#mankin ask

[buruzaitama]

Feliz cumple a este bello personaje!! 💜 Peyote de Shaman King...

*don't repost *

 In the second image, it's the first fanart I drew of him (I didn't know the real color of his hair) ... This is from 14 years ago, in 2007. 

Back then, my nickname used to be Marco Maxwell (I admit I miss it, but it's actually a real name that isn't mine and this is one of the reasons why I changed it)...

[shamipking]

Shaman King has one of those Found Families that makes me yearn.

[vergess]

speaking of anime have you indulged in anything new youve enjoyed while away

I tried out that Hunter x Hunter thing, it's p cute. I like the White Hair Anime Boy(tm) that is Killua. Alas, shonen and shotacon both simply don't do it for me, so it's more of a "I watch my girlfriend watch it" deal.

Damn tho, Hisoka X do X be X sneaky.

I took up My Hero Academia for a while as well, with similar results.

There's a K-ani I enjoyed! Flowering Heart . It's a magical girl show, very cutesy, very aimed at children under 8, and the most potent loli energies I've seen in decades.

The Eva 3+1 film came out like a month ago and it's so good. I felt more emotions watching 3+1 than I felt in an entire decade of MCU.

I recommend it A TON if you either enjoy Evangelion already, or you enjoy highly abstracted apologies for the failures of preceding generations including the way Millennials and below are blamed for the problems they caused even though none of us have the power to fix them, and the resulting total collapse of multiple systems both political and environmental going on around us globally.

Which, uh. Is a big ask for an anime movie! So well done on that!!!

"Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense." is an insane fucking length of title, but honestly, appropriate to the insane fucking comedy of the show. I binged it in two days, and I recommend it heartily if you've ever enjoyed playing an MMO or D&D in that way. You know, the rules fuckery way.

The Shaman King remake rocked my world. Those of you who don't studiously keep a working record of my entire life in your brains may not be aware, but Mankin is the third fandom I ever wrote fanfiction for, and is the first one I ever finished a fic for. Well "a". Many. Shaman King is the reason I am here to day, sitting before you on this blue hell, making this rec list!

The remake? Stellar, magnificent, healed the scars left in me by the 4Kids translation that I didn't even know I had ("HOW, ZEKE???? H O W!!!!!")

My life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! is another long title that matches well the chipper spirit of the show. Have you ever thought to yourself, "wow, I love himbos so much, I just wish bimbos were allowed to have as positive a relationship with the other characters around them!" then this, my friend? This is the show for you.

The protagonist is the sweetest, happiest, and most fundamentally good person ever to be too stupid to fucking function, and everyone around her is utterly and completely in love with her. The men, the women, even the siscon wants to have a triad with her and his sister (who also wants to have the same triad)!

And, last but not least, I mean.

Listen.

You know I watched Interspecies Review. We all know I watched Interspecies Review.

It's a barely not pornographic 12 episode jaunt into the lives of some folks who write up reviews of local brothels in a fantasy setting full of all your favourite (and lesser known) fantasy beings. The sheer amount of fetishes served is mind boggling.

Also one of the characters is a hermaphrodite, which, as one myself, I am always here to see that. Crim the angel has RIGHTS by god!!!!

How would I not have watched it and fallen in love instantly?

[creepy-bi-day]

it started as a joke cause I used to be on tiktok my fyp was kinktok and cosplaying (dont ask how I got kinktok on fyp cause I dont know myself)then mids said "kinktok pat addition then I got ideas so kinktok patrick au is where pat started out with shibari on a mankin then he got a partner who liked what he did, then he started doing shibari on his partner first vid with partner was them tied upall cute (and showed a bit of pats bite marks)(this is gunna be long forgive me its gotta be cut)-jay

Ksfdkjashfjkasfjkhs

GENIUS

[aonik]

It’s been one week since the announcement of Shaman King’s new anime so allow me to spazz here for a bit (the true original purpose of this blog...)

I’ve been literally bouncing off the walls with the preview video looping infinitely in my head. Well, that was until today, but first let me copypaste a list of hopes and dreams I wrote on twitter last week:

In an ideal world, the perfect Mankin anime would be like:

STUDIO BONES or Mappa.

New OP & ED by Megumi (though I could accept something else if it aspires to be as good).

Original seiyuu cast (I think we good on this one).

Around 100~ ep long (or whatever it takes to fit all the KZB comfortably).

Megumi cover of Osorezan Revoir as insert song.

Takei's art style from around vol 20 (you know the one).

No cheap 3D model integration (the angels and weapons deserve to look good)

Extras: Mappa Douji and Zero OVAs (and maybe Princess Hao).

Future hopes: FLOWERS/Red Crimson/The Super Star adaptations...

What brings me to my next point... Before the remake announcement happened, there were news about studio Orange (HnK, Beastars, Dorohedoro) doing a “3DCG remake” of a “familiar” series. And now my heart sinks thinking it might be SK because god how strongly I wish for that to NOT happen. I don’t even feel like explaining myself, I just don’t like 3D and it won’t fit Takei’s style or the collective view the fans have of the series....

And so my life went from an absolute state of bliss to basically this:

I find it amazing that this is something to worry about but here we are.

Yes, this is a big deal to me because Shaman King is the only thing that hasn’t left me mourning its deterioration like many other franchises I loved did, and there was no way that could have happened until this thought came to me. 

Like, for years I was prepared to accept that weapons and stuff would be 3D and ok... but characters? I was certainly not prepared. 

The only good news right now is that is just mere speculation... but I better brace myself for the worst case scenario so the hit doesn’t annihilate me if it turns out to be true (Hao above don’t let that happen...).

For a while we’ll be living in speculation land and that’s kind of terrifying... I literally just want to know what studio is working on this so I can go on with my life and know if I should be YAY or NAY kdfjghfdg I just want it to be 2D and I won’t ask for anything else like the list i made just ditch it altogether ples 

[lesamis]

So, like, was byron hot for keats, or

anon. thank you for asking the real & pressing questions on this fine day. genuinely, i’ve been waiting for this ask my whole life. short answer first: byron’s boiling hatred for keats was indeed, for lack of a better term, kind of horny!   

the longer & more meandering answer: 

byron and keats had no personal relationship at all, never met each other nor wrote to one another, and kept their remarks about one another almost completely about the other’s writing. they had friends in common - hunt and the shelleys - but they didn’t know each other at all. 

that didn’t keep byron from making things weirdly personal. he was offended by keats’s aesthetic principles: himself trying to veer more towards neoclassicism, he thought keats’s writing was overly sensuous and florid; himself admiring and emulating pope, he hated keats’s dismissiveness of any of the 18th century Greats. he found keats’s writing to be immature, indulgent, overeager, and inordinately sensual. it’s not difficult to make a leap from there to the sexualised language byron uses when talking about keats. his greatest hits: 

“The Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch, or whatever his names are: why, his is the Onanism of poetry- something like the pleasure an Italian fiddler extracted out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in Drury Lane.”

“Mr. Keats whose poetry you enquire after - appears to me what I have already said; - such writing is a sort of mental masturbation - he is always frigging his imagination.”

“No more Keats, I entreat - flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the mankin.” 

byron didn’t invent the idea of giving his criticism of keats sexual overtones - the press was on that, too - but he took it further than anyone else. he did this because he was byron, lord of impropriety, and because he took rather classist offense at keats’s lack of wealth and education, which to him lended itself to vulgarity. but i think he also pulled all this to such a personal level because he was annoyed by shelley’s fondness of keats, jealous of the one (1) favourable review keats received, and uncomfortable with such pronounced sensuality as keats’s being found in the writing of a male poet. in hating keats, he was being his usual bastard self, yes, but if we were being fanciful, it’s not too far-fetched to say that he was also having a bit of a sexual crisis. 

(keats, meanwhile, moved from genuine admiration of byron as a teenager to being mostly unimpressed with him as an adult. “Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative” - scathing stuff, john. i would have paid to see them have it out.) 

[thesealishere]

A Speed Date With Markiplier (Egos)! Googleplier X Reader (8/12)

“So! I bet You’re excited for the next date right?” Seal asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Uh, depends on who’s next.”

“That would beeeeeeee... Google! Google is next, thought about getting them all involved but as a group they’re a lot harder to keep track of.” Seal rambled on for a moment before shaking her head. “Anyway! Getting off track, have fun!” And with a snap of her fingers [Y/N] found them in a small coffee shop.

In front of them sat Google, his posture was stiff as his eyes scanned the room before settling on them.

“Hello Google.” [Y/N] smiled as he tilted his head to the side.

“Hello. [Y/N]. I hope this place is alright for you.” He said, his eyes looking to a corner before going back to them.

“Of Course it’s alright! Why wouldn’t it be alright?” They asked with a laugh, wondering what he kept looking at.

“Many forums said that a good destination for a first date was a coffee shop. Though I am not sure if you enjoy coffee or tea or neither.” He listed, adjusting his his seat.

“Well either way I’m sure they’ll have something for me. Are you okay? You keep looking-“ they began to turn their head to try and see what he was looking at but he quickly reached over the table and grabbed their shoulder so they would stop.

“There is nothing to worry about over there. I just thought I... Saw something. Nothing to worry about.” His normal even tone sounded slightly panicked for a moment so they decided to drop it.

“So... Google, how have things been?” They asked, leaning on the table, doubting they actually had time to order and get a drink since the place was busy.

“Would you like updates on current event?” His posture became nearly rigid again.

“No.” [Y/N] couldn’t help but let a small laugh escape. “I want to know how things have been with you. How’ve you been?” They asked and he paused, glancing to the corner once again before his eyes snapped back to them.

“Fine. I’ve been fine.... How about you?” He asked, his eyes going back and forth a few times. They were really starting to get curious now.

“I’ve been busy, but good.” They said and the two made some small talk, [Y/N] having to stop him from searching answers for questions, after catching him looking again they started to try and look at where he kept glancing but he interrupted them .

“I got something for you.” He quickly said before reaching under the table and pulling out a small bundle of flowers to give them.

“Oh thank you! You didn’t have to do this!” They said, taking the flowers from him and sniffing them.

“Results say that getting flowers for a date is optimal.” He said. “And... Roses were the most common, I am... Glad that you like them.” He said, glancing to the corner again.

“You really did a lot of research huh?” They asked and he gave a small nod.

“Current primary objective, take [Y/N] on a nice date. Secondary objective is to destroy mankin- I mean...” he trailed off, looking to the corner again and that was the last straw. Looking to the corner [Y/N] spotted the rest of the Google brothers who immediately ducked down and tried to act like they weren’t just signaling to Google.

“You have them helping you?” They asked with a laugh, Google looking down to the table as they looked back to him.

“They wanted to help with the primary objective. And I was... Concerned that I would mess this up.” He admitted, refusing to look at them.

“That’s very sweet of them. But I believe you could’ve done fine on your own as well.” They assured him, he looked up finally and smiled at them before glancing back to the corner. “What are they doing now?” [Y/N] asked with a laugh.

“Giving me a thumbs up.” He chuckled as well, finding their laugh contagious.

“Well you’ve earned them! I’d says this has been very pleasant.” They reassured him, getting a smile and nod in return.

“Times up.” Seal’s voice echoed in their head and was soon again followed by a snap, [Y/N] finding themselves in the plain room. “That went better than I thought, not surprised the others tried to help. Like I said as a group they’re hard to keep track of.”

“That was fun though! He really tried.”

_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_•_

Google! I really wasn’t sure what kind of date to have for him, then I realized he’d probably just look up common date ideas and go with top results haha! I hope y’all enjoyed reading and as always I accept any and all feedback! ~Seal~

[animefan299110]

LHAW Chapter 4: Training and a Movie

RWBY is owned by Rooster Teeth and the late, great Monty Oum.

                                         -----------------------

Jaune whistled to himself as he moved the spatula through the eggs in the frying pan. It had been a few days since he and Tai had their talk and Jaune felt as though a small portion of the burden that was on his shoulders had been lifted. Granted he still had the occasional nightmares of that night, but it was nice to know that he was slowly starting on the path to recovery. He just wish that Yang was as well.

"Jaune?"

Jaune stilled slightly at the voice behind him. He turned to see said person with her disheveled pajamas and greasy blonde hair. "Oh, hey Yang." Jaune said with a smile. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No; just got up." Yang said, her eyes looking at the sizzling eggs in the pan.

Jaune followed said gaze and was tempted to chuckle a bit. But decided against it since he figured it wouldn't be appropriate to do so. Instead he only asked, "You hungry? I could make you breakfast if you want."

"Huh?" Yang asked in confusion as the smell of the eggs wafted through the air. She snapped out of her stupor and blinked at Jaune. "Oh yeah, sure." Jaune only smiled as he resumed his work. As Yang took a seat at the kitchen table, she turned to him and asked, "By the way, what were you whistling when I came down?"

"Oh that," Jaune said while continuing his craftsmanship in cooking, "that was actually "Prof. Love" by SMOOCH."

"SMOOCH?" Yang asked with a raised eyebrow. "Haven't heard them in ages."

Hearing this, Jaune looked back in surprise and asked, "You used to listen to them?"

"My dad and Summer did." Yang said while shrugging her shoulders. "They used to be big fans of them. I remember whenever one of their songs came on the radio, the two of them would just dance like a pair of knuckleheads and sing the song. Sometimes my dad would have Ruby in a baby carrier and she would move her arms and legs thinking they were playing some game." She smiled a little at the memory of the two adults dancing and singing badly while little Ruby was gurgling and giggling in a baby carrier. Her smile soon turned to a frown as the memory reminded her of a time when everything felt right in the world and not messed up.

Jaune noticed and said nothing as he set a plate with eggs, bacon, and toast in front of Yang. He then sat across from her and began eating as well. There was a moment of silence between the two of them before he finally broke it. "Yeah, my parents were big fans of SMOOCH as well." He said. "It's actually how they met each other."

"Really?" Yang asked.

"Yep." Jaune said simply. "My dad was just going there to have a good time and my mom was a groupie traveling with her friends. She had a little too much to drink that night and my dad brought her back to her hotel room. He left her with a glass of water and a note with his number on the nightstand. She called him the next day and well...the rest is history." Yang nodded; it now made sense where Jaune's gentleman-like persona came from.

Jaune paused a bit to eat his food before he continued. "When I was fifteen, my mom, my dad, my sisters and I went to one of their concerts. My sisters weren't keen on going, but they changed their minds when they found out that the opening act was The Lunatic Jester Brigade."

"So your sisters are into crappy music, huh?" Yang asked with a smirk.

"Yep." Jaune said as he mirrored Yang's smirk before continuing. "Anyway, when SMOOCH came out onto the stage, I was in awe by their music. I remember how I wanted to be cool like them."

"So you wanted to wear makeup in your 50s and sing in front of thousands of old-timers like you?" Yang asked as she gave another smirk.

"You know what I mean." Jaune said, giving Yang a sarcastic glare. "I wanted that confidence that they had to do what they do best. It's a trait I'm lacking." He added sheepishly. Yang nodded in acknowledgement; Jaune certainly had some self-confidence issues, especially when it came to training and knowing girls.

"Who knows?" Yang said with a shrug. "Maybe one day, you'll find something or someone to help you with that."

"What; like a wingman?" Jaune asked incredulously.

"Exactly." Yang answered simply. Jaune only rolled his eyes; he didn't have a lot of male friends and the only one closest to being a wingman was currently traveling to Mistral with a bombastic red-head and a crimson reaper. He frowned slightly at the thought of his teammates and friend and how much he missed them.

The rest of the meal was met with silence between the two blondes. After they had completed their meals, Jaune took the plates and silverware and brought them to the kitchen sink to wash them. Yang, meanwhile, rose from her chair and made her way towards the stairs. But not before turning back to Jaune and saying, "Thanks for breakfast; it was…good."

"No problem, Yang." Jaune said with a smile. "I'm just glad you were willing to join me." Yang returned a small smile and made her way up the stairs. 'At least she's talking and smiling a little.' He thought to himself as he washed the dishes.

When he had placed them on the drying rack, Jaune made his way upstairs and into his room, where he retrieved Crocea Mors and pocketed his Scroll. He then headed downstairs onto the first floor quietly so as to not alert Yang. He walked into the kitchen and opened a side door that led down into the basement. Jaune then locked the door behind him so as to get some privacy.

The Xiao Long house had an interesting basement; not only did it house the heater and electrical box, but it was also set up as a training room for the winter months. Tai had shown it to Jaune before the axe incident and told him that he could use it for training whenever he wanted. The training room had several manikins, benches to relax on, a few Mu ren Zhuang wooden dummies, and a man-made training circle. Jaune couldn't help but notice a few broken pieces of mankins and wooden dummies lying in a heap in a corner. No doubt they were the unfortunate victims of Yang and Ruby's training sessions. 'Mental note,' Jaune thought, 'try not to destroy too much training equipment.'

After setting Crocea Mors down on a bench, he proceeded to move the manikins and wooden dummies out of the training circle. As soon as he made sure the equipment was kept at a safe distance, he pulled out his Scroll and opened the folder that contained the video of Pyrrha. He then propped it up on the bench and pressed "play" before picking up his sword and shield.

As Pyrrha continued to talk, Jaune did not move or follow the intructions at first. He just stood there, wanting to just hear her sweet and caring voice again. It had only been a few months since the fall of Beacon, but he was still haunted by her memory and what had happened between them that day. But despite that day and what he felt he had failed to do, he knew that he couldn't give up on making himself stronger. Not just for her memory, but for all of his friends and teammates.

The video immediately rewound itself to the beginning. ""Alright Jaune, just like we practiced." Pyrrha said. At this, Jaune lifted his sword and shield, waiting for her to continue. "Follow these instructions: shield up. Keep your grip tight. Don't forget to keep your front foot forward." Jaune did as he was told: he lifted his shield slightly higher, tightened the grip on his sword, and placed his left foot forward with his right at a 90⁰ angle.

"Ready?" Pyrrha asked before saying "Go."

"AAAH!" Jaune cried as he thrust the sword forward.

                                            -----------------------

For two hours, he followed Pyrrha's instructions, trusting and swiping the air just as she had taught him. He breathed deeply and slowly as he collapsed down onto the floor. He tried to stand up by using his sword to boost himself up. He then placed his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. He wanted to continue training, but he was too worn out. He gritted his teeth in anger at the thought that despite all of his training, he still felt like he wasn't getting anywhere.

After a few minutes, Jaune decided to call it a day and placed everything back to where it originally was. He then left the basement and went upstairs to take a shower. As he step into the stall, he let the warm water wash over him while trying to calm down. The past was the past; he couldn't change it even if he desperately wanted to. Yet it didn't make him feel any better as he fought the urge to punch the tile wall in frustration.

After he got out of the shower and dried himself off, he felt the dampness of his hoodie and sighed knowing that he would no doubt have to wash it. "I swear I wear that hoodie so much I wonder if people think I don't wear anything else." He said to himself before putting on a white t-shirt. He then went downstairs, put his hoodie in the washer, and sat down to watch some TV. Upon turning it on, a news station immediately popped up with an anchor reporting news about Beacon and Vale. Almost on instinct, Jaune picked up the remote and changed the channel, only to come across another news network reporting the same old information.

"Despite countless searching and questioning, Professor Ozpin, the once great leader and headmaster of Beacon Academy, is still being reported missing."

*CLICK*

"Leo Caspian, an advocate for faunus equality rights, was found dead in his home last night along with his wife and two sons. Originally thought to be the work of human supremacists, experts now confirm that the murders were committed by the White Fang. It has been noted that Mr. Caspian strongly opposed the organization's extremist ways throughout his career."

*CLICK*

"Atlas officials continue to impose a ban on trade and have cut off all communication to the outside world."

*CLICK*

Jaune shook his head as he kept flipping through the channels, each covering a story more sad and depressing than the last. It felt like the entire world was going to hell and it was getting worse every day. He clenched his fist at the fact that the culprits responsible were right in front of him and his friends the whole time and they were all too blind to notice. He remembered how satisfied he was when he had found out that Roman Torchwick met his end at the hands, or rather mouth, of a Griffon Grimm. 'Poetic justice at its finest.' He remembered thinking when he heard the news.

His channel surfing came to an end when he came across the RMC movie channel that showed actor Spruce Willis walking through an airship terminal. As the baggage claim station came into view, the words "Try Hard" zoomed into view. 'Try Hard it is, then.' Jaune thought before setting the remote and leaning back into the couch.

Five minutes into the movie, Jaune noticed some movement to his right. He turned and was surprised to see Yang walking down the stairs. "Oh, hey Yang." He said.

"Don't mind me," she said with a wave of her hand. "I just came down to get a snack. I'll be out of your hair so-" She stopped, however, when she saw what was playing on the TV. "Are you watching 'Try Hard'?" She asked curiously.

"Y-Yeah." Jaune said in surprise. "S-Sorry if the volume is too loud; I can turn down if I'm disturbing you."

"No; it's fine." Yang said as she sat on the opposite end of the couch. "I actually like this movie. Did I miss much?"

"Not really," Jaune said as he shrugged, "Spruce Willis' Shawn McCain found out that his wife is registered under her maiden name. No action yet."

They sat in silence for a bit, watching the terrorists find Tony's dead body on the stairs with the words "Now I have a gun" written on his shirt. "You know," Jaune said, finally breaking the silence, "I'm sad Alan Bickman is dead; he was a great actor and this movie helped cement his name into the movie business."

"Hmm." Yang hummed in acknowledgement.

They soon came across the signature moment when Spruce talked into the radio and said "Yippee ki yay, mother******". "Oh right; I forgot." Jaune said in disappointment. "RMC censors that phrase."

"It's stupid, really." Yang added. "I mean it's one of my favorite quotes and they have to ruin it.

"I know, right?" Jaune said in agreement. "It's one of the most iconic action movie quotes and they tarnish it by censoring it."

"Exactly." Yang replied.

Sometime later, the screen showed Spruce crawling through the air ducts muttering to himself.

"You know," Jaune said, "this scene always irks me. He's crawling through a metal air duct and he's talking to himself. First, metal isn't exactly silent when you crawl on it. Second, the echoes are going to reverberate off the walls and out the vents. At some point, one of the terrorists is going to hear him."

"Huh." Yang muttered with a raised eyebrow. "Never really thought of that until now." They decided to watch the rest of the movie in silence, just so they wouldn't be talking over an important scene.

It was during a slow scene that Yang's gaze fell on Jaune. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was something different about him. It wasn't his hair since he never changed it up. The dilemma wracked her brain until her eyes fell upon a piece of clothing he was wearing. It made so much sense now: he wasn't wearing his signature hoodie and armor.

It was a bit surprising for Yang considering the only time Jaune didn't have his hoodie and armor on was during non-combative classes. In those, they were required to wear their school uniforms and nothing else.

Gazing at Jaune without his signature equipment, she noticed that he had gotten slightly bigger over the year, not in body fat, but in muscle build. He may not be as bulky as the guys she was into, but he was a far cry from the noodle he was when he first came to Beacon. She then glanced at his arms, which had developed some muscle as well and seemed to hug the sleeve of his shirt. 'Wow,' Yang thought as her cheeks turned slightly pink, 'guess Pyrrha's training really paid off.'

"Y-Yang?"

"Huh?" Jaune's question suddenly snapped her out of her thoughts. She blinked a few times before noticing that Jaune was looking at her with concern. "Oh…sorry Jaune." She said. "What's up?"

"Nothing much." Jaune said. "It's just that you were staring at me for a while now. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine." Yang said with a wave of her hand. "I just noticing that you didn't have your hoodie and armor on."

Jaune glanced down and smiled as calmness washed over him. He looked back at her and said "Oh this? I was training downstairs in the basement and my hoodie got damp. I put it in the washer and my armor is upstairs."

"Oh," Yang said once the truth was revealed, "sorry, it's just….I've never seen you wear anything other than your hoodie and school uniform."

Jaune paused for a bit as he contemplated that bit of information. It was true that while at Beacon, he had only worn his hoodie and school uniform. But then again, Beacon had a pretty strict dress code, second only to Atlas. "Well," Jaune began as he scratched his head, "I guess I never really needed to use this shirt. I mostly kept it around in case of an emergency."

"Hmm" Yang said, turning her attention back to the TV. After a few minutes, however, she said "You know, you should wear it more often. It looks good on you."

"Oh." Jaune said, a bit surprised that Yang made that comment. "Um…d-duly noted. Thanks for the advice." Yang only nodded before turning her attention back to the movie.

It's wasn't long before McCain and his wife left with Fargyle and the credits began to roll. Jaune then turned the TV off and began to stretch while Yang rose from her spot and made to leave for her room. Jaune suddenly got an idea and when Yang was at the foot of the stairs, he said "Wait, Yang." The girl stopped and looked at him. "I was just wondering," he began while scratching his head, "maybe we could do this again sometime. You and me, watching a movie, just…hanging out." He took notice of her impassive expression and quickly added, "I-I mean, that's if you want to. I don't want to put any pressure on you. I-I just thought it would be a nice way to hang out. A-As friends, of course."

Yang continued to say nothing as she made her way up the stairs, resulting in Jaune's face to shatter in disappointment. Halfway up though, she paused and looked down at him. After a minute of silence, she said, "Sure."

"W-What?" Jaune asked in surprise by Yang's answer.

"Your idea of hanging out and watching movies…I'm willing to do it." She said. She then pointed her finger at Jaune and said, "But no romantic comedies; they're cheesy as hell. So no Nottingham Hill or 30 First Dates."

Jaune only smiled as he chuckled and said, "Sure thing Yang." Yang returned a small smile as she continued upstairs. Jaune sighed contently and turned the TV back on. 'At least she agreed.' Jaune thought to himself, 'that's a start.'

                                         ----------------------------

And thus concludes another chapter for Love Heals All Wounds. Well guys, I have an announcement. After I publish the next chapter for my My Hero Academia story, I will be taking a break from writing from May 21st to June 17th. Even writers need vacations.

But that doesn't necessarily mean I am abandoning my current stories. I just need to "recharge my batteries" so to speak...and now I'm reminded of Penny. Excuse me...

*Twenty minutes of crying later...*

Anyway, don't forget to favorite, review, and follow for more updates. And of course, kudos to Kerlongsj Evert Orlejov for beta reading this chapter. Next time on Love Heals All Wounds...there will be some angst, though not as much as the second chapter.

Until next time, this is AnimeFan299110 encouraging you all to go out with a Yang...I'm not even going to say it anymore.

[0bsidian5ire]

Prompt #8: Interdepartmental Collaboration

Prompt: No Prompt! from @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast's #ffxivwrite2019

"So you're the one helpin' out with K'lyhia's Doswmaga problem," said a cheerful voice over Kharagal's shoulder. Kharagal looked up from the book she was thumbing through over her lunch break. Standing behind her was a hyur woman a few ilms taller then Kharagal was. With her shoulder-length honey-blond hair, brown eyes and tanned skin, she looked unremarkable in Limsa. What did stand out was her clothing. It looked like nothing more than lengths of cloth and straps of leather snuggly knotted and buckled around the woman's body.

"And you are?" said Kharagal. Eorzea had less scruples than Hingashi about walking around partially naked, but what the woman was wearing pushed even most Eorzean sensibilities.

"Jus' mankin' sure Thubyrgeim didn' go assignin' a wet-behind-the-ears youngster to this one." The women fluidly slid into the empty seat at the table and began filing her nails with a long knife far to sharp for the job. "Way Jacke tells it, Doswmaga was thrown out o' Limsa and told he'd be killed if he ever tried to trade anywhere under Limsa's protection. That's he gathering men and dodgin' the assayers is a direct violation to that."

"And you think I'm a 'wet-behind-the-ears youngster'?" Kharagal was almost offended at that. It was hard not to be when she'd been riding her yol before she turned eighteen, a very young age for a mage to conquer Bardam's Mettle.

The woman laughed. "Quite the opposite. I have half a mind to grab you and my boyfriend and take care of the bastard ourselves." She sighed. "Unfortunately, that would rob K'lythia o' the opportunity to defeat her tormentor and that often does wonders for people's self-confidence."

"So you're letting the situation play out by itself unless you have to get involved?" Kharagal could respect that approach. It saved the Meirqid a lot of time and resources time and time again.

"More or less. K'lyhia's plans do tend to work out." The woman smiled. "That said, if K'lyhia's plan don' work out, feel free to kill the bastard. You'll be savin' us the trouble of trackin' 'im down again." She tapped her chin with flat of her knife. "I was goin' to give you this after Doswmaga was taken' care of, but I think I'll give this to you now..." The woman pulled out a slip of paper and wrote out a few lines in Eorzean script on it. "Assumin' Doswmaga does get taken care of, head to the warehouse closest to the Fishers' Guild and give this to V'olh Tia." She tucked the slip into the pages of the book Kharagal had been reading. "He'll give you your cut o' the take."

"And how do I know you're really with the people who enforce the Code?" Kharagal crossed her arms over her chest. This was very convenient. A little too convenient in fact.

The woman's face broke out into a grin. "Ask Thubyrgeim about Carmen Mercer. I'm sure she'll be willin' to tell you all about me." With that, she got up from her seat and did something that caused her to disappear into thin air.

Kharagal stared at the spot the woman had last been seen at and gaped. That... is like something out of a Confederacy ninja myth. Without further ado, she collected her books and headed back to the Arcanist Guild. She had to talk to Thubyrgeim.

Author's Notes: Yep, this is the first time Kharagal meets Carmen. Carmen meanwhile, has been checking out this competent foreigner who showed up at the same time Doswmaga started becoming more active and making sure there isn't any link between the two of them for quite a while. By now, Carmen's decided she wouldn't mind having Kharagal as back-up for some of the Rouge Guild missions that have good odds of getting messy.

[ericgilbertwilliams-blog]

2 Hidden Profit Opportunities For Your Business

READ THE LESSON: 

A business without a good operations team is like a hot looking 2019 sports car with a T-lizzie engine under the hood. All looks with no substance! And that means you could be leaving a lot of profit opportunities on the table. 

Now, I’m sure there are many among you that consider this rather obvious. So let me ask you this instead – when was the last time you took a step back from your sales or marketing strategies, and fine-tuned your operations team? Do you put as much care and attention into operations as you do in other departments?

Fine Tuning A Great Operations Team for Your Business

In 2017, Michael Mankins reported on the Harvard Business Review that the average company loses 20% of its productive capacity to operational drag. That means most small to mid-sized businesses lose about a day’s worth of work each week, just because their own cluttered work process and operational flow keeps tripping up their employees. You know those glorious margins your sales team was busting its backside to close for you last month? Say goodbye to them.

As a rule of thumb, you don’t want your operations team struggling because your business is mired by red tape – you want them struggling to keep up only because the demand for your product is that high!

Here are just a few of the many things a well-oiled operations team does for your business, it;

Creates strategies to constantly streamline your company’s work flow to cut out any step that’s dead weight, 

Allows your sales team to make competitive and sometimes outrageous promises for product delivery to prospective clients, and then figures out how to make them a reality, 

Micromanages individual steps in other departments’ operations so that you, as the boss, don’t have to do the same, 

Helps you safeguard and expand your profit margins, 

Is the reason why you don’t have dissatisfied customers, removing the need for customer service personnel solely tasked to deal with them, plus much more.

So how do you fine-tune your operations team to ensure that they can do all of the above, and more, for you? These two steps should be a good start.

1. Lay Down A Concrete Business Ideology For Your Operations Team

Most small to mid-sized business owners undervalue the need for a concrete working ideology because they believe ‘Make me money, aggressively’ suffices as one. That’s not a vision. Unless you’re running a non-profit, profits is the entire point of a business.

‘Make me money, by stripping costs as low as you can’ on the other hand is a different story. So is ‘Make me money, by minimizing internal and external time required to deliver a service or product’.

Figure out your mantra. Hammer it into your team members. The mantra may or may not change in a few months – but there should always be one.

The point of a clear ideology in the minds of your operations team is that it allows them to chalk out impactful long and short term goals, and then work towards them.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish” 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The “Operations Playbook”, released in 2014 by the National Center for the Middle Market, breaks the operations team’s job into four major sub-systems: problem-solving, daily management, overall business strategy, and people development. Discussing all four of these as a priority with your operations team in your Monday morning meetings not only helps them identify key metrics for the week to come, but also lets you gauge whether those actions align with your long-term business goals for the coming fiscal year.

2. Take Your Teams Feedback, Often

A great operations team isn’t just made up of employees who provide a quick turnaround and product delivery to your clients. That’s a given necessity for survival. A great operations team is one that has people working for you that live and breathe the details of your business…with passion!

For smaller businesses that are doing well enough to stay in the black, the biggest danger is complacency. ‘Why change something that works’ becomes such an ingrained thought in the company’s work culture that when a new situation does come along, no one dealing with it is adaptable enough to come up with new solutions. This state is called ‘active inertia’, and it’s often the death of a business.

Now, if your business is doing alright but struggling to grow, then I can assume at least some of the following points are true for you:

You have people with the right mind-set in your operations team; 

You regularly discuss short and long term plans with them; 

You at least have some systems in place to gather data from all your different teams; 

You regularly keep an eye on key performance metrics in your data to see how your business is doing.

Here’s what you need to do to unlock your next stage of growth – take your operations team’s feedback, often. A 2016 Forbes article identified the boss’ ego and the employee’s fear of questioning the status quo as the two major reasons for complacency in a business. However, it’s erroneous to equate asking a question to your boss about their plan of action with challenging the operational hierarchy.

Naval submariners work in a culture where even the junior-most sailor can ask a question of the highest officer in command, with clear expectations of receiving a thoughtful answer. In turn, the questions asked of them often reveal to the higher officers the thought processes of their sailors, and help identify potential problems in the submarine before they arise.

‘Min-maxing’ is a fascinating term from video gaming culture. It means finding ways to produce the maximum output possible in a set time with the minimum required input. More so than any other employees, your operations team members are your sailors in the submarine. As such, they’re the ones best positioned to ‘min-max’ your work process and operational flow. If you believe you have the right people in place, you ignore their feedback at your own peril.

Min-Max Your Business: Maximize Your Profits

“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe.” 

Muhammad Ali

If you take away just one thing from this article, let it be this – Your operations team is single-handedly responsible for both lowering your business costs, and maximizing the amount of work you can get done in a day.

Their job is to remove the pebble in your shoe. The potential profit margins that your sales team negotiates mean little if you’re throwing away valuable work hours into a black hole of redundancies and cluttered work processes.

Moreover, giving your operations team the importance they deserve will also very likely boost their own motivation, inspiring them to do better for the business’ success. And we’ve already seen how effective inspiration alone can be for productivity in a business.

However, if you’re wondering why I didn’t lay down specific key metrics and performance indicators that your operations team should concentrate on – that’s because they differ rather wildly depending on your type of business, your product, and your own vision for the company.

That’s precisely why I offer a complementary first consultation to any business looking to maximize its potential. Click here to book your free session, and let’s unlock those profits your business truly deserves.

by: Eric Gilbert-Williams

[nciwch]

Why is Baby Crawling On Hands & Knees Important for Development?

From Green Child.

Last updated on January 17, 2019 By Eliza Parker 

Many parents ask, “Should I encourage my baby to crawl?” Especially if their child seems more interested in walking as an early mode of movement rather than crawling.

But skipping the baby crawling on hands & knees stage may cause your child to miss some important developmental boosts – both mentally and physically.

Baby Crawling

Research has shown that baby crawling increases hand-eye coordination, gross and fine motor skills (large and refined movements), balance, and overall strength.

Crawling Age: When Do Babies Crawl?

The crawling age starts as early as 6 months but can be delayed by an additional 4 months or more. If Baby is nearing the crawling age, it may be time to consider the following development benefits of crawling and ways to help Baby crawl.

Crawling Baby Brain Development: CrissCross Crawling

There are two main types of baby crawling: belly crawling and hands & knees crawling. Unlike belly crawling, which relies on coordination of the same-side leg and arm when fully mastered, hands & knees crawling requires coordination of opposite-side limbs. This is called contra-lateral or cross-lateral (crossing sides). This movement sequences diagonally through the body as the crawling baby reaches forward with one hand while her opposite knee follows.

Why is crisscross motion important?

There’s an important pathway between the brain’s hemispheres—a band of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. The crisscrossing of movement of baby crawling on hands and knees through the body supports this crisscrossing of information in the brain. That is, crawling helps develop this band of nerves that allows the hemispheres of Baby’s brain to communicate with each other.

Dr. Carla Hannaford explains in her book, Smart Moves: Why Leaning Is Not All in Your Head, “Cross lateral movements, like a baby’s crawling, activate both hemispheres in a balanced way. These activities work both sides of the body evenly and involve coordinated movements of both eyes, both ears, both hands and both feet as well as balanced core muscles.”

“When both eyes, both ears, both hands and feet are being used equally, the corpus callosum orchestrating these processes between the two hemispheres becomes more fully developed. Because both hemispheres and all four lobes are activated, cognitive function is heightened and ease of learning increases.”

What happens when crawling baby can then combine upper-lower and side-side coordination in her body? She can move diagonally (crossing sides). Additionally, with the spinal axis giving her an up and a down, she will now be able to move any way she wants – three dimensionally.

The Ability to Cross Mid line

That is, to move a limb to the opposite side of the body. This is important for reflex integration, daily function, vision, hearing, and learning.

Spine rotation: Crawling necessitates a twisting coordination through the torso.

Strengthens the lower back in preparation for being upright

Prepares the ankles for the bending and straightening needed later in walking

Strengthens hand-eye coordination because it requires Baby to reach with her hands

Crawling Prepares the Hip Joints for Standing and Walking

Crawling helps organize and shape the hip sockets. As Keith Mankin, MD notes, “The muscle function starts to reshape the hips. As the hips reshape, pulled inward and forward by the muscle function, they become stronger and better positioned to lift the body and to start forward propulsion. And ultimately, these functional changes lead to increased strength and balance which lift the child upward into stance and walking.”

Crawling on Hands & Knees Supports Reading Skills

All this integration of brain halves, reflexes, and hand-eye coordination helps prepare the brain and body for reading. Crawling supports learning, creative problem solving, and brain function in general—so it’s also beneficial at any other age!

Do Creative Crawling Options Count?

Some babies crawl with one knee and one foot or scoot on their bottom. These babies very wisely found a solution for getting around!

However, these options actually indicate that they’re having difficulty coordinating or weight bearing on both hands and both knees. There are many reasons why this can happen, from both internal and external influences. So when one of these is their only option, they can miss out on some of the benefits of crawling. If your baby is moving creatively, there are fun, nonjudgmental, noninvasive ways to encourage hands and knees crawling!

But Some Say Crawling Isn’t Important

You may hear this. It’s sometimes stated for the simple fact that crawling on hands & knees doesn’t always happen these days—so if babies aren’t doing it, it must not be important. However, there are a few current parenting trends that can contribute to the inhibition of reflexes and typical motor development in general, such as propping in exersaucers or upright holding devices. An increase in the skipping of crawling points to these and other factors—it doesn’t indicate that crawling is not important.

Dr. Hannaford explains, “We have known for years that children who miss the vitally important crawling stage may exhibit learning difficulties later on. Baby crawling on hands and knees, a cross-lateral movement, activates development of the corpus callosum. This gets both sides of the body working together, including the arms, legs, eyes (binocular vision) and the ears (binaural hearing). With equal stimulation, the senses more fully access the environment and both sides of the body can move in a more integrated way for more efficient action.”

How to Help Baby Crawl (at any stage)

There are some things you can do from the beginning, as well as at any stage, to help baby crawl!

• Provide your baby with as much floor time as possible. This will give her freedom to explore her movement. It will be extra enticing if you join her on the floor!

• Allow her to discover sitting and standing completely on her own in order to help baby crawl. This will build adequate strength and coordination needed for supporting herself on hands and knees.

• As much as possible, avoid keeping your baby held directly upright in sitting and standing either by propping devices or by hand. This will help prevent her from developing excess tension that can make crawling harder and can even encourage scooting.

• Notice if your baby arches a lot, doesn’t want to curl into a ball and cuddle, doesn’t use both arms or legs, prefers to sit rather than move around on her tummy, habitually rolls long distances, may skip a milestone, or doesn’t seem to be interested in moving. These can be signs that respectful support could help provide your baby with more freedom of movement.

• Lastly, when helping your baby crawl, always listen to your gut feelings, even if you’re told not to worry about it or that your baby will grow out of it. Baby crawling on hands & knees is profoundly important. There’s no rush for a crawling baby to stand and walk. Allow baby to crawl for as long as she will, without “walking” her, until she chooses to walk on her own, and reap the benefits for a lifetime.

[intrpd]

Societal Readiness Levels: Ready for a new normal?

Monika Büscher

‘What gets measured gets done’ – a treacherous mantra of our times. As societies bend to a technocratic Gestell of indicators, their compliance feeds its power. In her critique of the New Urban Agenda’s call for urban resilience, Maria Kaika highlights how indicator-based planning can undermine communities. She cites Tracie Washington’s defense of disaster victims:

everytime you say, “Oh, they’re resilient, [it actually] means you can do something else, … We were not born to be resilient; we are conditioned to be resilient. I don’t want to be resilient …. [I want to] fix the things that [create the need for us to] be resilient [in the first place]

Tracie Washington, President of the Louisiana Justice Institute, in Kaika (2017).

Kaika shows how indicators designed to support resilience can end up supporting an ‘immunological’ ideology. A technocratic, managerial, solutionist smart city innovation agenda, she argues, ‘vaccinates citizens and environments so that they can take larger doses of inequality and degradation in the future’ (2017:89). The concept of ‘Technology Readiness Levels’ (TRL) is part of this agenda, as is the emergent concept of Societal Readiness Levels (SRL) (Fig 1). However, an affirmative critique (Braidotti 2011)of SRL may offer a lifeline off this self-destructive juggernaut.

Figure 1 Visualisations of Societal and Technological Readiness (Source: (Allwood et al. 2017)(right), (Schraudner et al. 2018)(left))

Developed by NASA as a ‘systematic metric/measurement system that supports assessments of the maturity of a particular technology’ and comparison between different types of technology (Mankins 1995), the TRL metric has spread to guide multi-trillion global innovation programmes. TRL embody a culture of solutionism (Morozov 2013), where technology is seen as a product designed to fulfill societal or operational needs or ambitions. SRL critique this technocractic focus. The SRL concept originates in debates about a transition towards low carbon futures (Allwood et al 2017, Fig 1 left) and the Danish Innovation Fund’s attempt to find a ‘way of assessing the level of societal adaptation of, for instance, a particular … innovation (whether social or technical) to be integrated into society’ (Fig 1 right). The two approaches are different in aim, one focused on a societal transformation where a socio-technical change of reduced material demand has become ‘normal practice’ at the highest SRL level, the other on measuring successful (profitable) embedding of (desire for) a product.

The Danish Innovation Fund’s SRL framework in particular has received interest from major actors like UK and EU research funding bodies. This indicates that concerns with the social dimension of innovation have become mainstream. The 2050 European Energy Roadmap, for example, recognises that citizens’ active participation in energy management is ‘as critical as technology to making the European energy system more flexible and sustainable’, and smart city innovation is scrambling to become ‘citizen-focused’. However, such citizen-focus all-too-often remains – at best! –at a ‘placating’ level (Cardullo and Kitchin 2019), at worst it constitutes cynical lip-service for moreintrusive commercial and security-driven exploitation of citizen data in ‘Lifeworld.Inc’ (Thrift 2011).

Mainstreaming attention to the social through SRL has failed so far. Why? Does this mean the very idea is ideologically corrupted like the New Urban Agenda’s resilience indicator-based approach? Or is failure down to a lack of societal readiness of the currently dominant SRL concept itself? Measurement and comparison have proved critical to societal transformation before (Mosley 2009). And as rapid societal transformation is needed to avert the collapse of humanity, could societal readiness be conceived differently? Allwood et al’s concern with a new normal as the highest level of societal readiness resonates with social science debates that the Danish Innovation Fund seems oblivious to. The summary below is designed to explore how we might give new direction to SRL.

Christensen’s recognition that innovation is often disruptive of existing socio-economic orders (Christensen 1997; Christensen et al 2015)highlights that technologies are not products to be inserted into a ‘context’ but catalysts for change. The concept of mode-2 science and society (Nowotny et al 2001)addresses this disruptive element and the unintended, un-known and unknow-able consequences of innovation. Mode-2 society and mode-2 science are based on interdisciplinary collaboration, and methods of collective experimentation (Felt and Wynne 2008), where scientists and citizens, organisations, technology developers and those who appropriate technology, bring together and contest social and technological innovation. Opportunities for such collaboration are often clustered at the implementation end of innovation, but calls to create them further upstream are beginning to define methodologies for citizen engagement on higher rungs of the ladder of participation (Arnstein 1969)to conduct Experiment Earth(Stilgoe 2016).

The result of such efforts should be more carefully radical and radically careful design (Latour 2008). Methods for achieving it cluster around experimentation, creative, artistic disruption and the strategic power of ignorance and surprise (Gross 2010). Gross suggests that given our inevitable ignorance in the face of complex systemic disruptions and unintended consequences of innovation it is critical that we generate as much surprise as early as possible. Simulation, play, broad-base dialogue and collaborative learning are essential for this. Introna (2007)adds an ethical dimension with his call for disclosive ethics and a focus on reversibility – it is important to not allow innovations to settle too fast. Recent efforts to define a digital ethics by the European Data Protection Supervisors’ Office address this need to give ethical issues a broader than regulatory exposure, including public consultation (EDPS 2015; 2018)

What is the role of the social scientist in this? Braidotti's (2011)demand to move beyond critique and into constructive endeavours or affirmative critique, require the courage to ‘stick one’s neck out’ and make value-based normative recommendations for how things should be organized in better ways. Failure and being wrong are obvious dangers. But there might be ways of doing it playfully and in safe spaces, experimentally, creatively, and collectively, which resonates strongly calls for an experimental sociology (Thrift 2011), inventive and speculative methods (Lury and Wakeford 2013; Michael 2016). It also sits well with suggestions that it is not necessarily deliberation or consensus that should be sought. Instead participatory designers and action researchers are calling on us to engage in infrastructuring for participation, seeking to include and enable dissent, debate, ongoing experimentation (Ehn 2008; Dantec and DiSalvo 2013)

Levitas’ utopia as method (2013)provides perhaps the most integrative framework for these endeavours. This is a creative appropriation of utopia not as a blueprint of a ‘better’ world designed by experts, but a method to engage diverse stakeholders in making better pockets of the world together, all the while remaining open to experiencing how and for whom this worldly constellation is (not) better and how. Collective narrative methods and visual story-building methods are particularly suited (Porritt 2013; McKay and Dickson 2016; Popan 2018)

None of these contributions have so far made it into definitions of SRL. The Danish Innovation Fund’s focus on validation, testing, deployment supports experimentation, but it is driven by a concern with social acceptance (and not the acceptability) of innovation, based on a deficit model of poor public understanding of science and technology. To ask, with Tsing(2015), and through research and innovation, ‘what if the time was ripe for sensing precarity?’ and ‘what constitutes living with it well?’, SRL need to be co-created, they need to measure how innovations enable a good ‘new normal’, and this needs to be open to contestation.

References

Allwood, Julian M., Timothy G. Gutowski, André C. Serrenho, Alexandra C. H. Skelton, and Ernst Worrell. 2017. ‘Industry 1.61803: The Transition to an Industry with Reduced Material Demand Fit for a Low Carbon Future’. Philosophical Transactions. Series A, Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences375 (2095). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2016.0361.

Arnstein, Sherry R. 1969. ‘A Ladder Of Citizen Participation: : Vol 35, No 4’. Journal of the American Institute of Planners35 (4): 216–24.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2011. Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nomadic-Theory-Portable-Braidotti-Paperback/dp/0231151918.

Cardullo, Paolo, and Rob Kitchin. 2019. ‘Being a “Citizen” in the Smart City: Up and down the Scaffold of Smart Citizen Participation in Dublin, Ireland | SpringerLink’. GeoJournal84 (1): 1–13.

Christensen, Clayton M. 1997. The Innovator’s Dilemma. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press.

Christensen, Clayton M., Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald. 2015. ‘What Is Disruptive Innovation?’ Harvard Business Review, 1 December 2015. https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation.

Dantec, Christopher A Le, and Carl DiSalvo. 2013. ‘Infrastructuring and the Formation of Publics in Participatory Design’. Social Studies of Science43 (2): 241–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312712471581.

EDPS. 2015. ‘Opinion 4/2015: Towards a New Digital Ethics. Data, Dignity and Technology’. https://edps.europa.eu/sites/edp/files/publication/15-09-11_data_ethics_en.pdf.

———. 2018. ‘Public Consultation on Digital Ethics’. https://edps.europa.eu/sites/edp/files/publication/18-09-25_edps_publicconsultationdigitalethicssummary_en.pdf.

Ehn, Pelle. 2008. ‘Participation in Design Things’. In Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory Design 2008, 92–101. PDC ’08. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Indiana University. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1795234.1795248.

Felt, U., and B. Wynne, eds. 2008. Taking European Knowledge Society Seriously. Vimodrone, IPOC: IPOC di Pietro Condemi. https://sts.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/i_sts/Ueber_uns/pdfs_Felt/taking_european_knowledge_society_seriously.pdf.

Gross, Matthias. 2010. Ignorance and Surprise | The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ignorance-and-surprise.

Introna, Lucas D. 2007. ‘Maintaining the Reversibility of Foldings: Making the Ethics (Politics) of Information Technology Visible.’ Ethics and Information Technology9 (1): 11–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-006-9133-z.

Kaika, Maria. 2017. ‘“Don’t Call Me Resilient Again!”: The New Urban Agenda as Immunology … or … What Happens When Communities Refuse to Be Vaccinated with “Smart Cities” and Indicators’. Environment and Urbanization29 (1): 89–102. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247816684763.

Latour, Bruno. 2008. ‘A Cautious Prometheus ? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design’, September. https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00972919.

Levitas, Ruth. 2013. Utopia as Method - The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780230231962.

Mankins, John C. 1995. ‘Technology Readiness Levels. White Paper’. NASA. https://aiaa.kavi.com/apps/group_public/download.php/2212/TRLs_MankinsPaper_1995.pdf.

McKay, J, and B Dickson. 2016. ‘Dreams of a Low Carbon Future : Doctoral Training Centre in Low Carbon Technologies’. Leeds University. https://lowcarbon.leeds.ac.uk/dreams-of-a-low-carbon-future/.

Mosley, Stephen. 2009. ‘“A Network of Trust”: Measuring and Monitoring Air Pollution in British Cities, 1912-1960’. Environment and History15 (3): 273–302.

Nowotny, Helga, Peter Scott, and Michael Gibbons. 2001. Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Re-Thinking-Science-Knowledge-Public-Uncertainty/dp/0745626084.

Popan, Cosmin. 2018. Bicycle Utopias: Imagining Fast and Slow Cycling Futures. London: Routledge. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bicycle-Utopias-Imagining-Changing-Mobilities/dp/1138389188.

Porritt, Jonathan. 2013. The World We Made: Alex McKay’s Story from 2050. Phaidon Press. https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-We-Made-McKays-Story/dp/0714863610.

Schraudner, Martina, Fabian Schroth, Malte Juetting, Simone Kaiser, Jeremy Millard, and Shenja Can der Graaf. 2018. ‘Social Innovation The Potential for Technology Development, RTOs and Industry.  Policy Paper’. Fraunhofer. http://www.thertoinnovationsummit.eu/en/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/20181220_RTO-Innovation-Summit_Policy-Paper-1.pdf.

Stilgoe, Jack. 2016. Experiment Earth: Responsible Innovation in Geoengineering. Boca Raton: CRC Press. https://www.crcpress.com/Experiment-Earth-Responsible-innovation-in-geoengineering/Stilgoe/p/book/9781138691940.

Thrift, Nigel. 2011. ‘Lifeworld Inc—And What to Do about It’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space29 (1): 5–26. https://doi.org/10.1068/d0310.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10581.html.

[junker-town]

Is Super Bowl 53 going to be Gronk’s last game?

Rob Gronkowski’s lofty salary cap hit in 2019 may mean he doesn’t get to play with the Patriots again even if he decides not to retire.

Rob Gronkowski has only played in nine NFL seasons with 100 regular season starts and another 16 games in the playoffs. That’s a long time, but it isn’t even close to the 16 and 17 seasons that Antonio Gates and Tony Gonzalez played, respectively.

That’ll inevitably matter in “Greatest Tight End Ever” debates, because it’s really possible that Gronkowski won’t play a 10th season in the NFL. And even if he decides he wants to play another year, the Patriots may decide Super Bowl 53 was his last game with the team.

Regardless, Gronk has a very real case as the best ever at his position.

Since arriving as a second-round pick for the Patriots in 2010, he has played football like a T-800. Gronk’s been bigger and stronger than whatever poor defender has been given the unfortunate assignment to cover him. It got him a ridiculous 74 touchdowns (including the playoffs) before he even turned 27. It took Gates — the all-time leader in touchdowns for a tight end — until he was 31 to reach that number.

Why would Gronk consider retiring?

The downside to Gronk’s fearless play is that it has been more than enough to accumulate a long list of injuries. He’s had surgeries to repair his knee, his forearm, and he’s had several operations on his back — which started giving him problems in college.

Now, he’s a few months away from his 30th birthday and he’s basically held together by duct tape. Gronk caught only three touchdowns during the regular season and tallied 52.5 receiving yards per game — his lowest average since his rookie year. The playoffs showed he can still make a difference when it matters most, but it looks like his best, most dominant days are well in the rearview mirror.

He was asked days before the Super Bowl if retirement is a possibility, and gave a perfectly Gronk answer. Via NFL:

“Yes. No. Maybe so.” Then laughed.

Last year, he spent a couple months considering retirement after Super Bowl 52. He also threatened to walk away when the Patriots came close to trading him to the Detroit Lions.

That means you shouldn’t be surprised if Super Bowl 53 was the last game for Gronkowski in New England — and possibly, the NFL.

Gronk’s contract will be too expensive for the Patriots’ taste

The Patriots aren’t exactly sentimental. Many of the most important pieces of their nearly two-decade reign of terror have been shipped off or released before they got too expensive to keep around.

Logan Mankins, Richard Seymour, Wes Welker, Vince Wilfork, Ty Law, and Mike Vrabel are just a few of the Patriots legends who had to finish their NFL careers elsewhere.

So it wouldn’t be surprising at all if the Patriots decide Gronkowski’s $11.86 million salary cap hit in 2019 is too high. It would actually be shocking if they didn’t. He’s one of only four tight ends in the NFL — along with Jimmy Graham, Zach Ertz, and Travis Kelce — due to count more than $10 million against his team’s salary cap next season.

New England can recoup $9.86 million of that cap space by parting ways with Gronkowski. That’d make sense, because — save for a few flashes of his former self — Gronk has mostly looked like a tight end worth a fraction of his current price tag.

It doesn’t help either that the Patriots reportedly believe Gronkowski’s preparation for the 2018 season is partly to blame for his difficult year.

Did Gronk hurt his own cause before the season even got going? #Patriots pic.twitter.com/5hzAJdcBbv

— Michael Giardi (@MikeGiardi) February 3, 2019

“Internally, the Patriots feel like Gronkowski brought some of this on himself,” NFL Network’s Mike Giardi said Sunday of Gronk’s recent injuries. “When he reported, he came in not as strong, not as fast, and not as explosive. While he had a very good first game against the Houston Texans, then — all of a sudden — the injuries popped up to the ankle, to the Achilles, and to the back.

“The Patriots feel as though if he had maybe done it their way as opposed to the TB 12 way — of which Gronk is devoted to — maybe things would’ve been different.”

It’s possible the Patriots will ask Gronk to take a pay cut to bring that salary hit down. But that’s asking a player who is already verging on retirement to come back for more punishment at a discount price.

Will Gronk be willing to return for less, or for a different team?

The 2011 season is the only time in Gronk’s career that he started all 16 regular season games. He missed three games this year, two last year, and eight the year before that.

It’s not often that a player retires at age 30, but not many have taken the punishment Gronk has in such a short amount of time. Here’s a quick recap of the injuries he’s accumulated in the NFL:

2011: Sprained his ankle in the AFC Championship against the Ravens. He played injured in Super Bowl XLVI and had surgery later that month.

2012: Broke his forearm causing him to miss five games and have surgery.

2013: Broke his forearm again in January, and missed the Patriots’ playoff game against the Ravens. He had three more surgeries on his arm due to infections.

2013: Underwent surgery for a fractured vertebra, missing the preseason and six regular season games.

2013: Tore his ACL and MCL in December, and missed the final three games of the year and two playoff games. He was also reportedly concussed in the game he hurt his knee. He had surgery on his knee in January 2014.

2015: Missed one game due to a knee strain.

2016: Missed preseason and the first two games with a hamstring issue.

2016: Missed a November game with a bruised lung.

2016: A herniated disc in his back required surgery, causing him to miss the last five games of the year and the playoffs.

2017: Missed one game due to a thigh injury.

2017: Suffered a concussion against the Jaguars in the AFC Championship.

2018: Missed three games due to a lower back sprain.

All that punishment makes his 2018 contemplation of an early retirement perfectly understandable. He also reportedly dealt with Achilles tendinitis, an ankle problem, and a bulging disc in his back this season. It makes you wonder if he’d want to come back even if the Patriots wanted him back for nearly $12 million.

They probably won’t, though. Will he be further dissuaded from another year of NFL hits if the Patriots try to pay him less? And would he be willing to play for another team if he’s released or traded?

Gronk’s already said that he doesn’t want anybody throwing passes to him except Tom Brady.

Rob Gronkowski confirmed he threatened to retire when the Patriots considered trading him to the Lions: “Yeah, it happened. Brady’s my quarterback.”

— Zack Cox (@ZackCoxNESN) September 24, 2018

If Gronkowski really is done, it’d likely be a rare case when a truncated NFL career was still enough to deserve a spot in the Hall of Fame. That tremendous, but relatively short run with the Patriots may end Sunday with one last game against the Rams.

[newstfionline]

Four Ways to Be More Effective in Meetings

By Tim Herrera, NY Times, March 6, 2017

Meetings!

Those endless blocks of time during the workday in which we are given tacit approval to zone out but that we cannot skip.

One study estimated that American companies hold 11 million meetings daily. Another said the unproductive ones cost the country about $37 billion yearly.

So why do we bother? Well, the problem is not the meetings; we know collaboration is an overall benefit for the workplace. The real issue is how organizations, and individuals, approach them.

“An excess of meetings is a symptom; it’s not a problem in and of itself,” said Michael Mankins, an author of “Time, Talent, Energy: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power” and a partner at Bain & Company.

That problem, Mr. Mankins said, is “either a culture that rewards collaboration for collaboration’s sake, or more commonly, an organizational structure that basically necessitates more people being involved in critical activities than should be required.”

Justin Rosenstein, who worked at Google and Facebook and was a co-founder of Asana, a productivity management tool, said even those vaunted tech icons of productivity fall into the trap.

“It was really sad the amount of time we spent not doing work, but doing work about work,” he said. “Even if a 30-minute meeting seems innocuous, context-switching is so hard, and it’s hard to get back into the rhythm of things.”

Doing away with meetings altogether would be counterproductive, so the trick is to get more out of the meetings you attend.

Here’s how to do it.

Learn the Art of the Pre-Meeting. After accepting a meeting invitation, the first thing you should always do is ask for an agenda well in advance.

Your best tool for doing well in meetings is relentless preparation, and studying the agenda will help you plot the moments for your contributions, said Jill Flynn, founding partner at Flynn Heath Holt Leadership, a consulting firm focused on training female leaders.

“Think of a couple of ways you hope to add value or your point of view ahead of time,” she said. “Meetings don’t always go the way you anticipate, but it definitely helps to be mentally prepared.”

When you are bringing a new idea, try to build support for it in casual chats before the meeting begins. If you face resistance, you will already have someone in your corner to back you up.

“Everybody knows, although women often do not, that the real meetings happen before the meeting,” Ms. Flynn said. “You need to have conversations with the key players before you ever get in the room.”

The first few minutes of a meeting are paramount, too.

“You want to get your voice in the room as early as you can,” Ms. Flynn said. “A lot of times people wait and think, ‘Oh, I have to wait because I have to have something really, really insightful to say.’”

But the direction of a meeting, including who will be contributing, is often decided in the first few minutes of a meeting, so it is important to participate early, she said.

Beware of the ‘Tyranny of the Most Verbose.’ If you must be in a meeting and you have done your homework, you can still end up being sidelined by what one former chief executive coach calls the “tyranny of the most verbose”: a meeting’s agenda being dictated by those who speak most forcefully, and often those who speak first.

“By not speaking up, you’re withholding something valuable from the team,” said Kim Scott, the chief executive of Candor and the author of “Radical Candor.”

“Silence is not an act of generosity when you have a great idea,” she said.

For timid or more junior employees--or those marginalized by a workplace’s culture--speaking up can be at best nerve-racking and at worst a terrifying experience. But expressing confidence through body language and word choice can make it easier to jump in.

To appear more engaged, sit toward the front of your seat and do not lean back, Ms. Flynn said. Think about ditching the laptop; sometimes it can set up a barrier between you and everyone else.

When the moment comes to speak up, try to use “muscular language.”

“If you’re the junior member, or the only person of color, or the only woman, our tendency is to be way too deferential and use a lot of qualifiers,” she said. “Get to the point, be factual, persuasive, use a sense of humor if you’re good at that. But be factual and clear and don’t use deferential language and filler words.”

Embrace the Uncomfortable. Pointing out obvious but uncomfortable truths is never easy, but it is nearly impossible in a setting with your peers and colleagues. But that is all the more reason to go for it.

“People bumping up against each other is what helps us not just improve our work product but also ourselves as human beings,” Ms. Scott said, noting the often-cited “obligation to dissent” at McKinsey & Company, the renowned management consulting firm.

The benefits here often far outweigh the risks, even if your workplace has not embraced dissent as a necessary tool for improvement. If something does not feel right to you, odds are it is not just you.

“I’ve seen meetings where I know that everyone in the room is thinking something, but no one feels comfortable saying it,” Mr. Rosenstein said. “We want to hear people say things like ‘I don’t know exactly why yet, but I have a weird feeling about this idea.’”

That will not win any debates, but sometimes acknowledging an elephant in the room can be all that is needed.

Be Selective About Which Meetings You Attend. With such a premium placed on group efforts, many organizations have reached one of two points, or both: A culture in which meeting invitations are seen as a sign of one’s prestige and importance, and collaboration happening for the sake of collaborating, a.k.a. collaboration overload.

“It’s become sort of a part of corporate culture that if you’re not invited to a meeting, it must be that you’re not important,” Mr. Mankins said. “That reinforces the behavior of wanting to be invited even if you play no role.”

The first step to recovery is, obviously, going to fewer meetings. That is easy for managers, but what about their employees?

The most tactful technique, experts said, is to acknowledge the invitation and express your appreciation, then politely explain that you are unclear about how your presence will add anything and suggest that you skip it. Frame your absence as an opportunity for others to add more to the meeting.

Another, more radical, choice: Designate one day of the week in which you won’t attend a single meeting. If you’re lucky enough to be in a position where you can decline meetings en masse, give it a shot. Even just one interruption-free day of the week can do wonders for your productivity.

[aonik]

I’ve been asked about the Mankin server so here’s an invite! Come with us to Funbarigaoka ♨

https://discord.com/invite/hmd8WNM

[gembug86]

I always wondered where these guys come from? They’re tiny onis, but onis in Mankin are like, tulpas made from strong negative emotions. That doesn’t sound like them. Are they just existing in the earth, called out by Yoh or Yohmei or whoever? I wish I could ask Takei....