#president of my club is assigning me more work and the only solution is to tell her to do it instead but then SHE will have too much work

[abstract-moth]

for once I would like to be struggling academically bc my brain actually struggles to comprehend the material and not bc I have some dumb*ss sh*t going on in my personal life

[ladyeliot]

It’s been a long, long time 

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader

Summary: You never knew what fate had in store for you, as if it was testing what it had offered you one day it took away from you the next. It was almost four years after Steve gave himself up to save the world, but you had never given up hope of being with him again.

Warnings: Angst. Disappearance. Fluff ending.

Word count: 2883

A/N: Captain America First Avenger / Avengers Endgame. Some of the dialogue is taken from the film. Sorry for my spelling and grammatical mistakes, English is not my native language, I am learning.

Song: It’s been a long, long time - Harry James

1949.

The rumours of his possible return were fading with time, but hopes were not falling.

Nearly four years had passed since the end of the Second World War, and the consequences were soon felt worldwide, especially by those who had survived that tragic period. You had been present from start to finish, being a potent participant in the covert operations linking the US and the UK. Although you had not been on the front line fighting as a soldier, you had been on the front line commanding the actions they would take. In 1939 you became a member of the British Royal Military, then a recommendation from a superior officer led to you joining the Special Operations Executive, a British spy agency, changing your destiny, causing MI5 to contact you, and then you were seconded to the Strategic Scientific Reserve, a top-secret Allied war agency during World War II, created by President Roosevelt. Too many things happened in a single year, too many things that would change the course of your history, but the most important was yet to happen.

In 1943 you were assigned to Colonel Chester Phillips' training base, known as Camp Lehigh, where you were assigned to supervise the candidate division of Project Renaissance, the project that changed everything. Project Renaissance was a highly secret project run by the United States Government. Its aim was to create super soldiers to be deployed during World War II against the Axis powers, thus having a great advantage in strategic warfare, however things didn't go as planned and they only had one success, a young man from Brooklyn named Steve Rogers.

You could never deny that you didn't notice him the first moment you saw him, he instantly caught your attention in two ways. The first of them was his physical shape, he stood out for his small stature compared to the other cadets, and his physical appearance looked sickly, although his medical record didn't say anything about it. On the other hand, the other aspect that impressed and inspired you was his courage and endurance to face each of the tests they had to pass, as well as his cunning, all of which won you over, as well as the generals of the project, as he was selected for the Renaissance project. The time you spent together at Camp Leigh made you realise the determination and humility he possessed, traits that the other members of the group, or any other man you had met before, possessed only to a slight degree.

The day the experiment was carried out, that is, the injection of the Super Soldier serum into Steve was another turning point in your life, the young man who went into that machine was not the same as the one who would come out of it, at least for everyone present, a human being went in and a super soldier came out, although for you he was still the same Steve Rogers with 30 centimetres more height and greater muscle mass. From then on he became the secret weapon that would overthrow Hitler, as the leader of the project, Dr. Erskine, was killed which meant that Steve was the only one of his kind.

You would have liked to have been able to say that your relationship was moving towards a more effective environment, but you were really living in a period of war, plus your character did not easily fit in with the word love, it never really did, or rather, you had never shown any interest in any man. You were rude, you had suffered enough harassment in your job, a job by and for men, to become insensitive in several cases. You were selective with your friends and also with the people you could trust, that's why every time you felt any affection for someone you stopped it, and that's what happened with Steve at the beginning.

Frankly, there were not too many moments to show your affection for each other, nor to enrich it, but every occasion that brought you together, there were certain feelings in the air that were never expressed in words. You encouraged him to be more than a lab rat or a fair hand for the soldiers at the front, you also helped him from your position with the missions, which after his triumph in rescuing the soldiers of the 107th infantry, were assigned to him. You complemented each other, you understood each other in many aspects that no one had ever understood, you had faith in him and he in you, that is why deep inside you were waiting for the day when the war would end to discover what it would be like to be able to dance with him without any worries around you, but it was not that simple.

As if the universe itself was mocking you, everything it had offered you was taken away in a breath. Even if you had never extrapolated it, your heart shrank every time he marched on a mission in enemy territory, you used to find yourself behind the controls of the base of operations that commanded his missions waiting for his voice or news from him to indicate what the situation was, but the last time what you saw was different. It was all a consequence of your attack on HYDRA HQ, you had worked out a strategy to take out their leader, the Red Skull, Steve was inside and you later came in with the assault guard and became part of the operation. Things had gone a little shaky during the operation, as the Red Skull managed to gain access to a ship and almost escaped from the place, but at that moment you appeared as if you were a breath of air together with Colonel Chester Phillips to offer him the last chance for Steve to finish him off and gain access to the inside of the ship that was about to escape, but not before sharing your first and last kiss. Every day you remember the last words you said to him in person "Go get him." before watching him jump into the plane and disappear into the snowy mountains.

After that, the ship became a direct path to death unbeknownst to you. A few hours later, from the command post, you managed to maintain a direct connection with the ship, specifically with Steve who was still inside it.

"Come in. This is Captain Rogers. Do you read me?" you all heard from the intercom.

"Steve, is that you? Are you alright?" your heart raced as it did every time he was away from you on a mission.

"Y/N! Schmidt's dead.

That brought a breath of relief that neither of you had experienced for a long time, you could see a little light at the end of the tunnel that was getting closer and closer to you, but what you heard next put the light out again.

"What about the plane?" you asked still worried about his situation.

"That's a little bit tougher to explain," Steve's words were choppy.

It really was complicated, the plane was loaded with explosive devices and was clearly headed for New York City, that meant there was only one possibility and you all knew what it was. You tried to talk him out of it, to find a new solution, but time was running out.

"Y/N, this is my choice," a lump formed in your throat at those words. "Y/N?"

"I'm here," you managed to say with watery eyes and a hand to your lips.

"I'm gonna need a rain check on that dance," you heard through the intercom, as a sharp gust of air rushed in between his words.

"Alright," you hid a soft sob. "A week, next Saturday, at the Stork Club."

"You got it," he said firmly, making it seem real that he was going to show up there on Saturday.

"Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late. Understood?"

"You know, I still don't know how to dance," a wistful smile appeared on your face at his words.

"I'll show you how. Just be there," you said almost begging him.

"We'll have the band play somethin' slow," Steve picked up the pace of his words, "I'd hate to step on your...

That was the last time you heard his voice, the line connecting the intercom to Steve went static with a soft continuous noise, that's when the tears flowed freely down your cheeks.

"Steve? Steve? Steve?"

Of course, life puts us all to the test, we believe we need redemption for the acts committed in the past, that often makes us lose hope that better times will come.  Almost four years have passed since those last events, since you shared your first and last kiss with your Captain America, since you heard his last words and since you felt that thing called love. Now your life had been turned upside down, you had dreamed for too long of meeting him, of seeing his face again and not only through those war films, but your life went on and you couldn't keep yourself stuck thinking about him, that's why you had decided to leave the Strategic Scientific Reserve and go into a new project with Howard Stark, called S.H.I.E.L.D.

It was unusual for the month of January to have that warm morning out, although it was actually quite comforting as it had brightened up your day, and even when you got home you opted to start cooking to the rhythm of whatever song was playing on the radio, which was unusual for you. The open windows allowed the sun's rays to stream into the living room, offering that homely touch that the little house in the middle of a residential neighbourhood lacked. Due to your countless projects and missions in the SSR you had not been able to enjoy home life as much as you would have liked, although it was really your decision, that house was too quiet and too big for you alone, although the radio offered you the company you sometimes needed.

As if it were a special event you had brought out the table linen and arranged the table in the parlour to eat there for the first time, normally you used the table in the kitchen, for you did not waste too much time on your meals, but this day was a new beginning, a new year, a good time to work out new habits. You opted to open a bottle of wine, which had been a gift from your dear friend Howard Stark, and poured yourself a glass while you waited for the chicken to make its acquaintance in the oven. The rhythmic melody of Nat King Cole along with your glass of wine lifted spirits that hadn't been this high for some time.

"Love is all that I can give to you," you intoned as you walked around the kitchen.

The midday seemed to be going smoothly, until a crashing noise from the front door brought you to a screeching halt. "Ogh, Mrs. Foster," you said to yourself before taking a sip from your glass of wine to fill your spirits. Mrs Foster was the neighbour from across the street who was always knocking on your door whenever she could, hoping to whisper about the other neighbours and glean as much information about you as possible, the funny thing was that she always barged in at the most inopportune times.

"I'm coming!" you exclaimed, taking off your apron and placing it on the counter. "I'm there!"

When you reached the front door you took five seconds to exhale the air inside you, position your dress correctly, take another breath, roll your eyes and expose a wide grin before you very quickly lowered the door handle. We've been talking before about all the turning points that changed your life and shaped your destiny, okay, that was one of them, maybe the most important one of all, the one that set the rest of your life on track.

"Hello Mrs. Fos-!"

Your voice disappeared, your vocal cords seemed to break at that moment, your wide, false smile also vanished as if it had never been on your face, your eyes seemed to have no eyelids and your lungs ran out of air, leaving you breathless. What you saw when you opened that door was your whole life, every moment appeared in front of you as if it were a frame. They say that happens when you are about to die, but it happened to you when the person you had loved had returned from the dead and was prostrate before you. You couldn't tell whether your reaction was the most humane or what someone else would have done in your place because you had never met anyone who had. Soldiers sometimes took long months to return home after the war ended, but it had taken Steve almost four years to do so.

Perhaps there had been hundreds or thousands of times you had imagined that moment, and now you didn't know what to do, your limbs were stiff, you were grateful for it or you would have collapsed in those moments. You kept holding the doorknob tightly, while he stood there on your porch staring at you, not knowing what to do. They were the longest minutes of your whole life, or maybe they were only a few seconds, you didn't know how time worked in those moments, but that didn't matter, your emotions recovered when you looked into his eyes, those blue eyes that you had dreamed of so many nights and they were watery, that was the sign that told you that this was not a dream, it was real life.

The air opened again and passed through your lungs in the form of a gasp, you shared the wateriness of his eyes in yours and in a moment you were wrapped in his arms. You could feel him again, or rather you could feel him around you for the first time. His arms were around your back bringing your body closer to his.

"You're... here." you murmured against his chest almost afraid that your words would make him disappear again.

"I'm home," he whispered against your forehead before kissing it and pulling away to look at your face.

It really was him, you noticed the odd changed feature, as if the years had passed him by more quickly, but there was no doubt that it was Steve. He placed his hands on your cheeks cradling your face, that sensation made you close your eyes as you placed your hands on his. Gingerly, you felt his breath collide against you and the longing for his lips that had haunted you for so many years came to an end.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, leaning his forehead against yours.

"No, you're home," you murmured, taking his hand and bringing his palm to your lips.

The open windows of the living room let out the melody of the radio, as if it were one of those Hollywood feature films with its own soundtrack. For a few long minutes you stood there on the porch of your house, oblivious to everything around you, oblivious to curious stares or if the chicken was burning in the oven, there was nothing more relevant than the two of you.

After a few minutes without taking your eyes off each other you took his hand and went inside your home, there were no unnecessary questions, no comments that could break the moment, your gazes were pleased to observe each other and as if your thoughts were connected and the person in charge of playing the songs on the radio knew it, one of Steve's favourite songs began to play. Harry James' voice came into the room, giving you the moment you had wanted for four years in your case, but for Steve it had been many more. 

“Never thought that you would be

Standing here so close to me

There's so much I feel that I should say

But words can wait until some other day”

His arm found position around your waist and your face found position on his chest. You listened to his heartbeat work to the rhythm of the melody, you could never have imagined ever feeling like this again, you would have made a pact with the devil on too many occasions to feel it. It was so unreal that you had to lift your face from his chest to look at his face again, to find out if it really was Steve in front of you, it was. 

“Kiss me once, then kiss me twice

Then kiss me once again

It’s been a long, long time

Haven't felt like this, my dear

Since I can't remember when

It’s been a long, long time”

Life had offered you a new opportunity to enjoy it together, and you were never going to miss it.

“You'll never know how many dreams

I've dreamed about you

Or just how empty they all seemed without you

So kiss me once, then kiss me twice

Then kiss me once again

It's been a long, long time”

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[adultprivilege]

Musings on Electrical Engineering

Hello all, your friendly neighborhood ademainalors here, sometimes I’m around, sometimes I’m not around, and that’s mostly because I am majoring in Electrical Engineering to try and solve climate change. Knowing me, you may be thinking, why climate change? Well, climate change is the most pressing youth rights issue of our time. We oppress youth with the idea that they will grow old and have rights conferred upon them later in life, but this is a lie for many of you, if climate change isn’t solved, many of you will die long before you hit adulthood. Today, youth have died in the climate change fueled Los Angeles fires, yesterday, youth died in Hurricane Maria, and tomorrow many more youth will die gruesome deaths in “natural” disasters until there are no youth left to speak for, and no youth left to confer rights upon. 

Why Electrical Engineering? Mostly, because politics is too slow, however, in hindsight I should have chosen Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering might also be too slow, but, if we only can get a new president every four years, and a new senator every six, and climate change is going to kill us all in twelve years, I fear we may be doomed if we wait for politics, although, I reiterate that politics is important, and protest is important, and if you have the right and the ability to do either or both, please do so.

I am specifically, looking for a thermal solution to climate change. A lot of people are researching carbon capture and renewable energy. I said sarcastically to a friend once that climate change is a good thing because it will prevent entropy because heat energy is energy, and then I realized that heat energy is energy, and have been working ever since to try to find a way to utilize it. I am failing though, and so please, if you have the time or the energy to steal my idea, feel free to. The idea is this, extra heat energy is captured by the planet and radiated to earth, causing great storms, and melting ice and other such. If we can capture that energy instead and use it to fuel human society: if we fight climate change with climate change, then we’ll have the kind of leverage we need to end it. In theory that is, in reality, it involves a level of chemistry and thermodynamics and meteorology that isn’t taught in electrical engineering, and also I am really bad at electrical engineering coursework, like, not so much that I’m actually bad at it, but I find it extremely difficult to do a homework assignment out of a textbook, knowing that the clock is ticking, I’m making a bet on academia and to be honest, I wonder if it was a bad bet. If I have advice for young people who want to find a technical solution to climate change, just start working on it, don’t wait for college, college is slow and far, and barely helpful. If you want to learn the courses I have learned in Electrical Engineering, you can google a four-year course plan and go on MIT Open Courseware, and just learn it, and then start doing things with that knowledge, and if you learn it now, then if you do decide to pursue a degree in it, you can test out of some courses, and be extremely lazy in others. You can even have a massive advantage over me, and learn the cool bits, and skip the irrelevant bits. If you’re a nerd like me, you can build prototypes at your local makerspace or library, and to be honest, it is really not that hard to pretend to be a student at University and utilize their spaces, clubs, and knowledge. You can do this for any degree too, if engineering isn’t your passion. I need your help to save our planet.

When you are taught CPR, you are taught to not care too much about the ribs you break, nor to care so much if you are an expert at CPR, because the person you are giving CPR is dead, and without CPR, they will continue to be dead. Our planet is dead, is what I keep saying to myself, but honestly, I feel depressed and I feel like a failure. I have autism, I have disability accommodations that allow me to turn in homework late, and I haven’t turned in nearly a month’s worth of work, and I am sick of neurotypical platitudes of how attainable it is to complete it. I am in grief over the planet! And I am in a major that largely doesn’t share my grief, Electrical Engineering is the safe major, it’s the major you get to prosper under capitalism, and thus, it’s super selective and elitist, and quite frankly, white, cis, male, and republican. As a person who started at community college at a majority-minority institution and was one of four to get into this University as a transfer student, and honestly what I seem to have in common with the other three is that we’re the whitest they could find, I am so disgusted with my own presence in that space, both the privilege of being there, but also the feeling of loneliness of being the only non-binary in that space, of being one of a handful of those with disabilities, and and handful of those who transferred. The loneliness is literally killing me, I, like many minorities in Electrical Engineering, have developed a chronic pain condition from being in this space. I’ve considered trying to persuade a pharmacist to give me the shingles vaccine because I am so stressed, and my immune system is so broken by it, that I am practically immunocompromized, and am nearly constantly fighting a cold. I might drop out just for my sanity and health, but I fear what that will mean for our sanity and our health. I am also disgusted by the fact that approaching the greatest engineering challenge of our lifetimes, our institutions for developing those engineers are so exclusive and so far up their privileged asses, that they don’t realize how many possible engineers, possible world-saving engineers, that they are excluding. To those in my audience who are marginalized and want to be engineers, learn what you can now, using online resources, in the comforts of your community and your peers, and when you go into academia, bring your sharpest swords of truth and justice, because this is a war, and I do need your help to fight it, it is incredibly lonely to fight a war alone.

But this is a youth rights blog and you want the youthrightsy bit. If education is about conformity, the majors that are the most conformist, the electrical engineerings, the computer sciences, they pay the most. But it’s a special type of conformity, the conformity of the privileged. If you are in an underfunded school, to conform is to wither, your peers in the rich schools are learning calculus, which will become the basis for their engineering, and debate, the basis for law, and science, the basis for medicine. The truth of it is, adultism is the means and the method by which generational power is enforced. To learn calculus when you are supposed to be barely learning algebra at an underfunded school is an act of youth rights. Hell, to be 10 and to be learning calculus when you are supposed to be learning multiplication, that is an act of youth rights. What differentiates the rich from the poor is early access to information, the earlier the access, the richer you are. It is not a coincidence that the most draconian, and the most policed and the least fun schools are also the impoverished ones. If school makes it hard to learn that is because it is trying to do that, because it is supposed to do that.

I cannot do my homework today and it is not my fault!

[peachywise]

night owls

stanley uris x reader

– one-shot

– synopsis: Your father has kicked you out, and you got no where to go. Stanley Uris might have an idea, however. 

– notes: this is a request from my sunshine anon!! “a Stan fic where this girl he finds cute (the reader) is unofficially part of the losers club and he’s out at night for whatever reason and finds her on a like a park bench and gets worried or smth (you decide why ;) )” i might make a part 2 of this, like the morning after?? if that interest any of you?? i’m not sure. let me know! 

A new town, a new park bench, the same old argument.

You guessed that no matter how much your father wanted to run away from his own problems, he would still drag them with him wherever he went, like a bad virus or an extra unwanted limb. Derry was supposed to be his solution to a better life. A fresh start where you and him would get along, and he could run from all his debts and toxic relationships. And for a month, it had worked. As much as you still fought and argued and yelled, everything would brush over in about an hour, and your father would have forgotten anything had ever happened.

Unfortunately, it appeared the clock had run out on your free trial to the decent dad subscription, because here you were again, kicked out in the middle of a cold autumn night, sitting on a park bench trying to figure out what to do.

You knew in the morning you could come back and not have him say a single word, but if you even tried to sneak back in tonight, it wasn’t going to end well for either side. Back in your old town, you would often just knock on your friend’s window and crash at their place, but since you had only been here a month and had thought all these troubles had gone away, you didn’t exactly have an emergency plan in place.

Not that you should ever have to plan anything like this at all.

It’s not like you didn’t have friends here or anything, but you had only just started to integrate yourself into their group. They called themselves The Losers’ Club. You thought it was a weird title to label themselves, but as you go to know them, it started to make sense. They were all outcasts, very different in their personalities, but seemed to mesh in such a close knit way that you couldn’t help but desire to be let in, to have those same people there for you as they were there for each other. 

It had taken you a long time to feel comfortable enough to even sit at their lunch table. The only reason you could now was because of Stan. He had been the first person you had met when you moved here. Your assigned counsellor had forced suggested you join an after school club to get into the Derry high school spirit. Everything but the math, dungeon and dragons, and bird watching club were closed for members, so you got a choice of three. You chose bird watching, thinking that at least that way you wouldn’t have to be cooped up inside all the time, and on cold days, it would most likely be cancelled. 

Stan was the president of the club.

He was also the only member.

Actually, there was this one girl Delia that would show up once in a blue moon for five minutes, but Stan said he had no idea who she was and that she wasn’t on the official club roster. You learned not to question it after awhile.

Since then, every Wednesday and Friday after school, you would meet Stan in the second floor Bio classroom and talk about birds or go outside to parks and try to see what ones you could find and identify. At first, you were really bored, but you really liked Stan and didn’t have the heart to quit. Then, eventually his bright passion grew infectious, and you found yourself enjoying it. Really, you found him to be the infectious one, but you wouldn’t ever admit it if he asked.

It’s why you chose this park bench, after all. This was the park you and Stan went to most often, and just being here made you feel a little safer. You just wished you’d had time to grab your damn coat so you didn’t feel so cold as well. 

“Y/N?” A soft voice called from behind you, sounding a hell of a lot like the bird boy currently on your mind.

Wow, you really were in deep, huh?

“I really need to get my head out of the gutter,” you mumbled to yourself, as you tucked your hands between your legs in an attempt to stay warmer. You knew you couldn’t stay here all night. Maybe there was a 24-hour diner in town somewhere? 

“What?” the incredulous voice asked again, but this time close enough behind you that it startled you back into reality. Turning around, your cheeks heated up as soon as your gaze locked with the curly haired boy, Stanley Uris.

An awkward, “uh…” was all you could muster in reply.

Stanley gave you a confused look as he moved around to stand in front of you. “Why are you out so late? Especially without a coat?” he questioned, and all you could do was stare in shock at him. How the hell were you going to explain this? You needed a lie, and fast.

“Here, uhm, take my scarf,” he mumbled, as he unwrapped the fleece patterned-plaid from around his neck and slung it over your shoulders. You hoped it was dark enough that he couldn’t see your inevitably red face. “Thanks,” you replied quietly, as you wrapped it around a couple of times, trying not to breath in his scent that clung to the fabric too deeply.

You hoped that by not replying to his question, he’d forget he asked. “Why are you here?” you offered instead, uncrossing your legs and crossing them the other way anxiously. Stan’s face dropped for a second as he looked down at his feet, embarrassment crossing his features. “I live a block away from here, I’ll have you know. I heard an owl and thought I would walk around to see if it was still around.” A small smiled curved your lips as you asked, “is it?” Stan just sighed in return, moving to sit next to you on the cold metal bench. “No. I think I scared it away.” Nodding your head, you said a simple, “ah. He was a skittish bird.” 

Stan nodded as well, before both of you were cast into silence. 

“So are you really not going to tell me why you’re out here?” Stan softly spoke again, turning to give you a look that reflected… concern? Why was he worried about you? Looking back down to your lap, an inner debate raged on whether or not to tell him. In all honesty, you knew you couldn’t even give a convincing lie. “I just told you I snuck out of my house at eleven at night to try and find a bird. I’m sure whatever it is, it isn’t that bad,” he added. A snort escaped you before you could stop it. “You snuck out?” you laughed, as Stan rolled his eyes and gave you a knowing look that screamed ‘that’s not important, now fess up.’

Sighing, you slid down lower on the bench, averting your eyes to the starry sky. You didn’t want to look at him while you explained, more fearful of the pitying look that was no doubt going to follow your story. “I got kicked out, alright? My dad and I don’t get along too well. He was upset that I talked back to him about getting fired, so I got tossed out for the night. It’ll be fine to go back in the morning. He’ll forget it ever happened,” you muttered, as you felt your heart pound in your chest, an uncomfortable pressure building in the form of a lump in your throat. How come you never cried when it happened, but as soon as you talked about it, emotions started to well up? It was bullshit. 

Stan was silent for a moment, but you could feel his eyes on you. Soon enough, Stan stood up, and your heart dropped. Yep. This was it. He was going to leave, and never talk to you again. At least there was no pity. 

“Come on,” Stan said, holding out his hand towards you. “What?” you sputtered, staring wide eyed at his outstretched hand. 

A small blush rose to Stan’s cheeks, and you had to fight back against the urge to say how cute it was out loud. It was absolutely not the time for that. “You don’t have a place to go, right? So come on, we can go to my house,” he mumbled, as your heart sped up once more. You didn’t think you could deal with all these emotions bubbling up.

“Stan, it’s really fine,” you started to argue, but he easily cut you off by saying, “Y/N, you’re shivering. I won’t force you, but it’s safe and right over there,” he stated, adding an even softer, “please,” at the end after you didn't reply. No one had ever been this kind before.

Swallowing back your slight embarrassment, you took in a deep breath and clasped his hand. He easily hauled you up on your feet. Giving each other a tentative smile, Stan began leading you out of the park, but dropped your hand after a minute and giving you a sheepish look after realizing he had still been holding it. You thought you heard him mumble “stay cool, Stanley,” under his breath, but you couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the sound of the soft wind around you. 

By the time you had reached his house, Stan turned and gave you a serious look. “We’re going to need to sneak in through my window,” he said sternly, as if admitting a long held secret. You blinked. “Okay,” you stated, waiting for him to show you exactly which window you had to squirm yourself through. An odd look crossed his face, like he had expected a different reaction entirely. “Alright,” he continued, as he made his way to the side of the house. You shrugged it off. 

For a bit, Stan struggled to get a proper grip sliding the window up, trying to push against the glass and get traction that way. After around a minute, you couldn’t stand idly by anymore.

“Here, I got it,” you laughed, bumping your hip into his to scoot him out of the way. Wiggling your fingers under the small crack at the base, you got it up an inch, and from there, it was easy enough. Turning towards Stan, you questioned, “have you never tried to break back into your house before?” Stan shook his head. “I’ve never even snuck out before tonight.” As you began to quietly step through the window frame, you offered, “next time, keep the window open a small crack,” Stan couldn’t stop the small smile that appeared on his face. “Duly noted,” he replied, following in after you. 

Quickly, Stan moved over to switch the lamp on beside his bed, and you awkwardly stood in the middle of his bedroom, unsure. As many times as this exact situation had happened in your old town, this was different. You didn’t have a stupid little crush on all your other friend’s you’d spent the night with. In all honestly, you didn’t know what to do. By the looks of it, neither did he. 

Clearing your throat, you awkwardly gripped your forearm as your eyes wandered around. “No bird posters?” you asked, and immediately wanted to slam your head against the wall. Jesus, was that the only thing you could think of to say? Stan chuckled. “Can I tell you something?” he questioned, moving over to sit on the edge of his bed. You nodded your head. “The bird watching club was something I made up so I could have some alone time away from The Losers’ Club. It gave me an excuse to go home quickly.” 

You didn’t expect that. Looking a little wide eyed, you asked, “what?” positively shocked. Stan offered an embarrassed smile your way. “Yeah. I showed up when they said there was a new member, and you seemed to really like it so I kept coming…” he trailed off. Bringing your hands up to your face, you felt utter embarrassment wash through you. “No!” you whisper yelled, conscious of the fact his parents were asleep somewhere in the house. “Wait, are you serious?” you giggled, unable to stop. Sitting down next to him, Stan laughed as well, giving a small confirming, “yep.” 

“I only went because I was told I had to join a club. I was going to quit but you seemed so passionate about it and, I don’t know, I like hanging out with you,” you admitted, dropping your hands to see his reaction. He busted into laughter and you quickly joined in. 

“Shh!” he sputtered out, still unable to stop the laughter as he clapped his hand over your mouth, and you his. Eventually, both of you calmed down enough. And then awkward silence filled the space once more. 

“I’ll just sleep on the floor, if that’s okay?” you said, fiddling with your hands on your lap. Stan let out a very quick, “no! No, uh, I’ll sleep on the floor, and you take my bed,” he commented as he stood up and took one of the pillows, tossing it to the ground. “I don’t mind, honestly,” you continued, before Stan shook his head once more, already grabbing a blanket and nestling onto the floor. Argument settled then.

Kicking off your shoes and taking of his scarf, you crawled into bed carefully, a little tense and all too aware of your surroundings once again. You just laid staring there at the ceiling for a few beats, before Stan asked, “can you turn of the lamp?” 

Turning over, you quickly switched it off, feeling a little more comfortable now that it was dark. After around five minutes, however, you were still no closer to falling asleep, and memories of your fight with your father were creeping back into your mind once more. You had almost forgotten all about it in the presence of Stan. “This isn’t the first time this has happened before, is it?” Stan’s unsure voice spoke from below, and you felt your body grow cold. “No,” you whispered back, your voice slightly breaking, “it’s not.”

Unable to contain everything you had pushed back for the last couple of hours, silent tears started to slip from the corner of your eyes, and you quickly lifted your hand to wipe them away before they could stain his pillow. In a second, Stan was up off the ground, turning back on the light and shuffling to sit next to you, peering down at you with a concerned look over his face. “Please don’t cry,” he pleaded, his hands hovering over you like he wanted to comfort you, to wipe your tears away, but was just unsure if it was okay to do. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” he continued. 

Sliding up, you rested your head against the headboard and painfully rubbed your eyes. “It’s okay,” you sighed, letting your hands fall to your lap. “It’s been like this since I was fifteen. It’s always just been me and my dad, but he gets really angry sometimes. The only thing he knows to do is kick me out,” you laughed humourlessly, unable to meet his eyes. “I had places to stay in my old town, but I thought it was going to be different here. This is the first time since we’ve moved, and I’m just—“ you started, as tears fell again. God, would they ever stop? “I’m just alone here,” you finished. Shock registered through your thick emotions as you were brought into a quick unexpected hug. That made you cry even more. 

Stan’s hand stroked your hair softly, as he gently stated, “you’re not alone.”

Bringing your arms up to wrap around his neck, he continued to murmur in your ear, “I’m here, I’m always here.” Leaning back out of the hug, Stan’s hand moved to cup the side of your face as he brushed the left over tears. A small reassuring smile warming his face. In a moment of bravery, you leaned forward to place a small kiss on his cheek, but instead, he moved his face slightly to the side, and you fleetingly kissed his lips instead. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to!” he started to fumble out, but you cut him off by leaning foreword to give him another chaste kiss. The butterfly’s in your stomach were a welcome feeling. “I’m glad I met you, Stan,” you quietly said as you pulled away, face still only inches from his. His thumb brushed against your cheek one last time, and the shy look that crossed his features made you smile in return. “I’m glad I thought I heard an owl tonight, Y/N.” he replied, and soon enough, both of you were back to laughing again, foreheads pressed together, shh’ing each other in between snickers.

– general tags: @multi-parker @stan-the-losers-club-man @babylovereddie @ubertrashmouth @this-cute-shit-xo @hummingstan @derrysdenbrough @socially-awkward-nerd @emmaamalie @catching-fire-in-the-wind @mikoalabear

[mormonmonastery]

Good, Better, Best: A Lesson for Third Hours

I’ve wanted a calling that involved teaching for pretty much all of the nearly two years I’ve been in my current ward and instead, for most of that time, I had...no calling at all. That changes tomorrow when I finally teach a lesson as an Elders Quorum instructor. There’s the good news. The not-as-good news? I’d been assigned to give a lesson on Dallin H. Oaks’ “Good, Better, Best” which is a solid talk but has also been used about a zillion times and pretty much makes its entire point in one sentence (also, I think the idea of this new third hour ciriculum is that they were supposed to be recent conference talks and I’m not sure where this EQ presidency is coming from using this? But you know, beggars aren’t choosers and etc.).

My solution to this was to take “Good, Better, Best” away from the “you need to prioritize in your individual lives” Stephen Covey angle I’ve always seen it taught with and towards the subtly radical idea that “maybe all this church busyness we do isn’t worthwhile, or the point of church?” I’m proud of how I’ve developed that idea in this lesson plan, and found it was actually closer to much of the original talk than at least my cultural memory of it was. I’m interested to see how it goes tomorrow but if you happen to need a lesson or resource for a talk on “Good, Better, Best”? Feel free to use this.     

What’s the Point? or, It’s All Greek to Me

Have the class read Moses 1:39 ("For behold, this is my work and my glory--to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man") and Matthew 5:48 ("Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect"). These should be pretty recognizable verses for most classes.

Use the passage from Matthew to introduce, teleios the Greek word that’s translated there as “perfect.” Its root word is telos, which means an aim, an end, a goal, a completion, or a purpose--when the New Testament talks about "enduring to the end," the Greek is saying "enduring to telos." 

(This word, and the fact that Jesus asks Peter different Greek words for love in the three questions of John 21, are the only pieces of Greek I think an average Mormon might happen to know, so you could try asking the class about it up-top and then explain whatever they don’t get. If you want a church-approved source to dip into this philology with, you can use Russell M. Nelson’s 1995 talk “Perfection Pending.”)

I like this definition I found in a biblical concordance a lot: "This root (tel-) means "reaching the end (aim)." It is well-illustrated with the old pirate's telescope, unfolding (extending out) one stage at a time to function at full-strength (capacity, effectiveness)." 

Now that you’ve laid out all the initial groundwork, give the class some questions that weave these threads together:

Can we say that Moses 1:39 is an effective summation of God's telos? 

Can we restate that verse as "God's telos is to help us reach our telos"?

 Can we translate telos as "our best"?

(These should all be softballs: yes, yes, yes. If they aren’t, at least the nuances that come out should be interesting.)

I Wanna Be the Very Best

Write the heading “BEST" up on the right side of the board with "immortality, eternal life, perfect, complete, purpose, full-strength" underneath, once you get the class to follow you on what God wants us to be = our best. When it comes down to it, the entire point of the church and our quorum/relief society/class/ward/stake is to bring us closer to these things.

Explain that, in this life at least, we often fall short of our best and end up at...good. Not to knock good! We need to be at doing at least good in some areas before we reach for what our best is. But, as Elder Oaks points out, “the number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives.”

What are we doing right now, as a quorum/ward that's good? Solicit ideas from the class under the heading “GOOD” on the other side of the board--leave space for another heading between GOOD and BEST.

A lot of where this lesson goes depends on what you get here. If the class just isn’t bitting, tell them that this means they’ve probably got a lot to say once we get to the middle piece of Oaks’ trifecta, huh? If they stuff it with things like “quorum unity” and all their fun fun fun activities (which is what I’m expecting when I teach it with a Utah YSA), you get a chance to talk about how the city on the hill Jesus talked about isn’t a country club (Gordon B.  Hinckley: “It should be recognized that this church is not a social club. This is the kingdom of God in the earth. It is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its purpose is to bring salvation and exaltation to both the living and the dead.”). If it’s mostly about having a true church or the priesthood, or having done 100% home teaching back when home teaching was a thing, you can point out how all of these things don’t do much good if we miss the point.

In short: it's good to be good, of course, but we shouldn't be good at the expense of being telos.

Missing The Point

Look at the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30. The foolish servant's primary mistake here is about the telos of money, right? He doesn't understand that the purpose of money is to invest it and allow it to increase in value. His lord has given him everything he needs to be the best servant he could be and he just didn’t get it.

Likewise, we can not understand the telos of the church/gospel/priesthood/etc. and focus instead doing good things around them.

Use the quote in Oaks’ talk from M. Russell Ballard to illustrate what that point is when related to the structure of the Church: “what is most important in our Church responsibilities...whether or not individual people—ministered to one at a time just as the Savior did—have been lifted and encouraged and ultimately changed.”

If you want to further drive this point home, have the class read from Micah 6:6-8 "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

“Each of Us Can Do a Little Better”

Considering these points, have the class fill in the gap under "BETTER" with, well, what we can do better, what gets us from good to telos. Have a nice long discussion about this for as long as you have left.

Close with this quote from Gordon B. Hinckley: "Each of us can do a little better than we have been doing. We can be a little more kind. We can be a little more merciful. We can be a little more forgiving. We can put behind us our weaknesses of the past, and go forth with new energy and increased resolution to improve the world about us, in our homes, in our places of employment, in our social activities. We have work to do, you and I, so very much of it. Let us roll up our sleeves and get at it, with a new commitment, putting our trust in the Lord."

[weirdfetishes123]

Lend a hand - deviantart

"Okay guys, we need to come up with an idea for our display at the college fair. Now, I’ve got something I think could be pretty impressive."

I tried to concentrate on what Brad was saying, but as usual I kept getting distracted. It didn't help that he was wearing a particularly tight t-shirt today that showed every line of his lean torso. I had only joined the science club because he'd been at the booth during orientation and I had trouble saying no to his easy smile. I didn't even figure out what I was signing up for until I arrived for the first meeting. When I look into his eyes it’s like there’s only the two of us, like all of his attention is on me.

"How about it?"

I jerked slightly as I realised I wasn't just imagining his attention this time, he really was talking to me.

"Sorry, I drifted off slightly. I was up late last night finishing an assignment."

"I asked if you would lend a hand? You know, with the project. You and me?"

I fought to keep myself composed. Time alone with Brad? Of course I was in.

"Yeah, sure."

He grinned "Thanks man, I really appreciate it."

He seemed unusually excited about the project. I guess that's why he's president of the club, he's passionate about all of this

---

I wasn't meeting up with him till the night before the fair. It seemed rather last minute to be leaving the work, but I wasn't going to question a plan that was working out so well for me. If we ended up working late together to finish it, well, that was fine with me. Maybe it'd be so late he'd invite me to crash at his place, we're both going the same place tomorrow anyway. And oh dear, there's only one bed. I guess... No. I was getting way too ahead of myself. But then again, I had to wonder why he picked me to work with him on this.

The days in between kept on in that fashion. Rising hopes and vain efforts to be realistic. I drifted through my classes, taking in absolutely none of what I was supposed to be learning.

Finally the afternoon arrived, and I went to the address Brad had given me. It was a small house in the suburbs near the college. I smiled when I saw the decal in the window near the front door. “If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the precipitate.” At least I knew I had the right address. My finger hovered over the doorbell, my heart hammering out of my chest, before I summoned up the courage to press it. Mercifully he answered the door almost immediately.

"Hey, buddy! Great to see you. Thanks so much for agreeing to help me out with this. Our display is going to be the best one for sure."

"It's no problem." I mumbled, with all the nonchalance I could muster "Anything for the science club, you know."

"Come through, I'll show you where we'll be working."

As we made our way through the house I took in my surroundings. Shelves on every wall were overflowing with beakers, containers of chemicals, textbooks, and assorted other supplies.

“Wow, this is some pretty intense stuff you’ve got here.”

“Yeah, my chem major is great and all. But what I really enjoy is applying what I learn. I’ve even been able to sell a few of the things I’ve developed. I’ve also been working on a special project lately that I’m super hyped to test out.”

He led me out to the back yard. There were tins of paint all about and an abundance of rope. I wasn’t too sure what we’d be painting though.

“So, what do you need me to do?” I offered

“Chill out, we’ve got plenty of time.” He reached into a cooler and tossed me a can. “Have a cold one and I’ll explain.”

I didn’t recognise the branding on the can, but I shrugged and cracked it open anyway. I leaned against the wall and took a sip. It was unusual, but pleasant. Brad seemed in no hurry to explain himself, he just smiled approvingly at me. Approvingly and, I might have been imagining it, somewhat hungrily as well. I couldn’t think of anything to say to fill the silence, so I busied myself with downing the drink. As I finished it he sauntered over to me and placed his hand on the wall behind me. He was so close; our faces were barely a foot apart. I felt the empty can slip from my grasp and clatter on the concrete under my feet.

“You have no idea what you’re doing here do you?”

“I… uh…” Crap, I’m not as got at pretending to pay attention as I thought.

“It’s okay” He laughed “I see the way you get when you’re around me. That’s why I knew you’d agree to this project.” He took his hand off the wall and brushed a lock of hair back behind my ear before moving his hand to my shoulder. Steadying it. I felt his other hand move under my shirt and play across my abdomen. His head moved closer to mine, our lips barely an inch from each other. Then I felt something else in his lower hand, he was pushing it into my navel. My hands shot down to grasp at what he was doing. There was a hose trailing out from my shirt. His smile became even wider. He pressed harder on my shoulder, pinning me to the wall, as his other hand reached behind him. I heard a hissing begin. He released me and stepped back to reveal a large gas tank that was feeding the hose. It was labelled He2. I stood, dumbfounded, for a moment, trying to understand what was happening.

“What is this supposed to-“ I stopped abruptly. My hands were still wrapped around the hose and I felt it moving. I looked down and saw my belly pushing outwards. I yelped in panic and tugged at the hose but something was holding it in.

“I wouldn’t bother trying to get that out. I coated it with an adhesive of my own design. It’s not going anywhere without the correct solvent.” Brad looked incredibly pleased with himself.

I pushed down on my belly, trying to contain what was happening. It compressed briefly but sprung back, continuing its growth unabated. I looked and felt like I had swallowed a basketball.

“How is this happening to me?” I gasped

“Well. That can I gave you was the special project I’ve been working on. A mix of chemicals that gives flesh almost unlimited elasticity. There’s a number of applications I’m hoping to market it for, but the fair gave me the perfect opportunity to test out one of the more fun ones. A parade balloon is a great way to grab attention, but I couldn’t find one that was really suited to our club. So, I decided to make one from scratch.”

“A parade balloon?” I repeated, aghast. The pressure continued building in my belly. My hands were pushed further apart as the basketball doubled in size and continued to push outwards. I tugged vainly at the hose, but Brad had secured it well. I couldn’t get it to budge. My shirt had rolled up over the top of my belly and the waist of my pants was painfully digging into me. I could feel the swelling starting to spread from my belly to the rest of my body. My limbs were becoming harder to move and the top of my shirt was tightening around my chest. Brad took a few steps back and looked me up and down, admiring his handywork. As good as it felt to have him look at me with such passion I wished it wasn’t because he was using me as a human guinea pig. It also did nothing to quell my panic.

Seemingly having overcome the initial resistance of my body the expansion picked up steam. My belly pushed out past the size of an exercise ball, tearing apart the waist of my pants as it did. I couldn’t have reached the hose at my navel if I had tried. My chest was pushing out to join my belly and one by one the buttons popped off my shirt, whizzing away as they did. My thighs were the most affected part of my limbs so far and as they swelled, aiming to join the sphere my torso was becoming, my underwear gave way as well as the remainder of my pants. I was now wearing only shoes and tattered remains of my former clothing. I kicked off the shoes while I still could to avoid ruining those too. I was mortified to be naked in this state in front of Brad, but he seemed to be thoroughly pleased with the show.

My chest and belly were no longer distinguishable as separate entities and my arms and legs were being pushed to the sides by their engorging girth. I was starting to have difficulty maintaining my balance and I had to adopt a wide stance to stay upright. I could no longer look all the way down due to my chest pushing up towards my chin. My torso sphere had claimed my limbs halfway down to the first joint when I heard the most merciful sound. The tank’s hiss began to die away before ceasing completely.

“Oh thank, God.” I muttered

“Don’t get too excited. We’re far from done.” Brad walked back over to inspect me as my panic surged again. “Remember, I need to you be a parade balloon, floating over our stall. This isn’t nearly enough helium to get you off the ground.”

He was right. Even though I had taken a whole tank of helium into my body I didn’t feel any lighter than I did before. “How much more are we talking?” I asked. Surely I couldn’t fit that much more.

“Well, I worked from the idea of a 100kg person. It’s an easy number to work with and I’m comfortable you’re under that. For current elevation and temperature helium can lift a little over a kg per cubic metre. Of course, I’m not entirely sure how much pressure your body will exert so I had to factor that in.”

“I don’t need the maths. How big am I going to get!?” I spluttered

“The needed lift will take about one hundred cubic metres of helium. Or to convert it to the dimensions of a sphere, you’ll be about five point seven five metres in diameter.”

The thought gave me a head rush and I would have toppled backwards had I not bounced off the wall behind me. Brad walked a circle around me, trailing his fingers across my taut skin as he did so. They skipped and bounced along the surface, like they would over a balloon, even squeaking when they met resistance. He pressed down into my flesh at several points and tapped on others.

“Yes. Skin integrity is holding admirably, you still have plenty of give and I’m confident you’ll be able to take the required volume. There’s no reason we can’t proceed.” He said to himself in a detached manner.

“No reason? What about my-“ I stopped abruptly as he caressed my jaw, gently running his thumb over my cheek. Protests about my feelings or wishes died in my throat. The look in his eyes told me that this was going to happen regardless. I was in no position to fight back. And besides. I was terrible at saying no to him.

“You’ll at least put me back to normal after this though?” I begged

“Mon amour. What do you take me for?” He tousled my hair. “The serum will wear off after a few days. If I left you inflated your frame would no longer be able to take the pressure, but I assure you I will have you back to your charming self well before then.”

“Good to know you’ve at least spared a thought to my wellbeing.”

“Oh don’t pout. Now, lets get you to a clearer area of the yard for the next phase, you’re a little cramped against the wall over here. You’ll need much” he lingered on the word “more room than that.” He disconnected the hose from the tank and slotted the connector into to another, longer, hose. I tested my balance and blushed, contemplating how I must look. Taking wide, slow, waddling steps I made my way to the centre of the yard. I looked about and tried to estimate just how far 5.75m was. Contemplating that made me want to run far from here but the thought of running in my state made me laugh to myself. Escape was a distant possibility at this point.

Brad dragged the rope over to me. “We can’t have you floating away, so first thing we need to do is get you secured.” My thinking hadn’t got that far ahead. I added one more thing to worry about to the litany of anxieties racing around my head. I complied as he tied loops around my ankles and wrists. I tried to inspect the security of the fastenings but since I couldn’t reach across my massive body to test them I was limited to a visual inspection. He tied the other ends of the ropes to four stakes that were driven into the ground of his yard. He looked over and must have seen my suspicious expression.

“Don’t worry. I tested these. They will hold.” He grabbed the paint tins and a brush and dragged them over to me as he spoke. “I’m a very thorough scientist, and you’re very safe.”

I snorted, I don’t know if I’d ever felt more unsafe and out of control than I did at that moment. But I had little choice but to trust him.

“Now.” He announced “We need to get you dressed up. As much as I’d enjoy it our mascot can’t be a big naked man.” I blushed as he busied himself with the paints. “I had to tweak the paints as well. Painting you at full size would be a mammoth task. These paints however will stretch out with you as you grow.”

He got to work, starting with a white base coat. As he busied himself with his project I began to relax a little. Getting such thorough attention from Brad sent a pleasant little shiver down my spine. I almost forgot how bizarre my circumstances were and drifted back to the fantasies I had for this afternoon. Of course, every time I had the urge to itch or stretch I would get a shock back to reality. Eventually he was done with his decoration and he stood back to inspect me.

“Beautiful” He exclaimed. “Wait here one moment.” Where was I going? I kept the remark to myself as he dashed inside and quickly returned with a dressing mirror. I couldn’t see all of myself in it at one time, even at a distance, but he moved it about so I could get an idea of how he had decorated me. I also got a good look at my overblown form for the first time. I had been made up to look like a scientist, most of my body covered in a white lab coat. Across my chest had he had written “Bleakwood College Science Club.” My panic returned as I realised this meant he would soon be moving on to blowing me up again.

“We’ll have you floating high enough up that no-one will be able to tell how ‘realistic’ your face is.” He chuckled to himself, clearing the art supplies away from my immediate vicinity. He took a hold of the hose again and located a gauge and knob that were along its length. “This is connected to an industrial helium tank I procured for this purpose. Are you ready?”

“Does it matter?”

He shrugged, grinned, and twisted the knob. I immediately felt the pressure within me spike. This tank was flooding the helium into me much faster than the first one had done. I felt myself steadily swelling, my limbs being rapidly swallowed by my expanding form. As the bottom of… me? I no longer really had many distinct body parts to speak of at the point. As the bottom of my sphere pushed my feet apart and touched the ground I finally lost my balance and toppled forward, letting out a yelp as I did so. I was now completely spherical save for my hands, feet and head. As the sphere claimed the last of my neck I also lost the last of my mobility. With my head cushioned on all sides by expanding flesh I could only look straight down at the ground. Brad’s feet stepped into the top of my field of vision. I felt him take my head in his hands and soothingly run his fingers through my hair and across the back of my scalp. The pressure in my body had no where to go anymore but out and I felt my body pushing outwards in all directions. I could further track my growth as I was pushed further off the ground and Brad had to slowly step back to accommodate my size. Eventually he had to let go altogether and he took a seat on the grass to watch his creation.

The pressure built within me. The speed I was moving from the ground was slowing but I could feel that that was simply to fill my massive volume. The gas was pouring in at a steady rate and the painted globe that was my body stretched out before me. Each breeze that wafted through the yard rolled my form slightly, but the weight of the ropes on each my limbs brought me back to a neutral position. Balanced on the tip of my belly, looking down at the content little man who had conned me into this. When I was a bit more than two metres from the ground he checked the gauge and updated me on my progress.

“You’ve taken about half of the helium needed. I think we can speed things up a bit more at this point.” He gave the knob a twist and the gas started rushing in so fast it vibrated my taut skin slightly, sending tingles through my body.

Only halfway? I thought. I’m not airborne yet, but surely I can’t fit twice as much gas in me as I have now?

But I kept expanding and, just as Brad had predicted, my body kept accommodating more. I could feel the lightening effects of the helium now and soon I felt my belly start to lose contact with the ground. I started to rise, slowly at first but picking up pace, until I was abruptly stopped by the ropes around my wrists and ankles and settled into a new neutral position. Brad was absolutely beaming. He jumped to his feet and pumped his fist.

“Yes! You look freaking awesome!” he crowed, before looking down at his gauge. “I left a fair bit of slack in my calculations to ensure we’d have enough lift. So, you’ve still got a ways to go my wonderful volunteer.”

“Why don’t we stop now?”

“Well, what else am I going to do with the rest of the helium? And besides, bigger is always better.”

He was now occupied in an exuberant celebratory dance, so I didn’t bother arguing with him further. I just had to hope that the tank would run out soon. Fortunately, at the gush he had left it on I didn’t have to wait too long. Though I’d guess he had pumped me up another ten or twenty percent just for his own amusement. As I felt the gush slow to a trickle and then stop I breathed a sigh of relief. Brad confirmed on the gauge that the tank was empty, then winched the ropes down a ways before disappearing under me. He let his fingers trail along my underside as he walked to my navel. I felt him tinker with the hose before appearing again, trailing the end behind him.

“There we go. All sealed up. We wouldn’t want you to spring a leak.” He slapped my firm underbelly for emphasis.

“What now?” I wondered

“Well, first thing in the morning I’ll take you over to campus to install you for the big day. In the meantime, you’ll have to spend the night out here. Of course, I wouldn’t want anyone to see you up close and see how I’ve achieved this little display. And I wouldn’t want you to get any ideas about calling for help either. So, I’m going to have to let you go a bit.” He released the winch on the ropes and I went shooting up into the air. Far further than where I had been before. For a few moments that felt like minutes I thought he had let the ropes loose, but I soon jerked to a stop. The wind at this height cause me to sway at the end of my tether. From my vantage point I could see him laughing and waving up at me before heading inside.

At least my time as a balloon would give me plenty of time to contemplate some revenge schemes for what he put me through. I hoped the science club would appreciate my display at least.

---

The fair came and went, and I watched it from my vantage point up in the sky. We won an award for our display and Brad told the rest of the club I’d done so much work on it I’d been too exhausted to come to the fair itself. Brad kept his promise and deflated me once the fair was done. He offered to buy me dinner to make up for my ordeal. I told him it was a start.

[federalistessay10350]

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Buy College Essays From The Most Reputable Service Ever Then, it's only a query of your moral ideas. This could possibly be coaching students on the weekends, driving for Uber, or taking paid online surveys. There are tons of how to generate income exterior your 9-5. Now that you have a clear plan to repay your money owed, you’ll be more motivated than ever to figure out creative new ways to earn cash. By offering info or agreeing to be contacted by a Sponsored School, you're in no way obligated to apply to or enroll with the school. You will also receives a commission every time another pupil gets access to your solutions. If you might be working in a peer-revision group ask others to say what they like about your paper, what’s unclear or confusing, and what questions they've about your writing. Ask them to recommend ideas on how one can enhance your paper. Listen to their concepts, and ask any questions you have about their comments. When you write every day you build your vocabulary and develop your writing fashion. I think it's at all times greatest for a scholar to have an impartial individual do the proofing. It is troublesome for parents to remain unbiased and sometimes it can cause plenty of added pressure between the coed and parent. It is, nevertheless, a good idea for the mother and father to help the coed brainstorm ideas for the essay previous to writing it. If they read by way of and make gentle edits, grammatical and typos, yes. The admissions officers reads as 1 out of a thousand’s and presumably even 10,000 or more. Your English trainer reads your essay to assign one grade out of many. The admissions officer reads to determine if they need to give you one spot out of probably comparatively very few. You also increase important pondering and writing expertise. My set off for writing is opening my laptop to my MS Word doc. I go away the word doc open each night time, so it’s the very first thing I see within the morning. Then, I reward myself with a sizzling cinnamon espresso. Try totally different amounts of writing time and breaks to see what works best for you. If the mother or father re-writes or writes the essay the reply is no. I do not consider that oldsters make good essay editors as a result of they aren't admissions officers. They have no idea what admissions officers are looking for. For the same cause, I don't assume English teachers make nice admissions essay readers. Your English teacher reads your essay as 1 out of 30. The hazard there's that the essay begins sounding extra like a forty one thing grownup, as an alternative of a high school senior. There is a sure “voice” that defines a young person about to start school and whether it is lacking in an essay, Admissions Directors will rapidly pick it up. Many applicants will have high GPA’s and SAT scores, volunteer in an area group, or be the president of a club or captain of a sports group. Admissions officers are looking for one thing, something, to tell apart your essay from the pile. The emphasis must be on “help” and not, “take over.” Parents, with solely one of the best intentions, will often offer plenty of input and comments, which their child will gratefully accept. Some parents can act as a sounding board with out taking on the project, whereas others can't. My desire (and admissions officers’) can be that folks are minimally concerned in the essay. When asking a question, college students assign how a lot they're willing to pay. But resist the urge to rewrite everything in the best way you might express it. More than any other component of the application, the essay gives perception into who a student actually is. So it should “sound” like the applicant, revealing persona, interests, quirks, private style, and voice.

[abcdnochu]

Lead the way

     There are a lot of problems in the world - that is quite obvious. From global warming to pollution to poverty, we are all affected and our country is not an exception.

    The Philippines suffers just like the rest of the world and the first instinct is always to look for people who claim that they could solve the problem, then blame them later if they didn't. We are looking for people who could do it for us, not knowing that the solution actually lies within ourselves.

    We have been looking too much at the big picture that we forget that the smaller parts that make up our society serve a very [maybe even much more of an] important role. Whether it be companies, family, sports or entertainment teams, and school organizations, they are all running under the same system as modern society, it's just that sometimes, we tend to underestimate their complexity.

     I have been studying for 10 years, and I have been exposed to all kinds of problems in our community but most especially the ones found in the school. And just like the elections for government officials every 3 or 6 years, I have also witnessed student government elections each year. And this is the part where I should tell you that this is not a blog that dictates what the barangay officials or the members of the cabinet should or should not do. I will not praise or defame our current president or other people of high positions. But I do hope that you pick something up along the way.

    Most people wonder why I run for positions in club organizations in school. Ever since 7th grade, I have joined more than 15 clubs. They worked just like how the national government works. We run, we do our campaigns and hope we get elected. Once elected, we take the positions and do our duties to improve the current system. But most of the students elected only get to fulfill the former and not the latter.

    Throughout the years, even though I have witnessed some student leaders who have greatly excelled in their work, I have also witnessed some who seem to have forgotten their work and only shows up when they will receive recognition or "power". During events, officers will organize and facilitate but at the same time we are in charge of preparing the venues and cleaning up after, balancing homeroom obligations and co-curricular ones. A lot of hard work is put in and it is fulfilling to know that you have contributed to it, however when you are an officer, you also get to go beyond passes since you are an organizer but that gets taken advantage of by some people in position who never showed up in the preparation process and are only there to enjoy the show, in the front row. In some instances, they would just use the membership as an excuse to be exempted from class. Sometimes, they would just ignore the responsibility altogether until the club gets an award or gets recognized by a higher governing body.

     You might wonder if I'm just ranting. Sure, partly I am, but honestly, I have also lacked in some areas. I have also made excuses, got lazy, and forgot some of the tasks that were assigned to me, but I know in myself that I try every time to regain my club mates' and advisers’ trust and accomplish my work. I have experienced cleaning huge gymnasiums, roadsides and dingy public restrooms, plant trees along a highway, paint a 4-story building, speak in front of thousands of people, and go to school early just to go home late.

     But the accomplishments you have done are not the most important. As I have stated earlier, these school systems are like modern day politics, but a bit more. Because not only do you get elected to take the position, being a member of the governing bodies in schools enables the youth to learn important values such as loyalty, punctuality, patience, and hard work. It gives you qualities and lessons you could use because at the end of the day, this world will be handed down to us. It is our job to keep it safe and make it prosper in the coming years. Being able to fully understand the responsibility and putting them into action while we are still young might just be the key to the worldly problems today. Student leaders will also learn about the problems they might encounter, like corruption and negligence, and at an early age, learn to eradicate them in their organizations and in the body that they serve..

    Because no matter how small, it makes a difference. No matter how little these acts of irresponsibility or greed or pride are, they actually are the catalysts of most of all of the problems we are facing today. The fact that as young as we are, we are given the opportunity to sharpen our wits and skills, makes us very lucky. They serve as training grounds for us, the youth, the future politicians leaders of this world. These smaller organizations that make up our community do not promote politics, but they promote hard work, unity and true leadership. If you are a member of a family, a friend group, a club, a team, a class, cherish the moments, learn from the hardships, do not falter in times of problems and when the rest cannot seem to find the solution, be that solution.

    The world already faces so many problems. Do not let the complaints and unwillingness of others hinder you from at least trying. As young as we are, we must recognize our responsibilities as citizens and active members of the human race. The world is flawed, and so are we; but the world won’t fix its problems for us. After all, the world does not shape us, we must shape the world.

 *Note: Kung natamaan ka man, no offence meant, I hope realization and inspiration struck you, Happy Holidays! xo

[seriousbusinessforhumans]

June 7, 2020

Finally! After an unforgettable week in which America — already reeling from the brutal caught-on-video Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, on top of a pandemic, a recession, and ... everything — watched with dropped jaw literally dozens of videos of police clubbing, shoving, or driving into peaceful protesters, or tear-gassing them, and even maiming some for life with rubber bullets, some officers are finally standing up and declaring: “I quit.”

The problem is, the 57 members of the police riot response unit in Buffalo, N.Y., who “resigned” — to be clear, these cops aren’t giving up their jobs, pay or benefits, but rather shirking their assignment to a special unit — on Saturday weren’t opposing the shocking brutality in their ranks but tacitly supporting it. They are instead protesting the local prosecutor who viewed a viral video of two Buffalo cops in full Robocop attire violently shoving a 75-year-old peace activist to the pavement and cracking his skull, and reached the same conclusion as the rest of America. He charged them with a criminal assault.

The shover-cop cheering society convened after the union president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, John Evans, said in a statement that the officers had been “merely following orders” to clear the square where a protest had occurred, adding bizarrely that Gugino “did slip in my estimation. He fell backwards.” It’s not often that you hear the defense from the Nuremberg trials and the standard line of your garden-variety wife beater invoked in the same statement.

The almost unshakable influence of police unions in American civic life, and especially in big cities, has been building at least a half century — mainly since the aftermath of urban unrest in the 1960s and ’70s — but the six years since the Black Lives Matter movement emerged from the ashes of Ferguson have finally brought the issue into sharper focus.

Not only is the public now seeing cellphone videos of police brutality, but it’s learning that many of these cops have been the subject of multiple complaints — yet protected by union rules or arbitration from any meaningful discipline. What’s more, the mild reforms from America’s first black president, Barack Obama, the election of progressive mayors and prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, and the rise of Donald Trump — endorsed in 2016 by many of these unions — has heightened a paranoid style and an embrace of authoritarianism by cop-union leaders.

A quick flyover of America reveals the problem:

In Minneapolis, amid the birth of Black Lives Matter and their city’s appointment of a reform-minded chief, the local police union in 2015 elected a new president, Lt. Bob Kroll, even though he’s the subject of 29 complaints, was accused in a lawsuit by black officers — including the current top cop — of promoting a hostile work environment (wearing a biker patch linked to white supremacy), and once boasted, “I was involved in three shootings myself, and not one of them has bothered me.” Kroll was a featured speaker at an October 2019 Trump rally in which he blamed Obama for “oppression” of police and praised the current president who "put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of [on] us.” Eight months later, after the handcuffed Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis cop, Kroll doubled down, writing in a letter to members that the citizens protesting his death are “a terrorist organization.”

In New York City, where online watchers have been shocked this week by the images of a police riot, with officers shoving, striking and abusing citizens, and using the excuse of an ill-advised curfew to arrest thousands of peaceful demonstrators, maybe viewers would be less surprised if they knew the head of NYC’s Sergeants Benevolent Association had not so benevolently tweeted in February at Mayor Bill de Blasio that “the members of the NYPD are declaring war on you!” When de Blasio’s adult daughter was arrested at a protest this week — a curious enough event — that same union event tweeted out her address, or “doxxing,” as kids today like to call it.

Closer to home in Delaware County, a police sergeant in the county seat of Media — and vice president of the county police union — is reportedly on administrative leave after a bizarre episode with a local shopkeeper who voiced support on Facebook for Black Lives Matter, only to see Sgt. Robert “Skippy” Carroll reply from the official FOP account: “If you choose to speak out against the police or our members, we will do everything in our power to not support your business,” later adding on his own personal Facebook page, “Try us. We’ll destroy you.”

OK, Skippy. The sergeant deleted the post and then there was a follow-up where Carroll and Delco’s new Democratic DA, Jack Stollsteimer, showed up at this guy’s sandwich shop and hugged it out, leading the shop owner to tell the Delaware County Daily Times that it was all a big misunderstanding. I guess you could say the shopkeeper slipped and fell backward, metaphorically speaking. Meanwhile, the Fraternal Order of Police in Philadelphia is still doing everything in its power to destroy the iconic South Philly food purveyor Di Bruno Bros. after its employees voiced objection to an offer of free cop lunches and the store said it would donate to Black Lives Matter.

Maybe it’s time to file a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization, or RICO, lawsuit aimed at breaking up this protection racket? The problem is that the bullying tactics work, with major policy consequences. It was so disheartening to watch Buffalo’s Democratic mayor, Byron Brown, defend some of the police actions, including the failure to attend to the injured Gugino (although he did criticize the union) on national TV Friday, in what looked like a hostage video.

In New York, de Blasio had been first elected in 2013 as a progressive reformer ending police stop-and-frisk tactics, but he clearly became cowed over the years by the massive resistance he encountered from police unions who famously turned their back on the mayor at a funeral for a slain officer. You can draw a straight line from de Blasio’s abandonment of police reform in his second term to his seeming tolerance for police brutality this week and his support of a disastrous curfew policy leading to pointless arrests of peaceful protesters and even essential workers. (Two officers accused of brutality toward protesters were suspended — not fired — on Saturday.)

Another serious consequence of police union influence and obstruction is that it’s been difficult, if not impossible, to end the career of the worst cops who commit many of the abuses. I watched this first-hand in Philadelphia over the 2010s as my Daily News friends and colleagues Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing shocking abuses in a police narcotics unit, only to see prosecutors clear the cops — after vicious assaults by FOP leaders on the pair’s journalism — while a cop who was fired won his job back in union arbitration.

One officer identified in the Pulitzer series was Joseph Bologna, who oversaw an elite narcotics unit and was captured on video ordering officers to disable security cameras in a raid on a bodega. He received only a brief suspension for “failure to supervise” and got another plum assignment to run a West Philadelphia precinct where there were scores of new complaints. Promoted nonetheless to staff inspector, Bologna was caught on tape last week viciously beating a Temple University student, leading to felony assault charges — and serious questions about why he hadn’t been stopped sooner.

The biggest reason that police and their unions have been able to abuse their authority is because, generally speaking, voters — especially white voters — overwhelmingly trusted them. That has collapsed since the killing of George Floyd. One survey found that overall support for police in America has plunged by double digits, and a whopping 78% told pollsters from Monmouth University that the anger of these protests is justified or somewhat justified.

That’s important, because the issue with reining in police unions has never been lack of good ideas, merely a lack of will. Michael Chitwood, a 55-year police veteran who recently retired as chief in Upper Darby, told the Inquirer his No. 1 solution would be to fix the arbitration system to stop the recycling of bad cops — “that’s a bad omen that sends a horrible message.”

The way to fix it is through the collective bargaining process, and here in Philadelphia, Mayor Kenney —who’s been historically backed by the FOP — will get another bite at the apple next year. The time for action is long past, but some of the burden falls on us as voters. If you want to curb police abuses, you can’t elect politicians begging for their union donations or endorsements.

When police union leaders start sounding like Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront, it’s time for the people to fight back for our rights.

(selected segments of the article)

[fire-blog-with-me]

Blue Rose Case File 4S

Agent Tamara Preston: “Deputy Director Gordon Cole’s recent dossier assignment left me deeply uncomfortable. Despite being tempered by my skepticism, I cannot deny that the whole experience mystified me. To remedy this, I decided to probe deeper with my own investigation. One of the few times in my life where I went forward without a strategy, so I found myself deep in the paper archives of the Bureau following wherever the path would lead. Just after midnight, I found a collection of boxes that held what I sought–perfect timing… the boxes held paperwork, case files, agent notes, memos, evidence, tapes, and many other documents. The following excerpts are documents collectively designated as Blue Rose Case File 4S. …”

From the audiotape archives of Special Agent Dale Cooper: “Diane, 3:30 p.m. December 6th. I am currently standing on a horizon of ice and snow outside Sioux Falls. It happened again. I had barely exited the airport terminal when the local law enforcement broke the news… there was another victim this morning. Daniel Stroup was found by public workers during a routine inspection of city buildings; he was found with what appears to be bite marks, deep gashes and lacerations across the torso and face, and vital organs missing just like the other victims. Evidence points to some kind of a serial killer, instinct points to a feral animal attack, and intuition points to something far more sinister.”

From a local newspaper/tabloid article: “ […] Gus Gunderson, president of the local gun club (running for his fourth term next month), outdoors enthusiast, and active member of the community, returned from a week-long hunting trip in the surrounding wild bearing further claims of a monster living among us. Gunderson is just the latest in a string of witnesses to what has been dubbed ‘The Crowned Man’ or 'Killer King’. Urban Legends of this figure have dated back to the days of our colonial settlers, but it seems like these encounters have had an increase in frequency over the last few years. Gunderson describes his encounter as "the single most frightening moment of my life… and I fought in Vietnam! At least back then, I knew what was in the jungle was of the Earth. They were human beings, we were human beings. When I saw that thing [Crowned Man]…I knew instantly that it was not anything of God's Earth. […] It started yesterday afternoon; I had a fresh kill and was prepping it for dinner. As I was cooking and the sun was going down, I felt something circling me and watching my movements. It stopped until nightfall. When I slept in my tent I awoke to the sounds of footsteps, heavy and somewhat plodding, around the campsite. I slowly reached for my rifle and clutched it close to my body. Suddenly, my tent was illuminated by a deep orange glow from outside, almost tricking me into thinking it was sunrise but I knew that was not sunlight. That's when I saw my first glimpse of it. It was only a silhouette but dear lord... it was slowly rising off all fours and when it stood up straight must've been 8 feet tall maybe 10, with long spindly hands and fingers, wispy long hair, and a crown of horns on its head...I busted out of that tent gun blazing, got in my truck and hightailed it back home.' [...] Gunderson mentions plans to lead a group of community minded individuals back into those woods to hunt and kill the Crowned Man.”

From the Tapes of Agent Dale Cooper: “Diane, 6:00 p.m. on December 21st, the winter solstice. Shortest day of the year. The sun is setting and night is upon us. A world of clear bright white has become a world of shadow and silhouette. It’s beautiful, Diane, but my mind is on the ugliness of the world. Five victims, Diane. Two before I arrived and 3 after my arrival. I believe I know the solution to this puzzle but I have yet to confirm my suspicions. I hope to solve this before the holidays but I’m not sure if that will be accomplished. As you know, the case has taken strange turn after strange turn, with piling frustration and obstacles. I’m facing skeptical local authorities (every town has them, Diane, I should be used to it by now but I’m still not a fan). A lawyer is obstructing the investigation whenever given the chance. The local coroner cannot stomach the autopsies so the reports have been coming in slower than desired. The victims show signs of ritual, torture, and cannibalization. Diane, this profoundly disturbs me, as it should… Not to mention that the coffee is underwhelming at best. I’m sorry but it’s true. As consolation though, there is the most revelatory double chocolate cake served at my Bed & Breakfast. Diane, I’m going to be sad to say goodbye to that cake. Also, Diane if it’s not too much trouble would you please remind me to double my physical fitness when I get back to Philadelphia…”

From local newspaper obituary: " Week of August 10, 1985. ... 'Lester Lundegaard, 42 years old. Died on a hunting trip last Saturday; he and his hunting group were killed in a wild animal attack. He was a vital part of the community, serving people at the Safeway for 20 years, participating in the bowling league, and an active member of the gun club. He is survived by his wife and children.' [...] 'Ron Tanner, 70 years old. Ron Tanner died over the weekend during a freak animal attack that killed him and the rest of his hunting trip companions. He had no grandchildren of his own, but in a way Sioux Falls was all his grandchildren. He will be remembered for his stories, his cheering at the high school football games, and his warm acceptance and support of everyone who knew him. He will be missed. Ron Tanner is survived by his brother Charles.' [...] 'Gus Gunderson, 50 years old. Sioux Falls will be a quieter place now, and that will take some getting used to. Gus was one of the most outspoken and outgoing members of the community. His list of achievements and activities would be too long to list here. Goodbye Gus Gunderson. He is survived by his wife and children.'"

Agent Tamara Preston: "Gus Gunderson did go on his hunting expedition for this Crowned Man, and brought along a group of 15 strong. Local authorities announced the massacre to the public as a freak animal accident. Of course, according to what I see here Agent Cooper was not fooled by this and suspected the work of something paranormal...why am I not surprised? Apparently, the same local Law Enforcement that gave Cooper such a headache later claimed in a press release that they debunked Crowned Man legend and that the they solved the string of killings...how you ask? The police claimed to have gone on their own hunt and brought back an exceptionally large stag (they claimed t was what witnesses saw as the Crowned Man) and what they claimed to be a pack of stray dogs who killed over 20 individuals over the course of half a year...Cooper later notes down that 'he's never been more disappointed in fellow law enforcement in his life.' I'm inclined to agree."

From the audio tapes of Special Agent Dale Cooper: "Diane, 11:30 a.m. I'm currently waiting to be discharged from the hospital. Last night I had an encounter with the Crowned Man again, this time escalating to more danger than I was prepared for. Don't worry Diane, I have a few lacerations but nothing that yoga, meditation, and a strong mind-body connection cannot fix...not to mention the help of local pain medications. It's remarkable what biochemists can do when manipulating chemicals. Of course I think part of the pain comes from my earlier encounter with that man who I have just learned is named Lorne Malvo. He is hunting me, Diane, and I intend to become the hunter not the hunted. He's a feral man, almost like some devil. In my darkest moments of fear, I would even say he could be the Crowned Man itself. I'll be on the alert, Diane. Also, could I request you do a search on Lorne Malvo in the FBI and CIA archives.' [...] 'Diane, 11:43 a.m. I almost forgot, but in addition to researching Malvo, I was hoping you could also find and send any information you can on...well, hmmm... Diane? Have you ever heard of the myth of the Wendigo?'"

From the final case report filed by Agent Dale Cooper: "From July to December 1985, 25 individuals in and around the Sioux Falls area of South Dakota were found dead, killed by apparent animal attacks or some depraved serial killer. However, upon my own investigation of the evidence, it is clear that it is not the work of beast nor of man. It is something infernal. [...] With no extraordinary help from local authorities but all the much appreciated help of local citizens, I was able to identify members of this cult through a combination of clues and intuition. Left and right hemispheres working together is a beautiful thing. A dozen local residents, ranging from all kinds of socioeconomic classes, were arrested for being part of the violent cult. [...] No traces of my attacker, but I know that Lorne Malvo will show up again. [...] [REDACTED] Bodies were found mutilated beyond easy identification, but lost in the shuffle of the grotesque was modus operandi. [REDACTED] signs of occult markings and [REDACTED]. As discussed a cult group enacting some sort of black magick ritual. That is the socially appropriate conclusion, but my intuition and personal experience tells me that it goes further. During my investigation I had several encounters with what locals referred to as the Crowned Man or Killer King, but after engaging with this entity I believe we should refer to it as [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] antlers jut out of its head and twist to shape like some magnificent and terrible crown [REDACTED] empty white eyes [REDACTED] long hands and fingers, deceivingly sharp, wrapped around my neck [REDACTED] shot the entity twice through each eye and once through each nostril [REDACTED] [...] I do not know for sure if [REDACTED] is still out there, but my heart says sadly that it is. There is more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamed of in our philosophies."

From Agent Tamara Preston: "Okay... Wendigos? Crowns of Horns? It's 3 in the morning. Wonderful. There's no further FBI investigations into this Crowned Man phenomenon--Good job, Cooper--but I was able to uncover more information about that Lorne Malvo figure mentioned in Cooper's tapes. According to FBI reports, Malvo was responsible for hundreds maybe thousands of deaths over the last few decades. There's still not much information on him, he's still as much a phantom as he was to Agent Cooper in 1985. But of note is that he returned to the Midwest area in 2006 where he was responsible for a chain of murders and other violent crimes. From 2006, Malvo and a possible accomplice/rival named Lester Nygaard terrorized several cities in Minnesota. Among the victims of that bloody year, law enforcement both local and federal--Agents Webb Pepper and Bill Budge were killed in action against Lorne Malvo--citizens, and Malvo even single-handedly eliminated the Fargo Crime Family. Both Lorne Malvo and Lester Nygaard died soon after. Well... that's enough for me. Agent TP signing off for tonight."

[biofunmy]

Charmin Made A Giant “Forever Roll” For Millennial Poops. It’s Incredible.

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News; prop styling: Shawn O’Connor

Archimedes, the ancient Greek scientist, was taking a bath when he had his eureka! moment, discovering a physics principle using water displacement to measure density. Rob Reinerman, lead of the innovation team at Procter & Gamble, was taking a dump when genius struck, leading to the creation of Charmin’s Forever Roll, a massive roll of toilet paper for millennial asses.

Reinerman, a 14-year veteran of P&G, had been pulled off his job as brand manager of Bounty paper towels and assigned to lead a newly formed innovation team within the toilet paper division. Along with his partner Kevin Mitchell, the bigwigs had tasked them with a singular purpose. “Never run out of toilet paper is the mission,” Reinerman said.

“I was at home, I think on a weekend. I was finishing up my business and faced the age-old question of whether to replace the roll or leave that last square for the next person,” Reinerman told BuzzFeed News. Ultimately, he knew the next person to use the bathroom would be his wife, who would be annoyed to find a nearly kicked roll.

But the germ of an idea was planted: What if they made a toilet paper roll that was…UNIMAGINABLY HUGE.

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News

The Forever Roll is 12 inches in diameter and is equivalent to 24 rolls of regular-size Charmin Ultra Soft.

Charmin pinched off its Forever Roll to consumers in April. It’s basically one of those industrial-size rolls you’d find at a rest stop, but so very soft. A few weeks ago, the Forever Roll caught a second wave of internet buzz when it was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article about new household products designed for adults who live alone. Reinerman crowed at the time about how it alleviates the storage problem for urban apartment dwellers (a bigger roll means less TP to store under the sink) and how the huge rolls can last a single person up to two months.

The response online was divided. Some thought this was a sad indicator of the state of the millennials: delaying marriage and children, unable to buy homes with ample bathroom storage like their parents, stuck in tiny apartments with nowhere to stuff extra rolls of toilet paper, and suffering from such burnout that the simple task of remembering to buy toilet paper once a week was too hard. Also, it’s a giant roll of paper for going doody, which is inherently funny.

sorry im late to this but imagine being single and having a date over to your house for the first time and then they walk into your bathroom and see a rock of Gibraltar-sized roll of toilet paper next to the shitter

08:23 PM – 04 Jun 2019

Dear @Charmin please consider sponsoring me because the “forever” roll is the only thing I will be talking about with friends, family and strangers for the next forever (About 1 month) I accept merchandise, Venmo and Cash app or hell I’d take a check.

09:01 PM – 21 Jun 2019

Webster’s dictionary defines “forever” as “a limitless time.” Charmin defines it as about one month, possibly two if you’re single, which is how long a single Forever Roll — 12 inches in diameter and equivalent to 24 rolls — will last you. Due to the girth and heft of the roll, it won’t fit standard toilet paper roll holders, so they created special freestanding and adhesive wall holders (for millennials who will never own a home and can’t drill into their landlord’s walls). A starter kit of three rolls and a stand costs $30, and a single roll is $10.

The (tiny) TP-in-a-roll format that we know now was popularized around 1890 by the Scott Paper Company — lots of people were wiping with the Sears Roebuck catalog before that. The Hoberg Paper Company of Green Bay, Wisconsin, launched the Charmin brand in 1928 and soon offered the classic four-pack.

For the next few decades, the physical form of the roll didn’t change much. It took until 1994 for Charmin to make the double roll. They then created a “Mega Roll,” equivalent to four rolls.

Yet aside from tweaks to texture, prints, or even scents (Angel Soft has two new scented core options), the general shape and concept of toilet paper for home use hasn’t changed in our lifetime. The biggest development of late has been wet wipes — including varieties targeted at men: Dude Wipes, Dollar Shave Club’s One Wipe Charlies, or Mangroomer’s Biz Wipes in “Executive scent” — and that’s not going well. Because wipes don’t break down as well as regular TP, they create massive, clogging “fatbergs” in sewer systems.

What happened to the American spirit of ingenuity? We put a man on the moon, and we still use basically the same dinky TP rolls as president Taft. Sure, we brought giant-size rolls to public restrooms, but that industrial stuff is thin, rough, hole-ripping. An ass war crime. Only a stone-cold psychopath would consider bringing home that giant wheel of rough paper, encased in a rugged dispenser to protect it from thieves. Why had no one, in over 100 years, thought, Hey, what if we made a GIGUNDOUS roll of soft toilet paper?

No wonder the feedback on the Forever Roll on Charmin’s site so far has been disproportionately positive: 4.7 stars out of 5 from more than 2,800 reviewers. They compared the magnitude of the invention to sliced bread (!), touted the roll as successful Father’s Day and birthday gifts (?), and remarked on how smoothly it glides on the Forever Roll stand. Of the complaints that were filed, a large share revolved around the roll not lasting long enough: “This thing just screams ‘use more!! MORE!!’ and my kids comply,” one user griped. But bottom line, folks: “Huge and soft.”

Could this signal a future in which all consumer goods are enormous? In which our houses are just Willy Wonka wonderlands of monstrously oversize paper products and fountains of soap? Is this a sign of the excesses of peak capitalism, or a sad sign of the state of the millennial condition?

“You could produce the biggest roll in history and it still wouldn’t clean an anus properly.”

Of course, toilet paper is not without its controversies. If you, a millennial who poops a lot (and who isn’t? avocado toast is chock-full of fiber) and are also concerned about the environmental impact of the Big Ass Roll, you’re not alone. And it’s not just that it encourages people to use more paper per wipe.

Shelley Vinyard, of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said Charmin is made from 100% virgin paper, no recycled fibers, just pure trees. “It’s an easy place to make a difference and vote with your dollars for a more sustainable option,” said Vinyard. NRDC notes that competitors like Marcal use recycled materials.

Loren Fanroy, a representative for Charmin, told BuzzFeed News, “100% of our wood fiber supply is third-party certified with responsible forestry certification systems, like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and come from sustainably-managed forests. We do not participate in any deforestation practices, and for every tree we use, at least one is re-grown.” And Reinerman points out that since each Forever Roll equals 24 regular rolls, you use fewer cardboard tubes, and there’s no plastic wrap packaging.

Still, destroying forests to wipe our butts can keep you up at night, and it calls into question the merits of toilet paper altogether. If you take it one step further, perhaps it’s time for Americans to embrace the bidet and end this cycle of deforestation and waste once and for all.

“[Toilet paper] is totally unhygienic and you could produce the biggest roll in history and it still wouldn’t clean an anus properly,” said Rose George, the author of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. “We use water to wash everything from our bodies to our cars, and yet for the dirtiest part of our body, we choose to use a dry substance that really only moves, and doesn’t remove dirt. It’s crazy. It’s like choosing to have a shower with a dry towel. Half the world uses water to cleanse their butts, and they think those of us who have paper cultures are dirty, and they’re right.”

“I can’t believe nobody thought of this before.”

After Reinerman and Mitchell recruited a few other people to work on their experimental team, prototyped the giant roll, pitched it to the big bosses (who were receptive), and started testing it and running a small ad campaign on Facebook, they were ready to go public in April 2019.

“We were consistently hearing the comment, ‘I can’t believe nobody thought of this before.’ And that’s when you realize that you have something that’s improving somebody’s experience,” said Reinerman.

So they hired more people to run an e-commerce site (the Forever Roll is only sold on the Charmin website, for now), and unlike other P&G brands, they do the marketing and social media themselves. “We have a small, mighty team that is running the whole operation,” said Reinerman.

Even Charmin’s competitor had to hand it to them for coming up with the Big Roll. “If you talk to folks in the bath tissue category, the one thing we never want to happen is to run out of toilet paper in a critical moment,” said Kim Sackey, consumer knowledge lead for retail at Georgia-Pacific, the Koch Industries–owned company that makes Angel Soft and Quilted Northern. Still, she isn’t too jealous. “The Forever Roll is one potential solution; in my mind, there’s other potential ones,” she told BuzzFeed News. Subscriptions, like the kind Amazon offers, are one option, and she’s interested in optimizing the timing and quantities of subscriptions so you don’t end up with too much or too little.

Other manufacturers, including Marcal, Scott, and Cottonelle, did not return requests for comment.

To me, Rob Reinerman’s invention was a stroke of genius, a gift to the human race and all our diverse and tender holes. But as a journalist, I needed to dig deeper. Trust, but verify; wipe till it feels clean, but still look at the paper afterward. So I tested out a Forever Roll here in BuzzFeed’s office.

The stand came with a screw and its own set of mini Allen wrenches to install (pretty easy). It had a heavy base to prevent it from toppling over and felt solid.

Katie Notopoulos

The Forever Roll inside the BuzzFeed offices.

I set up a Forever Roll in a single-use bathroom in our office, and after lunch, gave it a full test myself. It was…fine? The strangest part was that it was hard to tell how far to turn the roll to get the right amount of paper — I ended up with a little more than I needed.

Then I set up a notepad and pen in the bathroom explaining what the Forever Roll was, that I was writing an article about it, and wanted my colleagues’ feedback.

It turns out asking my coworkers to describe their toilet paper–wiping experience was perhaps a bad idea. Not a single person wrote anything down on my public notepad (I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to my coworkers and also let HR know I’ve definitely learned my lesson here). But I did get two personal notes.

“Way too big. If you drop it on the floor and it gets wet you are losing SO MUCH toilet paper,” said one coworker. “My bathroom is small, and it would 100% get wet somehow. Too much surface area.”

My editor said while she was impressed with how smoothly the Forever Roll glided on the stand, she would be mortified for guests to see a massive roll of toilet paper in her small apartment bathroom.

To that I say, what is the price of dignity? Is it $30 for the Forever Roll starter kit? Is it never having to waddle across the bathroom, pants around ankles, to get a replacement roll from under the sink? Is it not having guests see an aggressively large toilet paper roll in your bathroom? Don’t ask me, I’m the person who just wrote a long article (which is not sponsored by Charmin, btw, BuzzFeed is literally losing money paying me a salary to do this) about toilet paper. I have no dignity, but boy am I clean. ●

Kate Bubacz / BuzzFeed News

Sahred From Source link Technology

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2RyLZtq via IFTTT

[theinvinciblenoob]

Recent reports that SoftBank may take a majority stake in WeWork has added fuel to the already hot market for startups in the workspace and property tech sectors. One of the more compelling companies that stands to benefit from this trend is New York-based Convene. Started by co-founders Ryan Simonetti (CEO) and Chris Kelly (president), 500-person strong Convene has distinguished itself as a top-tier provider of meeting, event and flexible workspace offerings in its 21 locations.

But unlike freelance-heavy WeWork and other co-working companies that cater to 1-10 person companies, Convene puts owners of Class A office buildings at the center of its business model. The goal is to help these landlords provide tenants with the high-end of amenities of, say a unicorn tech startup.

On the back of the company’s recent $152 million Series D, Simonetti and Kelly were eager to discuss new initiatives, including a co-branded turnkey workplace and amenity solution and their plans to launch additional Convene locations, including London. They also elaborate on how they plan to benefit during the next recession and open up on their differences with category giant WeWork. Finally, they explain why paintings by renowned artists, including Picasso and Calder, are tucked into corners of the company’s first, soon-to-be-opened members club at Rockefeller Center.

Gregg Schoenberg: Ryan and Chris. It’s great to see you both. To kick things off, I want to establish that Convene is not a typical startup in that you’ve been around for about nine years.

Ryan Simonetti: Yes, is that called being washed-up in the start-up world?

GS: Not necessarily. Tell me about where the idea for Convene came from?

RS: Chris and I met during our freshman year orientation at Villanova University, ended-up pledging the same fraternity and spent a lot of time getting to know each other. From the beginning, we were probably two of the more entrepreneurial guys at Villanova. We sold used textbooks, spring break trips, parties into Philadelphia. If there was a way to monetize something in college, we were the two guys that were trying do it.

GS: Two scrappy guys from Villanova.

RS: Yes, we’ve always joked that we were probably the only kids at Villanova who didn’t have our parents’ credit cards.

GS: So years later, what was that catalyzing moment where you said, “Okay, here’s the idea for Convene”?

Chris Kelly: I remember two phone calls from Ryan that represent the earliest seeds of Convene. The first phone call was in the middle of the financial collapse, and in that phone call, Ryan said, “We’re about to witness the largest shift of wealth that the world has ever seen and we have to figure out how to be on the winning end of that.” Then a few weeks later, Ryan called me up and introduced the crazy idea for Convene.

GS: And what was that specific pitch?

CS: He walked me through the Grand Hyatt in Midtown Manhattan and said, “Look at the way these guys are doing business. This is a $60 million a year catering and meetings operation that was in essence being outsourced to hotels.”

“Just like Airbnb would tell you that their primary stakeholder is the homeowner, or OpenTable would tell you the primary stakeholder is a restaurateur, we view the building owner as our primary stakeholder.”

GS: And you’re saying hotels weren’t doing a great job?

CS: Hotels simply didn’t have the sensibility about what people really need in a business environment. They treated a shareholder meeting like a wedding with a projector. And we saw a huge opportunity to create spaces that met enterprise workplace requirements.

GS: So fast forward to today and tell me exactly what Convene is, because I think sometimes people struggle and just say, “Well you’re a WeWork competitor on the premium end.”

RS: We partner with Class A building owners to design places where people can meet, work and be inspired. It’s not any more complicated than that.

CS: To build on that, you could say that we’re essentially allowing landlords to offer Googleplex-style workplace experiences.

RS: That’s a big challenge for even large organizations. Look at Google, Facebook or JP Morgan. These companies can deliver an amazing experience at their corporate headquarters location. But in their smaller offices, it’s really tough to deliver a corporate HQ experience if you only have five, ten, or 15,000 square feet. You can’t build the kitchen infrastructure, or the gym, or all of those other things. So to Chris’s point, we’re democratizing access to that experience, and doing it with the landlord as the key partner.

GS: So the landlords are the core client?

RS: Just like Airbnb would tell you that their primary stakeholder is the homeowner, or OpenTable would tell you the primary stakeholder is a restaurateur, we view the building owner as our primary stakeholder. And what we’re helping them do is respond to the changing demands of today’s tenant, who want increased flexibility and better agility to adapt to change.

GS: I take it marrying technology infrastructure to the physical spaces is key to that, which is why you recently bought Beco. What exactly do they do?

RS: Beco is a workplace analytics platform that’s using sensor-based technology to help us, our landlord partners and our corporate clients better understand the way that people are actually interacting with space and services.

“But what really differentiates us strategically is that we’re not trying to build our own supply chain or our own inventories.”

GS: As you contemplated that acquisition, were you worried that it might be perceived to some of your traditional clients as Big Brothery?

RS: Look, everyone today is concerned about data privacy, and rightfully so. The way that the technology actually operates is that the actual users are anonymous to us.

GS: So is that data anonymous, or anonymous anonymous?

RS: Anonymous anonymous, meaning all we’re capturing is a random ID assigned to a phone, and that ties back to the sensor and data analytics platform.

GS: Do you have to opt in?

RS: It’s all opt in.

GS: Okay, I want to turn to the big gorilla in the broader flexible workspace category, because right or wrong, everyone, including Convene, gets compared to WeWork.

RS:Look, if we think about the macro trends that are shaping and changing not just the way that we work, but also the way that we live and travel, I would argue that WeWork and us have a similar view of the world and the future. But from a business model perspective, the quality of the product that we’ve built, the level of service that we deliver, the strategic nature of our partnerships with building owners, I don’t view us as directly competitive.

GS: I appreciate that WeWork ultimately caters to smaller sized end-users than Convene, so in that way you’re different. But it’s also true that even though Red Bull and Coca Cola are different drinks, you’re not going to drink a Coke and a Red Bull at the same time.

RS: From an analogy perspective, there’s a difference between Planet Fitness and Equinox, right? Would you argue that they’re competitive? Maybe. But the way I think about office real estate is Class C, Class B, Class A. Convene is a Class A partner to landlords.

GS: Right, but WeWork, with all that current and possibly future cash from Softbank, is moving upmarket.

RS: Sure, as they move more into enterprise and upmarket, of course, they’ll be competitive. But what really differentiates us strategically is that we’re not trying to build our own supply chain or our own inventories. We’re partnering with the existing supply chain to create a new category of supply that speaks to the collective demand from our customer demographic.

GS: As a service provider, I get that. But what happens when the next recession comes —

RS: — Yes, by the way, we’re excited for the next one.

GS: Because the knock on WeWork and other companies in the broader sector is that when the recession hits, the blood will hit the fan because of those short-term tenant leases.

RS: Well, right now, you see a lot of capital flowing into the sector and you have platforms that probably shouldn’t be here as well.

GS: Let’s take Brookfield. WeWork has a relationship with Brookfield. You guys have a relationship with Brookfield. But I think the difference is this: if bad things happen in the economy, they have to hope that WeWork is going to effectively manage those short-term lease obligations. From my outsider’s perspective, that looks to me like a counterparty relationship. But in Convene’s case, it looks more like an aligned partnership. After all, Brookfield, as well as Durst and RXR, are on your cap table.

RS: Every deal structure is aligned and even the leases we have are aligned. And when the recession hits, we will use it as an opportunity to deepen our landlord partnerships and take market share.

GS: With whose balance sheet?

RS: We’re using the landlord’s balance sheet to grow our business.

CS: And WeWork is using the Softbank balance sheet to grow their business.

GS: Could you elaborate?

RS: WeWork did us the greatest favor in the world, because our strategy since day one has been to make the landlord a key partner and stakeholder. Do you want to know who has the cheapest cost of capital? Cheaper than Softbank’s? It’s the landlord’s balance sheet. Their cost of equity capital is like six to eight percent.

GS: Really?

RS: Yes. If you think about the investor-anticipated yield in asset classes, real estate sits between a fixed income expectation and an equity capital markets expectation.

GS: Okay, but how does using the landlord’s balance sheet enhance your approach strategically?

CS: Because there are elements of the way we structure our deals that allow our performance to be variable. And by using the landlord’s balance sheet to grow our business, it aligns us and the landlord to be able to ride through a recession together.

“Do you want to know who has the cheapest cost of capital? Cheaper than SoftBank’s? It’s the landlord’s balance sheet.”

GS: Have many of the nation’s Class A landlords have bought into your model?

RS: If you look at our current partners that we’re actively working with, I think they globally control over 250 million square feet of Class A office space. So if 10% of that moves to flexible consumption, that means Convene could have an addressable market of 25 million square feet of inventory.

GS: So given the way you’re talking, would it be fair to say that your landlord partners have recognized that the flexible workspace trend is here for the long-term?

CS: How we consume real estate is undergoing a fundamental shift. This is the same conversation that was happening in the transportation industry 15 years ago. It’s the same thing that was happening in the travel industry when Airbnb was starting. That same conversation is happening today within the existing supply chain. So, yes, It’s a buy, build, partner decision that is being made in every landlord’s office around the country today.

GS: It still sounds odd to hear the phrase, “consume real estate.” Maybe I’m old-school, but you guys are down to earth. Do you find that language odd?

CS: Actually, what we’re seeing is the consumerization of real estate. Real estate was historically very B2B, very financially driven. Today, it’s being driven by human experience, So yes, brands matter, the customer experience matters. And that consumerization of real estate actually is happening.

GS: I take it that’s why you launched this new managed workplace solution that features the services you bring, but enables a client to use its own name?

CS: What makes that platform unique is that it’s co-branded. It’s an endorsed brand model by Convene, which means that the Convene brand standards, the Convene operating model, the Convene staffing model and the Convene university training program comes with it.

GS: So Intel inside?

CK: Yes, which gives clients the best of both worlds. It gives them the brand and reach and expertise of Convene. At the same time, they can now have something that feels more authentic and unique to them as a landlord.

GS: I want to shift to the future of work, which is something you both have spoken about in pretty bold terms. We’re at this amazing Convene members club, which sort of feels like a SoHo House except we’re in midtown. And you’ve talked about how an experiential personal life will be closer to a work life. Where is all this going?

RS: From a trend perspective, we believe fundamentally in what we call work/life integration. It used to be that you go to work and at the end of the day that stops and then you move to the rest of your life. That’s not really the way it works anymore. And when we think about some of the services that we’ve launched over the last couple years, it’s been with that idea in mind.

GS: Are you creating future offerings in-house or partnering?

RS: Actually, we’re about to announce a partnership on the wellness side, where we’re taking some of the wellness elements and starting to incorporate them into the broader Convene ecosystem.

GS: Do either of you guys have children?

RS: Yes, we both do.

GS: Because if you want to talk about quality of life and the war for talent, it seems like a natural extension to see if your plan to help the workforce addresses the challenges of working while raising young kids. Are such extensions on your whiteboard?

RS: Yes, they’re definitely on the whiteboard and some of those things are already in process. The difference is partnership. When I think about the way that we’re building our platform and the way that WeWork is building theirs, I think about us as being an open-source platform, Do you think you need to do everything yourself because you’re the best in the world at everything, or do you want to work with best-in-class partners?

GS: So for something like childcare, you’d bring in a partner?

RS: If we decide, which I’m not saying we are, to get into childcare, we’re going to do that with a proven partner that has a track record of delivering that experience and doing it really well.

GS: How does Convene fare in a world where remote work becomes an even bigger trend?

CS: Actually, there’s a difference between remote work and mobility. Remote work is the traditional concept of working from home, and we’re actually seeing some backlash now of companies who are really trying to drive culture, and want more face-to-face interaction.

GS: Does that show up in the design of your spaces?

CK: Yes, the built environments of our offices are changing from looking like cubicle farms where everybody reports to their desk and their computer to operating a lot more like a digitally-enabled campus. And the decoupling of people and their work from their desk is opening up an opportunity to build what’s called an activity-based workplace, where there are different types of spaces that are specialized and built for specific uses.

GS: You guys don’t even have offices, right?

CK: Right. None of us have offices.

RS: Also, people used to talk about remote work in magical terms. They’d say, I’m not going to need an office. We don’t believe that this is the case. We think that there a few things that will continue to matter to organizations. One is brand, two is culture, three is collaboration. And until technology can somehow magically replicate that experience, we think that the best ideas will come from face-to-face interaction.

GS: I have two important last topics to cover. First-off, why on earth, nestled into a semi-remote corner of this club, do you have a Picasso painting hanging on the wall? Because in my experience, usually people like to show off the Picasso if they have one.

RS: Ha, well, the Picasso, as well as all of the other amazing art that you’ve seen at Club 75, is part of the partnership here with the landlord.

GS: Well, it speaks to the confidence they have in you.

RS: Yes, but it also speaks to the experience we’re creating. We think about space as the body language of an organization. Space has the ability to move people and we think that art is a big part of that.

CK: It also demonstrates the extent to which landlords are committed to delivering a great experience.

RS: Right. Having a coffee next to a Calder or a Picasso can put you in a totally different headspace.

“There’s no amount of money in the world that can buy you a partnership with Brookfield or a half a dozen landlords that we’ll be powering next year.”

GS: Well, I’m glad you didn’t use shareholder money to buy these works, which brings me to my last topic. At this point, are you concerned about profitability?

CS: Yes, we are and that’s another one of the differences between us and others. In fact, we’ve been cashflow positive since Day one. And as an organization, profitability has always been something that we think is very important.

GS: It’s because you don’t have enough VCs on your cap table. Speaking of which, you’re obviously aware of the fact that Softbank and other megafunds may helicopter drop a lot more money into this space, which could change the competitive dynamics.

RS: First of all, the last time I checked, we were the second most capitalized platform in the category, by dollars raised. And if you look at our partnership-driven approach, where the landlord’s balance sheet is funding a lot of our growth, the actual capital that’s being invested in the platform is multiples of the $260 million we’ve raised.

But to your point, our concern isn’t so much about the capital that’s flooding in, There’s no amount of money in the world that can buy you a partnership with Brookfield or a half a dozen landlords that we’ll be powering next year. And money, whether its from Softbank or anyone else, can’t give an organization its corporate culture. And I think one of the reasons we’ve been selected as the partner to some of the most discerning customers in the world is because of the fact that everyday, we deliver consistently against a premium experience.

GS: Well, on that note, Chris and Ryan, I’d like to thank you for your kind hospitality.

RS: It’s been our pleasure and thank you.

via TechCrunch

[fmservers]

Convene uses landlord partnership model to outclass WeWork

Recent reports that Softbank may take a majority stake in WeWork has added fuel to the already hot market for start-ups in the workspace and property tech sectors. One of the more compelling companies that stands to benefit from this trend is New York-based Convene. Started by co-founders Ryan Simonetti (CEO) and Chris Kelly (President), 500-person strong Convene has distinguished itself as a top-tier provider of meeting, event and flexible workspace offerings in its 21 locations. But unlike freelance-heavy WeWork and other co-working companies who cater to 1-10 person companies, Convene puts owners of Class A office buildings at the center of its business model. The goal is to help these landlords provide tenants with the high-end of amenities of, say a unicorn tech startup.

On the back of the company’s recent $152 million Series D, Simonetti and Kelly were eager to discuss new initiatives including a co-branded turnkey workplace and amenity solution and their plans to launch additional Convene locations, including London. They also elaborate on how they plan to benefit during the next recession and open up on their differences with category giant WeWork. Finally, they explain why paintings by renowned artists including Picasso and Calder are tucked into corners of the company’s first, soon-to-be-opened members club at Rockefeller Center.

Gregg Schoenberg: Ryan and Chris. It’s great to see you both. To kick things off, I want to establish that Convene is not a typical startup in that you’ve been around for about nine years.

Ryan Simonetti: Yes, is that called being washed-up in the start-up world?

GS: Not necessarily. Tell me about where the idea for Convene came from?

RS: Chris and I met during our freshman year orientation at Villanova University, ended-up pledging the same fraternity and spent a lot of time getting to know each other. From the beginning, we were probably two of the more entrepreneurial guys at Villanova. We sold used textbooks, spring break trips, parties into Philadelphia. If there was a way to monetize something in college, we were the two guys that were trying do it.

GS: Two scrappy guys from Villanova.

RS: Yes, we’ve always joked that we were probably the only kids at Villanova who didn’t have our parents’ credit cards.

GS: So years later, what was that catalyzing moment where you said, “Okay, here’s the idea for Convene”?

Chris Kelly: I remember two phone calls from Ryan that represent the earliest seeds of Convene. The first phone call was in the middle of the financial collapse, and in that phone call, Ryan said, “We’re about to witness the largest shift of wealth that the world has ever seen and we have to figure out how to be on the winning end of that.” Then a few weeks later, Ryan called me up and introduced the crazy idea for Convene.

GS: And what was that specific pitch?

CS: He walked me through the Grand Hyatt in Midtown Manhattan and said, “Look at the way these guys are doing business. This is a $60 million a year catering and meetings operation that was in essence being outsourced to hotels.”

“Just like Airbnb would tell you that their primary stakeholder is the homeowner, or OpenTable would tell you the primary stakeholder is a restaurateur, we view the building owner as our primary stakeholder.”

GS: And you’re saying hotels weren’t doing a great job?

CS: Hotels simply didn’t have the sensibility about what people really need in a business environment. They treated a shareholder meeting like a wedding with a projector. And we saw a huge opportunity to create spaces that met enterprise workplace requirements.

GS: So fast forward to today and tell me exactly what Convene is, because I think sometimes people struggle and just say, “Well you’re a WeWork competitor on the premium end.”

RS: We partner with Class A building owners to design places where people can meet, work and be inspired. It’s not any more complicated than that.

CS: To build on that, you could say that we’re essentially allowing landlords to offer Googleplex-style workplace experiences.

RS: That’s a big challenge for even large organizations. Look at Google, Facebook or JP Morgan. These companies can deliver an amazing experience at their corporate headquarters location. But in their smaller offices, it’s really tough to deliver a corporate HQ experience if you only have five, ten, or 15,000 square feet. You can’t build the kitchen infrastructure, or the gym, or all of those other things. So to Chris’s point, we’re democratizing access to that experience, and doing it with the landlord as the key partner.

GS: So the landlords are the core client?

RS: Just like Airbnb would tell you that their primary stakeholder is the homeowner, or OpenTable would tell you the primary stakeholder is a restaurateur, we view the building owner as our primary stakeholder. And what we’re helping them do is respond to the changing demands of today’s tenant, who want increased flexibility and better agility to adapt to change.

GS: I take it marrying technology infrastructure to the physical spaces is key to that, which is why you recently bought Beco. What exactly do they do?

RS: Beco is a workplace analytics platform that’s using sensor-based technology to help us, our landlord partners and our corporate clients better understand the way that people are actually interacting with space and services.

“But what really differentiates us strategically is that we’re not trying to build our own supply chain or our own inventories.”

GS: As you contemplated that acquisition, were you worried that it might be perceived to some of your traditional clients as Big Brothery?

RS: Look, everyone today is concerned about data privacy, and rightfully so. The way that the technology actually operates is that the actual users are anonymous to us.

GS: So is that data anonymous, or anonymous anonymous?

RS: Anonymous anonymous, meaning all we’re capturing is a random ID assigned to a phone, and that ties back to the sensor and data analytics platform.

GS: Do you have to opt in?

RS: It’s all opt in.

GS: Okay, I want to turn to the big gorilla in the broader flexible workspace category, because right or wrong, everyone, including Convene, gets compared to WeWork.

RS:Look, if we think about the macro trends that are shaping and changing not just the way that we work, but also the way that we live and travel, I would argue that WeWork and us have a similar view of the world and the future. But from a business model perspective, the quality of the product that we’ve built, the level of service that we deliver, the strategic nature of our partnerships with building owners, I don’t view us as directly competitive.

GS: I appreciate that WeWork ultimately caters to smaller sized end-users than Convene, so in that way you’re different. But it’s also true that even though Red Bull and Coca Cola are different drinks, you’re not going to drink a Coke and a Red Bull at the same time.

RS: From an analogy perspective, there’s a difference between Planet Fitness and Equinox, right? Would you argue that they’re competitive? Maybe. But the way I think about office real estate is Class C, Class B, Class A. Convene is a Class A partner to landlords.

GS: Right, but WeWork, with all that current and possibly future cash from Softbank, is moving upmarket.

RS: Sure, as they move more into enterprise and upmarket, of course, they’ll be competitive. But what really differentiates us strategically is that we’re not trying to build our own supply chain or our own inventories. We’re partnering with the existing supply chain to create a new category of supply that speaks to the collective demand from our customer demographic.

GS: As a service provider, I get that. But what happens when the next recession comes —

RS: — Yes, by the way, we’re excited for the next one.

GS: Because the knock on WeWork and other companies in the broader sector is that when the recession hits, the blood will hit the fan because of those short-term tenant leases.

RS: Well, right now, you see a lot of capital flowing into the sector and you have platforms that probably shouldn’t be here as well.

GS: Let’s take Brookfield. WeWork has a relationship with Brookfield. You guys have a relationship with Brookfield. But I think the difference is this: if bad things happen in the economy, they have to hope that WeWork is going to effectively manage those short-term lease obligations. From my outsider’s perspective, that looks to me like a counterparty relationship. But in Convene’s case, it looks more like an aligned partnership. After all, Brookfield, as well as Durst and RXR, are on your cap table.

RS: Every deal structure is aligned and even the leases we have are aligned. And when the recession hits, we will use it as an opportunity to deepen our landlord partnerships and take market share.

GS: With whose balance sheet?

RS: We’re using the landlord’s balance sheet to grow our business.

CS: And WeWork is using the Softbank balance sheet to grow their business.

GS: Could you elaborate?

RS: WeWork did us the greatest favor in the world, because our strategy since day one has been to make the landlord a key partner and stakeholder. Do you want to know who has the cheapest cost of capital? Cheaper than Softbank’s? It’s the landlord’s balance sheet. Their cost of equity capital is like six to eight percent.

GS: Really?

RS: Yes. If you think about the investor-anticipated yield in asset classes, real estate sits between a fixed income expectation and an equity capital markets expectation.

GS: Okay, but how does using the landlord’s balance sheet enhance your approach strategically?

CS: Because there are elements of the way we structure our deals that allow our performance to be variable. And by using the landlord’s balance sheet to grow our business, it aligns us and the landlord to be able to ride through a recession together.

“Do you want to know who has the cheapest cost of capital? Cheaper than Softbank’s? It’s the landlord’s balance sheet.”

GS: Have many of the nation’s Class A landlords have bought into your model?

RS: If you look at our current partners that we’re actively working with, I think they globally control over 250 million square feet of Class A office space. So if 10% of that moves to flexible consumption, that means Convene could have an addressable market of 25 million square feet of inventory.

GS: So given the way you’re talking, would it be fair to say that your landlord partners have recognized that the flexible workspace trend is here for the long-term?

CS: How we consume real estate is undergoing a fundamental shift. This is the same conversation that was happening in the transportation industry 15 years ago. It’s the same thing that was happening in the travel industry when Airbnb was starting. That same conversation is happening today within the existing supply chain. So, yes, It’s a buy, build, partner decision that is being made in every landlord’s office around the country today.

GS: It still sounds odd to hear the phrase, “consume real estate.” Maybe I’m old-school, but you guys are down to earth. Do you find that language odd?

CS: Actually, what we’re seeing is the consumerization of real estate. Real estate was historically very B2B, very financially driven. Today, it’s being driven by human experience, So yes, brands matter, the customer experience matters. And that consumerization of real estate actually is happening.

GS: I take it that’s why you launched this new managed workplace solution that features the services you bring, but enables a client to use its own name?

CS: What makes that platform unique is that it’s co-branded. It’s an endorsed brand model by Convene, which means that the Convene brand standards, the Convene operating model, the Convene staffing model and the Convene university training program comes with it.

GS: So Intel inside?

CK: Yes, which gives clients the best of both worlds. It gives them the brand and reach and expertise of Convene. At the same time, they can now have something that feels more authentic and unique to them as a landlord.

GS: I want to shift to the future of work, which is something you both have spoken about in pretty bold terms. We’re at this amazing Convene members club, which sort of feels like a SoHo House except we’re in midtown. And you’ve talked about how an experiential personal life will be closer to a work life. Where is all this going?

RS: From a trend perspective, we believe fundamentally in what we call work/life integration. It used to be that you go to work and at the end of the day that stops and then you move to the rest of your life. That’s not really the way it works anymore. And when we think about some of the services that we’ve launched over the last couple years, it’s been with that idea in mind.

GS: Are you creating future offerings in-house or partnering?

RS: Actually, we’re about to announce a partnership on the wellness side, where we’re taking some of the wellness elements and starting to incorporate them into the broader Convene ecosystem.

GS: Do either of you guys have children?

RS: Yes, we both do.

GS: Because if you want to talk about quality of life and the war for talent, it seems like a natural extension to see if your plan to help the workforce addresses the challenges of working while raising young kids. Are such extensions on your whiteboard?

RS: Yes, they’re definitely on the whiteboard and some of those things are already in process. The difference is partnership. When I think about the way that we’re building our platform and the way that WeWork is building theirs, I think about us as being an open-source platform, Do you think you need to do everything yourself because you’re the best in the world at everything, or do you want to work with best-in-class partners?

GS: So for something like childcare, you’d bring in a partner?

RS: If we decide, which I’m not saying we are, to get into childcare, we’re going to do that with a proven partner that has a track record of delivering that experience and doing it really well.

GS: How does Convene fare in a world where remote work becomes an even bigger trend?

CS: Actually, there’s a difference between remote work and mobility. Remote work is the traditional concept of working from home, and we’re actually seeing some backlash now of companies who are really trying to drive culture, and want more face-to-face interaction.

GS: Does that show up in the design of your spaces?

CK: Yes, the built environments of our offices are changing from looking like cubicle farms where everybody reports to their desk and their computer to operating a lot more like a digitally-enabled campus. And the decoupling of people and their work from their desk is opening up an opportunity to build what’s called an activity-based workplace, where there are different types of spaces that are specialized and built for specific uses.

GS: You guys don’t even have offices, right?

CK: Right. None of us have offices.

RS: Also, people used to talk about remote work in magical terms. They’d say, I’m not going to need an office. We don’t believe that this is the case. We think that there a few things that will continue to matter to organizations. One is brand, two is culture, three is collaboration. And until technology can somehow magically replicate that experience, we think that the best ideas will come from face-to-face interaction.

GS: I have two important last topics to cover. First-off, why on earth, nestled into a semi-remote corner of this club, do you have a Picasso painting hanging on the wall? Because in my experience, usually people like to show off the Picasso if they have one.

RS: Ha, well, the Picasso, as well as all of the other amazing art that you’ve seen at Club 75, is part of the partnership here with the landlord.

GS: Well, it speaks to the confidence they have in you.

RS: Yes, but it also speaks to the experience we’re creating. We think about space as the body language of an organization. Space has the ability to move people and we think that art is a big part of that.

CK: It also demonstrates the extent to which landlords are committed to delivering a great experience.

RS: Right. Having a coffee next to a Calder or a Picasso can put you in a totally different headspace.

“There’s no amount of money in the world that can buy you a partnership with Brookfield or a half a dozen landlords that we’ll be powering next year.”

GS: Well, I’m glad you didn’t use shareholder money to buy these works, which brings me to my last topic. At this point, are you concerned about profitability?

CS: Yes, we are and that’s another one of the differences between us and others. In fact, we’ve been cashflow positive since Day one. And as an organization, profitability has always been something that we think is very important.

GS: It’s because you don’t have enough VCs on your cap table. Speaking of which, you’re obviously aware of the fact that Softbank and other megafunds may helicopter drop a lot more money into this space, which could change the competitive dynamics.

RS: First of all, the last time I checked, we were the second most capitalized platform in the category, by dollars raised. And if you look at our partnership-driven approach, where the landlord’s balance sheet is funding a lot of our growth, the actual capital that’s being invested in the platform is multiples of the $260 million we’ve raised.

But to your point, our concern isn’t so much about the capital that’s flooding in, There’s no amount of money in the world that can buy you a partnership with Brookfield or a half a dozen landlords that we’ll be powering next year. And money, whether its from Softbank or anyone else, can’t give an organization its corporate culture. And I think one of the reasons we’ve been selected as the partner to some of the most discerning customers in the world is because of the fact that everyday, we deliver consistently against a premium experience.

GS: Well, on that note, Chris and Ryan, I’d like to thank you for your kind hospitality.

RS: It’s been our pleasure and thank you.

Via Gregg Schoenberg https://techcrunch.com

[cubaverdad]

Cuban Counterintelligence Plays Hardball with Journalists

Cuban Counterintelligence Plays Hardball with Journalists / Iván García Ivan Garcia, 17 April 2017 — Money is no object. When it comes to thwarting, harassing and repressing intellectuals or journalists, there are always enough funds in military's coffers to write a blank check. Solid numbers are hard to come by but, according to conservative estimates, Cuba's special services and armed forces account for roughly 35% of the nation's paltry GDP. There is never a shortage of fuel, guesthouses, vacation homes, medical clinics or surveillance equipment for monitoring alleged counterrevolutionaries. It is mistakenly believed that the top priority of the Special Services is the fragmented domestic opposition, which can never turn out more than a few followers for any public gathering. Meanwhile, the brave fighters at the barricades are kept in line by punches, karate chops and detention in damp, filthy jail cells. The real danger for the government, and for counterintelligence as well, are high-level officials. "They are like laboratory guinea pigs, always under observation. Their phone calls, internet traffic, contacts with foreigners, sexual preferences and personal tastes are monitored. They cannot escape electronic surveillance even in the bathroom," says a former intelligence officer with experience listening in. As in the German film The Lives of Others, people with meaningful positions in government, the armed forces, international trade and the foreign ministry are under tight scrutiny. The next most heavily monitored group of individuals — more closely monitored even than dissidents — are those in the world of arts and letters and the sciences. "The method for dealing with outspoken opposition figures is to intimidate them, pressuring them with physical and psychological abuse, or simply incarcerating them. We know how they think. But individuals such as writers, musicians, scientists, researchers and government-employed journalists are like a knife with two edges. Many are silent dissidents. They often lead double lives. In assemblies, government offices and newsrooms they appear to be loyal to the system. At home they are budding counterrevolutionaries," observes the former intelligence officer. According to this source, agents are well-trained. "They focus on managers, officials and employees of important state institutions. Recent graduates of the Higher Institute of the Ministry of the Interior are assigned to dissidents and independent journalists. They are more adept at using physical and verbal violence than intellectual arguments." In my twenty-years working as an independent journalist, State Security has summoned me for questioning five or six times. On other occasions the interviews were more casual. A guy would park his motorcycle outside my building or near my house, as though he were a friend, and calmly chat with me or my mother, Tania Quintero, who now lives in Switzerland as a political refugee and who was also an independent journalist. He said his name was Jesús Águila. A blond, Caucasian young man, he had the air of an Eton graduate. When he became annoying, as when he would call or visit us to discuss our case or would harass my sister at work, Tania would threaten him with a ceramic mug and he would flee the scene. One afternoon in the late 1990s I was questioned at a police station by a high-ranking, rather refined official. Then, on an unbearably hot morning in 2010, I was questioned at a branch of Special Troops near the Reloj Club on Boyeros Avenue by officials from Military Counterintelligence. The site where I was interviewed was an interrogation cubicle located in a holding area for inmates. I had written a couple of articles for the Americas edition of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo on meddling by senior military officers in businesses and corporations. According to my interrogators, the Cuban armed forces did not like the image these articles created of military institutions. In a hollow threat, they told me that I could charged with violating a law — I do not remember which one — against disrespecting the "glorious and undefeated revolutionary armed forces." But ultimately it only amounted to intimidation. For six years they did not bother me. They denied me access whenever I tried to cover something at which operatives from State Security were present but they never detained me. Then, three weeks ago, they questioned a few of my friends whom they suspected of being sources for my articles. I wrote one piece in which I said that, if they wanted to know anything about me, they could call me in for questioning. Apparently, they read it because on April 4 they summoned me to appear the next day at a police station in Havana's Lawton district. There I encountered two pleasant, mixed-race and educated young men. I cannot say much else about them. I told them that what is needed — once and for all and by everyone — is open dialogue, to acknowledge the opposition and to try to find a solution to the national disaster that is Cuba today by following the path of democracy. While the officers did not promise tolerance, they did remain silent. Three days later, one saw the flip side of the coin. As had happened for ninety-seven Sundays, a mob dressed in civilian clothes was incited by State Security to stage a verbal lynching of the Ladies in White House near the police station in Lawton where I had been questioned. From January to March of 2017 the political police made 1,392 arrests and in some cases confiscated work materials and money from independent journalists and human rights activists. They harass people with little rhyme or reason. A group of reporters from Periodismo del Barrio (Neighborhood Journalism), an online journal which focuses on environmental issues and vulnerable communities, or a neo-Communist blogger like Harold Cardenas are as likely to be targeted as an overtly anti-Castro figure like Henry Constantin, regional vice-president of the Inter-American Press Society. With ten months to go before Raul Castro hangs up his gloves, the Special Services' game plan is poised to undergo a 180-degree turnaround. Using its contacts, it could establish a channel of communication between dissidents and the government, which could serve as a first step towards the ultimate legal resolution of Cuba's political problems. But I fear that democracy is not one of the Cuban regime's top priorities. Source: Cuban Counterintelligence Plays Hardball with Journalists / Iván García – Translating Cuba - http://ift.tt/2qbbpyr via Blogger http://ift.tt/2pfsgkD

[homestudyhelp365-blog]

(via Business Ethics 11 - Video Dailymotion)

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CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

Why don't corporate boards include more women and minorities? At a recent meeting of the Business and Organizational Ethics Partnership at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, panelists took on this question in a panel called "Board Diversity." The moderator was Katharine Martin, a partner and board director at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. The panelists were Barry Williams, board director for PG&E and president and former managing director of Williams Pacific Ventures; and Abby Adlerman, founder and CEO of Boardspan. Williams, who is African American, discussed his service on the boards of a dozen public companies during his career. He is now reaching "the age or time limit" for corporate boards, he said, and he wants to make sure younger minorities have the same opportunities he had. Williams conducted a "oneperson study" of Bay Area companies and found that only 24 percent had an African American director. The number is lower among tech companies. He added statistics for other minorities and women and showed the results to other directors and CEOs. He also compiled a list of black directors currently serving on boards, plus a list of black CEOs and chief financial officers, two common positions from which board members are drawn. "Most people I talked to were surprised at the extent of the underrepresentation," Williams said. "They couldn't understand why they weren't getting these names from the search firms." Since he completed this study, he has worked with others to broaden the effort to include other regions. "My overall impression is that a lot of people are doing a lot of work on this issue, but I'm not seeing as much success as I'd like," Williams said. He said leadership by CEOs is needed — "CEOs listen to fellow CEOs more than to someone like me" — as well as pressure from institutional investors. He also stressed the importance of all groups working together on board diversity, so that there isn't just one "diversity slot" on a board. "Somehow we're all fighting against each other for that one spot," Williams said. Adlerman said boards need to see the need for diversity: "One of the things I've learned is that you can't have a solution if you don't have a problem," she said. "I don't think we've really put our finger on the pulse of the problem." She cited common statistics used to build awareness: the huge influence women have in the economy as employees and consumers compared to their small presence on corporate boards. "We have lots of advocates and awareness, but no viable solutions," Adlerman said. "These are not really the board's problems." The real problem, Adlerman said, boils down to risk. "It is risky to bring another board member on unless you can get exceedingly comfortable with their ability to contribute and work style. Sitting directors want to minimize the chance of disharmony," Adlerman said. "We know it's not a supply problem: There are plenty of talented people," Adlerman said. "I don't think it's a demand problem – I believe intellectually plenty of white men sitting on boards would like to have more diverse boards." The problem, Adlerman said, is how to help boards manage the risk of bringing in someone they don't know. "I think that if we can really get to understand the risks that are perceived, we're going to make some really good progress." During the discussion, the panelists revisited the arguments for having a diverse board. "A significant amount of work now says that diverse groups make better decisions," Williams said. "Today's young people want to work in highly ethical, highly principled companies, and diversity is a big aspect of that." "We are bringing a broader perspective to the boardroom—that's the benefit of diversity," Adlerman said. Martin asked a follow up question about the supply issue: whether there really are enough women and minority candidates for boards with the specific experience boards are seeking in different industries. Tech companies, for example, may seek board members with engineering backgrounds. Williams said company management was the more appropriate place to be looking for specific technology expertise. "To me the worst boards are when you have 10 people who think alike and have the same experiences," Williams said.

  Answer the following question.

Q1. Give your views on the case.

Q2. Why diversity in board room is required? Discuss.

 CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

Stefano is a freshman at a small college called Hinchley University. Although Hinchley doesn’t recognize Greek life, there are plenty of nationally recognized fraternities and sororities off campus. Even before Stefano applied to college, he knew he wanted to rush a fraternity. His father was in a fraternity and always told Stefano that he gained valuable life lessons out of his experience that shaped who he became as an individual. When Stefano gets to Hinchley, however, he is disappointed that his father’s fraternity doesn’t have a chapter at his school. He forgets about rushing a fraternity until winter quarter comes around and fraternities host rush week. Stefano decides to attend rush week to see if he can find an organization that fits his mold. He’s looking for fraternity brothers who care about academics as much as socializing and who walk the talk supporting worthwhile philanthropies. At the end of rush, Stefano thinks he’s found just what he wants in a fraternity called “Alpha Iota.” Alpha Iota extends Stefano a bid and he accepts. Soon, however, Stefano finds some of his fraternity brothers are not the kind of guys he really wants to hang around with. While a lot of the members are great, several others both publically and privately show disrespect towards other fraternities and all women on and off campus. In addition, there is hostility between the brothers themselves that Stefano didn’t see during rush. He soon finds out it may be from hazing the pledges are forced to undertake. Only a couple days into his pledge period, on a Monday night, Stefano is locked in a dark basement with his pledge brothers. First, they are instructed to finish a keg of beer amongst the 25 pledges. After this, they are forced to stay awake all night, still locked in the basement, by blasting music and active brothers going around slapping pledges awake who fall asleep. Stefano finds himself torn. He’d like to belong to a fraternity so that he has a good social network on campus. But should he continue to go through the pledge period to join this exclusive club, even though he doesn’t respect some of the members and he doesn’t feel comfortable with the hazing?

 Answer the following question.

Q1. Do you believe the desire to be in a Greek organization—even one that hazes—should outweigh a college student’s moral conscience? Comment

Q2. If you were forced to do something you didn’t want to do to join an exclusive organization, would you do it? Discuss.

   CASE STUDY (20 Marks)

Last year, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter released statistics on their workforce diversity. At these companies, women hold only 16% of tech jobs. The Ellen Pao discrimination case put Silicon Valley, particularly VC firms, under the microscope. Whether it will be a watershed moment for gender diversity is still up in the air. At a minimum, a record of more subtle forms of discrimination exists now in the form of the case's court record. Major challenges organizations face in achieving gender diversity include hidden bias, micro aggressions, and leave policies that make sustained employment difficult for parents. Providing training and workshops to employees is not enough. Organizations must complement employee support with proper processes and controls. Diversity and inclusion will soon become a necessity, as both engineering talent becomes scarcer and communication between teams becomes even more paramount. "The experience of women in her early career is quite different from one on the back end of her career, yet we tend to clump the female experience into one category." "As companies continue to shift to being solutions based, connecting and giving a voice to their entire workforce will become even more important." "No one person can solve gender discrimination, but everyone can do something."

 Answer the following question.

Q1. Give your views on the case.

Q2. Discuss the reasons of gender diversity and discrimination in silicon valley Policy of Prohibition (20 Marks)

 Prohibition is good and women would appreciate a policy of prohibition. However some state governments may scrap prohibition on the grounds that (i) the adjoining states do not observe prohibition, hence people visit those states to quench their desire for the beverage (ii) the existence of illicit distillation and the difficulty in stopping this (iii) the strain on government resources for implementing prohibition, including the loss of revenue from excise duty.

   Answer the following question.

Q1. Are these grounds ethically justifiable? Explain.

Q2. In your opinion what are the benefits of prohibition.

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