#the one who deliver his messages is called Austen now

[nelkcats]

Crow services

After Danny died he noticed that some animals had become more attached to him while others had moved away. Aggressive or death related animals seemed to react positively to his presence, although friendlier animals such as birds tended to fly away.

Of course, none of this prepared him for the number of crows that landed on his window daily. At first he was scared that they would consider him a corpse and try to eat him but after the third time they brought him a shiny object he assumed they just liked him.

Those crows became very fond of him, they let him pet them, they would perch on his head or shoulders, always present and sometimes even watching over him (A particularly intelligent crow he named Poe would drive his parents away with distractions).

So when he moved to Gotham to complete his studies he prepared for a farewell to his feathered friends; said friends simply ignored him and followed him around the city. Danny assumed he wasn't going to be able to fight them, so he let them be.

This is how the phenomenon called "The Invasion of Crows" began in Gotham, the animals were not aggressive but mostly indifferent, some of them agreed to carry letters as homing pigeons (After Danny asked them for the favor) starting "Crow services"

As long as you had the money or something shiny to pay them the birds would carry messages from one place to another, ironically they would give that payment to Danny, who only sighed and let them pass to his apartment, giving them: some food, shelter and a place to sleep, although he was worried the moment his neighbor would complain about the noise.

At first he let them stay on the streets because they were supposed to be free, but after the sixth time he caught Damian Wayne trying to adopt one he just rolled his eyes and now the little ones were living with him.

So yes, when Jason finally decided to visit his neighbor he didn't expect the red eyed crowd staring at him and judging his actions, one in particular lunged at him and he swore he was about to gouge his eyes out before a voice yelled "Poe, wait! "

Said crow looked at him for a few more seconds before perch on the head of the prettiest boy he had ever seen, who approached to offer him a hand "I'm sorry, they're very overprotective" he muttered worried.

Jason almost fell over laughing when he noticed that this was B's "weird case" about the rise in crows alongside the supposed "new rogue" in town, when all he saw was a college boy with a murder of crows living in his house, maybe creating a new messaging system.

He was going to have so much fun with this, maybe he'd even manage to go on a date with his eyes intact, who knows.

[noona-clock]

Him - Part 3

Genre: College!AU, Enemies to Lovers

Pairing: Jinyoung x You (Female!Reader)

Warnings: Very mild cursing

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | Words: 2,032

About halfway through your day, you had texted Teddy about having a Self-Care Sunday, but on a Friday.

Your morning meeting with Jinyoung had left you agitated, and you’d received an essay back in one of your classes with a less than stellar grade -- totally not Jinyoung’s fault, but you were allowing yourself to be even more annoyed with him because of it, anyway. You had let your agitation get the best of you at lunchtime, and you’d spilled your soda all over your sweatshirt and jeans. The wet, sticky mess only worsened your mood; therefore, a night of sheet masks and manicures and probably a Jane Austen mini-series was definitely in order.

Teddy, unsurprisingly, had replied immediately with: “My place! 5pm!” and not for the first (nor the last) time, you had thought to yourself how glad you were to have a friend like him.

Once your last class of the day let out just after 4, you headed back to your apartment to pack up your pajamas, some face masks, nail polish, your Pride & Prejudice DVD, and some bags of popcorn. You sent a quick message to Teddy that you were on your way and more than ready for a night of pampering.

When you arrived at Teddy’s place at basically five on the dot, you were greeted by not only your best friend’s smiling face but also the smell of freshly delivered pizza.

Did you have the best best friend or what? You hadn’t even brought up ordering pizza, but he had gone and done it, anyway. He had somehow known you needed the most delicious junk food for dinner to make up for the obnoxious day you’d had.

“I guess seeing Jinyoung just messed up your whole day, huh?” Teddy quipped as you closed his front door behind you.

A look of disgust morphed your features, and you made your way to his kitchen counter to set down everything you’d brought. “I would rather not bring him up, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Okay,” your best friend chuckled. “Whatever you say. Ooh, Pride & Prejudice! And my favorite honey sheet mask?! You did have a bad day.”

“It was so mentally exhausting that you’re probably going to have to stop me from eating literally half of that pizza.”

Teddy quirked his brow at you. “Now, what kind of a friend would I be if I did that?”

A grin curved your lips, and you couldn’t stop yourself from shuffling over to him and wrapping your arms around his middle, pulling him into a tight, comforting hug.

“Thank you,” you murmured, pressing your cheek against his shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Well, I assume you’d be eating pizza and doing sheet masks and watching romantic movies alone. Which is totally fine, but it’s so much better with me,” Teddy replied, rubbing your back reassuringly. “Now, come on. This pizza’s gonna get cold, and I don’t know how much longer I can wait to see Mr. Darcy.”

“Oh, my god,” Teddy gasped when you hurried back onto the couch after taking the empty pizza box over to the kitchen.

“I’m not taking your honey mask, I promise,” you assured him as you handed him the packet, keeping the cactus flower one for yourself.

“No, not that! But thank you.” He took the mask from you, opening it carefully and reaching inside to pull out the slimy, sweet-smelling piece of cotton. “I just realized that Jinyoung is your Mr. Darcy!”

You almost dropped your mask into your lap.

“What?!” you cried, letting out a sputtering laugh. “Excuse me? Uh -- no. No, that is not at all true. And I told you not to bring him up!”

He had been doing so well! You had gotten through at least forty-five minutes of the movie without even one single mention of Jinyoung!

“No, but think about it,” Teddy urged before he leaned back and delicately placed the sheet mask over his face. “Lizzy and Darcy don’t start off the best of terms. She thinks he’s proud and arrogant, but he’s actually not all that bad. That’s what’s going on right now with you and Jinyoung.”

Of course, being a literature major, you absolutely loved stories. Romantic stories were your drug of choice, and you had practically grown up reading and watching anything having to do with Jane Austen.

Truly, you would be the first to admit if you were living a Pride & Prejudice plot.

“It really isn’t,” you argued, leaning back to put on your own sheet mask.

“Is, too,” Teddy retorted. “Just like Charlotte said about Darcy, Jinyoung isn’t really like that once you get to know him! I think you’re letting the situation get to you, and -- okay, and coming from me, this means something -- you’re being a little dramatic.”

Even though it did hurt to hear Teddy the drama major tell you that you were being dramatic... you knew he was right.

Probably right.

Your parents’ financial strain was definitely trickling down to you, and the pressure to find a job as quickly as possible created more stress on top of the stress you already had from regular college student life.

So, yes. It was entirely possible that this added stress was causing you to see Jinyoung through a more exaggerated, theatrical lens.

But Jinyoung really had said all those rude things to you yesterday! How could you be dramatic about it when he had literally told you to not even apply for the TA position because there was no chance you would get it?

“I don’t know, Teddy,” you murmured. Even though you weren’t entirely convinced you were just being dramatic, you decided to let Teddy think he was right. For now. You let out a relenting sigh and then added, “Okay, well, then tell me more about him in high school.”

“Aha!” Teddy cried triumphantly. “I knew you were interested!”

“No, I -- I’m not interested! Just tell me!” You reached over to gently hit his arm, not wanting to dislodge either of your face masks.

“I’ve got a better idea -- I’ll show you.” Teddy patted his hands around the couch cushion, obviously trying to look for his phone without disturbing his mask. When he found it, he quickly brought it up to his face and began tapping away.

You scooted closer to him, seeing he was bringing up his Facebook app. You watched silently, the dialogue in Pride & Prejudice the only noise in the room as Teddy navigated to Jinyoung’s profile and then into his photo album.

After scrolling quite a bit (high school was a few years in the past at this point, after all), Teddy clicked on Jinyoung’s graduation picture.

“Valedictorian,” you scoffed. “Of course.”

“...Weren’t you whatever comes right after Valedictorian? Second place?”

“Salutatorian,” you grumbled with a roll of your eyes. “Don’t ever tell him that. It’s just another thing he could hold over me.”

Teddy chuckled with bemusement before swiping to the next pictures. When he got to one of Jinyoung and some other guys wearing togas, he explained that was Senior Week. He pointed out his friends, telling you a little bit about them (and how Teddy had had a crush on Jackson for basically the whole four years).

As he swiped through the other pictures from Senior Week, you couldn’t help but notice that Jinyoung looked so... happy. He was smiling and posing cheesily for the camera, and you would never tell Teddy this but... it made you want to be friends with him. You weren’t sure why, but something about him in these pictures was just so enticing. Something besides his good looks.

Teddy also showed you his student council pictures (he had been elected Secretary his Junior and Senior years, which had not surprised you in the least), prom and homecoming pictures (he looked far too dashing in a suit, which also had not surprised you in the least), and pictures of the film club he had started (apparently, the first movie they’d watched had been Rear Window, one of your all-time favorites).

“See?” Teddy said as he put down his phone and slid the sheet mask off his face. “He’s a normal guy.”

“Then why was he such an asshole to me?!” you cried, following suit and taking your own mask off.

“I... honestly don’t know,” Teddy sighed. “I guess he just really wants that TA position. Or maybe he thought no one else was going to apply, and he just wanted to scare away the competition.”

Teddy reached for your discarded sheet mask, getting up to go throw them away. And just before he arrived back at the couch, he stopped. He let out a gasp.

“...What?” you asked cautiously. When Teddy gasped like that, it usually meant you wouldn’t like what he said.

“Do you want me to call him and ask?”

“Call who? Ask what?” Surely, he didn’t mean --

“Jinyoung! Ask him why he was such an asshole to you!”

You simply stared at Teddy, blinking.

What on earth were you supposed to say to that other than, “You’re joking, right?”

“No! I’ll pretend like you’re not here!” Teddy jumped back on the couch, grabbing his phone and tapping again on the screen.

“No, Teddy, I don’t think that’s a --”

But he was already pressing his phone to his ear, and you heard the muffled ringing through the speaker.

Oh, god. He was doing it.

...It’s not like you weren’t curious, but Jinyoung was smart enough to catch on, wasn’t he? And if you ever saw him again -- which you had no intention of doing -- it would be even more awkward!

“Hello?”

Oh, god. He answered.

“Jinyoung, hey!” Teddy greeted, and you buried your freshly hydrated face in your palms. “Listen, I was just curious about something.”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“So, my friend, Y/N. She told me about how you two met yesterday, and she’s very insistent that you were super rude and are an asshole. I know we weren’t exactly friends back in high school, but I mean, we knew each other. I just don’t think that sounds like you at all, and I wanted to clear the air, I guess.”

“...Oh. Well, I, uh -- I don’t want to make excuses or anything, but... she wasn’t exactly polite to me either.”

Your head snapped up, your brow furrowing deeply because what?! He had started it!

“Ah --” Teddy stammered. “Well -- she’s just... she’s kind of stressed out about trying to find a job right now. It’s -- it’s not really my story to tell, but she’s not usually rude. She’s super caring and generous once you get to know her.”

Thank you, Teddy.

“Okay... I’m sorry, but why are you telling me this?”

...Seriously?! What a little shithead!

“I’m just confused about the whole thing because I know that neither of you is really like that. Like I said, I wanted to clear some things up.”

“Ah. I see. Well, I really just think Professor Stewart will pick me, so I don’t want her to get her hopes up.”

He just thinks he knows everything, doesn’t he?!

“Okay, great,” Teddy replied a bit hurriedly, clearly feeling how annoyed you were becoming. “I’ll, uh -- I’ll tell her. But, hey. Any chance you think you guys might want to, like... hang out? Get to know each other?”

You held your breath.

...Why were you holding your breath?

You didn’t care what he had to say to that!

Not one bit!

“...I don’t think so.”

See? You didn’t care! Not one bit!

“Cool. Okay, got it. Thanks, bye!” And Teddy hung up before slowly looking over at you with quite the guilty expression.

“It’s fine!” you assured him, though your tone was clearly one of annoyance. “It’s fine because I don’t like him either. I don’t want to hang out with him or get to know him either. I’m not bothered by the fact he’s not interested in me, I’m really not. Even as a friend.”

Because you weren’t interested in him as a friend either!

It’s fine!

Part 4

[carolinesiede]

Reflecting on 2020

The strangest thing about 2020 was how familiar much of it felt: Working from home, extended periods of isolation, weeks and months blending together. To a much lesser degree, those are things I experience each year as a freelancer. And while I suspect it will take awhile before the full extent of the trauma we’ve all lived through this year fully sets in, right now I’m mostly focused on gratitude. I’m grateful for the health of my loved ones. Grateful I already had a work-from-home routine to maintain during the pandemic. And grateful that I was able to quarantine with my family for much of the year—which had its challenges but also its rewards too.

In my 2019 year-end post I wrote about feeling like my career was finally on an upward trajectory after several years of plateauing. This year obviously offered some new wrinkles in that regard. I made significantly less money and felt familiar fears about how sustainable this career actually is. But having less work also gave me more time to focus on the actual craft of writing. I feel like I reached a new level in terms of voice, clarity, and the ability to self-edit. I'm the sort of person who constantly (arguably, obsessively) strives to be better, and it’s rewarding to feel like that hard work is finally slowly starting to pay off.

In addition to devoting my quarantine time to mastering a favorite curry recipe, getting really into the Enneagram, finally learning to French braid hair, and rewatching all of New Girl, I also had some really cool opportunities scattered throughout the year. I interviewed John Barrowman about his surprise return to Doctor Who, which felt like a real milestone for me. I also contributed to the Los Angeles Times’ list of TV shows to binge-watch during quarantine, which appeared both online and in print. And thanks to everything going virtual this year, I was able to attend a press panel for the fifth season of This Is Us, which is the sort of thing I’m not usually able to do as a Chicago-based critic. 

My career is always a juggling act between film and TV, and this year made me appreciate how valuable it is to be able to move seamlessly between both worlds. I took on new TV assignments covering the first season of Stargirl and the second season of The Umbrella Academy, both of which were a blast to write about. And while I didn’t watch quite as many films as I did in my insane catch-up year last year, I did fill in some more major blindspots. I also contributed to The A.V. Club’s list of the best films of 2000 and shared my own ballot over on Letterboxd. Oh, and I set up a Letterboxd this year too!

Elsewhere, I made my debut on Bustle and The Takeout, and ended the year with a Polygon article about “Kind Movies” that pretty much sums up my entire ethos on storytelling. I was also named a Top Critic by Rotten Tomatoes, which was a real honor. But the pride and joy of my career remains my rom-com column, When Romance Met Comedy. I devoted a whopping 49,000 words to analyzing 25 different romantic comedies this year. And I’m really pleased with how the column has grown and with the positive feedback I’ve received.

I have to admit, I sometimes worry that year-end highlight reels like this one can make my life seem easy or glamorous in a way that doesn’t reflect what it’s like to actually live through it. I'm tremendously lucky to get to do what I do, but I also struggle a lot—both with the logistics of this career and with bigger questions about what value it brings to the world. My goal is to approach 2021 with a greater sense of intentionality. I want to be more thoughtful in my career choices, more purposeful in how I use social media, and more active in my activism and politics. I’d also like to do 20 push-ups a day everyday for the whole year, but we’ll see how long that resolution actually lasts.

Finally, on a sadder note, one other defining experience of the year was the loss of my dear internet friend Seb Patrick, who I’ve known for years through the Cinematic Universe podcast. Seb created a wonderfully positive nerd space online, and was a big part of my early quarantine experience thanks to the Avengers watchalongs I did with the CU gang in the spring. I’m so grateful for all the fun pop culture chats we got to have throughout the years, several of which are linked below. Seb is tremendously missed, and there’s a fund for his family here.

As we head into 2021, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing and podcasts I did in 2020. If you enjoyed my work, you can support me on Kofi or PayPal. Or you can just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends! That really means a lot.

My 15 favorite films of 2020

My 15 favorite TV shows of 2020

Op-eds, Features, and Interviews

Women Pioneered The Film Industry 100 Years Ago. Why Aren’t We Talking About Them? [Bustle]

2020 is the year of the Kind Movie — and it couldn’t have come at a better time [Polygon]

Make a grocery store game plan for stress-free shopping [The Takeout]

What’s Going On: A primer on the call to defund the police [Medium]

Doctor Who’s John Barrowman on the return of Captain Jack Harkness [The A.V. Club]

Episodic TV Coverage

Doctor Who S12

This Is Us S4 and S5

Supergirl S5

Stargirl S1

The Umbrella Academy S2

The Crown S4

NBC’s Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical!

When Romance Met Comedy

Is The Ugly Truth the worst romantic comedy ever made?

Working Girl’s message is timeless, even if the hair and the shoulder pads aren’t

You’ve Got Mail and the power of the written (well, typed) word

Love & Basketball was a romantic slam dunk

How did My Big Fat Greek Wedding make so much money?

America eased into the ’60s with the bedroom comedies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson

I can’t stop watching Made Of Honor

Notting Hill brought two rom-com titans together

It’s time to rediscover one of Denzel Washington’s loveliest and most under-seen romances

Something’s Gotta Give is the ultimate quarantine rom-com

20 years ago, But I’m A Cheerleader reclaimed camp for queer women

On its 60th anniversary, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment looks like an indictment of toxic masculinity

The Wedding Planner made rom-com stars out of Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey

After 25 years, Clueless is still our cleverest Jane Austen adaptation

William Shakespeare invented every romantic comedy trope we love today

Edward Norton made his directorial debut by walking a priest, a rabbi, and a Dharma into a Y2K rom-com

The forgotten 1970s romantic comedy that raged against our broken, racist system

His Girl Friday redefined the screwball comedy at 240 words per minute

Before Wonder Woman soared into theaters, the hacky My Super Ex-Girlfriend plummeted to Earth

Dirty Dancing spoke its conscience with its hips

The rise of Practical Magic as a spooky season classic

In a dire decade for the genre, Queen Latifah became a new kind of rom-com star

Years before Elsa and Anna, Tangled reinvigorated the Disney princess tradition

Palm Springs is the definitive 2020 rom-com

Celebrate Christmas with the subversive 1940s rom-com that turned gender roles on their head

The A.V. Club Film & TV Reviews

Netflix’s To All The Boys sequel charms, though not quite as much as the original

The Photograph only occasionally snaps into focus

Jane Austen's Emma gets an oddball, sumptuous, and smart new adaptation

Pete Davidson delivers small-time charms in Big Time Adolescence

Council Of Dads crams a season of schmaltzy storytelling into its premiere

In Belgravia, Downton Abbey’s creator emulates Dickens to limited success

Netflix’s Love Wedding Repeat adds some cringe to the rom-com

Netflix takes another shot at Cyrano de Bergerac with queer love triangle The Half Of It

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is a feel-good origin story for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first troupe

Sara Bareilles’ melodic Apple TV+ series Little Voice is still finding itself

Netflix’s sexist rom-com sensation gets a minor upgrade in The Kissing Booth 2

With Howard, Disney+ movingly honors the lyricist who gave the Little Mermaid her voice

The Broken Hearts Gallery tries to find catharsis in heartbreak

Netflix’s ghostly musical series Julie And The Phantoms hits some charming tween high notes

After We Collided slides toward R-rated camp—but not far enough

Holidate is a bawdy start to Netflix’s holiday rom-com slate

Kristen Stewart celebrates the Happiest Season in a pioneering queer Christmas rom-com

Isla Fisher gets her own Enchanted in the Disney Plus fairy tale Godmothered

Podcast Appearances

Debating Doctor Who: “Orphan 55”

It Pod To Be You: The Wedding Singer

Reality Bomb: Defending Doctor Who’s “Closing Time”

The Televerse: Spotlight on Doctor Who Season 12

You Should See The Other Guy: The Ugly Truth

Only Stupid Answers: Stargirl’s season finale

Motherfoclóir: Ireland and the Hollywood Rom-Com

Called in to Nerdette’s Clueless retrospective episode

Cinematic Universe Appearances

Cinematic Universe: Superman IV: The Quest For Peace

Cinematic Universe: Birds of Prey

Cinematic Universe: Infinity War watchalong

Cinematic Universe: Endgame watchalong

Cinematic Universe: Terminator 2

Cinematic Universe: Josie and the Pussycats

Cinematic Universe: The Cuppies 2020 (Cuppies of Cuppies)

And here are similar year-end wrap-ups I did in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

[yehet-me-up]

A Truth Universally Acknowledged - Chapter One

Pairing (this chapter): Junmyeon x Reader (female) 

Genre: Jane Austen-inspired, Regency fun + angst 

Rating: PG (this chapter)

Word Count: 5,296

Summary: A chance meeting brings a handsome, charming man named Jun into your life and your heart. But as your family gets used to their new life after a scandalous loss of money and status, the obstacles between the two of you stack up. 

Moodboard by @gingersaysjump​ A GODDESS, TRULY 😍 

A/N: I’m indebted to Shanae and Kat @yeoldontknow​​ for support and plotting with me and for fanning the flames of this series. 💕😘

Story Masterlist

The meal is half finished by the time your father finally joins the breakfast table; ambling and struggling to remain proud even in the face of ruin. 

He sits down at the head of the table like the king of a crumbling country, lost and diminished with lack of purpose.

Your mother watches him anxiously, her toast abandoned on her plate as she takes in his drawn brow. He clutches a letter in his hand, his mouth thinning to a tight line.

Across the table, you and your sister meet each other’s gaze. She chews anxiously on her bottom lip and you give her a small shrug of surrender. Since word came out that your family’s fortune was lost in a series of bad investments, the news of your fate has felt like a sword hanging above your head.

But now, apparently, the sword has fallen.

Your father clears his throat. ‘John has written to me.’ The words stretch out into a pause.

With a noise of frustration your mother drops her glass to the table. ‘And?’

He can’t meet her eyes, staring at the unfolded paper in his hand. ‘The house has been purchased. And at ten percent over what we asked for.’

Your sister raises her brow. ‘Why on earth would someone pay more?’

He clears his throat, awkwardly looking out the wide dining room window to the lush garden beyond. ‘We... came to an agreement.’

Dread settles low in your stomach. Whatever this agreement is, you have a sickening feeling it involves you.

‘As Mary and Daniel will be coming with your mother and I to Bath, the house will be lacking proper help,’ he says softly, ashamed. ‘The new owner inquired as to whether my daughters would be willing to remain at the house under his employ. Your room and board will be provided for.’

Your sister stands, fire in her eyes. She slams her palms on the thick wood table. She is a spark, always a roaring blaze, while you are the embers, burning hot beneath the surface, consuming yourself with indignation.

‘You mean he offered us the gracious opportunity to be servants in our own home? And you accepted?’ She demands sharply, rooting out the truth with a voice like a knife. 

Next to you, your mother drops her head into her hands, quietly weeping. ‘How could you?’ she pleads. 

When she looks up her cheeks are shiny with tears. ‘How will our daughters ever find husbands now Richard? What will become of them?’

He straightens, trying to regain some of his pride. ‘It seemed the best situation… for all.’

Your mother and sister scoff but all you can do is stare at the way the light glints off the water in your cup in front of you. Sadness settles over you, heavy and resigned, and you try to find something positive to cling to. 

‘This is humiliating,’ your sister hisses. She folds her arm and goes to stand at the window, radiating shame and heat.

‘We have hardly enough money for your mother and I to live. There is not enough to- you would have had to support yourself somehow anyway. There are still those in this village who are sympathetic to us. It seemed... the best solution.’

‘What about Bradley?’ your sister asks. The fact that your brother is able to work a respectable job and earn his own living is a wedge between him and you two.

‘Your brother will remain here in town, as well,’ he says. ‘The Allens have consented to let him sleep in the back room of the shop, in exchange for some extra work he will do from now on.’

Silence falls in the room. 

Finally you speak, resigned to this fate. ‘When?’

Everyone turns to your father. ‘Well. Your mother and I are essentially packed. The furniture, the art, most of the clothes will remain here with the house or be sold to appease our debts.’

‘We can’t even take our clothes?’ your sister demands. Her one true love is fashion and this must cut her deep.

He raises a hand. ‘Now, now darling. You can select three gowns to take with you to the servant’s quarters. That should be plenty. And Mary has a few spare work dresses she can leave behind for you and your sister.’

She glares at him, resembling a snake, spitting venom. ‘When? A month? A week?’

Your father pauses, rubbing his eyes. He looks as old as time itself when he finally looks around the table. ‘Tomorrow.’

The word is akin to a punch in your gut and you gasp. It’s drowned out by your mother and sister speaking in unison.

He makes a noise like a bear. ‘Your mother and I will depart in the morning. The two of you will move into the servants cottage tomorrow and begin preparing the house for the new tenant. Anna will be staying here, she will show you what to do.’

‘I’ll be meeting him later today to formalize the papers with the clerk.’ Message delivered, he slumps back in his chair. The last of his kingdom gone.

The wounded pride, your family name tarnished, you could tolerate. What use have you for the opinions of the small-minded people in town, as long as those you love are happy and in good health?

But the sight of him like this, broken and hollow, undoes you. Robs you of the naive hope you’ve kept hidden in your heart for weeks. That somehow this was all a joke. That it would somehow be fine. 

The stories you read had built up in your mind a fervent hope in divine intervention. A distant relative who would take you in. A gift from a wealthy friend who takes pity on you. A fairy godmother or a magical witch to grant your deepest wishes.

But as you listen to the sounds of baking through the open kitchen door, you know it is well and truly over. Neither of your parents have siblings of means. Your best friend, Maggie, has to work as a seamstress to help her husband’s meager income. Fairies and witches only exist between the pages of books.

No one is coming to rescue you. 

Your parents will be far away. Any hope you had of a life spent in the gardens - reading and laughing with your sister and Maggie - is dashed. Freedom leeches from your life and you find it suddenly very hot in the room.

Soon, you will be forced to marry to survive, whoever will take you. Either that or spend your days working in the kitchens, scrubbing pots and floors and pillow cases until your fingers grow old with age. 

‘I’m coming with you,’ your sister says harshly. ‘I want to look this man in the eyes before you sign our fates away.’

He waves a hand listlessly in agreement. Despair roars in your chest and you stand abruptly, chair clattering to the floor behind you.

‘I’m sorry, I have to- I can’t breathe,’ you say, heart thundering in your chest.

You turn and rush through the entry to the kitchen, your father calling after you. But you don’t stop as you run through the back door out into the yard. The chill of winter is finally melting from the earth and it cools your skin as you run like a woman possessed.

The length of your dress threatens to trip you and you gather the fabric in your arms with an uncharacteristic growl of frustration. Frustration at the stupid material, impeding your desperate run. Frustration at your father and mother for what feels like abandonment. Frustration at the men in your family for losing your very livelihood. 

Frustration at whoever purchased Springwoods for offering this ludicrous arrangement. He must be an old man, you think savagely, as you leave the neatly trimmed garden of your family’s home and enter the wild field beyond.

The path through the expansive, unclaimed territory at the edge of the town leads to a small hill and you dash up it as though salvation is at the top. 

An old man with a miserable wife and several greedy children. You hate them all already with a fire you didn’t know you possessed.

The vitriol of your thoughts makes you stop and catch your breath. You drop to your knees in the long grass with surrender. 

No, you shake your head. No matter how horrible this feels, you vow to not let circumstances turn you cruel, mean, and bitter. 

For long moments you breathe, savoring the sweet smell in the air. It must have rained last night while you slept, for the air is rich and full with the scent of earth and the ground is damp beneath your palms. 

You wish it would rain again; cleanse the world back to what it was before the news of your family’s ruin. But the sky is clear and the sun shines tauntingly through the white clouds. 

If the world refuses to offer you relief, you’ll give it to yourself. Underneath the great tree at the top of the hill you allow the tears to fall. Up here there’s no one but the wind to hear your sobs.  

Just when you begin to wonder if there are no more miracles in the world, you see something that feels positively magical.

On your left you hear barking and you watch as a large golden-brown dog comes barreling up to you. Your mouth falls open with surprise as the creature reaches you. 

He pants, his tongue to the side. His mouth pulls back in what you would consider a smile if he were human.

‘Well, hello there,’ you say with a laugh. He roots himself under one of your arms, wiggling to settle himself against you. ‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.’

You giggle when he looks up at you, eyes wide with innocence. Without hesitation you begin to pet his head. He closes his eyes and makes a rumbling noise of pleasure that melts your heart.

‘Where did you come from, little love?’ you ask him around the thickness in your throat.

He lifts his head and his tail starts to wag, thumping against your side and back. You see what he’s excitedly watching - a man is making his way up the hill. 

A noise of surprise leaves you. You can’t help it, this man looks like an angel or a God; something powerful and radiant, impossible and otherworldly.

His black hair sweeps messily across his forehead in the wind. The white shirt and black pants he wears fit him perfectly. He must have some money, then, if he can afford such nice, tailored garments. 

He’s not from here, though; you absolutely would have remembered meeting him. He seems to have appeared suddenly from your imagination. His face is open and unbelievably handsome in a way that makes you smooth your free hand through your hair self-consciously.

When he reaches you and your new furry companion, he laughs. The sound is melodic and deep, reaching down to your bones.

‘There you are, you rascal,’ he says to the dog with amusement in his warm, dark eyes. ‘I see you’ve made a new friend.’

His attention turns to you and heat blooms in your face under his gentle scrutiny. There are several boys in town you entertained a fancy for growing up, but none of them made you feel this way - the way the air feels heavy and dangerous when a storm is brewing. 

But this is not a boy, you think. This is a man. 

To avoid embarrassing yourself further you turn away, wiping at the tears on your cheeks with the back of your hand.

From the edge of your vision you see him sit next to you, leaning his head on one elbow and stretching his legs out in front of him. He does it casually, as though he happens upon women crying in the wild every day. 

You sniffle, hating how small and fragile it sounds.

‘I think our new friend is sad, Oliver,’ he says softly, petting the dog’s head. ‘I wonder if there is anything we can do to help her.’

When you turn back to him he’s looking up at you with warmth and compassion. The sincerity and honesty of him is readily apparent.

‘You already did, just by being here,’ you answer, attempting a small smile.

He smiles broadly and you think of the stars, shining on a clear summer night. You think of him as a creature from the forest beyond this field, sent by magic to come and whisk you away from your fate. 

You imagine him riding away with you on a great white horse like some knight of old. In this moment you’d go wherever he wanted to take you.

‘No one should be alone when they are crying,’ he says gently.

His mouth tugs to the side, his thick brows pull together. He looks as though he speaks from experience and you wonder what sadness has visited his life.

Against reason you feel instinctively protective of him. Something in his nature is too open, too ready to help, and you feel a desire to shield him from everyone in the world that would take advantage of him.

Oliver shakes himself before resting his head on your knee, looking at you and begging you to pet him. You chuckle and wind your fingers through the soft fur at his neck. 

The man laughs, the rich sound spreading along your skin like a balm. ‘Sorry about him, he’s a bit… wild. He’s not used to being in the company of beautiful ladies.’

He fights the tug of his lips as he watches you. His words undress you with his boldness, warm your heart and make your chest feel pleasantly heavy.

‘Untamed, wild things are the best of all, I think,’ you answer confidently, leaning back on your own elbow, mirroring his pose.

Oliver stretches out in response, sticking his nose in between the fabric at your knees and huffing. The man sighs. It’s impossible to tear your focus away from the playful glint in his eyes, the comfort you feel around him wholly unprecedented

He raises a brow and cocks his head, considering. ‘Yes, I think you are absolutely right.’ He smiles at you like the two of you now share a secret. 

If he were Joseph, the barrister your mother has been shoving you towards for years, he’d turn the conversation to matters of politics. If he were Lord Clarke, he’d bore you to tears with tales of his days at sea with the Navy. If he were your brother Bradley, he’d make some inappropriate joke to get a rise out of you. 

But he proves himself to be an unexpected kind of man.

‘Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave…’ he says dreamily, looking up at the swaying branches of the great tree before meeting your focus once again.

This time there’s a heat, a knowing, in his expression that feels like the time you burned yourself on a candle. But this burn is far more pleasant.

You laugh with joy and surprise, the grief and anguish from an hour ago feel acres away from you. 

It occurs to you to remember your manners. You should sit up, straighten your dress; ask after his name, his family, his occupation. But up here, above the town, slightly damp and dirty, amongst the wind and the unruly grass, you can’t find it in you to care. 

‘You like Keats?’

He nods. ‘I prefer Lord Byron, myself. But I can’t deny the beauty of Keats.’

Delight flares in your chest. ‘I adore Byron, the scoundrel. ‘Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.’’

He smiles and hums, satisfied at something. The sun breaks through the clouds and he follows it, watching as it dances along the folds of your dress down to the sliver of exposed skin at your ankle.

You should find your dignity and cover it. He should stop looking. But neither of you move. 

He breathes deeply and you watch as the motion moves the fabric of his shirt. Absently you wonder what his skin would be like beneath your lips. If it would be as warm and soft as it looks.

The bell in town distantly sounds the hour and you both jolt; the spell is broken. You tuck your legs under you, feeling as though a pitcher of cold water has been poured over your head.

The wildness in his eyes is hidden safely away when he looks back to you. ‘I’m sorry, I have an appointment in town I cannot miss.’

You nod sadly, wishing you could stay here forever. ‘I should get back to-’ you start, unable to give voice to the tangle of circumstances that await you back home. ‘I should get back.’

He stands, dusting himself off. Oliver stirs, raising himself and running in a lazy circle around his master. 

The man moves closer, offering you his hands. Something warns you not to touch him. Warns you that once you know what his palms feel like against yours, the sensation will haunt you all the rest of your days.

Ignoring reason, you reach for him with a recklessness born of longing. He clasps his hands around yours and pulls you upright. You stare at him and savor the heat and the roughness of him against you, unwilling and unable to release him.

His thumbs lightly stroke the top of your hands; a thrilling and foreign sensation builds in you. The way he watches you reminds you of the cover of a book you saw, hidden away in the back of the shop. Swirls of reds and oranges. A couple in an embrace. Hands and lips and nakedness and everything forbidden and raw and sensual you had longed to know.

Your rational mind reminds you of your family, waiting for you, mourning and broken. You take a step back, dropping your hands and regarding him with surprise and a tinge of fear. 

This is a dangerous thing. And you cannot afford the luxury of danger.

You curtsy for him, trying to remember how you are supposed to act. ‘Good day, sir.’

He frowns, shaken. But his good breeding takes over and he bows to you formally in return, dissonant with the lawless nature sprawling around you.

‘Good day, miss,’ he says politely in return. ‘I hope to see you again.’

Swallowing all the desperate and foolish things you with to say to him, you simply nod. Before you can do something truly reckless you turn and hurry down the hill.

‘Wait, I forgot to get your name!’ he calls out, sounding desperate.

You turn and don’t fight the smile that graces your lips. You shout your name to him and he reaches a hand in the air, pretending to catch it and tuck it in his breast pocket.

‘My name is Jun,’ he shouts back and you mimic his motion, pretending to hold his name in your hand.

For long seconds you hold his gaze, once again wishing you could leave with him and never return. When you turn from his sight you imagine hiding his name away inside your chest.

The walk back to your house feels effortless, as though you are floating on air. A giddy lightness lives in your heart alongside his name and refuses to abandon you.

You skip breakfast and stay in bed the next morning for as long as you can, savoring the softness and comfort of your bed, knowing you won’t sleep in it again. 

When you cannot delay any further you rise and dress yourself in a simple purple dress and plain shoes. 

With a heavy heart you pack two more dresses, one plain and blue, the other white and finer, into a square of fabric with some underclothes. Along with that you add a pair of sturdier walking shoes, the essentials you need for your hygiene, and your favorite book of stories. 

Once the task is complete you linger to make the bed, straightening the already tidy room, and to stare out the small window out at the garden and the field beyond. 

You sigh. Yesterday you felt magic in your fingertips, that around Jun anything was possible. 

Today, by yourself, you feel small and human and fragile. As though you are already fading away in the background of his house. 

‘Time to go,’ you say to yourself, to the room that is no longer yours. 

Gathering the corners of the fabric together, you pull the small bundle into your arms. In the hallway you find your sister with a similar pile of fabric and items.

‘I don’t care what he says, I’m taking four dresses,’ she says, indignant and regal, like a queen. 

You laugh, reassured that even though everything has changed, you still have each other. 

The departure of your parents is strained and emotional, but neither you nor your sister cry as they drive off. You’ll need all the strength you have to face the days ahead and it wouldn’t do to break down now.

Once their carriage disappears around the bend you go to set up your meager possessions in the small corner of the servant’s cottage. Two beds and a small closet to share now belong to you and your sister. A short few minutes later you head off to the house to begin your new life as servants. 

The two of you find Anna, the housekeeper, in the kitchen inventorying the food. Lucy, a woman in her early twenties and a close friend of you and your sister, gives you a nod as she kneads a mound of dough. 

Aside from Anna, the only members of the staff left are Frederick the butler, promoted from footman at Daniel’s departure, and Lucy, a kitchenmaid who is now the head cook of the house with Mary gone.

Anna notices you both standing there. ‘Good morning ladies. We all know the state of affairs here,’ she says with characteristic bluntness. 

‘Your father told me the new family is bringing a ladies maid. So, one of you will help out in the kitchens with the cooking and one of you will need to tidy the rooms and do the laundry. It’s up to you to decide, I know you’re both capable young ladies.’

You and your sister look at each other and both start talking at the same time. 

‘Well, obviously -’ ‘Of course, I’d-’

She laughs and looks at Anna. ‘I’ll cook and she’ll clean.’

‘Exactly,’ you say in agreement, a smile pulling at your lips.

Everyone knows you’re an awful cook and she’s messier than a hoard of wild animals. Anna chuckles and rolls her eyes. Maybe this won’t be so awful, you think with a small candle of hope in your heart.

‘What time are they arriving?’ you ask Anna, already imagining the dozens of things that must need to be done.

‘They’ll be here for dinner.’ She says before waving a hand at you both. ‘Go on, get out of the house. Enjoy the day. Lucy and I have the meals for today. The house is in fine state. We can start on your duties tomorrow morning,’ she says with a wink.

‘Let’s go to the market, shall we?’ your sister asks, a light in her eyes you haven’t seen in weeks.

The air in the town is hot and close, crowded with shoppers and sellers. You and your sister cling to each other until you pass through to one of the quieter side streets. 

Neither of you are inclined toward melancholy. Despite the change in fortune and status, you’re both determined to enjoy yourselves.

‘Hmm, what shall we buy today?’ she muses, knowing full well neither of you can afford a single thing.

Always ready to play a game, you join her. ‘Let’s buy another horse for our extravagant carriage. Perhaps some jewel-encrusted slippers for the next ball.’

She laughs, squeezing your arm. A shop selling ribbons, bows, and other assorted fabric is just ahead. She dashes inside and unfurls a length of long pink ribbon from a display, wrapping it around her waist dramatically.

‘And I shall buy a new dress, the most lavish and expensive one we can find,’ she says, fanning her lashes and pouting her lips absurdly. 

You laugh so hard you almost snort and clasp your hand to your mouth. She fixes the ribbon and twines her arm through yours again, pulling you forward, cackling happily in your ear.

On days like these the loneliness and drudgery of country life seems far away and manageable. On days like these, when the sun is shining and there are reasons to laugh, life seems downright idyllic.

The two of you round a corner and the sight of a pair of men up ahead makes your heart leap into your throat.

Though he’s cleaned up a bit, one of the men is definitely Jun. Color rises in your cheeks at the sight of him, the way his lips pout as he speaks to his companion. 

He laughs, reaching a hand to the other man’s arm in delight. This man wears the standard red and gold military dress, highlighting the auburn tint to his hair. Jun is much more formally attired today in white trousers, polished leather boots, and a high-collared, deep blue shirt, confirming your suspicion that he has money. 

His eyes crinkle in the corners and your stomach flips with something hot and untamable. You freeze to the spot and your sister tugs on your arm.

‘What? What is it?’ your sister asks, looking around.

You pull her back slightly around the corner so you can observe. ‘That man, up ahead. That’s the one I met yesterday. Jun,’ you say, unable to help your grin when you say his name.

She turns and scans the crowd before frowning. ‘Oh no. Him? In the blue shirt?’ 

You frown in confusion at the intense dislike in her voice and follow her gaze. ‘Certainly you can’t dislike Jun?’ you ask, searching her face for signs she’s joking. ‘He must be new to town, what can he have done?’

Aside from Jun and his friend the only other people on the street are women and children shopping for food at the grocers across the way.

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the gentleman in the blue shirt - I met him yesterday,’ she points, none too discreetly, to Jun. Her intense bright eyes brook no laughter. ‘That is Lord Junmyeon Kim, the man who has purchased Springwoods from us.’

‘Oh.’ Your whole being sags in disappointment against the stone wall. 

Already your foolish and impetuous heart had fantasized about seeing him again. Last night, when you told your sister about the things he said, the way he made you feel, you’d felt brighter than the moon shining in the sky.

But if he is the new owner of your family estate, then there are several monumental obstacles between you now. While he is no old man, he might be mean and dreadful underneath his cheerful exterior. 

When he realizes you are not only a servant, but a servant in his very home, he will certainly never take you seriously. You clasp your hands together at your chest to stifle your dismay. How on earth can you face him now?

‘And so we meet again,’ comes a warm male voice to your right.

You turn, gasping in surprise when you see Jun and his companion standing next to you. You were so distracted you didn’t even hear them approach. 

He’s fighting a smile again, his lips twitching at catching you off guard.

‘Hello again, Lord Kim,’ your sister says pointedly, curtsying to him. ‘May I introduce you to my sister?’

You grit your teeth and follow her lead, forcing yourself to keep your emotion locked inside as you curtsy to the new Master of Springwoods. Your hope and joy at his presence turns to embarrassment in the pit of your stomach as you straighten to look at him.

He looks to your sister and falters, his attention darting between the two of you, no doubt putting things together. His easy, open expression draws back into something confused. After a beat he bows to you both.

‘Pleasure to see you again, ladies,’ he says, resigned, brows pulled together. ‘You must be Lord Hayward’s youngest daughter then?’ 

You nod. The moment stretches out while you get lost in his eyes once more. You wish there was some way to undo this moment and return you to the purity and lightness of yesterday on the hill. No doubt he realizes how lowly you are in comparison to him and wants nothing further to do with you. Given the circumstances, you shouldn’t want anything to do with him, either.

Blessedly, you're all saved by the military man.

He bows. 'Don't worry, I'll introduce myself,' he says gamely. 'My name is Colonel Kim Minseok. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, ladies.' 

The corners of his mouth tip up like a cat and you feel your sister grab at your elbow like you've always done when trying to discreetly get each other's attention.

There's something playful and mischievous in his face and you look between the two of them. Your sister's cheeks color and she bites her lip. As always, she is able to recover and cut through awkward situations with grace.

'So, what brings the two of you to the market today?' she asks the Colonel in an attempt at conversation.

'Ah, well. My friend Jun here is new to the life of a Lord and I decided he simply must stop dressing like some retired military scoundrel and look the part,' he says, motioning to a shop up the road.

'Oooh, I love Taylor and Sons,' your sister exclaims, clasping her hands together in delight.

She takes a step towards the Colonel and asks how a military man came to be have such exquisite taste in fashion. In the space left by the pair of them you and Jun regard each other.

‘And how are you today... Lord Kim?’ You hope he can’t see the way you knead your palm with your thumb in the folds of your dress, doing your best to stay composed. 

He winces. 'Please, call me Jun.' His expression implores you, attempting to draw you back into his warmth.

But if your mother bred nothing else into you, she always encouraged you to be polite and formal. Though she could never curb your wild and imaginative nature, you can't help but follow her lessons on decorum. It gives you the feeling of being in control in spite of your aching heart, and you cling to it.

'I think we had better remain on formal terms, Lord Kim, given our mutual statuses,' you say softly.

'Please, if we could -' he starts, reaching a hand to the space between you, seeming saddened at thought.

But something behind him catches your attention and he stops speaking to look at what caused the sudden change in your mood.

Your older brother Bradley steps out of the men’s club opposite you, looking far more disheveled than usual, especially given the early hour. He looks awful, hair matted and eyes hollow, a large stain on his shirt.

He darts a calculating look up and down the street before turning up his collar and hurrying off. It's such an odd moment you can hardly believe it's the same person you've known all your life.

'Do you know that man?' Jun asks, perplexed. 

If he was gambling... Gods, how much more trouble can this family cause in one week, you think with a sigh. An instinct to preserve what is left of your family’s reputation makes you move.

'Sister, we must go,' you call to her abruptly, interrupting her conversation and stepping forward to grasp her clothed elbow.

She looks at you with confusion, as do Lord Kim and Colonel Minseok. 'Now?'

'Yes, now,' you say, trying to convey to her the urgency of the moment with a look. 'Please.'

With a sad look to the Colonel she nods and winds her arm through yours. 'Well, it's been a pleasure Colonel.' She smiles at him and her mouth sours with tension when she looks at Jun. 'Lord Kim.'

The last thing you see as you pull her back towards the direction Bradley went is the unguarded expression of longing on Jun's face as he watches you hurry away.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND ACQUISITION

Every one of you is working on a space that contains at least one has to make the software easy to use. The thing is, he'd know enough not to care what they thought. I, Ada have lost, while hacker languages C, Perl, Python, Smalltalk, Lisp. As with office space, the number of startups founded by business people who then went looking for hackers to create their own societies where intelligence is the most important skills founders need to learn.1 If you're designing a tool, for example, you can say later Oh yeah, we had to make search better, and I answered twenty, I could see them thinking that we didn't count for much. Compared to other industrialized countries the US is disorganized about routing people into careers. Which means it's doubly important to hire the best people.2 I wrote about earlier: the fatal pinch, but how clean the path to the finished program was.

So if you start a company.3 So please, get on with it.4 And most importantly, their status depends on how ambitious you feel. School is a strange one. And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. I'm not saying that issues don't matter to voters. Partly because successful startups have lots of employees, so it is unfair to delay. But teachers like him were individuals swimming upstream. All I can say is, try hard to do it as a business, rather than because they wanted to. It was really close, too. 6 each founder 250 12. Teenage kids used to have a deft touch.5

Even a company with 100 employees and one with 10,000, even if your group has only 10 people.6 Seed firms are like angels in that they invest exclusively in the earliest phase. The average MIT graduate wants to work at Google or Microsoft, because it's easier to sell at first, but mainly because the more founders you have, the worse disagreements you'll have. The founders are required to vest their shares over four years.7 Half the founders I talk to don't know whether they're default alive or default dead, but we're not willing to admit that to ourselves, because that's where smart people meet. And while they probably have bigger ambitions now, this alone brings them a billion dollars a year.8 Livable towns? They just need something to chase.9 The best way to explain how it all works is to follow the case of a hypothetical very fortunate startup as it shifts gears through successive rounds.

One of the reasons Jane Austen's novels are so good is that she read them out loud to your friends as something you'd written, you'll feel all too keenly what an imposition that kind of thing people don't plan, so you're more likely to get them in a society where it's ok to be overtly ambitious, and in fact can't be done by collaborators and design can't? Above all, they slow you down: instead of starting to ask too late whether you're default alive or default dead.10 We had office chairs so cheap that the arms all fell off.11 For example, many startups in America begin in places where it's not really legal to run a startup are prone to wicked cases of buyer's remorse. That's the main reason I wrote this. This is less the rule now, partly because the disasters of the twentieth century.12 The Selling of the President 1968, Nixon knew he had less charisma than Humphrey, and thus simply refused to debate him on TV.13 What struck me at the time, I would have seen that being smart was more important.14 And for many if not most startups, ours began with a core of fanatically devoted users, and all Evan and Joshua had to do it, and selling, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen. But beyond that they didn't want to be smart, and nothing brings people closer than a common enemy.15 They are doubly hosed: the general partners themselves are less able, and yet they have harder problems to solve, because the people I worked with were some of my best friends.

Occasionally startups go from seed funding direct to acquisition, however, and I feel as if I have by now learned to understand everything publishers mean to tell me about a book, and perhaps even move to the sort of backslapping extroverts one thinks of as typically American. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. The advantage of raising money from friends and family is that they're easy to find. Hiring people is rarely the way to fix that. If there are seven or eight, disagreements can linger and harden into factions. C, Perl have won. So at the last dinner; it's more of a party. Morale is key in design. I didn't really grasp it at the time what we were practicing for. That's big company thinking.16 Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere. The most important way to not spend money is by not hiring people.

The way to get rich from a startup is to run into intellectual property problems. Unless you're in a market where products are as undifferentiated as cigarettes or vodka or laundry detergent, spending a lot on brand advertising is a sign of breakage. So if you want to, but you have to do is other things.17 The restrictiveness of big company jobs is particularly hard on programmers, because the essence of programming is to build new things. I was persistent, but I don't believe it till you get the check. That's a problem, because looking down on the user, but you knew there would be no more Calvin Coolidges. It might be hard to find successful adults now who don't claim to have been cases of molecular bonding rather than nuclear fusion. Then you can gradually transform yourself from a consulting company, and that would probably be replaced, as if you couldn't get anything done unless there was someone with the corresponding job title. Nor does it harm you in the hope you'll be able to brag that he was an investor. They were helpful in negotiating deals, for example.

This pattern is repeated constantly in startup hubs. By accepting the term sheet, and then have to call them back to tell them you were just kidding, you are in big trouble. But I decided not to, because that's what it means is to have a deft touch. To a scientist, at least for programmers. I was learning so little that I wasn't even learning what the choices were, let alone negotiate the terms, so the deal fell through. Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. With the help of some part-time jobs they made it last 18 months. And in any case, many technical ideas do have political implications. But in fact that place was the perfect space for a startup at all, because if your sponsor goes out of business?

Notes

We didn't let him off, either as truth or heresy. Which is why, when I became an employer. You should probably start from the rule of law per se but from which Renaissance civilization radiated.

Bureaucrats manage to think of a handful of companies to be closing, not like soccer; you don't have to deliver these sentences as if having good intentions were enough to be when it was considered the most promising opportunities, it is. And yet if he were a first—e.

At first literature took a painfully long time I thought there wasn't, because it is very long: it has to grind. They want so much more attractive to investors, you can't easily get a false positive, this would probably be the fact that investment is a very noticeable change in how Stripe felt. As a friend with small children to consider how low this number could be made. That's a valid point.

Sheep act the way they have less money, then used a TV for a group to consider behaving the opposite way as part of a severe-looking little box with a cap. You're too early if it's not uncommon for startups is uninterruptability. That's very cheap, 1/10 success rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would give you term sheets.

If you want to lead. For similar reasons it might help to be at the end of the growth in wealth, the police in the narrowest sense. Most of the growth in wealth, and know the actual amount of time on schleps, and stir.

And for those interested in each type of proficiency test any apprentice might have. Many will consent to b rather than insufficient effort to see it in the beginning. The wave of the first duty of the incompetence of newspapers is that it's a departure from his family, that suits took over during a critical period. If you want to change.

Maybe markets will eventually get comfortable with potential earnings. If you weren't around then it's hard to make peace with Spain, and there didn't seem to be vigorously enforced. Their inexperience makes them overbuild: they'll create huge, analog brain state. When you fix one bug happens to compensate for another.

The empirical evidence suggests that if you like a ragged comb.

Currently we do. Though they are themselves typical users. If I paint someone's house, though I think in general.

In either case the money, buy beans in giant cans from discount stores. They assumed that their system can't be buying users; that's a pyramid scheme. As far as I know it didn't to undergraduates on the spot very easily. They can't estimate your minimum capital needs that precisely.

We wasted little time on is a way in which those considered more elegant consistently came out shorter perhaps after being macroexpanded or compiled. In sufficiently disordered times, even the flaws of big companies weren't plagued by internal inefficiencies, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but they were more dependent on banks, who would have been doing so because otherwise competitors would take Abelson and Sussman's quote a step further. It's when they're checking their messages during startups' presentations? 92.

But an associate is not economic inequality. On their job listing page, they were just getting kids to be important ones. I can't predict which these will be, unchanging, but they get a patent is now the founder visa in a situation where they are not one of the things you're taught. And yet there is a trap set by evil companies for the same time.

Even though we made a lot of people, how little autonomy one would say we depend on closing a deal to move forward. Y Combinator. Buy an old-fashioned idea.

If you're expected to do that.

Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation reaches a certain field, and you have to be vigorously enforced.

The meanings of these, and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware. Basically, the CIA runs a venture fund called In-Q-Tel that is largely true, because investing later would probably also a name. Of the two elsewhere, but they seem like I overstated the case of heirs, professors, politicians, and instead of reacting. Though we're happy to provide this service, and configure domain names etc.

A lot of companies to do that. More precisely, while they may end up reproducing some of those you should start if you don't have one. No one in its IRC channel: don't allow the same way a restaurant is constrained in b the second clause could include any possible startup, and Jews about.

[multipleservicelisting]

What Happened Today in the Coronavirus Pandemic

The scramble to meet vaccine demand

As Americans focus their attention on the fallout from the Capitol siege and the debate over another presidential impeachment, the pandemic is reaching what only a few months ago was considered a nightmare scenario.

Yesterday’s death count — at least 4,406 people — set another daily record, and represents at least 1,597 more people than those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. death toll, already the highest in the world by a wide margin, is soaring toward 400,000 — only one month after the country crossed the 300,000 threshold.

From the beginning, the country’s coronavirus strategy relied heavily on quickly making a vaccine. Multiple candidates were developed in record time, and if given out quickly, could rein in the pandemic and save thousands of lives. But so far the rollout has been slow, and riddled with challenges.

After the federal government yesterday abruptly reversed course and cleared vaccinations for people over 65 and adults with certain medical conditions, states have been scrambling to meet a surge in demand for doses.

Local officials have struggled to set up phone and online sign-up systems. Many of the oldest Americans, who are most vulnerable to the disease, are encountering byzantine online registration sites, error messages and crashing servers. Appointments are snatched up as soon as they become available, and some in the highest priority group have only managed to book their shots weeks from now.

As of this morning, the federal government has delivered almost 30 million doses, and more than 10 million have been administered. The Trump administration originally said that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by Jan. 1.

In Georgia, a man spoke to Atlanta’s Channel 2 Action News about how he had repeatedly called his county’s hotline to try to make an appointment for his mother.

“No one’s ever picking up,” Eric Moore said. “I promise you, I called 134 times.”

China put 22 million people on lockdown

It apparently started with a small outbreak at a village wedding party.

After a handful of coronavirus cases emerged this month in a province surrounding Beijing, the Chinese authorities locked down more than 17 million people in two cities, Shijiazhuang and Xingtai.

The new rules froze transportation and canceled weddings, funerals and a Communist Party conference. The government also ordered the testing of every resident there, which was wrapped up in a few days.

This week the restrictions were expanded to Langfang, a city on the edge of Beijing, and to some districts inside Beijing, the Chinese capital. They now apply to 22 million people, more than twice as many as the lockdown in Wuhan last January.

The move comes at a time when the Chinese economy was surging back after last year’s slump and when residents, many who felt like the pandemic was a thing of the past, were getting used to something close to normal life. China, a country of 1.4 billion people, has reported an average of 109 new cases a day over the past week. (For some perspective, the U.S. is averaging a quarter-million a day.)

Since the outbreak in Wuhan, Chinese authorities have created a playbook for outbreaks that includes sealing off neighborhoods, conducting widespread testing and quarantining large groups — measures that were seen as extraordinary when they were applied in Wuhan last year.

Officials have appeared especially worried about Beijing, home of the Communist Party’s central leadership. After a taxi driver there tested positive over the weekend, the authorities tracked down 144 passengers for additional tests, according to The Global Times, a state tabloid. Now anyone getting in a taxi or car service in Beijing has to scan a QR code from their phone, allowing the government to quickly trace them.

Resurgences

Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.

What else we’re following

What you’re doing

I have adopted what I call my Jane Austen hour. In the spirit of the Victorian-era tradition of “morning correspondence,” each day I spend an hour writing emails or texts to friends and family, many of whom I haven’t been in touch with for years. I have reconnected with old college roommates, high school friends, long-lost cousins, and all sorts of acquaintances I had lost touch with. I just send a short note saying that I was thinking about them and hoping they were managing OK in these crazy times, and then I share a treasured memory about them. The resulting reconnection and renewed correspondence has been a great antidote to pandemic isolation.

— Shelley Hammond Hoffmire, Oxford, U.K.

Let us know how you’re dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.

Sign up here to get the briefing by email.

Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com.

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/3oHXsql

[consideredart]

Quarantine Movie Mixtape Volume 1

Here are 10 movies you can stream right now to make your day a little better. Most of them you’ve probably heard of, a couple you probably haven’t. But they’re all easy to watch, with enough substance to feel like a solid use of a couple hours. Stay inside. Take care of yourself. Enjoy. 

Support The Girls (Hulu)

Regina Hall plays the general manager of a Texas breastaurant in this breezy day-in-the-life comedy. The setting would seem to call for leering raunchy hijinks but instead, we get a grounded and three-dimensional look at female friendship as well as a sharp examination of the modern American wage economy. Feeling a bit like a pilot for a workplace sitcom you’d happily spend 5 seasons with, its laid back pacing and pitch perfect performances make it endlessly re-watchable.

The Straight Story (Disney+) A road trip movie at 5 miles per hour; David Lynch throws a career curve ball with the story of 73-year-old Alvin Straight who hops on a lawnmower and travels from Iowa to Wisconsin to reunite with his estranged ailing brother. Warm and family-friendly, but also deeply melancholic, this true story was shot sequentially along Alvin’s real life route. Filled with the type of oddball characters and complicated Americana one would expect from the creator of Twin Peaks, albeit in a much more narratively traditional package.

Springsteen on Broadway (Netflix) The Boss recounts tales from his life while performing solo in this dazzling mix of memoir and concert film. The stripped down format displays Springsteen’s generation defining storytelling prowess and recontextualizes some of his greatest work. A soothing balm for those of us pining for the return of live music, it’s the kind of film you wanna grab a drink with.  Just make sure to keep some tissues handy.  This one will knock you on your ass more than once.  

Paddington 2 (HBO) Tim King’s exquisite sequel made headlines upon release when it became the highest rated film in Rotten Tomatoes history and it’s a distinction that doesn’t end up feeling hyperbolic. Ben Whishaw turns the title character into one of cinema’s most charming creations and finds a perfect foil in a never-better Hugh Grant. Endlessly inventive, the film effortlessly switches gears between vaudevillian slapstick, Wes Anderson levels of whimsy and dazzling setpieces, and even throwing in a splashy musical number for good measure. It’s “immigrants: we get the job done” message also makes it one of the first great anti-Brexit films. This one’s an absolutely essential viewing, even if you normally bristle at talking animal flicks.

The Love Witch (Amazon) Budding auteur Anna Biler wrote, directed, edited, produced, set decorated, costume designed, and *deep breath* scored this Technicolor mood piece. Gorgeously shot on 35mm film, the dark comedy follows a young witch named Elaine as the love spells she concocts to attract men go awry in increasingly amusing ways. Samantha Robinson gives a wonderful and hyper affected old Hollywood style performance in a story that is packed with thorny intricate themes and feminist imagery.  But after your first viewing, its dazzling production design also makes it a perfect piece of living art to throw on in the background while you work from home.

The Parent Trap (Disney+)

Whatever your memory of this movie is, I assure you it’s better than you remember. The solo directing debut of Nancy Myers, who would go on to be the queen of white wine movies, The Parent Trap displays a level of warmth and craftsmanship that is sorely lacking in future Disney remakes. It’s the rare family film that treats the children and adults with an equal level of respect. It is also highly kinetic, bouncing between summer camp, Napa Valley, and London settings with an infectious energy. The dual starring performances by Lindsay Lohan are truly remarkable, especially when she’s having to play one twin disguised as the other. Be sure to also luxuriate in Myers’ sublime set design.  These are the kinds of interiors that will have your brainstorming your next great redecorating project. 

Happy Death Day (HBO)

Don’t let the title or slasher movie trappings fool you.  This Groundhog Day riff does a better job capturing the vibe of 80′s teen comedies than almost anything else released in the past 10 years. Newcomer Jessica Rothe plays a college student who is murdered on her birthday and must keep reliving the day endlessly until she figures out who’s responsible. It’s all played with laughs with Rothe delivering a manic go-for-broke central performance that’s reminiscent of a young Tom Hanks as she’s put through a series of fantastic sight gags. If this one pleasantly surprises you, be sure you to check out its deeply weird Back to the Future II inspired sequel.

Love & Friendship (Amazon)

Throw any notions you have about stuffy costume dramas out the window for this adaptation of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan. Instead, settle in a smart, stylish, and side-splittingly funny romp with Kate Beckinsale starring as a recent widow turned voracious social climber. Writer-Director Whit Stillman crafts an 18th Century Mean Girls as Beckinsale and co-star Chloe Sevigny wittily and ruthlessly navigate societal norms and clueless men in an effort to stay atop the class heap. A highly quotable future cult classic.

Lady Bird (Amazon)

I won’t even bury the lede here. I think this is the best teen comedy of the 2010’s. Greta Gerwig’s directing debut stars Saorise Ronan as the titular (and self-named) character; a Sacramento high school senior struggling to define herself as she chafes against her lower-middle class upbringing. The attention to detail it pays to the specifics of its 2002 setting is akin to time travel and the intricacies of its central relationship will have you calling your parents, siblings, and high school best friends. But above all else, it’s a comedy for the ages. The razor sharp script unfurls smart honest one-liners at such a rapid clip that you’ll find yourself either immediately re-watching it or frequently pausing to catch up. I recommend both. 

Shirkers (Netflix)

In 1992, 19-year-old Sandi Tan and her friends met a fellow film lover who helped them shoot their own independent film before mysteriously vanishing with all of the footage. When Sandi got a call 20 years later saying that someone was in possession of the film, she decided to make a documentary chronicling the entire ordeal. This is that documentary. It’s also a love letter to cinema and a rousing look at an artist’s quest to reclaim control of her narrative and her work. The documentary as well as the footage shot in 1992 prove that while it took us a while to hear from her, Sandi Tan is a voice that should be with us for a long time to come.

[bentonpena]

Face masks designed for a surreal future where wearing masks is humanity’s new norm: Part 3

Face masks designed for a surreal future where wearing masks is humanity’s new norm: Part 3 https://bit.ly/31LSrmp

Do you realize its only 4 months to go before 2020 comes to an end? We know time flies, but this year has shaken up our lives like a snowglobe and the loose pieces of it are still falling into place. Its been 6 months since WHO declared COVID as a pandemic and the design world has geared up to save the world – from PPE, wearable face mask designs, adaptable ventilators to even portable ICU units – all these devices are intended to keep the world and you safe. While we all are responsibly using a mask to save lives as the world comes back to its feet, we bring you the best of face mask designs to help you make a smarter choice. The technology behind face masks has dramatically increased and its time to make an informed choice of the latest EDC that you need. After all, what is Batman without his equipment?!

Michael Soleo created a stylized, 3M-inspired version of the original face mask by Ashley Lawrence that allows those who are hearing impaired to still read lips! Everyone is equally affected by the crisis and what is now the new normal for us might be severely distressing for the differently-abled. Inclusive design is now more important than ever. Masks have become a global icon for COVID-19 and we are glad someone stopped to think “Okay, but how will people who rely on reading lips communicate for the next 6 months?” – it’s the little things, the simple designs that can have a deep impact.

We’re only half-way through 2020 and it seems like the virus still has tricks up its sleeve. With multiple scientists presenting evidence to WHO that the COVID-19 virus isn’t particulate-borne but rather is an airborne virus (which makes it much more difficult to deal with), it’s time our masks did more than just trapping particles. The UV Mask, unlike your conventional N95, doesn’t just trap microorganisms… it neutralizes them too, breaking down the genetic materials of coronavirus in milliseconds. Designed by UM Systems, the UV Mask comes with a dual filtration system that delivers the cleanest air quality of any existing face-mask. A preliminary replaceable N95 filter blocks 95% of particles like dust, dirt, debris, up to 0.3 microns. Microorganisms smaller than 0.3 microns then enter the UV-C Sterile Vortex, a helix-shaped filter that blasts microorganisms with UV-C light to destroy 99.9% of the remaining 5% on a DNA level, to give you air that isn’t just clean, it’s medical-grade, sterile-clean, bringing total filtration efficiency to 99.99%.

The LMP S2 is the product of a new normal, where masks may just be as common as wearing shades because it’s sunny out. Mark Austen’s LMP S2 improves on the N95 by ditching the fabric construction for silicone, which isn’t just comfortable, it’s easier to clean and is food-grade. Making the entire mask from silicone ensures a perfect, practically air-tight fit every time, while the soft elastomeric material is much easier on the skin, allowing you to wear the mask for longer without feeling any discomfort. The LMP S2’s silicone body takes the shape of faces, ensuring a universal fit, while an internal frame keeps the mask’s shape intact, so it doesn’t buckle and collapse every time you inhale. Fitted onto the front of the LMP S2 are a layered N99 and activated carbon filter that allows you to easily inhale 99% fresh air with every breath you take. The mask even features a dual-valve setup on each side that doubles the amount of air flowing into and out of the mask, effectively preventing the humidity in your breath from getting trapped inside the mask, keeping you fresh at all times. The result is a mask that looks, feels, and performs better than an N95.

Have you touched your face yet? I almost did… twice, and while that habit is a difficult one to break, Henry Kwak’s the Blocc makes it easier to do so while being able to go about your day. Think of the Blocc as a helmet visor sans the helmet. Made from scratch-resistant fog-resistant clear polycarbonate, the Blocc is as easy (and as comfortable) as wearing a pair of specs. Two temple-stems suspend the Blocc by your ears while a nose-bridge allows the visor to rest comfortably against your nose, and roughly an inch away from your face. The Blocc’s material choice makes it practically perfect for a face shield. Made from the same polymer as actual helmet visors (even the ones found in riot gear use PolyCarbonate), the Blocc is perfectly clear, allowing you to see through it with ease, while its resilient physical property prevents it from getting any scratches or scuffs by accident. It sits like an invisible force-field around your face, acting as a constant reminder to not scratch your eye or dig your nose or do anything that would be deemed just plain unhygienic or nasty.

RespoLab’s innovation lies in its use of a pleated and curved H13 HEPA filter, that covers your entire mouth. It sort of looks like the pleated, zigzag cabin air filters you see inside cars and air-conditioning systems. In both those cases, the job is pretty simple… to constantly filter air while easily trapping all sorts of microparticles into its pleats/folds. The filter exceeds the N99 standards, trapping even the finest particulate matter including viruses, allergens, pollen, and bacteria to deliver 99.97% clean air to your nose and mouth. The mask comes with a modular, multi-part design featuring an external plastic cover made from recycled ABS, and an oronasal mask made from TPE/TPU that provides the perfect seal around your face in a way that feels comfortable. The RespoLab’s design is engineered to control the airflow so that the inside of your mask never gets hot or humid, and the presence of a large filter makes sure you’re never struggling to be heard. The geometry of the filter allows sound waves to propagate and transmit through the mask more readily, further improving usability.

The Gādo mask doubles up as a face shield so that no bacteria enters your eye and comes with an accessory-like sanitizer so you won’t have to search your bags or have an oddly-shaped pocket. Designer Fulden Dehneli calls the mask Gādo (ガード) and the sanitizer Ken (剣) because she views these as complementary products that will become necessities in a post-pandemic world. Gādo means ‘guard’ and Ken means ‘sword’ in Japanese which is such a poetic way to describe tools – they guard us and kill the germs! Gādo and Ken were specifically designed for seamless integration into our lives. Gādo combines the benefits of a mask and a face shield with a simple sliding mechanism- a folded textile structure hidden under the shield which enlarges when the shield is slid up. This way you don’t have to constantly wear the traditionally obtrusive face shield but can ‘guard up’ if you’re among people and can’t maintain distance. Along with head straps that ensure comfort and fit, it also keeps the mouth visible to keep the window of human expression open, something we crave so deeply and will not take for granted when this ends. Ken is a sanitizer spray bottle that is ergonomically designed to be more portable and accessible than its predecessors.

Inspired by the AIRPOP pollution masks, designer Oliver Perretta has created this trendy multifunctional mask. With usability being the keystone of any design, the mask not only filters the air but also acts as an air quality monitor! The quality monitor accurately transmits data to your smartphone, helping you be aware and keep yourself safe – whether you are navigating indoors or keeping yourself safe outdoors.

The age-old adage stands true in these times – Time and Tide wait for none. So while we think our world has come to a screeching halt, the fact is that seasons have changed and summer is upon us. Studio Atelier I+N understands this and created this combination of mask and shades for a unique initiative by HyperAktiv titled ‘Bring your own Mask’. This mask is titled Summer Wave and the designers believe that if we have to go through wave#2 of COVID, at least let there be sunny days!

 The idea for a DIY hack came to Paseman around the time when the country was facing a severe shortage of N95 masks, forcing doctors and nurses to wear readily available loosely-fitted surgical masks. Paseman first tried scouting her area for N95 masks, hoping to donate them to medical facilities, and when she couldn’t find any N95 masks available in her vicinity, she decided to create a life-saving lifehack to make standard surgical masks more functional by ensuring a tighter seal/fit. The solution? A simple DIY seal that closes all air gaps around your nose and mouth so there’s no air leakage anywhere caused by a loosely fitted mask. Paseman and Duong’s first iteration of the Fix The Mask solution involved the MacGyverian use of a handful of rubber bands that could be strung together to create a tight brace to secure the mask’s fit. A few iterations later, the two developed a more robust solution by cutting into rubber sheets to create a better, more effective harness. The harness design is available on the Fix The Mask website as a free resource, to allow health professionals and regular citizens to get the most out of their face-gear while remaining safe from the virus.

Designed by Japan-based Donut Robotics, the C-Face mask is a universal mask-cover that fits on top of your standard face mask. Switch it on, and the C-Face mask connects to your smartphone, giving you a wide variety of smart features. Not only does it enable you to answer calls and talk to people without holding your phone’s mouthpiece near your mouth, it auto converts speech to text, allowing you to reply to messages, verbally type out emails, or ask your smartphone’s voice AI queries without having to take off your mask and talk to it. Currently, the C-Face even possesses the ability to translate between Japanese and 8 other languages, but multi-language support is merely an app update away! The voice-to-text feature even means less unnecessary touching of your smartphone’s screen to type out messages. Just say what you need and the dedicated app converts speech into text that you can copy and paste in messages, chat boxes, or mail drafts. The app even possesses the ability to auto-translate between a total of 9 languages, allowing you to seamlessly communicate with people regardless of language barriers. It’s almost as if the C-Face gives you the ability to speak in multiple dialects!

The Cannula mask by BDCI avoids this problem with its reinforcing endoskeleton. A thin plastic grille, this skeleton gives the mask its defining structure, preventing it from pressing against your face the same way a hanger prevents clothes from getting crushed by retaining its shape. Designed to be worn by people with respiratory difficulties, the endoskeleton even comes with a hollow spine that allows you to plug a nasal cannula to it, letting you direct fresh oxygen right to the wearer’s nose; effectively allowing them to inhale and exhale freely without worrying about a flimsy mask smothering them every time they try to breathe.

Whether you choose to wear a mask or not impacts not just your health – but those susceptible around you who trust you to take care of them. So the next time you don a mask, feel proud that you are helping those in need around you! Want to look at some more mask designs, check out the first and second parts of this series for inspiration.

Design via Yanko Design https://bit.ly/33D9esf August 13, 2020 at 07:44AM

[i-am-very-very-tired]

When Gwyneth Paltrow was 22 years old, she got a role that would take her from actress to star: The film producer Harvey Weinstein hired her for the lead in the Jane Austen adaptation “Emma.” Before shooting began, he summoned her to his suite at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for a work meeting that began uneventfully. It ended with Mr. Weinstein placing his hands on her and suggesting they head to the bedroom for massages, she said. “I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,” she said in an interview, publicly disclosing that she was sexually harassed by the man who ignited her career and later helped her win an Academy Award. She refused his advances, she said, and confided in Brad Pitt, her boyfriend at the time. Mr. Pitt confronted Mr. Weinstein, and soon after, the producer warned her not to tell anyone else about his come-on. “I thought he was going to fire me,” she said. Rosanna Arquette, a star of “Pulp Fiction,” has a similar account of Mr. Weinstein’s behavior, as does Judith Godrèche, a leading French actress. So does Angelina Jolie, who said that during the release of “Playing by Heart” in the late 1990s, he made unwanted advances on her in a hotel room, which she rejected. “I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did,” Ms. Jolie said in an email. “This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.” A New York Times investigation last week chronicled a hidden history of sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Weinstein and settlements he paid, often involving former employees, over three decades up to 2015. By Sunday evening, his entertainment company fired him. On Tuesday, The New Yorker published a report that included multiple allegations of sexual assault, including forced oral and vaginal sex. The article also included accounts of sexual harassment going back to the 1990s, with women describing how intimidating Mr. Weinstein was. Several days ago, additional actresses began sharing with The Times on-the-record stories of casting-couch abuses. Their accounts hint at the sweep of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged harassment, targeting women on the way to stardom, those who had barely acted and others in between. Fantasies that the public eagerly watched onscreen, the women recounted, sometimes masked the dark experiences of those performing in them. The encounters they recalled followed a similar narrative: First, they said, Mr. Weinstein lured them to a private place to discuss films, scripts or even Oscar campaigns. Then, the women contend, he variously tried to initiate massages, touched them inappropriately, took off his clothes or offered them explicit work-for-sex deals. In a statement on Tuesday, his spokeswoman, Sallie Hofmeister, said: “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances. He will not be available for further comments, as he is taking the time to focus on his family, on getting counseling and rebuilding his life.” Even in an industry in which sexual harassment has long persisted, Mr. Weinstein stands out, according to the actresses and current and former employees of the film companies he ran, Miramax and the Weinstein Company. He had an elaborate system reliant on the cooperation of others: Assistants often booked the meetings, arranged the hotel rooms and sometimes even delivered the talent, then disappeared, the actresses and employees recounted. They described how some of Mr. Weinstein’s executives and assistants then found them agents and jobs or hushed actresses who were upset. His alleged behavior became something of a Hollywood open secret: When the comedian Seth MacFarlane announced Oscar nominees in 2013, he joked, “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.” The audience laughed. According to a 2015 memo by a former Weinstein Company executive that The Times previously disclosed, the misconduct continued. More established actresses were fearful of speaking out because they had work; less established ones were scared because they did not. “This is Harvey Weinstein,” Katherine Kendall, who appeared in the film “Swingers” and television roles, remembers telling herself after an encounter in which she said Mr. Weinstein undressed and chased her around a living room. Telling others meant “I’ll never work again and no one is going to care or believe me,” she reasoned at the time, she said in a recent interview. Ms. Paltrow, 45, is now an entrepreneur, no longer dependent on securing her next acting role. But she emphasized how much more vulnerable she felt at 22, when Mr. Weinstein had just signed her up for a star-making part. On a trip to Los Angeles, she received a schedule from her agents for the hotel meeting with Mr. Weinstein. There was no reason to suspect anything untoward, because “it’s on the fax, it’s from C.A.A.,” she said, referring to Creative Artists Agency, which represented her. When Mr. Weinstein tried to massage her and invited her into the bedroom, she immediately left, she said, and remembers feeling stunned as she drove away. “I thought you were my Uncle Harvey,” she recalled thinking, explaining that she had seen him as a mentor. After she told Mr. Pitt about the episode, he approached Mr. Weinstein at a theater premiere and told him never to touch Ms. Paltrow again. Mr. Pitt confirmed the account to The Times through a representative. Soon after, Mr. Weinstein called Ms. Paltrow and berated her for discussing the episode, she said. (She said she also told a few friends, family members and her agent.) “He screamed at me for a long time,” she said, once again fearing she could lose the role in “Emma.” “It was brutal.” But she stood her ground, she said, and insisted that he put the relationship back on professional footing. Even as Ms. Paltrow became known as the “first lady of Miramax” and won an Oscar for “Shakespeare in Love” in 1999, very few people knew about Mr. Weinstein’s advances. “I was expected to keep the secret,” she said. Like several of the other women interviewed for this article, she felt she had to suppress the experience. She praised Mr. Weinstein publicly, posed for pictures with him and played the glowing star to his powerful producer. Yet their work relationship grew rockier over the years, she said, and she distanced herself. “He was alternately generous and supportive and championing, and punitive and bullying,” she said. Now, with the process of tallying the size and scope of Mr. Weinstein’s abuse allegations underway, Ms. Paltrow and others said they wanted to support women who had already come forward and help those in similar situations feel less alone. “We’re at a point in time when women need to send a clear message that this is over,” Ms. Paltrow said. “This way of treating women ends now.” Tomi-Ann Roberts In 1984, when Tomi-Ann Roberts was a 20-year-old college junior, she waited tables in New York one summer and hoped to start an acting career. Mr. Weinstein, one of her customers, urged her to audition for a movie that he and his brother were planning to direct. He sent scripts, then asked her to meet him where he was staying so they could discuss the film, she said in an email and a telephone interview. When she arrived, he was nude in the bathtub, she recalled. He told her that she would give a much better audition if she were comfortable “getting naked in front of him,” too, because the character she might play would have a topless scene. If she could not bare her breasts in private, she would not be able to do it on film, Ms. Roberts recalled Mr. Weinstein saying. (Asta Roberts, her mother, said in an interview that Ms. Roberts told her the story shortly after the episode.) Ms. Roberts remembers apologizing on the way out, telling Mr. Weinstein that she was too prudish to go along. Later, she felt that he had manipulated her by feigning professional interest in her, and she doubted that she had ever been under serious consideration. “I was nobody! How had I ever thought otherwise?” she asked. Today she is a psychology professor at Colorado College, researching sexual objectification, an interest she traces back in part to that long-ago encounter. She said that over the years she had had trouble watching Mr. Weinstein’s films. With a new release, “I would always ask, is it a Miramax movie? ” Rosanna Arquette In the early 1990s, Mr. Weinstein asked Rosanna Arquette to stop by the Beverly Hills Hotel to pick up a script for a role. Born into a family of actors, Ms. Arquette had already starred in a hit film, “Desperately Seeking Susan,” and “New York Stories,” and would go on to perform in films including “Crash” and television shows ranging from “Ray Donovan” to “Girls.” (Her account also appeared in The New Yorker.) At the reception desk, she was told to head upstairs, which she found odd. Mr. Weinstein was in a white bathrobe, complaining of neck pain and asking for a massage, according to Ms. Arquette and Maria Smith, a friend she told soon afterward. Ms. Arquette said she tried to recommend a professional masseuse, but Mr. Weinstein grabbed her hand and pulled it toward his crotch. She immediately drew away, she said. He boasted about the famous actresses he had supposedly slept with — a common element of his come-on, according to several other women who had encounters with Mr. Weinstein. “Rosanna, you’re making a big mistake,” he responded, she said. She refused. “I’m not that girl,” she recalled telling him on the way out. “I will never be that girl.” The part went to someone else, and Mr. Weinstein’s representative pointed out that he did not produce the movie. Later, Ms. Arquette was in the Miramax film “Pulp Fiction” but said she avoided Mr. Weinstein. Katharine Kendall “Welcome to the Miramax family,” Mr. Weinstein told Katherine Kendall in 1993, she said. She was 23, and about that time he was selling his small movie company to Disney, which supplied the cash that would turn it into a cultural force. After a meeting set up by her agent, he gave her scripts, including for the film “Beautiful Girls,” and invited her to a screening, which turned out to be a solo trip with Mr. Weinstein to a cinema near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. Afterward, he asked if they could swing by his apartment to pick something up. Ms. Kendall said she was nervous, but it was daytime, and she relaxed when she saw pictures of his wife on the wall. “He’s keeping it professional, he makes me a drink, we talk about movies and art and books for about an hour,” she recalled. “I thought: He’s taking me seriously.” He went to the bathroom, came back in a robe and asked her to give him a massage, she said. “Everybody does it,” he said, according to Ms. Kendall, and mentioned a famous model’s name. She refused; he left the room, and returned nude, she said. “He literally chased me,” she said. “He wouldn’t let me pass him to get to the door.” Ms. Kendall said his advances had a bargaining quality: He asked if she would at least show her breasts, if nothing else. She said no to all of it, she recounted. “I just thought to myself: I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. I’m so offended — we just had a meeting,” she said. (Her mother, Kay Kendall, said in a brief interview that her daughter told her the story at the time.) Ms. Kendall appeared in the film “Swingers,” distributed (but not produced) by Miramax, and has worked on and off as an actor since then. But she said the episode had dampened her enthusiasm for the business. “If this is what it takes, I can’t do it,” she said. Judith Godrèche When Mr. Weinstein invited Judith Godrèche to breakfast at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996, she had no idea who he was. At 24, she was already a star in France, and a new film she was in, “Ridicule,” was opening the festival. He had just acquired the movie and said he wanted to discuss it. They had breakfast at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, joined by a female Miramax executive. After the executive left, Mr. Weinstein invited Ms. Godrèche up to his suite to see the view, and to discuss the film’s marketing and even an Oscar campaign, she said in an interview. “I was so naïve and unprepared,” she said. Upstairs, he asked to give her a massage, Ms. Godrèche said. She said no. He argued that casual massages were an American custom — he gave them to his secretary all the time, Ms. Godrèche recalled him saying. “The next thing I know, he’s pressing against me and pulling off my sweater,” she said. She pulled away and left the suite. (Alain Godrèche, her father, said in an interview that his daughter told him about the episode the next morning.) Seeking advice, she later called the female Miramax executive, who told her not to say anything, lest she hurt the film’s release. “They put my face on the poster,” she said. “This is Miramax,” she said. “You can’t say anything.” Since then, Ms. Godrèche has starred in films in France and the United States. Like Ms. Paltrow, she felt she had to maintain a rapport with Mr. Weinstein, and sent him friendly emails inquiring about party invitations and potential work. “I tried to negotiate the situation over the years, and negotiate with myself and pretend it kind of never happened, ” she said. “I wish I’d had someone to talk to, to say, ‘How do you deal with this?’” Dawn Dunning In 2003, Dawn Dunning was doing small acting gigs, attending design school and waitressing in a nightclub where she met Mr. Weinstein. The 24-year old was wary, but Mr. Weinstein was friendly, professional and supportive, she said, offering her a screen test at Miramax, inviting her to lunch and dinner to talk about films and even giving her and her boyfriend tickets to see “The Producers” on Broadway. Then his assistant invited her to a meal with Mr. Weinstein at a Manhattan hotel. Ms. Dunning headed to the restaurant, where she was told that Mr. Weinstein’s earlier meeting was running late, so she should head up to his suite. There was no meeting. Mr. Weinstein was in a bathrobe, behind a coffee table covered with papers. He told her they were contracts for his next three films, according to Ms. Dunning. But she could only sign them on a condition: She would have to have three-way sex with him. Ms. Dunning said that she laughed, assuming he was joking, and that Mr. Weinstein grew angry. “You’ll never make it in this business,” she said he told her. “This is how the business works.” Ms. Dunning fled, she said, and when the assistant called her the next day, she hung up. She told her father, Rick Dunning, of the episode within a few months, he said in an interview. “I was like: Maybe this is how the business works,” she said. She left acting soon after and became a costume designer.