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black-is-no-colour · 4 years ago

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AnOther Magazine Autumn Winter 2020 Cover Story: John Galliano on Fallen Angels, Blitz Kids & Meeting Margiela

EMAIL EXCHANGE BETWEEN JOHN GALLIANO AND ANOTHER MAGAZINE, JULY 2020

AnOther Magazine: You went back to your own beginnings with this collection – your work of the 80s, your formative ideas about fashion. Why did that feel right for now?

John Galliano: Compression and suppression inspire a distinct sense of creativity, resourcefulness. During the lockdown period, something drew my mind to the way we felt during the Thatcher years, our backs up against the wall. Nothing can stand in the way of this kind of creativity.

AM: Why was your 1986 Fallen Angels collection specifically a point of inspiration – what is it about that collection that resonated?

JG: In confinement, I had come across the neoclassical wet drapery of Antonio Corradini and Raffaelle Monti – these veiled heroines in marble – which really appealed to me. I was hungry for the kind of aspirational beauty that inspires hope. In many ways, we were expressing the same sentiment in the 80s. It was a hankering for beauty, for heroism, for hedonism and hope.

AM: Fashion has changed so much since that era – in large part through work you yourself have undertaken across your career, helping to reinvent the ways we see clothes and fashion as a whole. Why does that era’s aesthetic and spirit speak to you today? To hark back to another collection of yours, is it about rediscovering a forgotten innocence?

JG: Between then and now, the common denominator is resourcefulness. The motivations were different but the expressions are similar – working with what you have, you try to find hope through the beauty of escapism.

AM: The Blitz Kids were a slightly earlier reference, but also in the mix. Why is that pertinent to now? That idea of dressing up to party – a decadence, perhaps? Certainly a glamour.

JG: Zoom parties! Putting on a red lip for the screen. We may be in a time of limitation, but we still have a human need to dress up, express ourselves and have a good time. Glamour needs an audience. I’ve never referenced a period in my own life before, but the emotional state of lockdown evoked an energy I had felt before.

AM: Can you describe your feelings when you first walked into the Blitz? Do you have any anecdotes you’d be happy to share?

JG: I wasn’t queen bee at the time. I had not become the peacock people associate with John Galliano. I was still quite shy, on my foundation year at Saint Martin’s. But, working Saturdays at [the boutique] PX, I had met a girl named Maria. Her background was Spanish, we hit it off and she got me into the Blitz club, along with Princess Julia, who worked down the road. I was a bit in awe of these characters. Of course, I wasn’t ruling like the Stephen Linards and the Stephen Joneses – I couldn’t even afford to go every week – but I did serve some looks.

AM: Stephen Jones once said that people were embarrassed to be seen in designer clothes – apart from Westwood, actually – at Blitz, that people made their own clothes. Was that something you also remember and experienced? Why was that?

JG: I think it was in the spirit of the time. We didn’t have the resources. I remember I had a brown workwear suit, a two-piece, with asymmetric fastening and little gold studs on it. It had a blue contrast collar with an embroidered yellow oak leaf. And I probably wore some kind of pointed pixie boot. Charles, the manager of Mrs Howie [a groundbreaking boutique in London, opened in 1976 by future fashion PR Lynne Franks and her then-husband, Paul Howie], would sometimes let me wear a hand-knitted jumper that had the letter S, for Super, on it. In the Blitz, people would dress up as historical eccentrics. Resourcefulness became our gateway to self-expression.

AM: You talked about the theatrical costumier Charles Fox in the film you produced to show the Artisanal collection. Can you elaborate on that – what happened and what it meant to you? Many of the references – the military, the men’s formalwear – are still with you today, as is, undoubtedly, that spirit of reinvention and transformation.

JG: When Charles Fox closed down, all these amazing characters and Saint Martin’s students flocked there to buy it all up. Today, you might call it upcycling, but back then it was what they could get their hands on. If you have a love of theatre and history, reinvigorating the old is a reinvigorating process in itself. Creation is the very act of giving life to something.

AM: It’s interesting that you chose to reveal your creative process so openly in the film, from research, to narrative, to referencing, cutting and making and styling. That feels quite precious – a lot of designers keep it to themselves. Why did you decide to share that? Why is it right for now?

JG: The anxiety we all experienced during the lockdown period created a need for transparency. I felt a desire to be clear about what we stand for at Maison Margiela – our core beliefs in diversity, inclusion and self-expression – which all begins with the process work. By recording and showing our research practice, our genderless fittings and how we express ourselves through charity finds and upcycling, we reinforce those values in a way that might appeal to Gens Y and Z. It is my hope that when our clients eventually meander into a Maison Margiela store and see the results of that process, those values will resonate. Perhaps this format can be a blueprint for a new way of proposing our ideas and ethics.

AM: Your clothes always tell a story – often many stories interwoven. You find these extraordinary narrative references and they feed your creativity. Does fashion need to tell a story – does a narrative add to fashion, for the wearer – or is that your process, just for you as a creator?

JG: The narrative informs my research and the process work and the way I communicate with my team through that process. But in the end I often keep it to myself. During the creative process, however, it feeds into the values that are transmitted through our work and which create a connection with our clients.

AM: What was it like designing a collection during lockdown? What were the good things, what were the bad things? How did the process change? And do you feel it has changed your creativity – your viewpoint on the world?

JG: In the beginning, it filled me with anxiety – and like everyone, of course, we had to deal with practical challenges. To me, it became a matter of turning those challenges into a sense of resourcefulness. I applied some of the things I’ve been fortunate to have been taught in the past. It’s like a mourning period – once you accept reality, you are able to embrace the unknown. And so it became a driving force – the feeling that nothing would stand in the way of creativity.

AM: Given the current situation, people are speculating that the collective experience of the fashion show may be a thing of the past. You have staged some of the greatest fashion shows in history, redefining the medium. What is your reaction to the idea that fashion shows may be of the past? How important are shows to you, as a means of expressing your ideas?

JG: What I eventually realised during the lockdown period was that fashion as we’ve known it in the past will never be the same, at least not until a vaccine is found. For the moment, I hope the format we adapted to this season can be a new way of communicating and exploring one’s collection. I don’t really like doing those big shows any more, because so often the focus is taken off the clothes. I prefer smaller shows. For now, I’m happy treading gently in this new direction.

AM: Our fight and flight instincts have perhaps never been so acute, and both those elements are present in the collection. The confrontation of taking clothing apart at the seams and the romance and fantasy of veiling, clothes that appear drenched in water. Does that make sense to you?

JG: The idea of fight and flight is another way of expressing resourcefulness and escapism – elements that have been inseparably interlinked through history. The human desire for beauty and seduction is a powerful instinct.

AM: When it comes to difficulties, do you feel that you, as a designer, propose clothes to fight in, or clothes as a flight of fantasy, an antidote to reality? Which do you find more powerful?

JG: I have spoken before about our desire to transmit Gen Z’s appetite for defiance through self-expression as a reaction to conformism and the societal preconceptions that negate our authentic selves. My proposals reflect those values. I hope our work can be tools for the expression of individuality and a message of joy and hope.

AM: In the film you showed predominantly classical female veiling. Did you look at veiled men in classical sculpture too? In some ways that has always been more scandalous, the naked Christ.

JG: Historically, the wet drapery that inspired me was often related to images of goddesses – and gods, too. During the process work, I began to express it in these celestial bodies – heroines as well as heroes – which draw the mind to many areas of mythology. You’ll recognise it in how I christened each passage in the collection, and in [model] Malick’s performance in the film.

AM: How does that religious iconography relate to your childhood?

JG: It’s a familiar element of my upbringing, because my mum brought it from Gibraltar and Spain. But this collection is reflective of so many mythologies.

AM: You are a person who has often had to deal with a lack of resources and has somehow managed to turn those limitations into a positive. The São Schlumberger collection, for example. How – and why – does limitation inspire you?

JG: Limitation creates challenges, and challenges force us to innovate. Whether inspiration is born out of necessity or out of determination – such as a desire to be sustainable – it inevitably enriches the creative process.

AM: There’s always a conversation around the relevance of haute couture – people argue that it is moribund, anachronistic, and so on. In what way do you feel you have moved the Artisanal so it works for now?

JG: I work within a creative pyramid, the pyramidion of which is haute couture. The work we do in the Artisanal atelier – the experimentation, development and technical know-how – drip-feeds into every other collection at Maison Margiela. Haute couture isn’t an expression of elitism, it’s what fuels a fashion house. It is the highest and most authentic form of dressmaking, and in an age tuned into transparency, I think the role of the dressmaker will be re-evaluated.

AM: And why genderless? That also goes back to the Blitz, perhaps?

JG: Genderless-ness is part of our genetics at Maison Margiela. It goes back to the freedom of self-expression and breaking down preordained conformist ideas of masculinity and femininity. Without these societal preconceptions we are free to express ourselves, to discover new things and evolve. The Blitz club, like certain communities today, provided an escapism from societal norms, but so many people are still having to negate their authentic selves. There’s still work to be done.

AM: There is still an amazing sense of the emotion in clothes that are hand-sewn for days, even weeks, on end, the romance of the touch of the hand. It feels very much as if you own that territory and that there are not so many people doing it like that today. Can you expand on that a little please?

JG: Over the years, I have taken on the responsibilities of a creative director, and I accept the role. But I am, at heart, a dressmaker. The creative process is the fuel of fashion. And creativity is the blood that courses through my veins and through this house.

AM: Craft is incredibly important to what you do – and always has been. It feels integral to your idea of couture. What does handicraft represent now, in a time when it is more difficult for many people to be together?

JG: Someone who watched the film told me that the connectivity between the team really shines through. That meant a lot to me, because connectivity is created by authenticity – and there’s nothing more honest than craftsmanship.

AM: There’s also the idea of construction and the extremely technical pattern cutting involved in this collection specifically. Can you talk a little more about the circular cut? About the methods you explored in these clothes, this collection?

JG: I mentioned how I was hungry for an aspirational beauty that creates the same sense of hope I remembered from the Blitz years. Back then, I had discovered the bias through a technique I had developed called circular cutting. It’s a way of structuring garments from several circular pieces – in this case, fabrics like butter muslin and thermocollant – which diffuse the draping and can evoke that wet, chiselled effect. The tailored pieces are examples of Recicla – humble charity-shop finds that I reinvigorated with heroic cutting – rooted in décortiqué, inspired by the hedonism of the dance L’Apache, which conjured these armour-like silhouettes. That process reminded me of the resourcefulness of the Blitz era.

AM: You talk about the idea of a community, the Margiela pluralism of ‘we’. Do you think that is a more humane position than, for want of a better way of putting it, the concept of the designer superstar? You have experienced both – in a sense, you have epitomised both.

JG: It is my hope that the film reflects the sense of community and connectivity that exists within the pyramidical structure of our fashion house.

AM: You have always had your own community. You can really see that in the film. These are all people who have been with you for a long time, some even from the start. They seem like kindred spirits – is that important? Finding people you can communicate with instinctively, maybe even without words?

JG: Community is about sharing and connecting, becoming part of a unity and relating to one another through emotions rooted in mutual memories. As you see in the film, we share all these things and use that connectivity in the creative process.

AM: In general, what is the importance of teamwork – of community – in fashion? Does it feel more important than ever now, following the assault on our personal freedom and contact with other human beings that the pandemic has brought?

JG: The lockdown period demonstrated the human need for connection. Immediately, we all took to Zoom and other channels to invoke a sense of connectivity. Fashion has the power to express codes of belonging. Through the values we have reinforced this season, I hope we are able to communicate the ethics of our community – the values of Maison Margiela.

AM: I think perhaps people don’t always realise the many connections between yourself and Martin Margiela – the importance of white and clothing stripped back to the toile, the interest in 18th-century cut, the deconstructing and reconstructing of traditional garments and the value of a sense of the passing of time, of age. How do you feel your two aesthetics relate to one another?

JG: When I met with Martin shortly before I joined the house, as a couturier I was particularly interested in his adaptation of the codes of haute couture – the idea of the maison, the white coats, the genetics, and so on. As we continue to establish a new set of codes at Maison Margiela, I hope those parallels feel inherent.

AM: You have launched a Recicla collection as part of the ready-to-wear and the Artisanal, where you source vintage items and rework them. That, again, references the Maison Margiela Replica heritage, but it is also a gesture towards sustainability. It’s an overused word but why is it important and can fashion ever really be sustainable?

JG: Upcycling, the raison d’être of Recicla, is a self-evident proposal for sustainability, but one that invigorates the creative process at the same time. Recicla started its life in the Artisanal atelier but is now being embraced by our commercial teams and actively going into stores, and I’m so happy to witness this development. Step by step, we can all play our part in being resourceful and reducing waste.

AM: You are among the most-referenced designers in student and emerging designers’ work. Does that make you happy, even proud? It’s not easy for you to answer, maybe, but why do you think it is?

JG: If I can deliver some of the hope, aspiration and passion that I remember from my own time in college, it’s a joy. Every year, when our new lot of stages arrive from the colleges, I do a dinner for them and get out my finest china and crystal. Sometimes it’s a drag ball or a karaoke. We have fun. When they come here they’re no different from how I was. Their experiences today are different because of the internet, but they’re creative souls like we were.

AM: There’s that old cliché of money being no object. In many ways, the most brilliant fashion proves and disproves that. How would you look at that sentiment, given the value of experience/hindsight?

JG: Financial resources make a difference to the way in which ideas can be executed and communicated. But some of the finest ideas are born out of a lack of resources. Drive can be fuelled by desire, but also by necessity.

AM: What would you say to a student starting out? I feel that your words would be very important to them, given the challenges facing any young designer, but perhaps more than ever now.

JG: Believe in yourself. Believe in your dream. Be passionate. You can be whatever you want to be. Don’t listen to anybody who says you can’t. Work hard and never give up.

AM: What are your hopes and dreams for fashion as we emerge from this crisis? And what are your hopes and dreams for the world?

JG: Now, more than ever, we need to respect fashion as a platform for communicating our values and ethics. As we emerge from this crisis, it is our responsibility to stand up for what we believe in – inclusivity, diversity, nonconformity, self-expression. We have to use the voice of fashion for positive change.

The full article is here: AnOther Magazine

#Maison Margiela #Margiela #Maison Margiela by John Galliano #John Galliano #Galliano #Maison Margiela Artisanal by John Galliano #fashion #AnOther #AnOther Magazine #interview

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rpgmgames · 6 years ago

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May’s Featured Game: Cadeau

DEVELOPER(S): HALFWORLDstudios ENGINE: RPG Maker VX Ace GENRE: Horror, Fantasy, Puzzle WARNINGS: Blood, Mild Gore, Suicide Mentions, Death SUMMARY: Cadeau is an RPG Horror game about a lonely, yet stubborn, young woman named Charlotte-- who finds herself in a world unknown to man, wearing clothes that do not belong to her. Wonderful and tragic events are to follow suit, as all of her greatest wishes come true. However, as these things often go, her happiness does not come without consequence...

Play the beta here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! Macdev: Greetings and salutations. I'm Mac, writer, artist, and programmer for Cadeau, as well as the founder of Halfworld. I've loved Rpg games since I was about 10, and have been creating them since! Bruno: My name is Bruno and I'm the music composer. I got into game music approx 2 years ago and I've currently made music for a couple of games and other projects, and Cadeau was the first one of them. Aidan: I'm Aidan/kanteramcneil on Tumblr! I'm one of the voice actors, and I'm super excited to be able to follow Cadeau's progress! I've been in the RpgMaker community for a few years now and I adore being able to watch all the devs progress and grow Rindre: Hi I'm Rin! Currently, I'm on an indefinite hiatus, but Big Mac managed to catch me, chain me up to a chair, and make me say stuff about myself against my will. So... I make games, I guess. - Note from macdev: Erm, not true? These accusations are SLANDER and I will not stand for it. WariA: Hello! I’m WaraiA, one of the voice actors of Cadeau — A pleasure to meet you! I will be voicing the oh so mysterious ‘Your Admirer’, so please look forward to listening to my antics ☆〜（ゝ。∂） I am a Japanese/Chinese Australian born citizen, with a tendency to speak in an American accent. Any pronouns are fine for me My most notable role so far has been Harpae from Pocket Mirror, so some of you may be familiar with my voice already! Nothing much has changed — I enjoy cosplaying, role playing, drawing every once in a blue moon, Final Fantasy XIV, and most importantly, catboys (Nael, I’m coming for you, boy) As ‘Your Admirer’ is a rather elusive character, I cannot disclose much. But I do suggest always keeping one eye open throughout your journey

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Macdev: Cadeau is a game about a troubled young woman named Charlotte Émile-- who is a "tomboyish" and bold individual who has been unfortunately presented loneliness by a series of disastrous events. After giving up on companionship, she miraculously receives an affectionate letter from a mysterious person aliased as her "Admirer". This "Admirer" character beckons poor Charlotte to visit them at a mysterious well in the woods, and to come armed with nothing but a strange golden coin. From there, madness ensues. Our protagonist must learn of her past and the events that lead to her misfortune, all while becoming entangled in a family drama rooted in witchcraft, raging years before her unexpected arrival. It is a story about self-love, friendship, acceptance, magic, and all that corny-ness. Sounds fun, right? My initial inspiration was The Witches House. The game was originally meant to be simple, and maybe an hour or 45 minutes long. A simple story, and a straightforward 2-ending path.... How have we managed to get here from that?

How long did you work on your project? *Macdev: Two years, I believe! Its anniversary is April 8th. In the beginning, it was very off and on-- because I was having a difficult time with school and-- as I mention-- organization. So not a whole lot of progress was made then. I'm proud to say I've been chugging quite a bit faster than my previous pace!

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Macdev: My inspiration would probably lie in Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts, and Alice returns to madness. As for RPG games? The Witch's House, Havenfell, and Pocket Mirror. As well as many other beautiful artists and creators in the video game community. Overall, my biggest inspiration for this game has got to be the stop-motion movie: Coraline. I even reference the movie once or twice in Cadeau. The tone of Coraline, and the whimsical yet eerie people and creatures within it give me inspiration for this game. It was very much a favorite of mine when I was younger, and that still applies today!

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Macdev: The biggest problem I've run into has been a lack of structure. In the beginning, I hadn't even written out the story halfway. I was just pulling ideas from thin air, going back and forth, and deleting entire concepts-- only to bring them back and re-arrange them as I went. Characters weren't fully dished out; the game didn't even have an ending. This state of creating is fine, but not when you have other people expecting things from you. Thankfully, things are sailing much MUCH smoother than before.

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Macdev: It's absolutely taken a turn from what it was originally! As I say, it was meant to be an extremely short game in the beginning, and now obviously that’s not the case. The goal for Cadeau now is: around 2-3 hours long in playtime, and full of many diverse character types! As well as a storyline that extends far more than face value. Which is in high contrast to the basic, short, immemorable experience that it was going to be.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Macdev: I do have a wonderful, beautiful, talented team working with me on Cadeau. - A composer! (Bruno Buglisi), - As well as voice actors! (WariA as Allete, Aiden/kanteramcneil as The Botanist, and Rindre (who I have definitely not kidnapped...) as The Maiden) I met everyone in the team through volunteer posts-- and I had never done that before-- but it worked very surprisingly well! We worked very quickly together, and we had a very mutual understanding of what each other wanted. It feels good to know I have such talented people helping this game come to fruition. I owe a whole lot to them for helping the game become what it is now.

What was the best part of developing the game? Macdev: Being able to make the world in your head interactable, for sure. Since I was 8, maybe even younger, I have loved writing stories and making art. Webcomics were my main thing as a kid, so story-telling is something I’ve always loved. So, the fact that I can turn my ideas into something someone can experience and interact with is a wonderful feeling. There's nothing more fulfilling, honestly!

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Macdev: Very often, actually! I try not to ride too close to the material I see in other games, but I do gain lots of inspiration from my fellow creators! One thing I am laser-focused on, though, is making Cadeau quite unique content-wise. I want it to have very interesting, uncommon puzzles and mechanics that you may not expect from this type of game-- or one of this engine. So far, I think I've achieved this-- so look out for that!

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Macdev: My favorite character has got to be The Botanist. At the beginning of the game he has no dialogue, yet still presents such a strong personality. They are kind, thoughtful, and absolutely adorable. Look at that foofy hair! I'm a sucker for it. Their character arc is something I'm excited for. It's been a blast writing it so far-- and I won’t spoil anything-- but you guys will love him. I'm sure of it. Now if we're talking character design, Naël has got to be my favorite. He recently received a “tune-up,” as I would like to call it, and I think everything works together very cohesively in his design now. It's probably one of my favorites out of all of them, at this point.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Macdev: Thankfully, things worked out perfectly-- and the universe blessed me with a wonderful team in the end-- but it was very stressful once I realized I had asked for help way too early. I essentially made a single map, and a little character sheet-- then asked for a whole team to help me out. As I said, it luckily worked out in the end. Now we have so many amazing people helping us-- but we also lost a few in the madness-- and that's a mistake on my part, 100%. If you don't know what you want, it's hard to ask for help. It will lead to confusion, lots of back and forth, frustration, etc... Just wait until your way further in development. Trust me. I know it’s easy to jump the gun and shoot for the stars, but sometimes it won’t work out as well as it has for the Cadeau team!

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Macdev: I won't say as of now! The idea of a sequel/prequel has floated around, but if it does come to fruition, it won't be until way after the release of Cadeau. We'll just have to see. (This isn’t to say I’m not hopeful!)

With your current project, what do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Macdev: I have so many amazing project ideas lined up for after the release of Cadeau. I won’t spill too much, so they'll be more of a surprise-- but they range from classic, adventure-themed true RPG's-- to 3D teenage-thrillers. I'm honestly stoked, there's so much in store for Halfworld.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Macdev: I think my biggest fear is letting people down. Also, I worry about losing interest or having people form the idea that the game is never going to be completed. It’s just going to take some time, is all, and that’s okay!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Macdev: I already mentioned above not to jump the gun and ask for help too early, so some more advice I'll give: is to keep all your material, all your ideas, and all your concepts in one concise place. I would say do it digitally from the get-go, but if you would prefer to write it down physically that's fine! Just make sure it's only one or 2 notebooks, and not 13. The information for Cadeau is spread throughout my hideous mound of notebooks, as I get up during ungodly hours of the night to scrawl a sudden idea down. So, I'm currently in the process of moving them to one digital spot-- and while it's generally easy-- I would have been able to avoid it if I had just put everything in one spot in the beginning. Oh, and back up your progress regularly! I have separate backups of Cadeau from months in 2 different years, and in 4 different places. So, I take backups very seriously—and so should you!

Question from last month's featured dev @atlasatrium: What's your favorite RPG Maker game and why? *Aidan: I love End roll, Ib, OFF, Prom Dreams, From Next Door, and Aria's Story! Bruno: Mm, definitely Long Gone Days (though it’s not being made on rpgmaker now) Midnight Train, Heartbeat and Glitched! WariA: I don't really have any :0 the devs I've worked with so far have all been really sweet (´꒳`);; Macdev: This is a tough question! I have a lot of favorites. Probably Stray Cat Crossing overall, but I also love Home and Starboy. Starboy brings a lot of memories, and Stray Cat Crossing was what inspired me to start making games! Oh, and Home is just very cute.

We mods would like to thank HALFWORLDstudios for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Cadeau if you haven’t already! See you next month!

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#rpgmaker #rpgmaker vx ace #indie games #Pixel Games #pixel horror #cadeau #project cadeau #projectcadeau #gotm #game of the month #gotm may #gotm 2019 #2019 #game of the month 2019

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wildchristographyhnd1photo · 5 years ago

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Clean White Research

Morten Koldby is a commercial photographer based in Denmark. The artist studied at the Danish School of photography and assisted a number of established commercial photographers for years prior to launching his own studio.

In an ongoing series of animal portraits, Koldby shoots his subjects against a stark white background, accentuating each animal’s unique facial features. You can see the ongoing series as well as other projects on his Behance profile.

[via Behance]

I really like to shoot portraits of animals like that. He's photos show animals in a different way. You can concentrate just on animals and notice some details that don't pay attention to in the natural environment.

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon is arguably the most influential ‘white background’ photographer of all time. It’s almost impossible to enter a photography classroom and find students who have never heard his name. He was primarily an American fashion and portrait photographer, and is well known for his images of celebrities (as well as others) who helped define America’s style and culture. He worked for a handful of fashion magazines, breaking out of the norm of fashion photography of the day to ensure that his models showed emotion in his images – something that many fashion photographers had not done before. Instead of focusing merely on the ‘fashion’ of the time, Avedon used the stark white background to almost force viewers into looking deeper into the emotions of those he used as models.

Terry Richardson

I really like his photos because they are differently showing people in funny and natural facial expressions. Natural luck is very important for me because I’m a wildlife photographer. I’ll try to emulate by talk witch model some situations.

How to achieve a white background?

A white background is one of the most commonly used types of background. This applies to both portrait and product photography, and it follows that this often creates simple, minimalistic photos that focus only on the person or object being portrayed. Often, such photos are also treated as intermediates for further graphic work. What to look for in order to take such photos and not have to correct them later in the graphics program? Or otherwise - why not just “burn” the background? Seemingly these are simple photos and you might think that the solution is to bring the lamp closer to the background. However, it turns out that it is not so simple, although it is not too complicated either. To perform the task, we can use both compact lamps or system flashes, as well as studio lamps powered by generators. The latter has the greatest power and thanks to numerous accessories (softboxes, canopies, umbrellas, etc.) give the most opportunities to modify the light. The most important factors affecting the final effect:

number of light sources, type of light (depends on the modifier / diffuser used on the lamp), distance of light from the background (the width of the light beam depends on the type of light and distance from the background), distance of the photographed object from the background, distance of the photographed object from the light sources, aperture, ISO sensitivity.

Accessories needed:

light meter (possibly), smartphone applications work relatively well, although this often does not apply to flashlight, white wall, background or large smooth cardboard; minimum 2-3 flash (for the whole figure or group of people you will need 4 flashes directed at the background), flash or lamps illuminating the main subject.

Contact sheet:

Final Photo:

Evaluation:

I took the picture in a school studio. My model was a friend from Oskar plays. I chose the model completely by accident, relying on my intuition. Flash, which was directed at the background, I set the maximum power to make the background white. I covered them with black flags so that the model was completely isolated from the background and there was no light on it. I took a few test photos and moved them on the computer to make sure that the Oscar is isolated from the background and is black. When I knew that everything was good, I started to set the flashes that were supposed to light my model. For this purpose, I used long and narrow softboxes. I placed flashes with softbots on the opposite sides of Oscar's face. With the help of a light meter, I measured the amount of light falling on his face. I adopted an aperture value of F / 11 to get a large depth of field and 1 / 125sec ISO-100. I had to experiment a bit with setting the flashes position to get symmetrical illumination on the face of the model. After a dozen or so attempts, I received a confusing effect. Just a little work on photoshop to bring the photo to a usable state. In a similar way I took pictures for the film but this time on models I used Heyaely. However, in this case, work was much more difficult because of the possibility of correction in the picture. After. printing, if something went wrong, to make a correction I had to use another expensive piece of paper. I had to light my eyes a little while keeping the rest of the photo in the right contrast and exposure. I used dodge and burn for this technology, but in the darkroom, it is much more difficult than on Photoshop due to the fact that I did not know the effect until the photo was developed. It was quite frustrating but also a big challenge that I managed. The effect is completely satisfactory for me, because I just planned it from the beginning. I photographed a few more people, but the Oscar photo best suits my requirements. I think the picture has a character. This causes several factors: First, unusual lighting that changes the appearance of the face slightly. Secondly, Oscar's very symmetrical and photogenic face. Thirdly, quite a dangerous face that I asked the model to make. I know that there are many, many other lighting options, but I liked this one this time and I am fully satisfied with the effect.

#research #cleanwhite

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roxyallnutt · 6 years ago

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Reflective journalism Kolb Cycle

The Marshmallow Challenge

Experience It seems only right to reflect on a Creative Technologies experience that left me questioning and reflecting days after the exercise actually took place. “The Marshmallow Challenge is a game for learning about innovation, creativity, teams, collaboration as well as the value of early prototyping and incremental delivery”, Wujec, (2018). I believe that this task sets a good representation of the common issues and challenges faced as designers in the Creative Technologies world.

"It's a simple task", Ricardo explained as he handed each group 15 sticks of raw spaghetti, a metre of masking tape and a baby pink marshmallow. The rules that followed were simple too. Construct the tallest freestanding structure with the resources given within an 18-minute timeframe. I worked in a group of semi unfamiliar faces. Because of this, I felt I had an advantage as there was no familiarity within the group members, there were no limits for expression and ideas due to the diversity and opportunities in a new group.

Firstly, I prefer working in teams like this. As an extroverted person, I enjoy new groups where I can voice issues and options while learning from fresh faces. Within the first five minutes of the challenge, I could pick up that the group was quite diverse in terms of engagement. We were divided between the talkative, the hands-on and the quiet. Our biggest problem was agreeing on what type of base, to begin with, and then worried about the height after. As most of us had no experience in this type of exercise it took a while for us to establish a concept worth pursuing, the time pressure wavering did not help. We began with a quick sketch and small discussion. We aimed for a tripod like frame with height increasing through the middle conjoint. We began with a triangular base which was made to add stability to the tower, then added spaghetti piece after piece to the middle frame. This lead to the final few minutes when the marshmallow was placed on top. Unfortunately, our second biggest issue was the actual placement of the marshmallow. 15 minutes had already passed and our marshmallow was untouched. I guess we figured that it was light and easily manipulated so it wouldn't be an issue. The second the marshmallow was added our structure began to topple to the right. Yikes, what a near miss. In the end, we completed the challenge with a semi-standing structure which we were proud of.

Observations As the timer eventually sounded I sighed in relief. We had a standing structure, but we just knew it wasn't the tallest of the class. I looked around the room to see a coalition of strange misshaped towers, many of which were not standing. I was annoyed with myself when I looked back to our structure. We were so invested in the base footing and time pressure that we seriously lacked in the height aspect and not much support was given to our surprisingly heavy little marshmallow to stand upon.

Tom Wujec (2018), explained: “the Marshmallow is a Metaphor for the Hidden Assumptions of a Project”. The lesson in the marshmallow challenge is that we need to identify the assumptions in our project-the real customer needs, the cost of the product, the duration of the service – and test them early and often. That’s the mechanism that leads to effective innovation.” From the combination of our discussion with Ricardo and readings into Wujec's finding, I understand why this exercise has a deep connection to my studies in BCT. Through the many projects and assignments, I am yet to experience, this exercise has taught me to be wary of each aspect of any project that needs stability and recognition in order for success. Any assumptions made may be the failure point in my design ideation. This was evidently seen by the many groups including us who did not factor in our marshmallow nearly enough.

In a later class discussion, Ricardo mentioned that "There will always be one that will sit back and take the back-foot". As mentioned before due to our team's diversity there were members that preferred to stay quiet and observe. While the challenge was highly competitive with a whole bag of lollies on the line, I wonder, if the challenge was also implemented to test a fresh team where each member needs to be equally involved. In situations like this exercise, it is very easy to become polarised by the more vocal leader, this was apparent in my group. This aspect restrains potential creativity from quieter members and lacks diversity in group involvement. Pirola‐Merlo, A., & Mann, L. (2004), this study explains how creativity in groups can be impacted by how much each person wants to contribute. I noticed that some members in my group decided to contribute their opinion only after the action was executed. For example, we used small bits of tape to bundle lots of two spaghetti stands together, it wasn't until after this was finished, a member spoke out and asked to complete bundles of 3 with more tape this time. Diversity in groups is important in the creative industries as team members are encouraged to contribute highly to avoid being one track minded by one leader. An improvement here could have been seen if my group ideated many possible designs together with the contribution from all rather than putting all our focus into one idea.

Reflect Our discussion with Ricardo concluded with the mention of preschool students thriving in this type of challenge environment compared to a class of business students. Basically, give them the same exact conditions for this project and watch as they prototype, refine and execute outstandingly. This made sense to me, pre-schooled students are inaudibly using the creative strategies "asking questions, comparing and contrasting solutions, evaluating solutions". Zachopoulou, E., Trevlas, E., Konstadinidou, E., & Archimedes Project Research Group. (2006). It is interesting to me how as I have grown up these strategies are forgotten and now are being re-established to me in a creative degree. It makes sense for preschool students to excel in exercises like this as their ability to rework and rework is natural to them. Ricardo explained how multiple groups in my class would begin the challenge with their plan, and then follow through from there. Exactly what we did. A method used by myself and my team members daily. "Planning the implementation of a chosen goal, however, poses a problem associated with different task demands." Bayer, U. C., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2005). We are typically engineered to consider the best way for success in these situations is too diverse a plan and execute accordingly. The greatest take away was to avoid the habit of planning a concept too early in the process and following it exactly. This completely limited our ability to make design changes, when issues arose during the challenge we did not stop and say let's try something new, we rather worked away until that aspect eventually worked for us.

Other skills that I have taken away: I am aware that there are more ways to implement problem-solving. I have also taken away second thoughts to my team contribution strategies. How a better-structured brainstorm or ideation can be facilitated to involve every member of the group rather than lead by one or two people. It is also significant for each team member to have the confidence to spot issues when ideas are going off track and voice them in a non-critical way. A combination of these lessons to take away will become useful in future projects and assignments.

If I can take any main thing away from this challenge it would be that the marshmallow is a metaphor for hidden assumptions of any given project. This is a valuable lesson and one that is sure to be the make or break motive in projects to come I'm certain. I intend to practise the awareness of the marshmallows that are hidden in creative assignments to come.

References:

Wujec, T. (2018). Applying the Marshmallow Challenge in a Research Method.

Pirola‐Merlo, A., & Mann, L. (2004). The relationship between individual creativity and team creativity: Aggregating across people and time

Bayer, U. C., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2005). Mindset effects on information search in self‐evaluation.

Zachopoulou, E., Trevlas, E., Konstadinidou, E., & Archimedes Project Research Group. (2006). The design and implementation of a physical education program to promote children’s creativity in the early years.

#CTEC502

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anettrolikova · 4 years ago

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When I saw this patterned irrationality, which was so extreme, and I had no theory or anything to deal with it, but I could see that it was extreme, and I could see that it was patterned, I just started to create my own system of psychology, partly by casual reading, but largely from personal experience, and I used that pattern to help me get through life.

if there’s anything valid in psychology, economics has to recognize it, and vice versa.

recognition of the power of what psychologists call reinforcement and economists call incentives.

People thinks that their relatives are innocent when the reality is usually different than they think. The reality is too painful to bear, so you just distort it until it’s bearable. We all do that to some extent, and it’s a common psychological misjudgment that causes terrible problems.

a lot of the way the world is run, including most law firms and a lot of other places, they’ve still got a cost-plus percentage of cost system.

human nature, with its version of what I call incentive-caused bias, causes this terrible abuse - people you marry & invite to your family.

there are huge implications from the fact that the human mind is put together this way, and that is that people who create things like cash registers, which make most behavior hard, are some of the effective saints of our civilization.

If you read the psychology texts, you will find that if they’re 1,000 pages long, there’s one sentence.

the human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can’t get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort.

the really innovative, important new physics was never really accepted by the old guard.

if you make public disclosure of your conclusion, you’re pounding it into your own head.

It’s very important to not put your brain in chains too young by what you shout out.

The Chinese brainwashing system,They maneuvered people into making tiny little commitments and declarations, and then they’d slowly build. That worked way better than torture.

in economics we wouldn’t have money without the role of so-called secondary reinforcement, which is a pure psychological phenomenon demonstrated in the laboratory.

Pavlov the dog salivated when the bell rang.

3/4 of advertising works on pure Pavlov. Think how association, pure association, works. Take Coca-Cola company. They want to be associated with every wonderful image, heroics in the Olympics, wonderful music, you name it. They don’t want to be associated with Presidents’ funerals and so forth.

Persian messenger syndrome- He didn’t hear one damn thing he didn’t want to hear. People knew that it was bad for the messenger to bring Bill Paley things he didn’t want to hear. Well that means that the leader gets in a cocoon of unreality, and this is a great big enterprise, and boy, did he make some dumb decisions in the last 20 years.

nobody wants to bring the bad news to the executives up the line. But here’s a few hundred million dollars you thought you had that you don’t. And it’s much safer to act like the Persian messenger who goes away to hide rather than bring home the news of the battle lost.

ordinarily there’s a correlation between price and value, then you have an information inefficiency. And so when you raise the price, the sales go up relative to your competitor. That happens again and again and again

Where you see in business just perfectly horrible results from psychologically rooted tendencies is in accounting.

people who have loose accounting standards are just inviting perfectly horrible behavior in other people.

an institution that gets sloppy accounting commits a real human sin, and it’s also a dumb way to do business

Theses 6 principles are reciprocity, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. “I think the power of persuasion would be the greatest super power of all time.” Persuasion as a superpower is very much within reach.

three times the success by just going through the little ask-for-a-lot-and-back-off.

the human mind, on a subconscious level, can be manipulated that way and you don’t know it, I always use the phrase, “You’re like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”

you tend to act in the way that other people expect, and that’s reciprocation if you think about the way society is organized.

what you think may change what you do, but perhaps even more important, what you do will change what you think. And you can say, “Everybody knows that.” I want to tell you I didn’t know it well enough early enough.

everybody looked at everybody else and nobody else was doing anything, and so there’s automatic social proof that the right thing to do is nothing.

the power of reinforcement, after all, you do something and the market goes up and you get paid and rewarded and applauded and what have you, meaning a lot of reinforcement, if you make a bet on a market and the market goes with you. Also, there’s social proof. I mean the prices on the market are the ultimate form of social proof, reflecting what other people think, and so the combination is very powerful.

Better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

taking advantage of your contrast type troubles and your sensory apparatus

people are manipulating you all day long on this contrast phenomenon.

If you throw a frog into very hot water, the frog will jump out. But if you put the frog in room temperature water and just slowly heat the water up, the frog will die there.”

If it comes to you in small pieces, you’re likely to miss, so you have to … if you’re gonna be a person of good judgment, you have to do something about this warp in your head where it’s so misleading by mere contrast.

Over influence by authority

Ordinary people subconsciously affected by their inborn tendencies.

Envy/ jealousy an enormously powerful thing, and it operates to a considerable extent at a subconscious level, and anybody who doesn’t understand it is taking on defects he shouldn’t have.

Chemical dependency the tendency to distort reality so that it’s endurable.

Skinner's theory - learning is a function of change in overt behavior. Changes in behavior are the result of an individual's response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment. ... Reinforcement is the key element in

Machines for poker and gaming computers were created by people who understands human psychology in order to ruin the society.

incentive caused bias

Once you realize that you can’t really buy your thinking down.

Availability does change behavior and cognition. If you have Coke available you will drink it all the time.

It isn’t just the lack of availability that distorts your judgment. All the things on this list distort judgment.

these psychological tendencies make things unavailable ’cause if you quickly jump to one thing and then because you’ve jumped to it, the consistency and commitment tendency makes you lock in, boom, it’s there. Number one.

You want to persuade somebody, you really tell them why. And what did we learn in lesson one? Incentives really matter. Vivid evidence really works

common mental illnesses and declines, temporary and permanent, including the tendency to lose ability through disuse. Then I’ve got mental and organizational confusion from the say-something syndrome.

What happens when these standard psychological tendencies combine?

the combination greatly increases power to change behavior, compared to the power of merely one tendency acting alone. Examples are: Tupperware parties. Tupperware has now made billions of dollars out of a few manipulative psychological tricks.

What you should search for in life is the combination, because the combination is likely to do you in.

Or, if you’re the inventor of Tupperware parties, it’s likely to make you enormously rich if you can stand shaving when you do it.

The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, by Charlie Munger

The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, a speech given in 1995 by legendary investor Charlie Munger, opened my eyes to how behavioral psychology can be applied to business and problem-solving.

Munger, for those of you who haven’t heard of him, is the irreverent partner of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway. He’s offered us such gems as: a two-step process for making effective decisions and the work required to have an opinion.

And this talk on The Psychology of Human Misjudgment is one of the best you’ll ever hear.

My nature makes me incline toward diagnosing and talking about errors in conventional wisdom. And despite years of being smoothed out by the hard knocks that were inevitable for one with my attitude, I don’t believe life ever knocked all the brashness out of the man.

… I have fallen in love with my way of laying out psychology because it has been so useful to me. And so, before I die, I want to imitate to some extent the bequest practices of three characters: the protagonist in John Bunyan’s Pilgram’s Progress, Benjamin Franklin, and my first employer, Ernest Buffett.

Munger made extensive revisions to The Psychology of Human Misjudgment in Poor Charlie’s Almanack because he “thought he could do better at eighty-one than he did more than ten years earlier when he (1) knew less and was more harried by a crowded life and (2) was speaking from rough notes instead of revising transcripts.”

Transcript

I am very interested in the subject of human misjudgment, and Lord knows I’ve created a good bit of it. I don’t think I’ve created my full statistical share, and I think that one of the reasons was I tried to do something about this terrible ignorance I left the Harvard Law School with. When I saw this patterned irrationality, which was so extreme, and I had no theory or anything to deal with it, but I could see that it was extreme, and I could see that it was patterned, I just started to create my own system of psychology, partly by casual reading, but largely from personal experience, and I used that pattern to help me get through life.

Fairly late in life, I stumbled into this book, Influence, by a psychologist named Bob Cialdini, who became a super tenured hotshot on a 2,000 person faculty at a very young age. And he wrote this book, which has now sold 300 odd thousand copies, which is remarkable for somebody. Well, it’s an academic book aimed at a popular audience that filled in a lot of holes in my crude system. When those holes had filled in, I thought I had a system that was a good working tool, and I’d like to share that one with you.

And I came here because of behavioral economics. How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn’t behavioral, what the hell is it? And I think it’s fairly clear that all reality has to respect all other reality. If you come to inconsistencies, they have to be resolved, and so if there’s anything valid in psychology, economics has to recognize it, and vice versa. So I think the people that are working on this fringe between economics and psychology are absolutely right to be there, and I think there’s been plenty wrong over the years.

Well, let me romp through as much of this list as I have time to get through.

24 Standard Causes of Human Misjudgment

First. Under recognition of the power of what psychologists call reinforcement and economists call incentives. Well, you can say, “Everybody knows that.” Well, I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I’ve underestimated it. And never a year passes, but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther.

One of my favorite cases about the power of incentives is the Federal Express case. The heart and soul of the integrity of the system is that all the packages have to be shifted rapidly in one central location each night. And the system has no integrity if the whole shift can’t be done fast. And Federal Express had one hell of a time getting the thing to work. And they tried moral suasion, they tried everything in the world, and finally, somebody got the happy thought that they were paying the night shift by the hour and that maybe if they paid them by the shift, the system would work better. And lo and behold, that solution worked.

Early in the history of Xerox, Joe Wilson, who was then in the government, had to go back to Xerox because he couldn’t understand how their better, new machine was selling so poorly in relation to their older and inferior machine. Of course, when he got there he found out that the commission arrangement with the salesmen gave a tremendous incentive to the inferior machine.

And here at Harvard, in the shadow of B.F. Skinner, there was a man who really was into reinforcement as a powerful thought, and you know, Skinner’s lost his reputation in a lot of places, but if you were to analyze the entire history of experimental science at Harvard, he’d be in the top handful. His experiments were very ingenious, the results were counterintuitive, and they were important. It is not given to experimental science to do better.

What gummed up Skinner’s reputation is that he developed a case of what I always call man-with-a-hammer syndrome, to the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail. And Skinner had one of the more extreme cases in the history of Academia, and this syndrome doesn’t exempt bright people. It’s just a man with a hammer and Skinner is an extreme example of that. And later, as I go down my list, let’s go back and try and figure out why people, like Skinner, get the man-with-a-hammer syndrome.

Incidentally, when I was at the Harvard Law School there was a professor, naturally at Yale, who was derisively discussed at Harvard, and they used to say, “Poor old Blanchard. He thinks declaratory judgments will cure cancer.” And that’s the way Skinner got. And not only that, he was literary, and he scorned opponents who had any different way of thinking or thought anything else was important. This is not a way to make a lasting reputation if the other people turn out to also be doing something important.

My second factor is simple psychological denial. This first really hit me between the eyes when a friend of our family had a super-athlete, super-student son who flew off a carrier in the north Atlantic and never came back, and his mother, who was a very sane woman, just never believed that he was dead. And, of course, if you turn on the television, you find the mothers of the most obvious criminals that man could ever diagnose, and they all think their sons are innocent. That’s simple psychological denial. The reality is too painful to bear, so you just distort it until it’s bearable. We all do that to some extent, and it’s a common psychological misjudgment that causes terrible problems.

Third. Incentive-cause bias, both in one’s own mind and that of one’s trusted advisor, where it creates what economists call agency costs. Here, my early experience was a doctor who sent bushel baskets full of normal gallbladders down to the pathology lab in the leading hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. And with that quality control for which community hospitals are famous, about five years after he should’ve been removed from the staff, he was.

And one of the old doctors who participated in the removal was also a family friend, and I asked him, I said, “Tell me, did he think, here’s a way for me to exercise my talents,” this guy was very skilled technically, “And make a high living by doing a few maimings and murders every year, along with some frauds?” And he said, “Hell no, Charlie. He thought that the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil, and if you really love your patients, you couldn’t get that organ out rapidly enough.”

Now that’s an extreme case, but in lesser strength, it’s present in every profession and in every human being. And it causes perfectly terrible behavior. If you make sales presentations and brokers of commercial real estate and businesses, I’m 70 years old, I’ve never seen one I thought was even within hailing distance of objective truth. If you want to talk about the power of incentives and the power of rationalized, terrible behavior, after the Defense Department had had enough experience with cost-plus percentage of cost contracts, the reaction of our republic was to make it a crime for the federal government to write one, and not only a crime, but a felony.

And by the way, the government’s right, but a lot of the way the world is run, including most law firms and a lot of other places, they’ve still got a cost-plus percentage of cost system. And human nature, with its version of what I call incentive-caused bias, causes this terrible abuse. And many of the people who are doing it you would be glad to have married into your family compared to what you’re otherwise going to get.

Now there are huge implications from the fact that the human mind is put together this way, and that is that people who create things like cash registers, which make most behavior hard, are some of the effective saints of our civilization. And the cash register was a great moral instrument when it was created. And Patterson knew that, by the way. He had a little store, and the people were stealing him blind and never made any money, and people sold him a couple of cash registers and it went to profit immediately.

And, of course, he closed the store and went into the cash register business. With results which are … And so this is a huge, important thing. If you read the psychology texts, you will find that if they’re 1,000 pages long, there’s one sentence. Somehow incentive-caused bias has escaped the standard survey course in psychology.

Fourth, and this is a superpower in error-causing psychological tendency, bias from consistency and commitment tendency, including the tendency to avoid or promptly resolve cognitive dissonance. Includes the self-confirmation tendency of all conclusions, particularly expressed conclusions, and with a special persistence for conclusions that are hard-won.

Well, what I’m saying here is that the human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can’t get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort. And here again, it doesn’t just catch ordinary mortals, it catches the deans of physics. According to Max Planck, the really innovative, important new physics was never really accepted by the old guard.

Instead, a new guard came along that was less brain-blocked by its previous conclusions. And if Max Planck’s crowd had this consistency and commitment tendency that kept their old inclusions intact in spite of disconfirming evidence, you can imagine what the crowd that you and I are part of behaves like.

And of course, if you make public disclosure of your conclusion, you’re pounding it into your own head. Many of these students that are screaming at us, you know, they aren’t convincing us, but they’re forming mental change for themselves because what they’re shouting out they’re pounding in. And I think educational institutions that create a climate where too much of that goes on are in a fundamental sense, they’re irresponsible institutions. It’s very important to not put your brain in chains too young by what you shout out.

And all these things like painful qualifying and initiation rituals, all those things, pound in your commitments and your ideas. The Chinese brainwashing system, which was for war prisoners, was way better than anybody else’s. They maneuvered people into making tiny little commitments and declarations, and then they’d slowly build. That worked way better than torture.

Sixth. Bias from Pavlovian association, misconstruing past correlation as a reliable basis for decision-making. I never took a course in psychology, or economics either for that matter, but I did learn about Pavlov in high school biology. And the way they taught it, you know, so the dog salivated when the bell rang. So what? Nobody made the least effort to tie that to the wide world. Well, the truth of the matter is that Pavlovian association is an enormously powerful psychological force in the daily life of all of us. And, indeed, in economics we wouldn’t have money without the role of so-called secondary reinforcement, which is a pure psychological phenomenon demonstrated in the laboratory.

Practically, I’d say 3/4 of advertising works on pure Pavlov. Think how association, pure association, works. Take Coca-Cola company we’re the biggest share-holder. They want to be associated with every wonderful image, heroics in the Olympics, wonderful music, you name it. They don’t want to be associated with Presidents’ funerals and so forth. When have you seen a Coca-Cola ad, and the association really works.

And all these psychological tendencies work largely or entirely on a subconscious level, which makes them very insidious. Now you’ve got Persian messenger syndrome. The Persians really did kill the messenger who brought the bad news. You think that is dead? I mean you should’ve seen Bill Paley in his last 20 years. He didn’t hear one damn thing he didn’t want to hear. People knew that it was bad for the messenger to bring Bill Paley things he didn’t want to hear. Well that means that the leader gets in a cocoon of unreality, and this is a great big enterprise, and boy, did he make some dumb decisions in the last 20 years.

And now the Persian messenger syndrome is alive and well. When I saw, some years ago, Arco and Exxon arguing over a few hundred millions of ambiguity in their North Slope treaties before a superior court judge in Texas, with armies of lawyers and experts on each side. Now this is a Mad Hatter’s tea party, two engineering-style companies can’t resolve some ambiguity without spending tens of millions of dollars in some Texas superior court? In my opinion, what happens is that nobody wants to bring the bad news to the executives up the line. But here’s a few hundred million dollars you thought you had that you don’t. And it’s much safer to act like the Persian messenger who goes away to hide rather than bring home the news of the battle lost.

Talking about economics, you get a very interesting phenomenon that I’ve seen over and over again in a long life. You’ve got two products, suppose they’re complex, technical products. Now you’d think, under the laws of economics, that if product A costs X, if product Y costs X minus something, it will sell better than if it sells at X plus something, but that’s not so. In many cases when you raise the price of the alternative products, it’ll get a larger market share than it would when you make it lower than your competitor’s product.

That’s because the bell, a Pavlovian bell, I mean ordinarily there’s a correlation between price and value, then you have an information inefficiency. And so when you raise the price, the sales go up relative to your competitor. That happens again and again and again. It’s a pure Pavlovian phenomenon. You can say, “Well, the economists have figured this sort of thing out when they started talking about information inefficiencies,” but that was fairly late in economics that they found such an obvious thing. And, of course, most of them don’t ask what causes the information inefficiencies.

Well, one of the things that cause it is pure old Pavlov and his dog. Now you’ve got bios from Skinnerian association, operant conditioning, you know, where you give the dog a reward and pound in the behavior that preceded the dog’s getting the award. And, of course, Skinner was able to create superstitious pigeons by having the rewards come by accident with certain occurrences, and, of course, we all know people who are the human equivalents of superstitious pigeons. That’s a very powerful phenomenon. And, of course, operant conditioning really works. I mean the people in the center who think that operant conditioning is important are very much right, it’s just that Skinner overdid it a little.

Where you see in business just perfectly horrible results from psychologically rooted tendencies is in accounting. If you take Westinghouse, which blew, what, two or three billion dollars pre-tax at least loaning developers to build hotels, and virtually 100% loans? Now you say any idiot knows that if there’s one thing you don’t like it’s a developer, and another you don’t like it’s a hotel.

And to make a 100% loan to a developer who’s going to build a hotel. But this guy, he probably was an engineer or something, and he didn’t take psychology any more than I did, and he got out there in the hands of these slick salesmen operating under their version of incentive-caused bias, where any damned way of getting Westinghouse to do it was considered normal business, and they just blew it.

That would never have been possible if the accounting system hadn’t been such but for the initial phase of every transaction it showed wonderful financial results. So people who have loose accounting standards are just inviting perfectly horrible behavior in other people. And it’s a sin, it’s an absolute sin. If you carry bushel baskets full of money through the ghetto, and made it easy to steal, that would be a considerable human sin, because you’d be causing a lot of bad behavior, and the bad behavior would spread. Similarly, an institution that gets sloppy accounting commits a real human sin, and it’s also a dumb way to do business, as Westinghouse has so wonderfully proved.

Oddly enough nobody mentions, at least nobody I’ve seen, what happened with Joe Jett and Kidder Peabody. The truth of the matter is the accounting system was such that by punching a few buttons, the Joe Jetts of the world could show profits, and profits that showed up in things that resulted in rewards and esteem and every other thing that human being. Well, the Joe Jetts are always with us, and they’re not really to blame, in my judgment at least. But that bastard who created that foolish accounting system who, so far as I know, has not been flayed alive, ought to be.

Seventh. Bias from reciprocation tendency, including the tendency of one on a roll to act as other persons expect. Well here, again, Cialdini does a magnificent job at this, and you’re all going to be given a copy of Cialdini’s book. And if you have half as much sense as I think you do, you will immediately order copies for all of your children and several of your friends. You will never make a better investment.

It is so easy to be a patsy for what he calls the compliance practitioners of this life. But, at any rate, reciprocation tendency is a very, very powerful phenomenon, and Cialdini demonstrated this by running around campus, and he asked people to take juvenile delinquents to the zoo. And it was a campus, and so one in six actually agreed to do it. And after he’d accumulated a statistical output he went around on the same campus and he asked other people, he said, “Gee, would you devote two afternoons a week to taking juvenile delinquents somewhere and suffering greatly yourself to help them,” and there he got 100% of the people to say no.

But after he’d made the first request, he backed off a little, and he said, “Would you at least take them to the zoo one afternoon?” He raised the compliance rate from a third to a half. He got three times the success by just going through the little ask-for-a-lot-and-back-off.

Now if the human mind, on a subconscious level, can be manipulated that way and you don’t know it, I always use the phrase, “You’re like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.” I mean you are really giving a lot of quarter to the external world that you can’t afford to give. And on this so-called role theory, where you tend to act in the way that other people expect, and that’s reciprocation if you think about the way society is organized.

A guy named Zimbardo had people at Stanford divide into two pieces, one were the guards and the other were the prisoners, and they started acting out roles as people expected. He had to stop the experiment after about five days. He was getting into human misery and breakdown and pathological behavior. I mean it was awesome. However, Zimbardo is greatly misinterpreted. It’s not just reciprocation tendency and role theory that caused that, it’s consistency and commitment tendency. Each person, as he acted as a guard or a prisoner, the action itself was pounding in the idea.

Wherever you turn, this consistency and commitment tendency is affecting you. In other words, what you think may change what you do, but perhaps even more important, what you do will change what you think. And you can say, “Everybody knows that.” I want to tell you I didn’t know it well enough early enough.

Eight. Now, this is a lollapalooza, and Henry Kaufman wisely talked about this, bias from over-influence by social proof, that is, the conclusions of others, particularly under conditions of natural uncertainty and stress. And here, one of the cases the psychologists use is Kitty Genovese, where all these people, I don’t know, 50, 60, 70 of them just sort of sat and did nothing while she was slowly murdered. Now one of the explanations is that everybody looked at everybody else and nobody else was doing anything, and so there’s automatic social proof that the right thing to do is nothing.

That’s not a good enough explanation for Kitty Genovese, in my judgment. That’s only part of it. There are microeconomic ideas and gain/loss ratios and so forth that also come into play. I think time and time again, in reality, psychological notions and economic notions interplay, and the man who doesn’t understand both is a damned fool.

Big-shot businessmen get into these waves of social proof. Do you remember some years ago when one oil company bought a fertilizer company, and every other major oil company practically ran out and bought a fertilizer company? And there was no more damned reason for all these oil companies to buy fertilizer companies, but they didn’t know exactly what to do, and if Exxon was doing it, it was good enough for Mobil, and vice versa. I think they’re all gone now, but it was a total disaster.

Now let’s talk about efficient market theory, a wonderful economic doctrine that had a long vogue in spite of the experience of Berkshire Hathaway. In fact one of the economists who won, he shared a Nobel Prize, and as he looked at Berkshire Hathaway year after year, which people would throw in his face as saying maybe the market isn’t quite as efficient as you think, he said, “Well, it’s a two-sigma event.” And then he said we were a three-sigma event. And then he said we were a four-sigma event. And he finally got up to six sigmas, better to add a sigma than change a theory, just because the evidence comes in differently. And, of course, when this share of a Nobel Prize went into money management himself, he sank like a stone.

If you think about the doctrines I’ve talked about, namely, one, the power of reinforcement, after all, you do something and the market goes up and you get paid and rewarded and applauded and what have you, meaning a lot of reinforcement, if you make a bet on a market and the market goes with you. Also, there’s social proof. I mean the prices on the market are the ultimate form of social proof, reflecting what other people think, and so the combination is very powerful.

Why would you expect general market levels to always be totally efficient, say even in 1973, 4 at the pit, or in 1972 or whatever it was when the Nifty Fifty were in their heyday. If these psychological notions are correct, you would expect some waves of irrationality, which carry general levels to … ’til they’re inconsistent with the reason.

Nine. What made these economists love the efficient-market theory is the math was so elegant, and after all, math was what they’d learned to do. To the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail. The alternative truth was a little messy, and they’d forgotten the great economist Keynes, whom I think said, “Better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

Nine. Bias from contrast caused distortions of sensation, perception, and cognition. Here the great experiment that Cialdini does in his class is he takes three buckets of water. One’s hot, one’s cold, and one’s room temperature. And he has the student stick his left hand in the hot water and his right hand in the cold water. Then he has them remove the hands and put them both in the room temperature bucket, and of course with both hands in the same bucket of water, one seems hot, and the other seems cold because the sensation apparatus of man is over-influenced by contrast. It has no absolute scale. It’s got a contrast scale in it, and it’s scale with quantum effects in it, too. It takes a certain percentage change before it’s noticed.

Maybe you’ve had a magician remove your watch, I certainly have, without your noticing it. It’s the same thing. He’s taking advantage of your contrast type troubles and your sensory apparatus. But here the great truth is that cognition mimics sensation, and the cognition manipulators mimic the watch-removing magician. In other words, people are manipulating you all day long on this contrast phenomenon.

Cialdini cites the case of the real estate broker. You’ve got the rube that’s been transferred into your town, and the first thing you do is you take the rube out to two of the most awful over-priced houses you’ve ever seen, and then you take the rube to some moderately over-priced house and then you stick ’em. And it works pretty well, which is why the real estate salesmen do it. It’s always gonna work.

And the accidents of life can do this to you, and it can ruin your life. In my generation when women lived at home until they got married, I saw some perfectly terrible marriages made by highly desirable women because they lived in terrible homes. And I’ve seen some terrible second marriages, which were made because they were slight improvements over an even worse first marriage.

You think you’re immune from these things, and you laugh, and I wanna tell you you aren’t. My favorite analogy, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of. I have this worthless friend I like to Bridge with, and he’s a total intellectual amateur that lives on inherited money. But he told me once something I really enjoyed hearing. He said, “Charlie,” he says, “If you throw a frog into very hot water, the frog will jump out. But if you put the frog in room temperature water and just slowly heat the water up, the frog will die there.”

Now I don’t know whether that’s true about a frog, but it’s sure as hell true about many of the businessmen I know, and there again, it is the contrast phenomenon.

These are hot-shot high-powered people. These are not fools. If it comes to you in small pieces, you’re likely to miss, so you have to … if you’re gonna be a person of good judgment, you have to do something about this warp in your head where it’s so misleading by mere contrast.

Bias from over-influence by authority. Well, here the Milgram experiment is it’s caused … I think there have been 1600 psychological papers written about Milgram. He had a person posing as an authority figure trick ordinary people into giving what they had every reason to expect was heavy torture by an electric shock to perfectly innocent fellow citizens. And the experiment has been … he was trying to show why Hitler succeeded and a few other things. So it has really caught the fancy of the world. Partly it’s so politically correct and …

Over-influence by authority has another very … you’ll like this one. You got a pilot and a co-pilot. The pilot is the authority figure. They don’t do this in airplanes, but they’ve done it in simulators. They have the pilot do something where the co-pilot who’s been trained in simulators a long time. He knows he’s not to allow the plane to crash. They have the pilot to do something where an idiot co-pilot would know the plane was gonna crash, but the pilot’s doing it, and the co-pilot is sitting there, and the pilot is the authority figure. 25% of the time, the plane crashes. This is a very powerful psychological tendency.

It’s not quite as powerful as some people think, and I’ll get to that later.

11. Bias from Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome, including bias caused by present or threatened scarcity, including threatened removal of something almost possessed but never possessed. Here I took the Munger dog, a lovely harmless dog. The one way, the only way to get that dog to bite you was to try and take something out of its mouth after it was already there.

Any of you who’ve tried to do take-aways in labor negotiations will know the human version of that dog is there in all of us. I had a neighbor, a predecessor, on a little island where I have a house, and his next-door neighbor put a little pine tree in that was about three feet high, and it turned his 180-degree view of the harbor into 179 and three-quarters. Well, they had a blood feud like the Hatfields and McCoys, and it went on and on and on. People are really crazy about minor decrements down.

Then if you act on them, you get into reciprocation tendency because you don’t just reciprocate affection, you reciprocate animosity. And the whole thing can escalate, and so huge insanities can come from just subconsciously over-weighing the importance of what you’re losing or almost getting and not getting.

The extreme business cake here was New Coke. Now Coca-Cola has the most valuable trademark in the world. We’re the major shareholder. I think we understand that trademark. Coke has armies of brilliant engineers, lawyers, psychologists, advertising executives, and so forth. And they had a trademark on a flavor, and they’d spent better part of 100 years getting people to believe that trademark had all these intangible values, too. And people associate it with a flavor, so they were gonna tell people not that it was improved ’cause you can’t improve a flavor. If a flavor’s a matter of taste, you may improve a detergent or something, but telling you’re gonna make a major change in a flavor, I mean … So they got this huge Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome.

Pepsi was within weeks of coming out with Old Coke in a Pepsi bottle, which would have been the biggest fiasco in modern times. Perfect, pluperfect insanity. And by the way, both Goizueta and Keough are just wonderful about it. They just joke. They don’t … Keough always says I must’ve been away on vacation. He participated in every single … he’s a wonderful guy. And by the way, Goizueta’s a wonderful, smart guy, an engineer.

Smart people make these terrible blunders. How can you not understand Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome? But people do not react symmetrically to loss and gain. Now maybe a great Bridge player like Zeckhauser does, but that’s a trained response. Ordinary people subconsciously affected by their inborn tendencies.

Bias from envy/jealousy. Well, envy/jealousy made what, two out of the 10 commandments. Those of you who’ve raised siblings or tried to run a law firm or investment bank or even a faculty. I’ve heard Warren say a half a dozen times, “It’s not greed that drives the world but envy.”

Here again, you go through the psychology survey courses. You go to the index: envy, jealousy. In a thousand-page book, it’s blank! There are some blind spots in academia. But it’s an enormously powerful thing, and it operates to a considerable extent at a subconscious level, and anybody who doesn’t understand it is taking on defects he shouldn’t have.

Bias from chemical dependency. Well, we don’t have to talk about that. We’ve all seen so much of it, but it’s interesting how it always causes moral breakdown if there’s any need, and it always involves massive denial. It aggravates what we talked about earlier in the aviator case, the tendency to distort reality so that it’s endurable.

Bias from gambling compulsion. Well here, Skinner made the only explanation you’ll find in the standard psychology survey course. He, of course, created a variable reinforcement rate for his pigeons, his mice, and he found that that would pound in the behavior better than any other enforcement pattern. He says, “Ah ha! I’ve explained why gambling is such a powerful, addictive force in civilization.” I think that is, to a very considerable extent, true, but being Skinner, he seemed to think that was the only explanation.

The truth of the matter is the devisers of these modern machines and techniques know a lot of things that Skinner didn’t know. For instance, a lottery … you have a lottery where you get your number by lot and then somebody draws a number by lot? It gets lousy play. You get a lottery where people get to pick their number, get big play. Again, it’s this consistency and commitment thing. People think that if they’ve committed to it, it has to be good. The minute they’ve picked it themselves, it gets an extra validity. After all, they thought it and they acted on it.

Then if you take slot machines, you get bar, bar, lemon. It happens again and again and again. You get all these near misses. Well, that’s Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome, and boy do the people who create the machines understand human psychology.

And for the high IQ crowd, they’ve got poker machines where you make choices, so you can play blackjack, so to speak, with the machine. It’s wonderful what we’ve done with our computers to ruin civilization.

But anyway, this gambling compulsion is a very, very powerful important thing. Look at what’s happening to our country. Every Indian reservation, every river town, and look at the people who are ruined with the aid of their stockbrokers and others.

Again, if you look in the standard textbook of psychology, you’ll find practically nothing on it except maybe one sentence talking about Skinner’s rats. That is not adequate coverage of the subject.

Bias from liking distortion, including the tendency to especially like oneself, one’s own kind, and one’s own idea structures, and the tendency to be especially susceptible to being misled by someone liked.

Disliking distortion. Bias from that. The reciprocal of liking distortion and the tendency not to learn appropriately from someone disliked. Well, here again, we’ve got hugely powerful tendencies, and if you look at the wars in part of the Harvard Law School as we sit here, you can see those very brilliant people get into this almost pathological behavior, and these are very, very powerful, basic, subconscious, psychological tendencies or at least partly subconscious.

Now let’s get back to B.F. Skinner, man with a hammer syndrome revisited. Why is man with a hammer syndrome always present? Well if you stop to think about it, incentive caused bias. His professional reputation is all tied up with what he knows. He likes himself, and he likes his own ideas, and he’s expressed them to other people, consistency and commitment tendency. I mean you’ve got four or five of these elementary psychological tendencies combining to create this man with a hammer syndrome.

Once you realize that you can’t really buy your thinking down. Partly you can, but largely you can’t in this world. You’ve learned a lesson that’s very useful in life. George Bernard Shaw said, and a character say in The Doctor’s Dilemma, “In the last analysis, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.” But he didn’t have it quite right because it’s not so much conspiracy as it is a subconscious, psychological tendency.

The guy tells you what is good for him, and he doesn’t recognize that he’s doing anything wrong any more than that doctor did when he was pulling out all those normal gallbladders. He believed that his own idea structures will cure cancer, and he believed that the demons that he’s the guardian against are the biggest demons and the most important ones. And in fact, they may be very small demons compared to the demons that you face. So you’re getting your advice in this world from your paid advisor with this huge load of ghastly bias. And woe to you!

And only two ways to handle it. You can hire your advisor and then just apply a windage factor like I used to do when I was a rifle shooter. I’d just adjust for so many miles an hour wind. Or you can learn the basic elements of your advisor’s trade. You don’t have to learn very much, by the way, because if you learn just a little and you can make him explain why he’s right. And those two tendencies will take part of the warp out of the thinking you’ve tried to hire down.

By and large, it works terribly. I have never seen a management consultant’s report in my long life that didn’t end with the following paragraph: “What this situation really needs is more management consulting.” Never once! I always turn to the last page. Of course, Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t hire them, so … I only do this in sort of a lawyer-istic basis. Sometimes I’m in a nonprofit where some idiot hires one.

17. Bias from the non-mathematical nature of the human brain in its natural state as it deals with probabilities employing crude heuristics and is often mislead by mere contrast. The tendency to overweigh conveniently available information and other psychological rooted mis-thinking tendencies on this list when the brain should be using the simple probability mathematics of Fermat and Pascal, applied to all reasonably attainable and correctly weighted items of information that are of value in predicting outcomes. The right way to think is the way Zeckhauser plays Bridge. It’s just that simple.

And your brain doesn’t naturally know how to think the way Zeckhauser knows to play Bridge. Now you notice I put in that availability thing, and there I’m mimicking some very eminent psychologists … Tversky, who raised the idea of availability to a whole heuristic of misjudgment.

You know, they are very substantially right. Ask the Coca-Cola company, which has raised availability to a secular religion, if availability changes behavior. You’ll drink a hell of a lot more Coke if it’s always available. Availability does change behavior and cognition.

Nonetheless, even though I recognize that and applaud Tversky, Kahneman, I don’t like it for my personal system except as part of a greater subsystem, which is you gotta think the way Zeckhauser plays Bridge. It isn’t just the lack of availability that distorts your judgment. All the things on this list distort judgment. And I wanna train myself to mentally run down the list instead of just jumping on availability. So that’s why I state it the way I do.

In a sense, these psychological tendencies make things unavailable ’cause if you quickly jump to one thing and then because you’ve jumped to it, the consistency and commitment tendency makes you lock in, boom, it’s there. Number one.

Or if something is very vivid, which I’m going to come to next, that will really pound in. And the reason that the thing that really matters is now unavailable and what’s extra vivid wins is … the extra vividness creates the unavailability. So I think it’s much better to have a whole list of things that cause you to be less like Zeckhauser than it is just to jump on one factor.

Here, I think we should discuss John Gutfreund. This is a very interesting human example, which will be taught in every decent professional school for at least a full generation. Gutfreund has a trusted employee, and it comes to light not through confession but by accident that the trusted employee has lied like hell to the government and manipulated the accounting system and was really the equivalent to forgery. The man immediately says, “I’ve never done it before. I’ll never do it again. It was an isolated example.” Of course, it was obvious that he was trying to help the government as well as himself ’cause he thought the government had been dumb enough to pass a rule that he’d spoken against. And after all, if a government’s not gonna pay attention to a bond trader at Salomon, what kind of a government can it be?

At any rate, and this guy has been part of a little clique that has made way over a billion dollars for Salomon in the very recent past, and it’s a little handful of people. So there are a lot of psychological forces at work. You know the guy’s wife, he’s right in front of you, and there’s human sympathy, and he’s sort of asking for your help, which is the form which encourages reciprocation, and there are all these psychological tendencies are working. Plus the fact he’s part of a group that has made a lot of money for you.

At any rate, Gutfreund does not cashier the man, and of course, he had done it before, and he did do it again. Well now you look as though you almost wanted him to do it again or God knows what you look like, but it isn’t good. And that simple decision destroyed John Gutfreund.

It’s so easy to do. Now let’s think it through like the Bridge player, like Zeckhauser. You find an isolated example of a little old lady in the See’s candy company, one of our subsidiaries, getting into the till, and what does she say? “I never did it before. I’ll never do it again. This is gonna ruin my life. Please help me.” And you know her children and her friends, and she’s been around 30 years and standing behind the candy counter with swollen ankles. In your old age, isn’t that glorious a life? And you’re rich and powerful and there she is. “I never did it before, and I will never do it again.”

Well, how likely is it that she never did it before? If you’re gonna catch ten embezzlements a year, what are the chances that any one of them, applying what Tversky and Kahneman called baseline information, will be somebody who only did it this once? And the people who have done it before and are gonna do it again, what are they all gonna say?

Well in the history of the See’s candy company, they always say, “I never did it before, and I’m never gonna do it again.” And we cashier them. It would be evil not to because terribly behavior spreads. … You let that stuff … you’ve got social proof, you’ve got incentive caused bias, you got a whole lotta psychological factors that will cause the evil behavior to spread, and pretty soon the whole damn … your place is rotten, the civilization is rotten. It’s not the right way to behave, and …

I will admit that I have … when I knew the wife and children, I have paid severance pay when I fire somebody, for taking a mistress on a extended foreign trip. It’s not the adultery I mind. It’s embezzlement. But there, I wouldn’t do it where Gutfreund did it, where they’d been cheating somebody else on my behalf. There I think you have to cashier, but if they’re just stealing from you and you get rid of them, I don’t think you need the last ounce of vengeance. In fact, I don’t think you need any vengeance. I don’t think vengeance is much good.

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bearchenfotografie · 5 years ago

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marcomoochala · 6 years ago

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Print On Golf Balls, Bags, Gifts, Leather, Acrylic and so much more!

In this blog post i would like to take some time to explain what UV printing is all about, some recommendations of UV printing machines that are available in Singapore.

So lets start of with some basics, there are many types of ink inkjet machines and models, also there are a number of ink formulations which are available. It is important to realise that there is no ‘single’ machine capable of doing everything which you need. That is because the surface on which the ink lands can be different, so if you want to print on eg. leather the machine and the ink formula must allow your ink to bond successfully with the ‘substrate’.

UV printing in Singapore is fairly new, and this is how the ink works. Ink is released from the print head and here’s where the magic happens..immediately upon its release and landing on your substrate it is cured. Which means you are able to print on virtually any type of substrate or surface without first treating the surface or purchasing media that has to be coated. That is a game changing technology !

Traditionally if you were to print on leather, you would use a process called silk screening whereby you would apply colors one at a time, but then you would need to make individual screens and the process is extremely time consuming not to mention labor intensive. UV printing is what is here to reduce the reliance of silk screening and digitizing the whole process.

So in a nutshell , the UV printing process is much simpler and all you need to do is load the item or product you wish to print on, position it and press the print button. This allows you to get creative…..and i really do mean creative!

So besides just doing the regular type of printing which may range from logo, some graphics etc. UV printing has an extremely distinct advantage. This advantage will literally blow your mind! Printing with our printers allow you to now create effects, such as emboss, spot gloss, textures, and unique patterns. Read on to see this little experiment which i did using our UV printers.

Faux Snake Skin EZ-Link Card

Snake Skin UV Printed

Emboss Effect Uv Printer

In the above image, i wanted to have the most unique Ez-link card in Singapore! So i decided that i would print out a snake skin texture directly onto the surface of this card.

So , i went on google and searched for snake skin images, which i then put into photo shop and added the text to. Once that was complete i sent it to the Mutoh 426 UH printer and the machine did the rest. Meaning, the texture was automatically created by the machine!

So if you take a close look at the image you will see where the text is embossed also you will notice the snake skin texture along the card, there is a slight bleed through from the image at the back, which can be easily corrected by printing a black layer first and then the textures on top.

Think of all the things you could possibly create with the UV printer!

Key Inks

Uv printer singapore

Uv printing technology

The UV printer uses primarily 4 colors (CMYK) , however you will realise if for example you would like to print on black leather, you won’t be able to do that if you just use 4 colors. This is the reason why our UV machine comes with White+ Varnish.

White ink serves to add a layer of white behind a dark surface in order to create contrast and vibrancy, so when you are considering a UV printer for your gift printing or future business it is important to select a machine which gives you the best White. There are a number of machines available in the market and i find some of them to yellow quickly or the white is simply not that white….which to put it bluntly sucks because then the rest of the colors are affected. So that’s my biggest tip for you!

Secondly, varnish. This ink ..well its not really an ‘ink’ per say however it is a liquid that adds gloss and additional fixation properties to a UV print. If you wish to do things like spot gloss or create beautiful prints on black surfaces just using varnish. This machine will surely be up to the task.

Details and text

With UV printing, because of the properties of instant drying, printing out it incredibly small text and fonts is achieved with the greatest of ease and accuracy. The ink simply does not have time to smear (i am talking on a microscopic level) it dries immediately when it makes contact with the surface so it retains all the possible details.

Would you believe it , it can print as small as a 3 pt text which basically looks like this :

This level of super fine detail is almost unheard of, however it just goes to show you the technical prowess of the capabilities of this UV printing machine. A good example of when you may need to print this small, is from one of my customers who prints the watch faces directly onto the metal to allow for customization of watches for their individual clients. Pretty nifty to own a watch which has your name on it !

Applications

There are no doubt a tonne of applications that can be used with our printer. The ability to print on almost anything is a BIG deal. If you are thinking about starting your own brand or business, you could source your products and then ship them over to Singapore and brand them accordingly. Then you would have the option of adding texture, details and other featured enhancements which would create a definite value for your product.

The biggest problem that we have in the Singapore gift market is the problem of MOQ! If you have ever tried sourcing for your companies corporate gifts you will know what i mean, just after you have selected your gift the next question would be “how many of this do you need?” This forces customer to sometimes purchase more than they need, worse they purchase generic gifts for their customers. So if you were thinking about giving a real special gift to your top 50 customers, you wouldn’t be able to do so simply because it would cost too much to run an MOQ and this would be extremely prohibitive. So having or knowing someone who has a UV printer would make it simple to run small batches quickly.

What about name cards! we use them everyday, however most name cards are printed on 300 gsm stock card and are at best simple and easily forgotten! Well with a printer like this you could offer customers a service of creating exquisite name cards printed on laminated bamboo as an example! You could add color, texture and gloss and create the most amazing name cards ever!

So as you can see, the versatility of these printers and the technology truly make it a great investment if you are ready to get creative and carve out markets where no one has ventured to yet !

Watch This: What we used to do (CNBC Interview) & How we evolved To What We do Now!

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What is UV Flatbed Printer/ Printing all about? Get the best UV Printer Solution in Singapore! Print On Golf Balls, Bags, Gifts, Leather, Acrylic and so much more! In this blog post i would like to take some time to explain what UV printing is all about, some recommendations of…

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swelldomains · 8 years ago

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5 Ways Search and Social Work Together

One year ago Facebook reported that it had over 3 million advertisers on their system. It might not be an online search engine, but paid search marketing professionals have absolutely located value as well as ROI from advertising on Facebook. In a similar way social media sites marketing professionals have actually likewise broadened the reach of their campaigns, by applying their Facebook insights to paid search and also remarketing efforts. Combining paid search and social projects develops an advertising force to be thought with. This blog post considers 5 means marketing experts can completely recognize that incorporated advertising power!

# 1: Usage Facebook To Build Brand Awareness

There's a really clear (and obvious) distinction in between exactly what individuals use Facebook and Google for. While individuals on an online search engine are purpose-driven as well as trying to find a piece of information, individuals on a social networks network are usually there to be social. On Facebook as well as Instagram, people check on their buddies, their much-loved web pages, and also maintain up to this day on recent trends.

Users discover new points on Facebook as well as Instagram, whereas on Google individuals find something they understand they currently need. Therefore Facebook and Instagram could be made use of for brand recognition, while Google's advertising network is usually better suited for owning straight conversions. For marketing experts this distinction is crucial to unlocking the potential of both channels.

If you're an organisation that is launching a brand-new item (or a new organisation in basic), no person is mosting likely to browse for you in Google, just because they have no idea you exist. Services need to develop a target market and also a strong brand name visibility prior to the general public will use internet search engine as a way to find them (lasting natural SEO initiatives omitted).

Facebook can aid. By marketing on Facebook marketing experts can construct brand name awareness, due to the fact that ads will certainly be revealed to customers as they scroll through their newsfeed. In time users will become aware of your brand merely from the ads you have actually flowed on Facebook (as well as ideally additionally from word-of-mouth since that's exactly how good your service is!). Facebook's audience-targeting makes this even much easier, enabling you to generate need for your product/business from a particular demographic developed from many information factors. Or else referred to as "draw marketing," this technique lets you construct need as well as awareness on Facebook to ensure that users will in fact start to search for your company on Google.

# 2: Begin Facebook Projects with Browse Landing Pages

When marketing on Facebook, marketing professionals could tailor photos, headlines as well as message. Greater than personalization, there is the capacity to A/B examination personalized variables to make the most of click-through-rate. However also if the material of the advertisement itself is amazing and also appealing, there will not be any conversions if the touchdown page is dreadful. Presuming you're already running paid search projects, you can make use of the existing Pay Per Click landing web page data, rather than entering into social marketing campaign blind.

Create a Facebook advertising campaign utilizing the landing page with the greatest rate of conversion from your search campaigns. A completely enhanced ad linkeded into your best landing web page from search is a recipe for Facebook ad success, or at the minimum a fantastic place to start.

The interplay in between social media sites and online search engine isn't one-sided either. When you develop an enhanced Facebook ad, you can utilize it to notify your PPC advertisements in search!

# 3: Create a "Lookalike" Audience

Before you study pressing a marketing campaign on Facebook, it's essential to figure out who your audience is. It's ineffective to be paying for an ad that isn't mosting likely to reverberate with a particular target market. Again, here's where search projects could aid narrow your focus.

By assembling a list of customers who converted from search advertisement campaigns, marketing professionals could use that information to create a custom audience in Facebook. Considering that conversions can take different types for different services, a customized audience listing can be produced from individuals who signed up for your newsletter or a checklist of individuals who bought something from your site for instance. You might even obtain more granular and publish a list of people that quit opening your e-newsletter, and also target them on Facebook with a new as well as a lot more intriguing offer - one that will certainly make them wish to connect with your brand name once more. In the image to the right here, I am being retargeted on Facebook by a brand name with whom I have actually previously communicated with, functioning to conserve elephants. This is a fantastic instance of a brand name returning to me on Facebook with a targeted message around a minimal edition t shirt, showcasing one of my favorite celebrities as well as making me desire to connect with their cause again.

While marketers should recognize their target market size as they build a custom audience, the process is pretty structured. That is, you can download and install the list of customers from your site into a. txt or.csv documents then post that listing straight onto Facebook! But don't stop there.

Facebook is wonderful for producing what's called a "lookalike" audience. Real to it's name, this kind of target market is automatically picked by the Facebook ad platform based on just what the custom target market you submitted looks like. Consequently your custom-made audience and also lookalike audience will certainly have comparable features. Most significantly they should have some fundamental interest in your service or item. And also easily marketing experts, you have not just one, yet two separate custom-made audiences to get to with your ads!

# 4: Change From Social To Search

Now here's where search campaigns take advantage of all the work you've performed with your Facebook or Instagram ads. With all the A/B testing in addition to the custom and also lookalike target market targeting, possibilities are at least some of the target market saw your Facebook ad. When a user sees your advertisement on Facebook a type of conversion has actually happened referred to as a 'Sight Via,' a 'Sight Via,' or a 'VTR.'

One of the most powerful strategies when integrating search and also social is to take a listing of view-thru users from Facebook and use it to target people in search. Marketers could publish their view-thru list from Facebook into an AdWords project and create just what's called a Remarketing Checklist for Search Ads (RLSA). Marketing professionals see to it you keep in mind that acronym! Because you already have specificed info on the view-thru individuals from Facebook (location, gender, age, etc.), you can target this listing with a different message in search.

Let's state you were running an advertisement for beard-grooming packages on Facebook. Through various A/B examinations and various audience targeting strategies, you established that middle-aged guys in the US who like Vice transformed frequently on your most optimized advertisement. You can take the checklist of people that saw your message of brand awareness on Facebook, and after that retarget them with paid advertisements on search, offering a 40% off limited-time price cut on the sets for example.

#5: Bids You Can Bet On!

Marketers have to recognize exactly what stage in the channel a target market is before choosing on what does it cost? to bid on them. Exactly how far down the channel are they? Will they click on your ad only to contrast pricing or are they a lot more devoted? That's where truth advantage of making use of cross-campaign targeted listings comes in.

In some of the steps above we discussed the power of taking audience understandings from search and also bringing them over to social. We likewise discussed taking audience insights from social and bringing them back to look. You should bid even more to get to these audience groups since they are better down the acquiring cycle. When targeting a lookalike audience with your ads for instance, you might wish to raise your spending to get to these users because this target market is much a lot more most likely to transform compared to a basic target market. When you're presenting an AdWords project utilizing an RLSA from a previous Facebook campaign, you would likewise want to bid even more to reach this audience and more. The factor is that anytime you currently know that the customers you're targeting already interacted with your brand name (either on Facebook or Google), increasing your spend is a good idea!

Search + Social = Sweeter Results

As we have actually revealed, there's genuine worth in integrating social advertisement campaigns with search campaigns. Social media like Facebook or Instagram may be a bit various in function than an online search engine, however the data and understandings they supply are very useful. Previous search projects can inform social campaigns as well as targeted social campaigns can notify search.

Let's Recap:

# 1: Begin building your audience base in Facebook # 2: Use your highest possible converting touchdown page from search in Facebook # 3: Produce a personalized target market in Facebook with individuals who transformed from search advertisement campaigns # 4: Target Facebook view-thru individuals with a different message in search # 5: Bid even more to reach these target market groups because they are even more down the purchasing cycle

Marketers who are wise adequate making usage of the techniques defined above will certainly have a benefit over rivals that are not. As individuals are pestered with consumer messages a growing number of (and much more!), it will be up to online marketers to claim precisely the best point at the correct time to get conversions - integrating search as well as social is an effective place to start.

If you're just running search campaigns and still unsure about Facebook or Instagram projects, don't fret, Acquisio's Overview of Facebook Advertising Success describes whatever you have to know!

#advertisement #advertising campaign #business #digital marketing #marketing #marketing campaign #marketing strategy #search marketing #seo #social marketing #social media #social media sites

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merkabacreations-blog · 6 years ago

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Mastery Journal 12.4.2

Mastery: Personal Development & Leadership (Month 1) – During Month 1 of the program, we read Mastery by Robert Greene. This was very inspirational reading and left me feeling enthusiastic about the program. The main lesson I took from the reading was that the road to mastery is not one that is formulaic. Even the great masters that came before us hit bumps in the road and faced obstacles and set-backs. Masters are made, not born. Even those born with genius level talents had to work hard to achieve their mastery. Also, the road to mastery is all about finding yourself; discovering your true desires and motivations. I learned to put my goals into perspective this month with tasks like the Mastery Timeline and Brainstorm/Research worksheet.

Defining Client Needs (Month 2) – During Month 2 we began brainstorming/researching designs for our city logos. We also began to do peer critiques starting this month. The feedback from instructors and classmates was very beneficial and helped me to look at my artwork objectively. This month I learned new techniques to overcome artist’s block and learned new ways to approach designing.

Brand Development (Month 3) – This month we digitized our best logo sketches from the previous month, we produced mood boards, we continued peer critiques and completed SWOT (Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) exercises. This month taught me what a brand truly is. Branding is much more than just a logo. The brand carries the value of the company. The brand is everything that embodies the company. The brand is the public image that acts as a representative for the company.

Effective Copy Writing (Month 4) – This month we produced ad comps for a non-profit organization. We developed personas which allowed us to get in the minds of our audience/consumer. This is a great tool for companies to use, so that they can determine what the best imagery and language is to persuade their audience to act. We also worked on developing new/improved taglines for the non-profits. This month taught me the importance of copy writing as a designer, because many designers get tasked with writing the copy in their designs, as not all agencies/clients will employ a separate person to write. It is critical for designers to be versatile, diverse and adaptable in this field.

Design Research (Month 5) – This month we produced web design comps for a made-up non-profit organization. The objective of the website was to not only promote a charity concert, but educate people about the goals of the organization (saving sea turtles). We came up with three mood boards and chose the strongest of our designs to be the base for our final web comp. Working on mood boards and comps in previous months definitely helped prepare me for this project. This month taught me the importance of having a strong rationale, or reason behind design choices, and having the research to back up your claims. This makes it easier, as a designer, to express your ideas to your clients. You’ll seem more credible and reliable with well-well-researched rationales. This month I also became reacquainted with design elements such as informational hierarchy, contrast, shape, line, etc. All of these elements of design help designers convey our messages more clearly to our audience, in ways that are usually universally understood.

Organizational Structures (Month 6) – This month we learned about different animation techniques. We got to animate subjects of our choice. I chose to use Kinetic Typography to animate the words of a poem I wrote many (many) years ago. We used Story journals, boards and maps to help us stay organized and truly tell compelling stories that the audience could connect with. This month definitely proved to be a learning curve for me as I was not very familiar with applications like After Effects. Where I felt like I had shortcomings, I was detrained to overcome them in the following months.

Design Strategies (Month 7) – This month we came up with an 8-week timeline for our thesis project. I learned to prioritize projects by level of important and relevance, which helped keep me from being overwhelmed. We also had periodic postings that showed our progress. Instructor and peer critiques along with the frequent check-ins helped me stay on task. Some techniques I learned from the previous month came in handy while I animated my logo sting. Sketching, animatics and story boarding were useful tools during this month.

Design Integration (Month 8) – This month we continued the project started in the previous months. I kept making strides in my animation and acquired new competencies in applications like After Effects and Keynote. My confidence was improving compared to month 6 when we were first introduced to animation techniques. In addition to my logo sting, I animated my web comps and made a promotional video which featured parallax imagery. This month I wrote one of my favorite research papers about Innovation where I challenged traditional means of education.

Multi-Platform Delivery (Month 9) – This was our last month of development for our thesis project. By the end of this month, it was nice to see all the progress I made on the Travel Campaign since the start of Month 7. It was interesting to see how it developed and grew from just the small idea to animate my logo. This month I also wrote my Inspiration Essay where I argued that there are no original ideas and wrote about methods designers should take to try to avoid plagiarism, even unintentionally.

Measuring Design Effectiveness (Month 10) – This month taught me the importance of testing a project while also teaching me how to word and develop questions which test the effectiveness of design choices. I had mixed feelings about the results at the end of the month, however. I was able to see my shortcomings and where I made mistakes when developing my questions. For example, vetting my test subjects before hand would have saved me time and I would not have had to devote so much time to demographic questions that had little or nothing to do with testing the effectiveness of the design. I learned that more planning should go into developing questionnaires for measuring design effectiveness.

Presentation of Design Solution (Month 11) – This month we were tasked with making a Wix website where we would showcase our strongest projects and demonstrate our claim to mastery. At first I was worried I wouldn’t have enough content or substantiated research to argue my claim to mastery. However, as I continued to populate my website with more of my work, I began to appreciate my journey in the program. In addition to the thesis presentation, we also improved our portfolios and posted reflections. The improvements to the portfolios is important because it showcases my work in a more professional light for potential employers.

Professional Practice (Month 12) – This month we did a lot as we prepared to exit the program. For one, we researched many different things that could land designers in legal trouble. From there we found solutions and alternatives that we could employ in order to avoid questionable situations. We also updated our resumes and cover letters, and learned techniques that attract hiring managers’ attention. Lastly, we designed experience maps which mapped out our journeys in the program, and explored what we did, felt, and thought throughout the whole experience. This last month left me feeling enthusiastic again, much like the first month did, because I am excited to see what the future holds in store for me. Researching jobs in my field and seeing the credentials they look for, left me feeling confident in my abilities and grateful for my previous experiences. With a couple of more years in the field I can start applying and qualifying for higher level positions. I feel very prideful when I look back over the course of this program. I’m extremely proud of my body of work and I’m glad I did not get too down, even in the moments when I felt overwhelmed and was doubting myself. I’m glad I kept pushing through and I’ve finally reached this moment.

In regards to my Thesis Presentation:

Month 1 taught me the importance of setting goals. One goal I set that month was improving my animation skills. Over the course of the program I did just that, and it proved to be crucial for my thesis project and presentation. A personal triumph I achieved this month was the Video Presentation. I wrote a script, memorized it and did several takes. Public speaking and speaking on camera makes me nervous, but I was glad I was able to overcome my shyness. Brushing up on my video editing skills was also helpful for later months in the program.

Month 2 taught me the importance of research in the earlier stages of designing. This helped me with every design project in subsequent months. Drawing sketches and doing word maps are techniques I’ll take with me beyond the program

Month 3 taught me that all details are important, even the small details. Small mistakes tend to add up and bring down the overall quality of the design. Developing a brand came in handy while developing the Travel Campaign for Marrakesh (which ended up being the bigger part of my thesis project.

Month 4 - The personas and ad comps were important accomplishments to me because comps weren’t things I was used to producing in the development stages of design but helped me out when producing web comps later in Month 5 and during the thesis project. The personas also came in handy when I wanted to determine who my audience was for the Travel campaign.

Month 5 - Web comps and web design research taught me what users want and don’t want to experience when visiting a website. I made sure to make my web comps for the Marrakesh campaign convenient and self-evident for my intended audience. My greatest accomplishment this month was my scrolling web comp which simulated a one-page website design.

Month 6 taught me that there is always new things to learn. I felt a little discouraged this month but after makings some breakthroughs, it left me determined to do better for the thesis project. Every part of my thesis project incorporated animation because I wanted to get better at it.

Months 7,8 and 9 taught me the importance of listening to your critiques and sticking to a plan and staying organized. My greatest accomplishments this month were my logo animation, promotional video and animated web comp. These projects proved I had acquired competencies in the things that were giving me trouble earlier in the program.

Month 10 taught me that what can be perceived as a successful design does not always translate on paper, especially if it is not tested correctly with the right group. One triumph I had during this month was my presentation of my results on Behance. I was able to design a really nice presentation despite my questionnaire having some noticeable shortcomings.

My experience map is modeled after my “workspace” as I call it. It is the state I most often find myself when I’m working or studying. I put the map on graphing paper to convey the high and low points of my mastery journey.

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j-philly-b · 8 years ago

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OUaT - Thoughts on Proposals & Weddings

All hiatus long I’ve been thinking about the Captain Swan proposal spoiler. When I first started thinking about a CS proposal and wedding, I was wondering if anything could be extrapolated from the Snowing and Rumbelle proposal scenes to give a clue as to how a CS proposal might go down. It seemed a natural progression to also look at the Snowing and Rumbelle wedding scenes to see if anything could be taken from those scenes as well to predict what could happen in a Captain Swan wedding. Now that we have a hint that that a CS wedding could happen this season as well, I decided to put everything down in one post and get it out there before it’s too late.

Two caveats before I start rambling on – First, Emma is A&E’s original princess, OUaT is her origin story and her journey to finding her happy ending by finding her family, her home, and her TL. Because of that, I think it would make sense for Emma’s engagement and wedding to break the mold, if there is one, and have each of those occasions be something completely unique to her and Killian instead of a mirror or parallel the one that have come before. [Not that I’m letting that stop me from making this post!]

Second, I’m using Snowing’s first wedding for the basis of this comparison/analysis because it is the one we were able to view in its entirety, and the more spiritual union versus the second, interrupted wedding, which seemed likely to have been performed more for the public.

Ok, now on with, well, with whatever this is…

Summary of Analysis Applied to Emma & Killian:

The location of the proposal, whether the proposal itself is spontaneous or planned, should be some place that is symbolic of Emma and Killian’s power as a couple.

The “ring” (i.e., the item exchanged at the moment of the proposal), I think, will be something that holds meaning to Killian, and something Emma already knows about and how much it means to him.

The location of the wedding, again, whether the event is spontaneous or planned, should be somewhere that is symbolic of hope and restoration to both Emma and Killian.

Finally, the person performing the ceremony should be someone whose persona represents the core value of Emma and Killian as a couple.

I. The Proposal:

a. The Setting – Light versus Dark

Snowing – On the shore within sight of King George’s Castle

David brought Snow to that spot on the shore with the intention of proposing, it was a planned moment, done in a wide open/exposed location in daylight with nothing to hide behind even though they were each under threat of danger from King George and Regina. Perhaps an act of defiance on both their parts, to demonstrate the fact that they are stronger together, especially where the proposal was immediately followed by Snow’s suggestion that they continue fighting against Regina and King George together.

Rumbelle – In Gold’s Pawn Shop

Gold was in his shop alone, having just hidden his dagger in his safe, with most of the lights off when Belle entered to return his (fake) dagger to him. Regardless of the fact that it was the fake dagger, Gold was still clearly overwhelmed by her gesture of love and trust in him. The gesture by Belle resulted in a spontaneous proposal with Gold (pretending/symbolically) surrendering his power to her. The atmosphere created by the dark shop was almost claustrophobic and overshadowed by Gold hiding the true nature of the dagger from Belle.

The proposals side by side:

Analysis

In each instance the setting for the proposal was related to the seat of the couple’s kingdom – King George’s castle, which was eventually taken over by Snowing to continue the ongoing battle between Snowing and Regina; and Gold’s shop where he keeps all the powerful magical objects in his possession as well as all the non-magical items he is able to use to exert power over the citizens of SB.

*edited to correct the location of Snowing’s proposal; thanks to @daxx04

b. The Ring – True versus False

Snowing –True Love’s Ring

It’s established very early on in 1x06 that the ring Ruth passes on to David is followed by True Love. And, as we all know, David’s refusal to give up that ring is the reason he and Snow met and went on their first adventure together. There is no doubt that Snow is well aware of David’s connection to the ring, and the meaning behind it. Finally, just before he proposes, when Snow asks David how he found her, he tells her that the ring led him to her and that he never wants the ring off her finger, perhaps meant as a physical reminder that he will always find her.

Rumbelle – The False Dagger

It is also established very early on that the DO dagger is a dark and powerful object, and that power is something Gold has a very hard time relinquishing. Belle is more than aware of Gold’s struggle with power, although in S3 her belief in him to ultimately do the right thing was still strong leading her to return the dagger to him, not realizing, of course, that he already had his DO dagger safely locked away. However, as mentioned above, it was her gesture and trust in him that cause Gold to propose on the spot by handing over the fake dagger and (falsely) placing his fate in her hands.

Analysis

Certainly, in each instance the “ring” is directly tied to the male half of the couple (honestly, the DO dagger is probably the best anti-TL ring the show could have come up with). However, the subterfuge in Gold using the fake dagger to propose while offering a heartfelt speech about trust undercut the sincerity of the moment; whereas David’s belief that the TL ring literally allowed him to find his other half represented a true connection.

II. The Wedding:

a. The Setting – Light versus Dark, Part 2

Snowing – Lake Nostos

Very similar to the setting of the proposal, despite the conspicuous lack of water, in that they were once again out in the open, nothing physically hanging over Snowing heads (seriously, pretty sure that arbor was over Lancelot’s head (and when the hell did they get the time to make that)), despite the fact that they were actively on the run from King George’s men and Ruth was on her death bed. Most notably, the spontaneous wedding culminated in Ruth’s sacrifice to ensure that Snow would drink the last few drops of water from Lake Nostos to break King George’s curse.

Rumbelle – The SB Wishing Well

While the planned, but apparently not publicized, Rumbelle wedding was held outside, it was done so at night in the SB forest next to the wishing well. Although the towering trees in the background leant a cathedral-like feel to the setting, holding it in the forest at night also gave it the feeling of something being done undercover, hidden from others.

The weddings side by side:

Analysis:

Here, what stood out to me was that in each instance the setting of the wedding was a place where something that had been thought lost had been returned to the couple. For Snowing, Ruth’s sacrifice allowed Snow to drink the last of the water from Lake Nostos, breaking King George’s curse, restoring Snow’s ability to have children, and clearing the way for Emma’s birth. For Rumbelle, the well is where they were first reunited after the curse initially broke and where Gold brought magic to SB, restoring his own DO abilities.

b. The Attendants – Mother versus Father

Snowing - Mother’s Sacrifice

Ruth, David’s mother, the source of the TL ring, and whose willingness to sacrifice her life ensured that Snow would get the last of the waters of Lake Nostos and that Emma would be born. It was her imminent death that instigated the impromptu ceremony.

Rumbelle - Father’s Approval

Moe, Belle’s father, who made the initial deal with Rumple that lead to Belle offering herself as the price, and who gave his approval for their wedding in SB. He had nothing to say in the scene and only functioned to lead Belle through the woods and into the clearing.

Analysis:

In one instance, a mother, who previously said she had TL with her son, sacrificed her chance to cure the poison from the arrow so that her son and his TL could have a child and get their happy ending. In the other, a father who in two separate worlds literally and symbolically handed his daughter over to the DO.

c. The Officiants – Love versus Conscience

Snowing – The Leviathan

Lancelot a/k/a the Leviathan, the son of the Lady of the Lake, a knight of the Round Table living in exile, a general for King George who gave Snow the cursed/poisoned water, and one half of one of the greatest romantic tragedies of all time.

Rumbelle – The Conscience

Archie Hopper a/k/a Jiminy Cricket, the conscience of the EF, and the (worst and only) SB psychiatrist.

Analysis:

Again, in each instance the officiant was more of a symbol related to the couple than actually important as an individual character. For Snowing, a symbol of a man who will do anything for love, even sacrifice a kingdom; and for Rumbelle, a symbol one’s conscience who is tellingly silent during the ceremony.

d. The Vows – Action versus Words

Snowing - Silence is golden

None, Lancelot did all the talking and it was about the Grail. [Yeah, let’s not go there in retrospect.]

Rumbelle - The lady doth protest too much

They each had a lot to say, but most of it had to do with Gold confessing to being an enemy of love and in awe of Belle being able to see the man behind the monster; and Belle realizing she hasn’t lost Gold over and over, but found him time and again believing the monster to be gone.

Analysis:

I’ll be perfectly frank, I am not a fan of tv/movie/literary wedding vows, they never sound sincere to my ear, and that’s solely on me, not a quality of the writing at all. So, in my mind, Rumbelle doth protest too much, in other words the abundance of vows on their part makes me doubt the credibility; contrasted by the complete lack of vows of Snowing, proving their intent by action and not words.

#ouat meta #ouat spoilers #to be safe #thinking it ouat #and trying to get back in the game #snowing #anti rumbelle #captain swan

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riverdamien · 5 years ago

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Humility and Faith

Session 7: Humility and Faith--James 4:1-17 . . .Warning Against Worldliness 4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions1 are yat war within you?2 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask zwrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 aYou adulterous people!3 Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? bTherefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit cthat he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But dhe gives more grace. Therefore it says, e“God opposes the proud but dgives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. fResist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 gDraw near to God, and he will draw near to you. hCleanse your hands, you sinners, and ipurify your hearts, jyou double-minded. 9 kBe wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 lHumble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 11 mDo not speak evil against one another, brothers.4 The one who speaks against a brother or njudges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is only oone lawgiver and pjudge, he who is able to save and qto destroy. But rwho are you to judge your neighbor? Boasting About Tomorrow 13 Come now, you who say, s“Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For tyou are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, u“If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. vAll such boasting is evil. 17 wSo whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction: On my desk sits the picture of an old friend who passed away several years ago, Annie, she was 95 years old. We met on line, she read of our work. Her interest in me came from having the religious name of "Damien of Molokai", for she lived on the island of Molokai. She paid my way to see her. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, walking where Damien walked, so many year ago. We had prayer every morning, and as I picked up her Bible to read a passage I noticed that the Book of James was torn out of the book. I looked surprised, and she said emphatically, "James is not supposed to be in the Bible, we are saved by grace." Through the two weeks we were there I loved joking about James, and getting her riled, it was fun. The reality is James challenges all of us. He is very blunt about the Biblical message, but what he is saying is at the heart of the Gospel, the heart of which Paul proclaimed, in a different way of speaking. When we experience Jesus in our hearts, they are transformed, and we have to share him in our actions, we have to love other people. Each day as we read the lectionary, the Old Testament scriptures ring out with the same message in connection with the Gospel. My friend felt challenged by the bluntness of James, she was 95, she believed she could not do much for others. Her whole life was given for others, my experience alone, was one of the grace of God through her hands. The truth is all we are asked to do is to give our best. To aim for perfection, but we always fail, but we tried. We shoot the arrow, aiming for the target, sometimes we get close, the majority of the time we fail. In this session we invite you to meditate on the passage, think how in this time of crisis, we can have humility, and faith, in which we love our neighbor. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. James 4:1-6: Two days ago as we shopped at Safeway, a fight broke out in front of us. Was it two street youth? Two homeless people? No, it was two seventy plus year old individuals fighting over the last role of toilet paper. They came to blows, the police were called. Well dressed, nice looking, and yet they gave in to their fears. How often do we let our own needs, desires, bring us to war with others? How often do we put our own needs over that of the greater good. Wars, great, and small are caused by selfish needs. By the way the "world behaves" implicitly says to us we are going adrift, and do not reflect upon the need of others, we become friends with the world. What are some patterns or values of the world that are easy to drift along and accept with out much thought that might come into conflict with the Biblical perspective of loving our neighbor? How can fear, panic, increase this conflict? 2. Verses 6-10: "Resist the devil and he will run away from you." James may have believed in the literal "devil", personally I believe in the evil that is within all of us, that which pushes us to be inhuman to others. James tell us that the devil is a coward when he/she is resisted, with prayer that claims the victory of Jesus on the cross. The devil's trick is to whisper that we know we can't resist; he/she has got us before and will get us again, so why not just give in straight way and save all that bother? It's a lie. Resist those tendencies to turn on others, to be selfish, and self-centered, to put yourself first--and the devil will run. What are the practical ways we can resist the "devil?" For example three weeks ago I had a light case of the flue. I was at a friend's house after I had recovered, and one of my friends joked with me about having the virus. I returned home, called my doctor, made arrangements to have the test, and waited. I have shut off my phone, simply to be alone, reflect, and not deal with constant questions. Yesterday my test results were back, and I am negative, I simply had the flu. In the mean time there were emails about rumors of me "having the virus." My tendency is to get angry, but now I simply laughed, and moved on. We resisted "the devil." So what practical ways can we all "resist the devil." 3. James contrasts "resisting the devil" with this promise: "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you" (v8). This is astonishing God is ready and waiting. God longs to establish friendship with each of us, a friendship deeper, stronger, and more satisfying than we can ever imagine. Why is it sometimes hard to imagine that God wants a relationship with us? In between his advice on "resisting the devil", drawing near to God, and having a pure heart are comments on humility in verses 6 and 10. Apparently humility has something to do with these directions. What is the connection? 4. In verses 11 and 12 James warns about speaking evil of one another. He seems to have in mind the kind of slander or gossip which eats its way like a cancer in into our relationships, and requires urgent treatment if it is not to prove fatal. His point is this: anyone who does such a thing is thereby implying that the ordinary "law" which applies to Christians --that they should love their neighbor as themselves does not apply to them. They are above it! They can look down on such petty standards from a great height? They are, says James, "judging the law," instead of doing what the law says. When are we tempted to think that we are "above the Law," of loving our neighbor as ourselves and why? 5. Why is it so easy to talk about what's wrong with other people and cast them in a bad light? 6. Throughout this passage James warns against the temptation to put ourselves in the place of God. How do verses 13-16 highlight this danger in relation to our future plans? 7. James again has strong words in store for us--don't you realize, he says, what your life is like? Think of the mist; you see out the window on an autumn morning. It hangs there in the valley, above the little stream. It is beautiful, evocative, mysterious, yes, just like a human being can be. Then the sun comes up a bit further, and ..the mist simply disappears. That's what your life is like. You have no idea what today will bring, let alone tomorrow. How do you respond to Jame's observation about the fragility of life? 8. In practical terms, what would it look like to live out an attitude that expresses, "If the Lord wills, we shall live, and we shall do this or that"? 9. The chapter ends with a warning which is far more general, and indeed far more worrying, thanloj what has gone before. Not to do what you know you should do is actually to sin. Once you learn the humility to accept God's royal law ("love God and your neighbor as yourself), and to live by it, to accept God's ordering of all life and to live within that, then you see more clearly the positive things to which you are being called. This may be a major life decision, a question of your whole vocation and path of life. Or it may be the small Spirit-given nudge to do small act of kindness for a neighbor or a stranger. But once we have had that nudge, that call, then to ignore, to pretend we have not heard it, is a further act of pride, setting ourselves up in the place of God. So the question is that as we look over this passage, in what ways is God calling or nudging us to do what is right? ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T. P.O. Box 642656 San Francisco, CA 94164 www.temenos.org 415-305-2124 [email protected] “Why am I compelled to write?... Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger... To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispel the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit... Finally I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.” -Gloria E. Anzaldúa Tenderloin Stations of the Cross Good Friday, April 10, 2020 Noon-2:00 p.m. Polk Street side of City Hall We will have the Stations of the Cross. Our plans are to do it alone, and have people go through the Stations at home. . Holy Communion We have taken Holy Communion to individuals who request the Sacrament. We administer the Sacrament outside, and have plastic gloves on, standing six feet away. We give only use only the host. We take all precautions.

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showlexsite · 5 years ago

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Cite This For Me

The conclusion is intended to assist the reader perceive why your research ought to matter to them after they’ve finished studying the paper. With extra quotes from exterior sources you collected – they belong in the essay body paragraphs. The death of beowulf essay: essay on my dream india in tamil, 5 paragraph essay on writing skills finest essay sentences. Writing a concluding sentence could not come as easily as you could suppose. Contemplate beginning with a brainstorming session to determine if your budding writers can find with totally different words for in conclusion.

In a course of essay, the reader must know what the ultimate end result or product is, as well as what may be achieved with it. While wrapping up the conclusion, ensure that to supply the reader with information of what they need to have by the point the duty is finished. So sure, you may think about ending with a question and asking a rhetorical question within the conclusion paragraph.

Transitional words are essential to write any nice paper. Nonetheless, a good conclusion will generally contain a restatement of the thesis that you just started your essay with and will depart the reader with a couple of final ideas related to the essay’s subject. Note how transitions might come at starting or finish of paragraphs, however both approach they sign movement and change.

Transitions are a crucial a part of every body paragraph, but not all topic sentences require a transition. There are a number of varieties of transitional phrases and phrases, and every class helps the reader to make sure connections. Utilization: transition words are used with a special rule for punctuation: a semicolon or a period is used after the first ‘sentence’, and a comma is nearly at all times used to set off the transition word from the second ‘sentence’.

These words ought to be used sometimes whenever the writer thinks it is vital. They are brief, consisting of a paragraph or two – for lengthy essays. Most paragraphs attempt to have a conclusion that is good and tidy. Writing conclusion enterprise types finest ideas life pi themes cast phrases s plural homework online tutoring childrens literature topics edu ap pattern rose for emily william faulkner outline format lit alternate necklace short story son fanatic hanif kureishi nel com.

Within the final paragraph of your academic paper, you need to rephrase a thesis and end your work correctly with out too many words. Take an important, related, and helpful main points from your body paragraphs and summarise them right here. Argumentative essay junior excessive fb and twitter evaluate distinction essay xat 2018 essay subjects content material advertising ecommerce case examine essay on why i really like my job, cover sheet of essay essay on inexperienced diwali in punjabi.

Whether or not you’re writing a technical report, an instructional essay on 18th Century Russian Literature, a press launch, or a public mission assertion, there may be all the time this problem: That at some point you end speaking about one thing, and now it’s good to discuss one other, and somehow it’s a must to make a connection between the 2 within the mind of the reader.

A very good conclusion serves at reminding the readers of the power of your argument. Utilizing key phrases or words from a earlier paragraph initially of the following one could make a pure transition. This type of conclusion would possiblyÂ contain weaving in (not tacking on)Â a whole new anecdote, or including a new bit of knowledge that provides to the story you introduced within the lead or body of the article.

Concluding sentences hyperlink one paragraph to the subsequent and provide one other system for helping you guarantee your textual content is cohesive. Should you choose to leave out the other two factors in your conclusion paragraph, your readers are going to wonder why you even bothered together with these points in your paper. Summarize all the important thing points you made throughout the body of the paper (issues that proved your thesis assertion).

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1. ï‚§ Concluding sentences are essential as a result of they supply a possibility for you to recap the significance of each body paragraph before transferring on to a different supporting subject. In a roundabout way, your conclusion is the continuation and affirmation of the ideas that you have expressed within the introduction. In this pattern, the writer signals the top with the phrase In conclusionâ€ and goes on to summarize the details of the reflection paper.

The transition phrases listing ought to be in sight of the author consistently and utilizing transition phrases must be a pure skill. Essay matters on romeo and juliet, how am i able to write opinion essay. A concluding sentence can be utilized to offer the author’s stance and opinion on a subject. One of the best ways to make certain your writing flows is by linking up your paragraphs and sentences correctly.

Finally, essay ending sentence the servant maintaining that she was poetry essay evaluation ronsard not a great spirit, she said narrator in poe to her, “Give me maintain of your petticoat (or skirt).” She would do no such thing; at the same time the spirit said to her, “Look at your petticoat; my mark is upon it.” She regarded and saw upon her essay ending sentence skirt the five fingers of the hand so distinctly that it did not appear possible for any residing creature to have marked them higher.

They write a conclusion that leaves the reader more confused than knowledgeable. Quick essay about recollections, meri maa essay in urdu for sophistication 1. Narrative essay examples 4th grade, gre argument essay writing examples essay on value of bushes. Learn other conclusions to essays that can assist you to get a better really feel for them rather than over-focusing on development perfection – studying by seeing other conclusions typically works greatest.

If the first paragraph of your essay is the most important, the conclusion is the second most vital. Lastly belongs in the primary body of your essay, not the conclusion. A rhetorical query is an intriguing query, which does not require an answer, and it may leave the readers with some ideas. The second sentence leads up to the thesis statement which is the third sentence.

Second, each transitional phrase or phrase has its own meaning, and certain transition phrases, similar to subsequently, are sometimes misused. Upsc last 10 years essay paper, the right way to write an essay about yourself for a job interview, competitors results in success essay writing. Writing a superb conclusion signifies that you end the paper in a constructive note for the readers.

In case your essay question is about Nurses’ bedside manner, you’re in all probability going to want to use the phrase bedside mannerâ€ in the conclusion a few occasions. It’s best to usually not use proof, abstract, or quotes as subject sentences. Twelve Steps to Writing an Effective Conclusion San Francisco Edit, 2003-2008; Conclusions The Writing Lab and The OWL. Think of a ‘subject sentence’, as it has additionally been known as, which will highlight the main areas examined in a specific paragraph.

If you’re unsure of what to write down learn the essay query and answer it in one paragraph. In case you mentioned a set of 4 points in the introduction and failed to discuss all of them in your essay body then avoid making up for that within the conclusion paragraph. Upon getting written the primary draft of your conclusion paragraph, take a second to reread it. Ensure that you’ve got indicated a transition from the body of your paper to your conclusion and that the key elements of your paper are anchored on your total argument.

In actual fact, over-utilizing transition markers reduces their effectiveness; save them for the places the place it’s essential to information the reader. Any proof or argument that’s important to supporting your thesis statement ought to seem in the primary body of the essay. After years of hearing my. Few lecturers know easy methods to train essay conclusions. Essay on kashmir concern pdf download, me vachelle pustak essay in marathi, mobile phone and my life essay ielts focus on each views essay matters , day by day routine essay questions.

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Difficult the reader: By issuing a challenge to your readers, you’re serving to them to redirect the information in the paper, and so they may apply it to their very own lives. Depart all your quotes for the main body and maybe one to use within the conclusion. Your essay wants a conclusion to drive details and give understanding why it issues. A new paragraph is meant to sign a brand new topic or idea, however not essentially one that’s utterly completely different.

As a transition word exercise, revise a paragraph adding the suitable transition word or phrase. Cohesion inside and between paragraphs reinforces the reader’s impression that you as the author have management and authority over your materials. This ingredient of your conclusion may be only some sentences long. Paper Thesis Good a Write to How on Suggestions.

Calmet was a man of nice integrity What is an argument in essay writing and appreciable acumen, but he passed an innocent and exemplary life in studious seclusion; he blended little with the world at giant, resided remote “from courts, and camps, and strife essay weather of war or peace;” and there appears sometimes in his writings a kind of nervous apprehension lest the dogmas of the church to which he was essay ending sentence pledged must be much less succesful than he may wish of satisfactory investigation.

You should not current any new arguments in your conclusion. Use the same keywords and ideas because the body paragraphs, however do not simply repeat the same sentences. In sum, transitions are small additions that can considerably improve the flow of your concepts. We hope that this enhancing tip will show you how to to integrate effective transitions into your writing.

The primary sentence will be the matter sentence of that paragraph, and as such, it should even be your CLAIM. A subject sentence is a significant portion of your essay. Short nature essay examples research paper on client behaviour in india word transitions essay umich complement essay prompts learn how to write an essay about your tutorial achievements essay on my favourite guide five level somebody one other word to explain essay.

Readers wish to know why they’re reading a selected passage as quickly as potential. Study every argumentative essay conclusion instance. A concluding comment is necessary to offer a sense of satisfaction to readers about what they gave learn and what they need to do now. 8th standard essay 1 query paper kannada. TOPIC SENTENCE A topic sentence introduces the subject of principal thought of a paragraph.

Take a look at the sentences at the start and finish of every paragraph. 2. Persuade your readers that your opinion is legitimate but, you don’t want them to really feel lectured at, critcized or insulted in the event that they disagree together with your concepts. Certainly, efficient transitions usually work because they aren’t seamless and indirect: as a substitute they call attention to the spaces between subjects of dialogue, they usually do that in a really simple, very apparent method.

It’s better to spend extra time on the task however to create a personalised and distinctive conclusion, which will follow the same type and flow of the rest of the paper. As a result of most academic writing is formal writing that includes complex matters and a crucial reader, it is advisable to goal for not less than a hundred phrases (as much as 200 words) if you write an academic paragraph.

Having read your essay, we must always perceive this most important thought with contemporary and deeper understanding, and your conclusion wants to reflect what we have realized. Sentence 4 identifies these skills, and sentence 5 (wrap sentence) affirms the relevance of essay writing to the skilled abilities identified. The points made within the three physique paragraphs are merely offered within the conclusion as an inventory.

We’ve got organized 50 of the best transition phrases for essays into 4 straightforward-to-comply with categories. These transition phrases and phrases organize your paper by numerical sequence; by exhibiting continuation in thought or action; by referring to beforehand-mentioned data; by indicating digressions; and, finally, by concluding and summing up your paper. Having a transparent goal before writing your conclusion will assist avoid a lengthy paragraph as your ultimate ideas shall be extra concise and refined.

A brief quiz will observe to test your data about concluding sentences. 1. Matter Sentence must be considered one of your main Skinny Questions Answered. Faux you you are talking to a youthful sibling and you simply wish to give him brief background or overview about your topic in a few sentences. It is best to give attention to working with the arguments and concepts that have ALREADY been brought up all through your response.

Be at liberty to write full essays on any of the themes, or ask your tutors to give you extra topics and themes to put in writing about. Second, the conclusion is not any place to bring up new concepts. When writing a narrative paragraph, the concluding sentence must be used to convey and emphasize the ethical lesson to the reader. Word that the word â€˜focus’ is repeated throughout the paragraph, reinforcing the paragraph matter.

If the primary paragraph of your essay is the most important, the conclusion is the second most vital. Lastly belongs in the main physique of your essay, not the conclusion. A rhetorical question is an intriguing query, which doesn’t require an answer, and it may go away the readers with some ideas. The second sentence leads as much as the thesis statement which is the third sentence.

To create a robust affect on the reader, it is needed to write an excellent concluding end that is not so lengthy. Remember, you’ve got already said all the principle causes and arguments in body paragraphs, so there is no have to introduce new data in the final paragraph. This is efficient as a result of questions are often what the reader has in mind when he or she sees your subject.

Paragraph transition words transition phrases and phrases might appear wherever in an essay however their most vital value comes as paragraph transition phrases connecting the concept in one paragraph with one other thought in a succeeding paragraph they contribute to attaining the seamless flow of writing from begin to end by establishing the precise.

If your introduction and physique paragraphs are where you lay the solid groundwork in your essay, your conclusion is where you convince your reader that what they’ve read represented a enjoyable, insightful, intellectual journey that was worth their time. Enhance your TOEFL writing by learning learn how to write an essay conclusion. Give an inventory of the major arguments for your thesis (often, these are the topic sentences of the components of your essay).

If you’re unsure of what to put in writing learn the essay question and reply it in a single paragraph. When you discussed a set of four points in the introduction and failed to debate all of them in your essay body then avoid making up for that in the conclusion paragraph. Once you have written the first draft of your conclusion paragraph, take a moment to reread it. Guarantee that you have indicated a transition from the physique of your paper to your conclusion and that the key elements of your paper are anchored on your overall argument.

Partially 5 of our Essay Collection, we show you the right way to write a killer conclusion. Okay, so now that we have now a recreation plan of how we have to write a good conclusion and what elements consists of, let us take a look at a couple of examples of some pattern essay conclusions. Briefly, the conclusion is the place it is best to place your analysis inside a bigger context visualize your paper as an hourglass-start with a broad introduction and overview of the literature, transfer to the precise analysis and discussion, conclude with a broad summary of the examine’s implications and significance.

2In the second paragraph of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe establishes the younger man’s obsession with that blind eye when he writes: “He had the eye of the vulture-a pale blue eye, with a movie over it.” 3This “vulture eye” is evoked over and over within the story until the reader turns into as obsessive about it as does the younger man.

Learn how to write good essays in french what’s a refutation in an argumentative essay, essay on milk in urdu learn how to write good essays in french. Others write the introduction first but rewrite it considerably in mild of what they find yourself saying academized within the body of their paper. We suggest involving a paraphrased thesis assertion and including a robust hook sentence to attract the reader’s attention again and depart an unforgettable impression.

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graaphicc · 5 years ago

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Photographic Edition and Eye: Reflections and How I Processed this Black and White

We begin today's article with a warning to navigators: You will not find the usual publication where we see, step by step, how to reach a certain result (which are very useful too). On this occasion I would like to investigate a key aspect when facing a certain edition: The photographic eye. Yes, you read correctly, the photographic eye. The works begin at the precise moment in which we align mind, view and camera on a certain object and finish when we give them output on paper or web .

Well, the edition seems to be within the process and we should not give vacations to that creative and personal aspect that, in some way, will end up defining us. Hasn't it ever happened to you that, once the images have been downloaded in the raw developer, you are not sure which edition to apply? Do we take her to the lights? Maybe in the shadows? What tone density do I want? If this happens to you often, this article may shed some light. You sign up? please follow the link for getting a service clipping path service.

Your Photographic Eye Also Works During Editing

I have never considered myself a “guru” of photoshop, in fact, I know rather “little”. However, if I told you that with certain “basic” knowledge and some “photographic eye” you can achieve excellent results , would you believe it?

Sometimes it happens that, from the moment you take the photo, you are clear about the edition that you are going to apply. In others, you decide the post-process during the edition itself. Ideally, the first term would be to reach that point where you can visualize the final result of the image from the moment you face a certain scene . Why? Obviously, you can work and correct on the fly. Therefore, we will consider the photographic eye as a “skill” that does not rest until we export the photograph in web or print format.

What do you think if we take a look at the edition of the cover image of this article? As I told you in the introduction, we will not review the “step by step” so much, but the reason for each one of them, this will help us to strengthen concepts by providing a basis on which to work towards our own projects.

Note : It is convenient to review the article " The Secret Technique to make the most of lights and shadows in your photos using layer masks and channels ". The "Technique" base that I use to edit this image is the same as in the article I quote, therefore, if you have it "on hand" to consult certain steps, better!

Note : You can click on the images to see in detail the adjustments of the different layers.

Anatomy of an Edition

There have been many who have asked me on my page about the treatment I do of black and white , therefore, there we go!

Field work

What aspects did I take into account when taking the “base photo”?

We are in a forest in "apparent" shade, but where is the sun, our main source? There will always be greater light intensity in that direction.

How should I place the model based on the angle of light? ¿ Where I want to place the lights and shadows in your body ? On this occasion (it is a self-portrait) I decided to opt for a “wide” lighting, that is, the camera in the same direction as the main source, thereby getting the leftovers (although dim) to the bottom.

From the first moment I had in mind a "strong" edition of lights and shadows , very contrast and dark background. I finally decided to "frame" the figure in front of some trunks, in this way I would be able to separate several planes obtaining a range of grays that contrasted in each of them.

The basis of the edition

We begin the basis of the edition with something very simple: We copy the background layer e - Image - adjustments - desaturate.

EDITION 01

Next comes an important part: it 's time to adjust that base to the “style” we want for editing, that is, overexposed? Underexposed? Since from the beginning I wanted to achieve a faint atmosphere, what we will do is create a layer of curves in which, first, we will click on the ends of the line (as you can see in the image) to subtract general contrast (we raise shadows and lowered lights) but with a tendency to underexpose the halftones (if you look, all the points that I have used in the curves are below the diagonal that marks the curves layer as “base”)

EDITION 02

This adjustment is important for one simple reason: it gives us an “underexposed” starting point to continue working in that same direction.

Applying volume using the “Soft Light” blending mode

Well, once the basis for editing our image is achieved, we go to the “channels” tab, copy any of them and paste it as a new layer in “Soft Light” fusion mode in our editing column with a peculiarity: We want to only apply to the lights , therefore, we will open a layer mask in which we will paste that same channel that we previously obtained.

Note: The appearance of the mask will be similar to the image shown below.

EDITION 03

Under-exposing shadows using the “Overlay” blending mode

By means of the “superimpose” fusion mode we intend to apply greater density to the shadows , that is, underexpose them even more. How do we proceed? Exactly as in the previous section: We paste in our editing column one of the copied channels, we open a layer mask, we paste that same channel in it and (this is the step that varies), this time we must reverse the image of the mask (as seen in the image that we will see below). With this we managed to preserve the lights of our photography and apply the effect on the shadows exclusively. for learning more about cliping path, please visit https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/clipping-masks.html

EDITION 04

General contrast

As you can see, I am a big fan of the curves tool. The only peculiarity that we will highlight in this step will be the application of general contrast using several points in the tone curve. It is important that you practice with her, that you understand her “experiencing” because we are facing a layer with incredible possibilities.

Ah! I forgot it. Another peculiarity of this step is that we return to "rescue" the "blacks" of our tone curve by raising the point of the lower left corner (always attending to the values of the curve that I show below)

EDITION 05

Under-exposure of forest bottom by curves + reflected gradient

At the beginning of the article we commented on the intention to underexpose the bottom of the forest, well, this is the moment! We create a new layer of curves (with values similar to those that you can see in the following illustration) where we will again save some of the shadows with greater black load (the point in the lower left corner).

Now, as a layer mask we will use a “gradient” found in the toolbar on the left. This option has several types of gradient and we will select “reflected gradient” as we will see below. What do we get with this? We are not applying that underexposure marked in the layer of curves on the body and yes on the environment .

EDITION 06

Contrast using the “overlay” blending mode

The next step is simple: Do you remember the section “Under-exposing shadows using the Overlay blending mode”? Well, we will do the same but without using a channel as a layer mask and yes the “brush” tool. With the black layer mask, we will paint in white on it in the area corresponding to the body, applying the adjustment only in that area.

Note: Do you see a small black brushstroke in the white area of the mask? It corresponds to an area that I was interested in saving for a simple reason, underexposed too much.

EDITION 07

Last elevation of blacks by curves

The next and last step is very personal. Maybe you like the images with the greatest load of “shadows”, maybe not, in my case I tend to underexpose the halftones a lot (they add density) but leaving the purest blacks “washed out” somewhat . In the next layer of curves you can see how I save shadows again (you know, raising the point of the lower left corner) trying to maintain the contrast (hence the “s” shaped curve).

EDITION 08

Do we draw conclusions?

I would like to underline again that at no time have I wanted to approach the article as a "step by step" because "each photograph is world" and the values to be used are always personalized. I think it is interesting that I have shown you what I "think" at each moment of the edition in order to "reflect" on what a certain image needs and what adjustments I use.

FINAL COMPLETE PROCESS

In the same way I would like to underline again that, for the profane in photoshop, it may be a bit difficult to follow the “workflow” of the edition of this photograph, so I consider it essential to follow it with the article “ The Secret Technique to make the most of match lights and shadows in your photos using layer masks and channels ”where, this time, I explain in detail how I use all these tools. Image editing is equally influenced by the photographic eye and that is where we must stop to think a little more : What do you need? How do I imagine it in my mind? I hope you found it useful! And here I will be, in the comments below, to answer any questions that may arise.

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martin9395 · 6 years ago

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Discovering the greatest MLM Software

Several devices, methods, or even requests are actually thought about as reliable ways of sustaining the personal quicken the circulation of purchase one of his customers. The procedure of deciding on the right devices to carry out the task can easily be actually a difficult duty. multisoft

Along with MLM, you carry out certainly not merely create your future. You assist various other individuals create their very own future.

ONLINE MARKETING systems involve straight marketing means of making money. Actual earnings are actually certainly not merely created in marketing alone.

The procedure can easily be actually really difficult. Coming from offering up to handling your team, the method is in fact a lengthy and also blowing winding street of battles and also tests. To accelerate the advancement, specific devices as well as uses are actually being actually made use of.

Certainly not all MLM software were actually generated identical. They might differ depending on to their functionalities and also amount of their dependability relying on your demands.

Along with MLM, program are actually looked at as being one of the absolute most vital devices readily available in the sector today. What these individuals perform certainly not discover is actually that absence of helpful MLM software is among the primary reasons some individuals stop working in MLM.

Along with the increasing costs of products in these times, individuals locate it difficult to create each ends satisfy. Costs, financial debts, and also high costs of products create lifestyle a day-to-day battle.

In contrast to very most common beliefs, MLM courses are actually certainly not "acquire abundant easy" programs. These courses were actually certainly not developed to offer you a simple palm on amount of money concerns. Along with MLM, you need to work doggedly to make the many things that you need to have.

Consequently, individuals and also entrepreneur search for viable means to supply all of them along with additional money and also help all the required expenditures to make it through.

Even with the debate, multilevel advertising and marketing or even MLM can easily still be actually a great income source. It performs certainly not essentially suggest that this kind of venture may provide you an all set pack of golds as well as veggies without applying initiative.

MLM software allows you generate trusted partners online. Along with MLM software, you may quickly deal with several advertising approaches in the Internet. This way, you will certainly have the ability to experience additional amount of money without a great deal challenge.

In MLM, you experience even more funds via the supposed recurring earnings. This may merely be actually accomplished through producing convenient and also reliable teams. That is actually, rather than choosing folks to perform the work for you, you attempt to sponsor others and also aid all of them create the exact same degree of effort that you reside in at the moment.

One of the numerous moneymaking systems on call in the community today, multilevel advertising and marketing or even MLM is actually taken into consideration as being one of the very best alternatives.

In some places, folks discover it challenging to establish or even discover efficient MLM software. You can easily constantly locate a specialist program company, however, this will certainly cost you added costs.

To obtain the absolute best MLM software that are going to function most ideal for you, below are actually some ideas:

1. Perform your research

The most ideal technique to a knowledgeable selection is actually acquiring proven as well as trusted details. You may do this through creating much more investigates on MLM software. Acquiring even more details concerning the request are going to enhance your peace of mind in picking the most effective MLM software that are going to help you.

2. Know your demands

MLM software might differ depending on to one's demands. To steer clear of more predicament, it is actually finest that you recognize what you require to receive the necessary MLM software.

3. Your finances

Although they carry out certainly not set you back a ton of money, MLM software costs might still differ coming from one function to one more. It is actually most ideal to consider your spending plan prior to you attempt to go shopping all around.

Maintain these factors in thoughts as well as you are going to definitely locate the best dependable MLM software in the marketplace today.

What MLM Software To Choose

As you talk to about, you are going to discover out promptly that the exact same MLM software carriers increase to the best of each talk. It is actually highly recommended that you utilize an MLM software supplier that possesses many 1000 hrs of expertise in the MLM market as well as is actually additionally valued to your spending plan.

The solution is actually to be actually quite cautious concerning that you decide on as your MLM software service provider. As the opportunity arrives that you need to have to choose the MLM software you are actually going to make use of, begin inquiring inquiries of the correct folks. Locate out that the greatest MLM software supplier in the business is actually.

As a business person, perform you require MLM software established internal or even should you tap the services of a software application carrier to prepare up the company? If I perform select to go that option, should I cultivate my personal MLM software, or even is actually there a company that will function most effectively for me?

The MLM company planet is actually strongly very competitive as well as any kind of developer of MLM software requires to recognize it in purchase to be actually reliable. You finish up investing loan on MLM software that is actually unproductive as well as your or else audio company goes down the cylinders as an outcome. The exact same point may take place if you tap the services of an every bit as unverified or even novice MLM software carrier.

Locating the ideal MLM software supplier to assist a brand new MLM company is actually complicated to carry out. What creates it hard is actually that it is actually certainly not constantly a very easy selection when you are actually encountered along with the appeal of an exclusive developer that vows wonderful end results or even a brand new MLM software supplier that assures terrific outcomes however possesses no expertise in the MLM business. Quickly you will definitely locate out whose titles drift to the leading along with the very most uniformity and also at that point it is actually merely an issue of locating the one that is actually correct for your MLM start-up.

Making Use Of MLM Software in Various Aspects of MLM Business Applications

MLM software may additionally be actually an outstanding supply manager.When utilized at sell factors as well as stockrooms, they can easily offer correct as well as thorough info regarding the stock placement. For MLM companies simply acquiring their action with each other and also organizing and also applying their tactics and also tips, innovatively developed MLM software may aid in several means.

MLM software is actually a genuine benefit to those that proceed their tasks coming from home.It gives all of them along with a quick and easy system where they can easily conduct all the activities counted on of all of them, producing the maximum use opportunity as well as resources.The MLM software could be a huge assistance to people in numerous elements of MLM business.It aids all of them handle profiles as well as payments of brokers, compute tax obligations, remittances and also produce recaps of purchase of several events as well as correctly arrange all info linked with MLM company of people.

ONLINE MARKETING organisation has actually acquired profoundly in attraction over the final years along with countless people producing a prosperous switch coming from being actually a staff member to handling a service independently or even through becoming part of a crew. The introduction of MLM software has actually transformed business on its own scalp as the use of innovation to MLM has actually taken it to more recent amounts of excellence.

An additional primary use software application remains in the advertising and marketing markets of the organization.One definitely remarkable treatment that could be skipped through a lot of is its own potential to boost your SEO variables as well as draw away additional appropriate visitor traffic to your internet site. MLM software is actually a completely important device of any kind of MLM company.

MLM software is actually an extremely practical source specifically when the procedures are actually sizable as well as increasing at a fast clip. It may be conveniently made use of as a stating system to monitor the staff in the down establishment.

It serves as a one-man workplace along with its own fundamental capability to take care of all significant tasks of a range of divisions connected with the MLM service.

software application could be configured to offer crucial relevant information regarding the services and products of a provider to its own group as well as novices signing up with your business.

Where to Find one of the most Reliable MLM Software

As an MLM expert, the best inquiry I am actually inquired is actually, "where perform I locate the absolute most dependable MLM software?"

I've devoted much more than twenty years in the troughs along with customer support agents as well as suppliers in the troughs, as well as I recognize what they desire and also need to have. I mention absolutely that you will definitely certainly not essentially discover the best trustworthy MLM software through confining your hunt to the Internet.

Listed here are actually 5 ideas for increasing your hunt for the MLM software answer that is actually merely straight for you:

1. Independent Consulting Firms.

There are actually a handful of skilled, individual, 3rd party study as well as consulting organizations offering straight marketing. Straighten along with an expert or even MLM consulting company that concentrates on representative effectiveness as well as advancement of remarkable customer care units as well as folks to guarantee their excellence. Within this method, you'll know that they possess solid, private viewpoints and also they will definitely inform you what is actually operating as well as what is actually certainly not functioning.

2. Publications Such as Direct Selling News.

This best-in-class magazine markets marketing to MLM Software business, yet it likewise posts periodic customer reviews of essential patterns influencing straight marketing firms. Register for this complimentary magazine, and also look via it every month.

3. National Direct Selling Association.

While there are actually merely a loads approximately MLM software business that are actually energetic participants, I've discovered that numerous of all of them are actually devoted to certainly not just marketing their program yet likewise to taking input coming from guests at the nationwide event of the Direct Selling Association (DSA). Given that the selection frequently amounts to that of a marital relationship in relations to dealing with one another, learn more about the applicants.

4. System.

Contact or even create straight to the noticeable innovators in the MLM consulting groups. you'll likely be actually startled through their common kindness in free of charge appointments and also strenuous conversations to assist you in know the most effective pathways for your provider as it decides on MLM software. Extend your system through going to a straight marketing functionality including the DSA, Direct Sell Expo, the Symposium Group, or even the VideoPlus University.

5. Referrals.

Opt for an MLM software carrier as well as inquire all of them for their recommendations. If you really check out the recommendations (I can easily certainly not inform you exactly how necessary this will definitely be actually for your psychological wellness as well as the potential effectiveness of your service), inquire the referrals what various other service providers of MLM software that they took into consideration.

Free MLM Software, How to Review This Software From an Experts Perspective

I began appearing online as well as inquiring some of the very most financially rewarding folks I understood in the sector what they utilized online and also you will be actually shocked exactly how naive they were actually concerning making this online prospecting direct I was actually attempting to help make. You view they were actually quite effective off-line however going to pieces online like the remainder of our company utilized to be actually.

What I located was actually shocking, their bodies were actually all really, really, quite similar. Indicator - Like a lightbulb! They all possessed MLM software they were actually leveraging to deliver to provide me a succinct definition as well as promote me to choose in.

2nd Evidence - They all possessed automotive -responder notifications that were actually handy instruction ideas - giving real market value - certainly not striking me over the crown along with their key service. 3rd hint was they were actually leveraging totally free as well as moderately valued MLM Software to email me financed plans for source that might in fact and also definitely assist me in my travel to become prosperous in the field. Possibly to you this looks like a logical body, yet I was actually knocked down at just how fabulous this tip was actually as well as just how completely it functioned.

There actually is actually one thing exclusive concerning making use of MLM software that really pop the question one thing individuals need to have, enabling you to assist others in the procedure, obtain what they need to have as well as truly are going to assist all of them obtain a lower leg up in their initiatives to be actually victorious in this sector. As you appear for Free MLM Software and also devices in overall that can easily assist you, attempt to always remember the litmus exam of ideas I discussed above.

I took an examination travel at a few of these Free MLM Software devices as well as I possess to state, the "Free MLM Software" I utilized only failed to review to the affordable models I received prompt end results along with. It truly was actually the adhesive that stored all my attempts and also tasks all together, website traffic creation generating a massive and also ever before expanding channel of customers appearing or even currently in the business. Simply a spectacular point.

Multisoft MLM Software Builder Review

The Multisoft MLM Software Builder is actually hooked up by means of their site which takes care of the material and also permits you to select what degree of gain access to your consumers will certainly possess. Each little of material that is actually available in the Portal is actually named a MAP or even Modular Application Program.

Right now the folks responsible for the Multisoft MLM Software Builder are actually giving a 3 time free of charge test for any individual that wishes to turn its own steering wheels just before they determine to obtain it. The MLM Compensation considers you have the ability to develop using this program consist of the Binary, Unilevel as well as Matrix Compensation strategies. This deals with a bulk of the Network Marketing Comp Plans little albeit certainly not every one of all of them.

To start along with the Multisoft MLM Software Builder all you must carry out is actually arrangement a cost-free profile, and also make a decision whether you would like to carry out a Binary, Unilevel or even a Matrix Compensation Plan for your firm. It additionally offers you the potential of set up positions or even rep headlines and also determine percentage portions. After you perform all this, you only click on a switch that claims "Build Company" as well as this program mosts likely to benefit you as well as creates a real-time body directly.

Their get in touch with relevant information is actually quickly offered on their site that include a full bodily handle, phone, mobile phone as well as telephone number as well as an e-mail deal with. They additionally possess an on-line application you may submit as well as send along with any type of inquiries you possess. Multisoft has actually been actually working online for several years.

This Network Marketing Software possesses a little bit of a various idea coming from identical program yet achieves the exact same point, and also the function is actually for those beginning or even intending to introduce their personal MLM Company to become capable to create their very own program in mins utilizing an instinctive online witch.

Along With the Multisoft MLM Software Builder you can easily tailor web pages and also authorize folks upward the very same time. What this business has actually carried out is actually taken common the MLM Software principle to an entire brand-new amount of computerization.

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tipsbyfarah · 7 years ago

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The healing phase

After a long and painful journey in so many jobs with so much hostility and losing myself along the way, the next period was labeled with my emotional numbness.

Here I must say this is a soft spot about me, I get emotionally attached easily to jobs, tasks and work. As far as I was concerned, everything was personal all the time.

Saying goodbye on the last job was weird, I felt differently, it was my choice to leave that horrible place, yet it did not really felt like much of a choice I have made too.

I wished so bad for my career life to surprise me, you know, I kept waiting for the plot twist. It gotta get better from here right? I mean it certainly could not get any worse.

Rock bottom my friends, I have hit rock bottom.

Everywhere I went, friends and family would ask the same question, are you working now? Where? I was always in between jobs, getting fired from one or leaving another. And the thing about this question was, that I should not have to explain myself or my choices.

I can’t share what I have been through casually, so I have made fun of myself, and enjoyed couple of laughs at my own expense, I mean why not?

Someone told me that the greatest people are those who don’t take themselves seriously, at that point, I did not know how to perceive myself at all.

My best friend at the time asked me to try Reiki magical healing powers. I told her: Girl, am not gonna pay money I don’t have for some I don’t even know to tell me stuff I already know!

Speaking of rock bottom, yeah it was dark, I was angry, sad, depressed and taking it all on my self and those around me, continuously wondering what’s the point of my life?

Every job experience that had added value to my skills, have harmed my soul in even bigger ways.

I have mad a decision to not work in start ups or with Bahraini managers. Enough was fucking enough.

My cooling off period was not long, in the same week I got two calls around the end of September 2013, One from an insurance company about a graduate development program and the other was from an amazing agency called 4Spots.

The insurance company called first, I googled, liked what I have found to begin with, I was aiming to join such a program since before I have graduated.

I went to the interview with the recruiting specialist and the former Head of HR (many he RIP). It was a very short and brief interview, but it was enough to show me that even in my state of despair, there was still hope.

The Head of HR asked me for the reason I left mum last job, I stumbled for few seconds and I said: well, I haven’t received my paycheck for few months. And as I went on to explain further he raised his hands and he said: well, that’s a reason enough for me.

They told me that they are meeting other candidates and the process will include a second interview and a test. The program was set to begin on Jan 2014.

I read about the company more and the first batch of the program, but eventually decided to not keep my hopes up.

Later that week, I got the call from 4Spots. The vacancy was Social Media manager, before I applied, I consulted google of course and I did my own Linkedin stalking of the staff.

The more I found out about this group of people and this (at the time) 6 years something agency the more I liked it.

It checked both items on my list: - Not a start up - No Bahraini managers

As a bonus point, the location is in Amwaj island, literally 10 minutes from home *yay Me*!

I met with the manager who had explained the role to me and the agency’s culture and basically what to expect working here, I loved marketing and been involved in social media as tasks from previous jobs, it was more a chit chat than an interview. I told him I knew Zainab Al Arab from uni, was not sure if she would recognize me, he encouraged me to greet her and talk to her, which I did.

The atmosphere was comforting, nice it smelled of freedom, intimacy, trust and mutual respect. Most of which was strange to me in a work environment.

The more I read and found about it, the more I wanted to join the team, but, you know me ( did not wanna get my hopes up).

Later that week I was offered the post and I happily accepted. Yes, I was confused and filled with what if the insurance company called? What would I do?

But there was still a long shot, I was not sure of my chances, and here, God had offered me something that matched my requirements 100%.

My heart told me to take the job and I listened. I started working at 4spots.

I was shy at the beginning, observing my surroundings and the way people dealt with each other. I still do that, I give myself the chance to know the best way to deal with each different individual.

It was an open space, all of us sharing huge tables sitting next to each other.

The client I was assigned to work with was a local bank, the team wanted to hire a local person that can better understand and relate to the bank culture.

I was happy. I loved the open free way of running the tasks assigned to you and the lack of micro management which is essential for one to be creative.

One day at a time, the team grew on me, strange feelings of comfort, job security were introduced into my vocabulary. I was learning from everyone everything I can about team work and my specific role.

I enjoyed long existential conversations with people from different backgrounds and interests.

Previously I have had issues with managers who don’t set boundaries with their employees, but this was not an issue at all, respect was the foundation and trust was given to each person. Everyone would do their work cause they loved what they do, the managers did not have to impose respect, respect was already there accompanied by the trust and care they show to all of the employees.

This place have taught me how to regain my dignity that I have lost and how to respect myself all over again.

I discovered Amwaj island and Muharraq with them in a way that I have never done before.

Because of this safe calm creative passionate environment I have found my way to the old me that I have lost for struggles and hostility of my old jobs.

One of the rituals there was “groove time” which is basically allocating the last 2 working hours of Thursday for a speaker that could be one of the team or an outsider, the topics were different and doesn’t necessary have to be related to work.

One of the employees had a presentation - if I remember correctly - about the affect of spoken words on people. And when the female co-founder\manager asked about whose turn it is to do a presentation next week I raised my hands cause I was interested at the time in similar subjects, I still remember the look on her face, she was surprised, I was still the new girl in the team, I told her I want to do something about the effect of the body on the mind. She accepted.

That was the real me, passionate about work, team spirit and presenting things.

The company wanted to register me at GOSI, but I was still registered under my old employer, which started a series of emails between me and my old employer as they were dragging this simple task for reasons beyond my comprehension. When the secretary called me, she told me to was related for my late paychecks that they had to pay me as I was under the sponsorship of ministry of labor and they had to pay me first before officially terminating my employment.

When I went there to sign the papers. I was perfectly calm knowing I have moved on, I was in a better place.

One afternoon with the team around tea, smiling at each other, exchanging stories about work, clients and life on lunch time worth more than all the dark months I have lived before.

My client was a tough one, we made a plan and I had to prepare the content on a weekly basis to be approved by them in addition to their events and national day holiday posts.

I attended few meetings with the team some for my clients, some for theirs. The place was always busy and the door is open to welcome friends, previous employees, clients and everyone!

At the beginning of my second month there, the manager told us that one of the groove times would host Waleed Hashim, Reiki master.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the same person my friend has previously suggested I see about my rock bottom and I refused.

The irony of this was just too much when I told her she said: God has sent him to your work place cause you have to listen to him whether you want to or not.

The second month was as great as the first month if not better. At this point I managed to get to know most of the team members and that was such a comfort while dealing with my client, their impossible requests and the restrictions they imposed on social media, I guess they have never received the memo about social media being a fun medium!

Anyways, one day I was working on next week content, I had my headphones on, completely indulging in the task. When suddenly the busy office sounded through my loud headphones strangely quiet.

I left my head up to see the whole team observing me, I had a mini heart attack, got embarrassed and laughed and they were laughing even louder. My face was tomatoe red.

I did what I always do, I was humming and singing along to my playlist and they were observing what they later told me my soft voice and my oblivion of the world around me. Someone told me they thought it was music played.

On that day my heart was both happy and aching, I related to my old job when the same thing happened and they reported me to the manager and did not have the courage to be hostile and hateful to my face in contrast to all of this love and acceptance I was overwhelmed with by this team.

I was on the verge of tears, the comparison was painful but at that very moment I knew that coming to 4spots was not random or a coincidence.

That was God well for me to purify my soul from all the dark places I have been.

The more I got to know the team, the wider I felt my heart open and my mind expanding and I found myself calling this place the home I belong to.

On Waleed lecture, he introduced Reiki and energy along few cosmetic rules. He said the life you want is the life you have blessed and lifted, and you will never get what aspire to get unless you are perfectly content with what you have now.

I was in a fun phase of my life, beautiful place, beautiful people. So, I got a call for the second interview from the insurance company.

Yep, Waleed called it first , be happy and content, things will fall into your lap ! A week after the interview I was informed that I was chosen, I was suppose to be happy about this right? I mean it was the DREM JOB. Well, I was not.

For someone who was not me, the choice was obvious, but for me it was not.

I was finally in a good place, I was healing, yeah I had a tough client, yeah the offer was tempting but I valued my new found inner peace over everything.

No one could relate to my struggle to make a decision. Stay or leave?

I knew a girl from the first batch of the program so I reached out for her and asked her about the work environment, culture, people and all that mattered to me the most. Will I fit in?

When we ended the conversation, I knew I had to make the difficult call. I talked to the manager about this and gave him my one month notice, I was aching inside, I was not completely sure but when things fall on your lap, you should follow through right?

I was anxious about this conversation and he surprised me as the main concern he had was if I truly wanted to join insurance? Was it something I am excited and happy about?

He asked me to keep to from the team and he will tell them after the national day holiday. Well since it was a secret, people started to find out one at a time.

My brain at the time still did not have adjusted as quickly as my heart, I still expected the worst so I expected a mean reaction about me leaving in three months time, but I was far from right. They were beautiful inside out, each and every person.

The last few weeks were special, in a place who loved caked and celebrated everything I had the pleasure of celebrating Christmas with the team before I was waived goodbye with a cake.

I ordered cake in jars for my last day for the whole team to say thank you for the encouragement and the beautiful experience and the impact they had on my journey.

I still have the team card from the goodbye gift they gave me hanged on my mirror “ You will always be connected to us”

Now, while reflecting on my past life, I know for sure that 4Spots was an important and vital phase for me.

I owe them so much for the healing energy they bestowed upon me and allowing a smooth and assuring transition for me to the corporate world.

Thank you team for Everything 💜

Love, Farah

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