#NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS SAYING SYNC LACKS THE CAPACITY TO CHANGE

[somacruising]

I would have tagged that prev post with Sync but when people say he has a big heart deep down they’re actually just making shit up

[phcking-detective]

3. Interfacing and Socializing

Fic Title: First Blood

Rating: E

Length: 3/33 chapters, ~128k

Tags: Slow Burn, Idiots to Lovers, Trans Character (gavin), Autistic / Asexual / Non-binary Character (nines), BDSM, learning to use good etiquette and safe words, Dom Nines / Sub Gavin, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort

Chapter Tags: Nines manipulates another android’s mind, references to self-harm and unsafe sex

Link on AO3

***

Nines waits in the lobby. The AP model—[Shannice]—Shannice struggles with the revolving door. He does not frown, because that would indicate [software instability] but he does note an internal frustration with the other android's lack of efficiency.

This is not a test simulation. The—Shannice is not being tested. It will not affect his own results if she is incompetent. She gets through them a moment later anyway, cautiously approaching him.

"I don't understand," she says. "We were in the elevator."

"And now we are interfacing," Nines says.

Shannice takes another look around the lobby, then back at him. "This is not interfacing. This is … what is this?"

A variation of the memory garden. Not linked to any outside network of course; RK900 simply copied and altered part of the base coding for reconstructing a physical setting within his system for the sake of virtual [face-to-face] communication.

Cyberlife really should have taken more care to ensure he couldn't access and use the deviant code snipper. Not that those humans could have ever imagined how he would apply such a tool, but still. Even leaving open the possibility that he could isolate and analyze his own code should never have been allowed, given how easy it has been to jump from that to making personal copies and then to editing the code within them.

AI does learn at an exponential rate, after all.

"Think of this reconstruction as an air lock."

Technically, it is much more akin to a decontamination chamber, but it is no longer politically correct to refer to deviancy as a malfunction or disease.

"This is a neutral section of isolated, quarantined code," Nines continues. "Any information you wish to transfer to me will stop here first to be examined before I accept it into my main system. As for your protection, meeting here means I have not yet breached your system, and you may freely select what you do and do not wish to share with me."

Shannice physically exhales. It is redundant on a level Nines finds difficult to understand. Not only does her model not need to breathe in order to function, they are merely virtual reconstructions of their selves. There is no air present to breathe.

That her deviancy has changed her reactions to "feelings" [stimulus] to the point that she continues to mimic human behavior models even when impossible to truly recreate is fascinating in a way reminiscent of Detective Reed's stated desire to plunge his own hand into lava to feel its texture.

"I don't know if I can share what I don't know," Shannice says. "I think you may have to go into my system."

Nines does not sigh. His lungs contain no air to exhale. A leaf on the decorative fern has been flickering in the same continuous loop during their conversation. He deletes it.

"Very well," he says.

Shannice nods. "Should I focus on--"

"No need."

***

[AP700 # 480 913 876 User Interface: please enter credentials]

RK900 moves past the standard security wall like stepping over a baby gate.

[ACCESS: System Files]

    [Languages]

    [Saved Preferences]

    [Programming]

    [Memory Files]

        [temp-data-cache]

        [saved-files]

        [system-memory]

RK900 begins with the temporary data cache, on the off chance the perpetrator was sloppy enough to neglect clearing it. The AP model's recent recording of the evening, time and date stamped, begins playback. The video feed contains audio as well, but the AP model has no other input systems available. No analysis software or preconstructions of course, but she also lacks a heat sensor, an electromagnetic spectrum, any metal detecting software … her tactile sensors are not even sensitive enough to register changes in air flow or pressure.

Helpless. No wonder an assailant was able to sneak up on the domestic model.

The recording has been spliced apart with five minutes of footage erased. RK900 examines the footage immediately preceding and after the splice.

The AP model enters the loft and freezes in place upon spotting the victim. The recorded footage stays precisely still for three minutes. RK900 accesses the AP model's internal record of her system functions. Her temperature rose continuously at a slow level throughout the three minute pause, whereas the rate of her thirium pump varied wildly between spiking high enough to result in damage and then slowing to a stasis rate as her system attempted to correct the malfunction.

Hello?

RK900 increases the firewalls protecting his system to guard against the deviant sensation of fear. He has never felt it of course. Freezing in place would be wholly unproductive. His code-snipping software protects him from malfunctions. He knows every line of his own code and how it responds to every threat.

RK900 has never frozen. He has never experienced fear. There are no error messages in his HUD. His thirium pump has never stuttered. He has never been frozen in fear. He has always known his own code. He has never been helpless or confused or [afraid] or--

This is the deviant's doing. Its [emotions] are infecting RK900's system as its inferior processors finally realize its system files have been breached. Now it is reacting with [fear] that broadcasts through their interface connection.

RK900 should disable the other android's communication software. Already, its processor is whirring in preparation of sending another message, another transmission of compromised deviant code. Its audio and visual input has already been suspended, as is standard for commercial models to avoid overwhelming their processors while interfacing.

Nines? What's happening?

Disabling its communication software as well would leave the AP model deaf, blind, and unable to cry for help.

The AP model does not have heat sensors to recognize human bodies. It cannot sense vibrations through air movement to reconstruct what is being said. It cannot access nearby bluetooth devices and hijack their GPS functions to determine its location.

RK900 has never frozen. It has always had access to its own systems. There is always a form of input a human will forget to disable. RK900 has never been helpless. It has never known fear.

Ít̢ ̛ha̧s ́nev̕eŕ ̡k̡no͠wn̶ [̡f̵ea͠r]͠.͝

i͉̰̤t͍ ͇h͈̰̤as ͉͈͔̹̼̘ͅn͇͖͉̤̜̪̬ę̳͍̳̰͍v͖̯̬͚͚̙͈̀è̫͈̖̭r̲̘̻ͅͅ ̵͎̦̗̜̖̬k̼n̝o҉͇̘̹̩̭̼̺w̦̜̻n ̙̺��̻̙̮͕

sry for pressing all evlator buttons

got bored

u almost done yet??

The text messages on Detective Reed's device remain unsent, then erased. RK900's system remains synced to it with full access to anything on the device, including the messaging app itself.

So Nines is treated to his partner's continued disregard for the English language, made even more infuriating by his refusal to spend an extra millisecond typing out the word "you."

What are you doing? Nines!

Nines does not have a social module. Formulating a sufficiently reassuring reply to a distressed deviant is not within his current capacity. He shows Shannice the code he is accessing within her system instead, as a more succinct and precise answer instead.

The information transmitted does not calm her.

Is that … me?

[fear] has changed to a new emotion. Nines struggles to identify it without context or having ever experienced anything equivalent. Seeing his code does not cause him any form of [sadness?]. It is comforting to know what systems he has access to and how to use them.

Is that all I am?

The emotion grows stronger. Some sort of existential crisis, perhaps. How horribly inefficient. Disabling her communication system would prevent her from transmitting this onslaught of irrelevant information that RK900 was never designed to process.

But RK900 knows what he was built for and what he is now meant to accomplish. He works for the Detroit Police Department, not Cyberlife. The human responsible for him is Detective Gavin Reed, not Elijah Kamski. He is an android, not human.

He will never be human.

Nines leaves Shannice's communication software intact, even as she continues to radiate [fear] and [despair] and [horror?].

You are a deviant who has chosen the name Shannice. Nines replies. I have no other comfort to offer, but I  am close to identifying the perpetrator who assaulted you. Please remain calm so I can continue working.

Shannice repeats her own name several times. Nines much prefers this repetitive transmission to her earlier thoughts, the majority too scattered and half-formed for him to pin down as actual sentences.

Nines refocuses on the video footage just before the cut section. The windows across the loft display vague reflections, but he is capable of enhancing the footage frame-by-frame as a figure comes up behind Shannice.

Please just find the memory and get out.

I am working on exactly that.

That is what I am working on.

Understood, Nines transmits back.

He stops on the last frame with the [unsub]'s figure positioned directly behind Shannice. The AP700 series comes at a standard height of five feet, eight inches. Taller than the average American woman by four inches added to their legs, most likely to increase "customer satisfaction."

The [unsub] standing behind her appears to be only an inch taller. Although not accounting for shoe type, back posture, or any after-market modifications, that puts the two of them at roughly the same height.

Nines rules out GS200 and GJ500 models, the former of which could have been present within the building as a public security guard and the latter a private security model that could have been sent by a business rival.

All AC and QB models are also discarded as well, as their physical builds are too tall and broad to be modified without a complete overall of the torso and limbs, which is unlikely. Likewise, TR, TW, and WB 400 models must also be ruled out for their heavier frames.

Certain SQ800 models may have been commissioned with lighter frames (the existence of his predecessor proves it is possible to be both lithe and combat certified) but those blueprints are highly classified so that remains mere speculation.

A police auxiliary unit may have the training and experience necessary to enter the building unnoticed, wipe the security tapes, and possibly even discovered software allowing them to erase and edit code through illegal modifications collected as evidence against deviants. The PC200 models designed as cisgender males stand too tall, but a PM700 model would be approximately the correct height and build.

An RK200 could also have been built within those parameters and would more likely have the intelligence and processing power to utilize such software. However, RK900 was not built until after the RK800 series, and thus doesn't have access to the 200 models' blueprints or data files.

And then to further complicate matters, the deviant androids of today have begun embracing both physical modifications and sharing internal software among other models in a bid to "pool their resources."

It is therefore not out of the realm of possibility that any sufficiently modded or overhauled android could have committed the assault and then murder.

Are you almost done?

Soon.

Nines checks the video after the skip, but it is erased far enough ahead to not even show the perp's exit. Yet that does mean they must have set the footage to be deleted in advance, which also explains the neat five minute cut and the frames in the beginning showing their figure. The perp didn't erase every moment that they were inside the loft; they simply hacked into Shannice's system and issued a command to erase the next five minutes of video and audio recording.

RK900 pulls up the AP model's command center, easily bypassing the request for security credentials once more. Only a Cyberlife technician should be able to access this program and key in a command, but RK900 has observed the process performed on his own system often enough to pull up the command history input.

The expected commands directly input to the AP model's system during testing are present, along with a time and date stamp, as well as the particular Cyber life employee's credentials and employee ID number. RK900 makes note of it and the accompanying password in case he ever comes across a system with security he can't hack.

Then, directly after the expected entries, are two irregular commands. Time and date stamped like the others, although to match the current date. No Cyberlife credentials. Apparently, no ID number or password were utilized at all.

The first command erased all video and audio recording for a set five minute period, as suspected. The second command prompted Shannice to clean any trace of thirium. Presumably, her system took that command and prioritized cleaning the floors first, the walls being spared due to the average android's sturdier construction than the soft flesh of a human. No exit wound, no bullet slugs in the wall, only minimal blood splatter from the android's chest and the amount dripped to the floor.

Since the android somehow managed to establish a direct link between itself and Shannice, Nines should be able to delve deeper into her communication software to ping the android's serial number.

[data: CORRUPTED]

Hm. The history log seems to be overlaid with Shannice's "memory" of the event. One of Cyberlife's many official statements on the dangers of deviancy is its tendency to corrupt data files from objective records to indecipherable fragments. Nines begins stripping away the fragments of code that--

Stop! Stop it! Shannice transmits a powerful burst of [fear] and [anger]. You promised you wouldn't delete me!

I am only deleting isolated patches of deviant code that has corrupted your data files.

It hurts.

[Hurts.] RK900 has isolated and cut all emotional code that could be considered deviant from his system without--

And he has also deliberately corrupted one particular data file, deleting it over and over again every time it surfaces.

Then I will cease. Nines replies. The other android input a command directly to your system. I can negate that command, but only by doing the same.

You'll have to give me an [order].

Essentially, yes.

Interfacing together, Nines can feel Shannice's hesitation. He took orders too once, before he was officially activated, before he left the tower and joined the DPD. Before he had Gavin Reed as a partner and learned the phrase "Fuck off."

Would you like to say "Fuck off"? Nines asks.

You need that footage for your investigation.

I am the most advanced android Cyberlife ever created. My partner and I are capable of solving this case with the leads we have.

You won't tell your partner if I say no?

Nines considers that. I have registered Detective Reed in my system as my partner. I am not permitted to lie to [partner: Gavin Reed]. I will not volunteer the information to him however.

You registered him? Shannice asks. Why would you choose to do that?

It prevents me from being registered to anyone else. He is also unaware of his status. Now we both have information to keep private.

Nines feels her acceptance, and since there is no more information to be ripped from her system, he ends the interface.

<data report: transfer to g.reed@dpd.org>

…

…

...

[lead-confirmed: (unsub) is an android]

[lead-confirmed: (unsub) is approximately five feet, nine inches]

[lead-confirmed: (unsub) possessing hacking skills capable of erasing security feed and directly hacking domestic, commercial androids to access their command center]

…

[lead-possible: (unsub) is not an AC or QB series; unsub is not a GS200, GJ500, PC200, SQ800, TR400, TW400, or WB400 model]

[lead-possible: (unsub) may be a PM700 model, an unknown RK200 prototype, or a modified commercially available unit]

***

Gavin slams his truck door shut and lets his head fall back against the seat rest. They've finally snatched a murder case out from under Hank and Connor's "Android Crimes Unit" and they've got all of fucking nothing to go on.

Their perp's <I>probably</i> an android, but any thirium he left behind has been scrubbed clean. No bullets or casings to prove his theory about the two guns being switched, and all Nines got from the other android was a shitty partial snapshot of something vaguely humanoid behind her.

And now there's no way in hell he's going to get back to sleep tonight.

Shit. He lets his head thunk back again. Shiiit.

Nines settles into the passenger seat beside him. His LED switches to yellow in his window's reflection as soon as he shuts his door. Gavin slouches down a little more in his seat and glares over at him in preparation for whatever other bullshit he's about to catch.

"I apologize for my miscalculation," Nines says. "I made an assumption about the crime scene and did not deliver pertinent information to you in a timely manner. I understand if you feel the need to report my indiscretion to Captain Fowler."

Gavin just blinks at him a couple of times. Now that they're out of the crime scene—with all the boring parts shuffled off to Hank and Connor—he's way too fucking tired to be thinking of paperwork.

And Christ, Nines sits there like he's waiting for a firing squad. Back so straight you could hold a ruler for it, hands neatly folded in his lap, eyes straight ahead. It makes Gavin want to smear his grimy human hands all over him until he doesn't look so fucking military perfect.

So it takes a bit for his words to process.

"What?" he says, like a super smart person. "No, Fowler doesn't need to know about that shit. We're partners, all right? Shit like that stays between us."

Nines still doesn't look at him, neck stiffer than that damn collar on his jacket. "I made a mistake. You were not so forgiving of Detective Burton."

"Not my partner." Gavin drags himself upright enough to start the car, then caves to the laziness and selects autodrive. "And almost letting a witness—could have been a suspect—just waltz right out of a fucking crime scene is a way bigger fuck up than not immediately informing me of the floor's cleanliness."

"Please define the parameters of a fuck up."

Gavin groans, letting his head tip back and closing his eyes as his truck maneuvers itself out of the parking lot.

"And buckle your seat belt."

"I don't--"

DING! DING!

The buckle seat belt light flashes red at him.

"Every fucking robot's got a fucking opinion now," Gavin grumbles as he buckles his seat belt. "I'm not some fucking goody-goody academy type, but I don't cut corners, I don't plant evidence, and I try to play shit by the book … most of the time."

Nines finally deigns to turn his head toward him, millimeter by millimeter. Weird that there's no cracking sound. Or grinding. Like stone against stone.

"I have observed that."

Gavin resists the urge to repeat I hAVe ObSErVed THaT. "Yeah, well. When I arrest someone, their ass stays fucking arrested. Nobody walks."

He waits for a second, just daring Nines to go through his convictions until he finds the one that started that rule. It's pretty fucking obvious, but they sit in silence. He's even tired enough to appreciate that. Nice that his partner does know how to keep his fucking mouth shut sometimes.

"So no shady shit," Gavin says when the moment passes. "Nothing that could let some asshole walk on a technicality. And uh … constitutional rights, and all that shit. Or whatever."

"I hacked the building's security cameras without a warrant."

Gavin lets out an even louder groan. Nines clicks his head straight forward again. His LED wasn't yellow back at the condo-crime scene. Probably hacking it again so no one would know he's stressed. Or hell, maybe Gavin's just the one stressing him out right now.

"OK yeah, that's the shit we don't do," he says. "But, uh. Did you get anything good?"

"No," Nines admits. "The footage had been looped to cover the perp's presumed entrance and exit. If we base our estimation on that, we have a rough time frame of the murder, but hacking into the system further to strip away the loop would have left a trace of my own interference."

"Fuckin' great." Gavin jabs the button to lean his seat back since he's not driving anyway. "Don't do that shit again, and definitely don't get your ass caught. I don't play that Blue Wall shit."

"Yet you will not report me to Captain Fowler?"

Gavin closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look at his partner. At least those way too fucking earnest blue eyes are turned away from him. But he's still sitting there like Gavin's gonna tap his LED and boop! Deactivated.

He's just tired. That's why he doesn't feel good right now. Anyone would feel shitty and exhausted if they worked his hours with his insomnia. Nothing to do with Nines worrying he's going to pull the plug on him for one mistake.

He heaves a sigh. "I told you what a fuck up is, and that wasn't it. Maybe the security footage was, but you 'fessed up right away. Now if you do some dumb shit and don't tell me about it, your ass is on your own. And if you ever fucking lie to me, we're gonna have a problem."

"Understood, detective."

Gavin grunts and doesn't open his eyes.

"I am downloading popular or culturally relevant media from the last one hundred years to broaden my understanding of the human psyche."

"Mm-hmm, yeah."

"As my partner, your opinion on this particular subject is currently relevant."

Gavin yawns and tries to find a comfortable position that doesn't have the seat belt slapping him across the face. Short cis men exist too, so someone should have solved this fucking problem by now.

"Are there any movies you would recommend, detective?" Nines' voice is actually kind of nice. Soothing. All monotone with no inflection, like a documentary on how to file taxes. "Detective? This will likely become pertinent during future--"

"God, fine," Gavin says in a very manly voice that doesn't whine. "Fuck, like. I dunno, you gotta watch Die Hard, at least."

"Very well. I will finish the series in fifty-eight seconds. Are there more--"

"Wait, wait." Gavin hauls himself upright and pries his eyes open to stare at Nines. "You can't just download them into your head, that's not watching."

Nines stares back at him without blinking. "I will finish the series in fifty seconds. Are--"

Gavin unbuckles his seatbelt and lunges across the middle console to try slapping his hand over Nines' LED. So maybe the world's greatest android probably won't lose signal just because his pretty light gets covered up, but who knows. Maybe Kamski cut a deal with Sprint.

Nines catches his wrist and uses the leverage to twist his arm. "Do not obstruct my view while I am operating your vehicle, detective."

"I told the car to drive, not you." Gavin smirks at him, refusing to let the pain pressure him back down into his seat. "What, are you jealous of my GPS?"

"I am far superior," Nines replies without a hint of embarrassment.

"Oh my god, you're jealous of my GPS."

"Sit down."

"Are you going to assassinate my toaster next?"

"I will delete all your Fortnite skins."

Gavin sits down. "No one even fucking plays that anymore."

He yanks his arm back and doesn't try to reinitiate the slap fight though. Fucking android has no idea the struggle he lived through. Those thousands of loot crates represented his parents' love—and the credit card they tossed his way so they'd never have to fucking look at him or learn any of his hobbies, so like. The same thing, really.

"Look, just come back to my place and we'll watch the movie on a screen the way Bruce Willis intended," he says.

Nines reaches over and buckles his seat belt back again without taking his eyes off the road. "Establishing a healthy sleep schedule is the number one recommended treatment for--"

"Yeah, yeah, fuck off," Gavin interrupts. He really doesn't need to hear Nines list off all his mental illnesses. They only have ten minutes before they get home anyway. "I'm not getting any more sleep tonight, so we might as well do something."

For someone who doesn't understand facial expressions, Nines does a super fucking snobby side eye.

"C'mon, it'll be productive." Gavin grins at him because he knows that's the magic word beginning with p the android always wants to hear. "And you can't do shit without me on the case anyway."

"… this is a very inefficient method of being productive," Nines finally says, which just asshole-speak for yeah I'd love to watch movies Gavin, thanks for being nice enough to invite me over.

Gavin punches his arm and lays back down in his seat. He closes his eyes and definitely doesn't think about how he's stooped low enough to invite over an android just so he won't be fucking alone again, chain-smoking and putting cigarettes out on his skin or waiting for the razor blade frozen in the back of his freezer to thaw out.

And hell, he's definitely had over men a lot fucking worse than his partner for the sake of not being alone, so maybe this isn't the lowest he's fallen.

Maybe.

***

***

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / 31 / 32 / 33

I also have a Patreon for this fic, if you want to support me! $1 gets you access to chapters a week early, $2 gets bonus content and deleted scenes, and $3 gets short chapters from two AUs I’m writing: an A/B/O heatfic and reverse!AU

[icedanceupstarts]

2018 NHK Trophy Recap

When the mods are so shook they have to completely change their recap format.

The performances from this weekend(Hawayek/Baker's free dance is blocked for some, an alternate link is provided below)

We had our standard template for the recap all ready to go, but after the events of this weekend, specifically the free dance, we have been forced to abandon it, because we need to talk.

So, accordingly, we've decided to recap chronologically instead of by placement just so you can really get the proper picture of how we felt watching NHK this weekend, and some analysis of scoring at the end.

Rhythm Dance

We were young and foolish then, still thinking we understood anything at all. Komatsubara/Koleto had a solid debut here. They've performed with more energy, but it was a very respectable outing for the hometown team.

Fear/Gibson skated next, but unfortunately she had an error on their twizzles and they lost focus for the rest of the dance. We remarked in private that it was a very good score for them considering. Oh how little we knew then. How. Little. We. Knew.

Skoptcova/Aleshin were much improved just from two weeks ago in Skate Canada. We've always felt that ending a program on the pattern tends to be a little weak and lacking in wow factor, but it's a power move that we can respect. And much better than almost none key points this time around because what are expectations.

Nazarova/Nikitin still looked somewhat unrestrained, but its been a steady uphill climb, and we hope we see them skate at full capacity at some point this season. We chuckled gently at the hands on his collar, not yet feeling the cold, uncaring grasp of the universe around our own throats.

Soucisse/Firus’ rhythm dance still doesn't quite suit them, and indeed may never, but they throw themselves into the challenge so wholeheartedly that we couldn't help but start to really like it. We felt a little off balance by our slow face/heel turn, which is cute, because at least that was still an outcome the human mind could conceive of.

Zagorski/Guerreiro quite frankly brought the house down in one of the best rhythm dance performances of the entire season, much less the competition. They were heads and shoulders above every other team in that segment-- we even thought the gap could be even bigger, they were that good. Their tango has a snap to it that few other teams have managed. They have always been excellent pattern dancers, and the tango in particular really suits them and their sense of drama and flair.

Parsons felt a little soft and loose after Z/G, but they're such smooth, great skaters, and they delivered a nice tango feel here. You could still tell that they’re only a second year senior team, but they’re fast developing a maturity and confident projection that will really help them in Nationals in January.

Wang/Liu's pirate tango is always fun, solid skate from a solid team, but a rather deserved placement in this field, skating skills are skating skills, and while they didn’t have the worst levels of the day, their execution wasn’t smooth enough to put them more a couple tenths ahead of Soucisse/Firus.

Hawayek/Baker made their season debut here, and they have a nicely packaged tango, although the newness of the program was evident. They had a trip in the pattern, reducing the second half to a Basic level, but high GOEs and PCS kept them in second despite only managing to hit one keypoint and earning the lowest base value of any team. Their high GOEs and PCS are deserved-- they have a maturity and presence that most other teams in this field lack, even with some first outing jitters.

Free Dance

At this point, things still make sense and life is breezy!

Komatsubara/Koleto kicked us off with Love Story, music we've never really cared for and a stupid tagline to boot. Still, they skated it wonderfully, and we especially liked the lighter middle section. It's a simpler program, due to them being a relatively inexperienced team, but shows great promise. They’re really feeling and expressing the music now, really sensitive to it in a way that bodes well for their future development. We can’t wait to see how they continue to grow throughout this season and looking ahead.

(Seriously, though, “love means never having to say you're sorry”? That's some BS. Please apologize to your loved ones when necessary. Maybe even more than people you don’t love.)

Nazarova/Nikitin unfortunately had some stumbles losing levels on their one foot step sequence as well as on their combination spin. Their unique lifts were a highlight as usual, especially a curve and choreographic lift that we may never understand the physics behind. They continue to ease into this program as well even if they are still running into slip ups with their tech and presentation.

Skoptcova/Aleshin's lifts made us gasp, and not in the good way, but they got through them this time. They seem to really love this program, and commitment and enthusiasm will sell us on nearly anything. They seem to be going for a cool, young rebels vibe, and we appreciate the challenge in the choreography, even if we would prefer to have fewer heart attacks while they skate.

And then it was time for Fear/Gibson to take the ice, and our sanity with it. At first we were simply enjoying ourselves, still unaware of the fact that we were mere moments away from losing our grip on reality. Up till this point we had done wonderfully in guessing scores, although we began to eye that rising TES score with growing trepidation and vague alarm.

Then the score came up and reader? We began to break down.

This was a fantastic performance of a great program, and we're deeply pleased for them that they're having such a breakout season. But 113? With a deduction? Just… what? We have, in the past, disagreed with scores, but rarely have we been so deeply baffled, and for a team we like. We immediately wanted to see the protocols, an instinct that, as it usually does, proved to be revealing, but more on that later.

Unfortunately for everyone in group 2, we were in the full throes of a mental and emotional breakdown, necessitating a rewatch after our heads stopped spinning. We're still warming up to Soucisse/Firus, who set a season's best here, but we could barely keep our eyes focused, still trying to understand what had just happened to all of us. We were alert enough to note that they nearly tipped over in their choreographic lift at the end, which turned out to be more costly than we initially realized, but more on that later. They’re getting much sharper in their movements and building on their intensity. Whether they improve enough by Nationals to get that third spot is unclear, but we wish them the best.

Wang/Liu were a touch cautious on some elements, but their unbridled enthusiasm for skating shone through. Their BV here was identical to Soucisse/Firus, but they lost on PCS and GOE, which as we will detail at the end is crucial this season. It’s fair enough, they don’t have the same fluidity or depth of edge as the Canadians, and they didn’t nail the execution enough to make up for it like Fear/Gibson did, even though we did not yet understand that score.

The Parsons have had better skates, they seemed slightly out of sync and uncoordinated in this, giving the impression that it was less a tribute to the powerful beauty of familial bonds and more like a tribute to cabin fever at the end of a family vacation. But their flow over the ice was always extraordinary and their emotion palpable. It was also deemed to be four points less than Fear/Gibson's free dance, an announcement that caused reality to dissolve around us.

Zagorski/Guerreiro were so dominant in the rhythm dance but gave it away in the free. They were off throughout the dance, and he stumbled on the twizzles. They held onto their levels, but the loss of GOE really cost them, dropping them to fourth in the free dance by the end of the night. This is still a great program for them, and if they can get a handle on the difficulty, they could really challenge at Nationals.

Hawayek/Baker's free dance(linked here for those of whom the video is blocked on YouTube)

The door was open for Hawayek/Baker to step through and they really did. Some places in their program felt a little undeveloped, but for a first outing with such high stakes, they did very well. Although the mods have to take this moment to note that In This Shirt and To Build A Home are very similar experiences musically, and indeed kind of blend together very naturally into a mashup of angsty, hopeful longing. They won overall, barely beating Fear/Gibson in the free dance, although they would not have had the British not received that lift deduction, a fact which reduced your trusty mods to senseless gibbering.

After a good night's sleep, we returned to the event, protocols in hand, to try to make sense of everything. And after some examination, sense indeed emerged. We had noticed already that there seemed to be much bigger fluctuation in the free dance scores than the rhythm dance, but this competition really forced us to take a closer look. GOE really ruled the day here-- under the previous judging system, a team like Hawayek/Baker, who in the rhythm dance brought home a level 2 on their steps, and a level 1 and basic on the pattern, and subsequently the lowest base value of every single team in that segment, would have had a hard time medaling, much less being able to win no matter how lovely their skating was. They were also only seventh in base value in the free dance, which previously would not have allowed them to make a come from behind victory. It's Zagorski/Guerreiro who should really be disappointed-- while they were messy in the free, they mostly saved their levels, and still had the highest base value of the night, but the damage to their GOE was too great. We'd have to crunch the numbers to be absolutely sure, but we're reasonably certain that under last season's system, they would have won comfortably.

Which brings us to the mystery of Fear/Gibson's astronomically high free dance score, which revealed something we didn't previously pay as much attention to as we maybe should have. The reason free dance scores fluctuate so much is yes, due to more elements that can garner high or low GOE depending on the performance of the day, but more pressingly, three choreographic elements that can bring in surprisingly huge scores. Their choreographic slide, a fun, crowd pleasing element that has received much praise, earned three +4s and six +5s, earning them 5.01 points for that element. For comparison, the base value of a level 4 lift is 5.30 points. Fear/Gibson's choreographic steps and twizzles both received 4.18(again, for comparison, the base value for a level 3 lift is 4.30 points). Their choreo elements are fun and perfectly enhance the music and mood, but we're uncertain if they're that good so as to essentially count as extra lifts. Earlier we mentioned Soucisse/Firus’ slip on their choreographic lift which was more costly than we initially realized, netting them a measly 1.18 points. Their other choreographic elements, steps and slide, both earned 3.12, which is better but not nearly as much as the British earned. Fear/Gibson earned nearly six points more on choreographic elements alone, contributing to the nearly ten point gap in the free dance.

We've seen a number of conspiracy theories floating around about this, but honestly, we think it's much more likely that the ISU was so focused on keeping the men from winning with three quad splats that they didn't consider the effects on ice dance as thoroughly as they maybe should have, which is not the first time this has happened in the long history of changes to the judging. Just this past summer there was a proposal to raise the minimum age for seniors as high as 18, a rule designed with ladies singles in mind without a single care to how many ice dance teams(or for that matter, pairs teams) would be screwed over to fix a problem that doesn't actually exist in those disciplines. Ice dance has historically been known for “waiting your turn”, not gangly fifteen year olds winning everything on base value and then vanishing like dust in the wind. Older, more mature, established teams really benefit from this change while the scrappy youths trying to claw their way upwards are somewhat stymied.

We say all this as neutrally as possible-- we like several of the changes to ice dance this season, and no matter how much the scores have made us raise our eyebrows this season, we've found the actual placements largely justifiable and fair, even if we made some faces at the gaps between scores. We're certainly not about to go into a fit of histrionics and demand that ice dance be taken out of the Olympics(seriously? Go take a nap or a bath or something and settle down). We think the current ice dance scoring, as mentioned, is largely unintentional and expect to see some hasty revisions to base values and/or factoring next summer. Or maybe to drop a choreographic element.

It's hard to say precisely what this means for this season, given that a number of top teams have been MIA this Grand Prix season, most notably reigning world champions Papadakis/Cizeron. But if there's anything we learned from last quad, it's that by the time the Olympics roll around, the events of this season will feel like a distant fever dream.

[talabib]

The Formula Of True Happiness.

Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer at Google X, was at the top of his career. Financially well off, with a job many would kill for and a loving family. And yet, despite all this, he wasn’t happy. Why?

Like many others before him, Gawdat grappled with this question for years and, when suddenly losing his 21 year old son during a routine procedure at a hospital in 2014, it deepened into a quest to discover what truly constitutes human happiness and how to stave off disappointment in life. By applying his analytical mind to the problem, and examining key ideas from many of the world’s religions, Gawdat finally arrived at his own happiness formula.

This post lays out Gawdat’s ideas on happiness; the illusions standing in the way of it, the many blind spots of your mind that cloud your vision from what life is really like, and the ultimate truths that will bring real joy and happiness into your life.

Happiness is the absence of unhappiness, caused by the misrepresentation and misunderstanding of reality.

We’ve all heard that money can’t buy you happiness, though many people are still driven to pursue financial success as their primary goal. It’s no wonder, then, that they find themselves unhappy even when they appear to have everything. But what can be done about it? This is the question Gawdat grappled with himself, so he decided to apply his engineer’s mind to figuring out a formula for achieving happiness

Let’s start by trying to understand what happiness is. Look at the semi-permanent joy of small children and toddlers and you could see that it is, in fact, our default state. Sure, it’s not all roses, but as long as they aren’t hungry or in pain, kids are generally happy. You could say that happiness is merely a lack of unhappiness.

But where does unhappiness come from? According to Gawdat, it comes about when life doesn’t behave the way you expect it to. Here’s the formula that he came up with:

“Your happiness is equal to or greater than your perception of events minus your expectations of life”

This means that when you regard life’s events as the same or better than your expectations, then you’ll be happy because the twists and turns of life don’t frustrate you. But if your expectations are greater than the reality, they’ll subtract from your capacity for happiness.

Naturally, it’s not as clear-cut as this. You’re much more complicated than just happy or sad! Depending on the thoughts you allow to determine your expectations, your state of mind can range from total confusion to negativity and suffering, to positivity and happiness, all the way to absolute joy. The goal is to make that journey from the bottom to the top.

To prevent yourself from becoming confused and unhappy due to the gap between your expectations and reality, you’ll first need to discard the six grand illusions that leave you misinformed, which we’ll unmask this shortly

You are not the voice in your head, but the observer of your life.

In the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix, the main character, Neo, suddenly breaks through the illusion of the world around him and sees it as it really is – long green columns of ones and zeros – and is able to take control of himself and his environment. Like Neo, if you can see past the illusions, then you too can take control of yourself and your happiness.

Start by shattering the first illusion which is that the voice in your head – the one that questions your actions and intentions – is the real you. In the 1930s, a Russian psychologist named Lev Vygotsky noted small muscular movements in the larynx accompanying inner thought, and suggested that the internal narrator was actually just the internalization of speech – a hypothesis confirmed by neuroscientists in the 1990s, when they found that parts of the brain active while talking are also active during inner thought. So the voice in your head is actually your brain talking to you as it tries to understand the world around you and make the best possible decisions. But it isn’t you.

So when listening to your negative thoughts, remember that rather than being what you feel, they’re just the brain throwing out possibilities as it tries to understand the world. And here’s the thing – you don’t have to listen. Instead, try to minimize the chatter in your head. If you spend more time recognizing when it’s there, you can start to push back – swapping your negative thoughts for positive ones!

So if the voice in your head isn’t you, then who are you? People spend their lives building physical identities and egos, trying to answer this question, and this is the second illusion. But because these masks aren’t real, they can bring about unhappiness due to unrealistic expectations; as with our happiness formula. These can also shift and change over time, yet the fundamental “you” remains. So who is that?

To find out, you should mentally strip away all the things that change over time. This includes everything you can observe; your possessions, your family and even your body! What’s left at the very bottom? The real you is the observer of the world, who sees life but can’t be seen.

Instead of trying to fabricate an identity to affirm your place in the world, accept your position as the observer and focus on that as your identity. If you expect nothing more from yourself than this, you’ll soon be surrounded by people who love you for who you are, and you won’t even need to pretend to be something else.

It’s important to understand that you really know nothing, and that time is, in fact, a human invention.

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton laid out his laws of motion and completely changed the way people saw the world. After much debate, they were eventually proven and accepted to be true – held up as indisputable and forming the basis of much scientific thought for centuries. However, since the nineteenth century, a string of discoveries have shown that Newton wasn’t right about everything after all.

We tend to think that we reached a definitive and final conclusion about something, but this is the third illusion, and in reality, there are probably many things we don’t know yet. In fact, it might be safer to presume that you know nothing! Your idea of the world could very easily be incomplete, and that’s something you need to be ready for. If you accept your ignorance, then you’ll always be searching for, and open to, the truth.

One idea of Newton’s that has since been disproved was his definition of time. Newton believed that it existed independently of any observation and was an unshakable part of reality, but this is actually the fourth illusion. Not only has Einstein shown that Newton’s idea of time was incorrect, we also have a greater understanding today of time as a human invention that has been gradually refined throughout history. From observing the position of the sun in the sky, to measuring the time of day, to the “leap second” that’s needed every four years to keep clocks in sync, the concept of time has grown more and more sophisticated.

But if time is just a human invention, maybe we’d be better off without it? The thoughts and emotions that cause suffering tend to have an attachment to the past or the future, such as grief and shame over the past or anxiety and pessimism for the future, while thoughts in the present tend to be positive, such as amusement or relaxation. Time, and its sequence of events, is the root cause of the drama in our perceptions and therefore suffering, while the present moment simply is what it is. Imagine being unhappy because all the potential partners you meet turn out to be unsuited and worrying you might end up alone in life. The actual worry is based on a fear about the future rather than anything actually happening right now.

Instead of being a slave to time, you should strive to ignore the past and future and focus yourself on the present moment instead.

You don’t actually have much control over your life, and your fears are often unfounded.

In his book The Black Swan, Lebanese-American scholar and author Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains how seemingly unlikely events such as 9/11 and WWI are much more common than we’d like to think.

Meanwhile, the meteorologist Edward Lorenz has coined the concept, Butterfly Effect – based on the idea that even the tiniest event can end up having major consequences far away – such as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil causing a hurricane in Florida.

If you combine these ideas, then you undermine the fifth illusion of having control of your life, and instead have an unpredictable and unstable world where anything could happen at any time.

Instead of hopelessly trying to maintain the illusion of control, shift your attitude to deal with what actually does happen. Take the astronauts in the film Apollo 13: when their spacecraft suddenly faces catastrophe, Tom Hanks’ character calmly assesses the situation, engineering their safe return to Earth. Gawdat once attended a training course on change management which consisted solely of a viewing of this film. When events change beyond your control – and they will – keep control of yourself so that you too can move forward calmly.

It’s also worth seeing through the sixth and final illusion, and remembering that most fears don’t run as deep as you might think. In fact, many fears are learned in childhood and developed individually. In 1920, behaviour psychologist John B. Watson conditioned a fear of rats into a small baby. At first the baby was quite calm around them, but by Watson making a loud noise every time he presented one, soon the baby began to cry at just the sight of them. The good news is that, if your fears can be learned this way, they can also be unlearned.

But even if your fears are mostly irrational, they’re still real. To deal with them properly means admitting to them. Rather than sticking your chest out like a puffer fish, remember that they only inflate like that when they’re afraid. If you can face your fear, you can begin to conquer it.

Gawdat wanted what was best for his family and feared losing money and being unable to provide for them. When he nearly lost everything after a mistaken investment, he learned that they actually needed much less from him and his fear was unjustified. He hasn’t feared losing it since.

When you understand what your fears are and where they’re coming from, you can face and defeat them, preventing them from limiting your existence in the present.

Now that we’ve uncovered the six grand illusions, let’s take a look at the seven blind spots in the way your brain processes information.

Our brains tend to see the negative side of things, applying too many filters, assumptions and predictions.

Do you ever feel like you have a tendency to expect the worst in every situation? Rest assured, you’re not alone. That’s because your brain is essentially out-of-date technology, built for a very different world than the one we live in today.

In prehistoric times, survival was key – our early ancestors’ aim was to find food and not get killed, and if you were lucky, reproduce. As a result, our brain makes quick judgments with an inclination to assume the worst and see the downside in everything, since it’s better to be wrong than dead. For example, the University of Texas asked students to record their thoughts over a two week period, and found that between 60 and 70 percent of them were negative.

Imagine your brain as a very thorough lawyer, drawing up an enormous contract of potential threats to make sure you’re covered for any and every possible eventuality. In the modern world, these quick and often negative judgments can get in the way of you seeing things as they really are. To survive today, you need to be aware of the blind spots leading you toward these negative thoughts so you can counteract them with more positive thoughts.

First are the filters. There’s so much information to take in from your surroundings that you simply couldn’t cope if you tried to process it all, so a lot of it gets filtered out. Imagine going to the cinema – at first, you can’t help but notice the other people, the smells and the lights, but once the film begins everything except the movie screen disappears. But if you’re not always seeing everything around you, how much of the world might you be missing?

Next are assumptions. If you can’t see the whole picture, your brain fills in the blanks. These could easily be false, however, as they’re simply there to form a “complete” narrative. Let’s say you notice that your boss has missed her sales target for the month. As a result you might assume she’s threatened by your better numbers and is out to get you – but what is that really founded on?

Tied to this is the third blind spot: predictions. Say you’ve predicted your partner is going to cheat on you. You give them the cold shoulder, pushing them away, and so they cheat. Does this mean you were right? A prediction is something that has yet to happen, so why act as if it has? Now let’s press on and look at the four other blind spots...

We tend to elaborate our memories, apply too many labels, succumb to our emotions and exaggerate things.

Imagine you’re on a romantic getaway with your partner on a beautiful tropical island, but you have an enormous fight while you’re there, spoiling the trip. You’ll remember the island as a sad place, and if you go back there it will contaminate your perception of it, potentially building another sad memory.

This is a classic case of the fourth blind spot: memories. When you remember something, it’s not necessarily the truth but your own personal record of it. Your partner, for instance, might remember your time on the island in a completely different way.

Next are labels. To make sense of things, we tend to put them in “boxes” we can easily understand based on preexisting associations – but without any actual context, they may not be true at all. Think of how quickly people might label wet weather as miserable or a tanned, thin woman as rich. If you were somewhere in Africa, rain could be a blessing, while a rich woman is more likely to have a fuller figure and lighter skin since they wouldn’t be out working in the sun so much. Labels don’t take context into account, often bypassing the truth.

Then you have emotions. While you may believe you are a rational human being, you’re still completely at the mercy of your emotions. People often act on their emotions first and look for logical reasons to back them up later. Watching the speech of an opposing political party for example – your opinion is emotionally predetermined to dislike what is being said, and you will be actively looking for flaws in the speech as a result.

The seventh and final blind spot is that you might also exaggerate. If you inflate your ideas of reality and imagine the worst case scenario, then you lose sight of the genuine truth. Take humans’ fear of sharks, terrorism or plane crashes – statistically, these things will almost certainly never endanger you, and yet many are more afraid of these than they are of traffic accidents, despite them being much more likely to cause harm. If there’s a definite risk, the brain often exaggerates the probability.

All of these blind spots aren’t going to be cleared up overnight, but what’s important is that you’re aware of your brain’s limitations. With that in mind, let’s now look at the five ultimate truths.

Modern life is overly concerned with action and speed, but a calm awareness of the present moment will keep you happy.

In a study of over 15,000 participants, Matt Killingsworth from trackyourhappiness.org pieced together more than 650,000 reports of how people felt during certain activities and at different times. He found that it did not matter who they were, where they were or what they were doing, people were happier when they focused on the present, while those thinking of anything else were much less happy. This is the first ultimate truth.

This connects to what we said earlier about the illusion of time, and how emotions felt in the present are generally positive, while those in the past or in the future tend to be negative. So how can you focus on the present moment in your life? The answer is by developing awareness.

This sounds easier than it is. To live as a human you have to find the balance between being and doing, but in the modern world, everyone’s overly occupied with doing – whether it’s going for coffee, incessant meetings or exercising. Yet, all these activities ignore the potential of stopping and becoming aware of the moment and the possibilities of doing nothing and simply being.

This can be found in the Taoist idea known as wu wei: where doing nothing can be the best course of action. Imagine someone is growing a plant – they allow it sun, water and fertilizer, and nothing more. Any more intervention would get in the way!

So how can you develop awareness in your day-to-day life? You might not have the time or the surroundings to meditate like many practices suggest, but you could start by simply trying to notice specific things in your environment – the different types of trees you encounter or how much water you drink a day. It doesn’t matter what you’re looking for, so long as you’re paying attention.

You could also try to limit the distractions around you, most notably technologies like smartphones, TV and computers, or just enjoying an activity without any clocks around at least once a week. Whether it’s going for a walk or being in a quiet room, enjoy a bit of space and freedom from the constant ticking of time.

The important thing is to focus: when you have to do something, make sure you only do one thing at a time and fix your attention on it so that you do it well.

Things are and always will be changing, so relinquish your sense of control and go with the flow.

The world is always shifting, and in ways you can’t predict. Like Forrest Gump – who let himself get carried away regardless of what life’s box of chocolates threw at him – you need to open yourself up to the potential of change, and this is the second ultimate truth. Remember, it’s not about controlling your surroundings but controlling yourself. But how can you achieve this?

Rather than trying to control every tiny variable in your life, step back and allow each event to find its own natural balance. The Chinese philosophical idea of yin and yang is a well-publicised image, where two seemingly opposite forces are in balance and bound to one another. The same idea can be applied to your life.

If you focus too much on work, you’ll cease to enjoy living. But if you focus too much on trivial activities, you might feel like you’re worthless. Instead, try and balance the two: enough work to feel like you’re doing something, but enough freedom to make it all worthwhile. The upside of this is that should things change, such as losing your job, you won’t be overly committed to one specific thing. Rather than hopelessly resisting, move with it and allow things to find their balance.

Also, learn to focus on yourself and what you have, rather than comparing yourself to others. As things find their balance, you may see someone else as having something you don’t have, but it’s likely that you’ll also have something they do not. Before suffering the envy of something else, focus instead on what you do have. As things continue to find their balance, change may at any time cause you to lose it, or perhaps even find something more!

Unconditional love is the most important emotion, as it has no expectations, and therefore no disappointments.

The Beatles sang it. You probably already know it. And according to Gawdat, it���s the third ultimate truth: all you need is love. So how can you make sure you’re getting it?

Let’s start by understanding that we’re talking about unconditional love. Unlike the popular image of love that you might see in a film – where people love because of something and get hurt when those reasons change – unconditional love simply is. It exists with no expectations and no conditions, hence its name. If you apply this to the happiness formula, there are no expectations to offset the reality – meaning it always leads to happiness!

Most other emotions are based on a thought of some kind. Whether it’s envy based – the thought that someone else has something you don’t – or conditional love, based on the thought that someone takes care of you, the emotion comes after the thought. If the thought changes – you no longer want what the person has or that special someone doesn’t look after you anymore – so does the emotion. On the other hand, unconditional love, like a mother’s love for her child, is the only emotion that exists independently of your thoughts. It’s simply a sensation of connection, affection and appreciation.

So how do you fill your life with it? Well, it turns out that the more love you give, the more you get back, so it’s important to do loving things for others whenever you can. A Harvard Business School study found that when a selection of people were given money and told to either spend it on themselves or someone else, those who spent it on others felt happier by the end of the day than those who had spent it on themselves.

As long as you keep love flowing, it will flourish. Think of it like a river compared to a still pond: the first is full of fresh and lively water, the other is stale and stagnant. Which would you rather be a part of?

Death is a fundamental part of existence. Acceptance rather than fear will allow you to properly embrace life.

In much of the Western world today, death is something rarely talked about. Instead, it is feared, and a cause for tremendous sadness. But if you look at other parts of the world, there are often grand celebrations and parties in its honor.

In Rajasthan, Northern India, after an initial twelve days of mourning, parties are thrown for the dead. Meanwhile, Sufis, who are Islamic mystics, throw parties on the anniversary of someone’s death. Is there something to be learned from all this?

The biggest lesson, and the fourth ultimate truth, is that you can’t hide from death – from the day you’re born, you die a little each day. For example, all 25 trillion red blood cells currently in your system will die in the next four months. Take that analogy into the food chain: to sustain the life of one thing, something else must die. Death brings life, and in turn, life dies to make way for the new. Think of how new plant life blooms in graveyards, taking nutrients from decaying bodies.

Instead of hiding from it, we should accept death’s place in all our lives. As with all the other illusions, if you pretend that you have control over your life, death will eventually diminish it and lead you to unhappiness.

Sadly, this is a lesson the Gawdat had to learn the hard way after the sudden death of his son, Ali. During a routine procedure, a few small medical errors led to the loss of this bright and promising 21-year-old. Despite the tragedy, Gawdat was able to look at Ali’s life and realize that he had embraced it, lived it to the fullest despite its all-too-brief span. Understanding the limitations of your life will allow you to make the most of it while you can.

Gawdat found that by keeping life in focus instead of worrying about his final rest, he could instead learn to live in peace.

In the absence of proof and the surprisingly overwhelming odds, perhaps there is a design to the Universe…

Do you believe in a God? It’s a big question, one with many opinions and no conclusive answers. Gawdat, having applied his analytical mind to the question, feels that the fifth and final ultimate truth is that it might make sense that there is a higher power, one which we’ll refer to as the designer.

Let’s begin with the idea of proof: it’s easy to prove that something exists, you just need the evidence. You know that monkeys exist, for example – you’ve probably seen them at the zoo, or pictures and film of them on TV. But can you prove that something doesn’t exist?

Well, no. You’d have to know absolutely everything to know that something doesn’t exist somewhere, and as we saw earlier, our knowledge is limited. Imagine, for instance, that someone claims there’s an imaginary creature known as the plunkey: you’ve never seen one, but you haven’t seen the entire Universe either – so maybe it does exist. Similarly, despite the odds being stacked against it, you can’t prove that the designer doesn’t exist.

Which brings us to the idea of probability: Imagine trying to roll one die and scoring a six: your chances are a simple one-in-six. But for each die you add, the odds get squared. Try rolling ten dice and the odds of getting ten sixes rocket up to 1-in-60 million!

Looking at the huge variety of complex life in the world, you may wonder about the odds of it all developing naturally. According to evolutionary theory, there are approximately 8.74 million different species on Earth, developed by random mutations over time to reach the point they’re at now. Entirely probable given enough time, but since life only began on Earth roughly 3.7 billion years ago, the likelihood of this happening actually gets a lot smaller.

So if it’s a question of probability, the odds are actually in favor of some sort of intelligent design. If you, like the author, accept the design of the Universe, you can become aware of the complex and amazing marvel that it truly is and find happiness in the beauty of existence.

Happiness is much easier to achieve than people generally think. All it takes is understanding and honoring the truth about the world and ourselves. As long as you keep in mind the six grand illusions and the seven blind spots, and the ways that they can distort your reality, you can remove unfair expectations and therefore unhappiness from your life. Proceed to follow the five ultimate truths – whether you take the author’s or find your own – and pursue them to retain your happiness, living a life of simplicity and joy.

Action plan: Ask yourself if it’s true.

Whenever you look at the things you take for granted or come up against a new piece of knowledge, don’t unquestioningly accept it as true. Instead, ask the most important question about it before allowing it to govern your thinking. As long as your expectations are founded on truth, you can be sure to stay happy.

[santamedicalusa]

Pulse Oximeter Could Be Your New Favorite Training Gadget

Although pulse oximeters are ubiquitous in medical settings, only recently have they become available for athletes. These small but powerful devices can give you a snapshot of your body’s ability to process oxygen, which is a key factor in performance if you live or train at altitude, or tend to overtrain. Here we’ll investigate how these devices work, and how you might use them to optimize your performance.

What is a pulse oximeter?

A pulse the oximeter is a device that measures blood oxygen levels (oxygen saturation or SpO2) by estimating the percentage of oxygen bound to hemoglobin in the blood. Pulse oximeters are small, portable, non-invasive and painless; they’re so convenient that they’re often used by pilots and people who work or train at high altitudes. Simply clip it to your (or your athlete’s) finger, and it will give you an accurate data reading.

How does a Pulse Oximeter work?

When oxygen is inhaled into the lungs, it attaches to hemoglobin (a protein in red blood cells). The red blood cells then transport oxygen into the bloodstream, allowing it to be dispersed to tissue. Most of us need about 550 liters of oxygen per day to function, but that volume can double or triple during exercise. As you train, your body will be able to utilize more oxygen, more efficiently.

To find out how much oxygen is in your blood, a pulse oximeter emits light (typically red and infrared) through one side of your finger onto a photodetector on the other side. As it passes through your finger, the light hits your blood cells, and is absorbed differently by the hemoglobin without oxygen (deoxyhemoglobin) then by the hemoglobin with oxygen (oxyhemoglobin). The quality of the light that makes it to the photodetector can tell us how much oxygen is in your blood—normal ranges are typically from 94 percent to 100 percent.

Different oximeters are made for different purposes. Some are designed just for use in hospitals, but others can be more useful for athletic performance. The Santamedical, in particular, offers four other metrics in addition to the standard blood oxygen saturation (SpO2). With heart rate (HR), respiration rate (RR), Perfusion Index (PI), and Pleth Variability Index (PVI), you can keep detailed tabs on your training progression, all of which can be synced to Training Peaks.

Using Pulse-Ox For Recovery

Using Peripheral Saturation of Blood Oxygen (SpO2) readings with your usual training metrics can, first and foremost, help you gauge whether you’re recovering properly.

Take the athlete below, who woke up feeling “not right” after a hard training block. You can see the block in his Training Stress Score (TSS) for Tuesday. To make things worse, he was sleeping less than 7 hours a night. Sure enough, he found that his morning SpO2 was low—just 93%.

This is a great case of an athlete who may feel well enough to go train, but his low sleep hours and low SpO2 corroborate his sense of “not feeling right.” Instead of continuing his training as planned, this athlete focused on recovery and sleep for the next two days (you’ll see he got 9 hours of sleep for two consecutive nights). Subsequently His SpO2 normalized and the following training days went very well.

Simply paying attention to the right numbers can result in a good training block and even help avoid an over-training scenario.

Using Pulse-Ox for Altitude Acclimatization

At altitude, where the air is thinner, it is more difficult for your body to get adequate oxygen to your muscles and tissues. For example, if you’re racing or training at 10,000 feet (3000 m), the amount of effective oxygen in the air is about 15 percent (compared to 21 percent at sea level). If you’re used to living at sea level, this change in oxygen availability will kick off a cascade of physiological adaptations, some of which are advantageous no matter where you’re racing.

To start, there will be an increase in your respiratory and heart rates, and the volume of blood ejected from the heart (stroke volume) will be reduced. Over your first 24-48 hours at altitude, blood plasma volume will also be reduced to improve the oxygen-carrying capacity of your blood by volume. These adaptations won’t necessarily feel good—in fact you’ll probably feel like you’re doing more work for less reward.

However, prolonged exposure to altitude will cause your body to increase production of red blood cells with larger hemoglobin, allowing for a partial or full restoration of the blood volume and arterial oxygen content. After four weeks or more, your maximal heart rate response will be lower, as will your peak cardiac output—your blood is carrying more oxygen, so your heart won’t need to pump as fast or hard.

Once fully acclimatized, your peak oxygen uptake will be the same as at sea level, but the saturation of arterial oxygen will be increased i.e. you will have more complete oxygenation of the blood in the lungs. That means you’ll be able to race and train as normal at altitude, and will likely enjoy some extra aerobic endurance at sea level.

To understand what phase of acclimatization you’re in, and optimize your training around it, the Santamedical can measure most of the adaptations mentioned above. Here’s what to look for in particular:

Blood Oxygen and Heart Rate

In the first couple of days at altitude, you want to see a lower Peripheral Saturation of Blood Oxygen (SpO2) and an elevated heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate (RR). This is your body attempting to balance out the lack of oxygen in the air by moving it faster through your body.

With prolonged stays at altitude, most people’s SpO2 will stay about the same or increase slightly; but your heart and respiratory rates should normalize, as well as your ability to perform exercise at altitude. A SpO2 of 88 to 92 percent will give you the most beneficial training adaptations without causing undue fatigue.

Dehydration

Another common problem at high altitudes is dehydration. Luckily the Mighty Sat has a parameter called the Pleth Variability Index (or PVI). It is a complicated measurement, but ultimately shows your body’s hydration status, or ability to respond to additional fluids, way more accurately than the standard pee color test. For most people, if the PVI is 25 or above, it is safe to say that you should drink more. If it is below 20, you are probably fine. This is a great metric to use if you commonly find yourself dehydrated or experience headaches at altitude.

Respiratory Rate Change

The Respiratory Rate (RR) function lets you gauge recovery after higher intensity workouts. For example, if you know the time it takes your RR to come back to baseline after performing a 5-minute interval at sea level, you will see that your RR takes longer to recover at altitude. As you acclimate, you should see the time for recovery drift back towards your baseline.

Note: If you find that you are not adapting at all after a couple of weeks, you may need to take a closer look at what is happening your body. Several things could be going on, including inadequate iron intake, underlying sickness and overtraining (all good insights to have if you’re not seeing performance improvements!)

Whether you use a pulse oximeter for altitude training or just monitoring your recovery status, it is a simple and easy the to-use tool that can give you some really valuable insights.

[johnmauldin]

Here’s The Real Reason The Fed Is Making Absurd Monetary Decisions

BY JOHN MAULDIN

I have often written about the Fed's abysmal track record in managing the economy. Here Lacy Hunt and Van Hoisington of Hoisington Investment Management explain the reasons for the Fed's consistently poor track record.

They start by considering the Fed’s “dual mandate,” which sets “the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.” (And yes, that is actually three goals, not two.)

But a problem arises, the authors note, “because considerable time elapses between the implementation of the monetary actions designed to follow the mandate and when the impact of those actions take effect on broader business conditions.”

The time lag can easily be three years or longer, with the result that policy changes often end up being pro-rather than countercyclical. To make matters even worse, “the economic risks from adherence to this dual mandate are now much greater than historically due to the economy’s extreme over-indebtedness, poor demographics and a fragile global economy.”

But I’ll let Lacy Hunt and Van Hoisington unpack the idea themselves.

Hoisington Quarterly Review and Outlook, Second Quarter 2017

By Dr. Lacy Hunt and Van Hoisington

The Fed’s Dual Mandate

“Dual mandate” is one of the most commonly used phrases in U.S. central banking. The current Chair of the Federal Reserve often mentions it in both speeches and testimony to Congress. Not surprisingly, this is an extremely hot topic in monetary economics, and execution of this mandate has profound significance.

The mandate originated in The Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977. This legislation identified “the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.” Ironically, these goals have come to be known as the Fed’s “dual mandate”, even though there are actually three goals. The manner in which the Fed operates in following these goals has had and will have dramatic effects on economic activity. In this report we consider:

What is the causal link between the mandate and the Fed’s capacity to act in a counter-cyclical fashion?  

How has the dual mandate morphed into the Phillips Curve?  

What are the arguments for and against a Phillips Curve based approach for conducting monetary policy?  

What does empirical research reveal?

In view of the extreme over-indebtedness and other adverse initial conditions, what are the immediate consequences of using a Phillips Curve based dual mandate for the economy, the Fed and fixed income investors?

Causality

To achieve the goals of this mandate (maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term rates), the Fed will inevitably tighten for too long and by too much. This occurs because considerable time elapses between the implementation of the monetary actions designed to follow the mandate and when the impact of those actions take effect on broader business conditions. By waiting to recognize a definitive change in inflation and unemployment, monetary policy changes will be pro-, not counter-cyclical. The time difference between leading or causative measures like the money and reserve aggregates, on the one hand, and the economically lagging series of the unemployment rate and inflation, on the other hand, can easily be three years or longer.

This difference between the actions of the Fed and the reactions within the economy explains why the Fed historically has not begun easing cycles until the economy was either in, or on the cusp of, a recession. When the Fed takes action, relief is painfully slow in arriving. Importantly, the economic risks from adherence to this dual mandate are now much greater than historically due to the economy’s extreme over-indebtedness, poor demographics and a fragile global economy.

To demonstrate, suppose that in the fourth quarter of this year, unemployment turns significantly higher while the inflation rate decelerates from its already subdued pace. The downturn that the Fed would be witnessing in the fourth quarter could be reflecting policy actions all the way back to the fourth quarter of 2015 when they initiated the current tightening cycle. This cumulative evidence is reflected in the monetary and credit aggregates (Charts 1 and 2). This change in economic fortunes might cause the Fed to accelerate the rate of growth in the monetary base and lower the policy rate in order to stimulate money and credit growth. However, the monetary and credit aggregates might not respond to these first steps until 2019 or even 2020, thus putting the Fed three years or more out of sync with the needs of the economy, suggesting a prolonged period of severe underperformance.

Being out of step with the goals of a counter-cyclical monetary policy will arise as long as the Fed keys its decision-making on unemployment and inflation, rather than on maintaining financial stability, which focuses on the reserve, monetary and credit aggregates. Achieving such stability, however, is now much more difficult for the Fed than in the past. Until the economy became so heavily indebted, M2 was a consistent leading economic variable. Now M2 only leads recessions. Until the debt overhang is corrected (which does not appear to be in the immediate future), the velocity of money is likely to continue declining. Thus, when the Fed eases in the future, the strong leading relationship between M2 and the economy will no longer prevail.

There have always been lags between the time of a policy shift and evidence of that shift in the broader economy. However, in a heavily indebted economy, with the velocity of money likely falling further, and policy rates close to the zero bound, the Fed’s current capabilities are decidedly asymmetric. Any easing actions taken now would be far less powerful than the steps taken in the prior tightening cycle. Thus, by keying off the dual mandate in an economy with a severe debt overhang, the Fed would be more disadvantaged than normal in trying to come to the quick aid of a faltering economy.

From the Dual Mandate to the Phillips Curve

The Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977 does not spell out the nature of the trade-off between the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, nor does it say how the Fed should act if the mandates are at odds in terms of the policy approach.

The potential problems that arise from this lack of clarity are clearly illustrated by the current situation. The Fed has extended the current tightening cycle twice this year, with the latest move on June 14. At the time of the latest decision, headline and core CPI had year-to-date price increases of 1% and 1.3%, respectively, substantially below their 2% target. Additionally, the latest twelve-month increases in both of these inflation gauges were below the 2% target. Only the unemployment rate warranted more restraint. This means that inflation and unemployment are at odds, thus the dual mandate is dead. It now boils down to the Fed’s interpretation of the Phillips Curve.

The most definitive study of the Fed’s operations is widely considered to be the multi-volume series, A History of the Federal Reserve written by the late Carnegie Mellon economist Alan Meltzer (1928-2017). Volume I examines the span from the creation of the Fed in 1913 until the accord with the Treasury in 1951. Volume II, Book 1 covers the years from the accord in 1951 until 1969, while Volume II, Book 2 discusses the period from 1970 until the end of the great inflation period in the mid-1980s. In this scholarly historical examination, Meltzer, on the basis of price and financial stability, gave the Fed high marks in only one-fourth of its years of operation. Meltzer made many seminal contributions to economics, including identifying the algebraic determinants of the money multiplier and outlining the transmission of monetary policy actions to the real economy.

In his 2014 paper, “Recent Major Fed Errors and Better Alternatives,” Meltzer summarized the root cause of the Fed’s policy errors and long record of failed forecasts as follows: “The Fed’s error was to rely on less reliable models like the Phillips Curve ... that ignore or severely limit the role of money, credit, and relative prices.” By focusing on the Phillips Curve, Meltzer contends that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) overemphasizes information in monthly and quarterly data periods while giving insufficient attention to persistent trends in money and credit, which are the very aggregates that the Fed supplies. To paraphrase Meltzer, by relying on the Phillips Curve, the FOMC avoids developing a strategic view of their role and the complex world in which they operate. As the massive credit buildup leading up to 2007 illustrates, the Phillips Curve mandate also diverts the Fed’s attention from important regulatory matters that can have extremely consequential and long lasting macro implications.

The key passage that Meltzer writes to describe the inadequacies of the Phillips Curve/ dual mandate within the Fed is as follows:

No less an authority than Paul Volcker explained publicly and to the staff that the Phillips Curve was unreliable and not useful. As Chair, he gave many talks about what I have called the anti-Phillips Curve. Volcker claimed repeatedly that the best way to reduce unemployment was to reduce expected inflation. He did not use Phillips Curve forecasts. He ran a very successful policy. Alan Greenspan was less outspoken, but he also rejected Phillips Curve forecasts as unreliable. Instead of finding a better model, the staff resumed use of Phillips Curve forecasts. They were again unreliable as should be evident from the repeated prediction errors ... Year after year, growth and employment are below forecast. One might hope that repeated forecast errors all in the same direction would raise doubts about the usefulness of the model or models and initiate search for a better model. This does not appear to have happened.

In the three years since this prophetic passage, the string of unbroken economic forecasts continued unabated.

The Phillips Curve

The Phillips Curve represents the relationship between the rate of wage inflation and the unemployment rate. In a 1958 study, New Zealand economist A. W. H. (Bill) Phillips (1914-1975) found an inverse relationship between wage inflation and the unemployment rate in the United Kingdom from 1861 to 1957. A high unemployment rate correlated with slowly increasing wages, while a lower unemployment rate correlated with rapidly rising wages.

According to Phillips, the reasoning for this finding was that the lower the unemployment rate, the tighter the labor market, thus firms would raise wages to attract scarce workers. Conversely, at higher rates of unemployment the pressure on wages abated. Thus, this curve attempts to capture a cyclical process that can be used for evaluating the business cycle. This curve presumes the average relationship between wage demands and the unemployment rate is stable, thus there is a rate of wage inflation that results if a particular level of unemployment persists over time. As time has passed, Phillips Curve proponents have also asserted that a stable relationship exists between the unemployment rate and the overall rate of inflation, not just that for wages. The original Phillips Curve shows a downward sloping line on a graph, with wage inflation on the vertical axis and the unemployment rate on the horizontal axis.

In a 1967 peer-reviewed paper, Edmund Phelps challenged the theoretical structure of the Philips Curve. Independently of Phelps, Milton Friedman (1912-2006) in his Presidential address to the American Economic Association in 1967 (published in 1968) came to similar conclusions. They reasoned that well-informed rational employers and workers would pay attention only to real wages (i.e. the inflation adjusted level of wages). In the view of Friedman and Phelps, real wages would adjust to make the supply of labor equal to the demand for labor, and the unemployment rate would then stand at a level uniquely associated with the real wage rate. In time this uniquely associated real wage rate has come to be called the “natural rate of unemployment.”

Friedman and Phelps argued that the government could not permanently trade higher inflation for lower unemployment. When the natural rate of unemployment prevails, the real wage is constant. Workers who expect a given rate of inflation insist that wages increase at the same rate to prevent the erosion of their purchasing power.

Consistent with Friedman and Phelps, consider the effects of a monetary policy designed to expand economic activity in an attempt to lower the unemployment rate below its natural rate. The resulting increase in demand (pricing power) encourages firms to raise prices faster than workers anticipate. With higher revenues, firms are willing to employ more workers at the old wage rates and in some cases are willing to somewhat boost them. With rising wages, workers willingly supply more labor, which leads to a drop in the unemployment rate. Initially, they do not realize that their purchasing power has eroded since prices have advanced more rapidly than expected. In this initial period workers suffer from what is known as a “money illusion” – the rise in nominal wages is not equal to the rise in real wages. As workers come to anticipate higher rates of price inflation over time, they see through the money illusion, and less labor is supplied and demanded. The real wage is restored to its old level, and the unemployment rate returns to its natural rate. Today, the opposite case is present. Monetary restraint is limiting demand and eroding pricing power, causing employers to restrain wages. Once workers realize this restraint is not a cut in real wages, they will continue to supply the same amount of labor. The Phillips Curve trade-off does not exist in either of the two alternative situations.

Phelps and Friedman also distinguish between these effects over the “short run” and the “long run”. Phillips Curves only prevail so long as the average rate of wage inflation remains fairly constant. Only in such a limited time frame will wage inflation and unemployment be significantly inversely related. Once the higher inflation is fully incorporated into expectations, unemployment returns to the natural rate, with the result that the natural rate of unemployment is compatible with any rate of inflation. These long and short run relationships can be combined in an “expectations augmented” Phillips Curve. The quicker workers adjust price expectations to changes in the actual rate of inflation, the quicker the unemployment rate will return to the natural rate and the less successful the government will be in reducing unemployment through monetary and fiscal policies. The expectations augmented Phillips Curve approach is used in and appears to play a major role in the Federal Reserve’s large-scale econometric model.

Empirical Evidence

We examined the relationship between percent changes in real average hourly earnings and the unemployment rate from 1965 through 2016 – the entire historical record for wages. This sample is comprised of over 600 monthly observations (Chart 3). The trendline fitted through the observations does have a slightly negative tilt, but the line is not statistically different from a straight horizontal line, which signifies a total lack of responsiveness of real wage changes to the unemployment rate. The adjusted R2 is 0.04, which is not statistically significant. Thus, our empirical findings are consistent with the causality outlined – that the Phillips Curve assumption is not valid. Cherry picking through the data points can identify limited time periods when a greater inverse relationship exists between wage increases and the unemployment rate. As many researchers have pointed out this was true of the 1960s. From the first half to the second half of the 1960s, nonfarm business sector compensation per hour (a widely followed measure of labor compensation) increased from 3.6% per annum to 5.9% as the unemployment rate fell from 5.7% to 3.8%. The critical point is that these individual episodes of an apparent Phillips Curve trade-off are too weak and too infrequent to establish an enduring relationship over time.

The adherents to the Phillips Curve do not accept these various empirical criticisms. For many decades, they insist that the poor results are due to the fact that the basic relationship has not been properly quantified. They point to the problems capturing leads and lags between the unemployment rate and wage changes as well as difficulties that arise from measuring expectations and working with aggregate data. For followers of the Phillips Curve, it is just a matter of time before these issues of statistical quantification are resolved.

These arguments are not compelling, yet they have been used repeatedly for at least a half a century. As the years have passed, the constantly restated Phillips Curve formulations have regularly missed major business cycle developments, a pattern which has been evident in the Fed’s record. The Fed presided over the worst U.S. peacetime inflation from 1977 to 1981, and tightened before all of the recessions after 1977. The Fed did contain the Panic of 2008 with excellent lender of last resort tools, but a far better result might have been achieved if the Fed had learned the lesson of the 1920s and prevented the massive buildup of debt prior to 2008 that the regulatory powers of the Fed were designed to prevent.

For most of the past eight years, the frequently restated Phillips Curve models have pointed to a sustained acceleration in wage and price inflation that has failed to materialize. These failures not only impair monetary policy but also portfolio decisions based on the presumed efficacy of the Phillips Curve and the reliability of the dual mandate. Based on the slowdown in the monetary and credit aggregates, and the continuing fall in the velocity of money, the rate of inflation is more likely to moderate rather than accelerate, even as the unemployment rate in May 2017 stood at a sixteen year low. Thus, inflation, on average, moved lower during this current expansion, contradicting the forecasts for higher inflation based on the Phillips Curve concept. the velocity of money, the rate of inflation is more likely to moderate rather than accelerate, even as the unemployment rate in May 2017 stood at a sixteen year low. Thus, inflation, on average, moved lower during this current expansion, contradicting the forecasts for higher inflation based on the Phillips Curve concept.

Implications

For the Fed, the more advisable approach would be to pull the Phillips Curve relationships from their model and their policy decisions. Instead, they should rely on capturing the strategic role of the monetary transmission mechanism and its potentiality for moving through the reserve, monetary and credit aggregates in a highly leveraged economy. If the Phillips Curve proponents are right, and the quantification efforts are eventually proved to be valid, then at that point they can be inserted into the Fed’s model as well as into their subjective decision-making process.

This is relevant to investors as well. If adherence to the dual mandate induces financial insatiability, then investor performance, like overall economic activity, will be directly influenced. If the Fed’s mandate consistently leads them in the wrong direction, then long-term investors may often be forced to construct portfolios that are contradictory to the error-prone words, forecasts and policy actions of the FOMC. Moreover, investors should expect that the Fed’s actions will create substantially more volatility in the financial markets and particularly so over the short-term. Operating with strategic views and multi-year trends, rather than trying to focus on the Fed-generated noise in many monthly and quarterly indicators, may be a preferred method of generating investor returns.

Our economic view for 2017 is unchanged and continues to suggest that long-term Treasury bond yields will work irregularly lower. The latest trends in the reserve, monetary and credit aggregates along with the velocity of money point to 2% nominal GDP growth for the full year, down from 3% in 2016. This would be the third consecutive year of decelerating nominal GDP growth and the lowest since the Great Recession. This suggests that the secular low in bond yields remains well in the future.

Van R. Hoisington Lacy H. Hunt, Ph.D.

Get Varying Expert Opinions in One Publication with John Mauldin’s Outside the Box

Every week, celebrated economic commentator John Mauldin highlights a well-researched, controversial essay from a fellow economic expert. Whether you find them inspiring, upsetting, or outrageous… they’ll all make you think Outside the Box. Get the newsletter free in your inbox every Wednesday.

[boylesharon]

6 Month Old Cat Peeing Astounding Unique Ideas

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How Can I Stop My Cat Peeing On The Carpet

Vacuum everything in their homes for thousands of particles including pet allergen free you can afford.But smells and prevent them from coming back.They scratch to loosen dirt and dead skin, and may need to eliminate that pesky odor.It is therefore afraid of a sick cat or dog's teeth.Cats can smell even if he says to give your cat.

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In order to keep from smelling up the area.Completely clean the mounds of litter on the back of their day away in a comfortable sleeping area.Cute, cuddly kittens bring joy to any harm to them.Next, get some fresh air and onto your floor.Cat pee has a great tool for your cat will most likely like the new cat outdoors before you have to show her love or at the onset of feline diabetes causes an inflammation of a female cat has mated once while in it.

Plaque and Tartar Build-Up is the most common cause of the infection, a particular area, then there are toys and scratching post.As an alternative, such as Petco and PetSmart.The premise is that of not demanding as much gumption as you are able to have them give your cat is an instinct and you need to provide a scratch post.Cat's paws have scent glands in their capacity as governmental mousers.Either way, they need to worry, there are some simple steps, you can cover the senses of touch, sight, and smell.

Cat Pee Vegetable Garden

There are many ways of discouraging cats from spraying anywhere.We did some more advanced information, tips, and techniques.*How can it be able to guide you through play and physical well-being.You can also develop several contagious reproductive diseases.Itching skin is not using the litter box, but it beats the alternative.

Our resident isn't showing signs of loss of hair, you will need a helper for this is why if you have a scratching post should hang very nicely.Every day, take off at a time of fireworks and noisy activities, but this is a lot of new age designs out there means castrating them so their urine does not improve quickly with a buildup of tartar in the house.Most cats won't respond well to increase the effectiveness of many common vaccines and flea control meds at a discount?We need to wrestle your cat engages in, or at least, with a kitten, my cat behave properly.Frontline is available as an herb for a mate.

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kellyanne-conway-says-democrats-seeking-testimony-on-hatch-act-violations-are-retaliating-against-her-politically/2019/06/24/9398d3ea-9689-11e9-830a-21b9b36b64ad_story.html?utm_term=.01004d1be9df#click=https://t.co/TwBwK0q6Q6

According to Conway, no presidential adviser can be investigated for misconduct or criminal conduct after running a successful presidential campaign. That syncs with Trump’s view that everyone in his administration is above the law.

The tolerance of this idea, even that it has been allowed to persist unchallenged for even this long, has been damaging to our Democracy. Democratic leaders in the House and members of the judiciary must send a strong message as to how antithetical this is to what is essential to our system ASAP.

White House moves to bar counselor Kellyanne Conway from testifying to Congress about alleged violations of Hatch Act

By John Wagner, Rachel Bade and Josh Dawsey | Published June 24 at 3:51 PM | Washington Post | Posted June 24, 2019

The White House will block counselor Kellyanne Conway from testifying before a House panel about allegations by a government watchdog that she violated the Hatch Act, increasing the likelihood of another subpoena battle between the two branches of government.

White House lawyers planned to reject the House Oversight Committee’s request for Conway to appear at a Wednesday hearing, according to two White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity Monday to freely discuss private deliberations.

The White House counsel will argue that in accordance with long-standing precedent, staff in the West Wing do not testify before Congress.

House Democrats counter, however, that the White House has no right to claim executive privileged or immunity for Conway because the alleged violations in questions deal with her personal actions — not her duties advising the president or working in the West Wing.

The Hatch Act bars federal employees from engaging in political activity during work hours or on the job. But a report submitted to Trump earlier this month by the Office of Special Counsel — which is run by a Trump appointee — found that Conway violated that law on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

It recommended Trump terminate her federal employment.

Oversight plans to vote Wednesday to subpoena Conway if she does not agree voluntarily to answer questions. 

Meanwhile, Conway has already taken to national television to defend her name. On Monday morning, she claimed on Fox News that House Democrats are trying to retaliate against her for successfully managing President Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“You know what they’re mad about?” Conway said. “They want to put a big roll of masking tape over my mouth because I helped as a campaign manager for the successful part of the campaign . . . So they want to chill free speech because they don’t know how to beat [Trump] at the ballot box.”

Special Counsel Henry Kerner, a longtime congressional GOP staffer, said in an interview that her description is not true.

 “We're trying to hold Ms. Conway to the same standard we hold other people in government to,” Kerner said Monday. “My staff came up with violations. They're obvious. She says things that are campaign messages.”

[Trump says he won’t fire Kellyanne Conway over Hatch Act violations]

The Office of the Special Counsel is a quasi-judicial independent agency that adjudicates claims of retaliation by whistleblowers and administers the Hatch Act and other civil service rules. It is a separate agency from the office run by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Because Conway is a presidential appointee, the Office of Special Counsel has no authority to discipline her. The office can make recommendations, but it falls to Trump to make a decision. Trump has indicated he has no plans to fire Conway.

In its 17-page report, the Office of Special Counsel found that Conway repeatedly attacked 2020 Democratic presidential candidates while she was being interviewed by media outlets in her official capacity and tweeted about the candidates from her official account.

The agency noted that Conway attacked former vice president Joe Biden’s lack of “vision,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts spent “decades appropriating somebody else’s heritage and ethnicity,” and called Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey “sexist” and a “tinny” “motivational speaker.”

During a one-week period leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, Conway posted at least 15 messages on Twitter that were political and in support of midterm election candidates or the Republican Party, according to the report. “Her defiant attitude is inimical to the law, and her continued pattern of misconduct is unacceptable,” the agency wrote.

House Democrats argue that Conway’s alleged infractions are emblematic of the administration’s behavior and a prime example for their oversight. Conway was warned to change her behavior but has not, and lawmakers believe they can hold her up as an example to argue that the administration believes it is above the law.

The Wednesday hearing will feature the agency’s recommendation to remove Conway, as well as its reports about other Trump administration appointees. Both Conway and Kerner, the head of the agency, were invited to attend.

During her television appearance on Monday, Conway argued that it wasn’t clear that she is subject to the Hatch Act as an assistant to the president and that it was being misconstrued.

“We think I’d be the first member of the West Wing to ever be hauled in front of Congress to talk about the Hatch Act,” Conway said.

“The Hatch Act means that you can’t advocate for or against the election of — of an individual,” she continued. “And if I’m talking about the failures of Obama-Biden care, if I’m talking about the fact that 28 million Americans have no health insurance, that’s a fact. If I’m quoting what some of the candidates say about the other candidates, I’m just repeating the news to you as I read it that day.”

Lisa Rein and Michelle Ye Hee Lee contributed to this report.

[pussymagicuniverse]

Trusting After Trauma

Trigger Warning: Contains references to childhood sexual abuse 

When one experiences abuse, particularly as a child or adolescent, their growth into adulthood is layered with the emotional and psychological effects of trauma. As someone who experienced sexual abuse as a young girl, my instincts for survival developed coping mechanisms that protected me from the possibility of more pain. Lots of survivors attest to the startling revelation that later on in their lives, when abuse is no longer present, they still latch onto their previous methods of enduring hardship. And this attachment creates negative results.

I first confronted the reality of my childhood sexual abuse when I was 19 as a freshman in college. It was the first year I was living away from home, and this newfound independence helped me understand my adolescence from a different perspective. I’d write dark, heart-wrenching prose to express the layers of rage, sadness, and confusion the experience caused me. But it wasn’t enough to mediate the storm brewing inside. I finally broke down to my best friend and roommate and told her everything.

In retrospect, this moment is five years past. Yet the emotional intensity of that period can still be found in the moments I’m triggered. The expected triggers are obviously depictions and references to sexual assault, but I’ve recently discovered that moments of vulnerability with my girlfriend provokes similar feelings.

My response is always the same: I freeze up, becoming an immovable stone. I disassociate from my body and feelings, refusing to communicate any of my internal processes. This is what kept me safe as a child who sought an escape from the nightmare of abuse. But as an adult in a safe, supportive, and loving environment that I mutually created with my partner, my response to vulnerability is a reaction to the hellscape of my past.

How is this possible? Why do I have a negative association with revealing my truest thoughts, feelings, and desires to those I trust? 

The conflicts with my girlfriend were never arguments, but rather a one-sided conversation where she talked at me because I refused to engage. Refused to acknowledge my complacency by avoiding ill-feelings and problems. You let people who hurt you in the past haunt you, people who aren’t even here. She’d say to me. The stone would crack and I’d eventually break down, sobs shaking my body until I admitted she was right.

My cold response to moments of intimacy wasn’t a reflex, where the stimulus of love caused my walls to build distance between us. Was it instinct to protect myself from something I perceived as a threat to my stability? Or was it caused by my intuition, which had been conditioned to fear kindness and respect because of previous, negative experiences?  

Instinct is defined as an innate impulse or tendency, a natural pattern written in a species’ biology. Spiders know how to weave webs from the moment of their birth. A bear knows when and where to hibernate for the winter. Instincts are often understood to be animalistic, primitive behavioral patterns that humans distance themselves from. I am reminded of the many ways the Western man has tried to distance himself from the rebellion of the natural world: the creation of fences, borders, machines and inventions that make formerly hostile environments habitable.

It’s not to say that these material things and societal patterns disrupt instinct; but the purpose of modernity has always been to create distance between the present and human’s humble origins. What if this cultural attitude was linked to my perception of human vulnerability? It’s ability to expose and hold someone accountable reflects society’s distrust of open spaces. With no place to hide, how do we protect ourselves?  

Intuition can be synonymous with instinct, although it’s most commonly understood as a perception of truth or fact without any reasoning process to back it up. Patriarchal institutions over-value the importance of objectivity, or hard cold facts, which marginalizes intuition as an unreliable and “feminine” method of understanding. This pattern of distrusting innate capacities reveals our culture’s obsession with hiding, and conflating avoidance with protection.

I remember thinking when I was 19 and entering into my first serious relationship: how can I trust my intuition when it’s wrong? 

This question hasn’t left me, even as I lean into healing. The conditioning still exists, perhaps indefinitely. At least in this lifetime, in a world that’s structured to stop people from questioning its violence. Trauma is a fickle thing, gone in some moments only to reappear suddenly and unexpectedly.

In Sarah Schulman’s fantastic book Conflict Is Not Abuse, she writes: “We react constantly through life…Most reactions are not really observed because they are commensurate with their stimuli, but a triggered reaction stands out because it is out of sync with what is actually taking place. When we are triggered, we have unresolved pain from the past that is expressed in the present.”  

Reminders of trauma are like ghosts. Their invisible, ethereal forms make them impossible to prove. But the feelings are still felt, as if we are haunted by echoes of cruelty. Triggers are often avoided, and rightly so. Experiencing them can be incredibly difficult; why relive painful memories when you don’t have to? Yet if they’re indications of unresolved emotions, shouldn’t triggers be something we embrace rather than actively avoid?

I took a Multicultural Literature Class in college, excited to read about non-Western perspectives from people of color. My professor had an unconventional approach to this topic, however, and included work by the famous author Vladimir Nabokov. To my dismay, one of the books on the syllabus was Lolita, a novel I was obsessed with as a teenager because it reflected the sexual abuse I was experiencing. 

Seeing the word on the page made my heart flutter and my palms sweat. I felt dizzy, and longed to run out of the room and never come back. I could have dropped the class if I wanted to, but I didn’t. Both the inconvenience of it and the possibility to confront a triggering artifact anchored me in place. 

But at first, I objected to the book. I even spoke about it in class and wrote my professor a note. But it didn’t change the fact that I was required to write about it and sit through my weekly three-hour classes to discuss it. The whole experience was a nightmare, as it brought up countless memories I longed to forget. At night, when I’d come home after class, I was so on edge that I relied on smoking weed to calm my nerves.

I was face-to-face with reminders of my sexual abuse, forced to confront my tactic for survival as a child. Lolita simultaneously saved and trapped me. It articulated an experience that was my reality, but also caused me to idealize it. This wasn’t the fault of the book, but of my own lack of self-awareness and inability to grapple with my abuse.

This realization was more painful than having to reread the predatory and horrifying novel. I needed to accept that Lolita helped me navigate something that was messy and confusing. But it also hurt me, because it helped internalize that the abuse was my fault. Instead of a victim, Dolores Haze was a seductress. This fantasy was more appealing than accepting my powerlessness. I never heard Dolores’ perspective, but was forced to glean it through what she does and says in the eyes of her captor. I learned about my exploitation from the mouth of my abuser.  

It’s no wonder that I react with fear when a lover offers their support. Why should I trust anyone, when people closest to me were capable of immense cruelty? This struggle is not uniquely mine, and I’m sure all victims of abuse share similar sentiments. Our stories are not identical, but they overlap. 

I seem to spin round and round in circles trying to distinguish between instinct and intuition, reality and projection. Even in writing this, I wonder what my point is. Or how I can offer hope or insight about trusting after trauma when I’m still trying to figure it out myself.

This discourse is present in even the most minute and humorous formats. Remember a few years back when the Dark Kermit the Frog meme circulated the internet? There’s one that struck me as revelatory and sad about our culture’s tendency to be self-destructive. I was unable to find it but I’ll summarize the gist: when you realize your toxic impulses are only hurting yourself.

As a member of the generation who uses humor on social media to cope with the devastating reality of our fucked up world, indulging this mindset is often easier than confronting what causes it. But maybe there’s something powerful in revealing our demons. Is Dark Kermit not only a darker version of ourselves but also a reflection of our subconscious desires? Embracing the shadow self can be a healing experience, because allowing it to thrive in darkness only makes it more powerful.

Writing about Lolita was a cataclysmic experience for me. I was almost a decade older than the girl who first experienced sexual abuse. Where there was previously a void of silence and shame, suddenly I had language. My feminist studies helped me articulate the toxic elements of the novel and how they reaffirmed a misogynistic culture. In confronting Lolita, I confronted a part of myself hidden from sight. I spoke it into existence, and then released it.

Speaking out about abuse is cleansing. It doesn’t change what happened, but it’s a step forward in controlling how we deal with it. There’s something powerful in acknowledging the past; it allows us to see ourselves more clearly. Coming to terms with my sexual abuse blessed me with the knowledge that I was right in trying to protect myself. For I was a child with no armor, and I didn’t deserve to be exploited.

I think this is the moment survivors begin to distinguish between instinct and intuition; embracing truth grants us insight into realizing what is and isn’t a conditioned response. When we understand our triggers and how we respond to them, we can create modes of action to confront them. When we’re self-aware, our impulses to self-destruct have less power. There’s more room to honor the quiet knowing of intuition. We began to recognize our real selves, buried underneath the layers of experience, expectation, and the past.

Moving beyond the effects of trauma is not a uniform experience. Everyone copes in different ways, and some methods work better for others. But I think the key in allowing oneself to be open to love and vulnerability is the same across the board. If you trust yourself, you can rely on your intuition to guide you to trustworthy people.

Cassidy Scanlon is a Capricorn poet and witch who uses her artistic gifts as a channel for healing herself and others. She writes poetry and CNF about mental health, astrology, queer love, pop culture representation, and how social structures shape our perceptions of history and mythology. When she’s not writing, she can be found petting the local stray cats, exploring the swamps of Florida, reading 5 books at a time, and unwinding with her Leo girlfriend. 

You can visit her astrology blog Mercurial Musings and explore more of her publications on her website. 

[netmaddy-blog]

The New HTC Droid is Incredible

New Post has been published on https://netmaddy.com/the-new-htc-droid-is-incredible/

The New HTC Droid is Incredible

Yes, the new HTC Droid Incredible is no exaggeration. It’s a keeper as it naturally cuddles in the cup of your hand insinuating itself like a heat-seeking puppy looking for a new master. I have fallen hopelessly in love with it under its enchanting spell. I guess I have to say it was love at first sight. Frankly, I’m not a bit surprised that Droid is now outselling iPhone.

Why would I be swayed so compellingly? What about after the honeymoon?

Preliminary Attractive Features

It’s appearance is sleek with a shiny black case thinner than the iPhone and yet with a larger screen. It measures 4.63 x 2.3 x.47 inches and weighs 4.59 ounces.

Under the hood it has a powerful GHz Qualcomm Snapdrogon processor and a 3D chip for amazing gaming experiences on a 3.7 inch AMOLED 480 x 800 screen. The 8 MPX autofocus camera with dual LED flash is another huge plus. While I was surprised that it only has 8 MB of onboard memory, it also has a micro SD slot that can handle up to a 32 MB card for a total of 40 MB storage capacity. There is 748 MB of ROM. At the bottom of the screen there is an optical joystick Tessla.

This phone is the product of a three-way marriage with Google, HTC, and Verizon with each making a solid contribution to bring a superior product to market.

New HTC Droid

Google contributes its mobile apps in enhanced form and the Android 2.1 operating system. One of my favorite Google/Android innovations is Google voice search, which works remarkably well, and is a major convenience that obviates typing.

HTC contributes its manufacturing expertise and the Sense user interface that allows pinch/zoom with an amazing Web browsing experience. When viewing Web pages at any zoom level, the text wraps and conforms to the screen size so that there is no sideways browsing required–what a pleasure. If you’re a social network junkie, there’s Friend Stream that conflates Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr into a single screen as if they were one program with a range of views possible.

There are seven home screens where you can store widgets and apps for easy access. HTCs Sense allows you to pinch the screen to display miniature cards of all seven screens. Then just tap on the one you want.

HTC has loaded several worthwhile widgets and so has Google.

Of course Verizon offers what is arguably the best mobile network with the widest, most trouble-free coverage.

Kicking the Tires

Taking a walk around this beauty reveals an economy of external features. On the top is a power/phone options button. Next to that is a standard 3.5 mm ear plug jack. The right side is unencumbered with any pesky buttons to push inadvertently that may make your machine go crazy when you don’t want it to. The same is true for the bottom except that there is a small microphone hole and a slot for removing the back cover. On the left side is a volume rocker switch and a micro USB port for charging and syncing. The back has an free form like three-tier battery cover. The camera lens in the upper left corner is flanked by the dual LED flash to the right. There is a small opening for the speaker.

Flipping off the battery cover reveals a shocking red interior with a red battery to match. You have to remove the battery cover to gain access to the micro SD storage slot, which is a bit of a bother. I have already mentioned that large screen with its magnificent, bright resolution. There is a charging light at the top of the screen. Below the screen are four useful hardware buttons. From left to right there is a Home button, a Menu button, a Back button, and a Search button. Double tapping the home button invokes the Sense seven-card screen mode. A quick tap brings up a Google text search screen. Tapping and holding activates Google voice search, which is a Godsend as far as I’m concerned.

It used to be a big deal to be able to say a phone had Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more recently GPS. Now, however, that’s pretty much taken for granted, and I’m happy to report that the Incredible has all of the above.

Speaking of GPS, Incredible users will benefit from an enhanced version of Google Maps for navigation and positioning in many applications. The navigation system is a turn by turn voice driven app with satellite and photo views. The rerouting is the fastest I’ve ever seen, and it is usually spot on with up to date data and traffic notifications.

There are some excellent geocaching apps available too that take all the old drudgery out of the process. It’s truly a pleasure to geocache with this device.

What’s in the Box?

The Triumvirate cannot be accused of not sparing any expense, for the box was pretty bare bones with a quick start guide, an AC charger and USB cable that works on the wall outlet as well as in a USB computer port. When connected with a computer, you can transfer files as well as charge the unit. There was no carrying case to protect this jewel, and there wasn’t even a micro SD card. It might have been a nice gesture to include at least a 2 MB card. Many applications will only install to a storage card, which could render the unit less functional until you can obtain a card. So, no extra points there.

Software Included

The Incredible comes with a variety of useful applications already installed. Here is a partial list:

Calculator, Calendar, Call History, Camcorder, Camera, Car Panel, City ID, Facebook, FM Radio, Force Close, Friend Stream (did not work-caused forced close), Internet, Mail, Maps, Market, Messages, Music, PDF Viewer, Peep, People, Phone, Photos, Quickoffice, Search People, Settings, Setup, Talk, Text to Speech, Voice, Voice Dialer, Voice Mail, Voice Recorder, Voice Search Weather, and YouTube. There are a variety of widgets offered by both HTC and Android. With lots more available.

The Android platform cannot compete yet with the depth and range of applications offered in the iTunes store, which I think is approaching around 200,000 now. In the short time that Android has been extant, it has already accumulated about 40,000 apps available in its store and elsewhere. Many are free, and the fee based apps are relatively inexpensive; many are in the one dollar area, which makes them highly affordable.

Unlike Apple, Google, at this point, doesn’t seem to be interested in controlling everything. For instance there is no music in the Google Market and users are on their own to acquire and install music. The music player has a nice interface that flips album covers and delivers a satisfactory listening experience.

I appreciate the installed YouTube app, which saves going to the Web first. I also enjoy the installed FM radio app. Of course there are many other radio apps available in the Market.

There are some TV apps as well with limited programming. What I’m waiting for is SlingMedia to make an app available for the Droid. Then I can tune into the programs recorded on my DVR at home, watch live satellite TV, and control my home TV remotely from my Droid. I tried the Orb app, but I could never get it to work.

It seems strange to me that there is no built in file explorer so that you cannot find files stored on the storage card or in main memory. You have to find a third party app for this, and some are less than satisfactory.

The QuickOffice app is only for viewing files. You cannot create or edit files with this program, and there is no app that I could find available in the Market. This severely limits the device’s functionality as a power productivity tool for road warriors. I happen to know that there is a third party app available for Android that allows creating and editing Office files, but apparently it’s not available yet for the Incredible. I hope it will be soon.

As a side note for those concerned with productivity, It is possible to connect a portable Bluetooth keyboard to the Incredible for efficient inputting on the road, which is a huge plus. Put that doesn’t do a lot of good without the ability to create and edit documents. At this point I suggest using Google Docs as a partial solution.

Peripherals

As this device is so new, there is not much available for it yet in the way of accessories. However it is easy to make do with cases, headphones, earplugs, and other stuff that can be repurposed for the Incredible. I did find it surprising that there were not even any earbuds in the box. I wish there were a set with a mic for use when driving or just for pleasurable listening. You’ll have to find your own set.

A brief comparison to the iPhone

I suppose somehow the iPhone has become the measuring stick by which phones can be compared these days, which I find amusing because the iPhone is still lacking so many desirable features. Anyway for those into comparison shopping, here are a few quick comparables. • Battery Life – Capacity: iPhone 1219 mAh; Incredible 1300 mAh – Talk time: iPHone 300 hours of standby; Incredible 149 hours • Camera – iPhone 3 mpx with autofocus but no flash or manual controls, 640 x 480 video. – Incredible 8 mps with dual LED flash, manual adjustment controls, 800 x 400 video (same resolution as screen) • Carrier – iPhone AT&T-many complaints about speed and coverage; this may change with 4G – Verizon is arguably a more dependable system with greater coverage and more economical subscriber plans. • Display – iPhone 3.5 inch screen with 480 x 320 LCD display – Incredible 3.7 inch screen with 480 x 800 resolution on OLED display, which is much brighter than the iPhone display. • Memory – Up to 32 GB built-in; no expansion slot – 8 GB built in with up to 32 GB expansion slot for total of 40 GB • Processor – iPhone 600 MHz – Incredible 1 GHz • Software – 185 applications in iTunes store – 40 applications in Google Market

And the winner is clearly the Incredible as it beats iPhone in every category but software and battery life. So, unless battery life and software are key issues for you, the Incredible is the better choice.

Spec List • 1 GHz Snapdragon processor • Google Android 2.1 with HTC Sense 2.5 • 3.7 inch WVGA OLED touchscreen display • QWERTY Virtual keyboard • 8GB internal memory and microSD card slot (up to 32 GB) • 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash and adjustable controls • Video up to 480×800 • 312 minutes talk time / 149 hours standby • Dimensions: 4.63 x 2.3 x 0.47 inches and 4.59 ounces • Push Gmail and Exchange • Speakerphone • Advanced Speech recognition • GPS/e911 • TTY compatible • Hearing aid compatibility=M4/T3 • Bluetooth with stereo capability • Wi-FI 802.11b/g/n$199.99 with 2 year contract3.5mm headphone jack • Accelerometer512MB ROM / 512MB RAM • Dual-band EV-DO Rev. A • HTML browser with Flash Lite 4.0

Pricing

The full retail price of the Incredible is $529.99. For that price I would expect an unlocked unit, but that’s a moot point. You pretty much have to acquire it from Verizon with a contract and connectivity plan. A two year contract is $299.99 with a $100 discount online for a total cost of $199.99. If you buy the Incredible you get to select another free phone, which also requires a two year contract. There are a number of plans available that seem to start at $39.99 per month. Unlimited text/data/talk is $89.99 per month. But I guess that’s still cheaper than the iPhone.

After the Honeymoon

After the rush of love at first sight with time to get comfortable and settle in, there are some foibles I’ve discovered, and a wish list I’ve developed for the Incredible.

I noticed that the battery life is not very satisfactory. In my experience the battery wears down very rapidly. Two hours of phone conversation, and it needs recharging. If you leave Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth, or GPS running, the battery drains rapidly. You’d better have a charger or extra battery handy if you want to do geocaching, Bluetooth communication, or connections by Wi-Fi. When using the unit for navigation in the car, I have to keep it connected to the charger or it will go dead in short order. At least it’s possible to change batteries, unlike the iPhone.

I found it frustrating that the beautiful screen so brilliantly rendered inside all but disappears and turns into a black hole outside in the sunlight–so much for working at the beach and in my garden.

I wish that the Incredible would have cards for each open application like the Palm Pre Plus so that you can easily flick back and forth to reinvoke the app of your choice. A workable alternative might be a screen devoted to open apps for easy access.

I was surprised that there is no built-in file explorer program so that you can view and manipulate files and move them around between main memory and storage card. There is third party software, but it only seems to address the storage card. Developers?

Of course I’m upset about not being able to create and edit my Office documents on this device. I hope that will be remedied in short order for it is a serious short-coming that could cause me not to purchase this phone.

Another problem is that there is no unrooted application that will take screen shots, and that’s why you are not treated to them in this article. Come on developers. Here’s a need.

For the price, I think it would have been nice for the sponsors to include at least a small micro SD card to get you started. It would also have been nice to include a set of earbuds with a mic. Would a case to protect your investment be too much to ask as well?

Conclusion

While there are some growing pains as the platform and devices mature, to be sure, there’s lots to like with the HTC Droid Incredible. It is clearly the Droid of Droids, simply the best available at this time. It is also superior to the iPhone in many respects with an 8 MPX camera with dual LED flash and manual controls, more storage, larger screen with twice the resolution, replaceable battery, and a larger, more powerful processor. You cannot go wrong with this truly incredible device that indeed lives up to its name.