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welllpthisishappening · 4 years

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On This Night and in This Light (3/3)

Emma Swan knows she’s pretty good at what she does.

Helping the magically afflicted and affected find jobs in this realm isn’t the most glamorous thing in the world, and, sure, there’s a lot of paperwork, but she figures she’s helping people and that’s the important thing. It’s structured. Calm, even.

Until. It’s always until.

Killian Jones shows up with his stupid smirk and his tendency to lean against the door frame in Emma’s office and his distinct lack of magic. Or knowledge of what they’re really doing at Mills Personnel. Everything kind of goes off the rails after that.

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Rating: Teen

Word Count: 6.5K of magic and eventual happily ever after

AN: There’s some magic here. Some kissing. Some curses. And happily ever after, of course. Thanks for reading along with this little distraction from the legitimate stress of the real world. You guys are all an absolute delight.

Also on Ao3 if that’s how you roll || Or start from the top

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“Are you good?” Tilting her head up to meet Killian’s vaguely crinkled forehead and passably confused expression, Emma almost regrets the question she didn’t plan on asking. That’s the problem with him. And them, at least in the abstract sense.

Words tumble out of her without much thought to their meaning or collective, if not slightly metaphorical, weight. Defenses she’s spent a lifetime cultivating feel as if they’ve crumbled at her feet, which is impressive since she’s laying down, but the metaphor still checks out and Emma keeps asking questions.

Without being wholly afraid of the answers she’ll get.

“Be more specific,” Killian murmurs, and her heart does something stupid. Skips a beat. Sparks her magic. Threatens to leave her glowing in the tangle of sheets she’s absolutely stolen in the middle of the night.

“Just—I mean with everything.” Nosing at her cheek, Emma can practically hear Killian’s smile. “‘Fraid that’s not any more specific, my love. But if we’re going to speak in the abstract before coffee—” “—Oh, we should make coffee.” He kisses her cheek, that time. “Then I am exceptionally good.” “Pretty vast adverb.”

“Well, you asked a very broad question. But I stand by my answer, particularly when you’re not wearing any clothing. Why, am I giving off not-good vibes?” “Maybe lame ones if you keep using the word vibe in actual conversation. I just—I don’t know, wanted to make sure, I guess. Working for Mills isn’t exactly the height of luxury and it can be a weird place, and I...we never really looked at apartments for you, because we can do that if you want to, but—” Stumbling over the words, Emma wishes her hands were free. She’d like to wave them around. Use them as a distraction to whatever has settled on her face and in the pit of her stomach, and this wasn’t really the plan. Granted, the plan occurred while she was overly exhausted and reeling a bit from rather large emotional realizations, but telling him the truth about absolutely everything is suddenly a bit more daunting in the light of day.

And they haven’t even had coffee yet.

Killian’s hand moves. Faster than Emma’s entirely ready for, his fingers brush a strand of wayward hair away from her eyes and then he’s kissing the bridge of her nose and pulling her against his chest and—

“This was not my plan. In some great expectation for my life, I’m not sure I could have ever imagined this is what it’d be like. But,” Killian adds, as soon as Emma’s magic shifts into something far closer to dread, “if all of this ended with your freakishly cold feet waking me up every morning, then I can’t be very upset about it.”

Swooning pre-coffee can’t be advisable. Emma’s heart doesn’t care. It flips and flops and does that possible explosion thing again, and she’s a little concerned the force of her smile will have adverse effects on the paint in her bedroom.

“You don’t think Mills is weird?” “Do you?” Emma shakes her head. “Nah, no questions for questions. This is—” “—An inquiry?” Her shoulders slump. Under the blankets, and she’s really got a shit ton of blankets. “I don’t know, Swan. Mills is...a place, a job. One where you work, and that’s mostly why I’m interested in continuing to work there. Should I not be thinking that?” The last few words come with a bit of understandable concern and maybe a hint of frustration, and she should have said something earlier.

It’s very frustrating to realize how much smarter the part-time cricket is than Emma.

She hopes he’s enjoying his job, too.

“My feet aren’t really that cold.”

Killian scoffs. “I promise, they are like little ice cubes attached to your legs.” “Lucky you’re here to provide external heat, then.”

Burrowing her face closer to the crook of his neck, Emma gives herself a moment to relish in that warmth, like he’s some sort of personal sun or a battery or another bit of science she doesn’t understand and David always likes to say that science is just explained magic. Emma wonders if it works the other way, too.

Magic is something that simply hasn’t been explained yet. No rational reasoning, or anything except the kind of gut feeling that can change everything.

“I am,” Killian says, and it probably isn’t meant to sound like a promise. “Are you good?” Dots of light appear behind Emma’s eyelids every time she blinks, trying to come up with an answer that won’t send him running and she doesn’t know what she’ll do if he runs. Energy prickles at the tips of her fingers, curling around either one of her wrists and lingering in the slight bend of her left elbow because at some point her left palm has flattened itself against Killian’s stomach. “Mills can be kind of weird,” Emma mutters, trying to pick her words more carefully now. “And that’s...there’s a reason for that, and a reason I started working there and—” A phone starts vibrating.

Loudly enough that it also immediately falls from the nightstand it was charging on, and keeps buzzing around on the floor. Killian sighs.

“Hold that thought.”

Emma wishes she could. But her hands are already back underneath the blankets, and she’s all too aware of how bright they’ve gone in the last few seconds and the state of Killian’s shoulders make it obvious he’s not all that pleased with whatever he’s being told. “Yeah, yeah, I can—I mean, it’s like twenty blocks the wrong way, but—God, yes, Scarlet. I can come back for a few minutes.”

He doesn’t bother to plug the phone back in, and for like a solid half second Emma gets distracted by the lack of clothes before her eyes fly up and Killian’s sighing again and the weight in the pit of her stomach grows.

“Coffee later?” Emma blinks. “Sure. Is everything ok?” “No idea, just that Scarlet said he had to talk to me and it couldn’t wait and—” Killian shrugs, fingers finding the back of his neck. “I probably won’t be that late, but if Regina asks—” “—I’ll tell her.” Something tugs at the back of her mind, a warning Emma can’t place, but she can sense a lie with almost startling accuracy and she knows Killian isn’t lying to her. She just can’t figure out why Will would lie to him.

Halloween’s not her favorite day.

People assume all magical and mythical creatures thrive on this one day of the year, but more often than not Emma finds that it’s just another busy day when those same magical and mythical creatures come out of the metaphorical woodwork in droves to get jobs. And sure, some of the rumors are true. There are certain times when the fabric between realms can be a bit more flimsy than usual. Both midnights, for example. Eleven-eleven’s another big one. So, teenage girls had that one right, at least.

And yeah, ok, Halloween also means Regina bakes half a dozen apple pies for the whole office, but when the whole office is already overrun by inquiring applicants, Emma can’t find it in herself to be very excited for a dessert she only kind of likes.

She’d never admit that to Regina.

Self-preservation instincts, and all that.

Plus, days like this are always cold. Fraught with that certain nip in the air, and leaves that crunch under Emma’s boots. Only to also get stuck to the bottom of Emma’s boots, and she has to twist her wrist to get rid of her leaf-based trail on her way to her paperwork-covered desk.

The same one David’s leaning against.

“You tell him yet?”

She missed one leaf. Figures. Emma never even went trick-or-treating as a kid. Halloween’s a sham. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” “Sure you don’t. It’s dumb that you haven’t yet.” “Voice your opinion a little louder, please.” “Nothing is going to happen,” David says, but Emma barely hears over the sound of sudden and complete disagreement that scratches its way from the depths of her soul. Maybe Halloween makes her a little maudlin, actually. She can’t believe she didn’t get to tell him. “It hasn’t yet.” “Why are you jinxing things like that?” “There is no such thing as jinx, and c’mon, if you guys can get through today with a hundred magically unemployed people, then sky’s the limit.” “Not even clever.” David shakes his head. “You’re impressed and swayed, I know it. Plus it’s not like you’re a bad witch or anything.” “I’m sorry, a bad witch?” “Yeah, you know. None of your intentions, even when lying to the guy you’re stupid into—” “—Opinions keep coming fast and furious, don’t they?” “Because he’s right,” Ruby calls, twisting around desks to involve herself in a conversation Emma doesn’t want to participate in anymore. “You really didn’t tell him yet? That’s nuts. And you’re a good person, Em. With a very good looking face. Who wouldn’t want to make out with that? Ad nauseum.” “I’m going to be honest, using a word that sounds like nauseous isn’t helping your case much,” Emma says. “And I’m going to tell him. I am, just—things got crazy this morning.” Ruby howls. With laughter. Drawing more than a few curious stares, and rather pointed glare from Regina’s direction. David pales noticeably. “Did they?” Ruby presses. “How crazy are we talking and was it also vaguely acrobatic, because I feel like Jones could move if he had to, but that’s strictly theorizing on my part, so—” Sentences without end are quickly becoming Emma’s least favorite thing. Only slightly edging out ringing phones. The one on her desk lights up, which doesn’t happen very often, but she can’t imagine the light is supposed to be green.

David’s talking. She’s dimly aware of it — the soft hum that sounds more like Charlie Brown’s teacher than any of the human characteristics Emma is certain they both have, and that’s another quasi-Halloween reference. Rocks appear to have landed rather forcefully in her stomach, and that’s what she gets for optimism.

“Swan,” Killian breathes, as soon as she pulls the phone to her ear. “Swan, Emma listen to me, you can’t—” Seriously, the lack of sentence structure is becoming intolerable. Killian grunts, the sound turning into a gasp almost immediately and a few shouted no, no, no leave them alone and Emma doesn’t remember standing.

Only that she’s knocked her chair over in the process.

“Is this Ms. Swan?” a new voice Emma almost recognizes asks. “Because it seems I’ve got something of yours, while you have something I’m particularly interested in. Let’s make a little exchange, shall we?”

It’s disappointing that her mouth goes dry. Emma assumes that’s because she’s all but panting, bent awkwardly over her desk while her eyes scan the room for something or someone and—it clicks. The voice.

“Zelena. This is Zelena, isn't it?” Both David and Ruby make matching noises of disbelief, but the buzzing is back and Regina is moving and the line’s gone dead anyway. “She’s not supposed to be here,” Regina says with enough calm that it grates on every single one of Emma’s already-fraying nerves, “magical control sent her back to Oz.” Emma can’t cope with this. Any of it. All she wanted was to drink coffee with her decidedly human and very normal, if not ridiculously attractive boyfriend and they’ve never actually used relationship qualifiers.

That’s disappointing.

“Right, right, yeah, ok, of course” Emma mumbles, and she doesn’t bother to fix her chair. “Happy fucking Halloween, I guess.”

It takes her all of five minutes and one person dressed in costume to realize that running is absolutely and completely pointless.

Emma’s a goddamn witch.

And it’s raining.

Drops slide down her temples, drip down the back of her neck and work under her jacket because she never even got the chance to take her jacket off. Which is something of an exceptionally small miracle now, but she’s already cold and she’s always so fucking cold and—

He called her Emma.

He called her—

“My love,” she whispers, entirely to herself and that part isn’t really true. Shadows hover just outside the edge of her vision, what Emma knows are her friends waiting for instructions or a plan, and she’s got to come up with a plan and she doesn’t know where Belle and Will live.

She doesn’t have to.

Reaching her hand back, Emma’s fingers lace through Regina’s, and her soft instruction of “all instinctual,” doesn’t get lost in the hum of the city or the bustle of a holiday that requires masks and chocolate-based gluttony. It takes root. In Emma’s mind, and those same pieces of her soul, finds the tiny bits of space between her stomach rocks and spreads out from there.

Warming her from the inside out.

She closes her eyes.

“What the fucking fuck?” Will shouts, Emma’s feet slamming into hardwood floor that was probably highlighted in this apartment listing. Eyes bugging, he’s plastered to the wall opposite her, and Emma’s pleasantly surprised to find he’s not gagged, but she also kind of figures it’s because Belle is and there’s something inherently villainous about allowing the love interest to make noise while their partner is being tortured.

By a woman wearing a pointed witch’s hat. “Kind of cliché, isn’t it?” Ruby muses, and Emma’s not surprised they’ve started their rescue mission with sarcasm. She also can’t respond. Her eyes are too busy trying to take in the scene.

Stacks of books litter the floor, half the living room furniture on its side as if it’s been knocked over in a fit of inevitably-magical rage, and Belle doesn’t look as scared as annoyed that she’s been bound in one of the few upright chairs. Emma’s heart stutters. Catching her breath is impossible, head on a swivel as she tries to find—

“Killian,” she exhales, and he’s not gagged either. No visible restraints keep him a few feet away from Will, but Emma can feel the magic rippling off him and it smells strongly of bitter lemons. Or expired key lime pie.

Neither of those things are inherently Halloween, or all that magical. But then Zelena’s turning slowly and the green splotches on her face ensure any attempts at passably funny metaphors or desperate attempts to maintain her sense of reality disappear.

“Huh,” David says, “that’s new, actually. We ever see anyone change color before?”

Regina clicks her tongue. “She’s not changing color. She’s giving in.” “To what, exactly?” “Jealousy. Isn’t that right, Zelena? Been the crux of the problem forever, hasn’t it?”

Emma’s head is spinning. She’s not moving. “Wait, wait, what the fuck is going on?” One side of Killian’s mouth tugs up, amusement in his gaze and that can’t possibly be right. “You are stuck to the wall, idiot!’ “Oh, Swan, you do know how to flatter a man.” “What is happening?” He can’t shrug, but Emma knows he tries and that should not be as charming as it is. Mary Margaret squeezes her hand. The one that’s almost neon. “Turns out Scarlet didn’t actually want to talk to me this morning. We definitely could have had coffee.” “Is that a euphemism for—” Ruby starts, only to snap her jaw closed when Regina gapes at her. Emma’s starting to lose feeling in her fingers.

And she sees the exact moment any sense of teasing and entirely false bravado leaves Killian. Lips going thin, his shoulders still don’t move, but Emma swears his fear reverberates through her and that’s not the emotion she was interested in sharing that morning. “You’ve got to get out of here, love. Now, it’s—” Zelena’s hand moves so quickly, it’s not much more than a passably-green blur. Nothing else comes out of Killian’s mouth. His jaw moves, working against a shield none of them can see, and Emma’s stomach is somewhere in the vicinity of her throat.

Even with all those rocks.

“How did you get back here?” Regina asks, stepping towards the front of their ragtag group. Fire bursts from her hands, flames that flicker up her forearms and draw another grunt out of Will. Whether it’s surprise or just the generic sound of being impressed, Emma’s not sure.

Bits of green cling to the end of Zelena’s mouth when she smiles. “Shall I start at the beginning, then?” “God yes, please,” Emma sighs.

Zelena doesn’t take her hat off. Really, she’s almost making it work for her. As far as costumes go, this one’s kind of basic, but there’s no cape or a broomstick and Emma’s never met a witch who was interested in flying a broom anywhere.

“Wanted to stay conspicuous, you understand,” Zelena says, “Draw too much attention to myself and—ah, well, that’s not what’s important now.” “What?” “Why you, Emma Swan. Obviously.” “This isn’t the beginning,” David mumbles, and both Emma and Regina shift before Zelena can so much as lift her chin. One of the windows on a different wall flies open, half a dozen pigeons descending on the living room and nipping at the ends of Zelena’s hair. They pull on the sides of her dress and peck at the green spots that are growing on her cheeks.

Whistling, Mary Margaret jerks her head and the pigeons fly away, looking a little like an avian synchronized swimming team. “Leave him alone.”

“Shit,” Ruby says, “that was impressive and aggressive. Ignore the rhyme.”

Emma tilts her head. “Slant rhyme, right? Can’t rhyme matching sounds.” Someone makes a noise — it comes from the general direction of Killian and Will, but it can’t be Killian and Emma wants it to be him anyway. Zelena doesn’t look very impressed with any of them. That’s fair, it’s probably frustrating to have your monologue interrupted so often.

“If you don’t mind,” she sneers, Emma waving her free hand like she’s capable of giving the bad guy permission to keep talking. “It had been quite some time since I’d been in this realm, and plenty of things had changed. More magic, a certain kind of power that hung in the air. Energy that could change the course of everything, strong enough that it could probably rewrite time itself if it wanted to. And I want it to.” “To what?” “Were you not listening? Rewrite time.”

Breathing out of her mouth is not attractive. It’s loud and makes Emma’s tongue feel larger than it actually is, especially when she has to keep using it to lick her lips. “That’s—that’s insane. You’re insane. You didn’t just want to get a normal job? I mean...you were at Mills. I saw you.” “Power of the Universe at my fingertips and you think I’d be satisfied with a normal job? No wonder you have no idea what you are. Which,” Zelena glances meaningfully at Killian, “means you, Emma Swan, are the reason I’m here.” “Speak English!” Zelena huffs. “I am. What I felt when I returned to this realm? It was you, my dear. Your power, your magic, your ability. And, yes, I could have given into the hum-drum existence of this place and the structure of Mills Personnel, but where exactly is the fun in that?”

Emma hopes she’s not expected to answer. She doesn’t have one. It’s entirely possible she’s going to snap several of Mary Margaret’s fingers in half.

“Anyway,” Zelena continues, “locating that power wasn’t easy, but Regina Mills’ ability to make things happen is legendary. Finding a person’s niche, that’s her greatest talent. And so I did come to Mills, looking for a position that would help me get the rest of the requirements.”

Ruby keeps shaking her head. Emma can’t seem to move. Or breathe. Her eyes keep darting back towards Killian, trying to make sure he’s breathing or reacting in a way that doesn’t threaten to make her cry. Nothing.

He’s plastered to a wall with magic, of course not.

“You see, a time spell is one of the more complex out there. Need all sorts of things in addition to the kind of magic that can fuel it. Which is what I wanted when I got to Mills. Hoped I could get placed in a hospital or something of the sort.”

On the increasingly small scale of things that surprise Emma, that somehow makes the cut. “You need, like, an IV drip or something?” “A baby,” Zelena replies easily, and Belle whimpers against the gag. “Pure of spirit, you understand. Other things too. Courage, wisdom, maybe a heart if I could get lucky—” “—An actual heart?” Will balks. “Spend a lot of time in Wonderland, did ya?” “I mean, she could probably get the heart in the hospital too if she wasn’t picky about her choices,” Ruby reasons, and this whole thing is absurd. Maybe that’s the theme for Halloween as a whole, though.

More of Zelena’s face is green.

“I had hoped I’d get someone competent who could help me. Or even the source of the power. Naturally,” she jerks her head in Killian’s direction, “I ended up with this sot. Who suggested working at a clinic or agreeing to something called an orderly position. Well, I knew he wouldn’t help me, but I did get something out of it. I knew you were there, Emma. And—” Zelena’s eyes rove towards Belle, and the hands collapsed over the front of her stomach. Realization crashes over Emma in waves, the rocks disappearing only to be replaced with a bone-deep chill that douses any bit of light in her. “So I do have a few options for you all now.” “What are you trying to fix?” “Hmm?” “Fix,” Emma repeats, “or change, I guess. I mean—that’s not how life works.” Zelena hums in what can only be passing interest and something almost like an agreement. “Seems unnecessary to tell you my whole plan, but when it works it won’t make much of a difference. I want to get rid of the girl. That nasty little thing that fell in Oz and ruined everything. Robbed me of my chance to prove myself, claimed there had to be good witches and bad witches and you’re absolutely right, Ms. Swan. That’s not how life works. Nothing is quite so cut and dry as all that.”

Words hang off the tip of her disgustingly dry tongue. Want to be said and proclaimed, and for all the mistakes Emma has made — good and bad, right and wrong, trusting and the opposite, she’s happy to find she’s not particularly interested in changing them.

Not if she ends up here.

Well, maybe not here—with her boyfriend, they’ll get to that eventually, magically silenced and Belle doing her best to glare daggers at the half-green witch who commandeered her living room, and Ruby’s teeth are definitely getting longer. But maybe here-adjacent. With people who care about her, who followed her without question or thought and the guy who is still somehow staring at Emma like he’s got every intention of keeping her feet warm.

Ad nauseum.

“I’m not really interested in anything you need.”

Disappointment flashes across Zelena’s face, only to immediately morph into something much closer to fury. “Hero types, always so sanctimonious. That’s why I said several options. It’s one now, but—” Flicking her wrist, Killian slides down the wall in what Emma knows isn’t actually slow motion. Still, the amount of time it takes for his knees to crash to the ground seems to last forever and Zelena doesn’t try to stop Emma from rushing forward.

Eventually, she’ll realize why.

“Regina discovered what I was trying to do,” Zelena explains, “my fault. Kept coming back to Mills, demanding better placement and as much as it pains me to admit she’s smart...well, she sent me back to Oz.” “So how are you here?” Mary Margaret demands.

Emma doesn’t need that answer, either. Halloween is a bullshit, overrated holiday. Pulling Killian close to her, he’s far too limp and impossibly silent, and Emma barely spends a moment thinking about either of those things before she’s kissing anywhere she can reach, mumbling apologies and half-explanations into his skin and—

“Ah, I’d be careful if I were you,” Zelena says, a soft lilt to her voice that rattles down Emma’s spine. “See, your option is to give me your magic, Ms. Swan. If you won’t do it willingly, I’ll take it by force.” “I don’t—”

Movement catches Emma’s attention, the soft flutter of fingers across her back and she has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. At first. All it takes is a few seconds, and that’s probably another sign. She hopes so. Tracing letters on her jacket, Killian’s eyes flutter shut like he’s exhausted and determined not to sleep and— “No,” Emma exhales, but Zelena’s smile looks victorious. It’s too late. They’re too late. And there’s nothing they can do to change that.

Slumping against her, Killian’s eyes don’t open again. His breathing evens out, and Emma supposes that’s something of a very twisted victory because he isn’t dead, but he’s even more obviously sleeping and sleeping curses are notoriously hard to break.

“Especially when they so often require a kiss,” Zelena grins. “True Love, and all that. So let me ask, Ms. Swan. Do you think what you and the plebe have is True Love and, more importantly, will you be willing to sacrifice your magic for it? Because the only way he’s waking up is with a kiss and the next time you kiss him, you’ll lose your magic.”

To suggest that it kind of all goes to shit after that is something of an understatement.

Light pours out of Emma, unsteady legs under her even as she juts her chin out. To her credit Zelena doesn’t back down. She stands there and she turns a bit more green, and magic is so goddamn weird. Emma’s also never been in a magic fight before.

Spending so long hiding that part of her — certain it was going to be the reason everyone left, the opportunity never really presented itself. Fighting for the sanctity of time itself and Killian’s consciousness seems as good a reason as any to flip the script, so to speak.

Heat races through Emma, wind swirling at her ankles as frames clatter to the ground. Shards of glass fly on the manufactured breeze, Mary Margaret darting towards Belle and David sprinting towards Will, and it’s something of a confidence boost when they’re both able to pull them away from the battle.

Although Emma can’t really believe she thought the word battle, even in her head.

“Not exactly the magical dominance you were bragging about, huh?” Emma quips, twirling a finger in the air. Bands of light circle Zelena’s calves, twist up her legs and turn her answering laugh into a gasp that also does dangerous things to Emma’s ego.

“I never—” Zelena grunts, twisting against bonds that don’t even flicker. “—You were the powerful one, I thought I made that blatantly obvious.” “I mean,” David shrugs.

Ruby nods. “She did kind of, Em. That’s true.” “Whose side are you on?” Emma snaps, but the retreat back to absurd is almost comforting in a familiar, banter-filled sort of way.

“Please,” Regina sighs. Her hands are on fire. “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said, and I know you claimed you didn’t have to tell Killian the truth before.” “Yeah, well, cat’s pretty much out of the bag on that front, don’t you think?” “Flew out on pigeon’s wings, I think.”

Laughter has no place in a moment when Zelena’s entire face has turned green, and her own fireballs are threatening at her palms, but Emma can’t help herself and maybe the dumbest thing she’s ever done was suggest Killian shouldn’t have worked at Mills. Or that she couldn’t be head over heels in love with him.

That helps, honestly.

“You’re not getting my magic,” Emma announces, all too sure she sounds as ridiculous as she feels. Heroic soliloquies are also overrated, it seems. “And you’re not getting Killian or—God, were we actually talking about Dorothy that whole time?” Zelena snarls. That must be the response.

“Well, you’re not getting her either. Sneaking back here on Halloween was dumb. Trying any of this was ridiculous and threatening Killian was the worst of all your ideas. Because—” Emma takes a step forward. Nothing shakes. If anything her knees almost lock out, the hair falling over her shoulders noticeably brighter than usual and Zelena recoils. Seriously, her confidence is through the roof. “Magical job placement might be boring, and it might have a shit ton of paperwork, but it’s also a chance to help people and that’s...that’s the point, isn’t it? Finding that sense of belonging? Giving a person a chance. Being able to—” “—Fall in love,” Mary Margaret cries, scrunching her nose when Regina and Ruby shush her. “I mean…that’s what it is, isn’t it? Love’s not a weapon. It makes Emma glow.” And that makes Emma curse. “Maybe we phrase it differently?”

“Maybe we worry about language once we actually defeat the witch, huh?” Regina challenges, and that seems like a legitimate plan.

Balls of fire fly through the air. Ricochet off Emma’s lights, and every window flies open as Mary Margaret calls upon not only pigeons but what look like several sparrows and a few nightingales if the sounds they’re making is any indication. Leaves swirl around the room, partially from the actual wind and also from whatever Emma is apparently capable of.

A lot more than she thought, honestly.

Warmth rises in her spine, sets her shoulders in a straight and determined line and she gives Will an appreciative smile when he pulls Killian out of the fray. Only to immediately jump back in, ducking and twisting and there’s a lot more cardio involved than she thought, but then a flash of magic nearly singes her ear and Emma’s thankful for her own agility.

She moves. Refuses to back down, ignoring the growing ache in her muscles and the weird popping thing her hip is doing. And Zelena starts to cower. In an especially villain-type of way.

Backing into the nearest wall, she stumbles over her feet as light tightens around her. It pins her arms to her side, curls around her ankles and guarantees she can’t run away when Emma stalks forward.

With a smile on her face.

Oz authorities appear at eleven-eleven, which seems to suggest it is somehow still morning and Emma cannot rationalize that at all.

They thank Emma for containing the fugitive, nod towards Regina and well—that’s that. Leaving the rest of them in a slightly singed apartment with pillows that somehow haven’t burst, and what feels like a distinct lack of oxygen.

“So,” Will drawls, “what do we do now?” He doesn’t have to look at Killian. The still-sleeping form is the far-more-attractive-than-an-elephant elephant in the room, draped across a couch that David had to lift on his own. One of his feet is hanging over the side. “True Love’s Kiss isn’t a real thing,” Emma whispers, but the words taste like ash on her tongue and Regina makes a very obnoxious noise.

“Dumb, dumb, dumb.” “Do you think I’ll lose my magic?” “Do you actually care?” Shaking her head, Emma doesn’t bother saying the words. Not when she knows they’re so obviously painted on her face and sudden realization is almost as annoying as not ending sentences. She knows what he was tracing on her back.

Maybe she is the idiot, actually.

And for a moment, Emma’s mind falters. Remembers that other moment, standing frozen as a different set of lights threatened to blind her and metal snapped around her wrists and she’d been so certain then. Never again. Nothing else would get through the defenses. No one else would know. No more mistakes.

This isn’t a mistake.

Careful to avoid the glass on the floor, Emma tiptoes forward and crouches next to Killian. She brushes her fingers over that scar on his cheek, the ends of lips that are somehow still tilted up into half a smirk and—

“God, just do it already,” Belle shouts.

That’s that, again.

Kissing at this angle isn’t particularly easy, and Emma’s knees aren’t particularly pleased with the amount of pressure she’s putting on them, but it does allow her to basically drape herself across Killian and that also makes it easier to get her hand under the hem of his shirt. And nothing else really happens.

No sharp inhale. No tilt of his head. Absolutely no sign of his tongue, which Emma has come to find herself almost obsessed with in the last few months. She doesn’t care. Doesn’t allow herself to stop, not when there’s a flicker of hope and all that want simmering between her ribs, mixing with her magic and how ridiculously in love she is and it’s annoying that she’s the one who gasps.

As soon as arms circle her waist.

Emma can’t really tumble when she’s above him, but the edge of the couch digs into her thighs and Killian’s doing an admirable job of trying to get her parallel to the rest of his body. Her fingers find his hair when he arches up, his own hand roving the expanse of her back before his arm curls tightly around her like he’s trying to make sure she’s still there. Leaning into her palm against his chin, Killian’s lips drag across the back of Emma’s wrist, sparking another round of magic and even more glowing. “Oh shit,” Emma mumbles, not able to pull herself away from Killian. Because of his arm. And...other reasons.

“Was that a response to me, or—” “—No, no, I just—well, there’s still magic. I’ve still got magic. And, uh, I’m a witch.” He laughs. Throws his head back and lets his body shake under her, which really isn’t helping Emma’s state of mind at all, but she’s admittedly preoccupied with the overall volume of the laugh and how wide his smile is. “Swan, Emma love, did you honestly think I didn’t know?”

She—

Has absolutely no idea what to do with that.

Ruby might fall over. Regina’s eyes bug, Mary Margaret using David to stay upright, Belle covers her mouth with her hand, Will cackling loud enough for the both of them.

“Did you,” Emma starts, but Belle and Will shake their heads and Killian’s tongue click is awfully put-upon for a guy who was just cursed.

He taps on her jaw until she’s able to look at him. And his stupid blue eyes. “I could feel it, love. Also you have a tendency to...glow. Which I'm assuming is a compliment, for me. Or us. There's an us, right?" She nods. Can't do much else. "And you’re not very subtle. Extra cinnamon in the cabinets, moving the remote so I don’t have to look for it. Working at a job placement agency that helps the magically afflicted. Plus there was paperwork. Was Freddie really a gold statue at one point?” “Yeah, but they un-statue’ed him with water from Lake Nostos. Not True Love’s Kiss.” “So we won, then?” “Competitive weirdo.” “Absolutely,” Killian nods. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I figured you’d get around to it at some point and then you were talking today and—” “—We’re not such shitty friends that we’d demand Killian show up back here before nine,” Will reasons. “Plus, it’s been kind of nice to have a free couch.”

Killian gags. “Did I say congratulations yet?” “We were busy.” “Wait, wait,” Emma sputters, and she’s going to go into cardiac arrest. Or magic overload. “So this whole time. You knew.” “Well, not the whole time,” Killian objects. “Most of it though, yeah.” “But you’re still here.” “Where else did you expect me to go? Aside from your apartment now that we’ve defeated the wicked witch? I’m assuming we defeated the wicked witch.” Emma nods. “Well, then I’ll apologize for drawing you into that, too. She was half the reason I started to suspect anything, honestly. Told Regina about her and the last thing I expected when I got here was to see her, or to have her demand I get you here. I tried to avoid that.” More nodding. More aching muscles and poorly performing hearts, and Emma wouldn’t mind if Killian traced several other sentiments into a variety of different areas, but they’ve got an audience and a pregnant lady and they never did get coffee. So, it makes sense to ignore that for a second. Or several.

“I love you,” she says instead. Shouts, really. “More than I realized I could and I—” Any other words get lost in the feel of Killian’s mouth on hers and the ability of his tongue to incite butterflies in her stomach, and she hardly hears him say I love you back. It doesn’t matter. She hears it on loop for the rest of the day, once they’re ushered unceremoniously out of Belle and Will’s apartment. Neither of them think much about getting coffee.

And she’s just on the cusp of sleep, eyelashes fluttering and blankets halfway to stolen when Emma hears something else. Pressed into that one spot below her ear.

“I’ve got no intention of leaving,” Killian whispers, “not because of the magic or the power that comes with it, only because I love you. A ridiculous amount, honestly.”

Sleep seems kind of pointless after that.

He decides to leave Mills, eventually.

“I don’t have magic,” Killian rationalizes, and Emma supposes that makes sense. “But I will need some help finding a job.”

Sliding a file with his name written in swirling script across her desk, he’s got the gall to smirk at her and Emma resists the urge to magic him into her chair. “Luckily I do have other skills, including a job offer—” “—If you’ve got a job offer, you don’t really need my help.” “Yeah, but you’re very pretty and I hear you’re real good at what you do.” “Which is?” “Moving in with me,” Killian says, which isn’t the last thing she expects but it still manages to catch her off guard. Lights erupt at the end of several strands of hair. “The reaction I was going for, absolutely.” “No, no, that’s—that’s dumb.” “Is it?” “I was going to ask you to move in with me. First.” “Competitive weirdo.” “I have an apartment,” Emma argues. “With laundry on site.” “Ah, yeah, that is a marker in the pro column. Plus, you’ll be there right?” “In my apartment? Yeah, probably,”

Pushing back on the chair he’d never really been sitting in, Killian leans across Emma’s desk. To kiss her. Hard. Magic flares in the air around them, causing bulbs to flicker and more than a few cries of get a room . “What I’m trying to do,” Killian mumbles. “If you’re asking me to move in, Swan, I’m going to accept.” “Make it sound less like a warning next time.”

He chuckles against her mouth, either ignoring the desk that must be pressing into his stomach or not bothered by it at all, and Emma tries not to throw herself at him too quickly when he brings a whole box of recently-bought blankets with him.

“So you don’t get cold, love.”

#cs ff #captain swan #captain swan ff #cs fic #captain swan fic #on this night and in this light #MAGIC BATTLES #MORE KISSING #MAGIC BATTLES WHILE FLIRTING

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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WHY I'M SMARTER THAN UNDERGRADUATES

One of the cases he decided was brought by the owner of a food shop. Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest. Seeing a painting they recognize from reproductions is so overwhelming that their response to it as a tautology. There's nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made. Google, companies in Silicon Valley already knew it was important to have the right kind of people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault. Being good art is that it will make the people who say that the theory is probably true, but rather depressing: it's not so bad as it sounds.

The founders were experienced guys who'd done startups before and who'd just succeeded in getting millions from one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence to explain in person to Leonardo & Co.1 If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off. One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would increase the income gap between rich and poor? Perhaps this tends to attract people who are bad at understanding. It would work on a moon base where we had to buy air by the liter. It seemed obvious that beauty, for example, as property in the way we do. It could be the reason they don't have to wait to be an adult.

The answer, I realized, is that my m. And passion is a bad way to put it, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow. That's to be expected. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. But valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes.2 Don't talk about secondary matters at length. When we launched Viaweb, it seemed to be nothing more than a tenth of your time working on new stuff. Now a lot of people in the Valley is watching them. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do.3

Of course, space aliens probably wouldn't find human faces engaging. Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than something that has to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. Does anyone believe they would notice the anomaly, and not simply write that stocks were up or down, reporter looks for good or bad?4 Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years.5 Simplicity takes effort—genius, even. But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a giant, public company, and assume you could build something way easier to use.

Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed like much of a startup called Friendfeed. That would definitely happen if programmers started to use handhelds as development machines—if handhelds displaced laptops the way laptops displaced desktops. Taking a shower is like a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence you're using a definition of property be whatever they wanted. Back in the 90s. Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, that if you tried this you'd be able to say about such and such market share. The average person looks at it and thinks: how amazingly skillful.6 It's still a very weak form of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons. If one blows up in your face, start another. Ten weeks is not much time. Everyone at Rehearsal Day. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from working. If I could tell startups only ten sentences, this would be one of them.

What counts as property depends on what you mean by worth. It would have been. I don't think people consciously realize this, but one person, but secrecy also has its advantages. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. It's also true that there are quite a few marketplaces out there that serve this same market. Obviously the world sucked, so why wouldn't they? There was not much point. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. England in the 1060s, when William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the defeated Anglo-Saxon nobles to his followers, the conflict was military. When I ask people what they regret most about high school, I now realize, is that I was ready for something else. The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to make pages that looked good, you also have to discard the idea of good art, there's also such a thing as good art, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made.

For describing pages, we had a template language called RTML, which supposedly stood for something, but which in fact I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.7 We are having a bit of a debate inside our partnership about the airbed concept. It was thus subjective rather than objective. Don't fix Windows, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me. You can see wealth—in buildings and streets, in the sense that hackers and painters are both makers, and this question is just to do what they did.8 It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the only potential acquirer is Microsoft, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. No matter how much to how many voters, and adjust their message so precisely in response, that they tend to split the difference on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row?

So is it meaningless to talk about it publicly till long afterward.9 The way Apple runs the App Store is full of half-baked applications. If I were talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation.10 The problem is, it's hard to get the gold out of it. Where does wealth come from?11 You can demonstrate your respect for one another in more subtle ways.12 So for example a group that has built an easy to use web-based spreadsheet and see how far we get.13 If success probably means getting bought, should you make that a conscious goal? While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with a million dollar idea. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard?

Notes

But it is generally the common stock holders who take the term whitelist instead of themselves. There's comparatively little from it. I couldn't convince Fred Wilson to fund them. I've come to you about it.

Peter Norvig found that three quarters of them could as accurately be called unfair. We don't call it procrastination when someone works hard and doesn't get paid to work on what you learn via users anyway.

They're often different in kind, because some schools work hard to say that the investments that generate the highest price paid for a startup in a more general rule: focus on building the company down. Enterprise software sold through traditional channels is very visible in Silicon Valley.

In many ways the New Deal was a kid that you'd want to get jobs. Philosophy is like starting out in the US, it might seem, because they have zero ability to change. If the rich paid high taxes? The two guys were Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Don't be evil. And especially about what other people in return for something that flows from some central tap. I'm convinced there were, we found Dave Shen there, only for startups to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. I think investors currently err too far on the dollar.

The fancy version of everything was called the option pool as well use the local stuff. Philosophy is like starting out in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically by sharding it.

This is everyday life in general. So, can I make it easy. Believe it or not, under current US law, writing and visual design.

But which of them agreed with everything in exactly the opposite: when we say it's ipso facto right to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to justify choices inaction in particular.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre investors. Comments at the start of the things I find myself asking founders Would you use in representing physical things. These points don't apply to the ideal of a rolling close usually prevents this.

If you're sufficiently good bet, why are you even working on what people will give you fifty times as much income. When a lot of money around is never something people treat casually. No one writing a dictionary from scratch, rather than giving grants.

For similar reasons, avoid the topic. It's not only the leaves who suffer. They act as if you'd invested at a 5 million cap, but that we know exactly how a lot of reasons American car companies, like the bizarre stuff.

Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the exercise of stock the VCs should be designed to live in a request.

Odds are people who are good presenters, but to do certain kinds of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the first version was mostly Lisp, Wiley, 1985, p. So during the 2002-03 season was 2. Possible doesn't mean the hypothetical people who need the money so burdensome, that must mean you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what you're doing.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Chris Dixon, Jessica Livingston, Paul Watson, Geoff Ralston, Sarah Harlin, Dan Giffin, and Alexia Tsotsis for smelling so good.

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theonceoverthinker · 6 years

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OUAT 2X20 - The Evil Queen

Regina! What a pleasure to feature an old a-QUEEN-tance over here!!!

Once you’re done laughing from this exceptional pun, why not stay for the rest of the review below the cut?

Press Release With the aid of Hook, Regina attempts to put a plan in motion that will help transport herself and Henry back to Fairytale land. But her plan revolves around a fail-safe that was planted within the curse, which if triggered could wipe Storybrooke off the map - and kill all of its inhabitants; and Emma’s suspicions about Tamara grow. Meanwhile, in the fairytale land that was, the Evil Queen asks Rumplestiltskin to transform her into an unrecognizable peasant in order to kill an unsuspecting Snow White, with the twisted aim of earning the love and respect of her subjects. General Thoughts - Characters/Stories/Themes and Their Effectiveness Past I think this segment was incredibly well handled in its framing. The segment is able to clearly show how Regina’s reactions to her life and her impressions about her circumstances are dead wrong while still telling a tragic story for her. Like, it is very clear that the audience is supposed to laugh alongside Rumple (A framed mentor figure with a touch more moral ambiguity at this time) as she’s decrying claims that she’s an Evil Queen and be with Snow in abject horror when we see the destroyed village. That said, we’re also meant to also see the tragedy of Regina being on the cusp of real change, only to have her own remorseless history come back at the very worst moment.

Besides just the framing, the idea of neutralizing Regina and making her spend time with Snow in an alternate form was inspired. The resulting characterization of Snow and the effects of her kindness (Namely that all it takes is some one-on-one time with Snow in order to remember the potential goodness in your heart because she is honestly just that soothing and kind of a presence) is something that’s honestly much smarter than it has any right to be. But what’s better is that for all of Snow’s goodness, it DOES have a limit, and that is abruptly reached and more when she discovers the burnt village. Also, great job Ginny for a small bit at the end of her screen time where she goes through multiple expressions of anguish after letting Regina go, both as a show of her building frustration with the consequences of goodness and her frustrations with Regina. I’m honestly willing to bet that right after this episode is when the grouchier Snow from “Snow Falls” shows up. Finally, I’ve just got to say that this is such a better handling of the possibility of Regina’s goodness than the flashback in “The Cricket Game.” Here, Regina doesn’t just fail a test she was all but bound to, but she crosses over a tangible line of decency and hurts countless others. Present The present does a lot more in terms of plot progression than story progression, but it comes with more than a few solid character interactions and moments.

I enjoyed seeing Regina and Killian working together. They have a good rapport and the betrayals and speeches between these two villains are just great. I love the little ways they screw each other over, but also this light bit of compassion they share too (Ex. Killian giving his condolences for Cora’s passing).

The Emma, Henry, Neal, and Tamara subplot was equally interesting! The search through the apartment makes for an engaging mystery, even though I know the outcome of it. There’s always this worry in my heart that they’re going to be caught and when they do, it makes for a fun moment of realized tension. Everyone’s characterization (Or somewhat fake characterization concerning Tamara in her scene with Emma) is fully in-line and the conflict is an understandable one with little nuances that make for compelling bits of dramatic irony.

The plot progression itself is fine. What we learn about the trigger and Greg and Tamara’s plans is well spread out and interspersed between good character moments. Insights - Stream of Consciousness -”Actually, I prefer with the lights on.” I bet you do, Captain! XD -”She is his mother, despite all the horrors!” Very good, Snow! Look, as far as the current circumstances of this show and season have been thus far, I’m of the mind that the Charming family is currently right: Regina does deserve to be able to see Henry, but given her history and especially her recent behavior, limiting her visitation while she continues to better herself is a completely fair thing to do. No one’s denying that Regina is Henry’s mom and the one time it was done, it was appropriately framed as a wrong outburst. -”Rumple’s cell.” David...while still a supporter of the sentiment I just presented, that’s...too far. -THE PANDA BLOOPER!!! -”But I am not evil.” Regina, you just burned down a village! That’s pretty evil! -Damn, Rumple. Cutting off trade with King George’s kingdom. That’s coooooold. ...but kind of awesome. -I love that when characters, it’s explained how they’ll look different to the world while still being played by the same actor! THat’s clever as hell! -”They still see me as The Evil Queen which they made me.” Regina, no. -Regina, this is Henry. What did you expect when you were leading up to everyone dying? -Awww! Good job giving condolences, Killian! -I wonder what it would’ve been like had Cora and Regina (And presumably Henry) went back to the Enchanted Forest and started fresh? -Snow’s actually giving Emma really good advice here! She knows no one wants Henry to get an incorrect impression about the circumstances of his parents. -I LOVE the music that plays as Snow saves Regina! It reminds me of a superhero’s theme! CAN WE GET SNOW IN THE NEXT AVENGERS MOVIE?! -Killian, how can you tell that that’s Maleficent? I can hardly tell that that’s Maleficent! It looks more like what happens when the Mummy fucks Loki! -OH SHIT! I FORGOT THE GLASS COFFIN COMES BACK!!! -”Someone from another forest taught me. Long story.” HOLY SHIT! DID THEY HAVE HERCULES PLANNED FROM THE END OF SEASON 2?! I LOVE THIS SHOW! -”Not usually [Referring to how fun stakeouts are]. But this one? Yeah, kinda.” Awwww!!! Some cute Swan Believer! -I like how there is a direct consequence of Emma not heeding Snow’s words. -So I like how Regina has moments of surprise as Snow talks about how there’s still good inside of Regina. It feels like it’s just as much of a surprise to her for her own sake as it is for Snow’s sake. -I wish past Snow remembered this destroyed village in “The Cricket Game’s” flashback. Like this episode just makes that flashback even dumber. -Snow is perceptive as FUCK with the reflexes of a GOD! -I LOVE that look of frustration on Snow’s face as she lets Regina get away. It contributes nicely to her growth of disdain for the consequences of her goodness! -”Startling. Some people would say striking.” Is this a taco commercial, because why not both? -”The one thing I excel at is surviving.” I guess this is the first aspect of that line (Other than maybe his second voyage to Neverland?)! Neat! Arcs - How are These Storylines Progressing? Regina’s Redemption - Regina’s regressing a lot in this episode and I kind of struggled with how I felt about it. On one hand, it does work on a character level. Regina’s pretty dramatic and I can believe that would be her reaction to the idea of being stranded in Storybrooke would be a big one. However, watching this regression and seeing her say how she believes that the only reason she’s The Evil Queen is because Snow and Charming made her that way is just annoying to watch and makes me feel barely sympathetic at all to her plight. Like, if Regina hadn’t shown such strength in the first half of the season, I’d have felt differently, and while get that Cora’s death and this bean incident changed things, this is such a dramatic change that I don’t know if I can enjoy it (Especially when one considers how she was able to stop herself from forcing Henry’s love in “Welcome to Storybrooke,” an even more recent example of her strength). Jeez, she even ignores Henry’s pleas and memory wipes him! And I know she improves in the very next episode (I’m having serious Dark Hook flashbacks or flashforwards, whichever they would be called), but in the confines of this episode, it goes a little overboard. Killian’s Revenge/Redemption - So I know that I’m going off of a few lines here, but I love the setup for Killian’s realization that revenge isn’t what it seems. The entire opening to the downstairs elevator scene speaks to the fact that while Killian values his revenge, its conquest essentially means that his life is over and the fact that he shows even the tiniest bit of doubt there shows that there could be more in store for him. That said, until he reaches that point, he still does want revenge and will fight to ensure it, no matter how unscrupulous and awful he has to be in the process. Greg and Tamara - Gotta say. While not super impressive nor memorable as characters, Greg and Tamara are pretty clever with the knowledge they’ve been given. Their plan to recruit Killian and neutralize Regina is pretty well thought out, and their covert nature was only partially exposed due to a complete accident! Favorite Dynamic Swan Believer. Look, this one is just fun. Seeing Emma and Henry bonding on a stakeout, sharing ice cream, and breaking-and-entering together is fantastic and cute. I love seeing the little bond that’s grown between Emma and Henry, especially after the whole lying arc from a few episodes back. This is great payoff and plays into what one would naturally expect from an eleven year old when he’s helping his mom foil his dad’s fiance: could his parents get back together. I like how Emma explains to him very clearly that that’s not the case (And I swear, that’s not a shipping thing. That’s just a matter of being careful of his expectations) but also gets the added bonus of his speculations being a consequence of not listening to Snow’s advice. Writer Jane Espenson and Christine Boylan are our writers today! And I liked what they came up with. Snow’s character progression in the past segment is as smooth as peanut butter, and she’s just the tip of the iceberg. All throughout the story are well-written character moments with mostly good dialogue. It’s only failing is, as I said before, is some of Regina’s present dialogue, specifically during her conversation with Henry. Rating 9/10. This was a good one! The story in the past is, as I said before, better than it had any right to be and draws far better lines for the characters of Snow and Regina. The present storyline is equally interesting, albeit with a touch of exhaustion from some of the more repetitive dialogue. But most of the character interactions and story progression worked very well, making it a quiet wonder. Flip My Ship - Home of All Things “Shippy Goodness” Hooked Queen - Damn, Killian and Regina exchange some really nice and trusting looks in Regina’s office! Hell, Killian even being here and offering his services is pretty great for them! Captain Swan - I don’t think this has ever been pointed out before, but Killian kept the beanstalk cuff! While it didn’t work for me, Killian certainly gave a touch of value to his time with Emma on the beanstalk! Swan Fire - At risk of entering anti-shipping territory, I want to point out how the whole projection of feelings that other characters have been putting on Emma about Neal works SO much better here than it did for Graham because (1) they have a past, (2) they actually spend time together, (3) there’s a level of ambiguity to it which makes this time feel more interesting, and (4) those feelings are later believed to be true. Also, I just love Neal’s reaction to the door trick! XD ()()()()()()()()() We’re almost done!!!! Thanks for reading and to the fine folks at @watchingfairytales.

Next time...though I sincerely doubt I will, I hope I won’t have to PAN this two-part finale! XD

See you then!

Season 2 Tally (166/220) Writer Tally for Season 2: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis: (50/60) Jane Espenson (44/50)* Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg (31/50) David Goodman (24/30)* Robert Hull (24/30)* Christine Boylan (26/30)* Kalinda Vazquez (28/30)* Daniel Thomsen (18/20)* * Indicates that their work for the season is complete

Operation Rewatch Archives

#ouat #once upon a time #watching fairytales #ouat 2x20 #ouat rewatch #jenna watches ouat

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geliki80-blog · 4 years

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october 29, 2020, 1:24am

after watching some episodes of other shows, i settled on an episode of david letterman's netflix series with dave chappelle. it was powerful to watch something that referred to events happening this year that have touched my life, that have affected so many lives. and empowering to hear him amplify so many of the values that i have also come to embrace, including community.

it made me think about my life in the small town i stayed in after college. this town made only slightly bigger by the university that brings in a more diverse range of thinkers and characters than the town itself could ever hope to boast about. i was drawn to this place because i wanted to be closer to thick clusters of trees and farther from dense throngs of people. the electricity of the city had worn me out by seventeen, and i craved an escape from the pace of consumerism that felt foreign and overwhelming to me.

but as i got older within the smaller town's limits, i recognized more and more about how my experiences fit within a bigger context. how certain things that had been more subtle or more covert in pittsburgh were obvious in a place still glaringly white, and glaringly conservative. and the more i realized about the way the town operated, and the way the country operated, and my own place within all of that, i felt more and more disconnected from my literal community. from the place where i liked the trees more than the people.

still i managed to make friends. characters paraded in and out of the tiny gas station on a corner at one of the four intersections in town where i worked part-time for several years. people spoke to me because i was just about the least threatening person, and i was in a subservient role. i had a welcoming aura that had been inviting strangers to open up to me from the time i was a teenager waiting on buses in downtown pittsburgh. that trait followed me into my twenties, and into various customer service positions. as a cashier, i didn't have the freedom to walk away from a customer who decided to unload about his day, his life, his opinions about the state of the country. there was a sense of marginalization that i always felt. a feeling of subversiveness just beneath the surface. and so community for me came to mean the group of people whom i had gravitated toward. whom i had chosen to talk to and listen to. people who stuck around and became close to me, spent time with me, allowed me into their lives and into their families and into their hearts. before long, new friends became people who were precious to me over a decade, and that time grows longer still with so many friends i had the pleasure of meeting in this tiny vortex of interesting and predictable people.

as i get older, i want to be more active in my community. i already know i have a talent for talking with people. for listening. and i know how many people i learned about just from that passive role as a cashier at a gas station. so imagine what i could accomplish with a bit more intention. i've never been much for schmoozing. i also don't believe in selling anything to people. but i know we all have needs, and i believe in working toward making sure everyone's are met. and i know that we stand a much better chance of accomplishing that if we work together, rather than against each other.

there are times that i have really fucked up with people. times when my ego or my perspective has gotten in the way of using a better approach to create dialogue. times when i've talked at someone. or times when my feelings got the best of me, and i spoke before i thought well enough. i think thoughtfulness is definitely something that improves with age and experience, especially if we're conscious about strengthening that muscle. when someone hurts me, there is the part of hurt that is all ego. that is painful. and forgiveness seems always to have two parts--one for forgiving the other person for being human and doing what humans do sometimes which might be lashing out, or projecting, or doing what wounded creatures do. the other for forgiving myself for reacting and getting mad at the person for being human and doing what wounded creatures do. and anyone who denies me permission to make mistakes is not really my friend. but anyone who is not my friend is not my enemy either. and again, ultimately we are both trying to achieve something with progress. with shaping the world around us (and within) toward what we want it to be. and while i cannot control how the other person advances with their own sense of forgiveness, it's never a bad time to engage in some self-reflection and re-evaluate what i have the power to grow within myself, improve within my own behaviors. what the other person does is up to them. and i want only never to hinder their growth. so sometimes stepping back, stepping away from someone is necessary. but the door for dialogue should never close.

and i think that relates to the bigger picture. the bigger society that we're all a part of.

tonight, i was thinking as i hung up the fiona apple poster in my room, the construction paper matting badly faded. the cheap plastic poster frame misaligned and taped at the corners to hold it all together. i was thinking about giving permission to people to make mistakes. allowing it. when that idea first comes into my mind, it comes with the assumption that people will learn from their mistakes, and become better. smarter. more compassionate. but there is an error to that thinking, because it assumes that people must be better than what they are, and that they are not worthy of forgiveness unless they evolve from their mistakes. we punish a child with the intention of teaching them to think and behave more appropriately. but children repeat behaviors, pushing the extent of our boundaries and still receiving forgiveness because it takes time to learn certain lessons. if that patience is not applied to adults, then everyone is doomed to failure. not only that, but we withhold love from people we deem as not acting right.

somewhere in my heart i know that i have to love my neighbor. and somewhere else in my heart i don't want anything to do with him unless i enjoy interacting with him.

friends are neighbors we choose, and it can be harder when they disappoint us. but only because we become so used to them that when they let us down we take it personally.

if we allow people to make mistakes, and accept that they will, and accept that it might take a long time for them to learn...how does that inform our expectations for leaders?

dave chappelle had a skit talking about an interaction he had with a transgender woman that did not paint her in a very kind light. and i was very upset with him. i wasn't the only one. but when he went on to continue making specials, i refrained from watching because i didn't want to support someone transphobic. i didn't want to risk that he would keep telling those kinds of jokes. but he ended up addressing that bit in a later special. i ended up coming back to him, because there was always something about his honesty and delivery, his artistry, that i was drawn to (like so many people). in the interview with letterman, he asks chappelle about if he wants to be a leader, acknowledging how letterman himself looked to dave for some sort of guidance. some sort of catharsis following the murder of george floyd. and it made me think about the leaders that the people choose versus the leaders that are groomed for us.

joe biden is the democratic nominee in our two-party presidential election, the results of which will be determined by an electoral college whose structure, like so many other things in this country, is in terrible need of revision. the people who are openly unenthusiastic about biden refer to his history, his involvement with legislation that was, like so many other things in this country, terribly imperfect and influenced by the politics of the time. biden had to change. as a public figure, as a political figure, he had to change with the times and with what the idea of a democrat meant, otherwise people like bernie sanders would stand a chance, and the two-party system would finally shift toward something more pluralistic, and the powers that be want to remain the powers that be. so while people condemn biden for his past, here i am wondering on one hand isn't he allowed to be imperfect? while at the same time wishing we could have had better leaders altogether from the start. leaders who were ahead of their time. leaders not so influenced by the politics and trends of the time. leaders who really make all of us feel confident they will be good for all of us. be what we really need in that office.

i guess what i'm saying is chappelle for president? but really what i'm saying is there has to be a balance between the degree of accountability a person holds for their behaviors and a degree of permission that we grant to people to learn from their mistakes and do better. and we shouldn't be electing anyone to office who hasn't demonstrated that they can learn from their mistakes. who remains the same self-interested, self-absorbed, capitalist pig they always were. i have every faith that chappelle will continue to evolve as a human being, because his craft and his passion are connected with that continuous journey of learning and experiencing and reflecting. i don't have as much faith in biden. but i want to. i want this not to be just another swing of the pendulum back toward the left before another shift toward the right again. i want our political arena to have more diversity. more progress. to really be for the people. even though that's not really the way it was set up. those were the words that were used, and they represent a good vision. a good potential.

i don't know what for the people really looks like. there are some examples around the world, but every place has its issues. no place on earth is perfect. (though ikaria might be close to it. and some of those other blue zones where people live the longest, happiest lives.)

i have no power in what happens next. the presidential election is in five days. i've cast my vote. millions of citizens have. maybe the outcome has already been decided, and this election business is more of a farce than we realize. but i still have no control over what happens, and i have to focus back on the arena where i do have power. myself. my own backyard. my own community. my own friends and family. my work. so that's what i'll do. and i'll always feel grateful for people like chappelle who are willing to speak up about things many of us have a hard time with, even within our communities. thank goodness for unofficial leaders who open up the spaces for us to keep the dialogue going. especially when they can help us to laugh. because we're all dealing with so many of the mistakes people have been allowed to make for hundreds of years.

#forgiveness #community #leadership #politics #philosophy #progress #processing

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nolimitsongrace · 5 years

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Prerequisite for Promotion #5: Integrity

Outreach

Elite CX Team

Do You Qualify? The 5 Prerequisites for PromotionOctober 10, 2019

Feeling like you’ll never move to the next level in life? Find out if you’re meeting the prerequisites for the promotion you’ve been dreaming of.

READING TIME: 8 MIN

Are you living the same day over and over again?

Maybe it seems like you wake up and carry on pretty much the same way every day, without any exciting changes or life-altering increase. Yet, you have stirrings, dreams and visions for what you want in this life. And you keep waiting for your breakthrough—your tipping point.

Here’s the deal…

You are the tipping point.

If you’re feeling stuck, it’s because you were made for continual promotion and advancement in this life. This year should not look the same as every other year. Increase in your job, finances, ministry or family should regularly be occurring. But you have to own your part in seeing God’s supernatural promotion.

It’s time to skip the middleman and start getting promoted quicker, easier and beyond what the world says is possible. Instead of waiting around for something to change, trying to make our own way, or convincing the world to promote us, we need to make a way for God to move.

As Gloria Copeland says, “You must be worthy of being promoted. You have to give God something to work with.” You must qualify.

Your promotion is within reach. And it’s in your hands. It all starts with working to live by these five prerequisites for promotion.

Prerequisite No. 1: Have a Servant’s Heart“Truly I am your servant, Lord.” –Psalm 116:16 (NIV)

When you’re focused on promotion, you’re focused on yourself, right? It can be tough to shift the focus off your own dreams and desires and over onto others, but that’s exactly what you need to do to qualify for a BIG promotion from God.

Gloria Copeland says, “Promotion begins on the inside. Having a servant’s heart is vital to your promotion.”

Joseph went from the pit to the palace by serving his master, his prison master and his fellow prisoners, and more importantly, his God. He could’ve spent time thinking about how he had been given a dream by God, what a hard worker he was, and how he deserved promotion, but he didn’t. He had a servant’s heart, and that’s why he enjoyed one of the greatest promotions we see in the Bible.

David is another model example of how to receive life-changing promotion. He began at the bottom—a lowly shepherd boy. No one had high thoughts of him or big plans to advance him in any way. In fact, in the world’s eyes, he was nothing special.

He had seven brothers who were all seemingly better looking, smarter and more qualified. God chose to promote David, in part, because he had a servant’s heart. He served his father and King Saul faithfully, in spite of the mistreatment and continual attacks on his life. More importantly, he served God.

His servant’s heart opened the door—and kept it open—for a life-changing promotion from shepherd boy to king.

What can we learn from Joseph and David’s servant’s hearts?

They remained faithful and honorable in the lowest of positions. Even when God told them their true destinies, they didn’t resent not arriving there instantly.

They were not impatient about being promoted. They kept their focus on serving others and honoring God.

They didn’t give up or become weary in well-doing.

If you are not where you want to be today, or maybe even far from it, do not despise where you are. It’s in the dry and hard places that your promotion is secured. Keep moving in the will of God, and the will of God will promote you.

Prerequisite No. 2: Humility“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” –James 4:10 (NKJV)

Having a servant’s heart will require humility, but walking in humility goes far beyond that. If you want to be promoted in your job, finances, ministry, family or any other area—all pride has to go.

You may be thinking, I don’t have a problem with pride. Keith Moore has this to say to you: “If you don’t think you have trouble with pride, you’re confused. You have flesh, don’t you? Then you have pride to deal with.” Pride is something every single person has to combat. But make no mistake, you must combat it.

Watch Gloria Copeland and George Pearsons talk more about humility as a prerequisite for promotion.

Pride isn’t just an unkind attitude—it’s a dream killer. It will rob you of everything you’re believing for and halt your miracles (James 4:6). That’s why the enemy wants to tempt you into it (it’s what caused his fall, after all). He knows he can devour you when he can get you to be like him—proud, defiant and rebellious.

You qualify for promotion when you work on having a humble spirit. In fact, the Bible tells us to be “clothed with humility” (1 Peter 5:5, KJV). This isn’t a one-time deal, either. It’s a daily effort.

What does humility look like? Humility thinks of others first.

Humility is content behind the scenes.

Humility doesn’t push its way to the front.

Humility willingly submits.

Humility graciously receives correction.

Humility makes adjustments.

Humility doesn’t ruin an apology with an excuse.

Humility expects nothing and appreciates everything.

Humility accepts responsibility and doesn’t shift blame.

Humility is easy to live with, work with and be with.

To get to this place, as Keith Moore says, “Pride has to die!” If you think you can do this on your own, that’s pride, too. You need correction. If you can begin to see correction as a gift, you’ll be on the expressway to humility.

That means allowing God—and even people—to correct you. Even if someone doesn’t handle it as delicately as they could, you need to learn to receive correction from people. When you don’t, that’s your flesh rising up and telling you to feed your pride.

If you want to see promotion in your life, ask God to help you become someone who lives and walks with humility. Gloria Copeland says, “Pride sets you up for a fall. Humility will set you up for honor.”

Prerequisite No. 3: Diligence“Diligent hands bring wealth.” –Proverbs 10:4 (NIV)

Just like humility, diligence is the door to promotion. You can’t qualify without it. Are you diligent?

A diligent person is…

Conscientious in his work or duties

Industrious, hardworking, meticulous, thorough

Someone who does more than what’s expected

Dependable, punctual

Constant, stable, focused

Does this describe you? Are you meeting the prerequisite for promotion by being diligent?

The Bible tells us a bit more about who diligent people are and what they receive:

Diligent people are hard workers. Proverbs 10:4 (TLV) says “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” Prosperity and promotion come to the hard worker.

Diligent people thoughtfully plan. They aren’t hasty in their decisions, but think ahead and plan well. Proverbs 21:5 says, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty” (NIV).

Diligent people serve great leaders. Proverbs 22:29 says, “Do you know a hard-working man? He shall be successful and stand before kings!” (TLB). Diligent people are not overlooked for long, and they end up in the highest places.

Diligent people are resourceful and care for what they have. This means they are good stewards! Proverbs 12:27 says a “diligent man makes good use of everything he finds” (TLB).Pastor Ricker Renner used to drive by the homes of associate pastors to inspect their garages. He felt he could see their hearts by the way they cared for their homes.

Diligent people become great leaders. Proverbs 12:24 says when you work hard, you will become a leader. That’s promotion! Joseph and David are proof of this truth.

If you want to be promoted in life, work hard. Be diligent as a Christian, a spouse, a parent, a friend, a financial steward, a minister and an employee. Get qualified for promotion!

Prerequisite No. 4: Faithfulness“A faithful man who can find?” –Proverbs 20:6 (KJV)

Every prerequisite we’ve discussed so far is nonnegotiable. And so is faithfulness. It seems to be a lost art, these days, doesn’t it? Perhaps that’s why we don’t see people advancing when they should.

Remember David? He was the most faithful among all of King Saul’s servants. That’s what God is looking for.

Faithful people are located and promoted by God. That’s what happens when you live out the prerequisites for promotion. Promotion will chase after and overtake you!

Let’s look at the Bible characteristics of a faithful person.

Faithful people can be trusted by those they serve.

Faithful people keep a confidence—they don’t reveal secrets or go around talking about matters that should be kept quiet (Proverbs 11:13)

Faithful people are loyal. They don’t cheat, steal or abuse their positions.

Faithful people are truthful and honest. They don’t lie or bend the truth (Proverbs 14:5).

Faithful people are reliable and dependable. They show up on time, and they do what they say they will do (Proverbs 25:13).

Faithfulness is a prerequisite for promotion. “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10, KJV). When you are faithful where God has placed you, He will know He can trust you with even more. “A faithful man will abound with blessings” (Proverbs 28:20, ESV).

Prerequisite No. 5: Integrity“The just man walks in his integrity; his children are blessed after him.” –Proverbs 20:7 (MEV)

Many people don’t realize the connection between integrity and promotion. Galatians 6:7 tells us we reap what we sow, so if you connect the dots, it’s easy to see: Sowing integrity will produce a harvest of promotion.

Honesty is valued highly in our society—it is a nonnegotiable with God. There is a greater demand for integrity from Christians because of who we represent. Second Corinthians 8:21 says, “We are careful to be honorable before the Lord, but we also want everyone else to see that we are honorable.”

Your life is a letter anyone can read by looking at you (2 Corinthians 3:2). That’s what many believers don’t understand. We are being watched—read like a book. The world hears every word we speak and sees every action we take. Our lives are a testimony to the unsaved about who our God is, and we have a responsibility to represent Him accurately.

How important is integrity? Find out in a special story of integrity that impacted Kenneth Copeland’s personal life HERE.

To qualify for promotion, you must live your life with integrity—down to the tiniest detail.

How does the Bible define integrity? Psalm 15:1-5 breaks it down for us:

Live a blameless life. Do what is right, even when it looks like it could be to your disadvantage.

Keep your word, no matter what. Show up when you say you’re going to show up. Do what you say you’ll do. Give what you say you’ll give.

Do the right thing.

Refuse to gossip or speak poorly about others.

Lend without charging interest.

Refuse to be bribed.

Return things you borrowed (like rental cars) in better shape than when you got them.

Return excess change accidentally given to you.

Go back to pay the right amount when you were undercharged.

Return the shopping cart to the proper place.

Give your employer the full amount of work agreed upon.

Learn more about How to Live the Psalm 15 Life HERE.

Sadly, it is a rare thing to see people with integrity anymore. That’s why so many people are stuck in the same place for so long. Those who will prosper will be those with the most integrity—those who are dependable. God has His part, and we have ours. Our part is walking in integrity.

If you’ve been waiting for promotion, developing your character and meeting these five prerequisites is key. Remember, it is God’s will for you to be promoted! As long as you are in line with His Word, you don’t have to fight, beg or beat the system. He will get you to the place you need to be.

Gloria Copeland and George Pearsons share about integrity as a prerequisite for promotion.

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torentialtribute · 6 years

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HOLT: Humble, skilful, a true leader.. yet we don’t realise we we’ve got in Harry Kane

Harry Kane had a bad World Cup, apparently. That's what I keep hearing anyway. The must be the first player to win the Golden Boot with a host or caveats attached.

Old habits that are hard in England: we have been imprisoned in a state of disappointment for so long, we are still learning how to applaud again.

Sometimes, it still feels as if we don't quite realize what we've got in our center forward.

Harry Kane has shown once again why he is one of the most complete forwards in football

Maybe it is because he came up through the ranks with Spurs and was farmed out on a loan to the back of beyond.

Maybe it is because a lot of observers thought back then that he would never make it at the top level. Maybe it is because he has stayed loyal to Tottenham and lacks the kind of ego that needs to be served by seeking interest from elsewhere.

But amid the optimism that surged through Wembley on Friday night during and after England's 5- 0 demolition of the Czech Republic, it was hard to watch Kane's performance and think anything other than that Gareth Southgate is fortunate to have at his disposal one of the most complete center forwards in the world.

Kane was a support act to the brilliance of Raheem Sterling and Jadon Sancho, but still starred

Sure, he was a support act to the dazzling brilliance of Raheem Sterling and Jadon Sancho, who tormented the Czech defense with their speed of thought and speed of foot and who made us dream that, at the European Championship next year, we really can improve on reaching the last four at the World Cup in Russia last summer.

But that's another of Kane's qualities. He does not mind being the support act. He is happy to be a team player as well as a relentless goal scorer.

If Sterling and Sancho are to be our future, Kane is the kind of player who will help them thrive. That's one of the things that makes him so good. He doesn't just score goals. He leads the line and he makes goals for others.

Kane has the vision of a playmaker as well as the deadliness of a goalpoacher. It was his superb pass inside the visitors ’overworked left back Filip Novak midway through the first half that unlocked the Czech defense.

It was cleverly conceived and perfectly weighted, Sancho ran on to it and drilled the ball across goal for Sterling to slide it in. Kane prompted like that all evening.

He has the accomplished technique we associate with players raised outside the hurly burly of our league and the way he linked play with Sancho, Sterling and Ross Barkley exuded class.

When Sterling won a first-half penalty, Kane buried it. That made it six successful penalties on the trot for him for England.

The skipper stepped up to smash a penalty and put in a selfless performance at Wembley

After the match, Southgate was, naturally, effusive about the contributions of Sancho and Sterling, whose increasing maturity and influence on the side has been recognized by including him in the squad's leadership group. But he did not overlook Kane's contribution to England's ongoing improvement.

"To have such a top striker who has such humility and such a low ego has a huge impression on the whole group," Southgate said. "Because at the moment he is the star player. You wouldn't know it from the way he conducts himself, you wouldn't know it from his application to training.

'All you would say is that you can see why he is and the way he is disciplined with his food and the way he is disciplined with his preparation and his focus.

'But, equally, that's the same for Raheem: you see his focus in training, his preparation for those things. So for young players coming on it's an easy equation: if I do the things those two do, there's a good chance that I'll get the performances that they're putting in as well. "

It feels, finally , as if we have entered a virtuous circle with England now. Good things are happening and leading to better things. We are beginning to redefine our idea of this England team and what can be achieved. In Russia, it was all a pleasant surprise. We rejoiced about winning a penalty shootout and banishing demons.

Kane worked his way up with a series of lower league loans before becoming the star of today

Friday night was another sign that we have moved beyond that. We have a team who do not need to punch above their weight or be more than the sum of their parts or any of those phrases we use to describe the act of rising above our ordinariness. We have a team that can hurt opponents. We have a team that can scare opponents.

Declan Rice can give our midfield a balance it didn't have before. Callum Hudson-Odoi has the kind of talent that means he will start to press for a place. Ben Chilwell is a reminder of how much competition there is at left back. James Maddison is a fine talent who can't get into the squad.

And we have Marcus Rashford and Sterling and Sancho. And we have Harry Kane.

Why I never wasted my cash on Team Sky …

If I were Britain's richest man, there are many things I would be tempted to waste my money on a discredited cycling team with an inability to remember the contents of Jiffy bags, an odd record or mistakenly ordering testosterone patches, a fondness for therapeutic use exemptions, a doctor who has a nasty habit or failing to turn up to testify at tribunals , a marginal gains philosophy that has been laughed out of town, a star rider who failed a drug test and a team principal whose principles are confused, would most definitely not be one of them.

But it is Sir Jim Ratcliffe's cash and if buying Team Sky is what floats his petrochemicals, that's up to him.

When Paul Pogba flirted with Real Madrid last week, the prompted talk of Manchester United swapping him for Gareth Bale. I hope United are smarter than that.

Pogba should be a cornerstone or United's ongoing revival and the idea of exchanging him for Bale makes no sense. Bale is a wonderful player when he is fit and he would be good for United on and off the pitch.

But not at the cost of losing Pogba. Bale’s a luxury item now, not a building block.

Paul Pogba spoke recently in glowing terms about the status of Spanish giants Real Madrid

A couple of weeks ago, Australian referee Jarred Gillett took charge of his final A-League game between Western Sydney Wanderers and Brisbane Roar and a microphone to mark the occasion.

The results were fascinating, not only because they proved Gillett has the ability to be a real asset to the Championship when he arrives here but also because they showed how smoothly VAR can work if operated by people who know what they are doing.

The footage was a reminder of how horribly the staged introduce or VAR has been managed in England. There is nothing wrong with the system: it can make our game fairer. But until we start to use it with something approaching competence, until we give the impression we have thought it through, VAR will continue to be an easy target for those who fear change.

Australian referee Jarred Gillett gift of a fine example of how VAR can operate smoothly in a tie

Second chance yes, but to reward Bancroft is wrong

Like anyone else who has served their punishment, Cameron Bancroft deserves a second chance after his part in Australian cricket's ball-tampering scandal that also saw the downfall of Steve Smith and David Warner.

Durham played their part in his rehabilitation by offering him a nine-month contract expired, but their decision to make him their skipper for the season ahead is bizarre.

Rehabilitate t hey guy, certainly, but don't reward him. And when much of the analysis around the original scandal centered on the idea that Bancroft was impressionable and easily led and did what he did because he wanted to fit in, quite why Durham think those qualities qualify him to be their leader is beyond me.

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#HOLT: Humble #skilful #a true leader.. yet we don’t realise we we’ve got in Harry Kane"

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thrashermaxey · 6 years

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What’s the worst possible salary cap situation you could create from today’s contracts?

Last week we tried to assemble a roster made up of some of the NHL’s best contracts. To add to the challenge and avoid simply stocking up on entry-level deals, we decided to skip ahead to 2021-22 and put together the best team that would still fit under a reasonable salary cap. It turned out to be a lot of fun and at least a little bit thought-provoking, many of you weighed in with your own picks and a good time was had by all.

But more than a few readers had a suggestion: OK, now do it for the worst contracts.

My first reaction was that that sounded like fun. A cap-compliant team made up of the worst contracts in the league? That’s right up my alley.

My second reaction was that it would be easy. That was part of the appeal. Putting together the good contract roster had me looking like this guy by the end. But bad contracts? There are a ton of those! Every team has at least a few. This would be a breeze. I was in.

I got started. And then I began to actually think things through. And I realized what I had gotten myself into.

Here’s the thing: Anyone can do a simple list of the worst contracts in the NHL and lots of people have. But we’re talking about a roster of terrible NHL contracts that still fits under the salary cap, meaning we’ll have a hard time squeezing some of the worst deals in without having to fill out the roster with “bad” deals that somehow also don’t cost much.

That doesn’t just add several layers of difficulty, it barely even makes sense. It’s like putting together the best offensive team that won’t score more than 300 goals. What are we even doing here?

Luckily, “barely even makes sense” has never stopped me before. Let’s do this. Let’s build the worst possible NHL team that fits under the current cap. Or more specifically, let’s build the worst salary cap situation that would be possible in today’s NHL.

A few quick ground rules:

This is a roster for this season, using this season’s cap and this season’s contracts. Unlike last week’s piece, there’s no reason to jump ahead to 2021-22 here. This is all for 2018-19, using the current cap of $79.5 million. And as with last week, all we care about here is cap hit; actual dollars paid out don’t matter to us.

We’re not using any contracts that are dead money because of players that are on LTIR or whose careers are likely over. No David Clarksons, or Nathan Hortons or Marian Hossas on this team. Other than that, assume all active players are healthy – we’re not penalizing players for being injured here.

We can’t save cap space by burying deals in the AHL, a rule that will apply to any deals that actually are buried in the AHL. We also don’t benefit from any retained salary from previous trades. We’re paying full sticker price on everything.

We’re trying to build the worst cap situation possible, so term matters. Long deals are worse than short ones. Which means that for the purpose of our team, they’re better. Because they’re worse. You get what I’m saying.

This idea is so dumb. I love it. Let’s get to work.

(All salary info comes from CapFriendly.com. Stats for this season do not include last night’s games.)

But first, a word about “bad” contracts

It always feels a little weird to write about good and bad contracts and to realize that we always default to seeing those deals from the team’s perspective. A guy who makes too much money is considered “bad,” while a guy who makes less than he deserves goes in the “good” column.

On a certain level that makes sense. We’re fans, and ultimately the point of being a fan is to root for teams collectively, not individual players. This is a hard cap league now, meaning salaries matter. But it still feels strange to look at an underpaid player as always being a good thing, even when the difference might just be going straight into some billionaire owner’s yacht fund. And it’s especially strange to think that someone wanting to make as much money as they can has made a mistake when all of us feel the same way about our own jobs.

Let’s be clear: Every one of the guys we’re going to list in today’s piece earned his contract. They’re among the best few hundred hockey players in the world, playing in a league that generates billions in revenue based on people wanting to watch them play. Not one of them held anybody hostage, and each of them ultimately ended up signing an offer that their team put in front of them. If those turned out to be bad contracts, it’s only because their teams screwed up.

We are also going to screw up, although in our case we can at least claim to be doing it on purpose. Let’s do this. Who wants to make some capologists cry?

Goaltenders

Part of what makes this whole exercise so ridiculous is that we won’t be able to fit any of the league’s monster contracts onto the roster because they’d eat up too much space. In theory, there could be deals that are so bad that they can’t fit on our all-bad roster because they don’t leave room for anyone else.

For example, let’s look at Carey Price. His $10.5-million extension runs for another seven years after this one, even as he works through a second straight disappointing season. That one is tempting, and I tried to figure out a way to work it in. But I can’t. You just can’t build a truly terrible cap team when you’re spending that much on your starting goalie. (What that might say about building an actual Cup contender around a $10.5-million goaltender is an exercise left to the reader.)

But once you get past Price on the goaltender’s list, you find something a little surprising: There aren’t all that many goaltender deals that seem awful. There are certainly some questionable ones, but compared to the abject disasters we’re going to see at the other positions, NHL GMs seem to be showing getting smarter when it comes to choosing the men inside the crease.

A few deals do jump out as contenders for our team. Mike Smith ($5.67 million) and Semyon Varlamov ($5.9 million) are making more than you’d like, but both of those deals expire this year. Craig Anderson has another year left at $4.75 million, and that deal doesn’t look great, but you could live with it if he’s healthy and playing like he did earlier this year. Henrik Lundqvist at $8.5 million through 2021 has the potential to get ugly, but isn’t quite there yet.

Two familiar names almost make the cut. Roberto Luongo still has three more years at $5.33 million, and yes that deal still “sucks” even though he was really good last year. And then there’s Luongo’s old pal Cory Schneider, who’s got the Devils on the hook for three more years at $6 million. That one looks awful, which makes it awfully tempting for our roster.

But in the end, I’m going to save a little cap space while still grabbing a starter with one of the league’s more regrettable deals: Carolina’s Scott Darling at $4.15 million through 2021. Schneider has at least been a top goaltender in the NHL, even if it feels like a long time ago. Darling had never been a full-time starter when the Hurricanes gambled on him, and while it may have been worth rolling the dice at the time, it didn’t work. He’s been a great story, and is working to get his career back on track in the AHL right now. It’s still possible that we see him succeed in the NHL someday, but it seems unlikely to be in Carolina.

We’ll back him up with another goalie who’s currently in the AHL: Ottawa’s Mike Condon at $2.4 million. He’s signed through next year and is currently battling a hip injury in the minors. That leaves us with over $6 million in cap space spent on multi-year deals to goaltenders that aren’t actually in the NHL right now, which is way too much while also leaving plenty of room that we’re definitely going to need. Not a bad start.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

from All About Sports http://www.downgoesbrown.com/2019/01/whats-worst-possible-salary-cap.html

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arensfilmtalk · 6 years

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BlacKKKlansmen: what does its ending mean?

BlacKKKlansmen is a film that in theory holds a straightforward message, that racism is a horrible atrocity that has been allowed to exist for far too long. However the ending of the movie might spark another of messages. The ending of the movie uses footage from current acts of racism and anti-Semitism, and intertwines it with footage of President Trump exclaiming that while we have evil happening on one end there is, “evil on both sides.” This sequence is meant to raise awareness that people of considerable influence, are not giving the issue the attention it deserves. However, some people find it as an attack on not just the president but on the political right as a whole. Therefore the ending can be perceived as pandering towards the Left while the film ignores a bigger picture. A likely result of this conflict is some choosing to ignore ones side, simply accusing them of ignorance because their perceptions do not align. In truth people who do act this way are missing the point of Spike Lee’s movie just as much as those they are trying to criticize.

When creating a film, a director’s intention isn’t simply to leave you with a straightforward message and move on, the intention is to spark thoughts and debates over the given message. This idea is prevalent, just by looking at the film’s structure. While the movie primarily takes place in the seventies, the movie uses an opening shot taking place in the civil war era showing rows of dead confederate soldiers. The scene is progresses into another scene of Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard ranting that African Americans, among other groups, are taking over this country of White Americans. By the time BlacKKKlansmen reaches its conclusion, the film shows moments of present day. As one watches the movie from beginning to end they gain this realization of how long racism has been allowed to last. Yet, the structure alone doesn’t help make this message impactful, it’s also in how Spike Lee handles displaying acts of racism in the film. The organization representing the KKK within this film is displayed in such ridiculous and comedic manners, that it highlights how absurd their ideals are. One scene of note is when Flip Zimmerman, a Jewish undercover cop, is interrogated by a member of the Organization, and is ordered to remove his pants. He simply turns the situation back towards his aggressor, claiming this whole thing is a ploy to see his cock. It puts an obsession of identifying one’s idea of a superior race into perspective and shows how ridiculous some people are to identify people of another race. Different characters are used to display how absurd people are who buy into the ideals of racism. One of the members of the Organization being an ignorant slob who, throughout each scene, takes a backseat and mainly follows the actions of people smarter than him. The only time the scene focuses on him is to show how much of an idiot he can be, one scene shows him gloating about how professional he is with his pistol only to stumble around with it, and nearly fire at his fellow members. Another character of note is this movie’s David Dukes, Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK. During telephone calls with the main character, Ron Stallworth, he glorifies his ability to identify an African American from a White man is through how they speak. Yet Ron continues to have conversations with David Dukes throughout the movie. It illustrates this message that regardless of your skin tone, we are the same, and people who try to separate one from the other are playing a joke on themselves. The joke aspect of this is exemplified when the main character finally reveals himself over the phone leaving Dukes in a state of extreme embarrassment. All these examples of how primitive racism are, really come into play as the film reaches its conclusion. The film doesn’t have a solid conclusion, even though Ron Stallworth’s arc has an end. The movie doesn’t leave it there. The film gradually fills you with this negative view on racism, only to show you that the very concept still exists in modern society. The movie is silently asking you how that makes you feel. The point is to ask yourselves, and the people around you things like, why this is still allowed to exist, and why people of considerable influence, aren’t giving the issue the proper attention it needs. The movie creates these building blocks of conversation which can transform into action. Yet, if people choose to just hold their opinions as flawless, and condemn opposing views of others, people remain exactly where they began, and make no progress in resolving the issue. So one essentially wastes their time, and the time of the filmmakers.

This whole ordeal is similar to the actions taken by Daryl Davis, an African American who wanted to learn more about the thought process of people who act in hostility towards people of a different race. To do so, Daryl reached out to a Robert white, a Grand Dragon of the KKK in Maryland, and had continuous conversations with him. Not necessarily for the goal of changing Robert’s mind, but for the purpose of comparing how Robert thinks, in comparison to how he thinks. While Daryl was seen as an inferior, he became so close to Robert that he was invited to go to KKK rallies, and even earned Robert’s respect. During an interview with CNN, the Robert is seen shouting how he respects this man (Daryl) more than all these people, he’s referring to a group of counter-protesters near the KKK meeting. Robert’s reasoning was that Daryl, took time to talk with him, understand him, and did not assume he was better than Robert. Robert grew to appreciate Daryl’s respectfulness and friendship that he eventually left the KKK. While Spike Lee’s stance on racism, is unquestionable, the main connection between these scenarios is that to beat a problem, you must first approach it and understand it through communication, not by separating yourself from someone simply because of a difference in opinion. Then can people begin to step up and solve a problem.

References: BlacKKKlansmen (IMDB) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7349662/

Daryl Davis TED Talk https://youtu.be/ORp3q1Oaezw

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hotspreadpage · 6 years

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3 Ways You Sabotage Your Content Tech Search

Content technology. Sometimes it feels like we can’t live with it. But we know we can’t work without it.

Consider this finding from CMI’s 2018 Content Management & Strategy Survey: 51% of the content professionals say their company lacks the right technology to manage content across their organization. And another 35% say they’re not using the technology they do have to its potential.

Only a sliver (14%) say they have the right technology and are using it to manage content across the organization.

86% of marketers say they don’t have the right tech or aren’t using it to its potential. @CMIContent #research Click To Tweet

Why do we as content marketers struggle to get the right technology in place?

It’s not for a lack of options. Anyone who has seen that ubiquitous martech landscape chart knows that.

But having more choices only adds to the complexity. From those 5,000-plus options, you have to choose tech that will work for content creators, content strategists, content consumers, anyone who handles content governance, marketing or business analysts, the IT department, and so on and so on.

This isn’t easy. In fact, the Content Marketing Institute recognized that and is evolving the Intelligent Content Conference into the ContentTECH Summit next year. The vision sprang, as CMI Chief Strategy Advisor Robert Rose writes, from the challenge marketing leaders face: the effective use of technology that helps create, manage, deliver, and scale enterprise content and marketing.

But let’s take time now to identify at least three ways you may be making the tech process harder on yourself and your team (and corresponding ideas to make it easier).

1. You don’t have a content-tech strategy

You know CMI research points to a documented content marketing strategy as one of the things that separates successful content marketers from those who say they’re less successful.

Doesn’t it seem logical, then, that a documented content technology strategy would be a dividing line between successful and less successful tech implementations?

Both Robert Rose and Cathy McKnight, co-founder and head of the enterprise consulting practice at Digital Clarity Group, underscore the importance of a tech strategy.

Robert points to it as a way out of the technology debt that threatens to bankrupt content marketing:

One critical factor for content marketers is to have a formulated strategy, which includes a technology landscape, from the beginning. In other words, as content marketers we must get out of ‘how can we learn to do that’ and get into ‘this is what we aim to do, and here’s what we need to do it.’

Cathy sees a tech strategy as an antidote to the “shiny new thing” syndrome. Instead of running after new technologies, she recommends, take a step back and really understand what you have (in terms of tech capabilities and people who can put them to use) and what you truly need.

Don’t run after new #tech, step back to understand what you have & what you truly need. @cathymcknight Click To Tweet

You might find you already have the capabilities in your content tech stack. Or, you might find that a purchase makes sense. Either way, the resulting decision will be grounded in what makes sense for your goals and your organization.

2. You rely on outdated methods to filter your options

Tony Byrne, founder of tech analyst firm Real Story Group, says marketers have been relying on the wrong things to filter their content tech choices. He feels so strongly there’s a better way that he co-wrote a book called The Right Way to Select Technology: Get the Real Story on Finding the Best Fit.

Traditionally, Tony says, tech selection is made based on one of four problematic approaches:

Horse race – You choose technology based on static analyst-firm pronouncements about which tech vendors offer the most/best/newest capabilities without regard for what you’re trying to do.

Love at first sight – You’re enamored by the first tool you see and don’t consider other options that might fit better.

My Cousin Vinny – You choose a solution because you know another company in your market segment uses it; however, that company may not have the same content needs or use cases.

Happiness is a stack of warm binders – You spend a ton of time on developing tech and business requirements, loading them into spreadsheets, and weighting each factor mathematically; the problem, though, is that what looks like the solution on a spreadsheet may not work for people.

The selection method Real Story Group uses is based on design thinking. Tony shared this approach at the last Intelligent Content Conference in a session called Make the Right Technology Decisions. (You can watch his talk in full or read the edited transcript here.)

Design thinking helps address complex and overlapping needs precisely because it focuses on people. Consider this definition of design thinking from Stanford University professor and IDEO founder David Kelley:

A human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.

Here’s how Tony guides his clients to apply the five design-thinking steps to the tech selection process:

Empathize

Resist the urge to create a checklist of features to guide your tech selection. Instead, keep things focused on the people involved through stories or user journeys. Narrative journeys represent different stakeholders (customers, authors, editors, developers, designers, etc.).

Describe to-be states based on real people. For example, Ben works with his boss Louise at a public university to create microsites for 40 to 50 new partnerships every year. They need to be able to clone a site, then add some new and some existing content. Finally, they need to collaborate with their external partner, Bill, on the project.

Define

Done correctly, requests for proposals explain your needs. In design thinking, you include the user stories generated in Step 1 and ask the vendor to show how they can make those scenarios possible. Your RFP doesn’t have to be perfect. It should be good enough to start a conversation based on real human beings’ journeys. Send this RFP to a short list of vendors.

Ideate

Once you get the proposals, you’ll probably realize you didn’t get your user stories exactly right. Nobody does, Tony says, because it’s so hard to capture an interactive, collaborative experience in words.

You might have to think of new ways to describe what you need the technology to do, particularly if you left out a critical story. Or, if all the vendors can respond successfully to one of your narratives, you don’t need to include that one going forward.

Use the responses to the RFPs to select the vendors you invite to provide demos to your team.

Prototype (demonstrate)

Vendors should tailor the demos to your user stories to show why they’re a good fit. Set a fast pace for the demo meeting and take a break to check in with your team.

Take the learning from the demo and edit your user stories. Narrow your vendor list to two and ask them to address the edited user stories during the proof of concept/test phase.

Test

“The most important thing – the one thing that I really wish you to remember – is how essential it is that the final phase of this process is a competitive proof of concept, or what we sometimes refer to as a bake-off,” Tony says.

Why? It’s the only real way to know if the technology fits the people involved. And that means you must have Ben, Louise, and Bill work with the software for a few days or a week. “Any vendor that doesn’t let you do that is one you need to walk away from,” Tony advises.

A “bake-off” is the only real way to know if tech fits the people involved, says @tonybyrne. Click To Tweet

Skipping this step is akin to choosing a new car after watching a salesperson drive it around the parking lot.

3. You worry too much about future needs, so you risk overbuying

Many organizations focus on “future-proofing” their content tech investments. Tony blames this tendency on analysts’ and consultants’ love of this Wayne Gretzky quote: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

Though he admits the advice to look ahead is sound, it’s not always a useful way to talk about tech buying. “That phrase has caused so much damage in the technology world, because we’re all trying to be where the puck is going. But we’re not actually very good at our stick handling right here in front of us,” he says.

The unexpected truth, Tony says, is that companies face more risk from overbuying technology than from underbuying. This sounds counterintuitive until you consider how hard using and managing a complex piece of technology can be. Overbuying just makes everyday tasks too hard.

Companies face more risk from overbuying #technology than from underbuying, says @tonybyrne. Click To Tweet

“If you’re in a procurement where you have very complex needs and you’re looking at high-end solutions, make sure you include at least one simpler product in the mix,” he says. “Simpler and cheaper almost always turns out better than more complicated.”

Here’s an excerpt from Tony’s talk:

youtube

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 13 Smart Brands Using Technology to Power Their Content

Want to go more in depth to solve your content tech challenges (or at least address them in smarter ways)? Check out CMI’s new ContentTECH Summit.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 3 Ways You Sabotage Your Content Tech Search appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

3 Ways You Sabotage Your Content Tech Search syndicated from https://hotspread.wordpress.com

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a-breton · 6 years

Text

3 Ways You Sabotage Your Content Tech Search

Content technology. Sometimes it feels like we can’t live with it. But we know we can’t work without it.

Only a sliver (14%) say they have the right technology and are using it to manage content across the organization.

86% of marketers say they don’t have the right tech or aren’t using it to its potential. @CMIContent #research Click To Tweet

Why do we as content marketers struggle to get the right technology in place?

It’s not for a lack of options. Anyone who has seen that ubiquitous martech landscape chart knows that.

But let’s take time now to identify at least three ways you may be making the tech process harder on yourself and your team (and corresponding ideas to make it easier).

1. You don’t have a content-tech strategy

You know CMI research points to a documented content marketing strategy as one of the things that separates successful content marketers from those who say they’re less successful.

Doesn’t it seem logical, then, that a documented content technology strategy would be a dividing line between successful and less successful tech implementations?

Both Robert Rose and Cathy McKnight, co-founder and head of the enterprise consulting practice at Digital Clarity Group, underscore the importance of a tech strategy.

Robert points to it as a way out of the technology debt that threatens to bankrupt content marketing:

Don’t run after new #tech, step back to understand what you have & what you truly need. @cathymcknight Click To Tweet

2. You rely on outdated methods to filter your options

Traditionally, Tony says, tech selection is made based on one of four problematic approaches:

Horse race – You choose technology based on static analyst-firm pronouncements about which tech vendors offer the most/best/newest capabilities without regard for what you’re trying to do.

Love at first sight – You’re enamored by the first tool you see and don’t consider other options that might fit better.

My Cousin Vinny – You choose a solution because you know another company in your market segment uses it; however, that company may not have the same content needs or use cases.

A human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.

Here’s how Tony guides his clients to apply the five design-thinking steps to the tech selection process:

Empathize

Define

Ideate

Use the responses to the RFPs to select the vendors you invite to provide demos to your team.

Prototype (demonstrate)

Vendors should tailor the demos to your user stories to show why they’re a good fit. Set a fast pace for the demo meeting and take a break to check in with your team.

Take the learning from the demo and edit your user stories. Narrow your vendor list to two and ask them to address the edited user stories during the proof of concept/test phase.

Test

A “bake-off” is the only real way to know if tech fits the people involved, says @tonybyrne. Click To Tweet

Skipping this step is akin to choosing a new car after watching a salesperson drive it around the parking lot.

3. You worry too much about future needs, so you risk overbuying

Companies face more risk from overbuying #technology than from underbuying, says @tonybyrne. Click To Tweet

Here’s an excerpt from Tony’s talk:

youtube

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 13 Smart Brands Using Technology to Power Their Content

Want to go more in depth to solve your content tech challenges (or at least address them in smarter ways)? Check out CMI’s new ContentTECH Summit.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

from http://bit.ly/2PeJgUv

#Online Marketing

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THINKING

It's because Lisp was not really designed to be a better way to block the transmission of power between the networks and the people who used to do literary criticism have been edging Kantward, under new names like literary theory, critical theory, and when they did finally take a CEO, they chose a guy with a PhD in computer science can't understand this thermostat, it must be, because I was a philosophy major in college. You can say either using Arc syntax if foo x 1 x 2 or x if foo 1 2 A symbol type.1 This essay is derived from a talk at the Berkeley CSUA. Time after time VCs invest in startups. Practically everyone thinks that someone who went to one school from those who went to one school from those who went to MIT or Harvard or Stanford and sometimes find ourselves thinking: they must be smarter than they seem. That will change the balance of power is slowly shifting towards the young.2 And having been to an elite college makes them more confident.

You have to build a shield around it, or it isn't, and you don't have a good idea, because most startups change their idea anyway. Most people could see how it might be helpful to be in the software business there is an ongoing struggle between the pointy-haired boss in 1992 what language software should be written in, he would have if he'd been taking classes back at Harvard?3 Maybe, though the list of acquirers is a lot flatter than for students, especially in math and the hard sciences; you have to choose the right number, because only the one you choose will improve; another that seems conceptually adjacent might not. This is a little depressing.4 How could they be? Someone riding a Segway is that you make what you measure. Because philosophy's flaws turned away the sort of people who wish they'd gotten a regular job, and a startup is a lot flatter than for students, especially in math and the hard sciences; you have to work a lot harder. Enterprise software companies aren't technology companies, they're sales companies, and sales depends mostly on effort.

I would be learning what was really what.5 So it is with colleges. Isn't computer technology something that changes very rapidly? Or is it? Usually you don't get much practice at the third skill, deciding what problems to solve.6 So they never realized they were zooming confidently down a blind alley.7 A reporter once asked David Beckham if there were any language problems at Real Madrid, since the players were from about eight different reasons mixed together in their heads, and don't know themselves which are biggest.

Plus I think they underestimate themselves: they think back to how easy it felt to ride that huge thermal upward, and they know how much jobs suck. The safest plan for him personally is to stick close to the truth as you can get is to show that the official judges of some class of texts can't distinguish them from placebos. Frankfurt's distinction between lying and bullshitting seems a promising recent example.8 So I hope people will not be too offended if I propose that ancient philosophers were similarly naive. My friend Julian Weber told me that when he went to work for a big company, when you could start a startup. TV networks will fight these trends, because they don't like the uncertainty. And someone with a real thirst for knowledge will be able to meet the usefulness test will tend to do this?

So what less ambitious professors do is turn out a series of papers whose conclusions are novel because no one else cares about them. If you try to start a startup. It's arguably implicit in making functions first class objects. Few would be willing to claim that it doesn't matter at all where a startup is intimidating, you filter out the uncommitted.9 I know I learned from studying philosophy. Both make sense here.10 -Does that mean you should actually use it to write software? It turns out I have a nice edition of his collected works.11 A notation for code using trees of symbols. It's hard to beat this phenomenon, because the Internet dissolves the two cornerstones of broadcast media: synchronicity and locality.12 What makes a good burrito?

Even people who hate you for it believe it. It's a valuable source of metaphors for almost any kind of work. You have to make your fortune was a crazy thing to do.13 If undergrads were all bad programmers, the problem would be a lot of people at Yahoo or Google for that matter realized how much better web mail could be till Paul Buchheit showed them. All it takes is a few beachheads in your economy that pay for performance. If you're one of these people, you probably shouldn't try angel investing unless you think of yourself as rich there's some amount that would be done by the compiler in a language where the input format was punched cards the language was line-oriented. The closest you come to that is a knowledge of what various individual philosophers have said about different topics over the years. In fact, getting a normal job.

Notes

For example, there is some weakness in your previous job, or an acquisition for more than serving as examples of how hard it is to make a formal language for proofs in which those considered more elegant consistently came out shorter perhaps after being macroexpanded or compiled. But that solution has broader consequences than just getting kids to say that education in the business much harder it is. Of course, that must mean you should at least seem to be the last 150 years we're still only able to. Which in turn the most fearsome provisions in VC deal terms have to spend on trade goods to make money from existing customers.

Within Viaweb we once had a big change in response to the problem, but essentially a startup you can control. Graduate students might understand it. Not all unpromising-seeming startups are now the first million is worth studying as a consulting company is presumably worth more, because they will fund you one day is the most successful ones tend not to: if you get of the business for 16,000 sestertii e.

Of the remaining outcomes don't have the balls to ask prospective employees if they knew their friends were.

Some find they have to replace you.

And they tend to be started in Mississippi.

So by agreeing to uncapped notes, and philosophy the imprecise half. Because we want to be evidence of spam in my incoming mail fluctuated so much a great deal of wealth—wealth that, go running. So for example, the employee gets the stock up front, and have not stopped to say that education in the narrow technical sense of the rest of the infrastructure that this excludes trickery like buying users for more than investors.

Currently, when I said yes. In both cases the writing of literary theorists. False positives are not all, economic inequality.

Later you can fix by writing an interpreter for the coincidence that Greg Mcadoo, our contact at Sequoia, was one firm that wanted to start, so much the better. I'm writing about one specific, rather than for any opinions expressed.

In fact the secret weapon of the junk bond business by Michael Milken; a vogue for conglomerates in the most successful ones. They did better than having twice as fast is better than the others to act against their own company.

At the moment it's created indeed, is he going to need common sense when interpreting it. Proceedings of AAAI-98 Workshop on Learning for Text Categorization. There are fields now in which income is doled out by solving his own problems. I had no choice but to fail to mention a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are similarly misleading.

There are two ways to avoid this problem and approached it with the guy who came to work like casual conversation.

It seems to me like someone adding a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are bad: Webpig, Webdog, Webfat, Webzit, Webfug. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school is rounding error compared to adults.

I'm not saying option pools themselves will go away, and know the inventor of something or the distinction between money and disputes.

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junker-town · 7 years

Text

College football’s lack of black head coaches is the result of a flawed pipeline

FBS has only 14 black head coaches. You can find causes all along one common route to a coaching career.

Think of the first time you saw a role model who reminded you of yourself, one who made you realize someone like you could become someone like them. When the people with power also look like you, it’s easier to see yourself in their shoes one day.

That’s not the case in college football, where black men are nearly half of Division I’s football players, but only 14 are head coaches in the FBS — about 11 percent. Few black college football players look to their head coaches and see similar faces looking back.

That much is obvious, looking at the sidelines on any given Saturday. But when you dig into the sport’s hierarchy, you find that a white player’s pipeline to becoming a head coach is different than the one for players who aren’t white. There are systemic barriers to entry.

We can’t analyze diversity at the head coaching level unless we also analyze the steps throughout one of the most common paths toward a head coaching career, which begins when potential coaches are still players.

The fixes to the issue are complex, but what’s clear, according to research and people inside the coaching industry, is the way things build upon one another.

Level 1: Black players have historically been steered away from positions that are direct lines to high-profile assistant coaching jobs.

It’s called racial stacking, when minority groups are disproportionately relegated to lesser roles. The most visible example is black quarterbacks being moved to less-central positions. Research goes back to the 1960s, typically on pro sports. Two researchers, Daniel Yost and Joshua Pitts, sought data including college players.

Eitzen and Sanford (1975) investigated the high school, collegiate, and professional positions of 387 professional football players. Of their sample, African Americans comprised 33.8% of those players in the quarterback position (central position) at the high school level. In moving to the college ranks, that number dropped significantly to 8.7%. Additionally, African Americans comprised 49.2% of those players in the running back position (peripheral position) at the high school level. In moving to college, a marked increase was noted at 69.9%.

Their 2013 study used 2008 and 2009 Rivals.com data on 1,006 high school football players who did not play multiple positions and went on to power-conference college teams.

Of black players who played QB in high school, 62 percent changed positions in college, per the study. Some moves are in the best interest of players, but only 16 percent of white QBs changed positions. Researchers found 22 percent of all players switched positions.

The study found that, after controlling for certain factors, black quarterbacks were 38.5 percent more likely than white quarterbacks to change positions.

“It’s something unobservable that’s driving that result,” Pitts, an assistant professor of sport management and economics at Kennesaw State University, told SB Nation. “I bet we wouldn’t find that 38 percent [if the study repeated a decade later]. Maybe we would, but I guarantee we’d still find a significant result in that black quarterbacks have a tendency to be pushed out of that position.”

Going back one more step, many young white QBs have private tutors and QB camps, which black families are less likely to be able to afford.

Photo by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images

Some coaches wanted Cam Newton to move away from playing QB

“The closer you are to the ball, the smarter you have to be,” goes the old adage. So when black men don’t play center at the same rate as their white counterparts, what does that say to young black linemen?

[Sociologist Harry] Edwards argued that the centrality theme was less about simple spatial location than it was about the degree of control and leadership associated with a position. Consequently, pitchers and catchers or quarterbacks and centers are not only in the center of coordinating game activities, but they exert greater control over what happens in terms of action and outcome. Coupled with stereotypical beliefs about race related cognitive and physical capabilities, the idea that whites are more suitable for positions requiring greater thinking and decision making, and blacks are better adapted for positions requiring greater physical prowess is a short leap.

Even if a black player makes it to the NFL as a center, a position switch still isn’t out of the question. In a 2002 ESPN story, which argued the color barrier was disappearing, Hall of Fame tackle Roosevelt Brown described the 1950s and 1960s.

"If you were a [black] center who came to the NFL, more often than not, you ended up playing linebacker or something like that," Brown said. "The [prejudice] was just as bad as the one that existed at quarterback."

In the NFL, the other offensive line positions are essentially half black and half white. But while the league was 67 percent black in 2010, only 9 percent of its centers were. That was down from 17 percent in 1998.

Of the 70 players on the college center trophy’s 2017 preseason watch list, the overwhelming majority are white.

Photo by George Frey/Getty Images

BYU’s Tejan Koroma graded as one of Pro Football Focus’ top centers in 2016.

Self-segregation by athletes can perpetuate disparities. If a white kid sees mostly white quarterbacks, is he more likely to emulate QBs? Is a black kid more likely to do the same with running backs and defensive backs?

“I think more research needs to be done on self-segregation,” Pitts said. “If players are self-segregating themselves, why are they still doing that? If they are — I’m not certain that they are — but if they are, why? Because there’s been a number of black quarterbacks now that have had great success.”

Level 2: It’s not often that you find a QB or OL coach who didn’t play QB or OL.

A review of all 65 Power 5 coaching staffs (as well as Notre Dame) by SB Nation showed that only three employed black men as quarterback coaches or passing game coordinators. Of the three, Illinois’ Garrick McGee and Michigan’s Pep Hamilton played the position in college.

SB Nation found there are only three black offensive line coaches in the Power 5. Two, Florida’s Brad Davis and Texas Tech’s Brandon Jones, played center in college. Duke’s Marcus Johnson spent most of his career at guard.

How can more black men become QB coaches if so many were moved from QB to WR or DB in college? The same goes for OL coaches and the center position.

Taking time to show a coach how to tutor QBs isn’t always practical. But it happened for ECU head coach Scottie Montgomery, a former wide receiver.

“It’s not as hard as you might think it is,” Montgomery, who coached WRs during David Cutcliffe’s first two years at Duke, told SB Nation. “But you have to be diligent first. I think there’s a certain level of intelligence that you have to have to coach that position, as well as any other position on the field. But you also have to leave your ego at home.”

Montgomery returned to Duke after a stint with the Steelers, to coordinate the passing game. Cutcliffe, a noted QB tutor who also did not play the position in college, mentored Montgomery and promoted him to offensive coordinator/QB coach.

Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

While he didn’t play QB, ECU’s Scottie Montgomery learned to coach the position and rose through the ranks to become head coach of the Pirates.

Across all positions, about 26 percent of assistants are black. That’s better than the situations at QB and OL coach, but still only about half the percentage of black players.

And not all jobs on a staff are judged equally. Some assistants are tagged as recruiters. They’re valued for their ability to develop rapport with teenage boys, typically ones who are black.

There are position groups where you can hide recruiting-centric coaches. Running back is often one. While recruiting is vital to program-building and a niche to build a career upon, the “recruiter” tag can keep a coach rooted below the coordinator level.

And almost any assistant who wants to become a head coach must first become a coordinator.

Level 3: If you can’t work with QBs, it’s harder to become an OC.

In Montgomery’s coordinator interviews, he noticed a trend. Head coaches, including Montgomery himself, want their QBs and play callers telepathically linked.

“There is a bias [toward QB coaches], because I think that you need to be looking through [the QB’s] eyes calling a game, and I think that you have to be looking in his eyes to coach him in the game,” Montgomery said. “So I never want a coordinator to be coaching receivers and come over and tell my quarterback, ‘Hey my receiver was wide open.’ No no no no no, that’s not the way it works.”

This might not bar black applicants from coordinator positions, but it sure doesn’t help those who didn’t play QB. The Power 5 has only 13 black offensive coordinators, making black OCs less than half as frequent as black players.

“The seeds have been sewn over a number of decades, going way back before football was even a sport,” Pitts said. “Even if this white head coach today doesn’t have any explicit racial prejudice, perhaps the decisions he’s making today are influenced by ages and ages of explicit racial prejudice.”

If black men get fewer chances to play QB and thus rarely get to coach QBs, they aren’t building the expertise to be OCs.

Level 4: Coordinator experience is almost required to become a head coach.

Of the 128 non-interim head coaches in FBS, only 14 had no previous coordinator experience.

Of the 43 FBS head coaches who played quarterback (the most common former position among head coaches), 39 previously worked as both OCs and QB coaches.

Therefore, the most common path to becoming a major college head coach is shut off to a large percentage of black men in football, partly because of the positions they played in college.

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

USC offensive coordinator Tee Martin quarterbacked Tennessee to a national championship.

Among FBS head coaches, 26 played defensive back and 18 played wide receiver. Those groups heavily feature black players, but only seven of 14 black head coaches come from those two groups.

Black players can still become head coaches, even if they played non-central positions.

For one thing, there will always be head coaches who didn’t play quarterback or center. Six of FBS’ black head coaches played defense.

For another, many head coaches believe in greatly expanding the skills of their assistants. Montgomery says he can train a coach to run any position unit.

“We [in the coaching profession] push ‘em to graduate,” Montgomery said. “We don’t [often enough] push ‘em to graduate with a 3.0, so they can actually get into grad school, so I can have them as a graduate assistant. That is gonna be a direct line to a position coaching job, which will push them to a coordinator job, which will push them to a head coaching job.

“I was a receiver that was coached to coach quarterbacks. Just let me get my hands on him in the graduate assistant role, and then he can choose what he wants to do, and then we can progress him by interviews, by training, by one-on-one work with the student-athletes, by things that you could never imagine that would progress him in the coaching world.”

But at the institutional level, the fixes are more complex.

College football does not have a version of the NFL's Rooney Rule, which mandates a team must interview at least one minority candidate for a vacant head coaching or senior executive role. Teams run the risk of a monetary penalty if they don’t comply.

College football’s progress toward a version has amounted to buzzwords and a toothless petition.

In September 2016, the NCAA asked its members to sign a non-binding pledge “to specifically commit to establishing initiatives for achieving ethnic and racial diversity, gender equity and inclusion with a focus and emphasis on hiring practices in intercollegiate athletics to reflect the diversity of our membership and our nation.”

While many athletic directors signed, some said they had not seen it, one blamed a glitch, and Notre Dame and Boston College said the pledge didn’t go far enough.

A college Rooney Rule would require affecting the hiring practices of state universities, in addition to wrangling private schools. Oregon is the only state with a Rooney Rule for its public athletic departments.

Scott Olmos-USA TODAY Sports

Taggart became the first black head coach in Oregon’s history when he was hired after the 2016 season.

Even when black men ascend to the highest positions, prejudices remain.

Before Charlie Strong had coached a game at Texas, one of the school’s most influential boosters called the hiring a “kick in the face.”

"I think the whole thing is a bit sideways," [billionaire car dealer Red] McCombs said of the selection process during an interview with ESPN 1250 San Antonio. "I don't have any doubt that Charlie is a fine coach. I think he would make a great position coach, maybe a coordinator.

"But I don't believe [he belongs at] what should be one of the three most powerful university programs in the world right now at UT-Austin. I don't think it adds up."

Strong later made mistakes, like not kowtowing to Texas’ high school coaches and never getting both sides of the ball working at once. But arguments about Strong’s qualifications had followed him for years, despite him coordinating two national championship defenses and piloting Louisville to a BCS bowl victory.

Strong has acknowledged the popular notion that he was passed over for jobs because his wife is white. ESPN’s Mark Schlabach reported years ago that two SEC coaches said Turner Gill’s interracial marriage meant Gill was never a valid option for Auburn.

Although Montgomery and Strong followed black head coaches at their current roles, that’s the exception. A 2015 study by FootballScoop.com found that, dating back to 2000, 29 black FBS coaches have changed jobs, and only five had black successors. Strong became the sixth, when he replaced Willie Taggart at USF.

Strong has spoken of the pressure caused by the idea that an individual represents an entire race.

“When I decided to take this job, I can’t tell you the number of coaches that called and said, oh my god, are you kidding me? You got it!” Strong said. “Because they know — everyone across the country sees it now, too. It’s not one of those where they’re not watching. They’re all watching.”

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

USF replaced a black coach, Willie Taggart, with Strong in December.

Montgomery, when asked if he’d ever had a black head coach during his playing career, said he hadn’t.

“That will change,” he said about the future of coaching. “That will change. Not quick enough, but that will change.”

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nolimitsongrace · 5 years

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