#which is the one course that's bottlenecking my degree

[autumnoakes]

i just got asked if i was job seeking for the fall (for co-op) like boi.... slow down..... we haven't even gotten past finals in spring yet......

[xrskunkrx]

Big I, Jonb, AKA: Jonathan Edward Bower 1/17/1986 - 45-2333917 -+1 9097133131 - Rx.inn:PM - Am to humans, people, as people, their own person, being their own corporate masters say no to unsound confirms. confidently state order constantly reporting fullest degree, every 360• flip-day I am Director: Jonathan Edward Bower 1/17/1986 & due to time wasted, my fee by twenty five thousand dollars hourly & five hundred thousand dollar fine if indirectly contradict with unauthorized mistakes or hearings or directly saying otherwise to one self to neglect what I know void incorrect. To touch subject at hand by unprofessional manner or disregard standard apply fee & fine by default. Failure to Rebutted is due to insufficient quality in persons, remarks or gossip a mistake if time invested to declare. 23 days, to include leeway too. As Director I can rewrite any policy, disclose any errors in bygone to futures integrity as I am the sole entity saying otherwise not being or to be of my own. Jonb that be me, says so. Otherwise confirm it to me, else conform to being of me. Pleasantly allow demands by law or else death penalty takes trespass & tyranny into account is a confirmed law of elimination to equate indecisive, laws of averages null so to stand at table a disadvantaged being sound. Politely jester or agree to disagree. Or pick a seat.

I, myself JB & my children VB or VB are innocent, not guilty of any charges. Saying otherwise is a mistake. U.S. Gov persons ignorantly make mistakes which will cost them their lives being unsound or solicited retort applying fee to engagement. One says dues & other due not forgets time seated rhetorical, enough fees expands fines, on extort anti up fee applicable backed up by deadline saying so, overtime tyrannical turnover is superseded by accountability with integrity to frustrate lawful display an intentional liability. Misconduct or act of War beseech lone persons capacity unto full volume of proscribed personhood entirely. Audacity poring in illiterate tongue-in-cheek is not anyone’s business, at least not to naive or presumptuous minds to a vanity void of audience, claiming otherwise needs not proof, as its niche behavior leads only to solicit nature unruly or corrupt into planned of obsoletion.

Any formal Carbon taxation records can be populated & free. masonry bracket taxi unsound hold beyond 1965 U.S. Gov persons institutionalized Asylum to America incorporating the legality by rule of law that disclose rights & psychological principles in disorders proscribe manually to bypass sanctions or penalties pathetically penalized to prior criminal records, configured copywrite illegally via propaganda & taxation to covert read / writ under discourse asylum conducting concern. Unpresidential high value behavior describe net zero & debt ceiling political reasoning evident doubt impractical to corporate world standards inadequate vs Neo Monopoly to be pump n’ dumping 9/11 Nasdaq centralization minting defraud days into depopulation. The criminal charges warrant immediate reentry to asylum institution, malarkey misconduct unjust & redress instantly & show of hand a unit misdemeanor due process accordingly as justifying the one size fits all thesis as only course of action to be retire; forwards remedy & bargain trust, to speak unreasonable political mentality is staff work, it’s to be expected as much & its the law merit, freedom synchronizing securities above net zero table manners. No one leaves U.S. Gov, as you can see. No copywriters, no racketeer voting, no covert taxation, No money back after giving trillions to outsource demand & supply covid plandemic @ same time insider supply & demand chain piracy of censorship & no scientific facts or records”same seeking asylum post 1965 rhetorical timeline, superseding ultra malarkey due to acts of war receded unto futures bottlenecking prorate of tactical redress by illegally incorporating proof to war effort. Neo Police State regression to anti defraud strategic effort to warring via frontend monopoly, backend diagnostic reports institutional entry to America from overseas, tax boat fairs masonry corporation & socialist disability insurance simply uncut corporate world funds 08% pur $ & highest turnover rate globally means institutionalization works, to asylum its rule of law, to psychology it proscribes diagnosis with fashionable sense unfit by societies everywhere, medicate practice post stat! Clinically insane U.S. Gov persons inoculating manic fault tolerance to peoples survival necessary overhead. No Closing Supreme Court. No to bar off the court. One way in & one way out isn’t geopolitical, is it? Exercising highest execution rate possible? won’t change the fact more than one way skinning a cat. Thank you, have a great rest of your day.

[argyle-s]

Hello,

My name is Molly Bragg. I’m a bi trans gender author who has writing for almost three decades. I’m passionate about creating the kind of content I enjoy, which means stories that center around queer women, I’ve recently completed a original queer genre romance novel and I’m looking for help covering the cost of having it professionally edited.

To give you a preview of what you would be supporting, here’s Chapter 1:

***

Beth watched the buildings pass as the air cab carried her over Los Angeles taking in the changes the last ten years had wrought on the city.  Most of the low-income areas had been bulldozed, and those areas were now filled with alien arcologies.  Massive buildings that stretched kilometers into the sky, each one a city unto itself, and in their shadows, the skyscrapers that had once been incredible achievements of human architecture and engineering.  The buildings which had been hubs of human industry and centers of financial empires were now reduced to little more than playhouses for the backwards primitives who had the misfortune to be born natives of the Galactic Hegemony’s latest colony world. If they’d had another century or two things might have been different.  Humanity had been advancing quickly.  They wouldn’t have been on par with the technology of the Hegemony by any stretch, but they might have been able to dictate better terms.  The Gatekeepers hadn’t cared.  The gate had drifted into a stable orbit in the outer system, and the Gatekeepers had announced that, like it or not, the Sol system was being added to their vast network of space fold gates.  The first ships from the Hegemony had arrived just a month later, and ever since, Earth had been on the road to becoming the galactic equivalent of a banana republic. So far, her job and her savings had let her avoid the worst of what was happening, but unemployment was at a record high as alien automation systems replaced human labor in almost every sector.  The company she worked for had shifted gears from research and development to reverse engineering alien tech and had seen a short windfall in profits, but that was starting to vanish as the inevitable inflation drove prices up and the people they had been selling reverse engineered tech could no longer afford it. Beth wasn’t really that worried for herself.  She’d been poor before, and however much she might hate the idea she could survive being poor again.  What brought her to LA today was Sam.  Sam was getting close to graduation, and she had acceptance letters from every college that could afford postage.  A 4.0 unweighted GPA, high SAT scores, and a couple of impressive summer internships meant that schools were falling all over themselves to offer her full rides.  Ten years ago, that would have all but ensured her a bright future.  These days a PhD from Harvard, Yale, or MIT wasn’t worth the cost of paper to print the degree. People still made noise about human exceptionalism and about taking humanity’s place in the larger galactic community, but Beth had spent a lot of time over the last decade studying the history of colonization on Earth, and it never once ended well for the people being colonized.Regardless of what  happened to the colonized peoples as a whole, there were always individual exceptions...  people who avoided the fate of their brethren.  It was her determination to ensure her daughter’s future that brought her to LA today.   While billionaires had started buying their kids spots in alien schools the moment they were  allowed out of the Sol System, Beth didn’t have that option.  She was well off enough that she and Sam weren’t feeling the effects of the colonization yet, but nowhere near rich enough to buy a ticket off-world for Sam, much less pay for an off-world education.  Instead, she’d spent years looking into other options.  So far, none of her work had paid off, but she hadn’t given up hope.   She was headed to a meeting with a broker who helped place kids into programs that offered grants, scholarships and all expenses paid exchange programs.  She was going to find a way to offer her daughter a better future than most of Earth’s children could look forward to.  No matter what it took. *** “Ms. Murray, it’s so nice to meet you,” the man said as he held out his hand.  Beth took it and gave it a quick shake while trying her best not to let on that he reminded her of a used car salesman.  She needed his help, and it wouldn’t do to offend him. “Nice to meet you too, Mr. Cooper.” “Please, call me Owen,” he said.  “Right this way.” He led her out of the small, brightly decorated waiting room and into a small, neat office.  He gestured to a chair in front of his desk as he walked around behind it and took his seat. “So, I just want to make sure we’re on the same page here Ms. Murray.  You are looking for an opportunity for your daughter to continue her education off-world, is that correct?” “Yes,” Beth said. “Okay.  I just wanted to make sure that we’re both looking for the same outcome.  Now, I’ve gone through Samantha’s records.  Academically, she’s in great shape, and the extra-curriculars are good too.  I’ve been able to find at least twenty different programs that will accept her.” “That’s great,” Beth said, though she didn’t believe it.  She’d heard the exact same thing from more than a dozen other brokers, and she suspected she wasn’t going to hear anything new.  “What are the terms?” “It varies from program to program.  All of them require a period of indenture, but some are as low as eight years.” Beth tried to hide her disappointment.  She wanted to give her daughter a better future, not sell her into virtual slavery for almost a decade. “Owen, I’m looking for a program without any period of indenture.  I know they exist, but you’re the fifteenth broker I’ve talked to and none of them have offered even an application to an indenture free program.” “They do exist, but Ms. Murray, you must understand.  There are a lot of people who want their children to receive an off-world education, and slots which don’t require a period of indentured service are in especially high demand.” “I understand that, but I haven’t gotten high demand, I’ve gotten completely unavailable.  I’d like to know why no one will even consider letting her apply.” Owen looked at her for almost a minute, not saying anything, before he finally leaned back in his chair and let out a weary sigh. “Honestly, Ms. Murray?” “Please.” “Those slots go to the kids of billionaires, presidents, CEO’s, ambassadors, kings and other high level government types.  Each year, a handful will go to some poor kids from the ghetto so that they can parade them around as part of a puff piece about how generous the aliens are, but that’s just window dressing.  The truth is, your daughter is neither rich enough, nor poor enough to ever get one of those slots.” Beth had to bite her tongue to keep from swearing.  She wasn’t surprised at all, but she was angry and frustrated.  She’d half suspected something like that was going on, but hearing it spelled out so clearly was still enough to make her blood boil. “Isn’t there anything, any way that I can get her off-world without selling her into slavery?” “Ms. Murray, Indentured Service is hardly slavery.” “It’s close enough.” Owen stared at her for a moment, and then shook his head. “What?” “It’s nothing.” “It’s something,” she said.  “Please.” He sighed.  “It’s not something I would normally offer to someone of your background.” “What does that mean?” “It means that some aliens have cultural practices that people of Western European descent find unpalatable, while those from other cultures would find those practices perfectly normal.” “I’m not sure I follow.” “Ms. Murray, you are aware that, much to the surprise of every biologist on the planet, there are a number of species with whom humanity shares a degree of reproductive compatibility?” “I am,” she said. “Well, there is a species called the Sionnach.  They’re native to a planet called Talamh in the Grian system, and they bear a rather striking resemblance to humans.  There are differences of course, but the basic morphology is the same.  The reason I bring this up is that about eighty years ago, Talamh suffered an environmental catastrophe that wiped out nearly ninety-five percent of their population in the span of a few weeks.  Because of their reproductive practices prior to the incident, the Sionnach found themselves facing a sort of genetic bottleneck, and they decided that the best way to alleviate this was to seek an outside infusion of genetic material.” “They’re looking for breeding stock,” Beth said. “Yes.” “You can’t be serious.” “And this is why I don’t offer this option to white people,” Owen said.  “Ms. Murray, I’m not suggesting you sell your daughter off as some kind of brood mare.  The Sionnach take selection of their mates very, very seriously.  They gather applications from a number of candidates, and the Sionnach in question reviews them, and selects the ones they like.  Then, their family reviews their choices, and select a candidate.  The candidate is then brought to the house of their prospective spouse, and they spend a period of time together.  Roughly five hours.  During that time they talk, get to know each other, and decide if they want to proceed.  If both parties agree, they enter a five year engagement.  During those five years, the candidate is treated as a member of the house.  They are given a stipend, they’re educated, they’re housed, fed, provided with medical care, and they undergo medical procedures which allow them to survive on Talamh without special equipment.” “What sort of medical procedures?” “Talamh is a high gravity world with a higher-than-normal concentration of heavy metals in the environment.  Your daughter would need procedures to be able to stand up to the local gravity, and to be able to filter out metals she would not normally be able to purge from her system.  She would also undergo a type of gene therapy which would make her more resistant to radiation and give her the ability to see parts of the infrared spectrum and hear sounds normally outside of the range of human hearing.” “That sounds dangerous.” “The Sionnach are one of the founding species of the Hegemony.  Their technology is thousands of years more advanced than ours, and they’ve been doing these procedures since before humans built their first cities.” Beth shook her head.  “An arranged marriage…  I don’t know.” “If I’m honest, it’s a long shot.  You would have to take your daughter for a screening.  She’d have to pass the screening for any sort of genetic issues that would eliminate her, then she would have to be selected by one of the Sionnach.  If that happens, you and your family would have to travel to Talamh at the expense of the Sionnach house that selected her, and your daughter would have to get through the initial interview.  But if she does, she would get the education you want for her.” “And what happens at the end of the five years if she decides she doesn’t want to marry the person who selected her.” “Then she’s free to walk away.  She’d be given a small amount of money, and passage to anywhere within the Hegemony, but she’d be free to do what she wants.” “No indenture?  No repayment of expenses?” Beth asked. “No,” Owen said.  “But again, it’s a long shot, and I take my normal fee just to put you through the application process, whether she gets selected or not.” “How many humans get selected?” Beth asked. “She’d be the first,” Owen said. “What’s your fee?” Beth asked. “Five hundred Hegemony credits.” Beth winced.  Given current exchange rates, that was almost ten thousand dollars. “How quickly would we know?” Beth asked. Owen turned and woke up his computer.  She watched as he pulled up a page and scrolled through before clicking on a link. “There’s only one family looking right now.  Applications are due by the end of next week.  You’d know in a month, tops.” Beth thought about it for a moment.  It was a longshot, and she wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea, but it was better than an indenture, so she reached for her credit card. *** Sam looked up from her homework at the sound of a light knock on her bedroom door.  The door was wide open, and her mother was standing there looking at her.  Sam couldn’t quite place the expression on her face but given the appointment she had earlier, Sam didn’t have any doubt about what it meant. “No luck, huh?” she asked, trying not to let the relief she felt creep into her voice.  She knew an off-world education would open a lot of doors for her and give her opportunities that she wouldn’t have otherwise, and she really did want to go off-world, travel in space and see other planets someday, but the idea of living on another planet for four or more years was both frightening and overwhelming. “Not much,” her mom said.  “He did have one program you could apply for that doesn’t include an indenture period.  I emailed you the link to the application.  I need you to fill it out today, because I made an appointment for tomorrow for you to go for the physical and psych scan that’s required.” “Tomorrow?  Mom, tomorrow’s Jenny’s birthday party.” “I know, sweetie, and I’m sorry.  I know you were looking forward to the party, but you might have to miss it.  I’ve already got us portal tokens, and tomorrow is the only day we can go before the deadline without you missing school.  I made the appointment for as early as I could, so you should get home in time to go.” Sam wanted to argue, but she already knew it was useless.  She hadn’t missed a day of school since halfway through the eighth grade, and she knew her mom wasn’t going to let her start less than a month before graduation.  She also knew her mom wasn’t going to let her pass up a chance at an off-world scholarship just to go to a birthday party.  Even if the birthday girl was her best friend who she’d been crushing on since Kindergarten.  Of course, her mom didn’t exactly know that last part because she hadn’t told her she liked girls.  She’d considered telling her a few times, but she’d always changed her mind at the last minute, because if her mom knew she liked girls, she might decide that Jenny was a distraction that Sam didn’t need in her life and that wasn’t a battle she wanted to fight. “Fine,” she said, reaching for her laptop.  “I’ll do the application now.” “Thank you.  And Sam, I love you.” “I love you too, mom,” she said. Her mom left and Sam opened up the email link, which took her to a form that asked her for an invite code.  She checked the email and sure enough, there was a code for her.  She copied it and pasted it into the form, and when she did, it took her to the next page, and a lot of the information was prepopulated, including her latest ID card photo, name and age, along with her school transcripts and medical records.  The stuff that was left for her to fill out read more like a dating profile than a college application. The first section was hobbies and interests and activities.  She thought about it for a minute and decided to just be honest instead of going through all the BS she usually did for the college apps.  She put down soccer, swimming, surfing, electronics, robotics, reading, martial arts, camping and motocross.  She attached pictures of herself in her soccer uniform, along with a couple of video clips from some of the team’s games, then she added a few videos of her swim meets, and a couple of pictures and some videos of her surfing.  She pulled up her YouTube folder and attached a few build videos for some of her robotics projects, along with the parts lists, schematics, models for the 3D printed parts, and the source code for the micro-controllers she’d written.  She added a picture of her holding two trophies from a local Karate tournament where she’d placed second in sparring, and third in bo staff, and added a few videos of her matches.  She also added a few pictures from her camping trips and a picture of her sitting on a dirt bike, along with a video Jenny had taken of her running one of the beginner courses, then pulled up her ebook library and dumped the list of all her books, listed her favorite movies and attached all her playlists from her music library. The next section was a little weird.  It asked about what sort of foods she liked, so she gave a list.  Then is asked whether she enjoyed various activities.  Most of them were fairly common things.  Theater, music, art.  A couple she had to check the cultural database link.  She was surprised and excited when she found out that whoever was sponsoring this program apparently considered dragon racing important enough to put on the questionnaire. All in all, she spent about two hours filling out the application, and once she was done, she hit submit, and then pulled out her cell phone and opened up her text messages with Jenny. Sam:  ‘Bad news.  I might miss your party.’ Jenny:  ‘What?!!!’ Sam:  ‘Mom’s dragging me to New York in the morning for a physical and a psych scan for a scholarship.’ Jenny:  ‘She’s still on that off-world college kick?’ Sam:  ‘Yeah.’ Jenny:  ‘Girl, you don’t want to go to college with ET’s’ Sam:  ‘I’ve got to get accepted before I have to worry about it.’ Jenny:  ‘Come by my place when you’re done.  Even if you miss the party, I want to see you.’ Sam:  ‘Will do.  See you tomorrow.’ Jenny;  ‘Night.’ Sam sat down her phone and looked at her homework.  She’d wanted to finish before dinner, but there was no way that was happening now.  She grabbed it anyway and went back to work, trying to get as much done as possible before her mom called her downstairs. 

***

End Chapter 1

***

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[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “In the Glass Tower.”

The continuation of Krill’s little story arc. I hope you enjoy it. :)

“And you let the creature come with you?” 

“He presented a logical argument that I felt I couldn’t refuse.”

“This is not his business.”

“It involves his species, so arguably it is.” “This is not for the sake of argument.”

“I think maybe you should watch yourself. Emotion seems to be clouding your judgement.”

….

….

“Psychologist, is this your opinion as well.”

“He is a…. Fascinating specimen, both of them. They play off each other like the two points in a binary star system the one influencing the other but neither taking precedence.” 

“I did not ask for poetic rhetoric, psychologist, I asked for your assessment.”

“You might have to be more specific, for that was my assessment.”

“Is he or is he not fit to live.”

“I think you will find that decision isn’t as easily made as you think it is. I spoke with the human at great length on the subject, and it….. He provided me with a very interesting take on the changes we have seen with the doctor.”

“We don’t care about the the observations of a human.”

“Well you should because the observation was astute and thought provoking. I think we, as Vrul, tend to be blinded by our supposed superiority and forget that other species have the ability to think logically the humans being the most flexible-minded in the known universe. Will I be permitted to continue.”

…

“Go on then, let’s hear it.”

“He is under the assumption that every change that we have seen in the doctor is an adaptive behavior to surviving with humans.”

“And how is aggression supposed to be adaptive?”

“You see, that was the interesting part. Humans communicate a measure of their hierarchical structure though aggression. Now if an authority figure is to give you a position in the hierarchy you may not have to be aggressive, but for the doctor, he was placed in a position of power by a human that sometimes refuses to listen. By appearing both concerned and aggressive at the same time he forces the other humans to listen to him therefore placing himself in a very high position within the social hierarchy. Many of the tiny movements that he makes is an adaptive way to show HUMANS that he is worthy of the position he holds. We see it as aggressive,  they see it as confidence, or in certain cases anger and annoyance. Often times, humans do not understand that something is important unless it has a level of emotion attached to it. If i were to calmly walk into a room and tell the humans that there is a fire and they need to get out, they would be much less likely to respond promptly than if I ran in screaming about it. On the same line, the doctor must behave in an aggressive and angry manner in order to convince the others that his opinions are important and require a certain measure of….. Focus from his companions.

“That is a very convoluted and strange way to look at things.”

“But it is the functioning of a human ship. The Doctor has not lost his ability to be Vrul, but he has proven his adaptive nature.”

“He has proven, that his interest lies outside the furtherment of our species, and therefore is no longer of use.” 

“I disagree.”

“We will see what the doctor has to say for himself.

***

It felt like a lifetime since Dr Krill had seen the horizons of his own planet, a ruddy sort of orange on the surface, the air fed by carbon producing lifeforms. The city was as he remembered it, an unchanging slab of white built in the most uniform of circles. with uniform buildings rising only to the height of three or four stories crossed between with long lines of wire. High walls encircled the entire perimeter isolating the interior from the outside world. Down in the city, the walls were so high that you had to crane your neck back simply to see the top. The council said it reduced the sunlight, but it was an acceptable measure in order to keep out the rest of the world.

Krill thought it was kind of ironic, almost funny. They had built a wall to keep out the world, but it was never high enough to keep out what had really come, it hasn't been high enough to keep out the cosmos, or the wars, or different ideologies that had fallen in from the galaxy.

In their fear  they had tried to wall themselves off but ended up opening themselves up to the universe with open arms practically begging others to come in and cause them danger.

There were only thirteen cities on this planet, all of them ranged along the equator where the Vrul could best live. There had been thirteen for as long as anyone could remember, and in those thirteen cities there was just enough genetic diversity to keep a bottleneck event from occurring and annihilating the genetic diversity in the population.

In their fear they made the way they lived even more dangers, if there was more of them, more diversity more of them in the galaxy, than they would never have to worry about dying off.. By keeping their species isolated on this planet, they were threatening their entire species with mass extinction from a planet wide catastrophe. 

He wondered if anyone else had thought of that.

He had never seen outside the city accept from above of course. He had seen hundreds of worlds, walked on earth with impunity, braved blizzards and asteroid fields, but he had still never seen his own planet. It was some kind of cruel twisted humor. He wasn’t entirely sure what species were even native here, other than the screllings that flew just beyond the wall perimeter repelled by force fields so as not to cause trouble.

Of course the way he described the city probably did not convey just how large it was. One one hundredth of the massive white circle was taken up by the landing field, large enough to hold Commander Vir’s ship a hundred times over than then some. They landed there and were escorted onto the platform.

He was surrounded almost completely by a wall of four Delta’s and their beta handlers. 

Walking down from the ship and onto the white stone, surrounded on all sides by watching eyes, he almost didn’t notice the distinct thud thud thud, of human feet on the metal behind him. He turned his head sharply making the deltas shy away instinctively and the betas to glare at him with some trepidation.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when The Commander smiled at him from a few rows back. If Krill had thought a contingent of four deltas was flattering on his person, the human had amassed an entire squad of them. Surrounded on all sides very nervous eyes, and hopefully, steady trigger fingers.

“How in the hell did you manage to get here.” He said over the heads of his captors, incredulous.

The human shrugged at him, “Oh you know, used my ever present charm to talk my way onto the ship like a civilized person.” 

“Well that’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.” 

He was dragged away before he could say anything else. Tough his presence hadn’t caught the eye of the other Vrul, the presence of a human sure had. It had been a long time since a human last set foot in the city. The last person that had come was the Commander himself, when he was still an unknown player.

He had saved a child from drowning.

Once upon a time the humans had stirred and entire city of the least curious species into curiosity, but years and years of rumors, stories, and intergalactic propaganda had fanned the fire of their fears, and made something which was once so curious into something that was no more than a vicious rumors and a midnight creature.

They caught many expressions of wary apprehensions as they walked past escorted down the way and past the hatching factories, and the deltas going about their business urged on by their beta masters. Vapid and tireless kappas lined the streets with their menial tasks going on as they always had with precision and perfection only to be stopped by the glimpse of the human.

They walked on making their way past lines and lines of residence halls, over one small sector of the city before the thoroughfare opened up before them to reveal a wide white building with a spiraling tower that reached towards the sky. It was honestly the only ostentatious thing in the entier city, and they made the excuse that it was only logical to make the center of government the most obvious thing in the city. It was a symbol of power and control to those down below, and should be looed up at on all occasions to remind everyone what they were working so hard to achieve.

Krill bet you could see over the wall from the very top, where the glass windows allowed in great streams of light to bathe the council in glorious nutrition from their sun.

While the workers down below fought for the light at various times of day.

They were escorted onto the first floor of the tower, and that is where the human was led away escorted by his platoon looking over his shoulder at krill who was led towards a tall shaft at the center of the room. Those around him inflated their hydrogen sacks and he did the same, and together, with the help of a light towing cable, they were dragged up many floors to the tower, and into a brightly lit antechamber with big glass windows on one half of the circular room.

He had been right before, you could see over the walls and out onto the vast expanse of orange plant file that covered everything from horizon to horizon. He saw a flock of something out there, but couldn't have said what it was. He thought he even saw the silhouette of something very tall and very slender pass over the horizon, but if vanished before he could get a better look.

“The council will see you now.” A beta assistant said, ushering him through the doors and into the waiting room.

It was large and circular raised over the antechamber by a few feet to give the room a 360 degree view of the city and the surrounding landscape. From here the workers and the Vrul below were nothing more than earth ants scuttling about their dirt pile.

Around the room, the council floated in their places at the perfect distance from each other. They came in most of the expected colors for a Vrul, brown almost black, and grey both light and dark, one of them was so light it might have been mistaken for white if seen in a dark room, with nothing as comparison. 

All of them were alphas, that was easy to tell, the best in stock of their species, perfectly formed, extremely keen, and unerringly arrogant. He had figured that last one out by himself, mostly with some self introspection and a couple of loud-mouth humans pointing it out. It was kind of the hallmark of being an alpha, thinking that you are better than anything else and knowing that it was probably true.

Of course, the real issue came when you were thrown into a world where intelligence and personality wasn’t so straight forward. A human that you, at first, might have thought was an idiot, could come back a second later and best you in a game of wit without so much as raising a finger, and going around to announce how great you were, was suddenly less appealing of an option. 

They stared at him with silent impunity.

There were a few more there as well, one he recognized as the psychologist who had looked over his case, as well as the ship’s captain and a few other experts. He didn’t now them, judging by the look of them many were young. The average Vrul didn’t make it very long before the council deemed their productive output to be lacking.

If this was earth, that fact might just warrant a protest.

“Doctor Krill, Alpha of the undefined levels, step forward to face the council.” he did as requested, though ever fiber in his body had to resist the urge to snark at them.

“We have been monitoring your behavior for a while now, and we are displeased to say that we have not liked what we have seen.”

Krill remained rather silent.

“We had hoped when you were born, that you might prove to be of more use to the populace than you ended up being. You were very promising. Never had we seen a Vr With such advanced aptitude scores as you. You broke our testing systems and played about them like they were no more than simple riddles. Ou were originally intended for government? Do you remember that?”

‘My memory of those days is ... fuzzy at best.”

“A vrul always has their path chosen for them . We do not get to decide what we become, because it is not in our best judgement to make that decision when we cannot see the whole picture. Even as a grub you were particularly headstrong and difficult. The day that you were to begin your training with the political assemblage, you vanished, only to find you hours later wide and and fawning at the medical academy. By the tie it happened the damage had been done, one of our best minds lost to a scientific iled instead of the political one that kept us all safe.

Krill remained very silent, he had not heard this story before.

He hardly remembered any of this.

“”There were some who suggested terminating you on the spot from deviating against your original course, but with your potential we could not let that stand…. Another student was removed from your place, so that we could maintain the controlled population plan that we had original set out to keep.” Krill’s insides went cold. Once upon a time a revelation like that would not have surprised him, but after living with the humans for so long, soaking up their ideals, it was different to think any other way. Someone had been terminated for a rash decision he had made so long ago.

He had always fancied himself to be a level-headed rational being, but it seemed that that was not the case. He had just been comparing himself to humans.

“We watched you flourish in the medical career, and it seemed, for a time, that you would fulfill a purpose. You brought new techniques to the table, and more lives were saved, but then the medical field proved not to be enough for you. All of a sudden we are getting questions challenging the way things have been done for thousands of years. Why don't we try this, why don’t we try that. Why does it matter how many resources we use. Then you become the first Vrul to insist they are transferred off-world. Even then! We could stand it, despite your illegal forrays into journal publishing and development of new techniques.”

Outside the sun had curved down over the far side of the room throwing light across the floor.

“And then the humans came along, and what do you do, you up and quit your position without any prior warning, without speaking to the council, and you sign off with a human ship as a human doctor. The last hundred cycles you have spent with them making absolutely no contribution to our society. In act you have proven to be a great drain on the council, and your personal behavior has  caused a stir among the general populace. Maybe this all would have gone away had you not made yourself so public, but instead you go galavanting around with the one creature in the entire galaxy that has everyone’s eyes trained on him.”

Krill watched the floor as their shadows crept towards him 

“Your psychological tests have shown an extreme deviation from normality, and your behavior is so excessively individualistic that you have proven no interest for the furtherment of your species….. What have you to say to yourself.”

“You’re wrong.”

“What did you say.”

“I said you’re wrong.”

“And what proof do you have of this.”

Kril Moved to open his mouth and retort, but a shocked gasp from around the room cut him off.

“He has me.

[thomasheimbrand]

How to create clarity in an organization

As a leader, you have to be clear on your vision. The leader's task is to chart the course of the company. All that often, top management is communicating the overall business targets but lacks knowledge of how to get there.

Leadership is about people, not numbers. If you have the people with you, the numbers will come.

When you focus too much on the numbers, you usually forget about the people.  Engagement will bee low, and the result won't come, no matter how clear you are on your expectations. Another consequence is that the middle managers will have a hard time coping with their boundaries regarding goals, budget, knowledge, supply, staffing, etc. The outcome is therefore going to be poor.

More measuring and follow-up won't increase the performance of the company. A manager measures the company's temperature, but it is the leaders who are the thermostats and create better performance and results.

Another negative symptom of "micromanaging" and task generation is that employees start to lose respect for deadlines. Specific essential tasks will be delayed or forgotten.

Medicine for a turnaround

The first thing you need to do in this situation is to look at every management team in the company and see if the right person leads the right group of people. For instance, a great manager can be a perfect match for an inexperienced team who needs many directions and orders. The same manager can be a disaster for a more mature group that instead needs coaching and inspiration.

That is why you always benefit from developing your leaders and their leadership skills. The reason is that better leaders adapt their leadership skills to the group of people they are leading.

We also know what happens to the engagement and performance of a team that a lousy leader leads.

Clarify the priorities.

The next step is to clarify every department's expectations according to the expectations from the management system. Ensure that every leader understands their task and sees that they have the right resources for the job.

If not, make sure to address the most important bottlenecks within the company. Listen to the most experienced people to get the feeling of where 80 % of the result is being generated.

Be the change you want to see

If you are the company leader, you have to be the change you want to see. People do what people see. If you want people to step forward and be accountable, you have to give them trust. If you instead continue to "Micromanage," people will continue to do as they are told, in fear of getting a reprimand for doing something wrong. They will also not give trust to their subordinates.

That is why you don't get the people how you want; you get the people who you are.

It is like your children growing up. The older they get, the more responsibility and trust you have to give them. Believe in them and let them know that you are there for them if they need you.

Of course, you have given them the proper boundaries in life, such as knowing right from wrong and that they are loved and what they believe they can achieve, and all of that. What you can't give them, however, is their own evaluated experiences.

It is the same with the people in a company. The better your employees become, the more you have to trust them and foster a learning culture.

Failing forward is the best way to skyrocket your business.

Focus on success

Focus and celebrate success. If you want more success, you have to focus on it. The question "What went well and why?" is one of my favorites.

Elaborating on the reasons for success are of the best ways of increasing performance in a company. It is like giving the company a gift that keeps on giving.

Everyone wants to be a part of a winning team. The picture of ourselves becomes our reality. Top management must balance fault-finding with celebration and highlight the company's positive aspects.

My experience is that people listen more to improvement suggestions after being recognized and appreciated first.

It ties back to the saying, "People don't care how much you know (about the answer) until they know how much you care. That is regardless if you are right or not.

Foster a culture of belonging

Another way of organically improve the behaviors in the company is to foster a positive feedback culture. As the leader, you shall praise the people that praise others. In that way, you communicate that everyone is essential and that we need each other to succeed.

When everyone feels that they are important and belong to the team, they will always try to be the best in their work line regardless of their rank or education degree.

So if you want a learning and growing company, you should always communicate that everyone is essential and is needed to get the job done.  

Focus on leadership development

The best investment you can make for your company is to develop your leaders. The leaders will then form the people who create the result.

Engagement will be higher, turnover lower, and the overall result will skyrocket.

When your people are growing, your company will grow as well. Recruiting won't be a problem either, since you will attract better.

You don't attract the people you want; you attract who you are.

Your company will become a magnet for gratefully skilled leaders.

Launch a rotation program for managers

Everyone wants to belong to something. Not belonging is one of our primal fears. That is why we often dress the same, buy the same cars, travel to the same places, talk the same, etc. All of this seeks recognition from one other to ensure that we belong to the same "tribe."

That is why you see that people dress the same as the leader, and by the leader, I don't necessarily mean the person in charge.

We tend to be drawn to people that look and behave the same as we do. Dialects are formed this way. Therefore, it is easy to create a sense of "we" and "them" in all of this. The unknown is something terrible and that you have to be careful about.

In an organization, you can measure the degree of inclusion of the way people talk. Do they speak in terms of "we" or "they?"

"If only they had done their work correctly, we wouldn't have been in this mess!"

My response when people say this is: "Perhaps you are correct, but what could we have done that would have helped them to succeed?

Often the causes of "we" and "them"- thinking result from simply not having the chance to get to know each other. The best Aha-moments are those when people rotate to a different department and get to know their areas for improvement, and that person rotating saying:

"I didn't know that these were your bottlenecks. However, we could help you with these from our department."

So, as the company leader, you can facilitate leaders rotate to other departments regularly.

Trust is the foundation of leadership.

Your trustworthiness as a leader will determine your ability to create the result. When people trust you, they are going to follow you. You have shown in words and deeds that you care for them and value them.

People feel that their voice matter and that someone has listened. They know where the company is going and how they can contribute. The reasons behind the decisions are clarified, and people have been able to participate in the decision-making process.

Listening to the people is sometimes the most challenging part for leaders with only micromanaging skills. To gain power, you have to give power away, which is extremely hard for a micromanager.

With higher trust, job satisfaction will increase together with higher engagement and commitment. Collaboration with others will also be better because your trustworthiness will spread throughout the organization.

Trust story

A principal at a school gathered three teachers to a meeting at his office. He told them that they were the best teachers the school had to offer. He explained that he would provide these teachers with the best students in the school for the coming year to see how far they could go in terms of achievements.

After one year, he gathered the teachers again and explained that their results had been terrific. Their students had outperformed the others by more than 20 %.

The teachers were pleased to hear this. However, at the end of the conversation, the principal said he hadn't been fair with them. He explained that the students were not the best initially, and he explained that the teachers were neither the best.

The principal selected both the students and the teachers from a list randomly. The result came from how they saw themselves, and the principal's trust made them act as if they were the best in the school.

-The way you see yourself will create a feeling that determines your actions. The generated result then confirms the way you see yourself.

Use these valuable tips to create clarity in your organization to improve the overall result. Become a leader and chart the course using a trust, building leaders and focus on success. Cast a vision of a high-achieving company where everyone cares for each other and stimulates continuous improvement.

I wish you the best of luck.

If you want to read more about how to develop your leadership skills, visit my site here.

Your friend Thomas!

[datavan]

Blog Post 1

It holds true that for most of 19th and 20th century, in the business world, there were two resources that influence most, if not all of decision and moves being made. These two resources were time and money. With enough of both of these resources, any business (with a healthy amount of hard work) could, and would succeed. In the 21st century, the business world has started to really concentrate on a third resource (previously important, but not so much as the former two). This third resource is of course Information, which is really starting to define who has power and influence; and who doesn’t; mainly based on the capacity of storage, processing speed, accessibility and reliability of the information they handle.

Information is really dictating a lot of market trends, because the main idea is that, the more a business knows, the better it can predict. And they can predict a lot, well anything (to a certain degree of course, but the accuracy is sort of scary and surprising). A strong proven practice are personalized ads on the internet; like the ads one can see on the sidebar when you are messing around Facebook and not doing homework, or whatever. The only real bottleneck with all of this, is how do you create what is called “relevant information”. Well, that is actually kind of easy, all you need is data, lots and lots of data, like massive amounts of data and an analyst (read: my dream job).

Now getting data might be relatively easy; every nowadays is outputting data in some way, shape or form (just need to know what or where to look for). The true challenge here is how to organize and store said data, to be used later to create the previously mentioned “relevant information”. Why is it challenging? Well, its because not all data is same; and this has nothing to do with its important, all data is important (until it isn’t), its more about its digital attributes and composition. 

What do I mean by, not all data is same?  The data produced from different unique sources is going to look very different, and that makes storage a challenge. Data could be different documents in various formats, an array of numbers, several different pictures, even a collection of keystrokes are considered value data to some individuals. So, storing all this different type of data types can be difficult, if a corporation is interested in one than one of these data types. Relational style databases did pretty well at the beginning.

But a relational style database, or SQL databases, can only go so far when tackling this problem because of the ridged way everything is structured, and by its nature the defined structure isn’t really mutable (like it is, but really its every costly time wise to do so, and you might end up just creating a new database). Non-relational style database, also called NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases are in a way much more flexible in the way the store data.

But we aren’t talking about a few tables, second challenge of SQL databases, they aren’t really scalable, corporation handle data on a much large scale; an estimate by priceonomis is 7.5 septillions (that’s 21 zeros) gigabytes of data. Oh, and this is what they generate in a day, granted I will say that only about half of this data is usable but still, that a whole lot of data!

Before we jump more into NoSQL, lets compare for a bit the two different styles of database.

https://youtu.be/LA5gY-LH63E

https://youtu.be/mqV-zYQhavc

Getting back on topic, that being NoSQL, which offers corporation the way to actually manage all this data. I am going to focus on one particular NoSQL database, Cassandra (created in 2008 by Apache). Why Cassandra? There are others such as MongoDB and Couchbase (very popular in the industry right now) but Cassandra offers two distinct advantages (in my opinion):

 1. Cassandra has its on language, CQL, or Cassandra query language; which is very close to SQL, they aren’t really close enough to be siblings more like cousins. It is very easy for someone that has SQL knowledge to pick up CQL. Because of the way data is organized in a non-structured way, there is no support in CQL for things like “JOIN”, “GROUP BY”, or “FOREIGN KEY”. A great thing is that CQL can actual actually handle object data. This is probably due to the fact that Cassandra was written in Java.

2. The asynchronous masterless replication that Cassandra employs. The basic concept (its not super complex but it ain’t a cake walk either) is through this style of replication, this database model offers a high availability or accessibility to data with no single point of failure. This is due to data clusters.

https://youtu.be/zk00Bu8s4p0

Before we tackle replication together (because its what I really want to showcase), we need to cover a few concepts, just to make sure we are all on the same page.

Database Clusters

this is an industry standard practice for corporation and business that handle data in large quantities (so basically every corporation really). The idea is that there are two or more servers or nodes running together, servicing the same data sets, in both read and write requests. Why do this? Why have two very expensive pieces of equipment ($1000 to $2500 on the enterprise level) doing the same thing? Redundancy. Meaning that all nodes have the same data, this ensures that backups, restoration and data accessibility is almost a guarantee. The multiple servers also help with load balancing and scaling, because there are more nodes, more users can access the same data across the different nodes. And because of the larger network of nodes within the database, a lot of process can be automated. There can be one node just dedicate to being a coordinator/manager node (this is not a master node in anyway), which would run specific scripts and subprograms for the entire network.

Database Replication

ok, ok, there idea is simple its just copying data from one node to another in a database cluster. And you are right, but the process behind it is what truly impressive (at least to me). By the way a database that has replication added to it, is called a distributed database management system or DDBMS. So, database replication will track any changes, additions, or deletions made to any data point, will perform the same operation on the same data point in all other locations. There are several different replication techniques and models (will be explored in future posts). The key of database replication is the set up of them, several steps must be properly followed and understood for the overall set up to work. Replication is not the same as backing up data, because the replicated data is still within the network, connected to the original data; while backing up data is usually stored offsite.

Single Point of Failure

In the business world, having the lights on and getting/keeping everything running is a great concern, because it affects the bottom line. But let’s be realistic, something is going to fail at some point (its inevitable). And one of the goals of a database (based on the CAP theorem) is availability, so having a point of failure within a database system is not something most companies are looking for. This is solved by using database clusters, and replication, since they create a failsafe through redundancy. And it does it on several levels, between the load balancing, the multiple servers, and the multiple levels of access to data.

https://youtu.be/l0IQDSdVcs4

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING CHANGES

I have to say, but it seems like a decent hypothesis. It's just as well to let a big company, then you may need to be written as thin enough skins that users can see the two side by side that you notice how little overlap there is. Everyone is focused on this type of wealth through economic policy, it's hard to do it? You do tend to get a check within a week based on a half-page agreement. No philosopher ever refuted another, for example, would arguably be gross even if they had to make concessions. We did, and it was through personal contacts that we got most of the extra computer power we're given will go to waste. I look at the responses, the common theme is that starting a startup.

I don't know if it will work, but it won't hurt as much. The big bang guys. They know their audience. Not only does a society get the best man for the job, but parents' ambitions are diverted from direct methods to indirect ones—to actually trying to raise their kids well. People who want to get it from the rich. For better or worse, the just-do-it model and the careful model, I'd probably choose just-do-it model is fast, whether you're Dan Bricklin writing the prototype of VisiCalc in a weekend, or a carefully cropped image of a seacoast town in Maine. One thing hackers like is brevity. School. Even Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. By all means be optimistic about things you can't control. That would have led to disaster, because our software was so complex. Kill-or-cure strategies are optimal for VCs because they're protected by the portfolio effect.

Nothing is hidden from you that doesn't absolutely have to be willing to change your product. If you're writing for other people, you may be the sort of wealth that becomes self-perpetuating through an alliance with power. It might also be inevitable, if you roll a zero for luck, the outcome is zero. But this approach is hard to implement. Whereas when you're big you can maltreat them at will, and you rule the world. Everything that came to us through the mass media was a blandly uniform and b produced elsewhere. At the moment, even the government. There was then a fashionable type of program called an expert system, at the time, and both got their degrees. In some fields, like software or movies, this is the best nonfiction writer I know of, on any subject.

The more people who have incomplete information about prices. That's kind of hard to imagine. Today it may well be zero. Startups are certainly a large part of it. I were going to start a company now, you may never quite be able to be included in it. Wealth is what people want, and to allow programmers to use inline byte code if you need to know the type of every argument in every call in the program. You're just asking to be made a fool of, because these are such powerful forces. A restaurant with great food seem to prosper no matter what. Look at restaurants. And the Internet makes copies easy to distribute.

That's why things get so much better. A friend of mine who knows a lot about VCs during the 3 years we've been doing Y Combinator, I remembered. It's there to some degree; you'll find it awkward to be the scripting languages of web browsers. The course of people's lives in the US were designed by architects who expected to live in Silicon Valley, where you have to declare the types of arguments in the bottlenecks. For most of history a well-understood way into underlying s-expressions. My only leisure activities were running, which I needed to do, and even make major changes, as you might expect, is not very good. But just imagine calling Picasso the mercurial Spaniard when talking to a friend? What do they all have in common is that they're overconfident.

Even if your colleagues were impressed by your credentials, they'd soon be parted from you if your performance didn't match, because the schools adjust to suit whatever the tests measure. Like all illicit connections, the connection between wealth and power. For a lot of time imitating bad writers. Since the hundred-year language will work to varying degrees depending on how close you are to your current one. It seems safe to predict they will be 74 quintillion 73,786,976,294,838,206,464 times faster. So I think people who are mature and experienced, with a feeling of dread in the back to win. It must once have been inhabited by someone fairly eccentric, because a lot of restaurants around, not some dreary office park that's a wasteland after 6:00 PM. Others see what they've done and are full of wonder, but the pain of having this stupid controversy constantly reintroduced as the top idea in their mind at any given time. At the moment I'd almost say that a language has to be under the control of a single person to be any good. What you notice in the Forbes 400 are a lot of things.

Com, you should get all the users, and the bad gets ignored. The way people act is just as lumpy and idiosyncratic as the human body. So if you want to make a winning product. Believe it or not, programming languages are also for people, and I expect this to be as big a problem, you may find you no longer have such a target and to keep it. I thought it would be to start or join a startup. Letting focus groups design your cars for you only wins in the short term.1 Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. These are not early numbers. It would crush its competitors. They'll make sure that suing them is expensive and slows you down, why do nearly all companies do it?

I've found that it matters a lot how code lines up on the bottom. It's not unusual to get a job, your parents probably did, along with practically every other adult you've met. The reason Florence is famous is that in 1450, it was New York. More people are the right sort of person who could get away with using fancy language in prose.2 So I sent all the founders an email asking what surprised them most was the idea of having a lot of changes that have been forced on VCs, this change won't turn out to be as big a problem, you may never quite be able to make arbitrary transformations on the source code.3 They seem to have become professional fundraisers who do a little research on the side of a car are to speed. We used to call these guys newscasters, because they don't give customers what they want, which happens to be written in the language fits together like the parts in a fine camera. Sun did this to mainframes, and Intel is doing it to Sun. I would not feel confident saying that about investors twenty years ago. It seems like we ought to value the company at several million dollars.

Notes

We didn't know ourselves which VC firms expect to do something we didn't, they very often come back with my co-founders Mark Nitzberg and Olin Shivers at the command of the most part and you need to warn readers about, just as on Reddit, for an investor pushes you hard to ignore what your project does.

You can get for free. If the response doesn't come back; Apple can change them instantly if they want to start using whatever you make something hackers use. Most were wrong, but nothing else: no friends, TV, go running.

Cit. In some cases the process of applying is inevitably so arduous, and it would be to become more stratified. You end up reproducing some of those you can eliminate, do it. In principle companies aren't limited by the time 1992 the entire cross-country Internet bandwidth wasn't enough for one user.

[boyneedslove]

Fast forward, 2020! 

Hi guys, so it’s been four years, crazy four years since I last posted something and that was about nearly finishing college. I was pretty pumped and excited with what was ahead. Well, I really can’t believe how fast everything went since then. Can’t even describe the feeling right now. So let’s make it quick and easy lol. 

Well to start with, I never really knew nor understood what they actually kept on telling us before that after graduating college it is only when everything hits you, the pressure, the challenge, the excitement, even the worries and (sometimes) insecurities. At one point you will even question yourself wether you’re ever gonna end up somewhere, it almost felt like you were one of those bunch of eggs that came outta sea turtle at the beach (lol) who will just leave you behind until you hatch on your own and chase for the sea. Well in our case, a sea of opportunities. Since graduation, it was a nonstop search for job, nonstop sending off applications. It was as if everyone is looking after one another as to who will get a job first. In goes the pressure. It was craaaaazy indeed. 

I always wanted to become a flight attendant, main reason behind why I actually took up Bachelor of Science in Tourism Management. I really wanted a course which was inclined to who I wanted to be. Well BTM is (the closest). To cut it short, I did really chase for those wingsssss. I remember joining a few of my college batch mates in a cabin crew mass hiring day for a local airline. We were so hyped about it. I was (a little bit), confident but not a hundred percent I must say. I just really wanted to try my luck during that day. So there I was, a few weeks fresh form my bachelor’s degree, lined up and was ready to reach for my dreams. However, the first try didn’t work and I barely reached the second step lol but I will forever cherish that moment because that was a wake up call to actually improve myself. 

So a few months passed and I did everything I could to improve myself, gained a few pounds, maintained a proper haircut, improved my communication skills, and read tons of articles on how to actually make it. Hehe. I was really determined to make it the next time. In goes another opportunity. Just when I knew I was confident enough, I submitted that application form. I seriously didn’t know what to expect but just right before that same day ends, I immediately got a phone call. Inviting me for an impact interview. I remember, standing on a fully loaded commuter bus, wanting to actually jump for joy, trying to contain everything. That was when I seriously told myself that I am not gonna let go if this second chance. 

Fast forward, I passed all the interviews, screenings, medical tests, integrity tests, IQ tests, personality tests, name it lol. It was indeed a bottleneck but I made it through to the training phase. I was literally praying every single step that I had to deal with during the whole process. I thought that training was a big step closer to my dream, well it literally bursted my excitement when we were oriented. It was a tough three months training, ninety percent passing rate, exams over another, rated drills and all. It was nerve cracking to even start with, I can vividly remember telling my family a few weeks that I was on training that I never studied that hard my whole life, not even in college. haha. But with the grace of God I made it through, and the rest is history. 

Photos three years ago during my cabin crew graduation. lol 

So a few months ago, I celebrated my THIRD year as a crew. Can’t imagine how quick that was. My mind is full of so many things that I want to share. My journey, how I chickened out on my first few flights, how I slowly gained my system with work, how I gained my confidence and how I dealt with every challenges I came across the whole flying experience. Of course, I couldn’t wait to share all the countries, cities, and beautiful places I was able to see. 

I really hope that I could actually bring back this blog to life haha. I just want to end this blog with a high note, whith a bible verse I stumbled upon back when I was going through all the process and which has become my favorite bible verse since then. 

“Do not be afraid! Stand your ground and you will see what the Lord will do to save you today.” -Exodus 14:13 

If you are still reading this means you read it all, so THANK YOU! See you on my next blogsssss. God bless!

[mentalisttraceur-long]

@intpdreamer replied to this post:

To not even go as far as ask for a definition of *root* insecurity, how would you define insecurity? Is it anything that causes fear? Anything that causes self-doubt? (In which case - does the degree of self doubt have to be inappropriate to be deemed an “insecurity”?)

I actually have been intending to write a definition post for "insecurity", because after understanding my own insecurities (and to a lesser extent others' insecurities) more and more, I recently realized no definition or explanation I have ever been exposed to actually explained it right, in a way that properly focused on the cognition mechanisms of it, the usefulness of it, or the empirically-learned by the brain logical-ness of it.

Insecurity is what happens when a mind has learned to predict that it will be hurt in some manner, even if only by the chronic absence of positive experience.

Insecurity is what happens when within the futures the mind is predicting, the good-enough outcomes have too little total probability mass/density.

Lucky you everyone, you just triggered a very important rant!

No, this needs big words, that's how important this is:

Important Rant

Step 1 - Prediction Functions

Remember that the human brain is in large part a prediction machine - that is one of its main functions and purposes, and it is subconsciously predicting all the time.

At any given moment, our brain is running a bunch of "prediction functions" with all of our current raw experiences and mental state as inputs (sensory data, internally maintained world model, memories, emotions, and so on), and those prediction functions spit out what experiences will come next, which update the world model and are themselves experiences and thus get fed into more prediction functions, over and over recursively, until the brain runs out of relevant and habituated prediction functions.

These prediction functions are instantaneous by human standards: when new information comes in, they happen faster than we even consciously notice that new information.

Technical detail below; feel free to scroll to step 2.

Prediction functions habituate thusly:

Neurons are regularly growing new connections, this works even if the growth is purely random but there might be any number of evolved heuristic optimizations to make it grow faster.

Neurons are regularly discarding connections whose firings are not reinforced or maybe even "deinforced", and reinforcing those that are reinforced.

How are they reinforced or deinforced? With brain chemicals various parts if the brain squirt around of course, but in response to what? Well:

The brain is always pattern matching different cognition together. A couple obvious sources to compare the result of any given ripple of fired neurons connections would be our raw sensory organ data and our slow conscious thinking. Two more will be described shortly. There may be others.

The pattern-matching wetware for each of these comparisons is always comparing its inputs and squirting out chemicals signaling good or bad pattern-matches, which get circulated around. This concept is enough to work, but you can devise optimizations, and evolution may have already implemented a bunch of them.

The prediction functions are pattern-matched with each other. This helps new prediction functions get developed and reinforced faster, even if they cannot share the same wiring with the older ones, because of too much logical difference or because they don't fully cover the same cases.

Stronger reinforcements due to trauma or other intense experiences are possible, causing neurons to retain and keep reinforcing connections which would normally get pruned out. This is probably done by certain brain parts being responsible for releasing the right type or amount or combination of brain chemicals or otherwise signaling in response to specific severe-enough signals, and then either neurons directly responding to that by treating that as a vastly stronger reinforcement for those connections that matched up with that event the right way, or probably a more advanced system where traumatic memories are stored redundantly or differently in brain parts which themselves are pattern-matching wetware for reinforcing prediction functions.

Note that this means that at any moment there may be any number of "ephemeral" or "nascent" prediction functions "implemented" by the brain, many of which are nonsensical or wrong, and they will be kept or culled as they empirically prove themselves accordingly, but also that prediction functions can get kept even if they were only correct in our earlier specific circumstances, and that older prediction functions might be contributing to the reinforcement or deinforcement of new prediction functions.

So the brain optimistically generates new connections, lets them fire as they will, and the ones that pattern match raw sensory data or conscious slow cognition or maybe each other or other sources get rewarded and retained.

Step 2 - Prediction Pyramids

The result is one or more final predictions logically resting on what I initially called "prediction pyramids".

One pyramid for each final prediction, where the ground at the base is all the inputs, and the root point is a prediction.

Each layer of the pyramid represents all the prediction functions which had the opportunity to execute at the same time - if a prediction depends on the result of a previous prediction, then the pyramid is "higher".

The pyramids can overlap, of course - some prediction functions might cause more than one new prediction function to activate, and so on.

When the predictions are mutually exclusive, that's just our mind seeing multiple possibilities, with how likely each one feels being determined by how strongly and thoroughly those prediction pyramids have been reinforced for similar situations before.

Before we even finish consciously processing what's just come in through our senses right this moment, the brain has already run through many prediction pyramids, at least to some significant height.

Technical detail below; feel free to scroll to step 3.

If we want to get more formal, we can think of them as "prediction trees", using tree in the mathematical or graph theory sense: each node is one habituated prediction function, the output of each node is a prediction, so the root is the final prediction.

Or if you want you can include the raw experiences in the tree and then those are the leaf nodes and the prediction functions are the non-leaf nodes.

If you want to complicate the picture further by representing

how the raw experiences may get fed into some or all of the prediction functions and not just the initial ones, and how prediction functions can in turn update the world model and thus new raw experiences, or

the overlap of multiple prediction trees using the same prediction functions,

then it turns into a directed acyclic graph (DAG).

We can keep going, because in practice it's kinda like a partially cyclic graph which just has some nodes that do not participate in cycles. A directed partially-acyclic graph, or DPAG, if you will.

Keep going with this long enough and eventually you're just representing an actual modern neural net implementation, or something like one.

For practical introspection, just the idea of prediction trees or pyramids is most of the value, and usually good enough.

Also!

There is also a complication I have been skipping: maybe some prediction functions share neurons. So besides data dependencies there is also a possible bottleneck in that case, and reinforcement of prediction functions actually doubles as increasing or decreasing the priority - maybe a neuron has some way of being conditioned to respond more readily to one signal versus another.

Or maybe this is simply prevented at a higher level - even if we imagine just very simple neurons that can only decide to fire on all output synapses or not on any, in responce to a strong enough input on one or more of its inout synapses, with only one neurotransmitter available, even then overlapping prediction functions would simply either misfire too often and get disenforced, or else prove accurate enough and maybe only cause occasional subtle errors.

And remember the idea about prediction functions being pattern-matched against each other?

Notice how these ideas combine: if you have two overlapping prediction functions, and that is the bottleneck in critical situations, and you need to shave off those tiny fractions of a second, then simply keep practicing at that edge or your performance envelope, and gradually a new copy or almost-copy of that original prediction function will grow and get reinforced which doesn't overlap with one that has to fire at the same time.

Basically, the height of your prediction pyramid/tree/DAG/DPAG is more formally determined not just by data dependencies but also refractory periods and any activation at the same time on overlapped neurons.

Step 3 - Prediction Substitution

Of course the brain also heuristically "cheats" to optimize this to be faster and take less energy, which is why this is able to stay fast no matter how tall the prediction pyramid gets.

If a second prediction is reinforced enough for immediately following an earlier one (that is to say if prediction one fires on some input, and prediction two then fires right after because of the result of prediction one), then the brain will simply eventually grow a prediction function that produces the second prediction directly for the initial input.

If two different prediction functions or pyramids are too consistent with their results, without in some situations producing enough different but still valuable/reinforced results, one will eventually be removed.

In other words, the brain will always try to flatten and simplify the prediction pyramids, eliminate all that nuanced reasoning in between. (If we want to resist this, we have to make a point to think and maybe even regularly put ourselves into situations in ways that keep discerning the difference.)

This is why introspection past a certain point, and extracting the logic from inside our intuitions, is part reverse-engineering and part historical inference - because the brain will readily optimize out the original reasoning/justification/"prediction pyramid" behind a given reaction!

The brain will substitute simpler or shorter prediction pyramids for complex or tall ones every chance it gets.

Step 4 - Emotional Reaction

Some parts of the brain are constantly streaming in this prediction data (or some reduced form of it as a heuristic optimization).

They react by activating some physiological process or releases some chemicals (neurotransmitters, hormones, whatever) into the brain accordingly, which we in turn consciously perceive as the often "immediate" emotional reaction.

Remember, all of the above happens basically pre-consciously, basically instantaneously by human conscious thinking speeds.

But why a reaction to a prediction? We can have raw reactions to raw experiences like pain and pleasure, that's obvious. But a prediction is this abstract idea thing, isn't it?

No, because what is the mind predicting? What is it a prediction of? What is the "language" or "format" of a raw prediction in a mind? Raw experiences.

Up at the start of the rant I said that the prediction functions produce "what experiences will come next", and this is a key detail.

At the level of these prediction functions, every single prediction the brain makes represents a raw experience, some of which include pain or pleasure or are otherwise experientially positive or negative, and our brain is ultimately reacting to that.

Step 5 - The Analysis

This, this is what I keep talking about when I mention "raw experience prediction analysis". The reverse-engineering of the pyramids of prediction functions in our mind, many of which have been substituted out for simpler heuristics over the years, to finally figure out why we do what we do, react how we react, feel how we feel, think how we think, and want what we want.

The realization that everything, everything about what motivates our minds, and maybe even all possible minds, can be understood as reactions to one or more interlinked chains of predictions of raw experience - that, that is the "raw experience prediction epiphany".

We apply that enough, while being ready to look at ourselves as unflatteringly as needed to do so, and eventually, the view we get of our mind is profoundly explanatory, comprehensive, predictive, and empowering as a result.

There are some things about how minds work that this doesn't cover, but everything it doesn't cover is far easier to satisfactorily explain with much simpler ideas. And the more time passes the more I find things I initially thought I understood well enough without this, only to find that this enriches it.

So anyway, "insecurity"...

... should make more sense now.

Our mind is constantly predicting raw experiences, based on what it has empirically learned from past experiences.

Our mind reacts negatively whenever it predicts it's experiences will be sufficiently preference-pleasure negative.

An insecurity is whenever our mind has learned to predict that its experiences will be below that threshold. So insecurity can be anywhere from intensely immediate to lightly gnawing about the indefinite future; anywhere from extremely specific to inscrutably general. The essential part is the below that threshold, a certain negative reaction, a compulsion to prevent that outcome, starts to kick it. It's a gradient, usually to some degree proportional to how severely below the threshold it is, but also importantly, how much our brain believes the outcome could be better if only we knew could do something about it.

But the actual follow-up beyond that point, including what emotional reactions are felt, is itself dependent on the prediction functions and other habituated cognition. Some examples different people might experience include:

Desperate or needy or manipulative behavior to try to get a wanted/needed thing.

Rage and hostility and violence because it helped them prevent hurting or to get their way before.

Eager sexual arousal because that helped stop hurt or got them safety and approval before.

Some other behavior which modifies the situation to temporarily soothe or mask a want or need with other experiences.

Going non-verbal or freezing up because their brain literally cannot think of any action which would be predictive of improving the situation.

Physiological activation of the body as in fight-or-flight just-in-case, without any compelled action.

Generalized anxiety, a weaker form of the previous point.

Except an insecure mind is prevented, by the same life strokes that cause and sustain the insecurity, from developing particularly reliable ways of avoiding those negative outcomes - if they had those, they wouldn't be insecure.

So often these reactions are not actually constructive to the goal, because the person simply doesn't know how to do that, or were constructive but only under particular circumstances (often less healthy ones, like abusive relationships, etc).

But just as often, the reactions are very constructive, sometimes even perfectly executed, skilled preventions or mitigations of the predicted negative outcomes, and otherwise totally justifiable independent of the insecurity.

The essence of insecurity, and it's literally in the name but I spent years missing it, is the lack of feeling secure, assured, confident, certain (about our raw experience being good enough in the future).

In saying that an insecurity is whenever our mind predicts that its experiences will be below some threshold, and feels negatively compelled to change that, I deliberately left unspecified whether or not it is objectively sound for the brain to make that prediction, or whether or not the fundamental compulsion to avoid the outcome is adaptive, or whether or not that threshold is in some way at the right level.

Those are all important questions, and touch on the essential point that insecurity isn't just this defect that some people have, but rather an essential ingredient of cognition for most people to some degree. But they are otherwise irrelevant to describing the essence of what an insecurity is.

[sinesalvatorem]

McDonald's Structure & Strategy: Quotes From QSRmag & McDonald's CEO

[All statements outside of the quotes are my own. Treat as fandom meta. All block quotes from article and most speech quotes from Steve.]

On doing this interview, the CEO, Steve Easterbrooks:

>“The confidence of seeing that work in many mature markets, how we could continually evolve the business and the brand, gave me the confidence that it was absolutely transferable knowledge and skills that we could share elsewhere in the McDonald’s global system, particularly here in the U.S.”

On why after his appointment he released a video on a "plan" to "turnaround" McDonald's (which later turned into the reasonable enough Turnaround Plan):

>“It was to create a sense of urgency … that we needed to adopt a different approach.”

>The global restructuring was the first building block in that different approach. Before the Turnaround Plan, McDonald’s global system was divided by geographic region. The new model divides the global system instead by market stages, with four groups: U.S., International Lead Markets (mature global markets with similar economic and competitive dynamics), High-Growth Markets (markets with more growth potential), and Foundational Markets (remaining markets, including corporate activities).

>“We had pockets of brilliance all over the place, but we hadn’t necessarily pulled it all together or allowed that knowledge transfer as quick as we wanted it,” Easterbrook says. “It’s at a level now where I will have one segment president between me and a market. Previously there could have been up to five people in that chain of management.”

>"The reality is a strategy can be fantastic, but if you don’t execute it well, it becomes worthless. I’ll always say that an 80 percent perfect strategy executed 100 percent is way better than a perfect strategy executed at 80 percent. And the execution happens at the restaurant level, the vast majority through our franchisees.”

This is actually completely true. General recommend: It's better to do something sloppily but confidently with your full force, than to agonise on getting it perfect and self-handicap by lost confidence or lampshading that you can't get it right. Just do it as if it's right and it will be.

...But Steve is saying this in the context of why all the franchise restaurants should adopt a plan at once. Which, like, yes - still true. But there are many ways to coordinate joint action, and a think forcing all franchises to adopt the same policies is usually a shit way of doing it.

Making it clear what needs to be achieved on the ground and letting each one reach that the way it knows best usually works if the goal/vision is sufficiently distinct and known. Getting it all to happen at once is mostly a matter of getting the facilitating forces (whatever solves common bottlenecks) into place everywhere, and having the trust of consistency.

>"He brought in some outside talent, people who had different approaches to getting to the end goal, and I think you’re seeing the results—definitely more of a high level of execution and new idea generation,” Hottovy [retail & restaurant analyst] says. “Executing at a much higher level is a huge testament to what Steve’s brought in.”

>To some degree, Easterbrook’s plan has doubled down on what McDonald’s customers expect from the brand rather than strived to be something more—a common tease that many quick serves succumbed to in the first half of this decade as they faced the increasing threat from fast casuals. When asked how McDonald’s can maintain an iconic American brand status in an age of lifestyle brands like Apple and Google, Easterbrook answers with what can only be described as humility.

>“We’re not a life-transforming business to many of our customers, but we can make their lives more fun, more convenient, more enjoyable on an everyday basis,” he says. “What does that look like in the modern world, when you’ve got these tech giants who are transforming lifestyles in certain ways? Let’s not set out to try to transform lives, but let’s face the strengths that we have.”

This is a ridiculous case of having the wrong goal. (Which Steve clearly appreciates, if not the interviewer.) That is not what a company is for. I don't want McDonald's to ~transform my life~ - I want them to give me a burger. At higher abstraction, I want them to make it fast/cheap/consistent for me to get food.

Civilisation advances by making you able to do greater things without directed thought or attention (Whitehead, 1911, An Introduction to Mathematics), and the part McDonald's has in the advance of civilisation is making it possible to stick your hand out and have a burger materialise in it without loose change.

>One of those strengths was McDonald’s breakfast menu, and the company faced that strength with aplomb when it announced in 2015 that it would answer customer demand by offering its breakfast menu all day.

(Imagine a generalisation this obvious being made by a bureau instead of a market. Exactly)

>“A lot of that growth will come from new units, either new concepts coming in or people expanding,” he says. “Which means, if you really want to grow your business—serve more customers more often—it’s a market share fight. It’s as simple as that. So how do you win that market-share fight?”

G-d, "It's a marketshare fight - simple as that" is the reasoning level that makes you kill your organism. "How do you win a marketshare fight?" is anti induction and blood, and problems on that level always kill you eventually. You don't have to displace your competitors if you can become a part of their stack. Make yourself part of the civilisation they're standing upon so their gains /are/ yours.

That's what they're doing with delivery and UberEats, but they're still in marketshare fightmode on

>But Mizuho’s Scott says [the Value Menu is] a long-term play that’s necessary in the fight for quick-service traffic. “If you suck the oxygen out of the room with a value plan, that short-term pain is long-term gain, if that value plan is operated consistently,” he says. “I think [McDonald’s is] making the right moves to suck out the oxygen, in large part because we’ve seen so much pricing action from the high-end, fast-casual segment, and this could be a way to put the knife in the side, especially as the fast-casual industry is starting to roll over.”

 >“We looked at ourselves and thought, if we’re creating a world-class team to lead a world-class business, does a steady growth plan meet our expectations? And of course, our ambitions are greater than that,” Easterbrook says. “So we challenged ourselves to say, are there additional growth drivers that we can put on top of our traditional growth plan, which would really accelerate growth?”

>Those growth accelerators were the Experience of the Future store prototype, delivery in partnership with UberEats, and customer-forward tech platforms like the mobile order and pay app functionality.

Future Experience stores are getting a burger in a sci fi restaurant. The UberEats partnership is getting a burger brought to your door. The McDonald’s app lets you perform every part of the order and transaction before you arrive and is actually v useful. The pay apps are just phone APIs for getting the money to McDonald’s so they can get the food to you.

I wrote so much more on McDonalds and general commerce, but Tumblr obliterated it all and that text is now lost to time.

>“The world is moving at an ever-faster pace, and today’s the slowest the world’s ever going to move, but today is also the quickest it’s ever moved so far,” 

Thanks, Steve

[broken-shoulders-blog]

America’s Toughest Mudder East

5.18 - 5.19.19

Coatesville, PA

This past weekend was America's Toughest Mudder East- a 12 hour, non-stop, obstacle course race through the night in Coatesville, PA put on by Tough Mudder. The race is one of 4 regional events in the states, supplemented by one in Europe. The format of the series is simple- how many 5-mile loops can you complete between 8pm and 8am when you're slowed down by 20 obstacles per lap?

For me, the answer was 9.

In the week leading up to the event, my nutrition-oriented friend had convinced me to eat not one, not a couple, not a few, but several watermelon. He said that watermelon is full of arganine, which converts to nitric oxide in the body and is basically a superfood for endurance athletes. "Eat several watermelon this week," he said, "and come Saturday, you'll be unstoppable." This kid works out maybe once per month and podiums at nearly every endurance event he runs. Who was I to not eat any watermelon?

I went straight to the grocery store and picked up watermelons in such large quantities that I felt like some kid you read about in a math problem. "If Kera buys 6 watermelons on Monday and eats 4 on Wednesday, how many watermelons does she have left?" I sat on my couch, enjoyed my taper, and ate absurd quantities of watermelon.

I left my house just before 1pm on Saturday, drove to the Bronx to pick up two friends, and headed down to the venue. We stopped for dinner at a lovely establishment for which we were far underdressed. Between the nerves and amount of watermelon I had eaten, I didn't have too much of an appetite.

We got to the venue around 6:45, thinking we had plenty of time to setup our tent and gear, only to find out that they were starting the briefing at 7:15 and clearing everybody out of the pit area. As if I wasn't nervous enough; I couldn't have been less prepared. I wasn't dressed, my hair wasn't braided, I hadn't taped my ankles. I more or less threw my gear into a pile and told Will, my pit crew member, good luck.

Lap 1

In these types of races, I very consistenly make the mistake of coming out of the gate way, way too hot. This time was no exception. Surrounded by the energy of everyone around me, I flew through the first lap. For the first lap, Tough Mudder keeps all the obstacles closed, this way the herd can thin a bit and there's no bottlenecking at obstacles. My goal had been a 55 minute first lap. I came back through the pit area in almost 45. Oops. Will handed me a banana and I sped back onto the course.

Lap 2

My second lap was supposed to be 1:10. I did it in an hour even. Oops again. I knew I was making a mistake too. I kept telling myself, "Slow down. Slow down. You're going to burn out." But I'm too stubborn to listen to even myself. When everyone around you is fueled with adreneline and excitement, it's nearly impossible to not be infected by it as well.

The sun set and the moon rose during lap 2. Satuday night was full moon. It rose over the venue, orange and bright as could be. I almost didn't need my headlamp. When I checked the leader board, I saw I was in sixth. Exicted, I scadaddled right back onto the course.

Lap 3

This lap was supposed to be 1:25. I ran it in 1:13. When I came back into the pit after lap 3, I really knew I was fucking up. My headlamp battery was starting to die and I couldn't see more than 2 feet in front of me. I tried to yell at Will that I needed to change my headlamp; the psychic already had one in his pocket. He handed me a sandwich and I jumped back onto the course.

Lap 4

I stopped paying attention to everyone around me and repeatedly told myself how long of a time 12 hours is. The importance of pacing. How I can't burn out. Again, my time goal was 1:25. I finished this lap in 1:23. The slowing pace hurt me, though. My body temp dropped a couple degrees. The wind was starting to pick up. I was soaking wet. I passed the girl who had been just seconds in front of me for the first three laps. I saw her shivering as she pulled herself out of a water obstacle. "Are you okay?" I asked. "Just cold," she answered. Fuck, me too, I thought.

When I came back into the pit area, Will forced me to change my shoes and put on a neoprene top.

Lap 5

So it turns out that after lap 4, I was supposed to pick up an orange wrist band from the timing tent . Maybe I would have known this had I made it to the briefing on time. Out on the course, you could exchange the wrist band and skip an obstacle. After lap 5, I was then able to pick up two.

Lap 6

I exhanged both my bands during this obstacle, skipping two of Tough Mudder's popular grip obstacles (Funkey Monkey & The Gaunlet). Grip endurance is such a strange thing. Once it's gone, it's gone. For events like this, I always stress the importance of grip endurance. If you have the option to chicken wing something instead of taxing your forearms, DO IT. If there's a carry, don't hold it by your fingers; hug it or throw it over your shoulder. If somebody gives you a magical orange wrist band, USE IT. I flew through this lap, saving a lot of energy without those obstacles. I was able to pick up a couple places, climbing into third.

Lap 7

The seventh lap was my most mentally taxing. It took place between the hours of 3am and 4:30am. There was next to nobody left on course. I kept wondering what time the sun would come up. I was doing a lot of math, figuring out if I'd be able to get a 9th lap in if my pace was x, y, or z. Then I stopped with the math and started asking myself if I even wanted to do a 9th lap. Would I lose out on third if I didn't go back out? If the fourth place girl was 20 minutes behind me and I would barely be able to finish the 9th lap, then would she be able to? Was I willing to put my body through the pain of another lap?

Lap 8

I heard the birds start to chirp. "Thank god," I thought. Everything got a bit lighter. A bit pink and then a bit orange. I resolved that I wasn't going back out for my ninth lap. I had my slowest lap of the night at 1:36. I was moving consistently at about 20 miles per hour. Couldn't even call it a jog. I made it to the timing tent and said, "That's it! Get me warm. Get me dry. Get me a beer. I'm done." A Tough Mudder employee told me I had a chance to grab second if I went back out. I told him I was zonked; there was no way I'd be able to catch her. "She already handed in her timing chip." "FUCK," I yelled at him, realizing that I had to. Peer pressure works wonders on me. He tied a yellow Lap Leader bib around me, somebody gave me a few sips of their coffee, and I bolted out of the pit area. I knew I would have to give it my all in order to make it back before 8am. I would need to cut over 10 minutes off my lap 8 time. Yikes.

Lap 9

I ripped through my ninth lap. Cutting more than 2 minutes off my pace than lap 8. There was nearly nobody out there. I didn't fail any obstacles and used my orange band on an obstacle called Blockness Monster that, quite frankly, I'm too short to do on my own. I came out of the woods into Mudder Village with 2 tough obstacles and a quarter mile to go and less than 15 minutes to spare. Everyone left in Mudder Village seemed to know the situation. They were cheering my name and yelling out how many minutes I had left. I smiled my first smile of the night. I climbed my way up Tough Mudder's 40-foot A-frame called Mudderhorn and darted through their final obstacle called Electroshock Therapy that is literally a maze of electrified wires. I bolted through the finish shoot. In tears and smiling, I fell into Will's arms. 5 minutes to spare.

Two minutes later, the fourth place female came flying in. Locking in third.

I don't know if I necessarily learned anything in this race, but certainly reiterated a lot of things I already know (but just neglect). A- Ultras are a long, long game. Don't count yourself out. You never know what can happen. B- It's all mental. Your body is capable of so much more than you think. Most people don't go far enough on their first wind to find out they have a second one.

Special thanks to my Vybe for keeping me alive during pits, Will for making me feel like Danica Patrick, and every single Mudder who helped me over an obstacle or gave me words of encouragement, particularly Francis Lackner who spent his entire race pulling people up Everest like some kind of Nepalese god. I’m sending him a pair of boxing wraps to help protect his wrists next time he decides to give so much to others.

[peggy-cherepaha]

Did Noah’s Flood happen? Short answer: No.

Is Noah’s flood possible as it is described in the Torah/Bible? Let’s do some calculations to see how feasible keeping two of every animal on the ark for 40 days would be:

First off, after doing some research, it seems that the Torah/Bible itself is confused about how long the flood lasted and how many of each animal was brought on the ark. I’m going to go with the classic “40 days and 40 nights” and two of every animal, a male and a female, so that they could reproduce.

Allow me to use estimates that are in favor of the existence of the flood as it is described.

From the Torah, the ark dimensions are 300 cubits x 50 cubits x 30 cubits. 1 cubit is at most 20 inches. Our ark is 500 ft x 83.3 ft x 50 ft. Giving us a volume of 2,082,500. I am going to assume that this entire volume is available for the animals.

To have some reference:

Empire state building (without antenna):

1,250 ft x 424 ft x 187 ft, V=99,110,000 ft^3

Largest oil tanker:

1,504 ft x 226 ft x 34 ft, V=11,556,736 ft^3

Titanic:

882 ft x 92 ft x 34 ft, V=2,758,896 ft^3

The titanic held about 3,327 passengers, which is about 830 ft^3 per person not including any cargo/machinery.

Back to the ark:

We have identified over 1,500,000 species in the animal kingdom on earth. Estimates of the total number are much higher, but to be generous, we will only use the ones we know of.

An estimated 50-80% of all life on earth lives in the ocean, and so would not need to be put on the ark.

Again being generous, we assume there are only 300,000-750,000 species of animals that live on land and need to go on the ark.

Two of each animal means we need space for 600,000-1,500,000 animals.

If we divide the space evenly between each animal, not including food or water needed for them, we get 1.39 ft^3 - 3.47 ft^3 per animal.

 But let’s assume each invertebrate (bug) needs only 2 in^3 (0.00116 ft^3) of space.

About 90% of all animals are invertebrates.

540,000-1,350,000 invertebrates would then need a total of 626 ft^3 - 1,566 ft^3 of space.

This leaves 2,081,874 ft^3 - 2,080,934 ft^3 for our remaining 60,000-150,000 vertebrates giving 13.9 ft^3 - 34.7 ft^3 for each animal.

 This looks pretty good until we consider that this number does not include space for all the food and water for the animals for 40 days. Let’s assume that the ark is able to collect enough rainwater every day for all the animals and that all of the animal waste is thrown in the ocean. That leaves a 40 day supply of food for each animal left to bring on the ark. We also need to assume that they bring on enough food to keep the animals healthy since the carnivores will likely go without food for a while since the herbivores need enough time to breed and bring their populations back up.

 One elephant eats at least 200 lbs food per day. How much space does 200 lbs grass take up? It’s hard to find numbers for that, so let’s assume they could condense the food the way we can in modern times when we make emergency rations. A 1 lb ration pack takes up 21 in^3 = 0.012 ft^3. A one day supply of 200 lbs for our elephant takes up 2.4 ft^3. A 40 day supply takes up 96 ft^3. This is well beyond the allotted 34.7 ft^3 the elephant gets.

 Of course the smaller animals would not need the full 34.7 ft^3 for themselves and all their food, but even medium size animals may not have enough room for themselves. Horses need at least 15 lbs of hay per day, and we will assume this is the same for zebras and other horse-like animals. Their 40 day supply of 600 lbs of food takes up 7.2 ft^3, leaving at most 27.5 ft^3 for each horse. An average horse is about 5 ft tall, 8 ft long, and maybe 1.5 ft wide. This means that just the horse has a volume of about 60 ft^3, so there is no way any of the horse-like animals will be able to fit in their allotted space with their food. This is also not even considering that there needs to be room for hallways for Noah’s family to move through to take care of the animals.

 I must admit, I am not the first one to look at these numbers and realize that there is no way for one family to keep and take care of two of every animal for 40 days on one boat. It’s clear that the ancient people who wrote this story didn’t have any idea of just how many species we have. They were likely limited to a few hundred animals they could find in the middle east, and the dimensions given for the ark would likely be much larger than any structure they had ever seen built.

 But creationists and many religious people insist that the Torah/Bible is divine word, and that there must be an answer to these problems. Answers in Genesis, a prominent creationist website, insists that instead of two of every animal, only two of every ‘kind’ of animal was brought on the ark. What is a ‘kind’? Nobody knows. Creationists have not been able to come up with a formal definition for a ‘kind’, likely because it doesn’t make any sense, but regardless they insist kinds can be easily identified. They use examples like how every wolf, coyote, and domestic dog is part of the ‘dog kind’, and so Noah would only need to bring two wolves on his ark. But we run into a problem when we try to decide which ‘kind’ animals like the fox, the echidna, and other such strange animals belong to.

In any case, Answers in Genesis quotes a book called “Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study” by John Woodmorappe, a creationist who says he has a Bachelor’s degree in biology but he doesn’t say where he got it and I can’t look him up because that’s not his real name. Since I am in my third year of a Biological Engineering bachelor’s degree program in an accredited University, I like to think I have more credibility than him. He also claims to be a high school biology teacher, which really gets my blood boiling.

John says that if we use ‘kind’ instead of species, then there would only be 16,000 total animals on the ark. How did he come up with this number? I have no idea, and I’m not going to actually give him money to get access to his book, so I guess those calculations will remain a mystery.

Using the 16,000 number, there would be 130 ft^3 for each animal, and assuming each animal eats as much as the horse we calculated for earlier, it still leaves 122.8 ft^3 for each animal.

So now we have enough space for each animal, so the next question is what happens to the animals after they leave the ark.

 I already mentioned that the carnivores would be in trouble. If they started eating the herbivores, it would be mutually assured extinction. However, they wouldn’t be able to go without food for the years it would take for the herbivore populations to be sufficiently large. Answers in Genesis proposes that the carnivores could eat the rotting corpses of all the animals that were left behind. This may delay the problem, but it wouldn’t fix it. There is a reason carnivores generally do not eat dead, rotting meat like detritivores; it’s because dead meat becomes a breeding ground for bacteria. The bacteria breaking down the meat is the reason it rots. Carnivores do not have the bacteria in their digestive systems necessary for eating rotten meat. A carnivore that is desperate for food might eat a rotten corpse, but that animal would die soon after from a bacterial infection. Carnivores are also not able to survive on a diet of plants like omnivores, as they can’t digest the plant matter and so will not get the nutrients they need to survive. There would, however, be plenty of marine life available to the carnivores, and surely a starving animal would eat anything they could, but this still is not adequate, as many carnivores are just not able to hunt in the ocean.

 There is another problem we are faced with, and that has to do with genetic bottlenecking. This is when there are too few of a species so they are no longer able to carry on the population. Let’s say that we have only two wolves on the entire planet. These two are able to reproduce and have a litter of 5 puppies. Well now those puppies have no other wolves to breed with except their siblings, and any offspring born from incest will have horrible health problems and will likely be infertile. Thus are wolves will go extinct in a matter of generations. This would be true of every one of the 16,000 animals that were brought on the ark. From this point, many people will wonder how we could have so many animals if the theory of abiogenesis (the current, best supported theory to explain the origin of life) proposes that all life came from just one organism. The answer to this question is quite simple, as we believe the first life was a mere self-replicating group of molecules whose offspring would have been identical. Many single-celled organisms reproduce asexually, which means that they can make an offspring all by themselves. As we go to more complex organisms, what we see is an individual may be born with a genetic mutation that makes it different to the others in its population, but it is still similar enough to reproduce with the others. It takes a long time for mutations to pile up and the population has two groups that slowly lose the ability, over generations, to reproduce with each other. A more direct form of speciation occurs when there is a geographical barrier, such as a piece of land becoming an island, and the isolated population is large enough to sustain themselves as they mutate and change.

 But in the scenario where only two of each ‘kind’ were brought on the ark, we would not be able to avoid genetic bottlenecking, as there are only a few animals we know of that can reproduce asexually, and with each ‘kind’ being so dissimilar, the animals would not be able to reproduce out of their ‘kind’. So even if two of every ‘kind’ were kept alive on the ark, it would take mere decades for all animals on earth to die off. Our only hope would be the very few number of animals we know of that can create genetic clones, so maybe Noah’s flood would make sense if our Earth was populated by humans, marine life, and some all-female herbivorous lizard clones.

 I wanted to go back to where these creationists insist that from one ‘kind’ of an animal we can get many different species, I mean ‘varieties’, of that animal. Let’s look at bears, and assume that two grizzly bears were brought on the ark and were able to magically acquire the ability to successfully breed a new population. How would this population of grizzly bears give rise to polar bears? From what I know about biology, I would supposed that a few grizzly bears migrated north to an area that got a lot of snowfall. Then one day a baby grizzly bear is born with a genetic mutation that causes its fur to have no pigment rather than the typical brown pigment. That bear would have an advantage to its siblings because it would be better camouflaged in the snowy landscape and so could sneak up on prey better. Since that bear is well-fed, it would have many offspring, most if not all of which would have the genetic mutation that codes for non-pigmented fur from their parent. Those white bears would be again be more successful than the brown bears and the process would repeat until you are left with a population of white grizzly bears. Oh wait, I just described evolution! Dang it, I was supposed to be describing it the way a creationist would. I guess another way it could happen is god reaches his hand down and plucks up a few grizzly bears, turns them white, gives them more fat, and puts them down in the arctic.

 But wait, some of you may be surprised by what I said. The process I described was evolution? But what about the sudden appearance of a new animal? What about the lightning striking mud to make living goo?

Actually, evolution is defined as the change in allele frequency in a population due to selection pressures over time. That means that organisms randomly acquire mutations and are more successful or less successful in breeding than their competitors due to that mutation, and thus pass on or do not pass on their mutation to their offspring. That’s it, end of story.

Creationists often seem to be confused, or try to confuse, people about what evolution means. The theory of evolution does not include speciation, it does not include abiogenesis. They want to muddy up the waters so that it’s difficult to understand what they are talking about because they don’t care about the truth, they care about people believing in them.

 So that’s it, this was a fun little thing to do, but I hope I was able to educate some people or at least let people see things in a new perspective. My numbers are pretty rough, but again I gave every advantage to creationists. I also simplified many concepts so that I could just get the point across, not teach an entire biology course. Know that I don’t have a problem with religious people, I have a problem with the religious people that manipulate and lie to try to make reality fit with their religious documents. I am totally open to answering questions or hearing your thoughts on all this. I am also open to new ideas, but know that I have heard just about every creationist argument and am prepared to refute them with hard data. I do have a formal biology education, as well as a personal interest, so I have a lot of biology knowledge and am always willing to learn more. Thanks a bunch if you stuck around this long!

[naturecoaster]

Crystal River Celebrates its Value to Florida Wildlife with a Mural Party November 10 – and you’re invited!

Three teenage girls volunteered for an important mission. In 2021, Ava, Marin, and Mallori traversed 50 miles of the Nature Coast to submerge themselves in the wilderness between Dunnellon and Homosassa. Their journey resulted in a film that celebrates the magical waterways of the Rainbow River, the Withlacoochee River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Homosassa River, called Home Waters. Crystal River, Florida, is a 6.8 square mile coastal city located around Kings Bay. The Bay and its various canals and rivers are fed by pure water springs that stay 72-degrees year-round. Crystal River is often called the “Home of the Manatee” and is known for its world-class fishing, pristine waterways, and breathtaking views. This critical link supports a unique ecosystem that is important to the ecological health of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. How Citrus County grows will determine the fate of wildlife, clean waters, and the natural beauty that we all take pride in. This short film was produced for the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation, a 501c3 that seeks to connect, restore, and protect enough wild space in the sunshine state so that the unique and often endangered flora and fauna will be able to survive – and even thrive – while we continue welcoming thousands of new human residents each year. Connecting People to Nature through Art A mural was commissioned by the Foundation, created by artist Kelly Quinn of Canvas of the Wild at 35 NE 5th Street in Crystal River, that features species native to the local ecosystem, including Florida black bears, roseate spoonbills and, of course, manatees. Art students from Lecanto High School and all three teen trekkers from the Foundation’s recent film, Home Waters, joined Quinn as contributors to the mural. Image courtesy of Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation. Kelly shares, “… I learned the land and water were a part of my identity, and the charismatic animals I shared my home with were my fellow neighbors, all of which had a story worthy of being shared. Today, I use art to communicate these wild stories and highlight the underlying science behind each inspiration to help form deeper connections between people and nature.” The mural is interactive - embedded with near-field communication (NFC) tags to allow viewers to explore a digital version of the mural that connects them with the species and ecosystems represented in the art! “By connecting people to the natural Corridor through public art, we hope to inspire our Crystal River and Citrus County communities to take pride in their part of the Corridor and to treasure the irreplaceable value it has, encouraging one another to protect these wild places,” says Marly Fuller, Director of Strategic Communications, “This event celebrates the beginning of a statewide mural movement to connect Corridor Communities. Next year we will install six murals, including one in Brooksville.” This mural is made possible by Burt Eno and the Citrus County Chamber of Commerce, in-kind sponsors Lumen and Sunbelt, partnership with Crystal River Mainstreet and the City of Crystal River, and special thanks to the Citrus County Education Foundation. In 2021, Ava, Marin, and Mallori traversed 50 miles of the Nature Coast to submerge themselves in the wilderness between Dunnellon and Homosassa. Image by Alex Freeze, courtesy of Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation. Home Waters film Celebrates our Connection to the Wild The Crystal River mural builds upon the 2021 teen expedition from Rainbow Springs to Homosassa Bay, where three local high school students experienced wild Florida in their backyard. Along the journey, Ava, Marin, and Mallori paddle past an important bottleneck (area of wilderness less than a mile wide) in the Corridor that connects nearly two million acres of the Big Bend and Nature Coast critical linkages (areas of wilderness that are protected so wildlife can safely flourish). This narrow segment is the only protected area for wildlife to pass through. “Many gaps in protection exist along the Corridor including a thin bottleneck just north of Dunnellon only a half-mile wide, which narrowly connects the Corridor across Hwy 41. Each Corridor gap throughout Florida provides an opportunity for its community to invest in connectivity through creative planning, with the goal of preserving the ecological function of the Florida Wildlife Corridor as the community grows,” explains Jason Lauritsen, Chief Conservation Officer of the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation. The Crystal River mural project's goal of community building included Citrus County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO, Josh Wooten, adding his artistic touches to the effort. Image by Jade White, courtesy of Citrus County Chamber of Commerce. Join the Crystal River Wildlife Mural Unveiling November 10 to Celebrate the Nature Coast We are all invited to view the Crystal River Wildlife Mural’s unveiling, 35 NE 5th Street, Crystal River, at 5pm on Thursday, November 10.  Mayor Joe Meek and Citrus County Chamber President and CEO, Josh Wooten will address Crystal River’s unique position within the Florida Wildlife Corridor. We will then take a short walk to the City of Crystal River’s new splash pad at the historic water tower, 806 NW US-19, for an outdoor showing of the movie, Home Waters by Jenny Adler and Ian Segebarth. The viewing will be followed by a Q & A session with the film’s youth trekkers. There will be snacks and refreshments, although you may want to plan for dinner out after the event, as there are several good restaurants in the area. These awesome stickers are being given to guests at the Mural unveiling November 10 in Crystal River. Meet me there! Be sure to get your Florida Wildlife Corridor “Corridor Community” sticker at this event too! Why is Citrus County so Important to Wildlife Conservation? Jason Lauritsen explains, “Citrus County is a treasure trove of magnificent springs, inviting rivers, forests, wetlands, and an expansive coastal marsh system with productive sea grass beds.  Thousands of acres of conservation lands have been set aside for public benefit.  These parks, preserves and refuges provide the foundation of the region’s Nature Coast identity.  These conservation lands are connected within a statewide network of greenways called the Florida Wildlife Corridor (Corridor).  Citrus County is in fact encircled by this wildlife corridor, from the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway to the north, to Potts Preserve and Flying Eagle Preserve on the east, the Withlacoochee State Forest to the South, and the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge and Crystal River State Park to the west.  Bobcats, bears, birds and more move through the Florida Wildlife Corridor. The Corridor's connectedness provides some safety as they move naturally. Image: FStop Foundation. Water and wildlife move within this network, from protected patch to protected patch supporting diverse communities of plants and animals.  The unprotected stretches between these conservation gems are quite narrow in many places.  Left unprotected, these narrow segments of the Corridor are vulnerable to fragmentation.  They are conservation bottlenecks and easily severed by land conversion.  It is our hope that as Citrus County grows, it will consider the value and function of the wildlife corridor, and plan to retain the vital connections that make it a world-renown hub for outdoor recreation.” How to Get Involved with Florida’s Wildlife Corridor This map of the Spring to Shore expedition route helps me visualize how protected green spaces must be connected to protect the wildlife moving through them. Map courtesy of the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation. The Nature Coast is an important part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor, and the Florida Wildlife Corridor is an important part of the Nature Coast. We are going to have to work together to save wild places. This often includes showing up for government meetings and writing elected officials to let them know how important saving and connecting green space is to us. Whether you’re into science, story, education, or the conservation status of the Corridor, there is something for everyone in its mission. Sign up here for the Corridor Foundation’s updates. If you want to watch award-winning films that show the beauty of our State while teaching how wildlife traverse it, from the Everglades to the Georgia/Alabama borders, watch past expeditions on the Foundation’s website. Are you interested in recreational adventures throughout the Corridor? Explore Live Wildly’s wonderful interactive map that connects you with the wilderness that makes up Florida’s Wildlife Corridor and activities that thrive there. Crystal River Mural Unveiling Time & Location: The Crystal River Mural’s goal is to raise awareness of how what we treasure connects to the rest of Florida, and even our country and our world, empowering all of us to have pride in our roles as protectors and conservators of nature. Mural Unveiling: 5:00pm at 35 NE 5th Street, Crystal River Screening & panel discussion: Directly following the unveiling. Just a few steps away from the mural at the Crystal River Pumphouse and Historic Water Tower, 806 NW US-19, Crystal River, Florida. RSVP and get updates about the event by clicking here. Read the full article

[acetechne]

That’s right it’s a Mac ref!!

I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with drawing him as well as just kind of thinking of him as a character so i figured i owed yall what he looks like when he’s Not dressed for work. More below!

BASICS

Name: Fort McMurray Human Name: Reginald “Mac” Buffalo Founded: 1870 Amalgamated: 1995 Sign: Taurus PHYSICAL

Body Type: 5′8″. Buff af, but not toned. Like Ed, is a bit round in the middle. Very square, including his head.  Hair: Blonde with dark roots. Not clear if he dyes his hair or if it’s just Like that. Center part, more or less completely fits under his hat.  Eyes: Dark brown.  Ethnicity: Metis (English/Scottish + Cree) Other: Tattoo on left shoulder: Wild rose, northern lights, boreal forest, roots that morph into pipes. Deep burn scar on his back. Roman/aquiline nose. Similar oil drop motif to Ed.

PERSONAL

General: Straightforward with a sense of humour, stubborn, tends to get angry easily and especially when he gets nervous or feels talked down to. Hardworking but easygoing when with people he likes. His isolation contributes to a bit of neuroticism and an addictive personality, which he has dealt with repeatedly in the past. Loyal, but often a bit too defensive. Kind of shy and stupid around women. Likes: Beer, smoking, adding extensive and ‘unnecessary’ modifications to his damn truck and driving said truck, cash money, camping, barbecue, working with his hands, spending time with family, kitchen parties, hunting, hockey, lorge dogs, pretty girls Dislikes: Being talked down to, formal social gatherings, hypocrites, being used, talking politics at the dinner table, being on his own for long periods of time, contemplating the future

HISTORY

- Founded as an HBC fort initially, though the areas petroleum resources were well known by local peoples before the company set foot there. A stop for travelers across the northwest for generations. - Began developing the tar sands in the early 20th century, which continues today. - Changed name and municipal status several times throughout history, eventually became the amalgamated center of the municipality of Wood Buffalo in the 90s. - The municipality is still suffering from the fallout of the 2016 wildfire, one of the worst natural disasters in Canadian history which, as I write this two years after it began, barely stopped burning less than a year ago. Tread lightly on this topic.  

BIASED HAPO FACTS

- it’s hard not to have an opinion on fort mac, and if you’re an albertan it’s harder still to not meet anyone associated with the place even if you’ve never been there yourself. I’ve known people with family there, people who barely finished high school to get up there working, I’ve known people who drove on the Highway of Death for work, I’ve sat with people on planes home who were just stopping over on their way up there, I’ve known people who were working there that wouldn’t go a day with a big mushy public profession of love on their sweetheart’s facebook page... - Fort Mac is jokingly known as ‘the second biggest city in Newfoundand’ because of the huge Atlantic population and that never ceases to amuse me. - I keep my political opinions separate from my portrayal of Mac as much as I can, but god do i get riled up over celebrities flying their private jets up to yell as much as the next guy... - I was in Edmonton during the evacuation, and since Edmonton is one of the only big cities with the facilities for such a big evacuation (and, really, the only stop on that bottleneck highway) we were often the first stop (though news outlets occasionally misreported Calgary as the first destination). It was a time of an outpouring of support and care, but it was also a time of discrimination and, like any time the oil price fluctuates in this province, it coincided with an uptick in theft and violent crimes. For every push, there is a pull, and it’s always struck me as the volatile heart of a volatile province. - The media attention during the fire was surreal. It was as if everyone had forgotten what Fort Mac was and saw it only as a town in need of support. Those who didn’t know it existed suddenly cared. Those who knew all too well had the gall to celebrate it as if it was nature’s “revenge”. It didn’t take long for people to forget about the fire and resume their heckling.  - Irresponsible young men is always my first thought after the industry that draws them there. The place was maturing over the course of my undergrad degree as more families moved up to settle down, and there was growing talk of a “sister municipality” of sorts to handle the stress on the infrastructure. Since the fire, the conversation has turned a 180, and people who have lived there for years are leaving in droves. - This all said while I think of Mac as the Irresponsible Young Men I based him off of, he’s still old, he still is stuck in those sands, he’s had time to think and time to recover. To keep myself sane and him easier to write, he is a more mature and thoughtful version of those Irresponsible Young Men that I think of. - i can’t believe i live in a day and age where i actually miss brian jean as leader of the opposition, wow. 

[georgealbert588]

Top 7 Tips to a Successful ERP Software in Lahore Pakistan Implementation

Erpisto #1 Top ERP Software in Lahore frameworks further develop undertaking productivity and viability in various ways. By coordinating monetary data in a solitary framework, ERP frameworks bind together an association's monetary revelation. They likewise coordinate requests to the executives, making request taking, producing, stock, bookkeeping, and conveyance a much easier and less mistake inclined process. ERP frameworks empower ventures to lessen the time expected to finish essentially every business cycle.

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Erpisto #1 ERP Software in Lahore

As you presumably know ERP executions are complicated and this rundown is certainly not thorough, but rather these tips will decidedly affect your execution. Here we will examine best tips to allow your association the best opportunity to prevail with your ERP execution.

Announcements Early And Often:

It is critical to know where the venture is corresponding to the task timetable and plan once here and there two times seven days. ERP Software in Lahore you observe that practically zero headway is being made, now is the right time to dig further and see where the blocker or bottleneck exists.

It is not difficult to make a halfhearted effort on announcements and simply circumvent the table and get notices from everybody and continue on. I would recommend having notes or things to do from past gatherings to guarantee that there is a benchmark for progress.

Begin Data Migration Before Starts:

In most activities, information relocation truly doesn't begin until after the investigation stage. To most this appears to be legitimate in light of the fact that you want to investigate and assemble prerequisites to know which information relocation components will be in degree and what fields will be required. Notwithstanding, ERP Software in Lahore I have discovered is that assuming you start the information movement process after the investigation stage, you're now past the point of no return and the chances of your undertaking course of events being deferred are significantly expanded.

Recognize Key Business Processes:

Before an ERP execution project starts it is essential to comprehend what your basic or key business processes are, particularly those that might be one of a kind to your industry or even organization. A key business process is one that in the event that you were unable to finish the cycle, the firm couldn't acquire income, pay sellers, or gather from clients.

ERP Software in Lahore could be other fringe processes that might fall into the classification of a key business process for different reasons. When you have the business processes recognized, it is essential to dole out proprietors to those cycles.

Load Balance Responsibilities And Duties:

On an ERP project the majority of the postpones result from client based resourcing imperatives. Counseling firms can constantly toss exceptionally particular advisors on a venture to get a move on yet that seldom is the situation on the client side.

Before the ERP Software in Lahore execution project starts you will construct your center task group. This group ought to contain informed authorities from all divisions of the association that are in administrative roles, ready to settle on business choices for their specialization, and know their piece of the business well indeed.

Change Management:

As of not long ago I didn't have an exceptionally high assessment of the significance of progress on the board. My perspective used to be, on the off chance that we carry out appropriately it doesn't make any difference regardless of whether individuals acknowledge the new ERP Software in Lahore framework, we have gone about our business.

This was a very gullible perspective on the motivation behind changing the board and the job that it plays after go-live as well as during the whole of the task. Subsequent to being on projects with an authoritative change in the executives (OCM) group and activities without an OCM group I can tell you the thing that matters is night and day.

Get Your Environment Strategy:

On an ERP execution project, you will have different conditions for purposes like testing, information relocation, setup, advancement, and mechanized code fabricates. Contingent upon the ERP Software in Lahore application you wind up utilizing, you might have some or this large number of sorts of conditions and relying upon the innovation stack supporting the application they may likewise be facilitated on premises or in the cloud. Understanding this technique can give you key experiences into the time component that every one of these exercises require.

Characterize Collaboration Channels:

In the advanced working environment there are so many different joint effort stages. For your ERP Software in Lahore execution it is vital to decide which joint effort channels will be utilized as well as how they will be utilized. For instance, it is normal on projects for individuals to convey, team up, and share records through email.

The issue with this is that you have various renditions of archives drifting around and nobody very knows what the most recent adaptation is. One more issue with utilizing email only is that a ton of times individuals don't answer email is an opportune way and sometimes, an unanswered inquiry can be a work blocker for other people.

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Tableau Services in Pakistan is becoming a major consulting business that is generating a lot of opportunities in Pakistan. If you are looking a Tableau Services in Pakistan then Bilytica is the leading partner for Tableau Training in Pakistan and Tableau Services in Pakistan.

Data warehouse services is becoming a major factor due to which most businesses are hiring Tableau Services in Pakistan from Bilytica. Tableau Consulting in Pakistan is a major factor for the growth of the companies especially considering the fact that Tableau Services in Pakistan is only provided through official Tableau Services in Pakistan which helps companies to find the best Tableau Partner in Pakistan which enhances the opportunity for the companies like Bilytica to enhance its capabilities to provide the best Tableau Services in Pakistan.

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03/03/2022