leave him’.”  Angie met Stan’s gaze.  Her eyes were a bright, brilliant blue, swimming in tears.  “I just need someone to listen.”

              “I can do that, but you’re gonna have to pay for another whiskey for me first,” Stan said.  Angie managed a watery chuckle.

              “Fine.”  Angie waved over the bartender and ordered herself a Long Island iced tea and another whiskey for Stan.

              “All right,” Stan said once his drink was in hand. “What’s going on?”

              “My ma became a stay-at-home mother when I was a tot.  She kept house and raised six kids-”  Stan coughed roughly.

              “Six kids?” he croaked.  Angie nodded.  “What the-”

              “We’re Catholic.”

              “Ah, okay.  Carry on.”

              “Props to her.  It’s a rough job to have, and I don’t look down on it.”  Angie slammed her hands against the counter.  A wind picked up, rattling the old beer advertisements on the wall.  “But it ain’t fer me!”

              “Lemme guess.  Your husband wants you to be a stay-at-home mom.”

              “Yes.  Which I knew. But this time- this time, he brought my ma into it!  Told me that I’d be good at it ‘cause my ma clearly was.  I just-”  Angie gestured wordlessly.  “How- how could he think that’s a compliment?”

              “Probably ‘cause he’s so dead set on you doing that,” Stan said with a shrug.  “He’s already decided you’ll do it, so he’s already started complimenting you on it.”

              “…That makes sense,” Angie said softly.  She groaned loudly.  “Why is he like this?”  Stan shrugged.  “I want to stay with him, to get him to change his mind-”

              “That’s not your job.  Your job is-”  Stan frowned. “Wait, what do you do?”

              “I’m a zookeeper.”

              “Your job is to keep zoos,” Stan said.  Angie furrowed her brow, like she couldn’t decide whether she was amused by Stan’s phrasing or not.  “Not to drag your husband out of the fifties.”

              “But I’m his wife.”

              “And?”

              “I’m s’pposed to help him change.”

              “What if he doesn’t want to change?” Stan asked. “What do you do then?”  The winds that had entered the bar with Angie abruptly died down.

              “…Yer right.”

              “I am?”

              “He don’t want to change.  He don’t want to listen to me.  I can’t force it, I shouldn’t have even tried.”  Angie dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and stood to leave.

              “Hey, uh wait-” Stan started.  Angie looked at him.

              “Yes?”

              “I, uh, I never got your last name.”

              “It’s Hillcrest.”  Angie slid her wedding ring off and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. “But not fer long.”  She paused for a moment, watching Stan, then leaned in and placed a gentle peck on his cheek.  With that, she left the bar.

              Stan stared at the door long after she had gone, his mind running a mile a minute.

              Did I just get her to break up with her husband?

-----

              Stan walked out of the shower and headed for his locker to get dressed in his civvies.  After he had his pants on, Undertow entered the locker room and went for his locker as well.

              “Hey,” Stan said.  Undertow grunted.  “Is it your sister’s husband again?”

              “Hmm?”  Undertow turned around.  “Oh, no, she finally dumped him.”

              “Really?  Good for her.”

              “Yeah.  But she’s got a new beau, and she insisted on dinner with him tonight.”  Undertow sighed.  “I’m not looking forward to it.”

              “Is he a dick, too?”

              “Don’t know.  Haven’t met him.”

              “Ah.  I get it. You don’t wanna meet your sister’s new man just yet.”

              “No, I do not.”

              “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m not looking forward to dinner tonight, either,” Stan said, slipping on his T-shirt. “I’m meeting my girlfriend’s brother for the first time.”

              “Oof.”  Undertow looked at him sympathetically.  “Don’t worry too much, Flamethrower.  You’re a great guy.”

              “Thanks, but I dunno if her brother’s gonna think that. My girlfriend says he can be a bit tough.”  Undertow walked over to Stan and clapped a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

              “I’m sure it’ll go great.”

              “Hopefully,” Stan muttered.  Undertow smiled at him.

              “If her brother doesn’t like you, he’s a damn fool.”

-----

              Stan walked up to the address Angie had given him. When she divorced her ex-husband, she had moved in with her twin brother, Lute.  Apparently, Lute was thrilled to have her with him again.

              I get it, though.  That twin bond is strong.  Stan stopped in front of the door.  He took a deep breath and knocked.

              “Comin’!” Angie called.  Stan felt some of his nerves disperse at the sound of her voice. The door opened, revealing the beaming face of his girlfriend.  “Stanley!” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. “Thank you so much fer agreein’ to this.”

              “You said it’s important, so…”

              “It is,” Angie said softly.  “It really is.”  Her eyes lit up.  “Oh! And, um, remember how ya told me that yer not exactly…on the side of the law?” she said, her voice low.  Stan nodded.  Telling Angie he was a villain had been nerve wracking, but she had proven herself once again to be the best possible girlfriend and taken it in stride. “Well, the reason I took it so well is ‘cause I have a lot of fam’ly members who ‘re in the same career.”

              “Wait, really?”

              “Yep!  Lute’s one of ‘em.  If things go well tonight, I can prob’ly convince him to put a good word in fer ya, get ya moved up in the ranks a bit.”

              “You really think so?” Stan asked eagerly. Angie nodded.  “That would be awesome, Ang.”

              “Just be charmin’, okay?”  Angie messed with his shirt.  “But that shouldn’t be a problem.”

              “Hey, Angie, the oven just beeped!” a voice shouted. Stan’s head whipped up.

              That almost sounded like Undertow.

              “All right, I’ll come take care of it,” Angie called back.  She kissed Stan on the cheek.  “Come on in and take a seat in the livin’ room.”

              “You got it.”  Stan kissed the top of her head and entered the house, following the hallway until he arrived at a cozy living room.  He took a seat on the brown couch.  Shortly after, a young man that looked eerily similar to Angie entered, holding a glass of water, and took a seat next to him.

              “So, um…” the man said.  He cleared his throat.  “Yer Stan?”

              “Yeah.  I’m guessing you’re Lute?”

              “Yessir.”

              “Nice to meet you,” Stan said, holding out a hand. Lute shook it, visibly reluctant. “Angie speaks pretty highly of you.”

              “She does the same fer you.”  Lute cleared his throat again.  “What do you do?”

              “I sell used cars.”

              “Used cars?”

              “Yeah.”  Stan shrugged.  “It’s just to make some dough while I work on my passion projects.”  Lute eyed Stan with interest.  Much like when he had heard Lute’s voice earlier, Stan was reminded of Undertow.  Something about the look in Lute’s gray eyes was eerily familiar.

              “Passion projects?  Like what?”

              “Oh, uh, I’m keeping them to myself until they work out,” Stan said.

              Don’t wanna spill just yet that I want to become a villain full-time.

              “Ah.”  Lute seemed disappointed.  He looked down at his glass of water.  After a moment, he spoke again.  “You a super?”

              “Yeah.  You?” Stan asked without thinking.  He fought back a wince.

              Angie just told you he was a villain, of course he’s a super, you dumbass.  Lute smirked. The water in his glass shot up, hovered as a sphere for a split second, then zipped around the room before returning to his glass.  Stan’s jaw dropped.

              “Whattaya think?” Lute asked snidely.

              “…I think you’re a super,” Stan said.

              Shit, it is Undertow!  How did I wind up dating my coworker’s twin sister without realizing it?

              “Yup.”  Lute winked. “Better yet, I’m a mask.  Give ya twenty bucks if ya can guess who.”

              “Lute!” Angie scolded from the kitchen.  Lute groaned.

              “Fine, I’ll drop it.”  Before Stan could think of what to do with the information that Lute was Undertow, the villain in question spoke again.  “So, ya sell used cars.  What’s yer education like?”

              “Uh, high school.”

              “That’s it?” Lute asked.  Stan nodded.  Lute frowned. “My sister has a-”

              “Doctorate in herpetology, I know,” Stan said.

              “And you don’t think it’s odd at all that someone so educated is with someone who only graduated high school?” Lute pressed. Stan shrugged.

              “It just means that she’s smart enough for the both of us,” he said airily.  Lute froze. His eyes began to frantically search Stan’s face.

              “…What did ya just say?” he whispered.

              “That Angie’s smart enough for both of us,” Stan said.  A memory abruptly surfaced of a conversation he’d had with Undertow a few days ago. He had mentioned his relationship, as well as the discrepancy between his education and his girlfriend’s.  And Undertow had simply replied that Stan’s girlfriend would have to be smart enough for the both of them, then.

              “Hmm.”  Lute leaned back, still staring at Stan.  “Say, yer a super, right?  What kind?” In lieu of a verbal response, Stan snapped his fingers.  A flame burst to life on his fingertips.

              “Whattaya think?”

              “Flamethrower,” Lute whispered.  Stan extinguished the flame.

              “Undertow.”

              “Yer- I-”  Lute dragged his hands down his face.  “Consarnit!”

              “Yeah, I gotta admit, finding out that my girlfriend’s twin is my favorite coworker is pretty weird,” Stan confessed.  Lute groaned.  “But you seem to be taking this way harder than you should be.”

              “It’s just- yer my fav’rite coworker, too.”

              “You make that sound like it’s a problem.”

              “It is.  I like ya, Stan, which is goin’ to make it difficult to be hard on ya.”

              “Wait, what?” Stan asked.  Lute sighed.

              “I have to be hard on ya to make sure yer all right fer my sister.”

              “What?  Come on, man!”

              “My sister just got out of a bad relationship. I don’t want her to wind up in another one right off the bat.”

              “You know me.  I’m a good guy.  I treat Angie right.”

              “That’s what I thought ‘bout Max,” Lute said softly. “Hell, we’d been friends since we were in diapers.  I thought he was a decent sort.  So when he ‘n Angie started datin’ in high school, I didn’t bat an eye.  I should’ve.  If I had, maybe I could’ve stopped Angie from needin’ a divorce.”

              “Lute.”  Stan and Lute looked up.  Angie had entered the living room.  She crossed over to Lute, knelt in front of him, and placed a hand on one of his knees. “Don’t blame yourself.  The only person to blame is me.  I should’ve left the minute he became a hero, and I was goin’ to have to abandon the dream of followin’ the fam’ly tradition.  But I stayed.  Even when he started raggin’ on me ‘bout how I needed to be a more traditional wife.”

              “You were in a toxic relationship,” Lute said softly.  “Yer not to blame.”

              “The only person to blame here is your dick of an ex-husband,” Stan said.  Angie and Lute looked over.  “Lute’s right, Angie.  It’s difficult to leave a toxic relationship.  My mom’s proof of that.  But Angie’s right, too, Lute.  It’s not your fault, either.  Sometimes…sometimes people start out good, but then they get worse.  Even if you had been hard on Max when he started dating Angie, things still could have played out the way they did.”

              “Yeah,” Lute said.  He sighed.  “Yer right, Stan.  We should be blamin’ Max, not ourselves.  Especially since he’s apparently a hero.”  Lute directed the statement at Angie, who paled.  “Banjolina, what’s that about?”

              “Banjolina?” Stan mumbled.

              “I didn’t share information either way,” Angie said tartly, getting to her feet.  “I ain’t a snitch.”

              “Ya won’t be tellin’ us what his hero name is, then?” Lute asked.  Angie shook her head.  “Hmph. Guess we’ll just have to figure it out on our own.”

              “Speaking of secret identities,” Stan said, “why didn’t you warn us that we already knew each other?”  Angie grinned.

              “I might not have ever gotten into the villainy game, but that don’t mean I ignore the chance to stir up some mischief.” Something in the kitchen beeped.  “Oh, I’ve got to get that.”  She rushed back into the kitchen.

              “Given what ya just said and what I already knew about you,” Lute said slowly, “I’ll drop the protective big brother speech.” Stan leaned back.

              “Cool.  I mean, no offense, but you’re not as intimidating as you think you are,” Stan replied.  Lute rolled his eyes.

              “Whatever.”  He leaned closer to Stan.  “Between the two of us, I think we could figure out which hero it is what broke Angie’s heart and trapped her in a bad relationship fer years on end.”  Stan nodded.

              “I agree.  That motherfucker needs to get a firm ass-kicking.”

[fxbrokersempire]

What Are Realistic Goals For Forex & CFD Traders?

What Does It Take To Be A Good Forex Trader?

Having goals and direction are an important part of achieving success in anything from life, forex trading is no exception. However, goals can be difficult to set because people usually set them way too high, way over the top of what’s realistically achievable and in an acceptable amount of time. For example, having the goal of ‘becoming a full-time trader’ isn't going to do you any good if you don’t know HOW to trade the markets properly. Whilst it’s good to have big long term goals, you will not achieve them if you don’t break them down into  the shorter term, having more realistically achievable goals. Doing this will keep you much more motivated and focused whilst also keeping you progressive towards your longer term goals.

Most forex traders get lost, in setting the bar way too high right from the start and then getting discouraged six months or even a few days later when they have nothing to show for it. This happens because they aren’t being realistic with their goals. Let’s discuss some realistic forex trading goals you should have so that you can stay focused, motivated and on track to your targets.

Learn How To Trade Properly, Limit Expectations

Whilst I appreciate that not everyone is a beginner trader, this first point applies to those who are just starting out in learning the trading craft.

The first goal you should have is to trade your account to learn, not to make money. Learn as much as you can so that you don’t lose all your money, leading to faster and longer term success.

This doesn’t apply to everyone of course. However, if you’re a novice trader who is just starting out, it would be wise to not expect to make a lot of money or an ‘income’ from trading straight away. The  early years are your training period, your pursuit of education as well as screen time in order for you to gain some experience. This will probably result in you breaking even or even a minimal loss if you are trading a small account.

So the lesson here is, as a beginner trader, a realistic goal is to trade your account as a learning exercise and not just for the intent of making a profit. Just as with any other profession, be it sports, business or anything else, you can’t expect to walk out, learn a bit and become a professional overnight. Learn more about learning how to trade in 5 trading lessons.

Don’t Aim Foe A Monthly Income Right Away

Once you’ve done some study and practiced trading for a while, you should start feeling more comfortable to start increasing your risk per trade, whether this means a transition from demo to live, or moving from risking $1 to $100 per trade, your objective should not be to make a ‘full time income’, let me explain why:

Most people will start trading with an account under $10,000. To put this into perspective, you’d have to make a 500% return on that account per year to make a decent living. Having a realistic goal would be trading slow and steady gains; hitting ‘singles’ and ‘doubles’ to build up your account. A 50% to 100% return per year would be a realistic return if you’re hitting the numbers right. The aim is to make a profit but not to ‘make a living’ just yet, so don’t get carried away by thinking you’re going to print money like a job or seasoned trader.

The reason why you should not aim to make a living is pretty obvious…you simply don’t have the money or the skills yet. As I explained above, you can’t 'make a living' on a small account over the long term, but you can and should try to build it up. The trading mindset that you need to build up a small account successfully is going to be impossible to achieve and maintain if all you’re thinking about is hitting massive return trades every time and ‘getting rich’ quick. You will over-trade, over-leverage your account and likely blow it out; which is obviously the complete opposite of what you really want.

Aim To Be A Part Time Forex Trader

As mentioned above, most people can’t and won’t achieve the status of full-time trader in the early part of their career. So, a great goal is to focus on becoming a part-time trader and earning a nice profit while still maintaining your day-to-day income. There are many benefits to this trading strategy. Remember, the last thing you want to do is get hooked in to the market, it can easily destroy your life just like it does to gamblers. Learn to be patient and set limits to keep trading both enjoyable and profitable.

Be As Good A Trader As You Can

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned forex trader, you should have a goal of putting your focus on the processes and strategies of forex trading and becoming a good trader, not necessarily on your account balance. This goal is more applicable to your subconscious and psychological mindset, because you literally have to train yourself to be focused on every trade setup, the price action and the overall chart picture, as opposed to the money and profits that so many traders become fixated on.

As discussed in the article ‘Focus on the trading, not the money’, a trader should focus on the actual processes of trading, not on profit and rewards. The main reason for this is that the only way you can become a profitable trader is by becoming a skilled trader, and you can't do that if you’re too worried about ‘making money’ or even loosing money, because you’ll become way to emotional.

Watch The Market More Than You Trade It

Another realistic goal you should have is to stay out of the market as much as possible and only trade those trade setups that will yield high probability results. Measure your risk exposure better. As your goal, you should stay away from the market when there’s nothing going on and observe much more than you trade. Targeting trades and setups is much more progressive and profitable than being over exposed all of the time.

The main idea here is that most traders lose money because they over-trade; they are simply in the market too much. This causes them to both lose money because they are entering bad trades which in turn makes them far too emotional as a result. Essentially starting a rollercoaster effect of bad trading habits which you obviously need to avoid. It takes discipline and patience to sit out of the market the majority of the time and only enter when your trading edge is truly present. This is the only path to making money consistently as a trader, there are no short cuts unless you are a gambler.

Stay Away From Social Trading Forums

You may be part of a forex trading group or trying to get trading ideas by looking at people commenting on sites like investing.com or reddit. My advice is to stay well away from this as it will serve no positive purpose to your trading goals whatsoever. In fact it will create a completely different mindset for you and your trading strategy which will confuse you and drive you crazy. These social platforms serve no real purpose to giving you winning ideas. The small number of traders that actually make money in the markets are not those who follow other peoples trade setups. Learn how to do your own analysis and discipline yourself to follow your trade setups strictly.

Make Trading Your Passion, Live It & Breathe It

Over my almost 13 years of trading, and training a good few thousand students, it’s clear that the people that make money don’t only think about the money or ‘profits and rewards’ nearly half as much as those who don’t make money. The ones who make money are those who love trading, are passionate about it and want to be the best trader they can possibly be. Just like a professional tennis player, whilst the money may be a driver initially, those tennis players have to love their chosen craft, and to stay in the game over a long period and excel at it, they have to have passion & drive. Therefore, your final goal is to not only want to be a trader, but to be honest with yourself and either find a passion for trading or cut it loose and move on, because I can promise you if you don’t love, live and breathe trading (not the money) you won’t succeed.

and last but certainly not least...

Trade Only With A Regulated Broker That's Trusted

Finding a forex broker that you can trust is no easy thing. As someone that has years of experience in this industry it is paramount that you trade with a broker that wants you to succeed and will not play with your invested money.

The best forex brokers to trade with are often ones that come with a recommendation and have been used and researched. Take a look at the fully regulated brokers that we recommend. Choose a broker that suits your countries financial regulator in order to trade safely and have a level of account protection. See below:

FCA Regulated Brokers - UK's Top Forex Brokers

CYSEC Regulated Brokers - Europe's Top Forex Brokers

ASIC Regulated Brokers - Asia & Australia's Top Forex Brokers

Trading with forex brokers that are not reputable can lead to major losses of funds and are fraught with scams. Please make sure you use a broker from our registered site using top reputable regulated forex brokers in the industry.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

...And what about the significant skilled and white-collar migrant workforce? Despite the rhetoric about “shithole countries” or nations “not sending their best,” the toll of the migration brain drain on developing economies has been enormous. According to the Census Bureau’s figures for 2017, about 45 percent of migrants who have arrived in the United States since 2010 are college educated.8 Developing countries are struggling to retain their skilled and professional citizens, often trained at great public cost, because the largest and wealthiest economies that dominate the global market have the wealth to snap them up. Today, Mexico also ranks as one of the world’s biggest exporters of educated professionals, and its economy consequently suffers from a persistent “qualified employment deficit.” This developmental injustice is certainly not limited to Mexico. According to Foreign Policy magazine, “There are more Ethiopian physicians practicing in Chicago today than in all of Ethiopia, a country of 80 million.”9 It is not difficult to see why the political and economic elites of the world’s richest countries would want the world to “send their best,” regardless of the consequences for the rest of the world. But why is the moralizing, pro–open borders Left providing a humanitarian face for this naked self-interest?

...

As the child of migrants, and someone who has spent most of my life in a country with persistently high levels of emigration—Ireland—I have always viewed the migration question differently than my well-intentioned friends on the left in large, world-dominating economies. When austerity and unemployment hit Ireland—after billions in public money was used to bail out the financial sector in 2008—I watched my entire peer group leave and never return. This isn’t just a technical matter. It touches the heart and soul of a nation, like a war. It means the constant hemorrhaging of idealistic and energetic young generations, who normally rejuvenate and reimagine a society. In Ireland, as in every high-emigration country, there have always been anti-emigration campaigns and movements, led by the Left, demanding full employment in times of recession. But they’re rarely strong enough to withstand the forces of the global market. Meanwhile, the guilty and nervous elites in office during a period of popular anger are only too happy to see a potentially radical generation scatter across the world.

...

I’m always amazed at the arrogance and the strangely imperial mentality of British and American pro–open borders progressives who believe that they are performing an act of enlightened charity when they “welcome” PhDs from eastern Europe or Central America driving them around and serving them food. In the wealthiest nations, open borders advocacy seems to function as a fanatical cult among true believers—a product of big business and free market lobbying is carried along by a larger group of the urban creative, tech, media, and knowledge economy class, who are serving their own objective class interests by keeping their transient lifestyles cheap and their careers intact as they parrot the institutional ideology of their industries. The truth is that mass migration is a tragedy, and upper-middle-class moralizing about it is a farce. Perhaps the ultra-wealthy can afford to live in the borderless world they aggressively advocate for, but most people need—and want—a coherent, sovereign political body to defend their rights as citizens.

Trump infamously complained about people coming from third-world “shithole countries” and suggested Norwegians as an example of ideal immigrants. But Norwegians did once come to America in large numbers—when they were desperate and poor. Now that they have a prosperous and relatively egalitarian social democracy, built on public ownership of natural resources, they no longer want to.17 Ultimately, the motivation for mass migration will persist as long as the structural problems underlying it remain in place.

Reducing the tensions of mass migration thus requires improving the prospects of the world’s poor. Mass migration itself will not accomplish this: it creates a race to the bottom for workers in wealthy countries and a brain drain in poor ones. The only real solution is to correct the imbalances in the global economy, and radically restructure a system of globalization that was designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor. This involves, to start with, structural changes to trade policies that prevent necessary, state-led development in emerging economies. Anti-labor trade deals like nafta must also be opposed. It is equally necessary to take on a financial system that funnels capital away from the developing world and into inequality-heightening asset bubbles in rich countries. Finally, although the reckless foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration have been discredited, the temptation to engage in military crusades seems to live on. This should be opposed. U.S.-led foreign invasions have killed millions in the Middle East, created millions of refugees and migrants, and devastated fundamental infrastructure.

Marx’s argument that the English working class should see Irish nationhood as a potential compliment to their struggle, rather than as a threat to their identity, should resonate today, as we witness the rise of various identity movements around the world. The comforting delusion that immigrants come here because they love America is incredibly naïve—as naïve as suggesting that the nineteenth-century Irish immigrants Marx described loved England. Most migrants emigrate out of economic necessity, and the vast majority would prefer to have better opportunities at home, among their own family and friends. But such opportunities are impossible within the current shape of globalization.

Just like the situation Marx described in the England of his day, politicians like Trump rally their base by stirring up anti-immigration sentiment, but they rarely if ever address the structural exploitation—whether at home or abroad—that is the root cause of mass migration. Often, they make these problems worse, expanding the power of employers and capital against labor, while turning the rage of their supporters—often the victims of these forces—against other victims, immigrants. But for all Trump’s anti-immigration bluster, his administration has done virtually nothing to expand the implementation of E-Verify, preferring instead to boast about a border wall that never seems to materialize.18 While families are separated at the border, the administration has turned a blind eye toward employers who use immigrants as pawns in a game of labor arbitrage.

Meanwhile, members of the open-borders Left may try to convince themselves that they are adopting a radical position. But in practice they are just replacing the pursuit of economic equality with the politics of big business, masquerading as a virtuous identitarianism. America, still one of the richest countries in the world, should be able to provide not just full employment but a living wage for all of its people, including in jobs which open borders advocates claim “Americans won’t do.” Employers who exploit migrants for cheap labor illegally—at great risk to the migrants themselves—should be blamed, not the migrants who are simply doing what people have always done when facing economic adversity. By providing inadvertent cover for the ruling elite’s business interests, the Left risks a significant existential crisis, as more and more ordinary people defect to far-right parties. At this moment of crisis, the stakes are too high to keep getting it wrong.

[klbmsw]

“Trump’s calls with foreign leaders have long worried aides, leaving some ‘genuinely horrified’

By Carol D. Leonnig, Shane Harris and Josh Dawsey October 4, 2019 at 7:19 PM EDT nytimes.com

“In one of his first calls with a head of state, President Trump fawned over Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling the man who ordered interference in America’s 2016 election that he was a great leader and apologizing profusely for not calling him sooner.”

He pledged to Saudi officials in another call that he would help the monarchy enter the elite Group of Seven, an alliance of the world’s leading democratic economies.”

“He promised the president of Peru that he would deliver to his country a C-130 military cargo plane overnight, a logistical nightmare that set off a herculean scramble in the West Wing and Pentagon.”

“And in a later call with Putin, Trump asked the former KGB officer for his guidance in forging a friendship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — a fellow authoritarian hostile to the United States.”

“Starting long before revelations about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine’s president rocked Washington, Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders were an anxiety-ridden set of events for his aides and members of the administration, according to former and current officials. They worried that Trump would make promises he shouldn’t keep, endorse policies the United States long opposed, commit a diplomatic blunder that jeopardized a critical alliance or simply pressure a counterpart for a personal favor.”

“There was a constant undercurrent in the Trump administration of [senior staff] who were genuinely horrified by the things they saw that were happening on these calls,” said one former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations. “Phone calls that were embarrassing, huge mistakes he made, months and months of work that were upended by one impulsive tweet.”

“But Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went beyond whether the leader of the free world had committed a faux pas, and into grave concerns, he had engaged in a possible crime or impeachable offense. The release last week of a whistleblower complaint alleging Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals as well as the release of a rough transcript of the July call led to House Democrats launching an impeachment inquiry against Trump.”

“The Ukraine controversy has put a renewed focus on Trump’s un­or­tho­dox way of interacting with fellow world leaders in diplomatic calls. Critics, including some former administration officials, contend that Trump’s behavior on calls with foreign leaders has at times created unneeded tensions with allies and sent troubling signals to adversaries or authoritarians that the United States supports or at least does not care about human rights or their aggressive behavior elsewhere in the world.”

“Joel Willett, a former intelligence officer who worked at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2015, said he was concerned both by the descriptions of a president winging it, and the realization that the president’s behavior disturbs and frightens career civil servants.”

“What a burden it must be to be stuck between your position of trust in the White House and another obligation you may feel to the American people to say something,” he said. The White House did not respond to a request for comment Thursday or Friday.”

“Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally, said the president speaks his mind and diverges from other presidents who follow protocol. Graham said he saw nothing distressing in the president’s July 25 call with Zelensky and said he expected it to be worse, partially given his own experience with Trump on the phone.”

“If you take half of my phone calls with him, it wouldn’t read as cleanly and nicely,” he said, adding that the president sounded like a “normal person.”

“This story is based on interviews with 12 former or current officials with knowledge of the president’s foreign calls. These officials had direct involvement in the calls, were briefed on them or read the transcripts afterward. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s private conversations with world leaders.”

“The first call Trump made that set off alarm bells came less than two weeks after his inauguration. On Jan. 28, Trump called Putin for what should have been a routine formality: accepting a foreign leader’s congratulations. Former White House officials described Trump as “obsequious” and “fawning,” but said he also rambled off into different topics without any clear point, while Putin appeared to stick to formal talking points for a first official exchange.”

“He was like, ‘Oh my gosh, my people didn’t tell me you wanted to talk to me,’ ” said one person with direct knowledge of the call.”

“Trump has been consistently cozy with authoritarian leaders, sparking anxiety among aides about the solicitous tones he struck with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Putin.”

“We couldn’t figure out early on why he was being so nice to Russia,” one former senior administration official said. H.R. McMaster, the president’s then-national security adviser, launched an internal campaign to get Trump to be more skeptical of the Russians. Officials expressed surprise in both of his early Putin calls at why he was so friendly.”

  “In another call, in April 2017, Trump told Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who had overseen a brutal campaign that has resulted in the extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers, that he was doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.”

“Trump’s personal goals seeped into calls. He pestered Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for help in recommending him for a Nobel Prize, according to an official familiar with the call. “People who could do things for him — he was nice too,” said one former security official. “Leaders with trade deficits, strong female leaders, members of NATO — those tended to go badly.”

“Aides bristled at the dismissive way he sometimes addressed longtime U.S. allies, especially women. In a summer 2018 call with Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump harangued the British leader about her country’s contribution to NATO. He then disputed her intelligence community’s conclusion that Putin’s government had orchestrated the attempted murder and poisoning of a former Russian spy on British soil.”

“Trump was totally bought into the idea there was credible doubt about the poisoning,” said one person briefed on the call. “A solid 10 minutes of the conversation is spent with May saying it’s highly likely and him saying he’s not sure.”

“Trump would sometimes make commitments to foreign leaders that flew in the face of U.S. policy and international agreements, as when he told a Saudi royal that he would support their country’s entry into the G-7.”

“The G-7 is supposed to be the allies with whom we share the most common values and the deepest commitment to upholding the rules-based order,” the former official said.”

“Russia was kicked out of the group in 2014 for violating international law when it invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Trump has publicly advocated for Russia to be allowed back in. Saudi Arabia, which oppresses women and has a record of human rights abuses, wasn’t a fit candidate for membership, the former official said.”

“Saudi Arabia was not admitted to the group. Calls with foreign leaders have often been highly orchestrated events in past administrations.”

“When I was at the White House, there was a very deliberative process of the president absorbing information from people who had deep substantive knowledge of the countries and relationships with these leaders. Preparation for these calls was taken very seriously,” Willett said. “It appears to be freestyle and ad-libbed now.”

“Trump has rejected much of the protocol and preparation associated with foreign calls, even as his national security team tried to establish goals for each conversation.”

“Instead, Trump often sought to use calls as a way to befriend whoever he was talking to, one current senior administration official said, defending the president. “So he might say something that sounds terrible to the outside, but in his mind, he’s trying to build a relationship with that person and sees flattery as the way to do it.”

“The president resisted long briefings before calls or reading in preparation, several former officials said. McMaster, who preferred providing the president with the information he could use to make decisions, resigned himself to giving Trump small notecards with bulleted highlights and talking points.”

“You had two to three minutes max,” said one former senior administration official. “And then he was still usually going to say whatever he wanted to say.”

“As a result, staff fretted that Trump came across ill-informed in some calls, and even oafish. In a conversation with China’s Xi, Trump repeated numerous times how much he liked a kind of chocolate cake, one former official said. The president publicly described the dessert the two had in April 2017 when Trump and Xi met at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort as “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you have ever seen.”

“Trump preferred to make calls from the residence, which frustrated some NSC staff and West Wing aides who wanted to be on hand to give the president real-time advice. If he held the call in the Oval Office, aides would gather around the desk and pass him notes to try to keep the calls on point. On a few occasions, then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly muted the call to try to get the president back on track, two officials said.”

“Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer, and critic, said the calls fit Trump’s style as a business leader. “When he had to get on calls with investors on a publicly-traded company, they had to worry that he would break securities laws and lie about the company’s profits,” O’Brien said. “When he would go and meet with regulators with the casino control commission, his lawyers were always worried under oath, in a public setting, that he would say something that would be legally damaging.”

“Though calls with foreign leaders are routinely planned in advance, Trump a few times called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron unannounced as if they were friends, a former administration official said.”

“After some early summaries of Trump calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia leaked to the press in 2017, the White House tightened restrictions on who could access the transcripts and kept better track of who had custody of copies. For example, Vice President Pence still received a courtesy copy of any foreign-leader call, but his staff now had to sign off when they transported it to his office and also sign off when they returned or destroyed the document.”

“Some former officials said that over time staff became used to the oddity of some calls even if they still found them troubling.”

“People had gotten really numb to him blurting out something he shouldn’t have,” one former national security staffer remarked.”

“But officials who had served in the White House through the end of 2018 were still shocked by the whistleblower complaint about the effort to “lockdown” records of Trump’s July 25 call. The complaint said White House officials ordered the transcript moved into a highly secure computer system, known as NICE, which is normally reserved only for information about the most sensitive code-word-level intelligence programs.”

“Unheard of,” said one former official who handled foreign calls. “That just blew me away.”

nytimes.com

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[scottriice]

Personal Capital

A Comprehensive Personal Capital Review

Investing typically takes one of two approaches. The first one would be to follow an active investing strategy where you personally select the ETFs and stocks to invest in. The other option would be to follow a passive investing strategy where you let someone else do the selection on your behalf.

If you wanted to follow a passive investing strategy in the past, you had to work with an in-person financial advisor. You then had to schedule a meeting with them, build a suitable portfolio depending on your goals, and pay the financial advisor an asset management fee every year.

Today, things have really changed since robo-advisors have been introduced to streamline the process. Instead of meeting a financial advisor, you simply fill out a questionnaire online. The fees charged by the robo-advisors are considerably lower than those charged by traditional financial advisors. When it comes to robo-advisors, Personal Capital is one of the best.

What is Personal Capital?

Personal Capital is one of the leading robo-advisors that offers both completely free and paid financial planning tools. However, the company insists that it isn’t a pure robo-advisor since there’s still a lot of human involvement in some of the products it offers, especially the paid tools.

Personal Capital offers a wide selection of features available with the free financial planning tools. For investors with at least $100,000 to invest, the company has more advanced features. The company aims to be a one-stop-shop when it comes to managing your financial life.

The investment services offered by Personal Capital are somewhat of a mix between a robo-advisor and a traditional investment platform that involves human-guided investing. However, the company’s investing features are more geared towards higher net worth investors.

About Personal Capital

Personal Capital was established in 2009 and its headquarters are in San Carlos, California. Over 2 million people use it and most of them primarily use the free version. Still, the paid wealth management service has over 18,000 clients with over $8 billion in assets under management.

Users typically start out with the free version before upgrading to the paid wealth management services, especially those that want direct investment management of their investment portfolio. Still, users that don’t upgrade find that the free version has many investment tools that are definitely worth having.

First things first though. Once you register / open your account (all that is needed is your name, email and phone number) you need to link your accounts to enable you to begin using the management platform.

How Does Personal Capital Work?

Personal Capital has grown to become one of the leading financial management platforms currently available. It comes in two versions:

– Free Financial Dashboard

– Wealth Management Service

The Free Financial Dashboard is essentially a budgeting application, but it still offers investing tools in abundance. The Wealth Management Service is a comprehensive investment management service that functions somewhat as a robo-advisor while still offering a generous amount of live support from human financial advisors. The following is a more in-depth look into the two versions of Personal Capital:

Free Financial Dashboard

The Free Financial Dashboard is often viewed primarily as a tool for budgeting, but it is actually quite limited in that regard. The investment tools offered in this version are still extensive. Even if you might not have any intention of using Personal Capital as a budgeting tool, the free version provides valuable investment support.

The dashboard plays the primary role of a financial aggregator, where all your accounts can be included i.e. checking, savings, investments, credit cards, and loan accounts. It lets you assemble the entirety of your financial life on one platform. It is even possible to include employer-sponsored retirement plans and it is actually here that this version really shines.

Features

The Free Financial Dashboard offers the following features:

I. Budgeting

The free version of Personal Capital can be used for tracking your cash flow and spending patterns. It is even possible to analyze individual transactions and spending categories. You will receive summaries every month that help you know exactly where your money is going.

If you would like to use Personal Capital primarily for budgeting, that would not be the best decision. For instance, while it provides alerts for upcoming bills, there’s no bill payment function. You will still have to pay bills directly from your bank account.

II. Cash Flow Analyzer

The Cash Flow Analyzer is a tool that creates a budget for you. Once you have set it up, it will track your income and expenses from the various financial accounts linked to the platform. It is even possible to set financial goals, such as paying off your debts or preparing for retirement. The Cash Flow Analyzer helps you come up with effective strategies for achieving your goals.

III. Retirement Planner

To help you determine whether or not you are on course with your retirement goals, the Retirement Planner uses a series of “What If” scenarios. You can adjust for changes in your individual situation, such as a career or job change, saving for college, the birth of a child, etc. it even considers outside factors that may impact your retirement.

IV. 401(k) Analyzer

Millions of Americans are part of employer sponsored retirement plans, but only a handful know about the hidden investment fees inherent in such plans. The 401 (k) analyzer offered by Personal Capital will show you the exact amount that each fund in your plan is costing you. It then recommends alternative allocations for lowering the costs of the funds.

V. Net Worth Calculator

If you track your assets as well as liabilities, it becomes easy to determine your net worth fairly quickly. That’s an important thing to know since net worth is a key metric when determining your overall financial strength.

VI. Investment Checkup

Investment Checkup is perhaps one of the most important tools offered by Personal Capital. Once you have aggregated your investment accounts on the platform, the Investment Checkup tool helps you optimize your accounts. It may suggest that you adjust your portfolio mix to improve the overall performance of your investment.

VII. Personal Advisor

The Financial Dashboard offered by Personal Capital is free to use, but you still have the option to contact a personal advisor. While the advisor won’t give you any investment advice, they can still answer your questions regarding the service while also providing additional information regarding recommendations that Personal Capital makes.

Wealth Management Service

The Wealth Management Service that Personal Capital offers is at times grouped with robo-advisors, and that’s not completely true. While the company uses some automated investment tools, there’s still a strong element of active human engagement. That’s why the service is grouped somewhere between robo-advisors and traditional human investment advisors.

Personal Capital first determines your investment goals, risk tolerance, and time horizon, just like robo-advisors do. However, the company also considers your personal preferences when building your portfolio. The Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) guides the management of your portfolio, which involves investing across multiple classes of assets to ensure proper diversification. The company even rebalances your portfolio periodically to ensure that target asset allocations are maintained.

Your portfolio is invested in 6 classes of assets:

– U.S. Bonds

– International Bonds

– U.S. Stocks

– International Stocks

– Cash

– Alternative Investments, which Include Gold, Energy, and Real Estate Investment Trusts

Your investor profile will determine the specific percentage of your portfolio that’s allocated to each asset class depending on your personal preferences, time horizon, investment goals, as well as risk tolerance.

To provide broad market exposure at a low expense ratio, each of the asset classes is invested in a low-cost index-based exchange traded fund (ETF). The portion allocated to U.S. equities, however, will be held in a diversified sample of not less than 70 individual stocks. That allows Personal Capital to provide tax optimization and tactical weighing.

Investment Strategies Used in Personal Capital’s Wealth Management Service

A. Tactical Weighing

It is an investment approach that improves upon traditional indexing by ensuring more evenly weighted exposure to easy style and sector. The strategy has been shown to outperform the S&P 500 by 1.5% annually, but with less volatility.

B. Smart Indexing

It incorporates Modern Portfolio Theory as well as equal size/sector weighting.

C. Tax Optimization

It is an investment strategy geared towards lowering the income tax liability that results from your investing activity. It uses several techniques:

– Using ETFs as opposed to mutual funds because they generate less capital gains

– Using individual stocks since they can be easily sold or bought to generate tax-loss harvesting

D. Automatic Rebalancing

If your portfolio passes your preferred asset allocation proportion, Personal Capital will automatically rebalance it.

E. Socially Responsible Investing

If you wish to incorporate Socially Responsible Investing into your investing activities, Personal Capital will select specific investment based on their compliance with the environmental, social, and governance. It will give you the opportunity to invest in what you believe in and avoid what you don’t.

Wealth Management Features

– Accounts Available: Taxable and joint investment accounts; Roth, Traditional, Rollover, and SEP IRAs; Trusts

– Minimum Initial Investment: $100,000 or $200,000 if you wish to enjoy regular access to financial advisors

– Advice for 401(k) and 529 Plans: While Personal Capital cannot manage these accounts directly, it will offer you advice regarding the same.

– Account Protection: All accounts are protected by SIPC, for up to $500,000 in cash and securities, which includes up to $250,000 in cash. The coverage protects against broker failure and not against monetary losses caused by fluctuations in the market.

– Account Custodian: All Wealth Management portfolios are held with Pershing Advisor Solutions, which is one of the largest investment custodians and clearing agencies in the world. The company is the custodian for over $1 trillion in assets throughout the globe.

– Financial Advisors: It is a major aspect of the Wealth Management Service. You can reach the financial advisors 24/7 via email, phone, live chat, or web conference. You will have 2 dedicated financial advisors if you choose to become a client of the Wealth Management Service.

How Much Does Personal Capital Cost

The fees that Personal Capital charges for investing advice and management are outlined below. The fees cover everything including tax loss harvesting, ETF expense ratios, portfolio rebalancing, etc. The fees are higher than those charged by pure robo-advisors, but are lower than those charged by traditional investment managers.

– $1 Million or Less: 0.89 Percent Annual Fee

– $1- to 3- Million: 0.79 Percent Annual Fee

– $3- to 5- Million: 0.69 Percent Annual Fee

– $5- to $10- Million: 0.59 Percent Annual Fee

– $10 Million or Higher: 0.49 Percent Annual Fee

Personal Capital: The Pros

– Budgeting and Investment Management Offered in a Single Platform: Personal Capital offers both budgeting/personal financial management as well as investment management on one platform.

– Tax Optimization: Extensive tax optimization strategies are used in the Wealth Management service to minimize the income taxes your investments generate.

– Free Financial Dashboard: The dashboard includes many different investment tools and budgeting capabilities and is free to use.

– Socially Responsible Investing: If you think of yourself as being socially responsible you want to ensure that your investments align with your values and Personal Capital allows you to do exactly that.

– Financial Advisors: If you select the Wealth Management service, you will have 2 financial advisors that can help with the management of your financial life.

Personal Capital: The Cons

– Limited Budgeting Capabilities: The budgeting tools offered by Personal Capital are considerably more limited compared to fully dedicated budgeting apps such as Quicken or Mint.

– Upsells: If you sign up for the free version, Personal Capital will constantly try to upsell the paid Wealth Management Service. Users have found this to be irritating.

– High Minimum for Wealth Management: $100,000 is the minimum initial investment amount required for the Wealth Management Service, which effectively locks out most small and medium size investors.

– High Fees: The 0.89 percent fee that investors have to pay for Personal Capital’s Wealth Management Service is considerably higher than that of robo-advisors, such as Betterment, who charge from 0.25 to 0.40 percent.

Personal Capital Vs. Betterment

Personal Capital is obviously not the only online investment management firm available. It has its competitors and one of the most popular of these competitors is Betterment, which is best known as one of the first major robo-advisors. However, it still has a human aspect as Personal Capital does.

Either Personal Capital or Betterment can be an excellent option when it comes to your investment, but each has its own strengths and pricing model. The following is a comparison of the two to find out which one is a better fit for your unique investment needs.

How Are They Similar?

Personal Capital and Betterment are similar in the following ways:

– Accounts Offered: Personal Capital and Betterment are both robo-advisors offering taxable joint and individual accounts, as well as traditional IRA, rollover IRA, and Roth IRA and trust accounts.

– Tax Loss harvesting: Personal Capital and Betterment both have tax loss harvesting features that help you save money on any losses incurred.

– 401(k) Assistance: Personal Capital and Betterment can both help you with your employer-sponsored 401(k) plan.

– Portfolio Rebalancing: Personal Capital and Betterment both offer automatic portfolio rebalancing to ensure that your ideal asset allocation is maintained.

– Socially Responsible Investing: Personal Capital and Betterment both offer investment options that are socially conscious.

– Security: Personal Capital and Betterment both use very strong security to ensure that your account information and money are safe and secure.

How Are They Different?

Personal Capital and Betterment are different in the following aspects:

Personal Advisor

Personal Capital and Betterment both offer the services of a robo-advisor, which include automated portfolio building and management. The difference is that Personal Capital provides a personalized service to help you deal with specific situations that you may require clarification or providing portfolio customization.

Holistic Wealth Management

The wealth management approach is yet another area where Personal Capital and Betterment differ. While Betterment focuses on managing your investment account, Personal Capital offers this as well as other services that can be of additional value to you.

Investment Style

Robo-advisors such as Personal Capital and Betterment usually offer similar asset allocations. Still, there are some differences that you should consider. Personal Capital, for instance, offers equal style and sector weighting that strives to lower volatility by equalizing across sectors, style, and company size. If you are an investor that’s worried about good returns with minimal volatility, this can be a key consideration.

Minimum Deposit

If you choose Betterment, you can actually start with no minimum. You could even start with a $1 investment if you want. However, to use the Premium service, you will require a balance of at least $100,000.

Personal Capital does not require that you have a minimum investment amount to use the free tools, but you will require a minimum investment amount of $100,000 to use the paid service. Additional premium services require a $200,000 minimum and $1 million minimum.

Annual Fees

Personal Capital’s fees depend on the total assets that the service manages for you. You will pay 0.89% in annual fees for accounts with $100,000 to $1 Million. It goes down to 0.79% for accounts with $1million to $3 million. It goes even lower to 0.695 for accounts with up to $5million, 0.595 for accounts with up to $10 million, and even further lower to 0.49% for accounts with $10 million or more.

Betterment charges 0.25% annually for the Digital Plan that includes the self-service robo-advisor. If you choose the Premium Account, you will pay 0.40% in fees, which includes unlimited access to a certified financial planner as well as a financial plan for all your assets, even those that are not managed by Betterment.

Personal Capital Vs. Betterment: Which One Should You Choose?

The decision regarding which one to choose between Personal Capital and Betterment is a tough one. You have to consider several different factors. However, Personal Capital has an edge over Betterment since it offers excellent free tools and delivers better investment performance over Betterment even though both have very similar investing styles.

How to Sign Up with Personal Capital

Now that you have seen just how great Personal Capital is for investing, you should head over to the official website to sign up and start using the service. You start by providing some details about yourself such as your email address and phone number, then creating a password.

You will then be asked to provide additional details such as your name, current age, age at which you wish to retire, and the amount of money that you have saved towards retirement. Once you provide that information you can start to link your accounts.

Personal Capital can sync with over 12,000 financial institutions, or you can just enter the name of your institution and web address. The platform will then start analyzing your financial accounts going back 1 to 3 months. Once the analysis is complete, you will have access to the tools on the Free Dashboard, along with recommendations by Personal Capital regarding your investment accounts.

To sign up for the Wealth Management service, contact a financial advisor to get started with the process. You will be required to provide further information, which includes documentation to verify your identity. You will then have to link one or more financial accounts to transfer funds into the account that will be holding your investment.

You will also be required to fill out a questionnaire that determines your investment goals, risk tolerance, investment goals, and time horizon. You will also have a web conference with a financial advisor who will gather more specific information. Your portfolio will be built based on the answers provided in the questionnaire and the information you provide to the financial advisor.

Summary

If you are looking for a great online investment management platform, then Personal Capital is all you need. It is easy to understand and useful. It offers free tools that give users an in-depth look at their own personal finance health, retirement potential, and investments. Paying customers get the assistance needed too take their investments to the next level.

It might be up to paying users to determine whether or not the paid services are worth the costs, but everyone should sign up for a free Personal Capital account. The free tools are simply to helpful to ignore. Personal Capital can be an excellent tool for helping you get a stronger grip on your finances, regardless of who you are, so try it out today!

Visit Personal Capital For More Info

source https://www.youreview.net/personal-capital/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=personal-capital source https://youreview1.blogspot.com/2020/04/personal-capital.html

[nuttyrabbit]

Well, this is a long, LONG time coming.  Updated b io under the cut

Name: Gambit the Weasel

Age: 24

Occupation: Mercenary, though technically he’s more of a hitman than anything

Continuity: Post-reboot Archie Sonic, though he can work in  the main Sonic verse as well.

Location: Empire City (Born in Empire City, but moved to Westopolis with his birth father at around a year old)

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Species: Weasel (African Black-footed Weasel is the main design inspiration)

Sexuality: Bisexual leaning more towards men

Personality: Cynical, jaded; an absolute fucking pessmist, always seeing the worst in everything and everyone. Is an absolute shit-stirrer, and will actively antagonize people for shits and giggles. He’s got a real big mouth and will freely and openly speak his mind to anyone, regardless of who or what they are. He loves banter, and will banter with just about anyone on just about anything. He’s always got a comeback or a snarky one-liner for any given situation, you cannot shut this man up.   Generally emotionally detached from most people and events, which lends itself to an incredibly dark sense of humor.  Also a very “shoot first, ask questions later” sort of person. Cocky, stubborn, and just an all around asshole, Gambit’s not really the kind of guy most people would want to be around, much less befriend.

Skills:  Gambit is incredibly accurate with his revolver, seemingly able to pull off near impossible shots when the occasion calls for it, and in general is able to make just about every bullet count.  This is helped by his impeccable quick draw ability, making him able to draw his gun and fire in the blink of an eye.

Gambit’s power is luck manipulation, signified by his eyes taking on an intense glow. This power enables him to turn the odds in his favor, sometimes to insane degrees; however, it requires his concentration or it will deactivate. When the situation is life or death, though, his powers will kick in on their own - when this happens, his powers short out and become unusable for a short time after.

Gambit is also impeccably good at games of luck, especially blackjack. Even without his powers backing him up, he can make an absolute killing at the blackjack table, or even something like the slots, although he has gotten kicked from casinos before due to his luck powers letting him “cheat” .

He can be rather charismatic if he wants to be, letting him seduce people or even get information out of others, though more often than not his big mouth and inclination towards antagonism betrays him. Well, that and his stench because he smells BAD

Hobbies: Hobbies: Drinking, gambling, smoking cigarettes and sleeping around are his vices, with alcoholism and gambling outright addictions he has. Gambit’s preferred beverage is beer, though he’s also partial to rum and whiskey. He drinks several times a day, becoming irritable and suffering withdrawal when he goes sober for more than a day.

His gambling addiction is where he sinks most of his money, alongside the booze. He will spend hours at the blackjack, roulette or poker tables. He often wins big due to his luck powers, but gets cocky, neglecting to keep up the act and losing out. Many times he is simply thrown out of casinos, most often for starting fights or cheating.

The other things Gambit typically blows his earnings on are ammo for his signature revolver, and cigarettes. Due to his vices and the need for ammo to do his job, he doesn’t always have enough cash left over to afford a pack. When he can, he goes through one or two packs in a day; so, more often than not, he has to bum a cigarette off of someone else.

Gambit is never seen without his trusty revolver; modeled after a S&W 44 magnum, it’s the most valuable item he owns. He treasures the gun above all else, going so far as to have gotten a custom engraving.

Gambit sleeps around, and does so often. While he is bi, he has a preference for men.  He is far from picky, however; his standards are low. If he’s not antagonizing someone, he’s flirting with them, trying to get them either to a cheap motel or back to their place for a few rounds. He never sticks around after, bailing shortly after he got what he came for. Gambit is nigh impossible to commit to a relationship, and will have flings with multiple people a night when given the opportunity. He is, for all intents and purposes, a slut in every sense of the word. Emotional intimacy? Never heard of her.

Fears: He doesn’t fear much, though deep down, he does fear betrayal, which feeds into his complex about trusting people.

Flaws: Gambit’s morality is almost nonexistent, his apathy lending itself to him taking on jobs others may deem too damning. Much like in gambling, his hubris can be his downfall while on the job; he sometimes gets too cocky, counting his chickens before they hatch, and can wind up blowing the contract. He is also at the mercy of his vices, the expenses of which have him living on the streets without food or shelter, often sleeping in the city’s many alleyways and rummaging for food in restaurant dumpsters. Naturally, he smells like garbage. But his biggest flaw, above all else, is his complex about trust. Gambit doesn’t trust anyone or anything outside of himself to the point of paranoia.  He outright rejects the idea of joining a gang or teaming up with someone because he’s always anticipating the moment when they turn on him. His past experiences with partnerships have only made this worse. It is why he leaves someone after banging them, it is a huge reason as to why he’s emotionally detached from people, and it is the biggest reason as to why he seemingly cannot form any meaningful relationships with anyone or anything.

Physical appearance: Gambit is 3′5, making him slightly taller than Sonic. He’s rather lanky and lithe, there isn’t much meat on those bones. He’s got crimson eyes that take on a distinct glow whenever his powers are active.  He’s got a few scars, with his most prominent one being a chunk ripped off of his right ear. His fashion sense leans towards classier attire with influences from the styles of the 1920s. Akin to his typical outfit pictured in the ref, he usually goes for suit+pants combos. He doesn’t wear vibrant colors often, though he’s not opposed to the idea; he does typically stick to greys, white and/or black for most occasions.

Bio: Gambit was an accident; the result of a careless fling between a corrupt politician and the unfortunate conman who thought he could blackmail her. When the situation wound up with Artemis getting pregnant, she was forced to carry the child to term due to fear of tarnishing her reputation. Artemis forced the child’s father to play along the role of her husband, faking a happy expecting family for the press. Once the baby was born, he was given the name Tai, and he and his father were moved from the public eye. Artemis told the public it was because she wanted to keep her family safe from the stress and exposure her career would bring, but behind closed doors, her plans for her new “family” were much more sinister.

Artemis, in her desperation to rid herself of the problem she created, and stumbled upon Empire City’s darkest truth: the Underground, a sprawling, far-reaching network of criminals, mercenaries and hitmen hidden in plain sight. It was there she would find the solution to her problem, forging a contract that would solve all her problems. It was the perfect crime - Artemis would leave the city on a “business trip”, and during her absence, someone would break into her home and murder her husband and child. The public would eat it up, bless their hearts, and Artemis, the victim, would stay strong in the face of tragedy, boosting her ratings.

Of course, things so seldom go as one plans. Artemis left on her trip, but when the hitman came for the boy and his father, Tai’s powers kicked in. The gun jammed, and his father took the opportunity to take down the would-be assassin. Tai’s father, piecing two and two together, grabbed the young boy and fled out of the city, to Westopolis. Artemis returned to the city, and by that time, the Underground had cleared out the hitman’s body. With the father and son nowhere to be seen, Artemis was told the job had gone off without a hitch, that they had been killed and just like that, all her problems were gone.

Once Tai and his father were in Westopolis, they lived in utter squalor, barely supporting themselves off of what meager money his father could scrape up with his “trade”. Tai’s father was a very angry man at this point, drowning himself in alcohol,  constantly screaming and ranting about how the world is full of bastards, how you can trust nobody and how there is nothing good in this world,  and often beating and shouting at  the young weasel,  blaming him for his current circumstances. He barely even fed the young boy, forcing Tai to live off of what meager scrap were left from his father’ meals, and whatever food or water he could manage to sneak  away for himself.

The young boy lived like this until he was around 8 years old, when his dad went out for a drink one night and never came back. Several days passed, and the weasel desperately scrounged around the house for what little food he could find, waiting for his dad to come home. Soon, someone did come through those doors, but it was not his father, but instead the cops, investigating his father’s death. They simply told him his father was dead and that he had to come with them.  Tai, who at this point had the message of “don’t trust anyone” figuratively and literally beat into him, instead chose to run away, with the cops not even bothering to give chase. “Less paperwork” they said.

From there, the boy lived on the streets, scrounging by on what little food and water he could find, sleeping in alleyway and most of all, avoiding anyone and everyone he could. “Don’t trust anyone, don’t bother anyone, keep your head down low and out of sight, out of mind” are the words that he lived by, the words that were literally beaten into him. And so he lived like this up until he was around 10 or 11 years old, when everything changed.

A local low level gangster, looking to obtain power and prestige within his organization, stumbled across the young Tai. Soon realizing that the young, wide eyed boy could serve as a valuable bargaining chip, decided to try and take him under his wing, and after several attempts, Tai went home with the man.  For the first time in his life, Tai lived in an honest to god home. He got served three meals a day, he had actual clothes , there were things to do here other than scrounge for food and stare at the walls.  He even got a new name: Gambit

But all was not well. The man intended to use Gambit as a tool, a bargaining chip, and that he very much did. The young boy was passed around to other gangsters, mobsters, lowlife scum, who did unsavory things to the young weasel, who had these fake smiles, comforting words that did the exact opposite,  had touches that lingered too long in bad places, who told him things he had never heard of and  talked about him in ways he didn’t understand. These made the weasel’s skin crawl, it made him feel wrong and dirty, but his “father” assured him that this was all normal, this was how the world worked.

As the boy grew, so did his knowledge of the world he had been swept into. The man taught Gambit everything: he taught him how to shoot, how to gamble, drink, eat good food, survive,  to indulge in the “good things in life”, to use his powers, and again, he hammered home a single, central message: “Don’t trust anyone. Don’t trust anything, the entire world is out for ya.”  The growing weasel internalized all of this. Soon, Gambit began to imitate his old man: his mannerisms, his way of speaking, his worldview, even his jokes. Gambit followed his old man in every sense of the world, completely unwavering.  He trusted him, seeing him as the father he never truly had, and perhaps hoping the old man saw him in a similar light.

However, things began to take a turn for the worse as he got older. His old man saw him as a tool after all, and he began to have Gambit take care of his dirty work, which went well at first. But soon, Gambit started showing a more rebellious side. He began to not follow orders, indulge in his vices more and more, even blowing the money he got from these operations on said vices. Sooner rather than later, the weasel turned from a useful tool into a complete liability, and his father realized this.

One night, when Gambit was around 18 years old, after yet another failed mission, his father snapped, screaming and ranting at Gambit about how he was a failure, how he was a “useless fuckin tool”, how he never actually gave a shit about Gambit, how  he was just a pawn who served no purpose anymore and needed to be gotten rid of. In his fury, he attempted to kill his adopted son, but Gambit got him first, killing him with the very revolver the old man had given to him

Panicking, Gambit took the gun, took some money the old man had lying around, and booked it.  He once again returned to the streets, quickly blowing through all the money he had managed to snatch up, spending almost all of it on his newfound addictions, trying to drown out all the horrible feelings that were coursing through him. But in a last act of defiance towards his old man, what little money he had left went towards getting his revolver engraved, something to make the gun truly his. But his mind was teetering on the edge of a complete breakdown: his life had gotten completely upended again, everything he knew was wrong, he was barely to handle it. So, in a desperate attempt to keep him sane and functional, his mind forcefully and deeply repressed almost all of his prior memories, only keeping what he needed to stay alive: his mentality, his skills, his given name, and his attitude.

After blowing through all of his money, and at a loss for ways to make more, Gambit teetered on the edge of starvation and death. But then it hit him: He was real good at killing people, and there were people who’d pay for that shit, so why not just do that? It wasn’t easy, as he failed quite a few of his early jobs, but soon he got into the groove of things, and from then on, his fate was sealed: Gambit the Weasel was a full blown mercenary.

And so things went for a few more years, with Gambit honing his skills, falling deeper into his vices, and being consumed by the all-encompassing bitterness, cynicism and snark that would come to truly define Gambit as a person and help him come into his own. But once again, everything would be upended.

When Gambit was 21, the Black Arms invasion wracked Westopolis, and in the midst  of the chaos, Gambit decided to book it to the nearest city, just trying to survive. Soon, he ended up in the City of Dreams: Empire City.  Here he would continue to hone his skills, his vices, and his personality.

Today, he continues to eke out a living the same way he always has (or at least how he thinks he has): taking whatever jobs he can, killing people, then blowing it all on his vices. As far as he knows, this is how things have been, and how they will always be.  But fate certainly has other plans for him, and one of them comes in the form of a cheeky little spaniel ( @pidgeonspen ‘s Carey) and a  certain green asshole (Specifically @frecklefacefromouterspace​ ‘s Scourge)

Misc: Shout outs to @pidgeonspen for creating the ref sheet, helping to create the design, and basically being my beta reader for the entire thing.

[projectcubicle1]

How to Build a Thriving Career in Supply Chain Management

 How to Build a Thriving Career in Supply Chain Management

Supply chains exist around the world, and they are one of the most important systems in our modern-day society. It is what brings food, materials, and products to the doors of citizens around the world, and it is in dire need of an overhaul. Not only do supply chains need to be vetted further at every level to improve environmental and social conditions. But they also need to be reimagined to avoid disruptions like we saw during the pandemic. Being a supply chain specialist is a lucrative role with a lot of different ways that you can approach it in a supply chain career. Every professional works and exists as part of the supply chain, and being able to manage it and see it from a top-down viewpoint will give you the ability to improve business and industries as a whole career in supply chain management. You can specialize in your key interests as well. Those interested in fashion can focus on fashion’s massive supply chain. Those interested in food – same thing. You can specialize in fair trade practices, in optimization, and so much more. With the world operating on various supply chains, you can really customize your role and enjoy a thriving career because of it. It may not sound like the most glamorous of jobs, but it is one that is surprisingly exciting and requires logistical and creative problem-solving. Working in the supply chain is a stable position, but with this guide, you’ll learn how to find that perfect role for you so that you can build a thriving career in supply chain management.

Why Work in a Career in Supply Chain Management?

Working in supply chain management means problem-solving, the right deadlines, and a lot of moving parts. It can be a great challenge for some, as it not only is a unique job with various real-world conditions affecting the supply chain, but you can easily focus on the industry or organization that you are most passionate about.Over 57% of companies believe that improved supply chain management gives them an edge over the competition. Add in the challenges brought on by the pandemic, and there are many businesses, big and small, that need a better approach to their supply chain. Every company has a supply chain, every company needs supply chain management. Whether you work directly or as a consultant, there are numerous excellent supply chain opportunities. Great Pay Opportunities In the United States, the median salary for a supply chain manager is $112,556, with the lowest 10 % earning $86,512 and the highest-earning $145,881 per year. The higher pay options will depend on the scope of your managerial role and also where you are located, with larger cities paying supply chain managers more than the average. There are many roles that are similar to and fall under the purview of supply chain management. The most prominent is, of course, that of a supply chain manager. Roles underneath this one include central supply manager, order fulfillment, manager, supply chain analyst, and more. When you consider that in the United States alone, 37% of all jobs are within the supply chain, an estimated 44 million people, you start to understand the scope and variety of jobs available. Working your way up in this job role will mean putting yourself in increasingly larger and more prominent roles. Being able to delegate, plan, and revolutionize supply chains as necessary is a very important skill and one that can and will fetch you a high salary. What’s more, when you work in supply chain management as opposed to the supply chain itself, you immediately work to future-proof your career. With larger levels of production and the increased challenges of pandemic disruptions and environmental concerns, being able to improve and manage a large supply chain, or at least work to improve it from a planning point of view, is something that businesses around the world will be begging you for. It is the single most important industry because it is a part of every industry. Every single business has a supply chain, and being able to optimize it would be your job as a supply chain manager.

Understand Career in Supply Chain

Every business has its own supply chain. Every industry has its own supply chain. Legal regulations and international boards are going to further change the structure of the supply chain and how it inherently works. Understanding the various supply chains and, more importantly, what type you are most interested in is a great place to get started with your career. You don’t need to be passionate about the types of supply chains but rather the industries they serve. Do you have a passion for food? Technology? Cars? Knowing what industry is most exciting for you is a great place to start. From there, just learning more about the supply chains that make all that magic happen is a great place to start.

Understand Your Passion and Strengths

There are many, many jobs that work along the supply chain. You can work in one of those positions or in supply chain management overall. In fact, you can even work in consulting. Advising on how to improve a product’s life cycle or how to make the production of a product more sustainable are also working to improve a supply chain and falls under the purview of supply chain management. With so many ways that you can directly improve products, businesses, and supply chains, there is absolutely going to be a role that allows you to focus on your passions and on your strengths.

The Four Main Areas of Career in Supply Chain Management

  Regardless of the industry, there are four main areas of supply chain management to choose from. 1.    Supply Chain Planning This is the most theoretical aspect of any supply chain. You may work within a company or as a consultant. Your goal is to create and plan the full supply chain, or alternatively, to rework it to be more stable, more sustainable, or all of the above. Many sustainability advisors either focus on this or at least touch on it within their job roles. As a greener, more socially responsible supply chain is one of the biggest challenges for addressing environmental concerns. This aspect of supply chain management is going to appeal to most, as it allows you to find solutions and create unique approaches to the goals and challenges faced by an industry or company. 2.    Operations/Production Management Operations and production management covers manufacturing and service industries specifically. And also requires advanced planning and management to ensure that sourcing, materials management, operations planning, distribution, logistics, retail, forecasting, order fulfillment, and more are all considered when designing and managing a supply chain. 3.    Logistics/Distribution Management Logistics and distribution management focuses on the agents and entities that move materials from their origin all the way to the consumer. These managers make the entire show happen and are the ones that will be most interested in how to avoid disruptions caused by another lockdown or pandemic. 4.    Procurement/Supply Management Procurement and supply management is another in-house role that contains six fundamental parts. As a manager here, you will need to identify customer needs, look outside your market for new options and ideas, prioritize and grow relationships with suppliers, collect data and analyze it, and the third is to communicate and negotiate with suppliers and shareholders. Essentially, you are the buyer that organizes for the materials, products, and services that a company needs to run.

Getting Started with Your Career

There are many, many ways to get started with your career in supply chain management. You can work in it either in the production and manufacturing stages, as an engineer, or even as a delivery person. Working your way up can help you learn more about yourself and how you want to Apprenticeships One of the best ways to get started in supply chain management is with an apprenticeship. Apprenticeships are different than internships. As an apprentice, you work closely with an expert and learn on the job. Typically apprenticeships are paid positions, which allow you to work and learn and, when the apprenticeship is over, get started in a new career. Internships Internships are another great way to get started with your career. You will want to start networking as early as you can. Connect with professionals online, read and learn using free resources online, attend events and talks, and try to be communicative and active when you meet or connect with these professionals online. This is the best way to get opportunities not available to the general public. This can be just the tool that you need in order to help you get your first internship, and then as many as it takes for you to start getting job offers instead of internship offers. Degrees There are degrees that you can complete that will prepare you for very specific supply chain roles. One of the more common ones is in Fashion buying and supply chain management. The sheer size of fashion means that there are full degrees to take that will allow you to learn the logistics and how to leverage opportunities. There are similar buying degrees that will help teach you how to buy better and how to build working relationships that will become essential when it comes to working in the real world. As there are also apprenticeships and internships, however, these undergraduate degrees are not always essential. You may find it better to start your career elsewhere instead. And then transition into supply chain management. So that you can bring a unique approach to the table and stand out as a candidate. Build a Thriving Career in Supply Chain Management This is great news for many looking to build a thriving career in supply chain management. Since it means that you don’t need to have a specific undergraduate degree to get started. Most teenagers don’t have dreams of working in supply chain management. Instead, this role becomes increasingly appealing the longer you work and deal with these issues first-hand. Where a degree will come in handy when you want to graduate from working along the supply chain. There is a very useful very effective masters in supply chain management online. This degree allows you to achieve two levels of the Supply Chain Management Certification (Level I and II). While also giving you the opportunity to customize it even further with global leadership, healthcare management, or operations management. The right certification for you will depend on the job or industry that you want. These master’s allow you to approach supply chain management from a variety of backgrounds. If you were a mechanical engineer working for an automotive company, for example, and want to become a district manager or other high-level executive, specializing in supply chain management can make you the perfect fit for the job.

How You Can Use Your Expertise for Career in Supply Chain?

When it comes to the top-tier job opportunities for those who specialize in supply chain management, know there are one of two options. You can either work to manage a global supply network for a company. Or you can work to start a business of your own. The good news is that you can do both. You can work for years as a manager in various positions and industries until you are ready to get started with your own company. You can either open a consultancy and help businesses all around the country. And even the world improve their own supply chains using tried and tested methods. Or you can use that skill set to create a winning supply chain for your own business. There are so many ways that you can take your career when you have the knowledge and experience. From starting your own business to being selective with which businesses and organizations that you work for, the sky is the limit. And each day will be different. Supply chain management means choice. Hence it means a great wage, and it means making a difference. Read the full article

[pint4punt]

4 QB Storylines You Should Actually Give a Shit About this Preseason

Ah preseason football, the classic foreplay to the NFL action we actually give a shit about. America’s form of dry humping during our last few weeks of abstinence before we all become like jack rabbits in the spring (but you know in the fall). For most teams, the ‘technically it doesn’t count’ action begins this week, with the exception of the Jaguars and Raiders who came early. So watch out for pre cum, don’t be a fool and wrap your…….starters… as we rev up to go all the way with the top storylines to watch this preseason!

QB trouble in Pittsburgh?

Mitch Trubisky, who we’re obligated to mention was drafted over Patrick Mahomes and that rapist Watson, doesn’t appear to have a firm grip on the starting job after all. According to multiple outlets, Mason Rudolph is keeping pace with and potentially even outperforming Trubisky in camp with the two currently splitting first team reps.

The Steelers have a dominant defense led by 2021 Defensive Player of the Year T.J. Watt and a promising young receiving core, but none of that will matter if their Quarterback keeps screwing the pooch. Tomlin has yet to have a losing season in his career with Pittsburgh and likely isn’t going to trot anything less than his best option at the game’s most important position. This is one of the few cases in the league where a QB competition is more than Coach Speak and nobody in Pittsburgh has claimed the starting job yet.

Who the F**k are the Panthers sending out???

Speaking of QB competitions that aren’t complete BS, Carolina has put together an amusing contest of mediocrity of their own. As Matt Rhule embarks on the campaign to save his job, their leader of men on offense remains (somewhat) ambiguous. We all know Baker Mayfield will likely be the starter, why the f**k else would Carolina send draft capital for Mayfield if they believed in Sam Darnold?

That being said, Rhule still isn’t putting a timetable on naming a starter and apparently neither QB has separated themselves from the other up to this point. Who the Panthers give the most meaningless preseason snaps to (besides rookie Matt Corral) will likely be telling of where they are leaning.

Deshaun Watson Pulling Himself Away from the Massage Table and Back on the Field

On behalf of our writers, we profusely apologize for the image the first half of that title likely put in your head. Deshaun Watson last started in the NFL at the tail end of the 2020 season and time will tell how the transition from foreskin back to pigskin will unfold. It appeared Watson would return for the majority of the season after serving an insulting 6 game suspension to start the year.

That was, until the undersized towel was ripped right out from under him by none other than Roger Goodell, who promptly appealed Sue Robinson’s ruling. As of this writing, it is unclear when the Browns reckless quarter-billion dollar gamble will see regular season action, but Cleveland has confirmed that they will be sending him onto the field this preseason for opposing pass rushers to force themselves on him for a change. Godspeed Travon Walker!

What are the Niners going to do with Jimmy G?

At the beginning of the offseason, we did a write up on where this handsome son of a bitch would land given the wealth of teams in desperate need of a starting Quarterback. Well America’s most eligible bachelor…...got left at the altar.

Poorly timed surgery certainly didn’t help his trade value, but with the regular season about a month away, his window to learn a new system and become a starter this year is shrinking rapidly. At this point the most likely outcome is that the Niners release him, get jack shit in terms of picks, and watch him take his chiseled chin to Seattle or one of the aforementioned teams in this article while they pray that the hype Treyn is real.

P.S. We apologize to those of you who actually thought he was the next Bachelor, but as of this writing his schedule looks clear and we’re more than happy to organize a Change.org campaign to make this happen!

[classycarla]

08.03.22

(Week Thirteen) Three months!!! I know for certain that three months is nothing but compared to the lifestyle of no exercise I was accustomed to this feeling of pure fitness joy is huge. I've been learning to curve my appetite cravings more towards what works personally and discovered that works for some doesn't work for everyone. I've learned to understand my lifestyle and accept the entirety of the idea of fitness to never lose the habits of going into the gym as often as I can find time. It's been a long three week journey but I'm doing great and realized also there is no pressure, rush, and no competition. I've been working on getting myself organized this month more than usual since my academic life is starting on campus because the complexities of online classes is leaving me extremely lonely. I need face-to-face interactions with my professor in the Criminal Justice Department. I've taken a night job now for three months and on going. The job is no where near easy and its quite challenging but I love the opportunities that present itself for growth with the company. There have been many changes like employees walking out and most of the workload being left to a certain few but it's been a place to advance. The workload isn't the determining factor to my tiredness but the complexity of managing many tasks at once inside a warehouse space. I believe in the company and appreciate all the incentives it offers to its workers. The help they are providing to many departments is amazing to watch in real time. I've also been working on my investment portfolio which is a sideline task I've been doing. I'm working on being a long term trader which comes with challenges as well and lots of waiting. Swing trading seems to be popular as well as short term investments but I'm working on the areas as they come and present challenges. At the moment I am taking lots of profits with minimal investment loss and standing there is ok for right now. It's already August and my daughter is heading into school along with a list of school supplies, uniform, and meals left to plan I don't know how I am going to manage everything. My personal relationship has taken a back end in my list of priorities because my partner has been working on his own career and the dynamics of our relationship has changed. With busy lives and opposing schedules it's left us with little to no time for each other and the promise of marriage taken the back end. I'm in no rush to get into a new relationship but decided to focus this time to advancing my own personal career choices as well as other opportunities that have presented themselves. I believe personal relationships can be very filling but I've compromised a part about me that I do not want to negotiate anymore. Marriage has always been important to me and the looming topics of sexual immorality have deep roots planted everywhere we go. As a growing Christian I'm leaning more on God and praying more than ever for my family. Learning to mind my own business and leave all other matters aside because God is reign and sovereign over my life is a decision I trust deeply. The worldly pleasures do not amount to the endless peace provided by our Lord. My diving deeper into scripture I have taken strength in God instead of lean on my own understanding. Regardless of what happens with my personal life there are still many events taking place in the background and during these turbulent times it's better to stay still and let God take the lead for his glory. I have my plate full and my glass overflowing with love, support, and encouragement from my family as well as community I just hope I can stand strong in the faith. Will be posting again soon!

[scifimagpie]

Elegy for a Mistake: My Toxic Friendship

My usual post style and topics tend to encompass writing techniques, analytical bits and riffs on TV and movies, or even the odd podcast. Once in a while, I turn my attention inward and try to offer lessons by example from my own experience. Today, I find myself talking about a humbling and painful, yet freeing experience: the release of an unhealthy friendship.

Normally, I'm a peppy, jocund, and self-assured writer, with solutions ready at hand by the time an article is ready to go. In public and private, I am known for my likeable and kind personality - though I would privately describe myself as a haplessly bumbling, well-intentioned blowhard.

Let us presume that both cases are simultaneously true. This time, I have only an ouroboros of self-doubt and a cautionary tale. Bear that in mind: this essay lacks an easy or blithe answer to the questions I've posed and struggled with.

A word of warning

To protect this person's anonymity, I will call them "Micah." I have changed their gender pronouns for this article to enhance their privacy as well. I won't talk about their personal circumstances at much length, either, for the same reasons. Figuring out their identity from context clues in my personal life and my blog is possible, but ultimately, unimportant.

For the same reason, I will not be including screenshots or "proof" or other receipts. I don't want to roast Micah's books or sabotage their career. (For reasons I will outline below, they do a great job of that on their own.)

Another big issue with Micah was my long-term working relationship with them. No matter how much you like someone and trust them, never work for free. More precisely, never work for free. or for exposure, or work trades if you find yourself shouldering a very unequal load.

I did this. I knew better - but Micah (and my own affection for them) let me talk myself into it over and over. And that was far from all that went wrong.

"Everyone has dead people," insisted Rocket Raccoon in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Everyone has their share of mistakes, ghosts, demons, and regrets. Perhaps Micah had more demons than most. But at the time, I saw them as a dammed fine writer and a tough person, a marvel of endurance.

That's still true, but their coping techniques to maintain that survival were another matter. Micah had ways of judging people and justifying their reactions to relatively small incidents that, over time, caused a lot more harm than I realised at first.

The warning signs I ignored

The thing is, Micah had a thin skin and a very sharp tongue. They were happy to nitpick and harangue anyone and everyone - usually in the safety of our private messages. This included people who thought of them as a friend and authority.

Everyone has gripes with friends from time to time, nitpicks about media, and qualms about significant industry names. Micah had all of those - and a long memory to boot. Eve their partner was far from exempt from critique and bewailing.

Yet I was, until the end of our friendship, the one person almost always exempt from these critiques. Not that I always got praise, but the mildest compliments were gold in the context of their otherwise unceasing criticism.

Surely this seems like an unflattering picture, but consider, reader, the burden of guilty pleasure that lies at my feet. I did not think I was complicit in their unhealthy patterns of criticism; I would sometimes softly defend people, but always in private.

On many occasions, I took the brunt of a fight to defend their honour - from a person who often had no idea Micah was offended. But I got to be the one good person in the world, who measured up - until I didn't.

But even before the change in tenor and tone, things were starting to go wrong. I was avoiding my favorite social media platform and my many friends there, because I dreaded the gloom and pain in Micah's messages. Our primary mode of communication was inevitably draining and depressing. Nobody has to be happy all the time, but unceasing misery is simply not okay.

The problem

While Micah and I do struggle with similar mental health issues, they had many severe physical issues to boot. I let this excuse their temper, their dark moods, and sometimes arbitrary coping mechanisms fat more than I should. They refused to deal with their mental health issues with medication or supervision - even though said issues were life-threatening.

And I, who normally would have spoken up about that, kept tolerating it.

Micah went to no small effort to convince me they knew best for themselves...even though the benefit of hindsight makes me question that deeply.

The problem is that Micah's depression was thick in their writing, and I think - I know - it sometimes negatively affected my own. Refusing to write happy or happier stories that were "not true to their experience, " they chased off potential fans and professional allies with endless cutting and overly specific arguments.

But I found their positions and their writing eminently defensible. They were very good at articulating arguments which I found persuasive.

When Micah excoriated me on a thread in public, in private, and on Twitter at various points, over a variety of issues, I began to question the state of our friendship. I think it's pretty fair to say that most of us know it's not good form to rip a buddy a new one "in public" or in private, as it were. Especially when, say, you actually agree on an issue, but have failed to state things in the exact way they require and prefer - and when that is an offense meriting a hard scoldin', it's a sign that something's awry.

Unfortunately, smart people can talk themselves into anything.

The fallout

I was unable to complete a dark and melancholy book for Micah, and they had a mental health crash - which was,  by that point, indistinguishable from their usual state. They said they wanted to talk less to me because they were deeply hurt that I hadn't recognized the toll of their books on my own mental health - even though I told them as soon as I realised it was a problem, and had found a reasonable way to articulate it. (That took probably 36 hours, for the record. I was unable to criticize their books to myself before that point.)

They were deeply upset, and I blamed myself - for their mental health crash, just as they wanted me to. Realising that I could no longer work for free or be fast enough, I found myself questioning many things about their books - and even Micah themselves.

I even asked a celebrity (whom they'd caused me to pick a fight with by complaining at length about her "horribly offensive, ableist" perspective that writing books too fast and immediately publishing them does not result in good books) for her insight.

Jenny Trout was kind enough to hear me out, and even warn me that a friend like Micah may not be a real friend. That really made me think. Ms. Trout was so eminently reasonable, and I thought about how repetitive Micah's books had been lately, and I just couldn't disagree with her point.

When we continued discussing the topic, Micah had the temerity to refer to artistic writers (as opposed to commercial writers) as "blowhards". When I admitted that had offended me, they took the tack of insinuating that ghostwriting, editing, or enhancing are "not real" writing, or part of a shadowy underground industry, not deserving respect as part of the industry (even though ghostwriting and editing have been present in writing for as long as books have been made.)

Frustrated and upset beyond communication, I had to get my partner to write the message saying I needed a break from Micah.

I spent the next two weeks in agonizing tension, worrying about the future of our friendship. About twelve days into the proposed three-week hiatus, I messaged Micah to check in, hesitantly extending an olive branch.

They ripped into me, accusing my partner and myself of unhealthy and unsafe behaviour towards them - for sending a short, clipped message in the middle of a hard mental health crisis.

As I stared at the screen and skimmed through their messages, I had to face the facts: I would never be good enough for Micah.

I was bound to bump into their exacting rubric of communications and requirements eventually. It had finally happened.

But when I realised I needed to end things, I felt almost deliriously free. I spent a good week smiling and laughing more, and enjoying a generally great mood. But then I had to think about everyone I had blocked or critiqued or mocked with Micah, and the way they encoraged me to shred others. In all, it is almost a wonder that through my relationship with them, I kept the vast majority of my friends.

How does one proceed?

Having patience for friends with mental health issues and complex disabilities is vitally important. Learning to talk about people and vent in private, rather than picking fights or airing the pettiest of grievances, are both important. How do I use the best of what Micah taught me while critiquing their perspectives after the fact? Is hard to say what would be different if we had never become close, but there will be no escaping their impact on my music taste, writing, and memories.

There are no tidy answers or how-to charts to figure out whether a friend simply has complex needs, or is facilitating and enabling your bad habits. Unhealthy friendships can also involve a lot of mentorship, support, and intimacy. If they were straightforwardly awful, they wouldn't last.

but at present. I seem to be, for the first time in my life, unencumbered by any toxic relationships. I have more energy and time for my friends and chosen family, and even my partners (my original partner Andrey, and our queerplatonic housemate Kit).

All I can do is try to wrap my head around both how much and how little I really lost, and apply my lessons to improve my friendships with others, ensuring they feel heard and cared for. At the same time, I must remain safe and self-critical enough to avoid perpetrating the abusive cycle and behaviors all survivors must constantly guard against.

At the end of the day, they left me with conjecture,. and not much else. I thought we were the closest of friends....yet I never heard their voice, met them - or even knew their given name. And there is only so much you can love a friend who won't share their true self with you.

*** Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime, housemate, and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Catch up with Michelle's news on the mailing list. Her books are available on Amazon, and she is also active on Medium, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog.

[carldavidson]

Graphic by Carl Davidson Right click on it and open in new tab to get a closer look.

The U.S. ‘Six Party System' 3.0: Revising the Hypothesis Again

By Carl Davidson

Keep on Keepin' On

"Successful strategic thinking starts with gaining knowledge, particular gaining adequate knowledge of the big picture; of all the political and economic forces involved…It's not a one-shot deal. Since both Heaven and Earth are always changing, strategic thinking must always be kept up to date, reassessed and revised."

May 30, 2018 - This statement above was part of the opening to a widely circulated article I wrote twice, about two and four years ago. With the upcoming November 2018 elections, it's time to take my own advice again and do another update. The strategic terrain is always changing, and we don't want to be stuck with old maps and faulty models.

In the earlier versions,  I suggested setting aside the traditional ‘two-party system' frame, which obscures far more than it reveals, and making use of a ‘six-party' model instead. The new hypothesis, I suggested, had far more explanatory power regarding the events unfolding before us. Some critics have objected to my use of the term ‘party' for what are really factional or interest group clusters. The point is taken, but I would also argue that US major parties, in general, are not ideological parties in the European sense, but constantly changing coalitions of these clusters with no firm commitment to program or discipline. So I will continue to use ‘parties,' but with the objection noted. You can substitute ‘factions' if you like. Or find us a better term.

For the most part, the strategic picture holds. The ‘six parties', under two tents, were first labeled as the Tea Party and the Multinationalists under the GOP tent, and the Blue Dogs, the Third Way New Democrats, the Old New Dealers, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, under the Democratic tent. In the second version, we had three ‘parties' under each. 

First and most important for us on the left was the rise of Bernie Sanders, who showed far more strength than imagined.  The second was the dramatic and unexpected flowering of Trump and rightwing populism on the right. Both of these, from different directions, challenged, narrowed and weakened the dominant neoliberal hegemonic bloc, which spanned both the GOP multinationals and the Third Way Democrats. It saw the Blue Dogs disappear and the Tea Party divide into Rightwing Populists and Christian Nationalists. Now here's the new snapshot of the range of forces for today, (including a graphic map). The two main changes are the re-emergence of the Blue Dogs, due to the recent three-way breakup of the Labor-Liberal center bloc, and the powerful growth of the Rightwing Populists under Trump. Starting from the left upper corner of the map:

The Rightwing Populists. This ‘party' has mushroomed via the Trump candidacy and unexpected 2016 victory. Trump, an ‘outlier elite' in his own right, is now directly connected to the Robert Mercer family fortune, the 4th ranking billionaire funding right causes. For example, the Mercers keep Breitbart News afloat and funded the career of Steve Bannon, former Trump ‘strategist' that took him to victory in the last stretch. Now along with Breitbart, Fox news is the hourly mouthpiece for Trump's war against the mainstream ‘fake news' mass media. Trump and his allies are waging political warfare against the ‘Deep State.' This is actually a contest for a new ‘America First' nationalist hegemony against the neoliberal globalists under both tents, the GOP Establishment and the Democrat's Third Way. This also includes the ‘intelligence community,' with a long list of Trump-targetted CIA and FBI ‘corrupt leaders', of which FBI director James Comey was the first to fall. ‘Corruption' was their refusal to pledge loyalty to Trump personally, like an old-style Mafia boss.

Trump also has a strong alliance with the Christian Nationalists (Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos, et al), and the DeVos family (Amway fortune), which represents another billionaire donor to the GOP right. Devos's brother, Erik Prince, has also massed billions from his Blackwater/Xe firms that train thousands of mercenaries to serve as ‘private contractors' for US armed intervention anywhere.

Where these two blocs under the GOP tent grew in strength all during the campaign, the Establishment Neoliberals divided a dozen ways, and they were defeated with some humiliation one by one. After the primaries, they were much weaker and were left with the choice of surrender, voting for Hillary Clinton (HRC) or staying home.

Trump's reach under the Dem tent to form an alliance with the Blue Dogs was more tactical. It stemmed from his appeals to ‘Rust Belt' Democrats and some unions on trade and tariff issues, plus white identity resentment politics. The economic core of rightwing populism remains anti-global ‘producerism' vs ‘parasitism'. Employed workers, business owners, real estate developers, small bankers are all ‘producers', and they oppose parasite groups above and below, but mainly those of ‘the Other' below them—the unemployed (Get a Job! as an epithet), the immigrants, poor people of color, Muslims, and more. 

Trump entered politics by declaring Obama to be an illegal alien and an illegitimate office holder (a parasite above), but quickly shifted to Mexicans and Muslims and anyone associated with ‘Black Lives Matter.' This was aimed at pulling the fascist and white supremacist groups of the ‘Alt Right,' using Breitbart and worse to widen their circles, close to Trump's core. With these as ready reserves, Trump reached farther into Blue Dog territory and its workers, retirees, and business owners conflicted with white identity issues—immigration, Islamophobia, misogyny, and more.

Trump's outlook has deep roots in American history, from the anti-Indian ethnic cleansing of President Andrew Jackson to the nativism of the Know Nothings, to the lynch terror of the KKK, to the anti-elitism of George Wallace and the Dixiecrats. Internationally, he combines aggressive jingoism, threats of trade wars, and an isolationist ‘economic nationalism' aimed at getting others abroad to fight your battles for you, while you pick up the loot (we should have seized and kept the oil!).

All this has set up the Rightwing Populists, aligned with Christian Nationalists, in a bid for hegemony over Establishment Neoliberals. So far, Trump is making gains, and the November midterms will bright to light the new balance. Trump's successes, however, also contain his internal weaknesses: the support of distressed white workers. At present, they are forming a key social base of his victories, assuming they will get lush jobs or rising 401Ks of the ‘Make America Great Again!' promises. The problem, however, is that Trump has not implemented any substantive programs apart from tax cuts. These mainly benefit the top 10% and create an unstable class contradiction in his operation, one bound to surface as promises are unfulfilled. His white supremacist demagogy and misogyny has also united a wide array of all nationalities of color and many women and youth against him. 

The Christian Nationalists. This is a subset of the former Tea Party made up of several Christian rightist trends, that has gained more coherence with the election of Mike Pence. It's made up of many who are simply conservative evangelicals.  A good number, however, are theocracy-minded fundamentalists, especially the ‘Dominionist' sects in which Ted Cruz's father is active. They present themselves as the only true, ‘values-centered' (Biblical) conservatives. They argue against any kind of compromise with the globalist ‘liberal-socialist bloc', which ranges, in their view, from the GOP's Mitt Romney to Bernie Sanders. They are more akin to classical liberalism than neoliberalism in economic policy, and thus stress abandoning nearly all regulations, much of the safety net, overturning Roe v. Wade, getting rid of marriage equality (in the name of ‘religious liberty') and abolishing the IRS and any progressive taxation in favor of a single flat tax. 

This is a key reason they attract money from the Koch Brothers, while the Kochs hold Trump and his populists in some contempt. As mentioned above, they also have some access to the Devos fortunes.

Effectively, Christian nationalist  ‘prosperity economics' amounts to affirmative action for the better off, where the rise of the rich is supposed to pull everyone else upwards, so long as those below also pay their tithes and pull upward on their ‘bootstraps.' They do argue for neo-isolationism on some matters, but favor an all-out holy war on ‘radical Islamic terrorism,' to the point of ‘making the sand glow.' They pushed for moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and ripping up the Iran nuclear deal. All this is aimed at greasing the skids for the ‘End Times,' the ‘Rapture, ‘and the ‘Second Coming' in the Middle East. With Cruz, Pence and Devos as leaders, they have become the second most powerful grouping under the GOP tent, and the one with the most reactionary platform and outlook, even more so than Trump.

The Establishment Neoliberals. This is the name now widely used in the media for what we previously labeled the Multinationalists. It's mainly the upper crust and neoliberal business elites that have owned and run the GOP for years, including the quasi-libertarian House ‘Freedom Caucus,' the smaller group of NeoCons on foreign policy (John Bolton and John McCain), and the shrinking number of RINO (Republican In Name Only) moderates. The Establishment also favors a globalist, US hegemonist and even, at times, unilateralist approach abroad, with some still defending the Bush-Cheney disaster in Iraq. Their candidates were Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, but when both of these collapsed under fire from Donald Trump, their voice was reduced to that of John Kasich, governor of Ohio. Kasich presents himself as a pragmatic, pro-worker neoliberal, a difficult circle to square. But he had the NSA/CIA's Michael Hayden and many from the ‘Intelligence Community' in his camp near the end. When Kasich was defeated, some went over to Clinton. Under Mitch McConnell's smothering wings, most are riding out the Trump vs ‘Deep State' storms in silence, as best as they can.

This is a big change. Previously dominant in the GOP and anchored on Wall Street, the Establishment forces were seriously weakened by both the Rightwing Populists and the Christian Nationalists.  It's possible they could be pushed out entirely, but a lot will depend on the results of Robert Mueller's investigations and the outcome of the 2018 mid-term elections. They could purge a weakened Trump and rebuild. They could try to form a new party with neoliberal Dems. Or they could join the Dems and try to push out or smother those to the left of HRC's grouping.

Now let's turn to the Dem tent, starting at the top of the graphic.

The Blue Dogs. This ‘party', while still small, has grown and gained some energy. This is largely because the United Steel Workers and a few craft unions decided to ‘work with' Trump on tariffs and trade. The USW got firmly behind Connor Lamb for Congress. Lamb's narrow victory was won in a Western PA CD in a rural and conservative area, but with a good number of USW miners. Now that the earlier gerrymandered lines have changed, however, Lamb has to run again in the new 17th CD, which is Beaver County and part of Pittsburgh itself, where Trump has less support. Support for ‘Medicare for All' is strong in this area. Lamb claims to favor it but claims it's unaffordable for now. This is a sore point for a good number of left progressive Democrats. They're likely to vote for him, but put their energies into working for better candidates running for legislative seats in Harrisburg.

The Blue Dog resurgence may not last. On one hand, the DNC Third Way gang currently loves people like Lamb, and want to see more candidates leaning to the center and even the right. On the other hand, Trump is unstable on tariffs. If he doesn't follow through on those he has put out as proposals, and folds up on major infrastructure plans save for ‘building The Wall, the unions involved may turn against him.

The Third Way New Democrats. Formed by the Clintons, with an international assist from Tony Blair and others, this dominant ‘party' was funded by Wall Street finance capitalists. The founding idea was to move toward neoliberalism by ‘creating distance' between themselves and the traditional Left-Labor-Liberal bloc, i.e., the traditional unions and civil rights groups still connected to the New Deal legacy. Another part of the ‘Third Way' thinking was to shift the key social base away from the core of the working class toward college-educated suburban voters, but keeping alliances with Black and women's groups still functional.

Thus the Third Way tries to temper the harsher neoliberalism of the GOP by ‘triangulating' with neo-Keynesian and left-Keynesian policies. But the overall effect is to move Democrats and their platform generally rightward. This had been Hillary Clinton's starting point in her campaign. But caught off guard by the Sanders insurgency, she adopted some positions, at least for the sake of campaigning, from both the former Liberal-Labor bloc and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She kept her ‘Rainbow' allies with her this way.

Now that HRC was narrowly defeated, the Third Way's power in the party has diminished somewhat. Its labor alliances have weakened, with unions now going in three directions. In terms of the current relation of forces in the party apparatus, the Third Way about 60% of the positions but still controls the major money. In California, for example, the Regulars kept control of the state party committee only with extremely narrow margins over Bernie supporters. The key test is the November midterms: Who will inspire and mobilize the much-needed ‘Blue Wave', give it focus and put the right numbers in the right places?  The measured moderates? Or the insurgent left? This brings us to the last of the six ‘parties.'

The Social Democrats. This is a better description than simply calling it the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as in the first version. I've also taken off ‘Rainbow' from the second version because this term is more fairly shared with the Third Way, which has kept the older and more pragmatic voters of the rainbow groupings under its centrist influence. And as before, the ‘Social Democrat' title doesn't mean each leader active here is in a social-democrat group. It means the core of the CPC, PDA, WFP and Our Revolution platforms are roughly similar to the left social democrat groupings in Europe.  

This is made even more evident with Bernie's self-description as a ‘democratic socialist' in the primaries, where it only seemed to help. It must be noted, however, that the platform is not socialism itself, but best described as a common front vs finance capital, war, and the white supremacist right. This is true of groups like Die Linke (‘The Left') in Germany as well. 

Finally, there is the dramatic growth of the Democratic Socialists of America due to their wise tactics in the Bernie campaign. They went all in for Bernie but also lost no opening to make themselves visible. Now with over 32.000 members which chapters in every state, they are winning a few local and statehouse races. They are now a player in their own right.

This is all to the good. The common front approach can unite more than a militant minority of actual socialists. Instead, it's a platform that can also unite a progressive majority around both immediate needs and structural reforms, including both socialists and non-socialists. Apart from winning many state primaries and 46% of the Convention delegates with a positive, high road approach, this party is now noted for two things: first, the huge, elemental outpourings of young people, mainly women, students and the young workers of the distressed ‘precariat' sector of the class, in elemental risings of millions after Trump took office.  Second, its organized character, with groups like Our Revolution, Indivisible, and the Working Families Party added to this dynamic and growing cluster.

What Does It All Mean?

With this brief descriptive and analytical mapping of the upper crust of American politics, many things are falling into place. The formerly subaltern groupings in the GOP have risen in revolt against the Neoliberal Establishment of the Romneys and the Bushes. Now they want hegemony. On the other hand, the Third Wayer are seeking a ‘restoration' of the Obama coalition, with its alliances with the Keynesian Labor Liberals, while co-opting and controlling the Social Democrats as energetic but critical secondary ally. The Sanders forces have few illusions about this and don't want to be anyone's subaltern. So they continue to press all their issues and policies of a common front vs finance capital, war, and the white supremacist right, building more organization and more clout as they go.

This 'big picture' also reveals much about the current budget debates, which are shown to be three-sided--the extreme austerity neoliberalism of all three parties under the GOP tent, , the 'austerity lite' budget of the Third Way-dominated Senate Democrats, and the left Keynesian, progressive and social democratic 'Back to Work' budget of the Social Democrats and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The 'Keynesian Labor Liberals' are divided, though they often holding decent programs as positions. But looking for side deals with Trump at the same time may not turn out too well. 

We have to keep in mind, however, that 'shifting the balance of forces' is mainly an indirect and somewhat ephemeral gain. It does 'open up space', but for what? Progressive initiatives matter for sure, but much more is required strategically. We are interested in pushing the popular front vs. finance capital to its limits, and within that effort, developing a 21st-century socialist bloc. If that comes to scale in the context of a defeat of the right, the 'Democratic Tent' is also likely to collapse and implode, given the sharper class contractions and other fault lines that lie within it, much as the Whigs did in the 19th Century. That demands an ability to regroup all the progressive forces there and on the outside into a new 'First Party' alliance, one that also includes a militant minority of socialists, which will be able to contend for power.

An old classic formula summing up the strategic thinking of the united front is appropriate here: 'Unite and develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces, isolate and divide the backward forces, then crush our adversaries one by one.' In short, we have to have a policy and set of tactics for each one of these elements, as well as a strategy for dealing with them overall. Moreover, take note of warning from the futurist Alvin Toffler: 'If you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy.' Then finally, as to tactics, ‘wage struggle on just grounds, to our advantage and with restraint.'

To conclude, we still need to start with a realistic view of ourselves as an organized socialist left. Save for DSA, we are quite small as organizations, but now we can see we are swimming in a sea of millions open to socialism. What can we do now? If you can see yourself or your group honestly working to achieve DSA's stated program, by all means, join and make them larger. Or set up Jacobin / In These Times Reading Groups in your living rooms and unite socialists with them. Join or start PDA or WFP chapters everywhere, use base organizations and broad 'Third Reconstruction' alliances and popular rainbow assemblies to build mass mobilizations and defeat the GOP in November. 

With both socialists and Rainbow progressives, start at the base, focus on city and state governments, and expand the Congressional Progressive Caucus. You rarely gain victories at the top that have not been won and consolidated earlier at the base. Most of all, in order to form broader and winning coalitions, you need organizations of your own to form coalitions and alliances WITH! Seize the time and Git ‘er done!

Carl Davidson is a national committee member of the Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism,  a DSA member in the Steel Valley, an activist with Progressive Democrats of American in Western PA's 17th CD, and a LeftRoots Compa. The views expressed here are his own.

[carterhaughs]

Tragic Backstory, only lvl 4 friends can unlock this

pt. 2 of Elsmere Aloryn’s personal history (bc as I research the Darklands and drow society her backstory becomes more and more detailed and refined which is so much fun to see taking shape. I don’t expect it to be openly confronted often in gameplay but it informs how I’ll play her)!!! this is all based on Pathfinder lore so the placenames and socioeconomic structures I mention here I did not make up - I’m situating her backstory very firmly in extant Pathfinder lore and then we can go wild in our campaign with whatever the DM throws at us in her own entirely self-constructed settings.

She’s a servant (albeit a secret one) of House Parastric of the Moaning Vault (cheery place name lol), the only drow noble house located outside of Zirnakaynin where most drow noble houses are situated. It is instead situated outside of Cocyrdavarin, the residence of the merchants and other bourgeoisie of drow society who make up the majority of the population. 

"It is also the only part of the city that non-drow are allowed access to, although outsiders should expect only contempt from the drow. Visitors of other races are seen as below even slaves in social standing, an attitude that the matriarchs of the various noble houses wish to change, as foreign trade brings great wealth to the drow capital. Even though the city is ostensibly governed by the twelve noble houses, the matriarchs only enforce the laws which benefit them personally, leaving Zirnakaynin in a state of de facto anarchy most of the time. This lack of laws means that open conflict and riots are a common sight in the city streets."

With all that in mind, it’s a wonder that Elsmere and her brother managed to survive at all - they did so through a combination of luck, skill, and the love of their mother and father. Prior to her self-exile, Elsmere and her brother - both of them half-drow - lived in the “undercity of slaves and industry” - the third cavern in the massive three-cavern (mostly) drow realm of Sekamina, Rygirnan. 

Her brother still dwells in their father's old house there. Their human father was a prince of thieves sort, at least prior to getting on the wrong side of some drow fleshwarping merchants (the stock in trade of House Parastric) and enslaved as the plaything of a cruel and powerful drow matron of House Parastric. He began a dangerous affair with their mother, a lowly vassal alchemist considered unfit for the practice of fleshwarping (who in reality was quite skilled but came from a long line of vassals morally opposed to the horrific practice). They were found out by one of Parastric’s male clerics whose infatuation with their mother was their family’s only protection from annihilation. Eventually, the matron tired of their father’s unbreakable spirit and had him executed. The cleric threatened to maliciously expose their father’s half-blooded progeny should their mother not service him sexually, and so the two of them remained hidden up until their mother’s death. Elsmere made it clear that the cleric would go down with them if he ever exposed them to the matron, so he kept their existence quiet and continued to train Elsmere in sorcery, in addition to the basic alchemical training her mother had started her on prior to her death from filth fever.

Half-drow, like all half-elves, age more slowly than humans but markedly quicker than elves, so it was paramount that the two of them stay hidden until they reached adolescence, at which their true age could be obfuscated, at least for a few decades. Elsmere could never hope to pass for a full-blooded drow given the green eyes and short statute she inherited from her father, and the telltale greyish pallor of a half-drow, similar to that of a Fetchling. Her brother, however, had the bluish cast and white eyes devoid of pupils of their mother, as well as her tall, willowy frame. Apart from his more rapid maturation, you would never guess he was part human. So Elsmere hid him away in the slave district in their father’s old hut as she continued her studies and grew ever more entangled in the benign and not so benign elements of the criminal network to which her father once belonged. His name went a long ways, but it could never grant them absolute protection or even passing certainty of safety, and they lived on a knife’s edge. Elsmere’s sense of compassion was compromised long before she was an adult in the interest of protecting what family she had left, and she has rarely looked back since.  

Since her banishment, her brother has taken up residence in House Parastric in preparation for a career in the military, supported by her work in Sekamina’s criminal underworld, primarily her gambling winnings. The only real glory for most male drow, it is also a job that would wear down elf and half-elf alike, making the eventuality of his aging more quickly than his fellows in later years far less noticeable. Against her advice, he has taken up with a female drow cleric of another noble house, a doubly dangerous act because of the deadly and constant quarrels between the houses and the possible calamity if his true heritage becomes known. Nevertheless, she supports him as best she can while on the surface, and is the only thing protecting his secret and supporting his livelihood. 

Elsmere grew up thinking her father’s blood legacy to her was not in her favor, but unbeknownst to him, and for many years, to Elsmere herself, he was the descendant of the blue chromatic dragons of the desert lands. Such dragons are wont to take human shapes and mingle with the criminal contacts of which they are so fond, and it is little wonder then that her father had such a talent for social manipulation and such a charisma about him. The silver tongues of blue dragons are well-known across Golarion. Her father lived longer than most humans without specialized training can endure in the Darklands because of the hardiness of his draconic ancestry but it never manifested so openly as it did in his daughter. Elsmere’s sorcerous inclinations were evident from an early age, but she and her family had always assumed her magic drew on her mother’s side of the family. While her mother was no witch, she had enough of the arcane in her, alongside her intellect, to work as a skilled alchemist limited primarily by her life of servitude. But after the deaths of her parents, Elsmere awoke her first bloodline power in defense of her brother when the Parastric cleric threatened to expose them. Claws sharp and bright as silver extended from her fingers and having read of such marks of draconic heritage in books of sorcery, she could little doubt what she was. She has studied draconic sorcery ever since and clung to the memory of something older and stronger than all the demon lords of the Underdark, hoping against hope that whatever bloodline powers she awakens in future will be enough to protect and sustain her brother, far from her side though he may be, perhaps forever.

[junker-town]

The Bulls are finally acting like a big market team again

Bulls fans pleaded for a front office change for years. When it finally happened, the team suddenly started acting like the premier franchise it always should have been.

It started with a billboard. Chicago Bulls fans took it upon themselves to raise more than $8K for an advertisement on the corner of Lake St. and N. Racine Ave. in the city’s West Loop neighborhood with a simple message: “Fire GarPax.”

The sign had gone up just weeks after the Bulls’ braintrust of John Paxson and Gar Forman decided to trade Jimmy Butler, a flat-out superstar in the prime of career with two years left on a contract that was massively below market value. It was the type of scenario most front offices and ownership groups dream about, one that opens up an endless amount of team-building avenues with a little creativity. Instead, the Bulls chose to punt, deciding they’d rather sacrifice a few seasons by tanking than trying to build around the best draft pick they ever made.

Three years later, Butler returned to the United Center again, this time to be named an NBA All-Star for the fifth time in his career. The game was in Chicago, but the Bulls’ presence was merely relegated hosting duties. The franchise had no All-Stars, but it was worse than that. There was no hope. The Bulls were among the NBA’s worst teams year after year, but they weren’t quite bad enough or lucky enough to land Luka Doncic or Zion Williamson. The only time the Bulls were ever discussed nationally is when their comically overmatched head coach found a new way to embarrass himself and his city, be it by igniting a near player mutiny a week into the job, installing a literal punch clock in the practice facility, or annoying opposing coaches with his bizarre timeout usage.

As the team’s best player, Zach LaVine, was being interviewed by ESPN right outside the arena, fans interrupted his answers with a loud “Fire GarPax” chant. It was a new level of rock bottom for an organization that only specialized in reestablishing how low it could go.

It never should have been on the fans to get this involved, of course. Paxson had been the team’s top executive for 17 (!) years; Forman was brought into the fold when the team hired Tim Floyd to replace Phil Jackson in 1998. The decision to fire them should have been an easy one, but even the simplest choices become convoluted in the weird world of owner Jerry Reinsdorf. To the chairman, keeping Paxson and Forman was an extension of the ‘loyalty’ that his closest allies believed was his defining characteristic. To everyone else, it was a fancy way of saying he was either too cheap or too lazy to care about his team as much as the fanbase did.

Paxson could have had his job forever if he wanted to, but why? He was clearly miserable. He had started calling his radio interviews “interrogations,” his team was terrible, his hand-picked coach had turned into a punchline. The billboard, the chants, the losses, it finally started to pile up.

Paxson did the only thing he could do: he asked to be replaced.

Photo by Joe Pinchin/NBAE via Getty Images

Two years later, the Bulls have a new front office and a reinvigorated sense of hope, even as the team entered Thursday’s trade deadline five games below .500. Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley were hired from the Nuggets and 76ers respectively to be the team’s new braintrust. Forman was fired, and Paxson was promoted into a position of no authority. Jim Boylen’s dissertations on spirit and the soul after every loss have been replaced by Billy Donovan’s competence and professionalism.

A team that had zero All-Stars only two short years ago now has two.

The Bulls swung the biggest deal of the trade deadline, sending out two lightly-protected first round picks and former GarPax lottery selection Wendell Carter Jr. to the Orlando Magic for Nikola Vucevic and Al-Farouq Aminu. It would be headline news for any team, because Vucevic was the only star that changed teams at the deadline. For the Bulls, it felt like a signal that they should finally be taken seriously.

For the last two decades, the Chicago Bulls did not make trades with the goal of improving the team. Yes, they swung a deal for John Salmons and Brad Miller ahead of an instant classic playoff series with the Boston Celtics in 2009. We’ll also give them credit for acquiring Otto Porter Jr. — included in the Vucevich trade as a salary match — even if it didn’t work out. Aside from those two examples, every trade the Bulls made in the last 12 years was essentially a salary dump. By trading for Vucevich, the Bulls were for once acting like the big market team they always should have been.

Karnisovas and Eversley had to do something. Since being hired ahead of last offseason, their only moves were signing veteran Garrett Temple to a one-year deal and drafting Patrick Williams at No. 4 overall. The rest of the roster was untouched from what Paxson and Forman had built. Hiring a real coach in Donovan had at least made the Bulls less humiliating, but any improvement was coming from resurgent veterans like Thad Young and an incredible efficiency leap from LaVine rather than the players the Bulls drafted in the top-10 after trading Butler.

Lauri Markkanen, Coby White, and Carter were’t going to be the saviors GarPax had hoped for. The Bulls either needed to trade LaVine and tear it down again, or give him a true co-star. The Bulls believe they have found the latter in Vucevic.

The player Vucevic is today at age-30 barely resembles who he was when he entered the league in the 2011 draft. The 6’11 big man did most of his work in the post throughout the start of his career in Philadelphia and Orlando before he remade his game to fit into a league that demanded more shooting range out of its big men. After not even attempting 10 three-pointers total in any of his first five seasons in the league, Vucevic has turned himself into something close to a knockdown threat. This year, he’s making 40 percent of his threes on 6.5 attempts per game.

Vucevic has never played with anyone as good as LaVine, and LaVine has never played with anyone as good as his new center. The two should form a deadly two-game on offense with Vucevic’s newfound shooting ability setting up a killer pick-and-pop routine. LaVine is already one of the league’s best at getting to the basket. Add in Vucevic’s passing ability — he’s finished in the 93rd percentile or above in assist rate for centers the last four years, per Cleaning the Glass — and the Bulls’ offense just became a lot more dynamic.

The Vucevic trade wasn’t the only move the Bulls made on Thursday. They also pulled off a three-team trade highlighted by the acquisitions 21-year-old guard Troy Brown Jr. and veteran center Daniel Theis from the Celtics. Theis has been a productive player in Boston for the last four years and was only let go so the team could avoid the luxury tax. Brown is a former five-star high school recruit at point guard (here’s a 2015 feature we wrote on him back in the day) who was moved to the wing in college in Oregon and then in the NBA. While Chicago’s rumored pursuit for Lonzo Ball came up short, it’s possible Brown could play a similar game as a connecting piece who brings plenty of skills to the table without needing to be a volume scorer.

It is no exaggeration to say Karnisovas made more trades to impact the roster in the span of a few hours than Paxson did in nearly two decades. The previous regime wanted to build slowly through the draft, hoping their selections would mature together and form a golden generation for the organization. They found some success with the Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon, Luol Deng clubs of the mid-00s, and again with Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, and Tom Thibodeau at the start of the 2010s. Those teams always came up just short, though, handicapped by their own narrowing thinking and refusal to throw their weight around as a big market club.

The deal the Bulls made for Vucevic on Thursday was the type they should have made when they had Butler. No one would have missed mid-round picks like Bobby Portis, Tony Snell, and Denzel Valentine then. In reality, the Bulls likely never even seriously considered it. By finally ditching GarPax, the Bulls opened up a whole new world of possibilities the franchise had spent decades ignoring.

Perhaps the most exciting thing for the franchise is that there’s more work to be done. Adding Vucevich makes the team better, but it doesn’t exactly lift them to contender status in the East. The Bulls need to take another big swing. You can bet they’re going to do it after the way they overhauled the roster at the trade deadline.

Chicago could still be waiting for its precious draft picks to develop right now if the fans hadn’t taken matters into their own hands. The Reinsdorfs just didn’t care enough to install a new front office themselves. Whether this is the start of the Bulls changing their league-wide perception remains to be seen, but for once the Bulls did something different. They thought big.