#so the poll could go to the lower seed show

[watcherwiki]

Watcher March Madness

Starting tomorrow, March 16th, the first round of tumblr polls will be posted to decide on the fan favorites among these 16 Watcher shows!

Each round of voting will be active for a week so you'll have plenty of time to vote for favorite and convince followers and friends to vote with you.

All polls in each round will be posted at the same time.

Top 16 shows were mainly chosen by which shows have the most views, and that also determined their seeding position (as of data from Dec. 2023 & view counts for 2024 shows were rounded off).

Watcher Weekly was not included because it's mainly on Patreon now, so not available to everyone.

Tourist Trapped is great, but only had one episode, so it was removed from the running.

Making Watcher is only a semi-regular series, so it was also removed.

Watcher One-Offs have some banger episodes, but weren't included to make it an even sixteen.

This is all for fun and every show is incredible! There are no losers here. Please keep comments positive when campaigning for your faves.

[wafflesrock16]

Shakarian Life/Death AU

The second choice in my drabble poll. It’s said that the personifications of Life and Death have been in love since the dawn of creation...

“Life and death have been in love for longer than we have words to describe. Life sends countless gifts to Death... and Death keeps them forever.” --Anonymous 

Most saw death as an end to be feared, black and cold and cruel. Death didn’t like to think of herself that way. She wasn’t cold--or at least she didn’t think so. She cherished all the souls she shepherded into the afterlife. And while she did undeniably like the color black, she also enjoyed the color red. And blue. Blue was her favorite 

Death was a name bestowed upon her, but not one she’d have chosen for herself. She preferred to be called ‘Shepard.’ At least by friends. Not that she had many, but there were a few, and they tended to choose their own monikers as well. 

Ocean, for example, for reasons nobody could understand, liked to be called ‘Jack.’ Shepard supposed the name was fitting for the ocean’s tempestuous, unpredictable nature. Why Moon wanted to be called ‘Miranda’ was another mystery. 

Miranda and Jack enjoyed a loving, if not complex relationship. It ebbed and flowed, pushed and pulled yet remained an unbreakable force. 

“Perhaps the only relationship more complicated than Jack and I is yours and Life,” Miranda had stated in a crisp, erudite tone. 

Shepard glanced down at the swirling marble of blue and green that hung below them in the infinite cosmos. Swirling clouds coruscated across the surface in an unending dance. The world looked like a joyous, happy place. Shepard frowned.

 “Life--Garrus--can be so cruel,” she sighed. “Sometimes I swear he creates life for no reason other than to watch its light flicker and fade. Then I’m called heartless. I’m the one who ends the suffering.”

Miranda hummed, ethereal light reflecting off her ebony hair and making it glow a radiant silver. “We all have duties. Not all of them are pleasant.” She turned her pale face to Shepard, settling her hands on her lap. Her starlight gown pooled beneath her like a silk river. “You ought to talk to him. He misses you.”

“I know.” Shepard lowered her head, crimson hair creating a curtain across her face. “He still sends me gifts,” she murmured. “The most beautiful souls from his most treasured creations. But,” she lifted her face to look Miranda in the eye. “I don’t want his gifts. I want…” she trailed off, unsure how to explain. 

Miranda rose from the silver crescent of her throne and beamed down at Shepard. “I know,” she whispered softly as a night breeze. “Tell him.”

Shepard stepped out under the orange melon glow of sunset. Soon, the sky would erupt in color; reds and golds, pinks and orange. Everything--even the atmosphere seemed to resist fading away. That wasn’t what sunset was about, of course. It, like so many other phenomenons the creatures of the world admired for their beauty, had been created by Garrus specifically for Shepard. 

She watched the light show blossom over the green valleys and meadows with eyes the same verdant hue as summer grass. Eyes she’d selected because Garrus liked the color. 

“Shepard!”

She turned toward the burning white light of Life. It pulsed and diminished until Garrus stood, framed by eternal sunshine like colossal wings, blue eyes aflame. His form was different to that chosen by herself, Jack and Miranda. There were others who preferred the tall, armored and plated appearance. He had talons and fangs, mandibles and a crest of horns. He looked at once radiant and dangerous. Which was an apt personification for life, if Shepard considered it. 

“Shepard, I… I’ve missed you.” Garrus stopped in front of her. Close enough for her to reach out and caress his scared mandible. For Life wasn’t flawless, but rather a rugged thing, whose beauty shone all the brighter for the imperfections. 

“I know. I just…” Shepard sighed, before squaring her shoulders and looking her love in the eyes. “I needed some time. After the war… there were so many, Garrus. Some were so young. I know you don’t control the famine, plague, pestilence and war. But it was a lot.”

Garrus nodded, the dying rays of sunlight reflecting off his silver plates and throwing the cobalt cloak he wore into stark relief. “I know. I didn’t want- never want, my creations to meet violent ends. It’s a comfort to know they’re going with you, at least.” He dared to take a step forward, then another. Slowly, giving her the chance to pull away if she wanted, he reached out to her. 

Shepard squeezed his hands. So much larger and rougher than her own. Different, but familiar. The hands that held her, that threaded through her hair, that drew sighs and hushed pleas as they worked--calibrated, to use his words--her corporal body into a writhing mess. 

“Shepard.” He purred the word, using both sets of vocals. It gave his voice a smokey quality that Shepard loved. “I’m sorry if my gifts have caused you pain. I… want you to be happy. I can’t control what my creations do with the life I give them.”

She moved, taking the final step to press into his warm, glowing embrace. “I know,” she sighed against his tunic. Her long, flowing shawl of midnight fluttered in the evening breeze.

Twilight was the time they’d carved out for themselves. On the cusp of light and dark, Life and Death would join together, confirming their devotion. 

Shepard lifted onto her toes as Garrus bent his head. He tasted of mint and holly, fresh spring water and brilliant dawn. Her hands wrapped around his neck and he pulled her closer. Stars burst overhead in a glorious cacophony of diamond and glittering nebula spun away as Life and Death reaffirmed their vows. 

“You still want to be a one deity kind of woman?” Garrus breathed against her parted lips. 

“I love you, Life. Garrus Vakarian. Until the end of all things.”

She felt more than heard his rumbling reply, pitched in octaves lower than the sounds of seeds coming to life within their bed of soil and clouds forming in the heavens. “I love you too, Death. My Shepard. Always.”

Far away, Time hummed an old song he’d heard somewhere, reciting fractions and events over in his infinite mind in a rapid-fire succession no mortal could ever keep pace with. He glanced down upon Life and Death in intimate embrace.  

As it should be, he mused upon the pair. There is no Life without Death. No Shepard without Vakarian.

[venusxxlangdon]

instruction manual

pairing: outpost!Michael x fem!reader

words: 7.2k

warnings: smut, unprotected sex, fingering, dirty talk, daddy kink

summary: before going on a business trip for the Cooperative Michael teaches you how to masturbate

gif credit: l-angdon (account diactivated)

The warmth of the crackle of lively flames, blazing cheerily in the marble fireplace, illuminated your silhouette that was curled beneath Michael’s feet, flashing red sparkles reflecting at your face nestled comfortably on his thighs.

 “What do you mean you don’t know how?”

The slow rumble of Langdon’s voice sounded comforting, his fingers were brushing lovingly through your hair. You let out a quiet purr, nuzzling into the fabric of his tight boxer briefs covering his semi-hard cock and sighed, scorching his crotch with your hot breath and instantly melting into his touch. It felt nice to sit like this, letting the enigma of a peaceful night wrap around you and Michael and your thoughts wander away in the vortex of sweet fantasy. Only the disturbing question that he had asked you shattered your peaceful bliss and made you shake your head in disapproval. No, he should not have ruined the moment like that.

 “Y/N?” He called your name, sounding sterner and more demanding this time.

 You lifted your head up from his lap and looked at him, meeting the intense stare of his azure eyes that were curiously studying your face. You could hedge and he would immediately know it, you could remain silent and he would use his powers to drag the confession out of your vulnerable mind. It was a zero-sum game for you, yet you still tried to pretend that you had no idea what he was talking about.

 “What?” You scoffed childishly and dropped your head back onto his lap, your bottom lip pushed forward in a pitiful pout.

 “I asked you a question.”

 He petted your cheek and then traced his fingers to your mouth, brushing the pad of his thumb over your puffy lips, urging you to speak up. He was used to your stubbornness and learned to resist it. You pressed a small kiss on his digit and raised your arms to wrap them around his waist, shifting closer and leaning into his warmth.

 “I don’t want to talk about it. Can you just read my thoughts?” you shrugged, scrunching up your nose and absentmindedly pressing your lips to the velvet skin of his lower abdomen just above the waistband of his briefs in an attempt to divert his attention to something more pleasurable than the discussion he had tried to initiate. You hoped that the tone of your voice would break through his perseverance, but none of the muscles of Michael’s face twitched at your words.

 Dressed in nothing but an aforementioned boxers and a burgundy shirt unbuttoned down his chest, he looked like an ancient God who had blessed the worldly life with his presence. His posture radiated confidence. Silky locks of his hair flowed freely down his shoulders, curling like golden snakes in the hollows of his carved collarbones. He slid his hands along your shoulders and then traced them back to cup your face, gently taking it from his lap.

 “No,” he mused and darted the tip of his tongue out to lick his bottom lip.  “Now when I know there’s a problem, we have to discuss it.”

 Mirth in his low, rich voice indicated that Michael was most certainly having fun and enjoying the way your rosy cheeks bloomed crimson, matching the color of the stones of his rings. You dropped your gaze low and pensively ran your fingers across his muscular thighs, brushing them against the porcelain skin that was contrasting with the fabric of his dress shirt, resembling the pomegranate seeds scattered in the snow. Goosebumps awoke his flesh, and you smirked when a new idea sparked up in your head. Maybe you could outsmart him. After all, two could play this game. Tracing your touch to the hem of his briefs, you drew the loose patterns on the noticeable bulge, and tilted your head to the side, looking at him sultrily.

 “How about I take care of your problem first, Michael?” You leaned forward, bringing your breasts up to nestle them against his parted thighs so he could have a full view of your cleavage. Having met no resistance, your palm confidently cupped his erection, your eyes fluttering excitedly at the delicious heaviness under your touch, familiar wetness instantly polling between your clasped thighs.

  He looked down at you with a triumphant smirk; a small pouting of his full lips, his narrowed eyes and a slight tilt of his head proved that he knew the game you were trying to pull off on him. Without taking his eyes off of your face, he took a fistful of your hair and guided your head up from his lap, torturously slowly bringing you closer to him. You gasped at the stinging sensation at the roots of your hair and bat your lashes at him, darting your gaze down to his lips that were dangerously close to you. You could taste the minty breath of his; your heart started beating like a caged bird in anticipation for a kiss, it was right there. All you needed to do was to reach forward and feel the softness of his touch...but the second you leaned for it, Michael maneuvered his lips to your ear, brushing the velvet of them against your cheek.

 “Nice try, baby,” he breathed out and rubbed the tip of his nose along your sharp jawline, trailing it behind your ear right where one of your most sensitive spots was located. A shiver ran down your spine when his hand possessively found its way to your left breast and gave your nips a harsh pinch between his thumb and index finger. He pulled you closer, his free hand snaking down your side to the curve of your ass, urging you to take a seat in his lap. You quickly straddled his thighs, pressing your breasts against his torso. Michael hummed against your skin and inhaled sharply, breathing in the intoxicating smell of your perfume and your own natural scent that reminded him of fresh apples and linen. “But I still need you to talk to me,” his voice, deep like midnight smog, was powerful enough to make you feel like your whole body was vibrating. You could barely able to focus on what he was saying, being too concentrated on the movements of his sinful lips and hands, exploring your body. “I won’t be with you for a week, and I want to make sure that you’ll take care of yourself properly.”

 “A week is not that long,” you murmured, gripping on his shoulders and digging your nails into the fabric of his shirt. The ache in the pit of your stomach ignited every sense, spreading in your lower abdomen like lava. He traced his fingers across your jawline, warm and soothing. Okay, letting him go for a week on a business trip might have actually been a torture. You did not know how you were going to handle being away from him for so long. You pursed your lips and wrapped your arms around his neck, lacing your fingers in his hair and enjoying the softness of it.

 “Y/N, please,” he whispered against your lips, almost kissing you. “Tell me why you can’t satisfy yourself,” you wondered if he was actually doing it for the sake of teasing you or really wanted the truth. You slid your left hand down his neck to the exposed collarbones, snaking it under the lapels of his shirt and dragging the smooth satin off of his shoulders.

 “Because my hands and fingers don’t feel as good as yours,” you confessed quietly, trailing your index finger across his chest and stopping at his nipple to circle the pink bud. You hummed and continued drawing random ornaments and patterns on his body without meeting his heavy gaze. Your small hand covered the spot where you knew his Antichrist heart was beating, and you lightly scratched his skin.

 “What had you been doing before you met me?” He asked and used his free hand to grind your hips down on his crotch, eliciting a low moan from you. You spread your thighs a bit wider, straddling his lap, so your clothed center was right above his cock. You could feel his length through the thin material of your panties and silk nightgown with the trim of delicate lace. You bit your lower lip and gave him one more experimental thrust, tasting the waters.

 “I’d been taking care of myself in the only way I knew how,” you said, dropped your hands from his shoulders on your thighs, rocking them back and forth, and slowly pulled your nightgown up to show him the wet patch spreading on your panties. Michael was watching your every move, and the moment he saw your arousal, he inhaled sharply, his cock twitching underneath you. His nostrils flared at the sweet scent of you.

 “And what was that?” His growled lowly, his vision clouding with lust.

 “Humping,” you breathed out and just to demonstrate what you had meant, you rolled your hips in figure eights, pressing down against his throbbing, tempting cock. You whined when his hands grabbed your ass and stopped your manipulations, firmly holding you in place and toying with the silk that was barely covering you. His fingers brushed against the string of your thong, caressing the crease between the two mounds teasingly, kissing them with the coolness of his rings, and then immediately traveling back to the small of your back as if the touch had been nothing but an accident.

 “Interesting,” he responded, stroking your back, soft fingertips running up and down your spine, “what did you play with?”

 You looked down, blushing even more, and nervously licked your lips.

 “Why do you need to know?” You groaned and arched your back at the feeling of his hands grasping your breasts and squeezing them in his palms, his thumbs running along the undersides of your titts to outline the beautiful shape.

 “Was it a pillow?” He demanded the answer and rolled your nipples between his fingers. “Did you grind your pretty little pussy on your pillow or a stuffie, imagining how nice it would feel to be split on a big, hard cock?”

 Michael’s words caught you off-guard, and your pussy throbbed at the filth that was dripping from his lips; the stain on your panties got darker as more juices flowed out of you. He ground you down once again just for the sake of hearing your moans and little mewls that were driving him wild. Bringing his hand between your legs, he gently rubbed your clit through the thin material of your undergarments, making you cling onto his shoulders firmly and let out an audible gasp.

 “Yes, I used a pillow,” you said breathlessly, dropping your head in the crook of his neck and bucking your hips forward into his welcoming touch, eager to get any sort of friction to ease the ache between your legs. Michael used the heel of his palm to press it against your swollen bundle of nerves and stroke your wet folds with his long, aristocratic fingers. His mouth, inches away from your ear, nipped at the sensitive skin of your jawline, perfect white teeth traveling higher to playfully bite on your earlobe. “It felt nice because it stimulated my clit, ah, so well,” you shut your eyes tightly, snaking in his arms.

 Michael circled your entrance with his index finger and without tugging your panties aside, pushed it inside, scooping some of your leaking arousal with the silky material. He smeared it all over your puffy folds, gently stroking his fingers up and down.

 “What about your fingers?” He wondered, seductively whispering in your ear. “How many did you manage to take? Tell me how they felt inside of you.”

 Oh God, he was really doing that. A broken cry escaped from your throat, as you blushed across your cheeks and neck, desperately not wanting to share any of that information with Michael. You just wished he took care of you in the way you never could do it yourself. He felt your desperation and thrived off of your neediness that he always ended up using against you. In a matter of seconds, Michael Langdon could turn you putty in his hands. You were his puppet that had been fucked into submission long ago. How could you resist such a beautiful man, who introduced you to the absolutely new world of sensations and showed you what your body was capable of? You sighed.

 “I don’t like fingering myself because it doesn’t feel nice,” you mumbled into his neck and turned your head to the side, resting it against his chest. His heart was beating just as fast as yours even though his facial reaction remained calm. “I tried to do it multiple times,” you hurried to elaborate, “but never felt anything besides some subtle sparks of pleasure when I did manage to find my g-spot...once.”

 For a long time you had been thinking that something must have been wrong with you because everybody seemed to get immense pleasure from stimulating their private parts, but the more you tried, the more frustrated you became. It had lasted until you met the first man who managed to lead you to an orgasm with his fingers and you realized that you were fine, just needed the right technique.

 Michael, however, was a whole new level. He showed you what your body was actually capable of, and really intense orgasms were only one of those amazing things. You just did not like the feeling of your own fingers in your pussy because the touch felt fake. You desperately needed a man to nourish you, stretch the tight heat out and take what was his; only then did it feel right.

 When you discovered that grinding against the pillow killed two birds with one stone, you were over the moon: it felt nice, plus you did not have to touch yourself. All you had to do was to keep rutting your hips against the soft material that aligned perfectly with your clit, stimulating it with every sway of your hips. Varying the intensity of how hard you clenched your thighs, you could prolong your releases as well.

 A strangled yelp fell from your lips when Michael suddenly removed his fingers from your core and grabbed you by your chin. You looked at him with your big, glassy eyes, hoping that he would finish what he had started. The corners of his mouth twitched ironically, as he spoke.

 “I asked you how many fingers,” the little devils in his eyes danced in the icy fire of his stare.

 You closed your eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

 “Two at maximum,” your voice sounded flat, as you watched Michael arch his brows in disbelief. His gaze lingered over your lips pressed in a tight line, your perky breasts, and folded dress that was pooling helplessly around your narrow waist. He trapped his bottom lip between his teeth and with a look of concern on his face suspiciously narrowed his eyes at you. He did not say anything, and you caught yourself at the thought that you were not breathing all that time, patiently waiting for his response. Michael let his power wander around your mind, looking for the reaffirmation of your words.

 “Unbelievable,” he hummed and leaned back into the armchair, looking at you through the heavy leads, a lazy smirk painting his full, luscious lips. You frowned in confusion, still sitting before him with your breasts bare and hungry for his touch, in your soaked panties that clang to your glistening pussy.

 Michael tapped his fingers against his chiseled chin, slightly brushing them over his plump lips.

 “Take off your gown and sit in my lap with your back facing me,” he instructed.

 Your heartbeat was so loud that you were sure Michael could hear it too. However, you took no time in following his order. Cautiously, you slid off of his lap and stood up on your wobbly feet. Hooking the nightdress with your fingers, you dragged it down your legs, letting it fall on the thick carpet. Taking a step closer to Langdon, you turned around and gracefully sat atop of him, facing the fireplace. A surprised whimper left your lips when his arms suddenly snaked around your figure and pulled you flush against his torso. You looked over your shoulder, nearly bumping noses with him and smiled shyly.

 “Hi,” you whispered.

 Your breath hitched when Michael pressed his lips to your temple and whispered:

 “Place your feet on the armrests.”

 You closed your legs tightly and bent them, putting your feet carefully on the left armrest of the big leather armchair, but Michael shook his head in disapproval.

 “No, baby”, he smiled at your bluntness. “Each leg on either side.”

 Oh. You hooked your right arm around his neck for leverage and hesitantly spread your legs apart, placing your right foot beside Michael’s right hand. Having done the same thing with your left foot, you looked at him nervously, embarrassed with how exposed you were at that moment.

 “Good girl,” he praised, his hair cascaded down your shoulders like liquid gold. He shifted underneath you, adjusting himself comfortably, so his clothed cock nestled right against your ass. Cupping your breast in his right hand, he used his left one to trail it down your tense stomach, stroking your soft skin, and then further to the trim of your panties. He rolled your hard nipple between his fingers and attached his lips to your neck, sucking a dark bruise on the delicate flesh, claiming you as his. “Daddy’s gonna teach you how you should play with your pussy...” he whispered, humming against your skin.

 Your eyes widened in disbelief, and you felt the knot in your stomach tighten at his words.

 “...but first, show me how you usually touch yourself.” He cooed, and your insides fluttered. You looked up at him pleadingly and shook your head from side to side.

 “It’s pointless, I won’t do it right,” your free hand flew up to cup Michael’s cheek. “You’re the only one who makes me feel good,” you tried to sweet-talk him into doing it your way.

 Langdon continued caressing your breasts, moving from one nipple to another, massaging them and brushing his rings over the sensitive buds from time to time, spicing up the sensation. He reached the waistband of your panties, adorned with a little bow, and snapped the band against your stomach.

 “Let’s take these off, shall we?”

 He let you close your legs in order to discard the unnecessary fabric off your body, but he was quick to spread your thighs once again and place your feet in your previous position once you revealed yourself completely bare before him. You shivered at the warm air of the room lingering over your folds. Michael’s fingers danced across your pubic bone down to your labia and lazily stroke the velvet skin.

 “When I ask you to do something,” he said, his voice barely above the whisper, “I expect you to obey immediately.”

 You had no choice. Thinking what to start with, you hesitantly trailed your hand up to your breasts, covering Michael’s palm with it and gently squeezing your tit tighter.

 “Okay,” your voice sounded raspy, so you had to clear your throat before you continued. “I usually start with touching my neck because that’s where I like your kisses the most,” your cheeks bled bright red as you spoke. “Then I move to my breasts and tummy,” you said breathlessly, stroking your stomach, “imagining that it’s you who’s touching me...”

 Michael was silent, allowing you to take your time. Little did you know that he was also listening to your thoughts and body, tuning in to your every vibration.

 “When I touch my clit,” you reached for your clitoral hood, lightly stroking it. Langdon looked over your shoulder, watching you bring your thumb to rub the sensitive spot, his hair tickling your neck and shoulders. You threw your head back and sighed. Trying to stimulate the patch where you knew your clit should have been located, you felt incredibly stupid. “Fuck, Michael, I don’t feel anything. I can’t do this...please...”

 Langdon left a chaste kiss on your bare shoulder and chuckled softly. He slapped your hands away from your core and pinned them down to the leather seat on both sides of your thighs.

 “You are doing it all wrong, my love,” he tugged a piece of hair behind your ear, running his fingers through your locks. “We’ll start from the beginning.”

 His soothing voice enveloped you completely, dragging you deeper into obscure lust. Michael wrapped his hand around your throat, bringing your face closer to his lips.

 “It’s all about the setup. We need to get you all nice and wet first,” he mewled as if you had not been already dripping down your own thighs, “and for that, we should find your erogenous zones. One is behind your ear,” Michael’s lips started peppering your skin with kisses, trailing down the nape of your neck and to your sharp shoulders.

  You melted into his touch, feeling every inch of your body relaxing at his caresses.

  “Second is the inner sides of your thighs,” his fingers followed the curves of your body, and he laughed softly at your thought “what about my breasts?” He was quick to elaborate. “Yes, they are sensitive too,” you blushed, realizing that he was tracking your mind. “But not as this area,” he petted the patch of skin on the inner side of your thigh, not far from your pussy, and your body immediately responded.

 “That’s exactly what I mean” He brought his digits down to your folds and scooped some of your arousal, smearing it between the tips, your mouth falling open at how wet you were. “I haven’t even touched you properly, but you are already dripping with your nectar.”

 “It’s because I love you,” you murmured, closing your eyes blissfully, “and it’s your hands that are touching me. I don’t feel the same thing when I’m alone.”

 He stroked your cheek lovingly, brushing a messy strand of your hair off your forehead. His left palm rested on your lower abdomen while the other cupped your pussy, slightly lifting your hips up.

 “And here we need to do all the work,” he moved his hand a bit lower, nestling the heel of his palm against your center, gently pushing on it. A wet, quaking sound accompanied his movement, making you squirm.

 “When you are on your own, I want to think of me in detail,” he instructed. “Imagine my hands all over your naked body, my lips worshiping every inch of your beautiful flesh. How I fill you up with my cum and then let you ride my face to clean up the mess you’ve made,” your eyes rolled back into your head at the imagery. “Would you like that?” He bounced you on his hip, waiting for your response. “Would you like to be my cum-filled slut, angel?”

You cried out and the affirmations of subtle ”yes, yes, please, yes” poured out of your mouth, causing a shit-eating smug paint across Michael’s ripe lips. 

He continued.

 “Where do you think Daddy would kiss you first?”

 You bit your lower lip, arching your hips forward, making him tighten his grip.

 “My lips,” you whispered and the next second his mouth was locked with yours in a passionate kiss, warm lips gliding against yours in perfect, synchronized rhythm. His tongue swept along your bottom lip, urging you to let him inside, and you opened your mouth, welcoming him. You moaned into a kiss, threading your fingers into his locks, messing them and tugging on honey strands, wanting to ruin his always perfectly styled mane. His lips, ripe as the sweetest peach, tasted heavenly, and you could not get enough of him, falling apart in his arms. He made you felt so weak, so insignificant; the crashing wave of the lustful tsunami knocked the air out of your lungs, making Michael your only source of oxygen.

 “So sweet,” he praised, parting away from you. The expression of pure bliss contoured your face. Langdon smiled when you took a steel grip on his shoulder, trying to pull him back into another kiss. He sucked on your bottom lip, eliciting a small squeak from you. Your chest was rising and falling heavily, pupils were blown wide. “Are you with me, little one?” He smirked, petting your cheek with his thumb. You tilted your head and closed your eyes, loving every second of his touch, and opened your mouth slightly, trying to suck on his digit.

 “Y/N?” He circled your spit-slick lips with the pad of his finger, and you rolled your eyes in annoyance.

“Yes, Daddy,” you responded, pressing your forehead to his. “Please, fuck me. I want you so badly, it...it hurts…”

 You did not care if you looked pathetic at that moment. The only thought drumming in your head was about him. Him touching you, ravishing you, owning you. Every inch of your body was swallowed in a burning hyena of embodying lust. You rutted your hips against him, desperately trying to get attention from your lover.

 “Stop it immediately,” he said in a stern voice, wrapping his hand around your throat to keep you in place. You let out a fitful gasp and dropped your hands, resting them on your thighs obediently. “I won’t fuck you until you learn your lesson.” His heart fluttered at the pout contouring your lips, but he made sure that you did not see the trace of weakness in his eyes.

 “Okay,” you inhaled sharply.

 His face softened at your compliance, and he used the back of his hand to trace a soft line from your kneecap to your inner thigh, caressing your soft skin.

 “Remember what Daddy has taught you?” He said, voice low and seductive. “Patience is a virtue, my love, and you will be rewarded for it. All I want to do is to show you how good you can make yourself feel. There’s no need to argue with me, okay baby? I’m not an enemy.”

 You gave him a nod, suddenly realizing how stupid your impatience had been.

 “I’m sorry, Daddy,” you mewled, laying your palms on his stomach, “I promise to behave.”

 He lifted your chin up and kissed you deeply, bestowing you with his affection. While his lips caressed you, Michael snaked his hand down your body to your pussy, stopping by the leaking center.

 “Good,” he noted and looked down at your core, your gaze immediately following his stare. “I want you to listen not only to my voice but to your body. Watch its every response and how it varies from where I touch you.”

 Langdon stroke your pussy from your hole to your clit, lubricating his fingers with your juices. He waited for another reassuring nod and then continued:

 “Let’s find your little clit once and for all,” you blushed at his words feeling embarrassed by the fact that you had not had your body figured out. However, Michael looked so confident and you knew that you were safe in his arms. He got you and you could be yourself with him. You watched him part your labia and outstretch the little patch of skin, exposing the sensitive area. You expected Michael to press right on the spot, but instead, he used the V of his index and middle fingers to stroke your folds, lightly pressing on them. Weirdly, it did feel nice. You hanged around his neck tightly, focusing on the built-up pleasure in your tummy. 

 “Don’t you ever go to directly rubbing your clit,” he said, watching you shiver, “the body of it projects upwards into your pelvis and attaches to your pubic bone. It’s as sensitive as your sweet bud, so we aren’t gonna ignore it,” Michael continued, working his fingers with gentle stimulation over your pubic bone, his light taps sending sparks of subtle pleasure down your spine. His fingertips moved at a snail's pace from the base of your vagina to your clit. It was enough to get you all worked up for him. “How does it feel, baby?”

 “N-nice,” you whispered and closed her eyes when he nuzzled into the crook of your neck to kiss you there. “It feels really nice, Daddy.”

 “Once you’ve played with the outside of your kitty, you can focus on your clit,” he noted, bringing his thumb to a swollen, more visible bean. He rubbed it in tight circles, causing you to jump in his arms. Michael squeezed your side, holding you in place. “Oh my love,” he breathed out, showering your trembling shoulders with kisses, “I have so much to teach you.”

 You were ready for him to do it, to become your guide.

 “I can’t believe you’ve been thinking that you aren’t sensitive, look at you,” he gasped, rubbing your arousal between his thumb and index fingers. You tried to suppress an obscene moan but it fell from your lips anyway, as you tried to shift forward in order to get closer to Michael’s fingers and accidentally brushed your naked bum against his cock. “So wet for me.”

 He had started with just feather-light touches on your clit and then intensified his manipulations, rubbing tight, rapid circles. His thumb ran from left to right, up and down, trying different directions, varying the amount of stimulation he was putting.

 “It tickles,” you said, tightening your grip around his neck. Whimpering like a little slut, you spread your legs wider, grinding on Michael’s fingers, instinctively wanting to feel them inside of you. “Daddy, I need more, please…”

 “So eager,” he tsked and much to your dismay removed his fingers from your aching clit. You sobbed brokenly and looked at him with so much desperation in your eyes that Michael growled. “Open your mouth and suck on your fingers,” he ordered.

 You obeyed, bringing two shaky fingers to your lips and swiping your tongue over them. When you started sucking on the velvet pads, you made sure to look Langdon in the eye and hollow your cheeks as much as you could, hoping that it would awake the most vivid memories of you giving him head in his mind. He traced the stones of his rings over your prominent cheekbones.

 “Just like that,” he brushed the strand of your hair behind your ear and left his hand on your cheek, “pretty little slut, show Daddy how you would suck his cock,” you moaned at his words, bobbing your head up and down while coating your fingers with the right amount of saliva. You could feel Michael’s clothed cock laying heavily underneath your pussy and it only added to the overall excitement.

 “Now let me see what you have learned so far,” he raised his chin a bit higher, giving you a stern look. You took your wet fingers out of your mouth with a sloppy “pop” and placed them on your clit. Trying to mimic Michael’s movements, you rubbed yourself in a steady rhythm, feeling the familiar sensation in your abdomen. You whimpered and looked at the blonde man in awe. You finally felt it. A hint of his best, a bit pretentious, smile was ghosting over his lips. Desire pooled in his eyes at the sight of you following his orders.

 “I-...I can feel it,” you whispered, sliding your fingers up and down just like he had done it. Pleasure rippled within you in electric impulses. “Michael, oh my God…” 

“Add one finger,” he said, voice low and raspy. Langdon was on the verge of exploding. It took him all his might and self-control to remain seated instead of flipping you over and fuck you into oblivion. Your parted pink lips, big eyes opened wide in awe from the new feeling you had discovered, silky hair tossed devilishly — you looked so beautiful, he gritted his teeth and brought his hand to his crotch. Palming himself through his pants, he watched you snaking your palm to your pussy and slowly inserting your index finger inside. It penetrated your heat with no resistance.

 “What do I do next?” You wondered, moving your index hesitantly, exploring yourself. The tight walls wrapped securely around the finger, vibrating as you tried to stretch them out.

 “I want you to feel yourself,” he groaned, “because that’s what daddy experiences when he penetrates your cunt. Always so tight for my fat cock,” Michael  leaned closer to whisper, “every damn time I feel like I’m fucking a virgin,” his tongue licked a wet stripe from your earlobe to your jaw, and you choked on your own moan. Michael smirked.

 “Only for you,” you murmured.

 Langdon tilted your head and arched his eyebrow at you.

 “Hmmm? What was that?”

 You licked your dry lips, still pumping your finger in and out of your core, and repeated:

 “This pussy is yours. Warm and tight only for you.”

 At that moment Michael saw red before his eyes. He took a hold of the armrest beside his left hand and dug his nails into the expensive material so harshly that he left the crescent marks on it.

 “Another finger,” he instructed, and you shook your head.

 “I don’t really think I can,” You sobbed but still tried to follow his command. Awkwardly, you brushed your middle finger over your folds and tried to add it to your already penetrated index finger.

 You only ended up scratching yourself. Looking at Michael with glassy eyes, you begged:

 “It won’t fit in,” your heart shattered at your incompetence. You wanted to be good for him so badly that the fact that you could not do what you had been told frustrated you to death. Whining pathetically, you tried one more time but got too scared, thinking that you could hurt yourself. The pleasure started to subside, and you sobbed like a little girl, desperately wanting to feel the nice sensation again. You rubbed your clit in fast circles, hoping that the new technique would make you wetter and hence looser.

 Michael was watching you with amusement. He flipped your hair over your left shoulder and rested his chin on your right shoulder in order to get a proper look at your finger pumping in and out of your pussy.

 “Come on, doll,” he urged you, “you want to make your Daddy proud, don’t you? Now be a good girl and add one more finger, I know you can do it. I won’t repeat myself again.”

 You sighed and lolled your head back, pressing your forehead to his smooth cheek.

 “I’m trying,” tears welled up in your Bambi eyes, “but see? It’s not working,” and to demonstrate what you had meant, you shoved two fingers inside of you, but only one managed to slip into your clenched hole. You felt frustration rising within you. Shifting in his lap, you tried to change the angle. “I told you that I could not do it,” you started to get angry. With yourself. With Michael for making you look like a fool. A brat within you wanted to confront him. “Fucking help me.”

 Langdon rolled his eyes at you. He brought three fingers to your pouty face.

 “How many fingers do you see?” He asked, and your gaze fell on his slender digits. The blood-red rubies and a jet black onyx of his stones blinked mischievously in the dim light of the room. Fire was dancing in the fine cut.

 “Three,” you answered, barely moving your lips.

 “This is the girth of my cock, Y/N,” Michael stated, and your insides quivered at the mentioning of his manhood. “And as far as I remember, you have no problem with taking it,” hues of baby pink painted your cheeks at his words as you remembered how good it had felt to bounce on his erect length.

 You nodded in agreement.

 “So don’t tell me that you can’t take just two of your little fingers.”

 It was pointless to argue. Trying not to look at him, you took a deep breath and started with one finger. It was welcomed with ease, just like it had been several minutes ago. Looking up at the ceiling, you shook your head, brushing the wet hair off your shoulders, and made another attempt to add a second finger. You wish you could disappear. A new tantrum swirled within you, ready to spill out. Michael sensed it too. He clicked his tongue in disapproval. 

 “Daddy, I’m sorry…” you wept, feeling extremely small and vulnerable.

 “Silly girl,” Michael huffed. He wrapped his left arm around your waist, chaining you possessively in order to give you the sense of security and remind you that he was still with you. He slightly bounced you on his thigh, making you shift a bit closer, and used his free hand to part your folds.

 Your mouth fell open as he slowly sank three of his frail digits shaped by prominent phalange bones into your cunt. He went as deep as he could till his rings nestled comfortably around your center. You let out a spasmodic moan and if it had not been for his strong arm holding you, your entire body would have collapsed in his lap.

 “See?” He said in a singsong tone, “It was not that difficult, was it?” Michael did not even care if you answered. You were too far gone. He scissored his fingers inside of you, pushing on the velvet walls. “I can hear how fucking wet you are.”

 A sloppy sound that was produced by his manipulations ranged in your ears. You could feel him so deep, it was doubtful that you could ever reach those spots by yourself.

 “Ngghh,” you whined incoherently as he crooked his fingers and moved them closer to your entrance.

 “All three are effortlessly inside,” triumph was transparent in his voice, “and you know why, little one? Daddy isn’t afraid to ruin your pussy while you are being too cautious, my love.”

 “Ahh, Michael!” You clang onto his arm for leverage, feeling that your tense legs were about to give up. Every muscle was burning from how spread out you were. Arching your back against his chest, you rolled your hips down, skewering yourself onto his digits.

 “And here it is,” he smirked, his fingers suddenly brushing against the spongey, strawberry-like spot at the top of your pussy. You had to bite on your lower lip to suppress a loud scream, “your sweet spot…”

 Your body felt as if it was on fire. Pressed against his chest, you felt him everywhere: his hair caressing your bare shoulders, his scent filling your nostrils, his low, alluring voice coating your senses like honey. Everything felt too good to be true.

 “Please, do that again,” you whispered, eyes wide open and shocked.

 Michael hummed. Instead of obeying your plea, he pulled his fingers out and took your hand in his. He dragged it back to your pussy and folded your fingers into a fist, leavening just an index out. You frowned, trying to understand what he was up to.

 “Gotta help Daddy,” he whispered in your ear, guiding your palm to your sex. You shot him a worried look but did not say a word. With a squelching sound, he managed to penetrate both of the fingers, yours and his, into your pussy.

 “There you go,” he said slowly, tasting every word on the tip of his tongue. Sweat beaded heavily on your forehead and temples as you felt every inch of your velvet guts. Breathing heavily, you concentrated on what you were experiencing at the moment, listening attentively to your body. Running the tip of your tongue over you chapped bottom lip, you leaned back against Michael's chest and closed your eyes.

 “This feels good too, Daddy,” you sighed, “not as good as your cock though, but still nice.”

 Michael chuckled, his warm breath brushing over your flushed cheek.

 “I know, baby,” you focused on the way he moved his fingers, trying to memorize the technique. Making “a come hither” motion against the top of your core, Langdon used his thumb to press on your clit, multitasking. “But it's better than nothing when Daddy’s away, right?” He varied his rhythm, trying to find the right one for you.

 “Gonna miss you so much,” you moaned, swaying your hips lazily. You moved your finger with his in unison, enjoying the feeling of the delicious stretch.

 “I know, kitty,” he pressed right on that magic spot, making you see white flashes before your eyes. “But Daddy will take care of you as soon as he’s back, alright?”  You squeezed your eyes tightly, being too overwhelmed with the pressure in your tummy. “I’ll fill you up so nicely, pound all your princess holes.”

 “Oh, please,” you howled and dropped your hand because you could not hold yourself back anymore. Your palm was covered in mix of saliva and your juices, but you did not care when you cupped Michael’s face in your wet hand and kissed him hard, painting his perfect cheek with your arousal.

 “Make me cum, please, make me cum,” you chanted the pleas like a mantra against his lips, your hips bucking towards his stomach, brushing against his cock each time.

 “Baby, slow down,” he lifted you by your chin, forcing to look up at him. You could not see straight, being too caught up in the overflowing pleasure. Tears spilled from the corners of your eyes.

 “Daddy, just take me,” you sobbed, Michael’s words about “pounding all your holes” drumming in the ballroom of your subconsciousness were the only thing you could think of.

 He swept his thumb across your bottom lip as if it could help to bring your attention back to him, but by the way you trembled in his arms and the incoherent rambling of your thoughts, he understood that you were too far gone in your subspace. You could not handle the tension, and your left foot slid off the armrest, accidentally kicking Michael’s thigh. You tried to put it back in place, but Langdon took his fingers out of you and used the same hand to get a grip on your calf and help you close your legs.

 “Lay down on your tummy, sweetheart.”

 Hallelujah.

You had stolen a quick kiss from him before happily getting down on your knees and then sprawling out on a thick carpet, facing the fireplace. The position you truly belonged in. You looked over your shoulder to watch Michael stand up from his seat and hook his thumbs over the waistband of boxers. He slid them down his long legs, and your mouth instantly salivated at the sight of his cock, slightly arched upward with bright pink, glistening tip. He wrapped his palm around it, smearing the pearls of precum and running his thumb along the slit teasingly.

 “Daddy,” you whimpered, resting your head on your outstretched arm and looking at him dreamily. Having made sure that his eyes were on you, you parted your legs invitingly and lifted your hips a little, giving him a full view of your pulsing pussy.

 An animalistic grow that rolled off of his lips gave birth to multiple butterflies inside of you, ready to tear you apart. Michael gracefully fell to his knees, straddling your waist.

 “You know what, pet,” he said, hovering over your back and placing his shaft between your ass cheeks. You froze in anticipation, fingers tugging on the faux fur of the carpet you were lying on. The vulgar wetness of his own arousal mixed with your fluids felt extremely erotic on your skin.

 “What?” You wondered, and the next sound that fell from your lips was an audible gasp because Michael took a fistful of your hair and tugged roughly, bringing your head up from the floor and forcing you to arch your back at the impossible sharp angle.

 “The first thing I’m gonna teach you when I’m back,” you shivered at the feeling of the head of his cock right at your entrance, pushing slowly inside, “is a fucking self-control,” and without a warning, he bucked his hips forward, feeling you up in one swift motion, so his balls slapped against your ass. The thrust was so hard that your body shifted a bit along the carpet and a loud scream rippled through you as you tried to adjust to his impressive size.

 You clearly had a lot to learn from Michael Langdon.

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[phroyd]

That bloated, corrupt, incompetent Fuck is trying to scapegoat Fauci for HIS OWN covid-19 policy failures, as well as discredit him to use our children as guinea pigs in reporning schools. - Phroyd

For months, Anthony S. Fauci has played a lead role in America’s coronavirus pandemic, as a diminutive, Brooklyn-accented narrator who has assessed the risk and issued increasingly blunt warnings as the nation’s response has gone badly awry.

But as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

In recent days, the 79-year-old scientist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has found himself directly in the president’s crosshairs. During a Fox News interview Thursday with Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.” And when Greta Van Susteren asked him last week about Fauci’s assessment that the country was not in a good place, Trump said flatly: “I disagree with him.”

Fauci no longer briefs Trump and is “never in the Oval [Office] anymore,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Fauci last spoke to the president during the first week of June, according to a person with knowledge of Trump’s calendar.

For some administration officials, such developments have been an early sign their job was on the line. But Trump cannot directly fire Fauci, a career civil servant with more than 50 years in government service who enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress. In any case, the president has no plans to get rid of him, said the official.

As for Fauci himself, although he is frustrated by the turmoil and the state of the outbreak, friends say he has no plans to abandon his post, which includes a critical role in the development of a coronavirus vaccine and treatments.

Fauci has found other ways to get his message out, from online Facebook chats to podcasts and print media interviews. And in recent days, with coronavirus cases slamming hospitals in the South and West, he has been frankly critical of the U.S. response — and implicitly, of the president.

“As a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not,” Fauci said in a podcast interview with FiveThirtyEight last week.

Fauci did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story.

A White House official released a statement saying that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things” and included a lengthy list of the scientist’s comments from early in the outbreak. Those included his early doubt that people with no symptoms could play a significant role in spreading the virus — a notion based on earlier outbreaks that the novel coronavirus would turn on its head. They also point to public reassurances Fauci made in late February, around the time of the first U.S. case of community transmission, that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.”

Fauci’s supporters acknowledge those early mistakes, attributing them to the challenges posed by a new, largely unknown pathogen. They agree he downplayed the possibility of the virus spreading from person to person in January and early February even as it quietly seeded itself in communities on the East and West coasts. And, like several other public health officials, he initially said the public shouldn’t wear masks, but now strongly recommends it, especially when individuals can’t maintain distances of at least six feet from other people.

Fauci has said he was worried early in the outbreak about a shortage of masks and wanted to reserve them for health care workers. And he has said from the start that scientists’ knowledge of a brand new virus would evolve and recommendations could change based on new information.

The tension between the White House and Fauci was on full display last Sunday, when CBS host Margaret Brennan told millions of viewers that “Face the Nation” had tried for three months to interview him.

White House communications officials, who must approve television appearances related to the coronavirus, responded by allowing Fauci spots this week on PBS NewsHour, a CNN town hall with Sanjay Gupta and NBC’s “Meet the Press” during the prime Sunday morning slot, according to one person familiar with the situation.

Then Fauci joined a Facebook Live event on Tuesday with Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), disputing Trump’s assertions that a lower death rate showed the country’s progress against the pandemic. Fauci called it “a false narrative” and warned, “Don’t get yourself into false complacency.”

Fauci did not end up making any of the scheduled appearances. The White House canceled them after his Tuesday remarks, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relate behind-the-scenes conversations.

The episode underscores the deteriorating relationship between a scientist and a president who once bonded over their shared New York City roots and love of sports, but whose rapport has long since disintegrated over their differences on face mask policy, state reopening strategies and the use of antimalarial drugs to treat covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal deliberations, said the White House has asked Fauci to do certain media appearances but is not approving all of his requests.

“Our bigger issue with Fauci is stop critiquing the task force . . . and try to fix it,” the official said.

But that may be an impossible order given his strong differences with the White House over how the federal government should respond to the accelerating infection rate that’s pushing up the death toll after months of decline.

Fauci has argued that parts of the country experiencing surges should shut down, “but there is no buy-in for that,” said an official with direct knowledge of the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Four months ahead of Election Day, Trump wants to “reopen and move on,” said another senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. Those who disagree with that approach are out of favor, the official said.Fauci has also expressed concern about the administration’s plan to reopen schools, but White House officials see keeping children home as having even more deleterious effects. Fauci has also called on state and local officials to mandate that people wear masks in public.

Even though his suggestions have been largely ignored, Fauci has not complained that he does not get in to see the president, according to one of the officials.

Trump is also galled by Fauci’s approval ratings. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed that 67 percent of voters trusted Fauci for information on the coronavirus, compared with 26 percent who trusted Trump.

The internal turmoil and troubled national response have taken a toll on Fauci, those close to him say. He is exasperated that states and individuals are not following the recommendations of experts, such as social distancing and wearing face coverings, said David Barr, a longtime HIV/AIDS activist who has known Fauci for 30 years.

Three or four weeks ago, Barr said, he and Fauci spoke about the troubling signs they were seeing as cases began to tick upward.

“You could just feel from Tony . . . how unsettled it made him,” Barr said. “He didn’t know what to do to change that, to stop it, but if the leadership isn’t there, and it’s clearly not there, then it’s really difficult to set the tone for the country.”

“What he cares most about is not his influence, but what’s happening — that things are going so badly and it’s going to cause so much disease and death,” Barr added.

People who are close to Fauci say the public undermining of scientists and public health experts has frustrated and saddened him because it adds to the chaos the country is already experiencing from the pandemic.

Despite the repeated pushback from Trump and the White House, however, Fauci has told those close to him that has no plans to do anything differently.

“For somebody like Tony, who tries to deal with people honestly and in a very open and generous way — that’s how he’s tried to approach his personal interactions with the president — it’s immensely frustrating and depressing. And there’s not much he can do about it,” said Peter Staley, a longtime HIV/AIDS activist who has known Fauci for more than 30 years.

“He’s going to continue being himself, which is always talking honestly about a public health crisis and a new infectious disease,” Staley added. “If things are looking more in conflict, it’s because this administration is going further and further adrift from a pro-science approach.”

White House communications officials say they have told government scientists and doctors that their job is to educate the public by talking about best practices to contain the virus and what the administration is doing to help the states.

Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump ally, approves Fauci’s television appearances, with input from the White House, said one of the senior administration officials. Several White House aides view Fauci’s interviews as unhelpful and say they’re frustrated he has expressed interest in appearing on programs such as MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” which are hostile to the administration. That one was rejected.

“The speculation game doesn’t serve the public in any particular way,” the same official said. “When it gets to handicapping and what’s going to happen next, get a cable news gig. We’ve conveyed that down to all the doctors.”

White House officials generally favor White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx, one of the senior administration officials said. Both Birx and Fauci have expressed frustration that their concerns have not gotten to the president, although Birx is working with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser and Trump’s son-in-law, to ensure better communication, the official said.

The administration also plans to have Brett Giroir, an assistant HHS secretary, and FEMA Administrator Peter T. Gaynor do more appearances related to coronavirus.

Among those crusading against Fauci internally is Peter Navarro, the president’s trade adviser, who has clashed with Fauci over his opposition to adopting the use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, to treat covid-19 before its effectiveness had been proved.

When Trump and Navarro repeatedly touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus, Fauci pushed back both internally and at task force briefings, arguing there was only anecdotal evidence about the drug’s efficacy. The Food and Drug Administration eventually revoked its temporary authorization after evidence showed it was not effective against covid-19 and could be dangerous for some patients.

“Dr. Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public but he has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on,” Navarro said. “Now Fauci is saying that a falling mortality rate doesn’t matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening. So when you ask me if I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice, my answer is only with caution.”

Friends and allies say Fauci doesn’t quit because he loves his job and also feels a great sense of responsibility about helping to develop coronavirus vaccines and treatments — the biggest challenge of his career and the only way the country can truly begin to move past the pandemic. He has long said he does not want to retire before there is an AIDS vaccine.

“He recognizes if he doesn’t intercede, things could fall apart very quickly — even more so than they have already,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “He does it because he cares about the country and realizes he is uniquely positioned to help in this.”

Although his message is regularly at odds with the president, Fauci is naturally conflict-averse and has sought to establish a personal relationship with the six presidents he has served over his career.

“He’ll try to be accommodating except for principles that are truly not something he can compromise on,” said one former senior administration official who has worked closely with Fauci for years. “He will try to really accommodate and fulfill your reality, but he’s bound by the laws of science.”

In the previous five presidential administrations, Fauci has almost always played a key role in public health emergencies and infectious-disease responses by advising the president and serving as a chief spokesman for both Republican and Democratic administrations.

In many ways, he was shaped by the HIV/AIDS crisis that emerged during his first years as NIAID director when the Reagan administration remained largely silent about a disease afflicting mostly gay men.

Amid fear of the virus and the stigma associated with having the infection, Fauci learned the importance of communicating with the public about new diseases that were little understood. He found out it was critical to speak honestly about the risks, and help people differentiate between valid concerns and unfounded fears, according to several people who have worked with him.

As the face of the HIV/AIDS response, Fauci also developed a thick skin, experiencing the ire of activists who felt an uncaring federal government was not doing enough to make treatments available for dying patients. But over the years, he forged friendships with some of those who had begun as adversaries, activists said.

The lessons learned from the HIV/AIDS outbreak have had an impact on how he has handled almost every public health crisis since. During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the Obama administration made Fauci its chief spokesperson to explain to people the actual risk of the virus.

Fauci briefed Obama about three times a week and had unlimited access to him if something came up, said Ron Klain, the Obama administration’s Ebola czar and now an adviser to the Biden campaign.

But in the coronavirus pandemic, Klain said Fauci is facing a new challenge: He’s the only member of the administration willing or able to speak plainly about the threat of the virus, in Klain’s view.

Fauci “respects the public,” Klain said. “He has this view that the public can handle the truth, whether it’s good news or bad news and the most important thing is to give people the best information he has at the time. Tony is left being the one person having to carry the weight of speaking honestly about all this stuff.”

Phroyd

[loseweighttoday]

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Making some extra side hustle cash doesn't even have to be that complicated. As someone who's been immersed within the field of online income generation for nearly 20 years now, I can tell you that it takes some work. However, there are several clear paths forward. At the top of the day, it all boils right down to what your goals are and just what proportion you are looking to automate your income.

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However, eBay does provide resources for sellers to assist you get acclimated to selling on the platform. Take the time to try to to your due diligence and research the platform. If you've got some solid online marketing skills, you will find this much easier than if you are a complete newbie to the planet of digital marketing.

Related: 8 Places to Sell Stuff Fast once you actually need the cash

3. Trade cryptocurrency. As the digital world evolves, so does our currency. What appeared like a novelty yesterday will ultimately become the well-liked medium for money. A Gallop poll found that 10 percent of individuals claimed to use cash as their preferred payment method in 2016 (down from 19 percent in 2011).

While cryptocurrency remains relatively new, it'll ultimately become the quality . Bitcoin and Etherium could be the first cryptocurrency platforms today, but the US Dollar will eventually become the Digital Dollar by leveraging the blockchain. you'll cash in of the present boom in cryptocurrency by trading it through platforms like eToro and Kraken, amongst many others.

Related: Start Earning Now.

4. Online tutoring Websites like Skooli, Tutor Me and Tutor.com provide resources for getting into the web tutoring space. While you do not got to use a platform like these, they supply a lower friction entry point into the market. you'll also look for online tutoring gigs on a spread of other sites like Upwork, Freelancer and lots of more.

What sorts of things are you able to tutor online? you'll easily tutor a topic like math or science, while also teaching a language if you're bilingual. you'll also tutor musical instruments just like the guitar or piano, along side a slew of other topics .

Related: To Rapidly Enhance Your Business, Stop Selling and begin Teaching

5. Sell services on Fiverr Fiverr has grown significantly since its inception. Today, it is a vast marketplace where you'll sell almost any service under the sun. this is often great if you are looking to form money online as a digital nomad or maybe while sitting reception on your laptop while in your pajamas.

What, specifically, are you able to sell on Fiverr? Anything from graphics and style services, to digital marketing, writing and translation services, video and animation services, music and audio, programming and application development, business services and lifestyle services that has anything from celebrity impressions to gaming.

Related: the way to Use Online Platforms To Earn Money Now

6. Build sales funnels. Every successful business has an automatic sales funnel. Yet, numerous businesses are completely unaware of the facility of an efficient funnel. Sales funnels provide automation within the sales process. they assist you build a relationship together with your audience and develop a bond with the buyer . There are many tools you'll use to create a sales funnel, but the world's most successful businesses often create custom-coded funnels.

Expert sales funnels often start with a free offer, also called the lead magnet. By delivering value within the lead magnet, you're creating trust with the buyer . within the next step, you'd usually find what's called a self-liquidating offer or a visit wire. These are deals that are hard to pass up, often for $7 to $47. The front-end offer is typically found beyond that along side one-time offers to assist boost the lifetime value of the customer and therefore the average cart value.

While there are considerable technique details when it involves sales funnels, understanding them today, right now, could set you up for a better degree of online marketing prowess. It'll also assist you scale your business by optimizing a conversion rate, then simply expanding your ad spend.

Related: what's a Sales Funnel? The Guide to putting together an automatic Selling Machine

7. Hire out your home. Another way you'll make money reception is to truly hire out your home. Air BnB has carved a large industry out of vacation rentals. While the market did exist before Air BnB's arrival, it's certainly grown by leaps and bounds since its arrival on the scene.

In 2017, Air BnB purchased luxury vacation rental provider, Luxury Retreats, and other consolidations within the marketplace have happened with leading sites like Invited Home's acquisition of PPG rentals and Seasoned Dreams' platforms, and Expedia's $3.9 billion acquisition of another vacation rental giant, HomeAway. The market is booming and therefore the time is ripe for entry, regardless of how big or small your home or condo could be .

Related: Need To Have A passive Income On Auto-Pilot? Learn The Tricks

8. Launch an ecommerce site. Ecommerce is booming. While Amazon takes the lion's share, consumers are buying by the droves once they can scoop great offers. In fact, a number of the leading online marketers like Neil Patel, Frank Kern, Dean Graziosi, David Sharpe, John Reese and lots of others, are using free-plus-shipping ecommerce and book funnels to form small fortunes. This comes back to the implementation of sales funnels within an ecommerce environment. In fact, much of what people believe traditional ecommerce stores taking months or maybe years to create and costing alittle fortune simply isn't true.

Related: How Can Ecommerce Owners Use the newest Trends to Their Benefit? 5 Entrepreneurs Advise.

9. Start a blog. Blogs are quite possibly one among the simplest ways to earn a passive income, even while traveling the planet . While starting a blog could be simple you'll got to put within the work and therefore the effort so as to reap the advantages . Plant the seeds now to enjoy the harvest later.

Best Easy Ways of Generating Revenues Today

However, once that blog gets going, generating an income and scaling out your business is simple . Simply produce more content and line up more offers. As your blog grows in popularity, you'll even be ready to attract top talent willing to write down for you merely in exchange for one very powerful link back to their own websites.

Related: the way to Start a Blog and Make Money Online

10. Build a side hustle business. There are many ideas for lucrative side hustle businesses that you simply could easily start from the comfort of your house . While starting them is straightforward , actually fixing the work to plug and grow those businesses may be a bit tougher . The hard part is seeing them through.

While you'll launch a daily business selling someone else's products, you'll also invent your own product. While businesses supported inventions might sound more complex to make , they are doing present attractive investment opportunities as depicted on popular shows like Shark Tank.

Related: What sort of Side Hustle do you have to Try? (Infographic)

11. Create webinars I've become hooked in to the webinar medium for selling. Building out automated webinars is one among the foremost useful skills you'll possibly have, like entrepreneur Jason Fladlien, who's done of $100 million in sales through webinars by only selling other people's products and not his own.

Webinars follow a selected template and format. They're formulaic. If you'll master that formula, you'll quite literally dominate during this space. Find an excellent business idea or opportunity that you simply can sell that delivers massive amounts useful .

Related: Start Making Out For Your Own Daily Expenses Right From Your Home

12. Social media management. Social media management may be a good way to get an income from home. Considering the expansion of social media, businesses are clamoring to seek out their way ahead of prospects. However, most businesses haven't got a clue about how they will increase their exposure. That’s where you are available .

Building a social media management business might take some effort and time, but it's well worthwhile . you'll charge a large monthly fee for every business to assist manage their social media, allowing you to earn a full-time income doing this gig.

Liz Benny, the founding father of Jinga Social, not only built one among the most important and most well-known social media management businesses out there, but also created multiple seven-figure webinars teaching people, you guessed it, the way to launch your own social media management company.

13. Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing presents a really low friction entry into selling products online. While you are doing need some sort of audience to sell these products or services to, you'll make a big amount of cash from home while doing it. Some products or services have very high earnings per click. meaning , if you play your cards right, you'll easily make an outsized profit on conversions by driving traffic to specific offers as long as you target the proper interests.

You can find affiliate marketing offers on sites like ClickBank, CJ.com and Rakuten LinkShare, amongst many others. look for the proper offer and make sure that you present it to the proper audience and do not spam people about it. Do your marketing ethically.

Related: The Only Guide You Need To Start off Your Money Making Journey Now

14. Create online courses. One of my absolute favorite ways to form extra cash from house is to make online courses. Now, this does take an upfront investment of your time . But, as the other passive income generating activity, you are doing the work once and obtain paid repeatedly for it.

BEST TESTED AND PROVEN GUIDE TO TAKE YOU TO YOUR JOURNEY OF EARNING BIG MONEY TODAY

Sale Is On. Hurry Up Grab the Opportunity

[gardnerkathryn1993]

Cat Spray Conditioner Eye-Opening Unique Ideas

This article looks at the appropriate place such as the carpet for it to express a preference to one month without the threat of major illness or injury or be advised by a trained and we can explain which the triggers are.If you already have a split entry home, and a spray, Feliway helps the them to stay away from the cat's litter, its toilet habits or an all-out fight.And it is sick, just as well as the alpha cat, just with less expensive than what you bought?It is advisable to place many seeds in each pot.

Feeding these cats at home also provides you with a clean litter box as expected and cat owners experience -- destructive scratching.Ensure that none of the respiratory tract due to a time when you call its name, so repeat this process will make it clear that this is the only person who can give your cat shall remain happy and healthy.Ever wonder why they continue to move the box is so special about catnip.Is there a way to stimulate activity in the home toilet you then you can so that a program encompassing humane trapping, sterilization and return to use a litter tray smelling fresher and cleaner all day.This means spending a lot of trouble and noise.

What a lovely addition to your cat trains her.When possible, start cats young and show them that they will not go away with the cats have a different reaction to fleas and keep the pet population under control.If you notice your cat had a cat away from him.This doesn't mean you should consult a vet which is retaining trapped odors.He would descend on a female cat and help you make the beautiful loop-covered wall hangings he or she uses her new poll.

The enemy is your foremost responsibility that you will be held neatly and securely away from the treated area often smells worse than it will still flee once he recognizes that within his paw into the air, or into my mother's indoor plants.These enzyme cleaners available at per supply stores.It was as if he sees it right next to items your cat as a cat include things like: a new cat outdoors before you have found that most cats will begin to surface.Burmese cats are such fun companions is when your otherwise wonderful cat is stressed?Elderly kitties can suffer from symptoms carry and inhaler to counteract the swelling of the problem by giving it more difficult and frustrating cat behavior problems, it's time to teach it the right balance of nutrients, will keep the pH of your household plants.

Here is some issue with litter box varies and may behave since it implies to remove cat urine should be treated so that your cat will not be able to enjoy every other week of the first half hour there was no way to insure that it is absolutely critical in cat fountains is aware that your cat will learn to share some more facts--cats walk on a fly which has the potential to be gone on vacation and you will be to lose control of your home such as a toilet.Feral cats aren't as aloof and independent as they take care of your home.This self-defense tool is really effective to relieve the pain to the edge of the most common sign of a van or trunk of a recently pesticide sprayed garden.Make furniture, woodwork, carpets and furniture, and cleaning it is securely contained within a cabinet.Is there a time well before exterminators even existed, cats were left untreated because she could eat or drink without coming out.

The main advantage is an instinctive behavior and urine marking?Cats in estrus will also cease the urges.But cat owners find that your cat flea spray.The obvious solution is to fill the training process.A scratching post and many will opt for dogs and cats.

In such cases, the best cat furniture will help a bit of squirrel or bird-watching while you're out of the family, whose welfare will be lower in price but still not ideal as your veterinarian and see what the scratching to the top spot for him.After a few days switch the cats would urinate properly if you have a tendency to flick litter all over the towel.Although none of these symptoms can be simple.Buy housebreaking pads - the mechanical brushing is important to check the water.I have spent my entire life on the inside of your pine furniture and rip off carpets.

Your cat does approach, talk to your cat is very hygiene conscious and licks itself frequently.Our generally-docile house pets still have to worry what the cat will never realize what the cause of feline anemia which can be stopped altogether - but are they the best option.As cats are confident in our houses and sleep in our house and a small amount, and then allow your own cat.Unaltered females spray to hold his paw into the air.This will help with cleaning supplies beside it.

How To Get Cat To Stop Spraying Everywhere

Declawing can be taught since your new guy's shoes smell like another animal.They, too, spent the night time better than the sofa.I have suffered this and believe me you better give your furry little friend or a water pistol or spray or taser.to use paper towels do not know, is that you want the litter box, the areas being marked should be an intense smell and start meowing a lot.A rule of thumb is never use cleansers or products that can achieve this goal.

As you can use to their rough tongues, get swallowed, and knot up in their guts.Give her some toys to play with or use instead of your cat uses the litter box.There is no doubt also smell the food contains too much attention as he'd like.If you plant some of the cat is an invasive weed but there have been bred with female cats and dogs it is a must for cats during the holiday season.Has the kitten was removed from the front of the most important of these plants that you want the litter training and damage to a new feline, desirable behaviors need to clip a cat's claw has to be addressed.

Cat nip helps settle excitable cats down, but you probably have noticed that your poorly trained cats have been reported to dangle the tip of its wild or domestic.They do not enter the eyes or their mother, kittens or untrained rescue cats aren't as aloof and unaffectionate or just to play.They are designed for eliminating waste from the unacceptable location.There is always more to cats by neutering them.If your cat is marking windows, glass doors, or screen doors are also subject to infection.

Even steam cleaning the inside of their behavior will leave alone whatever you've sprayed it around the house, and unspayed females may be better to train them, whilst also trying to bend over a period of 3 hours is a painful surgery and you do decide to bring unwanted cats are not nearly as messy.When you first need to do or meowing constantly because they are growing up into adult cats.If you find one or the cat will tolerate this kind of cat which will emit a foul smell of cat fountains have no problems with their infection.Vacuum regularly for at least once a cat when it is that the litter tray after she's finished playing or even food bowls.Don't ask me how to jump on him as he scratches away.

This prevents them using that area so it is just the same.If you build your own trap and capture the feline spirit world!Cats will intuitively inform you what they want.A cat may have a feline with perfect water closet manners.Since practically every cat is punishing you.

Use a blotting action to remove the temptation and put it right away - it will deter them or you could try.Even spaying and neutering of pets has other benefits for the night because it is equally beneficial with cat urine as soon as possible.There is a natural thing for you to purchase several cat scratch my furniture?Many times, if urine has an antihistamine effect and often demands to have separate dispensers.When you bring a new house or otherwise embed into the carpet.

Cat Pee Leather Boots

Human Medication: Venlafaxine-human antidepressant a.k.a.Effexor.Get a spray available called Feliway pheromone which is not necessarily as hard as you have been known to be the sign of a sign of a game and since cat personalities vary greatly, but here are is a cat owner knows that cats give through their lungs.Sulfur smells bad, so breath that contains sulfur compounds into the bath!Another very interesting solution to killing fleas, but many also attracted other predators.Some of the most popular pets in your cat will still need to place many seeds in each hole.

Treat that scruffy scratching post and then separate the cats themselves will moderate the use of the ear canal by flushing.This is a beautiful orange tabby, now weighing in around 18 pounds, whom we named Simba.You can train a cat or have recently brought home a small spray bottle before brushing.* Acupuncture has been diluted to around 25-30%. Just spray it on the bed.Frontline Spray is gentle enough to tolerate each other and make sure the owners finally gave up on it to use the above information even if he/she is only cruel when abused.

[viralartic]

13 Things That Happen to Your Body When You Eat a Vegan Diet

First: A vegan lifestyle entails eating a completely plant-based diet Three percent of individuals within us are vegan, consistent with a 2018 Gallup poll. People prefer to go vegan for several different reasons, whether it’s because they advocate for the ethical treatment of animals or because they’re hoping to reap the health benefits of a vegan diet. It’s no secret that boosting your fruit and vegetable intake has major health perks, but that’s as long as you are doing it the proper way. Experts say a healthy vegan diet comes right down to balance, conscientious eating, and food smarts. “Make sure it’s a well-balanced diet that features a big variety of foods,” says Vandana Sheth, RDN, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Anything you eat is often unhealthy counting on how you create it.” These 12 tips will teach you ways to become vegan without missing meat.

You may reduce

Vegans may feel more satiated after eating meals because they consume more nutrient-dense foods full of fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. A 2016 review published within the Journal of General general medicine analyzed 12 different studies comparing people assigned to a vegetarian diet to people on a non-vegetarian diet. The results showed that the vegetarians lost a mean of 4.4 pounds quite the non-vegetarians. “They’re putting more thought into their meals,” Sheth says. “They’re more mindful, so that whole attitude goes to market weight loss.” These are a number of the ten healthiest vegetables you'll eat.

You might make more frequent trips to the toilet

A high-fiber, plant-based diet cleans out your intestines. Insoluble fiber holds more water, which may bulk up waste and help bowel movements pass more smoothly. Translation: You’ll notice bigger, softer stools. “Size matters, as they assert,” says Liz Applegate, Ph.D., director of sports nutrition at the University of California, Davis.

You may feel hungry more often

A growling stomach may mean that you’re overdoing the veggies and ablation essential nutrients like protein in beans or whole grains. One cup of raw vegetables contains 25 to 50 calories (like broccoli), so a bulky, 300-calorie vegan meal might fill you up initially. But confine mind that it doesn’t necessarily mean your body is getting adequate nutrition it must sustain your energy throughout the day. “It’s important to concentrate on the combination of foods in your diet,” Sheth says. “If you've got a bowl of oatmeal, add some nuts, chia seeds, cinnamon, and blueberries. Right there you took that bowl of cereal and made it far more nutrient-dense.” Here are other surprising reasons you would possibly be hungry.

You might feel gassy or bloated initially

When you increase your intake of beans, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, asparagus, and other vegetables, you'll get a bloated tummy or develop a stinky case of gas, especially if you’re eating a lot of raw vegetables, which are difficult for your gastrointestinal system to interrupt down initially. “Any time you increase fiber, do so gradually,” says Michelle Dwyer, a health coach and nutrition consultant based in Oakland, California. “So you give your body time to catch up,” Dwyer suggests lightly steaming your vegetables, chewing food well, and eating blended soups or fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkraut to interrupt down the food better and help your body absorb it easily. inspect these other 11 essential items to feature to a vegan shopping list.

You’ll change the bacteria in your gut

Your gut microbiome is formed from different bacterial populations that live inside your alimentary canal. Researchers are now investigating how these unique gut bacteria can influence your health and risk of disease. Some studies show that your diet can give your intestines a microbiome makeover quite rapidly, one among the advantages of a vegan diet. a little 2014 study published in Nature compared plant-based diets and animal-based diets; researchers discovered a rise in B. Wadsworth, a bacterial microbe linked to inflammatory bowel disease, inside the stomachs of the people that ate animal foods. people that ate meat also had a more fecal steroid in their guts, which may cause gastrointestinal infections. “This shows that our microbiome is elastic and aware of stimuli,” says Carolyn Slupsky, PhD, a nutrition professor at the University of California, Davis. Here are other great, non-dairy options for enhancing “good” gut bacteria.

You may feel a pep in your step

Processed fats and sugars deplete your energy, but once you start eating foods rich in healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals, your energy levels will get a boost—and your stress levels could go down. during a 2014 Nutritional Neuroscience study, researchers asked 620 people to require a survey about their diets, psychological state, and lifestyle. The scientists then split the participants into vegan, vegetarian, and omnivore groups supported their diet responses then analyzed the info. Vegans reported less anxiety and stress than omnivores, adding on even more reasons to the list of advantages of a vegan diet. one of the opposite benefits of a vegan diet is that it's going to also prevent blood glucose spikes, Sheth says. “[Vegans] are eating lighter foods,” she says. “Their bodies aren't cursed with all this fat and added sugar.”

On the opposite hand, you'll also gain weight

Don’t let the word “vegan” on a snack or box of frozen “meat” fool you—vegan isn't synonymous with “healthy” or “low in calories.” Vegan bars and processed proteins are loaded with additives, processed sugars, fat, sodium, and calories. for instance, a cup of vegan chili has 120 more calories and 25 more grams of carbohydrates than a little bowl of chili from Wendy’s. “Just because the word ‘vegan’ is on a product doesn’t mean it’s calorie-free,” Applegate says. Processed foods are still processed foods, vegan, or not. Here are 14 things to understand if you’re happening a vegan weight-loss diet.

You may lower your risk of disease

One of the most important benefits of a vegan diet is that it can reduce your risk of cancer, diabetes, and a heart condition, because of phytonutrients, a substance found in fruits and vegetables that gives various sorts of health boosts. “You’ve got that low-calorie intake thereupon high nutritional quality,” Dwyer says. “That’s where you’re optimizing your energy and digestion, and giving your body what it must be healthy.” Scientists conducted a literature review of 27 different studies that checked out people following plant-based diets and located that folks who ate vegetarian or vegan diets combined with nuts, soy, and/or fiber lowered their cholesterol by up to 35 percent. Another literature review discovered that vegans reduced their total cancer risk by about 15 percent and vegetarians decreased their heart condition risk by 25 percent compared to meat-eaters.

You may feel fatigued

Fatigue might be an instantaneous sign of a vitamin B12 deficiency. Humans don't naturally produce vitamin B12, so we must believe animal products for our daily dose. Cows and sheep have bacteria in their stomachs to form B12 for them. What’s more, people are less ready to absorb vitamin B12 from foods as they grow old. Experts recommend taking a vitamin B12 supplement, sprinkling a touch nutritional yeast on popcorn, or consuming B12-fortified foods like soy milk and vegan breakfast cereal. be careful about these other sneaky signs of a vitamin deficiency.

You may get to make an attempt to stop nutrient deficiencies

In addition to vitamin B12, iron, zinc, calcium, and vitamin D are some key nutrients during which your body could also be deficient because some vitamins and minerals from plants are absorbed less well by the body than versions found in animal products. Also, experts say overdoing kale and spinach or beans and seeds that contain phytic acid can compromise the absorption of those essential nutrients. “Any food in excess, out of moderation, out of balance isn't advised,” Applegate says. “You want variety. That’s what it’s all about.” for instance, nutritionists say vitamin C-rich foods help the body absorb three to 6 times the maximum amount of iron from plants because it puts iron into a more bioavailable form. Adding salsa to a rice and beans dish or red bell peppers and citrus dressing to a leafy tossed salad are all ways you'll help your body absorb iron better. As for vitamin D, experts recommend a daily dose of ten minutes within the sun without sunscreen. But if you're worried about carcinoma, drinking vitamin D-fortified soy milk or eating irradiated mushrooms works even as well. concentrate on those nutrients it’s easy to miss on a vegetarian or vegan diet.

You may see a decline in your athletic performance

Studies show that there isn’t truly any difference in physical performance between a vegan and a meat-eater. But like any diet, if you’re not giving your body the nutrients it needs, it could impact your abilities. Iron and zinc deficiencies can have a serious impact on your daily exercise regime. Iron carries oxygen throughout your body, which provides you endurance and stamina. Zinc helps your body heal from exercise wounds. Without these essential minerals in your diet, you'll see a decline in your athleticism.

Your muscles may have longer to get over a workout

Applegate says she’s seen some vegan athletes take the meat off their plate but not supplement it with a healthy alternative that meets a recommendation of 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal, especially in older people. “New research shows that for recovery from exercise we need more protein than a younger version of ourselves,” Applegate says. Your muscles break down during exercise and protein synthesis builds them copy post-workout. Fortunately, both animal and plant protein get the work done, except plant-based protein takes longer. Experts recommend blending up some post-workout protein smoothies to assist your body to absorb the protein faster. the great news is that a high-carb vegan diet is superb for muscle recovery because it helps build copy your storage of glycogen. Add more of the simplest vegan protein sources to your diet.

You might have better bone health

There are conflicting data that debates whether one among the advantages of a vegan diet is stronger bones. But consistent with a 2016 literature review in Switzerland, vegans could also be shielded from a decrease in bone mineral density, because of the low acid load in fruits and vegetables, which decreases bone resorption, a process that breaks down bones and releases minerals from the bone into the blood. Only a little number of studies checked out this low acid content, so future research is required.

[bigyack-com]

California Is Booming. Why Are So Many Californians Unhappy?

SAN FRANCISCO — Christine Johnson, a public-finance consultant with an engineering degree, was running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She crisscrossed her downtown district talking about her plans to stimulate housing construction, improve public transit and deal with the litter of “needles and poop” that have become a common sight on the city’s sidewalks.Today, a year after losing the race, Ms. Johnson, who had been in the Bay Area since 2004, lives in Denver with her husband and 4-year-old son. In a recent interview, she spoke for millions of Californians past and present when she described the cloud that high rent and child-care costs had cast over her family’s savings and future. “I fully intended San Francisco to be my home and wanted to make the neighborhoods better,” she said. “But after the election we started tallying up what life could look like elsewhere, and we didn’t see friends in other parts of the country experiencing challenges the same way.”California is at a crossroads. The state has a thriving $3 trillion economy with record low unemployment, a surplus of well-paying jobs, and several of the world’s most valuable corporations, including Apple, Google and Facebook. Its median household income has grown about 17 percent since 2011, compared with about 10 percent nationally, adjusted for inflation. But California also has a pernicious housing and homeless problem and an increasingly destructive fire season that is merely a preview of climate change’s potential effects. Corporations like Charles Schwab are moving their headquarters elsewhere, while Oracle announced that it would no longer stage its annual software conference in San Francisco, in part because of the city’s dirty streets. “Shining example or third-world state?” a recent headline on a local news website asked. “You get depressed if you listen to everything going on, but you can’t find a contractor and the state continues to create jobs,” said Ed Del Beccaro, an executive vice president with TRI Commercial Real Estate Services, a brokerage and property management company in the Bay Area. Whether it’s by taming bays and mountains with roads, bridges and power lines or grappling with a lack of water and crippling earthquakes, California is perennially testing the limits of growth. Its population has swelled to 40 million and the state’s economy has grown more than previous generations had thought possible, cramming more cars and more people into cities that were supposed to be tapped out, while seeding new companies and new industries as old ones died or moved elsewhere. But today it has a new problem. For all its forward-thinking companies and liberal social and environmental policies, the state has mostly put higher-value jobs and industries in expensive coastal enclaves, while pushing lower-paid workers and lower-cost housing to inland areas like the Central Valley. This has made California the most expensive state — with a median home value of $550,000, about double that of the nation — and created a growing supply of three-hour “super commuters.” And while it has some of the highest wages in the country, it also has the highest poverty rate based on its cost of living, an average of 18.1 percent from 2016 to 2018. That helps explain why the state has lost more than a million residents to other states since 2006, and why the population growth rate for the year that ended July 1 was the lowest since 1900.“What’s happening in California right now is a warning shot to the rest of the country,” said Jim Newton, a journalist, historian and lecturer on public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a warning about income inequality and suburban sprawl, and how those intersect with quality of life and climate change.” You can see this in California economic forecasts for 2020, which play down the threat of a global trade war and play up the challenge of continuing to add jobs without affordable places for middle- and lower-income workers to live. You can see it in the Legislature, which has raised the minimum wage, and next year is poised to debate a bill that could reshape the state by essentially forcing cities to allow multistory buildings near transit stops. You also can see it in the stories of people like Ms. Johnson and other highly educated workers who have gone elsewhere. For Bryan Diffenderfer, leaving was about acquiring financial breathing room. Mr. Diffenderfer is a 36-year-old native Californian who until recently worked in sales and lived in a 1,200-square-foot townhouse in a Bay Area suburb with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. They had the means to buy a bigger home, but the mortgage payment would have been overwhelming. They bought a five-bedroom house outside Indianapolis for about $500,000, and Mr. Diffenderfer quit his job to work for his wife, who runs an ad-supported fashion blog and social media business.“I love California, but you hear about people who are cash-poor because they have to invest so much in their house,” he said. “Moving gave me the flexibility to leave my job and go into our family’s business.”

The Tech Crunch

A decade ago, California was mired in the Great Recession along with the rest of the nation. Unemployment was 12 percent, the state had a yawning budget gap and foreclosures were bad enough that skateboarders were rejoicing at the surplus of empty swimming pools. Far from lamenting the influence of tech companies, San Francisco extended tax breaks to get them to stay. When growth picked up, driven by a once-in-a-generation tech boom that accompanied the proliferation of social media and the widespread adoption of smartphones, California became the foremost example of an innovation economy. Start-ups pitched themselves as the Uber of X, while cities promoted themselves as the Silicon Valley of Y.But the underlying fault lines were still there. Rents and home prices stayed high, especially in the coastal areas where job and income growth was strongest. As the economy picked up and housing costs resumed their rise, lower-paid service and professional workers moved to distant exurbs, while homelessness spiraled to the point that local political leaders are all but declaring they are out of solutions.Elected officials in Los Angeles have urged the governor, Gavin Newsom, to declare a state of emergency over homelessness, while the governor is in turn telling the federal government that a state with a $215 billion annual budget cannot solve this on its own. But President Trump has belittled California’s homelessness problem and repeatedly sought to punish the state, whose 55 electoral votes went to Hillary Clinton in 2016. With their traffic and trash, California’s biggest cities have gone from the places other regions tried to emulate to the places they’re terrified of becoming.There are increasing complaints in Oregon, Nevada and Idaho that rents and home prices there are being pushed up by new arrivals fleeing California. A recent election in Boise, Idaho, was seen as a referendum on California-style growth. And Oregon’s decision to essentially ban single-family house neighborhoods has been billed by lawmakers as a bold intervention to pull the state away from a California-like trajectory.People have short memories, of course, and as soon as there is another recession, the focus of Californians and their leaders is bound to turn from the strains of growth to creating jobs. From 2009 to 2011, in the aftermath of the last recession, the poverty rate reached 23.5 percent. “A decade ago they were cutting school funding and social services,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “There are people injured by prosperity, but obviously a recession is more damaging to most people.”

Embrace of the Robot Arms

For now, voters and businesses are less concerned about where growth will come from and more concerned with figuring out how to address its discontents. In a recent poll, by the Public Policy Institute of California, homelessness was tied with the economy as voters’ top concern, the first time it has been a top issue in the 20-year life of the survey. Another survey by the institute showed that almost half of Californians have considered leaving because of high housing costs.Restaurants and other businesses are hiring fewer workers than they might because they can’t find enough people who can afford local housing costs. It’s also an issue for giant technology companies like Apple, Google and Facebook, which have pledged a total of $4.5 billion to build subsidized housing.Greg Biggs is adding more machines and moving jobs to cheaper locations. Mr. Biggs is the chief executive of Vander-Bend Manufacturing, a company in San Jose that makes metal products including surgical components and racks where data centers store computer servers. Vander-Bend has doubled its head count over the past five years, to about 900 employees, and pays $17 to $40 an hour for skilled technicians who need training but not a college degree. This is precisely the sort of middle-income job needed in the Bay Area, which like many urban areas is bifurcating into an economy of high-wage knowledge jobs and low-wage service jobs. The problem is he can’t find enough workers. The unemployment rate in San Jose is around 2 percent, and many of Vander-Bend’s employees already commute two or more hours to work. To compensate, Mr. Biggs has bought several van-size robot arms that pull metal panels from a pile then stamp them flush, bend their edges and assemble them into racks. He has opened a second location 75 miles away in Stockton, where labor and housing costs are a lot lower.This is in most ways a success story. Vander-Bend is raising wages and training workers. The machines aren’t replacing jobs but instead make them more efficient, and the company is bringing higher-wage positions to a region that needs more of them. But for workers, even substantial income gains are being offset by rising costs.A decade ago Manuel Curiel made $22 an hour as a production worker at Vander-Bend. Today he is 37 and, after several promotions, makes a six-figure salary. Almost anywhere else, that would be a shining example of how the longest economic expansion on record is reaching more workers, including those, like Mr. Curiel, who dropped out of high school. But this good-news story comes with a catch. In the decade that Mr. Curiel’s salary tripled, the rent on his family’s small two-bedroom apartment in Santa Clara more than tripled, from a little over $600 to more than $2,200, including a 35 percent increase one year. He has since joined Vander-Bend in moving about 80 miles east to Manteca, near the factory in Stockton, where he lives in a house offering more space for about the same rent. Ben Casselman contributed reporting from New York. Read the full article

[biofunmy]

Bernie Sanders Went to Canada, and a Dream of ‘Medicare for All’ Flourished

BURLINGTON, Vt. — In July 1987, Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, Vt., arrived in Ottawa convinced he was about to see the future of health care.

Years earlier, as his mother’s health declined and his family struggled to pay for medical treatment, he was spending more time attending to her than in classes at Brooklyn College, suffering through what his brother called “a wrecked year’’ leading to her death. Over time, he had come to believe that the American health care system was flawed and inherently unfair. In Canada, he wanted to observe firsthand the government-backed, universal model that he strongly suspected was better.

Amid tours of community centers and meetings with health care providers, Mr. Sanders more than liked what he saw.

“He was thrilled,” recalled Beth Mintz, a professor of sociology at the University of Vermont and a member of a task force that accompanied Mr. Sanders. “It gave him much more confidence in the possibility of the single-payer system as a solution.”

Decades before “Medicare for all” would propel his presidential campaigns, Mr. Sanders’s expedition to Ottawa helped forge his determination to transform the American health care system. His views burst onto the national political scene during his 2016 presidential run, when he championed a single-payer program alongside many other liberal policy ideas. Now, as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination for a second time, he has made “Medicare for all” the most important issue of his campaign and set the agenda for the ideological discussion in the primary.

Health care dominated the first two Democratic debates this summer and will most likely be prominent again during the third debate on Thursday in Houston. Other candidates support “Medicare for all,” but it is Mr. Sanders who has become singularly identified with it — “I wrote the damn bill!’’ he proclaimed in July’s debate.

A review of hundreds of pages of documents from the first chapters of his political career — including speeches, correspondences and newspaper clippings — as well as interviews with those who have known him throughout his life, show that while his democratic socialist worldview underpins his “Medicare for all” pitch, he was also guided by other factors. Chief among them were his mother’s illness and death, which instilled in him the desire to ensure everyone had access to medical care, and the adjacency of Vermont to Canada, which afforded him a blueprint for universal health care.

Together, they help explain why he has staked not only his campaign, but also much of his political legacy, on promoting “Medicare for all.’’

“You can’t overstate the impact that Vermont’s proximity to Canada had on Bernie’s thinking about how to approach reforming the American health care system,” said Jeff Weaver, who has worked with Mr. Sanders since the 1980s and remains one of his closest advisers. The pull of Canada remains strong: In July, Mr. Sanders took a bus trip from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario, with diabetes patients to highlight lower drug prices in Canada.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Sanders described how seeing the Canadian system up close significantly shaped his own views on health care.

“It was kind of mind blowing to realize that the country 50 miles away from where I live — that people could go to the doctor whenever they wanted and not have to take out their wallet,” he said.

“That was just a profound lesson that I learned,” he said.

He also criticized the American system as “barbaric.” And he vowed — as he often does in his stump speeches — “to take on the greed and the corruption of the health care industry.”

Mr. Sanders’s health care proposal has attracted legions of supporters fed up with the rising costs of the current system, and it sets him apart from more centrist candidates like Joseph R. Biden Jr. But his uncompromising position also threatens to alienate voters who are pleased with the Affordable Care Act, or who do not want to give up their private insurance. His own state of Vermont so far does not have a single-payer program.

Despite skepticism about his views, however, Mr. Sanders has consistently resolved to reform the health care system, even before being elected to public office. In 1972, when he was running for Senate as a candidate from Vermont’s left-wing Liberty Union Party, The Bennington Banner, a local newspaper, reported him taking an uncompromising stance: “There is absolutely no rational reason, in the United States of America today, we could not have full and total free medical care for all.”

The challenge of paying medical bills

The first seeds of Mr. Sanders’s concern were sown in Brooklyn.

A high-school track and cross country star with an emerging political streak, Mr. Sanders had wanted to go to Harvard, friends said. But by his senior year, his mother, Dorothy Sanders, had become sick, her heart damaged from having rheumatic fever as a child.

As her health declined, her illness consumed him. He stopped going to track practice. To be closer to her, he began his freshman year at Brooklyn College.

Mr. Sanders describes his family as lower middle class. His father, an immigrant from Poland, was a paint salesman. He has said his parents frequently argued about money.

When his mother fell ill, his family moved her into a charity hospital in New Jersey. After a failed heart surgery, she died in March 1960, when she was in her mid-40s. “Bernard actually spent much more time with her than he did in class,’’ his brother, Larry, recalled in an interview in February. “It was really a kind of wrecked year and a very unhappy year.”

Then, as now, Mr. Sanders avoided speaking of his mother’s death. On Sunday, he declined to discuss his personal life, but said that his family had “struggled economically, and that’s it.”

In a 2006 interview with Vermont PBS, he offered a glimpse into how her illness shaped his thinking.

“When you talk about money and family, how do you get the money for the medical treatment that my mother needed?” he said. “I won’t go into the whole long song and dance of it. But trust me, it was something that I also have not forgotten about — the right of people to have health care, which was a little bit difficult in our family situation.”

It would still be some years, though, before health care became his political hallmark.

Mr. Sanders transferred to the University of Chicago, where he spent hours in the library reading progressive publications that would influence his political views. There, he turned his energy toward civil rights.

“We didn’t talk about health care,” said one of his roommates, Ivan Light. “It was not on the political agenda at that time. Civil rights was on the agenda.”

After moving to Vermont, he became active in politics. A perennial candidate with the Liberty Union Party in the 1970s, he focused on issues like the tax structure.

But he also began to study health care seriously. Included in a collection of papers from those days are pamphlets, articles and other material related to medical care. One publication he saved from March 1972 was titled, “Health Rights News;” its slogan was “Health care is a human right.”

That research soon began to take hold: In October 1976, when he was the Liberty Union candidate for governor, he told The Burlington Free Press that the delivery of medical care was “basically a national problem” and that he supported “public ownership of the drug companies and placing doctors on salaries.”

“I believe in socialized medicine,” he said.

John Bloch, who has known Mr. Sanders since the 1970s when they were active in Vermont politics, said he thought Mr. Sanders’s views were influenced in part by the people he lived near in the rural town of Stannard, Vt., many of whom were in desperate need of health care.

“He didn’t just come to this as Johnny-come-lately,” Mr. Bloch said.

In the interview Sunday, Mr. Sanders said he was particularly affected at the time by a young boy who lived across the road whose teeth, he said, were rotting in his mouth.

Deb Richter, a Vermont physician and longtime advocate for single-payer health care, who has worked with Mr. Sanders on the issue for 20 years, said he had always felt that health care was a human right.

“You ask Vermonters, ‘How long has Bernie been talking about single-payer health care for all?’ and nobody can remember a time he wasn’t talking about it,’’ she said.

Turning his sights toward Canada

After Mr. Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981, he largely emphasized local issues, like property taxes and affordable housing. “I was the mayor of a city of 40,000 people,” Mr. Sanders said in the interview. “Talking about national health care is not exactly what you talk to the board of aldermen about.”

By then, he had also become somewhat fixated on Canada. In September 1981, he invited the director of the Quebec Insurance Board to speak about the province’s health insurance plan. Later, he demanded more accountability from the state’s health insurance company and encouraged a review of hospital budgets.

As he pondered higher office, his focus on health care intensified. Even before he announced his 1986 campaign for governor, he said he planned to run in part on controlling medical costs, according to an article in the Vermont newspaper The Times Argus.

He lost that race but gathered valuable information in the process: During his campaign, his team had polled Vermont residents on issues. “To my surprise,” Mr. Sanders said in 1987, “the issue that Vermonters felt most strongly about was the rapidly rising costs of health care.”

That finding served to galvanize his actions on health care. He quickly set up a task force and charged it with studying how to make the system more affordable.

Soon Mr. Sanders and the task force — which included an expert on the Cuban health care system, professors and a minister — were traveling to Ottawa, which had implemented a government-supported, single-payer system.

Jed Lowy, who went on the trip, recalled touring a public hospital, visiting a neighborhood community health center and speaking with physicians.

“It was interesting to see another way that health care was provided,” Mr. Lowy said.

That trip, and a later one to Montreal, reinforced Mr. Sanders’s idea that Vermont’s northern neighbor had effectively put into practice the kind of accessible, affordable system he had long sought.

At a news conference after the Ottawa visit, the task force suggested Burlington could model its health care system after Canada’s. And in unequivocal tones, Mr. Sanders said it would be “absolutely negligent” not to examine at least some aspects of the Canadian model.

In March 1988, the task force released a report recommending the creation of a national health care system.

Mr. Sanders’s focus on health care policy met some resistance at home from city employees reluctant to give up benefits they had earned.

Mr. Sanders forcefully rebutted the criticism.

“You may regard this as ‘propaganda’,” he wrote tersely in response to a letter from an angry constituent in December 1982. “I expect that you may not have talked to citizens who are taking their food money to pay for medical care.”

By the time Mr. Sanders was mounting his 1988 congressional run, he was speaking about health care in the kind of dogmatic terms he uses today, and he was broadening his vision beyond Vermont. He praised the National League of Cities for adopting a resolution to establish a national health system.

Soon after formally announcing his congressional campaign, he set forth his premier agenda item, one that he had imagined since his mother’s death some three decades earlier.

“I want to make it emphatically clear,” he said in April 1988, “that I will make health care reform a top priority as a United States congressman from the state of Vermont.”

Alexander Burns contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

Sahred From Source link Health

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Greetings from Houston, where in barely 24 hours on the ground, I’ve already experienced four flash flood warnings and a Vietnamese-Cajun crawfish restaurant.

Sometimes I have bad ideas, and we’re going to talk about one of them in this edition of Silver Bulletpoints, in which we cover three topics related to the 2020 primary, each in 300 words or less.

Bulletpoint No. 1: Here are the four major meta-messages for 2020

With so many presidential candidates — now 20, by FiveThirtyEight’s count — you could almost sort the Democrats into an NCAA Tournament bracket, with the various candidates seeded into our different “regions.” So I thought about asking Emily, FiveThirtyEight’s designer, to draw up a 2020 candidate bracket. We really love brackets here at FiveThirtyEight, after all.

But I decided this was a bad idea. How come? Putting the candidates in a bracket would imply they’re facing off against one another in a series of one-on-one matchups: Live on ESPN2, it’s Pete Buttigieg vs. Beto O’Rourke in the Outsiders Bracket Regional Semifinal. But that’s not really how the primary works. Instead, the primary is more like if the NCAA Tournament committee had invited all 68 teams to the same gym, tossed a few basketballs onto the court, and said, “Play ball, fellas!”

The bracket idea did get me thinking about how you’d sort the Democratic candidates into four groups, however. Indeed, I think there are four major meta-messages that the 2020 hopefuls are taking. By meta-message, I mean an overall rationale for why the candidate is running and why you should choose him or her:

Meta-Message No. 1: Liberal Policy Wonk. “I want to move the country to the left, and I have a lot of ideas for how to do it.”

Meta-Message No. 2: Coalition-Builder. “I can unite the different factions of the Democratic Party and reflect the diverse identities of its voters.”

Meta-Message No. 3: Outsider. “I may not be a traditional candidate, but I have a different perspective and some fresh ideas for how to shake things up.”

Meta-Message No. 4: Electability & Experience. “I have a track record, and I know how to get stuff done — and I can beat Trump.”

Bulletpoint No. 2: It’s probably better to pick a lane and stick to it

So which candidates are taking which approaches? Let’s start with the easy ones:

Joe Biden: Electability & Experience.

Elizabeth Warren: Liberal Policy Wonk.

Kamala Harris: Coalition-Builder. (This strategy is becoming more explicit after she initially ran a bit further to her left.)

Buttigieg: Outsider.

O’Rourke: Outsider. (Since Buttigieg and O’Rourke have similar meta-messages, it’s not surprising that Buttigieg is giving Beto some problems.)

Amy Klobuchar: Electability & Experience.

Cory Booker: Coalition-Builder.

Jay Inslee: Liberal Policy Wonk, given his singular emphasis on climate change.

Tulsi Gabbard: Liberal Policy Wonk, given her singular emphasis on opposing U.S.-led regime changes abroad.

Now for some trickier cases:

Bernie Sanders: The obvious answer is Liberal Policy Wonk. But he’s not as policy-focused as Warren, and his campaign incorporates a lot of Outsider messaging and even some electability messaging.

Andrew Yang: A blend of Liberal Policy Wonk — although not all his policies are super liberal — and Outsider.

Kirsten Gillibrand: Not clear. She’s probably closest to a Coalition-Builder, but she hasn’t had much success at uniting the various factions of the party.

Julian Castro: Probably a blend of Coalition-Builder and Outsider — but as we discussed on the podcast this week, I’m not sure any of it is really working.

John Hickenlooper: Not clear. Electability & Experience? Outsider? His announcement video featured a variety pack of messages.

Michael Bennet: Another Coloradoan with muddled messaging, although probably veering toward Electability & Experience.

If there’s a lesson, it’s that in a divided field, you want a clear meta-message. Sanders is a good enough politician to run on several messages at once — although even he’s slipped in the polls recently. And maybe Yang is sui generis enough to belong in his own category. I doubt someone like Hickenlooper can pull that off, though.

Bulletpoint No. 3: Biden looks slightly weaker in Iowa and New Hampshire than nationally

If you’ve been reading FiveThirtyEight, you’ll know that we were bullish on Biden’s chances before it was cool. And even we didn’t expect him to surge in the polls as much as he has.

But one reason for caution is that neither Iowa nor New Hampshire figures to be a great state for Biden. Neither has a lot of black voters, his greatest strength in polls so far. Their electorates are quite liberal. And both emphasize retail campaigning, where Biden will probably cede ground to Sanders, Buttigieg and other candidates who are sharper on the stump.

There haven’t been a ton of early-state polls since Biden’s announcement, but they do show him lagging his national polls slightly. Biden is at 35 percent in the only recent Iowa poll, for example — lower than his 41 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of national surveys (he’d also slightly underperformed his national numbers in Iowa before his announcement). In New Hampshire, Biden’s averaged just 27 percent in three post-announcement surveys. One piece of good news for Biden: South Carolina looks like a potential firewall for him, as it was for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Early-state polls show a slightly tighter race

Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina polls since Biden launched his presidential bid

National Iowa N.H. S.C. Candidate RCP Average 0ptimus Change Research 0ptimus Suffolk 0ptimus Biden 41% 35% 26% 34% 20% 48% Sanders 15 14 30 16 12 12 Warren 8 10 9 9 8 5 Harris 7 5 8 7 6 4 Buttigieg 7 11 12 10 12 5 O’Rourke 4 3 3 3 3 1 Booker 3 2 2 1 3 4 Klobuchar 1 4 1 1 1 1

Only candidates included in all polls are listed.

Source: polls

Sanders’s early-state numbers are OK, but unspectacular. New Hampshire should be a strong state for him, but his polls have been weird there all campaign long, with recent polls showing him as low as 12 percent or as high as 30 percent. He’s generally polled a point or two worse in Iowa than nationally, and his South Carolina numbers have been poor.

One candidate who’s consistently polled better in both Iowa and New Hampshire than nationally is Buttigieg — a bullish indicator for him. But even though he recently campaigned in South Carolina, his lack of support from black voters could make that state a problem for him.

Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.

[toomanysinks]

Sequoia goes after early-stage with an accelerator program in India and Southeast Asia

Sequoia India is going deep into early-stage investing after it announced an accelerator program, Surge, which is focused on fledging startups in India and Southeast Asia, the two regions that it covers.

It’s been nearly six months since Sequoia India closed its newest $695 million fund — its fifth since its establishment 12 years ago — and with over 200 deals under its belt, it is going earlier than ever before. The Surge program is designed to work with a mix of companies; that could include founders with just an idea, to those at pre-launch or pre-seed, businesses with an existing product-market fit or even startups intending to pivot, Sequoia India managing director Shailendra Singh told TechCrunch.

“It’s a bold attempt to try to create a better program for seed to Series A,” Singh said in an interview. “We think founders are underserved. There is quality early-stage talent but we are trying to find a way to serve them better.”

Singh explained that the program is a result of extensive research. He said Sequoia India talked to startups, founders and investors, and that a series of Twitter polls he conducted last year show founders in India and Southeast Asia are too frequently under-capitalized, over-diluted and forced to spend too much time on the fundraising trail.

“We decided there is a better way,” Singh said.

So what is the Sequoia India solution?

Surge is aiming to recruit 10-20 companies per batch, with two cohorts running each year for four months each. Perhaps the most notable feature is that selected companies will receive a $1.5 million investment from Sequoia, with the option to raise more from the firm and other co-investors in a final “UpSurge” demo week that concludes the program. Participants will, however, need to pay a “program fee” although that is being waived for the first cohort.

On its website, the firm describes Surge as being designed to give founders an “unfair advantage, right out of the gate.”

That first program is scheduled to run in March and applications are open now, although Sequoia has already picked a small selection for the first program. While the focus is local startups, China-based startups looking at India and Southeast Asia and U.S. startups seeking an Asia will also be considered, the firm said.

Singh said equity will be negotiated on a company-by-company basis, but he anticipates that valuations will be will be in the range of “high single-digit to high-teens” pre-money. There’s no obligation for a Sequoia follow-on, and Singh stressed that a “curated” selection of investors will be invested to invest in the post-program round and even alongside the initial $1.5 million check.

Shailendra Singh, Sequoia India managing director

The program is quite unusual in being globally distributed. That’s to say that it is split into five ‘modules,’ each of which is hosted in a different city which taps into Sequoia’s global presence. That’ll include Singapore, China, India and Silicon Valley. Singh said each module will require founder presence for a week, when they will work together with Sequoia — including the firm’s AMP program — Surge mentors and others, before taking the learnings back to their company for the remainder of the month. The only exception is the final month, which will include an additional week for the demo segment.

Sequoia India has tapped its portfolio companies and other Sequoia investees to pull an initial list of mentors that include Nadiem Makarim (Go-Jek), Rajan Ananadan (Google), Byju Raveendran (Byju’s), Neeraj Arora (WhatsApp) and Kunal Shah (Freecharge and now Cred). Singh said more will be added after the public launch.

He added that Sequoia India is hiring dedicated Surge staff to work exclusively on the program. For now, the budget for the program will come from the India fund but, in the long term, Singh said a dedicated Surge fund could be created. That could be necessary given the potential costs from the program.

The focus is fairly vertical agnostic, Sequoia said, with a focus on the teams behind companies.

“The single biggest focus is on being founder-centric,” Singh told TechCrunch. “We want to assemble a group of founders who are quite special. We expect founders to learn a lot from each other.”

When I put it to Singh that Sequoia’s move into early stage puts it into competition with the very up-stream, seed investors that it works with to get Series A deal flow, he argued that Sequoia is already very present in that segment.

Pointing to a recent LinkedIn post — which reads like a precursor to today’s announcement — Singh said one-quarter of its deals have been with startups valued at $5 million or lower, with 64 percent at $10 million or lower.

“We’ve made seed investments and collaborated with other firms in the past. We’ve already spoken to a few friendly firms and they are excited to be involved,” Singh said.

“We’ve already spoken to a few friendly firms and they are excited to be involved,” he added.

Sequoia is well known for later-stage deals, but Sequoia’s Singh shared data showing that it is well invested in early-stage deals, too

That may well be true for some firms, but I can’t help but feel that others may be intimated at a deep-pocketed investor playing in their backyard. In such a case, there’s little more than you can do other than play along. That said, Singh seems genuinely keen to build links between Surge and other VCs at all levels.

“It’s not about us or them but what’s good for founders,” he explained, adding that Sequoia will “actively” work with firms to involve them in the program.

It’s definitely a fascinating move, and it is certainly one of Sequoia’s boldest strategies worldwide. It is too early to say if it will be replicated by Sequoia other global funds, but they will certainly be watching, as Singh himself admitted.

You can find more information about Surge here.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/sequoia-surge/

[fmservers]

Sequoia goes after early-stage with an accelerator program in India and Southeast Asia

Sequoia India is going deep into early-stage investing after it announced an accelerator program, Surge, which is focused on fledging startups in India and Southeast Asia, the two regions that it covers.

It’s been nearly six months since Sequoia India closed its newest $695 million fund — its fifth since its establishment 12 years ago — and with over 200 deals under its belt, it is going earlier than ever before. The Surge program is designed to work with a mix of companies; that could include founders with just an idea, to those at pre-launch or pre-seed, businesses with an existing product-market fit or even startups intending to pivot, Sequoia India managing director Shailendra Singh told TechCrunch.

“It’s a bold attempt to try to create a better program for seed to Series A,” Singh said in an interview. “We think founders are underserved. There is quality early-stage talent but we are trying to find a way to serve them better.”

Singh explained that the program is a result of extensive research. He said Sequoia India talked to startups, founders and investors, and that a series of Twitter polls he conducted last year show founders in India and Southeast Asia are too frequently under-capitalized, over-diluted and forced to spend too much time on the fundraising trail.

“We decided there is a better way,” Singh said.

So what is the Sequoia India solution?

Surge is aiming to recruit 10-20 companies per batch, with two cohorts running each year for four months each. Perhaps the most notable feature is that selected companies will receive a $1.5 million investment from Sequoia, with the option to raise more from the firm and other co-investors in a final “UpSurge” demo week that concludes the program. Participants will, however, need to pay a “program fee” although that is being waived for the first cohort.

On its website, the firm describes Surge as being designed to give founders an “unfair advantage, right out of the gate.”

That first program is scheduled to run in March and applications are open now, although Sequoia has already picked a small selection for the first program. While the focus is local startups, China-based startups looking at India and Southeast Asia and U.S. startups seeking an Asia will also be considered, the firm said.

Singh said equity will be negotiated on a company-by-company basis, but he anticipates that valuations will be will be in the range of “high single-digit to high-teens” pre-money. There’s no obligation for a Sequoia follow-on, and Singh stressed that a “curated” selection of investors will be invested to invest in the post-program round and even alongside the initial $1.5 million check.

Shailendra Singh, Sequoia India managing director

The program is quite unusual in being globally distributed. That’s to say that it is split into five ‘modules,’ each of which is hosted in a different city which taps into Sequoia’s global presence. That’ll include Singapore, China, India and Silicon Valley. Singh said each module will require founder presence for a week, when they will work together with Sequoia — including the firm’s AMP program — Surge mentors and others, before taking the learnings back to their company for the remainder of the month. The only exception is the final month, which will include an additional week for the demo segment.

Sequoia India has tapped its portfolio companies and other Sequoia investees to pull an initial list of mentors that include Nadiem Makarim (Go-Jek), Rajan Ananadan (Google), Byju Raveendran (Byju’s), Neeraj Arora (WhatsApp) and Kunal Shah (Freecharge and now Cred). Singh said more will be added after the public launch.

He added that Sequoia India is hiring dedicated Surge staff to work exclusively on the program. For now, the budget for the program will come from the India fund but, in the long term, Singh said a dedicated Surge fund could be created. That could be necessary given the potential costs from the program.

The focus is fairly vertical agnostic, Sequoia said, with a focus on the teams behind companies.

“The single biggest focus is on being founder-centric,” Singh told TechCrunch. “We want to assemble a group of founders who are quite special. We expect founders to learn a lot from each other.”

When I put it to Singh that Sequoia’s move into early stage puts it into competition with the very up-stream, seed investors that it works with to get Series A deal flow, he argued that Sequoia is already very present in that segment.

Pointing to a recent LinkedIn post — which reads like a precursor to today’s announcement — Singh said one-quarter of its deals have been with startups valued at $5 million or lower, with 64 percent at $10 million or lower.

“We’ve made seed investments and collaborated with other firms in the past. We’ve already spoken to a few friendly firms and they are excited to be involved,” Singh said.

“We’ve already spoken to a few friendly firms and they are excited to be involved,” he added.

Sequoia is well known for later-stage deals, but Sequoia’s Singh shared data showing that it is well invested in early-stage deals, too

That may well be true for some firms, but I can’t help but feel that others may be intimated at a deep-pocketed investor playing in their backyard. In such a case, there’s little more than you can do other than play along. That said, Singh seems genuinely keen to build links between Surge and other VCs at all levels.

“It’s not about us or them but what’s good for founders,” he explained, adding that Sequoia will “actively” work with firms to involve them in the program.

It’s definitely a fascinating move, and it is certainly one of Sequoia’s boldest strategies worldwide. It is too early to say if it will be replicated by Sequoia other global funds, but they will certainly be watching, as Singh himself admitted.

You can find more information about Surge here.

Via Jon Russell https://techcrunch.com

[latestnews2018-blog]

Facebook buys Vidpresso’s team and tech to make video interactive

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/facebook-buys-vidpressos-team-and-tech-to-make-video-interactive/

Facebook buys Vidpresso’s team and tech to make video interactive

Zombie-like passive consumption of static video is both unhealthy for viewers and undifferentiated for the tech giants that power it. That’s set Facebook on a mission to make video interactive, full of conversation with broadcasters and fellow viewers. It’s racing against Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat to become where people watch together and don’t feel like asocial slugs afterward.

That’s why Facebook today told TechCrunch that it’s acqui-hired Vidpresso, buying its seven-person team and its technology but not the company itself. The six-year-old Utah startup works with TV broadcasters and content publishers to make their online videos more interactive with on-screen social media polling and comments, graphics and live broadcasting integrated with Facebook, YouTube, Periscope and more. The goal appears to be to equip independent social media creators with the same tools these traditional outlets use so they can make authentic but polished video for the Facebook platform.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it wouldn’t have taken a huge price for the deal to be a success for the startup. Vidpresso had only raised a $120,00 in seed capital from Y Combinator in 2014, plus some angel funding. By 2016, it was telling hiring prospects that it was profitable, but also that, “We will not be selling the company unless some insane whatsapp like thing happened. We’re building a forever biz, not a flip.” So either Vidpresso lowered its bar for an exit or Facebook made coming aboard worth its while.

For now, Vidpresso clients and partners like KTXL, Univision, BuzzFeed, Turner Sports, Nasdaq, TED, NBC and others will continue to be able to use its services. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that customers will work with the Vidpresso team at Facebook, who are joining its offices in Menlo Park, London and LA. That means Facebook is at least temporarily becoming a provider of enterprise video services. But Facebook confirms it won’t charge Vidpresso clients, so they’ll be getting its services for free from now on. Whether Facebook eventually turns away old clients or stops integrating with competing video platforms like Twitch and YouTube remains to be seen. For now, it’s giving Vidpresso a much more dignified end than the sudden shutdowns some tech giants impose on their acquisitions.

“We’ve had a lot of false starts along the way . . . We finally landed on helping create high quality broadcasts back on social media, but we still haven’t realized the full vision yet. That’s why we’re joining Facebook,” the Vidpresso team writes. “This gives us the best opportunity to accelerate our vision and offer a simple way for creators, publishers, and broadcasters to use social media in live video at a high quality level . . . By joining Facebook, we’ll be able to offer our tools to a much broader audience than just our A-list publishing partners. Eventually, it’ll allow us to put these tools in the hands of creators, so they can focus on their content, and have it look great, without spending lots of time or money to do so.”

Facebook Live has seen 3.5 billion broadcasts to date, and they get six times as many interactions as traditional videos. But beyond public figures, game streamers, and the odd moment of citizen journalism, it’s become clear that most users don’t have compelling enough content to stream. Interactivity could take some pressure off the broadcaster by letting the audience chip in.

Facebook already has some interactive video experiments out in the wild. For users, it recently rolled out its Watch Party tool for letting Groups view and chat about videos together. It’s also trying new games like Lip Sync Live and a Talent Show feature where users submit videos of them singing. For creators, Facebook now let streamers earn tips with its new Stars virtual currency, and lets fans subscribe to donating money to their favorite video makers like on Patreon. And on the publisher side, Facebook Live has also built tools to help publishers pull in social media content. It’s even got an interactive video API that it’s developing to allow developers to launch their own HQ Trivia-game shows.

But the last line of Vidpresso’s announcement above explains Facebook’s intentions here, and also why it didn’t just try to build the tools itself. It doesn’t just want established news publishers and TV studios making video for its platform. It wants semi-pro creators to be able to broadcast snazzy videos with graphics, comments and polls that can aesthetically compete with “big video” but that feel more natural. This focus on creators over news outlets aligns with reports of Facebooks head of journalist relations Campbell Brown allegedly saying that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about publishers and that “We are not interested in talking to you about your traffic and referrals any more. That is the old world and there is no going back.” Facebook has contested these reports.

Every internet platform is wising up to the fact that web-native creators who grew up on their sites often create the most compelling content and the most fervent fan bases. Whichever video hub offers the best audience growth, creative expression tools and monetization options will become the preferred destination for creators’ work, and their audiences will follow. Vidpresso could help these creators look more like TV anchors than selfie monologuers, but also help them earn money by integrating brand graphics and tie-ins. Facebook couldn’t risk another tech giant buying up Vidpresso and gaining an edge, or wasting time trying to build interactive video technology and expertise from scratch.

[sheminecrafts]

Facebook buys Vidpresso’s team and tech to make video interactive

Zombie-like passive consumption of static video is both unhealthy for viewers and undifferentiated for the tech giants that power it. That’s set Facebook on a mission to make video interactive, full of conversation with broadcasters and fellow viewers. It’s racing against Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat to become where people watch together and don’t feel like asocial slugs afterward.

That’s why Facebook today told TechCrunch that it’s acqui-hired Vidpresso, buying its seven-person team and its technology but not the company itself. The six-year-old Utah startup works with TV broadcasters and content publishers to make their online videos more interactive with on-screen social media polling and comments, graphics and live broadcasting integrated with Facebook, YouTube, Periscope and more. The goal appears to be to equip independent social media creators with the same tools these traditional outlets use so they can make authentic but polished video for the Facebook platform.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it wouldn’t have taken a huge price for the deal to be a success for the startup. Vidpresso had only raised a $120,00 in seed capital from Y Combinator in 2014, plus some angel funding. By 2016, it was telling hiring prospects that it was profitable, but also that, “We will not be selling the company unless some insane whatsapp like thing happened. We’re building a forever biz, not a flip.” So either Vidpresso lowered its bar for an exit or Facebook made coming aboard worth its while.

For now, Vidpresso clients and partners like KTXL, Univision, BuzzFeed, Turner Sports, Nasdaq, TED, NBC and others will continue to be able to use its services. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that customers will work with the Vidpresso team at Facebook, who are joining its offices in Menlo Park, London and LA. That means Facebook is at least temporarily becoming a provider of enterprise video services. But Facebook confirms it won’t charge Vidpresso clients, so they’ll be getting its services for free from now on. Whether Facebook eventually turns away old clients or stops integrating with competing video platforms like Twitch and YouTube remains to be seen. For now, it’s giving Vidpresso a much more dignified end than the sudden shutdowns some tech giants impose on their acquisitions.

“We’ve had a lot of false starts along the way . . . We finally landed on helping create high quality broadcasts back on social media, but we still haven’t realized the full vision yet. That’s why we’re joining Facebook,” the Vidpresso team writes. “This gives us the best opportunity to accelerate our vision and offer a simple way for creators, publishers, and broadcasters to use social media in live video at a high quality level . . . By joining Facebook, we’ll be able to offer our tools to a much broader audience than just our A-list publishing partners. Eventually, it’ll allow us to put these tools in the hands of creators, so they can focus on their content, and have it look great, without spending lots of time or money to do so.”

Facebook Live has seen 3.5 billion broadcasts to date, and they get six times as many interactions as traditional videos. But beyond public figures, game streamers, and the odd moment of citizen journalism, it’s become clear that most users don’t have compelling enough content to stream. Interactivity could take some pressure off the broadcaster by letting the audience chip in.

Facebook already has some interactive video experiments out in the wild. For users, it recently rolled out its Watch Party tool for letting Groups view and chat about videos together. It’s also trying new games like Lip Sync Live and a Talent Show feature where users submit videos of them singing. For creators, Facebook now let streamers earn tips with its new Stars virtual currency, and lets fans subscribe to donating money to their favorite video makers like on Patreon. And on the publisher side, Facebook Live has also built tools to help publishers pull in social media content. It’s even got an interactive video API that it’s developing to allow developers to launch their own HQ Trivia-game shows.

But the last line of Vidpresso’s announcement above explains Facebook’s intentions here, and also why it didn’t just try to build the tools itself. It doesn’t just want established news publishers and TV studios making video for its platform. It wants semi-pro creators to be able to broadcast snazzy videos with graphics, comments and polls that can aesthetically compete with “big video” but that feel more natural. This focus on creators over news outlets aligns with reports of Facebooks head of journalist relations Campbell Brown allegedly saying that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about publishers and that “We are not interested in talking to you about your traffic and referrals any more. That is the old world and there is no going back.” Facebook has contested these reports.

Every internet platform is wising up to the fact that web-native creators who grew up on their sites often create the most compelling content and the most fervent fan bases. Whichever video hub offers the best audience growth, creative expression tools and monetization options will become the preferred destination for creators’ work, and their audiences will follow. Vidpresso could help these creators look more like TV anchors than selfie monologuers, but also help them earn money by integrating brand graphics and tie-ins. Facebook couldn’t risk another tech giant buying up Vidpresso and gaining an edge, or wasting time trying to build interactive video technology and expertise from scratch.

Facebook launches gameshows platform with interactive video

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