#my point is that if all you know about economics is based on tweets you’ve read you aren’t an expert in economic theory

[raskies456]

my hot take of the day is that I think people who have never taken a single econ class should keep that fact in mind when they talk about economics

[confettipizza]

Lunar Recap

How it started. How it’s going. How it ended for the last lunar cycle of 2020.

This lunar cycle began with the New Moon on Jan. 12, 2021 @ 11:01 PM CT (Jan. 13 @ 05:01 UTC). It was the 13th Moon of 2020 according to the lunar calendar. And it ended Feb. 11, 2021, just before the 1st Moon of 2021! Happy Lunar New Year 2021, Year of the Ox!

South Korean Court Orders Japan to Compensate Women Forced into Sex Slavery

Colorado AG Opens Grand Jury Probe of Police Killing of Elijah McClain

Guantánamo Bay Prison Starts 20th Year of Indefinite Detentions

Pfizer to Boost COVID-19 Vaccine Output as WHO Warns of Vaccination Inequality

Lawmakers Catch COVID-19 After Sheltering in Room Where GOP Reps Refused Masks

FBI Warns of “Armed Protests” in All 50 States and at Biden’s Inauguration

Tomorrow is Sun conjunct Pluto. Something that’s been lurking in the shadows bout to jump out. Might be pretty big, but there’s also the individual personal experience of this event and might feel more like an early Full Moon for you.

House to Impeach Trump as GOP Shows Signs of Backing Removal

Well this is dumb. Sun conjunct Pluto?

The $3,000-a-month toilet for the Ivanka Trump/Jared Kushner Secret Service detail

I also remembered/realized how much I really love Anna Sui designs since I was a kid which is pretty random to pop up on my radar, but this woman gets that all I want is sparkly heart shaped objects in lacquered black and flowy hippie dresses

Trump Tells Aides Not to Pay Giuliani’s Legal Fees as Bid to Overturn Election Fails

All I know is talking about dreams and discussing them with others makes you feel better. The tarot angle is there to shed some light on what the dream is actually telling you.

Joe Biden Unveils $1.9 Trillion Coronavirus and Economic Relief Package

ICE’s Acting Director Resigns After Two Weeks on Job

Found out today the woman at the car mechanic I've been faithfully taking my car to for the past two years can speak to the dead and had some messages for me from my dad who passed in October-

Intuitive guided tarot card pull.

Waxing crescent into Aries Monday, January 18, 2021 at 1:06 AM CT Today’s Astro x Tarot forecast valid for the next 24 hours: Feelings are flaring up for you to make a statement, a very zippy move or a quick decision about someone or something.

So long as you remain flexible and agile, whatever you choose to do with them will work to your advantage. If you decide not to impose hyper-agility into your decision making rn, then kudos to you! You’ve gained practice points in self-control experience.

More Than 760,000 Pounds of Hot Pockets Recalled

‘I Answered the Call of My President’: Rioters Say Trump Urged Them On

Raphael Warnock and the Legacy of Racial Tyranny

The Extraordinary Courage of Aleksei Navalny

Whoa, I was like a cycle early on celebrating the lunar new year! I’ve been a month into the future for a week now. My bad! I apologize for any confusion.

I was thinking that the soul's law of attraction is probably pretty unstoppable even concerning partners, so like, if someone didn't love you back then it's not some mistake or human misunderstanding that you or they need to fix.

To find one's soulmate looks something like 2 souls flying towards each other from opposite ends of the galaxy to join their physical selves together in a collision force so brutal you're stuck like that and if that's not what yours looks like then maybe that ain't your soulmate?

All the men going to jail for their poop smearing Capitol rioting have online dating profiles and that’s reason no. 2 I do not date online! Reason no. 1 is ain’t nobody cute on there.

The Witch’s Myth: The true story of the crane husband

Where are your witch stars, Circe and Hekate, located? Their location can explain your relationship to witchcraft. Circe is in my 1st house influencing my outer appearances and Hekate is conjunct Jupiter influencing my domestic style and home to be distinctively witchy.

Sun into Aquarius Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 2:33 PM CT Here is your Sun into Aquarius forecast effective for the next several weeks of Aquarius season. 

Down to earth and grounded is our most qualified position to receive everything we need and use everything we receive. This is the reality of ourselves, the human condition.

We love reality based reality.

Get ready for reality-grounded White House press briefings

Why do people believe the lies they’re fed? Because those lies are designed to be more palatable than reality. Lies offer a quick easy patch, but what you’ve gotta ask yourself is are those lies actually designed to support the flow of all things into your life?

~* First Quarter Jan. 20 3:02 PM CT (21:02 UTC) *~

Biden and Harris Attend Memorial to Honor 400,000+ COVID-19 Victims in U.S. on Eve of Inauguration

Steve Bannon Among Final Trump Pardons and Commutations

Trump Admin Declares Multiculturalism Is “Not Who America Is” as WH Releases Racist, Revisionist Report

4,000+ Columbia Students Back Largest-Ever Tuition Strike

Today, whatever you’re doing or are wishing to become will be to the benefit of this unifying, love-aligned uprising.

Joe Biden Sworn In as 46th President of the United States, Ending Trump Era

Good inauguration Astro climate this morning feels like. #BidenHarrisInauguration

“What has shaken the U.S. population so badly, this assault on the Capitol yesterday, is really nothing by comparison to what U.S. operations have done in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, to other democratic movements and elected governments over the years.”

Progress towards wholeness can’t be made until we own up to the roles we’ve played in the past.

Read the full text of Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem ‘The Hill We Climb’

When did politics get so vibrant and fashionably uplifting? Please and thank you! #Inauguration2021

The two of wands says to review your options, do your research, crunch the numbers, imagine the outcomes, but there’s no need to force making a choice if you don’t have to. Buy yourself some time and let the plans for a resolution find you, not the other way around.

Donald Trump Leaves Office and Washington, D.C., Threatens “We Will Be Back”

Watchdogs Demand Transparency as Corporations Pour Millions into Biden-Harris Inauguration

Senate Dems File Ethics Complaint Against Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley over Jan. 6 Insurrection

Federal Forces Arrest Ex-Marine for Beating Officer with a Hockey Stick During Capitol Riots

It’s Friday and it just feels good to be alive, a socialist and calling Bernie Sanders cute on Inauguration Day week! What a difference a pandemic makes.

Instacart Lays Off 2,000 Workers, Including Group Who Started Company’s First Union

Mars square Jupiter January 23, 2021 @ 1:49 AM CT (7:49 GMT) Someone wants you to know that you are ready to conquer your perceived limits to arrive at expansion in your thoughts, feelings, emotions and understanding today.

Waxing gibbous into Cancer January 25, 2021 @ 12:51 PM CT (18:51 GMT) It’s a supportive Moon for dreaming for mental health and well being. Begin a dream journal or review your latest dreams, reflecting on them for a few minutes today.

You are opening yourself up to an emotional practice that includes care for yourself in ways no one else (besides you and your connection to the Moon) can provide.

And too my Tarot Dream Readings are open if you would like guidance or support on a particular dream. See my pinned tweet for how it works.

When one’s soul is allowed to lead one’s life, working in the dark shadows, the invisible silence, the soul’s manifesting results are way more lasting and way more powerful than egocentric anything.

Good morning, self! A reminder my ego has never done a thing for me my soul can’t do better.

National Guard Deployment at U.S. Capitol Becomes COVID-19 Superspreader Event

Russia Violently Cracks Down on Protesters Calling for Release of Alexei Navalny

Trump Plotted to Oust Acting AG, Use DOJ to Force Georgia to Overturn Election Results

Hunts Point Market Workers in the Bronx Win Wage Increase After Week-Long Strike

This mourning brooch is a mindful way to mark the death of a loved one while paying tribute to the impact it has had on you. Bring back this Victorian trend!

Veteran Talk Show Host Larry King Dies After Hospitalization for COVID-19

Hank Aaron, Who Overcame Racist Barriers to Become Home Run Record-Holder, Dies at 86

We don’t give our bodies or our intuition enough attention and nourishment a lot of the time, so today’s the day we practice finding and sitting quietly with our inner voice.

~* Full Moon Jan. 28 1:17 PM CT (19:17 UTC) *~

House Delivers Article of Impeachment to Senate, Triggering Trump’s Second Trial

Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani for Lying About 2020 Election

President Biden Increases U.S. Vaccination Goal to 150 Million Shots in 100 Days

President Biden Reverses Trump’s Transgender Military Service Ban

Biden Restores Plan to Feature Abolitionist Harriet Tubman on $20 Bill

Value is further added the more you mint your words with a most whole and complete love. Love is the greatest asset we can let appreciate in our lifetimes.

This Full Moon tomorrow sends a flash point that reminds you to circulate this wealth because it’s the greatest emotional gift we can bestow upon our loved ones, family, friends, neighbors, elders, members of our community, etc.

Venus conjunct Pluto in Capricorn January 28, 2021 @ 10:18 AM CT (16:18 GMT) Going through your day today uncovers a forgotten desire or creative goal. You find yourself asking something like: Remember when I wanted to become a pastry chef?

Although you decided to pursue a different course, take a moment to focus on and honor this memory when it arrives and then release it. What did you become instead and why?

45 Senate Republicans Back Dismissal of Trump Impeachment Trial

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Supported Violence Against Pelosi and Others in 2018 Facebook Posts

Taking the time to recognize and honor your past desires gives the respect these memories deserve and it integrates them into the whole wider scene of the individual, both shadow and light on your path builds confidence in your steps, confidence in yourself.

You are who you are for a reason.

Had no idea how literal this grassroots King of Pentacles card was gonna materialize today, but here it is folks! When a subreddit takes down a hedge fund!

Leader of Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, Was a Government Informer

U.S. Freezes Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia, Reviews Deal with UAE Made Under Trump Admin

Poland Enacts Near-Total Ban on Abortions, Triggering More Protests

Honduras Locks In Total Ban on Abortions, Attacks Marriage Equality

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Confronts Parkland Survivor David Hogg in Newly Resurfaced Video

The stock market this morning: Sh*t! Normal working class people read the market and figured out the game! Time to change the rules again. Let’s write it in ancient Babylonian hieroglyphs this time. They’ll never figure that sh*t out.

A message crucial to promote the awareness of your personal role in the collective will become evident over the next three weeks. You will come to ask yourself, What am I doing with my life?

If you aren’t familiar or comfortable with seeking your inner journey, then the greatest clue I can offer you at the start is to become open to the invisible world within you. How you learn to relate to it is completely personal and uniquely your own

Speaking in more concrete terms the next few weeks may manifest a life event for you where you must apply both logic and feeling in order to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion concerning an interpersonal relationship or the question what am I doing with my life?

This Mercury retrograde should be a cinch, but during it don’t buy tech if you don’t have to. And remember to triple check communication before hitting send. If you arrive at conflict be quick to apologize and say no more until tomorrow 

President Biden Expands Affordable Care Act Enrollment Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

House Speaker Blasts GOP for Assigning Racist Conspiracy Theorist to House Education Committee

Lawmakers Demand Probe into Trading App Robinhood After It Blocked Stock Sales That Hurt Hedge Funds

Pioneering African American Actor Cicely Tyson, Winner of Two Emmys, Dies at 96

Sun in Aquarius square Mars in Taurus February 1, 2021 @ 4:33 AM CT (10:33 GMT) The warrior’s edge has melted away and now you can take the scenic route through a field of wildflowers and mushrooms instead of blasting your way through a hillside of obstacles.

This energy catalyzes a scene that supports growth through varied experiences and it encourages everyone to seek their own way to resolutions, conclusions and understandings that are uniquely their own. Searching out your own way illuminates a strategic aspect of your purpose.

Happy Venus in Aquarius! The idea to refresh your wardrobe, hairstyle or redecorating by public opinion can be too hard to ignore under this influence. Your personal style will be influenced by the collective for the duration.

Burmese Military Stage Coup, Detain Aung San Suu Kyi

FBI Uncovers Evidence Jan. 6 Attack Was Premeditated as More Far-Right Rioters Face Charges

Trump Faces More Businesses-Related Woes as His Legal Team Departs a Week Before Impeachment Trial

It’s only the 21st day of the lunar cycle and already we’ve gone from the end of a rotten presidential era to the people’s revolution of the stock market, ok? And this moon ain’t even finished yet!

~* Last Quarter Feb. 4 11:38 AM CT (17:38 UTC) *~

U.S. Tops 26 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Shots, Surpassing Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

Moon Last Quarter in Scorpio February 4, 2021 @ 11:38 AM CT (17:38 UTC) A time for Descending, settling, closure, receiving compliments for doing a good job. Prime time for tying of loose ends and wrapping up unfinished business.

Democrats Say Trump “Singularly Responsible” for Jan. 6 Insurrection in Impeachment Brief

With consciousness humans are able to transcend the unconscious and reconfigure our relationship to it.

Though we can transcend the unconscious through viewing ourselves objectively, we are still apart of the the unconscious. Those rules still apply to us even as we contemplate their logic.

Jeff Bezos Steps Down as Amazon CEO After Amassing Huge Personal Fortune

Amazon to Pay Contract Drivers $61.7 Million After FTC Probe Finds It Stole Tips to Pay Wages

Republican Leader Won’t Punish Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over Racist and Violent Rhetoric

Prosecutors Seek Rearrest of Kyle Rittenhouse, Wisconsin Teen Charged with Killing 2 Protesters

Sometimes the right thing to do is protect your one actual valuable thing not by defending it, but closing up all the channels the valuable thing is being attacked from the outside. Sometimes you just gotta block, delete or remove your account and move on with/to what's good.

What if we wake up one day and COVID has disappeared, like poof! It vanished into thin air? Maybe it’s the moon opposed to Uranus that’s got me wishing wild problem solvers would pop up overnight.

Poll Reveals 25% of U.S. Adults Plan to Gather at Super Bowl Watch Parties

VP Harris Casts Tie-Breaking Vote to Move Ahead with Democratic COVID Relief Bill

House Removes Marjorie Taylor Greene from Committees over Violent, Bigoted Rhetoric

Smartmatic Sues Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell for Election-Related Lies

I unfollowed some lawmakers this morning after feeling second hand anxiety over the handling of their interpersonal conflicts. Realized they were me on IG two years ago and I’ve moved on since. Can relate, but don’t wanna relive, thanks!

I just want to let y’all know that I’m coping w insufficient candle syndrome & will be studying the art & science of candle making to save myself potentially hundreds of thousands of $$ by making my own delicious smelling coconut wax babies in diy terra cotta flower pots.

Wyoming GOP Censures Rep. Liz Cheney for Backing Trump’s Impeachment

Mass Protests Continue in Burma Opposing Military Coup, Removal of Aung San Suu Kyi

You may tell others like it is today, but hopefully this inspires you to check in with yourself and be honest/come clean about something you've been overlooking.

Indian Farmworkers Blockade Roads as Mass Protests Show No Sign of Slowing Down

Black Sheriff’s Deputy in Louisiana Dies by Suicide After Condemning Police Violence and Racism

Amazon Workers in Alabama Begin Historic Vote on Unionization

Second Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump Opens in the Senate

Georgia’s Secretary of State to Probe Trump’s Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election

Mercury square Mars February 10, 2021 @ 6:14 AM CT (12:14 UTC) Still talking about talking, it’s also Dark Moon time to shape or let a habit form. This practice can come from breaking free of outdated relationships with yourself or with others in order to spur growth.

Dreamed Jungkook was correcting my pronunciation of Korean last night. I’m sorry! I’ll try harder to take this lesson seriously

Senate Votes to Proceed with Impeachment as Managers Present Harrowing Video of Jan. 6 Insurrection

Gov’t to Send Vaccines to Community Health Centers as U.S. Continues Ramping Up Vaccinations

WHO Team Confirms COVID-19 of Animal Origin; Ghana Shuts Parliament After Outbreak Infects Lawmakers

Journalists Decry Raid on Progressive Indian News Site NewsClick

U.S. to Pursue Extradition of Julian Assange as Press Freedom Groups Warn of Dangerous Precede

Fossil Fuel Pollution Causes One in Five Global Deaths

Four Louisiana Officers Arrested over Police Brutality Cases and Other Misconduct

Two NYT Journalists Exit Paper Following Revelations of Improper Conduct

Venus conjunct Jupiter February 11, 2021 @ 8:59 AM CT (14:59 UTC) Receive the overflow of creativity into your life. Welcome it even if you aren’t sure what to do with it. Write down project ideas if you don’t have the energy to start on them now. You can work on them later.

I'm cool with double masking, but a lot of folks still aren't even doing the one :|

“The Inciter-in-Chief”: Democrats Accuse Trump of Being “Singularly Responsible” for Insurrection

U.S. COVID Death Toll Tops 471,000; Half of All Deaths Occurred Since Nov. 1

Saudi Women’s Rights Activist Loujain al-Hathloul Released After 1,001 Days in Prison

Biden Administration to Continue Trump-Era Policy of Turning Away Asylum Seekers at Southern Border

Sen. Bernie Sanders Grills Neera Tanden, Biden’s Pick to Head OMB

Sen. Bernie Sanders: “According to The Washington Post, since 2014, the Center for American Progress has received roughly $5.5 million from Walmart, a company that pays its workers starvation wages; $900,000 from the Bank of America; $550,000 from JPMorgan Chase; $550,000 from Amazon; $200,000 from Wells Fargo; $800,000 from Facebook; and up to $1.4 million from Google. In other words, CAP has received money from some of the most powerful special interests in our country. How will your relationship with those very powerful special interests impact your decision-making if you are appointed to be the head of OMB?”

Neera Tanden: “Senator, I thank you for that question. It will have zero impact on my — on my decision-making.”

[drdougdouglass]

Religious Bigotry in Presidential Politics: 8 Things Every Voter Should Know about the Intolerance of a Leading Democrat Candidate for President [Video and Poll]

Craig Huey May 1, 2019 Government, Congress, and Politics, Politics Leave a Comment

Religious intolerance and bigotry are increasing in America…

Faith-bashing and shaming is becoming popular among leading candidates for president.

The latest is Democrat Pete Buttigieg (pronounced Budda-judge) – who has already raised $7 million and is polling in 3rd place behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Here are 8 things you should know about what he has already said – what his lies and distortions are … and what the truth really is:

Pete Buttigieg viciously attacked Christians as hypocrites.

In a “Meet the Press” interview, Buttigieg criticized evangelicals who support President Trump by saying, “Here you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in Scripture or in church, where it’s about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants, and making sure that you’re focusing your efforts on the poor.”

“We see the diametric opposite of that in this presidency … Even on the version of Christianity that you hear on the religious right, which is about sexual ethics – I can’t believe that somebody who was writing hush money checks to adult film actresses is somebody they should be lifting up as the kind of person you want to be leading this nation.”

He viciously attacked Vice President Mike Pence for his Christian faith.

At an LGBT fundraising event, Buttigieg attacked Vice President Mike Pence – an evangelical Christian – for signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2015 while he was Governor of Indiana. The law protects the freedom of religious expression and conscience of businesses and employees.

Buttigieg believes Pence’s support of President Trump can only be explained in one of two ways: “Either he abandoned his religious principles in order to be part of this campaign and administration,” he said, “Or he has some very strange sense of destiny, that God somehow wants this in order to get somewhere better, which I think does very little credit to God…”

In a further frontal attack against the Vice President, Buttigieg proclaimed this about his same-sex marriage: “My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man – and yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God. And that’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand, that if you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir is with my creator.”

Pete Buttigieg twists the truth about religious freedom … freedom of conscience … and the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment.

He said, “I hope that teachings about inclusion and love win out over what I personally consider to be a handful of scriptures that reflect the moral expectations of the era in which they were recorded…”

“Our right to practice our faith freely is respected up to the point where doing so involves harming others,” he continued, “One of the problems with RFRA [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] was it authorized harming others so long as you remembered to use your religion as an excuse.”

Of course, he doesn’t specify how he believes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act harms members of the LBGT community. Certainly he’s not talking about physical harm – which is the type of harm prohibited by scripture against those practicing an immoral lifestyle.

Buttigieg preaches a lie about God, homosexuality and Scripture.

He twists truth and scripture to suit his own opinions – as do socialist and progressive Christians…

He criticizes Trump’s past. He decries his talk and tweets. But he ignores the clear teaching of scriptures he doesn’t like. For example:

The scripture that says marriage is between a man and a woman (Matthew 19:3-8)

The scripture that teaches homosexual behavior – like other sexual sins – is wrong (Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

He believes in killing the unborn – even children born alive, if they were meant to be killed before birth.

He believes in denying freedom of conscience and freedom of religious expression to Christians who oppose celebrating sexual immorality of any type.

Pete Buttigieg proclaims he is a Christian – and a better one than most.

During a recent Q&A at an event in Austin, Texas, Buttigieg said, “…I try to live a life that is consistent with Christian teachings. I know that it is my responsibility not to ever do anything that would in public life, not be equally beneficial or make as much sense to people of another faith or people of no faith. But in my life I believe in that Christian ethic, the idea that was drilled into me in Catholic school even though I’m no Catholic, I’m Episcopalian.”

At the same event he questioned whether Vice President Mike Pence truly believes in Scripture.

Pete Buttigieg knows Scripture and theology.

He studied Catholic liberation theology doctrine in high school and college. Developed mainly by Latin American Roman Catholics, liberation theology emphasizes liberation from social, political and economic oppression as the essence of Christian salvation rather than worship of God, confession of sin, and trust in the redemptive death of Jesus Christ on the cross coupled with His bodily resurrection.

At Harvard, he wrote a thesis on the Puritans. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

His father attended seminary in the 1960s, intending to become a Jesuit Priest … but instead became a secular intellectual.

His mother was “attached to the Episcopal faith,” but didn’t attend very many services.

At Harvard, Buttigieg was influenced by a prominent scholar who traced American exceptionalism to the Puritans of New England. “You can’t understand America without understanding the Puritans,” Buttigieg says. “In many ways, we’re still living out their legacy in ways that are good and bad.”

He says he looks for inspiration from people who have put their faith into action, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. “As we talk of the need for a religious left, we should remember that the black church has been [putting faith into action] for quite some time,” Buttigieg reminds.

When he speaks to a Christian audience, he selectively quotes Bible verses about caring for the poor and the sick.

Buttigieg isn’t looking for tolerance of his homosexuality or homosexual marriage. He is looking for total acceptance.

He wants to use the power of government edict to force acceptance of his lifestyle – whether people like it or not.

If elected, he would be the first homosexual president … and his same-sex marriage partner would be the first same-sex spouse in the White House.

Pete Buttigieg is trying to lead the Democrat Party to include Christians – and be the Party that’s anti-Christian, anti-family and anti-First Amendment rights.

“I think it’s unfortunate [the Democratic Party] has lost touch with a religious tradition that I think can help explain and relate our values,” Buttigieg says. “At least in my interpretation, it helps to root [in religion] a lot of what it is we do believe in when it comes to protecting the sick and the stranger and the poor, as well as skepticism of the wealthy and the powerful and the established.”

Watch this analysis of Pete Buttigieg’s far-left beliefs and policies by news commentator Laura Ingraham (about 7 ½ minutes).

Finally, let’s be clear about Evangelicals and support for Trump/Pence….

As I said in “Are Christians Hypocrites? 10 Surprising Realities About Christians and President Trump“, Evangelical support for Trump is based on policy only.

It’s not based on his rhetoric. It’s not based on his past – or even present – behavior. It’s not based on anything about Trump as a flawed person – or on whether or not he’s a real Christian.

It’s based on his policies that reflect Biblical truth … and non-negotiable Christian values:

He is the most pro-Israel president ever.

He is revolutionizing the Judicial branch with strict constructionist judges … not judicial activists – including 2 new Supreme Court Justices … and over 100 lower court appellate judges.

He is the most pro-life president ever.

He has done more to protect religious liberty than any other president ever.

He has done more to protect the persecuted church around the world than any other president ever.

In addition, he has restored our economy, increased employment – especially among minority groups – increased wages … and promoted entrepreneurship and innovation with massive deregulation and business tax cuts.

When he needs to be called out, we will call him out.

But when he enacts good policies, we rejoice and should say thanks without apology.

We choose policy over personality.

We choose key non-negotiable issues over articulate platitudes and talking points.

We choose action over empty promises.

This is not hypocrisy. This is respecting promises made, promises kept.

As president of an ad agency, I like taglines…

I suggest the following tagline for President Trump:

“He’s a doer, not a dreamer.”

What do you think? Email me at craig@craighuey.com

  Mayor Pete is NOT at the Top of my list of favorite candidates.

Both his vaulting ambition and shocking low standards concern me greatly.

But if he gets the nomination, he's got my vote.

The thing I like about him the MOST is how he seems to be terrifying all the Right People.

[error04notfou]

Queer Representation- Why Can’t 2 Men Just Be Friends

All-fucking-right, folks. Let’s sit the fuck down and listen real close for a moment. Don’t worry! I won’t take up tooooo much of your time. I know how busy it is being accidentally an asshole. I’ve been there. I’m gonna be nice, I promise. I just swear a lot.

There are same sex friendships on TV that are healthy and loving. There are a wide variety of relationships that slide themselves along a range of healthfulness and lovingness involving people of similar or same sexes having friendships. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because there would be no writers making stories that queers become interested in that do not wish to create queer representation.

See the wikipedia page for the following categories: Bromance, Womance, Platonic Love, Bromantic Comedy, Buddy Cop. Google Guy Love. You’ll love it.

Merlin. Sherlock. Supernatural. Star Trek. Scrubs. Boy Meets World. Literally Every Children’s Show Featuring Sentient Creatures.

We wouldn’t have stories written that continuously hint at queer stories without providing actual representation. I’m sure none of you want to hear the term queer baiting right now but I promise ye, us queers don’t want to see it either. Fucken. SHIT, my dudes. Unless you are looking for queer representation- unless you have that reflexive search for queerness in life and in media- queer baiting is something you can miss or misinterpret as friendliness. It has to do with framing, lighting, the scoring, the word choice. There’s a lot of flags a writer can throw up that Hint at possible queerness without being explicit enough to sound any alarms for people not keyed to look for queer representation in media. 

Hannibal is Not A Good Example because their goal was to redefine intimacy and it is Gay AS FUCK.

Teen Wolf. Sherlock. Supernatural. 

Go to youtube. Type in queerbaiting. There’s lots of videos with info on it. Rowen Ellis has some shit. Sarah Z, The Fucking QueerTUBE CHANNEL EQUIVALENT OF DOES THE DOG DIE, Aretheygay, HAS A VIDEO ON IT. Somewhere in Hbomberguy’s FEATURELENGTH FILM on why Sherlock is garbage, he touches on queerbaiting. 

Because they got to eat their cake and have it too, shows, movies, and books keep doing the fucken thing. Continuously throwing out flags of possible queerness for main characters while simultaneously being offended at queer audiences for believing them and then asking where the queer representation was. As well, they get to have continuously running jokes about how haha it’s funny that these two men show affection for each other because that’s gay and they’re not they’re just guys being dudes! (Scrubs. Look. You do a great job, I’m not coming for you but I am coming for Every Film of Michael Bay’s featuring two men who are friends. Pain and Gain? Anyone?)

See Teen Wolf banning the signing of ship fan art. Literally any scene in Sherlock where John Watson no homos so hard he accidentally wraps back around to yes homo.

Here’s the skinny, my dudes. My most righteously dudely dudes. The reason why queers ask for queer representation in media is because they Actually Don’t Have Much representation. It is exceedingly rare to find queer representation. And to find queer representation that doesn’t have a tragic end? Even more difficult. Despite the rustled jimmies of people finding a singular queer in their straight salad and exclaiming about the infestation of queers in this restaurant (the health department aught to be called! Think Of The Children!) it IS rare- unlike same sex friendships in films. 

This is a capitalistic system. I know right? When is that going to stop being pointed out? Supply and demand is the basic tenant- or so I was taught in high school economics. I, as a fellow queer, will simply feel grateful that I live in a time where we can be considered a consumer base with a loud enough voice to be seen as providing pressure on an industry that has yet to supply for our demand. Especially since it is difficult for me to forget that it was not so long ago that our voices were considered an inconvenience for demanding the right to be able to live.  

What you’ve done above is simplify an incredibly complex issue into its most reductive and unhelpful parts. No one can argue that it’s good for people to be able to have friendships on TV or anywhere else. The problem comes in in that this argument ignores the part where Everyone is Arguing That It’s Not OK To Have QUEER Relationships On TV and that These Relationships are Unhealthy. That is the tacit argument here. That’s the dog-whistle you’re accidentally blowing when you say that. 

It’s similar to people who say things like: What about the children? How am I going to explain THIS to them? I’m OK with gays but do they have to shove it in my face like this? Gay marriage is alright by me but I don’t want to see them kiss! Why can’t two men just be good friends! They’re just gals being pals. Queers make up less than 4 percent of the population, why do they have to be in everything I watch? I’m not homophobic, I just don’t want to be inconvenienced. I’m all for queer representation but does it have to be in the shows I like? Why can’t they (the queers) be happy with the representation they do have? Like Brokeback (dead gay) and The Imitation Game (Historical dead gay) or Jack from Will and Grace (Gay Stereotype), or like a shit ton of Alfred Hitchcock’s villains (The Evil Queers (Dibs on that as a band name BTW))? Or the Sassy Gay Accessory Friend like in Riverdale, GBF, that weird alien dude from American Dad? 

These are dog whistles. They are silencing tactics. They are manipulation. They are used to implicitly say that queerness is not OK. 

So no. No one is going to say it’s bad to see two dudes being friends and expressing that closeness in any media. I can understand the feeling like your views and relationships are under attack. I can understand why people feel afraid to express affection. I feel afraid, too. The difference is when straight people say they’re afraid of seeming gay, what they’re saying is they’re afraid they might be mistaken for me. As if that’s somehow embarrassing or dangerous or immoral. 

The part you’re missing when you talk about how frustrating it is that queers see queerness in relationships depicted on TV that you like is that you’re afraid they might be just like you. And a part of your brain associates queerness only with sexual acts. That’s why we’re inappropriate. YOU’RE not queer so you don’t like queer sex! Why would you want to see queer sex on TV? You don’t want to see queer kissing! Queer hand holding! You’re not queer! 

That’s why it’s difficult for people to consider explaining it to their kids. That’s why it’s difficult to Accept that there are queer children. That’s why I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is PG 13 despite its r*pe jokes, half naked women, and continuous references to sex, but had they included a same sex kiss as they had initially intended it, the MPAA would have made it rated R (Literally just google it. trufax.) Because these are all facets of homophobia. It’s ingrained and sometimes unconscious. You don’t have to actively hate queers to accidentally help those who do silencing them. 

So yeah. Long fucking story short. It would be cool for queers not to have to grasp at any same sex relationship on TV for hints of themselves. I agree. I’m getting fucking tired as all hell having to Read Between The Straight Lines to see the gay subtext. I’d like some straight up gay text. We’ll stop having to come for your platonic friendships when Hollywood finally gets around to inventing actual queer people in its media. And no fucking blink and you’ll miss it Le Fou doesn’t count. Neither does well-they-said-in-a-tweet Dumbledoor. 

[seedfinance]

PYMNTS Launches The Connected Economy, CE100 Financial Index

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Two weeks ago, Ferrari appointed its third CEO in as many years. That wasn’t the big news. This new CEO, Benedetto Vigna, is not a type of car but a technician and not just any technician. It comes from Europe’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer STMicroelectronics. There he led what has been called STM’s most profitable business unit: the one that builds and sells microelectromechanical systems and sensors: the things that power self-driving cars and in-car software innovations.

In late 2020, FedEx completed the acquisition of ShopRunner, a subscription-based Pureplay e-commerce shipping provider. That acquisition wasn’t material based on what FedEx paid to buy (they even said so). Judging by the insights and business model innovations that integrating logistics with retailers’ online order flow and the commerce ecosystem can offer, they say it is capitalized.

Verizon purchased the BlueJeans video conferencing platform in 2020 with the aim of using video as a platform for new B2C and B2B use cases that will be charged by 5G. One of the earliest applications is healthcare, where telemedicine services are made safe and private for anyone with a mobile device. These patient-doctor interactions are also automatically synchronized with the patient’s electronic medical record. The boss at BlueJeans said convenience and efficiency are two of the most obvious benefits, but most of all he is excited about the opportunity to make doctors more accessible to patients who don’t have good health options today.

Other industries are also shifting. Automotive OEMs are moving to technology first. Logistics players are relocating trade first. Telecommunications companies are leveraging new networks to push the next frontier in healthcare. Three of many data points that the connected economy is at the center of the boardrooms and war rooms of every single company worldwide.

Today is the official launch of the PYMNTS ConnectedEconomy ™ platform. We have been working on and developing this for almost two years, long before the pandemic accelerated the path to digitization for everyone.

More than just another way of talking about innovation, ConnectedEconomy provides a framework to understand how people and businesses will get involved in the years to come, and offers a range of research and insights to help leaders realize their opportunities to recognize and use the networked economy.

Definition and measurement of the ConnectedEconomy ™ Measuring

The ConnectedEconomy ™ consists of companies that rely on the Internet as a fundamental aspect in the provision of goods and services. In order to organize and follow the developments of the connected economy, PYMNTS has divided them into 10 pillars. Each represents a component of the globally networked economy that is developing rapidly. Together they represent the segments that will determine its future.

Pillars go far beyond the classic categorization and measurement of companies. Each pillar represents a set of broad activities that people and businesses participate in to achieve a specific goal. It is even more important that digitization is redefining activities and results for the pillars.

And these pillars are not independent verticals, but rather intertwined, which often complement one or more other pillars.

Take the grocery store – a vertical defined by the amount of stores people go to to buy their groceries.

Take restaurants – a vertical that represents the set of establishments that prepare food and serve it to consumers inside or outside the store.

Take food. It’s a pillar that reflects the blurring of the lines between the verticals that people use to buy, prepare, and consume their food. Eat is a new ecosystem that reflects the use of connected devices, apps, payments and other technologies by businesses and people to meet the consumer’s basic need for food.

PYMNTS has identified 10 pillars of the ConnectedEconomy.

Four of the pillars provide essential services that people rely on to perform much of their daily lives. People have to pay (and get paid)), Bank, communicate and travel.

People use another five pillars to run, maintain, and enjoy a household. As dwell is about managing their home and daily life and how they have it fun This is how they spend their free time. Then there is how (and where) they are eat and business. job is what most people have to do in order to do everything else.

Finally people want Stay healthy and live longer and healthier.

How people live in the networked economy

PYMNTS not only wanted to define the ConnectedEconomy ™, but also to understand how people live in it and appreciate it.

The PYMNTS ConnectedEconomy ™ platform presents the results of our first population-based study of 15,000 US consumers, conducted in April 2021. We conducted this study to better understand how digitally connected US consumers are today and where they find the natural synergies between the ten pillars of our connected economy and why. We plan to update this study annually, expand it to other regions, and launch specific pillar-based studies to better understand consumer and supplier dynamics within each region.

The study provided more than five million data points, which our analytics team combined into seven key insights. These insights provide a framework for how leaders should ponder the role they are planning in making the connected economy reality – one that two-thirds of the US population consider valuable and important.

You can download the full report here. You can find my opinion on the most important findings here.

The ConnectedEconomy ™ companies

We wanted to put the ConnectedEconomy ™ framework to the test by identifying a number of companies that we believe will predict the future of the connected economy. Today debuts the PYMNTS CE100 Index, a patent-pending financial index of this basket of 100 companies.

Reaching that 100 was a journey. First, PYMNTS selected a basket of 140 companies and asked eight highly respected payments investors and innovators to contribute to the list. The criteria are simple: Listed companies that are traded on all stock exchanges around the world enable or drive the future of the networked economy within and across the 10 pillars.

The final cut reflects a quantitative assessment of more than 100 variables and a qualitative assessment based on our experience, history, and a basic understanding of what determines long-term success in highly complex ecosystems. We plan to realign this basket of companies every quarter as more companies go public and become potential competitors.

We will publish a daily update on the performance of our CE100 index compared to other popular indices. The CE100 Index does not weight stocks proportionally by market capitalization – it’s a comprehensive measure of the growth of related economic players that limits the bias of some of the less powerful big tech performers who are part of the basket. It is important that, despite this adjustment, the CE 100 index has both turned backwards and outperformed the other major financial market indices until 2015 and at least until today.

Bookmark this link to check the progress of the CE100 index every day.

The captains of the ConnectedEconomy

Over the past six months, we’ve also spoken to 50 CEOs and C-suite executives from some of the largest and most innovative companies in the world to hear their views on the connected economy and their place in it. A common theme in all of these conversations is how much you’ve thought about the idea of ​​a connected economy, even without using those words. She and her teams use software, new technology, and connected devices to not only improve activities within each of these pillars, but to blur the lines between them to create methods of engagement.

Their conversations are also premiering today: Here you can see and hear yourself. And an eBook with their common thoughts – a window into the future of the ConnectedEconomy can be found here.

We will continue to speak to those in the know and tell you about what we hear as a regular feature of the platform.

What’s next

Since day one, the guiding principle of PYMNTS has been “What’s next” – with a number of proven frameworks based on cutting-edge economics, how innovations emerge and scale in dynamic markets in order to identify and analyze relevant trends before they become mainstream .

“What’s next” now includes an expanded focus on the networked economy. The PYMNTS ConnectedEconomy platform is the only place on the web where data, news, and insights about the innovations that drive the connected economy can be found – and the voices of those who deliver them – can be consistently heard.

We are pleased to be able to offer you a seat on the Ring to see how the future of our global economy develops.

———————————

NEW PYMNTS DATA: AI IN FOCUS: THE BANKING TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP

About the course: The AI ​​In Focus: The Bank Technology Roadmap is a research- and interview-based report that examines how banks are using artificial intelligence and other advanced computer systems to improve credit risk management and other aspects of their business. The playbook is based on a survey of 100 bank managers and is part of a larger series evaluating the potential of AI in finance, healthcare and other sectors.

source https://seedfinance.net/2021/06/21/pymnts-launches-the-connected-economy-ce100-financial-index/

[inbonobo]

this person is #fun, @JordanBPeterson | ContraPoints #philosophy #debating #postmodernism #skepticism

the other criticism I got from the AMA:

besttrousers 856 points 4 hours ago*

Professor Peterson,

Thanks for joining us today!

I’m a behavioral economist who works on labor issues, and I’ve been reading some of your work, such as the Self-Authoring Suite, with interest. It’s helping me think about potential interventions to help unemployed people rejoin the labor force. Thanks for putting it out there!

However, I’ve also been very frustrated to hear some of the claims you’ve made about economics, many of which been inaccurate.

It’s important to be precise in your speech, so I’ll give you two examples, before my question (I apologize for the length, but I thought it was important to provide the original quotes, and a brief summary of why they were incorrect):

Example 1

Here’s an excerpt from your recent interview with Cathy Newman:

Newman: Okay. Sure. But I want to put to you that here in the UK, for example, let’s take that as an example. The gender pay gap stands at just over 9%. You’ve got women at the BBC recently saying that the broadcaster is illegally paying them less than men to do the same job. You’ve got only seven women running the top FTSE 100 companies!

Peterson: Yeah.

Newman: So it seems to a lot of women, that they are still being “dominated and excluded”, to quote your words back to you.

Peterson: It does seem that way, but multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that it doesn’t exist.

Newman: But that is not true, is it? I mean, that nine percent pay gap! That’s a gap between median hourly earnings between men and women!

Peterson: Yeah, but there’s multiple reasons for that. One of them is gender, but it’s not the only reason. If you’re a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis. Like you say, well women in aggregate are paid less than men. Okay, well then we break it down by age, we break it down by occupation, we break it down by interest, we break it down by personality.

Your claim that “multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that it doesn’t exist.” Is incorrect. For an overview of research in this area, you can see Blau and Kahn’s 2017 review of the literature.

I suspect that you are looking at analyses that include occupational controls (based on what you said in the interview, and tweets like this one).

However, using occupational controls in this way is actually leads to a flawed analysis, as women choose what occupation to pursue. If women are being discriminated against in a given field, you would expect them to be less likely to pursue a career in that field. Including occupational controls will therefor lead to a biased estimate. It’s what statisticians call “collider bias”.

(For details, see the discussion of this issue on page 74 of Causal Inference, or the /r/economics FAQ)

Example 2

In one of your lectures, you said the following:

Because women have access to the birth control pill now and can compete in the same domains as men roughly speaking there is a real practical problem here. It's partly an economic problem now because when I was roughly your age, it was still possible for a one-income family to exist. Well you know that wages have been flat except in the upper 1% since 1973. Why? Well, it's easy. What happens when you double the labor force? What happens? You halve the value of the labor. So now we're in a situation where it takes two people to make as much as one did before. So we went from a situation where women's career opportunities were relatively limited to where there they were relatively unlimited and there were two incomes (and so women could work) to a situation where women have to work and they only make half as much as they would have otherwise.

There’s a lot that incorrect here – wages have not been stagnant since 1973 (I suspect you are thinking of household income, which has been more-or-less constant due to compositional changes due to later marriages), doubling the labor force would not halve the value of labor (the economy is not a fixed pie, more workers in the labor force grow the economy).

Most importantly, the premise is wrong. It’s not the case that it used to be possible for households to have one earner, and now it is not. Instead, what happened was we saw dramatic increases in the effectiveness of “household production” (think: laundry machines, clothes that need less frequent repair, microwave dinners). In 1965, the average women spent 32 hours/week on housework, and 10 hours a week on childcare – a full time job!

We aren’t poorer than we used to be, or working more. Instead, we’ve seen people effectively move from one industry (domestic labor) to another (firm labor).

Question

I know you’ve found it frustrating when your research has been misrepresented in the media, so I’m sure you can understanding the frustrations economists have when reading or listening to you misrepresent economics. These are common mistakes (we catalog them all the time over at /r/badeconomics) but also would be pretty easy to correct by talking to an economist, or reading the relevant literature. It's also important not to make such mistakes. Many of your fans have read these and now incorrectly believe that their wages are lower because of women entering the workforce.

What is the mechanism you have been using to check the accuracy of the claims you make about economics – or other fields you are not an expert in? What can we economists (or other experts) do to help you better understand these fields?

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[–]decimated_napkin 179 points 3 hours ago

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I feel like not controlling for occupation when assessing pay differences is more disingenuous than controlling for it. Yes, it's possible that women are choosing to not go into certain fields due to prejudice, but it's also possible that they simply don't like those fields for other reasons. Who are we to say? Since we don't know which it is, it would make sense to me to exclude that division from consideration and go with the method that would generally make the most sense, which in this case would be controlling for occupation.

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[–]wumbotarian 17 points 3 hours ago

I'll note this is an issue for any wage regression. We know education impacts your wage. but how much education you got is a choice. We need to control for the control, which is hard to do!

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[–]wumbotarian 94 points 3 hours ago

When doing a regression, we examine the effects of an independent variable (controls or "right hand side" variables) on dependent variables ("left hand side" variables; in this case, wages).

It is very important that the independent variables are indeed independent. They're not caused by anything else. They're "exogenous". If an independent variable is itself dependent (called "endogenous"), we need to control for that dependent nature with its own independent variables. Otherwise we get fundamentally incorrect results.

Occupational choice is not independent (no choice variable is independent). We can see that the choice of a job would be dependent on preferences for, say, job time flexibility. Or the pay someone gets. If pay is unequal between men and women in a given industry, women will choose based on that pay gap.

Therefore, it is not disingenuous to leave out occupational choice (or other endogenous right hand side variables). You simply cannot do any accurate analysis with dependent right hand side variables. It's not slight of hand done by feminists or anything. It's akin to pointing out that 2 + 2 != 5.

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[–]kmmeerts 7 points 2 hours ago

It's still disingenuous to lump in occupational choice with all the other uncontrolled variables, and to ascribe it to discrimination. The right thing to do would be to control for occupational choice, and to find the effect size of it, just like for every other variable. Only then can you start making hypotheses and finding narratives.

I don't doubt occupational choice is influenced by discrimination, but we have the statistical tools to study it, there is no need to keep it uncontrolled.

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[–]wumbotarian 4 points an hour ago

It's still disingenuous to lump in occupational choice with all the other uncontrolled variables, and to ascribe it to discrimination.

So we have experimental evidence that discrimination exists. While this is not indicative of the wage gap existing due to discrimination, it should update your priors that discrimination is an issue in hiring.

The right thing to do would be to control for occupational choice, and to find the effect size of it, just like for every other variable.

Okay, but as I explained you can't "control for occupational choice". It's a dependent variable. You'd need an instrumental variable that itself is independent.

I don't doubt occupational choice is influenced by discrimination, but we have the statistical tools to study it, there is no need to keep it uncontrolled.

We have the tools but not the variables/data! That's the point.

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[–]Stagnolia 11 points 2 hours ago

This is so awesome, thank you so much for contributing this. I am a STEM student and I love love love science but so far in all of my classes we’ve never dived into the complexity of controlling for dependent variables like this. Your comment was super informative and I’m going to save it to have on hand!

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[–]SuperSharpShot2247 12 points 2 hours ago

Economics doesn't have the benefit of the perfectly controlled experiments hard science does. While there are economic experiments, they're limited to testing economic theory and behavioral trends. For things like gender wage gap, the effect of legalizing marijuana, the effect of education on income, etc, we need highly sophisticated statistical tools to block out the "noise".

This is probably why your STEM classes haven't gotten into this level of control! I'm an undergraduate in Economics and typically we don't even learn the Instrumental Variables (IV) method (I only know it from a special class)!

[kingofthenorth49]

Enemy of the State

I woke up on November 4th allegedly an enemy of the people.

Now I didn’t do anything differently than I did on the 3rd, but that morning when I awoke I knew things were going to get weird based on what I was seeing in the media.

Now keep in mind I haven’t any trust in the mainstream media. Zero. None. Zilch. They have eroded that trust over the last decade or so for me, to the point I realize they are no longer news outlets, but rather 24 hour a day propaganda machines.

By now, many of you reading likely thought “Conspiracy theorist” or his tin foil hat is on too tight again. Didn’t you.

You don’t have to answer, I know that’s exactly what 50% of you are thinking as you read this. That’s how you have been programmed to think over the past 20 years, you are part of a cult you didn’t realize you had joined. Think about it. As North American’s (and I have to use that term because sitting here in Canada today my reference group is so enthralled with US politics they aren’t even watching what is going on in their own country) we are equally divided in our thinking.

And that is exactly what they want. A society divided is easier to conquer, and right now we are ripe for the picking. The last bastion against Marxism is fighting a death match I never believed I’d get to see during my short stint on this planet.

While the Coronavirus is real, the plandemic is not. It’s manufactured. I’m not talking about the virus, that’s beyond the edges of my aluminum chapeaux, I’m talking about the world’s approach to managing it. It’s all part of a plan to convert the world over to a One World Government.

Fear is the greatest motivator know to the human species and beyond. A field mouse being stalked by a hawk is acutely aware of everything going on around him as he literally runs for his life. Every action and reaction is measured against the knowledge that one wrong move and he becomes the object of desire of a stronger power. It’s the fight or flight response that has kept species alive for millions of years.

We’ve just had our fight response beaten out of us by those who wish to possess us, or rather possess the output of our labor.

Power is the drug of the greedy. Just look around you to see it. You only need look at the likes of Nancy Pelosi to see it. It’s for thee, but not for me. I say that a lot because I see it a lot. I see our elected officials set two levels of standards as they rule. One set of standards is for us, the working class, and the other set of standards are for them, the ruling class. Nancy’s trip to the beauty salon is one example that comes to mind. Let’s break it down for the people in the back.

For those who don’t know Nancy, she’s the 80+ year old speaker of the house, and one of the most powerful democrats in the United States. Nancy’s been in Washington a long time, she knows where the bodies are literally buried. She’s powerful, wealthy, and doesn’t give a rats-ass about you. She’s all about Nancy. So in the middle of this plandemic, Nancy needs to get her hair done for her next ice cream photo op and even though beauty salon’s are ordered closed under public health order, Nancy’s staff arrange for a salon to open to touch up the speakers locks.

Now as someone who cut their own hair for almost 3 months, I can understand the desire to have the professionals take care of things, but at the same time as a leader I understand the need to lead with integrity and not set a double standard. Nancy, not so much. Somehow a video gets released showing Nancy waltzing thought the salon between the shampoo and color, not only in direct contravention of the law shutting down these services, but sans face mask.

Now a little lapse in safety decorum amongst co-conspirators could be overlooked had it not been that Nancy had just days before been on the news berating the President for not wearing a mask and selfishly endangering the lives of others’. It was carried by every network for days.

Get it yet? It’s for thee, not for me. A double standard isn’t a double standard if your in power. They feel they are above the rest of us. But it gets worse.

When the mainstream media is forced to pick up the story a day later, the response from the Pelosi people is that Nancy was set up by the salon owner.

Are you fucking kidding me? This is how the 3rd most powerful leader in the United States responded to being caught in the act violating the very laws she enacted? The worst part of all of this was most of you all accepted it because it fit the narrative you’ve been programmed to accept. Be honest with yourself. You simply accepted that Nancy was the victim in this situation because Trump.

This is but one example of this type of entitlement. The Governor if Michigan’s husband got caught going boating during a lockdown. Prime Minster Trudeau got caught breaching ethics rules twice, and is under investigation for two more. No other sitting Prime Minister in the history of Canada has ever been chastised for lacking ethics except for the current returning resident of 22 Sussex Drive. They destroyed all the evidence of the WE scandal and it never really even made the news.

I’ll make you a bet right now, that if I refuse to pay my taxes this year, I’ll not collect $200 and I’ll go directly to jail. If you’ve ever stood before a judge accused of a crime, it’s the most sober humbling moment of your life. Our problem is getting them in front of one.

Am I making sense yet?

Hillary had a private email server. She deleted 30,000+ emails as Secretary of State. Her and her husband Bill made hundreds of millions of dollars as public officials. Bill raped a woman in Arkansas and paid her off with $400,000.00. But there’s no one holding them to account.

Barrack Obama and Eric Holder ran fast and furious. They put guns into the hands of drug cartels that eventually wound up back in the USA used to kill innocent Americans. Over a billion dollars in cash on pallets was flown to Iran in the middle of the night. But there were no scandals in his White House. Are you fucking kidding me? He used the intelligence community to spy on Trump’s campaign for Gawd’s sake, Richard Nixon had to resign as President for doing the same thing, does no one remember Watergate?

Jesus people, when will you wake the fuck up and realize you are being manipulated by those in positions of power. What is it going to take for people to stop accepting this type of behavior from those they entrust with the public purse and our freedoms.

I read The Rise of the 3rd Reich last year. It was a very sobering read to see how the Nazi party rose to power and committed atrocities against their fellow humans in the name of a better planet. I’ve seen images of the holocaust that sadden me to the very core of my being. I have always wondered how humans could treat each other like that, to strip people of their dignity, their world possessions, their families, and finally their very existence. And for what. For one persons hatred of another race. One person was able through persuasion to convince an entire population of a country to hate a group of people because they were different. They worked hard. They ran shops and factories. They worshipped together, they built strong communities. They gave back to their country and made is better. But because those in power despised them, they created hate against them and let the people turn on their fellow countrymen.

You all know the rest of the story.

Or at least I hope you do, because if you don’t, its going to happen again because it’s already happening the exact same way it did in the 1920’s in Germany. If you don’t believe me, read the book. Read the history of one example of how mankind is one of the ugliest species on the planet. Read about how they divided the country and made people hate the Jews. Hitler blamed the loss of the war, the economic downfall of Germany and the bad decisions of the Weimar Republic on Jewish capitalism. Does this sound familiar? It should.

Churchill said “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. Now while he didn’t invent that quote, he certainly had reason to use it. As the one person who stood up against Hitler (Thank Gawd he did) he understood completely the threat to humanity that existed in the ideology of the Nazi party.

Fuck we are stupid. That all happened in our generational life time. Our grandparents fought in that war. Our communities lost thousands of good men and women to the effort to combat the rise of Marxism and hate and protect the world against the likes of Hilter, Stalin, and Lenin.

Yet here we are.

I woke up on November 4th to hear people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for a “Truth and Accountability commission” to ensure Trump and his supporters are held to account. The talking heads were spitting vitrol and hate against 72 Million Americans who voted for Trump. On example, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin tweeted that morning, “Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not to follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite’ society. We have a list.”

We have a list? Seriously?

Hitler had a list too.

While Trump should have had a filter between him and his twitter feed, the man did nothing to rise to the level of a dictator who had women stripped naked and shot in front of their children, before they were shot next. Are you kidding me? Are people really that stupid?

I lived in the USA during Trump’s four years. I also lived there during Obama’s eight. By any measurable metric Trump’s four years brought more prosperity to the average American than Obama’s double term, and even if you take the economy out of the equation, Trump still made life better through his approach to governance. He got three noble prize nominations for crying out loud

But no one sees that.

But this isn’t about Trump, it’s about us.

We are failing as citizens to hold our leaders to account, and when you fail to check power, well, you get what you deserve. Our leaders, both elected and self-appointed (Think Zuckerberg, Gates) are running amok and have contempt for we the people. I believe in the next 6 months those in power are going to use the pandemic as a tool to move their agenda forward and attempt to go full Marxism around the globe under the guise of a One World Government. We are already seeing our own governments in Canada moving towards that end, the death of Freedom of Speech is just one indicator. Don’t believe me? Prime Minister Trudeau recently told the country “Freedom of expression is not without limits. We do not have the right, for example, to shout ‘fire’ in a movie theatre crowded with people.”

Well dumbass, actually we do, or at least we did. The cornerstone of any free person is the right to say what ever he/she/(Insert your preferred pronoun here) wants. If you cannot say whatever you want, you are oppressed. It’s just that fucking simple. He was wrong, but he wasn’t apologetic about being wrong. He thinks he is right, and his ideology supports that, which is the ideology of the left. You can say whatever you want as long as it agrees with our ideology, otherwise we will cancel you. We will public shame you. Call you racist, a bigot, etc until you shut up.

This is where we are today, a society afraid to speak up in fear they will be cancelled, ridiculed, or shamed. This is right where they want us, in fear, alone, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Wear your mask, stay home, be a good citizen. Make sure you keep an eye on your neighbor to ensure they are being good citizen’s too. After all, we are all in this together, at least until we aren’t.

Maybe I’m wrong, and I hope I am. Maybe AOC really meant those lists were to send out holiday cards thanking all those 72,000,000 American’s for doing their civic duty by voting for the person they best perceive to leader their collective ideals, to further democracy and make their country the best it can be.

It’s just too bad they picked the wrong horse.

Or did they. Will we ever know for sure? I doubt it.

In the end, a polite society who are open to freedom of speech, even if it flies in the face of our beliefs is critical to a progressive society. If we suppress thought, fail to encourage debate, and dismiss the ideas of differing opinions we will fail as a society, and when a democratic society fails, tyranny rises.

When tyranny rises, the cost to humanity is great. We cannot afford this journey again.

Anyway, I need to go spend some time with my dog. I’m pretty sure he’s a liberal, but I love him just the same. I feel the same way about my liberal friends, they just don’t drool on me as much.

Enjoy the day, but think about what you are willing to accept from our governments. If we remain quiet we have no one to blame but ourselves. Sometimes yelling fire means things are actually burning.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Welcome, everyone, to our final chat before the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration!!!

Or is it just “the anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration”?

In any case … we’re going to mark the occasion by looking back on what’s been most surprising about Year One of the Trump epoch.

My first question: What did Trump do in his first year that you found the most surprising?

Nate, you answer first.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I was surprised by the lack of surprises.

micah: That’s a cop-out.

natesilver: It’s also super annoying, like when people ask you what your greatest weakness is in a job interview and your response is, “I’m too hard on myself.”

micah: I’m a perfectionist.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): I’m gonna call bullshit here. You did NOT foresee him firing FBI Director James Comey.

micah: (I love when things get acrimonious less than three minutes into a chat.)

clare.malone: Actually, I went back and looked at a timeline of events, and I agree with Nate to a certain extent — a lot of the things I was surprised at weren’t policy things, but modes of communication things.

natesilver: Of course there have been some surprises, but there have been fewer surprises than I would have thought.

micah: Well then … WHAT WAS THE MOST SURPRISING?!?!?!?!?!?

natesilver: I mean, Comey does come to mind. Plus a Democrat winning a U.S. Senate race in Alabama.

And maybe how explicit the saber rattling toward North Korea has been, which sometimes reads like a bad parody.

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Well, I’m not surprised Trump reneged or didn’t follow through on some campaign promises, but I guess the fact that he really has moved to the right and capitulated so easily to congressional Republicans on policy is at least a little surprising to me.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Yeah, I was surprised that he largely, on policy, governed as a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio would have. He really was a Republican president on policy, except on a few issues. I expected more populism, a less-traditional GOP foreign policy, maybe infrastructure or a health care bill that was not as conservative.

clare.malone: My most-surprising Trump actions are: his North Korea tweets, his both-sides response to the white supremacist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Anthony Scaramucci hiring and firing (what a fun week!), the Comey firing, and the immigration shutdown in his first week.

natesilver: See, I’d put Charlottesville on the list of the least surprising developments.

perry: I was also surprised by the racial stuff, which he said during the campaign but I assumed he did not really mean. I thought the race-baiting was just a way to win the primary. But the travel ban, the immigration raids, the NFL stuff, Charlottesville, and the recent shithole/shithouse episode all suggest otherwise.

clare.malone: On his Charlottesville response … I dunno. It felt different from the times during the campaign when he flirted with racist themes. It felt more explicit and weird.

harry: IDK … I think Trump’s rhetoric has remained fairly constant, while his positions on issues have seemingly changed. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that.

natesilver: Trump has flirted with sympathy toward racist conduct all his life.

micah: Yeah, as Perry said, I guess it comes down to whether you thought Trump’s race-baiting during the campaign was political calculation or genuine.

We have to conclude it’s genuine now, right?

natesilver: That’s probably what we should have concluded before also, though.

perry: I might say I was hoping it was not genuine.

So maybe that changed my expectations of it.

micah: I mean, I’ve always been of the feeling that it doesn’t matter whether it’s genuine or not. The actions are what matter. If someone punches you in the face and breaks your nose, but it was an accident … well, you still have a broken nose. And if they accidentally punch you in the face over and over again …

natesilver: There’s a tendency in the media to assume politicians’ behavior is strategic instead of sincere.

clare.malone: So … I don’t think people thought he wasn’t racist. People thought he would be more restrained in the Oval Office, probably.

perry: Right. That is what I expected. Wrongly.

harry: To Clare’s point, most people thought Trump was racist during the campaign.

clare.malone: Maybe that’s a surprising thing, to Perry’s point — how disorganized the White House is.

natesilver: I mean … part of the problem with this framing is that there’s like a normal range of uncertainty, and I think he’s within that normal range for the most part.

It wasn’t totally out of character for Trump to fire Comey, for instance, even though you might not have predicted it specifically. And his lack of restraint also had lots of precedent on the campaign trail — and throughout his life — even though your median expectation might be that he would have checked himself a little more.

harry: Dare I say that people thought there would be some sort of pivot, and there hasn’t been?

perry: Obviously, yes, I expected this White House to be topsy-turvy, which is why I did that “power centers of the White House” piece. But the firing of the communications director so quickly, the chief of staff who lasted less than a year … the year has been a bit beyond “topsy-turvy.”

clare.malone: Yeah, remember those “wings” we talked about so much?

natesilver: People who said we ought to take Trump “seriously but not literally” should be pretty surprised. We aren’t those people, though.

micah: I guess that would be my answer to what’s been most surprising: That the normal Republicans have seemed to lose so much power in the White House, and yet at the same time normal Republicanism has won the day policy-wise.

I wouldn’t have predicted both of those things happening together.

There’s an unbelievably big gap between Trump rhetoric and Trump policy.

natesilver: Maybe because his appeal wasn’t based on “economic anxiety” to begin with? (Although, then again, maybe it was, which is why he’s so unpopular.)

harry: Congressional Republicans are controlling what they can control. They pass the bills they want and tell Trump to go you-know-what himself on bills they don’t want.

micah: OK, next question …

What have you been most surprised hasn’t happened?

natesilver: Perhaps the lack of economic protectionism, trade wars, etc.

clare.malone: Yeah, I continue to find it fascinating that Trump got convinced to follow House Speaker Paul Ryan’s agenda, not his own, on, e.g..e., trade stuff, infrastructure.

natesilver: Another one: Trump’s response to terror attacks, like the one in New York City in October, has been relatively restrained compared to how I might have expected him to react.

micah: I guess I also think the fact that Trump hasn’t sparked a trade war is the most surprising — I agree with Nate.

harry: I find the lack of a breakdown in Trump/Ryan relations kind of surprising. Ryan, if you remember, didn’t endorse Trump right away. And yet, Trump’s biggest problems seem to be with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

micah: That’s a good answer.

clare.malone: Well, if we believe the Ryan retirement rumors, that relationship might not be too long for the books

natesilver: I wouldn’t go overboard in declaring it a great relationship. They got a tax bill through, but not much else.

harry: They would have gotten a health care bill done if McConnell had come through.

micah: This kinda gets us into my next question …

What have congressional Republicans done in Trump’s first year that you’ve found most surprising?

natesilver: See, on this point I’m gonna really stick to my guns and say I’m not surprised by the Congressional GOP’s reaction to Trump. It’s about how you’d expect them to calibrate it given high partisanship on the one hand, but lots of private concerns about Trump on the other hand — and his also being very unpopular.

perry: The amount of time the GOP spent on health care was surprising, once it became clear in March that the members didn’t really want to vote on Obamacare and had always been talking a big game on repeal without any real plan to do it. The fact that they came back to it in September was bizarre, looking back.

clare.malone: It’s boring, but I’ll echo that the health care failure was the most surprising.

micah: Harry and Nate?

harry: I’m surprised by how cozy Sen. Lindsey Graham has been with Trump, while Sen. John McCain has, well, not been.

natesilver: I was surprised that GOP members of Congress from California, New York and New Jersey didn’t do more to protest the capping of the state and local tax deduction. That’s a pretty obscure one, though.

perry: I think — and I know there a lot of people who view Congress as only enabling Trump — that Sen. Richard Burr inviting Comey to a major hearing (after Trump fired Comey) and generally defending him was actually a fairly big slap at the president of his own party. Senators have backed up the Russia investigation in a lot of important ways, especially compared to House members. The gap between Rep. Devin Nunes (very pro-Trump in terms of Russia) and Burr is interesting.

natesilver: Overall, the Republican Congress has not always turned the other cheek toward Trump. Although the most important decisions it might make are still ahead of it. (What happens if Trump tries to pardon Jared Kushner, for example?)

micah: IDK … the extent to which congressional Republicans have let Trump get away with stuff depends on the issue. I agree that Senate Republicans have done some real stuff on Russia (relative to the House, at least), but what about on Trump family business stuff/conflicts of interest?

harry: The House has been more supportive of Trump, it feels. That’s interesting if only because there’s a higher shot that they lose their majority because of Trump.

clare.malone: How do congressional Republicans act post-midterm?

micah: Clare is really asking the million-dollar question, right?

Let’s say Democrats win the House but not the Senate.

Which seems like the modal outcome.

natesilver: I mean … the thing people get wrong — because it feels like Trump has been president forever — is that it’s still really early.

harry: It feels like no time at all to me, to be honest.

perry: In this era, I’m not sure running away from the president of your own party really ever makes sense. Fox News and other parts of the Republican Party enforce discipline. The moderates in the GOP will be the ones who lose in the midterms. I think the remaining House Republicans will stand with Trump pretty closely. Senate is different.

clare.malone: So here’s my scenario: Let’s say the Democrats win the House and vote to impeach Trump. Let’s say the GOP holds the Senate, but by a very slim margin. Do they vote to impeach in the Senate? Get a President Pence?

perry: No. Not a chance.

natesilver: Yes, a chance.

clare.malone: Because they think they would lose in 2020, Perry? Lose the base?

micah: It all depends on what he’s getting impeached for, doesn’t it?

perry: Well, if Trump called Putin in July 2016 and said, “Hack Podesta’s email on Sept. 12,” then yes. But based on the information we have right now, not a real chance.

micah: Right, I think it would take something toward the more extreme end of potential findings.

natesilver: What if Trump fires the special prosecutor or pardons his son-in-law?

micah: No.

natesilver: I just don’t think there are a lot of useful precedents for Trump, so predictions that he won’t be impeached seem overconfident.

People need to default more toward an uncertain prior.

micah: I’m just judging based on how congressional Republicans have been reacting to smaller stuff and scaling up.

natesilver: Also, I think the mentality changes a lot after a big Democratic wave election, if there is one.

harry: I’ll just say what I’ve always said: The chance of impeachment is underrated and the chance of conviction is probably overrated.

natesilver: I mean … it’s more likely than not that Trump gets impeached, right?

micah: I’m not sure of that.

harry: There’s a pretty good shot, but that’s a rather bold statement.

clare.malone: Well, it’s basically like answering the question of whether or not you’re confident in a Democratic House wave in 2018.

perry: So Democrats are likely to win House. Correct. There will be a huge push from liberal activists for impeachment.

Is that 50 percent? Let me think about that.

natesilver: Let’s say a 65 percent chance of Democrats winning the House, which is about where betting markets have it. Conditional upon their winning the House, what’s the chance Trump gets impeached? Maybe 75 percent? Plus a small chance that he does something so egregious that even if Republicans hold the House, they impeach him. I think you come out at about 50 percent or a bit higher.

perry: I think Rep. Nancy Pelosi and some of the more cautious Democrats will feel that Trump is very unpopular, and beating him in 2020 is a safer bet than trying to remove him.

I don’t know if that view will win out, but that will be the D.C. strategist view. And she listens to those people.

micah: What do betting markets peg impeachment at?

natesilver: Betting markets say there’s about a 45 percent chance Trump doesn’t finish his term, which is probably too high. But impeachment (setting aside the conviction/removal part) is fairly likely.

clare.malone: What if Pelosi isn’t speaker?

perry: I think this gets to an interesting question. If the Democrats win the House, will they only elect a pro-impeachment person as speaker?

micah: Fair question, but I have to steer the convo in another direction …

clare.malone: Boooooo!

Thank you for engaging, Perry!

micah: What have congressional Democrats done that has most surprised you?

harry: Total blockage. They’ve learned their lesson from the Republicans during the Obama years. It’s no-holds-barred.

micah: But is that surprising?

clare.malone: Yeah.

You’re surprised by total blockage?

What other option did they have?

micah: None, I don’t think. We haven’t really seen Trump or Republicans put them in a position where deal-making is really even an option.

clare.malone: If it were a different GOP president, maybe, but the Democratic base is out for blood with this one.

harry: I guess I thought there would be more compromising from the moderate Democrats in the Senate. Perhaps that was conditional on Trump having governed differently policy-wise in his first year (not as typical GOP president).

micah: Right, that last part hasn’t happened.

clare.malone: I guess there is the banking regulation stuff.

natesilver: Yeah, that’s an underrated surprise, I think. How rarely the moderate Democrats have lined up with Trump on key issues.

At the same time, I think people might underrate the likelihood of a Trump attempt to p—t if Democrats win both chambers of Congress in November.

micah: OMG

Nate, I expect more from you.

natesilver: See, the very fact that it’s socially unacceptable to suggest Trump might p—t is a good reason to think he might p—t.

I’m not saying it would be a particularly competent p—t. But could he agree to pass a big infrastructure bill with mainly Democratic votes? Sure.

micah: It’s only socially unacceptable here.

natesilver: No, you’ll get ratioed on Twitter too.

harry: Pivot.

There, I said it.

natesilver: One could argue that Trump’s legislative affairs strategy has been expedient. He wants “wins,” doesn’t want to crash the stock market, and otherwise doesn’t care too much about the details of domestic policy. So why wouldn’t he deal with Pelosi/Chuck Schumer, if it’s a bill that he thought business interests would like and that he thought might make him more popular?

micah: Why hasn’t he done that yet?

perry: Democrats have been more unified than I expected, as Nate is hinting at. I figured splitting the more moderate Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin from the more anti-Trump liberals like New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand would be easy. It might be for a more competent White House — Bush did it in 2001.

micah: Last question …

What has the media done that’s most surprised you in Trump’s first year?

harry: How openly anti-Trump the coverage has been.

micah: In a good way or a bad way?

clare.malone: Yeah, I actually think I’m basically on that wavelength. It’s interesting how adversarial the media has been, but I think that’s almost a reaction to what they think the reading/watching public wants? Like, when The New York Times reporter got pilloried for the way he interviewed Trump — that really surprised me. (I don’t have time here to get into how people expect print interviews to be the same as TV ones and it’s not the same skill.)

natesilver: I mean, I have some relatively petty gripes here, mostly related to the election. I’m continuously surprised at how a certain major publication that got a whole lot wrong in 2016 hasn’t really owned up to it. And I’ve been surprised that there hasn’t been more self-reflection from the media about how it treated Hillary Clinton and the email stories. But I actually don’t have that many complaints about how the media handled Trump’s first year in office. It has, for the most part, been trying to evolve.

clare.malone: What you’re getting at — that people haven’t reflected on 2016 coverage — is why coverage is more adversarial. I mean, it also should kinda go without saying at this point that this is a really unusual White House and the president lies a lot/makes a lot of claims that people need to push on.

natesilver: I also think coverage has gotten better over the course of the year. Like, the media seems more willing to deal with the reality of Trump’s attitudes toward black people than it was back in April or May of last year.

perry: Interesting. I actually think some parts of the traditional media (let’s say CNN’s Jake Tapper and Don Lemon, and The Washington Post at times) have been fairly direct describing Trump’s racial moves in an honest, straightforward way. People are saying “racist” when it applies.

clare.malone: But especially in the first weeks, it felt like some stories lacked context.

perry: Harry is right: The coverage has been more anti-Trump than I expected. I think much of it is appropriately anti-Trump, but the shift from kind of “both sides are at fault” coverage has been more pronounced than I expected.

Another thing: There has been some outstanding work from less well-known reporters because there is so much news happening, so there is more opportunity for new voices to emerge, which is good. Some example: the coverage of Trump’s immigration policies from Vox’s Dara Lind; Josh Dawsey at the Washington Post (who broke the shithole story); and Eric Lipton of the NYT’s coverage of the federal agencies under Trump.

micah: Closing thoughts?

perry: I found 2017 totally odd. I didn’t think Trump would be this traditionally Republican on policy. I didn’t think I would write basically a whole series of articles about how he played racial politics constantly. The president having to say, “I am not a racist,” (and reporters feeling compelled to ask him about it) was something I didn’t expect. Even for Trump, the staff upheaval was wild. I didn’t think Doug Jones would win in Alabama until it was called for Jones in Alabama. I expected the Obamacare repeal to pass, and the tax cut to pass with Democratic votes. 2016 was of course stunning on a bunch of different levels. I think 2017 was not that surprising by that standard. But it was unpredictable. McCain voting down a health care bill!

natesilver: I think 2017 (Trump as president) was less surprising than 2016 (Trump winning the general election), and 2016 was less surprising than 2015 (Trump rising to the top of the Republican Party in a field of 17 candidates).

perry: I agree with that. Well said.

micah: So things are getting less and less surprising!

clare.malone: #thenewnormal

perry: And in 2018, if the out party wins the House, it will be downright normal.

harry: 2017 felt normal to me.

micah: OK, on let’s end things on that ridiculous statement.

perry: LOL

harry: LOL

[codywalzel]

This is part one of two summarizing replies to a conversation I had following an ask by @arletestanyol on Instagram. This response is about storyboarding portfolios. I’ll post part two about TESTING for storyboard positions soon.

I wouldn’t write anything in script format, that’s not really showing anyone hiring for storyboards that you can do what is required of the job of ‘storyboard artist’. If you’ve seen me posting writing material, or seen me writing in script format, that’s either just for fun, or something I’m working on for my writing portfolio. I’m transitioning from storyboard artist to writer, and hoping to get staffed on a show for a totally unrelated, live action position- Staff Writer. Big world building/character design/pitch projects are fine, but I personally don’t recommend them. For one thing, if what you’re looking to do is storyboards/writing, there’s a lot of surrounding art required, (character designs, environments, unseen backstory, text documents with outlines and character descriptions, visual development, etc….). Basically it’s a ton of work for one short storyboard sequence, which is the only thing in there really worth looking at for storyboards. And, they’re big to sort through. There’s a good chance the person looking to hire board artists will give up scrolling through pages of character designs to get to board samples. Try to keep in mind that recruiters are looking for people to fill positions as fervently as you are looking to get a job. Meaning line-producers, showrunners, and studio recruiters are on a moving train that is a TV show or movie. They don’t think in terms of “let’s give this kid their big break.” They’re more like “We need a board artist who can start and be trained perfectly by next Monday, or we lose a day in the schedule.” So, in that panic, they don’t care about your well thought out art, they want to see specific skills on display that show you can do the job immediately. Make things they can look at QUICK, many times they barely read in boards or comics, they just scroll through and know in an instant how it feels. Storyboard artist can mean many types of work, ranging from projects where board artists write all the dialogue and most of the plot from a Writer’s outline- to projects where board artists follow detailed scripts to a letter, interpreting the images visually like a cinematographer, but not contributing to writing at all. I’ll get into the different types of jobs and the broad categories of ‘board driven’ vs ‘script driven’ shows later. First, I want to mention some of the better types of storyboard portfolio samples in my opinion, and why they are better: Webcomics, any type: -They can be a big serialized story you work on over years, like Jesse Moynihan’s Forming. (Jesse= Board Artist/Writer, Adventure Time, Creator, Manly) -They can be a weekly gag strip style comic Like Kelly Turnbull’s Manly Guys Doing Manly Things (Kelly= Board Artist/Writer Ben Ten, Board Artist Good Vibes, Ugly Americans) -They can be a mini series like my buddy Alex Cline’s Stinker’s Garden  (Alex= Board Artist/Writer Regular Show, Pickle & Peanut) -They can be just random ideas you have like Toonhole Chris (Toonhole Chris=Artist/Director/Writer at Cartoon Network. 

-They can be real life stories like Avner Geller’s Things That I Hearn (Avner= Visual Development Artist  Mr. Peabody and Sherman, The Penguins of Madagascar, Trolls, and Larrikins,) Webcomics are great because 1.Little things are really easy to digest quickly, 2. They show both your drawing/staging/joke writing ABILITY, and the unique FLAVOR you would bring to the team. There’s no one ‘cartoon network artist’ sence of humor or specific take on storytelling, the point is to do your own thing, and show your own voice. The other good one- Board Samples: -These are more prevalent in feature story, but see my buddy Todd’s feature portfolio anyway. TV focused people can do a similar, but slightly less detailed set of boards for their own personal projects. But this is where it gets into complicated territory, because different categories of project are looking at slightly different things when hiring. On A board driven show like Adventure Time, you are often writing the dialouge, and a good deal of plot based on a Writer’s or Showrunner’s outline. People staffing on those shows are going to want to see writing centered stuff like webcomics over a bunch of boards mostly focused on staging and acting. On a Script Driven Show like Bojack, they are going to care way more about staging, acting, and economic shot choices. Script driven shows tend to be half hour episodes (Family Guy, SImpsons, Bojack, Rick and Morty, Gravity Falls), instead of board driven’s 11 minute episodes (AT, Regular Show, Ben Ten, Star vs. The Forces of Evil). So, the longer episodes tend to call for more economic use of existing backgrounds and character models. Some of what they want to see if that you aren’t just cutting to a new angle every shot, that the acting is clear and thorough. On an Animated Feature, the boundaries are a lot more loose. You get strict movies where you are basically providing ideas at the occasional story meetings, then executing the script to the letter. You get really loose, open projects where the script is in  a constant state of development, and you are pitching ideas, shole scenes, huge, structural plot changes, and even songs. On most moves it’s in the middle- where you are changing and playing with dialogue, and keeping the intention of scenes as written in the script, but changing up the structure of your sequence to make it work. On all animated features, the recruiters scrutinize acting, staging, and cutting VERY closely. You are almost always drawing boards for a 3-d movie, so the camera restrictions are gone, because almost any angle is easily producible. Even 2-D features don’t place as much emphasis on re-using backgrounds as 2-D TV, because the budgets are big enough to cover a bunch of different backgrounds, so you can get a ton of angles on a scene. In any case, when you have freedom of camera, you need to use it wisely. Feature boards require the highest level of cinematic language, but not as high of writing ability as board driven TV shows. You don’t have to know which type of thing you most want to work for, you should be open to all of them starting out. And, you will probably end up working multiple types of jobs as a board artist. For any of the above jobs, a badass comic or board sample will always impress, so just do your thing tonally in your personal work. You definitely should be doing original story ideas, but that can include fanart of existing characters. If you’re doing board sample featuring the Little Mermaid, do something that comments on the movie, or is a joke or something, don’t, like board serious, cannon attempts at LIttle Mermaid fan fiction, and don’t just re-board a scene that’s already in the movie. Personally, I prefer to do board samples and comics of my own ideas and experiences, because I think it shows off your flavor better. But if you make any kind of comic or board sample amazing enough, recruiters will completely ignore the fact that you’re a different tone than the show, and assume you’re talented enough to adapt. One last thing on your portfolio: it’s not the hard part, I wouldn’t get too nervous about that. Pretty much all TV boarding is decided by tests. The only thing the portfolio is for is a key that unlocks the gate to the tests. It only needs to be good enough for the recruiters and line-producers to send you test. Testing is almost a completely different skill set, so I’ll talk about that in the next post. But the portfolio is pretty easy & difficult at the same time: Make awesome personal work and submit it to studios, if they get back to you with tests, try and pass them. If nobody is getting back to you or sending you tests, you probably need to work on your portfolio, make more awesome work, repete. Social Media: You can send studios your social media pages like instagram, tumblr, a facebook art page, twitter, etc, if it’s only your art on there (or if it is MOSTLY your art. You can have tweets about other stuff on your page, but if you send them to the ‘media’ section of your Twitter, the recruiter better not have to scroll past a dozen Green Arrow reaction gifs before they get to your first piece of art.) If your social media is a little more disorganized, that’s fine, just don’t submit it to recruiters. You’ll have to make a separate website for your art. I still recommend at least a simple website on top of the social media page though. It just keeps every type of thing in one place, so someone looking at people’s comics can find all your comics in one folder, someone looking for board samples can find that, for sketchbook pages can find that, and so on. I send both a portfolio website and my social media page, since they have slightly different things on them most of the time. As crappy as it might sound, if they see on your social media that you have a big audience, that can only help you. When you get to the next round and a Showrunner is looking at your test, they probably won’t care that much whether you have 10,000 Twitter followers or not. But, the recruiter deciding who to pass through to various productions in the studio definitely will consider that. If you DON’T have 10,000 Twitter followers, submitting your social media still won’t hurt you if the art’s good and your page is mostly art. Tons of people nowadays are scoped out by studios through their social media pages, whether they have followers or not, but obviously, the more popular online artist are more visible. Part 2, on TESTING, to come. Follow me on Instagram or Twitter  here.

[vsuvo768523]

Want To Spend More Time On Your Writing And Tired Of Doing It All? A Virtual Assistant Can Help

But I hit a wall about 18 months ago, and I definitely needed some help, so I started looking for a virtual assistant to help me. I had a few varied experiences and learned some lessons, and then Alexandra Amor reached out to me with some brilliant suggestions for how she could help. Alexandra is a children's author, but she is also a fantastic virtual assistant for me and a number of other authors. I trust her to help me with key tasks in my author business, and she even suggests things that I may not have thought of. Alexandra AmorSave Alexandra Amor Today, Alexandra explains how a VA can help authors. Joanna has previously talked about the advantages for authors of having a Virtual Assistant (VA), most recently in her podcast episode with Chris Ducker. I've been Joanna's VA for almost a year, so I asked her if I could chime in and address some common concerns I hear from authors about working with a VA. For those who aren't aware, VAs are independent contractors, like editors and graphic designers, who provide support from their home offices using online tools. The rise of the internet in the 1990s made this type of career possible, and it has only become easier in the ensuing decades for VAs to share information and support their clients remotely. VAs sometimes specialize in working with a certain niche of clients (e.g., Life Coaches or Real Estate Agents) but many are generally skilled and can work with almost any type of business. VAs are always responsible for the infrastructure they use to do their work (i.e., computer, basic software programs like Word and Excel, internet connection etc.) and they almost always work for more than one client at a time, just as editors and graphic designers do. You may not have reached the tipping point yet where you feel you need some virtual support. But I certainly hope that one day your books will be so successful that you will! Whether your need is current, or if you're envisioning what your business will look like when you're a wildly successful author, let's jump in and see if I can alleviate some of your concerns and questions about hiring this type of support. Author Concern #1: I can't afford a VA Joanna often says that she prefers the term ‘indie author' as opposed to ‘self-published author' because authors don't actually work in isolation. It's a team effort to get your books published, involving cover designers, editors and more. Working with a VA is a perfect example of this. At some point in your author business, it's not going to be possible, or advantageous, for you to do absolutely everything yourself. But unlike hiring a full-time, or part-time, employee, you can hire a VA for very specific tasks, within a specific budget that you set. A VA will work as few or as many hours as you need her to. It's an economical solution for many solopreneurs, including authors. Before you start looking for a VA, I recommend you have a clear idea about what your budget is. You will find it easier to set your budget if you know what it is you want your VA to do for you. (Below I cover how to figure both these things out.) While we're talking about your budget, let's talk about rates for virtual help. (Keep in mind that you always get what you pay for.) You'll pay from US$10 to $15/hour for general administrative or transcription help, for someone who is probably based in India or the Philippines. If you want someone experienced and technologically skilled, who has an entrepreneurial mindset themselves, and who is genuinely interested in your success, you'll pay between US$30 and $60/hour. The belief that you have to do it all, all by yourself, is not true. And it's equally untrue that you'll need to invest thousands of dollars a month into getting some help. It's not an either-or proposition. (I also think there's much to be said for the mental clutter that is cleaned up when you've got someone helping you, even if it's for one hour a week. By delegating some tasks, your brain is freed up to focus on your creativity.) Author Concern #2: It's simpler to do these things myself Delegating is tough. I get it. Your author business is precious to you and it is difficult to imagine anyone else doing things as quickly, easily and with as much care as you do them. However, as an independent author you also know that there are advantages to not being an expert at everything. You have probably recognized that you don't need to be a book cover designer, a copyeditor, or a bookkeeper in order to write and sell great books. You can outsource those specific tasks to others who are skilled in these areas. However, even knowing this, a hurdle that authors often face when hiring a VA is this; initially, it can take longer to explain how you want something done than to just do it yourself. So the danger is remaining stuck in a form of superhero syndrome and continuing to try to do everything yourself. Deal with this concern by thinking about your long-term strategy. You probably want to build a business that will support you for years to come. Invest some time in showing your new VA how you like things done and from then on you won't have to even think about that task. Also, consider that even though the VA you hire may be very skilled, she still needs to figure out the way you want things done. At the beginning of the working relationship, a little patience will be required, but it will be rewarded. Author Concern #3: What exactly should I get a VA to do for me? It's possible you feel overwhelmed with the number of tasks involved in running your author business. It's a slippery slope where you can find that you are spending far too much time administering and not enough time writing. And yet, that overwhelm can lead to paralysis when it comes to figuring out what to delegate. Here's my favorite tip for tackling this: For one week, keep a piece of paper on your desk in plain sight and within easy reach (or use your favorite electronic tool for making lists). Every time you find yourself doing something you either a) don't like doing and/or consistently avoid or b) know doesn't need your direct involvement, write it down. (Most people who do this exercise find that at the end of the week the list is far longer than they expected.) At the end of the week, take a look at your list. Do you notice any patterns? Are the tasks mostly focused in one or two areas? (e.g., social media or behind-the-scenes technical jobs.) Or are they general administrative type chores? Armed with this information, you can now specifically look for virtual help in the area of your greatest need. Now you know both what you need help with and what kind of skills you need in the person who's going to be helping you. (Not all VAs are created equal, so giving some thought to what kind of support you need before you go searching for help is important.) If you're still struggling with the idea of what a VA can do for you, here are some specific examples from my own practice: – Formatting HTML newsletters – Formatting books for Smashwords – Research about the business side of being an author (e.g., how Street Teams work, how to market a book in a foreign language, podcasts that might be a good fit to have you as a guest, etc.) – Scouting for bloggers to send book review requests to – Pitching to those bloggers and tracking responses – Formatting (and perhaps light editing) of blog posts, or organizing content – Managing your Street Team Facebook group (posing questions to keep the group engaged, answering questions, sharing upcoming news, etc.) – Creating box sets in Scrivener from individual novels – Moving works translated into a foreign language from Word into Scrivener – Scheduling tweets and Facebook posts (ones that don't require your direct input or engagement with your audience) – Transcribing audio interviews or notes – For non-fiction authors, VAs can do an enormous number of tasks around webinars or other training you offer (e.g., planning and booking the event, scheduling guests, managing registration lists, dealing with the back-end technology, creating and proofing slide decks, sending out advance information packages to the trainees, and then sending out follow-up information to the trainees, etc.) Author Concern #4: How do I find a Virtual Assistant? As with hiring any freelancer, personal recommendations are usually the best place to start. Does anyone in your author circles have a VA they can recommend? Can you put a shout out on KBoards asking for recommendations? There are several Virtual Assistant organizations, usually based on the country where the VAs are located. Do a Google search for “Virtual Assistant ” and you'll find these organizations. Once you're there, you can then do a search by the specific skill(s) you're looking for and the site will offer a list of names, usually with links to the VAs' individual websites. When you've got a few names that look promising, be sure to interview several potential candidates so that you can get a sense of both the skills they have on offer and how their personality is going to fit with yours. Your working relationship with the VA will hopefully be long-term so you want to make sure it's the right fit. Bonus Tip #1: Start Small I always recommend to authors that they begin to work with a VA by agreeing to a couple of smaller tasks or projects and then building from there. Rushing in and assigning too much, too fast, usually leads to conflict and fractures in the relationship. Starting small achieves two really important things; it begins to build trust, and it creates a testing ground to ensure the two of you are a good fit. Ideally as the first few small projects begin and end, you'll start to trust that your VA knows what they're doing and can follow instructions and complete the project at the agreed time and in a way that makes you happy. As well, your VA will begin to learn how you work and what matters to you. It's just as important that you are a good fit for your VA, as she is with you. Bonus Tip #2: Communication is Key In her interview with Chris Ducker, Joanna mentions that she and I share several documents on Google Drive so that we're both always aware of what's going on and what our expectations are. You can keep a shared spreadsheet to track your VA's billable hours, so you always know exactly where you are in terms of your budget. Another great idea is to keep a document with the list of projects the VA is working on, in priority order, so that things don't get forgotten about and so that you both know what your VA is supposed to be working on at any given time. Meeting regularly on the telephone or Skype/FaceTime keeps the communication flowing and also helps to grow your relationship. I welcome you to check out my premnium product's shop, where you will get all premium virtual products at the lowest rate. 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[beckyalbertalli]

Interview with Jeff Zentner, Morris Finalist!

So, Jeff Zentner’s THE SERPENT KING is up for the Morris Award, and I totally called it.

This aching, heartfelt coming-of-age story about three small-town Tennessee teens was nominated for the Carnegie Medal, was a Publisher’s Weekly Flying Start, and is currently sweeping the 2016 “Best Of” lists. Jeff is a musician in Nashville, and is also the author of the upcoming GOODBYE DAYS (spoiler: it’s breathtaking, and you will cry). I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to interview him as part of the annual William C. Morris Interview Series.

BA: Holy crap, Jeff. I’m just. This book is so beautiful and wise and gut-wrenching and honest, and I could not be happier about your Morris nomination. What was it like hearing the news that you were a finalist?

 JZ: Thank you, Becky! It was funny, I thought that if I ever was a finalist for something like this, I’d hear it first from my editor or agent, but actually, someone I don’t even know tweeted at me to congratulate me, and I was like, “wait, what?!” My first instinct was, “if this turns out to be nothing, I’m going to be really bummed out.” But then he forwarded me the YALSA announcement email. So I ended up telling my editor and agent!

BA: You’re such a pro at authoring, it’s hard to remember that TSK only came out in March. How has your life changed since publishing your debut? What was the high point? What was something that surprised you?

 JZ: I do a lot more traveling than at any other point in my life. I’ll go months where I don’t have a single weekend at home. But it’s wonderful. And the high point is closely related to that: the friends I’ve made among my fellow authors. In a very short time, I’ve made some of the best, most amazing friends I’ve ever had at any point in my life. Something that’s surprised me is how it’s never any easier to write a novel from the first one I ever wrote. In fact, it feels harder now. I’m more in my own head and I’m conscious now of my audience.

BA: THE SERPENT KING is told from three points of view, and one of my favorite things about this book is how distinct these voices are. Was that a challenge to get right, or did that happen pretty organically for you? Is there a little bit of you in each character, or are you most similar to one of them?

 JZ: Before I sit down to write a character, I’ve made sure I’ve let them reside in my head for a good three or four months, wherein I sit and listen to them and learn to hear their voice. With THE SERPENT KING, I was interested enough in each character to write a whole novel with each as the protagonist, but I was too impatient to wait and write a novel about each one. So I jammed them all into the same book. To write the characters, I pretty much divided my personality into thirds and gave each character a piece.  Dill got my general worldview and love for making music. Lydia got my curiosity and hunger. Travis got my loyalty and nerdiness for the things I love. All of them are some of me. None of them are all of me.

BA: I’m especially intrigued by Lydia, whom I find to be one of the most complex and relatable teen girls I’ve ever read. How did you pull that off?

JZ: I have been blessed to know so many amazing and brilliant women whom I so deeply admire. So Lydia has bits and pieces of all of them. Also, I’ve worked with teen girls at Southern Girls Rock Camp and Tennessee Teen Rock Camp, and I’ve seen their incredible intelligence and spirit firsthand, so it was really vital to me that I honor that to the fullest extent possible in the character of Lydia. It all comes from a place of the deepest respect and awe.    

BA: I know readers have a wide range of opinions about how and if social media and pop culture references should be integrated into books. In TSK, we see some real media and some invented media, and it’s absolutely seamless. Can you talk me through the decisions you made about that?

 JZ: When deciding whether to use real media or invent something, I ultimately tried to make a prediction as to what would best stand the test of time and not date the book too terribly. With music, for example, I know opinions vary widely on this, but I think it’s better to ask a reader to buy that teenagers love a real iconic music group that’s stood the test of time as opposed to a more of-the-moment real musical group that hasn’t stood the test or an invented musical group with whom readers can’t really relate.

The author, calling your girl.  

BA:  Lydia, Dill, and Travis come from really different religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, and I love that you show the complexities that sometimes arise from both. What sort of role does money play in the friendship among these three? What about religion?

 JZ: Money, or to be more specific, socioeconomic inequality,  is a tremendous source of story conflict. Healthy economic circumstances give Lydia the ability to leave Forrestville—and Dill—behind, a source of great consternation to him. Dill’s dire financial circumstances are the driver of his hopelessness and his being unable to leave Forrestville for a better life, like Lydia. Travis’s less dire—but still not terrific— financial circumstances contribute to the abuse he suffers at his dad’s hands.

In writing The Serpent King, I really wanted to shine a light on class and privilege in America.

 Religion plays heavily into Dill’s internal struggle and the way he comes into conflict both with Lydia and her desires for his life and with himself and his own desires. And religion is how Travis and Dill met and more indirectly, how Dill and Lydia met. Dill’s religion made him the sort of weirdo that Lydia was interested in knowing.

BA: What sort of reaction have you gotten from readers so far? As far as your fandom name is concerned, do you have a preference between “The Serpent Kingdom” and “The Zentnerds”?

 I love Zentnerds because I used to get called that mockingly, and I love the thought of reclaiming it, like “now who’s laughing?” ;)

The reaction has blown my mind. I truly did not expect very many people to identify with a young adult novel about the son of a snakehandling preacher. So every time I hear from another reader, I'm just overjoyed. I came to writing as an exceedingly obscure musician, who might get a lovely message from a listener once a month if I was lucky. Now it happens several times a day.

A tweet from a fan.

BA: Talk for a bit about GOODBYE DAYS! What was it like writing it, and how did that process compare to your process for THE SERPENT KING? What’s been the biggest difference between the two experiences so far?

JZ: The Serpent King came from characters/people/stories that had fascinated me for years. I based The Serpent King on two songs I'd written years earlier. Goodbye Days, on the other hand, came from characters I'd only lived with for months. So I had to learn very quickly to be fascinated with the lives of relative newcomers to my mind. That's one difference.

Another is that I let my writing process breathe a little more. With The Serpent King, I wrote in a frenzy. I wanted to get published before I was 70. With The Serpent King heading toward publication, I let myself do things other than write. I allowed myself to read other books and watch TV shows. Both helped make Goodbye Days stronger.

BA: Both of your books deal with some really heavy moments, but there’s also so much joy in both stories. How did you navigate these extremes? Which parts come most naturally to you as an author?

JZ: It helps that I have a very, very dark sense of humor. So I'm able to see the humor in a lot of situations that might otherwise look pretty humorless. And I'm very conscious about keeping humor a part of the story. It's easy when you write southerners, which I do, who are a naturally funny and morbid people. I also believe deeply in hope, even in the darkest of circumstances. So hope is always interwoven into my stories, which adds to any sense of joy I achieve.

Lightning Round! 

(in which Jeff was allowed to explain his answers, but was not required to)

BA: If Lydia, Dill, and Travis could each be given one BFF from another YA book, who would you choose for each of them?

JZ: This is not brown-nosing: when I read Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, I had the easiest time ever imagining Lydia and Simon as friends.

(ed. note: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) 

Travis and Hagrid from Harry Potter would be besties, no question. They're both gentle giants.

Dill and Cassie O’Malley from The First Time She Drowned by Kerry Kletter would be besties. They're both sensitive and intelligent and they could bond over their awful mothers.

BA:  Please summarize TSK using only emojis

JZ: I will defer to the amazing and brilliant Nic Stone’s summary:

BA: Now please summarize it using a single gif.

JZ:  Several people recommended this one:

BA: What is your all-time favorite comment you’ve received on your book? 

JZ: It was from my very first reader, Jarrod Perkins, who read it in manuscript form. I didn't even know he was reading it yet when I get a text from him that just said “you [expletive].” I was like “?????????” And he told me that he’d reached a certain pivotal scene. Jarrod is a very sophisticated reader and that's when I knew I might have a book I could publish.

BA: Golden Oreos or Classic? (If Golden, I actually will need you to explain this.)

JZ: I’ve always been a Classic man, but even more so in the age of Trump, when I’m not messing with anything golden.

(ed. note: hell. yes.)

Thank you, Jeff, for this beautiful interview and your beautiful books! 

Order The Serpent King!

Pre-order Goodbye Days!

[amoretheiwa]

So this came up on my newsfeed today on FB (I couldn’t crop the picture)

The girl who posted that posts a lot of things like. Now I’m wondering how she’ll respond to what I posed today.

It’s long so some is under the cut.

Before you read this, if you do, I want it made clear—this is a long post that I have been mentally gearing up to make for a while now, and it is not in specific response to any one person or post. Any comments are welcome that aren’t instigating an argument or are negative for the sake of causing problems (discussion/disagreement=great, welcome; arguing for the sake of arguing, being nasty=not okay, will be deleted off this post). If you still want to talk about anything mentioned but would rather not comment publicly, that’s fine! Go ahead and message me privately.

 Alrighty, here it goes *cracks knuckles*

 Prior to today, I had had no concrete idea of what the Women’s March was about and what was happening other than the fact that the instances of vandalism are not to be associated with the Women’s Marches that went on around the world. In both in person and on social media I have heard quite a lot of: the march was vague, what was the point, it wasn’t doing anything, it was just anti-Trump, etc. I also saw on social media (the closest march was/is 30 minutes away from where I currently am) people who marched and stated their purposes for marching, and mentioned things that they are going to do in the future as part of this movement.

Now, I wondered—what movement? Is it just regular, non-misandrist feminism? Some new group of women explicitly anti-Trump? What is this movement, who are the people behind the women’s marches? So, to answer this question I went to the source. “Sister Marches are solidarity events inspired by the Women's March on Washington, and organized by volunteers around the world.” ( https://www.womensmarch.com/sisters )This is taken straight from their website. It is the first line of text you see underneath the title “Sister Marches”. There were 673 marches, with an estimated number of 4,834,000 people who marched.

That still doesn’t answer the why, why people marched, what they marched for. If you click on their About page, you get some answers. “We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families - recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.” Okay, that’s an idea I can get behind. Solidarity means “unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group” thanks to a quick Google search. So, those who marched stood together in unity of the feeling that there is a need for a protection of our: rights, safety, health, and families. That then poses the question: what/whom do we need protection from? Who/what is threatening these integral parts of our lives and society?

To go slightly off-topic, I am an English major, and since before I declared my major I have extensively studied literature in both high school and college classes. A specific lens I love to take is that of feminism. Feminism is not the idea of making women superior to men, it is not just fixing issues in our country such as the still-existing Tampon tax, wage gap, and rape culture we do live in. Feminism is, according to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” and “organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests”. Now, some might disagree and say that the sexes are already equal. That being a feminist means giving up traditional values of home and family. That you can’t be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and call yourself a feminist, and that you have to deny or disagree with key doctrines of our gospel in order to be a true feminist.

You are wrong. There is no way to cut corners or honey it up—you are wrong if you think that feminism isn’t needed for everyone all over the world. But that’s for later. The timing of these marches is no accident. Donald Trump was inaugurated Friday, and the marches happened on Saturday. Now, something interesting to think about—according to the New York Times, crowd scientists are saying that 3 times more people marched in Washington DC alone than attended the inauguration (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/22/us/politics/womens-march-trump-crowd-estimates.html?_r=0). There are factors that played into that, such as political demographics, but the roughly estimated numbers—and their impact—still stand.

Why did more people choose to march for “the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families” than people chose to support our new president? I think that because of the things he has said in the past scare people. I think that the divisiveness of this election, and the topics most commonly discussed and argued about, opened people’s eyes to some harsh realities. Because of the “vibrant and diverse communities [that] are the strength of our country” that some of us are blessed to live in is what makes us as a nation stronger. It is not solely the white man. It is not solely the straight person. It is not solely the college educated business crowd. It is not solely the child raised in a home with two parents. It is not solely the Christian community. The United States of America is not a perfect country. In many ways, it is not even ideal. But it is a blessed land full of amazing individuals—and that individuality is what makes it so special. I have never once considered a person’s race, religion, political beliefs, gender, or sexuality to be something that would preclude me from forming a friendship with them.

Now, back to the original subject. People have tried to tell me that I don’t need feminism. I ask you: when have I not needed it? When I and two other classmates were sexually harassed and assaulted in high school? When it was assumed that because of my gender that a boy the same age, with the same experience and skill, could swim faster than me? When I have to pay a tax on necessary feminine hygiene products? When I had to learn on my own that women experience different symptoms when having a heart attack than men? When have you not needed feminism? When you, your brother/sister, your parents, your child, was told to “man up” and not cry because it’s a girl thing? When the word “gay” means an insult? When your daughters are taught by society that their anger is less valid than a boy’s? (http://rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2016-05-daughter-know-ok-angry/) When traditionally feminine characteristics such as kindness, compassion, and being quiet as seen as degrading? When being different from the status quo and deviating from the expected lifestyle results in social rejection or worse?

Anyone who is offended by someone else expressing an opposing opinion needs to take a step back and revaluate how they see others and themselves. There are ideas going around right now that everyone who voted for Trump is automatically racist, homophobic, and much worse. That’s wrong—but quite a few of those who did support Trump decided that that wasn’t a deal breaker for them. That someone else now being victim of people who feel encouraged by our president’s past actions is okay, because they’re not hearing about it and not seeing it. Whether you want to or not, almost everyone enjoys the benefits from a faulty society. All guys benefit from the world we live in in ways that aren’t so noticeable. As someone who is biracial but doesn’t look it, I definitely benefit in ways my friends who don’t have light skin don’t. There is a double-standard starting to emerge from forced diversity, such as quotas of different races, religions, and genders needing to be filled in certain environments, and that is just as wrong.

But you cannot deny that there is something even more wrong with the world and our country when people question someone else’s right to protest peacefully. When opinion-based articles circulate the Internet and are interpreted as fact over something that is in opposition to your own views but is true. I tweeted just earlier today that “Being informed by more than just people’s opinions is key to understanding the world around you”. I stand by what I said.

I’m not a feminist because I think that women are better than men, or that all men are aggressors—men suffer the effects of a patriarchal society and rape culture just as much as women do. Men get raped and sexually assaulted, men get abused, men have unfair stigmas placed on them (being good with or interested in cars, having to be physically and emotionally stronger, being expected to be the sole provider in the home).

Then, you might ask, why is it called feminism? Why was it the Women’s Marches and not something like the People’s Marches? The same reason it is Black Lives Matter and not just all lives matter. The same reason that there are women only gyms, and not male only gyms. As someone on Tumblr put it, when you’re in first place in Mario Kart, you don’t get the blue shell. You’ve already been given the whole cookie—it is time to give others the rest of their cookie, when from the beginning, they have only received half or less.

[gracebolton]

Agile Energy Projects in the Marketplace

I’ve been on radio, TV, in print, and sprayed around the internet. Its a bit like the install day back in January, but obviously with a dollar figure attached.

Despite that, there is still a lot of people ready to step up and put the boot into Powerwall, and lithium storage in general. I will never fathom why these parties are against progress, so I don’t read into it too much.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT…

During that time the world rolled on, and it appears renewable energy, particularly solar hybrid, has been going from strength to strength. One tweet in particular caught my eye, from Noah Smith.

2010: “Solar will never be viable without subsidies!” 2013: “Solar will never be viable without storage!” 2016: https://t.co/LHvPC2IVyw

— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) August 10, 2016

The Telegraph article linked by that tweet, written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, is an interesting discussion on battery storage as it affects the landscape. It is also a bit of a dig at the Hinkley Point nuclear project in England.

I wrote something previously on Nuclear Power, so without a re-hash I will reiterate: I AM NOT ANTI-NUCLEAR. However, I did point out there are significant financial hurdles to overcome in Australia. Leaving aside the social issues, that is.

Three paragraphs in the article from Evans-Pritchard got me thinking.

Perhaps the Hinkley project still made sense in 2013 before the collapse in global energy prices and before the latest leap forward in renewable technology. It is madness today.

The latest report by the National Audit Office shows that the estimated subsidy for these two reactors has already jumped from £6bn to near £30bn. Hinkley Point locks Britain into a strike price of £92.50 per megawatt hour – adjusted for inflation, already £97 – and that is guaranteed for 35 years.

That is double the current market price of electricity. The NAO’s figures show that solar will be nearer £60 per megawatt hour by 2025. Dong Energy has already agreed to an offshore wind contract in Holland at less than £75.

Those are some pretty compelling numbers, but the reasons why it got me thinking relate to my own work life.

A Short History Of Dwarves

I’ve been an IT guy for a living nearly 20 years now, working mainly in databases where I can help it. I’ve seen almost every tech acronym or buzzword put into practice, sometimes very poorly. Or for the sake of change.

One of the better periods was back in the day, when the technical stuff was held apart. I like the imagery that Neal Stephenson uses in Cryptonomicon – IT guys were like the Dwarves in Tolkein; working away in the dark, hammering out things of beauty like Rings of Power.

The company (Elves) would frolic up to the entrance of the forge, beseeching the Dwarves for a solution. The Dwarves would give a range of timelines and costs, and the Elves would pick one. We’d go into the forge, create what they wanted, and the land was content.

With advances in technology, and the hunger for globalisation, things needed to move faster. Thus, “Agile” was born as the new way to do things.

Credit www.dilbert.com

Generally speaking, the move to Agile is positive from my point of view. It seeks to guide the Good Ship Project through the icebergs as each one appears, not assert a course from Day 1 and expect no issues with implementation at all.

As long as Agile is implemented the right way, it can do good things.

There is a caveat though, and the seed of this started with smart devices in my opinion. If we’re ever having a beer, talking shop, I’d pinpoint smart devices as disruptive in more than just a good way.

Now non-technical people see an awesome app for $1.99 and wonder why projects still cost millions. As a result, they demand more.

Agile has collided with this belief that speed of delivery, and convenience, is cheap. Non-technical people don’t necessarily understand the systems. They’re trying to tell the developer how to do their job down to the finest detail. That isn’t actually helpful.

Dear Managers: right now, there IT guys reading this, and nodding their heads. Maybe muttering. Likely, swear words and dark thoughts are being countenanced.

Agile Energy Projects

One thing that holds true of IT projects, energy infrastructure, and pretty much anything down to a backyard deck, is the Quality Triangle.

If you are going to implement or change the project in terms of finances, timeline, or scope/size, then you have to accept it will affect the quality of the outcome. Aiming for all three is purely theoretical, in my opinion.

As with the recent Census Fail incident in Australia, sometimes it doesn’t matter how many resources you throw at a project, or how long it runs. The excreta hits the rotary ventilator, and its time to put out fires.

Hinkley Point C is subject to some base requirements, but the main one is the generation of 3200 MWe from a nuclear reactor. Not the biggest in the world but still a mighty undertaking.

Once you’ve decided it will generate that much, you’ve set your course. A prescribed amount of effort, human resources, and other elements must go into it. Critically, the reactors will be of a certain size and type, and you’ll pay the capital cost of that regardless.

If you encounter cost overruns or other issues, generally speaking you just have to suck it up, as per the article:

… the estimated subsidy for these two reactors has already jumped from £6bn to near £30bn. Hinkley Point locks Britain into a strike price of £92.50 per megawatt hour – adjusted for inflation, already £97 – and that is guaranteed for 35 years.

In Australian terms, that is $160 / MWh, which is frankly ridiculous.

All of this points to the fault lines emerging in “baseload” power argument. Not only is “base” power a myth, but the agility of these big power generation units is practically nonexistent from conception through to decommission.

As Hinkley Point C, and Finland’s Olkiluoto construction debacles show, centralised nuclear power might be green, but it isn’t necessarily going to stand the test of time, economically.

Smart Advantage of Renewables

Technologies I have seen work, or worked with directly show us that agility is the biggest factor in any tech marketplace today.

And let’s not kid ourselves: energy delivery is now a technology field. This is particularly true of renewable energy, which eschews the old school sledgehammer approach to power generation, in favour of smarts.

Smart use of power, smart direction of power, are going to be the big players moving forward. It starts with domestic applications, such as Tesla Powerwall, and smart management to deliver benefits for the home owner.

Beyond serving one household, it has the potential (and in some ways, the obligation), to serve the wider community.

This is achieved by using the battery as a trading platform. Benefits abound for the network willing to engage with customers, as I discussed in May. Reduced overall costs and waste benefit everyone in the longer term.

This move toward smarter storage also helps address the business sector. The power needs there are large, and despite being mainly during the day, will not going to tolerate the intermittent fluctuations of solar PV and wind.

Storage using batteries is one leg of the argument, across a various range of chemical makeups. Energy storage like pumped hydro can also assist deliver stable power on a larger scale. The big one for Australia should probably be molten salt reactors, particularly for South Australia, which has suffered issues recently.

Certain industries have scope for change today. Heavy transport, and transport in general, is already under the microscope in nations like Sweden, where they seek further reduction in carbon emissions.

Electric Vehicles take carbon off our roads and out of the manufacturing process through a simpler template of construction. If you don’t believe that, think about the amount of metal required to build a drive train for a petrol engine, versus an EV’s battery & motors setup.

How do we address the remaining heavy industry players, and areas outside domestic power supply that aren’t easily converted to renewable technologies?

Scale Advantage of Renewables

Critics of renewable energy sources often derisively quote land area required for building large-scale generation. Regardless of whether its wind, solar PV, pumped hydro, molten salt, or another method, a “farm” for renewable power will take space, that is true.

Nyngan Solar farm, Australia. Credit: Solar Sunwerx

Renewable energy projects are much simpler to implement from an engineering point of view, compared to a nuclear reactor. They are also more flexible.

A nuclear plant, once scoped, has very little opportunity for changing the Quality Triangle. It also isn’t going to get much more efficient if you delay implementation, because the technology is largely static.

Manufacturing issue with your solar PV arrays? Let’s just get less panels for now. They’ll be cheaper later on, or more efficient, anyway.

Dispute over one of your wind turbines? Fine: proceed with the rest of the farm until the outcome is known.

These are two examples (there are more) where the scalability of renewable energy creates a huge advantage. The unit size of a wind turbine, or a solar array, is in no way limiting for people who know how to implement them.

Pumped hydro and molten salt reactors are similar to traditional power stations, in that their capacity is roughly determined at time of construction. The key difference is they are primarily storage, over and above being generation.

They don’t need to be on all the time, only engaged when other resources are running low, or as demand spikes. This is another advantage over “baseload” coal or nuclear, which cannot uplift to address demand spiking.

Only gas-fired stations have this ability at the moment. The surging price for gas, as well as its status as a fossil fuel, renders it a short-term option at best.

The Paradigm Shift

You cannot simply build a traditional network and throw more and more renewables at it until you reach a very high number.

Coal in Australia has been built to over-capacity, resulting in wasted capital expenditure, and poorly managed outcomes. Witness the issues South Australia has at the moment, because of short-term thinking around renewable energy integration.

We need “smart” implementation of renewable energy projects. Flexibility must remain a core tenet of implementing this intelligence.

As Evans-Pritchard covers in his article, there are many storage options in development across the world right now. We’re in a period of real transition where more options will blow the marketplace right open.

This requires the right thinking, to engage renewable sources on a far larger scale, holding hands with storage options of all kinds. Markets will shift rapidly. Consumer needs, particularly in the developing world, will have no need, and no money, for sledgehammer tactics like “baseload” power.

Projects designed for even 30-year life cycles will find themselves at risk of rejection. It will be simply uneconomical to support such inflexible systems.

With the right people at the wheel, concerns over our energy needs, and the perceived shortcomings of renewable energy, needn’t be a concern.

from https://www.sustainablefuturegroup.com.au/53/agile-energy-projects-in-the-marketplace/ from https://sustainablfutg.tumblr.com/post/628305065858482176 from https://gracebolton.blogspot.com/2020/09/agile-energy-projects-in-marketplace.html

[recentanimenews]

Life Under State of Emergency: Kyoto and Sendai

A lonely Hachiko at midday (Photo: Daryl Harding)

  After looking at how the State of Emergency in Japan has affected voice acting in anime, we wanted to highlight some stories from people living all over Japan, how they are coping with the current coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown, and their thoughts on the situation.

  In this two-part feature, we will focus on four people from four different areas of Japan, from Japanese citizens and foreigners living in the country, to get their perspective and feelings on how the “lockdown” is affecting them.

  (Note: All answers have been edited down for clarity.)

  In Japan’s Old Capital of Kyoto

  Kyoto last November (Photo: Daryl Harding)

  I first spoke with Matthew Li from New York, who works as a social media marketer and producer for OtakuVS, an anime streetwear brand and YouTube channel, from his home in Kyoto.

  First, how are you doing in the “lockdown,” even though it’s not technically a lockdown?

  I live in Kyoto, so the “rules of the lockdown” might differ from Tokyo's rules. I can say that most of the city streets have emptied out and a majority of stores and restaurants are closed temporarily. To me, it's a good thing as it gives almost no incentives for tourists to visit or for locals to hang out in large groups.

  How has the quarantine affected you personally?

  I'm someone who likes to eat out, shop for clothes, and go to concerts, so the quarantine has affected my social life quite a bit. I had a lot of plans to travel around Kansai and Japan before the State of Emergency, but of course, all of that has been postponed. However, staying home has helped me keep productive on my hobbies, such as writing scripts.

  What about professionally?

  In Japan, I'm mostly working on marketing and production for OtakuVS right now. Since most of the stuff on OtakuVS is done digitally and from home, not much of it has changed apart from some scheduling.

  Was there anything you were looking forward to that has now been canceled?

  So many plans have been canceled or postponed, which of course doesn't feel great. I had booked a concert for the peggies (who sang the ending theme “Stand by Me” for Sarazanmai) in May, which is canceled. I was also hoping to go to Summer Sonic in Osaka in August though that probably isn't going to happen either. I'm sure many people have had bigger life milestones they've had to cancel though, so I always remind myself that I'm relatively lucky.

  Is there anything you’ve started to do because of the lockdown?

  I started reading a lot of news on the coronavirus, which maybe isn't the most healthy habit to pick up ...

  What are you using to cope with being forced to stay inside?

  I've been spending a good amount of my time on my backlog on films and catching up on manga like The Quintessential Quintuplets and Komi Can't Communicate. As for anime, I haven't been interested in many shows recently besides KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR, which will always win my heart.

    How has your neighborhood/town changed?

  My neighborhood has always been pretty sleepy since it's residential, so it doesn't feel any different.

  What are you looking forward to once everything is over?

  I'm looking forward to seeing my friends, eating out, and traveling again.

  How do you feel about Japan’s response to the pandemic?

  I think Japan's response has been very weak thus far. It seems to me that many politicians don't want to take responsibility for an economic downturn or to force change in the work culture here, but it's come to the point where decisions are being made too late. Japan's rate of testing is terrifyingly low in comparison with its neighbors, South Korea, and Taiwan, which has allowed the virus to spread at a growing pace. I don't think Japan will become another Italy or New York, but it's definitely not going to have an easy time in the coming weeks.

  Sleepy Areas of Sendai

    I then spoke to Takazuki, an avid fan of the Naoko Yamada anime film Liz and the Blue Bird and an international student that has been studying in Japan for nearly 4 years in the city of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture.

  Firstly, how are you doing in the “lockdown,” even though it’s not technically a lockdown?

  I live in Sendai, and each day feels like cases are getting worse after the Olympic flame was displayed in Miyagi prefecture. Although it’s not a big city, a lot of retail chains were closed.

  How has the quarantine affected you personally?

  It stressed me out immensely at the start due to the thoughts of it greatly affecting my career, but I’m slowly getting by. I’m fluctuating in my mental health and good physical health but slowly getting used to this quarantine lifestyle.

  What about professionally?

  This was my biggest worry in this pandemic. I major in STEM (research-focused); now I am unable to take samples and do research in my lab. This is my last year, so I am afraid I couldn’t graduate.

  International students here start their semester in Fall instead of Spring, unlike the Japanese students. I may have to change my thesis despite being halfway done and focus on write-ups and analysis instead.

  Was there anything you were looking forward to that has now been canceled?

  I was planning to visit Kyoto before Spring Break ended to attend a doujin event, do an anime pilgrimage, visit the KyoAni & Do shop and simply relax. I also wanted to visit the famous Agata Festival in Uji before I graduate, but I don’t think this pandemic will end before I’m able to graduate.

  I also attend a lot of anime events. I had won tickets for the Sound! Euphonium concert, AZALEA live, ReoNa tour, Sword Art Online Orchestra concert, and applied for many more, but all of those events either got canceled or postponed. I was also looking forward to going to the Akita Pride March, and this season’s fantastic TV anime and movie lineup.

  Is there anything you’ve started to do because of the lockdown?

  I’ve recently started playing games. It’s something I’ve not done in years because university and attending events have kept me busy. Been exercising a lot more too.

  What are you using to cope with being forced to stay inside?

  Liz and the Blue Bird. It’s an anime movie that’s keeping me sane. I can watch it multiple times and still have fun analyzing it. I’m not too caught up with seasonal anime (though they’re mostly postponed anyway), so I ended up watching more old anime for nostalgia. I haven’t touched JRPG in seven years because they usually take more than 80 hours, so I took this chance to play games like Tales of Vesperia.

  Taka's shrine to Liz and the Blue Bird and Sound! Euphonium

  How has your neighborhood/town changed?

  Nothing changed much at Level 3 warning in early April [when the State of Emergency was called, though Miyagi wasn’t on the initial list]. People were still going to the lab, as usual, we were more afraid of not going to work and felt guilty for staying home due to the work culture.

  [Note: The levels refer to Taka’s university internal system of ranking the pandemic. Level 4 refers to the State of Emergency declaration.]

  As of writing, there are still some people out in Sendai in some areas but I’ve never seen it this empty, except during the New Year period, and when I go out for karaoke with friends until 3 or 4 AM until early in the morning, a common practice in Japan.

  What are you looking forward to once everything is over?

  Karaoke with friends, meeting my favorite author and voice actors, going to events again, and anime pilgrimages. I’m also working on a collaboration with Japanese fans of Sound! Euphonium for a certain event.

  How do you feel about Japan’s response to the pandemic?

  Definitely not pleased, they could’ve done so much better. A lot of people think Japan is a utopia, but it’s just like any other country. Perhaps that’s why everyone expected better.

  Even at Level 3, some people are still doing sampling and come to the lab every day, hold meetings (not online), and conduct experiments. I was shocked at how there is no sense of urgency not just by the government, but by the citizens as well. It took Sendai to Level 4 (out of 5) to realize that this pandemic is not to be treated lightly.

  Any other stories you’d like to tell?

  I had to be quarantined for more than a month because I was in a certain area. When I’m finally no longer under supervision, I was able to check out the cherry blossoms around my quiet neighborhood and go downtown to finally grab some McDonald’s that I’d been craving. McDonald’s is good enough for me to survive …

  Unlike Tokyo or any other countries like Indonesia, there aren’t that many delivery services like UberEats in Sendai. The Konbini is my life savior, it is my best friend.

    Thank you to both Matthew and Taka for talking to us and sharing their stories in this troubling time. You can find Matthew’s work at OtakuVS, and find Taka on Twitter at @takasakinozomi, where she talks a lot about Liz and the Blue Bird.

  If you or someone who know is living in Japan, coronavirus-based English resources are available at NHK World Japan. 

    Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs the YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram. 

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[vsuvo768523]

Want To Spend More Time On Your Writing And Tired Of Doing It All? A Virtual Assistant Can Help

But I hit a wall about 18 months ago, and I definitely needed some help, so I started looking for a virtual assistant to help me. I had a few varied experiences and learned some lessons, and then Alexandra Amor reached out to me with some brilliant suggestions for how she could help. Alexandra is a children's author, but she is also a fantastic virtual assistant for me and a number of other authors. I trust her to help me with key tasks in my author business, and she even suggests things that I may not have thought of. Alexandra AmorSave Alexandra Amor Today, Alexandra explains how a VA can help authors. Joanna has previously talked about the advantages for authors of having a Virtual Assistant (VA), most recently in her podcast episode with Chris Ducker. I've been Joanna's VA for almost a year, so I asked her if I could chime in and address some common concerns I hear from authors about working with a VA. For those who aren't aware, VAs are independent contractors, like editors and graphic designers, who provide support from their home offices using online tools. The rise of the internet in the 1990s made this type of career possible, and it has only become easier in the ensuing decades for VAs to share information and support their clients remotely. VAs sometimes specialize in working with a certain niche of clients (e.g., Life Coaches or Real Estate Agents) but many are generally skilled and can work with almost any type of business. VAs are always responsible for the infrastructure they use to do their work (i.e., computer, basic software programs like Word and Excel, internet connection etc.) and they almost always work for more than one client at a time, just as editors and graphic designers do. You may not have reached the tipping point yet where you feel you need some virtual support. But I certainly hope that one day your books will be so successful that you will! Whether your need is current, or if you're envisioning what your business will look like when you're a wildly successful author, let's jump in and see if I can alleviate some of your concerns and questions about hiring this type of support. Author Concern #1: I can't afford a VA Joanna often says that she prefers the term ‘indie author' as opposed to ‘self-published author' because authors don't actually work in isolation. It's a team effort to get your books published, involving cover designers, editors and more. Working with a VA is a perfect example of this. At some point in your author business, it's not going to be possible, or advantageous, for you to do absolutely everything yourself. But unlike hiring a full-time, or part-time, employee, you can hire a VA for very specific tasks, within a specific budget that you set. A VA will work as few or as many hours as you need her to. It's an economical solution for many solopreneurs, including authors. Before you start looking for a VA, I recommend you have a clear idea about what your budget is. You will find it easier to set your budget if you know what it is you want your VA to do for you. (Below I cover how to figure both these things out.) While we're talking about your budget, let's talk about rates for virtual help. (Keep in mind that you always get what you pay for.) You'll pay from US$10 to $15/hour for general administrative or transcription help, for someone who is probably based in India or the Philippines. If you want someone experienced and technologically skilled, who has an entrepreneurial mindset themselves, and who is genuinely interested in your success, you'll pay between US$30 and $60/hour. The belief that you have to do it all, all by yourself, is not true. And it's equally untrue that you'll need to invest thousands of dollars a month into getting some help. It's not an either-or proposition. (I also think there's much to be said for the mental clutter that is cleaned up when you've got someone helping you, even if it's for one hour a week. By delegating some tasks, your brain is freed up to focus on your creativity.) Author Concern #2: It's simpler to do these things myself Delegating is tough. I get it. Your author business is precious to you and it is difficult to imagine anyone else doing things as quickly, easily and with as much care as you do them. However, as an independent author you also know that there are advantages to not being an expert at everything. You have probably recognized that you don't need to be a book cover designer, a copyeditor, or a bookkeeper in order to write and sell great books. You can outsource those specific tasks to others who are skilled in these areas. However, even knowing this, a hurdle that authors often face when hiring a VA is this; initially, it can take longer to explain how you want something done than to just do it yourself. So the danger is remaining stuck in a form of superhero syndrome and continuing to try to do everything yourself. Deal with this concern by thinking about your long-term strategy. You probably want to build a business that will support you for years to come. Invest some time in showing your new VA how you like things done and from then on you won't have to even think about that task. Also, consider that even though the VA you hire may be very skilled, she still needs to figure out the way you want things done. At the beginning of the working relationship, a little patience will be required, but it will be rewarded. Author Concern #3: What exactly should I get a VA to do for me? It's possible you feel overwhelmed with the number of tasks involved in running your author business. It's a slippery slope where you can find that you are spending far too much time administering and not enough time writing. And yet, that overwhelm can lead to paralysis when it comes to figuring out what to delegate. Here's my favorite tip for tackling this: For one week, keep a piece of paper on your desk in plain sight and within easy reach (or use your favorite electronic tool for making lists). Every time you find yourself doing something you either a) don't like doing and/or consistently avoid or b) know doesn't need your direct involvement, write it down. (Most people who do this exercise find that at the end of the week the list is far longer than they expected.) At the end of the week, take a look at your list. Do you notice any patterns? Are the tasks mostly focused in one or two areas? (e.g., social media or behind-the-scenes technical jobs.) Or are they general administrative type chores? Armed with this information, you can now specifically look for virtual help in the area of your greatest need. Now you know both what you need help with and what kind of skills you need in the person who's going to be helping you. (Not all VAs are created equal, so giving some thought to what kind of support you need before you go searching for help is important.) If you're still struggling with the idea of what a VA can do for you, here are some specific examples from my own practice: – Formatting HTML newsletters – Formatting books for Smashwords – Research about the business side of being an author (e.g., how Street Teams work, how to market a book in a foreign language, podcasts that might be a good fit to have you as a guest, etc.) – Scouting for bloggers to send book review requests to – Pitching to those bloggers and tracking responses – Formatting (and perhaps light editing) of blog posts, or organizing content – Managing your Street Team Facebook group (posing questions to keep the group engaged, answering questions, sharing upcoming news, etc.) – Creating box sets in Scrivener from individual novels – Moving works translated into a foreign language from Word into Scrivener – Scheduling tweets and Facebook posts (ones that don't require your direct input or engagement with your audience) – Transcribing audio interviews or notes – For non-fiction authors, VAs can do an enormous number of tasks around webinars or other training you offer (e.g., planning and booking the event, scheduling guests, managing registration lists, dealing with the back-end technology, creating and proofing slide decks, sending out advance information packages to the trainees, and then sending out follow-up information to the trainees, etc.) Author Concern #4: How do I find a Virtual Assistant? As with hiring any freelancer, personal recommendations are usually the best place to start. Does anyone in your author circles have a VA they can recommend? Can you put a shout out on KBoards asking for recommendations? There are several Virtual Assistant organizations, usually based on the country where the VAs are located. Do a Google search for “Virtual Assistant ” and you'll find these organizations. Once you're there, you can then do a search by the specific skill(s) you're looking for and the site will offer a list of names, usually with links to the VAs' individual websites. When you've got a few names that look promising, be sure to interview several potential candidates so that you can get a sense of both the skills they have on offer and how their personality is going to fit with yours. Your working relationship with the VA will hopefully be long-term so you want to make sure it's the right fit. Bonus Tip #1: Start Small I always recommend to authors that they begin to work with a VA by agreeing to a couple of smaller tasks or projects and then building from there. Rushing in and assigning too much, too fast, usually leads to conflict and fractures in the relationship. Starting small achieves two really important things; it begins to build trust, and it creates a testing ground to ensure the two of you are a good fit. Ideally as the first few small projects begin and end, you'll start to trust that your VA knows what they're doing and can follow instructions and complete the project at the agreed time and in a way that makes you happy. As well, your VA will begin to learn how you work and what matters to you. It's just as important that you are a good fit for your VA, as she is with you. Bonus Tip #2: Communication is Key In her interview with Chris Ducker, Joanna mentions that she and I share several documents on Google Drive so that we're both always aware of what's going on and what our expectations are. You can keep a shared spreadsheet to track your VA's billable hours, so you always know exactly where you are in terms of your budget. Another great idea is to keep a document with the list of projects the VA is working on, in priority order, so that things don't get forgotten about and so that you both know what your VA is supposed to be working on at any given time. Meeting regularly on the telephone or Skype/FaceTime keeps the communication flowing and also helps to grow your relationship. I welcome you to check out my premnium product's shop, where you will get all premium virtual products at the lowest rate. 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