#im SURE theres a better theme than future present past but . i dont know a lot of trio themes ok.

[lepoppeta]

*Sits down at a desk like I've just arrived at a meeting* Tell me about your ships and their theme songs and your thoughts, for any fandom/ships you currently feel like rambling about, even if I personally don't know them. Don't hold back c:

hhh oh boy this… "dont hold back" i could simultaneously go on forever and also… not. what im going to try and do for this is concentrate on songs that could be applied to both sides at once, rather than one individual person referring to the other. im also not going to be too narritively focused. these rules help me to keep the ask response to a minimum; i dont really like writing obscenely long posts, and would rather categorise them more concretely.

(by coincidence, this basically narrows down my ship themes to just my bioshock pairings).

if you want to inquire about particular character themes in reference to their respective pairings, then dont hesitate to send another ask! that goes for anyone else reading this post.

that being said… shakes hand thanks for coming today and expressing you interest. we really love to see that kind of go-getter attitude on this blog!

since i asked you about DELTACLAIR themes a little while ago, i figured id repay you and start with them first. deltaclair i find to be very interesting because has the intense aesthetic of a soulmate au but without any sort of weird macguffin to go along with it; theyre simply two people who had an instantaneous connection and an initial sense of deep, unwavering trust. in a lot of media ive consumed concerning these two, they dont really care about their past actions (either for themselves or for the other), but rather focus on the present and how that can affect the future. its a very interesting dynamic and honestly not one ive explored before in any other fandom.

the night we met (lord huron)

i am not the only traveler who has not repaid his debt ive been searching for a trail to follow again take me back to the night we met

the melancholy nature of this song really drives home the directionless nature of themselves and their relationship. they just seem to exist suspended in time and space and outside of finding eleanor and getting out of rapture neither of them have any especially lofty goals to strive towards. sinclair never comes off as particularly ambitious, more placidly curious and perhaps mildly vengeful. delta is… well, delta.

and then i can tell myself what the hell im supposed to do and then i can tell myself not to ride along with you

despite me noting that they never seen to distrust each other, im sure there was a part in the beginning where both of them were waiting for the inevitable screwing-over. as they slowly get more comfortable with the situation theres still this lingering feeling of "i shouldnt be entertaining this at all" and yet they do anyway and its so brilliant and angsty.

like real people do (hozier)

i will not ask you where you came from i will not ask and neither should you

theres this silent understanding that ive always garnered between these two that some things are better left unsaid. sinclair has no idea who delta was before the alpha series, and delta knows that sinclair (chatty as he may be) is pretty tight-lipped at the best of times. its not that important information is being swept under the rug in lieu of a shallow fantasy, its more a silent agreement that bringing past grievances up isnt particulalry helpful. neither of them come across to me as particularly petty (although one could argue that sinclair is the Pettiest Bitch in Existence).

so i will not ask you why you were creeping in some sad way i already know

(see above for explanation)

devils backbone (the civil wars)

dont care if hes guilty dont care if hes not hes good and hes bad and hes all that ive got

delta and sinclair definitely come across as relitively apathetic about each others seedier choices, and quite readily move them aside for the sake of a survivable present and more important a fruitful future. theres simply a distinct lack of shits given, but in an accutely unyeilding way.

in comparison, JATLAS is extremely passionate and volatile compared to deltaclairs mutual, silent acceptance. their songs also tend to be a lot more narratively involved and arent suspended in space like deltaclairs are. they stand out more as individuals who happen to be part of a pair, rather than two characters viewed as a whole. dismissing the themes that contribute to the story rather to them just as inidviduals, jatlas for now only has one song.

exile vilify (the national)

youve got suckers luck have you given up? does it feel like a trial? does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?

atlas and jack never expected to be so important to one another. it all happened so quickly and so intensely that neither of them really stopped to consider how they felt about the whole ordeal until much later. they plague each others thoughts for entirely different reasons; jack has experienced a loveless existence (especially after his mother died) and atlas has never met someone who strikes him as fiercely as jack does. theyre the victims of poor luck and overwhelmingly shitty circumstances and all they have at the end of the day is each other.

[rotshop]

also while im ehre . i would like to preface this by saying i know damn well splatoon 4 is like not even a glimpse of a thought yet and i am soo perfectly fine and content with that i just think conceptualizing is fun . anyway i think if we were going to do another 'final splatfest decides the sorta theme feel of the next game' i think past present future would be fun.

oh to have past be sorta art-deco themed . whatever the fuck bioshock did i guess for past. the idols have clothes themed after 20-30s mixed with a few modern touches mayhaps . could be themed more like radio shows for splatcasts possibly .

oh to have just . normalcore guys . literally just like a wholeass news crew. they cut to one another and report on specific aspects that usually get covered (one for covering like maybe fake weather and turf war stages, one for ranked series battles , another for ranked open battles, and one for game-related updates who might offer some other commentary hereand there idk, big man role) in splatcasts.

oh to have some futuristic guys. this one could def go a few ways with like . minimalism or (in an ideal world) future funk type of style . or also retrofuturism my darling ..... idk ill be honest i dont havetoo too many ideas for this one but ohhh my god i would kill for retro futuristic areas . i KNOWWW they could do it with the very slight vaporwave-y type things i THINK i remember from octo expansion please . please please please .

[littlx-songbxrd]

Chain of Iron:Death theory

As the awaited release date for Chain of Iron approaches and the fandom decends into pure madness, I want to put in my last two cents of overthinking before I stop having coherent thoughts

So we all know this is a second book, and second books bring the absolute pain in the shadowhunter chronicles. There is likely going to be a death from the mains considering the theme of this book, and I am here to throw my theory and reasons as to who I think it might be. Im here to sadly theorize about why I think Christopher Lightwood might not make it past the last hours

1. Tatianas revenge

Right now, Tatiana wants revenge after all our main families: the carstairs, herondales, fairchilds and both branches of the lightwoods. For the lightwood-collins theres barbaras death. For the herondales her daughter has been manipulating their son for over 6 years. Theres a theory that the fairy poison Mathew bought that caused Charlottes misscarriage could be traced back to her. And there are other theories that Elias dissaperance between chog and choi could have something to do with Belial. As of right now the only family who is yet to recieve any permanent damage or tragedy are the lightwood-herondales. Which is really ironic considering its the only family that has two bloodlines Tatiana wants to harm. Not only that, but theyre also the children of who Tatiana blames directly for her fathers death, Gabriel. It seems fishy to me there hasn't been any permanent damage in their family, and I dont think that is gonna last for long

2. The family tree

The family tree states that Grace Cartwright (Aka Grace Blackthorn) marries Christopher Lightwood and theyre the ones who continue the line that leads to Alec and Isabelle. Now Cassandra has said varius times the family tree can be misleading, and I am a firm believer this is one of the misleading ends. Why this lie was created, I'm not sure, but lets analize some things. As of right now there are 5 lightwood children. At least 3 of them can pass down the lightwood name. Of those three, if we take into account that Thomas may not have kids due to being gay, that still leaves two branches of lightwood kids that may continue on. As of present time we only have word of one line, Alec and Isabelles. And Robert isnt said to have any cousins, theres no mention in the future of another lightwood line. So the idea that both Alexander and Christopher have kids is pretty unbelivable considering theres only one lightwood line in the future. Unless Alexander goes on to have only girls and Christopher has only one boy, it seems more likely the family tree is wrong. Isabelle and Alec are confirmed as of the bane chronicles to be decendants of Gabriel lightwood (Isabelle makes a reference to looking up her great great grandfather Gabriel Lightwood and telling magnus he was hot in the last story of the book)

So its already confirmed they're a) the last decendants of the lightwood line and b) that line stems from Gabriel. If we based ourselves solely on the family tree and Christopher being the one carrying the line, that would have been believable enough not to raise any red flags. Christopher IS the son of Grabriel Lightwood, able bodied and seems to have a general attraction to women (I mean, we all know hes aro/ace but lets stick with canon). There isnt anything pointing to him not being able to marry and have kids. Where the red flags raise for me is with Alexander

Alexander wasnt in the original plans for the family tree, he was added when Cassie started writting the last hours. If you take into account his role in chog, there really was no reason to add Alexander Lightwood. He doesnt seem to do anything, hes a 3 year old kid, you can very well delete him from the narrative and nothing would change. So why did Cassandra add him?? Why did she decide to make Cecily and Gabriel have another kid ?

To me, it seems a lot like the baby carstairs situation . The family tree says Alastair carries the carstairs line, Alastair is a gay man so he cant have biological kids, theres another unplaned baby to carry the line. It seems to me Christopher carrying the lightwood line is a lie, and Alexanders role is to carry it in his place. I even found a little info from an ask wayy before chain of gold came out where it said Alexander had green eyes, but in the book she changed it to blue eyes. The exact same shade the modern day lightwoods seem to have. A trait hes more likely to pass down than his lavender eyed brother who supposedly "marries" grey eyed grace

3. Character Arc

Characters in literature need goals, things to work for or work towards through the story in order for them to develop. We call those things character arcs, and it seems we have all ignored how christophers may have indirectly ended. If you read his short story, or just overall analize his character, his main goal is simple. He wants to create something that will help the nephlim through science. His personal character arc is that he wants to prove himself and his skill to the clave using his passion to be a hero.

An arc that could have been expanded all through the series, and ended with him using his skills in the end to defeat belial in some way, proving his passions worth. Through the story we could have had a glimpse at his struggles, how he was put down, the failed attempts, fustrations etc. This all could have rounded christopher as a character, and brought more satisfaction to the end goal of his arc which is proving the value of his science. But instead, his arc in book seemingly already ended? Because he did it, he figured out a way to combine science with his duty and saved the entire enclave from the demon poison. He is now acclaimed a hero for his skills. All the other characters have things to finish going into chain of iron, Christopher doesnt. Why would she end an arc that could have taken through the entire series in just one book? Christopher is the only secondary character with a defined personality and a lack of arc to look foward too in following books. This could all point that his arc was rushed because it was being cut short

4. Lightwood blood

There has been a lot of theories going around about Thomas being the one who gets killed in this book, which is resonable considering the unerving amount of forehsadowing we've had to him getting himself caught up in something. But I raise you this, why would CC be giving us so much assurance that Thomas was going to get hurt if she was going to kill him? Not only would she be reaveling one of her most devastating murders, she would basically be spoiling a very big part of her own book. Thomas death would affect everyone, if she WERE to kill him she wouldnt be indulging us in our Thomas death theory as much as she has. Itd be too expectable, I actually believe that by giving us all the info she has she has more or less confirmed he wont die.

I believe this is all a decoy. Shes giving us foreshadowing towards something bad happening to Thomas, to cover up the very big reality shes planning to kill someone else. Theres a very big chance that for the resurection, theyre gonna need Jesses families blood. Same way Malcom needed blackthorn blood to raise Annabel. As of rightnow there arent any blackthorns (by blood) left alive, the only blood relatives Jesse still had are the lightwoods. So we already know Thomas gets captured by the murderer (referenece to the art), but it is most likely he gets rescued. People speculate he most likely got captured for the resurection Tatianas trying to do, because of his lightwood blood. But if Thomas escapes, Tatiana still needs her families blood. And I'd like to point out this is also where the fact she hasnt taken permanent revenge on the lightwood-herondales would come in. Theres a good chance that if the murders are releated to her, and she cant have Thomas, she wont stop at just Thomas.

5. Story relevance

In all sense of story, Christopher is the perfect candidate to kill. As hard as that is to say: he's a secondary character, who has a well defined personality, loved enough by the fans that there would certainly be a shock factor following his death, important enough to the story that there would be a big impact to the narrative, and interwined enough with the main characters to cause emotional distress in the story. His arc is indirectly done, this author has a history of killing lightwoods, there isnt much to discourage the possibility he might be killed besides the faulty family tree. And as I said, that tree has been stated multiple times to be misleading

Bonus prove

6. Christophers cut-out

Same way were analizing the hell out of a broken spear, why are we not talking about the skull on christophers?

(Sorry couldnt get better quality pics)

The truth is, I hate this theory as much as everyone, Im genuinly hoping chain of iron proves me wrong. But there are 5 deaths comming, and not all of them can be side characters. Cordelia Lucie and James all have main character protection. I already explained why Thomas dying is unlikely. Anna, Ariadne and Alastair have gay protection (and I think some asks about Alastair dying were pretty much answered with a discreet no)

If there are mains dying, Christophers the most likely to go

[pigletsbigmovie]

endgame spoilers i watched it a couple weeks ago here are my complaints lol

nebula and gamora...... were done so dirty lmao....... i am not surprised, i knew this was gonna happen but still.

i mean i really liked nebula in endgame! i love seeing how far she’s come since gotg! she played a larger role in this film than i was expecting and that was nice!

i just disliked the fact that she ends up killing her past self?? it’s such an example of the problem with these big ensemble films... other characters’ arcs take precedence over other characters and so like while killing her past self makes sense for the overall narrative... it doesnt make sense for nebula’s character arc....

or like how since this the last film in which we’ll be seeing all original avengers together, of course it’s them that are prioritized over other characters which means Of Course it’s tony that ultimately defeats thanos even tho really it makes more sense for thanos to be defeated by nebula and gamora and that would’ve been a rly big development in their arcs but guess not! i guess! no can do!

they tried to make the tony vs thanos conflict this Big Dramatic Thing but in reality it is sooooo impersonal....... which makes the conflict and the resolution of that conflict just not very interesting to me...

like imagine if the gotg films were it’s own franchise. no other marvel movies exist, it’s not connected to anything else, it is it’s own thing. then that would mean the gotg franchise has thanos for itself and those films would be leading up to the defeat of thanos which can be fulfilled by nebula and gamora because theyre protagonists of these films. imagine how satisfying that wouldve been!! like gotg has always focused on themes of family! that franchise ending with nebula and gamora defeating their abusive adoptive father with the help of their new found family wouldve been so emotionally impactful and satisfying!

but nnnoooo instead we get tony vs thanos. they don’t even know each other. they’re just that one guy that got in the way of their desires. just an obstacle. that connection is not deep enough to be interesting

ok i went off on a tangent there but back to nebula killing her past self.... Why. we know that given time, the nebula that we see can change for the better! we know bc we see that nebula right there! our nebula! but nooope instead of getting a powerful scene about nebula literally staring her trauma right in the face and how she feels about that now that she’s grown so much...... she just kills her? i mean she tries to appeal to her? but this past nebula isnt given the time she needs to grow! she’s just killed off with 0 compassion......... and it’s such... a sad and unsatisfying development... like there’s a difference between “letting the past die” and killing your past traumatized self.... like if her past self deserves to die and isnt worthy of compassion then that just goes against our nebula’s entire existence? she is the person she is in the present bc she was shown compassion and was allowed to grow! why is this nebula not deserving of that? it’s literally just bc it’s inconvenient to everyone else... thats awful.

then there’s gamora...... like she finds out about this future in which thanos succeeds in his plan and........... she fucking WAITS???? SHE WAITS TO STOP HIM??? IM SORRY BUT WHHHAAAAT THE FUCK??????

like!!! this is literally around the time in our timeline when gamora enacts her plan to ditch thanos and steal the power stone for herself as soon as she finds out that he’s found it’s location in order to stop it from getting into his hands. you’re telling me that gamora waits A LONG SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME after thanos gets all the information he needs to get not just the power stone but ALL THE OTHER INFINITY STONES before attempting to stop him?? YOURE ASKING ME TO BELIEVE THAT?? THAT SHE WOULDNT IMMEDIATELY OR AT LEAST AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TRY TO STOP HIM?

like if i remember correctly, by the time she teams up with future nebula to try to stop thanos, he’s already made significant progress in formulating/enacting his plan to get all the infinity stones..... like she doesnt try to sabotage/steal the information re:time travel in order to keep thanos away from the stones??? it doesnt make sense. it does not make sense that she would wait i cant get over it what the fuck alsooo...... while im glad that gamora isn’t just Dead now and that there’s an alive gamora out and about.... it Upsets me deeply that this isnt our gamora lmao. and this isnt just me being unnecessarily sentimental. it just sucks storytelling wise. gamora underwent so much development from the 1st gotg up to infinity war...... and now all of that is all Gone bc new gamora didn’t experience ANY of that! like saying her development was retconned maybe isn’t exactly true bc all of that development still happened and is Canon but... it’s basically all irrelevant now bc! again! this gamora didnt go through any of it! when peter and gamora reunite in infinity war and peter is emotional and gamora is like What the Fuck? like ha ha yeah funny but...... peter and gamora are very important to each other. theyve been through a lot together. whether or not you like their romance is whatever but them telling each other “i love you” in infinity war was such a HUGH DEAL considering everything they went through as individuals..... and now that development is Gone. and it sucks.

rly i felt all the female characters in endgame got the short end of the stick in this movie :/ like sure theres that One Group Shot... and sure it made whiny men cry so that’s great... it’s cool but like it felt so shallow to me! the bare minimum! very few of the women in that scene actually significantly contributed to the plot of endgame.... like it’s So Easy to put all these women in one shot but it’s a whole other thing entirely to give those women actual Roles in the plot. they even fridged another women in the Literal Exact Same Way they did in infinity war! the exact same way! like the 1st time they did it was unnecessary and unjustifiable to me and then they really went and did it again exactly the same! ALRIGHT! COOL I GUESS!

also captain marvel was so hyped up as being the Key to defeating thanos but the film comes out and i dont think she’s even in it for like 5 minutes total screentime. i mean i wont lie. seeing her fight thanos no problem was really really cool and i loved it but then it lasted what? 10 seconds? 

idk it’s just. rly rly easy to give superficial nods to the strength of these women and while, yes, it bothers whiny man babies and isnt harmful... it’s still superficial <:/ like these are just tiny itty bitty baby steps. it’s 2019 please allow female characters to play larger more significant roles in stories..... alluding to their strength is not the same thing as that. hire female writers.

overall i didnt have a Bad Time watching this movie? i actually laughed plenty. all the scenes with scott are wonderful. but overall the movie was just... fine... and left me feeling empty and indifferent like a lot of other mcu films leave me feeling <:) despite it’s faults i enjoyed iw a lot better and so endgame felt anticlimactic to me which is yknow. bad. considering it’s supposed to be a big finale.

sorry to be a big ol No Fun Allowed boy but i mean. the thing that i find so attractive about these films is Character! like ive only rly enjoyed a handful of mcu films but the reason i keep coming to watch the new ones is bc the idea of these characters is so attractive to me! this expansive superhero universe gives a big opportunity to explore a whole bunch of different characters and a whole bunch of different character dynamics. and while for the most part the mcu is good at producing distinct, conceptually interesting characters.... theyre generally not very good at utilizing them and building them up... which is why they leave me feeling empty

[themoneybuff-blog]

The relationship between time, money, and happiness

Shares 825 The older I get, the more Im convinced that time is money (and money is time). Were commonly taught that money is a store of value. But what does store of value actually mean? Its a repository of past effort that can be applied to future purchases. Really, money is a store of time. (Well, a store of productive time, anyhow.) Now, having made this argument, Ill admit that time and money arent exactly the same thing. Money is a store of time, sure, but the two concepts have some differences too. For instance, time is linear. After one minute or one day has passed, its irretrievable. You cannot reclaim it. If you waste an hour, its gone forever. If you waste (or lose) a dollar, however, its always possible to earn another dollar. Time marches forward but money has no direction. More importantly, time is finite. Money is not. Theoretically, your income and wealth have no upper bound. On the other hand, each of us has about seventy (maybe eighty) years on this earth. If youre lucky, youll live for 1000 months. Only a very few of us will live 5000 weeks. Most of us will live between 25,000 and 30,000 days. Ive always loved this representation of a life in weeks of a typical American from the blog Wait But Why:

If you allow yourself to conduct a thought experiment in which time and money are interchangeable, you can reach some startling conclusions. Wealth and Work When I began to fully grasp the relationship between money and time, my first big insight was that wealth isnt necessarily an abundance of money its an abundance of time. Or potential time. When you accumulate a lot of money, you actually accumulate a large store of time to use however you please. And, in fact, this seems to be one of the primary reasons the Financial Independence movement is gaining popularity. Financial Independence having saved enough that youre no longer required to work for money provides the promise that you can use your time in whichever way you choose. When I attend FI gatherings, I ask folks what motivates them. Almost everyone offers some variation on the theme: I want to be able to do what I want, when I want. To me, one of the huge ironies of modern society is that so many people spend so much time to accumulate so much Stuff yet never manage to set aside anything for the future. Why is this? In an article on Wealth and Work, Thomas J. Elpel explores the complicated relationship between our ever-increasing standard of living and the effort required to achieve that level of comfort. Ultimately you are significantly wealthier than before, but you are also working harder too. Nobody said you had to pay for oil lamps and oil or books and freshly laundered clothes, but you would feel deprived if you didnt, so you work a little harder to give your family all the good things that life has to offer.

Its a catch-22. You work more to have more money to buy more Stuffbut because you have so much Stuff, you need more money, which means you have to work more. Its almost as if the more physical things you possess, the less time you have. How do you escape this vicious cycle? There are two ways, actually. Spend Less, Live More The first (most obvious) way to remove yourself from this hedonic treadmill is to deliberately reduce your spending so that its below the level needed to maintain your lifestyle. As Ive argued before at Get Rich Slowly, frugality buys freedom. When you reduce your lifestyle, it takes less time to fund it. If youre earning $50,000 per year take-home and spending all $50,000, you leave no margin for error. If something goes wrong you lose your job, inflation skyrockets youre in a bind. Plus, you dont give yourself a chance to seize unexpected opportunities! But if you reduce your spending to $40,000 per year, you give yourself options. You can choose to continue earning $50,000 and bank the difference (building a store of time) or you can choose to work less today (taking the advantage of the time savings immediately). Spending less also helps fund your future. Learning to live with a lesser lifestyle means you dont need to save as much for retirement. If you spend $50,000 per year, for example, then you need roughly $1.25 million saved before you can retire. But if you decrease spending to $40,000 per year, your target drops to around $1 million. It takes much less work to fund an ongoing lifestyle of $40,000 per year than it does to maintain a lifestyle that costs $50,000 per year. And if youre in the fortunate position where you can slash your lifestyle from, say, $120,000 per year to $30,000 per year, you can really reduce the time you spend working. Buying Time Promotes Happiness But what if you like your lifestyle and dont want to cut back? Or what if youre not able to cut back? Theres still a way to use the relationship between time and money to increase your sense of well-being. Last year, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal published an interesting article that declared buying time promotes happiness. The authors conducted a series of experimental studies to look at the link between time, money, and happiness. Their conclusion? Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity. We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness. Using large, diverse sampleswe show that individuals who spend money on time-saving services report greater life satisfaction. A field experiment provides causal evidence that working adults report greater happiness after spending money on a timesaving purchase than on a material purchase. Together, these results suggest that using money to buy time can protect people from the detrimental effects of time pressure on life satisfaction. If you want to improve your quality of life, dont use your money to buy Stuff, use it to relieve time pressure. Instead of buying a fancy car, purchase time-saving devices. Hire a housekeeper or a yard-maintenance company. Maybe consider a meal-delivery service. Interestingly, the effects of buying time have the greatest impact on folks who have less money: We observed a stronger relationship between buying time and life satisfaction among less-affluent individuals, the authors write. Finding Balance My biggest takeaway from thinking about the relationship between time and money is this: When you spend less, you can work less. In a very real way, frugality buys time. But on a deeper level, frugality buys freedom financial freedom, freedom from worry, freedom to spend your time however you choose. When you treat time as money (and money as time), you can better evaluate how to allocate your dollars and your hours. When you know how much your time is worth, you can decide when it makes sense to outsource specific jobs. Ultimately, theres a balance to be had, and that balance is different for each of us. You have to decide how much time youre willing to spend on present comfort and how much time you want to bank for the future. I believe theres no single right answer to this dilemma. What about you? How do you view the relationship between time, money, and happiness? Do you have some examples from your own life of buying time in order to improve your happiness? What balance have you arrived at and how did you get there? Shares 825 https://www.getrichslowly.org/time-money-happiness/

[trendingnewsb]

MIA: This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me

Maya Arulpragasam is bringing dancehall, hip-hop and grime to this years Meltdown. Is the outspoken British Sri Lankan the best argument for positive cultural appropriation?

The Guardian said that you couldnt shag to my record. As conversational openers go, MIAs beats the banal niceties of, say, Hello, how are you doing?. Its no surprise that she charges straight into a chat about why her last album was considered too confrontational for the bedroom by this paper. Its an icebreaker moulded to MIAs very own design: abrasive, compelling, underpinned by sex. Yeah, she finally concedes with a grin when I suggest we move past it, you cant have it all, can you?

Its a theme she warms up to when we talk about her edition of Meltdown at the Southbank Centre, which were ostensibly here to discuss. Usually, I wouldnt do something like this, she says, slouched under an oversized khaki coat dress. [But the organisers] were like: Hey, you can do whatever you want. Still, putting on the South Banks annual festival, curated in previous years by the likes of David Bowie, David Byrne and Patti Smith, has turned out to be a fairly arduous affair for MIA who says she doesnt do computers at the moment.

They didnt tell me it was nine days long. I thought it was a weekend. And then all my lists were, like, Well, this person wont be in London and that person is doing Glastonbury. Organising festivals is actually really complicated, she stresses. It wasnt just about dreaming something and then it appeared. Programming literally means, like, programming.

For all that Maya Arulpragasam didnt quite know what she was letting herself in for, one suspects the Southbank Centre didnt either; logistics aside, the mornings photoshoot has already been met with some flapping from the press officer made nervous by MIA climbing on the roof without safety clearance. Still, her lineup dancehall, Brooklyn hip-hop, depressive Swedish rap and Nigerian grime is perhaps the most underground the festival has seen in its 24 years. How much is she expecting to shake up its comfortable concert halls, cafe bars and conference-room spaces?

Click here to watch the video for last years Go Off.

When I was a teenager in London, I would just get a Travelcard and go somewhere, explore the city and go to weird places, she says. I would never judge the place, like, This is middle class and white. This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me, but there wasnt ever a limit on where I could go or what I could do.

A long, elliptical digression on London then and now follows, which takes in the optimistic multiculturalism of the 90s, Tamil house parties, empire and British identity. Its the bento box of an MIA interview: individually contained ideas that dont obviously bleed into one another and yet, overall, make a collective sense if youre prepared to go with it. Thats the key thing about MIA: you have to be willing to go with her to properly get her. Given that she still looks and sounds like a beautiful, bratty, art-school upstart and is prone to labyrinthine tangents, its easy to portray her as inarticulate or unhinged. But MIAs intelligence is instinctive rather than intellectual, and fuelled by the political.

The Mehrabian maxim that reckons that only 7% of communication is verbal is one that might best be proven by the transcript of a chat with MIA removed of all tone, attitude, context and body language. Take, for instance, her explanation of why only the future remains relevant:

As humans, we dont use our past and our history to work out the importance of what our role is in the present, she says. And if you cant use the past to define your present, then it should not be an element that holds back the future. Greece is a perfect example. More than Britain, they were brought to their knees, and not a single white country thought about saving them. And it was part of their heritage. Its where their mythology comes from or their concept of capitalism and democracy comes from. Nobody cared, everybody cared about the modern. Right?

Kim Kardashian is actually more powerful than Greece. She has more money than the whole of Greece, she continues. Therefore, thats where the power lies. If you then define it that way, then you kind of just have to live with that. And maybe whats happening in modern society: that if youre going to judge it by that, then other countries are gonna come in and define the future.

In print, its a statement that seems lacking in logic and coherence. In the moment, Im fairly sure Im able to follow her and we go on to consider how and where this future is being defined (for the record: You cant ignore the fact that China is going to be doing their thing in the next 50 years) and how Arulpragasam believes the immigration issue has become a red herring covering up a truth that can explain the American and British swing to conservative populism.

With Brexit, the idea was to get away from Europe and reinvent our identity, she says. And really, that identity was going to be American, but then they gave us Trump! So, everyone now is like, Oh shit, what is Britain? Are we going to rewind back to the 1800s? We cant. Its too late for that. So, going forward, we need a charismatic leader who then va va vooms the British identity. And we dont have that either.

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted … MIA. Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith/The Guide

The prime minister has called a snap election on the day we meet. Does MIA have any faith in our political system? Or in the left?

Everyone keeps going, Corbyn cant do this, but its, like, well, who else is there? she says. If people just left him alone to actually do the job and actually gave him some support, maybe hed be different. Treating him with so much contempt fighting that takes all his energy. How the fuck do you expect him to do interesting things? In any case insists the estranged daughter of a Tamil revolutionary, politicians are people who couldnt get jobs somewhere else.

MIAs politics, unwieldy and unslick though they may be, have often made her an easy target for tedious sneering in the press; the most insistent narrative is that, like Banksy, shes big on arch, subversive statement but lacks substance. Or that she is a hypocrite for making herself the poster girl for the worlds most marginalised people. And yet, shes one of the best pop stars Britain has ever produced. For all the ear-clanging experimentation of her five albums, MIA has always kept a sleeve full of pop bangers Bucky Done Gun, Paper Planes, Bad Girls, Finally that have sounded like little that came before or since her. Even if she didnt have the tunes, here is an art-school refugee Sri Lankan single mother with a visual aesthetic co-opted by everyone from Vetements to Versace who was born into political rebellion and revels in controversy. Gleefully gauche and carefree, MIA is the best argument for when cultural appropriation works. Bland singer-songstress beloved of Radio 2 playlists she isnt. So how much has the criticism bothered her?

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted because Im not, she ays. I just had to fight for shit, and I still do. I just dont care any more. I dont know. She stops and starts. What I deal with as an artist, the media, the public persona, its a walk in the fucking park, compared to how confusing the universe really fucking is. Theres so much beauty in it and theres so much mystery, theres so much confusing shit in it. That is way more interesting to think about than why, like, Patricia hates me. You know what I mean? I laugh. Its like, Who the fuck is Patricia? and How can Patricia say this shit about me?. It just does not matter to me at all.As it is, she says shes most preoccupied with how to be a functioning grown up, an adult and a mother to an eight-year-old son (whose father Benjamin Bronfman is son to the billionaire heir of the Seagram fortune) born into immense privilege.

When the war came to an end in Sri Lanka in 2009, it actually did affect me, she explains. Everyone was, like, What the fuck does she know? Shes, like, a pop star, but that was my life. It was 50% of who I was, it was my identity. I didnt know what to do with myself. So I had a kid. Its the year the cause died, but the year my personal cause my son was born. And then, OK, I have to figure out what to do in very small parameters: I have a son, how is he going to see his grandma, am I going to make it there on Saturday? Can I make sure that I dont mess up his head by being depressed about certain things?

She struggles to reconcile her upbringing poor and living in Sri Lanka for her childhood to poor and living on a council estate in Mitcham, south London, in her adolescence with her sons. Im not very straightforward as an immigrant. That whole My kids would never see the pain that I saw; Im not like that. Im totally up for reintroducing him to the pain. I dont have any qualms about that. Her problems havent changed, she says, because of money or better circumstances. Whether Im in a mansion or a council flat, I would feel the same anxiety waking up going: I need to write this thing in a scrapbook, wheres my notepad? I would still have all those problems. I might still overcook the fish fingers. Those things are not going to magically transform because your house has changed. At the beginning I thought that money couldve saved my family. Very quickly I realised that money is not the thing.

Her conflict in wanting to being huge and commercial versus credible and ahead of the curve has been a persistent tension threaded through MIAs career. When I got into the music game, it was never an option to shut up and make lots of money. she says. To be a huge pop star, I would have to be, like, Yes, I think bombing Afghanistan was a great idea, I love our democracy and what it has achieved. I love the American flag and Im going to make a jumpsuit out of it. I just think it was important to have all of those Arab Springs, and its great and lets drink Coca-Cola. I had to do that, and do it all in a thong. Could I have done that if it meant that my mum had the nicest house in Chiswick by the river?

Click here to se the video for MIAs Bad Girls.

Does she worry about money now? If youre preaching living within your means, you have to, to some extent. But I also know that if youre someone in society that speaks out about injustice or political issues, one of the things that happens is that you get economically punished, 100%. I take that hit all the time.

The most recent, obvious example was MIA being forced to quit her headline slot at Afropunk last year, following a contentious quote in which she asked in an interview why Beyonc and Kendrick Lamar might not discuss why Muslim lives matter or Syrian lives matter. I dont regret [raising the issue], she says, with triumphant chutzpah. You saw how bad it was. And the Muslim ban didnt happen just with Trump, it was already happening under Obama. But you couldnt say that about him, you couldnt say that he introduced the Muslim ban, or banned seven different countries, or was already monitoring people, or dropped more bombs than Trump has. In truth, Obamas administration did identify the seven countries on Trumps list for additional screening measures, but it didnt bar their nationals. Shes already skipped ahead. The quantity of damage cant be quantified right now, she insists. Well have to wait the four years. After eight years of Obama, we kind of knew [his failings], but we just werent allowed to say them because he was so great. He was better than any person in Hollywood that I wouldve watched. He was really likable and just had loads of swag. That doesnt mean that you have to deny the truth, though.

This (and much more) comes moments after she tells me she has no time for opinions these days. She claims she doesnt read the news any more and that her primary sources for information are customers at the local kebab shop, taxi drivers and then sort of figuring it out. What about the state of the world? MIAs moment as an agitprop pop activist has never seemed more potent. Politics? I have no time for these things because Im so stuck in the zone. Ive become a hermit. [Meltdown] is actually giving me the chance to actually go out and meet people again. Ive gone for weeks without talking to a person, I do that happily. I tell her I dont believe her, as I suspect it would be a recipe for her to go fully barmy.

Im actually quite an extreme person, so I dont see that as madness. I see that as, like, solitude, doing a phase of solitude is not that bad. After declaring her fifth album AIM to be her final one, shes also trying to find new ways to channel her creativity. Im trying to write a film. I havent stepped into it yet because I want it to be good. Once you hit the start button you cant really stop it. She has, she tells me, the added complication of ADD to contend with. When was that diagnosed? I just have it. Dont even need diagnosis, its a waste of time, its a waste of the NHS. In truly blithe MIA style, she adds: Its just when you have too many ideas and not enough ways to get them out.

MIAs Meltdown is at the Southbank Centre, SE1, 9-18 June

Read more: http://ift.tt/2rBtxTD

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[themoneybuff-blog]

The relationship between time, money, and happiness

Shares 101 The older I get, the more Im convinced that time is money (and money is time). Were commonly taught that money is a store of value. But what does store of value actually mean? Its a repository of past effort that can be applied to future purchases. Really, money is a store of time. (Well, a store of productive time, anyhow.) Now, having made this argument, Ill admit that time and money arent exactly the same thing. Money is a store of time, sure, but the two concepts have some differences too. For instance, time is linear. After one minute or one day has passed, its irretrievable. You cannot reclaim it. If you waste an hour, its gone forever. If you waste (or lose) a dollar, however, its always possible to earn another dollar. Time marches forward but money has no direction. More importantly, time is finite. Money is not. Theoretically, your income and wealth have no upper bound. On the other hand, each of us has about seventy (maybe eighty) years on this earth. If youre lucky, youll live for 1000 months. Only a very few of us will live 5000 weeks. Most of us will live between 25,000 and 30,000 days. Ive always loved this representation of a life in weeks of a typical American from the blog Wait But Why:

If you allow yourself to conduct a thought experiment in which time and money are interchangeable, you can reach some startling conclusions. Wealth and Work When I began to fully grasp the relationship between money and time, my first big insight was that wealth isnt necessarily an abundance of money its an abundance of time. Or potential time. When you accumulate a lot of money, you actually accumulate a large store of time to use however you please. And, in fact, this seems to be one of the primary reasons the Financial Independence movement is gaining popularity. Financial Independence having saved enough that youre no longer required to work for money provides the promise that you can use your time in whichever way you choose. When I attend FI gatherings, I ask folks what motivates them. Almost everyone offers some variation on the theme: I want to be able to do what I want, when I want. To me, one of the huge ironies of modern society is that so many people spend so much time to accumulate so much Stuff yet never manage to set aside anything for the future. Why is this? In an article on Wealth and Work, Thomas J. Elpel explores the complicated relationship between our ever-increasing standard of living and the effort required to achieve that level of comfort. Ultimately you are significantly wealthier than before, but you are also working harder too. Nobody said you had to pay for oil lamps and oil or books and freshly laundered clothes, but you would feel deprived if you didnt, so you work a little harder to give your family all the good things that life has to offer.

Its a catch-22. You work more to have more money to buy more Stuffbut because you have so much Stuff, you need more money, which means you have to work more. Its almost as if the more physical things you possess, the less time you have. How do you escape this vicious cycle? There are two ways, actually. Spend Less, Live More The first (most obvious) way to remove yourself from this hedonic treadmill is to deliberately reduce your spending so that its below the level needed to maintain your lifestyle. As Ive argued before at Get Rich Slowly, frugality buys freedom. When you reduce your lifestyle, it takes less time to fund it. If youre earning $50,000 per year take-home and spending all $50,000, you leave no margin for error. If something goes wrong you lose your job, inflation skyrockets youre in a bind. Plus, you dont give yourself a chance to seize unexpected opportunities! But if you reduce your spending to $40,000 per year, you give yourself options. You can choose to continue earning $50,000 and bank the difference (building a store of time) or you can choose to work less today (taking the advantage of the time savings immediately). Spending less also helps fund your future. Learning to live with a lesser lifestyle means you dont need to save as much for retirement. If you spend $50,000 per year, for example, then you need roughly $1.25 million saved before you can retire. But if you decrease spending to $40,000 per year, your target drops to around $1 million. It takes much less work to fund an ongoing lifestyle of $40,000 per year than it does to maintain a lifestyle that costs $50,000 per year. And if youre in the fortunate position where you can slash your lifestyle from, say, $120,000 per year to $30,000 per year, you can really reduce the time you spend working. Buying Time Promotes Happiness But what if you like your lifestyle and dont want to cut back? Or what if youre not able to cut back? Theres still a way to use the relationship between time and money to increase your sense of well-being. Last year, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal published an interesting article that declared buying time promotes happiness. The authors conducted a series of experimental studies to look at the link between time, money, and happiness. Their conclusion? Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity. We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness. Using large, diverse sampleswe show that individuals who spend money on time-saving services report greater life satisfaction. A field experiment provides causal evidence that working adults report greater happiness after spending money on a timesaving purchase than on a material purchase. Together, these results suggest that using money to buy time can protect people from the detrimental effects of time pressure on life satisfaction. If you want to improve your quality of life, dont use your money to buy Stuff, use it to relieve time pressure. Instead of buying a fancy car, purchase time-saving devices. Hire a housekeeper or a yard-maintenance company. Maybe consider a meal-delivery service. Interestingly, the effects of buying time have the greatest impact on folks who have less money: We observed a stronger relationship between buying time and life satisfaction among less-affluent individuals, the authors write. Finding Balance My biggest takeaway from thinking about the relationship between time and money is this: When you spend less, you can work less. In a very real way, frugality buys time. But on a deeper level, frugality buys freedom financial freedom, freedom from worry, freedom to spend your time however you choose. When you treat time as money (and money as time), you can better evaluate how to allocate your dollars and your hours. When you know how much your time is worth, you can decide when it makes sense to outsource specific jobs. Ultimately, theres a balance to be had, and that balance is different for each of us. You have to decide how much time youre willing to spend on present comfort and how much time you want to bank for the future. I believe theres no single right answer to this dilemma. What about you? How do you view the relationship between time, money, and happiness? Do you have some examples from your own life of buying time in order to improve your happiness? What balance have you arrived at and how did you get there? Shares 101 https://www.getrichslowly.org/time-money-happiness/

[themoneybuff-blog]

The relationship between time, money, and happiness

The older I get, the more Im convinced that time is money (and money is time). Were commonly taught that money is a store of value. But what does store of value actually mean? Its a repository of past effort that can be applied to future purchases. Really, money is a store of time. (Well, a store of productive time, anyhow.) Now, having made this argument, Ill admit that time and money arent exactly the same thing. Money is a store of time, sure, but the two concepts have some differences too. For instance, time is linear. After one minute or one day has passed, its irretrievable. You cannot reclaim it. If you waste an hour, its gone forever. If you waste (or lose) a dollar, however, its always possible to earn another dollar. Time marches forward but money has no direction. More importantly, time is finite. Money is not. Theoretically, your income and wealth have no upper bound. On the other hand, each of us has about seventy (maybe eighty) years on this earth. If youre lucky, youll live for 1000 months. Only a very few of us will live 5000 weeks. Most of us will live between 25,000 and 30,000 days. Ive always loved this representation of a life in weeks of a typical American from the blog Wait But Why:

If you allow yourself to conduct a thought experiment in which time and money are interchangeable, you can reach some startling conclusions. Wealth and Work When I began to fully grasp the relationship between money and time, my first big insight was that wealth isnt necessarily an abundance of money its an abundance of time. Or potential time. When you accumulate a lot of money, you actually accumulate a large store of time to use however you please. And, in fact, this seems to be one of the primary reasons the Financial Independence movement is gaining popularity. Financial Independence having saved enough that youre no longer required to work for money provides the promise that you can use your time in whichever way you choose. When I attend FI gatherings, I ask folks what motivates them. Almost everyone offers some variation on the theme: I want to be able to do what I want, when I want. To me, one of the huge ironies of modern society is that so many people spend so much time to accumulate so much Stuff yet never manage to set aside anything for the future. Why is this? In an article on Wealth and Work, Thomas J. Elpel explores the complicated relationship between our ever-increasing standard of living and the effort required to achieve that level of comfort. Ultimately you are significantly wealthier than before, but you are also working harder too. Nobody said you had to pay for oil lamps and oil or books and freshly laundered clothes, but you would feel deprived if you didnt, so you work a little harder to give your family all the good things that life has to offer.

Its a catch-22. You work more to have more money to buy more Stuffbut because you have so much Stuff, you need more money, which means you have to work more. Its almost as if the more physical things you possess, the less time you have. How do you escape this vicious cycle? There are two ways, actually. Spend Less, Live More The first (most obvious) way to remove yourself from this hedonic treadmill is to deliberately reduce your spending so that its below the level needed to maintain your lifestyle. As Ive argued before at Get Rich Slowly, frugality buys freedom. When you reduce your lifestyle, it takes less time to fund it. If youre earning $50,000 per year take-home and spending all $50,000, you leave no margin for error. If something goes wrong you lose your job, inflation skyrockets youre in a bind. Plus, you dont give yourself a chance to seize unexpected opportunities! But if you reduce your spending to $40,000 per year, you give yourself options. You can choose to continue earning $50,000 and bank the difference (building a store of time) or you can choose to work less today (taking the advantage of the time savings immediately). Spending less also helps fund your future. Learning to live with a lesser lifestyle means you dont need to save as much for retirement. If you spend $50,000 per year, for example, then you need roughly $1.25 million saved before you can retire. But if you decrease spending to $40,000 per year, your target drops to around $1 million. It takes much less work to fund an ongoing lifestyle of $40,000 per year than it does to maintain a lifestyle that costs $50,000 per year. And if youre in the fortunate position where you can slash your lifestyle from, say, $120,000 per year to $30,000 per year, you can really reduce the time you spend working. Buying Time Promotes Happiness But what if you like your lifestyle and dont want to cut back? Or what if youre not able to cut back? Theres still a way to use the relationship between time and money to increase your sense of well-being. Last year, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal published an interesting article that declared buying time promotes happiness. The authors conducted a series of experimental studies to look at the link between time, money, and happiness. Their conclusion? Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity. We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness. Using large, diverse sampleswe show that individuals who spend money on time-saving services report greater life satisfaction. A field experiment provides causal evidence that working adults report greater happiness after spending money on a timesaving purchase than on a material purchase. Together, these results suggest that using money to buy time can protect people from the detrimental effects of time pressure on life satisfaction. If you want to improve your quality of life, dont use your money to buy Stuff, use it to relieve time pressure. Instead of buying a fancy car, purchase time-saving devices. Hire a housekeeper or a yard-maintenance company. Maybe consider a meal-delivery service. Interestingly, the effects of buying time have the greatest impact on folks who have less money: We observed a stronger relationship between buying time and life satisfaction among less-affluent individuals, the authors write. Finding Balance My biggest takeaway from thinking about the relationship between time and money is this: When you spend less, you can work less. In a very real way, frugality buys time. But on a deeper level, frugality buys freedom financial freedom, freedom from worry, freedom to spend your time however you choose. When you treat time as money (and money as time), you can better evaluate how to allocate your dollars and your hours. When you know how much your time is worth, you can decide when it makes sense to outsource specific jobs. Ultimately, theres a balance to be had, and that balance is different for each of us. You have to decide how much time youre willing to spend on present comfort and how much time you want to bank for the future. I believe theres no single right answer to this dilemma. What about you? How do you view the relationship between time, money, and happiness? Do you have some examples from your own life of buying time in order to improve your happiness? What balance have you arrived at and how did you get there? https://www.getrichslowly.org/time-money-happiness/

[themoneybuff-blog]

The relationship between time, money, and happiness

The older I get, the more Im convinced that time is money (and money is time). Were commonly taught that money is a store of value. But what does store of value actually mean? Its a repository of past effort that can be applied to future purchases. Really, money is a store of time. (Well, a store of productive time, anyhow.) Now, having made this argument, Ill admit that time and money arent exactly the same thing. Money is a store of time, sure, but the two concepts have some differences too. For instance, time is linear. After one minute or one day has passed, its irretrievable. You cannot reclaim it. If you waste an hour, its gone forever. If you waste (or lose) a dollar, however, its always possible to earn another dollar. Time marches forward but money has no direction. More importantly, time is finite. Money is not. Theoretically, your income and wealth have no upper bound. On the other hand, each of us has about seventy (maybe eighty) years on this earth. If youre lucky, youll live for 1000 months. Only a very few of us will live 5000 weeks. Most of us will live between 25,000 and 30,000 days. Ive always loved this representation of a life in weeks of a typical American from the blog Wait But Why:

If you allow yourself to conduct a thought experiment in which time and money are interchangeable, you can reach some startling conclusions. Wealth and Work When I began to fully grasp the relationship between money and time, my first big insight was that wealth isnt necessarily an abundance of money its an abundance of time. Or potential time. When you accumulate a lot of money, you actually accumulate a large store of time to use however you please. And, in fact, this seems to be one of the primary reasons the Financial Independence movement is gaining popularity. Financial Independence having saved enough that youre no longer required to work for money provides the promise that you can use your time in whichever way you choose. When I attend FI gatherings, I ask folks what motivates them. Almost everyone offers some variation on the theme: I want to be able to do what I want, when I want. To me, one of the huge ironies of modern society is that so many people spend so much time to accumulate so much Stuff yet never manage to set aside anything for the future. Why is this? In an article on Wealth and Work, Thomas J. Elpel explores the complicated relationship between our ever-increasing standard of living and the effort required to achieve that level of comfort. Ultimately you are significantly wealthier than before, but you are also working harder too. Nobody said you had to pay for oil lamps and oil or books and freshly laundered clothes, but you would feel deprived if you didnt, so you work a little harder to give your family all the good things that life has to offer.

Its a catch-22. You work more to have more money to buy more Stuffbut because you have so much Stuff, you need more money, which means you have to work more. Its almost as if the more physical things you possess, the less time you have. How do you escape this vicious cycle? There are two ways, actually. Spend Less, Live More The first (most obvious) way to remove yourself from this hedonic treadmill is to deliberately reduce your spending so that its below the level needed to maintain your lifestyle. As Ive argued before at Get Rich Slowly, frugality buys freedom. When you reduce your lifestyle, it takes less time to fund it. If youre earning $50,000 per year take-home and spending all $50,000, you leave no margin for error. If something goes wrong you lose your job, inflation skyrockets youre in a bind. Plus, you dont give yourself a chance to seize unexpected opportunities! But if you reduce your spending to $40,000 per year, you give yourself options. You can choose to continue earning $50,000 and bank the difference (building a store of time) or you can choose to work less today (taking the advantage of the time savings immediately). Spending less also helps fund your future. Learning to live with a lesser lifestyle means you dont need to save as much for retirement. If you spend $50,000 per year, for example, then you need roughly $1.25 million saved before you can retire. But if you decrease spending to $40,000 per year, your target drops to around $1 million. It takes much less work to fund an ongoing lifestyle of $40,000 per year than it does to maintain a lifestyle that costs $50,000 per year. And if youre in the fortunate position where you can slash your lifestyle from, say, $120,000 per year to $30,000 per year, you can really reduce the time you spend working. Buying Time Promotes Happiness But what if you like your lifestyle and dont want to cut back? Or what if youre not able to cut back? Theres still a way to use the relationship between time and money to increase your sense of well-being. Last year, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal published an interesting article that declared buying time promotes happiness. The authors conducted a series of experimental studies to look at the link between time, money, and happiness. Their conclusion? Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity. We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness. Using large, diverse sampleswe show that individuals who spend money on time-saving services report greater life satisfaction. A field experiment provides causal evidence that working adults report greater happiness after spending money on a timesaving purchase than on a material purchase. Together, these results suggest that using money to buy time can protect people from the detrimental effects of time pressure on life satisfaction. If you want to improve your quality of life, dont use your money to buy Stuff, use it to relieve time pressure. Instead of buying a fancy car, purchase time-saving devices. Hire a housekeeper or a yard-maintenance company. Maybe consider a meal-delivery service. Interestingly, the effects of buying time have the greatest impact on folks who have less money: We observed a stronger relationship between buying time and life satisfaction among less-affluent individuals, the authors write. Finding Balance My biggest takeaway from thinking about the relationship between time and money is this: When you spend less, you can work less. In a very real way, frugality buys time. But on a deeper level, frugality buys freedom financial freedom, freedom from worry, freedom to spend your time however you choose. When you treat time as money (and money as time), you can better evaluate how to allocate your dollars and your hours. When you know how much your time is worth, you can decide when it makes sense to outsource specific jobs. Ultimately, theres a balance to be had, and that balance is different for each of us. You have to decide how much time youre willing to spend on present comfort and how much time you want to bank for the future. I believe theres no single right answer to this dilemma. What about you? How do you view the relationship between time, money, and happiness? Do you have some examples from your own life of buying time in order to improve your happiness? What balance have you arrived at and how did you get there? https://www.getrichslowly.org/time-money-happiness/

[trendingnewsb]

MIA: This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me

Maya Arulpragasam is bringing dancehall, hip-hop and grime to this years Meltdown. Is the outspoken British Sri Lankan the best argument for positive cultural appropriation?

The Guardian said that you couldnt shag to my record. As conversational openers go, MIAs beats the banal niceties of, say, Hello, how are you doing?. Its no surprise that she charges straight into a chat about why her last album was considered too confrontational for the bedroom by this paper. Its an icebreaker moulded to MIAs very own design: abrasive, compelling, underpinned by sex. Yeah, she finally concedes with a grin when I suggest we move past it, you cant have it all, can you?

Its a theme she warms up to when we talk about her edition of Meltdown at the Southbank Centre, which were ostensibly here to discuss. Usually, I wouldnt do something like this, she says, slouched under an oversized khaki coat dress. [But the organisers] were like: Hey, you can do whatever you want. Still, putting on the South Banks annual festival, curated in previous years by the likes of David Bowie, David Byrne and Patti Smith, has turned out to be a fairly arduous affair for MIA who says she doesnt do computers at the moment.

They didnt tell me it was nine days long. I thought it was a weekend. And then all my lists were, like, Well, this person wont be in London and that person is doing Glastonbury. Organising festivals is actually really complicated, she stresses. It wasnt just about dreaming something and then it appeared. Programming literally means, like, programming.

For all that Maya Arulpragasam didnt quite know what she was letting herself in for, one suspects the Southbank Centre didnt either; logistics aside, the mornings photoshoot has already been met with some flapping from the press officer made nervous by MIA climbing on the roof without safety clearance. Still, her lineup dancehall, Brooklyn hip-hop, depressive Swedish rap and Nigerian grime is perhaps the most underground the festival has seen in its 24 years. How much is she expecting to shake up its comfortable concert halls, cafe bars and conference-room spaces?

Click here to watch the video for last years Go Off.

When I was a teenager in London, I would just get a Travelcard and go somewhere, explore the city and go to weird places, she says. I would never judge the place, like, This is middle class and white. This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me, but there wasnt ever a limit on where I could go or what I could do.

A long, elliptical digression on London then and now follows, which takes in the optimistic multiculturalism of the 90s, Tamil house parties, empire and British identity. Its the bento box of an MIA interview: individually contained ideas that dont obviously bleed into one another and yet, overall, make a collective sense if youre prepared to go with it. Thats the key thing about MIA: you have to be willing to go with her to properly get her. Given that she still looks and sounds like a beautiful, bratty, art-school upstart and is prone to labyrinthine tangents, its easy to portray her as inarticulate or unhinged. But MIAs intelligence is instinctive rather than intellectual, and fuelled by the political.

The Mehrabian maxim that reckons that only 7% of communication is verbal is one that might best be proven by the transcript of a chat with MIA removed of all tone, attitude, context and body language. Take, for instance, her explanation of why only the future remains relevant:

As humans, we dont use our past and our history to work out the importance of what our role is in the present, she says. And if you cant use the past to define your present, then it should not be an element that holds back the future. Greece is a perfect example. More than Britain, they were brought to their knees, and not a single white country thought about saving them. And it was part of their heritage. Its where their mythology comes from or their concept of capitalism and democracy comes from. Nobody cared, everybody cared about the modern. Right?

Kim Kardashian is actually more powerful than Greece. She has more money than the whole of Greece, she continues. Therefore, thats where the power lies. If you then define it that way, then you kind of just have to live with that. And maybe whats happening in modern society: that if youre going to judge it by that, then other countries are gonna come in and define the future.

In print, its a statement that seems lacking in logic and coherence. In the moment, Im fairly sure Im able to follow her and we go on to consider how and where this future is being defined (for the record: You cant ignore the fact that China is going to be doing their thing in the next 50 years) and how Arulpragasam believes the immigration issue has become a red herring covering up a truth that can explain the American and British swing to conservative populism.

With Brexit, the idea was to get away from Europe and reinvent our identity, she says. And really, that identity was going to be American, but then they gave us Trump! So, everyone now is like, Oh shit, what is Britain? Are we going to rewind back to the 1800s? We cant. Its too late for that. So, going forward, we need a charismatic leader who then va va vooms the British identity. And we dont have that either.

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted … MIA. Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith/The Guide

The prime minister has called a snap election on the day we meet. Does MIA have any faith in our political system? Or in the left?

Everyone keeps going, Corbyn cant do this, but its, like, well, who else is there? she says. If people just left him alone to actually do the job and actually gave him some support, maybe hed be different. Treating him with so much contempt fighting that takes all his energy. How the fuck do you expect him to do interesting things? In any case insists the estranged daughter of a Tamil revolutionary, politicians are people who couldnt get jobs somewhere else.

MIAs politics, unwieldy and unslick though they may be, have often made her an easy target for tedious sneering in the press; the most insistent narrative is that, like Banksy, shes big on arch, subversive statement but lacks substance. Or that she is a hypocrite for making herself the poster girl for the worlds most marginalised people. And yet, shes one of the best pop stars Britain has ever produced. For all the ear-clanging experimentation of her five albums, MIA has always kept a sleeve full of pop bangers Bucky Done Gun, Paper Planes, Bad Girls, Finally that have sounded like little that came before or since her. Even if she didnt have the tunes, here is an art-school refugee Sri Lankan single mother with a visual aesthetic co-opted by everyone from Vetements to Versace who was born into political rebellion and revels in controversy. Gleefully gauche and carefree, MIA is the best argument for when cultural appropriation works. Bland singer-songstress beloved of Radio 2 playlists she isnt. So how much has the criticism bothered her?

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted because Im not, she ays. I just had to fight for shit, and I still do. I just dont care any more. I dont know. She stops and starts. What I deal with as an artist, the media, the public persona, its a walk in the fucking park, compared to how confusing the universe really fucking is. Theres so much beauty in it and theres so much mystery, theres so much confusing shit in it. That is way more interesting to think about than why, like, Patricia hates me. You know what I mean? I laugh. Its like, Who the fuck is Patricia? and How can Patricia say this shit about me?. It just does not matter to me at all.As it is, she says shes most preoccupied with how to be a functioning grown up, an adult and a mother to an eight-year-old son (whose father Benjamin Bronfman is son to the billionaire heir of the Seagram fortune) born into immense privilege.

When the war came to an end in Sri Lanka in 2009, it actually did affect me, she explains. Everyone was, like, What the fuck does she know? Shes, like, a pop star, but that was my life. It was 50% of who I was, it was my identity. I didnt know what to do with myself. So I had a kid. Its the year the cause died, but the year my personal cause my son was born. And then, OK, I have to figure out what to do in very small parameters: I have a son, how is he going to see his grandma, am I going to make it there on Saturday? Can I make sure that I dont mess up his head by being depressed about certain things?

She struggles to reconcile her upbringing poor and living in Sri Lanka for her childhood to poor and living on a council estate in Mitcham, south London, in her adolescence with her sons. Im not very straightforward as an immigrant. That whole My kids would never see the pain that I saw; Im not like that. Im totally up for reintroducing him to the pain. I dont have any qualms about that. Her problems havent changed, she says, because of money or better circumstances. Whether Im in a mansion or a council flat, I would feel the same anxiety waking up going: I need to write this thing in a scrapbook, wheres my notepad? I would still have all those problems. I might still overcook the fish fingers. Those things are not going to magically transform because your house has changed. At the beginning I thought that money couldve saved my family. Very quickly I realised that money is not the thing.

Her conflict in wanting to being huge and commercial versus credible and ahead of the curve has been a persistent tension threaded through MIAs career. When I got into the music game, it was never an option to shut up and make lots of money. she says. To be a huge pop star, I would have to be, like, Yes, I think bombing Afghanistan was a great idea, I love our democracy and what it has achieved. I love the American flag and Im going to make a jumpsuit out of it. I just think it was important to have all of those Arab Springs, and its great and lets drink Coca-Cola. I had to do that, and do it all in a thong. Could I have done that if it meant that my mum had the nicest house in Chiswick by the river?

Click here to se the video for MIAs Bad Girls.

Does she worry about money now? If youre preaching living within your means, you have to, to some extent. But I also know that if youre someone in society that speaks out about injustice or political issues, one of the things that happens is that you get economically punished, 100%. I take that hit all the time.

The most recent, obvious example was MIA being forced to quit her headline slot at Afropunk last year, following a contentious quote in which she asked in an interview why Beyonc and Kendrick Lamar might not discuss why Muslim lives matter or Syrian lives matter. I dont regret [raising the issue], she says, with triumphant chutzpah. You saw how bad it was. And the Muslim ban didnt happen just with Trump, it was already happening under Obama. But you couldnt say that about him, you couldnt say that he introduced the Muslim ban, or banned seven different countries, or was already monitoring people, or dropped more bombs than Trump has. In truth, Obamas administration did identify the seven countries on Trumps list for additional screening measures, but it didnt bar their nationals. Shes already skipped ahead. The quantity of damage cant be quantified right now, she insists. Well have to wait the four years. After eight years of Obama, we kind of knew [his failings], but we just werent allowed to say them because he was so great. He was better than any person in Hollywood that I wouldve watched. He was really likable and just had loads of swag. That doesnt mean that you have to deny the truth, though.

This (and much more) comes moments after she tells me she has no time for opinions these days. She claims she doesnt read the news any more and that her primary sources for information are customers at the local kebab shop, taxi drivers and then sort of figuring it out. What about the state of the world? MIAs moment as an agitprop pop activist has never seemed more potent. Politics? I have no time for these things because Im so stuck in the zone. Ive become a hermit. [Meltdown] is actually giving me the chance to actually go out and meet people again. Ive gone for weeks without talking to a person, I do that happily. I tell her I dont believe her, as I suspect it would be a recipe for her to go fully barmy.

Im actually quite an extreme person, so I dont see that as madness. I see that as, like, solitude, doing a phase of solitude is not that bad. After declaring her fifth album AIM to be her final one, shes also trying to find new ways to channel her creativity. Im trying to write a film. I havent stepped into it yet because I want it to be good. Once you hit the start button you cant really stop it. She has, she tells me, the added complication of ADD to contend with. When was that diagnosed? I just have it. Dont even need diagnosis, its a waste of time, its a waste of the NHS. In truly blithe MIA style, she adds: Its just when you have too many ideas and not enough ways to get them out.

MIAs Meltdown is at the Southbank Centre, SE1, 9-18 June

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