#you could say canada but he was mathematically out of the points

[charles-leclerc-official]

It's insane to me that Charles somewhat has this reputation of "conceding" to others, especially Max. I saw a few comments the other day about how it's important for a driver to have a mentality of fighting others even in an inferior car, saying that Charles gives up too easily when it comes to Max, that when he gets pole he butches his race starts and lets Max past.

???

It's also insane to say this about Charles of all people- that he has a mentality of yielding- because he's also been criticized for overdriving, taking "unnecessary risks" in qualifying and thus putting a car in places where it doesn't quite belong.

I think of Vegas last year when Charles grabbed pole, well no one thought he could go beyond P3 in the race, really. But he saved up his battery in those last laps and pulled a perfect last lap overtake, clinching P2.

In an ideal world there would be no repercussions to not choosing your battles in F1 but this isn't an ideal world, is it.

And as for the criticism of Charles' approach to qualifying, I might not agree but I understand the perspective and where they're coming from. But the other criticisms as to why he's not a potential world champion being that oh he has the talent but he yields in the race when his car isn't fast enough, or he is incapable of choosing his own strategy and taking charge unlike sainz who pushes back- These are what kinda sets me off haha.

I feel like this is due to a lot of people trying to compare things that don't make good direct comparisons.

Lando had a few quotes earlier this year about fighting Max, and he was criticized for it, but I do think he basically was saying the same thing about picking your battles, and yes that's the whole point of the sport.

But I think this just comes down to people who don't really want to dig into context or logic. I get wanting to see a driver go 110% all the time, but that's not how it works. A smart driver knows when they can push and when they cannot. That's part that comes with experience and good instincts.

I don't think I have seen a time where Charles should have pushed and instead held back. When it's possible I trust him to go for it.

And 2023 is really hard because of the dominance of the RB-20. Charles took pole against all odds multiple times, and yes he lost it pretty quickly to the RB-20, it wasn't really a failure on his part because the car really shouldn't have been there in the first place.

But the media and fans like to set narratives about how certain drivers are on track, and often they don't align with reality.

Also insane to say he yielded when I don't think Charles has yielded at all this year, even when his brakes were almost on fire.

[sixstringphonic]

‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead

(Reported by Cade Metz, The New York Times)

Geoffrey Hinton was an artificial intelligence pioneer. In 2012, Dr. Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto created technology that became the intellectual foundation for the A.I. systems that the tech industry’s biggest companies believe is a key to their future.

On Monday, however, he officially joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers popular chatbots like ChatGPT.

Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than a decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work.

“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” Dr. Hinton said during a lengthy interview last week in the dining room of his home in Toronto, a short walk from where he and his students made their breakthrough.

Dr. Hinton’s journey from A.I. groundbreaker to doomsayer marks a remarkable moment for the technology industry at perhaps its most important inflection point in decades. Industry leaders believe the new A.I. systems could be as important as the introduction of the web browser in the early 1990s and could lead to breakthroughs in areas ranging from drug research to education.

But gnawing at many industry insiders is a fear that they are releasing something dangerous into the wild. Generative A.I. can already be a tool for misinformation. Soon, it could be a risk to jobs. Somewhere down the line, tech’s biggest worriers say, it could be a risk to humanity.

“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Dr. Hinton said.

After the San Francisco start-up OpenAI released a new version of ChatGPT in March, more than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of new systems because A.I. technologies pose “profound risks to society and humanity.”

Several days later, 19 current and former leaders of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 40-year-old academic society, released their own letter warning of the risks of A.I. That group included Eric Horvitz, chief scientific officer at Microsoft, which has deployed OpenAI’s technology across a wide range of products, including its Bing search engine.

Dr. Hinton, often called “the Godfather of A.I.,” did not sign either of those letters and said he did not want to publicly criticize Google or other companies until he had quit his job. He notified the company last month that he was resigning, and on Thursday, he talked by phone with Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. He declined to publicly discuss the details of his conversation with Mr. Pichai.

Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, said in a statement: “We remain committed to a responsible approach to A.I. We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.”

Dr. Hinton, a 75-year-old British expatriate, is a lifelong academic whose career was driven by his personal convictions about the development and use of A.I. In 1972, as a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Hinton embraced an idea called a neural network. A neural network is a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing data. At the time, few researchers believed in the idea. But it became his life’s work.

In the 1980s, Dr. Hinton was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, but left the university for Canada because he said he was reluctant to take Pentagon funding. At the time, most A.I. research in the United States was funded by the Defense Department. Dr. Hinton is deeply opposed to the use of artificial intelligence on the battlefield — what he calls “robot soldiers.”

As companies improve their A.I. systems, he believes, they become increasingly dangerous. “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said of A.I. technology. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”

Until last year, he said, Google acted as a “proper steward” for the technology, careful not to release something that might cause harm. But now that Microsoft has augmented its Bing search engine with a chatbot — challenging Google’s core business — Google is racing to deploy the same kind of technology. The tech giants are locked in a competition that might be impossible to stop, Dr. Hinton said.

His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”

He is also worried that A.I. technologies will in time upend the job market. Today, chatbots like ChatGPT tend to complement human workers, but they could replace paralegals, personal assistants, translators and others who handle rote tasks. “It takes away the drudge work,” he said. “It might take away more than that.”

But that may be impossible, he said. Unlike with nuclear weapons, he said, there is no way of knowing whether companies or countries are working on the technology in secret. The best hope is for the world’s leading scientists to collaborate on ways of controlling the technology. “I don’t think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it,” he said.

Dr. Hinton said that when people used to ask him how he could work on technology that was potentially dangerous, he would paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, who led the U.S. effort to build the atomic bomb: “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it.”

He does not say that anymore.

(Reported by Cade Metz, The New York Times)

[scp-arts]

Some Dr Edison and King headcanons I thought of (including some Kingson headcanons)

Dr. Edison

His full name is Michael Elizabeth Edison. Edison doesn't really mind his middle name as it was his grandmother on his mom's sides' first name, who sadly passed away before he was born so he never really had a chance to meet her.

Edison does have a younger sister that he helped raise and loves dearly but also works hard to keep her away from knowing about his line of work.

Majored in both Zoology, mainly in penguins, and Chemical science, but minored in Creative writing and took some courses in Electronics just for fun.

Has a mild case of social anxiety. He can still communicate with his other coworkers but if there was, like, meeting with people he isn't used to, Edison is informed before hand so he could prepare himself.

While he was a little bitter about being sent to Antarctica, Edison was rather happy that he had the chance to study one of the main reasons to go into Zoology.

When he gets overwhelmed by people, he tends to slightly pull at his sleeves and click his pen over and over again.

One of the members of a group called "The rule breakers" that not everyone really thinks is a part of the group.

Does tend to get easily distracted and really likes to ramble about things he is really really into.

Is actually from Canada but speaks with a more American dialect but when rambling, you can really tell where he is from.

Pansexual.

Is a 100% musical nerd and has several songs from different musicals in his playlist. His favorites are Hamilton, Beetlejuice, and Hairspray

Dr. King

Technically his full name is Johnathan Everett King but practically everyone is so used to using Everett as his first name, to the point where King honestly just doesn't care which one a person uses for him.

Does have an older brother but they don't really talk.... In fact, King didn't even know that he had a brother.

Majored in Mathematics but minored in physics and biochemistry. He does know the basics of medicine but not enough to be like a nurse

King does have some sleeping issues and would often have phone calls or video chats with Edison to help him sleep.

Can often be found banging his head against his desk but when asked why, all King will say that he is trying to drown out his dad talking about his destiny, really only Edison knows what he is talking about exactly, due to listening to his rants

Naturally talks really fast and will always happen no matter how much he tries to slow down

From Wales and has cursed out several people in Walsh.

Bisexual with more of a male lean.

Now some Kingson

King will always map out where all the exits in a room are so that when Edison gets more than a little anxious, King can take him to the nearest exit so he could take a break and regroup himself.

They have two year age and height gap, Edison being the younger taller one and King being the older shorter one in the relationship.

It took several years for Edison to finally get King to agree on watching some Studio Ghibli movies with him. Edisons' favorite being Spirited Away and Kings' is The Cat Return but they both really like Kiki's Delivery Service.

Edison was a bit surprised that King cared enough to get him a penguin plushie/Squishmellow when bringing him back home from Antarctica and couldn't bring the penguin he was emotionally attached to with him. Sometimes, Edison finds himself hugging the penguin and crying late at night

King is kinda the only person that Edison willingly and happily be himself around.

Their trope is honestly the sun/star and the moon

King has only met Edisons' baby sister like once but could tell just how much he loves her.

Edison loves it when they would have their late night voice calls/face chats and would be smiling through the entire thing, even if he is the only one awake

King has a few songs from Edisons' favorite musicals added to his own playlist, just because (totally not because he does actually really like any songs from them)

[newluddite]

Crazy Professors.

I read the BBC news stream regularly because I trust it and it has a global outlook. In Canada the CBC does OK, but they are not quite as good. They have too many people to please.

Recently (April 2023) I watched a quick BBC video thing about a "theory" that posits we are living in a Matrix-like simulation. By that we must all be simulations. This is Promoted by a Dr Nick Bostrom who has taught at Yale and Oxford and such places.

OK, this is utter bullshit. For this to be true it would require that some civilizations computational science (not ours) had fully understood and modeled with equations in total detail every component (to the molecular level) of every person and animal and insect and fish and rock and drop of water in the sea and on and on. His idea is that at some point this will happen.

Since it WILL happen in his universe it probably has happened and many times over so there are many many such simulated worlds out there and since there are so many the probability of YOU being in a real one is rather small. That hurts my head it is so stupid.

His PhD is in philosophy and he should really know how to construct arguments better. Thing is if there is one step in a logical argument that can be disproved then the whole thing collapses. He is lucky in that almost every step of his argument is so shaky it falls apart immediately upon examination. Lucky as people are intimidated by his CV and wont raise the objection. Lucky that media like to hit out with click bait, which this is.

I got lots of objections and recall that it takes only one true objection to pull the legs of the thesis out from under it.

First Objection is the idea that computational power is regularly increasing without limit. It has not done so for about 10 years. Moore's Law stopped being valid about 15 years ago. There have been modest increases in processor speed on the order of 50% more but it is hitting several limits. Current "supercomputers" are just built with large arrays of many rather pedestrian processors not faster ones. My 8 year old laptop is exactly as fast today as the top "gaming" units currently for sale. So that computational power is increasing without limit is False.

Full disclosure Solid State drives which are huge arrays of memory chips have sped up computers quite a bit. That is due to the fall in cost of EEPROM type memory. Storage media is getting bigger, but not the processor speed, that is not increasing.

Second objection is that some ultimate programmers have FULLY understood and modeled everything down to molecular detail. That means it is fully and completely understood. Also that accurate mathematical equations to mimic those things have been developed. Think about the implications of that. Those computational GODs are all knowing. There is nothing left to learn. That leads to the simple problem of why build a simulation of our world as it is with wars and crazy Americans shooting children to exercise their rights. How about a nice place? If this is a programed simulation choices were made. Bad choices.

Third objection is the "many worlds" problem his argument depends on there being many such simulations so that it is where the likelihood comes from. If there are not many worlds then that argument fails. I say it fails. No evidence or true arguments at all for such a meta-reality.

Fourth Objection. How big is this computer system running the simulation? The most powerful AIs run on BIG computers and computer arrays. They are not that smart, but have vast knowledge put into them by many real people. If you take the weight of all those people the machine weighs roughly as much, but is not as smart as that group of people together. So does a computer that could simulate the entire universe weigh as much as the universe or even a significant part of it? Most of the universe is Dark Matter and Hydrogen not the heavy metals and stuff to build computers. Those are minuscule fractions of the total. Basically there is not enough stuff to build a computer system that big. If you extrapolate to many worlds type simulation it takes even more of what does not exist.

As I said it takes only one correct objection to kill the thesis. I have four, I could go on.

Two more things. Occam's Razor is a conceptual tool that basically says if there are several options to describe a phenomena the most likely is the simplest, not the most complex. Dr Bostrom's is transcendentally complex. But it does get him interviews and book sales.

If you are patient here is another viewpoint from a hard scientist.

[queerchoicesblog]

Epilogue: Underwater (SC Titanic, Zetta x Adele Series)

As promised, here the epilogue of the Zetta x Adele Series, folks. 

This is the very end of a project that meant me quite a lot to me and got me through the last terrible year. Thanks to all those who supported it: hope you enjoyed it and will enjoy this ending.

In case you were wondering, this song inspired the whole series, particularly the last chapters:

I will skip the tag list for once since it’s pointless anyway. 

➡️ Ch. 1, Ch. 2/1, Ch. 2/2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch. 6, Ch. 7, Ch. 8/1, Ch. 8/2, Ch. 9, Ch. 10/1, Ch. 10/2, Ch. 11/1, Ch. 11/2, Ch. 12, Ch. 13, Ch. 14, Ch. 15 , Ch. 16, Ch. 17

_________________________

Almost a century after the sinking of the RMS Titanic and to celebrate Canada becoming the first country outside Europe to legalise same-sex marriage, the Canadian Film Institute decided to work side by side with several LGBTQ+ organisations across the world to put together an exhibition focused on the early queer cinema and the many queer stars who were forced to hide their true selves in the Golden Age of cinematography, spanning from 1890s till the aftermath of Second World War. "A testament to the role the LGBTQ+ community played in the history of cinema and that we have always been here, even if people hardly saw us" as a journalist wrote on a queer magazine. After the recent discovery of some private documents, the curators were overjoyed to include an icon of the 1900s - 1910s cinema like Zetta Serda into the retrospective and cast a new light on her extraordinary career sadly soon forgotten after the advent of the sound era. Yet, the silent picture star was mentioned as a model and 'endless source of inspiration" by many queer movie stars like Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo all part of the retrospective. Rumor has it that as soon as she landed in America, Marlene Dietrich demanded his agent a meeting with Mrs King.

A curator drove all the way to Montreal to meet the last known heir, a certain Mrs. Julia Nowak, who greeted him on the threshold of a cosy downtown apartment. She offered him a coffee and a slice of a Polish sweet bread: the recipe was a family heirloom, she explained, beaming. She was in her late fifties, a therapist, she said. Her hazel eyes gleamed when she added, in a pleasantly soothing voice that betrayed a hint of excitement: "I must confess I am so incredibly happy that you contacted me about the retrospective. I adore the idea and I will make sure to attend it. Also" she nodded to a wedding picture hung to the wall "did you know that my wife is in politics? She campaigned for the legalisation...yes, Madeleine Fournier: see, you know her! We got married right after the law passed. If anything, your call and project made me twice as happy". She took a pause, smiling over her coffee in remembrance. "Anyway, back to the matter of your visit...yes, as far as I know, I am Zetta's last heir. As you probably know, my family wasn't officially related to her but she stated otherwise in her will". She moved to the couch and gestured the curator to follow her as she opened up one of the boxes and chests piled into the living room and picked out an old album, the leather cover worn at the edges. Dust waltzed in the air as she opened it with caution and gentle care. She showed him a slightly discoloured black and white picture of a young couple kissing for the camera in front of a church. Another wedding picture, from a different era. "Nana Hileni and Papa Maciej's wedding picture. I still remember them even if they both died when I was barely a teen...as if one couldn't bear to live without the other. Or so I like to think. She would help me with the homework, mathematics particularly, and he baked this bread for me till he was too weak to do so. He always claimed that he won Nana's heart with his pastries but she always denied it laughing". She passed another picture of the same couple proudly standing in front of the Nowak family bakery in Hoboken. "Frankly, I believe that Papa's broad shoulders and Marlon Brando smile are more likely to blame for this coup de foudre" she laughed. "And he knew how to deal with her no-nonsense attitude and vice versa. They...balanced each other, if you wish". She picked another picture and handed it to him. A woman was looking down in tender adoration and awe to a baby nestled in her arms looking up at her, outstretching a tiny arm in an attempt to touch her face. "There! This is Dad" she pointed at the baby before turning the picture where someone wrote 'Alex meets Auntie Adele'. Turning it again, she pointed at the woman. "This is Adele Carrem. Or Auntie Adele as I've always heard calling her. Nana's sister and Zetta's publicist and companion" Putting it back into the album, she carefully picked a bunch of other old pictures. "You surely know who this one is" she smiled, handing out the one on top. The photo was rather grainy but you could still recognise the same kid, slightly older, around two, sucking his thumb, cuddled up in Zetta's lap. The actress had aged a little but her features were unmistakable and it was endearing to see her sitting by the fireplace to read that kid with the sleepy face a bedtime story. "Sadly, I have never met them. I wish I did, oh you have no idea...but stories of them lived through in our family" Julia continued. "My Dad loved his Aunties - as he called them - dearly and by what I've heard and read, they loved him in manner as if he was their own. He knew little of them or Zetta's career back then...to him they were just the sweet ladies who would buy him ice-cream in Central Park or take him to see his favourite pictures over and over again at the movie theater. He said he will never forget the afternoons he used to spend with them in a Manhattan cafe that no longer exists around Christmas: Nana and Papa worked like crazy as the festive season approached and the glorious cup of hot chocolate with an elegant puff of cream on top with the Aunties became a tradition to him. He kept it alive somehow as he did the same with me". She handed the curator a bunch of other pictures: Zetta cleaning up Alex's face smeared with jam, the both of them laughing; Zetta posing with Maciej and her Dad at a table in the Hoboken bakery. He eventually mirrored her smile seeing a five years old Alex at the beach all engrossed in building a sandcastle with Hileni and Adele, and he standing at the water edge hand in hand with Miss Carrem, looking out into the distance. "These are family pictures. I'll show you the Zetta's private memorabilia we cherished". Julia searched a little, opening an old chest and handling every item inside with tender care. When she found what she was looking for, she showed the curator an elegant set of smaller boxes containing letters, dried flowers and photos. "I have already received an offer to get these published. I'm still pondering it. Before agreeing, I want to consider throughly if this is a thing they would have wanted, even if they're no longer here" The curator nodded as she kept searching. He skimmed a few letters and smiled as his eyes fall on the photos hidden away in those boxes: the two women sitting together and chatting at Hileni's wedding, Zetta's reading a script, lazily sprawled on a chaise long in her apartment. Some had short lines handwritten on the back, like a promotional picture with "Missing you" written by Zetta herself. The curator showed another to Mrs Nowak: a visibly excited Miss Carrem proudly showing to the camera a document announcing her voter registration. On the back, in Zetta's penmanship: "On the way to vote...my sweet Adele won!". "Oh you didn't know? Auntie Adele was a suffragette! I couldn't believe it when I first heard it! Nana told me that she was in and out jail when they lived in London because of protests. You know, like those suffragettes you read about in history books but less famous. Yet she fought for women's rights and kept fighting for them even in America. She was quite disappointed though by some major decisions of some feminist movements and eventually joined a socialist Union 'more rightfully welcoming working class individuals, immigrants and black brothers and sisters'. It's all in those letters but yeah, you couldn't possibly know. So little is known about her outside family". A little smile drew on her face as she put back the photo. "That photo was taken the day of the first election open to women. I checked the date. I suppose Zetta wanted to immortalise the moment...it was sweet of her, huh? Auntie Adele must have been so proud and overjoyed that day! You know, my Dad was born in 1920 when women's right to vote was legalised nationally and Nana once told me that Auntie commented the lucky coincidence saying she was incredibly happy her nephew would get to live in a fairer world. She was a true force of nature...she never talked much of the sinking of the Titanic just like Zetta and Nana actually but when one day Dad asked...he was barely a child and probably found an old article about the tragedy...Auntie Adele minimised but Nana assured him that her sister saved her life that night, risking her own to go down to the belly of the sinking ship to bring her to safety. Auntie simply shrugged, saying that it was what sisters do and that they made it to the lifeboats only thanks to Zetta, who shouted protests to stubborn officers and eventually found them a spot on a boat. I cannot even bring myself to imagine how scary that must have been: I cried so much when Madeleine took me to see Leo and Kate...to think they were there and it was all real!" She picked a few other objects out the box: a Shakespeare Sonnets book in a leather cover with golden engravings, with a little handwritten dedication 'To Adele, my sonnet 116. Happy birthday! With all my love, Zetta'; old scripts with annotations, a framed photograph of Adele and Zetta slow dancing barefoot in the living room of a gorgeous Long Island mansion. "These have a sentimental value" Mrs Nowak noted, her voice betraying the flicker of emotions as she picked it up. She took a deep sigh and continued. "I remember the day I told Dad I was gay as it was yesterday. We had always been quite close so it came natural to tell him first. We were in his car, he had come straight from college to pick me up at ice-skating practice. I..I dropped it in the middle of a conversation, bracing myself for the worst. I heard so many bad stories about coming out to your parents I was terrified of the consequences but I couldn't hide it anymore. I mean, yes, in public: bullies get even nastier if they know and I didn't want people shouting me "dyke" at school. But I needed to get it out of my chest...with someone at least. He kept quiet for a moment and I felt like drowning in shame. But then he spoke". A nostalgic tender smile formed Julia's lips. "He said he had two amazing Aunties that contributed to make his life a wondrous adventure. It was thanks to them that he, the son of a baker, could attend a prestigious college, for instance: they offered to pay for it without asking a penny back. They also helped him write his first romantic letter to his childhood sweetheart and consoled him when the little girl turned him down. But his Aunties had a secret, he added. He said: to my kid eyes they were no less a couple than Mom and Dad and at home we all treated them in manner but one day Mom made me promise to behave differently when we were in public. In public I would refer to her sister as 'Auntie Adele' but call Zetta by her name. He didn't get it and it took some getting used to. He soon noticed that even the Aunties behaved a bit differently out in the sun: they wouldn't hold hands or use endearing words in the street or when other people were around. They simply behaved like good friends did. He understood it later when he, as stubborn as a mule, asked them directly". Julia gently grazed her fingers on the glass of the framed photograph, caressing it. "And they told me everything, he said. That they were in love, just like mom and dad were, but people out there could be uncomfortable and extremely rude to women loving other women and men loving other men. That they kept their companionship a secret in public because those people had no problems with women being friends and they didn't want to have bad words or worse happening to them. I remember asking him what he thought about it. He smiled. 'I cried. Since Auntie Zetta mentioned people claiming that women like them were sick and would burn in hell, I actually started crying. I sobbed desperately in her arms, crying that I didn't want them to burn in hell, I loved my Aunties and I was happy they loved each other. Eventually they explained me it was just a vile lie spread my malignant people. But I got quite a scare and kept staring at them with puffy red eyes and my face wet with tears for a while. It required lots of cuddling to bring a smile back on my face'. He shook his head, laughing of his endearing naivety. Then he pulled over and looked at me. He continued: 'I still don't get why people keep spreading those mean lies but I know for sure that my Aunties weren't sick and didn't end up in hell and so won't you. Don't believe bullshits like that for a split second, okay? And I also want you to remember that it doesn't change a thing for me and mom too. You will always be my little girl, our little girl and we love you'. We shared a long hug before driving back home. On the way back he insisted to buy my favourite chicken and waffles for dinner, saying mom's veggie soup could wait. For my birthday, a month later or so, he asked me to follow him to the attic and showed me this chest. To meet the Aunties that 'would have surely been there for me'". She tipped away a tear. "I told you I married Madeleine right after the legalisation of same-sex marriages. My wedding was also the last public event Mom and Dad attended together before his health worsened irremediably. He passed away last year". For a moment she looked on the verge of tears but she recovered quickly. "Sorry...anyway, that day Dad insisted on walking me down the aisle even if he was getting weak. He beamed with pride when a friend fixed a rainbow ribbon to his jacket. Later at the lunch he read a speech he had written for the day, his hand shaking. He shared the story of his Aunties. He said that despite the hardships their situation forced upon them, they had quite a happy life together, a happiness carefully hidden from the world. He wished us to find something similar to what they shared without needing to hide anymore. He said Adele and Zetta would have been so happy and proud to celebrate with all of us that day" Mrs. Nowak picked the Shakespeare Sonnet book and gave him a fond look. "He brought this to the wedding. And he read for us the sonnet 116, the one Zetta mentioned in her dedication. You know, the one that starts with 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments..." ----------------------- A few months later the exhibition on old Hollywood queer cinema and artists opened. Each artist had a room that soon filled with a crowd of enthusiastic visitors. In the first half, in a room arranged as a turn of the century nickelodeon with velvet chairs, all the memorabilia of Zetta Serda's public life: panels explaining the various stages of her career and the birth of her myth, promotional pictures of her performances, articles about her and a copy of a gazette announcing her wedding with the director Richard King. On the wall, on a screen her entire filmography rolled up in loop, bewitching spectators after a century. In display cases: the gorgeous sapphire necklace she wore on her last night on the Ship of Dreams and at the movie party of Surviving the Titanic, and a replica of her Cleopatra costume. The aging Queen of Egypt with a tragic love and destiny immortalised by Shakespeare was her last role back on the theater stage before retiring from the scenes. Old scripts with her personal annotation were displayed with photographs taken on sets and mundane events. The wall hosting the motion-picture screen cut the room in half. On the other side, the hidden half of her life. Her life with Adele no one suspected back then. A life kept secret that now unveiled in front of the eyes of the visitors. The curators discovered that finding public pictures of Miss Carrem was nearly impossible, true to the nickname she acquired as time went by: The Shadow. She stayed at Zetta's side until and even after she stopped acting, showing rare loyalty and devotion, but ever surrounded by this mystery allure. No one, even the most stubborn reporters managed to know anything about her and she was soon dismissed as a Titanic survivor, possibly a fan, who worked as Zetta's secretary and somehow gained her respect. Little they knew about the depth of their relationship and what stacks of secret letters and family memories revealed of the life of Miss Carrem. A panel finally told her story and her secret achievements: Adele, or better Adal, kept fighting for a fairer world and society her whole life and marched for women's right to vote on the famous parade in 1915. She also passed the teaching of Edith Garrud to her American sisters. The only pictures of her came from the Nowak family, except for one. The only photograph of a public appearance of Miss Carrem as well as the only known public appearance of Zetta and Adele. An old grainy photo accurately framed showed Adele shaking hands with The Unsinkable Molly Brown on a podium. In her free hand a shiny medal and a few steps behind the mayor of New York. According to the panel, the survivors' committee founded by Mrs. Brown decided to award Miss Carrem a medal for bravery and a generous check "to help her and her sister starting a new life in America". With great surprise, Miss Carrem received the medal and the check, thanked the board but refused the honors. Instead, she asked to deliver them both to the family of a certain Charlie Stoke, a stewart that lost his life in the sinking to save her life and those of many passengers. She added that her friend expressed the desire to study naval engineering one day and she wished that the money kindly offered to her would be enough to establish a scholarship for boys like him across the ocean. In another picture, Miss Carrem and her sister chatted with Moll Brown in company of Zetta. Eventually, other philanthropists and wealthy socialites signed checks for her cause so that the Stoke family received a generous contribution too. And today, as another picture confirmed, the faculty of naval engineering of the University of Newcastle hosts a marble engraving of Charlie Stoke: to his memory a scholarship had been instituted one year after on the anniversary of the sinking. Since 1913 it has been helping students of poor background to get an education and improve their life. Zetta herself became a philanthropist during her Renaissance and ever since. The first act of her new phase of her life was joining the Moll Brown survivors committee to provide help to the second and third class passengers families and survivors. Some said that the tragedy she witnessed touched her heart, other claimed that it was to be attributed to the influence of her publicist. Jokingly, she used to say that after all, she had too much money yet all she could have wished for in her life, so why not doing some good with it? A considerable donation under her and Mr King was received by the main hospital during the Spanish flu pandemic; she was particularly active in providing financial help to struggling neighbourhoods and female education institutions. In the middle of the room, a long glass display hosted the Shakespeare Sonnets opened at sonnet 116 and a selection of the private correspondence between Zetta and Adele. My darling, You will receive this letter tomorrow morning when I'll be already off to Chicago. The suitcases are ready and packed, this is a goodnight note scribbled the night before leaving you to remind you how much I love you and care about you. How much I'm going to miss you even if - thank God! - we won't be parted for long... Do not forget you promised me to write every day! Write to me, Adele, write to me whatever thought crosses that gorgeous mind of you: you know I could you rambling for hours without getting tired of the sound of your voice, of your sparkling wisdom. I wanna know everything. So don't be shy: I'll be waiting your letters with tender impatience. Can't wait to be in your arms once more. Adoringly yours, Zetta - Dear, dearest Zetta, I went to Central Park today with Hileni. It was a gorgeous spring day, sunny, a gentle breeze blowing: 'simply too beautiful to be wasted inside' as my sister put it. Did I tell you that she's still exchanging letters with the delivery boy from the hat shop? I thought they were over but apparently he invited her to the nickelodeon next week. Anyway, walking in the park with her I suddenly realised how I wanted to share that spring wonder with you. When are you coming back to New York? Tell me soon, please. And even 'soon' won't be soon enough: you're always on my mind since you left. But yes, tell me soon so I can make you promise we will go for a walk before the weather becomes too hot. Do you think I can wrap my arm with yours? Is it professional enough for a publicist? Even just for a few steps: oh you have no idea how I would love that! Or maybe you have? I hope so: it'd mean you miss me as much as I miss you when we are apart. Oh, I almost forgot: all settled with that magazine you mentioned before your departure! I negotiated a two pages long interview, plus pictures. And a cover mention. Hope I did well: you have already fired me as your secretary, I must prove you I am just what you're looking for in a publicist... Can't wait to see you again! Loving you always, Adele Only one letter was copied on a panel of its own on the main wall side by side with a blow-up of the picture of Adele and Zetta slow-dancing barefoot and free, for a blessed moment immortalised in a discreet shot. Adele pressing a tender kiss on Zetta's forehead, drawing a soft smile on the acrtress' lips. Many visitors commented it was heartwarming to see such a photograph that conveyed the intimacy and the warmth of affection radiating from the dancing couple. Some said that Zetta was even more beautiful like that: free, hair slightly askew and genuinely happy, loved. What stole their hearts away though was the letter attached to it. It was no surprise that the curators decided to name the retrospective Underwater. Dearest Adele, Forgive me for the tone of this letter. I am writing it down in bed while I cannot sleep and my mind runs back to you as if we could meet halfway between the miles separating us, in a world of fantasy of our own. It's ridiculous how much I miss you! I want you near, I need you near all the time. Take tonight: if you were here with me, I would be heavenly sleeping in your loving embrace. Most unfortunately, you are not and I'm lying here, insomniac, thinking of you. And about my life. No, don't frown. I am not getting all sad again. It's...bittersweet. And - I'll spoil you the ending so you will stop worrying, hopefully - it gets better the more you proceed. Have you ever felt trapped underwater? I did, my whole life. Always hiding, always measuring words, gestures, gazes not to let them see, not to let them know...so little time to go up and break the surface. Drop the mask and breathe. In, out. Once, twice. In my lowest moments I repeated to my myself: how are you gonna survive? One day an acquaintance with a remarkable passion for the sea explained me and the other bored commensals that you can keep someone alive by breathing oxygen into their mouth underwater. Pretty much like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation helps an unconscious person to regain consciousness. I found it interesting but doubted his words. Then I met you, Adele. My dearest, wondrous Adele. And I learnt that yes, you can't breathe if you're constantly underwater...but you won't drown if you have the right person swimming by your side in those deep waters. Put your lips on me, Adele. Touch me, hold me in your arms. And I can live underwater. With your love, I can live underwater. We can live underwater. I love you. I want to cover a full page of these three simple words: I love you. I want to cry them out and entrust them to the winds, to the night. But what for? Who cares if the world knows or not? I'll whisper them over your lips when we will be reunited. So you can breathe underwater. Counting down the hours separating us, my love. Eternally yours, Zetta

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #3: Taking Care of BUSINESS!

November, 1984

This is a sad day for the fledgling West Coast Avengers. It’s a cool cover for the fledgling West Coast Avengers but a sad day.

Not only are they falling before Graviton but they’re falling perpetually.

Anyway, last time in West Coast Avengers: Hawkeye and Mockingbird were sent by the Vision to create a west coast branch of the Avengers. Since Wonder Man, Tigra, and Rhodey Iron Man were California based, they got the nod to be the West Coast Avengers, despite reluctance from Tigra and Iron Man.

Their first case was mistaking as a supervillain and beating up a friend of Tigra who had followed her to the Avengers Compound to make sure she wasn’t in trouble. So. That’s not great. Next, the West Coast Avengers tried to chase down a bank robber named the Blank. This is really overkill for a guy whose only power is wearing a slippery anonymizing force field but he manages to get away anyway. The charger for his force field also dunks Graviton back into the world.

And as you can see on the cover, this isn’t ideal for our West Coast Avengers.

But before that, there was an event that sort of happened between issues. In Avengers #249, Vision tried to contact the West Coast Avengers but only got their answering machine. And that’s because they were dealing with the local worldwide unseasonable winter.

If Avenging and stunt work doesn’t work out for Wonder Man, he should consider becoming the new Mr. Plow.

Anyway, the forever winter is over, thanks to the Casket of Eternal Winters being reassembled and shut over in the Thor book as part of a multi-pronged plan to take down Surtur.

The West Coast Avengers are still dealing with the remaining snow because its not like snow just evaporates! Without turning into water first! Look, it would take too much time, people have places to drive, or something.

The combination of snow everywhere but normal warm South California weather leads to some people taking advantage by going swimsuit skiing, mostly so Rhodey can wryly think that weird is a way of life for Californians as an excuse to not worry about why Wonder Man has been acting weird lately.

Uh, good rationalizing, Rhodey?

Some people who don’t care for skiing decide to instead rob Radio Shack because NOBODY WILL EVER KNOW!

But Mockingbird shows up and starts beating them up when they make the mistake of believing that they outnumber her. They are mathematically right and wrong in every other way.

Hawkeye also shows up to pin some others to the wall with arrows so one of the Radio Shack robbers runs to the getaway car and tries to get the getaway driver to help him getaway.

But cat’s got their car.

It sort of makes sense why Tigra has decided on this for her winter outfit and yet I’m still baffled.

If it had just been the boots, that’d be one thing.

She’s also the only one who has made a winter weather change to her outfit.

Bafflement.

The blond robber doesn’t even try running, saying “What’s the use? Just take me away. I wanna serve my time and forget this ever happened!”

Bad day when some electronics theft gets an entire superhero team on you.

By midday, the West Coast Avengers meet by the Hollywood sign (so that the audience knows that this is set in LA). At this point all of the snow is gone, as if it’s been whisked away. So I guess I was wrong. Earlier the casket hadn’t been repaired but now it has been.

Hawkeye: “Well, whatever happened to [the snow], you can all be proud of the job you did over the past week! You put in a lot of long hours and saved thousands of lives! I’d say we’ve all earned a little time to unwind! That’s why I propose we hold the first annual Avengers barbeque... commencing tonight at sunset, back at the compound!”

Oh ho, I see that Hawkeye is going to be the fun Avengers chairman. Don’t see Vision organizing a barbeque.

The rest of the team is pretty excited about this... except for Wonder Man, who is distracted, answers without any real enthusiasm, and then takes off.

Hawkeye wonders if he’s still upset about the Blank getting away but c’mon that was weeks ago! Surely no superhero ever obsesses over anything!

When the Avengers disperse, Tigra lies that Iron Man promised her a lift as an excuse to talk to him in private about Wonder Man.

Tigra: “Something’s bothering him, and I thought maybe you could get him to talk about it! After all, you’ve known him longer than the rest of us!”

Iron Man: “Uh... not really, Tigra! I hardly know the man!”

Tigra: “What are you talking about, Tony? You fought alongside him dozens of times!”

Iron Man: “Tony -- ?! Ohhh... you think I’m Tony Stark!”

Womp womp.

This is one of the exact things Rhodey was worried would happen if he joined a team with a bunch of people who knew Tony/Iron Man!

Rhodey isn’t about to just reveal his name to her over a case of mistaken identity but he does prove to a doubtful Tigra that he’s not Tony by showing Tigra the skin on his hand.

Iron Rhodey also suggests that Tigra talk to him for reasons of it’s always flattering when a pretty cat girl pays attention to you?

I mean, sure. Yeah. True.

Tigra is also the only person on the team who actually realized Wonder Man was bummed who didn’t immediately dismiss the idea.

I guess its up to you, Tigra.

Meanwhile, in the Santa Monica Mountains, our coverboy Graviton.

He didn’t sit idle during the big snow, oh no! He took over an estate. And then sat idle!

Dammit, it was cold out!

Graviton: I prefer starting my empire in a warmer climate!

With the snow cleared up though, he can get down to business........ of recapping his recent travails.

So, Graviton.

He comes from Canada because Marvel Canada is just like that. He was a researcher in Research City, working on a teleport beam, and accidentally gave himself gravity powers by increasing the power to see what would happen. People at the lab didn’t like him because he kept throwing stuff at them so he took over.

Then he fought the Avengers. He kicked their asses. But the woman he was trying to force to date him threw herself off his floating city rather than date him (its cool, Jarvis saved her) so Graviton accidentally compressed his floating city into a super dense sphere with him as the nougaty center.

He managed to get out of that sphere, but with AMENSIA, and tried to kidnap that female scientist again but was stopped by the Thing and Black Bolt. So Graviton imploded.

He showed up AGAIN and tried to kidnap an entire Bloomingdale’s and was stopped by Thor, who dunked him into an interdimensional void.

Now here’s where it gets slightly weird.

The Beyonder’s construct passing through the void on its way to Secret Wars woke Graviton up and let him find his way back to Earth by homing in on the energy field of the force field the Blank uses.

I don’t know why that specific energy field. We may never know. The scientist who made it walked into the street without looking both ways and got run over.

Graviton is actually fairly pleased about winding up in “this most hedonistic of world cities!” He’s decided he’s all about creature comforts now.

The Blank returns from delivering message for Graviton.

Graviton gets annoyed that the guy is nervous despite having a cool dude who never fails like Graviton as a new boss and takes REAL exception when the Blank points out that the Avengers have beaten him before.

As well he should! Because technically its not true. If you’ll recall my recap, the Avengers didn’t beat him. He imploded. And then when he reappeared to fight the Thing and Black Bolt and imploded again. Now Thor, solo, managed to beat him where Thor, plus Avengers, couldn’t. Don’t ask why. That’s just a rule of comics. Daredevil beat Ultron once.

Among other ways he shows the Blank what’s what, Graviton demonstrates his force field belt ain’t so slick by switching it off through the field. Which, yes, technically gravity could work that way?

Meanwhile, over on ye private Avengers beach because if you’re going to have a sprawling compound, why not get a beach while you’re at it? Tigra interrupts Wonder Man pacing on the private Avengers beach and offers to tell her DEEP DARK SECRETS if he shares his.

Wonder Man: “There’s not much to tell... mostly, I’ve been wondering if I did the right thing in joining Hawkeye’s New Avengers team. I sometimes wonder if I ever did anything right, where the Avengers are concerned.”

He recaps his ENTIRE LIFE STORY to her, as is the style. Got powers from some Avengers enemies, turned against them, died. Came back to life, uneasy as a superhero, quit to become an actor.

He leaves out the part where he embezzled from his own company and was arrested, the part where he was a competitor to Tony Stark, and retcons in that he’s always loved acting. Rather than seeing one (1) movie and deciding he wants to be an actor now.

Apparently, Hercules’ offer to set Wonder Man up with some sweet Hollywood contacts didn’t pan out.

Then Simon worked as hired muscle for some scientific research groups but decides not to go into that.

There’s no ‘see such and such issue of book’ so I can’t tell whether this is a thing that was published or is a noodle incident.

Then a former agent got Simon that gig on the David Letterman show. Remember that one? David Letterman knocked out the villain with a big door knob? It probably made more sense at the time?

Anyway, although the show got pre-empted for a news report in New York, it did air in Cali-for-ni-a and a director reached out to Simon with stuntman work.

And its not the acting he wanted to do but it is acting and being good at it has done wonders, man, for his confidence. Which is why he jumped at Hawkeye’s offer to join the west coast team.

But then he let the Blank escape and now he’s back to feeling out of place on a cool superhero team.

So now that he shared his not so deep, not so dark, secrets, Tigra shares hers.

She knows what he means when he says he feels like a blunderer. Her stint on the New York Avengers team was a disaster (although she managed to get Molecule Man to go to therapy! By calling him a big loser! That’s something!). And she feels like most of her life is just things happening at her without her ever really feeling in control.

She also demonstrates that she can use that little tiger amulet (a gift from the cat people that turned her into Tigra) to look like her old self but she’s more comfortable as Tigra.

Hm.

That’s two whole characters who can technically transform but prefer to stay ‘powered up’ at all times. Tigra and She-Hulk.

It’s almost a pattern.

Anyway, Wonder Man and Tigra both try to be the insecure one on the team complimenting each other and deprecating themselves but Tigra decides fine. Wonder Man is hung up on losing the Blank? They’re going to track down a goddamn the Blank.

SHE MOONLIT AS A PRIVATE DETECTIVE SHE HAS A TRENCHCOAT SHE CAN DO THIS!

Tigra: “All right, Mr. Wonderful, come on!”

Wonder Man: “Where are we going?”

Tigra: “To see a man about filling in the Blank!”

Damn, good turn of phrase. You really do have this private eye patter down, huh?

She takes Simon to the Cat’s Jazz Club, Shroud’s hangout, to see if he has a lead on the Blank but they find the joint has been busted up.

The club employees are reluctant to talk at first but the Shroud shows up and tells them its cool, the Avengers are his friends. Also: he would like to know himself.

Club employee Mouse says that the Galeno Gang hit the club but they had a message that they were under new managment and that anyone that wanted to do crime business in town had to do it with said management.

So they hit the Cat’s Jazz Club because Shroud is pretending to be a crimelord to infiltrate all the crime.

So far, its working out really well for you, huh?

Anyway, Shroud says it’ll be easy to track down the Galeno Gang and find out who the new boss is but Wonder Man insists that he tag along to help. Call it payback for cracking Shroud’s ribs in issue #1.

Shroud doesn’t want all the crime to think he associates with the Avengers but Wonder Man has a STUPENDOUS IDEA!

So at the former home of Lucky Max Galeno, where some people are getting down and maybe even boogieing, the Shroud’s black fog fills the room and out strolls Shroud and Definitely Not Simon Williams.

He used his extensive acting experience to put on a wig and a jacket, that wily Wonder Man!

(Also Tigra is hanging upside down outside the window so its a good thing that Shroud and NotSimon are drawing all the attention)

Simon hoists one of the Galeno Boys and tells him they want to see the boss so the Blank comes out from the back room.

Its a testament to Simon’s INCREDIBLE ACTING TALENT that “he doesn’t look any more surprised than the rest of the crowd” according to Tigra.

The Blank justifies having the Shroud’s people beaten by saying that he had to establish credentials to consolidate all of the West Coast mobs so Shroud tells Simon to rough him up.

I like Simon’s like BOING here.

‘Sick ‘im!’ BOING, hah.

Also, the Blank has been smoking on and off throughout this whole issue but like. How does the force field work if he can just stick things into it? I mean, obviously, its permeable to air since he can breathe and... oh I think I just explained it. Dammit.

The boing stalls out midair leaving Simon hanging there.

Obviously its Graviton. No surprise to the audience. But very alarming to the characters who must think the Blank suddenly has more powers.

Off-panel Graviton hits Shroud with Wonder Man, knocking off the wig which wasn’t even secured in place. Dammit Simon, I thought you were an actor!

The Blank recognizes him as Wonder Man so the cat out of the bag, Tigra jumps through the window and onto the Blank’s back.

Graviton finally shows himself, exasperated with how much hand-holding the Blank needs to do basic things like fight several surprise superheroes.

Wonder Man: “Tigra! Get back! That’s Graviton! He’s one of the most dangerous men the Avengers ever fought!”

Graviton: “Nice of you to acknowledge that, Wonder Man!”

See, all he wanted was some acknowledgement. And to crush Wonder Man under a localized gravity field.

The Shroud tries to obscure the room under the idea that Graviton can’t fight what he can’t see. But the guy just grabs everything in the room and spins it around.

Then he pins Tigra, Shroud, and the Blank to the wall. The Blank because he managed to get captured off-panel.

Wonder Man KRUNKs up from the floor and tries to grab Graviton, alarming him that Wonder Man is fighting through the effects of so much gravity, having to block him with a “column of gravitic energy.”

The Blank complains about being stuck to the wall when he’s supposed to be Graviton’s partner.

Graviton: “Wrong, Blank! Very wrong! At beast, you were a go-between, a figurehead in my plans to organize California’s criminal element!”

The Blank: “D-did you say... ‘were?’"

And then he yeets Blank, Tigra, and Shroud out the window and into the ocean.

That certainly is a way to deal with some party crashers.

Meanwhile, the barbecue is going on without Tigra and Wonder Man.

Imagine being dunked into the ocean instead of eating Hawkeye’s steaks.

Hmm. I like that apron but I can’t help but feel that a modern comic would have a hilarious apron extremely specific to Hawkeye. Something in the genre of Quentin Quire’s shirts.

I also like Rhodey realizing that he’s not going to be able to eat any of this barbecue through his mask and deliberating revealing his identity to his teammates SPECIFICALLY to eat a steak.

Priorities.

Mockingbird points out that Tigra and Wonder Man are late and she can’t reach them on the radio but Hawkeye dismisses her concerns since they’re both so capable.

Meanwhile, Graviton dunks Wonder Man into the pool and holds him underwater so he can watch him slowly drown.

He’s also acquired some sexy swimsuit ladies from somewhere. This is LA so I guess they just spontaneously generated.

How will our heroes get out of their various water-based predicaments??

I assume swimming will be involved.

Next issue is last issue of the limited series and for the West Coast Avengers for a while.

And since the West Coast Avengers show up in Avengers #250 with the limited series wrapped up, expect me to schedule posting the posts in that way too.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because I know the recipe to Hawkeye’s secret steak recipe and I’ll tell you if you follow. Here’s a hint: take meat, set it on fire for a while. Also like and reblog and I’ll tell you how many potatoes Captain America’s potato salad contains.

[boydsfm]

❛ ✶ ( ALEX WOLFF , CIS MALE , HE/HIM )  —  did you see LUCAS BOYD walking around campus earlier ? i hear a lot of people talking about the NINETEEN year old SOPHOMORE . from what i know , they are studying COMPUTER SCIENCE and are a part of PHI KAPPA DELTA . they come across as + KIND-HEARTED but also - TIMID , which makes since because on their instagram ( LUCAS.V.BOYD ) it says they are a VIRGO . when i see them , i think of A DESK COVERED IN EMPTY COFFEE MUGS, DANDELIONS GROWING THROUGH THE SIDEWALK, THE UGLIEST GODDAMN SWEATERS YOU’VE EVER SEEN. the most interesting thing i’ve heard about them though , is the fact that REDACTED  , but don’t tell anyone i told you that . ooc info . ally . 22 . est . she/her .

hello hello hellooooooooooooooo. i’m ally, i’m from canada, and i’m addicted to tik tok i’m so excited to be here!! this has been an opportunity to bring back an old and beloved muse of mine, one lucas victor boyd ! if you like this, i’ll hyu on discord, or you can hmu at known simp harry hook#3923. 

statistics.

full name. lucas victor boyd  nickname(s). just lucas. not luke or lou, just lucas.  occupation. undergraduate student, beaumont campus tech support  age. nineteen. date of birth. september 2nd, 2001.  nationality. american. ethnicity. ashkenazi jewish, scottish. orientation. gay. gender & pronouns. cis male; he/him/his.

height. 6′0”. weight. 145 lbs. eye color. hazel. hair color + style. dark brown; usually messy and curly. he gets it cut short at the beginning of the semester and then by the end its a mop. really doesn’t style it.   dominant hand. right-handed. distinguishing features. distinctive nose, lanky figure, messy curls, undereye bags, that cute li’l mole. 

background. (tw alcoholism, death of a parent) 

SO. lucas was born in portland, maine, to a pretty lower middle class family. his father left when he was two years old, and he was largely raised by his mother, florence weber. 

florence was a hardworking and loving mother, but she was also quite depressed her entire life. she was a recovered alcoholic when she met judas, lucas’s father, but once he left, she slowly slid back into her old habits. 

by the time lucas was eight, he was having to start to pick up some household responsibilities. cooking, cleaning, packing his own lunch. waking his mom up in time for her shifts at target. 

by the time he was in middle school, he’d learned how to forge her signature on cheques, he’d applied for unemployment for her after she got fired, and he was taking any odd job to make money. 

school was his favorite distraction; he was always a brilliant kid, and if it weren’t for the fact he was already a terribly shy and awkward kid, he could have skipped a couple grades. he threw himself into schoolwork to avoid everything; his mother’s worsening condition, his crippling loneliness, his fear that he might be as gay as every one of his bullies insisted. 

this was, also, around when he picked up his most lucrative but troublesome odd job; hacking into the school board network to get test answers. he could get fifty dollars per person per test, and he was able to buy groceries besides beans and rice, was able to buy new clothes for himself and his mom. he felt awful about it every day, but... he still did it.

(death tw) at sixteen, when he found his mom motionless and cold on the floor of their apartment, he buried himself in his work, too. he couldn’t help but feel guilty, though; it was his work, his taking care of everything that had allowed his mom to keep her addiction up for this long.

so, yeah. there’s a very good reason why he doesn’t go back to portland anymore. he spent last summer in cambridge. well, that and his Secret. 

since the beginning of his freshman year, lucas has had something of a glow-up. he signed up for the school’s counselling services before he even got to campus, and he’s been making great strides. 

additionally, he pledged phi kappa delta, which... he never saw himself pledging a frat, ever in his life. but all the guys there were so... cool. and so supportive and nice and... and they’re like the brothers lucas never had. having that little family has helped him gain that much more confidence in himself. 

personality. 

if there was an onion headline for lucas’s life it would be Nervous Wreck Slowly Becomes a Functional Human Being.

very virgo, very type a. but also a pisces moon cancer rising. so he needs everything to be in alphabetical order or he’ll cry.

ever since he’s started college, he’s transitioned from being As Plain As Possible to being more outwardly soft as he’s gained confidence in himself. he wears the dorky sweaters and neat socks he likes, he has a small collection of plants on his desk, he knits scarves for his friends. big hufflepuff energy. again, this comfort largely comes from the acceptance he’s found at phi kappa delta.

slowly getting over his Big Anxiety. slowly learning how to talk to people. still awkward at parties. still has panic attacks every day during exam season. but he adores his therapist and takes his zoloft every day and he’s… he’s doing alright.

there are things he is sure of. his intelligence, his diligence, his ability to get shit done. he’s recently mastered asking fellow customers to please be kind to servicepeople.

still he’s that guy who doesn’t want to tell the waiter they got his order wrong.

he’s literally highkey fucking brilliant. he’s literally at the top of his class in one of the most difficult programs at one of the most difficult universities in the country. 

a chronic people pleaser up until the point that it breaks his moral code. like if you want him to help you cheat or help you toy with someone he will put his foot down. he’ll do it very softly, but he won’t budge.

(though he is known to do mathematics and computer science homework for his friends when they’re overtired. he’s always the one to offer in that case, though.)

the rare gay who is extremely capable in math. legit he gets so excited about math it’s actually really cute.

theres a part of him that still believes in magic, to some capacity. he still wishes on shooting stars and pennies on the ground and dandelions. 

his greatest strength and fatal flaw is that he sees the best in people. even if he knows you tried to hurt him, he will give chance after chance.

(but he works in tech support rn So. he’s slowly losing his belief in humanity.) 

in conclusion, here are some tik toks that describe lucas 

him in kindergarten

he can’t write i’m so sorry

 just.... the Vibes 

wanted connections. 

skinny love. lucas is extremely shy, especially in romantic situations. he cannot flirt to save his goddamned life. he also probably thinks this person is out of his league. (honestly i want a romantic plot for him so bad gimME) 

close friends. GIVE HIM FRIENDS FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD he’s such a good friend he just wants to love people.

lawyer for real life. based off this john mulaney bit. someone who reminds lucas that someone is mistreating him.

lab partner. idk man i just like that easy camaraderie. or maybe they make lucas do all the work in which case he will eventually snap.

tutoree. someone that lucas basically helps out of the good of his heart.

bad influence. someone get this boy TURNT

manipulator. lucas does have a bit of a backbone, but he is incredibly naive and very easily manipulated. basically he will do your stats assignments for you if you say he’s your friend.

academic rival. lucas is not typically an antagonistic person, but having someone be so obviously smarter than him grinds his gears a little bit. his mood when talking to this person is :))))))))))

literally anything pls i’m desperate and he’s baby

[arcticdementor]

It’s been mind-boggling to watch White Fragility celebrated in recent weeks. When it surged past a Hunger Games book on bestseller lists, USA Today cheered, “American readers are more interested in combatting racism than in literary escapism.” When DiAngelo appeared on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon gushed, “I know… everyone wants to talk to you right now!” White Fragility has been pitched as an uncontroversial road-map for fighting racism, at a time when after the murder of George Floyd Americans are suddenly (and appropriately) interested in doing just that. Except this isn’t a straightforward book about examining one’s own prejudices. Have the people hyping this impressively crazy book actually read it?

DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category.

If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy (“Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness”), which naturally means “a positive white identity is an impossible goal.”

DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except “strive to be less white.” To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo’s lecturing – what she describes as “leaving the stress-inducing situation” – is to affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the “ordeal by water” (if you float, you’re a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia.

DiAngelo’s writing style is pure pain. The lexicon favored by intersectional theorists of this type is built around the same principles as Orwell’s Newspeak: it banishes ambiguity, nuance, and feeling and structures itself around sterile word pairs, like racist and antiracist, platform and deplatform, center and silence, that reduce all thinking to a series of binary choices. Ironically, Donald Trump does something similar, only with words like “AMAZING!” and “SAD!” that are simultaneously more childish and livelier.

…

It takes a special kind of ignorant for an author to choose an example that illustrates the mathematical opposite of one’s intended point, but this isn’t uncommon in White Fragility, which may be the dumbest book ever written. It makes The Art of the Deal read like Anna Karenina.

Yet these ideas are taking America by storm. The movement that calls itself “antiracism” – I think it deserves that name a lot less than “pro-lifers” deserve theirs and am amazed journalists parrot it without question – is complete in its pessimism about race relations. It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors.

…

This dingbat racialist cult, which has no art, music, literature, and certainly no comedy, is the vision of “progress” institutional America has chosen to endorse in the Trump era. Why? Maybe because it fits. It won’t hurt the business model of the news media, which for decades now has been monetizing division and has known how to profit from moral panics and witch hunts since before Fleet street discovered the Mod/Rocker wars.

Democratic Party leaders, pioneers of the costless gesture, have already embraced this performative race politics as a useful tool for disciplining apostates like Bernie Sanders. Bernie took off in presidential politics as a hard-charging crusader against a Wall Street-fattened political establishment, and exited four years later a self-flagellating, defeated old white man who seemed to regret not apologizing more for his third house. Clad in kente cloth scarves, the Democrats who crushed him will burn up CSPAN with homilies on privilege even as they reassure donors they’ll stay away from Medicare for All or the carried interest tax break.

…

Corporate America doubtless views the current protest movement as something that can be addressed as an H.R. matter, among other things by hiring thousands of DiAngelos to institute codes for the proper mode of Black-white workplace interaction.

If you’re wondering what that might look like, here’s DiAngelo explaining how she handled the fallout from making a bad joke while she was “facilitating antiracism training” at the office of one of her clients.

When one employee responds negatively to the training, DiAngelo quips the person must have been put off by one of her Black female team members: “The white people,” she says, “were scared by Deborah’s hair.” (White priests of antiracism like DiAngelo seem universally to be more awkward and clueless around minorities than your average Trump-supporting construction worker).

…

The downside, which we’re already seeing, is that organizations everywhere will embrace powerful new tools for solving professional disputes, through a never-ending purge. One of the central tenets of DiAngelo’s book (and others like it) is that racism cannot be eradicated and can only be managed through constant, “lifelong” vigilance, much like the battle with addiction. A useful theory, if your business is selling teams of high-priced toxicity-hunters to corporations as next-generation versions of efficiency experts — in the fight against this disease, companies will need the help forever and ever.

Cancelations already are happening too fast to track. In a phenomenon that will be familiar to students of Russian history, accusers are beginning to appear alongside the accused. Three years ago a popular Canadian writer named Hal Niedzviecki was denounced for expressing the opinion that “anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." He reportedly was forced out of the Writer’s Union of Canada for the crime of “cultural appropriation,” and denounced as a racist by many, including a poet named Gwen Benaway. The latter said Niedzviecki “doesn’t see the humanity of indigenous peoples.” Last week, Benaway herself was denounced on Twitter for failing to provide proof that she was Indigenous.

…

People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates, parents, and colleagues for thoughtcrime. The New York Times wrote a salutary piece about high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of “anti-black racism” to make public, because what can go wrong with encouraging teenagers to start submarining each other’s careers before they’ve even finished growing?  

“People who go to college end up becoming racist lawyers and doctors. I don’t want people like that to keep getting jobs,” one 16 year-old said. “Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin their lives… I love twitter,” wrote a different person, adding cheery emojis.

A bizarre echo of North Korea’s “three generations of punishment” doctrine could be seen in the boycotts of Holy Land grocery, a well-known hummus maker in Minneapolis. In recent weeks it’s been abandoned by clients and seen its lease pulled because of racist tweets made by the CEO’s 14 year-old daughter eight years ago.

[darylelockhart]

How afrofuturism gives Black people the confidence to survive doubt and anti-Blackness

by Anthony Q. Briggs and Warren Clarke

Afrofuturism, like the kind seen in Marvel’s Black Panther, allows Black people to imagine themselves into the future. Marvel Studios

In 2018, Black people globally got a signal of hope when director Ryan Coogler and Marvel Studios released the critically acclaimed movie, Black Panther. While few knew of the Black Panther as a superhero despite the comic being released in the 1960s, millions now know of him because of the film’s overwhelming success.

Its success can be due, in part, because of what it tells us about Black people’s futures. Many Black people — seeking belonging and better outcomes for their lives — have turned to afrofuturism as the source of optimism. According to afrofuturist expert and author Ytasha Womack, afrofuturism refers to “an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation … Afrofuturists redefine culture and notions of Blackness for today and the future by combining elements of science fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, afrocentricity and magic realism with non-western beliefs.”

Black Panther had Black people chanting “Wakanda Forever,” while many imagined that they too could put on the Black Panther suit to gain a sense of belonging. Black people, including Canadians, believed that Wakanda, the utopian city where the Black Panther resides, is a real place. For Black Canadians, Wakanda offers a place that exists outside the harsh reality of an anti-Black white settler narrative that is anti-Black.

Black legal scholar Lolita Buckner Inniss says anti-Black racism is deeply enmeshed in the Canadian social fabric. Anti-Black racism cuts deep enough so that many, if not all, Black Canadians feel there is no hope for a better future.

Leaving family but not tradition

Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti must deal with racism and isolation as she traverses a universe that does not value her people’s knowledge. (Tor Books)

Afrofuturism in cinema is but one source. Writer Nnedi Okorafor’s 2015 science fiction novella, Binti, features a Black woman protagonist named Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka. Binti is an intelligent woman leader of the Himba tribe whose genius gets her into to the prestigious Oomza University, which floats about the galaxy. Binti is the first member of the Himba ethnic people to attend the school. Her decision to attend is met with ridicule, laughter and threats to her life due to the fear and insecurities of her people.

Her people have never been allowed to imagine futures beyond their traditional way of life and identification with the land. Binti states:

We Himba don’t travel. We stay put. Our ancestral land is life; move away from it and you diminish. We even cover our bodies with it. Otjize is red land. Here in the launch port, most were Khoush and a few other non-Himba. Here, I was an outsider; I was outside.

She echoes the social challenges that Black people face when embarking upon new ways of living after leaving traditional family and cultural contexts. Often, their families and cultures pressure them to remain entrenched within the known confines of family, culture and community, rather than explore the new and unknown.

One of us, Anthony, was the first member of his immediate family to attend post-secondary education and graduate school. He wanted to apply to graduate school but had to fight internalized feelings of low self-worth that insisted he did not belong in academia. Indeed, a lack of self-confidence influenced the choice to avoid applying to programs that required a high grade-point average with a full scholarship because he did not believe he would be accepted.

Blazing a trail to a Black future

In her village, Binti had been one of the few who used knowledge to create peace in her tribe, so she had to overcome pressure to remain in the village in order to embrace new learning. On a spaceship, travelling from her village to the Oomza University, Binti as the only Himba at the university encounters another obstacle: the false assumption that people from her land are evil, dirty and primitive.

In one moment, one of the Khoush (a different lighter-skinned tribe) students touches Binti’s braids out of curiosity and without consent. Her hair is mixed with sweet smelling red clay and perfume called Otijze, which is connected to her cultural heritage. One of the Khoush students responds that it has a horrible smell, suggesting a passive discriminatory logic of sanitation.

One can observe strong echoes of the attitudes of privileged whites towards high-priority Black neighbourhoods whose inhabitants are stereotyped as criminal, irrational, impoverished and unintelligent. The book suggests that there is no such thing as neutral space and that structural inequities and racial inequalities make space and place difficult to navigate, especially in elitist environments.

But Binti is gripped by the challenge of the new. Her journey of self-discovery begins when she decides to leave village life, defying her ancestors’ dedication to their land and cultural identity. Binti explains that tribal knowledge was handed down orally as her father had taught her 300 years of oral lessons “about astrolabes including how they worked, the art of them, the true negotiation of them, the lineage … circuits, wire, metals, oils, heat, electricity, math current and sand bar.” Her mother had also transmitted mathematical insights and gifts, but never in formal educational settings. Family unity and protection were paramount.

Binti symbolizes the trailblazer who encounters politics, racism, stereotypes, ignorance, systemic inequalities, gender inequities, classism and so on. Additionally, she faces the strong pull of past traditions since she is the first member of her family and tribe to attend a formal educational institute.

Afrofuturism offers a way for Black people to envision their futures, as Missy Elliot’s futuristic music videos exemplify.

Some Black individuals living such stories will inevitably encounter feelings of isolation, lack of belonging and self-doubt. Their internal battles will pit self-trust and the drive towards the new against the safety and security of the past. They will have to develop a secure sense of self and an understanding that it does not matter how far they travel among the galaxies because everyone has unique gifts they can contribute to the universe.

Against the pull of anxieties and insecurities, Anthony graduated with a master’s degree and a PhD; he currently has a post-doctoral fellowship — yet is in another galaxy of his own among the stars.

Afro-Caribbean Black people living in white settler, colonized nations such as Canada face discrimination and negative stereotypes. Afrofuturism can enable Black communities to reimagine new possibilities, especially when the future trajectory for Black Canadians is at times uncertain.

About The Authors:

Anthony Q. Briggs, Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Oakland University and Warren Clarke, PhD student, Department of Sociology, Carleton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

Despite Bitcoin’s Dive, a Former Soviet Republic Is Still Betting Big on It

Tax breaks, land deals and cheap energy have spurred cryptocurrency mining in Georgia, which wants to be a digital data leader.

TBILISI, Georgia — For three years, a windowless warehouse on the edge of town has been whirring with enough energy to power nearly 50,000 homes. Day and night, the warehouse, and dozens of cargo containers in a windswept valley, are generating Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that has created a virtual gold rush in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Bitfury, a bitcoin technology company, is churning out millions of dollars’ worth of the digital money using ultracheap hydropower harvested from waters rushing down the volcanic peaks of the Caucasus. Even as the currency has tumbled in value, thousands of Georgians have jumped into the game and sold cars — even cows — to buy high-powered computers to mine Bitcoin and join what has become a state-supported dash toward data supremacy.

A former prime minister encouraged Bitfury, then based in San Francisco, with a $10 million loan in 2015. The governing Georgian Dream party sold 45 acres for $1 for Bitfury to set up shop. The government has been selling energy at half the rates charged in the United States or Europe, and it has created tax-free zones to draw in tech-savvy entrepreneurs.

The efforts have given Georgia, with 3.7 million people, a dubious distinction. It is now an energy guzzler, with nearly 10 percent of its energy output gone into the currency endeavor. The country consumed so much power in recent years that the World Bank ranked it one of the most active cryptocurrency sites in the world.

The whole experiment is likely to face immediate challenges as the price of Bitcoin declines, after a spectacular rise tempted investors around the world to bet on cryptocurrencies.

Most companies tend to lose money when the price of Bitcoin falls below energy costs, and mining operators worldwide have recently been scaling back. The largest mining company, the Chinese company Bitmain, has been closing offices and laying off workers. Last week, Bitfury, which incorporated in London in 2018, announced layoffs at a facility in Canada.

Georgia, however, has been betting its economy on luring blockchain technology, the encrypted storage capability behind all crypto transactions.

Bitfury has helped migrate most of Georgia’s land registry to blockchain, making the government one of the first to rely on the secure digital ledger. Its tax system may soon follow. Georgia aims to beat Malta, Bermuda and other countries known for light-touch regulation of cryptocurrencies to dominate blockchain development.

“The economy’s digital transformation is our highest priority,” said George Kobulia, the economy minister. “We’re supporting this any way we can.”

A Low-Tax Frontier

In downtown Tbilisi, a neon-lit Marriott welcomes tourists. A nearby shopping mall installed a special A.T.M. for Bitcoin withdrawals. A cryptocurrency exchange flashes the prices of Bitcoin, Ether and other digital money on a ticker.

When street protests ousted the last Soviet-era leader in 2003, the government, struggling with poverty, corruption and grinding bureaucracy, began selling itself as a business-friendly low-tax outpost for investment. Big financial institutions came in. So did casinos. A private company willing to take a risk was Bitfury, founded in 2011 by a tech savant from Latvia who was proselytizing about a strange virtual industry.

Remi Urumashvili, a well-connected lawyer and now Bitfury’s main representative in Georgia, said that when Valery Vavilov, the co-founder and chief executive, approached him to seek advice on building a cryptocurrency operation, he was baffled.

“They told me they wanted to mine Bitcoins, and I’m asking them, ‘Hey, guys, what’s a Bitcoin?’” Mr. Urumashvili recalled.

Mr. Vavilov told him that the currency had introduced a new technology, blockchain, that had the potential for widespread use in business. Mr. Urumashvili said he had seen a potential tax advantage.

“They explained that it’s money that exists on the internet,” he said. “So I said, ‘If a thing doesn’t exist in reality, maybe the tax will be zero.’”

Mr. Urumashvili worked hard to lobby lawmakers to keep Georgia an open market for cryptocurrency. “I don’t like regulations,” he said, arching an eyebrow. “And there are very few regulations here for anything.”

As soon as Bitfury opened its doors, Georgia created “free economic zones” where mining activities and electricity weren’t taxed. When Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were exchanged for dollars or pounds, Georgia treated the exchange as an export exempt from value added taxes, so Bitfury could keep every penny of earnings.

Rumors have swirled that Bidzina Ivanishvili, a former prime minister from the Georgian Dream party and the country’s richest oligarch, has been a secret beneficiary of the digital experiment. He gave Bitfury a $10 million loan through his investment fund when Bitfury’s executive vice chairman, George Kikvadze, sat on his investment board.

Mr. Ivanishvili declined an interview. Mr. Urumashvili of Bitfury said that no laws had been violated to encourage Bitfury, and that the former prime minister’s loan had been paid off. He had no other ties to Bitfury, Mr. Urumashvili added.

The government even expanded an entire power station next to the Bitfury facility to pump in electricity at no extra cost. With energy prices at 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, Bitfury and its supporters could envision prosperity, if not around the corner then somewhere just beyond the fog of Georgia’s storied mountains.

Mining With Friends

When Bitfury came to Georgia, one Bitcoin was worth around $350. It spiked to nearly $20,000 before tumbling. Big players like Bitfury have bandwidth to keep operating. But smaller investors have been far more vulnerable.

In villages across Georgia, an estimated 200,000 people secured mining computers to set up in basements and garages. For young people especially who struggled in a tough economy, Bitcoin seemed an alluring alternative to just making ends meet.

Joining the rush was George Kirvalidze, 35, the former owner of a small internet company in the town of Kvareli, three hours from Tbilisi in Georgian wine country.

About half the town’s 6,000 households have some kind of a mining rig, he said.

“Most people who bought in thought high prices would last forever,” said Mr. Kirvalidze, who has managed to mine 20 Bitcoins.

Even farmers got involved. “At one point it was more profitable than owning a cow,” he said. “Now it’s not so sure.”

Cryptocurrency lives off a blizzard of mathematical calculations. Computers, or miners, around the world compete to solve complex formulas on the blockchain. When a mining computer gets the right answer, it is given a bundle of new Bitcoins as a reward.

The constant calculating superheats computers, and the energy demand — to power the computers and to cool them — has spiraled in places where such currencies are pursued.

To save energy, Mr. Kirvalidze created a mining pool with nine friends, who grouped their machines in a friend’s garage. One November afternoon, 15 of the 60 miners were turned off because Bitcoin prices had fallen too low to justify the energy use. More would shut down if prices continued to slump, he added.

“Bitfury is one step ahead of us,” Mr. Kirvalidze observed, citing the company’s cutting-edge technology and quasi-state backing in Georgia.

“If we could get cheaper energy prices, too, we could make more,” he said. “That would increase money circulating in the economy and eventually improve growth.”

‘Onto the World Map’

Forty-five minutes from the center of Tbilisi, trucks rumble over two-lane roads and past faded pink and yellow high-rises. A prison, in matching pink and yellow paint, blights a cow pasture. In the middle of the valley rises the gray confines of Bitfury, plunked on a 40-acre concrete strip protected by guards and a high wire fence.

In a warehouse as big as a Walmart, Ilia Koranashvili, a muscular engineer with a snake tattoo, walked around 160 hermetically sealed stainless steel tanks filled with power-efficient chips and a special cooling liquid. The tanks are Bitfury’s experiment to keep energy costs down and make the mining cost effective almost anywhere, said Mr. Koranashvili, who heads Bitfury’s monitoring team.

Industry estimates suggest the company mines just over 5 percent of all Bitcoins, although no one would say how much was being mined here.

But competitors in Georgia reckon it was a fortune. Vakhtang Gogokhia, the chief executive of Golden Fleece, a small cryptomining start-up, said he was pulling in around 10 Bitcoins a month using one megawatt of energy, enough to light 1,000 homes. Bitfury says it constantly consumes at least 45 megawatts of energy, though Mr. Gogokhia suspected it was more.

Critics say the government, by subsidizing operations like Bitfury, is ripping off taxpayers by forcing them to foot the bill for well-connected companies.

Zurab Tchiaberashvili, a lawmaker from European Georgia, the largest opposition party in Parliament, said the government’s generosity toward Bitfury had deprived Georgians of millions in tax revenue.

“It’s a huge conflict of interest,” he said.

Mr. Urumashvili brushed off such concerns. “Bitfury has given our country many things, including a path to the future,” he said. “When you have a ticket to get onto the world map,” he added, “you should use it.”

Still, as Bitcoin prices highlight the uncertain nature of cryptocurrencies, the government isn’t putting all of its eggs in one basket.

“Georgia is interesting for cryptocurrency miners,” said Mr. Kobulia, the economy minister. “But would it be a major source of our economic growth? Maybe not.”

Correction: Jan. 23, 2019

An earlier version of this article misstated the nation where Bitfury, a blockchain technology company, is based. It is incorporated in Britain, not the United States. The error was repeated in a photo caption. The article also misstated the position that George Kikvadze holds at Bitfury. He is the executive vice chairman, not the vice president. The rate for the energy prices paid by Bitfury was also incorrect. It is 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, not per hour.

[missmentelle]

I’m 18 and I have until the end of the year to be completely independent because I will receive no safety net after dec 31. My only ‘approved’ choices are 50 grand debt on a degree I don’t want/can’t use and will pay out of pocket, or americorp. Struggling to figure out what to do, scared I won’t get to finish even my community college associates degree and can’t afford to live alone, any advice?

Hey, I’m really sorry to hear that you’re in this situation. The world is a hard enough place at the best of times, but being out on your own at 18 with no help is daunting. It’s hard to know what you really want to do at that age, or to know what kinds of options you have available. The good news, though, is that it can be done - even without parental support, it’s possible to achieve your goals and live a good life. 

You say that your only “approved” choices are a 4-year university or going into Americorp - I’m assuming that these are the only options that your parents or guardians approve of. The truth of the matter is, though, that if your parents/guardians aren’t financing your life path, they aren’t entitled to any say in what you do. There are a lot more options in life than just a four-year liberal arts degree or earning a small stipend for AmeriCorps service. Some of the options you have available to you include:

Take out loans or financial aid to cover your tuition and costs of living while you finish your associate’s degree, and supplement your income with a part-time job, or full-time work in the summer term. Even if you need to go into a small amount of debt to finish your community college degree, it’s okay - community colleges actually provide excellent value for the cost, and it gives you a credential under your belt. Plus, many of those credits can likely be transferred to a four-year degree if you ever do decide to get your degree later in life, and you’re paying a lot less for those credits at community college than you would at a university. Talk to the financial aid or student services office at your college - they will be able to help you figure out this situation and point you toward financial resources that you can take advantage of. 

Trade school. People who look down on electricians, plumbers, heating and cooling technicians, pipefitters and mechanics are snobs and fools - those are professions that have excellent pay and often have great benefits, and involve going into little or no debt for your education. Trades allow you to work and learn your skills on-the-job as you get certified, so you are able to support yourself while you learn. Lifetime earnings for most trades are higher than earnings for a bachelor’s degree, but without the student loans, and going into a trade would allow you to quickly gain financial independence and then some. 

Tech or vocational school. Community college, university and trade school are not the only options - many young people seem to overlook technical and vocational schools, where you can learn highly employable skills and certifications in one- or two-year programs. This includes a lot of medical certifications, such as ultrasound tech, medical transcription, medical laboratory technician, licensed practical nurse, or respiratory tech. You can also earn certifications in IT and computer skills, industrial design and drafting, construction equipment operating, special needs education and assisting, safety inspection, and so much more. Two of my close friends went this route after dropping out of college - one became a medical lab technician, and the other went into industrial drawing (not a fine arts degree - he makes 3D computer models of engineering equipment for a living). Both completed their certifications in two years, both were hired immediately out of school, and both were able to purchase their first homes by themselves in their mid-twenties. This is a path that can also quickly lead to financial independence. 

Join the military. The military is definitely not for everyone, and not everyone can pass the strict medical requirements for joining. If you are willing to consider it, though, and you score reasonably well on the military aptitude test, you can have several options available to you within the military, with all your training provided and paid for. The pay is not great, especially in the beginning, but you will be looked after, and if you decide not to re-enlist after your first stint is up, you can come out of the military in your early 20s and get your university education paid for by the GI bill. I’ve met several people who went this route since moving to the USA, and many of them are now coming out of graduate school debt-free in their late 20s. Again, it’s not for everyone, but it’s an option. 

Give university a try as cheaply as possible. You don’t want to end up 50k in debt for a useless degree, and that’s fair - but if you’re careful and make some smart decisions, It’s possible to earn a university degree and not end up in that situation. Do your first two years cheaply at community college, and then transfer to an in-state public university. You could also look into doing your final two years at a more obscure, less “prestigious” school that might be willing to offer you a more generous financial aid or scholarship package - schools in “flyover” states or small towns will sometimes offer more generous financial aid in order to attract students. Plus, if you’re transferring in at age 20 and living alone, you may qualify for more generous financial aid since you don’t have any assistance from your parents. Do some research into degree programs - it’s true that a degree in English or Sociology might not get you very far, but degrees in computer science, nursing, engineering, accounting, business and mathematics are generally a good financial choice with high employability in their chosen field. My brother is about to finish his engineering degree in a specialized field next year, and he already has a six-figure job offer on the table. Speak to some advisers at local universities - they will be able to talk to you about transferring your community college credits, financial aid packages and programs available at these universities. 

Work for a bit. I grew up and did my undergraduate degree in Canada, so Americorps was not an option, but from what I understand, Americorps volunteers earn very little compared to other types of full-time employment. If you don’t feel ready to decide what you want to do with your life, it’s okay to take some time off, work full-time somewhere, and just get used to living on your own and managing your own money before you make any big decisions. I knew plenty of people who took a gap year or two off after high school, earned some money, lived with roommates, and then went back into education when they felt ready to do so, or found jobs that would advance them up the career ladder. There are still a handful of career paths out there where you can earn decent money without any formal post-secondary education, or where your employer will cover the cost of your education - air traffic control, rail traffic control, banking and insurance come to mine. I know people who went into all four of those professions and now earn comfortable salaries without having completed a degree. 

It can be daunting to try to figure out what you want to do with your life, so I recommend that you start by thinking about what kind of life you would like to lead, and work backwards to figure out what you need to do in order to get there. Do you want to work with your hands, or at a desk? Do you want to work indoors or outside? Do you want to wear dress clothes to work, or would you rather have a job where you can show up in jeans? How much money do you think you need to make in order to be comfortable? Would you rather earn more money and work longer hours, or earn less money and have more free time? Do you want to live in a big city, a small town, or a rural area? Are you willing to spend more years in school to earn more money, or would you rather earn less money and be done school faster? What do you want your average day or week to look like? It’s also important to remember that you are allowed to change your mind. You are not married to the first career path that you choose at the age of 19. You are allowed to try something, decide that you don’t like it, and try something else. You can always go back to school, switch your program, or explore another career - it doesn’t matter if you’re 23, 32 or 48 years old, those options will always be there. Life without a safety net is difficult, but it’s not impossible, and student loans are not the end of the world - it’s okay to go into a bit of debt if it will get you closer to where you want to be. 

If you need other advice about living on your own, choosing a career and living within your budget, also recommend that you check out @yournewapartment - it’s a great blog for figuring out the basics of adulting, especially if you don’t have that extra parental support. Best of luck to you!

[bllover4lif]

About Me Tag

Special thanks to @chiefofpigs​ for tagging me!!

The rules are:

1. Tag the person who tagged you

2. Answer the questions

3. Tag 10 people

• How tall are you?

Last time I checked, 5′5 or 5′6. 

And yet, I haven’t grown an inch. 😭😭😭😭😭

• What color and style is your hair?

My hair is a very very VERY dark brown hair, to the point where it looks completely black. For almost a year my hair has been in comb curls but now it’s in 2 stranded twists. Also when my hair is twisted, like it is now, if you look real close, you can see my natural brown highlights.

• What color are your eyes?

My eyes are the same color as my hair, brown but almost black looking.

• Do you wear glasses?

Yes. I’ve had cataracts since I was young, but was never confirmed until the 9th and 10th grade. I had the surgery done on the left one last year in February. And the other one will be done this summer!! Yes, that still means I need glasses.

• Do you wear braces?

No, and thank god I don’t. I don’t want to.

• What’s your fashion sense?

Um... (Laughs shyly) believe it or not, I’m not really sure. I have no real style.

It used to be matching colors. Now it’s more of a dark color scheme, with the few light colored clothes. I almost always wear shorts, pants, or capris. Also, I always wear tennis shoes. I never wear skirts, dresses or anything fancy unless its a special occasion (i.e. dresses for church or a wedding). I hate open-toed shoes, with the exception of wedges and gladiator sandals. And don’t even get me started on makeup. Mainly because I don’t know how to put it on. Also with my eyes, I’d be afraid of making it worse. I do have purses and cute bags though.

(Also, if you were to ask my mom, she would say I’m from ‘Grannyville’ due to not wanting to dress like how most other black girls my age I’ve seen walking around. LMFAO 😂😂😂😂😂)

• Full name?

Jude Asia Morgan

• When were you born?

December 23rd, 1999

And yet, I still feel so old. I wonder why?

• Where are you from and where do you live now?

I was born in Kenner, Louisiana. However, the majority of my family was born in New Orleans, LA. Currently, I live in Baton Rouge, LA. 

• What school do you go to?

I am a freshman (about to be sophomore) at LSU (Louisiana State University), 

• What kind of student are you?

I am a very quiet student who keeps to herself but warms up over time. For some reason, I fear people think I always look angry. I’m also the biggest procrastinator I know. And my mom always tells me not to do that. I stay up until 3 am or even later, even though 3 is my limit. And I always study for tests at the last minute (and for some reason, don’t always fail).

• Do you like school?

Yes. Especially college. I’ve never enjoyed it so much. With more freedom, why not?

• Favorite subject?

Mathematics, but I also love computer and technology subjects as well. I also love reading and writing classes (although my reading comprehension is horrible)

• Favorite TV show?

Don’t really have one. I rarely watch TV much nowadays. I do watch anime though if you count that. Some of my favorites is Cute High Earth Defense Club,  Cute High Earth Defense Club Happy Kiss, Yuri on Ice, and Yona of the Dawn. But ultimately it depends on the genres. I love male sports, male idols, BL, reverse harems, adventure, action, comedy, and supernatural. They also need males leads and not many girls.

• Favorite Movie?

None really. I always fall asleep during a movie, except for a good few. My favorite maybe... Hidden Figures? And maybe The Martian?

• Favorite books?

Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (currently reading)

Micheal Vey series by Richard Paul Evans

Maximum Ride series by James Patterson

Any book by John Green

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (#1 best book in the world, IMO)

*All in all, I am a huge bookworm. I love tons of books. I may start reading Harry Potter soon.

• Favorite pastime?

Well, let’s see. Naps, sleeping, cooking, naps, writing (recently), reading, naps,  playing otomes, drawing 3d cubes (and sucking at it) and more naps!! 

* Yes, I really love naps. 😂😂😂😂😂

•  Do you have any regrets? 

Not really. Maybe I wish I could have worked harder in middle and high school and then maybe I wouldn’t have gone through so much stress and depression at that time.

• Dream Job?

Something with math, like a teacher or an actuary. My ultimate goal is to have a masters or a doctorate in math so I can become a mathematician. Maybe something with computers and technology, like robotics or engineering. I also always wanted to be a chef. So at the moment, who knows?

• Would you ever like to be married?

Of course!! I have my whole future planned out.

• Would you like to have kids?

Yes.

• How many?

I want 5-6 boys and 1 girl.

• Do you like shopping?

Yes and no. It depends on what I’m shopping for. Books, yes. Food, yes (especially at Sam’s and Cosco due to the free samples). Clothes and shoes, I would if my mom wasn’t always complaining about what I choose there.

• What countries have you visited?

None. I have been to other states, such as Tennessee, Texas, Virginia (Washington DC) and a few other southern states. I do wish to travel to Japan, North and South Korea, Nordic countries, and Canada.

• Scariest nightmare you have ever had?

I would say either:

1. One where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton visited my house and threw a party and wouldn’t leave nor let me leave (LMFAO)

2. One where I rode a bike holding a pillow and after waving to 2 of my older brothers, the bike went out of control and started falling and screaming to my death into this deep prison looking ravine (which caused me to fall out of bed)

3. One where I was inside Call of Duty: Black Ops and I was in this area overlooking another one filled with Nova 6. My head is very fuzzy about it, but someone drove a big truck and crashed causing Nova 6 to spread everywhere. Everyone started dying (I blame my brother for this dream). and I woke up crying.

* For those who’ve never played, Nova 6 is a deadly gas that kills anyone within 20 seconds of exposure. You have to have a special suit to walk around in, but if you took too much damage, your suit would crack and you would be exposed. Don’t worry. I don’t think it’s real. 

Now that I’m looking, I would say most likely number 3. I can and l NEVER will forget such horror. 😭😭😭😭😭

• Any enemies?

No. Not that I know of. Maybe my older sister's cat?

• Any significant other?

Not at the moment. I did fall in love with my crush in my senior year of high school. We knew each other since 10th grade. He went to a different school run by the same principal as mine, and he would come over for certain classes. We met on a field trip through a friend, and we confessed on the last day for seniors to be at school. But we broke up days before my graduation, so not even 2 weeks. (Don’t worry. It was just because we didn’t know how to have a long-distance relationship while we were at different colleges and we didn’t want so much stress on us. I’m not upset at all. A little lonely, but not upset.) 

We still talk though. I’m sure he still loves me and after college, we may get back together. Our families accepted us almost immediately, even though they never met us until our graduations. So to answer, yes and no. And currently, my friend from middle school and her family are trying to get me and my crush together. We both love each other so much, but it’s hard to confess our true feelings as we are both very shy. But they already know we are the perfect match.

• Do you believe in miracles?

No, not really. Things just happen.

• How are you?

Very very tired, and very very stressed. I’m going through my last 3 of 8 finals this week and I have to pack and move everything out the dorm by this Saturday. Being a college freshman (a sophomore in August) is a lot of work. But I feel pretty positive that my grades this semester will be much better than last semester.

Not to mention, now that it’s summer, I plan to post my very first Ikerev fanfiction!! Please look forward to it!! 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️

Also, I get to write more (Yay!!) and get more routes to play (Yay!!). I can take as many naps as I want. And I’ll be stress-free!! ... Until next semester when I move into my apartment and start school again. So honestly... I feel really chill. I love my life!! 😍😍😍😍😍😭😭😭😭😭

Tagging: @incorrectikerevquotes, @alloveroliver. @edgarbright, @alloveroliver-ash, @ikemenfics, @ikemensengokufandom, @ikemenrevolution, and whoever else wishes to do this. See you soon!! Bye bye!!

[crispsevans]

Films in 2019

Woah, it’s been a while since I actually wrote some reviews to my seen movies. My current count is at 21/150 for 2019, 12 out of 21 seen in theatre.

filmpage - filmlist - suggest a film

CAN CONTAIN SPOILERS.

Vice (2018)

seen in theatre production country: USA OV: english seen version: german Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carrell Director: Adam McKay Plot summary: The story of Dick Cheney (Bale), an unassuming bureaucratic Washington insider, who quietly wielded immense power as Vice President to George W. Bush (Rockwell), reshaping the country and the globe in ways that we still feel today.

Review: I went to see this one before Oscar night, so I actually have seen most of the nominated movies of the year. 

I don’t know how much of this movie is actually true, but I left the theatre quiet shocked, because somehow most of those things just passed me. It may be, because I was a child when Bush and Cheney ran the US politics, but looking back a lot of it made sense to me. 

Now however much of it is true, it was a very ... entertaining movie. I really love McKay’s style of directing and story telling, also the cinematography and the final cut of the movie were really good. Bale’s performance is outstanding, as always, and I am still mad he didn’t win that Oscar. 

If you’re into political movies this is a Must-See. Rating: 4,5/5

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

seen in theatre production country: USA OV: english seen version: OV Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant Director: Marielle Heller Plot summary: When Lee Israel (McCarthy) falls out of step with current tastes, she turns her art form to deception.

Review: This was part of the Oscar night double feature that I attended.

SUCH A POSTITIVE SURPRISE!!!!

Never heard of Lee Israel before, since this movie is based on her own book. I was so curious to see which role it was that brought McCarthy to her Oscar nomination and I was pleasantly surprised by her performance and also by Richard E. Grants performance in this movie. It was so serious but had so many funny moments - it’s a very authentic piece of film. I loved it a lot and is such an underdog movie. Very entertaining and well played. I also loved the color grading of this film. Rating: 5/5

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

seen in theatre production country: USA OV: english seen version: OV Starring: KiKi Jayne, Stephan James, Regina King Director: Barry Jenkins Plot summary: A woman in Harlem (Jayne) embraces her pregnancy while she and her family struggle to prove her fiancé (James) innocent of a crime.

Review: Also part of the Oscar night double feature.

Very good and very important movie, though I had the feeling it could’ve been a little shorter. I have not read the book this film is based on so I cannot judge how good the adaption actually is, but I enjoyed watching it. Some serious issues are talked about in this movie, but at the same time it has so much love in it. Also a lot of naivety, but that’s probably because of the age of the protagonists. Rating: 4/5

Anon (2018)

streamed on Amazon Prime Germany production country: USA / Canada / Germany OV: english seen version: OV Starring: Clive Owen, Amanda Seyfried Director: Andrew Niccol Plot summary: In a world without anonymity or crime, a detective (Owen) meets a woman (Seyfried) who threatens their security.

Review: I still don’t really know what to think about this one to be honest. It was part of the 99ct-Prime Deals over here in Germany and I’m usually really into futuristic movies like this, e.g. I loved “In Time”, which was also directed by Niccol and the reason I really wanted to see this one.

The entire atmosphere of this film was very dark and mysterious. I don’t really know if I understood the movie right, to be honest, not because I don’t know what they’re saying in the movie but some scenes were kind of a mystery to me.  Rating: 3/5

Isn’t It Romantic? (2019)

streamed on Netflix Germany production country: USA OV: english seen version: OV Starring: Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth, Adam Devine Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson Plot summary: A young woman (Wilson) disenchanted with love mysteriously finds herself trapped inside a romantic comedy.

Review: I had high hopes for this one (I love romcoms), but I was let down completely. It was over the top, tried to be super funny when it actually wasn’t and I just sincerely didn’t like it very well. Poorly written, I’m sorry.

I loved the fashion of the movie though and another plus for Rebel Wilson and Liam Hemsworth, because I love them anyway.

Rating: 2,5/5

Captain Marvel (2019)

seen in theatre (twice, soon thrice) production country: USA / Australia OV: english seen version: german Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck Plot summary: Carol Danvers (Larson) becomes one of the universe's most powerful heroes when Earth is caught in the middle of a galactic war between two alien races.

Review: SALTY AF AND I FREAKING LOVED IT.

I can see why so many men dislike this movie, but I loved it so much, because it’s so salty and Carol is the hero we deserve. Here we go, new strongest avenger. Who’s Thor and who’s Hulk? HAVE YOU SEEN CAROL FLYING THROUGH SPACEEEEEE????

Loved the message of this film so much, probably my most favourite Marvel movie with Black Panther. Higher, Further, Faster BABY.  Carol as a character is a very strong woman, not giving up ever since her childhood. Very inspiring character and character development.

I had literally zero expectations, because I really disliked the trailers. They don’t do this film justice. If I wasn’t into the MCU already, I wouldn’t have joined after seeing those trailers. But what a shame it would’ve been, if I hadn’t seen it.  Shoutout to my friend to paid my ticket the first time and went to see it with me again like two days later lol. Yes, I saw it two times already and I plan to see it a third time in OV - can’t wait for that one.

Also Goose is the best thing about this movie. 

Midway through the film I saw the twist coming, though, but I really liked it. Would I see it again? A billion times yes. Rating: 5/5

The Imitation Game (2014)

streamed on Amazon Prime Germany production country: USA / UK OV: english seen version: OV Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Mark Strong Director: Morten Tyldum Plot summary: During World War II, the English mathematical genius Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) tries to crack the German Enigma code with help from fellow mathematicians.

Review: I missed seeing this one back in 2014 when it hit theatres. So I was very happy when it was part of the 99ct Prime Deals and I got it immediately. I wasn’t let down, what a great movie. I did a little research and even though the movie is different to Turing’s actual biography written by Andrew Hodges, I really liked it a lot and Cumberbatch’s performance is really amazing. His portrayal of Turing came across as very authentic and believable. 

Cracking a code is really a thing of impossibility for me so it was very interesting to see the process of cracking Enigma. Turing’s legacy still lives on ‘til this day with every new computer that is build - we really owe him a lot. It makes me sad to have found out he most likely committed suicide after his hormonal ‘therapy’ that he had to go through. 

Very touching.

Rating: 4/5

Monsieur Claude 2 (2019)

seen in theatre production country: France OV: french seen version: german Starring: Christian Clavier, Chantal Lauby Director: Philippe de Chauveron Plot summary: Claude (Clavier) and Marie Verneuil (Lauby) face a new crisis. The four spouses of their daughters, David, Rachid, Chao and Charles decided to leave France for various reasons. Here they are imagining their lives elsewhere.

Review: Sneak monday, luckily we only paid 2,50€ this time. 

This film is a disaster, building up on ‘humor’ that is based on homophobia, sexism, racism and many other bad things. I did laugh, but not because I thought it was funny, but because there was so much reality in it that I used the laughing as a way to cover up my disbelief in this. 

If people seriously think this is funny then I don’t know what’s wrong with them, I’m sorry. I don’t know if the intention of the movie was to actually show people how stupid it is to be THIS political incorrect or if they were actually thinking this is genuinely funny. However, just don’t watch it - it’s a waste of time.

Half of a point for the beautiful french countryside shots and the whole location setting plus the fashion in this movie. 

Rating: 0,5/5

[sciencespies]

Covid Test Maker Cue Health Goes Public At $2.3 Billion Valuation As Demand Surges

https://sciencespies.com/news/covid-test-maker-cue-health-goes-public-at-2-3-billion-valuation-as-demand-surges/

Covid Test Maker Cue Health Goes Public At $2.3 Billion Valuation As Demand Surges

Covid-19 test maker Cue Health went public on Friday at a valuation of nearly $2.3 billion. Shares opened above the $16 price set the night before and closed at $20—a 25% increase in the first day of trading. The San Diego, California-based company’s Covid-19 test—which consists of a swab, test cartridge and battery-operated reusable reader about the size of a smartphone—delivers test results in around 20 minutes and automatically uploads them to a mobile app. It’s used by a wide array of customers, including the Mayo Clinic, the Pentagon and even the Iditarod race in Alaska.

“The company is very mission driven. We want to make healthcare information more accessible,” says cofounder and CEO, Ayub Khattak. Access to Covid-19 tests has been an ongoing issue throughout the pandemic. And Cue’s IPO comes as the CDC has warned of a temporary shortage of point-of-care and over-the-counter Covid-19 tests this week as the delta variant continues to increase case counts. Cue estimates the broader Covid-19 point-of-care market, meaning rapid tests administered by qualified medical professionals, to reach approximately $12 billion in 2021, according to its S-1 filing. On average, the company is manufacturing around 43,000 Covid-19 test kits daily.

While most other authorized at-home tests are antigen-based, meaning they test for the presence of a viral protein, Cue’s test is molecular. It tests for the presence of viral RNA, which means it can detect smaller amounts of the virus in a person’s system and provides more accurate test results in line with PCR tests, the “gold standard” of diagnostics. A study conducted by the Mayo Clinic found Cue’s test results to agree with PCR tests over 92% of the time in detecting Covid and over 98% of the time in coming to a negative result. Cue’s tests are authorized for use by both symptomatic and asymptomatic people and for anyone age 2 years and older. 

Khattak, 36, and cofounder and chief product officer Clint Sever, 36, met more than a decade ago when Sever moved into the house next door in Los Angeles. Khattak, a mathematics major who worked in a biochemistry lab during undergrad at UCLA and Sever, who studied retail and consumer science at the University of Arizona, began talking about the swine flu pandemic, which was gripping the world at the time. It had parallels to the Covid-19 pandemic with people quarantined aboard cruise ships and emergency rooms being inundated. “It became pretty evident that there was a missing piece to the way that healthcare worked, which is, why is it so difficult to get diagnostic information?” recalls Khattak. “And so the solution in our mind was a really easy-to-use product that would be accurate and would be connected to the mobile phone. And then you could really make a difference in how people get information.”

Cue has five other test kits in late-stage development: flu, RSV, fertility, pregnancy and inflammation biomarkers.

The company, founded in 2010, was originally focused on rapid portable flu tests and was testing Cue’s technology in clinical trials when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Cue quickly shifted gears and spun up a Covid-19 test, receiving emergency use authorization from the FDA for its point-of-care test in June 2020. The company had already been working with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA, on its flu test, and entered into a $481 million contract with the US. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to deliver 6 million Covid-19 test kits and 30,000 readers. In March 2021, Cue received FDA emergency use authorization for at-home use. The test is also authorized in Canada for both uses, and in India and the European Union for professional use. Cue has 49 customers, including the government, large employers, health systems and doctor’s offices. The company plans to sell tests directly to consumers on its website in the fourth quarter, says Khattak.

The FDA authorizations, combined with the Department of Defense contract, helped boost Cue’s revenues from a net loss of $20.6 million on $23 million in revenue in 2020 to net income of $32.8 million on $202 million in revenue in the first six months of 2021. Following the IPO, Forbes estimates Khattak’s 10.6 million shares and options to be worth $226 million and Sever’s 2.7 million shares and options to be worth $121.2 million.

The IPO will generate around $200 million in proceeds, which Khattak says will go to what he calls “menu expansion.” One of the biggest benefits of the cartridge technology is that Cue users will be able to use the same reader to swap out for different tests once they hit the market. Right now Cue has five other test kits in late-stage development, which the company expects to begin submitting for FDA clearance in the second half of 2022: flu, RSV, fertility, pregnancy and inflammation biomarkers that could indicate risk of heart disease or chronic conditions. The company is starting clinical trials for flu and RSV in the near-term. And beyond the nasal swab, it will also be able to take blood, urine and plasma samples. “It’s got great range, which is what really gives it a big future,” says Khattak.

The huge ramp up in production has also resulted in a massive investment in hiring talent. Cue went from 100 people in early 2020 to around 1,250 employees today. “People see the longer term vision,” says Khattak, “which is that we can help make a difference in how healthcare is delivered by having connected lab-quality diagnostics in the home, and in the point-of-care, so that people can get information quickly and then act on it.”

#News

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Thistle

The Daily Thistle – News From Scotland

Wednesday 4th July 2018

"Madainn Mhath” …Fellow Scot, I hope the day brings joy to you…. A very Happy 4th July to all our American reader, today is Independence Day … Independence Day or not, Bella still needs a walk first thing, so we set off under a star filled sky.. the hustle and bustle that is in Estepona in the day time, vanishes in the early hours of the morning and she and I are almost alone as we walk through the town, the odd cat or stray dog can be seen, along with a few cars driving to I have no idea, the trash truck driver toots his horn and he waves as he takes another load of plastic bags to the dump, we arrive at the ocean, almost stationary, just the occasional small wave washing up on the sands, we turn for home, me thinking about the man that had a country named after him that he never even discovered or saw for that matter, Amerigo Vespucci….

HOW DO YOU KEEP A POLAR BEAR CUB COOL IN 30C HEAT?....Measures have been taken to keep a polar bear cub cool after temperatures rose to more than 30C in Scotland. Six-month-old Hamish shares an enclosure with his mother Victoria at the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, near Aviemore. While Victoria knows how to keep herself cool, park staff were concerned the cub would not. As a result, during the day they have had to stay in a shaded area which is not visible to visitors. They have also been given blocks of ice with treats, such as pieces of fruit, frozen inside. In the evening, when it is cooler, the pair have been able to enter the rest of their enclosure.The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland-run park's two adult male bears, Arktos and Walker, have been cooling off in a pond in their enclosure. They have also been given treat-filled ice blocks. During a previous spell of hot weather, park staff said polar bears can experience high summer temperatures in areas of their natural habitat in Canada. Earlier this week, temperatures in Aviemore exceeded 30C. The high temperatures have also been felt widely across the UK, and polar bears at Doncaster's Yorkshire Wildlife Park also sought out the cool of a pond in their enclosure during the hottest periods of the past few days.

DUNDEE PENGUIN SCULPTURES IN POSITION FOR CHARITY PARADE…. A penguin parade of 80 individually-designed sculptures has gone on display in Tayside and Fife as part of a 10-week charity art trail. The 5ft-tall penguins have been designed by local artists with designs ranging from golfers to footballers. The trail, in aid of cancer charity Maggie's, follows on from 2016's Oor Wullie Bucket Trail which raised nearly £900,000 for a children's charity. A map, app and sticker book can be used to help people find the penguins. The sculptures will be auctioned at the V&A in September. The penguins can be spotted across Dundee as well as in Broughty Ferry, St Andrews, Newport on Tay, Perth, Kirriemuir and Brechin. The organisers of the trail are encouraging people to upload photos while posing with the penguins. Maps can be collected from locations across the city, including Discovery Point and the VisitScotland tourist information office in Dundee City Square. Penguin artist and Maggie's Art co-ordinator Suzanne Scott worked closely with students from Abertay University to develop a unique app feature for her "Maggie and Fleur" penguin positioned outside the university's library. Ms Scott said: "The augmented reality app brings to life the theme of family and exploring Dundee's hidden gems, gardens and green spaces." Famous faces such as Judy Murray, Simple Minds and Lorraine Kelly have also been involved in designing or sponsoring a penguin. Designs have been inspired by things like the history of Dundee and climate change - others involve Star Wars, pirates and sporting heroes. Maggie's Dundee centre fundraising manager Annie Long said: "It's wonderful to have our penguins in place and ready to be enjoyed by people from across the Dundee area and hopefully far beyond. "Maggie's relies almost entirely on voluntary donations to support people to live well with cancer, and while I know our penguins will raise a tremendous amount for Maggie's Dundee, what's so lovely is that the whole project has perfectly echoed the warmth and togetherness of a Maggie's Centre. "I know people will love them - they certainly never fail to make me smile!" (See pictures at The land Called Scotland https://www.facebook.com/groups/LandCalledScotland/ )

'WORLD'S FATTEST HEDGEHOG' PLACED ON DIET AND EXERCISE REGIME…. A hedgehog which it is thought could be the world's fattest has been placed on a strict diet and exercise regime. Weighing in at 2.335kg (5lbs) - about four times the size of a normal hedgehog - it was handed in to a rescue centre in Aberdeenshire. Now named Arbuckle, the hedgehog could barely walk or form a defensive ball. Keith Marley, of The New Arc Animal Rescue Centre, near Ellon, said: "He's about the size of a World Cup football, after overfeeding." Mr Marley said it was the heaviest hedgehog they could find a record of. He told the BBC Scotland news website: "We were really surprised by his size and weight, as the average is about 600g. "The person who contacted us said he was feeding hedgehogs but this one stayed and refused to go - this may well have been due to the fact he could hardly walk. "He will be fed a restricted diet which is filling, and scatter his food around for exercise. It will be a long, gradual process."

RABBIT FOUND UNDER BONNET DURING MOT…. A mechanic carrying out an MoT found something unexpected under the bonnet - a live rabbit. The car was being worked on at Newburgh Motors in Aberdeenshire when Dave Gordon saw something white behind the front grill. He assumed the driver had hit something, but then it started moving. The rabbit was rescued from under the bonnet, taken to a vet for a health check, and is now being cared for at Mr Gordon's home. He told the BBC Scotland news website: "I had put the Vauxhall Corsa up on the ramp, and noticed a white flash. "I thought they had hit something, until I saw it moving. "I got the rabbit out - I have never seen that happen before - and then took it to the vet after work. It didn't have a chip." He added: "We contacted the car owner who said there are sometimes wild rabbits in her garden but we just don't know if it's a house rabbit or a wild one. "It's now at my house with my other half spoiling it until we find an owner. "My dog Cooper isn't sure what to think."

SEABIRDS FOLLOWING OF FISHING BOATS STUDIED IN SCOTLAND…. Scientists have studied seabirds' following of fishing boats in Scotland to develop a system for the analysis of foraging trips by animals. The researchers applied their modelling framework to GPS tracked fulmars that hunt for fish around Orkney and off Scotland's north mainland coast. They were able to identify occasions when birds switched from foraging to following a boat. Fulmars did this to find the same fish as the trawlers or pick up discards. The birds were found to spend as little as 10 minutes to more than seven hours interacting with fishing boats. In a new research article for the Journal of Animal Ecology, the scientists said the framework could be applied to other animals that might switch from foraging to heading towards human activity that may offer the chance of a meal. Scientists from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Washington State University, University of Aberdeen's Lighthouse Field Station in Cromarty and Marine Scotland worked on the study.

On that note I will say that I hope you have enjoyed the news from Scotland today,

Our look at Scotland today is of Hamish enjoying himself….

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Wednesday 4th July 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #Scotland #Bear #Travel #News #Blog #Love

[gduncan969]

Buying a Stamp Under Modern Monetary Theory

Isaiah 55:1-3a “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat.  Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy?  Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me.  Hear, and your soul shall live;..”

My last blog described how the Marxist-based ���Critical Race Theory” is permeating every nook and cranny of western culture including politics, academia, institutions, churches and large corporations and how it is radically altering our view of white society, accusing it of widespread systemic racism and white supremacy.  In its wake, woke-ism and cancel culture are becoming mainstream and demanding that the white races make amends for the injustices our supposed racism has inflicted on people of colour and these amends must include financial compensation along with fundamental changes to what we teach in our schools, who we hire in our industries, how we police our societies and how we are governed.  This, in itself, is nothing more than racism against whites in our western, multi-racial societies.  Other branches of the more general Critical Theory are spreading their poison into science and mathematics as seen in several US states who are encouraging their teachers to correct the white supremacy that they say exists in the teaching of mathematics where students are being asked to “show their work” to explain their (wrong) answers rather than being given what Critical Race Theory demands: an opportunity to explain either verbally or through multimedia projects, not using words or numbers, how they arrived at the wrong answer to the question— and by the way,  there are no “wrong” answers!  Allowing Critical Theory to advance unhindered will inevitably see the bible banned as “hate literature” because it places responsibility for wrong-doing on the individual, not the society and also for what it clearly says about abortion, marriage, homosexuality, gender identity and the many other currently promoted immoral behaviours.

What is “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT)?

I am no expert on money-management or economic theories but like most of us, I have watched governments spend themselves into oblivion and have asked myself where is all this money coming from to finance their largesse, most of which seems to have more to do with getting re-elected than their globalist slogan of “build back better”?  While Critical Theory seeks to destroy the biblical foundations on which Canadian and other western societies are founded there’s another theory, much less known to most, that is equally undermining these foundations, one that is being widely adopted among the richest nations in the world: “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT).  MMT is revolutionizing how national governments treat government debt and it does so by a sleight-of-hand mechanism that is both complex and confusing to the rest of us who earn our living by paying our way.  All of us raised in responsible families learned from an early age that you can’t continue to spend money you don’t have.  At some point the borrowing has to end and the debt has to be repaid or serious consequences will result such as bankruptcy and the repossession of all your goods, house included!  That threat keeps most borrowers very careful about how much debt they are willing to take on and how much monthly payment they are willing to live with based on their income.  Sadly, we have all assumed  our governments think likewise but under MMT that is no longer the case.  

News media have been warning us for years that our national debt is climbing into the stratosphere and is unsustainable.  Currently for Canada, it sits at $2.43 trillion dollars ($2,434,000,000,000) or $64,087 per man, woman and child—and it is still growing!  In the US, the national debt is at least $24 trillion and is also still growing.  How can this be and how will it ever be repaid?   To understand how any government can spend trillions of dollars they don’t have on social programs they can’t afford when they are already up to their eyeballs in debt, the answer is MMT.  MMT explains where all this extra money comes from but doesn’t explain how will it be repaid without having to tax the people to death? MMT’s answer is simple: governments can print the money they want to spend! To the layman’s eye—and that’s you and me—that’s all there is to it, they throw a switch in the printing room and the money rolls of the presses in beautiful sheets of brand new bills ready to be used to pay for all those new social programs they promised their voters.  Of course, it’s not that simple but how can they possibly get away with this without incurring the same devastating results that befell, for instance, Germany after World War I.  Like many countries before and since, they tried to print their way out of debt but failed miserably and the currency collapsed as the picture above shows, a 200 pfennig postage stamp, originally costing about two deutschmarks, cost 2 million marks after the collapse!  My father visited Germany in the 1930's and told me he could have lived for a month trading the 200 cigarettes he purchased on the ferry crossing the English Channel!  Cigarettes were much more valuable than deutschmarks! Germany ultimately found a solution to its woes in a man called Adolf Hitler and the way the world economy is headed, the world’s solution will be the anti-Christ!  Today, hyperinflation and collapsed currencies continue to ravage bankrupt economies in places like Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Lebanon but why is it their printing presses failed while those in the rich nations continue to succeed?  What is the secret to their success?

Like Critical Theory, MMT is a socialist-based approach to economics and unsurprisingly, its current leading figure in the USA is Stephanie Kelton who served as Bernie Sanders’ chief economic adviser in the last US election.  If you Google the term MMT, it explains the theory as follows (I’ve added some explanations for the terms used):

“MMT is a heterodox (meaning “not conforming with orthodox standards or beliefs”—Christians take note!) macroeconomic (country-wide) framework that says sovereign countries who control their own currencies like the U.S., Canada and others which spend, tax, and borrow in their own fiat currencies (meaning “a government-controlled currency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold and not operationally constrained by revenues when it comes to federal government spending”).”  

Are you now scratching your head and utterly confused?  Then to put it simply, “such governments do not rely on taxes or borrowing for spending since they can print as much as they need since they are the only issuers of their currency. Since their budgets aren't like yours and mine, their policies need not be shaped by fears of rising national debt.”  This is A PERFECT DESCRIPTION OF WHAT IS NOW HAPPENING IN CANADA AND AMONG THE G7 NATIONS.  “MMT challenges conventional beliefs about the way the government interacts with the economy, the nature of money, the use of taxes, and the significance of budget deficits. These conventional beliefs, critics say, are a hangover from the gold standard era and are no longer accurate, useful, or necessary.  MMT is used to argue for such progressive legislation as universal guaranteed income, universal healthcare in the US and other globalist programs for which governments claim to not have enough money to fund.”  These governments are the ones calling for “the great global reset” which will banish money as we know it and replace it with digits in a government-controlled memory bank in the cashless society we are headed into.  MMT says governments should not worry about not having the money, all they need to do is print more of it!

Core Principles

“The central idea of MMT is that governments with a government controlled (fiat) currency can and should print (or create with a few keystrokes in today's digital age) as much money as they need to spend because they cannot go broke or be insolvent unless a political decision to do so is taken.  Some say such spending would be fiscally irresponsible as the debt would balloon and inflation would skyrocket but according to MMT, large government debt isn't the precursor to collapse we have been led to believe it is (but of course this has not been proven).  Countries like the U.S. can sustain much greater deficits without cause for concern and small deficits or surpluses can be extremely harmful and cause a recession since deficit spending is what builds people's savings.  MMT theorists explain that debt is simply money the government put into the economy and didn't take back in taxes. They also argue that comparing a government's budgets to that of an average household is a mistake.”  If alarm bells are now ringing loud in your head you are not alone but it only gets worse.

Google further adds: “While supporters of MMT acknowledge that runaway inflation is theoretically a possible outcome from such spending, they say it is highly unlikely and can be fought with policy decisions in the future if required. They often cite the example of Japan, which has much higher public debt than the U.S.  According to MMT, the only limit the government has when it comes to spending is the availability of real resources, like workers, construction supplies, etc.  When government spending is too great with respect to the resources available, inflation can surge if decision-makers are not careful (in other words, if the government pushes too much printed money into the economy and there aren’t enough resources available to spend it on, then the price of those that are available will inflate.  The MMT cure for this is to increase taxes).  Taxes create an ongoing demand for currency and are a tool to take money out of an economy that is getting overheated. This goes against the conventional idea that taxes are primarily meant to provide the government with money to spend to build infrastructure, fund social welfare programs, etc.  "What happens if you were to go to your local IRS office to pay your taxes with actual cash?," wrote MMT pioneer Warren Mosler in his book “The 7 Deadly Frauds of Economic Policy?”. "First, you would hand over your pile of currency to the person on duty as payment. Next, they’d count it, give you a receipt and, hopefully, a thank you for helping to pay for social security, interest on the national debt, and the Iraq war. Then, after you, the taxpayer, left the room, they’d take that hard-earned paper cash you just forked over and throw it in a shredder!"  (Why? Because they have nice, clean new bills they’ve just printed.)  According to MMT, unemployment is the result of government spending too little while collecting taxes. It says those looking for work and unable to find a job in the private sector should be given minimum-wage, “transition jobs” funded by the government and managed by the local community.  This is exactly how President Biden is going to run the American economy.  The unemployed would act as a buffer stock in order to help the government control inflation in the economy.”  Does this sound all too familiar?  If you have been listening to our own Prime Minister or President Biden you might begin to understand where all the money has come from to pay for the pandemic pay-outs and the latest $4 Trillion “infrastructure program” in the US—they are simply printing it!

What’s Wrong With All of This?

The fatal flaw in MMT is the lack of any EXTERNAL standard of value which can be used to measure the relative value of each nation’s currency against that standard.  Historically, the external standard was gold and countries could not print paper money unless they had an equivalent amount in gold held in reserve but in 1972 Richard Nixon removed America from the gold standard and freed the US dollar to rise and fall as the world demand determined.  The result and because America was the richest economy in the world was that the American dollar became the new world standard to which all other currencies are compared including the Canadian dollar which dropped from par in 1972 to a level of around 61 US cents before climbing back to around 80 cents today.  The British pound dropped from around $2.75 to its current level of $1.37.  However, the price of gold climbed from $35.00 per ounce to today’s astounding price of US $1735.00 per ounce, clearly indicating gold remains highly trusted as a physical substance of value among the people of the world who refuse to put their trust in digital blips on a computer screen telling them how many dollars it says they possess.  The other result is that the US government is now free to print as many trillions of dollars as it wishes because it owns the world standard but watch out, China will soon reach a position to challenge this and potentially collapse the dollar with horrendous consequences for the western economies.

What Does the Bible Say?

If all of the above has you confused and anxious about your financial future, there’s good news: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4) and “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38).  We are not called to rely on our bank accounts for our sustenance but on our God who is “faithful and true” (Revelation 19:11) and who “will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5) but we had better learn fast what living by faith means before MMT destroys our economies.  Jesus never relied on money to accomplish his mission because he never had any and the one time he needed some, he sent Peter fishing to fetch it out of a fish’s mouth.  Peter and John didn’t rely on it either and told the crippled man at the gate “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Matthew 17:27).  How’s your “such” and how’s mine and does it compare with Peter’s?  Isaiah 55:1-3a tells us where our supply is and how much money it will cost us: “Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”  The “waters” God calls us to are the waters of the Holy Spirit (John 7:38) that Jesus told us would flow out of everyone who believes in Him.  All who have placed their trust in Him have the well of the Holy Spirit within them but many need to pull out the stopper of the natural mind and its worldly thinking that seals the well and allow the Holy Spirit to flow out through them as rivers of living water to provide for themselves, their families and the world around them all that God has promised them.

The question we all need to answer as we face the worst potential economic crash in history is how well have we learned to live by faith and not by sight? How far can we go if we have no money?  If our faith is in our bank account or in our government, where then is the Lord Jesus in our scheme of things?  Is he simply our “reserve currency” that we keep hidden away just in case or is he the supplier of every need, the author and finisher of our faith?  We are entering a time when these scriptures cannot be just words on a page but an every day experience as we learn to walk by faith and not by sight. These verses are commands to LIVE by, not just words to be remembered and my sense of where the world economy is headed tells me we had better start practicing them before it is too late.  I don’t for a moment understand all the intricacies of MMT but one look at who started it (Karl Marx), who is pushing it (Bernie Sanders) and the socialist governments that are applying it (Biden) convinces me we are heading into the final days when a quart of wheat or three quarts of barley will cost a day’s wage (Revelation 6:6).  Only those practiced in walking by faith will survive so let’s start practicing.