#ske…skeptic…

[vilevalentino]

TRIGGER WARNING, SHIT DRAWINGS !!

I wanted to share a few traditional doodles I did on my essay paper post getting my hands on some shitty markers (my fucking black marker already ran out of ink, you can see me trying to get it working in the second image)

[mwahbabe]

Tattoo artist chloe! x fem reader

you get a tattoo from an “out of the way” tattoo artist, you end up getting more than just new ink….

Men DNI !!!

tags: v fingering (r! receiving), sesbian lex, cunnilingous (r! receiving), porn w plot, loser chloe + yearning chloe rahhh, stoner chloe, reader smokes some weed, kinda friends with benefits?? or client with benefits idk shut up.

a/n: totally not based of a real event in my life. (i wish it were chloe instead 😔)

‧₊˚. °♱༺ ༻♱༉‧₊˚.

You had been wanting a tramp stamp for the longest time, you found Chloe through a friend. At first you were skeptical because her prices were cheap, but looking on her page and seeing her designs, they looked really good and honestly she was hot. You messaged her and sorted out a time the day before. She had told you to just come in whenever since she had no bookings that day.

You nervously walked into the tattoo studio, You had worn short shorts and a crop top so she could tattoo you easier.

As you sat in the tattoo studio room, waiting for your tattoo artist to arrive, you looked around at the various art pieces and designs that adorned the walls. The anticipation of your upcoming tattoo started to build, a mix of excitement and nervousness buzzing in your chest.

Just as you were thinking about how long you had been waiting, the door to the room opened and in walked the tattoo artist – none other than Chloe, as fate would have it.

She smiled warmly when she saw you, her electric blue eyes scanning your exposed skin, taking in your outfit and the area you were interested in tattooing.

"Hey." she greeted, closing the door behind her. “y/n right? sorry i was just having a smoke break.”

“You’re fine.” You smiled “yeah that’s me. Chloe right? i’m here for the tramp stamp i sent you.”

Chloe nodded, “The one and only.”

her smile growing wider as she took a few steps closer to you. "Right, I remember. Tramp stamp, classic."

She looked you up and down, her gaze lingering on your exposed skin for a few seconds before she gestured towards the chair. "You can take a seat and i’ll get it drawn up."

“Okay perfect.” you went to sit on the chair and couldn’t help stealing glances at her, Her arm tattoo was really cool. As well as the one she had on her chest. “I like your ink.”

As you sat down, Chloe picked up a drawing pad and started sketching on it, preparing to draw up the design for your tattoo. She looked up briefly, noticing your glances at her tattoos. A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips, appreciating the compliments.

"Thanks." she said, her gaze meeting yours for a moment. "This one was done a while ago by someone else.. these ones i designed myself..” Her voice having a hint of nervousness in your presence.

“that’s so cool…”

“can i… look at them closer?” you blurted out.

Chloe looked up again, her hand still sketching out the design on the drawing pad. She chuckled softly at your excitement, clearly enjoying your interest.

"Sure." she said, glancing down at her own torso, where a few of her tattoos were visible. "You can… take a closer look, I mean if you want."

Chloe felt a shiver run down her spine as your fingers traced over her skin, following the lines of her tattoos. Your touch was light, but it sent a jolt through her, one that she hadn’t expected. “Damn these are sick..” you were being a bit forward touching her body when you had only just met her but thankfully chloe didn’t seem to mind.

She watched you closely as you examined her tattoos, a hint of a blush on her cheeks. "T-thanks." she said, her voice a bit shaky than usual. making her curse internally for being so nervous

"So…is this your first ink? "

“yeah… i’m sort of nervous.” you admitted

Chloe nodded, her expression softening as she heard your admission. "It’s normal to be nervous.” she reassured. "But don’t worry, I’ve been doing this for a while. I’ll make sure it’s as painless as possible."

Her hands continued sketching on the drawing pad, designing the tramp stamp that would soon be permanently etched onto your skin.

“okay.” you nodded with a smile. This girl seemed so laid back and not the usual professional and stoic tattoo artists you had been recommended. But her aura was just inviting and you just trusted her.

Chloe noticed the smile on your face, and it made her feel more at ease. She was glad to know that you weren’t feeling intimidated. She turned the drawing pad to you. “how’s this looking?”

You looked at the sketch pad and saw it was a bit different from what you sent her but you actually liked it a lot more.

“ohh i actually like that a lot.”

Chloe’s eyes lit up as you expressed your approval of her design. “yeah?” she asked, her nervousness melting away in the face of your enthusiasm. “I tweaked it a bit, but i think it’ll look great on you.”

You smiled and nodded. You definitely trusted her design and process. “I think so too.”

Chloe’s confidence grew with your assent. Seeing your smile and hearing your trusting words gave her a boost. “Hell yeah. Let’s do it.” she said, setting aside the drawing pad and preparing some of the necessary equipment.

“You good to lie forward on the chair?”

You nodded and got up on the old ass chair that seemed like it was about to break honestly but again you trusted her. “yup. if the chair doesn’t break under me.”

Chloe chuckled, shaking her head at your comment about the chair. "Don’t worry, it’ll hold up. it’s seen many ass and tits in its day." she assured you, patting the chair for good measure, earning a laugh from you.

She took a moment to adjust the chair so that it was more comfortable for you, making sure you were situated properly. “Comfortable?”

You laughed at that as you settled yourself, it was a little awkward at first but you got comfortable and rested your head on your arms as you heard her moving around. “yeah.”

Chloe watched you get situated into the chair, taking a few moments to appreciate the view of your body in this position. She shook her head to clear her mind, reminding herself to stay focused on the task at hand.

She picked up the ink gun and prepared the needle, cleaning the area where the tattoo was going to be placed. “It’s gonna be a bit cold,” she warned, her voice soft and soothing. "But try to relax, okay?"

You nodded and when the cold water suddenly landed on your lower back, You tensed but soon got used to it. Trying not to shiver at the feeling of her hands on your back.

Chloe chuckled softly as she noticed you tense up when the cold water landed on your lower back. She continued to wipe the area, preparing it for the tattoo, her hands moving carefully and steadily.

Her fingers trailed across your skin, mapping out the spot where the tattoo would go. "You doin’ alright back there?" she asked, her voice low and smooth as she worked.

“mhm. still a bit nervous.”

Chloe hummed in acknowledgment, her eyes focused on her work. "It’s okay to be nervous. It’s a big step, getting your first ink." she reassured you, her voice gentle and soothing.

She gently wiped the area clean. “alright.. I’m gonna put the stencil on now okay?”

“mhm.” You nodded and looked back at her shyly.

Chloe smiled subtly as her eyes met yours, seeing the shyness in your gaze. She liked a nervous client, it made her feel in control.

"Hold still for a sec, babe." she said, her voice soft as she positioned the stencil over your lower back.

Babe.

the nickname echoed in your brain. But maybe she was flirty with all her customers.

You nodded and stayed still as she put the stencil on.

As she applied the stencil, Chloe's touch was light and delicate against your skin. She could feel the heat radiating off your body as she worked.

As she placed the stencil, her hand stayed on your lower back for a moment longer than necessary. She smiled at your compliance. "Great. We’re almost there."

You nodded and waited for her to take off the paper.

Chloe finished placing the stencil, her hand lingering on your skin for a moment before pulling away to remove the paper. "Perfect."

She examined the design against your skin, a few inches above the waistline of your shorts, making sure it was centered just right.

"Take a look. What do you think so far?" she asked, her voice eager.

You got up slowly, arching your back a bit as you did. You went and looked in the mirror, your back turned and your head turned to look. you checked it out before you nodded satisfied with the design and placement on your skin. “Oh that looks fucking hot. Yup. looks really good.”

Chloe watched with a grin as you stood and admired her work. She chuckled as you complimented the design, her eyes tracing over the lines of the tat.

"Hell yeah, it does." she said, pride in her voice. "I knew you'd look good with some ink. You like the placement?”

You looked and really liked where it was. not too high not too low. it sat perfectly right above where your panties where.

“I do. it’s perfect.”

Chloe couldn’t help but agree, her eyes darting over your body, taking in the placement of the tattoo. “it really is.”

She cleared her throat, trying to stay focused. “alright then. Let’s get started.”

She indicated for you to lay back down on the chair. “you gonna be able to stay still for this?”

You laid forward on the chair, arching your back again, seeing if you would get the same reaction.

Chloe sucked in a small breath as you laid back down, arching your back and giving her an extra view. She had a hard time maintaining her professional demeanor as she took in the sight, her eyes raking over you for a momenlt.

She swallowed and cleared her throat, her hands itching to touch you in a way that was definitely not tattoo artist appropriate. “yeah, just like that..” she said, her voice a bit huskier than usual.

You pretended like that didn’t make the area between your thighs pulse. You laid forward and wiggled your ass a bit as you arched your hips slightly before laying flat. Acting as if you were just settling. You were definitely feeling bold today..

Chloe’s eyes widened as she watched you arch and wiggle your hips, her hands clenching slightly as her mind went to very unprofessional places. She took a moment to compose herself as you laid back down, trying to maintain her usual cool and calm demeanor.

“I can’t tell you whether it’ll be easy or not, everyone’s different...” she said, her voice a bit strained as she prepared the ink. “Just focus on your breathing and tell me if you need a break kay?.”

You nodded. “okay..” you knew it was obviously going to hurt, especially in such an area first time, but in a weird way it was also thrilling.

you rested your face on your hands looking in the mirror, your watched as she moved your shirt up for her and pulled your shorts down just slightly so your lace panties were visible. The fact that she did it for you instead of asking you to was a huge turn on. You couldn’t help squeezing your thighs together subtly as her large hands touched your exposed skin.

Chloe felt her heart skip a beat as she tugged your shorts down, exposing the lace underneath, her hands lingering a moment longer than necessary on the soft fabric. She swallowed hard, her eyes lingering on the sliver of skin she exposed, before forcing herself to focus. She hoped that her hands wouldn’t be too shaky. Having a hot chic in her tattoo chair making her lose all professionalism.

“Just try and stay still. I’m gonna start now.” she said, her voice a bit hoarse.

You watched her in the mirror, your eyes wandering over her body and her masculine demeanour.

Chloe could feel your eyes on her as she started to tattoo you, her own eyes flicking up to glance at you in the mirror. The heat of your gaze was making her feel flushed, and she had to focus extra hard to keep steady in her movements.

Her hands were deft and practiced, but she found herself struggling to concentrate on anything but your body and the way you watched her.

You tensed up slightly as the needle met your flesh. The burning sensation took a few minutes to get used to before you did.

“Breathe.”

Chloe’s voice was soft and soothing, but it held a commanding tone. She watched as you tensed up, feeling the way your body reacted under her touch. Her eyes flickered to your face in the mirror, checking to see if you were okay.

“Doing alright still?” she asked, her hand stilling for a moment.

“mhm.” you nodded. it didn’t hurt as much as you thought. But it was still unpleasant. Small sounds came from you now and then.

Chloe nodded as you assured her you were still good, her eyes flickering back down to focus on her work. She could tell that while the pain wasn’t too intense, it was still uncomfortable.

Every now and then, a small sound would escape your lips, and each one sent a jolt through her body. She could feel her own breathing getting a bit more ragged but she steeled herself, trying to stay professional.

You watched her in the mirror, the way her hand rested on your upper back… and her focused face, her brow furrowed and the way her hand worked… You hoped you weren’t getting the chair wet.

Chloe could feel the heat radiating off your body, her hand resting on your bare skin, feeling the little trembles as you adjusted to the pain. Her mind was racing with thoughts and urges that were completely inappropriate given the situation.

She could feel your body shifting under her hand, the small sounds you were making, and she had to use every ounce of willpower she had to keep herself from touching you in a very unprofessionally way.

As she hit a more sensitive spot, you made a small sound. Your hand gripping the chair.

Chloes hand stopped momentarily as she checked in with you, "Hurts a bit there huh?" she asked, her voice soft and soothing.

She glanced up at you in the mirror, seeing your hand gripping the chair, and she had to resist the urge to gently run her fingers over your skin to comfort you.

“it’s okay… I can take it..”

Chloe could hear the determination in your voice as you said you could take it, and it only made her proud. She nodded and got back to work, her hand moving with a firm and steady touch.

“You're doing great babe." she said, her voice low and smooth. "Just a bit more and then we're done."

You stayed still for her until she was done. your mind distracted by her.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity and yet not long enough, Chloe finished up the tattoo. She cleaned it gently, her hands gentle and sure.

As she put the tools away, she took a moment to admire her work, her eyes studying the tattoo on your skin. "That's it. We're done." she said, her voice a bit hoarse.

As she cleaned it up. The worst part of the process you found out.

Chloe chuckled seeing you tensed up as she cleaned the tattoo, knowing that part usually wasn’t very pleasant.

“Almost done now." she said, her voice soothing as she finished up. "Just a sec…”

She reached for some of the anti inflammatory cream to help with the healing and applied it carefully, her hands gently rubbing it into your skin.

You stayed still for her.

Chloe was careful as she applied the cream, her hands moving gently over your skin, trying to soothe any pain. Once she was finished, she stepped back, her eyes flickering over the tattoo once more.

"You can look if you'd like." she said, gesturing to the mirror, a hint of pride in her voice.

You got up and looked excitedly. you admired your new tramp stamp loving how it looked especially with this outfit. “fuck… i love it so much.. you did really good.”

Chloe's stomach flip as you looked at the tattoo, a smile crossing her face as she saw the look of love and excitement in your eyes.

"Hell yeah, you look damn hot." she said, her voice a bit cocky as she admired her work. "You really like it then?"

“fuck yes. It looks amazing, Thankyou…How much do i owe you?”

Chloe's chest felt warm as you complimented the tattoo again, proud of the work she’d done.

"Considering how much I enjoyed working on such a hot chick, it’s on the house." she said, her voice nonchalant but her eyes filled with a hint of mischief.

“oh? is that what you say to every chic you find hot that walks through your door?”

Chloe chuckled, her smirk growing wider as you called her out on her statement.

"Not every chick." she said, her eyes holding your gaze as she leaned back against the chair. “Wouldn’t have much business then.”

“Right…” You chucked softly as you leaned against the counter.

Chloe watched as you leaned against the counter, her eyes flickering over your body, taking in the way your shirt rode up, the way your hair framed your face.

She couldn’t remember the last time she became so flustered and turned on by a client. It was unprofessional and she knew it, but she couldn’t help herself.

“well.. uh.. my schedules open for the rest of the day. Any other ink you’ve been wanting… or randomly decided on?”

You couldn’t believe she would tattoo you for free and then willingly offer more. but hell you weren’t about to pass that up.

“i’ve wanted a chest tattoo… “

Chloe raised an eyebrow, a smirk on her face as she heard your request.

"A chest tattoo huh?" she said, her eyes slowly raking over your chest, lingering on the exposed bit peeking out from your top. "Anything in mind?"

She shifted on the chair and leaned forward slightly, her eyes dark and intense, her voice low and slightly rough.

“Honestly the design you did for this one was sick so… hit me. draw one up.”

Chloe was surprised but thrilled that you wanted her to design another tattoo for you, and right now.

"That’s a lot of pressure you’re putting on me here, babe." she said, a hint of banter in her voice. "You sure you put that much trust in me?"

“Of course. Unless you want me to leave?”

"No way."

Chloe's response was instant and firm, surprising even her. She didn’t want you to leave. She wanted you to stay here with her for as long as possible.

“Alright. I have something in mind then.” she said, as she grabbed her smoke kit and began to roll. “you smoke?”

“Not much…” you admitted

Chloe nodded as she focused on rolling her joint, listening as you told her you didn't smoke often. It didn't surprise her. You didn't seem the type.

"Do you mind if I smoke then? I find it helps loosen up the creative brain." she said, holding up the joint in her hand before reaching for a lighter.

“Not at all.” you smiled and sat on the couch, wincing at the tenderness on your lower back against the leather.

Chloe lit the joint and took a slow drag, holding the smoke in her lungs for a moment before exhaling. She felt the familiar relaxing effect of the weed as she walked over and sat on the couch next to you, her eyes flickering to your wincing.

"How’s the pain level?“

She asked, her voice a bit softer.

“honestly. hurts more than when it was being done.” you said with a slight chuckle, both out of nervousness and forwardness.

"Yeah it feels like hell once the adrenaline wears off." She said with a laugh, taking another drag on the joint.

Her eyes wandered over your face, studying your expression as the pain hit you a bit more.

"You sure you want another one then? Right now?"

“Hell yeah.”

Chloe watched your unwavering determination with amusement and admiration. You were one stubborn, fearless chick, and she liked it.

"Alright then tough girl." She chuckled, taking another drag before offering you the joint. "Hit that and let's get some art goin' here."

“Okay.” You agreed with her no questions and went to take it before she held it for you to hit.

Chloe watched as you leaned forward, your lips around the joint as you inhaled. Your head was mere inches from her own, and she could feel the heat rolling off your body.

Her eyes were locked on your mouth as you finished taking a drag and leaned back, her mind clouded with a combination of the weed and the close proximity.

You looked her in the eye as you did it and blew it out coughing only a little. Thank god.

Chloe swallowed hard as she watched your lips purse around the joint, the cloud of smoke that appeared as you blew it out making her wish she was sitting even closer than she already was.

She took the joint from you and blew out a long stream of smoke, trying to maintain her composure. "Not bad." she said, her voice low and a bit strained.

“Thanks.” You said with a small laugh, impressed you didn’t have a coughing fit,

Chloe also found herself smiling, watching as a small laugh passed over your lips. She was used to seeing people flinch and cry from the pain of getting inked, but here you were laughing, relaxed on her couch hitting her blunt, and wanting more.

"Now..." she said, her eyes lingering on your chest, "I gotta see some skin before we can start."

You nodded and pulled your top down a bit the top of your breasts, where chloe had definitely noticed you were in fact braless.

Chloe swallowed, her body reacting involuntarily to the sight before her.

She took another drag on the joint, trying to calm her racing heart, before shifting in her seat and leaning closer to you.

"Perfect." she said quietly, her eyes lingering on your skin. "Right here..."

“yeah i like around this sort of area” You traced your finger across the area between your collarbones and the beginning of your breasts. indicating where you wanted the tattoo. Chloe followed your touch with her eyes, her breath caught in her throat.

"Right there?" she asked touching the area you showed her, her voice a bit strained as her mind began to imagine the design there, permanently attached to your skin.

You nodded.

Chloe cleared her throat, forcing herself to focus. She had to be professional, she reminded herself. Despite her body and brain having very un-professional thoughts and feelings.

She leaned forwards, her eyes focused on the skin that would soon be inked. Her fingers gently traced the same path you had, feeling the smoothness of your skin.

"You know it's gonna hurt like a sonuvabitch right here." she said, her voice rough. "You really sure you want it there?"

“yup. positive.”

"Damn girl."

Chloe chuckled, admiring your determination. There was no way she could talk you out of that now, and she knew it.

"Alright then." she said, her fingers lingering on your skin for a moment longer than necessary before she pulled away. "You relax on the couch and don’t move. I'm gonna get my sketchbook."

You nodded and stayed there obediantly, you felt your chest flutter as you watched Chloe get up from the couch and moved towards her desk, her body feeling a bit unsteady. There was something about you that made her feel so off kilter, and it was exciting as much as it was a bit irritating.

She bent over to grab her sketchbook, knowing full well that you had a perfect view of her ass from behind, and didn’t bother to hide the small smirk that tugged at her lips.

You, of course looked. You couldn’t help yourself.

Chloe could feel your eyes on her as she leaned over, choosing to linger there a few seconds longer for your viewing pleasure.

She made her way back over to the couch, sketchbook in hand, making sure to sway her hips as she walked. She sat back down next to you, leaning closer to you than before.

“can i have another hit..?” you asked with more confidence than before.

“go for it hotstuff.”

Chloe took another drag on the joint before handing it to you. As you reached for it, her fingers grazed over yours, a subtle, almost electric touch. You couldn’t hide your reaction to that nickname that would havw otherwise given you the ick from anyone else.

She kept a watchful eye on you as you took another puff, her eyes locked on your mouth as you inhaled, her own lips parting slightly at the sight.

You inhaled and blew it out keeping eye contact. the sexual tension in the air could be cut with a knife.

Chloe’s throat was feeling drier and drier with each passing second. The way you held her gaze as you exhaled the smoke, your lips slightly parted, your chest rising with each breath… it was driving her crazy.

She had to bite down on her bottom lip to keep herself in check, her leg bouncing up and down nervously as the tension increased. Her eyes never left yours, the connection between you two almost tangible.

After a bit of talking and smoking back and forth chloe got started on your chest tattoo, You were laid back in the chair with her leaning over you, her face inches away from yours as she worked on you.

Chloe’s mind was in overdrive. The position you both were in, with her body bent over you and her face so close to yours, was driving her insane.

She tried to focus on the task at hand, the tattoo ink, the steady buzz of the gun in the background. But all she could think about was you, the way you looked, the way your chest rose and fell with your breath, the scent of your skin.

You made sure to control your breathing when she pulled away, You inhaled and as she worked on you, exhaled slowly as not to fuck up her ink.

Chloe was both grateful and frustrated by your breathing. Grateful because you were making things so much easier by not flinching and squirming. But frustrated because every time you drew in a breath, your chest rose slightly, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes on her work and not get distracted.

She was silently thankful that the constant buzz of the tattoo gun was covering up the sound of her heart, which was pumping at a million miles an hour.

Chloe's eyes flicked up to your face as you made small sounds in response to the pain. She could see the slight wince of discomfort, the tightness around your eyes as the gun ran over the more tender parts of the tattoo.

But even that couldn't stop the heat pooling in her gut as you lay beneath her, writhing slightly as she worked her magic.

As she worked on the other side instead of moving around she chose to lean over you. her face inches away now. Not that you minded. You could feel her breath on your skin, she held you still by holding you by the arm gently but firm, besides the uncomfortable sting of the tattoo gun you were soaked

Chloe didn't even realize she was getting closer to you as she worked. All she knew was that she wanted to be closer to you, to feel more of your skin against hers.

She held you still with a gentle touch to your arm, her breath coming out in short shallow puffs against your skin, her eyes fixated on the ink on your body.

Her own body was reacting involuntarily, her pulse racing and her chest heaving as she leaned over you, the scent and sight of you almost overwhelming.

The scent of weed was thick in the air, the buzz of the tattoo gun blending in with the heavy metal music playing overhead. And as Chloe leaned over you, her chest hovering mere inches from your face, her bullet necklace dangled over your face every now and then when she moved to dip the needle end in.

She was completely focused on the task at hand, but even as she worked, her body was screaming at her to touch you, to get closer, to satisfy the ache within her.

“you… can hold my hand if you want.”

You did and gripped her hand hard but not too hard as she worked, You were excited for how this tat would look and also getting excited in a different way.

Chloe felt a jolt of electricity shoot up her arm. Holding your hand, feeling your fingers grip tightly to her own, sent her mind spiralling.

She could feel the tension in your hand, the way your fist tightened as the needle ran over sensitive skin. But it also grounded her, gave her something to focus on as she tried to suppress her own urges.

"Breathe." she said, her voice a bit rougher than normal. "Just keep breathing for me."

You nodded. you were quiet indicating it hurt otherwise you would be more vocal.

Chloe could feel the tension in your body as she continued working. You were being quiet, only letting out small winces every now and then, and she could see the pain in your eyes.

"Almost done, babe." she said quietly, her hand firmly holding yours. "You're doing so good. You're doing great. Just a few more minutes."

You nodded, squeezing your thighs together at her praise.

Chloe's eyes glanced down to your legs briefly as you squeezed them together, and she quickly looked back up, her gaze darkened. She could tell you were starting to lose control, and she was on the same edge as well.

"You're being so good." she repeated, her voice soft but firm. "We're almost there. You can take a little bit more, right?"

“yeah… i can take it.”

"Good girl."

Chloe's breath hitched as those words slipped from her lips, her eyes boring into yours as she looked down at you. Your submission, the fact that you were willing to take the pain for the sake of the tattoo, it was driving her wild.

She was so focused on you, on the tattoo, she was nearly done but she didn't want it to end.

You gave her a look through your lashes, you wondered if she was feeling the same way, but from the way her breath hitched at your sounds and how she gripped your body you could sense it.

Chloe could feel your gaze on her as she continued working, her body shuddering as she felt your eyes on her. And the way you looked at her, those big sultry “fuck me” eyes, nearly made her knees buckle.

She was losing control, losing herself in the sensations, the pain, the pleasure, the sheer need to touch you. But she had to keep it together for now, just until the tattoo was done.

As she dipped the needle back into the ink she took a hit of the joint sitting in the tray, before blowing it out.

“open your mouth.”

You opened your mouth obediently for the joint.

Chloe leaned over you, bringing the joint to your mouth, her hand gripping your chin. As you parted your lips to take a drag, she nearly groaned out loud.

The sight of your mouth open, your tongue darting out to take the joint, had her mind spinning. She was so close to the edge, she could feel her own control slipping by the second.

As she gripped your chin you tried not to moan. You looked her in the eye as you inhaled, your thighs squeezing together.

The look you gave her as you took the joint nearly broke her. Your gaze, your soft lips around the joint, she gripped your chin hard now, her body leaning over yours, her eyes fixed on your mouth as she watched you take a long, slow drag.

Her mind was racing, her heart thumping wildly in her chest, the sounds in the room blending together in a fuzzy mix of sensations. You blew it out towards her face.

Chloe couldn’t stop the small shiver that ran through her body. as you did this. The weed in her system combined with the sight of you, laying on the chair, eyes heavy, breath coming out in soft pants, was intoxicating.

She took the joint from your mouth and tossed it onto the tray, before leaning over you, her hands planted on either of your shoulders, trapping you in place.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice low and rough.

You giggled softly. “maybe…” clearly the joint had loosened you up and made your nerves less stiff.

Chloe smirked at your response, her eyes darkening at the sound of your soft, breathy laugh. She had you right where she wanted you.

“Yeah? You’re enjoying being a tease?, being all laid out for me to work on?”

She shifted slightly, leaning over you a bit more, pressing her body against yours.

Your breath hitched as her body pressed into yours as she towered over you. You couldn’t help the grin on your face. “yeah…” you admitted “I do like it..”

Chloe's gaze darkened further as you admitted, in that soft, breathless voice, that you liked this. Being at her mercy, pinned beneath her body, the pain and pleasure mixing together in a dizzying whirlwind.

She leaned in closer, the scent of your skin, the feel of your body against her, driving her crazy. “you’re really fucking hot...” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

“so are you…” You mumbled, your breath fanning her lips.

Chloe was done. All the control she had left was gone as you spoke to her in that soft, breathy voice, your breath fanning her lips.

She leaned in closer, her body pressing against yours, pinning you to the chair. “You wanna do something about it?” she asked, her voice a low whisper, her lips just millimeters from yours. absolutely you did.

“fuck yes.” you said before she kissed you hungrily, your legs wrapped around her and your arms gripped her lean but strong upper back. Chloe had waited long enough, and as soon as the words left your lips she captured your mouth in a fierce, hungry kiss. Her tongue was demanding and possessive as it parted your lips, her body pressed completely against yours.

Her hands trailed down your body, gripping and grabbing at your skin as her body moved between your legs, her hips rolling against yours.

You moaned as her hips rolled against yours, your moans being swallowed by hers. The sound of your moans was like music to her ears, it drove her crazy. Her body moved against yours in a slow, steady rhythm, each roll of her hips sending sparks of pleasure through her body.

Her hands were all over you, touching and grabbing, as if she couldn't get enough of you. The taste of your lips, the scent of your skin, the sounds you were making... it was intoxicating. As her hand snuck down into your shorts, she looked up at you, her pupils dilated, “can i?” she asked in what sounded like a whimper, you nodded a little bit too fast, with your consent chloe’s hand cautiously slipped into your panties finding your soaked folds and puffy clit, you let out a shaky moan and tipped your head back, your hips bucking into her hand.

Her mouth moved from your lips to your neck, biting and sucking at the tender flesh while she gently but firmly drew circles on your clit. Watching in fascination as you squirmed in her seat. She needed more.

Feeling her tug at your bottoms you lifted your hips eagerly letting her pull them off down your legs letting the soaked fabric of your panties join them and kicked them off your ankles. As soon as they were out of the way, Chloe ran her hands up your thighs, gripping them in her hands as she looked down at you. Her eyes darkened seeing you spread out beneath her, exposed and at her mercy.

You sat up on your elbows and watched in anticipation as Chloe’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of you, laid out before her, so willing and wanting. She dropped to her knees in front of you, her hands running up and down your thighs, getting closer to your cunt. You couldn’t help but let out an audible moan and watched her as she lowered herself,

Slowly, almost torturously, she leaned in and planted a kiss on your inner thigh, her lips tracing a path upwards towards your cunt, her eyes never leaving yours. Chloe smirked at the sound of your moan as her hand came down with a playful slap on your thighs She repeated the action a few times, alternating between gentle kisses and stinging slaps, watching as your body writhed beneath her touch.

“That hurt?” she asked, her voice a low whisper, her lips against the sensitive skin of your inner thigh.

You nodded, “I like it..”

“Course you do.”

Chloe chuckled as she came back up to kiss you, her shaky breath against your lips, which she captured again in a fierce, hungry kiss. Her tongue was demanding and possessive as it parted your lips, her body pressed completely against yours. “you taste good.. ” she said, her voice sultry and low, as she once again got back down between your legs continuing to plant kisses on your inner thigh, her hands gripping your legs, holding you in place.

Her fingers dug into your skin, her touch firm and possessive, as she continued to explore your body, her kisses getting closer and closer to your pussy. “bet you taste better down here…” she sounded as if she was breathless, like the sight of you had taken her breathe away.

You watched her and felt her blue hair tickle your thighs as she moved closer and closer to where you needed her.

She leaned in, her breath hot against your skin, her eyes locked on yours as her lips finally made contact with your pussy. You let out a moan through your teeth and your body reacted to it, Her eye contact was so intimate you looked away flusteredly

Seeing you look away made something possessive flare within Chloe. She didn’t want you looking anywhere but at her, she wanted your full attention.

She reached up and gently grabbed your chin, forcing you to look back at her. Her mouth was still planted between your legs, her tongue dancing over your sensitive bud.

“Look at me.” she commanded, her voice firm, her eyes fixed on yours.

you turned your head making eye contact shyly.

Her tongue flicked against your clit, her lips sucking gently, her fingers gripping your hips, holding you in place as she worked on you.

“Oh… fuck chloe.” you had never in your life been eaten out this good, she was hungry.

Hearing you say her name in that raspy voice, the way you cried out, filled Chloe with a sense of power. She loved having you like this, completely at her mercy, your body responding to every flick and touch, every movement of her tongue and lips.

Wrapping her arms around your legs, she pulled you closer, her mouth working hungrily against you, her eyes still locked on yours Your cheeks were hot as you tried your best to keep eye contact with her, keeping yourself propped up on your elbows

You were struggling to keep eye contact, your body trembling and quaking with pleasure under her touch, but Chloe was relentless. Her eyes held yours captive, demanding your attention as her tongue worked its magic on your most sensitive spot.

She could feel your legs weakening, your arms shuddering as you tried in vain to hold yourself up. With a growl, she gripped your hips, pulling you closer, her tongue and lips applying more pressure, more intensity, driving you closer and closer to the edge.

You moaned and one hand moved to grip something, anything, you settled on the back of her head, your fingernails gently raking on her neck. Chloe groaned at this.

Her mouth continued its assault on you, her tongue moving with a frenzied pace, her lips sucking at your clit with a fierce intensity.

Your chest rose and fell as your moans got louder and more whiney, you wondered if you were the first client she had done this to or if this was a common accurance with the way she was devouring you so good.

As your moans were growing louder, higher pitched and more desperate, Chloe was consumed by this act, completely lost in the moment. Her focus was solely on you, on the sounds you were making, the taste of you on her tongue.

She’d had clients come onto her before, yes, but nothing could compare to this. The connection she felt with you, the way your body responded to her touch… it was different. It was intimate and intense and utterly addictive.

“Chloe… shit.. oh my god you’re so good at this…” your shaky voice filled her ears.

Hearing your voice, breathless and ragged from pleasure, your words of praise only made Chloe double down. She wanted to give you as much pleasure as she could, make you moan and cry out her name in ecstasy.

She flattened her tongue against your clit, a guttural noise escaping her throat as she feasted on you, her hands gripping tighter at your hips to keep you still.

“So good… fuck.. yes baby… right there.” You praised.

Hearing your words of encouragement only fueled Chloe's desire. She loved the way you responded to her touch, the way you writhed beneath her, the way you called out her name.

She focused on the spot you had praised, applying more pressure with her tongue, swirling and lapping at your little clit, wanting to push you over the edge, to make you lose control completely.

When she added a finger you cried out, her digit entered you, slipping inside your wetness, you were lost in pleasure, her relentless double action on your cunt had you a squirming, whiney mess.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from your face, watching as you came undone beneath her touch. The sight of you, squirming and writhing, your body trembling and quaking as she worked her fingers and tongue, it was almost too much for her to handle.

She wanted you to fall apart completely, to lose control completely, and she showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.

As she added another finger, stretching you open, you let out a louder moan making her pussy throb.

The stretch felt so good as her tongue continued its action on your clit. When she started to pump her fingers, you were utterly out of your own control.

“Fuck… fuck..!! chloe..” Hearing you cry out her name, so breathless and wanton, was doing things to Chloe that she couldn't explain. It was the most delicious sound and it fueled her desire to push you further and further, deeper into the abyss of ecstasy

"That’s it," she purred, her voice low and sultry, "let go babe, I got you."

You obeyed her and a string of girly whines, cusses and groans came from you as you came, making a mess of her to her utter delight.

Chloe was hypnotised as you came undone, crying out her name in waves of ecstasy, Chloe slowed her actions but didn't stop completely. She watched in awe as you trembled and shook, your body a trembling mess of pleasure and exhaustion.

She lifted her head up and looked at you, a satisfied smirk on her face, her chin and mouth glistening in the lamplight. "damn..." she said breathlessly, still reeling from the sheer intensity of what had just taken place.

Chloe slowly withdrew her fingers, her breath still ragged and uneven from the intensity of moment. She climbed up from her kneeling position, her eyes never leaving yours, and perched on the edge of the chair beside you.

She placed a hand on your stomach, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on your skin, and watched as you laid there, chest heaving, trying to catch your breath.

“jesus christ… that was the hottest thing i’ve ever seen,” she said, a hint of awe in her voice.

You laughed softly, Still recovering from the most intense orgasm you’d had in a while. “fuck…”

Chloe chuckled softly in response, a satisfied and lazy grin tugging at her lips. She was still coming down from the intensity of the moment herself, but she couldn't stop watching you, taking in the sight of you lying before her, flushed and breathless and beautiful.

She reached out a hand and gently brushed some stray strands of hair away from your face, her touch light and gentle. "You okay there?" she asked, her voice still a bit rough.

“Yeah.. i’m good.” in your mind you couldn’t believe that really happened, your first tattoo and you get your pussy ate by a hot tattoo artist chic. But you somehow managed to play it cool.

Chloe smiled at your response, her fingers still tracing lazy patterns on your stomach, enjoying the feeling of your skin under her touch.

She knew what you were thinking, could see it in your eyes, and she couldn't help but smirk. "Not quite the typical tattoo experience, I know," she teased, earning another laugh from you

“I would have got one sooner.”

Chloe chuckled at your comment, her smirk widening into a full-fledged grin. "I'll have to keep that in mind for future bookings," she joked, her eyes sparkling.

She continued to trace her fingers over your stomach, her touch light and gentle, as if she was savoring the feeling of your skin beneath her fingertips. "You're welcome to come back anytime," she added, her voice low and suggestive.

“I think i will.” You giggled. but you meant it. completely.

“lemme clean you up hot stuff.” she gave your thigh a pat before rising up and grabbing some paper towels and her water bottle before returning to your side, gathering a generous amount on the paper towels before cleaning up any remaining fluids from your “encounter”. You winced a bit from the sensitivity. Much like when she cleaned your tattoo.

Chloe continued to clean you, being mindful of the tender flesh between your thighs, she knew how sensitive you were in that area now, and the sound of your wince went straight to her core.

"Sorry babe.," she murmured as she gently cleaned you up, her touch deliberately gentle.

“Don’t be.”

"She hummed softly in reply, her eyes still fixed on your body as she continued her gentle cleanup.

She couldn't resist the urge to touch you, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on your sensitive skin, as she took in the sight of you lying there before her, so open and vulnerable, your body still quaking from the aftershocks of pleasure.

“Can i have my shorts and panties back?” you asked with a slight grin sitting up straight.

Chloe nodded, her gaze lingering on your body for a moment longer before she reluctantly pulled away. She moved over to the side of the room where your discarded clothes were lying, and picked up your shorts and panties.

She walked back over to you, a cocky smirk still playing at the corners of her mouth, and handed your clothes over, You slipped the panties on your legs and then pulled them up doing the same with your shorts, with Chloe watching you silently as you put your clothes back on, her eyes roving over your body appreciatively. She couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment as your tantalizing skin disappeared under the fabric, but she tried to mask it with her usual cocky demeanour.

“alright. Lemme finish up the tattoo. got a bit distracted.” Her voice carried a teasing tone.

“Yeah just a little.” You teased. “but i think we both did.”

Chloe chuckled at your remark, unable to deny the truth in it. “Yeah, yeah.”

She moved back up to your chest, her focus shifting back to the task at hand.

As she resumed working on the tattoo, your mind kept replaying the events of the past few minutes over and over again, the feeling and sight of her buried between your legs eating you like you were her last meal still fresh and vivid in your mind.

As she finished your chest tattoo, the pain contrasting with the pleasure you had seconds ago surprisingly pleasant. Once she finished you smiled.

Chloe took a step back, admiring her work. The tattoo looked perfect on your skin, a permanent and sexy mark on your body that she had put there.

you gave her a warm smile “let me see.”

Chloe pulled a handheld mirror from the table and held it up so you could see your reflection in it. Her gaze followed your every move, watching your reaction as you took in the sight of your new tattoo.

"what do you think?" she asked, her voice steady but eager. She was silently desperate for your approval, her heart aching to hear your words of praise.

As you looked at the tattoo through the mirror, admiring it from every angle, chloe was behind you, both checking for your reaction and getting another look at your ass.

“fuck… I love that..” you said as you looked at it through the mirror from different angles. “you did amazing chloe.” that sentence had two meanings. Chloe's heart skipped a beat. The words you said sounded like music to her ears, and she couldn't help but bask in your praise. Her eyes roamed over her ink on your skin again.

"yeah? you really like it?" she asked, her voice betraying a hint of insecurity. she needed to hear you say it again, to know that she had truly satisfied you with her work.

“absolutely Chloe. thankyou so so much.” You wanted to kiss her but didn’t know if that was weird, even during this weird exchange. Seeing how much you loved the tattoo, how satisfied you were with her work... it meant everything to her. And when you looked at her like that, like you wanted to kiss her, she felt her walls crumbling, her usual cool and collected facade faltering.

When she saw you were going in your purse to pay a mixture of anticipation and reluctance coursing through her veins. She didn’t want this moment to end, didn’t want to go back to the cold and professional exchange of money.

“Uh..right yeah. Yeah, money.”

Truly she did need the money but she just couldn’t bare to see you go. She didn’t want this to end.

she spoke up, her tone a little bit needier than she liked.

“honestly… it’s fine. honestly after what we did, forget it.”

You gave her a look, insisting you had to pay her. “Chloe c’mon..”

“No. seriously it’s fine. As long as you’re willing to…y’know make this a regular thing. it’s totally on the house, if that’s okay …”

Your eyes lit up, it wasn’t everyday your tattoo artist fucked you silly and then gave you a good tattoo, free at that. You definitely weren’t about to say no. This was a dream to anyone that wanted tattoos.

“Sure. I mean if you’re okay with it.” you gave a slight smirk to the blue haired punk girl with various tattoos across her arm and body, pretending like inside your jumping for joy at the thought of doing this kind of thing with her again.

“Course. Hit me up whenever you want some ink. …or anything else. I got you.”

Needless to say, You had found gold when you found Chloe price.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from fringe figure to the prospective head of U.S. health policy was fueled by skepticism and distrust of the medical establishment—views that went viral in the Covid-19 pandemic.

People once dismissed for their disbelief in conventional medicine are now celebrating a new champion in Washington. Scientists, meanwhile, are trying to figure how they could have managed the pandemic without setting off a populist movement they say threatens longstanding public-health measures.

Lingering resentment over pandemic restrictions helped Kennedy and his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign draw people from the left and the right, voters who worried about the contamination of food, water and medicine. Many of them shared doubts about vaccines and felt their concerns were ignored by experts or regarded as ignorant.

Kennedy merged a crowd of Covid-era skeptics with people who long distrusted mainstream medicine and food conglomerates. Together, they helped return Donald Trump to the White House. With the president-elect’s selection of Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services, the medical establishment is bracing for an overhaul of U.S. health policy.

Health authorities who beat the pandemic worry about losing more trust from the people they worked to save. Doctors, scientists and public-health officials are asking themselves how they can win it back. Among their postelection revelations: Don’t underestimate or talk down to those without a medical degree.

Officials fear that Kennedy will promote unproven remedies, appoint vaccine skeptics to immunization-advisory committees and hamper the government’s infectious-disease detectives in a future pandemic.

Kennedy has said he opposes food coloring and additives, the widely used pesticide glyphosate, seed oils and foods with added sugars, among many other issues. Medical authorities say some of his views, such as suspicion of ultra-processed foods, have scientific merit, while others are unfounded. The food and pharmaceutical industries are planning to win him over where they can and do battle where they can’t.

Much of Kennedy’s popularity reflects residual pandemic anger—over being told to stay at home or to wear masks; the extended closure of schools and businesses; and vaccine requirements to attend classes, board a plane or eat at a restaurant.

“We weren’t really considering the consequences in communities that were not New York City,” the places where the virus wasn’t hitting as hard, former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said at event last year.

Authorities focused on ways to stop the disease and failed to consider “this actually, totally disrupts peoples’ lives, ruins the economy and has many kids kept out of school,” Collins said. The U.S. overall took the right approach, he said, but overlooking long-term consequences was “really unfortunate. That’s another mistake we made.”

Public-health officials wonder if they have sufficient clout for the next national emergency. “Science is losing its place as a source of truth,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious-disease physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s becoming just another voice in the room.”

Pandemic restrictions wore on Joel Grey, a 62-year-old retired car salesman in Belfair, Wash., who voted for Trump. He got vaccinated only because diabetes put him at higher risk of complications from Covid-19. He said he watched acquaintances lose jobs because they wouldn’t get the shot and blamed his mother’s death at 87 partly on the isolation of lockdowns.

Grey became frustrated with scientists telling Americans how to live, he said: “I just don’t think they have a place in our lives.” His view resonated broadly.

In October 2023, 27% of Americans who responded to a Pew Research Center poll said they had little to no trust in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, up from 13% in January 2019.

‘Latest Nonsense’ Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit group founded by Kennedy, got a boost during the lockdown era, a time of surging interest in alternative medical and nutrition information and advice. The nonprofit raised more than $46 million from 2020 to 2022, nearly 10 times more than it collected in the three years before the pandemic, tax filings show.

The group published articles saying Covid-19 vaccines sabotaged the immune system and enriched shareholders of drugmakers. “Ignore the Latest Nonsense About ‘Variants.’ Stay Focused on Dangers of COVID Shots,” read the headline of one 2021 article. Others took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the federal government’s infectious-disease research center, and groups that supported vaccines, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To counter such views, Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, shared information on the importance of vaccines and face masks. She dismissed unsupported claims as misinformation and described some of their purveyors as grifters.

Looking back, Rivera said her sometimes scolding messages weren’t helpful. “Everybody has been tempted by the slam dunk,” he said. “It’s not an effective way to communicate science. It’s just not.” She and others say they are dialing back the use of the word misinformation, saying it makes people feel they are being called liars or dumb.

During the pandemic, Palmira Gerlach had questions about the Covid-19 vaccines, but doctors “were very dismissive,” the 44-year-old recalled.

Gerlach, a stay-at-home mother outside Pittsburgh, said she falsely told her child’s pediatrician that she got the shot, seeking to avoid judgment. The doctor told her, “Good girl.” Gerlach turned to podcasts featuring Kennedy, drawn to his willingness to question pandemic measures.

One challenge for health authorities was learning how to combat Covid-19 while hundreds of people died each day. Researchers needed months just to clarify how the virus spread. That meant answers to common questions kept shifting: Was it OK to gather outside? When was it safe to visit grandparents? Do I have to wear a face mask everywhere?

Health authorities sometimes got it wrong. At first, officials said Covid-19 vaccines would prevent transmission or infection. Later, they learned that the shots instead cut the risk for hospitalization or death.

Shelli Hopsecger, a small-business owner in Olympia, Wash., who described herself as an independent, said she listened closely to health officials when the pandemic hit. But as school closures and lockdowns dragged on, she began questioning what they said.

Hopsecger, 56, said the pandemic made her realize how powerful a role federal health agencies played in her life. “We all are aware now that there are these agencies that look at these things on our behalf,” she said. “As citizens, it’s time for us to start telling them what we want them to look at.”

Last year, Hopsecger said she started listening to Kennedy’s podcast interviews on the recommendation of her 26-year-old son. She recalled Kennedy pointing out how millions of Americans suffer from chronic diseases, despite vast sums spent on healthcare.

“Mr. Kennedy is definitely on to something,” Hopsecger said. “Our current policies and systems are not doing the job of preventing or even reversing chronic diseases.”

Us and them Kennedy’s polling as an independent presidential candidate had fallen to the single digits when he threw his support to Trump in August and embraced the slogan “Make America Healthy Again.”

The career of Kennedy—an environmental lawyer, former heroin addict and the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy—took a turn in 2005 when he began questioning the use of vaccines. He says he exercises, meditates and attends 12-step meetings every day.

While campaigning for Trump, Kennedy talked about how more Americans were obese and more young people were getting diagnosed with cancer. He decried the quality of foods and warned that water and medicines were polluted by toxins and chemicals. He criticized the medical establishment for pushing pills and shots, rather than addressing the root causes of disease.

“We were all told in Covid: ‘Trust the experts.’ But that’s not a thing,” Kennedy said in an episode of the “What is Money?” podcast in April. “Trusting the experts is not a feature of science. It’s the opposite of science. It’s not a feature of democracy.”

Many doctors, scientists and health officials with traditional credentials share Kennedy’s view that ultraprocessed foods contribute to obesity, yet they also say more study is needed. Likewise, many establishment health figures agree that scientists need to do more to understand the role of microplastics and so-called forever chemicals in food and water.

Yet many scientists and food-industry officials say some of the food colorings and chemicals Kennedy pinpoints as dangerous don’t affect human health in such small quantities. Nearly all are alarmed by Kennedy’s unproven or disproved claims—that vaccines cause autism, AIDS might not be caused by HIV and antidepressant drugs might be linked to mass shootings.

Ashley Taylor, a 33-year-old entrepreneur in New York City, sides with Kennedy’s views on food safety and the role of experts. She became critical of traditional medicine after scoliosis surgery as a teenager left her reeling in pain and reliant on Tylenol. She said she rejected her doctors’ recommendations and found relief from her back problems with acupuncture, a nutritious diet, yoga and positive thinking.

Taylor said that health authorities during the pandemic ignored studies on natural immunity and didn’t acknowledge that people who had been infected with Covid-19 might not need to be vaccinated. “What I just don’t approve of is purposefully presenting information in a way that is not allowing the American public to arrive at their own opinion,” she said.

Taylor listened to part of Kennedy’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci; Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.” She was attracted to his ideas even more after watching a September roundtable on nutrition featuring Kennedy and his allies, hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R, Wisc.) in the Senate.

After previously voting for Democrats, Taylor said she cast her ballot for Trump.

Mainstream doctors, researchers and health officials are bracing for a Kennedy-led federal health department. They are considering how best to communicate with the public if they need to counter decisions that stray from established public-health measures.

Some Food and Drug Administration staffers have already stopped saying that vaccines are safe and effective, instead advising that the benefits outweigh the risks, a person familiar with the matter said. The change is intended to make clear that all medical interventions have risks, the person said, and to spike the argument that rare side effects mean vaccines aren’t safe.

Virologist Dr. Greg Poland said he advises scientists to communicate with humility and empathy, to speak as a compassionate physician would with a patient. “We’re not dogmatic. We’re not about forcing people,” he said. “We’re about imparting information.”

To build trust in vaccines, Poland, who is also a Presbyterian minister, speaks to conservative churches and civic groups. He tells them he will be truthful and transparent and then explains how vaccines work and how scientists arrive at a consensus.

Poland said he stays until he has answered every last question.

[psychreviews2]

Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 3

Getting her act together

As Melanie Klein put her past behind her, she began conversing with analysts in England. There was a mixture of skepticism with a sense of wonder and mystery about her process. She appeared both as a riff raff in the psychoanalytical community, but others were curious to see if she had been underrated, a diamond in the rough. Alix Strachey got the impression that "Mélanie is rather tiresome as a person—a sort of ex-beauty and charmer—and she’s unpopular with a certain section of the [Society] who pretend she’s quite sound in practice, but feebleminded about theory." Melanie felt that she was ahead of Hug-Hellmuth, because she found the Oedipus Complex with her play technique, whereas the former had not. "She’s not only got vast hoards of data, but a great many ideas, all rather formless and mixed, but clearly capable of crystallizing in her mind. She’s got a creative mind, and that’s the main thing." Hug-Hellmuth on the other hand was an influence to Anna Freud, who went more in the direction of Ego psychology.

Even as Melanie was keeping her personal life secret in many ways, like not talking about her estranged husband, she was willing to live life fully. "She’s really a very good sort and makes no secret of her hopes, fears, and pleasures, which are of the simplest sort." The two were in Berlin and living it up at dances and balls, despite having different personalities. "While Melanie was extremely perspicacious about analysis, Alix found her limited as a person." Regardless, Alix was sending copious letters back to England with the insights she was learning from Melanie. The translations into English were difficult but when Klein arrived in England, she found the experience positive overall and wanted to stay. "In 1925 I had the wonderful experience of speaking to an interested and appreciative audience in London—all members were present at Dr. Stephen’s house because at that time there was not yet an institute where I could give these lectures. Ernest Jones asked me whether I would answer in the discussion. Although I had learnt a lot of English privately and at school, my English was still not good and I remember well that I was half guessing what I was asked, but it seemed that I could satisfy my audience that way. The three weeks that I spent in London, giving two lectures a week, were one of the happiest times of my life. I found such friendliness, hospitality and interest, and I also had an opportunity of seeing something of England and I developed a great liking for the English. It is true that later on things did not always go easily, but those three weeks were very important in my decision to live in England."

Her impact was immediate and Melanie was starting to network with other experimental child psychologists in England, and she began taking the extra money she was earning to dress more professionally and reinvent herself after her failed marriage. Ernest Jones responded to Freud's objections, with a crossed out word that the author Phyllis Grosskurth thought was a slip that revealed his new allegiance. "I know that Melanie Klein’s work has met with considerable opposition in Vienna and also in Berlin, though more at first than later. I regard the fact as indicating nothing but resistance against accepting the reality of her your conclusions concerning infantile life. Prophylactic child analysis appears to me to be the logical outcome of psycho-analysis." Alix at the time was growing tired of Melanie's fastidiousness and goody-two-shoes persona, but she still respected her knowledge. "However, I like her, and she’s very impressive in her line, there’s no doubt of it. (I now think that Anna Freud simply hates her on personal grounds because she thinks she’s a 'low' woman. Someone ought to speak to her about her general sniffiness, don’t you think?)"

Melanie was also involved in a fling with C.Z. Kloetzel, in her last days on the continent, but it was a mismatch between a woman who wanted a long-term relationship alongside a strong sexual compatibility, but "Melanie Klein was too intense, too serious, too depressed for the kind of lighthearted liaison Kloetzel had in mind. She seems, however, to have continued to exert a strong sexual attraction for him since, according to Eric Clyne, he made periodic trips to England to visit her. She was an intelligent woman who was capable of losing her head. The man whom she always considered the love of her life seems to have regarded the relationship as one of a series of trifling flings." When she was invited to England to analyze Ernest Jones's children, it ended up being the last time she saw Berlin or Vienna.

Around this time, Melanie's analyst, Karl Abraham, died at a young age leaving her analysis in limbo. For her it was "a great pain to me and a very painful situation to come through. When I abruptly finished my analysis with Abraham there was much that had not been analysed, and I have continually proceeded along the lines of knowing more about my deepest anxieties and defences." She loved Abraham because he defended her in Berlin, but after his death, the Berlin Society increased their attacks on her. Sandor Radó in particular was very jealous and refused to publish Klein's works, because he was passed on Freud's papers from Ferenczi to read, and so he felt close to the source of true knowledge. A continental vs. English rivalry was beginning to brew.

Criticism

When Anna Freud was beginning to publish, she was having trouble getting acceptance in England. Her theories on child psychology differed from those of Melanie's. For instance, Anna was less into interpreting everything that arose within children and wanted to allow more simple explanations, to avoid being too suggestive, but ironically, she supported an educational mentorship, partially because children are still developing and need to learn so many practical things. They also disagreed on what the transferences meant, both positive and negative towards the analyst. The big differences between Klein's methods and Anna's was the differences in ages of the children. Melanie wanted to go as far back as possible, whereas Anna felt that this could be too intense for the children. Those convinced by Melanie Klein found that the analysts themselves may have had their own blocks to their infantile lives, and their fears of penetrating more deeply were limiting their progress. Even Ernest Jones wrote to Freud about the benefits of not waiting. He wanted to engage the neuroses while they were "still in a plastic state, than after the mind has become set and organized on an unhealthy basis and at great cost." He deftly avoided saying that Melanie Klein was analyzing his children, to spare Freud's feelings.

Sigmund Freud responded by disavowing Anna's theories as well as Melanie's, especially her theories of an independent super-ego in younger children. In terms of the superego, he agreed more with Anna. "I would like to contradict Mrs. Klein in this point, that she regards the super-ego of the children [to be] as independent as that of adults while it appears to me that Anna is right in emphasizing that the infantile superego is still under the direct influence of the parents." Anna then responded with her own papers on connecting to the Oedipus Complex in the classical timeline.

In the end, both theorists claimed results in their methods. Certainly there are similarities despite differences in the timeline. Both theorists explain emotional investment as a build up of tension and then a release, like the sex act. Anna emphasizes skill development, which Melanie wants the child to do more on their own accord, and this may be a weakness in that the child cannot always be counted on to develop any of the requisite skills to deal with life's challenges. After an interpretation in the Kleinian method, some children do go into their own searches for solutions in their family life, and let go of rumination at the same time. Anna's weakness could be that the education from the analyst may impose too many restrictions on the child and make them dependent on the analyst, like a parent or teacher. Also, the analyst may not know the child or parents well enough to make those decisions, so in many circumstances it would be better to let the child make their own determinations, especially when it comes to hobbies and interests.

Children, like adults, all have desires and are affected by obstacles and frustrations that stand in the way. This is true in the early days of an infant's life as well as throughout adolescence and adulthood. Rumination is let go of when there's discharge and venting, but especially when problems are solved and put behind oneself. Otto Rank was criticized for his birthing pains theory, but his acceptance of a meditative response is very instructive in that it can help to save energy. Venting has its limits if there are no solutions to problems. Endless venting may result in a lack of tact in social situations. Some problems also cannot be solved, so a certain amount of letting go of endless interpretations can save energy that is more needed in the arena of skill development. A daily meditation practice that goes along with work, to check in on one's breath and to relax any unnecessary tension, to let the breath move on it's own, can clearly demarcate attachment and resistance in the Buddhist way, but also in the psychoanalytic way, one can see the beginnings of wasted energy when thoughts begin to dwell on unnecessary topics or on things that cannot be controlled. Venting, on the other hand, can then be more appropriate when there are severe shocks and misfortunes. Part of the reason why venting is so helpful is that it's part of a grieving process where a misfortune cannot be changed, so the patient can exhaust emotions in grieving until acceptance arises naturally. In situations where it would better to face problems and solve them in a practical way, a more constructive and active approach is efficacious. Helene Deutsch also noted that all desires always end in larger or smaller depressions, so the child may not necessarily be autotelic enough to just quickly pick up new goals to regulate emotions. They may not think that this is what is needed and be stuck in depression. Goals can also be tiring, and a meditative rest is desirable for a burnt out psyche. On the other hand, both Melanie and Anna supported a resilience and persistence with Ego in some cases, because being intolerant of delays in gratification would limit skill development. It isn't always skills that should be analyzed, but also goals. Many goals are futile, and therapeutically helping the patient let go of those types of goals is a way to teach the patients on how to be autonomous and use their own agency to make choices without the need for added suggestions, education, or more analysis.

Object Relations: Otto Rank Pt. 1: https://rumble.com/v1gvrq9-object-relations-otto-rank-pt.-1.html

Object Relations: Otto Rank Pt 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvsf5-object-relations-otto-rank-pt-2.html

Object Relations: Helene Deutsch Pt. 1: https://rumble.com/v2wrvg5-object-relations-helene-deutsch-pt.-1.html

Object Relations: Helene Deutsch Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v2yepky-object-relations-helene-deutsch-pt.-2.html

In the text, Freud-Klein Controversies, the British Psychoanalytic Society saw the danger of the different methods splintering into their own schools with autocratic leaders and administrators punishing heretics, like in Freud's own circle, so they intelligently agreed on a compromise where people just joining the association could choose among three avenues. There was still some control over theoretical divergences, but the flexibility allowed for new advancements. "The Kleinians were organized around Melanie Klein’s contributions to theory and technique, the Viennese or ‘B’ group, as it was called, around the approach to psychoanalysis and technique supported by Anna Freud and her colleagues, while the 'Middle' group (later referred to as 'Independents') carried on the tradition and technique of the indigenous Members of the British Society, while maintaining their right to learn from all reasonable sources of knowledge."

There were a lot of competing theories around at this time on how to be a good analyst. Those criticizing Klein offered that Kleinian analysts didn't express their emotions enough so a rapport with the patient couldn't develop. The lack of social reassurance and physical contact created a non-therapeutic atmosphere. Despite this aloofness, critics also felt that Kleinians were too active paradoxically, and didn't allow the patient to do more of the insight work themselves. The most common complaint, which is leveled at all psychoanalysts, is the invasiveness of interpretation. Critics felt that interpretations alienate clients so their personal story remains buried under theory. Negative feelings were also a bone of contention, since many people look at therapy as a way to become happier. Those types of critics were more interested in the role that love plays in Melanie's theories than the dark side she explored. The worry was that negative thinking would be habituated. Exploration takes a long time in psychoanalysis, and so cognitive behavior therapists felt that they were more efficient by just focusing on conscious thinking, and by clarifying distortions there, many of the same results would manifest, and in some cases, there are even better results because clearer thinking improves thinking skills directly so the client could apply those very skills immediately after therapy. Because psychotherapy focuses on the past, both patients and cognitive behavioral therapists often wanted to focus more on the future, since that is the only place where opportunities for change emerge. As important as transference was, critics felt that it could be interpreted too much and not always reflect accurately. Not everything needs to be traced back to the primal scene in family life. Finally, many patients simply have skill deficits and nothing will improve until they are addressed.

In response to these criticisms, Kleinians felt that expressing their own emotions too much would interfere with the transference, since the goal of the analyst is to be a screen to land on, for projections from the patient to reveal themselves. As pointed out in Part 2, patients are bringing their current level of social skills and predictions, so they can't help but demonstrate these to an analyst that is a blank canvass at the beginning of therapy. When it comes to being social and physically welcoming, Kleinians are more comfortable with a friendly, non-judgmental attitude, because without dealing with underlying problems you are still stuck in a surface situation like in any other. Any therapeutic hugging or petting risks being too shallow and ineffective in the long run. Kleinian interpretations may seem too active, but as they relieve stress bit by bit, the therapy is actually progressing in depth. By also interpreting negative feelings, a lot more information could be discovered with negative transferences. Those insights further relieve anxiety for the analysand and allow a natural opening for love and a positive transference to arise, like a sunny day after the clouds disperse. Like in meditation, love is considered something that is naturally there but covered over with rumination. This means that negativity is not actually being strengthened but instead it's being understood. With strong supportive internal objects in the mind through positive transference with the analyst, the need for psychoanalysts to be just a teacher of skills can then offload that responsibility to patients, who will probably want to do it themselves and enjoy the pleasure of making their own choices. The future is also important for Kleinians, but without dealing with the past it is likely that habits will repeat themselves regardless of the skills taught. If teaching skills was all you needed then you could just replace therapists with a trainer. Finally, if cognitive therapy and clear thinking was all that was needed, how do they deal with behavior that is unconsciously driven?

The mind's creative expression

Because the unconscious is a very intuitive place, where in real time experience ideas pop out of nowhere, it made sense that Klein would want to explore creativity and play as it pertains to child psychology. From her point of view, play was just another language that could describe the inner world of a patient, and transference itself is a kind of creativity, where you take the inner world and make it manifest in the outer world. From Klein's point of view, both methods can expose the current skill level of patients, which includes their arsenal of reactions that are used when there are obstacles or there is a delay in gratification. How do they adapt to reality? "At a very early age children become acquainted with reality through the deprivations which it imposes on them. They defend themselves against reality by repudiating it." One of the markers of a good adaptation to reality is if the analysand has enough patience to tolerate how things are.  "...One of the final results to be attained is successful adaptation to reality. One way in which this shows itself in children is in the modification of the difficulties encountered in their education. In other words, such children have become capable of tolerating real deprivations." The earliest deprivation for psychoanalysts of all stripes is being able to tolerate the Oedipus Complex.

As children grow up, through many weaning processes, they have to gradually become more independent and choose ever more appropriate relationship choices all the way up to adulthood, and somehow make a satisfactory final choice. For most parents, they want a heterosexual result with the opportunity to have grandchildren, so they can watch the inheritance they leave behind, to bring solace to the last years of their lives. It's their stamp of immortality. How typically people find new object choices is by being disappointed with the current one, for one reason or another, and then trading up for the next available person who appears more sympathetic or helpful. For adults, this can be good if the current object choice is pathological and dangerous, but it could be frivolous if they underrate their current choice. This often appears after a disappointment and then love transfers to another object-choice based on the lifestyle they provide, as well as an initial flattery and a welcoming flirtatiousness. Prospective partners need some skill at seduction. In fact, this mechanism can be exploited in toxic relationships, which starts with "love-bombing," and a welcoming with slutty demonstrations, but sooner or later, the adult who traded up will have to experience deprivations again as normal life resumes. They now have to decide if they made a mistake or not. Whether you call it "grooming" or conditioning, even an adult mind can be hacked easily, because most people react unconsciously to ALL flattery in a positive way. Even ugly people can appear sexy if they show signals that you are free to go all in and use them as you will. Though, a cold mechanistic feeling may arise if the relationship has no authentic connection beyond flattery. It requires some life experience, including about typical love triangles, and reflection to see beyond the warm and fuzzy feelings.

The Lovebomb - Narcdaily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh9SXcJnILk

Daft Punk - Instant Crush (Video) ft. Julian Casablancas: https://youtu.be/a5uQMwRMHcs?si=cZxxiaFy_yNx6KKw

Rick Springfield - Jessie's Girl: https://youtu.be/qYkbTyHXwbs?si=bEdxRXzEIRczVUeO

New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkOr12AQpnU

For children, they instead do this in their restricted environment with their nuclear family. "In a number of children's analyses I discovered that the little girl's choice of the father as love-object ensued on weaning. This deprivation, which is followed by the training in cleanliness (a process which presents itself to the child as a new and grievous withdrawal of love), loosens the bond to the mother and brings into operation the heterosexual attraction, reinforced by the father's caresses, which are now construed as a seduction...On the other hand, however, the oral and anal deprivation of love [by the father's competition] appears to promote the development of the Oedipus situation in boys, for it compels them to change their libido-position and to desire the mother as a genital love-object." So for more heterosexual boys, they get jealous of the attention that the mother gets from the father and their rivalry makes the mother a stronger object choice. That then loosens because of it's inappropriateness and the boy then has to find a mother replacement, especially since the bond between mother and father is mutual and aligned more often. The heterosexual girl is in the same situation and has to find a father replacement. The united parents for the children provide the most potent relationship template, and the children will likely soak up identifications and repeat that template throughout their lives, especially if this is done with zero awareness of psychology. The influence of encouragement and discouragement can also go throughout life with people trading up and playing people off of each other. People who are rejected by others are discouraged by them, and make a transference to others who look similar, like having a similar personality, sex, or sexual orientation. Their similarities trigger a negative response, or transference, to the old situation. People who find candidates who apply flattery, act slutty, welcoming, and non-judgmental, they will have a strong feeling of encouragement. The mind is always looking for replacements in desires, and if it can't find it in one place, it will consider other options and possibilities. There's also the influence of lifestyle, where providers and nurturers of all different kinds are trying to meet up in whatever combination can be found. People can also adjust their contribution as a provider or nurturer depending on the vicissitudes of life as they happen. Sometimes people have to switch roles.

The Oedipus Complex now can be seen as the sum total of the reactions and inhibitions that arise when there are human obstacles to wish-fulfillments, goals and desires. It doesn't stop with parents, as René Girard pointed out, and some people are stuck with endlessly perceived challenges and obstacles, and will be attempting to trade up for their entire lives. All these psychoanalysts also had to accept that children have different constitutional dispositions and may respond to the same shocks differently. "I cannot determine whether it is neurotic children whom the early working of the Oedipus complex affects so intensely, or if children become neurotic when this complex sets in too soon." Children absorb their parental and familial role models and reenact their behaviors and also internally control their own minds with the same introjected personalities. This process starts with incorporation, which is a sampling of what is good and bad in the limited environment of the person, then it goes into introjection, which is a preference found in said environments, and then a habit of introjection of the same actions can turn into an identification, which phenomenologically appears as an image of oneself as the main agent acting in the world, devoid of the role models that supplied the earlier influences. Lesser identifications down the line may include more images of people who influenced you and a psychological distance between self and internal object is seen more clearly. If one has a meditation practice, and it is used for internal reflection, one can catch oneself, for example, imitating a way of speaking from another person, and you may see an image of that person while you're speaking in their same manner and accent. With a strong identification, that image of the role model doesn't appear and it feels like your sense of self. This is why imitation can be a sly and unconscious process. If you didn't invent something that you feel is the real you, you can improve clarity by asking "where did I imitate this from?"

The Origin of Envy & Narcissism - René Girard: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html

Our role-modeling goes beyond speaking and can permeate our play, which is why authenticity is more connected with culture than many of us are willing to accept, and has more to do with our current skill levels on how to deal with obstacles and challenges, and the zeal or taste we can sense when we can see our way through obstacles successfully. If people are open enough as adults, they need to look at how their wish-fulfillments are almost 100% taken from family and culture, and any originality has more to do with original mixes of those influences. Play is another illuminating method for children to reenact what they copied in their household and it provides clues for the analyst as to how developed the child is. Skills = Development. They also point to those original influences that have gone under the radar of the analysand, as well as unresolved negative emotions. "A fundamental and universal mechanism in the game of acting a part serves to separate those different identifications at work in the child which are tending to form a single whole. By the division of roles the child succeeds in expelling the father and mother whom, in the elaboration of the Oedipus complex, it has absorbed into itself and who are now tormenting it inwardly by their severity. The result of this expulsion is a sensation of relief which contributes in great measure to the pleasure derived from the game. Though this game of acting often appears quite simple and seems to represent only primary identifications, this is only the surface appearance. To penetrate behind this appearance is of great importance in the analysis of children. It can, however, have its full therapeutic effect only if the investigation reveals all the underlying identifications and determinations and, above all, if we have found our way to the sense of guilt which is here at work."

For Melanie, guilt is more powerful in the child, because the ego is too weak to accept mistakes and come up with adult solutions, but if the therapeutic result is achieved in child analysis, the child's nascent ego can now handle things at the appropriate level that the child is expected to be at. "As the analysis of children teaches us, we strengthen that ego when the analytic procedure curbs the excessive demands of the super-ego. There can be no doubt that the ego of little children differs from that of older children or of adults, but, when we have freed the little child's ego from neurosis, it proves perfectly equal to such demands of reality as it encounters demands as yet less serious than those made upon adults." Children of course have limitations on what they can do, because they have many years of education ahead of them. "Children cannot change the circumstances of their lives, as adults often do at the end of an analysis. But a child has been very greatly helped if, as a result of analysis, we enable him to feel more at ease in the existing circumstances and to develop better. Moreover, the clearing-up of neurosis in children often diminishes the difficulties of their milieu. For instance, I have repeatedly proved that the mother's reactions were much less neurotic when favourable changes took place in her children after analysis." The child begins to project, or predict accurately the behavior of parents, and is now not surprised or vexed. Interpretations help to understand reality so the thinking becomes less distorted and children know what to expect, which is important because inaccurate expectations usually lead to stress and rumination. Expectation is stressful because it has a mental element of control, which is felt as an exertion, especially when expectations are dashed. Expectations met are encouraging, and disappointments are discouraging, or inhibiting. If the children know better how to respond to situations, then rumination decreases in daily life. Even more of a prophylaxis is if the child can prevent a pathological secret from developing in the mind, and learn skills so as to avoid being in highly shameful situations.

Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v435lsq-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-2.html

When interpretations are done well, the child saves energy from the rumination found in the severe super-ego, and that translates into happier play and it creates a positive transference with the analyst that now appears so helpful. "The pleasure in play, which visibly ensues after an interpretation has been given, is also due to the fact that the expenditure necessitated by a repression is no longer required after the interpretation. But soon we once more encounter resistances for a time, and here matters are no longer made easy in the way I have described. In fact, at such times we have to wrestle with very great difficulties. This is especially the case when we encounter the sense of guilt." Guilt is difficult for a child as it is for an adult, because if there's any perfectionism and a lack of acceptance towards mistakes, the self-preoccupation continues unabated as a low self-esteem and can begin a masochistic streak in the patient. Developing a learning mentality is crucial for parenting to be successful and helps to avoid pathological secrets from developing and metastasizing in behaviors.

As noted in prior reviews, any of these feelings of guilt are usually about traumatic or embarrassing sexual encounters, early masturbation that was punished, or the result of severe conflicts with others. The tension and discharge in sexuality inevitably moves into any tension and discharge with regular activities. If the embarrassment and guilt is connected with sexuality, and any other forms of passionate exploration in play and hobbies, it can stunt the growth of a child. They freeze at a particular level until a learning mentality is discovered, usually after a surrender and acceptance of imperfection in the self. If children freeze they will not be able to make any more approaches towards challenges. This is why Melanie focused on the Oedipus Complex to try and get an awareness to appear in the child through interpretations. "Inhibitions in play and in learning have their origin in an exaggerated repression of these phantasies and, with them, of all phantasy. Sexual experiences are associated with the masturbation-phantasies and, with these, find representation and abreaction [catharsis/discharge] in play. Amongst the experiences dramatized, representations of the primal scene play a prominent part and they regularly appear in the foreground of the analyses of young children. It is only after a considerable amount of analysis, which has partially revealed the primal scene and the genital development, that we come on representations of pregenital experiences and phantasies...Consistent interpretations, gradual solving of resistances and persistent tracing of the transference to earlier situations, these constitute in children as in adults the correct analytic situation." Again one sees a learning mentality being trained in the child, which brings awareness to the child of how the brain functions and provides the live-and-let-live experience of self-forgiveness and self-belief that one can try again next time and develop more appropriate behaviors. A sympathetic analyst can also provide a non-judgmental atmosphere that expects children to learn from mistakes and not constantly freeze in self-preoccupation and perfectionism. They have to understand that development is what human life is all about and that no human is born fully formed.

Guilt can also be connected with hatred for the human obstacles in one's life and lead to scapegoating, even if the victims are only toys. This can appear in play unconsciously, but if an interpretation is accurate enough, it can point to the real struggles that are looking for solutions, release, and freedom. "For instance, children begin to distinguish between the 'pretense' mother and the real mother and between the wooden baby-doll and the live baby brother. They then firmly insist that they wanted to do this or that injury to the toy baby, only the real baby, they say, of course they love. Only when very powerful and long-standing resistances have been overcome do children realize that their aggressive acts were directed against the real objects. When this admission is made, however, the result; even in quite little children, is generally a notable step forward in adaptation to reality...It has always been my experience that the effects of such knowledge, gradually elaborated, is in fact to relieve the child, to establish a fundamentally more favourable relation to the parents and thus to increase its power of social adaptation."

Beyond a simple education to tell the child what is right and what is wrong, Melanie wanted the children to reason things out through the consequences of their phantasies in their inner worlds. They unconsciously want to do something bad, but when made conscious, they see more clearly that they would prefer to try something else more appropriate. "When this has taken place children also are quite able to replace repression to some extent by reasoned rejection. We see this from the fact that at a later stage of the analysis children have advanced so far from various anal-sadistic or cannibalistic cravings (which at an earlier stage were still so powerful) that they can now at times adopt an attitude of humorous criticism towards them. When this happens I hear even very little children making jokes to the effect, for instance, that some time ago they really wanted to eat up their mummy or cut her into bits. When this change takes place, not only is the sense of guilt inevitably lessened, but at the same time the children are enabled to sublimate the wishes which previously were wholly repressed. This manifests itself in practice in the disappearance of inhibitions in play and in a beginning of numerous interests and activities." They accept that they are a kid and that they are growing and learning. They can laugh at themselves, because it's a part of their development. This is also one of the ways to alleviate that compulsion to repeat, where a patient repeats their bad experiences because they haven't really learned how to regulate their emotions to move to another level. The important realization for all patients is to see that there is more love and connection when one takes on attitudes and actions that make it easier for others to do the same. In fact, when patients start seeing ways in which they can be more harmonious with others, that is a successful pathway after a bout of analysis.

In each child, there are different manifestations of a severe super-ego. In one patient, Erna, it was a more paranoid one. "In her play Erna often made me be a child, while she was the mother or a teacher. I then had to undergo fantastic tortures and humiliations. If in the game anyone treated me kindly, it generally turned out that the kindness was only simulated. The paranoiac traits showed in the fact that I was constantly spied upon, people divined my thoughts, and the father or teacher allied themselves with the mother against me, in fact I was always surrounded with persecutors. I myself in the role of the child, had constantly to spy upon and torment the others. Often Erna herself played the part of the child. Then the game generally ended in her escaping the persecutions (on these occasions the 'child' was good), becoming rich and powerful, being made a queen and taking a cruel revenge on her persecutors. After her sadism had spent itself in these phantasies, apparently unchecked by any inhibition (all this came about after we had done a good deal of analysis), reaction would set in in the form of deep depression, anxiety and bodily exhaustion. Her play then reflected her incapacity to bear this tremendous oppression, which manifested itself in a number of serious symptoms. In this child's phantasies all the roles engaged could be fitted into one formula, that of two principal parts: the persecuting super-ego and the id or ego, as the case might be, threatened, but by no means less cruel." Exhaustion keeps coming back as long as the pathological responses to family and the community are not resolved and understood, and also because resistance and stress is exhausting, full stop.

When children feel helpless, they begin to proactively take the place of the powerful one that made them feel so vulnerable. "In these games the wish-fulfilment lay principally in Erna's endeavour to identify herself with the stronger party, in order thus to master her dread of persecution. The hard-pressed ego tried to influence or deceive the super-ego, in order to prevent its overpowering the id, as it threatened to do. The ego tried to enlist the highly sadistic id in the service of the super-ego and to make the two combine in the fight with a common enemy. This necessitated extensive use of the mechanisms of projection and displacement. When Erna played the part of the cruel mother, the naughty child was the enemy; when she herself was the child who was persecuted but soon became powerful, the enemy was represented by the wicked parents. In each case there was a motive, which the ego attempted to render plausible to the super-ego, for indulging in unrestrained sadism. By the terms of this 'compact' the super-ego was to take action against the enemy as though against the id. The id, however, in secret, continued to pursue its predominantly sadistic gratification, the objects being the primal ones. Such narcissistic satisfaction as accrued to the ego through its victory over foes both without and within helped also to appease the super-ego and thus was of considerable value in diminishing anxiety."

So in this case, the child needed an excuse for the super-ego to accept the sadistic id so that it could be discharged in aggression while the ego is being morally supported by that same super-ego. Roleplaying can illuminate if there is serious fragmentation in the psyche when the patient doesn't have a core self and is just acting out endless roles in daily life. It means that the same ego, and superego, which need the energy of the id, or desire, can attack itself and others, draining energy, becoming entangled in internal personality contradictions, and covering over the potential mental peace that could be had in more harmonious relationships with self and other. The cost of course was the exhaustion that Erna felt. "...in Erna's case it broke down completely because of the excessive sadism of both id and super-ego. Thereupon the ego joined forces with the super-ego and tried by punishing the id to extract a certain gratification, but this in its turn was inevitably a failure. Reactions of intense anxiety and remorse set in again and again, showing that none of these contradictory wish-fulfilments could be sustained for long." This leads eventually to an adaption to reality, to abandon unrealistic wish-fulfillments, or it can lead to psychosis where the dreaming takes over as well as draining internal conflicts. In an obsession example, in another case study, the child persisted in rituals that didn't function in reality, which is also exhausting and another waste of energy. Melanie also noticed that some children had more or less helpful imagos, which could be examples to strengthen and condition in the child. Those positive imagos can provide a sense of autonomy, and self-reliance, especially if they are hopeful, helpful, practical, and realistic, like the adults who have already modeled those positive behaviors for the child. The more severe the pathology, the more resistant the old behaviors are to treatment, leading to more repetition. These frozen states of being can manifest themselves at differing levels of development and remain into adulthood.

Throughout development, there is a pressure for the ego to take on the different identifications imitated from all the different role models in the child's life and to fuse them into a cohesive personality. "The more extreme and sharply contrasting the imagos, the less successful will be the synthesis and the more difficult will it be to maintain it. The excessively strong influence exerted by these extreme types of imagos, the intensity of the need for the kindly figures in opposition to the menacing, the rapidity with which allies will change into enemies (which is also the reason why the wish-fulfilment in play so often breaks down) all this indicates that the process of synthesizing the identifications has failed. This failure manifests itself in the ambivalence, the tendency to anxiety, the lack of stability or the readiness with which this is overthrown, and the defective relation to reality characteristic of neurotic children. The necessity for a synthesis of the super-ego arises out of the difficulty experienced by the subject in coming to an understanding with a super-ego made up of imagos of such opposite natures. When the latency period sets in and the demands of reality are increased, the ego makes even greater efforts to effect a synthesis of the super-ego, in order that on this basis a balance may be struck between super-ego, id and reality[-ego]." A meditation example of this would be to use the present-moment-ego to follow the breath and use the breath as an anchor while setting up goals and knocking them down. Different super-ego personalities may interrupt the good intentions of the ego and send one into a repetitive cycle of regression with archaic personality goals. It would manifest as a feeling of a comfort zone that prevents development. The different personalities and their weaknesses would manifest different types of internal distractions, like with examples above of obsession or paranoia. Each person has to see what their particular problem is. A wholistic personality, in ideal circumstances, has less internal battles. Since the id is desire without a cultural example to imitate, it is flexible precisely because of that. If you have wish-fulfillments that conflict with each other, because you have conflicting role models in your life and culture, you'll have super-ego reactions that want to punish other super-ego tendencies, which leads the id to wasting more energy. If the ego can pursue goals that do not trip up the conscience of any of the super-ego internal role models, then a feeling of unity and consolidation can be felt. This is felt in the amount of peace that manifests.

The value of play is further seen when the child's projections manifest in how the toys are used, and the splitting is readily apparent when certain toys are treated with more or less antagonism or cooperation. A toy becomes either all good or all bad. Projections appear in play and the child can then find satisfaction that cannot be found in the real world. Maybe the evil toy gets their way. Maybe in another battle, good wins out. "By their means the synthesis of the super-ego, which can be maintained only with more or less effort, can be given up for the time being and, further, the tension of maintaining the truce between the super-ego as a whole and the id is diminished. The intrapsychic conflict, thus becomes less violent and can be displaced into the external world." Anxiety, guilt and stress can then be emotionally released in the play, like an adult being caught up in a good movie. Ultimately, no amount of entertainment or play will replace realistic solutions, so the best forms of art will solve a problem in a way that an audience member can see how it would work for themselves. Play can also be a way to think through a problem and try out different responses until an optimum one appears. "...Every step forward in adaptation to reality involved the releasing of large quantities of anxiety and the stronger repression of phantasies. It was always a great advance in the analysis when this repression was, in its turn, lifted and the phantasies became free as well as more closely linked with reality." Adaptation described here is to see the pathological skills come out of the unconscious, be made conscious, discharge emotionally along with the understanding, then in ideal situations, the child may start to look for better solutions so that the phantasies can begin to conform to reality and increase both external and internal harmony.

Children as they develop can then separate their play into fiction and non-fiction. By having both forms of tension and release, there's more opportunity for more flexible children to find gratification in life with play and responsibility. Responsibility also has a belief in oneself, a confidence, and self-efficacy, that one can achieve goals in life. "Normal children are able to master reality in better ways. Their play shows that they have more power to influence and live out reality in conformity with their phantasies. Moreover, where they cannot alter the real situation they are better able to bear it, because their freer phantasy provides them with a refuge from it and also because the fuller discharge that they have for their masturbation-phantasies in an ego-syntonic form (play and other sublimations) gives them greater opportunities of gratification." So simply, it's not just love and work, but play as well.

As distortion in the super-ego decreases, the good and evil in mental objects begins to be more realistic, so the underrated becomes conscious as well as the overrated in people. "...The analyst must simply be a medium in relation to whom the different imagos can be activated and the phantasies lived through, in order to be analysed. When the child in his play directly assigns to him certain roles, the task of the children's analyst is clear...With children as well as with adults, we have to infer from the analytic situation and material the details of the hostile role attributed to us, which the patient indicates through the negative transference. Now what is true of personification in its open form I have found to be also indispensable for the more disguised and obscure forms of the personifications underlying transference. The analyst who wishes to penetrate to the earliest, anxiety-inspiring imagos, i.e. to strike at the roots of the super-ego's severity, must have no preference for any particular role; he must accept that which comes to him from the analytic situation." This can be a little scary, considering how traumatized many kids are, but Melanie made a compromise. "When children ask me to play parts which are too difficult or disagreeable I meet their wishes by saying that I am 'pretending I am doing it.'" Empathy for Melanie becomes a hallmark of development. "In ontogenetic development sadism is overcome when the subject advances to the genital level. The more powerfully this phase sets in, the more capable does the child become of object-love, and the more able is he to conquer his sadism by means of pity and sympathy." So when children can empathize with others, meaning they can love others, and themselves, that object-choice is going to be more healthy because of the reduced sadism. You're not going to be taking things out on them, and you don't expect perfection from them.

When it came to the use of toys, Melanie wanted the toy to dictate less what kinds of games would be played and instead require the child to use their projections to make them what they will and more clearly take on different roles that exist in the child's real life. "I believe that the toys provided by the analyst should on the whole be of the type I have described, that is to say, simple, small, and non-mechanical...In such games the child frequently takes the part of the adult, thereby not only expressing his wish to reverse the roles but also demonstrating how he feels that his parents or other people in authority behave towards him—or should behave. Sometimes he gives vent to his aggressiveness and resentment by being, in the role of parent, sadistic towards the child, represented by the analyst."

The aggressiveness may lead to damaged toys which can create a sense of guilt in the child over what they might do to their family members. Interpretations that connect the destructiveness to the reality of home life bring the sense of consciousness to the problem and an opportunity to see reality more closely, that the object was underrated, and bring possible solutions to more adapt to the reality of those relationships. A reparation. Everything about reparation is about adapting to reality and changing tactics when one method or another doesn't work. It's for repairing relationships. "Feelings of guilt may very soon follow after the child has broken, for instance, a little figure. Such guilt refers not only to the actual damage done but to what the toy stands for in the child's unconscious, e.g. a little brother or sister, or a parent; the interpretation has therefore to deal with these deeper levels as well. Sometimes we can gather from the child's behaviour towards the analyst that not only guilt but also persecutory anxiety has been the sequel to his destructive impulses and that he is afraid of retaliation...By then we have been able to analyse some important defences, thus diminishing persecutory feelings and making it possible for the sense of guilt and the urge to make reparation to be experienced...Reparation in this sense is a wider concept than Freud's concepts of 'undoing in the obsessional neurosis' and of 'reaction-formation'. For it includes the variety of processes by which the ego feels it undoes harm done in phantasy, restores, preserves and revives objects. The importance of this tendency, bound up as it is with feelings of guilt, also lies in the major contribution it makes to all sublimations, and in this way to mental health." And for those who feel that Melanie Klein pursues the darkness too much, one can easily see a danger if the darkness is not approached and unconscious reactions are left to play out in life. In the real world, a toy dismemberment can translate to murder and dismemberment in actuality. Perusing any crime stories or stories of war, one can see dehumanization, which is to make humans into pests, to make it easier for the super-ego to accept murder. A populace that engages in little reflection and is easily slighted will have consequences in predictable violence, kleptomania, and genocide.

Another criticism against Klein's therapy modality has to do with the capacity of the child to understand. "'Are young children intellectually able to understand such interpretations?' My own experience and that of my colleagues has been that if the interpretations relate to the salient points in the material, they are fully understood. Of course the child analyst must give his interpretations as succinctly and as clearly as possible, and should also use the child's expressions in doing so. But if he translates into simple words the essential points of the material presented to him, he gets into touch with those emotions and anxieties which are most operative at the moment; the child's conscious and intellectual understanding is often a subsequent process. One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults. To some extent this is explained by the fact that the connections between conscious and unconscious are closer in young children than in adults, and that infantile repressions are less powerful. I also believe that the infant's intellectual capacities are often underrated and that in fact he understands more than he is credited with."

Because Melanie analyzed children as far back as she could go she felt that object relations were almost always there, and for any child that doesn't remember their birth, the reality is that they are becoming aware of their connections with others and developing enough of a memory and story of their lives which can't exist without object relations. "I found that object relations start almost at birth and arise with the first feeding experience; furthermore, that all aspects of mental life are bound up with object relations. It also emerged that the child's experience of the external world, which very soon includes his ambivalent relation to his father and to other members of his family, is constantly influenced by—and in turn influences—the internal world he is building up, and that external and internal situations are always interdependent, since introjection [to take in what is desirable] and projection [a defense] operate side by side from the beginning of life."

The mind is already reacting to the good and the bad experiences at the beginning of life, with splitting judgments of good and bad, then integration of the good and bad in objects help the judgments match reality more accurately, which is the insight that humans display a variety of good and bad behaviors within the same person. Eventually a feeling of wanting to take care of imperfect people, the feeling of pity, empathy, and sadness develops, kind of like seeing the good and the bad in people, but also witnessing their weak skills and behaviors with a non-reactivity and sympathy as to their imperfect attempts at managing life. They may hurt people sometimes, but they often mean well. Even if these experiences start early in life, they are reintroduced again and again with more and more added depth and complexity found in adults. "The conclusion to be drawn from the experience that depressive anxiety arises as a result of the ego synthesizing the good and bad (loved and hated) aspects of the object led me in turn to the concept of the depressive position which reaches its climax towards the middle of the first year. It is preceded by the paranoid position, which extends over the first three or four months of life and is characterized by persecutory anxiety and splitting processes."

As Melanie advanced her theories further, by adding a lot of material from younger and younger patients, a new more independent category of analyst was beginning to dawn: Those who were eclectic and integrative enough to not care what school a theory comes from, but only care that those theories explain real situations.

The end of the German Republic

In the lead up to World War II, Melanie's idea of being in England or the United States, was starting to be a good idea for other Jewish intellectuals looking for a safe haven. Repudiation of Judaism in Germany included even secular Jews. NAZIS were socialist, in that they attacked capitalists, but they preferred public coercion of the private sector as opposed to Marxist ideas of total government ownership, though many people found not much difference in totalitarian methods because all these labels cover the same power dynamic, where a powerful group of people give orders and everyone with less power has to obey, and this included rejection and retaliation towards supposed "thought crimes." The kinds of books that were burned or banned in the German example included non-affiliated socialist books, any books that were considered decadent or perceived as undermining NAZI prerogatives. Any books that supported social justice and wanted to improve working conditions were targeted. Naturally, Jewish authors' books, like the books of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, went up in flames. Even Ernest Hemingway's and Helen Keller's books were not spared. "The first group of German-Jewish analysts from Berlin had begun arriving in Britain in 1933 after the Reichstag fire...The passing of the monstrous Nuremberg Laws, which deprived Jews of citizenship, forbade marriage between Jews and Aryans, and barred Jews from the liberal professions, made 1935 a crucial year...Eitingon had gone to Palestine. Erich’s former analyst, Clare Happel, settled in Chicago, as did Hans’s analyst, Ernst Simmel, before moving on to California. Melitta’s original analyst, Karen Horney, had already moved to New York; and Helene Deutsch, who had always regarded Melanie as a rival, was by 1934 establishing orthodox analysis in Boston. Klein’s old enemies in Berlin, Franz Alexander and Sándor Radó, settled respectively in Chicago and New York...By 1938 one-third of the analysts in the British Society were from the Continent. A comparison of the 1937 and 1938 membership lists shows the number of new names that were added—Bibring, Eidelberg, Hitschmann, Hoffer, Isakower, Kris, Lantos, Stengel, Schur, Stross, Sachs, Straub—and of course Sigmund and Anna Freud."

Book Burning - Holocaust Encyclopedia: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning

Book Burnings in Germany - PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-burnings/

With the arrival of the Freuds Melanie was in a panic that she would soon lose her cocoon. "'It will never be the same again,' Melanie Klein lamented to Winnicott. 'This is a disaster.'" After being an early champion of Melanie, Ernest Jones was already beginning to retreat into an ambivalence between the two schools of psychoanalysis, especially after Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence was released. Other analysts were also making their choices and aligning with more conservative views or accepting some of the updates that Melanie was proposing, like the theory of internal objects. Many others, like John Bowlby remained independent.

Those escaping fascism found English people more tolerant and they enjoyed the beautiful walkways and parks in contrast to the chaos of banishment and war, but they still suffered from confusion and homesickness after being uprooted. The Vienna and Berlin cultures were also refined up to the hilt, but now regressing to a barbarism. Even advanced societies can lose their freedoms. Both Anna and Melanie started separating their clients based on their different theories. Anna felt that those "who had been analyzed or otherwise trained by analysts holding different views would not be likely to benefit from her teaching." Sigmund Freud was very ill at this time and he gave his blessing before his death that London should now be the center of Psychoanalysis. Over time the divisions between the two schools gave way to some back and forth where the education side of the theories could reduce confusion and a synergy could develop where new analysts could pick and choose which parts of which theory they liked and discard what they didn't. Those interested in younger children, and the promise that psychoanalysis could nip any problems in the bud, so to say, would naturally be curious about Melanie's ideas, and those who felt that older children, adolescents, and adults, was where the action really took place, and because they are easier to communicate with, would prefer more orthodox methods.

Love, Guilt and Reparation: And Works 1921-1945 (The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume 1) by Melanie Klein: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780743237659/

Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946 - 1963 (2nd Edition) by Melanie Klein: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780743237758/

Melanie Klein: Her World and Her Work by Phyllis Grosskurth: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781568214450/

Freud-Klein Controversies - Pearl King, Riccardo Steiner: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780415082747/

Melanie Klein Dr Julia Segal: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780761943013/

The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought by Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Jane E. Milton, Penelope Garvey, Cyril Couve, Deborah Steiner: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780415592598/

The Language of Psychoanalysis by Jean Laplanche, Jean-Bertrand Pontalis: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780367328139/

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

[ersatzash]

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic - Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Skeptic – Core Concepts, and view all of the multimedia and other materials for this module. What is meant by “good research” and the “good researcher”? Choose one of the following data collection techniques; then answer the questions below as they pertain to your selected technique: surveys, experiments, observational…

[crush-aesthetic]

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic - Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Skeptic – Core Concepts, and view all of the multimedia and other materials for this module. What is meant by “good research” and the “good researcher”? Choose one of the following data collection techniques; then answer the questions below as they pertain to your selected technique: surveys, experiments, observational…

[fufupaw]

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic - Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Skeptic – Core Concepts, and view all of the multimedia and other materials for this module. What is meant by “good research” and the “good researcher”? Choose one of the following data collection techniques; then answer the questions below as they pertain to your selected technique: surveys, experiments, observational…

[vilevalentino]

They’re sooooooo,,,,

[crowcantendmygoal]

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic - Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Skeptic – Core Concepts, and view all of the multimedia and other materials for this module. What is meant by “good research” and the “good researcher”? Choose one of the following data collection techniques; then answer the questions below as they pertain to your selected technique: surveys, experiments, observational…

[fabribrod]

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic - Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Ske

Complete the assigned readings from Practical Skeptic – Reader and Practical Skeptic – Core Concepts, and view all of the multimedia and other materials for this module. What is meant by “good research” and the “good researcher”? Choose one of the following data collection techniques; then answer the questions below as they pertain to your selected technique: surveys, experiments, observational…

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Covid Was a Tipping Point for Telehealth. If Some Have Their Way, Virtual Visits Are Here to Stay.

As the covid crisis wanes and life approaches normal across the U.S., health industry leaders and many patient advocates are pushing Congress and the Biden administration to preserve the pandemic-fueled expansion of telehealth that has transformed how millions of Americans see the doctor.

This story also ran on USA Today. It can be republished for free.

The broad effort reaches across the nation’s diverse health care system, bringing together consumer groups with health insurers, state Medicaid officials, physician organizations and telehealth vendors.

And it represents an emerging consensus that many services that once required an office visit can be provided easily and safely — and often more effectively — through a video chat, a phone call or even an email.

“We’ve seen that telehealth is an extraordinary tool,” said David Holmberg, chief executive of Pittsburgh-based Highmark, a multistate insurer that also operates a major medical system. “It’s convenient for the patient, and it’s convenient for the doctor. … Now we need to make it sustainable and enduring.”

Last fall, a coalition of leading patient groups — including the American Heart Association, the Arthritis Foundation, Susan G. Komen and the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society — hailed the expansion of telehealth, noting the technology “can and should be used to increase patient access to care.”

But the widespread embrace of telemedicine — arguably the most significant health care shift wrought by the pandemic — is not without skeptics. Even supporters acknowledge the need for safeguards to prevent fraud, preserve quality and ensure that the digital health revolution doesn’t leave behind low-income patients and communities of color with less access to technology — or leave some with only virtual options in place of real physicians.

Some worry that telehealth, like previous medical innovations, may become another billing tool that simply drives up costs, a fear exacerbated by the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the burgeoning digital health industry.

Companies offering remote urgent care, virtual primary care and new wearable technologies to monitor patient health are exploding, with the annual global telehealth market expected to top $300 billion by 2026, up nearly fivefold from 2019, according to research company PitchBook.

“I don’t think there’s any debate that there is a value in better access, but if this is just a one-off service that adds another billing option without fitting into patients’ regular care, I don’t know if it will do much for patients’ health,” said Tom Banning, head of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians.

Perhaps the most contentious issue facing politicians, insurers and hospitals is how much a telehealth visit is worth in a system that is already breaking the bank.

While Medicare and other insurers fueled the explosion of telehealth over the past year by paying the same rates as for in-person visits, many are expected to push for lower prices when the federally designated public health crisis ends. At the same time, physicians and hospitals are looking to maintain income.

“Payers are unlikely to give providers carte blanche,” said Dr. Hoangmai Pham, a former senior medical official at health insurance giant Anthem. But Pham noted insurers could reward physicians and hospitals that take greater responsibility for their patients’ overall health with higher rates for telehealth. “There’s an opportunity here,” she said.

For now, tens of millions of Americans have gotten used to meeting their doctor on a laptop or smartphone, and pressure is building on the federal and state governments to loosen rules to preserve virtual visits after the health crisis ends.

“I don’t want to go back,” said Suzy Brantley, a 67-year-old Texan who works at an accounting firm outside Dallas.

Brantley has been going to the same medical practice for more than 15 years. “I love them there,” she said. But when the practice closed its doors last spring, requiring virtual visits, Brantley found she enjoyed the more convenient way to do routine business like refill a prescription.

“You don’t have to leave work to go to the doctor,” she said. “I can just step into the break room for a few minutes and use my phone. … I love it.”

She’s far from alone. In a nationwide poll last year, 8 in 10 Americans who had used telehealth said they “liked it” or “loved it.” Nearly the same share said they were likely to continue using it after the pandemic, according to the survey by the Harris Poll.

Just a year ago, telehealth — or telemedicine, as it’s also called — was largely a curiosity. Patient and physician wariness and strict rules about how doctors could bill had squelched widespread use.

Fearing fraud and overuse, the federal government tightly restricted the kind of video and audio visits that could be billed to Medicare, limiting use mainly to rural areas and to visits in which a doctor was in an office or hospital, rather than working remotely.

“There was a fear that if there was the slightest opening in the Medicare payment system, people would find a way to abuse it,” said Sean Cavanaugh, who oversaw Medicare during the Obama administration.

That changed suddenly in spring 2020 as pandemic lockdowns shuttered physician offices. Almost overnight, doctors were forced to pivot to virtual care to maintain contact with patients and keep money flowing.

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The Trump administration moved quickly to facilitate the shift. The Medicare agency dramatically expanded the kind of services that could be provided virtually. Officials added 140 telehealth services to the list of what Medicare would pay for during the pandemic, including emergency visits, eye exams, speech and hearing therapy, and nursing home care.

Critically, Medicare raised fees for virtual visits to match those for in-office exams, a move followed by state Medicaid programs and many commercial insurers.

The surge was explosive. While fewer than 1% of primary care visits in Medicare occurred virtually in January 2020, by April nearly half did, according to data compiled by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

At UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, the number of covered telehealth visits increased nearly thirtyfold, rising from 1.2 million visits in 2019 to 34 million last year. Other insurers reported as much as an eightyfold increase.

“Very quickly, it became clear that we could deliver very good care to our patients via televisit,” said Dr. Manish Naik, chief medical information officer at Austin Regional Clinic in central Texas.

The medical group not only helped its primary care physicians pivot to telehealth, but it also built a virtual urgent care system that allows patients to connect by video with on-call doctors 24 hours a day, a model used by large medical systems such as Kaiser Permanente.

Other systems are moving beyond televisits to expand use of remote monitoring tools in people’s homes that track vital signs of patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes.

Perhaps nowhere has telehealth proved more transformational than in mental health services and treatment for patients addicted to drugs.

“Telehealth has been a godsend,” said Ellen Bemis, chief executive of AMHC, a network of behavioral health clinics in rural northern Maine. Bemis said the clinics are already seeing patients adhere better to their medications as they remain in better contact virtually.

“I hope we never go back,” she said.

In Alaska, health officials feel the same way. “What we’ve seen through covid was amazing,” said state Medicaid director Albert Wall, noting a major decline in patients missing appointments.

Whether these changes endure depends largely on Congress and the Biden administration, which hasn’t indicated whether it will make permanent the looser telehealth rules rolled out last year. The rules will sunset when the public health emergency ends, likely at the end of this year.

The uncertainty is fueling an urgent effort by physicians, hospitals, patient advocates and others to persuade government officials not to reimpose the strict limitations.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have introduced bills to cement the changes. In statehouses, advocates for expanding telehealth have introduced more than 650 bills, according to the Alliance for Connected Care, a telehealth lobbying coalition.

“We’ve seen the potential of telehealth,” said Dr. Christopher Crow, chief executive of Texas-based Catalyst Health Network, which helps primary care physicians manage their practices. “Now, we have to make sure we realize it before everyone starts shifting back to the exam rooms.”

Major physician groups are pushing to maintain equal reimbursement for telehealth and in-person visits.

Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association, said Medicare should continue to allow patients to receive virtual care in their homes and in all areas of the country, not just rural areas.

The association is also pushing for Medicare to keep reimbursing doctors for consulting with patients by phone, a move Bailey said would ensure that patients without broadband internet service aren’t left behind.

The push for more billable services has raised concerns about fraud, especially as physicians and hospitals develop more efficient systems to see patients remotely. “Overuse is absolutely a concern,” said Dr. Von Nguyen, chief medical officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. “Once these systems are in place, I suspect, the risk will be greater.”

Nevertheless, many insurers and state Medicaid programs, two groups that typically look more skeptically at services that can drive up costs, are backing telehealth expansion.

And despite initial fraud concerns, nearly a dozen Medicaid and insurance industry officials interviewed for this article noted that thus far they’ve seen little evidence of widespread misuse.

“There is fraud in traditional medical care, too,” said Dr. Donna O’Shea, a senior executive at UnitedHealth Group.

Several insurance officials said telehealth could ultimately save money by routing some medical care from high-cost doctors’ offices and hospitals to lower-priced virtual visits, particularly for urgent care.

And some insurance companies — including Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in New England and Priority Health in Michigan — are marketing health plans with lower premiums that steer patients to virtual care.

“We see this being a long-term change,” said Dr. Michael Sherman, Harvard Pilgrim’s chief medical officer.

Sherman said the health plan is even exploring whether to help low-income patients get internet access to expand telehealth further. “We have proven to ourselves that this works,” he said.

KHN correspondent Rachana Pradhan and digital producer Hannah Norman contributed to this report.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

Covid Was a Tipping Point for Telehealth. If Some Have Their Way, Virtual Visits Are Here to Stay. published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[smartworkingpackage]

100 announcements (!) from Google Cloud Next '17

San Francisco — What a week! Google Cloud Next ‘17 has come to the end, but really, it’s just the beginning. We welcomed 10,000+ attendees including customers, partners, developers, IT leaders, engineers, press, analysts, cloud enthusiasts (and skeptics). Together we engaged in 3 days of keynotes, 200+ sessions, and 4 invitation-only summits. Hard to believe this was our first show as all of Google Cloud with GCP, G Suite, Chrome, Maps and Education. Thank you to all who were here with us in San Francisco this week, and we hope to see you next year.

If you’re a fan of video highlights, we’ve got you covered. Check out our Day 1 keynote (in less than 4 minutes) and Day 2 keynote (in under 5!).

One of the common refrains from customers and partners throughout the conference was “Wow, you’ve been busy. I can’t believe how many announcements you’ve had at Next!” So we decided to count all the announcements from across Google Cloud and in fact we had 100 (!) announcements this week.

For the list lovers amongst you, we’ve compiled a handy-dandy run-down of our announcements from the past few days:

Google Cloud is excited to welcome two new acquisitions to the Google Cloud family this week, Kaggle and AppBridge.

1. Kaggle - Kaggle is one of the world's largest communities of data scientists and machine learning enthusiasts. Kaggle and Google Cloud will continue to support machine learning training and deployment services in addition to offering the community the ability to store and query large datasets.

2. AppBridge - Google Cloud acquired Vancouver-based AppBridge this week, which helps you migrate data from on-prem file servers into G Suite and Google Drive.

Google Cloud brings a suite of new security features to Google Cloud Platform and G Suite designed to help safeguard your company’s assets and prevent disruption to your business: 

3. Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) for Google Cloud Platform (Beta) - Identity-Aware Proxy lets you provide access to applications based on risk, rather than using a VPN. It provides secure application access from anywhere, restricts access by user, identity and group, deploys with integrated phishing resistant Security Key and is easier to setup than end-user VPN.

4. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Google Cloud Platform (Beta) - Data Loss Prevention API lets you scan data for 40+ sensitive data types, and is used as part of DLP in Gmail and Drive. You can find and redact sensitive data stored in GCP, invigorate old applications with new sensitive data sensing “smarts” and use predefined detectors as well as customize your own.

5. Key Management Service (KMS) for Google Cloud Platform (GA) - Key Management Service allows you to generate, use, rotate, and destroy symmetric encryption keys for use in the cloud.

6. Security Key Enforcement (SKE) for Google Cloud Platform (GA) - Security Key Enforcement allows you to require security keys be used as the 2-Step verification factor for enhanced anti-phishing security whenever a GCP application is accessed.

7. Vault for Google Drive (GA) - Google Vault is the eDiscovery and archiving solution for G Suite. Vault enables admins to easily manage their G Suite data lifecycle and search, preview and export the G Suite data in their domain. Vault for Drive enables full support for Google Drive content, including Team Drive files.

8. Google-designed security chip, Titan - Google uses Titan to establish hardware root of trust, allowing us to securely identify and authenticate legitimate access at the hardware level. Titan includes a hardware random number generator, performs cryptographic operations in the isolated memory, and has a dedicated secure processor (on-chip).

New GCP data analytics products and services help organizations solve business problems with data, rather than spending time and resources building, integrating and managing the underlying infrastructure:

9. BigQuery Data Transfer Service (Private Beta) - BigQuery Data Transfer Service makes it easy for users to quickly get value from all their Google-managed advertising datasets. With just a few clicks, marketing analysts can schedule data imports from Google Adwords, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers and YouTube Content and Channel Owner reports.

10. Cloud Dataprep (Private Beta) - Cloud Dataprep is a new managed data service, built in collaboration with Trifacta, that makes it faster and easier for BigQuery end-users to visually explore and prepare data for analysis without the need for dedicated data engineer resources.

11. New Commercial Datasets - Businesses often look for datasets (public or commercial) outside their organizational boundaries. Commercial datasets offered include financial market data from Xignite, residential real-estate valuations (historical and projected) from HouseCanary, predictions for when a house will go on sale from Remine, historical weather data from AccuWeather, and news archives from Dow Jones, all immediately ready for use in BigQuery (with more to come as new partners join the program).

12. Python for Google Cloud Dataflow in GA - Cloud Dataflow is a fully managed data processing service supporting both batch and stream execution of pipelines. Until recently, these benefits have been available solely to Java developers. Now there’s a Python SDK for Cloud Dataflow in GA.

13. Stackdriver Monitoring for Cloud Dataflow (Beta) - We’ve integrated Cloud Dataflow with Stackdriver Monitoring so that you can access and analyze Cloud Dataflow job metrics and create alerts for specific Dataflow job conditions.

14. Google Cloud Datalab in GA - This interactive data science workflow tool makes it easy to do iterative model and data analysis in a Jupyter notebook-based environment using standard SQL, Python and shell commands.

15. Cloud Dataproc updates - Our fully managed service for running Apache Spark, Flink and Hadoop pipelines has new support for restarting failed jobs (including automatic restart as needed) in beta, the ability to create single-node clusters for lightweight sandbox development, in beta, GPU support, and the cloud labels feature, for more flexibility managing your Dataproc resources, is now GA.

New GCP databases and database features round out a platform on which developers can build great applications across a spectrum of use cases:

16. Cloud SQL for Postgre SQL (Beta) - Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL implements the same design principles currently reflected in Cloud SQL for MySQL, namely, the ability to securely store and connect to your relational data via open standards.

17. Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise (GA) - Available on Google Compute Engine, plus support for Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability (GA).

18. Cloud SQL for MySQL improvements - Increased performance for demanding workloads via 32-core instances with up to 208GB of RAM, and central management of resources via Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls.

19. Cloud Spanner - Launched a month ago, but still, it would be remiss not to mention it because, hello, it’s Cloud Spanner! The industry’s first horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service.

20. SSD persistent-disk performance improvements - SSD persistent disks now have increased throughput and IOPS performance, which are particularly beneficial for database and analytics workloads. Read these docs for complete details about persistent-disk performance.

21. Federated query on Cloud Bigtable - We’ve extended BigQuery’s reach to query data inside Cloud Bigtable, the NoSQL database service for massive analytic or operational workloads that require low latency and high throughput (particularly common in Financial Services and IoT use cases).

New GCP Cloud Machine Learning services bolster our efforts to make machine learning accessible to organizations of all sizes and sophistication:

22.  Cloud Machine Learning Engine (GA) - Cloud ML Engine, now generally available, is for organizations that want to train and deploy their own models into production in the cloud.

23. Cloud Video Intelligence API (Private Beta) - A first of its kind, Cloud Video Intelligence API lets developers easily search and discover video content by providing information about entities (nouns such as “dog,” “flower”, or “human” or verbs such as “run,” “swim,” or “fly”) inside video content.

24. Cloud Vision API (GA) - Cloud Vision API reaches GA and offers new capabilities for enterprises and partners to classify a more diverse set of images. The API can now recognize millions of entities from Google’s Knowledge Graph and offers enhanced OCR capabilities that can extract text from scans of text-heavy documents such as legal contracts or research papers or books.

25. Machine learning Advanced Solution Lab (ASL) - ASL provides dedicated facilities for our customers to directly collaborate with Google’s machine-learning experts to apply ML to their most pressing challenges.

26. Cloud Jobs API - A powerful aid to job search and discovery, Cloud Jobs API now has new features such as Commute Search, which will return relevant jobs based on desired commute time and preferred mode of transportation.

27. Machine Learning Startup Competition - We announced a Machine Learning Startup Competition in collaboration with venture capital firms Data Collective and Emergence Capital, and with additional support from a16z, Greylock Partners, GV, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

New GCP pricing continues our intention to create customer-friendly pricing that’s as smart as our products; and support services that are geared towards meeting our customers where they are:

28. Compute Engine price cuts - Continuing our history of pricing leadership, we’ve cut Google Compute Engine prices by up to 8%.

29. Committed Use Discounts - With Committed Use Discounts, customers can receive a discount of up to 57% off our list price, in exchange for a one or three year purchase commitment paid monthly, with no upfront costs.

30. Free trial extended to 12 months - We’ve extended our free trial from 60 days to 12 months, allowing you to use your $300 credit across all GCP services and APIs, at your own pace and schedule. Plus, we’re introduced new Always Free products -- non-expiring usage limits that you can use to test and develop applications at no cost. Visit the Google Cloud Platform Free Tier page for details.

31. Engineering Support - Our new Engineering Support offering is a role-based subscription model that allows us to match engineer to engineer, to meet you where your business is, no matter what stage of development you’re in. It has 3 tiers:

Development engineering support - ideal for developers or QA engineers that can manage with a response within four to eight business hours, priced at $100/user per month.

Production engineering support provides a one-hour response time for critical issues at $250/user per month.

On-call engineering support pages a Google engineer and delivers a 15-minute response time 24x7 for critical issues at $1,500/user per month.

32. http://ift.tt/2msqs6b site - Google Cloud Platform Community is a new site to learn, connect and share with other people like you, who are interested in GCP. You can follow along with tutorials or submit one yourself, find meetups in your area, and learn about community resources for GCP support, open source projects and more.

New GCP developer platforms and tools reinforce our commitment to openness and choice and giving you what you need to move fast and focus on great code.

33. Google AppEngine Flex (GA) - We announced a major expansion of our popular App Engine platform to new developer communities that emphasizes openness, developer choice, and application portability.

34. Cloud Functions (Beta) - Google Cloud Functions has launched into public beta. It is a serverless environment for creating event-driven applications and microservices, letting you build and connect cloud services with code.

35. Firebase integration with GCP (GA) - Firebase Storage is now Google Cloud Storage for Firebase and adds support for multiple buckets, support for linking to existing buckets, and integrates with Google Cloud Functions.

36. Cloud Container Builder - Cloud Container Builder is a standalone tool that lets you build your Docker containers on GCP regardless of deployment environment. It’s a fast, reliable, and consistent way to package your software into containers as part of an automated workflow.

37. Community Tutorials (Beta)  - With community tutorials, anyone can now submit or request a technical how-to for Google Cloud Platform.

Secure, global and high-performance, we’ve built our cloud for the long haul. This week we announced a slew of new infrastructure updates. 

38. New data center region: California - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers on the West Coast of the U.S. and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

39. New data center region: Montreal - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers in Canada and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

40. New data center region: Netherlands - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers in Western Europe and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

41. Google Container Engine - Managed Nodes - Google Container Engine (GKE) has added Automated Monitoring and Repair of your GKE nodes, letting you focus on your applications while Google ensures your cluster is available and up-to-date.

42. 64 Core machines + more memory - We have doubled the number of vCPUs you can run in an instance from 32 to 64 and up to 416GB of memory per instance.

43. Internal Load balancing (GA) - Internal Load Balancing, now GA, lets you run and scale your services behind a private load balancing IP address which is accessible only to your internal instances, not the internet.

44. Cross-Project Networking (Beta) - Cross-Project Networking (XPN), now in beta, is a virtual network that provides a common network across several Google Cloud Platform projects, enabling simple multi-tenant deployments.

In the past year, we’ve launched 300+ features and updates for G Suite and this week we announced our next generation of collaboration and communication tools.

45. Team Drives (GA for G Suite Business, Education and Enterprise customers) - Team Drives help teams simply and securely manage permissions, ownership and file access for an organization within Google Drive.

46. Drive File Stream (EAP) - Drive File Stream is a way to quickly stream files directly from the cloud to your computer With Drive File Steam, company data can be accessed directly from your laptop, even if you don’t have much space on your hard drive.

47. Google Vault for Drive (GA for G Suite Business, Education and Enterprise customers) - Google Vault for Drive now gives admins the governance controls they need to manage and secure all of their files, including employee Drives and Team Drives. Google Vault for Drive also lets admins set retention policies that automatically keep what’s needed and delete what’s not.

48. Quick Access in Team Drives (GA) - powered by Google’s machine intelligence, Quick Access helps to surface the right information for employees at the right time within Google Drive. Quick Access now works with Team Drives on iOS and Android devices, and is coming soon to the web.

49. Hangouts Meet (GA to existing customers) - Hangouts Meet is a new video meeting experience built on the Hangouts that can run 30-person video conferences without accounts, plugins or downloads. For G Suite Enterprise customers, each call comes with a dedicated dial-in phone number so that team members on the road can join meetings without wifi or data issues.

50. Hangouts Chat (EAP) - Hangouts Chat is an intelligent communication app in Hangouts with dedicated, virtual rooms that connect cross-functional enterprise teams. Hangouts Chat integrates with G Suite apps like Drive and Docs, as well as photos, videos and other third-party enterprise apps.

51. @meet - @meet is an intelligent bot built on top of the Hangouts platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to automatically schedule meetings for your team with Hangouts Meet and Google Calendar.

52. Gmail Add-ons for G Suite (Developer Preview) - Gmail Add-ons provide a way to surface the functionality of your app or service directly in Gmail. With Add-ons, developers only build their integration once, and it runs natively in Gmail on web, Android and iOS.

53. Edit Opportunities in Google Sheets - with Edit Opportunities in Google Sheets, sales reps can sync a Salesforce Opportunity List View to Sheets to bulk edit data and changes are synced automatically to Salesforce, no upload required.

54. Jamboard - Our whiteboard in the cloud goes GA in May! Jamboard merges the worlds of physical and digital creativity. It’s real time collaboration on a brilliant scale, whether your team is together in the conference room or spread all over the world.

Building on the momentum from a growing number of businesses using Chrome digital signage and kiosks, we added new management tools and APIs in addition to introducing support for Android Kiosk apps on supported Chrome devices. 

55. Android Kiosk Apps for Chrome - Android Kiosk for Chrome lets users manage and deploy Chrome digital signage and kiosks for both web and Android apps. And with Public Session Kiosks, IT admins can now add a number of Chrome packaged apps alongside hosted apps.

56. Chrome Kiosk Management Free trial - This free trial gives customers an easy way to test out Chrome for signage and kiosk deployments.

57. Chrome Device Management (CDM) APIs for Kiosks - These APIs offer programmatic access to various Kiosk policies. IT admins can schedule a device reboot through the new APIs and integrate that functionality directly in a third- party console.

58. Chrome Stability API - This new API allows Kiosk app developers to improve the reliability of the application and the system.

Attendees at Google Cloud Next ‘17 heard stories from many of our valued customers:

59. Colgate - Colgate-Palmolive partnered with Google Cloud and SAP to bring thousands of employees together through G Suite collaboration and productivity tools. The company deployed G Suite to 28,000 employees in less than six months.

60. Disney Consumer Products & Interactive (DCPI) - DCPI is on target to migrate out of its legacy infrastructure this year, and is leveraging machine learning to power next generation guest experiences.

61. eBay - eBay uses Google Cloud technologies including Google Container Engine, Machine Learning and AI for its ShopBot, a personal shopping bot on Facebook Messenger.

62. HSBC - HSBC is one of the world's largest financial and banking institutions and making a large investment in transforming its global IT. The company is working closely with Google to deploy Cloud DataFlow, BigQuery and other data services to power critical proof of concept projects.

63. LUSH - LUSH migrated its global e-commerce site from AWS to GCP in less than six weeks, significantly improving the reliability and stability of its site. LUSH benefits from GCP’s ability to scale as transaction volume surges, which is critical for a retail business. In addition, Google's commitment to renewable energy sources aligns with LUSH's ethical principles.

64. Oden Technologies - Oden was part of Google Cloud’s startup program, and switched its entire platform to GCP from AWS. GCP offers Oden the ability to reliably scale while keeping costs low, perform under heavy loads and consistently delivers sophisticated features including machine learning and data analytics.

65. Planet - Planet migrated to GCP in February, looking to accelerate their workloads and leverage Google Cloud for several key advantages: price stability and predictability, custom instances, first-class Kubernetes support, and Machine Learning technology. Planet also announced the beta release of their Explorer platform.

66. Schlumberger - Schlumberger is making a critical investment in the cloud, turning to GCP to enable high-performance computing, remote visualization and development velocity. GCP is helping Schlumberger deliver innovative products and services to its customers by using HPC to scale data processing, workflow and advanced algorithms.

67. The Home Depot - The Home Depot collaborated with GCP’s Customer Reliability Engineering team to migrate HomeDepot.com to the cloud in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Moving to GCP has allowed the company to better manage huge traffic spikes at peak shopping times throughout the year.

68. Verizon - Verizon is deploying G Suite to more than 150,000 of its employees, allowing for collaboration and flexibility in the workplace while maintaining security and compliance standards. Verizon and Google Cloud have been working together for more than a year to bring simple and secure productivity solutions to Verizon’s workforce.

We brought together Google Cloud partners from our growing ecosystem across G Suite, GCP, Maps, Devices and Education. Our partnering philosophy is driven by a set of principles that emphasize openness, innovation, fairness, transparency and shared success in the cloud market. Here are some of our partners who were out in force at the show:

69. Accenture - Accenture announced that it has designed a mobility solution for Rentokil, a global pest control company, built in collaboration with Google as part of the partnership announced at Horizon in September.

70. Alooma - Alooma announced the integration of the Alooma service with Google Cloud SQL and BigQuery.

71. Authorized Training Partner Program - To help companies scale their training offerings more quickly, and to enable Google to add other training partners to the ecosystem, we are introducing a new track within our partner program to support their unique offerings and needs.

72. Check Point - Check Point® Software Technologies announced Check Point vSEC for Google Cloud Platform, delivering advanced security integrated with GCP as well as their joining of the Google Cloud Technology Partner Program.

73. CloudEndure - We’re collaborating with CloudEndure to offer a no cost, self-service migration tool for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers.

74. Coursera - Coursera announced that it is collaborating with Google Cloud Platform to provide an extensive range of Google Cloud training course. To celebrate this announcement  Coursera is offering all NEXT attendees a 100% discount for the GCP fundamentals class.

75. DocuSign - DocuSign announced deeper integrations with Google Docs.

76. Egnyte - Egnyte announced an enhanced integration with Google Docs that will allow our joint customers to create, edit, and store Google Docs, Sheets and Slides files right from within the Egnyte Connect.

77. Google Cloud Global Partner Awards - We recognized 12 Google Cloud partners that demonstrated strong customer success and solution innovation over the past year: Accenture, Pivotal, LumApps, Slack, Looker, Palo Alto Networks, Virtru, SoftBank, DoIT, Snowdrop Solutions, CDW Corporation, and SYNNEX Corporation.

78. iCharts - iCharts announced additional support for several GCP databases, free pivot tables for current Google BigQuery users, and a new product dubbed “iCharts for SaaS.”

79. Intel - In addition to the progress with Skylake, Intel and Google Cloud launched several technology initiatives and market education efforts covering IoT, Kubernetes and TensorFlow, including optimizations, a developer program and tool kits.

80. Intuit - Intuit announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

81. Liftigniter - Liftigniter is a member of Google Cloud’s startup program and focused on machine learning personalization using predictive analytics to improve CTR on web and in-app.

82. Looker - Looker launched a suite of Looker Blocks, compatible with Google BigQuery Data Transfer Service, designed to give marketers the tools to enhance analysis of their critical data.

83. Low interest loans for partners - To help Premier Partners grow their teams, Google announced that capital investment are available to qualified partners in the form of low interest loans.

84. MicroStrategy - MicroStrategy announced an integration with Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL and Google Cloud SQL for MySQL.

85. New incentives to accelerate partner growth - We are increasing our investments in multiple existing and new incentive programs; including, low interest loans to help Premier Partners grow their teams, increasing co-funding to accelerate deals, and expanding our rebate programs.

86. Orbitera Test Drives for GCP Partners - Test Drives allow customers to try partners’ software and generate high quality leads that can be passed directly to the partners’ sales teams. Google is offering Premier Cloud Partners one year of free Test Drives on Orbitera.

87. Partner specializations - Partners demonstrating strong customer success and technical proficiency in certain solution areas will now qualify to apply for a specialization. We’re launching specializations in application development, data analytics, machine learning and infrastructure.

88. Pivotal - GCP announced Pivotal as our first CRE technology partner. CRE technology partners will work hand-in-hand with Google to thoroughly review their solutions and implement changes to address identified risks to reliability.

89. ProsperWorks - ProsperWorks announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

90. Qwiklabs - This recent acquisition will provide Authorized Training Partners the ability to offer hands-on labs and comprehensive courses developed by Google experts to our customers.

91. Rackspace - Rackspace announced a strategic relationship with Google Cloud to become its first managed services support partner for GCP, with plans to collaborate on a new managed services offering for GCP customers set to launch later this year.

92. Rocket.Chat - Rocket.Chat, a member of Google Cloud’s startup program, is adding a number of new product integrations with GCP including Autotranslate via Translate API, integration with Vision API to screen for inappropriate content, integration to NLP API to perform sentiment analysis on public channels, integration with GSuite for authentication and a full move of back-end storage to Google Cloud Storage.

93. Salesforce - Salesforce announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

94. SAP - This strategic partnership includes certification of SAP HANA on GCP, new G Suite integrations and future collaboration on building machine learning features into intelligent applications like conversational apps that guide users through complex workflows and transactions.

95. Smyte - Smyte participated in the Google Cloud startup program and protects millions of actions a day on websites and mobile applications. Smyte recently moved from self-hosted Kubernetes to Google Container Engine (GKE).

96. Veritas - Veritas expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to provide joint customers with 360 Data Management capabilities. The partnership will help reduce data storage costs, increase compliance and eDiscovery readiness and accelerate the customer’s journey to Google Cloud Platform.

97. VMware Airwatch - Airwatch provides enterprise mobility management solutions for Android and continues to drive the Google Device ecosystem to enterprise customers.

98. Windows Partner Program- We’re working with top systems integrators in the Windows community to help GCP customers take full advantage of Windows and .NET apps and services on our platform.

99. Xplenty - Xplenty announced the addition of two new services from Google Cloud into their available integrations: Google Cloud Spanner and Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.

100. Zoomdata - Zoomdata announced support for Google’s Cloud Spanner and PostgreSQL on GCP, as well as enhancements to the existing Zoomdata Smart Connector for Google BigQuery. With these new capabilities Zoomdata offers deeply integrated and optimized support for Google Cloud Platform’s Cloud Spanner, PostgreSQL, Google BigQuery, and Cloud DataProc services.

We’re thrilled to have so many new products and partners that can help all of our customers grow. And as our final announcement for Google Cloud Next ’17 — please save the date for Next 2018: June 4–6 in San Francisco.

I guess that makes it 101. :-)

from Drive http://ift.tt/2msD2m4 via IFTTT

[android-for-life]

"100 announcements (!) from Google Cloud Next '17"

San Francisco — What a week! Google Cloud Next ‘17 has come to the end, but really, it’s just the beginning. We welcomed

10,000+ attendees including customers, partners, developers, IT leaders, engineers, press, analysts, cloud enthusiasts (and skeptics). Together we engaged in 3 days of keynotes, 200+ sessions, and 4 invitation-only summits. Hard to believe this was our first show as all of Google Cloud with GCP, G Suite, Chrome, Maps and Education. Thank you to all who were here with us in San Francisco this week, and we hope to see you next year.

If you’re a fan of video highlights, we’ve got you covered. Check out our Day 1 keynote (in less than 4 minutes) and Day 2 keynote (in under 5!).

One of the common refrains from customers and partners throughout the conference was “Wow, you’ve been busy. I can’t believe how many announcements you’ve had at Next!” So we decided to count all the announcements from across Google Cloud and in fact we had 100 (!) announcements this week.

For the list lovers amongst you, we’ve compiled a handy-dandy run-down of our announcements from the past few days:

Google Cloud Acquisitions

Google Cloud is excited to welcome two new acquisitions to the Google Cloud family this week, Kaggle and AppBridge.

1. Kaggle - Kaggle is one of the world's largest communities of data scientists and machine learning enthusiasts. Kaggle and Google Cloud will continue to support machine learning training and deployment services in addition to offering the community the ability to store and query large datasets.

2. AppBridge - Google Cloud acquired Vancouver-based AppBridge this week, which helps you migrate data from on-prem file servers into G Suite and Google Drive.

Google Cloud Security

Google Cloud brings a suite of new security features to Google Cloud Platform and G Suite designed to help safeguard your company’s assets and prevent disruption to your business: 

3. Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) for Google Cloud Platform (Beta) - Identity-Aware Proxy lets you provide access to applications based on risk, rather than using a VPN. It provides secure application access from anywhere, restricts access by user, identity and group, deploys with integrated phishing resistant Security Key and is easier to setup than end-user VPN.

4. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Google Cloud Platform (Beta) - Data Loss Prevention API lets you scan data for 40+ sensitive data types, and is used as part of DLP in Gmail and Drive. You can find and redact sensitive data stored in GCP, invigorate old applications with new sensitive data sensing “smarts” and use predefined detectors as well as customize your own.

5. Key Management Service (KMS) for Google Cloud Platform (GA) - Key Management Service allows you to generate, use, rotate, and destroy symmetric encryption keys for use in the cloud.

6. Security Key Enforcement (SKE) for Google Cloud Platform (GA) - Security Key Enforcement allows you to require security keys be used as the 2-Step verification factor for enhanced anti-phishing security whenever a GCP application is accessed.

7. Vault for Google Drive (GA) - Google Vault is the eDiscovery and archiving solution for G Suite. Vault enables admins to easily manage their G Suite data lifecycle and search, preview and export the G Suite data in their domain. Vault for Drive enables full support for Google Drive content, including Team Drive files.

8. Google-designed security chip, Titan - Google uses Titan to establish hardware root of trust, allowing us to securely identify and authenticate legitimate access at the hardware level. Titan includes a hardware random number generator, performs cryptographic operations in the isolated memory, and has a dedicated secure processor (on-chip).

Google Cloud Platform - Data Analytics

New GCP data analytics products and services help organizations solve business problems with data, rather than spending time and resources building, integrating and managing the underlying infrastructure:

9. BigQuery Data Transfer Service (Private Beta) - BigQuery Data Transfer Service makes it easy for users to quickly get value from all their Google-managed advertising datasets. With just a few clicks, marketing analysts can schedule data imports from Google Adwords, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers and YouTube Content and Channel Owner reports.

10. Cloud Dataprep (Private Beta) - Cloud Dataprep is a new managed data service, built in collaboration with Trifacta, that makes it faster and easier for BigQuery end-users to visually explore and prepare data for analysis without the need for dedicated data engineer resources.

11. New Commercial Datasets - Businesses often look for datasets (public or commercial) outside their organizational boundaries. Commercial datasets offered include financial market data from Xignite, residential real-estate valuations (historical and projected) from HouseCanary, predictions for when a house will go on sale from Remine, historical weather data from AccuWeather, and news archives from Dow Jones, all immediately ready for use in BigQuery (with more to come as new partners join the program).

12. Python for Google Cloud Dataflow in GA - Cloud Dataflow is a fully managed data processing service supporting both batch and stream execution of pipelines. Until recently, these benefits have been available solely to Java developers. Now there’s a Python SDK for Cloud Dataflow in GA.

13. Stackdriver Monitoring for Cloud Dataflow (Beta) - We’ve integrated Cloud Dataflow with Stackdriver Monitoring so that you can access and analyze Cloud Dataflow job metrics and create alerts for specific Dataflow job conditions.

14. Google Cloud Datalab in GA - This interactive data science workflow tool makes it easy to do iterative model and data analysis in a Jupyter notebook-based environment using standard SQL, Python and shell commands.

15. Cloud Dataproc updates - Our fully managed service for running Apache Spark, Flink and Hadoop pipelines has new support for restarting failed jobs (including automatic restart as needed) in beta, the ability to create single-node clusters for lightweight sandbox development, in beta, GPU support, and the cloud labels feature, for more flexibility managing your Dataproc resources, is now GA.

Google Cloud Platform - Database Services

New GCP databases and database features round out a platform on which developers can build great applications across a spectrum of use cases:

16. Cloud SQL for Postgre SQL (Beta) - Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL implements the same design principles currently reflected in Cloud SQL for MySQL, namely, the ability to securely store and connect to your relational data via open standards.

17. Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise (GA) - Available on Google Compute Engine, plus support for Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability (GA).

18. Cloud SQL for MySQL improvements - Increased performance for demanding workloads via 32-core instances with up to 208GB of RAM, and central management of resources via Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls.

19. Cloud Spanner - Launched a month ago, but still, it would be remiss not to mention it because, hello, it’s Cloud Spanner! The industry’s first horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service.

20. SSD persistent-disk performance improvements - SSD persistent disks now have increased throughput and IOPS performance, which are particularly beneficial for database and analytics workloads. Read these docs for complete details about persistent-disk performance.

21. Federated query on Cloud Bigtable - We’ve extended BigQuery’s reach to query data inside Cloud Bigtable, the NoSQL database service for massive analytic or operational workloads that require low latency and high throughput (particularly common in Financial Services and IoT use cases).

Google Cloud Platform - Machine Learning Services

New GCP Cloud Machine Learning services bolster our efforts to make machine learning accessible to organizations of all sizes and sophistication:

22.  Cloud Machine Learning Engine (GA) - Cloud ML Engine, now generally available, is for organizations that want to train and deploy their own models into production in the cloud.

23. Cloud Video Intelligence API (Private Beta) - A first of its kind, Cloud Video Intelligence API lets developers easily search and discover video content by providing information about entities (nouns such as “dog,” “flower”, or “human” or verbs such as “run,” “swim,” or “fly”) inside video content.

24. Cloud Vision API (GA) - Cloud Vision API reaches GA and offers new capabilities for enterprises and partners to classify a more diverse set of images. The API can now recognize millions of entities from Google’s Knowledge Graph and offers enhanced OCR capabilities that can extract text from scans of text-heavy documents such as legal contracts or research papers or books.

25. Machine learning Advanced Solution Lab (ASL) - ASL provides dedicated facilities for our customers to directly collaborate with Google’s machine-learning experts to apply ML to their most pressing challenges.

26. Cloud Jobs API - A powerful aid to job search and discovery, Cloud Jobs API now has new features such as Commute Search, which will return relevant jobs based on desired commute time and preferred mode of transportation.

27. Machine Learning Startup Competition - We announced a Machine Learning Startup Competition in collaboration with venture capital firms Data Collective and Emergence Capital, and with additional support from a16z, Greylock Partners, GV, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

Google Cloud Platform - Pricing & Support

New GCP pricing continues our intention to create customer-friendly pricing that’s as smart as our products; and support services that are geared towards meeting our customers where they are:

28. Compute Engine price cuts - Continuing our history of pricing leadership, we’ve cut Google Compute Engine prices by up to 8%.

29. Committed Use Discounts - With Committed Use Discounts, customers can receive a discount of up to 57% off our list price, in exchange for a one or three year purchase commitment paid monthly, with no upfront costs.

30. Free trial extended to 12 months - We’ve extended our free trial from 60 days to 12 months, allowing you to use your $300 credit across all GCP services and APIs, at your own pace and schedule. Plus, we’re introduced new Always Free products -- non-expiring usage limits that you can use to test and develop applications at no cost. Visit the Google Cloud Platform Free Tier page for details.

31. Engineering Support - Our new Engineering Support offering is a role-based subscription model that allows us to match engineer to engineer, to meet you where your business is, no matter what stage of development you’re in. It has 3 tiers:

Development engineering support - ideal for developers or QA engineers that can manage with a response within four to eight business hours, priced at $100/user per month.

Production engineering support provides a one-hour response time for critical issues at $250/user per month.

On-call engineering support pages a Google engineer and delivers a 15-minute response time 24x7 for critical issues at $1,500/user per month.

32. http://ift.tt/2msqs6b site - Google Cloud Platform Community is a new site to learn, connect and share with other people like you, who are interested in GCP. You can follow along with tutorials or submit one yourself, find meetups in your area, and learn about community resources for GCP support, open source projects and more.

Google Cloud Platform - Developer Platforms & Tools

New GCP developer platforms and tools reinforce our commitment to openness and choice and giving you what you need to move fast and focus on great code.

33. Google AppEngine Flex (GA) - We announced a major expansion of our popular App Engine platform to new developer communities that emphasizes openness, developer choice, and application portability.

34. Cloud Functions (Beta) - Google Cloud Functions has launched into public beta. It is a serverless environment for creating event-driven applications and microservices, letting you build and connect cloud services with code.

35. Firebase integration with GCP (GA) - Firebase Storage is now Google Cloud Storage for Firebase and adds support for multiple buckets, support for linking to existing buckets, and integrates with Google Cloud Functions.

36. Cloud Container Builder - Cloud Container Builder is standalone tool that lets you build your Docker containers on GCP regardless of deployment environment. It’s a fast, reliable, and consistent way to package your software into containers as part of an automated workflow.

37. Community Tutorials (Beta)  - With community tutorials, anyone can now submit or request a technical how-to for Google Cloud Platform.

Google Cloud Platform - Infrastructure

Secure, global and high-performance, we’ve built our cloud for the long haul. This week we announced a slew of new infrastructure updates.

38. New data center region: California - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers on the West Coast of the U.S. and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

39. New data center region: Montreal - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers in Canada and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

40. New data center region: Netherlands - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers in Western Europe and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

41. Google Container Engine - Managed Nodes - Google Container Engine (GKE) has added Automated Monitoring and Repair of your GKE nodes, letting you focus on your applications while Google ensures your cluster is available and up-to-date.

42. 64 Core machines + more memory - We have doubled the number of vCPUs you can run in an instance from 32 to 64 and up to 416GB of memory per instance.

43. Internal Load balancing (GA) - Internal Load Balancing, now GA, lets you run and scale your services behind a private load balancing IP address which is accessible only to your internal instances, not the internet.

44. Cross-Project Networking (Beta) - Cross-Project Networking (XPN), now in beta, is a virtual network that provides a common network across several Google Cloud Platform projects, enabling simple multi-tenant deployments.

G Suite - Enterprise Collaboration & Productivity

In the past year, we’ve launched 300+ features and updates for G Suite and this week we announced our next generation of collaboration and communication tools.

45. Team Drives (GA for G Suite Business, Education and Enterprise customers) - Team Drives help teams simply and securely manage permissions, ownership and file access for an organization within Google Drive.

46. Drive File Stream (EAP) - Drive File Stream is a way to quickly stream files directly from the cloud to your computer With Drive File Steam, company data can be accessed directly from your laptop, even if you don’t have much space on your hard drive.

47. Google Vault for Drive (GA for G Suite Business, Education and Enterprise customers) - Google Vault for Drive now gives admins the governance controls they need to manage and secure all of their files, including employee Drives and Team Drives. Google Vault for Drive also lets admins set retention policies that automatically keep what’s needed and delete what’s not.

48. Quick Access in Team Drives (GA) - powered by Google’s machine intelligence, Quick Access helps to surface the right information for employees at the right time within Google Drive. Quick Access now works with Team Drives on iOS and Android devices, and is coming soon to the web.

49. Hangouts Meet (GA to existing customers) - Hangouts Meet is a new video meeting experience built on the Hangouts that can run 30-person video conferences without accounts, plugins or downloads. For G Suite Enterprise customers, each call comes with a dedicated dial-in phone number so that team members on the road can join meetings without wifi or data issues.

50. Hangouts Chat (EAP) - Hangouts Chat is an intelligent communication app in Hangouts with dedicated, virtual rooms that connect cross-functional enterprise teams. Hangouts Chat integrates with G Suite apps like Drive and Docs, as well as photos, videos and other third-party enterprise apps.

51. @meet - @meet is an intelligent bot built on top of the Hangouts platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to automatically schedule meetings for your team with Hangouts Meet and Google Calendar.

52. Gmail Add-ons for G Suite (Developer Preview) - Gmail Add-ons provide a way to surface the functionality of your app or service directly in Gmail. With Add-ons, developers only build their integration once, and it runs natively in Gmail on web, Android and iOS.

53. Edit Opportunities in Google Sheets - with Edit Opportunities in Google Sheets, sales reps can sync a Salesforce Opportunity List View to Sheets to bulk edit data and changes are synced automatically to Salesforce, no upload required.

54. Jamboard - Our whiteboard in the cloud goes GA in May! Jamboard merges the worlds of physical and digital creativity. It’s real time collaboration on a brilliant scale, whether your team is together in the conference room or spread all over the world.

Android & Chrome Devices

Building on the momentum from a growing number of businesses using Chrome digital signage and kiosks, we added new management tools and APIs in addition to introducing support for Android Kiosk apps on supported Chrome devices. 

55. Android Kiosk Apps for Chrome - Android Kiosk for Chrome lets users manage and deploy Chrome digital signage and kiosks for both web and Android apps. And with Public Session Kiosks, IT admins can now add a number of Chrome packaged apps alongside hosted apps.

56. Chrome Kiosk Management Free trial - This free trial gives customers an easy way to test out Chrome for signage and kiosk deployments.

57. Chrome Device Management (CDM) APIs for Kiosks - These APIs offer programmatic access to various Kiosk policies. IT admins can schedule a device reboot through the new APIs and integrate that functionality directly in a third- party console.

58. Chrome Stability API - This new API allows Kiosk app developers to improve the reliability of the application and the system.

Google Cloud Customers

Attendees at Google Cloud Next ‘17 heard stories from many of our valued customers:

59. Colgate - Colgate-Palmolive partnered with Google Cloud and SAP to bring thousands of employees together through G Suite collaboration and productivity tools. The company deployed G Suite to 28,000 employees in less than six months.

60. Disney Consumer Products & Interactive (DCPI) - DCPI is on target to migrate out of its legacy infrastructure this year, and is leveraging machine learning to power next generation guest experiences.

61. eBay - eBay uses Google Cloud technologies including Google Container Engine, Machine Learning and AI for its ShopBot, a personal shopping bot on Facebook Messenger.

62. HSBC - HSBC is one of the world's largest financial and banking institutions and making a large investment in transforming its global IT. The company is working closely with Google to deploy Cloud DataFlow, BigQuery and other data services to power critical proof of concept projects.

63. LUSH - LUSH migrated its global e-commerce site from AWS to GCP in less than six weeks, significantly improving the reliability and stability of its site. LUSH benefits from GCP’s ability to scale as transaction volume surges, which is critical for a retail business. In addition, Google's commitment to renewable energy sources aligns with LUSH's ethical principles.

64. Oden Technologies - Oden was part of Google Cloud’s startup program, and switched its entire platform to GCP from AWS. GCP offers Oden the ability to reliably scale while keeping costs low, perform under heavy loads and consistently delivers sophisticated features including machine learning and data analytics.

65. Planet - Planet migrated to GCP in February, looking to accelerate their workloads and leverage Google Cloud for several key advantages: price stability and predictability, custom instances, first-class Kubernetes support, and Machine Learning technology. Planet also announced the beta release of their Explorer platform.

66. Schlumberger - Schlumberger is making a critical investment in the cloud, turning to GCP to enable high-performance computing, remote visualization and development velocity. GCP is helping Schlumberger deliver innovative products and services to its customers by using HPC to scale data processing, workflow and advanced algorithms.

67. The Home Depot - The Home Depot collaborated with GCP’s Customer Reliability Engineering team to migrate HomeDepot.com to the cloud in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Moving to GCP has allowed the company to better manage huge traffic spikes at peak shopping times throughout the year.

68. Verizon - Verizon is deploying G Suite to more than 150,000 of its employees, allowing for collaboration and flexibility in the workplace while maintaining security and compliance standards. Verizon and Google Cloud have been working together for more than a year to bring simple and secure productivity solutions to Verizon’s workforce.

Google Cloud Partners

We brought together Google Cloud partners from our growing ecosystem across G Suite, GCP, Maps, Devices and Education. Our partnering philosophy is driven by a set of principles that emphasize openness, innovation, fairness, transparency and shared success in the cloud market. Here are some of our partners who were out in force at the show:

69. Accenture - Accenture announced that it has designed a mobility solution for Rentokil, a global pest control company, built in collaboration with Google as part of the partnership announced at Horizon in September.

70. Alooma - Alooma announced the integration of the Alooma service with Google Cloud SQL and BigQuery.

71. Authorized Training Partner Program - To help companies scale their training offerings more quickly, and to enable Google to add other training partners to the ecosystem, we are introducing a new track within our partner program to support their unique offerings and needs.

72. Check Point - Check Point® Software Technologies announced Check Point vSEC for Google Cloud Platform, delivering advanced security integrated with GCP as well as their joining of the Google Cloud Technology Partner Program.

73. CloudEndure - We’re collaborating with CloudEndure to offer a no cost, self-service migration tool for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers.

74. Coursera - Coursera announced that it is collaborating with Google Cloud Platform to provide an extensive range of Google Cloud training course. To celebrate this announcement  Coursera is offering all NEXT attendees a 100% discount for the GCP fundamentals class.

75. DocuSign - DocuSign announced deeper integrations with Google Docs.

76. Egnyte - Egnyte announced an enhanced integration with Google Docs that will allow our joint customers to create, edit, and store Google Docs, Sheets and Slides files right from within the Egnyte Connect.

77. Google Cloud Global Partner Awards - We recognized 12 Google Cloud partners that demonstrated strong customer success and solution innovation over the past year: Accenture, Pivotal, LumApps, Slack, Looker, Palo Alto Networks, Virtru, SoftBank, DoIT, Snowdrop Solutions, CDW Corporation, and SYNNEX Corporation.

78. iCharts - iCharts announced additional support for several GCP databases, free pivot tables for current Google BigQuery users, and a new product dubbed “iCharts for SaaS.”

79. Intel - In addition to the progress with Skylake, Intel and Google Cloud launched several technology initiatives and market education efforts covering IoT, Kubernetes and TensorFlow, including optimizations, a developer program and tool kits.

80. Intuit - Intuit announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

81. Liftigniter - Liftigniter is a member of Google Cloud’s startup program and focused on machine learning personalization using predictive analytics to improve CTR on web and in-app.

82. Looker - Looker launched a suite of Looker Blocks, compatible with Google BigQuery Data Transfer Service, designed to give marketers the tools to enhance analysis of their critical data.

83. Low interest loans for partners - To help Premier Partners grow their teams, Google announced that capital investment are available to qualified partners in the form of low interest loans.

84. MicroStrategy - MicroStrategy announced an integration with Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL and Google Cloud SQL for MySQL.

85. New incentives to accelerate partner growth - We are increasing our investments in multiple existing and new incentive programs; including, low interest loans to help Premier Partners grow their teams, increasing co-funding to accelerate deals, and expanding our rebate programs.

86. Orbitera Test Drives for GCP Partners - Test Drives allow customers to try partners’ software and generate high quality leads that can be passed directly to the partners’ sales teams. Google is offering Premier Cloud Partners one year of free Test Drives on Orbitera.

87. Partner specializations - Partners demonstrating strong customer success and technical proficiency in certain solution areas will now qualify to apply for a specialization. We’re launching specializations in application development, data analytics, machine learning and infrastructure.

88. Pivotal - GCP announced Pivotal as our first CRE technology partner. CRE technology partners will work hand-in-hand with Google to thoroughly review their solutions and implement changes to address identified risks to reliability.

89. ProsperWorks - ProsperWorks announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

90. Qwiklabs - This recent acquisition will provide Authorized Training Partners the ability to offer hands-on labs and comprehensive courses developed by Google experts to our customers.

91. Rackspace - Rackspace announced a strategic relationship with Google Cloud to become its first managed services support partner for GCP, with plans to collaborate on a new managed services offering for GCP customers set to launch later this year.

92. Rocket.Chat - Rocket.Chat, a member of Google Cloud’s startup program, is adding a number of new product integrations with GCP including Autotranslate via Translate API, integration with Vision API to screen for inappropriate content, integration to NLP API to perform sentiment analysis on public channels, integration with GSuite for authentication and a full move of back-end storage to Google Cloud Storage.

93. Salesforce - Salesforce announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

94. SAP - This strategic partnership includes certification of SAP HANA on GCP, new G Suite integrations and future collaboration on building machine learning features into intelligent applications like conversational apps that guide users through complex workflows and transactions.

95. Smyte - Smyte participated in the Google Cloud startup program and protects millions of actions a day on websites and mobile applications. Smyte recently moved from self-hosted Kubernetes to Google Container Engine (GKE).

96. Veritas - Veritas expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to provide joint customers with 360 Data Management capabilities. The partnership will help reduce data storage costs, increase compliance and eDiscovery readiness and accelerate the customer’s journey to Google Cloud Platform.

97. VMware Airwatch - Airwatch provides enterprise mobility management solutions for Android and continues to drive the Google Device ecosystem to enterprise customers.

98. Windows Partner Program- We’re working with top systems integrators in the Windows community to help GCP customers take full advantage of Windows and .NET apps and services on our platform.

99. Xplenty - Xplenty announced the addition of two new services from Google Cloud into their available integrations: Google Cloud Spanner and Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.

100. Zoomdata - Zoomdata announced support for Google’s Cloud Spanner and PostgreSQL on GCP, as well as enhancements to the existing Zoomdata Smart Connector for Google BigQuery. With these new capabilities Zoomdata offers deeply integrated and optimized support for Google Cloud Platform’s Cloud Spanner, PostgreSQL, Google BigQuery, and Cloud DataProc services.

We’re thrilled to have so many new products and partners that can help all of our customers grow. And as our final announcement for Google Cloud Next ’17 — please save the date for Next 2018: June 4–6 in San Francisco.

I guess that makes it 101. :-)

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

[ds4design]

100 announcements (!) from Google Cloud Next '17

San Francisco — What a week! Google Cloud Next ‘17 has come to the end, but really, it’s just the beginning. We welcomed

10,000+ attendees including customers, partners, developers, IT leaders, engineers, press, analysts, cloud enthusiasts (and skeptics). Together we engaged in 3 days of keynotes, 200+ sessions, and 4 invitation-only summits. Hard to believe this was our first show as all of Google Cloud with GCP, G Suite, Chrome, Maps and Education. Thank you to all who were here with us in San Francisco this week, and we hope to see you next year.

If you’re a fan of video highlights, we’ve got you covered. Check out our Day 1 keynote (in less than 4 minutes) and Day 2 keynote (in under 5!).

One of the common refrains from customers and partners throughout the conference was “Wow, you’ve been busy. I can’t believe how many announcements you’ve had at Next!” So we decided to count all the announcements from across Google Cloud and in fact we had 100 (!) announcements this week.

For the list lovers amongst you, we’ve compiled a handy-dandy run-down of our announcements from the past few days:

Google Cloud Acquisitions

Google Cloud is excited to welcome two new acquisitions to the Google Cloud family this week, Kaggle and AppBridge.

1. Kaggle - Kaggle is one of the world's largest communities of data scientists and machine learning enthusiasts. Kaggle and Google Cloud will continue to support machine learning training and deployment services in addition to offering the community the ability to store and query large datasets.

2. AppBridge - Google Cloud acquired Vancouver-based AppBridge this week, which helps you migrate data from on-prem file servers into G Suite and Google Drive.

Google Cloud Security

Google Cloud brings a suite of new security features to Google Cloud Platform and G Suite designed to help safeguard your company’s assets and prevent disruption to your business: 

3. Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) for Google Cloud Platform (Beta) - Identity-Aware Proxy lets you provide access to applications based on risk, rather than using a VPN. It provides secure application access from anywhere, restricts access by user, identity and group, deploys with integrated phishing resistant Security Key and is easier to setup than end-user VPN.

4. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Google Cloud Platform (Beta) - Data Loss Prevention API lets you scan data for 40+ sensitive data types, and is used as part of DLP in Gmail and Drive. You can find and redact sensitive data stored in GCP, invigorate old applications with new sensitive data sensing “smarts” and use predefined detectors as well as customize your own.

5. Key Management Service (KMS) for Google Cloud Platform (GA) - Key Management Service allows you to generate, use, rotate, and destroy symmetric encryption keys for use in the cloud.

6. Security Key Enforcement (SKE) for Google Cloud Platform (GA) - Security Key Enforcement allows you to require security keys be used as the 2-Step verification factor for enhanced anti-phishing security whenever a GCP application is accessed.

7. Vault for Google Drive (GA) - Google Vault is the eDiscovery and archiving solution for G Suite. Vault enables admins to easily manage their G Suite data lifecycle and search, preview and export the G Suite data in their domain. Vault for Drive enables full support for Google Drive content, including Team Drive files.

8. Google-designed security chip, Titan - Google uses Titan to establish hardware root of trust, allowing us to securely identify and authenticate legitimate access at the hardware level. Titan includes a hardware random number generator, performs cryptographic operations in the isolated memory, and has a dedicated secure processor (on-chip).

Google Cloud Platform - Data Analytics

New GCP data analytics products and services help organizations solve business problems with data, rather than spending time and resources building, integrating and managing the underlying infrastructure:

9. BigQuery Data Transfer Service (Private Beta) - BigQuery Data Transfer Service makes it easy for users to quickly get value from all their Google-managed advertising datasets. With just a few clicks, marketing analysts can schedule data imports from Google Adwords, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers and YouTube Content and Channel Owner reports.

10. Cloud Dataprep (Private Beta) - Cloud Dataprep is a new managed data service, built in collaboration with Trifacta, that makes it faster and easier for BigQuery end-users to visually explore and prepare data for analysis without the need for dedicated data engineer resources.

11. New Commercial Datasets - Businesses often look for datasets (public or commercial) outside their organizational boundaries. Commercial datasets offered include financial market data from Xignite, residential real-estate valuations (historical and projected) from HouseCanary, predictions for when a house will go on sale from Remine, historical weather data from AccuWeather, and news archives from Dow Jones, all immediately ready for use in BigQuery (with more to come as new partners join the program).

12. Python for Google Cloud Dataflow in GA - Cloud Dataflow is a fully managed data processing service supporting both batch and stream execution of pipelines. Until recently, these benefits have been available solely to Java developers. Now there’s a Python SDK for Cloud Dataflow in GA.

13. Stackdriver Monitoring for Cloud Dataflow (Beta) - We’ve integrated Cloud Dataflow with Stackdriver Monitoring so that you can access and analyze Cloud Dataflow job metrics and create alerts for specific Dataflow job conditions.

14. Google Cloud Datalab in GA - This interactive data science workflow tool makes it easy to do iterative model and data analysis in a Jupyter notebook-based environment using standard SQL, Python and shell commands.

15. Cloud Dataproc updates - Our fully managed service for running Apache Spark, Flink and Hadoop pipelines has new support for restarting failed jobs (including automatic restart as needed) in beta, the ability to create single-node clusters for lightweight sandbox development, in beta, GPU support, and the cloud labels feature, for more flexibility managing your Dataproc resources, is now GA.

Google Cloud Platform - Database Services

New GCP databases and database features round out a platform on which developers can build great applications across a spectrum of use cases:

16. Cloud SQL for Postgre SQL (Beta) - Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL implements the same design principles currently reflected in Cloud SQL for MySQL, namely, the ability to securely store and connect to your relational data via open standards.

17. Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise (GA) - Available on Google Compute Engine, plus support for Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability (GA).

18. Cloud SQL for MySQL improvements - Increased performance for demanding workloads via 32-core instances with up to 208GB of RAM, and central management of resources via Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls.

19. Cloud Spanner - Launched a month ago, but still, it would be remiss not to mention it because, hello, it’s Cloud Spanner! The industry’s first horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service.

20. SSD persistent-disk performance improvements - SSD persistent disks now have increased throughput and IOPS performance, which are particularly beneficial for database and analytics workloads. Read these docs for complete details about persistent-disk performance.

21. Federated query on Cloud Bigtable - We’ve extended BigQuery’s reach to query data inside Cloud Bigtable, the NoSQL database service for massive analytic or operational workloads that require low latency and high throughput (particularly common in Financial Services and IoT use cases).

Google Cloud Platform - Machine Learning Services

New GCP Cloud Machine Learning services bolster our efforts to make machine learning accessible to organizations of all sizes and sophistication:

22.  Cloud Machine Learning Engine (GA) - Cloud ML Engine, now generally available, is for organizations that want to train and deploy their own models into production in the cloud.

23. Cloud Video Intelligence API (Private Beta) - A first of its kind, Cloud Video Intelligence API lets developers easily search and discover video content by providing information about entities (nouns such as “dog,” “flower”, or “human” or verbs such as “run,” “swim,” or “fly”) inside video content.

24. Cloud Vision API (GA) - Cloud Vision API reaches GA and offers new capabilities for enterprises and partners to classify a more diverse set of images. The API can now recognize millions of entities from Google’s Knowledge Graph and offers enhanced OCR capabilities that can extract text from scans of text-heavy documents such as legal contracts or research papers or books.

25. Machine learning Advanced Solution Lab (ASL) - ASL provides dedicated facilities for our customers to directly collaborate with Google’s machine-learning experts to apply ML to their most pressing challenges.

26. Cloud Jobs API - A powerful aid to job search and discovery, Cloud Jobs API now has new features such as Commute Search, which will return relevant jobs based on desired commute time and preferred mode of transportation.

27. Machine Learning Startup Competition - We announced a Machine Learning Startup Competition in collaboration with venture capital firms Data Collective and Emergence Capital, and with additional support from a16z, Greylock Partners, GV, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

Google Cloud Platform - Pricing & Support

New GCP pricing continues our intention to create customer-friendly pricing that’s as smart as our products; and support services that are geared towards meeting our customers where they are:

28. Compute Engine price cuts - Continuing our history of pricing leadership, we’ve cut Google Compute Engine prices by up to 8%.

29. Committed Use Discounts - With Committed Use Discounts, customers can receive a discount of up to 57% off our list price, in exchange for a one or three year purchase commitment paid monthly, with no upfront costs.

30. Free trial extended to 12 months - We’ve extended our free trial from 60 days to 12 months, allowing you to use your $300 credit across all GCP services and APIs, at your own pace and schedule. Plus, we’re introduced new Always Free products -- non-expiring usage limits that you can use to test and develop applications at no cost. Visit the Google Cloud Platform Free Tier page for details.

31. Engineering Support - Our new Engineering Support offering is a role-based subscription model that allows us to match engineer to engineer, to meet you where your business is, no matter what stage of development you’re in. It has 3 tiers:

Development engineering support - ideal for developers or QA engineers that can manage with a response within four to eight business hours, priced at $100/user per month.

Production engineering support provides a one-hour response time for critical issues at $250/user per month.

On-call engineering support pages a Google engineer and delivers a 15-minute response time 24x7 for critical issues at $1,500/user per month.

32. http://ift.tt/2msqs6b site - Google Cloud Platform Community is a new site to learn, connect and share with other people like you, who are interested in GCP. You can follow along with tutorials or submit one yourself, find meetups in your area, and learn about community resources for GCP support, open source projects and more.

Google Cloud Platform - Developer Platforms & Tools

New GCP developer platforms and tools reinforce our commitment to openness and choice and giving you what you need to move fast and focus on great code.

33. Google AppEngine Flex (GA) - We announced a major expansion of our popular App Engine platform to new developer communities that emphasizes openness, developer choice, and application portability.

34. Cloud Functions (Beta) - Google Cloud Functions has launched into public beta. It is a serverless environment for creating event-driven applications and microservices, letting you build and connect cloud services with code.

35. Firebase integration with GCP (GA) - Firebase Storage is now Google Cloud Storage for Firebase and adds support for multiple buckets, support for linking to existing buckets, and integrates with Google Cloud Functions.

36. Cloud Container Builder - Cloud Container Builder is standalone tool that lets you build your Docker containers on GCP regardless of deployment environment. It’s a fast, reliable, and consistent way to package your software into containers as part of an automated workflow.

37. Community Tutorials (Beta)  - With community tutorials, anyone can now submit or request a technical how-to for Google Cloud Platform.

Google Cloud Platform - Infrastructure

Secure, global and high-performance, we’ve built our cloud for the long haul. This week we announced a slew of new infrastructure updates.

38. New data center region: California - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers on the West Coast of the U.S. and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

39. New data center region: Montreal - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers in Canada and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

40. New data center region: Netherlands - This new GCP region delivers lower latency for customers in Western Europe and adjacent geographic areas. Like other Google Cloud regions, it will feature a minimum of three zones, benefit from Google’s global, private fibre network, and offer a complement of GCP services.

41. Google Container Engine - Managed Nodes - Google Container Engine (GKE) has added Automated Monitoring and Repair of your GKE nodes, letting you focus on your applications while Google ensures your cluster is available and up-to-date.

42. 64 Core machines + more memory - We have doubled the number of vCPUs you can run in an instance from 32 to 64 and up to 416GB of memory per instance.

43. Internal Load balancing (GA) - Internal Load Balancing, now GA, lets you run and scale your services behind a private load balancing IP address which is accessible only to your internal instances, not the internet.

44. Cross-Project Networking (Beta) - Cross-Project Networking (XPN), now in beta, is a virtual network that provides a common network across several Google Cloud Platform projects, enabling simple multi-tenant deployments.

G Suite - Enterprise Collaboration & Productivity

In the past year, we’ve launched 300+ features and updates for G Suite and this week we announced our next generation of collaboration and communication tools.

45. Team Drives (GA for G Suite Business, Education and Enterprise customers) - Team Drives help teams simply and securely manage permissions, ownership and file access for an organization within Google Drive.

46. Drive File Stream (EAP) - Drive File Stream is a way to quickly stream files directly from the cloud to your computer With Drive File Steam, company data can be accessed directly from your laptop, even if you don’t have much space on your hard drive.

47. Google Vault for Drive (GA for G Suite Business, Education and Enterprise customers) - Google Vault for Drive now gives admins the governance controls they need to manage and secure all of their files, including employee Drives and Team Drives. Google Vault for Drive also lets admins set retention policies that automatically keep what’s needed and delete what’s not.

48. Quick Access in Team Drives (GA) - powered by Google’s machine intelligence, Quick Access helps to surface the right information for employees at the right time within Google Drive. Quick Access now works with Team Drives on iOS and Android devices, and is coming soon to the web.

49. Hangouts Meet (GA to existing customers) - Hangouts Meet is a new video meeting experience built on the Hangouts that can run 30-person video conferences without accounts, plugins or downloads. For G Suite Enterprise customers, each call comes with a dedicated dial-in phone number so that team members on the road can join meetings without wifi or data issues.

50. Hangouts Chat (EAP) - Hangouts Chat is an intelligent communication app in Hangouts with dedicated, virtual rooms that connect cross-functional enterprise teams. Hangouts Chat integrates with G Suite apps like Drive and Docs, as well as photos, videos and other third-party enterprise apps.

51. @meet - @meet is an intelligent bot built on top of the Hangouts platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to automatically schedule meetings for your team with Hangouts Meet and Google Calendar.

52. Gmail Add-ons for G Suite (Developer Preview) - Gmail Add-ons provide a way to surface the functionality of your app or service directly in Gmail. With Add-ons, developers only build their integration once, and it runs natively in Gmail on web, Android and iOS.

53. Edit Opportunities in Google Sheets - with Edit Opportunities in Google Sheets, sales reps can sync a Salesforce Opportunity List View to Sheets to bulk edit data and changes are synced automatically to Salesforce, no upload required.

54. Jamboard - Our whiteboard in the cloud goes GA in May! Jamboard merges the worlds of physical and digital creativity. It’s real time collaboration on a brilliant scale, whether your team is together in the conference room or spread all over the world.

Android & Chrome Devices

Building on the momentum from a growing number of businesses using Chrome digital signage and kiosks, we added new management tools and APIs in addition to introducing support for Android Kiosk apps on supported Chrome devices. 

55. Android Kiosk Apps for Chrome - Android Kiosk for Chrome lets users manage and deploy Chrome digital signage and kiosks for both web and Android apps. And with Public Session Kiosks, IT admins can now add a number of Chrome packaged apps alongside hosted apps.

56. Chrome Kiosk Management Free trial - This free trial gives customers an easy way to test out Chrome for signage and kiosk deployments.

57. Chrome Device Management (CDM) APIs for Kiosks - These APIs offer programmatic access to various Kiosk policies. IT admins can schedule a device reboot through the new APIs and integrate that functionality directly in a third- party console.

58. Chrome Stability API - This new API allows Kiosk app developers to improve the reliability of the application and the system.

Google Cloud Customers

Attendees at Google Cloud Next ‘17 heard stories from many of our valued customers:

59. Colgate - Colgate-Palmolive partnered with Google Cloud and SAP to bring thousands of employees together through G Suite collaboration and productivity tools. The company deployed G Suite to 28,000 employees in less than six months.

60. Disney Consumer Products & Interactive (DCPI) - DCPI is on target to migrate out of its legacy infrastructure this year, and is leveraging machine learning to power next generation guest experiences.

61. eBay - eBay uses Google Cloud technologies including Google Container Engine, Machine Learning and AI for its ShopBot, a personal shopping bot on Facebook Messenger.

62. HSBC - HSBC is one of the world's largest financial and banking institutions and making a large investment in transforming its global IT. The company is working closely with Google to deploy Cloud DataFlow, BigQuery and other data services to power critical proof of concept projects.

63. LUSH - LUSH migrated its global e-commerce site from AWS to GCP in less than six weeks, significantly improving the reliability and stability of its site. LUSH benefits from GCP’s ability to scale as transaction volume surges, which is critical for a retail business. In addition, Google's commitment to renewable energy sources aligns with LUSH's ethical principles.

64. Oden Technologies - Oden was part of Google Cloud’s startup program, and switched its entire platform to GCP from AWS. GCP offers Oden the ability to reliably scale while keeping costs low, perform under heavy loads and consistently delivers sophisticated features including machine learning and data analytics.

65. Planet - Planet migrated to GCP in February, looking to accelerate their workloads and leverage Google Cloud for several key advantages: price stability and predictability, custom instances, first-class Kubernetes support, and Machine Learning technology. Planet also announced the beta release of their Explorer platform.

66. Schlumberger - Schlumberger is making a critical investment in the cloud, turning to GCP to enable high-performance computing, remote visualization and development velocity. GCP is helping Schlumberger deliver innovative products and services to its customers by using HPC to scale data processing, workflow and advanced algorithms.

67. The Home Depot - The Home Depot collaborated with GCP’s Customer Reliability Engineering team to migrate HomeDepot.com to the cloud in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Moving to GCP has allowed the company to better manage huge traffic spikes at peak shopping times throughout the year.

68. Verizon - Verizon is deploying G Suite to more than 150,000 of its employees, allowing for collaboration and flexibility in the workplace while maintaining security and compliance standards. Verizon and Google Cloud have been working together for more than a year to bring simple and secure productivity solutions to Verizon’s workforce.

Google Cloud Partners

We brought together Google Cloud partners from our growing ecosystem across G Suite, GCP, Maps, Devices and Education. Our partnering philosophy is driven by a set of principles that emphasize openness, innovation, fairness, transparency and shared success in the cloud market. Here are some of our partners who were out in force at the show:

69. Accenture - Accenture announced that it has designed a mobility solution for Rentokil, a global pest control company, built in collaboration with Google as part of the partnership announced at Horizon in September.

70. Alooma - Alooma announced the integration of the Alooma service with Google Cloud SQL and BigQuery.

71. Authorized Training Partner Program - To help companies scale their training offerings more quickly, and to enable Google to add other training partners to the ecosystem, we are introducing a new track within our partner program to support their unique offerings and needs.

72. Check Point - Check Point® Software Technologies announced Check Point vSEC for Google Cloud Platform, delivering advanced security integrated with GCP as well as their joining of the Google Cloud Technology Partner Program.

73. CloudEndure - We’re collaborating with CloudEndure to offer a no cost, self-service migration tool for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers.

74. Coursera - Coursera announced that it is collaborating with Google Cloud Platform to provide an extensive range of Google Cloud training course. To celebrate this announcement  Coursera is offering all NEXT attendees a 100% discount for the GCP fundamentals class.

75. DocuSign - DocuSign announced deeper integrations with Google Docs.

76. Egnyte - Egnyte announced an enhanced integration with Google Docs that will allow our joint customers to create, edit, and store Google Docs, Sheets and Slides files right from within the Egnyte Connect.

77. Google Cloud Global Partner Awards - We recognized 12 Google Cloud partners that demonstrated strong customer success and solution innovation over the past year: Accenture, Pivotal, LumApps, Slack, Looker, Palo Alto Networks, Virtru, SoftBank, DoIT, Snowdrop Solutions, CDW Corporation, and SYNNEX Corporation.

78. iCharts - iCharts announced additional support for several GCP databases, free pivot tables for current Google BigQuery users, and a new product dubbed “iCharts for SaaS.”

79. Intel - In addition to the progress with Skylake, Intel and Google Cloud launched several technology initiatives and market education efforts covering IoT, Kubernetes and TensorFlow, including optimizations, a developer program and tool kits.

80. Intuit - Intuit announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

81. Liftigniter - Liftigniter is a member of Google Cloud’s startup program and focused on machine learning personalization using predictive analytics to improve CTR on web and in-app.

82. Looker - Looker launched a suite of Looker Blocks, compatible with Google BigQuery Data Transfer Service, designed to give marketers the tools to enhance analysis of their critical data.

83. Low interest loans for partners - To help Premier Partners grow their teams, Google announced that capital investment are available to qualified partners in the form of low interest loans.

84. MicroStrategy - MicroStrategy announced an integration with Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL and Google Cloud SQL for MySQL.

85. New incentives to accelerate partner growth - We are increasing our investments in multiple existing and new incentive programs; including, low interest loans to help Premier Partners grow their teams, increasing co-funding to accelerate deals, and expanding our rebate programs.

86. Orbitera Test Drives for GCP Partners - Test Drives allow customers to try partners’ software and generate high quality leads that can be passed directly to the partners’ sales teams. Google is offering Premier Cloud Partners one year of free Test Drives on Orbitera.

87. Partner specializations - Partners demonstrating strong customer success and technical proficiency in certain solution areas will now qualify to apply for a specialization. We’re launching specializations in application development, data analytics, machine learning and infrastructure.

88. Pivotal - GCP announced Pivotal as our first CRE technology partner. CRE technology partners will work hand-in-hand with Google to thoroughly review their solutions and implement changes to address identified risks to reliability.

89. ProsperWorks - ProsperWorks announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

90. Qwiklabs - This recent acquisition will provide Authorized Training Partners the ability to offer hands-on labs and comprehensive courses developed by Google experts to our customers.

91. Rackspace - Rackspace announced a strategic relationship with Google Cloud to become its first managed services support partner for GCP, with plans to collaborate on a new managed services offering for GCP customers set to launch later this year.

92. Rocket.Chat - Rocket.Chat, a member of Google Cloud’s startup program, is adding a number of new product integrations with GCP including Autotranslate via Translate API, integration with Vision API to screen for inappropriate content, integration to NLP API to perform sentiment analysis on public channels, integration with GSuite for authentication and a full move of back-end storage to Google Cloud Storage.

93. Salesforce - Salesforce announced Gmail Add-Ons, which are designed to integrate custom workflows into Gmail based on the context of a given email.

94. SAP - This strategic partnership includes certification of SAP HANA on GCP, new G Suite integrations and future collaboration on building machine learning features into intelligent applications like conversational apps that guide users through complex workflows and transactions.

95. Smyte - Smyte participated in the Google Cloud startup program and protects millions of actions a day on websites and mobile applications. Smyte recently moved from self-hosted Kubernetes to Google Container Engine (GKE).

96. Veritas - Veritas expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to provide joint customers with 360 Data Management capabilities. The partnership will help reduce data storage costs, increase compliance and eDiscovery readiness and accelerate the customer’s journey to Google Cloud Platform.

97. VMware Airwatch - Airwatch provides enterprise mobility management solutions for Android and continues to drive the Google Device ecosystem to enterprise customers.

98. Windows Partner Program- We’re working with top systems integrators in the Windows community to help GCP customers take full advantage of Windows and .NET apps and services on our platform.

99. Xplenty - Xplenty announced the addition of two new services from Google Cloud into their available integrations: Google Cloud Spanner and Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.

100. Zoomdata - Zoomdata announced support for Google’s Cloud Spanner and PostgreSQL on GCP, as well as enhancements to the existing Zoomdata Smart Connector for Google BigQuery. With these new capabilities Zoomdata offers deeply integrated and optimized support for Google Cloud Platform’s Cloud Spanner, PostgreSQL, Google BigQuery, and Cloud DataProc services.

We’re thrilled to have so many new products and partners that can help all of our customers grow. And as our final announcement for Google Cloud Next ’17 — please save the date for Next 2018: June 4–6 in San Francisco.

I guess that makes it 101. :-)

[lilacmoon83]

Once Upon a Snowing

This is a sequel to chapter 5(Queen Bitch) and chapter 10(Damn the Farm). Mary left David's farm to protect him from the mercenaries that Regina hired to hunt her down. But David's not giving up on the woman he loves and has set out to find her.

If you have a prompt, comment or message me. Feedback is very helpful and much appreciated.

Once Upon a Snowing

I'm Invested in Your Future

Mary was tired, cold, and hungry, as she trekked deep into the forests of Maine. She couldn't stop though. She knew Regina's hired hands were on her trail and getting caught was a death sentence. And when she wasn't thinking about being tired, cold, and hungry, or being captured by some brute, she thought of David. Unfortunately, even that was painful right now. She missed him so much it hurt.

She leaned against a tree to rest, but gasped seconds later, as an axe landed next to her head. She jumped away and saw a man there. She scrambled to get away, but he grabbed her arm. She screamed and he put his hand over her mouth, before dragging her back toward the tree.

"Quiet...I'm not going to hurt you," he said with a thick accent.

"You really expect me to believe that. Regina hired you, didn't she?" Mary spat.

"She did...my name is Graham," he replied. She swallowed thickly, as he pulled his axe free from the tree.

"What are you going to do to me?" she asked.

"Nothing...I'm here to warn you. She's hired many more mercenaries to track them down and they won't be like me. They are animals. Regina doesn't just want you dead. She wants you brought back alive and she very much wants you broken. If one of those men get a hold of you, they will do exactly that," he warned, giving her a meaningful look.

"If she hired you, then why aren't you going to do the same?" Mary challenged.

"I'm very good at tracking, but I'm not animal like them. I know you didn't do what you're being accused of," he explained, as he handed her a pack of supplies.

"Even if you don't believe I killed my father, why would you help me?" Snow questioned skeptically. Graham smiled.

"I knew your father...he was kind to me when people had written me off. I never got the chance to repay that debt...until now. I have a cabin north of here. It's still a ways, but it's very secluded. The rough terrain might deter anyone from looking out that far," Graham explained.

Part of her screamed not to trust anyone; that this was probably some horrible setup. But his eyes were kind and he spoke of her father with fondness. And staying out here in the woods definitely wasn't an option.

"Thank you," Mary said.

"You can thank me by getting away. Go where she'll never find you," he urged. Mary nodded and took the pack, before heading off north through the hilly terrain.

It was sometime later when she heard a twig snap behind her and knew she was being followed. Her heart pounded, as she dashed behind a tree and picked up a rock. As the man passed, she jumped out in surprise and hit him in face. He went down and a dog emerged from the brush nearby, whimpering and she dropped the rock in alarm.

"Wilby...oh my God, David!" she exclaimed, as she knelt beside him and helped him sit up against the tree.

"Oh God…" she fretted, as she saw his chin was bleeding, but he laughed, as she dug through her pack to find a cloth to dab the blood.

"Maybe you don't need me to protect you," he joked.

"I thought you were one of the men after me! What are you doing out here?" she asked.

"Isn't it obvious? I love you," he replied.

"And I love you...that's why I had to leave! I needed to know that you were safe! I was trying to protect you!" she cried.

"Mary...I don't want to be safe or protected, not if means not being with you," he said passionately. She softened and collapsed against him in relief, as he took her in his arms.

"I couldn't bare if it something happened to you, because of me," she sobbed.

"Shhh...nothing's going to happen to me. Besides, we'll have a much better chance together than apart," he reasoned. She shook her head.

"David...I might be on the run for the rest of my life. I can't do that to you! You deserve better," she lamented. He shook his head.

"I want you...I need you. I don't give a damn if I have to run for the rest of my life, as long as you're by my side. A life without you is no life I want," he said fiercely. She melted against him, but didn't allow herself to get lost in him, not yet.

"We have to go…" she urged.

"Can I ask exactly where you're planning to go?" he asked.

"For now, a cabin north of here. A friend told me to go there. It's secluded and I think we'll be safe there, at least for a couple days until we figure out where to go next," Mary replied. He smirked.

"We?" he asked. She smirked back and kissed him passionately.

"We," she confirmed, as she bit her bottom lip. The way he was looking at her, with so much love, was doing nothing for her concentration. He laced his fingers with hers and they started off, with Wilby trotting along beside them.

They reached the cabin by nightfall and were pleasantly surprised to find a supply of cut firewood, allowing them to quickly make a fire inside the cabin. It had the modern amenity of indoor plumbing, but no heat or appliances. But the fire would serve them well for keeping them warm and allowing them to cook.

David fed Wilby from the supply of dog food he had brought in his supplies and then cooked some meat his mother had sent for them.

After their meal, they found sleeping bags in the closet and went about getting ready to sleep. Wilby had already curled up and went to sleep, but would hear anything if someone approached the cabin.

Once they had made a suitable bed with the sleeping bags and blankets, their attention turned to each other. They hadn't done more than making out in their time together so far, but Mary knew he was the one. And she knew he obviously felt the same about her. He had said as much and his actions spoke louder than anything. Being in his arms was heaven and she wanted more. So, as their kisses turned feverish, she started unbuttoning his shirt. David broke the kiss and looked into her emerald pools, seeing love and desire shining in them.

"Mary...are you sure?" he asked in a husky tone. She smiled.

"Oh, I've never been more sure about anything," she replied, as she lifted her arms for him. He swallowed thickly and his heart pounded, as he pulled her top over her head and discarded it. Their lips crashed together again and he lowered her to the soft fabric beneath them. The fire burned as brightly as their love and passion for each other, as they gave themselves to each other.

Sometime later

They lay curled together beneath the blankets, as they basked in the afterglow of their lovemaking. Their limbs were entangled and their bare bodies pressed tightly together, as he placed loving kisses on her neck and shoulder, while lacing his fingers with hers.

"I love you…" she whispered.

"I love you too...I will forever," he said, as he momentarily disentangled from her, long enough to grab his shirt and pull something out of the pocket.

"What are you doing?" she asked, as she sat up, covering her unclothed body with the blanket and admiring his muscled chest and torso. She gasped, as he showed her a ring, a silver band with a peridot gemstone.

"David…" she uttered.

"It was my mother's...and she insisted I take it before I left. She said that true love follows this ring," he said.

"And I know that's what we have...will you marry me?" he asked. Happy tears filled her eyes and she held her hand out.

"What do you think?" she teased, as he slipped it on her finger and she gazed at it in awe and then at him with love, before pulling him close. Their lips met and their passion consumed them once again and well into the night.

The next morning, after cleaning up and making breakfast, they started to pack up, knowing they would have to move on soon. But Mary was worried.

"David...even if we do go to Canada, they'll still be looking for me," she lamented.

"Which is why we need to get new identities," he said.

"Which costs a lot of money...money we don't have," she replied.

"Then we'll get it. We'll get jobs," he said.

"The minute I apply for a job, they'll run my name and the warrant for my arrest will come up," she reminded.

"Then I'll get a job...I'll get two jobs and get the money we need," he insisted. She sighed and he pulled her into his arms.

"We'll figure this out...I promise," he soothed, as they suddenly heard Wilby start growling. David put a finger to his lips to motion her to remain quiet, as he grabbed the fireplace poker. He prepared to strike when the door swung open, but hesitated when he saw it was an older man with a cane. The man put his hand up in surrender.

"Easy dearie...I mean you no harm," he said in an accented voice.

"Mr. Gold?" Mary asked.

"You know him?" David asked.

"He owns the pawnshop back home," she replied.

"It's good to see you are well and unharmed, Miss Blanchard," he said.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I've come to make a deal," he replied.

"What kind of deal?" David asked.

"One that I think you'll want to take," Gold stated, as he handed a folder to her. She opened and found new driver's licenses', birth certificates, a marriage license, and all the documentation they would both need to start new lives.

"I don't understand...why would you do all this for me...for us?" she asked.

"You have quite a few people back home that support you...and hate Regina. The truth about who killed your father will eventually come out and when it does, you will return and take back what is rightfully yours. Until then, you and your future husband need to survive," Gold stated.

"I still don't understand...why would you do all this for us?" David asked.

"Because when you return and the fair Miss Blanchard takes back what is rightfully hers, you'll help me with something, a favor of sorts. Let's just say...I'm invested in your future," Gold replied.

"And you're so sure that her case against me will fall apart?" Mary asked skeptically. He smirked knowingly.

"Oh most certain, indeed. I wouldn't dawdle if I were you. When you get to Toronto, you'll find I've already lined up jobs for you," he said, as he turned to leave.

"Oh...and congratulations on your engagement," he said, as he left. David looked at their new identities.

"David and Mary Swan," he stated.

"I guess so...I just wonder what he'll want in return someday," she said, a note of worry in her voice.

"We'll figure that out when the time comes. For now...we have a new life to start," he said, as he slipped his arm around her waist. Mary nodded and closed the folder. As she did, something fell out and fell to the floor. She bent down and picked up what looked like a car key. They looked at each other and then hurried outside, finding an old, yellow Volkswagen bug waiting for them.

"Well, this will beat the hell out of walking to Canada," he mentioned. She smiled and they joined hands.

"Come on Wilby...let's go boy," David called, as he loaded their things in the car and they got in, with their dog in the backseat. They were off to start their new life together, but someday they would return to set things right.

[vilevalentino]

I did a buncha whiteboarding with friends and here are the results, some of them feature @schpeenor too mee yow