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docmary · 4 years ago

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Food Insecurity-We may not live by bread alone, but neither do we live without it.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have little. Franklin D. Roosevelt

It has been my good fortune to have been able to support myself (barely at times) doing the work that I love, being a naturopathic doctor, for most of my adult life. I remember a sign in my tax preparers office that read: “The joys of owning your own business, not unlike the joys of natural childbirth, have been greatly exaggerated.” Or something like that. There are certainly those in my profession that have been financially successful along with the intrinsic rewards of helping people, but I was not one of them.

And then I got cancer. And not dying became my full-time job. On the side I also worked as a home health aide and I made little money but also had little in the way of responsibility. I also relied on programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps to survive.

I am doing well now. I have relocated from Alaska (my home of 30 years) to Washington state where I grew up, so that I could be closer to family. I was fortunate in that I had family to take me in while I figured out my next moves. Some are not so lucky.

I started volunteering at the Sky Valley Food Bank in my new community as a way to build my social network. I was blessed with the instant camaraderie of many fellow and sister volunteers, and paid staff, who were joined in a single purpose: support the mission of eliminating hunger. Every week we provided food for an average of 261 families, enough for 10 meals per person. This amounts to more than 75,000 pounds of food distributed every month—almost one million pounds per year.

And Then Came COVID-19

According to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), some 13.7 million households (10.5% of all households), experienced food insecurity at some point in 2019. That is 35 million Americans who were either unable to acquire enough food to meet their needs, or uncertain of where their next meal might come from.

In one study that came out in June 2020, researchers asked: “In the last seven days, which of these statements best describes the food eaten in your household?”

Enough of the food we wanted to eat

Enough, but not always the kind of food we wanted to eat

Sometimes not enough to eat

Often not enough to eat.

According to these researchers, since 2019, food insecurity has doubled overall and tripled in households with children.*

The Ripple Effects of Hunger

Not having access to healthy food has ripple effects of chronic ill health, disability, stress, and worsening poverty. These problems did not start with COVID-19, but the pandemic has made even more glaring the differences in the quality of life between “those who have much [and] those who have little.” This kind of safety net, that supplies sustenance to those in need, makes good economic sense. Adults who have a disability, in particular a disability and are not in the workforce, also experience more than twice the rate of food insecurity as adults who do not have a disability.

At our local food bank, we were unable to have our customers shop in-doors like we had in the past safely. We were shut down but found a way to deliver boxes of food to the porches of 125 families in the area. We also drastically cut down on the number of volunteers that could be in our warehouse per day which translates to fewer people doing more physically demanding work. The good news is that people from the community, from gardeners, to private businesses, to social service organizations, and individuals found ways to help Sky Valley Food Bank carry out the mission.**

School Closures and Vulnerable Students

With schools being shut down, students were no longer able to receive meals at their schools at a reduced price or free as they had in the past. This was not just a local problem, across the country nutrition directors reported that they were serving fewer meals than when school was in session. Last spring, the School Nutrition Association surveyed 2000 districts that reported 80% were serving fewer meals. Of those, the majority said the number of meals had dropped by 50% or more.

Most areas relied on the food pick up model that they usually did in the summer months where families could drop by their local school each day, often between 11-1, and pick up a bag lunch and maybe breakfast. But as parents started returning to work, the pickup model did not always work if parents were not always able to take children to the drop off site at the right time.

In Fulton County Georgia and Tucson Arizona, nutrition programs started packing food including frozen hamburgers and pizza, enough for a week’s worth of meals, and sending them out on school buses to be distributed at bus stops where the lowest income families typically resided.***

Food Deserts

In the best of times getting adequate nutrition is especially challenging for people who live in a “food desert.” The definition of a food desert can change depending on where you live. In urban areas, you need to live more than a mile away from a grocery store. For rural areas, you live more then 10 miles away. According to Feeding America, rural areas make up 63% of counties in the US and 87% of counties with high rates of food insecurity. In 2015, 19 million people lived in a food desert and 2.1 million households both lived in a food desert and lacked access to a vehicle according to the USDA.

The Shifting Model of Getting Food to the Food Insecure

In the summertime at Sky Valley Food Bank, we were able to greet our long-time customers, and many new ones, that were able to shop in our outdoor market. I loved being able to chat with our customers and find out how they were getting along. From my own experience, I can say that accepting help for something as necessary as feeding myself was a blow to my ego. Thank goodness I got over that. Being able to help my fellow and sister humans, regardless of why they were our customers is something I treasure.

Like many school districts around the country, our schools were not able to open in September. We partnered with our public schools to set up food pantries in five of our schools. We also had the return of rainy weather and the outdoor market was not an option. We began having a drive through service where our staff would build boxes of food for distribution in people’s cars. We were now serving 325 families and had special “Holiday” boxes in November and December, along with the usual boxes of meat, dairy, dry goods, canned goods, grains, produce, and food for their four-legged household members. Getting two boxes is better than one box, especially during the holidays.

In December we also had a toy drive that garnered an incredible assortment of toys from community members. It is remarkable how much our community does to provide for people having a tough time—food, toys, money—all gratefully accepted. The parents were able to pick out toys for their kids.

We are looking forward to having our customers back in our service area to carefully select the foods they want for themselves and their loved ones. We are looking forward to giving them the kind of respectful service we always have and continue to provide. COVID or no COVID.

LONE WOLF

I am a lone wolf.

I have lost my pack.

My sire was the first to go. The alfa.

His job to protect the pack, especially from each other, fell to no one.

I grew up with the bitch who was two years my elder.

Always the more adventurous one. She was gone

Before her pups were fully grown.

And they are lost to me.

The she-wolf who bore me tried desperately to keep the pack together.

“Come home. Why don’t you move back home?”

She grew old, frail, a little crazy

A kind of crazy that was always there but kept in check by the alpha.

The older bitch is gone too.

When did the word bitch become derogatory?

I reclaim that title. It suits me.

It suits those of us who live in a world where self sufficiency is prized above all

And sentimentality is a luxury.

Another sire gone. Was it really eight years ago?

He left to be with Jesus.

I think he’s food for flora and fauna.

Who’s to say?

My brother looks up from the hard work of dying

All traces of silliness and the infectious laughter that is his calling card are gone

And the world is just a bit more lonely.

The rest of the pack is dispersed.

Do they prowl in search of the familiar?

Of course they do. (howl)

*IPR.northwester.edu/documents/reports/ipr-rapid-research-reports-pulse-hh-data-10-june-2020.pdf

**Helpful Hint: when thinking of donating food to the food bank, treat the task of going through your pantry the same way you go through your closet—three piles; keep, donate, throw away. You don’t donate clothes that are ripped or stained. You throw them away. The food bank volunteers spend a lot of time sorting through donations. We cannot serve food that is spoiled or way, way, way past the pull date, or that has been opened. Thanks.

***NPR.org/2020/09/08/908442609/children-are-going-hungry-why-schools-are-struggling-to-feed-students

#food insecurity #food bank #COVID-19 #food deserts #school lunch programs #food and health #SNAP

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years ago

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South L.A. Wine Club’s Lindsay Williams Is Addressing Social Justice With Wine

Lindsay Williams, a registered nurse (Ph.D.) based in Los Angeles, is at the forefront of two national crises: Covid-19, and an industry-wide reckoning of BIPOC issues in wine. As the founder of South L.A. Wine Club (SLAWC), she organizes wine tasting events that bring together and commemorate BIPOC and other marginalized people in wine. What began as a personal passion pursuit to learn more about viticulture has morphed into a robust platform. SLAWC’s overarching philosophy is to cultivate a community culture around wine tasting that includes enjoyment, education, and engaging dialogue, as well as facilitating connections with winemakers in South L.A., Inglewood, and other neighborhoods.

Williams’ welcoming demeanor and thoughtfully curated events (happening virtually, for now) provide inclusive, accessible spaces for those who are ��wine-curious” and haven’t had access to wine education and culture. She recently launched the South L.A. Speaks series pairing local leaders and winemakers, and donated half the proceeds from wine sales to Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. This year, she also co-founded Our Glasses Full, an ongoing non-profit collaborative series that celebrates Black Joy, a collective jubilation, compassion, and call to action for bettering the lives of BIPOC individuals. She believes that Black Joy is at once pleasure and a powerful tool, and an act of resistance to social unrest; and that the act of savoring and sipping (wine) can not only be celebratory, but radically transformative.

“The business and culture of wine cannot be separated from the people that make it on one end, and consume it on the other,” Williams says. “Our Glasses Full and South L.A. Speaks are meant to reconcile this spectrum, and acknowledge the fullness that comes from celebrating all these aspects.”

1. What are you doing right now to shake up the industry to propel it forward?

Working in collaboration with my colleagues and friends in wine, and also focusing on my audience as a significant source of content and guidance in planning wine content. This year, I co-founded Our Glasses Full with some of my closest sisters in wine: Chevonne Ball of Dirty Radish, Alisha Sommer of Somersalt, and Roxy Narvaez. We hosted Juneteenth Saber Celebration this year, our inaugural event celebrating Black Joy through wine and user-submitted sabering videos as a way for wine professionals to contribute to the success of the event. Following this event, we want to commemorate other historic events and commemorations for BIPOC and other marginalized persons in American history through wine — which include Indigenous Peoples’ Day for October, Kwanzaa for December, and Women’s History Month for March.

In addition to this, South L.A. Wine Club celebrates and educates members of the South Los Angeles and Inglewood communities, so I started the South L.A. Speaks series to highlight the contributions of the South L.A. Community and pair our discussions with wine! So far, I have featured community therapists, social justice advocates, and natural healers, and paired our conversations with wines from local winemakers. Moreover, the wines were available for pickup and drop-off in South Los Angeles, and we donated half the proceeds of sales to Black Lives Matter Los Angeles.

Lastly, to celebrate and highlight voices within my community, I recently started the South L.A. Speaks series to connect with South L.A. and Inglewood residents about their work, how we are staying safe and sane, and celebrating each other with wine. I recently featured community therapists and social justice advocates with wine available for purchase from Serenity Farm and Vineyard and Final Girl Wines, both who are local winemakers in Los Alamos. We then donated 50 percent of the profits from the event to Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. It is truly exciting to see how wine can be a venue to connect with people, share our struggles and triumphs, and then support causes that benefit us all.

2. Is there any personal or professional introspection you’d like to share in light of what’s been going on with Black Lives Matter and the coronavirus crisis?

Personally and professionally, I think this is a time of great change and upheaval — and with that, what emerges is the importance of the relationships we’ve cultivated and the interconnectedness of systems. The toxicity of capitalism and the disparities it creates were already an issue (within the U.S. in general), but Covid-19 and the ongoing civil unrest has made it so these issues cannot be ignored. It will be interesting to see, this time next year, if the reckoning that is happening right now in wine continues for lasting and systemic change. As a Black woman, I encounter these issues every day, and as both a nurse and wine professional, I face these issues professionally. The fear that I once had to speak up on these issues has dissipated, so our industry will need to get used to being uncomfortable, empathetic, and recognizing and highlighting marginalized voices that typically have not been heard.

3. Tell me about your journey and involvement with the wine industry.

I developed a curiosity for wine in 2013 as a function of professional networking and social mobility. At the time, I was in graduate school and on the path to receive my Ph.D. in Nursing at UCLA (which I received in 2015). This represented a new social sphere of ivory tower academics, where I did not fit because of my ethnicity and age (I was in my mid-20s; and I observed that the average age of nursing Ph.D. students here were in their mid-50s). I found myself at conferences, mixers, and in classes where people were talking about wine, and I had no idea what they were talking about. Wine was not on my dining room table growing up, so I had no base of knowledge to build on. After a handful of occasions of sheepishly ordering whatever “red” was available, I started googling different wine labels and developed a small lexicon of wine terms that would help me break the ice and have substantive conversations with peers and colleagues.

In 2015, I went on a wine trip to Temecula and tried Leoness Cellars wines. It finally clicked why people loved wine so much. After that “Eureka!” moment, I started asking more and more questions, visiting wine shops and going to wine festivals to try more and more types of wine, which ultimately turned into a hobby, then a passion. I am a person driven by curiosity, harmony, and continuous improvement through acquiring new knowledge, so wine represented all these facets.

In 2016, I moved to South L.A., and sought to have the same growth and experiences with wine, but found there was nothing. In September, I started SLAWC on Meetup as a casual way to connect with like-minded people in my neighborhood. I was delighted to find not only similar minds, but an entire community. In the three years since starting South L.A. Wine Club, I have grown from hosting casual Meetups to offering curated events that bring in winemakers and distributors to this rapt audience.

4. What is the mission you envision for South L.A. Wine Club, and how are you achieving it?

The mission of South L,A, Wine Club is to create community among wine enthusiasts in South L.A. and Inglewood through accessible and affordable wine events, wine tastings, and wine education. I achieve this by building meaningful and substantive relationships with winemakers, distributors, wine brands, and curating events specifically in [these] areas. My events are not just for residents of South L.A., but for everyone who wants to celebrate this community.

Additionally, my community historically only had access to varietals and winemakers that were in grocery stores and liquor stores. Considering food insecurity and the pejorative connotation between liquor stores and communities of color, there are very few ways to access and enjoy wine in the neighborhood without driving across town. Our communities deserve to taste and enjoy these wines right in our areas, and that’s what I endeavor to do.

5. What’s the coolest thing you get to do in your job?

The best part of my work is meeting with new audiences and seeing the delight that comes with them trying something new and loving it! Even when they don’t like something, I use that as an opportunity and teachable moment; and at the end of the experience, they now know more about their palate and tastes than they did before.

6. Due to the pandemic, many individuals have had to pivot to survive and thrive. How has your business and role changed in the last six months?

The transition to virtual events was very difficult for me, particularly because I am also a doctorally-prepared registered nurse working on the frontlines of Covid-19 response. I went radio silent the first few months because I was overwhelmed with this seismic change.

With that challenge came the great opportunity to think strategically about what events could be in the future. For one thing, I wanted to keep virtual content short and digestible — that is, what could keep peoples’ attention and still be educational? Moreover, I had to consider, what is a potential format that holds space for the myriad of thoughts and experiences that we are all having right now? We are all struggling in some way, so for me, there was no point in hiding that from my audience. In my Instagram Live series and interviews, we talk about wine, but also social justice, creating harmony in our lives, self-care, and many other things.

7. What’s a significant shift your business has made in the last six months that you had never considered before?

How SLAWC can connect to other wine professionals nationally, through features in Black Wine Professionals, Our Glasses Full, and other collaborations with other wine professionals. I recently co-hosted an event with Amy Atwood Selections, Pinkies Up L.A., Zafa Wines, and Swift Cafe, a local Black-owned restaurant in the Crenshaw District. We collaborated to bring Zafa Wines to South L.A. paired with dinner, and an Instagram Live conversation with Krista Scruggs (the owner and winemaker) and I. It was an incredible event that brought these wines and the spirit of the event close to home and benefitted Black-owned businesses.

8. What about [changes that] you had thought were not possible before, but have become “standard” in this “new normal”?

That a virtual conversation can feel as enriching and fulfilling as an in-person tasting or visit. After months of attending virtual classes and tastings, I find I am now able to connect to more people than before.

9. How are you using your position to push forward on racial equity and respective issues in the industry?

I don’t take the name South L.A. Wine Club lightly — I know that with this name, I not only represent [myself], but also my community and its residents. Wine culture and the systems that maintain it are inextricably linked to systemic racism, injustice, and harm. So I am constantly questioning these practices in the work I do.

In addition, I bring my 10-plus years of health care experience into this work, and I see the startling disparity in health care access in hospitality workers. I am developing projects as an advocate for hospitality workers that no longer have access to health care or are underinsured with costly healthcare plans like COBRA.

10. What do you envision is next for yourself and South L.A. Wine Club?

Continuing to craft a caring and uplifting culture through our virtual content and collaborations with people nationwide. South L.A. Wine Club endeavors to be a pillar of strength within our community and a catalyst for positive change. With this in mind, I hope to have an operational base to host classes and curate more virtual events which speak to important issues that affect marginalized people/communities. Historically, much of our understanding of wine practices stems from elitist European “traditions.” SLAWC challenges these social constructs and offers insightful discussions that welcome all people into the fold, where they can feel a part of the wine-culture tapestry. Since it’s fluid and ever-evolving, we also ask what and how that looks and feels; wine sparks these vital discussions.

Additionally, with all of my initiatives and in being a small business (owner), I’m applying for grant funding as well as constantly seeking out new ways and opportunities to partner with like-minded wine professionals and brands that serve my community’s best interests. Lastly, I’m excited to be working on creating a wine club box; and although operational details haven’t been finalized yet, it will include curated varieties from local winemakers I want to spotlight. For instance, just last week I had an event that showcased 2018 Brut Rosé from Loubud Winery and the 2019 Passetoutgrain from Blue Ox winery that I would want included. The idea is that pickup of these wine boxes would be from my home (for the time being) and/or from South Los Angeles restaurants and businesses, such as with Swift Cafe where I did an event with them a few months ago.

The article South L.A. Wine Club’s Lindsay Williams Is Addressing Social Justice With Wine appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/south-la-wine-club-lindsay-williams/

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johnboothus · 4 years ago

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South L.A. Wine Clubs Lindsay Williams Is Addressing Social Justice With Wine

Williams’ welcoming demeanor and thoughtfully curated events (happening virtually, for now) provide inclusive, accessible spaces for those who are “wine-curious” and haven’t had access to wine education and culture. She recently launched the South L.A. Speaks series pairing local leaders and winemakers, and donated half the proceeds from wine sales to Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. This year, she also co-founded Our Glasses Full, an ongoing non-profit collaborative series that celebrates Black Joy, a collective jubilation, compassion, and call to action for bettering the lives of BIPOC individuals. She believes that Black Joy is at once pleasure and a powerful tool, and an act of resistance to social unrest; and that the act of savoring and sipping (wine) can not only be celebratory, but radically transformative.

1. What are you doing right now to shake up the industry to propel it forward?

2. Is there any personal or professional introspection you’d like to share in light of what’s been going on with Black Lives Matter and the coronavirus crisis?

3. Tell me about your journey and involvement with the wine industry.

4. What is the mission you envision for South L.A. Wine Club, and how are you achieving it?

5. What’s the coolest thing you get to do in your job?

6. Due to the pandemic, many individuals have had to pivot to survive and thrive. How has your business and role changed in the last six months?

7. What’s a significant shift your business has made in the last six months that you had never considered before?

8. What about [changes that] you had thought were not possible before, but have become “standard” in this “new normal”?

9. How are you using your position to push forward on racial equity and respective issues in the industry?

10. What do you envision is next for yourself and South L.A. Wine Club?

The article South L.A. Wine Club’s Lindsay Williams Is Addressing Social Justice With Wine appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/south-la-wine-club-lindsay-williams/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/south-la-wine-clubs-lindsay-williams-is-addressing-social-justice-with-wine

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radfempnw · 7 years ago

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Get ready for OAKLAND Pride Parade & Festival 2017! More details to come join the event page and share it with your friends.

Oakland will once again host a Pride Parade kicking off at 10:30 am and an all-day Pride Festival from 11 am to 7 pm in Downtown on Broadway.

OAKLAND PRIDE IS YOUR PRIDE! WE CAN’T DO IT WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT!

OAKLAND PRIDE IS YOUR PRIDE! Bay Area residents are rich in spirit and give freely! We give from our hearts and from our wallets to causes that we believe in. Help us celebrate our diversity and power this year at Oakland Pride. For any questions regarding your donation to Oakland Pride, please contact us at [email protected]. Oakland Pride is a 501©3 non-profit organization. Your contribution is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

ABOUT OAKLAND PRIDE Mission Statement It is the mission of Oakland Pride to celebrate the cultures and diversity of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community in Oakland and the East Bay. We are dedicated to educating the greater community, promoting equality, civic involvement and responsibility within Oakland and neighboring communities. Oakland Pride is committed to facilitating leadership and coalition building for the funding and development of the first LGBTQ community center in Oakland for everyone. History & Goals East Bay Pride was celebrated in Oakland from 1997 to 2004. Led by the efforts of former Oakland City Councilmember Danny Wan and the Oakland Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Roundtable. “Oakland Out In Oakland” commenced with a celebration of LGBT life in 2005 and 2006. Pride had not taken place in Oakland since that time. In 2008, Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan and others led efforts to re-organize an LGBT Roundtable in the City of Oakland. Since then, members of the Roundtable and the LGBT community representing all walks of life decided that it was time to resuscitate Oakland Pride for the long term and advocate for LGBT rights and interests, including the development of the first LGBTQ community center in Oakland for everyone. Since the renewal of this effort, Oakland Pride has been busy networking with allies and partners. Our goal is to create a vibrant and viable organization worthy of the LGBT community in the East Bay. Oakland Pride is set to celebrate our annual Pride festival on the first Sunday of September, Labor Day Weekend. As we continue to raise funds for the festival, the longer-term goal is to support our larger goal for the creation of an LGBT Community Center in Oakland for everyone. Oakland Pride is a 501©3 non-profit corporation. We are presently applying for sponsorship support from foundations and corporations. The funding will serve to not only help in the organizing of an event, but also eventually provide funding for the support of services at a future Community Center. Oakland Pride wants to be of assistance in providing a sustainable solution to implement or support needed services for challenges in our community—especially in low-income, multi-cultural elder and young LGBT communities. Oakland Pride is collaborating with a host of organizations that help our community and include Our Family Coalition, Lavender Seniors of the East Bay, Pacific Center, East Bay AIDS Advocacy Foundation and many other organizations that represent the breadth and depth of LGBT people in our community. FAQ When is Oakland Pride? A:The 2016 event, which will be the 7th anniversary of Oakland Pride, is set to take place on Sunday, September 11th, 2016. Oakland Pride PARADE kicks off 10:30am at Broadway & 14th Street. Oakland Pride FESTIVAL opens at 11:00am and ends 7:00pm. Where is Oakland Pride? A: Oakland Pride PARADE starts at Broadway & 14th Street (Oakland City Hall) and ends at Broadway & 20th Street (Oakland Pride Festival Main Entrance). Oakland Pride FESTIVAL main entrance is located at Broadway & 20th Street. Secondary entrance located at Webster and 21st Street. Do I need a ticket to get into Oakland Pride? A: General admission to Oakland Pride FESTIVAL is $10, children under 12 is $5. NO FEE to watch Oakland Pride PARADE (except in VIP/Grandstand* seating along the Parade route). *VIP/Grandstand for Oakland Pride PARADE at Latham Square (Broadway & Telegraph) is available as part of our VIP Pride Pass program, or on a first-come, first-served basis for a fee ($5.00 in advance, $10.00 at gate, free ADA access). For more information about VIP Pride Pass or Grandstand Tickets, please e-mail [email protected] Why do we charge admissions fee? A: Money from the admissions helps us pay the bills, from the stages, performers, fencing, port-a-potties, sound, security guards, Police Officers and everything in between. Likewise, the Children’s admission helps us cover the cost of the Family & Children’s Garden so families may enjoy all of the many activities at NO additional cost. Part of your admissions goes toward Oakland Pride’s Community Partners Program, through which we have been able to give back nearly $50,000 to LGBTQ friendly organizations and charities in the community since 2010. Is there an age limit for entry into Oakland Pride? A: Oakland Pride PARADE and FESTIVAL are open to people of all ages. In face, Oakland Pride has been reported as the most diverse and family friendly PRIDE in the country. A Family & Children’s Garden within the FESTIVAL focuses on providing a fun and safe area for children and their parents/guardians with free programs and activities. All children must be accompanied by adults at all time. Where can I stay near the event? A: Check out our Travel Resource Center for great deals staying in Oakland for the Oakland Pride Parade + Festival. How do I get to Oakland Pride? A: BART is the best way to get to Oakland Pride event! To watch the PARADE, exit at 12th St/Oakland City Center or 19th St Station. FESTIVAL main entrance is located at Broadway & 20th Street, right outside of BART station exit. For more options getting to Oakland Pride, please visit our Public Transportationsection in our Travel Resource Center. Are pets allowed at the event? A: Yes, pets are allowed at the event, including service animals of course. However, we strongly recommend leaving pets at home since the event is crowded, noisy, hot, and potentially dangerous to smaller animals walking on the ground. Oakland Pride is not responsible for any injuries that occur at the event. If you do decide to bring pets to the event, please make sure your pets are well trained, socialized, and comfortable with loud noises and large crowds. Please also make sure your pets are on leash, under your control at all times, provide water and shade, and clean up after your pets. We want everyone coming to the event, including your beloved pets, to have a fun and safe time. Where do I find parking? A: Street parking are available, but will be very limited around the event due to street closures and large number of event goers. Few paid parking lots are open Sunday with various operating hours. Oakland Pride is NOT affiliated with any parking services, and is not responsible for any problems regarding parking. For the best way to get to Oakland Pride, we recommend take BART and exit at 12th St/City Center or 19th St Station. Who will be performing at Pride? A: Each year we have headlining performers on the Main/Pride Stage, and some of our past performers included Chaka Khan, Martha Wash, Jennifer Holliday, Yo-Yo, Rah Digga, LaToya London, CeCe Peniston, JC Jones, and En Vogue. For this year’s performers, please check under our FESTIVAL section to find out the most up-to-date information. Do you recycle and compost at your event? A: Oakland Pride provides refuse collection bins for recycling, composting and trash at our event. All beverage cups, plates, utensils used at our event are compostable and/or recyclable. All collected refuse will be sorted post collection to reduce our ecological footprint. To help us keep the event as green as possible, please DO NOT litter, and put all refuse in collection bins. How can I be considered to perform at the event? A: Please follow the direction in the Entertainment Submission page, and submit your entry to be considered for a performance at our event. Deadline for Artist Promo Kit submission is August 1. How can I volunteer for Oakland Pride? A: Oakland Pride would not be possible without the help of volunteers who lend their time before and during our event. There are volunteer opportunities for people of almost all skills, backgrounds and abilities. Please Sign Up to become a volunteer, or e-mail [email protected] for any questions. Where can I get a copy of Oakland Pride Guide or Oakland Pride Pocket Guide? A: The official Oakland Pride Guide is printed and distributed by our major media sponsor, East Bay Express. The Pride Guide will be included in the last week of August issue of East Bay Express. You can pickup a free copy of East Bay Express at any of their 700 distribution locations in the East Bay. Oakland Pride Pocket Guide is a pocket-sized mini guide to Oakland Pride Parade & Festival. It contains the most current information regarding the Pride event, including event maps, stage lineups, parade route information, exhibitor booth locations, and much more. The Pocket Guide will be available on the day of the event at the Ticketing and Information Booth. www.oaklandpride.org

#oakland #bay area #northern california #california #finished

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servaxo · 6 years ago

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Foster a successful environment with personal and professional development

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” is such a popular interview question, it’s become almost cliché. And yet, planning for the future is critical, not just for potential employees, but also for current employees and your organization.

Why is it so important? According to one report, 93 percent of employees will stay at a company longer if it invests in their careers. And companies that invest in employee development also have 24 percent higher profit margins than those that don’t.

In other words, assisting employees with their personal and professional development isn’t just an investment in your employees. It’s also an investment in your company.

This Blue Paper examines the differences between personal and professional development and the various ways you can encourage and implement development in your organization. We also explore how using personal development giftscan help your company grow and thrive.

Personal vs. professional development

Personal and professional development can take employees’ knowledge and skills, along with your company’s productivity, to the next level. But the two terms are not the same. Let’s see how they differ.

Professional development

Professional development is broadly defined as enhancing hard skills that will help employees perform a particular job. Things like:

Taking a technology course

Learning how to develop a budget

Broadening expertise in a specialized human resources area

Personal development

In contrast, personal development is most easily described as improving soft skills. What’s important to remember is that when it comes to personal development, life skills can also be work skills. A class on breathing techniques or handling personal finances can help employees remove stress from their lives and make them better coworkers and managers.

Popular personal development areas include:

Leadership skills

Management skills

Time management

Conflict resolution

Communication

Elements of development

As your company changes and grows, your organization’s needs will shift. It’s to your advantage to consider what your organization needs, what your employees need, and how those goals can work in tandem.

Start with your business goals

First, take a look at your organization’s goals and decide what you need to achieve them. Does your team have the right skills to help you get there? By identifying opportunities for employee development, you can help your staff gain valuable skills while saving yourself time and money hunting for additional team members.

Discover employee wants and needs

While you’re determining what skills your company needs, take the time to see what skills your employees want to develop. You may have employees who want to move into management or learn a new skill set. Where possible, find places where the skills you require and the skills they want to develop intersect.

Recognize potential vs. readiness

You may have an incredible salesperson or programmer who wants to move into a management role but lack the skills. Or perhaps you have a hardworking staff member who wants to move into another department. If your employee wants to move into a role that will require growth and learning, take an honest assessment of what skills they will need.

Once you’ve inventoried their skills, you can assemble a plan of action and create next steps so that they move into their new or expanded role smoothly. What is that step-by-step approach?

Select the best style of training

While a formal university class or series of classes might be needed, there are multiple ways employees can learn skills.

Special projects or stretch assignments

Working with a one-on-one mentor

Learning under an internal or external subject-matter expert

Make a plan and put it into practice

Develop a timeline that can help your company and your employee achieve their goals. Think about using the following steps:

Set a hard timeline. Will their training take a month or a year?

Create check-ins to verify the employee is learning the needed skills.

Give them an opportunity to use their new skills, either by easing them into a new position or allowing them to take the reins for a short period.

Continue to evaluate their skills and, if needed, start the process again.

Make development feasible

Now that you’ve established what your employees want and need to develop, helping them find the time and means to learnwill keep them moving in the right direction. Offering the needed funding, flex scheduling and in-office courses on fundamentals can make their growth more feasible to fit into a day-to-day routine.

Fund their development or offer tuition reimbursement

Providing a set amount of money each year can help employees do everything from taking a management course to taking care of their health with a gym membership. As we stated earlier, both can be of value in your company, as life skills can also be work skills.

Offer flex time

While many schools offer educational opportunities during non-work hours, allowing employees to flex their schedules can let them take classes, meet with mentors or take advantage of other learning opportunities during their work day.

Provide learning opportunities

Find chances for employees to learn and offer to cover any fees associated with it. Or bring in a speaker or other expert on-site and give them personal development gifts, like a Mercury Notebook with Stylus Pen for note-taking or a Colorful Key USB Drive that contains educational information.

The Roanoke Chowan Community Health Center combined an external speaker and in-house discussion to help employees with their personal development. Their organization held an all-staff development day and gave everyone a Folding Umbrella with Auto Open as a professional development gift.

“We had a motivational speaker. The topic was ‘Reconnecting to our joy in work,’” said Melba Valentine, a human resources assistant. “People in the health care field get burned out a lot. The speaker discussed everything from random acts of kindness to topics like quality and safety.

“Each department also spent some time in breakout groups, discussing ways to help them prevent burnout and how preventing burnout could help them provide better customer service,” Valentine said.

Providing opportunities for development

Often, people think of development as cut-and-dried. The person doing the training picks up a book or goes to a local educational institution or seminar to come away with a specific skill. In fact, U.S. companies spend more than $70 billion on corporate training.

But in truth, there are a variety of ways to promote and implement personal and professional development, many of which will work well even for smaller companies or organizations with limited training budgets.

Online learning

While it’s possible to take online classes from colleges and universities, there are also several other online education forums. Sites like Udemy® or Skillshare® give you the option to select courses that can help your staff build or practice their skills. Employees can even learn specialized tech skills online via sites like Cybrary

Online learning also has other advantages:

Employees can access classes at any time, giving them the option to take them during the time of day or week that works with their schedule.

They can learn at their own pace, repeating classes or courses to gain better understanding.

Classes can be grouped into training units or courses, allowing you to create a standard company “university” of skills and training.

Industry conferences

Conferences can serve a dual purpose, allowing employees to network while learning about important skills and trends from industry peers.

Mentoring

Bringing junior and senior level employees together can help build relationships in your company and provide valuable training opportunities.

Encourage cross-training and problem-solving

Similar to mentoring, bringing employees together to share problems and knowledge can be educational and help your business solve difficult issues when they arise. In fact, studies have shown that 70 percent of learning is informal. Facilitating employee and mentor interaction can create a variety of viable learning opportunities.

There are other ways to assist employees with this process:

Create an in-house book club

Sponsor 15-minute lunch and learns

Create an in-house online social group via tools like Slack®, message boards or email for quick knowledge sharing

For Hour Children, an all-staff training once every two years helps the team build personal and professional skills. The nonprofit helps incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and their children assimilate into the community. Because the organization offers so many services, the team uses a variety of skills to help the organization be the best it can be.

At the last staff development, Hour Children brought in a professional speaker. “We’re working on ‘dream team’ development,” said Frances McMurry, donation pickup coordinator.

Development topics ranged from interpersonal skills to professionalism in the workplace. In addition to listening to the speaker and group discussions, the group participated in several fun exercises.

Everyone received a Seaside Travel Mug as a professional development gift. “I wanted to offer something people would use,” McMurry said. “Everyone here drinks coffee or tea or something cold. And they can take it wherever they want.”

A developed employee is a happy employee

With the aid of professional andpersonal development gifts, you can encourage employees to become their best selves. It will not only make them more loyal to your company, it will help your employees and your company grow.

The post Foster a successful environment with personal and professional development appeared first on 4imprint Learning Center.

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rodney-johnson-blog · 8 years ago

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The Wall Street Syndicate is Still at Work

Maybe they benefited from divine intervention… or maybe they were just lucky. Either way, the students and staff of St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California must be pretty happy right now.

In 2012 the school took a chance, investing $15,000 in a small, little-known app maker called Snapchat. Last week the school sold two-thirds of its shares for $24 million when the stock went public. I’m sure they’re still giving thanks.

Other people took home some dough that day as well. The co-founders, Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel, both cashed out $272 million. Their remaining shares make them both members of the billionaire’s club.

All told, the company sold 145 million shares and insiders/early investors sold 55 million shares. The company netted around $2.4 billion to fund expansion and operations, while the individual sellers walked away with the remaining $1 billion.

This part of the story is fun, but it can’t hold a candle to the folks that really got away with all the cash… the syndicate.

The early investors and insiders took a chance on a company that currently generates revenue, but hemorrhages cash. In 2016, Snapchat brought in $404 million and lost $515 million. And there’s no end in sight.

For the uninitiated, Snapchat is essentially a photo- and video-based social networking service. It’s a hit mostly among teenagers and millennials, but parts of other demographics have caught on too. Direct messages, or “snaps,” disappear forever after someone views them. The app also has group chat and story features, and many big media and publishing brands have their own channels within Snapchat.

The company has 158 million daily users, so clearly those involved think there’s a way, perhaps somewhere in the distant future, to turn those eyeballs into dollar signs.

Stock investors that bought shares the day of the IPO also see some hope. The shares priced at $17, but opened at $24. Those buyers who were allocated shares in the IPO before trading opened earned a cool 40% instant profit.

Which brings us back to the mob, er, syndicate.

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I worked on Wall Street. I learned the ins and outs of investment firms and eventually landed on a bond trading desk. Equity IPOs were part of the learning curve. We had to know how all of it worked.

Back then, attractive private companies – like Snapchat – would interview investment firms and choose a lead underwriter, who’d then put together a syndicate of investment firms to file all the paperwork necessary and handle the initial public offering of shares.

To fetch the highest price, the syndicate would go through the expensive, time-consuming process of generating sales material about the company and then holding dog-and-pony shows around the country to highlight the coming offering. This all culminated in the day of the offering, when the company and the underwriters found out if their marketing efforts were going to pay off.

For this effort, the syndicate of firms earned an eye-popping fee that could run between 5% and 10% of the funds raised. I can’t say the fee earned was in line with the efforts. It always seemed extravagant. But now, things are wildly out of proportion.

On Snapchat, the underwriter charged a “modest” fee of 2.5% of the funds raised, which works out to a mere $85 million. But, as they say in late-night TV ads, “Wait, wait! There’s more!”

In addition to this upfront fee, the underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase 30 million shares at the IPO price of $17, minus an underwriter’s discount. So not only do the mobsters, er, investment bankers, earn the difference between the current price of the shares and the IPO price, they also get an additional break.

At the close of opening day, this would have been at least an additional $210 million, bringing their IPO fee to a nifty $295 million.

Now, let’s review the heavy lifting that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs had to do to snatch this fee from Snapchat. They had to file all the documents required by the SEC, verify holdings of early investors, map out the number of shares the company and insiders would sell, and gauge interest from investors to determine the appropriate price for the shares.

A handful of associates with working knowledge of SEC filings and telephones could have done all of these things

What syndicate members didn’t have to do was introduce anyone in the investment world to Snapchat. The app store on everyone’s smartphones handled that. So the most time-intensive, personality-driven part of the process, the marketing of the company and selling shares to potential investors, was done for them.

And yet they earned almost $300 million. What a job!

These firms will go to great lengths to explain how much groundwork they had to lay ahead of the IPO, and how their research departments will support Snapchat in the years to come. But all that masks the real reason that companies, even ones that seem the newest of age like Snapchat, still use Wall Street. They’re scared that investment bankers will give them the cold shoulder if they cut them out.

If a company goes public without prominent underwriters, it risks such companies refusing to follow the stock in their research department, which precludes the clients of the investment firms from buying the stock.

And then there’s the matter of getting loans from these companies later, or further rounds of stock sales. Essentially, if companies don’t play ball, Wall Street can put financial hurdles in their way for years to come.

It sounds a lot like another syndicate… the one that controls the docks, garbage pickup, and cement in New York.

I’m guessing Murphy and Spiegel, the co-founders, don’t care. They did walk away with more than a quarter of a billion dollars in cash, after all.

But this is one more area, like politics, where I thought the internet was going to dramatically reduce the influence of money. I thought information would flow so freely as to cut out the middlemen, resulting in lower fees and greater access across the board.

That might be true one day, but the Snapchat IPO proves that today it still pays to be a member of the syndicate.

Rodney Follow me on Twitter @RJHSDent

Be sure to read more at Economy & Markets Daily!

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newstechreviews · 5 years ago

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Filmed by a Syrian opposition soldier riding in the back of a pickup truck, the shaky footage posted to Facebook on Oct. 14 showed Turkish troops walking cheerfully across a rocky plain in northern Syria toward a town that had just been vacated by U.S. forces.

It was one in a flurry of videos posted by citizen journalist Abo Liath Aljazarawy to his Facebook page, chronicling a rapid reshaping of northern Syria’s political map after President Trump ordered U.S. troops to withdraw from the region earlier that month.

But days later, the videos had disappeared from the Internet. Facebook had banned his page.

Aljazarawy, who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym for his security, had been using the page, called Eye on Alhasakah after his hometown, to share information about the Syrian civil war with his 50,000 followers. Some days, like that one in October, he shared news of troop movements. On others, he posted videos or photographs showing the bloody aftermath of military attacks. The point, he says, was to keep ordinary people informed. “We don’t have loyalty to anyone,” Aljazarawy told TIME. “Most of our followers are just common people.”

But the videos and photographs he shared showing the ground reality of the Syrian civil war were the reason his page was banned. Facebook confirmed to TIME that Eye on Alhasakah was flagged in late 2019 by its algorithms, as well as users, for sharing “extremist content.” It was then funneled to a human moderator, who decided to remove it. After being notified by TIME, Facebook restored the page in early February, some 12 weeks later, saying the moderator had made a mistake. (Facebook declined to say which specific videos were wrongly flagged, except that there were several.)

The algorithms were developed largely in reaction to ISIS, who shocked the world in 2014 when they began to share slickly-produced online videos of executions and battles as propaganda. Because of the very real way these videos radicalized viewers, the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria worked overtime to suppress them, and enlisted social networks to help. Quickly, the companies discovered that there was too much content for even a huge team of humans to deal with. (More than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.) So, since 2017, beg have been using algorithms to automatically detect extremist content. Early on, those algorithms were crude, and only supplemented the human moderators’ work. But now, following three years of training, they are responsible for an overwhelming proportion of detections. Facebook now says more than 98% of content removed for violating its rules on extremism is flagged automatically. On YouTube, across the board, more than 20 million videos were taken down before receiving a single view in 2019. And as the coronavirus spread across the globe in early 2020, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter announced their algorithms would take on an even larger share of content moderation, with human moderators barred from taking sensitive material home with them.

But algorithms are notoriously worse than humans at understanding one crucial thing: context. Now, as Facebook and YouTube have come to rely on them more and more, even innocent photos and videos, especially from war zones, are being swept up and removed. Such content can serve a vital purpose for both civilians on the ground — for whom it provides vital real-time information — and human rights monitors far away. In 2017, for the first time ever, the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands issued a war-crimes indictment based on videos from Libya posted on social media. And as violence-detection algorithms have developed, conflict monitors are noticing an unexpected side effect, too: these algorithms could be removing evidence of war crimes from the Internet before anyone even knows it exists.

Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Washington Post via Getty ImagesContent moderators work at a Facebook office in Austin, Texas. Facebook says more than 98% of content removed for violating its rules on extremism is flagged automatically.

On a rainy day in early January, Chris Woods leads the way up the narrow staircase of an end-of-terrace house on the campus of Goldsmiths University in southeast London. The top two floors here serve as the base of Airwars, which Woods founded in 2014 to hold militaries to account for civilian casualties. Out of this cramped headquarters, he and his small team have collected evidence of more than 52,000 civilian deaths, most gleaned from social media. They have forced the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria to share monthly information about civilians killed by collateral damage, and keep an eye on the Turkish and Russian militaries too. They also recently expanded to cover Somalia, and are working on a Yemen archive. All this is funded on a shoestring. “Our budget for the next year is around a third of a million pounds [$430,000] for everything that we do,” Woods says, in his attic office. “That’s roughly the price of a guided bomb.”

The removal of Eye on Alhasakah came as a blow to this tight operation. The page was one of the most comprehensive sources for news concerning northern and eastern Syria, says Mohammed al Jumaily, a conflict researcher for the group. “Its closure meant that we lost a key source of local reporting, which is already pretty sparse in that region.”

It was an example of how even one mistaken takedown can make the work of human rights defenders more difficult. Yet this is happening on a wider scale: of the 1.7 million YouTube videos preserved by Syrian Archive, a Berlin-based non-profit that downloads evidence of human rights violations, 16% have been removed. A huge chunk were taken down in 2017, just as YouTube began using algorithms to flag violent and extremist content. And useful content is still being removed on a regular basis. “We’re still seeing that this is a problem,” says Jeff Deutsch, the lead researcher at Syrian Archive. “We’re not saying that all this content has to remain public forever. But it’s important that this content is archived, so it’s accessible to researchers, to human rights groups, to academics, to lawyers, for use in some kind of legal accountability.” (YouTube says it is working with Syrian Archive to improve how they identify and preserve footage that could be useful for human rights groups.)

Most people working in conflict monitoring understand that the social media companies are in a tough position. Back in the attic in southeast London, Woods agrees that a lot of violent content has no place on social media sites. But he is frustrated with what he sees as three years of inaction by social networks when it comes to preventing valuable evidence from being lost forever, potentially reducing the chances of human rights violators being convicted of their crimes. “Our own view is that if they are determined to delete videos, photographs, posts and so on, we think it should be put into a cordoned off area that is only accessible to researchers with permissions,” Woods says. “Basically at the moment, it’s an all or nothing. They will delete an entire archive and everything gets permanently lost, as far as we can tell.”

Facebook and YouTube’s detection systems work by using a technology called machine learning, by which colossal amounts of data (in this case, extremist images, videos, and their metadata) are fed to an artificial intelligence adept at spotting patterns. Early types of machine learning could be trained to identify images containing a house, or a car, or a human face. But since 2017, Facebook and YouTube have been feeding these algorithms content that moderators have flagged as extremist — training them to automatically identify beheadings, propaganda videos and other unsavory content.

Both Facebook and YouTube are notoriously secretive about what kind of content they’re using to train the algorithms responsible for much of this deletion. That means there’s no way for outside observers to know whether innocent content — like Eye on Alhasakah’s — has already been fed in as training data, which would compromise the algorithm’s decision-making. In the case of Eye on Alhasakah’s takedown, “Facebook said, ‘oops, we made a mistake,’” says Dia Kayyali, the Tech and Advocacy coordinator at Witness, a human rights group focused on helping people record digital evidence of abuses. “But what if they had used the page as training data? Then that mistake has been exponentially spread throughout their system, because it’s going to train the algorithm more, and then more of that similar content that was mistakenly taken down is going to get taken down. I think that is exactly what’s happening now.” Facebook and YouTube, however, both deny this is possible. Facebook says it regularly retrains its algorithms to avoid this happening. In a statement, YouTube said: “decisions made by human reviewers help to improve the accuracy of our automated flagging systems.”

But Kayyali says there are signs that, for Arabic content especially, the way these algorithms work could be having a detrimental effect. Currently, Islamic extremist content from the Middle East probably makes up the bulk of training datasets, says Kayyali — though there’s no way to know for sure, because the platforms don’t share that information. It means that other Arabic content — like a video of the aftermath of a bombing, where the uploader has blamed “ISIS” in the accompanying text, for example — is also at risk of removal. “We have consistently seen Facebook and YouTube take down documentation of protests from the Arabic speaking world,” Kayyali says.

Despite the human toll of content moderation, conflict monitors say one way to make sure this content is kept online is for the social networks to hire more content moderators, and ensure they are paid and treated just as well as other staff. But both Facebook and YouTube are moving in the other direction — partly out of recognition that content moderation can be a demanding and emotionally damaging job, partly because computers are faster, and partly because running an algorithm is cheaper than employing skilled humans. “This technology is showing a lot of promise, and in some cases we are now even able to detect and remove some harmful content automatically, without human review,” Erin Saltman, Facebook’s EMEA counter-terrorism policy manager, said in a statement to TIME. That’s the case, for example, with reuploads of known extremist content. But when algorithms flag content which has never been seen before, Facebook and YouTube both say it is always routed to a human moderator, who makes a final decision on whether it should be removed.

That’s because Facebook’s policies allow some types of violence and extremism but not others — meaning decisions on whether to take content down is often based on cultural context. Has a video of an execution been shared by its perpetrators to spread fear? Or by a citizen journalist to ensure the wider world sees a grave human rights violation? A moderator’s answer to those questions could mean that of two identical videos, one remains online and the other is taken down. “This technology can’t yet effectively handle everything that is against our rules,” Saltman said. “Many of the decisions we have to make are complex and involve decisions around intent and cultural nuance which still require human eye and judgement.”

In this balancing act, it’s Facebook’s army of human moderators — many of them outsourced contractors — who carry the pole. And sometimes, they lose their footing. After several of Eye on Alhasakah’s posts were flagged by algorithms and humans alike, a Facebook moderator wrongly decided the page should be banned entirely for sharing violent videos in order to praise them — a violation of Facebook’s rules on violence and extremism, which state that some content can remain online if it is newsworthy, but not if it encourages violence or valorizes terrorism. The nuance, Facebook representatives told TIME, is important for balancing freedom of speech with a safe environment for its users — and keeping Facebook on the right side of government regulations.

Facebook’s set of rules on the topic reads like a gory textbook on ethics: beheadings, decomposed bodies, throat-slitting and cannibalism are all classed as too graphic, and thus never allowed; neither is dismemberment — unless it’s being performed in a medical setting; nor burning people, unless they are practicing self-immolation as an act of political speech, which is protected. Moderators are given discretion, however, if violent content is clearly being shared to spread awareness of human rights abuses. “In these cases, depending on how graphic the content is, we may allow it, but we place a warning screen in front of the content and limit the visibility to people aged 18 or over,” said Saltman. “We know not everyone will agree with these policies and we respect that.”

But civilian journalists operating in the heat of a civil war don’t always have time to read the fine print. And conflict monitors say it’s not enough for Facebook and YouTube to make all the decisions themselves. “Like it or not, people are using these social media platforms as a place of permanent record,” says Woods. “The social media sites don’t get to choose what’s of value and importance.”

#Blogger

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itsfinancethings · 5 years ago

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April 11, 2020 at 08:00AM

But days later, the videos had disappeared from the Internet. Facebook had banned his page.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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biofunmy · 5 years ago

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Navigating the New Pickup System at LAX

Good morning.

(If you don’t already get California Today by email, here’s the sign-up.)

Few things unite Californians — or really anyone who’s ever been to LAX — quite like complaining about traffic at LAX.

Last week, though, travelers were introduced to a new part of the Los Angeles International Airport experience that has sent the usual griping into overdrive.

Search “LAX-it” on Twitter and you’d think some sort of Thunderdome had opened just east of Terminal 1. The words “chaos” and “nightmare” appear frequently.

But, no: LAX-it — pronounced, for what it’s worth, “L.A. exit” — is just the expansive new lot where you’ll have to catch your Lyft, Uber or taxi, since almost all curbside ride-share and taxi pickups are now banned.

The move, airport officials have said, is part of plans to alleviate traffic as construction continues on an automated people mover that’s set to be running by 2023 — ideally well ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

Predictably, LAX-it’s opening days were rough. The Los Angeles Times reported that travelers and drivers were enraged by hourlong wait times and mass confusion on Tuesday, the lot’s opening day.

Shortly thereafter, Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that runs LAX, apologized for the delays and announced that it was adding more shuttles, more signage and more staff members to help move the lines along.

On Sunday, after having stepped off an early-morning flight from Florida, I joined the wandering hordes. I survived.

When I was somewhere over Texas, I checked the airport’s Twitter, which has started posting average wait times for Lyfts, Ubers and taxis. Waits were just a few minutes, but lengthened as the day wore on.

Getting to the lot was straightforward enough. Outside the baggage claim doors, a green shuttle arrived within about a minute. The drive through the central terminal loop to the lot took about 10 minutes.

In the lot itself, workers chirpily offered water bottles and instructions. Two food trucks were open nearby, though most people were heading straight for the cab lines. A few lingered under lime green umbrellas on benches, charging their phones at kiosks.

I ran into Michael Christensen, the airport’s deputy executive director of operations and maintenance, near where handlers had posted up with Eve and The Dude, a pair of gorgeous English Setters working as therapy dogs.

Mr. Christensen told me that conditions had improved significantly since Thursday night, but that staff members were tracking wait times closely and adjusting traffic lanes to better keep things moving.

He emphasized that traffic was moving through the upper level drop-off areas — where ride-share drivers previously picked up passengers — about 35 percent faster.

And although LAX officials consulted with managers who had implemented similar systems at San Francisco International Airport and La Guardia Airport, Mr. Christensen said that “an operation this big is unique.”

As such, he said, frustration wasn’t unexpected.

“We’re monitoring social media,” he said, “which takes a strong stomach.”

Still, Chance Bonner, a 39-year-old from San Antonio, said that the chaos seemed more organized than the last time he’d landed at LAX about a month ago.

“This is easy compared to driving in L.A.,” he said with a grin.

By the time I’d finished talking with travelers at about 1 p.m., I stood in line for about 15 minutes before I was matched with a Lyft driver. (Unlike at SFO or La Guardia, riders are matched with a driver using a PIN — essentially allowing travelers to move through on a first-come, first-served basis.)

For his part, my driver described the situation as “a mess,” but one he said had improved since last week.

About a half an hour later, we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 110 freeway, anyway.

Here’s the airport’s LAX-it guide, complete with contact information if you have questions. Good luck.

Here’s what else you may have missed over the weekend

We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the president also made a threat to withhold federal wildfire aid that was almost identical to one he made last year after the deadly Camp fire.

Mr. Newsom responded to the president on Twitter, saying: “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.”

Read more wildfire coverage:

The dust-up comes not long after Mr. Newsom described a paradox hamstringing California’s efforts to address climate change. The president, he said, “is doing everything right to respond to these disasters and everything wrong to address what’s happening to cause them.” [The New York Times]

The Maria fire, which prompted evacuations and burned thousands of acres in Ventura County, was 50 percent contained on Sunday. And all evacuation orders were lifted. [The Ventura County Star]

See the moment the Kincade fire exploded via a growing network of wildfire cameras. [The New York Times]

Also, here’s more about how scientists started that camera network. [The New York Times]

In other news

After five people were killed in a shooting at a Halloween Party in Orinda last week, Airbnb said it was taking steps to remove “party houses” from the platform. [The New York Times]

Representative Adam Schiff, who has become a kind of hero in his district stretching from West Hollywood to the San Gabriel Mountains, is finding himself in the spotlight as he leads the impeachment inquiry into the president. The president, meanwhile, has sought to make him a punching bag. [The New York Times]

In Silicon Valley, like anywhere, real estate is power. So who owns the land? And can they fix the housing crisis? Explore those questions in this big feature. [The Mercury News]

Lori Loughlin pleaded not guilty to new charges in the college admissions scandal case, signaling that she and her husband plan to continue fighting the accusations. By contrast, Felicity Huffman has already completed her two-week sentence in a Dublin prison known for its deluxe features. [The New York Times]

The climate activist Greta Thunberg took fossil fuel companies to task and rallied young people to fight climate change in Los Angeles on Friday. [The Associated Press]

Reflections

Support groups and studies have started to focus on mealtime for widows (now used by experts as a gender-neutral term) who are mourning the loss of a spouse. [The New York Times]

Fair warning: Reading this, about the rise of Reformation, a born-in-L.A. clothing brand for a specific subset of millennial women, will make you feel both kind of bad and very seen, if you happen to be a member of that population. [The New Yorker]

California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: [email protected]. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here.

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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kaleyamdarenawz32insurance-blog · 5 years ago

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nancygduarteus · 6 years ago

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America’s Ugliest Apples and Carrots Have Ignited a Food War

Do you know what baby carrots actually are?

For me, the baby-carrot jig was up a couple years ago. I’m not sure what I’d believed about them previously: Were they actual babies? Were they a “baby” breed of small adult carrots? I certainly hadn’t understood them to be carrot nuggets, whittled out of big, ugly carrots that many people wouldn’t buy in their natural state.

I’ve never lived in a world that wanted me to think about how the carrots got made. Since the early 1980s, scores of smaller American agricultural companies have been driven out of business or gobbled up by Big-Ag conglomerates. That I hadn’t thought much about my little carrots meant the system had worked as intended for the type of consumer I am (affluent, urban) and helped obscure the leviathan of the American food-supply chain, which includes everything from commercial growers and processors like Dole and Kraft Heinz down to local farmers’ markets and food banks.

But as shoppers change, so must the systems that serve them. Younger, socially conscious Americans and their concerns about sustainability have turned some unflattering attention toward the food industry. One of the most popularly cited problems is the amount of produce that goes entirely unconsumed in the developed world. By some estimations, it’s more than half. To combat that, a new class of for-profit start-ups has emerged: ugly-produce boxes. Companies like Misfits Market, Imperfect Produce, and Hungry Harvest aim to fill the logistical gaps and provide new markets for growers by buying up farmers’ “ugly” or excess produce and shipping it directly to your doorstep, often by subscription. They’re the rescue dogs of vegetation.

If successful, ugly-produce companies could help with the vanishingly thin margins faced by smaller-scale growers and expand access to fresh food. But not everyone is buying it: Food-justice advocates argue that profit-based solutions are unequipped to do battle against food inequality, and that even well-meaning companies could do real harm to community organizations. Depending on who you ask, ugly produce is either the salvation or destruction of America’s food system. The reality of its potential impact might be a little more complicated, with start-ups profiting from the food system’s structural problems while also providing real, material good for working-class people.

It seems as though “ugly” produce companies didn’t anticipate the criticism they’ve received. On a fundamental level, some researchers question whether Americans’ understanding of food waste as a crisis actually reflects the problem at hand. Last week on Twitter, the crop scientist Sarah Taber wrote a long thread arguing that ugly produce isn’t the problem or solution. “The food system is a hot mess but using ugly produce is one thing it’s actually really good at,” she says in the thread. In her estimation, my carrot nuggets are proof of concept: Odd produce might not go to Whole Foods, but much of it still does go to stores that serve working-class people, or gets sent to processors who turn it into salsa or apple juice. (Taber did not return a request for comment.)

The vast majority of American produce does indeed make it to a packinghouse for processing and distribution, but farmers point out that efficiency varies wildly depending on what kind of producer you are. According to David Earle, the business manager for the farm collective Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative, in Pennsylvania, around 20 percent of the produce from his organization’s small growers doesn’t meet stringent grocery-store or restaurant standards. “If they don’t sell because we don’t have an outlet and we have too much product, they’d likely just go bad,” he says.

Dana Gunders, a food-sustainability researcher who wrote the Natural Resources Defense Council’s 2012 report on food waste, says that Tuscarora’s problem is not unique for growers of its size. “You wind up with a situation at times where it actually does not make financial sense to harvest the product,” she says. Tuscarora has started distributing its excess produce through the ugly-produce-box company Misfits Market, and Earle says it’s been a boon to the business. “It’s good for us. It’s good for the farmer who’s not getting nothing for the product,” he says. “Misfits Market gave us an outlet to move these products and not just feed them to the cows.”

Other farmers are less enthusiastic. Terra Organics, based in Washington, shut down at the end of last year, and its owners cited the emergence of ugly-produce companies as among the reasons it was going out of business. In an interview with The New Republic, Imperfect Produce, the start-up that serves Terra Organics’ former community, conceded that it works with industrial-scale producers like Dole to source food, which critics say can make these start-ups an ally of exactly the food system that creates waste and hunger in the first place. If affluent consumers can feel as if they’re making ethical purchases while enjoying the savings and convenience of wonky vegetables delivered from commercial producers, they might be less likely to buy from local producers and cooperatives.

“People have been struggling for a couple decades now to bring their food system under local control,” says Eric Holt-Giménez, the executive director of the food-justice organization Food First. “There’s no indication [the ugly-produce movement] helps to do that at all.” Holt-Giménez questions whether it would even be possible to run an ugly-produce business with the kind of ethical standards that would benefit the greater good. “They’ve got to grow, as start-ups. They can’t change that,” he says. “They can’t think about a shared, more cooperative, more collective business model with communities.”

Misfits Market, at least, seems intent on trying to do things the right way. Abhi Ramesh, the company’s founder and CEO, says that his company doesn’t work with Big Ag and instead targets local, organic producers for its purchasing. Misfits gives them access to a network they can use not just to sell more produce, but also to reach consumers who might not otherwise have access to their food. According to a 2009 report by the United States Department of Agriculture, more than 20 million Americans live in food deserts, which means they lack meaningful access to affordable, high-quality, fresh foods; the disparity disproportionately affects black and Latino populations. “The reasons those people don’t have access today is because it’s not cost-effective to service them,” Ramesh says. “So our big challenge from a business perspective is how we figure out a way to service them in an economically feasible way.”

Critics often dismiss sentiments like this as sly, do-gooder marketing. Most ugly-produce companies deliver only to select zip codes in major urban areas, which is yet another barrier to the historically deprived. “It’s assumed people who end up buying these boxes are wealthier people who want to feel good about saving the environment,” Ramesh acknowledges. But he says that the majority of his company’s customers don’t fit that stereotype, largely because it services every zip code in the states in which it operates. “They’re older, they’re on fixed incomes,” Ramesh says of Misfit’s customers. “They may not be on food stamps, but they end up falling into a socioeconomic bucket where they need access to affordable produce.” Ramesh says the company is also looking into ways to accept federal SNAP benefits, which help the lowest-income Americans afford fresh foods. (Misfits Market doesn’t publicly release sales data, including consumer demographics.)

Some food-justice advocates encourage ugly-produce start-ups to go even further. In December, Phat Beets Produce, an Oakland-based organization that provides community-supported affordable produce, released a petition with a set of demands for an ugly-produce competitor, Imperfect Produce. Phat Beets, which did not respond to a request for comment, wants the company and those like it to provide in-person payment and pickup options to serve people without access to banking services, coordinate free deliveries to food-justice organizations and food banks, and limit grower partnerships to those who comply with farm-worker labor standards.

Meanwhile, other community food organizations have found it possible to work productively with ugly-food companies, despite worries that their success means diverting food away from people in need. Kait Bowdler, the director of sustainability for Philabundance, Philadelphia’s largest community food bank, says the two start-ups that service the area haven’t created any issues for her organization. “We have bigger problems we should be worried about,” Bowdler says. Philabundance hasn’t seen any drop-off in donations from growers since Misfits Market and Hungry Harvest became popular in the city. And normalizing the consumption of less-than-pristine produce can help alleviate the shame that some people feel when they need to get food from the bank, Bowdler says. “You can’t imagine how many different strategies we’ve had to talk about to make it clear to people that we’re recovering and rescuing food, not feeding people waste.”

Where Philabundance has seen recent donation shortages is from grocery stores. Bowdler credits that in part to stores’ expanding prepared-foods selections, which appeal to younger shoppers and allow retailers to reuse produce internally once it can no longer be sold in its original form. According to Gunder, the food-sustainability researcher, that dynamic is also connected to America’s food-waste problem, but it comes on the opposite end of the system. “Fruits and vegetables are the most wasted products in people’s homes,” she says. Based on her research, that’s where most waste happens overall.

Between kitchen-skill loss among younger Americans and the ever-dwindling opportunity to spend time preparing food, Millennials just don’t cook very much, even if they intend to. As a result, a lot of food goes uneaten for reasons that sales-based start-ups can’t touch. At least in the immediate future, that could present a bigger obstacle to feeding the poor than a disruption from ugly-produce boxes.

Moreover, just because ugly-produce start-ups aren’t doing all of the good doesn’t mean they can’t do some of it. Maybe both things are true: These businesses, if well run, can serve genuine needs for farmers and consumers that current agribusiness can’t. They’re also trying to retrofit a for-profit solution onto a supply chain that’s classist, racist, and opposed to the integrity of community-based food systems. The only real, long-term answer to those problems might be to rebuild the American food system as a whole. But maybe venture capital can be used to feed some people in the meantime.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/01/ugly-produce-startups-food-waste/581182/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 6 years ago

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America’s Ugliest Apples and Carrots Have Ignited a Food War

Do you know what baby carrots actually are?

Article source here:The Atlantic

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hoffman23nunez-blog · 6 years ago

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The Debate Over Fallout 76

The 30-Second Trick for Fallout 76 For a fully-priced title from a substantial studio, however, the deficiency of quality is really unforgivable. High Tech car racing tracks bring plenty of revenue to a community. There's a terminal to select what type of ammo you want. It's essential to note this is not actually a glitch or bug, but instead an exploit. Owing to that, here is what you have to know before diving in to a server with 24 other survivors! Rounding out the latest update is a couple of balance tweaks, in addition to a very long collection of bug fixes. Blowing things up has never been simpler. It's simple to miss stuff similar to this, though. The 2nd worst thing is to waste time gathering the erroneous supplies in an effort to receive prepared. A Secret Weapon for Fallout 76 Speaking of fighting, prepare for that to used in conjunction with an unholy blend of fascination and abhorrence once it regards the new Fallout 76 monsters. Fallout has an aesthetic meant to be digested over a long length of time, which may not do the job for new players searching for a strong first impression. Some games can only be obtained on specific platforms, but there's a bit of something for everybody here. How to Get Started with Fallout 76? Or you may set up a shop. You ought to choose an EB Games store at which you'll pickup your purchase. Players will need to kill the enemies guarding these missiles in order to acquire a distinctive code. Things You Won't Like About Fallout 76 and Things You Will Though, predictably, not everybody is happy. Someone put plenty of work into it to make it seem nice and neat. Love in the office can be extremely tough for all concerned. Where to Find Fallout 76 The seven-minute video goes through different items within the room, and a few of the suits you'll be able to view. You have the base game alongside many different in-game bonus items. Eurogamer reports several regions of the room continue to be accessible, but players are not able to interact with the items within them. What You Need to Know About Fallout 76 While the procedure for unlocking perk cards is different, the best way to use them is also quite different. If you have the time then please visit the website to see the real statistics. Additionally, you might also use the game's new photo mode during the creation process to better see the way your character looks, along with snap some shots you'll be able to share on social networking. Fallout 76 Explained At any rate, since you can likely guess, a good bit of controversy has erupted over the topic. If you save a number of each food group, odds are it will all go bad before getting the opportunity to eat it. Obviously it is not feasible to experience each and every change, but the most significant changes come in the shape of performance and stability, where Bethesda notes that various client and server-side changes are made to enhance the total stability of the game and boost the functioning of the game across quite a few end-user systems. What Does Fallout 76 Mean? Seasoned Fallout players ought to be aware there's no workshop stash. In Fallout 76, all the human characters are different players. To figure out the importance of that number and everything else you should know about Fallout 76, keep reading. Bethesda has announced the most recent game in the Fallout series and fans are left with plenty of questions. Order of Mysteries is among the factions you are able to join in Fallout 76. If you would like to try out this new title then you are going to have to pre-order Fallout 76. Fallout 76 is only a tremendous mess and a disappointment generally, and I have zero idea precisely what the group of Bethesda thought when they made this awful game. Bethesda, meanwhile, has grown into one of a number of key publishers to have a strong interest in the Nintendo Switch. It has since confirmed that they are not planning on changing about said bag. There were still several things that Bethesda had promised that it wasn't likely to deliver. Essentially, players may choose whether they wish to take part in Area Chat or not. Currently, there's no way to register for the beta on Bethesda's website or societal media accounts. The Demise of Fallout 76 You are going to want to make certain that the individuals who do the hiring for you are implementing a system which will lead to employees who last. Mainiero suggests that you could think about writing a contingency plan with your partner about the way the relationship will be managed by each of you and how it'll be resolved if it ends. Employed as a team has an impact on how you get around too. For quite a few, the endgame is the actual game. Fallout is a string of post-apocalyptic role-playing video games. You will be able to play the entire core Fallout 4 game in VR. You're just going to get to purchase the game to find out how cool it is for yourself. It plays at a comfortable pace just like a single-player game, except now you can enjoy it with friends if you want. Imagine, you've been playing a game for hours and just as you are just about to finish a level once the game freezes up. There were a run of game-breaking bugs, in addition to entire parts of the game that were completely unplayable. Lots of the bugs weren't quite game breaking. Make certain you update often since the majority of the time a patch not only makes your gaming experience more enjoyable, additionally, it contains some new characteristics that boost the game itself. The 5-Minute Rule for Fallout 76 When you're in the exact same level band, think about moving to the next hunting ground a military base named Huntersville. Upon leaving Vault 76, you're going to be granted your own CAMP. There'll be nuclear missile websites on the map `which you can do anything you want with'. The Nuiances of Fallout 76 Any contribution that could reduce costs has the capacity of raising profits, and raising the rise and survival of a company. You may get your own nukes! Ensure it is illegal, and make a black market in an instant. You and friends and family can construct a survival settlement with each other, help different players, or even get into some type of conflict with different players you run into. Indeed, the dearth of NPCs to speak to means you do not have quests where you are able to actually make decisions and gain or get rid of karma points. For somebody who's just attempting to play the game the way it's supposed to be played, it is often quite demoralizing to encounter players who obtained powerful items from these types of exploits.

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alettertotheuniverse-blog1 · 6 years ago

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Hong Kong - Macau on a Budget: Our Php9,694 Itinerary

Hong Kong Disneyland is a childhood dream. Anybody who says they're too cool for that can suck it. Plus, it’s just a ferry-ride away from Macau!

Living in the Philippines, Hong Kong is so accessible and is a great first out of the country destination. It's just almost 2 hours away by plane, there is no time difference, and there are no shortages of fellow Filipinos you could talk to. It's also only my second out of the country.

Last year was a month-long backpacking in Thailand with no itinerary whatsoever and this time it's a 4D3N HK-Macau escapade... so believe me when I say that, to me, this was too short a trip and that I got too intense and excited with the planning. For details on how we budgeted our trip and if you're trying to determine how to know if you need an iVenture Hong Kong and Macau Attractions Pass or not, head to this post:

How to Determine if an iVenture Hong Kong and Macau Attraction Pass is Right for You

What is an iVenture Hong Kong and Macau Attractions Pass? Check this link:

KLOOK: iVenture HK-Macau Pass

ENTRY:

Filipinos can stay in Hong Kong for up to 14 days without having to apply for a visa. This does not mean you can always simply just waltz through. To learn more about how we got stopped by an immigration officer upon entry and how we got through it, this post might be helpful:

Hong Kong Entry : Got Stopped by an Immigration Officer: http://alettertotheuniverse.com/post/175956612343/hong-kong-entry-got-stopped-by-an-immigration

Arrival:

After getting through the checks, although excited to hop on a bus, it was first things first for us!

For this trip, we pre-ordered the following essentials through KLOOK in advance:

Octopus Card

HK's transportation system is extremely impressive (I couldn't shut up about it during our whole stay.) The metrorail system is easily accessible, connects you seamlessly to where you need to go, and there's a train, like, every 2 minutes so it's rarely cramped.

We knew we'd be going around a lot and would be using the MTR mainly, so we decided to get the Octopus card which is basically like our beep card wherein you top it up pre-trip and simply swipe it when your ready to board the train. It is also widely accepted by the buses so you will no longer have to wait in line to get a ticket or look for spare change.

With our itinerary, we approximately used up about $150HKD (Php1022) Octopus card top up.

You can get the Octopus Card at the airport for $100 plus a $50 deposit (you get this back when you return the card), so a total of Php1022 as well - not including any credit though. We know we wouldn't be able to return the card as our return flight will be from Macau, so we got ourselves a discounted one from KLOOK. It's at Php641 and comes with a $50HKD top up already.

The link is below if you want to check it out:

KLOOK: Octopus Card

4G SIM CARD

I NEED MAPS! All the time. I'm just lost without it, literally. *wink*

And ofcourse, I need to stay connected with my travel buddies so we got ourselves a 4GSIM (China Mobile network) off KLOOK simply because I've learned that sim cards sold at the airport are wayyy overpriced. Plus securing one beforehand is just so convenient. The card we got is the 5day 4G SIM priced at P361 and would give you 1.5GB 4G Data plus $18HKD load. Was the 1.5GB enough for our stay? Yes, it was and I didn't even have to restrict my use. Of course, I didn't bingewatch series or anything and our AirBnb had Wifi anyway. But it was enough for Maps, Google, and your social media needs while on the go. Was the internet fast? YES. Wherever you go. Link is below if you want to check it out:

KLOOK: HK 4G SIM

Was it easy to pickup: Yes. The voucher comes with specific instructions on where to pick it up at the HK airport. The sim and the Octopus card can be picked up on the same booth.

Accommodations:

Unless you are on a luxury trip, you cannot be picky with accommodations. The rooms just aren't spacious to be honest, especially the bathrooms. But that's just how it is at Hong Kong. It costs around $300HKD a night for a double room.

We got one at the Jordan area where they also sell cheap pasalubongs

Anywhere is a good place in my opinion as long as it's close to the MTR.

Now that that's out of the way, we finally get to the part I'm most excited to write about: the places and activities!

Ngong Ping 360

We board the bus off the aiport at around 9:30am and first went to Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car.

Basically, to get to Lantau Island, we wanted to ride the cable car which goes over several mountains and gives you a beautiful Hong Kong city view from the top.

Our choice was to experience both the standard cabin and the crystal cabin (wherein you can also see the view through the floor of the cabin). We got a discounted ticket from KLOOK for this as well which costs P1139.

Link below:

KLOOK: Ngong Ping 360

You may also ride a bus to get to Lantau Island if you are not into the cable car route, so don't worry.

Ngong Ping Village, Lantau Island

In this island is the Ngong Ping village which is where you'll be dropped off by the cable car. It's a dainty village showing off beautiful, traditional architecture and cobblestone streets. Their 7-11 store design is so cute. In the square, you'll see a carabao roaming around

Tip: You may drop your bags off a counter as soon as you get off the cable car. Just ask around for it, it shouldn't be hard to find.

Tian Tan Buddha

After taking (quite a lot) of photos of the village, we went to see the Tian Tan Buddha which was atop a 250-step staicase. To me, there's really something about big Buddhas that is extremely humbling and calming. Once at the top, you'll get a great view of the island and you'll see the intricate details of the Tian Tan Buddha. Keep in mind to be respectful though as some people are praying at the foot of the Buddha and at the square.

Drop by the Po Lin monastery as well if you have time. It's all in one area within walking distance. If you are into a formal tour with a pro tour guide and everything, the below link may prove to be useful:

KLOOK: Lantau Island Day Tour

The Peak

We left at noon to catch the KLOOK rep at Central Station who will take us to the tram which is also something new to me (in one day, I already gained new transpo experiences: cable car and tram).

This was a really cool experience - one of my favorites.

We got to go up the side of the mountain on a really old but still well kept train, while looking out the window into an amazing view. Once we got there, we directly went unto the top of the Sky Terrace 428 (the actual Peak) and was greeted by the best, highest view of the Hong Kong cityscape.

This is what we have availed for PHP625:

KLOOK: The Peak Fast Track Combo

Heading out, you'll pass by the 3D Art Museum. I'm not if it is always for free bit it was that day.

Other activities in this tower ar Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and Chocolate Art Museum.

We were supposed to go out that night but we were so tiiiired, we decided to simply check into our AirBnb and have dinner around the Jordan area.

We ate this delicious spicy squid dish that was around $120HKD which is a bit pricey as per most good dishes at Hong Kong are. Good for 2-person sharing though.

I tried to stop multiplying my expenses by 7 but it was just so hard to stop converting HKD to PHP, lol. Checkout other dishes we got to try within our stay:

Disneyland

Day 2 was a full day at Disneyland. It was every bit amazing as imagined.

The Ironman experience, It's a Small World, and the Magic Manor are my top 3 favorite rides.

There was a tribute to Mickey that night wherein they projected Mickey clips across the whole street making the building walls come alive. The closing parade was magical. It was just epic.

I made a whole separate post just in tribute to it so there, check it out and feel my feelings with me:

A Day of Disney Magic

Man Mo Temple

Day 3 was our cultural day. Also, all the places we visited that day didn't involve entrance fees. Yay!

There's a lot of free things to do in every country. Just walk around a city and experience the local life.

It was such a unique experience to be inside this temple. Every corner felt so... spiritual? And eerie, but in a mesmerizing way. It may be because of the incense, the lighting, and the hanging lanterns... but it's so hard to describe unless you get to experience it (so go experience it!)

I also got my fortune told for $30HKD which is cool to say and all, but really it was only 2 minutes and less exciting. Hahahaha. He just told me something about not quitting my job until September. Meh. I wasn't planning to anyway.

I mean, do this for the experience, like I did, but if you are on a really tight budget, you won't miss a lot by skipping this.

Kowloon Walled City

We were supposed to tour around the infamous walled city but during our stay there was a typhoon (signal warning number 1) so we went to take cover instead for a few hours at Chi Lin Nunnery. Guess I'll just have to come back to HK next time for a tour of Kowloon's walled city. :'c

Chi Lin Nunnery

The most peaceful place I've ever visited as of date (the rain helped with the cozy ambiance, I guess). Like the Man Mo Temple, it's really hard to explain the effect of these places. There's just calm and spirituality in the air. And the design of each corner of this place is wonderful and intricate.

Again, it's a place of worship for some people there so be extra cautious and respectful.

Victoria Harbour: Symphony of Lights Show

It's at 8pm every night!

We watched from the Avenue of Stars (we were literally running to catch it on time).

Sat beside the bay to watch the sky and the buildings light up.

You definitely must not miss this!!! I love Hong Kong at night and this is part of the top reasons why.

See my post dedicated simply to HK's after sunset magic:

Hong Kong at Night

This was our last day at HK so we went around Jordan's night market to buy pasalubong and to eat.

I'm not sure why Filipinos say things are cheap at HK so it's a great place to shop around but from my experience, things... weren't cheap?

I kept converting it to PHP, so to me a $100HKD blouse is equivalent to PHP600+. Don't they do that? Or have I just not found the right shopping places? Do let me know.

Macau

We only had a few hours stay in Macau and the typhoon warning was raised to signal number 2 so... we were't able to get to the place I was looking forward to the most: the Ruins of St. Paul.

But here's how we spent the few hours we had:

We boarded the Cotaijet Ferry at 10am.

The trip was about an hour and the transaction was actually hassle-free.

Tip: We got a PHP1091 discount voucher from KLOOK and we exchanged it for a ticket the day prior (we did this on Day 3) - to reserve a 10am slot.

For more info about the voucher, here's the link:

KLOOK: Hong Kong - Macau Cotaijet Ferry

Tip: Upon arriving, we boarded one of the free buses. These are everywhere and are provided by the hotels even if you do not check into them or are not availing anything from them. You won't have to pay for transpo honestly if you simply want to see the tourist spots. These buses will give you a free ride.

Tip Again: Cotaijet personnels will offer you free discount vouchers upon arriving (they just hand them out when you walk by). TAKE THOSE. You'll get loads of discount coupons and we even got a free pass to the Parisian's Eiffle Tower viewing deck which would have cost us $100HKD otherwise.

Good to know: No need to change your money. Macau widely accepts HKD.

The Parisian

The hotel interior is a tourist spot in itself. It's just grand.

The ceiling paintings are mesmerizing. Plus the staff are extremely accomodating.

Good to know: $20HKD temporary lockers are available at the lobby. Only accepts exact cash though. If you don't have $20 bills/coins, head to the Casino or Main Reception to have your bills exchanged.

At the Parisian, you can visit their replica of the Eiffel Tower. It includes a small tour of the history of the construction of the tower and a viewing deck.

At the viewing deck, there is also a recreation of the the Love Locks bridge.

It's $60HKD to get your lock or, you know, just bring your own.

So if you're like me who can't afford Paris yet, this place is pretty amazing and is the best part of my Macau stay.

The Venetian

This hotel is just a passageway away from the Parisian. You won't even have to go outside again.

Have you ever been to the Venice Grand Canal in Mckinley Hill, BGC? It's like that. It's basically the same, really.

It's like Venice streets inside a mall. It even has a moving sky projected in the ceiling. (In my opinion, the one here in BGC looks better so if you haven't been, you should.)

Tip: Try the $10HKD cheesecake. It's nice.

Hope this was helpful. If it was, do drop me a line in the comments or messages.

I hope you get to visit HK and Macau! If you already did, what are your favorite memories?

Extremely fortunate to be experiencing this,

#Hong Kong #macau #travel #klook #klookph #ASIA #itinerary

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itsfinancethings · 5 years ago

Link

But days later, the videos had disappeared from the Internet. Facebook had banned his page.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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