#someone probably needs to do a proper study on how the pandemic seems to have effected tv production

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

if Rings of Power gets renewed it should be for at least two more seasons shot back to back just to lessen the gabs between seasons. Same with Wheel of Time. I'm honestly surprised HBO didn't decide to do that with House of the Dragon since it has already been decided they'll only do two more seasons but they've only commissioned S3.

[cosplayingwitch]

Just the Beginning

Chapter Four/Five of my "Finding My Way Home" series.

Poe Dameron x Reader

Summary: in this imaginary world, the covid pandemic is over enough for the reader to finish her research, get her degree, and go out celebrating it. After an evening of drinking, the reader flashes back to how the two of you met.

Warnings: drinking and swearing

Prompt: Flashback

(not my photo, found on a google images search)

You’d done it. Your dissertation defense was successful. You could officially start calling yourself “Doctor”. Not that you really wanted to. A simple PhD at the end of your name would do nicely.

You called the only person you knew who would fully understand what this meant to you. The man who’d been by your side since the beginning. Poe Dameron. Your best friend.

“I DID IT!” You shouted into the phone when he answered.

“I KNEW IT! Congrats!” he yelled back at you.

Then a stunned silence hit you. You’d actually finished it. Your ultimate goal- achieved. “What now?”

Apparently you’d said that last part out loud, because Poe almost yelled at you,

“You go out and celebrate is what you do! It’ll be what, five hours for you to get back here? Just in time for the bars and stuff to open! I know you’d never been much for partying, but this is a special occasion.”

Poe already seemed to be planning something, but you didn’t mind. This was a special occasion.

So you headed out, to go see your best friend and probably go dancing and drinking.

Late that night, after drinking way too much and dancing with strangers until the place closed, you sat in your apartment with your best friend. In your drunken state, you asked Poe (who insisted on being the designated driver so you could celebrate as wild as you wanted) if he remembered how you met.

“Of course I do. It’s not every day someone meets their... best friend and hits it off immediately. Like we did.”

He almost slipped. He almost said that it’s not every day someone meets their soulmate. Or the love of their life. Not exactly something he was ready to admit to you.

Even if you both had your suspicions about the other. Neither of you were ready for the (remote) possibility of a rejection and subsequent implosion of your friendship.

A friendship that had begun about a decade earlier.

You had just walked into your first class on your first day of your undergrad. Still in that kind of high school-preppy kind of attitude, you have a whole color coded notebook-binder situation set up, waiting on the start of class. This was the class that cemented your path in life:

Intro to Anthropology.

See, to get into the archaeology classes you had to have this class first. And so here you were.

Poe, however, had a different idea of what the class was. He needed a humanities credit that wasn’t in the history department, so he decided to get it over with early. Intro to Anthropology was listed as a gen ed option, so here he was.

Unlike you, Poe did not show up with color coded systems 10 minutes early. He showed up five minutes late with what can only be described as crayons and printer paper to take notes. And sat directly next to you.

So how the hell did you end up being friends?

The first day of class left you with a lot of questions about him. And while he did eventually get himself more put together throughout the semester (an actual notebook, pens and pencils instead of crayons, etc.), you still had some questions and doubts about this guy. It wasn’t until the week before midterms that anything beyond greetings had gone on between you.

After class, he’d asked if you’d be able to help him study. He had, after all, seen your very organized nature. Luckily he’d caught you in a good mood, so you’d agreed to meet him in the library the next day. But it was under one condition- it was to be absolutely platonic, it would not evolve into a date under any circumstances. Poe agreed.

This study session in the library went wonderfully, both of you felt prepared for the test, and you ended up acing it (Poe, however, never told you the grade he had gotten on that test).

The study group, which really only consisted of the two of you, met for every test that semester. By the end, you both knew you were meant to be friends.

You broke from your flashback and thought- maybe we knew we were meant to be more? But stopped yourself from saying it.

Poe remembered things a little differently. His showing up to class wasn’t crayons and printer paper. It was loose leaf lined paper and a large, ‘my first pencil’, pencil. He’d forgotten he had an early class that morning, so those were the only options at the drugstore up the street (the only place to stop that’s open that early on a Monday and also on his way to class).

So, yeah, his first day was a comical disaster. But he fixed things and showed up to the next class on time and with proper supplies.

With midterms coming up and his notes a mess, Poe approached you about studying because he considered you to be the most organized person in the class, so he’d have the best chance of passing with your help. And the ‘completely platonic’ clause you insisted upon? Perfectly fine. He was never really been into super organized people- they tended to be control freaks.

But you were different, Poe could tell after your first meeting. So he started calling it your ‘study group’, even though it was only ever the two of you. And you met before every test (Professor Organa gave a lot of tests that semester).

By the end, he knew he would be friends with you for a long time yet.

Maybe eventually more than friends?

Poe snapped out of his flashback to stop himself. The agreement from the beginning was that this was completely platonic, and that’s how it would stay.

Then he heard it. You were coming out of your flashback too. And in your blackout drunk status, you blurted out to Poe that you loved him. And he told you he loved you too.

But she’s drunk, he thought. She doesn’t mean it. She’s drunk.

But you did, in fact, mean it.

You woke up the next day somewhere around noon with the worst possible hangover. Seriously, you thought, this was how you celebrated becoming an accomplished academic? By going out and partying like you were in your undergrad years again?

Poe laughed when you slowly made your way from your room in a bathrobe, slippers, and sunglasses. He’d been up for a couple hours at this point.

Actually, he never really slept. He couldn’t get over your drunken admission.

Constantly, he went back and forth between ‘she meant it, sometimes alcohol makes people admit things they never would when sober’ and ‘she was very, very drunk, it meant nothing’.

So he asked you a simple question.

“Hey, how much do you remember of last night?”

You decide to lie to him. You were so drunk you admitted your love for him. You couldn’t let this jeopardize anything.

“Almost nothing. That had to be one hell of a party, eh?”

But you did have a small gap in your memory- you didn’t remember him reciprocating the feeling.

Disappointed, Poe returned to his self-appointed task of making breakfast. With his limited cooking skills, that meant toaster waffles. Luckily he’d learned how to not burn them when you were still undergrads. That’d been a joke between the two of you for years, but neither of you had mentioned that for years.

“Hey! You better not burn my waffle!”

That’s all it took to send you both into laughing fits, just like old times before major jobs and fancy degrees.

Just two friends goofing around in their apartment.

But it couldn’t last much longer.

You’d be leaving in a couple weeks for your next big adventure, leaving Poe behind in the apartment, with his boring university library job, almost the same one he’d had since you two were master’s students together.

And as much as you didn’t want to leave him without telling him how you felt, you did.

[nikstersss]

Not How To Pass The PLE

Before I go into the main gist of this post, let me give you a small background story. I was a mid-year post-graduate intern in Manila who started in January 2021. I lived alone in our condo unit near the hospital I went to. My usual routine was to get up early, prep, take a short walk to the trike station where I’d take a tricycle to the hospital, go on duty, insert a coffee or carioca break in between, walk all the way home at the end of the day, then maybe have a short study session with a couple friends after dinner or just chill at home. It was a pretty good setup. But then COVID happened. Suddenly, I was a pandemic e-ntern stuck at home listening to Zoom endorsements and lectures all day. At first I was hopeful that things would somehow go back to normal and maybe I wouldn’t be spending the rest of my internship in front of a screen, but we all know how that turned out. 

I finished the first half of my internship with the regular year PGIs online. While they were prepping for their boards, I was on my second half with the new batch of interns (that’s probably you, dear reader)—still online. Now you might think that it would have been wise of me to use all that “free” time to start early with my own boards prep and you would be correct. I thought the exact same thing. And trust me, I tried. And failed. Countless times. I won’t even try to justify it. Admittedly, I still think it was a wasted opportunity to read more and make notes, but then again, there’s no use crying over spilled milk. Besides, while it would have been nice and probably less stressful, I still survived without it. Which means that you can, too. So if you’re one of those who’s berating himself because you “didn’t make the most out of your time”, cut it out. You’ll be fine.

Towards the end of my internship, I enrolled in a review center. Despite the asynchronous setup, the review schedule was super tight and the sessions already started while I was still in the middle of final reports and exams. Needless to say, I was already behind on that before it even began. In fact, I didn’t even get to focus on reviewing itself until maybe around early February because of clearance, paperwork, and application stuff. So if you were to ask me how long I really reviewed for the March 2021 boards, I’d say just a little over a month. Kasalanan ko. Wag po tularan. Stressful siya. Nakakaloka. 

And even when I did get to really buckle down and do some intense reading, I didn’t follow the program anymore. I tried to catch up at first, but I was already way behind. But I am grateful for all the summarized material because that meant I didn’t have to pore over the mother books anymore. What I will say, though, is that because I didn’t exactly follow the recommended study hours etcetera, I was able to enjoy the whole process because I did it at my own pace. Sure, there was still that dread that maybe I wasn’t on the same level as the others, but I learned to tune those thoughts out eventually. And that’s where goal-setting and discipline comes in, I guess. 

The most common question I’ve been getting is what was my day like during the PLE review season. Honestly, I’d like to say I had a routine I followed, but that’s only half-true. While I did have a structure for my day, I rarely followed it exactly. Nevertheless, allow me to share what it would have been like if I did: 

Ideally, I’d wake up at 5:00 A.M. then do my morning routine which included prayer and meditation, making my bed, taking a shower, and brewing coffee. And because I’m the type of person who enjoys these mundane activities and slow mornings, I also took this opportunity to get myself in the zone before all the studying that’s to come. I’d plan out my study goals and outline (something you can do the night before, actually) then maybe have breakfast while watching some videos (could be review-related, or those self-motivational vids, or maybe even Korean street food). I’d do whatever I wanted to wake my brain up without stressing it out too much until around 6:30 A.M. By this time, I’d work on backlogs for about an hour and study until about 10 or 11 A.M.—it depends how in the zone I am. I’d prep and cook lunch and then eat while watching Netflix maybe or even play a bit of Fortnite or Paladins until about 1:00 P.M. At this point, I’m pretty certain to be quite sleepy so it’s either I make coffee or tea, or maybe even go out to study at a coffee shop, and then it’s study all the way until 7 P.M. I then take a break to get some exercise, take a shower, have a light dinner, and if I feel like I deserve it, nap for a little bit. At around 8:30, my family usually calls and then we pray the rosary together. After this, I study again, but more of a recall and review session for the day’s progress until about 11:30. I then have my night self-care routine and then go to sleep around midnight. 

The main takeaway from the previous paragraph? “Ideally.”

During the first few days of setting up my schedule or routine, following it was already challenging, but still doable. But then the backlogs started piling up and no matter how much I tried to streamline the whole study process, I just couldn’t keep up. I did what I could to follow study habits and schedules, but the setup was falling apart. And you know what? That was okay. 

Normally, my type A self would have been so frustrated already with how poorly I was handling my review season. Admittedly, there were a few meltdowns and anxiety attacks as the exam drew nearer, but for the most part, I just let things happen as they did. I still adjusted, sure, but I wasn’t hard on myself for always having to. I kept changing goals when I didn’t meet them (which was probably 80% of the time). There were even instances where I’d finish a handout and then I’d say that okay, I’ll watch an episode for a reward, but that episode became the entire season. While I considered myself to be the most chill reviewee, I also thought I was the worst because I refused to give up any of my wants for my needs. I resisted, of course, but then they’d bug me the entire time I was studying so instead of staying productive, I’d just annoy the hell out of myself. I was probably just lazy and stubborn. LOL. Long story, short, it was a constant battle. 

There were times when I felt confident enough to power through the whole thing. I enjoyed the whole process of studying, actually. Making notes and my own ways of memorizing things was fun. I made use of different study strategies, self-checks, and motivational boosters (more on these on a different post). Aside from these, having review-mates who were just a chat away made things bearable. Breakdown session muna tas aral na ulit. And how could I forget all my sweet friends who would send over coffee ayuda every now and then? To me, passing the boards, while mainly should be for oneself and one’s self-actualization, is also about not letting down these people who have been with you throughout your journey. 

But it wasn’t always a hyped-90s-movie-transformation-montage kind of environment. Other times, I was just worn out and dejected by my lack of progress. In the already meager time I had to study, I still had plenty of off-days. Concepts just wouldn’t stick and it was disappointing how I’d already forgotten what I just read a couple days ago. It got really tiring even if I was staying indoors all the time. I missed the comfort of coffee shops and the company of study buddies. I missed my family. I wanted to hug our dog. There were days when I couldn’t even bring myself to make coffee and open my notes. I even reached a point where I was sure that I wouldn’t finish reading all the material. (I kid you not, I have handouts I never got to open.) 

Yet here I am. Here I am writing about how I survived all that and got those two letters attached to my name. I am not a good example, obviously. There are hundreds better than me and you probably should be taking advice from them instead. I’m simply writing this to tell you that you don’t have to worry. This is all just to ease your anxieties about the PLE. I’m not saying it’s an easy feat that you can just achieve just like that. While I seemed rather complacent, I still put in the work, after all. Admittedly, I know I could have done more, but again, I’m not going to dwell on that anymore. It’s done. 

My goal in writing this is to let you know, my dear future doctor, that you’re going to be just fine. Here’s someone who understands the huge disconnect that stemmed from being a pandemic e-ntern. Here’s someone who’s always been doubtful and full of anxieties about the PLE even before she filed her application at the PRC. Here’s someone who constantly prayed that the PLE be moved even for just a month (or kahit two weeks lang masaya na ako nun) up to the week before the exam along with a rising number of cases. Here’s someone who barely has the capability to maintain focus for more than an hour. Here’s someone whose reading pace was literally at 10 minutes per page (yes, I actually timed it and IDK if that’s slow or really slow). Here’s someone who still allowed herself to study at coffee shops and even have samgyup (with proper health protocols, of course) even if she knew she was drowning in backlogs. 

My point is that if I managed to pass despite all that, you can, too. My close friends know that I developed a rather funny mentality to ease the jitters as the boards drew nearer. I knew and claimed it for myself that I would already pass. I viewed the whole PLE as just a “formality”--a means for His plans of me becoming a doctor to manifest in this realm. I believed it so much to the point that I thought that no matter what bloopers and slip-ups I have during the test, I’d still see my name on the list of board passers. I’m not saying you should totally ease up and just have a come-what-may attitude. Again, I’m not the model student you should be following here. What I’m saying is to have faith in yourself, your capabilities, and in God. So chin up, Doc. Just a little more ‘til you get to legally practice with that MD at the end of your name.

[teriwrites]

2020 Writing Wrap-Up

Something that I do every year on the 1st is go back through absolutely everything I’ve written throughout the previous year and compile it into one massive word document. Everything from outlining notes to unfinished short stories to my NaNo project wind up in that file, where I like to read back and reflect on what I’ve gotten done through the year. 

Every year, I end up having written more than I expected, and this year was no different! 

Total for 2020: 203,119!

This is the first recorded year (I think it’s year 4 that I’ve done this for?) in which I’ve cracked 200K! It’s also the first year I’ve ever actually followed through on my resolution to share some of my writing online! So as rough as 2020 has been, I still somehow managed to break some personal records in writing. Which probably has everything to do with the fact that I joined this community earlier this year, and it’s been incredibly encouraging and supportive!

I also branched out a bit more this year in a few ways. I worked on some poetry and prose, which is not something I’ve put a lot of time into before so tends to be a challenge. It’s nothing that I’ll be posting anytime soon, but it was fun to work on in the moment, which is especially important in such a wild year as 2020.

One snag that I definitely hit was the fact that I have a lot more unfinished work than most years. A majority of the short stories I started working on never got finished. But I can’t even be too upset about that, because I totally loved being able to read back on even the fragmented pieces I ended up with. And while I do think a large part of that (for me) is discipline over inspiration, I’m willing to accept that, sometimes, things will remain unfinished. And it’s okay to stop working on them. 

My overall focus shifted a bit this year, too, which was interesting. I worked more on longer things than most years - started out the year by finishing my first draft of Castle on the Hill, continued making some edits and reworking its outline, did a large part of Beneath Alder Creek’s first draft in November. Right now, I’m working on what I expect to be a novella by the time I’m done with it. It’s a big contrast to the usual, short and snappy short stories that fill most of my previous wrap-up files. But I still definitely write those sometimes, and it’s nice to be able to try stretching and testing my own boundaries. 

This is the part of my wrap-up where I go ham throwing in some of my favorite out-of-context quotes from a variety of different things I’ve worked on. Some of them might be familiar, a lot probably won’t. I’m going to post it beneath the thing so this doesn’t become even more absurdly long!

Some of the ~highlights~ of 2020:

First Thoughts in the Morning: wow the sexual tension between me and the alarm clock right now. Later Reflection: wtf? (a literal note on my notes app that I included because I Cannot remember writing any of this and it made me laugh)

Edriele’s gaze trailed down to the woman’s armor, and her stomach twisted. “Where did you find your attire?” The woman glanced down in surprise, as though she’d forgotten she was wearing it. “It was fitted to me when I gained my ranking. I suppose it draws attention, but after my confrontation at… you mean to ask me whether I’m impersonating a Knight!” “The thought had crossed my mind,” the Sister replied dryly. (novella WIP)

“Do you need to make a stop at your house before we head to the chapel?” Leslie asked as they started off. “What for?” Winnie asked. Leslie looked pointedly at the tip of her galoshes poking out from beneath her dress. With another roll of her eyes, Winnie sighed. “Oh, I suppose so.” (Beneath Alder Creek)

When the third meeting for the Society of the Hidden Immortal Tribe was called for the decade, I knew heads would roll. Gathering the entire society together took months. Everything had to be hush-hush; that was the entire point of spreading ourselves out. Plus, every time a letter arrived in the mail, it was a reminder of the idiot who had decided we needed a name change. Everybody agreed that being deemed the ‘S.H.I.T.’ was humiliating, but nobody could agree on a better title, so it had remained the same for nearly a full century. That was the problem with living forever. You always had more time to make decisions, and, in the end, nothing ever got done. (S.H.I.T.)

When she leaves, I’m not sure I remember a word of what she’s said. But as the stresses of the semester wash back in, and my mind clears like being pulled out of a dream, I suddenly understand how one could crash upon the rocks without realizing they’d ever changed their course. (A Modern Siren)

When Georg arrived later, he found Klaus leaning forwards onto the table, staring vacuously at one of his textbooks. "Studying hard?" he taunted as he approached and dropped into the seat Ingrid had been occupying. "I talked with Ingrid," Klaus explained. Georg's eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise, but he quickly recovered and looked pointedly at Klaus' posture. "Go that well, then?" "She said I'm arrogant and completely self-involved and that I never take what a girl says into account whenever I'm on a date." With a haunted gleam in his eye, Klaus stared up at his friend. "I think she's right." "Well then it's a good thing somebody pointed it out," Georg offered, and he turned to his work. (Castle on the Hill)

Takemoto Hana rested a hand over her face. She couldn’t see the swirling of darkness over her head, but she heard the whine behind its words. With a wry smile, she asked, ‘Do you not know how to brew tea?’ ‘Of course I know how to brew tea!’ The dark spirit’s voice boomed with a defensive defiance that rang false in the funny little woman’s ears.  (The Funny Little Woman)

“None of us want to be here right now,” Edgar called out to the hall. “None of us want to go back through the handbook and listen to the steps of proper etiquette in immortality. But it seems that, once again, it’s necessary.” “Dammit, Dave,” muttered the man next to me. I said nothing, but I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. Dave was… how do I describe Dave? To call him an idiot would be underestimating his craftiness. To call him a genius, I’d have to ignore all of his dumb antics. Cruel was too strong. Misguided was too innocent. Mischievous fit best, but even that fell short. Dave was a trickster god, if ever one existed. (S.H.I.T.)

Ridiculous, he told me with a self-conscious laugh of someone who didn't expect to be believed. I smiled, but I didn't join in. (The Little Roads)

“Hey, where did Alina go?” Lorelai asked. Zoe shrugged, but Jaiden cleared his throat. “I think you crossed one of her boundaries, Lo. She specifically asked not to involve her girlfriend in this, and then you did anyways. I know we needed the help, but friendships have to be built on mutual trust, my dude. You should’ve at least let her know your plan before you went behind her back.” The two women stopped and shared a look. “Hey, Jaiden,” Zoe asked. “Do you know the capital of Canada?” He shook his head. “I dunno, Ontario?” “Amazing.” (Mirror, Mirror)

"We had a bet going over whether you'd make it in time," Hans told him. "Did you win or lose?" Josef replied. Hans flipped a 5-Deutsche Mark coin over to Peter, who grinned as he pocketed it. "I'm glad you have so much faith in me." Josef's voice dripped with sarcasm. (Castle on the Hill)

Taliesin reached over his head and grabbed at one of the low-hanging bows, picking leaves from it. “I’m not sure.” Winnie stopped. “What do you mean?” “I mean that I don’t know.” (Beneath Alder Creek)

While she attended to these, the man beside her began to stir. Ella could see him out of the corner of her eye, attempting to push himself up into a sitting position. ‘You may want to lie back down,’ she told him, scrubbing uselessly at her skirt. The man continued to sit up anyways, pressing a hand against the side of his face. ‘Am I killed?’ ‘No, but your savior may be.’ Ella threw her skirt back to the ground. ‘When the Madame sees the state of me, I’ll be spending my future afternoons off making a new dress out of the fabric scraps.’ A frown crossed the man’s face as he considered her words, followed by a scowl of understanding. ‘You work for them. The bourgeoisie.’ (Cinderella)

Ingrid took the seat and began digging through her bag for a book. As she did so, she explained, "There were no other tables open in the building - even in the quiet section upstairs - so I figured that I would just ask the first person I recognized if I could sit with them, and well... here we are." "Don't worry about it," Georg answered when Klaus found himself dumbstruck again. "Just ignore the oaf, he'll leave you alone." Ingrid shot a grin at Georg, and Klaus suddenly wondered whether it was a good idea to have the two of them sit together. (Castle on the Hill)

Up ahead, I could see the glass walls of the bus stop. Usually, I waited for the bus leaning against the metal frame of the stop, leaving the seats inside open for children on their way to school. But the seats were empty now. I still avoided them. (Flo’s Magical Emporium: The Pandemic)

Now, I ask that you do not feel too much self-pity. For as easy an error as it may be to mistake a visiting aristocrat’s son for the hired help, the true talent in such a display causing his immediate departure lies within you alone. And to think that the meeting was the work of your father’s tenuous sway over the court! Well, I am sure the time away will do him some good, lest you begin to consider that you’ve ruined his position as well as your prospects. (Dearly Detested,)

Edgar was at the front of the lecture hall, and standing beside him was Dave, smirking as though at some private joke that only he was in on. He was wearing sunglasses, despite the dim lighting of the room, probably because he thought he looked cool. I rolled my eyes. What a tool. (S.H.I.T.)

 The work is different now. Countryside pathways winding through the forest lie forgotten for years without the familiar steps of a traveler. Off beaten paths in the city are never unknown for long, and sometimes streets that were once crossed by thousands a day fall back into obscurity. (The Little Roads)

“How much time will you give me to think on it?” she asked suspiciously, wrapping her arms around herself as though afraid they’d reach out to him if not kept in check. “You have all the time in the world,” the golden man said. “The boy’s, however, runs out with every passing second.” He extended his hand. (Beneath Alder Creek)

You ever met a rich person? Not comfortably wealthy. Not ‘my Uncle Kenny is a lawyer’ rich. Not even ‘widow answering the door to her manor on a hill dressed in fine silk’ rich. No, I mean proper, so-much-money-you-literally-can’t-spend-it-fast-enough rich. They say it isn’t worth Bill Gates’ time to pick up a $100 bill off the floor because he’ll have earned more in the time it takes to grab it. That kind of rich. They seem to be bred for times like these. Their houses are a source of endless entertainment – movie theaters, bowling alleys, personal gyms with a view of the sprawling landscape they overlook like cruel dictators. There’s no need for them to leave during a pandemic; they have access to the equivalent of a luxury resort most families have to save up month to visit. Necessities can be stockpiled in one of the useless extra spaces in the house. I mean, I once had to hide out in a luggage room for a contract. That’s right. An entire room dedicated to holding luggage, bigger than some of the apartments I’ve rented. I thought their residential labyrinths were my greatest source of grief. But social distancing? I’m one bad contract away from retirement. (Bounty Hunter During a Pandemic)

Shaking his head, Detlef pulled a new sheet from his notebook. “Look, I’m just saying, if we can get the satire right, we can be a modern Jonathan Swift.” “I don’t want to be a modern Jonathan Swift, I want to be a student actually passing his debate course!” Peter snapped. (Castle on the Hill)

Moonlight illuminated the German’s fair hair and pale skin, the effect more malevolent apparition than man. (Face on the Other Side of a Dark Window)

Back then, he’d been known for commissioning the exact same portrait of himself every hundred years, hanging them in a hallway in his manor and trying to pass them off as his line of ancestors to any of the locals. It had been a far less skeptical age, and Dave had earned himself a small band of worshipers before Jeff Goldblum himself had been forced to intervene. (S.H.I.T.)

Clara stood before the board of advisors assisting with her thesis. She was one, very intense paper away from her M.A., and she wasn’t about to risk it all by being too proud to ask for help. When she’d made the appointment to meet with them, she expected a series of questions surrounding her topic. Instead, they’d opened by offering her a job. “You want me to steal from the school?” Dr. Pye wrinkled her nose at the suggestion. Next to her, Dr. Pritchard said, “Don’t think of it as theft, dear. It’s merely redistribution.” Clara hadn’t amassed tens of thousands of dollars in debt to be lectured on the definition of robbery. “Either way, it involves me sneaking into the Chemistry department and taking a huge risk to get you some new toys to play with.” (Origins: The Ghost)

“Why is undermining Pryderi so important to Queen Ceridwen that she would risk breaking a timeless alliance just to dismantle them?” Her stomach twisted into a knot, protesting against the answer. “There are few members of the Dusk Court that we know by title.” A shadow passed over Enid’s expression. “The Lord of the Undernell is second only to the Queen.” “Great deeds build the reputation of one in their own court. Cruelty builds it in both.” Taliesin buckled under Winnie’s weight as she suddenly leaned against him. (Beneath Alder Creek)

“Why are all my friends so quick to endanger themselves?” I muttered as I packed up Midas’ crate. Natalie swiveled around from the candy aisle. “So you’re finally willing to admit that we’re friends?” “Save it.” (Flo’s Magical Emporium: The Pandemic)

[keow]

What advice would you give to someone who grew up in an atheist household but feels a vague connection to God? My family wasn't for or against any religion so I grew up indifferent but also comforted by religious memorabilia, going in churches, etc. I know that sounds wishy-washy but I'd like to explore it more but I don't know where to start and what to read to learn more, to decide what I think.

There are probably better blogs you could ask about this than mine, but I'll try my best. I’m going to answer this under the cut because it got really lengthy hehe. Also sorry this took so long to answer, I've been pretty busy!

So firstly it seems like we had really similar experiences growing up. My mom was “spiritual” and agnostic, raising me without exposure to really any religion (besides maybe Buddhism and a little bit of nondenominational Christianity��she shopped around a bit). I think this sort of background is becoming more and more common in society, so you aren’t alone.

Because of this non-religious childhood I can also tell you firsthand that there are a lot of bad things out there. For basically the entirety of my adolescence I was involved in witchcraft, paganism, and “new age” spirituality. I’m just going to tell you straight up that this is bad news. Please don’t fall for any of their bullshit. I literally worshipped and communicated with demons for years and it turned me into a horrible, evil person. Don’t fall for the “law of attraction” bullshit either, no matter how seductive it seems.

With that out of the way…

I am still in the process of converting so I can’t give you the perspective of someone who has completed that process, but I can tell you what has helped me figure out a lot of things religion-wise.

Firstly, the most important thing is to ask questions. If you do not ask questions, you cannot learn. If you do not learn, you will never know truth. So ask questions.

You say you feel drawn to churches, so I’m going to operate on the assumption that you want to know more about Christianity. If this isn’t the case then… well… ummmm well I ummummumummm Uh.

You’ve probably heard “Jesus died for your sins” before, but it’s very easy to just gloss over that because the idea is kind of pushed around our society without anyone really explaining it. Like I had no clue what that meant or how it worked before I started asking these questions.

“What are the doctrinal differences between these two religions? What about between these two branches of the same religion?” “Why is this biblical event important?” “How does the Trinity work?” “How do we know Jesus is the Messiah?” Et cetera. Any question you can think of, find out the answer to it. Catholic Answers is a pretty good place to start!

Secondly, as you’re in this “research” phase, I highly suggest immersing yourself in media that deals with religion as a whole. I listened to a lot of catholic podcasts and watched a lot of YouTube videos that explained some very important theological concepts that I didn’t quite understand. It’s not a proper education by any means but it will help you get the basics down.

Ideally, you’d be able to ask someone about this in person and get proper responses (assuming the person is knowledgeable and can explain things well). Like seriously, you should do this. Online stuff is nice but it isn’t a replacement for finding a parish and talking to someone.

I couldn’t really do this because I didn’t have access at the time when I was really becoming curious (pandemic and stuck with anti-theist parents lol), so if you’re in a similar situation, the internet is your best friend. In that stage I also followed a lot of catholic and orthodox blogs so I would be surrounded with that content as much as possible. Kind of like how if you’re trying to learn a language you need to immerse yourself in it I guess?

In my pinned post I have a lot of resources that were useful to me linked near the bottom :)

I highly suggest getting a Bible or AT LEAST downloading a good Bible app. Multiple actually. Or listen to something like the Bible in a Year podcast by Fr. Mike Schmitz. I have a study Bible with a lot of footnotes which is GREAT if you love knowing about translations, original texts, and historical context, but not as great if you just want to read the story of salvation itself.

Now you can be the most knowledgeable person on a religion, knowing all the history and all the doctrine, but if you don’t have a relationship with God it means absolutely nothing. The most important thing is to pray. You can’t have a relationship with God if you do not pray. Ask for guidance, ask for assistance in becoming more virtuous, pray for others, just talk to God about anything.

Personally I bought myself a nice rosary once I started seriously considering Catholicism and started to pray using that, but there are countless ways to pray.

The ways that work best for me are lectio divina and the rosary. I can never seem to finish novenas, but those are also nice, and listening to hymns and chant helps me connect to God a lot! ALSO learning about church history and the various saints throughout it. Again, you might be different, so just find what works for you!

LASTLY.

IT’S NOT WEIRD AT ALL TO CONVERT AS AN ADULT!!!!! Speaking for Christianity, that is. For something like Judaism it would probably be a bit stranger, especially since Judaism is so heavily linked to a specific culture and ethnicity.

Christianity however is very open to adult converts. That’s how it got started in the first place. There are countless saints who converted later in life, so please please don’t feel weird about it. The Church is probably the most friendly to converts out of all religions. Here’s an article on the Catholic conversion process for adults!

TLDR:

Ask questions, learn, pray, learn some more, pray even more, go find an RCIA program so you can get catechized and baptized. LOVE YOU <3

[roseinstem]

So as I’m sure most people are, I’ve been doing my course work from home for the past month due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. 

After scrolling through countless posts like this and getting fed up with how they seemed to imply that we should all be productive all day everyday, concluding with a little, “take care of yourselves”, like they didn’t just promote an unrealistic standard in this time of medical and finanical upset for many people, I was inspired to make this post, and with some encouragement of @studyinglatte​, 

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

Here are some realistic tips on staying productive 

(for when it feels like the world is collapsing around you)

Basic Living:

I would love to tell you to make your bed, but that would make me a hyppocrite, just make sure your blankets are fully on your bed and that any stuff you don’t sleep with is not

If you can’t brush your hair (you’re depressed, exhausted, etc and it seems like a bit too much), just put it up. It’ll keep it out of your face and makes things seem a little more put together 

If you can’t shower, wipe urself off with a baby wipe or damp towel, and put on deodorant, the stimulation of something damp on your skin will make you feel more alert, and deodorant helps you smell good

Please, I am begging you to brush your teeth, even if that’s the only thing you can do, dental health is so important and intertwined with your overall health. Dental health is also difficult to get back once it’s gone

Move! Move! Move!, so say you dont have a lawn to go out in, and cant go out into public because of social distancing, there are still plenty of ways to move. Look up an at home workout, or even just put on ur favorite song and sway to the beat, just get your body moving in any capacity you can

Please eat, preferably something healthy, but right now you may not have fresh food in your house, so anything that you find enjoyable, eat

Once you’ve done what you can of that then you can set your mind to academic work

Academics: 

Make a to do list sorting things by due date, work though those things in order of urgency 

Take frequent breaks, I get up and walk around probably every 15-20 mins

Keep a drink next to you, preferably water, but whatever you like is fine. proper hydration keeps you alert and focused

Email your professors if you need help. Right now, their primary duty is still to be a professor. They are there to help you 

If you have a zoom meeting, go to it on time, and do your best to pay attention 

Try and finish your work on time, but if you can’t, do not be afraid to ask for an extension. The worst that can happen is your professor says “no”, but given current circumstance they should be understanding 

Try and find a spot in your home and make it your little study corner. No distractions, good lighting, a comfortable chair 

This whole thing may seem overwhelming, but breath, take care of yourself, and eventually everything will be fine 

Set a reward for yourself at the end of the day - each night i let myself watch a movie as a way to relax and reward myself for a productive day 

Your ability to be productive will fluctuate daily, do not compare your worst day to someones best 

Stay safe, be realistic, and turn off the news every once in a while 

[prettylittlelyres]

My Year in Writing (2020)

Hello and Happy New Year! I thought it might be nice to share with you all an overview of what I've written in 2020.

First of all, let me say that I haven't written nearly as much as I wanted to, but that's OK, and it's OK if the amount you've written feels or looks pretty similar. The point is, it looks some way (I daresay pretty) because you've taken up the pen and put some words on a page.

I don't want to gloss over how bad aspects of my 2020 Writing Year have disappointed me, because that would be as silly as casting a damper on the whole thing by focusing only on the trickier bits. What I'm aiming for here is a balanced review - even if it's a rather informal one - of my achievements, and my feelings about my writing this year. In the interest of balance, let's start with something GOOD!

Right at the beginning of the year - around January - I started redrafting a rather fabulously dark fantasy romance, of which you've probably seen a little bit on this blog: Songs from the Crypt Forest, which I dropped after 9,800 words, because I wanted - and needed to work on my first dedicated book, and on my Year Abroad Research Project.

I managed to write about 17,000 words of the dedicated book in its original form before I realised that it wasn't quite working, and that I ought to try a different tack. The story I was telling there is a story I still want to tell, but I just wasn't ready to write it at the time. I'm hoping to pick it up properly in 2021.

I realised I needed to try getting back into the world I wrote in 'Violins and Violets', by writing something set around the same time and involving some of the same characters. In March, I started writing 'Book J', for which I didn’t have a proper title until I was nearly done with its first draft! I gave it the working title 'Book J', because I was writing it for my friend Jenny. By the time summer came round I had 52,000 words, and a first draft that was as complete as I think it ever will be.

Lockdown hit my life quite hard in Spring 2020, and I lost my language assistant job in France when all schools closed, and I had to come back to the UK to live out the academic year with my parents. Nevertheless I had to carry on working with my Year Abroad Research Project, Which I was able to hand in by 18th May, having squeezed all my findings into a dissertation of 6,000 words.

Now that my YARP was out of my way, and I had no more work to do for university, I started redrafting Jenny's book, now called 'Vogeltje', and cut it down to 44,000 words, which I polished until August... when I had copies printed for Jenny, so that she could read a book written especially for her. I would have given it to her in person in France, but lockdown happened, and I ended up posting her copies from one part of South England to another. A rather typical outcome for a meetup planned in 2019 for 2020, I suspect!

During lockdown, I also trained as a proof-reader and copyeditor, and did some volunteer work for a company that needed translators. Online training courses have been a godsend, and I've particularly enjoyed a novel writing course and a travel writing course that I've been following. The novel writing course has pushed me to flesh out plans for a number of books, including more detailed and cohesive outlines for 'Songs from the Crypt Forest' and 'The Night Has Teeth' (two books I want to write in a similar universe), along with my on-again-off-again WIP 'The Manylove Quarter' - and the plans for these three alone come to 7,850+ words!

I moved back to Southampton in July, and took August to start drafting 'The Manylove Quarter ', but that ended up petering out with about 19,200 words of prose on the page. Still, I spent a lot of time querying, and got plenty of reading done, so - especially considering the heatwaves in my area and a pretty enormous academic crisis in my record (fixed in November, after writing a LOT of letters and reports!!! So, this is where I send a million hugs to my lecturers and tutors for all the help they've given me, thank you, thank you, thank you all SO MUCH!!!) - I still felt fairly well-accomplished at the end of the month. I also did quite a bit of painting.

In August and September, I started typing up the journal I've been keeping since the beginning of April, once I'd settled back into life in the UK, to keep track of my feelings about the pandemic and my reactions to what I've seen or heard in the news. I write an average of 6,000 words per month, so I'm coming up to 50,000 words on the whole thing (but have yet to type up November or December). One day, I'll use it to write some extremely illustrious memoirs about how much fun, I had stamping up and down the stairs in my parents' house in order to get my steps in! (I really did get quite fit, though, and I want to get back to it in the New Year!)

At the start of September, I published a 2,500-word travel log my university's "study abroad" blog, all about how much I came to love the French city of La Rochelle, where I spent my 3rd year working. I think I will polish it at least a little before I post it here, but I would love to post a redrafted version on this blog!

My final year of university (BA Modern Languages, French and German) started in October, so all my reading and writing that month - or so it felt - was linked to my course. However. I've lost count of how many pieces I've translated between English, French and German, just to prepare for each class. I love my course, but it doesn't leave much energy for anything else!

Welcome to November, when all my graded assignments were due at once, and the associated stress started taking its toll. Luckily, my tutors were there to help me get extensions for work I couldn't hand in on time because my brain had turned into mashed potato. By the middle of December, I ended up with a 300-word translation and 300-word scripted scene for French, a 1,000-word commentary on a translation into English, a 2,500-word essay for French History, and a 2,000-word short story for German, which I've translated into English, and will post here any day.

This has really been a big year for letter-writing, especially since I came back from France. My cousin and I love writing longhand letters to each other, as I love writing them to my grandmothers, and, as such, I've written about one hundred letters this year! My cousin and I have kept every letter we've ever sent each other, and these collections have approximately doubled in size since the start of 2020.

I keep trying to redraft the first chapters of 'The Manylove Quarter', but never seem to get very far. With about 3 redrafts started since Autumn, I'd say l have about 1,000 words typed up. I can probably say the same of the story I'm trying to write as a kind of Standalone, kind of Sequel to 'This Still Happens' and 'Curls of Smoke', except that I'd put those around the 2,000-word mark.

If my Mathematic capabilities still stand up, I estimate I've written about 210,000 words in total this year (not including text messages, letters, emails and entries in my regular diary (which I keep separately to my pandemic journal)), which. honestly, makes me feel a little like I've failed myself.

That's why l'm making this post, actually, to address that feeling - because | know it's not rational, so I'm not going to call it "that fact" - and to tot all my work up in one place, so that I can see my achievements as one big hulk. Looking at my 2020 in terms of projects l've actually finished, it's disappointing! But to look at 2020 as a final wordcount makes me feel an awful lot better. My sister just pointed out that "210,000 words" is "nearly a quarter of a million words", and, put in that way, it's much easier to feel like I've accomplished something of which I can - and Should - feel proud. I've written a lot this year!

Now l'm asking all of you who feel like you've "not done enough work in 2020" to reassess the way you're looking at it all, and to see that:

Productivity shouldn't define how much you feel you're worth, no matter how productive you've been. Please don't fall into the capitalist trap of thinking you're only "doing the right thing" if you're working! You're worth a huge amount and you deserve to be proud of yourself!

You've achieved a lot more than you first thought, whether in the projects you've finished, the number of words you're written, the ideas you've had, the research and planning you've done, the time you've put in, the skills you've honed... OR THE FUN YOU'VE HAD! It all counts, and it's all important, and you can be proud of all of it, just like you can be proud of yourself.

If you don't feel like you've done enough, find a new angle from which to look at what you have done. I'm willing to bet someone out there can see how brilliantly you're doing already. Try to see yourself through that someone's eyes!

[matildainmotion]

Rejection, Failures and Fxck Ups – A New, or Very Old, Approach to Loss and Losing

          “It’s okay to make mistakes – that’s how you learn;” “It’s the taking part that counts -the playing, not the winning;” “If you can learn to lose that will be a huge achievement.” I hear myself saying these and similar truisms when my daughter comes last in a race with her impossibly long-legged brother, or breaks a cup, or spills her drink, or when my son’s carefully planned prank goes awry, or the drawing he is trying to do does not come out right. In such moments of acute vulnerability my daughter howls – a cry of deep and terrible anguish, that can go on for a great many minutes after the original loss. I noticed even when she was a baby that falling, for her, was failing, an injury not so much to her body as her soul- as if the ground had deliberately struck her, undermining her upright dignity. My son, on the other hand, does not howl, but rather bares his teeth, makes fists, swings punches at me or anyone else who might have witnessed and therefore in some way contributed to his sense of failure. In both instances, when they weep and wail, gnash teeth - because on a child-scale their circumstances seem serious and awful - I have comforted them and then come out with some version of the above statements. They are trite but I have believed that the basic message – ‘it’s fine to fail’ – was a sound one. At least, that’s what I thought until last week.

           Last Friday I experienced two forms of failure which, on an adult-scale, were really very minor. One was the culmination of a writing competition, run by a literary agency – the prize: mentorship and representation. I had not entered it to win – I had entered it in order to have a focus, a deadline, to practice submitting my fiction, rather than hiding with it in a secret corner. The winners were due to be announced on Friday. Despite being clear my primary motivation for entering was not winning, despite being certain I would not be selected, come Friday morning I was nervous. I was checking Twitter for the announcement and felt a strange mix of repulsion and respect for those on there who were frank enough to tweet, with nail-biting gifs, about their angst, their aspirations, their hope. Hope - Dickinson’s feathered thing but, despite the feathers, the only item not to fly out from Pandora’s box- a quiet, little creature with wondrous and terrible tenacity. On Friday I wanted to get the damn thing out of the box. I wanted it to fly away. I tried hard to shake it loose - it wouldn’t budge. I was feeling hopeful.

           Meanwhile, down the hill, at our allotment, there were some other little things in a box, that did not yet have feathers, only fluff: chicks. I hadn’t been hopeful about the eggs. We had collected them from a faraway farm – in theory they were fertilised but the woman who sold them to us did so for half price because, she said, “It’s late in the season and I can’t be sure. I’ll give you a variety to give you a better chance.” And then, on top of that, our broody hen (the Star Wars-inspired ‘Princess Layer’), at first rejected the pale blue ones that did not look like hers, and only later started sitting on them, so I thought they had probably got too cold and nothing was going to hatch. But Thursday morning, four weeks after she first went broody, sitting day in day out in the dark of the nest box, I lifted up the Princess and lo and behold there was a broken shell, and a tiny, wet, cheeping chick. Friday morning, after checking Twitter, I pedalled down the hill to the hens. Chick number one had fluffed up to full yellow cuteness and been joined by chick number two. Little wings, dark eyes, pale pink claws. I thought that was it, and began to take the other eggs, the pale blue ones, away. But as I lifted an egg, I saw a black spy hole in its shell, and behind the hole – motion - someone inside. I felt small, in awe, as if whoever was within knew things I didn’t, couldn’t. Breath held, heart fast, I put the eggs back. Here was hope in action. An actual hatching - the Easter pinup – the most famous of images for spring, for life returning.

           By Friday evening I had not won the competition and the chick was dead. It had hatched after hours of work – who knew hatching could be so like a human labour in its length and intensity? Yet it had managed, had come out whole -a bold bundle of breath, blood, beak, incontrovertible evidence that whichever came first – chicken or egg – the result was the same: life. But then it had been weaker than the others, who had had a head start, and the broody hen was growing restless – when I came back to check on them before bed, I found it lying, limp, still warm, thin eyelids down, little claws unclenched, half buried in the straw. If I had come earlier, if I had separated it, if I had cleared out the straw…maybe it would have lived.

        I have been very lucky – I have never had a miscarriage or a still birth. This was only a little chick. Nonetheless I felt broken. I tried out the truisms that I have used on my children a thousand times - they did not cut it. Worse than that – they seemed offensive. I wanted to howl like my daughter, and rage like my son. They knew something I didn’t. Just like that chick did. So I gave up trying to teach my children how to lose with grace and decided to consider instead what I might learn from them.

           My son goes from one obsession to the next, as many children do, but he does so with particular, on-the-spectrum intensity. Feb to April was My Little Pony. April to June was Beast Quest. He is now onto the Greek myths. To be fair there is some consistency through this- believe it or not both My Little Pony and Beast Quest draw heavily on Greek mythology for inspiration. This is the first time his obsessions have overlapped with mine - in my writing I am also working on a Greek myth. What strikes me as I study the stories through my son’s eyes is that they are full of characters, divine and mortal, who fail, fall and fxck up royally, who lose face, lose their lovers and their loved ones, and that when they do, they are terrible losers. The heroes and heroines in these myths don’t hold back on their howling and their raging. They cry for weeks, years even. They cry so hard they change shape or change the world around them. They swear vengeance for their losses, plan awful punishments, wage long and horrible wars. No one tells Hector, Achilles, Paris: “Never mind mate – it’s the taking part that counts.” Now I am not proposing to use the ancient Greek myths as a new model for mothering, but there is something relieving about their heroes unashamed and often moving melodramas, about their sense of seriousness and ceremony. Inspired by these myths, my son held a burial for the chick, by the raspberry bushes on the allotment. He knelt and said a prayer to Zeus, and then to Hades and Persephone, asking them to welcome the little creature when it arrived with them, to let it fly free. This was after he had railed at me for an hour – crying, shouting, trying to punch me, beating the wall, accusing me of murder – full on, proper grief, worthy of those ancient Greeks. It struck me I could have done the same with my writing disappointment: printed out the webpage announcing the happy winners, then wept upon it bitterly. Built a ceremonial fire, burnt the paper, whilst sending off my prayers for the Herculean stamina and strength required to keep writing. What I’m trying to say is that I’m aware I have been guilty of that crime our culture commits daily- tidying disappointment and loss away too quickly, making it constructive, sidestepping the difficulty, heading straight for claiming: “I’ve learnt my lesson. I’m fine. I’m over it.”  

           In the modern mythic classic, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, written by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, a book more befitting my daughter’s than my son’s age bracket, each time the children encounter a new obstacle in the landscape – long grass, mud, a river, a snowstorm- they chant:

We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no! We've got to go through it!

This is the insight that my children, a small chick and some Greek gods have reminded me of in the last week: you’ve got to go through it. Not over it, not under it, not round it, but through it. I did know this before – I know how excruciating it is when someone tries to teach you a lesson, give advice, instead of being present with the pain of where you are. But I had not recognised the extent to which I have been doing this with my children, because their losses seem so slight, so trivial when I hold them up against the stark losses in the world. I see now that I’ve been getting everything the wrong way round: I’ve been comparing the children’s worries to the world’s, instead of the world’s worries to theirs, instead of recognising that they hold some wisdom that I and the world need now. Ours is the age in which it is clear that we have made some cataclysmic mistakes, that we keep making them, that we are a generation of losers and those that come after us will inherit a whole lot of loss. There is no way round it. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. A global pandemic. Racial injustice. Climate change. Oh no! We’ve got to go through it! This means weeping for weeks. Howling for months. Raging for years. But doing so consciously and creatively. When my children do this, I think they are rehearsing themselves, rehearsing me. This is not about being hopeless. I believe that going through it, with full feeling and ceremony, is the most hopeful thing we can do – the thing that will earn us feathers. Maybe we can weep enough to change ourselves, a metamorphosis as marvellous as that of a Greek god.

           To go through it, there are some things we are going to need. Two of these things are the stuff of the gods: care and creation, or, to use other words, mothering and making. In all myths, in all traditions, this is what the gods do- they make stuff and they look after stuff. The two go together: we look after things because we made them, and we make things because we care. Arguably ‘Mothers Who Make’ is a terrible tautology, and caring and creating may even be the same – they both involve a kind of holding. When the chick died, I had to hold my son while he tried to hit me. Later I had to hold a ritual with him. At a time when all the theatres are closed, it seems to me, we need theatre more than ever. Be it online or outdoors, we need to build symbolic fires, stages to hold our grief, our rage, our fear, our hope. We need to perform these things- it is what will get us through. Secret creations and collaborations got people through the concentration camps. The late and legendary civil rights activist John Lewis said: “If it hadn’t been for music, the civil rights movement would have been like a bird without wings.” Art is not a luxury, a nice diversion – it is the way through, not round.

           So, what will I do next time my daughter falls over, or my son messes up his drawing? I hope I will pause and consider this: maybe there is a point to crying over spilt milk. Maybe next time it spills we will weep the same weight in tears as the milk that is pooling, white, across the kitchen table. Maybe we will lie in it, mop it up with our clothes, then run outside and do a dance to the milk gods, to celebrate the milk and say sorry for its loss, and then we will run to the river, dive in, wash our clothes and ourselves, while we sing a song of cleansing, and then we will walk back, dripping new. I am playing with this so as to bring it home to myself, so that when the next rejection, mistake, failure, loss befalls me or the children, I have the courage not to mop it up too fast. Instead of my teaching them to lose with acceptance, I hope that we may discover together how to lose with passion and imagination.

           So, here are my questions for you for the month of August (coming to you at the end of July): Tell me about your rejections, your failures, your losses- your own? your children’s? What do you do when loss comes? Do you weep? or rage? or both? Can you do so more, as if you were inside a Greek myth, do so consciously? And what ritual, ceremony or creative act can you perform to get you through it? What can you do to earn your feathers?

[frankterranella]

What do we tell our children about 911?

The 911 Memorial in West Orange, New Jersey

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that damaged the Pentagon and destroyed the World Trade Center. Nearly three thousand people died that day, making it one of those few “I remember where I was” days in the life of practically everyone conscious on that date. These “I remember where I was” days usually mark major tragedies. I have long defined a Baby Boomer as someone who was in a classroom on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. But there have been several of those days since then. Recently people are recounting where they were when the pandemic started.

But I was thinking this week about a day that President Roosevelt said would live in infamy, December 7, 1941. In a few months it will be 80 years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This tragedy, which was the prime “I remember where I was” moment for my parents’ generation, happened just a little over 11 years before I was born. So my image of the Pearl Harbor attack was undoubtedly very different from the people who lived through it. How different will my grandson Bryce’s picture of 911 be from mine?

Bryce was born a little more than 12 years after 911, so approximately the same amount of time as my distance from Pearl Harbor. For him, 911 is a historical event like my connection to Pearl Harbor. He will study it in school. But like me, he is growing up hearing the “I remember where I was” stories of his parents and grandparents. Those certainly add a human dimension to the cold facts of a history book. Here is a bit of my story for Bryce and his generation to add to what they will learn in a classroom.

I was in my office on East 42nd Street in Manhattan that morning as the planes hit the World Trade Center just a couple of miles south. Looking out our windows on the 26th floor, we could clearly watch the World Trade Center smoke and then crumble. Manhattan island seemed under siege with Air Force jets flying overhead. I use the word “island” because on 911, Manhattan felt more isolated than I could ever remember. All the bridges and tunnels were shut. The subways had stopped running. The only way off the island was by boat. So needing to get home to New Jersey, I headed across town to the Hudson River.

Fortunately, someone in authority had the great idea to use the Circle Line tourist boat docked at 44th Street to ferry people across the Hudson. On the afternoon of that sparkling September day, I joined thousands of others lined up at the dock to get off the island. As we pulled away from the dock, I looked down river to see black smoke billowing from the spot where the World Trade Center had been. The smell of ash and smoke was in the air and tears were in the eyes of many, maybe because of the smoke, and maybe not. This was before the age of smartphones and so, sadly, I have no pictures of what I saw on that day. But there is no shortage of photographic evidence of 911 for young people to see. And the pictures are alive in my memory.

When we reached the west shore of the Hudson, New Jersey Transit had buses that took us to the train station in Hoboken where we could board trains going west. No fares were collected. You just got on the train of your choice and went. I have no idea who made all this possible, but when people say that government and our institutions can’t do big things, I remember that day and how well it all worked when we threw politics aside and just helped one another.

Probably the single most vivid image in my memory of 911 is sitting on the train in the Hoboken station and seeing a man come aboard. He looked like a Wall Street banker, but his very expensive suit was absolutely covered in soot. He sat down across from me and put his head in his hands and wept. That’s when the enormity of what had happened really hit home. I knew in that moment that life would never be the same again.

In the weeks and months that followed, I often felt that the rest of the country hijacked New York’s tragedy. They used it as a pretense for attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. They did this despite the overwhelming opposition of New Yorkers to these military interventions. I was one of the hundreds of thousands of people who marched through the streets on New York warning against starting a perpetual “war on terror.” And now, 20 years later, we have finally extricated ourselves, having lost even more Americans in a senseless war than we lost on 911.

And I guess that is the main difference between Pearl Harbor and 911. After Pearl Harbor, we attacked the people who attacked us. After 911, we blindly lashed out at people who might possibly have been connected to the people who attacked us. Some of them are still being held in Guantanamo, much to our disgrace. The hunt that ended the life of Osama Bin-Laden, the mastermind of 911, was the proper response. That was the real and justifiable use of the military. When it was accomplished, the mission was complete. No more lives needed to be put at risk.

So as we mark this 20-year milestone, I think we need to learn from our mistakes. We need to teach our children well the lessons of the last 20 years. Otherwise, the victims of 911, and the brave soldiers who subsequently lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, will have died in vain.

[thevisafly]

15 Really Cool Jobs That Let You Enjoy Full-Time Travel! / Visa2Fly.com

Travelling is great. Except, during a pandemic, you can’t really do much of it – unless it’s part of your job scope! It’s times like these where we miss moving across the globe, and also have time to re-think our life (and career) choices. To blur the two would be amazing – travel is an expensive investment, although you do gain a lot of priceless memories. Club this with a job, and you don’t have to worry about spending a fortune, or saving – in fact, you’ll be doing the opposite: earning money! Read on to know more about how you can make travelling a permanent part of your life.

1.Government/International Relations Jobs There are a few jobs you can take as part of the Government – such as being a diplomat – that allow you to travel. Although these require quite a lot of preparation and dedication (including some tough exams on the way), they are valued highly and you can serve your nation in the process. You will probably be holding a new passport by the end of it – and standing in a new country as well! These are more long-term and require some commitment, so once you get in you may not be able to get out easily. But it is definitely worth the effort.

2.English Teaching For some reason, there always seem to be vacancies in the English teaching community. Many countries actively search for qualified teachers, so if you can crack IELTS or TOEFL and are a good teacher, this one’s for you! You may even be able to take on ESL (English as a Second Language) jobs in schools or communities, and gain exposure through educating professionally.

3. Flight Attendants Picture this: you’re 30,000 feet in the air. Your other crew members are there to keep you company, along with passengers who are seated. You see the sun rise in front of your eyes, and when you land, you get off in a new country. Cool, isn’t it? This could be your reality if you’re a flight attendant. However, this will come along with irregular sleep, long working hours, unsupportive passengers, and learning all the proper etiquette and techniques necessary for the part. Keep that in mind!

4. Volunteer Work Doing volunteer work is one way of guilt-free travel – you’re helping others whilst helping yourself too! But make sure to choose your projects carefully. Often, humanitarian work is given in places that have local resources – which make the latter underutilized. Choose organizations that empower locals in the long-term, such as contributing to awareness of local crafts/ empowering local teachers with resources and training. Do this instead of building infrastructure (which locals would know how to do, considering their knowledge about the land and its resources) or helping out in local produce.

5.Cruise Ship Careers Working on cruise ships means that you’ll be able to travel across the Seven Seas full-time! Provided you’re not prone to seasickness, that is. There are many such careers to be found on board, such as attendants, clergy, entertainers, restaurant occupations, or even lifeguards. Although these may sound glamorous, they come with a lot of hard work. You may not be able to get out and explore cities as much as you would like, but many cruise operators do allow their staff to get off the ship on breaks.

6.Travel and Teach Teaching opportunities aren’t just lacking in English. There are many ways you could use your knowledge to help others abroad. Maybe you know how to perform Bharatanatyam, are a certified Yoga instructor, or are an expert at crochet. Either way, there’s always a window out there for you! Do your research before you get on the plane, get any certifications you need, and go forth!

7.Translators and Interpreters This job comes in many different levels. You could be a translator for a local school, or even for the nearest Embassy! Choosing the option that covers your comfort level and priorities ensures maximum satisfaction – for you, and the person whom you are working for. Make sure you write all the necessary examinations of the language you are planning to translate, and are well-versed in the nuances and culture of the country you are planning to travel to. This narrows down the options of places you will be able to travel (for work), but ensures that your experience there is enriched.

8.Journalism and Blogging Do you have the skill needed to start a travel blog and make it successful? Or maybe you are well-versed in the realm of writing for travel? Either way, you could make this a profession and monetarily benefit from it – whilst travelling, of course! Many famous travel-related companies like NatGeo, BBC and Lonely Planet employ on-field writers to publish articles for them. You could be next!

9.Fitness Instructors If you’re a fitness buff or know a lot about how to keep fit, you could make a profit out of it, too! Many gyms and fitness centers across the world are on the look out for good staff, and maybe you’re the one they have in mind. Often, you will need to have prior working experience, be able to demonstrate your abilities, and have a certification for the same. This improves your credibility and gives them no reason to refuse!

10. International Aid Workers Working for the United Nations in areas of the World that require urgent assistance is a valiant and good-willed occupation. You get the chance to travel to otherwise inaccessible territories, and are able to provide aid for those who need it most – in a way that could benefit them well. Instead of being the person who donates, you could be the one who is on-field helping war-torn societies with those donations. Remember that this is not a job for the weak-hearted, but it is one that supports many.

11. Hostel Occupations Hostels are prevalent in any country you go to. A popular alternative to hotels, these establishments are more casual and have greater freedom. You can just walk into one and see if they have an opening, or do your research beforehand and then settle on one that is a good fit for you. Either way, make sure it is a professional and well set-up place in a connected area – to ensure your safety and salary!

12. Influencers Being an influencer online is a job that many seek. It comes with fame, followers… And lots of flights for you! Depending on the type of influencer you aim to be, you could opt for one that allows you to travel and vlog. Upon becoming popular (which is where the risk sets in – that you need to be popular to be successful), you would be able to snag good brand deals and maybe even become an ambassador – leading to more and more travel. Choose a platform that suits your style of marketing – Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, WordPress, YouTube, or all of them!

13. Be an Au Pair An au Pair is a helper from another country (which could be you), who travel to live with a host family – and help them with childcare and housework. If you are good with kids and dream of managing your own home someday, this could be you! Typically, Au Pairs are unmarried and are legal adults between the ages of 18-30. Although, you could still pick up this job after that as well.

14. Special Events Planners Being an events planner means you’re going to be planning the A to Z for someone’s important day – be it a graduation ceremony, wedding, or the Olympic banquet! If you get really good at your job, you’d gain recognition and well-known clients that could propel your career abroad. Destination weddings are common as well, and this allows you to travel and work at the same time.

15. Anthropologists, Archaeologists and Cartographers Studying culture, history and geography in school does come in handy – here. Following migratory patterns, unearthing dinosaur remnants or charting territories of the World are all things people of these professions do: along with travelling, that is. This isn’t a very common job scope, and not all people from these professions travel. But if travel is what you want, you could definitely choose a specialization that allows for the same. And there you have it! Professions that allow you to travel the World and get paid, too. Of course, each comes with its own difficulties –  but its own benefits, too! If you’d like to get a visa to ensure your travel is hiccup-free, check out our website at Visa2Fly.com! Check out our other blogs on solo travel and language learning platforms, so you’re updated on the coolest ways to travel!

[organiclifestylemagazine]

Data Shows How to Protect Against Coronavirus and We Address Conspiracy Theories

I’m not, nor have I been, concerned with contracting COVID-19. Pathogens infect people who are vulnerable. The concept of random/chance infections doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. If a pathogen does kill everyone and anyone regardless of how healthy the host is the pathogen would burn out its host supply. Evolutionarily speaking this isn’t something that makes sense.

The medical science community is just now discovering how gut health is synonymous with overall health. Of course, they’re trying to figure out what drugs can be made from the revelations and not how one can take their health into their own hands because the truth is not profitable. The truth is the only way to sustain proper gut health is to continually eat a wide variety of raw vegetables and herbs while avoiding toxic foods and chemicals that imbalance the microbiome.

Studies are showing a number of factors that play a role in the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Some of these we have control of and some of these we don’t. Let’s start with those we have no control over.

Age

Viruses like influenza are more likely to injure and kill both the young and the older population, given their more vulnerable immune systems. But COVID-19 is a little different.

Children under the age of 18 are far less likely to have symptoms of infection, and they are also less likely to need hospitalization, and kids are less likely to die of COVID-19.

People over the age of 75, on the other hand, are far more susceptible to the worst COVID-19 has to offer. Below is a chart with data provided by New York City Health as of May 13, 2020.

AGENumber of DeathsShare of deaths0 – 17 years old90.06%18 – 44 years old6013.90%45 – 64 years old3,41322.40%65 – 74 years old3,78824.90%75+ years old7,41948.70%TOTAL15,230100%

Age of coronavirus deaths via World Meters

The data we have is very limited so far but China and other countries, and other states within the U.S. show numbers for 75+ between 20% and 35%.

As you probably heard in the news, coronavirus has been hitting nursing homes hard.

Sex

Men are much more likely to suffer symptoms from coronavirus than women. Data provided by New York City Health as of April 1st states that 61.8% of fatalities are men. Other studies of other regions show similar percentages. Researchers are trying to figure out why. Men face higher risk of complications with other respiratory illnesses as well, as the flu also affects men disproportionately.

The evidence in current studies points towards men having weaker immune systems than women, especially when it comes to common viral respiratory infections. Men are more susceptible to them, symptoms are worse, they last longer, and men are more likely to be hospitalized and die from the flu.

Sue is a clinical assistant professor in family medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland

A study published in Frontiers in Public Health reported that men and women were equally likely to contract the novel coronavirus.

So why are men more likely to die? Theories range from how testosterone affects the body to the fact that men are often less likely to take care of themselves. As usual, it’s likely a confluence of issues.

Blood Type

A study found that people with blood type A were 50% more likely to experience severe COVID-19 symptoms than people with other blood types. On the flip side, those with blood type O were 50% less likely to face severe symptoms of COVID-19. 

Race

CDC statistics show that 33% of people who’ve been hospitalized with COVID-19 are African American. Some local communities that report data have found similar patterns.

Black people make up only 13% of the U.S. population but they make up more than 30% of COVID deaths, according to research from Johns Hopkins University.

The disproportionate death rate may be significantly explained by the fact that there’s a higher prevalence of obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes among African Americans compared with Caucasians. But there’s more to it than that.

Black workers are also more likely to have employment that does not allow them to work from home, and they are less likely to have the safety nets that allow them to take time off. There’s a likely possibility that the African American community is more likely to be exposed to the virus. Detroit was hit particularly hard by the pandemic, but the daily cases and the death rate in Michigan have been on the decline for some time, indicating that the virus may have run its course. Perhaps Detroit inadvertently followed Sweden’s model.

Related: Sweden’s Approach To Coronavirus, and Did It Work? What Should We Have Done?

While doctors warn against taking high doses of vitamin D The NHS says wants people to consider taking 10 micrograms of vitamin D3 a day throughout the pandemic – particularly if they spend most of their time inside.

Besides blood type, most of the data above indicates that health plays a big role in determining the outcome of someone who is infected by CVOID-19. The data below proves it.

Underline Medical Conditions and Immunocompromised

Of people who were sick enough to be hospitalized with coronavirus, 89% had at least one chronic condition. About half of those patients had high blood pressure and obesity, about a third of the patients had diabetes, and another third had cardiovascular disease.

People with obesity tend to be more likely to develop heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other health issues.

Besides staying fit, what else can one do to protect themselves from COVID-19? Vitamin D, Glutathione, and most importantly, gut health play an enormously important role in determining one’s ability to fight off COVID-19.

Vitamin D

Some studies have indicated that vitamin D deficiency is linked to poorer outcomes with coronavirus. There are not any studies showing the vitamin D supplementation can help one overcome the virus, and other underlying risk factors, such as heart disease and diabetes make it hard to draw conclusions because people with these conditions are often low in vitamin D.

Glutathione

COVID-19 deaths are attributed to something called a “cytokine storm”, a physiological reaction in which our immune system causes an excessive release of cytokines, a pro-inflammatory signaling molecule. The only treatments modern medicine knows to do for this symptom are oxygen therapy and assisted ventilation.

A new study has evaluated the effects of dose oral and IV glutathione in the treatment of two patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.

Oral and IV glutathione, glutathione precursors (N-acetyl-cysteine) and alpha lipoic acid may represent a novel treatment approach for blocking NF-κB and addressing “cytokine storm syndrome” and respiratory distress in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.

Science Direct – Respiratory Medicine Case Reports

To be clear, that’s only two cases that were studied in that paper. There are other papers that support the hypothesis, but there is nothing yet conclusive.

Dr. Richard Horowitz, a board-certified internist with a private integrative medicine practice is considered to be one of thes top Lyme disease doctors. He has built a practice around combining classical and complementary treatments for Lyme diseases. 

“It is a miracle and it’s not,” says Horowitz of glutathione, which he has used on thousands of patients in his medical practice over the past 30 years. “It’s already in the literature—there are published articles on glutathione showing that it has anti-viral activity against herpes viruses, HIV, and hepatitis. The problem is, all of the COVID research is happening through pharmaceutical companies. No one is looking at natural approaches. You hear a little about how low vitamin D might put you at risk, so it’s coming out in dribs and drabs.” And just like with vitamin D, you can be deficient in glutathione—especially if you’ve been exposed to a lot of environmental toxins (which is everyone). Older people are also more likely to be depleted of the compound.

Two Potential Treatments for COVID-19 Unfold in the Hudson Valley 

Gut Health

In the first case of novel coronavirus reported in the U.S., the patient reported two days of nausea and vomiting along with diarrhea in addition to respiratory symptoms. In some small studies, researchers have linked patients with gastrointestinal issues to poorer coronavirus outcomes. Poor gut health seems to equate to severe disease symptoms including higher fevers and a greater risk of liver injury.

The suggestion is that the gastrointestinal symptoms are caused by the virus invading the ACE2-containing cells that are found throughout the bowel. This, together with the presence of the virus in the stool, suggests the gastrointestinal tract as another possible route of infection and transmission.

The Conversation – Worried about coronavirus? Pay attention to your gut

But it’s not just that the virus attacks the gut. Science is on the verge of discovering that our gut microbiome supplies our entire body with its microbiome. And what they don’t yet know, but is nevertheless true, is that a body with a healthy, diverse, and plentiful microbiome is a much less hospitable host for foreign invaders.

The health of our gut bacteria plays a crucial role in how our immune system reacts to every disease, including coronavirus. Diet is crucial to developing and maintaining healthy gut flora. The wider variety of raw vegetables and herbs one consumes, the more diverse one’s gut bacteria will be. And diversity is key to a healthy microbiome.

This article, How To Heal Your Gut, goes into detail about how to develop a healthy gut microbiome and is the basis for ridding the body of and being less susceptible to nearly every disease.

From our sister company, Green Lifestyle Market, here are our top four supplement picks for anyone concerned with COVID-19:

Liposomal Glutathione

Forumla SF722

Abzorb

Vitamin D/K2 Liquid

But don’t skip the aforementioned gut health article! Diet is far more important than supplements, and if finances are tight, put your money towards healthy food before you purchase supplements.

And now that you have some facts to arm yourself against COVID-19, let’s talk analysis some of the so-called “fake news” that’s going around regarding coronavirus.

Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Germs are real, and they can kill you. But cellular health is what separates the vulnerable from the robust immune systems. Your gut is the engine that powers your body. While this should seem obvious to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of biology, it’s still considered conspiracy theory to suggest that getting ill with a virus is anything more than bad luck, even though the science continually supports our position. Speaking of conspiracy theories, let’s debunk a few.

Coronavirus Doesn’t Exist

Enough people have been sick and enough people have died that this conspiracy should be put to rest. On social media, there are lots of posts asking, “Do you know anyone who has actually gotten coronavirus?” Yes, I do. And when I comment as such I am often accused of being in on the conspiracy, or they say the people I know died of something else falsely attributed to COVID-19 (which does have some truth to it, considering that healthy people do not die from this disease). The problem with the biggest conspiracies, like flat-earth, is that people just don’t keep secrets well enough. If coronavirus were a hoax, there would be massive amounts of people sounding the alarm.

It’s 5G

There are many people claiming that people who think they are suffering from COVID-19 are actually being killed by 5G wireless. The timing is close but not close enough to make this conspiracy work. It is possible that 5G infrastructure could exacerbate symptoms, but that’s also true for glyphosate, refined sugar, fluoride, and other toxins we ingest daily. There aren’t yet any studies on the effects of 5G because the cellular companies don’t want them, but some studies that indicate 4G is associated with problems for our health. And if the studies’ conclusions are true, 5G is likely to be worse. But there are also a lot of studies that indicate cellular frequencies don’t directly harm our health. What we do know for sure is that radiation from towers and our cellphones, and Wi-Fi, is harming birds and bees along with other animals and insects. This is reason enough to be concerned with our own health regarding EMFs. Whether it’s direct effects or indirect (environmental degradation), EMFs aren’t good for us.

The Coronavirus is a Bioweapon

You may have heard that Bill Gates had coronavirus created In a lab to implement the New World Order and install human trackers on all of us.

Bill Gates is a dangerous man with many foolish ideas. But he’s not powerful enough to pull this off and I don’t think he’s “evil”. He seems to be a perfect example of how true this quote is:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

Upton Sinclair or curmudgeon H. L. Mencken

But the engineering of viruses is happening, and we’d be foolish to completely rule out the idea that a government or company would accidentally or purposefully release such a virus. The vast majority of scientists don’t believe COVID-19 was engineered accidentally or on purpose, but viruses are being genetically modified. There are some scientists who do believe COVID-19 was manufactured, and governments, as well as corporations, have been known to lie to us every chance they get.

This is a Made Up Virus to Get Trump Out of Office

The virus isn’t made up, but it’s pretty clear the left is leveraging the pandemic to help get Trump out of office. For evidence, there is plenty of blatant hypocrisy to chose from. If things were reversed, the Democrats would be all about restarting the economy while republicans would be sheltering in place and screaming about how Dems are trying to kill us all.

Conclusion

I stated that healthy people aren’t dying from coronavirus. With some online searching, it is easy to find plenty of media claiming this is not true. Stories such as one about a very physically fit man who almost died of coronavirus and one about a child in California who died are used as “A devastating reminder that COVID-19 infects people of all ages.” But it’s important to note that these cases are extremely rare, and one should also understand that strength and physical fitness are not synonymous with good health. Many men who can run marathons in their 20s and 30s develop autoimmune diseases in their 40s. Children who died, as rare as this is, were not in good health either.

If the CDC had our best interests in mind, they would have at least said something about the importance of eating right during a pandemic instead of trying to frighten us into sheltering in place.

Data Shows How to Protect Against Coronavirus and We Address Conspiracy Theories was originally published on Organic Lifestyle Magazine

[angeltriestoblog]

I took an online course!

Hello, and welcome to my first proper post under the #quarantingz tag: a little series where I chronicle all of my virtual endeavors and adventures in the time of COVID-19. Through this, I hope to achieve the following (research paper ka, gh0rl?):

Share what I’m doing with all of you guys, since it’s much easier than messaging and video calling you all one by one to confirm that yes, I am alive despite my inactivity on Messenger;

Hold myself accountable so I strive to find ways to keep myself occupied instead of sinking back into stagnancy;

Inspire you to pick up a hobby or try something out while we’re all cooped up indoors! I’ve seen a lot of my friends post that they’ve been getting so bored that even sleeping seems like a chore to them, but the four walls of your room present more opportunities than you think. Let’s try them out together!

And before anything else, it’s worth mentioning that this pandemic is not a productivity contest and we should not feel pressured into making or being the Next Big Thing. But, I believe there’s nothing wrong in seeking structure for one’s self-improvement if your mental health is up for it!

Ok. [START]

During the early weeks of the pandemic, online classes were still ongoing for students at my university, and needless to say, I was not having it. I was already worried enough about the possibility of contracting a life-threatening virus, and on top of that, I had to decipher lessons I could barely understand in a face-to-face set-up, and submit a paper on it that was worth half my grade. But thankfully my university opted to exercise cura personalis—“care for the entire person”, individualized attention to their needs—towards those who lacked the resources needed to keep up with the demands of e-learning. So, they cancelled the rest of the semester! I was filled with relief because as necessary as it might have been to stay on track, it was not an effective way to facilitate learning and retaining of information.

Which is why it’s kind of ironic that one of the first things I did once I realized I had so much free time on my hands was sign up for an online class. *cricket noises*

A friend had sent me a viral listicle of 500 free Ivy League courses. I guess a lot of people had looked at the indefinite quarantine period available at their disposal as an opportunity to learn something new! And well, I couldn’t help but join along, especially since Harvard was my dream school growing up, and they were offering hundreds of programs for me to choose from. (Sorry, Ateneo. I did say otherwise on my application essay.)

Growing up, I had wanted to be an author-doctor-scientist-rockstar-supermodel. I consistently proclaimed this to anyone with ears, whether they liked it or not, with all the conviction my four-year-old body held inside. I hadn't the faintest idea which degrees I needed to get to make a livelihood out of these childhood fantasies, but I figured that if I was going to be a legendary multi-hyphenate, I’d have to come from the best university in the world. I also remember negotiating with my family members from the States that I would have to live with them while I was finishing my college education, not knowing how far their humble home in Orange Country, California was from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Reality inevitably took over—more like, held the reins on my ambitions—and I had to accept that there were several constraints in place that would keep me from studying there despite my desire to.

Well, that was until I chose to take up a course on rhetoric, the art of persuasive writing and public speaking under HarvardX! I picked this out of the several options because I believe learning to separate logic from emotional appeal helps me analyze an argument better and craft more well-informed decisions—definitely a skill we must have in our toolbox given today’s media landscape that is constantly inundated with fake news.

I was to learn about how arguments are structured and how rhetorical techniques are usually employed by dissecting a number of influential and prominent speeches in American history. I then had to apply these learnings in two major written requirements: an opinion editorial and speech, both on any topic of my choice.  

Every morning for a week and a half, I would wake up as early as 9:00AM—just when some people on my timeline are getting ready to go to sleep—and dive straight into my lessons. I decided to take on a module a day since each was pretty packed with information in the form of readings and videos. More often than not, the flow looked like this:

The transcript of an address by a prominent American figure: examples of which are Former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr. I would annotate this with my first impressions, opinions on any lines and ideas that struck me.

The background of the speaker and the context of the speech: This honestly contributed a lot to my understanding and appreciation of the material. Although I’ve heard of most of them through almanacs I’d read as a kid, I never knew the story behind them.

The key concepts of the module: These consisted of terms and examples, as well as how to make use of them properly and to my advantage. Examples of the topics covered were modes of appeal, kinds of reasoning, and logical fallacies (my favorite).

The transcript, again: For the second round, I would have to spot the concepts that were previously taught to me, in action. When I was fully drained of my brain juice, I had the option to view and respond to the comments of my peers, as well as the lecture notes of my virtual professors. I admit I didn’t get to interact with any of my fellow students: majority of them were from different timezones. I would occasionally creep on the forums, look at the replies my peers would leave, and see I was in the presence of people from Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Videos of actual lectures regarding the reading, held by the professor: This course is an online version of an existing in-person Harvard class called "The Elements of Rhetoric". Probably the best part of the daily lessons, because it felt like I was also sitting in, watching his students recite from the other side of the room.A quiz on the topics discussed: Very easy, and you get two attempts before you submit your final answer so it’s almost always a sure pass.

As I mentioned a while ago, there are two major outputs to be submitted and they involve a lot of writing and preliminary research. (I personally wouldn’t recommend this to you if you don’t derive pleasure from activities of that sort.) In an attempt to shed a light on a timely issue, I wrote my op-ed on the steps the Philippine government must take to rehabilitate our healthcare sector, and my speech on the use of social media as an effective political tool amid a crisis such as this. The last one was a requirement I had done for my Comm subject, which I tweaked for the sake of formality.

The op-ed was subject to self-evaluation: I had to answer questions on whether my submission met the set criteria or not and give proof as to why I thought so. The speech, on the other hand, was graded by two anonymous peers, who gave encouraging remarks and cited points for improvement. Although I knew I gave my best, my final grade was very much dependent on what they thought of my work so I was a bit nervous. Thankfully, everything went well: I got a perfect score on almost every component and secured a certificate of completion (which I had to pay for, but looks great on my Linkedin, if I do say so myself).

Overall, I enjoyed a lot and found the learnings I picked up to be useful. The ideas might seem abstract but the building blocks of rhetoric pepper even the minutiae of our daily conversations, whether we're aware of it or not. All of us engage in discourse and form our stances on issues using emotion, authority, or hard facts. We elaborate on them by stating the general premise then delving into specific examples, or the other way around. Our last resort tends to be a form of character assassination, faulty generalization, or leading question. The list goes on! I don't think I can speak or listen without policing someone in my head!My response towards this experience is a far cry from how I felt towards my required online classes for school, it's true. But, there are several factors that differentiated both of them.

I was able to choose what I wanted to study. No Quantitative Methods or Computer Science being forced down my throat (although I am revisiting my lessons in those respective subjects after I’m done with everything else I want to do, because I remember my parents paid for those). I am free to invest in areas outside the scope of my degree and gain key insight from the most reputable institutions around the world. I have the luxury to study to test something out, to see if it’s simply a hobby or a potential minor/double degree/career trajectory. If I find out after a few sessions that it’s not my cup of tea, I can easily unenroll and move on. Trying to do that in college would lead to disastrous consequences.

Another thing I liked was the freedom I had to go through everything at my own pace, mull over what I wanted to write for as long as I needed to, rewind and go back to parts in the videos that I liked. Additionally, if I wasn’t in the mood to do anything productive on a certain day (it happens to everyone), I could easily do so without the fear of missing out on anything. I know that a handful of courses do require you to stick to a schedule but everything is still within a reasonable time frame.

Now, I understand that several things are chipping away at our (deteriorating) focus right now. It’s hard enough when school demands so much of our energy—I remember my Quant prof had offered to teach us once via Zoom and though if we were only preoccupied with Netflix and trashtalkan groups back then, we collectively decided to ditch him. But, if you’re determined and committed to learning for leisure purposes, here are some tips that helped me hold myself accountable!

Tidy up, both physically and mentally.

Find a workspace that is conducive to learning. In the absence of a desk in a bedroom, the living room couch or the dining table when no one's eating meals are suitable alternatives. As long as there is a constant source of light, little to no noise, and a simple set-up that minimizes the chances of you leaving your work, it should be perfect!

And while we’re on that note, eliminate distractions. I only had my notebook, pen, and correction tape on the table along with my laptop: I made use of the Forest app regularly as well and now I have a nice collection of various shrubs and trees. I even put my phone on top of the cabinet, God knows my sedentary lifestyle keeps me from exerting the effort needed to stand up and reach for it.

If you aren’t sure that you can devote your full attention to the task at hand, get someone you trust to help you! I update my mom that I’ve been studying and fill her in on my progress not only because I am naturally predisposed to telling her everything going on my life, but also so she can help keep me on the right track and ensure I do my work.

Take it seriously.

Allot a specific time of the day for it. That way, it’s easier to integrate it into your routine and stop you from bailing halfway. For me, it's not advisable to go at it early in the morning, because your mind won't be ready to process anything of that scale. But, it has to be one of the first tasks of the day so you can avoid putting it off in favor of whatever your subconscious feels is more interesting.

Take notes when needed, complete the assigned activities seriously without consulting other sources, and participate in the forums as a substitute for recitation! Be the star student you wanted to be, but were probably too shy to turn into for the fear of being smart-shamed by your peers!

Try to see the purpose in what you’re doing.

In my case, it gave me the motivation to finish it so I could apply it in real-life situations and make the necessary changes in my behavior and habits.

This definitely isn’t the last online course I’m taking: as a matter of fact, I have a couple lined up! I’m currently working my way through something on strategic planning by this website called Culture and Creativity. Although the material has been tailor-fit to address the social and economic development of countries in Eastern Europe, the concepts can easily be utilized in local contexts. Here’s a list of other programs that caught my eye while I was browsing the different catalogs across other platforms.

Investor Pitching Course for Creative Businesses | Culture and Creativity

Applied Psychology: Introduction to Consumer Behavior | Alison Courses

Marketing Analytics | edX

Transformational Leadership | Alison Courses

Global Trends for Business and Society | Class Central

Wishing you all the love and light the world can offer at a time that can be as apathetic and dark as this one. Wash your hands, pray for our frontliners, and check your privilege!

[antiques-for-geeks]

Review Special : Talking to Stuart Benny of Benny Games

It’s all the rage these days, tracking down the authors of games you used to play to find out more about them, their game and what happened to them. As you’d expect, some are more difficult to track down than others and even when you do, not all of them are willing to speak with you about the past.

Surprisingly, Stuart Benny was quite easy to find - a quick search on LinkedIn turned up a profile and a quick exchange of messages later, he agreed to do a short interview over Skype as like the rest of us, he’s isolating while the latest Pandemic plays out.

We caught up with Stuart from his home in the Midlands to find out more about Benny Games, how he came to write the seminal On The Busses, the aftermath and were intrigued to hear that he is back on the development trail.

The familiar, minimalist logo of Benny Games as it adorned software shop shelves for those fleeting few years in the 1980s. 

AfG : Hi Stuart, how the devil are you?

Stuart Benny : Not bad thanks. I’ve managed to avoid this Corona thing that’s going around up to now thankfully. Seeing all the news stories, it’s quite scary.

Yeah, it’s quite something isn’t it? We’re all working from home which seemed a bit inconvenient, but at least we no longer have to put up with Meat reading Twitter out loud at us all day and telling us every five minutes that we need to buy more bog-roll.

Fortunately I work from home these days, so not a problem for me. I don’t miss sharing an office.

So what do you do today?

At the moment I work with development teams out in India building commerce software. These days I don’t write the code, I just prepare a specification for the off-shore coders and talk to the clients here in the UK. IT is not as much fun as it used to be. Back in the day I worked in a team of coders that wrote the software the team in India now extend. Seems to be the way of the world.

Your early work led to a career?

Yeah. To be fair Benny Games ending was a good thing as it meant I was able to do things like go to University. I think I would have missed a valuable experience, but it would have been brilliant to have been up there with Peter Molyneux or David Braben.

Tell us about it. Pop, Meat and I tried our hand at a lot of programming but didn’t get very far.

It’s not an easy business.

How did you get involved in it?

I had gotten hold of a Spectrum in 1984, it was one of the rubber key ones that we got from my cousin who changed his for a Spectrum+. I’d played games round my friend’s houses but really wanted to create my own so I spent my lunch break learning how to write BASIC on the school computers. Getting the Spectrum was the final piece in the puzzle because now I wasn’t limited to an hour a day on a computer and had a proper manual that showed you how to write programs.

So I studied the manual and experimented. I created a basic Space Invaders clone called, imaginatively, Invaders from Space and sent it to budget labels, but they weren’t interested. That’s when Benny Games were born, I thought the game would be able to sell so I took some money I’d earned from my paper round, bought a pack of ten computer cassettes from Boots and my brother duplicated the game on his tape-to-tape. My friend Martin [Freeman, no relation to the actor] drew a cover, which I got photocopied on the machine down the library. Once they were all ready, I put a classified ad in the local paper and waited for the orders to come in.

And was it a success?

I managed to sell the ten tapes eventually.

I guess that not having the advertising push didn’t help.

At the time I was really disappointed, but I think that it was definitely a learning experience. It didn’t occur to send a review copy to a magazine, but to be honest, it was probably for the best.

But it still sold, so that must have been a small encouragement.

Maybe, but it underlined that I couldn’t do it all by myself. So I asked Martin if he wanted to help me on the next game. He had a Spectrum too and things like a joystick interface.

And that game would be Star Crash?

Star Crash, Yes. Martin had got a copy of the film on VHS from his Uncle and we used to watch it. We wanted to make a game that closely followed the plot, but we didn’t really know how to make it work, so we focussed on the space battle at the end of the game and made a shoot ‘em up. I did the code for the game itself as well as the sound effects and Martin designed the in-game graphics and box art.

It was a nice little game, influenced a lot by Galaxian, but subconsciously. There was one of those machines at the youth centre and Martin played it a few times. The big difference technically was that we did it in machine code, which sped the game up.

Again, we sold it direct for £4.99, but this time we put our money together and bought an ad in one of the Spectrum magazines and got more orders than the first time.

Looking back, at the time it didn’t occur to us to think about licensing for Star Crash. We were working in such a niche and at such a small scale, we got away with it I guess.

I must confess I struggled to find Star Crash. It’s not on sites like World of Spectrum.

No, I think it’s been largely forgotten. I think that Martin sent a review copy to Crash, but we never heard back from them. Must have got lost in the post.

I recorded over the original tape I saved the game on in the 1990s with a Menswe@r album.

So when would this be?

Probably 1995.

No, I mean when was Star Crash released?

That would have been 1985.

You’ve released two games now, so how did you go from that to writing On the Busses?

Well, Martin and I decided to leave school at 16 and set up for ourselves. We got a small loan with my Dad from the Local Government Enterprise scheme and set up in our garage.

Our plan was to release our own games, but a couple of our mates wanted us to release their efforts. That’s how Fletch (Andrew Fletcher, musician for On the Busses) got involved. He had written a text adventure version of a Doctor Who story called The State of Decay on the Commodore 16 and gave it to us. We changed the names of the characters and the planet and put it out as The Vampires of Proximus 3. It had this in-game music that really added atmosphere. It sold pretty well.

We also were sent a rough and ready version of Track and Field for the Spectrum by a local man who had bought one of the copies of Invaders from Space and wondered if we’d be interested in releasing his game. That was an ego boost. It had this weird bit in it where if you medalled, you had to negotiate with the doping control about why your wee smells funny. No-one else was doing it, so we left it in.

We tried to tie it into the buzz about the 1986 Commonwealth Games. It was called Edinburgh Games ‘86. That was less successful because we rushed it out.

Again, we struggled to find any trace of them online.

Yeah, I’m not sure where they ended up in the end. When Fletch sold his Commodore 16 in the 1990s, he sold his development tapes too. Probably someone out there still has it.

Point is, we were a bit fed up having to compromise bits of our games because we didn’t have access to the IP so decided to set our aim much higher. We were all better at coding, we had better hardware. It just seemed the right thing to do.

A scan of the cover is the only trace of The Vampires of Proximus 3 that we could find. Anywhere.

While Vampires is not licenced, On the Busses is. How did you come by that licence?

It really annoyed Fletch that we changed his game because we didn’t have a licence. My Dad, who was basically acting as manager for our company, said it was too risky to release it without the consent of the BBC as it was.

So, with the monies from Vampires we decided to see what we could do.

Initially we were going for a licence for OutRun. I was writing a game based on the arcade already - the busty woman sprite in On the Busses was originally for that game - and had a version of the first level done. It wasn’t very complete as I had to do it from memory, but it proved the point. At this stage it had no music.

We had no idea that US Gold had that relationship with Sega all sewn up, so after a very polite exchange of letters with Sega to see if they would do a licence with us, it looked like the project was going nowhere.

However, my mind cast back. My Grandma used to love watching On The Buses on a Saturday evening. When I was little we used to go round to hers for our tea and it would be on. I loved the antics that Stan and Jack got up to. So the thing held good memories for me.

I called the film and television company and they weren’t interested in doing a licence. After searching in the library, I eventually found a defunct publisher who had got the rights to produce new fiction books based on the series, but had never used it so I approached them.

The liquidator was only too happy to sell on the licence as they thought it was worthless.

Did it cost a lot?

I think it cost us £500 at the time. The liquidator was just pleased to get something for it.

What inspired the game?

Well, OutRun played a massive role obviously, but also games like Maniac Mansion with it’s dialogue and Infocom games like Hitch-hiker’s Guide with their in-box feelies that we copied in a unique way [the game infamously came with, amongst other things, a “used” condom in the box].

We wanted the game to be as close to the series, in spirit at least, as it could be. We wanted it to be like a new episode. Martin was doing a course in the evenings at the local college where they were digitising video, which is how we got the pictures of Stan and Blakey in and Fletch spent ages learning how to code for the AY chip in the [ZX Spectrum] +2 to get the music right. It took up so much memory though, we didn’t have anything left for the in-game music we’d planned. He was always a lot happier coding for the Commodore 16.

And the droop meter to monitor Stan’s ardour?

Yeah, we got that from Martin’s Mum. She said that she had no idea why young women in their twenties would be attracted to middle aged men with a gut who probably had the droop when there were plenty of virile young men about. Martin’s Dad shuffled awkwardly when she said it.

We put it in there because it was funny. If I did the game again today I’d probably leave it out because you can get Viagra now so there’s no need to worry about that kind of thing.

Yeah, I think that there might be other reasons.

How do you mean?

I mean, it’s a bit inappropriate isn’t it?

Loads of men have a wives half their age. You see them all the time in the celebrity pages of the papers. I think that Stan and Jack were proved right in the end.

Erm, the attention to detail in the game, like the digitised cut-scenes, were a bit of a breakthrough for the time and lauded in the reviews. How long was development in the end?

It was something we were all proud of, the lengths we went to to recreate the experience. It meant development took ages though, like nine months in the end. To get the dialogue for the arguments between Stan and Blakey, I spent ages watching tapes of the original series and writing it down. Things like that ate in the schedule and we were lucky to get it out for April 1988.

Why is the name spelt wrong though?

This again. I’ve had to explain this so much over the years. It was spelt wrong on the licence document we had so we followed that on my Dad’s friend’s advice; he was a solicitor.

So when the big moment came, the launch, were you happy?

I was thrilled. We rented a room at the local pub and invited the gaming press as well as the local paper and some people from an On the Buses fan group.

We had a bloke turn up from Video and Computer Games and he went very quiet when he saw the game. He took it away and after some negotiation with my Dad, we managed to get a full page advert opposite the review. We scored 91% from them which we were all ecstatic about.

The local paper did a nice article on us - you know, local boys done good - and said some nice things about the game. The On the Buses fan mob put us in their quarterly magazine for Summer 1988 complete with a glowing review.

Which was absolutely useless as we were out of business by then.

Out of business?

Well, yes. After we put out the game, it became clear that we’d not followed the rules of the licence. It was for original content only. As we’d used the digitised grabs and also the dialogue from the episodes, it didn’t count.

Ah, I can see why that might be a problem…

Always read the small print. After a couple of days on sale, we had to pull the entire thing for risk of getting sued.

So what happened then?

We ended up with a load of tapes duplicated that we could not sell, promotions we couldn’t run that still had to be paid for and so on. We were not able to absorb the cost of all of it and with no money coming in to fix it or release new games and try to keep going, we had no choice but to pull the plug.

Everything we had relating to the retail version of On the Busses ended up being thrown away, it had no value.

Closing the company must have been tough.

Fletch took it hardest; he had nearly finished a Commodore 16 game called Road Racer that was an unofficial port of OutRun. It was seriously good considering how weedy the system was. Our plan was to release it to the duplicators when the first payments for On the Busses came in. We’d have cleaned up with that one. It had started as a port of On the Busses, but we quickly realised it would be better to make it it’s own distinct game.

After we collapsed, he took it to a couple of other labels but could not find a market for it; everyone said it was two years too late. No doubt he felt like he’d wasted a year of his life, I know I did.

And you all left the industry at that point?

As I said earlier, I decided to quit while I was still not too far behind and get myself to University while Fletch and Martin decided to carry on with another company of their own. Sadly theirs didn’t see out the transition to 16-bit, but they had some success with a couple of budget games on the Commodore 64. Not sure what they are up to now.

Benny Games was a name that seemed to disappear without much explanation and there is precious little on the internet about them.

Now you know!

Are you involved in the retro scene these days?

Not really, I’m aware of people streaming games and things like that, but I’ve not sought the limelight.

I have been doing some coding though to keep my skills sharp. I’ve wanted to go back to OutRun for some time and do it like I wanted to back in 1987. Now there’s stuff like MAME I can see the reference material without shovelling 20p coins into a machine and get your mate to make notes.

Sounds interesting. We can’t wait to see what happens next. Thanks for your time Stuart!

Thanks; it’s been nice. It’s not often I get to talk about Benny Games these days outside of a job interview.

[passingthebarexam]

New Post has been published on Bar Exam Mind

New Post has been published on https://www.barexammind.com/covid-19-bar-exam/

COVID-19 and the Bar Exam

As if the bar exam isn’t enough to worry about, now there’s COVID-19. This article contains a few thoughts of mine about that situation.

But, before I get to those thoughts, let me express my hope that you and your families are all safe from this new virus. Knock on wood, my family and I are doing fine so far.

Bar Exam Postponements

Many of you reading this will live in states that have postponed the bar exam or are making contingency plans to postpone it should that become necessary. If you don’t know what’s happening with your state’s bar exam, you can obviously check your state bar’s website or this handy compilation of all deadlines from the NCBEX.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor, a psychologist, a virologist, an epidemiologist, a public health official, or a fortune teller. These are all just thoughts that I’m having as of late May 2020.

Mental health

As someone who has taken the bar exam twice, I know firsthand that it is mentally stressful for just about everyone who takes it. Clearly, in any jurisdiction that has postponed the bar exam, the date change adds additional layers of mental stress.

One level is that the traditional schedule of graduating law school in May and then studying until the middle of July is upended. If you live in jurisdiction and has postponed the bar exam until September, it seems to me that it might be a good idea not to start studying until July to avoid burnout. (Unless, of course, your bar prep program is still being offered May-June.)

Although I am sure some of you out there will choose to study from May through September, such a schedule seems to me to be excessive. On the other hand, if one wanted to do low-intensity studying, such as casually reading outlines or reading sample essays without doing anything else, that could potentially be a good use of one’s time I suppose.

To me it seems the biggest stressor would be the uncertainty of the possibility that the bar exam might be postponed yet again. I would suspect that if virus infection rates spike after states “reopen” during the next months, an additional postponement could become a real possibility.

Physical health

I have been watching several evidence-based YouTube channels regarding the COVID-19 virus, and it does appear that there are several ways one can increase the likelihood you will avoid the worst symptoms of the virus.

As you may know, it does appear that the majority of people who die from this virus have underlying conditions while only a small percentage do not. (New York study; Chinese study; Video re New York study.) Therefore, if you have any of the notable underlying conditions (hypertension, obesity, and diabetes being the most common), it would be ideal to do as much as you can to get them under control and managed well. Obviously, you need to speak with your doctor about that.

In addition, there is evidence that a majority of people who suffer the most severe effects of COVID-19 are deficient in vitamin D.  Below are two videos created by a British registered nurse in which he reviews the literature indicating that vitamin D is a helpful prophylactic measure.

If this is of interest to you, you should talk to your doctor about this and perhaps even get your vitamin D levels tested. Although I live in a sunny part of the country and spend a decent amount of minutes outside every day, I’ve been supplementing my vitamin D just be on the safe side.

Taking the exam

This section is going to be mainly speculative as I do not have any insight into how the bar examination testing areas are going to be arranged for exams given during this pandemic. Moreover, I have no professional experience in virology or biosecurity.

However, based on the information that’s been coming out from various governmental sources and medical studies (California; CDC; WHO), it would seem to me that a bar exam might be able to be administered relatively safely if it was given in a well-ventilated room with non-recycled air, with everyone wearing face coverings, and each seating location was adequately spaced and sanitized thoroughly.

I’m not sure how the bar exam authorities will handle this, but it would seem to me that each test taker should be permitted to bring in hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes in order to wipe down his or her area thoroughly before placing testing supplies (such as a computer, timer, pencils, pens, etc.) on top of the table. Assuming the materials you bring in had been previously sanitized and the area was sanitized, the main risk during the exam would be airborne transmission which should be reduced significantly by the proper use of face coverings and adequate ventilation.

In addition, the seating would have to be spaced out at least six feet per current CDC guidelines, but perhaps ten feet would be even better. As long as ventilation in the room was good to allow fresh air to continually enter the room, it seems like there would probably be limited risk of particle transmission. On the other hand, most guidelines prohibit gathering in large groups, so this could be an issue for the bar exam unless there were multiple, smaller testing locations.

But, like I said, I’m not a virologist or an epidemiologist or public health official, so my thoughts on this could be incorrect.

Where to stay during the exam?

If I were taking the bar exam under these conditions, I would do all that I could to be able to come home to my house at the end of the day and sleep there knowing that it was a safe zone. If I had to get a hotel room or other accommodation, I would make sure it was either (1) an extended-stay type hotel room with kitchen and refrigerator or (2) an AirBNB apartment near the testing site.

I would also likely rent the accommodation for an extra day and arrive early to sanitize it thoroughly. If it were a hotel room, I would direct the management and staff not to enter my room during the entire time I was staying there. I would make my own bed and clean anything I needed to clean. This way, I would not have to worry about any sort of risk of transmission while I was inside my sanitized rental space.

In addition, I would bring enough food with me from home so that I wouldn’t have to go grocery shopping or out to a restaurant. I would prepare and eat all my meals in the rented room. If the room was too distant from the testing site to return for lunch, I would bring lunch with me and find a place to eat alone.

Face coverings

Assuming face coverings would be required at the exam site, I would be sure to practice for the exam wearing one so that I would know how it would feel to wear it for hours at a time. (See my how to practice blog post here.)

For the exam itself, I would bring one face covering for each session of the exam. What I mean is, if the exam were two days long and had a morning and afternoon session each day, I would bring four masks individually packaged in plastic bags. I would wear one for the morning session and then return to my accommodation where I would remove my mask before eating lunch and relaxing. Then I would use a new mask to return for the afternoon session. Once that session was over and I returned to my accommodation at the end of the testing day, I would remove the mask. Repeat for day two. I think this is safer than reusing masks that may have been contaminated during a prior wearing session.

Conclusions

I really feel for anyone who has to take the bar exam under these conditions. Although it likely can be done with a high level of safety, it still yet another thing to worry about while studying for such an important test.

I wish you all good luck and good health.

  P.S. -- Want a FREE copy of my Bar Exam Mind audiobook?

You can get a free copy of my audiobook when you sign up for a free trial at Audible.com. Get the details by clicking here. Or, you can just get the audiobook directly from Amazon, iTunes or Audible.

[vsplusonline]

Coronavirus: U.S. inches closer to shutdown as COVID-19 deaths rise to 64

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/coronavirus-u-s-inches-closer-to-shutdown-as-covid-19-deaths-rise-to-64/

Coronavirus: U.S. inches closer to shutdown as COVID-19 deaths rise to 64

Officials across the United States curtailed many elements of American life to fight the coronavirus outbreak on Sunday, with health officials recommending that groups of 50 or more don’t get together and a government expert saying a 14-day national shutdown may be needed.

Governors were closing restaurants, bars, and schools as the nation sank deeper into chaos over the crisis. Travellers returning home from overseas trips were stuck in line for hours at major airports for screenings, causing them to be crammed into just the kind of crowded spaces that public health officials have been urging people to avoid.

READ MORE: U.S. travellers return home to hours-long airport waits amid coronavirus pandemic

In a sign of the impending economic gloom on the horizon, the Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark interest rate to near zero. President Donald Trump sought to calm a jittery nation by declaring that the government has “tremendous control” over the situation and urging people to stop the panic buying of grocery staples that has depleted the shelves of stores around the country. Gun stores started seeing a similar run on weapons and ammunition as the panic intensified.

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2:28 Coronavirus outbreak: Trump tells U.S. citizens stocking up on food and supplies to ‘relax’

Coronavirus outbreak: Trump tells U.S. citizens stocking up on food and supplies to ‘relax’

As Americans struggled to come to terms with how to change their daily habits, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a dramatic recommendation: Because large events can fuel the spread of the disease, it said gatherings of 50 people or more should be canceled or postponed throughout the country for the next eight weeks. It added that, at any event, proper precautions should be taken, including making sure people are washing their hands and not getting too close.

But in a sign of the difficulty of striking the right balance, the statement from the CDC also said the recommendation does not apply to “the day to day operation of organizations such as schools, institutes of higher learning, or businesses.”

READ MORE: Coronavirus: What are the chances of dying and who is most at risk?

Even before the warning, parts of the country already look like a ghost town, and others are about to follow as theme parks closed, Florida beaches shooed away spring breakers, Starbucks said it will accept only drive-thru and takeout orders and the governors of Ohio and Illinois ordered bars and restaurants shuttered. California’s governor asked the state’s bars and restaurants to do the same, but didn’t order it. New York City, New Jersey and elsewhere are considering similar measures.

“The time for persuasion and public appeals is over,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said. “This is not a joke. No one is immune to this.”

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His decision came hours after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, said he would like to see a 14-day national shutdown imposed to prevent the virus’s spread.

2:15 COVID-19: Delays at airports as American travelers try to get home

COVID-19: Delays at airports as American travelers try to get home

“I think Americans should be prepared that they are going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing,” said Fauci, a member of the White House task force on combating the spread of coronavirus. He heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

There is no indication Trump is considering such a move.

The worldwide outbreak has sickened more than 162,000 people and left more than 6,000 dead, with thousands of new cases confirmed each day. The death toll in the United States climbed to 64, while infections passed 3,200.

Meanwhile, harsh criticism rained on Trump and his administration Sunday from state and local officials over long lines of returning international passengers at some U.S. airports that could have turned them into coronavirus carriers as they tried to get home.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: U.S. Federal Reserve slashes rates to nearly zero in response to COVID-19

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lambasted the administration for allowing about 3,000 Americans returning from Europe to be stuck for hours inside the customs area at O’Hare International Airport on Saturday, violating federal recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people practice “social distancing.”

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The passengers, many of them rushing home because of fears they would be stuck in Europe, were screened for coronavirus symptoms before they were allowed to leave the airport.

Long lines also formed Saturday in Boston, Dallas and others of the 13 airports that are accepting return flights from Europe.

2:55 Coronavirus outbreak: U.S. officials will focus on taking care of health care workers, elderly during virus outbreak

Coronavirus outbreak: U.S. officials will focus on taking care of health care workers, elderly during virus outbreak

“People were forced into conditions that are against CDC guidance and are totally unacceptable,” Lightfoot said.

Elizabeth Pulvermacher, a University of Wisconsin student, arrived Saturday at O’Hare from Madrid, where she had been studying and spent hours in line. The customs process made her feel “unsafe,” she said.

“The whole idea is getting rid of the spread of coronavirus, but there were hundreds and hundreds of people in very close proximity,” Pulvermacher said.

Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University, said he was “appalled” by what he saw Saturday at nearby O’Hare.

READ MORE: U.S. government says coronavirus virus testing will prioritize medical staff, elderly

“If they weren’t exposed to COVID-19 before, they probably are now. From a public health perspective, this is malpractice,” Murphy said in a statement Sunday. “The lack of preparation and concern is unfathomable.”

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But the situation improved markedly Sunday at O’Hare and elsewhere. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said wait times are down to 30 minutes after processes have been adjusted to better handle the influx and extra personnel sent to the airports that are “funneling” passengers returning from overseas.

Bailey Miles, a 20-year-old sophomore at Taylor University in Indiana, arrived also from Madrid fearing the worst, but she got through customs and a health screening in about an hour. She said officials seemed to have learned their lesson from Saturday, when some of her friends returned.

1:22 Coronavirus outbreak: Pence says U.S. government has ‘no higher priority’ than health and safety of public

Coronavirus outbreak: Pence says U.S. government has ‘no higher priority’ than health and safety of public

“The employees were really helpful, had positive attitudes and had a lot of grace,” she said. She said a woman even passed out snacks.

At Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Amanda Kay said she was asked to keep her distance from other passengers when she arrived from Paris at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

“They wanted 50 people at a time. So the first 50 people got off, and they asked us to keep a large distance between ourselves,” she said. “We showed them the first form and then as we walk there’s a person who has the scan for your temperature. And then you go through Customs and then that was it.”

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READ MORE: During Democratic debate, Biden and Sanders call for increased coronavirus testing

Going forward, Wolf said he could not rule out a future halt to air travel within the U.S. Fauci said earlier Sunday on television that halting domestic travel had been discussed, though not seriously.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. The vast majority of people recover.

And that may have given some people false hope, causing them to venture into crowds that Fauci and others would prefer they avoid. Even if someone doesn’t become visibly ill, they can still carry the disease and spread it to others.

2:37 Coronavirus outbreak: Pence says over 2000 labs across U.S. will be able to process COVID-19 tests

Coronavirus outbreak: Pence says over 2000 labs across U.S. will be able to process COVID-19 tests

In New Orleans and Chicago, people clad in green for St. Patrick’s Day packed bars and spilled onto crowded sidewalks on Saturday even after the cities canceled their parades.

New York City, which has the nation’s largest public school district, announced that it will be closed starting Monday, joining most of the rest of the country. Mayor Bill de Blasio had originally balked, but under pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others he said Sunday, “I became convinced over the course of today that there is no other choice.”

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In Florida, Walt Disney World and Universal-Orlando were closing Sunday night for the rest of the month, joining their California siblings, which already closed. Farther south, Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale officials announced that they are closing their beaches, where thousands of college spring breakers from around the world have flocked.

READ MORE: Passenger who flew from Gatwick to Toronto tested positive for coronavirus: WestJet

The cities also ordered restaurants and bars closed by 10 p.m. and to keep crowds below 250.

“We cannot become a petri dish for a very dangerous virus,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said. “Spring break is over. The party is over.”

Starbucks said Sunday it is closing seating in its cafes and patio areas nationwide, but customers can still order at the counter, at drive-thrus or on the Starbucks app. It will also close or reduce hours in areas where there are a high-number of cases.

1:55 Coronavirus outbreak: How to talk to your kids about the virus

Coronavirus outbreak: How to talk to your kids about the virus

But not all government officials were as concerned. Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt tweeted a picture of himself and his children at a crowded metro restaurant Saturday night.

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes had a similar message on Fox News Sunday, encouraging people to go to local restaurants and pubs despite the warnings of health officials.

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Spencer reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press journalists Mallika Sen, Vanessa Alvarez, Seth Wenig, Lisa Marie Pane, Christopher Weber, Eugene Johnson and John Seewer contributed.

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Microsoft uncovers hacking operation aimed at software supply chain

Microsoft researchers these days exposed a complicated hacking marketing campaign that turned into serving centered malware to “several excessive-profile era and monetary agencies.” The unidentified hackers reportedly compromised a fixed of 0.33-birthday celebration modifying software tools by using injecting malicious code into the applications’ updating mechanism, Windows Defender Advanced Hazard Safety studies group located.

The recent findings underscore the Threat companies face through phone, 0.33-celebration programs. In many instances, such packages and services are generally integrated into a business enterprise’s IT infrastructure; widening the assault vector for hackers.

“[A] forensic examination of the Temp folder on [a] affected device pointed us to a legitimate 0.33-celebration updater walking as the carrier,” a Microsoft weblog reads. “The updater downloaded an unsigned, low-incidence executable right before malicious interest changed into observed. The downloaded executable became out to be a malicious binary that launched PowerShell scripts bundled with the Meterpreter reverse shell, which granted the faraway attacker silent manipulate. The binary is detected through Microsoft as River.”

Rivet is a trojan downloader that permits for a hacker to remotely execute code on a target device

“It took advantage of the not unusual believe courting with software program delivery chains and the fact that the attacker has already gained manipulate of the remote update channel,” researchers wrote. “This usual method of focused on the self-updating software program and their infrastructure has performed a part in a chain of high-profile attacks.”

Whilst these intrusions did not rely on 0-day exploits, the technique allowed assaults to successfully compromising precise belongings in the delivery chain.

There was several latest, unrelated incidents of hackers hijacking a software program application’s local update to contaminate a laptop community with a pandemic. The latest case Friday in an incident that affected Altair Technology’ EvLog product.

The hacking institution in the back of this campaign, dubbed “Operation WilySupply,” is possibly “prompted through monetary advantage,” consistent with Microsoft.

Microsoft Phone Call Fraud. What to Do and What Actions to Take

  For some years now. People of all walks of life commonly Human beings at domestic were hit via Microsoft Smartphone Call Scams claiming that they paintings for Microsoft while citing statements consisting of “Your license key code is inaccurate” or “Your Home windows Computer needs to be updated”. while those statements can be a truth. It is also a truth that Microsoft without a doubt does no longer Call up anyone who is jogging a Microsoft license approximately this form of issue.

When Microsoft Callers Name, what shall I do?

1. They may ask you to press a few keys. Why? To provide them access to your machine in which They’ll be capable of doing something. DO not PRESS ANY KEYS that they request, or something so that it will deliver them authority over your Laptop.

2. They may well sound professional. Regardless of their talent, do not allow them to convince you they’re authentic. they’re no longer!

3. In the event that they do happen to take over your Computer, They will truly point out which you have outdated software, your key desires updating or you have got a virulent disease. The trick is that the Microsoft Telephone Name Scammers shall seem very smart tapping away in your device convincing your mind that they know their stuff and what they may be talking about. Surely do not allow them to persuade you.

4. Put the Smartphone down as quickly as feasible. As soon as they point out the words “I’m calling from Microsoft”.

5. It is usually a terrific idea to get your Computer checked through a Technician and especially When a Microsoft Telephone Name scammer has effectively accessed your Laptop.

  Utilities of an Ethical Hacking Course

The increase in laptop and cell generation has brought about more threats in security. This may be inside the form of viruses that may crash the device and permit clean get right of entry to confidential statistics. With the speedy modernisation in era across companies, how does one prevent protection intrusions from taking vicinity? The activity of securing structures and cell devices can be best left to a trained ethical hacker. Such a person would have educated himself on an ethical hacking course.

The activity of a moral hacker

The task of an ethical hacker is to systematically penetrate the computer community of an enterprise with the intention to decide the security vulnerabilities of the equal. Something turns out to be the vulnerability of the device is determined after which as a result constant by means of the IT department of the enterprise. If those vulnerabilities aren’t fixed, they could be potentially exploited by means of a malicious hacker.

The methods utilized by a moral and a malicious hacker are nearly the same. Both have almost the equal understanding in phases of programming. However, the intentions are what truly differentiate one from the other. A traditional hacker makes use of illegal strategies to pass a system’s defenses, while the ethical hacker makes use of criminal techniques. the moral hacker is given permission by way of the organization to invade protection structures. In addition, this person also documents threats and vulnerabilities, offering an action plan on how to repair basic safety.

Wherein are vulnerabilities generally determined?

Normally when a large number of software are being used on computer systems, it offers probabilities of infection from viruses. these viruses are sincerely unlawful packages that could supply information to other resources. Negative or incorrect machine configurations are prone to have infections and vulnerabilities. Any kind of hardware or software program flaws, in addition to operational weaknesses in technical strategies, can result in software corruption.

Worldwide standards observed with the aid of ethical hackers

Massive agencies like IBM have large teams of personnel as ethical hackers. Many global companies also offer moral hacking inside the shape of a direction. Another company was known as-as Trustwave Holdings Inc. Has its very own moral Hacking lab that could explore capability vulnerabilities in ATMs, POS devices and different forms of surveillance systems.A moral hacking route gives all the numerous advanced tools and techniques used by safety experts to breach the vulnerabilities of systems in a corporation. The direction makes you watched like a hacker and explore a scenario from a hacker’s mindset. Extra can be discovered from a cyber protection training route.

Obtaining Personalized Software to Meet Specific Needs

With bespoke software layout options, you may get the precise software created on your needs. This may assist you to operate your commercial enterprise extra correctly and with less time concerned. It will let you to generate reviews with particular info or to put extra exams and balances in movement. In order to get this performed, you want to speak to a professional.

They can take your thoughts and from them to create the right bespoke software program design that will help you accomplish unique goals. The extra info you may share with them approximately your commercial enterprise and what you need the program to do, the more They are able to offer to you. It could take time for them to place it all collectively and to work out any bugs. They’re up for the venture and assist you to.

Discover your Programmer

Finding the right software is going to make a profound distinction in terms of bespoke software program layout. Some will advertise they have the skills but they really do not. They will be scammers or seek out and clean manner to make A few cash. People with the proper talent set are obtainable and They’re obsessed with turning in what you want.

Find a programmer with verified experience so that you can sense amazing about the viable final results. You need someone you may speak with and you want to see examples of different bespoke software layout they have carried out. They’ll not be capable of percentage with you who they finished it for, however, they ought to be able to share how long they have been in enterprise.

Search for critiques on that programmer too. There should be masses of other customers who’re inclined to share their own experience. There is the wealth of free information available on the net about bespoke software design if you take the time to look around. Once you Find A few proper applicants, time table a time to speak to them.

Talk your desires

Before you talk to them, have a lot of facts prepared to percentage with them as you may. They need in an effort to discover what you’re looking or and visualize how to make it work. If you could show them examples of what you have and what you want to be added to it, they have a basis to work from. Perhaps you’ve got an application with boundaries.

proportion with them what is not allowing you to complete it and They will have an answer. You’ll Discover most creators of bespoke software program layout are very innovative. they’ve masses of methods to apply the tools in their possession to head above and beyond what you had was hoping for.

Setup Phases for Of entirety