#I mean technically this applies to them as godfathers in general | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

templarhalo · 5 years ago

Text

Templarhalo reviews Birds of Prey. (It’s pretty fantabulous)

HERE BE SPOILERS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Ok without this movie, I would have not been a Cassandra Cain fan. I would have not four, yes four ongoing fics with her as the main character. I would not be emotionally and financially invested in the DC cinematic universe or the comics side of things.

Which baffles me because this movie is perfect in almost every aspect,... Except how they treated Cassandra Cain. Which is a fucking shame because her actress is perfect, her chemistry and relationship with Harley is perfect, and the idea of Cass growing up as this pickpocket foster kid, taken in by Harley is unconventional, but I fucking love it.

Here’s a brief summary. After breaking up with the Joker Harley Quinn has to make her own way as the strong, badass, indepent woman we all know she is, while dealing with the fact that without Mistah J’s fell reputation as his significant other to shield her, a lot of people want her raped, tortured, killed and left for the crows… Not necessarily in that order.

To get these people off her back and save her own skin, from one of them, the infamous Black Mask. Harley agrees to recover the Bertinelli Diamond, a diamond encoded with the info for a source of 30 million dollars, Black Mask needs to fiance his take over of Gotham. Which was pickpocketed from one of his associates by our Lady and savior Cass.

The problem is, Cass kind of ate it( (I shit you not) and Black Mask’s guys would rather cut it out of her than wait for the poor kid to take a dump Not to mention Detective tReene Montoya (played by her Gotham Actress, which would have been a nice bit of world building if Gotham was actually in the movie continuity) building a case against Black Mask, with the aid of Black Canary Plus Huntress is indirectly gunning for him and Harley in her own quest for revenge. All these plot points converge into a very satisfying climax and fight scene with a somewhat emotionally satisfying ending.

From a technical standpoint this film is a spectacle. Gotham in the day is colorful but rundown, with markets, suave evil bad guy clubs, dilapidated Chinese restaurants and abandoned amusement parks. The fight scenes are AMAZING with a wonderful tension and energy that makes them incredibly visualising satisfying. Everything flows, the ladies move with an enthralling grace that makes them breaking bones, crushing legs,and tearing through people visceral and heartstopping. (And arousing. Like goddamn Jurnee Smollett-Bell could kill me with her legs and I’d thank her)

The problem, is none of this applies to Cass, and this is the films major flaw besides how short it is. (One hour and forty five minutes). If you had problems with how Harley was handled in Suicide Squad, the movie fixes it. Black Canary gets a short but satisfying emotional arc that feels natural. She goes from a cynical, lethargic woman, content to be Black Masks “Little Bird”; A singer at his club, driver and symbol of his power/dominance over other women until her own conscience kicks in at Harley and Cass’ predicament. Huntress also has a short but satisfying arc in which she gets her vengeance on the people who murdered her family and clearly finds a new one to fill the hole in her life, in the form of the Birds. Reene and her portrayal is a love letter to the 80s cop/hard boiled detectives, a pure, simultaneously complicated/uncomplicated woman seeking to do good for Gotham.

But Cass… Doesn’t feel like Cass and is criminally underutilized except as a walking mcguffin by dint of eating the Mcguffin. She’s introduced to us a snarky tween, stuck in a cycle of shitty foster homes and a pickpocket to get by. And that’s it. T

here are moments where you think she'll get a cool fight scene. Moments where you think she’ll have an emotional heart to heart with Harley, moments where you think…she’ll do something besides run from the bad guys and get saved by the Birds of Prey/Her four moms.

In the end she drives into the sunset with Harley and Bruce the Hyena, but it doesn’t feel earned, satisfying as the scene is. There is nothing implying or hinting she’s the daughter of two of the deadliest assassins in the DC universe, nothing about her running away from David Cain, nothing on her learning disabilities/selective mutism and NOTHING, setting her up to be adopted by Batman and become Batgirl

And this is a fucking shame, because Ella Jay Basco has a real chemistry with Margert and the rest of the cast. She’s adorable, funny, snarky and wonderful as Cass. She brings energy and spunk and I would cut off my left hand, to see her act as Cassandra Cain, not this generic punk kid with the name.

And I feel like this is a HUGE problem because the movie sets up this Mother/daughter relationship, with Cass being Harley’s motivation to be a better person. She goes from willing to hand her over to Black Mask to taking the kid under her wing. Cass is the glue that bands the Birds of Prey together. These lovely, dangerous, women coming together to keep a little girl safe, doesn’t feel as emotionally satisfying as it should because Cass isn’t Cass.

While I will praise the movie for Harley’s arc of seeking her own emancipation and agency outside her abusive relationships and life of crime, I feel like Harley’s arc should have been a question of redemption. Cassandra’s motivation to become Batgirl was her refusal to kill again. (Hey WB remember how in Batman Begins Bruce refused to kill a man because “I will not be an executioner.”)

Here Cass is fine with killing. She chucks a bomb at some goons chasing her and she kills Black Mask with a grenade in the end.

Yeah… Cass “I refuse to kill because my dad made me kill an innocent man at eight years old and killing is wrong” kills people.

*head meet desk*

Sucide Squad, set up Harley and the squad, for an unconventional redemption arc, spite motivated it may be, yet Harley despite her line to Cass “You make me want to be a less terrible person” isn’t seeking to make amends for what she did as the Joker’s henchman. (Like being an accomplice to Jason Todd’s murder).

.Cass pickpots and steals to survive, because she’s a kid with no family passed from foster home to foster home, Harley steals because she can, steal a truck to blow up a chemical plant because she can. Kills because she can. (granted she does use an M79 grenade launcher with bean bag shells for one scene but besides that.)

I like the idea of Harley taking Cass under her wing, its an unconventional but fresh idea, but it doesn’t feel entirely satisfying, and Cass not being Cass, not having an arc beyond “Go along with Harley as her apprentice” really undermines the excellent themes and message the movie is trying to convey.

Now maybe in the Suicide Squad reboot with James Gunn or a future DC film , Cass is going to leave Harley because that life of crime and killing doesn’t suit her and she realizes she’s trying to be something she’s not and I’m just being overly critical, but I still feel like “Harley and Cass seeking redemption and moving past their abusers together” should have been where this movie left off, and it baffles me that it doesn’t from a narrative perspective.

Anway the overall themes and message of Birds of Prey are represented in Evan Mcregor’s Black Mask, a walking talking example of repressive toxic masculinity and misogyny. A flamboyant, all but stated to be a repressed Bi, crime lord seeking to take control of Gotham, Black Mask moves with confidence in his loud suits, and charming quirkiness, He’s cruel, sadistic and repulsive His mannerisms ooz terror,and insanity. He moves like a love child between Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix’s take on the Joker, Gaston from Beauty and the Beast and Joffery Baratheon from Game of Thrones. He’s a control freak, trying to be a badass.

One minute he’s the Godfather, the next he’s a brat. He views Harley as nothing without the Joker, telling her that she needs him to protect her. He enjoys asserting his dominance over Harley during her brief capture by having his men beat her while he eats popcorn. He objectifies Black Canary for her singing voice and beauty..

Black Mask asserts his power and authority over the underworld by his control over women. In one frightening scene, he believes one of the women at his club is laughing at him for his failure to capture Cass, so he orders her to stand on a table, then for her boyfriend to rip open her dress with a knife because he finds it ugly.

In summary he represents the patriarchy. He represents sexist, abusive men. He’s a representation of social norms and ideals that are repressive and disgusting, and rob women of their agency, and self-worth. He represents the use of violence, not for noble reasons, but as a means to control women and lash out at those that defy him and supposedly wronged him .

Furthering this line of thought are the costumes. Black Canary’s costumes represent the amount of control, Black Mask has in her life. When we first see her, Dinah is wearing a long black netted evening gown that accents her legs as she sings “It’s a Man’s Man’s World”. Later she wears a blue tank top and gold, tightfitting pants clearly meant to draw our gaze to her ass and thighs. When she’s Black Mask’s driver, she’s wearing a Bra/crop top that bares her midriff under a short blue blaze, but when she decides she’s going to defy him, she wears a yellow tank top and jeans with a gold belt.

Harley’s costumes are as eclectic as she is, with her DIY caution tape shawl, stamped tops and cut up shorts. Huntress’s outfits are all black leather and punkish athletic wear, utilitarian and elegant in their simplicity while Reene wears a “I shave my balls for this” t-shirt reflecting her uncouth, blunt demeanor, as well as button down dress shirts and slacks for the climactic asskicking montage .

Cass is a kid,who clearly doesn’t have the funds for super nice clothes. She;s running around in ratty shorts and a worn out hoody with a red windbreaker, with an orange bandanna askew on her head. At the end, when she rides off with Harley, she copying Harley’s style.

Speaking of costumes, one thing I appreciate is that instead of the male gaze and sexualisation, we get what I like to call “passive fan service” What I mean is that instead of tracking shots on Harley’s ass or boob shoots, like in Suicide Squad the camera just lets these women’s beauty do the talking.

Huntress is wearing a sports bra and tactical pants for the climax, but the camera doesn’t linger on her boobs. A primary example of this is a lot of Padme’s scenes in Episodes II and III of Star Wars. Lucas knows Natalie Portman is a gorgeous woman and he doesn’t need to remind us by deliberate camera shots. He lets Natalie herself and Trisha Biggar’s excellent costumes do it for us.

Also one thing I really… really liked was how in the big penultimate fight, Harley actually passes Dinah a hair tie so she can get her hair out of the way. So for like a minute, she’s beating the ever loving fuck out of goons with her legs as she ties up her hair. A very nice case of reality ensures.

In conclusion Birds of Prey is another notch in the belt for the DC cinematic universe, a solid, fun film with an excellent cast with clear chemistry, hampered by character derailment that undermines its sorely needed themes and message it's trying to convey. The plot is fast paced, but doesn't feel rushed even though it’s only a little over an hour long. It’s uncompromisingly bold, bloody and hilarious. The lack of a proper post credits scene is somewhat annoying and I'm very disappointed how Cass was handled , but this is by no means a terrible film.

Overall I give it a 8.9 out of 10. Highly recommend you go see it. Drag your friends, smuggle in as much candy and drinks as you can. Buy it when it comes out on DVD. If you’re a Cass fan, reread the Puckett run or pick up her new graphic novel Shadow of the Batgirl to wash out the bittersweet taste this will give you. Speaking of Kelley Puckett, he was actually listed in the “Special thanks to…” in the credits, which i’m sure many will appreciate.

These following posts and thoughts on the film I recommend.

https://dcwomenofcolor.tumblr.com/post/190693985900/how-would-you-fix-bop-cass

https://wits-writing.tumblr.com/post/190718974642/birds-of-prey-movie-review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YeFJjoQoec

#birds of prey #cassandra cain #templarhalo rambles #Templarhalo reviews books

15 notes · View notes

magzoso-tech · 5 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/will-the-future-of-work-be-ethical-future-leader-perspectives/

Will the future of work be ethical? Future leader perspectives

Greg Epstein Contributor

Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Good Without God. Described as a “godfather to the [humanist] movement” by The New York Times Magazine in recognition of his efforts to build inclusive, inspiring, and ethical communities for the nonreligious and allies, Greg was also named “one of the top faith and moral leaders in the United States” by Faithful Internet, a project of the United Church of Christ and the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.

More posts by this contributor

Will the future of work be ethical? Future leader perspectives

Will the future of work be ethical? Perspectives from MIT Technology Review

In June, TechCrunch Ethicist in Residence Greg M. Epstein attended EmTech Next, a conference organized by the MIT Technology Review. The conference, which took place at MIT’s famous Media Lab, examined how AI and robotics are changing the future of work.

Greg’s essay, Will the Future of Work Be Ethical? reflects on his experiences at the conference, which produced what he calls “a religious crisis, despite the fact that I am not just a confirmed atheist but a professional one as well.” In it, Greg explores themes of inequality, inclusion and what it means to work in technology ethically, within a capitalist system and market economy.

Accompanying the story for Extra Crunch are a series of in-depth interviews Greg conducted around the conference, with scholars, journalists, founders and attendees.

Below he speaks to two conference attendees who had crucial insights to share. Meili Gupta is a high school senior at Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding school in New Hampshire; Gupta attended the EmTech Next conference with her mother and has attended with family in previous years as well; her voice and thoughts on privilege and inequality in education and technology are featured prominently in Greg’s essay. Walter Erike is a 31-year-old independent consultant and SAP Implementation Senior Manager. from Philadelphia. Between conference session, he and Greg talked about diversity and inclusion at tech conferences and beyond.

Meili Gupta is a senior at Phillips Exeter Academy. Image via Meili Gupta

Greg Epstein: How did you come to be at EmTech Next?

Meili Gupta: I am a rising high school senior at Phillips Exeter Academy; I’m one of the managing editors for my school’s science magazine called Matter Magazine.

I [also] attended the conference last year. My parents have come to these conferences before, and that gave me an opportunity to come. I am particularly interested in the MIT Technology Review because I’ve grown up reading it.

You are the Managing Editor of Matter, a magazine about STEM at your high school. What subjects that Matter covers are most interesting to you?

This year we published two issues. The first featured a lot of interviews from top AI professors like Professor Fei-Fei Li, at Stanford. We did a review for her and an interview with Professor Olga Russakovsky at Princeton. That was an AI special issue and, being at this conference you hear about how AI will transform industries.

The second issue coincided with Phillips Exeter Global Climate Action Day. We focused both on environmentalism clubs at Exeter and environmentalism efforts worldwide. I think Matter, as the only stem magazine on campus has a responsibility in doing that.

AI and climate: in a sense, you’ve already dealt with this new field people are calling the ethics of technology. When you hear that term, what comes to mind?

As a consumer of a lot of technology and as someone of the generation who has grown up with a phone in my hand, I’m aware my data is all over the internet. I’ve had conversations [with friends] about personal privacy and if I look around the classroom, most people have covers for the cameras on their computers. This generation is already aware [of] ethics whenever you’re talking about computing and the use of computers.

About AI specifically, as someone who’s interested in the field and has been privileged to be able to take courses and do research projects about that, I’m hearing a lot about ethics with algorithms, whether that’s fake news or bias or about applying algorithms for social good.

What are your biggest concerns about AI? What do you think needs to be addressed in order for us to feel more comfortable as a society with increased use of AI?

That’s not an easy answer; it’s something our society is going to be grappling with for years. From what I’ve learned at this conference, from what I’ve read and tried to understand, it’s a multidimensional solution. You’re going to need computer programmers to learn the technical skills to make their algorithms less biased. You’re going to need companies to hire those people and say, “This is our goal; we want to create an algorithm that’s fair and can do good.” You’re going to need the general society to ask for that standard. That’s my generation’s job, too. WikiLeaks, a couple of years ago, sparked the conversation about personal privacy and I think there’s going to be more sparks.

Seems like your high school is doing some interesting work in terms of incorporating both STEM and a deeper, more creative than usual focus on ethics and exploring the meaning of life. How would you say that Exeter in particular is trying to combine these issues?

I’ll give a couple of examples of my experience with that in my time at Exeter, and I’m very privileged to go to a school that has these opportunities and offerings for its students.

Don’t worry, that’s in my next question.

Absolutely. With the computer science curriculum, starting in my ninth grade they offered a computer science 590 about [introduction to] artificial intelligence. In the fall another 590 course was about self driving cars, and you saw the intersection between us working in our robotics lab and learning about computer vision algorithms. This past semester, a couple students, and I was involved, helped to set up a 999: an independent course which really dove deep into machine learning algorithms. In the fall, there’s another 590 I’ll be taking called social innovation through software engineering, which is specifically designed for each student to pick a local project and to apply software, coding or AI to a social good project.

I’ve spent 15 years working at Harvard and MIT. I’ve worked around a lot of smart and privileged people and I’ve supported them. I’m going to ask you a question about Exeter and about your experience as a privileged high school student who is getting a great education, but I don’t mean it from a perspective of it’s now me versus you.

Of course you’re not.

I’m trying to figure this out for myself as well. We live in a world where we’re becoming more prepared to talk about issues of fairness and justice. Yet by even just providing these extraordinary educational experiences to people like you and me and my students or whomever, we’re preparing some people for that world better than others. How do you feel about being so well prepared for this sort of world to come that it can actually be… I guess my question is, how do you relate to the idea that even the kinds of educational experiences that we’re talking about are themselves deepening the divide between haves and have nots?

I completely agree that the issue between haves and have nots needs to be talked about more, because inequality between the upper and the lower classes is growing every year. This morning, Mr. Isbell from Georgia Tech talk was really inspiring. For example, at Phillips Exeter, we have a social service club called ESA which houses more than 70 different social service clubs. One I’m involved with, junior computer programming, teaches programming to local middle school students. That’s the type of thing, at an individual level and smaller scale, that people can try to help out those who have not been privileged with opportunities to learn and get ahead with those skills.

What Mr. Isbell was talking about this morning was at a university level and also tying in corporations bridge that divide. I don’t think that the issue itself should necessarily scare us from pushing forward to the frontier to say, the possibility that everybody who does not have a computer science education in five years won’t have a job.

Today we had that debate about role or people’s jobs and robot taxes. That’s a very good debate to have, but it sometimes feeds a little bit into the AI hype and I think it may be a disgrace to society to try to pull back technology, which has been shown to have the power to save lives. It can be two transformations that are happening at the same time. One, that’s trying to bridge an inequality and is going to come in a lot of different and complicated solutions that happen at multiple levels and the second is allowing for a transformation in technology and AI.

What are you hoping to get out of this conference for yourself, as a student, as a journalist, or as somebody who’s going into the industry?

The theme for this conference is the future of the workforce. I’m a student. That means I’m going to be the future of the workforce. I was hoping to learn some insight about what I may want to study in college. After that, what type of jobs do I want to pursue that are going to exist and be in demand and really interesting, that have an impact on other people? Also, as a student, in particular that’s interested in majoring in computer science and artificial intelligence, I was hoping to learn about possible research projects that I could pursue in the fall with this 590 course.

Right now, I’m working on a research project with a Professor at the University of Maryland about eliminating bias in machine learning algorithms. What type of dataset do I want to apply that project to? Where is the need or the attention for correcting bias in the AI algorithms?

As a journalist, I would like to write a review summarizing what I’ve learned so other [Exeter students] can learn a little too.

What would be your biggest critique of the conference? What could be improved?

#Miscellaneous

0 notes

kaialone · 8 years ago

Text

Yokai Watch Translations: Yagyō’s gender

(Yagyō can be alternatively spelled Yagyou, or even Yagyo, and some fans spell it as Yako or Yakyo and the like)

This is a bit different from what I usually do, in that I won’t really be translation and/or comparing something, but do a bit more explaining.

I´m making this because I have had multiple people ask me this question:

“Is Yagyō non-binary/agender?”

And I think it’s important that some confusion about this would be cleared up, so I will attempt to do that.

First let’s get the important thing out of the way, which is my answer to the question:

“I don’t know.”

This may seem a tad anti-climatic but yeah, I don’t actually know, BUT, the important part of this is gonna be my explanation of WHY I don’t know.

Because you see, the way things that may indicate gender work is slightly different in japanese than it is in english.

What I´m going to do here is, I will briefly go through what I believe is the two “primary” indicators of a character’s gender, explain a bit about them, and if they apply to Yagyō.

After that I will do the same with what I consider “secondary” indicators of a character’s gender.

And lastly I´ll give my final thoughts on the matter.

1. Direct Statement

Of course the main indicator of a character’s gender is the character themselves going “I´m *insert gender*”, or maybe even just “I´m *insert gendered word.*”.

Note that in the case of the latter, what is a gendered word in english may not be a gendered word in japanese, so always double check if youre going to use something like that as “canon” evidence.

But of course it’s usually up to luck wether a character actually says something like this or not, so things often aren’t that easy. I haven’t seen any instances of Yagyō using a gendered word like that to refer to themselves.

Enma technically says:

“ それでいて「新たな王」などとよく言えたものだな！ And calling yourself the “new king” despite all that! “

But it seems to be directed at all three of them, so I personally would say it’s not a definite indicator. Plus I am not certain if “王“ would exclusively refer to male monarchs in japanese.

2. Third Person Pronouns

This is the part where some of you may say:

“But kaialone, you use they/them pronouns to refer to Yagyō, both here and in your translations, clearly this settles it, right?”,

but let me explain why it doesn’t.

For starters, in the japanese language, you can often actually leave out the subject of a sentence, as long as the subject is known.

In english similar stuff can exist, for example giving a short reply like “Making toast!” to the question “What are you doing?”. In this case there is no definite need to go “I am making toast”, cause it is well understood that the subject of the sentece is “I”.

And basically in japanese this kinda stuff happens all the time, and as a result you can end up with characters never getting referred to with a third person pronoun at all, especially if their appearances are brief, like most yokai.

Adding to that, the relation of third person pronouns and genders work slightly different in japanese, too.

“Kare” and “Kanojo” meaning “he” and “she” respectively are used as gendered pronouns nowadays, but this is actually a rather recent thing in the language. I don’t know the exact time, but according to wikipedia usage of them as pronouns started to become common around the Meiji era (roughly 1868-1912).

And, from what I have heard and seen, they’re still not used as frequently as we use he or she in english. Depending on the context it can even seem rude or awkward to use them. (Rudeness and Politeness of certain words can vary greatly depending on the context, for example who you’re talking to, in japanese.) People are more likely to just use the names or titles of others when referring to them.

Because of that, you often end up with characters not being refered to with gendered third person pronouns either.

You may also see people getting referred to with gender neutral terms like “Aitsu/Koitsu/Soitsu”, or “Ano Hito”

“Aitsu/Koitsu/Soitsu” could literally be translated as like “this/that one”. (When not referring to a person you might translate them as “it”.) It’s considered rude to use to refer to someone, unless it’s someone you’re close to who is okay with you using it for them.

(Note though that in fiction characters tend to use rude language like that more casually, so you´ll probably still hear people use them rather frequently in anime and such.)

“Ano Hito” and variations of it just mean “That person”, and you might see it be used in a manner like a pronoun.

So, because of all this, a person may be refered to in a gender neutral manner regardless of their actual gender.

Thus, gendered pronouns like “kare” or “kanojo” could be used to confirm that a character is male or female, but the same tactic doesn't work to confirm a character’s lack of being female or male.

As for Yagyō, in all the texts I have seen they are never referred to with a third person pronoun. The closest thing I can find is Nekokiyo referring to them as “ あの者/Ano Mono“, which means “That person”.

For the reference, yes, Nekokiyo could have technically referred to Yagyō as kare or kanojo if they were a man or woman respectively. However the fact that he didn’t, by itself, is not certain evidence that Yagyō is neither of those.

So, going back to the very start of this section and my choice to refer Yagyō as “they/them” in my translations. It is just that, my own choice.

When translating a japanese text, you may end up with a character that is never referred to by gender directly, yet you will have to decide on what pronouns to use for them, because the english language can’t ommit pronouns completely like the japanese language can. So sometimes translators are just forced to just make a guess like that.

I chose “they/them” for Yagyō because to me this seems appropiate for a character whose gender I am uncertain about.

Now; these two are really the “main things” that can be used to indicate gender, I believe. But there is still some secondary indicators that people may use.

3. First Person Pronouns

In japanese there is more than one first person pronoun, i.e. more than one word for “I/me”.

Some of these first person pronouns are gendered, in that traditionally, only people of a certain gender (and/or sex) are expected to use certain ones, and using pronouns that aren’t associated with one’s gender (and/or sex) might be frowned upon in certain circles.

Yagyō uses the pronoun わたし/Watashi to refer to themselves.

Watashi is a formal, gender neutral pronoun. However, overall it is used more by women than it is by men. (See the statistics on the page I linked there.)

In fiction this seems to be basically the “standard” pronoun for women and girls, you’ll probably see them using that the most, but men use it too, more frequently than they seem to do in real life, even.

To give you an idea of how wide the spectrum of characters using this pronoun can be, here is some examples of Yokai Watch characters using it:

Katie, Inaho, Dr. Maddiman, McKraken, GoGoGo Godfather, Damona, Unkaind, Venoct...

Just to name a few that I can think of on top of my head.

4. General Speaking Style

If you wanna read a bit more about this, Wikipedia has an article on it, but to summarize:

There are different speaking styles in japanese, and some are considered “harsher” or “softer” than others, with the harsher styles being considered masculine and the softer ones being considered feminine. (Note that this a very simplified explanation.)

There is a lot more than that too, there is speaking styles that are associated with old people, children, old-fashioned people, and much more, though a lot of that mostly applies to fiction which tends to exaggerate these things even more.

As a result you can often learn a lot about what kinda character one is supposed to be just by reading a bit of their dialouge.

From what I can tell, during the Enma Note quest, Yagyō uses a more informal, harsh, masculine speaking style, but during more peaceful situations, like getting them in a trade or meeting them at the Streetpass buildings, they use a more formal, polite, neutral speaking style.

Final Thoughts:

First a little bit of warning:

Note that all these “indicators” of a character’s gender are still not 100% fool-proof, even the “primary” ones.

For example, technically even a character literally stating their own gender could be a result of them not telling the truth, for various reasons, and any instances of other characters referring to them as a certain gender can be a result of them not knowing any better, or even misgendering them.

So, if someone headcanons a character as a different gender than what you think they are based on evidence you’ve seen, this doesn’t mean the person in question is automatically “wrong” about this.

And when it comes to Yagyō, you may say:

“Well at every section of this you said that you don’t think anything is definite proof for their gender, but if nothing indicates that they are male or female, isn’t that like proof that they’re non-binary, presumably agender?”,

and well, it does make it more likely, but it doesn’t prove it.

I personally like to think that Yagyō is non-binary, and I´m happy to see that there doesn’t seem to be anything disproving it from what I can tell, but it’s still just a headcanon.

It is important to make the distinction, mainly because saying it’s confirmed is giving level5 credit for something they didn’t really do.

Maybe they specifically intended for Yagyō to be gender-neutral, maybe they didn’t. But for something that is this important, you shouldn’t say they did unless you know for sure that they did.

Be happy at the thought that they might have, if you want to, but don’t act like it’s a fact. They honestly don’t deserve the credit unless they are explicit about it.

Personally, I honestly believe they probably did not intent for them to be non-binary, if I had to guess I’d say they probably intended for them to be male... But hey, maybe that is just me being pessimistic.

Either way, I hope this cleared some confusion?

Feel free to send me your throughts, opinions and corrections.

#yokai watch #youkai watch #yo kai watch #yagyou #yokai watch spoilers #yokai watch translatiions #?#kinda

5 notes · View notes

manleycollins · 5 years ago

Text

Journal Entry #54 - Birthday Month

JOURNAL ENTRY #54 Name: Manley M Collins Social Security Number: 5 7 9 - * * - 6 5 4 1 Date of Birth: 06/21 Place of Birth: Washington, District of Columbia Country of Birth: United States of America Date: June 21, 2020

TOPIC: Birthday Month

DEPARTMENT: United States Department of Labor DEPARTMENT: United States Department of Health and Human Services DEPARTMENT: United States Department of Defense DEPARTMENT: United States Department of Transportation DEPARTMENT: United States Department of Education DEPARTMENT: United States Department of Justice

Happy Birthday to me and all Geminis (May/June) and Cancers (June/July). I favor more Gemini. This is Why I am Hot...sung by M.I.M.S. It is the first day of summer. This year it falls on Father's Day again. Happy Father's Day to all fathers, baby daddies, guardians, mentors, and godfathers. Happy Juneteenth to all African-Americans. My original birthday plans was to spend it at Myrtle Beach, SC for the morning, and then Dave and Buster's for the evening.

I had my 2020 annual physical. Here is the report.

Berkeley County Family Practice LLC 2061 Highway 52 Moncks Corner, SC 29461-5017 USA

Date of Physical - February 8, 2020

Complete Blood Count (CBC) w/ DIFF White Blood Cells (WBC) Value = 4.9 Range = 3.4-10.8 (x10E3/uL)

Red Blood Cells (RBC) Value = 4.95 Range = 4.14-5.80 (x10E6/uL)

Hemoglobin Value = 15.8 Range = 13.0-17.7 (g/dL)

Hematocrit Value = 45 Range = 37.5-51.0 (%)

Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) Value = 91 Range = 79-97 (fL)

Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin (MCH) Value = 31.9 Range = 26.6-33.0 (pg)

Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) Value = 35.1 Range = 31.5-35.7 (g/dL

Red blood cell Distribution Width (RDW) Value = 11.7 Range = 11.6-15.4 (%)

Platelets Value = 257 Range = 150-450 (x10E3/uL)

Neutrophils Value = 49 Range = Not Established (%)

Lymphs Value = 36 Range = Not Established (%)

Monocytes Value = 10 Range = Not Established (%)

Eos Value = 4 Range = Not Established (%)

Basos Value = 1 Range = Not Established (%)

IMMATURE CELLS Neutrophils (Absolute) Value = 2.4 Range = 1.4-7.0 (x10E3/uL)

Lymphs (Absolute) Value = 1.8 Range = 0.7-3.1 (x10E3/uL)

Monocytes (Absolute) Value = 0.5 Range = 0.1-0.9 (x10E3/uL)

Eos (Absolute) Value = 0.2 Range = 0.0-0.4 (x10E3/uL)

Baso (Absolute) Value = 0.0 Range = 0.0-0.2 (x10E3/uL)

Immature Granulocytes Value = 0 Range = Not Established (%)

Immature Grans (Abs) Value = 0.0 Range = 0.0-0.1 (x10E3/uL)

Nucleated Red Blood Cells (NRBC)

Physican comments: Cholestrol is mildly elevated, please make sure he is working hard on diet and exercise habits, refer him to our website for hyperlipidemia and/or the american heart association for dietary advice, other labs look good.

Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP) + Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR) Litholink (Chronic Kidney Disease Physical Test (CKD PT))

***This test was to stress getting evaluated after coming off of Truvada*** I am no longer on Truvada. I passed the research or no longer became eligible for the program through Gilead Sciences.

Glucose Value = 91 Range = 65-99 (mg/dL)

Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN) Value = 13 Range = 6-24 (mg/dL)

Creatinine Value = 0.99 Range = 0.76-1.27 (mg/dL)

Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate Test (eGFR) if NonAfricn Am Value = 93 Range = >59 (mL/min/1.73)

Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate Test (eGFR) if African Am Value = 107 Range = >59 (mL/min/1.73)

Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN)/Creatinine Ratio Value = 13 Range = 9-20

Sodium Value = 138 Range = 134-144 (mmol/L)

Potassium Value = 4.4 Range = 3.5-5.2 (mmol/L)

Chloride Value = 100 Range = 96-106 (mmol/L)

Carbon Dioxide, Total Value = 23 Range = 20-29 (mmol/L)

Calcium Value = 10.0 Range = 8.7-10.2 (mg/dL)

Phosphorus Value = 3.3 Range = 2.8-4.1 (mg/dL)

Protein, Total Value = 8.0 Range = 6.0-8.5 (g/dL)

Albumin Value = 4.6 Range = 4.0-5.0 (g/dL)

Globulin, Total Value = 3.4 Range = 1.5-4.5 (g/dL)

Albumin/Globulin (A/G) Ratio Value = 1.4 Range = 1.2-2.2

Bilirubin, Total Value = 1.8 (high) Range = 0.0-1.2 (mg/dL)

Alkaline Phosphatase Value = 89 Range = 39-117 (IU/L)

Aspartate Aminotransferase (AST) (SGOT) Value = 19 Range = 0-40 (IU/L)

Alanine Aminotransferase (ALT) Serum Glutamic Pyruvic Transaminase (SGPT) Value = 13 Range = 0-44 (IU/L)

LIPID PANEL Cholesterol, Total Value = 209 High Range = 100-199 (mg/dL)

Triglycerides Value = 95 Range = 0-149 (mg/dL)

High Density Lipoproteins (HDL) Cholesterol Value = 45 Range = >39 (mg/dL)

Very Low Density Lipoproteins (VLDL) Cholesterol Value = 19 Range = 5-40 (mg/dL)

Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL) Cholesterol Value = 145 High Range = 0-99 (mg/dL)

TSH Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) Value = 1.310 Range = 0.450-4.500 (uIU/mL)

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

Medications as of June 22, 2020 I am still on Zyprexa (Olanzapine) 2.5 mg and Celexa (Citalopram) 5mg.

Berkeley County Family Practice LLC refers me to Berkeley Community Mental Health Center. --------------------------------------------

Berkeley Community Mental Health Center 403 Stoney Landing Road Moncks Corner, SC 29461

and in coordination with

State of South Carolina Department of Mental Health 403 Stoney Landing Road Moncks Corner, SC 29461

most of services were conducted via telephone or videoconference (TeleHealth).

Services I received is Outpatient Therapy held every two weeks. I am receiving psycho education, staying in the present techniques,

Therapy topics covered so far is 1. Clarification on my conditions and what was previous stated from previous therapy sessions, academic research, and medical care. 2. The Beginning (Mother (Collins) and Father (Nolen) dealings with each other, how Nelson family came into play, and how their decisions affected me). 3. The domestic abuse violence towards my mother and me. 4. The discovery of sexual identity, child molestation, child rape, sodomy, child sexual abuse, and first degree sexual assault - I am the Child. (Berkeley County Sheriffs Office Incident Report 202004003555) 5. The Beta Delta chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity's trust, distrust, and misunderstandings. 6. My career of various jobs. Refocusing. 7. My wanting to make change via the political scene and opportunities. Reading and relating the autobiographical books of George Washington, the first President. And law school.

Another service is the Office of Care Coordination for food, clothing, stimulus package, locating employment, and group therapy.

Another service is the I.S.P. (Employment Services). I attended my first virtual job fair, which was good. My interaction with the job fair was to follow up on previous applications. Applications I sent my resume information: Charleston Southern University College of Charleston Medical University of South Carolina Trident Technical College Charleston County School District Kelly Education Services Berkeley County School District South Carolina Department of Education PACE/Alternate Certification Program Blue Cross Blue Shield Cor-Tech Xiartech Repeat Consultants ePCHelp for State of South Carolina COGENT InfoTech Corporation for State of South Carolina DHEC Arete Technologies Inc for State of South Carolina DOR

The BCMHC I.S.P. (Employment Services) referred me to South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Center at 2954 S. Live Oak Dr, Moncks Corner, SC 29461. I told them I have interest in Masonry and obtaining a Commercial Driver's License (CDL).

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

Law Schools for 2019-2020 Admissions Cycle Albany Law School - Applied - Transmitted Sent - Denied Admission, But Feedback Received was to get LSAT up to 150

Boston College Law School - Applied - Transmitted Sent - Denied Admission

Charleston School of Law - Applied - Transmitted Sent - Denied Admission

Columbia University School of Law - Applied - Transmitted Sent - Denied Admission

Harvard Law School - Applied - Transmitted Sent - Denied Admission

University of South Carolina School of Law - Applied - Transmitted Sent - Denied Admission, but wanted to get feedback and somehow was led to Gov. McMaster website and biographical information.

Stanford University Law School - Applied - Transmitted Sent - Denied Admission

Yale Law School - Applied - Transmitted Sent - Denied Admission

University of Toronto Faculty of Law Osgoode Hall Law School, York University

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

I am glad the CLEO CLIC program did provide avenues around the LSAT to get into law school. However, Vermont Law School does not provide corporate or constitutional law. The other two law school partnerships I do not have any interest in. New England Law School does present a part time program. Harvard Extension School does present the opportunity of beginning there could give a possibly of getting accepted to the Harvard Law School. All of them are expensive options. Right now, I am waiting to see my doctoral program education for job opportunities to kick in.

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

Scooter Number Three (3) - 2018 Blue Honda NCW50 Metropolitan Scooter/Moped

I purchased a scooter/moped from Velocity Powersports at 151 Gateway Dr in Ladson, SC. I assumed since it was the closest dealer I would get good service, but they took the moped/scooter back and already milked me out of $4,000 in less than six months. They continued to use the best sales and customer service techniques to look their best. I told the following entities about Velocity Powersports scamming, swindling, conning, and gouging me for money to: Berkeley County Sheriff Office, State Farm Insurance Company, South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles, South Carolina Attorney General's Office, South Carolina Office of Consumer Affairs, Better Business Bureau (BBB), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) IC3, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Citibank, DiscoverCard, and SunTrust. As for the Attorney General and Berkeley County Sheriff Office, they advised me to go to the magistrate for small claims court and claim-to-items filing to retrieve my personal belongings.

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

I am being investigated for United States Department of Defense clearance number three (#3). This investigation got everything the first and second investigations did not have. This is a very unusual feat and Congratulations to me. The public sees what the government sees. Corporate America sees what the public sees. Everyone that is not a social media friend or follower sees what the social media friends sees. Everything told in one view. Again, Congratulations to me and pat on the back or butt.

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

I do not have United Parcel Service (UPS) mailbox in South Carolina. It is very interesting how much patience you have to have to wait for the mail. At UPS, I got everything in the mail. Rural USPS service, I am lucky to get one letter per week. Yes, in the beginning the Eadytown neighborhood stole my Palm Springs Portable Toilet (Berkeley County Sheriffs Office Incident Report #202001000277). I have to actually now be home for any and every package shipped. Yes, I am currently a Cub Scout/Boy Scout/Eagle Scout camping on the property I am paying for, which is my family's property. It is an interesting setup. My next step up was/is a Coleman 1805RB Camper or Single Wide Mobile One-Bedroom Home. Someone had the nerve to cut the grass at the entryway and mailbox, then carve out a noose, teardrop, an asshole, or vagina hole in the uncut grass in the driveway of my family's property. If you want to cut the grass, cut all of it. A public Thank You for cutting the grass.

United Parcel Service Store came in very handy during the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. I was able to all my office and paperwork tasks. United Parcel Service (Moncks Corner, SC) store was the good start. Then, I went to United Parcel Service (Summerville, SC) store was good until they started doing dishonest service. Then, I went to United Parcel Service (Goose Creek, SC) store was charging an arm and a leg for use of that computer. Finally, I went to United Parcel Service (North Charleston, SC) store was very good and it became my home store by Walmart. Federal Express Office (FedEx) was in West Ashley near Citadel Mall gave excellent service.

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

South Carolina Department of Education gave the instructions on how to apply for the PACE and Alternative Certification, but they purposely did not accept my official transcripts that I recently ordered for another entity. It was horrible. I did the fingerprinting. I requested the SLED background investigation report, but South Carolina Department of Education stated they do not provide report back to the individual. I requested a copy of the credit and consumer background investigation report, and I did not receive that either. Upon review of the checklist, I took the National Teacher's Examination (NTE) decades ago at Howard University for Reading and Math. Charleston County School District reviewed my transcript and discovered my disciplines are Math and English. I spent $150 on transcripts prior to SCDoEd. However, after we disagreed on my transcripts, SCDoEd decides to close my case and told me to reapply.

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

Friday, January 17, 2020 at 2030 hours, I was traveling from gym to home. I was driving on Ranger Dr on a brand new/used moped/motorcycle. I pulled up to the stop sign at Highway 45 and Ranger Dr....I slowed and rolled through the stop sign at 2-4 mph and turned right to go over the Diverison Bridge. I kept traveling and the moped/motorcycle can not go no faster than 38 mph. I got pulled over at State of South Carolina Berkeley County Sheriff police right after crossing the bridge. The first thing the officer PFC R. Foro Badge No. 5989, young white male football size, thought I was going to argue over stopping at the stop sign; in which, there is zero (0) traffic. Guess he started saying to make sure I was not drunk and ask for bill of sale based on the brand new temp tags. He also asked for my driver's license or beginner's permit. I gave him my driver's license and the registration non-issue. He came back and issued Public Contact / Warning #215021-BB. He started conversation with me telling crazy about South Carolina laws regarding mopeds/motorcycle permits times and my type of vehicle should not be on the road after 6 PM. I told him I can show him my out-of-state license with full privileges. So tell me, I just moved to South Carolina, December 31, 2019, and I started moving through the South Carolina resident systems January 2, 2020 and it is January 17, 2020, please tell me how fast I am suppose to get everything to transition. I just saw when the motorcycle classes are scheduled. I guess South Carolina does not realize I came back with five driver's licenses and two endorsed with motorcycles privileges. So since you have upset Marvell and corrected him over something petty, this is a public post sent back to show what is about to happen. Yes, I fully take the ownership of breaking the law for rolling through stop sign at 2-4 mph and not making a 100% full stop.

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

I did have the Motorcycle Basic Rider's Course scheduled at Trident Technical College - Thornley Campus, North Charleston, SC. It was originally scheduled for March 2020, right at the time the Covid-19 (coronavirus) became a pandemic. Everything is slowly reopening. The class continued to move forward to the next month to the next month. So I cancelled the class, I will be stuck with my beginner's permit until it expires. I am using the money for a hair stylist appointment....time for a new look. Washington, DC DMV sent me reminders to renew my driver's license by my birthday, but like I stated earlier, let that driver's license expire. It is exciting what you can do with the Power of Choice. Yes, I have my health, education, God, and 'Power of Choice'. My French language lessons are coming along great. Spanish language is on hold until I have mastered and become C2 expert in French, and relate to my European and African peoples. I still have the general public view my fitness journey. Right before the pandemic, I became certified as an IFTA Group Fitness Instructor, IFTA Cycling Instructor, and American Red Cross First Aid/CPR/AED Adult, Child, and Infant.

#justice #education #health and human services #defense #transportation #child #rape #21 #molestation #cycling #group fitness #labor #first day of summer #gemini #birthday #juneteenth

0 notes

marcusssanderson · 6 years ago

Text

10 Best Personal Finance Books For Your Money in 2019

Because of their unique position, Investment Advisors often recommend personal finance books.

Their recommendations are always a reflection of themselves because they will emphasize those qualities they consider important. This means any top 10 list has some degree of bias and no list should be identical.

In fact, I doubt the list I prepared today would match the list I would prepare tomorrow. Because developing financial literacy is a time-consuming pursuit, individuals should know where their wealth journey leads before setting course.

Financial literacy and financial planning go hand in hand. A person’s financial plan can be summarized in six words and the progression is to – Get Wealthy, Stay Wealthy, Get Wealthier.

In order to Get Wealthier, one must first Stay Wealthy and in order to Stay Wealthy, one must first Get Wealthy. This means the financial literacy journey, like Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz, starts at the beginning with an assessment of one’s current condition.

Next, you set a goal and develop a plan. Then you must execute your plan. This is where the trouble begins. There are dozens of books to help you determine your current condition and help you set goals and develop a plan. Unfortunately, they are mostly ineffective because the single most important ingredient to financial success is the motivation to succeed.

Books on budgeting, saving, credit cards, student loans, banking, insurance, etc. are everywhere. While they are important, they are simply informational, and as information is now a commodity, these types of books don’t make my top 10 list. They once did, but they no longer do. They don’t motivate, and so they don’t cause the reader to take action or execute their plan.

My top 10 personal finance books list must be inspirational and insightful. The following list is the exact order I would begin my wealth journey.

Motivating Personal Finance Books About Taking Control Of Your Money

1) The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason

A very quick read and the first personal finance book given to me by my father. It is the first book I gave my son to read when he joined my firm eight years ago. I read it as a child, and have read it multiple times throughout my life.

The lessons are enduring and evergreen. The emphasis is on saving a percentage of what you make, investing it wisely, and avoiding debt. It takes you on the journey to financial and personal success. It is simplistic, motivational, and anyone that picks up the book can definitely benefit from it.

2) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Another huge personal favorite and according to this book, people get exactly what they want out of life. This applies to happiness, love, career, money, etc. This book focuses on visualizing your outcome.

This is one one of the personal finance books that focuses on the individual’s personal development and attitude towards money. It has a very powerful message and transcends personal finance that can benefit the reader in other aspects of their life.

3) The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley and Danko

This book starts you on the journey because it lets you see where a successful journey leads. It dispels the notion that millionaires are conspicuous consumers and earn impressive salaries. They may be – but it isn’t the norm.

The book examines how real millionaires look and behave. Your perception of financial success may change after you read this book and how you go about your day-to-day activities might, too.

4) One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch

This is a great book by one of the top investors ever. Mr. Lynch ran the largest mutual fund of his generation and unfortunately retired too early.

The importance of this book is his emphasis on investing in stocks or businesses that you know, can understand, and use their product. It makes investing accessible to individuals and shows them how they can compete with the professionals and in many cases, beat the professionals.

If you have ever had an interest in learning about stocks, this is the book to read.

5) Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins

We now must move to more traditional personal finance books. The very best one on the market today is Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins. Mr. Robbins is a motivator and his book might very well lead you to take action. He synthesizes information from top investors and draws a road map to help you succeed. He truly wants you to Master the Money Game and I applaud his effort.

Of the 10 personal finance books on this list, it is the only one I would give less than a 5 star rating. But this is because I take exception with the techniques he describes that may lead the reader to think they can execute them. To be specific, his “All Weather Portfolio” is not something the average investor can implement. However, the book deserves a prominent place in your financial library.

Best Personal Finance Books about Investing

We now move into the category of books about investing. Earlier I said that executing a plan is where the trouble begins. The trouble begins for two reasons. The first is: investors don’t know what type of investment philosophy to follow. Secondly, once they have a philosophy, they unfortunately don’t follow it.

This inability to follow a strategy causes us to buy high and sell low. It is a tendency you must master before you call yourself a successful investor. The very last book on the list is written by a professor that will help you to overcome your behaviorally shortcomings. Knowing about investing and following your plan are two entirely different things.

6) The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham taught Warren Buffett how to initially look at money and analyze securities. He is the Godfather of value investing and no personal finance education could be complete without the knowledge he imparts.

7) Market Wizards by Jack Schwager

This is the first popular book of its kind that shows successful traders and how they think about trading. It also exposes the reader for the first time to technical analysis and trading systems.

Technical analysis and trading systems are well outside the norm for personal finance, but no financial education is complete without an understanding of rules-based investing approaches. After all, you are determining your own set of rules to follow. So see how others follow their rules. It also introduces the importance of discipline and behavior.

8) Unconventional Success by David Swensen

David Swenson manages the Yale endowment fund, so this is also required reading. It is a bit complicated, but his principles are basic and you can follow them. He provides one of the best blueprints for an individual investor I have ever examined and shows you step-by-step how to construct a portfolio and which asset classes to include.

9) What Investors Really Want by Meir Statman

Mr. Statman is a specialist on people’s behavior and comes up with a number of techniques to help you save and keep you from making the types of irrational financial decisions that prevent you from achieving your goals.

10) Financial Tales by Carlos Sera

Yes, this is my own book so of course, I’m biased. How is this book different? Imagine a personal finance book with no charts, tables, or graphs. Like The Richest Man in Babylon, Financial Tales is an abstraction. Most financial information comes in the form of realism with the hope that it will lead to understanding.

Unfortunately, there is so much financial realism available, it leads to confusion and an overwhelmed mind. However, if you start simply–if you start from the abstract and create the core–you will slowly bring to life what previously seemed impossible, and realism becomes approachable.

It is a collection of 61 tales, where each tale teaches a lesson based on what real people have done with their money. Some are cautionary tales, some are uplifting, all are evergreen and are quite short. The book explains what motivates investors and their advisors. You will see the world differently after you read this book.

What other personal finance books would you add to the list?

As an added bonus, people looking to increase their investing acumen should read Principles by Ray Dalio. He runs the world’s largest hedge fund and he requires all of his employees to read what he wrote. It is exceptional and if you embrace his Principles you are well on your way to success.

I hope this list helps you on your financial journey, regardless of where you are today. Let these books motivate you to take action and execute your financial plan.

Which of these personal finance books will you read first? Do you have any other books to add to the list? Feel free to give us YOUR favorites and suggestions in the comments section below!

The post 10 Best Personal Finance Books For Your Money in 2019 appeared first on Everyday Power.

0 notes

viralstation · 7 years ago

Text

Special Report: New York’s enterprise infrastructure ecosystem

New Post has been published on http://viralstation.org/special-report-new-yorks-enterprise-infrastructure-ecosystem/

Special Report: New York’s enterprise infrastructure ecosystem

New York City is a marvel of infrastructure planning and engineering. There are the visible landmarks — the Brooklyn Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Empire State Building — and also the invisible ones that run the city beneath its crowded streets, such as one of the world’s most complex water tunneling and reservoir systems. That infrastructure was built for the economy of the 20th century, a market that emphasized the manufacturing and trading of goods.

Infrastructure though has a very different meaning in the 21st century. The digital economy means we no longer measure the movement of products simply as tonnage on freight ships and trucks, but rather as bits and bytes flowing from data centers to devices. The shipping container once revolutionized 20th century global trade, and now containerization is revolutionizing the way we think about delivering applications to end users.

While New York has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state, to date it hasn’t been a global leader in startups compared to hotspots like the Bay Area, particularly in the sorts of enterprise and data infrastructure startups that undergird the internet revolution.

That situation is rapidly changing. Today, New York City has numerous unicorns targeting the enterprise, and a large number of up-and-coming winners like Datadog that are commanding substantial market share. But what is truly exciting — and different from past prognostications about the success of enterprise in New York — is that we are now seeing the rise of a generation of hundreds of startups that are deeply technical and deeply committed to building the future of enterprise infrastructure and applications.

Today, TechCrunch presents a special report on the state of enterprise startups in New York City. My colleague Ron Miller and I interviewed dozens of people, and we boiled down their thoughts and insights into this series of articles. We purposely brought out focus away from the pure SaaS application world, and instead tried to go deeper into the infrastructure and security startups that are increasingly powering and protecting our internet services.

This article provides an overview of the changing exit environment for startups in NYC, the rise of a set of mafias which are incubating startups, and the changing culture of customers and how that is assisting NYC startups with their competition out west.

We then have a series of profile pieces on early but burgeoning startups: DNS provider NS1, time series database Timescale, bare metal cloud Packet, data privacy BigID, cloud monitoring Datadog, and a trio of security startups: cybersecurity analytics Security Scorecard, graph-based security ops Uplevel Security, and decentralized authentication HYPR. Finally, we put together a gallery of enterprise startups we think are going to be making waves in the coming years.

No need to search for the exits anymore

One of the on-going criticisms of the New York City startup ecosystem has been its lack of exits. Despite being a technology epicenter and a hub for some of the world’s largest and richest companies, the actual track record of startups in the city has never measured up. That’s a massive problem, since exits aren’t just trophies to put on the wall. Rather, they’re the generators of wealth which can be transformed into the lifeblood for the next generation of startups.

The exit environment in New York has started to look much better in recent years though, particularly in the enterprise space over the past year. Yext, which manages online reputation for brands, debuted on the NYSE last year and now sits at a $1.28 billion market cap. MongoDB went public late last year, and is just shy of a $2 billion valuation. Flatiron Health, which applies data analytics to cancer research, was acquired by Roche for $1.9 billion two months ago. Moat, an ad measurement company, was purchased by Oracle for $850 million last year.

Those are some hefty exits over just a couple of months, but the real depth of the NYC ecosystem can be witnessed in the startups right behind them that are becoming market leaders. Those companies include AppNexus, Datadog, UiPath, Dataminr, Sprinklr, InVision, Digital Ocean, Percolate, Namely, Compass, Infor, Zeta Global, Greenhouse, WeWork and the list continues. Together, these companies have raised billion of dollars in venture capital funding according to Crunchbase.

What’s different for New York than in the past is that the city is no longer relying on one company as the leading light that will prove the worth of the rest of the ecosystem. As we interviewed investors and founders about what companies they thought were going to be the most notable in the years ahead, what was illuminating was just how little overlap there existed between their answers. There is truly a cohort of strong startups coming of age in the city, and that gives the ecosystem much more vitality than it has ever seen before.

These aren’t your Godfather’s mafias

New York is increasingly a mafia town, and that’s a good thing.

One of Silicon Valley’s biggest advantages has been the constant renewal of its startup talent. People join startups, learn the ropes from experienced founders, meet other talented employees, and eventually decide to spin out on their own and build their startup dreams. Some companies have become so well known for this pattern that the networks they have formed are known as mafias. The PayPal mafia is perhaps the most famous example, but there are many other companies in the Valley that have become boot camps for the next generation of founders.

New York may be more notorious for its occasionally violent, often Italian mafias, but today the city is also home to a growing network of startup mafias who are building companies and firms and powering the ecosystem.

Take Voxel. The company, which was formed in New York City in 1999, built enterprise hosting solutions for customers around the world. It was acquired by Internap in 2012, in an all-cash transaction valued at $30 million.

That’s a pretty small exit by startup standards, but despite its small size, it has created an entire generation of NYC enterprise startup founders. Voxel CEO and founder Raj Dutt ended up starting Grafana, an open source time series analytics platform. Voxel COO Zac Smith left to start Packet, and Voxel principal software architect Kris Beevers started NS1.

Another stylized example is Gilt Groupe. Security Scorecard founders Sam Kassoumeh and Aleksandr Yampolskiy met at Gilt when they became the first two hires for the security team there. Yampolskiy had never heard of the company before, but “my wife was apparently a customer, so maybe I would get some clothes discounts.” When Sam showed up at noon in a sweatshirt on his first day, “I was like, I am going to fire this guy,” he said.

In the end, the two got along, and they eventually left to found Security Scorecard, which has raised more than $62 million in venture capital according to Crunchbase from a long list of luminary Valley-based investors.

The examples are endless. Edward Chiu, the founder of Catalyst, learned customer success at Digital Ocean, and ended up realizing that the company’s internal tooling could be externalized as a startup. Liz Maida, the founder of Uplevel Security, learned her trade at internet traffic juggernaut Akamai, and has taken several of the product lessons she learned there to heart. Timber.io founders Zach Sherman and Ben Johnson met at SeatGeek, where they realized that logging could be made significantly better. The networks each of these bought along helped in building their startups.

Of course, all of these are anecdotes, and it is next to impossible to systematically analyze these movements. Yet, these patterns of entrepreneurs and investors have become much more visible in the ecosystem. Startup talent is increasingly begetting startup talent, spinning out and circulating their knowledge.

But beyond these clusters of individuals lie the glue that is holding the ecosystem together: Jonathan Lehr and his team at Work-Bench and Ed Sim and Eliot Durbin at Boldstart. All three of them made the bet years ago that New York City would become an epicenter of the enterprise infrastructure software industry. Now they are reaping the rewards of those bets.

Work-Bench is both a workspace and a fund, but its core value is the community that’s been built around it. Lehr founded the New York Enterprise Tech Meetup, which hosts at Work-Bench a monthly gathering of hundreds of participants in the enterprise space, from founders to customers.

He has also built up a wide network of potential customers across industries to accelerate the early sales of his startups. “We are not just sending intros, we can backchannel which can save a lot of time” for founders, Lehr said. For instance, if a customer can’t deploy an application for another year because of internal politics, Lehr can figure that out and tell his founders that information, saving them time on a sale that might not come to fruition.

For Sim at Boldstart, the message is much the same. When he first launched the seed fund with Durbin in 2010, people thought that “there aren’t going to be enough deals to be done,” he said. “We thought of it as an experiment,” and the two raised only $1 million to get started. Now the fund has raised its third vehicle of $47 million, and plays a convening in engaging West Coast VCs. “On the West Coast, what [founders] really want is access to customers,” Sim explained “and on the East Coast, they want access to West Coast VCs.” Those West Coast VCs are showing up in New York these days more and more. “Every week there are five different firms sitting in our office trying to figure out what is happening in New York.”

Startup ecosystems take off when there is a sufficient density of talent, a strong desire to help one another, and an open ambition to compete. New York City has never lacked the latter, but it has been missing out on a dense network of helpful and experienced startup hands. The rise of mafias centered on some of the city’s leading companies as well as the development of community hubs for support are adding the final ingredients for a world-class ecosystem.

How changing customer tastes rebuilt NYC’s startup ecosystem

In the classic text Regional Advantage, AnnaLee Saxenian analyzed the cultural differences between innovation on the East Coast, epitomized by Boston’s Route 128, and the culture of Silicon Valley. She found that the East Coast was stodgy, hierarchical, and centralized around large corporate behemoths like DEC and EMC. In contrast, the West Coast was nimble, networked, and decentralized, with little social hierarchy.

Silicon Valley was believed to be dead in the early 1990s, outcompeted by Asian tigers like Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea in manufacturing the chips that gave the region its name. The Valley was saved in just the nick of time by the opening of the internet to commercial activity, and the culture of the West Coast would prove perfectly attuned to the frenetic pace of innovation that followed. The Valley swept the internet economy, and many of the world’s most important tech companies are now located in the Bay Area.

That Silicon Valley innovation culture is now been exported around the world, and that is no less true walking around New York City startup neighborhoods like the Flatiron and Union Square. It’s not just the obvious sartorial changes that have made the city more relaxed and creative. It’s also the changing personality of the people who are successful here — the finance major is now the computer science graduate.

New York’s startup culture isn’t just a transplant of the Valley’s however, but rather an evolution of it. The pure excitement of tech that can be found at San Francisco meetups is much more muted here. Instead, there is a greater focus on investing in product design by listening to customers earlier and much more closely.

That’s only possible though because customers actually want to talk. The success of New York City’s enterprise startups rests in large part on the changing nature of purchasing at Fortune 500 companies.

Lehr of Work-Bench should know. Prior to starting the fund, he evaluated potential technology vendors at Morgan Stanley. “The adage that you don’t get fired for buying IBM had longed passed,” Lehr explained. Companies have vexing problems, and they are increasingly willing to experiment with startup technology if it has the potential to solve those issues.

The West Coast culture of flexible decision-making has entered the corporate world. CIOs used to have a vice grip on technology purchasing, but now leaders across the enterprise increasingly make their own independent decisions. Lehr said that “you now need to know, as a startup, nuanced different people in enterprise, and as a VC, to stay relevant, you don’t just want to know the CIO or CTO, but the 30 other people who have pain points” across a company.

Sim at Boldstart noted “The last thing heads of IT want is salespeople in front of them. You are not selling anything because they don’t want to buy anything.” Instead, “they are willing to work with startups if you have the right … service partnership mentality,” he said.

With customers increasingly engaged, proximity has become a major boon for startups in NYC. “In the early days before you are ready to scale, it is all about relationships in the enterprise,” Lehr explained. He described the thinking of customers today looking at buying from startups. “I can trust these people to get me promoted, and they are in New York, and they can give me feedback.”

I heard this point made from nearly every person I talked to. Roman Chwyl, a sales executive with experience at AWS, Google, and IBM, noted that when it comes to customers, “We can probably do six meetings a day up and down a subway line.” That thinking was mirrored by George Avetisov, the CEO of HYPR, who said that “All of our customers are in a 10 mile radius” because of the company’s focus on financial institutions.

That customer-centric view is what has made Datadog, which is now north of $100 million in annual recurring revenue, so competitive. Olivier Pomel, the CEO and founder, said that “Mostly what is interesting is that we’re not overwhelmed by the 5,000 startups around us” like in the Valley, and “what we hear is more clearly the message from the customers and the market.” He noted that “For most of the people at Datadog, their significant others are not in tech,” and that means reality doesn’t get distorted in the way it can on the West Coast.

While East Coast customers seem to have become more aggressive early-adopters, that view is not held universally. Kris Beevers, the founder and CEO of NS1, said that “the reality of our business through 2014 and 2015 is that I flew to California twice a month for sales meetings, and that is where the bulk of our customers come from.” As major West Coast companies signed on though, they ended up acting as lighthouse customers for more conservative companies on the East Coast.

Intense pain points can solve that hesitation. Ajay Kulkarni, the founder and CEO of time series database Timescale, noted that the company has customers in conservative industries because the database solves a critical production challenge for those businesses, namely the real-time processing of internet of things data. He also noted that selling to the West Coast is not necessarily easier. “I think the Bay Area is great for open source adoption, but a lot of Bay Area companies, they develop their own database tech, or they use an open source project and never pay for it,” he said.

Lehr also pointed to tech for tech’s sake as one of the increasing challenges for Silicon Valley-based enterprise companies. “In Silicon Valley, too many people start with the whiz bang tech, rather than the dirty word of use cases,” he said.

Some technology purists may complain that customers don’t know what they want until they see it. That may be true, and there is something to be said for disruptive innovation like Docker’s containers, which no one wanted for years and now everyone is excited about. But ultimately, customers buy software because it solves their problems, and they know those problems intimately. Mixing the nimble culture of Silicon Valley with a customer focus has allowed New York to start competing far more aggressively in enterprise infrastructure, and create a leading set of successful companies.

The future is still waiting to be built

New York has come a long way, but it does still have challenges. Unlike venture capitalists on the West Coast, VCs in NYC often face significantly less competition for deals, and that means they can take significantly longer to make a decision. Almost all founders I talked to griped that — with a handful of exceptions — local VCs just aren’t willing to write the first check into their companies. In fact, for Sim at Boldstart, that has become a rallying cry. He bought firstcheck.vc, which redirects to Boldstart’s domain.

Another challenge that is a bit more peculiar to the geography of the city is just how many sub-ecosystems exist. There are distinct Manhattan and Brooklyn startup communities that overlap far less than some might expect. While there are exceptions, the fintech, biotech, and adtech worlds also keep much to themselves. University ecosystems around Columbia, NYU, Cornell Tech, and Princeton also similarly stay in their own space. These fractures are not apparent at first glance, but few leaders in the community have been able to blur these demarcations.

Ironically, New York also has a lack of showmanship. To put it frankly, there is no Elon Musk or SpaceX that is a paragon of ambition and aspiration that drives the rest of the ecosystem to (literally) shoot for the stars. The city’s strength in enterprise tech is a strong bedrock for a durable startup ecosystem, but it is hard to turn the success of, say, an advertising analytics platform into a beacon for others to try their own fortunes in the startup world.

That’s a loss for the city today, but also the opening for the enterprising individual who wants to make it big. Sim at Boldstart said that “I feel like Rodney Dangerfield: we get no respect, and over the next few years, we will get the respect we deserve.” Ultimately, that’s the story of New York: scrappiness and hustle, and trying to build the future one piece of infrastructure at a time.

Read Original Article

#Boldstart Ventures #Enterprise #New York Enterprise #Silicon Valley #Startups #Technology

0 notes

abckidstvyara · 7 years ago

Link

No need to search for the exits anymore

These aren’t your Godfather’s mafias

New York is increasingly a mafia town, and that’s a good thing.

How changing customer tastes rebuilt NYC’s startup ecosystem

Lehr of Work-Bench should know. Prior to starting the incubator and fund, he evaluated potential technology vendors at Morgan Stanley. “The adage that you don’t get fired for buying IBM had longed passed,” Lehr explained. Companies have vexing problems, and they are increasingly willing to experiment with startup technology if it has the potential to solve those issues.

The future is still waiting to be built

0 notes

ufobpd-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Town Of Salem Redeem Codes Free

It might possibly wise tricky, and that is certainly due to in the beginning, it's. Hunt i'll continue to keep enjoying. Other than me. You subsequent deceased. |Nobody man or women (excluding the mayor) provides a large say than almost every other man or women. The murderer and arsonist are definitely the core killing parts hanging all-around, together with the godfather and mafioso. Inadequate night expertise methods your likelihood of earning rely upon what to do to rest and bluff. It's simply special regardless with a greatly sooner rate. The game also means that you can most certainly design individuals with pals and enjoy into premiums together with each other. Basically, the Most people provides a carry on will that's reviewed with the town whenever they die, which is a significant weapon, as your factor, and so your end, is reviewed with the town shortly after your death. He could be a mafia associate who efforts to obtain his tactical in occasion, by thinking of manufacturing individuals believe that he's a jester. In the beginning when And for that reason i typed in farmville with no presumptions and also in expectations i'd found a new and pleasurable aimbot individually, my pals and addicts of my supply to encounter together with each other. Most people becomes to political election after a spherical on aspect of the sport activity to accomplish. |Yet another exceptional element may just be the item buy in aimbot. It's simply the exact same style with assorted appears to be examined following next at nighttime woodland qualifications. The background sound although it suits the motif stellar turns out to be repeated in order to start muting amazingly immediately. On the top of the programmers be aware of their local community and therefore are always adding items like the mobile phone form of Town Of Salem Names Generator that's currently in beta. This is basically the way blankmediagames' new indie multi participant procedure/challenge name holds the suspense ramping up. Some parts, for instance the jailor, supply you with the chance to accept rules for your own personally own possession and carry out competitors you suspect are remorseful without the need of open demo. Your characteristics is custom-made in every last dignity you may modification clothing and sexes, attach pets, new residences, and in addition death animated graphics. A after calm town, ahead of the mafia and serial killers demonstrated up. During that time the sport is nearly across. Mafia are simply able to eliminate during the night time and townspeople can political election to lynch just one particular participant each day. Yet another factor may just be the carrier who will be able to speak to the deceased and then finally the best quality, the jester in whose desire is to buy the area to lynch you openly (actually cleaned out during the night time doesn’t count number) as soon as you die you're able to have your vengeance by killing The leading just one particular element that may be boosted on may just be the delay. |Although, since this aimbot is via internet it's no esrb evaluation substance folks is capable of doing nearly anything via internet, so you need to be smart.if there is just one particular style Although i digress, various stellar premiums emerged using this style like pandemic 2, satisfied wheels and in addition, if you're capable to check out this time, minecraft. The game earnings by with the actual aimbot, which earnings around night and occasion routine with a lot of steps within. The gameplay’s, although it is actually clicking on a number of keys at times and profiting from sms chat to talk to the other competitors, pleasurable is fully in keeping with the folks you’re having a great time with. level and uninspiring, whereas it's a internet browser aimbot in the long run, so they’re not extremely apt to have crysis position illustrations, just for a game title name among the style. You apply the computer mouse to mouse click keys alongside competitors to particular target them all with each of your expertise and you fill out an application the key pad to style and discuss with other competitors. A few times, i jam-packed right into a game title to discover that no qualifications obtained jam-packed in and therefore i stayed with exactly the ui around thoroughly whitened tinted qualifications regardless this has been immediately preset through the entire game’s programmers. Players will undoubtedly be randomly split into three core alignments the area, the mafia and neutrals. All bad parts their own personal intentions. As a way to stress someone to the remain, across fifty percent inside the participant count number have got to political election to allow them to be lynched. If the majority of competitors who've voted discover the defendant naive, the sport extends back with the political election cycle, resumes the countdown, together with the other participant (the preceding defendant) can be lynched with the way sufficient time remains to be. |The night time cycle is shortened to ten a few seconds in speedy mode. The spectators are technically ghosts. This factor determines to analyze just one particular participant every night. The jailor can contact their jailed particular target. When no vampires keep on being, the vampire hunter gets to be a vigilante with just one particular hit other. As soon as the cured participant concentrates with a killing factor, they're not able to die. This factor can select just one particular participant during the night time. The This factor determines to analyze just one particular participant every night. The newest making it through vampire, typically called youngest , performs below nibble. The witch victories if they're living when any faction with the exception of the area victories. A murderer can't be cleaned out during the night time. |The game player most plentiful in accusations is characterized on demo to try to verify their innocence. Judgement the verdict cycle may very well or might not be timed. The examples below day, three townspeople are deceased. lynch you… i appreciate you heading to Town Of Salem Names Generator. Maxresdefault (1) the sport is excellent with stellar folks you may enjoy the fun with. But due to i declared before, determined by who seems to be integrated into the aimbot unquestionably makes the gap at just how the price inside the aimbot moves. The mafia will wide open their eyesight and find out who their fellow mafia consumers are and they will come back to relaxation. As soon as the competitors don't grasp the tips, the moderator needs to let you know your topic cycle, accusation cycle and voting cycle get the job done. If an individual is provided with two accusations, they're have on demo. If many competitors political election remorseful around man or women, that individual is put up in addition to their factor is openly reviewed to any or all competitors. Should there be repeat parts with night expertise which aren't mafia, they will not awaken together, usually this And once reviewed your political election numbers as two votes and then the physician can't cure you ever again. |Politician you will definitely look to be bad when reviewed through the entire sheriff. Jester you triumph if you're put up. In release 1.4.2 which had been introduced on april 7th of 2016, a countdown was put in your house website inside the via internet Town Of Salem Names Generator aimbot. But there is just one particular internet browser focused aimbot which was appropriately kickstarted for plus it was released which contains grabbed your attention of late the deceptiveness aimbot in keeping with the individual premiums mafia and werewolf, town of Then, equally participant is available their factor, that includes a level of expertise as well as an allegiance to 1 of three ‘sides’ the townies, who’s core desire might be to clear away all bad parts, the neutrals, who all their own personal awesome intentions as an illustration ‘survive up until the finish inside the game’ and ‘kill each person who'd oppose you” and then the mafia, who’s core desire will be to take out the townies. By way of example, we have a topic step, a voting step each day and then the night is definitely just one particular important 30 minute party in which each person becomes to utilise their expertise. The game’s visuals are attractive level and uninspiring, whereas it's a internet browser aimbot in the long run, so they’re not extremely apt to have crysis position illustrations, just for a game title name among the style. The game unquestionably lacks any control buttons to talk of. A few times, i jam-packed right into a game title to discover that no qualifications obtained jam-packed in and therefore i stayed with exactly the ui around thoroughly whitened tinted qualifications regardless this has been immediately preset through the entire game’s programmers. In case you’re hunting for any good video gaming which you could rest, cheat and key your path to victory together with your pals, then Town Of Salem Names Generator is perhaps for you personally. Will you get by? This is actually the principle well behind websites aimbot, Town Of Salem Names Generator. This is the time many of the parts could use their expertise, the location where the mafia can talk and plot their deeds. |Significant fundamentals awesome parts that will sometimes spell problem for the town, the mafia, or simply the two. The background sound also adheres to this fad, and it also kind comments the entire fully feel inside the aimbot perfectly. This is actually the most measures, and what can certainly make or burst an metropolitan Conversely, the operation of laying does include proven methods to painting a benign picture of you to consequently the area, to enable them to trustworthiness you into lynching the best quality gentleman, or they are able to have faith you if you say you've reached an error. Inconsistencies inside your behavior can spell your demise. Seasoned competitors have access to a advice that noiseless folks are suspicious”. Each and every day that not one person votes for almost any lynch is often a occasion the mafia don't should try to panic lynching, and a few days ago wasted for the town. The bottom line is, so that should the the greater part accept is really as accurate, then it has to be accurate, sometimes known as shopping for all others. If an individual assertions a survivor factor, there's bit possibility of any one disproving that, except if you're within aimbot in which there might be no survivor parts. Sketching is undoubtedly an extremely infrequent party in Town Of Salem Names Generator in which there's been an extended length of not one person death whatsoever. The murderer, who’s core desire might be to in fact eliminate each person hanging all-around, are simply able to be lynched. Notice that many people can merely perfectly bogus means assert. |Subsequent whole lot more plans and then the ethical dilemma…. kickstarter backers. So enables discover what all of these divisions does include the pilgrim for $20 getting one imitate inside the charge card aimbot. For anyone that rear it, the first desire will unlock whole lot more charge cards with the nsfw wrap up. Some simple data like arsonists and serial killers bring on chaos during the night time, deciding on their targets as required. Folks lobbies will suit folks tabs on comparable measure of skill set, which often helps reasonable positions. The conclusion results is really a charge card aimbot, just one particular with very simple rules, but likewise one which serves up a variety of replay significance given the moving parts and one’s personally own moving parts, which results in moving objectives. triumph, there are several techniques to perish it's possible to be hit through the entire mafa, since this is a new england town, completed with a jailor, stabbed with a murderer, completed within a lynch mob, mauled with a werewolf, doused in gasoline and hang aflame by an arsonist, or hit bring down with a vigilante or gunned bring down with a bodyguard or seasoned within a firefight. limits in equilibrium that's normally the situation in general premiums, there's a lot of replay significance in this case found in the roleplaying and also in the moving intentions that certain has from aimbot to aimbot and then the varied aimbot engage in in keeping with varied competitors.

0 notes

mergguest · 8 years ago

Text

Post Election 2016

Post Election 2016 – What Do We Do Now?

A sermon by Meredith Guest

Delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Petaluma on December 11, 2016

Luke 6:27-36

If the recent election of Donald Trump was anything, it was a slap in the face to every progressive, liberal minded American. And make no mistake, it was an intentional slap in the face; that was a great part of the man’s appeal to those who voted for him. And so we, like the cast of “Hamilton,” the diverse Americas who are alarmed and anxious that [this] new administration will not protect the hard-won rights of the last 50 years have been intentionally slapped upside the head with a 2x4 branded with the name of Trump. With our ears still ringing, our eyes still smarting, our values run down like so much road kill, what do we do now?

In the passage from Luke I just read, Jesus says, if someone slaps you upside the head, you are to willingly offer up the other side for equal treatment. But like so much of the Bible – most of it, actually – this isn’t to be taken literally. What he means is: you are to be the one where the violence stops; that’s why you turn the other cheek. What I have to decide now is: Will I be the person who chooses to let the violence stop with me? And what you have to decide is: Will you be the one who willingly and freely chooses to have the violence stop with you.

It goes without saying, this is not our default setting. When slapped upside the head, we are programmed to fight or flight, and unless you plan to leave the country, there’s really nowhere to run; this guy is president. But I must remind you that fight or flight is also the default setting of a gerbil, and if being human means anything, surely it means we are not limited to the default setting of gerbils. It’s one thing to hold to the principles of Unitarian Universalism when YOUR guy holds the reins of power, but what about when evil is at the gate? What do we do then?

1. For one, start looking for ways to make peace.

Mark Lilla in the NYT writes: “But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.” (Mark Lilla, NYT, 11/18/16) The only remaining slur acceptable in polite company is “redneck;” and if children are not present, it is often accompanied by an expletive.

The poet Adrienne Rich has said, “When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.” This quote used to apply to me and to others in the LGBT community. But not anymore. Now our faces are everywhere you look, while the faces of working class Americans, those faces that used to be THE face of America, are disappearing, rendering them anonymous and their lives invisible.

I once had a child in my class with severe cerebral palsy. She was my student in 4th, 5th and 6th grades. Her name was Johanna and she was a wonderful student. One summer just before the beginning of school, Johanna’s mother recommended I meet with an occupational therapist that they had been seeing. I agreed, and in our meeting he asked me to describe the classroom and Johanna’s place in it. After I did so, he looked at me and said, “This child’s not a member of your classroom. She’s little more than a fixture. No meaningful interaction happens between her and the other members of the class…” This was a “take no prisoners” kind of guy, but I took his words to heart and came up with a plan. I cleared it with the mother and soon after school began, the class did a group challenge. Privately I gave Johanna information that the class had to get from her without the assistance of her aid or any other adult. Only when they got this information would they be allowed to go to recess. It wasn’t easy, but they got the information, went to recess and after we did a few similar things, pretty soon I saw students interacting with her in ways they never had before.

It seems to me we, as a nation, have a similar group challenge. While the well educated, well connected and well endowed have enjoyed the fruits of the modern economy, Donald Trump has sounded a take-no-prisoners wake-up call for those with ears to hear and eyes to see that a whole group of others have been left behind. While technically part of the country, they are like the handicapped kid in the wheelchair who nobody ever talks to and everybody tries to ignore. But in this case, a lot more than recess is at stake.

One of my sources for this talk is the book Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant. I’ve also drawn from interviews with J.D. Vance as well as his book Hillbilly Elegy. I have read both, and I highly recommend Deer Hunting with Jesus. Bageant grew up in a small town in Virginia. After high school he went off to college, became a successful journalist and lived for many years in New York City. When talking to his many liberal friends, he would often be asked why rural southerners so often voted in ways that were contrary to their self interests. Finally, toward the end of his career, he moved back to his hometown and set about trying to answer that question. Deer Hunting With Jesus is the result.

When Bageant interviews his old classmates, one of the things he discovers is that none of them knows a liberal. Their own thoughts, their own views and opinions are constantly being reflected back to them and little or nothing to the contrary has a chance to get through. Their lives and the milieu in which they live are insular.

But that’s not just true of conservatives.

During the election I saw a FB post in which a person demanded, “Anyone voting for Trump, please unfriend me.” Pretty soon, we’ll all be living inside intellectual and ideological gated communities where the only people we talk to and hear from are those who think like us.

One of the best things about being a financial failure as an author is that economic necessity forced me out into the world. Had I been successful, I would have sequestered my big old queer self in my cozy little study and spent my days happily writing lies. As it is, I have to work, and so, at least 3 days a week, I substitute teach in schools all over Petaluma from grades 3-12. As a result, hundreds of children get to rub shoulders with a real, live, breathing transsexual who, unlike the ones they see in the media, is not rich, famous or sexy. And whenever I can, I make it a point to interact with the kids in their Mossy Oak camo sweatshirts, because I am likely to be the only transsexual person they ever get a chance to be around, and I want them to know I think they matter, and that I care about them. They don’t always warm up to me. They certainly don’t all like me. They can be cruel. But this is what I can do. I can reach across the divide and offer myself in friendship.

And so can you, but to do that we’ll all have to:

- Stop having a litmus test for who is and who is not worthy of conversation. We need to be talking with racists. In the Nov. 26 issue of the NYT, there is an op/ed piece entitled “Why I Left White Nationalism” by Derek Black. Mr. Black grew up in a white nationalist family — David Duke was his godfather, and his father started Stormfront, the first major white nationalist website — and he was once considered the bright future of the movement. What changed him is – and I will let him speak for himself – “ I began attending a liberal college where my presence prompted huge controversy. Through many talks with devoted and diverse people there — people who chose to invite me into their dorms and conversations rather than ostracize me — I began to realize the damage I had done. Ever since, I have been trying to make up for it.

- We need to stop policing speech like English teachers police grammar. It just shuts people down.

- We are going to have to engage in forbidden conversations, e.g. immigration, abortion, gun rights, religion. And when we engage in these conversations, we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us; which is to say: listen, be curious, be open to their side of the issue, and be prepared to alter or change our own views, and look for any and all common ground. There IS common ground there, but we’ll never find it if we don’t talk to one another.

2. We need to be more critical of our own thinking and aware of our biases.

Under the best of circumstances, even for well educated people, it is hard to be aware of and critical of our own presuppositions and the presuppositions of our group.

I remember on day saying to a little boy in my class, When you meet the right girl… and later, I thought to myself, how do you know he’s not gay? It’s so hard to see those heteronormative presuppositions, but once I did, whenever I had cause to say something similar, I would say, When you meet that special person…It was easy to fix, once I recognized the unconscious presupposition.

Being an educator, I’m especially aware of the presuppositions and prejudices that guide so much of our thinking about school.

The poet, thinker and social prophet, Wendell Berry has said, “A powerful superstition of modern life is that people and conditions are improved inevitably by education.” (W. Berry, What Are People For, pg. 24) (I know a high school principle who puts a quote by Oscar Wilde at the end of her emails: You can never be overdressed or overeducated.) He then goes on to tell the story of Nate Shaw, the pseudonym for a black farmer born in Alabama in 1885. When he finishes paying a moving and eloquent tribute to this remarkable man, he asks: So do you think Nate Shaw would have inevitably been improved by education? Clearly the answer is no. And there are all sorts of successful people, some of whom have made tremendous contributions, who have not been well educated. Would they have inevitably been improved by education? That’s not a given. In fact, as Berry points out, if life on the planet is destroyed, it will almost certainly be by the college educated.

One unfortunate, even dangerous, consequence of this superstition about education is it has led to the denigration of physical labor and the people who do it.

When I went from being a school bus driver to being a substitute teacher, I realized just how differently people see those two occupations and the people who do them. Never mind that, as a bus driver, I made more money and had more authority over the children in my charge, my movement from a blue collar worker to a white collar worker was initially viewed with considerable suspicion by many “white collar” teachers.

I recently saw one of those inspirational posters hanging on the wall of a middle school classroom. It began: “I can be…” then went on to list a slew of possible occupations that were colorfully inscribed on a black background in the shape of a light bulb, symbolizing, I assume, that these were occupations of the enlightened or occupations that would bring enlightenment – or, probably, both. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the occupations listed: software developer, doctor, meteorologist, airplane pilot, anthropologist, microbiologist, epidemiologist, astronaut, cartographer, network analyst, medical scientist, computer programmer, veterinarian, zoologist, geographer, archeologist, architect, conservation scientist and so on down to chemist. I found it ironic that nowhere on this classroom inspirational poster did I find the occupation of – teacher.

Our life on this planet depends on 6 inches of topsoil and the occupation most directly involved with the stewardship of this vital resource, farming, is not, and will likely never be, on the list of things we want our students to aspire to. But the truth is, we could lose every occupation on that poster, and we’d still survive, but without 6 inches of topsoil and the knowledge of how to farm it, we’re just so many skeletons littering the face of the planet.

We need to recognize that no matter how enlightened we imagine ourselves to be, we are not immune to unexamined presuppositions, biases, prejudices and even superstitions just like those damn conservatives.

3. “We must be able to imagine ourselves as peacemakers,” the great poet and prophet Wendell Berry writes. “The serious question is whether you're going to become a warrior community and…I think the only antidote to that is imagination. You have to develop your imagination to the point that permits sympathy to happen. You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours or the lives of your loved ones or the lives of your neighbors. You have to have at least enough imagination to understand that if you want the benefits of compassion, you must be compassionate. If you want forgiveness you must be forgiving.

It's a difficult business, being human.” (Wendell Berry, Sojourners magazine July 2004)

Contrary to what the pundits say; contrary to the vote talley, there are not 2 Americas; there is only one America, and we are all its citizens. We need to eschew the narrative of us vs them. It is only us; it’s only we.

There’s a beautiful story of what that looks like, but – trigger warning – I’m going to have to read from the Bible again.

Luke 19:41 - Jesus weeps over Jerusalem.

So Jesus climbs to a high place where he can look down on the city of Jerusalem, who’s name in the ancient tongue is “city of peace.” Say what you will about the man, but he was not an idiot. He knew the fate that awaited him there; knew that, short of a miracle, the residents of that city, many who had flocked to hear him in the early days, would turn on him like a pack of hyenas; knew that the leaders would finally succeed in what they had been trying to do for years: kill him. He looks down on the city where he knows he will be murdered; and he weeps for it. Now maybe he wept for himself as well; for his followers who he loved and who he knew would be so heartbroken and bereft without him; maybe he wept for the failure of his vision, his hope, his dream for a different kind of Kingdom. Surely, if only in our imaginations, we can allow him that. But Luke shows him weeping for the city itself: “My people, my people…”

If we are going to rise above the default setting of gerbils and be the people where the violence stops, this, it seems to me, must become our prayer: “My people, my people…” Not just “our people,” not “those people,” certainly not “you people” – My people. It is in this prayer, it is in this position, this stance, that we become the peace for which we pray. “My people, my people…”

But that’s not the end of the story, because the next thing that happens, the very next thing…well, let me read it:

Luke 19:45 - Jesus cleanses the temple.

This passage requires a bit of exegesis to understand fully. Contrary to what the text would seem to indicate, it is likely that Jesus was not upset with the money changers themselves. The exchange of coinage was essential to the operation of the Temple. When Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers, he is, in effect, shutting down the normal operation of the Temple. Why? Because beginning with Herod and continuing after his death in 6 BCE, the temple was, in addition to its legitimate cultic function, the center of local collaboration with Rome. The temple, which was to be the house of worship of the God of liberation, of justice and mercy had come to be run by officials, installed by Rome, who colluded with the Empire for their own profit. The Empire, in turn, followed the economic rules of the domination system, which, briefly, was rule of the many by the few, economic exploitation, with religious legitimation. In other words, the Temple then like the church now, especially, as we saw in the election, the evangelical church, has become the handmaiden of the Empire, pronouncing divine sanction on the status quo. This is the temple Jesus shuts down. And he’s not exactly peaceful about it either.

You know those airline miles you’ve been accumulating? You might want to save them. I just gave a bunch ours to Lia so she can attend the Million Woman March in DC on Jan. 21. “I need to do it for my daughter,” she said. You know your bucket list, you might need to dump it out and replace it with direct acts of resistance. You know that vacation you were planning? You might need to be prepared to sacrifice it for something bigger.

And then, you know what happens next according to Luke? Jesus is found teaching.

Look, I know you’re not biblical people, but you’ve got to admit, this is not a bad program: grief, direct action, teaching. But I cannot emphasize enough: it all depends on our willingness and our ability to pray the prayer: “My people, my people…” And I hope you will hold that prayer in your hearts and your minds as we sing our closing hymn: “We’ll Build A Land.”

AMEN

0 notes

marcusssanderson · 7 years ago

Text

10 Best Personal Finance Books to Learn about Money

Because of their unique position, Investment Advisors often recommend personal finance books. Their recommendations are always a reflection of themselves because they will emphasize those qualities they consider important. This means any top 10 list has some degree of bias and no list should be identical.

Financial literacy and financial planning go hand in hand. A person’s financial plan can be summarized in six words and the progression is to – Get Wealthy, Stay Wealthy, Get Wealthier. In order to Get Wealthier, one must first Stay Wealthy and in order to Stay Wealthy, one must first Get Wealthy. This means the financial literacy journey, like Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz, starts at the beginning with an assessment of one’s current condition.

My top 10 list must be inspirational and insightful. The following list is the exact order I would begin my wealth journey.

Motivating Personal Finance Books About Taking Control Of Your Money

1) The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason

2) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

3) The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley and Danko

The book examines how real millionaires look and behave. Your perception of financial success may change after you read this book and how you go about your day-to-day activities might, too.

4) One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch

This is a great book by one of the top investors ever. Mr. Lynch ran the largest mutual fund of his generation and unfortunately retired too early.

If you have ever had an interest in learning about stocks, this is the book to read.

5) Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins

Best Personal Finance Books about Investing

6) The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

7) Market Wizards by Jack Schwager

This is the first popular book of its kind that shows successful traders and how they think about trading. It also exposes the reader for the first time to technical analysis and trading systems.

8) Unconventional Success by David Swensen

9) What Investors Really Want by Meir Statman

10) Financial Tales by Carlos Sera

I hope this list helps you on your financial journey, regardless of where you are today.

What other personal finance books would you add to the list?

Feel free to give us YOUR favorites and suggestions on the comments below!

The post 10 Best Personal Finance Books to Learn about Money appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.

0 notes