#but also the more complicated i make the organizational system the longer it takes for the Urge to arrive again

[chaotic-autumn]

my relationship with tagging posts on tumblr as a person riddled with ADHD is that i spam reblog without tagging anything, and then every 2-6 weeks The Urge strikes and I use the mass post editor to create a complicated organizational system of tags that I know I will not add to anything until The Urge strikes again

[rafi420]

In the development of a company

In the development of a company

it needs to have a consensus, including a consensus on values, a consensus on strategy, and a consensus on power. In layman's terms, it's who has the final say. The HE Tuber founder does not need to worry about this, because he is the natural consensus of the organization, "He is the boss."

But when professional managers take over the authority, they need to establish a system within the scope of authorization to allow the organization to reach a consensus. In a nutshell: Founders have property rights, maximum voting rights, and Charisma-type reputation, and they can fight wherever they want; while professional managers only have authorization and rely more on the system.

Also in this year, JD began to establish a middle office. The supply chain units in technology and business were decoupled and became a middle office organization. The front office organization was a business scenario. The two parties were constantly recoupled and worked together to move forward. Since it is coupled, some external force is needed as support.

Of course, JD’s middle-end design is still relatively personalized. Generally speaking, the middle-end design of most companies is a technical middle-end and an organizational middle-end, that is,

 the middle-end design of finance, human resources and R&D departments. The reason for this is also very simple. Whether it is a company or a business unit, the three core elements are always people, money and materials. People and money are easy to understand, while things refer to the means of production. For Internet companies, their core production material is software, and the R&D department ensures the implementation and iteration of this production material.

Therefore, when the finance, human resources and R&D departments are centralized, the business units are actually more focused on execution. If he needs to expand his business, he needs to seek budget, headcount and R&D support from the middle office. In addition to good popularity, what business bosses need most is support from the CEO.

In other words, the middle office takes advantage of the egoism in human nature, which will lead to an increase in internal transaction costs and an increase in friction within the organization. This friction will of course cause some energy dissipation, but it will also cause the entire The organization moves closer to the center, and decision-making power is centralized upward.

This is why, when Liu Qiangdong returned to the business, JD began to dismantle Zhongtai again. Because the founder is the consensus of a company, he no longer has to use 

bureaucracy to pay more friction costs to manage the river of power within the company.

Similarly, when Kuaishou bid farewell to the dual-headed management model and appointed founder Cheng Yixiao as CEO, one of the first things it did was to dismantle the middle office. This company's business is not complicated at first, that is, it operates and commercializes around a content platform. But at one time, this company also had a middle office, but now, all its business units have been closed-looped into one system. In the first quarter, Kuaishou achieved its first profit after listing. I believe that the improvement of organizational efficiency should play a big role. effect.

Of course, the most thorough dismantling should be Alibaba, because with the establishment of the 1+6+N holding company structure, this company has achieved complete authorization of business lines.

After all, this is an era that no longer allows energy to be dissipated, and in addition to egotism, there is a more prominent commonality in human nature, and that is to win.

Especially when this moat is being broken one after another, if technology companies cannot break through and win, they will be in danger of survival. It is the general trend to make the decision-making chain shorter, more agile, and more equal in power and responsibility. China and Taiwan have completed the historical mission of this stage, but in the future, it may be resurrected in another form.

[bomberqueen17]

darkest before dawn etc

god anyway so i loaded etsy in an incognito window and checked out as guest and even though it asked for my email address it still let me give it money. so i did the thing. i did. i had three separate people offer to help me and that made me feel very warm and fuzzy but also embarrassed. i love you guys, i was going to bully my sister to do it instead but i didn’t even have to do that.

i am a disaster today too but yesterday a coworker said something and it was only today as i looked at the video transfer desk where i was multitasking four different orders using an organizational system i had refined on my own that’s been foolproof for two years now that it struck me that, oh, I am actually exceptionally skilled at not only the physical aspects of this (it takes rather a lot of dexterity to thread the 8mm machine) and at handling the complicated software, but I’m really quite good at the workplace management stuff, the result being that I can multitask four entirely separate orders to maximize the work the expensive machines can do during open hours.

Like, I’m a fucking idiot who can’t count to 100 (and got in a fight with my supervisor about that on Tuesday, when I wanted to do an order for a qty:100 by weight, since we’d tared the scale for that exact purpose and I still had the weights written down, and he wanted them counted even though it takes longer because he, not having a numbers-related disability, thinks that’ll be more accurate), but I am also really fucking good at what I do.

So that realization has helped. The problem with staying in a job that sort of treats you like shit in exchange for maximal flexibility is that it really does wear down your self-esteem.

Also i just discovered that Maddy Prior (how did i not already know about her? i do not know she is not exactly obscure and YET somehow I’d mixed up Steely Dan and Steeleye Span my entire life) has not one but two recordings of Of All The Birds, which I did not know was the title of that song my dad used to sing my niece. (It’s about an owl and we always called it The Owl but the first line is Of All The Brave Birds and apparently Roud categorized it as “Of All The Birds” so anyway. Whatever.)

(If you think this song isn’t going to make an appearance somewhere, likely related to mocking or alluding to Philippa, then think again.)

[thevampirediariesdiary]

SEASON 2 MUSIC MOMENTS

below the cut, you will find a list of (some of) the songs that are used prominently in season 2, with snatches of lyrics and some helpful context.  I’ve also included a few songs that are only used in the background, if I think the lyrics are interesting enough.

reblog and tell me your top 10! tag your friends to share their top 10! =)

2.01, The Return

an instrumental version of “Breakeven (Falling to Pieces)” plays during the “now I’m hurt” scene 

“The River Has Run Wild��� by Mads Langer plays at the beginning of Damon’s confrontation with Katherine, “it hurts to see you burning so bright”

“Come Home” by Sara Bareilles and One Republic plays over Damon and Elena’s scene, “everything I can’t be is everything you should be, and that’s why I need you here”

2.02, Brave New World

“Animal” by Neon Trees plays during the carnival scene where Elena tells Bonnie that she’s human and needs to do human stuff or she’ll go insane: “what are you waiting for, take a bite of my heart tonight”

“All This Time” by One Republic plays during the stelena ferris wheel scene, “all this time we were waiting for each other / all this time I was waiting for you / we got all these words, can’t waste them on another / so I’m in a straight line running back to you” 

2.03, Bad Moon Rising

“Under My Bed” By Meiko plays while Caroline is stuck in her bedroom hiding from the sun while Matt knocks on her door.  “here I am with my heart on the floor and my love out the door”

“Ashes and Wine” by A Fine Frenzy plays while Caroline pushes Matt into breaking up with her, while Alaric and Jenna reconcile, and then into the scene where Elena tells Damon he’s lost her forever: “Is there a chance, a fragment of light at the end of the tunnel, a reason to fight? Is there a chance you might change your mind? Or are we ashes and wine?”

2.04, Memory Lane 

Tyrone Wells “Time of Our Lives” plays while Stefan and Elena fake fight for Caroline’s benefit, “It’s hard to walk away from the best of days, but if it has to end I’m glad you have been my friend in the time of our lives”

Sara Bareilles’ “Breathe Again” plays over Katherine’s flashbacks to telling Stefan they’ll be together again, “my burden to bear is a love I can’t carry anymore / all I have, all I need, he’s the air I would kill to breath / holds my love in his hands, now I’m searching for something / out of breath I’m hoping someday I’ll breathe again”

2.05, Kill or Be Killed 

Trent Dabbs’ “Counting Sleep” plays over the Stefan and Elena scene in her bedroom in which they plan their fake fight, “tell me everything will be alright, I’m worried about nothing”

The Naked and Famous song “Punching in a Dream” plays over their fight, “Wait, I don’t ever want to be here, like punching in a dream, breathing life into my nightmare”

“I Need To Know” by Kris Allen plays over Elena’s discussion with Damon (“Are you leaving me? Or are you leading the way? Can you hear what I’m saying? I need to know.”) that leads into Elena’s decision to let Stefan drink her blood, you and me, always: “Will you take my hand?  Feels so far away, want to see your face, are you even there?  Can you show me?  Can you make me believe?”

2.06, Plan B 

The Script’s “This=Love” plays on overlapping scenes of opposing couples, Stefan and Elena and Mason and Katherine: “This is why we do it, this is worth the pain, this is why we fall down and get back up again, this is where the heart lies, this is from above, love is this, this is love”

The Black Keys’ “Tighten Up” plays over the scene in which Jenna calls out Stefan and Elena for fake fighting, “tighten up on your reins, you are runnin’ wild”

“Wires” by Athlete plays over the scene where Elena breaks up with Stefan for real, because Jenna got hurt, continuing into the part where Damon takes the blame and Elena doesn’t hold it against him, “I see it in your eyes, you’ll be alright / running down corridors through automatic doors, got to get to you, got to see this through”

2.07, Masquerade 

Digital Daggers’ “Head over Heels” plays over the Steferine slow dance scene, “You keep your distance with a system of touch and gentle persuasion / I’m lost in admiration, could I need you this much? / oh you’re wasting my time, you’re just – just – just – wasting time”

“People Change” by Joel & Luke plays over the angsty longing glances exchanged between Caroline and Matt, “will you be there if I call? will you leave me in the rain? if I say it’s all my fault, will you still walk away?  I understand if you’re afraid, but people change”

“Brave” by Tawgs Salter plays over the final scene between Stefan and Elena when she says she needs to wake up and Stefan says he understands, and lets her go, “I think I’ll be brave, starting with you, but I’ll fall away if you want me to..I think I’ll be brave, say how I’ve wanted you” 

2.08, Rose 

Dragonette’s “We Rule the World” plays over Caroline’s conversation with Damon wherein she explains that she covered for Tyler, “we’re not the ones with the big guns, some kind of shiny secret weapons, but lets pretend that we rule the world”.  the song cuts off when Damon tells her not to be Tyler’s friend. 

While Stefan is interrogating Damon in the interests of road trip bonding, asking if he’s helping his little brother save the girl he loves or if he loves her too, “Blood” by Editors plays: “There’s nothing believable in being honest / so cover your lies up with another promise / blood runs through your veins / that’s where our similarity ends”

“In My Veins” by Andrew Belle plans when Elena receives the message that Damon and Stefan are coming for her: “all that you rely on and all that you can fake / will find you in the morning but find you in the day / oh, you’re in my veins and I cannot get you out / oh, you’re all I taste at night inside of my mouth / oh, you run away cause I am not what you found” 

“Love Song” by Cruel Black Dove plays in the car when Stefan tells Damon that he’s been drinking Elena’s blood, “I’m alright, I’m alright, can’t you see can’t you see / he’s just like me”

“Ocean Wide” by The Afters plays when Elena returns home to Bonnie and Jeremy, “If love is an ocean wide, we’ll swim in the tears we cry / they’ll see us through to the other side / we’re gonna make it” and then fades into the scene of the Salvatores at home, making their truce to protect Elena and Stefan apologizing for the past and admitting he just needed his brother. 

“I was wrong” by Sleeperstar plays during the scene of Damon’s love confession in Elena’s bedroom: “last night we fell apart, I broke to pieces / our love was in a hall, packed all in boxes / and I saw what it was that I did to you / I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong”.  

2.09, Katerina 

“Precious Stone” by Pete Yorn plays while Caroline has lunch with Stefan and asks why he’s such a good friend to her, “come on, I know you’re feeling better, I know you’re feeling in control”

“Puritan Heart” by Matt Duncan plays I think for a hot second in the coffee shop while Slater lists his many degrees,  “I almost said ‘you used to be a lot of fun’ / but so did I…oh please melt my puritan heart”.  I only mention this because it’s a travesty that this song wasn’t used in a Stefan scene. 

“Light Love” by Free Energy plays in the continuing Stefan and Caroline scene, “Light love, don’t everybody want that love? And it’s hard sometimes cause everybody’s uptight, love” 

“Amen Omen” by Ben Harper plays while Damon and Rose talk about how it might be better if Damon turns off his emotions because caring gets you dead, Elena tells Stefan that everyone is in danger because of her, and Katherine looks at the drawing of her family. “Will I see your face again? Can I find the place within to live my life without you?” 

2.10, The Sacrifice 

Our very own Kat Graham’s “I’m Only Happy When It’s Raining” plays when Matt apologizes to Tyler, Caroline and Matt fail to make up, and Caroline brags about her organizational chops as a way of offering her help to Tyler, thereby setting up a brand-new love triangle: “I’m only happy when it rains, I’m only happy when it’s complicated, and though I know you can’t appreciate it, I’m only happy when it rains”

Joel and Luke’s version of “Love’s to Blame” starts to play as Caroline tells Tyler she doesn’t want him to be alone, and continues through Matt’s awkward entrance, “Can’t be near you right now, cause I know you’re no longer mine” 

“No Way Out” by Rie Sinclair and Mike Suby plays during the Jeremy/Bonnie scene when he says he was willing to take the chance he would die to protect her, and continues during the scene on the doorstep with Damon and Elena where she says he shouldn’t question why she would try to save everyone, and through their fight in the tomb. “you’re the very thing unwinding me / no one ever will love me better than your everlasting love / I found only one way in and no way out”

2.11, By the Light of the Moon 

“Longest Night” by Howie Day plays while Caroline runs to Tyler after he changes back to a human, when Stefan gets out of the tomb and kisses Elena, into the scene where Damon tells Rose he’s happy the legend was fake and she says she’ll stay and help him save Elena, “You and I, caught in a fading light on the longest night / it’s enough just to find love, it’s the only thing to be sure of / so hard to let go of, a thousand times or more” 

2.12, The Descent 

Anberlin’s “Impossible” plays while Tyler thanks Caroline for helping him, “you’re impossible to love or leave, so impossible to win or please / I’m wearing you out, just wearing you out, but I’m wearing you down / take what you want from me, it means nothing now / take everything from me, it means nothing now / not so easy to forgive, harder to forget, take what you want” 

TV on the Radio’s “DLZ” plays over Damon’s existential crisis speech, “congratulations on the mess you made of things…you force your fire then you falsify your deeds / your methods dot the disconnect from all your creeds…your victim flies to high all to catch a bird’s eye view of / who’s next” 

2.13, Daddy Issues 

Adele’s “Don’t You Remember” plays in the Grille while Elena exhorts Damon not to be stupid and to be the better man, “but don’t you remember? don’t you remember? / the reason you loved me before / baby please remember me once more.”

“Stay” by Hurts plays while Elena accuses Damon of blowing off Andi, and he says it’s in the best interests of women everywhere, “we say goodbye in the pouring rain and I break down as you walk away / stay, stay / cause all my life I’ve felt this way but I could never find the words to say / stay, stay” 

Natasha Bedingfield’s “Strip Me” plays while Elena fights with John, “take what you want, steal my pride / build me up or cut me down to size / shut me out but I’ll just scream / I’m only one voice in a million / but you ain’t taking that from me”

“Losing Your Memory” by Ryan Starr plays while Stefan brings the girls over Caroline’s house, and then when Damon tells Andi he’s in love with a woman he can never have because she wants him to be something he’s not, and she tells him love changes us, “all the best of what we’ve done is yet to come / wake up, it’s time, little girl, wake up / just remember who I am in the morning / you’re losing your memory now.” 

2.14, Crying Wolf

“All Die Young” by Smith Westerns plays while Caroline tries to make her excuses to Matt, “I wanna grow old before I grow up, I wanna die with my chin up / and definitely maybe I will live to love”

“You Wait for Rain” by Kyler England plays while Stefan and Elena wander around her parents’ cabin, “it’s like we’ve been drifting along pretending nothing’s wrong / we play the game keep up the charade, but when the river runs dry, we’re on different sides / you wait for rain and I chase the storm, we just don’t see it the same way / you say you want change but you’re never sure, we can’t go on like this anymore”

“Family Tree” by Matthew West plays while Jeremy and Bonnie kiss, while Tyler tells Matt that Caroline was there for him more than anyone’s ever been there for him, but she loves Matt and she needs Matt and she deserves someone like Matt, and subsequently leaves town. “You’re gonna find real love, and you’re gonna hold your kids / you’ll change the course of generations / this is not your legacy, this is not your destiny / yesterday does not define you / this is not your legacy, this is not your meant to be / I can break the chains that bind you” 

2.15, The Dinner Party 

“Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People plays in the Grille while Bonnie and Jeremy awkwardly flirt and lie to Luka.  I only mention this because it’s such a weird choice.

The Airborne Toxic Event’s “Happiness is Overrated” plays while Damon finds Katherine in his shower, having successfully maneuvered him into killing Elijah and almost killed Damon himself in the process, “speaking of little Miss Katherine, I feel swell, oh well / because losing you was something I always did so well”

2.16, The House Guest 

Angel Taylor’s “Epiphany” plays during the girls’ night scene, and Caroline and Jenna discussing whether everyone deserves the truth or if sometimes protecting someone without consulting them is the right choice, “and this epiphany just hit me and now I’m finally realizing / you’re all I never needed / I’m so perfect without you…a true love is surrounding, clarity abounding / you were never my epiphany” 

s.o.stereo plays in the Grille, first “I’ll take the bullet” while Jenna and Alaric fight about his secrets, “and if we want each other / cock it and pull it / you run for cover and I’ll take the bullet”, then “Eternal Flame” with Candice Accola, “do you feel the same, or am I only dreaming? / is this burning an eternal flame? / I believe it’s meant to be, darlin’”, and finally “Hello Miss Heels”, the lyrics of which I cannot find anywhere.  

“Broken Strings” by James Morrison and Nelly Furtado plays when Bonnie tells Jeremy she has her powers back, and then while Katherine tries to crawl into bed with Damon and he rejects her, “but we’re running through the fire when there’s nothing left to save / it’s like chasing the very last train when we both know it’s too late / you can’t play on broken strings / you can’t feel anything that your heart don’t want to feel / I can’t tell you something that ain’t real” 

2.17, Know Thy Enemy 

“Give Me Strength” by Snow Patrol plays while Matt reports back to Liz, and John tells Elena why he put his faith in Isobel, “you give the strength to me, a strength I never had / I was a mess you see, I’d lost the plot so bad / you dragged me up and out, out of the darkest place/ there’s not a single doubt when I can see your faces.”

2.18, The Last Dance 

“Spotlight (Oh Nostalgia)” by Patrick Stump plays while everyone prepares for the dance – Matt, who’s pretending to be compelled, Jeremy and Bonnie, who are fighting about what using her powers would do to her, “Every wound can be forgotten in the right light / oh, nostalgia, I don’t need you anymore”

“Hush” by Kula Shaker plays while Klaus!Alaric enters the dance, “well I got a silly little girl, she’s on my mind / look at her, she looks so fine / she’s the best girl that I ever had / except that she’s gonna make me feel so sad”    

Klaus dedicates “Dedicated to the One I Love” by the Mamas & the Papas to Elena: “while I’m far away from you, my baby / whisper a little prayer for me, my baby, yeah / because it’s hard for me, my baby / and the darkest hour is just before the dawn”

“Last Kiss” by Trent Dabbs plays while Jeremy and Bonnie dance, Stefan hands Elena off to Damon, Stefan cuts in on Caroline and Matt, and Damon cuts in on Jeremy and Bonnie, “I held her close, I kissed her our last kiss / I found the love that I knew I would miss / but now she’s gone, even though I hold her tight / I lost my love, my life that night / oh where oh where can my baby be? / the Lord took her away from me / she’s gone to heaven, so I gotta be good / so I can see my baby when I leave this world”

Birthday Massacre’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” plays while Stefan scolds Damon, leaving Elena and Bonnie separated from the group and vulnerable to Klaus, “trying to get away into the night / and then you put your arms around me / and we tumble to the ground and you say / I think we’re alone now / there doesn’t seem to be anyone around”

“I Wanna Be (Your Everything)” by the Manhattans plays while Jeremy gets beat up in the hallway, “I wanna be your lover and your honey / I wanna be your good luck and your money / I wanna always be by your side / I wanna be your protector and your guide”

“Dream Lover” by the Dollyrots plays while Elena looks for Stefan in the dance, “dream lover, where are you / with a love oh-so true / and a hand that I can hold / to feel you near as I grow old” 

2.19, Klaus 

“Helena Beat” by Foster the People plays while Katherine’s drinking in Alaric’s apartment and Damon and Andi drop by, “sometimes life it takes you by the hair / pulls you down before you know it / it’s gone and you’re dead again” 

“Get Some” by Lykke Li plays while Katherine dances drunkenly. “got you ‘round my finger like a lonely lover’s charm”

2.20, The Last Day 

“Not” by Cheyenne Mize plays when Tyler comes back to town to see his mother in the hospital, and when Matt kisses Caroline in the Grille, “heavy is the burden of truth / how can I say to you, I’m sorry / cause these words can’t change our mind / how can they change your heart? / I’m not the one, you think that I am”

“Wolf Pack” by The Vaccines plays when Damon admits he screwed up, and Klaus walks into the Grille to introduce himself and warn everyone off doing anything they’d regret, “I don’t even know you / you’re just someone new I don’t want to talk to / you’re wild / I don’t find you crazy at all” 

2.21, The Sun Also Rises 

Birdy’s “Skinny Love” plays after Jeremy tells Elena “I still have you,” during Jenna and John’s funeral, as John’s letter is read: “all your love was wasted / then who the hell was I? / now I’m breaking at the britches and at the end of all your lies / who will love you? / who will fight? /and who will fall far behind?”

2.22, As I Lay Dying 

Ingrid Michaelson’s “Turn to Stone” plays when Damon has a last drink and prepares to face the sunlight, “let’s take a better look beyond a story book / and learn our souls are all we own before we turn to stone / let’s go to sleep with clearer heads and hearts too big to fit our beds / and maybe we won’t feel so alone before we turn to stone / and if you wait for someone else’s hand, you’ll fall, you’ll fall”

“Speakers” by Days Difference plays while Alaric finds out that Damon’s dying, and while everyone congregates on the lawn to practice living one more day until it’s not as hard anymore, “now I’m trying and I’m dying to see you / I know I hurt you but I really didn’t mean to / got my pain on the mic, laying it all out tonight / I’ll do it again and again till I get it right” 

“I Should Go” by Levi Kreis plays during Damon and Elena’s last conversation, as he tells her he made choices that got him here, but it’s okay because he met her, and he knows she loves Stefan but he loves her and she should know that, and she tells him she likes him now, just the way he is: “all we have in common, and your company was just the thing I needed tonight / somehow I feel like I should apologize, cause I’m just a little shaken by what’s going on inside / I should go before my will gets any weaker / and my eyes begin to linger longer than they should / I should go before I lose my sense of reason / and this hours holds more meaning than it ever could / I should go, baby, I should go”

[eponymous-rose]

For the next little while, a lot of scientists will be sharing a typical day in their careers on Twitter---I’m weirdly less shy about doing this for a group of mostly strangers than I would be on my professional account, so here we are instead!

I’m a brand-new assistant professor, which means I’m not teaching yet and my responsibilities mainly revolve around laying the groundwork that’ll help me fund and lead my own research group. It’s way more chill than it’s going to be in a couple months, so I’m enjoying it while I can! Let’s demystify the more mundane parts of academia...

9:00 - 9:30: Step one is some prep for my upcoming conference in three weeks. I’m co-presenting a poster with a colleague, and she wants to have it printed off by Wednesday. We had a meeting on Friday to hash out the details, so I know that my part of it is mainly just creating some graphics to illustrate a complicated A.I. concept. Fortunately, I did just that for my presentation at a workshop a couple weeks ago! All it takes is a little copy-paste, some reworking of fonts, and some cursing at what does and doesn’t transfer from Powerpoint to Google Slides, and we’re good to go!

9:30 - 10:00: I stare into the abyss of e-mails. The e-mails stare back at me. I accept a welcome-to-town invite to a dinner party with an associate dean, set up a meeting with a visiting speaker to talk about her research, flag down a grants admin to talk about a new proposal, gently ping IT to remind them I’m still missing some important software, agree to chair a session at this upcoming conference, provide passport info to the admin for said upcoming conference, shoot the hotel a question about early check-in, and check in with a peer mentoring program to find out whether it’s okay for me to miss the orientation and still participate (it is). Phew. Okay. Unless anything urgent comes up, once I’ve done my e-mail time for the day, I try to leave anything new that comes in until the next day---I’ve learned that if you reply to everything immediately, the e-mails will just keep multiplying endlessly.

10:00 - 11:00: I’ve been putting off finishing this paper review, but dangit, I gotta get it done (the deadline is on Saturday). I’m recommending that this paper be rejected because of some fatal flaws in its methodology, but I want to give the authors something to work with to potentially resubmit someday, so I trawl through the literature for a while and make a list of recommended papers to go along with each major comment I make. In all, there are about two dozen recommended papers. Godspeed, rejected authors. I’m sorry. I feel a bit better after delivering the gift of Bavarian chocolate to the professor in the office next to mine (she couldn’t make it to the workshop this year but usually attends).

11:00 - 1:00: I’m experimenting with one-hour chunks of time in my schedule, but I’m finding that really intense writing needs at least two hours at a stretch. I’m doing something I’ve never had to try before: writing a proposal for a journal article. This journal is popular enough that it has a two-phase submission system: the first phase is just an abstract describing the paper and a cover letter justifying its publication in such a far-reaching journal. Although it’s recommended that you don’t start the paper until you know whether or not it’s been accepted to this journal, I do have preliminary results and an idea of the general organizational structure, so the abstract isn’t too arduous to write, and after a couple rewrites I’m pretty pleased with it. The cover letter’s new, though, and after some blank staring at the website’s vague suggestions, I remember that a colleague published here recently and ping her for advice. She kindly sends me her successful cover letter, which makes a great template! I send cover letter and abstract off to my coauthor for his approval, along with a request for a meeting sometime before we go to this conference.

1:00 - 2:00: For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a review of a major proposal for a big-name government agency that’s basically deciding on the next five years of someone’s research funding, so, you know. Not intimidating at all. This job has been made both easier and harder by the fact that the proposal is damn near flawless: amazingly great that I get to thumbs-up this grant, but a little frustrating that I still have to go through the motions of an arduous write-up that boils down to “you would be fools not to fund this research”. I can see the finish line, though, and after weeks of orientation videos and memorizing requirements, I finally get most of my review scribbled down.

2:00 - 3:30: This was supposed to be a short thing---getting a flu shot---but of course there’s a 100-person lineup at the campus clinic, and after I wait way too long before giving up, the one drug store I remember that does flu shots is a longer walk than I anticipated, and halfway through waiting we get evacuated because of a major gas leak down the road... well, I did eventually get a flu shot while surrounded by slightly frantic-looking firefighters, so we’ll call this a win and not worry about how long it took. Ahem.

3:30 - 4:30: There’s a seminar! It’s about snowflakes! I learn me a thing!

4:30 - 5:00: Back to the proposal review. I speed-read the technical details of the proposal, which all seem to be in order, and get to rebalance my karma after the morning’s rejection by submitting a strong recommendation to fund this research program. Thumbs up all around.

5:00 - 6:00: The poster’s not the only thing happening at this conference in three weeks: I’m also giving a presentation. The coauthor on the presentation might want to meet with me in the next couple weeks, so in preparation for that I figure I should probably put together a rough outline of a talk. It’s great that I gave a talk about a similar method two weeks ago, because I can repurpose a couple slides, and then the rest is based on a nearly-published (pending minor revisions) paper of ours, from which it’s easy enough to scavenge some figures. It looks pretty neat! Next steps will be to make sure it tells a proper story and cut it down to the 12-minute limit, but I’m pretty happy with the way it’s laid out.

And that’s a pretty average sciencey day for me, right now!

[let-it-raines]

Rising From The Ashes (Ch. 3)

Summary: When her husband died, Emma wasn’t sure that she could ever move on. He left her with a broken heart and a baby who was only three-months old. It’s enough to take most people down, to make them not want to keep going, but Emma Swan isn’t most people. She’s stronger than she has any right to be. And after years of heartache, she’s found ways to move on…one of those being in Neal’s best friend, Killian Jones. As she’s always known, however, things are more complicated than they ever seem to be.

Rating: Mature

A/N: I mean, how better to end the week than with something angsty? lol. I’ll post Second in Command on Sunday or Monday, I think. It’s much happier and totally cancels things out :D

We’ve got to go through the emotions and process, peeps. Things have to be bad before they get better!

Double “-/-” around the flashback!

AO3: Beginning | Current

Tumblr: 1 | 2 | 3

Tag list: @resident-of-storybrooke @resident-of-storybrooke @captainsjedi @captswanis4vr @teamhook @ekr032-blog-blog@mayquita @bmbbcs4evr @wellhellotragic @kmomof4 @jennjenn615 @onceuponaprincessworld @shady-swan-jones @snowbellewells @snow-into-ash @andiirivera @mariakov81 @thejollyroger-writer @shireness-says @kristi555 @facesiousbutton82 

Paperwork is scattered across her sitting room floor. At one point there was visible hardwood, but it’s been replaced with a sea of white paper with neatly printed words written across them, yellow highlighter marks slashed over certain words with handwritten notes added in filling up the margins. There’s some kind of organizational system going on, but she lost track of it hours ago. Now it’s a sea that she’s lost in, that she doesn’t know how to escape from, which is ridiculous considering all of the paperwork on the floor are just articles she found online about how to deal with someone coming home from war.

Or torture.

Or wherever the hell Neal has been.

She still doesn’t know exactly. He won’t talk about it when she visits him in the hospital. He won’t say a thing. Whenever anyone asks him about it, he deflects, changes the subject. It’s like he’s one of her high schoolers who think if they change the subject to the Friday night football game that she’ll forget that she’s trying to help them get into college. She’s not going to forget. It’s her job to help them, and she’s not going to be distracted by something so insignificant.

Neal is not the same way.

It’s been ten days since she saw him for the first time, since she had the tangible proof that he’s alive, and while her world has been thrown upside down, he seems perfectly fine, like absolutely nothing has changed. Every article she’s read, every professional she’s talked to, every conversation she’s had with Killian, it all says that he should be affected in some way.

Hell, he looks better than he did when he left. It doesn’t…nothing makes sense about this. Nothing makes sense about her life.

The fact that Neal moves in to kiss her every time she walks in his hospital room doesn’t help. She’s taken to turning her cheek, the way his lips feel on hers wrong, and after being so shocked that she couldn’t move away when she’d first seen him, she now knows how to better handle the situation. Logically, she understands why he does it. As far as he knows, Emma is still his wife. She hasn’t moved on, she didn’t file the paperwork so that she wouldn’t be married to a dead man anymore. But she has moved on, and she did file the paperwork. Legally, she has no attachments to Neal other than Henry.

Emotionally, it’s another story.

But Neal thinks that she’s his wife, and every time she visits him, he is so damn happy to see her that she’s not sure she can break his heart, not when he probably finally feels happy for the first time in so long. He talks about how much he’s missed her, about how much the thought of she and Henry kept him going all this time. It’s the only concession he makes to where he’s been, to what’s been happening, and a part of her clings to it, clings to the knowledge that she was able to bring him back with just the thought of his love for her.

It also makes her drown in guilt.

How the hell could she have moved on when he spent nearly a decade thinking about her and their child? She must seem so flippant, untrustworthy. She must be one of the worst human beings in the world.

She thinks that a lot. She thinks about how she’s a terrible person until flickers of screaming matches and petty words flash through her mind in a jumbled mess that’s difficult for her to understand and piece together.

“God,” she groans, choking back a sob while she runs her hands through her hair before rubbing the heels of her palms into her eyes, finally ending up with her fingers tightly grasping the pendant on her necklace, “this is fucked up.”

And it’s not like she has any relief in thinking of other things. Her life doesn’t get any less complicated outside of Neal. Because when she’s not thinking of how the hell she’s going to fix that and help him adjust to life, help him adjust to Henry, she’s thinking about Killian.

He has been…amazing throughout this entire thing. He is her rock, has been for so long, and she doesn’t know how he’s managing to hold himself together when she knows he must be falling apart too. And she’s not sure that thoughts of her are keeping him together.

She’s sure that it’s thoughts of her that are pulling at all of the strings that are unraveling him.

Because she can’t go back to Neal when there’s Killian here. She can’t leave the man she loves to go back to the man she once loved, the man who has been a ghost to her for longer than she knew him alive. But should she? Should she try to make it work? Is that what she’s supposed to do? Is there even a right answer?

She loves Killian so deeply and so truly that the thought of breaking his heart breaks her. They’re together. They have Ada, they have Henry, and they have each other. They’ve been a family for so long, longer than even the time she and Killian have technically been together, and she can’t break up her family. She can’t.

Yet keeping one family together means breaking another apart. Again.

It all seems so impossible, and it’s honestly the least of her problems when she really thinks about it. It’s just the one that consumes her when she’s home with only a sleeping Ada as company.  

-/-

-/-

“Momma,” Henry begins, crawling up onto her lap from where he’s been coloring on the floor while she’s been working on her paper for school. She’s so close to finishing, to graduating, and as much as she loves her kid, she kind of wishes he’d still focus on his coloring.

“Yeah, baby?” She saves her document before closing her laptop, placing it on the couch next to her while she moves Henry in her lap. God, she can’t believe how big he’s getting. He’s still got four months until he turns four, but he’s practically an adult.

“Where’s Killy?”

Her eyes instinctively close in an attempt to shut out all of her thoughts. Henry and school. All she’s trying to focus on is her son and school. And she’s only really focusing on school because she has to be able to provide for Henry. She has to be able to do something to help him have the best life that he can have. She has absolutely no time to think about Killian Jones or how he has completely changed her entire life.

She has absolutely no time to think about how his lips feel on hers, how grinding into his jeans feels, how he sounds when she bites his bottom lip. So obviously that’s all she thinks about when she’s alone.

It’s been three weeks since they kissed, and she’s honestly about another week from going crazy thinking about it. And she can only think about it because they don’t talk about it. She really wants to talk about it. She wants to know if it meant anything to him, if it means to him what it meant to her. She’s had feelings for him for longer than she’s willing to admit, mostly because she wasn’t willing to admit it to herself.

She’s been with men since Neal died, but it’s always been one date or one night, never really wanting to be in a relationship. A part of it has definitely been guilt, of feeling like she can’t move on because her husband died being an honorable man, but it’s mostly been about Henry. All she’s cared about is Henry.

And Killian.

She cares about Killian. A lot. Far more than is appropriate actually. Of all of the men in the world who she could fall for, she was dumb enough to fall for Neal’s best friend. But really, he’s her best friend. He hasn’t always been, but he has been for the past few years.

And she wants to jump his bones.

She also wants to date him, to let him into her heart more than she has been, but that’s…too much. It’s all too much, so if she keeps it on a physical level, it’s more understandable. She can’t really keep it on a physical level.

“I understand you, love.”

The words echo in her mind almost as loudly as the feel of his lips on hers continuously replays. Actually, no. They’re louder. They mean more, and those four words…they were everything.

But then she fucked it up by kissing him, by pushing too far, by making him pull back. And now while they’ve talked, while they’ve spent time together, there’s some kind of distance between them. She doesn’t want a distance between them. It’s been a long time since she wanted something for herself, and she’s struggling to allow herself to want this.

She wants to be with Killian. She’s just not sure that he wants to be with her.

She’s not sure that they even can be together.

“He’s coming over for dinner, Henry.” Henry stares at her blankly, almost like he doesn’t know what dinner is when he mostly definitely does. It’s literally his favorite time of the day. He gets to eat and Killian comes over. It’s her son’s two favorite things. He has good taste. “Killy will be here soon. Why don’t you draw him a picture to give him when he gets here?”

“Okay,” Henry sighs, sloppily kissing her cheek before crawling off of her and back to the ground, immediately pulling out a new sheet of paper from his book and getting busy drawing…something. Honestly, some things she can tell. Some things she can’t.

While Henry works on his art, she works on her paper, knowing she needs to finish it so Killian can proofread it after they get Henry to bed. She could send it to Mary Margaret, but Mary Margaret takes absolutely forever to get anything back to her. Killian is much faster, slipping on his glasses and quickly reading through it, finding mistakes as easily as if he was out commanding a ship.

So maybe something is weird between them, but she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Killian would do anything to help she and Henry. He’s a good man, a gentleman like no other, and she doesn’t know what she ever did to deserve someone like him in her life. Sometimes she thinks that she didn’t.

That she doesn’t.

She hears the front door of her apartment open, the sound of boots stepping onto the hardwood, and before she can get up to go greet him, Henry is up from the ground and running toward the door, his arms already open so that Killian can scoop him up and swing him around, laughter absolutely rumbling out of her little boy’s stomach.

“My man,” Killian laughs, shutting the door behind him and carrying Henry back to where she’s sitting, “tell me about your day.”

“I went to school,” Henry exclaims, his little chest still heaving from where Killian was swinging him around. Her chest his heaving a bit too, her heart beating wildly while she’s pretty sure butterflies actually move around in her stomach.

“Yeah? What’d you do at school?”

“Me and Kaleb ate goldfish crackers. And sat on a rainbow.”

Killian quirks an eyebrow even as his smile covers his entire face, the lines around his eyes crinkling. He looks happy, absolutely besotted with Henry, and she has to work on holding back a sob. Killian is so in love with her kid, and it both breaks and heals her heart.

She thinks she might be in love with Killian, too. She doesn’t know, though. She isn’t even sure if she’s capable of love anymore, but the way he makes her feel…she doesn’t think she’s ever experienced that before. And of course, that makes her feel awful, guilty even. She was married. Of course she’s felt this way before. Why would she have married Neal if he didn’t make her happy?

He did make her happy, didn’t he? Of course he did. He had to have, and if he were here, he’d love their son this much too.

But he’s not here. He’s not, and she doesn’t know what to do.

She just wants to be happy. Neal would want her to be happy, right?

Killian makes her happy. Killian makes Henry happy.

Shit, she wishes there was some kind of guidebook on how to deal with moving on. There technically are, she’s read enough of them, and even though she feels like she has, sometimes the guilt still nags at her. Like right now. It’s nagging at her right now because she feels free, light almost. And she shouldn’t be allowed to do that.

“A rainbow, you say?” Killian looks at her and waggles his eyebrows, something that makes her laugh without fail. “Was there a pot of gold at the end of it?”

“No. Books.”

“Ah, well, I happen to think books are just like gold. Right, Mummy?”

“I kind of like the gold,” she answers honestly, shrugging her shoulders.

Killian winks at her before leaning over and quickly kissing her cheek in greeting. “Hello, love. How are you today? Did you sit on any rainbows?”

“I went to work, picked Henry up from daycare, and have been doing school ever since. It’s not really been a sitting on rainbow kind of day.”

“Well, we’ll just have to change that, won’t we?” He shuffles Henry on his lap before standing. “Come on, Master Henry. Let’s make your mummy some dinner and you can tell me more about this rainbow.”

Later, when Henry’s in bed and Killian has finished proofreading her paper, the damn thing finally submitted to her professor, she and Killian are sitting on the couch idly watching TV. She’s not really sure what’s on. She honestly can’t pay attention to it, not with the way her mind is racing.

“Killian?”

“Yeah, love?”

“Do you think that I’m allowed to move on from Neal?”

He doesn’t reply at first, hurt flashing in his eyes, before he schools his features. What was that? “I think so. You were barely twenty-three years old when he died, and while I think that you’ll never forget him, I don’t think you can spend the rest of your life alone, not if you don’t want to be.”

“And that doesn’t make me a bad person?”

“Not at all, Swan. It makes you human. What happened to you is awful – ”

“What happened to us.”

He gives her a soft smile, one that she really likes. “Aye, what happened to us is awful, but I know that if I had been Neal, if I had been married and died, there is nothing I’d want more than for my wife to be happy.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely. That’s what love is, you know? It hurts like hell a lot of the time, but at the end of the day, you just want the person you love to be happy.”

“Killian?”

“Mhm?”

“You make me happy.” She turns to face him, tentatively running her hand along his cheek. His eyes flutter closed, his thick eyelashes dropping against his cheeks, before he opens them and all she can see is that beautiful blue. “Why haven’t we talked about the kiss?”

“Swan.”

“No, seriously. I want to talk about it. It…meant something to me, and I need to know if it did for you too.”

His jaw clenches the tenseness obvious, and her heart drops into her stomach until Killian turns his head and kisses her palm, his scruff a rough contrast to his lips. “Emma, it meant everything to me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s just…”

“You feel guilty,” she finishes for him, knowing that if there’s anyone in the world who understands, it’s him. He was there through it all, but it’s more than that. It’s always been more than that. “Because of Neal.”

“Aye, I do.” “But didn’t you say he’d want us to be happy? He loved us both. And if it’s okay for me to move on, to want to be free from what I feel like are actual chains holding me down, wouldn’t it be okay for us?”

“Emma, this is a dangerous game we’re playing. You are my best friend. I want to be with you. God, I want to be with you,” he groans, kissing her palms again, shivers running down her spine, before he runs his free hand through his hair, “but it’s more than just us. It’s the past. It’s Henry.”

She knows. She’s knows it’s all of that. She knows that Henry could be affected by this, but honestly, she knows that she and Killian could go up in flames, and Killian would muddle through the ashes to be there for Henry. She’s never been more sure of anything.

Ever. “I want to try. I want to let go, and I want to try. We understand each other, right?”

“Right.” He nods and allows the corners of his lips to tick up. “Then kiss me.”

And he does, leaning forward on the couch and gently sliding his lips over hers, his nose scrunching against her cheek while hers does the same. It’s the same as last time, but it’s different. It’s slower, sweeter, gentle. His hand makes its way into her hair while his thumb moves against the dip in her chin at the same gentle pace that his lips are moving overs hers. She smiles in the middle of it, not able to help herself, and Killian smiles too, pulling back from her for a second and resting his forehead against hers while he smiles down at her.

She’s happy.

That’s all she feels. There are no conflicting emotions and warring thoughts. She feels comfortable and happy, and she hopes that she can keep feeling this way. It’s all she’s wanted for so long.

Happiness.

Pure and simple happiness.

-/-

-/-

But she can’t think about any of that right now. The complexity of her life, of her relationship…relationships? Does she have relationships right now? It doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. Right now all that matters is trying to make her life has calm and as normal as possible. It’s not just her she’s thinking about.

It’s never just been her.

“Momma,” Henry yells, running into the room with his bookbag bouncing on his back until he comes to a skidding stop in front of all of her papers, nearly toppling over on top of them, “what are you doing?”

“Work,” she tells him. It’s a bit of a lie, but not totally.

“I thought daddy said you were taking some more time off of work. That’s why you’re not picking me up from school.” “I am, baby, but I can do a little work from home.” She uncrosses her legs and gets up from the floor, smoothing out her pajama pants. Did she not even change into real clothes today? Has she washed her hair? Brushed her teeth? She’s pretty sure that she brushed her teeth at least. Killian would have told her if she hadn’t brushed her teeth, right? “How was school?”

“So fun! We started a new book today, and it had trains in it. Mary Margaret let me bring it home so I could read it again.”

“Where is Mary Margaret, kid? She didn’t come inside with you?”

He shakes his head, dropping his bag to the ground. “She walked me to the door and let me inside before leaving. Leo has a dentist’s appointment.”

“Gotcha. You want a snack? Ada bug shouldn’t be up from her nap for another hour, so I can help you with your homework.”

Henry groans, throwing his head back and pouting the slightest bit. He’s only the slightest bit dramatic sometimes. “Can’t I eat and watch TV?”

“Nope. We eat, do homework, and then you can watch some TV. You know the rules.”

If there’s anything she knows for sure right now in her life, it’s that she loves her kids, and she’s going to try her absolute hardest to keep their lives as normal and as loving as possible. That is what’s most important. It’s what has to be. She would do absolutely anything to keep them happy, and she will. For as much as she goes through, they are the brightest part of her day without question.  

So she fixes Henry an apple and some peanut butter, trying to keep him healthier than she keeps herself, and sits down with him to do his math homework while he eats. When the baby monitor goes off halfway through, she leaves him to try some problems on his own before going upstairs and getting Ada, changing her diaper and bringing her downstairs. Ada will need to eat in a little while, and with Killian at work, Emma is doing this by herself. So Henry really needs to focus and get things done before her home is a madhouse.

It’s kind of always a madhouse.

“Finished,” Henry sighs, throwing his pencil on the table.

“Did you double check your work?”

“Yeah, but I know daddy is just going to check it again when he gets home from work. Do you think when I get to meet my dad that he’ll help me with homework?”

“I’m sure he’ll love to help you, baby.”

Henry twists in his chair, scrambling out of his seat and taking his plate to throw it away in the bin. “So when do I get to meet him? You and daddy get to see him, but I don’t. It’s not fair. And everyone at school keeps asking me about it.”

“We don’t know yet,” she answers honestly, knowing that it’s better just to tell him the truth. She really hopes that no one is giving him any trouble at school. Mary Margaret would tell her. She’d have to tell her. “I’m meeting with his doctors tomorrow to find out though, okay? You should be able to meet him soon.”

“Yeah, okay.”

On a normal day, she’d get Henry to spend some time outside, but she doesn’t feel like watching him right now. All she wants is to stay inside and not do anything, not think for just a little while, so she allows him to immediately start watching TV. She and Ada join him while he watches The Magic School Bus. She’s been subjected to some pretty awful kids’ shows over the years, so she’s honestly relieved when Henry really gets into something like this. It at least keeps her entertained as well.

Plus, Ada is really into the music and beat of it along with all of the colors, so it keeps her entertained as well. They really need to do some tummy time before she eats, especially since her entire schedule has been off. Emma’s been trying to keep it the same, but it’s so hard right now. Ada’s sleep schedule is about as messed up as Emma’s is right now. She’s got to start fixing that tomorrow.

They’re only on their second episode when the front door opens and closes, Killian’s footsteps sounding as he steps onto the hardwood. She doesn’t need to turn around to know that it’s him. She’d know the sounds of him coming home anytime. It’s something she’s grown accustomed to over the years, no matter where they are living.

“Hi,” he greets, leaning down and quickly kissing her cheek. It’s something he’s done thousands of times, but it feels…different. It feels like it’s friendly, something between friends, not something between them. But she’s imagining things. She has to be. Everything is so crazy right now, that even the life that is normal doesn’t feel normal. And hormones. She still has crazy hormones, right? It’s fine. Everything is fine.

“Hi, my Ada bug,” he laughs a little more enthusiastically, gently taking her out of Emma’s arms and propping her up on his waist while Ada cups his cheeks with her adorably chubby hands. He kisses her cheek, making her laugh. God, her laugh is like pure joy, and Emma doesn’t think she’s ever going to get tired of it. The first time she laughed was a few days ago, and it’s been so fun to make her laugh ever since. She’s really into it when Emma blows raspberries on her stomach or when she drops her toys, and the laughter that comes from both of those things is precious. “I missed you today, my little love. Yeah, Daddy missed you quite a bit.” Her eyes follow him as he sits down in the center of the couch, right between she and Henry.

“Hey, lad. How was school?”

“I already told Mom.”

“You still have to tell me. You know that. I want to hear about your day.”

When Killian pauses the show, she thinks that Henry might lose it, but he doesn’t, only groaning the slightest bit. “It was good. I took my science test.”

“How’d you do? You ace it?”

“I think so. There was one question, with the photo plant thing.”

“Photosynthesis.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know that one, but I tried.” “That’s all you gotta do, bud,” Killian tells him, a bright smile on his face while he alternates between talking to Henry and running his fingers over Ada’s stomach to keep her entertained. “Did you and Mum already do your homework?”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to check it. It’s math.”

“I will after dinner, okay?” Killian presses play on the remote, the show playing again, before leaning over to her and whispering in her ear, “Can I talk to you in the kitchen for a minute?”

The familiar feeling over nausea she’s been feeling for a little under a month now takes over, but she nods, getting up from the couch and walking through the archway to the kitchen while Killian follows behind her, Ada still in his arms. She’s starting to get fussy, fidgeting a bit, and before she and Killian sit down at the kitchen table, she takes her out of his arms and gets ready to feed her.

“What’d you want to talk about?”

Killian reaches up and runs his hand over his stubble, his fingers tapping against the skin. He’s nervous. Why is he nervous? He shouldn’t be nervous.

“I got a call from one of Neal’s therapists today.”

“Dr. Vibuthi?”

“Dr. Carter. He was checking to see what we plan on doing for his home situation. I suggested we put him up in a nice hotel, like we talked about, until we figure out how exactly to tell him about us since we’re supposed to be easing him into the changes.” “Where’s the but in this scenario?”

“But,” Killian continues, “Dr. Carter says that he really needs to be staying somewhere familiar, such as his house before he left. I tried to explain to him that we’re living somewhere different, that it’s not even the same state, but he was insistent.”

“He can’t stay here, though. There’s evidence of our life, of Ada, everywhere.”

“I know. I told him that, that there was no way in hell I’d hide my daughter or act like she was something to be ashamed of, but he insisted. And God,” Killian sighs, running his hand through his hair, “I don’t know what to do. They tell us he has to stay with us but that we’re supposed to ease him into life here. It’s all so fucking complicated.”

She almost instinctively covers Ada’s ears, not wanting her to hear the curses even if she’s too young to truly understand things like that, only picking up things that they say over and over again. It’s just habit, and she really doesn’t want her baby’s first word to be fucking.

That would be something.

“So what do you think? What? We set him up in the guest room for a little while, until we figure things out. We have him meet Henry, let them get to know each other a bit, and then we sit down with him and tell him about what’s going on with us?”

“I guess. I don’t really see another option. We just have to rip the band-aid off. From what I can tell, despite everything, Neal seems fine. And he’s a grown man. As much as, yes, we have to ease him into things, he’s not going to want to be babied. You know how he hates that.” “Yeah, that’s true.” She doesn’t want to say the next words, but she has to. She can’t not know. Maybe she’ll be able to sleep if she knows. “Are we going to stay together, Killian?”

His eyes blow wide before they settle, his face becoming as neutral as possible. She’s seen him do it a million times, and she’s not sure that she likes what it means. “I don’t know, love. I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, if it’s the honorable thing to do.”

“I don’t care about honorable. I love you. That doesn’t just change. And I know it’s not even the most important thing right now, but it is consuming me.” “Emma, I love you and our kids more than anything in the world, but this isn’t a black and white situation. If you want to have another chance with Neal, I have to give you that chance. Do you know what you want?”

You, she thinks.

You, she knows.

“No,” she says instead, the truth unable to pass her lips. “I feel like I don’t know anything. I feel like I have no answers, but I don’t want to leave you. I also just don’t want to hurt Neal. He doesn’t deserve that.” “No, he doesn’t, but this is where we are. I’m sorry, Swan, but if this is how our life is going to be, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions, okay? It’s going to be bloody awful at first, but we don’t have a choice. We should just try to be happy that Neal is getting his second chance. We’ll figure out things as we go. I make plans for a living, but this is it. This is all I can come up with for us right now.”

She feels the tears welling up in her eyes again, the sting of fresh water, and she wonders why the hell this couldn’t have happened when she wasn’t still adjusting to having a baby. She’s not sleeping, her hormones are all over the place, and absolutely everything is heightened. It’s awful. Every time she cries she feels ridiculous even if she knows that she’s not. She wouldn’t be ridiculous for crying even if she wasn’t in one of the world’s most stressful situations, but nothing makes her feel better. Nothing except for her kids.

And Killian. Killian makes her feel better which only makes everything worse.

“So did Dr. Cater say when they were releasing Neal? I thought this is what we were talking about at the appointment tomorrow.”

“Aye, it is, but he wanted to run over a few more things with me beforehand.”

“But what did he say about when?”

“He said Neal could come home tomorrow, actually.”

[marissajqn]

MYTH BUSTERS

Myth: When a teacher says, “don’t memorize this,” it means stop paying attention

because this won’t be on the exam.

Reality check: WRONG! This is an unfortunate and all-too-common source of

teacher-student miscommunication. What they almost always mean is that

you should understand it, not just memorize it for later regurgitation. More

than likely, it will be on the exam!

BUILDING A MEMORY

n its journey through the three stages of the brain’s memory storage system – sensory, short-term

(STM), and long-term (LTM) – a tremendous amount of information is filtered out. Your goal as a

medical student is to select learning strategies that maximize retention and minimize loss of important

information.

What are the take home messages?

" Pay attention to the learning task at hand and avoid distractions

" Get 7-8 hours of quality sleep on a regular basis

" Incorporate “active recall” into your study plan

" Deliberately link new information to existing knowledge

" Adopt a deep approach to learning

All perceived stimuli enter your memory storage system as “sensory memories.” Stimuli you attend to enter short-term memory (STM) – your attention signals the brain, “Hey, that’s important!” Depending on what you do next, some STMs will be lost and some will enter long-term storage. In the absence of continuous rehearsal (e.g., repeating a phone number over and over again), anything you can recall after 24-hours (and probably after a minute) is a long-term memory (LTM). Even so, many common study methods create “weak” memories (neural networks) that render retrieval all but impossible after a short period of time (hence erroneously referred to as “short-term” memory). Imagine that forming a LTM is like wearing a path in a rug. The first time you walk across a rug you leave footprints, but after a short time they are no longer detectable (STM). However, the more you traverse the same path (rehearsal), the deeper and more permanent the wear pattern becomes (LTM).

How are long-term memories (LTM) stored?

" The brain has a complicated storage system for long-term memories. An LTM is distributed

in a neural network (i.e., group of neurons primed to fire together) with different aspects of

the same memory stored in different brain areas, e.g., visual aspects of an episodic memory

stored in the visual cortex and associated sounds stored in the auditory cortex.

How are memories retrieved?

" “Remembering” (accessing a stored memory) involves replicating the pattern of neural

activity that occurred when the memory was originally formed. The relative ease or difficulty

of memory retrieval is related to the “strength” of the neural connections (like the depth of

the wear pattern in a rug). Because memories are stored throughout the brain, retrieval

involves reconstructing the memory, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

o Example: Imagine trying to remember someone’s name, but you can only recall that

the person was female and her name began with the letter ‘B’ so you mentally run

through all the female names you know that begin with the letter B. Alas, recollection

finally comes from a different retrieval cue altogether, “Her name was Betty and I

remember because we talked about how much we both liked the Flintstones when

we were kids.”

" To be readily accessible, a memory needs to have multiple, relevant retrieval cues. Study

methods that improve long-term retention and subsequent access to a stored memory

involve intentionally creating meaningful associations. In the example above, retrieval cues

included: female category, name begins with letter B, instance of discussing mutual

fondness of the Flintstones, and Betty Rubble was a Flintstones’ character.

" Two main processes are used to access memories: recognition and recall. Recognition

involves comparing a current stimulus (e.g., a sight, sound, or smell) to something sensed in

the past; it is a single step process and is generally easier and faster. Recall involves

directly accessing information in LTM, and is generally more difficult because there are no

direct retrieval cues, thus the entire neural path must often be reconstructed.

" When retrieved, information is pulled from LTM back into “working” STM and must undergo

a process of reconsolidation, which can strengthen and even alter the memory.

What does it mean to “forget”?

" In the absence of pathology, the human brain is capable of storing LTMs permanently, but

“memory decay” is a normal physiological process. Just as new neural connections can be

made, old ones that haven’t been used in a while can be “pruned” – “use it or lose it.”

Forgetting is either the result of poor initial encoding and/or faulty retrieval – without

adequate retrieval cues, a memory might as well not exist. Forgetting happens rapidly at

first, but slows as time progresses. Re-studying information at spaced intervals staves off

forgetting and improves long-term retention and retrieval. The MSUCOM curriculum takes

advantage of this aspect of memory by revisiting certain topics over again, but you can also

incorporate this into your overall study strategy.

What is “rote learning”?

" Rote learning methods are based exclusively on repetition and rehearsal – the idea is that

the more something is repeated the easier (and more quickly) it can be recalled.

Is rote learning a good study method?

" In some situations, but generally not. Rote methods represent a surface approach to

learning that are very useful for some learning tasks, such as memorizing a long list of

random words or numbers. Medical students often utilize rote learning to their detriment,

and describe their learning process as memorizing the course material. However,

“memorizing” and learning are not synonymous. Of course, one must “remember” something

in order to later recall it to answer a test question, but rote memorization creates LTMs that are particularly devoid of context, associations, and meaning. Rote study techniques do not

lead to genuine understanding and fail to produce retrieval cues required to recall and apply

information in a novel context such as answering an unfamiliar or higher order exam

question (i.e., knowledge “transfer”).

What are alternatives to rote learning?

" Alternatives to rote learning include deep learning approaches: meaningful learning,

associative learning, and active learning.

STUDY TIPS FOR IMPROVING LONG-TERM RETENTION AND RETRIEVAL

What are some study methods that produce deep learning?

Access to memories is greatly improved when the information being learned is meaningful. To aid in

recall, study methods should involve deliberate creation of logical, intuitive, and even fanciful

associations with existing knowledge. Make sense of new information and develop an

organizational scheme/framework. Information you understand rarely needs to be

“memorized” using rote techniques.

What to do

# Use your own words to rephrase definitions/descriptions

# Think of familiar examples – things that you can relate to

# Use familiar acronyms, acrostics, analogies, codes, musical

jingles and rhymes

# Relate new information to knowledge from other courses

(past or present) or to life experiences

# Relate theory to everyday practice

# Think about how the information relates to the medical “big

picture”: What is the clinical/practical significance? Why are you learning this?

What is the impact on/relationship to patient diagnosis and treatment?

# Create concept maps

Actively participate in your own learning (“generation effect”). Retention and recall are

improved when you actively participate in the creation of your own knowledge.

o What to do

# Create your own summaries, study guides, diagrams, charts, etc.

# Ask and answer your own questions.

# Use your whole brain, not just your left hemisphere. Play around with

information until some outstanding feature suggests a memory “hook”, such

as a mnemonic, picture, pattern, rhyme, or story; the more emotive (funny,

dirty, disgusting), the better.

Create both a visual and a verbal memory for the same information (“dual coding”).

o What to do

# Associate words with pictures

• Use your own words to describe a picture/figure/diagram

• Translate a written passage into a drawing or diagram

# Examples of specific memorization techniques that employ imagery include

the method of loci and journey method.

Whenever possible, study in an environment that is similar to the testing environment

(“state- & context dependent memory”). Recall is enhanced when the environmental context

is similar during both the encoding (learning) and recall phases, and is one reason why

studying in a quiet place is generally preferable to a noisy one.

" Spread studying out over several days, rather than cramming (“distributed effort”). Say you’re going to spend 10 hours studying a particular topic, it is more effective to spend that time as 10 one-hour sessions, or 5 2-hour sessions, or even 2 5-hour sessions, spread out

over two or more days, than it is to spend one marathon 10-hour session. This is why it is so very important to review everyday. Obviously, you cannot review everything everyday, but

make sure you frequently review the things that are most challenging to you.

" Avoid multitasking when learning difficult or dense material. Research has found that

although multitasking does not impact recall, it is extremely detrimental to the encoding

process. Multitasking divides attention, takes up valuable short-term memory space, and

negatively impacts on LTM formation.

" Review information you’re trying to memorize right before you go to sleep. Deep sleep

plays an important role in memory consolidation. This is a good time to spend a few minutes

reviewing a chart or going through some flashcards. To further enhance your memory, try to

recall the information shortly after you wake up.

" Self-quiz frequently by recalling information from your memory. Every time you access

a memory, you strengthen it. So, not only does self-quizzing help you identify your areas of

weakness, it also helps you retain the information for later recall by strengthening the neural

connections.

USEFUL RESOURCES RELATED TO MEMORY AND LEARNING

Memory http://www.human-memory.net/index.html

Memory Techniques: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_ISS.htm#mem

How to Improve Your Memory: http://www.helpguide.org/life/improving_memory.htm

Enhancing Memory http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/memory/section4.rhtml

Memory Curve http://www.com.msu.edu/Students/Academic_Development/memory_curve.pdf

Optimal Memory Curve http://www.com.msu.edu/Students/Academic_Development/optimal_memory_curve.pdf

Reference:

1. Tigner RB (1999). “Putting Memory Research to Good Use” College Teaching, 47(4) 149.

[khalilhumam]

Washington has given up on big-ticket reform

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/washington-has-given-up-on-big-ticket-reform/

Washington has given up on big-ticket reform

By Paul C. Light The final threat to bureaucratic performance is the decline in the capacity to design, enact, and implement major government reform. The number of major reforms has dropped over the last half-century, as has the number of large-scale reforms. It is no longer clear that Congress and the president could enact a package of large-scale reforms even if they wanted to. Tinkering—either government-wide small-scale reforms or reforms targeted to specific agencies or administrative procedures—may be the best they can do. Government management may have faded in recent decades, but it produced three distinct periods of reform on my list of the 210 most significant reforms enacted since 1945: (1) a wave of post-World War II reforms that included civil service reform, reorganization authority, administrative procedures, freedom of information, and the creation of new agencies such as the Peace Corps, NASA, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, (2) a surge of post-Watergate reforms that centered on open government, the inspectors general, ethics in government, paperwork reduction, and a long list of war-on-waste laws, and (3) during the 1990s with Vice President Gore’s reinventing government campaign, focused on government performance measurement, procurement streamlining, presidential transitions reform, and further expansion of sunshine-in-government laws.[1] Figure 1 Figure 1 shows a sharp decline in the number of large-scale reforms such as civil service reform, whistleblower protections, accounting rules, and reorganization that address government-wide issues. Whether with their support or under congressional pressure, the Truman, Reagan, and Clinton administrations emerged as the great engines of reform, while the Trump administration focused on breaking programs rather than fixing agencies. President Obama was ready to take a more aggressive path only three years into his presidency when he joked about salmon regulation in his 2011 State of the Union Address and promised action to simplify the federal organizational chart.[2] He returned to the need for reform the next year when he asked Congress for up-or-down authority to reorganize federal agencies and even promised to create a “Secretary of Business” in May 2013 as a “one-stop-shop” for economic renewal. Although Republicans not-so-politely rejected the proposal, Obama did produce a shortlist of presidential appointment and transition reforms, a number of anti-waste and open-government reforms, and the 2014 Veterans Access to Care Through Choice Act that President Trump has repeatedly claimed as his own. Obama’s plan would not have reduced the true size of government but would have brought reorganization back into vogue as a reform tool. Government reform comes in more than big and small packages. It also comes in the form of new philosophies such as Gore’s embrace of liberation management. Although reinventing government contained its share of familiar civil service reforms associated with downsizing and reclassification, Gore was also committed to the freedoms promised in the Government Performance and Results Act: alternative dispute resolution, regulatory reform, and increased transparency across a streamlined bureaucracy. Many of these reforms went to seed a decade later during the Iraq war, but the precedents were set for the future. Just because reform proposals are based on established law and traditional theories does not doom them to failure, but a blend of new and old, big and small might be well-advised in a period of great bureaucratic stress and significant political pressure. Despite the public’s current demand for major reform, Figure 2 shows a significant decline in activity and a drift toward smaller and older reforms.[3] The number of reforms built on old ideas exceeded the new under Carter (10 to 8), Reagan (17 to 14), H.W. Bush (6 to 5), George W. Bush (8 to 3), Obama (11 to 4), and Trump (6 to 2).  President Clinton was the only president with a net plus on new ideas (21 new ideas to 16 old ones), in no small part because of Gore. This is not to argue that new ideas have always led reform—the Clinton administration was the first administration since the end of World War I to generate more ideas than old. Nevertheless, Figure 2 should raise questions about both the inventory of government management reform and the level of innovation in reserve. Figure 2 The pace of reform depends in part on the politics of the moment, party pressure, and the institutional capacity to innovate. Much of the bureaucratic construction that followed World War II involved the repair, revision, and expansion of the New Deal’s alphabet agencies. Some of that work had begun before the war with the Brownlow Commission and the 1939 Reorganization Act, but the bulk of the legislative activity was driven by the post-war reorganizations and push for regulatory discipline. More recently, process reforms that enable greater transparency and consistency, such as freedom of information and civil service reform protection, have been in vogue, while structural reforms have dropped significantly as disappointments with past mergers such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security have reduced interest in grand reorganizations. Democratic presidents were more often the source of these and other scientific management reforms, while Republican presidents have been content to wage wars on waste. In turn, the presidency was more often the source of scientific management reforms, while the Congress was by far the most active source of “sunshine-in-government” statutes. But the public now more than ever is begging that government, of which it lacks trust and is skeptical, to be reformed significantly and thoroughly. Notwithstanding Trump’s record as a dismantler, presidents remain the institution builders, and, if elected, Mr. Biden has a chance to remake the presidency as a source of good government. The question is whether he will have anything to say.

[1] This analysis is based on my review of major congressional reform statutes enacted between 1945 and 2020, which is based in turn on my reading of the Congressional Quarterly’s summaries of major legislation in each Congress. Most of my coding is based on my review of major legislation in the annual CQ Almanac. My decision to include or exclude a statute as a major reform is based on my own experience in the field and, therefore, should be taken as my reading only. I did not ask whether a specific statute was successful or even faithfully implemented, but whether it was a significant addition to the government improvement, and measured its size (large/small) by the range of its effect across government as a whole, the newness of the idea by its fit with contemporary bureaucratic practice, its implementation approach (centralized or decentralized) by a plain reading of the statute, and its view of government (trusting or distrusting) by a plain reading, too. For an introduction to my approach, see Paul C. Light, The Tides of Reform: Making Government Work, 1945-1995, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. [2] Obama noted that salmon were regulated by not one, but two federal agencies: “The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in saltwater,” Obama said. “I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.” See Barack Obama, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congess on the State of the Union,” January 25, 2011, available at the American Presidency Project, University of California Santa Barbara, [3] Old reforms are identified in my coding system by links to core statutes from earlier reform periods such as the Administrative Procedures Act, Civil Service Act, and so forth, while new statutes are defined as breaks with the same core statutes. In turn, size is defined by a statute’s scope of coverage across the federal government. The coding here is highly subjective, but is designed to separate reforms that augment existing practices from reforms that break with the prevailing wisdom based on my reading of federal administrative practice.

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

Fox news Brooks: Four lessons I learned from the draft - NFL.com

Fox news

In case you are into the roster construction task, the NFL draft is equivalent to the Immense Bowl. The league's biggest player acquisition tournament gives deal of classes that aspiring group builders can consume to place their very gain philosophies down the street. Given time to think on likely the most significant happenings that took purpose this past weekend, right here are four classes that I learned from the 2020 NFL Draft:

1) By no manner too early to procure the subsequent franchise QB

The Inexperienced Bay Packers gain been perennial contenders at some level of the final three decades attributable to their stability on the quarterback purpose. The group transitioned from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers without skipping a beat, with a pair of Immense Bowl wins, 13 division titles and 20 playoff berths with No. 4 or No. 12 on the helm.

Even although the hand off from a 3-time MVP to a young quarterback who emerged as a two-time MVP himself used to be considered as controversial on the time, it be arduous to dispute the outcomes now. With that in mind, I'm in a position to't understand why the football world is miffed by the group's option to make consume of a first-spherical select on Utah Notify quarterback Jordan Treasure.

Obvious, the switch prevented the group from theoretically adding one other offensive weapon to the mix within the short timeframe, but the quarterback is largely the most impactful purpose within the game (and potentially in pro sports). And bringing in a young passer to learn within the support of certainly likely the most finest to ever enact it gives the Packers a chance to extend their championship window deep into the 2020s.

Sounds acquainted, finest-wanting? Here is precisely how the Packers proceeded when Rodgers surprisingly fell into their laps in 2005, with Favre quiet within the midst of a Hall of Standing profession. Despite Favre coming off certainly one of his worst seasons as a expert (NFL chief in interceptions with 29) on the age of 36, his decorated resume and legendary space as a Immense Bowl winner made Inexperienced Bay's different of Rodgers a huge shock.

On the opposite hand, historical Packers GM Ron Wolf established an organizational philosophy of valuing the quarterback purpose at a top price, and he passed on those classes to his successor Ted Thompson when Thompson worked as certainly one of his assistants. Paradoxically, Packers total supervisor Brian Gutenkast worked as a longtime scout below Thompson, and those quarterback classes are indubitably embedded in his group-building philosophy.

"Ron (Wolf) traded a first-spherical select for a quarterback that no-one wanted," Gutekunst acknowledged support in February on the NFL Scouting Combine, relating to Brett Favre. "Ted (Thompson) drafted a quarterback when he had a Hall-of-Standing guy sitting there who used to be going to play at least three more years. That is produce of how I've viewed it. My first 10 years within the league, it used to be (Matt) Hasselbeck and (Aaron) Brooks and all those guys. Ron used to be in a purpose to flip those guys into picks down the street.

"I factual think the quarterback purpose is so significant that it's good to well be by no manner no longer handle it whenever you happen to think you've a chance to gain interaction a player that could well play within the league."

And so remaining weekend, the Packers scooped up a young quarterback with a ton of doable. I gain no longer think somebody expects Decide to play finest-wanting away, but he can even scrutinize game action earlier than some some are willing to admit attributable to Rodgers' injure complications over the remaining several seasons and the truth that he'll be 37 in December. While No. 12 can even indubitably earn his MVP produce with more time in Matt LaFleur's plan, the percentages are in opposition to the passe quarterback taking half in a renaissance on the purpose in Year 16 and beyond.

True to be lunge, I'm no longer hating on Rodgers or brushing off his skills or esteemed purpose in NFL history, but we shouldn't ignore the passe's declining production and output since 2016. No. 12's completion proportion and passer rating gain been neatly beneath his lofty standards (65% completion price; 100.0-plus passer rating). Furthermore, it be been five seasons since he hit the marks in support-to-support years.

With Rodgers shedding some of his trademark athleticism, which performs a vital purpose in his game as an improvisational playmaker, the Packers wished to gain interaction a long, arduous watch on the 2020 quarterback class to gain a look at if there used to be a young quarterback worth taking as an apprentice.

Studying Treasure throughout the pre-draft task, there's a lot to love about his game and his doable as an eventual QB1. The Utah Notify product tests off a form of boxes as a mobile playmaker with A-plus arm skill and a artistic game. Treasure's been loosely when put next to Patrick Mahomes (who used to be when put next to Rodgers at some level of his pre-draft review) consistent with his capacity to carry out unheard of off-platform throws interior and outside of the pocket. Even although his turnover woes and disappointing 2019 campaign gain led critics to skedaddle holes in his game, a long, arduous watch at his sophomore season gives a undercover agent of what he can even turn out to be on the next stage with more self-discipline and a focus to detail.

Put in mind, Rodgers wasn't considered as a definite thing in 2005 and there gain been even questions about his long-timeframe doable following the vital two seasons of his profession in Inexperienced Bay. This capacity that of this the Packers' gamble on Treasure and his upside can even pay off handsomely down the street if he develops into a solid quarterback after likely serving a two-year apprenticeship within the support of Rodgers. The wage cap implications connected with dumping No. 12 earlier than the discontinue of the 2022 season makes it likely that Treasure will procure at least two seasons to work on his game below LaFleur's tutelage and the philosophical shift to a more speed-oriented manner (scrutinize AJ Dillon and Josiah Degura picks) could well support the youngster excel in a "stretch-bootleg" plan that mirrors the system speed by the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams with quarterbacks Jimmy Garoppolo and Jared Goff, respectively.

Pondering about Treasure's athleticism, arm skill and playmaking capacity when put next to the aforementioned QB1s, the Packers could well even gain a Immense Bowl-caliber quarterback in purpose to carry them via the next decade.

The Treasure select can even honest no longer unhealthy as a most normal one within the indicate time, but adding a young franchise quarterback to the roster paid mountainous dividends in Inexperienced Bay sooner than. It is some distance going to also happen all another time with the Utah Notify product in purpose as the heir obvious.

2) Eagles increasing a QB manufacturing facility

Treasure the Packers, the Eagles gain been met with quite the outrage over their components to draft a young QB with a top price select.

Presumably the indignation stems from who the Eagles took (Jalen Hurts) with their second-spherical different or hearing GM Howie Roseman's bodacious desire to make a "quarterback manufacturing facility" in Philadelphia, but the funding within the quarterback purpose is a finest switch must you see the panorama of the league. It be no longer a accident that the groups with the finest quarterbacks are routinely in playoff contention attributable to the QB1's impact on the of video games. Investing in a backup quarterback is love taking a undercover agent for insurance coverage in your condominium -- you gain no longer desire to pay the premiums, but you are grateful for the coverage when ache strikes.

Pondering about the Eagles' fresh history with their starter and his backups, the group indubitably understands the worth of a quality QB2 and the plan in which a succesful hold-in could well support title hopes afloat in dire conditions.

In 2017, Reduce Foles guided the Eagles to a Immense Bowl LII have interaction while incomes Immense Bowl MVP honors alongside the manner after Carson Wentz suffered a season-ending knee injure in Week 14. The following season, Foles all another time stepped in and engineered one other playoff speed after the franchise quarterback used to be sidelined in mid-December for the rest of the season with a support injure.

Even although Wentz started each game at some level of the 2019 odd season, he used to be knocked out of the Eagles' wild-card contest, forcing a 40-year-former Josh McCown into action to test out and spark the offense as an emergency hold-in.

With those recollections freshly etched within the minds of the total supervisor and head coach, the Eagles wisely made the QB2 purpose a priority this offseason. Nonetheless quite than spending gigantic money on a passe in free agency, they opted to search out a quality (and more cheap) backup within the draft. Pondering about the going price for high-discontinue backup QBs is within the $3 million-plus differ with the doable to succeed in into double digits, the Eagles are saving money and securing label lunge bet by investing in a young quarterback.

Imagine it this plan. For rather over $6 million, the Eagles gain locked up their QB2 for the next four years. Hurts will depend for factual below $1.1 million in opposition to the wage cap in 2020, per Over The Cap, which is a discount for a marquee purpose on the roster.

"For better or worse, we're quarterback developers," Eagles total supervisor Howie Roseman instructed newshounds after selecting Hurts. "We desire to be a quarterback manufacturing facility. After we accomplish these forms of choices, we always proceed to our suggestions and who we're and what we predict in, and excellent-wanting or wicked, this is who we're."

That assertion can even very neatly be laced with a twinge of conceitedness, but I understand and accept as true with Roseman's rationale in relation to devoting sources to the purpose. Quarterback play sooner or later determines the winners and losers on this league, and the wise groups gain a deep bullpen. The Eagles are simply going about their alternate in an unconventional plan.

That acknowledged, we gain viewed the New England Patriots succeed with a identical manner when they'd Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett backing up Tom Brady. The invested Day 2 picks (No. 62 total for Garoppolo in 2014; No. 91 total for Brissett in 2016) but gain been in a purpose to procure solid performance and label for his or her investments. The young quarterbacks helped the Patriots assemble a 3-1 file in 2016 at some level of Brady's suspension, and their particular particular person flashes as transient starters helped the group flip them for a draft select (Garoppolo traded to San Francisco for a second-spherical select) and a player (Brissett traded to Indianapolis for Philip Dorsett).

In Hurts, the Eagles are getting a twin-threat playmaker with a winning pedigree and impeccable personality. He led a pair of blue-blood functions (Alabama and Oklahoma) to the College Football Playoffs, while exhibiting unhurried improvements as a passer alongside the manner. With the Eagles intent on discovering a mobile playmaker to groom within the support of Wentz, Hurts used to be a logical different as a prospect.

"The keep the league is going, when he gets trip and instructing, he's going to be a precious player," Roseman acknowledged. "Our job is to carry out as many resources as we can and consume them to procure more label. That is indubitably what the draft is ready. It be about label."

While some Philly sports followers can even very neatly be pissed off that their group didn't handle more pressing desires with the different, the Eagles are hoping that their commitment to fortifying the quarterback purpose will pay dividends down the street.

"The draft is no longer about factual doing whatever is healthier for a bunch within the transient," Roseman acknowledged. "The draft is ready making wise, long-timeframe choices for your group consistent with the priorities that you just think [are] key to winning football video games. We gain received a form of football video games spherical right here the remaining three years, and I feel very assured that the decisions we accomplish are going to abet us neatly for the transient and the long-timeframe."

3) Teams building energy on energy

As a young player with the Inexperienced Bay Packers, I take into accout Hall of Standing government Ron Wolf telling me how he believed surplus at a purpose, particularly a purpose that is significant to the group's form of play, used to be serious to future success. He acknowledged stacking "energy on energy " permits a bunch to take in a vital injure to a key player, and besides gives the total supervisor with some doable alternate chips if they favor to them down the street.

From a game-planning standpoint, the addition of a blue-chip player at a purpose of depth enables the offensive or defensive coordinator to place in power a rotation that sooner or later wears opponents out. Final year, we watched the San Francisco 49ers add Reduce Bosa with the No. 2 total select to a line of defense that already featured four historical first-rounders. The 2019 Defensive Rookie of the Year enhanced the unit with his savage circulation flee talents and fanatical effort on discover how to serving to the 49ers field the NFL's second-ranked protection.

This offseason, total supervisor John Lynch tapped into the line of defense's superior depth and skill to swap out an rising celeb (DeForest Buckner) for a first-spherical select from the Indianapolis Colts that was the Reliable Bowler's change (Javon Kinlaw). Even although the passe's dominant performance received't be straightforward to change, the 49ers can even've landed an identical skill at a mighty more inexpensive label (Buckner signed a four-year, $84 million handle the Colts; Kinlaw's rookie contract is projected to be a four-year deal for spherical $15 million).

The Niners weren't the finest group to plan energy on energy within the draft. Here's a undercover agent at four different groups that added blue-chip avid gamers to already-loaded purpose groups:

Washington Redskins: DE Lumber Young. The pinnacle-ranked player within the 2020 draft didn't basically hold a purpose of want for the 'Skins consistent with the presence of Montez Sweat and Ryan Kerrigan on the perimeters, but Ron Rivera could well no longer circulation up a chance to add a premier circulation rusher to the rotation. As an A-plus athlete with a superb combination of size, energy and capacity, Young has gold jacket doable and his disruptive presence can aid the 'Skins shut the gap on their NFC East competitors. With four historical first-rounders joining Young on the frontline, the Redskins can even very neatly be in a purpose to gain a look on the blueprint that enabled the 49ers to switch to from doormat to contender in a pair of years.

Baltimore Ravens: RB J.Okay. Dobbins. It be arduous to upgrade a working game that is already considered as the finest within the alternate, but Dobbins will give the Ravens' offense plan more explosiveness within the backfield. The 5-foot-9, 209-pound workhorse is a dynamic runner with excellent imaginative and prescient, steadiness and body management. He completed his Ohio Notify profession as the second-leading rusher in faculty history on the energy of a junior campaign that culminated in a 2,000-yard season while leading the Buckeyes into the College Football Playoffs. Despite the presence of Worth Ingram, Gus Edwards and Justice Hill within the backfield, the addition of a blue-chip runner to a read-chance assault spearheaded by the reigning MVP (Lamar Jackson) can even accomplish the Ravens' working game downright frightening to shield in 2020.

Dallas Cowboys: WR CeeDee Lamb. When the Cowboys re-signed Amari Cooper to a lucrative extension, the group's work at huge receiver perceived to be completed. On the opposite hand, Lamb's finest-wanting draft-day slide keep the Oklahoma giant title squarely within the group's crosshairs, and Jerry Jones bypassed more pressing desires to add one other level scorer to the lineup. Lamb is a pure WR1 with unprecedented ball talents, hand-view coordination and working capacity. He's a rare playmaker in a position to snagging 50-50 balls alongside the boundary or taking a bubble cover the gap. With Ezekiel Elliott commanding attention as the Cowboys' major offensive weapon, Lamb can even join Cooper and Michael Gallup within the 1,000-yard club, with defenses forced to make a selection their poison when figuring out whether or no longer to discontinue the speed or circulation.

Miami Dolphins: CB Noah Igbinoghene. The Dolphins added Byron Jones to a defensive backfield that already featured a Reliable Bowler in Xavien Howard, but that did no longer discontinue GM Chris Grier and coach Brian Flores from selecting one other cornerback in Spherical 1. Igbinoghene is an explosive straight-line athlete with the tempo, quickness and burst to speed with vertical-stretch avid gamers on the perimeter. He's a brave competitor willing to switch nostril-to-nostril with the receiver on the street but quiet desires some skill refinement to be a high-discontinue playmaker on the island. That acknowledged, the Dolphins' components to make consume of an early select on a cornerback is one other example of a bunch stockpiling skill at a key purpose.

4) A 'avid gamers over system' manner

Most NFL groups title, have interaction into consideration and unhealthy prospects consistent with the avid gamers' particular particular person skills and traits (bodily and psychological) and the plan in which neatly those attributes align with the group's offensive or defensive schemes. Pondering about how most coaches and executives (in most cases stubbornly) adhere to this philosophy, it used to be refreshing to gain a look on the Dallas Cowboys' scheme for the 2020 draft continue their fresh transition to a "avid gamers over system" manner.

In theory, the components to label a player's skills over plan fit makes the review task so mighty simpler for scouts on legend of they will select avid gamers love they're filling out their Turkey Bowl squads on the park. Evaluators can simply give attention to figuring out the blue-chip prospects within the category and select out the "BPAs" (finest avid gamers on hand) when the group is on the clock.

The utilization of this philosophy locations the emphasis on movie undercover agent and the creation of real game plans to maximize a player's impact doable. Scouts are expected to bring the instructing workers the finest football avid gamers, and the instructing workers is predicted to plan or develop the playbook to swimsuit the influx of real blue-chip avid gamers.

Abet in January, Mike McCarthy clarify his group-building philosophy when he used to be requested how he would proceed about discovering avid gamers for his most neatly-appreciated defensive plan.

"I believe whenever you happen to've a system of protection where you wish a undeniable player to fit your plan, you are limiting your personnel division," McCarthy acknowledged at a press conference in January rapidly after his hiring. "We know what a Dallas Cowboys football player looks love. The length, the athletic capacity. Let's procure as many correct football avid gamers as we perchance can."

The coach used to be adamant about building a roster that facets as many stud avid gamers as likely -- irrespective of fit -- and his words gain been bigger than factual coachspeak consistent with what Cowboys government vp of player personnel Will McClay shared with newshounds this week.

"When he joined the group and we started speaking about avid gamers, certainly likely the most important issues out of his mouth used to be 'avid gamers over system,' " McClay acknowledged on Tuesday, per the group's web map. "Effectively, that rung a bell with me finest-wanting away."

One reason we can even honest no longer scrutinize as many groups deploying a avid gamers-over-system manner is that it locations a perfect bigger burden on the instructing workers to adapt in talk in self assurance to maximize the particular particular person and collective skill on the roster. Head coaches must be in a purpose to think outside of the sphere to make alternatives for the finest avid gamers to procure on to the sphere and must venture their assistants to gain interaction into consideration how a prospect can even impact the group in a purpose that can even honest no longer exist already within the fresh playbook.

"That used to be a definite thing to hear a coach articulate (avid gamers over system), on legend of most of it is system-based when they watch at issues," McClay acknowledged. "In suppose that opened the door for a form of issues."

Pondering about how many talented prospects are dismissed or devalued by groups attributable to strict schematic standards, the Cowboys' in opposition to-the-grain manner to the draft can even give them the leg up on the competitors. In a skill-pushed league with razor-skinny margins setting apart the winners from losers, the Cowboys are relying on their coaches to flip a series of blue-chip prospects into a championship-caliber group via schematic tweaks and on-field building.

If McCarthy and his workers can pull it off, we can even scrutinize more groups originate following the "BPA" mannequin.

Be conscious Bucky Brooks on Twitter @BuckyBrooks.

[cryptoquicknews-blog]

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Moving Beyond ‘The Blockchain Is the App’

This post was originally published here

Mic Bowman is a principal engineer at Intel and a member of CoinDesk’s advisory board. 

The following article originally appeared in Consensus Magazine, distributed exclusively to attendees of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2019 event.

Four autonomous vehicles arrive at an intersection. Who gets to go first?

Yeah, this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but the problem is very real, and surprisingly difficult. The solution lies in decentralized computing, an emerging field that will likely involve blockchains, along with a host of other technologies. To understand the problems it tries to solve, let’s dig deeper into this suburban impasse…

If we assume there’s no static infrastructure – for example, a traffic beacon – to arbitrate the intersection, the vehicles will have to negotiate a solution using only their in-vehicle computation capacity. What would the computer’s instructions be? Well, there are some general societal rules to go by: no one wants an accident; they all want to get through the intersection as quickly as possible; and there is some notion of “fairness” (“really, I got here first so I get to go first!”).

All this sounds more or less doable except that the vehicles might be augmented with a “little red button” that cheats the negotiation in order to get through first. (Seriously, if you were late for work, you’d push the button, right?).

From a systems architecture perspective, though, there are big problems with this scenario. Here are some: there’s no central authority deciding which car goes in which order. Second, the only infrastructure available for computation resides in the cars; that is, resources are dynamically allocated for the computation. Third, every driver is motivated by objectives that will drive their vehicle’s computation, and while some objectives – such as getting through the intersection without an accident – are shared by all, some goals will be unique to the individual.

(I’m late, so let me through first!).

It is this last characteristic that makes decentralized computing so challenging.

Applications and Challenges

Cryptocurrencies are the best-established applications of decentralized computing. But there are many others. In most cases, blockchains, which function as a decentralized, consensus-based alternative to trusting a centralized authority, will likely play a key role. Yet blockchains are useless on their own. For decentralized computing to work, blockchains must intersect with other solutions.

One much-discussed decentralized computing application is provenance in supply chains. Walmart recently announced that all its food suppliers must upload their data to a blockchain-based system so that users can monitor the supply chain for contaminated food. Similar ideas are being applied to tracking conflict-free minerals.

In these provenance cases, the blockchain is a critical component, but by no means the only one. As I discussed in last year’s Consensus Magazine, while a blockchain can provide persistent and transparent transactional management, storage and updates of data, the ability to track provenance also requires efficient, high integrity data entry. The quality of the blockchain’s monitoring is only as good as the data collected. Without proper oversight, data entry (for example. through sensor and telemetry data) may be manipulated by a malicious participant to misrepresent provenance.

Supply chain applications also demonstrate the importance of confidentiality and privacy of data because, at the core, they are about cross-organizational access to shared data. Queries on the data like “where did this lettuce come from?” are relatively uncontroversial and, in most circumstances, consistent with the shared objectives of the participants. Others are more conflicted, however, and it’s those that expose the difficulties in managing confidentiality in decentralized systems.

Can a supplier prove, for example, that it can meet delivery requirements without exposing otherwise confidential details of its internal operations? Herein lies a core problem for decentralized computing: how to perform network-wide computation on confidential data without exposing the details of that confidential information to the group.

Consider the challenges with genomic data. With researchers searching for cures to diseases, there’s tremendous societal and potentially business value in performing computations across the broadest possible set of genomic data sources, sources that are often created, managed or owned by different organizations. However, each database contains data that’s both highly valuable as intellectual property and restricted by regulations protecting the privacy of the individual contributors of that genomic data.

Dilemma.

Or we could just return to our autonomous vehicles, which are probably still sitting at the intersection. (“You go first.” “No, you go first”, “No, YOU go first”). A recent requirement for operating an AV is that it must have a “black box” that records telemetry data that can be used to analyze past behavior – for example, to determine the cause of an accident. This is basically the same role that a black box plays in an airplane – with one key difference: an airplane is largely by itself in the sky, whereas an autonomous vehicle is continuously interacting with other (potentially autonomous) vehicles. The black box in one vehicle provides a single historical perspective.

It does not, however, provide insight into the actions or decisions of the other autonomous vehicles on the road. All of this is complicated by adversarial machine learning, which could create a new attack vector for autonomous vehicles. How can a computer relying on a simple, local record of telemetry data differentiate between an internal error made by the autonomous vehicle, an external attack on the vehicle’s telemetry, or the actions of a malicious participant in the coordination protocol?

Ideally, to provide an attack-resistant history of the vehicle’s behavior, the black box would confirm the vehicle’s telemetry data with that of nearby vehicles as well as information about interactions with those vehicles – a full, system-wide snapshot, in other words. And that just returns us to the problem of doing computation with confidential information from untrusted sources.

Treating The Blockchain as the Trust anchor

The Internet of Things will demand decentralized applications. But building non-trivial versions of them is hard. Relatively straightforward problems like deterministic fair exchange between two parties is known to be impossible without a trusted third party to arbitrate the interaction. Here, a blockchain provides great value because it, in effect, becomes a technology-based, trusted third party that can arbitrate multi-party protocols. Still, we must address many other challenges before we can realize general purpose decentralized computing.

In part, getting there requires a transition from “blockchain is the application” to “blockchain is the trust anchor.”

It’s a transition that we’re already seeing in bitcoin. For example, the Lightning Network moves the management of bitcoin transactions into an off-chain channel created by a pair of participants who will only close their balances to the blockchain if there is an off-chain dispute.

Thus the blockchain functions as the trust anchor while the Lightning Network is the decentralized application.

Meanwhile, Thunderella, a consensus algorithm developed at Cornell University, achieves substantial performance improvement by combining an optimistic, high-performance “off-chain” consensus protocol with asynchronous slow path that uses a traditional blockchain consensus protocol as a fallback trust anchor when optimistic assumptions fail.

In this case, the underlying blockchain’s role is to publish evidence that the optimistic assumptions no longer hold and to reset inconsistent views.

Our own work on Private Data Objects, a Hyperledger Labs project to explore decentralized computing models, splits contract execution into an off-chain component that performs the actual computation, and an on-chain component that simply ensures an ordering of updates that respects dependencies between contract objects. Thus, intuitively, the blockchain serves as a decentralized commit/coordination log for database updates.

Confronting the Confidentiality Challenge

How to scale this and protect confidentiality?

Well, one approach requires us to recognize that balancing the tensions between shared and individual objectives is simplified if we broaden our notions of successful computation. Under the principle of differential privacy, we can dial down, or “fuzz,” the required accuracy of a database to preserve confidentiality. For example, we might convert a precise result like “the delivery truck is at 4th and Wilshire” into something less definitive like “the delivery truck will arrive in about 10 minutes.”

Consider how this concept – where some objectives must be met for success while others are “fuzzed” to complete the computation – might apply to our autonomous vehicles. It might not be necessary that the first vehicle to arrive at the intersection be the first one through the intersection so long as there aren’t accidents and that it can continue to its destination in good time. Fairness and first-come-first-through remain the objectives, but may not be requirements for success.

Other advances in computer science might also help. Privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) such as Zcash and Monero demonstrate the power of cryptography to enable computation on a privacy-protected sets of data. Still, as of now, developers have struggled to take this computationally complex technology to the kind of scale that’s needed for general purpose decentralized computing.

Here, hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEE) offer a potential alternative. Many modern processors come with technology to perform computation that guarantees the integrity and confidentiality of computation under certain circumstances.

Examples of shipping products include TrustZone from ARM, Software Guard Extensions (SGX) from Intel, and AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). For those more inclined to open hardware specifications, the Keystone Project from researchers at UC Berkeley and MIT, seeks to develop an open-source TEE for the RISC-V processor.

A hardware-based TEE provides a general-purpose compute environment that addresses performance and flexibility requirements that limit the applicability of ZKP technologies. However, hardware-based trust should not be viewed as a panacea. When it is situated appropriately in the larger security design context it could be an effective way to execute confidential computation in an optimistic fashion.

In other words, decentralized computing requires a combination of solutions. I hate to tell them, but those cars stuck at the intersection are going to have to multitask.

Motherboard image via Shutterstock

#crypto #cryptocurrency #btc #xrp #litecoin #altcoin #money #currency #finance #news #alts #hodl #coindesk #cointelegraph #dollar #bitcoin View the website

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[michellelewis7162]

Just how to Choose an Online Payment Solution

Just how to Choose an Online Payment Solution

 Exactly how to choose an Online Payment Service and also our choice

The payment supplier is selected based upon many different criteria. Several of these are the solution accessibility in the nation where your checking account is, prices of a purchase, monthly charges, the prices of integration, and whether it settles sales tax concerns or allows for integration with a few other popular payment solutions. A lot of these concerns should be responded to by You the customer. Stripe is our favored selection as it had exceptional API abilities. This article will certainly use Stripe as its payment cpu of selection. Alipay

Ideal Practices for payment suppliers

Retry if purchase did not been successful The transaction could fall short not just as a result of technological reasons yet in some cases inadequate funds might be the reason. You must retry processing the transaction between an hour to number of days later on.

Know when your CC will end Some of the card details will run out or their data will no longer stand for different reasons. When you do not have valid CC data charging the customer will not be feasible. The major card systems supply a service that allows you check if there are any kind of updates pending for the consumer information that you keep. Some of the on-line payment remedies will certainly also update card information for you. Red stripe will certainly do this for most of MasterCard, Discover, as well as Visa cards. Not just CC.

Be aware that in some parts of the world individuals are not willing to pay with their Charge card The most effective example of this is China when Alipay is the major payment resource. It is worth keeping in mind that not all customers more than happy handing out their card information so making use of a widely known payment approach assists to boost the completion price of potential deals. Red stripe also sustains Alipay for China as well as for Europe Giropay, iDEAL

We wish to have Alipay Often customers just want to use Alipay UK as they know with the brand name. Do not be stubborn - Stripe will certainly aid to optimize your revenue. Stripe and also Paypal are straight rivals there is no combination between them.

Best practices while utilizing the Red stripe payment procedure

PCI compliance with Stripe

Many users end up being PCI certified by filling out the Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) offered by the PCI Safety And Security Standards Council. The kind of SAQ depends upon how you collect card information. The easiest technique of PCI validation is SAQ A. The fastest means to end up being PCI compliant with Stripe is to see to it you get a prefilled SEQ A. If so Stripe will certainly load the SEQ A for you as well as will make it readily available for you to download to your account's conformity setups after the initial 20 or so purchases. The means to attain this is as adheres to:

- Utilize the Embedded form called Check out, Stripe.js as well as Aspects (it provides far better format modification then Check out). You can utilize react-stripe-elements which makes use of Stripe.js API or Stripe mobile SDK libraries. When you're using react-native select tipsi-stripe. ipsi-stripe bindings are not formally sustained by Stripe so assistance will not formally inform you that they get approved for prefilled SEQ-A compliance - but they do.

- If you are making use of web serve your settlements pages need to utilize HTTPS.

In all those instances information is firmly transmitted directly to Red stripe without it passing through your servers. When you choose the fastest means you will certainly not need to do anything more. It is as straightforward as this up until you reach 6 million transactions annually then you will have to fill up a Record on Compliance to verify your PCI conformity each year.

Plan for technological failing - Idempotency essential If you are utilizing API to take payments you should plan for a technical failing as all networks are unstable. If failing occurs wit is not constantly feasible to understand if a charge was made or otherwise. When it comes to a network failure you must retry the deal. The Idempotency secret is a prevention device against charging a customer two times. If somehow you sent the payment twice - which might take place due to retrying procedures after a failing. In Stripes node lib you just add it to alternatives specification while billing. Each Idempotency key will time out after 24 hours so afterwards time if you make a payment with the same Idempotency secret you will charge the client.

Stripe charges in cents not dollars On the internet payment options like PayPal charge in bucks as opposed to cents. However that in Stripes all charges are made in smallest currency system. This is not only the instance concerning bucks, Stripes does it for all currencies.

Test

Red stripe offers lots of card numbers for you to examine various circumstances on the frontend and also symbols so you can straight check your backend. For instance you can not only test Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club and also JCB Cards yet additionally worldwide cards and also 3D Secure Cards. Stripe additionally supplies you with tokens so you can evaluate failing circumstances like a cost being decreased, or a cost being obstructed due to the fact that its deceitful, an ended card, or a handling mistake. So you will be prepared for every little thing that can take place when you go live.

Do not place JSON in description - Use metal

Be descriptive as you can. Metadata is your good friend. You can improve your Red stripe purchase with custom-made information so you can after that see it in the dashboard. For example you can add points like consumer ID or the delivery ID in metadata so there is no reason to pollute your deal summary.

Should I accumulate extra information?

The bare minimum to gather from a CC is its number, CVV and also expiration day yet you can accumulate extra. You can additionally collect the postal code/ CC holder name/ address for Address Verification System (AVS). If you accumulate them it will raise Wechat Payment UK safety since the scams avoidance algorithms will certainly have much more information and will have the ability to react a lot more accurately. Nonetheless, from the individual point of view it's even more information to kind - which is not constantly excellent. Clients are just human and also occasionally make mistakes when going into data which can additionally cause some deals to be rejected. So you must select just how much data you need and also what will certainly function best for you and also your revenue. Similarly financial institutions will sometimes deny repayments with a 'do not recognize' standing and also you will certainly have to call your client so they can ask their financial institution regarding the reason (high level of current activity on a card, an absence of matching AVS info, a card being over its limit, or a variety of various other reasons which only the financial institution will certainly recognize).

 If you are any kind of on-line supplier of service or products, a method for consumers to pay quickly and easily online is becoming increasingly more essential. Online payment options are abundantly offered, and offer consumers a far more streamlined as well as hassle-free internet purchasing experience. The complying with are several of the advantages to carrying out online payment remedies. These apply to small businesses and large ventures alike (though the substantial bulk of bigger companies do have on the internet payment services).

Reduce of Purchase

It only stands to factor: if a purchase is simpler as well as quicker to make, there is a greater possibility that a person will make it. When you contrast the amount of time and also problem it requires to write out a check, placed it in a stamped envelope, and send it with filling in a name as well as a couple of credit card digits and after that clicking submit, it is clear at to which the client will perceive as much easier. As well as, in fact they will certainly be right even in a measurable sense worrying the quantity of time invested. Hence from a standard sales standpoint, it makes sense to supply online payment alternatives UK.

Up-to-Date Appearance

Beyond the above, a site that uses on-line payment solutions shows up much more up-to-date and contemporary. Online payment is the standard now, the rule as opposed to the exemption. So it makes a site appear even more market mindful as well as technically updated. This can aid to strengthen the sight for the customer that the website is legit, present, and also customer-oriented.

Simpler to Track and Organize

It is less complicated to track as well as arrange sales that are made online. The software program that processes these payments may additionally include analysis and also organizational components that are very handy in both evaluation of the sales performance of the website and also publication maintaining. And also excellent analysis and organization of supplier information is constantly handy for optimizing as well as streamlining a business.

Conserves Time and also Resources

These online payment services UK conserve the moment and sources of a company. Some examples are their capability to immediately handle repeating payments, produce billings automatically, as well as act as user interfaces for customer questions and complaints. The sheer workforce conserved right here alone is factor to institute these services.

Movement

These repayments can be received anywhere internet gain access to is available. This significantly frees up time and also permits higher flexibility both of business employees and also customers. When a customer can buy anywhere they can utilize their laptop computer, and also a firm can similarly receive those repayments basically anywhere and also anytime, the window for making purchases is a lot higher. This is all thanks to the raised availability/mobility.

A relatively current growth in this area is what is known as mobile payment. This is a growing network that enables people to Wechat Pay for goods or solutions making use of just mobile phones. Once again, what is occurring here is that payment is ending up being also easier to make in a variety of different circumstances and areas.

As you can see, applying an on-line payment option E14 5NR for your organisation makes sense on various levels. If you anticipate to have any type of significant online sales presence, allowing customers to make on line settlements is basically a requirement. Discover a great solution that matches your company needs and also you'll be ready to go.

 Today's culture is slowly proceeding in the direction of a cashless economy! People favor to utilize their plastic as opposed to hard cash. Indeed, making use of charge card is a whole lot simpler than lugging money around. One card is all that you require to suit your purse whereas in case of cash money you need to carry a mass amount because you don't recognize how much you may need at one go. While talking with a company boss who lives next door, I realized the relevance of on the internet payment and also its growing importance for business globe. They have actually begun using different on-line payment remedies as well as terminating the acceptance of cash money from the customers. You need to work with people in order to man the cash counters while in case of online cash transfer the process is quick, basic as well as hassle-free.

On the internet payment transfer is much safer option also. Credit cards are issued by a financial institution after a prolonged verification process. While paying with your charge card, you need to mandatorily check all payment related details before final confirmation. Likewise, you MUST inspect credit card and also bank declarations meticulously after every payment to make certain the appropriate quantity has actually been debited, and also that no scams has happened throughout the particular transaction phase. Bulk of individuals likewise make use of conventional payment portals (PayPal, Authorize.net, and so on) to transfer funds to the vendor. Occasion coordinators as well are relying greatly on such on the internet payment processing and also administration options to effectively deal with event registration charges and/or ticket sales.

On-line payment services feature some major advantages such as:

PCI Compliance

It suggests you can securely make use of such an option for monetary purchases of any kind of kind. PCI which means Payment Card Industry has actually gotten a few objectives that all credit card providing and also dealing financial institutions require to adhere to. Some of the objectives include keeping a protected network, securing the card owner's information, as well as consistently keeping an eye on every single deal that takes place using credit cards.

SSL 128-bit Information Security

Bulk of on-line payment administration software adhere to the SSL 128-bit data file encryption plan to protect info that passes through the system. Therefore, the online payment remedy allows you refine all types of credit/debit card settlements and payments made using preferred gateways firmly, stopping any kind of chances of fraudulence.

Tension-free Cash Handling

Companies of all kinds, event monitoring firms plus course organizers discover an online payment service extremely easy to use. It is since they don't have to trouble around separately collecting money from the consumers, attendees or trainees. The on the internet system successfully transfers money from the purchaser's to the seller's savings account in minutes with least human disturbance.

 On-line payment options could be the secret to saving personal time. It's simple to establish automatic electronic payment choices. You can log on each month to pay your expenses. Or you can license for repayments to be made as regularly as you want without going to your computer. Electronic settlements save you time due to the fact that you are not in the automobile or standing at the bank in line to make a withdrawal or transfer. Doing settlements online is very easy for people with standard computer system skills. If you want straight deposits from your business instead of waiting on a paper check, just offer your firm your account info to set up deposits with the financial institution, and also the transfers begin usually in a few pay cycles.

As an organisation on-line payment services will certainly conserve you a great deal of time and paperwork. You will have exact, organized records of the paychecks you spread at your fingertips. It will not take long to initiate worker pay-roll direct down payments when fundamental account information is authorized and become part of the system. Currently instead of preparing each specific check, printing it, and afterwards signing it, your pay-roll heads out at the touch of a few computer system keys.

Increasingly more company is being carried out online so online payment solutions is a progressively approved as well as preferred purchase. Cash can be transferred in real time where in the past, somebody could have to wait days for a check to show up, hoping it would certainly get to all and not obtain lost in the mail, and afterwards take it to the bank to deposit and wait for funds to clear. Currently, due to the strict regulatory steps that safeguard on the internet settlements, transfers are often offered to the recipient instantly or within a couple of hours of transfer. In today's stressed economy, having prompt accessibility to money that is your own or being able to pay your expenses in the nick of time when you can manage it, is a welcome benefit.

Online payment remedies is a terrific idea for people that require to move large or regular quantities of cash and also are worried for their safety and security. Before digital transfers, individuals had to take pay-roll to a bank, approve repayments personally, as well as handle money handy. Currently as opposed to stressing over being robbed at any step of the method, digital transfers offer a high degree of security. Staff members don't need to bother with washing a paper check when they do washing and after that needing to change it. Digital transfer guarantees the money goes straight to the designated account.

[entergamingxp]

Tetsuya Nomura On Kingdom Hearts 3 Remind and the Series’ Future

January 22, 2020 10:45 AM EST

Tetsuya Nomura answered 13 Questions of Darkness regarding the Kingdom Hearts 3 Remind DLC, hinting at what comes next for the series.

Square Enix published the second part of the Q&A regarding Kingdom Hearts 3 Remind: the 13 Questions of Darkness with Tetsuya Nomura. Kingdom Hearts‘ Director chatted about the DLC’s content and most notably mentioned that while it’ll take a while for the next main Kingdom Hearts game, other games are coming soon. An announcement regarding Kingdom Hearts Union X will also happen on January 23.

Note that I have merged and summarized questions 1 and 2 together in my translation as the answers simply summarize previously known information.

『KHIII Re Mind』発売記念「7つの光と13の闇 Q&A」”闇編”を公開！ #KH3 #_KH #KH3_ReMind pic.twitter.com/C0xKIgM4qP

— キングダム ハーツ (@_KINGDOMHEARTS) January 22, 2020

1&2/ What’s different about past Final Mix games and the Remind DLC? What’s the difference between the KHIII version 1.07 Free Update and the Remind DLC?

“Unlike Final Mix games which added new elements and balance changes to the whole game, Remind is independent content you can enjoy after clearing the main game. You can think of Remind as the Final Mix equivalent of Kingdom Hearts 3. The Free Update also adds new content that would have been included in a Final Mix version in the past, like the new Keyblades and abilities.

3/ Are you planning to release a “Kingdom Hearts 3 Final Mix” game later on? Or a physical version that includes the Remind DLC?

“At the time, we have no concrete plans for that. Maybe we’ll think about it if Kingdom Hearts 3 is ported to a new platform. I didn’t think about whether that could be a Final Mix or not either.”

4/ When does the additional scenario of the Remind DLC takes place? And what does it depicts?

“Some parts are skipped, but if you take Sora as the reference, it starts from the end of the final battle in the main game and goes until the ending. And it depicts Kairi’s rescue. The player has a broader point of view on the story than Sora’s point of view, so the Sora in Remind has a broader point of view than in the main game. It’s difficult to explain, But “KHIII” ended in “KHIII“, and its ending leads and connects to Remind‘s ending.”

5/ Does the Remind DLC affects the story shown in the main game?

“There are no changes to the main game’s story. Remind doesn’t affect it as it can only be played after clearing the main game. As for the cutscene corrections in the main story included in version 1.07, those are things I wanted to do but couldn’t until now for various reasons. Specifically speaking, it concerns the depiction of damage in cutscenes and the depiction of the sky.”

6/ Why the Final Fantasy characters didn’t appear in Kingdom Hearts III? And why did you make them appear in the Remind DLC?

“In KHIII’s story developments, there are no reasons to visit Radiant Garden, and we had some development problems regarding that too. The story developments in Remind necessitate the appearance of the Final Fantasy characters, and it would please the fans, so we added them. Even if they don’t play a big role, it conveys the fact that they’re still here.”

7/ What should we look forward to regarding the Limit Cut Bosses? Which ones are the most interesting?

“We decided from the start the Limit Cut Bosses would be fights against the Real Organization XIII members, but we disagreed about whether we should include Xion or not. I consulted Tai Yasue about it during development. Xion almost didn’t make the cut. So I hope you’ll enjoy her boss fight and struggle just like we struggled about whether to include her or not. She’s really strong.”

8/ In the past you said you wished to add one World’s worth of content with the Remind DLC, did you manage to do so?

“The truth is, at first we started to plan and design an actual new World, but it just didn’t feel right to me to add a new world by itself. If we try to do that again one day, I think it would be better if we had it from the start among our list of possible Worlds to add. To make up for that World we didn’t do, Remind has even more than 1 World’s worth of content. In particular, we had a hard time developing so many new bosses.”

9/ Can you tell us more about the Secret Boss & Episode?

“They include my thoughts regarding what comes next in the series. I don’t think you can predict them with the information you have now. The Secret Boss battle also turned out into something pretty different than what I initially ordered from the development team.”

10/ Why does the Kingdom Hearts 3 Remind DLC Final Trailer includes a line from the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 1?

“I wrote that line so I could reuse it someday if I had the occasion. I don’t think you’ll get what I mean at all, but back then, adding that line is what made the world of Kingdom Hearts approved. This mystery won’t be resolved now, but I think we’re at the entrance of the way leading to it.”

11/ Are you planning to do any new updates or DLCs following Remind?

“We don’t have any plans for future updates, but maybe more could come. As for DLCs, Remind is the first and last one. I’ve already moved on to the next game.”

12/ Can you tell us more regarding the future of the Kingdom Hearts series?

“It’ll take some time until the next main Kingdom Hearts game. But on January 23, an unexpected announcement from the KHUχ team will happen. Moreover, besides the KHIII development team and the KHUχ development team, two other teams are currently at work, and one of these two teams’ games will come out unexpectedly quick.”

13/ Do you have a message to share with the fans?

“After KHIII‘s development ended, some organizational changes happened. Because of that, we made you wait longer than expected for the Remind DLC and I apologize. The Remind DLC is packed with awesome content. I thought we’d focus on story elements, but most of the development time was spent on the boss battles and new systems. I hope you will enjoy all the merciless battles we could only add through this DLC. Co-director Yasue said he wanted to see players fight against the Secret Boss, so we also removed nearly all the Share restrictions. I hope you’ll enjoy the DLC.”

Square Enix also published some gameplay footage of boss battles in the DLC:

【DLC紹介映像③】いよいよ後数時間後に迫ったDLC『Re Mind』のリミットカットボス戦の一部を公開。#KH3 #_KH #KH3_ReMind pic.twitter.com/bxxKJEVySs

— キングダム ハーツ (@_KINGDOMHEARTS) January 22, 2020

If you wish to hear my unneeded opinion about all this. I’m one of those who disagree about the opinion that Kingdom Hearts‘ story is overly complicated, though I do agree it is needlessly complicated at times. And God, translating Tetsuya Nomura’s words when speaking about the series feels the exact same. Sometimes I wish he’d just stop Kingdom Hearts and announce The Bouncer 2 on PlayStation 5.

We also translated the “7 Questions of Light” with Tai Yasue regarding the Remind DLC. You can read more about the DLC’s content with our previous coverage here, here. here, and here. We also translated past Kingdom Hearts 3 Remind interviews with Tetsuya Nomura.

Kingdom Hearts 3 Remind launches on January 23 on PlayStation 4. It’s already available in Japan as I’m writing this. The DLC will be available a month later on February 25 on Xbox One.

January 22, 2020 10:45 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/01/tetsuya-nomura-on-kingdom-hearts-3-remind-and-the-series-future/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tetsuya-nomura-on-kingdom-hearts-3-remind-and-the-series-future

[talabib]

How To Transform Your Organization

What’s stopping you from doing the best work of your life? Are you hamstrung by outdated bureaucratic processes? Stifled by hierarchical structures? Forever sinking in the quicksand of mandatory meetings?

Well, most workers share these complaints and could easily toss in a few more. That’s why it’s time to change.

It might seem scary. It might seem impossible. But, if you don’t want your organization to perish in the arena of the global marketplace, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to rethink and reinvent the way you work.

That means updating the way your organization works – transitioning from an old legacy operating system to a new evolutionary operating system that’s more flexible, open, and human-centered.

This post does not prescribe any one-size-fits-all change initiatives. It does not offer a single clear answer to your professional problems. But how could it? You and your organization are unique. You can only change by finding your own path. So think of this post as a guideline – subtle nudges in the direction you need to be going. 

Traditional organizations are in crisis.

Let’s begin with a story of sabotage. At the peak of World War Two, the director of the agency that later became the CIA commissioned a special field manual. In the manual were guidelines for destabilizing communities and commerce. The idea was simple: give the manual to citizens friendly to the Allied forces and wage a war of what the manual described as “simple sabotage.”

Near the end of the manual, there’s a list of actions that interfere with organizations and production.Things like: making it hard to access work resources by setting up complicated bureaucratic systems, never allowing shortcuts that might speed up a process or decision, and adhering to all regulations, always.

When experts shows this list from the old manual to leaders, many laugh. “That’s exactly what people do where I work!” is the general response. In short, what amounted to sabotage in 1944 is now just another day in the office.

Let’s be clear. It’s not that people are trying to be saboteurs. It’s that companies are structured in such a way that following protocol essentially amounts to sabotage.

This is having an unfortunate effect on companies in at least three ways.For one, company lifespan is down. It used to be that a company on the S&P 500 could expect to spend 60 or so years there. Now it’s down to about ten.

Second, return on assets is also down. Return on assets is the amount of profit a company can generate with what it owns. In addition to being a great all-round metric of performance, it’s also hard to fudge. Unfortunately, since 1965, US return on assets has dropped from nearly 5 percent to just above 1 percent.

Third, productivity growth has also leveled off. Despite the fact that we’ve made incredible technological gains, we’re still unable to make more stuff per hour than we were ten or 20 years ago.

If you were to ask an economist why companies seem to be struggling, she’d probably scratch her head. If you ask the people at the edge, those workers on the ground dealing with day-to-day problems, you’ll get a clear answer: bureaucracy.

Organizational debt is dragging down businesses.

Imagine you’re a worker in a factory that makes auto parts. One day, as you operate your machine, you notice a hole in your right glove. The left one is wearing thin, too. “High time for a new pair,” you think. So you chuck your gloves, walk to where the gloves are kept, grab a new pair, and you’re back at your machine in 30 seconds.

If only all workers lived in such a dream world. Let’s look at a specific example. Auto manufacturer FAVI is a special company. Whereas most European producers of auto parts have folded in the face of Chinese competition, FAVI actually exports to China. But FAVI didn’t always enjoy such success. In the past, it struggled under the burden of bureaucracy.

Before its new CEO stepped in, a worker couldn't just go grab a pair of gloves. She had to show her gloves to her manager, who then verified that they needed replacing and issued her a permission slip. She then had to go to a cage where all the gloves were kept, wait for someone to help her, hand that person her slip, take her new gloves, then go back to her manager and get her slips stamped, at which point, she could return to her machine.

All this bureaucratic rigmarole took around 30 minutes. The cost of new gloves? Five euros. The cost of leaving a machine unmanned for that long? Five thousand euros.

Experts call such issues organizational debt. Organizational debt is all the procedures and policies and structures that no longer serve an organization; they may have made sense at one point, but that point is now long gone.

Organizational debt is often the result of automatic responses to problems. Something goes wrong in our organization, and so we instate a new policy or procedure to prevent that thing from going wrong again. For example, at FAVI, maybe people were stealing gloves, so some clever leader set up a system to put a stop to it.

The trouble is that such attempts at perfect order eventually lead to a kind of disorder. They result in the millions of self-sabotaging rules and processes that bring businesses to their knees.

The urge to fix issues by imposing rules goes deep – more than a century deep, in fact. If we want to break the habit, we’d do well to understand its origins.

Legacy Organizations assume that managers should think for workers.

Behind every organization, there’s a set of assumptions. These assumptions underlie and guide how everything is done. You can think of these assumptions as a sort of organizational operating system. 

For more than a century, the vast majority of companies have been using an operating system inherited from traditional organizations. Let’s call it Legacy OS. It’s all the structures and norms and practices that we hardly notice. Managers. Budgets. Performance reviews. It’s so prevalent that it’s nearly invisible. And, since most people mistake popularity for quality, Legacy OS rarely gets challenged, let alone rethought.

Traditional organizations – the Legacy Organizations running on Legacy OS – were born more than a hundred years ago.

At the time, factories weren’t as efficient as they are today. There was no standard instruction manual for workers. Veteran machinists each had their own idiosyncratic techniques. Novices learned on the job, adopting the habits of their elders. The approach to production was artisanal.

Meanwhile, they were often incentivized to work slowly. Machinists received a certain amount of money for each part they produced; if they started producing too many parts, however, their employers would often reduce this piece rate. So, to prevent piece-rate cuts, workers limited productivity.

Into this den of disorganization and underproduction charged a man who liked to measure things. His name was Frederick Winslow Taylor, and he revolutionized the world of work.

Taylor wasn’t interested in how long it generally took to produce a given part. He wanted to calculate how long it should take. So he measured each and every step in the production process of each and every part. Then he conducted an earth-shaking experiment.

He offered workers a raise. But there was a catch. To get the raise, which was substantial (between 15 and 30 percent), the workers would have to do everything just as he said. The workers agreed, and that was that: employee autonomy had been sacrificed on the altar of higher pay. The legacy organization was born. 

In the decades that followed, the foundational assumption of Legacy OS – that managers do the thinking and workers do the working – was enshrined as basic business common sense. 

Organizations are not complicated systems. They’re complex.

Pop quiz! Without giving it too much thought, do you think an automobile engine is complicated or complex? What about the mechanism of a watch? Complicated or complex? OK, how about the weather or traffic? Is one complicated and the other complex? Both complex? Phew, this is getting complicated.

If you’re like most people, your answers were arbitrary at best. Come on – complicated? complex? Those are synonyms, right? Well, whip out your pencil and paper – or your phone’s notepad or whatever – because it’s time for a crash course in systems theory.

When we call a system complicated, it means that it’s a causal system. Its component parts enjoy a cause-and-effect relationship. Take a cog out of a watch, and the watch will cease working. Put the cog back in (correctly), and it will start working again. Causal systems are predictable. Taking a cog out will never cause a clock to do something utterly surprising, like running backward or chiming a Beethoven sonata. Same goes for automobile engines.

Complex systems, on the other hand, systems like traffic and the weather, are dispositional. You can make educated guesses about what they’re going to do, but you can’t know for sure. To predict what they might do, you have to get to know them. You have to learn the quirks of their disposition. You can’t just read a manual.

One of the fundamental issues with Legacy OS is that it treats organizations as though they’re complicated systems. It assumes that the right rules are out there, that a scientific understanding of work is possible.

This isn’t the case. People are complex organisms; bring them together, and they form a complex system. But this is the thing about complex systems: you can’t solve their problems. All you can hope to do is manage them.

Evolutionary Organizations should flow like roundabouts.

When you’re driving, which would you rather encounter: a traffic signal or a roundabout?

Most people are more familiar and more comfortable with the traffic signal. In the United States alone, there are over 300,000 traffic signals. Roundabouts, in contrast, are rare, with roughly one for every 1,118 intersections.

In our case, a traffic signal is like a Legacy Organization. Popular, but, as we’ll learn, not the most effective.

But there’s an alternative – a better way to organize. Let’s call companies that have done this Evolutionary Organizations.

Both the signal and the roundabout were designed to deal with the same complex problem: traffic. Each is an operating system that attempts to minimize automobile accidents while maximizing traffic flow. Still, the assumptions underlying these two systems couldn’t be more different.

Traffic signals assume that people need to be told what to do. Red means stop. Green means go. Roundabouts assume the opposite. There are two rules: follow the flow of traffic and yield to cars already in the circle. But it’s up to drivers to apply these rules and navigate the intersection.

The popularity of the traffic signal might lead you to think that it’s vastly superior. But, across the board, roundabouts are better.

They reduce traffic delays by 89 percent; their yearly upkeep is between $5,000 and $10,000 less; they reduce both fatal collisions (by 90 percent) and collisions that result in injury (by 75 percent); and, as a bonus, they’re fully functional when the power goes out.

The only reason traffic signals are still the norm is because they’re the norm. We’re used to them. They’re familiar. And so we assume they’re also effective.

Legacy Organizations are also the norm, and Legacy OS has a lot in common with the traffic-signal operating system. Both assume that people can’t be trusted. Both assume that people need to be directed at every turn. Red means stop. Green means go.

But what if we abandoned this system? What if, instead of categorical rules governing all actions, instead of hierarchical structuring, instead of mistrust and micromanagement, what if – instead of all these things – we designed an OS that allowed people to move more freely and use their own judgment to tackle complex issues at work? That’s the Evolutionary Organization.

Evolutionary Organizations are Complexity Conscious and People Positive.

It’s one thing to say, “Make your organization more like a roundabout!” It’s quite another to shift from legacy habits to evolutionary practices. 

To move your organization toward a new operating system, there are two terms to keep in mind. First, Evolutionary Organizations are Complexity Conscious. They not only recognize that businesses are complex systems; they are also mindful of global complexity in general and human complexity in particular.

Second, Evolutionary Organizations are People Positive. They believe that people, when empowered in the workplace, are capable of dealing with this complexity.

What do these two qualities look like in action? Well, they add up to something like what David Marquet did when he assumed command of the USS Santa Fe, an underperforming nuclear submarine. Before Marquet, the USS Santa Fe’s performance was worse than every other sub in the fleet. Under Marquet’s command, it became the best.

That ascent began with an unorthodox approach. Rather than issuing commands, Marquet simply shared his vision for the vessel. At first, his crew were baffled by his response to their requests for orders, which was invariably, “What do you intend to do?” But with time, they began to think for themselves and shoulder responsibility for running the submarine.

Marquet introduced an environment where they could experiment and learn. He decentralized control, making it possible for his crew to devise quick solutions to complex problems. He also encouraged them to take ownership of their work. In short, he was People Positive and Complexity Conscious.

Now, if this doesn’t seem any more helpful than being told to model your company after a roundabout, well, sorry – but that’s somewhat intentional. Remember: we’re trying to escape the dogmatism of the Legacy OS. There will never be one way to go from legacy to evolutionary. There is no one-size-fits-all plan. Each organization must forge its own path.

Reconsider the domains of structure and purpose.

Evolutionary Organizations have successfully implemented change in a few domains. Marquet, the submarine captain decided to take a new approach to the domain of authority. And, as you know, the results were surprisingly good.

Imagine you show up to work one day, and your boss says, “Hey, I think you should write your own job description and set your own salary.” What would happen?

The Morning Star Company, the largest tomato processor in the world, does just that. Every year, each of Morning Star’s 400 employees writes a document that maps their responsibilities to their fellow coworkers. Coworkers then critique this document, offering ideas for improvement. In this way, top-down directives are replaced by community suggestions.

At Morning Star, you can also set your own salary, but it’ll be subjected to the same peer review. This system works exceedingly well for Morning Star, which nets above $700 million in revenue per year and has been growing consistently for the past 20 years. In other words, Morning Star successfully rethought the domain of structure. 

Here’s another example of rethinking structure. Buurtzorg is a Dutch home-care provider that employs some 14,000 nurses despite having a core team of about 50. How can 50 people manage 14,000? Well, they don’t.

They split all 14,000 nurses into 12-person teams that, for the most part, manage themselves, taking care of everything from scheduling to recruiting. Buurtzorg essentially functions like a collection of small businesses, all united around a common goal: providing quality and personal home care.

That brings us to the next domain: purpose. First and foremost, your organization’s purpose should be eudaemonic – that is, conducive to human happiness and flourishing.

For instance, Tesla’s mission is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” It’s certainly inspirational and eudaemonic, but it does have a problem. It’s vague. An engineer would be hard-pressed to translate it into concrete tasks.

Facebook developed a good system for keeping purpose both aspirational and actionable. Twice a year, they look at where they want to be in 30 years and then ask what they can do in the next six months to get closer to that distant goal. This allows for a sort of double focus: zoomed in on the present while also framing the big picture.

Reconsider the domains of meetings and membership.

Once, after a long and productive discussion, a team decided to discontinue their monthly strategy review. This team had been holding the truth back from one another for far too long; no one got any value from the strategy review, let alone liked it. Guess how much this boring, worthless meeting had been costing them? Three million dollars per year.

The average employee regards about half the meetings he attends as a waste of time – and he attends 62 of them per month. But there’s another good reason to put meetings under the microscope. They function as a sort of microcosm, a kind of miniature replica of the entire organization.

One technique that may help you eliminate unnecessary meetings and introduce superior meeting practices is the meeting moratorium. For two weeks – yes, two weeks – cancel all meetings. This may seem impossible, even reckless. 

But it’s worked for the James. He once worked with a leadership team whose members spent 45 hours in meetings per week. When that team reintroduced meetings after the two-week moratorium, they were able to do in 18 hours what they’d previously done in 45.

After you cancel all your meetings, take those two weeks to focus on the pain points. What do you miss? Where would a meeting truly help?

You can now start reintroducing meetings. But remember: like an organization, a meeting should have a clear purpose and be structured around that purpose. If it lacks these qualities, it’s probably unnecessary.

Another crucial domain is membership. Who is in and who is out? Who is welcome at your organization, and who isn’t?

A good way to figure this out is to look at hiring practices. When onboarding a new employee, you want to make sure that the person’s personality and passions are aligned with the company’s mission and environment.

But beware of hiring for culture fit alone. Though a good predictor of success when a company is starting out, it can cause underperformance later on. So it’s better to hire people who will contribute to your culture, not just fit within it.

Change is a never-ending process, not a one-time event.

What is change? Most leaders envision change as a sort of journey – a corporate quest from point A to point B. They’ve got a roadmap with landmarks and a well-defined end goal. But this metaphor is misleading.

Here’s the problem with thinking of change as a journey: travel is sequential. You move from one leg of the journey to the next. But change isn’t a series of steps. It’s not a map you can follow.

Imagine pouring milk into a mug of coffee. There’s an almost immediate color change, from black to brown, as the two liquids merge. Change should look more like that – like a transformative assimilation rather than a well-executed plan.

But to achieve such change, you have to change the way you change. No more change initiatives imposed from on high. No more CEOs decreeing company values. You can’t change a bureaucratic hierarchy with tools fired in a hierarchical, bureaucratic forge.

How should you change? Well, change should be continuous and participatory. One way to ensure continuous, participatory change is to introduce a technique called looping.

There are three stages, arranged in a loop, with the last leading back to the first: identifying tensions, proposing practices, and conducting experiments.

Loops can happen quickly or slowly, on a vast or a small scale. Let’s imagine a loop within a team to see how it works.

Let’s say the team identifies a tension: “only the loudest voices get heard.” A practice that might eliminate this tension is introducing a check-in at the beginning of all meetings. Prompt your team with a question, such as, “What color is your mood?”

Now try it out! Go around in a circle, having everyone respond to the prompt. Does it bring everyone into the present and give each voice space in the room? If not, keep proposing practices and conducting experiments until the tension is resolved.

There’s no way to make a list of every tension in existence, and a practice that works for one team or organization won’t necessarily work for another. Remember: we’re dealing with complex systems. If you keep that in mind, however, and empower your colleagues and teammates to do the same, you’ll be well on your way to doing the best work of your life.

Modern organizations need to change. Most of them are running on Legacy OS – a corporate operating system inherited from nineteenth-century factories. They believe that more control will lead to better results. A better approach is to reduce control – to model organizations on roundabouts rather than traffic signals. Do this, and your company may soon become an Evolutionary Organization. Here’s your first task: decide which domain you will attack first.

[click2watch]

Moving Beyond ‘The Blockchain Is the App’

Mic Bowman is a principal engineer at Intel and a member of CoinDesk’s advisory board. 

The following article originally appeared in Consensus Magazine, distributed exclusively to attendees of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2019 event.

Four autonomous vehicles arrive at an intersection. Who gets to go first?

Yeah, this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but the problem is very real, and surprisingly difficult. The solution lies in decentralized computing, an emerging field that will likely involve blockchains, along with a host of other technologies. To understand the problems it tries to solve, let’s dig deeper into this suburban impasse…

If we assume there’s no static infrastructure – for example, a traffic beacon – to arbitrate the intersection, the vehicles will have to negotiate a solution using only their in-vehicle computation capacity. What would the computer’s instructions be? Well, there are some general societal rules to go by: no one wants an accident; they all want to get through the intersection as quickly as possible; and there is some notion of “fairness” (“really, I got here first so I get to go first!”).

All this sounds more or less doable except that the vehicles might be augmented with a “little red button” that cheats the negotiation in order to get through first. (Seriously, if you were late for work, you’d push the button, right?).

From a systems architecture perspective, though, there are big problems with this scenario. Here are some: there’s no central authority deciding which car goes in which order. Second, the only infrastructure available for computation resides in the cars; that is, resources are dynamically allocated for the computation. Third, every driver is motivated by objectives that will drive their vehicle’s computation, and while some objectives – such as getting through the intersection without an accident – are shared by all, some goals will be unique to the individual.

(I’m late, so let me through first!).

It is this last characteristic that makes decentralized computing so challenging.

Applications and Challenges

Cryptocurrencies are the best-established applications of decentralized computing. But there are many others. In most cases, blockchains, which function as a decentralized, consensus-based alternative to trusting a centralized authority, will likely play a key role. Yet blockchains are useless on their own. For decentralized computing to work, blockchains must intersect with other solutions.

One much-discussed decentralized computing application is provenance in supply chains. Walmart recently announced that all its food suppliers must upload their data to a blockchain-based system so that users can monitor the supply chain for contaminated food. Similar ideas are being applied to tracking conflict-free minerals.

In these provenance cases, the blockchain is a critical component, but by no means the only one. As I discussed in last year’s Consensus Magazine, while a blockchain can provide persistent and transparent transactional management, storage and updates of data, the ability to track provenance also requires efficient, high integrity data entry. The quality of the blockchain’s monitoring is only as good as the data collected. Without proper oversight, data entry (for example. through sensor and telemetry data) may be manipulated by a malicious participant to misrepresent provenance.

Supply chain applications also demonstrate the importance of confidentiality and privacy of data because, at the core, they are about cross-organizational access to shared data. Queries on the data like “where did this lettuce come from?” are relatively uncontroversial and, in most circumstances, consistent with the shared objectives of the participants. Others are more conflicted, however, and it’s those that expose the difficulties in managing confidentiality in decentralized systems.

Can a supplier prove, for example, that it can meet delivery requirements without exposing otherwise confidential details of its internal operations? Herein lies a core problem for decentralized computing: how to perform network-wide computation on confidential data without exposing the details of that confidential information to the group.

Consider the challenges with genomic data. With researchers searching for cures to diseases, there’s tremendous societal and potentially business value in performing computations across the broadest possible set of genomic data sources, sources that are often created, managed or owned by different organizations. However, each database contains data that’s both highly valuable as intellectual property and restricted by regulations protecting the privacy of the individual contributors of that genomic data.

Dilemma.

Or we could just return to our autonomous vehicles, which are probably still sitting at the intersection. (“You go first.” “No, you go first”, “No, YOU go first”). A recent requirement for operating an AV is that it must have a “black box” that records telemetry data that can be used to analyze past behavior – for example, to determine the cause of an accident. This is basically the same role that a black box plays in an airplane – with one key difference: an airplane is largely by itself in the sky, whereas an autonomous vehicle is continuously interacting with other (potentially autonomous) vehicles. The black box in one vehicle provides a single historical perspective.

It does not, however, provide insight into the actions or decisions of the other autonomous vehicles on the road. All of this is complicated by adversarial machine learning, which could create a new attack vector for autonomous vehicles. How can a computer relying on a simple, local record of telemetry data differentiate between an internal error made by the autonomous vehicle, an external attack on the vehicle’s telemetry, or the actions of a malicious participant in the coordination protocol?

Ideally, to provide an attack-resistant history of the vehicle’s behavior, the black box would confirm the vehicle’s telemetry data with that of nearby vehicles as well as information about interactions with those vehicles – a full, system-wide snapshot, in other words. And that just returns us to the problem of doing computation with confidential information from untrusted sources.

Treating The Blockchain as the Trust anchor

The Internet of Things will demand decentralized applications. But building non-trivial versions of them is hard. Relatively straightforward problems like deterministic fair exchange between two parties is known to be impossible without a trusted third party to arbitrate the interaction. Here, a blockchain provides great value because it, in effect, becomes a technology-based, trusted third party that can arbitrate multi-party protocols. Still, we must address many other challenges before we can realize general purpose decentralized computing.

In part, getting there requires a transition from “blockchain is the application” to “blockchain is the trust anchor.”

It’s a transition that we’re already seeing in bitcoin. For example, the Lightning Network moves the management of bitcoin transactions into an off-chain channel created by a pair of participants who will only close their balances to the blockchain if there is an off-chain dispute.

Thus the blockchain functions as the trust anchor while the Lightning Network is the decentralized application.

Meanwhile, Thunderella, a consensus algorithm developed at Cornell University, achieves substantial performance improvement by combining an optimistic, high-performance “off-chain” consensus protocol with asynchronous slow path that uses a traditional blockchain consensus protocol as a fallback trust anchor when optimistic assumptions fail.

In this case, the underlying blockchain’s role is to publish evidence that the optimistic assumptions no longer hold and to reset inconsistent views.

Our own work on Private Data Objects, a Hyperledger Labs project to explore decentralized computing models, splits contract execution into an off-chain component that performs the actual computation, and an on-chain component that simply ensures an ordering of updates that respects dependencies between contract objects. Thus, intuitively, the blockchain serves as a decentralized commit/coordination log for database updates.

Confronting the Confidentiality Challenge

How to scale this and protect confidentiality?

Well, one approach requires us to recognize that balancing the tensions between shared and individual objectives is simplified if we broaden our notions of successful computation. Under the principle of differential privacy, we can dial down, or “fuzz,” the required accuracy of a database to preserve confidentiality. For example, we might convert a precise result like “the delivery truck is at 4th and Wilshire” into something less definitive like “the delivery truck will arrive in about 10 minutes.”

Consider how this concept – where some objectives must be met for success while others are “fuzzed” to complete the computation – might apply to our autonomous vehicles. It might not be necessary that the first vehicle to arrive at the intersection be the first one through the intersection so long as there aren’t accidents and that it can continue to its destination in good time. Fairness and first-come-first-through remain the objectives, but may not be requirements for success.

Other advances in computer science might also help. Privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) such as Zcash and Monero demonstrate the power of cryptography to enable computation on a privacy-protected sets of data. Still, as of now, developers have struggled to take this computationally complex technology to the kind of scale that’s needed for general purpose decentralized computing.

Here, hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEE) offer a potential alternative. Many modern processors come with technology to perform computation that guarantees the integrity and confidentiality of computation under certain circumstances.

Examples of shipping products include TrustZone from ARM, Software Guard Extensions (SGX) from Intel, and AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). For those more inclined to open hardware specifications, the Keystone Project from researchers at UC Berkeley and MIT, seeks to develop an open-source TEE for the RISC-V processor.

A hardware-based TEE provides a general-purpose compute environment that addresses performance and flexibility requirements that limit the applicability of ZKP technologies. However, hardware-based trust should not be viewed as a panacea. When it is situated appropriately in the larger security design context it could be an effective way to execute confidential computation in an optimistic fashion.

In other words, decentralized computing requires a combination of solutions. I hate to tell them, but those cars stuck at the intersection are going to have to multitask.

Motherboard image via Shutterstock

This news post is collected from CoinDesk

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[itsyourturnblog]

Most of the leadership mythology we subscribe to was created in the 20th century world of fossil fuels and mechanistic, production-oriented businesses. In the 21st century, that world is dying. We can see before us a new world, one of ideas, knowledge and innovation, but we’re not quite there yet. It’s still emerging. And as a result, we’re kind of in between things.

Stepping into the new world is a slow process. And it’s messy. In the old era, leadership was about efficiency and uniformity, and the best way to achieve that was highly structured, top-down leadership. But in a world where everything is changing, top-down can no longer work. Or as Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer put it in their book, Leading from the Emerging Future, “Our inherited leadership vocabulary is no longer fit to meet the challenges of our time.”

On some level, we all sense the need for a new leadership vocabulary. But first, we must break free of the lies that keep us from re-examining just what a leader is and should be.

Lie 1: Leaders are Either Heroes or Scapegoats

It’s difficult not to romanticise the heroics of leaders of spectacularly successful companies. They had a gloriously ambitious vision (or several visions in the case of Elon Musk) and they made it a reality. They were tested and persevered through extreme adversity and yet, they prevailed.

But even the best leaders are also human (thank god) and as such, they’re also (sometimes deeply) flawed. And if and when they ultimately fail, they will become a scapegoat. They couldn’t cut it. They weren’t strong enough. You’re good or you’re bad. You’re in or you’re out. A winner or a loser. It’s personal. And frankly, childish.

The problem with the leader as the be-all-end-all hero-visionary-superstar is that it assumes the people who work for those leaders are feckless followers who are in need of someone to tell them what to do and how to do it. In his book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge wrote, “At its heart, the traditional view of leadership is based on assumptions of people’s powerlessness, their lack of personal vision and inability to master the forces of change, deficits which can only be remedied by a few great leaders.”

This is not the way to create an organization that can adapt and thrive in uncertain times. It is the way though, to create employees who are cynical, or worse, unwilling to take risk and responsibility at work.

It’s a great way to get stuck.

Unstuck Leaders are mortal. Get over this hero thing.

Lie 2: Leaders Create Organizational Order

We believe that leaders should set the goals for a company and then implement policies and procedures to accomplish those goals. Company standards, regulations, workflows, performance metrics, etc. are all designed as top-down mechanisms of control. We believe that leaders are the best qualified to arrive at optimal solutions for all our problems.

The real world just doesn’t work that way. There are multiple informal systems in place in any organization that actually get the work done. Floor employees and supervisors have their own hacks and methodologies that senior management has no knowledge of. There are also informal networks of communication, favor trading and resource sharing and competing all happening under senior management’s radar. Employees often ignore organizational charts and regulations. They self-organize in spite of them. They break the rules. They create workarounds. And, they get shit done.

To try to impose order on these complex adaptive behaviors would be madness. And ill-advised to boot. Creative solutions arise out of tension, not order. When rules are enforced with an iron fist, innovation dies. Weak leaders create a false sense of security out of order and it gets them stuck.

Unstuck Leaders understand that informal systems are forming without them. They learn to understand them and then enable the teams and employees within them to do their thing. Notice that I didn’t say “harness” them. That’s not what this is about. The challenge of the Unstuck Leader is to not take control, but rather enable.

Is the thought of that making you a little nauseous? That. Right there. Is why Unstuck Leaders are so rare.

Lie 3: Leaders Provide Certainty in Times of Uncertainty

Most of us are not fans of uncertainty. Not a lot of people would say, “Yes please, bring me a whopping helping of I-don’t-know-what’s-going-to-happen!”.

That’s why, during times of uncertainty, we like nothing more than a strong leader to take charge. We like it even more if said leader can also reassure us that he or she will stop the change, put an end to uncertainty and restore the past as it was. Even better, we’d like to be assured that things aren’t really that complicated, that they are in fact simple and the old ways of doing things will continue to work once we just get past this one little blip.

This type of denial is what’s known in Systems Leadership Theory as “absencing”.

Rather than bravely stepping into the future, we cling to the past. We shut ourselves off from what is emerging. We turn our backs on those being affected by the change and ultimately, we turn our backs on ourselves. We’re left incapable of responding and creating and innovating. When we live in an absencing cycle, we’re betraying ourselves. It’s the ultimate self-own.

Scharmer and Kaufer believe this pattern of reaching into the past creates stuckness by limiting the organization to a single ideology (one way), an “us vs. them” mentality (othering) and perhaps most troublingly, a single will (fanaticism).

You only need look to the current state of American politics to see absencing in practice. The irony of absencing is that it can look like strong leadership, but it is in fact, an abdication of leadership. When we’re certain, we don’t seek out uncomfortable facts and data. We don’t seek out opposing views. And we’re left unprepared to face the challenges of the rapidly changing world we’re attempting to deny.

The Unstuck Leader understands that leadership is about accepting uncertainty and ambiguity and learning to thrive despite them. An Unstuck Leader’s job is to give employees certainty within the uncertainty. And that doesn’t mean telling them lies, nice stories or giving them false confidence and reassurance. It means giving them the only kind of certainty that matters. The certainty of co-created values, purpose, mission and vision. And it means showing them how to grow those things within themselves as well as within the organization.

Ultimately, Unstuck Leadership is about prioritizing truth over comfort. And that’s why we have to let go of the lies. It’s time to step out of the old, and into what’s emerging. And yeah, that’s not always easy…

Hi there! This post is an excerpt from my upcoming book, The Unstuck Leader: Getting unstuck. Staying unstuck. If you’d like to learn the five steps to eliminating the patterns of belief and behavior that are holding you back, sign-up for my email newsletter here (green box at top right of your screen on desktop, or under this post on mobile), and you’ll be the first to know when the book is published.

The 3 Most Damaging Lies We Tell Ourselves About Leadership was originally published in It's Your Turn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Judy Sims via It's Your Turn - Medium #itsyourturn #altMBA #SethGodin #quotes #inspiration #stories #change #transformation #writers #writing #self #shipping #personaldevelopment #growth #education #marketing #entrepreneurship #leadership #personaldev #wellness #medium #blogging #quoteoftheday #inspirationoftheday

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Master Your Taxes in 10 Easy Steps

So you’re self-employed. Good for you! You’re officially in charge of your own destiny. But if you’re self-employed in the U.S., Uncle Sam gets his share.

Most fitness pros know this. (Those who don’t are in for a very rude awakening when their tax bill comes due this spring.) But what you may not realize is just how much you can save by taking advantage of strategic tax deductions. By deducting all those you’re entitled to, you reduce your taxable income, potentially saving you a lot of money.

I know all this can seem overwhelming at first. I’ve had multiple entrepreneurs tell me they can’t understand a word their accountants say. It’s like their CPA speaks another language. (I call it “accountantese.”)

That’s where I come in. My job is to demystify money for entrepreneurs, breaking down complex financial goals into simple steps. The idea isn’t to replace your accountant—and yes, you do need one!—but to empower you with the baseline knowledge to feel more confident and prepared for your next appointment.

It’s about more than simply knowing what you can and can’t deduct—although that’s a big and important part of it. It’s about instituting the systems and resources that help you maximize profit while minimizing stress.

These 10 steps will put you on the right path.

READ ALSO: Are You Making Yourself Rich, or Poor? Why Every Choice Today Matters

1. Make friends with your accountant

I’ll be honest: If you struggle to understand your accountant, the problem might be you. It’s important to make an effort. You don’t have to pick out curtains or anything, but you do need to spend some time together.

Chat, build a rapport, and ask questions. No good? Then find someone else. The U.S. tax code is complicated and always changing. You need a professional to guide you, one you can talk to and trust.

2. Open a separate account for business expenses

A lot of newbies use their personal checking account and credit card for business expenses, and it can be a mess to sort out.

READ ALSO: 10 Online Training Challenges No One Warns You About

You need to treat personal and business money like church and state. It’s easier to track expenses, and you’re less likely to overlook deductions. Plus, it’s much easier to see at a glance how much you’re spending. That’s vital for trainers who’re too busy taking care of clients to stop and look at the numbers.

You don’t need a “business account” per se, especially if you’re not incorporated yet. A dedicated checking account or credit card works just fine (although you should check with your accountant first).

3. Expense the basics

Basics are your business necessities, and the more obvious write-offs. They include all your operational costs—fitness equipment, insurance, supplies, marketing, professional memberships and publications, and any business license you need—along with accounting and legal fees.

You can also write off the costs of using your work space—rent, utilities, Internet. Use a car for business? You can write off a portion of your mileage, and perhaps even your lease. I put cellphones and computers in this category too. If you use it for business, you need to deduct it.

4. Don’t forget the discretionary stuff

Things get interesting when it comes to discretionary spending, a category that includes travel, education, events, business meals, and client gifts. (Notably, the cost of entertaining clients is no longer deductible in the U.S., though client meals still are.)

Unlike basic expenses, like keeping the lights on and your equipment in working order, there’s a less direct line from these costs to your business’s bottom line. But that doesn’t mean they’re too risky to deduct. It just means you have to document why you spent that money. Taking a client to dinner, for example, helps you build a relationship and improve retention. Attending a fitness conference helps you stay connected and informed, and usually offers CEUs to retain your certifications.

Ask yourself if the expenditure will help your business grow. If the answer is yes, expense it.

5. But don’t go crazy

It’s smart to deduct the things you need to run your business. But it’s foolish to take on new expenses just because they’re deductible. The fact you can expense fancy dinners with clients doesn’t mean that’s a good way to spend your hard-earned money. At least half those costs are still coming out of your own pocket. Tax deductible doesn’t mean free.

6. Embrace development and education

Anything that makes you more knowledgeable in your field is deductible: books, magazines, memberships, courses, certifications, seminars, conferences. I know one entrepreneur who was able to deduct the $50,000 cost of attending a huge industry event.

The key: It must be related to your field. Did you join the Online Trainer Academy? Subscribe to Fitness Marketing Monthly? Buy one of Jonathan Goodman’s books? All are 100 percent deductible. But a subscription to Architectural Digest? Probably not.

READ ALSO: Five Top Trainers Reveal the Lesson That Changed Their Careers

7. When in doubt, expense it

I’ve seen entrepreneurs and CEOs deduct the cost of therapists and life coaches, which they justify as the price they pay to stay mentally healthy.

To justify an expense, you need to show how it can help grow your business, and you want to expense everything you have a good case for. It’s easy enough to move these “gray area” expenses over to the personal side if your accountant says no.

8. Ask questions

Think of your accountant the way your clients think of you. If they’re confused about something that’s important for their success on your program, wouldn’t you rather have them ask you? You can’t be afraid to ask questions that affect your financial fitness.

So if your accountant says no to a deduction, this is how you follow up: “What needs to happen for this to be a legitimate business expense?” I know one company owner who was able to expense clothing by making a simple tweak to the structure of the organization.

You may be able to do that, but you won’t know if you don’t ask.

9. Get organized

I work with highly successful entrepreneurs. In my experience, they know a lot about tax deductions, but they’re completely lost in terms of organization. Their records are a mess. They don’t use accounting software. They know next to nothing about the financials of their own business.

No matter how good you are at training your clients, if your financial records are in shambles, you’re only inviting stress.

Anyone making $30,000 a year or more should invest in accounting software like QuickBooks, or at least track revenue and expenses on spreadsheet. I also recommend hiring a bookkeeper, even for just a couple of hours a month. Ninety percent of the time, entrepreneurs should not be doing their own bookkeeping.

READ ALSO: How to Have a Long Career as a Personal Trainer

10. Save your receipts

Let me say that again: Save your receipts. All of them. I’m old school and keep mine in bank boxes, but a lot of people digitally store theirs using software like Hubdoc or Receipt Bank.

And here’s your pro tip: Jot down any details regarding the expense right on the receipt. If it’s a meal receipt, write down the client you were dining with and the purpose of the meeting. If it’s a travel receipt, same deal.

More documentation is always better. It helps at tax time and makes any audit a thousand times easier. I know one entrepreneur who was recently audited and asked to present 30 receipts. Thanks to a solid organizational system, compliance was easy and painless. Done and done.

Organizational systems are key, and the lack of them is the number-one thing that holds entrepreneurs back. Figure out the right ones for you, and you’ll not only save money and reduce stress at tax time, you’ll find yourself with a business that runs better all around.

      Your Next Move: Invest in Your Fitness Marketing (It’s a Tax-Deductible Expense!)

Keep more of what you make by improving your financial literacy and taking advantage of the many tax deductions available to fitness professionals. That’s just one of the many strategies and lessons we teach in Fitness Marketing Monthly (FMM), your monthly guide to a more prosperous career.

FMM is the only marketing information that you’ll need, conveniently delivered to your door in print once a month. Specifically, it’ll show you how to:

Instantly boost your bottom line with premium pricing strategies

Achieve more in less time with the efficiency habits of the pros

Confidently sell with greater ease by understanding customer psychology

If you’re a fitness or nutrition pro who is looking to take the next step in your career, FMM is for you. You’ll receive a receipt for your business tax deductions, plus up to $621 in bonuses when you subscribe.

Learn more and begin your subscription at theptdc.com/fmm today!

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