#it was worse at my last job because there was so much complex tech stuff.

[nelfs]

i think im actually a little mentally challenged. I always feel this at new jobs. like I just can't keep track of anything or remember to do things. it's really embarrassing, it makes me feel like a stupid child. like I lost my sweatshirt and then got sunburnt and left my hat somewhere and forgot to put my food in the freezer and then I realize I've also left my sunscreen in the car... just all these dumb little organization things that I can't do right.

[cy-cyborg]

Tips for wring amputees: its ok if your amputee can't repair their own prosthetics

There's a trope in fiction for amputees to always be these mechanical geniuses who can make and repair their own prosthetics, endlessly tinkering away and improving them. This isn't a particularly trope, and i dont think its harmful or anything, but in reality, prosthetics are REALLY, REALLY complicated, and a lot of amputees cant do their own repairs. And thats ok. Like, prosthetic creation and repair is way, way harder than I think people expect. Well outside the skillset of your standard mechanic, handy man or craftsperson.

People who make and repair prosthetics are called prosthetists. To become a prosthetist, most countries around the world today require you to have completed a bachelor's degree in specifically in prosthetics and orthotics, which covers not only how to make a prosthetics (and orthodics) but a great deal of medical knowledge, physics, how different forces impact "non-standard" bodies, the additional biological wear-and-tear that comes with being an amputee and so much more. This will qualify you to do the job of fitting/making the prosthetic socket (the part that attaches to your body) and putting premade components together to make a functioning device. On top of this, many prosthetists are also expected to have artistic skills, sewing skills, good physical strength and dexterity, IT skills, and more recently, knowledge of 3D modelling and printing.

You want to make all the high-tech components the prosthetists put together to make the full prosthetic? The requirements for that vary country to country, but most will require at least some level study in the field of engineering and/or medicine, on top of what was already required for the prosthetics course.

The reason for all this is because even "basic" prosthetics are extremely finicky, and messing up one thing will have a domino effect on the rest of the body, especially in more complicated prosthetics. It can also result in people getting severally injured if anything is even slightly off. many leg amputees for example end up with spinal issues due to extremely minor issues with their prosthetic that weren't caught until years later, and by then the damage had been done.

Some amputees do learn to do basic repairs. This is most common in places like the US, where a visit to the prosthetist can cost hundred to thousands of dollars (depending on your insurance), but it's also quite common in rural parts of countries like Australia, where cost isn't an issue but access is due to vast distances between major cities. I was personally in this category; as a kid, my nearest prosthetist was 6 hours away. My prosthetist was able to teach my dad, who later taught me, how to do some of the simple repairs, but we still needed to go in every few weeks for the more complex stuff (Kids prosthetic need more adjusting than adults because they're still growing. Also I was rough on my prosthetics and broke them a lot lol).

But even after being taught how to do repairs and having my prosthetics for 20+ years, I only ever did these sorts of repairs to my below-knee prosthetic. I will not do any repairs of any kind to my above knee leg, which is much more technologically complex. Every time I tried, I made it worse to the point where the leg was unusable. I just leave those repairs to the guy who went to university to learn how to do it, and sometimes even he needs to send it off to someone with even more specialist knowledge when it's really badly messed up lol. Last time that happened Australia post lost the package. Not really relevant to this post, I just find the idea of it being sent to the wrong place by accident hilarious, it was one of my more realistic legs too so someone probably had a heart attack when they opened that package lmao.

Anyway, back on track lol.

This isn't even touching on the fact that on some more advanced prosthetics, many features are actually locked behind a security barrier only prosthetists can access. My prosthetic knee has an app on my phone I can pair it to, that allows me to change certain settings and swap between certain modes for different activities that tell the leg to change its behaviour depending on what I'm doing (e.g. a mode for running, a mode for cycling etc). but most of the more in-depth settings I can't access, only my prosthetist can, and he can only gain access to those settings with a security key given to him by the manufacturing company that requires him to provide proof of his credentials to receive it. I don't really agree with this btw, something about being locked out of my own leg's settings makes me feel a bit of an ick, but it's set up like this because people used to be able to access these settings and they would mess with things to the point their leg was virtually unusable. Because altering one setting had a domino effect on all the others, and a lot of folks weren't really paying attention to what they were messing with, all their prosthetists could do was factory reset the whole leg, which causes some issues too. Prosthetic arms are often similarly complex, as I understand it and have similar security barriers in place for more advanced arms. I don't know for sure though, so take that with a grain of salt.

All this to say these are incredibly delicate, finicky and complex pieces of equipment. There's nothing wrong with having a techy amputee character who can do their own repairs, but in reality, that is pretty rare, and its ok to have your character need to see a prosthetist or someone more knowledgeable than them. It's a part of the amputee experience I don't see reflected very often in media. In fact, the only examples I can think of in fiction (meaning not stories based on real people) where this is reflected are Full metal alchemist.

technically I think Subnautica Below Zero also mentions prosthetists are a thing in that world, but its a very "blink and you'll miss it" kind of thing...in fact I did miss it until my last playthrough lol.

[ojcobsessed]

The dark prince: Oliver Jackson-Cohen comes of age

Britain's brightest acting talent on why he's relishing leaning into the darker side of humanity Words: Joseph Bullmore Photography: Adam Fussell Styling: Tony Cook 22 Dec, 2020 

Oliver Jackson-Cohen is utterly charming, with the looks and carriage of a Scandinavian royal consort. “But I can’t think of anything worse than playing a Prince Charming character,” the actor laughs. “It’s my utter nightmare. I would be terrible at it.” This, I think, is a healthy admission. Because Prince Charming — as the last 24 months of brutal Royal mishaps has proved — simply does not exist. And if he does, he’s probably rather boring.

Much more interesting, in fact, are the flawed, difficult, complex, darker areas of the male psyche. And it’s here, truly, where Oliver excels. You might remember seeing him (or not seeing him, in fact) as the eponymous Invisible Man, opposite Elizabeth Moss, in the psychological thriller earlier this year. Here, the gruesome fable was updated for a disquieting modern age — the villain is a tech guru, a messianic charmer, with a deep-seated psychopath complex.

“We’re currently obsessed with the darker parts of human nature,” Oliver says. “It’s like going to the zoo. We like to look at the danger and feel safe while watching it. I feel quite complicated, personally, and I like to use that in my roles. It becomes a sort of therapeutic thing with acting. I like to use all my sort of stuff, as it were.”

The effect is compelling, and it’s hard, sometimes, to square the warm and lovely actor with the darker, stranger roles he now finds himself in. “We just did a show called the Haunting of Bly Manor,” Oliver says. “And the character I play is a bit of a sociopath. They’re not fun to play, sociopaths. You’re kind of questioning, constantly, your moral compass. I think it raises so many questions about your own behaviour and your place in the world.”

Still, Oliver is happy to ask the questions. “I love the research. I love figuring it out. It feels like a puzzle you can never quite finish. And sometimes it gets to the point where we start filming, and I think: “I don’t want to do it now. I’ve done the interesting bit!’ But we all have this fascination with how people operate and behave.” he says. “And I’m constantly fascinated by how human beings work.”

Prince Charming, meanwhile, simply doesn’t offer those intriguing depths. “When I started, I was so compliant to what I was being told, or what I thought I should do. I was doing the jobs I thought I should be doing, not the ones I wanted to do,” he explains. “So about four years ago, I had a tough conversation with myself, and I thought: Just do stuff that you want to do. Do what feels right to you. And what’s been really interesting is this: that the things I’ve really felt I wanted to be a part of, they have almost all seemed to work. Which is one of those life lessons. Follow your intuition — it rarely leads you down the wrong path.”

[chongoblog]

Zero Time Dilemma Review/Ramble

Okay, so if you’ve been following me, you know that I’ve gotten into the Zero Escape series, famous for 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward, streaming both games. I recently took the time to experience the last game, Zero Time Dilemma by watching cutscenes rather than playing it proper mostly because A) I heard it was REALLY dark and didnt want to risk it on Twitch and B) I wanted to experience it more freely like while I’m at work.

After experiencing it. I have......feelings about it. And because there’s MASSIVE spoilers involved, I’m making it its own post under the ReadMore below.

tl;dr LOADS of bullshit, flawed execution, and stupid decisions, but still REALLY enjoyed it

Okay so a LOT of this is going to be complaining, and like I said in the tl;dr I still legit enjoyed this game, so I’m gonna make this a compliment sandwich by saying something nice now, loading up on complaints, then ending with more compliments. Carlos is good. So is Sean. Sigma being voiced by Matthew Mercer actually makes him more interesting imo. I REALLY like Phi’s new design and the way they build on the initial concepts brought up in VLR more accurately portray the ideas that started all the way back in 999, that being the idea of taking thoughts across timelines, just like the player. From the beginning, the theme/gimmick was always “what if your character remembered information when you savescummed?” In 999 that began as flashes of information, and in VLR the characters’ consciousness actually time traveled at the very end. ZTD now uses the idea of the consciousness traveling across time and space and RUNS with it. I also think that Delta has a cool design.

I’ll be nice again later, but now for the things I Did Not Like.

Emo Moody Junpei makes sense from a writing standpoint, but that doesn’t mean I have to like him. Maybe I just got spoiled since Evan Wilson did a spectacular job with his deliveries in 999 and in ZTD it seems like his soul got sucked out. Not the fault of the delivery as much as it is the writing. Eric is bad, and I feel like that statement isn’t controversial. I don’t think anyone likes Eric, and if you do, then sorry for shitting on him so much, but god I just don’t like him. And the abusive childhood thing doesn’t give me a drop of sympathy, but then again I’ve always hated the writing trick that “this person is shitty and pathetic but it’s because abuse!” (see also Mikan). Diane is boring (sorry).

But I fuuuuuckin HATE Mira. I hate Mira so much. Like, at first I thought she’d be alright, yeah she’s definitely The Boob Character™, but I liked Lotus well enough and Alice grew on me significantly, so I don’t see why Mira won’t. Then she’s like “surprise I’m a serial killer”. Now if they just made her a serial killer, it would be kinda boring so I’m glad they TRIED something new. I just think the result was bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad. Like....”hmm I never felt any emotions so when my mom told me they were kept in hearts I just ripped em out of people :)” is some garbage I’d write in middle school when I felt especially edgy. Also yeah seems p ableist. I won’t go too deeper into Mira, since she’s a sociopath and I don’t know enough about the actual disorder to put a candle to the real thing, but....bleh.

I won’t touch on THIS aspect for too long because I’m aware that it had barely any budget and it wouldn’t have happened without a kickstarter (don’t know the details), but the animation is just....so stiff. It really takes away from the dramatic impact some scenes are meant to have. But even IF the animation wasn’t stiff, I still am not a big fan of the darker and moodier direction it went. Although that’s moreso down to personal preference. Final note about the presentation (which is by far the game’s weakest aspect) is that I noticed multiple points in the sound mixing got to nearly Sonic Adventure 2 levels of being unable to understand what people were saying.

Alright. Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Let’s talk about Delta. This is going to make up a MAJORITY of this post so strap in.

Delta is a meme. There’s no other way to say it briefly. He’s just such a huge fucking meme. Almost everything about him, from his plan to his “complex” motives to his backstory to his powers. I mentioned liking his design, but fuck it. That’s a meme now too. Delta is the stupidest part of the game, and as much as I kind of love it, I also need to complain about it.

First let’s talk about Delta’s plan (because it starts with the nicest part of this segment). His motives are “complex” which is actually greek for “he’s probably either a liar, an idiot, or both”. I said there was nice things, so I’ll start with those. The very ending’s “ah ah ah. I never killed any of you in this timeline. If you arrested someone for crimes of another history, there would be criminals everywhere” was something I actually legitimately enjoyed. Yeah, intent was still there and he’s still a bastard (plus there was kidnapping and non-consensual drugging involved so kind of a stupid take), but I still thought it was a fun attempt. And also the “I had to make sure I was born” thing is a mindfuck, and I love those. Basically the first retort is “well I’m alive, right? So I don’t need to make sure I was born with powers because I WAS born with powers, which means it happened in another universe. So I don’t have to.” Only to then realize that we’re just in the universe where he DID do that but then the only justification is “someone had to” right? Wrong. Let’s talk about the rest of his “complex” motives

So I give a pass to “I had to make sure I was born”, but now we see why he had to do this whole deal and what he declares at the end of the game. That there’s some religious fanatic who intends to blow up the world and completely end humanity. And he released Radical-6 in the VLR timeline hoping that it would kill the terroris only killing 4 billion people instead of 6 billion people. In the timeline at the end of ZTD, he says that they had used this experience to hone the skills of the Shifters that way they could use their newly honed take down the religious fanatic WITHOUT Radical-6 and save the world.

What?

Now......before I tear into this.....I have ONE nice thing to say. The “unleash radical 6 and kill 4 billion vs let a terrorist end humanity” gambit IS cleverly foreshadowed with the radical 6 decision game with Q Team. But also wouldn’t that have made, like 1800 times more narrative sense to give that decision game to team D who KNOWS the impact of radical 6, or team C who he explains this plan to later on? Damn, even my nice thing was backhanded. Alright let’s REALLY tear into it.

FIRST of all, this is the exact same plot of Virtue’s Last Reward. Only difference is that somehow Akane and Junpei are just as skilled at this technique as Sigma and Phi despite the latter going to do Moon Training (granted the moon training was also to give them enough of a jump to go back 45 years). Speaking of Virtue’s Last Reward, this game also reveals that Delta is Brother, the leader of Free the Soul. A group of religious fanatics. So I wouldn’t be especially shocked if the religious fanatic is working with Free the Soul. But for the sake of this argument, let’s just say they aren’t with FtS. How in the Flavor-Blasted FUCK does he know this? Did somebody Shift back from that timeline and then just get Mind hacked (and we’ll fUCKING talk about Mind Hacking dont you worry)? How would that be the only piece of information known about the end of the god damn world? And if there IS more, then why the fuck wouldn’t you tell them the information? How does he know that it’s inevitable when apparently a god damn snail can unleash Radical-6?

I call bullshit on the “religious fanatic” thing. Wanna know why? Because at this point, Delta had already founded Free The Soul. He started this shit in 1938. At this point in time, he and the rest of the Free the Soul had already kidnapped Alice’s dad to create clones of his dead brother. He was pushing for a new world order and then in the VLR timeline, tried to PREVENT this whole thing from happening by sending Dio to the Moon. So if he actually gave a shit about “honing their abilities” then why would he do everything in his power to stop it? There is ONE out that there can be, but it’s something not even HINTED at (and I’ll talk about this later), but I think that "religious fanatic” is a big ol’ lie that he made up to try and save face when he was faced with a consequence, but even that explanation makes no sense since he’s like “lol shoot me if u wanna I wont mind hack you”

And let’s talk about mind hacking. Let’s fucking talk about Mind Hacking. Adding Mind Hacking was stupid, completely pointless, out of left field, and actively makes Delta a worse character. For those that don’t know, Mind Hacking is an ability that only Delta has (and I guess the player character technically but that’s a whole meta thing from VLR that doesn’t get followed up on) where you can read people’s minds and also fuckin control them. Why? Why was this necessary, ZTD? You wanna know what I thought was really neat? When I saw that different timelines produced different X-Codes. I thought “oh shit, I know this is Game Stuff, but the sheer foresight of the villain to do that? That’s some Moriarty shit.” It would require some insane explanations, but we’ve had enough sci-fi that we could imagine with enough advanced tech, you could set up systems that could use conditionals to give certain responses based on certain outcomes. Like if someone dies after the decontamination room button is pressed, then the central computer outputs a different X-Code than if it’s after the initial vote. Just make up a new tech that accounts for Shifting (plus the QUANTUM COMPUTER you have RIGHT THERE) and you could make a villain with so much calculated foresight that he’s just a god damn genius. But no. Mind hacking. None of that interesting stuff, just “lol I read ur mind idiot”. No outwitting anyone, just “lol get mindhacked eric u scrub bang bang”.

Honest to god, honest to FUCKING god, do you want to know how cool the final cutscene would have made Delta look if he walked out and just KNEW what happened in another timeline because of his plans. Like everyone recognizes him as Delta and he just goes “ohoho I see you had a fun time in my other timeline” using that deduction alone. But nah, he’s just like “yo I just mindhacked y’all, nice experience y’all had” I hate mind hacking so much. There’s no part of his plan where he NEEDED to mind hack in order to succeed that could have been written without mind hacking.

Now there’s a bit of a missed opportunity here that could both make mind hacking relevant, made his motive not shit, and also maybe even developed him into a SUPER interesting character! I know this is a bit fanfic-y, but hear me out. Make Delta a VICTIM of the stable time loop/bootstrap paradox. For those who don’t know, the bootstrap paradox is when time travel makes certain events happen seemingly out of thin air since they are their own cause. Basically it’s this clip from Milo Murphy. This is something that seems like it’s KINDA there in the subtext, but if they actually dove into it, they could have a GOLD mine.

What if we keep the mindhacking, and before he even MAKES Free the Soul, he mindhacks someone who experienced the events of the “religious fanatic”. But not just anyone. An experienced SHIFTer who made it their goal to stop this religious fanatic. After hundreds of attempts, they still fail. Delta sees this and determines it to be inevitable. So he’s having fun, cursed by the knowledge of an inevitable apocalypse. Then he meets Akane, Phi, Sigma, or Junpei after they had undergone the events of VLR and ZTD. He learns that particular timeline. A bleak future, yes, but one single future where humanity is alive. He sees two futures, one in which all of humanity dies, and one where he is the leader of a religious cult that wipes out 4 Billion People with a deadly pandemic. And the idea of being that person disgusts him. He despises it. But he’s completely resigned to fate. He knows that things must go precisely as he’s seen at the price of humanity, too frightened by such a burden to even take a toe off of the predetermined pathway. His motive is that he’s so tightly bound to fate and so afraid to let it slip that he has no choice but to commit the atrocities, despising himself for it every step of the way, but considering it better than the inevitable alternative. It would give a purpose for the mindhacking powers, it would give him a solid motive, and it would make the ending SO much stronger, showing the contrast between a group of SHIFTers confident that they can change fate and the man who is completely resigned to his own. Fuck, I might steal this character concept because I REALLY think this idea would work to make an interesting villain!

Like I mentioned, this is KINDA there in subtext (with him quite frequently saying “life truly is unfair”) and this could be an interpretation of the character, but if ZTD had explored that theme, then holy hell what an interesting character Delta would be.

But even WITH this fix, holy hell, this plan is stupid. Because guess what, dingus. You just created like 30 new timelines that all end in annihilation.

He coulda said ONE line about “even if there is only one history that ends nicely, that is solace enough”, that might have been dark, but still powerful. You know, add some depth. But instead, he’s just like “hmm hmm shoot me”

And the Q Twist? I’m honestly not as mad at it as I should be. On one hand, it does that cute thing where there are little bits of foreshadowing so when you rewatch it, you notice little bits like shadows and stuff, but on the other hand, there are PLENTY of points where either the camera just straight up lies to you and doesn’t show him when he should be there or Delta’s just been fuckin SHMOOVIN on his wheelchair around the room constantly to stay out of the camera and everyone’s just been kinda chill with it. Maybe if they had been more careful with the camera it could have delivered a TOUCH better. Like, even if the shots are a bit off, that’s noticeable enough to be part of the hint, no? I don’t have as much to say about this, mostly because this post is getting long as fuck so I’m gonna wrap it up so I can move on with my life for a bit.

So even with ALL OF THAT, I still enjoyed playing the game. That’s right, compliment sandwich time. The three wards all being one ward was a really neat reveal. The fact that you can shoot Delta in one scene is creative with its replay value. I’m glad they touched on the philosophical idea of what happens to the people who made it out from the coin flip only to get SHIFTed into the exploding lab, and exploring that idea was fun. I absolutely lost my mind at the idea of the gun to sigmas head had a random chance of firing and then seeing it elaborated on in the dice scene directly after it. Gab is a good boy.

Cant wait to play AI

[twilightofthe]

Anakin Skywalker Has ADHD.  Here’s Why:

I’ve noticed during my time as a neurodivergent person in the Star Wars community that Anakin, a favorite character of mine, displays a lot of neurodivergent traits.  Other people have noticed this too; in particular, @bpdanakins has made a really in depth and detailed post explaining how Anakin having BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) makes a whole lotta sense.  I’ve got ADHD, so this post is gonna be about how I as an ADHD individual see Anakin Skywalker as having ADHD too!!!

Note: Symptoms of ADHD include inability to focus and disorganization.  I have ADHD.  This post is gonna be a wee bit disorganized and I probs won’t be the best at citing a million sources cuz I do not have the mental focus to do that right now.  Thank ye.

So, what is ADHD? (Complicated.  The answer is complicated.) (If you don’t want the general ADHD lecture, just scroll down to where I start talking about Anakin particularly).

ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a neurological disorder that impairs the brain’s executive functions.  People with ADHD have trouble with impulse-control, focusing, and organization.  Basically, ADHD is a developmental weakness in how the brain manages itself.  I like to picture it like a filing cabinet.  Everyone else’s brain has a neatly sorted, labeled, and organized cabinet full of drawers that contain typical brain executive function commands.  ADHD people’s brains have a monkey in them that runs around screeching loudly, ripping labels off drawers, rearranging stuff, throwing the files everywhere, eating the papers and generally making a gigantic mess, so whatever you need to go to the drawers to look for something, it takes you ten times longer to find the mental command you need to do if it’s even still there-- and also the monkey is biting your leg the entire time.

People tend to say that this monkey infestation is a gift because sometimes, occasionally, the monkey will rearrange the papers in a different, special way that makes a beautiful picture that no one’s seen before and you can share it for the world to enjoy and everything’s great, you’re just quirky!  People tend to forget that it can be like that, but 90% of the time it’s more like the monkey has decided to take a massive shit all over the one specific paper you needed really badly and then put it in front of your foot so you step in it and don’t notice until people point out you’re tracking monkey shit paper everywhere.  Anyway.

ADHD is a complex condition and difficult to diagnose because it has so many different varying symptoms, and one person who has ADHD may experience none of the symptoms than another person who also has ADHD does and vice versa because there is a lot.  ADHD also tends to go unnoticed because it overlaps symptoms with a LOT of other mental illnesses an individual might have, so you might not even know you have ADHD if you’re also, say, autistic or bipolar, or again vice versa, because there’s a lot of “same hat” stuff going on there.  

ADHD also can have its own subcategories of mental illness that can also stand on their own, like ADHD-induced anxiety or ADHD-induced depression.  It can be really confusing to know everything going on in your head and put a label on it; for example for me, my doctors and I think I’ve got a separate anxiety disorder that works on its own that my ADHD makes worse, but that the depressive episodes I can suffer likely stem from my ADHD, and don’t need to be tackled individually or say that I have depression.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has previously identified three subtypes of ADHD:

Primarily Hyperactive-Impulsive type: Mainly have impulse control problems, tend to be impulsive, impatient, and interrupt others.  They fidget, hate sitting still/need to be in constant movement, tend to blurt out what’s on their mind or do what they feel like without thinking it through.  They’re constantly up with the thoughts in their head and have difficulty focusing on a single task unless they’re in hyperfocus mode (explaining more later)

Primarily Inattentive type:  Are easily distracted and forgetful.  Tend to be daydreamers who lose track of memories and personal items with regularity.

Primarily Combined type: Tend to display a mixture of both symptoms.  I was diagnosed as a child with the combined type but leaning more towards inattentive.

Anakin and Signs of ADHD:

SO.  For starters, I see Anakin as primarily combined type with heavy leanings toward hyperactive-impulsivity.  While this type is used to describe the stereotypical hyper little boy media tends to paint ADHD people as, adults can have it too and I see it a lot in Anakin.  ADHD magazine ADDitude gives examples of adults with h-i ADHD as people who find difficulty in waiting around for anything, interrupt others in conversation, make impulsive decisions, and have reckless driving skills.  Sound at all like someone we know?

Now Anakin absolutely checks all of the above boxes, but it’s way more than that, though.  I looked up Healthline’s basic signs and symptoms of Adult ADHD, and I am going to run down the list to show how basically all of them apply to Anakin Skywalker in one way or another.  Let’s begin!

Anakin and LACK OF FOCUS:  ADDitude suggests that saying ADHD people don’t have attention might be a bit misleading.  More accurately, ADHD people have tons of attention, we just can’t harness it in the right direction at the right time with any consistency.  In canon, it is made very clear to us very early on that Anakin has issues with some of the more spiritual aspects of Jedi training, like meditation, because he does not possess the focus necessary to concentrate.  We get other times when Anakin’s on missions with Obi Wan, where it is made clear Anakin has read the mission brief, but he hasn’t done a good job on it as he’s overlooked something.  He gets distracted while in diplomatic situations and Obi Wan needs to tell him to pay attention.  Palpatine is able to pull sketchy shit because he knows how to slip under Anakin’s radar while he’s not too focused on him.  Anakin isn’t always aware of his surroundings, seeing as how basically everyone who knows him knows about Padmé because he’s not good at being subtle; he’s not good at reading a room.  Canon has established that Anakin, while brilliant, has a very flighty attention span and unless it’s something that is deeply important to him or made glaringly obvious, his brain has a tendency to skip over it, and makes him less aware.

Anakin and HYPERFOCUS:  The flip side of ADHD focus issues.  While our brains don’t always want to pay attention to important rules or other peoples’ emotions or basically anything presented to us that we find boring in any shape or form, if we find something we like, we LATCH.  ON.  And we cannot stop concentrating on it, up until the point that we lose track of time and ignore others around us.  In canon, it is shown very easily what Anakin hyperfocuses on.  He’s described in several SW books and is shown in show and movies to completely go into a zone when in combat mode.  He’s good at it, he enjoys it, and saber skills is easily something that he can concentrate and get lost in.  Another obvious one is mechanics.  We see briefly in TCW and bits in the movies where when Anakin is fixing something or piloting something, he kind of drifts away from reality-- he’s got an ear on the situation if there’s danger of course, but he goes just solidly into Tech Mode where all he concentrates on is whatever he’s fixing/piloting at the moment, and that’s why he’s so skilled at what he does.  It’s also possible to hyperfocus on specific ideas or opinions, which you can see in basically every argument Anakin ever gets into with someone.  He’s like a dog with a bone on a topic he wants to discuss Right Now This Very Second and he will not let it go, nor will he allow you to either, because when we hyperfocus, our fixation can bleed into conversation until it takes control of the conversation, without us even knowing we’re doing it, so it can be surprising/embarrassing when someone points out we’re doing it. 

Anakin and DISORGANIZATION:  ADHD people basically struggle with organizational skills.  While we don’t see much of Anakin’s living spaces, we can see from the brief TCW snippets that his living quarters are a little cluttered.  However, he does run a relatively neat army-- though we don’t know how much of that has Rex, Ahsoka, Obi Wan, or someone else to thank for it.  In Anakin, most of the disorganization we see is in his mind.  Priorities can be an issue for ADHD people, and Anakin tends to prioritize the wrong thing at the wrong time at certain points.  He doesn’t always know what to say or how to say it, making him awkward and not very eloquent when speaking.

Anakin and TIME MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS: An issue that goes hand-in-hand with disorganization.  We have trouble using time effectively.  We procrastinate on things we don’t want to do, show up late, ignore things we consider boring, and the idea of the future or the past is overwhelming and or scary to us and can cause panic-- we need to focus on the now and the now alone because if we try to cross that bridge before we get to it, we might end up burning it.  All throughout TCW, we get Obi Wan in particular, but others as well, harping on Anakin for showing up late.  And, uh, he kinda does.  He makes it, he always does, but it’s always at the last minute just when everyone’s worried he’s not gonna show up.  He sometimes doesn’t go to important meetings.  He puts off paperwork.  Lots of people use all of this to make fun of him, be like “ah, he’s a bad Jedi, he’s lazy”, but like, that’s standard ADHD time management issues.  And fear of the future?  Hoo boy...  Anakin may handle his fears of the future in the literal worst way possible, but that overwhelming anxiety that everything’s rushing at you so fast and holy shit, you don’t have your shit together NOW, what the hell are you gonna do THEN, holy shit holy shit everyone’s gonna DIE PANIC PANIC DANGER PANIC--  Like, I get that.  I really do.  Fear of the future and inability to manage time overlap a lot.

Anakin and FORGETFULNESS:  ADHD have a tendency to forget important stuff, but here is where I remind y’all that not all ADHD people experience all the same symptoms, because Anakin actually has a really damn good memory.  Boy is sharp, he recalls really obscure stuff, and if you piss him off/do him a favor, he’s remembering that to his deathbed. Anakin, however, does display what is common in ADHD people, having a selective memory.  This goes hand in hand with our attention issues.  We remember what we focused on and that sticks in our mind: hopes, fears, interests, stuff like that.  Anything else?  Eh, if we didn’t notice it then, we’re not noticing it five years from then, or even five minutes from then.  That you can see in Anakin, where people like Ahsoka and Obi Wan have to teasingly remind him of important stuff that he tends to just shrug off like “oh yeah that thing that I didn’t care about then and don’t really care about now”, or he feels guilty cuz “oops I didn’t notice it then so now I’m lost”

Anakin and IMPULSIVITY: Aight y’all, this probably requires the least amount of explanation for Anakin Skywalker cuz the Star Wars narrative calls him impulsive like every ten seconds xD  ADHD people with impulsivity can be socially inappropriate (Anakin, always managing to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, king of escalating tense situations because he blurts out whatever he feels like), interrupt others (something Padmé and Ahsoka have both canonically called him on doing, he does it to plenty of others as well, Vader does it all the damn time by just force-choking people silent), rushing through tasks (”Oh Anakin, always on the move”.  He does not wait, he makes up plans as he goes, he’s constantly in motion), ACTING WITHOUT MUCH CONSIDERATION TO THE CONSEQUENCES (Examples: The entirety of Star Wars episodes 1-6, Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

Anakin and EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS: Alright, maybe THIS is the one that requires the least amount of explanation, haha.  ADHD peoples’ emotions seem constantly in flux.  We get bored easily and need constant entertainment. (Anakin running off doing crazy stuff seemingly for fun)  Small frustrations always feel like the end of the world because it takes over our entire brain. (Anakin being “overdramatic/overreacting”)  The slightest sense of rejection or negativity towards our ideas or anything we do can read as total hatred (this is called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, it SUCKS) so we’re oversensitive about criticism of basically anything.  RSD also means we’re paranoid that we’re not noticing other people’s emotions, so we always tend to worry everyone else hates us or our friends are going to leave us-- we have serious abandonment issues. (Basically all of Anakin worrying about the Jedi’s image of him, worrying about Padmé and Obi Wan loving him, freaking out over Ahsoka leaving, etc.)  Our mind is focusing on a million things at once so our emotions run super quickly, causing what looks like mood swings because in the time it takes someone to get surprised, we’ve already gone through surprise, confusion, realization, betrayal, fury, and sadness and are now “randomly” crying in front of you (Anakin and his mood swings).  Focus issues make us not realize that something we’re doing is upsetting/bothering someone unless they flat out say it, so we may seem mean/inconsiderate/careless (ok, not excusing that part of Anakin’s personality is that he’s just kind of a dick lol, but other stuff that he does seems accidental; he doesn’t want to hurt anyone he loves).

Anakin and POOR SELF-IMAGE:  HOOOO BOY THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!  So adults with ADHD are often hypercritical of themselves, which can lead to a poor self-image.  I do this a lot, and I can’t really explain why, just that I am frustrated with myself and need validation from outside sources.  Anakin verbally expresses this to Padmé and Palpatine in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith especially with all his “I’m not the Jedi I’m supposed to be” bits, how he constantly puts pressure on himself in the novels to be “the very best, I have to be better than everyone, I SHOULD be”, the conflict with that Chosen One label and whether he believes it or not and the pressure he feels from others to fulfill it, to be the Hero With No Fear when he’s fucking terrified all the time.  He’s relentlessly hard on himself for his failures and is always looking for an insult in others’ words (Like if Obi Wan gives him gentle concrit, Anakin will subconsciously tear it apart to turn it into how Obi Wan has found an error with all of him and hates him and Anakin sucks). For all his pride in his abilities, Anakin really does not like himself, poor dear, and seeks outside validation in Padmé, Palpatine, and Obi Wan.

Anakin and LACK OF MOTIVATION: Also ties back to focus issues again, if we don’t like it, our brain won’t focus on it, and we can’t convince ourselves to do it.  We can see this in times where Anakin has to be gently (or not so gently) prodded by Obi Wan or Ahsoka or someone into doing some Jedi business Anakin considers annoying.

Anakin and RESTLESSNESS AND ANXIETY: It’s described as our “motor won’t shut off”.  We always need to keep moving and doing things, and we get frustrated when we can’t do something immediately.  There are also bodily tics with fidgeting or frequent hand movements.  We see this several times with Anakin during wartime, where he’s practically vibrating over having to play the long waiting game instead of rushing in and getting the job done immediately (See: on Naboo where Anakin is pacing a hole into the floor and Obi Wan is telling him to kindly chill pls).  Part of his issues in ROTS happen when he’s worked himself up into a frenzy over sitting not knowing what to do over what’s scaring him so he jumps the gun and goes with the first available (awful) option.  I don’t remember if this is Hayden or if this is me projecting, sorry, but I always feel that when I watch Hayden in the movies, he always portrays Anakin as vaguely squirmy/fidgety, not really ever sitting PERFECTLY still, like he’s always moving some body part, fiddling with something in his hands or on his clothes.  In TCW and the OT especially, we see how hand-wavey he is when he talks, especially when he’s pissed, then the Finger Wag Of Doom comes out, but his hands are ALWAYS in motion.

Anakin and FATIGUE: It’s as the word describes it, we feel tired.  All the craziness in our head is overwhelming and we just.  Feel.  Tired.  We don’t see this as clearly in Anakin because all the Jedi seem fatigued, they’re fighting a fucking hopeless war, but it’s definitely there.  He has sleeping problems with his dreams and nightmares that spawn from his anxiety that could easily be ADHD-induced; they’re there.

Anakin and HEALTH PROBLEMS: Long story short, it’s basically all your ADHD issues making you neglect to take care of yourself.  We see how Anakin has unhealthy coping mechanisms, neglects sleep, and throws himself into reckless, dangerous situations.  He does not take care of himself very well at all.

Anakin and RELATIONSHIP ISSUES:  Ruh roh...  Aight, so all of the symptoms above can very obviously prove to be hurdles in professional, romantic, or platonic situations.  We can see how all the above examples in Anakin have in one way or another caused an argument between himself and basically everyone he loves (Obi Wan, Padmé, Ahsoka), people he has to work with (the Jedi council, anyone he gets assigned to on a mission), and anyone else.  He’s not called a human disaster for no reason, his actions can make him rub people very much the wrong way, and being kind of lonely and awkward and with not many friends is unfortunately a common occurrence in the lives of ADHD people (It happened to me, and I would consider myself much more of a pleasant individual than Anakin (no offense, hon), other people who met me just thought I was “strange” and that was that).

WHEW.  So yes, all of the above state my reasons why I think Anakin Skywalker has ADHD (as well as anxiety, but that’s another post).  Please remember once more that these are MY EXPERIENCES AS AN INDIVIDUAL WITH ADHD and that once again, NOT ALL ADHD PEOPLE SHARE THE SAME EXPERIENCES/SYMPTOMS

I will give the two articles I bothered fact-checking with below, the one from Healthline and from ADDitude

If y’all wanna talk more about ADHD!Anakin or any other ADHD Star Wars characters or just neurodivergent Star Wars character headcanons with me, my inbox and DM’s are always open, I love talking about this!!!!!!!!!

[nev3rfound]

mr shy guy : p.p

brief summary: being tony’s daughter means that the avengers love you. how could they not? but out of everyone, peter is rather shy to admit it literally. 

word count: 2.5k requested: yes by the sweetest person! thank you @iconicbabesss for the request! warnings: pure fluff, as I need it tonight

(everything on my blog is my own writing. if it is shared on another page or website know it isn’t me. all rights reserved. - thank you to everyone who helped regarding the wattpad situation, you’re all amazing)

* masterlistin’

* commissions

** permanent taglist **

Everyone loved you, how could they not? You were Tony’s daughter, the Junior Stark that had the same amount of wit and charm that your father has. Yet, amongst everyone who did love you, there was one person who was nervous to admit so. 

Ever since Tony had introduced Peter to you, he had been a mumbling mess around you. What made it worse is that a lot of the Avengers witnessed it first hand and those who didn’t refuse to let Peter live the event down. 

It wasn’t just your beauty that enticed Peter, but your manner as a whole. You were caring towards others, but quick to retort if provoked. You were funny, and sometimes you weren’t even aware you were telling a joke until laughter followed shortly after. 

Somedays, you were just working in the lab unaware of company. During those moments, Peter felt rude to disturb you whilst you had some time alone. But then he’d regret walking away as the sound of Sam interrupting you filled you with joy as you conversed with him, not Peter. 

Other times, you would be figuring out the pieces of technology required to fix your Dad’s suit or help Bucky with his arm. You took the time to help those who needed it, and you even sat Peter down to go through the upgrades you and Tony installed. 

Peter listened as you explained with such knowledge and excitement about the improvements made to his suit. He could see you were eager for him to test it out, ensure he approved. And when Peter put it to the test, he was amazed at how such small differences truly made a difference. 

*

“Bye May!” Peter yells through the apartment as he stuffs his suit into his backpack, knowing he was running late for the meeting that Tony told him repeatedly not to be late for. 

May turns her head from her newspaper, only to hear the front door slam before she had the opportunity to say bye. “See you later then, Peter.” She mumbles, returning her attention back to the latest headline about a kidnapper in the upper west side of the city.

Making it into the building, Peter was panting heavily. He tried to swallow the needed breaths he was taking as he checked his watch to see he had minutes to spare. 

He made it to the lift and as it was rising, it stopped on the third floor. The doors opened and Peter had a smile on his face until the doors opened and you entered, letting out a sigh of relief. 

“Hey, Peter.” You say with a soft smile as you lean against the glass wall, flipping through your notes. “Glad to see you’re on time.” You chuckle softly, but all Peter can focus on is how fast his heart is beating in his chest. 

“Yeah, I, I got lucky.” He manages to form a sentence to you and you lower your head, smiling to yourself before you tuck your hair back behind your ear. “How’s your, your day been?” 

You look over, pleasantly surprised to see him still talking. Tilting your body, you face him fully now, and Peter mirrors your actions as you have ten more floors to go. “Busy,” You admit with a small huff. “Dad’s been having me sort a few things out for the next mission, deciding who is the best fit and all.” You explain, and Peter nods as he remains fully immersed with you as you continue to talk. 

“Am I a possible contender?” He raises an eyebrow, deep down surprised about the sudden confidence boost. 

A small laugh leaves your lips as you shake your head. “You’re funny, Peter.” You tell him. “I don’t think this is your mission I’m afraid. But maybe next time?” You suggest as the doors open and you both file out in silence as Peter keeps his head held low.

*

The meeting concludes after shy of two hours, and Peter can barely keep himself awake. 

When Tony announces it is over, you’re the first to your feet and depart with your Dad, going over what needs to be done whilst everyone else turns to face Peter with smug smiles on their faces.

Peter lifts his head up, looking around in shock. “What? Do I have something on my face?” He questions, wiping his face before Natasha shakes her head. “Did I do something?”

Sam shuffles in his seat, glancing over to Bucky who wears a small smile, forgetting how truly difficult it is to flirt in the modern-day. 

“You know, the clever thing about Stark’s tech is that he can install cameras literally anywhere,” Sam speaks up. “including the elevators.” 

Peter’s eyes widen as realisation hits. Everyone in the room heard him talking to you, including his failed attempt at flirting. 

Slowly but surely, his cheeks begin to heat up. “We get it kid, you like Y/n.” Steve states, feeling a Fatherly instinct towards the kid from Queens. “And you’re shy about tellin’ her, but the truth is she is easier to talk to than you’re making it out to be in your head.” 

“She just, she���s so good and I’m just a kid from Queens who got lucky.” Peter says with a shrug of his shoulder as silence falls over the room. 

Bucky rises to his feet and heads turn. “Kid, follow me.” Bucky says as he motions for Peter to follow which he does, leaving the room in a stunned silence that of everyone, Bucky is the one to give the kid a pep talk.

“I’ll be damned,” Sam says with a whistle. “Buckaroo’s still got it in him.” 

Following behind Bucky, Peter remains nervous as to where he’ll be led. Yet, as Bucky pushes open a door it leads to a balcony. “Stark’s not installed camera’s on this side of the tower yet, so don’t worry ‘bout listeners.” Bucky states as his hands rest in his pockets. 

“Why’d you bring me up here Mr Barnes, I, I mean Bucky.” Peter stumbles and Bucky rolls his eyes, wondering if he should’ve bothered in the first place now. 

Moving closer to the ledge, Bucky looks out at the grounds. “You see, Peter. Y/n is more complex than you might think, but she does have a routine.” Bucky explains as Peter steps forward, looking over to see you sitting on a Motorbike. “She’ll drive out to a cafe, some old place that’s hidden away. But she likes privacy there.” As Bucky explains, you drive off toward the exit and turn out of sight. 

“Why’re you telling me this?” Peter asks, looking up as Bucky sighs.

“Because everyone deserves a chance, kid.” Bucky tells him. “And we can all see you’re hopeless, so we gotta intervene if we can help it.” Leaning on the balcony, Bucky looks out as he hears the faint sounds of cars driving by, remembering when everything was once so much quieter. “A lot has changed since my day, still learning to adapt you know?” 

Peter nods to Bucky, silently thanking him before he heads toward the door. 

“Hey, Peter?” Bucky calls out and Peter pauses, turning on his heels. “Learn to not stumble over your words. Focus on her eyes and smile, it’ll help.” Bucky says with a nod before Peter departs, knowing he’s got a cafe to head to. 

*

Surprisingly, it didn’t take Peter long to find the cafe. As Bucky had explained, it definitely was hidden away with the name being kept a secret as vines grow over the wooden block. 

“Come on, Pete.” Peter mumbles to himself as he peers through the large windows, seeing you curled up in a large dusky pink armchair with a book and a tea in front of you. 

He couldn’t help but let the smile on his face grow at the sight of how peaceful you were. He understood why you’d come here, it’s away from the rest of your life, there are no distractions, no obstacles or jobs to be completed. 

An old lady opens the door, leaning against it as she raises an eyebrow to Peter. “You comin’ in from the cold or just staring at the place?” She questions and Peter stutters before following her in, knowing you would’ve witnessed that. 

Trying to keep his cool, Peter orders himself a coffee and two slices of cake, having learnt which is your favourite from your birthday last month. 

As he turns around, your book is resting on your lap and you focus on him with a small smile. “Let me guess,” You speak up as Peter holds the tray in his hands, trying to avoid spilling the content across the wooden floor. “Bucky told you ‘bout this place?” 

Peter nods as you sit upright. “I got you a slice of cake, sorry I, I probably shouldn’t have come it’s your private spot and I am intruding,” Peter rambles as he places the tray down, looking over at the door as his best bet but you reach out, taking a hold of his hand.

“Pete, it’s okay.” You tell him genuinely. “Please, take a seat. I, I don’t mind the company.” You admit as your body warms up but soon cools down as his hand slips from yours. “So, what brings you ‘round here?” 

“Felt like a change of scenery,” He states and you lean forward, already intrigued. 

“Do tell me more, Spidey.” You say with a smile, and as Peter continues to talk the conversation flows with ease. 

The longer you both sit together, the more Peter realises why everyone does love you as much as they do. Conversations are effortless, you want everyone to be engaged in the conversation they’re having. Peter can feel your focus on him, and that smile, his heart melts with it widens as you laugh.

Before you are both aware, the old lady who owns the shop is closing up for the evening. “Come on kids, I gotta close at some point.” She says and you both clean up and leave.

“I had no idea it got that late.” You say with a laugh. “You heading anywhere now?” You question, watching as Peter shakes his head. “I know a good spot, you good on bikes?”

“I’m great on bikes.” Peter lies as you give him your helmet before you take a seat and Peter nudges closely behind. 

He faces a choice of either his hands around your waist or behind him, but before he can decide you start the bike and his hands instinctively rest around your waist. Unbeknownst to Peter, you can’t stop smiling at the thought.

As you reach the destination, Peter is clinging to you tightly. “Hey, Pete? You can let go.” You say softly and Peter clears his throat before standing up and looking around. 

“Wow.” He states as he takes a step closer to the gates. “How’d you find this place?”

You rest your helmet in one hand before unlocking the gates, pushing them open as they creak with rust. “Dad used to bring Mom here.” You explain as you walk in together, looking around as the pond remains well kept. “I used to sit on these rocks over here, lie on them for hours reading in the summer. It’s a spot away from the city, it’s where I can fully unwind.” You tell Peter and he nods along, truly fascinated.

The pair of you settle on the rocks, sitting closely as the sky is filled with stars. “Have you ever been to space?” Peter speaks up, looking over as you shake your head. 

Lying down on the rocks, you stare at the stars, but Peter can’t help but stare at you. “What’s it like?” You ask him, turning your head catching him. 

Peter shuffles to lie beside you as he exhales deeply. “It’s a whole other world up there. Aliens, beautiful galaxies but like Earth, it’s filled with secrets and dangers.” 

You chuckle at the thought. “Would you ever go back?” You turn your body to face him, and Peter mirrors your actions.

“Not unless I had to. I like it down here.” He says as you smile to him, focusing on his eyes. “Why’d you bring me here, Y/n?” Peter questions, watching as you remain almost too still for comfort.

“I wanted to get to know you better, Peter. Without everyone else watching or listening in.” You say quietly. “And, it’s nice having someone my age around, you’re easy to talk to and that’s what I like about you.” You tell him, unaware those words left your lips until you see his eyes widen.

“You like me?” He raises an eyebrow, watching as like your Dad, you hold your ground.

“Yeah,” You respond, shuffling closer. “that alright with you?”

Peter closes the distance between you, kissing you softly before pulling away. “Perfectly fine by me.”

t a g l i s t (thank you for the support!)

@biss-stuff   @psychicforest  @lourightm @mywinterwolf   @justsomedreaming @stanlux17@supermoonchildbroski @xrosegoldwolfx @courtneychicken@marvelsangels @supraveng @tommy-lee-81

[osleyakomwonkru]

The 100 Ask Game

Stealing this from @easilydistractedbyfanfic!

1. What Station on the Ark would you be from?

Is there an Education Station? We don’t really know a lot of the Stations. There’s twelve of them, but we don’t have names and/or jobs for all of them. Something that involves learning, passing on knowledge, history, stuff like that.

2. What would you get arrested for on the Ark?

Probably saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.

3. Would you take off your wristband when you landed on the ground?

That would depend on how angry I was feeling at the time. 

4. What would the necklace Finn would make for you look like? (Clarke: deer/Raven: a raven duh..)

Cat. I love cats. Maybe a panther?

5. If you could resurrect any MINOR character who would it be?

Jacapo Sinclair, no question. (leaving @easilydistractedbyfanfic’s answer here)

6. Create a squad of 5 characters to go on missions with. Who are they?

Octavia, Murphy, Echo, Niylah, Diyoza. All you need, really, covering all of the important aspects: Fighting, survival, sneakiness, healing, strategy.

7. What Grounder Clan would you belong to you?

Azgeda or Floukru. Yes, I’m a pile of contradictions.

8. What would your name be in Trigedasleng? (example: Octavia=Okteivia…just make it up!)

I’m pleading the fifth on this one because out of the Trig names that most closely resemble mine in the show, it is way too close for comfort to nicknames bullies used for me as a kid.

9. Thoughts on Finn? Some people hate him, and others love him, so I’m curious

I’m indifferent to him. Probably because I only started watching the show last year, so he was in and out of my life within a week of binge watching.

10. Be honest. How willing would you have been to take the chip without knowing all the horrible things it does?

Nope. Technology is scary. AI tech most of all.

11. What character do you relate to most?

Octavia, no question. Most specifically her feelings of non-belonging anywhere, the importance of agency and choices and an independent spirit that doesn’t want to either follow or lead.

12. What character do you like the least?

Marcus Kane, but Abby Griffin is becoming a fast contender for that spot. Though I’ve never liked her, while I did actually like Kane up until 5x04, so not being able to like Kane anymore feels worse.

13. Describe your delinquent outfit. (Would you wear something like Murphy’s jacket with the spikey red shoulder patch or have a trademark like Jasper’s goggles? Be creative, yet practical)

Black. Black and more black. If I came down in a jumpsuit like Octavia I would’ve ditched it as fast as possible. Then traded with Niylah to get a nice black leather outfit.

14. Favorite type of mutant animal?

Was the panther a mutant? Let’s say that one.

15. What would your job be on the Ark?

History teacher.

16. Would you have willingly pumped Ontari’s heart if Abby asked?

I’d do it, but I don’t know how good it at I’d be.

17. If Lexa wasn’t Heda, but she was still alive then who would have made the best commander?

Roan. He’s practical yet loyal, and believes in honour above all else.

18. How would you act if you ate the hallucinogenic nuts like Jasper and Monty?

I’d talk too much. Probably give away some secrets.

19. How would you have dealt with Charlotte’s crime? A more John Murphy approach or Bellamy Blake approach?

Bellamy version. Back at a time when Bellamy was still a good guy...

20. Who should have been the Chancellor, if anyone?

I still like Jaha for the job. He understands the burden of leadership and doesn’t toss it around like Abby and Kane.

21. Would you have been on Pike’s side like Bellamy or on Kane’s side? Or Clarke in Polis?

Kane’s side. About the only time you’ll hear me say that :P

22. Mount Weather had a lot of modern commodities. (example: Maya’s Ipod) What is the one thing you would snatch while there?

BOOKS. All the books.

23. What would your Grounder tattoos look like? Hairstyle? War paint?

I’d probably have tattoos all over my arms. Intricate braided hairstyles, the cooler the better. I usually wear my hair in braids anyway, been wanting to try something more complex.

24. Favorite quote?

I have a few, so you can have them all:

“The sword doesn’t care what you meant. It just cuts.” - Octavia, 4x06 

“I don’t choose pain, I choose life.” - Raven, 4x11

“Ge smak daun, gyon op nodotaim.” (Get knocked down, get back up) - Lincoln/Octavia, numerous episodes

25. If all of the characters were in the Hunger Games, who would have the best shot at winning?

Luna, because I think she could outlive everyone either by fighting until the death OR by stomping off by herself and outlasting everyone out of sheer willpower (keeping @easilydistractedbyfanfic‘s answer again)

26. Least favorite ship? Favorite canon ship? Favorite non canon ship? NOT INCLUDING CL OR BC OR BE

Least: Kabby. They use other people (read: Octavia) as pawns in their relationship problems and don’t take responsibility for the shit they do to each other.

Favorite canon: Linctavia. *cue tears*

Favorite non-canon: Niytavia and if they don’t become canon JRoth is getting an angry letter.

27. A song that should be included in the next season? If there had to be another guest star like Shawn Mendes on the show, who would you want to make a cameo?

I am currently loving the song “Ode to the Forgotten Few” by Mechina as a good descriptor for how S6 starts. Thank you, Spotify Discover Weekly playlists.

As to a cameo... eh. I didn’t even recognize that guy when he was on the show, because I’d never heard of him before.

28. What would you do if you were stuck in the bunker with Murphy for all that time?

With Murphy? Well, I mean, he broke the TV, so there isn’t really much to do for entertainment besides each other...

29. You’re an extra that gets killed off. How do you die?

In the Final Conclave, fighting Roan or Luna.

30. A character you’d like to learn more about and get flashbacks of?

Diyoza. I think we’ve got everybody else at this point.

31. A character you’d bang?

Roan. Ilian. Octavia.

32. Would you stay in the Bunker? Go up to Space? Or live on your own in Eden?

Wonkru for life, bitches.

33. In the Bunker, would you follow Octavia? What would you do to pass the time underground?

Okay, so, I am totally NOT a follower, but Octavia was right in all the things, so I would be a loyal member of Wonkru, because why wouldn’t I go with the right side?

I’d learn to fight, read a lot, write because people will need more stuff to read, stuff like that.

34. What crime would you commit in the Bunker that lands you in the fighting pits?

I wouldn’t, because I know how to follow the simple rules of a) don’t start shit, and b) eat your damn people cube.

35. Up in Space, who would you bond with first? Who would be the most difficult for you to get along with?

I’d be the first to reach out to Echo, because I’m a sucker for lost souls. I probably wouldn’t get along with Monty.

36. How long do you think you would last on Earth by yourself?

Pretty long, as long as I could find food and water. I’m good at entertaining myself.

37. When the Eligius ship lands what do you do?

Watch them for a long time. Not start a war out of the gate.

38. Favorite Eligius character? Least favorite?

I actually have a soft spot for Vinson. And Diyoza. McCreary can just go die.

39. Would you Spacewalk?

Doubt it. Space would be a nightmare for me.

40. Would you prefer to eat Windshield Bugs, Space Algae, or Bunker Meat?

Bunker Meat. But after the first meal I’d be storming into the kitchen to give them a lesson on how to prepare food so it doesn’t make you want to hurl.

41. Would you start a war for the last spot of green on earth? What would your solution be to avoid it?

I wouldn’t start a war, but if someone already started it, I’d damn well finish it. I’m not making peace with people who have shown that they’re untrustworthy on all things. I’m all aboard the worms plan. Quick and relatively clean.

42. Would you rather dig out flesh-eating worms or stick thumb drives into bullet holes?

Eh, I’d do either if I had to. Not too fussed.

43. Are you willing to poison your sister for the Traitor Who You Love? What would you do to stop Octavia?

I’m not stopping Octavia. Octavia was right.

44. Would you go to sleep in cryo or stay awake like Marper?

I might stay awake for a few weeks, just to recalibrate to a world that isn’t a shitstorm, but then go to sleep to wait out the rest of the time.

45. Who are you waking up first to explore the new planet?

Octavia, Niylah, Diyoza, Jackson, Miller. Raven and Shaw to fly the transport. Shove Clarke and Bellamy back into their ice boxes. 

If you want to do this, go for it!

[strangcrdoctor]

∞Guardians commentary time, because I was honestly too wiped out to get to it last night but I’m still very up for it now. 

1. So here’s my question about the opening sequence on Morag. If Ronan had hired the people that faced off with Quill in the opening sequence on Morag, was it just the case that Ronan’s men arrived 2.5 minutes too late, like Peter arrived just early enough to beat out Yondu? Because initially my impression was that they were indigenous and guarding it, but I know now that not to be the case because Korath is very much a devotee of Ronan, etc. But even if it is the case that Peter beat Ronan’s people, holy timing Batman. Seriously kudos to Quill for being even if incidentally two steps ahead of even Ronan’s game. 2. Okay one, Nova Prime Irani Rael is a hot piece and two she definitely deserves to be the girlfriend of General Leia Organa you can disagree with me but that makes you a suspect human being. Anyway, Rael making the diplomatic call to the Kree to denounce Ronan was not out of bounds for normal statecraft. Especially with a new and tenuous alliance, she’s not only right in calling bullshit that the Kree empire has said nothing to denounce Ronan, but she’s also right in advising they make a statement to stabilize their early peace because early peace is amazingly fragile. But like way to not maintain an alliance at all Kree Empire. You suck. 3. The actual diversity of felons on the Kyln is pretty neat, I’m not going to lie. Not just interspecies representation but also body type representation. There’s big very obviously non-straight criminals. There’s cool as shit looking alien species. There’s chubby feminine looking criminals! Tell me who they are Marvel! Tell me. 4. Now that Thanos’ real character has been revealed in the course of IW it is no damn wonder why Thanos thought of Ronan as a petulant child. Granted, Thanos’ logic is worse in that it is slightly better, but by comparison Thanos is an overly dire pragmatist were Ronan is very much just a racist bigot with a power complex. Thanos predictably find’s Ronan’s racial shortsightedness pithy, and I really have zero doubt that if Ronan had actually gone to piss on Thanos’ front lawn he would not have lasted long. 5. On the other hand, really Thanos. #1 piece of advice in the universe is don’t torture and dismantle women and then trust them to be complicit. You will die. 6. If anyone doesn’t feel pelvic sorcery during a close listening to Fooled Around & Fell In Love they are definitely soulless. 7. I also really really want to know what the hell they were drinking on Knowhere that got Rocket and Drax drunk (I mean who knows they might both be lightweights but I doubt it.), because Stephen wants some. 8. I’ll come right out and say it it’s a fucking shame that Tivan’s collection gets blown to hell. Not because Tivan isn’t twisted as hell keeping live specimens and slaves to himself, but more on the “holy crap what cool stuff just got destroyed that the universe will never see again” kind of way. It’s like the burning of the Library of Alexandria, only somehow worse. 9. The nods given to Thor: The Dark World and The Avengers are of course interesting given there’s a Dark Elf and a Chitauri, but I’m super curious about what made those particular specimens of each special enough for Tivan to keep them. Tivan deals with the depths and breadths of the universe coming in and out of Knowhere, and he doesn’t just snag one item from every species or race he comes across. So was there something interesting in particular about that Dark Elf and that Chitauri? Was the Chitauri one of the only remaining survivors after the nuclear explosion? Was the Dark Elf one of Malekith’s higher ups? I’m just curious about them, and curious about Tivan’s reasoning for keeping them. 10. Okay but adding to this whole Tivan’s collection tangent, Cosmo the Space dog cracks me up and not just because it’s funny for Tivan to have a doggie cosmonaut in his collection. Cosmo is a legit character in the Guardians comics, and he’s head of security on Knowhere and telepathic. So even if Tivan is keeping him in his collection or is just trying to keep him out of the way for something, just imagine what it’s like having an angry Russian dog thinking at you all the time because you’re getting in the way of him doing his job. 11. Slightly different bend on the Tivan train, but Carina legitimately just heard Tivan talk about how the stone was capable of destroying even a whole group of people who tried to wield it, and she was still willing to take the risk of being incinerated rather than living with her current conditions. Carina wasn’t resolutely making the hero play - she was making a suicide play knowing full well it would end that way if the hero play didn’t work. 12. When Yondu states that Peter doesn’t give a rip about Terra like. Dude. How many fucking references in this movie has he made to Terran culture? Music and movies and art and holy shit would you look at that, he sure as hell talks like a more culturally integrated human than anything else you twat waffle. Great way to piss him off though and get him to play it your way, which granted is what I think Yondu was probably doing the whole time but still. You don’t look at this boy who idolizes Footloose and knows who Jackson Pollock is and tell him he doesn’t care about Earth. Caring about Footloose and Jackson Pollock at all is a labor of love. 13. Speaking of Yondu, how the fuck is that the jewel frog bauble considered by anyone to be worth of the “high end” community? On top of it just hurting me, it does really raise the question of how is trite crap like that so valuable? Does it have some vector of worth and rarity because its origins are weird, obscure, or finite? Are the gems magical artifacts of some kind? Are the wealthy in space that mother-fucking self-ironic? Because if they are I want to know them. 14. Peter Quill, everyone, who makes a dick message to garner trust 15. Not for the first for for the last time will I say this, but Ravager tech is impressive. And I am amazingly intrigued at how Ravagers got such good technology and resources on their hands. True, they steal things and make money off of trades and pilfering. But that isn’t the only way to acquire goods and it’s not the only thing a viable pirating economic model can survive off of. Half the reason the Ravagers succeed is because they run like a business, have clientele, and are clientele for certain sects, right? So what kind of powerful connections do they have that allow them their advanced fleets? That’s the kind of shit I want to know about. 16. Also what the hell are Ronan’s pilots with the weird glowy psychic spheres on the Dark Aster? Is the Dark Aster itself Kree technology, or something Ronan got from Thanos who appropriated it from some other world he’s conquered? Because we know so little about the Kree in the MCU it’s hard to say, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see if the Kree ever do become a part of canon so we can have more data with which to make a comparison. 17. Guardians does a pretty good job of taking at least some time to portray how terrible aerial dogfighting is on a mass scale because honestly it’s a bloody nightmare. It’s pictured so often and so carelessly in film that it’s not something we often think about, and the only movie I’ve ever seen that addresses how it feels in human terms is Dunkirk, but the intensity and messiness of it in Guardians is still pretty realistic and I give it props for that. 18. It occurs to me that maybe the younger, post-GOTG Groot is so bitter and antisocial for a while because of how giving the elder Groot was, and the seedling felt the sacrifice and his existence was under-appreciated? It was just a thought that crossed my mind. 19. Also Ronan you twat. “Engage Immolation Initiative” is just Big Mean & Fancy for “light ‘em up fuckers,” don’t pretend you’re any cooler than anyone else. 20. I really really appreciate the design that went into the Xandarian cityscape as a fully intergalactic multicultural society that shows it even in the way the city and buildings are assembled. The city isn’t uniform like a lot of science-fiction cities are - it’s got texture. Different sectors have different styles of buildings and different architecture. Like a real metropolitan area, it’s a patchwork of influences and it’s very well done. 21. Kudos to Rocket for identifying that ground-to-air is a super viable defense strategy. One thing that people tend to forget about ground-to-air is that aside from clouds, there’s no obstacles behind which to hide in the sky, so while ground defense might seem clumsy at times, air offense is hugely precarious because there is absolutely no defense mechanism against any attack except maneuvering, and when a defense is fully able to target that weakness it’s pretty damn effective. 22. It’s interesting to me how well superhero movies integrate climaxes within battle sequences? Some people might call it lazy but I call it interesting when when defense lines break, plans fail, and when teams encounter interference to push the plot forward. Plot movement in Marvel movies curry a lot of momentum from these events, but actually they’re pretty interesting replications of how modern society has been built on the results of such events within our own history. History has been moved by these exact same sorts of events, which is why they make sense to us in storytelling. 23. Peter protecting Groot from Rocket’s crash into the into the Dark Aster? Golden. And then Peter immediately going to Rocket from the wreckage? Stellar. Peter Quill you are a gem. 24. I will never forgive Marvel for hurting me as bad with “We are Groot” as Warner Brothers did with “Suuuuuperman” in Iron Giant. Stop giving Vin Diesel more opportunities to rip my heart out of my chest, please. 25. My mom and my uncle, her brother, both adored the entire GOTG soundtrack so much and it brought them so much joy watching it together that it got me into Motown. Even though it was oblique and dorky, Marvel did something amazing with this movie and gave my parents a piece of their own youth back, while giving me a chance to share in their knowledge and experience. It’s stuck with me ever since, especially because fundamentally that experience is the reason I got into Motown music, which I now adore with all my heart.

Alright, done with that. These are... just getting longer and longer I’m sorry guys no one should have ever allowed me to do this. Oh well. Too late to stop me now. Captain America: The Winter Solider is up next, and oh the pain.∞

[seashellsoldier]

This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends

“They say the first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one. This book is my own ‘left of boom’ [military lingo for getting to the bomb-maker before a bomb is made] effort. It is the story of our vast digital vulnerability, of how and why it exists, of the governments that have exploited and enabled it and the rising stakes for all of us.  While this story may be familiar to some, I suspect it is one few are aware of, and even fewer truly understand. But it is our ignorance of these issues that has become our greatest vulnerability of all. Governments count on it. They’ve relied on classification requirements and front companies and the technical nature of the issues involved to conceal and confuse one stubborn fact: The very institutions charged with keeping us safe have opted, time and time again, to leave us more vulnerable. My hope is that this book may serve as a wake-up call, to encourage the awareness necessary to solve what may be the most complex puzzle of our digital age.” (p. 440)

Dr. Shoshana Zuboff wrote The Age of Surveillance Capitalism in 2019. Perlroth’s book could be a potent addendum to that work as infosec experts glean greater and greater info into the espionage, PSYOPS, and combat taking place within the circuitry of the world. Take in mind that most of this is seriously under-the-radar and classified stuff, which leans easily into some right-wing demographics saying such information is baseless “conspiracies”. (Perlroth does have a link to her thorough bibliography, and a solid 100 pages of endnotes in my e-copy to leave the mouth-breathers clutching their anonymous Parler handles and berating the New York Times because that is what their media moguls’ puppeteers do.) I’ve been apart of at least three large hacks (that I know of) and have three organizations trying to watch my back as all that info has been cast into the murk of the dark web. NetGalley got hacked just last week. The facts are there for those who have been paying attention, and Perlroth was elbowed into this niche facet of journalism, learning so much over the last 10 years, and summarizes the evolution of cyberwarfare well enough here—and it’s horrifying.

“By the time the NSA’s exploits boomeranged back on American towns, cities, hospitals, and universities, there was no one to guide Americans over the threshold, to advise them, or even to tell them that this was the threshold they would be crossing.

For decades the United States had conducted cyberwarfare in stealth, without any meaningful consideration for what might happen when those same attacks, zero-day exploits, and surveillance capabilities circled back on us. And in the decade after Stuxnet, invisible armies had lined up at our gates; many had seeped inside our machines, our political process, and our grid already, waiting for their own impetus to pull the trigger. For all the internet’s promise of efficiency and social connectivity, it was now a ticking time bomb” (p. 391).

Basically, we’re screwed. Everyone. Offense is far more powerful and better-funded than defense; governments around the world have partnered with any hacker they can to suit their needs and push their agendas; freelancers, mercenaries, fringe companies, and anarchists run wild on the web; every device is completely hackable; every company on Earth has been probed or infiltrated; the tech companies only care about their profit-margins; and, most elected officials only care about their stock portfolios. One carefully exploited “zero-day” could cripple any country, as we’ve already seen with Iran, Ukraine, Estonia, and Georgia. The use of tech can suppress a citizenry, as we know well with China and so many despotic nations. The internet can be easily exploited to sway millions of people and polarize a populace with distrust, disinformation, and propaganda, often leading to upheaval and mob violence, as we’ve seen in India, Ukraine, Britain, Myanmar, and the United States of Hypocrisy. Greed overrules morality. Power supersedes democracy. It’s only a matter of time before things get exponentially worse.

Zero-day weapon markets, Stuxnet, fuzz farms, the Patriot Act and the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, Snowden, Aurora, Heartbleed, NotPetya, WikiLeaks, Crowdfence, WannaCry . . . the list goes on.

In July of 2017, the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant in Burlington, Kansas, was hacked by Russia using a modified Stuxnet cyber-attack (https://www.wired.com/story/hack-brief-us-nuclear-power-breach/). Hell, even monolithic Google and the wealthiest man in the world, Bezos’s personal phone, were hacked. Perlroth visits several “hacking conventions” and deftly illustrates how kids can break into any device, any system, in a matter of minutes, performing on a stage for the audience, which no-doubt includes lots of federal recruiters salivating at the possibilities. But it’s not just federal organizations. It is nation-states and corporations, “white hats” and “grey hats” and “black hats”, all vying for the talent to add more soldiers to the battlefield of the code for their personal desires. The new battlefield is fought from comfy chairs far, far away.

As she learned how easy it was to access her personal information after the Aurora hack: I changed every password to every account I ever had to absurdly long song lyrics and movie quotes and switched on 2FA [two-factor authentication]. I didn’t trust password managers. Most had been hacked. Even companies that bothered to scramble, or ‘hash’, users’ passwords were no match for hackers’ ‘rainbow tables’—databases of hash values for nearly every alphanumeric character combination, up to a certain length. Dear reader, use long passwords” (pp. 248-9). I feel such things are band-aids over bullet wounds, but doing something is better than nothing.

NPR’s Terry Gross interviewed the author for Fresh Air: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966254916/u-s-cyber-weapons-were-leaked-and-are-now-being-used-against-us-reporter-says

. . . and Jill Lepore of The New Yorker did a nice review of this book: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/the-next-cyberattack-is-already-under-way

“The arrogant recklessness of the people who have been buying and selling the vulnerability of the rest of us is not just part of an intelligence-agency game; it has been the ethos of Wall Street and Silicon Valley for decades. Move fast and break things; the money will trickle down; click, click, click, click, buy, buy, buy, like, like, like, like, expose, expose, expose. Perlroth likes a piece of graffiti she once saw: ‘Move slowly and fix your shit.’ Lock down the code, she’s saying. Bar the door. This raises the question of the horse’s whereabouts relative to the barn. If you listen, you can hear the thunder of hooves.”

Lock down the code. I hired on to federal service in 2014, and then the OPM breach was realized. Most federal systems have been breached, just as much as the US has breached so many foreign systems. This is the new war zone, and there are no long-term winners here, unless we philosophize about who might be standing atop the ruins when it’s all over. In 2018, the RAND Corporation complied the most comprehensive report on cyber risk to date. The report is here (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2299.html) and has a summary of: “The resulting values are highly sensitive to input parameters; for instance, the global cost of cyber crime has direct gross domestic product (GDP) costs of $275 billion to $6.6 trillion and total GDP costs (direct plus systemic) of $799 billion to $22.5 trillion (1.1 to 32.4 percent of GDP).”

I doubt the literal “code” can ever be truly watertight. Reading this book grants huge respect for those responsible for coding well. It is no-doubt a terribly tough job. The best bet is to unplug everything, but our Pavlovian addiction to our tech toys is unbreakable at this point, and the “Internet of Everything” will inevitably make the whole world worse, unless the powers-that-be can lock down the f-ing code. Otherwise, I fear it will take nothing short of a calamitous “accident” to show us we don’t need such things after all. (Would an exploding nuclear plant in Kansas really change peoples’ minds here? History says “no”.) Remember the Tampa water-system hack of just 3 weeks ago from this writing? (https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965791252/fbi-called-in-after-hacker-tries-to-poison-tampa-area-citys-water-with-lye) Buckle up, because those “invisible armies” lined up at our gates are only getting started, and while Russia is a meddling anarchist sowing confusion and division and getting its tentacles coiled around our infrastructure, China is a voraciously hungry juggernaut vacuuming up everything it possibly can (https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/969532277/china-wants-your-data-and-may-already-have-it), while so many other countries (North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates) and so many companies, shell-fronts, criminal groups, and lone-wolf anarchists have their own agendas.

“Digital vulnerabilities that affect one affect us all. The barrier between the physical and digital worlds is wearing thin. ‘Everything can be intercepted’ is right, and most everything important already has—our personal data, our intellectual property, our chemical factories, our nuclear plants, even our own cyber weapons. Our infrastructure is now virtualized, and only becoming more so as the pandemic thrusts us online with a scope and speed we could never have imagined only weeks ago. As a result our attack surface, and the potential for sabotage, has never been greater” (p. 439).

It all raises the very question she writes on page 46: “How does anyone sleep at night?”

She does offer better bandages in the Epilogue. Scandinavia and Japan are paragon examples of nations doing the best they can. (What is with Scandinavia being so damn close to perfection in so many ways?) “We will never build resilience to cyberattacks—or foreign disinformation campaigns, for that matter—without good policy and nationwide awareness of cyber threats. We should make cybersecurity and media literacy a core part of American curriculum” (p. 449). I couldn’t agree more. The PATCH Act (Protecting our Ability to Counter Hacking Act) is also a promising start, but the proverbial Pandora’s Box has been smashed. I doubt a genuine digital Geneva Convention will ever happen, but we can certainly fortify the walls, hold transparency and accountability as tenets, and expect governments and corporations to do their utmost to protect the digital Commons.

[pangeasplits]

I have read your works! And I love 'The Stars Incline us, they don't bind us' so muuuuuch. If this is not too much to ask, can you make cherik fic rec? Thank you! Keep writing, awesome!

thank you very much, i’m glad you enjoyed my stuff! :3 

since this blog is exactly 5 years old today, what better occasion is there to do cherik fic rec post, as lurking around cherik fic rec tumblr posts waaay back in the day is actually what originally brought me to tumblr in the first place. the following list is in no particular order, and odds are i like multiple fics by the authors included but i was determined to limit myself to one from each (though in some cases, this was a veeeery close call, haha).

anyway, the actual title of this list is coincidentally the main criteria i used in the interest of not having it stretch on for miles, which is to say:

Cherik Fics Pan Has Reread An Embarrassing Amount Of Times Throughout Her XMFC Fandom Tenure:

Hier steh ich an den Marken meiner Tage by MonstrousRegiment

Erik Lehnsherr is a spy in the SS, and his British liaison is strategist Charles Xavier. Their relationship from the moment they meet to a year after the end of the war.

“You’re the only person in the world who knows what I am.”

Boden’s Mate by kaydeefalls

“Shaw has information that we need, and we need him alive to extract it,” Moira says, and there it is: the job is on the table. Extraction.

XMFC/Inception fusion AU. Erik is an extractor, Alex is his point man. They’re assembling a team to go after the most dangerous mind in dreamsharing: Sebastian Shaw. But unless Alex and the team can keep him in check, Erik’s desire for vengeance might just rip the whole job apart around them – and then there’s the shade that haunts his dreams…

Malastare Racer by ikeracity

Ignoring strict instructions from Master Emma to stay hidden, Charles and Erik decide to enter themselves into the Gorian Podracing Classic. Because they’re idiots like that.

Star Wars AU!

The Secret of the Knights Templar by madneto

Erik is a CIA agent who has been tracking down black market dealer and occultist Sebastian Shaw for the past ten years with no real end in sight. When he stumbles upon an unexpected lead that will put him one step ahead of Shaw at last, archaeology professor and Templar enthusiast Charles Xavier becomes unwittingly entangled in the fray, and Erik suddenly finds himself with a brand new partner who is the only one who can truly help him on what’s become a quest to find the Holy Grail. But Charles is even more than Erik bargained for, especially after they’re forced to pretend to be a married couple as a cover while racing to find the Grail before Shaw does, and both Erik and Charles find they’ve possibly bitten off more than they can chew.

Powered AU vaguely inspired by Indiana Jones and James Bond movies.

Their Mouths Always Lie by keire_ke

Charles adheres to most police protocols like they are a personal code of conduct. Erik gets things done and over with, for better or worse. Raven knows what she’s doing, most of the time. The serial killer kills, regardless. Police AU.

Try, Try Again by and_backagain

Except that this has happened before, he thinks with a start, and something in his throat closes up as he revolves on the spot, already knowing what he’s going to see. Charles’ back is arching as he falls, his eyes wide, and the crumpled bullet falls to the sand beside him like a calling card. X-Men: First Class Groundhog Day!AU.

The Courtship by dvs

A story about a courtship that began five hundred years ago.

Beloved of ravens by khaleesian

978 A.D. Charles never uses his power, Erik never hesitates. Can a man be both the void and what fills it?

Limited Release by rageprufrock

When Alex Summers broke out of supermax to rescue his stupid kid brother, he had no idea it was going to be so fucking complicated.

A Curious Carriage of Crystal and Cold by Etharei

Charles, a miner from a poor village in the countryside, saves the life of Erik Lehnsherr, scion of a successful business family and the richest man on the planet Eisen. Charles is a telepath and somewhat anxious about it, while Erik abstains from relationships because the lights flicker and doors open and electronics vibrate when he gets too excited.

Also featuring a long-suffering sister, a foul-mouthed bodyguard, and a best friend with a heart that is definitely not gold.

In which there are princes, spaceships, long journeys, and old secrets uncovered. (An AU sci-fi fairytale)

The Tower and the Hurricane by dreamlittleyo

(Post-XMFC AU.) Five years after Shaw’s death, Erik’s predictions prove painfully accurate. Violence rages on both sides of the human/mutant conflict. In a world ravaged by war, it doesn’t really matter who’s more at fault. Charles struggles to teach his students a better way, but what choices will he make when peace really isn’t an option?

The Masked Man (Who Has Everything) by Traincat

The one where Erik is Batman, and Charles is kidnapped roughly once a week.

At the End of Day and Night All We Want is More by cm (mumblemutter)

It’s already too late. (Alien/Prometheus AU)

If You Liked The Book, You’ll Hate The Movie by paperclipbitch

Modern-Day High School AU. It’s not until Hank realises half the class are glancing towards the back of the classroom with something like nerves and something like schadenfreude that he finds out Alex Summers is back.

Pantheon by Yahtzee

In the year 96 AD, all Rome is aware that their gods have begun to Mark certain people with their gifts – the healing power of Apollo, the metal control of Vulcan, the deathly touch of Pluto, or the mental powers of Minerva. When those gifts fall to slaves or barbarians instead of the Romans themselves, strict control is necessary.

Then a gladiator from Judea meets an enslaved scribe from Britannia, and the repercussions will shake the Empire itself.

Swimming with Sharks by Not_You

Erik used to be a shark. Now he’s not, and has to figure out how to be a good human father to his twins. Charles is willing to help.

To Do List by Black_Betty

Somehow, Charles and Erik have become one of those couples who rarely see each other because of their busy schedules. They’re SO busy, they haven’t had sex in weeks. Erik has had enough, and forms a coordinated plan of attack. Charles is less than helpful.

On Hearts and the Finding of Lost Treasures (The Tombs and the Raiding Thereof Remix) by luninosity

The first time he met Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr was—reluctantly, angrily, and decidedly against his will—impressed. This may’ve had something to do with the fact that Charles had just given him a sunny smile and somersaulted a foot over his head.

Watching the Stars Slide Down by groovyphilia

Seventeen-year-old Charles Xavier is ridiculously wealthy, and is used to being paraded around for show at his mother’s high-society Christmas parties. He’s always been rather sporting about it, and dutifully rubs shoulders with the elite every year in the glitz of the mansion ballroom.

This year, he meets a man by the name of Erik Lehnsherr.

Utopia by Takmarierah [Note: WIP but I had to include this fic]

It’s been five years since the beach, and four years since Charles was captured by the Brotherhood. Since then, he’s been kept in a safe house while Erik finally achieved what Shaw failed to do.

Now that most of humanity has been eradicated, Erik’s summoned Charles back to his side, promising a cure and political influence in exchange for Charles’ help - but Charles knows it’s only a matter of time before he asks for more.

Neither Rhyme Nor Reason by unveiled

Charles liked to tell people that the first time they met, Serik punched a kitten. (Or, the one where Erik is an angry Vulcan, Charles is still a telepath, and grief still shapes their lives.)

Incy Wincy Spider by Tawabids

Erik Lehnsherr is a renowned homicide detective, with his husband Charles at home and his partner on the job, Moira MacTaggert. When a twisted serial killer starts targeting mutants, Erik and Moira are the perfect team for the job, especially since Erik himself is the mutant poster-boy of an NYPD trying to improve their image.

But what they don’t yet know is that the serial killer is an old soul out of Erik’s past, and his next move is to pull Charles into his web.

The Amazing Adventures of Cat-Man by so_shhy

Charles is the non-powered, butt-kicking, high-tech teen sidekick of a cheesy superhero. Erik is the sidekick of the corresponding cheesy supervillain, and makes Charles’s life even more complicated than it already is.

Spy Games by manic_intent

Burn Notice AU, with Erik Lehnsherr as the spy and Charles as the trigger-happy ex boyfriend. Erik is burned for unknown reasons in Mexico and wakes up in New York City. Somehow, he needs to raise $500,000, in order to find out -why-.

Aaaand a shameless plug, since you brought it up, and since to this day ike and i still look at this fic and ask each other “wtf how” (and also we reread each other’s bits and yell at each other):

The stars incline us, they do not bind us by ikeracity, Pangea

Intergalactic Federation pilot Lieutenant Charles Xavier is assigned last-minute to a high profile mission: transporting over two thousand prison inmates from an old and overfilled prison complex to a newer, higher-capacity prison stronghold located on the outer reaches of the galaxy. Just as he’s settling down for a long and uneventful ride, things take a turn for the worse after the inmates riot and stage a hostile takeover of the ship, leaving Charles to find himself at the complete mercy of cold-blooded killers and facing the chilling prospect that he might not ever make it back home alive.

[damonbation]

Michael Burry Trashes Index Funds – Are We Screwed?

As a general rule, Mr. Money Mustache avoids reading the daily news and ignores the fluctuations of the stock market. And he advises you to do the same thing.

The negative factors of wasting your time, diluting your precious brainpower, and creating undue stress by worrying about things outside of your circle of control far outweigh any slight advantages you might get from the tiny slice of news stories that are actually useful and relevant to your daily life.

But on very rare occasions, something will squeeze its way through the News Sphincter that is worth addressing, and last week I learned of one of them. The basic idea was this:

Image source: Bloomberg If you’re not a finance nerd, the phrase “Like Subprime CDOs”, just means “really bad”.

Michael Burry, who in my opinion is a relatively brilliant and well-known financial figure, voiced his concerns that we may be inflating a big bubble by concentrating too much of our money in passively managed index funds.

And because I have been telling you since the beginning that index funds are the best way to invest, my email inbox and Twitter feeds started filling with concerned questions and links to his interview on Bloomberg, asking if we should be taking this seriously.

So is it a big deal? Should we be worried?

The quick answer is No. And we’ll get into the full explanation below, but first let’s do a quick review of Index Funds in general.

Why Index Funds are Great

Index fund investing is both the simplest and the highest performing way to invest your money. It’s as simple as getting any brokerage account and buying the Vanguard Exchange traded fund called VTI, or getting a Betterment account and setting your allocation to at least 90% stocks.

It’s the ultimate win/win because you just set it and forget it. Both the math behind it, and the historical performance for the past 40 years (since the invention of index funds) has proven this out.

Yes, a small percentage of actively managed funds have beaten the market, and a larger percentage have trailed the market. But this over and underperformance itself tends to be random, and today’s winners often become tomorrow’s losers.

A bowl of actively managed funds. Can you pick the winner?

And here’s the real problem: you can’t predict in advance which of these horses you are betting on. So your best bet is to ride directly in the middle of the pack, while minimizing the fees you pay for the privilege.

But suddenly, Michael Burry says we are reaching the point where this model may soon stop working. So who is right? Mr. Money Mustache or Michael Burry? Have I been naively misleading you?

And what about the reassuring words of Jim Collins in his book The Simple Path to Wealth or rather amusing Guided Stock Market Meditation he put up on YouTube? Is Jim full of it too, in light of these new comments from a financial expert?

Now, we are already treading onto thin ice here, because similar stuff is in the news every day, and most of it is junk. Financial ‘experts’ are a dime a dozen, and just because somebody got something right once (in this case predicting the 2008 financial meltdown), doesn’t mean they will be right in the future.

Because the financial news industry is powered by profits which come from clicks and traffic, their job is to shock and worry and distract you as much as possible so you will click your way through more of their bait. Within the context of that single Burry interview, for example, I saw the following bits of “Breaking News”:

Big gain! (never mind that aside from meaningless fluctuations, the market has gone exactly nowhere in the past nineteen months since January 2017)

Down Six Percent! (Oops it was back up to those highs by the time I checked)

Triple digits! (oh, wait, that is less than a third of one percent because the index is about 27,000)

Volatility! Impact! (oh wait, that is all just the random fluctuation it always does and it means absolutely NOTHING to you as an investor)

NONE of these things are the least bit newsworthy, and they shouldn’t even be mentioned in a footnote, let alone labeled “Breaking News.”

So, stock market reporting is silly, and predictions of doom should be viewed even more skeptically. Because the nature of our economic system assures that virtually 100% of predictions of financial doom will always be wrong, because we are not really all doomed – the future is very bright.

However, I’ve read a lot of Mr. Burry’s writing and have more respect for his analysis than that of permanent fearmongers like Peter Schiff or Dmitri Orlov. So I pay attention to his opinions, even when they differ from my favorite permanent realist-optimists Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

So the summary of his argument is this:

Passive investing tends to distort the prices of individual stocks, because we buy everything in a fixed ratio without considering the value of each company.

The “exit door” is small – there is a lot of money invested in fairly small companies whose shares are not frequently traded. So if we all tried to sell at once, we’d have way too many sellers and very few buyers. This would cause a massive price crash in the stock prices of these small companies.

There are some complex bits under the hood of index funds – things like options and derivatives that can break under stress and cause money losses or more volatility.

Now at this point, the stock traders and active fund managers are probably cheering and jeering at us:

“YAY! Told you all along – come back to us where you belong.

We are well worth our much higher fees because we are gonna beat the market! Just look at this cherry-picked data from the current ten year bull market!”

But instead of picking a fight, let’s just address these points one by one:

Yeah, but active traders have been making this argument against passive investing forever. The theory is correct, but in practice it would only be a problem if too many of us became passive and there were no active traders left. Thus the real question is: Are we close to this tipping point? And the easy answer is “Not even close”. Index funds own about 18 percent of global shares, and 45 percent here in the US. And active trading still outweighs index fund trades by 22-to-1.

A small exit door only matters if everyone is running for the exits at once. And even then, as index fund investors (as opposed to active stock traders), we don’t do that. And even in the event of liquidity problems in a big sell-off, the only downside would be some bigger temporary price swings. We don’t care about those either.

To better answer this question, I interviewed some of the people deep inside the machine – Betterment’s investing team and their director Dan Egan. A summary of their thoughts – This is actually more of a problem for “Synthetic” or leveraged index funds, not the true funds we invest in. For the most part, in the index funds you and I use, our money simply purchases real shares of businesses.

Point #1 above deserves a bit more of an answer. Because the real question here is “how many active investors does it take to balance out a market?” And like everything in life, this is not a black-and-white question. Instead we can look at this as being on spectrum. For reference, this is where we are now:

The great increase in Index fund investment after MMM and Jim Collins started advocating for it :-) Image source – Morningstar / CNBC

A Purely Active Market…

If everybody was an active investor or speculator, you would just have a sea of squabbling bullshit. Even today, people are trading back and forth for no reason just based on what they think the price will be later this afternoon. Even worse, you have “technical” traders, who place bets on the immediate future of a stock based not on fundamentals, but on obscure (and proven to be useless) mathematical patterns of what the stock price has done in the recent past. I may be unfairly lumping thoughtful value-based investors in here with day traders, but stock price prediction is a slippery slope and most of the trading volume on today’s exchanges is very slippery. And don’t even get me started on the nonsense of “high frequency trading” and the “flash crash” of 2010. No shortage of overly active trading.

If Everybody Was Passive…

At the other extreme of this would be an “All Index Fund” world, where giant zombie-like index funds would just buy all the companies in proportion to their current market value, even when those companies have stopped making money or are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Nobody would be even looking at the earnings, so stock prices would never drop, even when the underlying companies go extinct. And on the flip side of that, companies who became vastly more profitable would never be rewarded with higher share prices.

In this case, a gigantic market opportunity would open up. Apple shares would still be at their 1980 IPO price of 39 cents per share (after accounting for splits), and each share would pay an annual dividend of $3.08, which is like getting a 792% annual interest rate on your investment. Individual investors (even me!) would come back to the market and they would flood in and buy Apple shares, until the share price rose up to a level where supply and demand balanced out. And today, that price happens to be about $216 per share.

There are plenty of people out there, finding and exploiting these little opportunities. People like outspoken tech investor and futurist Catherine Wood speak authoritatively about them – but only time will tell if her $2.3 billion ARK capital fund proves to outperform the market over the long run.

And that is the real answer to question #1: If Actively managed funds start consistently outperforming index funds on average across the entire industry, then we have reached the point of “Peak Indexing”, and you should switch to a good low-fee active fund.

This is far from happening, but I’ll let you know if it ever does.

And for every successful niche-finder, there are a hundred wannabe players, spouting buzzwords and predictions, getting ever-louder when they are right but going mysteriously off the radar when proven wrong. This survivorship bias ensures that if we read the news, we get the mistaken impression that most stock predictors know what they are talking about. They don’t.

So really, that’s all there really should be to stock investing. A small group of dedicated experts seek out the best values, and in a big enough market a larger amount of index fund money can tag along.

Never Forget What Stock Investing Really IS

The value of one share of a company is equal to the “net present value” of all of its future lifetime dividends payable to you the shareholder. Higher expected profits mean higher eventual dividends and thus higher stock prices. Lower profits mean lower prices. And a company that never makes a profit over its lifetime should not even be listed on the stock exchange.

Lower expected interest rates also mean those future dividend payments are worth more of in today’s dollars, which means today’s stocks are worth more. Which is why drops in the interest rate often trigger simultaneous boosts in all share prices.

Some companies don’t currently pay dividends, but that is only because we the shareholders have given the management permission to temporarily reinvest profits into growth – in hopes of larger future dividends.

If we knew (theoretically) in advance that a company would never pay any of its future earnings to shareholders, those shares should be worth zero. A company which never produces and returns value to shareholders is worthless from a financial perspective – unless you could get someone to buy your proven-worthless slips of paper purely on pure speculation, in hopes of selling it to someone at a higher price in the future – like gold and bitcoin. Speculation of this type is a less-than-zero-sum game, a tax on overall human prosperity, which is why you shouldn’t waste your time on it.

So the stock market really is built upon the fundamentals of earnings and dividends. Not on news snippets and soundbites and rapid trading. And since publicly traded companies are big, slow entities with hundreds of employees and thousands of customers, their fates simply don’t change very quickly. “Analysts” who try to predict these future earnings with any certainty rarely outperform a coin toss.

So We Can All Just Stay the Course and Relax

Just as with other bit of news in the financial media, you do not need to take any action. Keep investing and stay the course. If you are so inclined, study up on profitable real estate investments as a side hustle, and if you want a bit of a safety margin in exchange for slightly lower returns in the long run, consider paying off your mortgage as you approach early retirement.

Once you arrive, you will probably find that money and investments are the last thing on your mind. After all, that’s what Financial Independence is all about – becoming free from the need to worry about money.

It’s a nice place to be, and I’ll see you when you get here!

from Money 101 http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2019/09/12/michael-burry-index-funds/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewdburton]

Michael Burry Trashes Index Funds – Are We Screwed?

As a general rule, Mr. Money Mustache avoids reading the daily news and ignores the fluctuations of the stock market. And he advises you to do the same thing.

The negative factors of wasting your time, diluting your precious brainpower, and creating undue stress by worrying about things outside of your circle of control far outweigh any slight advantages you might get from the tiny slice of news stories that are actually useful and relevant to your daily life.

But on very rare occasions, something will squeeze its way through the News Sphincter that is worth addressing, and last week I learned of one of them. The basic idea was this:

Image source: Bloomberg If you’re not a finance nerd, the phrase “Like Subprime CDOs”, just means “really bad”.

Michael Burry, who in my opinion is a relatively brilliant and well-known financial figure, voiced his concerns that we may be inflating a big bubble by concentrating too much of our money in passively managed index funds.

And because I have been telling you since the beginning that index funds are the best way to invest, my email inbox and Twitter feeds started filling with concerned questions and links to his interview on Bloomberg, asking if we should be taking this seriously.

So is it a big deal? Should we be worried?

The quick answer is No. And we’ll get into the full explanation below, but first let’s do a quick review of Index Funds in general.

Why Index Funds are Great

Index fund investing is both the simplest and the highest performing way to invest your money. It’s as simple as getting any brokerage account and buying the Vanguard Exchange traded fund called VTI, or getting a Betterment account and setting your allocation to at least 90% stocks.

It’s the ultimate win/win because you just set it and forget it. Both the math behind it, and the historical performance for the past 40 years (since the invention of index funds) has proven this out.

Yes, a small percentage of actively managed funds have beaten the market, and a larger percentage have trailed the market. But this over and underperformance itself tends to be random, and today’s winners often become tomorrow’s losers.

A bowl of actively managed funds. Can you pick the winner?

And here’s the real problem: you can’t predict in advance which of these horses you are betting on. So your best bet is to ride directly in the middle of the pack, while minimizing the fees you pay for the privilege.

But suddenly, Michael Burry says we are reaching the point where this model may soon stop working. So who is right? Mr. Money Mustache or Michael Burry? Have I been naively misleading you?

And what about the reassuring words of Jim Collins in his book The Simple Path to Wealth or rather amusing Guided Stock Market Meditation he put up on YouTube? Is Jim full of it too, in light of these new comments from a financial expert?

Now, we are already treading onto thin ice here, because similar stuff is in the news every day, and most of it is junk. Financial ‘experts’ are a dime a dozen, and just because somebody got something right once (in this case predicting the 2008 financial meltdown), doesn’t mean they will be right in the future.

Because the financial news industry is powered by profits which come from clicks and traffic, their job is to shock and worry and distract you as much as possible so you will click your way through more of their bait. Within the context of that single Burry interview, for example, I saw the following bits of “Breaking News”:

Big gain! (never mind that aside from meaningless fluctuations, the market has gone exactly nowhere in the past nineteen months since January 2017)

Down Six Percent! (Oops it was back up to those highs by the time I checked)

Triple digits! (oh, wait, that is less than a third of one percent because the index is about 27,000)

Volatility! Impact! (oh wait, that is all just the random fluctuation it always does and it means absolutely NOTHING to you as an investor)

NONE of these things are the least bit newsworthy, and they shouldn’t even be mentioned in a footnote, let alone labeled “Breaking News.”

So, stock market reporting is silly, and predictions of doom should be viewed even more skeptically. Because the nature of our economic system assures that virtually 100% of predictions of financial doom will always be wrong, because we are not really all doomed – the future is very bright.

However, I’ve read a lot of Mr. Burry’s writing and have more respect for his analysis than that of permanent fearmongers like Peter Schiff or Dmitri Orlov. So I pay attention to his opinions, even when they differ from my favorite permanent realist-optimists Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

So the summary of his argument is this:

Passive investing tends to distort the prices of individual stocks, because we buy everything in a fixed ratio without considering the value of each company.

The “exit door” is small – there is a lot of money invested in fairly small companies whose shares are not frequently traded. So if we all tried to sell at once, we’d have way too many sellers and very few buyers. This would cause a massive price crash in the stock prices of these small companies.

There are some complex bits under the hood of index funds – things like options and derivatives that can break under stress and cause money losses or more volatility.

Now at this point, the stock traders and active fund managers are probably cheering and jeering at us:

“YAY! Told you all along – come back to us where you belong.

We are well worth our much higher fees because we are gonna beat the market! Just look at this cherry-picked data from the current ten year bull market!”

But instead of picking a fight, let’s just address these points one by one:

Yeah, but active traders have been making this argument against passive investing forever. The theory is correct, but in practice it would only be a problem if too many of us became passive and there were no active traders left. Thus the real question is: Are we close to this tipping point? And the easy answer is “Not even close”. Index funds own about 18 percent of global shares, and 45 percent here in the US. And active trading still outweighs index fund trades by 22-to-1.

A small exit door only matters if everyone is running for the exits at once. And even then, as index fund investors (as opposed to active stock traders), we don’t do that. And even in the event of liquidity problems in a big sell-off, the only downside would be some bigger temporary price swings. We don���t care about those either.

To better answer this question, I interviewed some of the people deep inside the machine – Betterment’s investing team and their director Dan Egan. A summary of their thoughts – This is actually more of a problem for “Synthetic” or leveraged index funds, not the true funds we invest in. For the most part, in the index funds you and I use, our money simply purchases real shares of businesses.

Point #1 above deserves a bit more of an answer. Because the real question here is “how many active investors does it take to balance out a market?” And like everything in life, this is not a black-and-white question. Instead we can look at this as being on spectrum. For reference, this is where we are now:

The great increase in Index fund investment after MMM and Jim Collins started advocating for it :-) Image source – Morningstar / CNBC

A Purely Active Market…

If everybody was an active investor or speculator, you would just have a sea of squabbling bullshit. Even today, people are trading back and forth for no reason just based on what they think the price will be later this afternoon. Even worse, you have “technical” traders, who place bets on the immediate future of a stock based not on fundamentals, but on obscure (and proven to be useless) mathematical patterns of what the stock price has done in the recent past. I may be unfairly lumping thoughtful value-based investors in here with day traders, but stock price prediction is a slippery slope and most of the trading volume on today’s exchanges is very slippery. And don’t even get me started on the nonsense of “high frequency trading” and the “flash crash” of 2010. No shortage of overly active trading.

If Everybody Was Passive…

At the other extreme of this would be an “All Index Fund” world, where giant zombie-like index funds would just buy all the companies in proportion to their current market value, even when those companies have stopped making money or are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Nobody would be even looking at the earnings, so stock prices would never drop, even when the underlying companies go extinct. And on the flip side of that, companies who became vastly more profitable would never be rewarded with higher share prices.

In this case, a gigantic market opportunity would open up. Apple shares would still be at their 1980 IPO price of 39 cents per share (after accounting for splits), and each share would pay an annual dividend of $3.08, which is like getting a 792% annual interest rate on your investment. Individual investors (even me!) would come back to the market and they would flood in and buy Apple shares, until the share price rose up to a level where supply and demand balanced out. And today, that price happens to be about $216 per share.

There are plenty of people out there, finding and exploiting these little opportunities. People like outspoken tech investor and futurist Catherine Wood speak authoritatively about them – but only time will tell if her $2.3 billion ARK capital fund proves to outperform the market over the long run.

And that is the real answer to question #1: If Actively managed funds start consistently outperforming index funds on average across the entire industry, then we have reached the point of “Peak Indexing”, and you should switch to a good low-fee active fund.

This is far from happening, but I’ll let you know if it ever does.

And for every successful niche-finder, there are a hundred wannabe players, spouting buzzwords and predictions, getting ever-louder when they are right but going mysteriously off the radar when proven wrong. This survivorship bias ensures that if we read the news, we get the mistaken impression that most stock predictors know what they are talking about. They don’t.

So really, that’s all there really should be to stock investing. A small group of dedicated experts seek out the best values, and in a big enough market a larger amount of index fund money can tag along.

Never Forget What Stock Investing Really IS

The value of one share of a company is equal to the “net present value” of all of its future lifetime dividends payable to you the shareholder. Higher expected profits mean higher eventual dividends and thus higher stock prices. Lower profits mean lower prices. And a company that never makes a profit over its lifetime should not even be listed on the stock exchange.

Lower expected interest rates also mean those future dividend payments are worth more of in today’s dollars, which means today’s stocks are worth more. Which is why drops in the interest rate often trigger simultaneous boosts in all share prices.

Some companies don’t currently pay dividends, but that is only because we the shareholders have given the management permission to temporarily reinvest profits into growth – in hopes of larger future dividends.

If we knew (theoretically) in advance that a company would never pay any of its future earnings to shareholders, those shares should be worth zero. A company which never produces and returns value to shareholders is worthless from a financial perspective – unless you could get someone to buy your proven-worthless slips of paper purely on pure speculation, in hopes of selling it to someone at a higher price in the future – like gold and bitcoin. Speculation of this type is a less-than-zero-sum game, a tax on overall human prosperity, which is why you shouldn’t waste your time on it.

So the stock market really is built upon the fundamentals of earnings and dividends. Not on news snippets and soundbites and rapid trading. And since publicly traded companies are big, slow entities with hundreds of employees and thousands of customers, their fates simply don’t change very quickly. “Analysts” who try to predict these future earnings with any certainty rarely outperform a coin toss.

So We Can All Just Stay the Course and Relax

Just as with other bit of news in the financial media, you do not need to take any action. Keep investing and stay the course. If you are so inclined, study up on profitable real estate investments as a side hustle, and if you want a bit of a safety margin in exchange for slightly lower returns in the long run, consider paying off your mortgage as you approach early retirement.

Once you arrive, you will probably find that money and investments are the last thing on your mind. After all, that’s what Financial Independence is all about – becoming free from the need to worry about money.

It’s a nice place to be, and I’ll see you when you get here!

from Finance http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2019/09/12/michael-burry-index-funds/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Mack McConnell of Taster’s Club, a brand that sells craft spirits enthusiast membership.Some stats:Product: Craft spirits enthusiast membership.Revenue/mo: $270,000Started: October 2012Location: Brooklyn, NYFounders: 1Employees: 3Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hey! I’m Mack McConnell, founder of Taster’s Club, a subscription service for people who are curious to learn about and taste amazing craft spirits. Each month we send our members the most interesting spirits we can get our hands on and teach them all about it.We originally started with just whiskey, but we’ve since expanded into 12 different tracks: whiskey, bourbon, scotch, tequila, rum, gin, vodka, wine or “stock the bar” (includes all the above). Regardless of what track a member chooses, what makes us special is not only that we source the best stuff from under-represented, amazing craft distillers across the world, but that we teach our members all about these spirits to give them the 360° experience of what they’re drinking.I started Taster’s Club back in 2012, alone, from my room in San Francisco. I’ll never forget the feeling of getting that first subscriber, realizing that this idea might have legs. We’ve been lucky to have grown to share what we do with more and more people.The business has come so far but we still run a very lean team comprised of independent contractors (equivalent of 3 full-timers) and we’re doing about $270K/month in revenue. We’re just excited to keep doing what we love, sharing what we love with anyone who will give it a try.imageWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?Back in 2012, I was living in San Francisco, working at a big tech company and got the bug to launch a business that aligns with my passions. At the same time, I was getting fascinated with craft spirits from across the world and also became obsessed with reading and learning about them.As I kept on buying/trying new stuff, it became obvious that the process of discovering spirits is old and boring; most people go to the store and probably pick out whatever it is they had last (or, even worse, something they saw a commercial for!). I wanted to create a way for people to get spirits that was more exciting, convenient and encourages discovery. I was getting stoked about this stuff and I wanted to bring people along with me.Taster’s Club got its first subscriber in its first month; I was thrilled. I knew what I was trying to do might have legs but had to do it as a side-hustle. I moved to Paris, was working as a developer at a startup and was able to quit and work on it full-time around Taster’s Club’s first birthday.This was mostly possible at the time because I was a bit of a swiss army knife, able to do most things on my own (web/app development, operations, design, operations, sales, marketing, negotiating with suppliers, etc..), except warehousing/shipping.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Because alcohol is so heavily regulated, we had no choice but to work with third party, licensed warehouse/shippers to work within certain states, which conveniently answered some key questions upfront (dropship or hold inventory?).We began with select shippers only in select states. We were able to find them simply by figuring out who the leading e-commerce sites were working with.Finding a reliable means of serving customers in all 50 states has been a challenge from the start. Shipping alcohol directly to consumers requires a special kind of business license, and in many cases requires you to have a unique license for each state you’d like to serve. The “strictness” of regulations also varies widely from state-to-state, which means that trying to fulfill orders at scale would be a tedious, manual process if we took everything on ourselves. This made the decision between self-fulfillment and drop-shipping very simple.It was going to be prohibitively complicated and expensive to fulfill orders ourselves within the boundaries of the law, so we decided to work with third party vendors who were already licensed, insured, and willing to order, hold, and ship products on our behalf.To find these partners, we researched the current e-commerce sites that were delivering alcohol to their customers and reverse-engineered which states they were shipping to and how they were fulfilling orders.( Note: These sites were basically online catalogs where customers could buy one-off bottles, not a subscription model like we had in mind.)We started with one or two fulfillment partners and just a handful of “states served” and then expanded out as our revenue and customer base grew. As our transaction volume increased, so did our likelihood of landing new partnerships and getting more beneficial pricing terms.We had some of the early challenges were around consistency of customer experience and planning. We were essentially responsible for the customer experience, but it was being administered by various, distributed retailers. For example, sometimes the bottle we needed would be available at retailer A, but we needed it at retailer B, etc.. Or we would run out of our custom boxes (which were expensive when we were small!) at one retailer but didn’t plan properly at the other because of unplanned demand. We just didn’t have the resources to handle the complexity (was just me back then!), so our solution was just to put all customers on one monthly schedule, so everyone would get shipments on the same day every month, even if that means waiting 3 weeks to get your first shipment. It serendipitously worked out: customers didn’t mind, I were able to plan inventory more intelligently and focus on growing the business.Bottles broken in transit, late arrivals, missed delivery attempts (signature required for shipment!), etc. are part of the struggle. Every “fire” requires extra effort to put out because we have to be the middleman between the customer and the retailer operating behind the scenes.The bottles we were sending members early on were easy to choose because – being a huge spirits fan – I just took people through a list of my personal favorites. Making the educational material that accompanied each bottle was cinch because most of it was stuff I (being a spirits geek) already knew. Remember, I was really just making a service that I would have wanted to find a year prior.Describe the process of launching the business.imageOur first website was based off a Wordpress template built for restaurant menus I was able to sort of edit to look close enough to what I imagined, making plenty of design sacrifices to launch fast and on the cheap.A happy accident was that because we had to work with distributed retailers, we were able to make it so we didn’t need to buy product upfront, just according to orders that came in. So, the business literally required no capital to start, aside from the cost of the URL and Wordpress template. The business has continued that way, funded from its own profit.An important lesson I learned is that launching fast and lean was important because it allowed us to be the first to market (now there’s over 50 alcohol-related subscription services), let us define the category and gave important early lessons.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?What really worked for us is to stick to our mission: getting people excited about craft spirits. Just like any business, we made a million small decisions along the way, and to our credit, I think we did a good job at staying focused on the impact we were trying to bring to our members.With respect to growth , we’ve found some success with paid advertising, social media, content marketing, and email.Our general recommendation is to segment your audience and speak directly to their specific needs/interests. You might be surprised to learn that vodka aficionados are very different from whiskey connoisseurs in both language and behavior. Tailoring our message to specific audiences has dramatically increased engagement.Some of the segments we have created include: club type (Ex: whiskey, vodka, rum, etc.), active members, past members, self-purchasers, gift givers, gift recipients, non-members, new members (first 45 days), and recently cancelled members (last 7 days).We also have the ability to create new segments on the fly using information stored in our member database. For example, if there is a snowstorm forecasted to pummel the Northeast, we can pull all active members in the affected states and let them know that their shipment will likely be delayed due to inclement weather.Customer segmentation is a huge advantage for us because it allows us to personalize our email marketing to address the specific context and needs of an individual member. Where most ecommerce stores would just push out an “email blast” to their entire list around Christmas, we’re able to say something like this instead:“Hey John* ,*Christmas is right around the corner...can you believe it?!Last year you bought Jane Smith* a* 6-month subscription* to our* Whiskey of the Month* club. It looks like the subscription ran out in June, but we thought she might have loved it so much that she would enjoy getting it again this year.*If you’re still looking for the perfect gift, we’ve got an active promotion going on that will save you $15 off your first bottle when you start or renew a gift subscription.Interested? Click here to cross Jane* off your Christmas list.”*Each of those bolded phrases is an area that can be automatically tailored to the recipient based on the information we have in our customer database. That means we write a single email template and our marketing software does all of the personalization for us.Now, which campaign do you think gets more opens, click, and conversions? The generic “shotgun blast” email template that delivers the same message to everybody or the highly targeted, timely, contextual pitches that we’re using?HINT: It’s not the first one.Another recent win for us was layering in an abandoned cart sequence. It took half a day to set up, gets a 43% open rate and almost a 5% conversion rate. Free money!By far, our best growth tactic is providing an outstanding customer experience, from the order process to receiving their first bottle to the unlikely event of needing to contact support. Word of mouth referrals are extremely powerful and we earn them every day by going above and beyond for our members.The bulk of our traffic comes from organic search, which is the result of years of just “showing up,” building relationships, and publishing great content that people in our target audience actually want to read and share. Thanks to our content strategy and our PR efforts, we hold the top rank(s) for several high traffic keywords that have a specific purchase intent, which means that we get a fair amount of qualified site visitors that actually have a strong likelihood of converting to members.We also get a substantial amount of traffic from high profile referral sources like Esquire Magazine, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Whiskey Advocate. This is often a spotlight feature of our product offering or inclusion in a “Best Gifts for _____” piece. The latter is an especially nice opportunity, because most publications will update these from year-to-year and carry over the best ideas, so we end up seeing a regular bump in traffic around the same time each year.Paid advertising (search and social media) rounds out our biggest traffic sources, but it’s a much smaller piece of the pie. We don’t typically invest a lot in advertising outside of holiday seasons and special events, because we haven’t needed the extra boost.To make sure that our traffic continues to increase year over year, we’re doubling down on the things that are working (Ex: blogging, on-page optimization, and PR) while also exploring new channels like influencer marketing, sponsorships, and affiliate programs.With respect to retention , our focus on the customer experience helps with that as well. Our members renew their subscriptions at a high rate because we prioritize reliable service and helpful support every step of the way.We have also tried to turn new members into repeat purchasers by launching a members-only bottle shop where they can buy additional bottles of their favorite past selections. These one-off sales are a growing part of our total revenue and help us liquidate any excess inventory.Finally, we try to layer in stories and real-world experiences wherever possible. We publish spotlights of featured distilleries and do a deep dive into their history and processes. Here are a few examples we published for Cotswolds Distillery, Cleveland Whiskey, and Laws Whiskey House.When customers get to know the people behind the product, whether that’s Taster’s Club itself or the producers of the spirits we select, there is a natural connection that starts to form and makes them less likely to churn.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?We’re profitable and 100% of our sales are done through our online store.We serve thousands of members each month in every state except Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah.We start processing orders on the 1st of the month and have an internal goal of getting everyone a “bottle in hand” by the 15th of the month.We have a team comprised of marketing, member happiness, operations, and editorial staff. James Sowers is running the company these days and is doing an amazing job.We recently launched a new wine club just in time for Mother’s Day 2019 (LINK) and have a list of other clubs/regions we’d like to grow into over the long term.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?We really benefited from a couple of intersecting trends when we were getting started: subscription services and craft spirits. We were really in the right place at the right time.Regarding partnerships, one of the best decisions we’ve made is to partner with the craft distillers we love most. We’ve been able to make countless collaborations with distilleries, so Taster’s Club members often get bottles that are only available through our club. It’s been a great source of acquisition for people to know that we are the only places some of these collaboration releases are available.A lesson I learned was not building a robust team fast enough. We eventually got there, but it took me a few years when we frankly could have done it sooner. In the meantime, I was driving myself crazy doing everything from web development to customer service to sales to operations. I frankly had a lot of burnout around year 4 I had to recover from. It was such a game changer for the business when we hired Andrew, our amazing Director of Operations.What platform/tools do you use for your business?Website: Custom, Ruby on RailsMember Shop: Shopify, Back In StockBlog: WordpressPayments/Subscription Management: StripeOrder/Inventory Management: MailParserEmail Marketing: Customer.ioReferral Campaign: iReferSocial Media: RecurpostPayment Recovery:** **ProfitWell RetainCustomer Support: HelpScoutCustomer Happiness: AskNicelyProcess Automation: ZapierWhat have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?My mom is my biggest single inspiration in entrepreneurship. I’ve watched her do some amazing stuff, most recently found and run her non-profit Let It Be Us to increase adoption in the foster care population in Illinois.She taught me to do things that are important and to stay focused on them. Aside from her I try to surround myself with people that inspire me and can act as a sounding board, entrepreneurs and people with other diverse experiences.Other than people, my favorite book for entrepreneurs is The Four Steps to the Epiphany, which helps demystify the process of finding product market fit.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Do the thing you can’t stop thinking about.Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.Have separation between you and your project. If it fails, it doesn’t mean you failed. This is the mindset that makes it easy to try again.Even under tight constraints (day job, family etc…) don’t underestimate the impact of focused, continuous work, even done a little at a time, every night for a year.Where can we go to learn more?TastersClub.comFacebook.com/tastersclubtwitter.com/tastersclubhttps://www.instagram.com/tastersclub/If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

[talhaghafoor2019-blog]

Optimisation is the enemy of creativity in marketing and music

No, you are not becoming crankier as you approach middle age – music is indeed getting worse every year. And the marketing industry’s obsession with optimisation is to blame.

In late 2017, the YouTube channel Thoughty2 published a video exploring how music has changed over the decades. After starting with The Beatles, the narrator continues with an example of classic British understatement: “Fast forward to 2010, when Justin Bieber released his hit single Baby. This is generally considered to be a bad move.”

According to the research in the video, lyrical intelligence, harmonic complexity, and timbral diversity have decreased while dynamic range compression has been used to make music louder and louder. In short, songs are becoming stupider – especially since every hit now includes the “millennial whoop” as well.

“Instead of experimenting with different musical techniques and instruments, the vast majority of pop music today is built using the exact same combination of keyboard, drum machine, sampler, and computer software,” Thoughty2’s narrator states. “This might be considered as progressive by some people, but it truth it sucks the creativity and originality out of music – making everything sound somewhat similar.”

As a rule, businesses do not like risk. The video states that record companies today must spend anywhere from $500,000 to $3m to sign and market a new artist. That is a lot of money to spend on a band without being fully confident of success.

To minimise the risk and maximise the potential return, these companies optimise the music to do whatever seems to have worked in the past. Same set of instruments? Check. Simple lyrics? Check. Is it loud? Check. Simple melody? Check. Can you dance to it? Check. Millennial whoop? Check check.

But that optimisation process is a downward spiral that will result only in songs that will make Rebecca Black’s Friday sound as brilliant as Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. It is creating music by paint-by-numbers. It is ticking boxes rather than being creative. And the same thing is occurring in the marketing industry today.

The rise of optimisation

After my first career in journalism years ago, I went into marketing and at one point met with a recruiter who was looking for a digital marketer. “I need an expert in SEO, ASO, and SMO,” she told me, further rattling off a lengthier list of random acronyms.

“Optimisation” became all the rage after companies discovered in the 2000s how much traffic websites could attract from search engines. After the birth of search engine optimisation (SEO), marketers tacked on the latter word to create “app store optimisation” and “social media optimisation” as well as countless other uses where the term also made little sense.

App store optimisation (ASO) looks for hacks to increase a mobile application’s ranking and findability in places such as the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store – rather than, you know, creating and promoting a real, useful app that people will like. Social media optimisation (SMO) is a useless term because social media is simply a set of channels and tools that can be used for any specific promotion tactic.

Now, businesses have always discussed general best practices. My last job in journalism in the 2000s was serving as the editor-in-chief and executive director of the Boston non-profit newspaper Spare Change News. (It is one of the newspapers in the United States that are modeled on The Big Issue in the UK.)

In that role, I once attended an annual convention of the North American Street Newspaper Association that was held in Halifax, Canada. There, the assembled staffers discussed the best practices in terms of pricing, circulation, and countless other topics. Today, marketers talk about optimisation, which often means the best practices in line with someone else’s algorithms or what has purportedly worked for others.

Buffer has published studies on the ideal lengths of everything from blog posts to tweets to headlines to Facebook updates. HubSpot has reported the best times to post on social media. But in the end, both best practices and optimisation come down to the same thing: doing what everyone else is doing.

The perils of optimisation

Once, I was in a meeting where people were discussing how to get more traffic from blog posts spread on Facebook. The ideas focused on using psychology and gaming the social network’s algorithm: “Let’s ask people to comment on posts to increase engagement!” and “Let’s change the posts so that they are lists whose headlines start with numbers!”

“Make a funny, creative video advertisement instead,” I suggested, noting the reach that humorous videos receive on Facebook. But no one listened. Everyone cared so much about optimising the form of the creative that no one thought about the creativity of the creative. They prioritised the form over the function.

The perfect example of this is when marketers see studies on which headlines get the most “engagement.” In June 2017, Buzzsumo analysed 100m headlines and found this information on which headlines receive the most clicks, “likes,” and shares on Facebook:

Too many digital marketers use such information and focus on producing whatever marcom is cheapest and then optimising it. Here is a sample of recent blog posts on Medium from a certain prolific marketing writer:

5 Strange But True Habits of the World’s Richest People

5 Smart Reasons to Create Content Outside Your Niche

5 Simple Hacks to Sharpen Your Emotional Intelligence

10 Insanely Good Reasons You Should Publish On Medium

3 Unusual Hacks to Completely Up Your LinkedIn Game

Bored now.

Too many marketers go overboard and focus on optimisation to produce rubbish marketing such as clickbait blog posts with the same headline format such as this: [number] [unnecessarily strong adjective] [noun] to [achieve some goal].

The internet will continue to be flooded with boring, optimised posts that all have the same title formats in an effort to get clicks or satisfy other short-term metrics. But optimisation is the enemy of creativity and leads to worst long-term results. (Just look at how many reboots of successful TV shows from the 80s and 90s have failed today. The studios likely thought that copying what was done before would guarantee another success.)

Redundant optimisation quickly becomes cliched, hurts the brand, and is obvious to consumers. If Oxford Academic were to title journal articles in the above manner, the Oxford brand would become laughable. The only way for BuzzFeed News to be taken seriously – and the publication is indeed doing excellent journalism – has been to decouple its brand from the notoriously clickbait parent company.

Optimised reflects only short-term thinking. Using clickbait to get people to a website is the same as knocking people over the head and dragging them into your store. They may be there, but they will not buy anything because they will hate your brand.

When everyone optimises for everything, it is no longer a competitive advantage. The only true competitive advantage that people will have is what rests in their brains – creativity. Without that, you will only be as good as everyone else.

The benefits of creativity

According to an updated study in Admap magazine by Data2Decisions founder Paul Dyson, creativity is – by far – the second-best profit multiplier after market size:

Optimisation and best practices aim to do what someone else defines or the best of what everyone else does – but nothing more than that.

"Best practice is like training wheels – it keeps you safe whilst you're learning how to excel in your industry,” Helen Pollitt, head of SEO at the British digital marketing agency Reflect Digital, said. “To really differentiate yourself from the competition you need to be open to experimentation and growth, true optimisation requires facing failure. The issue with sticking to the safe zone of best practice is it stifles creativity."

The best depiction of the benefit of being different that I have seen comes from this BBH ad:

People notice what is different. And if your marketing does not get noticed in the first place, nothing else you do matters. As BBH London strategy director Lucian Trestler recently put it:

“‘Difference’ isn’t just a two bob philosophy or a frivolous creative penchant. It is the most powerful communications tool there is to deliver commercial results. We have a vast amount of data to support that. Evidence from neuroscience, marketing science and creative effectiveness data all agree on this point; difference is commercially safer than ‘safety.’”

Optimising based on data or algorithms is easier than being creative – but it is not always better, according to Wistia co-founder and chief executive Chris Savage.

“Today, everyone scores their leads with Marketo and A/B tests thirty different varieties of their landing page. You can’t get a competitive advantage doing that stuff anymore. You could say that as the percentage of marketers with a certain tech stack or using a certain tool approaches 100%, the competitive advantage you reap from it approaches zero,” he once wrote. "Using data to scale your marketing is critical. But when we all have access to the same types of data, it won’t be the data that differentiates us — it’ll be the art.”

Tom Goodwin recently said something similar: “A/B testing seems to be getting out of hand. Seems to be a way to offload decision making, not have a strategy, or gut or courage. What great art/music/products would ever be made this way?”

But tell that to those digital marketers who think only in terms of optimisation. Tell that to high-tech chief executives who want to mimic the marketing of competitors and think that they need only a differentiated product to be successful. (Just like record companies, startups are risk-averse because they do not want to lose the millions of investor dollars.)

In a quote attributed to John Ward from B&B Dorland in England, “advertising is a craft executed by people who aspire to be artists but is assessed by those who aspire to be scientists. I cannot imagine any human relationship more perfectly designed to produce total mayhem.”

At Digital Annexe University in 2015, Dave Trott gave a classic speech on creativity. Effective communications, he said, needs to have an impact, needs to communicate, and needs to be persuasive. “Impact” is the most important part.

“Impact will get you on the radar,” he said. “Without impact, there’s nothing there. There might be a bloke outside on the street right now telling us the secret of all life, and we’ll never know because we can’t hear him. Without impact, nothing happens.”

Now, take the desire of so many marketers to optimise all collateral to match some alleged universal standard. How will their work be different from that of everyone else? How will their work stand out? How will their work have an impact?

“Optimisation might work for certain businesses for a certain amount of time,” Steve Daniels, an independent graphic designer in the UK, said. “This course of action may feel safer, but it only remains safe if there are no competitors who disrupt the market or start playing the brand game in a strong way. As soon as that happens, focusing on creativity is a great a way to play the long game – and to invest in your future success.”

If your business wants to remain safe, no one will notice you. Taking creative risks is how you become memorable.

A quick recommendation

So, if you want to listen to an album where the musicians wrote their own material, played dozens of instruments, and created songs that are lyrically intelligent, harmonically complex, and timbrally diverse, I have an assignment for you.

Listen to records or remastered CDs of the Moody Blues album In Search of the Lost Chord (1968) and The Smiths’ song How Soon Is Now? (1985) with a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones and some refreshment of your choice. Maybe it will kickstart some creative inspiration.

After all, the Beatles will be remembered forever. Justin Bieber will not.

The Promotion Fix is an exclusive biweekly column for The Drum contributed by global marketing and technology keynote speaker Samuel Scott, a former journalist, consultant and director of marketing in the high-tech industry. Follow him on Twitter. Scott is based out of Tel Aviv, Israel.

This content was originally published here.

[restless-stirring]

former valve employee tweets about his experience at valve

Some tech companies engage in very focused Developer Marketing efforts to attract candidates, and you need to see through that. The more they try to sell you, or the more popular the company is, the more wary you should be.

Here’s a tip: If you accept a job somewhere and have to relocate, don’t use the real estate agents the company recommends. These agents sometimes have “back channels” to your new employer.

Information about you that would be illegal for your employer to ask or acquire through direct means can be acquired through these back channels.

And then this information can be used to pressure or exploit you.

Another employment tip: Never tell your coworkers or manager that you have a lease, or are locked into anything long term. Leave it ambiguous/private. If they know you’re “locked in” you are opening yourself up to exploitation.

I learned about this from a friend, who got exploited the instant their manager learned they had an expensive long-term lease.

At some companies, if they know you are paying back taxes (or a large debt) you are opening yourself up to exploitation. Always keep that information private.

Another employment tip: Have friends outside your company. Don’t turn your company into a “Corporate Tribe”. It’ll help you get perspective which is extremely valuable.

Many corporate devs we meet are totally and utterly sucked into day to day corporate politics. From the outside this appears very unhealthy.

At some point you’ve got to stop proving yourself. When you’re first starting you career you’ll have the strong urge to do this. At some point, stop. If somebody challenges you just move on.

Another employment tip: If you jump to a new company and leave in a few months (or within approx. the first year) because the place is bad or whatever, it’s going to put a ding on your resume. Companies know this and can use that to exploit you as well.

The more famous and well known the company, and the easier it is for that company to get new hires, the worse you will be treated (in my experience). Beware of that while shopping around for a new job.

At this one company, the only time I saw the president/CEO do a whole company meeting (at the office) all he basically talked about was how he manipulated the press. It took a while for that to sink in. It was a let down.

If you join a company and start to experience trauma bonding (look it up), you should walk immediately. Not every company is like that, and it isn’t worth it.

After joining this one Bellevue company one of the psuedo-managers kept ragging on a well known physics coder I respected. He joined the company and left for another after a few months.

Turns out, this coder realized how bad the work environment was and moved on to a more healthy company. So beware of stories like this as they could be indicative of a unhealthy environment.

If you’re working on a project hourly, think twice before becoming a full-timer. With hourly contracts the company must be careful with what they assign you to work on. Once you go full-time they will have much less incentive to value your time.

If you have to communicate with a very political, overly controlling company, always do so via CC’d email or conference calls with multiple parties listening. Never privately Skype or chat with anyone. This helps keep the overly political company honest.

People at large companies tend to self-censure themselves and behave better when multiple parties are listening. It definitely changes the tone.

If you work on a software project for a company and don’t contractually control the repo, then you don’t really control the project. The company can drop in coders at any time and wreck the project. Don’t sign deals like this.

Don’t work for free on a project, even if they sometimes pay you. The minute you start working for free you have devalued your time and your average pay will be less overall.

You can’t negotiate if you don’t have alternatives. Always have several active options and always be prepared to walk. If the company you are negotiating with knows you have no alternatives you can be treated like a dog.

I’ve seen this up close with a small game company negotiating with Microsoft. They knew the small company had zero alternatives so they got treated incredibly badly.

If somebody says to you “Only through me/us can you achieve success”, walk away. This is a common manipulation tactic.

Never have your company (or one of its owners) cosign your mortgage. You’ll be potentially locked in and when you want to leave it’s going to cause anxiety. (I’ve seen this happen.)

So-called “self organizing” companies are controlled by mass anxiety. Anxiety is contagious. I don’t think they are healthy places to work.

When signing a game development deal you need protection from last minute changes/additions to the design or features done by the publisher. Lock the features and basic design in contractually to protect yourself.

Don’t confuse “work friends” for real friends. People sometimes act very differently inside companies vs. outside. I’ve seen this over and over again. Money/status/power distorts things.

When you’re dealing with someone at a company: No matter how nice and cool that person is, you are actually dealing with that person’s manager. Learn what “triangulation” means.

If you’re dealing with a self-organizing company it’s more complex. You will be triangulated against multiple people and you’ll have to deal with group consensus.

Patent trolling attacks can be used by large companies to control individual developers who have open source software. It’s one tool in their aresenal.

When you start interviewing for a new gig, start at the least desirable company first and the most last. Interviewing (especially white-boarding) is hard and you’ll benefit from the practice at the less desirable companies first.

After you interview at the large company, you’ll then hopefully have multiple offers and can use them as leverage against the larger company.

If you and your work-friends experience a mass layoff, relax and start organizing. Identify the companies you and your friends want to work for. Send in people who don’t want the job to interview at each company to gather “intel” about the process, questions, tests etc.

After each interview get a brain dump from that candidate. Send in multiple devs if needed to gather more complete info about each company’s process.

I’ve seen this done and it works.

The devs who are sent in as “probes” will be getting valuable interview practice and networking, so it helps them too.

If you’re at a company and mysterious unexplained things start happening, and some people start leaving randomly with no explanation: you may be facing a mass layoff soon.

So-called self-organizing companies have a corporate arm somewhere controlling the entire operation from “above”. Find them and their friends to figure out who has the real power.

What you’ll find is that the corporate arm influences, controls, and “anxiety spikes” the self-organizing arm nearly constantly. It’s not self-organizing, it’s a company with opaque managers ruled through mass anxiety and fear.

If a company places massive emphasis on hiring and recruiting throughout their culture, turnover is either high and/or they are growing. Identify the cause and if it’s mostly turnover then the place may not be a healthy work environment.

Some companies make temporary strategic hires to help recruit from your social network. You may be disposed after a critical mass of new hires occur from your social network.

I’ve seen this happen first hand. The company was moving into a new field. They made the temp strategic hire then fired her a year later with no warning after they had hired up her friends and their friends.

If you’re at a place like this, you must learn who the corporate managers are, who are their friends, and the cliques. They are the ones with real power and everything else is an illusion.

At self-organizing companies with bonuses, workers will watch for rivalries between other coworkers to exploit. They will team up with one dev to bring the other (disliked) dev down a notch in some way. (I’ve seen this several times.)

Such battles can get VERY nasty and be almost invisible until the trap is sprung.

If the battle gets too big or nasty the corporate arm will step in to “referee”.

At self-organizing companies, coding must be done super defensively as anyone can come in and “turd up” the code you’re working on. You must design your systems for this inevitability.

Related: At places like this, you dare not depend on other systems actually working for any period of time. Copy/paste/rename the helper functions you depend on so others can’t quietly break or jankify your systems and make you look bad.

External hierarchical “Hired Gun” teams are used strategically by self-organizing companies to get key stuff done. If you work at a place like this, you must identify who controls this team as they effectively have access to a power multiplier.

At self-organizing companies, once you earn some “company bucks” it’s time to find key contractors to help amplify your abilities at the company. Always control the approval of their pay- never let a coworker control that.

It’s best to contract with famous devs, or well-known devs in different countries. They’ll be unlikely to ever want to accept a full-time offer and will be happy to remain a contractor.

There’s great risk involved in hiring contractors like this. But the rewards are potentially massive to you and the company. Hire very carefully.

If the group consensus turns against your contractor, you’re in trouble and you’re going to get dinged. So carefully manage the perception of your contractors.

On a competitive team within a self-organizing company, avoid asking for help unless you absolutely, positively need it. Any information you receive may be purposely distorted in some way. If you do ask for help, gather consensus from multiple devs.

Related: Route around problems vs. asking for help or modifications on these teams. Once you ask for help the other dev(s) have control and may purposely send you down a blind alley.

At a self-organizing company your coding style will change. Instead of modifying key headers and adding common helper functions, you may want to just define the helpers locally to your code instead to avoid political issues.

I know this probably sounds nuts or it shouldn’t be an issue, but I saw or encountered this problem multiple times.

On teams like this, it’s the Wild West. The devs aren’t working for the greater good of the company, they are working for good bonuses. This is one reason why bonuses in this type of environment are a really bad idea.

To earn a nice bonus at a self-organizing company, identify a feature or project that is valuable and team up with strategic partner(s) to make it happen. Over time you will find devs you work well with.

At a self-organizing company with bonuses: Once you modify a project you’re on the hook for anything until it ships. The team will hold your bonus hostage and claim your work broke something. It’s basically company-legalized extortion.

At self-organizing companies you must be very social. Early on you need to identify who is closely interacting with the corporate arm, who their friends and cliques are, and what they find valuable. If you fall outside this group’s favor be prepared for pain.

Related: You need a powerful “Sponsor” or “Baron” to back you. Figure out what they want and like. Watch or read “Hunger Games”. Once you get to this level you are almost untouchable.

At a self-organizing company: keep your test resources as low-key as possible/practical. If your team has setup a key test lab that you need to ship things, don’t advertise it outside your group. Other powerful teams/devs who want to see you fail will get it piled into a corner.

At a self-organizing company you must pay attention to subtle hints from the corporate arm. They just won’t come to you and say “work on this”. Events will just happen and you need to be wise and realize that nothing happens by accident at places like this.

Your mental model should be a hierarchical corporate arm with a self-organizing layer underneath. The corporate arm will reach into and influence the self-organizing arm using various tools.

Some tools are key strategic hires forced into the system, random firings, hints placed with devs that something is valuable or interesting, exposing devs to extra resources like the ability to pay contractors, destroying resources like test labs, or bonus payouts.

You can also just reach in and grab devs and force them to a new team. (That’s why you have wheels on your desk.)

If at one of these companies you find yourself in the basement with a stapler, working alone: be prepared to be fired unless you have a strong Sponsor and are taking an approved break.

Anyhow, I’ve given a brain dump of a lot of the things I remember while working for a so-called self-organizing company. IMO, once you throw bonuses in they become utterly toxic workplaces.

I do think they can work much better without the bonus incentive distorting everything. Also, as an external dev interacting with a self-organizing company I’ve had very good experiences.

If a connected person buddies up to you and starts showing you stuff, pay attention as they are basically telling you “this is valuable to the corporate arm”. If they start showing you their wealth that’s the corporate arm telling you “we will make you rich”.

If you’re running a self-organizing company, you need to have a measure and understanding of the current average and peak Anxiety Level within the self-organizing arm. Or it blows up and talent walks.

Random firings, messing around with key resources like test labs, encouraging toxic behaviors through massive bonuses, and forcing devs to move around randomly are all anxiety increasing/morale decreasing events.

And this is why I walked away from a self-organizing company 1 week after being given options. It was just too unhealthy a workplace, and it impacted my health too much. I would say most of my coworkers where ridiculously stressed out (I learned some had to go on meds to cope).

I came in one day and my coworker (let’s call him Bob) disappeared, his desk wheeled into the hall to be picked clean. “Where did Bob go?” I asked. I got replies like “Bob who?” or “don’t talk about Bob”. I realized then that I had no idea what I had got myself into.

Another type of temp strategic hire you can make is to recruit a well-known author, a famous dev, or a person with specialized skills (like an economist). Have them write gushingly about their amazing experiences at the company. Once you’re done with them quietly let them go.

At a self-organizing company you can easily spot the strategic hires made by the corporate arm. If they didn’t need to be interviewed, or the interview was purposely watered down, the corporate arm is making an exception.

In cases like this sometimes the corporate arm will quietly train the strategic recruit before the actual interview. They’ll give them all the questions for the white-board interview.

They turn these devs into experts who answer all the whiteboard interview questions with flying colors. “Bob was amazing! He definitely lives up to his legendary reputation.” Actually, no, they’re just being inserted into the system strategically.

These folks will be given a free pass. The corporate arm can hire and fire anyone they want at any time. If you went through the normal interview loop and weren’t filled in beforehand, the corporate arm could care less about you.

I watched this process happen with one well-known graphics figure. The dev didn’t take the job. I saw another graphics dev be “streamlined” into the company in exactly this way.

And so basically if you’re at one of these companies, you need to look around and spot the strategic hires. They have more power or sway than you, and it’s not merit based at all.

I watched all this happen multiple times. This is how a “self-organizing” company actually works in practice. If you’re told anything else it’s just fairytale developer marketing. If you complain you can forget your bonus or even your job.

Some companies always ask whiteboard questions from a “calibrated” list of sanctioned problems. The calibrated problems are on the internal company wiki. To defeat this process, just send in a bunch of “probe” interviews to get a sampling of the problems.

This is most convienent after a mass layoff. Since layoffs occur all the time in the video game industry it’s easy to get a good sampling when devs cooperate.

And so the interview process at these companies is biased in unexpected ways. Devs aren’t stupid. It favors well-connected candidates who are already in the system.

When you let the interview process be ran 100% by your employees at a bonus-centric organization, the current employees will tend to find ways of turning down recruits who would be too much competition.

So ironically, the better and more skilled the recruit the less probable it is that they’ll get the job. Current employees don’t want any more competition for their bonuses.

So bonuses can “invert” the employee-ran hiring process and turn it into a farce. I saw this happen firsthand many times, and the corporate arm’s response was to do forceful strategic hires.

The better response is to dump the bonus incentive and to involve the corporate arm (and their close friends) in all interviews to monitor them for accuracy/bias/fairness.

And so this is a form of Developer Marketing. Hire some key person, push them to write or blog, then once you’re done with them let them go. The “pawn” won’t complain too much as their career will be enhanced by being associated with your company.

What the developer actually writes is actually consensus based mumbo-jumbo. It’s just marketing. It’ll be based off the version of reality the corporate arm wants to market to developers they haven’t recruited yet.

To spot these marketing folks, just google them and see how long they lasted at the company. If it was a short period of time, they were probably a temp strategic hire made mostly or only for marketing and/or recruiting purposes.

How to spot a “Baron” at a self-organizing company: They hang out with somebody from the corporate arm. Or they are long term buds. They’re in their clique. If you buddy up to them and make their lives easier you’ll benefit.

So watch where people go during lunchtime. Just walk around and see who’s going offsite together. Reverse engineer the office’s internal social network and you’ll spot the key relationships involved in managing the self-organizing arm.

At a self-organizing company be very careful what you say to the corporate arm and their friends. If you casually disclose some weakness (say you owe a large debt, back taxes, or a divorce battle), they’ll know you are more prone to being manipulated.

And so you may become a tool of the corporate arm and find your desk involuntarily wheeled all over the office.

I do find myself fascinated by self-organizing companies. I do think they can work well but it depends on the corporate arm’s manipulation and psychology skills. Instead of explicit top-down structure it’s basically a company managed through centralized mass manipulation.

If the corporate arm is ran by a secretive reclusive zillionaire who is living in a wealth-bubble, the self organizing arm is going to probably be an anxiety-prone wreck. They need to back off and start measuring the system. Hire some in-house psychologists and therapists.

At a tight-knit self organized company be sure to prepare your spouse before they go on official company spouse events. She or he will be amazed at how much the spouses of corporate arm workers reveal.

The corporate arm spouses will let your spouse know immediately who the bosses actually are. There will be no ambiguity at all. Zero. You will be shocked if you actually bought the dev marketing.

In practice, company spouse events are just part of the extended interview to learn more about how to further or more deeply manipulate workers in the self-organized arm.

They are also gathering intel about workers who are unhappy or will be departing soon. It’s best to avoid them.

Related to this, for the first few years don’t give self organized companies your spouse’s email address. Don’t expose your family to subtle manipulation or any extra stress than is necessary.

The “intel” gathering goes both ways, however. A savvy self-organized company worker can have a spouse gather key info about the corporate arm from other spouses. But be prepared to learn things you don’t like.

At self organized companies you need to identify the Company Lifers. These are sometimes jaded, arrogant folks who have survived endless purges, mayhem and chaos. They know all the convoluted, broken systems, and the manual cargo cult-like processes used to run the company well.

These folks will abuse and demean newcomers without flinching. They will laugh at other’s demise. They are survivors and they don’t want new competition risking their standing within the company.

To survive you either need to buddy up to one of them or completely avoid them and always route around them.

Another way to spot powerful or connected insiders at a self-organized company is to spot the rare dev who rarely comes in and doesn’t do much. They’ll say a lot and work in small spikes. Figure out who is sponsoring them (sometimes they’ll smartly have more than one).

One thing that bothered me in my experience at one self-organized firm was how contractors could be treated. Unless you were famous or well-known, you could be treated like a 3rd class citizen. It didn’t matter how good you were or what you accomplished.

If you first applied and failed the interview, then later became a contractor, you were marked for life and would never become a full-timer. Eventually they get purged.

If you’re famous or well-known and refuse to relocate, a contract gig could work out great. Just keep your internal boss happy, get shit done, and enjoy it while it lasts. If/when your boss loses face or gets dinged somehow your gig will end soon.

Please note that most of the things I’m talking about at self-organizing companies occurred 5-10 years ago. It’s ancient history now, and these places do learn from their mistakes. Ask about the bonus situation if you interview at one.

One trick you can use to learn inside knowledge of a competitor’s tech is to offer fully paid for job interviews to their devs. Then have your employees ask tons of probing “interview” questions about the tech they worked on. Most devs will freely give away tons of inside info.

They’ll do this to prove they created or worked on the tech in question. They’ll want the job and NDA’s be damned.

And this is why if you are in a fast-paced/competitive field you must keep your devs happy or they’ll disburse to your competitors at the nearest opportunity and give away all that inside knowledge.

If you run a self-organized firm and you have turned up the anxiety levels too high, your company will become brittle and prone to mass talent flight. Wealthy competitors can come in and make offers and basically steal all your tech and devs right out from under you.

And so for the parts of the firm that are working on breakthrough or “hot” tech, you should back off and optimize for low anxiety. Make sure all key workers have a strong bonus/stock option incentive to stay around. Don’t mistreat them.

Let’s say you and your work-friends are acquired by a self-organized firm. Congrats! On the downside you are a marked person. Once the firm absorbs your tech or game you will be fired more often than not. They will identify the key devs and let the rest go within 1-2 years or so.

If you’re one of these folks, you need to make friends within the corporate arm’s clique and get a Baron or Sponsor fast or you’re on thin ice.

Your first year at a bonus-centric self-organized firm is a delicate, critical time. It’s basically do or die. In the growth-focused phase of the company, either you get a nice bonus or you’re fired in that first year. That’s it.

They will replace you instantly out of the hundreds of fresh recruits waiting at the door. Avoid buying a house or signing any expensive long term leases for the first year.

Always demand a startup bonus and save it because odds are you’ll be purged within 12 months. You’ll need those funds to ride this out.

If you know you’re going to get purged in the first year, and want to keep the job, interview at a competitor and land the job before the firing/bonus cycle. Then spread rumors that you interviewed up the road and have an offer.

They will be more inclined to keep you for another chance, as you will be seen as more valuable.

Politics at self-organizing firms are fascinating. Identify the barons and the corporate arm folks. Now, tell all their friends or associates (only!) rumors about whatever amazing things you are cooking up, or have going on.

If you tell these folks directly the news will have little weight and be immediately distrusted/doubted. If the news spreads organically from the bottom up, it’s viewed with more weight.

The phrase describing this phenomena is “if it’s not public it’s not real”. Public knowledge is given weight, individual claims or private knowledge is distrusted.

Bonus-centric self-organizing firms work on cycles. The key synchronizer is the firing/bonus/company vacation season. Everything is tuned to that tempo.

So if you’re at a place like this you must time your projects just right to land a big number on Envelope Day. Make your big new feature or whatever you’re working on land long before this day.

If you add in a key feature to a project too early, the team will have you in a compromising position (they’ll hold your bonus hostage and force you to help them on unrelated issues). To avoid this it’s all about timing.

After the “cleansing” (firing) season is over, take a break. Then put in some insurance work, in case you mess up your big new feature or release. If you mess up you can rely on the insurance work to get you through the next bonus cycle.

Beware of company vacations at self-organizing firms. Stay on your best behavior, don’t drink much, and keep your mouth shut about your personal life. You can be fired at these events, and any info gathered can be used against you. Make sure your spouse is given the heads up.

On the flip side, feel free to talk to the corporate arm workers and their friends in the self-organized arm. Valuable info and connections can be made during this time. Just be aware it’s absolutely not a real vacation.

Company parties at self-organizing firms can be incredibly awkward events. Imagine Stalin holding a Worker’s Party at a Gulag. That’s how fun they are. Genuine relationships are rare at these places and there’s too much mass trauma.

These events occur in multiple phases at large firms. Purposely claim some excuse to attend the island with a totally different group. You’ll be treated better, have the opportunity to be recruited by different groups, and be able to network more effectively outside your group.

One thing I learned at a self-organizing company is to avoid external sponsored company events, like GDC parties. Some corporate arm folks drink and act badly, because they can. The mask comes off and it can be pretty ugly.

Normally, the corporate arm folks are virtually unseen by your typical self-organized worker. If you are powerful enough and have a very strong Sponsor, feel free to hold their feet to the fire when you need something done.

All legit self-organizing firms have to “leak” an official unofficial Company Manual. It’s got to be slickly made and fun to read. Developer Marketing gurus create these productions to sway new recruits into the Hiring Funnel. Insiders laugh at these things.

At a self-organized firm the corporate arm will be almost invisible. They are like the Agents in The Matrix. When things are going smoothly they aren’t around. When they appear and adjustments are made you need to keep working like nothing happened.

I spoke with and interacted with the corporate arm, but they didn’t call themselves that. But they had corporate titles, or were members of the Board of Directors, etc.

I noticed that HR folks never lasted long at these places. They would always get let go and quickly replaced. Not sure if this was a feature or a bug in the matrix.

And so I’ve reverse engineered as much as I could, swapped notes with ex and current workers to figure all this out. Somebody needs to write a real handbook I guess.

The corporate arm folks don’t want you to think about their presence but of course they are always there making small and large adjustments to their little slice of corporate paradise. Is it really self-organizing?

Before firing/bonus season at a self-organizing firm you’ll be pulled into a meeting room with 2 or so other workers. They’ll stack rank everyone in various categories. Someone will be there from the corporate arm to record the “data”.

It was my strong suspicion that this data wasn’t really always recorded. The mysterious process used to compile the data was never talked about or defined.

In my opinion, sometimes (most of the time?) this was just a dog and pony show. There was no well-defined process or algorithm used. It was more based off popularity and the opinion of well-connected workers.

At self-organizing firms you need to be cautious about what teams you decide to work with. Spending time helping a low value team won’t help your career no matter how good your work. Always have a strong Sponsor or Baron to protect you during purges.

Or, associate yourself with a Sponsor’s pet project. Do what you need to do to shield yourself from the next purge’s axe.

If you don’t follow this advice you will be fired, sooner or later. No matter how good or critical your work.

Example: If you have pissed off an entire room full of developers, even while just trying to help them, don’t run off and then help the low-value support team. Associate yourself with a strong Sponsor’s team and stay put and you’ll survive the next purge.

To get some level of “employment insurance” at a self-organized firm, interview and have solid connections at local competitor firms. Spread bottom-up rumors that Company X Y and Z are your immediate backups. It’s a +1 to your “purge immunity”.

If someone at a self-organizing firm acts badly towards you, there are no HR or bosses to report to. Instead, you’ll need to avoid that person, don’t enable them, and route around them whenever possible. Buddying up to their detractors can help.

What you’ll find is that this person has pissed off multiple people at the company. Find them and swap notes.

One way the corporate arm in a self-organizing firm can take firm control over a team is to plop an employee or two from another company into the team. This is called “embedding”. If you see this happen, make sure the embedded devs can’t see your monitor.

Also, the embedded devs will be treated like solid gold if the company wants to woo them with a job. This is in actuality a sophisticated recruitment event in motion.

These devs will be Fast Pathed through the usually labourious and difficult interview process.

If you work at a self-organizing firm and you want to stand out, start moonlighting and open source your work. Get as much press and exposure as you can. If you get lucky an internal team will use your tech based off merit alone.

Ironically, it you write a lib and try to get it used internally you will probably be ignored and ridiculed. If you do the same thing and open source it publically the insiders who try to control things have lost control.

Closed source codebases at corps like this can be chaotic war zones. They are #ifdef messes with no upfront design or planning. Rewriting engines fixes absolutely nothing because the code reflects the broken culture.

And this is why you shouldn’t be an ass at a company like this. Eventually you can have dozens of internal devs wanting you fired.

At self-organizing firms you might be placed into a huge open office and given massive monitors. This is to normalize all communications and for more effective surveillance. Everything will be monitored either directly by a corporate arm employee, one of their barons or friends.

Make sure you set your OS fonts to the tiniest possible to avoid snooping at your emails or code. Or choose an off color scheme.

Also before establishing where you will sit you should conduct a site analysis to identify the spots with the most auditory and visual privacy.

On the flip side, if you go and sit in the corner and just code it could hurt your social standing. Contractors typically wind up in those spots and are quickly fired sooner or later.

Eventually as you earn more Company Bucks the corporate arm may allow you the use of the less common small and pleasant 2-4 person offices. But for newcomers you should get a pair of good noise blocking headphones and learn to love your huge open office.

You’ll notice at some self-organizing companies that lavish attention and endless funds are spent on new offices every few years. Every detail will be thought out lovingly.

The constant upgrades to new digs help disrupt the inevitable traumatic associations employees start having about their current office. New digs will boost morale for a time.

The corporate arm’s official line is that the new offices and constant desk moves help disrupt stagnation. In reality it just keeps workers’ anxiety levels up so they can be more effectively manipulated/controlled.

You’ll notice if you look around that everything has been thought out. Even color psychology has been applied, with colors chosen to invoke excitement, enthusiasm, and warmth.

Even the bathrooms are designed with effective team collaboration and communication in mind. Quick meetings at urinals are encouraged, even celebrated in the unofficial official employee manual.

The office environment may seem designed to resemble a classroom and remind you of your childhood. Employees will be reshaped and remolded in the company’s image, and to do this you must regress back into childhood and be reborn.

Just so it’s clear, if I was a billionaire I would be running my own little self organizing company. With a different color scheme, and better offices. I do think they can be superior to hierarchical companies. Hierarchical companies can degenerate into insanity.

And so my experience was super valuable. I can’t work for a hierarchical company anymore because I think they are mostly insane.

If you work at a self-organized company and have anxiety spikes every time the corporate arm makes some random adjustment, research adaptogens to help cope with the stress. Anxiety and stress are the tools used to control the self-organized arm.

While competing against your coworkers for bonuses etc. the “Last Man Standing” principle can apply. Those who can withstand the stress and chaos the longest win.

Occasionally the CEO of SelfOrganizingCo will want to do a Pet Project. Maybe he’ll want to make a point or prepare for some perceived future threat. If you get recruited consider yourself lucky as now you have the most powerful Sponsor in the entire company watching your back.

If the CEO breaks too many “rules”, like forcing employees to volunteer, powerful corporate arm devs might become mad that their resources are being taken. They’ll send their Barons around to loudly complain. Enjoy the show.

Go to lunch with key devs at this competitor and be seen doing it by your coworkers. It may seem awkward, but it’ll make you appear more valuable and connected.

SelfOrganizingCo had a local competitor (a well-known company) basically across the street. When the competitor was moving and looking for new offices, SelfOrganizingCo kept bidding the price of their recruiting competitor’s new office up.

To appear more valuable and more connected, go to lunch with developers at SelfOrganizingCo’s competitor. Do it in a location very likely to be witnessed. These corps hated each other.

At SelfOrganizingCo, you have a license to print endless money in the basement. So to slow competitors down, deploy the “Recruiting Black Hole” strategy to lower the average IQ and talent level of your competitor’s new hires.

You’ll need to find some busywork to keep your new hires you’re preventing your competitors from employing happy and productive. One solution is to put them on near-endless unicorn engine projects.

And this is another reason why developers who can instantly get gigs at the competitor across the street have a little more security.

If a recruiting candidate at SelfOrganizingCo is being walked around at the end of the day and shown the engine or new tech or whatever, the Corp is in Sell Mode. Don’t show this candidate anything negative or inefficient about whatever it is you’re working on.

If you do you’re going to get dinged. Also, if it rains or is overcasted a lot, always try to interview candidates from sunnier places in the summer if you can.

For the famous candidates, don’t reveal any details about your techniques or approaches. The famous candidate will go back to the corporate arm and put your work down to make them look more desirable/valuable.

Honestly my first 12 or so months at SelfOrganizingCo I could barely sleep for the first time in my life. I developed insomnia because I knew if I fell asleep I would have to go back into the office after waking.

If you are an HR person at SelfOrganizingCo, be forewarned that your days are numbered. Mysteriously, HR employees never seemed to have any job security there at all.

And so this bonus-based phenomena prevents savvy self-organized workers from helping other teams on key problems. It discourages collaboration.

Also, if you are a contractor never inquire or ask about attending the company vacation. Contractors are 2nd class citizens and are not permitted on the island. If you ask too much you’re just decreasing your purge immunity.

The CEO of a SelfOrganizingCo must have very strong connections with the media. Favor media that gives you glowing copy & paste press, and ignore or punish media that doesn’t. The tech media machine is a key extension of your Developer Marketing and recruiting efforts.

Smaller media sites can be the most effective amplifiers or your company’s media messaging efforts. Fly whoever runs the site to your office and wine and dine them.

Only the best and most savvy SeltOrganizingCo CEO’s have mastered the powerful art of media manipulation.

In late-game self-organizing organizations the CEO graduates to two primarily responsibilities: Firing people and manipulating the media.

A proper SelfOrganizingCo must surround itself with a constellation of hierarchical satellite firms. The satellites do a lot of the grunt work, create key technologies, and basically just get shit done. SelfOrganizingCo isn’t very efficient and so these friendly firms are needed.

One successful pattern is to outsource the early creation of a product to a satellite firm. Then bring it in-house for tuning and release. This ups the morale of your self organizing workers: they get the rewards of shipping with less grunt work.

There will be some tension between the workers at these companies. Unworthy devs who interviewed and got turned down by SelfOrganizingCo will wind up at one of these satellite firms. This is awkward as anyone who failed the interview is marked for life as inferior.

Also, internally the workers at SelfOrganizingCo will be very much aware that their jobs could be outsourced to a cheaper hierarchical firm. So the work done by satellite firms will always be judged as questionable or of inferior quality. There’s inherent bias involved.

If you’re a worker at one of these satellite firms never interview at SelfOrganizingCo. The risk isn’t worth it. If you’ve already interviewed and were turned down, remember the process is tuned to reject qualified candidates who could disrupt the bonus pool.

As a worker at SelfOrganizingCo, bonuses are what matter. Shiny new features earn you massive bonus payouts. Maintenance work is not valued and will get you eventually fired in a purge. To bump your purge immunity you must work on Shiny New Features before bonus/firing season.

Maintenance work can be used to earn some fractional purge immunity early after bonus/firing season. Never right before. Make sure you market the hell out of your amazing maintenance work.

Ideally you will cast and market your mundane but necessary maintenance work as adding amazing and incredible new features.

At SelfOrganizingCo there is a purge immunity amplification technique. If you have skills valued by many teams and other devs, market them to as many other teams as possible. Helping them add Shiny New Features will boost their purge immunity, indirectly bumping yours.

If you are a competitor of SelfOrganizingCo and meet up with self-organizing workers, remember that these workers are highly trained and susceptible to Anxiety Spikes. To exploit this, remind the worker of all the purges and randomness imposed on the office by the corporate arm.

This will work much of the time. After the Anxiety Spike the person will be more amendable to your company’s way of seeing things. This is how you recruit them.

If you are a self-organizing worker, stop and think right now about your current Purge Immunity level. The highest levels are granted to famous strategic hires with tons of corporate arm connections with rare skills who add or enable others to add Shiny New Features.

As a developer you need to cultivate a brand for yourself. Publish, release useful open source libraries, and hobknob+associate with other famous developers. This will help you stand out, get higher salaries, fast-pathed job interviews with no white boarding, etc.

Merit alone will not get you the fast-pathed job interviews. If you enter a large or well-known Corp without a brand be prepared for an uphill struggle no matter how good you are.

If you’re an unknown, having a powerful famous backer can get you fast-pathed into these corps as a contractor. You can turn this into a career.

Some cities have massive amounts of local talent pools and so without having a Personal Brand you won’t stand out and you open yourself up to exploitation.

This is why working in smaller cities can be so nice. There’s much less competition for your job and the companies have a harder time replacing you. The employee/employer relationship can be far healthier in the smaller less desirable cities (but there are less opportunities).

You especially need a brand in the Seattle/SF areas. Prices are insanely high and increasing and there’s massive competition for your job. Employers can easily purge and replace workers wholesale as needed. You’ve got to stand out.

The trend I’m seeing is for the software workers at the megacorps in large cities to be nervous, stressed out, abused wrecks who obsess over the company. These megacorps resemble Monty Python skits with their insane priorities and bubbleville cultures. Buyer beware.

The “C” (crazy) word will be used to discount what I’m saying. It’s easy to call some group or person crazy. Self organized workers are trained to see hierarchical firms as utterly crazy places. Anyone who points this stuff out and just tells it like it is is marked as Crazy.

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback about my recent Twitter storm. It's been super valuable and very encouraging. About 3/4's of this material was taken from notes I've been composing over the past few years. I tried to make it sound funny which isn't easy with this material.

If you're stuck in an open office, do this: Request multiple huge monitors and pile them up on your desk. Claim you need multimon to be more productive. Then, always be savvy about where you place your desk. The direction you face is important: always face everyone else.

If you can't do this, then put little mirrors on your monitors so you can see at a glance who's behind you.

Attach 3M Privacy Filters to your monitors if you deal with sensitive information, and/or shrink your fonts.

[thehowtostuff-blog]

People hate hubris and hypocrisy more than they hate evil, which is, I think, why we’re seeing the beginnings of a bipartisan cultural backlash against the tech industry. A backlash which is wrongly conceived and wrongly targeted … but not entirely unfounded. It’s hard to shake the sense that, as an industry, we are currently abdicating some of our collective responsibility to the world.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk do a ton of objectively bad stuff, but I just want to be clear that the mere act of holding onto that much money in a world with this much inequality is in itself a brutally evil action, and alone makes them bad people.

— Joseph Fink (@PlanetofFinks) June 13, 2018

I don’t want to overstate the case. The tech industry remained the single most trusted entity in America as recently as last year, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer. Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest man in the world, and Elon Musk probably its highest-profile billionaire; of course they’re going to attract flak from all sides.

Furthermore, tech has become enormously more powerful and influential over the last decade. The Big Five tech companies now occupy the top five slots on the Fortune 500, whereas in 2008, Hewlett-Packard was tech’s lone Top Ten representative at #9. Power breeds resentment. Some kind of backlash was inevitable.

And yet — the tech industry is by some distance the least objectionable of the world’s power centers right now. The finance industry has become, to paraphrase Rolling Stone, a vampire squid wrapped around the our collective economic throat, siphoning off a quarter of our lifeblood via increasingly complex financial structures which provide very little benefit to the rest of us. But a combination of learned helplessness and lack of hypocrisy — in that very few hedge fund managers pretend to be making the world a better place for anyone but their clients — shields them from anything like the rancor they deserve.

Meanwhile, we’re in the midst of the worldwide right-wing populist uprising which has led governments around the world to treat desperate refugees like nonhuman scum; turning them away by the boatload in Europe; imprisoning them on a godforsaken remote island in Australia; tearing children from their parents and caging them in America.

Tesla and Amazon’s treatment of factory and warehouse workers is at best questionable and at worst egregiously wrong … though if they were all replaced by robots, that would eliminate those complaints but also all of those jobs, which makes the complaints look pretty short-sighted. But it’s not whataboutism to suggest that outrage should be proportional to the relative scale of the offense in question. If it isn’t, then that indicates some seriously skewed priorities. What is it about the tech industry’s relatively venial sins, compared to those of finance and government, which so sticks in the craw of its critics?

Partly it’s the perceived hubris and hypocrisy — that we talk about “making the world a better place” when in fact we sometimes seem to only be making it a better place for ourselves. Life is pretty nice for those of us in the industry, and keeps getting nicer. We like to pretend that slowly, bit by bit, life is getting better for everyone else, too, while or sometimes even because we focus on our cool projects, and the rest of the world will get to live like us too.

Which is even true, for a lot of people! I was in China a couple of months ago: it has changed almost inconceivably since my first visit two decades ago, and overwhelmingly for the better, despite all of the negative side effects of that change. The same is true for India. That’s 2.6 billion people right there whose lives have mostly been transformed for the better over the last couple of decades, courtesy of capitalism and technology. The same is true for other, smaller populations around the world.

However. There are many, many millions of people, including throngs in our own back yards, for whom the world has gotten decidedly worse over the last ten years, sometimes as a result of those same changes or related ones (such as increasing inequality, which is at least arguably partly driven by technology.) Many more have been kept out of, or driven away from, our privileged little world for no good reason. Why is it somehow OK for us to shrug and turn our backs on them? The tech industry is enormously powerful now, and Peter Parker was on to something when he said: “with great power comes great responsibility.”

So why is it that we’re only willing to work on really cool long-term goals like electric cars and space exploration, and not the messy short-term stuff like inequality, housing, and the ongoing brutal oppression of refugees and immigrants? Don’t tell me it’s because those fields are too regulated and political; space travel and road transportation are heavily regulated and not exactly apolitical in case you haven’t noticed.

That painful, difficult stuff is for governments, we say. That’s for international diplomacy. That’s some one else’s problem. Until recently — and maybe even still, for now — this has been true. But with growing power comes growing responsibility. At some point, and a lot of our critics think we have already passed it, those problems become ours, too. Kudos to people like Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, who says “But we cannot delegate these complex problems off to the government and say, “We’re not all part of it,”” for beginning to tackle them.

Today in "private provision of public goods", Salesforce founder Marc Benioff pledges to shelter or house all the homeless people in SF in five years; https://t.co/5fO7y8Gyct

— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) June 16, 2018

Let’s hope he’s only among the first. And let’s hope we find a way for technology to help with the overarching problem of incompetent and/or malevolent governments, while we’re at it.

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