#also anything to do with sponsors. like the relationship between young drivers and sponsors is really interesting to me

[grise-and-rind]

Question for the ask game!!

🍄 if you could ask your favourite driver a question, what would you ask?

Ouu this is a good one!!

My fave driver is probably Max or Pierre, but I don't really think my question would change for either of them. I would ask: "What is one thing you want to change for young drivers/karters, and why? As well, would the change you want to make be just for young people, or could it be applied to all levels of motorsports?"

[redclercs]

DELICATE✰ CHARLES LECLERC.

iv. you and me would be a big conversation

— the one where both of you have big reputations.

warnings: this one got a little long sorry, bashing towards charles and y/n (i love them ok), taylor swift references,2.6k words.

masterlist ✢ next

FROM DATF1GURL ON TIKTOK: "IS Y/N Y/LN AFTER CHARLES LECLERC NOW?"

[female voiceover]: ❝(...) while it is true she has a contract with Elix the new MAJOR sponsor for Ferrari—horrible drink by the way—rumor has it y/n's actual goal is to get the monegasque driver to spare a glance her way... Like, okay girl, but you left a 3-year relationship five minutes ago, chill.❞

IN pure Taylor Swift fashion, y/n y/ln has found her own ‘Getaway Car’ in none other than the 25-year-old Monegasque Formula 1 pilot, Charles Leclerc.

While nothing’s been confirmed, (come on now, what celebrity will just confirm rumors of their own free will in this day and age? Screw you, PR agents) the actress has been seen at two Grand Prix and the Elix contract gives her good camouflage for being constantly photographed with her new beau.

No matter how much sex-appeal these two exude, let’s not forget that we have a victim here: Aidan Kim. How can you leave a three year relationship with the man that gave you everything and not even two months later you’re already with someone else?

Is it a rebound or are we looking at something serious? In your humble writer’s opinion it’s most likely the former. And let’s not forget what Taylor Swift, in her infinite wisdom, said: “Nothing good starts in a getaway car”, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Ferrari.

SEE ALSO:

→ Aidan Kim buys new home in Sherman Oaks.

→ Every celebrity present at the Miami Grand Prix.

→ Is y/n y/ln really done with RomComs?

May 13th, Los Angeles, California.

“ARE you sure this is who you want as your rebound, babe?” Victoria places the magazine down and turns her head to look at you, using the precise force and tilt for her sunglasses to slide down to the tip of her nose.

“Stop reading that garbage,” you warn, not bothering to change your position in the chaise-longue, you don’t even look away from the script in your hands.

The day started pretty well, sunny Los Angeles made you feel hopeful for the first time in a while as you opened the script Mildred sent you when you got back from Miami. A drama about a young widow. You can work with that.

“I just mean—” Vic shifts her whole body in your direction, “—You have options, what about Timothée? I’m pretty sure the Kylie thing is fake. And he wouldn’t say no to you.”

“Stop that, Vic,” this time you do look her way for emphasis, you mean it. “I’m not looking for a rebound, or anything else for that matter. I want a job.”

“Fine,” Vic makes a show of capturing her lip between her teeth to pronounce the “F” and lies back in the chair. “I’m just saying…”

You’re glad to be wearing sunglasses, so she can’t see the way your eyes rollback. To be fair, you’re at Vic’s house so she has every right to occupy the same space as you at any given minute. Which is all the time.

After the breakup you ran to Vic’s Los Angeles home and left the SoHo apartment to Aidan. Vic's house is amazing, with eight rooms, five bathrooms, a black granite kitchen and of course, the pool. But you miss New York, even if you can fit your own room two times in one of Vic's. At least, according to rumors, Aidan is moving out of the apartment so you might be able to return to it soon.

“I think it’s bullshit that they see me breathing near a guy and suddenly we’re dating,” you drop the stack of papers on your legs, startling Vic with the sound. “Bullshit.”

“It’s just tabloids, babe.” Vic goes quiet, knowing she’s annoyed you and now you feel guilty about that too.

“I know,” you sigh, picking the script back up. Suddenly you don’t like it that much anymore.

Of course you know it’s just tabloids. People talk shit just for fun, but you’ve been their main target for a few weeks now and you cannot wait for them to move on. Which seems unlikely.

You've never been more glad about turning down a Yankees game invite.

Following Ferrari’s disappointing Sunday and the respective mandatory Elix pictures, you hung around the Suite a little longer in aims of gathering your thoughts and the will to leave to meet Vic at another after-party.

“Hola y/n! I thought you’d left,” Carlos carried his bag in one hand as he struggled to put his sunglasses with the other.

“I’m about to,” you smiled at him, locking your phone. “You too?”

“Yep, going straight to the airport. See you in Italy?” he asked, running his now free hand through his black hair, all set.

“See you there, Carlos.” you waved him goodbye before leaning back on the couch.

Vic had apologized for the shenanigans she'd pulled the previous night, saying she knew she should have asked you instead of just running with things. So you were looking forward to the after-party, it would be fun to hang out with your best friend after making up.

It wasn’t even five minutes before Charles came out too, hanging up a call in his half-destroyed iPhone.

“Oh hey!” He greeted cheerfully, the bad aftertaste from the race wasn't evident in his demeanor anymore. They had their debrief and Charles was willing to let go of the negativity momentarily.

“Hi Charles,” your not-as-cheerful tone didn’t bother him one bit. “Are you flying back today too?”

You couldn’t picture yourself in an eight hour flight after everything they’d done today, but they’re not really regular humans.

“We’re driving to New York, actually,” his hand hovered over the refreshment table, until he picked one of the leftover Elix. Charles examined the black can he chose before speaking again, “We’re going to a Yankees game tomorrow.”

“That’s very nice, Charles.”

He hates Elix as much as the next person so you can't help but wonder why he drinks them even when the cameras are off. Carlos and you never do.

“Would you like to join us?” He offered, the last word deafened by the click of the can as he opened it.

You took a few seconds to process the question, long enough for Charles to down about half the can in one gulp.

“Thank you, but I’m flying back to L.A. tomorrow.”

Charles' mouth went down in one corner and you were uncertain whether it was your answer or the taste that caused it. He tilted the can making the remaining liquid dance.

“Maybe another time,” he added, downing the rest of the blueberry flavored Elix. “Don’t worry.”

“Thanks for asking me, though,” you smiled, grabbing your purse from the couch. You had recovered enough energy already, and you didn't want to miss the DJ set at the party. “I hope you enjoy it.”

“Thanks y/n,” his mouth was still frozen in that slight wince and you shook your head gently at the sight of the empty Elix. “I'll see you in Italy, right?”

“I’ll be there.” you assured, although you hoped not. But a week didn’t seem like enough time to secure a gig.

YOU land in Italy the day the Grand Prix gets canceled. Which is very much just your luck. It’s for the better, though, safety must always come first.

It makes no sense to run back to America when you have nothing else to do, so you resolve to stay in Rome and catch up with a few friends you have around. Matilde Bassi being the best among them, and she would rather die than let you stay in a hotel instead of her house.

"I said no," she repeats, and her accent—although barely even there— reminds you of Charles for a split second, before your brain lets go of the image. "I've told you a million times to come visit, I won't let you stay in a hotel."

You give up after that because you don't want to annoy her. Matilde has quite the strong character, which is the reason she got to Broadway in the first place. After years of being in New York, where you met her, she decided to move back to Italy. Mati, still pursuing her passion, is currently the European public's favorite Juliet.

The fact that all of this goes down in a phone call gives you time to pick up what little stuff you've gotten out of your suitcase and check-out of the hotel before Matilde gets there to take you to her house.

─────────

"So, how are you doing?" she asks, refilling your wine before moving back to the stove, where she's cooking your favorite Italian meal.

"I'm fine, I've told you," you chuckle, sipping the drink. Her house is beautiful too, and spacious, but it feels homey compared to Vic's. "Taking it easy."

One thing you tend to forget about Matilde is how she is able to see right through your bullshit, and that's exactly what she's doing now.

"You never take it easy, y/n. And I mean how are you really? How do you feel? A lot has changed for you lately." she flips her head back to remove a stray curl of hair out of her eyes, "You can be honest."

"I'm fine, seriously, Mati," you know drinking so fast will make the wine go straight to your head but you'll do anything to avoid really talking about this. Which is unfair, Matilde is being genuine.

"You moved from one coast to the opposite and you're fine? What are you working on right now?"

You sigh, managing to smell your own alcoholic breath. "I'm with Victoria, and I've lived in Los Angeles before, while filming, it's not a big deal. As for work... I'm just– picking some stuff out, seeing the best options."

Matilde nods and turns around to grab two plates from the sky blue cupboards behind her. "Are you planning on going back to New York?"

"Yeah, hopefully," you get up to help her and she gestures for you to take a seat again. "My name was on the lease and Aidan is moving out of the apartment, according to People Magazine, anyway so..."

"Your apartment was amazing," Matilde smiles, reminiscing the girls' nights you spent together while she worked in New York, it was always so much fun to be with Mati. "I hope you can go back. If that makes you happy, that is."

She manages to carry both steaming plates and the bottle of wine to the table, and finally sits down. "Well, enjoy!"

"Thank you, Mati, this smells amazing," you missed Mati's cooking so much because no matter how many Italian restaurants you visit, nothing compares to hers, and you're also glad to have something on your stomach that will make the effects of the wine go away.

Or that's what you hoped for anyway, because you're halfway through another cup of wine, almost done with your food, when you drop the grenade you've left unpinned in your brain for 2 months.

"I don't miss him," you whisper, resting the fork gently on the edge of the plate, between two of the yellow flowers painted on it. "Am I a horrible person because I don't miss him?"

You gave it a lot of thought ever since you took the plane from New York to L.A. the night you said no. You thought—still think—there's something wrong with you because the feeling that something was ripped out of your life and the hole that it left would never be filled never even appeared. There was no hole, it was a scar already, and you picked at it trying to make it bleed. But nothing happened. Nothing ever happens.

"You're not a horrible person, y/n don't say that."

You're glad Mati doesn't let silence fall between you, it would have made you regret everything that left your mouth, but she's already reaching for your hand and you feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders.

Mourning the idea of someone is worse than mourning their absence. And you had missed Aidan for a long time, even when he was with you.

"I just feel awful for leaving and not wanting to go back, I hate myself for being okay."

The rejected proposal is something you keep close to you still. You love Mati, and you trust her, but you cannot bring yourself to touch that subject.

Mati squeezes your hand, her food forgotten as well. "I'm glad you're okay. I liked Aidan, too. But you're my friend, and I love you and all I want is for you to be better than okay."

"Thank you Mati," it's her words that actually get the tears flowing, and you wipe them quickly with your free hand. "Sorry for dumping this on you so suddenly." you give a choked laugh before clearing your throat.

"I did tell you you could be honest," she laughs, giving your hand a last squeeze before letting it go. "How about we just go straight to dessert?"

You nod, grateful that she leaves to get the tiramisu you bought on the way home from the fridge so you can pull yourself together.

MONACO welcomes you the Sunday before the Grand Prix. Which you are excited about, for the first time in a while.

Matilde proves to be the best company once again, knowing her way around Monaco like it's her own home. You're glad she's attending the Grand Prix too and you were able to get her into the Ferrari Suite with you, unlike your failed attempt at Miami with Vic.

One thing you find out about Monaco pretty soon, is that they're obsessed with Charles Leclerc. He's in buses and billboards and you can see people waiting to catch a glimpse of him outside grocery stores. It warms you up inside that he's so loved in his own country, not many people can relate.

You don't love, however, that the articles online have brought attention to your presence in Monaco too. And although it’s far less than the one Charles gets for obvious reasons, the heat that comes from it is closer to ire than affection.

Still, you take photos with those who ask on your way back from dinner with Mati and ignore the “you’re here for your boyfriend, huh?” Questions that come from people with their cameras millimeters away from your face. Saying “it’s not like that” isn’t worth the effort because it won’t work.

May 23rd Montecarlo, Monaco.

Mati is introducing you to other celebrities that attended the All-Stars game, when Charles comes back from signing autographs to the part of the stadium where you are. He's messy, dirty and all dimples—again— which you start to find annoying. Although it's mildly sweet how he always smiles at you when your eyes meet, you cannot allow yourself to think of that too often. He's a nice guy, he's being nice.

"Hi y/n, I thought I'd see you until the weekend," he greets you, still drying off the sweat from the back of his neck.

You shrug, making way for a couple of guys who give Charles a bro hug, joke about the several mistakes he made during the match and then leave, acknowledging you in the form of a quick scan.

"Good game," you can't help the small laugh that follows the compliment, but Charles only smiles wider.

"I'm a natural," he replies, but takes his hand to the place he hit when he face planted. "Don't you think?"

"Definitely," you laugh again, raising both eyebrows. "I'm just glad you stick to racing."

"Me too," it's his turn to shrug, and run a hand through his damp hair.

“How was New York?” You look over your shoulder to Mati, who’s holding her own conversation a few steps away. “Did you have fun?”

“It was really fun, noisy, big. It’s a shame you couldn’t come.”

“Thank you again for inviting me. I do miss New York, but i had things to do.” You let the air out of your lungs hoping, albeit stupidly, he can’t see in your face that the things you did was read stuff on the internet about the two of you together.

“Oh you live in New York? That’s wonderful, so you know your way around. Lorenzo and I got lost.”

You chuckle gently. “It happens to the best of us.”

“Ready to go?” Mati puts an arm around you, smiling. “Hello, Charles.”

So it is true everyone knows each other in these circles.

“Hello Matilde,” Charles smiles back at her, “I won’t keep you any longer, y/n.”

“No worries, it was nice seeing you.”

“I’ll see you soon, maybe I can show you a place or two in Monaco.” Charles is very casual, but his eyes don’t leave yours for a heartbeat.

Matilde tilts her head and her ponytail falls into your shoulder, the small hairs tickling your ear.

“Uh, yeah, sure. Thanks Charles.” You shake your head away from Mati’s and wave Charles goodbye as he walks by you.

“My advice,” Mati is still holding you by the shoulder. “If I may be nosy… You don’t want to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Charles Leclerc. You don’t wanna do that, y/n.”

You roll your eyes but Mati is unbothered by the gesture. “I’m not doing anything, Mati. He’s being nice, we see each other every weekend.”

“He is a homie hopper, trust me, run don’t walk.”

You tsk, making her shake her head this time. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not doing that, never, ever.”

And although you intend to keep your promise, the first thing you do once your phone is hooked to the hotel’s wifi, is google Charles and his reputation.

Even if you know better than anyone that the internet is full of lies.

─── team principal radio: ❝hello! i really enjoyed creating this chapter, especially the fake media so i hope you've enjoyed it too. thanks for reading!♡❞

✰ paddock club members: @majx00

[rndyounghowze]

Black Noses And My Personal History With White Supremacy

I finally got the courage to talk about something that Dana has been challenging me to post about for a while. #blm #stopwhiteterrorism

By Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

Mays Landing, NJ

Venmo: @rndyounghowze

I have a very vivid memory of being teased on the school bus in elementary school for having “a black nose and lips”. Until I got glasses and was diagnosed with Tourettes it was the common theme of my playground bullying. My biggest role model at the time was our bus driver Mr. Garland (I think that was his name) because he defended me. I remember trying to make up some story about how I got plastic surgery and they messed up my nose. He looked me dead in the eye and said “we have to be proud of what we look like. We are beautiful inside and out. They’re ugly on the inside. That’s what makes us better”.

I lived with my grandmother during the week and my parents on the weekends. My mom and dad lived in one of the first “projects” in the US and at that time they were one of two white families living there. I would be playing with the kids in the playground and a Black mom who would be watching us would tell me to come up to them and she would hold my chin in her hand and turn my head for inspection to the other mothers sitting there smoking cigarettes. She would tell me “I don’t care what your mom and dad told you” and would let me go back and play. I never really knew what she meant.

Flash forward to high school. I decided that I wanted to dive into my family history. I was in a play about the Confederate Flag and I remembered that I had family on both sides of the war. I had enough info about my family to join the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I also knew that my family up In Kentucky had fought in the Union. I was proud to have “heritage” on both sides.

I was rooting through photo albums in my Dad’s mom’s house. I came upon a family bible that was really old. It had to be old enough to be owned by the parts of the family that lived in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1800’s. Family bibles used to have these front pages that listed weddings and births. Listed in the middle is a marriage between a woman with the last name Jung and a man named Richard with no last name. This would not have meant anything except that after his name they took the time to list him as “a n*****r”. They then spent a paragraph talking about how he fought in the Civil War and saved lives in a battle by shooting a superior officer and allowing the company to retreat. So he was a n*****r but he was a “good n*****r”.

I knew that the story was that our family had changed our last name from Jung to Young to avoid discrimination. My Dad’s side of the family has an outstanding military history and I know they were worried about appearing to have German ties in the war. I eventually went across the street and asked my great grandfather about this. The only thing he ever told me was “marry a girl with the Irish in her. It’s the best thing you could do.” My great grandfather passed away while I was in Highschool. My grandfather passed away in college. After the funeral I went to the house and looked for the family Bible. I had held it in my hand four times in three years. It was gone. I have never found it again. My Dad has special needs, his mom has dementia. The rest of my Dad’s family has never spoken to me after the funeral. It may be because I married a Black person. Maybe not. I will never know.

One time while driving through my mom’s side of the family’s hometown I saw a church sign that had the family name on it. I asked why we never went there and she just casually said “that must belong to the Black families that live here that share our last name”. I was floored by this. We had a black side of the family? What!? She was quick to tell me that they were in no way related. It was just that the family was as old as we were and had lived in that town as long as we had. My family has lived there and owned land there since before the Civil War. I have been digging into the genealogy based on what she has told me and after two or three generations the family line with our last name seems to disappear. Two white branches of the family go back eight or so generations and seem to have married into the family three generations or so back but there don’t seem to be any birth or death records in their town that support her story that the family had been there for a very long time. There is no not-slave-owning explanation for this. To this day my grandmother refuses to talk about it. She leans into the Scots-Irish side of the story.

In grad school when I first met Dana they made sure to do two things: Tell a very wrong Obama joke and then ask me what I was mixed with. The joke was to see if I reacted to the joke in a ”white way” (their words). If I did they would never feel comfortable being alone with me ever much less date me. The second question is because they saw what every other Black person I know saw. I told them what I knew about the probable Black man on my Dad’s side and my theory about my Mom's side. They kinda looked flabbergasted. Like they were surprised I admitted it.

Dana and I fell hard in love and spent three years trying to do the long-distance relationship thing. We had very long talks about race and whiteness. We had to have massive discussions about privilege and culture. I had reading lists and albums and homework that I had to do and Dana readily admits that in a lot of ways I already ”got it”. However, it was never enough. They wanted me to make a conscious decision to marry into a black family and know what I was getting into.

In August of 2014, I had just gotten back from spending a summer with Dana and I was using my hour before work to buy an engagement ring. I had two months to move to NJ so that we could start a job together. I heard on the news that Michael Brown was shot by a white cop in Ferguson. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It was the first time that the weight of what I was doing rang home in the deepest parts of me. I was marrying a Black person. At the time I wanted to bring children into this world. It finally dawned on me that those children were going to be Black. Just as the math in my childhood was Black nose+white skin=white guy the calculus done in a cop’s head was not going to add up well for our children. I worked at a church so I went to the altar and prayed. I prayed for a whole hour. I got the ring and moved to NJ. Dana and I were married five months later. I never looked back.

Why am I saying this now? Because white supremacy is the scourge of American Theatre. It's the reason why our Asian American artists are afraid to walk the streets at night. It's the reason why our Black artists are having to stand up and form their coalitions to get work done without a ”white yes”. It's the reason why even though I have photographic proof that the Cis males in my family have slowly gotten paler with every generation and that I know with absolute certainty that there is a Black contribution to my heritage somewhere that they locked it down and hid it from me like it was a crime (and it was until Loving V. Virginia, the very state my Dad's side of the family hails from). They appear to have bred as much of it out of me as possible by marrying women with ”Irish” in them. I feel like I was force-fed the blue pill and sidelined from my culture. I will never be black. I’m not even trying to be. I am just sickened that something that every Black person I’ve met can see may or may not come from a heritage that was stolen from me and hidden so well I can probably only prove it with a DNA test.

Whiteness is not a culture, it is an allergic reaction to the existence of BIPOC contributions to American life. It is cancer in our American Theatre and we have predominantly white institutions that are standing out like tumors in our cultural landscape. I am singularly focused on rooting them out not just because I'm married to a BIPOC artist. I'm rooting them out so that I can claim all of my cultures so that I can make reparations for the harm that has happened in my personal history. To create me BIPOC heritage may have had to be bred out and hidden and I may never be able to prove it. The sheer insinuation is enough to sicken me. I will uncover it and amplify my ancestors’ stories if I can find them. I will create a culture where this doesn't have to happen again. It ends with me.

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[elles-choices]

The Quarterback: Chapter Two (AU, Chris x MC)

Summary: Chris Powell is a star Quarterback stuck in a toxic relationship. Laura Davis is a writer looking for some inspiration for her new book. They went to the same college. They’ve heard about each other but their paths never crossed… not until they catch the same flight.

Pairing: Chris x MC (Laura)

Disclaimer: Some characters belong to Choices by Pixel Berry

—————————

Chapter Two: Girls Like You

The Next Morning...

Laura stands in the conference room, looking at the Central Park while waiting for her literary agent. She has been trying to start this book for a few weeks now but all she’s got are a few notes. She had writer’s block before but it never lasted this long.

She walks back to the laptop she placed on the table minutes ago and stares at the few notes on it. ‘Is there anything I could use?’, she wonders. Suddenly she hears the door opening and sees Elisa coming into the room.

“Good morning, Laura. How are you today?”, her agent and friend smiles happy to see her, giving her a hug before they sit down.

“I’m okay, thank you. It’s just... argh, as I told you before, this writer’s block is killing me. I don’t know what to do”, she sounds almost desperate.

Elisa puts one hand over Laura’s hand and gives her a squeeze, “Okay, it can't be so bad. Let me see what you have here”. Laura turns her laptop to Elisa and lets her go through her notes. “It’s not so bad, there are a few things you could use...”, she turns her chair so she can face Laura, “Let me ask you a few things, when was the last time you went out and had fun in LA? The last time you went on a date? Had sex? For god’s sake Laura, you broke up with James 5 months ago... you can’t write romance if you gave up on it!”

“I didn’t give up on it, it just didn’t happen. My friends are James’ friends and it’s been kind of awkward... every time we meet they try to avoid his name and I feel bad. And you know I haven’t gone on any dates since I broke up with him... but it’s not because of James, I just never found someone I would want to spend time with... and don’t even talk about sex, my last time was such a long time ago, I don’t think I remember how it works”, Laura laughs.

“Okay, no wonder you are lacking inspiration. Life is happening outside of your windows and you choose to stay home, in front of a computer, trying to give life to characters but you yourself are not living yours, not experiencing things. Get out there, have fun, try new things... get rid of this sexual frustration!”, Elisa closes the lid of Laura’s laptop.

“I’m not sexually frustrated! I can take care of myself...”, Laura crosses her arms.

Elisa smirks, “Okay, but you are a young woman with needs... social needs for example. Go out, get to know people and things will happen naturally. Trust me! One day you will see, hear or experience something the will be the sparkle you need to start your story!”, she stands up, “You can’t write about life if you are not living, so why don’t you go out there and enjoy it a little?”, she hands Laura her laptop. “We talk on Wednesday again before you leave. Now go and have fun!”.

Laura shakes her head, smiling, “The things you make me do...”, she packs her things together and hugs her friend. “See you on Wednesday!”

“See you, sweetie!”

—————

Chris is strolling through Central Park, thinking about his talk with Becca last night. She was out of control - her screams are still ringing in his ears, his body is still aching from her punches and kicks. She gave him an ultimatum but didn’t accepted his decision, ‘What was she thinking? That I would give her a ring?’. he wonders. He is so done with Becca and her ways, he knows he put up with it for too long and right now he feels like he can finally breath again.

He sits down on a bench, enjoying the view of Belvedere Lake. The soft rays of the sun warming up his skin in this beautiful spring day and as he closes his eyes to enjoy it, Laura pops up in his head and he smiles. Chris grabs his wallet and looks for the card she gave him and not thinking twice, he calls her. His heart beats faster with each time the phone rings until he hears her voice on the other side.

“Hi, Laura! It’s Chris... Powell”, he says nervously.

“Chris! How are you today? Feeling better?”, she smiles thinking of the talk they had the days before.

“Much better, you have no idea. And you? Is it a bad time to call? You sound a little out of breath”, he wonders.

“No, it’s fine. I’m running through the park... just trying to relax after my meeting with my agent”, she stops and starts walking.

“Oh, how did it go? Are you in Central Park? I’m here too”

“I was, now I’m crossing the street to my hotel. And about my meeting... I didn’t have much we could work with so she told me to go out, live my life, go on a date, have fun!”, she laughs, “Anything as long as I find a way out of this writer’s block”.

Chris thinks for a moment and says, “Maybe I can help you with that”, he chuckles, “Let me take you out tonight”.

Laura laughs, “I don’t think this is a good idea... Becca was my nemesis in my freshman year, I don’t wanna her coming after me now that college is over!”.

Chris smiles, “Becca is out of the picture now. And I just want to get to know you better. Maybe I can help you with your book somehow”.

Laura walks into her hotel room and thinks about Elisa’s words for a moment... ‘What do I have to lose? It’s not like we are going on a date..’, she wonders. “Okay, Chris. What are your plans?”

“You will have to wait and see! I’m picking you up at 7pm”, he stands up and starts walking back to his hotel.

“Alright then, see you at 7!”

—————

6:55 pm

Laura looks herself in the mirror one last time. She is wearing a red knee length dress with a sexy V-neck line; the soft curls of her light brown hair fall over her shoulder; her makeup is simple and natural. Satisfied with her look, she picks up her clutch and leaves the room.

As she walks through the reception area, she sees a black Mercedes stoping in front of the hotel. Chris walks out of the car, buttoning his gray blazer. When he sees Laura walking in his direction he whispers to himself, “Wow...”. He walks a few steps to meet her, kissing her on the cheek, “You look stunning, Laura”.

“Oh, stop!”, she giggles. “You look nice too, Powell!”, she looks into his blue eyes and sees a difference already. He seems more relaxed, free from the worries that were plaguing him a 24 hours ago. “So, where are we going?”

Chris smiles, “To the Baccarat...”. He holds his arm out for her to take and they walk together to the car.

“You look different, Chris...”, she looks at him shortly before glancing over to the window.

“I feel different. It’s as if my life just started”, he touches her hand, trying to get her attention. Their eyes meet and they both feel an electric sensation traveling through their bodies, they hold their gaze for a moment before the driver stops in front of the luxurious hotel. Chris gets out of the car, offering her a hand. Laura takes it and they walk into The Baccarat.

After getting their drinks and place their orders, Laura says: “So, Chris, are you working on any personal passion projects?”.

“Actually I am. At school I started a Second Chance Scholarship, I don’t know if you heard about it”, he pauses for a second and she nods, “I am working with a philanthropic foundation that sponsor students from not privileged backgrounds and we are trying to make the SCS a national thing. It’s been challenging... a lot of meetings and traveling but I’m not giving up so easily”, he smiles and his voice is enthusiastic. “But enough about this... how does a typical day look like for you?”

Laura looks at him with a warmth in her eyes, “I think it is fascinating what you are doing. I mean, you made it in life and you still care for this cause...  It’s amazing”, she smiles, “Back to your question, right now it’s pretty much between the gym and my study!”, she laughs, “I’m just trying to write, so there is nothing special about my days”.

“Now I get why your agent wanted you to go out... and she is right”, he chuckles.

“Yeah, well, we will see where this will take me... But now I got another question for you, did anything surprising happen to you today?”, she looks to the side and sees the waiter placing her dinner in front of her. After he leaves, Chris says:

“Yes, you accepted going on a date with me...”, he smiles at her and she looks at him surprised, “What? Wasn’t I clear that this is a date?”.

Laura giggles, “Yeah... not 100% clear, no!”

“Well, I hope you are having as much fun as I am... I haven’t been on a first date since freshman year!”, he reaches for her hand, “And it’s nice to be here with you”, his voice softens.

Laura says, “Me too... I mean, no first dates since freshman year and also, I’m having fun too!”, she blushes, looking at him touching her hand.

Chris smiles, “Enjoy your meal, it looks really good”, he lets her hand go and they eat their food, talking about their lives in LA, laughing about Chris’ jokes, enjoying the time together.

After dinner, Chris walks Laura back to her hotel. They are both quiet, lost in their thoughts. He looks at her and smiles - he doesn’t know yet what it is but he knows that there is something so special about this girl. It’s seductive, it relaxes him and makes him feel good. Whatever it is, he can’t wait to find out.

“This is me”, Laura says, stopping in front of the hotel entrance.

“I enjoyed our time together quite a lot, Laura. I’m flying back to Los Angeles tomorrow but I would like to see you again once you are back”, he says nervously.

Laura takes a deep breath, “Chris, I enjoyed the evening with you too but you just broke up with Becca. Do you think it’s the best time to start dating?”

“I checked out of that relationship a long time ago, Laura. The talk I had last night was more for her sake than mine... if you don’t feel comfortable calling it a date, then let’s just hang out and see what happens”, he steps closer to her, brushing a strand away from her face.

Laura smiles and kisses him on the cheek, “I’ll think about it... good night, Chris”.

“Good night, Laura”, he nods, smiling and watches as she walks into the hotel.

When Laura arrives in her room, she takes off her shoes and picks up her laptop from the desk, sitting down on her bed. She closes her eyes shortly, thinking about everything that happened tonight, their talks and how he made her feel - there is a warmth growing inside her chest and it feels so good that it makes her smile. She opens the laptop lid and starts writing her first chapter down.

To be continued…

For more chapters go to my MASTERLIST in my bio.

—————

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[formulatrash]

I reckon there's going to be a load of garbage responses to this so I wouldn't normally wade in but. Professionally informed opinion: Max is one of the nicest drivers in junior formulae. There aren't a huge number of interviews from his time racing because, bluntly, people don't pay that much attention to the junior drivers but there's a few, for receipts purposes.

This one from last year is one of the most honest, all-out-on-the-table interviews I've ever read with a driver, about how his F3 campaign fell apart and his mental health deteriorated. Ellie did a really great job in questions and Max gives in-depth answers about what made him withdraw from racing. Which is a huge step, to acknowledge that your dream is falling apart. Since he stopped racing, he's shown he's very emotionally aware and although he does openly struggle with things still, he has a good grasp on what's healthy.

Like Lando, he's not afraid to admit that racing sometimes scares him - which I think is really healthy. Lewis has made similar comments a few times and being able to acknowledge the danger of what they do is very self-aware. Obviously, they love it but they don't love that element, that there is a genuine threat to themselves and other people on track.

He's never had very much budget (hence doing Formula Renault not Euro F3) - which isn't to say he isn't richer than 99% of people but there's a world between 'extremely wealthy' and 'able to drop €3 million on a season of racing without thinking about it' and motorsport showcases the full spectrum. I'd desperately like him to get a drive, especially because he seems to want to come to Formula E (he's said it a few times) and I am extra fond of juniors who want to come to us, don't just focus on F1. But I do think it's, unfortunately, slipping through his fingers a bit right now. I hope maybe he can get a GT drive. (Lando! Sponsor your man dammit!)

Oh and his friendship with Lando: I don't know them personally, obviously but Lando seems so much more confident and happy since Max moved in with him. They're clearly supportive of each other, even if they will both be mean for the bants. They seem to have a very caring, comfortable relationship to each other; Max is clearly genuinely supportive of Lando's racing - even though Lando's living his dream - and Lando seems determined to have Max involved in his life, even and especially as Max's dream has fallen apart.

Also this is an awful thing to have had to go through but at the memorial for Anthoine Hubert - who Max was in the same driver academy as and knew well - he stood right with Anthoine's family and was one of the few drivers to openly cry. Which isn't to say the others didn't care, we all grieve differently but Max clearly wasn't worried about his image (there is, unfortunately, still a lot of judgement for showing emotions in racing) or anything other than honouring and grieving Anthoine.

I don't really see what the evidence is for the weird claims Max is some sort of toxic influence on Lando given Max by all accounts seems to be one of the nicest of the people he knows. Lando said awhile back he'd been cutting out people who were friends with him for what he does, not who he is (I can't remember which interview this was? maybe one for Mind? idk, I transcribed it so it's stuck in my brain) and the way he's got closer to Max over the last 18 months says he knows why Max is there.

Yes they are young and wealthy and stupid and have limited life experience and of course they will fuck up regularly but they seem genuinely nice with it. (I say "they" since him and Lando seem to come as a package these days, pet turtle and all) edit: also looking through some of the other responses, people seem to think Max reveals stuff about Lando. That's up to them, obviously but I don't think he does at all. He's never said anything that doesn't involve him - and even then is very careful with things like never mentioning the Wembley incident and is very protective of Lando, tells chat not to be weird about him. Yeah, he said they nap together or whatever but that's cus he's talking about himself. They're part of each other's lives, so of course Lando will come up - Max is pretty public about missing him desperately when he's away. Which. Y'know.

People, I usually start my asks or posts about "controversial" arguments with "I don't want to start an argument" but this time I really want to start one so I'm not going to write that.

Ok no, it's not that I want to argue with people, I just need opinions and I know that not everyone is going to have the same one and that sometimes opinions can clash and that can lead to arguments BUT I'm telling you my blog is neutral space about this thing that I'm going to ask from now to when I'll get all the opinions and ideas I need to understand better the situation.

I need to know what you think about Max F.

Any opinion is welcome (but if you refer to something specific I might ask for evidences 🔎🤣). I want to understand the general idea people have of him and his friendship with Lando and of course I'm going to give mine at the end of this (I'm not a bad person, I share my opinions too).

Reblog and write in the tags, reply or send me a message (anon or not) I don't care as long as you gave me your opinion.

Be prepared because I'm going to reblog this post until I have enough answers and data to help me

[entrepreneursbloguk]

New Post has been published on Entrepreneurs Blog

New Post has been published on https://www.entrepreneursblog.co.uk/blog/mr-beast-net-worth-year/

Mr Beast Net Worth [year]

Net Worth: $6 million Age: 21 Born: 7th May 1998 Country or Origin: United States of America Source of wealth: Social Media Entrepreneur Last updated: 2020

Introduction

MrBeast is a famous American YouTube SuperStar and a social media personality. As of December 2019, MrBeast’s YouTube channel has 27 million subscribers with more than 4 billion YouTube video views. 

He began his YouTube journey with his Worst Intros video series. MrBeast was nominated at the 11th Shorty Awards as the vlogger of the year. MrBeast is widely known for donating a lot of money to Twitch Streamers, the homeless and random strangers too. 

MrBeast started the TeamTress initiative in October 2019 and according to the video he made on his YouTube channel, he will be planting 20 million trees.

Early Life

Jimmy Donaldson popularly known as MrBeast was born on May 7, 1998, in Greenville, North Carolina. MrBeast attended Greenville Christian Academy. While in Greenville Christian Academy, MrBeast played both baseball and basketball. To focus more on his YouTube career, MrBeast dropped out of college. 

He is 6ft 3in tall and he is a Taurus. MrBeast has an estimated net worth of $6 million. Some of his videos are sponsored in the likes of Quidd, War Robots, Honey, TikTok, World of Tanks Blitz.

MrBeast also sells online merchandise like t-shirts, hats, hoodies via ShopMrBeast. He resides at Greenville, North Carolina. MrBeast is in a relationship with Maddy Spidell, an Instagram model.

Career

MrBeast launched a YouTube channel in February 2012. In the early days of his channel, his uploads were mostly on popular video games. These games are the likes of Minecraft, Pokemon, Call of Duty and Battle Pirates. Later on, he premieres his “Worst Intros” series. 

In this series, he made fun of intros used by popular YouTube Channels. This strategy worked well that it resulted in thousands of new followers flowing in. One of his most popular video in the “Worst Intros Ever” has been viewed more than 23 million times. 

MrBeast moved his YouTube channel towards more real-life videos after the huge success of “Worst Intros”. His new strategy has no clear formula and some videos take a huge amount of time to complete. In 2018, MrBeast launch ad campaign to support a fellow YouTuber, PewDieDie. He bought TV ads, radio and billboards among others. One of his videos, “I Gave A Homeless Man A Home” got 7+ million views in a day. 

Jimmy aka MrBeast utilises an attention-grabbing donation and charity stunts. In one of his videos, he opened a car dealership where he gave out cars for free. He is also known to have given out thousands of dollars to small streamers on Twitch and YouTube as well. He didn’t end there, MrBeast has extended his charity to waitresses and Uber drivers too.

Highlights

He has been described as “YouTube’s biggest philanthropist,” and frequently vlogs about his extreme acts of charity which include:

he has donated money to ”Attractive Twitch Streamers”;

he has donated $30,000 to a Fortnite Twitch streamer, known as SpaceLyon;

he had donated $30,000 to Ninja (an American YouTuber, eSports Gamer, and Twitch streamer who is mostly known for playing and streaming Fortnite on Twitch) to help the Suicide Prevention Center;

he gave $100,000 worth of items to homeless shelters in December 2018;

he tipped a waitress $10,000 for serving him two glasses of water;

he tipped a pizza deliveryman $10,000;

he has donated to a random homeless guy $10,000;

he has donated 3 million pennies ($30,000) to his 3 millionth subscriber;

he has donated $50,000 to Ninja to help St. Judes Cancer Research Charity.

Favourite Quotes

“One of the reasons I like giving away money is I just like to see how people react.” – Jimmy Donaldson (Mr Beast)

”If you’re not giving away $100,000, people aren’t watching your videos.” – Jimmy Donaldson (Mr Beast)

“I’d rather be poor than doing anything beside YouTube.” – Jimmy Donaldson (Mr Beast)

“If you want the special secret, if you want to know where it all came from — my parents aren’t that rich.” – Jimmy Donaldson (Mr Beast)

”I’m only 20 years old, every dollar I’ve ever made came from YouTube, and YouTube just pays better than you think.” – Jimmy Donaldson (Mr Beast)

“I genuinely enjoy helping people. It’s something I’ve had an issue with, I’m that much of a nice guy.” – Jimmy Donaldson (Mr Beast)

Life Lessons

How does Jimmy do it all? What is the secret to his success, and can we learn something from his success? Of course, we can, here are some life lessons that we can all use.

Start Wherever You Are With Whatever You Have

Jimmy did not have this type of success from the first day he started. He started making YouTube videos at the age of 13, and it took him six years to go viral and grab a lot of attention.

He used to make Let’s play-type of videos, where he recorded himself playing Minecraft a few years ago.

Those were his first videos, which only got around 1,000 views per month back at the time.

Now he usually gets more than 11 million views per video in the first two to three days after they’re published.

He started his channel on February 19, 2012, and got 20 million subscribers on June 18, 2019. This represents seven years, three months and 20 days.

Keep Experimenting Until You Find What Works

His content has changed over the years. From Let’s play-type of videos, he experimented with super-long videos with challenges like saying Keep Net Neutrality for ten hours straight and counting to 200,000.

Some of the rare challenges that he has done to start his virality series were:

Spin a fidget spinner for 24 hours straight

Say Pewdiepie 100,000 times non-stop

Count to 100,000, which took 48 hours

Watch paint dry for an hour

Read the entire dictionary in one sitting

He explains in a video that after donating $10,000 to a homeless man, he realised he liked helping people, so he continued doing it.

Keep Improving Your Craft

No matter how much success you have reached so far, you must continue learning, investing and improving. Mr Beast is an example of that.

“I used to make a dollar a day, so I didn’t even have a microphone. My mindset was just ‘reinvest everything I make’ — every time I got a paycheck, that was the month’s budget,” he says in an interview with the other popular YouTuber, Casey Neistat.

“So I saved up a dollar a day to buy a microphone. When I made a few thousand, I just spent a few thousand. When I made ten thousand, I just spent ten thousand. As I made more videos, I was like ‘I want to spend it on videos somehow.’”

Help Others As Much As You Can

He has helped many people so far, including his family, friends, and random strangers.

In September 2018, as a 20-year-old, he even managed to give his mother $100,000 and called this the “proudest day of my life”:

Enjoy the Process

Mr Beast also does seem to enjoy the process. At least, in the last few months, we could say, as he switched from doing seemingly weird challenges like Watching Paint Dry to arguably more interesting ones, like Last To Remove Hand, Gets Lamborghini Challenge.

This is also because he gets to work with his friends and does these entertaining challenges with them.

Be Consistent

You may be able to take a few lucky shots here and there, but the real challenge is to keep the consistency. 

If you want to keep getting such a large number of people following your content, you need to put in the work and keep producing.

He has been uploading regularly, putting out multiple videos per month, and getting more than 11 million views in all his videos in a matter of days.

This is pretty impressive. even when you compare him with PewDiePie, who is the second most subscribed YouTube channel, with 99,638,751 subscribers.

The more content he produces, the more likely it is for him to increase his exposure to new people from YouTube recommendations, social media shares, etc.

Summary

From the information gathered about Jimmy and his YouTube Channel, it is fair to say that Jimmy made his money via his YouTube Channel. MrBeast promotes the products of companies like TikTok, Lotto, Quid and others. YouTube pays between $2 to $5 for each 1k views. MrBeast gets about 7 million views per day. 

After doing the maths, MrBeast banks $14k to $20k daily from YouTube ads showing on his videos alone. That is a lot of money for the young creative YouTuber who create content that goes viral.

By December 2018, MrBeast had given out $1 million through his outlandish stunts, earning him the title of “YouTube’s biggest philanthropist.” MrBeast is a product of his viral content: He’s only able to give out these thousands of dollars thanks to six-figure brand deals to fund in-video ads.

[villes-noires]

It’s Only Temporary (Part One)

“It’s only going to be temporary” is a phrase that I have heard repeatedly during the past several years. Particularly from young adults looking upon their present circumstances. While youth has conventionally been considered as a process of transition, as something temporary anyway, this process is prolonged for many in an anticipation of gainful employment, marriage and family or a sense of stability, an anticipation that may never end. Much has been made for a long time about the seeming intensifying temporariness of everyday life, and the way this word has been affixed as temporary contracts and labor, temporary friendships with or without benefits, even temporary autonomous zones. In an extensively urbanized era replete with the valorization of mobility and circulation and the ways in which any apparent stability seems tenuous because of the ways in which social and geographic positions are networked across an ever-expanding range of relations, what could not be temporary?

I want to briefly reflect on the way in which such temporariness inhabits the urban, may be the urban’s sole inhabitant, as the temporary itself seems to constantly unsettle what it means to inhabit, and how the cities and suburbs and peripheries and all kinds of strange urban formations should not be viewed as places to inhabit. Rather, they are rather what Karen Barad might call an electronic body all the way down, a condensation of dispersed and multiple beings and times, where future and past are diffracted into each moment—a body set lose as a trans*-mattering, constantly wandering through what might be or have been, regenerating itself through strange alliances. As such urban residents are always on the way to themselves already somewhere else.

Or to take Jenny Robison’s project of comparative maneuvers, where urban territories are forged through things shifting sideways, laterally, without subsumption or overarching frame, without settling somewhere. For, “to settle” has always been excessively burdened by the imperial practices of the “settler” and his fascination, obsession in marking a story with a definitive beginning and end, a story from which to measure the worthiness of all others, their rights of use and potentials of self-making. Much of the urban today, however, wards off narration. Storytelling may continue unbated but what is told is less a story than a profusion of disconnected details.

Of course the obdurate abounds—all of those markets, shops and cafes that have barely made a few daily sales for decades; all the residential and commercial buildings that always have seemed to show signs of immanent collapse, all of those who have never extricated themselves from the same dead end job. Much is made about the relentless and accelerated transformation of cities and urban life, but from Mexico City to Mumbai large swathes of the city have barely been altered.

Yet regardless of empirical evidence the modality through which we tend to look a things seems to attribute a temporary condition to them, the sense that in a fundamental way they are already gone, past; that there is nothing about them that seems adequately prepared to survive through what is just about to arrive; that in the search for more intense experiences and exposures to the world that the ability to sense what is in front of us or where we are as somehow important or adequate quickly fades into a generalized restlessness. Even the notion of the “temporary” would seem to undermine its own meaning—for we recognize something as temporary in contrast to that which endures, sustains, continues. But for many in Indonesia’s black far east there is little recognition of continuity or of a destination to arrive to. In recent weeks I have been taking long ferry rides with youth as they make their way back and forth from Kupang—the main city of the East—in search of work on palm plantations in Kalimantan and Malaysia, gold and coal mines in Papua, the pearl beds of Alor, the oil fields of Aru, commercial ships from Makassar, agricultural processing and construction in Ende or Maumere, or low end jobs in Surabaya.

Most have not retained any positions in advance, and if they manage to secure some kind of temporary arrangement, do not stay at it for very long, for the working conditions are oppressive, the supply of potential labor voluminous, and the work itself it often pitched to fluctuating markets of demand. They rarely talk about where they come from or where they would settle if they had a chance. In this region of promiscous mixture the long nights on the ferry are punctuated by racial and religious anxiety, of the ways in which skin tone indicates a shifting barometer of proximity to increasingly precarious economic opportunity on the one hand and a tenuous rootedness to tradition on the other.

In a region where barter, piracy, mercantilism, and capital exchange on steroids all intermix more or less, race is a marker of who and what is made available for what. As few on these boats claim any capacity to manage their fates, nights of sugary coffee banter center on who is really Indonesian or not as if any had the faintest idea of what such a national designation referred to in the first place. At one moment they will vociferously complain about the enduring capacity of the Bugis to capture commercial markets, dominate the trade in every small thing, at the next moment everyone will claim to be Bugis themselves knowing about a deal that is about to go down, an opportunity that could make everyone rich for a few days.

Everyone sizes themselves against each other, men and women alike, although this is primarily a male world, with the women consigned to adjudicate disputes that threaten to get out of hand or who are the only ones carrying real things to trade. Yet most are also able to temporarily break through comparisons inflected by racial anxiety to offer everyone something, where they seem to hold nothing back in terms of places to stay, names of contacts, tricks to get by. To listen to their accounts is to enter a fray, a sudden whirlwind like those that often plague the boats traversing these seas, and the subsequent rash of cancellations and rescheduling. 

For what is told is usually disjointed, an account begins in one place but without warning the scene switches seamlessly to another, plantations become brothels become churches become rigs, and so forth, and it is hard to keep track anything coherent. No wonder, would be the quick conclusion, that these youth are not getting anywhere because they don’t seem to know where they are at any moment or what they are getting themselves into. They barely seem to touch shore and are at sea once again, which is the literal situation for many.  Like their forebearers they are most familiar with “slash and burn”, as they are not investing in long terms relationships but in maximizing this particular moment of contact. As such, it is hard to tell where these youth are actually coming from. Just as they continuously talk about something “out there” that will change their lives, when you ask where they come from, they point out across the sea and say, from “out there.’

Of course they all come from somewhere. Many are the offspring of long disappeared migrants, of reworked households from which they have been sometimes excluded, sometimes made unwilling centers of. They were sometimes the ones on whom extended family hopes were placed, ones designated not to work the fields, or those for whom fields were already overcrowded or fallow. Some were designated as those who could best “do without”—a parcel of land, a spouse, a normal future, so that meager savings could be applied to those seen as more vulnerable. Their strength was thus immediately converted to a deficiency in larger labor markets, in which they had only temporary footing—a little bit of driving, delivering, constructing, repairing, servicing.

Kupang, the largest metropolitan area of this East is full of young people with such temporary positions, waiting around, waiting to leave, then leaving. They deploy themselves as disposable income for tenuous and increasingly tense affiliations “back home” and beyond that are only partly familial, and entail complex relations of indebtedness among blood relatives, clans, local sponsors and authority figures—these the intricacies of communities hovering with uncertainty between the long-honed practices of bartering economies and the not yet fully instantiated economies of cash.

As retail and wholesale corporations increasingly dominate agricultural production locations and cycles all the way down, as large investors from Jakarta and beyond swallow up large tracts of land on and offshore in formerly remote locales, as the plantation system returns to consolidate individual landholdings, as already dry climates face further reductions in wet seasons, and as larger amounts of small scale agricultural production is left to older women, the stage is set for a preponderance of youth riding fast and loose on the motorbikes poverty no longer make unaffordable. For if your not riding the seas, your riding what passes for roads, sometimes with purpose, but most often without one.

In cities where the jobs of delivery are dependent on managing the mechanics of circulation, getting around is an intricate series of constant calculations always deliberated algorithmically in the imaginations of drivers that are buying time for their customers or making the sheer act of consumption possible. Algorithmically in the sense of various combinations of variables, impressions, hearsays, and shared messages that are reweighted in relation to each other, then applied to the question, “what should I do, how should I proceed?”

For, in many cities this kind of driving is done by marked bodies—those otherwise marginalized by virtue of racial or locational background, legal status, such as refugees and migrants, all of whose precarity cheapen the costs involved. Still this is the closest to stable employment many of these mostly young men will ever get. Itineraries thus are always subject to interruption—all trips between here and there are fraught with increased risks for specific bodies, where the specifics of their histories and aspirations are irrelevant to the fates to which they could be disposed.

Knowing that people have to move around, have to show themselves beyond the relative confines of safety in recessed neighborhoods, entire apparatuses function on the inflated prices of both survival and death that target such a showing. Extortion rackets, arbitrary detentions and executions, illegal detainment, shakedowns not only become purviews for criminal elements but integral aspects of official policing and municipal fundraising. So there is always a biomass available for being picked up, put over there, made to do whatever, and easily disposed of—creating an atmosphere in the midst of the urban poor where planning might simply be only useful as a recreational activity.

Instead of investing in the development of people’s lives as productive citizens, availed of a place from which to narrate a history of progression, of improved well-being, populations are “let go”, subject to what Ruthie Gilmore calls organized abandonment, their life-times freed up from definitive anchorage or accreted value, and made expendable, as currency to be spent, which in aggregate constitute a form of securitization, a constant stream of income available for expenditure, a wide open terrain of manipulations on what bodies can be used for, how they can be shifted around, all of which can be parried into claims of investment worthiness issued by elites and their nation-states.

Neferti Tadiar talks about the entrapment of populations having been convinced that becoming properly human is something worth pursuing, and willing to pay for. Residents have long been coaxed into jettisoning mixtures of jocularity, trickery, fast talking, inexplicable generosity, deft maneuvers, festivity and dissimulation in favor of a belief that propriety was attainable through considering one’s lifetime as a property to be cultivated, a value to be maximized. Never mind when teachers rarely showed up in classrooms, that the army milked every effort at entrepreneurial spirit, or that savings groups ended up paying exorbitant interest rates.

The urban poor are no longer reserve labor but indications of the capacity of states to move bodies around, keep them in line, kill them when necessary, and thus prove their creditworthiness on the international market. The refusal to invest in social reproduction, leaving the poor to fend for themselves now under conditions when fending becomes improbable conveys the willigness of nations to do what is necessary to guarantee the safety of foreign investment, to detach itself from its own coherence in favor of the machinic resonances of continuous incomes streams dutifully laundered. Life for many is what Neferti Tadiar refers to as “remaindered life”, that which remains after the pursuit of a normative humanity has been exhausted. As she points out, alternative ways of becoming human consist of tangential, fugitive, and insurrectionary creative social capacities that despite being continuously diminished, impeded, and made illegible by dominant ways of being human, are exercised and invented by those slipping beyond the bounds of valued humanity in their very effort of living, in their making of forms of viable life.

To mobilize even remote opportunities requires intricate forms of brokerage, lives subjected to intricate insurance policies that calculate the risks and attempt to circumvent them. Even for those riding the waves in Indonesia’s East attempting to escape all kinds of tedious obligations, they often end up owing far into the future, lives already mortgaged, forced to work backwards to pay off what they already owe. Here indebtedness seems far from temporary, that lives are rather locked into a set disposition from which there is no escape, except perhaps the literal taking on of more debt to escape that already accrued.

Under such circumstances what kind of story is worth telling? For these youth on boats, heading back and forth, they have little to carry with them but scenes of provocation, the way they push and pull at each other’s maneuvers. The ship may move ever so slowly, but in these long nights, they don’t sit still, they wander up and down every nook and cranny, they preach from tables, they sing local versions of Thai songs they have seen in videos, they demand each other’s attention, they hatch plots and schemes to take things weakly guarded, they talk about cousins and uncles who can do this and that. It is a thick web of complicities that can dissipate at any moment. Everything remains temporary.

[awesomeblockchain]

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You've heard about Bitcoin, the world's first major cryptocurrency, which has a valuation that is apparently tied to whatever direction your building's elevator is moving at the moment. You've also heard about the digital currency's promise to disrupt the global banking system, or to bankrupt its starry-eyed investors. Fanaticism over Bitcoin has stirred up cynicism among many financial experts, and unfortunately, it has overshadowed the real use cases of the technology underpinning most cryptocurrencies: blockchain.

However, the real-world applications of blockchain haven't slipped past insurers. Several insurance consortiums have formed in recent years to develop blockchains for use in the insurance industry, and while the technology is still young, its uses look promising.

As a type of distributed ledger, a blockchain can store data derived from a number of disparate sources more securely and efficiently than a centralized database. Additionally, certain blockchains, such as those built on top of the Ethereum network, can enforce "smart contracts," which will only finalize a transaction once preset criteria are met. These functions could be invaluable in situations where multiple parties need to share and sign off on information in order to complete a business transaction-in other words, almost every task undertaken by an insurance company.

Consider when someone takes out a policy on a used car they've just purchased. Ideally, both the driver and insurer will know the car's entire history-whether it contains original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts or generic versions; whether it's been involved in a collision or received repairs from flood damage; and even whether previous owners regularly changed the oil.

Currently, insurers can run CLUE Auto reports to obtain some of this information, but the reports are often limited, since the process of compiling and reporting on a car's history is manually intensive.

Under a blockchain-based reporting system, the vehicle manufacturer, parts supplier, original seller, repair shop, insurer and driver could all act as nodes on the blockchain. Even the individual parts that go into a car could be recorded, creating a far more robust vehicle history report than currently exists, in a format that is far more protected from data breaches.

"It makes the entire vehicle history transparent to all industry partners," said Olivier Baudoux, Head of Product Strategy at Mitchell International, a leading provider of software solutions to the property and casualty (P&C) industry. "Just as important, though, is that this data would be available to a consumer to validate that the vehicle they have purchased is in safe driving condition and that, if in a collision, the vehicle was properly and safely repaired."

Manufacturers would be incentivized to participate in this process because, among other things, it would enable them to better track which specific vehicles contain which specific parts. This could save them millions of dollars during a product recall, since they could track and notify individual drivers who own vehicles with faulty components, rather than issuing a blanket recall on an entire make and model.

For car insurance companies, having all of the above information secured, up-to-date and readily available could enable them to largely automate the policy underwriting and claims processes. "Underwriting a policy requires deep understanding of the 'Actual Cash Value (ACV)' of a vehicle, which is directly tied to appreciating previous damages and proper repairs (a.k.a. Diminished Value)," said Baudoux.

All of this is along the lines of what Mitchell International intends to accomplish. The company announced its forthcoming blockchain solution in January. "Within the next five years, we envision that blockchain will be used not only across the entire P&C industry, but also along the entire automotive value chain," said Baudoux. "An entire ecosystem yet to be built is being developed as we speak."

However, the benefits of blockchain aren't limited to the automotive industry. Several independent companies and insurance consortiums-including John Hancock, The Institutes RiskBlock Alliance, the Blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative (B3i), Bajaj Allianz and R3-have formed initiatives to develop use cases for blockchain in the broader insurance industry.

Eighty-six percent of insurance professionals across all industry segments believe blockchain will be either "important" or "very important," according to a recent Cognizant survey of professionals who are familiar with the emerging technology. Further, 54% of respondents believe blockchain will fundamentally transform the industry.

But while many in the insurance industry have an optimistic outlook on the implementation of blockchain technology, they haven't yet determined exactly how it will be used. Blockchain is a nascent technology, and at this point, its ultimate use cases are undefined.

With all of the fervor around cryptocurrencies and blockchain, one might wonder if businesses are developing blockchains simply out of hysteria. In truth, some probably are.

Situations exist where a centralized database may still make the most sense, or the benefits of a blockchain-based system might not be worth the research and development involved. Businesses shouldn't implement blockchains into their practices simply because the technology exists. In its report, Cognizant laid out several criteria for identifying an eligible use case for blockchain technology:

With these standards in mind, insurers have begun exploring the following use cases, in which blockchain technology could improve business processes.

Behind every insurance policy is a web of business relationships, including insurance agents, financial advisers, third-party service providers, government agencies, reinsurance companies and customers. Data associated with an individual's policy, or the dollars used to pay for it, can change hands several times. Managing each of these relationships is manually intensive, and having so many parties involved creates multiple opportunities for a data breach.

A decentralized blockchain could enhance security while giving each of these parties an efficient source for the information they need to audit, approve or participate in business deals on a daily basis.

Collectively, insurers receive and remit billions of payments globally each month. These payments vary in size, currency and parties involved, and they can be incredibly labor-intensive to execute and record.

With a blockchain-based system, claims reimbursements to customers, subrogation between insurers, commission checks to insurance brokers and payments to reinsurance companies could all be set up to occur automatically according to preset parameters. Doing so could save insurers significant time and money, plus reduce the possibility of payment fraud.

Smart contracts, a feature of some blockchains, execute an order when preset criteria are met. Telematics, such as the Nest Protect smart smoke alarm, are connected devices that monitor consumer behavior and transmit data back to the proprietary company. By integrating these two technologies, insurers could write policies, validate claims and trigger rate changes based on real-time data without any human intervention.

For example, a telematic device installed in a vehicle may alert an insurer if a driver rear-ends another car before a claim is ever filed. Similarly, if a telematic water and leak detector notices a burst pipe in a policyholder's basement, it could trigger a smart contract to send out an alert and initiate the claims process automatically, reducing damage and saving time for all parties involved.

It's too soon to say for sure which changes will obviously affect policyholders. However, anything that helps an entire industry operate more efficiently should ultimately benefit consumers. Here are three changes that policyholders may see in the coming years.

If blockchain technology enables insurers to automate or efficiently process claims, it's likely that individuals will receive reimbursements more quickly. An excellent example of this is the life insurance claims process.

Currently, when a policyholder dies, beneficiaries must actively complete a tedious death registration and claims process. Since this inefficient process takes place during what is already a stressful and traumatic moment in a beneficiary's life, billions of dollars of life insurance benefits go unclaimed. In many cases, beneficiaries don't even know they're entitled to a payout.

However, if policyholders, beneficiaries, hospitals, funeral homes and life insurance companies all existed as nodes on a blockchain, that claims process could occur automatically, as soon as a hospital records that a person has died. Insurance companies could save time tracking unfiled claims, payouts would be remitted automatically and beneficiaries could focus on more pressing issues.

The security measures and smart contracts built into some blockchains allow geographically and economically dispersed people to trust each other. Because of this, some industry professionals expect peer-to-peer insurance to become more common.

Peer-to-peer insurance describes the collaborative agreement wherein a group of individuals agree to pay for other individuals' claims, spreading the risk across the group. Essentially, it's insurance without a large central company taking a cut. Blockchain makes facilitating this type of agreement far more feasible.

Several crypto companies, including InsurePal and MediShares, are already working to leverage blockchain technologies for this purpose. However, it's likely that major insurance companies are also researching how to facilitate this business mode without being entirely cut out of the process.

Usage-based insurance already exists, but it's likely to become more common under a blockchain-based system. Under usage-based insurance, your coverage or policy premiums are directly connected to your individual behavior. For example, Metromile bases a portion of its auto insurance premiums on the number of miles an individual policyholder drives in a given year.

Since blockchain enables companies to capture and track data on a more detailed level than was possible before, it will likely allow insurers to gain deeper insight into policyholders' daily behavior. Because of this, policyholders may see their insurance rates based more heavily on their behavior, such as distance and speed they drive, the number of steps they take in a day or the number of hours they spend in their house each week.

Regardless of your views on cryptocurrencies themselves, blockchain is an emerging technology that could be transformational to a broad range of businesses. While still underdeveloped, blockchain looks especially promising for the insurance industry. Even if the ultimate use cases for the technology aren't as disruptive as some have claimed, consumers should expect to see blockchains further implemented within the insurance industry in the coming years.

The article, Insurers Want to Use Blockchain. Here's How It Affects You, originally appeared on ValuePenguin.

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I have an interview today for a job at Domino's Pizza to be a delivery driver. My only concern about it is right now I have personal insurance. If I were to get in an accident while delivering a pizza for domino's, would I still be covered? I'd like to hear from actual insurance reps or people who have had experience with this.""

Car Insurance for 18 year old female?

Hiya! I am due to pass my driving test by my 18th birthday. Ive been doing some research and got quotes of minimum 6K and even one which was 12K. I don't understand how the insurance companies reckon people like me can afford that kind of money. Do you kbow any good insurers that will help me out? A maximum of 2,000 will be ideal! I have the car ready and sorted. Its a Toyota Yaris 2001 with a 1.1L engine. It is worth less than one grand. Sooooo.....""

High risk health insurance for cancer patients?

I know someone without health insurance who just received word of a lung cancer diagnosis. I know most insurance companies won't take him but does anyone know of one that will, or a website that can point me in the right direction?

Can I drive a car with Florida license plates in my name & insurance from illinois?

Thinking about taking a car from illinois to florida. But one problem. Car insurance would be ridiculous if it was in my name, so I have it in a relatives. But I was thinking about taking the car from Illinois to Florida, Then registering the license plates in my name making them Florida plates. Can I keep the car insurance under my relatives name from illinois? If possible it would be a Florida car with Florida license plates and Illinois car insurance. Would that be possible?""

How do I get Insurance for my newborn baby?

I'm 18 and I just had my first baby. I live in Alabama. I Have insurance under my mom,but it won't cover the baby. Does anyone know how i would go about getting insurance for my baby,and do i have to have insurance before i take him to the doctor cause i have to take him tuesday.""

Can i change my license address to be covered by car insurance?

background info: -17 yrs old, male, got my license in january so its provisional, live in california. so i contacted my mom's auto insurance (liberty mutual) and they said the only way i would be covered as an occasional driver without being listed is if i didn't live in the same household otherwise i would have to be listed. so would it work if i just changed the address on my license?""

Affordable Student Health Insurance if I can't be on my parent's plan?

My parents are Japanese citizens in living in Japan and the insurance I currently am in with them obviously won't cover me in the U.S. I am going to be a college freshman and wonder if anyone knows any affordable student health insurance plans/companies. The plan provided at my school is a bit pricey and needs me to pay it all at once in the beginning which I can't do. Any affordable and numerous-payment-planned insurances?

Can I be forced to pay insurance for stepchild?

Here's the situation. My husband makes very little money. I have him covered under my insurance policy. Until recently, my stepdaughter was covered under Child Health Care Plus. Coverage stopped when she turned 15. Her real mother is being a real witch and demanding we buy her insurance. Hubby can't afford it. I can't enroll her under my employer's plan because there's only open enrollment one month per year. I really don't WANT to put her on my policy, as she seems determined to get pregnant ASAP, and also she hates me and steals from me. Can I be FORCED to get her insurance? Oh, and did I mention her real mother doesn't work? HELP!!!!""

I am 20 years old. How do I get affordable health insurance?

I feel hopeless. I was diagnosed with genital warts, and I need to get them surgically removed but I need health insurance or else it'll cost me an arm and a leg. I'm so confused and I am panicking. I don't even know where to start. What do I do? I am about to move out of my mom's house in a little under 2 weeks and my mom doesn't have health insurance either.""

Insurance cost for 2.3l fox body mustang 16 year old?

I am 16 and considering purchasing a 2.3l four cylinder mustang. These were made from the mid 80's to early 90's. They have like no power but get good mpg. I am worried that insurance companies would see the word mustang and give me a high rate. BTW my sister is 17 and pays only 50 a month on a family plan for a 1995 suzuki sidekick.

Change auto insurance company?

My car was covered by Progressive, the insurance is 6 months term, now it is about 3 months already(half way). I decide to cancel my current policy and switch to another insurance company, how should I do step by step? Thanks.""

What company would provide shipping insurance?

I want to sell some jewellery on Ebay and I will end up shipping it to Canada or US. Canada post offers a maximum insurance of $500. Which (if any) company would provide insurance at replacement value? Or at least a $1,000?""

How do auto insurance providers calculate your payments?

I just got off the phone with my auto insurance to change my address. They informed me that my rate is going to be $16 more now because I moved to a different zip code. The problem is, I had previously had my insurance changed because it skyrocketed after my previous move. Which is strange because I had moved from the same city before and it went down about $20. I have since moved BACK to the SAME city I was in before and it's going up again?? This makes NO SENSE! I thought it was based off of your location (zip code). But now I just think these insurance companies are making up their own numbers and rules and we're all getting screwed!! Can someone please explain this insanity to me? My zip code is now and was before, 95608. The zip code I just moved from is 95628. Yes, I have moved back and forth 4 times within the same 2 cities if you're confused.""

Do i need to call my car insurance company?

I was in a car accident today and it was not a small accident. I hit a car on its side. there was an older woman so an ambulance came but she ended up not being hurt, just procautionary. the police were called and they took all my info and whatnot. It was wierd the police did not give me any papers or anything and told me i could leave. they just asked me if i wanted my car towed and i said no. the police officer also told me when i asked him that i dont need to call my insurance company unless i want to make a claim. is that true? i only have 1 way insurance so im probably going to scrap my car. I always thought u should call them no matter what, do you know if i am obligated to call them or will they contact me? location: Quebec, Canada thanks a bunch, Tyler""

Motorcycle insurance for an 18 year old?

Realistically, how much would insurance be per year on a 600 cc sportbike for an 18 year old male with no car accidents(if that matters at all)? And what about any other costs? Thanks""

How much would insurance cost for a 2013 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500?

I am currently 17 years of age living in a metro area with straight As in school. I have never had any previous speeding tickets and I am a defensive driver. My parents are cosigning with me in order for me to get the car. I work as a waiter at a very upscale restaurant, so I am able to make the payments. But will it be over $300?""

How will this speeding ticket affect my insurance?

Back in April I got a speeding ticket CVC22350, went to traffic school, and paid it off. Now, I got another one today, CVC22349 (a) for going 87 in a 65 (on the freeway). I read that I can request traffic school and if the judge gives it to me, it will take the point away but they will still notify the insurance company of my ticket. Let's say I don't do traffic school. How will this affect my insurance rates? I have Wawanesa insurance. This will be my first ticket that they know of, right? And your first ticket shouldn't affect your rates? Please help!""

I need to provide health insurance for my daughter.?

I live in Colorado and she lives in New Mexico. I only need to provide health insurance for her (not myself). Anyone know of a good insurance deal in New Mexico?

Do I Need Auto Insurance if I don't have a car?

Ok, well i just got my liscense [ i`m 16 ] ... i don't have a car, so do i need auto insurance? i don't know if this is a dumb question, but people are telling me i need to be added to my mom's insurance and stuff. i`m trying to under stnad the whole car insurance thing so hopefully somebody can help.""

Buying life insurance for unemployed adult son?

I have a 24 year old unemployed son who works only temp jobs when they are available. I'd like to make sure he's covered if anything happens to him - what's the best route to take? I live in California, he lives in Ohio. Can I add him onto my job's insurance policy, or will I have to purchase it some other kind of way?""

Motorcycle Insurance question?

I recently bought a motorcycle and i'm just about to buy insurance but i am abit confused, I'm thinking of getting the Third party fire & theft insurance, which means i wont get no claim if I crash my bike but what if the other drive is at fault? Does their insurance cover my damage or what? thank you""

Is the insurance for a Mazda 6 expensive?

i want to know

Insurance rate for a 16 year old?

what would the monthly insurance rate be for a 16 year old driving a 2013 camaro ss v8 engine? thanks!!

Can Chevrolet Dealership repair vehicles with insurance?

So someone smashed into my parked vehicle. It is a chevrolet and the insurance is covering it and I can take it to a repair shop of my choice. I was wondering if the chevrolet dealership where I bought the car to can do those repairs? It is axel and bodywork damage. All help will be much appreciated thank you.

""Motorcycle Insurance Rate New Driver 22 years old 1974 Honda CB360, How Much?""

I'm buying a 1974 Honda CB360 Bobber motorcycle, I'm 22 years old..have had 1 ticket in October for running a blinking red light at night, 1 speeding ticket that got dismissed in court and 1 speeding ticket that stuck a 65 in a 55. I live in Michigan and this is my first ever motorcycle. How much am I looking to pay? and what is the best company to get insurance, online it says Geico wont insurance motorcycles in Michigan so cant use them. Full time college student if that matters any""

What would health care cost if NOBODY had insurance?

I was reading about how doctors are now rating insurance companies, and one figure that stuck in my head was $210 BILLION wasted anually on excessive administrative costs. Not administration, UNNECESSARY administration. They want to cut out red tape, well, why not cut out insurance altogether? What would health care cost if NOBODY had insurance, and had to pay for everything out of pocket? I suspect that patients would start paying a lot more attention to their bills, doctors would have to start competing, and costs would plummet. Shoot, there'd be at least $210 billion a year more available! There's mention of one doctor who accepts a flat yearly rate, and doesn't accept insurance. Would this really be such a terrible way to do things? Letting doctors and patients decide what's fair, instead of insurance companies and the government? We could let people buy catastrophic insurance, but not general health funds like we have now. Could it work?""

Insurance not paying a claim!?

Boy this is a good one & I don't know what to do Next! I went with the Lizard insurance even though they are Snakes and don't want to pay for any Claims! It started in 2010 with my truck, I took it to where they told me and they only paid for cosmetic damage even though there was a lot more including my steering was so bad I had to stop driving it. I wanted to take it to a shop that I had my truck lowered which because of we're I lived and the shop was I couldn't drive it, 65 miles. I had AAA tow it to my new house and from there after 2 years of not driving my truck they agreed to have it towed 7 miles to the shop. Well I told the claims adjuster what was wrong, he told me I needed to write a list and drop it off at the shop so I just got my Chopper back from the shop and went down to where my truck was a wrote a list of what I thought was wrong. Here is where the first of my troubles started, on the way home I am riding on the freeway and a truck to the right of me had a blow out and a Giant tire flew right in front of me, I couldn't do anything other than to run it over. It happened so fast, I hit it and made a brown spot in my shorts, jk. I then noticed smoke coming from my Chopper, it was Bad so I pulled over and noticed that my tail light was knocked off and caused some damage and the bold that holds my tail light on came off and rubbed on my new Avon 250 tire and Melted the side wall. I was able to ride home and once I saw all the damage I knew it was a problem. I called the Lizard and made a claim. The claims adjuster called me and said he will be out that Saturday, so saturday came and I never heard from him, I had his number and left a message, so this went on until Thursday and I called the lizard again and they transferred me to the AH boss and I left him a voicemail. Well I didn't hear from him as a few more days went by so Called back and got his boss's boss. The next day I got a nasty voicemail from the claims adjuster bitching at me. I called customer service and told them he went off on me and they can hear my voicemail too but no one listened to me. So I was told to call his boss, I said then I don't want this claims adjuster to come out, I don't want to speak to him or have anything to do with him. They were so sorry and said they totally understand and later that day the big boss called and I told him I hadn't heard from the adjuster other than a nasty voicemail and I want someone else to come out and not him. The boss said I understand and he will take care of it. So two days later the rude claims adjuster showed up at my house to take care of the claim, I was shocked it was the AHole I didn't want to come out but his bosses boss told him he better get out there and take care of this. Well once he was there, he wasn't as nice as he had been and couldn't be more rude than he was. I told him what had happened and the Damage, all he said was Prove it, Prove it, Over and over with everything I showed him. It caused major damage to my shocks and front forks, he laughed and said they are designed to roll over things and that it couldn't happen from hitting a tire in the road, well it can because that's exactly what happened. He was such a AHole I said, why did you even come out, did you just come here to be a @ss Hole or what!! He didn't say a word and just left. They paid out just a little for damages to the paint, tail light and the tire. The tired was new and cost 500 but they paid me 100 bucks for it. Mean while my truck is at the shop still to get looked over for the damage and they didn't pay a dime and the worst part was when I got the truck back from being towed, I started after the tow truck drive let it down and it sounded funny, then I smelt burning plastic so I opened the hood and my entire air intake system was gone!!! The burning was th vacuum hoses laying on the headers. I called the shop where my truck was and they said they are not sure what's going on but to call back. Well they are no longer in business and I lost all that so I called and opened a claim, now they are investigating me over this. So I have damage from 2010 that has never been fixed, my bike isn't right and someone had stolen my Volant cold air intake that's not being taken care of. What do I do? This is BS, I don't deserve this from my insurance Company and for them to treat me like they have, not pay out the claims. I needed my truck smoged Dec 31st so because all the parts to have it smogged weren't there I couldn't have it down and I have a ton of late fees with the DMV in California. My Volant is smog legal, I have the Ca numbers for it but it doesn't matter, I am getting the run around like no tomorrow. I will Drop GIECO and go with Farmers but not until my truck and bike are fixed. I have called everyone I could at Geico and no help!""

I want to name my new insurance company?

i want to name my new insurance company

High risk health insurance for cancer patients?

I know someone without health insurance who just received word of a lung cancer diagnosis. I know most insurance companies won't take him but does anyone know of one that will, or a website that can point me in the right direction?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-does-car-insurance-cost-age-16-charles-taylor"

[inhabitonline]

INHABIT: DOUG DELIA AT HOME

SPONSORED by lil indies (Facebook): Inhabit is a new series by local photographer David Lawrence (Website), that shares stories about the people who call Orlando home. It’s an exploration of where people live and spend their days, whether that be at home, in an office, the streets of downtown, or anywhere in between. Lawrence explores who people are and how they ended there.

Every other week we will be sharing Lawrence’s interviews, featuring a different Orlandoan and telling the story of the places they inhabit.

*This interview was transcribed and edited from an audio interview on 5/09/2017

Who are you?

“My name is Doug Delia. I’m 70 years old and I’m an old hippie. I grew up in the Sixties and still maintain the values of working for change and peace activism. I’m an artist, which for me involves writing and poetry; I’ve written quite a few theatre pieces and plays. I have done a lot of photography and I’m looking for ways to integrate those modalities together. Right now I have two books out that I call Poetography as they are a combination of poems and pictures. I’m trying to integrate photography into my artwork by painting over photographs and using photography in unusual ways.”

“I think that art history needs to be told by artists, not by historians, and I’m working on that; using my poetry as an avenue to tell stories. Lately I’ve been inviting friends to come and play music while I read poetry. I’m very interested in collaborations of any kind with people. Bringing people’s talents together in one place and playing off each other.”

Is art something you have always done?

“I think that you manifest whatever it is you’re meant to do at a very early age. I think that if you have parents or friends that are supportive and you have outlets, you can go from there. Some people go right from childhood into art school and they become an artist and they are in galleries and all that. But that wasn’t my route and its not most people’s route either. We tend to go on. As John Lennon said, ‘Life is what happens while you are doing other things.'”

“For me, that’s what happened. There were a lot of things that intervened for me. I wrote some poetry. I remember being in one anthology in high school. I submitted a couple poems that were in the anthology and right after that I went to community college in Holyok, Massachusetts. I wrote a theatre piece that was produced by the college. They were looking for some original materials, so I wrote this thing about going back and forth in time between the beatnik era and the hippie era.”

Note: Doug ended up flunking out of college and was faced with two options in his small town; work in the mill or enlist in the military. He was a conscientious objector, but decided to join, just as Vietnam was beginning to ramp up.

How does a conscientious objector join the military? I want to hear all about it.

“Well, the rest of the story was that because I was joining, and there were so few joining at that time, I had some leverage. I joined the Air Force and I told the recruiter I would only join if I could be in either the chaplain’s office or I could be a medic.”

“He told me he couldn’t guarantee anything. However, I did get to become a medic. I helped with the wounded as they came back. There wasn’t enough resources in country to handle all of the casualties, especially after the Tet Offensive. The casualties were taken to the Philippines or to Guam. I was never in combat, but I was stationed in Guam as a medic and ambulance driver. We would go down to the runway every day at 5 o’clock to the ambulances and help transport the soldiers back to the naval hospital on the other side of the island.”

“I always say I didn’t go to war, but war came to me. I saw the atrocities of war without actually being stationed in Vietnam.”

It’s easy to oppose things and remove yourself from a situation instead of saying ‘I don’t agree with this, but I’m still going to be here and help.’

“Well, I had a set of moral values that I wanted to adhere to. I never wanted to kill or injure anyone else. I wanted to be on the other side of that, the healing aspect of that. That continued after the war. I went to college at UCF with my Veterans benefits and got a degree in Philosophy and Religion; later in life I became a massage therapist, which is in the healing arts, and from there I started two schools in central New York training people for licensure in massage therapy. I feel good about that path…because it allowed me to create healers, thousands of graduates who are out there in the world, healing people. I feel like I was the tree and they were the branches and it was a blessing to have that opportunity. I think healing has been a part of my life and I think that my writing and my art is an extension of that. A lot of my writing is about healing our wounds, whether it is the war experience, childhood abuse, political or anything that has to do with healing the planet or self.”

Where are we currently and how did you end up here?

“Well, you know, I love College Park. It was either going to be Thornton Park or College Park for me because those were the places where they have the cute little bungalows. I didn’t want to live in a mansion type house. I like a big house, but I don’t want it to be pretentious. I’m not a pretentious person. By most people’s standards I have a lot of wealth, but I don’t want to be perceived in that way. I drive a Subaru, not a Mercedes. I dress in bangles and beads because that’s what I feel comfortable in. Being in College Park really fits into that sort of lifestyle.”

“So I have this little oasis back here in my backyard. I put most of these trees in because they weren’t here when I moved in. I enjoy being out here and writing and of course, Credo is a haven too. I love that I can wake up and walk over to a coffee shop and I get to sit there for a couple hours and work on photography and writing. It’s sort of like an office and the wonderful people that come in there, like you. You get to network with people and share ideas and thoughts––that’s community––and I love that I can probably live here without a car. I can walk to restaurants. Everything I need is right there. So, I like that idea.”

Besides Credo, do you have other places in Orlando that are important to you that you don’t find in other cities?

“There’s a great abundance of independent coffee shops here. Stardust coffee is a very interesting place with all the books. I’ve read poetry there. I’ve done the storytelling nights and I really enjoy that area. It’s a little enclave and I love the used clothing stores over there. It’s very Boho. I also like going down to Drunken Monkey. Its across from Barnes and Noble. You can have a cup of coffee and work there and you can go and look through the books. So that’s interesting. And you know, I’m a Starbucks fan too. I know it’s a chain and I prefer indies, but it also does a lot of great work. It’s a Seattle-based company and I feel they have a lot of integrity.”

You told me when we were walking over to your house, about your marriage and your kids- I’d love if you could share about your family.

“You know- I’ve been married three times. I used to say that reluctantly. People think that if you’ve been married more than once, there’s something wrong with you. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand that’s not the case. It’s a natural progression for people to grow apart at some point. Not everyone of course. Some people are very content.”

“I married very young. I think I was 20 years old when I first married and I don’t think that I had any concept of what a relationship was. So, of course, I don’t want to say it was doomed, but it was an immature love.”

“I’ve been married to Liz now for 27 years and she’s an artist. She does pottery and we have two girls together. At this age, we are more independent now. We don’t cling to each other like we would at 20. We live independent lives. Sometimes she’s up north and I’m here. She does her pottery and I do my art. We come together and have date night and make sure we do enough things to sustain the couple-ship, but we are more independent now. I think that’s a healthy thing at this age. My goals for myself are different than they were when I was 20. I’m looking at a limited lifespan at 70. I realize that.”

If you’re curious about Doug’s work- He currently has a showing called Feed Your Head, on exhibit at Henao Contemporary Center. It is a sampling of photography projects he has been working on over the past year. You can also follow him on Instagram at @dougvandelia

[junker-town]

NASCAR rumors: Matt Kenseth’s status still unknown as teams fill seats for 2018

A seismic Silly Season in which some of NASCAR’s most prominent teams are shuffling their lineups and some big name drivers are on the move, continues to come into focus.

The biggest changes thus far for 2018 has seen Alex Bowman replacing Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Hendrick Motorsports, Erik Jones replacing Matt Kenseth at Joe Gibbs Racing, Ryan Blaney joining an expanding Team Penske, and Paul Menard taking Blaney’s spot at Wood Brothers Racing.

Plenty, however, still needs to be determined. Kasey Kahne, Danica Patrick, and Kurt Busch are among the notables who still haven’t solidified their future plans -- situations complicated by sponsorship uncertainty within their respective teams.

Kahne’s position with Hendrick is most in doubt. On Sunday morning, team owner Rick Hendrick said “the plan” is for Hendrick Motorsports to remain a four-car organization in 2018, even as speculation persists that one of its cars could be cut due to lack of funding.

And after Kahne won the Brickyard 400, Rick Hendrick acknowledged Sunday night that although Kahne is under contract to the team through 2018, his continued employment is contingent on finding sponsorship for the No. 5 car.

If not, the team is likely to promote William Byron up from the Xfinity Series. The thinking being that the 19-year-old prodigy may be able to give the No. 5 car more consistent performance, which in return should help procure additional sponsorship.

Matt Kenseth is another key Silly Season domino. The 2003 Cup champion was thought to be a potential option to replace Earnhardt at Hendrick. But with that team opting to go with Bowman, and with Byron waiting in the wings to take over for Kahne, Kenseth’s options are limited.

Here’s a detailed look at how the free agency landscape is coming together for next season:

Matt Kenseth

With Hendrick choosing to go in a different direction, Kenseth is facing the realization he may not have the opportunity to sign with a competitive organization for next season. The possibility exists he could sign with Stewart-Haas Racing, though that is dependent on the team finding some additional sponsorship. Barring that, Kenseth will have to decide between joining a lesser team or stepping away with the hope that something more attractive eventually opens up.

Matt Kenseth is facing the realization he may not have the opportunity to sign with a competitive organization

Kenseth was asked about his future during a July 18 appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, and acknowledged he doesn’t have anything lined for 2018.

“I don’t feel like that’s going to be an opportunity I’m going to have,” Kenseth said. “I really I don’t know. I really honestly don’t have anything lined up for sure. I will say that I’m not really that worried about it. I’m not really losing sleep over it. I’m not that concerned about next season.”

Brad Keselowski

After prolonged negotiations, Keselowski and Penske announced a multi-year contract extension on Tuesday. Exact terms of the deal and the length were not disclosed.

Photo by Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images

Erik Jones

Erik Jones

The 21-year-old is off the market. However, his leaving FRR opens up an attractive ride with the same equipment Martin Truex Jr. has taken to three wins and the Cup Series points lead.

Kurt Busch

SHR holds an option on Busch’s contract, and co-owners Tony Stewart and Gene Haas exercising it largely hinges on whether Monster Energy continues to serve as an anchor sponsor for Busch’s No. 41 team. To varying degrees, Haas is already funding out of his own pocket the teams of Busch, Clint Bowyer, and Danica Patrick, and there is speculation SHR could downsize to three cars if the appropriate sponsorship cannot be found to relieve the burden.

If Busch were to leave, FRR becomes the frontrunner to land the 2017 Daytona 500 winner where he’d replace Jones. Busch had a successful one-year stint with the team in 2013 and the organization is even better situated than it was then, an enticing prospect for a driver who at age 38 is still capable of contending for a second championship

William Byron

The Hendrick camp had been split on on what to do with Byron. Does he get a bump to Cup and replace Kahne, or continue developing in Xfinity for another season? What’s clear is that Byron will be in a Hendrick Cup full-time no later than 2019.

Ryan Blaney

Another promising young driver who’s shifting organizations, and similar to Jones this transaction was expected. Team owner Roger Penske has wanted to bring Blaney in-house for some time and just needed the sponsorship to materialize to add a third full-time car.

With the funding coming together, Blaney was announced Wednesday as driver of the newly created No. 12 team. Penske now has a potent lineup going forward featuring the highly regarded Blaney alongside title contenders Keselowski and Joey Logano.

Danica Patrick

Danica Patrick’s future with SHR is in serious doubt

With the results absent and Patrick no longer bringing in substantial sponsorship dollars, her future with SHR is in serious doubt. Her contract expires at the end of the season, and for Patrick to return, additional sponsorship is needed, which could be tough considering she no longer moves the marketing needle like she once did.

What Patrick would do if she and SHR separate is unknown. With a new clothing line launched and a fitness book due out in January, Patrick looking outside racing becomes a realistic proposition.

Kasey Kahne

Unless circumstances radically change, Kahne’s tenure with Hendrick will come to an end with his 2018 option not being picked up.

A change of scenery would do Kahne good, and a midsized organization could greatly improve itself by signing the 18-time Cup race-winner who, at 37, still has many good years left — he demonstrated as much Sunday with an impressive win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Photo by Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images

Kasey Kahne

Alex Bowman

A lot of factors contributed to Bowman getting the biggest break of his career. Foremost, he did an excellent job as Earnhardt’s fill in a year ago -- on the track where he was competitive in several races, and off it where he had great rapport with sponsors and the team. Earnhardt advocating for him publicly also helped convince team owner Rick Hendrick to give him a shot.

Now the pressure is on Bowman to prove he’s deserving. If he doesn’t produce, it would cost Hendrick little to reverse course and move in a different direction.

Carl Edwards

NASCAR’s white whale who a lot of upper-echelon teams would love to sign, Edwards has given no indication he’s going to give up the Missouri farm life to return to racing on a full-time basis.

Paul Menard

With backing from his family-owned home improvement chain, Menard isn’t lacking sponsorship. This factored heavily into him landing with the Wood Brothers, where Menards will sponsor the No. 21 Ford in 22 races next season.

Menard departing Richard Childress Racing creates further uncertainty within that organization. The team is considering contracting from three cars to two and has already begun layoffs.

Chris Buescher

The second-year driver was loaned by Roush Fenway Racing to JTG Daugherty Racing this season, and that relationship will continue into 2018, Buescher said Thursday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

The story was updated at 12:50 p.m. ET on July 26, 2017

[spleenvent]

The Great Reality TV Swindle: One of the craziest stories I have seen on television.

If you managed to clap your eyes on my piece about televangelism (if you haven’t, then... well, please do :)), you will have seen how fascinated I am about the powers of persuasion in us human beings, if not necessarily to use those assets for the right reasons.

Writing that blog made me think of other examples, with one in particular worming its way through the memory vault, and what I still think is one of the most bizarre stories I have seen on screen. I remember watching it and questioning in my mind whether this was completely genuine or not. Thankfully, it is on YouTube (complete with ads from 2002 for added nostalgia bonus), and now nearly 15 years since it was aired, it compelled me to watch again from start to finish.

It’s a cautionary tale of the attempts of a fantasist to turn his dreams into reality. He managed to persuade others with similar aspirations, into giving up their livelihoods for a project with its foundations built on quicksand, sucking everyone in, including himself, and leaving them all with nothing.

Reality TV. How fly-on-the-wall became a television beast.

At the dawn of this century the medium of Reality TV was megalithic. Endemol created a monster with Big Brother that was sold all over the planet, I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here was a ratings winner, and Pop Idol catapulted a politics graduate from Wokingham to singing stardom.

TV production companies were eager to devise the next sure-fire hit, whilst average Joes and Josephine’s, seeking the opportunity for maybe more than their fifteen minutes of fame, were keen to get involved in their droves.

A glut of programmes were commissioned, with generally plenty more misses than hits. For instance, a concept like Shattered, where people were in a Big Brother style situation for a week but could not sleep, was well meaning but never really going to merit a second series. Another example was Bedsitcom, where people moved into a flat which in reality was a TV show set, and their housemates were actors putting them in uncompromising situations. It was a crass failure of a programme, all the more surprising seeing how it had Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the creators of Peep Show, and the Gibbons brothers who have revitalised Alan Partridge in recent years, in its roster of writers.

Nevertheless, one young, flamboyant and ambitious producer was convinced he had a smash on his hands. He had devised a concept where people would “take money on at its own game, and win.”

Nik Russian of Nik Russian Productions set about looking for contestants, putting adverts in publications such as The Stage for an audition. The plucky hopefuls were gathered at Ravens Ait, a swish corporate entertainments venue on an island in the Thames.

Russian split the wannabes into teams, and gave them all a task. Come back to the venue with a cake, made completely from scratch. The teams went out and knocked on doors asking members of the public to help them out, and found some generous souls willing to rustle up what they needed.

Given the fun and challenging task which took quite a lot of gumption to pull off, the successful candidates were overjoyed to hear they would be taking part in the show, which Russian had intriguingly codenamed Project MS-2. They gave up their jobs, living arrangements and some even finished relationships. But this was all going to be worth it for their shot at fame. I mean, the biggest regret you can have is doing nothing, right? (SPOILER ALERT!)

Reality bites.

Following big leaving parties and saying goodbye to family and friends, the contestants headed down to London, to discover just what they were in for. But rather than a fun task, they would be met with a shock. The premise of the show was, in any way which was legal, make one million pounds in one year. Their first task of the week was to find accommodation, for free, despite being promised in a contract that food and a place to live would be provided.

Realising something was terribly wrong with the idea, two teams disbanded and left. However, one team’s cameraman (all camera operators were trainee volunteers by the way) had access to a flat, so they all stayed in there to decide what direction to take next, and to demand a meeting with Russian to find out what the hell was going on.

When they met with Russian, they were stunned to find out that there was basically no show at all. There was no commission, no sponsors, nothing. Russian blathered on about sales and marketing teams, but it was highly likely these did not exist, like the fantasy in his own mind.

Russian’s true identity revealed.

Through a twist of fate, a chat with one of the cameraman’s friends discovered the true reality of Nik Russian. Real name... Keith Anthony Gillard. It turned out he was not a TV producer at all, but a sales assistant in a branch of Waterstones. He had also given that job up and his own accommodation, and then bizarrely turned up at the contestants’ place of refuge as he had inadvertently made himself homeless in the whole process.

They took him in, but not without hatching a plan to expose him and his actions. Tipping off ITV News London, they locked Russian in the flat until a film crew and journalist were let in. Russian did give an interview, but tried to play the victim, rather selfishly talking about his own hardships from this, over the 30 people whose lives he had forced to change to chase his pipe-dream.

Their TV appearance the next day on London Tonight gave the contestants a small sliver of fame. However, the hope anything would come of it would soon dissipate. The team would eventually disband and try and rebuild their lives, but not before contestant Debbie Driver contacted an independent TV company, Christmas TV, about making the documentary about their remarkable story.

As a result, even more investigations into Nik Russian found his web of lies had entangled his friends and his own mother in the whole mess. It was revealed that the audition’s clinical psychologist was his girlfriend who had no experience in that field, and the upmarket location it was staged at was blagged for free in exchange for promised publicity when the series was to air.

Still wanting answers, contestant Daniel managed to track Russian down to a house in Richmond-Upon-Thames, but Russian would still play the victim schtick. Daniel, who came across as a level headed guy up until this confrontation, said to Russian that he was resisting the urge to punch him.

Time to get my amateur psychologist hat on!

It would be easy to label these people as fame-hungry, but when reality TV was booming, a programme like Big Brother had its fair share of people who were encouraged by the experience rather than any perks it brought afterwards. Big Brother held some status as a social experiment in its early series, and had some very affable people in it, until it went down the “we need to shove as many twats in as possible to create scandal for ratings” path.

It could be said these people were gullible too, but one of the key aspects of this whole story was the audition. It went almost too well. For me, I was reminded, albeit loosely, of the Milgram experiment. Not necessarily the premise of that experiment, but how it was set out. The Milgram experiment looked into how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person, in that case through the medium of electric shock. People were told by an “experimenter” to administer powerful electric shocks to someone in another room, through a generator, which was actually fake. They would be told to increase these shocks and continued to do so despite hearing feigned screams from the room next door.

These “experimenters” were decked out in lab coats and held clipboards. They looked the part and therefore could have authority. Russian got his girlfriend with no psychology experience to hold a clipboard and act as if she was one. It’s amazing how just holding a device or wearing something that looks like a uniform can give you an air of authenticity. The camera operators were not professionals either, but they had cameras and looked the part. Russian worked in a book shop, and was not a TV producer, but had the charisma to convince people he was the head honcho in this show. Add the task he set into the mix, which to give him credit was an excellent idea, and also the location, and you’ve got something rather convincing. It epitomises the fake-it-til-you-make-it nature of Russian’s whole escapade.   

The success of the audition however was merely papering over the massive cracks in his bid to make a reality series, and I think it made him even more complacent. It is almost as if he thought everything would magically come together afterwards, but it was an astonishingly speculative idea that in the end was just a husk. The main bulk of reality TV shows have two things in common, an elimination process, and an endgame... a prize, a job, etc. Russian’s had no elimination process, and the endgame was you earned your own prize money. No wonder the TV producer he tried to get on board seemed completely baffled with the concept.

Here’s to the dreamers... (but the ones who make it a reality).

There’s nothing wrong with having a dream, people dream of being music stars, but you wouldn’t choose what genre route you wanted to go down, and arrange gigs, if you could not play an instrument. To make a dream a reality, you have to do all the things in between to make it work, the hard yards.

It would be interesting to see what has become of Nik Russian (who I doubt is still called that), and whether he learned a powerful lesson or not. You would have hoped so fifteen years on, and that his grasp of reality has considerably strengthened.

He may have not made the smash show he thought he had, spanning hours of programming and being a concept bought all over the world, but inadvertently he did find himself the centre of one hour of seriously intriguing television.

View Part Two of The Great Reality TV Swindle here

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7