#why does the corporate machine have it in for people who need to pee

[bread-tab]

I think if you put a lock or keypad on a public restroom then it's not "public," actually

Doubly so for """"accessible"""" restrooms. (heck idk how that's even allowed under the ADA)

I appreciate your unisex restrooms but today's gender is "I am semiverbal and incapable of starting a conversation about my bodily functions with your resting-murderfaced minimum-wage cashier"

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 4x02-- The Gang Tries to Serve a Subpoena

Under the cut.

This isn’t the first episode of season 4, but since it’s the first episode that doesn’t take place in an AU… it’s basically the first episode. 

Reddick, Boseman, and Lockhart has been rebranded as “RBL: A division of STR Laurie”. Remember when Will tried to rebrand Lockhart/Gardner as “LG”? At least RBL isn’t a well-known appliance brand. But I think this might be the same “sleek” font as the LG rebrand.

The acquisition of the firm has led to a remodel. I enjoy how every season RBL looks a little bit less like the LG set.

This remodel makes the offices look like a spaceship/villain’s lair/cyberpunk nightclub. There is a giant spiky cocoon thing (nope, I don’t have better words to describe that) coming out of the ceiling in the conference room and a new spiral staircase near the name partners’ offices. It looks ridiculous and intimidating (and it is supposed to). 

There are also dogs roaming around off lash.

And neon lights and a giant fucking GARGOYLE outside of Adrian’s office. It’s so huge it looks like it was taken from the Harold Washington Library. (This may be the most authentically Chicago thing in this episode.)

Much like the last episode, the first thing we see after the teaser is Diane arriving at work and being greeted by Marissa. And, also much like the last episode, Diane is disoriented.

As it turns out, there’s been a bit of a time jump since the end of the last episode-- Diane’s been traveling/resting (doctor’s orders), so this is her first day back to work in 9 months. “What happened here?” Diane asks. Does it make sense a name partner would be so out of the loop on major renovations? Nah. We are not meant to spend much time wondering why Diane/Adrian/Liz would agree to an acquisition or how the talks played out. This is the premise for season 4 and we’re just supposed to accept it. I’m usually wary of this kind of re-premising, but this doesn’t bug me too much. We saw last season the firm had no identity (bc when the firm had an identity in season 1 it was ALL BC OF BARBARA KOLSTAD) and we saw them lose their top clients. Diane’s been on leave so she probably wasn’t that involved in conversations, Adrian probably welcomes acquisition because it’s more money, and Liz… has always only been idealistic to a point.

My point is: our heroes aren’t actually, and have never been, heroes. Sure, they’re the underdogs dealing with a big corporation… but also, they sold to the big corporation.

Marissa says the cocoon spike thing is a sunset. K.

Jay’s never been up to STR Laurie’s floor. The dogs running around, however, have been upstairs. Monday and Wednesday are pet days, but the pets always come through the RBL floor instead of the STR Laurie floor. 

The name partners can bring dogs. (How many name partners are there if there are this many dogs and STR Laurie is at most 4 people and RBL is 3 and none of the RBL partners brought in dogs?)

JUSTICE FOR JUSTICE! (Poor Justice is probably not still around 11 years later but I had to say it.)

In the partners’ meeting, even the food everyone’s eating looks more upscale. Adrian officially welcomes Diane back. One of the non-name partners is not so happy to have her back. Or, rather, he’s not so happy the name partners got a ton of money in the deal and the non-name partners got screwed. Fair point.

I guess neither Lucca nor Rosalyn got the partnership.

Adrian expositions that they were acquired because they couldn’t survive after losing ChumHum, and STR Laurie is the 7th largest firm in the world. Got it. 

Diane’s check from the acquisition of the firm is so huge it stuns her. You would think she would have known these details. But we’re here now and this show works better if you look at the themes instead of wanting all of the character motivations to always make sense. I’d probably be chewing this plot out if it happened on TGW-- why would x make y decision!? Why didn’t we get to see it!?-- but with TGF I have an easier time accepting radical changes in tone. 

And TGF did need a change in tone. You can’t get that much mileage out of episodes about 45 (whose name might not even be mentioned this ep? I will try to look out for that as I watch) and clearly no one on the writing staff is interested in small, character driven intraoffice power struggles as the primary plots. If the writers have something to say about massive corporations, I’d rather sacrifice a few scenes of character development for a season that has a POV than sit through a season as uninspired as s7 of TGW.

(Perhaps this is why I’ve always liked TGW season 6 more than others-- it’s messy, but it’s INTERESTING. I like the Kings’ work best when it has energy and say what you will about season 6, but it’s not lacking for energy.) 

There is a dog peeing on Adrian’s office door and he is NOT happy about it (no one would be, but he is ESPECIALLY fed up). One gets the sense he’s not just appalled that it’s happening but tired of the dogs altogether. 

Diane is summoned to go upstairs to meet with the overlords. According to Adrian, Mr. Laurie isn’t bad, but Mr. Firth might be. 

Upstairs, there is a very long, very white hallway. It looks like it’s out of a sci-fi movie. 

I see TGF has finally leaned in to their tradition of casting British actors by just… having STR Laurie be a British firm. 

The set decoration of Mr. Firth’s office looks like it belongs on Evil. It’s over the top, has a piece of art that looks like horns (much like the therapist monster thingy… just watch Evil okay) and light fixtures that are clearly crosses. 

Mr. Firth asks Diane what she wants to do and she says she wants to get back to work. “What work?” he asks. Diane wants to get back to her clients and Mr. Firth tells a story about a poor man who wanted to give everything, even the moon, to a thief. Neither Diane nor I understand. Mr. Firth says this story is about how he’s giving Diane her “moon” by having her head up their pro-bono cases because she shines when she has a goliath to face. True, but what does this have to do with the story!? I legit thought that story was going to be about how Diane gives too much of herself and should learn to accept high pay checks while doing no work and getting out of STR Laurie’s way. Maybe I missed something?

Anyway, Diane is getting the pro bono department with 22 lawyers and 40 cases. This is to keep her happy and to make STR Laurie look good. Feels too good to be true. Diane gets investigator time and partner billable hours, and she’s told this is fine-- make the firm a good citizen no matter how much it costs. WTF is going on here? Is this a trick?

Diane walks downstairs, happy, as Lucca heads up the stairs. Maybe she’s not a partner, but she’s important enough to be summoned upstairs. 

Mr. Firth explains to Lucca that he is “the sorting hat of lawyers.” Lucca explains she’s never read Harry Potter because she doesn’t “like wizard shit.” Impressively brave to say that to your new overlord, Lucca. I have missed you and your give no fucks attitude. 

“Yes, fuck wizard shit,” Mr. Firth responds, somewhat stiltedly. 

Mr. Firth wants Lucca to work on a divorce case for one of their top clients as the client has a personality clash with their head of family law. Their head of family law is, of course, David Lee. Welcome back, I guess. At least David Lee happening to end up at this firm that acquired RBL makes a ton more sense than all the ways they found to keep David Lee relevant to TGW in its last two seasons. 

David Lee hasn’t changed a bit.

Diane’s first client is XIOMARA VILLANUEVA!!!!!! 

But in this universe, she’s a restaurant owner whose restaurant is about to be torn down because of eminent domain. Diane tries one of her usual tricks- asking Xo (I’m sure she has a name on this show and once they say it again I will stop calling her Xo) to bring her food truck outside of the courthouse so everyone can smell how great her food is and be more sympathetic to her case. 

“You’re not the lawyer I expected,” Xo tells Diane. Diane responds, “I’ve changed.” Diane, I am pretty sure that’s not what she meant, but ok!

Lucca and David Lee’s first meeting with Bianca Skye, the high profile client, is a bit awkward, but Bianca instantly takes a liking to Lucca. (“I didn’t know this firm had any black lawyers,” Bianca notes. “Oh, they hide us,” Lucca jokes. But it’s not really a joke when all the black lawyers are the RBL staff and they’re on a different floor…)

David Lee has Bianca tell Lucca her whole case-- which is fairly straightforward-- with way too much detail. Before Lucca asks David if he’s just trying to run up billable hours, it’s clear he’s dragging this out on purpose.

“Oh good, the Angry Black Woman has made an appearance,” awful human being David Lee says after Lucca calls him out. 

David Lee plays rank on her and tells her to watch and learn. Yes, making a racist comment and then being condescending without explaining your strategy is DEFINITELY the way to get the lawyer characterized by her complete lack of interest in being a cog in a machine on your side. 

Adrian, Liz, and Barry are all helping Diane do a mock trial before her first day back in court. It’s fun. 

Adrian is SO over the dogs. His face when a pack of them run past is priceless. 

Diane’s mock trial strategy goes well; the evidence is on her side. And Julius, as luck would have it, is the judge on this case. (Why this is in federal court I don’t know.)

Julius is very happy to be a judge. 

Canning is back. Feels weird to have him here without Alicia. But, honestly, I was prepared for worse. As we’ll see as this scene progresses, Canning is the PERFECT person to have as opposing counsel. If there’s a new rule to exploit, he’d be the first to know about it. If there’s a slimy strategy to use while playing innocent, that’s his schtick. If there’s a corporation doing bad things, he’s your guy. 

Canning tries to explain his condition to Julius. I guess Julius must have been in the New York office when Canning was at LG in late season 5. Diane laughs, knowing that Julius can’t be tricked by Canning. 

Canning probably also knows it won’t work, because he’s already prepared to ask Julius to recuse himself. I feel like this is entirely reasonable. Diane isn’t just an acquaintance… they were partners at the same firm for over a decade.

Diane is TOTALLY the type of white lady to overdo the pronunciation of “chorizo”. 

The delicious smelling food seems like it’s going to work, but we quickly learn that what used to constitute tricky is now just child’s play. The CEO of Rare Orchard, who has been subpoenaed, has decided not to show up. He doesn’t have an excuse. He isn’t delaying. He’s just not going to show up. Like, remember when we thought it was egregious that the CEO Canning was defending in 4x11 kept putting off depositions and Alicia calling the judge was an effective strategy? HA! (Anyone know if this case is based on something or if it’s the writers taking some creative liberties for the sake of plot? My fear is that aspects of it are real because I can’t see the writers being this interested in a plot point they invented.)

Canning says he thinks the CEO doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the subpoena. Julius reminds Canning that he is a federal judge and his subpoena is legitimate. Canning is all, “yes, I know that’s your position” as though laws are opinions. AAAAAAAAA.

This show loves this kind of thing, just totally taking the basic assumptions away and letting chaos reign. 

This CEO sent Julius a memo telling him to “go fuck yourself.” Eeek.

Diane doesn’t even get to do much lawyering.

Then there is a random cut (which I hate) to a scene of a massive set falling apart during a battle scene. Why the fuck is this here? And what is this from? If I ff to the credits will it tell me? Nope. Dammit. Someone help me out here. 

Credits! Things are exploding again, yay! Aside from the images on the TV, these credits look really similar to S3. I think they may have increased the saturation on the color of the liquids exploding but I could be making things up.

Julius’s outrage at the situation continues after the credits. 

David Lee tries to get Lucca to agree to just be comforting to the client. Lucca is like, no, because I was brought on for a reason I am going to do my job. 

DLee calls this “PC shit” and says something else racist. Bianca answers the door and asks to do the depo prep on the run. What this means is that they’re all getting on her private jet and going to St. Lucia. 

David Lee is TERRIFIED of the private jet. I would be too since I hate small planes (and all planes, but particularly small ones), but I am still enjoying watching him squirm. Lucca is too. 

Lucca DELIGHTS in reminding David they’re in a small metal tube with nothing holding them up. It’s fantastic. 

Bianca offers David Lee a CBD cocktail, because of course she does. This episode is doing a good job of reminding me of why David Lee and Canning were both once really effective characters, so if the writers can use them this way moving forward, I’ll be happy.

Bianca googled Lucca and demands to see pictures of her very cute baby. She then takes Lucca’s phone and starts up Tinder. This is a strange dynamic because it’s friendly but also sudden and also Bianca is paying Lucca for this time. But both of them could use friends, so I’m just going to be cautiously optimistic a real friendship could grow out of this. 

David Lee chugging a CBD cocktail is most definitely something I needed in my life. Thank you writers! 

Our characters are wealthy but everyone they deal with in this episode is ultrawealthy. Like, disgustingly wealthy. Bianca seems nice but holy shit no one needs to fly to St. Lucia for lunch. 

Court stuff happens. This episode is more interesting than just “court stuff happens” but the point is pretty simple-- Julius gets increasingly outraged at the breakdown of the system he believes in, and things keep getting more and more bizarre. 

Julius turns to the corrupt judge Adrian is sleeping with (I think the writers need to tell me what I am supposed to think of her because… I just don’t understand who she’s supposed to be, unless “corrupt judge who creeps me out yet for some reason Adrian is still into” is the point OR unless I am supposed to see her corruption as somehow excusable... ) for advice. She calls their job “shadow play” and says the system is all fake. That would explain why she’s open to bribery, then. She agrees to help Julius get the CEO into court, but I think she’s just helping to illustrate how futile this will be if he tries to resist again.

David Lee also doesn’t like the food on the island. It’s so funny. 

Lucca’s dress is really cute.

Bianca says Lucca must think she’s crazy for flying just to get guava for lunch. Lucca says, “No, it’s just a very different lifestyle from mine.” That’s an understatement. Bianca’s life changed in the last few years, and she’s worried it’s all going to go away (so, it’s implied, she’s living it up now). It seems she has some sort of skincare/cosmetics empire. 

Bianca is worried that in the next recession (oh look at that timely comment), her products will be the first thing people cut back on. Curious to know if this is happening. 

Bianca’s other concern is that she has no friends now because she’s rich. Everyone wants something. “You’re so full of shit,” Lucca says, refusing to pity Bianca. This makes Bianca like her more. 

Bianca talks about a service to matchmake friends. She found it weird, but she doesn’t find “this” (befriending Lucca, even though she is probably paying Lucca WAY more than the friend matchmaker fee) weird. Lucca is always entering into friendships so formally! Okay it’s just two scenes (this one and the one where she and Alicia become friends) but still.

Lucca reminds Bianca she’s also her lawyer.

Bianca asks if DLee is drawing out the case. She’s not stupid. Lucca says David isn’t drawing it out, but I think they both know the answer.

(Question based on what happens later in the ep- if David actually has reasoning, then why in the world would he not tell Bianca OR Lucca about it? And why do they need to have overly long meetings to draw things out? Can’t they just schedule them with large gaps? Idk the whole thing is weird and if David isn’t going to share his strategy that’s on him.)

The CEO finally shows up in court and Julius thinks he’s won. He hasn’t. He says he’s asserting privilege he can’t reveal because it is privileged. The CEO acts like Julius is in the wrong, which pisses Julius off. The CEO gets held in custody and Julius says that the restaurant can’t be bulldozed until the CEO complies. 

Then Julius gets the mysterious MEMO 618. Dun dun dun. 

I know there must be more but I feel like we know what Memo 618 is? Like, no we don’t know who sent it or exactly what it means, but we know the effect of what it does. What is the mystery? Who sent it? 

At night, Julius takes the mystery memo to Judge Hazelwood. She plays dumb because-- as we find out later-- Adrian is within earshot. Adrian’s jacket is apparently very recognizable because Julius spots it. I believe it; Adrian has a distinctive style. 

Adrian talks about taking their relationship public. So Judge Hazelwood bribing people didn’t end the relationship? 

Adrian also asks about Memo 618. He knows she knows what it is. She distracts him by getting on top of him.

Depositions for Bianca’s divorce get contentious but she has the upperhand. Lucca suggests that Bianca settle now and get the ex out of her life-- “balance money with psychological wellness.” Sounds reasonable to me!

At work, Judge Hazelwood is more forthcoming. And Julius did recognize the jacket. Judge Hazelwood tells Julius to let the CEO out and stop asking about the memo. Julius wants to get her on tape, but instead she tells him to get in an Uber and go to an address. She also warns that the court has a program if you break your phone. Sounds like a threat…

Julius finds the Uber easily and then goes on a long journey to the countryside. The driver, it turns out, is a former federal judge who didn’t comply with a mystery memo and he warns Julius to just do what they say or he’ll end up an Uber driver barely able to support his family. (THINK OF YOUR SIX CHILDREN, JULIUS.) 

Lucca wearing heels at her standing desk is… just silly, why would she do this? She wouldn’t take off one heel to stretch her foot; she would have a pair of flats to wear in her office. (This episode is written and directed by men, just fyi.) (Do women actually do this? I hate heels so I would never even consider it, but I feel like everyone hates heels??? Even the people who wear them all the time???) 

David is all mad at Lucca for encouraging Bianca to settle because it has tax implications. Two things: One, if there’s this obvious reason to delay, I feel like Lucca would have figured it out. Two, LUCCA IS ON DAVID’S SIDE. And if he’s allowed to say this out loud now, he could have said it earlier. So… no pity for David Lee. This is why you cooperate with your colleagues instead of antagonizing them. 

Liz-- who has been quite underused in this episode-- is also fed up with the dogs. She and Adrian storm upstairs to say, in Adrian’s words, “they can’t use this floor as a toilet for their motherfucking dogs.” 

They bust through the doors to the long hallway (which in real life would DEFINITELY have a key card reader on it) and push past the receptionist. 

Mr. Firth is holding a very cute dog named Avenger. Mr. Firth also refers to Liz as “Elizabeth”. 

Liz asks that the dogs stop “shitting” on their floor. After all, this was supposed to be a partnership, not an acquisition (does anyone believe that? I think Liz is just using their BS corporate talk against them). Mr. Firth says he will find a way to deal with the dogs. Adrian takes the opportunity to mention that the equity partners need their money. “How do we want to satisfy this?” Mr. Firth asks. “Give them money,” Liz says. Mr. Firth agrees to meet about this next week. He also gives Liz and Adrian access to the executive elevator. He’s just trying to appease them so they’ll be more on his side.

Liz and Adrian both recognize that was too easy, but decide to take the win. I feel like this problem is going to come back…

Julius apologizes and releases the CEO. He recuses himself but says that in the meantime the restaurant will stand. 

Diane knows something’s off and confronts Julius. She’s furious but Julius asks her to leave. I wonder what Diane would’ve done in Julius’s situation. It’s very easy to become complicit…

The restaurant is torn down anyway, making Diane even angrier. She tells Julius it’s on him and he reminds her that he is a judge.

And this is how systems are perpetuated.

That’s the end of the episode, save for the message about the two week break before episode 3 from the cast and crew. I appreciate that they included this, and that they included the whole crew rather than just the Kings and the cast. 

I don’t even recognize most of the crew! I recognize the cast (duh), Dan Lawson (the costume designer), the makeup artist (I think I’ve seen her in various instagram posts), Brooke Kennedy, and the Kings. 

Jonathan Coulton is in the video too (he’s totally a part of the TGF family at this point-- and is one of few people to be on TGW, BrainDead, TGF, AND Evil) to lead everyone in an adorable (but somewhat out of sync) singalong. Awwww. 

[seaweedsoup]

Garbage Language. Why Do Corporations Speak The Way They Do.

I worked at various start-ups for eight years beginning in 2010, when I was in my early 20s. Then I quit and went freelance for a while. A year later, I returned to office life, this time at a different start-up. During my gap year, I had missed and yearned for a bunch of things, like health care and free knockoff Post-its and luxurious people-watching opportunities. (In 2016, I saw a co-worker pour herself a bowl of cornflakes, add milk, and microwave it for 90 seconds. I’ll think about this until the day I die.) One thing I did not miss about office life was the language. The language warped and mutated at a dizzying rate, so it was no surprise that a new term of art had emerged during the year I spent between jobs. The term was parallel path, and I first heard it in this sentence: “We’re waiting on specs for the San Francisco installation. Can you parallel-path two versions?”

Translated, this means: “We’re waiting on specs for the San Francisco installation. Can you make two versions?” In other words, to “parallel-path” is to do two things at once. That’s all. I thought there was something gorgeously and inadvertently candid about the phrase’s assumption that a person would ever not be doing more than one thing at a time in an office — its denial that the whole point of having an office job is to multitask ineffectively instead of single-tasking effectively. Why invent a term for what people were already forced to do? It was, in its fakery and puffery and lack of a reason to exist, the perfect corporate neologism.

The expected response to the above question would be something like “Great, I’ll go ahead and parallel-path that and route it back to you.” An equally acceptable response would be “Yes” or a simple nod. But the point of these phrases is to fill space. No matter where I’ve worked, it has always been obvious that if everyone agreed to use language in the way that it is normally used, which is to communicate, the workday would be two hours shorter.

In theory, a person could have fun with the system by introducing random terms and insisting on their validity (“We’re gonna have to banana-boat the marketing budget”). But in fact the only beauty, if you could call it that, of terms like parallel path is their arrival from nowhere and their seemingly immediate adoption by all. If workplaces are full of communal irritation and communal pride, they are less often considered to be places of communal mysticism. Yet when I started that job and began picking up on the new vocabulary, I felt like a Mayan circa 1600 BCE surrounded by other Mayans in the face of an unstoppable weather event that we didn’t understand and had no choice but to survive, yielding our lives and verbal expressions to a higher authority.

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Anyhow, I left the parallel-path job after six months — unrelated to the standard operating language, although I used a wad of it in my resignation.

Photo: Sam Edwards/Getty Images

In January, a very good memoir called Uncanny Valley was published. The author, Anna Wiener, moved to San Francisco from Brooklyn around 2014 to work at a mobile-analytics start-up, and one of the book’s many pleasures is how neatly it bottles the scent of moneyed Bay Area in the mid-2010s: kombucha, office dog, freshly unwrapped USB cable. Wiener talks about the lofty ambitions of her company, its cushy amenities, the casual misogyny that surrounds her like a cloud of gnats. The book hit me in two places. One of them was a tender, heart-adjacent place that remembered growing up in San Francisco, with its fog-ladled neighborhoods and football fields of fleece. The other was closer to my liver, where bile is manufactured. This was the part of me that remembered working at places much like the one Wiener describes — jobs that provided money to pay rent in a major urban area while I freelanced for magazines and websites that did not. Writing, it turns out, is an economically awkward skill. Despite the fact that it can’t yet be outsourced or performed cheaply by robots, it isn’t worth much. In the case of Anna Wiener (and maybe only Anna Wiener), this is a good thing, because it forced her to embed in a landscape that cried out for narration and commentary.

The status pyramid at most start-ups is roughly this: The C-suite sits at the pinnacle, followed by senior data and tech people, followed by non-senior data and tech people, followed by everyone else except customer service, and then, at the very bottom, customer service. Which, by the way, has been rechristened “customer support” or “customer experience” at most companies — as though the word service might remind the college graduates recruited for these roles that they will in fact spend their days pacifying irritable consumers over phone, chat, text, and email. Wiener worked in customer support.

Being the lowliest worm at a company offers observational advantages in that it renders a person invisible. Wiener describes watching her peers attend silent-meditation retreats, take LSD, discuss Stoicism, and practice Reiki at parties. She tries ecstatic dance, gulps nootropics, and accepts a “cautious, fully-clothed back massage” from her company’s in-house masseuse. She encounters a man who self-identifies as a Japanese raccoon dog. She’s a participant and an ethnologist; she’s impressed and revulsed.

Wiener writes especially well — with both fluency and astonishment — about the verbal habits of her peers: “People used a sort of nonlanguage, which was neither beautiful nor especially efficient: a mash-up of business-speak with athletic and wartime metaphors, inflated with self-importance. Calls to action; front lines and trenches; blitzscaling. Companies didn’t fail, they died.” She describes a man who wheels around her office on a scooter barking into a wireless headset about growth hacking, proactive technology, parallelization, and the first-mover advantage. “It was garbage language,” Wiener writes, “but customers loved him.”

I know that man, except he didn’t ride a scooter and was actually a woman named Megan at yet another of my former jobs. What did Megan do? Mostly she set meetings, or “syncs,” as she called them. They were the worst kind of meeting — the kind where attendees circle the concept of work without wading into the substance of it. Megan’s syncs were filled with discussions of cadences and connectivity and upleveling as well as the necessity to refine and iterate moving forward. The primary unit of meaning was the abstract metaphor. I don’t think anyone knew what anyone was saying, but I also think we were all convinced that we were the only ones who didn’t know while everyone else was on the same page. (A common reference, this elusive page.)

The hideous nature of these words — their facility to warp and impede communication — is also their purpose.

In Megan’s syncs, I found myself becoming almost psychedelically disembodied, floating above the conference room and gazing at the dozen or so people within as we slumped, bit and chewed extremities, furtively manipulated phones, cracked knuckles, examined split ends, scratched elbows, jiggled feet, palpated stomach rolls, disemboweled pens, and gnawed on shirt collars. The sheer volume of apathy formed an energy of its own, like a mudslide. At the half-hour mark of each hour-long meeting, our bodies began to list perceptibly toward the door. It was like the whole room had to pee. When I tried to translate Megan’s monologues in real time, I could feel my brain aching in a physical manner, the way it does when I attempt to understand blockchain technology or do my taxes.

I like Anna Wiener’s term for this kind of talk: garbage language. It’s more descriptive than corporatespeak or buzzwords or jargon. Corporatespeak is dated; buzzword is autological, since it is arguably an example of what it describes; and jargon conflates stupid usages with specialist languages that are actually purposeful, like those of law or science or medicine. Wiener’s garbage language works because garbage is what we produce mindlessly in the course of our days and because it smells horrible and looks ugly and we don’t think about it except when we’re saying that it’s bad, as I am right now.

But unlike garbage, which we contain in wastebaskets and landfills, the hideous nature of these words — their facility to warp and impede communication — is also their purpose. Garbage language permeates the ways we think of our jobs and shapes our identities as workers. It is obvious that the point is concealment; it is less obvious what so many of us are trying to hide.

Another thing this language has in common with garbage is that we can’t stop generating it. Garbage language isn’t unique to start-ups; it’s endemic to business itself, and the form it takes tends to reflect the operating economic metaphors of its day. A 1911 book by Frederick Winslow Taylor called The Principles of Scientific Management borrows its language from manufacturing; men, like machines, are useful for their output and productive capacity. The conglomeration of companies in the 1950s and ’60s required organizations to address alienated employees who felt faceless amid a sea of identical gray-suited toilers, and managers were encouraged to create a climate conducive to human growth and to focus on the self-actualization needs of their employees. In the 1980s, garbage language smelled strongly of Wall Street: leverage, stakeholder, value-add. The rise of big tech brought us computing and gaming metaphors: bandwidth, hack, the concept of double-clicking on something, the concept of talking off-line, the concept of leveling up.

Empowerment language is a self-marketing asset as much as anything else: a way of selling our jobs back to ourselves.

One of the most influential business books of the 1990s was Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma. Christensen is responsible for the popularity of the word disruptive. (The term has since been diluted and tortured, but his initial definition was narrow: Disruption happens when a small company, such as a start-up, targets a limited segment of an incumbent’s audience and then uses that foothold to attract a bigger segment, by which point it’s too late for the incumbent to catch up.) The metaphors in that book had a militaristic strain: Firms won or lost battles. Business units were killed. A disk drive was revolutionary. The market was a radar screen. The missilelike attack of the desktop computer wounded minicomputer-makers. Over the next decade and a half, the language fully migrated from combative to New Agey: “I am now a true believer in bringing our whole selves to work,” wrote Sheryl Sandberg in Lean In, urging readers to seek their truth and find personal fulfillment. In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh described making conscious choices and evolving organically. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries pitched his method as a movement to unlock a vast storehouse of human potential. You can always track the assimilation of garbage language by its shedding of scare quotes; in 1911, “initiative” and “incentive” were still cloaked in speculative punctuation.

At my own workplaces, the New Age–speak mingled recklessly with aviation metaphors (holding pattern, the concept of discussing something at the 30,000-foot level), verbs and adjectives shoved into nounhood (ask, win, fail, refresh, regroup, creative, sync, touchbase), nouns shoved into verbhood (whiteboard, bucket), and a heap of nonwords that, through force of repetition, became wordlike (complexify, co-execute, replatform, shareability, directionality). There were acronyms like RACI, which I learned about in this way:

CO-WORKER: Going forward, we’ll be using a RACI for all projects.

MOLLY: What’s a RACI?

CO-WORKER: RACI stands for “Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.” The RACI will be distributed around so that we’re all aligned and on the same page.

ME: But what is this thing, like, physically? Is it a chart?

CO-WORKER: It’s hard to explain.

I never found out what a RACI was because we never ended up using one, but according to its Wikipedia page, it’s a “matrix” with over a dozen popular variations, including RATSI. I can imagine a world in which all these competing references might combine into a jaggedly interesting verbal landscape, but instead they only negated each other, the way 20 songs would if you played them at the same time.

And yet it should be possible to gaze into this alphabet soup and divine patterns. Our attraction to certain words surely reflects an inner yearning. Computer metaphors appeal to us because they imply futurism and hyperefficiency, while the language of self-empowerment hides a deeper anxiety about our relationship to work — a sense that what we’re doing may actually be trivial, that the reward of “free” snacks for cultural fealty is not an exchange that benefits us, that none of this was worth going into student debt for, and that we could be fired instantly for complaining on Slack about it. When we adopt words that connect us to a larger project — that simultaneously fold us into an institutional organism and insist on that institution’s worthiness — it is easier to pretend that our jobs are more interesting than they seem. Empowerment language is a self-marketing asset as much as anything else: a way of selling our jobs back to ourselves.

In August, WeWork — recently rebranded as the We Company — submitted its prospectus to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The document is just under 200,000 words long, or nearly the length of Moby-Dick, and it reads like something a person wrote in the middle of an Adderall overdose with a gun to his head. Here’s how the company describes itself on page one:

We are a community company committed to maximum global impact. Our mission is to elevate the world’s consciousness. We have built a worldwide platform that supports growth, shared experiences and true success.

You can probably imagine the rest. In the words of a lecturer at Harvard Business School, the prospectus “reads like a Marianne Williamson self-help book,” which might be insulting to Marianne Williamson. As with any public-facing statement issued by a company, the prospectus maps the distance between what the company is and how it sees itself. What is beautiful — almost spiritual in its grandeur! — about WeWork is not the vastness of the distance but how easy it is to measure. WeWork’s real-estate arbitrage can be summarized in plain English, yet the prospectus is so baroquely worded that it requires a kind of medieval exegesis — a willingness to pore over the text, assess its truth claims, elaborate on its explanations, and unmask its hidden values. In its fidelity to incoherence, WeWork’s majestic PDF revealed a now-obvious truth about the organization, which is that its ratio of ingenuity to bullshit — a ratio present in every organization and, indeed, every human — was tipped too far in the wrong direction.

The collision of corporate self-actualization with business realities was at the center of a story about the luggage company Away that came out in December. (Disclosure: I worked with both of the Away founders in the early 2010s, before the company existed, at a different company. They seemed nice.) A piece in The Verge by Zoe Schiffer reported on Away’s work environment, which looked like a mixture of punishing hours, dangled career opportunities, and an “until morale improves, the beatings will continue” theory of management cloaked in wretchedly obtuse language. A 9 a.m. message from the company’s CEO, Steph Korey, to customer-experience employees went like this:

I know this group is hungry for career development opportunities, and in an effort to support you in developing your skills, I am going to help you learn the career skill of accountability … To hold you accountable — which is a very important business skill that is translatable to many different work settings — no new [paid time off] or [work from home] requests will be considered from the 6 of you … I hope everyone in this group appreciates the thoughtfulness I’ve put into creating this career development opportunity and that you’re all excited to operate consistently with our core values to solve this problem and pave the way for the [customer experience] team being best-in-class when it comes to being Customer Obsessed. Thank you!

You could run down Korey’s leaked messages — this and others — with a checklist. Did she revert to the passive voice in a way that seemed to divest herself of responsibility? Yes. Did she Capitalize words Arbitrarily? Yes. Did she type phrases like “utilize your empowerment”? She did.

The internet went nuts. Here, finally, was proof of a maddening experience that many people had undergone: the weaponization of language by a person in power that bewildered, embarrassed, and penalized the people beneath her. Did Korey really believe that withholding paid time off from lower-level employees counted as a career opportunity? Was her mind a ticker tape of sentences like this, or had she run it through an internal executive-translation plug-in?

There’s an early Edith Wharton story where a character observes the constraints of speaking a foreign tongue: “Don’t you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time, not what one wants to, but what one can?” To put it another way: Do CEOs act like jerks because they are jerks, or because the language of management will create a jerk of anyone eventually? If garbage language is a form of self-marketing, then a CEO must find it especially tempting to conceal the unpleasant parts of his or her job — the necessary whip-cracking — in a pile of verbal fluff. Korey wouldn’t have sounded any nicer if she’d said exactly what she likely meant (“I am disappointed in your work, and there will be consequences, fair or not”), but I doubt she would have gotten in trouble for saying it. Meanness doesn’t inflame people as much as hypocrisy does.

As the leaked Slacks make clear, Korey, as well as her employees, were working under the new conditions of surveillance-state capitalism (or, from the company’s perspective, a culture of “inclusion and transparency”). One reason for the uptick in garbage language is exactly this sense of nonstop supervision. Employers can read emails and track keystrokes and monitor locations and clock the amount of time their employees spend noodling on Twitter. In an environment of constant auditing, it’s safer to use words that signify nothing and can be stretched to mean anything, just in case you’re caught and required to defend yourself.

And so Korey’s problem was less her strategy than her execution. Away was founded by two women who saw, in a climate where Glossier was thriving and a book called #GIRLBOSS was a best-seller, that the language of empowerment could be a terrific brand asset for, of all things, a suitcase manufacturer. It made sense that Korey spoke to her employees in terms of opportunity and growth. Her mistake was in trying to extract their gratitude for it. I hope everyone in this group appreciates the thoughtfulness I’ve put into creating this career-development opportunity.

Language had gotten other people in trouble at Away, too. About a year earlier, a handful of employees started a private Slack channel to talk candidly about being marginalized at the company — using, presumably, indefensible non–garbage language. The channel was reported, and six people were fired. For Korey’s misdeeds, she resigned as CEO, suffered a few weeks of embarrassment, then changed her mind and reclaimed her old job. Nobody observing the two outcomes could mistake the lesson here.

In 2011, I was dropping printouts on a co-worker’s desk when I spotted something colorful near his laptop. It was a small foil packet with a fetching plaid design.

My co-worker’s assistant was sitting nearby. “Caroline,” I said, “do you know what this is?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Jim belongs to some kind of runners’ club that sends him a box of competitive running gear every month.”

The front of the plaid packet said UPTAPPED: ALL NATURAL ENERGY. The marketing copy said, “For too long athletic nutrition has been sweetened with cheap synthetic sugars. The simplicity of endurance sports deserves a simple ingredient — 100% pure, unadulterated, organic Vermont maple syrup, the all-natural, low glycemic-index sports fuel.”

It was a packet of maple syrup. Nothing more. Whenever I hear a word like operationalize or touchpoint, I think of that packet — of some anonymous individual, probably with a Stanford degree and a net worth many multiples of my own, funneling maple syrup into tubelets and calling it low-glycemic-index sports fuel. It’s not a crime to try to convince people that their favorite pancake accessory is a viable biohack, but the words have a scammy flavor. And that’s the closest I can come to a definition of garbage language that accounts for its eternal mutability: words with a scammy flavor. As with any scam, the effectiveness lies in the delivery. Thousands of companies have tricked us into believing that a mattress or lip-gloss order is an ideological position.

In 2016, Jessica Helfand, an author and a founder of the website Design Observer, was invited to teach at Yale School of Management. The idea was that Helfand could instruct grad students in the art of creative thinking, which they could then use to start companies and make money. She immediately developed a contact allergy to the way her students spoke. “It started the first week I was there. After the lecture, a student said, ‘Well, my takeaway is …,’ and I thought, ‘Takeaway’ is what you do with food in London. Maybe instead of a takeaway, you could sit with the ideas for a while and just … think.” Helfand compiled a list of commonly bandied-about words and divided them into categories like Hyphenated Mash-ups (omni-channel, level-setting, business-critical), Compound Phrases (email blast, integrated deck, pain point, deep dive) and Conceptual Hybrids (“shooting” someone an email, “looping” someone in). All of these were phrases with “aspirational authority,” she told me. “If you’re in a meeting and you’re a 20-something and you want to sound in the know, you’re going to use those words.” It drove Helfand nuts. This wasn’t a teaching position; it was a deprogramming job. She left before the contract was up.

The problem with these words isn’t only their floating capacity to enrage but their contaminating quality. Once you hear a word, it’s “in” you. It has penetrated your ears and entered your brain, from which it can’t be selectively removed. Sometimes a phrase will pop into my head that I haven’t heard in years — holistic road map — and I will feel as if someone just told me that in July 2016, I ate a bowl of soup that contained a booger. I’m overcome with aversion; I’m too late to do anything.

This hints at the futility of writing about irritating words. Usage peeves are always arbitrary and often depend as much on who is saying something as on what is being said. When Megan spoke about “business-critical asks” and “high-level integrated decks,” I heard “I am using meaningless words and forcing you to act like you understand them.” When an intern said the same thing, I heard someone heroically struggling to communicate in the local dialect. I hate certain words partly because of the people who use them; I can’t help but equate linguistic misdemeanors with crimes of the soul. Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense makes swift, excoriating work of language as a whole, but it exactly predicts the extravagant inanity of garbage language:

A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

He proposed (I’d argue) that we just give up on functional speech altogether — drop the charade that our personal realities share a common language. Choosing to speak poetically (by which he meant intentionally calling things what they are not) was his ironic solution. Language is always a matter of intention. No two people could have less in common than when they are saying the same thing, one sincerely and one with snark. And so with every exchange, you have to acknowledge a reality where words like optionality and deliverable could be just as solid as blimp and pretzel. What happens if you ask a Megan or a Steph Korey or an Adam Neumann what they mean? I imagine a box with a series of false bottoms; you just keep falling deeper and deeper into gibberish. The meaningful threat of garbage language — the reason it is not just annoying but malevolent — is that it confirms delusion as an asset in the workplace.

By Molly Young at Vulture

[wildlyhardphilosopher-blog]

puppy training pads | potty training at 18 months

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puppy training pads | potty training at 18 months

Know Your Pet + – Miniature Schnauzer Coton de Tulear We are always available to help dogs that have completed our training. Arizona’s Premier Training Facility Of course, not everything’s covered there! So some things that may apply… Paper Training Helps handlers understand the body language of their dogs & identify signs of stress eCurmudgeon Remember that, early in training, your puppy does not know the meaning of the word. Therefore you could just as easily teach your puppy to sit with the word bananas (or sit in any other language) as you could with the word sit. The key is to associate the word, in this case “sit,” with the action of placing the hind end on the floor. LEAVE A REPLY (21) Litter & Nesting Get personal recommendations & stay informed Meow Mix sq Ft. Indoor Facility How To Housetrain Your Dog AKC Pet Insurance How to handle your small pet Settle It’s never too early to train Call Toll Free: 877-985-2695 9.86 ARF Emergency Medical Fund® Having a trained dog isn’t the same as having a balanced dog, but if your dog knows a few basic commands, it can be helpful when tackling problem behaviors — existing ones or those that may develop in the future. Happiness Guarantee Amazon Inspire Jump up ^ McKinley, S.; R. J. Young (2003). “The efficacy of the model-rival method when compared with operant conditioning for training domestic dogs to perform a retrieval-selection task”. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 81 (4): 357–365. doi:10.1016/S0168-1591(02)00277-0 During the first week, be particularly observant. Notice what types of activities (like digging or chewing) interest your puppy. With that information, you can brainstorm ways she can do those activities safely and within acceptable parameters. But you will still need to supervise him when his bladder starts to get full, or when the time is approaching for his next trip outdoors. 12. How To Feed Your Puppy Thank you – I totally agree, but putting in the hours, in the beginning, will pay off the rest of your dog’s life. It is so worth it 🙂 You then slowly move the paper toward the outside where another set is placed and you begin to encourage your puppy to go outside only, before completely removing the papers inside. At this point they will have made the transition. Dog’s Name, Breed, Age (approximate)* Dog Trainers in Tustin To make the first step easier and less scary for your puppy, close the crate door most of the way, but keep your hand inside. Hold onto their toy or food puzzle while they play with it, and praise and talk to them in a comforting voice. Do this until your puppy is comfortable playing even when your hand is out of the crate. 5 Pack Leadership Techniques Keep in mind that accidents are likely, even inevitable. Your dog is learning what is expected of him and can only be expected to “hold it” for so long. Very young puppies in particular have extremely limited control of when they go. Master advanced behaviors & tricks What are the hottest destinations in the Denver area this summer? Well, according to Lyft, the city has become a playground for sports fans and festival goers. Re: how to start Perhaps you have a brand new pup or a newly adopted teen or older dog. One thing that is vitally important to building a happy interspecies household is that your new dog becomes housetrained as quickly and reliably as possible. You should be equipped and ready to start housetraining your new dog from the moment that you bring him home. SUBSCRIBE (Left) Dog Gift Guides Email Address* our career opportunities Prevention is worth an ounce of cure. That’s why it’s a good idea to stick to a limited “roaming-free” schedule, meaning that you will only let your puppy roam free for about 20-45 minutes before putting them back in their “no mistake” zone. This also gives a puppy parent a break to go back doing other things without worrying about what their puppy is up to. Todd Herman In the wild, dogs stare at each other until one backs down or makes a challenge, so you should never attempt to outstare your puppy, especially if he’s nervous. Payment Due Some dogs are smarter than others – but which are the smartest? Do not let your dog stay in his crate for too long before taking him outside. If you wait too long, he’ll have no choice but to relieve himself in the crate. Dogs need plenty of exercise and playtime too, so you should never leave them crated for more than a few hours at a time or overnight. 12 External links Disclosure: This post is brought to you by Business Insider’s Insider Picks team. We aim to highlight products and services you might find interesting, and if you buy them, we get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. We frequently receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising sales team. We welcome your feedback. Have something you think we should know about? Email us at insiderpicks@businessinsider.com. Initially, you will have to build your routine around your puppy’s needs, and these are reliably predictable when they are very young. Puppies need to urinate immediately after waking up, so you need to be there to take your puppy straight into the garden without any delay. Trimming Your Dog’s Coat Hi there, please do join the forum https://thelabradorforum.com where we can have a proper conversation and help you. 🙂 Between 8 and 12 weeks (when weeing seems spontaneous), my puppy spends a fair bit of time in there and I paper train them to use puppy pads. How to Clearly Communicate With Your Puppy Delegate Meeting Dates Even small breed puppies can cause damage. Do not ignore puppy biting when you have a small breed dog by thinking that it does not matter because they are small. Large or small, this behavior needs to be stopped early on. This will prevent even more serious biting later on. World Literature Described by breed enthusiasts as… Give me a call! DROP-IN, START ANYTIME! $29.99$39.99 See Our Testimonials Live Pet Nose-to-hand target. Why? Because it’s easy and you can get in a lot of clicks and treats early on. It’s the “low-hanging fruit” behavior, so to speak. Most puppies can learn a hand target in one session easily. With this training, you are making it easy for her to earn treats, quickly building a reinforcement history and putting “cookies in the bank.” (See How to Teach Your Pet to Target). The Canine Strategies Workbook: For People Who Love Their High-Energy, Fearful, Wil… Corporate Volunteer Opportunities Ladders Broncos unveil impressive Dove Valley training center renovations Find a Dog ^ Jump up to: a b c Miller, Pat (July 2004). “Young Dogs Can Learn From Older Well-Behaved Dogs”. The Whole Dog Journal. Retrieved 1 December 2012. Pet Portal Female Dogs in Season Anne & Nelson  Preparing Your Pets for the Holidays Elimination is a natural function, and new puppies in particular can be expected to relieve themselves whenever and wherever the impulse strikes until they are: 1) old enough to control the urge physiologically, and 2) appropriately motivated to pee and poop outdoors. Both factors must be in play before puppies are capable of becoming housetrained. Shop by Pet For dogs that have graduated from Adult Dog Level 1 Seattle Mariners © Copyright 2015, All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress | Designed by Bdayh 356 Nordic SE In the past it was traditional for trainers to use punishment or dominance to establish a “respect hierarchy for the pack.” But recent research is in favor of a style of training called “positive reinforcement.” Clean up accidents with an enzymatic cleanser rather than an ammonia-based cleaner to minimize odors that might attract the puppy back to the same spot. Don’t be late for class: View our Class-Schedule-At-A-Glance for upcoming classes and socials. Learn More > GIVE A GIFT (Left) What to do if you catch him in the act 16.10 ©2006-2018 Ahimsa Praise Dog Training, LLC. All rights reserved. Content and images may not be reproduced without permission. Partner Spotlight In 1848 W. N. Hutchinson published his book Dog Breaking: The Most Expeditious, Certain and Easy Method, Whether Great Excellence or Only Mediocrity Be Required, With Odds and Ends for Those Who Love the Dog and the Gun. Primarily concerned with training hunting dogs such as pointers and setters, the book advocates a form of reward-based training, commenting on men who have “a strong arm and a hard heart to punish, but no temper and no head to instruct” and suggesting “Be to his virtues ever kind. Be to his faults a little blind.”[6] Stephen Hammond, a writer for Forest and Stream magazine, advocated in his 1882 book Practical Training that hunting dogs be praised and rewarded with meat for doing the correct behavior.[7] 7. Think Las Vegas, baby! Slot machines do not deliver a payoff with each grab of the handle. If ever time you played a slot machine, it paid you exactly the amount you put in, you would quickly become bored and stop playing. Gamblers are attracted to slots because of the hope of hitting a jackpot. Psychologists call this “intermittent reinforcement.” Apply this theory to training your young canine student. Once you’ve taught the basics, bolster compliance by offering a treat intermittently. Keep your pup guessing about when he’ll be rewarded – and how much — and he’ll work harder for that tasty “jackpot.” You could try some bitter apple or bitter cherry spray, but usually when dogs are chewing at night it’s because they’re not tired enough to sleep, I’d recommend upping their daily exercise. After all, a tired puppy is a happy puppy! Archives Packages & Rates Read this book for free with Kindle Unlimited For example, if you don’t want your puppy on the furniture, say ‘No’ loudly and guide him off every time he climbs up. Then praise him every time he gets on the floor.

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                                                                  NOVEMBER         2017

 *****Bill Murray has been singing at Carnegie Hall promoting the new album with Jan Vogler and friends.

*****A beautiful eastern black rhino was born on October 2nd. There are only a few hundred left in Africa.

*****NASA just found 20 new habitable planets.

*****Loving , loving ,loving At Home with Amy Sedaris. Great guest stars and Von Mueller’s: The official maple syrup of the Third Reich and other humor of that ilk. It is like Pee Wees playhouse, Mister Rogers, Martha Stewart, local DIY shows, SNL and SCTV all rolled into one. Go Amy!!

*****The World Series did not include the Cubs. Astros V Dodgers.

*****The first African American full time Nascar driver since 1971, Darrell Wallace Jr. will drive for Richard Petty.

*****Some drunks at a wedding reception in Illinois jumped the fence at Wildlife Prairie Park to chase bison. The newlyweds had already left.

*****San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz called out Scary clown for his slow response to the Puerto Rico disaster.

*****Coming to Broadway this fall: The Cher Show!!

*****Robin Thede has a new show on BET called The Rundown.

*****So, Tim Allen was whining on Norm Macdonald’s program about Last Man Standing being cancelled. Allen said, ”There is nothing more dangerous to Hollywood than a funny likeable conservative.” What?? I could not even get thru one episode of that show. I think he was damn lucky that thing stayed on the air as long as it did. Friends and I were shocked whenever we would notice the show was still going.

***** Trump released demands to overhaul the green card system by hiring 10 thousand more immigration officers and more money to build the wall.

*****OJ Simpson is out of prison and his first meal was at McDonald’s. That is so fucking American.** Speaking of the arches: Mulan sauce.. that was a thing?

*****On the great new show White Famous, I believe I saw Jamie Foxx’s balls under that skirt!!

*****Stephen Colbert and Ted Danson share an ancestor. The same is true of Mary Steenburgen and William H. Macy.

*****Ines Rau, a French model is Playboys first transgender playmate.

*****Things sure exploded on The View because of the phone call Trump made about a fallen soldier. Rep. Frederica Wilson claims that he did not mention La David Johnson’s name and told his widow that he knew what he was getting into. **He seems to have no sensitivity but then we knew that. He is the Greg Stillson of 2017!

*****What a great couple of weeks on the late night shows. Thank you for Conan and his horse story on Colbert. Thanks for Paul and Dave and Biff on Kimmel. ** Kimmel’s son Billy is getting ready for a second surgery and there will be some guest hosts with Shaq, Dave Grohl, Channing Tatum and Jennifer Lawrence.

*****David S. Pumpkins now has an animated show and has really become a thing.

*****Dale Earnhardt Jr. and wife are having a baby.

*****It looks like the Czech Republic now elected a leader just like Trump in their choice of Andrej Babis.

*****Russian sanctions have still not been implemented and the deadline was October 1. Hey scary clown: Just signing the measure means nothing!!

*****Diane Lake, a young former member of Manson’s family wrote a book about letting go of Charlie. She promoted ‘One of the Family’ on Dr. Phil.

*****So.. It seems that the prototypes of the wall are near the Mexican border and it is drawing gawkers from across the border. So.. The wall to prevent illegals is actually drawing them to the site to check it out. Priceless.

*****Judas Priest is going on tour.

*****Mark Wahlberg hopes God will forgive him for Boogie Nights. C’mon own your fucking art.. You were lucky to be in suck a brilliant film.

*****Dave Letterman received his Mark Twain prize for American humor on October 22. He now claims, “I’m now the most humorous person in the world.”

*****East Peoria’s Joe Girardi is out as the NY Yankees manager.

*****Her it comes: The final season of Major Crimes.. This is a tough one, what quality acting there is on that show.

*****Days alert: It breaks my heart that they brought back Dr. Rolf back and immediately killed him off. At least he was in Abigail’s dream and boy was he hairy!!Please let him have a twin like on Night Court.** Why are characters heading to Memphis? Will they meet with someone who can help answer questions about Will Horton? Will Paul find out the truth before anyone else and will he keep it to himself? If Will is alive, is he the same person or has he went thru big changes? ** Rumors are out there that EJ could be headed back..fingers crossed.

*****Texas inmates donated $53,863 for hurricane Harvey relief.

*****Has Mueller filed his first charges in the Russia investigation?

*****Trump’s approach to Iran seems to be undoing all of Obama’s efforts. This, of course is the ultimate goal of the Trumpers so good news for them. Trumps use of the term ’Arabian gulf’ has helped to unify the diplomatic and revolutionary sides of the Islamic republic.

*****Too Funny to Fail takes on the subject of the failure of The Dana Carvey Show.

*****Robert Plant has a new album, ‘Carry Fire’ which he will support with a 2018 tour.

*****Congress did not reauthorize the healthcare program for kids so 9 million kids are booted off healthcare.

*****Bob’s Burgers did a great episode about brunch drunks. Oh that is such a thing!!

*****The new administration just loves pollution. Just one more thing to add to the ever growing list of climate change dismantling is Scott Pruitt helping to get rid of the clean power plan. I am sure their corporate polluter friends and Obama haters are pretty happy about that.

*****Scarlett Johansen and Colin Jost made their first public appearance as a couple at an SNL after party.

*****Word is that they have found Paul Revere’s outhouse and they are examining its contents.

*****I’m so glad that Curb is back!!! J.B. Smoove is killing it as usual.

*****Roman Polanski has a new film, ‘Based on a true story’ which stars his wife Emmanuelle Seigner.

*****Metamora High school in Illinois is reeling from a racist video put out by some members of the football team.  The entire school system of Metamora which includes Riverview and Germantown hills was closed October 3 due to a mass shooting scare.

*****The newest Eastwood film is the 15:17 to Paris.

*****Facebook had to turn over about 3,000 ads for inspection. Facebook employees offered themselves up to the Trump and Clinton campaigns. Only Trump took them up on it. Google and Twitter also embedded themselves in his campaign.  The staff used all they were taught to put bogus Hillary info out there and penetrate the rural vote.  They pushed a lot of buttons with infrastructure in middle America. The platform churned out 50 to 60 thousand ads a day.  By pinpointing the things you care about most , they seemed to use the trickery well because it worked.

*****They found the tomb of Santa in Turkey.

*****Nick Cage has his own candy bar in Japan.

*****Chris Elliott is on the Last man on earth. Thank you God!

*****The country talked about guns for a few days again after the Vegas shooting. No license or registration is needed in Vegas. Machine guns are perfectly legal. As saner people have mentioned: The GOP insists that the Vegas shooter’s gun arsenal is a right but medical treatment for his 500 + victims is merely a privelage. Well put Desirina Boskovich.** The American college of physicians says that gun violence is a public health issue and calls for banning automatic and semi -automatic weapons.** 78% of Americans don’t own guns.**Wayne LaPierre was on Face the Nation to reinforce that anti -gun people are elites. The only sane thing he said was that we need to enforce the laws we have in place better to start with.

*****Sen. Bob Corker is ranting about Trump and the ‘adult day care center’ we call the White house.

***** Oh my God.. Rick Springfield is on AHS. Whoa! Sometimes that show just amazes you with its direction. Hell yea.

*****Brett Ratner and Jared Leto will bring Hugh Hefner to the big screen.

*****Jedediah Bila has left the View and has been replaced by Meghan McCain.

*****Colin Kaepernick consulted a Navy seal about his peaceful protest. The Seal told him that he didn’t see a problem with the kneeling at the games. He found it more respectful than sitting. People seem very divided on this issue  but this country has always disagreed on their version of patriotism. Wearing the flag s disrespectful, kneeling during our anthem is not. Perhaps the players should hold AR 15’s instead of taking a knee. Our President does not seem to have a problem with protesters showing up armed.**Pence made a big show of walking out of the game after the kneel. Only loves the team if they think as he does. It was an expensive stunt.

*****California has been experiencing the biggest wildfires in state history.

***** Hmm. I see a movie with Liam Neeson , Clint Eastwood and Kurt Russell.

***** The Pioneer Woman speaks of a granny named Inee.

*****So, I rarely watch Fallon but that Hillary show was awkward and special. The respect and beautiful words from the female writers and Miley brought tears.

*****Can’t wait to see Suburbicon.. looks fab!!

*****350 barrels of oil were spilled in the gulf of Mexico.

*****Reporters were arrested in St. Louis as they interviewed demonstrators. This is in violation of their first amendment.

*****Anti- abortion advocate Rep. Tim Murphy had a bad week as congress was trying to pass a bill that would ban and bring criminal charges against those who have abortions after 20 weeks. His mistress Shannon Edwards claims that he asked her to get an abortion but it turned out the pregnancy was just a scare.  He now says that it is his staff who wrote the pro- life rhetoric he spewed. He has resigned.**Scary clown wants to broaden the rules to let more employees deny birth control coverage.

*****The Rolling Stones have 18 recordings pulled together for On Air. The collection of 1963- 1965 BBC show clips were never commercially released.

***** Harvey Weinstein? Secret employees? Everybody knew?  WTF?  Obviously we have some extreme self indulgence and mental health issues here. Why can’t powerful men control themselves? **Many of the liberal donations he made have been donated to charity.** The list keeps growing with thanks to Ronan Farrow and his exhaustive work in the story on The New Yorker. Weinstein’s wife has left him so he is in for some shit. ** More women are coming forward about other powerful men as well like R Kelly, Mark Helprin and James Toback.** When the movie is made of the Harvey scandal, I hope they cast Jeff Garland in the title role.**In the wake of the Weinstein tsunami there have been protests at public gatherings for other men with pasts .A retrospective for Roman Polanski  did not turn out so well.

*****Meet the Press and the AFI are having  film fest. Look for the film Heroin(e).

*****Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted for hiding foreign bank accounts, money laundering, false statements, conspiracy against the U.S. just to name a few. There is now a viral video with the music from To Russia with love that shows Trump and various staff being taken in by the FBI. I teared up.. Could it happen??** George Papadopolous has pled guilty.

*****Kathy Griffin is slamming Harvey Levin and Andy Cohen. She claims that Levin was egging people on about her Trump head stunt. Her Mother in a retirement community and her sister dyeing of cancer were receiving death threats. Cohen who produced her ‘My life on the D-list” is taking over her New Year duties on CNN.  Her claim about him is he often tried to get her do coke and he is generally an ass.

*****Actor Anthony Rapp claims Kevin Spacey was sexually aggressive with him when he was 14 and Spacey was in his 20’s.  Kevin denied and apologized and came out.

***** You must check out Denis O’Hare as Edgar Allan Poe on PBS American Masters.

*****Corey Feldman wants to expose the pedophiles of Hollywood for 10 mil.

*****Does it bother anybody else that those on cooking shows never seem to use spatulas to scrape the bowl? They pour and move on.

*****Check out the Comedy Get Down with Cedric the Entertainer, Eddie Griffin, DL Hughley, Charlie Murphy and George Lopez.

*****Larry Flynt is offering 10m million for info leading to the impeachment of scary clown.

*****Ben Stiller takes on the 2015 prison escape of David Sweet and Richard Matt. The Showtime production will star Benecio Del Toro, Paul Dano and Patricia Arquette

*****Jemele Hill is back from her suspension form ESPN because of her tweets. Let the girl stand up for her beliefs.

*****Atlanta has voted to decriminalize weed, now if they can get the rest of Georgia on board!

***** So it seems the boy scouts are going to now admit girls.

*****It has been nice to see Charley Pride every now and again lately.

*****Hooray!! Jessica Tuck is on General Hospital.. Oh, How I have missed you Jessica Tuck.. Where have you been??

*****A report says that white nationalists are flocking to get their DNA tested  to prove their white heritage with some mixed results. Of course they often find they have African ancestry or other  blood they may not want to admit is running thru them. Duh!

*****Nellie (Cornell Iral Haynes Jr.)  was arrested for rape on his tour bus at a Wal Mart.

*****Chicago pastor Robbie Wilkerson and his wife Tasha were sentenced to 37 months and 12 months respectively for defrauding a summer food program for impoverished kids.

*****The 207 Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.

*****Steven Avery of Making a Murderer has been denied a new trial.

*****Roseanne Cash is getting some backlash for her comments. Cash wrote, ”The NRA funds domestic terrorism.” Her life has been filled with threats because of her views with smears like, ”your Dad would be ashamed of you.” Some ‘fans’ obviously did not understand her Father.

*****The White house thinks NBC should apologize after their report about Rex Tillerson threatening to resign after clashes with Trump. The scuttlebutt is that Pence intervened. Word is that Tillerson called Trump a fucking moron. Rex says he never considered leaving.

*****Senate intelligence can’t seem to get anywhere on the Trump dossier because everyone refuses to cooperate.  The committee has reported they are still interviewing and going thru documents. The investigation is now in exploratory mode. They do know that Russia is currently active in meddling in our election process and our vote tallies were accurate. Republican members of the bipartisan panel are praising the Obama administration for their complete cooperation.

*****Marilyn Manson had to cancel 9 shows after being crushed by a stage prop!

*****R.I.P. Tom Petty, the victims of the Rt. 91 country music fest in Las Vegas, S.I. Newhouse Jr., Bunny Sigler, Ralphie May, Bob Schiller, Fats Domino, John F. Dunsworth, Robert Guillaume, Gord Downie, Richard Wilbur, Sima Wall, Jack Bannon and victims of the NY Halloween attack.

[beingmad2017-blog]

The Medical Fitness Care Disaster And Why It Have become Inevitable

New Post has been published on https://beingmad.org/the-medical-fitness-care-disaster-and-why-it-have-become-inevitable/

The Medical Fitness Care Disaster And Why It Have become Inevitable

Due to the fact 1970, the Healthcare enterprise has passed through a cutting-edge trade. Earlier than that point people have been overwhelmingly (about 70%) in traditional indemnity plans in which sufferers pay a positive percent of Healthcare fees. With the passage of the Fitness Renovation Organization Act written via Ted Kennedy (D-Mass), in no time over 70% of U.S.A. citizens were protected with the aid of HMOs.

Health

The shape of HMOs Became moreover in large part distinct than conventional indemnity plans. HMOs require number one care physicians to behave as gatekeepers of advanced care and it empowered coverage businesses to the venture the clinical judgment of medical doctors. It confined preference to the one’s docs and carriers “in the community” and any care furnished by using way of outside agencies, care that did not observe the proper policies or didn’t have the right referrals Turn out to be really no longer paid.

It’s miles undeniable that we’re currently in a Healthcare Crisis with skyrocketing expenses and intense patron dissatisfaction. It’s miles by no means a amazing sign while medical companies need to market themselves on customer support. No different enterprise has to strive to steer consumers that “we may not abuse you” and that “you be counted on us”. The contemporary argument is that Medical and  Fitness care wants to be socialized due to the fact the loose market hasn’t labored.

First, the crucial precept of the loose market is that the man or woman occasions of a transaction are capable of negotiate the terms of that transaction themselves. As an instance, if I need to buy an car, I am able to negotiate with the company the terms of the transaction and the dealer can do likewise. If neither oldsters desire to retain, we can go with the flow on. Without loose preference on each the business enterprise and consumer in identifying phrases of the transaction, there may be no loose marketplace. there’s no unfastened marketplace Without choice.

The Healthcare tool in this u . S . A ., advanced by way of way of Democrat Ted Kennedy who now campaigns in opposition to his non-nonprivate creation, all but removes choice in every health practitioner and patients.

Restricting the choice of sufferers

Let’s assume you, Joe consumer, need medical health insurance. Due to the shape of the tax system that enforces what is largely a historic twist of fate, you will likely get this through your employer. Your enterprise company is limited via tax regulation to most effective will-will let you make selections about your medical health insurance issuer at sure times, basically whilst you’re employed and as soon as three hundred and sixty five days thereafter. you may probably get a few picks, an HMO with higher deductibles and decrease charges, an HMO with lower deductibles and higher prices (from the same agency), and a traditional indemnity plan. In case your enterprise corporation chooses Blue Flow Blue Guard, you’re only going so one can select Blue Move Blue Protect.

Employers decided which coverage business enterprise to paintings with. Their motivation is apparent, to store cash. As a secondary objective, they need happy employees. But, the coverage organisation is promoting insurance in your organization, no longer you. So that they craft rules which may be profitable for your company. Possibly 60% of personnel are happy with what they get, but the extraordinary forty% are pretty a super deal hosed. in the occasion that they want a awesome insurance business enterprise, they need to pay the entire rate and the business enterprise isn’t allowed to compensate the employee on what their issue could have been. Give up end result: purchasers do no longer select out their coverage organization, their corporation does. inside the occasion that they want to trade their coverage, they can’t until the following benefit preference period dictated via manner of the IRS.

Now you, Joe consumer, need to go to the health practitioner. You’re taking your to be had dandy provider list (or cross surfing) and also you choose out from the list of docs your HMO permits you to move see. You may understand you want an orthopedic Scientific medical doctor to deal with your knee troubles however this is too bad, you want to visit a primary care physician first (and pay for that useless appointment that you do now not want). This number one care Medical health practitioner’s activity is to limit the quantity of superior care patients accumulate. In truth, in some cases, number one care physicians get an advantage based mostly on how few referrals they supply.

Care

Allow’s assume you do get a referral. Then you visit in which the HMO tells you to visit with even extra restrained alternatives in the issuer list. Allow’s exchange the state of affairs, Let’s say in location of knee troubles you’ve got most cancers. You pay attention proper matters about the Mayo Hospital and you want to get care there. Too awful, you want to head in which your HMO tells you to visit. You can have a better shot at survival at Mayo, it does now not count number.

You may want to discover possibility treatments, However, your doctor who’s privy to what your coverage enterprise will and could not pay for better than you ever will, virtually will restriction you to the ones alternatives which your coverage organisation has already determined you may have. He’s aware about that they’ll not pay (and he probably won’t receives a commission) if his plan of care deviates from the dictates of the coverage corporation’s accountants. those people have in no way seen you, haven’t any facts about you but have near whole manipulate over your Healthcare alternatives based on a few sparse office work despatched back and forth. The affected person will in no way get the opportunity to talk to a good deal lots less negotiate with those humans.

Ultimately, you need to pick a Clinical medical doctor the various picks which might be provided to you on your corporation directory. In case you need to “charge maintain”, nicely, you aren’t provided pricing In advance than the hand. This may be hard in a few instances, but patients honestly haven’t any pricing facts with which to select Before they’ve already dedicated themselves to care (a few exceptions, no longer many).

The internet stability of all of this is that during every unmarried step of the Healthcare gadget, the customer is removed from the decision-making loop. The most effective Healthcare selection the purchaser gets to make is whether or not or no longer to have the insurance Business enterprise pay or to do what they count on is proper and pay complete rate out-of-pocket and hazard financial disaster, although It is the right desire.

Prescribing the choice of docs

On the other element of the transaction, we’ve got got Clinical docs that still have their alternatives restricted and taken out of the equation. Before a Scientific health practitioner sees his first patient, In advance than he receives an workplace or buys any machine, he desires legal responsibility insurance. The pinnacle magnificence he is charged might be identical to different vendors with comparable practices regardless of what training, experience, qualifications or differences exist among them. A Saturday-night time time hack artist will pay the same as a physician who has gained the Nobel Prize. In Illinois, the top fee for an OB-GYN Earlier than they see their first patients is set $240,000. In surrounding states, It is approximately one-fourth as plenty this is why Illinois especially has a Healthcare Disaster. carriers are fleeing the country. Take a glance near any kingdom border and You can see a thriving Healthcare exercise simply on the opposite side of the Illinois border with that country.

The phrases of this insurance coverage (further to the fee) are non-negotiable and designed to do one component, prevent proceedings or cause them to much less hard to win. For OB-GYN’s the terms are the most infamous. As an example, a woman who has had 2 youngsters already Without headaches, is having a third low-chance pregnancy needs to go through the same regimen of care as a primary being pregnant. If you’ve had youngsters, you understand how this works. Began 2nd trimester or so, you go for bi-weekly checkups (that emerge as weekly as you get in the direction of start). You pee on a stick, you get weighed and that they ask you if you have any questions. There may be an ultrasound in there and a couple of blood exams.

With my first child, after a few of these appointments, I commenced to surprise what Became the factor. We didn’t have questions. In, out, 15 mins: that is $50 (the reproduction in this example). Why do I bring up this tale? Because of the fact In case you, the affected man or woman, decide that These visits are superfluous, your provider is wanted to drop you as an affected individual. You could don’t have any complications, You can haven’t any questions and there can be clearly no cause for Those visits, But, your provider is needed to mandate which you skip, no matter clinical want in any other case you can’t be their affected person anymore. via the way, you, the affected person, pay for this option made not by using the usage of your health practitioner, however by way of a few criminal professionals at a legal responsibility insurance enterprise. The USA has the very best C-phase price within the advanced worldwide because legal responsibility coverage companies insist that if something is “bizarre” a C-phase should be carried out. now not Because of clinical need, However Due to “Restricting legal responsibility”.

further to legal obligation insurance groups dictating the phrases of care, docs then should deal with Clinical health insurance companies (or even worse, Medicaid). about 30% of medical bills despatched to humans (now not coverage businesses) are paid. Scientific docs understand that they’re being paid thru the insurance companies, not the affected individual. They understand that if the coverage organization isn’t going to pay them, they in all likelihood might not be paid. The simplest exception to that is sufferers who stroll into an emergency room or medical doctor’s administrative center with a Platinum American Specific card. providers recognize Those human beings are paying cash and they get treated with a long way greater respect than insurance sporting patients do.

Before the question of the “bonus assessments” for Restricting referrals even is to be had into play, docs recognize that the coverage organization is looking the images. They understand they won’t get patients Without becoming a member of a “network” of some vendors in a given insurance enterprise. The coverage agency will then dictate what charges they may fee, what services they are able to offer, what capsules they are able to prescribe and in some cases what number of sufferers they could see.

A doctor that practices Without taking the primary coverage can have a hard if not impossible time earning a dwelling. A Medical physician that practices Without a legal duty insurance (even in locations in which it is criminal to do and that is not many) can be considered certifiably insane.

Clinical

End

each Medical docs and patients have their selections and capability to negotiate their Healthcare substantially confined. there is some opposition in a completely constrained feel in which employers can pick from a small choice of HMO agencies. medical doctors can pick too and there is a small subset of legal responsibility insurance organizations they may be capable of select from as well. One of the maximum vital plans for “Health care reform” is to really have the government serve as the HMO instead of on-public private groups. It’s far unfathomable to accept as proper with that obtaining rid of the trivial amount of choice inside the Healthcare gadget this is left will result in a higher device this is extra aware of patients.

[workreveal-blog]

Did using psychedelics result in a computer revolution? -BBC

New Post has been published on https://workreveal.biz/did-using-psychedelics-result-in-a-computer-revolution-bbc/

Did using psychedelics result in a computer revolution? -BBC

” … in phrases of our view of the universe – or my opinion of the                                world – perception can be greater useful than physics may be.” You might be excused for thinking these are the phrases of a philosopher or a stoned Grateful Lifeless fan, but no. It’s from an interview in 2000 with Mike Lynch, the CEO of Autonomy and Britain’s first software program billionaire, presently in the manner of selling his agency to Hewlett-Packard for $10bn (£6bn). Lynch, who was talking about the strength of the sample recognition that paperwork the basis of Autonomy’s fulfilment, went on to speak about the fascination of desires, near-dying reports and the accounts of those experimenting scientifically with LSD within the Nineteen Sixties: all kinds of altered belief.

Did psychedelic pills play a substantive position in the development of personal computing? In 2009, Ryan Grim, as part of publicising his ebook That is Your Country on pills: The name of the game Records of getting High in The us wrote a piece for the Huffington Submit that made public a letter from LSD inventor Albert Hofmann to Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2007 soliciting for investment for studies into using psychedelics to assist relieve the tension associated with life-threatening contamination.

He picked Jobs because, as The big apple Times reporter John Markoff told the arena in his 2005 e-book, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Fashioned the Private laptop Industry, Jobs believed that taking LSD was one of the or 3 maximum important things he’d done in his life. That 2001 conversation stimulated Markoff to put in writing the book: a Records of computing with the medicine saved in.

From 1961 to 1965, the Bay Location-based totally International Basis for Advanced Study led extra than 350 human beings through acid trips for studies functions. Some of them were prominent pioneers inside the development of computing, together with Doug Engelbart, the father of the computer mouse, then heading a venture to apply computers to augment the human thoughts at close by SRI. Grim also names the inventors of digital fact and early Cisco employee Kevin Herbert as examples of experimenters with acid and calls Burning Man (whose frequent attendees consist of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Web page) the present day equivalent for the ones looking for thoughts expansion.

computer

There is a delicious irony in thinking that the same American corporations who require their employees to pee in a cup rely on machines that were created using drugged-out hippies. However, things are not so simple. Markoff strains cutting-edge computing to 2 resources. First is the easy cut, navy-fashion, healthy-carrying Large Iron method of the east coast that, in its IBM incarnation, became so memorably smashed within the 1984 Terrific Bowl advert for the original Apple Mac.

2d is the eclectic and iconoclastic blend of hackers, hippies, and rebels of the west coast, from whose ranks so many of today’s Big Silicon Valley names emerged. Markoff, born and bred within the Bay Region and 18 in 1967, argues the idea of the Private computer as a device to empower people changed into an only west coast concept; the east coast failed to “get” whatever but corporate technology.

There’s a simple precept to invoke here: twist of fate does no longer imply causality. As early Sun employee John Gilmore, whom Grim calls a ” psychonaut”, says in that article, it’s far very difficult to show that drug use led directly to Non-public computers. The Sixties were a time of excessive upheaval: the Vietnam conflict and the draft, the arrival of girl-managed birth control, and the campaign for civil rights all contributed to the counterculture. Become it the intercourse, the medication or the rock’n’roll – or the science fiction?

In 1998 Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, Stated in a dialogue of his leisure of science fiction: “I assume it is also made it simpler for me to reflect consideration of matters that were not quite ready but-but I should imagine would possibly just in all likelihood be viable.”

Annie Gottlieb, in Do You Accept as true within Magic? Bringing the 60s Returned Home, recounts the Personal exploratory reports of a selection of interviewees and is derived to this conclusion: “Any drug revel in is decided ways less via the drug than by using what we carry with it.” Many people tried acid. The best one has become Steve Jobs.

Dan Frydman recollects honestly how the computer he used at school within the Eighties changed his life. Now 38, he turned into one of the eras who grew up with lecture room computers that almost everybody could use to put in writing self-contained applications – the equal of latest telephone apps.

The PC became the BBC Micro, a computing revolution dressed in mild brown plastic. Made with the aid of Acorn computer systems of Cambridge, the first version, released in December 1981, covered an easy programming language known as BBC Basic which even very young children ought to comply with. And with coin arcades supplying video games including Area Invaders, this became their danger to create their very own – loose – model.

  “We all had a bash [at programming it],” Frydman says. Even though he moved into the structure, he came Back to programming, designing and writing websites: “Without that early advent of programming as something that becomes logical rather than scarily medical, I don’t assume I would have were given to it,” he says.

Initially called the Proton, the BBC Micro were given its call after Acorn, then just two years old, won the agreement to make the hardware for the BBC’s then-ongoing computer literacy challenge. It became a settlement that was the making of Acorn – and, arguably, the present day world, for a descendant of Acorn’s chip design methods now powers every mobile smartphone, consisting of the smartphones utilised by hundreds of thousands.

Neil Kinson, forty-two, says the appearance of the gadget when he turned into at school in north-east England “stimulated humans to get under [its] covers… I had visions of my very own little software empire.” Although that didn’t occur, he went directly to Examine software engineering at college “in any other case I would have accomplished a natural physics diploma”. Thats why BBC said that computer revolution plays a huge roll.

Another then-student, Nicholas Radcliffe, recalls that he “ended up producing business software program for my local training authority” – and later use that skill to fund himself through university. “That BBC Micro experience brought about the entirety I’ve completed considering, which has covered being a part of the formation of the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), spinning out my institution from there as Quadstone Restricted, a VC [venture capital]-based totally Edinburgh-primarily based software program corporation that became, in the end, received the aid of Portrait software program.”

Although the BBC unique that 12,000 must be made (so viewers of its new PC Programme might be capable of percentage the experience of the brand new microcomputing revolution), uptake became so speedy that, in 1982, 24,000 have been bought – and schools were soon ordering them via the thousand. Via the 1990s, while Computers strolling Microsoft software program began to supplant the ageing BBC gadgets inside the classroom, 1,000,000 had been sold.

revolution

The Micro wasn’t cheap: expenses started at £235 (£seven-hundred at present day fees) and £335 (£1,000 at late charges) for the Version B, which became the long-lasting version. Costs rose slightly (to £299 and £399 – no longer that rather more than a computer could value these days).

The specs, through cutting-edge standards, have been minuscule: a processor going for walks at megahertz, extra than a thousand Instances slower than a standard CPU these days, and 32 kilobytes of Ram. You needed to plug it into a Television set as there has been no monitor output. There has been no hard pressure; applications had been saved on cassette tape, from which they will be performed Lower back or on to which they could be recorded. (Application names have also been Constrained to a most of 10 characters.) Any of the 163,000 factors, or pixels, at the display, could show eight colourings, or flash in eight mixtures of two colours. Today, screens offer millions of to be had hues and millions of pixels.

But the BBC Micro’s arrival in school rooms as a part of the authorities’ initiative to pressure computing use in faculties revolutionised computing in Britain. Scores of small video games and other software program agencies have been set up by way of folks who had got their start writing programs on the BBC Micro, and on other computer systems from the duration, which includes the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, which also ran simple and was drastically cheaper at £80 (£240 at current expenses).

However the arrival of these “extra useful” Computers spelt the dying knell for the self-made study room programmers: the new machines did not have a primary, and pupils have been now taught “ICT” (records and communications era) instead of coding.

A part of the impact has been the continuing talents shortage in programming and the falling enrolment in university publications. Radcliffe thinks that “mockingly, programming is a great deal tougher to get into now, for kids and others. It is a weird mixture of things. Lower back then, each gadget got here with necessary or similar. Programming changed into a much larger part of the experience. I also think there has been less to examine, and the machines have been less summary. You can just set bits to draw on the screen. Now you have got layer upon layer of abstraction to get through.”

Wherein could he begin now? “I think quite often about what I’d be doing these days if I have been 12 or 14, and I’m sure the answer is badgering my dad and mum for an iPad and a developer package. The iPad is appealing as it does have all those sensors and access to a lot of stuff, and because of your capability to show the entire tool into a physical manifestation of something. But the mastering curve to get the first element running is simply huge in that surroundings; you can’t do it with a first aspect.”

Kinson shows “it is genuinely a case of building the proper curriculum, as honestly all of the infrastructures to do that exists nowadays, however stripping Returned one or two layers of the usability of Some of latest tools to make sure humans learn the fundamental ideas and talents”.

BBC

But even while some struggle with reviving the BBC Micro’s legacy, it lives on in at least one shape. Acorn, Apple and VLSI Technology teamed as much as creating a new business enterprise, Superior Risc Machines – later shortened just to Arm – to make higher variations of the specialised low-power chips that had run within the Acorn Archimedes laptop, a successor to the BBC Micro.

An early ARM chip powered Apple’s handheld Newton device. But gun quickly found new markets in cellular phones, and now billions of chips the usage of ARM’s designs energy every smartphone in use, such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android gadgets.