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blueheartbooks · 9 months ago

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Sense and Sensibility: A Delicate Tapestry of Love and Society

Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" weaves a captivating tale of love, resilience, and societal expectations in early 19th-century England. Published in 1811, this timeless classic follows the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, as they navigate the challenges of life, love, and loss in a society governed by strict social conventions.

At the heart of "Sense and Sensibility" are the contrasting personalities of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Elinor, the epitome of sense, embodies rationality, propriety, and self-control, while Marianne, the embodiment of sensibility, is characterized by her passionate nature, emotional intensity, and romantic idealism. Austen masterfully explores the tension between these two opposing qualities, highlighting the virtues and pitfalls of each as the sisters navigate the complexities of romantic entanglements and societal expectations.

One of the most compelling aspects of "Sense and Sensibility" is Austen's incisive portrayal of the constraints and expectations placed upon women in Regency-era England. Through the experiences of the Dashwood sisters, Austen illuminates the limited options available to women of their social standing, whose futures are largely determined by their ability to make advantageous marriages. As Elinor and Marianne grapple with the pressures of propriety and the dictates of their hearts, Austen offers a poignant commentary on the challenges faced by women in a patriarchal society.

Moreover, "Sense and Sensibility" is celebrated for its richly drawn characters, sparkling dialogue, and subtle humor. From the affable and pragmatic Colonel Brandon to the dashing but duplicitous John Willoughby, Austen populates her novel with a cast of memorable characters whose foibles and follies add depth and texture to the narrative. Austen's keen observations of human nature and her sharp wit are on full display as she deftly skewers the hypocrisies and vanities of her characters with a gentle but incisive touch.

In addition to its exploration of love and society, "Sense and Sensibility" is notable for its enduring themes of resilience, sisterhood, and female agency. Despite the setbacks and disappointments they face, Elinor and Marianne demonstrate remarkable strength and resilience as they navigate the complexities of their circumstances and strive to carve out their own paths in life. Austen's celebration of sisterhood and female solidarity resonates with readers of all ages, offering a timeless message of hope and empowerment.

In conclusion, "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen is a timeless classic that continues to captivate readers with its richly drawn characters, incisive social commentary, and poignant exploration of love and sisterhood. Austen's masterful storytelling and keen insight into the human heart make "Sense and Sensibility" a compelling and deeply resonant read that speaks to the universal truths of the human experience. With its enduring relevance and timeless appeal, "Sense and Sensibility" remains a beloved masterpiece of English literature.

Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" is available in Amazon in paperback 18.99$ and hardcover 25.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 478

Language: English

Rating: 8/10

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

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blueheartbookclub · 9 months ago

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Sense and Sensibility: A Delicate Tapestry of Love and Society

Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" is available in Amazon in paperback 18.99$ and hardcover 25.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 478

Language: English

Rating: 8/10

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

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denicdlife-a2 · 4 years ago

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Tag Dump

; corrupted code [musings]

; relatable imagery [aesthetics]

; unauthorised access [muse]

; pointless but appealing [music]

; confidential files [headcanon]

; oh no. i insist. beg for me [ic]

; inquiry processed [ask]

; interaction initiated [starter]

; interaction recorded [reply]

; unnecessary wants [desires]

; pointless ‘fun’ [dash games]

; unwanted observations [dash commentary]

#; corrupted code [musings]#; relatable imagery [aesthetics]#; unauthorised access [muse]#; pointless but appealing [music]#; confidential files [headcanon]#; oh no. i insist. beg for me [ic]#; inquiry processed [ask]#; interaction initiated [starter]#; interaction recorded [reply]#; unnecessary wants [desires]#; tag dump #; do not reblog #; pointless ‘fun’ [dash games]#; unwanted observations [dash commentary]

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fictionadventurer · 3 years ago

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When I got onto Team Lewis, I thought I was in pretty good shape. Before I even brought up the possibility of the Inklings Challenge, I’d been thinking up a short portal fantasy piece inspired by some of the points brought up in the Christian worldbuilding and Narnia discussions that were happening on my dash. I still like the idea, and I still may wind up using it for the Challenge, but it feels more like a meta-commentary on Narnia than its own piece of fiction.

(And every time I try to write this post, I get the urge to write this piece, so I may just have to go with it. But it doesn’t change the fact that I also want to talk about the other idea that’s developing, especially since that original idea doesn’t have an ending).

I’d prefer my Inklings Challenge piece to draw from some of the same Christian fantasy ideals that drove Lewis, but to be its own story. I considered several old ideas that include portal fantasy and/or space elements, but the trouble with using old ideas is that you’re attached to the old ideas, and it can be a lot of work to let go of the old, failed ideas and come up with new ideas that work better. It can almost be easier to start from scratch because you don’t have to waste time killing darlings. Plus, a lot of those old ideas are fairy tale retellings, and I’d like to come up with a wholly original story--A) because it feels like cheating to use a fairy tale outline to come up with Christian fantasy because so many of those stories already line up with a Christian worldview, and B) to push out of my comfort zone and see if I can actually write a story rather than just a glorified fanfic.

As I was trying to come up with ideas, there were several images, tropes and themes that were appealing to me.

Stewardship

The idea of a king being tied to the land

Hospitality

Hope in bleak circumstances

A love story (possibly a love triangle if I can get away with it) between two people from different worlds

I tried different variations that included some of these things, but none of them were turning into stories until heard the readings at Mass on Saturday, and was struck by the concept of Exile. Excellent concept for a Christian portal fantasy--we’re all exiles awaiting our true home in Heaven. I had also been very drawn to my writing prompt of an epistolary portal fantasy, but since I’d seen other people express interest in it, it felt kind of mean to “take back” my writing prompt, as it were. Combining the letters with the concept of exile, however, felt different enough from the original prompt that even if someone else does use it, it’ll likely be very different from whatever I write.

So that’s what I’ve got so far. An epistolary portal fantasy love story about the concepts of exile, stewardship, humility and restoration. I have the basic outline of a plot (unfortunately a bit too obvious of a plot in the circumstances). I have one character who I’m a little bit in love with (it’s very easy to fall in love with Christ figures), who is unfortunately not one of the POV characters. I have sketchy ideas for some characters. A few ideas for scenes and observations and plot points. And no clue what the fantasy world is like, beyond a few basic ideas. And probably no hope of turning this hazy idea into a full-fledged story during the time limit. I should just throw up my hands and decide on an easier story. But I’m already thinking of this as my Inklings Challenge story, and if I don’t write it now, I don’t know if I ever will. And it feels like a bit of a shame to lose this. So this is probably a terrible idea, but I have to at least give it a try.

#adventures in the inklings challenge #adventures in writing

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gugobewu11 · 5 years ago

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Greatest Wins in Next Three 2007 Bowl Games - Michigan, Southern California and Georgia - Part 6

Here are the following 3 champs of the current year's 2007 school football bowl game outcomes:

Capital One Bowl - Michigan Outlasts Florida, 41-35, as Lloyd Carr Wins His Last Game

In the event that the Michigan Wolverines had wrapped it up and put it under the tree, active mentor Lloyd Carr couldn't have gotten a superior Christmas present from his players as they defeated 4 turnovers to turn around No. 9 Florida, 41-35, in the Capital One Bowl.

The long-lasting, famous Michigan mentor declared his retirement after another misfortune to Ohio State in November. Had he not resigned, he would most likely have been approached to leave. Michigan employed Rich Rodriguez who dashed from his head instructing work at West Virginia to assume control over Michigan's celebrated football program.

The success was immense for Michigan's seniors as they won their first bowl game in quite a while. Chad Henne tossed for 373 yards and 3 touchdowns and Mike Hart hammered out 129 hurrying yards and 2 touchdowns.

The Gators held the game close gratitude to Michigan's 4 turnovers and a lot of huge plays by sophomore Heisman Trophy victor Tim Tebow and his fast partner Percy Harvin. Tebow was playing with a messed up bone in his non-tossing hand and was feeling the squeeze yet was as yet 17-of-33 for 154 yards and 3 touchdowns. He additionally ran for 57 yards and another score.

Harvin got 165 yards on 13 conveys (12.6 yards per convey), scored once, and furthermore got 9 goes for another 77 yards and a subsequent touchdown. At last, it was insufficient as Michigan won one for Carr.

The Gators neglected to change over a fourth down play at its 25-yard line and K. C. Lopata's 41-yard field objective put Michigan ahead 41-35 with just 2:21 remaining. Florida got another shot however Tebow tossed 4 straight air balls. Both Michigan and Florida completed the season with 9-4 imprints.

BCS Rose Bowl - Southern California Crushes Illinois, 49-17, to Make a Statement

Pete Carroll and his Southern Cal players despite everything are thinking BCS national title game, however the Trojans will need to trust that that will occur. They may have completed at 11-2, equivalent to Louisiana State that will play in the title game,how to open a slot machine business yet the Trojans lost at an inappropriate time to an inappropriate group Stanford at home.

In a presentation of dissatisfaction and distress, Southern Cal truly stepped Illinois 49-17 in the BCS Rose Bowl game to say something. First year recruit half back Joe "Where Do They Find These Guys?" McKnight tore through the Illini protection for 170 yards (125 yards hurrying and 45 yards accepting). McKnight's yield was a piece of the Trojans' 633 yards of offense.

The yield set a Rose Bowl record and the Trojans' 49 focuses tied the record. The victory game gave Southern Cal 11 successes for a remarkable sixth consecutive year. Illinois Coach Ron Zook still completed the year at 9-4, an incredible turnaround after a 2-19 record in his initial two years at Illinois.

Try not to be confounded here, Illinois was a 13.5 point dark horse going in. Recollect that it was Illinois which managed Ohio State its lone misfortune, 28-21, and the Buckeyes will confront LSU in the national title game. Caps off to Zook and his players for a mind blowing year.

BCS Sugar Bowl - Hawaii's Unbeaten Streak Ends as Georgia Wins Easily, 41-10

Georgia's Bulldogs were jumping frantic that they were not welcome to play in the BCS national title game, and Hawaii's Warriors were forced to bear their disappointment, losing 41-10 as their fantasy of an ideal season finished in the BCS Sugar Bowl.

Hawaii came into the game at 12-0, the main undefeated group among the NCAA's 119 Division 1A schools. They did it with mentor June Jones' run-and-shoot offense that found the middle value of 46+ focuses a game, the arm of junior quarterback Colt Brennan and some incredible beneficiaries.

Brennan is the genuine article. He has set more NCAA passing records than Carter has liver pills, however nothing appeared to intrigue Georgia, and particularly Marcus Howard, who turned into the game's MVP as he had 3 sacks, 2 constrained bobbles and a tipped ball that colleague Dannell Ellerbe caught.

Actually Georgia was just too large, excessively quick and unreasonably solid for the Islanders this time around.

Howard and his cautious mates lived in Hawaii's backfield as Brennan was sacked multiple times, tossed 3 block attempts and lost 2 mishandles, one of which Georgia recouped for a touchdown. Georgia's guarded line pushed Hawaii everywhere throughout the field; Brennan was fortunate to escape New Orleans perfectly healthy enough to be drafted for Sunday obligation in the NFL.

"It was the quickest group I've presumably ever observed," said Brennan. To be reasonable, they would not have been so quick in the Warrior hostile line had played better and given Brennan more security so Hawaii's offense could be compelling.

It was a decent yet troublesome game for Hawaii to swallow, however the Warriors will live to battle one more day. They needed to realize that their 12-0 record was against a lot more vulnerable rivalry than each different BCS group confronted. They had their way in the Western Athletic Conference, in any event, bringing down Boise State, which likewise lost its bowl game to humble East Carolina 41-38. Indeed, even the Washington Huskies, who had an important lead on Hawaii, couldn't beat the Warriors as their game finished with Hawaii on top.

The residents of Hawaii experienced passionate feelings for their Warriors and well they ought to have. Hawaii had a mark year. Different groups are presently attempting to take June Jones away from Hawaii. It merited the annihilation when you realize that Hawaii figures to make a $4 million payout for its appearance in the BCS Sugar Bowl. For a group whose selecting spending plan was an immaterial $50,000 every year, that is a great deal of moola. Hawaii would now be able to stand to enroll ability on the territory.

June Jones has become an open door for some different groups. His run-and-shoot offense has brought about a 76-41 record (64% win rate) in 9 seasons, including the current year's 12-1 imprint and BCS bowl appearance. Jones assumed control over a Hawaii group that was winless in 1998 and went 9-4 in his first season. Interpretation: You don't have to remain wakeful evenings appealing to God for Hawaii's prosperity; the Warriors and doing fine and dandy, bless your heart.

(Proofreader's Note: This is the sixth article of an arrangement on the 2007 bowl game outcomes.)

Ed Bagley's Blog Publishes Original Articles with Analysis and Commentary on 5 Subjects: Sports, Movie Reviews, Lessons in Life, Jobs and Careers, and Internet Marketing. I will probably illuminate, teach, amuse and rouse you the peruser.

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otp-armada · 5 years ago

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A Time Capsule

I’ve been lurking across several fandoms spanning a decade now, since my days of reading “Bones” fanfics on fanfiction.net. Before any inkling of Ao3’s existence. Maybe longer, my memory is murky at times.

I’ve never made a splash in any fandom, so to speak. I’ve always been content to stand shrouded in anonymity, residing on the edges of fandom, never an active participant. Perfectly at peace to never have a voice. Never brave enough to want to be heard. It has only been in the last few years that I discovered Tumblr and felt comfortable enough in taking advantage of its anon feature to interact mostly with The 100/Bellarke crowd, “conversing” with one user in particular. In the instances I chose to speak, there was safety in knowing my words never had an identity attached. A safety that lent itself to sending anon asks a fairly common activity until I wrote one recently sharing a remnant of my “The 100” viewing experience. The warm response from the users who read it left me smiling for the rest of the day. Their reply took a direction I didn’t expect. They encouraged me to take credit for my words under my username, which of course, I didn’t have, not being a Tumblr user.

I was flattered by the response, bolstering me to continue the line of conversation with another ask and was met with reiterated sentiments.

In the wise words of one of those awesome people,

“I was the ultimate lurker for a long, long time. I had a Tumblr account for four years before I ever made a single post, and even then I had to be talked into it. And you know what? When I finally starting “talking,” it was so freeing! Even if no one else was listening, even if I was speaking into the void, I was no longer dependent on anyone else to share my thoughts and opinions. I could do that myself.”

I took the compliment but waived the advice. Tumblr is made of communities built upon sharing and I have always been unto myself an island. It goes against my shy, introverted nature to take part in a community. I have no business pretending I have a place there. None at all.

And yet, despite my misgivings, the idea wouldn’t leave me as I believed it would. I started to genuinely ponder the merits of creating a blog.

There are strong reasons to support the affirmative.

First, the utilitarian benefits. In the absence of a blog, I turned to alternative methods of archiving appealing posts. If by some miracle, the item count of my browser reading list hasn’t yet ascended to the thousands mark, it most assuredly rests in the hundreds. My camera roll queue has indubitably reached the thousands count, currently sitting pretty at 3,300. I shudder to think of the sheer number of my bookmarks. One hundred and eighty notes on my phone. The final frontier has been broken, at last, habitually inundating my laptop with screenshots. Long has it been overdue to clean house.

Second, I find writing to be a herculean undertaking I enjoy in the moments it doesn’t drive me to the brink. A slow-going process, but when I’m able to appreciate the fruits of my labor, marvel at the polished product, I often feel quite proud. Writing is a skill I’ve lost touch with over years of disuse but found incrementally returning while expressing my opinions via Tumblr asks. Like any skill, it can be honed with time and practice. Transferring my streams of consciousness onto written medium challenges me to think critically, ask myself if my POV genuinely holds true or falls apart, requiring further reflection. If nothing else, it’s a good way to process thoughts and emotions. I find it easier than and therefore preferable to oral communication. I am a perpetual editor, always amending my statements which can’t really be done as effectively in speech.

Third, if there was ever a time to join the Tumblr fandom I’ve found a home in for the last three years, why not in time for the show’s last ride? The night I signed up for Tumblr coincided the first day of “The 100” cast and crew filming their 100th and poetically final episode. Around the same space of time, we got a release date and the nostalgic goodbyes of a few cast members rolled in. I know when Bellarke crosses the last threshold, I’d want it plastered all over my dash and I’d be able to make it happen.

But where there are pros, the cons inevitably follow.

Do I really need a further distraction from my responsibilities, spending additional hours and expending more energy I should not spare online? The too easy potential for more hours behind a screen when prone to headaches and horrid habits of not regulating my eating and sleeping schedules? The answer is a clear and resounding “No.” Would maintaining a blog be harmful to my mental and emotional health? Remaining anonymous has historically done a fine job of insulating me from general rebuke, which has mitigated the risk of reproach at least. No corner of the internet can be designated as a safe space. I knew I would in all likelihood have to work diligently to curate and be responsible for my experience, leading me to doubt how the effort could possibly be worth it. How could it be worth feeling exposed, self-conscious? Constantly second-guessing myself, debating whether or not my thoughts are best kept within the privacy of my mind to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes? Combating the periodic skepticism that my thoughts possess value worth writing?

There was always the lingering possibility I was overthinking the decision to my detriment, as is my norm. After all, it seemed silly and dramatic to regard one obscure little blog in a sea of hundreds of millions of social media users as momentous. But I know myself better than that. It is a really fucking big deal for me.

I vacillated between both sides of the argument for days before deciding not to follow through with the venture.

And then one night, a single stray observation ran through my mind. One observation became another, became another and before I knew it, I had formed the grounds for an entire meta post. It didn’t end there. More ideas filtered through. I expanded on those ideas. More traction gained. Another meta formed. More jumping off previous points. Before long, I had mentally written the foundations for four metas. And I was so excited and proud of forming these connections to this puzzle without even trying that I wanted to share it. I sat down to write them in my trusty Notes, outlining, trying to jot the main points down before they fizzled away from memory. I saw how long-winded these spiels had gotten sans the full writeup, subsequently rationalizing…well, not blowing up someone’s inbox is just good manners, isn’t it? And terribly inefficient to boot. More to the point, it seemed a disservice to myself to censor my rumination to fit the small confines of a Tumblr ask box.

The part of me that wanted to push forward envisioned what the future of my blogging efforts may look like. That part knows that this blog is for me and only me. What makes me laugh, what makes me cry. Smile. Rage. Flail. Think. Whatever the hell I want. I get to say what I want, however, I want. It’s incredibly nerve-wracking. It’s also exciting, thrilling, and yes, freeing. The notion of carving out a tiny space for me to fill to the endless brim with whatever brings me joy makes me…really damn happy. It’s not an easy feat to accept and harder to retain. I should be ok, so long as I never forget that I get to be in control of what happens here. It’s within my right to block anyone I don’t want to engage or associate with. It’s my full right to not care what anyone else has to say if I don’t want to. Block out anything negative I don’t want to endure with only a few clicks. If I decide I want to walk away, permanently or otherwise, for any reason, it’s within my right to do that too. It’s comforting.

There was a time when I “knew” I would never sign up for an Ao3 account until one of my favorite authors withdrew the majority of her stories from public consumption. I “knew” I was never going to post commentary until I did. I “knew” my username would never be seen by anyone aside from me, never to be affiliated with my commentary until it was.

I did. Each and every time I thought I would never, I did. I broke my own barriers with patience and some courage. Maybe the most intimidating aspect of something new is simply the beginning. I said earlier that I’ve been an island for nearly as long as I can remember. It’s still true, I don’t expect overnight results. It’s probably going to be true for a long time. Perhaps forever. But maybe it’s all the more reason why I should take this step toward peeking out of my self-imposed shell. Do what scares you, or whatever it is they say.

I wish I could say it was enough to reverse my earlier verdict.

Nope, I had to agonize some more.

What can I say? Fear is a damn powerful inhibitor.

Lo and behold, as if the universe took pity on me, I got the chance to communicate directly with the same awesome lady whom I quoted above and she kindly offered some more merciful wisdom to a truly maddeningly indecisive individual:

“When you create a blog, you are STILL anonymous. You have a username, yes, but it doesn’t lead back to you unless you want it to. You still have your personal privacy. Tumblr isn’t Facebook. If you want to disclose personal information, you can, but you certainly don’t have to.

And second, your blog is for you, not for anyone else. It’s for you to express your own opinions. Or create gifs or other visuals. Or just repost what other people create. You can be on every day, or just once a week. It’s also a great way to save stuff you might want to look at again. And then… and then… when brilliance suddenly hits you, you have somewhere to let it hang out! 😁”

It was much I had already considered, but it helped immeasurably to have my reasoning reaffirmed from an external source I respect. I logged into Tumblr for the first time the very same night.

After much deliberation, an uncharacteristic burst of bravery and a grueling four hours I owe to technological ineptitude, I have, tentatively and cautiously, opted to give this Tumblr thing a go.

With luck, a day will never arrive when I dust this preamble off for a much-needed pep talk. Instead, it is my hope that one day, this memo-to-me will stand as proof that I don’t always need to be afraid of the unknown. Not all endeavors have to be as frightening as they may appear. And if I can apply this attitude to all else suppressing my personal growth, I might just be peachy someday.

Bearing this in mind…

…here we go.

#about me #personal

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taffysannotatedsonichu · 7 years ago

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Sonichu 7 Page 20

SONICHU: So, the plan is, we get there five minutes earlier, we wait in the sphere to stay undetected, and just after the Crystal hits younger Chris, I dash out and grab it and return to within the sphere. Not totally creative, but okay.

CHRIS: I’ve often pondered and observed the idea of time travel, and the idea of changing the past for a better future/our present. After much pondering I’ve realized that if we were meant to tamper with the past, it would only go unoticed, as if the trip back was originally supposed to happen in the first place. Like if we went back to prevent the mishap at *Target, I would still likely have to take the punishment anyway, pointless.

Caption: *See Sub-Episodes 7 & 8

SONICHU: I get it, dad, like in the “Futurama” Roswell, NM episode, it turned out Fry was his own grandfather. Freaky and messed up. Or in the “Bender’s Big Score” movie, with Fry trying to live his missed Y2K life, he still had to end up in Y3K anyway. Good matching storyline.

CHRIS: Yes, I agree, although Megan Marie Griffin strikes me more fondly, television-wise.

SONICHU: Why doesn’t Magi-Chan offer his input on the conversation? Cat got his tongue?

MAGI-CHAN, MAYBE?: 001100010010011110100001101101110011

It may not be that creative a plan, Sonichu, but it seems like rational enough a plan that it’d work, a first for Chris.

The topic of time travel brings up a lot of deep, existential questions that the mind of Christian Weston Chandler can’t even fathom, much less answer. I don’t exactly know what Chris means when he says that if he’d gone back in time to prevent the incident portrayed in the Off Target Sub-Episodes that he would still have had to take the punishment for them; if he went back in time to stop himself from loitering at Target he would have never gotten arrested for them, so no, he wouldn’t have had to take the punishment.

Sonichu connects these musings to two episodes of Futurama, the aforementioned Bender’s Big Score movie and the season 3 episode “Roswell That Ends Well”, an episode where the Planet Express crew are catapulted, thanks to the energies from a supernova interacting with electricity from a sparking microwave, back to 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, where it turns out the spacecraft that allegedly landed there was their own and the alien allegedly discovered was company physician and lobster monster John A. Zoidberg. In the episode, Fry hangs out with his grandfather-to-be Enos, accidentally getting him killed. Realizing his days are numbered since he rewrote his own existence, he consoles Enos’s grieving widow and gets her pregnant with the man who would become his own father, thus rewriting himself back into history, albeit now as his own biological grandfather. I think Chris is somehow worried about that happening here or something.

Chris drifted off in the middle of Sonichu’s speech into daydreaming about Megan Marie Griffin, only daughter of Peter Griffin and someone Chris really loves mass debating to. Chris, of course, immediately changed the subject to what animated women he finds hottest, of course. But Magi-Chan is too busy trying not to get all three of them killed to think about stupid shit like that. I find it a little interesting that Chris chose to use her seldom used full name, he really seems to have a thing for full names.

That string of binary (I can’t figure out exactly who’s saying it) is lifted directly from Bender’s Big Score. In that movie, Bender utilizes the code, which has been tattooed on Fry’s ass, to summon a time sphere (which looks an awful lot like the time sphere here just green instead of blue) that will allow him to travel back in time. Unlike the blue sphere here, it will only allow the user to go back and can’t bring them back to the present. The time code from that film offers the premise of “paradox-free time travel”, an idea that I’m sure was appealing to Chris. The binary code isn’t meant to spell any word; at one point in the movie Fry has to read it through a mirror so it was designed to be, when divided into six lines of six, it could be read the same but reversed on a mirror. Herein lies a fairly confusing problem though - why would Magi-Chan’s psychic powers utilize a binary code?

While we’re on the topic of Bender’s Big Score, here’s a little tidbit from the DVD commentary: Futurama resisted the urge to do time travel stories until the Roswell episode because, according to series producer David X. Cohen, “Whenever you watch a sci-fi movie or TV show with time travel, generally as a sci-fi fan you get mad.” While obviously there is no real time travel to fact check against, time travel plots leave plenty of plot holes open and even the best writers forget some glaring mistakes. Remember that those are professional sci-fi writers saying that time travel plots are too complicated even for them. Someone like Chris getting a hold of a time travel plot, and we’re all doomed.

#Sonichu 7 #Time Hogs #Christian Weston Chandler #sonichu #magi chan sonichu

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bigyack-com · 5 years ago

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How to Run a Business in 2020

In recent years, stars have lent their names to all kinds of sneaker collaborations. Puma had Rihanna. Reebok had Gigi Hadid. Adidas had Kanye West. Nike had … Jesus Christ?Not exactly. In October, a pair of “Jesus shoes” — customized Air Max 97s whose soles contained holy water from the River Jordan — appeared online for $1,425. They were designed by a start-up called MSCHF, without Nike’s blessing.The sneakers quickly sold out and began appearing on resale sites, going for as much as $4,000. The Christian Post wrote about them. Drake wore them. They were among the most Googled shoes of 2019.The only thing that didn’t happen, said Kevin Wiesner, 27, a creative director at MSCHF, was a public disavowal of the shoes by Nike or the Vatican. “That would’ve been rad,” he said.Now, in the MSCHF office in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, a pair stands like a trophy.MSCHF isn’t a sneaker company. It rarely even produces commercial goods, and its employees are reluctant to call it a company at all. They refer to MSCHF, which was founded in 2016, as a “brand,” “group” or “collective,” and their creations, which appear online every two weeks, as “drops.”Many of those drops are viral pranks: an app that recommends stocks to buy based on one’s astrological sign (which some observers took seriously), a service that sends pictures of A.I.-generated feet over text, a browser extension that helps users get away with watching Netflix at work.As Business Insider recently noted, the present and future profitability of these internet stunts is dubious. Yet, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, MSCHF has raised at least $11.5 million in outside investments since the fall of 2019.In the high-risk, maybe-reward world of venture capital, the group’s antics are well known. Nikita Singareddy, an investment analyst at RRE Ventures, compared MSCHF to Vine and Giphy. All three, she said, offer ��lots of delight” and encourage content sharing.“Sometimes investors are a little too serious about monetizing something immediately,” Ms. Singareddy said. “With MSCHF, there’s faith that it’ll pay off. There’s an inherent virality and absurdness to all the projects that they’ve created, and it’s something people want to share and ask questions about.”For starters: What is it?

‘This Is How We Live’

The MSCHF office says as much about the company as any of its products.A giant white pentagram covers the entrance floor. On a visit in December, an inflatable severed swan’s head dangled from a ceiling beam, and a rubber chicken bong — a recent drop — sat on a coffee table, full of weed.“My mom thinks we make toys,” said Gabriel Whaley, 30, the chief executive.MSCHF has 10 employees, nine of whom are men. The company Twitter and Instagram pages are private, so most of its direct marketing takes place not on social media but through text messages from a mysterious phone number.Though the team used to run a marketing agency, working with brands like Casper in order to fund MSCHF projects, they stopped taking on clients last year. Now, they pretty much do whatever they want.“The cool thing that we have going for us is we set this precedent that we’re not tied to a category or vertical. We did the Jesus shoes and everyone knows us for that, and then we shut it down,” Mr. Whaley said. “We will never do it again. People are like, ‘Wait, why wouldn’t you double down on that, you would have made so much money!’ But that’s not why we’re here.”The point, he said, is to produce social commentary; the “story” the sneakers told was more important than turning a profit. “There are several youth pastors that have bought a pair, and even more who are asking, like, ‘I love sneakers, and I love God. I would love a pair of these,’ and that wasn’t the point,” Mr. Whaley said. “The Jesus shoes were a platform to broach the idea while also making fun of it: that everybody’s just doing a collaboration now.”In order to prepare each drop — be it an object, an app or a website — MSCHF’s employees log long hours. Most mornings, Mr. Whaley gets to the office around 7; the rest of the team arrives by 10. They often stay late into the evenings, conducting brainstorms, perfecting lines of code, shooting live-streams or assembling prototypes. Weekends, Mr. Whaley said, aren’t really a thing.“It’s not just a full-time job,” he said. “This is how we live. The distinction between your work and normal life doesn’t really exist here, and it’s just because this is what we were all doing whether we were getting paid or not in our former lives. So nothing has really changed, except we have more power as a unit than we did as individuals.”Though Mr. Whaley eschews corporate titles, functional groups exist within MSCHF: idea generation, production, distribution and outreach. In their past lives, most of the staffers were developers and designers, some with art backgrounds, working at their own firms and for companies like Twitter and BuzzFeed. The oldest employee is 32, and the youngest is 22.Some C.E.O.s of Fortune 500 companies have tried to mentor Mr. Whaley and “shoehorn” MSCHF into a traditional business, he said. They insist MSCHF is building a brand, that it needs a logo, a mission, a go-to product that people recognize.But MSCHF doesn’t have a flagship product, or market its releases traditionally. “It just happens that anything we make tends to spread purely because people end up talking about it and sharing it with their friends,” Mr. Whaley said.That’s part of the appeal for V.C. firms. With software companies, for example, there are “very clear metrics and paths to monetization that are tried and true,” Ms. Singareddy said. For MSCHF, that path is less obvious.“Some of the best investments, even early on it wasn’t clear what the result would be, but you’re making an investment in the team,” she said. “That’s what makes a company like MSCHF so exciting. Venture is about taking reasoned risk — it’s a true venture capital opportunity.”

Banksy for the Internet

Mr. Whaley talks a lot about what MSCHF is and who the people who work there are — and aren’t. Running ads on subways, or trying to build a social media following, or landing a spot on the Forbes “30 Under 30” list isn’t who they are. He cringes at the word “merch.” (“The day we sell hoodies is the day I shut this down.”)To observers, critics and followers, the company’s portfolio may amount to a very successful string of viral marketing campaigns, a series of jokes or something like art.“I don’t see anybody doing exactly what MSCHF is doing,” said Frank Denbow, a technology consultant who works with start-ups. “Everybody is able to get a one-off campaign that works, but to consistently find ways to create content that really sticks with people is different. It reminds me of Banksy and his ability to get a rise out of people.”On Twitter and Reddit, users trade theories and tips about MSCHF’s more cryptic offerings, such as its most recent, password-protected drop, Zuckwatch — a website that looks like Facebook and appears to be commentary on data privacy.Among these ardent fans, the drops are treated as trailheads, or entry points, setting off mad, winding dashes in search of cracking the code. Other followers, less devoted, may only know MSCHF for its Jesus shoes, which Mr. Wiesner said have been knocked off by sellers around the world. He is happy about it. “If we can make things that people run away with, that’s absolutely the dream,” he said. “Most of what we make is us personally running away with stuff.”Ahead of the presidential election, MSCHF’s employees plan to take on more political projects. (A drop in November, involving a shell restaurant, enabled users to mask political donations as work expenses; it was promptly shut down.) The company also hopes to expand beyond apps and objects to experiences and physical spaces.“Everything is just, ‘How do we kind of make fun of what we’re observing?’” Mr. Whaley said. “Then we have as much fun with it as possible and see what happens.” Read the full article

0 notes

biofunmy · 5 years ago

Text

How to Run a Business in 2020

In recent years, stars have lent their names to all kinds of sneaker collaborations. Puma had Rihanna. Reebok had Gigi Hadid. Adidas had Kanye West. Nike had … Jesus Christ?

Not exactly. In October, a pair of “Jesus shoes” — customized Air Max 97s whose soles contained holy water from the River Jordan — appeared online for $1,425. They were designed by a start-up called MSCHF, without Nike’s blessing.

The sneakers quickly sold out and began appearing on resale sites, going for as much as $4,000. The Christian Post wrote about them. Drake wore them. They were among the most Googled shoes of 2019.

The only thing that didn’t happen, said Kevin Wiesner, 27, a creative director at MSCHF, was a public disavowal of the shoes by Nike or the Vatican. “That would’ve been rad,” he said.

Now, in the MSCHF office in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, a pair stands like a trophy.

MSCHF isn’t a sneaker company. It rarely even produces commercial goods, and its employees are reluctant to call it a company at all. They refer to MSCHF, which was founded in 2016, as a “brand,” “group” or “collective,” and their creations, which appear online every two weeks, as “drops.”

Many of those drops are viral pranks: an app that recommends stocks to buy based on one’s astrological sign (which some observers took seriously), a service that sends pictures of A.I.-generated feet over text, a browser extension that helps users get away with watching Netflix at work.

As Business Insider recently noted, the present and future profitability of these internet stunts is dubious. Yet, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, MSCHF has raised at least $11.5 million in outside investments since the fall of 2019.

In the high-risk, maybe-reward world of venture capital, the group’s antics are well known. Nikita Singareddy, an investment analyst at RRE Ventures, compared MSCHF to Vine and Giphy. All three, she said, offer “lots of delight” and encourage content sharing.

“Sometimes investors are a little too serious about monetizing something immediately,” Ms. Singareddy said. “With MSCHF, there’s faith that it’ll pay off. There’s an inherent virality and absurdness to all the projects that they’ve created, and it’s something people want to share and ask questions about.”

For starters: What is it?

‘This Is How We Live’

The MSCHF office says as much about the company as any of its products.

A giant white pentagram covers the entrance floor. On a visit in December, an inflatable severed swan’s head dangled from a ceiling beam, and a rubber chicken bong — a recent drop — sat on a coffee table, full of weed.

“My mom thinks we make toys,” said Gabriel Whaley, 30, the chief executive.

MSCHF has 10 employees, nine of whom are men. The company Twitter and Instagram pages are private, so most of its direct marketing takes place not on social media but through text messages from a mysterious phone number.

Though the team used to run a marketing agency, working with brands like Casper in order to fund MSCHF projects, they stopped taking on clients last year. Now, they pretty much do whatever they want.

“The cool thing that we have going for us is we set this precedent that we’re not tied to a category or vertical. We did the Jesus shoes and everyone knows us for that, and then we shut it down,” Mr. Whaley said. “We will never do it again. People are like, ‘Wait, why wouldn’t you double down on that, you would have made so much money!’ But that’s not why we’re here.”

The point, he said, is to produce social commentary; the “story” the sneakers told was more important than turning a profit. “There are several youth pastors that have bought a pair, and even more who are asking, like, ‘I love sneakers, and I love God. I would love a pair of these,’ and that wasn’t the point,” Mr. Whaley said. “The Jesus shoes were a platform to broach the idea while also making fun of it: that everybody’s just doing a collaboration now.”

In order to prepare each drop — be it an object, an app or a website — MSCHF’s employees log long hours. Most mornings, Mr. Whaley gets to the office around 7; the rest of the team arrives by 10. They often stay late into the evenings, conducting brainstorms, perfecting lines of code, shooting live-streams or assembling prototypes. Weekends, Mr. Whaley said, aren’t really a thing.

“It’s not just a full-time job,” he said. “This is how we live. The distinction between your work and normal life doesn’t really exist here, and it’s just because this is what we were all doing whether we were getting paid or not in our former lives. So nothing has really changed, except we have more power as a unit than we did as individuals.”

Though Mr. Whaley eschews corporate titles, functional groups exist within MSCHF: idea generation, production, distribution and outreach. In their past lives, most of the staffers were developers and designers, some with art backgrounds, working at their own firms and for companies like Twitter and BuzzFeed. The oldest employee is 32, and the youngest is 22.

Some C.E.O.s of Fortune 500 companies have tried to mentor Mr. Whaley and “shoehorn” MSCHF into a traditional business, he said. They insist MSCHF is building a brand, that it needs a logo, a mission, a go-to product that people recognize.

But MSCHF doesn’t have a flagship product, or market its releases traditionally. “It just happens that anything we make tends to spread purely because people end up talking about it and sharing it with their friends,” Mr. Whaley said.

That’s part of the appeal for V.C. firms. With software companies, for example, there are “very clear metrics and paths to monetization that are tried and true,” Ms. Singareddy said. For MSCHF, that path is less obvious.

“Some of the best investments, even early on it wasn’t clear what the result would be, but you’re making an investment in the team,” she said. “That’s what makes a company like MSCHF so exciting. Venture is about taking reasoned risk — it’s a true venture capital opportunity.”

Banksy for the Internet

To observers, critics and followers, the company’s portfolio may amount to a very successful string of viral marketing campaigns, a series of jokes or something like art.

“I don’t see anybody doing exactly what MSCHF is doing,” said Frank Denbow, a technology consultant who works with start-ups. “Everybody is able to get a one-off campaign that works, but to consistently find ways to create content that really sticks with people is different. It reminds me of Banksy and his ability to get a rise out of people.”

On Twitter and Reddit, users trade theories and tips about MSCHF’s more cryptic offerings, such as its most recent, password-protected drop, Zuckwatch — a website that looks like Facebook and appears to be commentary on data privacy.

Among these ardent fans, the drops are treated as trailheads, or entry points, setting off mad, winding dashes in search of cracking the code.

Other followers, less devoted, may only know MSCHF for its Jesus shoes, which Mr. Wiesner said have been knocked off by sellers around the world. He is happy about it. “If we can make things that people run away with, that’s absolutely the dream,” he said. “Most of what we make is us personally running away with stuff.”

Ahead of the presidential election, MSCHF’s employees plan to take on more political projects. (A drop in November, involving a shell restaurant, enabled users to mask political donations as work expenses; it was promptly shut down.) The company also hopes to expand beyond apps and objects to experiences and physical spaces.

“Everything is just, ‘How do we kind of make fun of what we’re observing?’” Mr. Whaley said. “Then we have as much fun with it as possible and see what happens.”

Sahred From Source link Fashion and Style

from WordPress http://bit.ly/3aVPYK7 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

Text

How to Run a Business in 2020

In recent years, stars have lent their names to all kinds of sneaker collaborations. Puma had Rihanna. Reebok had Gigi Hadid. Adidas had Kanye West. Nike had … Jesus Christ?

The sneakers quickly sold out and began appearing on resale sites, going for as much as $4,000. The Christian Post wrote about them. Drake wore them. They were among the most Googled shoes of 2019.

The only thing that didn’t happen, said Kevin Wiesner, 27, a creative director at MSCHF, was a public disavowal of the shoes by Nike or the Vatican. “That would’ve been rad,” he said.

Now, in the MSCHF office in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, a pair stands like a trophy.

For starters: What is it?

‘This Is How We Live’

The MSCHF office says as much about the company as any of its products.

“My mom thinks we make toys,” said Gabriel Whaley, 30, the chief executive.

Though the team used to run a marketing agency, working with brands like Casper in order to fund MSCHF projects, they stopped taking on clients last year. Now, they pretty much do whatever they want.

Banksy for the Internet

To observers, critics and followers, the company’s portfolio may amount to a very successful string of viral marketing campaigns, a series of jokes or something like art.

Among these ardent fans, the drops are treated as trailheads, or entry points, setting off mad, winding dashes in search of cracking the code.

“Everything is just, ‘How do we kind of make fun of what we’re observing?’” Mr. Whaley said. “Then we have as much fun with it as possible and see what happens.”

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/how-to-run-a-business-in-2020/

#Life style

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ofglories · 3 months ago

Text

He wonders what it would be like to talk to swords.

Not that it would help with Caledfwlch. The sword and him are one and the same, one soul split into two beings. And all that.

#an appeal to the observers; dash commentary #the heart of a fallen star; emrys pendragon #fun fact emrys and caledfwlch really are two halves of one soul #that's why caledfwlch shattered when he died

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garp19-alexgorcik · 5 years ago

Text

Results from “Still a Man's Game: Gender Representation in Online Reviews of Video Games” experiment

Hypothesis 1: Male character references will outnumber female character references in online reviews of video games, both in text and images.

Hypothesis 2: Male characters will be described as active and playable characters proportionally more often than female characters in reviews, whereas female characters will be featured as passive objects of game play proportionally more often.

Hypothesis 3: Female characters will be described and visually depicted in a sexually suggestive manner proportionally more often than male characters in reviews.

RQ1: How do video game reviewers regard the prevalence and sexually suggestive representations of male and female video game characters in game content?

Method

Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com), a site affiliated with the CNet computer product review service, was used to obtain reviews for sampling. Gamespot was listed as the top site for video game reviews by the Google search engine’s ranking feature at the time this study was conducted, a testament to its popularity with players. To ensure a representative sample of popular and commonly reviewed games, reviews of all games from Gamespot’s “Top Rated” (games released in the last year rated highest by reviewers) and “Most Popular” (games whose pages are currently receiving the most site visits) lists were examined during a March 26, 2004, site visit to obtain a cross-sectional purposive sample. From the top 100 games in each list, redundant reviews were removed (some games appeared on both lists), and only the higher rated review was kept when multiple versions of a game for different play platforms were featured (e.g., PC and Sony Playstation 2 versions of the same game). 1 Lastly, all games from the “Most Popular” list that were not yet reviewed (some “Most Popular” games were upcoming releases not yet available) were also culled.

This process of elimination resulted in a sample of 100 games for the final analysis. The games from this group consisted of products released for six different game platforms: personal computer (N = 35), Sony Playstation 2 (N = 28), Microsoft XBOX (N = 15), Nintendo Game Boy Advance (N = 12), Nintendo GameCube (N = 9), and Sony Playstation (N = 1). Game genres were diverse, including sports, action, and strategy games intended for various age groups. Objectives and plots ranged from a railroad planning and construction simulation (Rail road Tycoon 3) to a gory narrative game featuring the plight of a doomed convict who escapes justice by grudgingly committing grisly murders for a snuff film distributor (Manhunt).

The unit of analysis in this study was each one- to three-page Gamespot review, and protocols guiding coder decisions were simple. Appearance of primary (main) characters and playable characters of each gender were indicated by their presence or absence in a review’s commentary. Active characters were defined as “characters that are playable or otherwise who have a significant impact on the plot of the game (e.g., as villains, combatants, “aides,” etc.),” and passive characters were defined as “characters that don’t play an active role are described (e.g., spectators, objects of game’s goal that do not play a role themselves in the outcome, etc.).” Protocols guiding decisions regarding sexual content were also rudimentary: Mentions of character attractiveness were defined as instances where “a character’s (passive or active) attractiveness is mentioned, whether tersely (e.g., “dashing,” “beautiful”) or in detail (e.g., “looks sexy in that revealing outfit”),” and sexual depiction in images was defined as instances where “a pictured character is depicted in a sexually suggestive manner, including revealing clothing, suggestive posture, etc.” This strategy was used to capture highly overt and relevant content of interest because preliminary examinations of reviews indicated that sexually suggestive content tended to be unambiguous. Although some video game characters were nonhuman (e.g., the alien protagonist from Ratchet and Clank), coders used mention of gender-related characteristics or gender-specific pronouns in reviews to determine character gender when possible. The author coded the entire sample of reviews, with 19% (N = 19) of the sample randomly selected for independent coding by a volunteer unfamiliar with the research hypotheses for intercoder reliability analysis .2 Reliability testing employed Scott’s Pi, a measure that accounts for category prevalence to estimate coder reliability above expected chance agreement (see Riffe, Lacy, & Fico, 1998). An item assessing primary character gender (“male,” “female,” or “no primary character/ gender unknown”) yielded a Scott’s Pi value of .82, and 14 dichotomous items indicating presence or absence of the various male and female depictions yielded an overall Scott’s Pi value of .81. In those cases where disagreement between coders existed, the primary coder’s decisions were used in analysis.

Results

Character Prevalence:

In general, female characters were represented in far fewer of the sampled game re views than male characters (Table 1). Though 75% (N = 75) of the reviews mentioned male characters, only 42% (N = 42) mentioned female characters in any capacity. Images including male characters appeared in 78% (N = 78) of the reviews, whereas female characters appeared in images accompanying only 32% (N = 32) of the reviews. Though 54% (N = 54) of the reviews indicated no primary characters or left primary characters’ gender unclear, 76% (N = 35) of the remainder featured male primary characters. Only a small portion of reviews indicating primary characters named a female lead (10.9%, N = 5) or primary characters of both genders (13.0%, N = 6). Comparing the 95% confidence intervals for these observed frequencies indicated that all of these differences were statistically significant (i.e., the 95% confidence intervals for the male and female proportions did not overlap for each category), strongly supporting Hypothesis 1.

Active and Passive Characters

Comparison of male and female characters’ appearance in active and passive roles found similar differences. Active male characters were mentioned in 75% (N = 75) of the reviews, whereas active female characters were described in only 33% (N = 33) of the reviews. Also, 65% (N = 65) of the reviews indicated male playable characters, whereas only 22% (N = 22) mentioned female playable characters. These differences were all statistically significant. A small difference in frequency of passive characters, with passive females appearing in 9% (N = 9) of reviews and passive males appearing in only 8% (N = 8), was not statistically significant. 3 Hypothesis 2, therefore, is only partially supported.

Sexually Suggestive Depictions

Though female characters were underrepresented overall, their attractiveness and sexuality were mentioned in proportionally more reviews than that of males (Table 2). Less than 1% (N = 1) of the 75 reviews mentioning male characters included a reference to a male character’s attractiveness or sexual appeal, but 12% (N = 5) of the 42 reviews mentioning female characters included such references to females. This difference narrowly missed this study’ threshold of statistical significance because of a small overlap in confidence intervals, largely due to the low frequency of such references in general. Though such a low overall prevalence may suggest a lack of sexualized content, the infrequency might as easily be interpreted as disinterest in such content on the part of the reviewers. Analysis of video game images from the reviews, however, more strongly suggests a gender gap in sexually suggestive portrayals. Of the 32 reviews with pictured female characters, 41% (N = 13) contained sexually suggestive imagery of females; only 4% (N = 3) of the 78 reviews with pictured males similarly included sexually suggestive male representations. This statistically significant difference provides partial support for Hypothesis 3.

Reviewer Opinions

Comparing the prevalence and nature of review comments about attractiveness and sexual appeal (largely determined by the reviewer) with the prevalence of sexually suggestive video game imagery (largely controlled by game producers) addressed the study’s research question regarding reviewers’ attitudes toward depictions. Although our analysis found that reviewed video games’ images portrayed women in a sexualized manner in much higher proportions than men, reviewers mentioned such content only six times regarding either gender. It is possible that reviewers were not particularly interested in mentioning the attractiveness or sexualization of characters, downplaying female sexual depictions in review comments. There is also some anecdotal support in reviews suggesting reviewers’ disapproval of sexualized female portrayals. Consider, for example, Gamespot reviewer Gord Goble’s (2003) take on the selection of the lone female player character featured in the TigerWoods PGA Tour 2004 personal computer game: “That the only LPGA personality to make the grade is the young and attractive, but unproven, Natalie Gulbis is interesting, to say the least” (n.p.). Though comments of this nature and the reviewers’ overall tendency to leave sexualized depictions unmentioned suggests that reviewers may be unenthusiastic about the proliferation of sexualized female images in video games, such a firm conclusion about the game reviewers’ reactions to character portrayals cannot be made from this study’s evidence. This study’s research question regarding reviewers’ reactions to sexually suggestive content thus remains only partially answered: Reviewers mention such depictions rarely, but it is unclear why.

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

Text

Meet the woman who’s spent 60 years making the skies a little friendlier

By Lori Aratani, Washington Post, November 25, 2017

It’s early on a Thursday morning and flight attendant Bette Nash has just strolled up to Gate 19 at Reagan National Airport, where American Airlines Flight 2160 bound for Boston is parked and preparing for boarding.

As she pauses at the counter to adjust her scarf, a 20-something guy looks up. He lets out a gasp.

“Oh, my God,” he says excitedly. “Are you Bette Nash? Can I have your picture?”

This is what life is like when you are Nash, 81, who has been flying since Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House and a ticket for a flight cost $12.

The 20-something in question, Pavel Boress, is an American Eagle flight attendant who has long known of Nash but never had the chance to meet her. Hugs are exchanged.

He fumbles with his phone. The pair lean their heads together and snap a selfie--another one for the ages.

“Everybody in the industry knows about Bette,” Boress says, still giddy from the encounter. “She’s an inspiration.”

Nearby, Nash’s longtime colleague, flight attendant Suellen Evans, watches with amusement.

“It happens all the time,” she says. “Autographs, too.”

Patting her bag, Evans whispers, “I keep extra Sharpies just in case.”

Eastern Air Lines, US Airways and, yes, even Trump Shuttle. Bankruptcies and at least one strike. Nash has weathered them all. And now, entering her seventh decade of flying, no one is as surprised as she.

Ten years ago, when Nash was feted on her 50th with a rare water cannon salute (a tribute usually reserved for a retiring captain or an officer), she laughed at the suggestion that she would be around for her 60th.

Yet here she is. The mandatory retirement age for pilots in the industry is 65, but there is no such thing for flight attendants, so Nash is still flying.

She’s worked other routes during her long career, but the D.C.-to-Boston shuttle, known affectionately as the “Nash Dash” to her regulars--is her favorite. It requires her to be up before the chickens--the alarm in her Manassas, Va., home goes off at 2:10 a.m.--but it gets the single mom home in time to have dinner with her son, who has Down syndrome and lives with her.

The route brings her into contact with power brokers of all types, in different industries and of varying political persuasions.

These days her regulars include political commentator David Gergen, members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation and Kenneth Feinberg--the attorney perhaps best known for administering the 9/11 and Deepwater Horizon disaster compensation funds.

“If Bette’s on the flight, you know everything is going to go well,” said Feinberg, who has flown with Nash for almost three decades. “She never gets flustered. No matter how busy she is, she’ll always stop and ask you how you are.”

Added Karen Clougherty, a retired Defense Department contractor and Nash Dash regular who lives in Alexandria, Va., but has family in Boston: “There’s just this spark--she’s the first one you see when you get on. She knows you and gives you a hug. I will change my schedule if I know Bette is flying.”

Nash, the eldest of three sisters who grew up just outside Atlantic City, was a fresh-faced 21-year-old when the call went out for girls--because that’s what they were called then--looking for a little adventure. It seemed far more glamorous than her job as a legal secretary, and the idea of meeting people from all over appealed to her innate curiosity. She borrowed a suit from one of her sisters, and two interviews later she was hired by Eastern Air Lines.

Stories? She has many. There was the flight from Washington to Miami with nine stops in between. Or the time her plane hit turbulence so bad that the toilet in the lavatory separated from the floor. In the early days, pillbox hats, girdles and garter belts were required. Once, her garter belt snapped midflight. Nash didn’t panic--no--she casually bent down, scooped it up and continued with the beverage service. There were the days when she served lobster and carved meats to passengers. Oh, and the time she flew with Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy Jr.

Lobster dinners and $12 tickets may be a thing of the past, but one thing remains constant: the philosophy Nash has embraced since she started in 1957.

“Customer service is about making customers feel good,” she says simply. “Everyone wants number one--a little love and a little attention.”

At a party celebrating her 60th anniversary this month at National, she had the crowd in stitches with her observations, including this bit of fashion commentary: “In the old days, we saw a lot of mink coats,” she said. “Today, we see a lot of flip-flops.”

For Nash, it is the people--both the passengers and her co-workers--who keep her coming back at a time when most folks have packed it in. The everyday stresses she might be dealing with seem to melt away once she’s on board.

With 10 minutes to go before departure, there is no time for small talk as Nash helps ready the flight for boarding. She stores her bag in the overhead and goes to work making sure everything is in order. She checks in with the pilot and gate agent.

Nash is joined by Evans and flight attendant Joan Myers-Singh. The three have known one another since the days when they flew for Eastern Air Lines.

“Not sure you heard the announcement, but we have a celebrity with us,” the captain says, telling the folks aboard that this is Nash’s 60th anniversary. The passengers break out in applause. Nash--ever gracious--nods and smiles.

But when it’s time for takeoff, it’s back to business.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boarding is now complete,” she says.

Once the plane levels off, it’s back to work. Nash grabs a wicker basket of snacks and begins to take drink orders.

The flight lands 10 minutes ahead of schedule and taxis to the gate.

There is much merriment as the passengers deplane.

“Take care, Bette,” says one passenger.

“Tell your husband I said ‘Hi,’ “ she replies.

“Keep at it,” says another.

“I’ll keep working if I can,” she says.

“I put you on Twitter, #American Airlines,” says another.

Bette nods.

“Here’s to the next 10 years,” says another.

Nash laughs.

“Oh, God, I hope not,” she says, then pauses for a moment. “Well, you never know.”

#Bette Nash

0 notes

techsolutionpress-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Hands-on: NetZero to offer no-agreement 4G portable hotspot benefit NetZero, the dial-up Internet administration of old, is revealing an agreement less .

Two things astonished us over the most recent couple of days: initially, NetZero still exists. This is the organization that had universal advertisements for its dial-up Internet benefit in the mid 2000s (truth be told, still offers dial-up). Second, that organization is entering another item field: portable hotspots.

The new portable get to focuses from NetZero come in both USB stick and hotspot shape. This is special since they round out levels of utilization not secured by hotspot arranges accessible from enormous bearers like Sprint and Verizon. They likewise come without contracts.

The present condition of most portable hotspots from traditional bearers is somewhat pitiful. It jam them as a specialty gadget: to get a sensible cost on them (from free up to $80), clients must sign two-year contracts—generally, all accessible equipment alternatives are well over $200. Once that agreement is marked, the base month to month expenses and information lumps are substantial. Sprint has the minimum costly information level, at $34.99 every month for 3GB of information, as far as possible up to $100 every month for 10GB on Verizon or $80 every month for 12GB on Sprint. There are few courses around this framework. Clearwire quickly offered the Clear Rover Puck, which doled out information associations on an every day premise, yet the item was in the end pulled.

When we dealt with the NetZero hotspot, it appeared to be bigger than a Sprint Overdrive, yet at the same time smooth and sufficiently little to fit in a portable PC case take. The model is really the Clear Spot 4G (divulged by Clearwire in July 2011) at last touching base available with some NetZero marking. It has just two catches, power and sound on/off, and additionally a microUSB port for charging.The hotspot will play a little beep when another gadget is associated with it. It shows gathering, remaining battery life, and also the system name and watchword on its show. Along the base is an information speed figure we observed to be horribly mistaken contrasted with our speedtest.net figures—it showed rates of 4-7Mbps down when we were getting far under 1Mbps. (Refresh: A NetZero delegate reveals to us this figure was the aggregate sum of information utilized so far in the session, not the exchange rate)The battery inside the hotspot is a sizeable 2200mAh intended to give "6+" hours of utilization. In our tests, we fell somewhat shy of this gauge—around five and a half hours.

NetZero's gadgets get information access through Clearwire, whose Clear 4G benefit powers other prevalent gadgets like the Sprint Overdrive. The utilization of Clear 4G speaks to a noteworthy drawback to NetZero's administration, one that the Rover Puck shared. The 4G benefit that gets 3 to 6Mbps download velocities is just accessible in few extensive markets and can't get to any reinforcement 3G benefit. This settles on it an awful decision for voyagers who every so often venture outside huge urban communities.

Outside these huge urban areas, we were astounded to discover the NetZero hotspot could in any case associate with a tower exactly 170 miles away, however the association was agonizingly back at 0.28Mbps off and 0.02Mbps up and 687ms ping—a fascinating, if not really dependable, information point. Identified with that, Clearwire was sued in April 2011 for offering its 4G benefit outside its customary administration regions, then professedly sitting tight for clients to wind up plainly disappointed with the moderate rates permitting administration cancelation charges to come in.

On its hotspot and USB stick, NetZero arrangements to offer significantly littler pieces of information, at substantially littler costs, without any agreements. The most minimal level of 200MB of information for each month is free with the buy of either the hotspot ($99.95) or USB stick ($49.95), on up through $50 for 4GB every month. Clients can change their arrangement inside the month on the fly on the off chance that they discover they require more information.

While we can value offering littler pieces of information for less cash, the NetZero levels rapidly move toward becoming cost-restrictive, especially if contrasted with the hotspot get to you can empower on numerous cell phones. The upper levels are cost restrictive—at the higher ones, you can get less expensive administration from any of the cell bearers.

In any case, the lower levels, especially the free and $10 ones, appear to be convincing at first (particularly given the absence of a two-year contract). On an individual note, I frequently utilize hotspots on occasional business trips. Subscribing at a dash of two years is pointless; having the capacity to turn access now and again month-to-month, or even everyday (as I do with my cell phone) is substantially more perfect.

In any case, a commentary on the NetZero item page murdered our free-200MB dreams: that level is offered for a year. From that point forward, you should pay for information on one of the higher levels or endure without. More regrettable, a NetZero agent we addressed elucidated once clients get off the complementary plan to a paid one, there's no going back.The prospect of free information alongside a gadget was what at first attracted us to the NetZero 4G hotspot, yet impediments like 12-month top and the failure to come back to 200MB once we've ventured up to different levels makes that information level feel like a grimy trap. Be that as it may, then, there are not very many utilize situations where we could escape with utilizing just 200MB in a month.

Given that the normal site page is currently moving toward 1MB in size and I visit a normal of 375 pages a day in view of my web history, 200MB would last from about breakfast to lunch while being used for work. On the off chance that I gather that amid a bustling workday out and about I visit a large portion of that number of pages and am out and about four days a month, I'd require the 1GB/month get ready for $20. This bests the other hotspot choices, yet not my cell benefit hotspot capacity, which is a similar value knock for significantly more information.

While my regular way to deal with information access out and about is to turn hotspot benefit on my telephone as it's required, the NetZero hotspot could be appealing. For clients who live in or go to Clear 4G zones, expend information in tastes as opposed to swallows, don't need a two-year, and don't have a cell phone hotspot to piggyback their PCs or tablets on...this works. Simply don't be excessively influenced by the most reduced valued or complementary plans—you'll utilize them up quicker than you might suspect.

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