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ggukcangetit · 4 years

Text

Dreamcatchers 6

Pairing: jungkook x oc

Summary: DI Jeon didn’t need a new partner. Unfortunately, his superiors felt otherwise; especially considering the extremely high-profile murder that had just taken place in the port city. Recent transfer, DI Choi Yuri finds herself confronted with a new cityscape, unfamiliar people, a hostile partner, and a homicide that is certain to bring back unpleasant memories.

Genre/AU: fluff/action/mystery | detective! au | police!jungkook, police!oc

Word Count: 5.2k

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: mentions of violence, alcohol, blood, drugs, death. basically stuff you’d associate with a murder mystery/crime drama.

Chapters 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

A/N: it’s been a while since i posted and even longer since i updated this fic but its still here and so am i! lol. updates are not gonna be very frequent but i have a list of works in progress that i plan to finish so there will be something or the other being posted at the most random moments.

also, reminding everyone that this story features a named oc because i’m still very unfamiliar with writing second person reader inserts. i’m not aiming for strict accuracy in this story, and all criminal investigation/forensics knowledge i have has been gathered by watching crime drama/procedural dramas! my knowledge of geography is also not totally accurate so apologies for that. once again, one thing right by @hobios prompted me to write a police inspector! jungkook story. would highly recommend reading that because it’s probably one of my most favorite pieces of writing!

21st December

"Is this how you conduct a sample analysis?! Where did you even train? I've half a mind to report you and get you kicked out!!"

Yuri stopped at her desk, surprised to hear Seulgi's yelling so loudly that she could be heard all the way from the floor above. She was usually extremely calm and even-tempered, but the past couple of days had seen her irritable, snappy, and downright furious.

"Dr. Ahn sounds really angry," whispered Jisoo, clutching a file close to her chest. "I've never heard her yell at anybody before. I hope she's okay."

"I'm sure everything's fine," said Jeon, walking over to his desk and dropping a bunch of files on it. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

Yuri raised an eyebrow at him, but complied nonetheless. They walked outside, standing near a clump of trees outside of earshot of anyone in the station.

"Guess who I've just brought in on suspicion of murder for the 2nd Nov case?" he asked, lowering his voice.

"No!" gasped Yuri. "Minhyuk?"

"Yep. He's been in the country for a while now. Fancy giving me a hand with the interview?"

"Me? I mean," she bit her lip. "I wasn't part of the original investigation."

"I know, but in light of what you've found out and the fact that you're now my partner, Goh thinks it's okay."

"You told Goh?!"

"I had to. I can't restart the investigation without his permission."

Jeon stared at her for a few moments, trying to gauge her reaction. "So, what do you say?"

"Alright. Let's nail this bastard."

Ahreum was late. She had a meeting with one of her professors to decide on which medical stream she'd specialize in. Despite using forensics as an excuse to distract Seulgi, she was seriously considering it now. Deciding to pursue medicine had been a drastic career switch for Ahreum, and a lot of people had questioned her decision relentlessly. But if there was something she had learnt in the years following her parents' divorce, it was patience and the ability to block out irrelevant conversations. Namjoon had always been immersed in his studies, barely affected by the bitterness existing between their parents. Ahreum, barely in high school, felt lost and helpless during those times. After the divorce, things had become less tumultuous and she was able to see her parents as individual entities. That was when she realized that her father was never going to like any of her decisions, no matter how hard she tried to please him, and her mother preferred to stay aloof at the best of times. Ahreum learnt pretty early in life, that she needed to be there for herself. She loved her brother and parents, though the latter a lot less than the former. Her decision to study English Literature and Creative Writing had been a spur of the moment one - dictated more by the fact that her high school boyfriend was going to study at a major Arts university. She didn't really regret any of her decisions. Her degree had led her to finding a hobby she adored - photography. And having a freelance job meant that she could stay with Namjoon - who earned a significantly larger amount than her - and move whenever he needed to move as well. This was also how she had met Taehyung 3 years ago - a happy coincidence of events when she had been taking pictures outside the museum at Seoul. They had started talking about art and photography, eventually realizing that they lived in the same part of the city. In addition to Yuri, she also considered Taehyung to be her best friend. She had seen him during one of his lowest moments when Seokjin had left home; and then some time later when he had found Seokjin living in the town Ahreum and Namjoon had recently shifted to, she had stayed by him as he grappled with his anger and frustration towards his older brother until an eventual reconciliation.

But at this moment, she was beginning to lose patience with him. Five minutes before she was about to leave for her meeting, she received a bunch of frantic texts from him.

8.25 am

T: ahreum?? are u up??

T: jimins still in custody

T: im so worried

8.26 am

T: u there?

T: i want to visit him...

T: will u come with me?

8.27 am

T: hey

T: ???

T: i didnt sleep much so i dont wanna drive there

8.28 am

T: are u sleeping?

T: ???

He knew she had a meeting today. He knew how important the meeting was for her. She had spoken about it many times. Not for the first time, Ahreum wondered whether Taehyung cared about her beyond what directly concerned him. If it wasn't somehow relevant to him, he never seemed to remember much. It was a careless apathy that had hurt her during the beginning of their friendship, but she had accepted it as a part of him.

Her meeting was at 9 am and she usually needed 20 minutes to get there on her bike. She closed her eyes and mentally rehearsed the points she was going to bring up during her meeting. Her phone pinged once more, breaking her concentration.

8.30 am

T: hey

T: can u pick me up?

She frowned and shot a quick text before pocketing her phone and strapping on her helmet.

A: sorry have a meeting... talk later

As Ahreum sped through the narrow lanes, she was convinced that there was no way she was going to talk to Taehyung today. He would have to manage on his own for once.

Yuri and Jeon sat across from a very nervous Park Minhyuk, his bloodshot eyes indicating that he had been brought in after a rough night.

"Good morning." Jeon began the interview, his notes stacked neatly in front of him. "You were very hard to get a hold of, Mr. Park. Specifically because your company categorically states that you've been out of the country for business."

"I-" His face was white as a sheet.

"When we called your office, we were told that you are often out of the country on business trips. Short trips," Jeon flipped through his notes. "A fortnight, 20 days at max. Your secretary was very obliging - he told us that you traveled on October 12th and returned on October 27th. Then left the country again on November 1st and returned on November 16th. Another trip between November 22nd and December 6th. And finally, one more on December 10th from which you still haven't returned."

"Your phone records are very interesting, Mr. Park," said Yuri, joining in. "I'm DI Choi, by the way, and I will be assisting DI Jeon as his partner on the case. Now -" she opened the file in front of her and took out a particular page - "is this your cell phone number?"

"Yes, but-"

"Our Telecomms division looked over recent activity over the last 3-4 months. While your office confirms that you have been on multiple trips out of the country from October onwards, your phone has been operating in Korea for almost two months. Can you tell us why?"

Minhyuk remained silent, his hands clenched on the table.

"Do you recognize this?" Yuri placed a plastic bag on the table and moved it towards him.

The remaining color drained from Minhyuk's face as he stared at the ring inside the plastic bag.

"Let me help you out, Mr. Park," she continued. "This is an heirloom from your mother's side of the family. There was three such rings - one buried with your mother, one on your brother's finger, and one found at the scene of Son Eunbi's murder. Can you tell us how your ring found its way to a murder scene?"

"I didn't kill her!" Minhyuk looked like he was going to pass out. Jeon poured some water into a glass and passed it to him.

"She was dead when I got there!" he said after gulping down the water. His hands were shaking by this point.

"If she was dead when you got there, why didn't you call the police?"

"I..."

Faced with a possible murder charge, Minhyuk looked frightened but not nearly as forthcoming with an alibi as one would have hoped.

"Mr. Park," Yuri spoke after a period of silence. "Did you know that Ms. Son had a three year old daughter named Gina?"

Minhyuk gulped, his eyes breaking contact with hers. He removed his hands from where they had been clenched on the table, choosing to hide them in his lap.

"Are you Gina's father?" she continued. Minhyuk head shot up at her question.

"H-how did-"

"When did you find out?" she asked.

Minhyuk sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "I guess there's no point in denying it since you know everything." He reached out and finished the remaining water in the glass. "In October, after I came back from a trip, I happened to meet her by chance and Gina was with her. It was odd, the way that she tried to avoid talking to me. And the fact that Gina also had clear grey eyes."

For the first time since the interview started, Yuri realised the resemblance between the Park brothers was limited but striking. Their eyes were the exact same shade of grey - while Jimin looked cold and unwelcoming, Minhyuk's glasses did well to give him a warmer appearance.

"I asked her why she hadn't contacted me when she got pregnant. Or in the three years since Gina was born."

"What did she say?" asked Yuri, softly.

"She was scared that I wouldn't believe her." Tears had started to roll down his cheeks. "I loved her... so much. And then she just disappeared one day. I tried so hard to find her but..."

Jeon poured another glass of water for him.

"I told her how happy I was to hear about Gina. That I wanted us to be a proper family. I was willing to do whatever was necessary if that's what she wanted as well. I think she was beginning to warm up to the idea. I even told my father to postpone my next trip so that I could spend a little more time with both of them. But-"

"But?"

Minhyuk stared at his hands, looking tired and dejected. "He - uh, he wasn't happy when he heard about Gina. My father has very particular expectations."

"What did he say to you? Did he threaten you, Mr. Park?"

Minhyuk let out a soft chuckle. "My father doesn't threaten. He suggests."

"And what did he suggest you do about Gina and Eunbi?" asked Jeon.

"That I stay away from them. For the sake of my inheritance."

"And did you?"

"I was planning to... I-I was meant to travel the next day and I thought I would go and see her once more before I left. But when I got there..."

Minhyuk covered his face with his hands, taking deep breaths to try and calm himself.

"What happened when you got there, Mr. Park?"

"She was lying there... in a pool of blood. Gina was asleep in the back. I-I didn't kill her. You have to believe me."

Yuri and Jeon exchanged a quick look as Minhyuk protested his innocence. They were aware that the homeless man had killed Son Eunbi. The DNA found at the crime scene confirmed the fact that he had stabbed her. But they needed Minhyuk to give them as much information as possible.

"I'm afraid we do not conduct our investigations based on belief, Mr. Park," continued Yuri, shuffling her notes meaningfully. "You still haven't provided us with an alibi for that night. Strange thing - the Park family seem to have a particular aversion towards providing alibis. Your brother was also extremely resistant when we spoke to him."

"You spoke to Jimin? What for?" Minhyuk's expression had changed completely. He looked strangely alert.

"I guess you aren't aware that Jimin was arrested for the murder of Kang Eunwoo on December 15th." Jeon spoke deliberately, hoping to elicit a reaction. And he was successful.

"What?! That's impossible! There's no way he could've done that!"

"Why are you so certain of that?"

"Because he was with me on December 15th!"

"I'm sorry but we can't take you at your word. You can't even provide a proper alibi for yourself on the night of Son Eunbi's murder. How can we be sure that the two of you aren't just covering up for each other?"

It was then that Minhyuk realised that he would need to come clean. There was no way to save Jimin without telling them the entire story.

"Fine," he sighed. "I'll tell you everything."

"Everything?"

"Yes. If it can help Jimin, I'm willing to risk my father finding out."

Yuri glanced at Jeon who gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

"Go on."

"After I saw Eunbi... lying there, I couldn't leave Gina. No matter what my father had said, I couldn't leave my daughter in such a situation. So I... took her away with me."

"Where is Gina now, Mr. Park?" Yuri asked, frowning.

"She's safe."

"Where is she?" asked Jeon, sharply.

"In Busan. I have an apartment there and she's been with me since that day."

"Why didn't you tell the police that you had her? Why does your company believe that you are abroad on a business trip?"

Minhyuk rubbed his eyes tiredly and drank some more water. "I couldn't let my father find out. Jimin and I have an apartment in Busan that we bought under a different name. It was a place our father couldn't find us. Gina's been staying there with me since 2nd November."

"Are you sure your father thinks you're abroad? It doesn't seem like something easy to cover up."

"Jimin helped with that," said Minhyuk, leaning back into the cold metal chair. "He told father that I had run away because he hadn't been understanding of my situation with Gina and Eunbi. Jimin's good at convincing people - it's a talent he's barely ever put to good use."

"So Jimin knew that you were hiding in a secret apartment with your recently discovered daughter?"

"Yes, he did. I have an alibi for 2nd November. I was in a meeting till 9 pm and then stopped for drinks at a nearby fried chicken place till 11 pm. I was a bit tipsy after that, which is why I decided to visit Eunbi and Gina. After taking Gina away from there, I went to Jimin's place, got the keys to the apartment and drove straight there. I think I reached around 2 am."

Yuri jotted down all this information, making a note to check on every new detail that had been mentioned.

"What about December 15th? You said Jimin was with you. Why?" asked Jeon, folding his arms across his chest.

"We meet once a week to make sure everything is going okay," said Minhyuk, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly. "Sundays are usually the best days for that."

"Where did you meet?"

"At the local ice-cream shop," Minhyuk frowned, trying to remember something. "You know the one near the end of town?"

"The Dairy Berry? Yes, I know which one you're talking about." Jeon gave Yuri a brief nod to confirm that this was a legitimate spot and not something Minhyuk was making up on the spot.

"Gina loves sweet things and I thought it would be easier to take her with me the same day I met Jimin. I think we were there till 10 pm. After that, I dropped Jimin at a bar and drove back home."

"Which bar was this?" asked Yuri.

"Sunset."

"And you drove straight home after that?"

"You can check the dash cam on my car and the security tapes at my apartment building, if you want."

"We definitely will, Mr. Park," said Jeon, surveying him carefully. "In the meantime, you will be in custody until we have verified each and every single thing you just told us. So I suggest you keep yourself hydrated."

Yuri could feel a pair of eyes on her as she spoke to Jisoo and Suho.

"We need to verify everything that Park Minhyuk told us. But there's a lot of ground to cover and we've lost quite a bit of time since the murder of Son Eunbi. So I suggest you recruit some uniformed officers as well." Jisoo jotted down the locations and the times they needed to verify, and nodded to Suho to indicate she had forwarded the details to him. "We need to get the information as soon as possible."

"Will do," said Suho, giving her a reassuring nod.

Yuri waited for them to leave before walking over to the person who had been watching her for a while.

"Did you want to talk about something?" she asked Seulgi.

"I-" Seulgi tugged at her sleek, high ponytail, looking oddly hesitant. She seemed in a better mood than earlier in the morning when she had almost scared one of the interns into leaving the country. "Do you have a minute?"

"Yeah- " Yuri checked the clock on her phone - "just a minute though. I'm waiting for Jeon to get a warrant from Goh."

"Did he-? I mean, Jimin, uh... have you...? You know-" It was strange to see her grappling for words. "Are you certain he's done it?"

Yuri stared at her for a second. This wasn't what she had been expecting Seulgi to talk about. The doctor's relationship with Jimin was even more puzzling than she had originally perceived it.

"We're looking into it right now." She paused, trying to gauge Seulgi's reaction. "But you already know about the blood sample match - that, in itself, is pretty damaging."

"Y-yeah, I know."

Before Yuri could say anything more, Jeon came out of the Chief Inspector's office. "We've got a warrant to search Minhyuk's apartment. Let's go."

Glancing one more time at Seulgi's ashen face, Yuri put on her coat and scarf and followed Jeon out the exit.

Once inside Jeon's car, Yuri debated whether or not she should attempt to engage him in conversation. Her decision was made for her when he drove onto the main road, and lowered the volume of the police scanner.

"What was Seulgi saying?" he asked, his eyes focused on the road.

"Just where we were in the investigation."

"I see."

Yuri fiddled with the button on her coat, itching to say more.

"What's the deal with her and Jimin?" she finally asked.

"I- what do you mean?" Jeon raised his eyebrow and gave her the most puzzled expression he could muster while trying to stay focused on the crazy traffic.

"Their relationship is... weird. He keeps flirting with her, and she is on the verge of ripping his guts out at every given moment. But just now, she seemed almost worried about him."

"I don't really know... they've never really seen eye-to-eye on much." Jeon checked the rear view mirror to make sure he was clear before deftly changing lanes. "Jimin has always been the person who tries his utmost to push everyone's buttons. And Seulgi... well, she has a lot of buttons."

Yuri snorted loudly. "That tells me nothing and everything at the same time. You really have a way with words, Jeon."

He smirked at this, his eyes never leaving the road. "So does that mean you trust me now?"

"No." She looked at him and caught the way his face fell slightly at her response. "But who knows what the future holds..."

The smirk was back.

Ahreum had a terrible headache. She usually didn't get many headaches. So on the rare occasion that she did, it put her in a really terrible mood. The only person who knew how to handle this situation properly was Namjoon. He knew that she needed silence, dim lighting, green tea, fresh bread, and absolutely no unexpected company.

So when Ahreum got home after her grueling 3 hour long meeting, hoping to relax and recuperate, she wasn't too pleased to find Taehyung sitting in her living room, playing a very loud game on his tablet.

"You're back!" he yelled, once she slammed the door to make her presence felt. "I've been waiting for hours. How was your meeting?"

"'S okay," she replied, shortly. Taking off her coat, she opened the middle cabinet in the kitchen and searched for the green tea.

"Great! So do you wanna go and visit Jimin now?"

"No."

"What? Why not? You don't have anything else to do right now. Just come with me. Please!" He had walked into the kitchen and was standing in front of her with a pout on his lips.

As endearing as she always found his antics, Ahreum was at breaking point. She placed the cup on the counter with a loud clink, and turned to face him.

"Because I don't have time to follow you on your every whim, Taehyung. Because I have a life of my own. Because I am studying medicine, which, if you aren't aware, is a very taxing occupation." She paused for a breath, as his mouth fell open in shock. "Because I am not your babysitter. Or your handler. Or your caretaker. And I'm tired of being responsible for you. You're a grown ass adult and it's about time you acted like one."

"Ahreum, I'm-" His eyes were wide and worried, and she felt a tiny sliver of remorse. "I don't think you're my babysitter or handler or whatever. You're my best friend."

"I thought so too. In fact," she said, looking away from him. "I thought we were, or we could be, more."

"W-what? Ahreum?" Taehyung sounded so lost and confused that she was tempted to console him.

She walked to the front door and held it open for him. "I think you should leave now. I'm tired, I have a headache, and I don't want to be around anyone right now."

"Wait! What did you mean by that?" he asked, hesitantly standing at the entrance.

"I'm tired, Taehyung. I don't have the energy to explain everything to you. Now, please," she began closing the door slowly. "I want to rest."

"It's clear!" The uniformed officer confirmed to them, before opening the door further.

"Okay, let's see whether little Gina is here," instructed Jeon, his face drawn into a frown.

Yuri nodded and walked into the room on the left of the large living area. It was a study of sorts, with a large wooden desk, a swiveling chair, and shelves upon shelves of books. She quickly checked to see if there was anyone in the room before shouting "clear!". There was another door connecting to a smaller room, it's walls bathed in bright sunlight and smelling of soft lavender. This was clearly some sort of guest room, judging by the inconsistent decor theme. The furniture looked sleek and modern, but the sheets on the bed were soft and pastel colored. A bunch of soft toys stood leaning against the flat screen tv, and Yuri realised that this was probably the room that had been hastily fixed up for a small child's unexpected stay. And sure enough, soft strands of brown hair peaked through the large covers on the bed.

She walked over to the bed slowly, not wanting to startle the child. Yuri barely managed to stifle a gasp as she looked into the child's clear grey eyes - the same color as both Park Minhyuk and Park Jimin.

"Hello," she said, softly. "Are you Gina?"

The little girl nodded, bringing the covers closer towards her.

"I'm a police officer. I help catch bad people." She didn't respond, staring at her with wide eyes.

"Do you want to go to your dad, Gina?" She nodded vigorously, sitting up at the mention of her father. "Okay, we will. But first, tell me, are you okay? Do you feel pain anywhere?"

The little girl shook her head.

"Are you sleepy?"

Again, she shook her head.

"Are you hungry?"

Slowly, she nodded her head.

"Okay, we'll go and see your dad, and also get you something to eat. Is that okay with you?"

"Yes."

"Wonderful."

It was just after 2 pm and Yuri felt completely drained. After they had found Gina, she had insisted on returning to the station to ask Jimin about his alibi for the night of Kang Eunwoo's murder. From what she had understood, he had refused to provide an alibi to protect his brother and keep him out of the police's radar until the situation with Gina worked out. Even though she still couldn't get herself to consider him a pleasant person, his desire to protect his brother had humanized him a great deal in her eyes.

Sure enough, once he was made aware that Minhyuk had come forward and spoken about his daughter and the events of the past month and a half, Jimin looked much less hostile than before.

"I was at Sunset from around 10.30 pm to closing time - which is 2 am," he said, sighing tiredly and rubbing his face with his hands. "You can confirm with them."

While Minhyuk and Jimin's alibis were verified, Yuri received a text from Namjoon, asking her and Jeon to meet him at Seokjin's bakery. It was barely a 2 minute drive there, so Jeon suggested they get lunch over there and make it before Goh finished compiling the list of paperwork for them to finish.

The smell of freshly baked milk bread wafted out of the kitchen, adding another layer of warmth to Seokjin's cozy shop. The man in question picked up the large tray filled with various different confections, and brought it over to the table by the window.

"Peach danish and americano for Namjoon, chocolate fudge brownie and vanilla bean ice cream for Jeongguk, and a snow croissant and hot chocolate for Yuri." He placed everything on the table, before grabbing his lukewarm cup of tea and sitting down with them.

"So you finally find the child, then?" asked Seokjin, sipping the tea. He made a face at the odd taste that tea acquires when it's between comfortingly steamy and soothingly chilled.

"Yeah we did," Yuri replied, when her partner remained silent. "Goh is dealing with Minhyuk and the custody charges. It's no longer in our jurisdiction."

"Namjoon, how's grad school treating you?" Seokjin diverted the conversation, realising that his friend wasn't ready to talk about the case at that moment. "How much longer do you have?"

"A few more months and I should be done." Namjoon wiped the pastry flakes from the corner of his mouth and nearly tipped over his americano in the process. Yuri chuckled at this, suddenly remembering those random moments in high school where Namjoon was a lot thinner and less confident, but still had a propensity for knocking things over.

"Remind me why you're putting yourself through this?" Seokjin broke off a piece of the peach danish and popped it into his mouth.

"The last time I tried to explain that, you spaced out and created a new pastry recipe for your menu. As much as I like helping your business flourish, I'm gonna preserve my energy and only talk about things when necessary."

Seokjin chuckled and picked up a spoon from the dispenser. "Jeongguk, can I get a bit of ice cream from you?" There was no response, and looking at him for confirmation Seokjin's eyebrows shot up in alarm.

"Okay okay, I won't eat any of your ice cream. You don't have to tear up about it!"

Yuri and Namjoon turned towards him as well, not sure what to do when they saw tears slowly sliding down Jeongguk's cheeks.

"Are you okay? What's wrong?" asked Namjoon, patting his shoulder softly.

They sat in silence, as Jeongguk sobbed softly and wiped his face with his coat sleeve. He turned towards Yuri, his eyes glazed with tears but holding a soft radiance unlike what she was used to.

"Thank you."

Yuri felt her face heat up suddenly. This wasn't what she had been expecting. The soft sincerity in his voice startled her. It was nothing like the person she had met only a week ago. She looked away abruptly and nodded her head.

"There's nothing to thank me for. This is our job."

Jeongguk smiled and resumed eating the disgustingly sweet dessert combination in front of him. He nudged Seokjin to take some ice cream like he had originally intended. There was silence once more, but this time, it was very different.

Back at the station, Yuri finished the paperwork for the day. There was a lot to complete, and since they had stopped at Seokjin's for a break, they had lost some time as well. Goh had been very clear about completing all the paperwork for social services to take over the case from them now that Gina had been found.

It was barely even 5 pm but Yuri felt a large yawn coming on for the third time in the past few minutes. She wasn't sure how long she would be able to carry on without getting proper sleep at night. At this rate, she would eventually burn out. There was only so much coffee could do for her.

A light tap brought her attention to another person standing in her cubicle. She looked up to see Jeon holding two steaming cups of ramen, tilting his head slightly to confirm whether it was okay for him to sit down.

"Did you need anything?" she asked, after moving her slightly. He placed the ramen on her desk and pulled up his own chair and sat down.

"I've got a peace offering," he gestured to the ramen. "I wanted to apologize properly for being an absolute dickhead to you. I-" He hesitated, looking down at his hands that lay clenched on his lap - "I don't really have an excuse for my behavior but I had a lot on my mind. Particularly about finding the little girl. And, well... you really don't know what solving this case means to me."

Once again, Yuri wasn't sure how to react. She felt embarrassed that he was thanking her for doing her job - something that he did as well. While she appreciated his apology, his entire being remained confusing to her.

"Don't worry about it," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "And thanks for the ramen; food is always appreciated."

Thankfully, her computer ping-ed with a new email before the atmosphere could get any more awkward.

"Okay, we've confirmed Minhyuk's alibi's for 2nd November and 15th December. He wasn't involved in either murder. Jimin was with Minhyuk till 10.15 pm on 15th December - his car's dash cam confirms that he dropped Jimin off at Sunset bar around that time."

"Fantastic! And what about the CCTV footage at Sunset? Does it confirm Jimin's story? He said he was there till 2 am."

"Hang on, I'm opening the report. Th-" she stopped abruptly, frowning at the screen.

"What?" asked Jeon, looking over her shoulder to read the email.

"CCTV footage does not place Jimin at Sunset from 10.15 pm till closing time at 2 in the morning. He doesn't have an alibi for Eunwoo's murder."

She turned to look at him, an odd sense of foreboding hitting her as she realized that they would have to charge Jimin for murder by the next evening. He held her gaze, his dark eyes reflecting a similar shadow of doubt.

please reblog and leave a comment if you liked this part! thank you! 😊

#bts fic #jungkook fic #jungkook x oc #jungkook fluff #taehyung #seokjin #namjoon #yoongi #hoseok #bts fluff #bts bookclub #btswritingcafe #bangtanhq #magicshopnet

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roslinadama-sinequanon · 4 years

Text

Saying Good-Bye to Yesterday-Chapter 11

So, yes it’s been forever and day. I haven’t dropped off the planet or quit writing for Shandy. It just got difficult for a while.

You can find the chapter here https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13004092/11/Saying-Good-Bye-to-Yesterday and here https://archiveofourown.org/works/15321687/chapters/53083987 and here

****

"Hey, hon." Andy paused in buttoning his shirt at the greeting, his lips curving into a smile when he took in Sharon's disheveled appearance as she entered their bedroom, fresh from a workout, spandex shorts clinging to her long toned thighs, loose tendrils of hair slipping out of her high ponytail.

"How was the Barre class?" He asked.

"It wasn't Barre. It was Spin." Over the past few months, Amy had convinced her to start taking spin classes with her, adding to her usual regimen of Body Barre, Pilates, and Yoga.

"Well, how was Spin?"

"Ugh." She pulled the sweaty racerback tank over her head. "Jelly legs."

"Gorgeous legs," he corrected.

"Yes, well, that takes work, darling." Though she ate healthily, for the most part, was supple, naturally active, and thanks to genetics and a great metabolism, didn't have to fight hard to maintain her slender figure, she exercised to keep toned and fit. In addition to the classes she attended when her schedule allowed, she swam laps almost every day, did some light weights at the PD gym, and also got out to Malibu to a riding stable as often as she could. When she first mentioned her horseback riding to Andy as a full-body workout, he gave her a typical Andy quip, "for the horse, right? " She'd ignored the comment until she could prove her point. One afternoon she'd taken him on what he referred to as a "ball crushing" ride, and he'd sheepishly eaten his words. Later still, when they'd become intimate and he'd felt those "thighs of steel" around his waist, he'd come to an even greater appreciation of that "full-body" exercise.

"Well, I'm pretty gross right now, so I'm going to hop in the shower." She pulled off her sports bra and wiped at the sweat under her breasts before dropping it in the hamper and disappearing into the bathroom. When she emerged 15 minutes later, she had one towel wrapped around her torso, the other turban-style around her head.

"Don't forget, I have book club tonight," she said.

"Yeah, I'm gonna hit a meeting."

She glanced up sharply from her dresser, a pair of rose-colored panties dangling from her fingertips. "Everything okay?"

Though her tone remained neutral, Andy picked up the tiny inflection of worry. It wasn't his usual meeting night. "Yeah, everything's fine," he assured her. "I had to skip last week because of our case, and I haven't gotten the chance to talk to Isaac."

"About us?"

"Yes."

Once in her fresh panties, Sharon shimmied on a pair of black leggings that she paired with a long, slouchy v-neck cashmere sweater in a soft shade of blush. To finish off the casual outfit, she slipped on a pair of two-tone quilted Chanel ballet flats, big silver hoop earrings, and a silver cuff bracelet. Andy continued to watch her dress. Watching her shed her professional persona for her personal one was kind of a ritual for him. At work, she was all fitted, classic, sleek lines. Understated and sophisticated. At home, her wardrobe was softer and a little more eclectic. Even her jewelry was different. At work, simple diamond studs in her ears and her watch, no bracelets, no necklaces, no dangling earrings. At home, she often wore pretty bracelets, hoops or dangling earrings, and a variety of necklaces, including the crucifix she never wore to work. Separation of church and state and all. He asked her once why she stopped wearing necklaces when she took over Major Crimes. After expressing surprise that he had actually noticed that, she told him that Brenda had warned her that wearing a necklace when interviewing suspects was dangerous because they could use it to try to strangle her. Given the violent animosity their former Chief seemed to bring out in suspects, he figured she was speaking from experience. Probably a good idea that he wore his sobriety necklace tucked in under his shirt. He was pretty sure there were hundreds of suspects over the years who would have loved nothing more than to strangle him.

A half-hour later, with her hair blown dry and her make up re-applied, Sharon came out of the bedroom to see Andy slipping on his jean jacket as he prepared to head out. Rusty was sitting on the couch on his laptop.

"You boys are on your own for supper tonight," she reminded the two.

"Okay. " Rusty glanced up. "What do you want to do, Andy?"

"I have a meeting, so I thought I could pick something up for us on my way home. Want a pizza from Palermo's?"

"Just make sure my half isn't loaded down with veggies."

Andy rolled his eyes. "No veggies. Got it."

Sharon smiled and started to reach for the Trader Joes bag she'd left on the table.

"I've got that, babe." Andy took the heavy bag and followed her out the door. Not so long ago, she might have bristled at the move and argued that she could carry the bag herself, but Andy knew that. It was simply a gentlemanly act of kindness, and she no longer looked for any sort of underlying misogynistic meaning to his kind gestures.

******

The strong smell of flowers hit Sharon just outside the storefront, and she glanced up at the pretty awning hanging over the doorway. "Lotions and Potions," her friend Summer's bath and body shop in Mar Vista. She opened the door, and the floral and spicy scents grew more pronounced. Taking a few steps in, she scanned the room, looking past the displays of soaps, bath salts, body creams, and lotions to see Summer with a customer over in the incense and essential oil section. The little bell that jangled at her entry drew Summer's attention, and when she glanced over and saw who it was, she gave Sharon a smile and a hand gesture indicating that she would be with her in a minute. Sharon nodded and began browsing, lifting and examining the vintage apothecary jars Summer used to carry her product. The old-fashioned jars and antique-looking sepia labels with their intricate designs and calligraphy lettering harkened back to another era as if she was stepping back in time.

Several years ago, this had been a New Age jewelry and clothing store where Summer worked as a clerk. Summer fit right in with today's millenials, often flitting from job to job, but for as long as Sharon had known her, she grew herbs and made homemade soaps and lotions in her house, selling her creations on the weekends at craft fairs and farmer's markets. Then Anabel, the storeowner, allowed her to put a few samples out for sale at the store, and they were a big hit. Soon she had a whole product line for sale. When Anabel decided to sell the store, the first person she approached was Summer, which had taken Summer completely by surprise. She was an artist, after all, not a businesswoman. I mean sure, she practically managed the store, but what did she know about running a business? At least that's what she said to Sharon when they were talking out the pros and cons. It was a moot point, anyway. Summer didn't have the kind of money needed to start a business.

But Sharon did. When her grandparents died, she was bequeathed quite a large inheritance. Some of the money was in a trust, but she had more than enough to lend Summer for the start-up costs. Summer hadn't seen it that way. It had been a battle royal for Sharon to get her best friend to agree to the loan. The very idea of it terrified Summer. What if she didn't succeed? What if she couldn't pay Sharon back? Sharon had gone through hell digging out of the mess Jack created for her financially, and she didn't want to see her have to deal with anything like that again. And most of all, she didn't want the money coming between them. Their friendship was too important. But Sharon prevailed. They worked it all out, with Sharon as an investor, and then they worked together to make Summer's vision become a reality.

The quirky little store was a reflection of its quirky little owner, and it was a hit. Situated only a few miles from both Venice Beach and Santa Monica, it drew in both the unconventional crowd and the well-to-do. Summer paid Sharon back several years ago, but Sharon still took pride in all that she had helped her friend accomplish here.

Grabbing a bottle of her favorite vanilla/jasmine body cream, Sharon glanced back around to see that Summer was still engrossed in conversation with her customer, her light brown curls bouncing on her shoulders with every enthusiastic nod of her head. Rather than stand around waiting, she decided to make her way to Summer's office in the back of the store. She pushed aside the beads that hung in the doorway, in lieu of an actual door, giving a loud sigh at the chaos. As usual, Summer's desk was filled with clutter: folders, papers, coffee mugs, and a bunch of opened boxes. No way could she ever work surrounded by such a mess. In fact, she could already feel the prickles of anxiety at the very idea. She started to move things around to make a spot to set her bag down when an item in one of the boxes caught her eye. Reaching in, she pulled it out, eyes widening with both surprise and curiosity.

"Find anything you like?"

Sharon jumped, nearly dropping the glass object. "Dammit, Summer! "

Summer's wide grin grew even wider. "Gotcha. Either you're losing your cop instincts, or that object holds more than a little interest for you."

"What is it?"

"If I have to tell you, Andy has a real problem."

Sharon flushed. "I know what it is; I just mean why do you have boxes of this stuff?"

"That stuff, as you call it, is luxury personal care products. "

One elegant brow rose skeptically. "Luxury? They're…"

"Glass dildos."

"And again, you have boxes of these, why?"

"I had a distributor come in for a meeting today. She wants me to try selling her line here."

"You're going to sell sex toys? Here? At Lotions and Potions?" Sharon looked so appalled that Summer had to giggle.

"No, I am possibly going to sell luxury personal care items. I told her I would think about it. It's a big and pretty lucrative business right now. Look at them, Sharon, they're works of art."

Sharon looked again at the item in her hand, eyeing it critically. Blown glass with swirls of color, graceful lines. She had to admit, it really did look like a piece of art.

"Much more attractive than the real thing. Am I right?"

Sharon gave a little snort-laugh. "Oh my God, you're right. It is. Though we better not let the guys hear us say that."

"God, no. Men do love their penises, don't they?"

"Mmm…" Sharon hummed affirmatively.

"Almost as much as they love our boobs."

Sharon shook her head with amused affection and another little snort-laugh. She never quite knew what was going to come out of Summer's mouth. In that respect, and in so many more, they were as different as night and day. Oil and water. Chalk and cheese.

Summer was as outgoing and irreverent as Sharon was private and respectful. As unconventional and flighty as Sharon was traditional and responsible. As loud and boisterous, as Sharon was soft-spoken and reserved.

Summer was thrift store boho gauzy tops, flowing skirts, Birkenstocks, and arms covered in bangle bracelets. Sharon was Neiman Marcus pencil skirts, Armani suits, killer heels, and diamond earrings. Summer lifted her arms in worship to the winter solstice while Sharon knelt in reverent prayer at midnight mass. Summer was homeschooling and a childhood spent on a commune. Sharon was private Catholic schools and summers on Nantucket. Summer was Stevie Nicks to Sharon's Grace Kelly.

And yet, they clicked. For 26 years, they had been best friends. From the day that Sharon and Jack moved into their new home in Mar Vista and a bossy little child knocked on their door stating, "I'm five. Do you have any little girls my age I can play with?" With baby Ricky on her hip, Sharon smiled at the little ragamuffin with Popsicle lips and a mop of brown curls and then introduced her to a bashful four-year-old Emily. Within seconds, a harried woman in a tank top and an Indian wrap skirt straight out of the 1970s followed. Since she shared the same wild head of curls with the little moppet now dragging Emily along by the hand, Sharon assumed she was her mother. Indeed, the woman said she was looking for her daughter and, like Sharon, she too had a diapered little boy resting against her shoulder. Sharon introduced herself then invited the gypsy looking woman in for a cup of coffee. It was the beginning of three very important friendships: Sharon and Summer, Emily and Jade, and Ricky and Cody.

Despite their differences in background, personality, and temperament, the two young women easily found common ground. Their kids were the same age, they both loved the arts, and they were both in difficult marriages. Their bond was quick and strong. They spent their days off from work building sandcastles with their kids at the beach, pushing swings at the park, or attending children's reading circles at the library. They babysat for each other, swapped books, and on those rare occasions when they had time for themselves, browsed through art galleries, bookstores, and museums together. Most importantly, since neither had extended family in Los Angeles, they created a much-needed support system for each other. And that was something that became increasingly important, because, within a few years, they were both on their own. Single parents.

Summer came across as flaky, but she was everything Sharon needed in a friend: supportive, warm, honest, and a strong shoulder to cry on-one of a very select group of people whom Sharon allowed to see her vulnerability. They had journeyed together through all the difficulties and heartaches life threw at them, helping each other raise their children, bucking each other up when things seemed bleak, and sharing in each other's joy as they each found success in their professions and new love. From breast-feeding to hot flashes, they had seen each other through it all.

"So, " Summer continued. "Go ahead and take whatever you like. I know you're not a prude. Try one out and let me know what you think."

"I'm good." Sharon placed the item back in the box with a little quirk of her lips. "I've got the real thing now."

"Yeah, well what about these? Could be fun." Summer dangled a pair of handcuffs.

"Again, I've got the real thing."

"Pfff… Those things would hurt. These are love cuffs. Nice and soft. See." Sharon admired the plush cuffs Summer thrust in her face, faux fur with little tiny bows, definitely not standard LAPD gear, but shook her head negatively. "I'm all set." She glanced down at her watch. "Come on, Sum. We really have to get going or we're going to be late."

"Oh, no, we wouldn't want to be late."

Sharon rolled her eyes, ignoring the sarcasm. Fate had surrounded her with smart asses. "No, we wouldn't. So, let's go."

"Okay, okay, don't get your panties in a wad. Just promise me you'll think about it."

Sharon blew out a long-suffering sigh. "Fine, I'll think about it, now let's go."

*****

Sitting in the back corner of the bookstore, Sharon found herself center stage, surrounded by a group of women gushing with excitement over the diamond on her finger, grabbing her hand to look at it and pumping her for all the details of the proposal.

"It's so beautiful, Sharon. " Aggie's eyes went dreamy, her hands in a prayer triangle under her chin, lost in the fairytale of Sharon's proposal. "And how romantic. I can just picture it…A winter wonderland. A romantic sleigh ride through the woods and Andy down on one knee professing his undying love for you-" She broke off, swiftly coming back to reality when everyone burst into laughter. "What?" She defended herself. "I love romance."

"As if we didn't know," Marina scoffed. Whenever it was Aggie's turn to pick their monthly book, it was invariably a romance of some sort.

"Hey, I thought Russians were supposed to have romantic souls." Aggie's protest was made in the soft New Orleans drawl she hadn't lost despite having lived in LA for the past 20 years.

"I had one of those…Four husbands ago." Marina, a ballerina, had defected to the United States in the late seventies and had later opened a ballet studio in LA after retiring from the stage. Sharon met her when she signed Emily up for lessons at her studio after her young daughter had become more serious about studying dance and outgrown her instructor. It was Marina who had seen the talent and drive in Emily and helped her become the principal ballerina she was today. Marina was also cynical and pragmatic and went through men, mostly younger men, the way Andy used to go through younger women.

"Don't listen to her," Sharon said. "You're right, Aggie, Andy couldn't have picked a more romantic way to propose. Hard to believe I found a man whose sense of occasion can actually rival mine. It's certainly a night I will never forget."

"I still can't believe Andy took Gavin to help pick out your ring and not me," Summer sulked. The room went silent, all the women turning to her with wide eyes before erupting in giggles. "What?" She held her hand's open palms up and shrugged in a "what the hell" gesture.

Rachel, a pretty blonde, responded. "Come on, Sum, when it comes to style, there is nobody, other than maybe Roz here, who is more opposite from Sharon than you."

"I'd take exception to that if it weren't 100% true," was Roz's good-natured response. A writer for a comedy sitcom, Roz was notoriously sloppy in her dress, preferring the sweatpants, t-shirts and Converse sneakers she was wearing right now to any other attire. When she was forced to wear something nice, she chose boxy male suits and would never be caught dead in a "girlie" skirt or dress.

"I don't think we're that opposite." Summer's protest drew more peals of laughter.

"Summer…" Rachel lifted her friend's skirt, smirking when she exposed plastic clogs. "You are wearing Crocs. Need I say more?"

"There's nothing wrong with Crocs. They're comfortable." Summer pushed her skirt back over her shoes.

"No offense, I love you to pieces, but they're fugly and Sharon wouldn't be caught dead out in public in them." With her sleek dark blonde bob and stylish clothes, Rachel Garner had far more in common when shopping with Sharon than Summer. Like Andrea, Rachel was a lawyer, now an advisor to Mayor Garcetti. She and Sharon had become friends back when Sharon was promoted to the LAPD's Women's Coordinator position and they had worked together on numerous cases.

"What I don't understand is why you want to get married in the first place. I mean you just got out of a bad marriage, why jump right back in?" The room went silent, this time with tension, not humor. Roz sat back, arms crossed over her chest, seemingly unconcerned by the group's collective disapproval.

"What the hell are you talking about?" It was Summer who quickly jumped to Sharon's defense. "Just out of a bad marriage? She's been done with that ungrateful, immature, disloyal prick for 23 freaking years! Just because she only formally divorced him a couple of years ago doesn't mean-"

"Summer," Sharon tugged on her friend's arm. "It's okay, calm down."

"It's not okay; she has no right to say that. You," she pointed a finger at Roz, "have no idea what she went through. You've known her for what? Four years? You have no right to question her choices. And just because you hate men doesn't mean she has to feel the same."

"Okay, okay, whoa. I didn't mean to start World War III." Roz held her hands up in defeat. "And for the record, I don't hate men. Well, all men anyway. I'm just saying, she doesn't need a man…a husband."

"Roz is right." Sharon agreed, taking a sip of her wine.

"What?" Summer turned to her with confusion.

"She's right. I don't need a man. But I can want one without needing him. And you know what? That makes this the purest relationship I have ever been in, ever. I don't need Andy's money, I don't need his security, I don't need his protection, I don't need him to provide shelter for me, I'm not looking for a father for my children. I am with Andy for one reason only. I love him. It's as easy and as simple as that. I love him and I want to spend the rest of my life with him. And yes, I want the formal commitment of marriage. I know I don't need it, but I want it. And that's my choice." She tapped her fingers on her chest, stressing the point. "I am at a place in my life right now where I can do what I want to do, not what I need to do, and you have no idea how much freedom there is in that for me."

"And we're thrilled for you." Summer's narrowed eyes shot daggers at Roz, causing Sharon to suppress a smile. Summer was about as laid back a person as she knew, however, one thing they did have in common was that you didn't mess with the people they love.

"Yes, we are." Patrice set a gentle hand on Sharon's knee. "Andy is a great guy, and he loves you to the moon and back." As Andy's caregiver while he was recovering from his surgery, Patrice had gotten to know the man and the way he felt about Sharon better than any of them.

Andrea nodded in agreement. "You all know how I feel about marriage, but hell, if I had a guy who looked at me the way Flynn looks at Sharon, who knows?"

Aggie, who had gone off to pilfer through the shelves, returned and flopped down in an oversized chair. She opened the small book she'd been looking for and began reading. "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

"That's C.S Lewis, isn't it? " Sharon recognized the passage from having read a lot of Lewis's work.

Aggie nodded. "From The Four Loves."

"Well, he sums it up rather nicely, doesn't he? " Sharon poured a little more wine in her glass, then sat back. "Loving someone is a risk, no doubt about it, but I will always believe that it is a risk worth taking." She was well aware of how easy it would have been to encase her heart in one of those caskets after Jack, to allow herself to become unreachable. But that just wasn't in her DNA. Barriers, yes, she had certainly erected some of those, but closed off completely? No. She simply had too much love inside her to shut down like that. She knew people often thought she was cold, aloof, unemotional. They never knew it was all a façade, a shield meant to hide the fact that she actually felt things very deeply. She'd had to learn how to contain those emotions, to hide her feelings, but they were there, they were always there. And, had she entombed her heart, she never would have been able to let Rusty in, nor been able to embrace the man who had become the love of her life. Vulnerable? Yes, love made you vulnerable, but the rewards far outweighed any risk.

"I agree, we all need to remain open to love. Now, who's hungry?" Helen, the owner of the bookstore, set to restore order to their opinionated little group. "We'll eat, then dive into the book."

Sharon shot the older woman a grateful look. They might all be friends, but she had never really been comfortable with people dissecting her life.

The food was potluck. Each member of the club took a turn hosting the meeting, but it was always potluck so no one was stuck having to feed the whole group. At the end of each meeting, they drew out of a hat to see if they would be bringing the beverages, an appetizer, or an entrée to the next meeting. Though it wasn't a rule, they often tried to base whatever food they brought on the setting of their book. The only part of the meal they did not draw for was dessert. Mary Agnes Boudreaux McCormack, Aggie, always brought dessert. Twenty years ago, Aggie had moved to Los Angeles after Craig McCormack walked into her bakery in New Orleans and swept the 37-year-old widow off her feet, taking her home with him to California. Aggie opened a pretty little bed and breakfast near Venice Beach and brought with her the French and Creole delicacies of her former home, including the to-die-for beignets she brought to each meeting, regardless of the setting. No one was willing to forgo those beignets.

This month's book was set in Mexico, so there were cheesy nachos with garlic guacamole, sweet potato and black bean taquitos, a creamy taco soup, Mexican chicken and rice, and fish tacos. Sharon had drawn beverages at their last meeting, so, along with a case of seltzer water, she'd brought a few bottles of a Baja Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot blend along with the makings for Mojitos.

"And these," she drew out two large bottles of champagne. "Because we can't celebrate 10 years without a little bubbly. I still can't believe we've been doing this for 10 years." She poured the champagne and passed the glasses around to the ten incredible women sprawled over the sitting area. Ranging in age from their late forties to early sixties, with most in their fifties like Sharon, black, white, and mixed heritage, native Californians and transplants, gay and straight, single and married, they were a diverse group who had come together to bond over a shared love of books. And somewhere along the way, they had become friends. Friends that had seen each other through infidelity, divorce, infertility, empty nests, cancer, adoptions, menopause, job losses, promotions, and new loves gained and lost.

The book club had come about rather organically not long after Helen and her business partner, Jenny, opened "The Book Nook", a combination bookstore/café a little over 10 years ago. Helen's husband, Christopher, had accepted the position of visiting professor at USC, and the British couple fell in love with the climate and laid back lifestyle of Southern California. So, when a permanent position became available, they decided to leave the gray skies and rain of England behind and settle in the land of sunshine and surfers. At the time, Jenny was a stay at home mom whose marriage had fallen apart after her battle with breast cancer. Divorced, her children in college, and cancer-free, she was ready to embrace a new life when Helen became a patron of the coffeehouse where she was working as a barista. Soon they were discussing a joint venture. A few years later, their bookstore/cafe became reality, and Sharon, Summer, and Rachel became some of their first customers. Recommendations of authors and long chats over coffee regarding the books they read or were interested in reading had Jenny suggesting the idea of starting a book club.

For Sharon, it was perfect timing. Ricky had just gone off to Stanford, and with Emily across the country at NYU, she was reeling from the effects of her empty nest. For 21 years, her life had revolved around her children and their needs, car-pooling, cooking, laundry, helping with homework, getting them to practices, cheering them on at games and recitals, and most recently visiting college campuses in preparation for their futures. And then suddenly they were just…gone. The house was too quiet, too empty, too filled with memories. And, with her children gone, the fact that she did not have a love life only became more pronounced, her bed suddenly emptier, colder to the touch. And it didn't help that she was starting to feel like she was in a rut at the PSB. Melancholy enveloped her in its insidious web, eating away at her, telling her that her best days were now in the past.

Later, she would find that she actually enjoyed the peace and solitude of being on her own, the freedom of not having to organize anyone but herself. But in the beginning, the loneliness was crushing. Both Rachel and Summer commiserated with her because they were going through the same thing. It was Marina who encouraged her to use that time to focus on herself and do some of the things she'd wanted to do but hadn't had time for in the past.

For many years, Sharon had helped out a few nights a month at St. Joseph's soup kitchen, bringing Emily and Ricky along with her, which was how she'd gotten to know Aggie. Now, she began volunteering at the church's domestic violence shelter, counseling the women on their rights, teaching them how to defend themselves, and helping them to find jobs. She coached them through the interview process and helped them select outfits from donated clothes-including her own-that would help them look professional. Eventually, she ended up on the board of directors. She also became the LAPD's liaison with "The Sunshine Kids Foundation" helping kids with cancer, worked with Rachel to raise money for "Emily's List", sold her house and bought the condo, and then she joined the book club.

It was the perfect hobby and helped her to expand her group of friends. Other than Gavin, Summer, and Rachel, she didn't really have any close friends, confidantes. It wasn't that she was anti-social, she had many friendly acquaintances: Marina, Aggie, a few women and men at work. But, the truth was, she had never had the time to cultivate deep friendships. As a single mom, she was usually either working or taking care of her kids. And where most people made friends on the job, her work within the PSB made that impossible. Barriers were essential in her position, and that had not been easy, especially in the beginning. Even though she'd always been a bit reserved, she was not a naturally unfriendly person, so having to close off that side of her had taken time and effort. But she'd become good at it. Maybe too good. Once her walls were built, it was hard to let people back in.

The book club started out small, and though it had not been intentional, they were all women: Helen, Sharon, Summer, Rachel, Jenny, Marina, and Aggie. Roz, Patrice, and Andrea were later additions. Once the only women thing was established, they decided to keep it that way, which pleased Sharon. She was surrounded by men all day long, worked in a profession dominated by men, and she didn't have a problem with that. For the most part, she liked working with men, liked their direct ways, and had always felt that the best teams had a combination of women and men. On the other hand, it was nice to spend time with her women friends and immerse herself in the female perspective. It was also easier to be herself and let her hair down without the male/female dynamic, without feeling like she had to prove that she was tough enough, strong enough, smart enough, the way she did at work, every… single… day. Around these women, she could express her emotions, and frankly, her sexuality, without being embarrassed or viewed as weak.

"To ten years!" Helen raised her glass of champagne.

"To ten years!" The group chorused.

TBC

#shandy #sharon raydor #andy flynn #Major Crimes #shandy fanfic

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aligarbawaukesha · 4 years

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How to List References for a Job: Tips, Examples, and More

If you’re looking for how to list references for a job (or who to list as references for a job), then you’re in the right place.

I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know about giving professional references for a job – on your resume, on applications, after the interview, and when recruiters ask.

I’ll also cover the mistakes you need to avoid if you want to get hired.

Let’s get started…

References on a Resume: Why You Shouldn’t List Them

I don’t recommend putting references directly on a resume. Ideally, your references will be people you’ve spoken with recently and are willing to speak highly of your work. You don’t want to flood these people with a huge amount of phone calls. You want to “save” them for when an employer is truly interested in you.

This is what the best, most in-demand job seekers do! Imagine you have 20 companies trying to hire you. Are you going to just send them each a list of your references, and have each of your references take 20 phone calls? No way!

So to position yourself as an in-demand candidate and appear modern/up-to-date in your job search, I recommend NOT including professional or personal references on your resume.

I also don’t recommend saying, “references available upon request,” on your resume. This doesn’t need to be said; employers already assume you have references that you can provide. So including this sentence just makes your resume format look outdated.

References on Job Applications

Since you don’t want to give references too early (as discussed above), you should not provide a list of references on an application form, either.

Instead, put a note indicating that you have multiple personal and professional references that you’re ready to provide, however, you’d like to speak first to ensure that the position is a potential good match.

It’s okay to say that you don’t give references before having an interview.

“Won’t This Cost Me Interviews?”

If you’re worried about losing out on job interviews when you apply for jobs, you could list names and positions, but no contact info. That way, the employer or recruiter sees that you have references ready to go, but understands you’d like to have a real interview first.

Here’s a sample of how it would look:

Reference Name: Bethany Jones

Relationship: Bethany was a fellow Customer Support Associate at ABC Company

Email: Will be provided after job interview

Phone number: Will be provided after job interview

When Should You Provide References to an Employer?

The right time to give your list of references to an employer is when you know they’re interested in offering you the position.

It should be a late-stage step, not the beginning of the process. Remember: You don’t want to waste your reference’s time by asking them to talk to countless employers who may or may not even want you on their team!

So it’s best to try to hold off on giving your references until you’ve had at least one or two interviews – for example, a phone interview and then a face-to-face interview with the hiring manager.

That way, you’re not asking too much of your references, and you know that you’re close to the end of the process when you do provide a list of professional references to the company.

One exception: If you were fired or laid off, or a recruiter or employer has some other concerns in a first conversation, they may ask for a reference ahead of time. You can consider providing one great reference if this is the case.

How to Respond to Recruiters Asking for References

Throughout your job search, you may also have a recruiter asking you for references.

When a recruiter asks for references, it’s okay to tell them that you have multiple professional references that you can provide, but you have a policy of not giving out references until you’ve had an interview with the company and made sure the position is a good potential fit.

Explain that you’re happy to give references and you certainly understand that an offer won’t be made without it, but that you aren’t comfortable providing references upfront. Tell them that you’ll provide them directly to the hiring manager when the time comes.

One exception: If you were fired or laid off, a recruiter may want to talk to a reference just to hear someone verify your explanation for why you were fired.

They’re going to invest time/effort into working with you and helping you find a position, so they want to understand your story.

In this case, it might be a good idea to provide one reference upfront to put their mind at ease and get them to buy-in to helping you. But for everyone else, tell them you need to interview for jobs first, and you’ll provide references at the appropriate time.

For a full explanation of how recruiters work and how to get them to help you, read this article.

Warning: The “Hidden” Reason Recruiters Ask for References

Recruiters from staffing agencies will often ask for a list of professional references in the first conversation as a way to build their network and find even more job seekers to work with.

They’ll call the references and ask a few questions about you, but also try to build a relationship so they can represent that person in their job search next time they’re looking for a change.

So, be aware of this, and don’t let recruiters get your references before you’ve spoken with an employer directly! This is yet another reason to tell them you do not give references before having an interview and knowing if the employer is interested in your background.

Professional vs. Personal References

Professional references are people who have seen your work first-hand and have been colleagues, bosses, or supervisors in past jobs. (Or occasionally, someone you’ve supervised). If you’re an entry-level candidate, then your professional references can be professors/teachers.

On the other hand, personal references (also called character references) are people you know personally. This could be a former sports coach, family friend, or any other personal contact who can speak to your character and personality traits (like hard-working, excellent leadership, etc.)

When choosing personal references for a job, pick people who know you well and like you. They’ll be able to speak highly of your character and personality traits, which will help you get hired.

How Many References Should You List?

You should include at least two professional references, and up to four. You can also list one personal reference such as a family friend, a mentor, a coach, or anyone else who can speak to your work ethic, attitude, intelligence, teamwork, or other traits that employers love to see.

How many references is too many?

Any more than four professional references is unnecessary, and will be considered to be too many by many employers. If you have more than four references, you should decide who you think will provide the best testimonials of your work and narrow your list down to those four people.

You also shouldn’t have more than one personal reference. And personal references should not be used in the place of professional references.

If you’re looking for your first position and don’t have any work experience, don’t worry. In the next section, I’ll explain who to put as your professional references for a first job.

Listing Professional References for a First Job

If you just graduated or are looking for your first position, don’t worry – you can list teachers and professors as your references!

When you’re looking for your first position, your academic experience IS your professional experience. That’s the advice I give on your resume, too. You should write about projects, accomplishments, presentations, and leadership that you did in school, especially if you have no internships or other work experience to show.

And you can ask your professors or teachers to be references in the same way that you’d ask a colleague from a past job. We’ll cover how to ask anyone to be a reference coming up soon in this article, so keep reading.

Giving References While Still Employed

If you’re currently employed, rounding up great references can be tricky, but here are some ideas to help you:

First, if you’ve held other jobs in the past, you can approach colleagues from those previous positions and ask them to be a reference. Explain that you’re currently employed and therefore cannot use references from your current job. That way, they’ll understand why you’re contacting them even if it’s been a few years since you worked together.

Employers should understand why you can’t provide references from your current job, too. Any reasonable employer will quickly realize why you’re not able to ask someone you currently work with to be a reference.

However, if you do have a very close relationship with someone at work and trust them enough, you could also ask them to provide a reference. But if you feel this is a risk, or you’re not sure how they’ll react, DON’T risk it!

You can simply follow the advice above and give references from past jobs.

Always Ask Your References for Permission First

Whoever you decide to ask to be a reference, make sure to talk to them first!

I’ve worked for many years as a recruiter and there’s nothing worse than calling someone’s reference and being told, “Oh, I didn’t know that they had put me down as a reference.”

It just doesn’t reflect well on you. It doesn’t make you seem upfront, or like someone who communicates well. (And those are traits that hiring managers look for in interviews).

So always talk to your references and ask if they’re okay with being listed. And also ask if they feel comfortable speaking highly of your work! You don’t want a reference who’s going to say you’re not a great worker.

So you should ask, “Are you willing to be a reference in my current job search?” but then also ask, “And do you feel comfortable speaking about the quality of my work, and recommending me to employers?”

As a final step, make sure you confirm the best phone number for them to receive calls on. You don’t want any mix-ups where someone is expecting a phone call on a different number and misses the call.

Professional References Format Example

Once you have your list of names to give employers, you’ll want to format it and get it ready to send.

I recommend putting together your full list in a Word doc or the body of an email. You could also ask the recruiter or employer which format they prefer.

Example of how to format your references:

Name: John Smith

Relationship: John supervised me for 18 months at XYZ Company, from 2016 to 2018.

Email: [email protected]

Phone number: 555-555-5555

Availability: Weekdays from 9 AM – 3 PM Eastern Time

Reference Letters

Employers may ask you for reference letters, too. In this case, you’d ask your references to write a page about why they’d recommend you and what they observed about your work that would make you a great employee.

Reference letters are great because you can send a copy to multiple employers, which could save time in the long-run. However, it’s best to find out what format an employer prefers (phone call vs. reference letter) and provide what they want!

If you follow the steps above, you’ll make a great impression with employers and get more job offers from your interviews… without ever providing a “bad” reference or doing anything that could cost you the job!

The post How to List References for a Job: Tips, Examples, and More appeared first on Career Sidekick.

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djossem · 5 years

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How To REALLY Lose Weight

(Doctor Oz) – Melissa McCarthy is widely agreed to be one of the funniest women working in Hollywood today, and yet despite her tremendous success, it seems every interview and magazine profile has to make at least a passing reference to her weight.

I doubt that was Melissa’s motivation to drop over 50 pounds recently, but as an added bonus, all those insipid columnists and red carpet blowhards will now have to come up with something else to talk about.

That’s a photo of the 45-year-old actress showing off her amazing body transformation on the set of her new movie, The Boss

I sat down with Melissa to find out how she managed to lose so much weight in record time and how she’s planning to keep it off.

Dr. Oz: Tell us about your weight-loss struggles?

Melissa McCarthy: I have struggled with my weight throughout my entire life. Thankfully though, near the end of 2015, I made a commitment to my health and I have stuck to it. Just a few months later and I am in the best shape of my life! I’ve lost more than 50 pounds without breaking a sweat. I haven’t really done it the old-fashioned way, slow and steady, by eating healthy and exercising regularly.

Dr. Oz: So, what’s your secret?

Melissa McCarthy: I was watching your show with my husband one night and heard you talk about a fat buster called the 3 Week Diet. I was very skeptical because wherever you look somebody is trying to sell you on some miracle diet supplement. But this stuff really worked for me.

Dr. Oz: So, you’re saying you didn’t change your habits or started exercising?

Melissa McCarthy: I don’t feel like I went on “real” diet. I just continued with my days as normal, eating mostly what I normally eat. We have 2 children so dieting in our home is not something we normally do, but this system was so effective that it was a breakthrough for me. I also tried exercising, but it didn’t last long. I was just too busy with the kids and upcoming movies and I didn’t have time to spend hours in the gym. So, I figured I would just follow the plan and hope for the best (laughing).

Dr. Oz: How soon did you start seeing results?

Melissa McCarthy: I noticed a change in my body the first week. I was so amazed. All my friends asked me what diet I was on and when I told them I was using the 3 week diet they couldn’t believe it. Some of them also ordered the product and are having great results. But I will speak for myself and say that this is the best weight loss product I have tried, and I’ve tried many. Losing weight shouldn’t be this easy (laughing).

Dr. Oz: Would you share with our readers where you bought the product?

Melissa McCarthy: I’m against endorsements so I need your readers to keep in mind that and I’m not making any money on this recommendation. The only reason I am willing to talk about it is because it really did wonders for me. And I strongly recommend everyone to do research before they buy anything online.

You were talking about the 3 week diet so that’s the product I used. I figured if you recommended it, there’s gotta be some science behind it, right?

Dr. Oz: Now that you’ve lost 50 pounds, what’s your next weight loss goal?

Melissa McCarthy: I don’t want to lose any more weight. I’ve actually stopped following the diet because skinny is not who I am. I’m going to keep my curves. I love me.

Dr. Oz: People already call you the “Queen of comedy,” what’s up next for you?

Melissa McCarthy: I am busier than ever with my two upcoming movies: The Boss and Ghostbusters and my latest fashion line. I am continuing to work hard, expand, try new things, and have fun!

Here’s a closer look at Melissa McCarthy’s dramatic transformation. We barely recognized her when she came for an interview.

Melissa McCarthy is not the only celebrity who owes her weight loss success to this diet.

The 3 week diet has been secretly used in Hollywood as a powerful diet supplement and appetite suppressant for years, but it seems that most celebrities would rather have people think their miraculous weight loss is due to rigorous diet and workout regimes.

Not surprisingly, many people who struggle with their weight have yet to hear about it.

However, after recent endorsements by many other celebrities, it seems that the diet has been making its way into the homes of general public.

Cameron Diaz revealed on my show how she achieved her incredibly toned figure with the 3 week diet!

The 3 week diet helped Jennifer Lopez lose 18 lbs in just 1 month!

As I began to investigate the countless success stories reported by celebrities and people just like you from all around the globe, I decided that this weight loss trend was worthy of a closer examination.

To take my research a step further, I participated in a study conducted by Columbia University’s Obesity Research Center.

This study was performed according to a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel-group design. Subjects aged 20 to 65 years with a visceral fat area >90 cm2 were enrolled.

Subjects were randomly assigned to receive treatment for 12 weeks with the diet (containing 1000 mg of HCA per day) or placebo. At the end of the treatment period, both groups were administered placebo for 4 weeks to assess any rebound effect.

Each subject underwent a computed tomography scan at the umbilical level at −2, 0, 12, and 16 weeks.

Results

Forty-four subjects were randomized at baseline, and 39 completed the study (3 week diet group, n = 18; placebo group, n = 21). At 16 weeks, the 3 week diet group had significantly reduced visceral, subcutaneous, and total fat areas compared with the placebo group (all indices P<0.001). No severe adverse effect was observed at any time in the test period. There were no signs of a rebound effect from week 12 to week 16.

How does the diet work?

The 3 Week Diet boosts weight loss by slowing the body’s ability to absorb fat, replacing fat with toned muscles and even improving your mood and suppressing the drive to react to stressful situations with food. It flushes out all the toxins from your body and works as an anti oxidant to help your skin and hair look younger. It energizes your system, making you feel better in no time.

The 3 Week Diet is clinically proven to:

Deliver 4 times more weight loss than diet and exercise combined

Suppress appetite

Promote cardiovascular and digestive health

Help eliminate bad toxins that have built up over the years

Increase energy levels

Improve skin and hair

Increase metabolism

Here are some more real life examples from people who had amazing results just by using it.

My Results – I dropped 21 lbs in just 1 month and lost 3 dress sizes. I nearly cried!

Week One:

After one week I was surprised at the dramatic results. My energy level was up, and I wasn’t even hungry. A welcomed side effect of it is its power to curb the appetite.

I honestly felt fantastic!

Best of all, I didn’t even change anything about my daily routine. On Day 7, I got on the scale and couldn’t believe my eyes. I had lost 3.5 lbs. But I still wasn’t convinced, since they say you lose a lot of water weight at the beginning of any diet. I wanted to wait and see the results in the upcoming weeks. But it sure was looking up! I now weighed under 122 lbs for the first time in years!

Week Two:

After two weeks of using the 3 week diet, I started the week off with even more energy, and actually sleeping more soundly than before. I was no longer waking up during the night and tossing and turning because my body was actually able to relax (this is a result of getting rid of the toxins, I think). Plus I still managed to lose another 7 lbs, putting me at an unbelievable 10.5 lbs of weight loss, in just 2 weeks.

I must admit that I’m starting to believe that this is more than just a gimmick.

Week Three:

After 3 weeks, all my doubts and skepticism had absolutely vanished! I am down 2 full dress sizes after losing another 3.5 lbs. And I still have a ton of energy. Quite often, around the third week of other diets, you tend to run out of steam. But with this my energy levels didn’t dip, instead they remain steady throughout the day. I no longer need that cat nap around 3pm in the afternoon! I am even noticing that my stomach is digesting food so much better. No bloating or embarrassing gas after I eat.

Week Four:

After the fourth week, my final results were shocking. I lost an unbelievable 21 lbs since starting using the 3 week diet! I am definitely going to continue with it because it has so many antioxidants and vitamins that makes my skin look unbelievable.

I couldn’t be any happier with the results. I Lost 21 lbs in 4 Weeks, No Special tricks, No Intense Exercise.

As I have often reported on my show, losing weight often feels like an impossible challenge and all too frequently the results are painfully disappointing. However, after an exhaustive research effort including interviewing actual dieters using this exact system, I’m more than excited about this medical breakthrough.

I rarely do these write ups because the reality is that there is just a bunch of rubbish out there claiming to be that next big weight-loss breakthrough. But this was just too good to keep away from the public.

It’s not often you can find something that helps you lose weight without changing your diet or exercise habits, but the 3 week diet seems to do just that.

As a special thanks to my loyal readers, I have personally arranged an EXCLUSIVE deal for my readers, so you will be among the very few men and women to sample the remarkable results of this diet free of charge. But make sure you act fast, as the number of free trials is limited.

Take advantage of my exclusive link to get a FREE trial and the lowest possible price on shipping, courtesy of Dr. Oz.

How To REALLY Lose Weight doctor, Fitness, how to, How To REALLY Lose Weight, Lose Weight, really via Best Fooz http://bit.ly/2Tp3U6T

#doctor #Fitness #how to #How To REALLY Lose Weight #Lose Weight #really

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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THE REASON IS THAT VARIATION IN WEALTH

If you're at the leading edge of a field doesn't mean you have to draw a building, and it introduced us to Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, both of which he can be said to have invented a new language. That no doubt causes a lot of people look at a list of heroes.1 Retailers are less of a bottleneck as customers increasingly buy online. We present to him what has to be good for them to start treating us like actual consultants, and calling us every time they wanted something changed on their site.2 You're getting things done. Notes One reason I put it there is that I don't think they were traumatized by the experience.3 These points don't apply to types of startups that need less than they used to be very successful.

The pattern here seems the same one we see when startups and established companies enter a new market. Not all ideas of that type are so valuable, finding one is hard. Unfortunately not.4 What drives you day to day is not wanting to look bad.5 So what's the real reason there aren't more Googles? But no one seems able to foresee that, not even the smart kids. During this time you'll do little but work, because people are using them on servers. People in America. The culmination of my career as a writer of press releases was one celebrating his graduation, illustrated with a drawing I did of him during a meeting. When we started Artix, I was once trying to tell someone that I hadn't had much success in doing something, but to notice quickly when your beliefs become obsolete, you can't do anything that required a commitment of more than you realized. Surely at some point, when someone attacked you, you have more money in the bank to make it happen.

As Clinton himself discovered to his surprise when, in one of its users, however unnatural it seems. I phrased this in terms of reducing inequality.6 Often they care a lot about VCs during the 3 years we've been doing Y Combinator, because we didn't want them to know about business to run a business. We're more patient. A typical angel round these days might be $150,000 raised from 5 people. I'm not sure why. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be solved though. That's what you really like.

Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. Sum up all these sources of error so powerful that if you eliminate economic inequality, but those few thousand users wanted it a lot.7 1, solve the core problem in a more sophisticated type of essay. What happened to Reddit didn't happen out of neglect. But there seem to be many universities elsewhere that compare with the best investors do conflict, so if you're measuring usage you need a certain body type. I don't know enough to say whether patents have in general been a net win. Imagine having to ask permission to release software before it works, and any theory a 10 year old leaning against a lamppost with a cigarette hanging out of the way to become an expert on networks it seemed obvious to him that the way to get that done as soon as you get older and more experienced. In fact, the poorer people are, even if they're supposed to start them or investors want to fund more dubious startups than with other companies; they'd have to overcome in order to be successful startup founders are. Thanks to Sam Altman, John Bautista, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Sarah Harlin, Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Gary Sabot, and Joshua Schachter for reading drafts of this, but that's because it's so counterintuitive, and partly so I don't know if Plato or Aristotle were the first investors in Google. There's a narrow variant: is it bad that the current legal system, to apply for patents to build up the patent portfolio they'll need to.8

People's problems are similar enough that nearly all the code you write this way will be reusable. We try to pick founders who are younger or more ambitious the utility function is flatter. They wanted to be popular. But elegance is not an efficient market. This limitation went away with the arrival of new fashions makes old fashions easy to see if there was some kind of work. It seems like the best languages all evolved together with some application they were being paid market price. The air traffic control system works because planes would crash otherwise.9 This territory is occupied mostly by individual angel investors. When I thought about the question of whether public company CEOs in the aggregate, make more money.10 When classical texts began to circulate in Europe, they contained not just new answers, but new questions. Anyone who cares can have fast Internet access now.11

Partly because there's so much scope for design in software, a successful application tends to be simply This sucks. It's the same with work. Some people could probably start a company? Software companies are sometimes accused of letting the users debug their software. 30 days of going out and buying a blank canvas. They launch it with no indication of whether you're too late is subsumed by the question of what this new Lisp will be used to hack. Occasionally it's obvious from the beginning. They're obsessed with making things well. How can the richest country in the world. IBM introduced the PC, they thought they were going to send you an email talking about sex, but someone who really, truly doesn't care what his peers think of him is that his company was not the teachers. If all you have is statistics, it seems obvious.

It's much like being a postdoc: you have probably discovered a useful new abstraction. I realized when I started writing spam filtering software because I didn't want have to look for it—where presumably the hackers did have somewhere quiet to work.12 If you start a startup, I think, because they enjoy it. Ideas can morph. And indeed, probably also the best route to that knowledge was to backtrack and try another approach. I know this business well enough to get an offer at an acceptable price.13 Then for each ask, might this be true?14 It's worth studying this phenomenon in his famous book The Mythical Man-Month, and everything I've seen has tended to confirm what he said, by then I was interested in AI a hot topic then, he told me that any startup had to include business people in a room full of people. They've invested in dozens of startups, which makes you unattractive to investors. But as one VC told me: As a result it became massively successful.15 There were not a lot of investors unconsciously treat this number as if it were always going badly. It is not the problem, and that often creates a situation where it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that.

Notes

Our secret is to write your thoughts down in, we don't want to wait for the same time. On the next stage tend to become one of the ingredients in our common culture.

He did eventually graduate at about 26. 99, and as an idea where there were already profitable.

Security always depends more on not screwing up. Nothing annoys VCs more than their competitors, who may have to track down. Frankfurt, Harry, On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1965. When you're starting a company.

Which helps explain why there are only about 2%. They have no idea what they do on the relative weights? This argument seems to have been in the sample might be? I see a lot cheaper than business school, and making money on the programmers, the more important.

We may never do that. They'd freak if they knew their friends were. Delicious users are collectors, and that they use; if you tell them to go to college somewhere with real research professors.

S P 500 CEOs in 2002 was 35,560. I'm not saying option pools themselves will go on to the code you write has a pretty comprehensive view of investor behavior.

An investor who for some reason insists that you should make the people who make things very confusing. I'm speaking here of IT startups; in biotech things are from an interview.

Robert V. And while we have.

There's comparatively little competition for mediocre ideas, and they succeeded. But if you're a YC startup you have is so new that it's a collection of stuff to be a quiet contentment. And in any era if people are trying to make money, in which you are.

In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp features like lexical closures and rest parameters. The biggest counterexample here is Skype. Some VCs seem to have balked at this, on the Daddy Model and reality is the post-money valuation of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits. Probabilities in this respect as so many others the pattern for the best startups, because you have to tell them everything.

35 companies that seem promising can usually get enough money from them. Now to people he meets at parties he's a real salesperson to replace you. They don't know how many computers the worm might have to keep their wings folded, as in Boston, or at such a large chunk of time.

It was also the highest price paid for a startup to sell them technology.

This kind of kludge you need to raise money, then over the details.

From the conference site, June 2004: While the space of careers does. It was also obvious to your brain that you're not going to do this would probably be interrupted every fifteen minutes with little loss of personality for the next Apple, maybe you'd start to pull ahead in the world population, and when given the Earldom of Rutland. But what they're doing.

Incidentally, this seems an odd idea.

Thanks to Sarah Harlin, Steve Huffman, Geoff Ralston, Robert Morris, and Daniel Gackle for putting up with me.

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peppernephew7-blog · 5 years

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2:00PM Water Cooler 11/30/2018

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Trade

“Xi and Trump Should Swallow Their Pride and Join the TPP” [Foreign Policy]. ‘The only way forward is to seek peaceful coexistence through piecemeal compromise. The perfect vehicle for such talks is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the multilateral free trade deal negotiated under former U.S. President Barack Obama, abandoned by Trump, and resurrected by other Asian-Pacific trade partners such as Japan. The G-20 meeting between Trump and Xi should produce an announcement that the United States and China will be launching bilateral negotiations to join the TPP together.”

“Trump signs NAFTA replacement deal ahead of the G20 summit” [CNN]. “The ceremonial signing does not mean the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — the USMCA, as it has been rebranded — will now go into effect. The deal still needs to win congressional approval in Washington, where key members of both political parties have already expressed significant concerns. ‘I don’t expect to have much of a problem,’Trump said during the ceremony.”

“Schumer calls for improvements to new NAFTA deal” [The Hill]. Schumer: “I am most interested in ensuring that any final agreement protects our dairy farmers and that there is real enforcement of new and tough labor provisions. The deal must also raise wages and should recognize that climate change is a grave threat to our countries’ economies and the health and safety of our citizens.” And–

I oppose NAFTA 2.0, and I will vote against it in the Senate unless @realDonaldTrump reopens the agreement and produces a better deal for America’s working families.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 29, 2018

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

2020

“Bernie Sanders Puts Forward a Program That Could Split the Democratic Party” [Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report]. “[T]he immediate obstacle to Sanders’ proposals for Medicare-For-All, tuition-free public higher education, expanded Social Security, a $15 an hour minimum wage, “bold action” on climate change, fixing the criminal justice system, comprehensive immigration reform, progressive tax reform, a $1 trillion infrastructure overhaul and cheaper prescription drugs, is not Donald Trump’s GOP troglodytes — it’s Nancy Pelosi and her corporate Democrats, who answer to a much higher power: big capital…. Sanders doesn’t have to win the White House to bring about this historic “creative destruction.” He just has to wreck the Party. If the Party sabotages him in the primaries, as in 2016, then progressives will get another chance to do the right thing, and say goodbye to the Democrats. Or, if Sanders wins, hopefully the corporatists will follow the money and run away to the GOP, or form their own Third Way party, and leave the Democratic carcass to the poor folks. Any split will do the trick, as long as the result is a non-corporate mass party.”

“Sanders Institute Brings Star Power to Burlington” [Seven Days]. “A star-studded crowd joined Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the Burlington waterfront Thursday night to kick off a three-day conference hosted by the nonprofit Sanders Institute…. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, actress Susan Sarandon, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis were among those scheduled to address such topics as climate change, housing and criminal justice reform.” Sanders (video): “We have got to make sure that the Democratic party is not just the party of the east coast and the west coast. It is a party of every state in this country. Our job is to make sure that the issues that we deal with, that people understand they impact black families in New York City, they impact white families in Kansas and Latino families in Los Angeles.” • Heads explode at the mention of Susan Sarondon….

“The Making of Elizabeth Warren” [Politico]. “For Warren, that first go-around with Dr. Phil was an epiphany. She was not being asked to talk to a reader on the other side of a printed page but to counsel actual people sitting right there in the same studio. ‘I had done interviews about [The Two-Income Trap]’ she told me, ‘but never had someone turn directly to me and say, ‘Here’s a family, here’s their problem. Give them some advice, Elizabeth.’ And that’s what I did.’ Perhaps more important, she realized viscerally the disproportionate but equally undeniable reach of TV—that ‘by spending a few minutes talking to the family on Dr. Phil’s show,’ she would write in her 2014 memoir, she ‘might have done more good than in an entire year’ on campus.” • It is true that Warren is a good explainer.

“Clinton does little to dampen 2020 speculation” [The Hill]. “‘I don’t understand the wisdom of telling a woman who has made history in our party and in the country to get off the stage,’ said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Clinton. ‘Assuming the campaign learns from its missteps, she’d be fine.'” • Oh my.

“Goodbye Midterm Dynamic, Hello Presidential Politics” [Stuart Rothenberg, Inside Elections]. “In presidential years, voters cast separate ballots for president and for Congress. During midterms, those same voters don’t have a presidential ballot, so they don’t have a direct way to express their dissatisfaction with the person in the Oval Office apart from voting against the nominees of the president’s party… With Trump not on the ballot — but traveling around the country saying that he was in fact on the ballot — the only way to send a signal of dissatisfaction to the White House and to make a statement about changing the direction of the country was to vote against Republicans for federal office. That is exactly what swing voters (including independents and college-educated whites) and core Democratic demographic groups did.”

2018

“The thrills and chills of a Democratic supermajority” [Los Angeles Daily News]. “With many ballots yet to be counted, it appears Democrats will have 60 votes in the 80-member Assembly and 29 votes in the 40-member Senate. There hasn’t been a Democratic supermajority of this size in California since 1883. The new supermajorities of roughly three-quarters in each house represent an unprecedented level of power, particularly when added to Democratic control of every statewide office. The future of California could be reshaped by it. Stakeholders are lined up to demand more money for affordable housing, infrastructure and expanded public assistance. Yet the state faces an enormous unfunded liability for public worker pensions and benefits. Combined with increased spending, it could plunge the state into disaster in an economic downturn.” • You’d think CalPERS would be mentioned by name….

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The new wave of Democrats owes a huge debt to people power” [Gary Younge, Guardian]. “There has been a gale afoot for some time now. The election of the most racially diverse and most female Congress ever is clearly a product of a moment in which #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, Women’s Marches, Fight for 15, immigrant rights, gun control and climate change have emerged or continued to surge. The election of a misogynist bigot to the White House has doubtless been a catalyst for women and minorities to stand for election too.” • Partly a product. I don’t see how you put the election of former CIA operatives, even in female, into this frame at all. “Not enough,” as Sander would say, that they’re women!

Stats Watch

Chicago Purchasing Managers Index, November 2018: “a very good month for Chicago’s PMI sample” [Econoday]. “New orders surged…. Hiring picked up…. This report can be volatile as demonstrated with today’s results which contrast with other business surveys that indicate November’s pace either held steady or slowed.” And: “The Fed manufacturing surveys have been trending down – and the Chicago ISM strongly expanded” [Econintersect]. And: “well above the consensus forecast” [Calculated Risk].

Commodities: “Commodities Drop Looks Secular, Not Cyclical” [MarketWatch]. “Any way you measure it, the market for commodities is suffering. The Bloomberg Commodity Index of 22 key raw materials ranging from oil to copper to soybeans has dropped about 10 percent since reaching an almost three-year high in May. I’ve identified 10 forces that explain the weakness and why it will persist.”

Retail: “Payless sold its discount shoes for $600 a pair at mock luxury influencer event” [USA Today]. “Payless took over a former Armani store, renamed the retail location as “Palessi” and stocked the outlet with its discount-priced boots, heels, tennis and leisure shoes. Then, it invited a flock of partygoers and sold them the shoes, typically priced at $20 to $40 in Payless stores, at inflated designer price tags of $200 to $600. “Palessi” sold about $3,000 worth of shoes within a few hours…”

Tech: “Company Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview” [Patent Panda]. “[D]uring the second year of my PhD at the [MIT] Media Lab. I was invited to visit Google ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects) to learn about some of their new projects in storytelling. I got to visit their space, meet some of my creative heroes and I shared with them all of my work in interactive books and storytelling…. What started as just a visit quickly turned into a job interview. I was even invited to share my work directly with Regina Dugan, the director of ATAP at that time! I was excited, thinking perhaps I would be invited for a summer internship. It turned out they found my work so relevant that they offered me a job on the spot.” The writer turned down the job to stay in school. Time passes… “Two years later, in March 2016 I find out from some paper engineering friends that some of the same people who had interviewed me had also applied for patents on interactive pop-up books with electronics. These patents covered many of the same things that had discussed, that I’d showed them, with no mention of my or others’ work in the field.” • Wowsers.

The Bezzle: “Blockchain study finds 0.00% success rate and vendors don’t call back when asked for evidence” [The Register]. “Though Blockchain has been touted as the answer to everything, a study of 43 solutions advanced in the international development sector has found exactly no evidence of success. Three practitioners including erstwhile blockchain enthusiast John Burg, a Fellow at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), looked at instances of the distributed crypto ledger being used in a wide range of situations by NGOs, contractors and agencies. But they drew a complete blank. ‘We found a proliferation of press releases, white papers, and persuasively written articles,’ Burg et al wrote. ‘However, we found no documentation or evidence of the results blockchain was purported to have achieved in these claims. We also did not find lessons learned or practical insights, as are available for other technologies in development.'” • Hilarity ensues.

The Bezzle: “British tech billionaire Mike Lynch charged with fraud in the US over $11 billion Autonomy sale” [Business Insider]. “Lynch sold Autonomy to HP for $11.7 billion (£9.2 billion) in 2011. A year later, HP’s CEO claimed the company had wildly inflated its earnings, and subsequently wrote it down by $8.8 billion. In response Lynch launched a countersuit, claiming HP was scapegoating him for its own incompetence. On Thursday, the US Department of Justice filed 14 charges of fraud against Lynch in a San Francisco court, along with Autonomy’s former vice president for finance Stephen Chamberlain. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.”

The Bezzle: “Tesla has reached production milestone of 1,000 Model 3s a day: report” [MarketWatch]. “According to an internal email from Chief Executive Elon Musk to employees, which Electrek said it obtained, Musk told employees to focus on keeping that 1,000-a-day production level steady and to look for ways to reduce costs and find efficiencies. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the report.” • Dubious provenance….

Gaia

“We Can Pay For A Green New Deal” [Stephanie Kelton, et al., HuffPo]. “We need a mass mobilization of people and resources, something not unlike the U.S. involvement in World War II or the Apollo moon missions ― but even bigger. We must transform our energy system, transportation, housing, agriculture and more…. Here’s the good news: Anything that is technically feasible is financially affordable. And it won’t be a drag on the economy ― unlike the climate crisis itself, which will cause tens of billions of dollars worth of damage to American homes, communities and infrastructure each year. A Green New Deal will actually help the economy by stimulating productivity, job growth and consumer spending, as government spending has often done. (You don’t have to go back to the original New Deal for evidence of that.) In fact, a Green New Deal can create good-paying jobs while redressing economic and environmental inequities.” • Well worth a read.

“Climate change: Australian students skip school for mass protest” [BBC]. “School Strike 4 Climate Action protests have been held in every state capital and 20 regional towns.”

“How Wildfires Are Making Some California Homes Uninsurable” [New York Times]. “California’s wildfires keep growing bigger, more frequent and more destructive. Of the 20 worst wildfires in state history, four were just last year, giving rise to a record $12.6 billion of insurance claims. It hasn’t gotten any better this year…. ‘We’re not in a crisis yet, but all of the trends are in a bad direction,’ said Dave Jones, who is completing his eighth and final year as California’s insurance commissioner. ‘We’re slowly marching toward a world that’s uninsurable.’” • Ulp.

“Coal is still king in global power production” [Phys.org]. “Coal remains the most widely used means of electricity production in the world. It also happens to be the biggest emitter of climate-changing carbon dioxide of any fuel. Despite efforts to tackle global warming, worldwide demand for coal was up one percent last year, mainly due to demand in Asia…. India seems set to replace China as the world’s biggest coal consumer while Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines and Vietnam have also registered big increases.”

“Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians have been exposed to dangerous PFAS chemicals, including around Pittsburgh’s airport” [Public Source]. “The contamination is from a class of chemicals referred to as PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances). The chemicals have gotten into water supplies in hundreds of locations across the country and are associated with a range of cancers and serious illnesses in humans, even if they’ve been exposed to very small amounts…. In 2016, at least six million Americans were thought to have been exposed to PFAS through their drinking water. The Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group that studies the chemicals, concluded that more than 220,000 Pennsylvanians were likely exposed to PFAS. But in May the group estimated the number of people exposed nationally is about seven times higher than they originally thought. Its latest analysis suggests more than 110 million people in the nation may have been exposed through their drinking water.”

“Mathematical Simplicity May Drive Evolution’s Speed” [Quanta]. “Creationists love to insist that evolution had to assemble upward of 300 amino acids in the right order to create just one medium-size human protein. With 20 possible amino acids to occupy each of those positions, there would seemingly have been more than 20300 possibilities to sift through, a quantity that renders the number of atoms in the observable universe inconsequential. Even if we discount redundancies that would make some of those sequences effectively equivalent, it would have been wildly improbable for evolution to have stumbled onto the correct combination through random mutations within even billions of years…. ” • But they don’t take Kolmogorov complexity into account! (Sorry, I couldn’t find a quotable nugget after the lead! But the article is interesting….)

“Study Finds Rising Sea Levels Result Of Expansive Colonization Effort By Dolphins” [The Onion].

Class Warfare

“Grinnell student workers approve campuswide union; school’s move to quash has national implications” [Des Moines Register]. “Grinnell College students voted to expand unionization of student workers, but the move could be short-lived as the school tries to quash the unionization by appealing to a Republican-majority National Labor Relations Board.” • That’s shocking. The Grinnell motto: “Truth and Humanity.”

“Louisiana School Made Headlines for Sending Black Kids to Elite Colleges. Here’s the Reality.” [New York Times]. “T.M. Landry has become a viral Cinderella story, a small school run by Michael Landry, a teacher and former salesman, and his wife, Ms. Landry, a nurse, whose predominantly black, working-class students have escaped the rural South for the nation’s most elite colleges…. In reality, the school falsified transcripts, made up student accomplishments and mined the worst stereotypes of black America to manufacture up-from-hardship tales that it sold to Ivy League schools hungry for diversity….” Interestingly: “Some alumni, especially those who spent only a short time at T.M. Landry, have been successful.” • Brings up the idea that the Ivies are meant to filter out talent, rather than encourage it…

“Suicide and the chimera of American prosperity” [The Week]. “It will be tempting for some liberals to argue that the drug and suicide epidemic, which is most pronounced in states like West Virginia and in the post-industrial Midwest, is the muted response of white Americans to the prospect of their irrelevance in a rapidly diversifying country. But that’s not what I think is happening — and not just because David Duke probably says the same thing. For one thing, the despair that is the underlying cause of these phenomena is universal. The difference is that black and Hispanic communities have more hard-won resilience than whites who have led increasingly atomized, if comparatively more prosperous, existences for half a century now. They live in self-segregated communities in which the only meaningful bonds with their neighbors and even their extended families are those to which they have consented. Their experience has not prepared them for financial uncertainty, violence, atrophying attention spans, and drug taking. For them there really is no such thing as society.?

“In 1970s, workers at this GM plant tried to reinvent the American Dream. Instead, they watched it fade away” [Will Bunch, The Inquirer]. “The young lords of Lordstown found the assembly line — 35 second bursts of a dull, repetitive task, and a 5-second break before the next Impala or Vega rolled up — to be soul-crushing work. Botched cars — some of them slashed, deliberately sabotaged by angry workers — piled up in the giant lot outside the factory. A good chunk of the labor force had little fear of conflict with their bosses because they’d recently returned from the front lines in Vietnam.”

News of the Wired

“There Is Gas Under the Tundra” (photographs) [Lens Culture]. “[W]hile Xelot’s images of the peculiar fire-ice balance are arresting enough as still visuals, there are also features of the setting that cannot be captured with a camera’s lens. ‘These huge [LNG] flames in the tundra make a lot of noise, and they are incredibly hot. While I was photographing I almost burned my finger off. The atmosphere’s temperature is -30°C, but the closer you get, the more it burns, which is an impressive sensation. The tundra is historically a very silent place, but inside the yards it is noisy and crowded, and I try to make this contrast come through in the photographs.'”

Vaccination and public health. Thread:

Dear parents of children who do not have cancer: a casual measles exposure in a grocery store caused the following things to happen when my child was in chemotherapy:

— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018

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Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant(KH):

KH: “The recent rains, on Hawaii Island’s west side, have caused an explosion of fountain grass and the pure white Hawaiian poppy, along the ocean.”

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser, now completed. So do feel free to make a contribution today or any day. Here is why: Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of small donations helps me with expenses, and I factor that trickle in when setting fundraising goals. So if you see something you especially appreciate, do feel free to click below! (The hat is temporarily defunct, so I slapped in some old code.)

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on November 30, 2018 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/11/200pm-water-cooler-11-30-2018.html

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maxwellyjordan · 5 years

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Case study on the Ginsburg conspiracy theories in action

#WheresRuth. Even as the answer – working from home while recovering from cancer surgery – was covered by journalists and confirmed by the Supreme Court itself, this hashtag and similar ones populated Twitter in January and February. False allegations about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s status ranged from standard political rumors (e.g., that she planned to announce her retirement soon) to massive conspiracy theories (e.g., that she was in a medically induced coma or that her death was being hidden from the American people). Presumed “updates” from conspiracy theorists as well as mishaps from media organizations — at one point, Fox News erroneously aired, for barely two seconds, an image of Ginsburg with the dates “1933-2019” under her name — fueled the theories.

Journalists looked into the conspiracy theories in depth as they were developing, especially after a February 4 appearance by Ginsburg at a concert in Washington — in which she was personally seen by multiple reporters of the Supreme Court press corps — was rejected by some as “fake news,” supposedly due to a lack of pictures. After the event one Washington Post reporter, Robert Barnes, “experienced something he says was a first in his career: a storm of commentators, many anonymous, swarming his social media accounts and email inbox to tell him that something he saw with his own eyes and reported in The Post did not actually happen.”

At SCOTUSblog, we organized a small experiment intended to produce an illustration of how proponents of conspiracy theories respond to evidence disproving their ideas. We were curious to see how different individuals on Twitter who had participated in spreading misinformation about Ginsburg responded when asked directly to correct themselves and inform their followers of the truth. We expected to meet some resistance (and we did), but we saw it as a valuable opportunity to demonstrate the process in action. Our data are limited and we don’t profess statistical significance; what follows is more of a case study.

Procedure

Through January and February, we tracked 82 Twitter accounts with over 10,000 followers that tweeted claims or insinuations (including questions) about Ginsburg’s death or incapacity. The account with the most followers was that of actor James Woods (@RealJamesWoods), who at the time had 1.95 million followers and who tweeted on January 29, among other similar messages: “As citizens we have a right to a fully seated United States Supreme Court. The fact that #RuthBaderGinsberg [sic] is literally missing in action is troubling. Considerations of her personal well-being aside (we wish her good health), Americans need to be apprised of her viability.” This may seem like a simple inquiry, but it ignores the Supreme Court’s direct statements. An example of a more nefarious tweet comes from one user with 250,000 followers, who on February 8 tweeted a link to a YouTube video and the message: “WHISTLEBLOWER REVEALS TRUTH ABOUT RUTH BADER GINSBURG HEALTH according to unconfirmed sources Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in a medically induced coma. They’ll keep her alive until the 2020 election if necessary.”

Ginsburg returned to work on February 15 for conference with her fellow justices. Over the two-week February sitting, Ginsburg heard all six of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments. She also released three opinions, including in one case, Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, that had been argued during her absence in January – indeed, the court had indicated in January that she would be participating in these cases based on the transcripts and briefs. News coverage of Ginsburg’s apparent productivity during her absence was met with some skepticism on Twitter. For example, on March 5, the ABA Journal tweeted a link to an article and the news that “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has written four majority opinions this term, outpacing all the other justices. Three of those opinions were issued after Ginsburg returned to the bench following Dec. 21 surgery for lung cancer.” Some of the replies to this tweet include, “Obviously her clerks are very industrious,” “Does she bring her opinions in person? #WheresRuth,” and “Did you witness her writing these opinions?”

Following the February sitting, we went through our list of users to track which, if any, had acknowledged Ginsburg’s return to the bench. We found 10 of the 82 (12 percent) did so in some way. Woods tweeted on February 20, “Always happy to see a victory over cancer. It is a dreadful disease and every survivor is a gift to us.” Another example is television host John Cardillo (@johncardillo), with over 115,000 followers, who tweeted on February 19, as a reply to an earlier tweet, “Ginsburg is back on the Court. She heard arguments today.”

In addition to these 10 who acknowledged Ginsburg’s return to the bench, we removed three from our overall group for different reasons. One notable user on our list, Jacob Wohl (@JacobAWohl) — who, in addition to claiming to have proved the falsehood of Ginsburg’s February 4 public appearance, posted a petition demanding that Ginsburg step down from the bench — was permanently banned from Twitter for creating fake accounts. A second user was suspended and a third had locked its tweets before our final review.

This leaves 69 (84 percent) who did not acknowledge Ginsburg’s return. We attempted to contact each of these users to report about Ginsburg’s return and to ask them whether they intended to inform their followers of the truth. We sent a direct message through Twitter to 41 users (50 percent of our sample). With slight variation depending on what the user had tweeted, we sent the following message: “We noticed that after Justice Ginsburg missed oral arguments in January, you questioned her status and called for proof of life. She’s now heard every oral argument in February, and yesterday she released two opinions from the bench. We’re wondering when you plan to update your followers on the truth of the matter. Please advise. Thank you.”

We were not able to DM 28 people (34 percent of our sample); we followed them temporarily — which made for two days of dreadful Twitter — but they never followed us back. Included in this group are prominent public figures such as Sebastian Gorka (@SebGorka), with over 700,000 followers, and Mark Dice (@MarkDice), with over 400,000 followers.

Responses

Roughly half of those we messaged (21 out of 41) did not respond to us. Of these, three blocked us. Including the 28 who never followed us back, 49 of the 69 who did not address Ginsburg’s return (71 percent) ignored our outreach. One user, with 40,000 followers, did not directly reply to us, but did tweet a screenshot of our DM with the text, “Someone @scotusblog has a lotta nerve.”

We did receive 20 responses to our DMs (49 percent of those we messaged; 24 percent of our overall total). We’ll now detail these responses more closely.

Ten users insisted on further proof. This was the largest category of rebuttal from those who did respond to our outreach.

For example, Stephen Miller (@redsteeze), with over 170,000 followers, told us, “Going to need to see photographic or video proof of her from the bench before I do something like that. OH RIGHT.. SCOTUS doesn’t allow cameras. How convenient.” Miller then tweeted a screenshot of our DM and his response. (Because of this tweet, we use his name. We won’t reveal users behind other DMs, which are private communications.) A second user, with over 350,000 followers, responded, “And I’m wondering if you have updated video of this. Until then, you can miss me the he said she said BS.” A third user, with over 35,000 followers, added, “When you provide me with a current, 10 minute one on one interview with Justice Ginsburg holding a newspaper with a current date on it I will update my followers that she is in fact alive, well, and functioning at ‘full steam’. Until then I remain skeptical of the situation.” There were seven other responses in a similar vein.

Four users disputed the need for any clarification. For example, a user with over 125,000 followers wondered, “Why should I? [My followers] can read the news. They are well aware.” This user has consistently tweeted remarks disparaging the credibility of media reports.

Other users suggested that questioning Ginsburg’s status, despite abundant evidence, was not even problematic. For example, one user, with over 170,000 followers, asked: “It’s wrong to question? Please advise, thanks in advance.” Or, similarly, from a user with over 60,000 followers, “Pretty sure I asked a simple question. ‘Where is Ruth?’”

A fourth user in this category, with over 20,000 followers, said that she had only wondered why members of the media had not reported on Ginsburg the way Melania Trump’s temporary absence from public appearances in 2018 had been covered. She said we should read her article. We had, and she did indeed call for proof of life.

Two users insisted that Ginsburg was dead. According to one, with over 15,000 followers: “Nope, that’s a body double if ever there was one.” And as another user, with over 435,000 followers, suggested, “That’s total hoax and a planned delay – bet she’s dead.”

In a more miscellaneous category, one user, who participates in a broadcast show that shares conspiracy theories and who has over 95,000 followers, invited us onto the show, asking, “Care to put a representative on air with me to do it?”

Two users responded to our DMs by correcting the record. One user, with over 18,000 followers, said, in a response that echoes the “no need to retract” variety: “Her recovery has been well publicized. But I’ll be happy to put a tweet out about it.” And he did tweet to this effect. Another user, who has over 160,000 followers, said, “Yes- we will update posts! Thanks.” He posted an update to an earlier article that had criticized reports on Ginsburg’s February 4 concert appearance, stating, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been sighted at the Supreme Court and has recovered from her bout with lung cancer…for now.”

Finally, one user, with over 165,000 followers, corrected us, indicating that she had retweeted some articles about Ginsburg being back. We were unable to find an actual retweet of hers to this effect. If we include her out of deference, as well as the two who acknowledged Ginsburg’s return after our outreach and the 10 who did so beforehand, we count 13 users (16 percent of our overall sample) who did ultimately inform their followers of the truth of the matter.

Evolution

On February 15, Ben Collins, an NBC reporter who has looked into online conspiracy theories, tweeted a prediction: “Now that RBG will be out in public soon, the conspiracy that she’s secretly dead will only evolve.” We found examples of this phenomenon in response to our outreach. For instance, Stephen Miller suggested to his followers in a tweet on March 5 that, “Hitting up DMs is exactly what SCOTUSBLOG would do in a panic if people were starting to figure out the truth.” Another user, with over 75,000 followers, posted an article, which seems to mistake us for the actual court, “So is it me, or does it make it even fishier that an official account would scroll through every blue check mark profile that mentioned that they thought Ginsberg [sic] was dead…and passive aggressively threaten us to take it down? Because I sure think it is.” Although we don’t suppose our DMs will enter into any “canon” regarding the Ginsburg conspiracy theories, these tweets do illustrate Collins’ prediction in action.

Accounts with the most followers

We tracked 23 accounts with over 100,000 followers. One observation is that six of the 10 accounts that acknowledged Ginsburg’s return were in this group, comprising a quarter of the largest accounts, even as only 12 percent of our overall sample made such an acknowledgement. There may be a certain savviness to these six users, who on average have over 495,000 followers, actively spreading rumors — thus generating engagement with their social media and, as applicable, clicks for their websites — before backing off, perhaps out of concern for protecting their reputation. Additionally, we received six direct responses from this large group (26%, which roughly matches the 24% direct-response rate across our entire sample). Two of these insisted on further need for proof, two disputed the need for a correction, one did issue an update and one said she had already retweeted an update.

Conclusion

The accounts that we tracked and attempted to contact all have some measure of influence. We limited our search to accounts with more than 10,000 followers because we wanted to see how popular users — who are, presumably, concerned about their reputation and image — would react when confronted with the fact that conspiracy theories they pushed had been refuted. Only 16 percent publicly acknowledged Ginsburg’s return. Those who did not (80 percent of the accounts we tracked) have chosen to ignore or actively dispute evidence of her return to the court. (As explained, 4 percent of the tracked accounts were removed from consideration.)

This isn’t the first time that conspiracy theorists have targeted the Supreme Court, and it won’t be the last. We don’t want to draw any broad conclusion about conspiracy theories and how they evolve once their core arguments are proven wrong. We simply were interested to see how those who pushed this specific talking point reacted when the facts changed.

The post Case study on the Ginsburg conspiracy theories in action appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/03/case-study-on-the-ginsburg-conspiracy-theories-in-action/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#law #justice

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chorusfm · 6 years

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Mitski – Be the Cowboy

Mitski Miyawaki (mononymously known as Mitski) is a powerhouse. The Japanese-American artist is only 27 years old, and her new album; Be The Cowboy is her fifth album in six years. Her 2016 album Puberty 2 was released to universal critical acclaim, single “Your Best American Girl” landed on multiple “best songs of 2016” lists, and starting in March this year, she joined Lorde as an opener for the New Zealand artist’s Melodrama World Tour. To say that Mitski has been having a hard working, busy, few years is an understatement. Within Be The Cowboy, there’s a new central focus for Mitski: the loneliness that accompanies a young woman as she relentlessly tours to continue being a musician for a living. Of course, her words are as sharp and powerful as ever. There’s no one who has so effectively mastered the art of explosive, endlessly fascinating songwriting. She switches between personifying fictional characters, while a number of tracks follow her relationship with music (“Geyser” and “Remember My Name” spring to mind) rather than other people, or herself. This is undoubtedly Mitski’s most ambitious album yet, and also the culmination of all her past work. The album has an unbelievable amount of musical ideas wrapped up inside it, and in any other artist’s hands, it might not work. Be The Cowboy is only 33 minutes long – only three songs are longer than two and a half minutes, but it all flows beautifully. All the ideas are anchored by ethereal vocals and haunting lyrical gems. Just looking at the singles, it’s clear that Mitski is confident in making yet another sonic departure. Take second single “Nobody”; an infectious disco-pop banger that’s nothing like anything else in her discography. Album opener “Geyser” is bombastic and combines the piano and organ found in her first two records, Lush and Retired From Sad, New Career In Business and joining them is the crashing, distorted guitars that defined her breakout album, Bury Me At Make Out Creek. Final single “Two Slow Dancers” is a gorgeous, nostalgic piano ballad. There’s no one who tackles nostalgia and loneliness like Mitski. Apparently, Mitski has a real knack for writing pop songs, too. Is there anything she can’t do? “Nobody,” “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?,” and “Washing Machine Heart” are some of her grooviest songs yet. They should be mega hits. “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?” is deceptively upbeat. It’s also pretty crazy, featuring horns, a fun repetitive synth sample reminiscent of the one that framed Puberty 2’s “Happy,” and a synth-and-guitar-lead climax to close the song. Of course, it’s not all fun and games. Mitski sings in a slightly higher register than usual – this immediately caught me off guard, I thought I knew her voice and different tones like the back of my hand. She is dissecting the end of an important relationship, and asks to just “paint it over.” “Washing Machine Heart” could easily be a companion to “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?.” It’s another poppy, unusual song where someone is invited to toss their dirty shoes into her washing machine heart, and “bang it up inside.” The contrast between the self-destructive lyrics and the catchiest melodies in her entire discography is so very Mitski. Be The Cowboy could’ve been “Washing Machine Heart” x14 and remained a captivating listen. Personally, I couldn’t be happier that “Old Friend,” a song that captures wistfulness for a “blue diner” that I’ve never seen but would now love to visit follows “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?.” “Old Friend” is a plain but lovely track that features Mitski back on the piano, and simple acoustic strumming holds it all together. Her longing request to visit the blue diner and “take coffee and talk about nothing, baby” takes listeners to a place everyone in town would know; it’s retro but familiar. Mitski has a talent for writing songs that sound old-timey, like the Angel Olsen-lite “Lonesome Love” and the misleadingly jaunty “Me And My Husband”. In the mournful “Lonesome Love,” we hear Mitski trying to prove that she’s over someone. She spends an hour putting on her make up. She walks in wearing her high heels, “all high and mighty” but ultimately loses once they say “hello.” She then takes the blame for getting hurt again, and explains that “nobody butters me up like you” but “nobody fucks me like me.” “Me And My Husband,” on the other hand, is a bit more unusual. There’s a deep sigh just before the piano and drums come bursting in. Again, Mitski sings in a higher register. She’s already indicating that while the music is joyful, the story is not as it seems. In an interview with the 405, Mitski says this about “Me And My Husband”: …I think a lot of marriages are like that because that’s what it is; it’s no longer about being in love. It’s really hard to stay in love and keep the spark. When you get married and you’re with someone for years and years, it no longer becomes about infatuation or having your heart aflutter. But the song is just about “you know what, this may not be love anymore, and I may be unhappy, and I’m going to die one day and this is just going to be my life.” But then turning around and saying “this is the decision I made, and you’re the person I chose, so I’m just going to stick with you. We have our problems, but this is our life and we’re going to live it.” And that’s what it’s about. It’s heartbreaking, but fits right in to the multiple narratives and themes running throughout Be The Cowboy. Hearing her misdirect listeners with accessible, uplifting sounds and juxtaposing them with some of her most self-deprecating (“I am the idiot with the painted face”), candid lyrics is genius. “Nobody” is arguably the song that accomplishes this the best. “My god, I’m so lonely / so I open the window to hear sounds of people”, Mitski croons in “Nobody,” one of Be The Cowboy’s standout tracks. Like a majority of her lyrical content, “Nobody” is raw. We hear a woman completely vulnerable, and that vulnerability is seeping through the wonderful pop song. In the music video, it’s largely Mitski ft. Mitski in an eerie nightmare scene. It’s interesting watching the colourful, peculiar video for “Nobody” compared to the equally dramatic but grey video for “Geyser.” Be The Cowboy is fully immersed in drama and intimacy, and most importantly: confidence. Mitski continues to explore intimacy in the album’s second half. She shares the softness she feels in her heart through recurring motifs. Recurring motifs in music have always been fascinating to me, and I find it unfortunate that most artists don’t experiment with their lyrical approach and apply a motif or narrative. From “Nobody” onwards, we hear Mitski express a desire to be kissed. She’s “just asking for a kiss,” just “one good movie kiss” and she’ll be all right. In the beautiful, sweeping love ballad “Pink In The Night,” she’s glowing pink because she’s so infatuated with somebody and confesses, “I know I’ve kissed you before, but I didn’t do it right.” In the delightful “Washing Machine Heart”, she’s exasperated and craves to be kissed already! Then, she pleads, “somebody kiss me, I’m going crazy” in “Blue Light.” Mitski is an artist who knows her ambitions, is extremely self-aware and allows herself to portray the need to burst open through her music. Although she’s threatening to burst at the seams, there is something Mitski won’t let herself or listeners forget: she is a woman in control. For Be The Cowboy’s press release, Mitski explains the album title as “a kind of joke”, and continues to say, “There was this artist I really loved who used to have such a cowboy swagger. They were so electric live. With a lot of the romantic infatuations I’ve had, when I look back, I wonder, did I want them or did I want to be them? Did I love them or did I want to absorb whatever power they had? I decided I could just be my own cowboy.” Be The Cowboy is electric. The music seems to effortlessly veer from sombre piano ballads to upbeat pop, to slight jazz to sublime indie rock. This is something Mitski has always excelled at – making the complex sound remarkably simple. And, the simple things she does do are always fantastic. The straightforward fuzzy guitar riff running through “Remember My Name” has been in my head for days, and “I need something bigger than the sky, hold it in my arms and know it’s mine” is already a fan-favourite line. As is “it’s just that I fell in love with a war, and nobody told me it ended” from the epic and melancholic “A Pearl.” “A Pearl” may be the most essential song on Be The Cowboy. It’s the track that nails what Mitski asked herself in the press release – did she love them or did she want to absorb whatever power they had? “A Pearl” finds her rolling the pearl that was left over in her hand, only looking at this pretty object and avoiding examining toxicity that lies inside a relationship. Mitski doesn’t just look at something pretty, for nostalgia’s sake. She takes her listeners on journeys. She brings us to a school gymnasium in Be The Cowboy’s album closer, “Two Slow Dancers.” She keeps her dry wit with her as she reminds listeners of the smell of school gymnasiums; “It’s funny how they’re all the same.” The school gymnasium is the chosen destination for two ex-lovers to share a final dance. They are “two slow dancers, last ones out”, wishing the moment could last forever. “Two Slow Dancers” is mellow, but Mitski doesn’t hold back from sharing the anxiety of growing old. Though she’s still young herself, she can’t help focusing her fifth album on longing for the past and imagining relationships better than they actually were. To be honest, I’m relieved that Be The Cowboy breaks from the album closers of her past work. While “A Burning Hill” and “Last Words of a Shooting Star” are stunning, intense songs, they are worryingly frank songs that had me feeling like I was snooping through her diary. But here, she embraced fiction and larger-than-life storytelling. She became her own cowboy. With Be The Cowboy, Mitski has a newfound assurance that’s just wonderful for fans new and old to watch blossom before their eyes. Do you want to be your own cowboy? I know I want to be. --- Please consider supporting us so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/review/mitski-be-the-cowboy/

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/20-more-weird-job-interview-questions-that-have-actually-been-asked/

20 more weird job interview questions that have actually been asked

So you’re looking for some weird, odd, unusual job interview questions, are you? Well, just so you know, a while back we published a wildly popular roundup of 20 weird interview questions that have actually been asked in an interview (go check it out if you haven’t yet!). And now that you’re here, you’ve just arrived at Part 2!

That’s right and since that other post did so well, we went ahead and rounded up a fresh new batch of weird interview questions which you can find below.

With this set of weird interview questions, we also included a bit of context – and sometimes even a sample answer – alongside them so you can get a better picture of what the interviewee (or interviewer!) was thinking when the unusual question was asked.

Read on for the goods!

“Can you tell me 10 things you could do with a pencil other than write?”

The answers included some basic responses such as erasing, but I was really surprised by some of the other responses. One of the candidates we ended up hiring said A tool to pick the earwax out of your headphones after you’ve used them which I thought was so honest and funny (come on, most of us have done it!). It’s a nice break from traditional accounting questions and also shows how well candidates can think on their feet.

– Casie Grammer, Customer Success Manager at airCFO

“If I had an airplane full of jelly beans and I wanted you to get them all out, but in a very sanitary way so I could still eat them, what would you do? You have 24 hours to do this, but you have unlimited funds.”

My response was that I would hire 2 cranes and put one on each side of the plane. I’d buy big inflatable pools and put them under each exit on the plane. I’d then connect the left crane to the plane’s left wing, and tip it up, making the jelly beans fall into the pools. I’d repeat the same process with the right crane and wing. There would be some jelly beans left, so I’d then hire a crew, in full hazmat outfits (just to drive the sanitary point home), to clean up the rest of the jelly beans.

– Roxanne Williams, Marketing Director at Full Stack Talent

“Do you personally change the oil in your car?”

Years ago, after completing a business-related master’s degree, I interviewed for a supervisory position at a firm that specialized in data entry jobs for nearby auto-parts manufacturers who required quick turnarounds. I was questioned in rapid-fire fashion by a team of three people — and questions came so fast that I had little time to compose my answers. Suddenly — out of the blue — a panel-member asked this question.

Since all of the previous questions had asked about my job-related supervisory experience, my college business courses, my personal management style, or how I would handle a contrived employee problem, I was definitely caught off guard. Trying to gain a few seconds think about how to answer, I asked them a question: What does changing my own motor oil have to do with this management position?

They told me that since quick turnaround on their data entry jobs was critical to meeting their clients’ requirements, they couldn’t afford to have much down-time in their facility. So when there were problems with any of their data-entry equipment, supervisors were supposed to try to resolve the issue without calling the vendor for repairs (and waiting for a field technician who might not arrive for hours). For that reason, they only wanted to hire supervisors who weren’t afraid to get dirty fixing things. (Personally, I thought there were surely better ways to determine my mechanical aptitude!)

Anyway, I told them that I personally did most of the repairs necessary to keep my aging 1973 VW Beetle roadworthy, and I was offered the job. However, since I disliked my interview “treatment” and thought it might be indicative of their organization’s management culture (and had three other interviews lined up), I turned down their offer on the spot.

– Timothy G. Wiedman, D.B.A., Former Associate Prof. of Management & Human Resources of Doane University

“If you were a kitchen appliance, which kitchen appliance would you be and why?”

I was applying to work as an English teacher for a nonprofit in the education industry and was being interviewed by the Program Director. In the interview, he asked [this] question.

It really caught me off guard! I responded that I would be a refrigerator because I’m a chill person who’s usually stuffed with food. It was a goofy answer, but the interviewer laughed and mentioned that he liked my creativity. I ended up landing the position!

– Sarah Hancock, Content Marketing Manager at BestCompany.com

“What if someone asks you to join at “double” the pay we offer?”

Reason for Asking: By asking such burning questions and putting them in difficult situations, we wanted to judge the clarity of thoughts and honesty in their opinions. Spontaneity is another factor under consideration in this case as taking a longer duration to answer enhances the odds of giving “framed answers.”

– Ketan Kapoor, CEO and Co-founder of Mettl

“Given a chance, would you sabotage a colleague’s career to climb up the ladder?”

Reason for Asking: This question can reveal multiple insights about a professional whether it’s their integrity, honesty, work ethics or the value system. How far a person go for the professional ladder speaks what culture can you expect in future. People answering in positive are most likely to promote negative competition, a toxic work culture while detesting collaboration and teamwork. Answering in negative, on the other hand, is the sign of an individual who believes in fairness and giving credit to the deserving people.

– Ketan Kapoor, CEO and Co-founder of Mettl

“What if you find out your boss is having an affair with a colleague?”

Reason for Asking: We asked this to check how efficiently can a person demarcate personal and professional boundaries. While one person might look to extract personal benefits in this case, the other person might work as usual with negligible impact on working relationships. It’s an excellent question, if you are to judge a candidate on “professional ethics” and the ability to retain “confidential” information in their head. However, it’s important to check the reasoning behind the answer to arrive at a conclusion.

Typical Responses: The question evoked wild responses. However, we preferred candidates who demonstrated a strong work ethics and chose to step out from overlapping personal and professional lives. The initial premise was to choose candidates who stay away from grapevine and fostering rumors at workplace, ultimately leading to a toxic work culture.

– Ketan Kapoor, CEO and Co-founder of Mettl

“If a plane was filled with Skittles and you had to empty it as fast as you can, how would you do it?”

My answer: It depends on the kind of plane. If it were one of the planes people go skydiving out of, it’d be easy to just fly the plane, and open the hatch to let the skittles fall out. If that didn’t get them all out, I’d use a broom, and just sweep the rest out.

Context: This was for a position as a Marketing Assistant at a Financial Institution and was asked by the VP of Marketing.*

– Lauren Crain, Digital Marketer at HealthLabs.com

“How do you make an omelet?”

My answer: You start by getting the tools: a pan, a stove, and a spatula. Then you take out the ingredients: 3 eggs, oil/butter, cheese, chopped bell peppers, chopped mushrooms, and chopped bacon (Of course these ingredients are optional and interchangeable). Place the pan on the stove, and the butter/oil in the pan. Turn on the stove to medium heat and allow the butter/oil to get hot. In a separate bowl, crack open the eggs, and whisk them together until they get fluffy. Pour the eggs into the pan, and add the ingredients. Allow the eggs to cook through and slide the omelet off of the pan onto a plate, folding it as it slides down.

Context: This was for a position as a Content Writer for a small business and was asked by the Founder and CEO.*

– Lauren Crain, Digital Marketer at HealthLabs.com

“How would you describe the color green to a blind and deaf person?”

I was interviewing for a job at GNC, the health nutrition store, as a simple associate to work the registers. The interviewer was the manager of this specific location in a small town. The interview was going fine, all of the normal questions asked, and then she asks that question.

WHAT. Is that even possible? I fumbled over my words for a couple minutes and then simply said – I’m so sorry, I really don’t know how to answer that question. She then moved away from the question, so I said – What’s the answer you were looking for? How would you answer that? and she responded with I don’t know. THEN WHY EVEN ASK THE QUESTION?

– Cassidy Barney, SEO Manager of Epic Marketing

“How many gas stations are there in the United States?”

When interviewing for a Marketing Director job at Earthwatch, an environmental non-profit in Boston, I was asked this question. They wanted to see how I thought through a problem logically.

– Brett Rudy, Sr. Director, Marketing at Constant Therapy

“What is the one thing that you believe to be true that very few others do?”

As our team have scaled I have conducted over 50 interviews in the last three months and I recently inserted [this] tricky question just to see what our job candidates would say. The question comes from the book Zero to One by Peter Thiel.

The question shows you if person answering the question has engage in any sort of deep thought and also about how they approach business and life in general. There really is no right answer to the question moreover it just really shows you what level of thinking the person answering it is operating at. This is highly valuable if determining the candidate is an A, B , or C player.

– Zach Hendrix, Co-founder of GreenPal

“What is your gun noise?”

We asked this as we consider it important that our hires have a personality and a good sense of humour, so we felt that it would be a good way to test their ability to relax and have a laugh in a pressure situation, as well as to see how witty they are. We hoped people would see the fun of this question, and make big machine gun noises or the sound of a shotgun cocking. The person we asked just said “bang” after having paused for a considerable amount of time. It’s not a question we’ve used again since.”

– Steve Pritchard, HR Consultant, The London School of Make-Up

“I’ve asked [candidates] to bring a favorite mug to a follow-up interview. The reasons why I do it are pretty simple: 1) I want to find out if the person will actually remember to do this. 2) I want to see their personality.”

When the person comes to the follow-up interview I want to get to know them better. And the best way to find out more about the person is to let them talk about something that they like. This way they don’t think too much of what they are saying and you can get a better perspective of what the person is really like.

– Sarunas Budrikas, President of Angle180

“What are the qualities you like least and most in your parents?”

This questions allows us to see how the interviewee will tend to act in the coming months and years. If they don’t like that one of their parents were super unorganized, they most likely will tend to be more organized. People tend to adapt to the qualities that they like in their parents and shy away from qualities that they don’t like. Are these qualities that they are going to track towards going to be qualities that you are looking for in this candidate?

– Shawn Breyer, Owner of Breyer Home Buyers

“You are trapped on a life raft with a nun, an old man and a baby. There is only room for three of you, and you must decide who you throw off the raft. Who do you choose any why?”

He refused to give me any other info. I explained that the man could have navigation skills, the nun could be a world class angler. I finally said, Okay, the baby, because if we all die, so does the baby.

I got the job and found out later that in all his years of asking the question, no one had ever said the baby.

– Sean Spicer, Inbound Marketing Manager of AgileIT

“What’s your favorite cartoon and why?”

I had applied to work as a communication specialist at the international headquarters of American Leak Detection, an emergency service home provider. The director of marketing asked me. I responded that I’ve always loved Nickelodeon’s Hey Arnold! cartoon because it was hilarious and very true to life when I watched as a pre-teen.

The interviewer knew he was asking an odd question, because after I replied, he told me that a former boss had asked him the same question during an interview years ago and he’s found it relaxes people and gives you a chance to see their silly side.

– Stacy Nagai, Public Relations Manager at Chapman University

“What’s your spirit animal?”

I was definitely surprised by the question as it followed some fairly standard interview questions. I even asked for the interviewer to repeat the question just in case I heard him wrong. My answer was that my spirit animal is a husky because I’m always up for an adventure and will have a smile on my face the whole time.

After I got hired on, I asked my manager about the question and he told me it was to make sure I was a good culture fit. We have a great culture here at TSheets and do our best to protect that with each employee we bring on.

– Patrick Adcock, Marketing Analyst at TSheets by QuickBooks

“Why are manhole covers round?”

I stumbled and stammered a bit, and then tried to same something about circles giving the maximum area for people and equipment with the minimum amount of metal to make the cover. While this is kind of true, it was not the real answer. I also did not get the job. The real answer is:

So they don’t fall in.

A round manhole cover is slightly bigger than the diameter of the hole that it covers. A cover that is square, could be turned diagonal to the corners of a square hole, and dropped in. In fact any other shape can be manipulated in such as way as to allow the cover to fall into the hole. Only a round cover is completely idiot proof.

– Chris Morrissey, Head of Bioinformatics at Bioage Labs

“What’s your favorite candy?”

[That’s my] favorite question to ask during in an interview. While it may seem like an innocent unassuming question, it actually gives me a very vivid insight into the candidates personality and thought process. Responses can range from a dead end I don’t have one right through to a history lesson on the creation and inception of Skittles! It’s a great way to see how intuitive and passionate people can be. Since there is no right or wrong answer, it gives the candidate to talk freely without the worry of checking boxes to impress me.

Working in online marketing, this kind of passion is important because if the candidate can convey their passion for something fairly mundane, it shows me that they’ll easily be able to express their ideas and creativity in the job. We rarely like to recruit for specific positions because we’d rather have a well rounded employee and this is a great way to tell how well they’ll be able to slot into these different positions.

– Jon Hayes, Marketer for Authority Hacker

This article first appeared on Kununu.

More from Ladders

Source: https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/20-more-weird-job-interview-questions-that-have-actually-been-asked

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andrewdburton · 6 years

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The stories we tell ourselves

I had lunch with Sabino yesterday. He’s my accountant — but he’s also my friend (and a loyal Get Rich Slowly reader).

I told Sabino about how our house has been a money pit over the nine months since we bought it. I told him how much fun I’ve been having with Get Rich Slowly since I bought it back, and about how much work it has turned out to be to get the site renovated.

Sabino told me about his businesses (he doesn’t just own the accounting firm, but bits and pieces of several other companies too) and about his kids (who, to the surprise of both of us, are all teenagers now). He’s worked hard all of his life to give his family a solid future, and now — at age 48 — all of his dreams seem to be coming true.

I’ve shared Sabino’s story several times in the past. But for those who are unfamiliar, here’s a synopsis.

Sabino’s family moved to the United States when he was ten years old. They were poor and didn’t speak English. But from an early age, Sabino wanted to be part of the American Dream. He learned English, worked hard, and put himself through college.

After Sabino got married, he and his wife Kim set financial goals. Their chief aim was for Kim to stay home and raise a family. So, while our friends were buying new homes and new cars, Sabino and Kim rented a mobile home in the country for $200 a month and paid $950 cash for a 1982 Honda Accord. They both worked full-time jobs, but they lived off Sabino’s income alone and used Kim’s salary to repay $35,000 in student loans.

“We made sacrifices,” Sabino says. “We made these choices because of the goals we had. We knew what we were working for, and we were happy to do it.” (Back then, I didn’t understand their choices and sacrifices; twenty years later, it all makes sense.)

Today, Sabino is a successful business owner while Kim stays home to raise their three children, just as they planned. Because of their diligence, they now own a nice home in the country (they paid off the mortgage last spring) and new cars that are fully paid for. By staying focused on their purpose, they’ve been able to build the life they always dreamed about.

Rejecting Society’s Narrative

Yesterday over lunch, we talked about the qualities that lead to success. As I often do, I complained about the current narrative that the mass media is trying to sell Millennials: their lives are tough because the economy sucks and the deck is stacked against them.

“I just don’t believe it’s true,” I said. “The economy doesn’t suck. And now might be the best time in history to be alive. Besides, even if this story were true, so what? If you’re dealt a crappy hand, it’s up to you to make the best of it.”

Sabino nodded in agreement. “I don’t like that sort of thinking either,” he said. “But it’s nothing new. Our culture always has a story they want to tell you about yourself. When I came to this country, for instance, everyone — my friends, my teachers, my family, everyone — had expectations for me and what my life would be like.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When I was young, my parents worked in the fields. That’s how they made money to support us. One day my father pulled me aside. He told me that my future too was to work in the fields — unless I chose to change my destiny. That talk made an impression on me. Nobody expected a poor Mexican kid to graduate from high school, but that’s what I did. Nobody expected a poor Mexican kid to graduate from college, but that’s what I did. Nobody expected a poor Mexican kid to own an accounting firm, but that’s what I did. I decided to live a different story than the one that others had written for me.”

Sabino is one of the inspirations for my financial philosophy, and the reason is obvious. He’s lived it! (And he continues to live it.)

For more on Sabino’s story, check out this interview he did for the Oregon Multicultural Archives at Oregon State University.

Determine Your Destiny

My lunch with Sabino reminded me of a New Yorker article from a couple of years ago. In the piece, Maria Konnikova explored how people learn to become resilient.

She cites the work of Norman Garmezy, a developmental psychologist from the University of Minnesota. Garmezy, who died in 2009, spent more than forty years researching the qualities that lead to success and prevent mental illness. The quality that seemed to matter most? Resilience, the ability to surmount life’s slings and arrows instead of succumbing to them.

Writing about the work of another resilience researcher, Emmy Werner, the author says:

What was it that set the resilient children apart? Because the individuals in her sample had been followed and tested consistently for three decades, Werner had a trove of data at her disposal. She found that several elements predicted resilience.

Some elements had to do with luck: a resilient child might have a strong bond with a supportive caregiver, parent, teacher, or other mentor-like figure. But another, quite large set of elements was psychological, and had to do with how the children responded to the environment.

From a young age, resilient children tended to “meet the world on their own terms.” They were autonomous and independent, would seek out new experiences, and had a “positive social orientation.” “Though not especially gifted, these children used whatever skills they had effectively,” Werner wrote.

Perhaps most importantly, the resilient children had what psychologists call an “internal locus of control”: they believed that they, and not their circumstances, affected their achievements. The resilient children saw themselves as the orchestrators of their own fates. In fact, on a scale that measured locus of control, they scored more than two standard deviations away from the standardization group.

This latter statement sounds like statistical gobbledygook but it’s important. Werner’s research indicates that resilient children — those who are able weather the storms of life — score in the top 2.2% when measuring locus of control. Again: Successful kids believe they control their own fate.

Psychologists are convinced that resilience is a fundamental key to success. But where does it come from? Can it be learned? Why do some people respond better to stress than others? George Bonanno of Columbia University believes it all boils down to perception. From the New Yorker article:

Every frightening event, no matter how negative it might seem from the sidelines, has the potential to be traumatic or not to the person experiencing it…

Take something as terrible as the surprising death of a close friend: you might be sad, but if you can find a way to construe that event as filled with meaning—perhaps it leads to greater awareness of a certain disease, say, or to closer ties with the community—then it may not be seen as a trauma. (Indeed, Werner found that resilient individuals were far more likely to report having sources of spiritual and religious support than those who weren’t.)

The experience isn’t inherent in the event; it resides in the event’s psychological construal.

Konnikova concludes that yes, resilience can be learned, and the best way to do it is to shift from an external locus of control to an internal one. She writes: “Not only is a more internal locus tied to perceiving less stress and performing better but changing your locus from external to internal leads to positive changes in both psychological well-being and objective work performance.”

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I’ve written about all of these concepts before. I’ve written about developing financial resilience, about how our perception determines our experience, about becoming proactive by developing an internal locus of control, and about how all this relates to mindsets of scarcity and abundance. I’ve written about these concepts in the past, and I’ll write about them again in the future.

These ideas are the foundation upon which the Get Rich Slowly philosophy is built. To achieve your financial goals, you must accept responsibility for your choices and decide that you are in control of your fate. You are the boss of your own life.

I often get frustrated when I hear people complain that they can’t downsize their home, they can’t get a new job, they can’t get rid of their cell phones, they can’t save half of their income. In most cases, these things simply aren’t true. It’s not that they can’t do these things, it’s that they won’t. They’re telling themselves a story that they believe to be true, but they don’t understand there are other plotlines and endings available to them.

Generally speaking, no one story is more true than any other. Each tale is simply a different way of viewing our life. If one story makes us unhappy or uncomfortable, it’s possible to tell ourselves a different version of the story, one that creates a more positive experience. (It’s like the blind men and the elephant.)

Choose Your Own Adventure

A few years ago, I had a conversation with my friend Tyler Tervooren. He and I were both going through a lot of life changes, and we were each trying to re-write parts of the stories we’d been telling ourselves. Tyler shared a technique he was using to change his belief systems.

“I have a list of qualities I want in myself,” he told me. “I’ve written them on index cards in a specific format and I read these to myself every day.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “one card might say, ‘I am the sort of man who always keeps his promises.’ Another might say, ‘I am the type of man who makes exercise a priority.’ I have about twenty of these cards, and I review them every day. This is a way for me to stay focused on what’s important to me, and to remind myself of my values.”

What a great idea!

The bottom line is this: If you don’t like the story you’re living, only you can change it. You are the author of your own life. You didn’t write the beginning of the story, but you have the power to choose the ending. In so many ways, life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Choose an adventure you love instead of one that makes you unhappy.

I know, I know. All of this is easier said than done. Once you’re thirty or forty or fifty years old, you’ve had decades to tell yourself certain parts of your story. You may have written yourself into a corner. Changing plotlines can be difficult. Still, it is possible — and nobody else is going to change the storylines for you. It’s up to you to live the story you want.

The post The stories we tell ourselves appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/stories-we-tell-ourselves/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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foursproutwealth-blog · 6 years

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The stories we tell ourselves

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/the-stories-we-tell-ourselves/

The stories we tell ourselves

I had lunch with Sabino yesterday. He’s my accountant — but he’s also my friend (and a loyal Get Rich Slowly reader).

I’ve shared Sabino’s story several times in the past. But for those who are unfamiliar, here’s a synopsis.

Rejecting Society’s Narrative

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Sabino is one of the inspirations for my financial philosophy, and the reason is obvious. He’s lived it! (And he continues to live it.)

For more on Sabino’s story, check out this interview he did for the Oregon Multicultural Archives at Oregon State University.

Determine Your Destiny

My lunch with Sabino reminded me of a New Yorker article from a couple of years ago. In the piece, Maria Konnikova explored how people learn to become resilient.

Writing about the work of another resilience researcher, Emmy Werner, the author says:

Every frightening event, no matter how negative it might seem from the sidelines, has the potential to be traumatic or not to the person experiencing it…

The experience isn’t inherent in the event; it resides in the event’s psychological construal.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Choose Your Own Adventure

“I have a list of qualities I want in myself,” he told me. “I’ve written them on index cards in a specific format and I read these to myself every day.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

What a great idea!

The post The stories we tell ourselves appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

#Wealth

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foursprout-blog · 6 years

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The stories we tell ourselves

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/the-stories-we-tell-ourselves/

The stories we tell ourselves

I had lunch with Sabino yesterday. He’s my accountant — but he’s also my friend (and a loyal Get Rich Slowly reader).

I’ve shared Sabino’s story several times in the past. But for those who are unfamiliar, here’s a synopsis.

Rejecting Society’s Narrative

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Sabino is one of the inspirations for my financial philosophy, and the reason is obvious. He’s lived it! (And he continues to live it.)

For more on Sabino’s story, check out this interview he did for the Oregon Multicultural Archives at Oregon State University.

Determine Your Destiny

My lunch with Sabino reminded me of a New Yorker article from a couple of years ago. In the piece, Maria Konnikova explored how people learn to become resilient.

Writing about the work of another resilience researcher, Emmy Werner, the author says:

Every frightening event, no matter how negative it might seem from the sidelines, has the potential to be traumatic or not to the person experiencing it…

The experience isn’t inherent in the event; it resides in the event’s psychological construal.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Choose Your Own Adventure

“I have a list of qualities I want in myself,” he told me. “I’ve written them on index cards in a specific format and I read these to myself every day.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

What a great idea!

The post The stories we tell ourselves appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

#Wealth

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hesham-abdelhamid · 6 years

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What is a 'Youthquake' and why should you care about it?

There is an Arabian phrase that says “alalam yantami 'iilaa al-Shabab” - the world belongs to the youth. Now, there is a word for that phrase in the English language. Not just any boring old word. It’s a “word of the year.” Oxford Dictionaries chose “Youthquake” as the word of 2017. The word had a huge impact when it shook the ground and became the epicentre of the 2017 UK general election and later on striking again during the elections in New Zealand.

YOUTHQUAKE is the Oxford Dictionaries #WordOfTheYear 2017. Find out more: https://t.co/BanfCMh2Gi pic.twitter.com/iIQ4ykwUwa

— Oxford Dictionaries (@OxfordWords) 14 December 2017

The word itself, ironically, isn’t new. It was first coined in 1965 by, Vogue’s editor-in-chief, Diana Vreeland. It was used to describe the youth-led fashion and music movement of the Swinging Sixties. - groovy, I know right?

I wasn’t even alive to catch the word the first time but I am young enough to be enthusiastic about it now. But unfortunately politics isn’t my forte - so I took it upon myself to expand my knowledge on the youthquake phenom and maybe you can benefit from it too.

According to Oxford’s own undoubted definition: “The noun, youthquake, is defined as ‘a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people.’”

Lexicographer Susie Dent told the Guardian that the 2017 shortlist showed that “there’s not a lot of sunshine in the standout words this year. Words like Antifa and kompromat speak to fractured times of mistrust and frustration. In youthquake, we finally found some hope in the power to change things and had a little bit of linguistic fun along the way. It feels like the right note on which to end a difficult and divisive year.” The sad and sombre shortlist is a true representation of how times have changed because in 2015 the word of the year wasn’t even a word it was an emoji, the famous ‘Face with Tears of Joy.’ So, 2017 was about serious business and politics played a huge part in that.

2017, was a weird year for young people following the history-changing results of the 2016 US election and Brexit. They were left with little to zero hope of ever getting their voices heard. I spoke to young people from all over the world and the main words that were used to describe 2016 were either ‘disappointing’ or ‘devastating’. So, it’s natural for young people to have been vocal and loud in 2017.

The term was popular in the UK after Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party drove normally apathetic young people to the polls in the general election. Critics moaned that no one actually used the term. Now, they have more ammunition. According to a new paper by the British Election Study (BES), the youthquake did not happen - so why waste our time with the word of the year malarkey?!

Youthquake '17: Surge in younger voters under 40 to Labour - especially amongst 18-24s - delivered strong performance for Jeremy Corbyn. BES figures show it might have been partly driven by increased turnout amongst 25-35 year olds. Older voters - over 55s - moved to Tories. pic.twitter.com/Dl7LDAWaiE

— Alan Travis (@alantravis40) 29 January 2018

Turnout among people aged 18-24 probably did not increase, argue researchers. The finding goes against polls published after the election, which had suggested a 16-point jump in turnout among that age group. In fact, the supposed youthquake was barely a tremor, say the authors.

Now, if you are like me and you have no understanding of political statistics whatsoever - Just do what I did and seek help from your local MPs. I mean they should know, they do run the country after all.

I spoke to Alok Sharma, a Conservative MP for Reading West, and asked him: “do you think the youthquake did actually happen?”

Perhaps this topic has been the centre of attention as his response was:

“Oh, that question again.” He said.

“In terms of the election, voting wise and statistically - no. However, I do think the so-called youthquake had an effect on the election - young people were very vocal about this election in particular. It was more of an emotional involvement with politics because people like you felt victimised. As a conservative I tried everything I can to eliminate that and tried to get opinions from the youth of Reading and speak to them about how we can better Reading” he said.

Mr Sharma wasn’t the only one who shared this sentiment.

I also spoke to Lord Allen of Kensington, a Labour-supporting member of the House of Lords, he answered the same question and said: “Young people have always been at the centre of everything - they are the future. It’s a very simple concept and I feel like Corbyn understood that very well. Yes - The youthquake might not have happened within the election itself but it certainly happened around it. The fact that 17-year-olds found a potential prime minister as a ‘cool and hip’ figure is unheard of. The 2017 election was one of the first times I have seen young people excited about politics and engaged with it - in a very long time.”

“I think the youthquake isn’t a myth at all.” He added.

Now, after speaking to these two gentlemen - I was even more confused.

I had to do a bit more digging (and oh boy is my shovel broken!) - so was the youthquake really a huge part of the election or not?

The BES “no Youthquake” conclusion is based on analyses of data gathered in the BES 2017 national face-to-face survey of 2,194 respondents in 234 constituencies. This works by interviewing the survey respondents in their own homes, which nowadays is difficult to do since response rates have fallen dramatically over time: less than half (46 percent) of those who were originally selected to participate completed an interview.

As pollster Anthony Wells stated in his reflections on the BES team's claim that “researchers like the face-to-face survey because it enables them to check if respondents actually voted at the election. The difficulty in 2017, however, was that only 1,475 of the 2,194 respondents – or 67 percent – were checked.” In other words, there is no validated report of the voting for nearly one-third of the overall sample. This missing data further compounds the problem of the low response rate.

Another problem concerns the number of young people in the study and how they are distributed across the country. Altogether, there are only 157 respondents aged 18 to 24 in the survey. Nearly half (45 percent) of the 234 constituencies sampled do not have any respondents in this age bracket. This means that for the 197 constituencies for which validated voting data are available, 61 percent do not have any under-25s in the survey.

So, If you process politics in the same way I do - which is always to have fairness and balance within everything - then surely the survey isn’t even an accurate representation…?

Also, why are we so fixated on the BES survey. Other national surveys indicate young people gave much stronger support for Labour in 2017 than in 2015. The percentage of 18-24-year-olds voting Labour climbed from 43 to 62 percent in the Ipsos-MORI election surveys.

The Guardian presented statistics after the 2017 election showing that the high turnout was driven by young and minority voters. The results clearly state that more than half of individuals aged between 18-24 voted - that's an increase of 16 percent than the turn out in 2015.

Alex Chalk, the Conservative MP for Cheltenham commented on the rise of young voters and said: “young people were vocal about the election and that shows that their involvement with politics is growing, which makes very happy.”

Whether the stats prove that the youthquake happened or not - it doesn’t really matter because just like that Arabian phrase states, the world really does belong to the youth. The future leaders are today’s learners and they are quickly learning how to get their voices heard. The youthquake did shake the ground in 2017 or as the youth say “the election was shooketh.” To dismiss the available evidence which clearly testifies against the BES survey is teetering on ignorance. There was a widely unexpected and politically consequential “Youthquake” in 2017. Psephologists would be wise to study its nature and causes and consider its possible consequences.

Already in the early days of 2018, young people around the world are at the forefront of change, Emma Gonzales and the #neveragain movement for example. Gonzales has quickly become a household name, not just in the US but around the World. The powerful young woman’s speech, in support of prohibiting the sales of weapons in the US after 17 students from her school were murdered at the hands of a student with a gun, was inspiring beyond words. She has left us all mesmerised by her sheer passion and determination for change.

Just like Emma, today’s youth will achieve more than just a “word of the year” they will re-write the course of history.

#politics #youthquake #2017 uk elections #BES #the guardian #alex chalk #alok sharma #word of the year #ipos-mori #survey #conservatives #labour #theresa may #jeremy corbyn

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lostpensioner · 7 years

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Late Life Crisis

I have noticed that since I have, recently, retired, I have been spending a lot of time and psychic energy on comparing myself to people who seem to have made more of a success of their lives than I have. I know that comparisons are odious and that this newly acquired habit is, at least, unfruitful and, at worst, corrosive of my ego. But I can’t seem to stop doing it.

This recent tendency seems to represent the flip-side of an older and more useful habit I acquired in childhood, and which used to stand me in good stead. I am, of course, talking about the habit of using role models to help me to become the man I wanted to be. As a boy, and well into manhood, I would consciously pick out role models from the ranks of the famous and from among real people I actually knew. By compositing the positive traits of those I admired I copied and pasted a prototype for the man I hoped to one day be. That man was tall and handsome in the manner of Sean Connery, witty and charming in a Cary Grant sort of way, Ghandi-like in his ability to lead his fellow men into the path of righteousness, with the sporting prowess of George Best, the musical talent of all four Beatles, the scientific genius of an Einstein…. You get the picture.

I’m sure there is nothing unusual about the kind of project I set for myself as a boy. And I am equally sure that there is nothing unusual about my recent feelings of disgust with myself for falling so far short of my projected self. There comes a time in all men’s lives, and for me it seems to be now, when we look at ourselves and see what it is we’ve actually become. I can, alas, no longer escape the fact that when I look in the mirror what I see is a little, fat, baldy aul’ fella, with yellow teeth and droopy features. I’d like to be able to tell you that I’d become that man because my exciting and very successful life left me with little time to pay attention to my physical aspect. But the reality is that my current outer appearance rather mirrors the life I have led. It’s been disappointing. I feel disappointed by myself, and the few people who were ever appointed by me in the first place, are now very disappointed in me.

So far, as you can see, there is nothing unusual about my story. Lots of people embark on life full of hope and plans, and end up disembarking full of regrets and self-loathing. We don’t really need another story about that. But what I think I could do, which might be useful, would be to examine my life (or lack of a life) with a view to identifying some of the key causes of failure. There are lots of books out there which can tell us of the habits of successful people. But what of the habits of unsuccessful people? Might it not be worth our while to take a look at those in the hope that those who come after us could learn some of the traps they should avoid?

Just off the top of my head I can think of some of my own habits which more than likely have led me to the inglorious place I am in now. For, instance, I have never taken the time to acquire any talents, I have never actually applied myself in a concerted way to realising any of my dreams, I have disliked the whole 98% perspiration theory, I have resorted to blaming my family for all of my shortcomings and imagined lack of opportunities, I have often been frozen by a fear of failure, etc. etc.

Now I could examine all those traits and bad habits of mine in terms of how they have impacted on all aspects of my life. But that would not make for pleasant reading. It could all too easily turn into a long, self-pitying, self-loathing list of failures. I really can’t see any entertainment value in reading about how yet another aging man comes to terms with his unextraordinariness. If I want to wallow in self-pity (and I do) I should do so in the privacy of my own disappointing little world and not foist all of my shortcomings on a public who have never harmed me.

So instead I will zone in on one small but important aspect of my life in which I have failed, and try to analyse the reasons for my failure. Basically, over the forthcoming pages, I intend to examine the reasons why I have never gotten around to writing a book. This was something that, for a large part of my life, I believed I would achieve sooner or later. In fact, I believed I would do it many times over without having to sacrifice quality in the interest of being prolific.

Before I go on to discuss why I have not turned out to be a writer, I think I ought to devote some time to explaining why I ever got it into my head that I could become one. This seems only reasonable. If, for instance I had told you that I had always believed that I would one day become a professional rugby player you would make certain assumptions about my earlier life. It would not be unreasonable for you to expect that, as a teenager, I had been of exceptional size and strength. You would also assume that I had, at an early age, shown signs of sporting talent, signs which had been noted by talent scouts from the top rugby clubs in Europe. That would be a fairly typical back story for a successful rugby player.

But why is it that for so many people who have dreamt of becoming writers, their ambition is predicated on very little evidence of talent. Writing seems to be one area of endeavour where huge numbers of people believe they can excel for absolutely no apparent reason. I think that part of the problem may be that, unlike in areas such as sport, writing talent doesn’t have any obvious physical manifestations. Let us go back to our rugby analogy to illustrate this point. Once I happened to walk past Paul O’ Connell, the Munster and Ireland rugby star. I was, of course, completely in awe of his physical presence. The man is a giant, and an obviously athletic giant at that. Even if I had not recognised who he was it would not have been unreasonable of me to surmise that he could have been a rugby player. There was strong physical evidence to suggest this possibility. Now, on another occasion, I happened to see Seamus Heaney on the Rosslare to Le Havre ferry. Unlike in the Paul O’Connell illustration, there was nothing in this man’s physique which was indicative of his literary talent. I didn’t cry out: “Will ya look at the big shoulders on that fella! I’d say he must be a poet. It’d be no bother to him to be pickin’ up dirty big metaphors and droppin’ them, appositely, into a carefully crafted trochee. And look at the teeth on him! All the better for scansion.”

Now, the point is, Mr. Heaney no more looked like a Nobel prize-winning author than I do. Or, to put it another way, I look like just as good a writer as Seamus Heaney. Can you see how easy it is to deceive yourself about literary talent?

If, then, a talent for writing is something which does not reveal itself in one’s physical appearance, where then does it show itself? The obvious answer is that we can spot literary flair when we examine samples of a writer’s work. And therein lies the problem, for me and for many other would-be writers. I don’t actually have any examples of my work that I can show you. The fact is that, although I would like to be a writer, I don’t really fancy the idea of sitting down at a desk doing a lot of writing. I’m not really that sort of writer.

The sort of writer I want to be is the sort who graciously accepts awards with a few well chosen, witty but sincere words. I’ve already done quite a lot of the rough work for my Booker Prize acceptance speech. The basic framework is there; I just need to put in the witty bits and find some convincing way of faking sincerity. Although it still needs a bit of polishing, I have a good feeling about that speech. I think it will be remembered.

And I’m the sort of writer who would feel comfortable in a Dublin literary pub, the sort of place that’s due to make a comeback around the time that I actually finish my first novel, (an event which, unfortunately, is being held up by my inability to start said first novel or, for that matter, do the bit in the middle). I will be more than happy to prop the bar up for hours on end, being bought pints by admiring young scribblers who are too in awe of my reputation to expect me to actually say anything to them. I won’t say anything to them, as it happens, but I will cultivate the look of a man who, if he deigned to speak to his inferiors, would speak a spake that would be a model of brevity while managing to encapsulate a many-layered nugget of insight into the human condition.

And as for those arrogant enough to imagine themselves to be my literary peers? Now they could turn out to be the rock I’d founder on. Sooner or later they would weary of my cultivated silence. They might see my feigned garrulousness as a ruse to avoid conversation, the sort of conversation that could be seen by some as revealing a certain ignorance of literary matters. This might lead them to provoke me into the sort of literary argy bargy in which I might not acquit myself entirely gloriously.

But primarily I would see myself as the sort of writer who would be interviewed on the Late Late Show. It would become an annual event. Gay Byrne would come out of retirement once a year to interview me about my latest acceptance speech. (Not, you may have noticed, about my latest novel, the unstarted masterpiece.) Gay, of course, will not try to show me up as some sort of literary sham. He will understand that he is in the presence of a writer so writerly that it would be beneath his dignity to waste his time in the presence of pen and paper. An author so authorly that he has freed himself from the vain attempt to imprison in mere inadequate words on a page the true majesty of his exceptional soul. Gay would have more sense than to ask belittling questions about why I’ve never gotten around to actually writing anything. It would be simply accepted as a given that I don’t do the whole wordsmith thing. I’ve moved the art of the writer on to the next level.

Yes, I’m definitely more interested in the glamorous side of being a writer. I’m far less enamoured of the practical, bum-on-seat aspect of it. I would like to be a writer without having to tie myself down to the nitty gritty of writing. I’ve always regarded that type of thing as mere clerical drudgery. I’m sure it should be possible to pay somebody to do that for me. That would be, after all, not such an unusual thing these days. Lots of famous people from the world of sports, politics and the arts have produced “autobiographies” which have in fact been written by ghost writers. This is generally regarded as quite an acceptable way for someone to tell their story to the world, even though they have been too busy doing other stuff to bother to acquire the skills of a writer.

Now I’m not going to claim that the reason I haven’t developed literary skill is because I’ve been busy achieving wonders in other fields of endeavour. I’m not that sort of genius. I’m merely pointing out that a precedent has been set for treating writers as simple journeyman tradespeople whose function it is to serve the more exceptional amongst us.

So, as you can see, I have the healthy ego necessary to become great. I have, I believe, a great soul. Unfortunately it is not the sort of great soul which manifests itself through wonderful deeds. Nor is it the sort of greatness which tends to reveal itself through the medium of elegant thoughts expressed in memorable prose. No, this is a more elusive form of greatness; a greatness which is mainly definable in terms of its total lack of non-greatness. From an early age I have never really doubted my greatness. In fact, so secure was I in my belief in myself that I was never driven to try and prove it to the world. I think if you study the biographies of so-called great people, you will notice that many of them were driven by an insecurity which pushed them on to exceptional deeds. They always feared that someone else would run faster or jump higher than them. This fear of being bettered came between them and their rest.

I, on the other hand, have never felt a need to prove my greatness to the world. Neither have I ever allowed anything to come between me and my rest. As geniuses go I’m one of the less kinetic. I have bided my time patiently, in the firm belief that one day the world could not fail to see my greatness and acknowledge it by way of fawning adulation which would stop short enough of hysteria to allow me to walk in relative peace and comfort down any of the world’s more crowded thoroughfares.

As I look back now, I can see that the history of my ego seems to be divisible into several distinct eras. Firstly, there was the early, building stage in which adoring adults missed no opportunity to praise me. I don’t think they did it with any conscious intention of boosting my psychic immune system so that I would be resistant to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in later life. I don’t think any particular thought process went into this behaviour. It seems to be a normal human instinct to admire and complement babies and small children, even when they are doing the most unextraordinary things. This tendency becomes even stronger when we are in the presence of our own bundles of joy.

My parents, for instance regularly complemented me for my ability to eat my vegetables. This feat gained me the status of “best boy” in my house. (This accolade was never, as far as I can remember, awarded to any of my siblings, despite the fact that they were all older than me.) Not only was I a great vegetable eater, but I also had great talent for a wide range of activities, including getting up wind, taking medicine, taking baths and tidying my room. Apparently, there had never been another boy, in the whole history of the world, who could equal me across a wide spectrum of human endeavour.

When I started school, my teachers seemed to be no less impressed by my prodigious talent than my family were. So pleased was I with the regular praise for my handwriting, my ability to sit in a desk without moving around the room, my excellent manners, that I failed to notice whether other students in my class received such constant approval. I can only assume that they didn’t.

The next stage of my ego’s history was what I would call the complacent period. During that phase I began to lose any competitive streak I had ever had. The notion of being the best boy had become so engrained in my subconscious that I began to lose all need to impress people. In school I could go for weeks without doing anything even remotely impressive. Eventually I would feel a need to impress myself and so would spend a day or two letting my teacher and my peers know who was boss. Then I would graciously fade from the limelight and let the others get a bit of praise.

When it came to sport I tended to be more drawn to team games. This was not because I was naturally a team player, but because being on a team allowed one to fade from view for minutes on end, contributing little to the side’s efforts, and then, when I chose, I could deliver a brief spell of outstanding skill, vision and athleticism. I avoided games such as table tennis, where you were expected to be able to strike the ball exactly as often as your opponent, with nowhere to hide when things weren’t going well for you.

I have to admit that, at that stage of my life, and well into adulthood, I saw effort as something rather vulgar. I thought that people who tried hard were needy. They lacked the self-confidence necessary for not trying. I saw tryers as inferior souls who had something to prove. I, on the other hand, believed so completely in my own greatness that I felt that all I needed to do was to patiently bide my time until my greatness manifested itself in the form of some concrete achievement. For many years I believed that achievement would be in the literary field. (Again, teachers were involved in this. I received special praise for my essays and stories. For some reason I took that praise to heart more than I did any other.)

This complacent stage gradually ceded to the resentful stage of my life. I began to take umbrage at the number of my inferiors who seemed to be outstripping me in various fields of endeavour. People whom I had regarded as mediocre poor sloggers were beginning to garner accolades at a rate which was becoming unsettlingly greater than my batting average. Teachers and college lecturers were being frequently gulled into seeing talent where they should have merely acknowledged honest effort. Later on, my employers would heap praise on my colleagues for demonstrating traits such as punctuality, reliability or being good team players. Now to my mind these are not characteristics that set the pulse racing. They are not words we associate with the greats. Greek gods were not famous for arriving on Mount Olympus at nine o’clock sharp every morning. Neither was Fionn Mac Cumhail famous for “being there for his team mates”.

And so I began to grumble as this unfair world began to reward the little people whom I had unwisely allowed to step into the limelight while I desisted from boastful displays of my brilliance. “I could do better than that” became my mantra as I viewed the “achievements” of my inferiors. The only thing that stopped me from producing work of equal mediocrity was my pride in my own reputation. I would not sully my name by association with the sort of pap produced by every second twenty-year-old, to popular, if not critical, acclaim. So they made a lot of money! But I was above that sort of prostitution. I would rather go to my grave not having written a bad book than pick up a few million for churning out a bestseller.

I think the stage of development I am now at could best be described as the panicky stage. I am torn between two options. On the one hand, I could break free of my paralyzing perfectionism, (for surely there is no greater form of perfectionism than that which constantly counsels you to not try and therefore never end up falling short of your ideals), and allow myself to write something inferior. A small but increasingly nagging voice in the back of my head is trying to tempt me down the “have-a-go-what-have-you-got-to-lose” path. If, this voice reasons, I pop off a literary work of any merit whatsoever before I die, then I might at least insinuate myself into the public memory in a not entirely negative manner. Maybe a few people will buy my book and enjoy it. Maybe they might pass it on to their kids and grant me some kind of poor man’s immortality.

On the other hand, I have my completely unsullied reputation to consider. The only two writers I can think of who have never written anything that isn’t a masterpiece, are James Joyce and myself. When I am dead no critics will be able to say of me: “He had his literary flaws. For all his prodigious merit, he could, betimes, strike a false note.” I’m not sure I would feel comfortable spending eternity being exposed to damnation by faint praise.

Sometimes I suspect that life might be setting me a test. I have, so far, resisted spectacularly the temptation to lower myself to competition with those who are not my equals. For more than sixty years I have held my nerve. I have patiently bided my time even when those who love me look at me and wonder if now mightn’t be a good time for me to make my move. “Prove to us all,” their eyes seem to say, “that you’re not a complete waste of oxygen. We’ve stuck by you all these years and we feel that now might be a nice time for a little scrap of vindication if you feel up to it.” Of course I’d like to oblige them when they look at me like that. It would be all too easy for me to unleash my talent on the world like a thunderbolt. But what would that prove? That deep down I am one of the small souls, one of the puny egos that can’t go for ten minutes without a pat on the back. If I give in to this temptation at this stage of my life I may end up unleashing my thunderbolt before I am ready, and readiness is everything. If I give in, if I fail this test, I may never realise the great destiny that fate has pencilled in for me.

By way of compromise I have decided to dedicate some time to writing an account of why I have never written anything. It will be a deliberate policy to avoid any attempt to write well. In this way I hope to save my genius for the right moment, while limbering up gently. This will be a half-hearted exercise designed purely as a means to warm up my literary muscles in case I may one day need to use them.

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