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thewestmeetingroom · 4 years ago

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Planting Seeds

Broadcast Jan. 2, 2021

SPEAKERS

Braeden, Janine, Rebekah, Sabrina, Melissa

[Intro Music]

Braeden: Hello and welcome to The West Meeting Room. We are broadcasting on CiUT 89.5 FM at Hart House where we are taking up space on Dish with One Spoon Territory. My name is Braeden, and I'll be hosting the show today. Welcome to 2021 everyone. I hope this finds you somewhere safe and taking good care. A few weeks ago, we had a virtual meeting with our team of co-producers for the show. And before the pandemic we used to meet up in the studio once a week for these really beautiful and open-hearted roundtable discussions. I've been missing deeply sharing that space with everyone in person this past year. So for our last gathering of the year, we created a virtual Roundtable. So for this first show of 2021, we'll be bringing you into our last conversation of 2020 in the West Meeting Room. So grab a cup of tea and come join us. Joining me in the studio - Do you want to introduce yourself?

Sabrina: Hi. I'm Sabrina. I feel like I'm a tired voice. [laughs] You might have heard me a lot. But yeah, I'm Sabrina.

Rebekah: I can go next. I'm Rebekah. I'm not as tired. But um, yeah, I'll probably take a nap after this.

Janine: Hi, I'm Janine. I'm really tired, too, but on a sugar rush. So god helped me today. Thank you. (laughs)

Melissa: Hi, I'm Melissa. I'm new to the party. So I am very excited to be here, but also very tired.

Braeden: Well, thank you all, this tired bunch, for joining me in our zoom studio today. Um, just wanted to, Yeah, just have some casual conversation to round out the year. But I guess, I did have in mind to maybe start with Sabrina because we were talking a bit about snail mail. And I know you put together a package of letters for your business. And I just wanted to ask like, Yeah, what were like - what sort of inspired that and what is maybe drawing you to like this slower form of connection and communication?

Sabrina: Yeah, I feel like this is like a mix of business strategy and also like genuine inspiration. I created a product called Letters from the Tarot, which isn't super unique by any means. Like a lot of people do this in different iterations. But basically what that was, is like me going to my tarot cards and pulling just in general, like a general message, and then taking a picture of it in like a Polaroid style thing. So that that person had like a physical representation of the card, and then writing out their reading, like on proper letter paper, and like putting it in an envelope and making it like a super analog process. Because I usually do readings like online. One of the reasons for this is because the holiday seasons are coming up, and I wanted a physical product that would be like really good to put in some stocking stuffers. So that's like the business perspective. But also, I feel like there's a lot of screen fatigue going on. I was like really excited for the prospect of, there's like a restaurant down the street from where I live. And they're like, super, like spooky and like gamer-esque kind of thing. And I was like really excited to like proposition them over at Halloween and being like, I'd love to like sit in a corner booth in your restaurant and just like do live readings. And I'm like, I just get paid with tips and you can like bring people in or whatever. And then I can't do that because of the pandemic and everything. So it's like, how can I reproduce that kind of physical experience and like bringing those messages that way. And it was really nice, because as we were discussing earlier, I'm notorious for over-committing myself, always. And as I was putting it together, I kind of, I got a wholesale order for them. So someone like bought a bunch of them to put in their store. And at that point, it was like at the point of no return I had to like buy all the materials and I was like, Hey, we're doing this. And midway through I was just like, this is too big like I can't do this. I've never done this before what if everything I do is gonna let this store down. I already bought all this stuff like this is terrible. I had like 18 assignments due and I was like freaking. And then I finally got to the point where I was just sitting down and like writing the letters. And it was like, super nice and meditative. And then I got like washi tape and stickers and I like did them all up. And then I put them in the envelope. And then I did a wax seal, which is like much easier than I thought it was going to be. So I learned a new skill and just going through all the process and like putting all the letters together, it was a great way to disconnect from my screen. It was a great way that I hope I can intuitively connect with just like people in the community in a way where they kind of have like a physical reminder of that reading. But also that like allows them to disconnect from their screens for a little bit as well. And maybe do some intuitive reflective work, just kind of like on their own with actual paper. And it was nice to write things. So yeah, that's kind of like the story of that. In a nutshell. I hope I answered your question.

Braeden: Yeah, no, that's nice. It touched on it really beautifully. And yeah, you've got, you definitely inspired me to like, bust out the wax seal that's been in my drawer that I just like impulse bought at like a stationery store, and then never did anything with. So I think this is the season for snail mail. And that's why, yeah, I really wanted to connect with you about that.

Sabrina: Oh, another point real quick, too, was that the other inspiration for this too, was with electronic readings, it's very much just me. But the sheer amount of supplies that I needed to do this required me to go out and buy things. And this was also an avenue for me to reinvest into the community. So all of my like materials are from, or not all of them completely all of them, but the majority of the materials, I made sure to look and try to source as much as I can from like local Toronto businesses. So most of my stationery stuff is from this place called Wonder Pens, which is like, in the West. And they're owned by the like this couple, who I believe are also people of colors, so I'm also trying to like uplift like BIPOC and other marginalized communities. And then I got like one of the cameras that I was using from this place called Henry's, which is like an independent photography shop in Toronto. So that was another thing too, was like a physical product means that I could get physical tools and buy them from other small businesses.

Braeden: That's very cool. Thank you for sharing. Maybe in keeping with thinking about like analog and slowing down and time away from screens, and just sort of like, I don't know, connecting with tactile things in a meditative way - I think, Melissa, I'll toss it over to you. I noticed that there's a lot of foccacia popping up on your Instagram feed if you don't mind me sharing that? I wondered if you had any reflections on that that you could share with us?

Melissa: Yeah, you would be right, we have been making like two foccacia a week, which is like not good, because that means we've also been eating two a week. And I mean it's, I guess it could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. But yeah, I'm not sure if anybody is familiar with Claire Saffitz. She used to work at Bon Appetit. And now she's doing her own independent thing, which is awesome. But yeah, we took her focaccia recipe that she posted kind of as like the breakout on her YouTube channel. And we, my partner and I, aren't super big breadmakers, which actually thinking about that is a lie, because I do have a sourdough starter in my fridge. But yeah, we thought we'd give foccacia a shot, because in all honesty, I don't think I had ever even eaten it before. So I was like, might as well just make it and try it all at once. And it is very therapeutic. In terms of slowing down, I mean, obviously, you do need to rely on the screen a little bit to like, watch the video and take your notes and stuff. But once you're there, it's a lot of waiting, which I'm not very good at. I'm not a super patient person. So I think that it's a good exercise for me to make things like bread where you are forced to wait. And, you know, if you don't wait and you get impatient, bad things can happen to your bread. So it's a really good exercise for me. And if you ever get a chance to make focaccia when you get to the dimpling part, where you have to like press down the dough, you will never feel anything like that in your life. It is amazing. And the better, like the more you you let your dough proof and like the bigger it is. We also realized the first time we made it, we didn't put enough water. So the second time we made it, it was that much fluffier. And even that, like even if you don't eat bread, I would make the bread and dimple it so that you can feel it and then gift it to somebody because it's amazing. So yeah, that's kind of a way that we've been, I guess turning off and kind of spending some nice time together. Which is great. So yeah, we've been eating a lot of bread, you would be right in saying that my feed is all foccacia now.

Braeden: No, it's wonderful. I really enjoyed it. So, yeah. What about you, Rebekah? Janine? Are there like some tactile analog screens-free activities that you're doing? Or maybe, or maybe thinking about doing in these coming weeks of hopefully getting some some rest and some time away from work?

Rebekah: Yeah, absolutely. When you mentioned snail mail earlier, like with Sabrina, I was thinking like, over this entire summer, I actually also did a snail mail campaign where, because I was back home with my parents after having left Canada because the lockdown, I spent a lot of time like writing letters back and forth, like people I hadn't talked to in a really long time. I wrote letters to my cousins. I wrote letters to like classmates from like university and classmates from high school. And it was just like, really therapeutic. And that act of waiting. Like Melissa said, I'm not a very patient person. So that idea of like having to be patient for like the mail to be delivered. And then, you know, checking the mailbox every day thinking like, Oh, is it here? Like is the letter here? I don't know. I felt like SpongeBob in that moment, just like constantly waiting by the mailbox, just like for something to come. And then I also was staring at the stack of cards that I have sitting next to my computer on my desk that I bought on a whim because I was like, You know what, maybe we'll do like holiday gift - like holiday card ideas, like send out to friends and family. Um, haven't gotten around to that, because this semester has not permitted me to do so yet. But I think that that's something that I'm going to try to pick back up again. Because like Sabrina said, it's like really therapeutic for me to like, write to people, and then the idea of waiting. I just love getting something in the mailbox. Like, I think that's really fun. So, yeah, and another tactile thing. I'm just like constantly writing in my journal. Like, I always joke that like, my journal is going to be turned to a memoir one day. But like, I think I'm like actually serious about it. Now at this point, I'm not writing for other people still, but like, I'm very much thinking in that historian brain and like wanting to document like my life during this pandemic over the course of this year, because I've learned a lot about myself. I grew a lot, challenged myself a lot. And so I think it'll be a really cool way to like, look back, like during this time especially because this - time is fake - But like, especially looking back over this year, like, time has gone by so fast and so slow at the same time. Like February is right around the corner. And I'm thinking like the last time I went out and had fun was for my birthday, which was in February of last year. And that's like two months away. So not really sure what happened between now and then but it just keeps going by so I think a journal will be a really cool way to like, share that with my future family. You know, like you're learning about 2020 in school. Well, let me crack open a journal for you. And I'll tell you about what was actually happening. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.

Braeden: Thank you for sharing. Janine, what about you?

Janine: I feel like, during this time, I've gotten a lot more in touch with my creative side. Like the past month, I think I was super stressed. And one way that I kind of, like kind of took care of myself because I don't want to say self care. I want to just be like, Yeah, I was not doing well and it wasn't like a skincare routine. It was like, I felt like I was losing my voice for a bit because I was working like so hard on things to please other people that I kind of lost my creative voice a bit. And so I created this photo essay and I interviewed a lot of people around me about their experiences and about their lives about different themes. And that made me really happy. And I think that going back to my journalistic side, that's a lot more of just listening to people and talking about things in a more abstract way has made me feel more myself. So I want to do more of that. I want to explore, like photo essay type projects. Obviously podcasts, but even like just poetry. I feel like sometimes we work, work, work, work work, and we forget that our internal voice is still there. And I want to do projects that are true to myself as well. Because sometimes I get sucked into this idea that um you know, I have to be the perfect package of like a 4.0 student and a perfect daughter, a perfect sister, a perfect whatever. And I end up losing myself in the process. So doing projects like this really make me happy.

Braeden: That's it. That's all my questions. [laughs]

Rebekah: I was gonna say like, Braeden, what about you? Have you been linked in with any like tactile things?

Braeden: I feel like I did kind of get into a flow with cooking. I feel like the past couple weeks, there is something about like - I feel like it's so boring - but just like chopping vegetables. Like I can just turn my brain off. And not like, I mean - I'm sure all of you wrestle with this - like work is showing up in your dreams and like, it just completely hijacks your brain space. And, and I find like when I'm cooking, it's just the smells and I'm chopping, you know, 1000 carrots. What's really nice, I think, that's helped me get into this ritual - I get a Good Food Box from Foodshare, which is a really amazing organization, every Thursday. And it's just like a signal to my brain that I have to like - it kinda reminds me - I used to work, I've worked in a lot of restaurants as a cook. And, you know, you have your delivery days. And you just, like you just cook, or cut, chop, like 1000 things of everything. And so, yeah, every Thursday, I just chop a ton of vegetables. And I can just - it just feels like the only time that my brain shuts off from the things that I'm stressed about, or like my to do lists. And I'm just, I feel like fully present. And then I get a great nourishing meal out of it. So yeah, I feel like I'm actually also doing something nice for myself that is nourishing and generative. So yeah, that's been really nice. Thanks for asking.

Janine: I love that you guys love doing things with your hands. And like, that's a form of therapy. For me, it's the opposite. Like I hate, like cutting things up for cooking and stuff like that. Like for me, I find a lot of comfort in stillness. And I feel like, granted I've burned down the kitchen once before or almost burnt down the kitchen trying to cook. So there's some bad experiences with that. But like, generally, I've just been having a lot of walks in trails and just forcing myself to, you know, just sit and journal and write or like, think of the first thing that pops into my mind. And I feel like, I don't know, I really love that you guys - like we each have different ways of expressing ourselves and different coping mechanisms. And I think, Melissa, it's funny that you mentioned foccacia, because I only learned about that yesterday. I didn't know what it was until yesterday. But my mom is also a bit big on making breads. I just for some reason, I am too scared to try it myself. I think if I tried it myself, it would go terribly bad.

Melissa: You should definitely try it, I promise you, it will not go poorly. My only expert tip for you is don't forget the salt because I forgot the salt yesterday. And it does make a difference. But you should try it. It's really easy. And I can send you the video. And if it doesn't work out, then just slather some dip on it and dip it in balsamic vinegar. And it'll be fine. You can't mess it up, I promise.

Sabrina: I think, too, there's like salience. And like, say your thing, like just try it. And like see, especially when it comes to bread. And I know especially in the everyone like being at home people are reconnecting to like growing plants. And like everyone's like baking bread and like doing these very kind of like slower tasks that take time. And I think something that I keep thinking about too is this post I saw an Instagram, which is not unique to that person, because I think it's just a general thing. But like "the day you plant the seed is not the day that you like harvest the fruit." And I think too, like we're talking about, like work showing up in our dreams and like having these expectations. And I think moving back to these things where it's like especially when it comes more to plants, I'm thinking more to plants, the philosophy like your breathing life into something that's like also its own thing. And sometimes things don't work out. And like that's okay. And even with bread, like honestly, sometimes the breads rising, and then it collapses. Like, it doesn't want to hold all that air in you know what I mean? L ike I don't - I mean I kind of subscribe to a form of animism. So I think there's life in all things. But I do think the life in bread is different than the life in like plants. But I think that's just like more of a testament to like, not everything can be controlled, or like confined into like a small test, test-case box. And sometimes things just kind of like, do run their course. And it's up to you to just kind of adapt and accept that and like wait and see how things crop up in time. I think there's virtue in that as well. Like learning to like live more slowly and like see what happens.

Rebekah: Yeah, that's actually a really cool idea that like something that I've been trying to reflect more about recently is, you know, trying to like - this year has thrown so many curveballs in like many, like many ways than one and so the idea of like not really knowing what the final product will be like, and kind of like you said, Sabrina, like, you're planting seeds and like, you have to wait for them to grow and like see what kind of options and stuff kind of come out of that. And I'm in the process of like applying to different programs right now. And everyone's like, well, what's your number one choice? Like, where do you want to go? And I'm like, you know what, I'm just, I'm just planting seeds right now. Like, I'm just trying to, like, see and wait and not trying to get my hopes up too high. And just trying to like, become more comfortable with like, living in this ambiguous like, not being able to plan my life out for like, five or 10 years kind of thing. Um, over the summer, I actually like bought a stick and poke tattoo kit. As like a whim like, everyone's out here making foccacia or like making sourdough and was like, You know what, I'm gonna learn how to tattoo myself. So why not? Um, that was my quarantine project. And I did this one tattoo. It's like, what is it called, like a crystal ball. I tattooed it on my ankle. And I just really like the idea of a crystal ball. Because you're always trying to like, see into the future. Like, you're always trying to look and like, figure out what's coming next. And that was my entire shtick over the summer. I was like, what's coming next? When am I coming back to Toronto? What am I doing after this year? Like, how - what is life going to look like? And things were changing every two weeks. Like you couldn't really plan for it into the future. Like you had no idea what was going to happen next month. And even now my mom's like, when am I gonna see you? I'm like, You know what? I can only think till the end of December. I can't think past that right now. But yeah, looking at that crystal ball literally reminds me like, okay, you're always trying to look and see what's coming next. And like, of course, it's good to have a plan. I'm a planner. Like, it is what it is. But I'm just trying to like, remind myself like, it's fine. If you don't know exactly what's happening next. You are not supposed to that's like the really cool thing about like, this whole life thing or whatever. Yeah, I don't know, I think crystal balls are a really cool way to monument that and I got a really sick tattoo out of it. So yeah.

Janine: I kind of feel the same way. Like, I feel like I've, I've always like, wanted to control everything in my life and wanted my plans to work out a certain way. And even though I'm really young, I still feel like, that's been a part of me, since I was really young. I've always kind of wanted to be an overachiever. Never really was, but always had that intention. And I feel like, as we're graduating next year, next semester, I feel this sense of like calmness knowing that I don't know what my next step is. And I like that. I like that, you know, I'm going into this new chapter of my life, this new phase, where I'm not sure what's gonna come of it. But what I do know is I kind of - it's kind of cheesy - but I want to live a value-based life as opposed to like a goal-oriented life. And that doesn't mean that I don't have ambitions, but I am trying to focus more on the day to day values that I instill in my work and my friendships and my character, as opposed to like, you know, associating my worth with a certain career or a certain job, or, you know, whatever it is. I just, I'm kind of tired of like, putting my worth up against, like, my ambitions. And it's good to have a healthy balance with that. But right now, I want to take a break from that next year. And that's my, like, seed that I'm trying to grow next year. Yeah,

Sabrina: I feel like what you're talking about when it comes to like, future planning is really salient. I was literally in my apartment yesterday talking to Max like, Okay, so we'll graduate in June, and then we can like rent our new place, and we're going to foster dogs for a year and then we're gonna foster children. And I'm like, trying to figure out like my three year plan, because, you know, I came into it thinking that I was going to go to law school, which is not completely off the table, but I'm definitely not going to go right after graduation. And this is gonna be like, the first time in my life where like, I'm not - I'm like ending that - I'm ending a year, but I'm not knowing that I'm going to go into another year, you know what I mean? Like, I don't have that structure of school telling me like, where you're going to be and like, what you need to read and what you need to do, and it's a full time thing. And I was ready to like, until 24, just like have that structure. And then I got into this audio thing. And then I was like, I'm not gonna go through the torture that is professional school. Now it's like, literally, I turned to my partner and I was like, I just don't - I'm, it's just hitting me that I need to figure out like, what am I going to do for the rest of the entirety of my life? Like starting in May, it's just going to be - like I'm not taking summer classes to get somewhere else. I'm not in pursuit of a degree or any sort of like outside metric of like something that like someone else deemed I need to get or like to get to something. I just can, I don't know, I can like move somewhere if I want to. I can like try buy a house. I can't buy a house. But like, theoretically, I could buy a house if I had the means, you know what I mean? Like, if we were in a different world, I could buy a van and like, go live in the woods somewhere. Like, I'm just like, freaking out. So yeah, I think I need to plant some seeds, but then like, let them grow. And stop trying to like envision what the life, what my life would be like having those fruits yet when I don't even know what seeds I'm planting.

Melissa: I think that's such like, everybody's kind of echoed the same sentiments that like, you know, we all kind of have an idea. And then the pandemic had other ideas. And now nobody really knows what's happening. And obviously, nobody wants to be in a pandemic. But I think something that has come out of this is like, it's a very humbling experience for a lot of people. But I think especially for students, and especially for students who are, you know, like, everybody's kind of set already. Like, they have goals in mind. And they have a schedule, and they have a life plan and whatever. And the pandemic came around and was like, actually, none of that is on the table anymore. And, like, obviously, that's distressing. And a lot of people who have, you know, mental health issues are really struggling right now. And like there are a lot of negatives. But I think that the one thing that it's really teaching people is you, you can't know what's happening. And I think that that's okay. So yeah, I don't know. I feel like I also graduate this year from, in April, from grad school. Which is crazy. So we're not going to talk about that. But in general, like, there's just so much up in the air right now. And I think that, I don't know. I think that it's kind of healthy, especially for folks like myself who are really type A and really planners and organized and whatever. Like you don't know what's happening. And that's okay. And nobody else knows what's happening, either. So I think that it's been sort of, like the patience that is needed to make bread. I think that the patience that's needed now, too, is something that maybe nobody asked for, but maybe some people needed. I don't know. Yeah, I struggle a lot too with wondering what to do after because I haven't not been in school since I was like a kid. So I don't know, that's a lot of pressure. But I think that what you guys have said about like, just planting seeds where you can and figuring out which ones are going to grow and blossom and which ones aren't, like that's all right. And I think that's just part of the experience. So yeah, I don't know, just everything that you guys said was really nice. And I think that it's true that everybody has been forced to slow down, which has been tough, but I don't know, maybe unnecessary toughness for a lot of us. So it's gonna be interesting to see what happens when our seeds start to grow wherever we've planted them.

Janine: And I don't know if you guys also feel this, but I have depended on other people's validation for a really long time with my work and what I want to do. And culturally, you just feel like, you know, it's a reflection of not just yourself, but your family, your parents. Like they've invested in you your whole life and stuff like that. So I I kind of had to let go of that pressure of I'm trying to impress other people, because I have to choose between, you know, being true to myself doing work I'm passionate about and being okay with uncertainty, and put other people's opinions of me aside and not give them the weight that they once had on the way I think of myself. And so, yeah, I just wanted to also add that.

Braeden: Yeah, I'll jump in as, as someone who's sort of like on the other side of, of having gone through school, and then, you know, it feels like a long time since I was in school. But yeah, Janine I think that was like the biggest transition of - I remember, my first actually, my first job after school was cooking, was as a cook in a kitchen. And it was like, I had to retrain my brain. I didn't realize how institutionalized my brain had become where I would like, you know, I would like make something or prep something and be like, okay, but like, what's my grade on this? Like, how did I perform? Like, what's the bell curve on this like creme brulee I made? Like I was so desperate for this like feedback or like, you know, or how I'm doing or - and it was like it was a real, it kind of felt like a brick wall of a reality check of like, Oh, I actually need to source this from myself. And I can't just like move through the world trying to like mine this like performance based review from people, because that's not real life. Like it was, it was a really trying experience. Like going, getting out into the working world and also just as like, yeah, listening to all of you talk about like, what's next - like, I mean, you're just gonna live lifetimes. Like with each year that passes you're going to work so many jobs. You're going to go so many places. You're going to meet so many people that like before you know it, when you look back at the past couple years - when I look back at the past 5 years, 10 years, since I've been out of school, like I can't even list the number of different jobs I've worked in. It's just all just sort of snowballed one, one from the other. So yeah, I'm really excited at like the blank canvas that sort of lays ahead for all of you. And, yeah, I'm excited to like, keep in touch, you know, throughout all of that, to see where all of you are, are traveling and doing and creating.

Rebekah: That's actually interesting, because it reminds me of an article that I read from the New Yorker yesterday. The article was about, like, if you could see other iterations of your life, like, depending on the choices and stuff that you made. And I love that concept. Like, I think that, you know, a bunch of sci fi movies kind of do that. But my favorite movie is called Mr. Nobody with Jared Leto, where he lives like three different lifetimes because he never makes a choice. And so at the end of his life, when someone's like interviewing him, like, Oh, so what was your life, like? He recounts, like, all of these different lifetimes that he lived because in his mind he never made a choice and actually lived all those different realities. It's a really trippy movie and I highly recommend if you get a chance to watch it. But the article was really fascinating, because, you know, this like concept of like, oh what would my life be if I made this choice? Or if I did this thing, if I did that thing? Like, for people who constantly live in that framework, you know, like, what if, what if? what if? what if? It can be like really overwhelming. Whereas like, some people kind of wrestle with that "what if" idea, and they're like, Okay, cool. That's a fun thought experiment. Now, let's get back to like, you know, regular life. I don't know. I don't know if anyone else like in this call does that but I also think about like the movie Meet the Robinsons, and how like, he built a time machine where he could have like seen what his life - like there's different alternate realities. I think alternate realities are really cool. But I sometimes wonder like what my life would have looked like if I had made different choices. But not trying to dwell on that. So I'll just toss it out there.

Sabrina: Yeah, my main like philosophical stream is ethics. Not that they stream you in philosophy in U of T. It's just what I enjoy. So that is the life that I live Rebekah. I wake up in the morning, and I'm like, what if I wear this blue shirt? Like, is it immoral to wear it? Like what? I like go to the grocery store and I'm like, Is it wrong that I'm buying this? Like what if I didn't - you know what I mean. But it's like all the way down to like a micro, like microcosmic decisions to be like how would my life be differently if I changed my life in this way? Always from like, a moral perspective. And I definitely think that, it's like, yeah. I feel like there's definitely those people there who like have that thought experiment and then they like move on with their lives. And I think that's also really important to be able to cast like that. But when you're like trapped in that cycle of like, but what if I do this, but what if I do that? What if whatever? It can become like really overwhelming, like you were saying. Because then you just don't want to make a decision. Because who knows what's gonna happen. And I think that's the - that's that thing, too - is like that need for control that we're talking about. And like, some semblance of like I know where I'm going. And I know what's about to happen and I know that I'm going to be safe, right. I think that's like, the big thing, too, is like people looking for safety in like a lot of the visions of the future that they see. And it's like an interesting balance to strike between like allowing yourself to consider all these possibilities, but then also acknowledging that you can't, like you were saying with a crystal ball, like you can't actually look into the future.

Janine: Yeah, that's such a cool article. I really want to read it Rebekah. I love Meet the Robinsons was one of my favorite when I was younger. And I think that if you pose the question, would I want to know what my life would look like a year, two years, three years from now, the answer for me is always No. I do not have that curiosity in me because I actively create my own future every day. And that sounds like - I've - this sounds kind of, I don't know, I watched an interview with Miley Cyrus last night talking about her album. And I really liked what she said. She goes, "every night, I kind of say goodbye to myself and I wake up a new person." And so that's where self forgiveness comes in is, you know, you can't say that, you know, next year I have to have this like checklist for my life. And for this year, and I have to do this, this and that. And I have this intricate plan. Because when you do that life kind of laughs at you and just says no. [laughs] Refuses everything that you know, you've pushed yourself to you know obsess over and stuff. So I think it's like maybe this balance that we need to strike between actively working for what we want in our lives. And, you know, working and manifesting that every day, but also letting go of that control and being like, I have this self forgiveness, self acceptance. Whatever comes will come, and I'm okay with it. And it's a very hard balance to strike.

Sabrina: I think too Braeden, going back to what you were saying about like that external validation is so real. And it's like one of the many, many, many, many, many reasons why I get very upset when professors like excuse their terrible policies being like, well, I'm just preparing you for the real world. Like, no. You're just preparing me to continue in academia. And that's a whole other kettle of fish. But like, the real world is not like this. I had to like work through this, like with my therapist. Because at my - this job is great, because it's all about creative expression. And there's like no punishment to that. But I feel like the world, "real world" is interesting. Because when you're like employed somewhere, like you can get fired. So there is that kind of form of performance review. But like, as long as you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, like no one's gonna check in at the end of your work every day and be like "Good job! B plus! Here's how you could have improved," you know what I mean? Like, maybe you should have used like, a blue paperclip and 12 point font instead of a red paperclip and 10 point. Like, they just want to know that you got the thing done. And I'm now in a position where I'm like working in a more of like a professional capacity where like, to me, it's like the concept of like being fired has like replaced the concept of like getting a C plus. And I'm like everything's terrible because then I'm just automatically gonna be fired. And I have to like, talking to my therapist about it, and I'm like, every decision I make, I'm like waiting for my supervisor to come back at me and be like here's where you could have improved. Here's where you did well and here's what you whatever. And it's like, she just wants me to get my work done. She does not care. You know what I mean? Like, she hired me because she thinks I'm competent. So she's like, there's ways that I'm being trained, but also ways where it's just like she's trusting me to do the thing. And it's more of like a completion mark, I suppose. If you want to keep up the school analogy. I think it's very interesting to be aware of those things, because I was not aware of it. And I also found myself too - and I think this is like another issue with like the post-secondary system - but like, a lot of the assignments that I do in class, I'm not necessarily doing what I want to do. I'm doing what I think my TA is going to mark well, right. And that's also another mentality that I needed to subvert when I entered like this sort of position where it's like, I need to stop creating things that I think my supervisor is going to like pat me on the back for solely because I want her to pat me on the back. Like I need to create good work that I'm proud of that I know she will be happy with. Because she hired me to do the work that I know that I can do you know what I mean? And I feel like these are like really important things to acknowledge that people might not even realize, because then you enter like these workspaces and you have this feeling of like, why does everything feel so out of place? Like, what am I seeking? Like, why does this feel so weird? And it's just like, because everything that you've been like taught to do and the way that you've been trained to like interact with the work that you're doing is not actually appropriate for this space. And like you're not the problem. It's just like your conditioning and the way that you've been working for the past couple of years. And, yeah.

Melissa: I actually, Sabrina, something that you said made me think, actually kind of have a realization. I have an interview this week for a big person job, which is very exciting. But speaking of, you know, having that academic like evaluation sense instilled into you, I didn't even realize that I did this. But I reached out to somebody who like already works for the organization to try to get some insight into the interview process. And now that you said that, Sabrina, the only two questions that I asked her were about how I was going to be evaluated. So I asked her a question, how much do I need to know about x topic? Or like, Am I - I basically asked her if I was going to be quizzed. And then the second question that I asked is, does she want like, the interviewer, in your experience, does she want me to hand her a portfolio. And she basically responded and was like none of that is necessary. They're basically just - I hate, like, I don't want to say vibe checking, but basically they're just making sure that you're a good fit. And like, they made me do a personality assessment. So I'm pretty sure they're just making sure I'm not lying. But like, the first thing that I wanted to know is like, Am I being tested on my knowledge? And if so, how am I being tested? And if, like what is the test look like? And I didn't even realize that that was an academic thing until this conversation right now. And it's funny, because when I realized that it wasn't going to be that, I felt relieved. So I feel like, I wondered what that kind of says about those values that have been instilled in us from being in academia for so long. The fact that I feel so relieved that she's just going to ask me about who I am as a human being and not judge me based on if I get a pretend test, right. Like, I don't know. I just, I didn't realize but that's kind of just a personal anecdote about how that - I feel like that idea kind of creeps into your life in ways that you don't realize all the time, which is very harmful in my opinion. But yeah, that definitely is going to take some unlearning. So if anybody has any tips on how to unlearn years of academic pressure, let me know. [laughter]

Rebekah: We're all like shaking our heads.

Sabrina: I did want to say, like, the biggest like - this isn't necessarily like a learning process. It was just one situation, but that kind of like helped me put things in certain perspective. It's like - my, one of my siblings is like over, a decade older than me. So I was like, back in like, [Rebekah gestures "me too"] (whoo, yeah! Rebekah! Twinsies). So like, it was like, I was back in early highschool, early highschool. And he was at my house, and he was doing like an interview, like Skype interview or whatever. And I was just in the living room, but I was like, over listening, because he was just talking, it was like everyone's business in the common space. And, you know, he's talking about his resume. And he's talking about his qualifications. And he was just like, yeah, I speak French, like English is my native language, but I also speak French. And I was waiting for them to be like, okay, conjugate like passe compose. Like, he was like, whatever. And like, the interviewer, I believe, also spoke French, and then just started speaking French to him. And then they spoke French for like, five minutes. And then they moved on. And I was like, they didn't test him. Like, they didn't test them. Like, they just spoke French. And then they moved on. And then I - this is like years later, right - like, a couple months ago, I was in the interview for the job that I'm in now that I'm trying to unlearn these like academic things. And, you know, she was just kind of like "So I see you speak French on your resume." And I was like, yeah, and she's like, cool. Like, someone that we're working with also speaks French, so you can connect on that. And then we just moved on. And I was like, Wow, I didn't need to do a dicte. I thought I would going to like interviews and they'd be like, so here are your conjugation sheets, you have 20 minutes, hand them back and then we'll evaluate your proficiency. And I think it's really interesting because like, even like my partner, he's going into a different sector. And he actually gets quizzed in the sector that he's in. It's actually common to be quizzed and have take home assignments. And they'll send them to you and then see how you go through those assignments like to be hired, like, Oh my god, that sounds terrible. I'm looking at him right now telling him that like, that sounds terrible. So it's definitely not like all the case, I'm sure in certain respects like that academic training is helpful in certain sectors. And this is more of like a STEMy kind of sector for him. So that I think makes a lot more sense. Because it's more quantitative than qualitative. But yeah, I think what was very helpful for me was that seeing possibly the way that my life could turn out, even in early high school by like watching my brother's interview, even years, or listening to my brother's interview like even years, years, years ago, and then experiencing that kind of situation myself, is just understanding kind of like, even what Melissa was saying. Like understanding the circumstances where like, you aren't necessarily going to be quizzed. And like, that's okay. And just know that like, not everything in life is going to be like some pop quiz trying to trick you into like, creating a metric for your performance or something. Some people will just like believe you. Which I think is also something like it's like, phased out of people as they move through like institutions and structured institutions. Like people don't believe people for things. Like you need a whole note that you have to pay for just to tell someone that you were sick. And like, can I get like a rewrite for this thing? Like yeah, it's just interesting that in the "real world" there's more space for trust and just kind of like taking people for their word.

Braeden: Yeah, um, maybe to round out the end of our hour together I would love it if we could go around, and if everyone, if you're comfortable, if you could share maybe some work or an aspect of your work, or the way that your work that you work that you're proud of. And then maybe, do you have like an intention or a well wish to cast towards yourself over this break for your rest and restoration? Like, as we round out our last conversation into the year like what's like a good intention that you want to cast towards yourself to invest in yourself over the break?

Rebekah: Oh, tough question. I don't know, for me, I'm working on a couple of different projects right now. And I guess I'm just really proud of the way that like, I've not only like sought out like these different projects that feel very different from what I usually do in my academics as a way to like challenge me. Like I'm working this writing project right now, and I write a lot for myself, but I don't really write for other people very often. And so this is a, like a challenge and a test, but I get to interview some people who I'm really excited to interview and like, you know, tell the story that I don't think that is like currently being told. But my well wish for myself for over the break is to reconnect with my grandparents. I know, that's completely unrelated to what I just said. But, um, I've been like, meaning to like, reconnect with them for a while. And it gets like really hard to do that like during the thick of the school year. And so I floated the idea to my grandparents a couple of weeks ago that I want to do like an interview style thing with them like I did when I was in high school as an updated version four years later. Because I think that there's like more questions that I want to ask them. And while I still have them here to ask those questions, I want to like make sure I can document that and like have that as a family historian type of thing. So, um yeah, that's my wish for myself is to like actually make that happen. And so I'm saying this now, because I'm gonna listen to this later. And it's going to remind myself, Hey, did you do that thing that you said you're going to do? And hopefully the answer will be yes. There we go.

Janine: I love that idea. I think that just inspired me to do the same with my grandmas. To call them and ask them these questions. I think for me in the break, I want to just personally clear my head a bit. And like I said before, kind of find my voice again and find my passion again. Because I think I've lost it for a bit. Like not lost it, but it's definitely dim because of like, a lot of anxiety and stress and stuff lately. And I think that I want to meditate. That's one way that I want to take care of myself and whatever will come creatively will come. Whether it's writing or audio or visuals, I'm just giving myself that space to breathe. Like, it sounds like a simple thing. But it's, it's harder than it seems to just breathe and meditate and take care of myself in that sense.

Sabrina: For me, something that I'm proud of, in my workflow - I think I've been moving into a space of establishing good boundaries across everything that I'm committed to in a way that honors how I've committed to those things. And doesn't like, have me like under delivering. But then also in a way where I can like juggle everything. And I think my like wish for myself for this, this kind of break period is honestly just to rest. And to like, just take some time to do nothing or like do things that I enjoy. Like for myself. I don't even know, I don't even know what rest means. Because I also have like a bunch of ideas. So it's like, people are like well you need to rest and it's like but I also want to do 1000 things. So like, I don't. I don't know how you marry those two things. But I will - I don't know, hit me up in three weeks, and we'll see if I figured it out.

Melissa: Those are all really great well wishes to yourself. I think that it's really important to cut yourself some slack when you can. And on that note, I guess something that I am proud of is I was talking to folks about my education plan earlier. So it's basically just an academic assignment that I'm working on. And I'm really proud of it. Because I think that I surprised myself with how like legitimate it feels. Like I feel like looking at it makes me feel like maybe I am actually a museum professional. And I don't know, I feel like it kind of helps mitigate some of that imposter syndrome. So it's always nice when you produce something that you feel like, Hey, I could maybe actually show this to an institution. So that's been pretty cool. And it's also been fun to work on. And then my wish for myself I think is just to be nice to myself over the break. So if I need a day off to not do anything like that's okay. Whatever the outcome of this interview is, I think just being nice to myself about that. In echoing what Janine said, like, I'd also like to be creative over the break. I have a knitting project that I'm working on, but like if I don't finish it that's okay. So yeah, I think just giving myself space to be productive or to not be productive and trying not to put too much pressure on myself, which I'm pretty good at putting pressure on myself. That is I'm not as good at taking pressure off. So we'll work on that this week. And what about you Braden?

Braeden: Um yeah, I think something, I think something that I'm, I'm proud of around work is that I'm realizing, I feel like for the first time, sort of my work is like integrating itself with me as a person and like who I am and how I move through the world. And like - and I feel like the actual bedrock of my work is in building relationships. And I feel like that's kind of who I am as a person. Like, I feel like I'm returning to who I've always been. And that's also just like integrating its way into work where it's just like the foundation of all of this, is in building relationships, building trusting meaningful relationships. But also, yeah, creating pathways for creative expression for myself and for the people around me. And so yeah, that just feels, it feels really nice to come into alignment with that after sort of years of like, a very like turbulent working life. And then something I guess, like some well wishes, I think I just want to read. Like, I just want to, I just want to sit on the couch and like read a book for three hours. And if I like fall asleep after 15 minutes with like, with napping with like the book on my face, like, that's cool. That sounds like bliss. So yeah, thank you. Thank you all for for sharing. And for joining me in this convo. This is, this was really lovely. And I'm wishing all of you a wonderful restorative break and look forward to connecting in the new year and in hearing about all the nice things you all did for yourselves. Thank you so much to Sabrina, Rebekah, Janine, and Melissa for joining me in the West, Meeting Room for our last conversation of 2020. And a big thank you to all of our extended Hart House podcasting family who have all taught me so much about how to hold space for meaningful conversations. I hope this finds you heading into 2021 with a bit of a lighter load. And if things are feeling heavy right now, I would encourage you to call up someone who's helped you, someone who can bring you comfort, or someone who can make you laugh. Take care of each other in the meantime, and we'll be with you next week.

#time #rest #analog #breadmaking #creative #wellwishes #pandemic #thinking #unlearning #space #writing #conversation

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spookyspaghettisundae · 4 years ago

Text

Not Killing Him

Orion Crown sat in his big, mean-looking SUV in the old parking lot. The dry heat of Vegas had ripped up the asphalt here over the past years, leaving it pockmarked and littered with potholes. His own car and one other vehicle in the lot were the only ones parked there, immobile, like silent steel corpses, cooling in the shadow of some abandoned warehouse.

The thick windows shielded him from the noise of traffic in the distance, so Orion sat in a weirdly muffled silence. Staring at the entrance of the derelict warehouse with its crooked, ajar doors. He felt sick to his stomach because he had slept little more than a few hours per night and his forehead was burning up.

He picked up his phone from the passenger seat, snatching it from where it was resting next to a loaded semi-automatic pistol. He thumbed through the display, checking his recent direct messages on your social media platform of choice.

Orion Crown, social media darling and super-giant of the statusphere. He flipped through business proposal messages from other influencers, something marginally important from his YouTube video editor, and an array of annoyed passive-aggressive texts from his producer-slash-partner. He let the list slide to a stop, with this finger hovering over the display. Hovering just over the message from “The Glass King” with the preview field only saying that it contained a GIF.

The internet star dithered. He could refuse to walk into that warehouse and refuse to use that gun. His career and life would be over, though.

The alternative was sucking it up, gripping the cold metal of the pistol in his palm, walking in there, and blasting away. Didn’t matter who it was. Didn’t know, didn’t care.

Even though seeing the message’s contents disturbed him every time he reviewed it, his thumb descended in slow motion. Like time almost ground to a halt, like the universe was trying to stop him from watching it again.

He tapped the message and it flicked onto full display on his screen.

The animated GIF flashed with disturbing imagery, all of it cut so quickly and abruptly that it became impossible to take it all in. Words and symbols displayed for fractions of seconds so that the mind could not really grasp what it read, and video footage that may or may not contain clipped recordings of overt violence. Violence he, himself, had authored.

The glare of his phone reflected in Orion’s glassy eyes, pupils dilating with dread and disassociation. Knowing that he recognized some of the things presented here so subliminally and viscerally, feeling guilt even though he had always rationalized the terrible things he had done in the past.

How was anybody better? How could anybody be better?

I am not a bad person, Orion thought. Nobody is.

After watching the animated GIF loop countless times, glued to the phone’s display as if bound in a trance, he put the phone back down onto the passenger seat, a hand’s breadth away from the gun. He barely registered the words that followed far down below the window of animation.

The threats. The instructions.

The sentences that had brought him to the locker where he obtained the gun. The address of this warehouse. And his mission, to kill anybody he saw inside this place.

Why didn’t this “Glass King” person just ask for money? Why this? How did the Glass King even get that footage? It had been destroyed long ago.

None of it made any sense.

No matter how many times he mulled it over, Orion Crown—born with the more unglamorous name of Kyle Howard—his sense of self-preservation, greed, and existential dread always won out. Always looped him back to doing as he was told as long as it served his own purposes. To get this over with, and walk away, and never let anybody know of his dirty secrets.

If the Glass King put any of that out—if they aired out any of Orion Crown’s dirty laundry—then he would be out of the game. Done. Probably also in prison.

Orion looked over to the gun. Stared at it, taking in every hard and unforgiving edge and angle of its sleek industrial design.

He had before, and he pondered it again, now: to just pick it up and stick the nuzzle right into his own mouth. Pull the trigger and end it right now.

But his vanity and pride, masked with religious guilt and eclipsed by copious amounts of doublethink, led him to believe that this was the only way.

He grabbed the gun and weighed it in his hand. Orion licked his lips and they felt funny. Not chapped, but uneven. Slimy. He bit his lip and chewed without realizing it, while his gaze swept up and down the crumbling building of this damned warehouse.

In one fluid motion, he got out of his car, slammed the door shut, and walked towards the entrance of the warehouse. The heat outside his car, even here in the shade—combined with the inexplicable fever he was running—made his head swim as if he had been drinking nonstop for the past day and night.

He gripped that pistol in his fist like his life depended on it. And as far as Orion was concerned, it did.

The rusted hinges on the big metal double doors squealed and he cringed at the sound of it, freezing in place. His heart raced, his pulse thundering in his ears. Eyes darted back and forth, looking for a sign of anybody in there. Whoever had parked the other car had to be in here, and Orion’s job was to gun them down.

Something heavy, like a brick hitting a pile of rubble, echoed through the decrepit and dingy halls.

Orion’s hand jerked and he pointed the gun out in front of himself, aiming at every dark corner and little thing he could perceive. With nobody in sight, the adrenaline pumped through his body, suffusing him with a quiet rage and driving the sweat to erupt from his pores, clouding his senses and sapping his reason.

He sidled through the entrance and crept through the abandoned place, twitching at any possible sound he thought he heard and any shadow he saw in the corner of his eyes, expecting someone, anybody, to jump out at him.

Something chugged and sputtered, causing him to freeze once more. He continued sneaking on when he recognized those sounds to be coming from a gas-powered generator, hidden somewhere deeper within the warehouse’s bowels.

He kind of hoped that someone would jump out at him from a blind spot. Thinking it would be much easier to pull the trigger if it felt like self defense.

Instead, he found a large, wide, pillared hall, awaiting him at the end of a long twisting and turning through claustrophobia-inducing corridors.

Someone had arranged seven door frames in a perfect circle, bolted down with plywood feet to support their weight, sawdust and power tools littering the dirty floors, and that distinct smell of freshly cut wood hanging in the air.

Each door frame held a door, closed and looking far too new to fit into this warehouse. An array of four construction site spotlights illuminated the doors from their center, connected to a tangle of bright orange power cord extensions, leading his sweeping gaze to the generator he had been hearing chug away all this time.

The doors were just standing there, out in the open, connected to no walls. Leading nowhere.

Orion gripped the pistol in both hands, holding it outstretched far in front of himself. He had never fired a gun before in his life. Without realizing it, he both wanted the thing to be as far away as possible from himself, but also wanted to use it and for things to be over fast.

But nobody was here. Right?

Wrong.

Arriving in the center of the seven doors, he blinked and inspected a small pile of objects heaped up in between the four spotlights.

A bunch of broken smartphones, a black wig, a small cracked hand mirror, a pile of about twenty credit cards that had been sloppily cut in half, a bunch of different keys that looked far too old to fit the locks on the doors here, and all of the objects rested on top of a local city map that someone had drawn all over with a black magic marker.

A pebble crunched underneath a boot. But not Orion’s shoe. He swiveled, almost getting dizzy at his own speed as he pointed the gun at the source of the noise.

Standing only steps away from the other person, he held the pistol out and swallowed. No matter how many times he had tried to mentally prepare for this moment, he hesitated and his index finger trembled instead of squeezing around the trigger.

Nobody jumping out at him. Just standing there.

She stared into the barrel of his gun for a split second and then met his gaze. A woman in her twenties, dressed like a man. Or—at second glance—androgynous, like she was in some sort of getup for a rock or punk band from the 1990s. Clad in a ratty leather jacket and dark jeans; covered in studs on her clothing, a chain hanging from her belt, and spikes protruding from a choker around her neck; way too much makeup on her face; and a poorly-cut hair-do of shaved sides and long top that could constitute as a fashion crime.

More distracting, however, was the hand she held in her hand. Orion did a double take on that before he fully absorbed what he saw there. A waxen hand with candlewicks sticking out from the fingertips, gripped firmly in her slender hand.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked Orion. She squinted at him.

He squeezed the trigger. It didn’t work. The fucking gun refused to work.

Orion turned it over and looked at it and realized that it had a safety setting which he had forgotten to take care of before walking into the building.

Clink. Snap.

The woman flicked a lighter on and guided it to the waxen hand in her hand and he had flicked the safety and pointed the gun at her and the next thing Orion knew, his wrists hurt. And so did his neck. And his lower back.

Chafing against exposed skin, coarse rope and the smell of burnt candles still filled his nostrils. He began thrashing but found that his limbs did not obey his instinct to struggle against his bonds because of how tightly he was tied down. He scraped his skin against something like rough rock or rusty metal behind him.

Blinking and fighting the fever back down, the taste of iron clung to his tongue. His vision blurred here and there and reality caught back up to him with disjointed delay. She had tied him to something in sight of the circle of seven doors.

The woman crouched in front of one of the doors, her back turned to him.

With a loud PLOP, she opened something in her hands and whatever she was doing, it resulted in the door being splattered with something dark and red.

Hoarse, the words croaked out of his throat and left him sounding more like a toad. “Hey,” Orion emitted. “Let me go!”

The woman whispered something and it dawned on him that it was no response to him.

“What the fuck are you doing? You’re gonna get into so much trouble if you don’t let me go,” he said. But it really was just pathetic pleading, masquerading as feeble threats. “Police’ll be all over your ass, lady.”

She continued whispering and splashed more of the dark crimson liquid over the next door, to its left.

Something crunched. It drew both Orion’s attention, and that of the woman. They both stared at the thing crawling into the large hall, emerging from the corridors he had entered from. The way they paused, paralyzed with disbelief—and the failure of the human mind’s capability to process what they were looking at—took in the thing moving along the floor.

It looked like a pile of trash, like someone had kicked over a garbage can and the contents of four weeks of refuse had spilled out over the ground. With a stench to match. But parts of it looked fleshy, or sponge-like. Wobbling but staying whole, like a block of jello. Other bits, like stalks, or tentacles, tiny and too many to count, coiling and recoiling and almost like they were looking in every direction, but seeing without any discernible eyes.

Death and evil incarnate, crawling over the filthy floors. Hungry, but slow. Creeping. Part of the world’s abandoned things, coalesced and fused into something awful, something trapped in between the realm of the living and the realm of non-existence; a vessel to something worse, something spawned in the darkest recesses and the deepest abyss of human sin. Crawling, and more than one. Another pile of living muck and vomit-inducing presence followed. And another. And another.

Rejects.

They headed towards the seven doors with painful slowness. But one of them began veering away from the rest, inching closer towards Orion.

Thwuck. Shlack. Scrape.

Orion wanted to throw up. He started wriggling, thrashing, fighting against his bonds, but none of it helped. He looked back at the woman in desperation.

She breathed through her teeth, “Shit.”

Haste colored her every movement now and she haphazardly sprayed more liquid onto the doors. One by one. She whispered all the while, though the whispers had made way to hectic chanting. Orion had no chance in understanding it, for the words sounded nothing like any language he had ever heard before.

Almost matching the sounds made by the Rejects, creeping forth.

Scrape. Flesh. Shlef. Thwuck.

The Reject crawled closer. Ever closer to him.

Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes, first blurring his sight a little, and then a lot. Orion had no time or space to realize how that might have been better, he only felt the deep-rooted dread in his stomach. The certainty of death by this abomination, crawling up to him. Only an arm’s length away from his kicking feet.

The stench intensified as the thing got closer, robbing him of any speech, making him wretch.

Images of the GIF on his phone flashed in his mind. The violence he had inflicted, captured on camera—his own recordings, not meant for public consumption—sent to him by the Glass King.

Just like these monsters had been sent by the Glass King.

Orion screamed for help.

A figure in a long black duster emerged from the corridors, standing still at the edge of the large hall, staring at the seven doors. Orion screamed for help from him, now. But within just a few beats of his heart, pounding so hard that it wanted to burst from his chest, he knew deep down that this man was the master of the Rejects.

No—this man was the Glass King, and he cared nothing for Orion’s plight. Hell, he probably enjoyed it. Orion sensed that just much malice from the presence of his man, and his imagination ran wild in response to the evil emanating from his body, hitting his entire being like a truck.

“Will you even be you when you return from that place? If you return from the house?” asked the man, directing his words at the woman by the doors.

Cold and uncaring about Orion, who was now screaming at the top of his lungs. Because something cold and wet and slimy slapped against the bottom of his shoe. And slithered up it, tugging at shoe laces, wrapping around the leg of his pants by his ankle, and applying pressure. Pulling itself upwards.

Onto him.

The woman never stopped chanting, flinging blood at those doors and then sticking something white and misshapen into the keyhole of one of the brass knobs, exposed by the glaring cone of light from one of the spots. She stopped chanting.

“You can’t stop change. Everything changes. That’s all you’re really afraid of, isn’t it?” she shouted. Anger making her voice tremble. Also something insecure. Or fear.

She ripped the door open and ran through it and slammed it shut behind her, but she didn’t emerge from the other side.

Just gone. Vanished into thin air.

Orion had neither eyes nor mind for this phenomenon, however. He only felt the many tiny tendrils of trash touching, feeling, finding their way up his limbs. A path of disgusting discovery, exploring his body like an alien creature trying to figure out human anatomy, but in reality just so depraved and sinister that it pretended to be doing so when it fed on his festering dread and despair.

Was this what it was like to be helpless? To be used, and chewed out?

To cry for help, but be ignored?

He had no capacity left for clean, deep thoughts. Only terror filled his being. The Reject crawled up over him, exerting the weight of a full-grown person, pinning him down and amplifying his sense of helplessness.

Some part of him expected to feel tiny teeth from tiny mouths chewing away at him, but the slithering and worming motions only reflected the darkness in his own heart, mirroring the corruption that had always haunted him. His screaming died down, petering out into a hoarse unintelligible something that transformed into whimpering.

The man in the duster—the Glass King—clicked his tongue but ignored Orion, approaching the seven doors.

“You didn’t answer my question, Kimmy. You fear the answer, or you’d say it out loud,” muttered the Glass King.

Orion expected the sensation of cold metal to be cutting his flesh, but the wet something was more like saliva dispersed from tongues, oozing across his skin. He expected for those rubber bands and spongy stalks to wrap around his neck and choke the life out of him, but they only squeezed a little bit. Just enough to be uncomfortable, and just enough for the Reject to enjoy it.

It breathed on him. The Reject engulfed him, not killing him.

The man in the duster turned on his heels.

Eyes wide open, stricken with unnatural knowing accumulated from a thousand lives and a deep-seated and all-devouring madness—staring into Orion’s eyes. The Glass King’s stare reached deep inside, prying away at his secrets like a lunatic ripping away at the fabric padding lining the walls of a forgotten cell, for those crazy eyes had seen the same GIF as he had. Knew what he knew. Knew his every dirty secret.

Much worse was the grin plastered across his face. Toothy, sadistic, and stretched far too wide to look fun or what was natural for that human face.

“Oh, Kyle, my boy,” said the Glass King, with the grin never wiping itself off his face. “You had one job and you bungled it. But no worries, I still have use for you. Your name, your reputation—your face. Enough mojo there for me to milk for a far greater purpose. Good on you for at least coming here, huh?”

The Glass King took a few steps closer towards Orion. Neared. Menace echoing with each step of his boots thumping against the dirty floor.

Orion wasn’t even whimpering anymore. Before a sheet of paper with something cold and wet and fleshy clinging to its underside had fully crept up the side of his face and covered it—before he closed his eyes and lost sight—he wanted to protest.

But he had no words.

Some part of him, matched only by his urge to vomit, knew he deserved this. Every second of it.

The Reject breathed on him, hot and damp and unpleasant. It almost entirely engulfed him, satisfied with the almost.

Not killing him.

—Submitted by Wratts

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Michael in the Mainstream: The Nostalgia Critic

I have been a fan of the Nostalgia Critic for years now. That’s a rather controversial stance to take nowdays, especially in light of recent controversies; first was the big #ChangeTheChannel movement which had the entire site sans Brad Jones performing a mass exodus elsewhere with some even going so far as to brutally cut ties with Doug for his and managements failings (with Alison Pregler, AKA Obscurus Lupa offering some especially harsh words). Then was this year’s review of The Wall, where he utilized his divisive clipless style and his complete lack of a good singing voice to create what is hands down one of the worst videos – not even just review, VIDEOS – on YouTube. But even with those two things aside, I do think there is some value to the work of Doug Walker. He became popular for a reason, right? So what is that reason? Where did he go wrong?

Doug Walker began doing his Nostalgia Critic schtick in the wake of James Rolfe’s Angry Video Game Nerd becoming an internet icon, and he quickly became one of the bigger faces in the wake of imitators Rolfe spawned. The conceit of his show is rather simple – he reviews nostalgic movies, mostly stuff from the 80s or 90s, with occasional forays into the 2000s – all while parodying the typical internet film critic much as Rolfe parodied the typical nerd gamer. The Critic, you see, is not necessarily Doug, but instead a hyperactive psychotic manchild version of himself who screeches, shoots, and curses up a storm while reviewing movies. It wasn’t too different from other review shows at the time, really, but Doug had a sort of corny charm that really worked.

As time went on, production values slowly increased, Doug’s humor sharpened, and eventually actual thoughtful film analysis crept in, especially in the post-reboot episodes. In fact, that is something I generally like about Doug’s work, and why I even bother with him still: the man clearly has an understanding of film theory, he knows what he’s talking about, and when he takes the time to sit down and actually talk about movies he’s actually pretty insightful. I think of his reviews of stuff like Ghostbusters 2,where he actually gave a genuinely great alternate plotline for the film that would have better utilized the concepts and characters, or any of his numerous video essays on film issues like whitewashing. When it’s Doug just sitting down and talking about a film while cracking jokes here and there, it tends to be really good.

However, Doug has increasingly wanted to add some spice to his reviews in the forms of skits. And it’s not like there never were bits in his reviews back in the day, but post-revival He ramped up the amount of skits, utilizing a cast of friends, with the current mainstays being Malcolm Ray and Tamara Chambers. I do sort of like the weird cast of characters the show has amassed, and I think they really help give the show an identity to set it apart from other review shows. Malcolm and Tamara are honestly, genuinely funny and enjoyable, though the writing doesn’t always play to their skills and can sometimes be a bit obnoxious. I think I’d have to say Malcolm is probably my favorite of the bunch, as he has the wackiest roster of amusing characters, with roles such as Satan, Black Willy Wonka, and good ol’ Bill. And some of his best reviews have crazy skits. His Moulin Rouge review is a standout example; even if I don’t agree with his opinions, he manages to make the musical interludes fun, funny, and actually filled with some sort of commentary relating to the film.

I think the real issues with the skits is they sometimes bog down the reviews or go on for a bit too long. Some of them also just plain aren’t funny at all, or they use really bottom of the barrel cringeworthy comedy that the Critic himself has criticized in his reviews. Of course, the pinnacle of these problems are his clipless reviews, which are basically just Doug and pals reenacting whatever movie he’s reviewing. On paper, this seems like a fun and amusing idea, but the execution is often extremely poor. See, the thing about the Nostalgia Critic is that you’re ostensibly going to him to see criticism and see if something is worth watching; the thing with his clipless reviews is that they require intimate familiarity with the source material for you to even get half of the jokes he’s making, which kind of defeats the point. This is one of the reasons his review of The Wall is so terrible; he’s taking a film that is incomprehensible and surreal and parodying it without explaining the context, so anyone unfamiliar with the movie will be lost.

And even if you are familiar, a lot of the parody can come off as mean-spirited or even filled with blatant lies. Doug has a tendency to overexaggerate and be hyperbolic when he’s in-character, so if he finds a serious flaw in the movie he’ll blow it up in his parody. His reviews of the It films really showcase this, as he sort of nitpicks things that really aren’t as big a deal as he makes them out to be, which has the unfortunate side effect of making his legitimate criticisms look a bit weaker. In fact, a lot of the time Doug comes off as genuinely hypocritical, mocking tropes and tools he himself frequently utilizes in his own reviews. It’s so weird, because despite all this as well as the cheap special effects and production values that Doug is clearly putting a lot of effort into acting out all these wacky parodies, but he just can’t act and criticize at the same time. At the very least, his clipless reviews lend themselves well to unintentionally hilarious, so bad it’s good territory.

I think a lot of why the clipless reviews and skits don’t work is because of Doug’s lingering resentment over the failure of Demo Reel, which was him trying to branch out after he retired the Critic. Of course had to fall back on the Critic; Demo Reel was not very popular, and people just wanted more of what Made Doug famous. I do like that he did try stuff to spice his show up to make it enjoyable for him again, but it’s still hard not to get the sense that Doug is still bitterly lashing out with his skits at the people who wouldn’t accept him branching out into attempts at legitimate acting. As such, they just feel like empty, over the top garbage that Doug is pushing out because he really wants to act, but he feels like he can’t because what people want is more Critic.

I guess in general it doesn’t help that Doug is just not a great actor. Just look at his performances in the anniversary movies, which horribly clash with the whiny manchild the Critic is portrayed as in the main show, orr even during some of the commercial skits he does, where he tends to overact or just get too childish and hammy. It’s so obvious to me that Doug really wants to be a legitimate actor but he just doesn’t seem to have the aptitude for it. He’s a lot better at comedy and criticism than he is at acting. Of course, that’s not to say he’s incapable of doing anything good; his review of that 3D Nutcracker movie, and in fact a lot of his more modern Christmas-related reviews, have some genuinely touching and heartfelt moments, and when Doug is staying true to the goofy, idiotic character of the Critic he can be really fun.

The Nostalgia Critic is not really a show I think I can recommend to most people. Hell, sometimes I feel like I only watch it because of, ahem, nostalgia. I definitely don’t think the show is void of good content, but when Doug drops something like The Wall, it makes me wonder… Still, I like to stick around, because when Doug hits it, he hits it out of the park. The problem is when he fails, he tends to fail in the most epic manner possible. He’s like that one bat in EarthBound which is super powerful but misses a lot, but when it hits, your opponent is pretty sure to get knocked out. I think a lot of Doug’s failings are carried by his supporting cast, and the flaws in his writing are only easy to swallow because of the genuine insights he offers. There’s just a lot to take into consideration when it comes to the Critic, it’s really hard to say if he’s good or bad. He just… is.

I definitely think some of what Doug does is bad and cringeworthy (I really can’t defend those sketches in the Deadpool 2 review or those awful Kermit puppets), but I think beneath the cringiness, beneath the overdone acting, and beneath the flaws, there are some good insights to be found about films and why they do and don’t work. I of course don’t agree with everything Doug says, but there is still genuine thought and effort. I don’t really know if I can say he’s worth going out of your way to watch, but popping in now and then to check out what Doug has to say isn’t a bad thing. I kind of wish he would go back to doing those video essays again, because I think that was some of his best work, or maybe stick to only reviewing stuff that he has some sort of genuine connection with. When he is really passionate about something, it really shows, because he puts care and effort into the analysis and is able to tell some genuinely good jokes in between snarking at the film. When he just doesn’t care… you get The Wall review. Yeah, that’s pretty much my go-to for awful Doug reviews, becauseit is emblematic of every single problem that has come to plague his worst efforts: lack of care, bad writing, crappy production values, overdone and overacted skits, manipulative editing, and zero insight into the film.

Still, as cringeworthy as he can get these days… I’ll take this version of Doug over the Bat Credit Card/Chuck Norris/Burger King “elephant”/forced meme version of Doug from his early days.

I’m Michael Ford. I remember the Nostalgia Critic so you don’t have to.

#Michael in the Mainstream #review #web show review #The Nostalgia Critic #Nostalgia Critic #NC #Doug Walker #critic #criticism #comedy #internet reviewer

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alfahadliker-blog · 4 years ago

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liahonas · 6 years ago

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Hi! I'm 13 and my family isn't Mormon. I've read some of the Book of Mormon, I'm still reading it, as well as researched the religion thoroughly. I know it's the right religion for me due to this feeling I have confirming it that just gives me this utter sense of happiness. Do you have any suggestions of how to deal with this or just how I can stay true to Mormon values even if I don't/can't go to church or do things most Mormons can with their families?

First off, congrats on being so dedicated and spirituallyopen at a young age ^^ I’m happy you have found your truth and want to remaintrue to it as you go through life. 😊 I think I was a year or two older than youwhen I first seriously prayed and felt those same confirming feelings. It’s asweet, calm and peaceful sort of bubbly joy that is not quite like anythingelse. I’m so happy you now share in that happiness!

I’m assuming that as your family is not mormon, they mustalso be against you joining by yourself at this time or at the very least areopposed to/unable to take you to meetings or activities due to how you’vephrased your question. If so, then my first piece of advice is to continuereading the scriptures. A great thing about the church is the fact that mostmaterials are online and free to access. ^^ The Mormon channel on youtube alsohas amazing videos, most of them short, that continue to teach and lift thespirit of those who watch them.

Keeping up with this and never forgetting this testimony isa hug part of keeping your faith alive. I’ve known people who were in similarsituations as you and as they grew up they put their faith on the back burneruntil year after year they forgot the truth they had found. And it breaks myheart because right now, this very moment in time that you have found thistruth is the most important. And because you are so young and have no familialsupport, you will have this challenge set before you. Keeping up with andgrowing your faith is the best way to stay close to this truth you have found.

Another way is to try and stay close to the values andteachings of the church. As a teenager you will face things that willpotentially have you making difficult choices. Chastity and the Word of Wisdomwill be big ones. Review the Strength for Youth and Articles of Faith, as wellas talks on the topics you may find issues with.

As a teenager, you would soon be participating in Seminary,had you become a member. In case you are unfamiliar, it’s a daily scripture study class forteens 14-18 yrs old. But it’s a great home-study tool too. I kept my oldmanuals because even now I find them terribly helpful in breaking down thegospel. Each year covers the four main parts of Mormon scripture: The Bible(Old and New Testaments), Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. Themanuals can also be found online for free! Think of it as a daily devotional,or whenever you have time to devote to reading and considering the questionsand lessons they teach. ^^

There are also awesome hymns and music online for you to listen to and peruse. Youtube has a ton of great traditional hymns by Motab (mormon tabernacle choir) but as a teen you may also want to hear some more upbeat stuff and that’s where EFY music comes in. It stands for Especially For Youth, and new stuff is released about every year. It’s kind of like gospel praise music, like traditional Christian organizations have, but it’s made specifically for our beliefs (though any one is free to enjoy them). And you can get most, if not all of them, free. I’ll include links below. ^^

I would ultimately suggest, depending on how open your familymay be, in expressing your wish to join or at least allow you to participate inchurch activities. Perhaps there are mormon teens at your school who you canreach out to? Or even missionaries? In the end, it depends on how comfortableyou feel and what you are able to do, being a youth and all. But the above iswhat I would first suggest doing if nothing else ^^ You’re already off to agreat start, now you just need to keep with it until one day when you can makethat choice for yourself to join. 😊

Here are some helpful links, hopefully they aren’t redundantfor you! ///’)

Seminary Lessons

Youtube channel videos

For the Strength of Youth

Articles of Faith

Free EFY Music Downloads + streaming

If you have any other questions, concerns or just want totalk, I’m usually around ^^ I’m happy to answer if I can~

~Ronnie

#Ron answers!#lds #Mormon #advice #investigators #youth

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comicsinkcorporated-blog · 6 years ago

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Interview with Screaming Villains, developer of Night Trap 25th anniversary.

CI: So how did development for Night Trap 25th anniversary first come about?

SV: It honestly started out as sort of a joke. Sometime after the failed Kickstarter, hardcore fans started attempting to recreate their own remake of Night Trap and some gaming sites were writing articles about it which I found kind of odd especially since they either didn't work or barely worked. I was already messing around with FMV stuff as a hobby and a friend of mine came up with the idea of myself making a working version running on a phone.

I threw it together in about 3-4 days, posted a video of myself playing it on Youtube and sort of remained anonymous about it. I got a local arcade owner that I know to post the video on his Facebook account since he was friends with an absurd amount of retro gamers and it started to spread and got about 5000 views within the first 24 hours.

The website fmvworld.com found it too and decided to contact Rob Fulop (one of the creators of Night Trap) to get his opinion on it. Another website called segabits.com also contacted Tom Zito (producer of Night Trap) to find out if he had any involvement so that sort of put me on their radar. After that I figured "what the hell?" and sent an email to Tom at about 3am and got a response in about 15 minutes. He just asked a couple of questions about it and asked for my phone number. The next day, he called me and 20 minutes into the conversation he asked if I would like to do an official version and I said yes.

CI: Limited Run Games PS4 version of Night Trap remains their fastest selling game, while the Nintendo Switch version may end up being their best selling game. Were you surprised by the popularity of this remaster?

SV: I don't think anyone was expecting that. It just came out of nowhere which I think helped a lot so thank god my friends were able to keep their mouth shut while I was working on it. Originally, there was only going to be 5000 copies of the game available. Once the announcement was made Josh Fairhurst from Limited Run Games and myself were pretty much stuck on Twitter the entire day so we definitely wasn't expecting the reaction it got.

After that, Josh said something like "We might need to increase the quantity" which at the time I don't think they ever exceeded 5000 on a game so it got bumped up to 6000. After that, he came back again and said "Maybe we should add a collectors edition" so now we're at 8000 for PS4. Then it was "Let's release a big box version for PC" so now there's another 2000. It just kept growing and growing and still didn't meet demand. What's funny is the guy that made the announcement trailer and myself was constantly googling Night Trap that day just to see what was being said but then we went to the trending section on Youtube and we're like "Oh my god! The trailer is trending higher than Gucci Mane!" For a brief moment a game that a lot of people considered terrible was all of a sudden popular and I think that's rad.

CI: What do you think it is about Night Trap that has made it so beloved amongst fans?

SV: It has a b-movie feel to it and doesn't take itself seriously. A lot of hate that it gets is sort of undeserving. The popular ones are usually "this is barely a game" or "this has bad acting". NT was made 5 years before it was finally released and intended for a console that used VHS tapes and the acting is very similar to 80's horror/thriller films. Unfortunately, it was the wrong time period when it was finally released in 1992 and at that point nobody was really reminiscing about the 80's like they do today. The fans that are super hardcore about Night Trap are usually gamers that have a great interest in movies in general. What surprised me was the number of people that I've talked to that said Digital Pictures influenced them to pursue a career in the film or tv industry.

CI: Were there any notable, unforeseen difficulties during development?

SV: Engine restrictions was the biggest issue. I figured out pretty quickly that a lot of the gaming engines available weren't really designed with FMV in mind so because of this I think the video quality suffered more than I would've liked. Luckily, this is no longer an issue with future releases.

CI: How did the Limited Run Games physical release come about?

SV: The dudes from My Life In Gaming actually brought it up. One of those guys lives down the street from me and very early in the development process I told him I was working on Night Trap and wanted a documentary to go along with it since it has a crazy history and I thought it'd be a cool promotional tool. He immediately suggested that I work with Limited Run Games. Over the next several months I kept telling him that I'd think about it whenever he brought it up.

About a month before the game was announced, Coury came to my house to film my interview for the documentary. After we were finished he brought up Limited Run again so I told him to go ahead and tell them what I was working on. Ten minutes later, I got an email from Josh Fairhurst. Limited Run is super rad and I honestly can't imagine doing any game without their involvement so I'll most likely harrass them with each release that I do. They actually ported Night Trap to Nintendo Switch. I can't say anything bad about those dudes. They've helped me tremendously.

CI: So the Nintendo Switch version of the game comes with Japanese & French audio, was this something Screaming Villains commissioned themselves? Did Night Trap have an original Japanese and French release? And what was the reasoning behind including the new audio?

SV: The Japanese and French audio actually came from previous releases. I got ahold of copies of the game that were originally released in Europe and Japan and just ripped the audio from the disks. Before it was released I started getting messages and emails asking for additional language options so that's where that idea came from.

CI: So Night Trap as a copious history with Nintendo, when the company called out the game out in court, vowing it would never appear on a Nintendo system, which lead to some bad blood between the original Devs and Nintendo. How did it feel to finally put Night Trap on a Nintendo System?

SV: I think it's cool. Digital Pictures always released their games on Sega consoles and 3DO so it's super rad that one of them finally ended up on a Nintendo console. Definitely long overdue. With Night Trap getting released on there with a Teen rating without cutting any content might hopefully stop people from claiming that the game uses violence against women to move the story further which is absolultely ridiculous along with everything else that people claim is in there that doesn't even exist.

CI: What was the decision to go with Double Switch as the next FMV game to remaster?

SV: Double Switch just seemed like the obvious choice since it's the same type of game as Night Trap but everything is improved on. You could I guess call it the spiritual successor to Night Trap. It's also my favorite game from Digital Pictures. I think it was expected too. Back in February, I met a lot of the people that worked on Friday The 13th The Game. When I was introduced to the Executive Director Randy Greenback the first thing he said to me was "Are you doing Double Switch next?!" Josh from Limited Run was campaigning for it pretty hard too since his aunt is a childhood friend of Debbie Harry who appears in the game. A very short teaser for it was showng during the Limited Run E3 conference. While watching the conference there were people leaving comments like "Just announce Double Switch already!"

CI: Night Trap special editions in the past have come with cassette tapes, patches, and even a VHS tape. Can you tell us if Double Switch special edition will come with anything like that?

SV: It most likely will but I have no idea what since I haven't really talked to Limited Run about those options yet. Usually what happens is they throw an idea at me and I pretty much agree to all of them. They're huge Sega nerds like I am so I trust them with their ideas. The idea of pogs came up for Night Trap but we ran out of time so it wouldn't surprise me if that happened with Double Switch.

I'm sure it'll come in a Sega CD jewel case too since Limited Run ordered about 15,000 of those. I will say that it's getting a completely new cover since the original ones are kind of lame and don't really fit with the type of game that it is.

It looks super rad! DS also has a super rad soundtrack that was done by Thomas Dolby, who wrote and performed the hit song "She Blinded Me With Science" so I was hoping that a stereo version of the soundtrack existed so we could release that but sadly it's all mono.

CI: There was some rumors that Screaming Villains have been working on bringing, Marky Mark: Make My Video to the PS4. Can you confirm this?

SV: Oh dear....that was a joke that went too far. What happened was Josh Fairhurst and I kept getting our tweets captured and used as news articles for very minor stuff. I hated it because I wasn't used to this sort of thing since Night Trap was my first console release and Josh was beyond frustrated with it because of a random person making a negative comment about Nintendo, which led to a gaming site writing an article claiming that Josh spoke negatively about Nintendo when it wasn't even him or even anyone affiliated with LR.

They were forced to update the article and admit that they were wrong. After that, we started tweeting each other about a re-release of Marky Mark but making it sound official like it was an actual thing that was happening just to see if anyone would start turning that into articles.

One night, I took it a step further and made a working version of the game running on a PS4 in about an hour and then the next day we both posted a link to a video showing it. That got yanked from Youtube within the first 20 minutes. We used to talk about it all the time trying to figure out how to make it happen since the idea is too ridiculous to ignore but no. No remake of Marky Mark Make My Video.CI: What other FMV games do you want to bring to modern consoles?

CI: What other FMV games do you want to bring to modern consoles?

SV: My original goal was to get as many games from Digital Pictures as I can which is pretty much happening now. Night Trap and Double Switch aren't the only ones coming. Outside of DP releases the goal is D which was originally released back in 1995. I feel like there's a ton of different things you can do with that one.

CI: Lastly is there anything you would like to say to the readers?

The obvious thing would be thank you to everyone that played NT25. It was a stressful process so it made me happy to see that people that were fans of the original enjoyed it. Also, if you're a fan of Digital Pictures releases then stick around because some super rad stuff is coming!

#Night Trap #nintendo #Sega #horror #playstation #interview

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johnpaceylowrie-blog · 7 years ago

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"A Tale of Two Cities (Part Two)" Behind The Scenes Blog | The Ocularist, S1E3

Hello!

Fraser here...again. Did you enjoy episode 3? It was a weird one huh? I’ve got to say that I really dislike episode 3. Mainly because I’m the main component of it but also because the whole situation was extremely stressful. I don’t really need to go on about it anymore which is why it seems very silly that I’m even writing this ‘behind the scenes’ blog… That’s why I’ve asked my brother to do it! So without further ado, take it away Alex.

Hello keen JPL blog readers.

I’m Alex, John’s middle child (the handsome lanky ginger one in episode 3). Fraser has asked me to write a blog detailing the events which occurred on that summer weekend...

So, me and my little sister Sophie (the not so lanky (and handsome) ginger one) live ‘daan saath’ in the Cambridgeshire/Hertfordshire region. We make our way up to Nottingham and stay for weekends at a time but we visit far more sporadically these days due to work and other commitments... it’s a lot harder to find a weekend when everyone is free these days.

When myself, Fraser and Sophie were kids - every second weekend Dad would hop in the whip and drive 2 hours down the A1 to pick us up after school, and then drive another 2 hours back up the A1 to take us to Nottingham! He’d then repeat the procedure when it came to Sunday. He put in some serious hours on that road… it’s nice that we can make our own way up there now as I'm sure he never wants to drive on that road again! It’s just a shame we can’t make it up there as often.

FJ (Fraser) had come up with the idea to throw dad a surprise BBQ party with family, booze and BBQ food! Like most plans, this plan changed several times due to unforeseen circumstances.

Firstly, we discovered that dad’s flight didn't arrive into East Midlands airport until about 8/9pm! So, it was more of a late Spanish kind of fiesta.

Secondly, we discovered… we had no BBQ. QUITE AN ASTOUNDING THING TO FORGET, EH?! The giant metal meat monster was missing from the garden, and I believe it had been for quite some time. Perplexed as to how we had forgotten the most essential component to a BBQ party, someone had a lightbulb moment… in SWOOPED a previous birthday present we kids had bought for dad - the infamous Rural Paella Plate... see below for all its beauty:

The three-legged beauty shone so eloquently in the June sunshine.

She was our hope.

She was our saviour…….

Two things:

We realised the food would not be ‘BBQ’ food if cooked on this. We wanted smokey goods,

More importantly, we realised we had no gas in the Calor tank...

Once more we were without an engine room.

Without an entity in which we could put all our faith and bacon in.

With the plan revised and our tails between our legs we headed to Tesco Extra - Beeston’s metropolis. If you ever think you’re big in something, just know that Tesco’s are well ahead of you, and they will take over the world.

The team of 4 consisted of FJ, Soph, my girlfriend Beth and myself.

We were left with the task of purchasing enough food and booze to feed nine people... a mixture of vegans, vegetarians and non-beefeaters (cowspiracy changed my life…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV04zyfLyN4).

With each aisle scoured, we boasted a ram packed trolley filled to the gills with snacks, racks n baps. Two hours deep into the shop we finally felt we could checkout. We used the new Tesco self-scan tool, I think this was the first time I hadn't sneaked a garlic bulb in a bag without scanning/paying for it… yeah that’s right Tesco, what you gonna do about it?! The scanner unveiled that our shop had accumulated to about £110 worth of food, wine and beers!

We rolled up to the checkout, scanned the little barcode, began packing our bags… then we heard that harrowing sound… *APPROVAL NEEDED* which prompted this lady to come up to us...

In unison, the Lowrie kids revealed their mugshots to the gatekeeper. I turned my head to Beth (my aforementioned girlfriend) where she detailed through gritted teeth

‘I don't have my ID with me’.

3 out of 4 of us had the ID… yet the gatekeeper declined us, saying she will have to take the alcohol from our grasp.

Beth was inconsolable... but for good reason.

She’d ruined everything…

We ended up going to Sainsbury’s and replacing the alcohol...

With the news that dad wasn't feeling too great, we were all unsure what kind of mood he would be in when he landed. So, we decided to prep all the food and start drinking before he arrived. All that really mattered is that we got to shout “surprise” and welcome him home.

FJ and I sat in the garden playing with Chunk (the chunky collie that features in the episodes) when one of us tabled the idea of possibly using the chiminea to cook some of the food in.

Now, the chiminea is the home of fag ends, dog hair and seasonal bugs. It was going to require a good ol’ clean, not to mention some fire starters and coal!

We struck a deal - if FJ cleaned the chiminea I would sort the burning essentials; the contract was duly signed and we proceeded (turns out I had all the equipment in the back of my car…big up myself).

Once finished, Fraser removed the marigolds, we filled the chiminea to the brim with coal, wood and fire starter stuff (which I'm sure must be made of horse sh*t) and after several minutes of speculating whether the fire would maintain its heat, the coals turned white… it was time to begin the festivities.

We all had jobs to do:

- Sophie and Karen were on kitchen cooking and salad prep, (Karen was also on John watch - checking his flight plan to see where in the world he was),

- Fraser was our caveman - cooking varying types of meat on the chiminea whilst trying to preserve the fire!

- I was the resident DJ for the afternoon. I was held responsible for keeping up staff morale with tune after tune. You know you’ve got a solid music library when your Step-Mum continually asks you “What’s this one called Alex?” “Do you have Spotify playlists I can download?”.

- Beth’s job was to run spontaneous dance exercises when people were transitioning between jobs, probably the most important job of the evening.

We were later joined by Chantal (FJ’s girlfriend) and our step sisters Amy and Will…

With the noise rising and the drinks flowing we lost track of time.

All of a sudden Karen came rushing in telling us Dad had arrived earlier than expected and was on his way from the airport!!!

PANIC!!!

We had to be on maximum alert, we needed to maintain the surprise, we’d got so far.

“HE’S HERE HE’S HERE, HIDE!! HIDE!!”

We all took cover behind the sofa and bookshelf.

Cameras at the ready, we waited for our cue.

Karen handled the situation extremely well.

She brushed off Dads comments about the balloons, about her having a drink in her hand and about her looking FAB-U-LOUS

*click fingers in a Z formation*

And then, well, the footage says it all really. He was shocked! For someone who had been so ill during the week and had just travelled god knows how many hours in a metal tube full of recirculated air, he looked pretty suave.

He told us about his adventures and opinions of Jakarta. He detailed the sheer amount of poverty which riddled the city and how he saw so many children living in poverty. You could see that this affected him emotionally as he spoke with a quiver to his voice. My dad is a very caring man and he’s always been a humanitarian. I'm sure, if he could, he’d give them all a life that every child deserves to live...

I think Dad had a very minimal amount of sleep under his belt, yet he stayed up with us till the wee small hours of the morning. Drinking, dancing and just enjoying the craic.

In fact, I tapped out before he did! It was about 1am and I couldn’t hack it. I’m pretty sure Dad stayed up till about 3am fueled by sleep deprivation, jet lag and booze - a dangerous concoction.

Morning came with foggy heads and toasted breads. We all sat round the dinner table discussing the night that had been. Reminiscing about the food, alcohol consumption and Dads ‘O brother where art thou’ dancing (see episode 3 for the full experience). Dad was there but decided he needed to go back to bed as he wasn’t feeling too great - which was fair enough all things considered. It was Karen’s brother’s birthday so she shot off to go celebrate yet another day of birth.

Fraser, Sophie, Beth and I sat around watching various YouTube videos, which seems to be a common theme for a Sunday at Dad’s. Watching fails and cute dog videos… we got bored pretty quickly. We decided to watch a film,

“I’ve heard really good things about this film called ‘Inferno’, please guys can we watch it”

exclaimed Fraser. We reluctantly agreed. Honestly, I usually trust my brothers taste in films but my goodness… this was a monstrosity. The acting, the screenplay, the confusion! It really was a diabolical film. Please attack Fraser on all forms of social media for making us watch that film.

*Note from Fraser: It was such a bad film. Terrible.

About midway through the film we heard a huge banging sound come from somewhere. We shrugged it off the first couple of times, just thinking it was one of our neighbours. The third time though I thought I better go check on Dad to make sure he was OK. As I ran up the stairs I saw Dad leaning against the wall between his bedroom and the stairs, holding his chest/stomach area. He groaned

“help, help, please get some help call an ambulance”.

I bombed down the stairs as fast as I could, I burst into the living room and told the others “it was dad, he needs help, I'm calling an ambulance”. I always thought in these situations I would be calm and collected but in reality I really, really wasn’t. Knowing my Dad’s past heart problems and seeing him in that much pain my thoughts turned to the worst - he’s having a heart attack.

Fraser dashed up the stairs and sat Dad down. He was the calmer of the 2 of us which I must say I'm surprised about. I only say this because we’ve been to a couple of ‘Escaplogic’ escape rooms in Nottingham (If you have never been go! It’s so much fun) and he’s been the most stressed and panicky of the 3 Lowrie kids…!

Episode 3 explains the rest of the situation pretty well really. I will say this though - one thing really bugged me…

Dad and Karen still have a wired home telephone!

The responder was asking me questions about Dad’s physical condition such as what colour he was, what’s his heart rate etc.… I couldn’t check these things because he was upstairs and I, like a dog chained to a post, was stuck within the 1 metre reach of the wired phone! Dad & Karen please get a new phone, many thanks.

Dad stayed in the hospital for a few days so they could run tests but we never heard what the actual problem was. The main thing is that he is fine, well, he’s better than he was. My Dad will tell you he hasn't been fine since he left the womb - I’ve never known a man to have tennis elbow, tennis knee and tennis ear all at the same time!

To conclude, we had a great family get together to celebrate the big man’s birthday. The aftermath was one of scariest days of my life BUT I am happy and relieved that he is back up and running, working hard, trying to pass on his legacy in Ocularistry.

The video series has been a great watch so far and I’m really looking forward to seeing all the episodes to come. It’s nice to see the guys hard at work - or hardly working. ;) ;) - so, keep it up!

Much love, Alejandro (@ixardesign)

-----------------------------

Thanks a lot Alex! I’m glad I didn’t have to write about all that...

If you enjoyed this blog be sure to tune in next week for the behind-the-scenes of episode 4! Next weeks episode is all about the Nottingham Trent University courses that John runs.

Till next time! - Fraser Lowrie (@lowriemusic - Insta, FB, Twitter, Spotify)

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efosa123 · 6 years ago

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Clickbank For Beginners | How To Make Money With Clickbank (2019) what is going on YouTube Angemon I'm here back with another video and today I'm gonna be showing you guys a full tutorial on how to get started on Clickbank as a beginner so it's I'm literally gonna cover everything from you know how to pick a product that is guaranteed to sell all the way to building an opt-in page a Thank You page email marketing and how to actually promote this offer and it's gonna be a free traffic source for those of you that are just starting I know a lot of beginners don't have a big budget Fred so I will be showing you guys how to promote this for free so this is gonna be a super in-depth video and after this you could literally go and take these steps I just showed you implement it and make a lot of money doing so so this is kind of how I got started kind of the message methods I'm going to be teaching you so hope you guys do enjoy if you end up enjoying be sure to drop a like and subscribe to the channel if you want to see more videos like this so here we are on Clickbank if you aren't familiar with Clickbank it is an affiliate marketplace where there are thousands of affiliate offers you can pick from and start promoting right away so what I like to do is just simply hit the search button because it's going to show you the most popular products on Clickbank and I always sort by gravity because those are the products that are getting the most sales so there's a few things I look for when choosing a product first the gravity has got to be anywhere from about 40 to 50 or above because that tells you that it is you know selling and converting pretty well the next thing I look for is whether or not the offer looks spammy and I'll show you guys what I mean by that um and also if they give you the right marketing materials and you guys will see what I mean in just a second so what I usually do is I click through and see which offers look good which ones don't look good so I'm just gonna go I've looked at this offer before this one this is what I mean by what it kind of looks spammy like I don't know it's just not something I want to put my name by and sell because that's going to look for my image so I'm not gonna sell a product like that but let's check the next one out I've never looked at this one let's see numerologist okay this looks pretty reputable another thing you can do if you're actually going to end up promoting something is obviously look up reviews on Google or YouTube and see if people like it or not but I actually have heard in numerologist comm it's a pretty popular numerology site so this looks to be pretty reputable it doesn't look spammy so this is something you I would recommend end up promoting so I'll go ahead and find another example just for those of you that want to see another one I'm going to see this one and this is basically my process I just click through and see what looks good and what doesn't this one doesn't look too bad so something like this looks pretty good gives a lot of information stuff like that I really don't like promoting products let me find one um I don't like promoting products like I think this might be one of them like this where it's a video and it's almost like a fake voice talking and they're talking about this story and it's you know what I mean it's those fake sales videos things like these I don't like promoting those because those are using kind of spammy products and I don't like to sell those because it looks bad on my part for being an affiliate so we're just gonna run with numerologist comm for this example and so now that we have a product or one that we're thinking about we are gonna check the sales material real quick just to make sure they give us enough so we get a 60-day cookie that's good 65% payout pretty solid let's see let's see so this was January 2014 so a while ago but somebody made $36,000 in 2014 those numbers are probably way up so there definitely is potential it'll make a lot of money with this let's see so they do give you a quick start guide I'm gonna help you start promoting and they have promotional tools and resources so let me just sign up for this real quick just to show you guys what kind of promotional stuff you guys would get so we'll join let's see ok so you guys get this Quick Start Guide which is kind of nice but this this is the stuff I'm talking about you you need to make sure your offer has things like this so they have free swipe copies so based on what thing you're selling you guys can pick different ones so if you're selling like a personal development product on numerologists you can hit this on the Law of Attraction one something like that so what I would do all of these are star for numerologist com but the reason why they have different topics is for advertising so if you're advertising the people interested in the law of attraction obviously you're gonna want to use the emails are related to that so that's why they have these different topics so they have two emails I would like more so you might have to make a couple on your own but it is a good start and you can kind of base your other emails off of these too so not terrible there they do have some banners and stuff that you can use so overall not too bad you know it looks like a reputable reputable product and brand and looks something like something that you could definitely go ahead and promote so now that we have our product we are going to create a funnel and if you don't know if this is this it's called clickfunnels you can build sales funnels opt-in pages anything like that so numerologist so if you guys do want to try out click funnels there is a 14-day free trial link below see if you like it if you don't cancel if you do like it I highly recommend it for affiliate marketing but there are alternatives out there if you choose to do so so what you want to do I like pretty simple opt-ins I just don't have like to have a lot of junk on the page so we're gonna find a pretty simple one and we're actually going to use the product to help us make this opt-in so I'll show you guys what I mean in just a second let me find a pretty simple one let's see let's see there's kind of okay I like this one just big blur often because I can put a nice little picture behind it that kind of relates with numerology so I love building these funnels this is honestly like my favorite part of the whole online business thing is just creating these different funnels and stuff editing them making them look cool so definitely fun to play around with so we're just going to delete actually so we could actually go ahead and get ade numerologist com logo for that just PNG logo let's see if they have one let's see let's see mmm don't really like any of those so what we're gonna do is we are gonna delete this and we are going to add a headline and we're just gonna move this up here and click funnels is all drag and drop very easy to navigate for beginners and stuff so let's see we're gonna change this color to white let's see you Tex color wait there we go so we're just gonna say new or let's say let's let's look at here so we could put free you you want to make it congruent with the actual offer so we could literally put free personalized numerology report like that I'm gonna make that a little bit bigger I get stand out like that and then let's see what else they got okay we're gonna delete this okay and then right here we'll just say to get your free report please you know something simple like that you don't have to put a ton of time and effort into this as long as it looks clean people will sign up so we're just going to delete this name field for now and then let's see you send me my free report that actually works let's see they have a purple button so we're going to change this to purple we want this to look congruent as almost as if the page when they come on this page you want it to seem exactly the same as the other one just so they think they're kind of on the same website if that makes sense so that's kind of the psychology behind that let's see did I have my move me real quick there we go let's see it was like a purplish right no like a pinkish purple something like that that looks pretty good okay we'll go with that you'll take me back so that looks pretty good we're gonna take this uh my stupid heads getting in the way we're gonna take this out just cuz I don't think we need that right now delete delete okay so it's very simple and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look up numerology background and I'm gonna find a cool little background I can put maybe I'll do space just cuz face and numerology kind of go together sort of okay so something like okay that looks perfect that looks perfect too okay awesome awesome we will use this because it's a bit bigger you save okay then we were just gonna go to settings background click here we're just gonna drag this here it's gonna upload and we will have a new background once it loads hopefully it doesn't take too long let's see let's see I do not know why it is taking forever let me wait there it is sorry about that this is just kind of like an actual tutorial so I'm sorry if it's not the most entertaining thing ever however I think you guys will get a lot out of watching it so yeah we're gonna make this not actually no that looks pretty good so free personalized new okay I like how this looks so you can have something just as simple as this click Save and then next we are going to do the Thank You page so when they actually well actually this one's a little bit different so a lot of times I will do something where you will have an opt-in page and then once they opt-in you'll either send them something or have something on a Thank You page however since numerology numerology com is offering them a free report that's kind of the free thing so what you could actually do is just get your affiliate link actually like right here you get your affiliate link and you could actually just put it straight in the button so when they put their email it sends them straight to the numerology numerology com so they can actually get their free report so that makes sense most times it won't be like that so just know a lot of times you will have to make a thank-you page and then on the thank you page you want to give them a little bit of information about the product so we will go here let's see that's action you just go to go to website URL enter your favorite link and as simple as that once they enter their email it will take them to your fifth it'll take them this page with your affiliate link so that is how I would go ahead and promote this product or at least set up my landing page so yeah this one's a little bit different just because they are giving away a free thing a lot of times they don't do that so that is why I didn't end up doing a thank you page so we would just delete that Thank You page okay so now what you want to do now that you have their email is email marketing this is called get response this is my favorite email marketing platform and you can get a 30-day trial by clicking the link in the description it should say get response you will get a 30-day trial and so what you can do is you can just go in to get response and put whatever emails you want to use in and put it on an autoresponder so when the person opt-ins it will send these automatically whenever the dates you want them to send so if you want one to send you know one day after they sign up and then one three days after you can do that whatever you want so and then and some of the emails like here you are gonna include your filling link and this is how you guys are actually going to get a lot of your sales you will get some around from just from the opt-in page going here but a lot of your sales will come from email marketing so you have to make sure you guys are doing this if you want to have a successful affiliate marketing business now if you want to learn how to shorten your affiliate link I like bitly com you just put a link in can shorten it so like right there you can shorten a link so just a quick little tip for you guys so how I actually would go about promoting this numerology thing so what I would do is I would just create a youtube channel around around numerology so for example you would just look up numerology and then okay there you there's no way you're gonna rank for numerology especially with a new channel however as you go and add an A now it's starting to narrow down so what I would do it's called the alphabet method you do from A to Z and you can do about three to four videos per each and by the end of that you guys should be making a ton of money from this offer because you have so many videos up so you make a video about numerology and astrology numerology in the Bible whatever one's you want and then you could just after that go to be finding which ones you want to do then go to see and go to D and go all the way through Z and by the end you guys will have probably around 100 videos it sounds like a lot and it is like those videos even after you're done posting the nice thing about YouTube is they still get views so if you have a hundred videos each of them is just gets ten views per day that is 1000 views per day and if you mention your opt-in page in the link in description or if you say hey if you guys want to get a free numerology report click the first link in the description and it takes them to your opt-in page let's say let's lowball let's say 20 20 % of the people that watch your video in a day and I'm clicking on your opt-in page and let's say 50 for 50 percent of those people end up opting in so you're gonna be ending up with 100 emails per day if you just get 10 views per day on all 100 videos so 100 people per day on an email list within a month you can be making a full-time income from that no doubt that is 3000 people per month and there's no reason you can not be making a full-time income from that if you're just sending them the emails and you will make some upfront money from this so this is what I would do if I were restarting back over I would get involved in niche and make a ton of youtube videos about it and just use that free traffic to generate enough income for me to be able to start using paid ads and from there you can just scale it up so I hope you guys did enjoy this video if you did be sure to drop a like and subscribe I know it wasn't the most entertaining video but I I hope you guys got a lot out of it and kind of saw my process of how you I think you guys should start as a clickbank beginner I'm kind of how I did and how I would again if I were to have to do that so I hope you guys did enjoy I will see you guys with nobody out tomorrow

#affiliate marketing #brko banks #clickbank affiliate marketing #clickbank for affiliates #clickbank for beginners #clickbank for beginners 2019 #clickbank marketing #clickbank training #clickbank tutorial #how to make $200 a day #how to make $200 a day online #how to make $400 a day #how to make 400 dollars a day #how to make money with clickbank #joshua elder #paolo beringuel

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londonpalestineaction · 8 years ago

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Some security advice from a workshop at our February 2017 meeting.

Passwords

If you use the same password everywhere, this is the number one thing you must fix and state surveillance is the least of your problems.

The no. 1 threat is companies holding your data and not securing it properly. Password databases are frequently leaked onto the internet. If the company is good, they've taken some measures to hide your actual password, but that's not always the case.

The last high profile incident happened a fortnight ago with a very security conscious company making a terrible mistake in their systems, which are used by OKCupid, for example. So anyone who uses the same password for OKCupid as they do elsewhere is at risk.

Don't remember your passwords – use a password manager:

Use tools like 1Password or LastPass to save and create passwords for you. You then only have to remember one long password to access your "vault".

2nd Factor Authentication:

Sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, as well as the password managers above offer you the ability to use a "2nd factor", which is something you have on you as well as your password. This is normally your phone.

Don't completely mistrust corporations, or being a needle in a haystack can be a good thing

Anonymity amongst the big datasets of large corporations can be a useful way to operate. One reason is that it's not in Google's or Amazon's interest to give information to the US government due to EU privacy law. Governments then have to try and tap the entire input and output of those company's systems, and given most of it is cat videos on YouTube with the occasional Alec Baldwin playing Trump impression, well, good luck to them.

More importantly, they have the resources to secure data better than most, and have made big efforts to do so post-Snowdon, mainly due to EU/other international contracts they don't want to lose if it was found they were handing everything over to the US government without a fight.

Communications between Google equipment is secure (post-Snowden), so sending email messages between GMail accounts is much more preferable than emailing from RiseUp and Gmail and back again, as the government is definitely tapping what goes in and out of RiseUp, but is having a harder time doing that within Google's network.

The companies are also running their own campaigns against state surveillance.

However, use ProtonMail:

It's Swiss, open source, and has the thumbs up from security community.

Your computer

Keep it up to date:

Don't still be running Windows 7, and don't run old versions of OS X. These are basically dead in terms of security. Windows 10 Anniversary Update and OS X Yosemite are more secure than Linux. Yup, that's right.

Encrypt it:

Either use FileVault on Mac, or Bitlocker on Windows to encrypt your hard disk. This means if someone steals your laptop, they can't get at the contents without your password. The screen unlock was never secure.

Don't use it for sensitive information:

If you fear a state adversary is trying to get to your information, you should assume your laptop is already hacked. The truth is that laptops and desktops were not designed for security in mind, sooo....

Your phone

Use it:

Modern phone systems are designed much more heavily around security. iPhone remains the best, but even modern Android devices and Windows Phone are OK.

Keep it up to date:

Same rules follow as for normal computers. Your phone should be receiving regular updates every month. If it isn't, you can assume your phone is not secure. This means in practice sticking to Apple, Motorola, LG, OnePlus, FairPhone or Samsung for phones. You can use the cheaper brands as burners, but they quite often can't be trusted.

Use Signal:

Just use it.

Photos:

On an action, you may want to take photos and share them. They usually come with a load of metadata to help professional photographers, but which can also help police identify you.

Twitter and Instagram remove this data, so use these sites to share photos.

I think I've been hacked?

Try the Digital First Aid Kit, and failing that, contact someone at Access Now, or Zeynep Tufecki or Martin Shelton (below), by the securest means at your disposal.

Who to follow for more information

Amie Stepanovich (@astepanovich) & Estelle Massé (@estelMP) - Access Now, digital rights group

Zeynep Tufecki (@zeynep) - Harvard Berkman Klein Center sociologist with specialising on technology and protest with first hand experience from Turkey

Martin Shelton (@mshelton) - User research with press and "at-risk groups" at Google

The Grugq (@thegrugq) - Bangkok-based Independent Security Researcher

Delete everything

Don't keep messages, documents or plans longer than you need them. If you can use the disappearing messages feature of Signal, do so. (BTW, SnapChat is not an alternative.)

Glossary

OPSEC

Operational Security. The process to identify critical information that has to be protected, and the processes for carrying out that protection.

SIGINT / COMINT

Signals/Communications Intelligence. What most security researchers talk about when talking about online security. Sounds all military and cool, innit.

HUMINT

Human Intelligence. 95% of anyone's problems in activist communities is trust. Technology is comparatively easy. Don't get too hung up on state surveillance when there are more likely vectors for infiltration. To quote The Grugq:

SIGINT is really the sort of intelligence collection technique that needs to lose its prominence in the pantheon of intelligence gods. It is very easy for a serious adversary to defeat: basic tradecraft from the days of Allen Dulles will work (leave the phone behind, have the meeting while taking a walk). This tradecraft technique is described by Dulles, in 50 year old KGB manuals, and by Hizbollah operatives last year (2012). The only way to catch people who are capable of any sort of OPSEC / tradecraft is via: a) Mistakes that they make (very easy for amateurs to make mistakes), or b) Via HUMINT. Spies catch spies, as the saying goes. It might be updated to, spies catch clandestine operatives.

Double down on HUMINT and scale back SIGINT. SIGINT can be evaded, but HUMINT, essentially exploiting trust relationships, will always bite you in the ass.

Just use Qubes / Blockchain / GPG2 / Homophonic Encryption

Really unhelpful advice that's possibly technically correct, but way to onerous in reality, given by Twitter techbros who want to sound clever but don't have anything useful to offer. Ignore.

Open source

Sounds bad, right? Not really. All our most secure systems are based on shared assumptions about mathematics. Open source means the code for these systems are shared, and everyone understands how secure they are.

WhatsApp is insecure

Guardian journalists putting lives at risk through misinformation. Ignore.

#LPA resources #security #digital security

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itslikethatfrenchthing · 4 years ago

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068: 5 Of The Best Things To Do When You're Overwhelmed By Work

Today’s talking point:

Let's talk overwhelm.

The illness that affects all of us at one point or another in our business, especially when it comes to getting overwhelmed by work. I wanted to pull together a few of my biggest tips in this podcast episode, so that you have a nice refresher and a reminder as to what you should be doing when overwhelm starts to creep into your business.

We go over five tips (+ 1 big bonus tip) to help you beat overwhelm for good. Then I’m going to cover how to stay motivated when your progress is taking longer than you thought.

click here to watch the free masterclass on how to focus on the right tasks in your business without working 24/7!

WHAT IS OVERWHELM?

The first thing I want you to realise and understand is this: overwhelm is a choice. And you are in charge of how overwhelmed you allow yourself to feel.

It's going back to being self aware, and really building that mindset and muscle to be aware of when overwhelm starts creeping in - so that you can nip it in the bud.

One thing I can promise you is that we all struggle with overwhelm. It doesn't matter how successful you are, or how long you've been in business for, it will creep up. It's that feeling that you get when you just feel off, you get a tightness in your chest that makes you feel like you can't cope with everything and you need to escape from it. You need to escape from your work.

But there is something you can do about it. Being overwhelmed by work is not actually as terrible as sometimes we make it out to be in our mind because nobody's perfect, and not every day will be perfect. It's about understanding that it's okay to not be perfect. You can allow yourself to course correct and give the day a close and start new the next day.

It's really important that you can do that without feeling guilty or feeling like you're putting yourself down. Remember that every day might be different in your schedule. You might have a day where you have six hours to work on your business. Then the next day, you might only have two. It's okay to have a changing schedule. It's okay to not have a perfect structure in your business. Most of my days are very different. I have client calls on certain days of the week, some days, I have more calls than others. And I like to have that flexibility!

So it's really key that you start implementing some of the habits that we've talked about in previous episodes, implementing those specific strategies to make sure that you're staying on track, even if your days are different.

So what can you do to prevent overwhelm?

#1 | Plan Your Day In Advance

Are you sick of me saying this yet? This is critical. It's really important. I'm not going to go into this in too much detail, because I did talk about it a lot in Episode 67. So definitely go and listen to that if you haven't already.

Planning your day, especially planning it the night before, can really help you so much.

#2 | Pick Non-negotiables

Only pick 1-3 non-negotiable tasks for each day. I cannot stress this enough when I say that momentum leads to motivation. If you don't get something done in your business because you're too worried about multitasking and getting 17 things done in the day, you're probably not going to get any of them done.

Say you've just got a load of projects that you've not started, have not yet completed. That just creates more stress and anxiety for you and your business. So instead of picking 17, pick 1-3 and every single day. Bonus brownie points if you know those three tasks lead towards your monthly and quarterly goals.

Let me give you an example of what my current week looks like this week, as I'm recording this episode.

Monday

Record this podcast episode

Create a new lesson for the Busy to Boss Academy

Other daily to-do's I need to get done including my daily to-do’s, Instagram story, those sorts of tasks

Tuesday

Continue writing my social content for the week

Continue writing an email sequence for a funnel that I'm working on

Client calls

Wednesday

Client calls

My passive traffic flow system (more about that in another episode if you want)

Thursday

Going through some market research

Looking at moving parts of my business over to a different platform

My usual daily to do's

Friday

Check in with my clients

My usual daily to do's

Take the afternoon off

Simple, streamlined, and strategic. So, what does that look like for you?

#3 | Create Clear Steps

I don't want to see anything on your to-do list or calendar that says write a newsletter, etc - these really big broad to-do’s that are not actionable steps. You want to be very specific with the tasks that you are going to complete.

Something like:

Create a Facebook ad campaign number one

Write the first draft of my September newsletter

Write the script for my upcoming YouTube video titled X

This is really important to keep that momentum going by being very actionable with the tasks that you assign yourself. Take a look at your calendar right now or your project management system and look at the tasks that you've written down. How specific are they? If they're not that specific, then go ahead and change that.

#4 | Break It Down

Break it all down. We talked about this a lot, this view of simplifying the projects that you are working on. We want to make sure that you break down really large, complex projects into smaller, more actionable goals so that you can make progress quicker, and have the satisfaction of getting to that next step with your project.

This is honestly one of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners make. They assign themselves 40 different tasks to do in a week. We don't realise that a project takes a lot longer to complete than we usually predict. So always, always overestimate when you are allocating your tasks into chunks of time.

Always overestimate and really think about how you can write your projects down into little bitty pieces.

#5 | Do Something You Love

Do something you love every single day. You might think this is counterintuitive, but it's actually critical. I want you to add this to your calendar, one of those three non-negotiables that you get done everyday should be something that you actually enjoy.

Once I started implementing this strategy in my business, I started seeing a really amazing increase in my productivity, in my overall happiness in the quality of content I was putting out and in the quality of products that I was putting out.

Your business shouldn't be run in the day-to-day based on tasks you think you should be doing. It should be run based on the tasks that you enjoy, and that work for you.

So I make it a non negotiable to every single day do something that I truly enjoy in my business. For me, that's things like:

Creating content

Client calls

Working on new projects, new offerings

I love writing blog posts and creating newsletters and recording podcasts and speaking to my clients and creating new courses and content for my Academy that makes me happy. It makes me feel satisfied.

I really want you to do the same in your business, pick an area of your business that you love working on, and then do one small task related to that area every single day. That brings you a lot of joy.

+BONUS - Set Realistic Time Frames

Now usually whenever we think we can implement a project in a set amount of time, it takes us twice as long to complete it.

This is something that I struggled with a lot when I first started out. When I first started my business and went full-time I joined a group coaching program. I realised that people who were way more successful than me, allotted 3x more time in their project management system to complete the projects in their business. So I started realising that I'm not giving myself enough time to complete these things. No wonder I got to the end of the day and felt like I hadn't accomplished anything. It's because I had these unrealistic expectations of how much further ahead, I should be.

That's a limiting belief that we all have. We all want to be an overnight success and have instant gratification and it's just not realistic. You have to be able to give yourself time to implement big projects in your business. So instead of creating a new big project for myself every single month, I actually now create quarterly projects that I give myself three months to complete, and I break those costly projects down into micro goals for each month.

HOW TO STAY PRODUCTIVE

I want to talk to you about how to stay motivated when you feel like progress is taking forever. It's this whole notion of what do you do if you feel like you're chugging along, you're working hard to pursue your business goals but things are just not coming together as fast as you'd hoped expected or wanted them to.

This is something all of us can relate to whether you're in the beginning stages of your business or you've been doing this for a while; it’s really hard as business owners to balance our expectations because we're usually very impatient people.

Sometimes it doesn't come down to not being patient. Sometimes it comes down to the other side of the spectrum where you're actually too patient and you're not moving forward as quickly as you could be because of, well, because of a million different reasons.

We want to make sure that you have the best tools available to deal with these issues. Have a patient yet impatient mindset.

When you step into the patiently impatient mindset, you're working relentlessly and intentionally towards your business goals. But at the same time, you're realising that the results are going to lag, the results are going to take time. You’re working really hard, but know that you won't see the results right away. The results will never catch up to the rate at which you work. That's just the reality. It's a fact of life. But that doesn't mean that the results aren't actually there. It just takes time.

It is a balance of both sides: If you want to be a successful business owner, you have to have the impatience, the will, the excitement, the momentum, the motivation to keep moving forward every single day and be impatient about the pursuit of progress and success in your business. But then the patient aspect has to come in. It has to teach you that hey, okay, we're working really hard here. We're moving forward. We have this energy and this determination. But you also have to realise that this is a journey and there are sequence steps to success.

No matter how hard you work moving forward, the results will lag, the results will never be instant. If they were instant, then everyone would be doing this or no one would give up on their way to becoming a successful business owner.

We all go through this. It’s okay to be working really hard but not seeing results. Make sure that you are balancing patience and impatience to keep a steady pace, but not beat yourself up for missing time milestones.

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Watch the free masterclass here.

Want access to a library full of online marketing resources plus weekly bitesized breakthroughs to help you boss your online presence? Find it here.

What did you think of the show? Leave a review on iTunes!

Subscribe to the show and get notified when a new episode goes live.

Come join my free FB group.

Apply to work with me 1:1 as a private client here.

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#Blog

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scottmapess · 5 years ago

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BUY BITCOIN!!! – Economic Collapse 2020 Used For The Biggest THEFT In History – INCREDIBLE

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the show, everyone. It’s the Krypto, like I’m superexcited, have back on the show today. Naomi Brockwell. Naomi, how’s it going? Going pretty well. How are you? Doing great. Doing great. For those of you who may not know Naomi. She is the Bitcoin girl, has a lot of different Bitcoin related music videos out there on the Internet, as well as being a really just a massive part of the crypto community, having emceed lots of the top cryptocurrency events, as well as making fantastic content on her YouTube channel about privacy and bitcoin and all kinds of fun and interesting topics. So they linked Downbelow to her YouTube channel. So do go and subscribe to that. But today we’re gonna be talking about really what’s going on with this crazy crisis, how governments are using this crisis as a way to take away our privacy and just bail out some Bitcoin and all that fun kind of stuff. So stick around. It’s gonna be a great, great chat. And now I think we should hop right in with a nice, juicy one. Did we learn nothing from 2008? This this crash happened. It was terrible. Banks looted everything. And now here we are in 2020. What’s go ahead. We learn nothing. I think it’s the opposite lock. I think we learned everything from that, which is why it’s all happening again. And what I mean is that government got a taste for how easy it is to print huge amounts of money injected straight into the pockets of all of their crony friends. And then, I mean, we still haven’t had an audit of the top bailouts from 08. We don’t know where all of that money went. And the government. I think people in power realized how much power they could garner by having that leverage tool to be able to say, well, we have all of this money to dispose of. Who wants it? Put up your hand. What have you got to offer? And so, yeah, they learned a great lesson of how easy that was. So now rolled around. This is basically the same same process that is on steroids now. Right. The amount of money that they’re printing is astronomical. There are trillions of dollars in corporate bailouts and once again, the people are getting screwed. So I think at the end of the day, yes, individuals did not become suddenly economically literates. They are looking at this one thousand two hundred dollar check that the US government is saying, well, we’re going to send you the stimulus package, 1200 dollars. That’s gonna be fine for you being shot in your house for months, not being allowed to work. That will tide you over, I’m sure. Meanwhile, they’re handing trillions of dollars to that crony corporate friends. And no one gets an eyelid because they were able to, you know, just grease people’s agreement with all of this by by giving them something inside, like throwing them crumbs. So I think it’s the same thing happening over again is history repeating. And what we learned from 08, like when we have these emergency measures, they’re not emergency measures. They lost. And I think this is something that we definitely need to keep in mind, especially when we start to talk about privacy and and how we’re dealing with that crazy crackdown in terms of surveillance that is happening right now. The policies being implemented. I think I think it’s a scary slope, to be honest. It really is. I think you make a great point that when we do see these things happening, they rarely get rolled back later on. Oh, it’s just now it’s just during the emergency. And then 10 years down the line, we’re still saying, hey, why? Why is this still the case? Why are we still doing these things? It’s an emergency measure. And suddenly you realize this emergency never ended, you know? And yet people keep buying it. They keep saying, oh, well, it’s just an emergency. It’s just a stopgap measure. And these things, as you said, they never get rolled back. And we should especially when we’re talking about privacy solutions right now, because there’s all kinds of surveillance technology out there. And honestly, you know, if people want to create contact tracing apps and use them, I think that’s great. Pay individuals can can choose to use these things. But if governments are going to be saying, like, we mandate, you use this project, this app, and we’re going to have access to wherever you are at any given time, it’s all going to be identifiable to your post said it’s just surveillance and we need to be really careful with what measures and what invasions of privacy we’re going to allow right now, knowing that this is going to stay in place for the next 20, 30, 50 years until they cook up something new and worse. It’s not going to be rolled back. And I think too often people is like a high stake is a high stake selling environment. You know, where where the government’s I click going to do something immediately. Let’s pass this bill that has all of these really important things, because we have to ask you, time is of the essence and people go, oh, OK, just pass the toss it quick, guys. And they don’t read these things. And then, like policies, people don’t kick up a fuss because people like what we need. We need all this checking stuff. And so just pass it, you know, mandate it all. Let’s get a hold on this thing. And it’s it’s just so such a terrible. Is it. I hate that people fall for this stuff that they do every time because these high stakes environments at high. Just sales. You could call it. It just hurts all of us because at the end of the day, as you said, these are not things that are just going to be around while this emergency is going on. These isn’t going to be around forever. These things don’t get rolled back. So we just need to look at what’s actually being implemented and decide, is this the future that we want to be creating right now with these policies? It’s very interesting points there. And I think one of the things is that there’s no one to help us. This is something people need to realize. I mean, we back in 2008, I mean, the Occupy Wall Street movement came out of that and that was short lived and a bit disorganized. And I think, you know, the media ignored and then vilified and then it was kind of over. Right. And people had to go back to doing stuff. Whereas here you’re up against this behemoth of these these banks that have nothing. But they have thousands of Full-Time lobbyists working to pursue their interests and to bribe politicians and to get their policy initiatives passed. I mean, I think that I can’t river which leak it was that came out, but it showed that in Obama’s entire first cabinet was chosen by Citibank. I mean, the level of corruption going on in governments and both parties agree on. This is a thing or a take across countries, not just the U.S. I mean, most parties in any given government agree on the general narrative of this is how banking is done. This is how power is given over to the elites. And this is how we take away privacy from our citizens. Yeah, no, it’s it’s devastating. And I just like and reading your poster in the background, because honestly, this is so Orwellian when you say war is peace free. Free war is peace. Freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. What is this? Oh, William. Doublespeak way where they say things like that to get these things passed. They say, you know, they give us these false choices and they they make us buy into this system that is hurting all of us. And really, you’re just selling your rights to make choices about your life and you’re selling it to the highest bidder and opting into mob rule people to make decisions about how you live your life. I mean, it’s just such a like it’s a crazy situation in general. But right now we’re in particular danger because we have all of these big decisions to make. I mean, right now, honestly, that there are systems around the world that are so stressed right now that some people are saying, well, this is crazy. We’re on the verge of collapse as a society. Could you are when you’re looking at a six million people in a single week filing for unemployment and then just so many more millions across the world just being unemployed? People are predicting that 40 percent of the population might end up being unemployed as a result of all of this is the lockdowns of businesses, et cetera. I mean, that’s the recipe for civil unrest. Absolutely. And so I think that when you’re dealing with such a high stakes environment like that, some people say, well, society could collapse entirely and this would be scary and let’s protect ourselves. They’re about to enter into this, you know, crazy Hunger Games scenario or something. I don’t know that other people are saying, no, this is the perfect opportunity. These systems are stressed. This is a great chance to build something better, to implement better strategies and better systems and better policies. And, you know, that’s a really difficult thing to do. But it’s not completely out of the question. You’re looking at people taking matters into their own hands already. Like when the FDA screwed up so badly with testing and when they were they had a monopoly on testing. They banned any competition in testing and then they screwed up the test. So America was just so prepared for everything going on. And then not only that, but then they started banning the innovation coming out where people were picking up the slack, sort of banning at home testing. They made it so that you had to all the testing had to go through that a single state you couldn’t do testing in your own state. And that went on for like a month. I mean, that blows my mind that you have systems like that and people started to just say, OK, I’m just going to go around you and not ask for permission. And people started to do things. People started to 3D printing masks. People started to use their computing, hashing to your phone link for a QR to fold proteins, to start to look at how we can we can help in this situation. People when you have like people being told where they can spend their money, what price they have to use, what they are allowed to spend, how much they are allowed to spend on these goods. Which businesses are essential? Which business not? You say people start to say, well, I’m going to find alternatives. I’m going to go around, I’m going to maybe use online marketplaces that aren’t as heavily monitored as Amazon, for example. Well, I mean, you have these small in towns. You have this little ecosystem set up where people are buying and selling goods from each other rather than going to their usual places. There’s this whole shift that’s happening in society as people are taking matters into their own hands. And I think something like that could be exciting if you use it in the right way. This sort of idea of a garrison where you can go around the existing systems that don’t work. My hope more than ever is that through this process, we learn how corrupt and inept the government is with all of that awful policies that they’ve implemented and awful reactions. And just like this corruption, I mean, just blows my mind and all of this and the devastation that they’ve caused as a result of everything that’s going on. But I hope the people start to wake up to this and find better systems, start to use their systems. That’s that’s why frame for at the end of all this. Hopefully we can we can hope. And I think to an extent, honestly, we are starting to see at least if we talk about let’s talk about the cryptocurrency aspect here. We are seeing to an extent, people starting to move into this. And we’ve seen big volumes picking up across Latin American crypto exchanges, for example, Argentina. We’re seeing record volumes in Venezuela. We’re seeing record volumes, Colombia, Brazil, on and on. We’re seeing a lot of new interest from people and it’s coming at the exact time. It’s not just I think the people want to cop in and grab some quick gains when there’s those people to. Right. There’s definitely a speculators coming. I think we’re seeing a lot of people coming in for the unique aspects of cryptocurrency that you can’t evade capital controls. We see capital controls affecting a lot of countries or people can’t send sometimes any money out. We’ve seen that in Lebanon where you can’t send any money without. Getting special permission, which which basically means that if you’re rich and connected, you can do whatever I want, and if you’re not rich and connected, well, you have to come begging for scraps from the banks. If you can get anything at all, which is a broken system. And so we’ve seen these volunteers picking up everywhere, really. I mean, even major exchanges like crack. And for example, we’ve seen I think they said they saw an 83 percent increase in sign ups or something like that. So we see a lot of new people coming into the crypto space at the exact same time that we see the governments. I mean, I think the U.S. is the absolute worst offender when it comes to this. I mean, how many trillions that literally lost count of how many trillions? It’s two trillion later. It’s a trade side. I mean, it’s really over here. It’s half a billion here. I mean, that the one thing I think I just did is such an egregious example of how screwed up the whole system was as the small business loan situation where they had three hundred and fifty billion dollars set aside for small businesses, almost all of it went to big businesses. The banks took 10 billion dollars in fees to do almost no work except to take money from the government and hand it straight to their friends by taking a nice little chunk in the middle. So it’s decimated. It was disgusting. Well, I see this idea. Good. Yeah. Yeah. No, I’m just going to mention what you were saying before about this uptick that we’ve seen. I think this is completely to be expected. If we think about the conditions that led to Bitcoin becoming popular in the first place, it was alright. We had this giant economic collapse. You had all these corporate bailouts. You had all of this corruption. You had just a printing press going crazy. And then someone released this white paper and said, here’s an alternative money. And I think that these days when people get into crypto, especially the last few years, they get into it and they’re like, what is what’s the price? How can I speculate on this? You know, how can I flip it back? I’ve bought them. And they don’t really understand why Bitcoin has so many impassioned users, people who would like changing their entire lifestyle to fight this. They will like it. It’s just a money like I didn’t guess it. But the fact is, in 08, people were so angry about what was going on. They were disgusted at the policies that the government was enacting and they wanted a better way. Now, in right now, we’re in the midst of another financial crisis. Right. And people starting to get a say that same feeling of why it’s so important to have alternatives. They’re saying the corruption in traditional finance, the same the corporate bailouts are seeing all the cronyism and the politicians just lining the pockets of their friends. People are angry and they’re starting to look at alternatives. Now, this is the first crisis that we’ve had since we’ve had Bitcoin, since we’ve had cryptocurrency in general. So I’m very interested to see what’s going to happen here. You know, I don’t know whether there’s going to be hyperinflation or inflation in general. We didn’t really see it in 08. So I don’t know whether that’s going to be something that we’re going to see this time, even though the government is really ramping up policies that they even did in a way. It’s on a much larger scale this time. But who knows, maybe the Fed’s able to juggle this. And we don’t really see the inflation that a lot of a lot of people are like the apocalypse people are predicting. But I think that even if, like, first of all, people worried about that. So they’re getting involved. But second of all, people just want out of this system. It’s unfair. It’s unjust. And. And so I like more than ever, I’m looking to the people who are providing everyday use cases for cryptocurrency. It’s not just that I want people to hold and buy so that they have reserves. If things hit the fan and all of their money goes to trash because it’s just being inflated away. Right. I actually that that’s great. And I love that. And I think it’s good to have a hedge just in case and diversify. But I also want to see people pulling their power away from traditional finance. I want to see people closing their bank accounts. You know, right now, I don’t think we’re going to have bans on whether or not you can get your money out. I think we’re just going to see banks ramping up the bureaucracy, all of the things that they have to jump through to get their money. There’s not going to be some oh, we don’t have the money. You can’t come here or there’s only five thousand dollars a day you can access or whatever. I don’t think we’re going to see that. I think we’re going to just be waiting through this molasses of bureaucracy. So it’s gonna be harder than ever. And that’s how the banks are going to safeguard themselves because they don’t have the money that people will want to get out. Right. That I haven’t. I want to see people pull that power away. Don’t rely on them to give you permission to access your own money. Haven’t had money in crypto that you’re using every day. Buy your groceries with crypto bio gas or petrol with crypto. Pay your bills with crypto. All of this stuff is possible now. We have had 10 years of development. We have all kinds of third parties that make this a whole lot easier. Places like Refill make it really easy to do all of this stuff and, you know, go to your local meat market, go to your local vegetable garden and ask them if they will accept crypto. Go to your local brewery. Tell them that you’ll give them. You know, I like places like any pay, for example, actually give you a percentage. If people sign up to accept Krypto. There’s all kinds of incentives in place for you to be using crypto in your everyday life. That’s that’s the world that I want to say that that that’s an exciting world soon. I think more and more and people realize that you can there. There is alternative ways to pay. I think that’s one of the great things about Bitcoin, is that we’ve set up this alternate rail of being able to pay people and obviously Bitcoin just the tip of the spear. There’s a whole lot of cryptocurrency that people can accept if you want to accept, like going except like going into one theory, we say, except Ethereum. And that’s that’s a great diversity, a choice versus saying, well, you have to use this government dollar, this government fiat currency, the one that we you have no control over. I think that’s one of the things that really excites me about Bitcoin, is because I know what Bitcoin is. I know what’s going on with the network. I understand the economic policy of it. I know you know that there’s no changes coming to that except the ones that are pre-programmed in, whereas what we see with the central banks, whenever they want to print another trillion dollars, they do it and they rob you every time they front run you. First and foremost, they give the money straight over to their banker buddies who then lend it out to you at 20 percent a year or whatever. That’s a broken system. And Bitcoin is the opposite of that. Bitcoin is giving you monetary freedom, this Swiss bank account in your pocket and all that stuff. It’s very, very powerful stuff. And it’s you’re removing yourself from this corrupt banking system when you hold Bitcoin and of course, other crypto currencies are providing this whole new just explosion. I feel like it’s this like evolutionary Cambrian explosion moment where we see all these different financial tools starting to come out across decentralized finance. So it’s very, very exciting. No, it’s absolutely exciting and I want to see people not just taking back control, taking their own financial sovereignty back into their own hands. I want to see people supporting those that are building our decentralized future. Because when you’re using these services, you’ll giving in market signal that says, yes, this is something I want in my life. When you’re going to a brewery and paying with crypto, you’ll telling them, yes, I want you to be using crypto. Remember, if things hit the fan and U.S. dollar goes to nothing, then like, what are your options? Right. If you’re if there aren’t voices around you that are accepting crypto crypto, I mean, is it gonna be that useful for you if you don’t know how to spend this stuff? Is it going to be that useful for you? Right. So I think that people need to start to oil this mechanism. This crypto ecosystem support the places that are already investing in this and just pull your power away from traditional finance, inject it into the future, which is decentralized money that no one can control, because people as I said, they’re so angry about what’s going on, they’re looking for alternatives. And this is the moment where we need to show them we have a better alternative. That’s right. And we have better if I go back, I think back to like 2017, we had this whole ICL boom and bust and all that stuff. And that was we didn’t really have a lot of great working product. And we had, you know, his bitcoin is working fine. And there were some other things are working just fine that we fast forward to 2020, the entire crypto ecosystem. It’s so good right now and it’s only getting better all the time. We have so many great wallets. We have so many great now decentralized services, decentralized exchanges and decentralized lending and decentralized insurance and decentralized loans and decentralized gaming and decentralized content hosting services. It just it’s wild as well. You can actually start using the stuff and some of these things you can use to get rewards for. And then some of these things you can actually just use to make your everyday life just a little bit better. No, absolutely. And I think that it feels empowering. It feels empowering to take control of your finances, to take the power away so that when you. I mean, essentially when you’re using traditional finance, you’re asking for permission. Every time you use it, every time you swipe your card, they can put a hold on things. Mr. Banker, please, can I have some money, sir? May I please use. It’s my money. That’s my money. Like, for example, the other day a friend of mine said she tried to get her money out of her bank account, but she’s been doing a lot of traveling. And her bank said no, because this seems to be some crazy activity going on. We just don’t want you to get money. Maybe they didn’t have the money. I don’t know. And and she said, well, I want to get my money out. What do I need to do? What forms to fill in? So she jumped through all of these swims and then they kept telling her, no, you can’t get it out still. Just like what you want. Then they’re like, well, you need to provide documentation of all the places you visited and all this just like, well, what do you told me? Why do you need all that information? It was such an overreach. And then they eventually said, well, you already got out a thousand dollars in the last week. That’s enough. What do you need more for? As if it’s their business at all. How much money is she is spending? How much of her own money she has access to? I mean, things like that should just send up giant red flags to people. I mean, I’ve had my bank account frozen before because I’ve sends it to something related to crypto in the early days and my bank account free. So I was like, no, we don’t deal with crypto. And I’m like, well, it’s my money. You know, I either I send it directly to this place or I take it out and I send it anyway, like, but unfreeze my account because this is my money. I want access to some people and not so lucky. Some people have their assets forfeited. Some people have their accounts. Saiz, some people have at first indefinitely. This stuff happens. And I don’t think people realize how important financial sovereignty is until that personally affected. Until then, people like my credit cards fine. You know, all of that’s fine. But there’s so many things wrong with that. It’s not just the corruption, like the corrupt system that you’re feeding into and giving more power to up, but it’s also that you’re not safeguarding yourself. I mean, identity theft alone is like a trillion dollar industry. Every time you use your bank card, you’re putting out details out there into the ether, the pain that hackers are always getting access to. JP Morgan gets hacks like every other week. You know, all of it does get stolen. You know, we should be using services that protect us more. We should be taking more responsibility and care with ourselves. Right. And I mean, I just I long for the day when the majority of people start using alternatives because we’ve had a stranglehold in finance for so long and people who get away with anything and they could extort people and they can charge whatever fees they want. We didn’t have a choice like in Australia right now. There’s a ten thousand dollar cash limit on anything that you want to purchase. So basically what they’re saying is it doesn’t matter how much you dislike the banks, whether or not you want to give them your business, you are forced to use their services. Whether you want to know whether you think they’re good or ethical business or not, you’re forced to use that. I mean, that’s a government supported cartel right there. I’m forcing this these systems so they charge higher fees, more rate than withdrawal fees, more account overdraft fees, more account maintenance fees. Don’t have enough money. We’re going to take money from you. It’s it’s a crazy system in Australia, actually is one of the more generous countries in their limitations on your freedom. If you look at some European countries I know I think it was Spain’s got like a two thousand euro cash limit. And this the thing is not this, that the idea is that once if you make a purchase using more than the allowed limit by the government, you’re a criminal. You can get fined or put in jail for using cash as a payment. And I think it’s really good points about that. It can happen anyone at any time. This is the thing when you’re using their system, they’re in control. They own your money when you put it in there. If you want to support WikiLeaks, right. Hands up, son, or WikiLeaks, you’re not allowed to do that. You’re not allowed it. That’s what it’s like. The guidance book right there. Edward Snowden spoke. They just got to seize the account that that money went to inside us. It’s illegal. You’re not getting any of those profits. You purchased his. You sent him a crypto donation that goes straight to Snowden. That’s insane. It’s insane when you think about it. And this is this is the monetary system we live in. If you want to get your money back at the bank, you have to beg. You have to plead. You have to hope that they’re going to give it to you. I mean, hey, look, if you’re rich and powerful, you’re all good. But if you’re anyone else that’s not super rich and powerful, you are in a position of weakness when you have your relationship with the bank because they’re in charge your money. The second you give it over to them, it’s hard to get it back. And that is a broken system. I think when you see the power of crypto, they can send money to anyone, anywhere with no restrictions. If you want to support WikiLeaks when it by Snowden’s books, whatever you can do that you have that freedom to do these things. Now, I want to talk just a little bit before we end up our chat here about really the attacks on privacy that we’ve seen. So this. Mexican beer crisis has been used as an excuse by a whole variety of different actors to increase censorship across the Internet, as well as to try and get these different things through that are decreasing people’s privacy. We’re seeing attacks on encryption. We have these tracking apps that they’re bringing out and schist. Orwell couldn’t have written it better himself. I mean, I don’t think that he even conceptualize how crazy things could potentially get. Yeah, I think that when we get started with contact tracing, I think that we shouldn’t demonize that in its entirety because it’s absolutely possible to have a contract tracing app that is completely anonymous and that is privacy focused. That is completely feasible is whether or not the government decides to implement that or not or whether, again, they use this as a as a facade for trying to sneak in more of that surveillance policies, which seems a lot more likely to me. I mean, they’re doing that with encryption. You mentioned the attacking encryption. So you got, Bill, by the attorney general right now with Lindsey Graham being one of the major proponents by it, that they put this bill forward called Earn It and Earn It is a disaster that, again, they using the guise of a way protecting children. And what it actually is. I mean, these have been the two most vocal opponents to encryption. They have been saying, like literally Lindsey Graham said about a year ago, said to Facebook, We want to access all messages on your platform. If you don’t let us do this, we will do it for you. And then, lo and behold, he’s a major sponsor of this bill that comes out that will do justice under the guise of protecting children. So you get all kinds of bad policies come through when it’s called something notable so that when voters look at it, they like, well, I don’t want to support someone who didn’t want to protect children. And it’s like, oh, no, that’s that’s not what this is about. Like this attack on encryption. It isn’t just an attack on encryption. It’s far worse than that since an attack on free speech. So there’s something there’s a policy in America that basically gives a safe harbor to companies that host other people’s content, and that’s safe. Harbor says that someone else is posting illegal content on your platform. You’re not liable for that as long as you don’t know about it. If you find out about it, you take it off, whatever. But this is like the linchpin of freedom of speech in America. If we did not have this, there would be no way that websites would be able to host anything that would not be this freedom of expression that we say blossoming on the Internet because people a company is going to protect themselves. They’re going to erred on the side of caution, because if they’re facing jail time and bankruptcy, they’re obviously going to be more cautious than they need to be. So but the government is doing is saying we are going to take away the safe harbor from you unless you follow our detailed plan and follow our guidelines that we set forth. By the way, we haven’t written those guidelines yet. This is a blank check we’re going to give to the committee to write whatever guidelines they want. And lo and behold, Bill Barr is going to be the head of this committee. You’ll have that guy who wants to bad encryption because he thinks that there are people who have private conversations online. I should should be labeled as criminals. Yeah, he’s going to lead this. And so what are they doing? I mean, you have a f f talking about this. You had Snowden’s organization, Freedom of the Press, talking about this. You have WikiLeaks told him about it like you had everyone who believes in freedom of speech and believes in privacy on the Internet just in absolute shock and outrage about this bill saying this is a ban on encryption. Do not pass this. And I think that is just it’s really hard to convey to people how important policies like this are, how important it is to speak out against them, how important it is to stop them. Because when things like this get put in place, as we said, people. These are cold emergency measures. Either they protecting children or they are stopping misinformation in the age of Mexican beare illnesses like that. They all these they are labeled as they stop, got temporary things and they are never temporary things. These policies lost. The Patriot Act kept getting reauthorized every time it expired. Right. And then then it gets worse. They didn’t just reauthorize the Patriot Act, which was the biggest invasion and overreach in privacy. And I think a step towards more surveillance, a totalitarian Orwellian, not may that we’ve seen, they increased. It’s when they reauthorize it. So, I mean, this stuff is dangerous. We should be vigilant against it. We shouldn’t be having these knee jerk, terrified measures. We’re like, just pass whatever, make sure that we protect ourselves right now. We need to be thinking about the future we’re creating. Do we want an Orwellian nightmare situation where I mean, we’re living most of our lives these days on the Internet and we rely more than ever on robust security for those platforms? Do we want this Orwellian future where we have no privacy left on those platforms where literally the only way to have a private conversation is to be physically with someone and have no electronic devices around us? Because I could be listening as well. I mean, that’s a scary situation where we’re feeling like we’re monitored with everything we do. People start to walk on eggshells. There’s this chilling effect that comes across society. This is not a future we want to be creating. And we need to be exercising more than ever our freedom of speech right now. And now you mentioned, like you mentioned, these. Platforms that are censoring things. And I just. Oh, my God. Like things. Then they say anything that goes against her guidelines. YouTube is is deleting. That stuff is chilling. I mean, on the one hand, YouTube can do whatever they want. Right. And they’re a private company. But it is chilling that they think that that’s a reasonable thing to do. I mean, right now, like, I have a library platform and I’ve had a library platform, which is like a YouTube alternative for years. And I’ve always thought of it as this sort of I’ll hedge my bets. I have this small community growing. I’ll just upload my content there. I’ll just mirror it so that it’ll stay that way. My channel’s deleted for whatever reason. I’ve got it all. And then last month for the first time at one of my videos on library got more views than the same video on YouTube. I hit 12000 subscribers on my library platform and a video that was demagnetized on YouTube. I owned over three hundred dollars full. So suddenly I’m going, whoa, that there are real alternatives out there. Now the trick is getting people over to those alternatives and getting them to frequent those because I mean YouTube. I think that they’re killing themselves right now. Facebook. I think that they’re destroying themselves with this censorship, that shooting themselves in the foot. Because if people people would flock to the Internet because they wanted freedom of expression, they wanted to be able to connect with people. It was this free flow of information. As soon as you start to inhibit that. People will start to leave. And before that, it was harder for people to leave because they weren’t alternatives. But you can bet that there are flourishing alternatives out there right now. So I honestly, their days are numbered. Well, that’s the thing. We have the marketplace of ideas. Right? So if we do have. One place starting to not be as good as it used to be. Then you will see people voting with their feet and they will go other places. They will find alternative content platforms. And, you know, it’s trying to censor what people say or what people think was really what it comes down to or talking to thought crimes here. Right. You can’t have those opinions. You can’t have these thoughts when you start to look at that. It’s a very, very dangerous precedent when we let Silicon Valley and the tech overlords decide what is and is not acceptable to be discussing. We’ve seen all these tiny little algorithm changes that actually more and more support the establishment. Right. Some of that, for example, I think was last year they passed a new update to the algorithm that prioritize, like MSNBC and CNN over alternative media sources on YouTube, like a Jimmy Door, secular talk radio, these kind of shows, they got deep prioritized. So we actually see the official story, which is almost always lies and misinformation actually being what is promoted as the truth. I mean, it’s sad, I guess ironic because YouTube was created as an alternative to CNN and MSNBC and FOX. Like we wanted just a free flow of ideas. And that’s what you should have started out as. So that that’s a fact. Is that what you’re thinking? So I think that I can’t remember which publication I wrote about this, but yeah, they started satirists herding such queries on their site with like an embedded code that leaked the rating a channel had. So as you said, like they would think YouTube was manually rating channels with how good they thought they were so sad it would get a really high score. And then, like, maybe Krypto, like an NBA TV would be like had a low score so that they just wouldn’t show up in search results like this. This is someone this isn’t an algorithm that’s just making guesses. This is an individual at Facebook. I mean, at YouTube going through and manually choosing which channels people should watch over others. I mean, I think if they’re going to do that, fine, but be transparent about it. Let people know that that’s what your platform is about. Don’t pretend to be this egalitarian alternative to mainstream media where anyone can post their videos because that’s not what they are anymore, you know, and then people can make an informed decision. Do I want to be on this platform? That is very much funneling what I can and can’t say and what I kind of can’t access or do. I want actually to be able to access all kinds of things. So I want to broaden my horizons. That’s it. And that’s one of the many reasons why I also upload online videos over to library. So it’s just important to support the decentralized ecosystems as well as just having that extra place where you can put your videos. Final thought for today. What are some practical things that people can do to stay safe online to preserve their privacy? Cool. This is a really great question. Are the number one thing that I would say is never use the same password twice. You should be having a strong password on every single platform that you’re using. And you’ll think, well, I’m on hundreds and hundreds of Web sites. How could I remember all these passwords? Get a password manager? Honestly, this is gonna be a lot safer than what’s currently happening. Like recently, there was a there was a zoom hack. Right. And it turns out Zoom was never hacked. What happened was you had all these other leaks, like maybe it’s LinkedIn had that big hack, or maybe it’s JP Morgan had they had and hackers collects passwords and then they try the same passwords on all these other Web sites. So hackers were able to access all of these Zoome accounts because people would just be using passwords. This is the biggest security threat. That’s the easiest to change. So get a password manager. Remember, only one password for your password manager. That’s super long. Find one that is recommended by privacy experts. I think the dash lane is a great one. I think that Freedom of the Press Foundation they recommend. That’s one of the ones you can use. Some of them are better for Mac, some of them a benefit. The pay say so check out their information on that, but do not ever use a password twice. I also don’t just like change one letter and your password, because that’s not going to help you figure it out. They figure it out. They just it gets run through all this automated process. Number two, update your software as soon as there is an update available. People so often just say, well, I don’t have time right now. I keep putting it off. It says, update now. And you’re like, no, I’m in the middle of work. I can’t do it right now. The reason why there are so many updates is usually because people have found security holes and they’re patching them. So if you are not updating the first thing that people do when hackers find out there’s a security hole, they will. Absolutely. Try to exploit that security hole. They will take that hole and then try to see which accounts that they can access. So if you are not updating your software immediately, that’s a big risk. And then I guess the third thing I would say just does not make things too complicated. E-mail is inherently insecure. Estimates is inherently insecure. Almost every messaging platform you use is inherently insecure. If you are using Facebook Messenger, don’t it’s inherently insecure. All of these platforms that I’ve support to have good encryption, you know, that’s so great. But encryption is a very complicated thing. Some encryption is absolutely already broken by the NSA. There does seem to be some encryption that seems to still be robust. And although we can’t know for certain, experts have looked into these things and are constantly innovating and trying to make platforms more secure than ever. And so, again, Freedom of the Press Foundation, which their primary focus is to make sure that journalists and whistleblowers are protected when they’re leaking information. So they want you to be as secure as possible. I think that they recommend to messaging services, as Snowden recommends, to messaging services signal and why up and says that they are the most secure in his opinion. So if you’re using any other messaging service, I mean, sure, maybe you like the the stickers or something. The stick is really worth having a database of a log of the history of every conversation you’ve had. That one day probably will be released on Facebook stickers. But my Facebook stickers. Yes. Signal. Why? I would encourage everyone to stop putting everything that emails, even if you have purchaman mail like partial mail is much better than things like Gmail, which is. Absolutely. You’re just creating a log for the NSA to collect everything you’ve ever written. Right. And but when I say NSA, this is this faceless corporation. You’re saying that you’re creating a log that employees every day, people to access all your communications as well. So, you know, this is you’re just opening yourself up to major security threat there. So just use while signal whenever possible, whenever it doesn’t need to be in an email. Just use those things. And then the probably the three things that I would just mentioned right off the bat as ways to protect yourself immediately. Simple things, really easy things that don’t require a giant shift in your day to day living. But just, you know, you start to think about those things. There you go. Nice, easy, simple steps to follow, guys. Naomi, thank you so much for coming on the show today and talking about Krip to talk about the kind of talking about privacy has been a fun chat. Again, day one who stuck around to the end of this chat. Thank you so much. And of course, is the leak down below where you can get subscribe to Naomi’s channel, Nancy. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

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BUY BITCOIN!!! – Economic Collapse 2020 Used For The Biggest THEFT In History – INCREDIBLE

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