#i still heard Industrial Noises up there but i used my noise cancelling headphones

[moomeecore]

i found a book abt the anti lawn movement at the library & decided to sit out in my yard & read it. but ironically there was a neverending barage of power tool noises making it difficult to focus. so i walked to a nature park near me in order to escape the dreaded sounds. almost stopped at the mowed picnic table area bc i hate walking but fortunately pushed forward and made myself walk up an annoying hill to an area that is a preservation of a native oak savanna & sat down against a tree near the edge of the path & did my reading there. and honest to god that was a 100/10 experience. there was something so powerful abt being in a preserve for a locally native habitat while reading abt the impacts homeowners can have on native plant preservation! it powered up my energy towards my life mission (evangelize abt enviormentally sustainable gardening to every single person who comes within a 10 ft radius of me) by like. 15 points. also a deer walked up to me and that was super cool

[andtheghost]

01/07/24 - The third (or fourth) breakdown

I used to live with a guy. Let’s call him Warhammer. He was LOUD. Not even just the kind of loud where he needed to constantly be heard (although he was that, too) but the kind of loud where he would be talking at his natural volume and you could hear him in a crowd from the other side of the room. And he had a really bad case of ADHD. So he would be playing a video game, watching a YouTube video on his phone, and playing DnD over discord all at the same time.

I’m his polar opposite in that regard. I’m typically pretty quiet, and I need a lot of quiet time or I start to get… grumpy. I put all of my focus on a single thing at a time, and I like to do so in a peaceful environment. We’re talking candle burning, comfy pajamas on, one of those ambient music playlists with the forest sounds playing in the background.

And sometimes I may have fantasized about dumping him feet first into a very slow wood chipper. Because I had to wear my noise canceling headphones, and unless I turned the volume up so high it completely counteracted the effect, I could still hear his obnoxiously loud voice over my nice peaceful ambient sounds. From a different room.

This was basically every day, slowly chipping away, along with a few other things. I’m not quite sure why the volume is always the thing I remember the most vividly, when there were other things, things that would probably bother most people a lot more. Regardless, I never said anything about any of it.

That was his home too. I didn’t feel like I had any right to tell him not to do what he wants in his home. Asking him to talk quieter would have been about as useful as asking me to talk louder (I will, for about two seconds, then I’ll go back to my normal volume without realizing it, and for those two seconds I’ll feel horribly uncomfortable because it feels like I’m yelling at you) but I could have asked him if he could turn the volume down. Or hell, maybe he could even turn at least the video game volume off. I don’t think the sound was strictly necessary. And it wouldn’t hurt to ask, right?

But I never said anything, and I just got more and more bitter, and eventually I left. The way I left was not ideal. And it certainly wasn’t fair. This was definitely not a simple case of “I was quite and you were unaware,” I did some shitty things near the end that I’m not particularly proud of. But I still can’t make myself feel too bad about it, because there’s a LOT more to that story, things I don’t think he realized I knew, and if I had been in a healthier headspace I never would have went out with him in the first place. If I’m being honest, I think the aftermath was karma for both of us.

I do that, though. I stay quiet about things that should be talked about, expect the other person to bring them up, then I get bitter and angry and hurt when they don’t, I start getting passive aggressive, and then I just cut ties and leave without any warning.

I brought that particular situation up because it was different than normal. I never had any feelings for him outside of friendship. We were both weirdos, the difference being that he wore his strangeness like a suit of armor to attract attention and I tried desperately to hide it from anyone who I didn’t think could handle it (pretty much everyone). We were similar in the ways that mattered to me at the time, and we got along better than I had gotten along with anyone in a long time, and we had known each other for a while so I got to see how well he treated his ex.

Also, he was interested in me. Honestly, at that point that may have been all it took. Everything else was probably icing on a cake made of industrial waste. As previously mentioned, unhealthy headspace. I was lonely and he was interested, and interesting, and I thought the feelings would develop if I spent enough time with him. I learned that that’s not how it works.

The feelings are either there, screaming in my face, beating against my skull, demanding that I don’t turn away no matter how many times I try, (and trust me, I try. I try so so hard), or they’re just.

Not.

And they just weren’t there. I tried breaking up with him three times. Every time he would give me reasons I’m being unreasonable. Calm down you’re being dramatic, you’re paranoid, seeing things that aren’t there, jumping to conclusions. All things I’m prone to doing. I would back down for a few days, a week, and try again with the same results.

Finally I broke up with him via changing my relationship status on Facebook and went to Texas. I also left a massive, I mean MASSIVE mess behind when I left. I left my entire life there, anything I couldn’t fit in my backpack.

It should be noted that over the last seven years I’ve had several mental breakdowns. As if I need to break down completely, but it has to happen in intervals, otherwise I would probably go insane and kill myself. Am I allowed to say that here? Oh well, I said it anyway.

That was the third breakdown. Maybe the fourth.

TBC…

[pufflyhallows]

Picks & Pens (II)

Hello! I’m back with another chapter for this one. This AU is so cool for me, I hope you guys like it.

Chapter Two: The Day I Died

Warnings: language

Word count: 2,4k

a/n: I still don’t know shit about press lol

Mrs. Lennox hadn’t e-mailed you in three days. Didn’t seem much time for the outside eye, but you knew it was strange. You hoped there was nothing wrong with the interview, as you had already started working on your questions and also had plans for the extra cash coming in soon. There was a local artist whose paintings had a quite fun twist on pop culture and you liked to support him. Your living room could use some more color too.

Just when you finally had all your focus directed at the writing of your questions, Jessie popped up behind your laptop with a questioning look.

“What?” you asked impatiently, slightly irritated that you had been interrupted.

“You’re too quiet today.”

“I’m working?”

“Must be something really important to make you miss Kevin’s afternoon rage. What is it?”

“Oh, I missed it? What was it this time? The vending machine ran out of peanuts?”

“Nope. The construction site is ‘making too much noise’.”

“He means the construction site ten floors below us?”

“Yeah. You can’t even hear it!” Jessie shook her head. “Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. What are you working on?”

“An interview,” you closed your laptop.

“Ooh… is it top secret?” she wiggled her eyebrows. “Is it an A-List celebrity? Oh my God, it’s Tom Hardy, isn’t it?”

“What? No,” you chuckled. “I’ll tell you when I get the confirmation. It’s a bit uncertain for now.”

“But can you give me a hint? Like… male or female? Actor or singer? Politician, maybe? A TV host?! Give me something, Y/N!”

“Male,” you said. “And that’s all I’m giving you.”

“Male… Hm…” she squeezed her eyes. “Are you sure it’s not Tom Hardy? You know I would definitely pretend to be your assistant and sneak in that interview, right?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t doubt that. But no, Jessie, it is not Tom Hardy.”

“What a bummer. Well, good luck on the confirmation. I need to go back to that puppy coat article.”

“Puppy coat?”

“Yeah, you know… Coats for puppies. It’s quite trendy now in the winter. People still need to take their dogs out for walkies, after all.”

“Please tell me you’re putting pictures on that article.”

“You bet I am,” she smiled. “Comes out tomorrow, probably. Check the website at noon.”

“I definitely will.”

When Jessie walked away, you heard the infamous ding from your computer, announcing a new e-mail. You quickly opened the device again and clicked on the e-mail icon. It was from Brenda.

Mrs. Lennox wants to grab coffee downstairs with you at 4 p.m.

Perfect. Probably an update on the scheduling.

You replied confirming your attendance to the casual meeting and looked at your watch. It was still 3:35 p.m.

Your train of thought for the interview had been lost already, thanks to Jessie and her curiosity, so you didn’t get back to it right away. Instead, you decided to stretch your legs and walk over to Ben’s desk. He managed to make those twenty five minutes pass quite fast, getting a few laughs out of you in the process. When it was time, you got into the elevator and descended a couple of floors to the coffee shop.

You knew from experience that Sophia Lennox always arrived five minutes after the time she set. She hated waiting for people, but she did not want to make people wait for her for too long. Words you heard from Sophia herself. For that reason, you took the liberty to sit at the most discrete table and wait for her inside. As expected, she appeared after five short minutes and sat in front of you.

“Have you ordered anything yet?” she asked, signaling to the waitress that usually served her table.

You shook your head just as the waitress approached the table.

“Hello, dear. One latte for me and…” Mrs. Lennox looked at you.

“A mocha for me,” you smiled at Sam, the waitress.

“Right away,” she smiled back, walking away.

“I could start this conversation with ‘you’re probably wondering why I asked you to meet me here’, but I know you’re smart enough not to wonder. You know this is about the interview,” Mrs. Lennox started. “And let me get this out of the way and say that it’s very much confirmed. You will be interviewing him. The only issue we’re having is his schedule. He’s a very busy man, apparently. Much busier than I thought.”

You kept on listening, not finding that information surprising.

“It was his birthday a couple of weeks ago and he had taken a break from his usual schedule to celebrate. Now that he’s back, there are some things he needs to take care of before even thinking about interviews. At least, that’s what his manager told me.”

“So no prediction?”

“Actually, yes. There is a prediction, but I don’t think you’re going to like it. He will probably be available between the 15th and the 21st of December. Though it’s no guarantee.”

“Oh! That’s like three weeks from now,” you reflected for a few seconds. “And then it will be quite a hurry to write the article.”

“I know… I felt really tempted to pull the ex-girlfriend card, but you’ve asked me not to and I didn’t.”

“What, you think they would make time for it if they knew?”

“I mean, probably. It’s good press for him too,” you looked down after hearing her words. Of course it’s about press. “But all they know is that it’s for SL Magazine.”

Before you could reply, Sam came back with your orders, placing them on the table.

“Thank you.”

As she walked away, you grabbed your cup of mocha and took a small sip.

“So…” Mrs. Lennox cleared her throat. “Can you do it?”

You knew that was a rhetorical question. There was no way you could backpedal now.

“Yes. But I’d really appreciate it if you managed to get me the 15th or 16th. The sooner, the better.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” your boss sighed, raising her cup at you before taking a sip. “I will try to get the-”

The conversation was interrupted by Mrs. Lennox’s cellphone ringing inside her purse. She reached for it and looked slightly surprised with the name on the screen. “It’s her.”

“Who?” you frowned.

“The manager,” she slid her finger across the screen and put the phone on her ear. “Hello?”

You grabbed your cup with both hands and took a long sip as you watched the conversation.

“I’m great! How about you? Oh, that’s lovely. I believe it was Tuesday, yes. Not at all! I completely understand. Well… um…” Mrs. Lennox looked at you hesitantly before carrying on. “Yes, that’s her.”

The nervousness and apprehension started kicking in. You found yourself almost squeezing the cup between your hands, waiting for your boss to end that call and tell you what was going on.

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” she let out a business laugh. “Oh, that will get a little rushed, don’t you think? No, no. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Miss Dawson. Of course. Bye bye.”

Mrs. Lennox placed her phone on the table and took a deep breath. She looked at you and bit her lower lip thoughtfully.

“What happened?” you asked. “It wasn’t canceled, was it?”

“No! Don’t even say something like that,” she shook her head and waved her hand at you. “Well, his manager is quite good. She looked into SL and found out you work for us, so she wanted to know if, by any chance, you would be the one interviewing him. I wasn’t going to lie, of course, and said yes.”

“Oh...”

“Look, I know this isn’t what you wanted, but it is actually a good thing, Y/N. She said she’ll squeeze us in for next week!”

“Next week?!”

“Isn’t it great? I knew they would make time for you.”

Of course, I’m ‘good press’.

“You have started on the material, right?” Mrs. Lennox asked.

“I have, actually. But I’m still doing research.”

“Okay. You’ll have to hurry a little bit. Miss Dawson said next Wednesday is the perfect day, which means you only have about four days to finish it. And keep in mind that I want to see it before you go, so we should have a little spare time in case you need to make edits,” she stopped to take another sip and you accepted that your weekend was going to be wasted on Sirius Black research. “Do you know her, by the way? The manager.”

“No. He had a different one back then,” you sounded more bitter than you intended, and Mrs. Lennox eyed you for a couple of seconds.

“I won’t ask.”

“Thanks.”

“Well… let’s get to work!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With a glass of red wine on your nightstand and random music videos from YouTube playing on the TV, you typed question after question on your laptop, sitting on your queen sized bed on a Saturday night. It was going to be a big article. Two full pages with three columns of text each, according to Mrs. Lennox. She wanted the narrated type, with you describing even his motioning hands. It was going to be a handful, but you were prepared. You had done it before. This wouldn’t be any different from the Saoirse Ronan one.

As you went through his discography, you listened to all the songs you hadn’t listened before, which meant most of them. After the breakup, you had stopped listening to his music altogether. You only knew the ones that became hits and played in the radio, gas stations, stores, every damn where. It was quite annoying, actually.

You got to the last song of his latest album, released eight months ago: Love Falls. There was no music video, so you paused the TV and clicked on the song on your laptop’s Spotify to listen to it through your headphones.

The lyrics immediately caught your attention.

Have you cried yourself to sleep?

Have you felt this incomplete?

Have you ever cut yourself so deep to see if you still bleed?

Oh, another angsty song. Great.

Do you ever feel wanted?

Do you ever feel needed?

Do you ever feel happy?

Or are you just like me?

What the fuck is he talking about? He’s the artist of the decade! Of course he’s wanted. If there was something that pissed you off about the music industry was when artists tried to be ‘relatable’ in their songs, even if it meant portraying an image that wasn’t necessarily true.

I’m hanging by a thread, a rope, the noose around my neck

I choke, ‘cause every time I’m falling love falls out of me

Right. What about all the girls he’d been with? Every month there were pictures of him partying with someone different and- Well, actually, that was it. Partying. In your research you realized he hadn’t been in a serious relationship since… you.

I'm hardened like a rock, a stone, the brick inside my chest

Alone, 'cause every time I'm falling love falls out of me

Maybe… maybe he wasn’t trying to be relatable. Maybe he wasn’t projecting a fake image. Maybe he did feel like that.

I'll never forget the day I died

Love memories frozen and denied

Flower of my heart withered and dried

You took a very long sip of your wine and wiped your lips with your sweater’s sleeve.

Love falls out of me

And that was it. The song ended. You had gone through his entire discography, listened to every song and watched every music video. Weirdly, apart from the ones that were released when you were still together, that was the first song that made you feel something. The first one you actually enjoyed. It was a really good song, you had to admit. It was raw and vulnerable, something you hadn’t seen in one of his songs since the first two albums.

You played it again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Interesting.”

Mrs. Lennox was reading your material for the interview, with a pen between two fingers, ready to cross out or add a sentence.

You were sitting on the comfy, fluffy chair in front of her table, nervously bouncing your leg as you squeezed your hands together. You hoped she liked what you had prepared because you really wanted to use it.

“Oh, I didn’t know this.” She kept reading, clearly interested. The fact that she hadn’t done any edits yet gave you hope.

A few more minutes went by, no edits, and suddenly she looked up at you. Slowly, she put the sheets of paper down and took off her red cat-eye glasses.

“I’m impressed, Y/N. You really went above and beyond on this. I’m almost certain this is the very first time I didn’t have to edit the material for an interview before approving it.”

“Does that mean…?”

“It’s approved. You can use it. As a matter of fact, you have to use it. It’s perfect!” Mrs. Lennox chuckled. “You go straight to the point and ask exactly what people want to know. Not to mention the small details you’ve picked up on! Well done. This article is going to be amazing.”

You sighed, relieved. “Thank you, Mrs. Lennox. I sure hope so.”

She smiled at you. “And I’m curious to find out the answers.”

“Honestly? Me too.”

“I know,” she nodded, still smiling. “Good thing we won’t have to wait for too long. Tomorrow is the day!”

Mrs. Lennox stood up and handed you back the papers. “You know the deal or should I recap?”

“Please, recap.”

“It’s an intimate interview, as you know. This means that the only people in the room are going to be you and him. All he has tomorrow, besides this interview, is a photoshoot for a radio station or something. It’s supposed to take place in the morning, but it’s likely that it will be extended into the afternoon. And that’s why his manager scheduled our interview for 6 p.m. A little later than our usual, I know, but she’s squeezing us in. It’s not his usual either.”

“Place?”

“His personal studio. He has something to do there after the interview, apparently. Or even during the interview, doesn’t really matter. It’ll still be just the two of you,” she paused. “You need the address?”

“No, I got it.”

“Great! I think that’s about everything.”

“Okay,” you nodded slowly, glancing at the material in your hands. “I should get back to work, then.”

“Actually, Y/N, why don’t you go home? I have nothing for you here.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You don’t have to come tomorrow either, use the day to prepare for the interview. Study the material and rock on! Oh, and don’t forget to call me before you get to the studio. I want to give you my pep talk,” she smiled.

“Sure,” you smiled back, standing up. “See you in two days, then.”

“See you, Y/N. Good luck.”

********

Love Falls by HELLYEAH

[xathia-89]

Long Lost Sibling - Ieyasu

“You’ll think it’s not been long at all since you’ve seen me,” Ieyasu grinned at his teary little sister, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “And you’ll go back to complaining that I won’t let you do anything.”

The little girl smiled and hugged him tightly. “Stay safe,” she quietly told him.

“Only if you do,” he chuckled, patting her head.

I woke up with a start to my alarm blaring across the room as I hit it hard. I was having the same dream over and over again recently as I went to get my teeth brushed and my hair under a beanie swiftly. I spent most of my life dealing with fluffy hair, it was the best way to deal with it was a beanie hat shoved on the head, and then I’d cover everything with the industrial hair net anyway as I heard my parents yelling at some of the staff that had already started in the bakery. I was adopted from a young age by a couple who couldn’t have their own, I was supposedly found by them near the shop without anything but a name and a necklace that I now wore as a bracelet. I nearly tripped down the stairs in an effort to get going on with the bread for the day before I could start work on my sweet pastries and the cake masterpieces that attracted the attention for our signature dishes.

“Natsuki!” My dad yelled after the morning rush was done with, and called me into the office. I frowned since he rarely did anything like that with anyone except to reprimand them, but swiftly went into the small room, and closed the door as he gestured. “I need you to take some time to do some research for me,” he patiently explained. “We’re expanding the bakery again, and I’d like you to manage the new shop,” he offered, looking at me hopefully. “I want you to scout out Kyoto for me and pick it all yourself. Manage it completely, and I will give you the financial backing of an already established store,” he smiled.

I practically bounced back out of the office. It didn’t help my focus as I had to make a leaving cake to order that afternoon, luckily it was just the finishing touches that I was always allowed to put my noise-cancelling headphones on for since they would require the most focus. Something I needed calming classical music for, and not the manufacturing sounds of a working bakery.

The old style of sweet buns were my latest project. The older generation lapped them up, and we couldn’t make them fast enough for them, but it wasn’t appealing to the younger crowd that would come in as I leant on the counter waiting for the collection to arrive. I was thinking about the trends in order, and how it was usually fairly predictable based on the customer’s appearance what they’d be after.

A businessman in a suit would want a coffee to go naturally, and occasionally take a sweet treat to keep him going. A mother with her kids would go for the cakes, while the coffee morning meetings would order a variety of the sweet buns and the fancy coffee settings on the machine. Teenagers would go for what they thought made them look older and ‘sophisticated’, especially when they weren’t on their own. Young adults would want the freshly baked bread, and never even glance at the displays. While the older generations would admire everything while coming in for their daily orders and would be the easiest to twist into adding onto their orders. And if they didn’t fit into those categories, then they wanted a cake doing for a special occasion as the office manager came in for her order. She gave me a snotty look since it matched her exact specifications and had to hand over the entire amount.

We all took a moment to have a breather as we closed the shop. Most of the staff had already finished by mid-afternoon, so when we did close up at three, it was usually those of us who lived over the shop. The equipment was cleaned over on a daily basis as the pace dropped to something much more relaxed, and we put the music on to dance about while doing the definite boring parts of our job.

I had my own box room above the shop, it was the only way to get your own space, anything bigger than my room was a shared one. There were about five of us currently, not including my parents, who lived there and another two spare rooms for up to four more. I sat on my bed, thinking over what I’d been told earlier in the day as I took off my beanie and stared at my appearance in the mirror. I kept having the reoccurring dreams where I was having the same conversation about seeing my brother again, and I’d never seen the boy before in my life. Everything felt like I was going to get answers in Kyoto, and I had no idea why.

I was five hundred years in the past, and I’d just been made a Princess of the Oda for saving Nobunaga from the fire. It had been a few days since I’d been appointed, and I was told I was free to spend my time doing as I liked. I kept going to the kitchens, but I found out I wasn’t much use there since cooking wasn’t really something I was proven at. I ended up leaving the castle behind after a lot of frustration between the staff and me and wandered up to a small bakery.

“You should try one of these!” The owner beamed, thrusting a roll at me.

I was hesitant in taking a bite, and I could see why he wasn’t selling a lot. I ended up persuading him to take me on and that he wasn’t going to open tomorrow, because I’d prove my worth to him in the early morning.

“You’ve been adding the ingredients in the wrong order, it’s upsetting the whole process,” I told the man, showing him how I worked. He wasn’t impressed with my attitude, but my persistence and ability to be blunt got me quite far in many things. “You need to treat it like you would a child. You wouldn’t give them hard foods before giving them liquids and expect them to know how to eat properly,” I stated.

It was a few hours of bickering between us before my first batch was done.

His expression told me everything.

Nobunaga hadn’t got a care in the world as to where I went or what I got up to. Hideyoshi however, was frequently ready to scold me for lowering myself to work in such an awful place, until I told him to come by one morning and see what I’d managed to do with it. He was suitably impressed and conceded that I’d actually done the baker a favour, and then told me not to eat too many of my sweet buns because it wouldn’t do my teeth any favours. I began to get some regulars attending, and then one man turned up with a slightly mouthy merchant I recognised from the market.

“Yuki, isn’t it?” I smiled, “Come for your usual?” I asked.

“No, my boss wanted to see what all the fuss was,” he grumbled, looking away as I offered the man a sweet bun.

His boss looked like he’d fallen in love with my baking. I’d seen the expression a few times over, as Yuki realised I’d already fed his boss something sweet and was already torn between who to tell off first before I gave him a savoury dough that he favoured to stop him talking.

It wasn’t long before Yuki disappeared back to the market, and his boss approached once I was alone. He was a charmer, I could tell that much by the way he carried himself, and that he was stupidly good looking was a hand to his cause I imagined.

“So where did this angel fall from the sky?” He opened, offering me a charming smile.

“I was just in the area,” I shrugged, determined to be vague. “Do you have a name or do I just call you Yuki’s boss?” I asked.

“Shingen,” he replied with a dazzling grin.

“Natsuki,” I returned. “Though I think Yuki has just taken to yelling Suki at me when I sneak him in some extra buns when he looks rough,” I shrugged.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that kind of hat on your head before,” he gestured to my beanie, which was still hiding my fluffy hair under it.

“It was a present, probably from far away. It keeps my hair out of my face when I’m baking, so does the job,” I answered. “Now, can I interest you in some things, or are you just going to keep blocking the shop?” I bristled at him, indicating to the line starting to form.

Shingen was starting to become a regular. He would frequently be alone rather than with Yuki, and he was refusing to cease on the charm. I wasn’t sure if I was just wearing down to the charm, or starting to warm up to the man as I found myself looking forward to the next round of teasing between us both. He would always order the red bean paste sweet buns, and then found a new way of teasing me even more.

“A date?” I repeated back to the man as I was frozen in handing over the buns. All of the immediate vicinity was now listening on with avid fascination.

“Yes,” Shingen humoured. “Nothing overly fancy, but I’d like to get to know you more without a display of baked treats between us,” he chuckled.

“She’s off shortly,” the baker cheerfully announced, and I flushed bright red. “You’ve never had any interest in anyone else,” he muttered and gave me an overly dramatic wink. “She’s just going to get changed,” he beamed as I was then promptly ushered to the back.

I was glaring at the baker who was cheerfully waving me off, along with all of the regulars we’d accumulated on a quick basis. I was confident that he’d keep the demands for the sweet buns satisfied at least as I was ushered away in the kimonos that I wore as Princess rather than the baker. I was feeling a little flustered since the beanie looked so out of place, but I daren’t remove it. My longer locks of hair were weighed down to stop the fluffy mushroom look that seemed to be in my genes regardless of the products used from the modern era, and I only seemed to have water to help me in my fling back to the past. A lot of the townspeople did a double take to me walking in the streets while the bakery was still open, and with a rather charming man.

Shingen was a perfect gentleman much to my surprise. We got to a tea house, and he ordered tea and dumplings for us both. I’d been told that these dumplings were rivals to my sweet buns, so I had been curious for a while but not able to stop my passions in baking to come and taste them. Shingen gave me a wink, and I found myself suddenly blushing hard and looking away from the man in an attempt to cool down.

“I’m still curious about the hat,” he humoured to me.

“It stays on,” I sulk self-consciously, pulling down on the beanie. I knew it was getting close to needing to be washed, but I wasn’t prepared to go through the teasing from the likes of Masamune and Mitsuhide that would inevitably occur.

“It looks cute when you contemplate murdering someone because you’ve taken it off,” he chuckled, offering me a dumpling.

“Shouldn’t you be with Yuki anyway?” I paused, trying to deflect the conversation away from me.

“He’s elsewhere currently, I specifically came to see you,” Shingen gave me a charming smile. The man was relentless I had to admit as I finally bit into the sweet treat. “Good, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, hating to admit that someone else had the ability to bake well. “You seem to have a bit of a fixation on me,” I commented, desperate to turn the conversation around.

“A gorgeous woman like yourself who clearly isn’t married, I’m surprised there aren’t more men queuing up for dates,” he was like this with most women I could glean.

“I’m sure there’s plenty who don’t come with all my baggage,” I shrugged, reaching for the tea. “Or are much easier to get on dates at the very least,” I smiled, referring to his luck that my boss had practically pushed me over the counter to go on a date with the man.

“Mm, but they aren’t you, and your baking skills have me intrigued,” Shingen charmed.

“I’ve always baked. My dad would want a hand to keep demands supplied, and I’d comply,” I answered simply. “Then I started working on the sweet buns and the likes, and we found out that it worked brilliantly to get more customers in and give us a better life.”

“How did you end up here then?” Shingen was pushing to know more about me as I raised an eyebrow.

“How did you end up a merchant?” I smiled, taking a sip of my drink.

Shingen looked stumped and then shrugged his shoulders casually. “I wanted to get out and see what was happening, so I decided to travel, but I needed a way of funding myself, so I turned to it.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’d be happy to stay in any one place then,” I added thoughtfully, my gaze drifting out over the open doors which showed the bustling marketplace.

“I think I’m getting ready to settle down,” he chuckled. “Depends on finding the right woman I suppose as well,” I felt myself blushing hard as Shingen purposely gave me a charming look.

“I’ve got to get home, we’ve got something tonight I need to get ready for,” I bristled, determined to get out of the situation. Shingen kissed my hand as I passed, making me turn the shade of a tomato as I rushed up to the castle.

Hideyoshi turned the corner and looked surprised to see me. “Natsuki,” he was ready to scold me. “I’ve been looking for you after the baker said that you weren’t there,” he had his big brother tone and look on.

“Sorry, I ended up at the teahouse,” for some reason I felt like I should be hiding who I was with as Hideyoshi levelled with me.

“We’re leaving in a few days, we’re going to war,” he frowned. “And Lord Nobunaga has decreed that you are to accompany us.”

“What? That makes no sense,” I frowned.

“I did argue that, but Lord Nobunaga has made the decision you are coming with us,” Toyotomi sighed. “We need you to prepare the ingredients for keeping morale up,” he muttered.

“I can make a sweet dough that gets baked on fires,” I waved my hand without a thought. “All the soldiers will love it.”

“I’ll leave you to arrange it with Masamune,” the vassal frowned.

It was never in my plans to be on the battlefield, tight and secure in Nobunaga’s arms as the Tiger of Kai and Dragon of Echigo were reportedly out and fighting. I wasn’t expecting for Masamune to come and steal me in time to avoid an attack from a familiar face, as I realised that the warlord currently attacking us, was the same one who insisted that his boss didn’t need to eat too many of my rolls. Yuki wasn’t looking at me, he was busy fighting with Nobunaga as Date laughed and his sword swung in front of me to protect me.

I wasn’t sure who looked more shocked, me or Shingen, to see each other on the battlefield. And Date was sharp enough to use that moment to tear away and drop me off at the camp.

“Go and find Ieyasu, and don’t leave his protection,” he ordered, before bolting back off. I didn’t need telling again as I fled into the camp.

The fluffy blonde was currently monitoring things from the main tent with Mitsunari, much to the former’s disgust. They both looked surprised to see me.

“I was dropped off at the outskirts and told to stay with you,” I shrugged.

“Are they out there?” Ieyasu immediately pressed.

“Who?” I frowned.

“Shingen and Kenshin,” he snorted, as though there wasn’t anyone else he could possibly be talking about.

“I saw Shingen and Yukimura,” I replied, having made the connection that ‘Yuki’ was the vassal of Shingen and actually Yukimura Sanada. “So I’d make the assumption that Kenshin is likely to be fighting.”

It was a long wait, I took to making up some batches of the dough for sweet roll and baking them by a makeshift ‘oven’. It kept me in the centre of the view and gave me a defence as I could always just grab a flaming stick if something snuck up on me.

I was the most popular person in camp as I went around with the warm rolls, and as soon as one soldier had torn into one and found it was sweet dough, I was in danger of being mobbed for the food as Masamune then took to helping me dish it out.

“Kitten,” Date waited until we’d been left alone. “Why did Shingen recognise you?” His voice was neutral, no accusation in it.

“He’s been coming to the bakery I’ve been working at recently, he likes the sweet buns I do,” I shrugged. “I had no idea who he actually was,” I sighed. “It sounds like I’m lying.”

“Nobunaga is probably going to have something to say about it,” he agreed.

“So he was scouting Azuchi?” Nobunaga was frowning.

“Probably. He was more interested in my baking recipes, to be honest,” I explained. “He’d be there most days.”

“The point is, he knows that she’s not just any ordinary person,” Hideyoshi argued. “He’s going to come for her, she’s not trained in any kind of weaponry, and he knows where she works.”

“Ieyasu,” Oda’s voice grabbed the attention of the distant blonde. “You will look after Natsuki in your manor. You are not permitted to leave those grounds until we have established that you aren’t in danger of being kidnapped.”

I had to understand where the order was coming from and nodded silently. I even rode on the back of Ieyasu’s horse to Azuchi. We barely exchanged a few sentences the entire time. I hadn’t got a lot to converse with the man, and he was of a similar disposition off the top of it. I wasn’t one for sitting around and doing nothing as Ieyasu said to do as I please, and I introduced myself to the staff. They rarely had any issues, but I was more than happy to help with doing the cleaning and laundry since I would be nothing more than a hindrance to the cooking staff. Then I spied all the spices and peppers one afternoon and asked the cook.

Turns out that they’d had to buy enough in to cater for us both as we both liked our foods spicy. Something very strange in this era as I thanked the man and got on my way to the laundry area.

“Natsuki,” I was surprised to see Ieyasu glaring at me, and that he was staring at the medallion on my bracelet. “Where did you get that?” He was hostile and snatched my wrist to his jade eyes for a closer inspection. I could feel myself tremble in his grip, and then he was shaking with fear.

“It was the only identifying thing I had on me when I was found. It was originally a necklace,” I was feeling very defensive as I was attempting to wrestle my arm back.

“This is my family’s symbol,” he hotly accused. “And to be blunt, it’s the same item I gave my sister before she disappeared,” he glared.

I remembered that gaze. My dreams were making sense, as Ieyasu’s grip was relaxing at the same time. I was searching his eyes for the answers, tears welling up swiftly.

“I told you that you’d go back to complaining that I wouldn’t let you do anything,” he muttered. I was sobbing loudly, and wrapped myself up tightly in a hug with Ieyasu, attracting the attention of most of the staff in the meantime.

We were awkwardly sat and waiting for the staff to leave as dinner was presented. Ieyasu was surprised to see that I liked my food as spicy as he did, but then gave strict instructions we were to be left alone.

“I never arrived at the grounds I was meant to obviously,” I started nervously, “I ended up five hundred years in the future. There’s something called a ‘wormhole’ it basically transports you through time it seems, and it’s happened to me twice sheerly by chance, and I don’t understand it either,” I lamely explained, poking at the noodles. “I grew up in a bakery. I was happy and swamped,” I smiled.

“It makes things a little easier for me to process,” Ieyasu sighed. “You grew up without the terrors of this place,” he gave me a wary smile. “What’s with the hat?”

I pulled it off and revealed a very similar style of fluffy hair to the male. He smirked as I pulled it back and glared at him.

“You should be more sympathetic,” I grumbled, “You have the same problem,” I argued, and stabbed a piece of meat with my chopsticks.

“Yes, but apparently I don’t need to cover it up,” he smirked.

It wasn’t long before Hideyoshi had arrived in response to the urgent message that Ieyasu had sent. He was looking flustered, as my brother had decided that hiding my hat would give the game away as to what had been discovered and needed discussing.

The vassal was wide-eyed and looking between us like he couldn’t understand who he was looking at.

“So the Natsuki that disappeared years ago is the same one who just happened to turn up at Honno-Ji and save Lord Nobunaga?” He repeated back at us slowly.

“Well, I only gave one of those medallions out,” Ieyasu snorted, showing Hideyoshi the bracelet on my wrist. “And she has been hiding her hair under that hat,” he pointed out.

“That hat saved me from your ridicule,” I sulked, glaring at my brother as I was feeling so relieved that my dreams that had been haunting me for years were a reality. It was the only snatches of memory I had.

A messenger arrived to take me to Nobunaga in private. Something that we had all expected.

Then I was bundled into a box and swiftly carted off through the forests by the sounds of things. I tried pounding on the sides, but nothing was said in response as I yelled until I was hoarse, and I couldn’t find anything to open any gaps. I kept kicking it in frustration to let them know I hadn’t given up.

“I thought I said to be nice to her,” a voice sighed after what felt like a lifetime of hearing nothing, and the hatch was opened from the side to tip me out.

I landed ungracefully and glared at the kidnappers. Then I realised that the voice had sounded familiar because it was.

Shingen offered his hand with a smile. “Apologies, I told them to transport you in comfort, but apparently that went unheeded,” he glared at the men. They didn’t care, as the warlord gave me a glance over. “Come, I’ll get you some a bath and some fresh clothing, and then a feast tonight,” he smiled, keeping hold of my hand as I hesitantly took his offer to get off the floor. His hand was warm and soothing, encasing mine as I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t feel threatened by the man who was technically the enemy.

A lot of the people passing by us looked on with interest, but nothing hostile as they greeted the man amiably. There wasn’t a rush to get to the castle, as I spied Yuki waiting impatiently at the gates.

“He’ll have a lecture ready about limiting the amount of baking you’re allowed to do for me,” Shingen humoured, pausing to kiss the back of my hands and making my cheeks burn bright red.

“Really Lord Shingen,” Yukimura frowned. “I didn’t think you’d go to this length for some sweet buns,” he scolded freely.

“Oh, it wasn’t just the sweet buns,” he chuckled, leading me inside where a room had already been prepared for me on Shingen’s orders it seemed. The staff who passed us would warmly greet us. The reasoning was starting to fly over my head until my hat was snatched from my head by a passing Kenshin. And then my hair instantly fluffed up in the style that resembled my brother’s and made the warlords pause. “I thought Ieyasu’s sister had vanished years ago,” he murmured.

“It’s a long story,” I smiled awkwardly. “We only just found out ourselves,” I admitted.

“Let’s get the lady bathed and ready to talk to us over food,” Shingen said, leaving my hat in Uesugi’s hands.

I was introduced to Sasuke, one of Kenshin’s prized ninjas, who I recognised as being the man I’d met just before falling through the wormhole in the future. He tapped on his nose, as though to say it needed to be our secret. There was definitely an interest in my hair, as the maids were discussing ways of getting it to weigh itself down to stop it being so fluffy. I was feeling embarrassed being at such a centre of attention, but Shingen was looking only at me; it seemed during the feast. Being a princess was a new thing for me, and since I had been given free rein of my time, then I had focused on doing what brought me some comfort and then helping someone to build their business and livelihood for survival.

The aides were watching with me avid interest, especially since I heard the mutterings about either using me as a hostage or bargaining for an alliance. It was hard to understand about how women were viewed with such limited potential in this era, and I was beginning to retreat inside myself when the vast majority of the hall was dismissed after they had all eaten. There was intrigue, but no one dared to question either Shingen or Kenshin’s orders on the matter.

It was merely myself, Yukimura, Sasuke, Kenshin and Shingen now present. Sasuke ensured that the hall was free of anyone looking to eavesdrop and had even left presents for anyone attempting to listen in for leverage.

With the help of the ninja, I explained about the wormholes and that I had somehow ended up going through one when I disappeared as a child. I had ended up five hundred years in the future, and then found a second one that returned me. It sounded too far fetched to believe as I told them, and then I remembered to show the medallion on my bracelet of the Tokugawa clan. I  bit my lip as Shingen merely smiled at me and patted me on the head.

“Sounds like you’ve had a rough few weeks,” he admired.

“I only just found out that I wasn’t dreaming that I had a brother, but it was a memory from just before I disappeared. And then I get kidnapped and end up in enemy territory,” I pointed out. “I would like to go to my room and get some rest,” I said, looking pointedly at Shingen.

He chuckled and offered me an arm as we stood up. He never uttered a word, and only kissed my knuckles as he wished me good night outside my room. I dropped onto my futon as I began to wonder just what sort of mess I had gotten myself into.

I was allowed free reign of the castle and was graced with escorted visits into Echigo. Shingen was always trying to get to know me more, as I was trying to resist what felt like was becoming inevitable. I know that word had been sent to my brother specifically that I was safe, but I was being held at Echigo under Shingen’s care. I wasn’t sure when it had become natural for us to hold hands whenever we went out together, or that we just talked freely between ourselves.

His thumb was stroking my bottom lip as the sun began to set. I was trapped by the enchanting gaze he was giving me, and I felt like I was going to drown in his eyes. We were so close, and I couldn’t remember being in his arms with his feeling before. It was natural gravitation, and I couldn’t get enough of his passion through his kisses. My arms were locked around his neck before we had to part for breath, and I slowly dropped them as my insecurity set in. I wasn’t going to pretend that I’d never heard all of the rumours about all of the beautiful women that Shingen attracted, whereas given how I had grown up largely without the romantic experience.

“Don’t give me that look,” Takeda murmured softly, and then stole another kiss. “It makes it impossible to resist you when you look so vulnerable that I feel I should keep you in my arms.”

I flushed red at the implications of his words, and Shingen chuckled. “We should probably get back before Yuki starts yelling at us again for missing dinner,” I smiled, trying to reassure myself that Shingen wasn’t just trying to play me to mess with Ieyasu.

Shingen didn’t care who saw us together, that much was obvious. He was always holding my hand, and more recently, he had frequently been kissing the back of my hand. He surprised me on the way back, sweeping me up in his arms and giving me a passionate kiss because I looked too tempting to resist from doing so. I was a fetching shade of red by the time we did make it back to Kasugayama where the vassal was waiting impatiently. He was tempted to chastise us, but then something caught him off guard in his lord’s expression, and his eyebrows disappeared into his messy brown locks.

It was a few days later when a message was received that negotiations were requested to take place on neutral grounds, halfway between Echigo and Azuchi. With the strictest addition that I had to be present. Shingen looked amused as he visited my room to let me know, and then requested I accompany him into Echigo.

The townspeople were all in high spirits and were definitely warm in their greetings to me. Nothing had been mentioned as far as I could tell that I was an opposing warlord’s sister, as I had the impression that it would drastically change everything I experienced.

“You look worried,” Shingen brought me out of my thoughts.

“I was just thinking how things would change if they knew who my brother was,” I admitted, dipping my head in embarrassment.

“If anything changes, I will address it,” he soothed, pulling me into his side to reassure me. “We set out tomorrow, and it will get boring,” he laughed, “So I wanted to see you smile,” he charmed, tilting my chin up with his finger, as I failed to resist the suggestion. “Come, we should go and find somewhere quiet to make some sweet buns,” Shingen decided with a grin that set my heart fluttering as we slipped off back to the castle.

Ieyasu couldn’t hide his relief, as I broke the ranks and ran up to him and hugged him tightly. He was reluctant to let me go and was still trying to process that not only was I his sister that he’d found after twenty years, but he was likely going to lose me from under his guard. Shingen chuckled and called my name as a polite request to start the talks.

I gave Ieyasu one last squeeze and slipped back into Takeda’s side. I was sat as a princess on the political explanation for my attendance, as Nobunaga inclined his head in greeting and Hideyoshi was nearly as relieved to see me as my brother from his expression.

“I agreed to the talks, what are the demands?” Shingen was trying to keep his cool being opposite his enemy while ultimately discussing someone he apparently cared for deeply.

“That Natsuki be safely returned to her brother,” Oda stated with a casual shrug.

“And what if she makes the decision to stay here?” He asked, taking his gaze to my brother.

“If you are about to ask what you think,” Ieyasu was gritting his teeth. “Then I will only accept if you can prove that you won’t even think of looking at any other woman,” he glared.

“He hasn’t since Natsuki arrived,” Kenshin snorted, clearly bored that there wasn’t going to be much of a chance of war.

“I would promise it, but it’s a given,” Takeda replied, purposely looking me in the eyes as he lifted my hand to his lips.

“Fine,” Ieyasu glared. “But you refuse me entry at any visit to see Natsuki, and I will wage war,” he warned. “And you will write to me constantly,” he sulked as he directed the last command at me.

“I was hoping for war,” Kenshin shrugged and promptly left the tent, as Shingen wouldn’t let go of my hand, while a blush was threatening to make me blow up with how heated I was feeling.

“Will you two get a room,” Yukimura snapped at us, reminding me and Shingen that we weren’t alone like we usually were. His lord chuckled and put the slightest of distance between us as my brother rolled his eyes overdramatically.

“I need to show my future wife what life will be like here,” Takeda charmed as an excuse, while the meeting was brought to an end.

It only took a few days for word to get around Echigo that Shingen and I were to be shortly wed. The whole place was buzzing with excitement, and one of the maids had even made a concoction that would slicked my hair down from its usual fluff to an actual style without just making it greasy. I had only just moved into Shingen’s room and dropped onto our futon the night before in exhaustion as I’d been running about trying to tie up loose ends. Ieyasu had arrived a few hours beforehand, and would definitely cause a ripple on their appearance tomorrow, but I trusted Shingen’s word as I drifted off.

“Natsuki,” someone was shaking me awake. The maids were already tipping Takeda out of the room as dawn was just breaking. It was going to be a long day of celebration, as Yukimura could be heard leading his lord away.

It started with a bath, and then I was tightened into a beautiful white kimono that had been designed especially for me and this part of the ceremony at least. The concoction was applied to my hair, it was going to be a debut for it as the maid was excited to see how it worked under the stress of the day. She was just as meticulous in the application of my makeup, the presentation of the bride was going to blow everyone’s mind at this rate.

Shingen was stumped and had to be nudged to accept the san san ku as Ieyasu and Yukimura took place as part of our families and sipped at it. We were left alone for a moment, and I was surprised at the amount of passion that had been bundled up into the formal appearance he was keeping. The kiss seared my lips off and took all my breath away before Yuki called for us both to come out for the sake. I was blushing heavily as we came out, and then had to disappear up to our room to change into my uchikake. It was heavily coloured in tones of red with the flowers that could be found in Kai dominating it, the colours of Takeda as I wore a white and red kimono underneath.

The main hall was bustling with Shingen’s and Ieyasu’s aides. There was a slight tension, but it was to be expected given the nature of their loyalties. But I whispered that the sake was to be liberally distributed and it soon eased the atmosphere into a fitting celebration.

“Natsuki,” Shingen nudged me, as I turned from talking to Sasuke, and found that my empty cup was being filled again, and he smiled at me.

“Your smile is lethal,” I quietly told the man, sipping at my cup.

“Only for you,” he charmed, picking up my hand and kissing it. “I was feeling lonely,” he teased.

“You just wanted my attention,” I corrected him.

“I dare say I can ask, given that you are now my wife,” his breath was hot on my ear, and the sake was definitely going to my head after all the stress of the day was quickly vacating. “Our room will be far away from everyone,” he teased, leaving it purposely hanging in the air as Ieyasu was glaring at the man.

“Shingen,” I gasped, feeling myself begin to pool.

We hurried left everyone, telling the staff to keep plying them all with sake to keep everything settled, otherwise leaving Yukimura, Ieyasu and Kenshin in charge.

I was still trying to get my head around my life as I was bundled up in my husband’s arms in our futon. I had been born in this time period, to be transported five hundred years in the future and grew up there, only to come back. I was happy, and I didn’t want to go back. I had grown up in safety, and relearning how the Sengoku era worked was a task in itself, but I was happy and where I belonged. A smile etched into my face as I drifted off to sleep, feeling safe and loved.

[thisdayinfavrd]

March 15, 2009

A midlife crisis is just teen angst with disposable income.   @badbanana (Tim Siedell) – 64

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Unless you're playing "Let's Lose An Eye!" Then it's still cool.   @sween (Jason Sweeney) – 50

One guess who'll actually *watch* all these videos of video bloggers interviewing video bloggers about video blogging.   @hotdogsladies (Merlin Mann) – 44

You know you're Canadian when you decide to teach your surly waiter a lesson by only tipping him 15%.   @sween (Jason Sweeney) – 37

My hotel bathroom has a Regenerative Care Bar, a Ginseng Exfoliant Lozenge, and a Clarifying Body Bullet. Will trade for soap.   @scottsimpson (Scott Simpson) – 37

Woke up to the smell of frying bacon and brewing coffee. Must've passed out last night in the Denny's bathroom again.   @awryone (Josh Donoghue) – 36

I'm sure that all of your cats are lovely, but you should know that they all look the same to me.   Like the Jews.   @Jessabelle2o7 (Jess) – 35

Son: How do I reset my iPod? Me: Try Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right A B Start. Son: Funny. Heard that last week in the old age home.   @abigvictory (Michele Catalano) – 33

It's amazing how a little vomit can ruin a blind date.   @texburgher (Geoff Barnes) – 32

Rushed to the kitchen mid-shower to find the tea kettle whistling while he sat three feet away wearing noise-canceling headphones. Hate.   @CcSteff (Stephanie) – 32

Have you guys ever SEEN The Wiz? How is anyone not offended by it?  Michael Jackson is in blackface *the whole time*.   @phyllisstein (Blight Christmas) – 32

I am BLEEDING followers because I'm being chatty tonight. People sure hate it when people use Twitter as a social network.   @luckyshirt (Darin Ross) – 31

Don't think of it as a bonus for evil AIG employees. Think of it as a stimulus for the Hamptons' depressed cocaine and hooker industries.   @adamisacson (Adam Isacson) – 31

I got in a fight with a bowl of noodles. I won. their only defense was gravity. and, um, they were noodles.   @baileygenine (Bailey Siewert) – 30

Missing tweet #1331946786   @luckyshirt (Unavailable) – 30

Merlin Mann called me "so very meta" to my face, and I nearly jizzed into the Platonic form of pantsness on the spot.   @Remiel (Remiel) – 29

Julius Fucking Caesar fucking unfriended me on Facebook. Fucker's going down.   @sween (Jason Sweeney) – 28

If anyone in this house needs me, I'll be at Couch by Couchwest.   @giromide (Pantse Macabretoe) – 28

I explained the Secret Service to my kids as ninjas in church clothes. No idea which apology to issue first.   @texburgher (Geoff Barnes) – 27

Stuck in traffic, Jim asks me to roll down my window so he can ask the driver of the car with FATNSXY vanity plates for her number.   @CcSteff (Stephanie) – 27

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/macbook-pro-16-first-impressions-return-of-the-mack/

MacBook Pro 16” first impressions: Return of the Mack

In poker, complacency is a quiet killer. It can steal your forward momentum bit by bit, using the warm glow of a winning hand or two to cover the bets you’re not making until it’s too late and you’re out of leverage. 

Over the past few years, Apple’s MacBook game had begun to suffer from a similar malaise. Most of the company’s product lines were booming, including newer entries like the Apple Watch, AirPods and iPad Pro. But as problems with the models started to mount — unreliable keyboards, low RAM ceilings and anemic graphics offerings — the once insurmountable advantage that the MacBook had compared to the rest of the notebook industry started to show signs of dwindling. 

The new 16” MacBook Pro Apple is announcing today is an attempt to rectify most, if not all, of the major complaints of its most loyal, and vocal, users. It’s a machine that offers a massive amount of upsides for what appears to be a handful of easily justifiable tradeoffs. It’s got better graphics, a bigger display for nearly no extra overall size, a bigger battery with longer life claims and yeah, a completely new keyboard.

I’ve only had a day to use the machine so far, but I did all of my research and writing for this first look piece on the machine, carting it around New York City, through the airport and onto a plane where I’m publishing this now. This isn’t a review, but I can take you through some of the new stuff and give you thoughts based on that chunk of time. 

This is a re-think of the larger MacBook Pro in many large ways. This is a brand new model that will completely replace the 15” MacBook Pro in Apple’s lineup, not an additional model. 

Importantly, the team working on this new MacBook started with no design constraints on weight, noise, size or battery. This is not a thinner machine, it is not a smaller machine, it is not a quieter machine. It is, however, better than the current MacBook Pro in all of the ways that actually count.

Let’s run down some of the most important new things. 

Performance and thermals

The 16” MacBook Pro comes configured with either a 2.6GHz 6-core i7 or a 2.3GHz 8-core i9 from Intel. These are the same processors as the 15” MacBook Pro came with. No advancements here is largely a function of Intel’s chip readiness. 

The i7 model of the 16” MacBook Po will run $2,399 for the base model — the same as the old 15” — and it comes with a 512GB SSD drive and 16GB of RAM. 

Both models can be ordered today and will be in stores at the end of the week.

The standard graphics configuration in the i7 is an AMD Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB of memory and an integrated Intel UHD graphics 630 chip. The system continues to use the dynamic handoff system that trades power for battery life on the fly.  

The i9 model will run $2,699 and comes with a 1TB drive. That’s a nice bump in storage for both models, into the range of very comfortable for most people. It rolls with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of memory.

You can configure both models with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 memory. Both models can also now get up to 8TB of SSD storage – which Apple says is the most on a notebook ever – and 64GB of 2666 DDR4 RAM but I’d expect those upgrades to be pricey.

The new power supply delivers an additional 12w of power and there is a new thermal system to compensate for that. The heat pipe that carries air in and out has been redesigned, there are more fan blades on 35% larger fans that move 28% more air compared to the 15” model. 

The fans in the MacBook Pro, when active, put out the same decibel level of sound, but push way more air than before. So, not a reduction in sound, but not an increase either — and the trade is better cooling. Another area where the design process for this MacBook focused on performance gains rather than the obvious sticker copy. 

There’s also a new power brick which is the same physical size as the 15” MacBook Pro’s adapter, but which now supplies 96w up from 87w. The brick is still as chunky as ever and feels a tad heavier, but it’s nice to get some additional power out of it. 

Though I haven’t been able to put the MacBook Pro through any video editing or rendering tests I was able to see live demos of it handling several 8K streams concurrently. With the beefiest internal config Apple says it can usually handle as many as 4, perhaps 5 un-rendered Pro Res streams.

A bigger display, a thicker body

The new MacBook Pro has a larger 16” diagonal Retina display that has a 3072×1920 resolution at 226 ppi. The monitor features the same 500 nit maximum brightness, P3 color gamut and True Tone tech as the current 15”. The bezels of the screen are narrower, which makes it feel even larger when you’re sitting in front of it. This also contributes to the fact that the overall size of the new MacBook Pro is just 2% larger in width and height, with a .7mm increase in thickness. 

The overall increase in screen size far outstrips the increase in overall body size because of those thinner bezels. And this model is still around the same thickness as the 2015 15” MacBook Pro, an extremely popular model among the kinds of people who are the target market for this machine. It also weighs 4.3 lbs, heavier than the 4.02 lb current 15” model.

The display looks great, extremely crisp due to the increase in pixels and even more in your face because of the very thin bezels. This thing feels like it’s all screen in a way that matches the iPad Pro.

This thick boi also features a bigger battery, a full 100Whr, the most allowable under current FAA limits. Apple says this contributes an extra hour of normal operations in its testing regimen in comparison to the current 15” MacBook Pro. I have not been able to effectively test these claims in the time I’ve had with it so far. 

But it is encouraging that Apple has proven willing to make the iPhone 11 Pro and the new MacBook a bit thicker in order to deliver better performance and battery life. Most of these devices are pretty much thin enough. Performance, please.

Speakers and microphone

One other area where the 16” MacBook Pro has made a huge improvement is the speaker and microphone arrays. I’m not sure I ever honestly expected to give a crap about sound coming out of a laptop. Good enough until I put in a pair of headphones accurately describes my expectations for laptop sound over the years. Imagine my surprise when I first heard the sound coming out of this new MacBook and it was, no crap, incredibly good. 

The new array consists of six speakers arranged so that the subwoofers are positioned in pairs, antipodal to one another (back to back). This has the effect of cancelling out a lot of the vibration that normally contributes to that rattle-prone vibrato that has characterized small laptop speakers pretty much forever.

The speaker setup they have here has crisper highs and deeper bass than you’ve likely ever heard from a portable machine. Movies are really lovely to watch with the built-ins, a sentence I have never once felt comfortable writing about a laptop. 

Apple also vents the speakers through their own chambers, rather than letting sound float out through the keyboard holes. This keeps the sound nice and crisp, with a soundstage that’s wide enough to give the impression of a center channel for voice. One byproduct of this though is that blocking one or another speaker with your hand is definitely more noticeable than before.

The quality of sound here is really very, very good. The HomePod team’s work on sound fields apparently keeps paying dividends. 

That’s not the only audio bit that’s better now though, Apple has also put in a 3-mic array for sound recording that it claims has a high enough signal-to-noise ratio that it can rival standalone microphones. I did some testing here comparing it to the iPhone’s mic and it’s absolutely night and day. There is remarkably little hiss present here and artists that use the MacBook as a sketch pad for vocals and other recording are going to get a really nice little surprise here.

I haven’t been able to test it against external mics myself but I was able to listen to rigs that involved a Blue Yeti and other laptop microphones and the MacBook’s new mic array was clearly better than any of the machines and held its own against the Yeti. 

The directional nature of many podcast mics is going to keep them well in advance of the internal mic on the MacBook for the most part, but for truly mobile recording setups the MacBook mic just went from completely not an option to a very viable fallback in one swoop. It really has to be listened to in order to get it. 

I doubt anyone is going to buy a MacBook Pro for the internal mic, but having a ‘pro level’ device finally come with a pro level mic on board is super choice. 

I think that’s most of it, though I feel like I’m forgetting something…

Oh right, the Keyboard

Ah yes. I don’t really need to belabor the point on the MacBook Pro keyboards just not being up to snuff for some time. Whether you weren’t a fan of the short throw on the new butterfly keyboards or you found yourself one of the many people (yours truly included) who ran up against jammed or unresponsive keys on that design — you know that there has been a problem.

The keyboard situation has been written about extensively by Casey Johnston and Joanna Stern and complained about by every writer on Twitter over the past several years. Apple has offered a succession of updates to that keyboard to attempt to make it more reliable and has extended warranty replacements to appease customers. 

But the only real solution was to ditch the design completely and start over. And that’s what this is: a completely new keyboard.

Apple is calling it the Magic Keyboard in homage to the iMac’s Magic Keyboard (but not identically designed). The new keyboard is a scissor mechanism, not butterfly. It has 1mm of key travel (more, a lot more) and an Apple-designed rubber dome under the key that delivers resistance and springback that facilitates a satisfying key action. The new keycaps lock into the keycap at the top of travel to make them more stable when at rest, correcting the MacBook Air-era wobble. 

And yes, the keycaps can be removed individually to gain access to the mechanism underneath. And yes, there is an inverted-T arrangement for the arrow keys. And yes, there is a dedicated escape key.

Apple did extensive physiological research when building out this new keyboard. One test was measuring the effect of a keypress on a human finger. Specifically, they measured the effect of a key on the pacinian corpuscles at the tips of your fingers. These are onion-esque structures in your skin that house nerve endings and they are most sensitive to mechanical and vibratory pressure. 

Apple then created this specialized plastic dome that sends a specific vibration to this receptor making your finger send a signal to your brain that says ‘hey you pressed that key.’ This led to a design that gives off the correct vibration wavelength to return a satisfying ‘stroke completed’ message to the brain.

There is also more space between the keys, allowing for more definitive strokes. This is because the keycaps themselves are slightly smaller. The spacing does take some adjustment, but by this point in the article I am already getting pretty proficient and am having more grief from the autocorrect feature of Catalina than anything else. 

Notably, this keyboard is not in the warranty extension program that Apple is applying to its older keyboard designs. There is a standard 1 year warranty on this model, a statement by the company that they believe in the durability of this new design? Perhaps. It has to get out there and get bashed on by more violent keyboard jockeys than I for a while before we can tell whether it’s truly more resilient. 

But does this all come together to make a more usable keyboard? In short, yes. The best way to describe it in my opinion is a blend between the easy cushion of the old MacBook Air and the low profile stability of the Magic Keyboard for iMac. It’s truly one of the best feeling keyboards they’ve made in years and perhaps ever in the modern era. I reserve the right to be nostalgic about deep throw mechanical keyboards in this regard, but this is the next best thing. 

Pro, or Pro

In my brief and admittedly limited testing so far, the 16” MacBook Pro ends up looking like it really delivers on the Pro premise of this kind of machine in ways that have been lacking for a while in Apple’s laptop lineup. The increased storage caps, bigger screen, bigger battery and redesigned keyboard should make this an insta-buy for anyone upgrading from a 2015 MacBook Pro and a very tempting upgrade for even people on newer models that have just never been happy with the typing experience. 

Many of Apple’s devices with the label Pro lately have fallen into the bucket of ‘the best’ rather than ‘for professionals’. This isn’t strictly a new phenomenon for Apple, but more consumer centric devices like the AirPods Pro and the iPhone Pro get the label now than ever before. 

But the 16” MacBook Pro is going to alleviate a lot of the pressure Apple has been under to provide an unabashedly Pro product for Pro Pros. It’s a real return to form for the real Mack Daddy of the laptop category. As long as this new keyboard design proves resilient and repairable I think this is going to kick off a solid new era for Apple portables.

[darylelockhart]

Our centuries-long quest for 'a quiet place'

by Matthew Jordan

The new film “A Quiet Place” is an edge-of-your-seat tale about a family struggling to avoid being heard by monsters with hypersensitive ears. Conditioned by fear, they know the slightest noise will provoke a violent response – and almost certain death.

Audiences have come out in droves to dip their toes into its quiet terror, and they’re loving it: It’s raked in over US$100 million at the box office and has a 95 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Like fairy tales and fables that dramatize cultural phobias or anxieties, the movie may be resonating with audiences because something about it rings true. For hundreds of years, Western culture has been at war with noise.

Yet the history of this quest for quietness, which I’ve explored by digging through archives, reveals something of a paradox: The more time and money people spend trying to keep unwanted sound out, the more sensitive to it they become.

Be quiet – I’m thinking!

As long as people have lived in close quarters, they’ve been complaining about the noises other people make and yearning for quiet.

In the 1660s, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal speculated, “the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” Pascal surely knew it was harder than it sounds.

But in modern times, the problem seems to have gotten exponentially worse. During the Industrial Revolution, people swarmed to cities roaring with factory furnaces and shrieking with train whistles. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer called the cacophony “torture for intellectual people,” arguing that thinkers needed quietness in order to do good work. Only stupid people, he thought, could tolerate noise.

Charles Dickens described feeling “harassed, worried, wearied, driven nearly mad, by street musicians” in London. In 1856, The Times echoed his annoyance with the “noisy, dizzy, scatterbrain atmosphere” and called on Parliament to legislate “a little quiet.”

It seems the more people started to complain about noise, the more sensitive to it they became. Take the Scottish polemicist Thomas Carlyle. In 1831, he moved to London.

“I have been more annoyed with noises,” he wrote, “which get free access through my open windows.”

He became so triggered by noisy peddlers that he spent a fortune soundproofing the study in his Chelsea Row house. It didn’t work. His hypersensitive ears perceived the slightest sound as torture, and he was forced to retreat to the countryside.

The war on noise

By the 20th century, governments all over the world were engaged in an endless war on noisy people and things. After successfully silencing the tug boats whose tooting tormented her on the porch of her Riverside Avenue mansion, Mrs. Julia Barnett Rice, the wife of venture capitalist Isaac Rice, founded the Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise in New York in order to combat what she called “one of the greatest banes of city life.”

Counting as members over 40 governors, and with Mark Twain as their spokesman, the group used its political clout to get “quiet zones” established around hospitals and schools. Violating a quiet zone was punishable by fine, imprisonment or both.

But focusing on noise only made her more sensitive to it. Like Carlyle, Rice turned to architects and built a quiet place deep under the ground, where her husband, Isaac, could work out his chess gambits in peace.

Inspired by Rice, anti-noise organizations sprang up around the globe. After World War I, with ears across Europe still ringing from explosions, the transnational culture war against noise really took off.

A promotion for the British Anti-Noise League, which was active in the 1930s. Russell Davies

Cities all over the world targeted noisy technologies, like the Klaxon automobile horn, which Paris, London and Chicago banned by ordinance in the 1920s. In the 1930s, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia launched a “noiseless nights” campaign aided by sensitive noise-measuring devices stationed throughout the city. New York passed dozens of laws over the next several decades to muzzle the worst offenders, and cities throughout the world followed suit. By the 1970s, governments were treating noise as environmental pollution to be regulated like any industrial byproduct.

Planes were forced to fly higher and slower around populated areas, while factories were required to mitigate the noise they produced. In New York, the Department of Environmental Protection – aided by a van filled with sound-measuring devices and the words “noise makes you nervous & nasty” on the side – went after noisemakers as part of “Operation Soundtrap.”

After Mayor Michael Bloomberg instituted new noise codes in 2007 to ensure “well-deserved peace and quiet,” the city installed hypersensitive listening devices to monitor the soundscape and citizens were encouraged to call 311 to report violations.

Consuming quietness

Yet legislating against noisemakers rarely satisfied our growing desire for quietness, so products and technologies emerged to meet the demand of increasingly sensitive consumers. In the early 20th century, sound-muffling curtains, softer floor materials, room dividers and ventilators kept the noise from the outside from coming in, while preventing sounds from bothering neighbors or the police.

But as Carlyle, Rice and the family in “A Quiet Place” found out, creating a sound-free lifeworld is nearly impossible. Certainly, as Hugo Gernsback learned with his 1925 invention the Isolator – a lead helmet with viewing holes connected to a breathing apparatus – it was impractical.

A drawing of Hugo Gernsback’s ‘Isolator’ appeared in a 1925 issue of the magazine ‘Science and Invention.’ Science and Invention

No matter how thoughtful the design, unwanted sound continued to be a part of everyday life.

Unable to suppress noise, disquieted consumers started trying to mask it with wanted sound, buying gadgets like the Sleepmate white noise machine or by playing recorded sounds of nature, from breaking waves to rustling forests, on their stereos.

Today, the quietness industry is a booming international market. There are hundreds of digital apps and technologies created by psychoacoustic engineers for consumers, including noise cancellation products with adaptive algorithms that detect outside sounds and produce anti-phase sonic waves, rendering them inaudible.

Headphones like Beats by Dr. Dre promise a life “Above the Noise”; Cadillac’s “Quiet Cabin” claims it can protect people from “the silent horror film out there.”

The marketing efforts for these products aim to convince us that noise is intolerable and the only way to be happy is to shut out other people and their unwanted sounds. This same fantasy is mirrored in “A Quiet Place”: The only moment of relief in the whole “silent horror film” is when Evelyn and Lee are wired in together, swaying gently to their own music and silencing the world outside their earbuds.

In a Sony ad for their noise canceling headphones, the company depicts a world in which the consumer exists in a sonic bubble in an eerily empty cityscape.

A 2011 ad for Sony’s noise cancellation headphones. Ads of the World

Content as some may feel in their ready-made acoustic cocoons, the more people accustom themselves to life without unwanted sounds from others, the more they become like the family in “A Quiet Place.” To hypersensitized ears, the world becomes noisy and hostile.

Maybe more than any alien species, it’s this intolerant quietism that’s the real monster.

Matthew Jordan is  Associate Professor of Media Studies at Pennsylvania State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation,  which is a content  partner of Sci Fi Generation

[lizapuspa]

Audio-Technica ATH-M70x: An HONEST Review

  Audio Technica ATH M70x is also on of the best choice headphones from Audio Technica Headphone series. Get best price for audio technica ath M70x at Amazon http://amzn.to/2EtutjF Hi, ViralPicts here with the Audio Technica ATH M70x. If you’re familiar with Audio-Technica then you already know that this pro audio brand creates some of the best quality products in the market, such as the best-selling ATH M50x. The M70x is the latest offering in this series, but it’s not as similar to the M50x as most would think. I’m here to give you guys my honest review, without any of the hype. Stay tuned. If you’re watching this video, chances are you’ve already heard of Audio-Technica through the popular ATH M50x headphones, which represents one of the best values under $150. The Audio Technica ATH-M70x is a much newer product released by Audio Technica, and this time, is priced above the $200 price mark. As the name suggests, the M70x is a higher model than the M50x in the lineup, so naturally people would think this is like an upgraded version of the M50x. Well, not exactly, as the M70x is drastically different from the best-selling M50x, and I’ll tell you why in this video.  

  So with that said, we’re going to jump into the in-depth review and discuss all the features and performance of the M70x.

1. Features + Unboxing

The Audio-Technica ATH M70x comes in a large box which is nearly identical to the M50x packaging. Inside this box, you’re greeted by a large square hardshell case, which is an upgrade to the leather pouch which the M50x came with. Inside this hardshell case is the M70x with earcups folded flat, which is a feature of the M70x, although they don’t collapse inwards like the M50x. Along with the hardshell case, you get 3 detachable cables with locking mechanism: a standard 3 ft straight cable, a longer 10 ft straight cable, and a coiled cable. So as you can see, the M70x is a pretty standard headphone with nothing fancy like Bluetooth wireless or active noise-canceling, but that isn’t the point of these headphones as they are made primarily for studio use and home listening. Stylistically, I would say that the M70x has a subtle yet beautiful design that adds a modernized twist to the M50x, with a matte finish contrasted by shiny metal rings. Also, the overall size of the M70x is much more streamlined, making the M50x look very bulky and dated in comparison.

2. Build Quality

Aside from sound quality, one thing which the Audio-Technica brand excels in is build quality and durability. Although a lot of this material is plastic, Audio-Technica headphones like the M50x and M70x are built like a tank, and are built to withstand years of wear and abuse. With that said, the M70x was designed to be lighter than the M50x, so they do feel a tad bit flimsier in comparison. For peace of mind, the M70x comes with a 2-year warranty which is twice the industry average.

3. Comfort

If there was one category which caused mixed reviews with the M50x, it would be comfort. Luckily for the M70x, Audio-Technica listened to all the consumer feedback and made the M70x much more comfortable right out of the box. In addition to the lighter weight of the M70x which results in less pressure on the top of the skull, the clamping force has also been reduced on the sides, which was a bit too tight on the M50x. Overall, the M70x is a very comfortable headphone which you should be able to wear for a couple hours with ease.

4. Sound Quality

Audio-Technica is commonly associated with value when it comes to performance and sound quality. The M50x which came before is mostly responsible for this. But with that said, the M70x is a radical departure from the sound signature of the M50x. Let me start off by saying, that the frequency response of the M70x is flat as a pancake. These are extremely accurate monitor headphones built for studio purposes. I find it funny because, a lot of people refer to “accuracy” as the thing that all headphones should aspire for, and if that’s true, then these headphones would be like the holy grail, right? Well the reality is, their reception from the general public has been quite the mixed bag. You see, the problem with completely “accurate” headphones is that, they also sound very boring. Now don’t get me wrong, the sound quality is top-notch, with crystal clear detail and separation, along with a pretty good soundstage for closed-back headphones.

The only issue that most people are having is that the analytical sound of these headphones is very cold and unforgiving, which results in some extremely sharp highs and unimpressive bass compared to today’s average premium headphone.

It’s all about the details with these headphones, and they’re a pleasure to work with if you’re doing professional work in music production or film editing. Casual music listeners on the other hand, are better off with the more V-shaped response of the M50x, providing the bass impact which is absent from the M70x. See also: Audio-Technica ATH-M50x: An HONEST Review Audio-Technica ATH M50X, M40x, M30x, M20x M Series Headphone Review Demo Comparison

5. Bottom-line

So bottomline, the M70x is a great overall package which improves upon the M50x in style and comfort. The only real issue with this headphone is that it’s purpose-built for professional work, so the flat frequency response is somewhat unexciting to the casual music listener. Aside from that, the sound quality itself is stellar, with crystal clear detail and separation, along with a decent soundstage. When first released, the M70x retailed for a whopping $300, which some places still sell it for today. Luckily, prices have come down since then, and you can find a brand new pair at under $220, which I think presents a great value if you’re in the market for truly accurate headphones, considering the comfort and styling are on point as well. If you’re interested in picking up the M70x for the lowest price available, click the link in the description below to get your pair at a discount so you can save dat money. Last but not least, please don’t forget to hit that Thumbs Up button, Comment, and Subscribe if you enjoyed this video. I want to take a moment to say thank you for everyone who watches my videos, your comments really encourage me to keep making more. If you have any questions at all about these headphones, leave it in the comments below. Thanks for watching guys! You have a wonderful day.

[samanthasroberts]

Do yoga, work harder: how productivity co-opted relaxation

Holidays, procrastination and drug-taking were once ways to escape work. Now leisure has been reappropriated to aid work. So is anything actually considered unproductive nowadays?

Are you reading this when you should be working? Please don’t feel bad. Later, you will get more done, because reading enhances your productivity and so does surfing the internet while at work. Just make sure that it does not account for more than 20% of your time, say researchers at University of Melbourne and the National University of Singapore. You can idly scroll, safe in the knowledge that you are offsetting your present indolence against a productive future.

Productivity is the great preoccupation of our age. The productivity industry is thriving. It has its own aisle in all the app supermarkets. You can type “enhances productivity” into Google and validate as a productivity hack almost any human activity, from laughing to crying. If there is something depressing about the idea that your emotional responses can be bent to the services of work, ask your desk neighbour for a hug. It might take you away from your screen for a minute, but that’s OK because a hug is a great brain hack to get your oxytocin flowing, which will make you more productive.

There is almost nothing you can do to escape being productive. The old escapes have become productivity tools. Go for a walk? Chat by the water cooler? Hang out with your pet? Eat chocolate? Get laid? Daydream? Open your bowels? All these and more are now propounded as aids to productivity. Leisure itself is being reappropriated. Corporate yoga is booming. Even the chief executive of Public Health England has advocated it. Meditation and mindfulness sessions are offered to employees at companies including Ford, Google, Goldman Sachs and Aetna, the last of which according to David Gelles, a business reporter for the New York Times, estimates a saving of $2,000 (£1,475) a head in healthcare costs and a gain of $3,000 a head in productivity as a result. There is no point shutting your eyes to seek oblivion in sleep because sleep is undergoing a reawakening, led by Ariana Huffington, who sees it as “a great performance enhancer” and is harvesting your insomnia anxiety to build an empire.

Does it matter that leisure is increasingly being put to the service of work? If the results are good, and productivity makes us happy, where is the harm? Sarah Vaynerman is the founder of Work From Om, a yoga company based in New York City. Six or seven years ago, she was working as a marketing manager in a “very toxic environment on Wall Street” when she found herself “in a kind of a hole – so stressed I didn’t know how to get out of it”. She began to practise yoga, and soon rose from the mat with a new business: corporate yoga, which she now provides to firms ranging from startups to giants such as Warner Music Group.

In many ways, Vaynerman was her own first student. “I was expecting relaxation. There was plenty of that. But what really surprised me was how all other aspects of my life came to improve. My attention was improving, my focus was improving, my ability to organise was improving.” And if she was less stressed, she says, that was “not because I was lying on a beach* but because I was doing more, my life felt fuller. I felt more capable and confident.” (*Don’t fret if you are reading this lying on a beach; some scientists say holidays can help your productivity, too.)

Screen break … A woman boosts her productivity by looking at the internet. Photograph: Tim Robberts/Getty Images

I wonder whether Vaynerman ever worries that it is inherently un-yogic to harness the potential of yoga for the purposes of enhanced productivity, but she says not. “I don’t believe so at all. It’s a misconception that yoga is there just to relax you,” she says. “In fact, yoga in Sanskrit means ‘to yoke, to union’. It is supposed to connect your outside circumstances with your authentic self, your purpose.”

This sounds great, provided that the outside circumstances to which we are yoked are not overly concerning. But it cannot be coincidence that personal productivity has thrived as a preoccupation at a time when global productivity is failing to grow as well as it did before the global financial crisis. This poor performance of labour productivity growth during the economic recovery is commonly referred to as “the productivity puzzle” (incidentally, puzzling is a great boost for productivity, so I’m surprised this hasn’t resolved itself by now), which makes fathoming it sound like a fun hobby.

“Increased productivity used to be something that companies and managers were responsible for,” says Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. “Today, though, individuals are responsible for their own productivity. You become more productive through life-hacks, having the right noise-cancelling headphones and so on. We have a whole language that shifts responsibility for productivity back on to the individual, meaning that you have no one but yourself to blame if things go wrong: it’s not because you work in a super-noisy, poorly managed office, it’s because you have trouble multitasking in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.”

Maybe this kind of biohacking is prevalent preciselybecause individuals feel obliged to incorporate or embody the demands of the workplace. Even LSD, once the ultimate expression of the counterculture, has been harnessed as an aid to productivity.

Since 2010 James Fadiman has tracked microdosing of LSD, in which a small dose – typically 10 micrograms – is taken every three or four days without psychedelic effect. He first heard the idea from someone who had been recommended a microdose by Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesised LSD, “to clarify a relationship he was in”. Fadiman has gathered a sample of 1,500 microdosers, aged from 18 to 80, across 59 countries, who submit their findings for him and his colleague Sophia Korb to study.

Fadiman, speaking on the phone from Menlo Park, California, has countless examples of the benefits of LSD in this form. “A young man at a San Francisco meet-up said: ‘Well, I only use microdosing when I have a coding problem,” he says. Another found that he could drive for longer. Another still, who had been eating really badly, went to a restaurant while microdosing “and he said to me: ‘I looked at the menu and, by God, I wanted the salad.’”

For Pang, this shows how “modern capitalism is capable of turning anything either into a product you consume or an enhancer of productivity”. But Fadiman sees it differently. “The people I’ve spoken to,” he says, “they don’t feel they’re more productive.” Instead, he sees microdosing as “an enhanced wellness tool” of which productivity is only a part, although he acknowledges that one of the major benefits is “diminished procrastination”.

Hug it out … grappling with your workmates can get the oxytocin flowing. Photograph: Claudia Burlotti/Getty Images

Steve Jobs was influenced by Zen Buddhism and LSD, and Mark Zuckerberg has also spoken about his interest in Buddhism, so there’s a long association between the search for spiritual enlightenment and productivity. Still, it seems ironic to think that LSD was once enjoyed as a way to turn on, tune in and drop out. “Absolutely,” Fadiman chuckles, suggesting an update. “It’s turn on a really little bit, tune into your life and enjoy your day. Somewhat different.”

Like Fadiman with microdosing, Vaynerman advertises productivity as just one of the many benefits of yoga. And Richard Pierson, the co-founder of bestselling meditation and mindfulness app Headspace, emails to say: “It would be a shame if employers are only integrating mindfulness to improve productivity. My hope is that they are supporting it so their employees can be healthier and happier throughout their life.”

“Happiness is a route to productivity, not the other way round,” agrees Graham Allcott, who calls himself “the productivity ninja”. He enjoys meditation and yoga. But, he says: “I’m not doing yoga to be productive, though I know it helps me.”

This makes me wonder if anything these days can be considered unproductive. What could Allcott, or anyone, do to escape? To get a proper break, I mean, not the kind that’s flagged at the back of our minds as performance-enhancing? What is the least productive activity Allcott can think of? “I would say the least productive way to spend time would be … Well. I think it would be working on something where …” He hesitates: “No. That’s not quite right. I was kind of thinking about the opposite question. What’s the most productive tends to come down to whether you’re adding value in the best way. The best way to add value is to define the task really well.”

I don’t feel that we have struck at the core of unproductivity here. Perhaps there is no longer such a thing as purposeful unproductivity. After all, even procrastination has been claimed as a productivity tool, provided it is “high-performance procrastination”. And if productivity is simply a byproduct of enjoyable pursuits, are Allcott, Vaynerman and Pierson right to see it as harmless?

“These companies that sell relaxation tools and techniques are kidding themselves if they don’t understand this is part of an acceleration of our economy and expansion of work into all aspects of our life,” says William Davies, a lecturer at Goldsmiths University and author of The Happiness Industry. “It’s a cruel mentality where everything can be used or should be useful, and if it isn’t, I’m not trying hard enough. That’s one problem. The other problem, of course, is that where you once had things that added intrinsic value for people, they’ve become captured in some way.”

What we lose, he says, is the idea of comfort, that nurturing state of ease or strength that is an end in itself. Does he have any suggestion for how to escape the need to be productive? “I suppose slumped in front of the telly with a burger in one hand and a beer in the other,” he says. But unfortunately, some European researchers have got there first and declared vegging out to be healthfully productive. This suggests another possibility. Maybe the idea of productivity itself has been co-opted, to describe the things people like to do, so people can continue to do them, while appearing to be busy.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/06/do-yoga-work-harder-how-productivity-co-opted-relaxation/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/10/06/do-yoga-work-harder-how-productivity-co-opted-relaxation/

[allofbeercom]

Do yoga, work harder: how productivity co-opted relaxation

Holidays, procrastination and drug-taking were once ways to escape work. Now leisure has been reappropriated to aid work. So is anything actually considered unproductive nowadays?

Are you reading this when you should be working? Please don’t feel bad. Later, you will get more done, because reading enhances your productivity and so does surfing the internet while at work. Just make sure that it does not account for more than 20% of your time, say researchers at University of Melbourne and the National University of Singapore. You can idly scroll, safe in the knowledge that you are offsetting your present indolence against a productive future.

Productivity is the great preoccupation of our age. The productivity industry is thriving. It has its own aisle in all the app supermarkets. You can type “enhances productivity” into Google and validate as a productivity hack almost any human activity, from laughing to crying. If there is something depressing about the idea that your emotional responses can be bent to the services of work, ask your desk neighbour for a hug. It might take you away from your screen for a minute, but that’s OK because a hug is a great brain hack to get your oxytocin flowing, which will make you more productive.

There is almost nothing you can do to escape being productive. The old escapes have become productivity tools. Go for a walk? Chat by the water cooler? Hang out with your pet? Eat chocolate? Get laid? Daydream? Open your bowels? All these and more are now propounded as aids to productivity. Leisure itself is being reappropriated. Corporate yoga is booming. Even the chief executive of Public Health England has advocated it. Meditation and mindfulness sessions are offered to employees at companies including Ford, Google, Goldman Sachs and Aetna, the last of which according to David Gelles, a business reporter for the New York Times, estimates a saving of $2,000 (£1,475) a head in healthcare costs and a gain of $3,000 a head in productivity as a result. There is no point shutting your eyes to seek oblivion in sleep because sleep is undergoing a reawakening, led by Ariana Huffington, who sees it as “a great performance enhancer” and is harvesting your insomnia anxiety to build an empire.

Does it matter that leisure is increasingly being put to the service of work? If the results are good, and productivity makes us happy, where is the harm? Sarah Vaynerman is the founder of Work From Om, a yoga company based in New York City. Six or seven years ago, she was working as a marketing manager in a “very toxic environment on Wall Street” when she found herself “in a kind of a hole – so stressed I didn’t know how to get out of it”. She began to practise yoga, and soon rose from the mat with a new business: corporate yoga, which she now provides to firms ranging from startups to giants such as Warner Music Group.

In many ways, Vaynerman was her own first student. “I was expecting relaxation. There was plenty of that. But what really surprised me was how all other aspects of my life came to improve. My attention was improving, my focus was improving, my ability to organise was improving.” And if she was less stressed, she says, that was “not because I was lying on a beach* but because I was doing more, my life felt fuller. I felt more capable and confident.” (*Don’t fret if you are reading this lying on a beach; some scientists say holidays can help your productivity, too.)

Screen break … A woman boosts her productivity by looking at the internet. Photograph: Tim Robberts/Getty Images

I wonder whether Vaynerman ever worries that it is inherently un-yogic to harness the potential of yoga for the purposes of enhanced productivity, but she says not. “I don’t believe so at all. It’s a misconception that yoga is there just to relax you,” she says. “In fact, yoga in Sanskrit means ‘to yoke, to union’. It is supposed to connect your outside circumstances with your authentic self, your purpose.”

This sounds great, provided that the outside circumstances to which we are yoked are not overly concerning. But it cannot be coincidence that personal productivity has thrived as a preoccupation at a time when global productivity is failing to grow as well as it did before the global financial crisis. This poor performance of labour productivity growth during the economic recovery is commonly referred to as “the productivity puzzle” (incidentally, puzzling is a great boost for productivity, so I’m surprised this hasn’t resolved itself by now), which makes fathoming it sound like a fun hobby.

“Increased productivity used to be something that companies and managers were responsible for,” says Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. “Today, though, individuals are responsible for their own productivity. You become more productive through life-hacks, having the right noise-cancelling headphones and so on. We have a whole language that shifts responsibility for productivity back on to the individual, meaning that you have no one but yourself to blame if things go wrong: it’s not because you work in a super-noisy, poorly managed office, it’s because you have trouble multitasking in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.”

Maybe this kind of biohacking is prevalent preciselybecause individuals feel obliged to incorporate or embody the demands of the workplace. Even LSD, once the ultimate expression of the counterculture, has been harnessed as an aid to productivity.

Since 2010 James Fadiman has tracked microdosing of LSD, in which a small dose – typically 10 micrograms – is taken every three or four days without psychedelic effect. He first heard the idea from someone who had been recommended a microdose by Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesised LSD, “to clarify a relationship he was in”. Fadiman has gathered a sample of 1,500 microdosers, aged from 18 to 80, across 59 countries, who submit their findings for him and his colleague Sophia Korb to study.

Fadiman, speaking on the phone from Menlo Park, California, has countless examples of the benefits of LSD in this form. “A young man at a San Francisco meet-up said: ‘Well, I only use microdosing when I have a coding problem,” he says. Another found that he could drive for longer. Another still, who had been eating really badly, went to a restaurant while microdosing “and he said to me: ‘I looked at the menu and, by God, I wanted the salad.’”

For Pang, this shows how “modern capitalism is capable of turning anything either into a product you consume or an enhancer of productivity”. But Fadiman sees it differently. “The people I’ve spoken to,” he says, “they don’t feel they’re more productive.” Instead, he sees microdosing as “an enhanced wellness tool” of which productivity is only a part, although he acknowledges that one of the major benefits is “diminished procrastination”.

Hug it out … grappling with your workmates can get the oxytocin flowing. Photograph: Claudia Burlotti/Getty Images

Steve Jobs was influenced by Zen Buddhism and LSD, and Mark Zuckerberg has also spoken about his interest in Buddhism, so there’s a long association between the search for spiritual enlightenment and productivity. Still, it seems ironic to think that LSD was once enjoyed as a way to turn on, tune in and drop out. “Absolutely,” Fadiman chuckles, suggesting an update. “It’s turn on a really little bit, tune into your life and enjoy your day. Somewhat different.”

Like Fadiman with microdosing, Vaynerman advertises productivity as just one of the many benefits of yoga. And Richard Pierson, the co-founder of bestselling meditation and mindfulness app Headspace, emails to say: “It would be a shame if employers are only integrating mindfulness to improve productivity. My hope is that they are supporting it so their employees can be healthier and happier throughout their life.”

“Happiness is a route to productivity, not the other way round,” agrees Graham Allcott, who calls himself “the productivity ninja”. He enjoys meditation and yoga. But, he says: “I’m not doing yoga to be productive, though I know it helps me.”

This makes me wonder if anything these days can be considered unproductive. What could Allcott, or anyone, do to escape? To get a proper break, I mean, not the kind that’s flagged at the back of our minds as performance-enhancing? What is the least productive activity Allcott can think of? “I would say the least productive way to spend time would be … Well. I think it would be working on something where …” He hesitates: “No. That’s not quite right. I was kind of thinking about the opposite question. What’s the most productive tends to come down to whether you’re adding value in the best way. The best way to add value is to define the task really well.”

I don’t feel that we have struck at the core of unproductivity here. Perhaps there is no longer such a thing as purposeful unproductivity. After all, even procrastination has been claimed as a productivity tool, provided it is “high-performance procrastination”. And if productivity is simply a byproduct of enjoyable pursuits, are Allcott, Vaynerman and Pierson right to see it as harmless?

“These companies that sell relaxation tools and techniques are kidding themselves if they don’t understand this is part of an acceleration of our economy and expansion of work into all aspects of our life,” says William Davies, a lecturer at Goldsmiths University and author of The Happiness Industry. “It’s a cruel mentality where everything can be used or should be useful, and if it isn’t, I’m not trying hard enough. That’s one problem. The other problem, of course, is that where you once had things that added intrinsic value for people, they’ve become captured in some way.”

What we lose, he says, is the idea of comfort, that nurturing state of ease or strength that is an end in itself. Does he have any suggestion for how to escape the need to be productive? “I suppose slumped in front of the telly with a burger in one hand and a beer in the other,” he says. But unfortunately, some European researchers have got there first and declared vegging out to be healthfully productive. This suggests another possibility. Maybe the idea of productivity itself has been co-opted, to describe the things people like to do, so people can continue to do them, while appearing to be busy.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/06/do-yoga-work-harder-how-productivity-co-opted-relaxation/