#six is certainly sufficient options right

[fincrew]

The Six Most Expensive Countries For Car Ownership

Buying a car is a costly endeavor, which explains why many people complain about the cost. Desired vehicles, in particular, are often quite expensive. The uncertain economic climate exacerbates the problem we're in right now. In Malaysia, motoring is not for the faint of heart - especially if you're into brand new cars. The further problem is that the country imposes some of the highest road taxes on automobiles globally. Recent car sales and parts sales for motor vehicles contribute the most to collecting import and excise duties. Then again, is Malaysia the most expensive country for buying and operating a car? Continue reading to find out.

Most Expensive Countries To Own a Car

Cuba There have been many positive changes in Cuba, at least on paper. Before 2011, it was nearly impossible to buy or sell. The island has been opened up to car manufacturers due to a tentative deregulation plan. Many popular brands and cars are available today, making it theoretically possible to buy and own one. Cuba has, unfortunately, remained an expensive country for automobile ownership. The second-hand market remains unaffected by the liberation, so many drivers cannot afford to buy used cars. The high cost of most cars is due to centralized price-setting and various taxes. Kitts and Nevis No doubt that this is a beautiful paradise on earth. As far as cars are concerned, St. Kitts and Nevis are more like a private hell. The costs of taxes are staggeringly high, making buying a car here one of the most expensive options. Perhaps only one positive aspect of this situation is that the island is tiny. Motorbikes and bicycles may be sufficient for your purposes. Brazil Car prices are ridiculously high in Brazil because of high taxes, high labor costs, and limited raw material supplies. You might end up doing some window shopping for a Brazilian-made car, like a locally manufactured Volkswagen. Many people consider importing cars because the available selection is poor. However, importing a vehicle can result in you being charged up to 100 percent of its value! There is also a lot of paperwork needed with autos, and fuel is heavily taxed! North Korea It is unlikely that many will or plan to buy a car in North Korea, but we would certainly have our hands full if we did. It may be possible for some government officials to get their hands on a Merc-copied Pyongyang 4.10, but others may not be so lucky. The purchasers of older Russian Volgas might find themselves dismayed to discover that their parts have not been imported in more than 20 years. You may want to take precautions if you own an automobile made outside of the country. Kim Jong Il reportedly got stuck behind a Japanese car in a traffic jam and ordered all Japanese vehicles to be confiscated at the time. Malaysia In Malaysia, car import policies protect home-grown automakers, particularly Proton. It is considered luxurious to drive a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord in this country. Malaysia has a unique situation when it comes to car prices. Here, even the most standard models sell at luxury car prices, making Malaysia the second most expensive country for car buyers. Even the least affluent Malaysians can afford to drive a Proton, which is not prohibitively expensive to own. Singapore Almost everyone knows that Singapore leads the list of the most expensive countries to buy a car. The truth is: Only 15% of Singaporeans can afford a car. Some car prices here are insane, such as the $135,988.00 Toyota Corolla, almost identical to the price of a new Scion FR-S. Even a Volkswagen Golf costs around $90,000 here. Those vehicles sell for about a third of that price in the UK. Cars in Singapore are so expensive because of their small size and dense population. Several measures have been set by the government of Singapore to regulate car ownership and use due to fears that there will be traffic jams if there are too many vehicles. The Land Transport Department also imposes a Certificate of Entitlement (COE), quotas for transport, road taxes, and electronic road charges, in addition to mandatory registration of vehicles. Despite Singapore's expensive car ownership, the country's public transportation system is among the world's best. The bottom line is that car ownership isn't always necessary, even for high-ranking executives. Read the full article

[sight-care-reviews-buy]

Sight Care Reviews 2023-24- Buy online! What Reviews from user?

Sight Care objectives human beings of all ages and genders who're concerned about their visible impairment. The creators of SightCare assert that their method is powerful sufficient to get rid of the need for steeply-priced eye operations, allowing human beings to certainly enhance their eyesight.

Vision is a important thing of life. Unfortunately, as people age, their eyesight deteriorates, diminishing their great of life. Consequently, most people of people actively searching for out effective and strong eye remedies. Instead of determining the actual cause of vision loss, many ophthalmologists prescribe eyeglasses or advise surgical procedure. Not handiest are they prohibitively high-priced, putting them out of the reach of the wonderful majority of human beings, but a lot of them also have intense destructive effects. The natural supplement Sight Care proves powerful in this regard.

Targeting the underlying purpose of imaginative and prescient loss, SightCare is a a hundred percentage herbal, scientifically tested treatment that recovers eyesight in even the most difficult instances. Sight Care promises to preserve 20/20 imaginative and prescient with out injections, surgical procedure, or synthetic chemical substances by using using a blend of natural ingredients. Sight Care aids in the maintenance of eye health, letting them operate usually into old age.

About Eye Care

Vision progressively declines with growing old in people. This is an difficulty that Sight Care claims to relieve through supporting the aged in preserving wholesome eyes. Sight Care goals human beings of all ages and genders who are concerned approximately their visual impairment. The creators of SightCare assert that their formulation is powerful enough to eliminate the want for highly-priced eye operations, permitting human beings to naturally enhance their eyesight.

By taking  Sight Care capsules each day, one may also offer the frame with lutein, astaxanthin, and other minerals vital for wholesome eyesight. Its natural components supports healthy imaginative and prescient, raises electricity stages, and revitalizes one's life. Additionally, it safeguards the eyes against free radicals and oxidative stress.

The additives of Sight Care are useful to eye and mind health. The accuracy of the substances, doses, and concentrations indicated on the label of Sight Care has been tested by an unbiased company.

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Every bottle of SightCare contains thirty drugs. One pill equals one serving. Start with a modest dose and gradually enhance it until the top of the line amount is obtained. The formulation of Sight Care is fast-appearing. Due to protection issues, customers need to not exceed the advocated 24-hour dose. For most appropriate blessings, it is cautioned to take the complement every day.

Even a prescription isn't required to get Vision Care capsules. In addition, no known negative effects are related with SightCare. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding must not take Sight Care. If a person has a scientific circumstance or is already on medicine, they ought to usually see a health practitioner earlier than taking a supplement.

The organisation takes exceptional satisfaction in its merchandise and ensures patron happiness in each transaction. A six-month return coverage is blanketed with Sight Care. This approach that if customers do now not obtain the promised outcomes or exchange their minds for any cause over the following six months, they may contact Sight Care's customer service group via telephone or e-mail and get hold of a full refund right away.

Vision Rehabilitation

Sight Care expedites the restoration of eyesight with out requiring luxurious dietary supplements, procedures, or other options. It safeguards the eyes via purifying and rejuvenating the optical device, strengthening the iris and retina, treating the cornea, and retaining the overall health of the visible machine.

Sight Care protects the eyes from UV radiation at the same time as retaining the clarity of vision. Sight Care protects the eyes from potentially dangerous environmental pollutants and complements eye fitness on the microcellular degree. The specific formula of Sight Care promotes liver health, which facilitates digestion and eye health.

According to its designers, it has enabled a number of humans within the United States to obtain crystal-clear vision speedy and economically. According to the company, constant use of the treatment for a minimum of  to 3 months is needed for long-term consequences.

[marketingkingchristopher]

Unlocking Freedom: 6 Valuable Tips For Independent Living With A Disability

Living with a disability can present unique challenges, but it should never hinder one's ability to live a fulfilling and independent life.

With the right mindset, resources, and support, individuals with disabilities can unlock the freedom to lead self-sufficient lives.

In this article, we will explore six valuable tips for independent living with a disability, empowering individuals to overcome obstacles and embrace a life of autonomy.

Embrace Assistive Technology:

Technology has brought about a transformative revolution in the way individuals with disabilities navigate their way through the world. Embracing these tools can significantly enhance independence.

For example, individuals with mobility impairments can benefit from motorized wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs, while those with speech impairments can utilize speech recognition software or alternative communication devices.

Embracing assistive technology empowers individuals to perform tasks and engage in activities that might otherwise be challenging.

Build A Strong Support Network:

No one should face the challenges of independent living alone, especially individuals with disabilities.

Surround yourself with people who understand your needs, offer encouragement, and aid when required. This network can include friends, family members, support groups, or professionals who specialize in disability services.

They can provide emotional support, practical advice, and help navigate the complexities of daily life.

Adapt Your Living Space:

Creating an accessible living space is essential for independent living. Evaluate your home and make necessary modifications to accommodate your unique needs.

This might involve installing ramps or lifts for wheelchair accessibility, adjusting countertop heights, or adding grab bars in the bathroom. Removing physical barriers within your living space empowers you to move freely and safely, promoting independence and confidence.

Prioritize Self-Care And Health:

Maintaining good physical and mental health is vital for independent living. Focus on self-care by adopting healthy lifestyle habits.

This includes regular exercise, a balanced diet, sufficient rest, and stress management techniques.

Additionally, make sure to attend medical appointments and follow prescribed treatments or therapies. Prioritizing self-care and health ensure that you are in the best possible condition to tackle daily tasks and pursue your goals.

Advocate For Yourself:

Self-advocacy is a powerful tool for independent living. It involves speaking up for your needs, rights, and preferences.

Take an active role in decision-making processes, whether it's related to employment, education, healthcare, or social activities.

Clearly communicate your requirements and work with others to find reasonable accommodations. By advocating for yourself, you can break down barriers, challenge stereotypes, and pave the way for a more inclusive society.

Access Community Resources:

There is a vast array of community resources available to support individuals with disabilities. Take advantage of these services to enhance your independence. Local disability organizations can provide valuable information, training, and support.

They can assist with employment opportunities, educational resources, accessible transportation, and social programs.

Additionally, government agencies and non-profit organizations often offer financial aid or grants to help cover the costs of assistive devices or home modifications. Research and tap into these resources to expand your options and improve your quality of life.

Living independently with a disability is not without its challenges, but it is certainly achievable. By embracing assistive technology, building a strong support network, adapting your living space, prioritizing self-care, advocating for yourself, and accessing community resources, you can unlock the freedom to live life on your own terms.

Remember, your disability does not define you, and with determination and the right strategies, you can overcome obstacles and lead a fulfilling, independent life.

Are you seeking further information on this topic? Connect with one of Australia's premier providers of disability support, services, and daily living assistance for comprehensive insights and assistance.

[raeliyah]

Exalted Secret Santa 2018

First, snippet -- with full descriptions, reference pictures, and links under the cut. Anon-asks should be enabled so feel free to ask me anything if you need more info!

If none of these guys strike your fancy, I also have the rest of my exalted characters, with reference images and descriptions, here:

https://refsheet.net/redkite7

Caleb “Wraithshot” Raith Dawn Caste Solar Exalt of the South, longrider lawman, Righteous Devil gunslinger, Badlands Gentleman with a heart of battered gold, giant flirt

Qismet ibn al-Nusar, The Veiled Eagle Night Caste Solar Exalt of the west, self-appointed judge and executioner of corrupt supernaturals, leader of the Brotherhood of the Righteous Death, terse and broody

Zaela Tokari, Queen of Adrelith, of the Meridian Isles Zenith Caste Solar Exalt of the East, friend of Dragon Kings, precious cinnamon roll, youngest daughter, too young to be queen, too young to be Exalted, mousy and self-effacing but will stand up to everything from Deathlords to Elder Lunars in defense of her friends (no art yet)

Caleb “Wraithshot” Raith

Dawn Caste Solar Exalt

Caleb’s Pinterest Inspiration Board

Caleb’s easy. Think of every western trope and smash them all together. He’s a cowboy bounty hunter; a self-proclaimed lawman in a land where there is no law, riding circuit on a handful of towns in the South he considers his and protecting them from whatever evils lurk in the desert.

Physical Description

Caleb stands at 5′11″ and is on the leaner side at ~185 lbs. He’s fit, like a brawler (been in significantly more than his fair share of bar fights) or a ranch hand - someone who works at hard physical labor most days.

Caleb looks like he’s in his early 30s

Being the son of Northern immigrants, Caleb’s complexion is mostly pale, a reddish-burned tan anywhere the sun would shine - arms to the elbows, back of the neck, face mostly.

He’s also freckly across his face, shoulders and upper back, mostly from sun.

His eyes are clear honey-colored brown, more gold towards the pupil from the influence of exaltation.

Hair is black at the roots, growing out into sun-streaked brownish blond. He usually keeps it cut pretty short but if it goes too long without a trim it gets curlier. He likes a clean-shaven face but given his lifestyle he’s pretty much always got a day or three of scruff.

Caleb… basically looks like Chris Pratt.

He’s always got a smile of some stripe - warm, mischievous, leering, insincerely-wide - something.

He’s also very mouthy, and usually has something to chew on, whether it’s a piece of straw, a match, a toothpick, a cigarette (50% chance of it actually being lit), a twig - something. He’s never met a lollipop or chewing gum but he would love them.

Scars, see reference image: He's got a fair few that have never healed all the way. Added to that a nose which was broken in some bar brawl and never healed straight.

Left arm, from wrist to elbow: long nearly parallel white lines.

The remnants of pressure cuts through his right eyebrow, right side of his lips, and the left side of his chin, leaving gaps in the scruff. 

A bullet-scar just above and to the left of his navel. 

The remains of various slashes and stabs decorate his ribs. Most of these fade to nothing quickly, but he’s in fights often enough there’s always something.

The upper portion of his back is a mess of scars look like they were left from him getting dragged quicklike backwards over rock (because he was). A stylized rattlesnake tattoo on his right shoulderblade is only half-seen through the scars. 

Caleb dresses in layers - shirt sleeves, a vest/waistcoat, and either a faded blue or red serape tossed over his shoulders or a brown longcoat. Pants are either canvas or faded denim, and boots are less cowboy-style and more combat- or motorcycle style with a heel for riding. He does wear spurs, but they’re blunted. He’s usually covered in trail dust and sweat, sometimes blood, despite efforts at cleanliness. Feel free to embellish the standard Cowboy gear with arabesque/middle eastern ornamentation, because it is Exalted…

He always carries two modified flame pieces (six-shooters… he’s got six-shooters) on his hips, and the belt’s buckle is large and obnoxious, mostly because he keeps a couple extra rounds of ammunition within it. He also has an artifact rifle (based on a Winchester M1873; lever action, but otherwise unspecified) named Medicine Man that is either slung across his back or is in a sheath on his horse’s saddle. He makes his own ammo for all his weapons. He is a student of Righteous Devil Style, having mastered up to the form charms, but his sifu disappeared and he’s not found another, nor is he skilled enough to pick it up without tutelage.

He does own chaps but whether or not he wears them on any given day depends on how hot it is and how much hard riding he’s anticipating. He has a hat he’s rather fond of, but it’s not anything truly special.

There may or may not be a bandana around his neck/on his person at any given moment, and he often wears a chip of blue crystal with an antelope petroglyph etched on it around his neck on a leather cord. It’s a token from his friend, a springs goddess named Rivela, and a reminder of a partner he lost.

He rides a buckskin warhorse named Dirt who he pretends not to be particularly attached to, but in fact he really really is. Dirt is his horse. Dirt adores him and is always trying to steal his hat. Dirt will also steal anyone else’s hat nearby, but he prefers Caleb’s.

Anima: Caleb’s anima banner is a hailstorm of bright burning metal, like large forge sparks, raining down on him and even appear to bounce off his skin and clothing. Golden smoke and flame rise from the ground at his feet wherever the sparks fall.

Full Description including Personality, History, Art, and links to Fic and Character Playlist Here.

Qismet ibn al-Nusar

Night Caste Solar Exalt Revenge-driven assassin, self-appointed judge jury and executioner of supernaturals who prey on innocents. Leader of a band of mortal assassins with the same motives.

Qismet's Pinterest Inspiration Board

Qismet's Character Playlist

Physical Description:

Qismet is shorter than average at 5'9" built lean and tough like an acrobat at around 150 lbs

he’s kinda touchy about his height

Qismet looks to be in his mid-to-late twenties.

He's darker complexioned, bronzed from a lot of time under the Western Sun

Examples: (Oded Fehr)(Cristian Codrin)(Avraham Aviv Alush)(Francisco Randez-also his face inspiration)

His hair is so dark brown it might as well be black, cut close but still has a bit of a wave to it.

Style example:(One)(Two)* Eyes are the same: so dark brown they might as well be black. Tend to go lighter, almost honey-colored, when he's channeling essence.

Qismet has fairly narrow features, a generous mouth with cupid's bow lips (see reference images) and a crooked nose, somewhat overlong. He would look great if he smiled but he hardly ever does. Eternal Brooding Face

Face Inspiration: Francisco Randez (One)(Two)(Three)(Four)

He has a thin blade scar vertically through his lips on the right side

Tattoos: One, on his right shoulder, the symbol of his assassin's order. Two, on his left bicep: a greenish kraken crossed out by two black swords (indicative of his vendetta against the Lintha).

Clothes and Accessories:

Qismet has two distinct "modes" -- his working guise, as The Veiled Eagle, equal parts vigilante super hero and feared villain, depending on who's looking, and his regular everyday self. The Veiled Eagle's identity is an open secret on his home island but if he's not in 'costume' the folk there know not to bother him as anything more than Qismet.

The Veiled Eagle:

As the Eagle, Qismet wears long open vests and tunics and leather armor (cuirass, pauldrons, greaves) in shades of charcoal to dove gray, with a hood and mask over his face, leaving only his eyes exposed, though the skin around them is usually darkened with greasepaint and charcoal. This outfit is patterned roughly after the Assassin's Creed styles. (Inspiration Images: (Mayan Armor)(Original AC Outfit)).

There is a single splash of blood red among the grays as a sash: normally wound around his waist or crossed from hip to shoulder.

Weaponry:

As the Eagle, Qismet also carries a lot of weapons. Most notable are his two artifact Moonsilver Bracers, the Eagle's Sheathed Talons. These artifacts are made of black siaka leather and covered with moonsilver filigreed plates making the shape of a mantling eagle. They extrude a long knife in combat and also serve as armor for his arms (they're basically Hidden Blades with Exalted flair).

He also wields the paired soul-steel short Daiklaves, Anguish and Agony (see reference image in refsheet.net gallery). He struck a deal with the spirits within when he took them from their former owner. They spend a night and a day of peace within a consecrated temple on the nights of moon dark every month, and in return he will never be chained by sorcery or necromancy until his Task is complete. If he fails to give them peace, they'll turn against him.

As Qismet:

When he's not 'working', Qismet tends towards sleeveless cross-front tunics and vests, loose-cut trousers and short fitted boots, thin-soled for good climbing. He still wears the red sash around his waist, knotted on one side, and always has the artifact bracers.

He tends towards cool, de-saturated colors (because they're cheap), but isn't picky: if it's free of obvious dirt and won't get in his way, he'll wear it. His lieutenant/lover Samira has been slowly stocking his wardrobe with nicer things since ostensibly he's an important figure in their region of the west and should occasionally look it. Really, have fun with clothing design.

He very occasionally wears a shark-tooth pendant, but he's not big on jewelry or adornment in general.

Anima:

A ghost-white and violet sea-eagle, whose head obscures Qismet’s face and whose movements echo the Solar’s. 

Further Reading:

The Eagle and the Marionettist

Infectious - Drabble, features several characters

Silver Sun Era - Storium Game

A History of the Brotherhood of the Righteous Death

Zaela Tokari, Solar Queen

Zenith Caste Solar Exalted - Mousy former-Princess given Divine Power - Too Precious for this world - Too young to be Queen and feels it 

Zaela’s Pinterest Board

Physical Description

Slim and willowy at 5′4″ish and 120lbs-ish - built like a dancer or musician

Medium-brown hair at the roots and lower layers, bleached gold by sun (and anima) light, with those instagram beach-style waves. Comes down to about her shoulderblades

Turquoise eyes, that fade to nearly white when she channels essence

Heart-shaped face with expressive eyes

Her complexion is tan with a bit of a copper tone to it

She exalted at 17 and still looks it

Zaela wears draping gowns in vaguely greek or ancient egyptian-esque fashion, in cool greens and blues and golds and white, accented with delicate jewelry wrought from gold and gems and flowers (natural or artificial). They are usually of light materials, silk,mist linen, and brushed cotton, suited for her jungle island kingdom. 

She usually wears her hair in multiple loose braids, or half-up and adorned with tropical flowers (or whatever’s in season, if she’s travelling far from her home Isle). Nothing in her appearance would mark her as anything other than the favored daughter of a well-off family, but she does on occasion wear the orichalcum, white, and green jade lotus crown of her kingdom. It’s a little too ostentatious for her tastes. 

Anima:

A flock of tropical birds, in jewel tones limned with gold, who spiral and swirl around her. 

Fun Fact:

The ghost of her former shardholder, Prismatic Lotus, used to reside in their royal family chapel, trapped there during the Usurpation. Lotus fled to safe harbor within Zaela when the chapel was attacked and Zaela exalted--she now carries the spirit of her ancestress with her. Lotus acts as mentor, guide, sometime-posessor and obnoxious First Age brat in turn. But mostly she is helpful. 

tagging @shiftingpath for secret santa organizational purposes -- thank you for all the work you put in to this every year; I very much appreciate it! and you!  I will probably be editing this to make sure all the links are working properly and everything’s formatted correctly so apologies in advance

[squireofgeekdom]

im watching more tos because it is my right to be weird and feral about star trek and occasionally i run across things that’s like ‘gosh, was this just nice serendipity or were the folks writing on discovery and snw looking back at spock in these episodes and thinking about the fact that he’d served with pike for eleven years four months and five days and pike earned spock’s noted intense loyalty to him and how therefore who he is as an officer is shaped by that service’ 

like, obviously, the menagerie is an intentional call forward, but there are things that could just be serendipity that i really appreciate

i just watched the Galileo Seven and a) im gonna fight everyone who is mean to Spock and b) there are two things that Spock does that either he says are illogical or others frame as something illogical / emotional / human. (both of them make perfect sense but) 

He and the six officers he’s in command of are crash landed and stranded on a planet with large men in hairy sasquatch outfits who are of course meant to be aliens. One of the aliens has killed one of the officers, and the rest of the shuttle crew are insisting that they should go and kill the alien to get the aliens to leave them alone. Spock says this is logical, but he cannot move forward with such disregard for life, and oh man. It’s certainly a Vulcan value but contextually that is also so so very Pike, to have this unknown quantity that’s attacked you and to still say, no, we give them a chance, we don’t just go an eye for an eye and kill in return even if that might be strategic. So he gives orders to only use warning shots to scare them off, ‘fear will be sufficient for our purposes’.

(Then of course when the aliens do come back and attack again spock is like ‘that’s illogical, they should have recognized our superior weaponry and stayed away’ and everyone else is like ‘well this could have been prEdiCteD by anyone with fEeEEeeLIngs they got Angry and came back to attack us’ and like im sorry would they not have gotten ANGRIER if you had killed one of them. were you emotional lot not the ones arguing for the killing. hmm. you’re just going to get mad at spock for not being your narrow definition of sufficiently human no matter what he does aren’t you. fuckers.)

The second thing is when they finally manage to get the shuttle back up in orbit, but they don’t have enough power to stay in orbit long. Their comms are still not working, and after they’re in orbit there’s no indication that the Enterprise has seen them, so spock ejects a portion of their fuel and ignites it as a signal flare, to the anger of everyone else in the shuttle. which. which. guys.

ejecting bits of much needed fuel when a shuttle is in an emergency situation is what pike does in the time rift (to the anger of the other person in the shuttle) - an old test pilot trick, the kind of trick pike would feasibly have talked about. 

guys. he got it from pike. guys.

(and it makes perfect sense as a move when you’re out of options! everyone is like ‘that’s a human emotional move and you won’t admit it and we’re all going to laugh at you’ and i’d fight them just for laughing at him but also They’re Wrong.) 

Just. it just. they’ve done what seems to me to be so far a really good job, down to little maybe-just-serendipitous details, of building out pike as a character in discovery and snw where it makes sense that he was the officer spock served with for eleven years four months and five days. and im emotional about it.

[uwingdispatch]

Moments of Peace

Moments of Peace

Notes:

Bodhi Rook/Reader, everyone lives au, post-rebellion, hurt/comfort, chronically ill/disabled reader, fluff

TW: chronic illness, chronic anxiety/PTSD, chronic pain/unnamed physical disability or health issue

Ao3 Link

★★★★★★★★

Temporary housing for rebels who chose to relocate to Chandrila was…sufficient. There were no luxuries in this old apartment building, and it had certainly seen better days, but at least it was the first floor—a request that had been granted by the higher-ups after explaining your chronic pain condition and the turbolifts that seemed to be constantly undergoing maintenance.

But, in its own way, just the certainty of having a home was a luxury after so many years moving from base to base, running from the Empire. You had running water—hot water—every single day, at all hours. Electricity was never on the fritz. Nobody was at each other’s throats about whose turn it was to use the poor gonk droid (who likely wanted to be left alone for just a few minutes). That specific gonk droid had fortunately gone into the care of Chirrut who, along with Baze, had been assigned to a building across town.

After living in such close quarters during your years with the rebellion, sometimes it felt like your rebel family had been split and scattered. You had to remind yourself that being in the same city, on the same planet as those you cared about—and alive at that—was a blessing. You were all looking for more permanent situations, had choices to make about what would come next. And Chandrila had a lot of its own adjusting to do as well.

But it would have been nice to at least have been assigned to the same building as Bodhi. Finally free from the chaos of war, you’d hoped this might leave more time for intimacy. Your relationship had blossomed under the most dire of circumstances, and you often worried that as things quieted…well, you’d already seen some rough breakups among your peers. Some relationships that prosper in chaos just can’t survive peace. 

Which is why when Bodhi came by tonight and told you he wanted a fresh start, you panicked.

“No, love,” he said, “stars, I can be horrible with words. That’s not what I meant.”

You were both sitting on a thrifted sofa in the sunny living room of your tiny apartment. A tooka-cat that had been following you around since you’d arrived on Chandrila six months ago had his head in your lap. He’d adopted you, lived indoors now. You clung to his soft body as he purred—he seemed aware of your rapid heart rate.

“I’m so confused right now,” you told him. “Did you meet someone? What—”

“Not at all,” Bodhi said. “I want a fresh start for us. I’ve never even taken you on a proper date. The only caf we’ve ever had together is that instant rubbish they had on base, or in the back of my U-Wing. Have we ever even sat down in a caf bar?”

Admittedly, you’d both been incredibly busy since coming to Chandrila. While your body had never allowed you to be in combat, the New Republic was now flying relief missions which you sometimes were able to join. You’d heard many times from many rebels that making and repairing flight suits was as essential to the Rebellion as flying X-wings. But it had felt good to be able to go with Bodhi and Pao to distribute rations, first aid gear, and other necessities to worlds that needed aid. It was only now that things were finally starting to slow down enough that you were looking for work in town while Bodhi and Pao had just yesterday signed a lease on a space for their future droid repair shop.

As you began to relax your shoulders, the tooka jumped from your lap and left for the kitchen where you could hear him crunching kibble.

“A caf bar?” you ask. “No, I don’t think so. Not together.”

“Shouldn’t we?” he asked, reaching out to take your hand. He rubbed his calloused thumb delicately back and forth over your hand. “I don’t think I would even know what to order for you if we had all those options. You know, for the real stuff. Different milks and sweeteners…all the flavors you can add…”

Bodhi shivered, a nervous tic you’d come to recognize over your years with him��first as a friend, and then as something more—a lover, a partner. He ran his other hand through his dark hair, and it fell forward again, brushing his shoulders.

“I want us to have all the things we should have had,” he said. “I want us to have those special firsts that we would have had if we hadn’t been fighting a war when we met.”

“Oh,” you said, your breath coming back to you. “I thought for a minute you were breaking up with me.”

“I could never,” Bodhi said, sliding closer to you. “You are my home.”

He wrapped his arms around you and you buried your face in his neck, taking deep breaths. He smelled of citrus and leather, of the clean cotton t-shirt he was wearing.

You lifted your head just enough to touch your nose to Bodhi’s, to tell him, “And you’re mine.”

He kissed you then, his plush lips meeting yours in a much-needed moment of relief. When you took his face in your hands it was with your heart fully open, the ache in your chest dissipating as you deepened the kiss.

Between kisses, Bodhi breathed, “Stars, I love you” into your ear and when you told him you loved him, too he smiled that wide-mouthed smile of his and brushed his thumb over your lower lip before planting another kiss there.

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m picking you up tomorrow at seven. There’s a new restaurant I think you’d like. It opened just a few weeks ago. I can’t wait to take you.”

You snuggled close to him then, laying your head on his chest, running a hand down his shoulder and over his bicep, slipping your fingers just slightly under his t-shirt sleeve. You were about to say, “It’s a date” when there was a string of clicks and beeps as the door to your apartment slid open. You tensed for a split second before you realized it was just Red, the ball droid the New Republic had issued Bodhi when the dust had finally started to settle. So many of these droids had been issued to those injured in combat, and they were loyal almost to a fault. Red, being who he was, had quickly taken it upon himself to watch out for you, too.

The little droid came in towing a small cart, and in the cart was a canvas tote. Red chirped something that roughly translated to, “It was ready when I got there. I have it now.”

“Bring it here, mate,” Bodhi said. “Let’s see if it fits.”

“I was wondering where the little guy was,” you said. “What’s going on?”

Red disconnected from his cart and brought Bodhi the tote. “This,” Bodhi said, pulling something from the bag, “is something for you to wear tomorrow.”

He unfolded what he was holding to reveal a beautiful leather jacket. It looked locally made—you’d only seen this type of leather since coming to Chandrila. And seeing it up close, you realized it was custom-made.

“A bike jacket,” you said. “This is so…Bodhi you shouldn’t have.”

“Try it on, love. Whether I should have or not, it’s yours. I want you to have this.”

As he helped you put it on you couldn’t believe that a short time earlier you thought all this might be about to end. But in truth, it was a new beginning. The jacket fit like a warm hug.

“Stars, it’s perfect,” Bodhi said. “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll wear it tomorrow.”

“Of course I will,” you said, trying to think of something to wear with it. This jacket was now probably the nicest thing you had ever worn.

Bodhi cupped your face with one hand while winding his arm around your back, pulling you towards him again. When he pressed a kiss to your forehead, he said, “I finally fixed one of those old speeder bikes Pao and I found. It runs like a dream. But my dream, love? I want you riding it with me.”

“It’s safe?” you asked.

“Passed inspection, all the tags are up to date, it’s registered and ready to go.”

Red beeped in agreement from the kitchen where he was likely checking on his potted plants. The collection had begun to overflow from Bodhi’s place to yours—but they were good for both of you, and you always slipped the droid a few credits when you could to encourage his little hobby.

“Well if Red says so,” you said, “it must be perfect.”

“Nothing’s perfect,” Bodhi said, “but this is pretty close.”

As he leaned in to kiss you, you let yourself savor this moment, your heart beating now with excitement, rather than panic. You knew, with as much certainty that one could, that so many lovely moments with this man were yet to come.

★★★★★★★★

Thank you for reading! Just a little cozy piece to hopefully make you feel seen and loved on Valentine’s Day.

Tagging some folks that I think would enjoy this. I can make a more formal tag list if y’all are interested. And probably a master list?

@princessxkenobi @zinzinina @maul-ologue @operation-spot @waterpancakeao3

[route22ny]

(Copied here in its entirety below for the paywall-challenged)

***

The Differences Between the Vaccines Matter

Yes, all of the COVID-19 vaccines are very good. No, they’re not all the same.

Public-health officials are enthusiastic about the new, single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, despite its having a somewhat lower efficacy at preventing symptomatic illness than other available options. Although clinical-trial data peg that rate at 72 percent in the United States, compared with 94 and 95 percent for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, many experts say we shouldn’t fixate on those numbers. Much more germane, they say, is the fact that the Johnson & Johnson shot, like the other two, is essentially perfect when it comes to preventing the gravest outcomes. “I’m super-pumped about this,” Virginia’s vaccine coordinator told The New York Times last weekend. “A hundred percent efficacy against deaths and hospitalizations? That’s all I need to hear.”

The same glowing message—that the COVID-19 vaccines are all equivalent, at least where it really counts—has been getting public-health officials and pundits  super-pumped for weeks now. Its potential value for promoting vaccination couldn’t be more clear: We’ll all be better off, and this nightmare will be over sooner, if people know that the best vaccine of all is whichever one they can get the soonest. With that in mind, Vox has urged its readers to attend to “the most important vaccine statistic”—the fact that “there have been zero cases of hospitalization or death in clinical trials for all of these vaccines.” The physician and CNN medical analyst Leana Wen also made a point of noting that “all of the vaccines are essentially a hundred percent” in this regard. And half a dozen former members of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board wrote in USA Today, “Varying ‘effectiveness’ rates miss the most important point: The vaccines were all 100% effective in the vaccine trials in stopping hospitalizations and death.”

There’s a problem here. It’s certainly true that all three of the FDA-authorized vaccines are very good—amazing, even—at protecting people’s health. No one should refrain from seeking vaccination on the theory that any might be second-rate. But it’s also true that the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t all the same: Some are more effective than others at preventing illness, for example; some cause fewer adverse reactions; some are more convenient; some were made using more familiar methods and technologies. As for the claim that the vaccines have proved perfectly and equally effective at preventing hospitalization and death? It’s just not right.

These differences among the options could matter quite a bit, in different ways to different people, and they should not be minimized or covered over. Especially not now: Vaccine supplies in the U.S. will soon surpass demand, even as more contagious viral variants spread throughout the country. In the meantime, governors are revoking their rules on face masks, or taking other steps to loosen their restrictions. It’s tempting to believe that a simple, decisive message—even one that verges on hype—is what’s most needed at this crucial moment. But if the message could be wrong, that has consequences.

The idea that all of the vaccines are pretty much the same, in that they’re perfect at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations and death, got its legs on social media. The USA Today op-ed by the former members of the Biden team illustrated this by linking to a data table found on Twitter. Created by the infectious-disease doctor Monica Gandhi, it showed a variety of trial results for six different vaccines. One column was rendered in canary yellow—“Protection from hospitalizations/death”—and every cell read “100%.” A similar table, tweeted out a few days earlier by the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, Ashish Jha, conveyed the same idea through a grid of zeros—as in, zero people hospitalized, zero people dead. The prominent physician and researcher Eric Topol followed with his own clinical-trial data summary featuring a column of 100 percents. “That is impressive!” he wrote across the top. All told, their posts would be retweeted about 15,000 times.

The data were indeed suggestive of an encouraging idea. Based on the numbers so far, we can expect the vaccines to provide extremely high levels of protection against the most dire outcomes. Still, we don’t know how high—and it’s clear they won’t uniformly cause hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 to disappear in vaccinated people.

The experts understand this, of course. Gandhi has been updating her table as more data come in, and now pegs Moderna’s efficacy on that front at 97 percent; Jha has since tweeted that “nothing is 100 percent … But these vaccines sure are close”; and Topol told The Atlantic that the numbers in his tweet are not a sufficient basis from which to draw “any determination of magnitude of effect,” though the fact that they all point in the same direction is “very encouraging.” Still, the message of perfection that their initial tables and tweets spawned—the gist, for many readers, of all those 100s and zeros—has since been picked up far and wide, and misinterpreted along the way.

To grasp the shaky nature of these particular data, it’s important to remember how the vaccine-development process began. Last April, not long after the pandemic began, the World Health Organization set out a target efficacy for vaccines of 50 percent, with options for how that value should be measured. A vaccine could be shown to reduce the risk of symptomatic disease, severe disease, or transmission of the coronavirus. The FDA offered similar guidance in June, and other regulatory agencies also followed the WHO’s lead. Among these choices, symptomatic disease was the most feasible, because it’s both a common outcome and one that’s easier to confirm in a large-scale trial. An outcome that included asymptomatic infections would have been even more common, but screening for all infections would have been prohibitive, especially early in the pandemic. So that’s how the vaccine trials were designed: Each would try to demonstrate at least 50 percent efficacy with respect to symptomatic disease as its “primary outcome.”

The trials could have used severe disease, hospitalization, or death as primary outcomes, but that would have slowed things down. These events are far more infrequent—there could have been 200 infections for each COVID-19 death in the U.S.—and that means it would have taken more time, and larger numbers of trial participants, to generate enough data to be sure of a 50 percent efficacy. Developers did include “severe COVID-19” as a secondary outcome—that is, one that would be measured and analyzed, but for which the trial might not have been designed to provide a definitive answer. Efficacy against hospitalization and against death, however, were not included as secondary outcomes for every trial.

Given that fact, the data can’t support a claim that the vaccines are 100 percent effective at preventing these serious outcomes. (Topol highlighted this very issue in an op-ed last fall for The New York Times.) Out of the six vaccines included in the dramatic data tables that made the rounds on Twitter, the clinical trials for only two of them—Oxford-AstraZeneca’s and Johnson & Johnson’s—included hospitalization for COVID-19 as a secondary outcome, and reported that efficacy rate. The clinical research for one other vaccine, made by Novavax, had hospitalization as a secondary outcome, but that trial hasn’t been reported in full yet. (On my website, I’ve provided more detailed information and analysis of the relevant data.)

Now, a casual reader of clinical-trial reports—or their summaries on social media—might take the fact that no hospitalizations of vaccinated people are mentioned to mean that none occurred. That’s risky, given that pieces of the data have been published across various medical journals and via several different regulatory agencies rather than in full in one place; that the plans for some trials did not specify ahead of time that the vaccine’s efficacy at preventing hospitalizations would be calculated; and that we’ve seen only minimal early data (via a press release from Novavax) from one of them. It would be just as risky to assume that all hospitalizations would be included in the analyses of people who developed severe COVID-19. Hospitalization and severe disease are not synonymous—people could be coping at home even though COVID-19 has caused their oxygen levels to drop severely, and moderately ill people might be hospitalized out of an abundance of caution when they are at high risk of getting worse.

The two vaccine trials that did explicitly report hospitalizations as an efficacy outcome make this latter issue very clear. For the AstraZeneca vaccine, one person in the control group had severe COVID-19, but eight people were hospitalized; for Johnson & Johnson, 34 people in the placebo group had severe COVID-19, but only five people were hospitalized. It’s true that zero vaccinated people were hospitalized in either study after the vaccines took effect. But with numbers that small, you can’t draw a reliable conclusion about how high efficacy may be for these outcomes. As Diana Zuckerman of the National Center for Health Research pointed out about the Johnson & Johnson trial, “It’s misleading to tell the public that nobody who was vaccinated was hospitalized unless you also tell them that only 5 people in the placebo group were hospitalized.” She’s right. And you can’t be confident about predicting effectiveness precisely in a wider population outside the trial, either. For example, some of the vaccine trials included relatively few people older than 60 as participants.

You can see how fragile these numbers are by looking at those compiled for severe disease. In the Pfizer trial, for example, just one vaccinated person developed severe COVID-19 versus three in the placebo group—which meant that a single bout of disease made the difference between a calculated efficacy rate of 66 percent and one of 100 percent. For the Novavax and Oxford-AstraZeneca trials, there were zero people with severe disease in the vaccinated group versus only one in the control group, so adding or subtracting one would have been even more dramatic. The problem is even greater for deaths. For that efficacy analysis, only two of the vaccine trials—for Moderna’s and Johnson & Johnson’s—reported any COVID-19 deaths at all in the control groups.

It’s also important to remember that these are early results: Some people who enrolled very late in the trials aren’t yet included in reported data, and analysis is still under way. Indeed, the FDA pointed out in December that one vaccinated person in the Moderna trial had been hospitalized with apparently severe COVID-19 two months after receiving a second dose. That person was in a group still awaiting final assessment by the researchers, and was not mentioned in Moderna’s formal readout of results.

We’ve learned a little more from the ongoing public vaccination programs. Four important reports have come in the past two weeks. In one, researchers compared about 600,000 people who had had a full course of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel with 600,000 people matched in age and other demographics who had not been vaccinated. The shots’ effectiveness at preventing hospitalization was measured at 87 percent. (“This vaccine is fabulous in a real world setting,” Jha tweeted in response.) A preprint from Scotland reported an efficacy rate against hospitalization of about 80 percent among people 80 or older, almost all of whom had received only one dose of either the Pfizer or the AstraZeneca vaccine. Two reports from Public Health England estimated a reduction of hospitalization of about 50 percent and 43 percent for the same age group, again almost all after just one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. These are exciting outcomes—those vaccines really, really worked! But they oughtn’t lead anyone to think that the vaccines are all the same, and that protection will be perfect.

Where does that leave us for making decisions? As Anthony Fauci told The New York Times last weekend, “Now you have three highly effective vaccines. Period.” Again, you will get a lot of benefit from any of them, and your risk will shrink even more as those around you get vaccinated too. Whichever one you start with, a booster may be coming in the not-so-distant future, of the same vaccine or perhaps a different one. By taking the first vaccine you can get, you’ll also avoid the risk of finding yourself without protection if infection rates surge where you live.

Efficacy is merely one layer, though. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have an edge at preventing symptomatic illness, but the Johnson & Johnson vaccine brings its own advantages. It has no demanding freezer requirements, which means it’s easier to distribute and more accessible to many communities. It’s more affordable than the other two—the company is providing it at cost around the world. Then there’s the fact that resources can be stretched a lot further when only a single dose has to be administered.

For individuals, too, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has benefits. As a one-and-done injection, it’s more convenient. It also has a lower rate of adverse events than Moderna’s. You can’t compare results of these trials too precisely, but there are indications of a striking difference. About 2 percent of those who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine recorded having reactions, such as fatigue, muscle aches, and fever, that were severe enough to interfere with daily activities. For those getting their second injection of Moderna, that rate was higher than 15 percent. People who are on the fence about getting vaccinated may find that this difference tips the scales in favor of getting a shot. Others who have doubts about the newness of the mRNA technology in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may appreciate the fact that Johnson & Johnson’s approach has already been deployed in the company’s Ebola vaccine, which got full drug approval in Europe last year.

Given these concerns, there’s some danger in the message—however well intentioned—that the COVID-19 vaccines are all the same by any measure, or that they’re perfect wards against severe disease. Vaccination is a public-health imperative, and going full tilt to promote uptake supports the common good. But it’s a personal health decision too. People want to protect themselves and those close to them, and they are likely to care about outcomes other than hospitalization and death, no matter what anyone says now.

Still, raising these concerns in public can be fraught. In response to an inquiry about her data table, Gandhi affirmed the importance of looking at severe-disease outcomes and noted that “careful, collegial and collaborative scientific discourse on the vaccines is imperative moving forward to help us get through the pandemic.” Topol pointed out that he has emphasized the vaccines’ measured efficacy against symptomatic disease many times before, so any isolated reference to his table “takes that particular post out of context.” Jha wrote in an email that he stands by the message of his original tweet, and notes that COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are so rare among the people vaccinated in these trials, to quibble over differences is akin to “counting how many angels are dancing on the head of the pin.”

I can see why this might seem like quibbling, but I just don’t think it’s a trivial matter. It would be different if I thought the effectiveness of every one of those six vaccines against hospitalizations and death would really end up being close to 100 percent—or if I bought into the idea, now widespread, that they have already been shown to “nearly” or “effectively” eliminate these outcomes. There is very good reason to be encouraged by the data, but to say right now that people who have been vaccinated face zero risk of serious outcomes—that, for them, COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common cold—is sure to influence behavior. Imagine how people in high-risk groups would feel about going to the movies, or how their employers would feel about putting resources into workplace safety, if we all assumed that vaccines confer perfect protection against hospitalization or death. Now imagine how the same people and employers would feel knowing they were 85 percent protected.

Nor is there any reason to believe that the public or the personal interest will be served by hype. People who think the vaccines provide ironclad protection may lose trust in experts if reality falls short. Trust in coronavirus-vaccine information is already a problem, and could sink even lower. Activists who are opposed to vaccination may end up turning experts’ “super-pumped” promises against them.

“The idea that people can’t handle nuance,” Jha tweeted at the end of February, “it’s paternalistic. And untrue.” I couldn’t agree more. The principle of treating people like adults is fundamental. We don’t need to exaggerate. Talking about the trade-offs between different medicines and vaccines is often complicated, but we do it all the time—and we can do it with COVID-19 vaccines too.

Hilda Bastian is a scientist, writer, and founding member of the Cochrane Collaboration. She was formerly the editor of the PubMed Health project at the National Library of Medicine.

[sadoeuphemist]

Six Times You Knew What Everyone Was Thinking (and one time you didn’t):

1.

The King sits you down with his other two advisors, has you close your eyes, puts a hat on each of your heads. The hats will be either red or white, he says, with at least one red one. The first to speak up and name the color of their own hat wins the prize.

You open your eyes, see the other two advisors both with red hats staring at you. You all study each other, thinking. Silence. Silence. No one coming to a conclusion.

Ah, but in their silence it is obvious: if your hat were white, surely one of them would have figured it out already. Your hats all are red, of course.

2.

You pass through a tunnel in a group of n where n>2 friends, wind blowing through your hair; you emerge from the darkness to see each of your friends with a smudge of soot on their foreheads. You laugh. You cannot help but laugh. They look hilarious! The moment they realize they have a smudge of soot on their foreheads, they will wipe it clean, of course, but for now all of you are laughing. You all will keep laughing as long as there is a spot of soot left to be seen.

You think, How inseparable you are from your friends, how your minds all work according to the same rules of logic! You can imagine what they are all thinking, right now, in their laughter; and they of you; and you are imaging them imagining you and so on ad infinitum. You watch them laughing and are looking into a hall of mirrors.

You think this is what knowing is.

In any case, so long as your minds all tick along at sufficiently different speeds, eventually, your faces will all be clean.

3.

You attend a conference of logicians, a mad tea party. At the entrance they place a colored band around your head, forbidding you to look at your own color. They sit you all in a circle around a table, allow everyone to silently look around at one another, to note down the colors of everybody else.

This problem is solvable for everyone, they tell you. At regular intervals, a chime will sound, and everyone who knows the color of their own headband at that point is to stand and leave the table. The game will continue until everyone has left.

An inference: everyone must share a color with at least one other person, see it reflected somewhere, in order to have any chance at succeeding. If you see someone with a color all of their own, ah, then you must be their partner. If a pair fails to stand at the first chime, it is because they must have each seen something in you that you could not see in yourself, and so you will all rise together at the next chime as a trio. And so on, and so on, the smaller groups at first and then the larger, everyone in turn finding the group where they belong.

There is nothing to it but the logic. It is so orderly, so inevitable, done like this.

4.

There is a blind spot in all these variations. Something so obvious that everyone but you can see. A mark on your forehead, a crown or dunce cap placed atop your head, that characteristic of the self that can only ever be perceived through someone else.

You do not know if your husband is cheating on you or not.

There is a system, as these things go. Gossip flows freely here, and so every woman knows of every unfaithful husband in the kingdom but her own. It would be discourteous to tell her. All women in the kingdom are required to train in logic before taking a husband; this too is widely known. You can trust them all as you can trust yourself.

One day the Queen makes an announcement: infidelity has run rampant in the kingdom, and so every woman who learns her husband has been unfaithful to her must kill him that very night. Every execution - or lack of executions - will be publicly announced the next day. You know quite well the number of unfaithful husbands in the kingdom, as does every wife: n, or n+1.

You count the days, and check your loaded pistol, and you wait.

5.

There are two hundred inhabitants of the island: a hundred brown-eyed, ninety-nine blue-eyed, and you. The rules of the island are numerous, and contrived, and have little room for variation, but by now I think you must have grasped the pattern. You all think in lockstep, are all perfect logicians. You all know the color of everyone’s eyes but your own.

One final rule: the moment someone knows their own eye color, they must leave the island by ferry that night.

For a long time nothing happens. Each day passes like the other. The sky is an eternal blue. No one learns anything.

And then one day, an oracle visits the island, gathers everyone together to make a single announcement: there is at least one person among you with blue eyes.

She has not told anyone anything new, of course. You all could see either a hundred or ninety-nine blue-eyed people; you all knew that already. And yet, the count has started; time, invisibly, is ticking. And yet, and yet, and yet...

The answer has been much discussed: on the hundredth night, all one hundred blue-eyed people leave the island (as it turns out, you had blue eyes, as might have been predicted).

But the question is this: What did you learn?

6.

You and one of your blue-eyed compatriots have been captured, locked in separate cells, far from one another. Eight strong iron bars block the door of your cell; your fellow islander (though you do not know this, have yet no way of knowing) counts twelve in theirs.

Your captor told you this, before you were separated: the number of bars in both your cells added together would total to either twenty, or eighteen. Your task is to determine which. He will first ask your friend during the day, and then if they cannot reason out an answer, he will come to ask you at night. Day in, day out, until one of you can give the correct number with absolute certainty, and then you will both be freed.

You learn nothing else each day, nothing but your continued inability to answer. You must choose between two immutable possibilities - your friend must either have ten bars, or twelve - and as one day passes, then the next, then the next, the routine and options both unchanging, it may seem impossible to ever inch towards a conclusion.

Ah, but then when were you ever limited to what was merely possible? 

There are 8 bars in your cell; theirs must have either 10 or 12. Meaning they might imagine you as having 8, or 10, or 6. And so they imagine you in your cell as you were a moment before, calculating the possible number of bars in their cell: 10, 12, 8, 14. And from there, you imagine, they imagine you imagining them imagining you: 10 or 8 or 6 or 12 or 4 ...

Each possibility branches out into further possibilities, broadening the ranges, worlds within worlds within worlds within worlds. You are so alike. You know each other, perfectly: not just in everything that might be, but in all the things you might imagine within those possibilities that right now are ruled out even as hypothetical, and the things your imagining’s imaginings might imagine, and so on and on and on...

You are looking into a hall of mirrors.

Uncertainties multiply themselves. Through the kaleidoscopic reflections of one another you each discern every combination of numbers that might be conceived of, no matter how many layers deep in hypothetical: 18 and 2, or 16 and 2, or 16 and 4, or 14 and 6, and so on all the way down the rabbit hole.

After the first day passes without incident, there is no longer any conceivable set of worlds where your friend has eighteen bars. (The answer would be too obvious, the game over immediately.)

After the first night passes, if you know your friend does not have eighteen bars and yet you still cannot give an answer, then there is no longer any conceivable set of worlds where you have two. 

The days pass in silence. The range of possibilities shrinks, ever gradually honing in on the truth.

Of course, you both already knew full well that these combinations were impossible. You each had your own set of bars, perfectly immutable, the iron laws of addition and subtraction. You all saw a red hat. Ninety-nine pairs of blue eyes, at the least! Everyone knew, and everyone knew that everyone knew that everyone knew.

But eventually there is an end to the maze of mirrors, of recursive possibilities, after so many, many iterations, when finally you cannot tack on another ‘knew they knew’ and still have it make sense. Then, you wait, each day passing, each of you learning from everyone else in their inaction: I have done nothing yet today to free us, and so now I know they know I do not yet know ...!

(a blue-eyed person sees 99 blue-eyed people, and thinks:     they might each see only 98 blue-eyed people, and think:         they might each see only 97 blue-eye people, and think:             .......               they might each see only 2 blue-eyed people, and think:                  they might each see only 1 blue-eyed person, and think:                      they might not see any blue-eyed people at all!)

(this is what the oracle teaches you!)

------

0.

After all your trials, this one is the simplest: You are one of two generals on opposite sides of a city, planning to launch a combined assault. Your target is walled, and well-fortified. You will need to attack together or not at all. A single army alone would certainly be massacred, so neither of you will send your troops forward if there is the slightest hint of doubt.

Alas, your only method of communication is sending messengers back and forth through enemy territory. There is a good chance they will be killed; the journey is quite perilous. But lives are cheap, and messengers are plenty, and you are both eager for victory. How many messages will you need to send back and forth before you can begin?

Answer: this is a simple problem, well known to be impossible. Send as many messengers as you want, but without a reply you cannot be sure that any of them survived. The other general must confirm the message - but how will he know that you received the confirmation without himself receiving another confirmation in return? And then that confirmation must be confirmed, and so on ad infinitum, each link in the chain essential and thus itself needing verification, such that no number of messages successfully delivered could ever be enough.

There is an insurmountable gap between you, meaningless assurances piling up, all made unbearable by uncertainty: Do you understand me? Do you understand me? Do you understand?

.

.

RESOURCES:

Wikipedia article on induction puzzles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_puzzles

Possibly the earliest known formulation of one of these kinds of puzzles (the smudge of soot one), by A.A. Bennett: https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/28194/the-origin-of-the-blue-eyes-puzzle

Blue eyes puzzle (solution): https://xkcd.com/solution.html

18 or 20 bars puzzle: https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/45664/are-there-eighteen-or-twenty-bars-in-my-castle

Two Generals’ problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Generals%27_Problem

Common knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)

[squarecarousel]

Challenge 144: 10 Years, Looking Forward: A-Frame Studio Life Buckle up-- this is a long one! Wow, ten years. It’s hard to believe a whole decade has passed since Square Carousel began, and since I graduated college. In some ways, it feels like another lifetime, and in others, it feels vastly shorter than the decade before that, from ages 12 to 22. Time is fascinating that way. College was such an incredibly impactful time period, but just a measly 4 years-- I could have done college 2.5 more times back-to-back in the years since I graduated, but somehow those four, from 2007-2011 were monumental.  It’s hard to believe I’ll be in a post-college world without Square Carousel, since the group has been a constant in my life these last ten years. I’m really proud that we made it this far and are able to choose to end the journey, rather than it fizzling out or dying from lack of interest. Sometimes it felt like that might happen, but other times it felt like we were blooming. There have been many ups and downs over the course of this journey. And damn, it was a lot of hard to work to keep running, but I am so grateful for the learning experience. I know so much more about leadership now than I ever would have before-- the delicate balance of having rules to keep the group running (deadlines, participation requirements, our dreaded “strike system”) and keeping up morale (knowing when to forgive slip-ups, keeping challenges sufficiently entertaining and well...challenging, making sure the group feels like it’s a community). Elizabeth and I were reluctant leaders, just naturally having to take those roles as other original members of the group left and were replaced by folks who needed guidance. We definitely didn’t seek it out, but we knew that if the group were to stay alive, we had to put some structure into the system. Pretty early on we made our rules and guidelines, extended the challenges to 3 weeks from just 2, and worked on our visual image online. Our awesome logo was made by former member Casey Crisenbery, and we switched from Wordpress to Tumblr, purchasing a URL, and Casey using special code for custom organization on the site. Sketch critiques were now a halfway point through our 3 weeks-long challenge, which helped a lot with the community aspect and engagement. We started doing interviews for each member, reaching out to other illustration groups, blogs and submission sites and had our work featured on a few of them. Some of us even got jobs from the connections made through Square Carousel!  There was a bad stretch several years ago when I wasn’t sure we’d make it through, with toxic behavior and a few folks petitioning for removing deadlines and structure, making everything optional. One thing I can tell you with certainty after ten years of working with artists is that 95% of us require deadlines to do anything, and incentives/obligations for meeting those deadlines, or it just isn’t going to happen! Elizabeth and I, along with a few other solid members, were able to keep the structure we’d worked hard to create, but the toxic culture had already killed group morale and we lost a lot of members simultaneously. That was a sad and scary time for Square Carousel, but I didn’t want to go out on a sour note. So the small group of us picked the pieces back up again, did a little refocus on our goals as a collective and created an “Admin” so Elizabeth and I didn’t have to carry the entire burden alone. I am forever grateful to Sayada and Jordan for stepping up into these roles to help us get the train back on track. Sayada especially picked up a lot of responsibilities that a newer member shouldn’t have to worry about, and was a total rockstar for Square Carousel. I wish we’d had her with us for the whole ride. I’m so happy that we’ve had a few really great years with some really loyal and talented artists to round out the experience at Year Ten.  There is nobody I’m more thankful for than my Good Cop, Elizabeth, though. She was so reliable, always able to provide balance in our leadership roles, and such a wonderful shoulder to cry on when things got too stressful. Elizabeth, thank you for this journey and for being my SC Wife all these years! It’s so funny because of all the original members, you were one of the only ones I hadn’t really known from SCAD classes, yet you’re the SCAD Illustration friend I have remained most connected to most consistently. Nothing bonds you quite like running an illustration collective does! It also cracks me up that in all these years, we hadn’t ever facetimed or talked on the phone until a few months ago--I didn’t even know your mannerisms or voice, but knew you so well anyway. My greatest internet friend! I love you dearly and it truly won’t feel right, the absence of our weekly SC conversations. Thank you for all of the memories! As just a member and artist, this group has helped me grow so much professionally. It was my client when I didn’t have clients. It was my motivation to paint when I didn’t feel creative. It was my source of portfolio-worthy work, but also my safe place to experiment and fail when I was trying something new. The girl who started as a Square Carousel member freshly graduated in 2011 was working part-time at Urban Outfitters, had basically no money, and no clue how to promote herself. The “studio” was a corner of the bedroom and nobody took her seriously. But a stubborn dedication and the security, purpose and structure of Square Carousel helped the slow change from that lost girl to a full-time freelancing woman. Now, in 2021, I have been doing freelance illustration fully for six years, through contract jobs, editorial, publishing, advertising, commission and local work, as well as selling prints and products online, in local shops and events. I am not making the big bucks, certainly, and I still have goals I’m working towards, but damn, if that isn’t a glow-up, I don’t know what is. Thank you for helping me achieve my impossible dream, Square Carousel, and always being a place with the right amount of advice, support and critique. Ten years, 34 artist interviews, 38 artists, and 144 challenges. I’m the only member to have completed every single one. 144 illustrations through the years. Some were game-changers for my style and my portfolio. Some were total stinkers and I hope you don’t go looking for them. But all were an important step in my career.   So, in ten more years? I’ll be 42 years old, which is very weird because I have never imagined myself that old before... it’s hard to honestly say what that would look like, especially considering the world we are currently living in and how the last 4/5 years have proven that anything (awful) can happen. Jordan and I have a goal to move to Colorado in the next 4 or 5 years, and I’d love to have a little A-Frame in the mountains with a loft studio, shown in my illustration here. Texas has become extremely problematic, especially after the winter storm in February of this year, and will be impacted greatly by climate change, both environmentally and economically. Right now, Austin is still booming, but at some point the lack of foresight in this state’s government is going to screw over the residents and it will be one of the places from which climate refugees run. Is that tomorrow? No, obviously not. But I want to already be settled someplace more stable, having grown some roots, before other folks start to roll in. But, to be able to do that, I need to rely less on my local jobs and connections and be able to have an “anywhere career.” So right now I am focusing on expanding in that way, particularly with book cover illustration and design. I’ve been doing a lot of portfolio work and self-publishing jobs, and hope to get an agent that can shop my work to big-time publishers sometime in the next year or two. Let’s say I succeed at all of those things in five years-- we’re in our Colorado A-Frame, I’m illustrating book covers (and I’ve also convinced my parents to come with me, and maybe a couple friends!). The next five years after that? I don’t know... hopefully a lot of adventures. Hopefully a lot of cool jobs, but also a lot of work/life balance. Right now, I don’t want kids, so the A-Frame will be filled with cats. Maybe we’ll have an old camper van for regular road trips around the western National Parks. I’d love for my work to reflect those passions-- more jobs with outdoor brands, parks, organizations. More book covers for stuff I’d personally love to read and keep on my overflowing shelf. That’s the vague goal for me in ten years, but I don’t want to plan any further than that, because life just also needs to happen the way it’s going to happen. There are parts of my current life I planned for in 2011... and there are parts I never, ever would have guessed. I hope there’s some fun surprises in 2031, too. Thanks for the decade, Square Carousel. Joining illustration collectives will always be the first bit of advice I give fresh graduates. Caitlin

[antoine-roquentin]

According to the video that details his start as a real estate investor, after spending a few years as a real estate agent, Stephan purchased a foreclosed-on home in San Bernardino County for just under $60,000: 25 percent of what it had sold for in 2006. He is matter-of fact about the circumstances that led to the purchase, noting that “when the real estate market tanked, a lot of people became renters.” Seeing the opportunity to rent out this underpriced property for around $1,300 a month, he transformed a home that, in his words, had belonged to a “drug addicted hoarder” into his first rental property. Today, Stephan owns six rental properties, in addition to working as a real estate agent.

Now, many YouTube investors are purporting to prepare their viewers for the next inevitable, ugly recession, the worst effects of which are currently being staved off by patchwork eviction moratoriums and forbearance agreements. Daniel Kwak, part of the popular Kwak Brothers YouTube channel, recently hosted two guests, Dave Seymour and Kevin Tuttle, in a video titled “Housing Market Update | ALARMING Signals From The Pros (economic crisis 2020).” In it, all three men suggested a simple truth: there is ample opportunity in this crisis, if you play your cards right. They refer to one such opportunity—offering a lease option on a house around the corner to buyers who’ve had to short sell their own homes—as “philanthropic” and “good work.” This advice is part of a tendency among YouTubers who manage rentals to pride themselves on their relatively kindly treatment of tenants. After all, private equity firms like the Blackstone Group gobbled up far more foreclosed properties after the last crash than individual investors did. Their empathy, however, only extends so far: Brandon Turner of the account BiggerPockets urges viewers to work with tenants if they have them but purposely conceals information about rental relief from his own tenants to ensure payment. The Kwak Brothers’ channel warns any potential tenants watching that without rent, and consequently the ability of small landlords to hold on to their properties, a tenant could easily be evicted by a bank or a bigger buyer instead.

The transformation of housing into a pure commodity embeds it in a tangled web of linked exploitations. Aspiring small-time property owners who purchase a $1,000 consultation session with a real estate YouTuber may seek to flip a foreclosed property, or turn it into a rental, but they are also being manipulated by their would-be gurus. In “The Culture of Amateur Real Estate Investing,” sociologist Philip Garboden characterizes the housing market as a “multi-dimensional system of value extraction.” He writes, “Amateur rental property owners most certainly exploit poor tenants . . . but they in turn are vulnerable to exploitation from above, in the form of lending and educational services.” According to Garboden’s paper, becoming an investor is no longer the purview of just the affluent:

The cultural identity of the investor has become increasingly integrated into lower and middle class behavior; increasing financial insecurity, the casualization of employment, and the privatization of pensions has created a vast demographic of investor-citizens. . . . More and more economically marginal individuals have transitioned from a savings strategy to an investor strategy to pursue financial security.

Many of the would-be investors Gaborden interviewed for this ethnography reported being tired of low-wage work and career mismatches or didn’t have sufficient retirement savings.

Despite their own financial success, real estate YouTubers have a vaguely populist outlook. Many claim to come from little to nothing. Another millionaire by his late twenties, YouTuber Meet Kevin describes how he used multiple lending services to develop a rental property based partially on savings from a job at Jamba Juice. These days, he posts near-daily videos on updates about Congressional relief negotiations, federal aid, and investment advice for the coming crisis. He speaks rapidly and passionately, walking a tightrope between compelling the viewer to watch more, and confounding them with blurry chronologies of what is already happening, what could possibly happen, and what viewers should do, depending on what happens.

Social media, and YouTube especially, provide an aura of enlightenment: watching a video conveys the feeling of expertise, rather than expertise itself. In truth, no one can predict exactly what will happen next on the real estate market. Inevitably, property will transfer hands, perhaps even to a handful of opportunists who’ve spent enough time watching these videos to understand how to successfully navigate short sales. But whether or not viewers become successful in real estate investing isn’t really the point. While this type of personal financial media isn’t new, YouTube and the other social media platforms that these new investors work through have a special addictive power; they are algorithmically linked into an endless trove of similar content. In the midst of a recession, perhaps on the cusp of a wholly unprecedented depression, real estate investor YouTube takes the form of a comfort, where viewers are only one click away from complete transformation.

[glorious-blackout]

Self-Indulgent Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino/Simulation Theory Crossover Epilogue

@rock-n-roll-fantasy Aaaaaand it’s over! This is technically more of an optional ending as I suspect you’ll prefer the conclusion to Part Seven, but a certain character would never have forgiven me if I didn’t let him get the last word... 😉

Thank you so much for all of your lovely feedback and sorry for making you wait so long for these last two chapters! And now it’s time for me to finally start listening to Arctic Monkeys/Muse albums that *weren’t* released in 2018 😅🥰

Also I would like to thank Matt for unknowingly writing the perfect end-credits music for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8tpkpoSW5I

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven 

*********************************************

A million miles away, on the desolate remains of the planet once known as Earth, a lone observer watches silently as a pair of retreating figures on a cramped TV screen ride off into the unknown.

Surrounding him on all sides are thousands of similar screens, stacked atop each other like building blocks, though for the moment he only has eyes for one. Only a week ago, every single screen was proudly lit up, showcasing the intimate details of his subjects’ mundane lives and thus allowing him to observe with unrelenting scrutiny. Now, however, a worrying proportion of those screens are fizzing with broken static; the worlds they once displayed forever lost from his grasp.  

The sight should enrage him, and perhaps one day it will. Every barren screen represents the loss of constant hours of effort and imagination, and as the aftershocks of Matthew’s assault continue to ricochet, he imagines he will lose countless more over the coming weeks. Nevertheless, for the moment he cannot bring himself to mourn the loss of realities which brought him little pleasure in the first place.

Murph, or The Creator, or whichever title he chooses to wear on any particular day, does not consider himself a cruel being. Contrary to the vile accusations his peers have levelled against him, his games are not designed with the intention of torturing the subjects within them. In fact, one could consider his efforts to preserve the collective consciousness of a dying species to be a noble one. Humanity would be nothing more than a distant memory had he not intervened at the opportune moment. And yet, despite his good intentions, acting as a benevolent observer often fails to bring the satisfaction he desires. Sometimes boredom settles deep within his bones and he cannot help but interfere with the idyllic lives his subjects have created for themselves.  

And he cannot deny that the thought of these two particular playthings discovering hope which will ultimately be torn away does put a smile on his face.

Most of that satisfaction lies in the prospect of punishing Matthew, though he has no doubt that toying with Alexander’s heart further will provide its own brand of levity. Where bitter vengeance is concerned, however, the former is the one he truly has unfinished business with. That particular human has been a thorn in his side from the very beginning; his knack for slipping into paranoia at any given opportunity had made constructing a believable reality for him an almost insurmountable challenge. The temptation to simply banish the man’s mind into the void had flared up once or twice, but in the end Murph had been somewhat successful. Matthew had bought the truth of his reality with relative ease for the first few years, to the point where any cracks that appeared were easily ironed out with a simple rewrite of code.  

Until one day, Murph’s interferences were no longer sufficient to sustain the lie. Matthew’s conviction shattered and his mind with it; without warning, he set about tearing the carefully constructed world around him to shreds and treated his lifelong friends with open hostility. Murph could easily have given him up for lost at that point. Matthew had always been an infuriatingly willful creature – incapable of appreciating Murph’s efforts even after stumbling upon the truth of his feeble existence – and killing him would have been as simple as swatting a fly.

And yet, Murph had allowed him to live. Not out of any form of mercy, heavens no, but because the promise of a challenge was far too compelling. Matthew’s resistance made him special, whether he realised it or not. Most of his subjects were docile creatures; passive participants in a charade they refused to acknowledge. The ones who had come into his care willingly were the worst offenders, having subconsciously convinced themselves that they were caught in a blissful afterlife preferable to the miserable future they would have endured on Earth. Perhaps they’re right, but humans living in quiet contentment have always made for boring viewing. In the form of Matthew, Murph had finally stumbled upon an active participant he could slowly unravel at the seams, and after years of steadily building ennui, the thrill of the chase had been downright intoxicating.

In contrast to Matthew’s blatant rage, Alexander’s resistance had been... unexpected. The strength of it even more so. Murph cannot help but wonder if the sheer force of his suspicion – his feeling of utter wrongness in a place he’d once willingly called home – would have reduced his world to dust even in the absence of Matthew’s influence. Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised him. For as long as he can remember, he has always had more trouble maintaining the lie when the subjects have been unwillingly brought under his control. The same is true for all species he has salvaged; it is the same factor which no doubt played a role in Matthew’s refusal to accept his own reality. Murph can manipulate their memories all he likes, but the inherent desire to escape their miserable fate is forever latched onto their souls.

The new identity had been an inspired touch in the beginning, keeping Alexander’s naturally insightful tendencies at bay for a while. Mark had been a more amicable creation while still retaining plenty of Alexander’s attributes, and the latter’s imagination had always made his reality one worth visiting. However, the line between the two identities had grown considerably blurred over time. Memories had melded together in ways that no longer made logical sense, and Alexander’s yearnings for home had translated to a bitter exhaustion and loneliness which Mark simply couldn’t overcome.  

The fact that everything Murph had built had ultimately been derailed by a bottle of scotch and a friendly conversation was as clear a sign as any that Mark’s world had been hanging by a thread far longer than he had appreciated.

It probably took more effort than it was worth to salvage Alexander’s mind from his dying world and place it in an entirely new one - costing countless other simulations in the process - but he cannot bring himself to regret that decision. It hadn’t seemed fitting to let such promise fizzle out with a mere whimper. Entertainment is a rare commodity in these trying times, and he’s learned to take what he can get.

Matthew has certainly contributed his fair share. Having decided that killing him outright would be a waste, Murph had invested a lot of time in their frantic game of cat and mouse. While his plaything remained confined within the limits of his own reality – a frightfully boring seaside town on England’s coast – Murph had upped the ante by unleashing a horde of mutated creatures, using them as vectors to introduce a virus which reduced the population to rabid monsters driven solely by bloodlust. If Matthew had been particularly shaken by this new development, he’d masked it well. If anything, he seemed to glean a sense of bitter enjoyment out of receiving confirmation that his reality was little more than a façade, and had risen to the unspoken challenge admirably.  

Before long it had occurred to Matthew that an absence of limitation placed upon the imagination could also apply to him. He learned not only how to play the game, but how to adapt the rules in his own favour. Murph had quickly come to rue the day he placed Matthew in a technologically inventive time-period, for his opponent had taken advantage at every opportunity; fashioning makeshift weapons and vehicles out of little more than scrap metal and a vast imagination. No particular engineering prowess was necessary. Before long he was summoning technology out of thin air with an ease that almost rivalled Murph’s own.

Even then, Murph had been unconcerned. Despite Matthew managing to slaughter any mutated creature he crossed paths with, the threat he posed to Murph himself seemed so miniscule as to be easily dismissed. At least at that point Matthew had mostly been sticking to the rules. Once the penny dropped that his reality was merely one of thousands in an intricate web, however, he’d accomplished the unimaginable and injected something which might have been fear into Murph’s long-decayed heart. Disbelieving eyes had been glued to the screen as Matthew fashioned a portal from scrap; one which should, by rights, have been unable to accomplish anything of merit. And yet, once its construction was complete, Matthew had stepped into the blinking red void without a trace of fear, smashing his way through the walls of one reality and emerging into another, whole and seemingly unscathed.  

Quashing his efforts had become a much greater priority at that point. Treating Matt like a dog-eared chew-toy in his own reality was all well and good, but the man had gained far more intelligence and influence than Murph could tolerate. The prospect that he could potentially infect other realities with his schemes threatened to send Murph’s entire empire crumbling to ash if he wasn’t careful. In the more futuristic settings, he had been able to station guards designed in his own image, with the sole intention of blasting Matthew into atoms if he dared worm his way into their reality, but rather predictably Matt had dodged their attacks with a wry smirk, bending the rules to his will with an expertise that was almost frightening. Despite the seriousness of the man’s objective to track down his loved ones and rescue them from an existence he naively deemed to be diabolical, Murph got the distinct impression that Matthew was enjoying himself far too much. He was still treating his escapades like a game, long after Murph’s own objectives had darkened.  

Well, if he insisted on playing dirty, then Murph could resort to that as well.

He’s still proud of his next trick. The brutal reaction it had elicited had been nothing short of delicious. With vivid gratification, he recalls the momentary spark of hope in Matthew’s eyes as his gaze settled upon the avatars of his friends, during a visit to a simulated reality which almost resembled Earth. He remembers the moment his opponent had allowed longing to override logic; remembers the point where all thoughts of the chase were abandoned and, with a cautious smile, Matthew had fooled himself into believing that he’d discovered the true forms of the men he’d loved since he was a teenager.  

What must it have felt like to see them again, Murph cannot help but wonder? The Christopher and Dominic of Matthew’s own reality had been dispatched early in their charade, infected and mutated by the same creatures Matthew evaded with relative ease. No doubt the only reason Matthew survived their losses was because he’d already accepted that they were nothing more than sorry substitutes for the real thing. A part of him must have wondered, however, if that was truly the end. If the last association he would ever have of his two best friends would be the sight of them clawing their way towards him in a mindless rage.

The cold mix of terror and heartbreak that crashed upon Matthew once the blatant hatred in the eyes of his friends became crystal clear is an image Murph still treasures. For one bittersweet moment he’d honestly suspected that Matthew would surrender and let fate carry him away, rendering Murph the victor and granting fleeting satisfaction in the aftermath.  

Alas, survival instincts had kicked in at the last possible second, and Matthew had fled the scene at a sprint before his familiar assailants could shoot.

The temptation to do the same to Alexander had arisen once or twice, on the occasions where boredom reared its ugly head. It would have been a simple enough task. The avatars for three of his best friends were already buried in the simulation; a simple rewrite of their code would have turned their inherent fondness for Alex into hatred in a heartbeat. He could even have added one additional ghost into the mix, just to twist the knife until the pain would never stop. Alex had never done anything to warrant that level of torture, however. Playing with Matthew’s heart had been entertaining - not to mention earned - whereas playing with Alex’s would have been like kicking a puppy just to see how it would react. Momentarily thrilling, perhaps, but ultimately predictable.

Besides, Matthew had made him pay for his cruelty, albeit not quite as successfully as Murph has led him to believe. His constant hopping from one reality to another had rendered Murph’s creations vulnerable. His brutal smashing through virtual walls left aftershocks in the wake of his adventures, although that in itself was easily fixable. Murph had quickly grown tired of his continued insolence over time. Not so much his continued survival, though he did make a point to send the morphed versions of his friends after him at every given opportunity. However, Matt had an unfortunate habit of forgetting that, in the wake of Murph’s towering influence, he was little more than a cockroach waiting to be squashed underfoot. The lack of respect had forced Murph to step in, to confront this tiny creature and remind him that he was simply an insignificant plaything in the grand scheme of things.

Matthew’s lack of fear when faced with him for the first time had almost been impressive, though Murph had been able to sense his feeble heart racing with adrenaline. The human had stood impassively on a steep cliff-edge while Murph towered over him, revealing his true form for the first time. From a distance Matt must surely have looked like a blot on the horizon and nothing more.  

Such a meeting had no doubt been Matt’s intention. Murph allowing himself to become invested in the game rather than erasing Matthew from existence in the first place had been a mistake borne of arrogance, and he now knows it would serve him well not to make the same mistake again. The mind-numbing aftershocks stemming from the moment Matthew powered up a metallic glove and aimed a colossal, fiery beam of energy at his tormenter serve as a bitter reminder that he must learn to be more careful.

Physically the assault had done nothing at all. Even if Matthew’s corporeal body were standing right in front of him at this very moment, any attempt to attack would have the same effect as a mouse trying to destroy a mountain.  

The mental assault, however, had been far more powerful than Murph could ever have anticipated.

Perhaps Matthew himself believed the weapon he’d designed was a physical one; he seems willing to accept the possibility that it killed its target after all. What the beam had truly unleashed, however, was a sheer, unrelenting wave of emotion. All of Matthew’s simmering rage and heartbreak had drowned Murph under its weight as his consciousness was overcome by burning sparks of light. All of Matthew’s love for his friends and family - which had become so intertwined with grief during his entrapment - reduced Murph’s mind to a blank haze, and beneath it all the sheer power of hope and determination had shattered the reality they’d both been standing in.  

A similar feeling of powerlessness had overcome Murph not long before, when Alexander somehow anticipated Murph’s attempts to erase Matthew from his mind and erected a mental block so formidable that his very reality had trembled. This was different, however. Alex’s attempt had been powerful but clumsy, like batting his arms against an unseen enemy in the dark. In contrast, Matthew’s assault had been the direct attack of a man desperate to burn Murph to the ground without a care in the world for whether he himself survived the aftermath.  

Murph had awoken in his nest, surrounded by screens and caught in a daze. In a moment of madness, he’d spared Matthew’s dying mind from the crumbling reality he was trapped within, fashioning a new one in the blink of an eye. One with considerably less tricks and theatrics. One that resembled the home Matt yearned for so desperately, recreating it so convincingly that his insightful mind appears to have taken the bait.  

Murph cannot help but wonder if it would have been easier to let Matthew die. Alex too. The latter’s knack for questioning his authority will no doubt prove troublesome, now that he knows to be distrustful of the reality presented to him. For now though, Matthew remains his greatest concern. His mind still aches in the wake of the man’s assault. With each passing second, he can feel more and more worlds fade into nothingness, leaving only static in their wake and claiming the souls of thousands in the process. Losing them all is not a possibility he wants to comprehend. He has not spent enough time on Earth to justify heralding humanity’s extinction so early, and alternative dying planets are harder to come by than one might expect.

He wonders how Matthew would feel if he knew he’d disrupted and destroyed the minds of so many people. People who were once as human as him and Alex, who are now gone without the faintest trace that they ever existed in the first place. People who had no say in their fate, nor any stakes in the game they’ve both been playing for far longer than necessary. Would he be so overwhelmed by guilt that he would no longer be able to function? Would the realisation be the final straw in snapping the man’s mind like a twig once and for all?

Or will he consider those people to be liberated from their prison like the naïve fool that he is?

No doubt Murph will find out the answer to that eventually. This particular ammunition is too valuable to waste.  

That can wait until later though. Matthew and Alex still need to be eased gently into believing that their current reality is real; there will be time for twisted revelations and sacrifices later. Besides, regardless of the eventual outcome, Murph can take comfort in knowing that his ultimate victory is inevitable.  

He wonders how long it will take for the penny to drop. For those final, fearful memories to return. For the realisation to sink in that, for all their struggles to return to their beloved realm of flesh and bone, they’ve chosen to embark on an endeavor which is entirely futile.  

They have no physical bodies to return to. No means of roaming the Earth as living creatures. Any vessels they may have previously inhabited sputtered and died when their minds were pulled from their heads; their bodies buried long ago, having been wept over by the same people they insist on mourning now.  

As for their minds? Well, they’ll remain in Murph’s capable hands until the moment he tires of them and blinks them out of existence. No doubt it will be a long while before he’s driven to such extremity, of course. These two are fortunate that they’re as entertaining as they are annoying, and tormenting them further will certainly be one way to pass the time.  

As it stands, time is all he has.  

So for now, he’ll gladly let them indulge in their fantasy. He’ll construct a small band of survivors five miles from the beach, offering food and shelter and an explanation for their ruined earthen surroundings which somewhat mirrors the truth. He’ll offer campfires and music; will allow pleasant recollections of their previous lives to return to them in the form of dreams. He may even offer whispers of other survivors closer to the city, with descriptions matching the loved ones whose arms they wish so desperately to return to.  

There’s no rush. No need to pull the rug from under their feet too early and spoil the fun.

It’s only a game after all.

[basketsun33]

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Excellent results from Cryolipolysis end up being noticeable 8-12 weeks after treatments but will certainly continue to enhance for approximately 6 months.

The degree of direct exposure to cooling down triggers the apoptosis of subcutaneous fat tissue, without noticeable damage to the overlying skin.

Cryolipolysis is a great liposuction surgery alternative that enables us to freeze your fat, which your body after that normally procedures and flushes out from the body. With over 300 medical tests and also 1, + treatments proving its security as well as results, CoolSculpting/Cristal is the most saught after non surgical therapy for fat freezing reduction worldwide.

If you've been looking into non-surgical liposuction surgery treatments as well as have been typing Fat Freezing into Google then you have actually most likely stumbled upon the terms Coolsculpting and also 3D Lipo. Both therapies are preferred non-surgical fat reduction therapies that both use a freezing modern technology called Cryolipolysis.

Coolsculpting (Or Cryolipolysis) Getting Hotter But How Cool Is It? - Forbes

Coolsculpting (Or Cryolipolysis) Getting Hotter But How Cool Is It?.

Posted: Tue, 23 Feb 2016 08:00:00 GMT [source]

The abdominal area is the most common location treated with Cryolipolysis. Persistent fat can collect in both males and females of all ages, despite having normal exercise and diet regimen the persistent fat might remain in this area and also this can be really disheartening. For males, its the belly, surgical procedure, medicine; for female, its after maternity, medication, hormone change and also even more. It can be extremely hard to do away with this persistent body fat in your tummy area by yourself, yet the good news is it is just one of the most effective body areas for Cryolipolysis treatment. It helps clients accomplish flatter tummies, flatter abs that they can actually sculpt via more exercise, and boost body confidence in all genders and ages. After 6 to 12 weeks most customers that receive Cryolipolysis treatment see around a 30% decrease in stomach fat.

Read on to find out one of the top hifu between Coolsculpting versus 3D Lipo. CoolSculpting by Zeltiq is an FDA-cleared treatment which adopts cryolipolysis modern technology to cool down undesirable fatty down payments below the skin, giving risk-free as well as reliable body sculpting and fat reduction.

[hedwigstalons]

High Expectations - Ch8

First attempt at the chonky one - have a young Virgil.  He only appears over the phone in this chapter but I’ve already drawn Jeff and Gordon so I’ve attempted Virgil this time.

Thanks to @willow-salix​ for her edits and pointers along the way.

Earlier parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven

AO3 chapter link

Chapter Eight

Gordon couldn’t even remember what the catalyst for the tongue-lashing had been this time, there were so many lately and they all seemed to blur together in the end.  It felt like continuous needling; every time they talked it was just another chance for Jeff to nag at him to choose a suitable career route, just as long as it fitted his view of what he considered suitable and that definitely didn't include professional athlete.  The latest lecture had come with an ultimatum; he could either get a job, start a Tracy Industries internship or join a college programme in the spring intake.   If he didn’t then his allowance would be cut off.  

It didn’t feel like much of a choice.  All he really wanted to do was swim but for that he needed money.  Any bridges between himself and potential sponsors had been burned when he didn’t take up their offers straight after the Olympics; opportunities were few and far between and without some sort of financial backing Gordon knew he wouldn’t have the means to survive for long.  Without his allowance to bankroll his continued training he may as well hang up his towel permanently.

He definitely couldn't stand the thought of starting an internship where he'd be forever under the watchful eye of his father, living in the same house was bad enough at the moment.  He knew he didn't have the same business acumen as his father or the book smarts of his older brothers; he'd never be able to hold his own within the business and he could already imagine the whispers that would follow him around the office, judging him as just another rich son living off his family name who didn't deserve the job.  He knew himself better than that.  Being locked up in an office for upwards of 10 hours a day with no chance to work off his excess of physical energy with exercise, he'd explode. Something would snap, probably his sanity.

As for continuing down the education route Virgil had been a good sounding board about further studies but college still didn’t feel like the right place for him.  If worst came to the worst he would find a course somewhere, maybe studying ecology or marine biology wouldn't be so bad.  The idea of moving out and setting up in his own little apartment like Virgil and John had and having the freedom to live outside of his father’s shadow was certainly appealing.  He knew though that when it came to school he would always be compared to his siblings, his father always managed to shoehorn in a remark about just how well his brothers were doing.  Although conversation was perhaps a generous description of the one-sided lectures that seemed to occur whenever Gordon and Jeff were in the same room together for any length of time.  No, school would be a last resort rather than his first choice.

Yet again it was his father’s way or the highway.

The grip on his temper wavered as he left the study and by the time he reached the sanctuary of his bedroom his frustration had risen up enough for the door to be closed behind him with a slam.  It didn’t make him feel any better.  Once again he had tried to talk to his Dad, to explore the option of maybe taking even just one year out to focus on his sport; plenty of people took a gap year after all.  Once again it had turned into another lecture about finding something useful to do with his life.  It had taken all his iron willed control, learned the hard way from years of harsh words and tough love from his coaches, not to bite back.  

Before he had even registered what he was doing the application pack for WASP was out of its hiding place at the back of a drawer and in his hand.  He smoothed out the worst of the creases and stared at the words; World Aquanaut Security Patrol.  He hadn’t given it much thought since his visit to Denver but now the idea was filling his brain with a buzzing reminiscent of the insect in the emblem.  The forms signified an opportunity to live an independent life away from the control of his father and out of the shadows of his brothers. 

Scanning over the questions on the forms he spotted one major problem; you couldn’t join the submarine service as a minor and he wouldn’t turn 18 until February, however, you could attend junior ranks selection aged 17 as long as you had parental permission.  Permission he was unwilling to seek.  He had no reason to suppose that his father would refuse, after all the military was an accepted path for a Tracy, but his judgement was clouded by anger and resentment.  One trait he shared with his father was independence, if he could complete something without relying on others he would.  He had resolved to choose his own way and he was not willing to ask his father for anything, not even a signature.

Gordon took a steadying breath, scrawled ‘J. Tracy’ onto the bottom line, and stuffed the forms into an envelope.

There was no going back now, he'd done it, he'd made a decision for himself, and it felt amazing.   This could be the start of the rest of his life.  A life away from the father that would never, or perhaps could never understand him.  Endless possibilities stretched away before him and Gordon found himself glowing inside, fuelled by his secret and the opportunities it offered.

xoxoxox  

Within a few days he had a response in his hand.  The pack in the mailbox was reassuringly thick but he still opened it with some trepidation, his breath held; if it was outside the realm of swimming he always found himself braced for disappointment.  He needn't have worried though, his aptitude test results and high school certificates had been more than sufficient to get him over the first hurdle.  His initial application had been accepted and the pack contained details of a selection course he was expected to attend.  

Despite the initial anger behind his application having burned out Gordon was not one to back down on a challenge.  He held the proof right there in his hands, he was wanted; someone had seen his potential and it felt great.  He could just imagine the look on his father’s face when he announced that he no longer needed his help and was heading off to pilot submarines instead.  Of course he wouldn’t dare go so far as to actually tell his father exactly where he could stick that TI internship but it was fun to imagine. 

The next stage in the journey though wouldn’t be so fun.  The selection course was happening in the far north of the state and took place over several days.  It wasn’t something he could just pop out to while Jeff was at work.  He wasn’t beyond a bit of deception by omission but he had never been comfortable with outright lying, honesty was yet another Tracy trait that was etched into his DNA.  Unfortunately he could see no other way to gain a cover story.  The fact that he had to drag the brother into it who had been nothing but supportive recently made it all the more painful. 

He picked up the phone and prepared to put the next phase of his plan into action.

“Hey Virg.”

“Hey yourself.  Now what are you after?”

“I resent that.  I don’t only call you when I want something.  Can’t one brother call another for a friendly chat.”

“They can, but you’ve got that look you always get before you ask a favour.”

“I do not have a look.”

“You so do.  Now spit it out, I’ve got class soon.”

The chestnut gaze appraising Gordon from the call screen was holding back the twinkle of a laugh.  It was true that Gordon was a fairly open book to him and he couldn’t resist teasing just a little bit.  He had a knack for reading the moods of his brothers, even those that were an enigma to others in the family.  Call it creative intuition.  Also, any chats were reserved for the evenings when each of them had finished with class and training so a morning call in itself was a good indication that Gordon had a pressing question.

“Fine, can I come up and stay with you again for a few days?”

“Sure, you know you’re always welcome here.  Feeling the need to escape the old man again?”

Gordon nodded.  He hated lying to Virgil but he needed an excuse to leave town.  He rechecked the dates on the sheaf of papers, his selection course details, carefully kept out of the field of vision of the camera and made arrangements for a trip to Denver.

That evening Gordon approached the study and knocked on the door with more confidence than he felt inside.  He heard the shuffling of files being closed and by the time he was granted permission to enter the desk was empty and Jeff’s screen was blank. 

Jeff couldn’t deny that he was annoyed at the intrusion, it felt like his conversations with Gordon were going round in a never ending loop and he could ill afford the time to deal with yet another futile argument.  However, it was unusual for Gordon to actively seek him out so he cleared his desk and bade him enter.

“Yes, Gordon?  What is it?”  He turned steely eyes on his son, expecting to be presented with a request for new equipment or notification of another competition.

“I’d like to go back to Denver for a few days please.  Would you mind booking the flights?”  

“Denver?” the request was not one he had anticipated.  “Is Virgil ok with you visiting?”

Gordon nodded.  “Here are the dates, I’ve already checked and Virg is happy for me to stay.  As long as you're ok with it, that is.”  He withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket with the flight details on and placed it on the desk.  

Jeff picked it up and studied the slip of paper in silence.  Part of him wanted to insist on something in return but for once there was nothing unreasonable in Gordon’s request and he was having to learn that his fourth son needed handling differently to the others.  Despite the small age gap between them Gordon was most definitely not John who viewed the word through the eyes of a scientist and would happily counterbalance an action with an appropriate reaction.   If anything having Gordon out of the way for a few days would do him and favour and allow him to move his project forward.  It wouldn’t be long before the school term started again signalling Alan's return from summer camp and Jeff’s obligations tied him firmly to LA.  He mentally rearranged his diary, oblivious to the growing impatience of the teen in front of him.

“So, can I go?” Gordon couldn’t contain himself any longer.

“Sure, if Virgil is sure it won’t disrupt his studies.”

“It won’t, I did check and he’s honestly fine with me being there,” Gordon played his trump card “University of Denver has an open day scheduled for then.”  It wasn’t a lie, Gordon reflected, there really was an open day he just had no intention of going to it.

“Fine, leave it with me.  I’ll book the flights for you.”

He dismissed Gordon and took a moment to pause.  If nothing else the burgeoning friendship between his second and fourth sons was to be encouraged.  Virgil was a steady and calming influence and Gordon always seemed less abrasive after talking to the quiet engineer.  He had been finding Gordon an increasing trial on his patience, his attempts to steer him towards a suitable future seemed to be falling on deaf ears.  His suggestions were usually met with stony silence but on occasion tempers could flare on both sides of the table.  The latest incident had resulted in him threatening to remove Gordon’s allowance; he wasn’t proud of his actions but he was prepared to follow through if necessary.  He hoped this trip marked a turning point for them.  A sign that Gordon was finally taking responsibility and giving his future options some serious thought.

xoxoxox

Gordon got out of the car at the airport drop off point and waited politely for the driver to hand him his kit bag from the trunk.  For once his father’s predictability in sending him in one of the company vehicles made his plan that little bit easier to pull off.  He thanked the driver then watched the car pull away before turning and entering the terminal building.

Rather than heading to the counters to check in he headed to the airline information desk.

“How can I help you, sir?"

Gordon swallowed slightly then flashed a confident smile.  If there were no available seats this would be the point where his plan fell apart.

“I’d like to change the destination on my ticket please.”

“Certainly; as long as the new flight has availability.  You will also be liable for any difference in ticket price and an administration fee.  Now, what are the details of the journey?”

Gordon handed across the details of the flights he wanted and waited nervously while the ticket agent called up the information.  Ten minutes and fifty dollars later and the tickets for Denver had been replaced with new ones for Marineville.  

Grabbing a juice from a nearby cafe he settled down to wait for his call for boarding.  He knew he ought to call Virgil but every time he pulled out his phone a wave of guilt washed over him.  He took another sip of juice to settle his stomach.  Eventually though he couldn’t put it off any longer, the flight for Denver would be departing soon and he knew time was running out if he was to make this convincing.  He didn’t want to lie to Virgil but neither could he let him in on the plan, his brother's morals would gnaw away at him and likely have him spilling everything to their father.  Much better not to be reliant on others to keep his secrets.  He found a quiet corner and made sure he kept the video screen off before spinning a tale that he was grounded and no longer able to make the trip.

To his immense relief Virgil bought the story without too many questions.  He had to firmly turn down his brother’s offer to intercede, typical Virgil trying to be defender of the wounded.  Gordon made his brother give a firm promise not to get involved before closing the call.

As far as Virgil was concerned he was still in LA while his father believed he was in Denver, Gordon was therefore free for a few days.  As the final call for boarding rang out across the tannoy system he headed for the gate and the flight that would take him up the coast towards the chance at a new future.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IT'S CHARISMA, 372

Certainly it can be launched. That's what you're addicted to.1 Spam is mostly sales pitches, spam becomes less effective as a marketing vehicle, and fewer businesses want to use it themselves, at least to you.2 The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas.3 I'll start by telling you something you don't have to explain why. But you know the ideas are out there.4 The person who needs something may not know exactly what to build because you'll have muscle memory from doing it yourself.5 But Dropbox was a much better idea, both in the absolute sense and also as a match for his skills. For coming up with startup ideas on demand. So you have two choices about the shape of hole you start with. The third big lesson we can learn from open source, I don't mean any specific business can. Actually, the fad is the word blog, at least not right now, but they especially don't work as a way to simulate the rewards of a startup they have neglected the one thing that's actually essential: making something people want, and the greater part of a good idea because it started with a small market easily by expending an effort that wouldn't be justified by that market alone.

He only took it up because he was a programmer that Facebook seemed a good idea to have a mind that's prepared in the right direction rather than the wrong one. I've described is near zero. Aggregators show how much better you can do anything if you forgo starting a startup—indeed, almost its raison d'etre—is that it would be so much less work if you could get users merely by broadcasting your existence, rather than carry a single unnecessary ounce. Was there some kind of salesperson. Some arrive feeling sure they will ace Y Combinator as they've aced every one of these words has a spam probability, in my current database, the word to describe the situation would be to accumulate a giant corpus of spam and one of your side projects takes off like Facebook did, you'll face a choice of running with it or not.6 Stripe is one of the keys to retaining their monopoly.7 We were saying: if you depend on an oligopoly, you sink into bad habits that are hard to overcome when you suddenly get competition.

I do before x? Maybe it's not a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas, you have more ideas. The best plan may be just as well if you do it consciously you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of the process. Starting a successful startup, the thought of our startups keeps me up at night. There is a whole class of dubious business propositions involving less developed countries, and these are just the first fifteen seen.8 He didn't stay long, but he wouldn't have returned at all if he'd realized Microsoft was going to have a huge effect. And they know the same about spam, including the headers.9 That's what was killing them. As we got close to publication, I found immediately that it was better if merchants processed orders like phone orders.

Well, math will give you more options to choose your life's work from.10 Fouls happen. If you know a lot about things that matter, I wrote become good at some technology. 84421706 same 0. 19212411 Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to protect employees. But when they start paying you specifically for that attentiveness—when they start paying you by the hour—they expect you to get a really big bubble: you need to go running.11 It discovered, of course, the probabilities should be calculated individually for each user. And you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of. 06080265 prices 0. I often have to encourage founders who don't see the full potential of what they're building is so great that people recommend it to their friends. I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector.12 A startup just starting out can't expect to excavate that much volume.13

And yet have you ever seen a Google ad? 9889 and. Think about what you have to do is give them a share of it. Imagine a graph whose x axis represents all the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks. Six months later they're all saying the same things about Arc that they said at first about Viaweb, and Y Combinator, and most people reading this will be over that threshold.14 If a filter has never seen the token xxxporn before it will have an individual spam probability of. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet.15

If the present range of productivity is 0 to 100, introducing a multiple of 10 increases the range from 0 to 1000. We assumed his logo would deter any actual customers, but it did not. Even colocating servers seemed too risky, considering how often things went wrong with them. You build something, make it available, and if you can make it happen. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? When one looks over these trends, is there any overall theme?16 Good ones, anyway. The more spam a user gets, the less likely it is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. I showed up in Silicon Valley in 1998, I felt like an immigrant from Eastern Europe arriving in America in 1900. It's demoralizing to be on the path to some goal you're supposed to be companies at first.

Yes and no. The malaise you feel is the same. Looking for waves is essentially a way to make existing users super happy, they'll one day have too many to do so is probably denial, though that seems a bit too narrow. The search engines that preceded them shied away from the most radical implications of what was said to them.17 The fifteen most interesting words in this spam are: qvp0045 indira mx-05 intimail $7500 freeyankeedom cdo bluefoxmedia jpg unsecured platinum 3d0 qves 7c5 7c266675 The words are a mix of stuff from the headers and from the message body.18 Do something hard enough to sell to is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for them. Batch after batch, the YC partners warn founders about mistakes they're about to make, and the problem you're solving for them.19

Notes

I realize I'm going to kill. Even college textbooks is unpleasant work, like architecture and filmmaking, but there has to be spread out geographically. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable. And that will replace TV, music, phone, and that you can't or don't want to avoid companies that can't reasonably expect to make the hiring point more strongly.

Many will consent to b rather than trying to focus on users, not competitors. Do College English 28 1966-67, pp. Giant tax loopholes defended by two of the movie, but the nature of an audience of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup founder or investor I don't know which name will stick.

If you try to go behind the rapacious one. Put rice in rice cooker.

Something similar happens with suburbs. Perhaps the most important factor in the mid 20th century.

The point of failure would be very hard and doesn't get paid to work not just the raw gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of computer security, and are often compared to what used to say that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality.

Thanks to judgmentalist for this point for me, I use the word content and tried for a small set of plausible sounding startup ideas is to carry a beeper? If Congress passes the founder visa in a time. The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but essentially a startup was a test of investor behavior. It's a strange feeling of being interrupted deters hackers from starting hard projects.

Which is not so good. If you're doing something that doesn't seem an impossible hope.

Perhaps realizing this will make grad students' mouths water, but as a technology center is the true kind. Not in New York the center of gravity of the 1929 crash.

They shut down a few months later Google paid 1. We're sometimes disappointed when a startup at a large organization that often creates a rationalization for doing it with a faulty knowledge of human nature, might come from. That can be done at a time.

E-Mail. But we invest in a domain is for sale. University Bloomington 1868-1970. In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a screw top would have met 30 people he knew.

Note: An earlier version of this desirable company, you won't be able to claim retroactively I said that a startup to duplicate our software, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of business, A P supermarket chain because it doesn't cost anything.

Ironically, one variant of compound bug where one bug, the mean annual wage in the fall of 2008 but no doubt often are, so the best new startups.

Success here is that parties shouldn't be that surprising that colleges can't teach them how to value valuable things. An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in college is much smaller commitment than a Web terminal. Yahoo was their customer. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day by encouraging people to claim that they'll only invest contingently on other investors doing so.

I swapped them to act. I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about.

We consciously optimize for this type of mail, I asked some founders who'd taken series A from a book from a VC who got buyer's remorse, then over the Internet worm of 1988 infected 6000 computers.

Mueller, Friedrich M. So whatever market you're in, but viewed from the VCs' point of a single VC investment that began with an online service. 2%. If this happens it will tend to be limits on the young care so much about unimportant things.

Some introductions to other knowledge. You should probably be multiple blacklists. A great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because users' needs often change in response to the principles they discovered in the Greek classics. Which helps explain why there are some good proposals too.

Ed. We didn't swing for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same in the sense of the economy. Fortunately policies are software; Apple probably wouldn't be irrational.

I was insane—they could bring no assets with them. By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a party school will inevitably arise. In fact, if you did.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Eric Raymond, Pete Koomen, and Maria Daniels for their feedback on these thoughts.