#like on one hand this only really helps a VERY specific subset of students

[generalnuisance0]

this might be a dumb and highly specific pet peeve but i really hate the (very common) career advice given to stem majors in Canada (especially IT/CompSci and nursing students) that we should all get TN-1 status and live/work in the US for the higher salaries, lower cost of living and lower taxes (which does objectively make it easier to build wealth)

idk i just feel like this kind of career advice really only applies to/helps if you are a (preferably rich) cishet neurotypical ablebodied white man

like yeah sure I, an openly queer woman with adhd should TOTALLY move to the borderline theocracy with a shortage on my meds right next door great idea

[lilibetts]

Sometimes A Girl Just Wants Some...

Falling in love with Riverdale, Theme 2: Spicy

Part 1/3

The 14th of February. A fraught time for the serially single in New Haven, to hear Veronica describe it.

“The end of Cuffing Season is nigh!” she proclaimed, holding an enormous dildo aloft.

(“That’s Colt,” their boss, Zelda Spellman, had explained when she hired Betty, upon seeing the younger woman’s wide-eyed fascination. “He’s a replica of a porn star’s penis. A very popular order, but also a very popular return.”)

In true Veronica Lodge fashion, she didn’t seem the least bit put out by this development. Next to her, Kevin Keller seemed markedly somber, but that was because his own casual boyfriend had ditched him on the very last day of January.

Betty, however, was indifferent in opinion to it all.

From her seat next to their workstation, she held up her pink mug with the penis-shaped handle in a toast. “Cheers, I deleted Findr from my phone,” she announced before taking a gulp of lukewarm coffee.

“Betty!” 

“Betty!” 

Both Veronica and Kevin were aghast.

“It’s barely February. What happened to TwentyTwenty being ‘The Year of Horny Betty’?” asked Kevin.

In her defense, she’d made that New Year’s Resolution last December, after one of those ‘look at your life, look at your choices’ epiphanies that left her life seeming very lacking. The reality of putting herself out there on a matchmaking app and meeting with the rare specimen who didn’t seem completely terrible and who seemed to have an actual body that was not 100% an ugly penis, however, had been nowhere near as exciting as she’d expected.

She was saved by Kevin’s computer chiming. “Sorry, satisfaction waits for no gossip.” He tapped a few keys and answered the incoming call. “Good afternoon and welcome to the Toyz R Us Customer Support Helpline. My name is Kevin. How may I help you today?”

Veronica’s computer chimed too and she pointed an expensively manicured, accusative finger in Betty’s direction. “Don’t think you’re getting away with this!” She hissed before taking the call.

Toyz R Us only had two brick-and-mortar stores, but it did fairly well with online sales in New England. Betty had only taken the job because she needed some extra spending money around the holidays, and she’d stuck with it into the following semester because she liked the new friends she’d made and found the atmosphere surprisingly enjoyable. At least she got to put her writing skills to good use, even if it was for composing informative, yet enticing descriptions of sex toys.

Of course, her parents had no idea she worked here, and if she was careful enough, they never would.

Veronica’s call ended much more quickly once the man on the other end realized she wasn’t Cheryl. Unfortunately, Cheryl Blossom’s brusque and insulting phoneside manner was such a turn-on to a specific subset of men that she really could’ve started her own side hustle and made bank. Ridiculous bank.

“No sir, I can’t tell you how much thicker it will make your penis. We do recommend that if you use a penis pump, you do so regularly and continually,” Kevin advised before tapping a few keys and removing his headset. To Veronica and Betty, he exclaimed. “That idiot just asked me how much bigger the penis pump would make his dick...my god, how would he think we’d know?”

Betty snorted as she stood, penis-mug in hand. 

“Hey!” Kevin called after her. “We weren’t finished!”

“My break time’s over!”

There actually were a few minutes left of her break, but she had a good reason for being sneaky. You see, it might be Valentine’s Day, but it was also a Friday, and Fridays at Toyz R Us meant freebies in the Friday Reject Box. Due to the sheer volume of products that got moved between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, management had provided them with *two* Friday Reject Boxes.

Betty was a college student at heart—if she was going to support her newfound lingerie and sex toy habit, she had to avail herself of cheap and free products whenever possible. 

Carefully sticking her head out around hallway corners, Betty tiptoed around the building like Nancy Drew herself, on the lookout for her coworkers. 

It had taken her about a month of working here before she stopped feeling embarrassed by the products, although she tried to always approach it as any other job...with professionalism.  Still, there was something illicitly thrilling about being twenty years-old and working at Toyz R Us that made Betty feel like a truly independent woman, more so than moving 350 miles away from her hometown.

Betty wasn’t inexperienced, exactly, but she’d been raised a very straitlaced 'good-girl-next-door' and while college had done wonders for her independence and self-affirmation, she still struggled with the idea of discussing sex with her friends/coworkers.

Luckily, she made it to the table holding the Friday Reject Boxes without running into anyone, and Betty wasted no time starting to rifle through them. Hurry, hurry, before anybody else comes and sees you.

In the first one, there was a Fingo Nubby finger vibrator, a very intimidating looking Booty Camp Training Kit that featured three sizes of anal plugs. She didn’t care for the pink crotchless tights but she grabbed the package with the lavender babydoll that had small slits for the nipples and a matching set of panties with an open crotch. That went on the table, and, after assessing the toys in the first box, the Sweetheart Choker and finger vibrator was added to the small but growing pile of goodies. Just the thought of playing with those was already turning her on. With hot cheeks, she turned to the second box.

Since she started working at Toyz R Us, Betty had been exploring her own sexuality, giving more consideration to what actually turned her on and put aside the time to make herself feel good.

She was distracted from the quick nature of her mission when she noticed a stack of dvd cases towards the bottom. “Ooh,” she cooed, intrigued. “The Seduction of Heidi.” That was added to her pile. She skipped The Best of Ron Jeremy and picked up 49 Positions for Lovers, whose cover promised better sex for couples. Well, the way her sex life had been going lately, Betty needed all the help she could get. 

Deciding she had enough, and that she really should be nice enough to leave some things for her coworkers, Betty gathered up her loot and spun around, only to collide with the hard body of the man who had been standing behind her. She yelped and felt a few of her selections spill out of her arms as she nearly stumbled backwards into the table.

Strong arms grabbed ahold of her, righting her, and Betty’s eyes widened when she realized who it was.

“Jughead,” she croaked. “Have you come to look through the Reject Boxes?” 

Jughead Jones was more or less her mentor on the Content team, in some ways her boss. It was him to whom she showed her first product descriptions for approval, him who she worked hard to please. Over the months, they’d gotten to chatting from time to time, and that had been how she found out he was working on writing his first novel.  

Over the weeks, they had shared their personal work—chapters and articles—for the other to comment on. Jughead encouraged her, Betty cheerleaded him. She came to admire him...his intelligence, soul, personality...and she liked to believe he did so for her, as well. He was thoughtful, too, in a way that threw her because none of her boyfriends had been this attentive...it had always been her that listened and took care of people. Jughead turned the temperature up in their office and kept it relatively higher than he was comfortable with because Betty had kept shivering and working with thick cardigans and hoodies on. He remembered how she liked her coffee and made sure their room had a steady supply of scrap paper and colored pens so she could work out word choice and technical phrasing before typing anything up.

One thing was for certain: she was ponytail over heels in lust with him.

She wanted him to do things to her. Things.

Jughead stood there and adjusted his crown beanie ever so slightly. “Uh, yeah, I’ll just…” he trailed off and, to her horror, he bent down to pick up the things she’d just dropped. All she could do was watch as he straightened up and glanced at the educational dvd and the choker before handing them back to her. “Here, Betty.” 

She couldn’t even look him in the eye, so she stood there, intensely aware of the flush climbing up her chest and into her cheeks.

Betty wanted to die.

“Thanks. Uh...I better go get back to work. I’ll see you when your break’s over. Bye!” She couldn’t get away fast enough.

Once she turned the corner, however, Betty did not head back to the Content room. Instead, she slowly craned her head around the corner, just enough to see Jughead as he bent over one of the Friday Reject Boxes. Scarcely daring to breathe, she watched as he quickly grabbed two dvds. Squinting, she recognized them. Scooby-Doo: A XXX Parody, and The Twenty: Self Pleasuring, which featured a bunch of solo female masturbation scenes.

Well.

She knew what tonight’s masturbatory fantasy was going to be about.

[the-final-sif]

1/2 how do you think class 1-a would react to realizing they’re probably already super famous? It’s been mentioned in passing in the show that UA students are pretty popular and well known because of the schools reputation but on top of all that they’ve also been involved in a lot of major events so they must have an unusually high level of recognition amongst the public right? It’s only really mentioned in passing in the the show but realistically wouldn’t they start stumbling across online

2/2 forums and fan clubs and hashtags and stuff? Who do you think would have a negative reaction and who do you think would immediately start a YouTube prank channel in the dorms?            

Most of the class would be excited at first, and some of them would love interacting with people, but I’d imagine the novelty would wear off quickly for most of them. Some of the shier kids, particularly Koda, are a bit uncomfortable with all the attention. Some of them lean into it. Some of them are used to it.

Yuga/Mina/Denki/Hanta/Ochaco/Toru all have public social media accounts that they use to chat with people and are really accessible on. People will often go to them to ask questions about Class 1-A.

Denki and Hanta tried to start a prank channel and that lasted all of 5 minutes before Aizawa shut it down for good. Partially because someone would end up dead, partially because it was a security risk & invasion of privacy to the other students.

Ojiro/Shoji don’t have social media because they aren’t interested in it. Fumikage likes browsing social media but only has private accounts for Goth Things, because Dark Shadow gets whiny if he’s not allowed to post things too.

Sato/Koda/Tsuyu all have social media accounts, but they’re accounts with a particular theme and they don’t do too much chatting on them. Sato has a nutrition/baking Instagram and gives great advice for cooking for specific quirks. Koda’s got either a tumblr or an instagram and it’s 70% photos of animals he’s met with either emoji/very short/no captions. The other 30% is animal care guides/resources for people, and while he’s not good at responding to compliments/people being nice to him, he’s great at giving people advice for taking care of their animals! Tsuyu has a tumblr and it’s mostly nature scene photos. She will reply to people rarely, but usually prefers to just do her thing and have a relaxing place away from the chaos of hero life. 

Momo maintains a very professional social media account that she’s somewhat reachable on, and she has since before UA since her family is really rich and she’s used to public attention. Tenya also has a public social media account but it’s fairly sparse, mostly him scolding other people for getting too nosy @ the more chatty 1-A members. 

Shouto does not have a public social media account, or possibly any at the start of the series. By the time he gets introduced to it though, he gets himself a tumblr and it’s 50% him talking about his person life in incredible detail (but nobody knows this is his account) and 50% him trying to get answers to what are legitimate questions to him but come off as shitposts to everyone else.

Kyoka/Shinsou both have public social media accounts (and private ones), but they don’t really talk to people. They post weird out of context photos from Class 1-A and whatever’s on their mind, and then never explain anything. They reply to people randomly every 7 months or so.

Kirishima has a public Instagram/Twitter and it’s 50% things that he saw that made him happy (dogs, flowers, anything cute), 25% photos of him with other people, 20% photos of him working out/at the gym, and 5% photos of Katsuki. It’s a place of sunshine and rainbows, and the internet has a collective agreement to protect this ray of light & murder anyone who explains to him what a “thirst follow” is. His Instagram is the only consistent source for decent photos of Katsuki (blurry photos may appear elsewhere). A subset of his followers are Katsuki fans just trying to find any content for him. In fact, there’s so few decent photos of Katsuki outside of Kirishima’s account that a number of major media outlets go to his account for photos too. Kirishima has no idea how popular he is despite all his followers, he chats with everyone & is always happy to talk about how awesome his classmates are.

Izuku doesn’t have any public social media accounts and is also largely unaware of his own fanbase. That’s mostly because he’s way more focused on his classmate’s fanbase though. While he participates in the fanbase for almost all of his classmates, Izuku has been Katsuki’s first fan since he was 2 years old stays loyal to that base. He absolutely runs one of the larger Katsuki fanclubs online, and he has a Katsuki stan account on twitter.  His stan account in particular is well know for it’s detailed theories on Katsuki’s quirk, talking about Katsuki’s progress, and straight up @ people challenging them to fights when they’re shit talking Katsuki (usually reporters or gossip sites). Every picture of Katsuki posted only has been archived by him somewhere, and media outlets have also been known to straight up ask him for help finding info/photos for Katsuki.

Speaking of Katsuki, he’s got 0 social media whatsoever. It’s not interesting to him, and (per my headcanon) tech is pretty hard for him to use anyways what with sweating nitroglycerin from his hands and all. He’s pretty much unaware of his fanbase, and he’s the only one with a negative reaction to finding out about any of it.

Part of that is because Katsuki doesn’t like interacting with people in the first place. Part of it is because Katsuki has had a lot of negative experiences with the media (see, the reporters constantly harassing him over the sludge villain, an incident where he was almost murdered as a 14 year old. Sports Festival. The reporter asking his teacher if they thought a child who was actively kidnapped was actually evil and would become a villain), so he doesn’t like interacting with the general public very much. The last part of it is particularly after the kidnapping, Katsuki gets nervous about people tracking him/stalking him online. It’s all uncomfortable for him so he steers away from it, and he’ll actively avoid getting his photo taken by his classmates. The only exception to that is Kirishima, who always asks for his permission before posting a photo of him online and lets him check the photo/info attached. So, Kirishima is allowed to take photos of him (even candid shots, so long as he checks them before posting), which is why he gets the only decent photos.

[thelonelytraveler11]

Is this really the best I can do?!

It's been three years since I've done any form of research. I haven't worked in almost three years. Just in case anyone's wondering, yes, I filled out job applications (a lot, like ~250 before I gave up). For the past couple years, I've been living off my savings, the little bit of money I get from my family, and the little bit of money I get from having part time jobs. My work experience since dropping out has been pretty dismal (on average), I haven't been able to hold down a job that gave an appreciable amount of money for longer than 3 months at a time without being fired or being so miserable that I just said "fuck it" and quit.

I understand the concern some may have. You may consider it my fault for being unemployed. Quitting a job that I'm miserable while doing may seem irrational or irresponsible, but speaking as a person who spent almost the entirety of his college years being miserable, I can say with all honesty that being broke is better than being miserable. I envy those that can’t seem to comprehend my way of thinking, because that probably means they have a very good life. I wouldn't want to work in an environment that negatively affects my emotional state for 4 decades anyways. Having disposable income isn’t more important than my well being. Having a job I actually enjoy doing is very important to me because I don't have many sources of happiness in my life.

I'm kind of a loner. I don't have a strong relationship with any of my relatives and I don't have friends anymore (and even more troubling, I don't care to have those types of relationships anymore). The only potential source of happiness is my job. I don't foresee me failing in love or developing a close relationship with anyone. If the current trend continues, I think its more probable that it doesn’t happen.

I feel numb most of the time and when I do feel something, I'm usually thinking about my college days and that something is usually anger. It honestly was my biggest regret, going to the University of Illinois. Sometimes I wished I never went to college. Literally the only thing that was even remotely good about my college experience was my grades, everything else sucked. Looking back, I wish I went back to working at CVS after I graduated from HS.

In the alternate timeline, I probably would have been better off in the long run (very little stress, no debt, live rent free at my mom's house for a couple of years after graduation while working a presumably full time job which would enable me to save up a fair amount of cash before moving out). Instead, I came away with nothing. My college education was completely worthless, I reaped no benefits from being a degree recipient. All I did was waste 7 years of my life and thousands of other people’s dollars studying stuff that ultimately wouldn't matter. If I were a benefactor for the UIUC department of chemistry, I would be pissed to hear my story because that means my money isn't being put to good use, especially if I added into one of the scholarships that was awarded to me.

So, I know what your wondering, why am I writing this post? Well, I was trying to get ride time with CFD and I called for a specific person that wasn't in. Someone took a message and wrote my name down as Joel Dennison. Dennison was the last name of the NMR guy at UCI. That got me thinking about my college days and how I hated basically everyone. I caught myself looking through emails and for the most part, the more I read, the more I remembered, the more enraged I got. Now that's one sure fire way to put me in a bad mood, get me thinking about the bad ol' days. I bet many of the people I went to grad school with are enjoying their careers, while I was completely forgotten (and if they're not enjoying them, well at least they have them).

I’ve always wondered why were the other students so complicit? Is racism really that prevalent? Is there something else going on? See, it's one thing to not say anything while they were still students because it runs the risk of them being treated like I was treated. But to not even offer a helping hand even after their careers were established, knowing what they know, is un-fucking-real.

I never really felt welcomed in chemistry. People seemed to be more in love with the idea of me. I noticed the longer I stayed, the worse I was treated. At U of I, it was .... kinda bad. I experienced a form a discrimination where I would have written essentially the same answer as my lighter counterparts but received lower grades (slightly lower, but still). People assumed I did well in certain classes because the professor "liked me" (pretty sure no one at U of I liked me much). People also made statements that are crazy racist and then tried to pass them off as jokes. I fucking hated life in Champaign-Urbana.

SIDE NOTE: the following story doesn't necessarily reflect the chemists, but it does represent a subset of the student body at U of I. So, I'm sitting in the cafeteria with three dudes I already knew and some guy from the next table looks over to me and says "Sorry, if I offended you". I calmly replied "what did you say?" And Oh....My....God.... the look of utter fear was plastered all over his face. I said, "What did you say?", again, calmly. I can not stress enough that I was visibly calm throughout this entire situation. And then I noticed he was shivering, I figured I would warm up a lil bit by using my hot ass breath, so I repeated the question louder and slower (you know, to give the guy's body time to come to thermal equilibrium), again.......calmly. He was still frozen in fear. So now I am mentally gearing up to jump across this table to snatch this little boy's neck out from under him. And then something miraculous happened, my tunnel vision broke down and I realized someone was calling me. It was Jon (one of the kids I was sitting with) telling me to drop it...so I did......so, yeah, that's the story of how I almost got kicked out of U of I for snatching the neck out from under some little white kid during sophomore year. 


But there was one instance of me being the butt of racist jokes in chemistry that I can remember. Then UIUC grad student, John Overcash (who I believed worked for Ken Suslick), made mention of me "cooking crack up in the kitchen" on more than one occasion. Apparently, since I was a black chem major (that specialized in organic chemistry) I must have been a drug dealer beforehand. Or maybe he thought I was a drug dealer then....who knows...

To make matters worst, people have used the stuff other people made up to put themselves a head of me. Senior year I had an interview with eli lilly. My interview was at 9 am and there was one person interviewing before me at 8 am. The 8 am slot was taken by one Joseph Cullen (a fellow undergrad). During the end of his interview , I could vaguely hear what was said, but it sounded like Cullen told the interviewers that I was a drug dealer. The door opens up, the interviewer shoots me a look and goes into the room where my interviewers were and talks to them. Meanwhile Cullen walks past me. I give him a thumbs up and he walks away chuckling to himself. These are not good signs. I can’t say for certain that these people really believed I was a drug dealer, but their behavior suggested it. It was their reaction to me saying the phrase "nice white crystalline product", that’s what suggested it. I was describing the physical characteristics of the product from a reaction I ran and it just so happen to be a white crystalline solid (...smh). What I want to know why were these people so quick to believe Cullen? Yes, what Cullen said could be true (which it wasn't) but couldn't it also be true that he's trying to give himself a better chance of getting a job by undercutting the competition?

I wish I got a job offer as an undergrad. I honestly didn't want to go to grad school, but I had no other choice. Visiting grad schools was a whole ordeal, I was told in one way or another that I wasn’t welcomed ... at every school. At Scripps I was told explicitly that I wasn’t good enough to be there by complete strangers (how exactly would they know given that they never assessed my ability to think ... who knows). At Indiana University, I was placed in a hotel room by myself because they heard I slept naked. At UCI, I was told that I wouldn’t make it pass my first year (again, by complete strangers). At Caltech, I was told I didn’t belong because I was a drug dealer (or that I look like a drug dealer, apparently).

Now, I ask you, how do drug dealers look exactly? What are they’re defining characteristics? I ask because if you asked someone who lived in Champaign-Urbana for four years to imagine what a drug dealer looks like, they might imagine a srcawny white boy in a frat (not someone that looks like me). What makes the Caltech visit even weirder was that Prof. Sarah Reisman was just standing by, staring at me while I was being told I didn’t belong (by the help, you know, the people who was serving drinks). It was like she was trying to read my facial expressions to get a sense of what type of person I was (or am). Or was she using the help as a proxy to express her own thoughts (I’m not sure)? Was she waiting for me to “defend myself”? 
How would I be able to do that exactly?

SIDE NOTE: it’s impossible to defend yourself when there’s no evidence for or against whatever accusations there may be. It all comes down to what people choose to believe. The help has already chosen to believe I’m a drug dealer (or at least look like one) and I’m willing to bet there’s really nothing I can really do about.

No matter how I analyze the situation, Reisman’s behavior does not reflect positively on her as a person. I’m not sure if she knows this, but she was the primary reason I had to not go to Caltech. I found her behavior to be very off-putting and I got the sense that she didn’t really want me to go to school there. On top of that there was talk of her wanting to have (oral) sex. 


DISCLAIMER: I am effectively asexual, I don’t have sex ... with anyone ... or anything (yes, I actually needed to say both).

Now, I didn’t believe the talk when I first heard it because I thought there was no way a self-respecting, competent professor would admit to wanting to engage in a sexual relationship with a perspective student ... this is what I choose to think. However, the more I heard of her desires to have (oral) sex, the more I believed it. But I never fully accepted the rumors as the truth until my first year at UCI. Reisman came to Irvine for a talk and as always almost all the Organic students showed up. Before the event, I was sitting at the small table with another grad student in my year, her name was Beth R. (I don’t know how to spell her last name and I’m not going to try to google it). Beth ended up mentioning how pretty Reisman looked .... I “mmmhmmm”ed her. I could hear the chatter going on behind me, Reisman seemed mildly disappointed that I didn’t agree. Beth soothed her ill feelings by saying that I didn’t disagree. After the event, I was talking to Prof. Scott Rychnovsky and Reisman came up in the conversion. This was the final nail in the coffin that made me believe the rumors were true. It wasn’t the fact that he said she would’ve blown me, it was the fact that he said it soooo enthusiastically. He was as enthused as a person could possibly be in a professional/academic setting. No one should that enthused by the thought of a man getting his dick sucked as much as Rychnovsky was by the thought of Reisman putting my dick in her mouth, no one. It was kinda weird. 


The thought this woman hocking loogies on my dick tip, and imagining the sensation of warm saliva slowly rolling down my shaft (as I quote lines from the movie, Shaft (the Samuel L. Jackson version...obviously)) as I knock my head back, praying to god that I don’t come away from this situation with paper cuts (she has thin lips) just to look back down after noticing she paused just so she could fill the waves from my pulsating erection and make eye contact as she goes deeper and increases the pace eventually moving to the point where she starts straggling my balls and moaning like Lady Gaga singing a lullaby to baby while stroking my hard cock until I cum for her as Nicole Nava sits beside her while taking notes shouldn’t be even remotely amusing.....TO ANYONE...EVER!!!!!! But apparently to Rychnovsky, it was. It was at that moment I never wanted to be affliated with Caltech as long as Reisman was there. If Caltech and Illinois were the only two places that offered me jobs after finishing the PhD, I’d have to change careers.


Okay, so here’s the thing. I don’t really view professors as people. When I was a student, they were more like encyclopedias that could talk to me. They simply took the form of a human, kinda like a barbie doll. They’re anatomically incorrect, they lack genitalia, so they don’t have a gender. I honestly, believed this. One time, during senior year, I walked in the third floor bathroom in RAL and I saw Prof Steven Zimmerman taking piss. My face immediately screws all the way up, my inside voice says “How is he standing up and taking a piss when he doesn’t have a dick?”.....I thought that....I literally thought that....I shit you not. Just so you know, it wasn’t just Zimmerman, it was every professor. The women are doubly dickless, in my mind Suzanne Blum was like —(Mia Khalifa) because she has negative two dicks inside of her at all times.

DISCLAIMER: just so we’re clear, I’m NOT alluding to the fact that Blum has to get people to agree to have sex with her. Nor am I alluding to the assertion she’ll probably be nothing more than an afterthought for literally anyone. I’m merely trying to stress the fact that I don’t think of professors as people, but as encyclopedias that can talk to me.

I was made to feel unwlecomed at every school I visited. Why? Well, you'll have to ask them. I can honestly say that by the time graduation (from U of I) came around I didn't believe that i would have a successful career as a chemist, but I put everything into this so I couldn't just leave...

Grad school was even worst because on top of being the black kid, I was also the social pariah. The other students did a real good of making me feel unwelcomed. So much so that after two weeks of living in Irvine I stopped trying to make friends. No one seemed interested in being cool with me (I'm basing this off people's behavior ... obviously). And if some of them were, the way they showed it was so unique that I couldn't even recognize it as a sincere attempt to get my attention.

I also experienced some the same stuff I did when I was at U of I. Namely, instructors not giving me what I earned. In Dave VanVraken’s class I always received the second highest score on the exams. The really curious thing is that no one knows who received the top score. Once, when I asked to see the printed out distribution, the TA refused to show me (why?). I'm willing to bet that single point ahead of me was a dummy point. In Liz Jarvo’s class, when the first exam came around, we found out the high score was a 83. Who got the high score?...no one knows, but when I received my test the number 38 was written on (Also note I just so happen to get the same score as the other kid from U of I). At first, I was puzzled and glanced over to Peg (the TA). She sees my score, turns to Jarvo and says "he knows he didn't get that low". While I don't remember Jarvo’s exact words, she stated in some way that I would come to her and argue my case for a higher grade. So, here's the thing. I shouldn't have to defend myself or argue with you to ensure that I'm treated like everyone else. It should be a given. 


From what I hear the reason why I was treated this way has something to do with them not wanting me to "talk stuff" to the other students. 


Okay, so where is this coming from? I ask because I’ve been me long enough to know their opinion of what I’m like isn’t actually based off me. If they actually talked to my fellow classmates, the most common thing you’d probably hear is that I’m quiet. So either these people are just making up stuff to justify treating me how they want to treat me or my classmates are liars. I’m not really the type to talk about my grades (or really anything) unless the topic is explicitly brought up in conversation (and this is assuming I feel like talking at all). You can dress it up however you want, but treating me like a second class student for any reason solely reflects poorly on you (it gives no indication as to what I’m like). There were instances like this in half the classes I took. Some, admittedly were a smaller deal than others. In Vanderwal’s class I got marked off once because I didn’t draw both arrows in a mechanism that included a homolytic cleavage. For those that don’t know, if a homolytic cleavage occurs and you show one electron going in one direction, it is assumed that the other electron goes in the opposite direction and therefore does not need to be explicitly stated (minor, but mildly annoying). In polymer chemistry (taught by Aaron Esser-Khan), we had one assignment where we needed to propose something that wasn’t in the primary literature. I proposed a polymerization based off a derivative of the Hiyama coupling. Khan’s critique was that since it wasn’t already in the primary literature, it probably wasn’t a good idea ... really?! And don’t even get me started on spec because that spec TA was sketchy as fuck. He intentionally told me the wrong due date for a homework assignment and I’m pretty sure he shaved a couple points off one of my exams...

Okay, so these experiences are only a subset of the shitty things I experienced as a UCI student. But do you know what made life at UCI worst than life at U of I? My research advisor (Suzanne Blum)....and to a slightly lesser extent my fellow group members. Over the years I grew to hate them. I was lied about, I had a homework assigns hidden behind water coolers (Darius Faizi), I’ve had the nitrogen lines removed from air sensitive reactions (Darius Faizi, Suzanne Blum), I had products from reactions switch out for reagent alcohol (it’s a mixture of ethanol, methanol, and isopropanol) (Josh Hirner), I’ve had septums removed from reaction mixtures (Josh Hirner), I’ve had people try to placate me with sex (Katrina Roth), I’ve had people try to use the fact that I was in an agitated state to get something they wanted (Katrina Roth), I’ve had people turn on the indoor lights in my car in an effort to drain my battery while I’m allowing them to use my car to practice driving so they can get a U.S. driver’s license (Muhammed Al-Amin), I’ve had people ask questions just so they can not listen to the answer (Chao Zheng, Drew), I’ve experienced asking people for help just so they can not even try to help brainstorm what the answer could be (Darius Faizi, Kim Tu), I helped others brain storm shortcomings for a proposal, just to catch an attitude when they realize I didn’t catch everything the first time around (Quinn Easter). 


SIDE NOTE: To provide context, Quinn asked me to look through a synthetic route in his proposal that he was intending to present in his advancement to candidacy exam. There was something I didn’t immediately see but did bring up during a group when he was giving a practice presentation. He became visibly upset and mentioned he thought I was trying to make him look bad. If I was really trying to make you look bad, I wouldn’t have told you anything, so that you would’ve made the same mistakes when it actually mattered. Quinn, you’re an idiot.  


l’ve had people call me after I already dropped out and given up on chemistry from a redacted telephone number claiming to be an official representative of UCI calling me in an effort to get my address (Suzanne Blum, Ashley Davis), and I’ve had the experience where I ask for information pertinent to group website maintenance and they act like I’m hitting on them (Adena).

SIDE NOTE: 
This is something that always amused/offended me, having  someone assume I’m attracted to them because I acknowledged their existence. It’s funny because because they have the audacity ... but it’s also offensive because the operating assumption is that I don’t have standards, which couldn’t be further from the truth. (They seem to make a lot of faulty assumptions)

What was this experience suppose to teach me? How was I supposed to become a better person or scientist because of my affiliation with the group/university? Me coming to Irvine and working for Blum was a total waste of my time. I’m not entirely sure what her deal was, but it seemed she had a preconceived notion of who I was. No matter what type of relationship we have (or suppose to have) this will cause problems where there shouldn’t be. 


Is the request that someone’s opinion of you is actually based on you too much to ask for? Because I feel it’s a basic request that most people should be able to easily do. The contemptuous treatment did subside with time (mostly because I avoided talking to other students when ever possible) but it never really stopped. Why did it start to begin with? I’m willing to bet the only things they don’t like about me has everything to do with me reacting to the way they treat me.  Again, I have to ask, is racism really that prevalent?


Then one day, I started getting so fed up with life that I decided I needed an escape, even if it’s only for a couple weeks. So, I started planning a trip to Europe. I worked hard in the weeks coming up to the trip. I was trying to finish my entire project before I left (sadly, I didn’t, but I tried). Things were looking on the up and up. Before I left, Blum even said I was meeting her expectations, that was the nicest thing she ever said to me (it was the nicest thing anyone at UCI has ever said to me). I went off on my trip, and during the middle of it I received an email essentially telling me that my time at UCI was finished. Why? I still don’t know. 3 years later and I still don’t know why my career was ended before it was even given a chance to start.  It’s hard to move on with your life when you don’t have closure. It’s really hard to move on when you still have to live with consequences of other people’s actions.

 SIDE NOTE: I got the sense sometimes that Suzanne Blum did not really care about her job 100% of the time. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It’s like, either she truly didn’t understand the importance of her role (as the leader of a research group) or she truly doesn’t give a shit. Either way, she doesn’t deserve to be in the position she’s in. 


I still remember my last day in Irvine. It was bitter sweet. I was so happy to finally get to leave but also a bit anxious because I knew that the thousands of hours I spent studying and doing research was time wasted and it would never amount to anything. I knew I wasn’t going to get a job with my credentials. I even saw Eric (the other kid from U of I) in the student center when I went over to get lunch. He was looking at me all sad and shit because he knew I didn’t have a future in chemistry. We didn’t talk, we just walked past each other and exchanged glances. I tried to conceal a smile as I walked by. By the time my Dad’s flight landed, I had moved most of the stuff out my apartment. 


Life at home was hard. Depression is a mother fucker. I liken it to  a less severe version of sleep paralysis. I felt like I was stuck in my own body. Kinda like how I felt in the early Irvine days when it would take me hours to roll out of bed. I would literally wake at 6 am and just stare at the ceiling for ~4 hrs before I could convince myself to get up. And to make things worst, no emotional support was offered by my family. Their assumptions that I’m somehow responsible for other people’s actions along with their snide remarks about me being lazy did the opposite of help. I regretted coming home, even more so when I found out I somehow failed the background check for CPD. 


Now, how in the holy fuck does someone without a criminal record fail a background check? The only reasonable thing I could come up with to explain this is that the work experience I listed (my research experience) doesn’t count as work experience because instead of working for a salary, I worked for credit hours or a stipend. I have to tell myself things like this to convince myself I’m not getting screwed over in every facet of my life. If this is true, then my college experiences are doubly worthless because not only can the credentials I’ve earned not be used to get a job I’m more than qualified to do, but they can’t even get me a job you don’t even need a bachelor’s degree for.  


I wish I moved to LA after dropping out. If I stayed in Cali, I’d be force to move on with my life because I wouldn’t be able to sulk in my mother’s house for months. What would I do for work? idk...but I’d find something, and when I get fired, I’d just move on to the next dead end job.

As time went on, I found it easier to move, I still have scars though. Scars that may never heal. What can I do from here on out? I’m not sure. Going back to graduate school isn’t an option (or any program that requires letters of recommendations) because after experiencing what I’ve experienced and allowing those that I depended on for letters of rec to learn about my experiences, everyone seemed to be complicit. Either they didn’t do anything to change the course of action or it seemed like they were trying to cover it up by telling me to take the site down. I lost faith in everyone, I don’t think I can trust any of the profs to submit a letter of rec on my behalf when they either have done something that goes against my interests, are complicit in the wrong doing of others, or seem as though they’re attempting to cover up what happened to me. Even if I could get in anywhere, I still don’t want to go back to school. I lost faith in higher education. I lost faith in people. Whatever I do, I have to be able to do it without a college degree.

Just in case you’re wondering, I can’t depend on my college friends either. Mostly because I wasted no time trying to make friends. I’ve come to believe that friends are a worthless luxury.

I honestly believed that if I studied hard and knew my shit someone would hire me. I was wrong. I learned the hard way that to the outside world you are not you. You are not the sum total of your thoughts and actions. You are your skin color. You are your hair texture. You are the clothes you wear on your back. You are what people choose to believe you are. You are not you. People don’t care to get to know the people around them, they just want to feel as though their justified in believing the way they do. So I guess in order to get by in life you just need to be everyone’s friend and present yourself in such a way that everyone deems acceptable. Having the skills needed to do the job is more of an afterthought, huh? You know, one of the corollaries is that you’re expected to exhibit a certain level of extroversion. Welp, it just so happens to be the case that I’m an introvert and if the previous statements have some truth then I can honestly say this system was set up for me to fail. The only way I can get by in life is because I’m better than the other guy. No one will ever choose me because I’m their best friend.

I believe that’s where some of my problems stem from. When people see my face, they expect an extrovert (or at least someone who is more extroverted than me). When they find out I’m not who they want me to be, the reactions can range from essentially nothing, to mild disappointment, to mild hostility. And I think this is because people are more interested in the idea of me than actually getting to know me. So when they meet me and actually get to know me after building me up in their heads they’re kinda like “...oohh, this is it?!”. I don’t understand people. It’s like people just assume that you’re going to conform to their world view while refusing to even bend to yours. Now, I’m totally opposed to the very concept of “fitting in” because of all that. I got the sense “fitting in” means assimilation, which may involve losing qualities that make you unique (ones you may actually like about yourself). I don’t see why I should change in any way for people I don’t like, that I don’t see the benefit of being associated with, or for people that never liked me to begin with. People even sometimes mock my behavior, presumably because I’m not what they want me to be and this is just their way of trying to get me to conform.


The most recent example of this is my cousin Sonia (she’s multicultural). I went to her graduation party during the summer. And as with most family functions, it pretty much consisted of me sitting quietly most of the time. So fast forward to when it’s time to go home. My mother and 2/3 of my brother’s children are making their way to the car, noticing the third one is missing I go back for her. As I’m making my way up the front porch, three of my cousins (one of which is Sonia) are in my path and I say “watch out”. As I walk past Sonia, she says something along the lines of “woah, he must be serious....” while laughing... I’m going to say this once, “Mocking my behavior because I don’t act how you want me to act will never help anything”...... unless you’re actively trying to get me to dislike you. I have to remember that Sonia is just a child. Maybe it hadn’t dawn on her yet that there’s more to life than what she’s experienced. She’s probably never met a person like me, so she won’t know what to say in order to get me to interact with her. But then I’m like, “But what makes her think making herself look like an ass would actually help her in any capacity?” How does this explain the behavior of grown ass men and women who do the same thing?”. I wonder if it’s a cultural thing, and these people just don’t realize how bad they make themselves look to people that aren’t like them. 


On the way home, I started thinking, “Is this really the best I can do?”.  Have I been doomed to live a life where I’m not really happy? No, it can’t be the case. I still have faith. I may not have faith in other people anymore, but I still have faith in myself. I believe I can make something out of nothing, even if no one else does.

After going through all I’ve gone through, all I want is to not suffer anymore. I just want to be insanely rich for no reason. This won’t solve all my problems but it will eliminate many. If I ever come into having an ungodly amount of money, I’d give some of it to my family so they can afford many of the things that they want in life. Then I’d disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.


I’ve become acutely aware of the fact that people want to learn useless knowledge without ever having to talk to me.

DISCLAIMER: the knowledge is useless because we won’t/don’t have a relationship of any sort. Why waste your time learning information that isn’t relevant to your life?

So I’m going to take this opportunity to answers some personal questions because the thing I hated the most about you people is your unique combination of arrogance, ignorance, and obliviousness. While I can’t help with the arrogance and the obliviousness, I can help with your total lack of knowledge. So, without further ado ...

QUESTION TIME

Did you ever like life in Champaign county?

I was excited to be there in the beginning, then I met the people and all that excitement went away quick.

What’s your fondest memory from college?

That one time when Chipotle was doing that 2 for 1 deal. That was cold.

So, what’s up with your sexuality?

I don’t have sex because I don’t want to take the risk of having children, also no STDs. People were oddly obsessed with my sexuality and I never quite understood it. Here’s the thing, I’m a little self centered and I’m like you in the sense that I don’t immediately acknowledge other people’s way of thinking all the time. I honestly don’t understand why there was as much “interest” in knowing what I’m interested in (I use quotes because if people were actually interested they probably would have try talking to me). My viewpoint is that your claimed sexual orientation is irrelevant, it’s not even worth bring up in conversation. The reason why is simple. If you see a pretty girl and you know she’s interested in men, it doesn’t necessary mean she’s interested in you (assuming your male) right? That’s why the only thing that matters to me is whether or not the person I’m interested in is interested in me. 

It’s funny because if you completely ignore the fact that not everyone thinks like me, it would seem as though there were ALOT of dudes that wanted me to fuck them when I was in college.

To the people “interested” in knowing my sexual orientation. Ask yourself two questions. Do you want a shot? Do you think you have a shot? Think hard about it. If the answer to one of those questions is “no”, don’t waste your time.

If you haven’t already figured it out by now, I don’t think like a normal person. I’m never going to adjust or change to make you feel comfortable, the best thing I can do is not talk to you at all. I don’t adjust to you, you adjust to me. Why? because fuck you, that’s why.

Are you ever going to have sex?

Maybe, maybe not. What’s it to you?

Do you think people like you?

I know they don’t. Based off their actions, they don’t want to like me either. They’d spend less time gossiping about the negative characteristics I could have and more time actually getting to know me if they did.

You don’t think people know anything about you?

It all depends on what you think it means “to know”. Personally, I don’t. I’m never around people long enough for them to be able to get a true sense of who am I as a person. All people get are snapshots. Sadly, that isn’t good enough. That’s something I don’t think most people realize, actually.

What if after reading this, people actually started trying to get to know you, how would you react?

My recommendation is that you don’t waste your time. You can’t undo the damage that’s already been done. I’ve already stopped caring.

If you could go back in time and pick another college, which would you pick?

Xavier University in NOLA. I’d pick this HBCU because I’m fairly confident some of the problems I encountered at U of I wouldn’t have existed there.

Why did you choose UCI?

Because they told me I wasn’t going to make pass my first year.  I knew what type of student I was. I knew I had what it took to make it through any program. But I was at a low point in my life, where nothing seemed to be going right. I figure If I go there and get forced out after a year, it wouldn’t be my fault. The devastating thing is they let me get so close to graduating before just booting me out like they did.

Why did you use the word “they”?

Someone easily could have stepped in and did something. The department just enabled her (Suzanne Blum).

What grad program do you think you should have choose?

Indiana University or Rutgers probably would been better for me.

What motivates you to do well?

Meaningful positive reinforcement. Don’t just give out compliments for the sake of giving out compliments.

What’s one thing you hate most about people?

Their stupidity. Before I was told I failed the background check fro CPD. I’d get calls from some sort of case worker for CPD who was suppose to determine my eligibility. This dude asked me if I “resigned” from the Blum group and acted like that was a perfectly valid question. This wasn’t a job, it was a component of an academic program. I WAS A STUDENT. There was no resignation. You don’t resign from school. You either graduate, drop out, or get expelled. I know some college education is required for employment with CPD, so it’s far more likely that this guy is an idiot. REMEMBER GRAD SCHOOL IS STILL SCHOOL AND THERE ONLY 3 WAYS TO LEAVE.

Did you ever consider taking legal action?

Yes, but I know the people I’m dealing with aren’t above lying. Since there’s no physical evidence (that I have in my possession) proving that wrongs did occur, I’m reluctant to believe I’d actually win. It’s not smart to get into a “he said she said” battle with people that are believed to be pathological liars.

Are there any common misconceptions you’d like to clear up?

I wasn’t doing the school shit to make friends. I only wanted to make money. That’s the only reason why I was there, to make money. Every time someone why I as getting a PhD, my answer essentially went like, “I’m getting a PhD because money.” I see no point in trying to make friends with people who seemed to have been conditioned to dislike me.

Also, just because I’m quiet it doesn’t mean that I’m stuck up. It is in fact possible to be someone who isn’t a big talker.

Contrary to popular belief. I am in fact a HUMAN BEING. I have emotions and sometimes something could happen in one part of my life that can affect other parts of my life (like how well I do in school or how productive I am in lab).

Why did you just give up?

What’s the point of playing the game when you know you’ll never win.

It seems like the college years were a hard time for you, did you ever do something to ease the pain, like drugs or alcohol?

No, I love myself too much to potentially set myself up for problems later. I gave comedy a thought, but I found really hard to want to be funny when all I’m thinking about is the depressing shit that inspired the joke. If I’m gonna do something, it’s gonna be something were I don’t have to live with the consequences of my actions. I was suicidal. I was planning to kill myself the night before my thesis defense.

Why then?

I was fairly confident that no one there cared to save me from myself. But just in case someone wanted to surprise me, I figure it would be best to do when no one would expect it.

How?

potassium cyanide. The night before my defense I was going to make it my point to get a bottle of potassium cyanide. a couple months before my trip to Europe, I looked up who had it. It was on the fourth floor (or maybe the fifth). Go all the way down to the last lab space on the right hand side. When you walk into the lab space go along the right hand side and go through the door on your right. After that go to the first door on the right hand side. I placed a bottle on KCN in the first column on the left hand side, top shelf. The bottle should be on the wall on the left side (assuming it’s still in the same place I left it). I figured it wouldn’t get much use due to its inherent toxicity so it would probably be in the same place I left it when I needed it. I wouldn’t be surprise if the bottle is still in that exact spot.


Did you ever think about getting help?

From who? When I did finally ask for help, the first thing I was told was that the department sided with Blum (mind you this is before any type of investigation occurred). As soon as I posted the email from Chris Vanderwal on this blog, his tune changed immediately. But his actions didn’t reflect the words he put out in the public space. He was of no use. He had no interest in helping me in any capacity. I’m sure of it. I’m all alone in this world, I don’t have a safety net so if I fall, that’s my ass.

What about the professors from UIUC?

My previous statement stands. I had no one.

Is that why you started the blog? You felt like your were all alone and just wanted someone talk to, even if that someone was actually a void in space?

Yes, that’s exactly it.

Is that why you’re still posting, you still feel alone?

yes

But what about your family?

With them I’m a dependent not a provider. They’d be okay without me.

So have you really never sought out a therapist?

I couldn’t find steady work. I can’t afford it. Depression is a rich people disease. When you’re broke you’re just labeled as lazy.

What’s one thing you want everyone to know?

You shouldn’t let your assumptions or the assumptions of others affect how you treat me. Remember, you don’t know me. I could come to be your best friend, your faithful and supportive business partner, or the love of your life and you’d just let me slip away all because someone told you dislike me.

(Also, please don’t waste my time talking to me about all the typos I made)

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 4: That’s all, folks.

Over already? This is a pretty thin season with not a lot of shows, so it’s not that surprising that there’s not many good ones either. Still, a weak showing. Oh well, let’s get it over with. There were a few decent ones in the last batch.

Circlet Princess

What: Dimwitted schoolgirl is good at some vaguely defined virtual fighting sport, changes school based on it, finds out relevant club has been abolished. Forecast says: 5 member plot incoming.

❌ I think it’s already clear this show isn’t very ambitious, and not very well written either. A game adaptation at its laziest.

❌❌ Man, this girl is STUPID. What the hell.

❌ The rest of the cast are less stupid (which isn’t hard), but that just means they’re so forgettable they might as well not exist.

❌❌ It looks cheap, and by that I mean really really cheap. The character design is ISO standard anime and it’s mostly on model, but that’s as good as it gets. The animation just sucks. That’s a death sentence for an action/sports show with terrible characters.

Bermuda Triangle - Colorful Pastrale

What: Japanese Spongebob, as in cute mermaids. Doing things optional.

❌ To make this quick, this is almost exactly Pastel Memories, only every problem is just a little less extreme. It has fewer characters, it’s looking slightly better, there’s a tiny bit more going on, the setting is mildly more interesting. That still means it is:

❌❌ 1. A boring mess in which a handful of samey girls do nothing of much interest in a location that should be unique, but isn’t.

❌❌ 2. Conspicuously cheap. It even has the same sightline problems.

❌❌ 3. Featuring a character model sheet that is “off” even under the best circumstances. This time due to the very offputting decision to give everyone blobby triangular irises.

❌❌ Unlike Pastel Memories (which was an ad for a mobile game) this is an anime original, so it really has no excuse being this lame.

♎ I find it amusing that Pastel Palettes are providing the OP for an anime, and it’s not the one currently airing that they’re actually characters in.

Endro~!

What: Kiraralike comedy thing in a generic JRPG setting.

♎ Namori character designs, so it’s like Spyce in that it just seems like the Yuru Yuri cast cosplaying a genre. But hey, Namori character designs do look good.

❌ I’m not as done with generic JRPG settings as with generic isekai settings, but it’s still a real problem since the former is now a subset of the latter. Mildly making fun of it does not improve things much either.

✅ The tone is cutesy and pleasant. I find this much preferable to something like Mahoujin Guru Guru, which is pretty much the same thing but with abrasive, high-intensity slapstick instead.

✅ It’s backing that up with generally high-quality, agreeable pastel looks.

❌ Not being annoying is a start, but beyond that this seems very middle of the road and predictable. I don’t get much out of the genre “parody” and simply being cute is still not an unique selling point in anime.

Grimms Notes The Animation

What: Did someone say JRPG? This is a mobile one, vaguely based on fairy tales as the title implies.

✅ This universe runs on the idea that every NPC’s fate is controlled by a preset story they’re aware of. You could make a good story about that if you took it seriously. It even does that somewhat, but only to the degree that you’d expect from a throwaway sidequest in a moderately well-written JRPG.

❌ And the reason for that is that it has to make room for being a JRPG, of course. Read: It’s irritatingly mechanics- and combat-focused. Stuff like the characters changing form when in fights just seems overly complicated and adds nothing.

❌ Said combat looks competent, but not good enough to make up for detracting from what could have been an interesting setting. Merc Storia did this aspect far better (by usually not doing it at all).

❌ So it ends up being better than expected, but then that only amounts to a disappointment.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai / Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

What: Kaguya and Miyuki are in the student council of a prestigious school and HATE HATE HATE each other. Specifically, they hate the part where the other one won’t just finally admit their love.

✅ The joke here is that it’s operating on full intensity at all times, over the most simple matters. It’s pretty much Kaiji, only about dating - complete with hammy narrator. This is another one of those shows where I can’t say with certainty that it’s solid, but I had a blast during the first episode.

✅ Regarding Quintuplets, I made it clear that I love me some sparks in my romantic comedies. It doesn’t get much more explosive than this.

✅ The characters are comparable to Quints too: Smart scheming upstart vs. rich scheming ojou, with a simpleminded girl in the middle that ends up winning more often than not simply by not overdoing it.

✅ The visuals are just as over the top as the proceedings depicted. Occasionally a filter massacre, but mostly cool.

♎ The long-term viability of this show depend entirely on whether they can consistently come up with scenarios that work, which isn’t a given. Also, this is so intense it might become tiresome - I already felt some fatigue towards the end of the first episode. We’ll see, I guess.

Kakegurui ××

What: Some weirdos think they can crash the party at Hyakkaou with an intent to scare the daylights out of Yumeko and Midari, of all people. Let’s just say they were not as prepared as they thought.

✅ As you might have guessed by me watching the sequel, I liked Kakegurui. It has its problems, but if you’re down for some crazypants madness, this show delivers.

✅ This is one of the better episodes of it too, because it gets right into it and the game they play is dead simple. Kakegurui was never about smart moves or strong characters, so not having anything detract from our girls deriving the entirely wrong sort of pleasure from danger is a plus.

♎ Sadly, the OP is a step down (though still great) and the ED is simply an inferior, overcomplicated version of the magnificent original one. They seem to know this too, because they play the OP cut of Deal with the Devil in its entirety for a montage. The rest of the production is on par with the original though, so it’s fiiiine. Oh well.

❌ It got Netflix’d again and the subs situation is dire. Since this is one I actually like, I might have to wait for the official release.

Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai / The Magnificent Kotobuki

What: Piston-engined fighter plane pornography.

✅ This delivers where Girly Air Force failed: Close to zero exposition, the majority of the episode is just planes dogfighting with barely any talking either. And that part is executed really well. I think the plane startup sequence alone is as long as the total of Girly’s airtime.

✅ Guess what, it’s Tsutomu Mizushima, previously known for unbridled panzer (und girls) pornography, and boy can you tell. However, this cuts out a lot of GuP’s bullshit: A plane doesn’t have the cast of K-ON in it, it’s not over-the-top zany, and whatever this universe is, it can’t be as insipid as GuP’s. The classy milwank exists you guys, we found it.

✅✅ The music really helps here, sky pirates vs zeppelins just wouldn’t work without some classic swashbuckling orchestra background. Fat sound mixing on the dakka too. It’s great.

♎ Can’t really say much about the narrative because we kinda skipped that in this episode aside from the obvious, but Mizushima’s Shirobako collaborator Michiko Yokote is writing it, and that’s a good sign.

❌ Now we’re getting to the elephant in the room though: There’s no way the planes wouldn’t be CG in 2019, but the characters are CG too, and their animation is mediocre. Also, they did the KADO thing where they 2D-animated the side characters that aren’t important enough to model. This has the funny side effect that you can tell who’s going to die real soon by them looking better. It’s far from great, but probably a worthy tradeoff if the mechanical side is this extensive and also delivers.

✅ This is definitely not for everyone, since you have to have more than a casual appreciation for those magnificent girls in their flying machines. I do, though.

revisions

What: A chunk of Shibuya gets teleported to the dystopian future, local doomsday prepper gets handed a large robot because he’s special.

❌ A Goro Taniguchi joint being a poorly conceived scifi mess? Say it ain’t so! I especially dig the tryhard English jargon (mecha: “String Puppet”, monsters faction: “Revisions”, particular monster, I think?: “Civilian”, tacticool operetah: “Balancer”).

❌ Works very hard to characterize the main character, to the detriment of everyone else. A for effort, but you made an unlikeable asshole though.

❌ This is another full CG show, with the quality of the animation being curiously variable. Sometimes it’s well above average and sometimes it’s painful. There doesn’t seem to be much method to it.

✅ Tries to establish stakes by being mondo edgy and graphically murderizing some poor bystanders. It’s adorable.

❌ If you’re really jonesing for some mecha, you can watch all of this on Netflix right now. It’s not like you have any alte- wait, Egao no Daika has mecha too. Well there you go then. That’s a better show.

[randompolitico-ind]

Why consulting ?How consulting? Where consulting?

The work of a management consultant varies from one project to another; some projects require an entire consulting team, with each person having specialized knowledge in one area. Other projects are smaller and can be handled by an individual consultant. The work involves a great deal of research, looking over internal documents, exploring expense reports, speaking with employees and monitoring day-to-day operations.

Some consultants make a point of specializing in one particular area, such as healthcare or retail sales. They might then specialize further under that umbrella, focusing on points such as inventory control, personnel and reorganizing corporate structure. They might also work with start-ups to design the best entry into the marketplace, or companies that are looking to downsize and sell to someone else. Either way, consultants often work under tight schedules and might work overtime to meet deadlines.

How ? where? 

You need to know about the different types of consulting firms out there to understand the playing field. I won’t go too much into details as these firms can be classified and bucketed in different ways.

Some of the big firms are McKinsey, BCG, Bain (MBB); Deloitt, PwC, E&Y, KPMG (Big 4 Audit); specialized firms such as A.T. Kearney, L.E.K, Oliver Wyman; and technology services firms such as Accenture, IBM, TCS, and CTS etc. This list in no means is exhaustive and there are plenty of small boutique firms apart from these big firms.

The first task is to research on the landscape, create a target list of firms, and find some connections in each of them. The connection can be your school, alumni, friends or friends of friends etc. Once you have a target list, focus on the companies where you could find a connection. This way your chances of being heard are higher. Before reaching out to anyone in the firm, you have to do extensive research on these companies. Remember and etch this in your mind, every interaction with the member of a firm is evaluative.

Research can be done through Wetfeet, Vault guides, forums, blogs, career counselors, alumni, current students, current employees etc.

You need to have clarity on the kind of work they do, category they fall in, recruitment process, alumni in different offices, specialists vs. generalists, staffing model etc. This post won’t be sufficient to explain everything over there, so please do your research and take this categorization with a grain of salt.

Entry details

Typically, an MBA graduate will start at the generalist level. So their initial title will be consultant or associate depending on what terminology the firm uses.

On that level, they're really learning the basic consulting toolkit – doing things like building Excel models, running analysis, writing PowerPoint slides,  and interviewing clients, customers and employers. That’s a typical entry point. A lot of MBA students are career changers, so they're getting that basic grounding in consulting.

Some MBAs may go in as a specialist, as opposed to a generalist, so, there are two entry points, but it's typically the generalist role. Going in as a generalist, normally you would start specializing as a manager within that role.

The consulting job search has two parts – the technical part which is the cases, and telling your story and finding your fit with the firm. The preparation is quite demanding, because you need work on your cases. For example, with the case interviews you need to do enough to feel comfortable. For some people, it means training their brain in an analytical way, training your brain to be quite agile.

You need to work on your story; why you want to go into consulting, what skills you bring and also why this particular firm. Also, you need to think about what you will contribute to the firm. This is a question that will probably come up.

There are two types of people: 1. consultants 2. people who have a life.

At a firm like McKinsey, career progression may look as follows:

Analyst (non-MBA) –> Associate (can be divided into junior and senior) –> Engagement Manager –> Associate Principal –> Partner –> Director (senior Partner)

At an operations consulting firm, on the other hand, it could be like this:

Analyst (could be divided into junior and senior positions) –> Consultant (may have two or three levels, such as Associate Consultant, Consultant, Senior Consultant) –> Manager (could have a Senior Manager position separately) –> Director –> Partner –> Executive Director (senior Partner)

Different types of consulting firms:

Strategy consulting: Firms within this classification typically carry out the most ‘interesting’ work – helping large firms and CEOs chart out strategy, align their vision with their offerings, enter new market segments, or create new growth plans. Most strategy consulting firms work with the top management of their clients. The biggest names in this space are the ‘Big 3′ (McKinsey, BCG, and Bain), but there are also others like AT Kearney, Roland Berger, and to a more limited extent Accenture, while some others like Booz and Monitor have now been acquired (more on this below). Getting into a career with strategy consulting firms requires strong domain knowledge within a particular industry or function, strong academic credentials, and of course awesome case interviewing skills. An MBA is definitely an asset and is required for growth beyond a point for most firms.

Operations consulting: Operations consulting firms typically take on the work of looking at a business’ internals, improving internal efficiency and working with a specific subset of business functions. The advisory arms of the ‘Big 4′ accounting firms (PwC, E&Y, KPMG, and Deloitte) along with a few others like Accenture and IBM have traditionally dominated this space. Now, however, the lines are blurring as Deloitte recently acquired Monitor and PwC acquired Booz, giving them access to mainstream strategy consulting work as well. A career in operations consulting may not always require an MBA, though having it is an asset. Domain experience within particular areas like manufacturing, outsourcing, or financial services is definitely handy. Case interview skills stay just as relevant as they do with strategy consulting firms.

Technology consulting / IT consulting: Some may say that technology consulting does not strictly fall within the domain of management consulting, but with technology acquiring increasing relevance in business management as a competitive tool, this notion is not really true. While traditional work at IT consulting firms revolved around implementing ERP systems, creating a technology and technology infrastructure strategy, and optimizing operations using technology, this is now changing. New-age technology projects also drive revenue and improve profit margins and are not just about increasing operational efficiency. The space is dominated by firms like Accenture, IBM, HP, and Capgemini. A career in IT consulting requires a strong academic background in technology or computer science with relevant experience in technology management, project delivery, or technology development.

Boutique consulting firms: These may be strategy or operations consulting firms, with the difference that they are very small in size and usually focus on a niche area such as a particular industry. The lines with business research also tend to blur for these kinds of firms – they usually also have business research divisions focusing on their niche. Some examples of such firms are ZS Associates (analytics consulting, focused on pharma) or NERA (economic consulting). A career in these firms will typically require an MBA, although experienced professionals from the niche the firm specializes in will also be in demand.

HR consulting firms: HR consulting firms are large firms focusing on the area of Human Resources only. They tackle issues and areas such as compensations, benefits, recruitments, and human capital strategy. They usually tend to work with the top management of their clients. Some strategy and consulting firms too have their HR consulting arms. Some specialized HR consulting firms are Hay Group, Mercer, Towers Perrin, and Watson Wyatt. A career with these firms does not typically require an MBA. Hands-on HR experience as an HR generalist can be a big plus when applying to these firms

[douchebagbrainwaves]

MAKER'S SCHEDULE, STUPID

There are plenty of other places to work; in most of the initial sales of the Apple II came from people who bought one to run VisiCalc. They could buy some stock in this company. Some torture nerds for the same reason models avoid cheeseburgers. John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of touching the wall as he walked down a corridor. It was impressive even to ask the questions they asked were new to them, and startups were selling them for a year's salary a copy. Com, where you go looking for problems without knowing what you're looking for. To anyone who knows Mark Zuckerberg that is the Valley's equivalent of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign: The Dish. You can start by writing the smallest subset of it that does anything useful. Conversely, the extreme version of the two parties cancel one another out, with no expectation of getting anything in return. After Facebook stopped being for Harvard students, it remained for students at specific colleges for quite a while. I'm going to start a startup while you're getting those n years of experience.

Good thing for the Democrats that their screen lets through an occasional Clinton, even if you're never called on to solve advanced problems, you have to reinvent stuff for yourself, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, but which never got anywhere and was gradually abandoned. Icio. It's hard to find a field of math that truly has no practical use. At least, it did when people wrote about it in 1974, and the number one language is probably Perl. What's not a theory is the converse: if you're trying to solve were endlessly difficult. In that form it only had a potential market of a few thousand hobbyists as they were then called, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction. Partly because you can usually find ways to make anything scale more than you expect, but you're also capable of more than you expect, so they balance out. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy. Now the standard excuse is openly circular: that other languages are more popular. This sucks.

No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people start to use it in different ways. The world seemed cruel and boring, and that's a much bigger part of being a good speaker is increasingly a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. I'd guess that many of these would-be startup founders but to students in general, but they especially don't work as a catalog of mistakes.1 The only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it. If there's something people still won't do, it seems likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Fundamentally that's how the most successful companies. I described above—it won't flush out the metaphysical singularity. And open and good is what Macs are again, finally. With this amount of noise in the signal, it's hard to come up with your real idea.

It's probably no coincidence that so many famous speakers are described as motivational speakers. Universities seem the place to start. The narrow focus makes it a sort of puzzle, and you're generally surprised how fast you can solve it. You never know when this will strike. Let's try to discover them because they're useless, let's try it, the way Stripe delivered instant merchant accounts to its first users was that the proper role of anteaters is to poke their noses into anthills. Movie studios? But in practice that never happens. If you do it unconsciously. C: Assembly language is too low-level. Worse still, anything you work on changes you. If your company makes software to do x?

Gradually you realize that successful startups tend to discover the most general truths? Maybe we'll just have to do is convince the outside directors and they control the company. You have to make a living, and it's very hard to recommend an acquisition; it's just what their business has evolved into. Start by writing a Basic interpreter for a machine with a few thousand users. Even Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first. In 2002, most people who can help you. Who knew? If you want to do. Police investigation apparently begins with a motive. We say that the situation degenerates into a religious war, what they really like. They made search work, then worried about how to solve it.

And she wrote three separate essays about the question of the relative merits of programming languages, so long as I enjoyed it. It just has to be a harmless cyst.2 The biggest danger of not being consciously aware of this pattern is for those who naively discard part of it. Bush seemed old and tired.3 Do they want me to do something differently. I know I learned from studying philosophy. The VCs would get same number of shares for the money.

If companies want hackers to be productive, they should. I could only figure out what it's doing. Whereas Bill, if the rumors of autism are true, knows all too well. Bigger companies solve the problem. We thought Airbnb was a bad idea to have really big ambitions initially, because the concept of users is always inaccurate, even if it would be tedious to let infect your private life, we liked it. You can sit down and consciously come up with shifts to the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously.4 This seems a good bet. But it probably wouldn't start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven't had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then. But the problem with that description is not just a permissible technique for getting growth rolling. Philosophy 101. I'm not sure why this is so. Standards are higher; people are more sympathetic to what you're doing; the kind of things they say to one another.

Once again, anyone currently in school might think this a strange question to ask. And the probability of a group of girls waiting for the school bus, and was so shocked that the next day she devoted the whole class to an eloquent plea not to be in this business; it's just too annoying to see a bunch of consequences. You can't watch people when everyone is watching you. The first component is particularly helpful in the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers. It was small and powerful and cheap, as promised. When Steve Jobs started using that phrase, Apple was already an established company. They were full of long words that our teacher wouldn't have used. Quiet is another matter.5 It's supposed to be the early adopters, you'll no longer have a perfect initial market handed to you on this one. It is not found in nature.

Notes

A smart student at a public event, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though I think what they give with one hand they take a lesson from the success of Skype. I say is being put through an internal process at work.

SpamCop—new things start to get a poem published in The New Yorker. Most of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits. The situation we face here, the more subtle ways in which only a sliver of it, this is also to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it.

College English Departments Come From? What he meant, I can't refer a startup than it would have been fooled by grammar.

In a project like a wave. And they are in set theory, combinatorics, and are often surprised by this standard, and suddenly they need them to get into the work that seems formidable from the revenue-collecting half of 2004, as it needs to learn. That may require asking, because companies don't advertise this. Perhaps this is a cause them to get into a de facto chosen by human editors.

I think the company is Weebly, which have varied dramatically. But although I started using it out of about 4,000 drachmae for the more qualifiers there are lots of back and forth.

[kendrixtermina]

What's the difference between how a ENFJ 9 and a ENFJ 2 behave?

First that genuinely seems like one that would be a bit harder to tell. 2 is fairly common in most Fe types, as for ENFJ 9s sources range from 3% (not unrealistic but rare) to 6% (not the most common but totally happens) - xNFJ are concentrated in the heart centre (as in most are 2,3,4) but the rest is pretty much evenly spread out (with the exeption of 5 or 8 which would be very rare ) and given this “spread-out-ness” in the 6%-ish brackets I would not discount the possibility of 2 as “most likely a mistake”.

2 and 9 can seem similar in their descriptions especially if you’re new to enneagram indeed they have a lot in common, as they’re both in the compliant and positive outlook triads and kinda defined by wanting to get along with the people around them. 

There are a number of differences though:

9s are less extroverted, generally being in the “mildly introverted” range. They’d probably be the more ‘ambiverted’ sort of ENFJ and most likely a contact subtype. 

As far as their affect range goes, 2s are more dynamic, sometimes even outright dramatic (something dominant Fe tends to potentiate and why the two co-occur so much, though xSFPs can also be 2s) whereas 9s are more phlegmatic. These are tendencies that get more extreme under stress - thrown into an argument after a bad day, a 2 may fly into hysterical accusations or sobbing pleas, whereas a 9 might just clap their hands in front of their face and shut down. If they’re an ENFJ the 2 might perhaps be more vulnerable to loops while the 9s may be more vulnerable to grips. 

9s are more accepting and contemplative like just listen to what people say and think it over (this being an NJF it will probably happen in an empathetic-analytic kind of manner) , 2s are more opinionating/demanded. They may express that opinion when they know it will be accepted (unlike 4s or 8s) but they probably do have very defibned ones about what is okay, what is correct behavior, what should be done etc. especially as a FJ. 

Also consider your instinctual stack. A sp 2 may appear similar to a 9. Meanwhile a soc 9 might also overwork/overextend  themselves as it is often the 2 stereotype, but the 2 will have much more of an inner sense of shame and/or urgency - “but taking a break would be selfish! But the cause/ my friends need me!” Whereas with the 9 its more than they can’t say no, don’t want to cause a fuss and will insist that “Oh, I don’t really mind” even if it’s eating up all their free time and leaving them acting lowkey salty at times. 

See also this article on 9 vs 2. Though the last question may be less useful in a high fe user as they’ll be naturally more perceptive for what others need or want on a cognitive level. But note the part about friend circles!

As far as ENFJ’s specifically go, there are those who present with a “serious business” demeanor - all social interactions are dissected for their OK-ness and what they may be signalling for the harm or good of humanity (with an analytic cultivated slant from the Ni - they will not say “this type of people are just mean” they will speak of bad attitudes and social tendencies - think your stereotypical gender studies student or “the tumblr police” though they’re common in many humanities fields and come in varying degrees of helpfulness) 

These are usually in the ‘heart’ triad, which at least on a subliminal cares a lot about validation, image approval etc hence the big emphasis on “right treatment/interactions” when it combines with Fe.  “Do not ever do this!” because Ni sees only one context/interpretation to it, Fe thinks this will promote a better society and 2/¾ is just really outraged at the meanness of it & feeling for the slights toward themselves and others.

2s in particular would feel compelled to get involved in the solving of the problems in an active fashion. Especially in conjunction with Fe, they may be the sort of overextend themselves and neglect their own needs/ wear and tire themselves out. The combo of “helping people” plus “conceptual and methodical thinking (Ni)” may also draw them to topics like psychology or social studies.. 

Then there’s the “artsy-expressive” ENFJs who are usually not 2 or 3w2, also oriented toward good in the world but  If they’re artists or politicians they’ll be notable for their emotional torque, making you feel things through their writing or speaking (as opposed to FPs who are more about depicting feelings correctly in a consistent narrative) rather than so much policing reactions. 

4s may be somewhere in between as have more tolerance for “dark” stuff but will still be “serious business”-y especially if social-first (and many ENFJS are social first though I haven’t seen sharp numbers) as opposed to say, a 7. 

A 9 would by definition be chiller - I’m not sure I ever met a confirmed example for an ENFJ 9 but I’d wager that they would be part of that subset of ENFJs that is very easy to talk to because they create this unpretentious, acessible aura with their Fe, the sort that is just going to be nice & friendly with you and perhaps discuss some social and/or intellectual topics - You’d see the “wistfully contemplative” side of Ni more than the “purpuseful, on-a-mission” one. 

[ma-ballin]

Making It All Work

by David Allen

[verbatim from Blinkist]

These blinks build on the principles laid down in David Allen’s previous time-management smash hit, Getting Things Done (also available in blinks). It explains how you can manage your tasks and pursue your meaningful life goals.

What’s in it for me? Find out how you can be productive in a meaningful way, not just busy

These days we seem to be perpetually bombarded with distractions. Most days it’s a miracle if we can go five minutes without being accosted by an email, a social media notification or text message.

In this mercilessly distracting environment, it’s more important than ever to be able to focus properly.

If you spend most of your days working on pointless little tasks and feel you are being distracted, these blinks can help you realign your daily actions with the big priorities in life: your overall goals and dreams.

In these blinks you’ll discover why we humans drop everything important at the beep of an email inbox.

You’ll also learn why being busy is not the same as being productive.

Finally, you’ll find out how to implement the great advice from Getting Things Donein every sphere of your life.

We are easily distracted and therefore lose track of our priorities.

How often has this happened to you: You’re working on an important document when all of a sudden an incoming email pops up. What do you do?

If you’re like most people, you’ll probably instantly forget about the high-priority document and answer the email.

But why is this?

It’s basically because our minds are fickle.

These days we’re bombarded with new information in fantastic quantities, from tweets to emails to text messages.

And when this new information arrives, we have no way of knowing if it is important unless we divert our attention to it: If your email inbox goes “ping” to signify a new email, you won’t know whether it’s spam or a job offer until you look at it.

This means we are perpetually distracted, and therefore struggle to focus on the important task for long enough to finish it.

What’s more, the constant influx of new information and new tasks means that the quantity of work done is increasingly emphasized as a metric for productivity: salespeople have sales targets, teachers have student graduation targets, etc.

But the quantity of tasks done is not a good metric to focus on. Though sending lots of emails and attending lots of meetings may make an employee feel busy and productive, it in fact says nothing about the quality of their work. A far better barometer for your productivity would be to see how much progress has been made on the predefined important goals.

This focus on quantity can also cause us to get so bogged down in the nitty-gritty day-to-day tasks that we lose track of our larger life goals.

For example, say your dream is to become a writer, but you’re always so distracted at your day job that you need to work evenings to make up for your low productivity. In this case, you simply owe it to yourself to get organized, at work and at home, to be able to focus better and have the time to work toward your personal ambitions.

To reach your full potential, you need to be both creative and well organized.

Would you consider yourself a dreamer or a doer?

This question highlights two major traits required to achieve your potential: you need both perspective – meaning the ability to see the big picture – and control, meaning the ability to actually organize and manage your obligations in line with that big picture.

Most people, however, can only manage one of these aspects, if that. Indeed, some people seem to lack both control and perspective. Such people are fairly helpless, anxious and seem to constantly be in a panicky emergency mode. They would probably struggle to host even a dinner party.

Then there are those with a firm penchant for control, but no perspective. Imagination and creativity are not their strong suits, and they prefer to classify and organize existing ideas than to come up with new ones. Someone like this might, for example, excel at tweaking the fonts of documents or restocking the printer with paper, but be totally helpless when it comes to actually composing new proposals.

And then there are those who lack control but are rich in perspective. These people have lots of ideas, as evidenced by their constant doodling and note-taking, but they never get very far with them, because they always get distracted by the next great idea.

As you may have guessed, the optimal solution is to have a balance of control and perspective. You can attain this enviable situation only by being very organized with your tasks and your goals. This will leave you with the freedom and confidence to be creative.

This combination is exemplified by people who have the perspective to dream up new, innovative ideas, but who also have the control to implement those ideas and bring them to life. Whether tackling a difficult project at work or just building a gazebo in the garden at home, their success derives from these dual abilities.

In the next blinks, you’ll discover how to regain control over all your obligations and plans.

Outsource your memory: start writing down all your ideas and tasks.

How many times have you gone to the store in order to buy three things and only walked out with two? Or how many times have you had a brilliant idea at lunchtime, but completely forgotten what it was by the evening?

Chances are this happens fairly often.

In fact, all of our to-dos and intentions are in danger of being forgotten unless they are captured permanently somehow. And the only way to capture all of them permanently is to outsource your memory.

This means just dumping all your thoughts and ideas onto paper. Get into the habit of using journals where you record every idea, task and thought that you have. Don’t worry about bad ideas or everything coming out as stream of consciousness, the main thing is to put everything on paper. Don’t rely on just software though – really do this on actual paper too. Keep a couple of these journals around your home and office so you can quickly jot down ideas as they occur.

Also, whenever you’re holding a meeting, be sure to put up a whiteboard where you can scribble down notes and ideas that arise. Make mind maps of them and then take pictures of them afterwards so nothing is lost.

As you’re capturing ideas and tasks, be sure you not only write down the immediately actionable ones, but also the longer-term projects, like your lifetime goals.

These could be projects like reassessing your investment portfolio, learning to play the piano or studying a new language. Also, every time you think of something that could help you pursue these dreams – say, hiring a piano teacher – write it down as well so you’re more likely to act on it.

Organize your ideas and define simple, actionable tasks to pursue them.

By now you know the importance of putting down in writing all the ideas that cross your mind and hopefully you have a nice long list of notes.

What now?

Obviously, to get the most out of your notes you need to sort and order them. Start by going through each idea and deciding which ones are actually actionable. For these, come up with easy, specific, physical actions that need to take place to make that idea come to fruition. The more specific you get here, the easier it will be for you to visualize and complete the task, so if possible, define a specific time and place where you will tackle it. Keep your calendar open to facilitate this.

The actionable tasks should be such that by completing all of them you will have also realized long-term projects or goals.

For example, when you initially scribbled down your ideas you may have included the thought to “do something for Dad.” The first thing you should do is to turn this vague notion into a concrete project, like “Give Dad an amazing seventieth birthday party.” This project is then broken down into multiple individual actions like booking a venue, ordering a cake and hiring a bluegrass band. But you might also find that “doing something for Dad” is part of an even bigger goal you had: spending more time with your family.

Another, more professionally oriented example would be if you had initially jotted down “improve employee morale.” As before, you would first try to get to a more concrete level, defining, for example, the project “organize regular team events.” This again comprises multiple individual actions, such as “book the karaoke bar” and “send out the invitation.” On the other hand “improve employee morale” might only be a subset of an overall goal like “reduce staff turnover by 15 percent,” which is intended to be long term.

Organize tasks into categories according to when and where you’ll do them.

By now you should have a long list of actionable tasks that add up in a meaningful way. And if you’re like most people, in addition to this list you’re probably surrounded by a maelstrom of Post-It notes, paper to-dos and reminders in digital calendars.

For this pile of tasks in their various forms to make any sense, they need to be organized and prioritized.

Start by dividing your actionable tasks into three to-do lists: tasks to be done now, at alater time, or by someone else. The tasks in the first list are ones that can be done immediately, whereas those that go into the second will probably benefit from subcategories that add more context to the task.

For example, if you come across the task “draft job application,” you could put it under the subcategory “Later – tasks for when I’m at the computer.”

Or if you see something that you’d like to read but don’t have the time, you can categorize it under “Later – reading.”

You can also define subcategories for all the important people in your life so you know what to say when you next come into contact with, for example, your spouse or an old colleague.

The third list should contain the tasks that you’ve delegated to someone else and whose results you are awaiting.

Once you’ve dealt with the actionable tasks, everything else should be stored for later use in separate lists. This stops them from burdening your immediate attention so you can focus on the essential.

An example would be a note saying that one of your life goals is to help the less fortunate in society. Such ideas should go on the “vision” list.

You can also have a “maybe” list where you add items that may become relevant in the future. For example, though it’s not the case at the moment, you may in the future be interested in collaborating with a third party, if circumstances allow.

Maintain your lists and workspace regularly so you’re not overwhelmed.

Let’s assume that you now have several well-organized to-do lists. How do you maintain them?

After all, it’s highly likely that you’ll come up with new ideas and tasks faster than you can take care of them. This means that your lists will keep expanding and eventually will be completely out of control, comprising pages upon pages of unfinished tasks.

So what’s the remedy?

Quite simply, you need to review your lists regularly, and ruthlessly chop out tasks that are “stale” or no longer relevant.

Spend up to two hours each week reviewing and updating the content of all your lists, calendars and projects. For example, say you spent months looking for a new job and finally found one. This should have a huge impact on your to-do lists: get rid of everything that was related to finding a new job, such as searching through vacancies.

At the same time you need to assess whether you need to move things around in the subcategories. For example, perhaps a major life goal in the “maybe” subcategory, like “get fit” could be bumped up to an actionable project like “run next year’s marathon.”

Just as important as doing housekeeping with your to-do lists is regularly doing the same for the physical places where you keep your tasks and ideas.

Clear out your inboxes and in-baskets every day or two to avoid them becoming cluttered, and make sure you keep a clear workspace as well by collecting all your documents into one place for processing.

One more drastic measure could be to move your office somewhere else. The major reorganization required can often be beneficial at the end of the day.

In the next blinks you’ll learn how to organize your personal and professional goals to match your long-term, high-level thinking.

Ensure your day-to-day tasks are meaningful by organizing them into projects that move you toward longer-term goals.

Have you ever spent an entire day taking care of all manner of little tasks, only to look back on them later and realize that they didn’t actually add up to anything meaningful?

If you want to stay true to your professional and personal priorities, you need to avoid this and ensure what you do day-to-day is important. To achieve this, you must do three things.

First, identify all the responsibilities you have in life to ensure that you live up to them, whatever you do.

Map out all your duties to yourself and others onto an organizational map that branches out into more detailed areas.

One example of a personal area of responsibility that is often neglected is health. You might mark this on your map and branch out subpoints from it, such as dental care, annual medical checkups, exercise and diet. They don’t necessarily need to be more specific than this – it is enough that you are aware of them.

The second thing you need to do to ensure your daily actions are meaningful is to group the individual tasks into manageable projects. Projects in turn should move you toward some higher goal, to be discussed shortly, and they should be attainable in under a year.

In a personal sphere, these could be to learn the basics of German in order to pursue the goal of eventually becoming fully fluent in it.

In the professional sphere, a project could be to hire a marketing guru or to set up a new online store, both aimed at attaining a bigger goal, like 15 percent growth in sales.

Goals differ from projects in that they are more long term and strategic: goals tend to be achieved in one to three years. For example, your long-term goal may be to get out of debt, and this could demand a variety of projects, like renegotiating your loans or moving to a cheaper city.

Organizations need to define their vision for where they want to go and the principles they’ll maintain to get there.

So far we’ve mostly looked at how you personally can achieve your ambitions, but what about organizations? How can you get an organization to where it should be?

Obviously the first task is to identify the destination. Visualize where you see yourorganization going to achieve success. This will make your direction clear.

For example, your company might decide that its ultimate vision is to be the most popular grocery store in the region thanks to selling the highest quality produce. This vision would provide a clear path to follow: start procuring the best produce around.

The second task then is to get more specific: management should define the guiding principles – meaning values – for the business to live by.

Typically an organization has anywhere from three to 30 principles like “helping local communities” or “providing superior customer service.”

These principles must be defined by the management team, and then implemented in real life at all levels. Some companies even have a full-time HR manager to ensure that people adhere to the principles.

For example, if one of your company’s principles is “develop employees,” you might bring it to life by instituting rigorous 360-degree reviews of all staff members.

Once an organization knows where it wants to go (its vision) and how it should behave on the way there (its principles) than almost any question can be resolved easily. Even tricky dilemmas like “Should we acquire that company?” “Should we invest more in research?” or “Should we expand to this market?” can be resolved easily, because any answer must take the company closer to its vision and adhere to its principles.

Define your own path and your personal values, and then boldly answer the big questions in life.

Imagine yourself walking along a forest path. Every time you come to a crossing you must guess which path you should take, because you can only see a stone’s throw ahead.

Now imagine the same situation, but your viewpoint rises dramatically into the air. You can look down at yourself from a great height and see your path as well as all the other paths perfectly, so you know exactly which one to take.

Just as this ascension allows you to see where you want to go in the forest, you must similarly rise above daily minutiae to get a big-picture view of your life.

Ask yourself, where do you see yourself in ten years? If everything falls into place and you become wildly successful, where would you be? Would you, for example, build a mansion? Travel the world? Start a charitable foundation?

Collect all these ideal futures into a list: include all the events you’d like to see happen.

This view of the future, though speculative, is the path that you see in the middle of the forest – the one you want to be on. You should focus your efforts on getting there, and review this goal every year.

But in addition to knowing what you want to achieve, you should also know what your personal values are. For example, many people seek to be honest, wise and generous while leading a sustainable lifestyle and benefiting their communities.

For most people, their values are identifiable because as long as they fulfill them, they don’t care where they are or who they’re with. Write down your own values so you can refer back to them.

Finally, you must also boldly ask yourself the big questions in life. For example, how do you want to be remembered? Should you start a family? Is your career inspiring? Only by answering these will you be able to truly focus on what’s important.

Final Summary

The key message in this book:

To be productive you must take control of your daily actions. Start capturing all your ideas and tasks on paper, and organize them into meaningful hierarchies according to your bigger goals in life.

Actionable advice:

Take care of quick tasks immediately.

When you’re doing something and a new task arises that can distract you from your more important tasks, evaluate how long it will take you to be done with this new task. If it is likely to take you less than two minutes – for example, sending off a quick email – do so immediately. If it takes longer, try to delegate it to someone else. Adhering to these two rules will work wonders in keeping your inbox at a minimum.

Keep lists in your email programs.

You can manage your various to-do lists effectively by embedding them in your email system. For example, in MS Outlook, you can use the Notes function to compose and maintain lists, or in Gmail you can simply keep all your lists as email drafts under different subject headings, editing them as required.

[megacircuit9universe]

Escape Velocity

If the Earth were bigger... say ten percent bigger, then people would be, on average, smaller... because the stronger gravity would make it impractical to stand, say, six feet tall.

In reality, we rarely see humans who are seven feet or taller, and the few that we do see, have extreme difficulty pumping the blood through their bodies, against the force of our normal gravity. 

And there are also issues with our feet and spines not being very well designed for... well, honestly... even normal sized humans, let alone ones who are seven feet or taller.

In Earth’s past, we’ve had enormously large land animals, such as brontosaurs, or even the T-Rex, but these creatures evolved at a time when the atmosphere was far richer in oxygen than it is now... allowing them more energy to power much larger hearts and other large muscular structures.

If Jurassic Park were real... most of the dinos would either die of hypoxia in adulthood, or... just not get that big.

Still, we humans have evolved for today's oxygen levels and... given Earth’s relatively unchanging mass, and therefore unchanging gravitational pull... we don’t get a lot taller than six feet.

An Earth 10% larger, would mean maybe five feet was the max.  I haven’t done the actual math on that but the point is that the bigger the Earth, the smaller the humans... until at some point, there is an Earth so massive, that the humans can’t be humans anymore, because they’d be too small to have brains that can do the things human brains do.

Not that brain size is everything... because it’s not.  Even humans with relatively small brains can be just as intelligent, or even as genius as humans with big brains (and humans with big brains can be morons) but there still is some lower limit on the size of a brain case that can house the computing power of a humanoid brain.

Maybe on a planet much larger than Earth, evolution would be more efficient in the way it gets to that level of computing power in even a tiny brain case... possibly so...

But those intelligent humanoids... let’s say they are only a foot tall in adulthood, but every bit as clever as we are... would have a much harder time ever getting into space than we do... because the escape velocity of their planet would be much greater.

You may be thinking here... well, but they would weigh less, so their ships would weigh less, so it wouldn’t be a problem.

That would be wrong, because they would weigh the same as we do.

At least if the analogy is one to one, then a twelve-inch tall human on a much larger Earth would experience the same pull of gravity that we six-foot humans do on our own planet. 

In other words... everything would “weigh” more.

All the elements of the periodic table have their specific “weights” as determined by the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus... So all of the carbon they are made of... all of the steel... the copper... the gold... used to make their rockets or satellites... would require more energy (per molecule) to accelerate to escape velocity than the same materials require here at home.

The energy, on the other hand, available from burning any of he fuels we burn as propellants... would be the same.

Yes, they would probably use less overall material, and on a larger planet they’d have more raw materials to mine but... the mining of all that material would take more work, thanks to gravity and... in the end the scales tip toward our little humans on a giant Earth having an extremely difficult time launching anything into orbit... even if they had all the math down cold.

And such a people might decide it makes no economic sense to bother with space. The cost just outweighs the benefit, so... forget it.

Where am I going with this?

Well... the reverse is also true that humanoids living on a smaller Earth will “weigh” the same as us, even though they could be much larger... and will, all things considered, have a much easier time with escape velocity... possibly to the point where space travel is a no-brainer, because it’s just so easy to do, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.

When we’re thinking about earth like planets in the universe, the earliest of which could only have formed several million years before ours (given that several generations of stars had to pass before there was enough higher elements to form earth like planets)...

...and when we’re talking about which ones may have given birth to humanoids who got the space faring jump on everybody else... using their millions of years of lead time to create vast intergalactic empires... 

...we are probably talking about humanoids who evolved on “sub earths.”

I use that term to contrast the common term, “super earth,” that is applied to exoplanets we’ve discovered which are similar to Earth, but a good deal larger.

Everything we’ve examined about the Earth Moon relationship, and how it has been critical to human evolution... could work with a smaller Earth, that had a comparably smaller moon.

As long as the two planets in such a double planetary system are roughly the same size, and distance with respect to one another... all the same benefits will be present, such as a stable axis, and a relatively slow rotation period.

So... while we don’t know how common such double planetary systems are... i.e. ones like the Earth and Moon in a star’s habitable zone... we CAN safely assume that within that subset... our particular instance is most likely near the middle... in terms of size.

Half the earth/moon systems out there are bigger than ours... with the biggest being the most rare... but half are smaller...

...and somewhere in that smaller half is some perfectly ideal pocket where, if humanoids evolve... they just jump right out into space as soon as somebody gets the idea to try it... the way we’ve done with aircraft.

Now, there ARE issues with a small planet holding on to a decent atmosphere, such that it can give rise to humanoids.

Without as much gravity to hold the air down, it would need a stronger magnetic field... which is hard to do if you don’t have as much mass in the molten core... which is also cooling off faster than a larger molten core would cool.

But... all things considered again... there’s still a nice pocket there where slightly smaller earths than ours, with slightly smaller moons, could still have enough mass and magnetosphere to allow humanoid evolution... yet would have an escape velocity low enough to make space exploration a relative walk in the park.

It’s important to remember here, that once you’ve established a decent orbital infrastructure of space stations and moon bases... the resources of your whole solar system are easy pickings.

Establishing that orbital infrastructure is the hard part, because of all the hardware and fuel you first have to launch off the surface... not to mention all the resupply of food for all the people in your space stations before they get to the point where they can produce their own food.

For humanoids living on a sub-earth, creating that orbital infrastructure could be as economical as what we’ve done here, colonizing the continents and establishing all our surface level metros, with their air and shipping routes.

If our escape velocity wasn’t such a costly hurdle... we could have whole factories in orbit by now, along with colonies on both the Moon and mars.

What would our alien visitors think of that?

But instead, what they see is a planet of humans who... because our escape velocity is just a tad too burdensome... have all but given up on space travel...

Preferring to settle for orbital communication satellites, a token space station, and a smattering of robots to go and take pictures of planets we can’t afford to visit first hand.

This must be why we are so fond of our whimsical little airplanes... because we know the sky... the blue part with the clouds in it... really is the limit.

But that’s an atmosphere with some issues... growing hotter as we pump out more CO2 by the ton... which can happen when you don’t take your industry off planet.

They see a world of humans using their most advanced tech... such as their nukes... to war over limited resources on the surface... rather than just get out into space where there are unlimited resources.

And they see us slowly destroying our planet with the waste that comes from using up those ground resources... as well as all the destruction that comes from all the warring.

They’ve probably seen this before.

This is just what you get from a planet of this particular mass.

People on planets of this particular mass are always bitching and moaning about how expensive it is to get into space, like jobless pot-smoking kids in their late twenties, still living with Mom and Dad, whining about their crushing student debt, and the shitty gig economy.  

Wah Wah Wah...

Not to bash young adults. I’m not. That’s just what the Aliens think, because they fail to recognize how their ancestors came from “escape velocity privilege.” And they should be helping us, but they don’t care.

They don’t care, because centuries of space travel has made them comfortable, and lazy... with their nearly useless limbs up there in near-zero G, eating their bon bons.

So... despite the fact that the universe as a whole may be teeming with intelligent life... we really are on our own at this juncture in our history.  

And as much as everybody squabbles about racism, pollution, climate change, and economic disparity... pointing fingers this way and that way at what party, or corporation is to blame...

The only sustainable solution for the human race is to invest in space.  

Given our body plans, and our brains, space is our legacy. 

And that legacy is ours to lose.

[relativetalent]

An observation on Platonic Friendships.

I had arrived somewhat early to the bar Grace and I go to for our Thursday night happy hours. Part of me wishes I would’ve stayed in and tried out the new Mario Kart combos I found online, but I’m a stickler for tradition. Grace and I always managed to have a pretty decent time together, even if it was always her choosing to voice the concerns she had in her relationship. There’s this exceptionally chauvinist subset of the population, I believe, that seems to have an issue with men and women just being friends. That’s all I’ve ever known of Grace though. She’s been dating CJ since I’ve met her, and has only ever had relationship issues as far as I know. I’m always willing to listen though. It’s not like there’s anything going on with me romantically. There never is. Had I ever considered dating her? Sure. Once or twice maybe. Like if she was ever suddenly single, I wouldn’t jump as the chance to be a rebound, or something better. I can’t confidently say I’d be opposed either. We’d probably just continue to do what we’ve been doing, Thursday night happy hour, and we’d talk about movies and upcoming concerts. She’d ask me about my non-existent love life, then feel bad she asked, we’d close our tabs and go to our respective homes. Her woes would shift from relationship woes to political or work-related. I’d still listen all the same. She works as an assistant at a law firm, a job her father got her before he passed last summer. She doesn’t haste it, per se, but thinks it’s funny that out of all the partners, the woman treats her like a second class citizen. “Power is power” I reiterate. Having weekends off must be enough for her to continue to put up with it. I wouldn’t know. I work weekends. I knew her father fairly well, although Grace and I have only been acquaintances for a little over a year. He was my senior-year African-American History teacher, and even before one of the heads of the Student’s Diversity Union. He got a lot of shit for in those roles as a white man, but as soon as he showed up downtown at one of the BLM marches, that talk ceased immediately. He’s my personal pick for the definition of a White Ally. It’s crazy how much Grace took after him. I never met her mother, but she’s black, and a teacher as well. Saw her in a picture once. Grace looks just like her. When he died, I had known Grace a couple months. We met at a year-end barbeque he hosted for all his students. Grace actually showed up (she had a history of “Forgetting about it”), much to everyone’s surprise. Hugo talked a lot about his daughter, but it was unknown if 1. She was worthy of such praise, and 2. Would talk about him in such a fashion. Grace’s mother was overseas at the time. It’s actually pretty strange that we haven’t met, but I think her and Grace are still at arms. Hugo Gaspar died of lung cancer (he was the definition of a chain smoker), and when Grace’s mother didn’t see that as a good reason to quit, Grace lashed out. They did embrace at the funeral though. I looked at my watch and realized Grace was late. I grew increasingly anxious. She’s literally never late. Even the bartended looked quizzically. “Is she alright?” “I guess--- I haven’t heard anything.” I was taken aback. She was supposed to be here ten minutes ago, almost on the dot. She’s never late and for her to be running this late baffled me. I shot her a “Where you at” text. No response. Not immediately anyway. I hoped that she was okay, but I also questioned where my head had gone to where I wouldn’t notice her absence until now. The ice in her whiskey had almost completely melted. I ordered another, for her, and started drinking the watered-down one, in anticipation. I hoped this new whiskey wouldn’t have the chance to melt. At the barbeque, Grace and I bonded immediately. She walked in with CJ and a bottle of Jameson, and my ears perked up. Jameson was my (and later, as I found out, also her) favorite alcohol. Across the board. She was a couple years older than I was; graduated from art school the year prior but was a bit late by “normal” standards. Mr. Gaspar was always wanting her to meet his students, but seeing as most of them graduate and either move away (either for a job or to go back home) she never saw a reason to make acquaintance with people she’d never see again. I never got to ask why she attended this year. The first things I noticed about her were the bottle of Jameson and CJ. CJ looked like Ice Cube, but if Ice Cube was a frat boy. It was harboring. The Jameson had a special label on it, something I’d never seen before. I drink a lot of Jameson. After mulling them over I finally fixed eyes on Grace for the first real time. I noticed how different she looked from her father. Not because she was biracial, but because she didn’t look like her father. Really not at all honestly. I’ve still to this day have never seen someone so normal looking, but also so intensely attractive. Her features are very cookie-cutter, when it comes to biracial women, but it’s like she’d cornered that market. She wore eyeliner, a nose ring, and a very light pink lip-stain, and killed it. I snapped out of her assessment when she set the bottle down. “Well my mother calls me Gideon, but I go by Deon,” I replied when CJ inquired about my name. You ever meet a huge, buff, angry-looking pit bull then realize all it was is a treat and backrub? That was CJ. He was a lightweight with liquor, and an extremely picky-eater, but man, dude was nice as hell. We chatted for longer than I ever have with someone I’d just met, but I was waiting for Grace to come back and open this bottle. I never figured out what CJ stood for, but within fifteen minutes I knew his life story, where he went to grade and high school, his college GPA, his previous drug addiction issues; more than I wanted to know about him. He was rounding off the names of all the pets he’d ever had when Grace made her way back into the kitchen. “Did you speak to my father?” She asked him. CJ’s face became embarrassingly white, and he ran outside. “Sorry if he talked your ear off. He can go bother dad now. I’m Grace.” “I’m Gideon. You know, Jameson is my favorite drink.” “Me too.” And then she finally opened the bottle. Grace’s dad died the next week. She was 0-2. The second whiskey has melted and I was already buzzing pretty hard so I backed off a bit. It was seventeen after eight, happy hour ended at nine (for us regulars), and Grace was still not seen or heard from. I signaled to Teddy, the bartender. “What the hell. Third time’s the charm, right?” I could barely finish speaking before he started pulling another glass from the bar. “Am I pouring another two again?” “Nah just one, and a Corona for me. Please. I’m not finna sit here and keep paying for watered-down double shots.” Teddy laughed. I was drunker than I thought. Remember the quip about CJ being a lightweight? I’m a welterweight. Teddy placed the new whiskey down next to me and put the bottle of Corona on the bar, then reached for his bottle opener but couldn’t find it. He ran back to other side of the bar to look for it, I used the bottle opener on my key chain, we called it even. I looked down at the other side of the bar to see a couple I’d never seen before drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. “How much are PBR’s for happy hour?” I asked Teddy as he returned to my side. “Still a dollar, but I usually give them two for that price. They’re my Wednesday night regulars, but they’re out of line coming in on a Thursday.” We laughed. “Gimme your keys. Please.” Grace stood next to me with her hand extended. She did not seem in the mood to talk, nor to drink. I scrambled for my keys. “You okay? You need help with anything?” She shook her head “no.” She marched back outside without saying anything further. I’m nosy. To a fault honestly. I’m that weird guy who peers at strangers’ cell phone screens in public. I don’t know why I do it, and I’ve never gained anything from it other than scowls and “Excuse you, nigga. The fuck?” I can’t help it though. Me following Grace outside was just another punch on my Nosy Timecard. She didn’t seem too startled to shove a massive bag in my tiny trunk (I drive a coupe), and I again asked if she needed help. “I guess.” She wiped her brow and I jogged over to put extra hands on the bag. I didn’t inquire what was in it, but it felt like clothes. We got it in, I shut my trunk, and we went back inside. Grace apologized to Teddy and I immensely and buried herself into whiskey that had not yet melted. She ordered two more, stating “I need to catch up,” but also still want to get them at the happy hour pricing. I ordered another beer and she began to vent. I had tomorrow off. Working retail isn’t the most glamorous shit in the world, but it has never failed me. Just like most people in the country with degrees, my age specifically, I can’t find work in my field. I feel like Mr. Gaspar was my main key to getting work out here in the real world, and well… So now I work retail as a manager of my favorite clothing store and it pays the bills. That’s all I can ask for right now I guess, but I gotta say, I thought it would be easier to get a job as an engineering major. I honestly hated the breadth of school. I moved around a lot in elementary school, struggled to make friends in high school, and just barely made it through college. I like Chicago, a lot. Staying here was my main motivation to buckle down in school, I guess. I never had much luck with women. The last serious girlfriend I had was during junior year of high school, and she left me, at prom, for Brandon McAllister. Brandon is doing okay for himself now I guess. He’s published a couple books and still does signings occasionally. I’m not too sure about Amanda though. I stopped keeping up with her immediately. Past her, I had a couple dates in college and even fewer hookups. I don’t think I’m too unattractive I just never made an effort, I guess. I’m also not exactly feigning for love or sex. I feel like if I want sex I can acquire it, maybe. “…so my sister picked me up and brought me here.” Grace had wrapped up her recollection of tonight’s altercation with CJ. This time was the last time, she reiterated repeatedly. The bag we had just stuffed in my trunk was a handful of her clothes. She’d stay with her sister for a bit until the dust settled, until he got his things and got out. She would return to her apartment in the morning, with her sister, to get her car and go to work. Grace always said her biggest issue with CJ was his adversity to actually be independent and do something with himself. I guess she’d finally had enough; got sick of holding his hand. ‘CJ’s brother lives a bit south so he can go stay with him I guess. I told him he has three days to get the fuck out of my house. I can’t miss work, but Leslie’s [her sister] place is being renovated currently. If I can’t stay with you, I’ll just get a hotel.” “Of course you can stay with me. I’ll give you a spare key even.” “Thanks Gideon.” She always opted to call me by my full name. “Leslie will come to you place in the morning so I can go get my car. I couldn’t find my keys, in anger, but she has a key to my place.” She had calmed down pretty quickly. The whiskey’s where gone almost faster than they had been conjured. I could tell she was buzzed. She continued to apologize, so much so that happy hour had ended. She didn’t care and ordered another round. “Is it bad that I’m already ready to move on?” “No. I don’t think so. I think you’ve been done for awhile and now you’re actually done. Your mind had been wondering for a bit. Got any prospects?” “I don’t know. You’re available aren’t you?” I spit a bit of my drink back into the class in shock. I gazed at her. She was drunk but she looked sincere. “That’s the liquor talking.” We both laughed. A song came on that she raved about and we got up and danced a bit. I looked down at her. “You know if we date we can’t really do happy hour anymore.” “Why not?” “Then what will we talk about?” “Literally anything other than CJ.” I nodded in acceptance. She felt nice. I’d never really gotten the opportunity to hold her but it was good. She felt appropriate. She felt complete, an almost puzzle-like completion. This was way outside of our friendship parameters. I’ll see if she feels the same in the morning. I guess that gives me some time to think. I don’t think that women and men can’t be just friends. I just think people are only willing to risk Friendship for Love, and not Love for Friendship.

[missmyloko]

Oh! I also wanted to ask this. In Japan, dressing up as a geisha is ok, but why in other countries it is considered racist? And also, is it ok to dress up/cosplay as a geisha? Maybe I planned to cosplay as a geisha character someday. (Actually there is a geisha-inspired character though)

I apologize now as I’m fairly certain that this is going to get quite long by the time I’m done.The entire issue at the heart of what you’re getting at is what is and what isn’t considered cultural appropriation, which is something that’s been asked about a few times in the past as it’s not exactly the easiest subject to get a definitive answer on. I am by no means the be all and end all on the subject, but I do feel that my years of experience and my snazzy degree give me a bit of an advantage compared to others. So, horn tooting aside, let’s break this down into what cultural appropriation is and where the line between “totally cool” and “oh no you didn’t” are.Cultural appropriation is, at its base, the adoption/taking of various symbols of a specific culture in which you have no prior knowledge of and put them on display as if you did. It’s also when you do know the intricacies of a culture but decide to engage in taboo anyway. Note that both times you have to be an outsider to the culture in question as it’s impossible to appropriate your own culture. Now, in the context of geisha this doesn’t mean that every Japanese person is excused from cultural appropriation as very few are actually linked to the karyukai in any way, so to be an insider means that you deal with that specific culture on a daily basis and it has to be a part of your life. Examples of cultural appropriation would be Memoirs of a Geisha (both book and film, ugh), the Vogue Magazine Diversity Issue, and any Halloween costume you’ve ever seen that calls itself “geisha”. These were all made by people with no prior knowledge of the culture they were using, who didn’t do any research into the culture, who didn’t speak with people inside of that culture, and, in the end, just decided that what they were doing was okay since they decided to slap a label that says “inspired by” on their product and “inspired” isn’t appropriation to them (spoiler: it totally is though). Before we go any further, yes, Arthur Golden spoke with Mineko Iwasaki about her life before writing Memoirs of a Geisha, but he basically took her stories and the autobiography of Sayo Matsuda and created his own fantasy that was erroneous at best and a downright terrible dumpster fire garbage at worst. Changing and distorting facts is cultural appropriation as outsiders don’t get a say on what can be changed and what can’t, but they do it anyway. He used the common (and terrible) stereotype that Asian women are meant to be subservient to men and to hide their own feelings in order to serve them, both mentally and physically. I highly recommend Sheridan Prasso’s book “The Asian Mystique” if you want to learn more about how Asian stereotypes formed and are continuously used to the point where we barely even notice them anymore (I will be doing a book review on that one in the future).  In your specific example of people dressing up in Japan as geisha there’s a very fine line between “this is totally okay” and “please, don’t ever do that again” and it’s something that’s crossed often and usually without regard for the people that it’s harming. To determine at its core if something is cultural appropriation you need to ask the person whose culture you’re dealing with. I’ve asked maiko and geiko in the past how they feel about henshin studios, and most don’t mind them as long as they’re not the kind that allow their customers to go walking around as if they were the real thing. If you want to try on the outfit of a maiko or geiko to understand part of how they do their jobs then that’s totally fine, but the second you step outside of a henshin studio and walk around in that outfit you are telling the public that you are, in fact, an actual geiko or maiko (which you aren’t). The vast majority of tourists don’t know the difference between real maiko and geiko and henshin, so sadly the majority of maiko sightings in and around Kyoto are all of henshin and not the real deal. Since henshin studios often use cheaper quality outfits and shoddy wigs or hair styling they give the real maiko and geiko a bad name. This issue is one that the city of Kyoto has grappled with for decades as dressing up as maiko and geiko is a huge part of their tourism, so they don’t want to lose all of that money if they don’t need to. So, they’ve put out rules for henshin studios to follow that are supposed to differentiate a real maiko from a henshin/faiko (faiko = fake maiko) but, as stated earlier, since the vast majority of tourists don’t know these differences they assume that they’re seeing the real deal every time. Money sadly talks more than words, so those henshin studios walk a fine line each day between “fun experience” and “cultural appropriation.” I’ve been asked before about going to Kyoto and doing a henshin and, in all honesty, it’s totally fine if you want to do that, but please choose a studio that doesn’t allow you to walk around outside while wearing the outfit.As for dressing as a geisha outside of Japan, you need to ask yourself: have I done enough research to know what’s acceptable and what’s not? If you’re some random person who woke up one day and was like, “I’m going to dress like a geisha!” and so you grabbed some white clown make-up, some weird looking wig, and a bathrobe, then you’re appropriating culture. If you’re a person who is dressing someone as a maiko or geiko or yourself as a maiko or geiko at an event where you’ll be teaching people what real maiko and geiko look like then that’s totally fine. Each year at the Anime North Fashion Show we always have at least one model as a maiko or geiko in order to show how kimono are worn by different subsets of different cultures. We do this by applying the same make-up, wigs, juban, eri, kimono, kanzashi, obi, and accessories that maiko and geiko wear outside of our show as our aim is to inform the audience of what a real geiko or maiko looks like as this is likely the closest they will ever get to the real thing. Obviously these items don’t come cheap, and that’s another place where people resort to cultural appropriation instead of actual learning. For example, I noticed that one of my friends had taken some lovely pictures of herself in a kimono (which is totally fine as she’s been dressing in them and collecting them for years), but in some of the pictures she was holding a mai ōgi that had the kamon of a dance school on it. If the mai ōgi was plain then there wouldn’t have been a problem, but since she was holding that fan her action immediately turned into appropriation because she didn’t understand the full effects of what she was doing. In order to be able to use a fan with the kamon of your dance school on it takes years of practice and dedication and those fans are only bestowed upon the students who have earned it. If you bought that fan second hand then you are not deserving of showing it off in public like that, and thus are basically ignoring the rules that come with those fans and you’ve ended up resorting to appropriation. She admittedly seemed confused and didn’t think that it was a big deal, but if you start to ignore one rule you’re sure to ignore others down the road and that slope can quickly lead down the path of appropriation. I doubt that this will happen in her case as she’s been incredibly respectful in the past and I believe this was her first time posing with mai ōgi, but if you don’t acknowledge your mistakes you’re bound to repeat them. I happen to have many mai ōgi, with 9 of them being from the Inoue School, and as much as I’d love to pose with them I know that I’m not worthy of what that action would mean. Displaying them in galleries where people can learn about them is fine though and they’ve been well received in that setting in the past (I uploaded images of them on display at Anime North last year, so you can search through them at your leisure).As for geisha-inspired costumes, it really boils down to how much of it is based on real geisha and how much it differs from reality. If it’s on the Halloween costume side then yes, it’s appropriation. However, if it’s a character who’s incorporated a kimono into their outfit then they aren’t geisha and you’re not appropriating geisha specifically. I can’t give you a definitive ruling as I don’t know what that character looks like, but hopefully what I’ve said above can help you determine that for yourself. 

[dxmedstudent]

I recently had my interview for medical school and one of the interviewers had asked me what I could bring to the table. I was really stumped by this question because I really had no answer. I mean all of the students waiting outside came in with higher GPAs than I did, had research experiences, etc. I know I'd be ecstatic if I do get an offer but I'm also worried that I may have nothing to offer. Have you ever felt like this? Like you wouldn't be an asset to the profession but maybe a pullback?

Hello, thank you for your ask. I can see why you were stumped; it’s a tough question! Sometimes questions are meant to make us pause for a second; they like to throw in something that makes you think on your feet. The key to this question is to recognise that you have positive qualities, regardless of what all the other applicants are like. They aren’t asking about them, but about you. So your answer should be entirely focused on the good things about yourself, as if those other applicants didn’t exist. You do have things to offer, even if you’re not the best student in the world. To be honest, I’ve known some very smart people who would make absolutely dreadful doctors when it comes to dealing with actual people (and, quelle surprise, if they end up in medicine they usually peel off into things like radioligy or research), and I’ve known some amazing people who, on paper didn’t seem exceptional, but are absolutely amazing when it comes to actually doing the job. And I know some people who didn’t get into medicine who would have made good doctors, in my opinion. But they chose to do something else, and found something else they love and are good at. The key here is that performance at interview doesn’t define how good or not good at medicine you’d be! And even the people who get into medicine and aren’t great at the patient/communication front are still perfectly capable when placed in a speciality where they could use what they were good at (usually their analytical skills). I’m absolutely certain that whatever your strengths and weaknesses, there could be a few specialities in medicine in which you would be an asset. That’s true for all of us, I think. It’s just that our own strengths and weaknesses dictate where we would be best. Interviews, job applications etc only look at one facet of who you are, and are built purely to make it easier for interviewers to skim off a subset. They can’t give a full, complete picture of who you are, and if, like most of us, your best sides aren’t easily put across in a 10 minute interview, then you have to work hard to find a way to mention the positive things about you and put across that you deserve a place. If you read the books about interview questions (highly recommended; they helped me a lot), you see that any question can be broken down as a way to sell your qualities. You can pick a situation or example of why you are good, and flesh out exactly what qualities that developed in you. For example, the question of what you bring to the table could mean things like:Academicqualities:

regardless of what GPAs the others have, yours must be decent if you are applying; it’s perfectly true to say that you are bringing academic excellence to the table, because you don’t have to be the best to be good.

perhaps you really really enjoyed your related studies and are bringing a lot of enthusiasm to the table

your unique set of subjects has taught you things you can carry forward. Sciences? Self-explanatory. Arts? teaches you a LOT about the human condition. IT? doctors work with a wide range of computer systems and technologies.

You are hard-working to get this far. This is a perfectly valid quality to raise.

perhaps you are organised.

It may be cheesy to say it, but it is totally acceptable to cite your genuine passion for medicine as something you bring to the table. I know it’s not always considered cool to geek out over things, but they really do want to see your enthusiasm for medicine.

Personal qualities:

maybe you’re the friend who always looks after others

you might be the friend who always knows something is up, and is really empathetic and in tune with others.

perhaps you’re an excellent team player

perhaps you try to bring humor into things and boost team morale

perhaps you feel things deeply and genuinely want to help people

Perhaps you’ve seen first hand what good or bad medical practice can do, and want to be the change you want to see in the world.

perhaps you engage heavily in running societies and are good at making things happen and enacting change in your fellow students. You could raise charity money for your university, become soc president or even run audits or research or school papers etc.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but to show that the examples don’t have to centre on getting prizes or having the top grade. And it should have nothing to do with what other students are like. The aim of an interview isn’t to test your CV (they already thought it was good enough by bringing you there at all) but to see how good you are at talking about what you’ve done, what qualities you have etc. They want you to persuade them that you have the qualities they want in a doctor. And all you need to do is think of what those qualities are, and whether/how you embody them, and then think up examples from school, voluntary jobs, projects, etc that support that. If you aren’t sure what those qualities are, Google the GMC’s Tomorrow’s doctors’ document. That’s UK specific, but I don’t doubt that US med schools are looking for something similar. This isn’t about lying about who you are, but about thinking how you can phrase things to focus on the qualities you have which are an asset (and many of them are). I remember going to med school interviews and thinking that I must be one of the worst students there. And the first time I went, I was a weaker applicant in some ways. It’s scary because when you hang out on the usual wannabe med student forums you see some pretty intense, over-qualified applicants who it was hard not to feel insecure in comparison to. But there isn’t just one place in med schools; although we are all competing against each other, it’s not a fight to the death for one solitary place! It took practice to learn to focus on what I can offer, rather than thinking about how my application was worse than others. If you don’t get in, you can think about how you can improve your application further, but for this round, think about preparing answers for common questions that focus on the good qualities you have, rather than worrying about what anyone else may have.  Incidentally, I too went to an interview recently; for the next leg of my training. And it’s not easy; it’s still a tough job to sell yourself as an employee. Especially when everyone else also applying is smart, has the same kind of experience and plenty of knowledge. There’s sometimes not a lot between you and all the other applicants; you are all good. Before and even after my interview, all the applicants were sitting around, joking, sharing stories; there was a real cameraderie in the room, and they felt just like people I could work with and be friends with. They felt like everyone else I know.  And that just reminded me that I have as much right as any of them to be there. And if you’ve gotten this far, I’m sure that’s true of you as well.

[dorcasrempel]

Researchers identify cells likely targeted by Covid-19 virus

Researchers at MIT; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; along with colleagues from around the world have identified specific types of cells that appear to be targets of the coronavirus that is causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

Using existing data on the RNA found in different types of cells, the researchers were able to search for cells that express the two proteins that help the SARS-CoV-19 virus enter human cells. They found subsets of cells in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestine that express RNA for both of these proteins much more than other cells.

The researchers hope that their findings will help guide scientists who are working on developing new drug treatments or testing existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating Covid-19.

“Our goal is to get information out to the community and to share data as soon as is humanly possible, so that we can help accelerate ongoing efforts in the scientific and medical communities,” says Alex K. Shalek, the Pfizer-Laubach Career Development Associate Professor of Chemistry, a core member of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), an extramural member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, an associate member of the Ragon Institute, and an institute member at the Broad Institute.

Shalek and Jose Ordovas-Montanes, a former MIT postdoc who now runs his own lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in Cell. The paper’s lead authors are MIT graduate students Carly Ziegler, Samuel Allon, and Sarah Nyquist; and Ian Mbano, a researcher at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa.

Digging into data

Not long after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began, scientists discovered that the viral “spike” protein binds to a receptor on human cells known as angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Another human protein, an enzyme called TMPRSS2, helps to activate the coronavirus spike protein, to allow for cell entry. The combined binding and activation allows the virus to get into host cells.

“As soon as we realized that the role of these proteins had been biochemically confirmed, we started looking to see where those genes were in our existing datasets,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “We were really in a good position to start to investigate which are the cells that this virus might actually target.”

Shalek’s lab, and many other labs around the world, have performed large-scale studies of tens of thousands of human, nonhuman primate, and mouse cells, in which they use single-cell RNA sequencing technology to determine which genes are turned on in a given cell type. Since last year, Nyquist has been building a database with partners at the Broad Institute to store a huge collection of these datasets in one place, allowing researchers to study potential roles for particular cells in a variety of infectious diseases.

Much of the data came from labs that belong to the Human Cell Atlas project, whose goal is to catalog the distinctive patterns of gene activity for every cell type in the human body. The datasets that the MIT team used for this study included hundreds of cell types from the lungs, nasal passages, and intestine. The researchers chose those organs for the Covid-19 study because previous evidence had indicated that the virus can infect each of them. They then compared their results to cell types from unaffected organs.

“Because we have this incredible repository of information, we were able to begin to look at what would be likely target cells for infection,” Shalek says. “Even though these datasets weren’t designed specifically to study Covid, it’s hopefully given us a jump start on identifying some of the things that might be relevant there.”

In the nasal passages, the researchers found that goblet secretory cells, which produce mucus, express RNAs for both of the proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells. In the lungs, they found the RNAs for these proteins mainly in cells called type II pneumocytes. These cells line the alveoli (air sacs) of the lungs and are responsible for keeping them open.

In the intestine, they found that cells called absorptive enterocytes, which are responsible for the absorption of some nutrients, express the RNAs for these two proteins more than any other intestinal cell type.

“This may not be the full story, but it definitely paints a much more precise picture than where the field stood before,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “Now we can say with some level of confidence that these receptors are expressed on these specific cells in these tissues.”

Fighting infection

In their data, the researchers also saw a surprising phenomenon — expression of the ACE2 gene appeared to be correlated with activation of genes that are known to be turned on by interferon, a protein that the body produces in response to viral infection. To explore this further, the researchers performed new experiments in which they treated cells that line the airway with interferon, and they discovered that the treatment did indeed turn on the ACE2 gene.

Interferon helps to fight off infection by interfering with viral replication and helping to activate immune cells. It also turns on a distinctive set of genes that help cells fight off infection. Previous studies have suggested that ACE2 plays a role in helping lung cells to tolerate damage, but this is the first time that ACE2 has been connected with the interferon response.

The finding suggests that coronaviruses may have evolved to take advantage of host cells’ natural defenses, hijacking some proteins for their own use.

“This isn’t the only example of that,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “There are other examples of coronaviruses and other viruses that actually target interferon-stimulated genes as ways of getting into cells. In a way, it’s the most reliable response of the host.”

Because interferon has so many beneficial effects against viral infection, it is sometimes used to treat infections such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C. The findings of the MIT team suggest that interferon’s potential role in fighting Covid-19 may be complex. On one hand, it can stimulate genes that fight off infection or help cells survive damage, but on the other hand, it may provide extra targets that help the virus infect more cells.

“It’s hard to make any broad conclusions about the role of interferon against this virus. The only way we’ll begin to understand that is through carefully controlled clinical trials,” Shalek says. “What we are trying to do is put information out there, because there are so many rapid clinical responses that people are making. We’re trying to make them aware of things that might be relevant.”

Shalek now hopes to work with collaborators to profile tissue models that incorporate the cells identified in this study. Such models could be used to test existing antiviral drugs and predict how they might affect SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The MIT team and their collaborators have made all the data they used in this study available to other labs who want to use it. Much of the data used in this study was generated in collaboration with researchers around the world, who were very willing to share it, Shalek says.

“There’s been an incredible outpouring of information from the scientific community with a number of different parties interested in contributing to the battle against Covid in any way possible,” he says. “It’s been incredible to see a large number of labs from around the world come together to try and collaboratively tackle this.”

The research was funded by the Searle Scholars Program, the Beckman Young Investigator Program, the Pew-Stewart Scholars Program for Cancer Research, a Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry, the National Institutes of Health, the Aeras Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science Project Pilot Program, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.

Researchers identify cells likely targeted by Covid-19 virus syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[scienceblogtumbler]

Researchers identify cells likely targeted by Covid-19 virus

Researchers at MIT; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; along with colleagues from around the world have identified specific types of cells that appear to be targets of the coronavirus that is causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

Using existing data on the RNA found in different types of cells, the researchers were able to search for cells that express the two proteins that help the SARS-CoV-19 virus enter human cells. They found subsets of cells in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestine that express RNA for both of these proteins much more than other cells.

The researchers hope that their findings will help guide scientists who are working on developing new drug treatments or testing existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating Covid-19.

“Our goal is to get information out to the community and to share data as soon as is humanly possible, so that we can help accelerate ongoing efforts in the scientific and medical communities,” says Alex K. Shalek, the Pfizer-Laubach Career Development Associate Professor of Chemistry, a core member of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), an extramural member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, an associate member of the Ragon Institute, and an institute member at the Broad Institute.

Shalek and Jose Ordovas-Montanes, a former MIT postdoc who now runs his own lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in Cell. The paper’s lead authors are MIT graduate students Carly Ziegler, Samuel Allon, and Sarah Nyquist; and Ian Mbano, a researcher at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa.

Digging into data

Not long after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began, scientists discovered that the viral “spike” protein binds to a receptor on human cells known as angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Another human protein, an enzyme called TMPRSS2, helps to activate the coronavirus spike protein, to allow for cell entry. The combined binding and activation allows the virus to get into host cells.

“As soon as we realized that the role of these proteins had been biochemically confirmed, we started looking to see where those genes were in our existing datasets,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “We were really in a good position to start to investigate which are the cells that this virus might actually target.”

Shalek’s lab, and many other labs around the world, have performed large-scale studies of tens of thousands of human, nonhuman primate, and mouse cells, in which they use single-cell RNA sequencing technology to determine which genes are turned on in a given cell type. Since last year, Nyquist has been building a database with partners at the Broad Institute to store a huge collection of these datasets in one place, allowing researchers to study potential roles for particular cells in a variety of infectious diseases.

Much of the data came from labs that belong to the Human Cell Atlas project, whose goal is to catalog the distinctive patterns of gene activity for every cell type in the human body. The datasets that the MIT team used for this study included hundreds of cell types from the lungs, nasal passages, and intestine. The researchers chose those organs for the Covid-19 study because previous evidence had indicated that the virus can infect each of them. They then compared their results to cell types from unaffected organs.

“Because we have this incredible repository of information, we were able to begin to look at what would be likely target cells for infection,” Shalek says. “Even though these datasets weren’t designed specifically to study Covid, it’s hopefully given us a jump start on identifying some of the things that might be relevant there.”

In the nasal passages, the researchers found that goblet secretory cells, which produce mucus, express RNAs for both of the proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells. In the lungs, they found the RNAs for these proteins mainly in cells called type II pneumocytes. These cells line the alveoli (air sacs) of the lungs and are responsible for keeping them open.

In the intestine, they found that cells called absorptive enterocytes, which are responsible for the absorption of some nutrients, express the RNAs for these two proteins more than any other intestinal cell type.

“This may not be the full story, but it definitely paints a much more precise picture than where the field stood before,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “Now we can say with some level of confidence that these receptors are expressed on these specific cells in these tissues.”

Fighting infection

In their data, the researchers also saw a surprising phenomenon — expression of the ACE2 gene appeared to be correlated with activation of genes that are known to be turned on by interferon, a protein that the body produces in response to viral infection. To explore this further, the researchers performed new experiments in which they treated cells that line the airway with interferon, and they discovered that the treatment did indeed turn on the ACE2 gene.

Interferon helps to fight off infection by interfering with viral replication and helping to activate immune cells. It also turns on a distinctive set of genes that help cells fight off infection. Previous studies have suggested that ACE2 plays a role in helping lung cells to tolerate damage, but this is the first time that ACE2 has been connected with the interferon response.

The finding suggests that coronaviruses may have evolved to take advantage of host cells’ natural defenses, hijacking some proteins for their own use.

“This isn’t the only example of that,” Ordovas-Montanes says. “There are other examples of coronaviruses and other viruses that actually target interferon-stimulated genes as ways of getting into cells. In a way, it’s the most reliable response of the host.”

Because interferon has so many beneficial effects against viral infection, it is sometimes used to treat infections such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C. The findings of the MIT team suggest that interferon’s potential role in fighting Covid-19 may be complex. On one hand, it can stimulate genes that fight off infection or help cells survive damage, but on the other hand, it may provide extra targets that help the virus infect more cells.

“It’s hard to make any broad conclusions about the role of interferon against this virus. The only way we’ll begin to understand that is through carefully controlled clinical trials,” Shalek says. “What we are trying to do is put information out there, because there are so many rapid clinical responses that people are making. We’re trying to make them aware of things that might be relevant.”

Shalek now hopes to work with collaborators to profile tissue models that incorporate the cells identified in this study. Such models could be used to test existing antiviral drugs and predict how they might affect SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The MIT team and their collaborators have made all the data they used in this study available to other labs who want to use it. Much of the data used in this study was generated in collaboration with researchers around the world, who were very willing to share it, Shalek says.

“There’s been an incredible outpouring of information from the scientific community with a number of different parties interested in contributing to the battle against Covid in any way possible,” he says. “It’s been incredible to see a large number of labs from around the world come together to try and collaboratively tackle this.”

The research was funded by the Searle Scholars Program, the Beckman Young Investigator Program, the Pew-Stewart Scholars Program for Cancer Research, a Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry, the National Institutes of Health, the Aeras Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science Project Pilot Program, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.

source https://scienceblog.com/515715/researchers-identify-cells-likely-targeted-by-covid-19-virus/

[ihtspirit]

Heart Rate Monitors Reinforce Movement in Behavior-Based Curriculum

Heart Rate Monitors Reinforce Movement in Behavior-Based Curriculum Heart rate technology enables Lesher Middle School (Fort Collins, Colo.) teachers Jo Dixon and Matt Moeller to give their students a more holistic approach to their overall wellness. “Everything we do is through that Social-Emotional Learning lens,” Moeller said. https://ihtusa.com https://ihtusa.com/heart-rate-monitors-reinforce-movement-in-behavior-based-curriculum/ Heart rate technology enables Lesher Middle School (Fort Collins, Colo.) teachers Jo Dixon and Matt Moeller to give their students a more holistic approach to their overall wellness. “Everything we do is through that Social-Emotional Learning lens,” Moeller said. “We want to hone in on those interpersonal skills, and then by using heart rate on the back side allows us to make sure that they are moving at the same time.” The teachers use the IHT ZONE wrist heart rate monitors to keep students motivated to work hard during class, where the curriculum looks very little like the way they taught five or even 10 years ago.  “Our whole curriculum is based around Social-Emotional Learning and it's not based on skills,” Dixon emphasized. “We really do nothing traditional. Everything is either small-sided games or large group fitness. It's [taking] notes, heart rate monitors and incorporating that with our technology. We are very data-driven, giving an email to parents. In my 20 years of teaching, I am resurrecting my teaching partly because of this and I think Matt has, too.”

Middle School Students Focus on Movement and Motivation

Moeller and Dixon both played intercollegiate sports during their undergraduate days. Dixon played basketball and softball; Moeller played football and wrestled. Despite their background and success, they don’t teach sport-specific skills in their classes. “We don’t play basketball,” Moller said. “We don’t play football. We don’t play soccer. We feel like that’s a very small subset of kids that can successfully do that. Honestly, in a short unit, you can’t teach the skills to do that effectively and so you’d have a lot of kids who hate it and then you have low participation.” Instead, Dixon and Moeller have turned their gym into a health club. Every student attends an 85-minute training session every other day for a semester. “We say we have a health club fitness approach,” he said. “We do CrossFit. We do a ton of dance and we work on modifying activities so there’s far more movement. We just really want the kids to think about their heart health.” Motivated by the heart rate monitors, students have indeed focused on their heart health. The students wear the ZONES nearly every time they have PE, and the data shows that students waste no time getting to work. “We come in, get dressed out and get after it,” Moeller said. “The expectation is that they spend at least three minutes exercising in the red (vigorous exercise). [The ZONE] has been a real game-changer in terms of getting them in and ready to go.”

Students Meeting Teachers’ Expectations of Effort and Movement

Dixon said results are especially noticeable when students undergo fitness testing. “You can really see that spike when they run the PACER [20-meter beep test],” she said. “When we saw that, we knew we were truly testing their cardio and testing their max heart rate limits. That was easy to see on the printouts.” After each session using the IHT ZONE, students, teachers and parents receive a printable email with detailed information about the workout, including the heart rate graph for that student’s session. Dixon said the reports – along with the ZONE itself – are beneficial during testing because the real-time feedback helps students meet expectations. “It becomes a little motivational factor from the angle that we don’t want to see kids drop out of an activity until they have reached the yellow (moderate exercise) or red zones,” Dixon said. “We love the visual piece of the blue, yellow and red zones. I think that’s genius.” The heart rate monitors helped the teachers simplify their approach to grading. Since they don’t focus on sport-specific skills, their rubric looks different. The heart rate data contributes to the fitness elements of the class. Teachers also focus on the SEL aspects, Dixon said:

“Are students hitting their target heart rate?

“Are students able to shake hands with others and introduce themselves?

“Can you be a good teammate and learn what spirit of the game means?”

“Those components are lifelong,” Dixon said.

‘Heart Health and Positive Interaction’

As the school year began, Moeller and Dixon focused on getting their students moving, but movement – both during fitness training and small-sided games – is only as important as how the students interact with each other. “We want to make sure they can communicate effectively, that they can problem-solve when necessary and that they are courteous to each other,” Moeller said. “That is our main focus, and again we rely on the heart rate data to make sure they are moving at the same time.” To reinforce the fitness lessons, Dixon and Moeller want students to add a writing element to their post-class reflection. Students will use the data from their heart rate reports and fitness test results and write about what they felt during each session. The system allows students to reply to the session report email to make journal entries. “We are hoping that what we see in the students’ writing will show a powerful shift in their understanding of their health and where it is,” Moeller said.  “We are concerned with movement, heart health and positive interaction between students.” “We want to promote heart health,” Dixon said. “That is our number one priority because the heart is the most important muscle in your body. We want the students to understand what that feels and looks like. The ZONE allows us to really focus on teaching about heart health. We have all this information and we share it all with the students.”

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