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puckpocketed · 11 months ago

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21/12/2023 Seattle Kraken vs LA Kings

The Summer I Fell For Hockey - Strategy, Expectations, and Earning Your Ice: On 1-3-1 and Joey Daccord

My regulars filter in on my last day of work for the year and ask me how my games went, and I take a moment to think: people who are this nice to their baristas are probably going to heaven. They’ve been so patient and kind and interested, and commiserate with me over the losses (except for Simon, large latte, who is cheerfully smug as a Red Wings guy that hasn’t let go of the 6-5 comeback game the Sharks forced through). Yesterday, I caught the tail end of a near-shutout from the Kings against the Sharks, and this past Sunday they beat the Kraken 3-2. The LA Kings have won against both of my beloved teams in succession this week. Not even two days ago, I published an essay on the importance of staying silly and taking losses well with the help of my fellow fans. I remind myself of all this throughout the day as I serve — and yet there’s restless energy under my skin as I head home. I keep thinking about an errant comment made on the Sharks’ broadcast: that the Kings play a 1-3-1, and it’s what held my Sharks’ attack hostage for so long.

I talk about my profound attachment to hockey as though I just switched it on one day. While this makes for a convenient explanation, the truth is that I’m still falling. Hockey’s been great to watch, as a new fan. The learning curve isn’t as steep as it feels trying to get into other sports, and I do myself the favour of starting simple — the puck goes in the goal, and sometimes there are fights. But I can’t just sit here and be satisfied with a casual, passing interest, and when I get home the 1-3-1 won’t let me go. I have to chase it. Playstyle and team identity can be so hard to quantify and analyse in a game that moves so fast, but even my novice eyes see how playing against the LA Kings is absolutely suffocating.

Before I had the language for it, I described it as “the 1-3-1 bullshit”, and in my head I thought about it as whatever the hell they did to choke off the Sharks’ approach through centre ice as I watched them strip puck after puck, watched even the most promising looking rushes become lost. The backbone of a 1-3-1 is an impenetrable wall in the neutral zone, which sounds pretty cool until you look up videos and find that 11 years ago crowds were booing teams that used it. It consists of one wing forward posted deep in the offensive zone, the centre and the other forward and a defenceman in the neutral, and the last defenceman hanging back to capture stray pucks. It’s the ice hockey equivalent of turtling; a completely defence-oriented system that’s used to maintain leads. The trouble, of course, is that the Kings are just using it regardless.

Applying the ramping methodology to learning about hockey players, I see a pattern emerging in me — I start with what’s most familiar. Goaltenders are pretty straightforward, conceptually applicable across athletic disciplines; I like that I can see someone stop a play, throw their body in the way and dive on the puck and it’s as simple as that. Amongst dizzying line changes and d-men pairings and hockey formations, my ears and eyes land over and over again on Seattle Kraken goalie Joey Daccord. It takes me a minute to figure out why.

Today, a national broadcast day, the puck is dropped 20 minutes late — I know this because I overslept my nap alarm by about that much and still managed to catch it. First period is reminiscent of their game against the Kings earlier in the week: the Kraken struggle to maintain puck possession, and the Kings have a staggering 19-6 lead in shots on goal. Even with the lopsided shot ratio, Daccord remains unbreakable. He dives for pucks, he’s quick on the glove and just as effective with his stick. I am brought back to his last few games played, where a shootout and an overtime hung on his performance. There are all-round agreements on the Kraken defensive line letting Daccord down in the past couple games, forcing him into making some impossible saves. The 9-round shootout with the Kings was an anomaly; and it could be said that this deep into a shootout, it’s less about the players (whose shot quality becomes increasingly questionable as the coaches scrape through their star forwards and down the line hierarchy for shooters) and more about a battle between goalies. I wonder, idly, if he’s thinking about that shootout loss, or the overtime loss against the Stars. He seems like the kind of person who would take that responsibility on his back, no matter the extenuating circumstances.

The Kings give me anxiety, this first period. Their defence looks airtight. Whenever the opponent gains possession, executing an effective 1-3-1 means bombarding the attacking forwards with bodies as they try to cross the blue line to mount a rush, to force a dump in or a puck turnover. The Kraken can’t break through — the one time they do, they lose control of the puck to speed. This chokehold; it exposes the gaps in any given team’s communication, baits them into stupid mistakes. The disdain people have for this system isn’t because it’s dirty or dishonourable or unfair, but rather because it makes for some very uninteresting hockey. It’s got a lot of names; the neutral zone trap, the trap, the 1-3-1. At the height of its popularity, it's said to have contributed to the infamous Dead Puck Era.

In modern day hockey, players are faster, more agile, and can blast through the 1-3-1 with prejudice; and the NHL have adjusted their rules about passing and handing out penalties for obstruction in the years since the 2004-05 lockout — all of this has resulted in a much lower rate of play for the trap. What fascinates me is that the Kings play it anyway, and if they weren’t up against my teams I’d probably be enraptured with the total buy-in from the players (I’m half captivated by them as it is).

What I learn about Daccord, in a slow trickle of Kraken media skimmed on my lunch breaks and between game periods, is that expectations are high. The Kraken’s main goalie, Philipp Grubauer, was the one in the net when they went to the Stanley Cup playoffs last season. What I read is: Daccord is Grubi’s replacement, the kid they drafted from the Ottawa Senators during expansion who’s made waves as the starting goalie for the Coachella Valley Firebirds. Grubi faced a comparably high amount of shots on goal in the postseason and still managed to maintain an incredible save percentage according to reports in May — and there’s that damned playoffs run again, insinuating itself into the expectations of a very different Kraken roster. The shoes Daccord must fill are big. Brighter stars have burned out against that sort of pressure.

Going into the second period I brace myself for the Kraken to get scored on. This is how it’s gone before — it’s a numbers game in the end, I reason to myself — get enough shots on goal and one is bound to slip through by way of unforced error or lucky bounce. And yet, Joey’s as sharp as ever. He slaps down shots in succession. Glove, stick, body. What could beat an airtight defensive trap in the neutral zone? A wall at the crease. Perhaps he is thinking about those lost games, perhaps that’s what has him so lit up tonight.

Then, the impossible happens in the wake of a faceoff: Tanev decides it’s turbo time, and suddenly the puck is in the net and the Kraken are on the board. They work hard on the forecheck, they ice the puck rather than give over possession, and their penalty kill is tight; and beyond that, Daccord is on fire. Early on in third period, Jordan Eberle, or Ebs, scores off of an absolutely magical pass between the skates of a Kings player, courtesy of Matty. Again and again, the Kings’ momentum is halted by Daccord’s glove, and as I sit and admire his tenacity I notice something else: what the fuck is he doing playing the puck?

Let’s talk about goaltending on a broader scale. Of the dozens of games I’ve been able to watch and in all the highlights I’ve seen, the goalies have looked — and I say this with the utmost respect — pretty good, but not all that unique or special. They do what they can, but there’s a reason why the NHL’s most recognizable names tend to be forwards and centres; saving goals is like ruining the fun, even if you make an impossible catch, everyone loves a star who can dominate the game by scoring and skating and defending in their own way. Goaltending ‘style’ was a mystery to me. I had a healthy respect for goalies when I first started watching hockey, but I never thought of any particular players as eye-catching — until now. Now I realise exactly what has me so excited about this player: Joey Daccord doesn't play quite like any goalie I’ve seen so far.

I could give you a history of goalies who play pucks, a Greatest Hits list of players who broke new ground and invented the style that Daccord is emulating, but it’s not actually that long. One specific incident that always comes up in these conversations about goalies and pucks is Patrick Roy’s infamous deke on Gretzky — a move that had him crossing the red line and earning a penalty. Martin Brodeur was so good at leaving his crease to play the puck that he changed the rules of the game; with the introduction of the trapezoid behind the crease and the new rules around goalie puck handling, Brodeur’s newly minted playstyle was seemingly killed in the cradle. Still, even with the new rules, there’ve been goalies who pushed that envelope, acting as an additional man on the ice and allowing for breakaway passes to a waiting forward on the blue line. And as I sift through Kraken games and other Kraken media, I find out that Joey Daccord is one of them.

‘At times he acts like a seventh defenseman, or a 13th forward,’ writes Kate Shefte, in her absolute banger of an article on Daccord meshing with the team as he takes on more net duties. I dig a little deeper and find out that, as per the only Kings goal of the match, that this puck handling isn’t without its risks. Some time in third period, not long after the Kraken secure their second goal, the puck comes down the ice. Daccord leaves the net to play the puck. The bounce off the boards is awkward, and catches the receiving player off-guard and sends it right onto the tape of a Kings player, and though Daccord dives for the ensuing puck shot right into his net, his stick misses it by what feels like half-inches. In a twist of unimaginable irony, one of Daccord’s strongest advocates is the person who whiffed the recovery of the bounce.

Justin Schultz — Schultzy for those keeping score — is quoted in that very same Shefte article saying, “He’s so talented back there with the puck. I don’t think I’ve ever had a goalie that plays the puck that well.” All that trust, and in the end to fail at following through with the player you so believed in? It must sting. (Privately, I hope Schultzy is okay. I want all our players to have short term memory for these mistakes and misplays, I want the shining vision I have for a team family to remain.)

It probably won’t be the last time it happens, but this doesn’t phase me one bit; risk for reward is what makes a player exciting to me. Joey’s got to be fearless, and probably a bit cocky, if he’s putting himself out there and breaking conventions. There must be some unshakeable bedrock of self-assurance that has him skating out of the net and playing puck after puck — because even after such an unforced error, he keeps fucking doing it.

What you’ll find if you go looking is a startling consistency in Joey Daccord’s media appearances. Joey Daccord, the relative unknown, has the same sentiments and the same stories as Joey Daccord, the NHL game-winning goalie. You can track his development and his vision year on year as he grows as a player if you look deep enough.

What people have to say about his puck handling is three things: he’s unbelievably patient on the draw, he’s one of the best they’ve ever seen, and he won’t stop if you keep giving him chances. What I find watching and reading his interviews is a sincere and hard working young man who couldn’t give you a canned, media-trained response if you paid him for it. In contrast to some of the absolute cardboard-bland, deadpan responses you might see from even the most talented of players, Daccord finds his way towards something resembling charm. It’s an awkward kind of charm, for sure, one that comes from a kind of self-seriousness that has him reaching for genuine answers while staring off into the distance in contemplation, or dragging out a funny anecdote.

For anyone who’s been around in the Kraken tag, you’ll have seen in real time my stumbling upon a 2020 web interview Daccord agreed to do with two kids who run a YouTube channel called Max and Ben Talk Hockey. It’s got your typical webcam video and audio quality, and it really could use an edit or two — but it captures me from the moment I press play. It was conducted after Daccord recorded ice time with the Ottawa Senators in 2019, and to date it’s one of the longest uncut pieces of Daccord media you’ll find. Joey maintains his absolute determination to be sincere. Where he could’ve just humoured them, he answers all of their questions as seriously as if he was speaking to reporters from the Seattle Times.

In 2021, a year after his talk with Max and Ben, Joey recounts how one of his assistant coaches imparted a vital lesson on mentality and pressure while he played for the Sun Devils. “You’re good enough where you just have to be the average version of yourself,” he says, quoting Mike Field. In that 2020 interview, speaking into his webcam, he echoed the wisdom to Max and Ben: “For me, I try to be Average Joey, because I think Average Joey is a really good goalie. So if I play like Average Joey, it’s going to be above average compared to most people.”

Towards the end of the interview, something he says catches me. The question Max asks is about his experiences being a backup goalie, and how he deals with that.

“You gotta earn your ice,” says Joey, with the certainty of it being a personal mantra. What a soundbite! What an absolutely electric quote — and it was given in the closing minutes of some obscure interview for a channel with less than 300 subscribers, probably half that at the time of recording.

Knowing all of what I know about his personal philosophy, I must recant my statement on his lingering doubts and self-flagellation about previous losses. He might never make excuses, but he carries with him a lesson that no doubt forms the foundations of his seemingly endless confidence and resilience — that he can’t be too hard on himself, because that way lies madness, and that Joey Daccord on an average night is more than good enough.

True to his word, he played like himself, like Average Joey. The Kraken end the game 2-1, with Daccord posting 42 blocked shots — equalling his own franchise record.

And if that’s what Average Joey is like? He’s more than earned his ice.

#kraken lb #seattle kraken #la kings #joey daccord #ice hockey #nhl #my writing #post-game stuff #strategy stuff #player stuff #me: yeah i'll write a cute little thing for kraken post-game. joey did great i should mention him!#me 2600+ words later after blacking out during my research: oh #anyway this is a Joey Daccord Fan Blog now <3 #tag edit: if it’s not obvious by now i’m also half in on the kings and that’s insane to me. let me just get attached to the enemy team #how many times will this happen as i explore teams and hockey strategy? who knows #it’s inevitable though. definitely.

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jadelotusflower · 4 years ago

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April 2021 Roundup

Welp - a few days late on this, but I’ve had a busy week, including finding a blue-tongue lizard in my house. I have no idea how or why the poor thing got in or where it thought it was going, but it gave me quite the shock. After some trial and error I was able to herd it into a box and release it in the backyard, where I suspect it’s made a home in my compost bin.

Other than that, this month I was lucky enough to live see my first live musical in over a year - The Wedding Singer. I love the movie and have listened to songs from the Broadway cast album, but this is the first time a professional production has been staged here. It was enormously fun, with an exuberant cast and tongue firmly in cheek. It was so nice to be back in a theatre (with social distanced seating) after everything was cancelled last year.

Reading

David Copperfield (Charles Dickens) - I’ve never really read much Dickens outside of A Christmas Carol, but I enjoyed the Iannucci film so much last year I decided to go back to the source material. I was surprised at how much that adaptation retained from a novel so large, at least in terms of important plot points, but then there’s a great deal of characters sitting in rooms and talking about things only tangentially related to the plot. It was an enjoyable read and of course Dickens is a witty writer, even if I found some parts a bit tedious - anytime Mr Micawber or Mr Peggotty shows up my eyes tended to glaze over. But the novel is dense with so many intersecting characters and plots that I can certainly see why it’s been well read and much studied.

A Column of Fire (Ken Follett) - the last (chronologically) novel of the Kingsbridge series, this time set in the 16th Century amid the Catholic/Protestant conflicts in England and France, but also touching on Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands - even the Caribbean. Follett’s favourite tropes are all here; lovers kept apart by circumstance, despicable villains with too much pov page time, rape as a plot device, the apathy/self serving nature of kings and queens. Ned Willard is a typical Follett male (self insert) hero, and as usual it’s the female characters who are far more interesting - Margery the devout but conflicted English Catholic, and Sylvie the enterprising and determined French Protestant. Both are the object of Ned’s affection, which I suppose is telling, and Follett desperately needs to learn how to write some other kind of romantic plot.

Of course it packs in the historical events for them to witness and/or participate in, from the end of Mary I’s reign all the way to the Gunpowder Plot - but it does feel that the latter is rushed in at the end and the novel probably could have ended at the Armada. While I did enjoy the broadened scope, a part of me missed the locality of Kingsbridge as a microcosm of England - this book was more concerned with the macro perspective where the other books (particularly Pillars) was effective in telling the story through Kingsbridge-as-a-character. On the other hand, I did enjoy the France side of the plot (mostly for Sylvie) that covered the machinations of the Guise family, the struggles of French Protestants, and events such as the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre (a rather harrowing section).

Watching

Shadow and Bone (season 1) - I went into this show completely cold (other than the trailer and general excitement on my dash), and really enjoyed it. Alina was a bit generic spunky heroine at first, but she grew on me by the end although I can’t say I really cared much about any of the romantic plots (and want to stay faaaaar away from the discourse). It was the Crows were the real draw for me, and while I was aware that their material came from later books, for me (not knowing any better) their integration into the Grisha plot was seamless.

While I was impressed by the worldbuilding I could have done with a bit more exposition - I still don’t know who the Shu and Suli are, where Fjerda is in relation to Ravka and what the basis of the conflict between them is. On the other hand, I can appreciate they resisted the urge to do too much “as you know”-ing and assume the rest of the world will be revealed as it becomes relevant. Still, I think if shows can learn one thing from Game of Thrones, it’s the value of finding some way of presenting a map to the audience to give some geographic perspective - a few times I did find myself needing to think about which side of the Fold the characters were on at any given time, and have no idea where Nina and Matthias were meant to be at the end. But then I’m the person who constantly flips to consult the map at the front of a book while reading - I need to see it.

I’ll add my disappointment to the RH fans at the chance of seeing Lucy Griffiths again, only for her role as Luda to be a brief flashback that saw her promptly stabbed to death (her entire demo reel could be made up of death scenes at this point). It’s a real shame, because she is perfect for a series like this (in a role like Genya perhaps), and it seems like such a waste.

Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (episodes 1-6) - The new strategy for family entertainment: taking a property that was popular with young Gen X-ers and/or Elder Millennials in their childhoods, and rebooting/reviving it as a show they can now watch with their own kids. The premise is simple enough - the Ducks are now a corporate juggernaut of the live long enough to see yourself become the villain variety, cue a new rag tag underdog hockey team, training at the run down ice rink owned by a disillusioned Gordon Bombay.

It’s mildly entertaining, the child actors are all very good and I’m always here for Emilio Estevez, although I can do without the inevitable romance with Lauren Graham (the team’s coach and mother of one of the kids). But the most recent episode, where a bunch of the og Ducks (sans Charlie) appear, coupled with liberal use of the Ducks Theme, hit me right in the childhood. They got me! They got me with the nostalgia! Because I am a sucker.

The Handmaid’s Tale (season 4, episodes 1-3) - I was very frustrated with this show last season, because it seemed more concerned with endless extreme close ups of Elizabeth Moss emoting rather than telling a coherent story. June is a character with the thickest plot armour I’ve ever seen, while almost every person she comes into contact with meets a bitter end. Rather than the slow domino effect to topple the regime depicted in the original novel and its sequel The Testaments, the show is moving at a breakneck pace, while somehow little actually happens except rinse repeat torture/endurance porn.

More interesting is the Canada side of the story with Moira and Emily (the excellent Samira Wiley and Alexis Bledel), and the difficulties for refugees adapting to life outside of Gilead, which wasn’t explored in either novel and could use more focus in the show. Ann Dowd is absolutely compelling as Aunt Lydia, and a far more interesting villain than the Waterfords (whose scenes have become interminable) yet funnily enough doesn’t get the devoted close-ups, long speeches, or writer interest they do. I’m still watching, if only to see if the show follows her story in The Testaments or not.

Writing

Not a very productive month on the writing front at all, I can’t even bring myself to look at the meagre word counts, so I’m going to let them roll over into May.

#personal #april roundup #long post #reading watching writing

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csykora · 5 years ago

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[A tabby cat curled up in the middle of a bubble hockey board. Or you, being comfortable in an athletic community that’s good enough for you]

Hiiiiii! I’ve been looking at ice hockey and it seems a cool sport and something that I might want to do as a hobby. Only Im disabled. Do you think I could still do the thing? Do you have ideas on how to start doing the thing? Ive often found it hard to do sports because coaches or trainers don’t know shit about disability and so have no clue how to teach you things or what you may or may not be capable of and telling them is useless because they make assumptions about your body and gah. Cheers

Hey—

Yes. Do the thing. Please go do it! I am not your coach, not your trainer, only friendly local bone witch—which I am very annoyed to have to say because you are a great athlete to work with.

Can I point out a couple things you just said?

You’re offering to do a trainer’s homework for them.

The early game didn’t have coaches. People milled on and off in whatever situations they felt like. Coaches and trainers came onto the scene so that someone was keeping track of who was actually good at what, when they needed support, and how to use them to best effect. That’s their whole gig.

Talking to folks on this blog, I’ve learned lots of people have this impression that capital-A Athletes have some factory-settings-standard body, any deviation a disaster (and they themselves can’t be athletes because they don’t.)

I think it’s very useful to smash this idea. Every athlete is a grab bag of weaknesses and weirdnesses, from old injuries down to handedness. Every coach longs to have three right-shot defensemen, and has made peace with the fact they’re not going to get them. Their job is to play with all the mismatched pieces they do have until they fit into a team.

If you present a coach or trainer with information about your abilities, and they don’t want to use that information, the problem you got right there is a shit coach.

Despite what the National League believes, there are more than 32 coaches in the world.

Throw a stick up here and you’ll hit another amateur coach. When we’re little, if we get a shit coach or PE teacher, we get stuck. That does real and lasting harm, which I am happy to go on at length about, but to flip it around:

Now, you are a big Zee, who wants to learn to play as a hobby, with the goal of having fun. That’s a powerful place to be.

I won’t say there aren’t stakes: you could get hurt, physically or emotionally. Sharing information about your body with other people to try to keep yourself from getting hurt all the time can be hard. Playing can make you feel physically accomplished and capable in your body, which is a deep need I think we all have, so having to back away if a team does turn out to be shit is hard. So I don’t say “you can always quit a team” lightly, but…there is no threat if you quit a shit team, no one (who matters) will get mad or make you go back.That means you can advocate for yourself, and if a reasonable shot at advocacy reveals that a coach isn’t just unfamiliar with how to do their job for someone with your disability but uninterested in doing their damn job for a disabled person, you can wave them farewell and find another.

Now, our goal is for you to find a good trainer, who just needs to be given information about what you (not someone with the ‘same’ condition, but you specifically) have got going on.

I’m going to tell you to look up an adult learn-to-skate program. Most rinks will have regular learn-to-skate and learn-to-hockey programs spaced throughout the year (often paired so you spend “first semester” on skating before the people who want to move up to hockey). Look up different rinks, talk to people about the rink culture and the coaches there. If you have the time, maybe spend a while hanging out there watching the open skates, local team practices or public classes, getting a sense what it’s like and telling yourself you have as much right to be in that barn as anyone else. Then sign up for a class. But first I want you to be devastatingly, Hepburn-ishly confident in talking about what your disability means for you.

From the information you’ve just given me, I don’t know almost anything I would need to work with you. You may or may not know that information about yourself already, but you can figure it out.

“Mild hemiplegia” is not a super-medical phrase. Hemiplegia is complete paralysis on one side of the body, where you are unable to move those muscles on purpose. A mild to moderate loss of muscle strength on one side is hemiparesis.

These terms are, to be honest, mostly used to organize medical literature. They describe very specific signs that might happen for a variety of reasons. Other symptoms like loss of sensation, loss of range of motion, involuntary muscle spasms, or loss/delay of involuntary motion (reflexes), which may or may not occur with plegia/paresis, have to be specified and described. If I were treating you I definitely wouldn’t describe your case as “hemiplegia”, I would call it “hemiparesis” with a lot more descriptive words around that (and I probably wouldn’t use either when talking to you).

It’s not that you used a word wrong. I’m concerned that 1. people have made you think you have to use A Medical Name for your disability for it to be taken seriously, but also 2. because the stroke happened so early, you’ve actually been denied care and opportunities to learn about it.

1. First, for the record, you don’t have to justify your disabled identity to me. And while I really (really) understand the self-protective urge a lot of us have to try to say, “my condition is really real and serious, it has a Real Medical Name, please believe me”, I think that (outside of a legal context where you’re seeking protected accommodations) that strategy often isn’t as useful as we hope it will be to communicate with other people in our daily lives. The people who demand to see your Really Medically Serious card before making accommodations will always find something else to demand, while people who aren’t trying to be assholes will be better able to help you if they know exactly, practically how.

It’s not that one way of talking about your disability is wrong, but I want you to talk about it in ways that are useful to you, that help you connect with other people and get you what you want.

2. I’ve worked with a lot of elders who have paralysis or hemiparesis from strokes later in life, after being able-bodied for most of their lives, and doctors and therapists jump right up in there teaching and training them to “recover” that “lost function”. They/their families can’t not know all the medical words just from hearing them over and over. But what often happens when a person is disabled since childhood is that…they aren’t seen as having “lost capacity” that can be “saved”, but as having a baseline “low level of function” that’ll never change, so much less attention is payed.

I’m using the air quotes because many people’s disabilities are present throughout their whole lives, and someone’s disability or disabled identity is not just a “problem” to be solved or gotten rid of. But people with disabilities grow and change, especially when we’re, you know, children. What often happens is that parents/authorities encourage able-bodied children to play, practicing motions and building up their bodies’ ability to move, while children with disabilities get benched from practice, benched from not just one activity but from being active at all, which means being benched from developing their bodies in the ways that might actually work for them, and from developing relationships with their bodies.

Proprioception, for example, is a combination of some fundamental ability/capacity/threshold/potential/whathaveyou and skill developed through experience that changes in context. Ever seen a baby? None of them know where the hell they are. A baby that can crawl is let loose to explore the world and bump into things that trigger their nerves until their body learns to fit all that sensation information together and use it. A baby that doesn’t crawl for some other reason often doesn’t get a chance to explore, to experience those sensations or train up that skill. And a kid that has a different threshold for stimulation, who naturally seeks out more or less or a different sort, is often stopped from stimming in ways which would provide their body information they could process.

As an adult, you get the chance to look at what you want to do and how your body can do it again.

So…

I want you to go throw a ball at a wall. Try to catch it. If you do any exercises already, sit-ups or pushups, do some of those. Run around the block, jump around on your bed. Stretch or just swing your arms and legs around. Find some small objects to use as weights and lift them, with either arm and then either leg (or set them on the floor and see if you can push them).

Work your way up your body one limb at a time, first thinking just about that limb on its own and then comparing the two sides after you’ve done them both. Don’t put a value judgement on anything yet, just pay attention: if your feet feel okay after running around, if you had more strength in one spot than you expected, if you had fun jumping, if there was a time you thought you might wobble but were able to correct, count that too! Think about each activity you did, the sensations around it, and whether that stim was satisfying, overstimulating, or not stimulating enough.

I want you to be able to go to a learn-to-play program, ask to talk with the coach at an appropriate time during the application or orientation, and say things like, “I have this condition. This is what it means: I have less strength with one arm, but I can move it as fast as the other, and with the same range of motion. I don’t grip items as well with one hand, or I tend to grip very hard. I don’t feel this type of sensation in this area, but I do feel that”.

Your coach is then going to recommend exercises to build strength in particular areas, or modifications to exercises so that you can do them without needing to use a particular area; they might have you try different equipment (find a tape job or adapted hand position that helps you keep hold of your stick, etc), and they may also encourage your towards and start training you for a particular position where you could do the most. When it comes to sensation, they’ll know to watch you closer for injuries in that spot that you might not notice.

This came in while I was applying to go back to university, and I bribed myself through the short essay section by pausing every hour to eat chocolate and sketch out what I would have you do for hypothetical positions and exercise plans. That’s still a long way off, but I’m very invested, so a couple things I want you to think about as you work towards the goal:

Keep sled hockey in mind. It’s not always a fit for people whose disability involves their arms, but it’s a cool community and most rinks will offer clinics where you can try out a sled and get a sense of the game.

How do you feel about getting hit with a puck? From your description, stickhandling and shooting may not be super fun for you. They may be, but if you give them a fair try and start to fee discouraged, try picturing yourself as a defender focussing on positioning or shot-blocking, or a goalie. Some people never ever want to do it, which is fair, but if you’re at all interested I’d love to see you try some time in goal! Everyone’s different but some folks the weight of the pads and the focused role can be really good stimulation. If your handling or footwork doesn’t feel great, goaltending would let you focus on moving your body more naturalistically as a whole to position in front of shots. And everyone else will love you for volunteering!

Write back and tell us how it goes!

#long post

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell Review & Discussion

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In which two Rainbow Rowell fans discuss Wayward Son, the much-anticipated sequel to queer wizard romance Carry On ...

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This Wayward Son discussion includes major spoilers for both Carry On and Wayward Son.

Wayward Son, the sequel to Rainbow Rowell's queer wizard romance Carry On, hit shelves earlier this month. The book picks up roughly a year following the ending of Carry On, which saw Chosen One Simon Snow defeat the Insidious Humdrum and The Mage alongside best friend Penelope and vampire boyfriend Baz. It asks the worthy question: What happens after The Chosen One fulfills his prophecy?

Answer: Simon Snow is depressed, having not developed the coping skills to thrive in a post-Watford, post-Prophecy world. This prompts Penny into strong-arming Simon and Baz into a cross-country road trip adventure across America. What begins as Cheesecake Factory visits and Ren Faire detours escalates into another fight for Simon and his friends, as the gang is inadvertently pulled into a vampire conspiracy that already has Simon's ex Agatha in its clutches.

With a third book in the series, Any Way the Wind Blows, set to conclude the trilogy, Den of Geek Books Editor Kayti Burt and Den of Geek Contributor Natalie Zutter take the time to check in with the beloved series. How does Wayward Son expand on the cultural conversation begun in Carry On, and what do we hope for from the trilogy's final installment?

The First Question

Hot take! Generally, how did you feel about Wayward Son?

Kayti: I feel the need to preface this answer with some context: I was very hyped for this book. Carry On is one of my favorite books, and Rainbow Rowell is one of my favorite authors. To say this was one of the pop culture artifacts I was most looking forward to in 2019 would not be an understatement. Perhaps this kind of hype is untenable, but I am not in the habit of trying to talk myself out of positive emotions (anymore.. I hope), even for the worthy cause of not later being disappointed in part because of them.

That being said, I was disappointed. If Carry On was a nutritious and oh-so-delicious meal, then Wayward Son was a snack. There were elements of the narrative that I really loved and I think it had an amazing, ambitious premise—to explore what it can feel like after you’ve finished The Thing You’ve Always Been Working Towards (this is a particularly good allegory for graduating into the “real world,” a subject I don’t think is explored enough, honestly in our pop culture) but the book never quite fulfilled on its promise. I ended it with a feeling of Not Enoughness. Even though so much happened, plot-wise, it didn’t feel like the characters developed, either individually or collectively, in many noticeable ways.

read more: Best New Young Adult Books

Natalie: The Renaissance Faire was the shit… though I was surprised that it seemed so alien to these Brits, as I would have assumed they would have a much higher likelihood of running into reenactments of medieval life on that side of the pond. A quick google later, and it turns out that Ren Faires are a very post-World War II American pastime—who knew! So that was a keen choice of Rowell’s, to present a subculture that would feel incredibly foreign to these magicians even though it’s mundane for the Normals.

For all that I felt like the Penny/Micah scenes wasted valuable time, forcing our trio to road trip across the heartland (instead of starting out on the coast, which would have been much more convenient) felt very American. Earlier this year, I spent a month in Nebraska City, NE on a writing residency (with brief visits to Omaha and Lincoln), so those portions felt much more familiar than they would have if I hadn’t temporarily lived there.

Kayti, I share your love for the quirks and rules of American magic, from the dead zones to—my favorite aspect of this series’ magic system—the efficacy of using American language and phrases in spells.

Kayti: Thank you for bringing up the Ren Faire, Natalie, and for giving that American context for it. I did not know about its history and now need to read more about it.

Natalie: Always here for Ren Faire discourse.

Kayti: Sadly, I have not yet been to a Ren Faire in real life (it’s on my loose bucket list!), but that did not keep me from loving this part of the book, or from understanding (having been to other delightfully performative spaces like this one, including Harry Potter World and, you know, Comic Con) what it looks, feels, and even smells like. There’s something incredibly powerful about going to a space in which everyone, including adults, has agreed to pretend, to play to some degree. In general, the Ren Faire scene felt like the point in the book in which the plot jumpstarted. The narrative sped up and felt kinetic and full of potential in a way it hadn’t before.

read more: Frankenstein Adaptations Are Almost Never Frankenstein Adaptations

As for the other parts of the American road trip narrative, it struck me in reading your comments that I have not been to almost all of the places that they visit in Wayward Son, which is interesting given my earlier rant about the brand of escapism I enjoyed as a child Harry Potter fan who had never been to England. (Reading Rowell’s books have taught me a lot about Nebraska, which I would love to visit. I recently read her graphic novel Pumpkinheads, which is set at a Nebraskan pumpkin patch, and it made me realize how, as a native New Englander, I erroneously ascribed certain Traditional Fall Practices solely to New England.)

Natalie: To be fair, I think most Americans (or at least coastal ones, like you and California-bred me) are raised to regard fall as very much belonging to the East Coast what with the leaves and the apple picking and such. So I’ll have to check out Pumpkinheads to disabuse myself of that notion as well!

You’re so right about the plot jumpstarting at the faire, because it was a site of so much concentrated pretend and delight in play. Maybe our quartet will find that they need to locate a similar space in England in the next book?!

Supporting characters: How did Penelope and Agatha grow (or not) as characters?

Natalie: I’m not sure if either grew on her own within her own arc; with Penny, I was especially waiting for her to be shown the error of her ways in looking down on Normals, as it seemed like the book was building to that. Then again, that kind of deep-seated self-reliance (which occasionally manifests as know-it-all arrogance) wouldn’t necessarily go away from just one adventure; so I guess it’s more realistic for her to need to experience more of the world beyond Watford before she fully grasps that while magicians are special, they’re not the be-all, end-all. To that end, one of my favorite moments in the book was when Penny and Agatha realized they could command magic without speaking and by drawing on one another. I’m excited to see how this brings them closer together—and likely on a different magickal level than Baz or Simon can grasp—in the third book.

Kayti: Same. I loved the big fight scene that saw Penny and Agatha holding hands, walking out of the fire like some kind of dude witchhunter’s worst fear. I didn’t think it was particularly earned, character-wise, as we didn’t really get to see these two talk things out. The book began with Penny trying to insert herself into Agatha’s California life, against Agatha’s express wishes. Penny disrespects so many of the boundaries Agatha has communicated to her, and, even though Agatha obviously ends up needing Penny and co., it’s not really addressed.

read more: How Harry Potter Shaped Modern Internet Fandom

I liked Penny’s storyline in Wayward Son, even if I wish we had gotten more of it. I liked that we got to see more of her relationship with Baz, and that her “deep-seated self-reliance” (which is a great way of putting it) is challenged. I think she’s the character who gets the most development here; Micah’s words seem to get through to her and, by the end of the book, she is relying on people a bit more. On the Agatha front, I was disappointed to see Agatha fall back into a world of magic/rigid external structure after she chose a different life for herself at the end of Carry On.

Natalie: I’d say that aside from Simon, Agatha is surprisingly the character with the darkest and most nuanced outlook on the Chosen One narrative—especially since she spent her formative years believing she was the reward for Simon saving the world. Yet I wanted to see more of that anger/frustration from Agatha, who instead seemed rather apathetic (though she got in a few good snarky comebacks) about her limited prospects in California. I wanted her to lay into Penny for ignoring her boundaries!

Looking Forward to Book Three

Do you think Simon will get his magic back in the third book? Do you want him to?

Natalie: Simon seemed to do fine without being able to command magic in this book, thanks to the wings and tail and his general MO of acting like a bat out of hell in battle. I would be curious to see him develop his relationship to magic in what I assume will be the conclusion of this trilogy: having gone from being the manifestation of magic to having to rely on his friends for every little thing, hopefully there’s a way he can learn to exist parallel to it.

Kayti: Yeah, I like that. In some ways, the NowNext crew’s efforts to transplant magic into a non-magickal creature seem to foreshadow a potential choice for Simon: would he choose to get his magic back if he had the option? I’d like to see him develop an identity and broader skillset outside of magic. His inability to properly take care of himself in Wayward Son is not a result of his lack of magic, but rather his mental illness, which I think is a reality Rowell does a good job emphasizing, even if Simon himself can’t see it.

Natalie: Good point. I think that at times I failed to recognize that as a mental illness issue and instead regarded Simon entirely through the lens of magic—i.e., much the way his friends do.

What do you think has happened at Watford???

Kayti: I don’t know! Why didn’t I let you answer this question first?!

Natalie: I might have chosen to answer these questions in a certain order for this very reason…

Kayti: Very Slytherin of you.

Natalie: I keep wanting to be Ravenclaw, and then the Slytherin just takes over in moments like these...

Kayti: I am the opposite! I am a Ravenclaw who wants to be a Slytherin.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect that Penny, Simon, and Baz will face some consequences for their careless actions in Wayward Son, though that doesn’t seem to be what the emergency at Watford is alluding to. I wonder if it might have something to do with the vampire community, as they played such an important role in Wayward Son and are obviously tied to Baz, which would force him and Simon to face some realities they have thus far been able to avoid. Whatever it is, I am happy to be heading back to England.

read more: What TV Networks Still Don't Understand About Fandom

Natalie: I definitely think it’s some crisis that’s mostly been running parallel to the events of Wayward Son, though I wouldn’t be surprised if their actions in middle America (and the aforementioned outing via Ren Faire battle) had some impact.

Considering that the trio were all at least a year out of their time at Watford at the start of the book, it would be really interesting if the crisis at Watford is something about which they’re completely out of the loop—if going back to a place where they lived for years is nearly as foreign as stepping on American soil.

How did you feel about that ending?

Natalie: I read this entire book expecting it to be concluding a duology, so even when we got to the ostensible cliffhanger of an ending I initially thought maybe it was meant to be open-ended—that Simon and Baz would or wouldn’t resolve their individual issues, that there would always be an emergency to draw their attention away from fixing their relationship. That would have felt a bit too unsatisfying for me. Now that we know there’s a third book in the works, I’m more onboard with ending on a “to be continued…”

Kayti: As I got closer to the ending, I think I began to realize that this would not be the end of the series, but I still expected more from this ending: more of an emotional confrontation, of some kind, even if it ended in Simon and Baz breaking up. Simon’s intention to break up with Baz stated in the very beginning of the book felt a bit like a Chekhov’s gun that never went off.

Natalie: You’re right! The fact that they didn’t address anything about their relationship nagged at me—like, even if they’re as bad at being together as they each seem to think, it seemed truly surprising that after nearly dying a half-dozen times over they decided to stay in this weird cautious detente.

What do you want to see explored in the next book?

Kayti: I was expecting the question of Simon’s parentage to play more of a role in Wayward Son—if not in Agatha inadvertently giving Team Snow the information about Lucy that would probably allow Penny or Baz to put the pieces together, then in Simon wondering more about it himself. I’m still not clear how much he knows about The Mage’s machinations. Does he realize that the Mage was his biological father?

I’d also like to learn more about Baz’s family. We get hints of him in Carry On, most especially his Aunt Fiona, who is a force to be reckoned with in the fandom world. How has Baz’s relationship with Simon affecting his relationship with his family, if it has? Is he close with his siblings?

read more: Checking In On Harry Potter Canon

Natalie: I… completely forgot that Simon doesn’t know everything about the Mage’s plan, so yes I would like to see this resolution as well.

I’d like to see each of the characters struggle with fitting into a post-Watford world in adulthood: Agatha with some righteous anger, Penny examining her magickal privileges, and Simon and Baz comparing their relative support systems in the form of family.

I’d also like to see the magickal world change. Wayward Son proved that there are some cracks in how the magicians harnessed magic and built their identity around it; but it seems like in some ways they need to get with the times. Like, now that Simon is no longer the Chosen One, how does that affect an entire magickal world that was half-expecting to get wiped out at any time?

Kayti: Yes to Agatha’s righteous anger and Penny’s examination of her magickal privilege!

The Final Question

How do you think Wayward Son compares to Carry On?

Natalie: Carry On was so clearly in conversation with Harry Potter and Chosen One narratives—and subverted those story beats so brilliantly, from how spells are constructed to the Mage’s self-fulfilling prophecy—that it feels like a complete book.

Wayward Son felt like it didn’t know what kind of story it was: part culture-clash tour of magickal creatures of the U.S., part interrogation of its own established magic systems. And maybe that was by design! The characters are figuring out who they are now that they’ve broken the standard Chosen One narrative, so it stands to reason that the sequel would similarly be looking for itself. But it felt very much like a middle book; I will probably enjoy it more on a reread someday once I have the hindsight of knowing how the story ends.

read more: This Is How You Lose the Time War Solves the Time Traveler's Wife Problem

Kayti: Yeah, I am interested to see how I feel about this book after I read the third one in the trilogy, but I am also a big believer in all respective works of a larger series (whether it is in book, TV, or movie form) having to stand on their own, which I am not sure that Wayward Son does. It’s possible that Wayward Son was never going to be as revelatory a reading experience as Carry On, and the ways in which it used some of the best qualities of fanfiction culture to challenge, expand, and contextualize some of the problematic and/or unexplored aspects of the Harry Potter series, in particular when it comes to trauma.

That being said, I think Rowell’s ambitions with this one—to explore depression and what comes after The Chosen One wins—is just as brilliant an idea as what she was working with in Carry On, but one that wasn’t given the time or space to be adequately explored.

Natalie: Really well put. I think we were all expecting more drawing upon fanfiction culture (something that I will note that Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow the Ninth succeeds in doing as a follow-up to Gideon the Ninth) when instead this is an entirely different animal. If anything, I would love to see Any Way the Wind Blows build on Wayward Son’s conversation about mental health and moving on, so that the third book is closer to the second than the first.

Wayward Son is now available for purchase via Amazon, Macmillan, or your local independent bookstore.

Natalie Zutter is a playwright and pop culture critic who will talk about fanfiction until you spell her silent, and is very much due for a Fangirl reread. Read more of her work here.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature Natalie Zutter Kayti Burt

Oct 17, 2019

Young Adult Fiction

Fantasy Books

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emilykatie · 5 years ago

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20 Dad Things to Do on Father's Day

Make this Father’s Day Gifts delivery a great one with these 20 pop-approved games, projects and activities. Getting messy is definitely required!

In her job as a physician's assistant, my wife has been required to work in the E.R., get ready for 6 a.m. surgeries, and be on call — all things that have led to a rewarding career but nothing close to what our parents called a “normal work schedule.”

As such, it’s often just our two sons and me, the three Vrabel men, waking up to a day full of endless possibility and promise. And these days tend to begin the same way: with me making breakfast and asking, “So what’s on the agenda today?” and the boys responding with…well, abject silence, since they’re upstairs furiously Minecrafting while I talk to a stack of speedily cooling Belgian waffles.

Given the opportunity, my sons would be pretty well satisfied devoting one to 48 hours of their day to Minecraft. In these cases, it falls to me to devise the plan for the day, an activity or outing that not only has enough appeal to peel them away from their 8-bit fantasyland but also accomplishes the following: 1) enriches their lives; 2) helps them grow into wise, fulfilled adults; 3) is mentally active; 4) is physically active; 5) falls within my state’s laws of personal safety; 6) doesn’t cost $20,000; 7) is something I wouldn’t mind doing either. So, you know, no pressure.

Every parent wants to fill his children’s hours with activities that will empower and enrich them; every parent has stared at a wall repeating, “Yeah, I have no idea what that is.” To that end—and to celebrate Happy Fathers Day Gift to India online delivery —here’s an incomplete list of DAD things to do with your kids, as written by actual dads, prominent bloggers, musicians, and me, a humble writer-slash-Belgian-waffle aficionado.

1. Play in the street.

Sam Weinman, a New York City editor and author of Win at Losing: How Our Biggest Setbacks Can Lead to Our Greatest Gains, approaches parenting with this idea: “Allow them to be the conduit to your younger self. I like to remind my boys that being a kid never gets old.” His go-to? Dragging out two goals, waiting for traffic to subside, and playing a little hockey in the street. He’s even turned it into an annual event: a round-robin tournament with four kids and a dad on each team. Winners take home a replica of the Stanley Cup trophy—which is actually a popcorn maker. “It’s arguably the highlight of the year.”

2. Introduce them to a record player. Now, granted, this isn’t for everybody: It doesn’t always work to have a 2-year old’s peanut butter–covered hands around a precision device that doesn’t play if you bump it. But some years ago, I ventured into the attic to retrieve my old and spider-infested collection of records, and on many nights since, we’ve been charmed by this relic from the past. We page through the massive art, make jokes about bizarre 1970s-era artist names (“Meat Loaf?” my eighth-grader said one night, shaking his head in bemused disbelief. “Why don’t people make any sense?”), and indulge in the novel idea of listening to something straight through, instead of fast-forwarding or commanding Alexa to play something different.

RELATED: How to Spend More Quality Time With Your Child

3. Invent new cereals. According to my 6-year-old, I have been eating Cocoa Pebbles incorrectly for decades. He told me this while retrieving two other boxes of cereal, from which he created an innovative new breakfast called CocoaLuckyTrix. For the week after, we started breakfast by engaging in some cereal alchemy, producing such inventions as Cinnamon Toast Flakes, Rice Krispiespuffs, and my personal favorite, Marshmallow Apple Pebbles.

4. Learn which colas can explode. Everybody knows that Diet Coke + Mentos = geysers of carbonated awesomeness. But though it’s the most famous reactive liquid, Diet Coke isn’t the only drink that will activate on contact with Mentos and make a mess of your kitchen! Head to the grocery store and grab a sample of other sodas. (This is for science, so the cheap bottles work just fine.) If you’re feeling especially MythBuster-y, tape several pieces of poster board together, mark off heights, and see which beverage creates the greatest geyser. (Hint: Don’t skimp on the diet root beer.)

5. Send screens back in time. If your kids are into video games anyway, bond with and/or horrify them by showing them the ancient video games you had to deal with as a child. There are a few ways to do this: You can get an Atari simulator at Walmart for about $40, and Nintendo has released new (and tiny) “Classic Edition” plug-and-play versions of its NES and Super Nintendo consoles. The NES Classic Edition comes preloaded with 30 games, including Super Mario Bros. 3, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Dr. Mario, and Castlevania.

The Super NES Classic has Street Fighter II, Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, and Super Metroid. Best part: Both let you save points, so hitting the power button no longer means obliterating your progress! Bonus: If your kids are into Minecraft, the graphics and gameplay on a Super Nintendo will seem like some impossible magic from the future.

RELATED: Want to Feel Old? Watch This Little Girl Try to Run a Gameboy

6. Climb your city. Troy Carpenter, dad and Instagram star @redblueox, has an altitude-themed go-to for his oldest: visiting monuments and ascending to urban heights. He’ll take his kids to Indianapolis’s downtown Soldiers & Sailors monument or figure out which days of the week he can visit the top floor of other skyscrapers. If you’re in a city with older kids, finding the highest heights can be a perfect mix of urban adventuring and making sure they get enough exercise to sleep well that night.

7. Create a spy network. Few concepts capture a kid’s imagination more than secret messages, which is what compelled Coy Bowles, guitarist with the Zac Brown Band, to fashion a game out of a quirk in his house’s design. “We have a 4-inch tall pipe that connects one recording-studio room to another,” he says. “Its purpose is to pass cables through the wall, but my daughter and I now use it for fun.” Bowles and his budding spy swap messages and toys through it. “It’s cute to see her so curious about what’s happening on the other side of the wall.” No pipe? Hide messages anywhere: in drawers, behind bookshelves, in the vegetable crisper, inside a favorite book.

8. Invent stories (with a little help). Take a few sheets of paper, cut them into squares, and write a single and possibly hilarious word on each. Biscuits. Alien. Rhinoceros. Havarti cheese. Then ask your kids to make up a tale, occasionally flipping a square over and adding the word on it to the story. It’s 100 percent free, 102 percent imaginative, and customizable to you and your family. (Translated: “You can use whichever ridiculous words you want.”) It’s this strategy that once made my 6-year-old spin a fantastic yarn about a space pirate who uses lightning to fight a volcano inside an evil toilet. (Full disclosure: His stories always seem to include a toilet.)

9. Go playground shopping. If you live in an area with multiple playgrounds, turn your travels into a piratical expedition. Make a playground map, mark the spots you want to hit, and devise a plan with your kids for exploring each one. Make lists of the best parts of each—which one has the twistiest slide, the biggest fountains, the most imposing jungle gyms—and revisit as needed.

RELATED: 7 Unique Playgrounds for Kids

10. Bust the kids. Mike Spohr is the editor of BuzzFeed Parents, coauthor of The Toddler Survival Guide, and inventor of the Police Officer game. “My kids ride their bikes until I (the police officer) pull them over—for speeding, to ask if they’ve seen an on-the-run thief, or any of a thousand other scenarios. They want me to differentiate it every time, which gets really hard!” His son is usually apologetic; his daughter sometimes gets sassy. But all parties go home happy.

11. Fail to walk a straight line. Block out your senses by closing your eyes and plugging your ears, and try to walk 100 steps in a straight line. It will not work. You will end up 50 yards to the left, or back where you started, or in the middle of a mud puddle—but never ever straight ahead.

https://www.parents.com/holiday/fathers-day/traditions/fathers-day-activity-ideas/

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i-globalone · 5 years ago

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CoinDesk will be on the ground in Davos from Jan. 20–24 chronicling all things crypto at the annual gathering of the world’s economic and political elite. Below is the first edition of our pop-up newsletter, CoinDesk Confidential: Davos. Subscribe below.Get your Fourth Industrial Revolution hardhats on – it’s time to ponder the slew of problems ailing today’s global economy!Hello, it’s Monday, Jan. 20, 2020, the preamble to the 50th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum begins today. I’m Zack Seward, managing editor of CoinDesk, and I’ll be your guide to all things blockchain and crypto at this yearly confab of global leaders and their many hangers-on.Weather Forecast: Fresh snowfall on Saturday and Sunday has the skiers happy. ⛷For Monday, a high of 25°F (-3°C), low of 13°F (-10°C). Chance of precipitation: 10 percent. Setting the StageBlockchain is more prominent on the WEF agenda than in years past but that’s not to say the technology will have a starring role in the Congress Centre itself. The thing to remember about Davos is that there’s the WEF’s main stage (there are 53 heads of state this year, according to the WEF) and dozens of side events.Sustainability is a major theme of this year’s event, with climate change activist Greta Thunberg arguably being the top speaker (U.S. President Donald Trump is also speaking). And while the WEF programming on Monday is only opening ceremonies, other events will already be in full swing. Don’t Miss…The Global Blockchain Business Council is a partner of CoinDesk Confidential: Davos. Visit us at the GBBC Lounge at Hotel Europe on the Promenade.Here are the three crypto-related events on Monday worth knowing about:1️⃣ Cryptocurrency exchange LATOKEN is hosting the Blockchain Economic Forum at Guggerbach Hall. It kicks off at 15:30 CET with a keynote from Chris Giancarlo, the former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Hot on the heels of his newly organized efforts to push for a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC), this session will be one to watch.2️⃣ Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys chief Joe Lubin is headlining CryptoMountain Rocks at Hotel Morosani Schweizerhof. Kicking off at 14:00 CET, this event promises ample discussion of decentralized finance (DeFi), stablecoins and what to expect in 2020. It’s going to be deeper in the weeds for ethereum fans on the slopes.3️⃣ The other event is clearly a can’t-miss about which I am not biased at all: the CoinDesk Confidential: Davos Kick-Off Reception. This party starts at 19:00 CET at the GBBC lounge at the Hotel Europe. We’re booked solid but make sure you click Tuesday’s newsletter for tidbits on any notable happenings. We have quite a guest list already including MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen, ex-CFTC chair Chris Giancarlo and many more. Sound SmartIf you find yourself on a ski lift with a world leader, here are a few conversation starters. WEF insiders know these things to be true:The specter of Libra has been a catalytic event among the world’s central bankers.Expedited efforts from the People’s Bank of China to develop the digital yuan have raised geopolitical eyebrows.As such, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will dominate the conversation this year.CBDCs are government-administered, digital versions of sovereign currencies (but don’t have to be decentralized like real cryptocurrencies) and are a necessarily reactive development. The way central bankers see it, a widely used supranational stablecoin (be it Libra or something else) would undermine their ability to influence the economy through monetary policy. “CBDC” should be a busy square on the WEF 2020 bingo card. Watch this space. 🥇🥈🥉Thought Leaderboard 🥇🥈🥉We’re handing out gongs to the brainiest crypto thought-leaders at Davos this year. We’ll be tracking the usual suspects’ panel appearances, briefings and media spots, so email me at [email protected] if you’ve noticed someone’s overwhelming brilliance… Related ReadingLast week CoinDesk brought you a plethora of Davos-related content for upping your conversation game.Bonus Feature:🎿CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen was at the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz last week, where crypto luminaries like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss took a (brief) break from skiing to discuss where bitcoin fits in the currency Cold War.Double Bonus:📺Leigh, Michael and I do a quick rundown of what we’ll be exploring this week: Media DietCoinDesk Confidential on Telegram for the latest on-the-ground updates from Crypto Davos.unDavos on Telegram (invite only) for updates from those still working their way up the badge-system hierarchy. We might be able to help with an invite…Wall Street Journal WEF live blog for Davos dispatches from the financial paper of record.Quartz Davos Daily Brief newsletter for the above, but less stodgy.Politico’s Davos Playbook for a spicy-yet-comprehensive telling of the confab’s political angles.Micah White’s strategy briefings for notes on the Occupy founder’s latest efforts to build an “activist cryptocurrency.” Who Won Davos Crypto Twitter?Don’t worry, XRP fans, Brad can afford to pay for his own speaking spots: Seen on the Promenade 👀For the WEF Annual Meeting, the main street of Davos is transformed into “the Promenade,” with local shops temporarily taken over by internet giants, sovereign wealth funds and other businesses looking to shill their wares to the global elite.We took a stroll Sunday night as work crews were putting the finishing touches on signage and screen displays. A few notes:Crypto liquidity provider XBTO was the only crypto brand with signage: Last year, a number of crypto companies had “activations” on the Promenade. 2019’s big fish, ethereum venture studio ConsenSys, which had its own Ethereal Lounge on the main drag, is nowhere to be seen in 2020.The cryptography killer is here: A quantum computer was being set up at the IBM lounge on the Promenade. With “quantum supremacy” being declared by Google late last year, the computing power behind these machines may one day pose an existential threat to cryptographically secured systems. Read up here and here.Big ad-spend at Zürich Flughafen: Greeting visitors touching down at ZRH this weekend: a big old ad touting Bitcoin Suisse’s crypto-finance chops. We wonder how much they paid for the privilege… Office of the DayWe’re holding it down at the unofficial CoinDesk Davos bureau this morning before we hit the icy streets. Fun fact: the CoinDesk squad is staying at a former sanatorium up the hill from the main drag. Great views, great bunk beds! 📍Pin DropFind CoinDesk today at…The Blockchain Economic Forum starting at 15:00 CET, and then at our very own CoinDesk Confidential launch party at Hotel Europe from 19:00 CET onward. Contact UsThe CoinDesk team on the ground in Davos is:Michael Casey – @mikejcasey on Twitter and TelegramZack Seward – @zackseward on Twitter and TelegramLeigh Cuen – @La__Cuen on TwitterJoanne Po – @JoannePo on Twitter and TelegramAli Powell – @aliknievel on Twitter and TelegramAaron Stanley – @AaronWStanley on Twitter, @AaronStanley on TelegramAre you here in the mountains with a hot tip that simply must be shared? Were you unable to make it this year and have a request that would assuage your FOMO?Get in touch, say hi!Till tomorrow, —Zack “Let’s Play Hockey” SewardDisclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

http://m.globalone.com.np/2020/01/coindesk-at-wef-2020-crypto-themes-to.html

#SEO #Local SEO training

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bubblesoccer23-blog · 6 years ago

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Baseball - The Metaphor of Life

Introduction: As the PAURA 2010 has kicked off on June 11, this year at South Africa, there is a great feeling of euphoria and enthusiasm all over the world about the games that encompasses the planet earth by media, news channels, news papers and Television sets. No doubt you like football and in India too there is a great fervor among the many populace to watch the game even though Indian football team never qualified for the biggest football event of the World. We all love our heroes, the demi-gods like Pele, Maradona, Beckham, Ronaldo, Kaka, Wayne Rooney and many others. Looking closely around the game and how the players are positioned, their role on the football ground and the way the game proceeds, one cannot help although find a great metaphor of Life in it. That's what exactly this article is all about. It is a humble dedication and salutation to greatest and most popular games of the world.

The Field: Soccer match is played on a field of 90 to a hundred and twenty meters length and 45 to 90 meters for width. On both sides we see the goal posts. Your personal team which includes 11 players will be aiming to score the objective in the opposite goal post. The opposite team would be looking to defend that and rather counter attacking your goal place to score a goal. In life to you have to have goals. Your are directed is to score goals. You cannot sit passively and watch whilst the outside circumstances counter attack you and make one purpose after the other pushing you on the back foot. You have to be proactive. You got defend sometimes but also attack. You still have to know where you have to reach, where you have to score a goal. Your goals are just like the lighthouse for the ship which helps them to help on the right path. Remember we are all placed on the soccer field by Lord Almighty. We all are players on the field, we will have to play our part, and we have to be proactive and learn our aims and do everything to reach our goals. Our life becomes exciting, and then we find meaning to this everyday living. So that's the first metaphorical lesson we glean within the soccer game. We are all players on the field of living and we have to score goals. We have to be proactive in relation to our goals.

Positions: As the soccer games kicks off, the very 11 players of a team are positioned on the field depending on the various roles they play. We can learn a lot of things through the different positions they take and the various roles many people play on the soccer field.

Goalie: Near the goal article is placed the goalie, who plays one of the most important role in a very Bubblesoccer. He is there to defend the goals this opponent team hits in the net. Usually he has formulated the special ability, alacrity and alertness to prevent the opposite workforce from hitting a goal in the net. He is like the chemical substance wall around our houses that prevents trespassers. In every area of your life we have to play the role of a goalie when it comes to guarding ourselves by being hit by negative thoughts. Our minds are like the main goal post. The outer circumstances, people and events can certainly try to impregnate our minds with negative thoughts. We should try to be00 a Goalie at such times and see that our intellects are not invaded by the thoughts that can pull us decrease and demoralize us. What happens to a team whose Hockey goalie is not able to defend the goals being put in the net. They is weakened and its focus from scoring goals is definitely switched to defending goals. It is demoralized and is fast moving toward defeat. That's exactly the picture of a one that does defend himself or herself from negative thoughts. The person will be weakened and will divert from his or her goals about pursuing excellence and succumb to defeat in life. So performing the role of a goalie in life is very important, we should meet for defend ourselves from negative thoughts.

Back positioned Players: Amongst players of Soccer, the Goalie is not the only one who protects the goals. There are some players positioned at the back like the Heart Fullback, Left-Right Fullback and the Wingback who also assistance in defending and marking and attacking the Forward people from the opposite team. The roles that these players located at the back play, is the role that reminds us that in every area of your life many times it is important to be on the back foot and whenever the actual tide is against us we should be able to keep some of our calm. We should not be surprised that many times there are persons, circumstances and events that will seem to pressurize us make us behind. When you venture out in the sea in a dispatch, you are bound to encounter storms. That's life! "Ships while in the harbor are safe; but that's not what Ships are meant for. micron says William Shedd. Ships are supposed to go out and project into the deep sea and fight it out against the storms which come against it. Many times we have to be players at the back, counselling ourselves, our principles, our values, our faith, and even our lives from being pushed behind, from getting bogged down. Many times there are people or circumstances that can drive us to quit. Many students encounter failures, so do quite a few professionals and businesspeople at such times we are attracted to give up but here the role of the players inserted at the back comes forth. We have to mark what is that is scary us, go to the source of the trouble and defend ourselves. Regularly we may have to defend ourselves from the wrong company who all pulls us down, wrong habits that corrode existence and wrong actions that reap the harvest associated with bad fruits. The Bible says, "When the opposing forces comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will probably raise up a standard against him. " That typical is the players who play the game of Soccer put at the back.

Midfielders: Now there are players also positioned in the Middle of the football pitch. Some of them are the Left together with Right Midfielders, Defensive Midfielders and the Central Midfielder. These kind of players have the duty of game-making. They sometimes fight as well as make the game and then pass it out to members positioned forward. In our lives also there is a time when you have to sit and make out a strategy so that it becomes practical for us to reach and achieve our goals. At these times we have to be the game makers, the Midfielders. There is a great deal of scope in our lives to sit and plan as well as organize our lives. We have to resort to things like Time Management Preparation, Goal Setting and writing the mission of our lives. Often we have to prepare ourselves by learning different skills and also techniques so that it is convenient for us to move ahead to arrive at our goals. At such times we are playing the particular roles of the game-makers, we are playing the role regarding Midfielders. Midfielders play an important role on the field with regard to their team, without them the players that play forward who have to attain goals against the opposition would be rendered helpless. They won't include anything at their disposal to go ahead and shoot or ranking.

Players positioned as Forwards: Finally let us look at the competitors who are positioned forward on the soccer field. When the Goaltender defends goals for the team, the players positioned behind protect from attackers and the midfielders make the game, the Ahead carry the ball into the opposition's net. The players that happen to be positioned forward are Deep Lying Forward, Centre Frontward and the Winger. The main role of these players is to punch. They are always on the attacking mode. Once they have the baseball in their possession, they seek to put it across the Goalie with the opposition team into the net. When we also defend our live from negative attitude and thinking, when we defend yourself from wrong practices, principles and people, when we prepare our self for the opportunities that lie before us then there will probably come a time where our goals, our aims could well be as clear as the Football goalpost and we would be within the position to hit and score. So in life we would find opportunities before us lying wide awake that would guide us to hit at our goals. It is possible that you will miss many hits, you may hit and miss by just a mile but you got to keep hitting back till putting the ball across the Goalie into the net. In life we come across failures, many times we miss read opportunities, many times most of us commit errors but we got to get up, dust our-self and hit again. A Japanese Proverb says, "Fall down seven times; get up eight. " Scoring an objective into the net comes through immense practice and patience and now we should also inculcate these two qualities when we want to reach our own aims and goals in life. So it is important role that the strikers positioned forward play, for they give finishing touch towards the game.

Conclusion: Friends, in the end I would like to encourage every body to go ahead and enjoy the FIFA 2010. But Rankings also encourage you to look at the philosophical side of the video game, the metaphor that the game of Soccer presents. Could it excite and enthuse you with courage, assurance and capacity to enjoy, explore and elevate your life one stage further. May you hit and reach your goals in life, could you emerge winners and even when you feel that you have misplaced remember there's always next time. The next FIFA in 2014 on Brazil.

#Bubble Soccer #Bubblesoccer

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scarlettlarue12-blog · 7 years ago

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Lego Marvel's Avengers Walkthrough.

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