#in our corporate SOPs and everything

[goodmorningevildoers]

Words of wisdom!

[queen-scribbles]

sometimes

9. holding hands across the table [Kazen/Elara] ---

"Helmet off, LT."

She obeyed the soft-spoken command by instinct, the cold making her eyes water even inside the cave, before resuming course to examine the injured soldier.

The captain removed his, reddish brown hair ruffled and spiking, as he crouched by Saijin.

A more thorough look confirmed her initial analysis. "I can make him comfortable, sir, but there's nothing more to be done." She met Saijin's eyes--resigned and so young. "I'm sorry."

He just nodded. He knew. He'd known and hung on until someone arrived he could report to, who he could warn.

Dorne did what she could while Dryst listened to the pained rush of Saijin's report, warned Yuun, assured the dying corporal he'd done well.

He would be remembered.

It was only a moment before the light faded from Saijin's eyes and his labored breathing ceased.

The captain pushed to his feet, marked the coordinates for retrieval of the fallen, and offered her a hand up. They pulled their helmets on and got back to work.

It wasn't until after the mission was complete and they were back on the ship, Yuun settling in while they cleaned their gear, that she let curiosity get the better of her.

"Could I ask you something, sir?" she began, biting her lip.

"Anything, always," he said, head coming up to give her his full attention.

She smiled faintly, then set down the blaster she'd just finished reassembling. "With Saijin, why helmets off?" SOP dictated helmets stayed on in hostile environs like Hoth unless in a safe zone.

"I didn't need your training to tell the man was dying, Elara," he said heavily. "He deserved to see our faces, look in our eyes." He swallowed hard. "If I couldn't be fast enough to save him, least I could do was make sure the last thing he saw wasn't these emotionless buckets." A sharp rap of his knuckles against the helmet he'd been cleaning.

"Kazen..." She reached across the table to cover his hand with hers. She'd thought it would be something like that. It made her like him quite a lot more. "We did what we could. Sometimes... sometimes you can't account for everything. Sometimes soldiers die. And I know you know that," she added when he opened his mouth, "but sometimes-"

"-it helps to hear it," Kazen finished. He turned his hand to give hers a squeeze. "Thank you, Elara."

"Always," she said softly, squeezing back.

Their hands slid apart, focus returning to their tasks.

"He was so young," Kazen muttered as he smoothed out carbon scoring.

"He was." Barely any older than Aleksei. "But I think... I think he appreciated you making the effort. Sir."

He nodded, and they finished in silence.

Sometimes, doing what you could was all you had.

Sometimes that was enough. Sometimes it had to be.

[zenosanalytic]

Life in Plastic: A Modern Galatea

Just watched BARBIE(2023) and: I Liked It!

Spoilers, Obvsl, Beyond this Point, I don't want to readmore cuz I've heard things about those being Weird on mobile? idk

BARBIE(2023) isn't trying to say anything we don't already know, or position itself as a "politically challenging" film. Honestly, having now seen it, the Republican freakout about the movie is even more Pathetic than it looked getting mocked on twitter. God in Heaven, Ben Shapiro, have some dignity!

The first two acts of the film are just a massive sendup of the capitalist mythologizing around BARBIE(2023); it only repeats those advertiser lies to call them the bullshit they are, and even that is done lightly and comedically. The mythologizing of Barbie's creator in the second and third acts somewhat undercuts this, but using her as a By-The-Numbers Deus ex Machina character ala The Oracle(or every god-role Morgan Freeman ever played), AND casting Rhea Perlman(!!!) to play Ruth Handler, AND-And the overall lightness of the film, renders that pretty irrelevant. Like: I noticed it, and |:T at it internally, but it didn't nag at me or detract from my enjoyment at all. It also presents the (all male)executive-suite of the Mattel corporation as a bunch of ridiculous bozos, but I'd hardly say any of this amounts to a "critique of capitalism" in any meaningful sense. Is it pointing out the failings and flaws in capitalism? Sure. But it's all rather milquetoast stuff we already know(I mean: who thinks ANY capitalist knows what the hell they're doing anymore?) presented with a "fondly-poking" tone, and only ever deployed while also serving the film's primary objective(to be funny). There's nothing ideological about it and it doesn't really spend time on it, only developing it while doing other comedic things. If anything, the harshest critique of the movie is saved for anticapitalists; there's a scene where Sasha calls Barbie a "Fascist" which lands so inauthentic and unfairly it basically embodies that "leftists call EVERYTHING fascist" argument centrists(and cryptofascists) have mainstreamed for the last 20-goddamn-years. And I mean: putting it in the mouth of a tween girl is not NOT saying something, right?

BARBIE(2023) Does Not Hate Men; oh my god, please leave your cootie-free zones for three minutes, I beg of you. Again: accusing it of this is SO Ridiculous that it really makes obvious how insipid and GENUINELY CHILDISH, I mean like LITERALLY SCHOOL-YARD BOYS VS GIRLS JUVENILE, contemporary conservative misogyny, and its reading of this film, is. Probably the most entertaining sequence in the WHOLE MOVIE is ABOUT Ken and the Kens! They end up fighting each other in a HILARIOUS Sendup of modern action-movies, equating them DIRECTLY to how kids act out fight scenes in play(with their toys and each other. They even have the Mattel Executives walking right through the middle of it as the confused Adults, unaffected by the make-believe rules), which is ALSO a great musical number, that Then Turns into a Wonderful DANCE NUMBER about self-acceptance and choosing Solidarity over the toxicity of competition. And all this happens, consciously and overtly(like: the film literally says this), as a super-low-stakes, super-ridiculous mirrorverse-version of how our OWN misogynistic society pits women against each other to prop up male entitlement(like: while the Kens are first fighting, then finding, themselves, the Barbies are reinstating their old Matriarchal constitution, with a few Ken-held circuit court seats added as a sop to reform XD Also Alan is there). Gloria's husband(literally credited as this in Spanish) is Cute and Loveably Dense in all two of his scenes. Green!Ken(Simu Liu) has my Heart forever. Alan is also there. The only opinion this movie has on men is that they are at their best when being soft and lovable, and only The Most Excellent Bros to each other, and that maybe treating the people you love LIKE you love them is better than trying to control everything all the time(which is hard, dehumanizing, and doomed to failure anyway??)? Probably the most "political" thing going on with gender here -even WITH a big speech about the contradictions of femininity in a misogynistic society being the crux of the movie- is filming the Kens the way women usually are.

And that really sums the movie up. Low-stakes and Light. Fun and Funny. Barbie's grand reward for the whole ordeal is HILARIOUS and I won't say anything more to spoil it. Alan is also there. The most hyperbolic(though entirely justified, imv) thing I will say about this film is that it understands what a Barbie movie is and nails it, thereby making itself probably the Best Live-Action adaptation since The Lord of the Rings(or possibly the live-action Kenshin movies, if you've seen those[the 2nd and 3rd one are really good; the first one's ok]).

I'd definitely recommend it, it's a fun low-effort(for the viewer; not knocking the crew at all) movie with a tasteful smattering of genuine Cinematic Spectacle, that doesn't let its gags get old. I predict it will be one of those middling movies that lasts; that it will be a staple of mid-day HBO summer lineups in 5 years, and stay such for the next 30. Go see it in theaters if you can.

[isoghana1]

How to get halal Certification in Pretoria

What is HALAL Certification in Pretoria?

halal Certification in Pretoria  is a crucial method that confirms that merchandise, services, or systems observe Islamic law, especially in terms of nutritional guidelines, cleanliness, and ethical problems. This certification is crucial for groups in Pretoria aiming to cater to the growing Muslim population in South Africa and globally. By acquiring HALAL certification in Pretoria, organizations can display their dedication to meeting the correct goals of Muslim customers, improving their credibility, and increasing their market achievement.

Understanding HALAL Certification

The term “HALAL” method is permissible or lawful in Arabic, while its opposite, “HARAM,” technique is forbidden or illegal. The HALAL certification in Pretoria applies to many products, including food, beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, logistics, and packaging. The certification technique involves an intensive exam of the complete manufacturing and supply chain to ensure that the products or offerings are viewed with an Islamic mind. This involves sourcing uncooked materials, manufacturing methods, hygiene necessities, and ethical remedies for workers.

In Pretoria, HALAL certification in Pretoria is essential because of the severe population and the growing demand for HALAL-compliant merchandise. For organizations, obtaining this certification fulfills a non secular requirement and offers an aggressive part inside the marketplace. It indicates to customers that the business respects and adheres to their non secular ideals, thereby building recall and loyalty.

HALAL Consultants in Pretoria

The technique of carrying out HALAL certification in Pretoria can be complicated and requires a deep knowledge of Islamic regulation and the proper necessities set with the valuable resources of accreditation our bodies. This is where HALAL professionals in Pretoria come into play. These professionals are specialists within the venture and provide precious assistance to corporations searching for HALAL certification in Pretoria.

Services Offered via HALAL Consultants in Pretoria:

1. Initial Assessment HALAL experts begin by evaluating the industrial employer’s contemporary practices and strategies. They identify areas not meeting HALAL Certification in Pretoria requirements and offer pointers for essential modifications.

2. Documentation and Implementation: The professionals assist companies in preparing the preferred documentation, which incorporates Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), aspect lists, and delivery chain statistics. They additionally guide the implementation of HALAL-compliant practices inside the company.

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4. Pre-Certification Audit: HALAL professionals can conduct a pre-certification audit Before the legitimate certification audit to identify any closing gaps. They offer actionable comments to help the business prepare for the very last audit.

5. Ongoing Support: Even after obtaining HALAL certification, businesses must meet their needs. HALAL specialists offer ongoing support to ensure compliance and help with any re-certification strategies.

HALAL Auditors in Pretoria

HALAL auditors in Pretoria are the specialists chargeable for engaging within the professional certification audit. Their position is to affirm that the economic company’s merchandise, offerings, and techniques fully have an examination of HALAL necessities. The audit machine usually entails the following steps:

1. On-Site Inspection: HALAL auditors go to the enterprise premises to behavior an in-depth inspection of the entire manufacturing and delivery chain. They check everything from raw fabric sourcing to manufacturing, packaging, and distribution.

2. Documentation Review: Auditors evaluate all applicable documentation supplied by the business enterprise, including element lists, SOPs, and delivery chain information. They ensure that those files reflect the region’s HALAL-compliant practices.

3. Compliance Verification: During the audit, the auditors affirm that each factor of the organization’s operations meets HALAL requirements. This includes ensuring that there are no cross-contamination risks and that all products are free of HARAM substances.

4. Audit Report: The auditors compile a record detailing their findings after completing the audit. If the economic organization meets all of the essential necessities, the auditors endorse the issuance of the HALAL certification.

Why Factocert is the Best Provider of HALAL Certification in Pretoria

When it consists of obtaining HALAL certification in Pretoria, Factocert is identified as a central agency for numerous reasons:

1. Expertise and Experience Factocert has a fixed number of noticeably certified HALAL experts and auditors who are very happy. Their in-depth knowledge of Islamic regulation and HALAL standards guarantees that companies collect accurate guidance and manuals sooner or later in the certification manner.

2. Comprehensive Services: Factocert offers a wide variety of services that cover every aspect of the HALAL certification process, from preliminary assessment and documentation to training, audit training, and ongoing assistance. This complete technique guarantees a clean and successful certification experience.

3. Customized Solutions: Factocert knows that each enterprise is unique, with its particular challenges and needs. They offer customized solutions that address the specific necessities of each patron, ensuring that the certification technique is efficient and effective.

4. Reputation and Trust: Factocert is known for its willingness to please and integrity. Its recognition as a trusted certification agency offers corporations self-assurance in the certification process and enhances their credibility in the marketplace.

5. Global Reach Factocert’s worldwide presence and community of partners permit them to help businesses no longer be the most effective in Pretoria and expand their advantage to international markets. This global attitude is critical for companies seeking to tap into the growing name of HALAL merchandise globally.

Advantages of HALAL Certification in Pretoria

Obtaining HALAL certification in Pretoria gives numerous blessings to companies in Pretoria:

1. Market Expansion: HALAL certification in Pretoria opens regional and international marketplace opportunities. As the demand for HALAL-compliant products grows, groups with certification can tap right into a broader purchaser base.

2. Increased Consumer Trust: HALAL certification in Pretoria builds consideration amongst Muslim customers, who are confident that their products meet the best necessities and comply with Islamic regulations.

3. Competitive Advantage: HALAL certification sets a corporation aside from its competition in an aggressive market. It demonstrates a dedication to splendid protection and moral practices, which can trap new customers and grow emblem loyalty.

4. Compliance with Islamic Law: HALAL certification in Pretoria guarantees that an agency’s products and practices are in full compliance with Islamic nutritional laws and ethical requirements. This reduces the risk of alienating Muslim clients and allows for the retention of a superb logo photo.

5. Improved Operational Standards Obtaining HALAL certification in Pretoria regularly upgrades operational necessities, better hygiene practices, advanced documentation, and extra-perfect employee education. These upgrades can result in accelerated performance and free financial savings.

6. Access to Global Markets: With HALAL certification, corporations in Pretoria can expand their reach to worldwide markets, mainly in regions with large Muslim populations. This certification is essential for exporting merchandise to international locations inside the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other areas in which HALAL products are in high demand, HALAL  Certification in Bryanston..

7. Brand Reputation: HALAL certification complements a business enterprise’s reputation for excellent and ethical practices. It indicates to customers that the enterprise is devoted to meeting their dreams and adhering to excessive necessities, which may bring about prolonged patron loyalty and prolonged-time period fulfillment.

In giving up, HALAL certification is a precious asset for groups in Pretoria attempting to amplify their market attain, beautify their credibility, and gain a competitive side. With the assistance of HALAL specialists and auditors from Factocert, companies can navigate the certification manner with self-perception, ensuring compliance with HALAL necessities and reaping the numerous blessings that certification offers. Factocert, as a primary provider of HALAL certification offerings, provides the information, revels in, and tailor-made answers to take advantage of a hit certification and hold compliance for a long time, HALAL  Certification in Bloemfontein .

Why Choose Factocert for ISO Certification in Pretoria?

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Well, seasoned subject expertise who has certified several Organizations that were facing the problems by offering them the one-stop solution according to the requirement of international standards, now they are our happy clients and they have gained 100% satisfaction by the solutions. So if the concept of implementing the International standard comes to mind please do visit our site www.factocert.com we’d be happy to Aid you with fewer ISO Certification cost in South Africa.

For more info: halal Certification in Pretoria. 

Related Article: Get ISO Consultants

[rauthschild]

It's a strange list of books that on the surface seem to have nothing much to do with our daily lives, but in fact, these resources tell the tale of how our country has been overtaken by guile and corruption, who (and what) is responsible for this outrage, and they suggest --- if only by logical extrapolation --- what to do about it.

The first insight involves the formation of a separate government in a separate jurisdiction of the law, by foreign, for-profit corporations; and, a still-functioning British Secret Society founded by Cecil Rhodes for the purpose of creating and expanding the colonial British Empire worldwide:

Carroll Quigley: The Anglo-American Establishment

Carroll Quigley: Tragedy and Hope

Gerry Docherty and Jim MacGregor: Hidden History - The Secret Origins of the First World War

The second important insight that Americans desperately need is an understanding of the source of the Overpopulation Myth and the evils of both the Committee of 300 and the Club of Rome:

Dr. John Coleman: The Story of the Committee of 300

Dr. John Coleman: The Rothschild Dynasty

Get your feet wet with a video:

https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/dr-john-coleman-exposes-the-committee-of-300/

Through these works you will finally understand where the evils of the present era have been born, nurtured, and foisted off on us --- by whom, for what reasons, and how.

The politicians were bought off by the Committee of 300 and, the Club of Rome, acting as a storefront for evil elements within the Committee of 300, put it all in motion specifically to destroy the middle class of this country and to promote an agenda of global genocide.

The primary requirement to restore sanity in this world is to: seize the ancestral wealth of the specific criminals responsible so that the more unsavory members of the Committee of 300 and Club of Rome are prevented from using payola and grants as a means to pursue these insane genocidal objectives.

Just how much payola to the employees of the NIH has recently been disclosed by OpenTheBooks.com --- they were individually motivated by no less than $170 Million, while the sop to the institution topped over a billion dollars.

The second requirement is to arrest these criminals and throw away the key -- en masse. These heirs of the British East India Company and their Club of Rome pals all need to face charges for genocide, piracy, unlawful conversion, and more.

The third requirement is to expose everything they have done to destroy, steal, murder, maim, and control entire nations, usurp national governments, and corrupt every aspect of life on this planet.

We don't need the United Nations protecting the UN CORPORATION and WHO, nor do we need corrupt politicians operating a phony corporate government in a "territorial capacity".

We don't need False Narratives of any kind.

We have a complete picture of the Evil in our midst, where it came from, who promoted it, how they have funded it, and most important -- who they are.

May all their malice, greed, arrogance, uncaring, and criminality be reflected harmlessly away from their victims and may we all join in washing away the blood and misery that has been the legacy of the British East India Company, their heirs forming the Committee of 300, and their foot soldiers in the Club of Rome.

[mysteriouslyclearsheep]

Operations Management Software

 Whether you're in charge of operations at a seed-funded company or a well-established corporation, you need accurate, uncompromising software to optimize day-to-day tasks. The operations management software solutions provided by Infotonics Media enable companies to unite, simplify, automate, and digitize their business activities from start to finish.

InfotonicsMedia offers software development and consultation services to develop and deploy operations management software that enables complex businesses to use digital information, collaboration, and automation solutions to align processes, implement digital transformation goals, assure regulatory compliance, and constantly improve.

Operation Management Services offered by InfotonicsMedia

Digital Transformation

Automation of time-consuming tasks and transparency of procedures leads to improved customer service, a more efficient workplace, and cost savings.

SOP development

End-to-end process mapping and formatting of SOPs to your template and organize structures are included in the SOP development services.

Compliance Consultation 

Compliance actively promotes the favourable national public perception of an organization, bringing up a plethora of chances that organizations with a negative reputation or public image are unable to enjoy. It is also an essential component of any organization's internal control process, aiding in the management of content and the reduction of expenditures.

Business Processes Management 

BPM should be seen as a management discipline that aids firms in better understanding and controlling their business processes. BPM seeks to enhance a business process from start to finish by assessing it, modeling how it works in various circumstances, implementing improvements, monitoring the improved process, and continuously optimizing.

Business Architecture 

Many of the other Enterprise Architecture domains are linked and aligned to Business Architecture as an anchor point.

Business Transformation

The business transformation cycle has three points: decrease complexity, enhance transparency, and improve execution. Transformation should not be viewed as a choice, but rather as a need for a company to adapt and develop

Features in Our Operations Management Software

Process Designer

Using the drag and drop feature in our operations management software, you can create bespoke task workflows using our visual process designer interface. Assign assignments and route information automatically depending on your organization's unique process. Set up notifications, reminders, and escalations to keep things going.

Form Designer 

Create responsive, Web-based forms to collect information quickly and easily with our operations management software. Include a wide range of field types, form logic, templates, and layouts to ensure accurate data capture and routing every time.

Service Portal

Provide a consistent front-end experience that allows users to submit forms, complete activities, and follow the status of processes. Collaborate in real-time using our operations management software on work in progress. For a fantastic user experience, provide visibility by role to see whether activities are finished, pending, or in progress.

Process Integration (API)

Our operations management software allows you to create workflow apps that integrate with current corporate systems via process integration. Other apps can utilize our open architecture and independent web service to start a workflow, finish a list of tasks, change process statuses, and do other bi-directional actions. InfotonicsMedia connects everything.

How InfotonicsMedia collaborates to design your particular operations management software:

Process Discovery: 

InfotonicsMedia may collaborate with your team to examine, document, and enhance your process needs based on our hands-on process development experience to design your operations management software.

Process Design: 

We have created hundreds of workflow solutions for a wide range of businesses and will use that experience in all of your operations management software development projects.

Process Implementation: 

From process design through user testing, we help ensure that your operations management software development project gets off to a good start and is widely accepted.

Design and production of reports and KPIs: 

Creating custom reports and dashboards that track the metrics required to optimize processes.

Software evolvement: 

We then integrate your present system environment with the new operations management software. Data may be sent and pulled between InfotonicsMedia API and the plugin library.

Technical Support: 

InfotonicsMedia offers technical support for operations management software installation, Active Directory synchronization, further development work, and more.

Possibilities you can access through an operations management software 

Examine the performance of your infrastructure across servers, containers, storage, and network infrastructure, as well as in hybrid and multi-cloud IT settings through operations management software.

Monitor the health and availability of your commercial, SaaS-delivered, and bespoke online apps, improve the performance of your databases, and ensure that they're all providing the anticipated levels of service with custom-made operations management software for your business.

Access rights management, security event management, server change monitoring, and patch management are all tools for securing your IT system using our operations management software.

Operations management software or IT Service Management systems that are both simple to use and intelligent can manage people, processes, and technology from start to finish.

Operations Management Software: Engage better with customers and co-ordinate effectively among employees 

Collaborate effectively among employees

From employee management to hiring and onboarding, unify your HR processes. Maintain a full database of your personnel, their attendance status, and hierarchy, and even manage vacation approvals in one location with InfotonicsMedia’s operations management software.

Engage better with customers

You should have a single point of contact for anything connected to your PoS system. Manage supplier data, buy orders and payments, inventory updates, and keep track of your complete ordering lifecycle and more with an efficiently designed operations management software.

Save valuable resources and time 

Deploying a fully custom-built operations management software, decrease individual effort, establish communications and automate email chores. You may even increase budgeting efficiency by combining business contacts, approvals, and financial information into a single procedure.

Deliver awesome service promptly

Improve response rates by integrating your customer service platforms. Auto-assign tickets depending on the availability of representatives, update task statuses and turn social media complaints into support issues. You may also assign ratings to each representative and generate detailed reports with operations management software should you aim to grow.

Why invest in operations management software?

Improve the Performance of Your Database

Take advantage of powerful database anomaly detection powered by machine learning that improves over time. With an easy-to-use, intuitive user experience of operations management software, you can pinpoint the core cause of performance issues and keep your databases optimized and ready to offer your next business advantage.

InfotonicsMedia database performance monitoring and optimization solutions are built to provide you with insights into database health and diagnose performance issues in minutes. InfotonicsMedia’s performance management in operations management software features support for all top relational, conventional, open-source, and cloud-native databases, including AWS Cloud and Azure.

Our ingeniously built operations management software can carry out:

Advanced database anomaly detection 24 hours a day, seven days a week, down to the second data collecting.

Intuitive User experienceve

Analysis of query-level performance

Server and network management 

Our products are intended to help IT professionals manage "all things IT" simply and cost-effectively. Our custom-built operations management software can do:

Monitor the health of real and virtualized servers, plan server capacity, and manage server asset inventory.

Isolate storage hotspots to assist in determining what is creating an issue before it affects your solution.

Troubleshoot networks to decrease outages and discover, analyze, and resolve network performance issues as soon as possible.

Understand who and what is linked to your network.

Leverage Leading Network Management Services

For the past 15 years, we've been assisting IT professionals in mastering network administration through our operations management software. They've pushed us to the top by telling us exactly what problem they want to be handled and how they want it solved—and we deliver. Sure, you could attempt to control your network using other people's software, but you'd have to utilize it.

InfotonicsMedia allows IT professionals like you to keep your organization moving forward by addressing today's network monitoring concerns rather than tomorrow's buzzwords. We're happy to keep up the fight against the status quo—and the bloated network management software paradigm that most IT companies have been compelled to embrace.

Keep People, Processes, and Technology in the same line

Organizations of any size can easily find themselves in a state of disarray with off-track initiatives and growing expenditures due to the ongoing evolution of technology, expanding IT systems, use of cloud resources, changes in employees, and more.

Enhance operational effectiveness. With our IT Service Management skills, you can lead your digital transformation initiatives and day-to-day operations. IT professionals have spent years honing services such as effective incident management, change management, IT asset management, and more.

Simplified Security and Compliance

You can simply manage a more secure and compliant operational environment with an operations management software, all without having to build up a full-fledged Security Operations Center (SOC). Our IT Security solutions assist in the correlation of logs and events, the tracking of server modifications, the management and audit of access to vital resources and data, and much more.

We consider your success as ours

InfotonicsMedia is committed to your success—we want you to be great at your work, and we provide several resources to help you do so.  We've assembled a full array of award-winning resources, from our extensive library of instructor-led training (included with active maintenance) and our Customer Success team is ready to help you get the most out of your investment in operations management software.

[orbemnews]

Not Your Pre-Pandemic Las Vegas A decade ago, after a rained-out Thanksgiving desert camping trip with our five kids, my wife, Kristin, and I headed to the nearest available lodging, the now-shuttered Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas. Watching our brood eat their Thanksgiving meal as cigarette smoke and slot-machine clamor wafted over their cheeseburgers, Kristin and I locked eyes with an unspoken message: We ar­­e the world’s worst parents. We have avoided Las Vegas with the kids since then, but an aborted drive to slushy Aspen this April with three of our heirs caused us to pause in Vegas. At the time, the city was just awakening from its Covid slumber, with mandatory masks and limited capacity in most indoor spaces, traffic so light that cars were drag-racing down the normally packed Strip, and a lingering, troubling question over the whole place: Will this reopening really be safe? But extraordinary things have been happening during this slumber, and while we were only going to spend one night there, we had so much fun that we ended up staying four. At first we spent most of our time in the relative safety of the outdoors, but then we started to relax along with the rest of the city, drowning our hands beneath the ubiquitous liquid sanitizer dispensers, masking up and heading indoors. I knew things had shifted in Sin City when, while maneuvering the minivan through some seemingly dicey neighborhood between Downtown and the Strip, I noted on the back alley wall of a hair salon a striking mural depicting the cult outsider artist Henry Darger’s seven Vivian Girl warriors in their trademark yellow dresses. What were the Vivian Girls doing here? Farther along, Vegas’s ghost-town adult stores, shuttered warehouses and other buildings were also sporting increasingly elaborate murals: a blood-squirting horned lizard spanning half a city block; a dog with an impressively slobbering tongue piloting an open cockpit plane; a colorful phoenix and dragon rising like fireworks from an empty parking lot — all producing collective surprised “Wows!” from inside our minivan. Las Vegas, it seems, is emerging from the Covid crisis as a place of spectacle and creativity, especially outside the air-conditioned gambling ghettos of the Strip. Over the next four days we did a lot of walking, crawling, flying and even railroading, all of it away from the casinos. We explored the Arts District, an area that has gone into hyper drive — so much so that we waited 30 minutes to get into my once “secret” Colombian breakfast joint, Makers & Finders — and wandered along Spring Mountain Road, the hub of the city’s Chinatown, rapidly expanding westward. In the midcentury mecca of East Fremont Street, a $350 million investment by the tech titan Tony Hsieh, who died last year, has produced a boulevard of fantastical art installations, restored buildings and a sculptural playground surrounded by stacked shipping containers converted to boutiques and cafes, all guarded by a giant, fire-spewing, steel praying mantis. “Vegas is going through a cultural renaissance,” a former member of the city’s Arts Commission, Brian “Paco” Alvarez, told me in a recent telephone interview. “A lot of the local culture that comes out of a city with two million unusually creative people didn’t stop during the pandemic.” A mysterious, windowless building The most striking newcomer is Area15, which opened in February in a mysterious, airport-hanger-size, windowless building two miles west of the Strip. Imagine an urban Burning Man mall (indeed, many of the sculptures and installations came from the annual arts festival held in northern Nevada), with some dozen tenants providing everything from virtual reality trips to nonvirtual ax throwing, accompanied by Day-Glo color schemes, electronic music, giant interactive art installations and guests flying overhead on seats attached to ceiling rails. Face masks are currently only mandatory in Area15 for self-identified unvaccinated people, though some of the attractions within still require face masks for everyone. Everywhere, we encountered the constant presence of cleaning attendants spraying and wiping surfaces. On the second floor of Area15’s art riot I met an old acquaintance from New York, Chris Wink, one of the co-founders of the joyously weird Blue Man Group, who was bringing his creative magic to Area15 in the form of a “Psychedelic Art House Meets Carnival Funhouse” called Wink World (adult tickets start at $18). Wink World is centered around six rooms with infinity mirror boxes reflecting Slinkys, plasma balls, fan spinners, Hoberman Spheres and ribbons dancing to an ethereal soundtrack of electronic music, rhythmic chanting and heavy breathing. “I worked on these installations for six years in my living room in New York,” Mr. Wink told me. “I was trying to evoke psychedelic experiences without medicine.” My unmedicated children were transfixed, as if these familiar toys frolicking into eternity were totems to their own personal nirvanas. I’ve never seen them stand so still in front of an art exhibit. Lava-filled caves and artificial lawns Omega Mart (adult admissions start at $45, face mask and temperature check mandatory), the biggest attraction in the complex, lines one side of the complex’s atrium and seemed — at first — to provide a banal respite from Area15’s sensory overload. Along the sale aisles I found Nut Free Salted Peanuts, Gut Monkey Ginger Ale and cans of Camels Implied Chicken Sop. My kids, good campers, immediately ducked into a small demonstration tent erected in the back of the store. They never came out again. A hidden entry brought them through the wall and into a world of artificial lawns, lava-filled caves, drab offices, a desert canyon, locker rooms, a secret bar and other divergent spaces often linked by hidden entrances. “Pull every knob and open every closet you see, Dad,” my daughter, Vivian, breathlessly advised as she whizzed by me for the fourth time in this 52,000-square-foot maze. Created by the renowned Santa Fe artist collective Meow Wolf (the name derived from pulling two random words from a hat during their first meeting), Omega Mart is an amalgamation of some 325 artists’ creations tied together by disparate overlapping story lines which one can follow — or not. For a short time, I tracked the story of the takeover of Omega Mart’s corporate headquarters by a hilariously manipulative New Agey daughter, and then got sidelined into the tale of a teen herbalist leading a rebellion to something else. I have no idea what I experienced other than that Brian Eno composed the music to one of the installations. None of my kids could explain what they experienced either, other than something mind-expanding. If it wasn’t for dinner, we might still be in there. Feasting in Chinatown Dinner! The choices are dizzying and there are now 10 Michelin-starred restaurants in the city. We weren’t going to any of them. Leaving Area15, even the distant lights of the Strip seemed relatively calming. But we were driving the opposite direction, to Chinatown. A decade ago, Chinatown was mainly a small enclave of restaurants and shops behind an ornate red gate overlooking a strip mall called Chinatown Plaza, catering to Vegas’s growing wave of Asian immigrants. Chinatown has now expanded to the far reaches of Spring Mountain Road, a desert Hong Kong of neon signs in Mandarin, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean, advertising restaurants, coffee houses, foot-massage salons and lots of stuff I couldn’t read. Our goal was an unlikely corner of a strip mall, where hides, in the Jones family’s collective opinion, the best Japanese restaurant in North America, Raku. Step behind an understated white backlit sign and you enter an aged wood interior of an intimate restaurant that you might find off a Kyoto alley. We slid into the family-style tables behind the main dining room and commenced to feast. There’s a $100 tasting menu if you are feeling adult, but my tribe ordered cream-like tofu with dried fish, foie gras skewers and a dozen other items. Chinatown became our go-to-spot for snacks and boba tea between adventures. A favorite spot became Pho 90, a low-key Vietnamese cafe with outstanding noodle dishes and exquisitely layered banh mi sandwiches for picnics in the wild. Beyond the city Las Vegas’s expanding grid abruptly surrenders to the desert, which might be the most overlooked part of Vegas family vacations. Red Rock Canyon, 17 miles west of the Strip, is like walking into a Road Runner cartoon with a Technicolor ballet of clashing tectonic formations. We grabbed our admittedly reluctant brood on a 2.4-mile, round-trip hike on the Keystone Thrust Trail through a series of gullies until we emerged above epic white limestone cliffs jutting through the ocher-colored mountains. Here we had our Vietnamese picnic overlooking the monolithic casinos in the distance. Our last night’s excursion into nature didn’t take any persuasion: Half an hour’s drive south to Boulder City, a company called Rail Explorers has set up rail bike tours on the abandoned tracks leading to the Hoover Dam construction site. We booked a sunset tour (from $85 to $150 for a tandem quad bike). After some quick instruction, we, along with three dozen other visitors, climbed into an 800-pound, four-person Korean-made bike rig and, giving the group ahead of us a three-minute head start for some space, started peddling. Our route was along four miles of desert track gently sloping into a narrowing canyon pass. As we effortlessly peddled at 10 miles per hour, we noticed that the spikes holding down the railroad ties were often crooked or missing. “I bet these were all driven in by hand,” my teenage son, Cody, a history buff, noted. In the enveloping dusk, we glimpsed shadows moving along the sagebrush: bighorn sheep, goats and other critters emerging for their nocturnal wanderings. But the most surreal sight was at the end of the ride, where a giant backlit sign for a truck stop casino appeared over a desert butte — Vegas was beckoning us back, but now we welcomed the summons. Here we were, peddling into the sunset, feeling more athletic, cool and (gasp!) enlightened than when we first rolled into Vegas four days ago. Oh what good parents we were! “The moniker of ‘Sin City’ is totally wrong,” Mr. Alvarez told me, “if you know where to look.” Source link Orbem News #Las #prepandemic #Vegas

[magistralconsulting]

Financial Process Outsourcing – Version 2.0

Introduction

Financial process outsourcing has been on the horizon of businesses for over a decade now. But there are a few trends that are making this process all the more strategic. It is not only about cutting costs, but having the right partner who could improve the processes, change culture, bring in the new talent and technology and make finance more predictive and proactive.

When it comes to Financial Process Outsourcing, the following trends are changing the landscape of the industry

Smaller and niche clients

Bigger players with a headcount of hundreds of thousands started taking advantage of outsourcing around a decade back. They are increasing it in terms of scale and complexity, however, the major volume is now going to come from smaller players as small as 1 or 2 men companies. Niche processes that are difficult to deliver on a turnkey basis also show promise.

Technology

Technology impacts all industries all the time. Financial process outsourcing is no exception. It has now moved from process outsourcing to process reengineering to automate steps and bring down the costs further and improve the operational efficiencies

Outcome-based offerings

Outcome-based offerings are still to take off but are on the horizon. It makes the vendor, your business partner where they are accountable for business results and not only delivering on the processes. Metrics related to a reduction in sales outstanding, operations costs, cycle time reductions, liquidity improvements, forecast accuracy are a few related to advisable business outcomes

Strategic importance

Outsourcing started as a low-cost low-value add jobs outsourcing. It still is to some extent. However meatier and strategic jobs are now being outsourced. Processes like budgeting, fundraising, investor communications, etc. are also being outsourced apart from the run of the mill accounting jobs

Advantages of Financial Process Outsourcing

There are multiple reasons why outsourcing the financial processes is the best way of doing it. The reasons not only involve cost savings but a host of others that raise the operational standards of the client, whatever business they are in.

Financial Process Outsourcing Advantages that Magistral Consulting Offers

These advantages are:

Cost

Of course, cost considerations here are tangible and very obvious. One dollar saved is a dollar earned. That is a saving that starts showing in the P&L as soon as you decide to outsource. Depending on your location and the process that you wish to outsource a savings of 50-80% is very normal and can be expected.

Flexibility

Apart from the absolute cost savings, there is a further scope of savings due to fractional resources. Fractional resources mean that you are not hiring anyone permanently but are tapping into the skill and experience of the resources only as and when required.

CFO outsourcing

CFO outsourcing or substantial outsourcing of strategic tasks is an emerging trend. This is all the more important for start-ups or funds that are small and can’t afford a full-time CFO.

Focus on core tasks

Outsourcing frees up the management and workforce bandwidth to focus on more strategic aspects of business and operations

Technology

As the vendor is experienced and has worked on outsourcing similar processes from other clients as well, it’s in a better position to recommend and implement a technology that might reduce the effort or improve the turnaround time for a process. It is done by automating several tasks of the process using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

Operational efficiency improvements

Outsourcing to an expert improves the operational efficiency of a process by multiple notches. Something like an increase in efficiency due to touchless processing, reductions in operations cost, and reduction in Day Sales Outstanding (DSOs) are very typical operational outcomes of outsourcing

Improved plan compliance and making finance more predictive

With tools like dynamic real-time scenario planning, dashboards, visualization tools, data science and analytics, and on-demand reporting, it’s possible to make the finance function more predictive

Financial Process Outsourcing: What could be outsourced?

Financial processes that are low value add and not strategic could of course be outsourced. Now added onto transactional outsourcing is the strategic outsourcing elements that require specialist interventions. The activities that could be successfully outsourced are:

Bookkeeping and back-office support

The activities that are time tested to produce cost benefits and improve the quality of operations are account reconciliations, deferred revenues, customer billing and payments, expense processing, general ledger, financial and tax reporting, currency consolidation, payroll services, and vendor invoicing.

Controller services

The services like audit reports, auditor facilitation, compliances, MIS, dashboards, etc form the backbone of outsourcing here

Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A)

This is the bulk of the planning and analysis aspects of the Finance function. This includes acquisition integration support, board reporting, financial data analysis, ratio analysis, comparative analysis with competition, financial research, along with planning, budgeting, and forecasting

Fundraising

This aspect requires a very specialist intervention. Here the offerings include pitch deck content and design support, investor reach-out, modeling and valuation, and investment bank’s selection

Mortgage process outsourcing

This is a specialist process of a lender whose critical elements could be successfully outsourced. These elements are marketing, loan origination data entry and analysis, underwriting documentation, background investigation, property assessment, accounting, financial checking, documentation checking, mortgage underwriting, and every other micro sub-steps required for the evaluation, underwriting, and approval of loans.

Magistral’s tried and tested process for outsourcing

Magistral has helped scores of clients in the financial industry and elsewhere in outsourcing operations. Magistral follows a customized and low-risk process for a smooth transition. The process puts business continuity and risk minimization at the center. Here are the major steps in offshoring that is proprietary and unique to Magistral:

The approach followed by Magistral Consulting for outsourcing financial processes

Project Kick-Off

There is a call with all the client stakeholders to understand their challenges and expectations from offshoring a process. Once the business imperative of offshoring is understood, a proposal for services is prepared. The proposal carries in detail the commercials, methodologies, KRAs and KPIs, project plans, and other details required for client management to take a call. Once the proposal is signed off the action begins.

SOP preparation

Before taking any project for delivery Magistral invests a great deal of time and expertise in preparing Standard Operating Procedure documents. For preparing SOP a trained analyst gets in touch with the client SPOC (Single Point of Contact) and by his skills in business analysis brings all the knowledge of people onto a process document. We call this “bringing what is between the ears onto the paper”. Every fine detail is captured. A Magistral SOP document would carry lots of process diagrams, tips for analysts, swim-lanes, along with audio and video recording of meetings and training. The whole of this process is done without any cost to the client. Clients first-hand see the expertise that Magistral brings to the table without any investment on their part. Once the SOP document is ready, the signoff about its accuracy is taken from the relevant personnel in management. Till this point client does not spend even a single penny and we are fine about it.

Business Reengineering

Once the detailed SOP is ready, business reengineering opportunities make themselves evident. There are processes where either cost could be reduced or turnaround time could be improved by Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Machine Learning. The same is shared and validated with the client.

Pilot Projects

Our proposals are always signed based on the projects or milestones that we deliver. It is never based on the number of people (FTEs) that we employ to deliver services. Normally vendors will charge for FTEs and then they will sit and undergo process training at the client’s expense. With Magistral, you only pay when we deliver the project or processes that meet your quality standards. We start with low volumes. Trainers get trained in the process. Coordination with the client is very close and done almost daily to fill any gaps in delivery and expectations. For bigger projects, an onsite analyst sits with the client for weeks and is responsible for business analysis and knowledge transfer.

SLA finalization

Many times, there are no Service Level Agreements decided for internal teams. We make sure we are accountable for everything we deliver and decide the SLAs of every process. These SLAs can be in terms of improvement in quality, turnaround time, analyst’s availability, prompt acknowledgment of requests, etc. With Magistral, if you have internal SLAs, we promise to beat that further with at least 20% improvements.

Process Stabilization

With SLA compliances meeting standards, we increase the scope and volume of work offshored.

The phased approach ensures the client is never too invested to back off. The process is also designed to give enough confidence to the clients to trust the expertise of Magistral.

About Magistral

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple funds and companies in outsourcing operations activities. It has service offerings for Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Offices, Investment Banks, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Financial Consultants, Real Estate, REITs, RE funds, Corporates and Portfolio companies. Its functional expertise is around Deal origination, Deal Execution, Due Diligence, Financial Modeling, Portfolio Management and Equity Research

For setting up an appointment with a Magistral representative visit www.magistralconsulting.com/contact

About the Author

The Author, Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsutling.com for any queries or business inquiries.

[aaron-golden]

“Hey, I know that place,” I said to my skeptical friend, pointing out a restaurant marked by a smiling pirate. “There’s one opening up near where I live.”

“The Captain’s Boil? Like a plague?”

“I think they mean a boiling pot.”

“What the hell,” quoth she. “I like seafood.”

It was the biggest mistake either of us would make that day, but we were taken in by cute marketing and a pleasing design and the promise of seafood. It’s a franchise, right? They’ve got stores all over the place. How bad could it be?

We would soon learn that everything good implied by this place was a lie.

Taking a cue from some Taco Bell-ruled dystopian nightmare, the interior looked like a fast-food place but signage asked that we wait to be seated. No worries, thought we, and we were seated promptly enough. It certain places this could be kitschy and misguided and very fifties, like the mixture of cute pirate wallpaper and sci-fi nightmare tile scheme.

“Do you want anything to drink?” asked our waitress. She had no name tag and never introduced herself, and that’s fine – when I worked retail I had a tendency to “lose” my name tags and never gave my actual name. I kinda approve of that; I know corporate wants employees using their real names in case compliments come in, which I always viewed as proof that corporate had never been in an actual store. Regardless…

“Coffee would be nice.”

“We don’t have coffee.”

“Tea?”

“No.”

“What do you have?”

“Water.”

“Two waters, please.” I looked at my friend. She nodded. “With a couple slices of lemon.”

The waters arrived but the lemons never did.

And that’s fine. It’s fine. New restaurant opening up, there’s going to be some issues as things get sorted. The Captain’s Boil is new. I get that. At least this one is new, right? It’s cool. This wasn’t a warning sign at all. The ghastly looks that twisted the faces from the single other full table was certainly not a warning. The words they silently spoke – get out – could be safely ignored.

The decor was okay: brown paper table clothe taped into place. A full thing of napkins. The glasses were plastic and cheap. The smiling face of the mascot leered down on us, staring with one eye.

“Odin gave up his eye for wisdom,” my friend said. “What do you think that guy gave his up for?”

I had no answer and the pirate would not reveal his secrets.

The menus came and we looked them over, a single poorly laid out double-sided laminated page designed by someone with an eye for everything but practicality. There were appetizers on one side and main courses on the other, the words hidden beneath garish colors and pictures that advertised food we would never see.

How could we know that then?

“I think I’d like a crab,” my friend said. I echoed her sentiment. We ordered corn, too, and selected a sauce for the crab to be marinated in. We settled in to wait for the food. The waters were refilled. No lemons were ever found.

We did not notice then the lack of any kind of price by the crab. We would suffer the consequences later.

Meanwhile, the mascot continued to leer from the walls. “Too late to run now, matey,” it crooned.

Plastic gloves and bibs were brought out, both one-size-fits-none. The gloves groped my finger-flesh like a club-bound dude-bro with any amount of beer inside him. The bib slipped away like his would-be victim protected by her sisters. Those gloves were not coming off without tearing and that bib was lost forever.

When the crabs arrived they came in a plastic bag – broken crabs boiled apart and still in the shell, the shell still holding and strong. There were no plates offered, nowhere to discard the shells we were given nutcrackers to sort through – and the shells came unscored, so we were going to have to work for our meal.

Reaching into the bag was a process that covered our forearms in what we originally thought was the yummy sauce that we’d chosen off the menu but which we became more convinced was actually pooling and congealed blood as the meal went on and it seeped through the plastic, giving the brown paper an unhealthy shine.

Without plates, utensils, or even a bucket, we had no choice but to dump the shells we’d managed to break and get some of the meat out of on the brown paper table clothe in front of us, adding to the wreck and ruin. The shattered shells piled up, hiding delicious crab meat between bits of cartilage and shell. Were we getting all the meat? Were we even getting our money’s worth? How much was this going to cost? How much waste was this one meal going to create? Only one of those questions would be answered. The waters were refilled without lemons. The family with the haunted expressions left us alone in the Captain’s Boil with disinterested waitstaff and silenced Nickelodeon.

My phone rang but the gloves continued to hold my hands prisoner. I asked the waitstaff if replacement gloves were possible and was told they were not. These were my designated gloves – there could be no others like them. Whoever was calling was going to have to wait if I wanted to keep my hands free of the congealing liquids that were sopping through the brown paper.

Hey, remember that corn we’d ordered?

We found it. It was in the bag the whole time, hidden underneath pieces of crab and soaking in blood and sauce.

“You’re sure this is blood?” I asked, eyeing the corn with uncertain hunger.

“Pretty sure,” my friend said, glaring. “I deal with more blood than you do.”

She was right, I knew.

We left the corn where it was as I struggled to free myself from the gloves, then excused myself to use my phone. Another friend of mine was in my neighborhood – I had to warn her.

“Do not go to the Captain’s Boil,” I whispered, still dealing with the trauma of the seafood blood cult that was even now watching my every move. The single beady eye of the mascot trailed me, mocking, a pirate that would never be satisfied until I had paid for my suffering. Grimacing, I went back in, forced a smile at the counter and spared a glance to my friend as she eyed the corn and weighed the risks.

Did we get all the crab? I wondered. We did not know. We would never know. The question continues to haunt us.

I used their bathroom, struggling past the mop that blocked the stall door, the cleaning supplies leaking under the sink and filling the air with a heady smell that seared the blood-scent from my nostrils. I left quickly, walked back to the front.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked the person behind the counter. She smiled at me, printing off a bill. Two Dungeness crabs, two waters, two pieces of uneaten corn, no lemons: $106.53.

I could have fought it. Maybe I would have, but my stomach was already beginning to ache. I paid, tipped, collected my friend and left.

“Nothing to do now but wait for the food poisoning to set in,” she said. Later, she continued: “That was a monstrous assemblage of seafood, waste, and the failed follow-through of a successful branding campaign, all of which has culminated in an over-priced, over-hyped, and literally stomach-churning result which will neither be soon missed or readily forgotten.”

That’s an actual quote. I know the best people.

We nabbed some ginger ale and Gravol elsewhere. She had a ferry to catch and I had my life to live. Between the two of us we had shared and survived an experience and now – now – there was nothing to do but warn people and keep them from making the same mistake as us.

And now you have been warned.

[evening-rose-309]

The thing is: until corporations stop monopolizing shit and alternatives become more accessible, then we're all going to have to settle for the bad shit that we know is bad.

Example: I hate Unilever. Unilever is part of the reason my country is going bald forest wise [read: naturally occurring and diverse forests] because it and all its wannabees keep replacing our trees with palm oil plantations. Areas that have never been flooded in over several centuries have become flooded over the past two years, and I'm talking car height tides of water, because palm trees may absorb water, but due to the fact that they're the only things there and can't hold their tanks for shit, come raining season it all just...pours out. In massive waves.

So what do I do, knowing this shit? Well, being a youngun' with not much money or a Paypal even to this night, I cut back on my Unilever products - the ones that I can feasibly control like, say, my shampoo and soap products. The thing here is, while Unilever does work in those sectors, they also produce and work with OTHER SECTORS. Butter alternatives aren't cheap. All the butter in the store is a Unilever subsidiary or partner and I can't help it if I get that because, hey, I need it and it's the only thing there.

If you say 'oh just shop online', well here's the other thing: quality control. You have NO IDEA what is going in that packet before you buy it, what state the wrapping is in, how they package it, what state even the butter is in when they do get it out, what happens during delivery. Your convenience store chains usually have a firm hold on those things and they will be held accountable when something goes wrong, they have an SOP. A private seller? Maybe if the site your on enforces those rules, but still even then, at the end of the day, when you report them that's one less alternative from an already teenie tiny number. The site isn't going to replace their product and you're back to square one.

That's just butter. I can't imagine what it's like for disabled people or people with specific needs when they have to get the thing that they need to survive and actually live to the next hour from a place they know is horrendous and goes against everything they are as a person - but they need it. You can't villainize that and you shouldn't, because it's not their fault.

TL;DR Monopoly is bad and you should be shaming the corporate slime balls playing it, not the people they've trapped in their game.

People on Tumblr need to shut up when they demonize others for not boycotting certain stores or brands. Yeah, there are stores I don't buy from, like Chick-fil-a and Walmart. But the more you research, the more you realize the staggering amount of companies that are immoral. It gets to be so that for some people, the only stores that aren't unethical are the ones people can't afford.

"So buy clothes from Goodwill or thrift stores so that your money isn't going to (company)."

And what if you can't find the clothes you need in your size? I'm a plus size and currently in need of an interview suit, casual, and in-between clothes. I work close to paycheck to paycheck I've looked at all the Goodwills in my area, and they simply don't have the sizes I need. This isn't a problem solved by going to different stores. A lot of places don't have great variety of plus sizes. What makes it worse is that a lot of brands don't make plus size in petites because I guess they don't think fat people can be an average or less than average height.

"So go to Aldis."

I do. I'm fortunate to have no shortage of grocery stores near me. But not all places are like that. My cousin in Wyoming needs to drive an hour to get to the nearest grocery store. I believe their convenience stores sell more than the ones near me, so it's not like they can't get by, but their choices are limited.

"So you're willing to fund an immoral operation to save money."

Sweetie (derogatory), either you've never lived paycheck to paycheck or you're still a child and have a false idea of what adulthood is like. Some people have no choice but to buy the cheapest products they can, and some people don't have a wide array of stores to shop from. Personally, I can afford to boycott a few places, but not the long laundry list that contains every unethical store.

Don't get me wrong. Boycott the stores you can, but don't come online and assume people who don't are just selfish. The thing with stores like Walmart and Amazon are that they set the poor against the poor. They know some people will need jobs badly enough that they can't refuse despite bad work conditions. They also know other people can't afford to shop elsewhere. So they see it as a win-win and take advantage of everyone.

[businessdesigncorp86-blog]

How Procedure Documentation Software Helps You in Managing Your Employees?

Procedure documentation software can help disseminate information, instructions, and policies among your employees. When it comes to SOP software and procedure documentation, Business Design Corporation is the market leader. Our well-crafted and sophisticated technology allows organizations to monitor, streamline, and revamp their workplaces and dramatically improve their operations. With our software, everything in your organization is just a few clicks away. For more details, please visit us at https://www.businessdesigncorp.com/.

[docsamurai]

Humans are weird: The Abandoned Base

*Quick note before I start: This is the 3rd installment in a series I’ve called the Lost Colonies which is largely about human society adapting to the strange environments of other worlds. You can read the other installments here: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing this series, but with my new work schedule I had to bring it to a close. If you’ve enjoyed this story follow me on here for my other writings. Thanks again to everyone who has reblogged, liked, replied, DMed, or otherwise shown their appreciation for this series. It means a lot to me that people enjoyed it and the love you’ve all shown me has really helped keep me going for these last few months.*

A bead of sweat dripped down Kiara’s forehead as she hauled the last of the containers of equipment into a weathered shed. Even though the gravity on Steadfast was lighter than her homeworld it had still been a long day of preparations for what the colonists called “The Tides” and her back was aching. It felt good, reminded her of her childhood. It had been a long time since her days scouting beyond the Thaw and though she loved exploring the universe and finding hidden pockets of humanity it wasn’t often that she had a good reason to get her hands dirty.

Kiara looked around for the colonist she was helping and found her tying large heavy knots to some sturdy looking rings sunk deep in the ground around the house. “Jun! I finished loading the crates. What’s next?” A moment later the device on Kiara’s hip perked up and translated Galactic Basic into the old Earth dialect that these colonists still spoke. It was supposedly a form of pre-unification Mandarin, albeit with several hundred years of taxonomical drift.

“Did you remember to tie them down spacer?” The elderly woman asked as she went back to her knots. “Yes I did. Everything’s stowed properly for the Tide.” Jun simply grunted and Kiara was sure that she would find an excuse to check on her work before the day was done. “Well trace the cables on the house to the anchors in the fields, just make sure I got them all secured.”

Kiara shrugged and took off a jog around the edges of the complex. There were 8 lines attached to winches built into the porch surrounding the circular house. The whole effect would have looked like spokes on a bike wheel from above. Sure enough as she reached each anchor Kiara found the knots tied so well she couldn’t have tightened them if she wanted to. Kiara finished the 2 kilometer jog back at where Jun had been previously only to see her double checking Kiara’s work in the shed. “Good work spacer. You’re done here, go check on Hai and see if he needs any help in the kitchen.”

Kiara smiled to herself and took off to the house to find Jun’s husband. Kiara found him stirring a large stockpot in the kitchen with a basket of freshly baked rolls on the table. Hai was friendlier than Jun but rarely spoke at all. “Greetings Hai, Jun sent me in to see if you needed help.” Hai simply kept stirring as the translator worked. “No, you can rest if you’d like. Help yourself to some bread.” Kiara picked up a roll and spent a long moment simply smelling the heady aroma of yeast and herbs. That was one of the major perks of a primarily agricultural world like this one: wheat meant bread.

Jun came in from the field carrying one of the black, meter tall, egg shaped stones that dotted the hillside to the East and Hai gave her an affectionate peck on the cheek. It was the only time Kiara had seen her blush. Jun set the egg down on the table and grabbed a large, flat tool from near the sink. Sliding the sharpened edge of the tool into a crack in the side of the stone Jun twisted and the stone split open along the perimeter to reveal that it was in fact a large mollusk. As Hai went to work transforming the near meter of mollusk into some wonderful smelling soup Jun washed her hands and sat down at the table across from Kiara.

“So, you said you wanted to interview me spacer?” Kiara straightened up, set the translator on the table, pulled her datapad out of her bag and hurriedly swallowed the last of her roll. “Yes, sorry, let’s start over. I’m Kiara Williams and I’m a special liaison for the Galactic Republic. We’ve been traveling the galaxy learning more about the human colonies and outposts that were lost when EarthGov fell. We’ve made it our goal to re-establish contact with as many of them as we can and to find ways to reintegrate them into galactic society if they wish to rejoin us or to simply learn more about them if they don’t wish to rejoin.”

Jun picked up a roll and thoughtfully chewed as she listened to the translator. Kiara continued. “We understand that this planet is a former EarthGov military outpost that was kept off of most official records. I just want to assure you that we’re not here because of the military, I just want to learn more about you and your culture.” Jun gave a short laugh as she heard that. “Well if you did want the military then you came a few hundred years too late. When the war was over they left us here to rot. That was a long time ago sure, but your ancestors being slaves that got thrown away isn’t exactly something you forget.”

Kiara decided that telling Jun that there was never a war, that EarthGov simply fell apart from the inside was a talk that could wait for another day. “I know how hard that is. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve come across a number of similar stories of EarthGov’s crimes. I came from a lost colony myself. We can talk later about what, if anything the galactic council can do for you, but first I’d like to learn a bit more about your culture if that’s OK?”

Jun nodded as Hai slid a bowls of soup in front of the women before sitting down himself. “Well let’s start with the obvious questions. We’re several kilometers in land but the hills are covered in giant mollusks and your home is apparently built to float, exactly how does that work?” Jun laughed into her soup. “I thought spacers were supposed to know everything about science. It’s the moons, we’ve got 3 of them and they have enough mass to make the tides a bit bigger than you’ve probably seen, especially when they align like they’re doing right now. Only happens a few times a year but when it does it can get this old place up over those hills if we don’t anchor it in place. When they don’t align we usually don’t get tides high enough to even reach us.”

Kiara gratefully sopped up the last of her meal with a third roll “I saw some houses out closer to the shore on my way in. Are they temporary? Where do the rest of the colonists live?” Jun sat back with a cold glass of some brown liquor as Hai kissed her on the cheek again before going out to the porch. “We call the people on the shore ‘Drifters’ because they just let their houses drift along with the tides when they roll in and steer them as needed. Sometimes they get swept out to sea but they usually keep a kayak or 2 to tow them back into shore if they need to. Decent folk, sometimes we hire them to help with the harvest if the blackshells, mollusks as you called them, get a good meal from the tide. We usually sell most of the harvest to high grounders who live further in land and up mountains where even the big tides can’t reach.”

“Exactly how high can the big tides go?” Jun got up from her chair and led Kiara to the porch. Somehow the tide had come in over dinner without her even noticing. In the fading light of dusk Kiara could see the tops of the hills nearly a hundred meters under water. “We must be 500 meters up!” “It’ll get up to 700 before the night is out.” Hai tightened a winch nearby pulling the shed which was floating nearby a little closer to the main house before sitting on a swinging bench chair to watch the sunset. Jun joined Hai on the bench and guestured to Kiara to take a nearby seat.

“So you’ve asked your questions spacer, and I don’t care much about your republic. I’ve been on this planet all my life and I don’t intend to leave. You’ll probably find some Drifters looking for places to drift and there’s probably some high grounders who’d be interested in leaving too, but not me or my Hai. What about you though? What’s your plan?”

“I’m not exactly sure what you mean Jun. I’m just doing my job and trying to learn about people who got lost out in the stars.” Jun shifted in her seat and leaned back into Hai “Well I’m not lost spacer, I know where I’m at even if where I’m at drifts from time to time. Do you have a home out there in the stars? How about someone to come home to?”

Kiara shook her head. “I spend most of my time travelling the stars, the closest I have to a home is my ship, but that’s really all I need.” Jun and Hai shared a look. “Just because you drift doesn’t mean you can’t find someone to drift with you, or someone you can always drift back to. That’s how I met my Hai after all.” Kiara smiled at the thought and got up from her chair to go back in the house leaving Hai and Jun to watch the sunset in peace.

Kiara opened up her commlink back to her ship in orbit and opened a channel to one of her contacts on the galactic council. A familiar Turic face filled her screen. “Ah Kiara, it’s nice to hear from you. Is everything is going well on MX-103?” “Yes Kit’cha, everything’s fine, this interview just took longer than expected but I should be back at the station in a few standard cycles.” “That is good to hear Kiara, I’m sure Corporal Jett will be glad to hear -” “JEANNE MADE CORPORAL!?�� Kit’cha’s face fell slightly “I forgot we were keeping that a surprise.”

Kiara laughed to herself and took a deep breath. “Say, Kit’cha, I was wondering...” Kiara grinned fighting down an unfamiliar nervousness in the pit of her stomach. “when I get back, would you like to get some dinner? Just the two of us?” Kit’cha seemed caught off guard at first. “I’ve learned a lot about humans since I was assigned to the lost colony division 12 sols ago and I’ve learned a lot about their customs. Correct me if I’m wrong, but given the context would this be what humans call a ‘date’?” Kiara didn’t say anything but simply nodded, feeling her cheeks flush with color. “I would greatly enjoy that Kiara Williams.”

[readingontheedge]

The Haunting of Thores-Cross

Ghosts of Thores-Cross Book 1

by Karen Perkins

Genre: Paranormal Suspense

 "The ghost of a wronged young woman in the village of Thores-Cross waits 230 years to have her story told in Perkins's suspenseful and atmospheric first Yorkshire Ghost novel"

- BookLife by Publishers Weekly

*Silver Medal Winner, European fiction - 2015 IPPY Book Awards

*#1 Bestseller in 6 Amazon Categories, including Ghost Suspense, British Horror and Gothic Romance

*Top 10 Bestseller in 8 more, including Historical Thrillers and Occult Horror

*Over 100 5-STAR reviews on Amazon.com

Likened by independent reviewers on Amazon to the Brontë sisters, Edgar Allen Poe, Barbara Erskine and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Karen Perkins' novels are filled with unflinching honesty and an acute understanding of human nature. She explores not only the depths of humanity, but the depths of human motivation behind the actions and pain people inflict upon each other, as well as the repercussions of these actions not only in the short term, but also the later generations who live with the implications of the past.

Emma Moorcroft is still grieving after a late miscarriage and moves to her dream house at Thruscross Reservoir with her husband, Dave. Both Emma and Dave hope that moving into their new home signifies a fresh start, but life is not that simple. Emma has nightmares about the reservoir and the drowned village that lies beneath the water, and is further disturbed by the sound of church bells - from a church that no longer exists.

Jennet is fifteen and lives in the isolated community of Thores-Cross, where life revolves about the sheep on which they depend. Following the sudden loss of both her parents, she is seduced by the local wool merchant, Richard Ramsgill. She becomes pregnant and is shunned not only by Ramsgill, but by the entire village. Lonely and embittered, Jennet's problems escalate, leading to tragic consequences which continue to have an effect through the centuries.

Emma becomes fixated on Jennet, neglecting herself, her beloved dogs and her husband to the point where her marriage may not survive. As Jennet and Emma's lives become further entwined, Emma's obsession deepens and she realises that the curse Jennet inflicted on the Ramsgill family over two hundred years ago is still claiming lives.

Emma is the only one who can stop Jennet killing again, but will her efforts be enough? 

Goodreads * Amazon 

Video Trailer: 

https://youtu.be/qas3UEht_6Y 

The Haunting of Thores-Cross - Excerpt

   I could not look down at myself. I could not bear the sight of Mam’s clothes on me. Both skirt and shawl itched. I knew I would be aware of every thread of wool on my skin all day. More noise at the door, and I followed Mary downstairs. Digger and his son, Edward, had arrived with the cart to take Mam to the church. I let Mary Farmer organise them. It were Mary who urged their care. Mary who gave instructions to John over Pa. Mary who pushed me through the door and out into bright sunlight. It were Mam’s funeral, how could the sun shine? I looked back at the house and, for a moment, pity for Pa mixed with my despair. How long before Digger’s cart came for him?

‘Come on, lass, no dawdling!’

I turned back to the cart and started the long walk behind it down the hill, Mary Farmer at my side. After a few steps I stopped hearing her endless chatter. It became just another sound of the country, like the birdsong. Ever present but meaningless. We passed the smithy and William Smith joined us, then the Gate Inn and Robert and Martha Grange.

One by one, the village turned out, dressed in their best, and fell in behind us. Mary Farmer greeted them all. I hardly noticed. I felt as if my insides had frozen. My heart, my lungs, belly, everything. With each step, they splintered further. I wondered if I would make it as far as the church at the other side of Thores-Cross or whether I would be left on the side of the lane, a heap of cracked and broken ice.

‘Here.’ Mary Farmer nudged me and held out a handkerchief. ‘Thought this might come in useful. John won’t miss it. Not today.’

I took it. I had not realised I were crying, but when I wiped my face and eyed the scrap of cloth, it were sopping wet. My eyes and nose must have been streaming since we left the house.

I scratched my shoulder. Remembered I were wearing Mam’s clothes and lost myself in sobs. Mary Farmer tried to put an ample arm around me, but I shrugged her off. I wondered if I would ever stop crying. The cart reached the bridge and turned right. I followed, walking alongside the river, the same walk I used to make every other Sunday with Mam and Pa. We shared a curate with Fewston and would have to make that walk twice a month, unless Robert Grange were making the trip in his dray cart and we could ride the two miles over the moor. I realised with a start that I would not have to do that any more – not if I did not want to. Less than half the village made the trip to Fewston, claiming a variety of ills, and we only went because Mam insisted. I cried harder at the jolt of relief I felt.

‘Here we are, lass. Thee stick with me, I’ll get thee through this.’ Mary Farmer clung to my arm and I peered at the church. Digger and Edward lifted Mam down from the cart, ready for various men from the village to carry it inside. Robert Grange, William Smith, Thomas Fuller and George Weaver. Our closest neighbours. I took a deep breath and followed them into the plain single-storey stone building with the steps so worn they were more like a ramp. It were cold inside, despite the July sun. Or maybe that were me. Still ice, still cracking, but still in one piece. 

Cursed

Ghosts of Thores-Cross Book 2

  Jennet's here. No one is safe.

A skeleton is dug up at the crossing of the ways on Hanging Moor, striking dread into the heart of Old Ma Ramsgill - the elderly matriarch of the village of Thruscross. And with good reason. The eighteenth-century witch, Jennet, has been woken. A spate of killings by a vicious black dog gives credence to her warnings and the community - in particular her family - realise they are in terrible danger. Drastic measures are needed to contain her, but with the imminent flooding of the valley to create a new reservoir, do they have the ability to stop her and break her curse? 

Goodreads * Amazon 

Cursed - Excerpt

 Thruscross, North Yorkshire

 7th August 1966 – 11:30 a.m.

  ‘Right, tea break over, lads, back to work. Rog, Steve, you’re up on Hanging Moor in the bulldozers. As soon as they’ve gone through, Paul and Simon, you get the chippings down. And take care – don’t go past the markers, that drop’s lethal.’

The road crew groaned, threw their dregs of tea to the ground and refastened their flasks before clambering into their machines to dig out the access road to the new dam spanning the Washburn Valley. The valley would be flooded in a month’s time, creating the new reservoir for the Leeds Corporation Waterworks to supply half of Leeds with drinking water, and the road should have been completed last month.

Rog led the way, the large bucket scraping heather and peat, then dumping it into the waiting tipper truck.

Steve followed, making a deeper cut. Together they gouged an ugly scar over the pristine Yorkshire moorland.

‘Bugger,’ Steve cried out and jolted in his seat, knocking the control levers. The big digger wobbled, teetered, then slowly toppled over towards the edge and a sheer wooded drop of a hundred and fifty feet to the valley bottom below.

‘Steve!’ Rog cried. ‘Lads, help!’

The rest of the crew downed tools and diggers and rushed to the stricken bulldozer. By the time they reached it, Rog was already clambering on to the cab, desperately trying not to look at the vista that opened up before him only a few feet away.

‘Steve?’ he called again. No answer. His mate lay unconscious, twisted in his seat. ‘No!’ The digger slid a foot or two in the wrong direction.

‘Rog, get down; she’s going over!’ Andy, the foreman, shouted.

‘No – Steve’s out cold.’

‘You’re no help to him if your weight pushes it over the edge – get down! We’ll get help, but we need to secure the digger somehow, keep her steady.’

Rog took a last look at his mate then nodded. He realised he couldn’t get into the cab without destabilising the digger further and he had no idea how serious Steve’s injuries were. He climbed down carefully, just as Simon drew up in the tipper truck. Half full of soil and rock, it was the heaviest vehicle there.

Andy got on the radio to inform his boss at the dam where there was a telephone to call for help, while Paul ran over with a chain. He secured it round one of the digging arms, and Simon backed up – slowly – until the chain was taut.

The digger shifted, turning around the pivot point they’d created. The back end now hung off the edge of the cliff.

‘Keep it there, Simon,’ Andy called. ‘And keep it in reverse – if the edge fails, you’ll need to pull him backwards.’

‘Can’t he just do that anyway?’ Rog asked.

‘We don’t know how badly he’s hurt. If he’s broken his back or neck, moving him could make it worse. We don’t want to move him unless we have to – not until the Fire Brigade and ambulance get here. What happened anyway?’

‘Uh.’ Rog pulled his attention away from the downed machine. ‘I don’t know – he shouted out, then rolled it.’

‘He shouted before he rolled?’

‘Yes.’

‘Andy, Rog. Come and have a look at this,’ Paul called and beckoned them over to join him where Steve had made his last cut.

‘What is it?’ Andy came hurrying over.

‘Uh, looks like a skull.’

‘What? Oh Christ, it’s a bloody skeleton! Well, that’s us finished, lads, no more work here for at least a month while they sort this one out,’ Rog said.

‘Forget that, we’ll just go round it,’ Andy said.

The three men looked over at Steve, then back into the grave. Only the skull and shoulder girdle were visible. As one, they shuddered as a worm pushed its way out of the compacted earth behind the jaw bones, for a moment looking as if the skull had stuck an emaciated tongue out at them. 

Jennet

Ghosts of Thores-Cross Book 3

 ‘Jennet will have your heart and your fear in equal measure’

‘Through Jennet we see how cruelty can drive even the most ordinary people to hatred and, in Jennet's case, evil’

Yorkshire is in the grip of a heatwave, and Thruscross Reservoir has dried up to reveal the remains of the drowned village of Thores-Cross beneath.

Playing in the mud which coats the valley floor, four-year-old Clare Wainwright finds an old inkpot, and can’t wait to show it to her best friend, Louise. But when Louise’s mother, Emma, sees it, her reaction is shocking, and both families are plunged into their worst nightmares.

Emma knows what the inkpot portends:

Jennet has woken.

Now she wants the children.

This is not a gore-ridden, jump-scare horror story. This is more real than that. Jennet is a story about the horrific things that people do to each other, and the way we react to that maltreatment – which does not always end with death.

Jennet’s story is a horror story because it’s not necessarily fiction. It reflects the way women were treated in the time that Jennet lived. It reflects the psychology of the abuse cycle. And it reflects real life. All of it.

If, as I believe, the spirit does not die when the physical body dies, then how many spirits are looking for vengeance today?

What wrongs will you want to right when you pass through that veil? What will I?

This is the conclusion of Jennet’s story, which began in The Haunting of Thores-Cross. I hope she finds peace. I really do. 

Goodreads * Amazon 

Jennet - Excerpt

  Ma pulled her coat tight around her body and, head bowed to the wind, pushed forward with as much strength as she could muster. No wonder Spencer hadn’t wanted to shift.

‘Sensible hoss,’ she muttered, but knew she had to push on.

With the headwind she could not hear anything from behind, and forced herself to stop and turn to check the others were following.

Biddy hooked her arm in Ma’s as she reached her, and Winnie took her other arm.

Elsie Grange and Babs also linked arms, and together they fought their way into the headwind, Nell and Rachel carrying lanterns on the flanks of the group.

Winnie came to a sudden stop, pulling on Ma’s arm, and Babs bumped into her back. ‘Listen!’

The women huddled together.

‘I can only hear the wind,’ Elsie complained.

‘Hush. Winnie’s right, there’s summat else,’ Ma said.

This time they all heard the low growl, and Babs squeaked. ‘That’s what I heard at the fairy spring!’

‘Hold the lanterns high,’ Ma instructed.

Nell and Rachel obeyed, and the seven women peered into the darkness. They jumped when it was split by a streak of bright light.

‘There, something moved!’ Rachel exclaimed.

‘Come on, hurry,’ Ma said as a loud growl competed with reverberations of thunder.

The women got moving once more, their steps quick and purposeful along the lane.

Even Ma jumped at the next growl. It came from right behind them.

Babs hurried to the front of the pack, her terrified tears blending with rainwater on her cheeks. Ma took pity on the young lass, and hustled forward to join and calm her.

They paused at the stile in the wall bordering Ratten Row. Wolf Farm lay a few yards beyond.

Ma turned to Babs. ‘Nearly done,’ she encouraged.

The wind tore at their coats, and the two women crouched down by the wall for a little shelter, then froze. There had been another sound; more a snarl than a growl, Ma was sure of it. Was Jennet here? Was she in the form of the black dog or wolf which had been the cause of so much recent grief?

They listened hard as the rest of the women joined them, but could hear little over the shriek of the wind, the pounding of the rain, and the rumbles of thunder. The church bell tolled once more and Ma shivered. Had she taken on too much? Was the witch too strong for her?

But she could not waver now. ‘Come on,’ she shouted, and turned to drag herself over the stile. She felt hands helping her up, and swung her leg over the capstones. She nearly overbalanced as a gust hit her, but her friends kept her upright and she was soon over.

Biddy, Winnie and Elsie followed, then the younger women clambered across, Nell once again at the rear, brandishing her lantern, which Rachel took off her while she made her climb.

‘Come on!’ Ma bellowed, but her leg slipped from under her as she stepped forward and she skidded into a painful fall.

‘Ma!’

Babs and Rachel tried to help her up, but lost their own footing on the drenched ground.

Biddy joined the heap.

‘Ground’s too wet!’ Winnie cried. ‘Whole hillside’s a bog!’

‘Oh God!’ Nell shoved her lantern at Elsie as the moon appeared through a break in the clouds. ‘Stan! Alfie!’ She ran towards the farmhouse, falling to her knees more than once, but concern for her husband’s young brothers pushed her on.

A rectangle of light appeared in the front wall of Wolf Farm as another crash of thunder accompanied a blaze of lightning.

Stan reached down, his hobnailed boots helping him keep his footing, and pulled Nell back up to her feet.

She gesticulated, her words incomprehensible in the wind, but a flash of understanding hit Ma as she realised the young farmer’s wife was pointing uphill.

‘Get back, get back, it’s a trap!’ she shouted at the other women. ‘That beast wasn’t stalking us, it was herding us! Get back to road before the moor slides!’

Nell, flanked by Stan on one side, and his younger brother Alfie on the other, joined them, Nell’s words echoing Ma’s.

The mud-covered, straggly group struggled back to the boundary wall, and heaved themselves over as the ground they had been standing on slipped.

Stan hurled himself forward, his feet carried away. Rachel and Nell caught his sleeves as he fell.

Alfie looked up from his position on the wall, anguish clear in his eyes before clouds darkened the moon once more. He could do nothing to help his brother – his hands were full of Elsie Grange as he heaved her up and over the wall, Winnie hot on her heels.

Elsie screamed, and Alfie rose up, a capstone held in both hands which he flung with a strength borne as much from terror as from years of hurling bales of hay and contending with maddened ewes about the farm.

An inhuman screech followed and Alfie held his arms up in triumph. The women did not need to hear his declaration of triumph to know he had hit the wolf-dog.

A louder rumble than even the thunder which roared overhead deafened the group, and they turned as one to see a river of peat and heather hit the back wall of Wolf Farm. It found at least one means of entry as seconds later a dark, muddy mess spewed from the front door on its journey downhill.

The nine bedraggled villagers stared in disbelief.

‘That settles it.’ Nell’s voice was audible between gusts of wind and furious clangs of the church bell. ‘You two boys are coming home with me. Billy could do with your help on the farm, and there’s plenty of room for you in the house. You’re not spending another minute here.’ 

Karen Perkins is the author of eight fiction titles: the Yorkshire Ghost Stories and the Valkyrie Series of historical nautical fiction. All of her fiction has appeared at the top of bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic, including the top 21 in the UK Kindle Store in 2018. Her first Yorkshire Ghost Story - THE HAUNTING OF THORES-CROSS - won the Silver Medal for European Fiction in the prestigious 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards in New York, whilst her Valkyrie novel, DEAD RECKONING, was long-listed in the 2011 MSLEXIA novel competition. Originally a financial advisor, a sailing injury left Karen with a chronic pain condition which she has been battling for over twenty five years (although she did take the European ladies title despite the injury!). Writing has given her a new lease of - and purpose to - life, and she is currently working on a sequel to Parliament of Rooks: Haunting Brontë Country. When not writing, she helps other authors prepare their books for publishing and has edited over 150 titles, including the 2017 Kindle UK Storyteller Award winner, The Relic Hunters by David Leadbeater, and has also published a series of publishing guides to help aspiring authors realise their dreams. Karen Perkins is a member of the Society of Authors and the Horror Writers Association

Website * Facebook * Facebook Group * Twitter * Instagram * Amazon * Goodreads  

Author Links

Website: www.karenperkinsauthor.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Yorkshireghosts

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/yorkshireghosts

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LionheartG

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yorkshireghosts

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Karen-Perkins/e/B009BLBUTY

Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7135531.Karen_Perkins 

Giveaway

$50 Amazon

Follow the tour HERE for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway! 

https://www.silverdaggertours.com/sdsxx-tours/ghosts-of-thores-cross-book-tour-and-giveaway 

[khushikansal20-blog]

My internship journey with IFortis Corporate India

Hi everyone, today I’m going to give you a just of my first every internship with fortis corporate. I joined the internship as a sales & marketing intern since I wanted to work in this field and know all the basics of marketing.

It started off with my application and then I got a call from the HR Shruthi. It was a telephonic interview and fortunately I got selected. Within a few days we got our first SOP. The HR hyped us all up for the event that is going to happen. THE STEP AHEAD festival. It’s the world’s largest virtual school fiesta for all the students. It gives them a chance to showcase their skills to the world virtually. The company’s effort for the growth of students and to give them a chance to prosper really made me proud to be a part of such a wonderful event. The company has always aimed at the growth of every individual along with their own future growth prospects. 

Shruthi was assigned to our team was very supportive. Be it with the doubts we had, the confusion regarding the SOP or even if we couldn’t deliver within the deadline. We had very frequent google meetings to keep a track that every intern was clear and motivated. The motivating factor was always the relationship each intern had with each other and with Shruthi It was a very healthy work environment without any stress factor. Shruthi inspired us at every stage and made it very clear to us that this internship was meant for our own growth first and then the company’s prospect.

The company’s recent project-

  ‘STEP AHEAD’ - The 1st edition of the STEP AHEAD "India’s First & Largest Virtual School Fiesta" by IFORTIS CORPORATE will be held in 26th & 27th June 2021. Bringing together the dazzling school children, from all over the world and providing the spotlight to make it beam even brighter!

The past events organised by Ifortis Corporate included interesting projects like-

AARAMBH 2020

 India’s First & Largest Virtual Youth Festival - AARAMBH, A Virtual 2 Day Mega Youth Festival empowering youngsters and solving the mental health problems, after Hours and a whole host of exciting Virtual Entertainment Experiences. The much-awaited mega festival is held from 29th – 30th September 2020. AARAMBH will be India's first Virtual Youth Festival experience which had 10,000+ audience and 1,500+ participants across India.

#Entrepreneurship 360

 Entrepreneurship 360 is a global initiative for ambitious career- driven women across the globe, who are ready to identify, hone and expand their potential as entrepreneurs.

"The mission of this program, is to solve global problems starting from hunger to health by helping women to learn how to start and grow businesses, as well as successfully compete in global markets, by providing quality training, counselling, and access to resources". This exclusive program had 4,900+ women across the globe.

During my internship, I was assigned to get as many student enrolments as I could. So I started of with the school kids I already knew since it was easier to convince them. I reached out to them via video calls and explained everything about the event and asked them to showcase whatever talent they had since the event includes lots of competitions for students to choose from. It did take a little hesitation from the students’ side since they were already worked up due to the pandemic we are in. But when they were told about the exciting rewards and the recognition they would get, they eventually agreed. All this time we were in continuous contact from our HR Shruthi and discussed every level of problems we were facing. It was quite a challenge to convince students and their parents but with proper guidance I was successful.

All the time while I was busy completing my SOP and submitting day to day reports, I realised how I am getting better at handling deadlines and pressure and this could be done only because of the work environment ifortis corporate  provided us with. I was very driven towards reaching my goal. Ifortis corporate helped me grow my skills in the marketing field and gave me a lifetime experience.

Future prospects of the company: IFortis Corporate is stepping into Apparel Manufacturing Industry (Textile & Manufacturing Industry) with an ambitious mission to create more employment opportunity for the women & youth across India and helping them to become self-reliant with obsessive focus on the quality, worker’s safety & welfare, social responsibility and customer satisfaction.

For more contact: hr@ifortiscorporate.com

[internshipjourney]

My Internship journey with IFORTIS CORPORATE, INDIA.

#LifeSo I want to share my experience in iFortis Corporate, India. First talking about my team leader HR Harsh Mishra. His contribution was exceptionally well. His dedication towards the SOP was exceptionally well. Great leader and the way he have supported in the task was fantastic.

At IFORTIS CORPORATE, sustainability management aims to create integrated values. Not only do create economic values by maximizing profits and shareholder values, but also take on a stronger responsibility as a global citizen to create social values. As deliver innovative products and services along the value chain which is based on the core values pursue at IFORTIS CORPORATE,  generate values in the fields of economy, society, and environment. They monitor the financial and non-financial impacts that we exert on society throughout such process so that we maximise our positive impacts while minimizing any negative ones.

Vision & Principle

At IFORTIS CORPORATE, our sustainability management aims to create integrated values. Not only do we create economic values by maximising profits and shareholder values, but also we take on a stronger responsibility as a global citizen to create social values. As we deliver innovative products and services along the value chain which is based on the core values we pursue at IFORTIS CORPORATE, we generate values in the fields of economy, society, and environment. We monitor the financial and non-financial impacts that we exert on society throughout such process so that we maximise our positive impacts while minimising any negative ones.

iFortis Perspective

We believe businesses have a responsibility to contribute to a sustainable future for work, for workers and for the world. We are driven to lead by example, and we are guided in everything we do by our Values, our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and the Sustainable Development Goals. This is how we attract and retain the best talent and how we create a culture of conscious inclusion that fosters innovation, enables high performance and allows everyone to achieve their full potential.

STEP AHEAD - The 1st edition of the STEP AHEAD "India´s First & Largest Virtual School Fiesta" by IFORTIS CORPORATE will be held in 26th & 27th June 2021. Bringing together the dazzling school children, from all over the world and providing the spotlight to make it beam even brighter!

Challenges faced convincing the customer but finally overcome it by making them understand importance for their students.

At IFortis Corporate, we are committed to employing people from all cultures and backgrounds and we aspire to diversify our company across all indicators including gender, age, sexuality, ability and religion. This is evidenced through our many spoken languages, with our staff collectively speaking more than 30 languages. We acknowledge the Indigenous Indians as traditional custodians of our land and seek to be an employer of choice for those identifying as First Nations people. This is achieved through our values of an inclusive work environment, where we work to break down barriers and embrace diversity of people, ideas, talents and experiences.We believe in supporting a progressive culture that allows all our associates to feel at home, enjoy equal opportunities and grow with us.Our culture & core values, set the tone for how we work together and treat each other in order to empower us all and foster a unique team spirit.

 IFortis Corporate is stepping into Apparel Manufacturing Industry (Textile & Manufacturing Industry) with an ambitious mission to create more employment opportunity for the women & youth across India and helping them to become self-reliant with obsessive focus on the quality, worker’s safety & welfare, social responsibility and customer satisfaction.

Life at IFortis-  Develop & implement a digital marketing strategy.

Create and run campaigns online to drive website traffic, brand awareness and visibility, generate leads, etc.

Working on achieving weekly targets of interaction and closures

Working on calling and meeting (if necessary) the prospects for the business

Working on strategizing and creating plans to reach out to our prospects

Working on reporting daily progress to immediate reporting managers.

For contact hr@ifortiscorporate.com.