#briefings

[buildoblivionthenwewilltalk]

[uncanny-tranny]

I think so many people are so deeply alienated from themselves that they have no clue how to exercise their free will and autonomy. For some, this alienation runs so deep that they are afraid of their own autonomy and humanity. It is completely understandable why one would have those feelings, but it can be worrisome.

I want to help others who feel this way, so here are small things I have done to exercise my free will:

Add "guilty pleasure" songs to playlists and actually listen to them (I have a ton of late 1990s-early 2000s music I listen to now proudly that I never listened to in the past out of shame)

Getting the décor item, bath set, bed spread, ect. in the patterns you like, even if it's "childish" (I got a dinosaur-themed wastebasket from the kids' décor section and I adore it)

Taking a new route to get to a place you go to often

Eat dessert first

Celebrate well, and often

Collect things that are "odd" or don't seem like an "acceptable" thing to collect (somebody on my "for you" page collects dandelion crayola crayons and it was so cool!!!!!!)

Incorporate one new piece in an outfit you wear frequently (e.g., a new chain, a necklace, ribbons, bracelets, ect.). Challenge yourself to add onto the outfits if you feel up for it.

Sing along to songs without worrying that you sound "good" or your intonation is completely accurate

Read a book from a genre you weren't allowed to read as a kid (comics, thrillers, mysteries, anything!)

Walk without having a specific destination or goal

Pick up a new craft without expecting yourself to master it or to ever be "good" enough. Get your hands messy.

I don't want to shame anybody for not feeling as though they have free will or that they are exempt from exercising it. However, I wanted to give ideas so that you might read this list and find your own ways to express your intrinsic autonomy and will. You deserve to be a person, to feel alive, not just living. That is what our lives are for.

[monakisss]

growing up in the ninth house

[otselotus]

о/

[ideadeco]

Οταν καταφέρνεις να συγκεντρώσεις 6 top ονόματα της αγοράς για να μιλήσουν σε ένα webinar, για ένα από τα πιο νευραλγικά ζητήματα που απασχολούν τους επαγγελματίες και τα agencies, τότε αισθάνεσαι λίγο σαν να έχεις πετύχει τους έξι αριθμούς του τζόκερ!

Ευχαριστώ μέσα από την καρδιά μου όλη την ομάδα speakers για την εμπιστοσύνη και την συνεργασία:

Αρσένης Πασχόπουλος, JUSTONLINE Marketing Agency

Αθανασία Καραμέρου, Sustainable Development Expert

Αντώνης Ζεάκης, Upthink Digital Agency

Φίλια Μητρομάρα, Attica Media Group

Τάσος Κοτζιάς, HEART© Holistic Coaching Methodology

Αρετή Βάσσου, IDEADECO SEO Copywriting Agency

Θέλεις να μάθεις τα πάντα για τα briefings;

Δεν αντέχεις άλλο να χάνεις χρόνο και χρήματα από τα κακογραμμένα briefings;

Προλαβαίνεις ακόμα να κάνεις εγγραφή και μάλιστα με τιμή έκπληξη για τις τελευταίες θέσεις!

Πρόσθεσε το κουπόνι: LASTSEATS

Κλείσε θέση σήμερα: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crafting-powerful-briefings-tickets-840376908957

Μην περιμένεις τελευταία στιγμή γιατί έχουν μείνει ελάχιστες διαθέσιμες θέσεις.

With Arsenis Paschopoulos, Filia Mitromara, Antonis Zeakis, Athanasia Karamerou, Anastasios Kotzias, JustOnLine, Seminaria.gr, Upthink Digital Agency, IdeaDeco SEO Copywriting Agency, MyHolistic.Coach, Gerochristo Jewelry, Parthenon Jewelry Collection

[itboytrends]

Reno Gold and Peter Korth photographed by Corey Myers for 'Homme Fatale' by Patrick Church

[lifeguard30]

[cozylittleartblog]

not that we didn't already Know belos was full of shit, but it's even funnier knowing the titan was still alive the whole time and probably judging him

[poyopaan]

sometimes you just gain an older brother who tried to kill you like an hour ago

[thenighttcat]

How I waste my life by attending briefings

3.53pm on 22 Nov 2023

There are two types of people who gives briefings.

Type One. They hasten to get the whole darn thing over as fast as politely possible. Faster, faster, faster! Politeness is thrown out the window. Fast.

Type Two. What’s the hurry? Productivity is overrated anyway. Surely my lovely audience would love to hear, interspersed within the long laundry list of administrative matters, of which bullet point I shall elaborate and repeat at least five or six times on average in case Mr Thomas at the back isn’t listening, oh his hearing isn’t quite that good, little amusing comments that draw from personal philosophy, or a funny detail about my recent holiday to Antarctica, or perhaps that meme my uncle’s wife sent in the family group chat last Friday, or what about…@#&#Y$Q

It’s funny how for somebody who hates wasting time, I sure know how to waste time on a gigantic scale.

[jockodeparis]

Eric Hanson and Jeremy Tucker The Size of It (2000) dir. John Travis

[stars-obsession-pit]

In some DPxDC fics, Kryptonite is made of solidified ectoplasm.

This is often used for humor - Danny gets to eat the Kryptonite like it’s no big deal.

But what if it was taken in a different direction?

Ghosts are made of ectoplasm.

Kryptonite’s dangerous effects towards Kryptonians mainly came about after the planet’s destruction (in at least some interpretations, the material is dangerous because it’s infused with radiation from the destruction of the planet).

The destruction of Krypton caused a lot of death—a lot of ghosts—all at once.

The first time Danny laid his eyes on some Kryptonite, he had to run to a wastebasket before he emptied his stomach.

It was full of trapped souls.

[bluegiragi]

brief.

early access + nsfw on patreon monster!AU masterpost

[heritageposts]

What does life in North Korea look like outside of Pyongyang? 🇰🇵

Hey, I'm back again with a very scary "tankie" post that asks you to think of North Koreans as people, and to consider their country not as a cartoonish dystopia, but as a nation that, like any other place on earth, has culture, traditions, and history.

Below is a collection of pictures from various cities and places in North Korea, along with a brief dive into some of the historical events that informs life in the so-called "hermit kingdom."

Warning: very long post

Kaesong, the historic city

Beginning this post with Kaesong, one of the oldest cities in Korea. It's also one of the few major cities in the DPRK (i.e. "North Korea") that was not completely destroyed during the Korean war.

Every single city you'll see from this point on were victims of intense aerial bombardments from the U.S. and its allies, and had to be either partially or completely rebuilt after the war.

From 1951 to 1953, during what has now become known as the "forgotten war" in the West, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs over Korea — most of it in the North, and on civilian population centers. An additional 32,000 tons of napalm was also deployed, engulfing whole cities in fire and inflicting people with horrific burns:

For such a simple thing to make, napalm had horrific human consequences. A bit of liquid fire, a sort of jellied gasoline, napalm clung to human skin on contact and melted off the flesh. Witnesses to napalm's impact described eyelids so burned they could not be shut and flesh that looked like "swollen, raw meat." - PBS

Ever wondered why North Koreans seem to hate the U.S so much? Well...

Keep in mind that only a few years prior to this, the U.S. had, as the first and only country in the world, used the atomic bomb as a weapon of war. Consider, too, the proximity between Japan and Korea — both geographically and as an "Other" in the Western imagination.

As the war dragged on, and it became clear the U.S. and its allies would not "win" in any conventional sense, the fear that the U.S. would resort to nuclear weapons again loomed large, adding another frightening dimension to the war that can probably go a long way in explaining the DPRK's later obsession with acquiring their own nuclear bomb.

But even without the use of nuclear weapons, the indiscriminate attack on civilians, particularly from U.S. saturation bombings, was still horrific:

"The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II" - Charles K. Armstrong

On top of the loss of life, there's also the material damage. By the end of the war, the U.S. Air Force had, by its own estimations, destroyed somewhere around 85% of all buildings in the DPRK, leaving most cities in complete ruin. There are even stories of U.S. bombers dropping their loads into the ocean because they couldn't find any visible targets to bomb.

What you'll see below of Kaesong, then, provides both a rare glimpse of what life in North Korea looked like before the war, and a reminder of what was destroyed.

Kaesong's main street, pictured below.

Due the stifling sanctions imposed on the DPRK—which has, in various forms and intensities, been in effect since the 1950s—car ownership is still low throughout the country, with most people getting around either by walking or biking, or by bus or train for longer distances.

Kaesong, which is regarded as an educational center, is also notable for its many Koryŏ-era monuments. A group of twelve such sites were granted UNESCO world heritage status in 2013.

Included is the Hyonjongnung Royal Tomb, a 14th-century mausoleum located just outside the city of Kaesong.

One of the statues guarding the tomb.

Before moving on the other cities, I also wanted to showcase one more of the DPRK's historical sites: Pohyonsa, a thousand-year-old Buddhist temple complex located in the Myohyang Mountains.

Like many of DPRK's historic sites, the temple complex suffered extensive damage during the Korean war, with the U.S. led bombings destroying over half of its 24 pre-war buildings.

The complex has since been restored and is in use today both as a residence for Buddhist monks, and as a historic site open to visitors.

Hamhung, the second largest city in the DPRK.

A coastal city located in the South Hamgyŏng Province. It has long served as a major industrial hub in the DPRK, and has one of the largest and busiest ports in the country.

Hamhung, like most of the coastal cities in the DPRK, was hit particularly hard during the war. Through relentless aerial bombardments, the US and its allies destroyed somewhere around 80-90% percent of all buildings, roads, and other infrastructure in the city.

Now, more than seventy years later, unexploded bombs, mortars and pieces of live ammunition are still being unearthed by the thousands in the area. As recently as 2016, one of North Korea's bomb squads—there's one in every province, faced with the same cleanup task—retrieved 370 unexploded mortar rounds... from an elementary school playground.

Experts in the DPRK estimate it will probably take over a hundred years to clean up all the unexploded ordnance—and that's just in and around Hamhung.

Hamhung's fertilizer plant, the biggest in North Korea.

When the war broke out, Hamhung was home to the largest nitrogen fertilizer plant in Asia. Since its product could be used in the creation of explosives, the existence of the plant is considered to have made Hamhung a target for U.S. aggression (though it's worth repeating that the U.S. carried out saturation bombings of most population centers in the country, irrespective of any so-called 'military value').

The plant was immediately rebuilt after the war, and—beyond its practical use—serves now as a monument of resistance to U.S. imperialism, and as a functional and symbolic site of self-reliance.

Chongjin, the third largest city in the DPRK.

Another coastal city and industrial hub. It underwent a massive development prior to the Korean war, housing around 300,000 people by the time the war broke out.

By 1953, the U.S. had destroyed most of Chongjin's industry, bombed its harbors, and killed one third of the population.

Wonsan, a rebuilt seaside city.

The city of Wonsan is a vital link between the DPRK's east and west coasts, and acts today as both a popular holiday destination for North Koreans, and as a central location for the country's growing tourism industry.

Considered a strategically important location during the war, Wonsan is notable for having endured one of the longest naval blockades in modern history, lasting a total of 861 days.

By the end of the war, the U.S. estimated that they had destroyed around 80% of the city.

Masikryong Ski Resort, located close to Wonsan. It opened to the public in 2014 and is the first, I believe, that was built with foreign tourists in mind.

Sariwon, another rebuilt city

One of the worst hit cities during the Korean War, with an estimated destruction level of 95%.

I've written about its Wikipedia page here before, which used to mockingly describe its 'folk customs street'—a project built to preserve old Korean traditions and customs—as an "inaccurate romanticized recreation of an ancient Korean street."

No mention, of course, of the destruction caused by the US-led aerial bombings, or any historical context at all that could possibly even hint at why the preservation of old traditions might be particularly important for the city.

Life outside of the towns and cities

In the rural parts of the DPRK, life primarily revolves around agriculture. As the sanctions they're under make it difficult to acquire fuel, farming in the DPRK relies heavily on manual labour, which again, to avoid food shortages, requires that a large portion of the labour force resides in the countryside.

Unlike what many may think, the reliance on manual labour in farming is a relatively "new" development. Up until the crisis of the 1990s, the DPRK was a highly industrialized nation, with a modernized agricultural system and a high urbanization rate. But, as the access to cheap fuel from the USSR and China disappeared, and the sanctions placed upon them by Western nations heavily restricted their ability to import fuel from other sources, having a fuel-dependent agricultural industry became a recipe for disaster, and required an immediate and brutal restructuring.

For a more detailed breakdown of what lead to the crisis in the 90s, and how it reshaped the DPRKs approach to agriculture, check out this article by Zhun Xu.

Some typical newly built rural housing, surrounded by farmland.

Tumblr only allows 20 pictures per post, but if you want to see more pictures of life outside Pyongyang, check out this imgur album.

[meanbossart]

There, he got some new underwear.

[ideadeco]

The Critical Role of Briefings

The importance of comprehensive and clear briefings in the marketing world cannot be overstated. Despite this universal acknowledgment, a surprising number of projects suffer due to inadequate briefing processes. This phenomenon hinders creativity and effectiveness and strains the relationship between marketers and agencies. A deep dive into official studies and industry statistics reveals a…