#and todays focus is micro aggressions and how to address them and call them out kindly and correctly
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lupismaris · 1 year ago
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Nothing says "I'm the only openly/visibly/known trans member of our division" quite like having to take a Xanax before a mandatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training with the crew to avoid the inevitable panic attack the joint exercises
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today-only-happens-once · 4 years ago
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clarity
Word count: 5463
Summary:  Hakoda had been hearing rumors about the Fire Lord's son for years. That doesn't mean he is ready when the truth finally comes to light... especially when the truth only confirms the worst. Companion piece to “out of focus” but can be read separately. 
Warnings: injury/burns, angst, some mentions of trauma and PTSD, canonical child abuse/mutilation, Sokka gets angry protective and yells a little, blink-and-you-miss-it mention of nausea, please let me know if I missed anything. 
A/N: Turns out, I really wanted to explore Hakoda’s POV of the events in “out of focus”. So much so that not only did I write this, but’s longer than the original. Woops. Hope you enjoy it!
Read on AO3.
...
His son is good at many things, Hakoda thinks, but his poker face is not one of them. 
He’d had never been particularly good at it, if Hakoda is being honest. He’d usually been able to tell with one glance when Sokka was at fault for something breaking and would blame Katara, and Kya had been even better at reading the micro-expressions of their son. Sokka is older now—and in more ways that Hakoda is comfortable with, he carries those extra years around like a weight on his shoulders—but he still hasn’t quite mastered the art of subtlety. It was something he’d need to work on if he wanted to be chief of the Southern Water Tribe one day. 
Sokka shifts in his seat across from him, his brows pinched slightly in evident annoyance. Hakoda sees the shared glance between his son and the Fire Lord. Zuko’s mouth twitches in something like amusement. 
“I want immediate release of all war prisoners,” the Earth Kingdom ambassador, Bashi, beside Sokka demands.
Hakoda inclines his head. “I second that. I have men in those prisons that haven’t seen their family in a decade.”
Hakoda couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Two years apart from his children had caused him to feel like he’d already missed out on so much of their lives. The idea of going five times that without any news from the outside… Suffice it to say that Hakoda did not envy those men.
“Of course,” the Fire Lord says, but his voice is nearly swallowed by the loud demand down the table, “Absolutely not!”
The hard glare that Fire Lord Zuko sends down the table at the Fire Nation Admiral makes Hakoda grateful that he is not on the receiving end of it. “Admiral, people who were arrested as prisoners of war have no need to remain so after the war has ended.” Zuko meets Hakoda’s gaze, the heat in his glare lifting at the redirection of attention. “I’ll draft that mandate tonight and will ensure its circulation as soon as possible.”
The Fire Lord—dressed in the traditional royal robes and his hair pulled into a top knot—is a stark contrast to the first time Hakoda had met him back in Boiling Rock. At the time, Zuko had been Fire Nation public enemy number 2 behind Aang. The tattered red tunic of Fire Nation prison uniforms had hung off his thin, borderline-malnourished frame. He looks better now, a little. Zuko is still lean, but not quite as gaunt as he’d looked in the Fire Nation prison. Hakoda’s biggest concern when it came to the Fire Lord’s well-being these days was the dark circles around his eyes that, though he tries to hide it, indicate too many sleepless nights.
“This is an outrage!” The admiral slams his fist against the table, leaping to his feet.
Hakoda feels his jaw clench in frustration. He has little patience for men who try to assert themselves through aggression and yelling rather than calm rationality. Even so, it doesn’t surprise him, exactly. Hakoda had been around long enough to know that Fire Nation men had long been taught there was power through anger, and to wield it as they see fit.
Zuko rises to meet his feet, slowly and deliberately. “Admiral--”
“Where is the justice for the Fire Nation families whose sons and daughters were slaughtered by those criminals?”
Hakoda presses his hands together to keep them from curling into fists. Did the Admiral not realize just how many Fire Nation soldiers walked free after slaughtering  innocent people, let alone soldiers? Even the person who killed Kya--
“Admiral.”
“I remember a time when you cared about Fire Nation soldiers! And it’s hard to believe you’ve forgotten, seeing as you ought to be reminded every time you so much as look in the mirror--”
Hakoda frowns. The comment rings vague bells in his head, though he can’t remember why…
“Enough!” Zuko snaps sharply. “You will watch your tongue or you will be escorted out. You approach insubordination.”
“You are a child,” the admiral says, spitting the word child like it disgusts him, “though one that ought to know a thing or two about insubordination, given your father’s attempts to brand you with a permanent reminder of its consequences--”
“Warriors!”
“Then again, he always was twice the leader you never will be. Long live the Phoenix King!” 
Sokka is suddenly on his feet. “Zuko—!”
“Sokka—!”
Hakoda leaps up just as the admiral punches a fireball at the space between his son and the Fire Lord. His heart jumps to his throat, but Zuko is fast. He shoves Sokka’s shoulder down with one hand and dispels the fireball with the other. Hakoda leaps over his chair as he sees the glint of his son’s boomerang hook through the air. 
The admiral’s gaze locks onto him for a moment and Hakoda instinctively ducks, diving underneath a bolt of scorching flames. He feels the ground tremble, hears the roar of dying flames above him. Hakoda risks a glance towards his son just in time to see Zuko step in front of him, bending the burst of flames to split on either side of them, rather than hit Sokka straight on. 
The door ricochets open. Two Kyoshi Warriors spill into the room, and in a flurry of quick strikes, the admiral drops to the floor. Limp.
Bashi unbinds his feet with the bending from earlier—it’s only now that Hakoda realizes that tremble in the ground a moment ago had been earthbending—and the admiral hurls insults at Zuko as he’s dragged unceremoniously through the doors. 
The silence that follows echoes in the room. 
Hakoda takes a quick, calculating sweep of the room. Kovrik, the Northern Water Tribe ambassador, is wide-eyed but appears unharmed. Bashi is panting but standing upright. Sokka is hidden behind Zuko who shifts awkwardly in the silence.
He clears his throat. “Apologies for the, uh, disruption. It won’t happen again.” He looks, for all the world, genuinely apologetic. Embarrassed, even.
Which is foolish, Hakoda thinks. Zuko couldn’t reasonably be expected to have weeded out all of the Ozai sympathizers in a month. Ozai may have been one person but there was an entire ideology and system that allowed his tyranny in the first place. A sixteen-year-old couldn’t be asked to single-handedly dismantle it all, and certainly not so quickly. 
“It’s not your fault, Fire Lord Zuko,” he tells him. 
“I appreciate that, Chief Hakoda,” Zuko says. Behind him, Sokka sucks in a breath through his teeth and Hakoda feels his chest twinge in concern. He had fought in a war long enough to hear the pain laced through the noise. Zuko turns around to look at him, then turns back around sharply to address the room. “We will adjourn the meeting for today. We will reconvene tomorrow.”
Zuko hides it well, Hakoda thinks, but there’s an urgency to his words hidden behind a carefully constructed mask of stoicism that leaves no room for doubt in Hakoda’s mind. Sokka is hurt.
“But Fire Lord Zuko—”
“I think we could all use a breather, Kovrik,” Hakoda jumps in, not eager for another argument to break out. “Coming back tomorrow with a clear head is a good decision.” Besides, the sooner he can clear the room of other people, the sooner he could check on Sokka who Zuko was—almost protectively—keeping from view. 
“Yes,” Kovrick acquiesces, though Hakoda can tell he’s still not pleased. “Yes, I suppose that’s fair.”
Zuko nods his appreciation. Kovrik, Bashi, and the few other dignitaries that had been in the room bustle out the door. Hakoda waits until it’s latched shut behind them before he turns his full attention towards his son. Zuko has already turned his full attention to him, saying something in a low voice. 
Hakoda can sees the clench of his son’s jaw and the slight wince as he places his hand in Zuko’s. Hakoda steps up behind the Fire Lord, peering over his shoulder. His chest tightens a little in sympathy when he sees the blistering, angry red skin on the back of his son’s hand.
“Do you have anything that can help?” he asks of the Fire Lord, frowning. He thinks briefly of calling Kovrik back in before he remembers that the Northern Water Tribe’s men, even when benders, didn’t typically learn its healing abilities. 
“Yes, sir,” Zuko replies, not taking his gaze from Sokka’s hand as if he could heal it by staring at it hard enough. “Though it’s not quite as immediate as waterbending healers. But it should help with the pain and prevent infection. Follow me.”
Hakoda follows as Zuko guides Sokka by the elbow out the door of the meeting room and through a network of hallways. There’s something almost jarring about it to Hakoda. The image of the Fire Lord leading his Water Tribe son through the palace to get him help, rather than as a prisoner, has a part of Hakoda’s mind reeling. Sokka’s blue clothing stands out against the dark reds and blacks that adorn the walls and pillars around them.
How quickly times had changed.
Hakoda thinks back to the conversation in the meeting a few moments ago as he watches the back of Zuko’s head, moving quickly down the corridor with Sokka in tow. Rumors and propaganda about the Fire Nation, and especially about its leader, flew quickly amongst the ranks of soldiers in the war. It had been difficult to know fact from fiction, especially as it related to the royal family. 
A year ago—the memory comes crystal clear to Hakoda now—one of the men on his crew named Horrak had told him what he’d been certain was an exaggerated, hyperbolic story. Something about the Fire Lord and his thirteen-year-old son. On Tui and La, I swear it’s true. Heard it from the mouth of a Fire Nation soldier myself who was actually there.
He’s a tyrant and cruel, Hakoda had said, rolling his eyes because the idea was just… incomprehensible, but there’s no way Ozai would do that to his own flesh and blood. He’s too proud of his bloodline anyway. 
Zuko glances over his shoulder at Sokka, and Hakoda sees the angry scar across half of his face. The words of the admiral in the meeting whisper in the back of Hakoda’s mind in a way that makes his stomach turn. Your father’s attempts to brand you… Hakoda had thought that surely, surely, even Ozai had a line in the sand when it came to his own family. 
He’s less confident of that now.
Zuko says something to two of the guards stationed at the set of double doors that Hakoda doesn’t quite catch, and then slips through the door. Hakoda follows close behind. 
“Wait here,” Zuko says, and then vanishes through a door on the far side of the room.
Hakoda glances around the room. It was a bedroom, but Hakoda had a hard time believing it was Zuko’s. It seemed too simple of a room to belong to the Fire Lord. Then again, Zuko had been full of surprises from the very first time Hakoda had met him. 
He looks to his son, noticing the tight grimace to his face and the very slight sway and grabs the chair beside the bed to get his son to sit before he falls face first into the floor. 
“You had good reflexes in there,” Hakoda says. He’d dealt enough with injured Water Tribesmen to know that distraction was usually the best way to help them deal with the pain of a burn. He had no doubt that his son was no exception to that. 
“Lots of practice,” Sokka replies, obediently taking a seat. He hisses out another breath as his grip around the arms of the chair stretches the skin across the back of his hand. He swears under his breath.
“Easy,” Hakoda says softly, bracing a hand on his son’s back. 
The comment from his son makes his chest twist, but he can’t very well deny it. His son had seen more combat in the past year than he’d hoped he’d have to in his lifetime. Hakoda knows that it was an unreasonable expectation for his son to somehow be the exception to generations of pain. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Sokka would be able to handle the fight—Sokka always been able to hold his own—but could you blame a father for wanting to spare his son the experience of waking up from nightmares, haunted by the people he couldn’t save?
Hakoda dealt with that enough for the both of them.
“Wish Katara was here,” Sokka says. 
“I know,” Hakoda tells him. “Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s coming to Caldera for a while. She’s still in Ba Sing Se with Aang.” She and Aang were working on their own negotiations of reparations and treatises. Caldera was only one location of many that were in the middle of such conversations.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sokka sighs. “Her magic water comes in handy, though… Get it? Hand-y?”
Hakoda snorts. That’s the kind of joke he used to make to get Kya to smile.
The door across the room opens again. Zuko emerges with his arms wrapped around a giant tub of water, several vials and rags gripped in his hands. He’d also pulled his hair out of the top knot so that it falls into his face, shaggy and unbrushed. It makes him look younger somehow. 
Spirits, he really is only sixteen, isn’t he?
The Fire Lord seems to be studiously avoiding both his and his son’s gaze as he crosses back to him and sets the washbasin at Sokka’s feet. The realization twists uncomfortably in Hakoda’s stomach. 
“Can I see your hand?” Zuko says in what is perhaps the softest voice Hakoda has ever heard come from the teen’s mouth. 
Sokka blinks. “Yeah. Sure.” 
Hakoda crosses his arms over his chest and watches as Zuko examines his son’s hand. The Fire Lord handles it with care, mindful of the injury even as he inspects closely. His brow is furrowed in concentration and there’s a long beat of silence. Sokka is almost uncharacteristically quiet, but Hakoda doesn’t miss the very slight way his shoulders seem to ease. There’s a familiarity between them, Hakoda realizes, and it makes him wonder in the back of his mind if maybe this wasn’t the first time they helped each other. 
“I don’t think it’ll have permanent damage,” Zuko says eventually. “But I still need to treat it so it doesn’t get infected. It… might hurt a little. But then it should feel better.”
Hakoda sees his son swallow. “No permanent damage. That’s good.” He nods, evidently steeling himself. “Okay.”
Zuko looks for a moment like he’s about to say something else, but seems to change his mind. Instead, he busies himself with wringing a cloth in the basin of water, into which he had emptied the contents of the vials. Hakoda’s gaze flickers again to the scar on his face and wonders if he might be so intimately familiar with the care of burns from his own experience. 
Hakoda wonders if there was someone else to help him and teach him. Perhaps that uncle that he and Sokka had mentioned. Iroh, Hakoda thinks his name is, though that would mean the uncle was General Iroh, as in the Dragon of the West. That seemed unlikely to the chief. No way this “wise old guy” who apparently spent his free time giving advice and making tea was also the same person who laid siege to Ba Sing Se for six-hundred days.
He watches Zuko press the rag gingerly to the back of Sokka’s hand and Sokka yelps, yanking his hand back. 
“I’m sorry,” Zuko says immediately with a bit of a grimace. “This part is painful, but it’ll stop hurting in a minute.”
Hakoda listens to the strained breathing of his son, taking a step towards him before Sokka manages, “Right. Right, sorry.” 
“Don’t be,” Zuko tells him. “I know it hurts.”
Hakoda watches from behind Sokka as his son places his hand back in Zuko’s, who slowly but gingerly presses the rag back to his hand. There’s a casual intimacy to the way that Sokka willingly gives over his injury to the Fire Lord. An assured immediacy to Sokka’s movement combined with the extraordinarily careful way in which Zuko handles it that surprises him. He’d known, intellectually, that his children had become close with the Fire Lord. But the moments in which Hakoda got to be witness to that friendship sometimes still caught him off guard, even all these months later. 
It even folded into the way they fought beside each other. Hakoda had gotten very fleeting glimpses of it back in Boiling Rock, but he’d seen it more clearly in the meeting room a few minutes ago. They watched each other’s back, protecting one another without getting in each other’s way, like it was a rehearsed dance. Hakoda had watched the way Zuko stepped in front of flames to protect his son and had seen the way Sokka had timed his boomerang through to ensure the next fireball directed at Zuko would be kicked wide. 
For a long moment, the only sound heard in the room is the quiet splash of water as Zuko submerges the rag again and wrings it out. Hakoda glances at the Fire Lord’s face and wonders if Zuko had always had a habit of facing flames head-on. 
“What did the admiral mean,” Sokka blurts out suddenly, breaking the silence, “when he talked about insubordination?”
Hakoda’s lips press into a thin line, his gaze flickering briefly to his son before flitting back to Zuko. Zuko’s eyes had gone wide, the rag in his hand frozen half-out of the bowl. He blinks. “What--uh. I, uh.” Hakoda sees his hand clench around the rag and the way he takes a careful, intentional breath. “When I was younger, I spoke out at a meeting.”
Zuko busies himself back to tending to Sokka’s hand. Hakoda, however, feels something sink like an anchor in his stomach. He goes very, very still.
“After the stuff at Ba Sing Se? When you went home?” Sokka asks, and Hakoda realizes that he hasn’t heard the same rumors he had. Rumors that were at least a little bit true, but surely not all of it. Surely--
“No, I uh.” Zuko coughs a bit. “Before that. Before… yeah. Earlier.” 
“What happened?”
Hakoda stays quiet but he keeps his eyes on Zuko, who looks for all the world like a wild snow leopard caribou that had been cornered. His shoulders tense and Hakoda wonders, very briefly, if he might make a run for it. His jaw clenches, and he shifts to the balls of his feet.
Zuko doesn’t run.
Instead, he seems to focus even more on the administrations he’s giving to Sokka’s injury, as if healing something else might be able to protect him from his own old wounds coming under scrutiny.
“My uncle allowed me to attend a war meeting,” Zuko begins after a long beat as he wraps a fresh bandage around Sokka’s hand, “where they were talking about some battle strategies to use against an Earth Kingdom battalion. There was a general that wanted our newest fleet to serve as a distraction while we mounted an attack from the rear.”
Hakoda feels for a moment like he’s standing on cracking ice. He heard about that attack. The few members of that battalion spoke of how victorious they’d felt, decimating an entire fleet of rookie Fire Nation soldiers only to be attacked from the rear. Hakoda had spoken two years ago with one of the Earth Kingdom soldiers that had escaped, had listened as she recounted the bloodbath it had been. 
They must have known, she’d been saying with a haunted, far-away look to her eyes, that we’d win against a bunch of newbie soldiers. It was like they were served up as goat-dogs for slaughter. Just a… distraction. Ozai doesn’t even care about his own people. 
That conversation had been two years ago. Which meant—
“That’s not fair,” Sokka says. “Your newest recruits? They’d be slaughtered by an experienced battalion like that.” Hakoda feels a brief flicker of pride through the growing tightness in his chest. His son is far smarter than he gave himself credit for. 
“Exactly,” Zuko sighs, bitterness dripping from his voice like venom. “And that’s what I told them. I wasn’t thinking. I just… yelled at him.” Zuko secures the end of the bandage to Sokka’s palm slowly, as if reluctant to be done with the process. “My father didn’t… take it well. I was challenged to an Agni Kai, and I thought I would be facing the general in it, so I accepted.”
The steadily growing tightness in Hakoda’s chest snaps around his lungs like a steel band. So even the worst rumors—the ones he’d been certain couldn’t possibly be true, not about that, not even Ozai—had been true. And it was all because he tried to save people’s lives. 
Hakoda does not have a weak stomach, but it rolls with the lead weight of realization. 
Zuko still doesn’t look at either one of them. Unable to keep his attention on helping Sokka’s injury, he turns his attention instead to gathering the basin of water and the empty vials and used rags. Something to keep his hands—his attention—busy. Hakoda had seen some of the men he fought with do the same thing when talking about stories they mostly tried to forget. 
“No…” Sokka says in a low voice, and Hakoda knows from the horror in his voice that his son is starting to put the pieces together too.
“It wasn’t the general,” Zuko confirms, his voice quiet and heavy in the silence around them. “It was my father.”
“You faced your father in an Agni Kai?” Sokka asks.
“Not exactly. I…” Zuko stares down at the bowl, his gold gaze looking a thousand miles away. “I couldn’t fight my own father. Instead, I begged him for forgiveness. I was met with a fist full of flames.” Zuko waves a hand towards his face. 
I begged him for forgiveness. 
Hakoda thinks of the version Horrack had told him. I heard the kid was kneeling in front of him when it happened—
“He--” Sokka also sounds at a loss of words, his voice choking off. 
“I was banished after that,” Zuko continues and his voice is hollow in a way that ricochets like shrapnel. Hakoda watches him meet his son’s gaze. “I was told to bring the Avatar back and all would be forgiven, or to not come back at all. That was before you and your sister woke Aang up from the iceberg.”
He hears what Zuko won’t say.  It was before there’d been confirmation that the Avatar was still around at all. He’d been banished from his home and told to chase a ghost. It was an impossible task. Ozai didn’t want his son to come home at all, Hakoda realizes. And from the tight way Zuko swallows, he’s pretty sure Zuko knows it too. 
Hakoda clenches his grip into a fist to mask the tremble to his hands. Zuko had done the right thing at that meeting—had tried to spare lives—and had still asked for forgiveness. Begged for it. And Ozai had lit his hand on fire and… and… painfully mutilated his own son and then kicked him out, telling him to chase a legend. In some ways, Hakoda thinks, it was crueler than telling him not to come back at all. 
Zuko is sixteen. But he is still a child, though saddled with the weight of righting a century of conflict on his back. And Hakoda knows that the Agni Kai had been three years ago. 
“How old were you?” Sokka asks tightly. 
Spirits above, he was only—
“Thirteen,” Zuko says, and Hakoda sighs, shutting his eyes against the confirmation. 
“Thir--” Sokka cuts himself off, his voice strained. “Thirteen. Tui and La, when I was thirteen--” he breaks off again.
Hakoda knows what Sokka is thinking about. Sokka was thirteen when he’d left to join the war effort. He’d tried so hard to keep Sokka as safe as he could. Protect his childhood from being stolen more than the war and the loss of his mother already had. He’d seen the stubborn set to Sokka’s jaw when he’d chased after him onto the ship gangplank, and Hakoda knew that Sokka was just as protective as he was. He’d asked him to look out for the village, for Katara. 
Hakoda would have done anything in the world to keep Sokka safe. He still felt that way, despite all the ways that Sokka had proven he could hold his own. He couldn’t help it. He wouldn’t want to. Sokka was his boy. Not so little anymore, not so innocent. He’d seen and been through too much, and Hakoda had missed most of it. But he’d tried. He’d tried to keep him safe for as long as he could manage. 
At thirteen, Zuko had been hurt by a person he’d loved and then thrown out into the world with barely a second thought. The Fire Nation had robbed him, too, of so much. Too much. 
Sokka takes a sudden step towards him and Zuko visibly tenses as if expecting a blow. Sokka freezes in place. “Zuko…”
Zuko shakes his head quickly, and there’s a small part of Hakoda that uncoils when he sees the way Zuko’s gaze doesn’t look quite so distant anymore. “Anyway. That’s--that’s what the admiral was talking about.”
“You…” Sokka sounds close to tears. “You were his kid.”
“Yeah, well.” Zuko looks at Sokka again. “He spent most of my life wishing I wasn’t.”
Hakoda’s jaw tenses. He looks at Zuko who looks, for all the world, like a sixteen-year-old kid, with his shaggy hair falling into his face and in Fire Lord clothes that are maybe just a touch too big for him. At thirteen—barely a teenager—he’d spoken up out of an intense desire to keep more people safe. To save lives. In Hakoda’s eyes, Zuko was a hero. Just for that. 
How anyone could look at him and not be proud was far beyond Hakoda. 
“Zuko,” he says, and Zuko’s gaze flashes over to him almost like he’d forgotten Hakoda was there in the first place. “I… hope you understand that you didn’t deserve that.” 
The words fall short of what he wants to say, of what he means. But they feel important to him. Zuko deserved better from his nation and especially from his own father. Hakoda doesn’t know very much about the former royal family, but he doesn’t get the impression that Zuko heard that a lot. And if nobody else was going to make sure Zuko knows that he deserves better, Hakoda will at least try. 
Something softens a little in Zuko’s gaze. “I know, sir,” he says. “It… I didn’t at first. It took me a long time to understand that it was wrong of my father to do that. But I know that now.”
Hakoda inclines his head. It is a small mercy against the tremendous pain the kid carries on his back, but it’s something. And as far as Hakoda is concerned, it’s not a small thing, either.
“Where is he?” Sokka demands in a near growl.
Zuko blinks, looking far more surprised by Sokka’s outrage than Hakoda is. “Where’s who?”
“Ozai.”
“Sokka, what are you going to do? Fight him?” Zuko looks completely bewildered. “He already lost.”
“Against Aang, not against—did Aang even know?”
“Um, I guess I don’t know. I never told him. I… never told any of you.”
“Yeah--and what’s that about, huh?” Sokka takes a step forward. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
Hakoda takes a step towards his son. “Sokka,” he warns. 
He wants to explain to him that sometimes things are hard to talk about. Spirits know there were things Hakoda had seen in his days involved in the war that he didn’t want to talk about and hoped he never would have to. He wanted to explain that events like that, things that linger on the edges of your nightmares and follow in lock-step with your shadow, had a nasty habit of strangling in your throat so that the words don’t come. That it is easier to carry those things close to your chest rather than lay them bare for the world to see. 
But Sokka is fuming and cuts his father off. “What, did you think we wouldn’t care? That it wouldn’t matter?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Zuko hurls back at him, waving a hand towards the bedroom window. “My father already lost to the Avatar, Sokka. The war is over. The fighting is over. Aang took his bending. And that—I don’t know about you, but that’s the best, most justified end to his legacy I can think of.” 
There’s a long, heavy moment of silence. Hakoda watches the way his son’s shoulders heave with angry breaths, his non-injured hand curled into a fist. Sokka had always been fiercely, desperately protective. It runs in the family, Hakoda thinks idly. But this wasn’t something Sokka could protect Zuko from. The damage had already been done. 
Hakoda thinks, perhaps, that such a truth only makes it harder for his son to deal with. 
“Wherever he is,” Sokka growls, “I hope he rots. He deserves worse.” 
Zuko blinks, his eyes wide. Hakoda wonders briefly if Zuko has ever had someone be angry on his behalf, rather than angry with him. 
Sokka evidently doesn’t understand his surprise. “Don’t tell me you disagree—”
“No,” Zuko says quickly. “I just… nothing.” He offers the barest hint of a smile at Sokka. The reminder of the familiarity between them relaxes some of the tightness in Hakoda’s chest just a fraction. 
There’s a long beat as Hakoda hears his son suck in a deep, slow breath. Zuko’s gaze falls from Sokka’s, drifting back to the basin of water beside him. Zuko’s fingers twitch at his side. He looks suddenly uncomfortable, Hakoda thinks. Nervous, almost. 
“Thank you for helping Sokka’s hand, Firelord Zuko,” Hakoda says suddenly, and maybe it’s a foolish way to convey to him that this didn’t change their opinion of him. At least, not for Hakoda… and from his surge of protective anger, he’s pretty sure the same goes for his son. Zuko was still Zuko. And if maybe he made sure to call him Fire Lord as a quiet reminder that Hakoda did not think him less of a leader either, then maybe that was okay too.
Hakoda sees the slightly pink tinge to Zuko’s cheeks as he meets Hakoda’s gaze. But he reads the understanding in those gold eyes as well. “Oh. Uh, of course, sir. And… just Zuko is fine.” Thank you, is the unspoken words that flit across the teen’s gold eyes.
Hakoda smiles a little, inclining his head. “Understood.” He turns his attention then to his son. ”I should draft a letter to Bato tonight to update him on the treaty. Will you be okay without me?”
Sokka rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth is tilted up in a half-smile. “Yeah, dad. I think I can manage.”
Hakoda gives Sokka’s shoulder one last squeeze and a nod to Zuko before he ducks out of the room to give them both a moment to talk more. He closes the door behind him, pausing long enough to take a breath. 
Generations of conflict had been ended a few months ago by a bunch of kids with too much weight on their shoulders and too many shadows clinging to their edges. But at their heart, they were good people trying to do good things. Spirits know they all had plenty of reasons to be otherwise. War had a nasty habit of bringing out the worst in people, of demanding sacrifices to who you are. It could latch onto the darkest parts of you and pull until it was all that remained. He’s grateful that the group of kids that ended the Hundred Year War managed to keep the best of themselves despite everything, and that they continued to do so.
Hakoda had learned a long time ago that goodness is a choice. And he’s grateful that the world was in the hands of people like his kids, like Aang, like Zuko. Kids who, despite everything and all the ways people tried to pull their darkness out of them, continued to make that choice.
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cuteandtwisted · 7 years ago
Note
this prompt from awful-aus “You hired me to photograph your sister’s wedding and you need to leave me alone now so I can do my job. Just because you technically literally invited me does not make me “”ipso facto’” your date and I can’t take pictures when you’re using my tripod to help yourself stand upright.” AU 💛
(i’m gonna add rich!Isak to this one, which is VERY AU, I realize)
The first time Even touches him is by accident.
Even is a good person. He does his best to be kind to everyone he meets and to never judge a soul, and he’s mostly good at it. Well, except maybe when it comes to uptight, prickly, and arrogant Isak Valtersen. But Even has his reasons. He really does.
Many have tried to get to the bottom of Even’s dislike for the ‘cute rich boy’, some thinking that it’s a longterm rivalry or that perhaps Isak accidentally killed his puppy—anything extreme enough to warrant such strong negative feelings from the ‘chillest person on campus’. And they’re mostly right. It is out of character for him. Even has no reason to dislike ‘rich people’.
But Isak is more than that. Isak holds some pretty bigoted and insensitive opinions on the refugee crisis, too blinded by his own privilege. And while most people would let it slide, Even refuses to turn a blind eye, especially after Isak literally got into a fight with Mikael (that he had to physically break) and implied he wasn’t 100% Norwegian—and no, the fact that he actually had a tiny crush on Isak his first week at uni before any of this went down won’t change that.
.
“Dude, that was like two years ago,” Mikael sighs when he catches Even glaring at Isak in the cafeteria again. “Get over it.”
“It was last year,” Even corrects him, still holding Isak’s gaze across the large room. He feels ridiculous and mean, but Isak—in his dress shirts and cashmere sweaters—has been doing this a lot lately, provoking him and randomly stealing glances before looking down. Is he trying to start shit again or what.
“Give him a break. He’s a chill guy,” Mikael yawns before stuffing fries into his face again. “I know he looks like his mom dresses him every day, but he even apologized to me and stuff. He didn’t mean it like that.”
“You shouldn’t internalize micro-aggressions, Mikael. If he hurt you, then you should face it and confront him!”
“I can’t stand you, bro. Are you listening to yourself? He’s harmless!”
“How do you explain him glaring at me all the time then?”
“It’s called staring, Even. He’s like in love with you!” Mikael rolls his eyes.
“I’m leaving.”
.
Even is doodling in his sketchbook when Isak Valtersen materializes in front of him in the library, making him instantly draw his brows together.
“Uh hello,” Isak clears his throat and Even loses his resolve for a second because the younger boy sounds nervous and looks incredibly uncomfortable in his v-neck cashmere sweater.
“Uhm hi.”
“So, uh. I heard you do photography, and I was wondering if you want to work on my sister’s wedding.”
Even blinks at him, his mouth gaping a bit. He doesn’t mean to but he stares hard enough to notice a delicate flush spread along Isak’s cheeks all the way to the tip of his ears. His eyelashes are ridiculously long and he’s rambling. It’s almost adorable.
“Uh, I mean I know it’s last minute. But I messed up booking a photographer and it was the only thing she tasked me with. And now she doesn’t have one and she’ll kill me, and obviously I’ll pay you a lot of money to make up for the short notice, and—”
“I don’t need your money,” Even says and he sounds mean. He regrets it immediately because Isak is blushing furiously now and he looks like he’s about to combust from humiliation, like it’s taken all of his courage to come ask Even. “I mean you don’t need to offer me a lot of money,” Even sits up and speaks softly. “I don’t care about money.”
fuck.
Now Even is nervous and he doesn’t even know why. He doesn’t even like the guy, but some nonsensical instinct to just take care of him takes over. And Even hates how he has no resolve whatsoever, how all it takes is a pretty boy with long eyelashes to move him.
“Are you available this Sunday?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Promise?” Isak asks with big round eyes, and Even is both puzzled and endeared by the word and by how earnest he sounds uttering it, like he holds promises sacred.
“Promise.”
.
“What the hell?” Mikael laughs. “That was fast.”
“Shit. I don’t know. He looked like he really needed me, okay?”
.
The second time Even touches him is not that much of an accident.
It’s a mess, really. Even has no idea why he said yes or how Isak got his phone number. But he’s been texting him nonstop about equipment and tripods and camera models for a week now. And while Even has his own gear, he can’t turn down the opportunity to shoot with the real expensive stuff. Isak’s family can afford it after all, so he doesn’t feel too bad.
Even is overwhelmed by just how much money Isak ends up spending on the rather simple job. He’s almost bouncing with excitement as he shows him what he got, and Even secretly hopes Isak has rented and not bought all of this.
.
Even is enjoying the wedding reception and the job itself despite the collar of his shirt digging into his skin and his hair refusing to stick to one direction. But he thinks he would enjoy the job more if Isak Valtersen actually gave him some space. No, really, the kid has barely left his side, only walking away to grab himself yet another drink from the bar then almost running to glue himself back to Even’s hip. He also insists on looking at every shot right after Even takes it, and he’s even directing him now.
“Can you go closer? Can you take a picture of her side profile? I think the light is better over there. No, not the groom, fuck that guy. Can you focus on her hair? She’s proud of her updo. Can you do effects or something? Oh, that’s post-processing? What’s post-processing? Photoshop? Oh, is that expensive? Do you want me to pay for it? Oh you have an illegal copy? Can you get arrested for that? Can you get a picture of all her friends? Can I see? Wait, go back three pictures.”
Even’s skin is crawling an hour in because not only is Isak not letting him do his job, but he’s currently leaning on the very expensive tripod to keep himself from falling over, not to mention that his cheeks are flushed and his curls are a mess and he’s giggling and Even wants to touch.
Shit. Control yourself.
.
“Do you want a drink?” Isak asks and Even has to let go of the camera to hold him because Isak is tripping over his own feet and slurring his words and why is this kid so drunk on his sister’s wedding and why is he here with me instead of with his family.
“I don’t drink on the job,” says Even as he hooks an arm around Isak’s waist to support him and tries to will away the excitement building up at the pit of his stomach.
“I don’t mind,” says Isak, turning his face to him until all Even can see are his long eyelashes and his incredibly sad and heartbreaking eyes. “I can pay you now if you want. You took enough pictures. I don’t mind.”
.
Isak might look small but he isn’t, and Even is learning it the hard way right now with Isak leaning almost fully against him as he drags him away and tries to find someone to take over. A man in a fancy suit and a strong build finds him before he loses it—thank god—and sighs heavily.
“Always an embarrassment, this one,” the man breathes in disapproval, and for some reason, Even frowns and tightens his hold around Isak’s passed out body. “A friend of Isak’s?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Even lies.
“How surprising. Didn’t think anyone actually liked him.” Even is glaring at the man now and before he can bark, he hears. “I’m Terje, his father.” The man then hands him keys and shrugs, “Here, take my car before anyone sees him like this. The address to the house is in the GPS. Make sure he doesn’t throw up on my seats.”
And with that he’s gone.
.
Isak falls asleep against the window and Even has to bite down his own lower lip to bear the sound of Isak’s head bumping against the glass. He can’t stand it, however, and he eventually slows down and makes sure to drive as gently as possible.
It gets even worse because when they stop at a red light, Even reaches for Isak’s head and pulls it towards his own shoulder and eventually his chest. It’s extremely uncomfortable, but at least Isak is no longer hurting himself. Though when the younger boy curls into his side and purrs in his sleep, Even has to take a deep breath because the stirring in his chest almost makes him drive into the sidewalk.
.
“Where are we? What are you doing?” Isak blinks in confusion when they cross the threshold. The house is enormous, and a warm woman greets them at the door and takes Isak’s coat and Even’s as well. She then guides him to Isak’s room which is upstairs.
“You’re home. It’s fine,” Even reassures him as he pulls him up the steps. He drops Isak into what he assumes is his bed and sits beside him to catch his breath.
“I ruined the wedding. I’m such a disappointment,” Isak sighs in defeat, an arm crossed over his face to cover his eyes. “I ruin everything.”
Even knows he should leave. He’s done more than enough and he doesn’t owe this boy anything, really. But the words resonate with him. The shame, the disappointment, the loneliness. It all sounds like something straight out of Even’s mouth.
So he lies back down next to Isak.
“You did great today, Isak. You didn’t ruin anything.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not lying. You were wonderful today. Your sister was very happy.”
Isak removes his arm from where it’s lying on his face and looks at Even through wet eyelashes with something like gratitude in his eyes.
“I’m not racist, Even. I swear,” Isak mumbles in a small voice while Even stares at him, all limbs and curls on his massive bed. “I thought your friend was being homophobic to me last year and I said the dumbest thing. I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to. Please don’t hate me. Everybody hates me.”
Even must be the weakest person in the world because he’s undeniably moved by the plea in this boy’s voice. He’s so moved that he reaches over and lets his right hand thumb Isak’s cheek as gently as possible. He can’t help it, providing comfort when he can. And the way Isak’s eyes flutter shut almost instantly at the contact, nuzzling against his palm like he can’t help it, like he needs it, like he’s never been touched quite like this, makes Even’s protective instincts nearly soar in his chest, his heart filling with something resembling tenderness.
“I don’t hate you,” Even says and it’s true.
“Promise?”
And there it is, the ever slight fluttering in his heart.
“Promise,” says Even.
“Can you stay tonight?”
Even stays the night. Then when he wakes up in Isak’s massive bed with his chest pressed against the boy’s back and his arms locked around his stomach like they belong in the other’s embrace, he jumps in absolute panic and shows himself out in his clothes from the previous day.
Isak texts him ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ in the afternoon and Even isn’t sure what to do, so he doesn’t reply.
Later at night, he gets a few more texts. ‘I’m sorry I was so weird last night. Didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I’d like to be friends if you want.’
‘It’s also okay if you don’t. I understand.’
.
Isak finds him at the school cafeteria with the boys on Tuesday and hands him a sealed envelope without looking him in the eye.
“For Sunday. Thanks a lot Even, I owe you one,” he says with a brave but distant smile then nods in Mikael’s direction. “Hello guys,” he adds politely before turning on his heel.
It’s money, the ‘lots of money’ that Isak promised him. And Even feels terrible.
.
Even sees him everywhere and it scares him how much he wants to go to him, talk to him, touch him, hold him, ask him if he’s okay, double-check if he still asks ‘promise?’ when Even says something nice. 
It scares him how much he cares for this boy he knows so little about. It terrifies him.
Maybe it’s my brain playing tricks on me again. Maybe.
Even pines from afar.
.
“I heard Isak got a second job at the coffee shop where we hang out,” says Elias while they’re working on a ‘Hei Briskeby’ edit. “Apparently he’s in bad terms with his dad and he has to work for his own money. I had no idea it was bad between them. Did you know?”
Even groans into a pillow and spends the rest of his day thinking about appropriate ways to text Isak.
.
“Hey,” Even clears his throat then has to stop himself from gasping when Isak looks up from his book in the library.
“Uh hi,” says Isak and he’s blushing again and Even suddenly remembers how it felt like to hold him in that bed. “Even. Oh, hi!”
He’s adorable and Even just smiles because he can’t help it and because he’s been nothing but mean to this boy, yet he’s glowing and smiling and blushing right now like he’s happy to see him.
Even takes a deep breath then slides the envelope along the desk. Isak blinks, confused.
“I told you I don’t need your money,” Even smiles this time around then watches him squirm.
“But—“ Isak pauses, bites his lip. “You worked for hours.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“But it was. And you even did the post-processing stuff and you listened to me whine about everything, and you drove me home, and you took me to my room, and—” he pauses again.
“And I cuddled you until morning,” Even continues for him, letting himself fall on the chair opposite of Isak.
Their eyes meet and he can see how embarrassed but hopeful Isak is, how scared but willing to take a leap of faith. He can see it, how badly he wants this, needs this, aches for this, whatever this is. And who is he to crush this boy’s hopes? Who is he to turn Isak down when everything in him is urging him to just show him how loved he can be, how precious he can feel?
“Let’s consider the cuddles payment for my services,” Even adds.
“But— you left.”
“Because I’m an idiot.”
There’s a pregnant pause after that. Isak takes a deep breath then finally speaks. “I thought you didn’t want me.”
Oh babe.
“I want you,” says Even, almost immediately too. Because he feels like Isak needs to hear it, because he feels like he’s not the kind of person to thrive on subtle actions and assume and wish for the best. Because he feels like Isak needs that validation, that undeniable and unwavering confirmation that he is in fact wanted. Isak who insists on double-checking every nice thing that’s ever said to him by seriously asking ‘promise?’ like he’s used to people deceiving him and not doing good by him. Isak who seems like he doesn’t get to hear these three words nearly enough. Isak who stole his heart on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Isak. So Even says it, again and again. “I want you.”
Isak smiles and it’s precious, like a treasure. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
The third time Even touches him, it’s because he’s aching to.
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outlyingthoughts · 5 years ago
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My mom was right, or a story on my privileges and microaggressions: Jul 20
Sometimes, your thoughts appear to meet at a cosmic intersection, everything coinciding and suddenly unlocking another level of understanding about your reality.
The start of Summer 2020 was a cosmic intersection for my reality. From populations around the world finally leading global protests against racism and police brutality, the escalation of Police-state-like situations in France and reading more books like « So you want to talk about race » by Ijeoma Oluo; everything confirmed an uncanny feeling I grew up to have an increased acuity for: my Mom was right, the world around me, despite how privileged I had seemed to be so far, was viciously racist and being blind to the racism I suffered from didn’t make it unreal.
Growing up in France with the myth of colorblindness, « because we are all one, indivisible and equal » in the eyes of the Republic and the Laïcité, makes it easy to deny the existence of institutionalized racism. French secularism, as the central pillar of our civic culture, provides a logic for our republic to conceal its racism under the soft blanket of a republican model of integration.
The French government officially rejects both censuses and data collection based on ethnic, religious or linguistic nature of groups. As such our national social cohesion is solely relying on the idealistic dream that from the moment that we have a French nationality, it grants us all an absolute equality in treatment, legally ensured by our all-mighty constitution.
Don’t get me wrong: I loved this principle that the state should be outlawed from seeing race and obliged by the law to treat us all equally. I loved attending my civic education classes and having a program that preached that we were all included because what mattered was that we were all French before anything else. I loved feeling like it was true thanks to my already existing privileges. I’ve had the luxury to believe in this illusion, all of it, until I had to navigate the « adult world » on my own, face racism with my own eyes and discovered how facts were radically different from our nicely designed civic education program.
My privileges allowed me to swim in sweet denial of the social reality of our country. But what happens if you're not French? What happens if you’re not perceived as French by the rising extreme right wing and populist political parties, by the people in the street, by a large portion of the voters in local and national elections ? What happens when the social reality doesn’t match those beautiful principles of equality and both the public discourse and authorities turn blind to systemic injustice ?
The problem is that not every French kid of color has the luxury to feel included and valued within the French society. When adults outside of your house are biased towards people that look like you, whether it be in the street, in fancy shops or even teachers at school; when politicians and people in the news are framing people from your ethnic or religious group or even from the neighborhood you come from as dangers, criminals or frauds of the system; how can you feel French before all, equal and included ?
Unfortunately, when sociologists and researchers are interested in studying this phenomenon, it is virtually impossible for them to do so since such data and measures are deemed inherently illegal in the government’s eyes. Even minorities asking for acknowledgment of systemic discrimination and inequalities through ethnic and/or religious demographic statistics are thus called out for being separatist and/or communitarist, all of this based on the adoption of the Law on « Informatique et liberté » in January 1978 which prevented public authorities from collecting data based on racial, ethnic or religious criteria.
Since then, even laws aiming at allowing the study of diversity, social integration and discrimination have been deemed anti-constitutional. As such, there is no way in France to account for socio-economic inequalities of ethnic and religious minorities, which -of course- makes it easier to deny their existence since they legally cannot be accounted for and studied.
This lack of acknowledgment does translate into French society and the way many French people think -regardless of their skin color and religion, even though more regularly among people of caucasian appearance-. Since I started growing more and more aware of the insidious racism around me and calling it out, I received backlash on many topics like cultural appropriation or reversed racism and a lot of denying of racial issues in our country.
In France, like in many Western countries with large non-white populations, many people refer to the existence of a so-called « reversed racism » when minorities start to call out systemic racism in our societies. So much that even some of my own relatives have thrown this term in my face when I started arguing against them on institutional racism in our country.
Sadly, in France the inability to account for discrimination, inequalities and even violence against minorities makes it virtually impossible to prove with numbers how rare what they refer to as « reversed racism » is compared to the urgency to address the too common racism against people of colors.
In the context of social justice, the goal is to highlight the institutional character of racism in our societies. Reversed racism in this context does not exist because white people in Western societies do not suffer from systemic inequalities and discrimination. Because last time I checked, Caucasians looking people in France do not risk institutionalized racial profiling and violence by the police or discrimination in employment because of « reversed racism ».
To have family members, who can witness how racism plays out in my everyday life and still believe in reversed racism comes to me as a denial of the experience of people of color when facing racism. It is like turning the cheek to the other side and say « yes you may suffer because of racism but please let’s not focus on your pain because I found a concept that fits me and all my unchecked privileges and allows me to deny the experience of a whole part of the population justifying it with a form of racism that does not impact my everyday life and doesn’t exist on a systemic scale »: News flash this is extremely insulting.
These forms of insidious white privileges in people’s discourse; to be able to be blind to racism and deny its existence because it does not affect your everyday life are microaggressions to people of color, denials of our pain and prevent a fruitful debate on how to solve the issue of institutionalized racism in our societies.
On my own privileges
My mom was right, in the tender years of my childhood I was privileged enough to virtually not see a difference between me and the other white kids (apart from the hairstyles I couldn’t do or that I was tanner than them regardless of the seasons).
My paternal grandfather was white and mayor of his town, I loved going to his workplace as much as I could, always showered in compliments and candies. Sometimes I would look up at the portrait of the current president hung in a big ceremonial room in the townhall and despite knowing that my parents didn’t approve of him, still I felt so at home within the bounds of our republic.
And while such privileges didn’t lead me to be « colorblind », it did make me blind to a large part of the discrimination I suffered from when I finally old enough to face it myself. I was convinced to be living in a post-racist society, convinced that only a minority of uneducated countryside freaks who had never seen a black person could be racist. I was convinced of all of this because I lived in a country with such beautiful laws and principles on equality and republican inclusion that it seemed unimaginable that the contrary could be real.
When my black mother was trying to make me notice micro-aggressions and subtly racist situations from our everyday life, I was denying everything (“it’s not racism mom, it’s -enter whatever excuse I could make up for them-). Sometimes I’d even make fun of her for being so imaginative and overly sensitive. Worse, I would go crazy with my democratic propaganda when she’d tell me she couldn’t be bothered to go vote because she did not feel included or represented in the elections. While I still condemn not voting because (forgetting the debate on whether it is rational or not) it is both a right and a privilege that isn’t respected by the autocratic leader in my maternal country, now I also understand my mom’s stand, feeling ignored and not included in political debates. 
Today, I’m calling myself out for blindly believing in this integrative republican lie despite my own mother’s truth. When first generation but also second, third or even fourth generation immigrants are massively deemed as frauds of the system, it is logical that they have a reluctance to waste their time and resources on getting informed and involved in a system that pisses on them while still exploiting with joy their labor for the benefits of the national economy.
On Microaggressions
After reading a couple books and many essays on race like « So you want to talk about race », I felt discouraged as the wanna-be essayist I am. I didn't want to become yet another mixed essayist since we all apparently had the same stories on the way our bodies had been shamed, fetishized and sexualized whether it is our big butts, big hair, the same stories on exceptionalism and belittling compliments we receive, either making us exceptions of the group we identify as (« you’re pretty for a black girl ») or even categorizing our successes solely as a result of affirmative action (when I was applying to one of the top universities in Political Science in France, a friend of mine who was also a person of color told me that I was sure to get in because I was a great and lucky token black person).
Such discourses are so normalized and internalized that as I entered adulthood, I found myself sharing with my Caucasian father my deep fears of making it in life only because I was very often the only black or person of color in the circles and institutions I evolved within. Luckily, after a year of attending university abroad, I recovered confidence in my intelligence and abilities; but still had this fear when writing about my experience to not want to be seen as yet another angry black woman. But now the cosmic intersection struck me like a truck in my face: we all have the same story, not because we are whiny individuals and all the same but because everywhere people of color are suffering from the same discrimination and/or micro-aggressions.
What I had interpreted as my non-originality which would make me unable to succeed as a writer is just yet another proof of the systemic nature of racism and the discriminating ways of thinking and standards in our societies which we all suffer from.
Somehow, I found myself wishing at times that I had been an outcast like Ijeoma, but sadly I was socialized to match and please people’s expectations. When puberty and reality hit, I found a way to fold away myself and straighten the black out of me to fit the mold: whether it be in school, in my mostly white friend circles, in my behavior or appearance.
For the longest time from the start of my teenage years, I began internalizing all the ways societies and people told me that my “blackness” was ugly. How my hair was too big or deemed disgusting, how my fellow classmates saw me as a milking cow for starting puberty earlier than most girls. It came to a point where I genuinely believed that I could never be seen as beautiful if I let my natural bouncy curls and curvy shapes out. I was in denial of how much daily microaggressions had destroyed my self-esteem and standards of beauty.
Micro-aggressions are actions or remarks that are received as subtle or non-intentional forms of discrimination against minorities and/or marginalized group. An example of micro-aggression is someone telling you that you’ve never been arrested by the police because “you’re not that black for a black person” or that your hair is “impractical” and annoying because African hair requires more time and care to be maintained.
The problem with such remarks isn’t necessarily the intent or the way the person who made it thinks about the micro-aggression but rather the way it is received and hurts the receiver. Often times, when we do dare to stand up for ourselves against a micro-aggression, we are being told the same things I use to tell my own mother: that we are too sensitive or easily offended (especially if you’re from my generation I’m convinced you know the pleasure to hear older generations complain that we’re “a generation of offended sheep”) and only now I can understand how disrespectful and unsensitive my privileges made me towards my mom. Because I was so blinded by legal formalities and public discourse on the way society was supposed to be based on our laws, I was completely disregarding my own mother’s experience and struggle and some of you still do. That’s what unchecked privileges do.
But the violence of micro-aggressions generally isn’t rooted in the action or statement or its intent per say. Rather, most of the time, it’s in the way they are enshrined in wider systemic discrimination as repetitive and accumulated attacks on an individual across different moments and perpetrators. It turns an action which might appear inoffensive to the perpetrator (like touching someone’s hair) but will be taken as something extremely disrespectful to the receiver.
Growing up in France, hair on TV ads and the hair products on supermarket shelves were different than mine, the same way my friends at school could all have those flowy ponytails which I felt very sad my hair type didn’t allow I couldn’t have (until I begged my mom to relax my hair and she agreed when I was 7 because being a kid of a divorced couple she couldn’t take care of my hair for the whole month of summer at my father’s). But in any case, my relationship to my hair was the first instance where I felt part of a “minority” let’s say.
Getting into middle school and puberty, of course everybody gets criticized, shamed or made fun of for their difference: it’s part of teenage years. But when minor teenage bullying cross-cuts a subject which society marginalizes you for (as futile as hair and physical appearance can) and which throughout your life you’re going to get comments and/or random people’s opinions on all the time. All of this tends to weigh on one’s mind and if all the while, it is being deemed unattractive by the male gaze, then this innocent teenage bullying suddenly makes you, from a young age, internalize racism and hatred towards your own self, with the courtesy of mainstream western beauty standards.
(And yes, still today some men that I’ve frequented have dared to tell me they “didn’t mind my hair curly but they preferred my hair straight because they think I’m much prettier with” DID I ASK YOU FOR YOUR OPINION ON MY HAIR?)
I hope now it is pretty straightforward, why when my relatives tell me that my hair is impractical, I go bonkers. I’m simply sick of society, of men, of my teenage years, everything that made me internalize white beauty standards and told me that my natural appearance was not enough, not practical or not fit for them. And don’t even get me started on the ones that feel entitled enough to touch a part of my body without asking for my consent (here, only, my hair but still): Don’t touch my hair nor feel entitled to give me a judgement on my appearance.
Lastly, to put it all perspective, would you go around touching people’s ass and telling them: “well I don’t really like your butt, I'd rather you wear shapewear to change it” ?
Sources:
https://theconversation.com/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-66723
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000026268247&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2019/03/19/la-difficile-utilisation-des-statistiques-ethniques-en-france_5438453_4355770.html
Oluo, I. (2018). So you want to talk about race. New York, NY : Seal Press
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michellelewis7162 · 5 years ago
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Choosing A Marketing Company
 No concern how excellent your item or the service you are actually using is, it will not accumulate the profile it is entitled to unless it stands apart amongst its own rivals in the industry. In reality, a really good marketing project could be such a boon to your organisation that possessing the right advertising and marketing firm benefiting you can bring in all the difference between success as well as breakdown. Therefore, it is actually beneficial investing some opportunity reviewing a number of companies if you want to choose one that matches your business requires absolute best. If you want to perform this it is actually a good suggestion to figure out precisely what sort of advertising you need to have. Below are a few locations to look at: Digital Crowdfunding
 Whether you are actually looking for a complete re-branding of your photo or even focusing on certain regions. Equally, whether you intend to help make corrections to actually effectively developed product or services or produce a slogan or even logo design for new companies. Problems including the dimension and also lineage of the agency participate in a part right here, as a huge firm may be a lot better geared up to develop an entirely brand-new picture for you while a much younger, smaller organization could possess more imaginative suggestions for a brand-new product launch Top Promotional Agencies.
Determine whether you are trying to branch off right into a new market or create better recognition in an existing market. You might, for example, wish to attract a much younger or even extra advanced reader or even experience your existing market allotment could be raised in places where you have commonly succeeded. In either situation it is worth reviewing the marketing firms experience of doing work in your certain field and also whether the organization has the adequate amount of get in touches with to be actually able to reach your target market. If you are wanting to raise consumer recognition of a new variety of detergents, mention, will the firms experience of releasing a wholescale project for a shower room right provider possess any sort of importance? What benefit one audience may not essentially benefit an additional, therefore talk to concerns concerning what kind of project meets your item and also attempt to recognize whether you are actually offered generic answers or your particular necessities are considered United States.
Identify whether it is the web content or even the kind of your advertising and marketing that calls for attention. In short, are you making an effort to develop certain associations for your product and services so they become immediately recognisable to customers? Or perform you experience the networks where your information is actually being relayed are actually inadequate as well as require enhancing? It is actually no excellent employing an advertising agency fizzing with fantastic suggestions yet without the framework to become able to execute all of them.
The above points need to aid you recognize which services you want the advertising company to do. Definitely, various companies will possess various strong points and weak spots, therefore pay out close interest to just how much expertise they have of the type of advertising and marketing you really want done and also the volume of results they have actually invited comparable campaigns in the previous Top Promotional Agencies.
 It is consistently an excellent tip to keep your eyes open for projects that impress you and contact the advertising division of the business to inquire that managed their campaign and what it felt like partnering with all of them. Similarly, ask ex-clients of advertising and marketing companies you are specifically curious about what their expertise of collaborating with the company was actually. Was the agency positive and also performed it adapt the initiative to match particular demands, or was actually there an opinion that the agency gave conventional general services to certain troubles?
 The moment you have actually limited your hunt down to two or even three marketing organizations, there are an amount of additional particular inquiries to take into consideration:
 1. Pinpoint that will be actually in charge of your profile and also establish whether the account supervisor will remain along with you throughout of the project or even an even more jr profile manager will take over once the initiative is up as well as running. Preferably you intend to be actually partnering with the same crew coming from beginning to finish.
 2. Establish how regularly the profile supervisor will provide you updates concerning the improvement of the project, featuring the costs sustained and also any client feedback acquired. Before the campaign also starts be sure that there are no covert expenditures and also there is an unit in location to establish how the project is actually going Top Promotional Agencies.
 3. It is an excellent tip to talk to the possible advertising and marketing company to make a trial project to find out how properly you interact, what method the organization follows, how closely it pays attention to your demands and also just how aggressive it is. As an example, determine exactly how the organization would certainly handle the opportunity of managing specific client promos and also loyalty systems that will provide your firm much more personality, or even ask for that they build a purchases approach for some of your most up-to-date items United States.
 The moment you have actually taken the measures laid out in this article you need to possess a better tip of the type of marketing company that appropriates for your sort of campaign. Everything remains today is to be actually attentive when attracting up a contract regarding what you are acquiring as well as what you are certainly not and also whether the regards to settlement consist of any type of performance assurances. The greatest of good luck, as well as heres wishing you pick a marketing firm you may possess a long as well as rewarding relationship along with.
 Just how to Find the most ideal Digital Marketing Agency
 So as to find the most effective digital advertising agency, first, our experts require to understand "what is actually digital advertising", "will digital marketing advantage your business" as well as respond to the concern "just how perform I obtain more leads for my organisation?" - which should be the function of any marketing United States.
 What is actually a Digital Marketing Agency?
The dictionary interpretation of Digital marketing is the advertising and marketing of items or even companies making use of electronic technologies, mainly on the net, yet also including mobile phones, display advertising and marketing, and also any sort of various other digital medium. Therefore basic to summarise in one paragraph, however, it can be actually a challenging process to solve and also to guarantee that all of your digital marketing is cooperating, certainly not as silo tasks. This is where the proficiency and knowledge of the most ideal digital advertising and marketing companies could be hugely advantageous.
 Standard advertising and marketing, newspapers as well as paper listings, like Yellow Pages, are increasingly much less successful for services. Whilst a couple of years ago people would visit a computer system to seek a product and services, nowadays people are hooked up to the world wide web throughout the day, on a daily basis and "real-time online". Trying to find details, a service or product is actually as easy and also straightforward as browsing on a laptop computer or computer at the workplace or getting their mobile phone or tablet. Digital advertising concentrates on getting your info, product or services in front of individuals when they are actually looking online. The finest electronic companies recognize the purchasing method of your items and also services and make sure that your details projects to the potential customer at the suitable opportunity. In the digital advertising and marketing world, the different phases of the acquiring process i.e. investigation, factor as well as acquisition are actually contacted "micro-moments" as well as the finest digital advertising and marketing firm will definitely provide the pertinent information, company or even item at the targeted attend the buying method Top Promotional Agencies.
 Whilst some digital advertising organizations are going to additionally make and take care of traditional advertising or business advertising, such as paper advertising and marketing, expert digital marketing organizations will definitely focus on internet marketing in contrast to "marketing providers" who often focus on TELEVISION, broadcast and printing advertising and marketing Top Promotional Agencies.
 Irrespective if your company is business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), digital advertising and marketing could be a quickly, often immediate, and dependable method of obtaining leads in to your service as well as increasing income. The extremely best electronic advertising and marketing organizations will take care of each one of the digital advertising based upon roi (ROI) ensuring the tops created are at an expense that creates service sense and increases income levels. Digital advertising and marketing will benefit your company as well as addresses the question "just how perform I acquire additional tops for my company"?
 Digital advertising, sometimes described as web site advertising and marketing, can easily be actually broken in to a lot of vital components as well as services:
 Search Engine Optimization Services
Internet search engine optimisation, many commonly abbreviated to "SEO", is actually the procedure of acquiring your website found on search engines like Google when people make a hunt applicable to your company, solutions or items United States.
 Irrespective if your web site is actually ecommerce or even marketing solutions it will certainly drive leads and also purchases right into your company if it is actually discovered for the search conditions people use (usually described as "key phrases") to seek all of them in Google.
 Search Engine Optimisation requires expertise as well as understanding of how Google reviews your web site. What messages and also relevant information you yearn for Google to read for a webpage or website as well as knowing where to put that information so online search engine may locate it. An excellent SEO provider will certainly have an effective record of ranking web sites higher in the search results Top Promotional Agencies.
 SEO operates greatest when the established approaches of obtaining ranks are actually used together with most up-to-date fads that are actually driving web traffic. An example of this particular is actually the "near me" sensation, which has actually seen a 150% development in the final 12 months, where cellphone consumers are incorporating "near me" to their search inquiry i.e. "SEO Company near me". These consumers are seeking to get and also purchase from a neighborhood product or service supplier.
 Although SEO can easily be actually a stand-alone service, it is most effective when blended with PPC, social media sites and online reputation advertising and marketing. S.E.O is additionally the keystone of reliable PPC, social media sites as well as credibility administration campaigns United States.
 Pay for Per Click
Spend Per Click (PPC) usually recommended to as "Google Advertising" or "on the internet advertising and marketing" is where you place adverts on top of the hunt leads for particular search conditions. These hunt terms could be words people make use of when in the "research" phase of making an acquisition or even targeted at the "buying search phrases" when prospective clients are actually wanting to purchase Top Promotional Agencies.
 Although your advert, relying on your spending plan, can easily be presented each time a hunt is actually made, you simply pay for when a world wide web consumer clicks on your advert and is required to your website or even calls you point coming from the hunt leads webpage definition you merely pay for when you receive a click coming from a prospective client therefore the label for this kind of marketing of Pay Per Click (commonly abbreviated to PPC).
 The amount of you purchase each hit is established through a few factors. The "price every click on" (abbreviated to CPC) is determined by the quality as well as significance of the advert to the hunt condition being used and the relevance of the web page on your web site that the prospective customer land on. These variables add to your total "high quality score". The much higher your top quality credit rating, the much less you ppc as well as a lot less you pay every lead right into your service Los Angeles.
 In the UK, Google has the substantial bulk of hunt website traffic and a lot of your finances should be positioned their, nevertheless, you will not desire to miss the smaller sized, yet still substantial capacity for consumers coming from hunt motors like Microsoft's Bing platform, as well as a little aspect of the budget should be actually assigned to other online search engine. Likewise, the greatest PPC control providers will certainly also explain spreading your PPC budget over an amount of initiatives targeted at various components of the consumer trip. A little component of the spending plan need to be actually designated to the research study phase of the acquiring process when people are utilizing broad hunt terms to locate details, a small component of the budget plan when individuals are actually looking for your own, your rivals or market forerunners provider label. The large number of the budget plan when prospective clients are actually utilizing search phrases directly associated to purchasing and also finally, a small aspect of the spending plan to re-market (reveal your advertising to people that have actually revealed an interest in your product or services by seeing your site) to catch and increase transformations coming from the clients previously promoted also Top Promotional Agencies.
 The very best PPC Agency are going to be actually a Google Premier Partner. A Google Premier Partner standing suggests that the business has an effective record in supplying top quality campaigns, which produce good competitive/low CPC's and deliver high as well as positive ROI's. The finest PPC agency will certainly possess a robust PPC management procedure in area to promptly respond as well as capitalise on modifications in the PPC projects of your rivals.
 Unlike SEO, that can spend some time to become completely successful, Pay Per Click is actually immediate in the simple fact that as very soon as your campaigns are live they could be generating leads for your organisation.
 Pay Per Click is actually very helpful when executed together along with SEO. A well-optimised website will certainly boost the top quality credit rating of your Google marketing campaign causing a lowered "cost per click" indicating you acquire additional tops for your budget Top Promotional Agencies.
 Social Media Site Marketing
Social networking site platforms including Facebook as well as Twitter are right now legitimate areas for a service to attract leads. Facebook possesses over 38 MILLION energetic as well as regular users in the UK and also the variety is anticipated to cheer over 42 MILLION by 2020. No matter if your organisation sells to individuals or various other services, your prospective clients perform Facebook and also utilizing it often Los Angeles.
 Facebook is actually great at elevating awareness throughout the consumers "study" stage, reminding them of your companies or even products in the course of the "point to consider" stage as well as putting your details products facing prospective customers at the "buying" phase. Along with such a big audience as well as the flexibility to target consumers throughout the acquiring procedure, Facebook may be an excellent avenue to produce tops as well as purchases and also to provide a wonderful gain on expenditure.
 A good digital advertising and marketing agency are going to have a proven record in delivering highly effective Facebook marketing campaign. The best electronic advertising organizations are going to be capable to illustrate the transformation rate and also expense every lead of your social networks advertising and marketing.
 Once more, social media marketing and particularly Facebook advertising and marketing may be accomplished as a stand-alone task nonetheless it works a great deal better when mixed along with SEO and/or PPC. When a possible consumer sees your web site their pc is denoted as having checked out. This at that point allows you to target the consumer of that personal computer, that has actually shown an interest in your service or products.
 Reputation Management
When considering creating a purchase, a prospective consumer will definitely comb the internet to locate feedback and assesses from previous consumers. Your internet marketing and also sales can easily reside or perish through the reviews for your organisation, product or services. Making sure that positive reviews are quick and easy to discover and that any bad responses is actually handled properly, may be a big advantage to your conversion price Los Angeles.
 Digital marketing companies contact this "credibility control" or "internet image management" however, essentially, it is actually generating bodies to create client assessments as well as client reviews arising beneficial customer satisfaction is grabbed as well as easy to discover for possible consumers.
 Several organisations are interested in allowing the public the ability to candidly give responses. You can not satisfy all of people each one of the moment, and providers worry that a poor testimonial is going to possess a damaging effect on their organisation. Firstly, if a person is found out to leave a poor evaluation for your business they will certainly find a platform to carry out thus and there are 1000's of platforms to select from. It is actually much better to have command of where customers are urged to leave a review. The second thing is, a bad or negative testimonial, if managed effectively, can be a beneficial for your service. Interacting with a bad evaluation highlights that you love feedback and subsequently, you care regarding your customers. One properly took care of negative assessment can be as helpful for your business 10 excellent evaluations Los Angeles.
 Seeking a Marketing Agency?
 Tapping The Services Of a Marketing Agency is an excellent approach to bring your organisation to the next level, but finding the right marketing company that will certainly do all the essential job as well as bring you extra customers can easily be actually challenging. And also prior to you entrust your difficult made money to the very first firm that arrives your way, you ought to take into consideration a couple of traits.
 The Internet has currently boosted a whole lot even more than it was before as well as transformed the way of life of lots of folks in several techniques. Having said that today's foremost professionals specify that this is actually simply the begin of its own growth. They profess that nowadays the on the internet world is actually far more vital for our team than many other channels, moreover that will certainly determine our lifestyles in a couple of extra directions in the nearest future. For example, based upon new research information, the a large number have already turned towards the online web to study and also research as opposed to visiting the public library. Likewise, the future of the newspapers in addition seems sealed off due to the fact that even more as well as more folks are actually already using the Internet to receive the newest info.
 The TV is actually upcoming towards to the Internet similarly. A growing number of TELEVISION shows along with sports happenings are right now relayed online and also more people are actually spending a lot less time checking out television. Because of that, even the FIFA World Cup 2010, was actually transmitted online.
 As a result if you run a small company or a significant provider, and also if you prefer to receive additional customers and also customers, it is essential to possess an engaging web visibility. More companies are mesmerizing as well as comprehend this, in order that is actually why, an increasingly volume of business owners are actually utilizing the companies of an advertising and marketing organization.
 Therefore how can A Marketing Agency be actually helpful for your details business design?
 What an advertising firm performs, is actually investigating and also assessing the marketplace comprehensive particulars for the client's market, therefore the firm may formulate really good marketing initiative. The reason of that is the customer's services and products to reach out to the potential consumers. However discovering the right advertising and marketing company can easily be actually challenging. While a standard firm uses the traditional advertising and marketing techniques like newspaper advertisements, TV commercials, magazines and also billboards, an internet marketing agency will promote the customer's organisation online. As well as to perform that it is actually extremely essential that the organization possesses properly skilled workers that has learnt the internet search engine, affiliate advertising and marketing, SEO, PPC, post marketing, e-mail marketing and several various other methods.
 The advertising and marketing firm, as an aspect of advertising as well as industrying the client's site, might design and adjust the site also. By doing this it will certainly be sure that the website is actually certainly not merely distinctive yet that will certainly carry even more potential customers as well as consumers.
 Additionally comparable to a standard organization, the objective of an online advertising and marketing agency may label your business as well as the items, not just advertise as well as industry your business. As well as certainly, this is carried out completely on the world wide web.
 So Would You Hire A Marketing Agency?
 This is one of the most common concern that a lot of service managers ask personal frequently given that they are baffled. Considering the huge possibility of marketing on the Internet, tons of services want to go over the conventional technique of advertising and have actually set up a major existence online through an advertising and marketing organization.
 Also a lot of company owner have determined to take things in their own palms and market their product or services online, however lots of neglect from the absence of expertise.
 Nonetheless the truth continues to be that, a growing number of people are actually making use of the Internet as their principal resource for details, updates, music, watching sports occasions yet much more significant searching for items as well as companies they require.
 Picking the greatest Digital Marketing Agency
 It is actually necessary that you pick the very best electronic advertising agency given that they are required to aid you obtain direct exposure as well as presence online for your business. When selecting one you should attempt for one that is nearby and is actually based near where your business is actually found. Through doing this you will save attempt and also opportunity taking a trip to the marketing agency. It will definitely additionally be actually simple to connect quicker and also easier as an alternative of incorporating complication to your guidelines through using e-mail or even the phone. With the grow older of the net, it is essential that the electronic marketing organization you opt for is skilled.
 Prior to speaking with prospective world wide web marketing provider, you must detail your objectives and also vital outcome places that you would just like for the advertising and marketing agency to deal with. Create a brief checklist of four or more great agencies as well as ask for a personalized assessment to discuss your listing with therefore you may observe exactly how they will address your inquiries and if they may give you the vital end results you prefer. After the appointments, perform an evaluation of the offerings as well as abilities each of these companies along with your business's finances and advertising and marketing objectives. When this is actually done you should be capable to pick the organization that finest suits your demands. A lot of firms when appearing for an electronic marketing firm are searching for a company that will definitely provide you social networks marketing, mobile advertising, SEM, making a blog, SEO as well as considerably more.
 Below are a few other tips to aid you decide on the right digital marketing firm.
 - Experience-when you hire an electronic marketing agency, they must possess a sizable volume of knowledge in this industry.
- Look to observe if this advertising agency has actually implemented successful advertising and marketing methods for a business in a market comparable to your own.
- You should likewise consider the premium of each agencies operate before you wrap up the agreement
- You should take a look at the employees of the company to see their qualifications and knowledge given that you desire your organization in excellent hands.
- Look carefully at the package of solutions this company is providing. Lot of times, they will provide the right internet site layout, mobile and also email web options, internet marketing, SEO and SEM, duplicate and also material writing and also additional.
- Checkout their website, social media webpages, and also the blog post as well as observe just how they have actually executed their advertising and marketing community. Observe that whatever is improved.
- Check out the credibility of the digital indicating company you are thinking about allow take care of many of the instance.
 These are actually just a number of a lot of things to consider prior to choosing an electronic advertising and marketing firm. Take your opportunity to discover the firms you are actually thinking about working with prior to creating the ultimate choice.
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askstockmarket · 5 years ago
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Why stock markets are so excited about Modi 2.0
Why stock markets are so excited about Modi 2.0 A market sceptic asked me after the results; why are markets so excited about Modi? He had a point. During the last 5 years, the Nifty gave an average return of around 9.5%, which is lower than the 11.5% CAGR that the Nifty returned since inception. Let us look at five key reasons why the markets are excited about Modi 2.0. Look at wealth creation You will be surprised to know but the stock markets created $1 trillion of wealth during the 5 years of the Modi government. This is the highest absolute wealth created by stock markets in any 5-year rule in Indian history.  While the index may not have performed that well, the real action came in the form of new listings and non-index stocks. That is a lot of wealth created in 5 years. Financialization of savings No previous government contributed as much to the financialization of savings and building the indirect equity cult as the Modi government. AUM of Indian mutual funds moved up from Rs.8 trillion in 2014 to Rs.23 trillion in 2019. Such a huge growth on a large base is truly commendable. Also, the Indian mutual funds collect nearly Rs.8500 crore each month through SIPs, which is largely stable. Also, mutual fund folios and Demat accounts have seen a manifold increase. That is the kind of retail push that markets always wanted. Continuation of the reforms process One thing Modi 2.0 assures the market is of a continuation of the reforms process. Some of the reforms like GST and IBC have been substantially valued accretive for a lot of stocks in India. Modi 2.0 also means that the reforms momentum will continue at the same pace. In the previous regime, Modi has shown a penchant to take up bold reforms like IBC and GST and even out of the box reforms like the cash ban. That is the approach markets look for. A divestment boost The market expects that the decisive mandate for the Modi government for a second term will coax the government to be more aggressive in divesting government stakes. The strategic sale was spoken about but not pushed through. This will only mean more quality paper coming into the stock markets thus reducing the bubble risk. FPIs like it - that is important FPI has driven the direction of Indian markets for the last 25 years and they are truly happy about the return of the Modi government. That only assures that flows into India will continue at a rapid pace in the months to come giving the markets the much-needed stability and support. If you are wondering why the markets rallied post-exit poll; this was one of the key reasons. Modi 2.0 - Economy What are the economic challenges that Modi must address urgently The victory of the BJP and the NDA has not only been emphatic it has been largely decisive too. While India has maintained above 7% growth in the five years of the Modi government, it gets a lot more complicated now. The global slowdown, higher oil prices and BREXIT promise a not so healthy cocktail. Complete reforms agenda The industry has been talking about third-generation reforms but that can wait. The immediate priority for the new Modi government will be to take bad debt resolution and GST to its logical next step. Better implementation of GST, lesser leakages and simpler rates must be something to be worked on immediately. Secondly, the IBC has made a good start but the remaining insolvency cases have to be disposed of quickly to be effective.  Project divestment starts With a decisive second mandate, the Modi government can afford to be more adventurous. Greater autonomy to the PSUs, majority private participation and strategic sale must be pushed forward on a war footing. It is not just about revenues with respect to divestments. It is also about making the Indian PSU sector more competitive in the global market place. But above all, this effort will ensure that quality paper comes into the stock market. That will largely do away with the risk of market bubbles. Big export thrust Over the last 30 years, the Indian economy has managed to follow a specific export narrative. Initially, in the 1980s it was textiles followed by gems & jewellery. Later, software and pharma became multi-billion-dollar export cases. In the last 10 years, India has not really had a clear export story. That is what India needs to focus on. Whether it is automobiles, steel, aluminium defence production; that is a call the government has to make. But whatever the choice, the government must have a multi-pronged strategy. This will include easy funding, easy processes, marketing support, collaborations etc. It is only a combination of all these that can give a true-blue thrust to exports. Need to create more jobs The people did not really question the Modi government on jobs in his first five years. However, voters may not be so charitable in the second innings. The government needs to seriously brain-storm on how to create more jobs. Agricultural has to become more profitable and SMEs need to get back their trust. Government recruitments must start in a big way and the government has to take the lead on this subject. CMIE data may or may not be precise but intuitively you can see the unemployment problem all around. Jobs can put an end to a lot of problems, including that of consumer demand! Modi 2.0 - Lessons The opposition needs to learn some key lessons from the elections As much as the victory of the NDA in general and the BJP, in particular, was emphatic, it also left some very critical lessons for the opposition. How they read the lessons will determine their future. Every healthy democracy needs a strong opposition and it is in India’s own long term interest. Caste era is over Be it the states of UP, Bihar or Madhya Pradesh, caste equations have hardly mattered. The nationalism narrative created by the BJP has really worked. In a way, the 2019 elections also marked the end of the caste era and the dominance of caste parties since 1989. Voters don’t care about caste issues any longer at the time of voting. Understand the youth What the Modi government managed better than the opposition was to make a direct appeal to the youth. The youth seems to believe in a strong centre based on nationalism and that is exactly what the Modi government provided to the next generation. Nearly 65% of Indian voters are below the age of 35 and for most of them, the Congress party’s glory prior to 1989 is just a footnote of history. The opposition should understand this aspect and modulate their narrative accordingly. The young want decisive leadership and that is what Modi 2.0 promised. Everything else becomes secondary. Have a positive agenda The India of today and the India of tomorrow believe in a positive agenda. No point in running a campaign just highlighting the mistakes of the ruling party. That is the big blunder that the opposition parties committed. Modi used that campaign to his advantage and used the party machinery and media to full effect. That surely worked better than anything else. The devil lies in the micros If it was a Modi wave, why did Congress perform so exceedingly well in Punjab and Kerala?  While the wave was there, people still respect grass-root leaders who try to understand what people need. Amarinder Singh and Tharoor are examples of two leaders who delivered the state against all odds. There is a bigger lesson for the opposition that there is merit in micro-level planning; the way BJP runs its machinery. Roll up your sleeves, folks The outcome has proved that to win an election in a complex country like India, you need feet on the street. An army of armchair analysts divorced from reality will not get you anywhere. Also, it is amusing to see leaders spending more time on Twitter than at the ground level. People like Amit Shah, Jagan, Tharoor and Naveen Babu have proved the need to roll up your sleeves.
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ephemeradical-blog · 6 years ago
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How to Get Started in Online Poker
Have you heard than poker is a lot of fun? Indeed poker includes a perfect combination of a social friendly circle or club versus battling wits and adrenalin of winning. When getting started off with poker some people rush out to deposit a considerable sum at a biggest online site they can find. They usually lose their deposit quickly, sour on the game and leave. There is a much better way and it is more fun. I recommend beginning at any quality totally free internet poker sites instead. There are numerous out there to choose from.
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Learn Poker Rules While poker rules are simple, the game is fairly fast paced. Usually you have less than 30 sec to produce a move. Thus it is critical to have the ability to quickly grasp at least what cards you have, how they match community cards and various different methods for you to win. Do you wish to learn all that if you have your actual, hard earned dollars on the table? Perhaps you do. For me - that would make me anxious and where is certainly fun for the reason that? Free multiplayer online poker sites, where you online perform against other people, are ideal for learning these simple poker rules. You will learn them with no pressure and no hit to your wallet. Do Not Be a Patsy There are explanations why many sites motivate you to produce a cash deposit as soon as possible. The most important one is to provide new money in to the game. Online poker is certainly a zero sum video game. That is what someone won someone else must have dropped. New inexperienced players are known as "fish" or "patsy" in online poker parlance. Good players purposely seek them out. Poker is a casino game of skill in the end. The better you abilities are the better and more consistent your payday is. You aren't a patsy. Since you are scanning this article you are already before 90% of poker newbies. You have mastered poker basics on safe enjoy money poker sites for free. So when you are prepared to play for actual money you enter the overall game with some self-confidence. You are not confused or intimidated by a strict seller and quick pace at casino tables. Learn What Never to Do Some poker specialists believe it is detrimental for your poker skills to train on free, that is play money, online poker sites. They explain that when there is no real money on the relative line players modify their behavior. Put simply players have no fear of losing their cash and be maniacs raising every hand just to see what happens. I trust that observation. Play money sites feature reckless, hyper aggressive actually maniacal players who by no means stop for an instantaneous to think what they are performing. Well, they are simple to beat for those who have a minimal discipline rather than take part in the same over the top playing style. Poker has what is called an ideal strategy - strategy which ensures to win the most over the long-term whatever cards you are dealt. The closer your perform to perfect strategy the larger your edge becomes. Think of it this way - if you cannot beat a free poker game, why do you think you'll prosper in cash game where players, on average, are a lot more competent? Make feeling? In this manner of thinking goes additional. When you can regularly beat a free poker game, it is a solid indication you are ready to move up. Observe and Adapt There are in least three fundamental skills you need to learn prior to going upon a roll in NEVADA. Obviously learn the cards. That is know how cards combine into winning combos in Texas Holdem poker. How different combos rank against each other. The majority of the players you will encounter do know that. But those hours you spent online can pay off there. Since you played free of charge you could afford playing more hands. More practice produced you faster and more comfortable running card combos in your mind. The other two skills are being adapting and observant to current playing style. What is there to see online you might ask? In online poker you can observe a lot even. Watch how much period your opponents take to react. Make mental notes how they respond to different situations. Discern patterns within their play. It appears like a complete large amount of work. That is because it is but therefore is walking. You do not consider walking hard because it was learned by you once and it became you nature through constant practice. It works the same with online poker abilities. Finally, adapting means adjusting your video game to take maximum advantage of specific individuals seated at your specific table today. You cannot play mechanically applying "greatest practice" rules like increase with your great cards and fold your junk cards. You are wanted by me to accomplish better than that. Here your razor-sharp observation starts bearing fruit. You will notice that a raise from maniac means much less a raise from a tight, cautious player. Wagering out into four players after a increase on earlier round says a lot more that an automated bet on the flop. You have to adapt your play by loosening up and tightening down as opportunities go and come. There is a very important factor I learned well - playing poker is playing and fun may be the important thing. But playing and successful is more pleasurable even. Spend a while planning then you can certainly enter on your own terms and be a dangerous opponent not a fish. Where to Go Online This is a short section because the answer is easy. Find a site with Fixed Limit no Limit online poker which loads fast and its own graphics are functional but sparse. I discover that many betting themed sites are weighty on flashy in-your-face images which confuse me and change me off. You need to avoid those and seek out poker rooms where graphics are simple, practical and basically "get-out-of-the-way" that you can focus on poker. You have of choices from feature-rich plenty, downloadable software by large commercial online cardrooms with an excellent support for Mac and Windows. On the various other end of spectrum can be free of charge no download poker software playable in a browser. Such simply no download clients still offers full-featured Texas Holdem poker yet playable even on smartphone or iPad. Where to Learn Poker Strategy The pointers I gave in this post are only bare basics that get you started on the proper foot in poker. Nevertheless there is more if you wish to improve your game a lot. Depending on your individual way to understand and how you digest info you can go among the two methods. Either spend lots of time on poker forums getting together with fellow new players and learning via social group. It can be fun and fairly motivating but be prepared to spend some time. Another way is buying a book and working through it really. For the best value I recommend Small Stakes Hold 'em: Successful Big With Expert Enjoy by Ed Miller and David Sklansky. The book is solid, methodical however readable and addresses all aspects of winning in poker.
Tumblr media
Enough Talk - CONTINUE and Play Some Poker Now it's time to put everything into an actionable plan. Here is how I would recommend you to proceed. Begin by playing poker free of charge online. Once you have learned the rules buy a book. Read it once. Perform more poker while staying observant. Think of the tactile hands you played following the game is over. You will automatically return to the book. Reading it second period will not be boring at all because you get deeper meaning predicated on your own experience at the tables. Once you are beating a free of charge game online you pays a check out to your neighborhood casino and enjoy some Limit Texas Holdem. Starting out with No Limit can be a sure way to reduce your bankroll quickly. Continue on playing micro stakes online along with low stakes in a online casino. Inevitably you will have moments if you have lost control and produced stupid mistakes. It really is never wrong to go back to the prior level to rebuild confidence. Even poker pros frequently do that. Maintain building you and saving for a trip to Vegas bankroll. I will see you there. Become familiar with more about 슈어맨
0 notes
raven-the-native-blog · 6 years ago
Text
How to Get Started in Online Poker
Perhaps you have heard than online poker is a complete large amount of fun? Indeed poker has a perfect combination of a social friendly circle or club versus battling wits and adrenalin of winning. When getting started with poker some people hurry out to deposit a significant sum at a biggest online site they can find. They usually eliminate their deposit quickly, sour on the overall game and keep. There is a better way and it is more fun. Instead I would recommend starting at any quality free online poker sites. There are plenty of out there to select from. Learn Poker Rules While poker guidelines are simple, the overall game is fast paced fairly. Usually you have significantly less than 30 sec to make a move. Thus it is advisable to be able to quickly grasp at least what cards you have, how they match community cards and all different ways you can win. Do you wish to learn all that when you have your actual, hard earned dollars on the table? Perhaps you do. As for me - that could make me nervous and where can be fun for the reason that? Free multiplayer online poker sites, where you online play against other people, are perfect for learning these basic poker rules. You will learn them without pressure and no strike to your wallet. DON'T BE a Patsy There are explanations why many sites encourage you to create a cash deposit as soon as possible. The most crucial one is to provide new money into the game. Online poker is certainly a zero sum video game. That is what someone won someone else must have lost. New inexperienced players are known as "fish" or "patsy" in poker parlance. Good players look for them out purposely. Poker is a game of skill after all. The better you abilities are the better and more consistent your payday is. You are certainly not a patsy. Since you are scanning this article you already are before 90% of online poker newbies. You possess mastered poker basics on safe enjoy money poker sites for free. So if you are prepared to play for real cash you enter the overall game with some confidence. You aren't intimidated or puzzled by a strict seller and quick pace at casino tables. Learn What Not to Do Some poker specialists believe that it is detrimental for your poker skills to teach on free, that's play money, online poker sites. They explain that when there is no real money on the line players modify their behavior. Put simply players have no fear of losing their cash and be maniacs raising every hand just to see what happens. I agree with that observation. Play cash sites feature reckless, hyper aggressive also maniacal players who never stop for an instantaneous to believe what they are carrying out. Well, they are simple to beat should you have a minimal discipline and not engage in the same over the top playing style. Online poker has what's called an ideal strategy - strategy which ensures to win the the majority of over the long term regardless of what cards you are dealt. The closer your enjoy to perfect strategy the bigger your edge becomes. Think of it this real method - if you fail to beat a free poker game, why do you are believed by you would prosper in cash video game where players, on average, are much more competent? Make sense? In this manner of further thinking goes. When you can consistently beat a free poker game, it is a good indication you are ready to progress. Observe and Adapt There are at least three fundamental skills you must learn prior to going on a roll in NEVADA. Obviously learn the cards. That is know how cards combine into successful combinations in Texas Holdem poker. How different mixtures rank against each other. Most of the players you will come across do know that. But those hours you spent online will pay off there. Since you played for free you could afford playing more hands. More practice made you faster and convenient running card combos in your mind. The various other two skills are being observant and adapting to current playing style. What is there to observe online you may ask? In online poker you can observe a lot even. Watch how much time your opponents try react. Make mental notes how they respond to different situations. Discern patterns within their play. It appears like a complete large amount of work. That is because it is but so is walking. You do not consider walking hard because it was learned by you once and it became you nature through constant practice. It works the same with poker skills. Finally, adapting means adjusting your game to consider maximum advantage of specific individuals seated at your unique table today. You cannot perform mechanically applying "greatest practice" rules like increase with your great cards and fold your junk cards. I'd like you to do much better than that. Here your sharp observation starts bearing fruit. You will notice that a raise from maniac means much less a raise from a good, cautious player. Betting out into four players after a raise on earlier round says a lot more that an automated wager on the flop. You have to modify your play by loosening up and tightening down as opportunities go and come. There is a very important factor I learned well - playing poker is playing and fun is the important thing. But playing and successful is more pleasurable even. Spend a while preparing then you can enter by yourself terms and become a harmful opponent not really a fish. Where you can Go Online This is a brief section since the answer is simple. Look for a site with Fixed Limit and No Limit poker which loads fast and its own graphics are practical but sparse. I find that many gambling themed sites are large on flashy in-your-face graphics which confuse me and turn me off. You need to avoid those and seek out poker rooms where images are simple, functional and basically "get-out-of-the-way" that you can focus on poker. You have of choices from feature-rich plenty, downloadable software by large commercial online cardrooms with a great support for Windows and Mac. On the additional end of spectrum can be free no download poker software playable in a web browser. Such no download clients still offers full-featured Texas Holdem poker yet playable even on iPad or smartphone. Where to Learn Poker Strategy The pointers I gave in this article are only bare essentials that get you started on the proper foot in poker. However there is enough more if you wish to improve your game. Depending on your personal way to learn and how you digest information you can go among the two methods. Either spend lots of time on online poker forums getting together with fellow new players and learning via social group. It can be fun and quite motivating but anticipate to spend some time. Another way is buying a book and operating through it really. To get the best value I recommend Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play by Ed Miller and David Sklansky. The book is solid, methodical however readable and addresses all areas of winning in poker. Enough Talk - CONTINUE and Play Some Poker Now it's time to put everything into an actionable plan. Here is how I would recommend you to proceed. Start out by playing poker for free online. After you have learned the guidelines buy a book. Read it once. Play more poker while keeping observant. Think of the hands you played after the video game is over. You will automatically go back to the book. Reading it second time will not be boring at all because you get deeper meaning based on your own experience at the tables. After you are defeating a free game online you pays a visit to your neighborhood casino and enjoy some Limit TEXAS HOLD EM. Starting out with No Limit is usually a sure way to reduce your bankroll quickly. Keep on playing micro stakes on the web in addition to low stakes in a internet casino. Inevitably you will have moments if you have lost control and made stupid mistakes. It really is never wrong to return to the prior level to rebuild self-confidence. Even poker pros do that often. Keep building you and conserving for a vacation to Vegas bankroll. I'll see you there. Become familiar with more about 토토사이트
0 notes
Text
How to begin in Online Poker
Perhaps you have heard than poker will be a lot of fun? Indeed poker has a perfect combination of a interpersonal friendly circle or club versus battling wits and adrenalin of successful. When getting started off with poker some people rush out to deposit a significant sum at a biggest online site they can find. They often quickly drop their deposit, sour on the overall game and leave. There is a better way and it is more fun. I would recommend beginning at any quality totally free internet poker sites instead. There are several out there to choose from.
Tumblr media
Learn Poker Rules While poker rules are simple, the game is fairly overly busy. Usually you have significantly less than 30 sec to make a move. Thus it is critical to be able to grasp at least what cards you have quickly, how they match community cards and various different ways you can win. Do you want to find out all that if you have your true, hard earned dollars on the table? Perhaps you do. As for me - that would make me anxious and where is definitely fun for the reason that? Free multiplayer poker sites, where you enjoy against other people online, are perfect for learning these basic poker rules. Become familiar with them without pressure and no strike to your wallet. Do Not Be a Patsy There are reasons why many sites encourage you to create a cash deposit as quickly as possible. The most important one is to provide new money in to the game. Poker can be a zero sum video game. That is what someone won someone else must have dropped. New inexperienced players are called "fish" or "patsy" in poker parlance. Good players purposely seek them out. Poker is a game of skill after all. The better you skills will be the better and more constant your payday is. You aren't a patsy. Since you are scanning this article you already are ahead of 90% of poker newbies. You possess mastered online poker basics on safe play money poker sites for free. So when you are ready to play for actual money you enter the game with some confidence. You aren't intimidated or baffled by a strict seller and quick speed at casino tables. Learn What Not to Do Some poker professionals believe that it is detrimental for your poker skills to teach on free, that's play money, poker sites. They clarify that when there is no real money on the line players modify their behavior. Basically players have no concern with losing their cash and become maniacs raising every hand just to see what goes on. I trust that observation. Play cash sites feature reckless, hyper aggressive actually maniacal players who never stop for an instantaneous to think what they are carrying out. Well, they are simple to beat in case you have a minimal discipline and not engage in the same outrageous playing style. Poker has what is called a perfect strategy - strategy which ensures to win the most over the long term whatever cards you are dealt. The closer your enjoy to perfect strategy the larger your edge becomes. Think about it in this manner - if you cannot beat a free of charge poker game, why do you are thought by you would prosper in cash video game where players, on average, are much more competent? Make sense? This way of further thinking goes. When you can beat a free poker game consistently, it is a good indication that you will be ready to progress. Observe and Adapt There are at least three fundamental skills you must learn before you go upon a roll in NEVADA. Learn the cards obviously. That is know how cards combine into winning mixtures in Poker palace texas holdem. How different mixtures rank against each other. The majority of the players you will come across do know that. But those hours you spent online can pay off there. Since you played free of charge you could afford playing more hands. More practice produced you faster and more comfortable running card combos in your mind. The other two skills are being adapting and observant to current playing style. What is there to see online you might ask? Even in online poker you can observe a whole lot. Watch how much period your opponents try react. Make mental notes how they react to different situations. Discern patterns in their play. It appears like a whole lot of work. That is since it is but so is walking. You do not consider walking hard because it was learned by you once and it became you nature through constant practice. It functions the same with poker abilities. Finally, adapting means adjusting your game to take maximum advantage of specific people seated at your unique table today. You cannot perform mechanically applying "greatest practice" rules like raise with your great cards and fold your junk cards. I want you to do better than that. Here your sharp observation starts bearing fresh fruit. You will notice that a raise from maniac means much less that a raise from a tight, cautious player. Gambling out into four players after a increase on earlier round says a lot more that an automated wager on the flop. You have to modify your play by loosening up and tightening down as opportunities go and come. There is one thing I learned well - playing poker is definitely fun and playing may be the important thing. But playing and successful is a lot more fun. Spend a while planning then you can enter by yourself terms and become a dangerous opponent not really a fish. Where you can Go Online This is a short section because the answer is easy. Find a site with Fixed Limit and No Limit poker which loads fast and its graphics are functional but sparse. I discover that many betting themed sites are large on flashy in-your-face images which confuse me and convert me off. You would like to avoid those and look for poker rooms where images are simple, functional and basically "get-out-of-the-way" that you can focus on poker. You have plenty of choices from feature-rich, downloadable software by large commercial online cardrooms with an excellent support for Windows and Mac. On the various other end of spectrum is usually totally free no download poker software playable in a web browser. Such no download clients still offers full-featured Texas Holdem poker yet playable also on smartphone or iPad. Where to Learn Poker Strategy The pointers I gave in this article are only bare essentials that get you started on the right foot in poker. Nevertheless there is enough more if you want to improve your game. Depending on your personal way to learn and how you digest details you can go one of the two ways. Either spend lots of time on poker forums interacting with fellow new players and learning via social group. It could be fun and fairly motivating but be prepared to spend some time. Another way is investing in a book and actually working through it. To find the best value I recommend Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Perform by Ed Miller and David Sklansky. The book is solid, methodical yet readable and addresses all areas of winning in poker.
Tumblr media
Enough Talk - Go On and Play Some Poker It is time to place everything into an actionable strategy now. Right here is how I recommend you to proceed. Start out by playing poker for free online. After you have learned the rules buy a book. Read it once. Perform more poker while staying observant. Think about the hands you performed after the video game is over. You will return to the book automatically. Reading it second period will not be boring at all because you get deeper meaning predicated on your own experience at the tables. Once you are beating a free of charge game online you can pay a visit to your neighborhood casino and perform some Limit Texas Holdem. Starting out with No Limit is certainly a sure way to reduce your bankroll quickly. Continue on playing micro stakes online along with low stakes in a internet casino. Inevitably you will see moments if you have lost control and produced stupid mistakes. It really is never wrong to return to the prior level to rebuild self-confidence. Even poker pros frequently do that. Keep building you and conserving for a trip to Vegas bankroll. I will see you there. Get to know more about 토토사이트
0 notes
abckidstvyara · 7 years ago
Text
Ripple is going after startups to build an ecosystem around its XRP cryptocurrency
Ripple is going after startups to build an ecosystem around its XRP cryptocurrency
It’s finally happening. Ripple is making a push to expand the use of its XRP cryptocurrency into new verticals and segments beyond the payment and banking space where the company is focused.
XRP is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency behind only bitcoin, the original breakout artist, and Ethereum, the platform that most developers pomp for. XRP has a total ‘coin market cap’ of $28.7 billion today, according to Coinmarketcap.com, and yet it is barely used beyond a handful of pilot customer deployments that Ripple has announced.
That might change soon, however, after Ripple announced a new initiative called Xpring — pronounced ‘Spring’ — which is aimed at bringing entrepreneurs and their businesses over to XRP, both the cryptocurrency and the smart ledger, to build an ecosystem. The project will use a mixture of investment, grants, and incubation to lure companies and expand the use of XRP whilst allowing Ripple to continue to focus on its financial services business.
That’s essential, and even in the short space of six months the need for variety has been clear.
The value of XRP shot up in December and January during a crypto surge which saw bitcoin reach an all-time high of nearly $20,000 per coin. The collective value of XRP was worth more than $128 billion at peak before a market crash in January walked those prices back significantly. Ripple has come under fire for a perceived lack of use for XRP, which has been marketed as a tool for banks but has attracted only cross-border payment services as customers.
Going beyond Ripple
Ripple has hired Ethan Beard, formerly director of Facebook’s developer network and an ex-EIR at Greylock Partners, to lead Xpring and more broadly Ripple’s developer program.
“The goal is to support businesses that we believe would see benefit from building upon the XRP ledger,” Eric van Miltenburg, Ripple SVP of business operations, told TechCrunch in an interview. “Support will come in a variety of ways: investment, incubation, and the potential of acquisition or grants. We’re focused on proven entrepreneurs who can use the ledger and XRP to really address their customers’ problems.”
Van Miltenburg said Ripple has been approached by entrepreneurs and companies wanting to work with XRP “for years,” but nothing came of discussions because Ripple is focused on financial services.
“There’s been enough interaction to say there’s something here [and] now is the time,” he added. “Over the last four to six months [the idea of Xpring] has really crystallized.”
Ethan Beard speaking at LeWeb in 2010 (via Adam Tinworth/Flickr)
If you’ve been keeping an eye on Ripple this year, the launch of the program won’t be a huge surprise.
Aside from the fact that many in the crypto space are pulling together their own funds — whether it be informally as a company, or more broadly across industries like the Ethereum Community Fund — Ripple has quietly upped its investment focus.
Initially, two Ripple executives took part in a $25 million investment in January for Bay Area-based startup Omni then in March CEO Brad Garlinghouse told TechCrunch that Ripple would “certainly partner with companies that are looking to use XRP in lots of different ways” whilst maintaining its focus as a business.
Xpring is that project.
Enter the Bieber… kinda
Van Miltenburg and Beard told TechCrunch that the kind of segments where they see the most potential for XRP are trade finance, gaming, virtual goods, identity, real estate, media and micro-payments.
When I put it to them that XRP is looking for reasons to justify its $28 billion market cap, van Miltenburg claimed that Ripple is far less speculative than other cryptocurrencies.
“There’s a use case we have established for it: Ripple is one of the only enterprise solutions on the blockchain that’s out in production. We believe the XRP ledger and the asset has a performance profile that lends it to others,” he said.
He added that Ripple has seen interest from projects that “started on a blockchain that isn’t living up to their needs,” and that Xpring could focus on rehousing such projects. However, it won’t be investing in ICOs, buying other tokens or hosting ICOs on the XRP blockchain, van Miltenburg said.
Aside from Omni — which said it will “soon” add XRP as currency in its marketplace service — Xpring has pulled in a couple of early names. Scooter Braun, the man best known for managing Justin Bieber, is “pursuing several endeavors that will use XRP to improve artists’ ability to monetize and manage their content.”
Neither van Miltenburg nor Beard could be specific on exactly what Braun is working on — there are already a number of blockchain-based digital rights and music streaming projects in development — but they said he isn’t one to jump on a bandwagon.
Braun said in a canned statement that he is “excited our team is among the first in the entertainment industry to lean into the blockchain movement.”
“This is only the beginning as we will continue to build out more use cases for XRP,” he added.
Other early partners being announced today include Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas who is transitioning out of his role to build micro-payment services using XRP via a new venture called Coil. In addition, Xpring has backed VC firm Blockchain Capital while Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, raised his latest fund entirely in XRP.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse previously spoke of plans to partner with companies on XRP (via Christopher Michel/Flickr)
Building an ecosystem
Generally, the plan for exactly how Xpring will work seems fluid at this point.
Beard spoke of the next wave of innovation coming from the blockchain, much like Facebook’s Timeline and social graph helped scale companies like Spotify, Zynga and BuzzFeed from startups into major tech names. He believes that, in turn, Xpring and XRP can help “build new businesses and change how industries function.”
Van Miltenburg was non-committal in terms of goals.
“Our motivation is to ensure that the XRP ledger and digital asset reaches its full potential. We want to see an extremely healthy and robust XRP ecosystem; that benefits Ripple and all others,” he explained.
Ripple is known to incentive its partners with XRP bonuses for signing, but it isn’t talking numbers this time, either the specific incentives that it is giving to high-profile names like Braun, or the overall budget that it has put behind Xpring.
“For the right opportunities, we can be aggressive. There’s no hesitation or reluctance to make big bets with opportunities that require investment,” is all van Miltenburg would say.
You can bet a large chunk of capital (XRP) is supporting Xpring. The current system with hundreds of cryptocurrencies isn’t sustainable, those that make it through will be the ones that offer the most value, and ecosystems could well be a measure of that. XRP, as the third-largest cryptocurrency, has considerable expectations on it which, as the crash earlier this year showed, can wipe out money faster than it made crypto wealth.
You can bet that Xpring, while outside of Ripple’s core financial services focus, will be a very key focus for building a community and ultimately usage for XRP. The question is how the startup community will reach to a different kind of investment option.
Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.
0 notes
theinvinciblenoob · 7 years ago
Link
It’s finally happening. Ripple is making a push to expand the use of its XRP cryptocurrency into new verticals and segments beyond the payment and banking space where the company is focused.
XRP is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency behind only bitcoin, the original breakout artist, and Ethereum, the platform that most developers pomp for. XRP has a total ‘coin market cap’ of $28.7 billion today, according to Coinmarketcap.com, and yet it is barely used beyond a handful of pilot customer deployments that Ripple has announced.
That might change soon, however, after Ripple announced a new initiative called Xpring — pronounced ‘Spring’ — which is aimed at bringing entrepreneurs and their businesses over to XRP, both the cryptocurrency and the smart ledger, to build an ecosystem. The project will use a mixture of investment, grants, and incubation to lure companies and expand the use of XRP whilst allowing Ripple to continue to focus on its financial services business.
That’s essential, and even in the short space of six months the need for variety has been clear.
The value of XRP shot up in December and January during a crypto surge which saw bitcoin reach an all-time high of nearly $20,000 per coin. The collective value of XRP was worth more than $128 billion at peak before a market crash in January walked those prices back significantly. Ripple has come under fire for a perceived lack of use for XRP, which has been marketed as a tool for banks but has attracted only cross-border payment services as customers.
Going beyond Ripple
Ripple has hired Ethan Beard, formerly director of Facebook’s developer network and an ex-EIR at Greylock Partners, to lead Xpring and more broadly Ripple’s developer program.
“The goal is to support businesses that we believe would see benefit from building upon the XRP ledger,” Eric van Miltenburg, Ripple SVP of business operations, told TechCrunch in an interview. “Support will come in a variety of ways: investment, incubation, and the potential of acquisition or grants. We’re focused on proven entrepreneurs who can use the ledger and XRP to really address their customers’ problems.”
Van Miltenburg said Ripple has been approached by entrepreneurs and companies wanting to work with XRP “for years,” but nothing came of discussions because Ripple is focused on financial services.
“There’s been enough interaction to say there’s something here [and] now is the time,” he added. “Over the last four to six months [the idea of Xpring] has really crystallized.”
Ethan Beard speaking at LeWeb in 2010 (via Adam Tinworth/Flickr)
If you’ve been keeping an eye on Ripple this year, the launch of the program won’t be a huge surprise.
Aside from the fact that many in the crypto space are pulling together their own funds — whether it be informally as a company, or more broadly across industries like the Ethereum Community Fund — Ripple has quietly upped its investment focus.
Initially, two Ripple executives took part in a $25 million investment in January for Bay Area-based startup Omni then in March CEO Brad Garlinghouse told TechCrunch that Ripple would “certainly partner with companies that are looking to use XRP in lots of different ways” whilst maintaining its focus as a business.
Xpring is that project.
Enter the Bieber… kinda
Van Miltenburg and Beard told TechCrunch that the kind of segments where they see the most potential for XRP are trade finance, gaming, virtual goods, identity, real estate, media and micro-payments.
When I put it to them that XRP is looking for reasons to justify its $28 billion market cap, van Miltenburg claimed that Ripple is far less speculative than other cryptocurrencies.
“There’s a use case we have established for it: Ripple is one of the only enterprise solutions on the blockchain that’s out in production. We believe the XRP ledger and the asset has a performance profile that lends it to others,” he said.
He added that Ripple has seen interest from projects that “started on a blockchain that isn’t living up to their needs,” and that Xpring could focus on rehousing would-be blockchain migrants. However, it won’t be investing in ICOs, buying other tokens or hosting ICOs on the XRP blockchain, van Miltenburg said.
Aside from Omni — which said it will “soon” add XRP as currency in its marketplace service — Xpring has pulled in a couple of early names. Scooter Braun, the man best known for managing Justin Bieber, is “pursuing several endeavors that will use XRP to improve artists’ ability to monetize and manage their content.”
Neither van Miltenburg nor Beard could be specific on exactly what Braun is working on — there are already a number of blockchain-based digital rights and music streaming projects in development — but they said he isn’t one to jump on a bandwagon.
Braun said in a canned statement that he is “excited our team is among the first in the entertainment industry to lean into the blockchain movement.”
“This is only the beginning as we will continue to build out more use cases for XRP,” he added.
Other early partners being announced today include Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas who is transitioning out of his role to build micro-payment services using XRP via a new venture called Coil. In addition, Xpring has backed VC firm Blockchain Capital while Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, raised his latest fund entirely in XRP.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse previously spoke of plans to partner with companies on XRP (via Christopher Michel/Flickr)
Building an ecosystem
Generally, the plan for exactly how Xpring will work seems fluid at this point.
Beard spoke of the next wave of innovation coming from the blockchain, much like Facebook’s Timeline and social graph helped scale companies like Spotify, Zynga and BuzzFeed from startups into major tech names. He believes that, in turn, Xpring and XRP can help “build new businesses and change how industries function.”
Van Miltenburg was non-committal in terms of goals.
“Our motivation is to ensure that the XRP ledger and digital asset reaches its full potential. We want to see an extremely healthy and robust XRP ecosystem; that benefits Ripple and all others,” he explained.
Ripple is known to incentive its partners with XRP bonuses for signing, but it isn’t talking numbers this time, either the specific incentives that it is giving to high-profile names like Braun, or the overall budget that it has put behind Xpring.
“For the right opportunities, we can be aggressive. There’s no hesitation or reluctance to make big bets with opportunities that require investment,” is all van Miltenburg would say.
You can bet a large chunk of capital (XRP) is supporting Xpring. The current system with hundreds of cryptocurrencies isn’t sustainable, those that make it through will be the ones that offer the most value, and ecosystems could well be a measure of that. XRP, as the third-largest cryptocurrency, has considerable expectations on it which, as the crash earlier this year showed, can wipe out money faster than it made crypto wealth.
You can bet that Xpring, while outside of Ripple’s core financial services focus, will be a very key focus for building a community and ultimately usage for XRP. The question is how the startup community will reach to a different kind of investment option.
Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.
via TechCrunch
0 notes
victoriagloverstuff · 7 years ago
Text
Ripple is going after startups to build an ecosystem around its XRP cryptocurrency – TechCrunch
It’s finally happening. Ripple is making a push to expand the use of its XRP cryptocurrency into new verticals and segments beyond the payment and banking space that the company is focused.
XRP is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency behind only bitcoin, the original breakout artist, and Ethereum, the platform that most developers pomp for. XRP has a total ‘coin market cap’ of $28.7 billion today, according to Coinmarketcap.com, and yet it is barely used beyond a handful of pilot customer deployments that Ripple has announced.
That might change soon, however, after Ripple announced a new initiative called Xpring — pronounced ‘Spring’ — which is aimed at bringing entrepreneurs and their businesses over to XRP, both the cryptocurrency and the smart ledger, to build an ecosystem. The project will use a mixture of investment, grants, and incubation to lure companies and expand the use of XRP whilst allowing Ripple to continue to focus on its financial services business.
That’s essential, and even in the short space of six months the need for variety has been clear.
The value of XRP shot up in December and January during a crypto surge which saw bitcoin reach an all-time high of nearly $20,000 per coin. The collective value of XRP was worth more than $128 billion at peak before a market crash in January walked those prices back significantly. Ripple has come under fire for a perceived lack of use for XRP, which has been marketed as a tool for banks but has attracted only cross-border payment services as customers.
Going beyond Ripple
Ripple has hired Ethan Beard, formerly director of Facebook’s developer network and an ex-EIR at Greylock Partners, to lead Xpring and more broadly Ripple’s developer program.
“The goal is to support businesses that we believe would see benefit from building upon the XRP ledger,” Eric van Miltenburg, Ripple SVP of business operations, told TechCrunch in an interview. “Support will come in a variety of ways: investment, incubation, and the potential of acquisition or grants. We’re focused on proven entrepreneurs who can use the ledger and XRP to really address their customers’ problems.”
Van Miltenburg said Ripple has been approached by entrepreneurs and companies wanting to work with XRP “for years,” but nothing came of discussions because Ripple is focused on financial services.
“There’s been enough interaction to say there’s something here [and] now is the time,” he added. “Over the last four to six months [the idea of Xpring] has really crystallized.”
Ethan Beard speaking at LeWeb in 2010 (via Adam Tinworth/Flickr)
If you’ve been keeping an eye on Ripple this year, the launch of the program won’t be a huge surprise.
Aside from the fact that many in the crypto space are pulling together their own funds — whether it be informally as a company, or more broadly across industries like the Ethereum Community Fund — Ripple has quietly upped its investment focus.
Initially, two Ripple executives took part in a $25 million investment in January for Bay Area-based startup Omni then in March CEO Brad Garlinghouse told TechCrunch that Ripple would “certainly partner with companies that are looking to use XRP in lots of different ways” whilst maintaining its focus as a business.
Xpring is that project.
Enter the Bieber… kinda
Van Miltenburg and Beard told TechCrunch that the kind of segments where they see the most potential for XRP are trade finance, gaming, virtual goods, identity, real estate, media and micro-payments.
When I put it to them that XRP is looking for reasons to justify its $28 billion market cap, van Miltenburg claimed that Ripple is far less speculative than other cryptocurrencies.
“There’s a use case we have established for it: Ripple is one of the only enterprise solutions on the blockchain that’s out in production. We believe the XRP ledger and the asset has a performance profile that lends it to others,” he said.
He added that Ripple has seen interest from projects that “started on a blockchain that isn’t living up to their needs,” and that Xpring could focus on rehousing such projects. However, it won’t be investing in ICOs, buying other tokens or hosting ICOs on the XRP blockchain, van Miltenburg said.
Aside from Omni — which said it will “soon” add XRP as currency in its marketplace service — Xpring has pulled in a couple of early names. Scooter Braun, the man best known for managing Justin Bieber, is “pursuing several endeavors that will use XRP to improve artists’ ability to monetize and manage their content.”
Neither van Miltenburg nor Beard could be specific on exactly what Braun is working on — there are already a number of blockchain-based digital rights and music streaming projects in development — but they said he isn’t one to jump on a bandwagon.
Braun said in a canned statement that he is “excited our team is among the first in the entertainment industry to lean into the blockchain movement.”
“This is only the beginning as we will continue to build out more use cases for XRP,” he added.
Other early partners being announced today include Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas who is transitioning out of his role to build micro-payment services using XRP via a new venture called Coil. In addition, Xpring has backed VC firm Blockchain Capital while Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, raised his latest fund entirely in XRP.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse previously spoke of plans to partner with companies on XRP (via Christopher Michel/Flickr)
Building an ecosystem
Generally, the plan for exactly how Xpring will work seems fluid at this point.
Beard spoke of the next wave of innovation coming from the blockchain, much like Facebook’s Timeline and social graph helped scale companies like Spotify, Zynga and BuzzFeed from startups into major tech names. He believes that, in turn, Xpring and XRP can help “build new businesses and change how industries function.”
Van Miltenburg was non-committal in terms of goals.
“Our motivation is to ensure that the XRP ledger and digital asset reaches its full potential. We want to see an extremely healthy and robust XRP ecosystem; that benefits Ripple and all others,” he explained.
Ripple is known to incentive its partners with XRP bonuses for signing, but it isn’t talking numbers this time, either the specific incentives that it is giving to high-profile names like Braun, or the overall budget that it has put behind Xpring.
“For the right opportunities, we can be aggressive. There’s no hesitation or reluctance to make big bets with opportunities that require investment,” is all van Miltenburg would say.
You can bet a large chunk of capital (XRP) is supporting Xpring. The current system with hundreds of cryptocurrencies isn’t sustainable, those that make it through will be the ones that offer the most value, and ecosystems could well be a measure of that. XRP, as the third-largest cryptocurrency, has considerable expectations on it which, as the crash earlier this year showed, can wipe out money faster than it made crypto wealth.
Cool read from TC Source Link
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createadaptprogress · 7 years ago
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#MeToo or #WitchHunt – a level of analysis problem
I like tackling easy issues. A while back, I pretty much solved racism. So, yeah, you’re welcome.
Let’s try something else that should be easy and uncontroversial: the reaction to the last centuries (millennia) of sexual predation, which for the vast majority of cases (not saying all, only a mere 95-99%) is male predation on female-let’s call this reaction the #MeToo movement for obvious reasons. Let’s contrast this to the fear sometimes expressed that #MeToo is going too far and that innocent men (mostly, not exclusively) risk being scapegoated unjustly—let’s call that the fear-of-witch-hunts movement (#WitchHunt for short). I suggest that we try to address this, by first accepting that there is some legitimacy to both movements, and restating that legitimacy upfront. I see the pitchforks rising already, so let me clarify: saying that two movements have *some* legitimacy does not mean that *all* elements of the movements are legitimate, or that their legitimacy is comparable and equal in all ways. But diving in these terribly murky waters requires to be ready to deal with tensions and address  boundary issues about legitimacy of each case, without fear of losing one’s principles and convictions.
[I’m following a very classical (dialectical) but forgotten way to look at an argument: understand what each side seeks to say, before jumping in.]
As an icebreaker, and acknowledging the perils of the effort, I recommend this clip from SNL. 
youtube
Now, let’s dive in.
The #MeToo Argument
This one seems like an easy one. We have centuries, millennia, of sexual aggression, rape, all the way down to daily cat calls, innuendos, insults, harassment, professional quid pro quos offered or forced, on and on and on. 
[You might personally fear that normal and appropriate human interactions, including flirting, could be caught in the wave of #MeToo response—that is very much part of the #WitchHunt response, which we will look at next. But right now, remember that we try to first acknowledge the value of each side of the argument. So, stay in this space for a moment.]
Let’s be clear: What we’re talking about are unsolicited and inappropriate remarks, calls, touches, down to the criminal act of rape (footnote 1). The stats are hard to produce, but where they exist they go from 20% to 40% of women being victims of sexual aggression (a man putting his unsolicited hand on a woman’s buttocks, George Bush Sr style), to power abuses in the workplace (Bill Clinton receiving fellatio from an intern in the oval office), to forced quid pro quos (3 trillion cases reported and counting since Abraham offered his wife to pacify the new neighbors, all the way to Weinstein), all the way down to rape (which, according to the current’s US president former wife, is sometimes not “technically” or “legally” a rape, police affidavits notwithstanding), and yes murder.
On top of that, we must acknowledge that silence, victim shaming, sweeping under the rug, mockery if not complicity have been the dominant social responses to this phenomenon. I am assuming that this is an acknowledged reality, and that I don’t have to provide links, book references, or statistics right now.
And where are we today? In a small part of the world (the “West” but not only), where human rights have been heralded and feminism has made headway, a quarter of a century after the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas controversy, after a man was elected president in spite of boasting about his sexual aggressions against women, and after women and men marched in Washington and U.S. cities, finally women with some power (Hollywood elites) found the courage to step forward. An ‘enough is enough’ movement was born at a time when social media amplifies voices (and where traditional media spend half of their time reporting on social media). Let’s remember – another painful topic – that priests’ abuses against children started being addressed only once the Internet took the control of public voice away from organized structures. (See ‘Here comes everybody.’) Social media can generate unwanted noise from the mob and the trolls, but have this for them that isolated voices can also rapidly find peers, echo, and scale.
This collective ‘enough is enough’ moment is the legitimacy of #MeToo. A revolution against the silence and denial, that have been part and parcel of centuries of victimization.
But… here comes the tension, the fear of a proverbial pendulum swing...
The #WitchHunt argument
I’ve known a couple of people who have been wrongly accused at some point of sexual harassment or worse. Imagine a single individual—you or me—being wrongly accused of an act that they did not commit, and seeing their name publicly tarnished for something lewd, vile, or criminal. This has happened, this can happen, and this will happen again. It is certainly a terrible thing for the victim, in this case the wrongly accused. 
[Now, if you followed wholeheartedly the #MeToo argument, this point may strike you as unbalanced. But that’s the name of the game in this blog. Put that aside for a second, to try and acknowledge that even if there was only one person--your father, your brother, your friend--,accused wrongly for an innocent act, it would be a painful and unfair event. Right?] 
Liberal, progressive, rule-of-law societies seek to err on the side of ‘innocent-until-proven-guilty’ for good reasons. It is not trivial to be accused of gender violence, lewdness, sexual violence, or rape. That’s why it cost Rolling Stone Magazine $1.7 million to settle a wrongful accusation case.
So, we have two powerful fears in front of us. I did not say equal, but we should be able to acknowledge that these two fears are opposed to each other, and both can reasonably strike reasonable human beings. So where do we go from here?
Moving forward—a level of analysis problem
We do not want metaphorical ‘public lynching’ taking the place of justice (footnote 2). On the other hand, given the role of silence and a permissive culture, which we just described for the #MeToo argument, how can we work this out? Is the law always enough? Is it enough that the law exists, when societies develop a tacit understanding that the law can be distorted or ignored? Sometimes society needs to steer justice toward courage. So, how do we reconcile the legitimacy of both claims and movements?
I see two lenses through which we can answer that question, and both are heavily dependent on context:
First there is the quantitative, numerical element. Since all actions have unintended effects, very few actions perfectly solve a problem. A big task for policy makers, arbiters of justice, and yes collective conscience, is to ask whether our actions lead to better outcomes for more people, along with fewer people affected by unintended effects. I will add a quantitative post-scriptum to this post. But numbers are not the focus here.
The lens that I want to focus on could be called the level of analysis problem (footnote 3). Simply stated, the level at which a problem is analyzed (micro or macro; individual or aggregate; personal or social) changes the nature of the problem (footnote 4). I recommend the quotes inserted in the footnote, but let’s summarize as follows:
When numbers (of people, of things, of events) increase, complexity increases at some point. Let’s take an example outside of our debate, just to be clear, then we’ll get back to it. One student late for a class is one kind of a problem. Two students late for a class is just twice the one student late problem. But 20/30 students late for a class is a different type of a problem.
We can look at a problem at different scales, with different tools of analysis, and derive different lessons. Are we addressing the problem of ‘Jules is always late for classes,’ or ‘most students in this class show up late?’ Not being clear about the level of analysis can lead to using the wrong tools for understanding what is happening, and drawing the wrong conclusions for what needs to be done about it.
#MeToo versus #WitchHunt is in part a level of analysis problem, mediated by the context in which we live.
While victims are individuals, and each aggression is a terribly individual story, the gist of my argument for the legitimacy of #MeToo was the massive historical number of abuses, insults, and crimes, and the overwhelming waves of silence, which have allowed these numbers to endure (and still do in most of the world). And the #MeToo movement, as symbolized by the hashtag of a social media tool, is a collective response to a collective problem (footnote 5). Breaking the silence, changing social mores and societal norms, is all about aggregating experiences and voices. #MeToo is collective action for social change to create the space for individual protection and justice currently denied.
But to make the #WitchHunt case, I switched to a focus on the individual. Innocent until proven guilty is not about groups, but individuals. ‘He said - she said’ is framed as a conflict between two individuals. This understanding needs to guide the future of our response to sexual aggression and violence.
At a collective level, we must continue to break a deadly silence (and seriously, ‘deadly’ is not hyperbole; murder and rape are incestuous cousins in the family of gender-based violence). An endemic crime against nature and our human identity has fed on silence, complicity, and on eyes turning away from discomfort and pain. We need far more #MeToo on a larger global scale and timeline in order to change the norms and festering environment that have allowed this to go on.
And yet, at an individual (case-by-case) level, we must hold firm to two fundamental principles, which are in tension but not in contradiction: (1) immediate recognition and protection of alleged victims, and (2) energetic but due-process for the alleged culprits, innocent until proven guilty.The grey zone and terribly complex space to maneuver is represented by this simple word, “alleged”, and in considering with growing intelligence the wide scale of offenses, which I am lumping together in this blog.
Consider context
Balancing the trade offs between #MeToo and #WitchHunt requires an understanding of the importance of context. Let’s consider a somewhat absurdist thought experiment to make the point:
A company hires a new Chief Financial Officer, and the head of human resources tells a board member, “you know, she’s been known to commit bank robberies on weekends.” Can you imagine the board member responding, “Well, you know, these things are complicated. We need to give her the benefit of the doubt. What’s bank robbery, what’s making a withdrawal? Those things are hard to sort out. Let��s not create a mountain out of a molehill here.”?
This isn’t even vaguely plausible because there is no widespread social tolerance for bank robbery. Whether the comment was a stupid joke or factual would be assessed and addressed very quickly. There would be no reason for the HR director to take the story to the media, or start a social media campaign -- #EnoughBankRobberies. The process for dealing with this individual suspected crime would be a legal individual process. Because the cultural context is different for bank robberies and for violence against women, there would be no collective call for a solution, only due process.
For sexual predation, however, we know as a fact that there have been a multitude of cases when someone said, “you know that [anchor, movie producer, president, famous politician, powerful business man, small business manager, supervisor, artist, scientist, chef] has a ‘history’ with women”, and that ‘history’ was allowed to endure. Silence has over and over again led to a repeat of the crimes and to escalation. So, maybe yes, sometimes, the court of public opinion may rule before the justice system takes action, because it has too long encouraged the same justice system to take no action. Here you go Mr. Weinstein, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, Mr Trump, Mr Lauer, and consorts. A context of complicit silence is forcing a cart before the horse response – public sanction is coming to weigh in before justice does. It’s unfortunate, but it is necessary. For now. It is indeed dangerous, and so is surgery. But sometimes it is lifesaving.
Conclusion
In the current context, I have to agree with Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post when she writes: Is sexual harassment just a witch hunt now? That’s absurd, and here’s why. Over time, if we don’t lose sight of the goal and challenges to overcome, we might one day see a world where the context has drastically changed. I am looking forward to the day, when I can disagree with Sullivan, and when we have the same level of tolerance for sexual aggression as for bank robberies. But we ain’t there yet. There are laws and guiding principles as old as the book of Leviticus precisely about balancing #MeToo and #WitchHunt arguments. The rest of the bible and human history indicate that the #MeToo problem has not yet been solved. Maybe we’re getting a second chance at tackling the problem seriously. Evolution?
Of course, companies, justice, and employers must do their job and engage in due-process with respect for the principle of innocence until proven guilty. Some innocents will sometimes be unfairly treated, and it is the job of all of those in power and positions of decision-making to react early, effectively, and justly, so that these cases remain few and far between. We must ensure just redress and yes, avoid overreaction. Serious journalists will need to do what Rolling Stone did: retract, apologize, and make amends. So will employers. In some cases, we may need to learn how to replace dismissals with institutionalized steps protecting alleged victims and providing due process for alleged victimizers. But we must continue to turn dominant norms and status quo upside down. The few, the proportionally very few people, who make false claims need themselves to be taken through due process. On an individual case, authorities (legal, institutional) must bear the #WitchHunt risk in mind, but the #MeToo movement, if anything, needs to grow and scale globally. The fear that one person could make a false claim cannot justify silencing 10,000 women who have suffered for too long the impunity of the predators. (see the post-scriptum if you are interested in the numbers.)
Let’s support #MeToo, and whatever comes next to change our culture, wreck the status quo, make complicit silence unacceptable, make justice more just, and create a climate where victims dare to speak out without fear of retribution, shame, and further victimization. Let’s continue our collective evolution toward progress, and let’s have determined and intentional case-by-case due process responses. It’s not ‘either-or’; it’s a battle to fight on two levels in a complementary manner. That’s the only way for progress and slow healing from this millennium-old malady.
Peace --
  Eric
PS: Follow this link for a quantitative illustration.
Footnote 1: Flirting, infatuation, or romance should have little to do with all this, except that it may not be the case in the neural connections of some people. I am not going to go into this. [A good friend commented on this footnote, and helped me realize that it could be misconstrued.  I meant that flirting should have little to do with all this, because I was talking about abuses of power, crossing verbal and physical space boundaries, things that are NOT ‘flirting’. Now, the neural connections of some people fail to connect the fact that if you are someone’s boss, or are in a position of power and influence, it’s really not appropriate to switch codes and bring flirting to the office. Yes, making a compliment once, depending on the culture, may be just fine. If there is no power differential, no way to be misconstrued, and if it happens once in a rare blue moon. If you cross that boundary every day, if you cross that boundary repeatedly, if you cross that boundary without noticing that it is not welcome, if you cross that boundary when you’ve been asked not to, then it’s not flirting - it’s becoming harassment. And since some people’s neural connections don’t allow them to make that difference themselves, that’s why there’s a #MeToo movement pushing employers to make sure that they get the point. And entering someone’s physical space uninvited, or in a work context, certainly in a work power differential, that is not flirting, that is aggression. Flirting is telling a peer: “this looks really nice on you”, once, at a proper time and place. And yes, it will be a cultural gray zone. But nothing in the following articles about Weinstein here, or the MSU dean here, meets that standard.]
Footnote 2: I’m uneasy with my own metaphor, because very real lynchings based on race have taken place not so long ago, and still do in the form of ‘honor killings’ in some parts of the world, targeting women exclusively for sexual behaviors shared with men, or for sexual crimes of men.)
Footnote 3: The ‘level of analysis problem’ is borrowed from an excellent political science paper by David Singer in 1961. Here’s a quote from the introduction of his paper:
In any area of scholarly inquiry, there are always several ways in which the phenomena under study may be sorted and arranged for purposes of systemic analysis. Whether in the physical or social sciences, the observer may choose to focus upon the parts or upon the whole, upon the components or upon the system. He may, for example, choose between the flowers or the garden, the rocks or the quarry, the trees or the forest, the houses or the neighborhood, the cars or the traffic jam, the delinquents or the gang, die legislators or the legislative, and so on. Whether he selects the micro- or macro-level of analysis is ostensibly a mere matter of methodological or conceptual convenience. Yet the choice often turns out to be quite difficult, and may well become a central issue within the discipline concerned. The complexity and significance of these level-of-analysis decisions are readily suggested by the long-standing controversies between social psychology and sociology, personality-oriented and culture-oriented anthropology, or micro- and macro-economics, to mention but a few. In the vernacular of general systems theory, the observer is always confronted with a system, its sub-systems, and their respective environments, and while he may choose as his system any cluster of phenomena from the most minute organism to the universe itself, such choice cannot be merely a function of whim or caprice, habit or familiarity. The responsible scholar must be prepared to evaluate the relative utility—conceptual and methodological—of the various alternatives open to him, and to appraise the manifold implications of the level of analysis finally selected. 
Footnote 4: A seminal work, for those interested in the scientific view of different scales of analysis is P.W. Anderson’s ‘More is Different’ published in Science in 1972. This brilliant paper basically explains how when number of units increase in the analysis of a phenomenon, complexity increases, and that ‘at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear.’
Footnote 5: The #MeToo meme is literally the attachment of individuals (”Me”) to a collective wave (”Too”) through a shareable technology (#) to break the cycle of invisibility and isolation of the individuals, and force a societal reckoning through the power of numbers. 
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talabib · 7 years ago
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How To Ask The Right Questions At The Right Times
There is a hidden skill that helps successful people make informed decisions and forge stronger connections. This skill is the power to ask the right questions at the right times.
Questions help us break down barriers, pinpoint solutions and explore new ways of doing things. Yet, most of us assert more than we ask. We talk more than we listen. Imagine how much more effective we would be if we ask the right questions
Smart questions make you smarter . Questions —asked the right way, under the right circumstances — can help you achieve both short-term and lifelong goals. They can open doors to discovery and success, bring you closer to a loved one and even uncover answers to the universe’s most enduring mysteries.
Insightful questions help you connect with a stranger, impress a job interviewer or entertain at your next dinner party, and they can be the keys to a happier, more productive and fulfilling life. Sincere questions too often play second fiddle to certainty, ideology and outrage. But what if we asked more and asserted less? What would we discover?
Humans are built to be curious, that much is in our DNA. Our questions reflect who we are, where we go and how we connect. They help us learn, and they help us lead because effective questioning marshals support and enlists others to join. After all, asking people to solve a problem or come up with a new idea turns the responsibility over to them. It says, “You’re smart, you’re valuable, you know what you’re doing — what would you do about this problem?”
The following are the type of questions you should ask
Diagnostic Questions
Strategic Questions
Empathic Questions
Bridging Questions
Confrontational Questions
Creativity Questions
Mission Questions
Scientific Questions
Interview Questions
Entertaining Questions
Legacy Questions
Diagnostic Questions
Diagnostic questioning identifies a problem then burrows down to its roots, especially when those roots are not instantly obvious. For example, your tooth is killing you. You go to the dentist. She asks where it hurts, when it hurts. When you chew? When you drink? She taps, pokes and applies cold water until you leap out of the chair. Oh sorry, did that hurt? “Yes,” you grunt, through the junkyard that litters your palate. She says the problem is this other tooth. You’re feeling “referred pain.” An X-ray confirms it. A filling fixes it.
Diagnostic questions progress systematically to describe the problem and identify it. You can learn how to ask diagnostic question by doing the following:
Connect symptoms and specifics. Start with big, broad, what’s-the-problem questions and then narrow down, zero in. Get past the generic to identify the symptoms and describe related observations in detail.
Ask for the bad. Don’t duck the issues or avert your eyes. Ask direct questions in search of direct answers. It may get ugly, but if you want to fix a problem, you have to acknowledge it to deal with it.
Study history. Look back. Ask about similar experiences, events and patterns. They provide a baseline. Look for similarities to other situations.
Ask again. The mere existence of a problem means there is something unknown or unanticipated. To be sure you’re on solid ground, ask several times and several sources. Confirm and corroborate.
Challenge the expert. We rely on experts to diagnose our diseases. But that doesn’t mean they’re right or that they’re off the hook in explaining what’s going on. Before you accept a diagnosis, ask what it is, what it means and where it’s coming from. And reserve the right to get another opinion. 
Strategic Questions
Strategic questions ask about the bigger challenge and the long-term goal — about stakes, opportunities, costs, consequences and alternatives — as you focus on the big picture.
“Strategy, by definition, is about making complex decisions under uncertainty, with substantive, long-term consequences,” Freek Vermeulen, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the London Business School, wrote in the Harvard Business Review.
Colin Powell was a key player in America’s two wars against Iraq. The questions he asked — and did not ask —stand as examples of how strategic questioning can shape decision-making at a time of crisis.Here are examples of strategic questions he asked:
Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
Have the consequences of our actions been fully considered?
Do we have a clear and attainable objective?
Strategic questions are vital at any major crossroads. They are deceptively simple questions that illuminate complex decisions characterized by great risk or uncertainty. They call for answers about purpose and the big picture.
You might decide that the answers need to be unanimous and affirmative. Or you might be comfortable with a more ambiguous response. Strategic questions prompt you to examine the terrain broadly, to estimate the situation from which you can proceed with a better sense of capability and destination.
Empathic Questions
Empathic questions explore what makes people tick, think, fear, and feel. They focus unselfishly and spring from genuine interest. The simple act of asking, of listening without comment or judgment and letting a silence linger or a free form thought to coalesce, invites a person to reflect or think out loud. It might even prompt a revelation.
Empathetic questioning helps you connect with others. Use this line of questioning when a colleague needs to talk through an argument at home or politics at the office, or when you want to reach out to someone who comes from a different place, background or perspective.
Helen Riess is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She studies empathy and teaches doctors how to incorporate it into their work with patients. Riess tells doctors to start with a broad question to establish an empathetic relationship. “How are you doing today?”
Riess tells her doctors that they have to do more than just ask. They have to listen closely and sincerely. They have to hear more than words. They must listen to voice tone and inflection and watch for reactions and body language. She coaches them to maintain eye contact and scan the other person’s face to see if they seem relaxed, anxious, frightened, or stressed. If they hear strong emotion, they should respond to it directly and ask compassionately. “What are you most concerned about?”
Riess believes it is the questioner’s responsibility to take in fully what the patient is communicating. This affects outcomes; patients who don’t experience empathy are less likely to trust their doctors, and they’re less likely to adhere to the treatments that are recommended. A systematic review showed that low empathy and communication in patient-doctor relationships actually lead to worse health outcomes.
You don’t need a degree to be a disciplined listener and an empathetic questioner. You just need to know who you are talking to and be able to imagine what the world looks like through their eyes.
Bridging Questions
Bridging questions are intended to encourage people to talk when they don’t want to. They coax information, glean detail and assess intent and capability.
The principles behind bridging questions support a specific and clear outcome: getting a closed person to open up. The objective is to lower a person’s defences and move his or her brain out of red-alert territory.
Start with questions the interviewee is comfortable addressing even if the questions are not relevant to the issue at hand. As you’re building rapport, ask “how” questions. “How” questions ask for explanation and background. They encourage stories. The human brain is wired for stories. It’s how we learn and how we remember.
Listen hard for “entry points” to turn the conversation to the story you want to hear. You can recognize an entry point by actively listening for an observation or a complaint that resonates with the story you’re after. A flash of anger or expression of regret can be an entry point. Use them to your advantage.
To keep people talking, use periodic “micro-affirmations.”  When you hear something relevant, signal interest by leaning forward, offering a slight nod or a barely audible “uh-huh.” These micro-affirmations reinforce without interrupting or distracting. They signal that you are engaged and sympathetic.
Use questions without question marks. Phrases like, “Tell me more,” “Explain that to me,” “Go on,” “That’s remarkable” or “Fascinating,” serve as open-ended invitations for a subject to pause, reflect and provide more detail. They convey interest and, when stated in the right tone and accompanied by open body language, offer affirmation and validation, which are important to reduce barriers and generate cognitive ease.
Questions without question marks can feel less threatening and less like an interrogation. Angry, alienated people might believe they see and understand things that others do not. By saying, “A lot of people agree with you,” you offer a measure of validation without an endorsement of the point of view. You “normalize” the conversation, creating the appearance that you understand.
Confrontational Questions
Confrontation and accountability questions put issues on the table and demand answers for the record. They air a grievance, level an accusation and reinforce the rules of acceptable behavior.
Confrontational questioning often requires assertive interruption or repetition to make it as difficult as possible for your adversary to change the subject, dodge the question or run out the clock.
When you adopt a true adversarial approach, you raise the stakes. Confrontational questioning must be approached from a position of strength. Questions can be used as weapons. If you’re going to confront someone in power, there has to be an element of aggression. You must have the courage of your convictions and realize it isn’t a popularity contest.
If you have the basics — solid information, a clear objective to your questioning and enough spine and moral indignation to stand up to authority — you can have an impact, especially if you understand your platform and know your audience.
Invoking community is one of the surest ways to give more heft to your case and more edge to your questions.Whether at a town hall or a staff meeting, confronting a powerful person is not easy. But having a community on your side creates an alliance. Your questions become
the group’s questions, which are harder to dismiss as the ranting of a malcontent and easier to amplify because of the implied voices ready to join you. If you’ve done your homework, are prepared to stand up to the pressure of the encounter and have crafted your questions so that you succinctly express the problem and the challenge, you can take the high ground and demand answers.
You should prepare for an evasive or confrontational response. Effective confrontational questioners have to be fast and uncompromising listeners. It’s what good lawyers do in a courtroom and good interviewers do in front of a camera. They pick up on a voice tone and swoop in on hesitation. They shut down attempts to filibuster or self-aggrandize. They keep the laser aimed at the core issue they’re after.
With accountability questioning, you want precision. You want to pin someone down. Often, questions that elicit one-word answers can be the most effective crowbars to the truth. Examples of Yes-no questions include :
You were late yesterday. Is that correct?
Did you call when you knew you were going to be late?
Did you think about the consequences of being late?
Lawyers like yes-no questions because they establish the record and draw precise boundaries. They put on the record a definitive response to a specific action or moment and give the questioner almost complete control over the witness and the testimony.
Confrontational questions entail risk because they put relationships and reputations on the line. If you’re wrong, or if you sound ill-informed or like a bully, the questions will boomerang and hit you and not the person you are trying to hold to account.
Creativity Questions
Creative questioning asks people to close their eyes and imagine. It welcomes crazy ideas, shrugs off the obvious and seeks alternatives.
The president of Middlebury College was in the early stages of crafting a 10-year strategic plan. At the fall retreat, a facilitator started with a question that invited participants to think creatively about the college’s future by going there. “It is 10 years from now,” he said, “and the latest college rankings have just come out. This school is at the top of the list. What are we doing?”
He put the future in present tense. His question was a time machine. Once inside the machine, the obstacles that often interfere with big ideas — practical considerations like cost, resources, staffing and economics — fell away.
Participants listed qualities that earned them the top spot. There was a new science center, a new library, more students who brought more diversity, more faculty and more funding. The future was clear!
Then, they worked backward to determine how to make it happen, from program design to funding. Today, the college has accomplished many of the goals set out in that exercise. The school is in the top ranks of liberal arts colleges. Imagined reality became actual reality.
A publisher convened an off-site retreat with his top editors. He began with an exercise. Crunch time had arrived, and each magazine had to cut its budget by 50 percent. He asked:
What do you cut?
What do you do?
Where do you start?
The teams went to work prioritizing and calculating, cutting staff and expenses. Though this was just an exercise, everyone played along and took it seriously. Then came the twist. In a surprise move, the publisher gave his editors their money back. Every penny. But, he told them to use the budget they’d cut just a few minutes earlier as their new baseline. They could invest the money they had “saved” in any way they wanted.
What will you build?
How will you invest?
Their answers helped transform the company’s five newsstand magazines and led to more National Magazine Awards than any of their rivals. The net profit for the company doubled in two years
Mission Questions
Mission questions help you draw people into a genuine conversation about shared goals and what everyone can bring to the task. They help you convey your priorities. Mission questions require you to talk less and listen more.
Karen Osborne, founder of the Osborne Group, a fundraising consultancy, developed a set of questions to help her identify what people care about and where and why they give. Osborne’s discovery questions generate a conversation. They ask what people care about and the motivations behind their passions. If they are now in a position to do something more about a problem they’re passionate about, what will they do?Examples of  those questions includes:
What are the guiding principles that have helped you in life?
What do you hope to accomplish with your philanthropy?
What values do you consistently support?
Osborne asks her questions to get answers, but she also asks to be sure the other person is doing the talking. As research shows: People forget what they heard, but they remember almost everything they say.
Your questions prompt people to answer and to engage. That’s a critical step, Osborne says, if people are going to embrace a cause for which they’re going to provide significant financial support. Osborne insists that engagement is the key to philanthropy. The more that people are involved in an initiative, the more they give to it.
Once you have established the mission and concluded that your goals coincide, you can start thinking about the next step: actually doing something.
Rick Leach, founder of the World Food Program USA, rallies support, raises money, and finds partners in business and government to support efforts to get desperately
needed food to victims of drought, poverty, war and natural disaster. To attract people to social movements, he believes, you must engage their curiosity and connect passion with mission. He focuses on turning commitment into concrete action. “It’s earnestly asking questions and learning to more fully hone the need in search of the opportunity to address the need,” he said. His template for partnerships is built on four questions.
How do we define the problem?
What are the strategies to solving the problem?
What’s the goal?
How can we all play a role in achieving the goal?
When the 2015 Ebola crisis hit, food and nutrition quickly became a big problem, as whole areas of some countries shut down. Business stopped. Leach turned to his longtime sponsor, United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS), knowing its capacity in logistics. Leach asked if UPS would help distribute food, medical supplies, generators, and equipment. UPS agreed. The company provided invaluable logistical support to assemble material, equipment and relief supplies and fly them into West Africa. World Food Program distributed food to more than 3 million people in the year and a half after the Ebola outbreak.
This approach to mobilizing people and defining roles can be applied at virtually any level — whether you are trying to change the world or the town where you live. Get good people together and use Leach’s questions to define the challenge, consider strategies and set roles.
Scientific Questions
Scientific questioning drives a process that revolves around data, experimentation and observable fact. The discipline this line of questioning imposes makes for better inquiry and better decisions across the board.
There’s a line of inquiry characterized by the slow question, the one that doesn’t yield an immediate answer and dares you to embrace uncertainty. The slow question is expressed through the inquisitive lens of science. The method builds logically from the ground up. Consider the following when looking at scientific questions
Observe a problem, frame a question. Take what you see or know to be objectively and measurably true from the real world and ask a question. What’s going on here? What’s causing this?
Offer an explanation. Based on your observations, your experiences, and the facts and data that exist, put together a clear hypothesis that could explain the situation.
Put your hypothesis to the test. Experiment and measure over time. Try to prove yourself wrong. What else could explain this situation? What did you miss? What could be wrong with your approach and your data? If your hypothesis holds up, you are making progress.
Share. If you think you’re onto something, shop it around and show it to other knowledgeable people. Let them review it. Do they see something that you didn’t Do they have a problem with your data or your methods. If not, you might just have a theory you can act on.
The methodical, logical approach to scientific investigation provides a blueprint for inquiry that rewards reality, not emotion, one step at a time.  
The discipline of scientific questioning moves us toward a more methodical form of inquiry that invites more data and better measurement into the questions we ask and the answers we get. As data becomes more accessible, we can expect more science and more metrics in the decision and questioning process.
Interview Questions
The first rule of the job interview: Don’t wing it. Preparation pays. Know what you’re talking about and to whom. Know as much as possible about the job. Have a
list of questions on a pad and in your head. You are not sitting down for a random chat. You are trying to learn as much about the other person as you can to establish whether this position is a good fit for both of you.
If you’re the applicant, you can anticipate that most every interview will ask you touchstone questions.
Why are you interested in this position?
What do you think you can do for us?
What makes you qualified and unique?
Why should we hire you?
Prepare a series of responses for each question. Organize your thoughts in bullet points, two or three distinct characteristics for each response, so you can talk about several traits without getting lost or long-winded. Practice your answers. You want to be clear, concise and prepared to address the question — or a variation of it — directly and confidently. Think of some examples or short stories that highlight relevant experience or set you apart.
Keep in mind that your tone will convey as much about you as the words you use, so strike a balance in how you present yourself. Talk about your successes without bragging, express confidence without sounding cocky and acknowledge your shortcomings without sounding insecure. Be prepared to speak about your character and personality by citing a tough decision or a dilemma you faced and how you worked your way through it.
Know what questions you want to ask. The questions that you, the candidate, will ask are nearly as important as your answers to the interviewer’s questions. You need to project informed curiosity about the position, the enterprise, the competitive landscape, and the measures of success.
Try practicing by recording your answers on your smartphone. Practice will allow you to fine tune your answers so you project confidence and fluency.
If you’re the interviewer, you have to ask precisely and persistently to get beyond the resume and practiced responses. If you’re filling a management position, ask
about how your applicant deals with people, motivates success and handles setbacks. You are asking questions that call for tangible answers that shed light on your applicant’s talent, experience and personality. You want to get a sense of what will motivate her and keep her productive. You ask about situations or experiences that illuminate intangible characteristics, such as how the person deals with adversity or thinks creatively. You want insight into the other person’s work ethic and professional expectations, goals and ambitions. As an interviewer you can ask the following questions
What’s the most successful project you’ve run?
What is it about this job that interests you most?
How does this job connect with your larger professional aspirations?
If red flags have come up through reference checks, askabout those, too: “What would your detractors say about you?” You want honesty and realism. Self-awareness is essential to being a successful leader.
Entertaining Questions
Entertaining questions allow you to engage your audience and keep the conversation interesting and lively so everyone plays. You can be commanding or charming, funny or unpredictable, but the objective always revolves around creating an experience that your guests will enjoy and remember. Use questions the same way a chef uses spices: subtly but deliberately to bring out the flavors of the meal. So what are the basic ingredients of entertaining questions?
Know your audience. Who are you talking to? What have they done? Where have they been, and what do they care about? Pick questions that intrigue and interest everyone.
Think creatively and choose deliberately. Draw from a menu of topics and questions to create a flow and distinctive moments. You want a combination of topics that will engage different people on different levels.
Set a mood, and set a rhythm. Funny or serious? Provocative or reflective? Set the mood through signals, prompts words, and timing.
Engage emotion. You trigger emotions through the subjects you pick and the questions you ask. Serious or snide? Funny or flippant? It’s your call.
Start with an exchange that is spontaneous and a little unexpected. You can often break the ice, get a smile and set a tone that is more relaxed and will lead to a more genuine experience.
Good hosts are always on, always listening and always interested in their guests and the conversation around them. If you’re the host, prepare accordingly. Adopt a strategy that creates the event you want. If you want a fun, free-flowing evening, roll out some questions that tap into the easy currents of daily life. Make them open-ended and friendly questions. Ask about the new restaurant, the local football team or the newest Leonardo DiCaprio movie.
By applying a little “conversation leadership” to get people interacting, you can create an environment that is inclusive, interesting and dynamic. A few well-placed questions will jump-start a conversation. The more you ask, the more you get.
Legacy Questions
Legacy questions ask what we’ve accomplished or changed and inquire about the lives we’ve touched. They are questions about meaning, spirituality, lessons learned, gratitude, regrets, people and purpose.
Legacy questions open the door for reflection and resolution. They seek context. They can be existential or spiritual. Legacy questions ask about meaning and gratitude, mistakes and adversity.
A properly told life story can capture life’s impact and its meaning. But not all stories have happy endings, and not all lives end with clarity or resolution. A question can prompt a reply brimming with guilt or sadness. Anger and sorrow are not uncommon emotions at the end of life.
Some burdens may seem insurmountable: feelings of acute failure, a sense of a wasted life. End-of-life expert Ken Doka believes every life has meaning, though sometimes it takes hard work and persistent questioning to find it. He asks:
How do you put your mistakes in context?
What lessons would you share?
What high points in life would you point to?
We do not need to wait for the deathbed moment to ask about the meaning in our lives. Legacy questions travel with us. If we have the courage to ask them, they help us get our bearings and write our story. If we listen closely to our answers, we gain perspective.
Questions are our way to connect with other human beings. Inquiry, not imitation, is the sincerest form of flattery. Ask a good question, and you convey interest.
Slow down, listen closely and ask more and you engage at a deeper level. You show that you care. You generate trust. You empathize, and you bridge differences. You become a better friend, colleague, innovator, citizen, leader or family member. You shape the future.
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michellelewis7162 · 5 years ago
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Selecting An Advertising And Marketing Organization
Selecting An Advertising And Marketing Organization
 Despite how great your item or the company you are actually providing is actually, it will certainly not develop the account it is worthy of unless it sticks out among its competitions in the market. As a matter of fact, a good advertising project can be actually such a boon to your service that having the right advertising organization helping you can easily bring in all the variation in between results and also failing. As such, it pays investing a long time assessing a number of companies in purchase to choose one that matches your organisation needs to have greatest. To perform this it is a really good tip to establish precisely what sort of marketing you require. Listed below are actually a few regions to think about:
 Whether you are looking for an overall re-branding of your image or focusing on specific places. Every bit as, whether you desire to help make modifications to already well developed services and products or make a slogan or logo design for brand-new brand names. Concerns like the measurements as well as lineage of the agency figure in below, as a big organization could be much better geared up to develop a totally new image for you while a younger, smaller agency might possess much more innovative concepts for a brand-new product launch Top Promotional Agencies. Digital Crowdfunding
Make a decision whether you are wanting to branch off in to a brand new market or even produce higher awareness in an existing market. You might, for example, wish to attract a more youthful or much more advanced viewers or even experience your existing market share might be increased in areas where you have actually customarily carried out well. In either situation it deserves reviewing the advertising and marketing agencys adventure of doing work in your particular area and whether the company possesses the adequate amount of calls to be actually capable to reach your viewers. If you are actually seeking to enhance customer recognition of a brand new stable of soaps, say, will the firms adventure of introducing a wholescale advocate a restroom fitting company possess any type of significance? What work with one viewers might certainly not always benefit one more, thus inquire concerns about what kind of initiative suits your product and also make an effort to discern whether you are actually given universal answers or even your particular needs are actually taken note of United States.
Recognize whether it is the material or the type of your marketing that needs focus. In short, are you attempting to develop certain affiliations for your services or products so they end up being instantly recognisable to buyers? Or do you feel the stations whereby your information is actually being broadcast are inadequate as well as need enhancing? It is no really good hiring an advertising and marketing company fizzing with great ideas however without the structure to become able to execute them.
The above aspects ought to assist you recognize which services you yearn for the advertising firm to conduct. Inevitably, different firms are going to possess various assets as well as weak spots, thus spend attention to the amount of experience they possess of the sort of marketing you desire performed and also the amount of results they have possessed in comparable projects previously Top Promotional Agencies.
 It is actually consistently a great idea to keep your eyes available for initiatives that impress you as well as refer to as up the advertising and marketing division of the business to ask who handled their project and what it was like dealing with all of them. Every bit as, inquire ex-clients of marketing companies you are especially thinking about what their expertise of partnering with the organization was actually. Was actually the organization positive and also did it customize the campaign to satisfy details demands, or even existed an impact that the agency delivered typical general answers to specific troubles?
 The moment you have limited your search up to two or even three advertising organizations, there are a variety of even more details inquiries to look at:
 1. Recognize who will be actually in cost of your profile as well as establish whether the account manager will remain with you for the period of the campaign or a much more jr profile supervisor will manage the moment the initiative is up and also managing. Preferably you really want to be actually partnering with the same team from beginning to end.
 2. Assess exactly how regularly the profile supervisor will definitely provide you updates concerning the progression of the project, consisting of the costs sustained and any sort of customer comments received. Before the initiative even starts ensure that there are no hidden costs and there is a device in location to find out just how the project is going Top Promotional Agencies.
 3. It is actually an excellent concept to talk to the would-be advertising organization to create a trial campaign to establish exactly how effectively you collaborate, what method the agency complies with, just how carefully it listens to your demands as well as just how aggressive it is actually. For occasion, assess exactly how the organization will take care of the possibility of managing certain customer advertisings and also devotion systems that would certainly provide your provider much more personality, or even request that they develop a purchases tactic for among your most recent items United States.
 The moment you have actually taken the actions laid out in this particular article you need to possess a much better tip of the type of marketing company that is suited for your type of initiative. All that continues to be today is to become persistent when attracting up a contract about what you are actually acquiring as well as what you are actually certainly not and also whether the relations to settlement include any performance warranties. The best of good luck, and also heres wishing you pick a marketing organization you can easily have a long and worthwhile partnership along with.
 Just how to Find the most effective Digital Marketing Agency
 In order to find the greatest digital advertising and marketing agency, first, our experts need to recognize "what is electronic marketing", "will digital advertising and marketing perk your service" and also address the inquiry "how perform I receive more tops for my company?" - which need to be actually the purpose of any sort of advertising United States.
 What is actually a Digital Marketing Agency?
The dictionary meaning of Digital marketing is actually the marketing of service or products utilizing digital modern technologies, mostly online, but additionally featuring cellular phones, present marketing, and every other digital tool. Therefore easy to summarise in one paragraph, however, it may be a complex process to get correct and to ensure that each of your digital advertising is collaborating, not as silo tasks. This is actually where the know-how and also expertise of the greatest electronic marketing organizations could be extremely useful.
 Traditional advertising, newspapers as well as paper directories, including Yellow Pages, are significantly much less successful for services. Whilst a handful of years ago individuals would head to a computer system to look for a product and services, nowadays individuals are actually attached to the world wide web all day, every day and "live online". Seeking info, a service or product is actually as fast as well as basic as browsing on a notebook or personal computer at the office or getting their mobile telephone or tablet computer. Digital marketing pays attention to receiving your relevant information, product or services before folks when they are seeming online. The absolute best electronic agencies understand the acquiring process of your services and products and make certain that your details projects to the possible customer at the suitable time. In the electronic advertising and marketing globe, the several stages of the getting procedure i.e. study, factor to consider and also purchase are phoned "micro-moments" and also the incredibly finest electronic advertising and marketing firm are going to provide the appropriate information, product or service at the targeted attend the purchasing method Top Promotional Agencies.
 Whilst some electronic advertising companies will definitely likewise create and also manage traditional advertising and marketing or business advertising, such as paper marketing, professional digital advertising agencies will definitely focus on internet marketing in contrast to "advertising and marketing providers" that often focus on TV, broadcast as well as printing marketing Top Promotional Agencies.
 Regardless if your company is actually business-to-business (B2B) or even business-to-consumer (B2C), digital advertising could be a quick, typically instant, and also dependable method of acquiring introduces your company and driving up revenue. The incredibly best digital marketing firms will certainly take care of each of the digital marketing located on return on financial investment (ROI) making sure the leads created are actually at an expense that creates organisation sense and also enhances profit amounts. Digital advertising and marketing will profit your service as well as answers the inquiry "exactly how do I obtain additional tops for my organisation"?
 Digital advertising and marketing, in some cases described as web site advertising and marketing, could be malfunctioned in to a number of crucial functions as well as companies:
 Search Engine Optimization Services
Internet search engine marketing, a lot of commonly abbreviated to "SEO", is actually the process of acquiring your website discovered on online search engine like Google when folks make a search pertinent to your business, product or services United States.
 Irrespective if your site is actually e-Commerce or offering solutions it will certainly steer tops and sales right into your service if it is actually discovered for the hunt terms individuals utilize (frequently pertained to as "keyword phrases") to seek all of them in Google.
 SEO calls for adventure and also understanding of how Google reviews your web site. What notifications and info you desire Google to read for a web page or even website and also recognizing where to put that information so internet search engine can easily discover it. A great SEO business will definitely possess a tried and tested track document of ranking sites higher in the search leads Top Promotional Agencies.
 Search Engine Optimization operates greatest when the proven strategies of obtaining positions are actually used combined with most up-to-date fads that are actually steering website traffic. An example of this particular is the "near me" sensation, which has found a 150% growth in the last 12 months, where cellular phone individuals are actually incorporating "near me" to their search question i.e. "SEO Company near me". These clients are trying to acquire and get coming from a regional product or service supplier.
 Although SEO can be a stand-alone service, it is actually most helpful when combined along with PPC, social networking sites as well as credibility and reputation advertising and marketing. SEO is actually also the keystone of helpful PPC, social media sites as well as reputation management initiatives United States.
 Pay for Per Click
Spend Per Click (PPC) typically recommended to as "Google Advertising" or "internet advertising and marketing" is where you install adverts on top of the search results page for particular search terms. These search terms can be words people utilize when in the "research" period of buying or even targeted at the "getting keyword phrases" when potential consumers are seeking to acquire Top Promotional Agencies.
 Although your advert, depending upon your finances, can be shown each time a hunt is actually created, you merely pay out when a web customer selects your advert and is needed to your site or phones you point from the search results web page definition you simply spend when you obtain a click coming from a possible customer as a result the label for this type of advertising and marketing of Pay Per Click (usually shortened to PPC).
 How a lot you pay out for each click is established through a couple of variables. The "expense every click" (abbreviated to CPC) is established due to the quality and also relevance of the advert to the search condition being used and the significance of the web page on your web site that the potential consumer arrive at. These factors add to your general "premium score". The greater your high quality score, the a lot less you pay for every click on and much less you pay out every introduce your company Los Angeles.
 In the UK, Google possesses the extensive large number of search web traffic and a lot of your budget plan need to be actually positioned their, nevertheless, you will certainly not yearn for to overlook the smaller, however, still substantial possibility for customers from online search engine like Microsoft's Bing platform, and also a little aspect of the finances need to be actually alloted to various other hunt motors. Additionally, the really ideal PPC management business will also go over spreading your PPC budget plan over an amount of initiatives targeted at different components of the client trip. A small part of the finances need to be actually assigned to the research study stage of the buying procedure when individuals are actually making use of vast search phrases to locate information, a tiny portion of the finances when people are searching for yours, your rivals or even market forerunners company title. The large number of the spending plan when possible customers are using hunt terms straight related to making an acquisition and lastly, a small component of the finances to re-market (present your advertising to people that have actually presented a passion in your product or services by exploring your internet site) to catch and increase conversions from the customers previously marketed too Top Promotional Agencies.
 The most ideal PPC Agency will certainly be actually a Google Premier Partner. A Google Premier Partner status shows that the provider has an established record in supplying high-quality projects, which generate really good competitive/low CPC's and provide high as well as beneficial ROI's. The best PPC firm will possess a robust PPC administration process in place to rapidly respond as well as capitalise on changes in the PPC projects of your rivals.
 Unlike SEO, that can spend some time to be fully reliable, Pay Per Click is quick in the reality that as very soon as your campaigns are actually real-time they could be creating tops for your service.
 PPC is strongly helpful when accomplished together with SEO. A well-optimised site will certainly improve the quality credit rating of your Google ad campaign leading to a decreased "cost per click on" indicating you obtain even more leads for your finances Top Promotional Agencies.
 Social Network Marketing
Social network systems like Facebook and Twitter are actually currently legit places for an organisation to draw in tops. Facebook has more than 38 MILLION energetic and also frequent users in the UK and also the amount is actually expected to rise to over 42 MILLION through 2020. Irrespective if your business sells to customers or even various other services, your possible customers get on Facebook and also using it often Los Angeles.
 Facebook is great at increasing awareness during the clients "study" phase, reminding all of them of your product or services in the course of the "factor" phase and putting your certain products facing potential customers at the "purchasing" phase. With such a big viewers and the versatility to target clients throughout the purchasing method, Facebook may be a really good avenue to produce leads as well as purchases as well as to deliver a wonderful roi.
 A good electronic marketing company will have an established record in delivering extremely reliable Facebook ad campaign. The greatest digital marketing companies are going to have the ability to show the transformation cost and price per lead of your social networking sites advertising.
 Once more, social media sites advertising and marketing and specifically Facebook marketing could be accomplished as a stand-alone activity nonetheless it operates a lot better when mixed along with SEO and/or PPC. When a possible customer gos to your internet site their computer is denoted as having visited. This at that point allows you to target the customer of that computer, that has actually revealed an enthusiasm in your services or products.
 Online reputation Management
When looking at buying, a potential customer is going to scour the world wide web to discover comments as well as reviews coming from previous clients. Your internet marketing as well as purchases can easily stay or even die through the assessments for your company, solutions or items. Making sure that positive reviews are easy to locate as well as that any sort of damaging reviews is actually handled effectively, could be a substantial advantage to your sale rate Los Angeles.
 Digital marketing firms phone this "reputation control" or even "on the internet image management" having said that, in fact, it is producing units to produce consumer reviews and consumer comments arising beneficial consumer fulfillment is actually grabbed as well as effortless to discover for possible consumers.
 A lot of services are actually interested in enabling the social the capacity to freely give comments. You may not please each of individuals each one of the time, and firms stress that a bad review will possess an adverse influence on their organisation. First of all, if someone is actually established to leave a negative assessment for your company they are going to find a platform to perform thus and also there are actually 1000's of systems to decide on coming from. It is much better to have management of where customers are encouraged to leave behind a customer review. Secondly, a poor or bad testimonial, if handled effectively, could be a favorable for your business. Interacting along with a negative testimonial highlights that you look after regarding reviews as well as consequently, you appreciate your clients. One effectively took care of negative customer review could be as helpful for your company 10 excellent evaluations Los Angeles.
 Searching for a Marketing Agency?
 Hiring a Marketing Agency is actually an excellent technique to deliver your company to the next level, however finding the right advertising firm that will certainly carry out all the required work as well as take you a lot more customers may be difficult. And prior to you entrust your difficult made money to the very first organization that arrives your means, you ought to consider a few traits.
 The Internet has actually now enhanced a great deal further than it was actually before and also changed the way of living of many individuals in several methods. Nevertheless today's foremost pros mention that this is just the begin of its development. They state that nowadays the internet globe is a lot more important for our team than a number of various other channels, additionally that will certainly determine our lives in a few additional directions in the nearest future. As an example, based upon brand-new research study information, the majority have presently switched toward the on the internet web to research and study rather than going to the collection. Likewise, the future of the newspapers furthermore seems to be actually secured because much more individuals are presently making use of the Internet to get the most recent information.
 The TV is actually upcoming towards to the Internet just as. Much more TELEVISION series in addition to sporting activities happenings are actually today broadcasted on the net and also additional folks are actually devoting less time seeing tv. Due to that, even the FIFA World Cup 2010, was actually transmitted on the Internet.
 For that reason if you run a business or even a major provider, and if you prefer to obtain more leads and also clients, it is necessary to have an engaging internet presence. Even more companies are catching up and also know this, to ensure is why, a significantly amount of entrepreneurs are utilizing the services of an advertising and marketing agency.
 So how can A Marketing Agency be actually valuable for your details organisation design?
 What a marketing company does, is investigating and analyzing the market place in-depth information for the client's field, therefore the company may develop good advertising initiative. The objective of that is actually the client's product or services to connect with the prospective customers. Nevertheless locating the right advertising organization may be actually tricky. While a standard agency uses the conventional advertising tactics like newspaper adds, TV commercials, journals and also advertising boards, an internet marketing agency will advertise the customer's service online. As well as to perform that it is actually incredibly essential that the company has effectively trained personnel that has learnt the online search engine, associate advertising, SEO, PPC, post advertising and marketing, e-mail advertising and also numerous various other procedures.
 The advertising and marketing company, as a portion of promoting and also industrying the client's site, may create and also change the web site as properly. Through this it will certainly be sure that the site is certainly not just appealing however that will deliver extra prospects and clients.
 Likewise comparable to a typical company, the goal of an internet marketing firm may brand the company and the products, certainly not only ensure and market the organisation. And also of course, this is performed totally online.
 Thus Would You Hire A Marketing Agency?
 This is actually one of the most common concern that many entrepreneur ask self on a regular basis considering that they are actually perplexed. Keeping in mind the substantial potential of marketing on the Internet, tons of companies want to look at the standard way of marketing and have actually set up a huge presence online along with the aid of an advertising firm.
 Likewise several small business owner have actually determined to take traits in their very own hands as well as market their product or services online, however a lot of neglect coming from the shortage of knowledge.
 Nonetheless the simple fact continues to be that, an increasing number of people are using the Internet as their principal resource for information, news, songs, viewing sports events yet even more necessary looking for product or services they need.
 Deciding On the very best Digital Marketing Agency
 It is very important that you opt for the most effective digital advertising agency considering that they are required to help you acquire visibility and also visibility on the web for your firm. When selecting one you ought to pursue one that is local and also is located near where your business is actually found. By performing this you will definitely conserve initiative and also time taking a trip to the advertising firm. It will definitely additionally be very easy to communicate quicker and also much easier rather than including confusion to your instructions through making use of email or even the phone. Along with the grow older of the internet, it is important that the digital advertising firm you pick is actually proficient.
 Prior to consulting with potential web marketing provider, you must detail your targets as well as crucial end result locations that you will as if for the marketing firm to operate on. Create a quick checklist of 4 or even more excellent companies and also require an individually appointment to discuss your checklist with so you can see how they are going to address your questions and if they can provide you the crucial end results you want. After the examinations, carry out an evaluation of the offerings and also capacities each of these organizations with your firm's finances as well as marketing objectives. As soon as this is actually performed you need to be actually able to pick the firm that greatest suits your needs. Most agencies when appearing for a digital marketing agency are actually seeking an agency that will definitely offer you social media sites advertising and marketing, mobile marketing, SEM, creating a blog site, SEO as well as a lot more.
 Listed here are a few other tips to assist you decide on the correct electronic advertising and marketing company.
 - Experience-when you employ an electronic advertising organization, they need to possess a significant amount of expertise in this field.
- Look to view if this marketing firm has applied prosperous advertising and marketing strategies for a provider in a sector identical to yours.
- You should likewise appear at the top quality of each firms operate just before you wrap up the agreement
- You ought to take a look at the employees of the firm to view their certifications and also experience due to the fact that you desire your firm in great palms.
- Look closely at the package deal of services this company is supplying. Often times, they will definitely offer the best site style, mobile and email web options, on-line marketing, SEO and SEM, copy and also information writing and more.
- Checkout their web site, social networking sites pages, and the blog site as well as view just how they have actually implemented their advertising and marketing culture. See that whatever is actually upgraded.
- Check out the image of the digital marking organization you are taking into consideration allow manage a lot of the case.
 These are actually just a number of many things to check out just before hiring an electronic advertising firm. Take your time to learn more about the companies you are looking at choosing prior to making the last selection.
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thr0ughmyeyesx · 8 years ago
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Weekly Reflection
30/1/17
Today my mentor and myself thought it would be a good idea to let the class know I have my first observation next Monday and remind them not to talk to her or the observer and remind them what is expected of them throughout the observation. A difficult students Daniel, who wasn’t in lesson today, will find this very difficult and I don’t know how he will react so if he his in on Wednesday I will try this again and see if he responds well or not. Through the lesson Leah made a few pointers of things I need to remember for the observation, these consisted of:
·      if students are late make sure I address them when entering the class to show the observer I am in control.
·      Try and ask students more questions to show that they are learning rather then giving them the answers.
·      Try not to ‘fiddle’ clicking your pen.
·      Double check PowerPoint.
·      Objectives in present tense not past.
All of these pointers I will take on board and try and make sure everything is perfect for the observation although I know my first one will be the worst but because I did so well in the micro teach I feel I will take it personal if I get a bad score but I know there is nothing I can do about this other than develop from it.
 1/2/17
Today I used a different starter activity to try and get the students to engage in the lesson, the activity is called Kahoot. I brought in my ipad for students to do this interactive quiz and they seemed to enjoy it, I feel this is an exciting way to start the lesson and get the lesson started.
There was also an incident between two students today, one student in the class named Daniel, who has needs, threatened one of the learning support staff and this upset another student in the class. He confronted Daniel then stormed out of class, punching the walls and doors and being abusive to other students in the corridor. I didn’t really know how to deal with the situation other then trying to calm the student down, I will look into ways and techniques to del with aggressive behavior. I tried to talk to Tom about patients and how to just ignore Daniel which I think works and from this I realized I do have more patients then I thought to put up with various behavior in the class but I don’t want to fail or give up on the students but Daniel has have every chance to redeem himself and I will now not give them any help and focus on other students who want to be here.
https://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2010/05/08/how-to-handle-an-angry-verbally-aggressive-student/
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