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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Pluralist, your daily link-dose: 24 Feb 2020

Today’s links

How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus: Zeynep Tufekci in outstanding form.

The Snowden Archive: every publicly available Snowden doc, collected and annotated.

Key computer vision researcher quits: facial recognition is a moral quagmire.

My interview on adversarial interoperability: you can’t shop your way out of late-stage capitalism.

81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration: monopoly and its justice system.

I’m coming to Kelowna! Canada Reads is bringing me to the BC interior, March 5.

A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory: conspiracies are comorbid with corruption.

This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2010, 2005

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus (permalink)

Xi Jinping’s refashioning of the Chinese internet to ratchet up surveillance and censorship made it all but impossible for the Chinese state to use the internet to detect and contain Corona Virus, writes Zeynep Tufekci in The Atlantic. Tufekci talks about “authoritarian blindness,” where people too scared to tell the autocrat the hard truths makes it impossible for the autocrat to set policy that reflects reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/

(Cue Mao telling China to “eat 5 meals a day” because his apparats were too scared to warn him of impending famine, then selling off the nation’s food reserves for foreign currency because he thought it was surplus. Food production collapsed.)

Before Xi, a certain amount of online dissidence was tolerated because it helped root out dangerously corrupt local leaders before they could do real damage. It’s always hard to make autocracies sustainable because corruption and looting leaves them hollow and brittle.

When Xi took power in 2012, he restored “one man rule” and began a series of maneuvers, including purges, to consolidate power for himself. The rise and rise of China’s mobile internet made this far more effective than at any time in history.

“Authoritarian blindness” kicked off the Hong Kong protests because the state so badly misjudged the cause and severity of the grievances there. The same thing happened in Wuhan when doctors and netizens faced retaliation for describing early virus outbreaks.

The reality-debt built up by official denial always results in reality bankruptcy, eventually – so finally, the reports of the virus were so widespread and alarming they could no longer be suppressed. But by then, the virus had proliferated. This is an important point: “the killer digital app for authoritarianism isn’t listening in on people through increased surveillance, but listening to them as they express their honest opinions, especially complaints.”

That’s how you stabilize the unstable: by using digital authoritarianism to fine tune the minimum viable amount of good governance to diffuse public anger. It’s how you maximize your looting without getting strung up by your ankles.

The Snowden Archive (permalink)

The Snowden Surveillance Archive collects “all documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have subsequently been published by news media.”

https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/cgi-bin/library.cgi

It’s indexed and searchable, created by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and the Politics of Surveillance Project at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. (Canada is a “Five Eyes” country that partners with the NSA on global mass surveillance)

There’s a “Portable Archive” version – a tarball with all the docs so you can create your own mirror:

https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/collect/snowden1/portablearchive.html

They provide instructions for turning this into a kiosk they call a “Snowden Archive-in-a-Box.” Costs about CAD120.00

Key computer vision researcher quits (permalink)

Joseph Redmon is the creator of YOLO (You Only Look Once), a key Computer Vision technology. He’s just announced his resignation from computer vision work, citing ethical concerns with Facial Recognition.

https://twitter.com/pjreddie/status/1230523827446091776

His thread is really important, calling out the gap between what ML researchers SAY they want to do about ethics and how they actually deal with ethical issues: “basically all facial recognition work would not get published if we took Broader Impacts sections seriously.”

“There is almost no upside and enormous downside risk.” That’s some serious Oppenheimer stuff right there. The kicker? “For most of grad school I bought in to the myth that science is apolitical and research is objectively moral and good no matter what the subject is.”

My interview on adversarial interoperability (permalink)

The Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast (which offers information security advice and analysis for non-technical people) just posted part 2 of our interview on Adversarial Interoperability, Right To Repair, and technological fairness.

http://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2020/02/24/adversarial-interoperability-part-2/

Part one went live last week:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1229842619380858885

In this one, I try to explain how John Deere’s war on farm-based repairs is connected to Apple’s war on independent repair, and how consumer choices can’t solve either problem — but collective action can!

It’ll take a movement, not individual action. Thankfully, such a movement exists. EFF’s Electronic Frontier Alliance, a network of groups nationwide working on local issues with national coordination. It’s the antidote to individual powerlessness.

https://www.eff.org/electronic-frontier-alliance/allies

81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration (permalink)

Binding arbitration was originally created as a way for giant corporations to resolve their disputes with each other without decades-long court battles costing tens of millions of dollars. SCOTUS ratified the principal in 1925: firms of similar size and power could use binding arbitration as an alternative to litigation.

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/we-now-have-a-justice-system-just-for-corporations

In the century since, corporations have eroded the idea of arbitration as something reserved for co-equals and have turned it into a condition of employment and of being a customer.

In an era of both monopoly and monoposony, it can be hard to find a single employer OR vendor who will conduct business with you unless you first surrender the rights your elected lawmakers decided that you are entitled to.

Today, the largest corporations in the world require you to “agree” to binding arbitration before you can conduct business with them: your monopolistic ISP or cable operator probably does.

As do Walmart, Uber, and Amazon (and not coincidentally, all three have crowded out all the competitors you might choose to take your business to if this strikes you as unfair).

In 2019, SCOTUS ratified the practice.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/13/business/binding-arbitration-consumers/index.html

81 out of the Fortune 100 non-negotiably require binding arbitration if you want to conduct business with them. “Arbitration is often confidential and the outcome doesn’t enter the public record” – if you get screwed you won’t know if it’s a one-off or a pattern.

This is especially pernicious in the realm of US health care. There is ONE pain specialist in all of Southern California that my insurer covers who doesn’t require binding arbitration. When I took my daughter to the ER with a broken bone, they threatened not to treat her unless we signed an arbitration waiver – and that ER is now owned by a PE firm that bought every medical practice in a 10mi radius and now they all do it.

We are literally replacing public courts with private corporate justice, where the “judge” is paid by the company that maimed you, or ripped you off, or killed you.

I’m coming to Kelowna! (permalink)

I’ve never been to Kelwona, BC or anywhere in BC apart from Victoria and Vancouver, so I am SO TOTALLY EXCITED to be appearing in Kelowna for Canada Reads on Mar 5. Please come and say hello! (it’s free!)

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

The event is a collaboration between the Kelowna Public Library and CBC Books, and I’m being emceed and interviewed by Sarah Penton. It’s going to be recorded for airing later as well (I’ll be sure to fold it into my podcast, which you can get here: http://craphound.com/podcast/)

A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory (permalink)

A(nother) flat-earther has tried to prove that the Earth is disc-shaped by launching a homemade rocket. This one (“Mad” Mike Hughes) killed himself by pancaking into the desert.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/daredevil-mad-mike-hughes-dies-homemade-rocket-launch-filmed-tv-n1141286

This is awful. Jokes about “Darwin Awards” don’t change that.

When you scratch a conspiracist, you generally find two things:

Someone who knows chapter-&-verse about real conspiracies (e.g. “If you think antivax is so outlandish, let me tell you about the Sackler family”)

Someone who has been traumatized by conspiracies (belief that the levees were dynamited during Katrina to drown Black neighborhoods are often embraced by people whose family were flooded out in 58 when the levees in Tupelo were dynamited to drown Black neighborhoods).

A belief that the aerospace industry engages in coverups and conspiracies is not, in and of itself, irrational. Aerospace is the land of conspiracies and coverups. Look at the Boeing 737 Max!

Conspiracies are an epiphenomenon of market concentration. “Two may keep a secret if one of them is dead”: the ability to conspire is a collective action problem, wherein linear increases in the number of conspirators yield geometric increases in the likelihood of defections. When an industry is reduced to 3-5 giants, the likelihood is that every top exec at each company worked as a top exec at one or more of the others (to say nothing of the likelihood of intercompany friendships, marriages, etc). Moreover, an industry that concentrated will almost certainly be regulated by its own former execs, as they are likely the only ones qualified to understand its workings.

Many of us were appalled by the sight of the nation’s tech leaders gathered around a table at Trump Tower after the inauguration.

But we should have been even more alarmed by the realization that all the leaders of the tech industry fit around a single table.

We are living in both a golden age of conspiratorial thinking and of actual conspiracies. The conspiracy theories don’t necessarily refer to the actual conspiracies, but “conspiracy” is a plausible idea with a lot of explanatory power in 2020.

We spend a lot of time wondering about how we can fix the false beliefs that people have, but some of our focus needs to be on reducing the plausibility of conspiracy itself. Make industries more competitive and diverse, make regulators more accountable.

Put out the fires, sure, but clear away the brush so that they don’t keep reigniting.

I strongly recommend Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES for more.

https://boingboing.net/2019/09/21/from-opioids-to-antivax.html

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago: Labour MP Brian Sedgemore excoriates his own government’s terror laws in the speech of his lifetime: https://web.archive.org/web/20050227035611/http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050223/debtext/50223-21.htm

#10yrsago: How ducks, Nazis and themeparks gave America its color TV transition: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/feb/23/digital-switchover-bbc-spectrum

#5yrsago: Alex Stamos, then CSO of Yahoo, publicly calls out then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on crypto backdoors: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/yahoo-exec-goes-mano-a-mano-with-nsa-director-over-crypo-backdoors/

#5yrsago: A chronology of the Canadian Conservative Party’s war on science under PM Stephen Harper: https://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment

#5yrsago: Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’s movie about Edward Snowden, wins the Academy Award for best documentary: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/edward-snowden-congratulates-laura-poitras-winning-best-documentary-oscar-citizenfour

#1yrago: Every AOC staffer will earn a living wage: https://www.rollcall.com/2019/02/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-call-for-a-living-wage-starts-in-her-office/

#1yrago: Richard Sackler’s “verbal gymnastics” in defending his family’s role in killing 200,000 Americans with opiods: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/sackler-behind-oxycontin-fraud-offered-twisted-mind-boggling-defense/

#1yrago: German neo-Nazis use Qanon memes to signal-boost their messages: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fringe-groups-are-using-qanon-to-amplify-their-wild-messages

#1yrago: French courts fine UBS €3.7b for helping French plutes dodge their taxes: https://www.thelocal.fr/20190220/breaking-french-court-hits-swiss-bank-ubs-with-37-billion-fine-in-french-tax-fraud-case

#1yrago: Apple to close down its east Texas stores to avoid having any nexus with America’s worst patent court: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/22/apple-closing-stores-in-eastern-district-texas/

#1yrago: Small business cancels its unusably slow Frontier internet service, Frontier sticks them with a $4,300 cancellation fee: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/frontier-demands-4300-cancellation-fee-despite-horribly-slow-internet/

#1yrago: Fast food millionaire complains that social media makes kids feel so entitled that they are no longer willing to work for free: https://amp.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/muffin-break-boss-fury-over-youth-who-wont-work-unpaid/news-story/57607ea9a1bbe52ba7746cff031306f2

#1yrago: Apps built with Facebook’s SDK shovel incredible quantities of incredibly sensitive data into Facebook’s gaping maw: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/22/facebook-receives-personal-health-data-from-apps-wsj.html

#1yrago: Super-high end prop horror-movie eyeballs, including kits to make your own: https://fourthsealstudios.com/

#1yrago: EU advances its catastrophic Copyright Directive without fixing any of its most dangerous flaws: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/european-governments-approve-controversial-new-copyright-law/

Colophon (permalink)

Today’s top sources: Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/”).

Hugo nominators! My story “Unauthorized Bread” is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC’s Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, “The Canadian Miracle,” for MIT Tech Review. It’s a story set in the world of my next novel, “The Lost Cause,” a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I’m getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I’ve been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world’s prehistory.

Currently reading: I finished Andrea Bernstein’s “American Oligarchs” this week; it’s a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I’m getting really into Anna Weiner’s memoir about tech, “Uncanny Valley.” I just loaded Matt Stoller’s “Goliath” onto my underwater MP3 player and I’m listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/10/persuasion-adaptation-and-the-arms-race-for-your-attention/

Upcoming books: “Poesy the Monster Slayer” (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we’re having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

“Attack Surface”: The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

“Little Brother/Homeland”: A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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darkestangel1326 · 4 years

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Prologue - This was real life. Right?

Hey lovelies. So I know it is likely no one is going to read this but me but I just had to write this anyway. For me. Posting for the same reason! Fic under the “Keep reading” cut, but here’s how I got here:

This all started when I wondered what would happen if MC was a scientist. Or a science grad student. But then I thought, what would be enough to compel a scientist or science grad student to stop their sciencing realistically for any amount of time? Because as my previous PI says, every scientist becomes a mad scientist at least in one point in their careers for their research - this is especially true for grad students.

Then, I just never understood the whole returning a phone excuse Unknown gave MC to lure her into Rika’s apartment. Like MC, with her own phone, is gonna return a phone she doesn’t even have, just because Unknown was persistent? He even says he’s a student in the States who will eventually return home so what was with the urgency to go to find the owner? If he really wanted to return the phone, he could’ve mailed it since he has the address right? We know he does because he sends MC there. It just always bothered me.

Finally, I wanted to slightly self-insert to make the MC (Emme C.) a bit more human so that it even if you couldn’t change her choices, it would still be entertaining. I heavily relied on second person, to help give it the mystic messenger vibe though I’m not sure it works.

This prologue is some character building for Emme C. (Actual name: Emme Cee), brief OC appearances and, for my sanity, this is all taking place in the US. TBH I’m not even sure how deep I want to go with this story. I just know I needed to write it.

So without further ado!

“My biggest fear and why? Hmmm,” you mulled it over and took another sip of your beer, after your lab mates glared at you for an answer.

Or former labmates - you were leaving for grad school in a few weeks so this was kind of your farewell social. Even with your general distaste of beer, even you had to admit this one was really good.

You closed your eyes and sheepishly rubbed your neck. “This is gonna sound weird but a time loop,” you answered hesitantly. “It just makes me uneasy to be stuck in never-ending cycle, replaying the same scenario over and over again with no end in sight.”

“True but we are in academic research!” Marie answered, a teasing lilt to her voice that transformed into a chuckle.

“Yeah you might have to deal with it during your Masters program, especially the thesis stage.” Whitney continued, joining in with a laugh.

“Don’t remind me,” you giggled as you took another sip - a longer sip - of your beer. “But that’s not exactly what I mean either” you persisted, a bit more seriously.

I’m afraid of replaying the same day, the same events, the same interactions over and over again, not knowing why or how to stop it,” you finished more seriously. You took another sip of the fizzy drink and felt your equilibrium teeter a bit.

“You mean like that movie Groundhog Day?” Aurora quietly inserted.

“I haven’t seen that movie but if it’s like what I said, then yes, that’s it,” you answered, your fizzy drink now gone.

“Sorry wait. Why are you afraid of time loops? I think I missed that part. Wouldn’t replaying the same day and seeing how your choices change events be a good thing?” Sally asked. Technically, she was completely right - repeatability was one of the sacred ideals of science after all. Plus, If you really thought about it, you hadn’t actually said why you’re afraid of time loops, just that you are.

“I’m afraid of never moving forward - of never progressing, no matter how hard I try or work. A time loop means, yes, I’ll know what my choices would entail, but not how to escape or what the triggering event for my release could be. I could replay the time period of the same few weeks but for years without knowing how to escape and move on. And, I guess, since it took me so long to even start my Master’s and I felt like I might never be able to, this fear was just born,” you admitted, pouring more beer for yourself.

I mean an actual time loop where every single thing happens the exact same way, down to the underlying rhythm of conversation. And where you can’t escape until you figure out the common problem then fix it. How would you escape it? And what if you mess up, in different ways, forever? Who would want that?!

—————————————————————————

You awoke with a sigh, realizing you had that dream again. Or was it a flashback since this happened a few weeks ago? You shrugged your shoulders and got to work sorting boxes. You were set to start on-campus work in a few weeks so you were just trying to do the bare minimum research wise. Plus, you wanted to really focus on decorating your new apartment and get acquainted with the town since you’d be living there for the next few years.

After a few hours of scrambling and organizing, you sat on the floor (you were still in the process of buying furniture), and looked at your emails.

One in particular caught your attention, so much so that you took off your glasses and rubbed your eyes, almost laughing at such a cartoony response. The subject line of this email was what confused you. It read “missing research paper - need citation”. It was an unfamiliar email, moreover, it was sent to your previous college email, which was linked to your past research publications.

Curious, you bit the inside of your cheek and read the email.

“Dear Emme,

Hope this email finds you well. I am a student from XXX University and have been working on a research project concerning XXX. Your research was one of the most recent and prominent examples as to why this area needs further study, however, I have not been able to access the paper I saved as a bookmark in my web browser. After extensive searching, I have been unable to find the original paper or even one of the articles that referenced it - almost as if the article has completely disappeared from existence! Is there a reason the research article is gone? If not, could you provide me with an idea of where it is and the proper citation for my research article?”

what. whAT. WHAT!?

Your research couldn’t be gone! This didn’t make any sense! Yes it was a few years old, but it couldn’t be gone from the web! There are research papers from the 1960s that are archived and accessible online for goodness sake!

You had to calm down. Take deep breaths. You continued trying to breathe as you pulled out your research flash drive. You looked for the paper on your there and found it, sighing in relief. It grounded you, reminding you that your work did exist. Just as you were set to attach the file and corresponding citation to the email, your internet stopped.

Scratch that, your entire laptop stopped.

You groaned. Yes, this was an older, refurbished model, but it’s been working fine. The screen distorted for a second, as if the extra pixel boxes emphasized the frozen nature of your screen. Before you even had time to process it, your laptop unfroze and you breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank heavens. You had just moved and weren’t sure you could realistically afford a new laptop anytime soon. As you look over your screen, however, your relief shifts to panic.

omg. oMG. OMG!

It’s gone. Your research files. The ones on your laptop and on your flash drive. The email is gone. Before you can refresh the page you get logged out. You can’t even log into your old email account - Error 404 Not Found.

Your heart races. Then, it aches. You worked so hard on those projects. They were part of your scientific fabric and now both were just gone. Your years of work, gone in seconds.

You felt like crying. But you decide not to, at least not until you’re in the shower where the tears can blend in with the cascading liquid as you sing emo music.

For now, you decide a quick walk and some fresh air are what you need, so you grab your keys and head for the mailbox. You’ve only lived in this apartment for a week but you check the mail constantly in an effort to get in the habit rather than because you expect something.

But today, you did get something. A small parcel with no return address. Curious, you take that and the grocery flyers to your apartment and open the package there.

A phone? It’s from the same company as yours, just a slightly older model.

You blink at it, almost telepathically asking it what it’s doing in your mailbox. You decide to turn it in to the mail service and are about to put it back in its envelope when you notice a note.

“Charge me”

“What the hell is going on today?” You mutter as you pull out your charger and plug it into the phone.

You sit on the floor with this new phone in hand and sigh. “Why am I even taking orders from a mysterious note for anyway?”

Just then the screen lights up. There’s no passcode so opening the phone was super easy. The phone’s screen and minimal app selection almost made you think it was new, but the lack of setting it up told you that wasn’t the case. Who would buy this phone and not use it? And why did they send it to you?

There is one app that calls to you, mostly because you’ve never seen it before. And because it was unlike the rest of the default apps on the screen.

RFA? What’s that?

Just then, the screen turns dark and green characters zoom up through the screen. You sucked with all tech but even you knew this reaction was abnormal. You swore you didn’t press the app but seeing the phone continue reacting, you become less confident.

“Hello?”

You stare at the screen. ‘Unknown’ was messaging you.

You respond. Stupidly. Naively. And without thinking about the consequences.

Because this was real life. Right?

What’s the worse that could happen?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m debating taking this next part a few routes...we’ll see what I decide...

If you, by any chance made it all the way down here, can you drop a reblog or something with your thoughts? Was Emme Cee likable? Did the flow make sense? Do you like where this is going? Let me know!

#mystic messenger #mysme #mysme fic prologue #DA writes #This was Real Life. Right?

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mediaeval-muse · 4 years

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I’m feeling angsty about the academic job market and the responses of people around me, so I’m listing some of the most common attempts at “consolation” I’m getting and articulating why they aren’t helpful, in case anyone else finds it useful.

I’ve been on the academic job market for 2 years and have gotten zero requests for an interview. It’s bad.

The people in my life are trying to be helpful, and I really do appreciate it, but so much of it comes from a place of ignorance. So here’s a list of things people have said to me and why it’s not necessarily helping.

“You’ll find something.”

Whether this is intended to mean “eventually someone will call you” or “eventually you’ll get any job,” both are nebulous and have the vibe of “everything will be fine.” The problem is I don’t just want to find something. I know, rationally, that I can get a job in a host of different fields outside academia; the problem is rather that I spent 8 years training for a job I desperately wanted and can’t have - not because I’m unqualified, but because higher education decided to shift to a model that devalues the humanities. So, yes, I’ll find something, but right now, it feels as though I’ve tried to do something and failed. When you feel like a failure, “everything will be alright” kind of dismisses the significance of the negative emotions I’m having now.

And yes, the feeling of being mad because I can’t get what I want does come from a place of privilege. I get that. But the problem isn’t necessarily that I can’t have something and I’m throwing a tantrum. It’s that I set a goal for myself and found happiness/purpose/meaning in something I was doing, and now, I have to leave that behind not because of something I did, but of how academia’s hiring models have changed. I think of it as kind of being related to millennial upbringing: millennial are a generation that were told to find meaning in your job, that you could do anything if you worked hard enough. Some of us are feeling betrayed when we work really hard and the opportunities aren’t there.

“You can get a job in alt-ac.”

A variation on the above statement. At the moment, I’m salty because I don’t want a job in alt-ac. Not that alt-ac jobs are less valuable or unimportant; they just aren’t what I personally set out to do. Again, the problem isn’t that I’m afraid I won’t get a job, it’s the feeling of personal failure and the existential angst associated with not being able to do the thing that I found purpose in. I think I’m allowed to have sad feelings because of that.

“Why not teach online classes or adjunct until a tenure-track job rolls around?”

You can’t just walk in and teach a class anywhere. The hiring crisis is not just at the tenure level; because there are so few TT spots, people are flooding the adjunct market and online teaching market.

Plus, there’s the issue of stability and finances. Adjuncts make an average of $2,500 per class they teach, and their employment is often determined on a semester-by-semester basis. That means meager salaries and unstable employment. Not to mention that adjuncts have to teach upwards of 5+ classes per semester and some colleges don’t offer full benefits to adjuncts. That’s a lot of work and takes a toll on mental health. Not everyone can handle that stress and it doesn’t make someone a “weak” or “non-dedicated” person if they choose not to do that.

“You can teach grade school!”

First, not everyone is cut out to work with children. Or angry parents, for that matter. Second, you have to take more classes and get certified to teach in the USA (if you want to go to public schools. I think private schools are a bit more lenient). That means paying more money. While that’s fine if someone wants to do it, realize that it’s not for everyone. Third, states have rules as to what you can teach, what you must teach, etc. For some, rules might be stifling. College teaching is way different than teaching K-12.

“Academia sucks anyway. Many people have left.”

People’s experiences of academia vary greatly. Mine has been mostly positive. You can’t tell people how to feel about academia. Also, many people who leave do so by choice. Being forced out by lack of opportunity is a different thing.

“It’s just a bad year. You’ll get something eventually.”

First of all, it’s been a bad decade, and the hiring freezes have only gotten worse. Second of all, while I’m waiting for an academic job, I need money to live, so I’ll have to leave academia anyway just to pay my bills. Third, if the market does bounce back, the danger is that people who have been outside academia for so long will look “stale.” Job ads are now putting limits such as “PhD must be acquired between 2-4 years ago” on their qualifications. I know this language is meant to give new academics a chance, but it excludes people who have been on the market for a while or people who had a temporary position after graduating.

“Most people don’t have jobs in the field they have a degree in anyway.”

That’s true, but people who say this to me are usually referring to BAs or BSs. A BA takes an average of 4-5 years to complete. I’ve done a BA plus 8 years of graduate work. So I’ve invested a lot more time in this degree, and it feels wasteful to not do anything with it. Also, I like my field. Why would I not want to do something with it?

“People move for jobs all the time.”

This was said in response to me having to move back to Wisconsin when I’m done with my degree and I expressed sadness at having to leave my entire social circle/immediate friend group. Yeah, people move for jobs all the time. But I’m not moving for a job. I’m moving for lack of a job. When people move for jobs, the prospect of new opportunity is exciting, and positive emotions surround the move. For me, I’m moving because I failed to get a job, so there’s a lot of negative emotion. Having to leave friends only compounds the negativity.

“The people who get jobs put in the work, so they deserve them.”

This was said to me after I expressed the thought “I feel like in order to get an interview these days, you need to be a celebrity grad student, have a zillion publications, and even more awards and fellowships.” Here’s the problem: yes, maybe those people deserve it. I’m not saying people with a lot of resources or publications aren’t doing good work. But it really says something when there’s a shortage of resources and one person keeps getting them over and over again, and that leads to a job. Let’s face it, anyone who is putting in genuine effort and passion into their academic work deserves recognition. Grad students today are the most qualified generation of scholars in history - we all deserve jobs based on merit. But academia isn’t a meritocracy - a lot of what resources are thrown at you depends on what school you’re at and who your adviser is.

“You can just research/publish in your spare time to build up a more attractive portfolio.”

Ok, so... you want me to work for free? Without university employment, I’m not getting compensated for the things I publish. Also, without university employment, I don’t have access to an academic library (unless I pay for it myself, which some colleges let people do). If I have a non-academic job, I’ll be working 40+ hours a week, and you want me to do more (uncompensated) work on top of that? If you want to do it, that’s fine, but the reality is that it is uncompensated work. And not everyone can afford to do that.

“If you just revise your CV and cover letter to look like this...”

The problem isn’t the quality of my job application. It’s the fact that there are. no. jobs.

“That’s life. Welcome to adulthood.”

If something is unfair, the impulse should be to try to make it more fair, not just to accept things the way they are.

Things that would be way more helpful:

“I’m sorry. This isn’t fair.”

“How can I support you?” (Then actually do it)

“Are you interested in exploring other employment avenues? I can help you, if you want, or I can be a listening ear if you just want to be mad right now.”

“You have value independent of your work.”

If you’re TT: actually do things in your department to make it better

If you’re non-TT faculty: join a union and push for better treatment of adjuncts and specialized faculty

If you’re outside academia: vote for politicians who value education (not like Betsy DeVos) and make noise about valuing teachers

If you’re a parent with a kid going to college: pester your university admin about their hiring practices, spending habits, and supporting humanities education

#personal

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closetcasefabray · 5 years

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Don’t Make Me Spell It Out For You, Part 1/6

briefest of brief summaries: clarke kind of hates her neighbor because lexa hates fun or something. aka & they were neighbors

okay, so finally writing this as a fic. i could’ve definitely made this a one-shot, but i divided it into 6 parts (of varying lengths) to have fun with it, and i’m cleaning it up and adding more. also managed to hit several of the classic au prompts: fratboy!clarke, neighbors/girl next door, (kinda) enemies to friends to lovers, city au, useless lesbian/bisexual, & one bed. hope you enjoy.

titles courtesy of Janelle Monae.

EDIT: apparently this entire thing just up and disappeared when i made a small edit on mobile. fixed it. thanks tumblr for being generally awful.

1. all the feelings that i’ve got for you

You love and hate living in New York—love the diversity, art scene, local parks, trips to the Bronx Zoo, concerts in Prospect Park, and (finally) earning a living wage after graduating two years ago. You hate the MTA’s ceaseless delays, the owners of the dog barking outside your window every morning, rude restaurant guests who tip poorly, and the puddles that seem to always be on the sidewalks even when it hasn’t rained for days. You love your neighborhood but hate how old your building is—tiny living space, worn out hardwood flooring that slopes, the distinct off-off-white color of it all, and the incredibly thin walls.

You also recently determined that you’re really starting to hate your neighbor.

The first time you receive a knock at the door, it’s understandable.

Raven is, in her own words, “Queens, born and raised, and therefore a die-hard Mets fan.” It’s not always clear because most of the time she spends watching games, she’s swearing at the players and coaches, and groaning, “I fucking hate this goddamn team.”

So you’re sitting between Raven and Octavia late one night, watching the Mets play the Padres, drinking beer, and shoveling pizza into your mouths, when an unexpected home run has Raven jumping to her feet and shouting, “I fucking love this goddamn team!” She does a dance and claps as the Mets celebrate their two run lead.

A soft knock at the door interrupts Raven high-fiving you and O repeatedly less than a minute later. You all exchange looks and you roll your eyes when Raven and O look at you expectantly. You stand up, take a swig of beer, and open the front door.

A stunning but half-asleep girl, about your age, is standing on your old, beat up Welcome mat. You figure she’s your neighbor, but you hardly see anyone else who lives in the apartment building, not to mention the number of people who move in and out throughout the year. Your assumed neighbor is in her pajamas—a Columbia grad school t-shirt, striped shorts, and some moccasin slippers—and her hair is a mix of brown waves and curls, tousled no doubt from struggling to sleep. Her grey-green eyes remind you to finish your painting of a storm at sea.

“Sorry,” you say quickly, then explain, “West Coast Mets game.”

The other girl just nods.

“We’ll keep it down. Sorry again,” you say, offering a small smile.

Your neighbor doesn’t reciprocate and just turns around to go back to her apartment. You feel guilty as you gently shut the door.

“Well, that’s one way to meet your new-ish neighbor,” Octavia says before drinking from her beer.

“It is two in the morning,” you say with a shrug.

“She’s been here for over a month. This shit-hole I call home is nicknamed the City that Never Sleeps for a reason,” Raven says, taking an aggressive bite from her slice of pizza. “Also the Mets are winning!” she adds as she chews, “That, like, never happens, so she should respect my devotion to this piece of shit team.”

You and O just roll your eyes, and you hope the pizza and beer will keep Raven busy enough and her mouth full to prevent further yelling.

The second time Lexa—you read her mailbox label—knocks at your door, you expect it.

You get home from a killer shift and Raven is scrolling through Hulu and the like for something to watch, so when you say you never saw John Wick 2, she immediately tells you to “sit your ass down and watch this shit.”

You can’t hear the dialogue over the crunching of the chips you’re sharing with Raven, so you keep turning up the volume. Raven gets up to use the bathroom as you watch the scene unfold.

Then his house explodes.

For a brief moment you think the apartment is too because the surround sound speakers Raven has set up shakes the floor and walls. You scramble to turn down the volume and manage to pause the movie.

Raven’s head immediately pops out from the bathroom to look at you with her mouth hanging open in slight horror. “Oh no…”

You look at the time. It’s 12:30AM. “Shit.”

You realize you’re holding your breath when you hear the light knocking ten seconds later.

“Hi,” you say, feeling stupid as you look at another form of tired Lexa. She’s got her glasses on this time and a Les Mis tee to accompany a different set of striped sleep shorts, but her hair is in the same state of lovely disarray as it was a week ago. Eyes still quiet storms.

“Could you just turn it down a bit?”

“Already did. Sorry. It was hard to hear the movie and then something blew up… on screen, I mean.” You question if you ever actually learned the English language or had a normal social interaction with an attractive person before. Whether bars, clubs, or even work, you can typically charm people’s pants off. Apparently in your own apartment, all it takes is a pretty girl with messy hair and full lips to throw you off whatever game you can manage.

“Thanks,” is all Lexa says in response.

After you close the door, you turn to a still shocked Raven with her mouth agape. “Okay, so that one was fair,” she admits.

“Is there a thin-apartment-walls setting for your sound system?”

The third time Lexa knocks at your door is the last straw.

You have the night off after a 45 hour work week, carrying 20-pound boxes of wine up and down the stairs, memorizing five new menu items and an entirely new cocktail menu. Do you love the restaurant industry? No. But you’re decent at it and it pays double what the YMCA paid you for children’s after-school art lessons.

You manage to crawl out of bed around two in the afternoon, and proceed to drink an entire Britta’s worth of water before refilling it and sticking it back in the fridge. You probably shouldn’t have had the last two (or five) shots you took last night after work with your coworkers.

You hear the familiar sound of Raven coming up the steps and her keys in the door as you plop yourself into the chair at the small table that separates the kitchen from the living room.

“You’re home early,” you say, Raven is helping her mechanical engineering company collaborate on a big project with MoMA, so she’s been working ten hour shifts, six days a week.

Raven, despite looking exhausted, lifts her fist above her head in victory. “And I have tomorrow off! I’m going out!”

You groan, and Raven just laughs. “I heard you stumble in last night, so it’s cool. I’m going out with O and Lincoln later. I have pot, and you look like you need a cannabis miracle.”

You smoke some of Raven’s weed, and while it does make you feel better, it doesn’t do much for the lethargy part of your hangover. You order delivery for the both of you and wait, sprawled out on the couch in the living room while Raven showers. You snap out of your daze when Janelle Monae’s voice starts to pour out the bluetooth speakers, and you let out a full belly laugh as Raven dramatically exits the bathroom into your line of sight, dressed in only a towel with another wrapped around her head, using her phone as a microphone.

“Live my life on birth control. I lost my mind on rock and roll,” Raven sings, spinning through the kitchen to the living room. She points at you as she continues to sing along and dance. You join her and turn up the volume at the chorus.

You’re both belting along, dancing all sexy despite the fact that Raven’s in a towel and you’re still in a baggy shirt and sweatpants. Raven takes a small hit from her bowl and passes it back to you.

You’re not sure how long she was knocking, but it took a set of louder-than-usual knocks for you to hear it. You look at Raven and briefly feel like you’re back in your college dorm together and resist the urge to chuck the bowl in your hand out the window.

“Really?” Raven mouths, gesturing at the clock reading 3PM.

“What do I do?” you ask. Yeah, you’re moderately stoned.

Raven turns the volume down a bit. “I don’t know, but I’m naked,” Raven says, trying to appear serious before snorting and running to her room to put on clothes.

“Fine, I can just go fuck myself, yeah?” you stage whisper after her.

“Heeeeeey,” you say, opening the door and leaning against the doorframe.

Lexa still looks tired but is wearing a nicer version of your own outfit—jogger sweats, a UMD tee, and some red TOMS she evidently shoved onto her feet without pulling the backs over her heels.

“Your music… It’s distracting me, and just… Could you just turn it down a little, please?” Lexa asks with a light sigh.

“Sure thing,” you reply, and, christ, give her a thumbs up.

You’re sure Lexa can smell the pot, but she doesn’t say anything. She just shuffles back to her apartment, and you close the door not-as-gently-as-usual before turning off the stereo.

Raven walks back into the living room, now fully clothed, and sits on the couch with a dramatic sigh. She grabs her bowl and takes a hit.

“Who, like, gets fucking mad about Janelle Monae? On a Friday? At 3PM?” you ask, taking the bowl Raven offers.

“Someone who hates fun,” Raven says, blowing smoke out her nose and mouth.

In the week following the last knocking incident, you decide you don’t like Lexa Woods, maybe even hate her and her stupid university sleep shirts and stormy eyes. Sure, she’s got her beautiful hair and maybe you’ve thought about how soft her lips probably are once or twice; none of that stops you from declaring her the Enemy of Fun.

You’re not sure what mood you’re in, but you are sure that you drank a lot of gin at O and Lincoln’s engagement party. Raven jokes that gin makes you aggressive, a really dumb “fight me” kind of aggressive.

“She can fucking knock all she wants,” you huff, sitting down on the couch to stop the room from spinning. “Like, what? Are we not allowed to have fun anymore?”

“I know, but let’s try not to have tonight be another night where she comes knocking.”

“I’ll tell her what’s what. Come on, fucking Janelle Monae?” you say, waving your arms in exasperation. “And why not? I fucking dare her to come over. I thought you hated her too?”

“I mean, I think she kind of sucks, but hate is a little dramatic. You’re also pretty confrontational right now, so I don’t want a knock tonight,” Raven says with a chuckle, and you realize she’s far more sober than you as she pours you a glass of water.

“I’d win in a fight.”

“Right.”

“I would.”

“Of course, Clarke.”

“I hate her.”

“Sure.”

#clexa au #clexa #fic: don't make me spell it out for you #that's long so #fic: dmm #or just #nn au #ccf fic #ccf #clexafic #clexa fanfic #ccf fanfiction #ny neighbors au

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frederator-studios · 5 years

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Bird Banfe: The Frederator Interview

You might be surprised, talking to people in the animation industry, at how rare it is to encounter a still-kicking passion for cartoons. Bird Banfe is, to borrow Drake’s term, a real one. A recent SCAD Grad with mad Storyboarding skills, a deep investment in Scooby Doo and a penchant for pink, Bird's enthusiasm for her craft emanates from her, an enlightened power not unlike those of the magical girls she grew up idolizing. Hearing Costume Quest’s Production Coordinator speak with conviction, knowledge and love for the shows that shaped her, and those she now helps shape, it’s abundantly clear that her passion is an unstoppable force, and when it comes to Bird’s dreams, my sense is that it’s never been a question of ‘whether’—simply one of ‘when’.

How did you break into the animation industry?

I got the chance to intern at Nickelodeon during my last year at SCAD, on Spongebob. Totally by accident!

Cool! How does one “accidentally” become a Nicktern?

The Dean of our school was PO’d because Nick representatives were visiting campus, but it was finals and nobody knew, so people weren’t showing up. My friend who worked in the animation building called me up and was like, “Hey, there are Nick people here doing general interviews. Come do one!”

So you bailed on whatever you were doing and went?

Yeah! I had like 30 minutes to throw on an outfit, a little makeup. I thought it went awful. Which is how you can expect an interview to go, with no preparation and barely any clue what it’s for. I didn’t hear anything for a couple months, so I figured, eh, good learning experience. Then on the last day of school, I got a call at like 9pm from an unknown number, and didn’t pick up. They left a voicemail - and it was my interviewer! She said she had something to tell me. I was like, “What?! It’s been two months! This could still be a thing?!”

And on the last day of school!

The last day of school - period. I was driving home to New Jersey the next day. No job lined up, flipping out. We got in touch, I waited a bit more, then I got a call from the Spongebob team. From a Skype interview with them, I got the job.

What were your responsibilities on Spongebob?

The same as a PA. Handling files for artists, organizing things, picking up tasks to help the production along. On Spongebob specifically, I did a lot of archiving backgrounds. The show has these beautiful, physical painted backgrounds. Handling those was probably the coolest part of the job. It got really weird sometimes. It’d be like, “Here is the interior of Patrick’s mouth and it’s really gross.” And I’d have to search around to label it, because they go into Patrick’s mouth in like 3 different episodes.

Wow, so you became the in-house expert on Patrick Star mouth shots.

It was a lot of fun! I learned a lot about how animation works. In art school, they don't teach you anything about production. I didn't know what to expect, or really what was expected of me! I'm good at organizing, I know Photoshop, and I work really hard. Those things carried me through the internship.

Backing way up - when did you know you wanted to work in animation?

A lot later than most people would say. I wasn’t drawing on the walls when I was two. I was drawing! But about as much as any kid would. I wanted to be a Veterinarian for most of my life. In sophomore year of high school though, I realized I have a lot of story ideas, and original characters - all the stuff that kids who really like anime would have. And I knew I’d go insane if I didn’t have a creative job. That decided it for me. Not, “I really want to do this!” more, “I can’t imagine a world where I’m satisfied with a different career”.

So as a junior and senior, you geared yourself toward animation?

Yeah - my Uncle was working in visual effects, mainly for superhero movies, so I knew someone ‘who does that’. I knew it was an option, not an intangible dream. I was in art classes throughout high school, because they were fun. But then I started going to an art studio after school to take animation, painting, and life drawing classes - the last of which was a big shock to me.

Oh, wow - you did all the right things!

When you know people who do it, they’ll tell you! “Go take your life drawing classes—there are no other kids in high school drawing naked people, you’ve gotta do it”. I got advice from a lot of people and followed it the best I could. I applied to a bunch of art schools for animation, though none in California. Not even CalArts - wasn’t even a blip on the radar (off my surprise) It was too far for my family! We picked Savannah, and I’m really glad. I had a great time at SCAD.

What did you like best about animation at SCAD?

It was a good fit for my personality. I was very much the go-getter in college - you know, a try-hard. And the school has a ton of great resources if you want to put in the work. SCAD is set up in a way where if you take advantage of everything that’s there, and are willing to work, you'll prosper.

Going into animation, did you have a focus in mind?

I knew from my animation classes in high school on that I wanted to storyboard. I figured that out quickly, mostly because my teacher steered me toward it. He was like, “You’re good at this. You need to keep doing it.” I was like “Okay, will do.” (laughs) I think every role in animation is interesting, and I’m not too picky. I’m sorta glad somebody made that decision for me!

Are you now looking for avenues into storyboarding from production?

Definitely, but I’ve loved my time in production. I can’t see myself doing it forever, but, remember I said I was a big go-getter in college? I pushed myself really hard. I don’t want to say I burned out, but... I wanted time for myself. To learn how to be an adult, do things like cook for myself. Working in production has given me time to breathe and figure out what I value in the industry.

For example - I was accustomed to that air of, “Oh, you want to be on a show with clout, a show that people know”. I realized on Spongebob how little that really means. Tell anybody in the industry you’re on Spongebob and they’ll go, “That’s cool” and maybe mention their friend on the show. It wasn’t ‘celebrity status’, you know? Maybe to my Grandma, but not to people here. I’ve come to see it’s much more important to find a team that really works with you, and Costume Quest was that team for me.

Did being part of a great team help you shelve the art anxieties?

Oh yeah. When I first started in production, part of me was like, “You need to get into art, now. You need to be doing this, this, and THIS you should have done yesterday!” Tons of pressure. But on Costume Quest, I realized, “These are really great people. I like being around them, I like coming to work every day. I don't want to leave.” So I decided I'd do everything I could with this show and this team. And that’s been very fulfilling. Not in a way that I expected—but in a way where I’ve learned about what I need in a workplace.

What’s your Big Goal in animation, if you have one now?

I always feel embarrassed saying this, because I'm just starting out. But I have lofty goals of being a Creator. I just want to make something that’s important to young girls growing up. Thinking about the things that were important to me as a little girl, I want to foster that.

What kinds of Things?

Magical girl shows (laughs). Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Cardcaptor Sakura. The very ridiculous, very pink, frilly stories, where the message is usually “Love is the most powerful thing in the universe”. But I think those stories are really important! Empathy is important to teach people, and cartoons do that, today more so than ever. Plus, kindness is actually what kids want: when we tested our show, we got feedback that the kids didn’t like it when our characters were mean. When I was growing up, there weren’t as many US shows that talked about interpersonal dynamics, or hit on the empathy theme: “people are different from you, that’s why they behave differently.” That’s probably why anime was so fundamental to me then. Spongebob wasn’t talking about things that felt important to me at that age, but Naruto was. I’ve always been attracted to stories about people learning what it means to grow up and make the world a better place, and where the characters are fun to watch doing that. Costume Quest definitely is that, to me. I just really like all the characters.

Who are your favorite of the characters? Which ones do you identify with?

I definitely identify with Wren the most—which is not something I should admit to. Very much the stubborn, rough-and-tumble personality. I look at her and go, “Yup, that’s me as a kid.” My favorite character is Rudy, which is really weird. It’s that crazy YouTube-popstar personality - the one associated with “YouTube celebrity” which I just find hilarious. And I love Reynold. I like the dynamic between him and Wren the best.

Do you have a favorite episode of Costume Quest?

My favorites are always the Reynold ones, because they have so much heart. You really feel for the kid. He goes through a lot, and he cares a lot; there’s just no way you can’t. I’ll say “Scout’s Honor”. Of all the episodes we’ve done, that’s probably the one that puts a smile on my face the most. The board artists and writers packed a lot of funny stuff in there, and I love singing along with it.

What have you liked best about working on Costume Quest?

The people, first of all. And it’s just a good show. I live for those moments where I can watch something then go to my friend later and be like, “Remember that part?” and crack up about it. Costume Quest is a lot of that for me.

Anything you’d like future fans of the show to know?

Keep an eye out for a little clown doll. We got a haunted doll last summer, off eBay. His name is Little Richie and he moves around the office. It's so funny. It was actually Julian (interviewed here!) who decided to start hiding him in some of the backgrounds. So he’s now a fun little Easter egg - or a continuity error, depending on the sense of humor of whoever you ask. It’s been so fun having him crop up all over the office. In the freezer, behind a plant. Suspended from the ceiling.

What are your favorite cartoons?

I love love love loved Scooby Doo as a kid. I still do. I love those ridiculous straight-to-video WWE crossovers. They are my guilty pleasure in every sense of the word. So bonkers. There’s John Cena standing next to Daphne. It's great. I was Scooby for Halloween for 5 years. I was obsessed, but not for any reason that I can parse today as an adult. I think I just like dogs. I really liked Chowder. That show, especially that style, stood out to me when I was deciding to pursue animation. Same with Flapjack, a similar vein of style and humor. And with both, it’s these lead characters who are just sweet kids, nothing but nice. Courage the Cowardly Dog I loved, even though I was the most easily scared kid in the world. You might think, “Oh, Scooby-Doo, Courage the Cowardly Dog, you must like scary things.” Not at all. I was deeply afraid. I just loved dogs that much. PowerPuff Girls was huge for me. These days, I have to keep up with every episode drop of Steven Universe or risk getting it spoiled. Star Versus and OK KO! are great too, and Ducktales I really enjoy putting on.

What are you working on now? Do you feel pretty motivated to go do your personal work after the work-day?

My portfolio. And it’s hard. It’s really hard. It took time, but I’ve come to terms with that. You can’t burn yourself out. You have to put body first and figure out the balance you need in life, in order to be happy. I’m also the type that works a lot better in an office setting. So I’m prone to coming into the office at a weird time, if I actually want to get something done. At home, I never get anything done. Unless it’s Sunday. Sunday is my work day. Saturday’s my sleep day.

Bird is now Production Coordinator on Final Space. Follow her on Twitter. Costume Quest will premiere in 2019 on Amazon Prime Video - keep an eye out!

Thank you for the interview Bird! And for helping make Costume Quest the extraordinary show that it is <3

- Cooper ❀

#The Frederator Interview #frederator #scad #costume quest #scooby doo #spongebob #animation #nicktern #production #storyboard artist #storyboard #final space #sailor moon #chowder #cartoons #cartoon #interview #artist

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beneaththetangles · 5 years

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BtT Light Novel Club Chapter 11: True Tenchi Muyo! Volume 3 (Washu)

Welcome, dear readers, to the eleventh meeting of our Beneath the Tangles Light Novel Club. Up for discussion today is what is perhaps the least of the three True Tenchi Muyo! novels, but also the most satisfying in a number of ways. While Jurai and Yosho filled in important gaps that advanced the story of Tenchi Muyo!, Washu feels almost mid-story, a volume that raises more questions than answers while being the first of the books to focus on one of the main girls, and a fan favorite at that—the enigmatic genius, Washu Hakubi.

Framed in a unique way—reminiscent, actually, of the Mihoshi Special—the story begins by reminding us of “Hello Baby!”, the episode where we first got a glimpse into Washu’s sensitive side and learned that her back story was perhaps far fuller than we first imagined, far longer and deeper than any of the other girls’. The way into this tale is through none other than Mihoshi, who begins to regale the Masaki household with a family story that transitions into the main one, not realizing that her family’s account is part of Washu’s also.

Like the others in the series, Washu is a quick and exciting read. It is an absolute thrill to read about Washu’s childhood (or second childhood?) and her early years at the Academy. The story humanizes Washu, who in the original OVAs often flows between an absolutely lovable caricature of a mad scientist and a wise, ethereal being (note: only a very bit of her chousin origin is discussed here); the novel catches her during a time of innocence. In fact, the story really could be described as Washu’s loss of innocence, describing a journey from her years as a caretaker among orphans through education and her greatest loss, the one that still haunts her in the present time, as seen in “Hello Baby!” Covering so many years, the action often moves too fast and doesn’t necessarily feel like one big, coherent piece, though perhaps it wasn’t meant to—Washu continues to expand the world of Tenchi Muyo, which would of course later become larger and even more vast than fans would have imagined.

But enough from me—we want to jump into actual discussion. As we finish this series (the first we’ve completed!), I invite you all to answer the following questions in the comments. Feel free to answer some, all, or none, instead focusing on some other aspect of Washu which you’d like to discuss:

In what ways do you better understand Washu after reading this novel?

Do you see Mihoshi’s relationship with Washu differently after this novel?

Why do you think Washu prefers to stay in the guise of a child after the events involving her family and into the modern day?

Is Washu a more or less compelling character after you’ve read the novel?

Did anything surprise you about Washu’s backstory?

Do you understand Mikamo‘s decision to leave home with Mikumo?

Did Washu make the right decision at the end of the book?

Jeskai Angel, our newest club member, also read along. Having never read the previous installments in the series nor watched the show, it presented a great opportunity to look at Washu as a standalone novel. I asked him some questions from that perspective:

TWWK: Was the novel confusing since you had little context for it, having not read the other novels or watched any of the anime?

Jeskai Angel: I found the novel less confusing than I feared it might be. The very beginning features a bunch characters I’m obviously supposed to know already, but the bulk of the book focuses just on Washu and introduces new elements or characters just fine. There were occasionally other things that an experienced Tenchi fan was expected to know (light hawk wings or whatever???), but it wasn’t a big deal.

TWWK: All the light novels are surprisingly accessible, contributing greatly to the larger canon and containing plenty of fan service (the big connection you wouldn’t know, and that which set the Tenchi community on fire when it first was published decades ago now, was Mihoshi’s relationship to Washu), but working as stand-alone works. I’m glad it worked that way for you!

Jeskai Angel: I assume the big revelation that Mihoshi’s is Washu’s great granddaughter? Interesting.

TWWK: Yes! Though an astute viewer might surmise that Mihoshi had a special relationship with Washu, it was still incredible to find out that they’re related, and comical as well, since they’re on quite opposite ends of the intelligence spectrum. But onto the content of the novel! What are your general impressions?

Jeskai Angel: I think I most appreciated the humor. There was a hilarious line about cooking potatoes in a munitions factory early on, more humor as the story went on (Washu going faster and faster every time she had to run anywhere). I found the book’s overall pacing a bit odd. Sometimes you’d get a super detailed fight scene, for example, then other times the narrative skips months or years into the future with hardly any summary. It wasn’t bad, just a bit perplexing. The book also tried to cover an unusually long span of time (at least compared to other light novels I’ve read that take place over days or months at the most), which I suspect accounts for some of the peculiarities. The book also lacked resolution — specifically, it made a big deal of Washu’s mysterious origin, then dropped the subject and never came back to it. I’m sure her true nature has been explained in some other element of Tenchi media, but in the context of this book it felt weird.

TWWK: Those are good points. Vol. 3 certainly rushes through a long period of time, and is especially speedy toward the end. The mysteries about Washu, too, feel strange within a self-contained book. I guess it would be a surprise to tell you that the mysterious jewels are connected to Washu’s actual being—she is one of the three chousin, goddesses who created the universe of Tenchi Muyo. And coming back to her, did you find Washu’s story to be compelling?

Jeskai Angel: Compelling is such a squishy word, but yeah, I’d say the story was adequately compelling (enough that I wanted to read to the end, at least). The author was successful at portraying Washu as smart without making every other character a buffoon, which not all books with would-be clever protagonists pull off. And Washu turned out to be a really noble person (at least as far as this story is concerned?): her tireless efforts to see son again, plus her love great enough to let him go because she believed that was in his best interest, is quite impressive.

TWWK: Speaking of Washu’s intelligence, I wanted to get your take on this as someone also in this world—what did you think of how life was presented at the Academy versus your own experience in academia?

Jeskai Angel: In real life, grad school isn’t nearly as…hmm…zany as Washu’s experience. Also, I received some really generous financial aid, but the Juraians (sp?) took the idea of the graduate fellowship to pretty crazy extremes. I just wish real-life history PHDs were valued as highly as Juraian philosophy students. LOL. The emphasis on independent study is definitely true to life, however. That’s how writing a dissertation is, but even before that, college involves a lot of unstructured time that requires self-discipline to use.

TWWK: Interesting, though I imagine your FAFSA package didn’t provide a cavernous laboratory or office spaces, or a hundred maids and butlers!

Jeskai Angel: Yeah, my fellowships let me afford a small apartment, not a mansion or astronomical observatory.

TWWK: Alright, one more question and then I’ll give you the chance to talk about anything else you’d like. If this was just a one-volume work, what would you title it?

Jeskai Angel: Probably just “Washu.” Or maybe “Washu’s Love”? Nice ambiguous title with multiple meanings.

As for other thoughts inspired by the book… Can I just take a moment to rant about what a scummy coward Washu’s erstwhile husband was? Let me get this straight: you marry a woman, but are too cowardly to tell her your real name. You marry this woman, but instead leaving father and mother to cling to her, you still prioritize dear old dad’s political situation ahead of your wife. You marry this woman and have a kid with her, but instead of telling her you’re abandoning her and why, you just disappear with your son and never communicate your wife / your son’s mother ever again. And then when you this woman has come to visit, you hide so you won’t have to face her. Am I missing something? Is this guy not scum? He seems as much a jerk as Washu seems a noble, loving hero. I feel sorry for both this guy’s wives.

On a totally different note, the idea of wooden space ships makes no sense but sounds super cool. The casual reference to self-mutilating surgery as if it’s normal and reasonable (i.e. gender “reassignment”) was a little disturbing. The equally cavalier mention of porn was likewise problematic. It reflects the acceptance of porn as normal that I’ve noticed in various anime. If pornography is really as normal as Japanese media seem to imply, that says their society has serious trouble. Not that America has anything to boast of…

—

And that’s it for us this time around! We highly encourage you to pick up the volume if you haven’t yet, and Jurai and Yosho as well, which I would describe as better written works and nearly as compelling. And stay tuned next week, as we announce our twelfth (!) selection for the BtT Light Novel Club!

Featured illustration by スギシン (reprinted w/permission)

#light novels #tenchi muyo!#true tenchi muyo!#washu hakubi #btt light novel club #articles #author: twwk #Author: Jeskai Angel

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mentalmimosa · 6 years

Text

getting away with something

Prompt: Basement. Prompt from this generator.

“So,” Tony said, “how are we gonna to do this? Are you, uh, are you going to kiss me? Am I kissing you? What are we doing here?”

Thor frowned. “Do we need to determine that in advance?”

Above them, the music was banging; 80s night was underway at full volume at Alpha Chi Phi. The house was full, the beer was flowing, it was the best blowout they'd had all semester, and yet somehow, Tony wasn't on the dance floor; no, he was sitting on a couch in his frat’s grody basement negotiating a make-out session with his heretofore unannounced crush.

Well, unannounced to his crush, anyway. Whatever he’d said to his best friend Steve didn’t count. And anything he may have accidentally just blurted out in Thor’s general direction, that was technically Steve’s fault; he was the one who insisted that Tony drink two Moscow Mules.

Why Thor had agreed to a kiss, though, Tony had no earthly idea, but hell, he was buzzed enough not to look a gift like Thor in the mouth.

Tony cleared his throat. “Well, no, we don’t have to, I just thought it might, you know. Ease your anxiety about this whole thing.”

Thor’s mouth turned up. “You misunderstand my hesitation, Stark. I’m not nervous.”

“Oh.” Tony bit back a nervous cackle. “You’re not?”

“No.” The couch shifted as Thor tipped towards him, a warm, enormous shadow in the growing dark. “But I’m very aware that you are.”

“Me?” Tony squeaked. “Of course I’m not. This was my idea!”

Thor’s hand curled around Tony’s jaw. Ok, swallowed it, really. God, the guy was huge. “It’s true,” Thor said. “And you did lure me down here under false pretenses, after all. We both know you’re perfectly capable of carrying that keg upstairs on your own.”

Tony’s eyes fluttered. “Yeah.”

Thor drew his thumb over Tony’s chin. “You’ve wanted this for a long time. Haven’t you?”

“Pffft,” Tony said, trying to rally his dignity. “How do you know that? Maybe it just occurred to me this evening. Maybe I saw you leaning against the fridge tonight singing along to Tainted Love and thought, wow, I need some of that.”

Thor chuckled and now they were heartstoppingly close, nose-to-nose practically. “Hmmm. That’s not what Steve told me.”

“Steve?”

“Mmm.” Thor kissed his cheek. Murmured: “He said that you’ve been, quote unquote, lusting after me all year.”

“That is a gross exaggeration,” Tony said, breathy. “It’s only been like, oh, the last three months, tops. And I need you to be a witness when I straight up murder my roommate and soon-to-be very, very ex-best friend.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to resort to homicide, Stark,” Thor said, in that weirdly formal way of his that was so goddamn hot.

Tony found himself clutching one (fucking incredible) bicep, while the other hand wandered around in Thor’s gorgeous, ridiculously long hair. “You wouldn’t?”

Thor smiled and oh jesus fucking christ, Tony could feel it, because Thor’s lips were there, right there, tucked up against his. “If he had said nothing, I would never have guessed that you liked me.” Another smile, this one broader and wide. “And I’d never have been brave enough to tell you that I feel the same way.”

“You--” Tony got out, “you what?”

And then their mouth were together and his was falling open, asking, pleading, and Thor was right there, surging forward, shoving him back into the semi-terrible cushions and giving him all kinds of tongue, pinning his head and his hips and fuck, Thor was on top of him, his knee tucked between Tony’s thigh as they kissed the shit out of each other and Tony just had to get his hands on that ass then, that perfect stupid ass that had taunted him for months, months, since he’d come back on night from the lab to find Steve and Thor half-drunk on the floor, giggling like idiots and pointedly not doing whatever political science homework they swore was due in the morning but fuck it: the 100 proof vodka Steve had hidden under the bed was a hell of a lot more interesting, they’d assured him, than Watergate.

And it wasn’t like all of Steve’s friends weren’t fucking gorgeous; it was his superpower or something, pulling pretty people to him--but pretty people who were all universally nice, and not in that fake way that made Tony crazy. Steve’s friends were as a rule kind, super smart, and prone to long fits of profanity. Like Nat, who brought Steve the vodka from her study abroad; she could speak five languages and curse well in eight. Or Sam, Steve’s RA from freshman year who now in grad school and had them over to his apartment for big dinners of actual food. Even Bucky, who was a weird mix of perpetually grumpy and unconsciously hot. He’d wrestled with Steve in high school and had all kind of hyper embarrassing stories about Young Steve’s Dating Life that never failed to make Tony howl and Steve turn into a prickly, blushing cactus. After two years of living side by side with the guy, Tony should’ve been used to it, wandering in and finding walking wet dreams yukking it up with everybody’s All-American Steven Rogers.

But Thor was something over and above; built like a linebacker crossed with a ballet dancer, he was precise in his awesomeness, funny in an unexpected way, and dear fucking gods, the way he spoke wound Tony up hard: that hint of an accent, that fondness for formal syntax, the lilt that belied the behemoth it came from. Dear god.

Never mind that they'd exchanged maybe 50 words since they'd met. Never mind that Tony went out of his way to be out of the room whenever Steve announced Thor would be over. None of that had done a damn thing to put the kibosh on Tony's crush.

And ok, maybe he had said some things to Steve that he shouldn’t have, muttered some things when he was high about Thor's soul-crushing thighs, but if that running off at the mouth had earned him this--Thor on top of him, making small, hot sounds as they moved together, the heat of his cock unmi-fucking-stakable against Tony’s hip--then Steve’s unrelenting teasing had been worth it. Every damn second.

Then Thor’s hand clamped down on Tony’s hip and urged him up, urged him to work himself against Thor’s two-by-four of a thigh, and Tony groaned, the whole electric circuit of his brain frying once and for all.

“That’s it,” Thor panted. “That’s it, yes, Tony.”

Tony’s head fell back and he scrabbled at Thor’s shoulders. It felt like he was in high school again, like they were getting away with something; like they were fooling in his parents’ basement trying not to get caught. And they were, kind of; sure, there was a hell of a party raging overhead, but all somebody would have to do was wonder where the keg was, why they hadn’t come back, and they’d come down the stairs and see he and Thor, see them like this--

A moan fell out of his mouth, a howl, and Thor kissed his throat, bit gently at the side of his neck. “Does that feel good?” Thor whispered. “Rubbing yourself against me?”

Tony whimpered something, whispered, and Thor sighed, a wave of hot breath.

“I love that you can’t wait for me to touch you,” he said against Tony's skin. “I love that you’re so hot for me you’re going to come like this, in your trousers.”

Tony laughed, high and wild. “We call them jeans in America, Thor.”

Thor’s grip slipped from his hip to his ass and tightened, shit, and now Tony had no quarter, no chance to escape. It was fucking amazing. “Whatever," Thor said. "You’re going to blow your load in them regardless, aren’t you?”

Jesus, every time he said it just kicked Tony that much closer. “I don’t know,” he managed, “but I might if you keep telling me to.”

Thor’s hips hitched and it was his turn to groaned, a sound that shook Tony down to his bones.

“Come on,” Tony said, tugging at Thor’s hair, losing his fingers in it deep, “tell me what you want me to do, baby.”

“Mmmm,” Thor said, slurry. “That would take an eternity.”

“Not if you start right now.”

Thor raised his head so they were eye to eye, so Tony could take in every inch of that beautiful face. “I want you to come on my cock. I want you to come in my mouth. I want you to come under my hands and I want you to feel so good when you’re with me, when I’m touching you, that you think of me whenever you lose it, be it from your own touch or from somebody else’s.”

Tony’s breath came out in a soundless shove, a gasp, but Thor was still going.

“And the fact that you make me feel like this, so greedy, so covetous, when I barely know you, when I’ve only just kissed you, when I’ve never even had my hand on your dick makes me feel like this is madness, Tony Stark, what I feel for you.” Thor’s mouth bloomed, a smile like sunshine. “Madness in the best possible way.”

A sound seethed through the clutch of Tony’s teeth and he slapped at Thor’s arm, dug his nails into Thor’s wrist. “Touch me,” he said. “Don’t take it out, please, but just--”

Thor groaned and shoved his way between their bodies, curled a big hand over the swell of Tony’s cock and squeezed, ever so not gently. “Do you want me to move it? Or hold it here like this?”

“Move,” Tony managed, “oh fuck, please, move.”

Then they were kissing again, messy now, frantic, and Thor was stroking him through his jeans, teasing the tip, rubbing the heel of his hand against Tony’s balls, and Tony had had actual sex with people that hadn’t felt this good, that hadn’t made him feel this out of his head. Actual sex with real naked people and he hadn’t been as desperate for it, like he could barely breathe, barely blink, he wanted to come so fucking bad. Thor didn’t seem much better off; he was like steel against Tony’s stomach, the heat of him like a living singe. And when Tony finally rucked up Thor’s tight black t-shirt and scratched at his back, the man jolted like he’d been shot.

“Please,” Thor groaned, filling the air with the word, the whole goddamn house, “oh fuck, Tony, come on. Please.”

Then the world was upside down, Tony was, because he was stiff, he was still, he was spilling inside of his jeans and Thor wasn’t letting him go, was working his hand against the wet denim and Tony was senseless, he was shouting, he was emptying himself knowing he’d have to walk upstairs soon and everyone would know what had happened, what they’d been doing, how fucking amazing Thor, this beautiful blond fucking god, had managed to make him feel.

Thor, who was whispering something in his ear, who was still humping himself against Tony’s now-boneless body so hard that the couch was shaking, banging itself against the wall and somewhere, in Tony’s jellified brain, he realized how close Thor was, how ready he was to spill, and oh, hey, Tony thought. He should probably help out with that.

He spread his hands over the expanse of Thor’s back, petting at the hot skin there, tracing the curve of Thor’s spine. “Next time we do this,” Tony said, pitching his voice about the hot press of Thor’s breath, “next time you come, you better do it inside me.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Definitely.” Tony raised his head and licked into Thor’s open mouth, sucked dirty at the man’s tongue. “And you should definitely fuck me in Steve’s bed. It’ll make him so goddamn mad.”

Thor snorted and shoved his hips forward and lost it, his body shaking as his cock gave it up, as he threw his head back and laughed and laughed, the sound of it fading away, breathless. Tony beamed up at him, preening, his arms locking around Thor’s body, tight, as the last shudders worked their way through Thor’s body, the last of his laughter fading into a warm, sated sigh.

“You’re right,” Thor said, ducking his head down to meet Tony’s. “He’ll be furious. We should go upstairs and do it right now.”

“Eh,” Tony said. He pressed their lips together, eased his way into a kiss. “In a minute.”

Thor melted against him and made that sound again, so incongruous to someone his size: that soft, contented sigh. “Mmmm,” he said, stroking a hand through Tony’s hair. “Indeed. In a minute."

#tony/thor #thunderiron #college au #mutual pining #dirty talk

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awed-frog · 6 years

Text

I may have mentioned this before, but I listened to this outstanding program a few years back (I think it was an interview on some German radio, but I may be wrong) and I can’t get it out of my head. Problem is, I don’t remember any names so I can’t find a source, but listen to this: as it turns out, a major yet hidden problem with academia and general adulting is that people are überfocused on a specific detail in their own field, and are neither encouraged nor equipped to see a bigger picture.

Example one were two Dutch researchers who were randomly talking to each other because they were friends or something (if I remember this right, one was a psychologist and the other an economist?) and that’s how they decided to study the mostly ignored correlation between capitalism and mental health? And maybe I’m the last person on the planet who never saw things this way, but it’s true that until very recently, if your life sucked you were mostly pitied and supported (I’m talking about Europe here - I know Americans have that whole American Dream nonsense going on, so it may be different over there). Like, you were unemployed - nobody would have scoffed at you and told you you just needed to try harder. People knew that times were objectively shitty - factories closing down and whatever else - which means there was some kind of emotional support system you could count on. Capitalism, however, turns everything you are as a person into an exploitable resource, and because of that how successful you are and how much money you make are directly and solely your responsibility. If you can’t find a job, or are stuck on a zero hours contract, or barely make the minimum wage, well - fuck you - those things are no longer considered as a ‘shit happens’ kind of situation, but have become your fault, and your fault only. Why didn’t you go to uni? Why did you go to uni? Why didn’t you study something more marketable? Why did you waste money and time on a holiday instead of learning Korean or C++? And so on and so forth. The fact many of us feel trapped in an economic nightmare and yet think it is of our own making is, according to those researchers, the primary reason why there’s an epidemic of self-confidence-related illnesses like eating disorders, anxiety, stress, OCD and so on. We become unable to answer a phone and even go outside because we’ve been brainwashed into believing every little choice we make will decide whether we’ll have a reasonably normal life or die in a ditch, and that’s something that’s unprecedented in human history.

Example two was how three grad students meeting in a bar basically realized why their efforts were amounting to nothing at all? Like, this was happening in an African country (again: sorry I’m fuzzy on the details), and one of them was working with the local community because many parents had stopped sending their children to school and that was Bad; another guy was a biologist, and he was concerned with the rising number of baboon attacks on people; and the third researcher was off doing something else - studying the impact of illegal deforestation, maybe? And anyway, of course they were all working separately within their organizations - until that moment they randomly started chatting to one another and realized their problems were actually the same problem. I think what had happened was: a big Western corporation had poisoned a body of water, which means fishermen could no longer make a living, which had led to them burning down stretches of forest to plant more crops so their families wouldn’t starve. The baboons, of course, were none too pleased with this, and also going hungry af - their next move was helping themselves with fresh, juicy food directly from the fields. People then started to task their children with protecting their maïze and egusi and manioca so the baboons would back off; and the local schools emptied. And, whatever, it seems so logical and self-evident when you look at it that way, I remember the radio program explaining how it had actually been very hard to piece these elements together? Because, like, one organization’s work had been to talk to parents and convince to send their kids to school, while other people were trying to come up with ways to stop the fires and biologists were just running around and wondering how to improve the cohabitation between wild animals and local communities. And from the outside, of course, all of these problems were considered lowkey unsolvable because Africans - ie, white people inherently assuming black people do stupid and irrational things just for the hell of it and what can you do, amirite? And again, in reality this whole mess was a West-engineered problem - a greedy corporation based in London or some shit who’d paid the local government to look the other way as they poisoned an entire lake.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, except - we need to be better at this. We need to find a way to balace the need to know our stuff very well with the absolute necessity of understanding what other people are up to. This is especially important in academia and in politics, but as extreme partisanship, an übercompetitive market for university jobs and a generalised ‘my view and experience of the world are the only ones that count’ mentality, we’re barreling faster and faster towards the abyss. So, let’s try and remember that it’s not person vs person out there. The real struggle is humanity vs unchecked corporations, and if we want a shot at winning we need to forgive one another a bit more and let go of damaging stereotypes and stay focused on what matters. Also: bloody talk to each other. Be kind when you can; be mad when you must; and above all, be relentlessly, unapologetically curious.

#capitalism #the resistance #students problems #mental health #the 99%#i want to be optimistic #but it's very hard to do anything world-changing #when you've got a life going on #and the other side is basically hell-bent on your destruction #it's like fucking lotr out here

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ndx94 · 3 years

Photo

My pro-choice Democrat anti-Trump pro-CCP parents are furious with me that my college girlfriend and I twice procured emergency contraception in 2007 and my brother will not talk to me as it turns out I’m not a virgin retard, but had sexual intercourse within a committed thought-we’d-get-married love-relationship in my senior year of college and lived with her in the year following that and twice in my life I committed seminal ejaculation within the context of a female anatomy belonging to someone who badly wanted to get pregnant and be “settled” with me at the age of 21, after our parents had very carefully trained us not to have sex before marriage, warned us about attending Rutgers University, and also demanded us to “take responsibility” in the case of conception.

I am not happy about being an abortionist, babykiller, or anything like that but the idea that I wasn’t put up to it in the least or that you can vote for Bill Clinton and love porneia and still hold your son 100% accountable for his morals at the age of 21 when he was traumatized by the Iraq War and sleep-deprived for 3 years due to stress and emotional abuse by his racist Pakistani anti-white roommate in college and naturally he would then not want to come inside girl to cope or work out and be a nice person in hope of getting love in general rather than gun for Law School. TW-1 and I thought we would get married; we were both virgins in the autumn of 2006 and I at least have not so much as copped a feel of a breast-outline or buttock since TW-1 and I broke up in summer ‘07 let alone ‘played the lottery’ (pregnancy is winning).

I don’t like talking about this but it’s one thing people want to know about and I feel the right to say a few words in my defense on Planet Roe America and as a person who I’m pretty sure was conceived both outside of wedlock and in cis-rape or rape by deception, and if my little “Jaehee’s helper-bird” friend is correct, son of a guy who got so mad I didn’t myself rape the American Korean Presbyterian Pastor’s daughter (a.k.a. my sister) in the summer of 2002 that he fond some girl to drug and rape as symbolic coping.

I still remember well the autumn afternoon I met Taiwan-1, whose name is Rebecca or in Mandarin means “pure literature” or as I like to say “pellucid and literary” or “limpid and well-lettered.” As with the pastor’s daughter I in retrospect devoutly if not ardently regret not being closer to her father, who cared about me far more than my biological begetter; a Confucian gentleman and natural scholar / lover of moral philosophy who happened to become a banker just b/c he had to help his family (and all of Taiwan as a national-level financier), rather than a scholar of history and poetry as I apparently myself have become.

The evening Taiwan-1 and I met was the first day in my life I drank a full glass of wine. It was at a Rutgers English Department function related to the Honors Thesis I wrote, also on Taiwan and the director Hou Hsiao Hsien. I had originally wanted to write my thesis on a videogame called Final Fantasy VIII which in retrospect was an augury of how E. Asian media would summon people to Love not just through Squaresoft but later SM Entertainment, about which I also hoped to write an academic thesis before breaking hard toward political scholarship and military or what I call the sort of “hard science ofo Korean Studies’ like statistics, economics, history, primary source documents, constitutional and legal analysis, reading the daily papers, esp. 38North which is an amazing labor of love from generals who just think all day every day about saving their boys.

The emotion that I felt as I drank that my first wine - I had just come from dropping off my desktop / tower PC to be repaired at the Livingston Campus Rutgers PC shop, and was looking forward to working on my writing on my father’s Windows 98 laptop (I didn’t like laptops at the time but felt comfortable / nostalgic using Win98 in 2006, the apparent end of the universe) - was like, “Wahh [soft but real cry], does David Johnston really deserve nothing and no one?” I’m not trying to say I am selfish or unselfish but I had no friends, the only person I really liked was Big Bad Boris a.k.a. Aleksey “Alex” Kasavin who worked Google later on then Microsoft via Yale MBA program, but he doesn’t like / has never opened up to me or wanted to be close or committed or “eternal roommates” as I used to feel about him. I recently wrote Aleksey a last letter just expressing frankly “sorry to you + sorry to me too” that I always wanted to be close with him and this was not reciprocated; it might’ve been a little cross but after 18 years of this person grinning at me without hugging me (platonically but I have always wanted a close male friendship like a I briefly had with Danny Shin in KR), what am I supposed to do but say something?

When Rebecca looked up at me at the RU English Honors Program welcoming gala at Zimmerli Museum I heard what was either glass breaking - like a Jewish wedding where the couple stomp a glass before kissing, a ritual I love / adore somehow - or at least someone toasting. I had talked to this Korean grad-student. Because of Rebecca I came out of my shell a bit and decided instead of pulling ice cream or delivering pizzas I would try to be slightly more social and get a job as a writing-tutor instead, since I was working on my creative writing daily since 2005, and had started my “bioweapons Taiwanese- and Korean-America families + abortion + China and America assassinating indigenous peoples” novel in 2003 (the “soft sci fi of Sci-Rom / Futurist Romantic Realism) novel that my parents hate me not publishing since it predicted Covid in a way), and had a good “ear” as a reader (I loved imitating esp. Haruki Murakami and a little Gao Xingjian).

TW-1 and I courted between September and November. One of the formative drives in our relationship was her parents’ moving back to Taiwan for her dad’s job and mine moving to WI leaving us all alone together in New Jersey. Another, we were both studying Taiwan. My uncle’s wife is also Taiwanese. I don’t want to give the details of our sexual relationship since this person is an important working professional, a scholar, but we lost our virginities in a hotel suite in Washington, which is why I posted this pic of drapes. I’ll never forget how the day afterward I felt an insane, idiopathic “atheist-thought-bullet-packet” in my head then spent the day working on my creative writing at the “business lounge corner” of the Embassy Suite while TW-1 watched anime in her t-shirt. For some reason that day when I went on my PC to check e-mail I got a communication from my online DAI Forum friend who hadn’t reached out to me in more than a year, as if psychically he just knew that there had been a disturbance in the force or, as I like to say, the great “gayakeum” that binds some people had been detuned or returned.

This is “American Korean Millennial Lit; the story of some semen / sperm” but it seems meaningful somehow that on the night I actually punctured her virginal membrance neither of us completed orgasm / ejaculation. She started crying and then I stopped and we both went to sleep and left each other alone. Then all day we just nursed ourselves in our way, she with Japanese stuff and I with my creative writing or “journals.” We went out to dinner and it was a very “Maison Ikkoku” moment in the November weather in her metallic dress and my military jacket and polo shirt and taped glasses. That night I also discovered my incredible intuitive capacity for what you might call “air-braking” or being able to stay inside really really really close to the moment of potential impregnation. I don’t like talking about porneia and had wished I left it all behind but like in JAV when they have to j--- themselves before doing something obscene that men of my gen. were influenced by the millions to do to insult their GF’s and wives t’s pathetic to me that they can’t “air-burst the A-Bomb at 100 feet.” It was 15 years ago and today I think like why did God create sexual organs to look that way and be that way, stuff like frankly what’s the relationship between male circumcision and conscience (removing the ”foreskin of the heart”).

I am not without tremendous fault in my relationship with TW-1 esp. due to the fact that all the while we were together I was haunted by the presence or memory or eventual wish to be together again with S’hai-1. I could never fully convince myself that TW was better and yet by the same token if I’m being honest my attitude in 2006 was, “If Kate doesn’t want me / is never coming back I am still gonna live life and try to be married with children and a profession because I am not trash just because she gets mad and fires me whenever she feels like it.” Our relationship was also marked by meddling from both her family and friends and mine.

I don’t know why I’m saying this now as it is the ancient past and I am writing almost something that I fear the Holy Ghost does not want me to as everyone has to work out their salvation for themselves with fear and trembling and their seed and eggs are their own or the Lord’s.

TW-1 and I had a good relationship in all honesty except for money. The MD at Aurora Psychiatric and my brother and parents are mad. The MD was like “get a car maybe blahblah then do some Bulgarian deadlifts, Axe body spray” ahhaha alright just the car and I LOVE and thank Hananim for this man but he is Indian-American anwyay I was like “Dude we traveled around half the world, we shared so many meals in so many places.” MD didn’t realize relationships are like that; you don’t just arrive but share the whole journey of two lives as one, and it’s infinitely sad when you share that way with one person then another rather than one all the way through. It was really liek a marriage in the sense that pace Ecclesiastes I was “seeing the world with my wife.”

My very favorite day together with TW-1 was in Princeton, NJ at Panera or Au bon Pain drinking espresso. I later wrote a scene in Hot Pursuit in Princeton and also K-pop fanfic in which I was married to I-know-not-whom but we were dropping off our daughter Krystal for classes. It was common for Millennials at Rutgers at least in the honors program to visit Princeton as a vacation or “different oxygen” since P is only about 1 hour down the road from this mad disheartening to some soul-breaking suicide-inducing state school, nestled in woods. Educational Testing Service / the makers of the SAT and TOEIC and TOEFL also have their headquarters around there adn I nearly got a job there in 2007, my first dream job as I believed that the SAT protected gifted young people from arbitrary often intellectually envious subjective teachers; a view on standardized testing shared by all rational governments but especially Korea and Asia in general, and also by the serious and caring moral, now basically religious scholar / sociologist Charles Murray, who believed he was saved from racists, as were many Jews in the days the Ivy League was hyper-anti-Semitic (word to the wise: they’re now anti-Korean mutatis mutandis).

The Lord is high and lifted up

The Lord is lifted up

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wineanddinosaur · 3 years

Text

Next Round: Bar Project 2021 Is Educating Students on the Future of Drinks

On this episode of “Next Round,” host Zach Geballe chats with Brian Connors, director of the Bacardi Center of Excellence at Florida International University. The center is part of a dynamic partnership between the Bacardi brand and FlU to develop students in the realm of hospitality and tourism management. Through the program, Connors seeks to teach students how to adapt to a new world of hospitality through disciplines such as beverage management, fine spirits, industry innovation, sustainability, and entrepreneurship.

The program’s goal is to reimagine what hospitality may look like during a pandemic. By embracing this “new normal,” the center has given students opportunities for safe, hands-on learning experiences — solving problems introduced by the Covid-19 pandemic. Tune in to learn more about how the next generation of hospitality is being schooled.

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Zach Geballe: From Seattle, Wash., I’m Zach Geballe, and this is a “VinePair Podcast” “Next Round” conversation. We’re bringing you these conversations in between our regular podcast episodes so we can focus on a range of issues and stories in the drinks world. Today, I’m speaking with Brian Connors. He’s the director of the Bacardi Center of Excellence at Florida International University’s Chaplin School of Hospitality and Management. Brian, that is a long title. How are you doing?

Brian Connors: Zach, I’m doing great, man. Thank you very much for having me. This is going to be a fun conversation.

Z: Let’s start with some background for people who might not be familiar with the Bacardi Center of Excellence and the Chaplin School. Can you tell me a little bit about what that is and how it came to be?

C: Absolutely. We’re actually approaching our 50th anniversary for the FIU hospitality program, and for a lot of us in the beverage industry, that last name or the name Chaplin should also ring a bell, as we are the beneficiaries of the Chaplin family of Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits. They’re just a wonderful group to work with. We actually took on the name as the Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management a little over 10 years ago. Right now, we are the second-largest hospitality program in the United States. FIU as a whole, we’re a big school with the fourth-largest research institution in the United States. We got a lot of horsepower behind it. Our world here in South Florida and our partnerships that we’ve gained between the South Beach Food and Wine Festival has definitely put us on the map. Now, over a year ago, we partnered up with Bacardi North America. They were very generous and gave us a $5 million gift, and within that, we created the Bacardi Center of Excellence. Our mission is to raise awareness, to raise the education level, to support, and so forth. Not only the FIU students that are going to be pursuing careers in the beverage industry, but also the industry as a whole. We’ll definitely get a chance to talk about some of the initiatives that we did from Bacardi Teach, which is an online platform that we created during Covid that’s available to everyone for free. We will be having some other additional badged or for-credit courses also available there. There might be a small fee for that one, Zach, but it’s again, for credit, so it’s slightly different. We saw great success with that. We launched very quickly to give back, to up-skill. We’ve had now, I believe, over 3,000 courses taken. If you take five courses successfully, you’re able to gain your badges that equal up to a certificate of excellence, which is a great resume label for individuals getting back into the workforce. We’ve had over 200-plus individuals take multiple courses and gain certificates. Zach, the best part about that initiative is we are just getting started. We’ve got some great stuff coming out.

Z: As you said, this is just a little over a year old and possibly perfect timing, given what happened to the beverage and hospitality industry and everyone in the last year. I want to get a sense from you, before we talk a little bit more, about the Bar Project 2021, which is super interesting to me. In particular, can you speak more to the student base at FIU in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management? Because I think this is something that some of our listeners are going to be very familiar with. Some may very well be grads, but others will not necessarily know a lot about how these programs work in a modern education environment. Are your students mostly typical college age, 18- to 22-year-olds, or are there a lot of people going back to school at some point in their career? How does that break out?

C: We have one of those great backgrounds. We have the traditional learner that would be coming to us right out of high school, and that’s fantastic. We also have individuals that are seeking their master’s degree that is coming directly from the industry. We also receive a good amount of veterans from the VA that come in from there as well. Veterans actually come in and join us as well. One of the best parts about our student makeup here, particularly down here in South Florida, is the vast majority of our students are also working in the industry. We’re slowly but surely seeing them coming back to the industry now. Our makeup is pretty interesting because we’re 70 percent female. Out of that, a good majority are first-generation college students, the first in their family to go to college, which we celebrate. We also have an incredibly diverse overall makeup of our student body. I think one of the best parts about the Chaplin School is our willingness and desire for partnerships with the industry. We’re firm believers in bringing the industry into the classroom as much as we possibly can so our students get exposed, from our hotel restaurant program, to our beverage program, and to our culinary program. We have fantastic partners that we’ve teamed up with, and that’s going to be something that’s a little unusual. Not all schools have that opportunity, and I think back to one of the best partnerships we have is the South Beach Food and Wine Festival, because that’s gained $32 million. This year is going to look a little different, Zach, in May. In the past, we’ve had amazing support, again, from Southern Glazer’s, but also from the Food Network and the Cooking Channel. We can be here all afternoon talking about that list, but the students get to work with some fantastic culinary professionals. They love seeing the “foodie celebrities” coming in from the Food Network. They are hands-on, and we have more success stories than we can count, and some of the great opportunities they have with that. Those are just some of the really unique things that take place down here in South Florida at FIU.

Z: Awesome. One thing that I’m particularly interested in that I’m sure is continuing to evolve. I’ll be completely honest here for a minute. I considered going to a hospitality management program when I was coming out of high school and decided not to go. I went to a different university for a different program. Part of the reason was that in the spirit of time, back then, the view of the people who went to hospitality schools was that they were only interested in or were being groomed for big hotel chains, big corporate restaurant jobs. It didn’t seem to me at the time that someone who was interested in the restaurant industry but was more interested in smaller-scale operations — it just seemed I was going to be working on how do you manage a banquet dining program for 10,000 people? It was something that I wasn’t interested in. I’m sure that is not actually true and less and less true going forward. From an educational standpoint, what is it that your students are learning and are interested in doing once they get out of school?

C: Yeah, a great question. I love your story of building up, because I was in the same boat. I did go to school for hospitality and I went to culinary school and then continued on to get my bachelor’s and my master’s, all in hospitality. That’s the world that I love and that’s the industry I fell in love with. Then, I got that education bug and decided that developing people and creating great leaders of the future was more important. The biggest shift, Zach, now is students and learners with an entrepreneurial spirit like never before. A lot of today’s learners look at things a lot differently. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Back in the day, I went to school up in Ithaca, N.Y. It was the Marriotts, the Hiltons, and the Hyatt’s, and they recruited like mad. By the time I was getting ready to get out of my undergrad degree, I was like, “Wow, this is what it’s going to be.” I took a left turn and jumped on a private yacht as a chef for a couple of years because that’s just more fun that way. That’s where we’re at today where we have students that are all working now, in school, and they get that taste of what’s going on in the industry. A lot of them, again, take that entrepreneurial role. We also have FIU Startup Food taking advantage of a lot of those situations. We’re going to see this a lot more, Zach, because due to the pandemic and the shift that we’ve all seen, this entrepreneurial spirit is going to be true and they do have courses and opportunities to do that. We also offer PODs., which is called Programs On Demand. I mentioned earlier where we bring a lot of the industry and what we’ve launched ones with lots of coffee so we have those programs coming out. They get exposed to all these things and the traditional model is broken. The one-size-fits-all education when you and I were undergrad doesn’t work anymore. There is a tremendously high level of customization because it’s not just going to be well, “I like events.” OK, we get that. “Oh, I like beverages.” OK, great. Now, they can get a la carte education. Yes, like major institutions, we have majors and tracks. But right now, I’m teaching a fantastic intro course on beverages. It’s called Introduction to the Global Beverage World. In this particular course, we touch base on the spirits world, the wine world (which we’re talking about now), the beer world, and the nonalcoholic, coffee and tea. What this does is gives them a little taste, pun intended, of each one of those segments. Then, they are able to choose their own paths. If you get that, as I call the wine bug, you continue on with our fantastic wine program that was created in the 1980s by the late Chip Kassidy, where he did a phenomenal job. Right now, we are in the stages of rebooting, resetting, and redoing all that. On the beer side, we have amazing brewing science, and the story goes on from there. Also, we have our spirits management track that is part of the Bacardi Center of Excellence. What we’re noticing, Zach, is that I’m getting students from the school of engineering and from the business school and so forth that go, “No, I just thought this would be really interesting because I wanted to learn more about the beverage segment.” They probably use different terminology, but for our listeners, that makes sense. That’s what’s going on now, because it’s not, again, this one size fits all. It’s now about higher-level customization for each student. They work with advisors. It’s a lot different where you had to take specific credits. Of course, we have our core but now you have this higher level of customization, which is absolutely fantastic.

Z: That’s very cool. Let’s talk a little bit about the Bar Project 2021, because I think one of the really exciting things to me about what you all are doing is looking from an academic perspective and a research perspective, which is hard for those of us in the industry at the moment who have to be a little more focused on day-to-day survival. Focusing on what particular bars and beverage alcohol is going to look like as we move forward out of this period of the pandemic. Can you talk a little bit about how this came to be and what you’re working on at the moment?

C: Yeah, absolutely. Your timing is impeccable. As you know, the Bar Project 2021 launched Feb. 3. Andrew Zimmern was our guest host. We launched this all out to our FIU students. Now, a little background before we get into the nuts and bolts of it all. With our partnership with Bacardi North America, funds were put forth to create what we call our Innovation Fund. Inside that Innovation Fund, we got incredibly creative and innovative to create Bar Project 2021. We teamed up with a great think tank group out of New York City that does a lot of our technical support. Zach, this is where it’s slightly different. This is also 85 percent on-demand. What do I mean by that? We are now in the Netflix/Prime world or mindset, particularly due to Covid. Students, as we mentioned, are slowly but surely going back to work here in South Florida, but they’ll be able to check out a module at the end of their shift or be able to binge multiple. That’s really what we’re experiencing now. I’ll tell you more about that in a minute. What we do is we spatter in about 15 to 20 percent of fireside chats, where we tap great industry leaders, some of our faculties, and they have conversations with them where the students can actually livestream and ask the questions right there. The beauty of this is we’re capturing it all for the industry, and we’ll talk more about that. We’ve already gotten into the guest experience. We’ve already done a module on guest experience, on design thinking, thinking a little bit differently. It’s a different world. We want to challenge these younger minds to tap into them and say, all right, what are they seeing? What do they think is going to be next? Of course, we talk about diversity, inclusion, how important that is in the hospitality and in the beverage industry as well. We had some great industry leaders talk about that. Now, in these coming weeks, we’re going to be moving into even more relevant topics. Our partners at Bacardi North America are going to be talking about sustainability, because you probably know Bacardi is coming out with a brand new packaging that’s going to be one 100 percent biodegradable. That is just the models. We’re really challenging the students to think, again a little bit differently. Then, of course, you and I are both wine educators, but the importance of data analytics and how we’re now using this data and consumer behaviors to make different decisions. I use that reference as wine educators because, for many years, I was always on the road or traveling the world to cruise ships and teaching people. These days, it’s all virtual. And these days, it’s all going to be done through what the better data set is. We’re going to be developing that for them as well. The new world of marketing and social impact, and the whole thing should be coming together on April 5. We already have lined up a few of our great industry judges. There are a few more in the works that are going to be challenging the students. Now, as they come to the end of this, Zach, there’s going to be five teams of four. They’re each going to have these individual challenges. They’re going to use this information they’ve gained in the past eight to nine weeks. Take their own level of creativity and innovation and put forth the solutions to the challenge at hand. Now, some of the challenges are still on the top-secret side in a good way. It’s funny how WhatsApp and these other apps out there, the word travels very fast. Industry folk, like our friend Sabato Sagaria, master sommelier, are going to be joining us. He’s an old friend. That type of industry expertise where he’s coming from, Danny Meyer and Bar Taco. They’re going to see these whole new levels of stuff going out there. You can probably tell by my passion in my voice, we’re incredibly excited about it because there’s also scholarship on the table. We’ve learned that a lot of our learners really appreciate, more than ever, the opportunity to win a scholarship. Through the Bacardi Fund, we’re able to do this. If I told you the number of money people needed, you’d be shocked how actually low it is. We take that into consideration so that each team member would be able to reach that threshold and apply that right towards their education. I think more importantly than just the scholarship, Zach, is the exposure. How often do you get to have this type of interaction with some top-notch beverage professionals out there that are doing great stuff and the camaraderie? The knowledge share that’s going to be going on through the Bar Project 2021 is absolutely fantastic.

Z: Yeah, and I think one of the things that are really interesting to me about this, in addition to everything you’ve spoken to, is how it gets people really thinking about the industry as an ever-shifting and evolving world. I think one of the things, too, that I found in my time in the beverage industry is that unfortunately, you get some people who come to it with the idea that it’s a rigid, locked way of how you do things. I think societally, we found out in 2021 that sh*t changes, and you have to be prepared for that. Also, those changes allow for a lot of innovation, development, and throwing off systems that just don’t work anymore or don’t work as well as others. Are there things that you’ve seen out of either your students or your colleagues or some of the pros that have participated in that are going to be models for hospitality and service going forward?

C: Yeah, absolutely. What I’m going to talk about is going to get fit right into a Bar Project 2021. I apologize, I forgot to mention we’re going to repackage it so it’s not as student-centric and get it out there on BacardiTeach for our industry. This is all going to be real-time, because what we’ve noticed now is that — I’m going to use my own term on this — hustlers will win. This has been an incredibly hard time. You’ve had some great guests even on your show I’ve listened to. We have our own podcast at FIU. We all have a podcast. It’s true because this is our new way of interacting and getting information out there in this crazy world we’re in. I’m a firm believer that these great operators, these hustlers that change their business model almost overnight, have gotten incredibly creative about what they’re going to do. Our students are also embracing that. They see it’s going to be this new and different world. A year ago, Zach, if we were talking about Uber Eats and Drizzly for $1.1 billion, people would think we’re absolutely crazy. Now, the students are highly aware of that. They see these new and different business models taking place almost overnight in some cases. They’re really moving forward. Probably the biggest thing, and this is through research done by Bacardi USA, also on our end, we’re going to see a return back to basics. What do I mean by that? Coming up through the ranks in hospitality, as a young food and beverage director, it was all about inventory, inventory controls. Well, no one really forgot about it. But I’ll use a very simple term here: making money. “I can make this cocktail,” which I completely appreciate. I love creativity. I love mixology. But I think we’re going to see a lot of return to basics, where we’re going to be looking at what’s on our back bar. What do we need to be successful? What do we need to have a great guest experience? And of course, what do we need to be profitable? That’s what we need to be looking at, because as you and I both know, the restaurant segment, the bar segment, is a nickel-and-dime business. If we are going to be accounting for every single nickel and dime, that’s where a lot of the stuff that will be launching on BacardTeach, again, offering to the industry is going to be incredibly useful. Every day I start talking about this, and my eyes are opening up more and going, “Oh my goodness, we’re right on track.” Because we’re seeing it across the marketplace, where we’re slowly but surely, out where you are in California to Washington State, slowly. But opening down here in South Florida, we’re outdoors where we have a lot of properties open, but what we really need to be mindful of now is people, No. 1. Then, of course, our control systems internally. How well are we working in our business as well as on our business? Got to quote my mom there a little bit. Yet, it’s true that we need to get these things in check, and we’re going to see this return to the basics. I love that because there’s nothing wrong with that, because the worst part is it’s usually what people forget first. We’re going to see that coming out in the next eight months of return plus into the new world as we know it.

Z: One last question for you, Brian, before we wrap things up here. I’m personally curious about the ideas that might be out there as many states have relaxed various things around liquor laws, both involving the sales of to-go cocktails, shipping in some cases. Every state is its own thing, which I’m sure as an educator drives you crazy. It certainly drives me crazy. In some of the smaller-scale spaces, the things that I’m particularly curious about is whether we’ll see more continued interest in and focus on takeout or to-go cocktails, cocktail delivery, things like that. Is it something that you see a real future for? What does that look like?

C: Double down on that one, Zach, because I’ve been quoted a few times already saying it, but the genie is out of the bottle. We’re not going to be able to get that genie back in, if you know what I mean, when it comes to to-go cocktails and so forth. One of the most innovative things we’re seeing now in many, many markets but I’ll just use the example of reef technologies down here in South Florida and across the U.S. where they use neighborhood kitchens, or some people call them ghost kitchens. Now, don’t be surprised if you now see the cocktail world moving in that direction as well. Everyone has their favorite corner bar back in the day, but now that could be that corner bar that you never knew was there. And within 30 minutes, your favorite cocktail could be at your door. The challenge we’re going to see with this type of new world of delivery is ensuring the best quality experience for the guest. Some brands are doing this incredibly well, as you and I both know, sustainable to-go containers can get very, very expensive. Again, ensuring that we have the best. Not all food is created equal. Not all food travels well. Think about pizza. That’s why it’s so damn good. It travels well. But at the same time, we’re going to see brands stepping out, more energy into larger kitchens, realizing that we’re going to have this amazing GreenShoots movement. I’m going to quote my good friend, Dr. Chris Mueller, that says, after a forest fire, a few weeks go by, but what starts to pop up after that devastation? There are all these amazing green shoots where this sudden burst of energy is coming from. That’s what we’re going to be seeing in the restaurant, food, and beverage and in the bar segment because of the creativity people have from being pent up for over a year now. At the same time, it will go back to the basics as we talked about earlier. However, this high level of creativity, we’re already seeing in our RTDs, ready-to-drink cocktails. We’re seeing new products coming out to the marketplace that can compete directly, because our guests and consumers these days are savvy and smarter than they were a year ago. If you think about that for a minute, it makes a lot of sense. Now everyone’s got their own habits formed or what it’s going to be. The strong are going to survive. The hustlers are going to win on that, definitely. We’re going to see a high level of creativity and quality. That’s going to be the key. The guest is willing to pay for quality.

Z: Wonderful. Well, Brian thank you so much for your time. Really, really fascinating. We’ll put some links in the episode description for some of the content that is available online for everyone. Thank you so much, really fascinating. We’ll definitely keep an eye on what you and your team at FIU are doing.

C: Amazing, Zach. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, then please leave a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.

Now for the credits, VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and in Seattle, Wash., by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible, and also to Keith Beaver’s VinePair’s tasting director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who is instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.

The article Next Round: Bar Project 2021 Is Educating Students on the Future of Drinks appeared first on VinePair.

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johnboothus · 3 years

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Next Round: Bar Project 2021 Is Educating Students on the Future of Drinks

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Or Check Out the Conversation Here

Brian Connors: Zach, I’m doing great, man. Thank you very much for having me. This is going to be a fun conversation.

C: Amazing, Zach. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

The article Next Round: Bar Project 2021 Is Educating Students on the Future of Drinks appeared first on VinePair.

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source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/next-round-bar-project-2021-is-educating-students-on-the-future-of-drinks

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askauradonprep · 7 years

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What jobs would the Descendants characters have?

Ooooh, fun! :D The good news is that Descendants takes place in the modern day, so a lot of jobs are still applicable to the Descendants verse.

AKs

Ben - Probably runs to be head of state for whatever country it would be in the ‘real world’ AU, assuming the country was a democracy - he’s got a good family and money, so that would probably help. He probably went to the creme de la creme of universities and will study politics and law with minors in economics and public policy so he does well. He works himself to the bone and of course he goes to grad school, what is he, an amateur? Long story short, he doesn’t sleep for all his post secondary career.

Audrey - I feel like Audrey’s very artistic and theatrical and would probably enjoy going in to the arts. But she’s supposed to carry on the family name and so she goes into politics, advocating for her ‘state’ or ‘province’ at the federal level. She probably studied politics and public policy and got involved in her school’s theatre department for fun, quietly musing it would be nice to be in the performing arts.

Chad - Chad’s in politics, but on the sleazy side of politics where he takes bribes and treats people like they’re stepping stones - you know, the stereotypical politician. He’d probably manage to network his way into campaign positions. He went to grad school with Ben and Audrey but he didn’t take it seriously - he only took politics, no double majoring. His hobbies were sports and misogyny in school.

Jane - Jane would make a super great event planner. She stresses herself out asking a million questions about decorations and food and what her employers want. She just wants their wedding or prom or party or whatever to be PERFECT! She went to college instead of university, for Special Events Planning and her phone rings off the hook.

Doug - Doug wasn’t sure what he wanted to go into - accounting, computer programming, working in a chemistry lab somewhere, whichever. But as Evie’s business grew and grew, he became more and more invested in its success, and so now he’s become her brand manager with Evie as the CEO. With that in mind, he went to school for Business Administration with a focus in Marketing and a minor in Accounting. That way, if he and Evie break up and the job doesn’t work out, he can become a manager somewhere else.

Lonnie - Lonnie’s a DJ who competes in kickboxing competitions. She has a bunch of medals and trophies on her mantle. She got started helping out her brother at his own DJing gigs but she’s since learned to solo. She started going to college for Musical Technology but she stopped after two years because she was booking more gigs and wanted to practice more for her kickboxing. So far it’s worked out, though her parents would feel more comfortable if she’d finished her degree.

Jordan - Jordan became a professional blogger as her blog got more and more hits. She talks about fashion, makeup, lifestyle stuff, music, cooking, and basically whatever she wants to talk about. She didn’t bother with college and as long as the blog pays the bills, her dad’s cool with that. Her backup plan is to go into social media, organizing campaigns.

Ally - Ally’s a travel writer with columns about the new and fun things, big and small, from different cultures in the places she visits. Whether it’s shrunken heads like the one Freddie gave her or an article about traditional food and its semblances, she’ll write about it. That said, she still has a tendency to run her mouth at first glance and so she’s written some fairly insensitive things, even though she means well. The good news is she DOES mean well and would probably change her writing style if she learned it was genuinely hurting people. She probably double majored in cultural anthropology and cultural geography.

VKs

Mal - Mal’s probably an artist who’s got a bunch of stuff in galleries and things like that. Now granted, dating the President or whatever doesn’t hurt, but I think she’d submit her stuff under pseudonyms at first, just to make sure they like her stuff based on quality. She probably didn’t go to college with Ben - she probably attended an art college or something where she majored in Drawing and honed her craft. Yes, that’s a real degree you can get. I’ve seen it on a zillion college websites.

Carlos - CARLOS IS A PRECIOUS BABY. He achieved his dream of running a shelter for abused animals and children. Sometimes he has to keep animals away from kids but he finds animal therapy helps both of them a lot of the time. He became a psychology major with an emphasis on crisis and abuse counselling and also got a degree in animal science with a bunch of animal welfare certificates. He lives with Jane over the top floor of the shelter with the kids. He likes to joke about having 20-30 children at any given time.

Jay - Even in a world where tourney and ROAR don’t exist, he probably went into professional sports. It’s his biggest outlet. When he retires as he gets older, he’ll become a coach and teach the next generation - so he went into physical education to get his teaching credentials.

Evie - …Is this a question? She’s still a fashion designer. Going to high school with some big names made it easy to get her name out there and she’s been rolling into her career since. She probably went to art school with Mal and majored in Fashion design and then went to grad school with Doug to major in business administration. She’s been considering branching out into makeup beauty products like lotions, jewellery design, accessories and hair care. …You know, in between chemistry papers that she publishes on the down low.

Freddie - I’m thinking she’d still want to be a jazz singer. She probably skipped college so she could pound the pavement looking for opportunities. She started off singing in a club or a bar during daylight hours or maybe a hotel. Eventually she got noticed though and now she’s got a record deal and her smoky voice will be all over the radio.

Zevon - He’d PROBABLY want to go into politics. I can see him absolutely scrambling and be willing to work as a staffer for decades. His issues with malapropisms make it tricky for some people to think he’s competent, but underestimating him is a mistake - he’s surprisingly good at planning and he thinks of unforeseen circumstances. Lack of post secondary on the Isle would make it harder though - so unless he gets off the Isle, he’ll probably be mixing up new medicines, products, etc. No magic doesn’t mean those skills are worthless.

CJ - Heck if I know. She’s one of those people who goes from place to place living off backpacking and taking odd jobs to pay her way. Most likely didn’t go to any kind of college ….which, tbf, she doesn’t seem to have finished high school so. There’s that.

Dizzy - Probably a cosmetologist and hair dresser. She’s got her own hair and beauty salon where she supplements her favourite tricks with her mom’s old ones. She still gets SO EXCITED when she gets to do whatever she wants. She probably went to beauty school and got whatever licenses she needed and may have also gotten a certificate in jewellery design or something. She’s collabed with Evie before and would love to do so again.

Uma - …….And now I’m mad because she, Harry and Gil probably just took over their parents shops or whatever, so she’s still stuck working the restaurant. At least now she might be a manager? Even so that bites. If she got off the Isle, those three are probably either sailors for hire (for like researchers or travellers or whatever), but I can see her as a lobbyist or activist for Isle issues. She’d be ready to kick in Ben’s door and yell at him for whatever he’s doing wrong. In which case she may have gone to school and majored in politics?

Harry - Hook owned a fishing shop, so he and Harriet worked out a deal. He does the actual fishing if she’ll run the shop. They also go around mugging people and taking money and things to survive so there’s that, but I presume you mean legal jobs. If he’s not on the Isle and Uma’s crew aren’t sailors for hire, I don’t know. I’ve only ever seen him as a sailor. A sword fighting teacher? Uma’s assistant? Oh, actually, he’s fairly theatrical. He might not make a half bad actor or dancer. I can see him vacillating a lot if he’s not a sailor, not getting tied down, just taking whatever classes for funsies while Uma’s there and then ditching as soon as she graduated if he doesn’t find anything in particular to strike his fancy.

Gil - Gil probably works at the hunting store with his brothers. If they won’t let him, he’ll go fishing with Harry. Outside the Isle, I’m not sure if they’re not sailors. A bodyguard would make a good job for him since he’s the crew’s muscle. Uma’s maybe? I can also see him going into sports like bodybuilding or maybe modelling. He’s a cutie who’s smile could make flowers grow, he’d do well.

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cosmosogler · 7 years

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hi friends. i have been writing this for an hour. i hope you enjoy my new novel, “i had a long thursday.”

today i actually woke up on time and got up. then i spent 2 hours in my apartment doing... not a whole lot? like i got ready for school and i was ready to go at 8:55 like usual. but then i just kind of... played pokemon for a while. a half hour or so, i dunno, 45 minutes? it doesn’t feel like it could possibly have been that long. i was doing some other stuff. multitasking. it’s never a good idea.

i biked to campus. that was fine i guess.

i got to campus at about 10 and then i settled in and got working on a little classical. then at 10:25 i went up to my graduate coordinator’s office for a meeting. i told him about how i was doing and what i was looking for next. he asked me to set up an e&m problem...

i felt really confused trying to get started. he was quiet for a while. then he asked what the concept of capacitance meant. i answered right away and he said i was wrong, and that was my problem. i don’t know the equations, but then when i try to grab an answer right away i grab the wrong one. i’ve told this to danielle at the drc before in almost those exact words. i didn’t tell him i knew that already because he said it quick and i think he was building up to something else.

he was.

after we talked about a diagram i’d drawn and how you can, actually, derive the equations you need during the test IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE MATERIAL AND HOW IT CONNECTS TO EVERYTHING ELSE VERY WELL, he asked me another question. he asked how i knew i could use a gaussian surface to solve this problem.

i did actually sit and think about that one real hard. i knew the immediate answer that came up- i knew it was wrong. i couldn’t figure out why it was wrong, and it was really tripping me up, and i couldn’t get past it, and-

“this setup is symmetric,” i said, without really thinking about it beyond “the first thought i had is wrong and i am not currently thinking the words that are coming out of my mouth this is very strange.” the coordinator smiled and said that was right and explained how it connects to the other equations we were using in class.

i don’t really... know... where that answer came from.

he said that graduate students have to be very creative and i just wasn’t learning the same way as my classmates. physics questions are very open-ended and he saw when i asked about “how to memorize equations” that i was treating the problems like yes/no questions. he said he didn’t know why i didn’t learn that in undergrad, or even earlier, but that physics graduates think of problems as branching paths with different tools you can use to approach the same question. i thought about how i solved some of the quantum problems differently than my classmates and got the answer faster and just as correct.

i got kind of upset with myself, gonna be honest. stuff i didn’t learn how to do as a kid- or was actively prevented from doing or learning- is still coming back and biting me in the ass constantly. are you kidding? i learned how to stop being clever. not how to start. when i had a question the answer was always “because god made it that way” or “because i said so.” what am i supposed to learn from that? we never went to the library. my parents lamented that they don’t teach kids how to use the dewey decimal system and then never let me learn. we had dial up, google didn’t exist yet. i didn’t learn i could look stuff up on the internet until i started high school.

i couldn’t say any of this to him of course. but i was really struggling with that sense of loss and frustration and the feeling that something important had been taken from me right from the start and i didn’t know if i could get it back now.

the coordinator really is a very smart man though. i’m glad he knew how to put words to the mysterious problem i’ve been having for the last two months. the last six years. the last ten years.

he said he wasn’t sure if he could talk to my professor about his treatment of me without it affecting my grades or my ability to utilize his office hours. but he did say that i should start using that professor as a resource instead of asking for general advice. like, go in with specific questions about small parts of a specific problem he can directly solve. i think i can do that. i do it with my parents. shouldn’t be hard to generalize that concept.

i told him i started this project and i’d like to see it through. and that i know i can get up the hill like everyone else, i was just unsure if i could do it as fast as the course demands, and that’s where i was worried. he said to find upperclassman grad students and talk to them about e&m theory and how to link everything together. i can do that too.

after that i went back to the office and finished another classical problem. then the girls and i went to the women in physics lunch with a guest speaker. i was participating and asking questions until i hit a snag. the speaker said she didn’t go into industry because she liked working at the los alamos lab.

i stopped. isn’t working at a lab the same as working in industry? if you go into industry doesn’t that mean you work at a lab? i was too embarrassed to ask a really common knowledge question like that and i didn’t have the opportunity to look it up while we were talking.

oh ok. http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/1999/07/jobs-industry-vs-jobs-national-labs this says that industry is more focused on creating a product and national lab work is more focused on doing what their sponsor wants or getting sponsorship for their projects.

good to know, i guess.

probably should have asked.

after lunch i went and worked on more classical but i was getting distracted because i’d had to get up so many times already. at 1:55 i got up and left for my psychiatrist appointment. i got on the wrong bus.

ok, look, i saw the “20″ and figured “oh that’s mine” and got on and then i realized the route was “120″ and i was way off track. and then when i made it back to the main road i realized that there are NO BUS STOPS ON THAT SIDE OF THE ROAD. WHY??????

so i had to run the rest of the 15 minutes to the counseling center. i darted into the office about 2 minutes late and then i had to stand there for 5 minutes while the receptionist was on the phone with someone who just didn’t... want to hang up i guess? the other receptionist was talking to another person. so i couldn’t check in. so i waited.

when i saw the psychiatrist we found the medical history my undergrad doctor had sent over. i talked about how i didn’t feel anything even though i knew what i was supposed to be feeling. i talked about how i felt super sleepy in stressful situations. i talked about how group therapy was challenging because i’d kind of lost interest in trusting people again.

in group i got into it a little bit actually, maybe ironically. i talked about how mom used to tell my friends super embarrassing stories about me while they were over for playdates. so i started treating it like nothing mattered. people could know whatever they wanted about me. it doesn’t matter. don’t hold your information too close.

i mean nothing good ever happens when people find out my orientation but it doesn’t matter right?

like, sometimes nothing bad happens either, but nothing specifically good has happened.

anyway. she said it sounded like i had ptsd. i said that’s come up before. she said i need to start seeing an individual therapist. she said i could probably find resources at the crisis center, which is open on weekends. but i couldn’t go there regularly because i’m not guaranteed the same doctor every time. she also said she’d need to see me again next week to get a more complete picture of my life. so i’ll probably be there for two hours again.

she’s really nice too. i like her. i am concerned for her because the white supremacist guy is speaking here after all in mid-october. the state pressured the university into “free speech”ing it up all up in here. they’re not sponsoring him though so he had to actually rent the space with his own money.

i saw on the school web site though that the buildings closest to the, uh, speaker will not be open. so i think she will just get a day off.

after that i waited at the bus stop. i was late for my meeting at the drc. finally a bus came. after i got on the bus driver pulled over at the very next stop and pulled out a novel and started reading. i was like “no.................” internally.

i was super late.

anyway danielle and i managed to condense what is usually a 50-minute session into 20 minutes in which i talked about what i’d learned today, stuff i’d been doing in the past week to improve my chances at the midterms, how i was feeling more confident with my homework, and that positive self talk is incredibly challenging. she said it was a really important habit to get into and also congratulated me on being proactive and getting these resources that i needed.

i guess just because someone who is mad at or around you says something mean to you that doesn’t make it true. (re: not being proactive because i could be doing this, this, and this (which i am in fact already doing).)

danielle asked how i was feeling about my midterms now that homework was going pretty smoothly. i laughed and said i was looking forward to my hopes and dreams getting crushed by yet another test.

then i laughed at how quickly her expression changed between the words “dreams” and “crushed” because i was surprised. i’d noticed her beaming as i began my sentence with “looking forward to” but wasn’t sure what to do about it, knowing how my sentence was going to end.

i like her a lot.

i walked back to the department because i’d had quite enough bus nonsense today thank you. the air was soupy today though so i was really wet and sticky when i got back indoors. i collapsed into the chair at the desk i’ve co-opted in suzanne/luis/rebika/taylor’s office. i got back to work, but i spent a little time horsing around with my classmates right before they left to get some drinks at the bar. i’d been up and down so much today that i just wanted to spend some time actually working. july said i’d “spurned her advances” which i thought was hilarious. harrison and i threw the foam space shuttle at each other and then i baseball pitched it into the wall and startled taylor.

right before suzanne and jennica left we held a short conference with soham (after learning the proper summoning technique) about one of the classical problems i’d been looking at. he hadn’t done it yet so we mostly spitballed concepts. the question was worded very enigmatically and we couldn’t figure out what part of it meant. as soon as suzanne and jennica left i felt confused and had trouble continuing. i tried to borrow suzanne’s ipad to get her class notes finally but it was locked and she didn’t answer my texts.

we didn’t really have time to talk to the grader. i think we just gotta kind of suck it up for now and work on that after midterms.

i talked to taylor a little bit about the problem. i was actually ahead of him??? that was bizarre. i ended up getting very, very lost in the math when i did finally muster up the courage to work on it by myself. when jennica came back she said what she had done and told soham to do, so i erased my entire page of struggles to properly factor this mess of fractions and did what she did. i had some reservations because she was turning a general proof into a special case but it took a page to finish the problem instead of start it so i let it go.

of course 20 minutes later she told me that had all been wrong and that we actually had to do this really obscure thing that no one had ever heard of and didn’t make any sense to me. it was the part that had been very cryptic in the question. i told her i didn’t care any more and would just move forward. i can’t keep redoing the same problem forever. i have to practice the other problems i’m not very good at before the midterm.

then it was 8 so i had a quick snack and biked home. my body hurt a lot less than usual, probably because i had some kind of fuel in it instead of absolutely none. i am becoming a little more bold with turning and i’ve figured out how to start moving from a stop without tipping over. i’m glad it’s starting to feel more natural after, what, two weeks of riding it every day? although it feels like my butt might be permanently bruised, between the seat (which is falling apart) and the cracks in the road (which is also falling apart). i usually feel pretty ok by the time i wake up in the morning and then the instant i sit on the bike to get to school my body goes “ ;___; “.

that’s a crying face.

anyway when i got home i made dinner and wept about a comic that updated and i realized i have like 30 posts in my queue so i moved up the posting schedule to 5 a day instead of 4. hope you’re ready for a flood of new content!!!

hope you’re ready for the deluge of sammie reblogs!!!!!!!!!!!!

hope you’re ready for so many posts you can’t read all of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i was thinking maybe since i am not feeling too bummed right now i should end my post with, like, positive self talk i guess. i don’t really know what to say or how to do that though.

i can’t seem to get past the “i’m angry that i never got to learn this” part of being an adult and into the “actually learning this” part. i joked to suzanne that it’s really surprising to raise something that is thriving- it was in reference to our potted plants that we keep by the window, but i moved on to my cat.

“like, i just leave her food and water and she’s so happy!” i said. “i feel like there should be some kind of secret handshake that i don’t know in order for her to be happy. but i have just taken good care of her.”

suzanne laughed and said “secret handshake?”

i said “i dunno.”

so i guess that’s a positive thing i can say to myself today. my cat seems very genuinely healthy (especially considering the kidney disease, which has receded somewhat???) and happy with where she’s at right now. and she seems to be juuust about at the “healthy weight” bracket finally.

and... it really does feel good to know what the classical homework questions are asking for almost right away. it feels good to see “set up this lagrangian” and know immediately what kinds of information i need to get from my diagram. i said to taylor, i think, that it was nice because this homework was dealing with concepts i was struggling with a few weeks ago but now that we’ve had some time to process it, it makes a lot of sense. and it’s good to know that i am, in fact, understanding things slowly in the background as we move forward way too fast.

as i left our meeting i told the grad coordinator that “a good way to get someone to learn something real fast is to make it too hard.” he smiled, i think. i hope he starts to believe in me a little more soon.

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brentrogers · 4 years

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Podcast: Psych Central Turns 25 This Year

It’s Psych Central’s 25th anniversary! In today’s show, we celebrate the Internet’s largest and oldest independent mental health site with founder Dr. John Grohol. Just a few years after the World Wide Web became public domain, Dr. Grohol was inspired to create an online resource for everyone — a site where patients, clinicians and caregivers could come together to access and share valuable mental health and psychology information.

Join us as Gabe and Dr. Grohol talk about the past, present and future of Psych Central.

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Guest information for ‘John Grohol-Psych central’ Podcast Episode

John M. Grohol, Psy.D. is a pioneer in online mental health and psychology. Recognizing the educational and social potential of the Internet in 1995, Dr. Grohol has transformed the way people could access mental health and psychology resources online. Pre-dating the National Institute for Mental Health and mental health advocacy organizations, Dr. Grohol was the first to publish the diagnostic criteria for common mental disorders, such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. His leadership has helped to break down the barriers of stigma often associated with mental health concerns, bringing trusted resources and support communities to the Internet.

He has worked tirelessly as a patient advocate to improve the quality of information available for mental health patients, highlighting quality mental health resources, and building safe, private support communities and social networks in numerous health topics.

About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘John Grohol-Psych Central’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of The Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today, we have Dr. John Grohol. Dr. Grohol is the editor in chief of PsychCentral.com and the man who founded Psych Central 25 years ago. John, welcome to the show.

Dr. John Grohol: Great to be with you today, Gabe. It’s an exciting achievement.

Gabe Howard: I’ve never done anything for 25 years. It’s incredibly impressive. And I want to start back twenty six years ago, twenty seven years ago before Psych Central existed. When you were coming up with the idea for this Web site, how did you get this idea?

Dr. John Grohol: So it all began when I was in grad school down in Florida and I had a bad first year in school because I learned about the death of my childhood best friend who took his own life. And that was a difficult thing to come to terms with because none of us saw the situation at the time that he was going through and he didn’t feel comfortable in reaching out to anyone. This was back in 1990 and I needed help, but I didn’t exactly know where to turn. One of the places I ended up turning to was a support group online, and that support group was on a section of the Internet we call Usenet, which hosts newsgroups. We call them newsgroups, they are actually just what we would today call like a discussion forum like Reddit or something or even Facebook, similar in the sense of these were groups set up to discuss specific topics. One of those topics was a depression group. And I just found it astounding, amazing that there was an online support group for depression in 1990.

Gabe Howard: And this is before the Internet was a household name.

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah, this, well, this predates the Web, and that’s why it’s hard to explain and hard to have people wrap their minds around it, because here we are 30 years later and to understand that people were doing online support, emotional support and information sharing thirty years ago. So these are not new phenomenon. So for people to sort of look at the Internet and say, oh, you know, it’s not real or you can’t have a real emotional connection with other people, I laugh at them because we’ve been, people have been having real emotional connections through Internet technologies for well over 30 years, actually goes back even further than that.

Gabe Howard: Yeah, I remember the old, like, bulletin board system days.

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy too were the commercial services and they also had the equivalent of support groups in their respective services.

Gabe Howard: They did. I used to work for CompuServe serve, and that’s where I found the Internet. So it’s interesting. We’ve got a similar story so far with technology really helping us get through difficult times. And of course, I’m really sorry about the loss of your friend.

Dr. John Grohol: Thank you. It was a really difficult time in my life, and using that support group really helped me and it really helped me understand the power that such support groups held for people, if only they knew about them. The fact that I came upon it, it was only because I had some mad computer skills at the time. Computers were a hobby of mine. So I understood how to search for that type of group on Usenet. At the time, it was not a simple process and you had to be in academia. Back then, you had to be associated with the university as a student or a professor or something even to access that part of the Internet. So that got me thinking, well, if this helped me so much, and it’s helping other people as much as I can see that it is, wouldn’t it be great if more people knew about this? So I started collecting, I started indexing all these support groups that existed back in 1990 and 1991. And I published those indexes on those groups to let people know about other great emotional support and psychology groups that existed so people could find them and find each other.

Gabe Howard: And this was all before PsychCentral.com was a registered domain name.

Dr. John Grohol: Yep, yep.

Gabe Howard: And now here we are. So it’s obviously you did this for five years, which is not an insignificant amount of time. This wasn’t a whim for you. This was something that was a major part of your life for half a decade.

Dr. John Grohol: I was actually deeply involved in newsgroups back then because that was the modality that people used to have online discussions. There was no Reddit. There was no other way of doing that. Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s a thing called mailing lists that still exists today, too. And that’s where you get the online discussion, it comes right to your email box. And those remain widely used in many parts of the Internet.

Gabe Howard: So now we’re at 1995. Twenty five years ago.

Dr. John Grohol: So 1995, it looked like the Web was going to be the phenomena that turned out to be, and I said, well, this is a good place to publish a Web site and to put these indexes, to give them a home. To point people to a Web site and say, here you can go and find an online support group here. You can go and find a group about psychology or some related topic. And it’s so much easier than trying to publish these on newsgroups. So the first couple of years, there was no PsychCentral.com domain because domains back then were also pretty expensive. So what most people did is that they would use an Internet service provider’s domain and they would have lots of users, much like, if you remember, early Web sites allowed people to build their own Web site like GeoCities

Gabe Howard: Like GeoCities

Dr. John Grohol: So, yes, that’s the one. So you had your Web site and it hung off the GeoCities.com domain. That’s where Psych Central originally lived at first in upstate New York, where I did my internship. Eventually, I went out and spent the, I think it was like $50 or $60 a year to have a dot.com domain back then. So that’s a pretty significant investment. So I had to make sure that I was ready to make that commitment to PsychCentral.com. And it was perfectly OK before like 2002 to not like have your own domain. That was more of a corporate thing.

Gabe Howard: So here we are, we’ve now registered PsychCentral.com. What did this site look like when you made the leap from, you know, hanging off somebody else’s domain name? What sort of took place in these transitional years, these startup years?

Dr. John Grohol: Well, at first, it was more of a hobby site for me. I mean, it literally was a way of publishing these indexes and learning HTML and coding for the Internet and doing that and understanding how graphics worked and how. You had to do it all back then. There was no such career as a web developer. HTML was built to be simple and easily learned. And so anybody could create their own Web site. I taught many conference workshops about how a clinician, how therapists could build their own Web site, because it was that easy. And you can still do it today. You can build a very simple Web site using raw HTML coding directly from an application like notepad or word pad or something like that. So for the first couple of years, the Web site didn’t have a lot. It was maybe like a dozen pages and a bunch of those pages were the indexes of the support groups.

Gabe Howard: To put it in 2020 talk, it was basically just a list of links.

Dr. John Grohol: Yes, it was a list of links, because that’s. It’s hard to understand this, but Yahoo at the time in 1995 was the only search directory and Yahoo was just a list of links curated by human editors. And that’s what made it special. But back in 95, 96, 97, the Web was small enough that you could actually have humans go around looking for new Web sites to put into their directory. And so that’s basically what I was doing. I was doing a specialized directory of links for mental health, for psychology.

Gabe Howard: Did that have a blog on it? Were you writing articles back then? Or is this?

Dr. John Grohol: So that’s a good question about blogging, because I did start blogging and I believe it was 1999. And I wasn’t satisfied with any of the blogging software available at the time because it was all pretty rudimentary and didn’t quite do everything that I wanted it to do. And so I coded my own blog software to be become a blogger, and I coded that in Perl. And I maintained it for a couple of years until WordPress came around. And that was in the early 2000s.

Gabe Howard: When did PsychCentral.com start looking how it looks today? And I don’t mean design wise, I mean, you know, having all of the blogs, having the forums, having the news and all of the stuff that people have come to rely on today.

Dr. John Grohol: From 1995 to 2006, those first eleven years it grew bit by bit, piece by piece. I worked on it in my spare time. It was not my full time gig. I had other jobs working for other companies, helping them build mental health Web sites. I added pages here and there where I could, when I could, when I had the time. And it was kind of done, you know, randomly, haphazardly. I didn’t really have a clear vision for what I wanted it to be and become because I was doing this work for other companies. But I did see it that it had a good traffic profile, that it still continued to get a lot of traffic, despite it not being as big as some other Web sites out there or as in depth about different mental health issues. I also encouraged a lot of people to publish on the site if they had an article or if they wanted to tell their personal story about dealing with mental health issues or dealing with treatment and whatnot. So I published a lot of other people’s stories, other people’s writing on the site as well. In 2006, that’s when I decided I had enough of working for the man and different start ups and seeing all the ways that they were doing things wrong and spending money on things that didn’t matter. And I was so sick of seeing that. I was seeing, you know, millions of dollars just basically be wasted and poured down the drain. And so in 2006, I said, look, I can do this better. I can do this more thoughtfully. And I can do this independent of any industry influence, whether it be pharma, whether it be my own biases toward psychotherapy. I believe we can create a better mental health Web site that has information that we keep updated, that we add new stuff to, that we have a blog. 2006 was really the tipping point, the turning point for Psych Central, because I started focusing on it full time. It started paying my bills and it allowed me to hire my first couple of staffers.

Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after we hear from our sponsors.

Sponsor Message: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: We’re back discussing the 25th anniversary of PsychCentral.com with founder Dr. John Grohol. Now, I know that Psych Central’s credo is to provide the best evidence based mental health and psychology information, regardless of profession. All voices are important and should be elevated in the discourse about mental illness and mental health. When did that credo come along?

Dr. John Grohol: The background for the credo comes from my seeing back in my graduate school days, my observing that the professions didn’t talk to each other. Psychiatrist didn’t talk to psychologists. Clinical social workers didn’t talk to a psychiatrists or psychologists. That each of these were their own individual silos in training and then in practice, in research and then trying to get those research results disseminated to clinicians. And there was no reason for it. We’re all trying to work on the same disorders. And I found it so frustrating because at the end of the day, all the mental health professionals and there’s, you know, five, six, seven, eight, nine different types of mental health professionals, they’re all doing the same kinds of things. They’re trying to help people grapple with difficult things in their lives, whether they be diagnosed mental illness or personality concerns or just coping with a life issue. And I saw no reason for this disconnect between the professions. It really annoyed me. And I talked to other colleagues and found, surprisingly, that they were open to the idea. That there is this desire to coordinate and communicate more between professions, but it just doesn’t happen. So from the onset of building Psych Central, I very strongly believed that we should be agnostic in our development and in our communications, the way we write content, the topics we focus on. We should try and be as objective as possible, as independent as possible.

Dr. John Grohol: And really just look at what does the research say? Does the research say therapy works best for this disorder? Or does the research say medications work best? Or some combination of the two? Or is there a third modality that you should consider? And I just put aside any professional biases as much as humanly possible and tried to create the content that reflects that belief in the credo. The last part of the credo is that it’s not a conversation just for professionals to be having among themselves. The most important part of the conversation is patients, our clients, and they need to be a part of the conversation. Their stories need to be heard. And from day one, I always believed that. And I try and I tried to create a platform where patient stories could also be a part of the conversation. And in my view, the most important part.

Gabe Howard: John, it’s interesting, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder back in 2003, and it was 2006, 2007 before I would say that I started to become a mental health advocate. And for years, I sort of bopped around in the siloed system that you speak of. I was a person with lived experience or I was a consumer, a peer, a patient. And when I met up with websites that wanted to talk about, you know, the research and the facts, they had no interest in my voice because they believed that my voice was opinion. And then I met up with you. And that was fantastic because you understood that the patient voice is relevant and the clinician voice is relevant and the caregiver voice is relevant and PsychCentral.com really has all of these voices coexisting in perfect harmony. So it’s no surprise that somebody like me ended up on Psych Central, because my only other choice would really to be on just a patient only Web site. And I, like you, feel that just leaves so much information out. And it also sort of makes us hostile to each other. Do you find that everybody coexists well, on PsychCentral.com?

Dr. John Grohol: You know, that’s the goal, that that is what we strive to be, what we strive for the site to reflect, that all of these voices are equal. I don’t know that, you know, we always are successful at doing that as well as we could, but we do try. And it is rooted firmly in the belief that the patient voice isn’t just one of many. I would argue it’s the most important. It’s the one that’s least heard and is often left out of the conversation altogether. And I find that just horrible, horrible bias in a lot of Web sites out there that they don’t include the patient voice or it’s sectioned off into its own special patient section. You know, here are the patient stories. I don’t believe in that. I believe that it should be as integral and as well integrated into the conversation as much as any other voice, because we’re talking about patient lives here. They need to be a part of the solution. They need to be a part of, an active part of their treatment, or in many cases, the treatment simply isn’t that effective.

Gabe Howard: Well, John, obviously you’re going to get no argument from me. I do want to commend you strongly for doing this, because I think that people who don’t live with mental illness don’t realize how often the patient voice is pushed down. So I was very surprised when I found Psych Central just as a user. It came up in a Google search. And I liked this because it forced me to learn about all sides. And I think that made me not only a better mental health advocate, but honestly, I think it allowed me to get better care. And I know that is a common thing that I hear running the podcast and doing the work that I do. So, of course, complete kudos to you.

Dr. John Grohol: Thank you. Thank you. But it’s not me. I have a hard time accepting such things because I do the platform and I do what we’ve created here with the help and support and standing on the shoulders of dozens of staffers like yourself. It wouldn’t be possible to have the great resources that we have on Psych Central without people like you, without people like our managing editor Sarah Newman, without all the other great editors and contributors that we have. It’s just they are all individually amazing people and they’ve helped, you know, make Psych Central what it is today. And of course, it would be nothing today if we weren’t able to actually speak to people in a way that they find useful. Because we have somewhere between six and seven million unique users every month. That also helps us do the kind of work that we’re trying to do.

Gabe Howard: John, we’ve talked about the past, we’ve talked about the present. What’s the future of Psych Central?

Dr. John Grohol: The future of Psych Central is always a question in my mind, because we’ve had a great 14 years as a full time ongoing concern. The online landscape over the past four or five years has definitely gotten a lot more difficult to navigate with Google and primarily Google, because that’s the search engine that everybody uses and their algorithm changes. A small digital publisher like Psych Central has a much more challenging time navigating these kinds of algorithm changes that don’t seem to make very much sense to us or to a lot of other health publishers. That’s definitely been a challenge for us. So in the future, I’d like to hope that Google continues to listen to small publishers like us and is aware that when they change the algorithm, and it can really hurt publishers that have been providing health information before they were even, before they were even a business, before they were even a company. I mean, we’ve been around before WebMD. We’ve been around long before Google. Part of the future of Psych Central is trying to maintain our leadership position as an independent mental health resource.

Dr. John Grohol: I think some of the ways that we can improve and do some awesome things in the space is, for instance, to put together a great app. We’ve done an app in the past, but it was more just a way of interacting with our Web site. And we’d like to do an app that is more intervention based and helps people wherever they are in their own mental health journey to try and become a better person, to try and cope better with those kinds of things that life is throwing at them, whether they’re mental health issues or relationship issues. And I see a lot of potential there. So that’s something that we’re looking to get started with this year and hopefully have something out within a year’s time or so. The future is, Tom Petty reminds us, is wide open. And I believe that we have still only touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s possible to help people with mental health issues and concerns in their own daily lives.

Gabe Howard: Well, John, I can’t thank you enough for starting Psych Central, and I can’t thank you enough for being open to evolving. It wasn’t three years ago, actually on November 19, 2017, we aired the very first episode of The Psych Central Podcast where we had you as a guest telling us all about Psych Central. And I listen to that episode sometimes and it really just reminds me of how far we have come with the podcast in the last three years. And of course, thank you for being willing to invest in podcasting at a time when, well, frankly, most people were rolling their eyes and saying, everybody has a podcast.

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah, I mean, it’s just one of those things that we like to innovate. We like to see what kind of platforms, what kind of things people are interested in doing and trying to reach them wherever they are. I think that’s so important. If they’re into podcasting, why wouldn’t you have a platform? Why wouldn’t you have some podcasts to try and help people understand mental health better? Psychology better?

Gabe Howard: Well, I guarantee that every listener of this show could not agree with you more, John. This was great. You want to come back in say five years for the 30th anniversary of PsychCentral.com?

Dr. John Grohol: Gabe, I think that would be a great thing to look forward to, and I’m going to put it on my calendar.

Gabe Howard: Well, John, I agree, and it’s a date. All right, everybody, here’s what we need you to do. If you like the show, please subscribe. Please rank us. Review us. Use your words and tell people why you like us. Share us on social media. Send us in e-mails, mention us in support groups. If you’re at dinner with your mother and you’re bored, tell her all about The Psych Central Podcast. And remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. And we will see everybody next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! For more details, or to book an event, please email us at [email protected]. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com. To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share with your friends, family, and followers.

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Podcast: Psych Central Turns 25 This Year

Join us as Gabe and Dr. Grohol talk about the past, present and future of Psych Central.

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Computer Generated Transcript for ‘John Grohol-Psych Central’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Dr. John Grohol: Great to be with you today, Gabe. It’s an exciting achievement.

Gabe Howard: And this is before the Internet was a household name.

Gabe Howard: Yeah, I remember the old, like, bulletin board system days.

Dr. John Grohol: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy too were the commercial services and they also had the equivalent of support groups in their respective services.

Gabe Howard: And this was all before PsychCentral.com was a registered domain name.

Dr. John Grohol: Yep, yep.

Gabe Howard: So now we’re at 1995. Twenty five years ago.

Gabe Howard: Like GeoCities

Gabe Howard: To put it in 2020 talk, it was basically just a list of links.

Gabe Howard: Did that have a blog on it? Were you writing articles back then? Or is this?

Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after we hear from our sponsors.

Gabe Howard: John, we’ve talked about the past, we’ve talked about the present. What’s the future of Psych Central?

Dr. John Grohol: Gabe, I think that would be a great thing to look forward to, and I’m going to put it on my calendar.

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